Hold Onto Me, Chapter 1

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

Clark/Chloe
Season 6, "Freak"

5500 words
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Based on a plot bunny by sullivanlane, used with permission.

"Clark, I need you to x-ray me."

"What?" Clark Kent jerked his head up and stared at his friend with shock. He didn't ordinarily use his x-ray vision on girls, because there was always the temptation of using it to peek under their clothes. Chloe was his best friend, not his girlfriend, and he tried really hard to avoid that kind of temptation where she was concerned.

"Clark." Chloe Sullivan spoke impatiently as she strode toward him. He could hear her voice shaking, and he knew she was really upset. "Come on, we're both adults. Just do it."

The unfortunate sexual overtones of that phrase sent his brain reeling down paths he was better off not wandering. Just do it. He'd thought about just doing it with her an awful lot lately. In fact, if she hadn't hooked up with a geeky photographer at the Daily Planet named Jimmy Olsen, he had a feeling they would have done it about six months ago. But Jimmy had just left the apartment, and he and Chloe were alone in a darkened room, while thunder rolled outside and rain beat on the windows...

He shook off the images that came to mind, annoyed with himself. Chloe was freaking out, scared half out of her mind, and he was standing here letting himself indulge in dirty thoughts. For God's sake, she wanted him to x-ray her, not to have sex with her. He gave himself a mental slap, trying to get his mind out of the ditch and back on the road.

"Okay," he said, and squinted to focus his vision. He started at her feet, to minimize any temptation he might feel to misuse his vision, and moved up her body.

In her right shoulder, he spotted something that shouldn't be there.

"There," he said, blinking to shift his vision back to normal. For just a second, he got a shadowy image of what she looked like without clothes on, and he blinked again, because he had absolutely no business using his x-ray vision that way. Even if it was inadvertent. Well, mostly inadvertent. "Underneath your collarbone."

She reached up and poked at her shoulder as if she might be able to pull out the little object somehow. Her skin looked perfectly unscarred. "What is it?"

He shook his head, still staring at her shoulder. It was some sort of tiny mechanism, but he hadn't been able to tell more than that. "I don't know."

"Please, Clark. Please. I don't want to die."

He looked up, into her pleading eyes, and he understood that she was asking him to help her somehow. But he wasn't sure what he could do to help her. There was a foreign object in his best friend, something that might be anything from a GPS device to a bomb, and he had no idea what to do next.

He stood frozen, staring at her, and her voice rose. "Just get it out of me!"

He understood her panic. He'd stolen a laptop with information on the "freaks" Dr. Bethany had apparently been experimenting on, and she'd managed to hack into it, finding a map of Smallville with a GPS overlay. Each dot on the map represented a meteor freak. Jimmy Olsen had reported that the freak named Daniel Kim had just died, and the dot that represented him had turned red. One by one, the rest of the dots were changing from green to red as the freaks were killed somehow.

And one of the dots was here at the Talon. One of the dots... was Chloe.

They both knew that whoever was killing off freaks might kill Chloe next. For all they knew, the thing in her shoulder might be a way to release poison into her system and kill her at the push of a button somewhere. They had to get it out.

But he couldn't just reach into her and pull the object out. He wasn't a doctor.

Her eyes were wide with terror, and he wanted to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he recognized they didn't have time to waste. "We need to get you to a hospital," he said, striding past her, toward the door.

She didn't follow. "Clark," she said, her voice shaking. "There's something inside of me. I don't want to wait around the ER while the doctors try to figure out what it's going to do to me. We need to get it out, now."

He turned to look at her, and she met his eyes. "How accurate is your heat vision?"

Panic flooded him. His heat vision could flare so hot that he could reduce objects to ash instantly. He didn't want to try using it surgically on his best friend, certainly not without having practiced first. "Chloe. Don't even go there."

"Is it pinpoint accurate?" she demanded.

The thought of accidentally hurting her, maybe burning her to death, rose up in his mind, and he shook his head wildly. "Chloe, I'm not going to burn you!"

"Clark!" Her voice rose. "Daniel Kim is dead, and every single one of those dots is turning red one by one. I'm not going to be the next red dot!"

Still he hesitated, and she bit her lip. "Fine," she said, turning and stalking toward the kitchen area. Lightning flashed outside. "If you're not going to help me, I'll do it myself."

She grabbed a long, sharp knife from the knife block on the counter and lifted it to her shoulder.

"Chloe! Wait!" He imagined the knife point going into her shoulder, maybe damaging her nerves in the process, imagined her blood running everywhere, and he knew she was right. His heat vision was a better option. "Just hold on," he said, reaching out his hand to her.

She looked at him for a moment as if gauging his determination, then flung down the knife on the counter with a clatter. She pulled down the shoulder of her blouse and stared at him. She looked terrified but resolute.

"Do it," she said.

This time, the phrase didn't make any sexual images run through his head. He was too damn scared of hurting her. He didn't want to use his heat vision to burn her, because there was too much potential for hurting her. But if he didn't do it, she might die right in front of him.

She was right-- he didn't have any choice. He had to do this.

"All right," he answered. He walked toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. She looked up into his eyes. She was obviously frightened, but he saw trust in her eyes, trust that he'd be able to save her, and it warmed him, driving some of his own fear away.

"Hold onto me," he told her.

Read Chapter 2 here.