No One Left to Fight, Chapter 4

Clark/Chloe
Season 6, "Combat"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

Their mouths were still pressed together, their tongues teasing and stroking and touching, and their bodies slid together in a dance of need and desire and affection. Clark was careful not to squash her, but he let himself sink against her softness just a little. She parted her thighs and wrapped them around him, and the feel of her heat pressed right up against his erection made him shiver.

He lifted his head and buried his face in her hair. "Chlo," he whispered. There were a lot more words ricocheting around the inside of his skull, but the single syllable, the name that no one called her except him, was all he could manage to get out right now.

He was bewildered and shocked by the intensity of his feelings. He'd been certain he was in love with Lana, enough to try to put a stop to her wedding and ask her to run off with him instead. But now he couldn't quite figure out what he'd been thinking. Because his feelings for Chloe were so deep and real that they made him realize his supposed "love" for Lana was nothing more than a crush, a holdover from his youth.

He felt so much for Chloe that it scared him a little.

Despite her earlier reservations, her hands were all over him, sliding up under his shirt, caressing the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck, running down and exploring the curves of his ass through his jeans. He jolted and gasped at every light brush of her hands, every new caress, and she kept touching him, her fingers sliding lightly over his skin, until heat flowed through his nerves in an unbroken stream.

He found himself dropping kisses all over her throat, her shoulders, her ears. She squirmed beneath him, and the feel of her body rubbing against his made his aching need worse than before.

"Chloe," he whispered against her throat. "Oh, Chlo..."

The stark desire in his voice must have gotten her attention, brought her back to reality, because all of a sudden she stiffened beneath him. "Clark. Wait."

Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him away gently, and it felt an awful lot like a rejection. The fury that had been seething inside him for the past couple of weeks abruptly bubbled to the surface. He yanked away from her, rolled off the couch, and stood up.

He glowered down at her and snapped out words impatiently.

"What now, Chloe?"

"I just..." She sat up, and her lower lip quivered. "We can't do this, Clark. I can't..."

If he hadn't been so physically wound up, he might have been a little more sympathetic, a little more conscious that her confusion had more to do with her than with him. But as it was, her words shashed into him, a sharp-edged rejection that cut like a knife.

"Fine," he said tersely, too mad to try to talk out whatever was bothering her. He didn't feel like talking, damn it. "If you're going to be a tease, then just go home."

She looked up at him a long moment, then reached out shyly, her hand moving toward his.

He glared at her and deliberately yanked his hand out of her reach.

At the stricken look on her face, he remembered her earlier words-- you're acting like I've already turned into something disgusting-- and instantly felt like the world's biggest heel. But he forced back his guilt, reminding himself that she'd said no to him. Even after admitting that Jimmy didn't mean that much to her, she still didn't want him.

Whereas he wanted her so much he hurt, both on a superficial physical level, and somewhere deep inside.

"Clark." Her voice was a low, raw whisper. "I just... I can't..."

"Yeah, I got that already." He did his best to sound cold and indifferent. "Go home, Chloe. It's late."

She stared up at him for a moment longer, then slowly got to her feet, turned toward the staircase, and walked away without another word.

He stood in the semidarkness of the loft, feeling the rage consuming him. He was flooded with the same pain and anger he'd been feeling, but now it was entwined with thwarted lust and longing, and that only made the rage more intense, more difficult than ever to control.

He wanted to hit something until it shattered. He wanted to go hunt down meteor freaks and beat the crap out of them.

He wanted to kill someone.

At the thought, he shut his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down. Goddamn it. He needed to get past this futile anger somehow. He couldn't keep taking it out on people who had nothing to do with Chloe's situation, people who didn't deserve to be the hapless objects of his rage.

And besides, he wouldn't ever kill again out of anger, no matter what. During his conversation with Chloe, he'd slowly come to that conclusion, and he wasn't going to let the rage sidetrack him from his decision. If he ever killed again, it wouldn't be because he was pissed off, but because there was absolutely, positively no other choice, no possible other way to save innocent lives.

And he hoped that somehow, some way, he'd manage to avoid it from now on. There had to be options. In every situation, there had to be options other than killing. He'd just have to work harder at finding them.

He'd been doing his best to ignore the sounds of Chloe's feet walking down the stairs, but he couldn't filter her out of his consciousness, no matter how hard he tried. Her heartbeat thudded in his ears, and he heard the soft clunk of her car door opening, heard her sink slowly down into the seat.

And then he heard a muffled sob.

Shit. He balled his fists up, suddenly even angrier with himself than he was with the world. He was being a jerk, and he knew it. As upset and angry and distressed as he was, she was a lot more so, and with good reason. It was her life that might get ripped away at any moment, after all.

She was the victim here, not him.

He remembered his earlier thoughts, the idea that he needed to make love to her now, while she was still the same Chloe Sullivan he'd always known. Before something awful happened to her, and he spent the rest of his life regretting the fact that he hadn't taken a chance and let himself get close to her, if only for a short while.

The Yaris' engine started up. Without the slightest conscious thought, he found himself standing next to her car. He'd supersped right down the stairs in a heartbeat.

She was sitting there staring blankly through the windshield, her hands clenching the steering wheel so hard the tendons in her hands stood out beneath the skin. He bent and tapped on the window. She jumped and looked over at him in surprise.

He smiled at her. She hesitated, then cracked the window open, just a bit.

"Chloe," he said, very softly. "Don't go."

Read Chapter 5 here.