Consequences, Chapter 2

Clark/Chloe
Season 7, MHE for "Fracture"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Read Chapter 1 here.

I know you've been thinking about that all day, so I figured we'd get it out of the way and be friends.

It had been his first kiss. He'd been fourteen, and she'd been a new girl from the city. He'd been assigned to show her around school, and when she'd found out he lived on a farm, she'd asked to see it.

No. She'd demanded to see it. He'd figured out very quickly that what Chloe Sullivan wanted, Chloe Sullivan got. Not that she was bossy or obnoxious about it-- but she had a way about her that somehow compelled people to do whatever she wanted.

He'd certainly never been able to say no to her.

Anyway, she'd looked over the farm, her eyes glowing gold with interest, and then he'd brought her up to the loft, his private space he only shared with his very best friends. She'd stood there for a moment, looking around, then put her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him.

He'd never been kissed before, and he'd been totally unprepared for what it felt like, the warmth of her mouth against his, the way his lips tingled. The way everything tingled.

She'd pulled away, and he'd gaped at her.

"What was that for?"

She'd smiled, and told him she knew he'd been thinking about it all day. And the weird thing was, he had. He had a crush on Lana Lang, the girl next door, but something about Chloe Sullivan had made him totally forget Lana for a little while.

He pulled himself out of his haze of exhaustion, dragged himself out of happier memories, and opened his eyes, just to check on her. Not that he'd ever stopped listening for her heartbeat for a microsecond since this whole ordeal began, but every so often he felt the need to do a visual check, too.

Dawn was beginning to break outside. Frail, delicate fingers of gold stretched into the room, illuminating the bedroom. One of the bars of light fell over her face.

He studied her face as if he hadn't memorized every detail years ago. A determined chin, a slightly too prominent nose, long dark lashes concealing hazel eyes. She wasn't classically lovely, yet when she smiled, her whole face transformed into radiant beauty.

It occurred to him that he might never see her bright smile again. Hell, he might never see her face again after today. Sooner or later, he was going to have to admit she was really dead, that her body was going to decay and decompose just like anyone else's. And then she'd have to be--

He stopped the thought before the word buried could form in his head. He remembered her struggling frantically in the morgue drawer, trapped in darkness because she'd been declared dead, and he shook his head in denial.

He wasn't going to let that happen to her again. He just wasn't.

He deliberately turned his mind back to thoughts of kissing her. He'd kissed her a lot of times, considering they'd never officially dated. After that first kiss in the loft, there had been a moment between them, a moment she'd never remember, but that he'd never forget. A guy named Kyle Tippet had proven he had the meteor-fueled ability to control people by telling Chloe to kiss Clark.

Clark still recalled every moment of the incident as if it were yesterday. Kyle had taken Chloe's hand in his, their hands glowing as they touched. You have feelings for Clark, don't you, Chloe? You see him, and you want him. All this time, you've been hiding it. Now you can show him.

Chloe had turned to Clark with a dreamy expression on her face, run her hands slowly over his stomach and chest, then grabbed him by the coat collar and yanked him down, rather forcibly, for a kiss.

Aware that she was under a compulsion, Clark had struggled a bit. But he hadn't wanted to struggle. He'd been all too conscious of the same sensations as last time, the warmth of her mouth, the feminine fragrance of her skin, the responses of his body...

When she'd finally let him go, she hadn't remembered a thing.

But he'd remembered every instant of it.

He'd come very close to kissing her again at the spring dance, but they'd been interrupted. The next time he'd actually kissed her again had been in a file room, of all places. They'd been sneaking around in a hospital, trying to get information on a guy who'd been meteor infected, and suddenly the door had opened.

Chloe hadn't hesitated. She'd grabbed Clark and pushed him right up against a file cabinet. This time, he was older, and she felt so good against him he couldn't help reacting, even with an annoyed doctor looking on.

His lips had parted automatically, and he'd touched his tongue to hers. The feel of her tongue against his had sent a shower of sparks through him.

Afterward, he'd been hideously embarrassed that he'd responded that way, because she'd just been trying to cover for both of them, to convince the doctor that they were candystripers who'd stepped into the file room for a quick makeout session. And it had worked. The doctor had been totally fooled.

Clark just wished he hadn't felt like such a dork afterward. It was one thing to kiss a girl when you were trying not to blow your cover, and it was something else entirely to stick your tongue into her mouth.

But he'd liked the way it felt. Despite all his presumed devotion to Lana, he couldn't seem to stop thinking about kissing Chloe. He thought about it, over and over again. On some level, he really wanted to kiss her again.

Two years later, he'd gotten his chance.

The world had been falling to pieces around them as they stood in the Daily Planet basement. She'd said softly, I don't know if I'm ever going to see you again. And then she'd walked toward him and kissed him, and he'd kissed her back.

He'd outgrown some of his natural shyness by then, and he'd slid his tongue right into her mouth and kissed her, deeply, passionately, holding her tightly.

When he'd gotten back to Metropolis, he'd wanted to kiss her again, but he hadn't quite had the nerve.

Now, looking at her still, silent form, he let himself voice the truth he'd never quite let himself acknowledge.

"I wish I'd kissed you when I came back from the Phantom Zone," he said, very softly. "Things could have been so different, all this time. It could have been me and you, Chlo. It should have been me and you."

There was no response, of course. He sat there, staring at her, all the times he'd kissed her, and almost kissed her, playing in his head like a movie.

If only she wakes up, he thought. If she wakes up, I'm going to kiss her again.

And again, and again, and again.

Read Chapter 3 here.