Quirks

Clark/Chloe
Season 7
Rating: Adult (on the mild side)
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Based on a prompt by electricmonk333: "Five quirks about Chloe that Clark cannot resist."
Still from Allison Mack Online.

1:The pen quirk

"Where the hell is my pen?"

Clark Kent grinned as Chloe looked frantically around her desk, searching under piles of paper and beneath the monitor and behind her name plate. He sat there, perched on the corner of the desk, watching her dig wildly.

"Damn it!" She shuffled paper madly. "Why can I never find a pen when I need one?"

He watched her for a few more moments, then, at last, took pity on her.

"It's behind your ear."

"Oh." She reached up, and sure enough, there it was, right behind her ear. She grinned sheepishly. "You'd think I'd remember to look there first."

"You'd think," he agreed. "But you never do."

"You could have told me."

Given that her mind was razor-sharp about most subjects, he found her absentmindedness, and her subsequent desperate searches, incredibly endearing, but he wasn't about to say so. "And miss watching you look everywhere for it? I don't think so."

"Jerk," she said affectionately, and picked up the phone to call whoever she was interviewing.

He watched her absently stick the pen behind her ear again, and grinned in anticipation of another, even more frantic search.

*****

2: The car quirk

"Don't you dare spill that in my car."

"You and your car," he said, rolling his eyes as he took a long sip of the Coke they'd just gotten from a drivethrough window. "You're a complete slob about everything else, but you're a total neat freak when it comes to your car."

She took the Coke from his hand and sipped from the same straw. It was, he thought, kind of weird that they shared straws that way. It wasn't like they were dating or anything. But they'd always done it, ever since middle school. If one of them was drinking something, the other just casually reached out, took the cup, and drank from it, too. It was one of those things that was simply understood between them.

"My car," she said, "is the only thing I have that really belongs to me. I share the apartment with Lois. I share the basement of the Planet with a whole bunch of other reporters. But I bought this car with my own money. It's all mine, and if you spill a drop of Coke in it..."

"Easy, Chlo. It's me. I don't spill stuff, remember?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "I know that."

She handed it back to him, driving onehanded, and the cup slipped from her hand. She squealed.

He caught it out of midair. The cup's lid came loose, and liquid began to spill. Very quickly, he grabbed the napkins they'd gotten and managed to get the liquid before any of it hit the dashboard or carpet.

"Nice," she said approvingly. "This is why I keep you around."

Now that the horrible crisis of Coke spillage had been averted, he couldn't help laughing at the squealing noise she'd made. She turned her gaze from the road for an instant and glared at him, all squinty-eyed. "What is your problem?"

"You're cute," he said, still laughing.

She blinked, as if that was the last thing she'd expected him to say, and then rolled her eyes, exactly as he had earlier.

"Puh-lease," she answered.

He knew she didn't believe him, but it was true. He always found Chloe's little quirks to be amusing. And in that moment, when she squealed in terror because a soda had threatened the perfect cleanliness of her car... he had found her wholly adorable.

*****

3: The coffee quirk

"You're addicted."

"I am not." She poured coffee into a cup, looking at him across the countertop in her apartment with a trace of defiance. "I just like coffee."

"You," he said more firmly, "are addicted." He put his hands on the counter, leaned forward, and narrowed his eyes at her. "You can't live without coffee."

She lifted the cup to her lips and took a long sip. "A life without coffee," she answered, "isn't worth living."

He grinned at her. It was her day off, so she was wearing a short-sleeved, green-striped t-shirt and jeans, and she looked impossibly cute. The shirt clung to her curves in a way that he tried hard not to notice, because they were just friends. But he was male, and not blind, and he really couldn't help noticing.

"Apparently caffeine brings out the philospher in you," he said. "Could you even make it a day without coffee?"

She took another long sip. "Hell, no," she answered flatly, and his grin grew wider.

"That's pathetic," he said, teasing her.

"I don't think so." She looked at him over the rim of the cup. "Isn't there anything you're addicted to?"

"Of course not."

"Oh, come on. I bet there is. Isn't there anything you can't get through the day without?"

He looked at her and thought of the way he called her three or four times a day, the way he felt compelled to stop by the Daily Planet to see her at least once a day, the way his day wasn't complete until he called her in the evening and told her everything he'd done, and listened to everything she'd done in return.

"Yeah," he answered, very softly. "I guess there is something I'm addicted to, after all."

*****

4: The writing quirk

"Can't talk. Writing."

Clark had just paused by Chloe's desk in the basement of the Daily Planet. Before he could get a single word out, she'd spoken those three terse words. He knew better than to try to get her attention when she was in full-on writing mode, but he tried anyway.

"Chlo," he said. "Listen, I just came by to ask if you wanted to do lun--"

"Writing." Her fingers flew frantically over the keyboard.

He wasn't stupid, so he subsided into silence and watched her for a moment. He'd watched her write since their freshman year in high school, and she'd always been this way. When she got to a certain point in a story, she was totally and completely focused on it.

Clark found her level of focus endearing. But it also made him wonder what else in her life she turned that laser-sharp focus on.

He wondered if she focused this intently in bed.

He shook his head, startled by the thought. He didn't wonder what Chloe was like in bed. He just didn't. That was wrong, because they were friends. Just friends. He'd broken up with his girlfriend Lana a couple of months ago, but he didn't have the slightest interest in, well...

He watched her fingers fly over the keyboard, imagined those small hands sliding over his skin, imagined her staring at him with the same intent focus she used when writing.

And for the first time he admitted to himself that yeah, he did wonder what Chloe was like in bed.

He really wanted to find out.

*****

5: The sex quirk

"Do you always have to be on top?"

Clark lay sprawled beneath Chloe. After she'd finished writing her story, he'd finally gotten her attention, and asked her to do lunch with him. But with his mind running down new, less-than-clean paths, one thing had led to another, and after lunch he'd swooped her up in his arms and carried her back to Smallville.

Now they were stretched out in his bed in the old farmhouse, where they'd been all afternoon. They'd made love four times, and every last time she'd somehow wound up on top.

At his question, she paused and thought about it.

"Yeah," she answered at last. "I guess I do."

"It's not that I mind, exactly," he said. In fact he found being on the bottom allowed him to watch her, to watch her reactions and her expressions and the way her breasts bounced. And he definitely wasn't complaining about any of that. "It's just that I figured we could try some different positions this time."

"But I like being on top."

"You and your quirks," he said, rolling her over and grinning down at her. "I think you just like being in control. But I'd like a chance to be in charge."

She thought about that, then gave him a slow, sexy smile. "If you insist."

He lowered his head and began to kiss her everywhere. They'd been friends forever, so his kisses were filled with affection, but they were filled with a new, sharp-edged lust, too. Until this afternoon, he hadn't realized just how much desire for her he'd been keeping under wraps.

She kissed him in response, her kisses just as full of affection and lust as his were. But somehow, by the time their bodies were joined, she'd managed to get back on top.

He closed his eyes and decided not to argue about it. He'd always found Chloe's quirks to be irresistible.

This one was no exception.

-The End-