Rose Red, Chapter 8

Kal/Chloe
Season 7
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 7 here.
Read the story from the beginning here.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Clark could hardly restrain himself from finding a board and clobbering himself in the face with it over and over again, like the monks in that Monty Python movie. He knew a board wouldn't actually survive contact with his skull, but he wanted to do something to pay penance for how stupid he'd been.

He'd had sex. With his best friend. Without protection.

And yeah, okay, so he'd been under the influence, the same way a human male would be if he'd inadvertently ingested half a bottle of Viagra. He knew it wasn't really his fault. Exposure to red K always stole his self-control away.

Still, that didn't stop his desire to find a board.

Chloe was looking at him, her eyes brimming with hurt and anxiety, and he realized the expression on her face was what was really making him want to smack himself in the head. He thought he could cope with an unexpected pregnancy if he had to.

But knowing he'd hurt Chloe-- that was the one thing on earth he couldn't deal with.

And she was very obviously hurt by what had happened.

He wasn't nearly as upset about it as she was. He knew he ought to feel sorrier about it than he did. But he remembered the wild pleasure, the way he'd screamed, the way he'd come deep inside her, and he couldn't feel quite as sorry as he ought to.

I always knew it would be great with her.

He shook himself, brushing the stray thought away. It had been great, but it hadn't been because of Chloe. It was because they'd both been under the influence of red K.

If they did it again, it would probably be perfectly ordinary. Maybe even kind of dull in comparison.

Not that they were going to do it again.

Of course they weren't.

"Listen... Clark..." She sounded as awkward as he felt, and he was grateful she hadn't pulled out the snark, her normal defensive mechanism. "I know this is really... weird... but maybe if we just kind of put it behind us..."

"It won't be easy to put behind us if you're pregnant," he pointed out, doing his best not to sound like the idea scared the bejeezus out of him.

"Well..." Her forehead creased. "There's always the morning-after pill, Clark. I don't think we have to worry about a baby, okay?"

The little knot inside his chest eased at her calm, rational thinking. They were both very young. He didn't think he was ready for a baby, not even a baby he'd made with his best friend in the world.

But then again, he thought of Chloe round with his child, Chloe nursing a tiny baby at her breast, and a strange little longing coiled deep inside him. A baby would link him and Chloe together forever, and on some level, he really liked the sound of that.

Not going to happen, he told himself. Get over it.

"Okay," he said. "So let's talk about us."

"Us?" Her eyebrows shot up so far they almost disappeared into her hairline.

"Our friendship," he clarified rapidly, lest she leap to the wrong conclusion, like he wanted to jump her bones again. Which he totally did not want to do and was not currently thinking about, not even a little.

"Clark..." She reached out and put her hand on his forearm, in a friendly gesture she'd made a thousand times before. All of a sudden he remembered her fingers stroking up and down along the sensitive skin between his wrist and his elbow, caressing him until he moaned and trembled.

He felt his body react at the memory, and tried really hard to ignore it.

"Look," she said, "our friendship hasn't changed. Right?"

"Right." Except for the fact that perfectly innocent touches now felt charged with impossible levels of sexuality, and he couldn't look at her without thinking about how it had felt to be inside her, how it had felt to come inside her.

Except for that, everything was perfectly normal.

"I know things might be awkward for a while..."

If awkward meant he wanted to grab her, shove her against the wall, and screw her hard, he was in perfect agreement with that assessment.

"...but I think we can work past this without too much difficulty."

He opened his mouth, and words he hadn't intended to say, or even to think, fell out.

"Assuming we want to work past it."

She blinked at him, looking startled, and then stood up, facing him. Anger blazed in the golden depths of her eyes.

"Excuse me?" she said. "Are you telling me you don't even want to try to save our friendship?"

That wasn't what he'd meant at all. He opened his mouth to defend himself, to explain himself, but she talked right over him.

"Eight years of being friends, best friends, and you just want to throw it out the window because of one awkward incident? Why?"

"I didn't--" he started, but she wasn't finished. In fact he was getting the impression she'd barely begun.

"Look, you can't blame this on me," she said angrily. "You can't act like it's all my fault, and just ditch me because you feel uncomfortable about what happened. And you can't blame yourself and go all mopey about it, either. It wasn't my fault, and it wasn't your fault. It was just one of those bizarre things that happen in Smallville. And I'm not giving up our friendship because of one little rock, Clark. I'm just not."

He wasn't giving up on their friendship, either. That was the last thing he wanted, and he tried to say so. "I think--"

"And I have to say, Clark, that the idea that you'd give up, on our friendship and on me, just because of a little awkwardness? It really pisses me off."

"Yeah," he said dryly. "I'm getting that."

"Well, then, get a grip on yourself and quit talking about not working past it, okay?"

"I didn't mean it that way," he said.

She hesitated, cocking her head, and stared at him.

"Exactly what way did you mean it, then?"

"I meant..." He understood why she was confused about what he'd meant. Hell, he was confused too. He remembered his earlier words: I never want to hurt you, and I would never, ever have done that if it weren't for the red K.

Only it wasn't true. Because he was pretty sure he'd been on the verge of doing it for a while now. The red K had just made him finally act on the impulse.

He hesitated a second, considering that, then grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her, hard. At last he lifted his head and looked down into her stunned, wide eyes.

"I meant maybe we shouldn't try to just go back to being friends," he told her.

Read Chapter 9 here.