Forget Me Not

Clark/Chloe
Season 8
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.

"I love you, Chloe. I think I've always loved you."

Clark Kent had been thinking those words for the past six months, ever since she'd been thrown in jail and he'd been trapped in Russia, unable to help her. And at last, at long last, he'd gotten up the nerve to actually say them.

Chloe Sullivan looked up at him, her eyes glowing.

"Clark," she whispered, her voice trembling as if she were on the verge of tears. "I love you too."

Joy swelled inside him, and he wrapped his arms around her and lowered his mouth to hers. Their lips clung together in a long, sweet kiss.

At last he lifted his head and smiled into her eyes. She gazed back at him, looking oddly vague. Apparently he was a really great kisser, because she looked like her head was spinning.

"Oh, hi, Clark," she said. "Did you come over to watch that movie?"

He blinked at her. Coming over to watch her new DVD of Spiderman 4 had ostensibly been his reason for coming over, but that had been before his confession. Like, half an hour ago.

"Uh..." he said, confused.

"Great." She pulled away from him and headed for the DVD player. He trailed after her, bewildered and baffled, as it slowly dawned on him that she didn't remember his confession.

Or his kiss.

*****

It was a week before he worked up the nerve to tell her again. And once again, she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him passionately.

"I love you too," she mumbled into his throat. "I've always loved you, Clark."

He wasn't quite sure what had happened last time to make her forget everything that had happened, wasn't quite sure what he needed to do to avoid a repeat of last time. But he did remember that her sudden amnesia had directly followed their kiss.

But still, just kissing her couldn't possibly have had such an impossible effect on her. Could it?

Chloe lifted her head, obviously waiting for him to kiss her, and he very hesitantly lowered his head and brushed a very light, tentative buss over her lips.

And instantly, her eyes went unfocused.

Oh, no, he thought.

"Hey, Clark," she said brightly. "We were heading out for ice cream, right?"

*****

It was the kiss, he reflected to himself the next week. It had to be. Evidently he'd developed a bizarre new power, and when he kissed her he somehow wiped her memory. Not all of it, of course. But somehow her memories of his confessions of love kept getting totally washed away.

He wasn't clear on whether kissing him wiped a specific block of time, or a specific kind of memory.

What he was clear on was that he couldn't kiss her any more.

"I love you," he told her for the third time.

And for the third time, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him in a loving embrace. He wanted to kiss her, so badly he shook with the need, but he very carefully didn't.

Instead he took her upstairs to his bed and made love to her for half the night, kissing her everywhere except on the lips.

And this time, she remembered every bit of it.

*****

In the morning, as golden light slanted into the old farmhouse, he was very vaguely aware of her getting up and pulling on her clothes. If it was time for her to be heading to the Isis Foundation, then it was time for him to get up and head for the Daily Planet, too. But he was worn out from hours of lovemaking, and he couldn't quite force his eyes open.

"See you tonight, Clark," she whispered, leaning over him. "I love you."

"Mmmmm," he answered blurrily.

And then, to his immense dismay, he felt her lips against his.

Shit. His eyes popped open, and he looked up into her face, hoping against hope that the memory erasure thing was time dependent, that she wouldn't just forget everything they'd done together last night.

But she looked at him, her eyes oddly vacant, and his heart sank.

"Oh, hi, Clark," she said. "I just came over to see if you wanted coffee, but I guess you're not up yet. Maybe later, okay?"

"Chlo--" He sat up, heedless of the fact that he was naked beneath the sheets, and grabbed desperately for her arm, but she was already walking toward the door.

"See you later," she said brightly, and disappeared through his bedroom door, utterly unconscious of the fact that she'd made love to him till two o'clock this morning.

Clark fell back against the mattress, flung an arm over his face, and groaned.

*****

Other guys didn't have to deal with stuff like this, he grumbled to himself over the course of the next month. Other guys could kiss girls, and not have to worry about their memories being erased like a hard drive exposed to a magnet.

Then again, he'd never been like other guys. Ever since the day he'd discovered being around pretty girls made him start fires with his eyes, he'd known his love life was going to be a little odd.

But in his wildest dreams, he'd never imagined that he'd make love to a girl, and then inadvertently wipe every memory of the event out of her head.

He didn't have a clue what to say to her. He couldn't figure out how to explain what had happened. He struggled to imagine the conversation, tried to imagine himself explaining that he'd made love to her, and in the morning accidentally wiped her memory so that she didn't remember any of it.

It sounded crazy, even to him.

In the end, he wound up not saying anything at all.

*****

"Oh, my God. I'm pregnant."

Clark's heart fell all the way to his feet at Chloe's words, and he gaped at her. "Pregnant?"

"Yeah." Standing in her apartment, she waved a little white stick at him, which he recognized as a home pregnancy test. "I'm pregnant. Only... I can't be. I haven't been with a guy in over six months, Clark. I don't understand this."

"Uh, Chlo..."

"Oh, my God. It must be another one of my meteor powers manifesting." She stalked across the room, still waving the pregnancy test in the air and looking very freaked out. "It's asexual reproduction or something. I'm budding some sort of bizarre freakish monster in my abdomen. Oh, my God."

"Chlo. Calm down."

"Calm down?" She spun around and looked at him incredulously. "Clark! I'm going to have a mutant baby! What if it, like, rips its way out of my abdomen like in those movies?"

"Chloe." He was across the room in two strides, his arms around her. "That is not going to happen, okay?"

"How do you know?" Her voice rose toward hysteria. "I'm a mutant! I'm having a mutant baby!"

"No, Chlo." He tightened his arms around her. "You're having a half-alien baby."

She was very still for a long moment. At last she drew back slightly, lifted her head, and looked at him.

"Exactly what do you mean by that?"

"Uh... your baby, Chlo..." He hesitated at the look in her eyes, then stammered out the truth. "I-- I'm the father."

She blinked at him. "Can you impregnate women with your x-ray vision or what?"

"No. Actually, I did it the normal way. You just don't remember it."

She was beginning to look annoyed. "Clark, I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that."

"No. It's--" He heaved a sigh. "I know this sounds crazy, but I've developed this weird new power. Whenever we kiss, you forget anything romantic that's happened between us. And I do mean anything."

"Are you serious?" She looked shocked. "You're telling me I actually forgot..."

"Yeah, you did. About a month ago, we made love, Chlo. For hours. And before that, I told you..." He swallowed. "I told you I loved you twice before that. But then I kissed you, and both times... you forgot."

She looked at him for a long moment. "Did you really tell me you loved me?"

"Yeah. And it's true. I love you an awful lot, Chlo."

She tilted her head. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

"I did. Like I said, I told you three times."

"No. I mean, why didn't you tell me about the forgetting part?"

"I don't know." He sighed again. "It's just... it's hard putting yourself out there like that, you know? I mean, I finally got up the nerve to tell you how I felt, and you forgot it. Three times. I made love to you, and you even forgot that. I honestly didn't know how to tell you, Chlo. I mean, seriously, how could I tell you that we made love, but that you didn't remember it?"

"But you're telling me now."

"Well, I can't really let you keep worrying about a mutant baby monster ripping its way out of your stomach, can I? Anyway, at least now I have some proof to back up my story."

"True." She sighed, and her eyes turned wistful. "Clark... was it nice?"

He didn't have to ask what she was referring to. "It was awesome, Chlo. We made love for hours."

"I'm sorry." She smiled, a little sadly. "I'd give anything to remember that, Clark."

He cocked his head and thought about it. "Maybe we can give you something else to remember."

The corners of her mouth curled up in a sexy little smile. "Sounds like a plan."

He scooped her up in his arms and whooshed back to the farm, then lay her carefully on his bed. She was still as slim as ever, but inside her, his child was growing. That thought scared him and turned him on, all at the same time.

"Just don't kiss me," he warned her. "Whatever you do, do not kiss me on the lips. I don't ever want you to forget the fact that I love you again. Okay?"

She sighed. "Am I never going to be able to kiss you? For the rest of my life?"

"I guess not," he said, a little sorrowfully. "Not now, and not ever. We can't take the chance."

"That's too bad."

"Yeah." He bent down and brushed his lips over her abdomen. "But I bet I can make up for it."

"Yeah." She curled her hands into his hair, and chuckled. "I bet you can, too."

*****

A week later, they stood in front of a minister and said the vows that would bind them together forever. At first, Chloe had objected to the idea of getting married, fearing that Clark only wanted to marry her because of the baby.

But after a lot of discussion-- and a lot of sex-- he'd managed to convince her that he wanted to marry her because he loved her, and because he never wanted to be apart from her again. He couldn't deny that the baby was a consideration, but the honest truth was that he couldn't imagine his life without Chloe any longer. They belonged together.

"You may kiss the bride," the minister intoned.

Clark turned and looked down into Chloe's beautiful, radiant eyes, thinking how lucky he was to have her, a woman who could accept all his oddities, all his strangenesses, all his peculiarities. She accepted his bizarre ability to wipe memories with a kiss as easily as she'd accepted his superstrength and his ability to blow steel doors off vaults. She loved him for everything he was, and everything she believed he'd someday be.

He was, he thought, spectacularly lucky to have found her.

And this was the happiest moment of his life. He'd finally gotten the woman of his dreams... and he had no intentions of ever losing her again.

He flashed a brilliant, joyous smile... and hugged the bride.

-The End-