More Than Friends, Chapter 5

Clark/Chloe
Season 8, MHE for "Plastique" (SPOILERS for later in season 8)
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 4 here.

"We can't." She stiffened in his arms, fear making her heart accelerate, and he caressed her hair with a gentle, reassuring touch.

"That's Brainiac talking," he told her.

"No. It's not. It's just that... there's someone else inside my brain, Clark. I can't make love to you when it's sitting there, watching."

"Yes, you can." He bent his head and kissed the top of her head. "I've wanted to make love to you for a long time, Chlo, and I think you feel the same way. Just shut him out and forget about him. Not even him, not really. Forget about it."

"But I-- I'm not myself, Clark." Her voice rose, to a higher and higher pitch, until she sounded outright hysterical. "I can't control all my choices. You're taking advantage of the situation. It's not right for you to ask me to do this, when I'm not totally in control of myself..."

"Shush." His hand tightened on her hair, just a bit. "That is Brainiac talking, Chlo. We both know that you love me. I'm not taking advantage of anything. I'm just going to make love to the woman I've wanted for a very long time."

She closed her eyes and buried her face in his chest, trying to slow her pounding heart. But it wasn't easy. Fear poured through her, as real and intense as if she were standing on the edge of a thousand-foot precipice.

"Shhh." His big hand splayed out over her back, stroking along her spine, and slowly, slowly, the panic began to fade a bit. She shivered at his touch.

A voice whispered in her brain. He's just using you. He doesn't love you. He can never love you...

"Shut up," she muttered into his chest.

"What?" Clark sounded startled.

"Not you." She consciously loosened her frozen muscles and reached up under his shirt, stroking the warm satin of his skin. "I was talking to the voice."

"Oh." He sounded grimly amused. "This is kind of strange, isn't it?"

"Kind of doesn't begin to cover it. It's like a threesome."

"No, Chlo. It's not a person, and you shouldn't think of it that way. It's just a machine, and not even the full version. It just left some programming behind."

"I know. I'm just... scared."

"Yeah. I can hear your heart pounding. And that's Brainiac's doing, too." He swept her up in his arms and smiled into her eyes. "Let's get your heart pounding another way."

*****

Under ordinary circumstances, having Clark sweep her up and carry her off to bed would have been one of the best moments of her life. But now it filled her with a primitive panic. Because afterward, she knew, he'd get up and walk away, leaving her alone, abandoning her...

Stop it, she told herself irritably.

Intellectually, she understood what was going on here. Brainiac, or the remnants of Brainiac, was trying very, very hard to keep her out of Clark's arms. Most likely, his guess was close to correct, and lovemaking would disrupt the functioning of the AI in her head somehow. So it was fighting back, using every weapon it had to keep her and Clark apart.

She recognized that the panic she felt wasn't her own fear at all. It was the entity inside her, manipulating her brain into producing certain chemicals in order to make her feel fear. Pushing her buttons, so to speak. It was like she was a puppet, and Brainiac was the puppetmaster.

She was damned if she'd let a machine run her life. She was damned if she'd give in to fear.

Lifting her chin, she wrapped her arms around Clark's neck and kissed him for all she was worth.

Read Chapter 6 here.