Kiss on My List

Clark/Chloe
Rating: PG-13
Based on a prompt by erinkatiemee: Five times Clark wished it were him kissing Chloe.

1.
She was kissing the guy.

No, not just kissing. She was stuck to him like she was attached to him by suction cups. Like she was a freaking Hoover. Clark stared, and wondered if the two of them could be pried apart, or if they were just going to stay this way for the rest of eternity.

He'd come wandering into the Torch, saying, "Hey, Chloe, I need the..." and his words had died in his throat as he saw his best friend Chloe sucking face with some guy. Something unfamiliar spiked through him, something that felt very much like violent anger. He thought it might be jealousy, but he wasn't quite sure.

All he knew was that he wanted it to be him she was kissing.

At last Chloe pulled away from the guy, and shot a sexy smile in his direction. "Don't worry, Clark," she said. "We're done."

The guy stared at her, looking awestruck. "Can I have your number?"

"Why?" Chloe turned her back on him and spoke with disdain. "The thrill is gone."

Clark frowned, because it wasn't like Chloe to act that way. She wasn't the type to use guys and then toss them aside.

But on the flip side, he was glad that she wasn't all that interested in the guy. It saved him from having to pound the guy through the floor.

Oh, my God, he thought, shocked. I am jealous.

He wanted to be the one Chloe was kissing.

2.
He'd danced with Lana. She'd shown up, and he'd been shocked by her appearance. For just a moment, it had been like he was a freshman again, dancing with the girl of his dreams in his arms.

But when the music stopped, he remembered he wasn't in love with Lana any more. He was in love with...

Well, no one.

He'd meant to sit out the prom altogether, but Lois had talked him into it. Actually, as it turned out it had been a wannabe prom queen who was inhabiting Lois' body-- but that wasn't the point. The point was that on the drive over here, he'd started thinking about Chloe being here. He'd started thinking about dancing with Chloe.

And he'd liked the idea.

When he'd walked in, he'd been so happy to see her that he'd given her a big, stupid, beaming smile. She'd smiled back, and he'd thought maybe... maybe...

But then all that stuff had happened with the wannabe prom queen, who'd taken over Chloe's body, and then his, and then he'd been a little distracted by his past walking in through the door.

But this wasn't the past. It was the present. And Lana, pretty though she was, wasn't really the girl he wanted to dance with.

He said goodbye to Lana, ignoring the wistful look in her eyes, and went in search of Chloe.

He followed the sound of her heartbeat to one of the health classrooms, and found her.

Attached to another guy's face.

He stood there, staring, rage and another, hotter emotion boiling inside him. Jealousy, he thought, remembering the emotion he'd felt once before in a similar situation. He was green-eyed with it.

Well, he was always green-eyed. But still.

He stood there staring, rage pounding through him with every beat of his heart. He felt almost betrayed, except, well, he'd been dancing with Lana, so he had absolutely no reason to feel that way. He didn't even know who this guy was. He was just some random dude.

Clark wanted to kill him.

He stood there, clenching his fists, for a long moment longer, then turned and stalked toward the door.

As he stormed out of the room, he managed to avoid ripping the door off its hinges.

Barely.


3.
Okay. He was being stupid.

Clark stood in the Daily Planet basement, giving himself a pep talk. Just last night, Chloe had kissed him here. But when he'd come here to discuss it with her, and to see if she might be interested in doing it again (and again, and again), she'd seemed more interested in this geeky guy-- Jimmy Olsen-- than in him.

Dismayed and confused, he'd backed off, and let Chloe go off to have a vending machine dinner with Jimmy.

You're being stupid, he told himself now, staring wistfully in the direction she'd disappeared. That kiss she gave you-- it wasn't just an end-of-the-world thing. She really meant it. Any fool could see that. So why are you standing here dithering?

He knew the answer. He was standing here dithering because he was a really big coward.

And okay, maybe it wasn't just that. He knew by now that Chloe had a way of backing away whenever the two of them got too close. She'd pushed him away before, building walls and making sure he knew the were just friends.

He figured Jimmy Olsen was just another wall. A shield, to make sure Clark kept his distance.

But he couldn't let her push him away this time. That kiss had been big. Something deep inside him told him it was a turning point in his life. He had to follow up on it.

Steeling himself, he turned and stalked out of the bullpen, toward the vending area upstairs. He went up the stairs, around a corner...

And found Chloe and Jimmy kissing.

He stood there, staring blankly, while a now-familiar feeling of jealousy boiled up inside him. She was kissing someone else. After that kiss she'd laid on him, that earth-shaking, amazing kiss... she was just kissing this other guy like it hadn't mattered to her at all.

Apparently he'd been wrong. She hadn't really meant it. It hadn't been a huge, life-changing moment.

In fact, apparently it hadn't meant anything at all.

He stood staring, bewildered and shocked and hurt, and then turned and slowly trudged away.

It felt wrong to walk away from her. Very, very wrong. But clearly, she'd made her choice.

And he wasn't it.

4.
He'd been so glad to find her, in this strange new world he'd found himself thrust into. But she didn't know him here, and she was engaged to be married to this other guy, this George Dean.

In a world in which she'd never known him, never known her very best friend, he'd somehow expected her to seem as if something was lacking. But she didn't. She smiled, looking gloriously happy-- happy in a way he hadn't seen her look in his own world in a long, long time.

And then she turned her head, stood on tiptoe, and brushed a kiss over George's lips.

Jealousy hit Clark like a ton of kryptonite bricks. He ought to be standing next to her, damn it, not this guy. She belonged next to him, kissing him...

Which was all crazy. He hadn't kissed her in almost two years. But suddenly he felt like that was a serious oversight on his part.

Which was crazy. In his world, she was with Jimmy.

She was always with someone, damn it. Some shield, some wall to keep her away from Clark, to make sure that the last little barrier between them didn't go down. A wall that ensured they never became more than friends.

He might never get back to his own world. He knew that. But if he did, he wondered if he could ever get past that wall.

Or if it was too late.

5.
He ought to be glad she was getting back into dating. But he wasn't glad. In fact he was the furthest thing from glad.

Judging from his pounding heart, his clenched fists, and the way his eyes were sizzling, he was pretty sure he was jealous as hell.

She was only kissing the other man on the cheek, and maybe it wouldn't have bugged him so much if he hadn't seen this guy before. But he'd seen her kissing him once before, in another world.

She was kissing George Dean.

Even as his eyes sizzled with jealous anger, he told himself to get over it. She and George were destined to be together. That was obvious. She'd been with him in the other universe, and now, a year after Jimmy Olsen's death, she'd finally found George here.

He ought to be happy for her.

But he wasn't. In fact, he wanted to yank her and George apart, and then knock out all of George's teeth.

He blinked, startled by the unexpectedly violent reaction. He wasn't supposed to get all jealous over Chloe... and yet it kept happening, over and over again. She was his friend, and he wasn't supposed to want to kiss her.

But he did. He really did.

She pulled away from George, smiling up into his eyes, and he stalked toward her, stepping right between them on the crowded sidewalk, rudely shouldering George aside. He caught her by the arm and glared down at her.

"Let's go talk," he said.

*****

As it turned out, he didn't do much talking. He half-dragged her around the corner and pushed her up against the brick wall of the Daily Planet building, and the next thing he knew he was kissing her.

And she kissed him back.

He kissed her hard, some deep instinct telling him to claim her as his, the way he should have done after that night she'd kissed him. Her lips parted in submission, and his tongue slid into her mouth, and Goditwasgood. He moaned, and let his body press up against hers, and...

"Whoa." She wrenched her mouth away, and put her hands on his shoulders. "We're in public here, Clark."

He glared down at her. "Being in public didn't stop you from kissing George."

"That was a buss, Clark. A kiss on the cheek. This is making out. And you're acting like... well... like you want to do it, right up against the wall."

He thought about that for a moment.

"I think I'd like that."

"Forget it," she said firmly. "I am not going to jail just because you're horny."

"I'm not horny. Well, okay, I am, but this isn't about sex, Chloe. It's about you and me, and the way things should be."

She cocked an eyebrow and looked at him dubiously. "The way things should be?"

"Yeah." He sucked in a deep breath and plowed on. "Ever since that night you kissed me, and I went off to the Phantom Zone... I've felt like it should be you and me, Chlo. Like we were, I don't know, meant to be."

She blinked at him and didn't say anything. Awkwardly, he went on.

"You wound up with Jimmy, and that wasn't right... even if he hadn't died, it just wasn't right, you know?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "I know."

"And then in that other universe, you wound up with George..."

"Pardon me?"

"You were with George in that other world I saw," he said, a little desperately. "Engaged to him. But it shouldn't have been him, Chlo, it was only him because I wasn't there, and I'm here, and so it can't be him. It's got to be me. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Clark," she said, solemnly but with a flicker of humor beneath the solemnity, "I honestly doubt you understand what you're saying."

"That kiss, that night in the Daily Planet," he said, more desperately than before. "It should have changed everything. It was supposed to change everything."

"Uh-huh. And you know this because...?"

"I just do," he snapped. "It should have been you and me, Chlo, not you and Jimmy or you and George or you and anyone. All this time, it should have been us. I've known it ever since the night you kissed me. Hell, I knew it before then. Every time I saw you kissing someone else, I'd get this feeling of... of wrongness. This feeling that it wasn't the way things were supposed to be."

"But when you were kissing me..."

"It felt right, Chloe." He looked down at her, very seriously. "Do you feel it too?"

She sighed, and leaned her head back against the wall.

"Yes," she answered. "I do."

"That's good," he said, and bent to kiss her again. And to his immense relief, she kissed him back, just like she had that night in the Daily Planet. Just as if there had never been any shields around her heart, just as if she'd never used Jimmy or George as a wall to keep him away.

Just as if she was finally willing to let Clark into her heart... where he belonged.

He tightened his arms around her and kissed her harder, heedless of the people passing them on the sidewalk. From now on, he thought hazily, she wasn't going to be kissing anyone else. Just him. Over and over and over again.

And that was exactly the way things were supposed to be.

-The End-