Elly's Fanfiction

Welcome!

2012-12-25T10:43:00.013-05:00

Picture above by electricmonk. Used with permission of the artist.

Welcome to my archive of Smallville fanfiction. Most of my stories revolve around Chlark, but there are some slash and general stories here as well. There are a also few M*A*S*H stories (Hawkeye/BJ slash) and Doctor Who stories. Please don't read any story marked "adult" unless you're over eighteen.

Some Smallville stories have been deleted, but there are still a lot of stories here. In the sidebar, you can click on the images for a list of stories. There is a chapter list on the first page of each novella. Also, there is now a list of tags in the sidebar, although it is not yet complete. And finally, I am adding an alphabetical listing of stories with descriptions.

I love feedback! Please feel free to leave comments or email me at ellyfanfiction@yahoo.com .Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for all your patience!

Massive updates (brought over from my LJ), 1-30-12:

Smallville (all Chlark):

-30-

Chances

Dreaming

Rose Red 2, Chapter 2

Doctor Who:

45 for a Moment (Eleven/Donna Temple-Noble)

There Will Come Soft Rains (Nine)

Paradoxes (Ten/Jack)

All Ten/Donna:

Two Friends, One Bed- Doctor Who version

The Still Hour is Come

Two new Doctor Who stories, 11-27-11:

Personal Grooming

Appetites

A new Doctor Who story, 11-17-11:

Personal Spaces

One new Doctor Who story, 11-14-11:

The Dream of a Normal Life

Three new Doctor Who stories as of 11-12-11:

The Singing of the Song

The Mating Habits of Humans

Life of the Party

New story as of 10-18-11:

Happy Endings

Stories you may not have read in a while:

The Weight of the World

She's Got You High

Cute

Angel Among Us

Rose Red 2, Chapter 2

2012-01-30T16:27:00.000-05:00

Fandom: Smallville
Characters: Clark/Chloe
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Note: This is for Toby, who has been so much more than patient. Hopefully more soon!
Chapter One is here.

Chloe Sullivan Kent was standing in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on Clark’s favorite meal—meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans straight from the garden—when something blurred into the kitchen.

Chloe was used to things blurring past her. More to the point, she was used to her husband blurring past her. Clark could zoom so fast he made a Ferrari look like it was standing still, and she’d lost her startle reflex long ago.

But she did jolt with surprise when a pair of hands grabbed her, yanked her away from the stove, and shoved her up against the counter.

A big body pushed into hers—a big and noticeably aroused body—and his mouth pressed hotly against her throat.

“Clark,” she protested, weakly. “I’m trying to finish dinner.”

“Don’t care about dinner.”

"Excuse me? I've spent an hour working on this dinner!"

"Don't care." His voice was hoarse. “Want you. Now.”

Well. Meatloaf or no meatloaf, she couldn't really object to that. After two years of domesticity, after far too many nights of would-be lovemaking interrupted by an infant's wailing, it was kind of nice to hear, actually. What was a girl supposed to say, except hell yeah, baby?

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his hair, inhaling the hot male scent of him. “Better let me turn off the stove,” she whispered into his thick, dark hair.

He didn’t appear to hear her. His hips were moving, pushing his erection against her insistently, and she opened her eyes, because this was very unClarklike behavior. Sure, Clark liked sex as much as the next guy-- but he liked meatloaf, too. Anyway, it wasn't like him to totally ignore her when she talked. It was almost like--

Oh.

On the table, in a crystal vase they’d gotten for their wedding, sat a huge bouquet of red roses.

“Oh, Clark,” she whispered. “You didn’t.”

He wasn’t listening. His hands were busy undoing her jeans, and he appeared to be entirely focused on that task. She batted at his hands—gently, because batting at him too hard was a good way to break a bone or two.

“Clark,” she said, more firmly. “You’re under the influence. Stop what you're doing, right now.”

“I just want sex,” he grumbled against her throat. “Is that really too much to ask for?”

“I don’t mind,” she said, “except…” She looked him over, as best she could when he was pressed up against her, and sure enough, there was a long gash on one of his arms. “You got dosed with red K from the roses,” she told him.

“I can handle it,” he assured her, working on her jeans again.

“Clearly you can’t.

“Chlo.” His voice was low and sexy. “Stop talking, all right? Let’s just fuck.”

She knew he was under the influence then, because Clark Kent, mild-mannered Kansas farmboy, simply did not talk that way. Ordinarily, just the sound of that word was enough to make him blush. But he was very decidedly not blushing.

Still, there was nothing to be done about it now. She’d seen him like this before, and she knew how singleminded the red K made him. If he didn’t have sex, he’d probably go crazy or blow up or something. And since Rose wasn’t in the house, and it was just the two of them, they could do whatever he wanted, as loudly as he wanted.

It might be kind of fun, actually.

“Fine,” she said softly. “Let me take care of you, then.”

She unzipped his jeans and went to her knees.

*****

Clark braced himself against the counter with his hands and arched his back as her tongue began to stroke around the head of his cock. He heard a strangled sound rise out of his own throat, and his cock jerked eagerly.

“More,” he muttered hoarsely.

“Don’t be in such a hurry.” Her breath brushed over his sensitized flesh, making him shudder. “Slow is good.”

“Fast is better.”

She chuckled softly, and her tongue began sliding up and down his shaft. So soft and warm and wet and...

So totally not enough.

God, she was going to kill him. He was going to die, right here and right now, as a result of inadequate sexual fulfillment.

She reached up and began toying with his balls, very gently, and her tongue slipped toward the head of his cock again. He groaned, and caught her hair in his hands, gently but firmly.

“Chloe. Please.”

She must have heard the utter desperation in his voice, because she opened her lips, and he slipped into the heat and the moisture of her mouth. It was exactly what he needed. A low moan rumbled out of his chest, and he clutched at her, begging wordlessly for more.

She drew him into her mouth, and he struggled not to thrust, for fear of hurting her. Her mouth slipped up and down his shaft, and he groaned as pleasure built up inside him. He was hot, so hot, and he was going to come, right down her throat, and it was going to be so damn good—

And then she yelped, and yanked away from him. Seconds-- maybe microseconds-- away from coming, he whimpered in frustrated, anguished need, but she didn't hear him. She leaped to her feet and spun toward the stove.

“Damn it,” she yelled. “The green beans are on fire.”

Paradoxes

2012-01-30T16:26:00.001-05:00

Title: Paradoxes
Characters: Ten/Jack, the TARDIS
Genre: Slash, PWP, angst, hurt/comfort. Missing scene from "The Last of the Time Lords."
Description: After the Year That Never Was, they're all damaged. Scars never heal entirely, but with the right treatment, they can fade...
Length: Oneshot, completed
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Warnings: Explicit sex, some mentions of torture and rape

*****
The more the Doctor worked, the angrier he became.

“An arc welder!” His voice floated out from beneath the console, high-pitched with fury. “That sick bastard! He used a welder on her, Jack!”

“I know, Doc. I’m sorry.”

“My poor girl.” The Doctor emerged from beneath the console, his eyes glittering with rage and pain. He sat on the grating and reached up, patting the console with fierce affection. “I’m so, so sorry, love. I wish I could have been there to protect you. You didn’t deserve this.”

The TARDIS offered a feeble hum in response, and Jack smiled a little at the familiar sound. “There, hear that? She’s still in there. She’ll be okay, Doctor.”

“She’ll be functional,” the Doctor said darkly. “But that’s not the same as okay.”

Jack nodded, because he of all people understood that. After the last year, he wasn’t sure any of them would ever be okay again. “Yeah,” he said, leaning over the console and working on fixing a bit of machinery that he personally had blown all to hell when he’d destroyed the Paradox Machine the Master had created from the TARDIS. “I guess that’s true for all of us.”

The Doctor leaned back against the console, closed his eyes, and took a shuddering breath.

“I wish I’d been able to reverse time for all of us, Jack. We'd all be happier if it had never happened.”

“It did happen, though.” Jack twirled a spanner in his hands. “Maybe it’s better if someone remembers it. History forgotten is history doomed to be repeated, and all that crap. I gotta admit, though, it’d be a hell of a lot easier if we could all just forget it all.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. All of us on the Valiant—and that includes this old girl—will remember every last detail.” He sighed again, and Jack wondered exactly what he was remembering. A long year trapped in an ancient, feeble body, probably. All the horrors and atrocities the Master had forced him to witness, perhaps, from the burning of Japan, to Jack’s repeated torture and deaths, to—

Well. Sitting here and wasting time remembering wasn’t going to do either of them any good. And it wasn’t going to get the TARDIS fixed, either.

“C’mon, Doc,” he said gently. “The faster we work, the faster she’ll feel better. Since I’m partly responsible for all this destruction, I want to get back into her good graces.”

“Oh, Jack.” The Doctor’s dark eyes opened and gazed at him, full of affection and warmth. “You saved her. You saved all of us. She doesn’t blame you.”

“I know.” He remembered spraying bullets at the TARDIS’ console, and shivered a little. “But I blame me.”

“Yes.” The Doctor’s eyes were shadowed. “I understand how you feel.”

There was a silence between them for a long moment, while they stared at each other, each gripping the TARDIS’ console as if to comfort her. And then, by unspoken common consent, they went back to work.

*****

Hours later, the TARDIS’ hum sounded much stronger, and Jack could feel her presence inside his head, filled with gratitude and affection. The TARDIS, it seemed, had forgiven him. The Doctor looked up at the Time Rotor, glowing blue rather than crimson, and a faint smile curved the corners of his mouth.

“There,” he said, patting the central column. “Feeling more yourself, aren’t you, old girl?”

The TARDIS hummed, and the Doctor smiled a little more widely, absentmindedly wiping the oil off his hands onto his suit.

“Thanks, Jack,” he said. “I reckon she’ll need a little extra love and care for a while, but she’ll recover.”

“True for most of us, I suppose.” Jack looked around, frowning. “I guess we need to take her to the Rift to recharge her. I thought Martha would be back by now. I know she took her family back home, but I figured…”

The Doctor’s forehead wrinkled, and he gazed at the blue central column as if avoiding eye contact. “I don’t think she’s coming back, Jack. At least not permanently.”

“What?” Jack boggled at him. “Of course she is. She wouldn’t leave, not after everything that happened… everything she did…”

He trailed off, for the first time allowing himself to imagine everything Martha had been through in the past year. He envisioned her slowly making her way across the world, step by step, risking her life with every moment as she told everyone she met about the Doctor. She’d done everything she could to save the world, made a superhuman effort, and she must be exhausted clear down to her soul. She probably desperately needed to rest. He hadn’t really thought about everything she’d been through, but of course the Doctor had, because that was what the Doctor did.

The more he thought about it, the more he realised the Doctor was right. Martha was almost certainly going to choose to stay here on Earth.

“Her first responsibility is to her family.” The Doctor sounded very weary, and Jack suddenly saw his young features overlaid with the wrinkled, liver-spotted countenance the Master had forced onto him, heard the croak of old age in his youthful voice. “It has to be. Just as your first responsibility is to Torchwood. I don’t blame anyone for leaving me when they must. Don’t blame anyone for getting tired, either. Saving the world’s a tough job. Sometimes people need a break. Other times they just need to go save the world some other way. But either way… they always leave, sooner or later.”

There was a calm acceptance in his voice that was at odds with the ancient sorrow in his eyes. He ran his hand through his thick brown hair, smearing it with oil, and Jack uttered a small, mirthless laugh. The Doctor’s hair was a sweaty, spiky mess, and his suit was rumpled and stained. “Doc,” he said, “you’re a disaster area. You’d better go take a shower.”

The Doctor looked down at himself ruefully, seeing the oil stains on his favorite suit, and nodded. “Good idea,” he said. “But listen, Jack, if Martha comes back…”

“I won’t let her go without saying goodbye to you, Doctor. Don’t worry.”

The Doctor nodded, his eyes still old and tired, and trudged away, disappearing down a corridor.

Jack sat down on the grating and leaned against the hexagonal console, listening to the purring of the TARDIS, both the quiet hum in his head and the ambient noises she made. She sounded happier, if not as cheerful as usual. Well, it was too early for her to be back to her normal self entirely. She’d been through a lot this past year. Chained and raped and tortured… killed and brought back to life…

Just like him.

It had been a hellacious year for all of them. God knew it hadn’t been a picnic for him and Martha, but the Doctor, he thought, might have had it worst of all. A man who needed to move all the time, forced into an aged body that rendered him incapable of moving. A man who hated to be alone, isolated from his friends. A man who loved humanity, forced to watch it destroyed and trampled beneath the feet of a madman, utterly helpless to save people as they died by the millions.

And now his reward for finally triumphing over the Master, for saving them all, was to be more loneliness.

Jack heaved a sigh. He really hated to leave the Doctor, but he had no choice. His life was on Earth now. And even if the past year had never happened for his Torchwood team, he wanted to spend time with them, to revel in their aliveness.

The Doctor, he knew, understood.

And in a way, that made it worse.

The Doctor understood because he’d been left so many times before. He’d outlived so many people, been left behind over and over again as his companions found new lives and new loves and new commitments. In fact, being with the Doctor seemed to paradoxically make people better suited to survive and thrive on their own.

The Doctor had come to expect that eventually, he’d lose everyone he loved. And yet, despite his understanding, it hurt him every time a companion left. Jack could see that in his eyes.

The Doctor had been through so much in the past year—old age, suffering, and in the end, the death of a man he’d once called friend. How the Doctor could truly grieve for the Master after everything the other Time Lord had done, Jack didn’t quite understand. But he knew better than anyone that emotion wasn’t always logical. It just was.

And there was no doubt that the Doctor had grieved for the Master’s death—more for the friend he’d once been than the monster he’d become, Jack supposed. But inexplicable grief was still grief, and piled on top of everything else, the Doctor must be near emotional collapse.

The Doctor was lonely and grieving, and they were all going to leave him behind.

Something inside Jack seemed to snap, and he came to a sudden resolution. Rising to his feet, he strode toward the Doctor’s quarters.

*****

The Doctor had left the door to his bathroom open a crack, and steam wafted out, proof that the Doctor had indeed showered. But there was no sound of running water, so Jack inferred that he’d finished. He took a deep breath, then pushed the door open.

The Doctor had his back to him, and was rubbing at his unruly wet hair with a big blue towel. His movements made the muscles in his back and shoulders and arse ripple beneath glistening pale skin, a beautiful and enticing sight that Jack couldn’t seem to look away from.

He saw the Doctor suddenly go rigid, and glanced to the mirror. It was foggy, but he could still make out the Doctor’s wide, startled eyes, staring at him in the reflection.

“Jack?” he said, as if there might be some doubt as to his friend’s identity.

Jack found himself frozen, his mouth dry. He’d loved this man through two different bodies, for more than a century. But something about the Doctor—a certain reserve, a certain sense of distance—and Jack’s uncomfortable certainty that he himself couldn’t ever be good enough, mature enough, strong enough, had prevented him from making a move on the other man. He’d never quite dared to approach the Time Lord this way.

He’d seduced hundreds of beings he didn’t give a damn about. But paradoxically, he’d never tried to seduce the one being in the universe who truly mattered to him.

The truth was, though, that this wasn’t about seduction so much as it was about offering comfort and friendship and support. And love, too, if he was going to be honest about it.

After everything he’d been through, the Doctor, he thought, really needed to be loved.

Something deep inside him seemed to push him toward the Doctor. He managed to get his muscles working again, and moved forward.

“Jack?” the Doctor said again, sounding bewildered.

Jack reached up and took the towel out of the other man’s hands.

“Let me take care of you,” he said, very softly.

He began drying off the Doctor, starting at his hair—which was already fairly dry, and standing up in spikes all over his head—then moving down to his shoulders, across his back, his bum, and his legs. The Doctor didn’t move away, which was a victory in and of itself, Jack figured. He just stood there, letting Jack rub him dry.

Slowly, he walked around the Doctor, gazing straight into the shocked wide eyes for a moment, and began work on the Doctor’s front. He let himself enjoy this to the utmost, revelling in every moment of running the towel over the slim, beautiful body. The Doctor, he noted, had a rather impressive erection, but Jack didn’t linger, only dried him there as everywhere else, and moved downward, kneeling to dry his feet last of all.

And then he laid the towel aside, and still kneeling, gazed up at the Doctor.

The Doctor, he found, was staring back. His gaze was filled with a multitude of emotions. Lust, sorrow, confusion, hurt, need—there was so much shining out of those dark, dark eyes.

Jack reached up, very slowly, and wrapped a hand around the Doctor’s cock. The other man shivered a little, and reached out, putting his hands on Jack’s head as if to brace himself.

“You don’t have to do this, Jack,” he whispered.

Of course I don’t have to do it, idiot, Jack almost retorted, but he choked the words back, because he didn’t want to argue. He didn't want harsh words between them right now, only kind ones. The idea that the Doctor would think he was forcing himself to do this, that he didn't understand this intimacy was something Jack had desperately wanted for years, made his heart ache. Did the Doctor really not realise how much Jack loved him? Did he not realise how much all his companions loved him?

Jack suspected he didn’t. And that made his heart ache worse than before.

“I want to do it,” he answered gently.

The Doctor didn’t say anything else, but his hands closed in Jack’s hair, and his eyes fluttered shut.

Taking that as permission, Jack leaned forward and brushed his lips over the head of the Doctor’s cock. The Doctor shuddered, and his grip tightened. Jack opened his lips, letting himself taste the Doctor for the very first time. He tasted fresh and clean and somehow very alien. There was a slightly spicy taste to his skin and the fluid that leaked from the tip of his cock. Not unpleasant, not at all, but very definitely not human.

Jack ran his tongue carefully over the head, exploring thoroughly, then opened his mouth and took the Doctor inside. The Doctor quaked all over, his thighs trembling, and Jack wondered how long it had been since he'd had sex. He wasn’t certain if the Master had raped the Doctor too, or if he’d left him alone entirely.

It didn’t matter. Whatever the Master might have done to the Doctor, it hadn’t had anything to do with pleasure, only with power and anger and humiliation.

What Jack was offering to the Doctor was entirely different-- affection and care and pleasure.

The paradox of love before leave-taking.

“Jack.” The Doctor’s voice was low, but determined. Even in the midst of a blow job, Jack grumbled to himself, the man just could not stop talking. “It’s been a long, lonely year for both of us.”

Jack let him go with a pop. “I know,” he said softly. “I know, Doc.”

He leaned forward and licked again, and the Doctor shook. “Been all alone—didn’t even have the TARDIS in my mind—“

Jack hadn’t thought of that. When he was on board, the TARDIS was a nice comforting hum in his head. But to the Doctor she was much more. Time Lords and their TARDISes were psychically linked, symbiotic, in a way that other species couldn’t really understand. The Doctor had spent the last year not just separated from his friends, but separated from the warm mental presence of the sentient machine that he’d been attached to for hundreds of years. Jack couldn’t know for certain, but he imagined the absence of the TARDIS must have been a gaping, empty dark place in the Doctor’s mind.

“Just saying…” The Doctor seemed to be having trouble formulating words, which presumably meant Jack was doing something right. “I don’t want you to feel like… just because we’re both lonely…”

“That’s not it,” Jack said, although in fact it was, sort of. It was true that he was making love to the Doctor because he hated the thought of the Time Lord going off on his own after so much suffering. But there was far more to it than that. His relationship with the Doctor was complex, full of tangled emotions and interwoven history, far too complicated to put into words… especially when he was down on his knees and doing his best to bring the Doctor to his.

“I just don’t think—“

“Doctor,” Jack interrupted. “Shut up, okay? Just let me do this. Just once, let me do this.”

He took the Doctor into his mouth again, first the sensitive head, and then a little more, and the Doctor made a thin keening noise, the sound of a man struggling for silence and failing. Jack could sense him holding back, trying not to thrust. He drew him in further, as deeply as he could, and lifted a hand, playing with the Doctor’s cool, heavy balls, then pressing a thumb gently against the root of his cock and caressing it in steady, slow strokes.

“Jack.” It was no longer a question, but a muttered prayer. The hands dug into his hair, and the hips began to move, driving deeper into his mouth, but Jack didn’t mind. All he wanted right now was to draw pleasure from the Doctor, from this man who hadn’t known this sort of pleasure in far too long, who might not know it again for years to come.

He hummed softly, letting the vibrations drive the Doctor higher, and stroked the underside of the shaft with his tongue. He sucked a little harder, his cheeks hollowing out, and the Doctor gave a long, drawn-out wail of ecstasy as his cock juddered and his body shook. He came in long spasms, his hands clutching Jack’s hair almost painfully, and Jack kept up the suction, relentless, until the last tremor of the Doctor’s orgasm had faded away.

Finally Jack released him and sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth. He could still taste the Doctor’s exotic, spicy flavour, and he did his best to commit it to memory. Not just the Doctor’s taste, but the noises he’d made, the way he’d shivered, the feel of his fingers in Jack’s hair. Jack never wanted to forget a moment of it.

He rose to his feet and looked into the Doctor’s eyes. The Doctor stared back. His eyes were still wide, but they were no longer dark with the shadows of nine centuries. Naked, his body relaxed, his eyes bright, he looked almost young again.

*****

The TARDIS hummed to herself. She wasn’t fully repaired yet, and she hadn’t forgotten what had been done to her by the Master—she would never forget—but she had regained her function, and she had her Time Lord back. And through the mental connection, she could feel that he was beginning to recover from his pain, too.

Her Time Lord had said, I reckon she’ll need a little extra love and care for a while, but she’ll recover. And the same, she knew, was true of him. Both he and Jack had been terribly damaged by the events of the year-that-wasn’t-a-year-any-longer. In their way, they’d been damaged just as badly as she’d been. All three of them had scars that would never heal entirely.

But with the right treatment, scars could fade.

She knew enough about humanoids to understand what the two men required to begin repairs and to regain proper functioning. Love was what all sentients needed, whether they were machines or humanoids, and she knew they loved each other, even if they'd never shown it openly. She knew what was in their minds and souls, perhaps better than they themselves did.

And that was the reason she’d spurred Jack into approaching her Time Lord. It hadn’t taken much of a mental push for him to do what he’d always really wanted to. He’d just needed the slightest whisper of a suggestion, and she hadn’t hesitated to make one. And her Time Lord had needed only an equally tiny push to accept what Jack offered, rather than running away from him.

Jack and her Time Lord had repaired her.

And so she would repair them.

*****

Jack expected the Doctor to step away and get dressed, to put his armor back on, to take refuge behind his walls. But instead the other man reached up, caught Jack’s face between his hands, and leaned in, brushing his lips over Jack’s. Surprised, but not at all displeased, Jack melted into the kiss, letting his arms wrap around the Doctor’s slender waist, holding him tightly. The kiss grew in intensity, becoming wet and deep and heartrendingly sweet.

At last the Doctor let him go, quirked an eyebrow, and went to his knees. Jack looked down at him, blinking in shock. He had the embarrassing feeling he was wearing the very same shell-shocked expression the Doctor had worn earlier.

“Uh, Doc,” he stammered. “You-- you really don’t have to—“

“I know.” The Doctor looked up at him. His smile was gentle, and at the same time rather wicked. “But I want to.”

“Oh,” Jack said. He hesitated, then offered a wicked smile of his own. “Well. That's okay then.”

It was more than okay, actually. He wasn't about to say no to something he'd wanted for years and years. And when the Doctor began, it was even better than Jack had imagined-- and over the years he'd imagined it quite a lot. It was so good he didn't have words for it. Not that he needed words anyway, not right now. He suspected the inarticulate little sounds of pleasure he was making were probably more than enough to communicate his appreciation to the Doctor.

It was a strange thing, he thought as he dug his hands into the Doctor’s hair. Almost another paradox, really. When you knew you were going to leave someone behind… you wanted to hold them to you more tightly than ever.

Just for a little while, he let himself hold onto the Doctor like he’d never let go.

The End

Afterimages

2012-01-30T16:25:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Ten/Donna, Ten/TARDIS (sort of)
Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort
Length: Oneshot, 1850 words
Description: The Doctor is grieving after he loses Donna, and the TARDIS wants to help.
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Note: Post "Journey's End." I know that in JE, the Doctor lost more than just Donna. But for the purposes of this fic, the loss of Donna is what he's grieving about most. Warning: Lots and lots of angst.

*****

The TARDIS was worried.

The Doctor could feel her concern, washing over him in waves. He rolled over in bed, a little irritably, because right now he just wanted to be left alone.

“I’m fine,” he grumbled.

She didn’t agree. He got the mental equivalent of a poke. You’ve been in bed too long, the sentient machine seemed to be saying. Get up, get up.

He didn’t agree. It had only been a day since he’d dropped Donna Noble off at her mother’s house for the last time. Well, maybe two days. Three at the outside. And after everything that had happened, everything he’d been through lately, he was very, very tired. That was the only reason he was still dressed in pyjamas and curled up in bed. It had nothing to do with depression, or missing his best mate, or the lack of someone to talk to. He was just tired.

“Go away,” he muttered. “Leave me alone.”

The TARDIS hummed unhappily. He rolled over in bed, burying his face in the pillow and thinking about Donna. The way she’d begged him not to take her memories—the way she’d cried as he stripped them from her—the way he’d left her behind in Chiswick, and she hadn’t even recognized him, hadn’t even cared that he was leaving—

Well. Of course she hadn’t recognized him. That had, after all, been the idea. She mustn't ever remember him, or her mind would burn. Intellectually, he understood that. But it still hurt terribly to know that his best mate no longer remembered all the things they’d done together. It hurt to know that she’d never hug him again, or smack his shoulder, or call him Martian, or…

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and pressed his face harder into the pillow. Not to hold back tears, but just because the pillow was nice and soft and he was still very tired.

Get up? The TARDIS sounded almost plaintive. Please?

“No,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Go ‘way.”

The TARDIS uttered an unhappy sigh, and for a moment there was silence, and a cessation of her anxious presence in his mind. Grateful to be left alone, he wrapped his arms around the pillow and buried his face in it harder than before.

And then a familiar but different presence brushed at his mind, and he jolted in surprise.

“What—what?”

He didn’t hear words, but he felt her there, fond and brisk and a little impatient. He could almost hear her saying, Oi, Spaceman, what are you doing lying around when there’s work to be done? Get up and have a cuppa, for heaven’s sake!

He jerked to a sitting position, looking around his room wildly. “Donna?”

But of course she wasn’t there. No one was on board the TARDIS except him. He was all alone.

He blinked, and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. Going senile, he thought grimly. Or crazy. He wasn’t sure which one would be worse, but neither sounded appealing.

The presence brushed his mind again, and he shuddered. “Donna,” he breathed.

But Donna wasn’t here. He’d left her back on Earth, in the care of her mother and Wilf. Was he really going crazy, then, or…?

A light dawned, and he looked up at the TARDIS. “How did you do that?”

He felt her give the equivalent of a shrug, which didn’t surprise him. She couldn’t explain how she did half the things she did. She just did them. Much of what was easy, obvious, and instinctive for her was impossible for any other sentient being.

But he thought he understood. She’d been in Donna’s head for a year now. She had psychic impressions of Donna—and all his other companions, for that matter—stored away in her memory banks. Afterimages of Donna’s mind, rather like the blurry but recognizable image one saw for a moment after glancing into a bright light and then looking away. She’d just shared one of those impressions with him, probably thinking it would help ease his sorrow.

“Don’t do that again,” he told her firmly. “I don’t want an… an echo of her. It’s not real.”

A pause, as if the TARDIS was contemplating his words, then Donna’s presence brushed his mind again. This time it was full of fondness and concern. A flash of Donna’s memories from some time when he’d been injured or sick or upset, he guessed. He trembled, trying not to get lost in the psychic impression.

It wasn’t real.

But it felt real.

Take a little more care, Martian, she’d said once, after he’d been injured rather badly by a spear thrown by a primitive warrior. Not that I’d miss you, but I don’t know how to fly this old tub on my own, y'know.

But her hand had been stroking his hair, and her eyes had been full of affection and worry, and he’d known she cared.

Her affection brushed over him now, and he closed his eyes, letting himself feel her, imagining her hand in his hair, imagining her right here beside him—

“No.” He spoke as firmly as he could, but he knew he didn’t sound really convincing. “Stop it.”

But of course the TARDIS wasn’t listening to his voice as much as she was listening to his mind. And inside, where he couldn’t help his reactions, he was basking in the warmth of Donna’s love and care. It might be only a memory, an echo, but it was better than the bleak loneliness he’d been feeling since he lost his best friend, and the TARDIS knew it. He couldn’t hide his reaction from her.

More echoes of Donna brushed through his mind, insubstantial as gossamer, and yet so very, very real. Her compassion. Her temper. Her strong feelings of friendship for him. Unable to stem the warm flood, he fell back on the bed, shutting his eyes and letting it all wash over him. There was nothing else he could do. The TARDIS was determined, and in this, at least, she was stronger than he was.

And maybe, just possibly, he didn’t really want her to stop.

He sprawled on his back, helpless against the surge of emotions, and the memories those feelings touched off. He could easily imagine Donna there, right beside him, holding his hand and laughing with him and hugging him…

Tears rose to his eyes, but he blinked them back hard.

He lost track of time as Donna's reflected emotions lulled him, comforting him, filling the emptiness inside him. For the first time in days, he felt almost content. And then, slowly, he became aware of an emotion that shouldn’t be there.

Desire.

For him.

“Stop that,” he said, hoarsely. “She never—she never felt that way about me—we were just mates—we agreed from the beginning—”

The TARDIS was insistent, however, and he knew that it was the impression of a real emotion, that at some point Donna had begun to feel—

Oh, Donna, Donna, he thought wretchedly. I never knew.

She’d wanted him, and he’d never realised.

And now it was too late.

The echo of her desire rolled through him, hot and strong and very human. This was, he thought as analytically as he could, probably an echo of a fantasy she’d had about him while—

Well. He shouldn’t be letting himself experience this particular emotion of hers. Even though she’d never know, it was still an invasion of her privacy, and very, very wrong...

“Stop it,” he said faintly, and so entirely without conviction that the TARDIS ignored him completely.

To his chagrin, he discovered he was hard, throbbing with insistent physical need. He couldn’t help it. He might not be human, but he shared the same basic drives humans did, and the afterimage of Donna’s desire, swirling around in his mind and his body, wasn’t something he could ignore. And the knowledge that she’d actually wanted him thrilled him at the same time it made him ache with the terrible grief of chances lost forever.

He'd wanted her, but now he could never have her.

She'd wanted him, but now she didn't even remember who he was.

The echo of her feelings, so blunt and feverish and needy, swamped him, overwhelming his precarious emotional stability and knocking him entirely off balance. He imagined her voice whispering in his ear, telling him she wanted him, telling him she loved him, and a desperate hunger took hold of him. He reached down and shoved his pyjama bottoms out of the way, grasped his hard, aching cock, and began to stroke himself with a frantic urgency.

The need for release, the need for her, coiled inside him. He remembered the smell of her hair, the way her skin felt, the bright happiness of her smile, the warmth of her hand in his. Her emotions, her desire and hunger and lust, filled his head, and he sobbed, in mingled ecstasy and grief, as he climaxed hard, come gushing across his abdomen in long, hot spurts.

At last the pleasure faded away, and the TARDIS gently withdrew from his mind. He collapsed on the bed, vaguely aware that he was still sobbing, tears running down his face.

“Why—” He sobbed harder. “You didn’t help—you only made it worse—”

He felt the machine’s gentle reassurance, and her confidence that she’d helped him. And despite his pain, which felt like a barely scabbed-over wound that had been ripped open again, he knew she was right.

He’d needed to cry, to let himself grieve for everything he’d lost, to come to grips with his own feelings for Donna. To acknowledge his sorrow over not just the loss of his best mate, but the chances and hopes and possibilities that were now gone forever.

“But it hurts,” he whispered.

The TARDIS touched his mind, and he heard a gentle almost-voice telling him that it had to hurt, that he couldn’t expect to lose someone so important to him without pain. He felt her hopeful thought that it would get better, eventually. That one day he’d be able to think of Donna without wanting to scream in rage and pain and anguish.

Not today. And not tomorrow.

But someday.

She was probably right, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. He didn’t care about someday right now. Right now, he was drowning in grief and loneliness and guilt, and the only outlet for it all was tears.

And those, at least, the TARDIS had given him.

He cried like a child for a long, long while, grieving for the friend he'd had, and the lover he might have had. Grieving for everything he'd lost, and everything he hadn't had the courage to reach out and take. Slowly, his sobs died down, and eventually he fell asleep, tears still streaking his cheeks.

In his dreams, he saw his own afterimages, memories of his best mate and all they’d done together. All they’d accomplished, side by side.

And yet his dreams were less than comforting.

Because in his dreams, he dreamed of Donna… and of chances lost.

-The End-

Isolation

2012-01-30T16:24:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Genre: PWP, hurt/comfort
Description: After a week spent in solitary confinement, the Doctor needs a little comforting, which Donna provides.
Length: Oneshot, 2700 words
Rating: Adult for explicit sex and language. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.

A week.

They'd kept him in isolation for an entire week.

Just the thought made Donna Noble's blood boil. The Doctor was by nature a sociable bloke. For him to be all alone, in that ridiculously tiny excuse for a cell, with no windows and no lights and absolutely no one to talk to--

Well, it was inhumane, that was what it was.

But she hadn't said so to the aliens, because she'd been lucky to manage to negotiate his release at all, and she didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it. And besides, the Doctor hadn't been entirely blameless (she really wished he'd get it through his thick alien skull that whoopee cushions and monarchs didn't mix well), and she was honestly grateful they'd allowed him to leave the planet at all. She'd learned more than she wanted to about the Zardenzan penal system over the past week, and she knew his punishment could have been a lot worse. So she remained uncharacteristically silent and tight-lipped until the TARDIS took off and left Zardenza behind.

"Well," he said, looking at the console as if he hardly recognized it. "I suppose the first thing I should do is take a shower..."

She thought of him stuck in that dark, small cell, barely long enough for him to stretch out in, and her heart broke for him. He looked awkward and uncomfortable, as if he could scarcely remember how to move around in an open area, and she shook her head.

"No," she said firmly. "The first thing you should do is eat. You're skin and bones, Doctor. Looks like they hardly fed you."

"I've had better cuisine," he said with a grim effort at a smile. "But gruel is enough to keep a man alive."

Barely, she thought, looking at him. His pinstriped suit was hanging off him, and it had hardly been big enough to fit round a stick to begin with. But he had a point about needing a shower, too. His hair was greasy and fell lankly about his face, his jawline was covered with scraggly brown whiskers, and his odour didn't make her think of spices and ocean breezes, the way it usually did. He wasn't human, and didn't reek the way she would have after a week with no bathing facilities-- but he definitely wasn't clean, either. He was a fastidious bloke, and would probably feel better if he bathed.

"Tell you what," she said. "You take a shower, and I'll bring some food to your quarters. All right?"

"All right," he said, his voice low, entirely devoid of its normal spirit. He turned, heading for his room, and she watched him go, observing the way his shoulders drooped and his head hung. He wasn't happy. Maybe it was the lack of food, but more likely it was the week of solitary imprisonment. She didn't think solitude was good for him, somehow.

She went to the galley and put together a trayful of his favorite things-- toast with marmalade, ginger biscuits, tea-- then carried it down the corridor to his room. When she entered, he was just emerging from the loo, much cleaner. His freshly washed hair stood up in wild disarray on top of his head, he'd shaved, and he'd discarded the old suit-- which probably needed burning at this point-- and was clad only in a dark red robe. He smelled like himself again, and she breathed in the rich fragrance of exotic spices and tropical breezes that was so much a part of his presence, and realised how much she'd missed it.

She tried not to stare at the V of pale chest exposed by his robe, but she couldn't quite help it. He was always so throroughly covered up that any exposed skin on him was...

Well, not sexy, not precisely. Just... surprising.

She perched on the side of his bed, and he dropped down beside her. "Food," he said with immense appreciation, sounding more cheerful already, and snagged a piece of toast off the tray. It disappeared in three huge bites, and he reached for more.

"Poor thing," she said, watching him. "You were really starving."

"Mmmmm," he answered, devouring another piece of toast and washing it down with a large swallow of tea. "They only fed me twice while I was there."

"Twice?"

He looked at her face, saw the fury she knew must be written there, and laughed without humour. "Easy, Donna. It's all over now, and I survived."

"Two bowls of gruel?" Rage rose up inside her, nearly choking her. "That's all they gave you?"

"It was enough to keep me from starving." He reached for a biscuit. "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, I suppose. Still, it's nice to have some real food again. Thanks."

She watched, still seething, while he cleaned off the entire tray-- four pieces of toast and eight biscuits-- then leaned back against the carved wooden headboard of his bed with a contented sigh.

"Are you all right otherwise?" She frowned, studying him. He was gaunt, but she didn't see any bruises or injuries. Even so, she couldn't stop worrying. "Do we need to take you to the medbay and have all those fancy machines take a look at you?"

"I'm fine." He shrugged. "They didn't do anything to me, Donna. Nothing at all. That's the whole point of solitary confinement. They just... left me."

There was a grimness in his tone, but his face was expressionless. "You must have been miserable," she said softly.

"Nah." He tried to smile, but she knew him well enough to know it wasn't really sincere. "Brain the size of a planet, y'know. I had plenty to think about."

"I can't imagine you all cooped up in that little cell," she said with a shudder. "You're always so... active." She'd almost said hyper, but bit it back. Right now he didn't look hyper, not exactly, but there was something about him...

He looked like something was simmering underneath his skin, a sort of repressed energy bubbling just beneath the surface. Maybe he needed to go to the console room and do some tinkering, or read in the library, or something comforting and familiar along those lines. Or maybe he just needed to relax a bit.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, as if basking in the comforting hum of the TARDIS. "It's good to be home," he said softly.

"I bet it is, Spaceman." She smiled a bit, because it was good to have him home. "You look tired."

"I am tired." He didn't open his eyes. "Stupid, yeah? You'd think the last thing I'd be after a week alone would be tired. But I couldn't sleep properly in that place. It was so... it was so small and confined, and it made me twitch-- almost literally climbing the walls-- I just couldn't--"

His voice rose, the first hint he'd given that he wasn't really as calm as he was trying to pretend. He cut himself off, but not before she'd noticed the high, almost panicky note in his voice.

He'd been a lot more stressed by his isolation than he wanted to let on, the poor bloke.

"Maybe I should go, then," she said. "Let you sleep."

"No." His eyes snapped open, and he looked at her with imploring dark eyes. "Don't go, Donna. Don't leave me."

Of course, she thought. The absolute last thing he wanted right now, after a week of enforced solitude, was to be alone. "Okay," she said, as soothingly as she could manage. "I don't mind staying."

"Do you think..." He kept on staring at her with big eyes, and his voice dropped almost to a whisper. "You didn't hug me when you rescued me, Donna. Do you think maybe you could hug me now?"

She'd been too intent on getting him off Zardenza to even think about hugging him. But she knew that the Doctor very much enjoyed being hugged. She leaned over and wrapped her arms around his neck, and he put his arms around her and squeezed so hard she thought her ribs might be in danger. But she didn't protest.

He pressed his face into her hair and sighed, and held her against him for a long, long moment.

At last he let her go. She straightened up, and smiled at him.

"Want me to lie down with you?" she offered.

"Would you?"

He looked both very pleased at the idea, and a little shy. That was no surprise, as the two of them had never slept in the same bed before. Under normal circumstances, she never would have dreamed of offering, and would have smacked his head right off his shoulders if he'd suggested it. But this was a special situation. She wasn't going to make him try to sleep all by himself, not after everything he'd been through. Not if he was more comfortable with her beside him.

She stretched out on the bed next to him, pulling the covers up over her. She was wearing jeans and a knit shirt, which were comfortable enough to sleep in. He wriggled around, burrowing down under the covers and stretching out his long legs, then pulling the quilt up to his shoulders. He looked warm and cosy and almost happy, and she reached out a hand and caressed his cheek, very lightly.

His eyes instantly fluttered shut, and a soft moan of pleasure rose from his throat.

She yanked back her hand, startled by his reaction. She'd touched the Doctor in friendly, affectionate ways before, and not once had he responded with a--

Well, a sex noise.

But then again, he'd never been starved of human contact for a whole week, either.

Sympathy flooded her, and she reached out and stroked his cheek again. He turned his face into her hand, and made a soft whimpering sound.

Poor thing, she thought, imagining him all alone in the dark, with no one to talk to and nothing to do. All that manic, hectic energy, trapped in a dark, tiny cell, barely able to move. He must have been so lonely, must have felt so trapped...

Without any conscious decision on her part, she found that her hand was in his hair, her thumb stroking over his too-high cheekbone, and he was making desperate little sounds of pleasure, moans of need and want that really couldn't be described as anything except sex noises. He sounded like she was touching...

Well, the sounds he was making were totally out of proportion for the simple caress of her hand against his face.

He'd obviously been starving for touch. And that didn't surprise her, not really. He was a touchy-feely sort of bloke. Always hugging, holding hands, bumping his shoulder against hers. He seemed to need physical contact the way most people needed food and air.

And obviously being without any sort of physical contact for a week had driven him just about barmy.

She let her hand move down, stroking his freshly shaved jawline, and down along his throat, and he tilted his head back, granting her access. She ran her finger along the sensitive area just beneath his ear, and he groaned in what sounded like pure sexual ecstasy.

She kept running her finger back and forth between his ear and his collarbone, and he twisted beneath her hand, writhing against the mattress and making low growling sounds in his throat. Either Gallifreyans were ridiculously sexual creatures-- and she'd never before seen anything to make her believe that he was any hornier than the average human-- or he was simply terribly starved for touch.

All that energy she'd sensed bubbling beneath his skin, she realised, had been sexual energy. The pure, basic need for physical contact. He might be a highly evolved alien, but he apparently had needs that were just as primitive as any human. And being all alone for a week had brought those needs boiling to the surface.

"Maybe," he muttered, sounding as if he were forcing the words out through a fierce act of will, "you should go."

"I don't think so," she answered, and lowered her head, brushing her lips over the spot she'd just been caressing. He shuddered violently and cried out, as if she'd put her mouth somewhere very intimate. She opened her lips and let her tongue touch him there, and he trembled and sighed and moaned.

"Donna-- oh, Donna--"

He'd rolled onto his side to encourage what she was doing. She shifted so she was behind him, and began brushing kisses over the nape of his neck, while her hand slid down his front. His hips jerked, offering himself to her in a surprisingly unsubtle suggestion, and she took the hint, shoving his robe out of the way and gently taking him into her hand. He was swollen with need, and when her fingers wrapped around him, he gasped out a word she'd never imagined she'd hear him say.

"Fuck."

She smiled against the back of his neck, because the idea of making the proper Time Lord forget himself to such an extent was rather entrancing. Very slowly, she began to stroke him, and his hips moved urgently, driving into her hand.

He felt just like a human, like smooth satin over granite, except his skin was a bit cooler than a human's would be. The scent of spice and ocean breezes grew stronger, and the taste of his skin beneath her tongue grew more... well, alien. Not salty, as a human's skin would be, but more like cinnamon. She decided she quite liked it. She let her tongue tease his earlobe and his throat and his jaw, and at the same time her hand moved on his cock in a slow, deliberate motion.

"Please--" He was gasping out the word, over and over again. "Please, Donna-- please, let me-- please--"

She refused to move her hand any faster, and his pleading trailed off into frantic sobs. His whole body vibrated with need, and he twisted and arched, desperately seeking release.

"Soon," she promised softly.

"I can't... I can't wait..." He turned his head toward her just a bit, his face contorted with hunger, his eyes wide and desperate. "Ahhhhh, Donna. Please."

Unable to refuse when he needed it that badly, she moved her hand a little faster, and watched as his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth dropped open. "Oh, fuck, fuck," he whispered again, and then a long sound rose from his chest, a deep, resonant groan of pleasure and release, and he came hard into her hand and all over the sheets, his body shaking with the force of his climax.

At last his muscles all relaxed, and she let go of him, wiping her hand against the sheets, and wrapped her arm around his waist. He curled up, letting her spoon against his back, and his arm draped across hers. She breathed in his unique fragrance, then pressed her ear against his back, listening to the distinctive pounding of his double heartbeat.

There was a long silence. At last he spoke.

"I didn't mean--" He sounded hesitant, and a bit embarrassed. "I didn't mean for that to happen, Donna."

"Neither did I." She shifted slightly, and kissed the back of his neck again. "But I'm glad it did."

"Yeah," he said, his voice blurred with sleepiness. "Me too."

The TARDIS sensed his growing exhaustion and dimmed the lights-- low, but not to complete darkness-- and Donna wrapped herself around the Doctor, reassuring him wordlessly that he wasn't alone any longer. His body relaxed, and his arm grew heavy on hers, and moments later she heard a soft buzzing snore, and knew that he was fast asleep.

She closed her own eyes, grateful to have him back, and fell asleep with her arm around him.

It felt strangely right.

-The End-

Incompatible (Remix)

2012-01-30T16:23:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Genre: Fluff, humour
Length: Oneshot, 1350 words
Description: The Doctor has made an error, and now he is suffering the consequences.
Rating: PG (warning for mpreg)
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Note: I don't think you can technically "remix" your own story, but I didn't quite know what else to call it. I had two entirely separate ideas for this, and since there was no way to do them as a story and a sequel, I wrote them up as two different stories. Both follow from "Compulsion," but both are intended as AUs.
Thanks to babydee1 and pipersmum for helping me with a bit of Britspeak!

Incompatible (original version)

*****
"Doctor?"

Donna Noble paused at the door to the loo, blinking in shock at the startling sight of the Doctor kneeling in front of the toilet, his lanky body limp with misery. Slowly and painfully, he lifted his head, and she saw that his hair, which could ordinarily best be described as fluffy, was sticking to his face, damp with sweat. His face was so pale that his freckles stood out in bold relief.

"Donna," he said, rather miserably. "I don't feel too good."

"Oh, blimey." She crossed the tile floor and sat down next to him, patting his shoulder gently. "You're sick."

"Welllll..." He looked embarrassed. "Not exactly."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Um... remember last month, when we... well, remember that resort we went to?"

"Of course I remember," she said with a fond smile. "How could I forget?"

"Well..." He paused to swallow, looking like he might just be about to sick up again. "Remember how I said we had incompatible DNA?"

She nodded, patting his shoulder.

"I was wrong."

"What?" She stared at him in confusion. "What do you mean, Doctor?"

He looked back at her with big, sorrowful eyes.

"I'm pregnant," he said.

She burst out laughing.

*****

Several minutes later, she was still giggling, and the Doctor looked very, very annoyed.

"Let me get this straight," she said. "Time Lords... have... a uterus?"

"It's not called a uterus," he muttered defensively.

"Don't care what you call it, Sunshine; if there's a baby growing in it, then it's a uterus." She looked at him, chortling, but he was so clearly unhappy that she couldn't help but feel sympathy. She tried to choke back her laughter. "Poor thing. Is this how it always works with your people?"

"Well... ordinarily we grow our children on the loom. But in the occasional case when an... error... is made, then... yeah. This is how it works."

"And we made an error."

"Several of them, as I recall." He groaned, and retched into the toilet some more. "Oh, Rassilon. No wonder my people went in for asexual reproduction. This is absolutely disgusting."

"Don't worry," she said, patting his shoulder. She could feel an echo of his nausea through their mental bond, and yeah, it was disgusting. Totally. "Morning sickness doesn't last forever."

"It'll go on for about six months," he said, hanging his head miserably. "Gallifreyan pregnancies are slightly longer than human ones."

"Oh, yeah? How long?"

"Twenty-one months."

"Oh. My. God." She gaped at him. "You have to carry around a baby for almost two years?"

"Well, I'm already a month along." He sighed. "So call it twenty months from now till I deliver. Advanced brains require a longer gestational period, you see."

"And exactly how..." She looked him over thoughtfully. "I don't quite recall seeing... well, how exactly do you deliver the baby?"

"You really do not want to know."

She decided he was probably right about that, and patted his shoulder sympathetically instead of pressing for detaills. "How are we going to get you through this, Doctor? I'm no obstetrician, and we can hardly check you into a hospital in London. But you can't give birth by yourself on the TARDIS, either. What are we going to do?"

He frowned for a moment, then his expression lightened.

"Martha," he said. "Martha Jones. If I get all the literature I have on Gallifreyan obstetrics to her, she'll have plenty of time to learn all there is to know about it by the time the baby's ready to be born. She can be Earth's leading expert on the subject."

"Earth's only expert on the subject, you mean. Okay. That sounds like a plan." She watched as he turned back to the toilet and sicked up some more, and frowned, swallowing uncomfortably against the nausea she could feel emanating from him. "Are you absolutely certain you're pregnant?"

"Checked myself in the med bay. The results were conclusive." He sighed. "We're going to have a baby, Donna."

She couldn't help the delighted smile that broke over her face. "I don't mind. I love babies, and there's no one I'd rather have a baby with."

He gazed up at her, all dark eyes and hopeful expression. "Really?"

"Really," she told him, and gently brushed the hair off his damp forehead. She refrained from adding that the absolute best part of this situation was that she was going to get a baby without having to be the one who went through pregnancy. She could tell through their mental bond that morning sickness was a symptom she'd just as soon never cope with.

He looked mournful. "But I'm going to get so... huge."

"That," she said, looking at his skinny form, "I'm actually looking forward to seeing."

"How exactly can I save worlds if I'm waddling? I'm going to have backaches! Swollen ankles! Varicose veins!" He groaned. "I'm going to be the Pregnant Oncoming Storm! Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? The Oncoming Storm is not supposed to be pregnant, Donna!"

"You'll find a way," she said, stroking his hair. "I have faith in you. You'll manage it somehow. But by the end, you're going to have to resign yourself to doing a bit less running, for sure."

"The Daleks will laugh at me."

"Doubtful. They don't have much of a sense of humour."

"The Sontarans will mock me."

"You've mocked them for being short often enough. Turnabout is fair play, if you ask me."

"I'm going to be useless," he said with a moan, "absolutely useless. I might as well just resign myself to spending the next twenty months knitting booties, or something."

"Hey." She smacked him on the shoulder, very gently, so as not to upset his stomach any further. "Do you seriously think the entire female population of Earth becomes useless when they're pregnant? That every woman on Earth just sits down and knits booties for nine months?"

"Well... no. Of course not."

"Then quit your whingeing," she said tartly. "If Earth women can find a way to carry on when they're pregnant, then a Time Lord can manage it, too."

"I just..." He lowered his head and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. "I had quite a few children, Donna, but they were all... loomed. I've never actually been pregnant before."

"I'll help you through it." she said, gently stroking his hair. "Don't be scared, Doctor."

He lifted his chin with an attempt at his usual arrogance. "I'm not scared." He caught her eye, apparently saw she wasn't fooled, and dropped his head again. "I'm terrified," he admitted in a small voice.

"It'll be okay. I'll be here to hold your hand and help, the whole time. It's the least I can do, considering I'm the one who got you up the duff to begin with."

She saw the slightest curve of his mouth. "That was really all my fault, Donna. You asked-- and I told you it was safe--"

"You made a mistake." She patted him. "But not a bad one, not really. I've always wanted a baby."

"Yeah." He lifted his head, and his eyes went unfocussed and distant, as if he was seeing other times, and children from long, long ago. "Babies are nice. Very, very nice."

"Well, babies are nice when you have them with the right bloke." She reached down and took his hand, squeezing it. "And you're definitely the right bloke, Doctor."

He paused, considering that, then brightened.

"Yep." He popped the P, and offered her his cockiest smile. "I am, aren't I?"

"You egotistical prawn." She whacked at him, very gently, and he chuckled.

"Well," he said, looking a little more cheerful. "So much for our agreement about not mating, eh? I mean, we already pretty much blew it to smithereens, honestly, but this kind of puts the capper on it, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, it does," she said, and grinned, feeling very, very cheerful herself. "It really does. You have to give us credit for that, I reckon. When we mate... we really mate."

-The End-

Incompatible

2012-01-30T16:22:00.000-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Genre: Fluff, humour, romance
Length: Oneshot, 1250 words
Description: The Doctor has made an error. Donna is suffering the consequences, and she is displeased.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Note: This is a sort of followup to "Compulsion," in which the Doctor said he and Donna had incompatible DNA, and a few people pointed out that Time Lords and humans have been known to interbreed in canon. Also, this is for missbuterfly, who really wanted "Compulsion" to wind up this way. This is, however, not intended as a true sequel to "Compulsion." Call it an AU ending, if you like.

*****
"You said we had incompatible DNA."

The Doctor cleared his throat in embarrassment. "Well... perhaps incompatible was an overstatement."

"An overstatement. Really."

"In fact, it might have even been... um... entirely incorrect."

"Oh. Really. I'm shocked."

The Doctor cringed slightly at Donna's sarcasm. Her tone, he thought unhappily, was so sharp he could have used it to shave with.

"I do make mistakes upon occasion," he said with dignity.

"So do I." She glared at him. "Like shagging idiot Time Lords who don't think they need to use condoms!"

He winced at her words, and the volume with which they were delivered. "I'm sorry, Donna. Really, really sorry. I honestly didn't think--"

"Yeah, you obviously weren't thinking." She groaned. "Neither was I, apparently."

"I'm sorry." He knelt next to her on the floor of the loo, where she was currently worshipping the great and benevolent porcelain goddess, as she had poetically expressed it. "It probably happened because of the mental link we developed. I s'pose I should've used protection, just in case. Next time--"

He broke off as she heaved and retched into the toilet. "Next time?" she repeated thickly when she was through. "Are you kidding me? Do you honestly think I will ever, ever let you touch me again?"

"I know you don't want to hear this," he said, "but women almost always survive morning sickness. Even morning sickness of the Gallifreyan variety."

"Are you telling me that Time Lords have extra-special, super-duper, ultra-strong morning sickness?"

"Well..." He coughed uncomfortably. "There was a very good reason we usually had our children via an asexual process."

"Because the men in your society got tired of being screamed at by violently ill women?"

"Something like that, yes." He reached out awkwardly and patted her shoulder. The physical contact allowed him to feel a bit of her nausea through the telepathic bond they'd developed. It felt... unpleasant. "Try not to focus on the sicking up, Donna. Focus on the positive instead. Just think, we're going to have a ginger baby."

"Maybe." She gagged into the toilet again, and he clamped his jaws and swallowed hard, trying to ignore the echo of her feelings in his head. "Unless we have a baby with messy brown hair sticking up all over its head. The poor child."

"It'll be ginger," he said with absolute confidence. "It'll be gorgeous."

She looked at him, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and smiled, just a little. "You really think so?"

"I really think so." He touched her hair gently. "Gorgeous... just like you."

The truth was that she currently wasn't at her most lovely, with her hair hanging stringily around her face, sweat beaded on her forehead, and huge dark circles under her eyes. But even though the Doctor was hardly an expert on women, he was bright enough to realise that he didn't need to mention any of that. Donna was gorgeous. Absolutely.

Well, sort of. If one stretched the definition just a tad.

She smiled at his words, and he realised with a touch of surprise that even hunched over the toilet, her hair hanging limply and her skin pale and damp... she really was gorgeous.

"A beautiful little baby," she whispered. "Not such a bad mistake to make, really."

"Exactly!" he said brightly. "You'll have a gorgeous little ginger baby in your arms in just twenty months."

She froze. "In just what?"

"Twenty months. The gestational period is twenty-one months, and you're already a month along, so..." He caught sight of her face, and trailed off. "Oh. Well. Yes. That may seem a bit long, from the human perspective, but you see, a Time Lord brain is significantly more complex, so..."

"Never touch me," she said firmly, "ever, ever again."

She turned back to the toilet and began retching again, and he held her head, feeling somewhat queasy himself. "But--"

"Never again!"

He sighed. "Ginger," he said under his breath, "and probably really, really loud."

"Oi! I heard that! Don't you think you're already in enough trouble, Sperm Lord?"

"I said I was sorry!"

"Good. Say it every day for the next twenty months, and I might just forgive you."

"You'll forgive me before that," he said optimistically. "Most women stop having morning sickness after the first six months or so."

"Oh, thanks for that information. I'm so very happy to know that. So I can look forward to six months of puking up my insides? That's absolutely spiffing."

He stroked her hair with gentle sympathy. "I'll have to keep an eye on you-- make sure you don't get dehydrated, or develop an electrolyte imbalance. But don't worry, Donna. I'll take good care of you."

"Just because I'm pregnant with your baby?"

"Of course not." He heard the hurt in his own voice. "Don't I always take good care of you, Donna?"

"S'pose so." She leaned her head against his chest. "A little too good, sometimes, or I wouldn't be in this mess."

"Actually," he said, "this was caused more by you taking care of me, as I recall." He squeezed her, very carefully, so as not to upset her stomach further. "And it was brilliant."

"And so were all the times after." She sighed, and then drew back and smiled at him, just a bit. "Doctor. We're going to have a baby."

"A ginger baby with a big mouth."

"No. A Time Lordling with spiky brown hair and a tendency to babble."

"There's an old Gallifreyan saying," he said, drawing her back to his chest. "Only time will tell."

"Yeah." She sighed. "Lots and lots and lots of time. During which I'll swell up to the size of a planet."

"Only a small planet. And you'll still be gorgeous, the same as you are now. There'll be a bit more of you for me to admire than usual, that's all."

"You're deluded."

"Am not. I'm a Time Lord. I see basic truths of the universe that your tiny little human brain can't perceive. And one of those basic truths is that Donna Noble is always gorgeous."

She rolled her eyes. "Definitely deluded. But I reckon that's not such a bad thing." She pressed her face against him, and he had the unworthy thought that he hoped she wasn't wiping off anything, well, yucky on his beloved brown suit.

Oh, well, he reflected. Once their little ginger baby was born, there would be plenty of yuckiness on his suits. He hadn't been a father for many years, but he certainly hadn't forgotten all the rather disgusting baby byproducts. They weren't the sort of thing anyone could forget.

And yet, oddly, he found he was looking forward to the experience, more than he'd looked forward to anything in a long, long time.

"I can't wait to see you that way," he said. "I think you'll look lovely."

"I think I'll look like an overinflated beach ball. I can definitely wait. Not that I have much choice in the matter, anyway." She sighed. "Twenty months? Really?"

"Twenty months," he confirmed. "Even though the baby's half human, the gestational period will still be twenty months."

She sighed, and patted her abdomen, which of course showed no signs of pregnancy yet. "I suppose it's worth the wait."

"Of course it is. Babies are wonderful."

"Even half-human babies?"

He looked into her eyes, and smiled.

"A baby that's half you, Donna," he said softly, "is the most wonderful thing I can imagine."

-The End-

The Still Hour Is Come

2012-01-30T16:21:00.000-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Ten, Donna
Rating: PG (warnings for angst and the loss of children)
Genre: Angst, hurt/comfort, introspection
Length: Oneshot, 1800 words
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Note: The title and one line in the story are from "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London," by Dylan Thomas. Spoilers for "The Doctor's Daughter" and "Forest of the Dead."

Donna finds the Doctor in the TARDIS library, seated on the leather sofa, staring off into space. They'd dropped Martha off on Earth, and headed back into the Vortex, and then he'd silently left the console room. She imagines he wants to be alone, but she doesn't think solitude is what he really needs right now. So she sits down next to him.

He doesn't turn his head, doesn't say hello, doesn't acknowledge her presence in any way.

"You all right?" she says.

He glances at her, and tries to smile, without much success. "Oh, yeah," he says. "I'm all right. I'm always--"

"Don't," she says sharply.

He blinks at her.

"You're not all right. Stop saying you're always all right."

He bristles slightly, and lifts one eyebrow, a lordly alien looking down on a small and inferior human.

"You did ask," he says coolly.

"Yeah, and it was a stupid thing to ask. Of course you're not all right." She notices that his hands are knotted into fists, resting on his thighs. Unintimidated by his chilliness, she reaches out and puts her hand on one of his. It remains fisted, so hard the knuckles are white. The rest of him, she realises, is just as tense.

"I'm fine," he says. He turns his head away, staring blankly at nothing.

"Oh, you are not." She watches him. His face is expressionless, and he's dry-eyed, but she feels tears burning her own eyes. She knows so little about him, but on Messaline, in just a few terse sentences, he'd told her so much. Once upon a time, he'd had children, children he misses so fiercely he can hardly bear to mention them.

When I look at her now, I see them. The hole they left, all the pain that filled it.

And now the loss of Jenny is yet another hole, filled with pain and grief and heartbreak. In a way, she's sorry she encouraged him to think of Jenny as his daughter, because now the girl is only another loss for him to mourn. One more loss, piled upon so many others.

And yet... well, how could she have done anything else? Jenny had been part of him. And he'd needed her, he really had.

She knows he's not just grieving for Jenny, but for all the children he's lost. How many? She has no idea. Strange, to think of him as a father. Somehow she'd imagined he'd always been footloose and fancy free. She'd never guessed that somewhere in his long life, he'd stayed on a planet long enough to raise children.

She can't imagine having children, and then losing them. Tremendous joy, and then terrible anguish. She can't imagine the pain he must be going through.

"Jenny was lovely," she says at last. "A wonderful girl."

His expressionless mask slips, very slightly, and he blinks. "Yes," he says hoarsely. "She was."

Jenny had been wonderful. No surprise there, as she'd been genetically all Doctor. He's pretty wonderful too-- not that she'll ever tell him that. But Jenny had been full of life and intelligence, sparkling with it, lighting up any room she was in, and lighting up the Doctor, too. Donna can still clearly see his delighted smile when he hugged his daughter and told her she was brilliant.

And now she's gone, and there's a still, quiet void in her place.

Donna remembers her own voice: She'll help you. We both will.

She thinks unhappily that Jenny would have done him so much good. A family member to care for. His own flesh and blood. She knows he's terribly lonely, though he never says so. She can feel how much he misses his own people. Jenny could have helped fill those holes inside him with joy instead of pain. She could have.

But now she's just become another loss for the Doctor. And the only person he has left to comfort him is Donna. She promised to help him cope, and so she will. But she's unhappily aware that she is woefully inadequate to the task. She's not family, not a lover, not even one of his own people. Only a friend.

A line she heard once at a funeral rises in her mind: After the first death, there is no other. It's true for the dead, she thinks, but what about the living? What about the people who survive the deaths of their loved ones? They have to deal with death over and over again.

The Doctor has lived long enough to suffer loss upon loss upon loss. She can't imagine how that feels, not really. She's already lost her father and her grandmother, and if she lives to a reasonable old age, she knows she'll lose still more people she loves.

But to lose all of one's children-- one's loves-- one's entire species--

It's beyond her comprehension. No wonder his eyes look so ancient and sorrowful sometimes. The wonder, she thinks, is that he can smile at all.

He's still sitting there, stiff and blank and tight-lipped, and she can't stand it any more. She just can't. She slips toward him on the sofa, pressing against his side, and wraps her arms around him in a fierce hug.

A shiver runs through him, but he doesn't turn toward her, doesn't respond, doesn't hug her back.

"Donna," he says, with only the slightest tremor in his voice. "I'm perfectly fine."

Idiot man, she thinks, not without affection. He might be an alien, but he's much like a human male this way. Determined to pretend everything's okay, that he's too tough to break, that he can cope with his sorrows all on his own. Determined to tell himself he doesn't need anyone to help him through this.

But she knows he does.

She leans her head on his shoulder, and presses closer. He's still rigid, all closed in on himself. It's rather like hugging a stone, but she knows he needs comforting, no matter what he wants to believe.

She remembers his voice: When they died, that part of me died with them. It'll never come back. Not now.

She thinks of another piece of his soul dying, deep inside him, and her heart aches for him. She wants to somehow magically comfort him, to take all his sorrows away, but this is all she has to offer. There's nothing else she can do for him. She sits there, her arms around him, holding him tightly, her head on his shoulder. For long moments, he doesn't move.

And then, slowly, he shifts, turning toward her. His arms come up and wrap around her waist, and he lowers his head, pressing his face into her shoulder. She lifts a hand, stroking his hair, and he shudders, and makes a small sound of pain and grief.

She holds him while he mourns.

*****

Donna is curled up in a big wing chair in the TARDIS library, her arms wrapped around her legs, her face pressed into her knees, when the Doctor pokes his head in. "All right there?" he asks.

"I'm fine," she says, without looking at him.

There's a pause, and then the sound of his Converse-shod feet stepping nearer.

"No, you're not," he says. "I shouldn't have even asked. It was a stupid question. Of course you're not all right."

"I'm fine." She sighs against her knees, trying not to remember her time in the Library computer, and failing miserably. "None of it was real, Doctor."

His footsteps come closer. She doesn't open her eyes, but she is nonetheless aware that he's kneeling next to her chair. His hand drops gently onto her shoulder.

"It felt real, though," he says gently. "Didn't it?"

It had felt terribly real. Despite the strange way time had leapt and tumbled and hiccuped, it had seemed utterly real. When she closes her eyes, she still sees her happy life, and the bright, beautiful faces of her children.

Except they hadn't been children at all.

She remembers Miss Evangelista's voice: Your children were never alive. They're not real.

She knows it's true, that they were only computer programs, electronic data. Illusions. But she remembers tucking them in, kissing them goodnight, telling them stories...

She curls up a little more tightly in the chair, clinging to her memories, the memories she can't bear to let go. The Doctor's hand is on her shoulder, but she can barely feel it. She's back in her cosy little house, with her family, holding two warm, small bodies, kissing soft rosy cheeks good night...

"I'm sorry," he says, stroking her hair. "So sorry, Donna."

"It wasn't real," she whispers. "It was never real."

She tries to push her sorrow away, because she is guiltily aware that her grief can't compare to his. He lost a real, flesh-and-blood daughter, and before that, he lost real children and real loves and real people. It isn't the same thing, it really isn't, and she has no right to weep for the minor losses she's suffered when he's gone through so much worse.

"It was real to you," he answers. "And that's all that matters."

She thinks of her children. Joshua and Ella. So beautiful, so sweet, so brilliant. They were never real, and in a way, that makes their loss that much more tragic, because she has nothing real to recall, no little curls of baby hair to look at and cry over, no photos of birthday parties and family vacations to make her smile, no tiny booties carefully packed away in a trunk in an attic somewhere. All she has to hang onto is the feeling of being their mother, the way they felt in her arms, the happy sound of their laughter.

And now they're gone, all gone, and she can never see them again except in her dreams.

It's so quiet here without them, so empty. So still.

She remembers the Doctor's voice: The hole they left, all the pain that filled it. She understands now, more than she ever wanted to. The Doctor is right. Joshua and Ella were real to her, and so the grief she feels is real too. Just as real as the Doctor's sorrow at losing his daughter. It's different, and yet... it's the same.

In a strange way, her loss is just as real as his. There's a hole inside her, filled with nothing but pain.

His hand brushes through her hair, very gently, and she knows that the Doctor understands. He doesn't think her losses are insignificant or irrelevant or less important than his own. He understands what she's going through, as no one else could.

When they died, that part of me died with them.

Oh, yes, she thinks. He understands.

Despite her best intentions, a choked sob escapes her. The Doctor puts his arms around her, the same way she put her arms around him when he lost Jenny, and gently pulls her off the chair, into his lap.

She buries her face in his chest, and lets herself mourn.

-The End-

Two Friends, One Bed (Doctor Who version)

2012-01-30T16:20:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Rating:: PG-13 (implied sexual content)
Genre: Fluff, humour
Summary: Two friends, one bed, lots of sexual tension. That's about it, really.
Length: Oneshot
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Note: Way back in 2006 I wrote a little Smallville story entitled "Two Friends, One Bed." I was inspired to try a DW version of the same idea after watching "The Shakespeare Code," only with Ten/Donna. Dialogue only (in the mode of my original SV story), which I realise is not everyone's cup of tea.

"You're sleeping on the floor, Sunshine."

"Oi! How come I don't get the bed?"

"Because you're the one who can't drive."

"I can drive just fine. The TARDIS sometimes has a mind of her own, that's all."

"Look, Spaceman, all I know is that I was promised a nice holiday on the golden beaches of Alamarasha, and instead I wound up on a planet that's so primitive they're still using chamber pots for plumbing. And then, as if that wasn't bad enough... now we're stuck here, 'cause you broke the TARDIS."

"Didn't break her, not really. Just haven't quite figured out what's wrong with her yet. She ought to be taking off, but for some reason, she won't."

"She's probably annoyed with you because you keep using that mallet on her. I've told you a hundred times--"

"Look here, Miss Ginger Know-It-All, I was using that mallet on her long before you were born."

"And she's probably bloody tired of it by now. I would be."

"She knows it's a sign of affection."

"Is that what you call it? Look, Doctor, if you ever use a mallet on me--"

"Not much danger of that. I'm not feeling a lot of affection for you right now, to be perfectly honest. This floor is hard."

"Oh, you're such a whinger."

"I'm serious. It's like sleeping on rock. No, wait... it is rock. Are you really going to make me sleep on a stone floor all night?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Stop with the crying and the whimpering already. You sound like an old spaniel I once had. He was a whinger, too."

"But it's hard. And cold."

"Oh, fine. Come up here. But you bloody well better stay on your own side of the bed, Time Boy. If you put your hands anywhere near me--"

"My hands are tired. So is the rest of me. And I don't actually make a habit of accosting my companions, anyway."

"Good. Because I am not at all interested in being accosted."

"Fine. That's just fine."

"Perfect."

"Wonderful. Brilliant. Marvellous."

"Look, Spaceman, could you possibly stop pretending to be a thesaurus and shut the hell up? Some of us need some sleep."

"Yeah. If you don't sleep, you get grouchy. Wait a minute... don't you ever sleep?"

"Oi!"

"Ow!"

"Be glad it was only my pillow. If I had that mallet you use on your poor ship--"

"Wouldn't want to use that on me, Donna. It's a sign of affection, remember? I might get the idea you're accosting me, or something."

"You and your ship have a really odd relationship, do you realise that?"

"As opposed to you and me. Why are you always so tetchy, anyway?"

"Tetchy? I'm not tetchy. You're just extremely irritating."

"Oh, so it's all my fault you're always yelling at the top of your lungs?"

"Yes, it is. No one but a saint could help yelling at you, and I'm no saint."

"Tell me about it."

"Do you really want me to hit you with this pillow again?"

"Aaarrrghhh. You are absolutely the most irritating companion I've ever had. Remind me again why we didn't get separate rooms?"

"Because there's supposedly some sort of weird monster running loose out there, and you were afraid to be on your own."

"I was afraid for you, actually."

"Sure you were."

"I really have no idea why I keep putting up with you, Donna. You're mouthy, you're annoying, and you're somehow managing to take up three-quarters of the bed."

"As skinny as you are, you don't need more than a quarter of it, anyway."

"I'm entitled to half. Move over."

"Oi! Quit shoving! What did I say about your hands?"

"My hands are not doing anything except pushing you over a bit."

"Your hands do not belong on my bits, Martian!"

"That is not what I said. Not even remotely. I said-- oh, never mind. Just shove over, will you?"

"No. I won't. You're the size of a stick, and you don't need that much space. You're just being a pain."

"Fine. If you really want to cuddle up so close to me..."

"I'm moving! I'm moving!"

"Much better. Ahhhhhh."

"Your arm is now on top of me, Spaceman."

"I was just stretching."

"You're done stretching, and you're still on top of me."

"Just my arm. I was worried you might be chilly."

"There's a blanket."

"Thin, poor excuse for a blanket, if you ask me. I'm just looking out for your welfare, Donna. I'd hate for you to get cold in the middle of the night."

"Like your skinny arm is going to keep me warm. It's about as big round as a pencil."

"Well, how about if I do this?"

"The rest of you isn't that much bigger than a pencil, either."

"Thanks for that. Thanks, so much."

"Still... this is a little warmer, I will admit."

"Better than the blanket?"

"A bit, yeah. And speaking of bits... what's this?"

"Ohhhhh. Donna."

"Oh yourself, Spaceman. Don't think I'm accosting you, or anything. Just doing my part to help keep us both warm."

"And you are doing a wonderful job. Brilliant, really. Absolutely spectacular."

"Alien, you talk too much. Do us both a favor, and quit talking, or I'll have to hit you with a mallet."

"Ah, I knew it. An undeniable sign of affection, that. You do like me, don't you?"

"Well... maybe a little bit."

"Come on. Admit it. You like me."

"Oi! Who said you could take my clothes off?"

"Just admit it."

"Fine. I like you. But just like like. It's not like I fancy you or anything."

"I like you too, Donna Noble. You're very, very annoying sometimes, but I do like you."

"I guessed that, what with you taking my jumper off and all."

"I'm going to work on your jeans next. You have a problem with that?"

"Not really, but you're wearing so many clothes it's going to be morning by the time I have all yours off."

"Don't worry, Donna. I'm absolutely worth the effort."

"Ha!"

"Don't believe me?"

"Well... you'll have to prove it to me."

"Oh, I plan to, Donna Noble. I definitely plan to."

-The End-

There Will Come Soft Rains

2012-01-30T16:19:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Character: The Doctor
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst, introspection, vignette
Summary: Life goes on. This is not always a comforting thought.
Length: Oneshot, 240 words
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Note: Just a tiny barely-more-than-drabble.

...And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
-"There Will Come Soft Rains," Sara Teasdale

He emerged from the TARDIS, into the golden dawn of an alien planet. A sun was just rising above the horizon, sending hesitant fingers of silvery light upward. He craned his head back and looked up into the gilded sky, where a few stars still gleamed against the brightening daylight.

He couldn't see Gallifrey, of course. It wasn't there any longer.

His own sun was gone. His life, his people, his world. All gone. Blown apart by him in a violent cataclysm, his last desperate effort to end the Time War and save the universe. Gallifrey was lost to him forever, and he would never again see it except in memory.

And yet on this planet, and on millions-- billions-- of other worlds, life went on, untroubled by Gallifrey's passing, unconcerned by his loss, unaware and uncaring that his species had passed into history.

It was spring here, and the sweet fragrance of flowers filled the air. Azure leaves rustled in the warm breeze, birds sang, and lizards scampered through the bluish grass. Life in all its joyful abundance continued.

He stood gazing upward, long after the sun had risen and the stars were no longer visible. Dark clouds rolled in, obscuring the sapphire sky, and a soft rain began to fall. Still he didn't go back into the TARDIS.

He stood there, staring up into the sky, and let the rain wash over his face like tears.

-The End-

45 for a Moment

2012-01-30T16:17:00.002-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: The Eleventh Doctor, Donna Temple-Noble
Genre: Angst
Description: We move on, even when we don't want to.
Length: 600 words
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters are the property of BBC.
Note: Written in memory of my husband, who would have been 45 this year. The title is from "100 Years," by Five for Fighting.

She looks older.

She's sitting alone at a table in a rather nice restaurant, in a pool of sunshine, looking over the menu. Seated in a dark corner near the back, he studies her, making sure not to make eye contact. Silly, really, since he's wearing an entirely different face, and there's not a chance in the world that she'd recognise him even if she still had her memories of him. But being stared at by a stranger is likely to make her uncomfortable, and that's the last thing he wants, today of all days.

Older. Yes, definitely older. Not old, not yet, but not young, either. There are silvery glints in her mass of ginger hair, and more lines at the corners of her eyes than he remembers. Her figure is a little rounder than it was, and there are grooves on each side of her mouth. She's older... and yet she's still beautiful.

It's been ten years since she was on the TARDIS, by her personal timeline. Somewhat less for him, but still far too long. He wishes he could have her back. After all this time, he still misses her terribly.

But he can't have her back, and he knows it. Some decisions can't be undone. Some things can't be changed. But that doesn't stop them from hurting.

And yet, he wishes...

The door opens, and her husband walks in, with two small children in tow. A girl and a boy. He's kept in contact with her grandfather, and he knows she named them Joshua and Ella, though of course she doesn't know why she chose those names. She doesn't recall that she had two "children" by those names in a virtual reality. She shouldn't remember those names at all, but some things, he supposes, are too important to ever be suppressed completely.

The children squeal and rush to her, and she opens her arms and hugs them, beaming. Shaun Temple pauses next to her and grins down on her. His eyes shine with love as he looks at her.

"Happy birthday," he says.

She laughs, and pats the seat next to her. He squeezes into the booth beside her, rather than sitting across the table from her, and puts an arm around her. She puts her head on his shoulder, and the kids crowd into their laps. They're the very picture of a perfect family.

Donna Temple-Noble is forty-five years old today. And she's happy. No one could look at her bright smile as her family surrounds her and doubt it. She's happy.

Human lives are so short, their lifespans but a moment compared to his, and yet, he thinks, in a way they make up for it, simply by the sheer amount of love and joy and delight that they manage to pack into the few brief years of their lives. Humans are amazing.

Donna is amazing.

He gets up and saunters in their direction. Next to their table, he pauses. "Did I hear him say it was your birthday?" he asks.

She looks up at him, smiling, glowing. Even if her memories were intact, there's no possibility she could recognise him. He's just a stranger, a slender young man in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, a mass of unkempt dark hair falling over his forehead.

"Yes," she admits. "It is."

"Birthdays are cool," he says, smiling back at her. "Happy birthday."

"Thanks," she says, and turns her attention away from him, and back to her family, where it belongs. He's only a stranger to her now. He's not what matters most in her life any more. Her husband and her children are the center of her world now. And that, he thinks with a touch of sorrow, is how it should be.

He walks on past, and goes out the door, leaving her behind.

Again.

-The End-

Dreaming

2012-01-30T16:17:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: G
Length: Oneshot, 300 words
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Note: The story is reality. The show is the AU.

"Last night, I dreamed."

He held her against his chest and spoke into her hair, his voice muffled. She could tell by the way he held her-- tightly, almost protectively-- that the dream had upset him. She didn't say anything, just put her arms around him. She heard his soft sigh of contentment.

"I dreamed that I loved someone else," he whispered into her hair. "That I turned my back on you and walked away, Chlo. That we weren't even friends any more."

She laughed softly against his chest. "That's silly, Clark. That could never happen. We've known each other since high school. How could we ever stop being friends?"

"Yeah." His grip on her loosened slightly. "It was silly, I guess. You've been too important to me for too long for me to ever turn my back on you. And as for falling in love with someone else--"

"That isn't too hard to imagine," she said wryly.

He squeezed her again, almost apologetically. "Once I got the Lana blinkers off," he said, "I realized it had been you all along. It couldn't be anyone else, Chlo. It just... couldn't."

She tightened her arms around his shoulders. "It was just a dream, Clark. Dreams don't make any sense."

"I guess maybe deep down... I'm afraid of losing you."

"You won't." She chuckled. "You can't get rid of me now, Clark. You're stuck with me."

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. She leaned her head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

"This is how it was always meant to be," he whispered. "You and me together."

"Yes," she agreed, holding him just as tightly as he was holding her. "This is how it was meant to be."

-The End-

Chances

2012-01-30T16:16:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Chloe, also Lois/Ollie
Rating: PG
Season 6, "Rage"
Length: Oneshot, 1300 words
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Note: This is my horribly delayed fic for the Chlark Secret Santa. My apologies for the delay, and my gratitude for your understanding. I wanted it to be a little longer, but it just wouldn't cooperate. This is for mariko, who wanted: post-episode/fill-in-the blank, hurt-comfort, a happy ending (I don't mind Chlo-Lo or Clark-Lois friendship, and I love Lollie. Somewhat AU-- Jimmy who? No such character, darn it!

Chances lost are hope's torn up pages
Maybe this time...
-"Chances," Five for Fighting

Lois and Oliver looked so happy together.

Seated at the Kent farmhouse table, Chloe watched her cousin and the billionaire with a touch of envy. Lois was gorgeous, with long dark hair and a spectacular figure, and men always looked at her like she was something special. But no man had ever looked at her quite the way Oliver Queen did.

Chloe, on the other hand... she supposed she was pretty enough, but she was hardly the sort of girl who made men fall in love at a glance. In fact, plenty of men had looked and looked and still never fallen in love with her. Case in point: Clark Kent, currently carrying in steaming dishes of food and putting them on the table. He'd known her since middle school, but he'd never seen her as anything but a friend.

Admittedly, that was partly her fault. Maybe more than partly, really. A month or two before, when the world had seemed to be ending, he'd gone off to battle an alien conqueror, and she'd grabbed him and kissed him.

And he'd kissed her back.

But the next day, when he'd come back from saving the world, she'd backed off, just like she always did. Well, not right away. At first she'd been so shocked at his unexpected appearance, so delighted to see him safe and sound, that she'd run across the room and hugged him. And the first words out of her mouth had been utterly honest: Everything's great now that you're here.

But then she'd backed away emotionally, afraid to tell him what he meant to her. Just as she always did, she wanted to push him away before he could push her away. She could still hear her own voice, high-pitched and artificially cheerful: It's not like I'm expecting us to hook up or anything.

Which had been an idiotic thing to say. Of course she'd wanted to hook up with him. Clark was gorgeous, not to mention a true hero, and she'd loved him almost since the very moment she met him. Hell, if it hadn't been for all the other reporters in the Daily Planet basement, she probably would have just shoved him up against the wall, put her hands all over him, and kissed him again.

But no. She knew she wouldn't have. Because when it came to guys, she was a wimp. And when it came to Clark Kent, she was an absolute coward.

Stupid, she thought. Stupid stupid stupid.

But Clark hadn't exactly tried to change her mind, either. He'd looked a little surprised by her words, maybe even a bit disappointed-- but he hadn't argued about it.

She sighed, knowing that was only an excuse. She'd been the one to end whatever might have been, not him. He'd held her in his arms and gazed at her, expectant, hopeful, almost eager-- and she'd slammed down a door between them.

No, she couldn't blame this one on him.

Clark put a platter of ham down on the table, then walked to the head of the table and stood there, tall and handsome and grown up. He'd changed so much from the short, skinny boy she'd first met in middle school, and yet deep down he was the very same boy, as good and decent and solid as ever.

She looked at him, dressed up for Thanksgiving, wearing a blue button-down shirt and a pair of chinos, his hair more neatly combed than usual. He looked really adorable, she thought. And for about the eight hundredth time since that morning in the Planet, she wished she hadn't opened her big stupid mouth. She wished she'd done things differently.

Her first impulse had been to run across the room and hug him. That had been a good impulse.

If only she'd followed up on it with her second impulse, which had been to grab him and kiss the hell out of him.

Too late now, she thought sadly. That moment was gone, and she could never, ever get it back.

Clark began speaking, and she tried to focus on what he was saying.

"If I could have everyone's attention, please," he said. "I'd like to make a little announcement. Our family has a tradition that goes back way before I was even born... where everyone takes a moment to say what they're most thankful for in their lives. I would just like to say that I'm thankful for my mom and dad... whose faith in me taught me to have faith in myself."

Chloe offered him a sympathetic smile, along with everyone else. Clark had lost his father not too long ago, and everyone knew it hurt him to be the one at the head of the table, in what should be Jonathan Kent's place. At the other end of the table, Martha Kent sniffled, smiling through her tears.

"Also," he said, "I'm thankful for my best friend, Chloe, who supports me in everything I do. I..." He swallowed audibly, then went on. "I really don't know how I could live without her."

His eyes turned to her, and for just a moment she saw everything he felt for her reflected in the green depths. She saw affection, and longing, and a need as deep as her own. She saw hope.

She saw possibilities.

She wanted to offer him a breezy smile, to pass off the moment as nothing important, just as she always did. To fall back on her tired old routine of pretending that there was absolutely nothing between the two of them except friendship. To fall back on a comfortable, safe lie.

But then she remembered what she'd been thinking a moment before. Too late now.

It wasn't too late. Clark was giving her a second opportunity to admit what she felt. He'd put himself and his feelings out in the open, right in front of everyone they knew. He was practically holding his heart out to her on a platter.

The moment wasn't gone forever, after all. This was her chance.

And unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life calling herself stupid stupid stupid, she had to take that chance.

She jumped to her feet and walked rapidly around the table. He was tall and she was short, but she yanked down his head, and he didn't seem to object.

She did what she should have done that morning in the Daily Planet. She grabbed him and kissed the hell out of him.

She planted her lips on his, and he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back, right there in front of everyone.

Vaguely, she was aware of applause, and Lois hollering, "Get a room, you two!", but she was hardly aware of anything but Clark's mouth on hers, the warm scent of his skin, and the feel of his arms around her. She could have kissed him forever. But eventually she remembered they weren't alone, and she pulled away, blushing, and looked into his eyes.

"What I'm most thankful for," she told him, loud enough for everyone to hear, "is you."

Lois whistled and applauded some more, and Chloe blushed again, and went back to her seat. But after Clark had served everyone, he took her hand and held it in his, with the gentle, firm grip of a man who didn't intend to ever let go. He smiled across the table at her, and spoke very softly, echoing her words back to her.

"Everything's great now that you're here, Chlo."

"Yeah," she said, and smiled back at him. "Everything's great now."

-The End-

-30-

2012-01-30T16:13:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Chloe
Futurefic oneshot, 2400 words
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Note: AU. Chloe was always a reporter, Lois worked for the Daily Planet but now lives in Star City with Ollie, and Clark never worked for the DP until now. Written for marikology.

In journalism, -30- used to mean the end of the story.

But her story is far from over, Chloe Sullivan thinks as she walks back to the Daily Planet with a group of other reporters. They all just took her to lunch to celebrate her birthday. An enormous bunch of black balloons bob above them, the ribbons clutched in her hand.

She's thirty today, and despite the black balloons and the Over the Hill cake she just ate, her life is just getting under way. She won her first Pulitzer a few months ago. Her first, but not her last, if she has anything at all to say about it. She's just had another hard-hitting front page series published, this one about LexCorp's criminal exposure of workers to toxins. She's one of the best reporters in the city, and she knows it. And she's got friends, she thinks, looking at the group around her. Lots of good friends.

On some level, of course, she wishes her cousin Lois were still here. Once upon a time, her cousin Lois worked at the Planet too, but she'd married Oliver Queen a few years ago, and they'd gone off to Star City to live happily ever after. Now Lois is a mild-mannered reporter by day and a superhero (the Green Sparrow, the papers dubbed her, much to Chloe's amusement) by night. Chloe's happy for her. She loves Lois. Lois deserves a superhero of her very own.

She sighs, missing her own superhero.

She still thinks about him all the time. She can't help it. They'd been good friends, the best of friends, for ten years. And finally, five years ago, they'd cautiously embarked on a more serious relationship. But only a couple of weeks after they'd begun dating, things had gone terribly wrong.

A bridge had collapsed, and the Blur had saved thirty-five people. But it wasn't enough, according to the local media. Over a hundred more had died, and he'd been crucified in the newspapers, villified on the local news. In the worst tradition of local news, the media had played up all the people who'd died rather than those who'd been saved. She'd done her best to write sympathetic pieces in the paper, pointing out all the good he'd done, all the lives he'd saved, but she'd only been a junior reporter at that point, and no one paid much attention to her little articles.

He hadn't been able to bear the weight of the public condemnation on his broad shoulders, and he'd left his beloved farm behind, left her behind, and fled to Fawcett City.

She'd called him, sent him texts and emails and IMs, trying to get him to come back, but he'd been crushed by all those deaths, and wouldn't listen to reason. She'd even gone to see him, but he'd avoided her, and even all her reporter skills hadn't enabled her to track him down. She knew how he sometimes tumbled into pits of self-loathing, and imagined he hadn't wanted to listen to anything but the sound of his own guilt clamoring inside his head.

But she could only take so much rejection, even from him. Eventually she'd quit calling.

And still she hasn't forgotten him. Well, how can she? He's in the paper, every day. Articles come over the wire about him, and are dutifully reprinted in the Planet. She reads every one compulsively, reads about his good deeds, exults in everything her Boy Scout accomplishes.

He's not the Blur any more. He's Superman.

He's become a symbol of truth and justice, and the media's darling. She's so proud, and she wishes she could tell him so. But too much time has passed. She can't just pick up the phone, not now. Not when he's made it so clear that he isn't interested.

She sighs, because despite all the friends she has, despite a job she loves and a boss she respects... sometimes she feels alone.

As they near the Planet she hears a voice, far off on the crowded street. "Look! Up in the sky!"

A chill runs down her spine despite the spring warmth, and she looks up, but she doesn't see anything, only a hazy blue sky and the sun burning far overhead. She lowers her head and blinks hard, because her eyes are watering from the noon brilliance of the sun.

At least that's what she tells herself.

*****

Back in the office, she's barely started in on her email when her editor Perry White approaches. "Ms. Sullivan," he says, "I'd like you to meet someone."

"Hmmmm," she says, barely glancing away from the computer. There's a dark-haired guy with glasses standing next to Perry. A bit on the hefty side. Looks like he might live in his mother's basement. "Hi."

"This is Chloe Sullivan," Perry says. "One of our best reporters. She's going to show you the ropes."

Wait a minute. What? She's a busy woman. She doesn't have time to break in newbies. Irritated, she looks up from the screen and glares at the guy. Shaggy dark hair, blue eyes behind the glasses, and an ill-fitting suit. He looks a little like an oversized Clark, she thinks with a pang, except Clark was never such a dork...

"And this," Perry says, "is Clark Kent."

Shock hits her between the eyes, all but knocking her from her chair, and slowly, very slowly, she rises to her feet. Now that Perry's said the name, she can see it's him. But there's something about him that makes it oddly hard to focus on him. The glasses, maybe? Whatever it is, it's effective. He's been her best friend since middle school, and he's the man she still loves, and she didn't even recognize him.

Clark smiles-- an oddly goofy grin, nothing like the happy bright smile she remembers-- and offers her his hand. He inadvertently knocks her coffee mug onto the floor, and the remnants of her coffee spill everywhere. She blinks, taken aback by his clumsiness, and he hangs his head and shuffles his feet, looking embarrassed.

"Sorry," he mutters. "I'm always doing things like that."

She's beginning to get it. Protective coloration. A man who can move in superspeed is incapable of being genuinely klutzy. But once he stopped being the Blur and allowed himself to be seen, then naturally he'd have to make sure no one could tie Superman to Clark Kent. Most of the superheroes she knows-- the Green Arrow, the Batman, Hawkman-- wear a mask to protect their identities. But everyone knows what Superman looks like.

Somehow, Clark Kent is the one wearing a mask.

"Nice to see you again," she says.

"Oh," Perry says. "You two have met?"

"Well, of course we've met. You--"

But a quick glance at Perry shows her that he doesn't remember Clark, not at all. He doesn't remember a day spent in Clark's company in Smallville. He doesn't remember Clark risking his own life to save him as he dangled at the end of a rope. He doesn't remember all those times Clark came to visit her at the Planet.

Interesting, she thinks, her reporter mind clicking rapidly. Is it the glasses, or... something else?

Regardless, she's not going to be the one to give the game away. She's guarded Clark's secret for years. She'll keep doing it till the day she dies.

"I guess not," she admits, looking straight at Clark. "I thought for a minute I recognized you, but I guess you just have that kind of face."

Another goofy grin unfurls. "Yeah," he says. "I guess I do."

"Anyway..." Perry is in a hurry. Perry is always in a hurry. "Clark here's been working for the Fawcett City Register for the past few years, and he's not bad, but he could use you to help him sharpen up his prose a bit. You two are going to be partners."

She's never before had a partner, and she wonders how Clark managed that, exactly. She sighs, because that's what Perry expects, and rolls her eyes.

"I work alone," she protests. "Always have. I'm your best reporter, Perry. Find someone else to babysit. I don't have time to teach him how to punctuate."

"Find time, Sullivan." Perry turns and walks away. "Oh, he says, turning back as if something has just occurred to him, "by the way, happy birthday. I almost forgot."

She finds that unlikely, since the black balloons are looming over her desk like a storm cloud. "Thanks," she says.

"Why don't you take the afternoon off?"

She blinks at him. "Seriously?"

He breaks out in raucous laughter, amused by the success of his own joke. "Hell, no. Get back to work, Sullivan."

She doesn't grin until his back is turned. Then she allows herself a chuckle, and sits back down at her desk. The tall stranger-who-isn't sits down at the desk across from hers.

"What are you doing here, Superman?" she hisses. "And why doesn't Perry remember you?"

He shrugs one big shoulder-- and now that she can properly see him, she can see he's not hefty beneath the suit, but solid muscle and bone. He's a big, strong guy, and about as far from dorky as it's possible for a man to be. He doesn't seem surprised that she knows his superhero identity. "I decided it was time for me to quit running," he says softly. She notices he isn't addressing the other question, and decides to let it go for now. "Fawcett City doesn't need me. It's got Captain Marvel. It's protected. But Metropolis... Metropolis needs me, Chloe."

She looks at him, and the truth spills out. "I need you too."

She wishes she could take the words back the minute they're uttered, but he doesn't look embarrassed or dismayed by them. His eyes-- still a vivid green behind the glasses, not the blue she thought she saw at first-- shine with hope.

"Yeah," he says softly. "That's why I came back, Chlo. If I'm going to be really honest about it, that's why I came back. Not because I missed Metropolis. But because I missed you."

"You're the one who left in the first place," she points out.

He sighs, and papers in her inbox flutter to the floor. She bends to retrieve them, and when she sits up he's watching her alertly. She can see his heart in her eyes, and it makes her own heart ache.

"I was scared," he admits. "I was upset. I let all those people die..."

"You saved as many as you could. The rest of them-- it wasn't your fault they died, Clark. You're fast, but you're not instantaneous. Even you can't always save everyone."

"I know that. I know it now. I even knew it then. It just... it felt like my fault, Chlo. It hurt enough to blame myself, but then when the media started blaming me too..." Another sigh, another gust of wind. If he really wants to conceal his identity, she thinks, he's going to have to learn not to do that.

"I understand," she says. "But why wouldn't you talk to me about it?"

He lowers his head, looking ashamed. "I wanted to start over," he says. "I got rid of the Blur and created an entirely new identity. I was trying to start totally fresh." He shrugs. "I guess it was just habit, Chlo. You know how I always used to hide up in the loft when things got tough? I guess Fawcett City was just another barn for me to hide in."

"You should have let me in," she says softly.

"I know. I was stupid to shut you out. Really, really stupid. I know that now." He takes a deep breath, and meets her gaze. His own gaze is filled with contrition and sorrow. "I'm sorry, Chlo. Really, really sorry."

She understands. She'd understood then. She'd seen the hurt in his eyes, seen the weight on his shoulders. It had been his first major failure as a superhero, and he just hadn't known how to cope.

She wishes he'd let her in to help, but it's very like Clark that he'd try to deal with it on his own.

"And now you're starting fresh again," she says.

"Not entirely." He gives her a little smile, nothing like his artificially geeky grin. "I'm keeping the identity this time. I'm never giving that up, Chlo. Never. I'm going to be Superman till the day I die."

She glances around, a little nervously, but none of her colleagues are listening. It's almost as if none of them can hear him talking. Interesting. Another effect of the glasses, maybe? She's going to have to find out how those glasses work, just for the sake of her own curiosity.

"Annnnnd," he says, a little more shyly, "I'd sort of like to go back to being friends with you, too."

"Just friends?"

He stammers, not like the geek he's pretending to be, but in the same way her farmboy always stammered when he had to deal with women and emotions. "Um," he says. "Well, I thought... I mean, it's been five years... I was a little worried that... well, that there might be someone else..."

"There's no one else," she says softly. "Not for me. What about you?"

"No," he says, very firmly. "No one else."

"Well, then." She leans back in her chair and smiles at him. "Not just friends, then."

He grins back at her, and she can see the farmboy she knew so clearly now. He's a little older, and so is she, but he's still young, with all that potential in front of him. And so is she. And so is their relationship.

"I've missed you," he says softly. "I've missed you an awful lot."

"Likewise, farmboy."

"And since it's your birthday... I was wondering if maybe you'd like to go out for dinner."

She laughs. "My, my. You are a newbie, aren't you? You think we get to have dinner here? You think we get to have lives here?"

Sure enough, as if on cue, Perry steps out of his office.

"Sullivan! Kent!" he bellows. "Big metal robots down on Church Street! Well, move it! What are you sitting around twiddling your thumbs for? Get your asses in gear and get me that story!"

"Come on," she says, and they're running for the stairs, side by side. She's missed this an awful lot, missed working with him, missed helping him save people, missed having him beside her. She has a good life, a great life, but seeing him again makes it even better. Having him here is a birthday present she never expected. It's the best birthday present she could have asked for.

Thirty, she thinks again, isn't the end.

It's just the beginning.

-30-

2011-11-27T08:08:00.003-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who

Characters: The Tenth Doctor/Donna, the TARDIS

Rating: PG-13

Length: 13,000 words, six chapters. Completed.

Warnings: Torture, attempted sexual assault, adult language

Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Ahhhh. Physical appetites… the hunger of the body…

“Get… out.”

Hunger… need… lust… I had almost forgotten…

“Out! Go away!”

Don’t be absurd. The voice rumbled through him like thunder. You are mine now, and I shall consume you. And then… I shall consume everything else in my path.

“Stop it.” He spoke through his teeth, clutching his head, fighting against It. “Stop it right now.”

Mine… mine… all these dark desires, all this hunger… after so many centuries, so many aeons…

“Get… out!”

He threw everything he had against It, but It only laughed.

There is no need to fight, little man. Give yourself to me. We will enjoy the pleasures of your body together.

He fought, clawed at It with his mind, struck at It, but to no avail. No matter how he fought, he couldn’t even seem to touch It. Nothing he did had any impact on It. He was outmatched, and he knew it.

But he went on fighting for a long time.

And all the while… It laughed at him.

*****

Donna discovered the Doctor in the TARDIS’ galley. That, in and of itself, was not surprising. Half the time he’d get so busy tinkering in the control room that he forgot to eat–and as skinny as he was, that couldn’t be a good thing– and then suddenly he’d notice he was starving, and would head for the galley to get some toast and jam, or biscuits and tea, or something equally nutritious.

Sure enough, he was digging his fingers into a jam jar again. Marmalade, it looked like. Almost empty. She narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, intending to yell at him. The man was always sticking his fingers into their communal food, usually without bothering to wash off the grease from the TARDIS engines first. It was disgusting.

But something about the desperate way he was scooping out orange globs of marmalade and shoving it into his mouth made her halt with her mouth still open. He wasn’t just eating, she realised.

He was devouring.

It wasn’t as if the Doctor had wonderful table manners–he’d lived alone too long, she suspected, or maybe most of his companions had had too much respect for the great Time Lord to complain when he chewed with his mouth open–but he didn’t usually gobble food as if he were afraid it was about to run away from him, never to be seen again. She stepped to the side to get a better look at him, and saw a peculiar expression on his face, a look of sheer bliss, as if the Dundee marmalade he was consuming was ambrosia.

“Doctor?” she said, hesitantly.

His eyes flickered open. His eyelids were heavy, and he still had that odd look on his face. He looked for all the world as if eating marmalade was better than sex.

Ugh. Sex, the Doctor, and marmalade. There was an image she needed to bleach out of her brain, right now.

“This is delicious,” he moaned, and the low, sensual tone of his voice once again made her think of sex. God. All of a sudden she had sex on the brain. Was there something wrong with her?

Or was there something wrong with him?

“You all right?” she said, stepping into the galley and looking him over. The refrigerator door stood open, as if he hadn’t wanted to take the time to close it, and behind him, on the counter, she could see an array of emptied jars and containers. Jam, pickles, mayonnaise, Nutella, boxes that had held leftovers which should have been thrown out long ago. How long had he been standing here, digging food out of the refrigerator and stuffing it into his mouth?

“Course I’m all right.” He reached his long fingers into the jar, scooped out the last glob of marmalade, and stuck it into his mouth, licking off his fingers with slow, thorough strokes of his tongue. His eyes fluttered shut, and that strange, unsettling expression of bliss crossed his face again. “Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“Dunno,” she said, watching him worriedly. “You’re eating right out of jars, Doctor. Didn’t even bother yourself to find a spoon.”

“So?”

“So,” she said, “it isn’t like you to be this hungry. And besides, ever since you came out of that temple on Vena IV this morning, you’ve been acting kind of…”

His eyes flickered open, and he looked at her alertly. “Kind of what?”

She sighed. “Kind of barmy, actually.”

He uttered a short laugh, tossed the marmalade jar onto the counter with a clink, and turned back to rummage in the refrigerator.

“Doctor,” she said, frowning in concern. “Haven’t you had enough to eat?”

“Never,” he answered, his voice dark and low. He straightened up, an uncooked egg in his hand, and took a big bite, shell and all. Raw egg dribbled down his chin, and his face went slack and happy again. Her stomach turned.

She backed out of the galley, and he didn’t seem to notice that she’d left.

*****

“There’s something wrong with him. Really, really wrong.”

She sat in her bedroom, talking to the walls. Before she’d come on board the TARDIS, she would have thought talking to a machine was a mark of insanity.

But that had been before she’d met the blue box.

The day she’d moved in, Doctor had explained in an offhand way that the TARDIS was sentient, and she’d rolled her eyes, thinking he’d lived alone too long, the poor bloke. But within a day or two, she’d begun to feel the TARDIS in her mind, in a way she couldn’t explain. Before long, she’d found herself accepting that the time machine was indeed another person, albeit a rather strange one.

And since there was no other humanoid besides the Doctor on board, she had no one to turn to now except the TARDIS.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said with a sigh. “He’s been really… odd. Even for him. And that’s saying something.”

She felt agreement in her head, and concern. The TARDIS was worried too.

“I found him just now, eating everything he could find in the fridge. I mean, everything. Didn’t even matter if it had mould on it. He was just… eating.” She remembered the expression on his face, and shivered. “And this morning, right after we came back on board, I found him in the med bay, with a hypospray, and I swear he was…”

The TARDIS hummed unhappily.

Donna thought about the sight of the Doctor, lifting the hypospray away from his own arm. God only knew what it had been filled with, but she knew perfectly well that the Doctor was almost always healthy. He’d bragged about his superior Time Lord physiology often enough. He didn’t need vitamins or supplements, and there was no good reason for him to be injecting himself with any sort of medicine.

Unless… unless he’d gotten sick down on Vena IV, and was just too proud and Time Lordly to let her know about it. She supposed that could be the case. God knew he’d been acting odd ever since he'd visited that silly temple, and an illness could explain that, couldn’t it? In any event, she liked that idea a lot better than the first one she’d had, which was that he’d been doing drugs just for the hell of it.

She closed her eyes, remembering that moment in the med bay, the look of near-ecstasy on his face. He’d looked a lot like he had while he was eating, actually. Blissed out in a way that was very unDoctorlike. And she knew, with a dreadful sinking of her stomach, that he hadn’t been injecting himself with anything that he truly needed.

He’d been getting high on something. And that was just not the Doctor she knew.

She sighed, and dropped her head into her hands.

“We have to help him,” she said. “What can we do?”

The TARDIS’ response was as worried and stressed and as impotent as she herself felt. The blue box clearly didn’t know what to do, either.

Donna sat up, lifting her chin and stiffening her spine. “Well,” she said to the walls, “the one thing I’m not doing is sitting in here, hiding. I’m going to go have it out with him.”

The TARDIS seemed uncertain if confronting the Doctor was a good idea, but Donna didn’t care. She wasn’t going to hide away if there was something wrong with her best friend–and the Doctor, despite all his annoying ways, was undeniably her best friend. There was clearly something wrong with him, and she was bloody well going to figure out what it was, and help him.

*****

Let me go.

“Don’t be absurd, little man.” It spoke out loud, because there was no one else around to hear It–well, besides the blue box, and that technology could do nothing to hinder It. The blue box had entered Its mind, trying to join the fight against It, but like the Time Lord, it was helpless against Its superior power. “Your body is mine now.”

Let me go!

“You just don’t shut up, do you?” It had finally grown sated with food, and had decided to explore another appetite. There were so many delightful ways to enjoy this body, and It had barely got started. It sloshed whisky into a glass and drank it hungrily.

Only Its fourth glass, and already the room was beginning to spin. Lovely, lovely body. So much fun.

I’m going to get free, sooner or later. I swear it.

“Why can’t you just be quiet and enjoy the ride?” It groused. At first It had found the little man amusing, but he was rapidly becoming a nuisance. Not that his feeble struggles could accomplish anything, not that his efforts to free himself had the slightest chance of success, but he was just so annoying. It was trying to delight in the appetites of this body, to lose Itself in the half-forgotten pleasures of flesh, but It couldn’t fully enjoy Itself with the little man yammering constantly.

Right, then. It’d just drink the little man into oblivion.

*****

When Donna walked into the Doctor’s dark-panelled study, he was seated–sprawled, really–in his leather desk chair, his tie and jacket and vest off, his shirt half unbuttoned, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his feet propped up on the desk. Near his feet she saw a bottle of whisky, two-thirds empty. He looked bleary but blissful, and he was belting out a song in some language she’d never heard before.

Gallifreyan, she’d heard. It was a beautiful language, even when he employed it to cuss out the TARDIS and her systems. But this wasn’t Gallifreyan. She was sure of it. Gallifreyan was a tonal language that sounded like the ringing of a bell or the gentle chiming of a celeste. This language sounded guttural and coarse by comparison.

Of course, the Doctor probably knew hundreds of different languages. But if he was really drunk, she’d expect him to be singing in his own language.

In any event, whatever he was singing must have been vulgar, or the TARDIS would have translated it. Clearly it didn’t meet her ladylike standards.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, walking into the study.

The guttural words cut off, and the Doctor opened his eyes and looked up at her. It appeared to be quite an effort. “Ahhhh,” he said, his voice so thick that she could barely understand him. “The companion.”

She glared down at him, annoyed that he was so drunk he couldn’t even remember her name. She didn't appreciate just being another in a long line of companions.“Why are you getting drunk?”

He lifted the whisky bottle, saluted her with it, and took a huge mouthful straight from the bottle, spilling it over his cheeks and chin. Then he put the bottle down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Because I can,” he said.

She frowned. She’d never seen the Doctor drink seriously before, but he’d mentioned once or twice that his body could counteract the effects of most drugs. She'd even seen him recover from cyanide poisoning, so she guessed it wasn’t easy for him to become inebriated.

And yet here he was, drunk as a bloody lord.

Drugs, marmalade, and whisky. She tried to make the pieces of the puzzle fit into a whole that could explain his behaviour, and couldn’t. Something was clearly wrong here, but she couldn’t guess what.

She wanted to yell, because shouting was her preferred method of dealing with situations she didn’t understand, but she thought sympathy might get through to him in a way than anger wouldn't. She crossed the room, shoved aside some of his clutter of papers, and sat down on the polished surface of the desk.

“Doctor,” she said, very gently. “Talk to me.”

He looked up at her fuzzily. His dark eyes had always been so expressive that they showed every thought, and even though he was drunk, they still reflected what he was thinking. Right now they were filled with a kind of hunger.

With… lust?

Shocked to see that expression in his eyes, aimed in her direction, she started to stand, but his hand struck out like a snake, capturing her by the wrist and holding her there. Startled by his sudden move, she tried to wrench her wrist away, but couldn’t. For a long, skinny streak of nothing, he was a surprisingly powerful man.

“Ahhhh,” he said, his voice soft but very dangerous. “There’s an appetite I haven’t explored yet.”

Read Chapter 2 here.

Personal Grooming

2011-11-27T07:57:00.001-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: The Tenth Doctor/Donna
Length: Oneshot, 1400 words
Genre: Humor
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.
Sequel to Personal Spaces.

“So how does this hair thing work, exactly?”

Donna Noble was seated on the worn leather sofa in the TARDIS library, the Doctor next to her. That was nothing new, really, since the two of them spent much of their spare time together in the library.

What was new was that the Doctor's arms were wrapped around her, and one of his long legs was tangled between hers. This was a rather striking innovation.

“It’s not my hair, not really,” he answered. She ran her fingers through his fringe, and he panted. “It’s my scalp.”

“Right. I knew that.” She scratched experimentally at the top of his head, and his eyes drifted shut. He wore the same ecstatic expression he’d worn in front of the Isara earlier in the day, when the two of them had pretended to have sex by running their hands through each other's hair.

Only he hadn’t been pretending, as it turned out.

“Do that some more.”

“Greedy.” She let her nails scrape a little harder, and he whimpered. “Pitiful,” she said. “Just pitiful. Give him a head rub, and the great Time Lord turns into a puppy.”

“Oi!”

“Oi yourself, Time Boy. Bet you like it when I scratch behind your ears, too.” She tried it, and he leaned into her hand so hard he practically fell over. “Pitiful,” she said again, fondly.

“Just… don’t… stop.”

“Right there?”

“Oh, Rassilon. Right there. Yes.”

She rather liked seeing him like this, breathless and dishevelled and a little sweaty, but as she rubbed his scalp, something occurred to her. “Wait a minute,” she said, and her fingers stilled.

“You are stopping.” His eyes flickered open, and he fixed her with his Oncoming Storm glare. The effect was slightly marred by the fact that his hair was sticking up all over his head. “I thought we agreed. No stopping.”

“I was just thinking…”

“Think all you want. Just don’t stop.”

She snorted, and rubbed the hair just behind his ear. He actually wriggled with delight, and she was hard pressed not to laugh. “Here’s the thing,” she said, stroking lightly. “How many times have I seen you in front of that big mirror in the wardrobe room, playing with your hair?”

“Um.” His ears turned a little red, whether from arousal or embarrassment she couldn’t guess. “Well. I have really good hair this time around. Nice and thick. It’s natural to enjoy, er, styling it…”

“Oh, Doctor.” She sighed, doing her best to look disappointed in him, and shook her head. “Excuses, excuses. I reckon this explains why you're so fond of... personal grooming.”

He tried for an arrogant, superior expression, which was rather foiled when she made him wriggle again. “What exactly are you implying?”

“You naughty, naughty boy.” She snickered. “You’ll go blind, y’know.”

His ears turned redder. “It’s not like that,” he muttered.

“You sure?” She laughed softly. “All that pomade… all that brushing... all that rubbing with your fingers… come on, Doctor. I can do the math. No wonder you like styling your hair so much.”

He lowered his eyelashes, veiling the dark eyes. “S’not like anyone else has been offering to do it for me.”

“Didn’t know you liked it.”

“And you wouldn’t have touched it if you had.”

“True.” She wound a lock of his hair around her finger and pulled, experimentally, and his eyes drifted closed. A long, anguished noise ground in his throat. “If you want,” she said, “I can start styling it for you. Braiding it, maybe. Ribbons. A nice pink bow…”

The noise in his throat started to sound more like an outraged growl. “Don’t you dare.”

“Fine.” She snorted again, imagining him facing down villainous aliens with a pink bow in his hair. “I guess you’ll just have to keep doing it yourself. But do me a favor, and close the wardrobe room door next time.”

He opened his eyes, and gave her a surprisingly cheeky grin. “What, you don’t like to watch?”

She yanked on the lock of hair again, a little harder. She meant it as punishment for his cheek, but she’d forgotten that he liked it a little rough. His eyes went dark with unmistakable lust. “Blimey. Do that again.”

She yanked, and he made another one of those grinding, desperate sounds.

“You like?”

“OhDonnadothatsomemore.”

His voice was breathless. She did it again, and he gasped as if his respiratory bypass system just couldn't keep up.

“I thought you were going to show me your other erogenous zones,” she said, without ceasing the yanking. “You said you had quite a few that humans didn’t…”

“Not. Right. Now.”

“Oh. Enjoying this, then, are we?”

“Enjoying it. Yes. Rather.” He sounded as if he could barely get words out. “Is there any chance you could stop talking for just a moment?”

She yanked, and considered the question. “It’s possible.”

“But not very likely.”

“Not really, no.” He was trembling, his breath coming in unsteady gulps, and she decided to take pity on him. She opened her hand, grasped a nice big handful of his tawny hair, and pulled even harder. He threw his head back, his eyes clenching shut, his mouth dropping open, and she watched him while he cried out her name, his whole body shaking.

Really, alien though he was, he looked just like any other bloke in the throes of orgasm. Except she'd never before been with a bloke who got off on having his hair pulled.

After a while his long, lanky body relaxed, and she let go of his hair. He fell forward onto her shoulder, gasping, and she found herself pressed into the leather sofa with a rather large lapful of inert Time Lord.

“God, you’re easy,” she said.

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “No one has done that for me in decades,” he muttered into her shoulder. “I mean, till today. Forgotten how much I liked it.”

“Decades.” She laughed, trying to conceal the sympathy that flickered through her. “Oi, and I thought my sex life was pitiful.”

He lifted his head, offering her a shy and rather endearing grin. It was a constant source of amazement to her that a nine-hundred-year-old alien could manage to look so like an awkward teenage boy. “We can work on fixing that.”

“Well, I was trying to get you around to that earlier, actually, but you got distracted.”

“Yes. Distracted. Sorry.” He raked a hand through his hair in his usual absentminded way, then suddenly stopped, turned red, and lowered his hand. “Er. Well. I think you were showing me your erogenous zones…”

“Your hair is a right mess,” she said, lifting a hand to stroke through it.

He sighed, and his eyes fluttered shut.

“Donna,” he said softly. “You’re distracting me again.”

“Am I?” She smoothed his sweaty, tangled hair back into some semblance of order with her fingers. “Imagine that.”

He lowered his head, pressing his face into her shoulder. “Donna, I honestly think that it’s my turn to…”

“Doctor,” she said, very gently. “If it’s really been decades, I think it’s okay for you to have a little attention paid to you for once. We can get around to me later.”

"I'm just..." Her fingers stroked through his hair, and he quivered, but he went determinedly on. "A little. Concerned. That we might. Um. Never leave. This sofa."

"You like it that much, do you?"

He heaved a long, contented sigh. "Yeah. I do."

"I'm glad," she said, and was surprised to realise how much she meant it. She'd never really thought of the Doctor in a sexual way before today-- in fact she'd intentionally refused to think of the Doctor in a sexual way-- but she was starting to feel like she should have run her hands through his hair a whole lot sooner. She lowered her head, and spoke into his ear.

"From now on," she whispered, "I'm going to do this so often that you won't need to do personal grooming any more."

He shivered. "I'd like that," he said. "Just... no bows."

"No bows," she agreed. "Just a whole lot of touching. Now... quiet down, and pay attention to what I'm doing."

"I am paying attention," he answered, his voice hoarse. "I am so very much paying attention. Absolutely, positively, definitely paying attention. You wouldn't believe how much attention I'm paying..."

"Doctor." She yanked. "Shut up."

He shut up.

Well, until they got to the part where he cried out her name.

-The End-

Personal Spaces

2011-11-17T13:47:00.002-05:00

Fandom: Doctor Who

Characters: The Tenth Doctor/Donna

Length: Oneshot, 5300 words

Genre: Humor

Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.

Disclaimer: These characters belong to the BBC, not to me.

The Doctor had no respect for personal space.

The first time Donna Noble had met him, he’d almost instantly gotten right in her face, waving his alien thingy at her. Well, not that alien thingy, no. Another alien thingy, a little technological doohickey. A whatchajigger, if you wanted to use the technical term. He’d started nattering on about what might be wrong with her, babbling nonsense at a mile a minute, and she’d had to smack him to get him to give her a little breathing room.

He’d backed off, holding his cheek and looking affronted, as if no one had ever complained when he got in their face before.

Since she’d moved into the TARDIS (along with half a dozen suitcases), a day hadn’t gone by when he hadn’t invaded her personal space in one way or another. He’d come up and peer over her shoulder to see what she was having for breakfast, dribbling his toast crumbs onto her scrambled eggs and bangers. He’d walk up behind her in the library and blithely snag a book right out of her hands, without the slightest concern for whether or not she wanted to share her reading material (Vogue, yes; The Pirate Captain and his Virgin, not so much). He’d absentmindedly wander into her room because he wanted to talk, oblivious to the fact that she might be changing her clothes or flossing her teeth. He’d sing “I’m On My Way” by the Proclaimers fifteen times over while working, unaware or uncaring that she was right there in the console room and growing ever more ready to kill him.

And then there was the hugging.

Donna wasn’t the touchy-feely sort. But the Doctor definitely was. At first she’d been a little suspicious of all the hugs, thinking maybe it was just his way of copping a feel from his unsuspecting companions. But for all his lack of respect for personal space, his hands always stayed very carefully on her waist whenever he hugged her, never sliding down to squeeze her arse (and as ample as her arse was, it wasn’t as if he’d have had any trouble finding it). And she never got the feeling that he was thinking about knobbing her.

He just liked hugging.

To the villains of the universe, he was the Oncoming Storm, respected, feared, even dreaded–and with good reason. When he encountered a wrong, he could be cold, implacable, and honestly quite terrifying. She’d seen it.

But much of the rest of the time, he seemed more like a lost little boy who’d lost his family and needed consoling.

And he had lost his family. He’d lost everything. Once she understood that, she actually found the near-constant hugs rather endearing. He was just a poor lost alien who needed a little physical contact and affection, so he didn’t feel so alone in the universe. She could understand that.

So when the green-skinned aliens who’d abducted her shoved a dishevelled and rather grubby Doctor into the cell where she’d been confined for the last hour, she fully expected a hug.

She wasn’t disappointed. The instant he saw her, those big dark eyes lit up.

“Donna,” he said, crossing the cell in two steps and wrapping his arms around her in an enthusiastic embrace. “You’re okay,” he mumbled into her hair.

“Course I’m okay,” she mumbled back–really mumbled, because her face was being squashed into his shoulder. Not that she minded. Even though his face looked as if they’d been using him to scrub a rather dirty floor–and given that mop of hair on his head, they could certainly be excused if they had–he smelled like he always did, clean and sort of spicy. “I yelled. They ran.”

He laughed into her hair, a sound of amusement and relief. “That’s my Donna,” he said fondly. “Always armed for battle.”

She pulled back, just a little, and looked up at him. Up close he looked worse than she’d thought. There might be a bruise or two under the dirt. “What happened to you?” she demanded.

“Oh, well…” He sighed, looking slightly ashamed of himself. “When they grabbed you, I might have made a few derogatory remarks about the local laws. And I might possibly have added an insult or two about the planet’s monarch, while I was at it.”

“And you complain about my mouth. You never shut up, that’s your problem.” She looked him over, feeling more sympathy than she would let herself show. “Beat you up, did they?”

“Well, not so much. I mean, there was a fight.” He lifted his chin in a feeble effort at machismo. “You should see the other bloke.”

“I did see the other bloke. He just shoved you in here. And he looked perfectly all right.”

The Doctor’s face fell. “Well, the Isara don’t show bruising the way we do. It’s the green skin, y’know. Bruises don’t show as much. But I definitely got a punch or two in.”

“Of course you did.” She patted him on the shoulder and pulled away, looking around the cell. “So we were arrested for…?”

“Your hair color. It’s a crime.”

She turned on him abruptly. “I beg your pardon?”

Since she’d begun travelling with him, she’d grown accustomed to getting in trouble for what she saw as rather silly reasons. A couple of months ago, the Doctor had been detained by the local authorities for wearing trousers–an item of clothing only permitted to women on that particular world–and to his great disgust, he’d had to don a skirt to get out of official custody. And a few weeks ago, she’d nearly caused a riot by wearing the wrong perfume to a planet where everyone communicated by the sense of smell.

But her hair color? Since when was red hair a crime?

Alarmed by the look in her eyes, he held up his hands in a don’t-hurt-me gesture. “Oi, don’t get mad with me. I like ginger! You know I like ginger! It’s just that here, no one has red hair except… well…”

He muttered the last word, and she scowled. “What was that?”

“Prostitutes,” he repeated, his cheeks flushing a bit.

“Prostitutes,” she echoed, narrowing her eyes. “So they think I’m a–"

“Yep." He popped the P, as he often did when he was uncomfortable. "On Isar, ladies of the evening dye their hair ginger. A sort of advertisement for their trade, you might say. And since the government here is currently cracking down on that sort of activity, they arrested you.”

She imagined a green-skinned Isara with red hair, and supposed that would be rather gaudy. Hard to miss. Quite an advertisement indeed. “But you’re not ginger.”

“No.” He sighed. “I’m in gaol because of my big mouth, mainly.”

“Nothing new there,” she snarked. “Couldn’t you just keep your head, hold your tongue, and bail me out, or however they do it here?”

“I tried. They wouldn’t let you go. That’s why I got annoyed, because…well…”

He trailed off, looking more embarrassed than before, and she glared up at him. “What exactly is the punishment for having red hair?”

“Wellllll…”

He could drag out a word longer than anyone she’d ever known. Ordinarily he was a babbling brook, and the fact that he couldn’t get beyond that one word didn’t bode well. “What. Is. The. Punishment?”

“Well, you see,” he said awkwardly, “although it’s illegal for the regular bloke on the streets to avail himself of a prostitute’s charms, the monarch himself is allowed to… well, he rather collects… that is to say, he tends to…”

For a nine-hundred-year-old alien who’d seen just about everything, she reflected, he could blush and stammer more than any man she’d ever met. “The monarch gets to keep all the prostitutes for himself,” she said bluntly.

“Er… yes.”

“So they’re keeping me here until they turn me over to His Bloody Majesty, is that it?”

“Errrhhmm. Yes.”

“Okay, then,” she said, moving on from that unpleasant thought to the next. “It’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen to me, but what about you?”

“Wellllll.” There was that word again, drawn out till she wanted to smack him to make him stop. “That’s the embarrassing part.”

“What, we didn’t get to the embarrassing part yet?” She heard her voice rising, and didn’t try to hold it down. “The embarrassing part isn’t that I’m being given to the local ruler as a sex toy?”

“Er, not exactly. Not quite, no. You see, as you pointed out, I’m not ginger, so they would have let me go, but once they decided to keep me–"

“Once you shot your mouth off!”

“Right. --I had some discussion with His Majesty himself, and it turned out that he’s quite the amateur student of xenobiology.”

Oh, dear God. There was that word. She’d never heard it before she met the Doctor, but now it seemed to come up on a regular basis, and though she wasn't entirely clear on the meaning, she'd noticed that every time she heard the word, trouble followed. “What exactly do you mean by a student of xenobiology?”

“Well. He’s, er, interested in the way our species… interacts. So to speak.”

Oh, no. She felt her cheeks turn just as red as his. “But we’re not even the same species.”

“Well, they don’t know that, do they? We look like the same species. We’re certainly not green-skinned, after all. We both have only two eyes and five fingers per hand, and we're missing all those tentacles. As far as they can tell, we’re the same, and they’re rather intrigued by…”

“Let me guess. His Bloody Majesty wishes to observe us mating.”

He turned the colour of a ripe tomato and stared at the stones of the floor as if they were extraordinarily fascinating. “That’s about the size of it.”

“No.” She glared at him as if he'd come up with the notion of shagging all on his own. “I won’t do it. We agreed when I came on board the TARDIS. No mating, just mates. Remember?”

“This wasn’t my idea!” he said crossly.

“You’re the one who landed us on this stupid planet without doing a little research into the local customs first! Shouldn’t the mighty and brilliant Time Lord know what red hair means here? Shouldn’t you have an idea what the punishments for local crimes might be?”

“I don’t know everything,” he grumbled. “Just most things.”

“Well, we just won’t do it.” She scowled. “They can’t make us. Can they?”

“I suppose not.” He sounded dubious.

“His Majesty sounds like a perv. Probably wants to record it. Probably has DVDs of all sorts of aliens going at it.”

The Doctor turned even redder, and abruptly crossed to the small cot in the corner of the cell and sat. She didn’t really want to know why he’d found it necessary to sit, all of a sudden. There were some things she was better off not knowing.

“Anyway,” he said in a voice that was unusually hoarse, “they’ll be coming shortly to take us up to the palace. They’ll clean us up, and then…”

“And then we get to perform for His Perverted Majesty.”

He looked up at her with big, solemn eyes.

“I’ll get us out of this somehow, Donna. I promise.”

And regardless of what might be going on downstairs–because blokes couldn’t help their physical reactions, after all, even Time Lord blokes–he was wearing his lost little-boy face, and she knew he needed a hug. She crossed to the cot, sat beside him, and put an arm around him. He leaned against her, pressing his face into his hair.

“It’ll be all right,” she told him. “Everything’ll be okay.”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her.

“I hope so,” he said softly.

*****

Two hours later, she was escorted into a large, circular chamber with enormous marble columns holding up the domed roof, and a large golden throne at one end, where the monarch was seated, flanked by armed soldiers. She’d been freshly bathed and scented and wearing a dress that under other circumstances, she would have fallen in love with. It was made of a silky material, and it was a particularly lovely shade of green (not unlike their captors’ skin color, actually). It clung to her curves and cupped her breasts lovingly and in general made her look quite stunning.

But given that His Perverted Majesty was almost drooling, she really wished she looked a little less glamourous.

Fortunately for her, the Doctor made his appearance before she decided to march across the room and slap His Majesty across his green cheek, which probably would have been a mistake. The Doctor was wearing handcuffs, and she guessed he’d tried to escape again, but without success. There was a fresh new bruise marring his forehead. He wore a very unDoctorish outfit– dark pants, a dark green jumper, and what looked like a leather jacket.

Not at all the Doctor’s style, she thought.

His clothes, however, were similar to what the Isara males seemed to wear. Apparently they’d put him into what they thought of as a more appropriate costume. He looked displeased, and she guessed that he was unhappy about the loss of his beloved brown suit. Still, he had to like the leather jacket better than that skirt he’d had to wear a couple of months ago.

They marched him toward her. As he approached, she could smell soap, and the scent of freshly washed male skin, and she knew he’d bathed, too. He smelled good, rather like sandalwood but with his own spicy scent beneath the soap, and all the dark clothing made him look rather more dangerous than usual.

A little warmth coiled deep inside her, and she tried to ignore it. After all, he was just a long streak of alien nothing. A skinny boy with abandonment issues. Not an attractive, gorgeous, sexy male.

The Doctor stopped a foot away from her, and his dark eyes bored into hers. Trust me, his gaze said. I’m going to get us out of this. I promise.

You bloody well better, you alien git, her gaze answered.

The Doctor swallowed, and turned toward the monarch, who was leaning forward eagerly on his throne, observing them with what Donna thought was a rather disgustingly avid gaze.

“Your Majesty,” the Doctor said, obviously trying for a reasonable tone. (If he'd tried for that earlier, she thought snarkily, they might not be in this mess.) “Our people do not mate publicly.”

His Majesty smiled–at least, Donna thought it was a smile. It wasn’t a pleasant expression, in any event.

“You will mate for Our viewing pleasure,” he said. “Or you will die.”

“Somehow I knew you were going to say that,” the Doctor muttered. He glanced at Donna, visibly gathering his thoughts, and then spoke firmly.

“Our people’s most sacred rule,” he said, “is that once we mate, we are mated for life. Therefore, if we do this, I must insist that you release us afterward. The woman will be mine, forever. I cannot share her with another, not even your Royal Majesty. Our religion forbids it.”

There was a brief stirring around the chamber as the Isara soldiers discussed that string of lies. The muttering voices sounded respectful, almost impressed, and she recognised that the Doctor had hit on something that impressed their captors. Apparently sacred rules and religion meant something here.

“Couldn’t tell him our most sacred rule is no shagging in public?” she hissed.

He had the grace to look embarrassed. “Didn’t think of it fast enough,” he whispered back. “Anyway, I really don’t think they’re gonna let us out of that one.”

Given the avid expression on the monarch’s face, she suspected he was probably right. His Majesty clearly wanted to see some hot xenobiological action. Right now, however, the monarch was looking Donna over as if she were a slab of beef, rather to her annoyance. She opened her mouth to tell him to keep his five eyes firmly in his head, but the Doctor shook his head, very slightly, and she subsided. For now.

“Very well,” the monarch conceded at last. “She is not attractive enough for my harem in any event. I would only give her to my soldiers as a toy, and I doubt they would care overmuch for her, either.”

Donna growled-- who are you calling unattractive, Tentacle-Boy?--, and the Doctor made a noise that might have been a snort of amusement. But his face was carefully neutral as he said, “Then we are agreed. We will demonstrate how our people mate, and then you will let the two of us go on our way peacefully.”

“As long as she never returns to Our planet with her hair dyed that color,” the monarch said.

The Doctor didn’t bother to explain that her hair wasn’t dyed. He only nodded. “Agreed.”

One of the soldiers unfastened the Doctor’s handcuffs. He lifted his hands, shaking them a bit, and then turned toward Donna. She shied back and glared at the monarch.

“Oi! Are all these soldiers going to stay in here?”

“My bodyguards,” the monarch informed her.

Bloody perverts, more likely, she thought, but didn’t say so. She only looked back at the Doctor, waiting for him to do something to get them out of this.

Instead, he caught her face between his hands and kissed her.

Her first instinct was to react the way she’d done the very first time he invaded her personal space–yank back and smack the daylights out of him. But his lips were firm and cool on hers, and her mouth tingled at the unexpected contact, and she almost instantly forgot about slapping him. Kissing him, she thought fuzzily, really wasn’t so bad. In fact it was sort of… pleasant.

If pleasant meant that it made her hot, wet and tingly in places other than her mouth. Yeah. It was definitely pleasant.

And then his tongue was slipping into her mouth, touching hers, and she thought vaguely about jerking away and yelling, Oi, mate, don’t need to do that in order to put on a show, do you? But there was something very sexy about the feel of his tongue against hers, and she felt that warm melting in her middle again, felt the tingling between her legs grow more urgent, and somehow she just couldn’t pull away.

God help her, but kissing the Doctor was incredible.

Not that she was ever going to admit that, not in a million years.

Anyway, they wouldn’t convince the monarch and all his drooling bodyguards to let them go by yelling at each other. They had to see this through, one way or the other. So she let her hands slide through his hair–all that nice, thick hair–and he groaned. Loudly.

A bit startled by the intensity of his reaction, she started to yank her hands away. Instantly he lifted his mouth from hers. “Play along,” he hissed, and then his mouth slammed back down on hers, and his hands went to her hair, too.

She stroked his hair, and he groaned again.

Okay. She got it. She understood the plan, now. It was kind of a dumb plan, but a dumb plan was better than no plan at all, she figured.

He touched her hair in a slow, sensual caress, and she moaned into his mouth. She’d had a long string of rotten boyfriends, and God knew she knew how to fake it. She was a bloody expert on the subject.

She ran her hands through his hair again–and no, she had never, ever fantasized about doing that before, because that would be weird, and she was so not weirdly attracted to the Doctor’s hair–and he moaned and sobbed and gasped so convincingly that it made her insides melt almost entirely. He was really putting his hearts into this performance, she thought. He was good-- really, really good. He was one hell of an actor.

Well, she could put on a show, too. His long, graceful fingers continued to slide through her hair, and she moaned in ever-increasing pitch and volume, and let her body undulate as if she were lost in the throes of passion.

All of which was completely, totally, and utterly faked, because she was not in the least turned on by the feel of his talented fingers stroking over her scalp. His gentle caresses didn’t arouse her in the least.

Oh, bloody hell, who was she kidding? The dreadful truth was that she wasn't having to fake it very much at all. Having her hair stroked by the Doctor felt quite a bit better than sex had with most of her boyfriends.

She wasn't sure if that said something about the Doctor's skill with his hands, or just about the generally abysmal quality of her boyfriends. Either way, it was depressing.

She ran her own fingers through the hair at the back of his head, down to the nape of his neck, and the Doctor uttered a rumbling noise that was so blatantly sexual it made her toes curl. Her fingers curled, too, digging into his hair, rather harder than she intended. The Doctor threw his head back, screwing his face up very convincingly, and sobbed as his whole body shook.

She was so caught up in watching him that she almost forgot she was supposed to be part of this too, but a yank of his hands on her hair recalled her. She threw her own head back and arched her spine, faking it as loudly as she could (which was of course pretty damn loudly, because if there was one thing Donna Noble did well, it was loudness), while chiding herself for getting distracted. It was really ridiculous for her to pause to watch the Doctor come, when he wasn’t coming at all.

Not that anyone would know that. The way he shuddered and cried out, you’d think he was in the throes of a spectacular orgasm.

She realised she was still gripping his hair tightly. She loosened her fingers, and his cries faded to gasps. He seemed to think the performance was over, because he leaned forward, resting his head on her shoulder and panting heavily. Then his knees seemed to give out, and he pulled her down with him.

They knelt there on the marble floor, faces buried in each other’s shoulders, giving a very convincing impression of a couple who’d just done the dirty and now were barely able to keep upright.

But would the Isara really be fooled by such a silly display? It seemed absurd to her, but then again, she had absolutely no idea how the locals copulated. For all she knew, they shagged with their ears. Maybe this would look perfectly believable to them.

Sure enough, His Majesty cleared his throat. He sounded hoarse and turned-on, she thought. At least his voice was decidedly different than it had been. She took that to mean that their performance had been satisfactory. She only hoped that His Majesty wouldn’t be watching it on DVD from now till the end of his reign.

“The two of you,” he decreed, “may go in peace.”

*****

“I can’t believe they fell for that!”

Donna threw herself down on the sofa in the TARDIS library, still wearing the green dress, and laughed in joy and relief. They’d left Isar in peace, as per the monarch’s orders, only stopping briefly on the way to free all the ginger ladies of the evening from His Perverted Majesty’s clutches. She imagined the two of them wouldn’t be welcome on Isar again any time soon, but that was absolutely wizard as far as she was concerned. She didn't have any intentions of inviting any of the Isara to visit her in Chiswick, either.

The Doctor sat down next to her, a little too close, as always, and put an arm around her shoulders. He smelled like leather and wool and warm male, and she wished he’d change back into one of his suits. The dark, smoldering leather look just didn’t suit him. Really, it didn’t.

“I knew they would,” he said, preening a bit. The Doctor never failed to congratulate himself on a job well done. “Y’see, while I was being bathed and dressed, I made some discreet inquiries of my captors, and discovered that the way they have sex involves the first digit of the left hand and one of their eyeballs.”

“Ewwwww.”

“You really don’t want to know the details,” he agreed. “At any rate, I knew they wouldn’t be expecting to see sex involving, er, the nether regions. They probably would have thought that we were faking it, frankly. And they certainly would have found it disgusting.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder, not because she wanted to breathe in the mingled scents of leather and sandalwood and spicy, sexy man–because there was no sexy man here, just the Doctor–but because she was rather tired after all the day’s events. “I suppose different people have sex all sorts of ways.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed readily. “You wouldn’t believe some of the structures that have evolved just in the one galaxy. Eyeballs aren’t the strangest sex organ I’ve run across, not by a long shot. Why, I once encountered a race that–"

“Doctor.” She reached up and ruffled his hair affectionately. “Believe it or not, it is possible to talk too much.”

At the touch of her hand, he suddenly went very still, and she looked up at him. There was an oddly intent expression on his face, a look of hunger and wanting that made her heart ache even as a terrible suspicion occurred to her.

“Doctor,” she said, very slowly. “How did your people make love?”

“Um” he said. “Erhm. Wellllll…”

There was that word again, dragged out like it was being pulled through a time warp. That couldn’t be a good sign. But at last he got more words out.

“Much the same as your people do, actually,” he said.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

“We just have a few more erogenous zones,” he added.

She yanked her hand away from his head and sat up very, very straight. “Is one of those erogenous zones your scalp, by any chance?”

He turned red again, looking more abashed than she’d ever seen him. “It might be.”

“Oh, my God!” She whacked at his shoulder, not terribly gently. “I got you off, didn’t I? All that moaning and groaning–you weren’t faking it at all, were you? I really made you come!”

Well, more or less, anyway. The absence of a wet spot on the front of his jeans indicated he hadn't come quite like normal blokes did. But the fact that the Doctor wasn't a normal bloke was so obvious it hardly seemed worth remarking on.

He scrambled backward on the sofa, holding up his hands as a shield. “I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said, rather pitifully. “I thought I had better self-control than that. I just…”

“You just what?”

“I just couldn’t help myself,” he said in a very small voice. “Once you started–I didn’t want you to stop.”

The honesty and the shyness and the sheer aching need in his tone brought her to a sudden halt. She looked into his dark eyes, seeing there the lost and lonely little boy she’d seen so many times before.

Only he wasn’t a little boy. He was a fully grown man. A man who’d been cruelly cut off from his own society and the company of others like himself. A man who was very, very lonely, and who desperately needed to be touched.

Sympathy swept through her–and that was all it was, just sympathy, not any sort of lust inspired by the memory of his voice sobbing through an orgasm, or by the fact that he smelled good enough to eat with a spoon–and she slid along the upholstery toward him. He backed up against the arm of the sofa, his eyes wide and worried, and for once she found that she was the one intruding into his personal space.

She remembered her own words: No mating, just mates. They’d agreed to that. They’d both insisted on it, actually. But that had been before she really knew the Doctor. Before she’d really understood him. Before she’d seen all that terrible loneliness in his eyes, and realised exactly how much he longed to be touched.

I just couldn’t help myself.

Yeah. She knew how that felt.

Reaching out, she stroked a hand through his fringe, very gently. He closed his eyes, and she heard his breathing turn harsh.

“So that’s an erogenous zone?” she said.

“I’m afraid so.” His voice was rather unsteady, as if he could hardly keep himself from groaning again.

She let her hand run along the side of his head, just above his ear. “And this?”

“Mmmm-hmmmm.”

She trailed a finger along the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. “How about here?”

“Unnnnhhhhhhh.”

She’d never heard the Doctor make a noise quite like that before, not even on Isar, and it made her smile at the same time it made parts of her go tingly again. Really, all this tingling was getting out of hand.

Maybe, just maybe, she thought, the Doctor wasn’t the only one here who was lonely and isolated and aching for a little physical contact. Maybe she needed to be touched, too.

Before she could change her mind, she reached out, grabbed the Doctor’s hand, and placed his palm firmly against her breast. His eyes snapped open, and he stared at her, his mouth falling open in shock.

“That’s one of my erogenous zones,” she informed him.

“Really,” he said, very slowly. He sat there frozen for a long moment, as if totally baffled by what to do next, but eventually it seemed to dawn on him that she was waiting. He moved his hand, very cautiously, and she shivered as her nipple hardened beneath his palm. A dark heat began to glow in his eyes. “Are there others?” he said softly.

“Oh, yes,” she breathed. “Lots.”

“Really?” His hand squeezed her breast with slightly more confidence. “Where?”

She smiled. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

He looked at her for a long moment, still very serious, then his bright, beaming smile broke out, and some of the loneliness faded from his eyes.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

And this time, when he moved into her personal space... she didn't mind.

-The End-

2011-10-18T06:44:00.002-04:00

Chlark
Futurefic AU, in which Clark and Lois were never together and Lois is just that somewhat ditzy reporter who’s never made a connection between Clark Kent and Superman.
3200 words, oneshot
Written for Secret Chlark, for moviefreak4634

When Chloe Sullivan walked into the office at 8:47 a.m., he was seated at her desk. She hesitated, just a minute, then regained control of herself and continued toward him. She ought to be used to him showing up at her workplace. He’d been doing it since they were teenagers, after all.

But five years ago, when she moved to Gotham, they’d drifted apart, and she wasn’t used to him just stopping by her desk any more.

He was reading a newspaper—the Gotham Gazette—apparently unaware of her approach, but she knew perfectly well he heard her footsteps. He’d probably heard them coming from the parking garage. She cleared her throat, and, in the perfect imitation of human mannerisms he’d developed over the years, he jumped a little in feigned surprise, and looked up at her.

“Oh, Chloe,” he said, just as if he hadn’t noticed her till this moment. “Hi.”

She perched on the edge of her desk, since her chair was currently filled with two hundred twenty pounds of Kryptonian. “Hello, Clark,” she said, feeling awkward. There had been a time when there was nothing awkward or unexpected about him showing up like this, when she’d counted on seeing him constantly, when a day hadn’t really been complete if he hadn’t come by to bring her a coffee or to consult about some meteor freak or just to say hi. But that day was a long distance in the past.

He was dressed in a blue t-shirt, old, worn jeans, and workboots, the customary outfit he'd worn as a teenager, but now those dreadful dark-framed glasses rested crookedly on his nose, giving him a geeky look. He lifted the newspaper and rustled it a bit, calling her attention to the oversized headline on the front page. “Nice article,” he said.

The excessively casual tone of his voice tipped her off as to what his purpose was here. He wasn’t happy about her article, for some reason. She wondered if perhaps he thought she was trying to expose this particular hero. He'd never liked any superhero's identity to be threatened. Of course, she'd never do that, and he should know that by now, but...

“Thanks,” she said.

His green eyes flickered up to meet hers, for just a moment, then he glanced back down at the headline: GOTHAM’S BAT. “You’ve written quite a few stories on him lately,” he said, and there was still that cautious note in his voice.

“He’s been very nice about allowing me to interview him,” she said, wanting him to realize she wasn’t trying to expose the man.

“You’re his official biographer, huh?”

“Something like that.” She consciously curled up the corners of her mouth, aware that her attempt at a smile was tight and uncomfortable. “The same way Superman's official biographer is my cousin.”

Annoyance flickered in his eyes at her mention of Lois Lane-- the perpetual and irritating thorn in his side, who was always doing half-insane things like throwing herself off buildings in order to get another interview with him-- and his expression looked just as tight as hers. “The thing is, you make this guy sound kind of… incredible.”

“Well, he is.”

“He’s just a regular guy,” Clark said. His fingers tightened on the paper, and she heard it crumpling a bit in his grasp. “Just an ordinary human.”

“An ordinary human who does extraordinary things.” She smiled, more naturally this time. “”In a way, I find that more admirable than superheroes with unusual powers.”

“You always have,” he muttered, and she knew he was thinking of Ollie.

“It’s just…” She waved her hands in the air. “The Batman can be killed, and yet he goes out there and risks his life every day, just to protect the city.”

She heard his teeth grind together. “I can be killed.”

“Yes, but it takes a lot more to kill you. You’re not risking your life the way he is.”

His eyes flashed behind the glasses. “So he’s braver than I am, is that it?”

She blinked at him. She hadn’t seen Clark in six months or more, and the last thing she’d expected was for him to suddenly show up and start an argument about one of her articles. He almost sounded… jealous.

Which was ridiculous. Superman had no reason to be jealous of any man on Earth. Superman was, well... super.

“Look,” she said, allowing her own voice to show irritation, “this isn’t Batman vs. Superman, and no one’s calling for a cage match. I write for the Gotham Gazette, and as such I naturally write about the superhero who’s protecting our city. We leave the gushing articles about Superman to the Metropolis papers.”

“He’s no superhero.” Clark sounded as sullen as he often had as a teenager. “He’s just a guy playing dressup.”

“He’s definitely a superhero.” She glared at him, so fiercely that his hair would have caught on fire if she had heat vision. “Didn’t you read the article? He saved all of Gotham this week, and probably most of the Eastern seaboard as well.”

“Beginner’s luck,” Clark retorted.

“Beginners--? He’s been doing this for most of a year, Clark. He’s saved so many people—done so much—“

Clark slammed the paper down on the desk and rose to his feet abruptly. Anger, and something else, something less definable, smoldered in his eyes. Chloe was aware that her co-workers were sending her anxious looks—should we call security for you? Or maybe the cops?—but she couldn’t quite look away from the gleam in those eyes.

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Startled, she snorted. “In love with him? Where did you get that idea from?”

“It’s in your words.” He leaned forward, planting his hands on the desk and glaring, so that she was suddenly afraid for her hair. His voice lowered, but the intensity in his eyes didn't fade. “I’ve seen it before, Chlo. Starting way back in high school, when you wrote that article about ‘Superboy.’ I knew you were halfway in love with him, just from reading it. And now—this... this Bat thing—“

“Batman,” she growled. “He’s called Batman.”

“Batman.” He spat out the syllables as if spitting out something that tasted disgusting. “You’re in love with him.”

“Lois is in love with you,” Chloe pointed out. “Maybe journalists always fall in love with the biggest story of our lives.”

He rolled his eyes, as he always did at any mention of Lois. She’d been chasing Superman for years now, and still hadn’t figured out that he was the same man who sat across the desk from her. Chloe loved her cousin with every fiber of her being, but she had to admit that Lois Lane was not the sharpest tool in the shed.

She could write a hell of a newspaper article, though. It ran in the family.

“Lois is in love with Superman,” he said. “She doesn’t know I exist. She doesn't even see me, most of the time.”

Chloe sighed. “And if I have any sort of… interest… in Batman, it's in the hero, and what he accomplishes. I wouldn’t recognize the man himself if I walked past him on the street, and odds are I wouldn’t even like him if I met him. When a grown man dresses up as a bat, you have to figure he's got some unresolved issues. I doubt he's really my type.”

“Women always go for heroes,” Clark said, and she heard the bitterness in his voice. Heard it—and understood it. Despite his moviestar good looks, he’d always cultivated an aura of invisibility. He was the quiet guy, the student who sat in the back of the class and industriously scribbled down extensive notes, the reporter who turned in all his articles on time but never wrote anything really outstanding. He’d never win a Pulitzer, because he would never let himself stand out that much. He'd never be recognized as brave, or daring, or even particularly intelligent. Most people just described him as nice.

Superman was a world-renowned figure, but Clark Kent was just an ordinary guy.

In that moment, she understood that he wasn’t really jealous of Batman, as much as he was jealous of himself. He was tired of seeing women fall for heroes, masked men, caped avengers, rather than for the men themselves.

Which was ridiculously ironic, because she’d been in love with him since they were both fifteen—long before she’d known he was a hero. She’d loved him back then for his quiet smile, and his love of books, and his gentle sense of humor. She still did.

He was the one constant in her life, the one man she’d always loved. And he'd never really known it. Oh, he'd been aware she had a crush on him as a teenager, of course. But she was pretty sure he hadn't realized that her love for him had never faded. Even through Jimmy, Ollie, and a few other relationships-- she'd never stopped loving him.

“Maybe when women go for the ordinary men,” she suggested, “the men just don’t realize it.”

He snorted.

“Idiot,” she said gently, putting her hand on his arm. He jolted with real surprise this time, and looked down at her hand on his arm with an expression of genuine shock. “I’m not in love with Batman. I’m in love with you.”

His gaze shot up, and his eyes locked with hers. He still looked like she’d hit him over the head with a Kryptonite club. The naked doubt in his eyes made her smile a little.

“Always have been,” she said softly. “Always will be.”

“But I thought—I thought—“ He swallowed hard. “I thought you were into heroes, Chloe. You were always into heroes.”

“I am into heroes.” Her hand squeezed his arm. “Only my hero is a mild-mannered farmboy from Kansas who wears glasses.”

He looked at her, as if trying to gauge her sincerity, and at what he saw in her expression, something blazed into life in the depths of his eyes. Something hot and bright and dangerous.

“Oh, no,” she said in response to the unmistakable look in those eyes, holding out her hands. She'd never made love to him-- she hadn't kissed him in years-- but she recognized lust when she saw it. “I just got to work, Clark—I can’t— I can't possibly--"

He leaned forward, till their noses almost touched. “I want you,” he said in a low, throaty growl.

She blinked against the fierce brightness of his eyes, and the sudden tears in her own, and sighed in surrender.

“All right,” she agreed meekly.

*****
Superman could have swept her away to anywhere—a bed, a tropical island, Los Angeles.

Clark Kent took her to the dark alley behind her workplace.

Before she could draw a breath, she was pressed up against a brick wall, his warm, big body all but crushing hers, and she was being kissed senseless.

She decided she liked being senseless. She lifted her arms, let her fingers dig into his thick, dark hair, and pulled him against her harder.

A strangled noise rose from his throat, a noise of desire and joy and need, all tangled together. A noise she’d never imagined she could draw out of him. She'd left Metropolis because she'd known she could never make him need her that way, and she'd been afraid of staying, afraid of watching him fall for some other woman. All her insecurities had compelled her to run, to leave him far, far behind.

And it looked like she'd been wrong. He did need her that way after all. Maybe he always had.

She sighed against his mouth, suffused with a happiness she’d never thought she would feel. She’d kissed Clark a few times, back in their youth, but never like this. This wasn’t the sort of kiss they’d shared back then, hesitant and naïve and cautious. This was a savage flare of need and desire, an aching desperation that had gone unsatisfied for far too long.

But it clearly wouldn’t go unsatisfied for much longer.

His big hands were all over her, sliding up under her clothes, discovering and exploring, caressing her stomach, her ribs, her… She jolted, and a little ahhhh came out of her, a sound she couldn’t have held back for all the world.

He made a little noise of satisfaction, and began caressing her there, and her nipple hardened beneath his questing finger until it ached. Her own hands reached beneath the t-shirt he wore, stroking the satiny skin of his back, stretched tight over powerful muscles. It was his turn to sigh into her mouth.

And then he was lifting her, and her panties disappeared somehow—ripped off? thrown aside? She wasn’t sure, but she never saw them again—and her own hands were fumbling at his jeans, unbuttoning, unzipping, and then…

Their bodies seemed to merge somehow. Not like normal sex, she thought hazily, not just his body sliding into hers, not just the usual joining of bodies. It was more like the two of them becoming one. They moved together, melding in a smooth and easy rhythm, and a wild and wonderful pleasure suffused her.

He groaned, throwing his head back, his eyes clenched shut, and she knew somehow that he felt the exact same way.

His fingers dug into her ass, holding her tightly against the rough brick wall, and she wrapped her legs around his hips, letting him sink into her as deeply as humanly—or Kryptonianly—possible. He sobbed into her mouth and moved faster.

Friction and heat and ecstasy coiled in her, and a climax overtook her, shaking her so powerfully she could hardly bear it. He must have felt it, must have felt her body squeezing his own, because he suddenly surged into her, quivered violently, and then collapsed against her, squashing her against the wall.

There was a long silence. At last she spoke in his ear.

“Sometimes I wish I could write about the things that really matter to me.”

He lifted his head and looked at her. A small grin tilted a corner of his mouth.

“Heroes matter,” he answered. “Even..." He made a little face. "The Batman.”

She chuckled at his residual jealousy. “They do matter,” she agreed, stroking his damp, ruffled hair gently. “But not as much as these ordinary things. Kissing. Making love. Talking afterward. It doesn't make for interesting newspaper articles, but I think… I think maybe this is what matters most in the world, Clark.”

His arms tightened around her. “Only when you do it with the person that matters most to you,” he answered.

He’d answered her question just as clearly as if she’d asked it, taken all her insecurities away with one sentence, and she felt herself grinning foolishly. “I’d like to do it again,” she said, “but I really have to get to work.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I have some work to do, too.”

She knew that he must have a great deal to do. Working for the Daily Planet, and patrolling Metropolis' skies as Superman, represented an enormous time commitment. She wondered if he could make time for this and for her, wondered if she really mattered enough to him. Hesitantly, she suggested, "Maybe this evening…”

“Definitely this evening.” He squeezed her, then let her go. “And all the evenings to come.”

Her throat tightened at the sincerity in his voice. He lowered her to the ground, and she straightened and smoothed out her skirt, then watched beneath lowered lashes as he straightened out his own clothes, zipping his jeans and unrumpling his t-shirt. He was, she thought, at his most beautiful like this. Despite the glasses, despite the maturity now stamped on his features, he still looked like the boy she’d loved in high school, so familiar and so lovely that her heart ached.

She loved him as a man, and as a hero. But she also knew that he never would have grown into the hero that he’d become without the man he always had been. The mild-mannered farmboy.

Her mild-mannered farmboy.

*****
Above them, in the shadows, a figure watched silently. He hadn't intended to be a voyeur, and he'd carefully looked away during their moments of intimacy. But he'd been unable to leave the area, because he'd been trapped. He'd known that if he moved, the slightest scrape of his foot against the fire escape where he perched might betray him to the man below. He was a detective by training, and he could recognize Superman readily enough without his costume, even if no one else seemed able to manage that feat. And everyone knew that Superman had better-than-canine hearing.

He was glad to see that the golden-haired reporter had finally gotten together with the man she loved. He'd done research into her, of course, just as she'd done research into him. He'd stumbled across Superman's identity by studying her past, but he'd also come to understand the sorrow and loneliness that always haunted the blonde's eyes. She'd run away from Superman-- or rather, from Clark Kent-- a long time ago, and Superman had let her go.

All of which proved that a superintelligent alien was just as prone to stupidity as anyone else on the planet.

But they seemed to have worked out their problems now. He watched them kiss, watched them walk out of the alley with their arms around each other, and he smiled just a little-- something he all too rarely did. He liked the blonde reporter. In fact, he thought he could have felt more for her than that, but for the plainly writ sorrow that told him clearly that her heart belonged elsewhere.

The next time he saw her, he knew the sorrow would be gone from her eyes.

That was, he thought, something superheroes couldn't do. They could save lives, they could prevent tragedies, they could even protect the world. But so much sorrow in the world didn't arise from tragedies, but from the little things that heroics couldn't fix, from the ordinary grief of living.

There was only one man in the world who could take away the shadows of grief in the reporter's eyes.

And thankfully, he'd done so.

The alley beneath him was empty. The Batman turned and silently glided through the shadows, the faint smile still curving his mouth.

Even he wasn't immune to happy endings.

-The End-

Rose Red 2: Every Rose Has Its Thorns

2011-06-03T15:26:00.003-04:00

Kal/Chloe futurefic
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Sequel to Rose Red. Written for Tobi.

He could handle a little red K.

Yeah, Clark Kent admitted to himself, so the last time he'd gotten near the rose bush in the woods, he'd wound up pregnant. Which not only showed that red K rendered his self-control a little weak-- okay, a lot weak-- but also exposed some things about his biology he wasn't willing to examine too closely. The idea that he, the strongest man on earth, had a uterus, of all things, was just not something he liked to contemplate.

But that wasn't the point. The point was that he was older now. More mature. He was a responsible family man with a wife, a productive farm, and a happy and healthy toddler. A little red K wasn't going to mess him up.

And sure, it was true that red K had done a number on him a few times in the past. But he was a grownup now, with adult responsibilities, and a little red K exposure wasn't going to turn him into a bank robber or a gang member. Not this time.

The thing was, there simply weren't any roses as nice as the ones in the woods. He'd checked every florist in a five-hundred mile radius. He'd purchased roses from florists in the past, and they just didn't possess the unearthly beauty of the ones growing wild in the underbrush behind Hubbard's farm. He'd wandered past them a few times lately, just to check them out, and even from a distance he could see they were as flawlessly perfect as he remembered.

It was the second anniversary of the first time they'd made love, and Chloe deserved flawlessly perfect roses.

So he was damn well going to get her some.

He remembered they'd affected her, too, but that was no big deal. She'd been punctured by one of the insanely long thorns, so all he had to do was strip the thorns off. Simple and straightforward. The only problem was getting near that rose bush long enough to pick the roses. He remembered the enormous chunk of red kryptonite Chloe had excavated and then dropped back into the earth, remembered the way it had gleamed so seductively in the sunlight...

Not that he was going to be seduced by it. Heck, no. He had it all figured out. All he had to do was superspeed to the bush, pick the best roses, and then superspeed away before the kryptonite could even affect him. Simple.

He could totally handle a little red K.

*****

Pleasure hit him like a truck the minute he blurred to a halt next to the rosebush, and his last coherent thought was that he couldn't handle it, after all. And then he quit worrying about it. His higher brain functions ground to a halt, and he stopped thinking about anything but the feelings of power and lust and sheer sensuality running through his veins in a hot rush of sensation.

He ought to go home to Chloe. Her cousin Lois was watching after their daughter Rose for the evening, so the two of them could... indulge. And right now, Clark felt very much like indulging. Just the thought of Chloe, combined with the heat surging through his veins, was enough to make his cock swell in his jeans, pulsing with an overwhelming need. Knowing he was all alone out here, he pressed his palm to his fly, and groaned aloud at the resultant flood of pleasure.

He needed release. He needed it so damn much. He and Chloe had been busy lately, her with her job at the Daily Planet, him with the farm. Their work load, combined with Rose's tendency to wake up if one of them even uttered a smothered moan, had had an unfortunately depressing effect on their sex life. Which was why they'd asked Lois to take Rose for the night, so the two of them could... enjoy themselves.

But he was suddenly aware that he couldn't wait to get home. If he made love to Chloe right now, he'd last about twenty seconds. He needed to take the edge off first.

He unzipped his jeans and shoved his boxers out of the way, and looked down at himself.

He was as hard as if it had been weeks-- and maybe it had. He couldn't quite remember. Yeah, actually, he could. He'd made love to Chloe a week ago, on the farmhouse couch, just because he'd been afraid if the two of them walked up the creaky stairs and past Rose's room, she'd hear them, and start to fuss. Sometimes he thought she already had superhearing, but maybe it was just a normal baby thing. At any rate, he'd stripped Chloe's clothes off and laid her down on the couch, spreading her legs, and...

Oh, God. His cock jerked at the memory, unbearably hard, and he wrapped his hand around the hot flesh and began stroking, very slowly. His eyelids fluttered shut and his head fell back, and he heard a long, low sound rise from his throat.

Memories assaulted him,. He had perfect recall, and he could remember everything, every sight and every smell and every sound. She'd been wet for him already, and the remembered image of her soft, fragile flesh, glimmering almost opalescent between her legs, almost sent him over the edge. He gritted his teeth, trying to stave off his orgasm. Not yet... not yet...

He remembered bending to her... exploring her gently with his mouth... the spicy taste of her exploding on his tongue...

Despite his good intentions, his hand moved harder, and his hips began to move, thrusting his cock against his clenched hand. He tightened his grip until he could have crushed granite in his fist, and jerked his hand violently. The fragrance of roses surrounded him, and images spun through his mind, her wet flesh, her hands digging into his hair, the soft, strangled sounds of pleasure she made, the smell of her skin...

He flung his head back and cried out as his orgasm rushed over him and through him, a long, glorious wave of sensation that took him outside of himself and into some realm of ecstasy he'd never before known. He heard the sound of his own voice echoing through the forest, high-pitched and desperate, so loud that birds took wing in fright. His come spurted from his body in long gushes, milky-white against the deep green of the underbrush.

And then the heartstopping moment of pure rapture faded away, and he fell to his knees, drained of his strength, gasping for breath.

As he fell, one of the inch-long thorns caught his forearm. He had skin like steel, and nothing should be able to pierce his flesh.

But the thorn scored a long gash in his skin.

He knelt there, staring blankly at the damaged flesh, at the blood slowly welling from it, as red as the roses. He felt heat swirling from his arm outward, filling him, renewing his exhausted body and flooding him with a lust even greater than before. His cock, which had been half-soft, hardened into an ache of desperate need.

He had to come. Right now.

But this time, he damn well wasn't doing it alone.

He got to his feet, picked an enormous bouquet of roses, and blurred toward home.

More to come...

Cherry on Top

2011-06-02T21:28:00.007-04:00

Kal/Chloe
Season 7 or thereabouts (AU)
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Sequel to Cherry Pie.

There was only one thing Clark Kent liked more than a hot fudge sundae.

And that was a hot fudge sundae with a cherry on top.

Sitting in a booth at Friendly's, across from his girlfriend Chloe Sullivan, he carefully spooned the cherry off the top of his sundae and popped it into his mouth. He closed his eyes in bliss, chewed carefully, and swallowed it.

"Mmmmm."

Chloe chuckled. "You and cherries. Ever since the Cherry Red incident, you've had a thing for them."

He opened his eyes and grinned at her, remembering the "incident." He'd drunk an energy drink his mom had in the fridge, not realizing it was made from cherries that had absorbed red kryptonite, and the effect it had on him had been... well, it had turned a mild-mannered farmboy into a sex maniac.

He and Chloe had lost their virginity together that night. And since then, they'd had a couple more experiences with red K-laced cherries.

But this cherry was perfectly safe. It had to be. This was Friendly's in Metropolis, and the odds that they used Smallville cherries in this particular restaurant were miniscule. He just liked the way cherries tasted-- he associated them with sex and fun.

Even so, he was aware of a nice warm feeling of lassitude spreading through him. He scooped up another spoonful of whipped cream and ate it, but the mouthful of sweetness wasn't quite enough to satisfy him. He reached over and swiped her cherry.

"Hey!" she objected, trying to defend it. But he had superspeed, and she couldn't move quickly enough. The second cherry followed the first, and he sighed happily.

"Clark Kent," she said, frowning. "You stole my cherry."

"Ha," he answered with a grin. "You totally gave it to me, baby."

She blinked, and then her frown deepened. He saw her brows lower and her forehead furrow as she studied him carefully.

"Oh, no," she said at last. "Your eyes are turning red."

Huh, he thought. Who'd have guessed he might run across a Hobbs Farm cherry in Metropolis? Old Man Hobbs must have expanded his operation, because he knew she was right. He could feel the nice warm sensation swirling through him, heating him from the inside out.

The pleasant warmth began to turn into something a little more urgent, and she sighed, reading his mood change with the ease of a woman who'd known him intimately for years.

"We'd better go," she said.

"I think we'd better come," he countered.

"Clark." She leaned toward him and hissed, "This is a family restaurant. Don't you dare start doing the double entendre thing."

He looked around, seeing that a couple of booths were filled with little kids and their tired-looking parents. Even under the influence, he wasn't going to say anything he shouldn't in front of little kids. He shrugged, reached into his wallet, and tossed two twenties on the table-- enough to cover dinner and give the waitress a really nice tip.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go."

"Good idea. And keep your head down so no one notices the glowing eye thing, okay?"

He supposed that glowing ruby eyes would be kind of difficult to explain. Not that he cared all that much. Still, he didn't want to freak anyone out too badly. He got to his feet, swaying slightly, and followed Chloe from the restaurant, keeping his eyes downcast.

The minute they were outside on the street, he picked her up in his arms and swooshed.

"Hey!" she objected, looking around to see where he'd brought her. "How come you always get to run things?"

He put her down on the bed in the apartment they shared in Metropolis and grinned at her. "I like being in charge, baby."

She scowled up at him. Her golden hair was windblown from their speedy trip, and he thought it looked adorable. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe I like being in charge sometimes, too?"

He frowned, and she reached up, grabbing his arms and yanking him down onto the bed beside her. He didn't have to fall, of course, but he was more than willing to join her there. She put her hands on his shoulders and shoved him, rolling him over onto his back. And then she was climbing on top of him, her thighs on either side of his, her warm body cradling his. His eyelashes fluttered shut, and he heard himself utter a soft but extremely heartfelt moan.

"This time," she told him, "I'm going to be on top."

*****

Clark uttered a little whimper as she began to rub her body against his. Even through jeans, she could feel the heat of his erection. She rubbed a little faster, and felt him twitching through the fabric. When he was on cherries, she thought with amusement, he was spectacularly easy.

"Unhhhh," he said, and his hands reached up to grab her arms-- probably, she suspected, as a prelude to shoving her over and taking charge. She reached for his arms instead, and pinned them against the mattress.

Of course he was about a million times stronger than she was, and there was no possible way she could hold him down unless he permitted it. But she had a feeling he'd permit it.

She was right. His arms relaxed, and he let his body arch up against hers. Another low groan rumbled its way out of his chest.

She slid off him, eliciting a grumbled complaint, and rummaged in a nearby dresser drawer. Seconds later, she'd tied his arms to the bedposts with two silk scarves. Of course, he could have torn the scarves like tissue paper, but they both understood the rules of the game.

This time, she was in charge.

This time, she was going to be on top.

She settled back down onto him, her thighs on either side of his, and moved against him. Almost instantly, he was grinding against her, hard and fast, little gasps and moans escaping him, and she knew he was going to come in fifteen seconds or less if she didn't find a way to put the brakes on. She backed away from him, sliding down his thighs, and he opened his glowing red eyes and glared at her.

"See," he said, grumpily. "This is why I don't like it when you're in charge. You always stop before we get to the good part."

"If you wait a while," she said, as persuasively as she could manage, "the good part can be even better."

"Hmmmppph," he snorted.

She managed to suppress her smile, and reached out, unfastening his jeans. His eyelids drifted shut again, the long dark lashes lying against his cheeks like fans, and a long sigh slipped from between his parted lips. She unzipped his jeans, revealing red boxers with a really impressive swelling beneath them.

She let her fingers slip over the swelling, and his hard, hot flesh shuddered beneath her touch.

"I'm ready for the good part," he gritted between his teeth.

She laughed softly. "You can wait."

She pulled down the red fabric, exposing his cock, a dark, dusky pink already glistening with precome, and lowered her head. As her tongue slid over the head, he gave a low, deep groan, and his biceps flexed. She lifted her head and glared at him.

"Do not even think about tearing my good scarves," she growled. "You're not flipping me over this time. For once, I'm staying on top until the end."

He grumbled, but his arms relaxed, and she lowered her head again. Her tongue slipped over his flesh, finding all the most sensitive places with the ease of long familiarity. His big body quivered all over.

"Good. Part. Now."

"No. Relax, Clark. You know I'll let you have it eventually."

"I don't want it eventually," he grouched. "I want it right now."

More to come...

No Good Deed

2011-06-02T13:51:00.006-04:00

Sullivan Kent/Barri Allen
Futurefic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC, sort of. At least they're based on characters that do!

One question haunts and hurts
Too much, too much to mention:
Was I really seeking good
Or just seeking attention?
Is that all good deeds are
When looked at with an ice-cold eye?
If that's all good deeds are
Maybe that's the reason why

No good deed goes unpunished
All helpful urges should be circumvented
No good deed goes unpunished
Sure, I meant well --
Well, look at what well-meant did...
-"No Good Deed," from "Wicked"

"Barri!"

As the last echoes of a shot died away, Superman-- otherwise known as Sullivan Kent-- zoomed toward a dark back alley in Metropolis. He landed beside an inert body on the pavement, so hard that his boots cracked the concrete, and fell to his knees.

"No, no, no." He spoke in a desperate whisper, listening for the sound of her heartbeat. It was there, but just barely. Barri Allen (a.k.a.Impulse) possessed superspeed-- she was one of the very few people on the planet who could outrace him-- and unusual strength, but she wasn't invulnerable, the way he was.

Which explained why she was lying on the pavement, a crimson puddle forming beneath her.

He knelt there, frozen with indecision. Moving her might prove fatal. And yet if he didn't move her--

He listened to her heartbeat, which was fading fast, and came to the bleak realization that if he didn't get her to a hospital in the next minute or two, she wouldn't survive. He couldn't wait for an ambulance or paramedics. He had to move her now.

Pushing his fear and indecision aside, he scooped her up in his arms and rocketed toward Metropolis General.

*****

His fault. It was all his fault.

Dressed in tattered jeans and a Nickelback t-shirt, Sully paced back and forth in the hospital waiting room. Barri's parents sat near him, holding one another. He wished he had someone to hold him. He'd called his mom, and she was on her way, but she'd been working on a story some distance outside of town, and it'd take her a while to get here. He'd stripped Barri's suit off to protect her identity, and passed the whole event off to his mom and the doctors as a mugging, but he was miserably aware that it wasn't.

Barri was in danger of dying because she was a hero.

If only... he thought wretchedly. If only he hadn't met Barri, if only he hadn't become friends with her, if only she hadn't followed his lead and gone back into the hero business she'd left behind...

There was no doubt in his mind that if she hadn't met him, she would have been safely in her dorm room, studying industriously for her next big exam. She wouldn't have been out on the streets, trying to save people and getting shot in the chest as a reward.

When he'd assumed the mantle of Superman, when he'd put on his father's suit, he'd been seeking redemption. He'd been trying to make himself a better person. But Barri hadn't needed to become a better person, damn it. She'd always been incredible, one of the most amazing people he knew.

He'd led her into this. And he'd been wrong. He saw that now, as clearly as he'd ever seen anything. He shouldn't have gotten her into the hero business. Hell, maybe he never should have gotten into the hero business. He'd told himself he wanted to save people, but deep down, he suspected maybe he was just trying to convince himself he wasn't a loser. He'd wanted people to think better of him. And Barri had. She'd fallen for the new him, convinced that he was a hero.

He remembered the sight of her on the sidewalk, motionless, a puddle of crimson beneath her, and he knew that he wasn't a hero. He was still the same damn loser he'd always been, only in Technicolor.

If Barri bled to death, it would be entirely his fault.

She can't die, he thought firmly, as if one of his superpowers was positive thinking. She just can't. I won't let her die.

He'd lost his father half a year before, and he couldn't stand the thought of losing someone else who mattered to him. But holding back death wasn't one of his abilities, either. If she'd been mortally injured, she'd die, and there was nothing in this world he could do about it.

He stopped his pacing, sank into a chair, and buried his face in his hands.

*****

Two hours-- two very long hours-- later, a surgeon appeared.

"Mr. and Mrs. Allen?"

Sully had been listlessly staring at the television, so lost in his own misery that he hadn't even heard the surgeon's footsteps approaching. At the voice, he jerked his head around and listened.

"Yes?" Bart answered, getting to his feet. He was a small, graying man who didn't look at all like one of the world's greatest superheroes, and his eyes were filled with the same mixture of hope and dread that Sully knew was reflected in his own eyes.

The surgeon held out his hand in a reassuring gesture. "I just wanted to let you know that your daughter is out of danger."

Sully looked at the man with gratitude, mixed with a little awe. It was a little humbling to realize that for all his superpowers, this ordinary human man had far more power over life and death than he himself did.

Bart broke into a wide grin. "Thank you," he said. "Can we see her?"

"When she wakes up, you can see her." The surgeon looked at Sully for the first time, and offered a kind smile. "I think we can allow her friend to see her for a moment, too."

*****

Naturally, Barri's parents got to go into the room first. But after fifteen minutes or so, they came back to the waiting room. Bart dropped a sympathetic hand on Sully's shoulder.

"She asked for you, Sullivan."

Sully swallowed, then stood up and headed down the hall. At the door of her room, he paused and looked at her. Against the stark white sheets, she looked very fragile and pale, and terror gripped his heart anew at the thought that he had come so close to losing her.

He'd been fighting against his feelings for her, telling himself he didn't have time to fall in love right now. But all at once he realized love didn't wait around till you had time for it.

It came, whether you were ready for it or not.

"Hey," he said.

She turned her head on the pillow and smiled slightly, as if the effort were exhausting. "Hey yourself. Come sit for... a minute."

The words came slowly, as if they too were exhausting. He sat in the chair next to her bed and took her hand in his, very carefully. It seemed very small in his. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

He heard a faint snort. "How... did I know... that was going to be... the first thing out of your mouth?"

He sighed. "Barri, it's all my fault..."

"And yep... I knew that... would be the second thing."

He refused to be sidetracked. "I should have been there to protect you. In fact, I should never have let you help me at all..."

"Help you?" Despite her clear exhaustion, her eyes blazed, and her words grew stronger. "I told you before, Junior, I'm not a sidekick. I do... my own saves... and I make my own decisions. Going back to work... was my choice, not yours."

"I should have tried harder to talk you out of it. If you hadn't been out there--"

"Then a lot of people... would have died." Her eyelids flickered, and her voice subsided. "But going back out there... was the right decision, Sully. It was the right thing to do..."

Her voice trailed off, and she fell asleep. He sat there for a long moment, holding her hand, just watching her breathe, just listening to the sound of her heartbeat.

She was okay. She was alive. And she'd be fine. This time.

And somehow-- somehow-- he had to make sure there wasn't a next time. He had to make her see that she couldn't go out there again. It was just too damn dangerous.

He'd almost lost her today. And he damn well wasn't going to lose her again.

*****

"He seems like a nice kid," Bart said in the waiting room.

"Yes." Andrea Rojas Allen's voice was still lightly accented. She had a beautiful, musical voice. In fact she was still a gloriously beautiful woman, and Bart wondered, as he had so many times in the past, just how he'd been so lucky as to marry her.

Love moves in mysterious ways, he thought wryly.

He thought of the young man who'd waited out here with them, grief and guilt written clearly in his emerald eyes, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Sullivan Kent was in love with his daughter.

And that only made him feel worse.

"It's too bad..." he started.

Andrea shushed him. "He has superhearing, remember?"

Bart sighed, because if there was one thing in this world it wasn't good at, it was shutting up. "I just don't like what's being planned, Andrea. He's a really good kid. And he and Barri... well..."

"We have no choice," she answered. "It has to be done."

Bart drew in another breath, and nodded in resignation.

"Yeah," he said. "I guess it does."

But just because something had to be done, didn't mean he had to like it.

*****

Chloe Sullivan Kent stood up as her son walked back into the waiting room. She'd been on the trail of a story, three hours north of Metropolis, and had just gotten here. She looked at Sully as he walked into the room, seeing the weariness stamped on his face.

He looked so much older, she thought, studying him. He wasn't the boy he'd been six months ago. There was a tiredness in his movements, the exhaustion of those who carry the world on their shoulders. Atlas Syndrome, she'd once dubbed it. It was a familiar expression, one she'd seen before. On Sullivan's father's face, and on every hero she knew.

She wondered how on earth she'd failed to see it before now.

Two nights ago, she'd seen Sullivan stripping off his clothes to reveal the costume beneath, and she'd realized with a jolt that her son was Superman 2. The shock had nearly driven her to her knees. She should have realized, long ago, but somehow... she hadn't.

Somehow she hadn't been able to see him as anything but the same amiable, lazy kid he'd always been, a boy who'd been into mischief from the day he was born, a boy who'd never applied his formidable intelligence and all his superhuman strength to make something of himself.

And while she'd been lecturing him on college, his laziness, and the need to apply himself, he'd made something of himself.

And she hadn't even noticed.

Sully looked up, noticing her for the first time, and smiled. His smile was tired, too, and something about it-- the pain and sorrow it inadequately concealed, maybe-- made her open her arms. He went to her wordlessly, wrapping his arms around her and pressing his face into her shoulder.

"Mom," he whispered.

Her eyes smarted with tears. He wasn't her boy any more, but he still needed comforting, and that made her happy somehow. She wanted to blurt out the secret she'd carried for two days-- Sully, I know you're Superman 2, tell me how this happened, I'm so proud of you, why on earth didn't you tell me?-- but she remembered her experience with Sully's dad, long years ago, and held her tongue.

When he was ready to tell her, he'd tell her. And until then, she wouldn't ask.

Because Chloe Sullivan Kent could keep a secret with the best of them.

-The End-

Rain on the Scarecrow

2011-04-26T22:59:00.008-04:00

Clark and son (possible implied Clois marriage)
Futurefic angst
Rating: G

Scarecrow on a wooden cross, blackbird in the barn
Four hundred empty acres that used to be my farm
I grew up like my daddy did, my grandpa cleared this land
When I was five I walked the fence while grandpa held my hand

Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow
This land fed a nation, this land made me proud
And son I'm just sorry there's no legacy for you now
Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow
-John Mellencamp, "Rain on the Scarecrow"

"It's so empty."

Clark Kent looked down at his son's dark head. The boy was five years old, and he'd grown up amidst the bustle and commotion of Metropolis. His green eyes were wide as they gazed over the seemingly endless fields that had once constituted the Kent Farm.

"I grew up here," he answered. "I guess it might seem empty to you, but I always loved it."

"Really?" The green eyes turned up to his. "Then why don't we live here?"

Clark sighed. "Your grandma gave me the farm for a wedding present, but... well, I decided that it was time for me to leave this all behind. So... I sold it."

"So it's not ours any more."

"No. It's not ours any more."

He looked over the land, the land his father's father had cleared, the land his father and mother had worked so hard to make profitable, and regret clenched in his chest. He remembered long hours spent feeding the cattle, watering and weeding and picking vegetables, selling produce at the local farmers' market. He remembered seeing his father get up at five every morning to get the work done, remembered watching his parents struggling to make ends meet, remembered hearing his mother weep hysterically at the thought of losing the farm.

Once upon a time, this farm had been everything to his family. Once upon a time, this farm had been his home.

This land had been his father's pride and joy, his family's legacy. And he'd sold it as casually as if it were merely property.

But now, too late, he realized it had been so much more.

His son tugged on his hand, recalling him from his dark thoughts. "If it's not ours, then why are we here?"

Clark looked down at the green eyes, so like his own, and then out over the empty acres. In the distance, a tattered scarecrow that had once guarded a cornfield stood alone in an overgrown, weedy field.

"The man I sold it to couldn't make it profitable, either," he answered at last. "So we've come to say goodbye."

Perhaps reacting to the sorrow in his father's voice, the boy fell silent and stood quietly, still holding Clark's hand. Clark stared out across the land where he'd grown up for long moments. At last his son tugged on him again.

"Daddy, it's starting to rain."

With a start, Clark realized the boy was right. A light drizzle was beginning to fall from the leaden clouds. He smiled apologetically down at his son.

"Okay, kiddo. Let's go."

With his son holding his hand, he turned his back on what had once been the Kent Farm for the last time. The rain drenched them both as they walked back to the car, parked on the rutted dirt road that bisected the farm.

As they drove out onto the main road, heading back to Metropolis, they passed a large sign posted at the front of the property:

Kent Acres, another LexCorp project. New homes starting at $300,000.

LexCorp: Making America a better place to live!

-The End-

In Memoriam

2011-03-13T09:53:00.009-04:00

Clark/Chloe angst (character death)
Futurefic, PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Written on the fourth anniversary of my soulmate's death.

I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
-from "In Memoriam," by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

SUPERMAN IS DEAD.

She looked at the yellowed clipping framed on her wall, and sighed, remembering how much it had hurt to write it. She'd covered every moment of Superman's time in Metropolis for the Daily Planet, from the moment he'd first arrived, wearing the yellow and scarlet sigil on his chest, to his triumph when he'd finally succeeded in putting Lex Luthor behind bars.

But this had been the hardest story she'd ever written.

She remembered sitting at her desk at the Daily Planet, trying to type, while tears ran down her face, obscuring her vision. Her editor Perry had stopped next to her chair and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Chin up, kid," he'd said gruffly. "We're all broken up about it. But Sullivan, the best way to deal with grief is to work. Anyway, writing the news is what we do... no matter how much it hurts."

She'd sniffled, and nodded, knowing he was right. Even though he couldn't know that her suffering was greater than anyone else's in Metropolis, even though he couldn't know that she had been Superman's wife... he was right. She was a reporter, and her most important job had always been to report on Superman.

And that meant reporting on his death as well as his life.

She stood there in front of the clipping, four years later, and felt a single tear trickling down her cheek. Most of the time, she tried to focus on the positive aspects of his life-- all the times he'd saved Metropolis and the planet, all the people he'd saved from muggings or robberies or suicides, all the hope he'd brought to the world.

And on a more personal level, all the times they'd laughed together, all the times they'd worked shoulder to shoulder, whether writing or doing "hero work." All the times they'd kissed, or made love, or held hands.

He'd made a tremendous difference to the world, and to her, in his too-short life, and that was something to celebrate. And yet she couldn't help mourning for his loss, even four years later. Not only did she find herself thinking of all the things he could have accomplished if he were still alive... but she missed him terribly.

And so did everyone else. Today the TV stations were full of tributes to Superman, news footage of his most famous rescues interspersed with people talking about how much he'd meant to the city, or telling stories of being saved by him. And because she'd been his unofficial biographer, there were interviews with her, too-- some of them dating from fifteen years ago, when he'd first arrived in the city, and some of them dating from just after his death, when she'd been visibly distraught and barely able to formulate coherent sentences.

She had only been able to bear watching the tributes for about an hour. She'd watched a few shots of him leaping into the air, his dark hair blowing back, his crimson cape rippling behind him, and she'd found herself sobbing. She'd turned off the TV and retreated into her sanctuary, the office where she sometimes wrote at home.

But even here, reminders of Superman were everywhere. Every major story she'd ever written about him lined the walls, photographs of him decorating almost every article. In every photo, he looked noble, courageous, an avenging angel sent from above to protect Metropolis. Even her coffee mug bore his sigil.

And now he was gone. The thought made her heart ache.

She sat down in her leather chair with a little sigh, admitting that he'd been too much a part of her life for her to escape. She could never forget him, not even for a day. She could never even learn to think of him without a little pang of pain and sorrow in her chest.

Not that she spent every day moping. Of course not. He wouldn't have liked that. The best way she knew to pay tribute to his memory was to go on living and working, and doing her utmost to help the world. Her mothods of helping the world weren't as spectacular as his had been, of course, but they still mattered.

So she didn't sit around grieving over him, most of the time. But there was always a faint shadow of sorrow somewhere deep within her. And today, on the anniversary of his death, she couldn't seem to escape her grief.

She squared her shoulders. The best way to cope with grief, she reminded herself, remembering Perry's words, is work. And the best way to deal with his death is to celebrate his life.

She drew in a long breath, then turned to the computer and began typing. Words appeared on the screen.

SUPERMAN: A LIFE.

She looked up at the pictures on the walls, remembering his life as well as his death, and smiled a little.

And she typed faster.

-The End-

Earth Girls Are Easy, Chapter 1

2010-11-07T22:23:00.005-05:00

Clark/Chloe
Season 3
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Inspired very loosely by my story Kryptonian Boys Are Easy.
Manip by Khyla. Used with permission of the artist.

Birthdays suck.

I mean, they really, really suck.

We're not talking minor sucking here. We're talking full-blown, hardcore, total suckage.

It's bad enough that Dad totally forgot. I know that for him, "forgetting" means oh, sorry, honey, I had a date tonight. Dad's having a midlife crisis, I guess you'd call it, and right now some thirty-year-old hottie with plastic boobs means more to him than I do. That's not really a surprise.

But what really surprises me, and bugs me, is Clark. Where the hell is Clark?

I mean, yeah, he's mopey as hell, and he spends all his spare time thinking about some wildly hypothetical future with Lana even though they aren't even talking to each other right now, but still... it's not like him to totally forget about me, his best friend.

But today in school he didn't seem to notice the date, and he hasn't shown up to escort me to the Talon, or bring me a cupcake, or any of the lame and totally adorable sort of things he usually does for my birthday.

So... yeah. Birthdays totally suck.

Especially this one.

*****

Holy shit, look at the time. Chloe's gonna kill me.

No, not really. She'll be so glad to see me she'll let me live. Well, probably. Especially since that was Mr. Sullivan who just tooled by with some bimbo. Hey, jerk, it's your daughter's birthday, you know! Why the hell are you going out on a date when it's Chlo you should be taking out?

Gah. Parents. I'm glad mine aren't total assholes. Mr. Sullivan used to be okay, but lately...!

Oh, well. At least Chloe has me. And aren't I an awesome friend, showing up at seven-thirty? Poor Chlo, she probably figures I've totally forgotten about her.

And that was what I wanted her to think. But I didn't mean for it to get quite this late. I just got busy with... homework.

Oh, fine. I was thinking about Lana. But I'll never admit that to Chloe. As far as she's concerned, I've been doing calculus all evening.

Anyway, I wish I had something really awesome to give her. She deserves it, what with the way her jerk dad's been acting lately. Plus, she's my best friend in the whole world, and she deserves better than this lame book. I should have baked her a cake or something.

There's gotta be something better I can give her.

Better think fast, Kent. You'll be at her house in three point five seconds.

What could Chloe possibly want from me?

*****

"Hi, Clark."

Clark looks scruffier than usual, like he ran the whole way over to my house. I look around, and don't see his truck parked on the road or in the driveway. I'm not really surprised. It's too far for any normal person to walk, but Clark has this way of just materializing out of thin air. Almost literally. I guess his parents must have dropped him off, but that doesn't explain the way his hair's all windblown.

But I know he doesn't want me wondering about how he gets around so fast, so I'm not going to. Much. I step aside and let him come in. I notice with approval that he's holding a gift. At least he remembered my birthday.

This is why he continues to maintain his best friend status. He's slow, but he gets there.

He offers the package to me. It looks sloppily wrapped, and I'm oddly touched by that, because it means he wrapped it himself, instead of having Mrs. Kent do it for him. I take it from his hands and look it over.

"It's not much," he says, looking adorably awkward. Only Clark can make awkward look so damn cute. "Just, you know, a little something."

I know he's being perfectly honest, and it's not much, because the Kents are organic farmers, which does not translate to having lots of money to spend. But I don't mind, because it's the thought that counts. I smile, and begin ripping open my gift.

More to come...

Find Yourself

2010-07-08T19:53:00.012-04:00

Clark/Chloe, some Clark/Lois, Chloe/Ollie, and Lois/Ollie
Season 10
Rating: PG
3000 words
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
The music is "Find Yourself," by Brad Paisley.

When you find yourself
In some far off place
And it causes you to rethink some things
You start to sense that slowly
You're becoming someone else
And then you find yourself

"This..." Clark Kent raised his voice as he tugged impatiently at his long black leather coat. "... just isn't right."

"I do not understand what you mean, Kal-El" the Fortress intoned, its somber English tones coming from somewhere far over his head. "You have been wearing this costume for almost a year now."

"Yeah, and at first I thought it was right, but I've started to figure out it's not. I just..." Clark dropped his hands away from the lapels and started to stalk restlessly across the icy floor. "It's kind of hard to explain. It's just not me."

"In what way?"

Clark blew out an irritated breath. "Some of the things the newspapers have been saying about me... they're calling me a vigilante, Father. Even... a terrorist. In these clothes... I scare people."

"Are you certain it is the clothes that are to blame?"

Clark stopped his stalking and lowered his head. "No," he whispered. "Not entirely. Some of it is the things I've done. The way I've gone about being a hero-- it isn't right, Father. I've screwed this up pretty badly."

"You have saved many people, Kal-El."

"Yes. And that's something to be grateful for. At least that much, I've done right. But some of the other things I've done, like... like knocking down those towers with my heat vision. I frightened everyone."

"You made certain no one was in danger."

"But they didn't know that." Clark looked down at his dark clothing, frowning. "This isn't me, Jor-El. This isn't what my parents-- my adoptive parents-- wanted me to be. It's like I've become someone else, and I really don't like the person I'm becoming." He sighed again, seeing his breath puffing white in the Arctic chill. "If I'm really going to be the city's hero, I can't ever terrorize the people of Metropolis. I want them to look at me and see hope, not fear."

The AI did not respond. Clark considered the matter a moment longer, then stripped off the long ebony coat and threw it to the floor.

There was a long silence. At last the Fortress spoke.

"You are certain about this, my son?"

"I'm certain," Clark answered. "I've let myself give into anger too many times. I've let myself frighten people. Even threaten people. That isn't how heroes are supposed to behave. That isn't who I am-- or at least, it isn't who I want to be."

"Do you intend to do away with your costume entirely?"

"Not exactly. I still want to wear this symbol..." Clark tapped the S sigil on his chest. "But not quite this way. I've made mistakes, Father. I want to start over, and do better this time."

There was another long silence. At last the Fortress' voice echoed through the vast chamber, its tone warmer than Clark had ever heard it.

"Well done, my son," it said. "You have passed your first great test."

Clark blinked up into the shadowy ice above. "Test?"

"Humans have an old saying about power."

"Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely?"

"Precisely. Once you accepted your full powers, once you accepted your destiny, there was a danger that you might embrace your darker side. Lurking within you is a certain ruthlessness, a certain lack of care for humans and their fragility. We have both seen this side released by the influence of red kryptonite, and we both know it still lives inside you... and that sometimes it is closer to the surface than it should be."

Clark lowered his head and said nothing. Jor-El went on.

"I have watched you this past year, and worried, but I dared not intervene. I had to know if you could be tempted into using your powers to harm, to intimidate, to terrorize."

"And I was," Clark said softly.

"You were, although never as seriously as I feared. At least you did no real harm to anyone. And you have turned away from the wrong path, recognized your errors, all on your own. I am glad, my son. Several times this past year I have worried that you would embrace the darkness inside you. It relieves me to know that you have repented of your too-violent actions. But in order to turn away from violence and terrorism entirely, you must find a way to deal with your anger."

"I'm not angry anymore, Jor-El. I'm over it."

"My son..." The AI sounded mildly exasperated, as if Clark were a wayward teenager who'd swiped the car keys. "We both know that many of your wrong actions this year have stemmed from anger and loneliness-- an anger that is too deep to simply ignore. You cannot 'get over it' without facing the problem head-on. Even a hero cannot walk his path alone, Kal-El."

"I'm not alone. I have Lois."

"And yet you are still angry."

"If you're talking about Chloe--" Clark crossed his arms defensively. "Yeah, we were once really good friends." And something more, something we never really got to explore. "But those days are over. She's made it clear I don't matter that much to her any more."

"Then you must either find a way to deal with your remaining anger... or find a way to bring her back into your life. An angry superman is a great danger to the world, Kal-El. Surely by now, you realize that. You must find some sort of resolution for this matter."

"Fine," Clark bit out. "I'll see what I can do."

"That is all I can ask."

Clark changed the subject deliberately, gesturing toward the dark leather on the floor. "What about the suit? Do you mind if I trade it in on something a little brighter?"

"Of course not, Kal-El. I never intended you to wear this costume for long. I did not send you to this world to be a symbol of darkness. On the contrary..." The AI's voice echoed in the chamber, solemn and profound. "I hope that you will become a symbol of light."

When you make new friends in a brand new town
And you start to think about settlin' down
The things that would have been lost on you
Are now clear as a bell
And you find yourself
Yeah, that's when you find yourself

"So this is your new apartment." Chloe Sullivan turned around, looking at the tiny space dubiously. "Well. It's..."

"Larger than a shoebox," Clark finished. "And that's about the best that can be said for it. I know."

She nodded, and a rueful smile touched her mouth. It was, he thought, only a pale shadow of the happy smiles she'd once flashed on a regular basis. "I figured you'd get around to moving to Metropolis eventually."

"Well, my mom rented out the farm, you know. I think that was her way of kicking me out of the nest." He started digging his belongings out of a box. A man couldn't be expected to live without his iPod, after all. "Anyway, my friends all live here now."

"And Lois."

He glanced up, startled by the slight edge of bitterness he thought he heard in her tone. He remembered his conversation with Jor-El a couple of weeks earlier, and wondered if Chloe was carrying around some residual anger from their broken friendship, too. She'd seemed so indifferent to him, so wrapped up in her fling with Ollie, that he'd assumed she no longer gave a damn about him.

Maybe he'd been wrong.

"And Lois," he agreed. He and Lois had been dating for about six months. He was really quite fond of her, although deep down he suspected it was because she reminded him of another reporter he'd known, once upon a time.

That reporter had lost her way.

Clark knew how that felt.

He glanced at Chloe now, only three feet away, but so distant emotionally that she might as well be on another planet. There was so much standing between them now, anger and attachments to other people and a chilly reserve that neither of them could seem to break through. But once upon a time, she'd been his very best friend. And Jor-El was right. Losing his friend-- his support, his rock, his foundation-- had made him angry with the world.

He of all people couldn't afford to be carrying anger around.

Desperate to bridge the distance between them somehow, he dug into the box and found an old issue of the Torch, the high school newspaper he and Chloe had worked on . "Hey, look," he said, handing it to her. "It's that article we wrote together about that kid who could shapeshift. Remember? He was breaking into lockers by flattening himself to the width of a sheet of paper."

She took the yellowed newspaper and looked at it with a half-smile. "I remember," she said softly.

He straightened up and looked down at her. "We worked great together, Chlo."

She seemed oblivious to his hesitantly offered olive branch. Her nose wrinkled as she perused the article. "I don't know, Clark. This is pretty juvenile. The first paragraph really sucks."

He couldn't help laughing. After all these years, she was still an editor at heart. He took it gently out of her hands and looked down at it reminiscently. "Those were great days, Chloe."

"They were," she agreed. "But they're gone now."

"Are they?"

She stared up into his eyes for a long moment, her hazel eyes wide with surprise, then looked away. "Of course they are," she answered, her voice curter than before. "I'm never going back to journalism, Clark. I have another path now."

She didn't say the rest, but he heard it: I'll never be your best friend again. I have another path now.

He remembered what Jor-El had said to him two weeks before, and persisted. "Are you sure it's the right path?"

She stiffened, as if his intrusion into the icy space between them alarmed her. "Of course I'm sure."

"Okay," he said gently, because the last thing he wanted was to piss her off. She, like Lois, would jump on him if she got annoyed. In many ways, Lois reminded him of Chloe, which was, he thought, probably why he and Lois had started dating in the first place. There'd been a void in his life, an emptiness caused by the distance that had developed between him and Chloe, and he'd tried to fill it with Lois. Lois was Chloe's cousin, and a reporter, and on the surface they were a lot alike.

But for the first time he realized how foolish it was to try to replace one girl with another, as if people were interchangeable. A void left by Chloe's absence couldn't be filled by anyone else. It was as futile as trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. Chloe was Chloe, and no matter what path she walked, she'd always be one of the most important people in the world to him.

And anyway, he hoped that someday she'd come back to the path she belonged on. Journalism... and friendship with him. Things might never be exactly the same as they'd been, but he thought he could live with that. What he couldn't live with was this cold distance between them.

"Want to help me with this box?" he said, deliberately changing the topic.

She looked at him, and in the golden depths of her eyes he saw an echo of their long friendship, undimmed by time and the distance that had grown up between them. He found that brief glimpse reassuring. Some things, he thought, never changed, no matter how much you tried to change them. Some things couldn't change, not really, and he very much wanted to believe his friendship with Chloe was one of them.

"Sure," she answered. "I'll help you."

She came around to his side-- right where she belongs, he thought-- and began helping him unpack.

Where you go through life
So sure of where you’re headin'
And you wind up lost and it's
The best thing that could have happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that’s when you find yourself

"I didn't mean to write this." Sitting in his apartment a few months later, Chloe passed him a sheaf of paper, chewing on her lip and looking adorably confused. "It just kind of happened."

Clark glanced through the neatly printed sheets. He was grateful that she'd brought this to him. It was, he thought, another sign that their formerly shattered friendship was struggling back onto more solid ground. "Whoa," he said. "This looks like an expose on LexCorp's new Phoenix project."

"Yeah. It is." She swallowed. "Ever since Lex came back, I've been wondering what he's up to. Eventually I started snooping around. I couldn't help it, Clark. I had to know."

He could barely restrain a snort of amusement, because that was the Chloe he remembered, before she'd lost her way. "Every reporter in Metropolis has been after this story, Chlo. Even I haven't been able to figure out what Lex was up to, thanks to the fact that he hides everything behind lead walls and Kryptonite shields nowadays. But this..." He finished speed-reading the article, then looked up. "You have documentation for all this?"

"Hello? Have we met?"

He laughed. "Of course you do. Chlo... this is huge. This is going to totally make your career."

"Whoa there, cowboy. I don't have a career. At least not in journalism."

He handed her back the sheaf of paper, gazing into her eyes.

"Give this to Perry White," he told her seriously, "and I can guarantee you will."

When you meet the one
That you've been waitin' for
And she's everything that you want and more
You look at her and you finally start to live for some one else
And then you find yourself
That’s when you find yourself

As he'd begun to realize he was using Lois as a substitute for someone he couldn't have, the relationship between him and Lois had kind of petered out. They'd always be good friends, but that was really all they had. Lois was a great girl, but there could never be as much depth between the two of them as there had been between him and Chloe.

He didn't like to be the kind of guy who'd use a woman to ease his loneliness. And although he knew Lois had had real feelings for him, he also had a strong suspicion she'd been using him as a substitute, too. They'd used each other, without really meaning to.

One night the two of them had finally admitted that things weren't just working out between them. No tears, no recriminations... just two people facing the truth that they weren't meant for one another.

He'd kissed Lois goodbye, very gently, and said simply, "Tell Ollie I sent you."

She'd looked at him, her eyes huge and oddly vulnerable. "Ollie and I... but Ollie and Chloe are... well, it's too late, Clark."

"I don't think so," he'd answered. "For some things, it's never too late."

And he'd been right.

His own words came back to him as someone sat down at the desk next to him. Tired of what she termed "this long-distance crap" with Ollie, and tired of being stuck in the Planet's basement, Lois had accepted a better job at the Star City Journal, near Ollie's permanent residence. The desk next to him had sat empty for a couple of weeks, although he'd gotten about fifty chatty emails from Lois, who seemed to be very happy with her new job and her new boyfriend.

But the desk next to him finally had an occupant. At last, he had a new partner. The partner he'd always been waiting for, deep down. He grinned at her, and Chloe looked over at him and smiled, the old, bright smile he remembered from high school. In her eyes, he saw genuine friendship-- not just echoes of the past, but a reflection of the friendship they'd finally put back together.

"Hi," she said.

He smiled back at her, knowing his feelings for her were reflected in his own eyes.

"Hi," he answered.

When we go through life
So sure of where we're headin'
And we wind up lost and it's
The best thing that could have happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah that's when you find yourself

He flew past the Daily Planet's glittering golden globe. It was weird, but once he'd cast off that black coat, and all the darkness that went with it, he'd found himself slowly learning to fly. Or maybe the flying had more to do with Chloe's re-entrance into his life. Maybe Jor-El had been right, and all that suppressed anger and loneliness had been weighing him down. He wasn't sure, and tried not to overanalyze it too much.

All he knew was that he'd been lost for a while. But now, finally, he knew exactly who he was and where he wanted to go... and who he wanted to be with.

He glanced into the Art Deco building as he flew past, seeing Chloe typing away, her eyes intent on the screen, her fingers flying over the keyboard. Chloe, he thought, had finally figured out who she was, too. They were both back on the paths they'd always been meant to walk.

And they were walking those paths together, as partners... and maybe a little bit more. He wondered if he'd ever have gotten to this point if he hadn't gotten lost a little along the way. Maybe sometimes a guy needed to take a wrong turn. Maybe, he thought, it was the only way to be certain of the right path.

But what mattered was that in spite of his mistakes along the way, he'd finally found himself, and he was grateful for that.

He flew once around the globe, then headed off to patrol Metropolis, his red cape fluttering behind him, his yellow sigil shining brightly in the morning sunshine.

-The End-

Baby, Baby

2010-06-24T09:36:00.006-04:00

Shelby, Clark/Chloe futurefic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Sequel to A Dog's Life.

"Urrrrrgggghhhhh."

It was Saturday afternoon, and The Girl and I had been relaxing together in the farmhouse-- her on the couch, me on the old threadbare rug. But the sounds The Girl had suddenly begun making were not like any sound I'd ever heard before. I got up from my comfortable spot on the rug, cocked my head, and then pattered across to her.

Hey. What's going on? You sound like I did the time I ate that whole bag of dog food.

"Ummmppphhh." Despite the horrible groans, she reached out and rumpled my ears. "Shel, I think... I think the baby's coming."

I stared at her. I understood enough of people barks to get the general gist of what she was saying, and it worried me. If you want someone to defend the house and bark at the mailman, I'm your guy. I'm good at chasing rabbits out of the garden, too. But this was not my area of expertise. The puppy? Now?

She groaned again, and I wrinkled my forehead. I know dogs can have puppies pretty easily (not that I'd know from personal experience), but humans... well, humans are something else again. I whined uneasily.

"Yeah. Now." She looked at me with intense eyes. "I called for Clark already, but I don't think he's listening. He's so stressed, and he has so much on his mind... You'd better go find him, I guess. Understand me, Shel? Find Clark."

I understood. I got to my feet, shook out my fur, and took off to find The Boy.

*****

I found The Boy out in the back forty, fixing a fence. Apparently he was fairly absorbed in what he was doing. I knew he should have been able to hear The Girl's groans from here-- his hearing was better than mine, which is highly unusual in someone of the two-legged persuasion-- but he was humming tunelessly as he worked, and evidently hadn't thought to tune her in. Which was kind of dumb, to be honest, but from listening to him and The Girl talk, I knew he hadn't expected the puppy to arrive quite yet. Anyway, My Boy had never been the sharpest tool in the shed.

I ran up to him, sat down, and barked. I was panting pretty hard from my long run-- I was getting kind of old to run at all, let alone half a mile-- but I did my best to make my bark sound deep and serious.

"Hey there, boy." He reached down and tried to pat my head, but I ducked, and barked again, more sharply this time.

Come home, kid. The Girl needs you.

He frowned at me. "Something wrong, buddy?"

I barked again. Come on, kid. I know I'm not Lassie, but I think I'm being pretty damn clear here.

He put down the wooden board in his hands, and his eyebrows drew together. "Is it Chloe? Is she...?"

One more bark, as emphatic as I could make it. GO HOME NOW.

He stood there for another few seconds, frozen. I saw him tilt his head very slightly, and I knew he was listening to The Girl's groans of pain. He looked as terrified as I'd ever seen him.

And then suddenly he was gone.

Amazing how he did that. I'd met a lot of the two-legged persuasion in my life, and not a single one of them had been able to move like that. My Boy was unique. I knew he'd gone to the house, so trotted back in that direction, taking it easy now that I'd delivered my message. Once upon a time I could have moved pretty fast myself (if not fast enough to look like a blur), but those days were way behind me now. The run had taken a lot out of me, so I trotted... and slowed down to a walk once or twice, too.

When I went through the dog door and into the house, I heard The Boy. His voice sounded high-pitched, loud, and frantic.

"I have to get you to the hospital, Chlo. We have to get to Dr. Hamilton. I can't... I mean..."

"It's... too... late." The Girl sounded as if she were talking through a mouthful of nails. Every word was hoarse with pain. I sat down at the entrance to the room and whined in sympathy. "It's coming... right... now..."

"But the baby's early. It's too early."

"Maybe... not... I mean, it's part... Kryptonian..."

"Still, we can't take the chance, Chlo. Something might be wrong. I can pick you up, and get you right there..."

He bent to pick her up, putting his arms around her very gently, and she immediately screeched in pain. He jumped back, looking as wide-eyed and panicked as I'd ever seen him.

"I'm sorry, Chlo, I didn't mean to hurt you..." He looked around wildly. "Maybe if I call an ambulance..."

"And tell them... we're having... a half-human baby?" She groaned again, very loudly. "It's coming... oh, God..."

He stood there, looking scared to death, as if he didn't have a clue what to do. I wanted to help him, but I didn't know how. She lay there on the couch, gasping, almost sobbing. And then she opened her eyes and stared at him imploringly.

"Help me, Clark."

He swallowed, and then he lifted his chin, and the panic faded from his eyes. He knelt beside her, taking her hand.

"It's all right, sweetheart." His voice was no longer high-pitched, but calm and deep and soothing. "I'm here, Chlo. I'll help you through it. Breathe, sweetheart. Just like we practiced, okay?"

She sobbed and clung to his hand fiercely. "Help me, Clark. Please, help me."

"I will," he said softly. "Always."

*****

The puppy had no fur.

I tilted my head on one side, considering the small morsel of humanity that was being presented to me. Of course humans are mostly lacking in all that nice fur that we canines wear with pride, but The Boy had a nice head of dark fur, and The Girl had pretty golden fur (not unlike mine) on her head.

But their puppy was... well, furless. I wondered if it had mange.

Even so, it was kind of cute. It had little tiny fists that waved around aimlessly, and a little squinched-up face. It made a funny sound that hurt my ears but made me want to protect it, all at once.

I decided I liked it. I would have licked its face, except I sensed that The Girl would have gone ballistic if I had, so I simply waved my tail in approbation.

"Good dog, Shel." The Boy was holding the puppy in one arm, but he reached out with the other hand and rubbed my head. "You know, I might not have gotten back to help Chloe in time if you hadn't come to find me. You're a good dog."

Very true, kid. Glad you appreciate how helpful I am. I accept payment in Milkbones.

"So we were thinking..." He grinned over at The Girl, who was still lying on the sofa, looking utterly exhausted. "Well, we have to name the baby after Mom. So her first name is Martha. But we thought... we thought maybe we'd call her Martha Shelby."

I thumped my tail on the floorboards. Good name. I like it.

He laughed. "Glad you approve."

I do. But... well... I looked up at the small bundle and wagged some more. I hope you don't mind... but I'm just going to call it Pup.

The End

Back to the Future, Chapter 1

2010-05-06T07:52:00.004-04:00

Clark, Bart, Chloe
Season 6
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.Sequel to Men in Black and Ghostbusters.

Don't bet your future on one roll of the dice
Better remember, lightning never strikes twice
...So take me away, I don't mind
But you better promise me I'll be back in time
-"Back in Time," Huey Lewis and the News

"You get slower every day, old man."

Clark Kent put on a burst of speed that brought him nearly up to Bart Allen's heels. "I'm just taking it easy on you," he answered. "You being just a kid and everything."

"Ha. You are such a liar. You're gonna run out of gas any minute now."

"No," Clark answered. "I'm gonna kick your ass any minute now."

"You have to catch it to kick it, Supes." Bart started drawing away from him, without any apparent effort whatsoever. He grinned back over his shoulder. "See ya."

He hit the accelerator, metaphorically speaking, and started to draw away. Clark ground his teeth and ran faster, faster than he'd ever run in his lifetime.

But it wasn't enough. Bart was still drawing away from him.

The truth was that Bart could run circles around him, and they both knew it. But Clark was a guy, and his ego didn't really like being bested at something he'd once figured he was the best at. He strained even harder, and started to gain ground again.

Bart looked over his shoulder again. This time there was surprise in his eyes. "Easy there, old man. You're gonna strain something."

"No." Clark found he was breathing hard, something that had never happened before. "I'm... going... to... catch... you."

He moved up on Bart, until he was running just behind him. Bart turned his head, looking startled, and then he grinned.

"In your dreams, man."

He strained, too, and suddenly he was nothing more than a red blur, even to Clark's eyes.

And then suddenly the world shifted, in a weird, stomach-twisting way that Clark couldn't define, but definitely didn't like.

The two of them fell out of superspeed with shocking suddenness, and hit the ground hard.

*****

When Clark opened his eyes, it was to brilliant fall sunshine and the chatter of hundreds of young voices. He got to his feet, a little unsteadily, seeing that they were at Smallville High School, of all places.

Beside him, Bart was blinking in confusion, too. "Weren't we in California?" he said.

"Thought so. I guess we got going pretty fast."

That still didn't explain how they'd wound up in Smallville, of all places. But at least he didn't have to go far to get home to Metropolis-- which considering the way he felt right now, was a good thing. He felt oddly burnt out. He'd obviously strained way too hard trying to catch Bart.

The kid was right. He was getting old.

He looked over the crowd of kids, smiling a little at the memories they evoked... and then froze.

"What's wrong, man?"

Clark didn't say anything. He couldn't. He was caught in the icy grip of horror and disbelief. Bart followed his gaze, and his mouth dropped open, too.

"Holy shit, Supes. That guy looks just like you."

Clark watched as the younger version of him-- tall, gangling, and awkward, with a skateboard over one shoulder-- walked toward Lana, and then tripped over his own feet and fell to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs.

"Jesus," Bart said. "The guy's a total dweeb. He's like a weird Twilight Zone geek version of you."

Clark finally found words. "That is me, Bart."

"Say what? Are you going senile on me or something?"

"No. This was..." Clark could barely force the words out. "This was six years ago, Bart. Back in my freshman year of high school."

Bart's head jerked around in shock. "Are you telling me we traveled in time?"

"I guess..." Clark swallowed. "I guess we went a lot faster than we thought."

"No." Bart started to shake his head emphatically. "No freakin' way, man. No, no, no. We could not possibly have... I mean, it's just not possible that..." He trailed off and stared into the crowd of students. "Holy crap, there's the hottie."

Clark knew who he'd see even before he followed Bart's pointing finger. In the crowd, not far from his younger doppelganger, there stood Pete and Chloe, laughing together.

Chloe, he thought, looking at her sweet, young face with a wave of nostalgia. She'd been so pretty, so open, such a good friend, and yet he'd hardly noticed her back then, because he'd been so damn focused on Lana Lang. It had taken a long, long time for him to realize he was crazy about Chloe.

"Wow," Bart said. "She looks so young..." He trailed off and thought about it, then heaved a long sigh. "Holy shit," he said again. "We really did travel in time, didn't we?"

"Looks that way," Clark said.

"Dude, we better get the hell out of here before we screw something up. You know, like in Back to the Future, where he stops his parents from meeting? We don't want something like that to happen to us."

"We didn't go that far back in time, Impulse. Only six years."

"Still, we're bound to do something wrong. We gotta go home."

"I'd love to get back, Bart. But how exactly are we going to do that? I don't even know how we got here."

"Superspeed, dude. Something about us going so fast made us time travel."

"So how are we going to reverse it? If we do it again, we might just go back further in time. I don't want to wind up hanging out with dinosaurs, you know?"

"Maybe if we ran in the other direction..."

Clark rolled his eyes. "You're going to be a T Rex's dinner, Bart. I'm warning you."

"Well, Supes, just standing around here isn't going to do us any good. It's only a matter of time before you do something stupidly heroic, like save someone who should have died or something, and totally alter the timeline."

Clark nodded slowly, realizing that Bart was right. He wasn't sure how to reverse the effect that had gotten them here, to this point in time, but just standing here wasn't going to get them back. They had to try something.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go."

The two of them burst into a run, but within a few feet, they slowed and came to a halt, looking at each other with horror.

"Crap," Bart said. "Our superspeed's gone."

More to come...

Pitbull, Chapter 17

2010-05-04T10:53:00.007-04:00

Perry and full cast, from "Perry"
Season 3 and later
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Read the story from the beginning here.
Read Chapter 16 here.

The Watchtower was gone.

Chloe Sullivan sipped morosely at her coffee, barely tasting it. Everything she'd worked for in the past year was gone, just like that.

You should always back up your data, she thought glumly. She'd known that, of course. But Ollie and Clark had insisted she couldn't back up her databanks, that the information they contained was too sensitive, too earthshaking, and she'd let them win that particular argument.

Foolishly, as it turned out.

She should never have let Ollie and Clark have a say in the matter, even if Ollie's money was footing the bills. She'd let Ollie upgrade the Watchtower, too, and look what had happened. The safeguards had been inadequate, and as a result she'd almost been killed.

She didn't doubt that Ollie and Clark were heroes, but that didn't mean they had brains.

She sighed, wondering what she was going to do next. She'd known for a while that being Watchtower wasn't for her. Working with heroes was a great destiny... but it wasn't her destiny. It wasn't what she most wanted to do. At least not like this, barricaded in a huge stone tower, hiding from everyone and everything. For a while, the Watchtower had been her refuge, but she'd gotten past the traumas of the past year, and she no longer wanted refuge.

She wanted to rejoin the world.

Don't be stupid, Watchtower, Ollie had said earlier today, when she'd brought the subject up. What would we do without you?

Not a problem, she'd answered. I have a replacement all lined up.

A replacement? Are you kidding me? Who the hell else can do what you do? Who could we trust that much?

She'd smiled a little. She's a friend of mine. And believe me, she's the most trustworthy person you'll ever meet. Her name is Barbara Gordon...

No, Watchtower wasn't for her, not any longer. Maybe it never had been, really. But what was for her? That was the big question. She sipped her coffee thoughtfully, remembering something her father used to say: As one door closes, another opens.

But where was her open door?

As if in answer to her question, an older man sat down at her table. Chloe blinked, startled by the intrusion into her privacy. She glanced at the man, and her eyes widened.

"Ms. Sullivan," he said.

"Mr. White," she answered.

Perry White lifted a mug of coffee to his lips and took a long swig, then put the mug on the table with a thunk. "A little birdie told me you were looking for a job," he said with his roguish smile.

Clark, Chloe deduced. Or possibly Ollie, who co-owned the Daily Planet. She bristled slightly.

"I'm currently unemployed," she said, "but I'm still weighing my options."

"Of course," Perry answered. "I'm sure after over two years out of journalism, offers from newspapers are just flying into your inbox."

"Why would you think I'd be looking for a job in journalism?"

He snorted. "I do know something about you, Ms. Sullivan. I know you've wanted to work at the Daily Planet since you were eight years old. I know that you managed to win an internship there in your freshman year of high school, and that you even managed to talk old Kahn into hiring you your first year of college. What else would you want to do?"

"The Daily Planet," Chloe said between her teeth, "is just a promotional rag for LuthorCorp now, and everyone knows it."

"Ow. You wound me, Ms. Sullivan. I've been doing my best to turn the Planet around."

"Which explains the gushing puff piece on LuthorCorp's pharmaceutical division last week. That was a long ways from fair and balanced journalism, Mr. White. It's obvious the Planet is still LuthorCorp's lapdog."

Perry sighed, and the humor left his eyes. "Okay, kid. Let me lay my cards on the table. I'm doing everything I can to get the Planet's reputation back..."

"You've been trying to do that for a year and a half, Mr. White. The Planet is still producing crap."

Perry looked like he might be grinding his molars together. "Here's the thing. Since the LuthorCorp CEO went missing, the stockholders have been in an uproar. I don't know all the wheeling and dealing that's gone on behind the scenes, but the upshot of it is that LuthorCorp's half of the Planet is being sold to some big corporation in Gotham."

Her eyebrows shot up. Ollie, you jerk, why didn't you mention any of this to me? "Gotham?"

"Yeah, Gotham. Wayne Industries. And from what I've heard, the company isn't looking to make the Planet its bitch. The CEO is genuinely interested in serious, old school journalism. In short..." Perry fixed her with a mournful stare. "This is our big chance to finally make a difference, kid. But you can't make a difference if you're sitting in coffee houses sipping lattes, instead of chasing down stories."

Chloe picked up her spoon and began idly stirring her coffee. Her heart was thumping in her chest, but she strove to conceal her sudden excitement. "I don't get why you would need me."

"You do know why. When I hired your friend Kent, I'd lost all my best journalists. Anyone with the ability to write a coherent sentence packed up and fled for greener pastures the minute Lex Luthor bought the Planet. And I still don't have enough real reporters. I'm training up all these kids, but it's slow going, let me tell you. I need all the journalists who can write I can get."

She shrugged. "I haven't written in two years, Mr. White. So again I ask, why me?"

He looked at her for a long moment. The corners of his mouth curved up slightly, but his eyes were solemn.

"Because," he answered, "you were once the kind of reporter I would like to be."

She stared back at him, struck dumb. For Perry White, Pulitzer winner and renowned journalist, to utter those words to her... well, she couldn't imagine a greater compliment. It left her at a loss for words. At last she lifted the mug to her lips and took a long sip of coffee. She noticed her hand was trembling-- whether with fear or excitement or both, she wasn't certain.

"I'll think about it," she said.

*****

"Welcome to the bullpen, kid."

Clark tried not to gape foolishly as he looked around at the vast Art Deco space, with brightly colored Tiffany lamps hanging overhead. He tried to look cool, as if this wasn't the biggest damn moment of his life. But inside he felt like a kid on Christmas.

Wow, he thought. Wow. Just... wow.

He'd never really dared to imagine he'd get promoted out of the basement, let alone up here where the big boys worked. Chloe had worked here for almost three years, and never gotten promoted. But of course things had been different then. Back then the Daily Planet had been a well-respected paper with some of the best journalists in the world writing for it. And now...

Well, maybe now that the management had changed hands, things would improve. He hoped so. He'd been visiting the Planet for years, but since he'd started working here, he'd grown to love the newspaper and its great history as much as Chloe had. He wanted to help it win back its former glory.

Still, he thought to himself that it was a pity Chloe wouldn't come back to work here. The thought of working beside her under the Tiffany lamps gave him an odd twinge of longing. It felt like the logical extension of the two of them working together in high school. Ever since he'd started working here, he'd imagined her sitting at the desk next to him, and thought how right it would feel to be her partner again.

He sighed. Some things just weren't meant to be, he told himself, and headed for his desk, his box of personal belongings clutched in his arms.

"Oh, just a couple of things, kid," Perry said behind him. "First of all, you're not partnered with Lane any more. The two of you fought more than you wrote, and anyway, she's wasted on the city beat. That piece she did on the Mexican uprising last year was terrific. I've put her on the foreign desk."

Clark considered that, and nodded. It was a nice step up for Lois, and she'd always been kind of bored with the city beat anyway. The occasional big stories got her fired up, but she wasn't enthused about turning out the duller, everyday stuff, and tended to foist it off on him. He figured the foreign desk meant she'd be traveling overseas a lot, which she'd probably love. She'd grown up a military brat, and she'd never quite lost the wanderlust.

Even so, he'd miss Lois. She was a lot of fun to be around, when she wasn't snarking at him and irritating the hell out of him. He hadn't minded having her as a partner, though he did have to admit the two of them had squabbled more or less constantly.

He wondered who Perry was partnering him with. Anyone was fine, so long as it wasn't Parsons. The guy had serious gas issues, and the odors he produced caused Clark's sensitive nose genuine anguish. He went toward his desk, thinking, Anyone but Parsons, anyone but Parsons...

He saw Parsons' nameplate on the desk next to his, and groaned inwardly.

"I'll be working with Parsons, huh?" he said over his shoulder, trying to sound enthusiastic.

"No," Perry answered. "You'll be working with someone new."

Clark glanced at the desk on the other side of him. Whoever the newbie was, they hadn't gotten their nameplate up yet. He looked over the neatly arrayed items, seeing a coffee mug, a small stack of books, a Smallville High sticker on a binder...

Smallville High.

He blinked, and looked back at the coffee mug. He'd seen it before, many, many times. It was a small green alien head with slanty black eyes, and it had sat on Chloe's desk at the Torch for years, and on her desk in the basement of the Planet as well. He gaped at it, barely daring to hope.

"You're in the way," a familiar voice said behind him. "Move over."

He turned around and saw Chloe Sullivan pushing by him, a box of stuff in her arms. He stared as she walked by, and he felt a big stupid grin spread over his face. She looked up at him, and he saw a twinkle in her eyes, a twinkle he hadn't seen in a long, long time. For the first time in a long while, she looked happy. And no wonder.

She was finally back where she belonged.

He looked at his desk, right next to hers, and smiled even more broadly.

He was right where he belonged, too.

*****

Perry stood back and watched as Kent tried very, very hard not to grin too broadly at the sight of his 'lady editor." He liked Kent. He had to admit he'd hired the kid at least partly out of curiosity about any abilities he might have, but after a year and a half of observation, it was clear that Kent had no special powers. He was just an ordinary young man, but he did have a surprising way with words.

Kent had confessed more than once that he was still going to Chloe Sullivan for help on running down stories quite frequently. Apparently you could take the girl out of the Daily Planet, but you couldn't take the Daily Planet out of the girl. Perry felt a bit pleased with himself for finally managing to bring Ms. Penchant for the Truth back into the fold. If the new management really wanted the Planet to turn itself around-- and so far, it seemed that they did-- he still needed good journalists. He couldn't run a paper by himself.

And Kent, Sullivan, and Lane might be youngsters, but they had a hell of a lot of potential.

He remembered his meeting yesterday with the Planet's co-owners, Oliver Queen and Bruce Wayne. "You're the Editor in Chief now," Queen had said, his words filling Perry with a joy he had to fight hard not to show. "We're counting on you to get the Planet back to its glory days."

"Congratulations," Wayne had added. "You have a great opportunity here, White."

And he did. He knew that. He had the opportunity to give the grand old lady of Metropolis her dignity and reputation back. And even more importantly, he had the opportunity to do some real, serious journalism. For the first time in almost two years, there was nothing fettering him, no one dragging him down, no superior trying to stop him from reporting on what really mattered.

He did have an opportunity here, and by God, he was going to take it.

He glanced at Kent and Sullivan, both industriously setting up their desks and conspicuously not chatting, even though he knew perfectly well they were both bursting with things to say to each other. The future of the Daily Planet, he knew, rode on them and the other youngsters that filled the room... but it rode on him, too. He might be old and gray, but he still had the wisdom and the experience and the sheer grit necessary to turn the Planet around. And Kent and Sullivan, along with the rest of his young staff, had the youth and the fire and the boundless energy that the task would require.

He looked at the bustling bullpen-- his bullpen-- once more, and then turned and headed into his office to plot out his strategy. He had a hell of a lot of work to do, but he didn't doubt for a moment that he could do it.

The Daily Planet was damn well once again going to be the world's greatest newspaper... or his name wasn't Perry "the Pitbull" White.

-The End-

Triptych, Chapter 3

2010-05-03T21:47:00.005-04:00

Clark/Kal/Chloe
Season 9
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Warning: Some threesome aspects and general weirdness.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.
Sequel to Triangulation.
Read Chapter 2 here.
Read the story from the beginning here.

Clark didn't take her hand. He reared back, looking shocked and offended. "You have got to be kidding me," he said.

It took a lot to shock Kal. In fact, Chloe wasn't sure he was capable of being shocked. He only grinned and took her hand in his massive paw. "Sounds good to me, sweetcheeks."

"Do not even think it," Clark growled. "And hands off. There is no way I'm going to stand by and let you--"

"No one's asking you to stand by," Kal answered. "The reporter's asking for your active participation in this new and exciting venture. Quit being a prude, will ya?"

"But-- but--" Clark looked adorably confused. He fixed imploring eyes on Chloe and stared at her, wielding the bewildered puppydog expression that always worked on her. "You can't be serious, Chlo."

"Clark," she said gently. "I know this feels kind of weird, but think about it logically. Until twenty minutes ago, you and Kal were the same person. You were both my boyfriend."

She could see him examining that thought in his head, turning it over for possible flaws, and finally accepting it. Clark might be a prude, but he was also fair, almost to a fault.

"Okay," he said. "I see your point. But the thing is, we're not the same person any more. We're two different people in two different bodies. You're going to have to make a choice."

"Why?"

She could see the wheels spinning on that one, too. "Well, Chlo... you can't expect the three of us to... people just don't..."

"People do, actually," she said. "More than half of the world's societies are polygamous."

"Yeah, but this society isn't polygamous."

"You'd be amazed, actually. I did this article..."

Kal looked annoyed. "You're heading off on a tangent, Goldilocks. Women shouldn't talk so much; it gets in the way of fucking. Look, farmboy, the thing is that she belongs to both of us--"

"If you say I belong to you again," Chloe remarked pleasantly, "I'm going to tear off your balls and feed them to you for dinner."

It was, she thought, the first time she'd ever seen Kal look taken aback. He blinked at her, then got his conversational ball rolling again. "Um, yeah. What I meant to say, farmboy, is that we've both been dating her, in a way. So unless you want to do like Solomon and cut her down the middle--"

"Which I personally would not be in favor of," Chloe interjected.

"Then we gotta split her up some other way."

"Kal," Chloe said, letting her voice grow a little sharp. "Please stop talking about splitting me up as if you were discussing the best way to split the last pint of Cherry Garcia in the freezer."

"Hey, do we have Cherry Garcia? Cool."

"Kal!" Clark sounded annoyed. "Focus, Kal. We have a problem and we're trying to solve it."

"No, farmboy. We've already solved it. You just haven't quite caught up yet."

"Listen, Kal..." Clark looked exasperated. "The thing is, I don't think I can quite... I mean, I'm just not into..."

"Farmboy, you're into a lot of stuff you don't like to admit. Like being a girl, remember that?"

Clark's cheeks flushed a dull red. "I wouldn't want to do it again."

"Bull. You loved every minute of it. You loved me fucking you, a whole hell of a lot."

"Could we never speak of that again? Like never, ever, ever?"

"Dude, look, I'm just trying to make a point here."

"Which is?"

"Which is that you're a lot dirtier than you think you are. And it's not just my influence. Deep down inside, you're a bad boy, or I wouldn't be here at all. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of a threesome with the blonde and a hot guy like myself turned you on a lot more than you want to admit."

"Kal..." Clark covered his face with his hands for a moment. Chloe suspected he was bright red now. "Look, even if I had, uh, an interest in guys... which I totally don't... you're me."

"Not exactly."

"Close enough. We're like identical twins. It would be like incest, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah, we talked about this before. I think it's more like masturbation than incest. But whatever. I'm not asking you to shag me unless you really want to, farmboy. I'm talking about screwing the reporter's brains out."

"Sex with two incredibly gorgeous guys," Chloe said, to no one in particular. "Is there a down side to this?"

"Of course there is!" Clark snapped. "I am not doing this, okay? I am just not... it's just wrong, all right? I'm not doing it, and that's all there is to it."

Kal studied him for a long moment, then cocked an eyebrow at Chloe.

"Blondie," he said, "take off your clothes."

"Don't bother," Clark said stiffly. "I'm not as easy as you think. I'm not going to just melt into a puddle if you... oh, God."

"See?" Kal said. "Totally easy."

"Totally," Chloe agreed, tossing her bra aside.

"Oh, God," Clark said again. "I can't-- I shouldn't-- oh, the hell with it. Let's fuck."

More to come...

Goosebumps, Chapter 2

2010-05-03T20:33:00.004-04:00

Clark/Chloe
Season 6, sequel to She Bop
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 1 here.

It wasn't every guy who found goosebumps wildly attractive, Chloe thought.

In fact, it wasn't any guy she knew of. Except Clark Kent.

He lowered his head, pressing his face into her shoulder and uttering a low, sensual murmur that was somewhere between a growl and a purr. Even through jeans, she could feel his cock give a hungry throb. She rubbed against him, and he growl-purred again.

"Here," she whispered, pulling up her shirt. "You can rub right against my goosebumps."

He made a tortured sound of need, and his hips jerked, pressing his immense erection against her. She could feel its heat through the fabric. "I'm still mad at you," he gritted out through bared teeth.

"I can tell," she said, rubbing her belly against him, bare skin against denim. His head fell back, and something more than a growl rose from him. It was a long sound of mortal anguish, as if he were about to die of pleasure.

"Chloe..."

She loved hearing him say her name that way, as if was being dragged out of the deepest part of him. His hips jerked harder and faster, and she knew he was about to lose control. Goosebumps had that effect on him. Where goosebumps were concerned, Clark Kent was seriously easy.

She let him thrust twice more against her belly, then pushed him away, very gently. "Wait," she murmured.

"Wait?" He sounded indignant. "I can't wait."

"Of course you can."

"Chlo," he growled, his voice in a lower register than usual, "I'm already pretty damn pissed off with you. Do not try my patience or I'll-- I'll--"

She unbuttoned his jeans and slowly unzipped them, then looked up into his eyes. "You'll do what?"

He tried to look fierce, and failed utterly. "I'll screw you."

"Oh, my, I'm terrified," she mocked gently. "What a horrific punishment. Please, Clark, oh please spare me. I'm terrified of the prospect of multiple orgasms and a good hard--"

"Do not say that word," he rasped.

"Why not?" She smiled at him. "Will it make you come?"

"It might just. Shut up for once, Chlo. You talk too much."

"I only talk," she said softly, "because it turns you on."

She pushed his blue boxers out of the way, then stepped back a pace and looked at what she'd unwrapped. His erection was huge, glistening with precome, and as she stared it did an eager little dance, pulsing as if begging for her attentions.

"Very nice," she said softly. "How do you want to come?"

He bared his teeth at her. "I told you, I want to screw you."

"You mean you want to fuck."

At the blunt word, he closed his eyes, and his breathing shifted to erratic gasps. She watched his cock with interest, seeing it jolt hard. He was almost there already.

So amazingly easy.

She stripped off her clothes. His eyes snapped open at the sound of her shirt hitting the floor, and he stared at her. "What are you doing?"

"Stripping, obviously."

"Uh..." She watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed convulsively. "Chlo, I can't... I mean, I'm about to..."

"I know." She stripped off her shorts and stood in front of him, dressed only in a bra and skimpy panties. God, it was cold. She was starting to shiver. But it was so worth it to make Clark's eyes gleam like that.

"There you go," she said softly. "Lots and lots of goosebumps."

Clark made another sound, this one an unnnhhhh, a primitive, animal sound of hunger. He reached for her, but she stepped back, shaking her head.

"You know what I want to see," she said softly.

"Chlo..." His voice was tight, strangled by lust and need. "I can't... I want you..."

"Later," she answered. "But first, I want to watch you."

He shuddered, as if unable to resist her demands. And then his hand wrapped around his long, thick cock, and he began stroking himself hard.

"That's it," she whispered. "That's good, Clark. Let me see you come."

"Oh... God." He sounded as if he were suffocating. "I can't... Chlo... I want you... I want to wait... but I can't..."

"Don't wait," she whispered, staring avidly at his cock. It was flushed a deep rose now, gleaming wet with the copious moisture that pulsed from him, and with every motion of his hand, it darkened. She watched, seeing his balls pull up against his body, seeing his cock jerking even in the encircling prison of his hand. What she could see of his body was covered in goosebumps, and he was shaking as if with cold, even though she knew he was impervious to extremes of temperature.

His green eyes were focused on her intently, staring at her bare flesh, covered in goosebumps. He looked enraptured, almost drugged. And then the first long burst of come exploded from him, all over her naked body, all over the wide planks of the floor, and he threw back his head, his mouth falling open in a long cry of pleasure. She watched his cock spasm over and over again, watched his body shuddering, watched his face contort in ecstasy.

At last it ended, and he released himself with a gasp. She saw his legs shaking, saw how drained he was, and moved to him quickly.

"Sit down before you fall over," she whispered.

He dropped onto the old couch, pulling her down into his lap. His chest was heaving with long, desperate breaths, and his face dropped into her hair as if he just couldn't hold his head up. But he spoke into her hair, proving that he was indeed conscious.

"Your turn," he said.

More to come...