Five Christmas Kisses that Chloe Sullivan and Davis Bloome Never Had

I. Jitters

"You've been working all day," Davis said, sitting down on the couch in The Torch. He was supposed to be home, helping his parents clean up after everything with Earl Jenkins. Right now, he just didn't feel like it. Earl had been a friend, one of the few he'd ever had, and he only got so sick, was driven so nuts, because of the rocks that came with his ship. "You need to rest too, Chloe."

His friend sighed and flipped her head back, making her bangs spring everywhere. "Level Three, Davis. It's out there. Earl Jenkins almost killed our whole class trying to find it. You know what this means?"

"It means if Earl went nuts over it and we all almost died. It means that some cub reporter from Smallville High shouldn't fuck with it."

She narrowed her eyes at his cursing but didn't react otherwise. "LuthorCorp knows about the rocks too. That's exactly what it means. They might have known for years about the kind of people come from them, about the mutants."

"And?" Davis pressed, still glad that, so far, Chloe hadn't made the leap from mutants to alien.

Not that he was overly impressive as one. He just couldn't be hurt, not now. Clark Luthor had jump started all of that by running him over with his Porsche a few months ago. Now nothing could pierce his skin at all. He knew. After an argument with his dad, he'd shoved his arm in a thresher and the damn blades had bent on him. He wasn't exactly sure what invulnerability was going to do for him, but he knew he better keep his mouth shut and his head down. Earl's outburst and everything that had come with it wasn't helping the low profile, although he was beginning to have his own suspicions about the younger Luthor brother and how strong he had to have been to pull both him and Earl up one handed.

Maybe he was Level Three's star, saved out as a prize Lionel Luthor wanted more than just in a cage.

Davis wasn't sure, but he knew Chloe poking her nose in it wasn't going to do her a damn bit of good. He was invulnerable, not fast. He couldn't keep an eye on her every second.

"Lionel might be hurting people."

"The mutants aren't exactly-"

"There aren't just dangerous ones like Tina or Sean Kelvin. I have files on suspected mutants who don't hurt anyone. You really want to leave them to be prodded and cut into by Lionel Luthor and his creepy sons?"

"No, of course not, but I don't want to see him hurt you for exposing something that might not even exist," he replied, setting his hand over hers for emphasis. He'd always felt drawn to her from the day he'd shown her around the middle school and she'd kissed him by the bleachers. Why she blew him off after, he couldn't understand. "Chloe, here."

She rolled her eyes as he handed her a beautifully wrapped gift. Mom had taught him how to even make real bows from ribbon. He wanted it to be perfect. "I thought we agreed nothing fancy. Just friends stuff?"

He sighed, "I know but I wanted to surprise you anyway. Christmas is in three days, just relax and stop trying to block evil for once."

"Or chase conspiracies?"

"That too," he replied, grinning almost as widely as she was when she spied her gift under all the paper. "Do you like it?"

She clutched the copy of Tales of the Weird and Unexplained to her chest. "How did you even find this?"

"Many, many hours on Lycos and also hitting some local Metropolis bookstores. Mom and Dad had to go to get some supplies for the farm so I conned them into taking me to this rare place near the Slums. I didn't even think I could."

Chloe leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. "It's the best! No one gets me like you, Davis. You're a great friend."

He kept his smile frozen in place even though something weird was howling inside of him, something feral and low and for a second he thought his vision was red-filmed. "I know so let's get out of here and forget the Luthors for a while."

Along with his chance to get out of the friend zone.

II. Scare

"My mom didn't leave," Chloe said, and she didn't know how to say the rest.

Davis frowned and sat down next to her on the couch in The Torch. He was so warm, she felt it pour off of him in waves. Davis had gotten so tall, so broad lately. He'd been the hero of the Crows' winning season, which had come out of nowhere. It wasn't that he hadn't always been athletic. It was more that she was surprised he'd try at all. Of course, he was eighteen this year and could play under his own signature. It had pissed Mr. Kent off and she wasn't sure why.

Oh she suspected. Every time something terrible with the mutants happened or the Luthors, Davis was there. At first it seemed like those things sought him out, but recently, he was just there. She'd had her suspicions with Mikhail, that somehow Davis had saved her and been on the field at the same time. She wasn't sure how fast he'd have to be to do that, but pretty damn fast.

She'd bet her lap top he was infected, at the very least.

Still, she didn't know how to tell anyone that her mother was nuts and had been hospitalized and that was why she wasn't around. All the things her dad had told her over the years were so much bullshit.

"Chloe?"

She hiccupped and closed her eyes. "She's in Fairview Sanitarium. She's been there since I was eight."

Davis cradled her then, rocking her against his chest. "It's okay."

She sniffled and looked up at him, into his deep brown eyes. She wasn't even sure why she pushed him away so hard. Chloe liked him, always had, but it had been easier to stay friends. It didn't seem possibly they'd do anything but self destruct hooking up the same day they met, so she ketp him at arm's length. Besides her cousin Lois, he was the only friend she had and she couldn't lose him.

"It's not, though. My mom's nuts and schizophrenia is genetic. What if that's me in a few years, just drooling in some asylum!"

Davis shook his head and kissed her forehead. "You won't be. I just...there are worse things to be, Chloe. You're perfectly rational and I'll never let anything happen to you."

Tears streamed down her cheeks and she wanted to believe him, but no one could stop a time bomb in her DNA, not even Davis, no matter what powers he might have had. "That's easy for you to say. You don't know about your parents. You don't know for sure anything bad about them. I know my mom's catatonic and never leaving and ten years? That could be me too."

"No, I don't know anything," he said, standing and starting to pace. "There are so many things I wish I could ask them. Things that I know are wrong with me and I can't. Chloe, you're your dad too and other factors. You're going to be fine."

Frowning, she hopped to her feet. "What's wrong?"

Davis swallowed and looked away. "Nothing, it's stupid."

"No, it's not. What's did you dream about Davis? Why could you save me from Mikhail?"

"I can't-"

"You're infected, right?"

Davis clenched his jaw and when he spoke, it was so fast that she barely kept up. "I wish it were that simple because it's not and I can't have anything I want, not at all," he added, cupping her cheek. "Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because," he said, leaning close and she could almost kiss him back, taste his lips on hers finally because they were so close.

"Why?"

"When I dreamed, all I saw was blood."

"Davis-"

He shook his head. "It's too much. I can't talk about this. Look The Talon has A Christmas Story on, can we just pretend today didn't happen, not forever, just a while. I could use a distraction."

Chloe sighed and wished he'd just trust her, just a little. "One day. I still say nothing's as bad as figuring you're due to go insane."

Davis took her hand and grabbed their coats. "What about being a monster?"

She wasn't sure he was joking.

III. Lexmas

"There's no way you met Santa," Chloe hissed, sitting in a corner of the Kent kitchen. Everyone else but her and Davis were sitting in the living room, trimming the tree and talking election strategies.

Davis shrugged and she gulped again at how close he was, at the scent of his aftershave tickling her nose. She wished they'd stop this dance around each other. There were no longer secrets between them. He knew all about her mother, about the deals she'd made stupidly with Lionel and Lex Luthor two years ago, and, in return, Chloe knew that Davis had come from the shower.

Hell, she knew as much as he did about his origins because all any of them knew was that he'd come in the shower and that he was invulnerable and very fast. No name, no planet, no even idea of how else he might grow.

She wished she could offer him any real comfort. All she could do was help him fight the mutant and Luthorian corruption that ran rampant around their small hamlet, promise she'd never leave him.

"So Santa?" she prodded.

Davis nodded. "I know, but I'm an alien so why isn't there a Santa Claus? I mean, Lana went nuts with all that French witch crap last year."

"Like those stones did us any good," Chloe griped. "They stay in the caves but haven't led you to crap."

Davis frowned at that. "Maybe they're not for me."

"But you're the alien,"

"Maybe I'm not the only one. We don't know I'm unique. Hell, you thought Cyrus could be."

"Then who else?"

"Not sure yet, but maybe not every mutant is actually one. I don't know, but why is Santa so hard?"

"Because reindeer? Round belly? Going down chimneys? That's all crap, Davis."

"I saw him, and he gave me this box. Said I couldn't open it until I was back home to report to you."

"Then open it!"

He smiled back at her and her heart melted. She couldn't understand how he'd gotten here, why anyone would send him away. "So, Chloe, let's see what I've got," he continued opening the red wrapping and blushing. "Oh."

It was a large sprig of mistle toe with a message on a tag attached to it, written in flawless script:

Kiss her.

She gasped, her throat dry. "Wow, it must be Santa cause you'd never do this."

Davis frowned back at her and were his eyes red? Not bloodshot but red, glowing like burning coals. Could he tell? "Why would you say that?"

"Because, okay, first I was scared and then for a while you were even more scared because of the fact I didn't know 'the secret.' Now we're on the same page and, let me be honest, I've been dropping damn anvils about all of this, and you just pretend not to notice."

Those same red eyes were glaring back at her and catechism was running through her mind. They'd have to look into that later, whatever that weird shift was, maybe he was getting another ability.

Now? Now, damn it, they were going to work on them.

"You think I don't?" he asked and his voice sounded wrong somehow, gruffer. "I can't."

"Because why?"

"You know why."

"Say it."

"I'm not human and it's not fair and-"

She grabbed the damn mistle toe herself and held it over both of them, kissing him with a furor she couldn't contain after six years. He resisted at first but kissed her back, wrapping strong arms around her. When she pulled back to look into his face, his eyes were brown again.

Smoking cool.

Chloe had a Hell of an effect on him.

"I get to decide what's fair, Kent. I...Merry Christmas, Davis."

He smiled and kissed her again. "Merry Christmas, Chloe."

IV. Identity

"See you pulled it off, and that idiot Jimmy Olsen isn't any the wiser on this. So why aren't we happy?" Chloe asked.

Davis sighed and kissed her. He had a gift for her, been saving a year for it and the velvet box felt heavy in his pocket. The last six months since Lex had gotten his hand on that orb, had done something to affect Davis, well, things were wrong. He was blacking out and losing time.

In the last few weeks he'd waken up naked in the fields around the farm covered in blood and with random live stock shredded next to him. That other shoe dropped and he wasn't...the last time, two days ago, there was some kind of grey spike embedded through the horse's heart. On the sly, he'd slipped it to Emil and, as he'd feared, all the doctor could tell him definitively was that some of the DNA was made up of non-terrestrial chemicals.

His.

Something was happening to him, and it was more than dreams of blood that alternated with a vision of a woman with long dark hair and cold eyes who spoke of how he was going to do the House of Zod proud.

"It's nothing," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out something else instead, a necklace he'd spied with a small emerald chip. That would have to do until Davis could figure out what he was changing into. He couldn't bind Chloe to these things until he at least knew.

"You just seem so sad. The Ultimate's secret is safe. Your mom and dad are coming back from D.C. for Christmas. It's supposed to be a good time. You look like I killed your dog."

No, just like I killed a cow or four.

Leaning down, he kissed her again, long and lingering, taking in the feel of her. He wanted to save this moment. "I love you."

"I love you too, always will," she said, narrowing her eyes at him and he could see the gears in her head twirling. He hated sometimes her intelligence, that Chloe Sullivan was impossible to lie to.

"Good, then I have an early Christmas present," he said, handing her the package. He flinched when her smile fell just a bit when she realized it was merely a necklace.

Chloe pasted a huge smile back on her face and pulled up her hair. "Will you?"

He nodded and clipped it shut. "You look amazing."

"Then I have a lot of pressure on me and I hope you'll like what I got you tomorrow."

"If it's from you, I will," he said, taking her hand and leading her out of the Planet's basement and to her car. Davis was just glad the weird spikes didn't stop errupting from his knuckles until they were already in the car and he could hide it under his coat.

V. Doomsday

"You bring him back to me," she hissed.

Clark Luthor eyed her and she didn't know what kind of deals she was making anymore. "He's supposed to kill me, right?"

She snorted and pulled the lead box out of her purse. The black meteor rock was rare but she'd seen it split Lex before, and she hoped it could do the same for Davis, take the Beast part away. "He doesn't want to. I can't say that's something that bothers you much, is it Ultraman? How many competitors or problems have you eliminated for your father?"

"Including Lionel too? I lost count."

She swallowed. "You're a monster."

"I'm not the one running amok all over Metropolis, nine feet tall and spikey. I'm not the one who uprooted a damn subway car. I kill people? They need killing."

"Look, I need Davis back. The Beast was sent here for you. You take this," she said, handing him the box. "You take it and you separate them and then the Beast is your damn problem."

"And if it does to me like it did to Lex? I can't see my motivation in this? It's as strong as I am and the sane thing for anyone is to run all the way to fucking Asia and hope it never finds us."

"So you're a coward? Why am I not surprised," she spat.

Clark shrugged. "Sweeten the pot, Goldilocks. What do I get if I save your boyfriend?"

She swallowed. Chloe had been here before years ago with his father and older brother. "What do you want?"

He leaned down then, and kissed her. Chloe tried pulling back but it was like being caught in a steel trap. Finally, he released her. "Oh you know, Miss Sullivan. I stop him, bring Davis back and you come to me."

"I..."

"Or I go to Tahiti and fuck your problem."

She closed her eyes and fingered the necklace at her throat. In a year, she'd never taken it off. "Deal."

There was a breeze and he was gone before she could rethink her decision.

She hadn't stopped hugging him tightly in three days. Hell, Chloe hated to leave the bed to do anything but her hair was getting pretty tangled. Of course, if you'd seen Davis shirtless, you couldn't blame her for foregoing hygiene to an extent.

"I love you," he said, smiling up at her. "I'm free. Hell, I'm normal. You brilliant investigator. You figured it out. Luthor killed The Beast and we can have everything we wanted."

"Well you don't have abilities."

"Screw abilities," he said, kissing her and she burst into tears when he revealed the ring in his palm. "I...will you marry me?"

Swallowing hard, she let him slip the ring on her finger, trying to enjoy the gifts this Christmas had brought them-his freedom and their union.

She'd worry about Luthor tomorrow; it was the best she could do.