Next part! Sorry for the wait!

Just about the time the 'zombies' started breaking in, a dark haired paramedic ushered Jimmy and Lana to the vents.
"You're not visible there. Get out of reach and try to keep quiet."

Davis, his uniform read. Jimmy recognized him but chose to ignore that fact. He'd been the guy to put him into that drug addled sleep after all. But it was hard to choose to hold a grudge after he was going down with his ship and all. Titanic was a tragic story. Not that going down with your ship wasn't kind of a stupid thing to do.

"I hope your head doesn't get torn off. Best of luck, bro." Jimmy said.

Davis just nodded. Taciturn guy.

"Is Chloe safe yet?" Lana asked. "If she got caught outside …"
That seemed to get a reaction out of the broody type. He shook his head, jaw tightening, forgetting they were even there.

"She never made it into the North exit… I have to find..."

"Man, wait." Davis couldn't vanish before he'd replaced the vent, leave Jimmy here to be piecemeal.

Jimmy had a tiny suspicion that he was waiting for Chloe. It was always about the girl, even when they acted all noble. Jimmy didn't begrudge him that.

Jimmy got up to the vent first, courtesy of some fancy footwork. He held out a hand to Lana and she took it rather enthusiastically.
"Careful… stitch," he forced out.

Lana couldn't help it; one of her hands wasn't so good for supporting herself on the way up.

"Dammit, woman, you're heavy."

Then, Jimmy couldn't explain it, but she was inside the vent, the cover was on. Boom! There was something weird about that guy. Or he was just really desperate.

Lana squeezed Jimmy fingers, once inside. "No one has ever said that to me before."

Then they crawled. They hadn't gotten far before they started to hear the breaking in. Shouting and metal against assorted hard surfaces and a few bullets, steel on flesh.

Lana had stopped. Jimmy couldn't shake the image of a green hand reaching past the vent and yanking her out feet first, tearing her into gory pieces. Gross.

"You can keep on going. Come on."

Lana just lay against the metal listening. Her hand had opened up again. She had that look on her face like Henry got when it started to storm. Mom and Dad hadn't ever noticed, but Jimmy did. He'd try to comfort him any way he could. It lost him some of his best comics.
Maybe that was what he was supposed to do. He could be the clown for Lana.

"This is…cool. I saw this in Sky High. A long time ago. There was this evil, hot cheerleader who could make herself a bunch of doubles…"

She started crawling again.

It wasn't until at least twenty minutes later that Jimmy's voice wavered. The sounds out there started to change. A voice screamed and it was the most horrible thing Jimmy had ever heard, like something had taken it and amplified, slowed it. Made it less than human.

People didn't shout any more. Beams kept breaking with an alarming rate. Something heavy was moving under them. There was screaming, so much screaming reverberating and bouncing off the walls like it couldn't ever end.

"That's what he was capable of." Lana whispered. Jimmy didn't understand what she meant. She crawled forward the last few steps, let out a shuddering breath and screwed her eyes shut tight.
"I hope David found her. Oh, I hope he did."

"She probably saved our lives." Chloe might have, from all this- whatever it was. Jimmy drew himself in tighter, thinking of one of those monster flicks. Monsters didn't exist. Of course.

"She saved both our lives by shooting. They would have torn us apart otherwise." Lana went on.

(Something howled, but it wasn't a howl, really, but like beams breaking, hundreds of knives hitting a thick sheet of glass. Was that what being torn apart sounded like?)

"That sucks. I'm no good at formal apologies." Jimmy said.

Right below them, there was a wet, swishing sound as something-someone hit the ground. They didn't move, barely breathed for five minutes, but the vent never opened, no one and nothing came. Something else broke.
Jimmy heard Lana's manicured nails scraping against the metal.

Maybe it wasn't the least interested in them. It was like World War Three out there.
They had to block it out somehow.

"Do you want to hear about Catwoman?"

"I don't care. Just. Just talk to me. "

By the time Chloe walked into what (had been) Metropolis General, it was blacker than an eclipse. The dulled emergency lights couldn't penetrate the ash. She felt her way past a few signs, an exit, out of lights and covered with soot halfway across the road. From there it was easy- a straight beeline into what was left of the hospital.

Something thick caught at her ankle and threw her forward into some half burned wreckage. Her face slid against the glass pane before she could ease away. This had been the phone booth.

On the other side of the glass there was a thick, limp hand, nails all covered in crusty blood. Someone from the mob? His fingers still clutched a baseball bat. Chloe didn't have to look twice to know that whoever-he-was was dead. There was little left to identify. Smoke had probably killed him before he got very close. But the glass was unbroken; and fire hadn't torn off his face like that.

Chloe eased herself away; semi-stumbled on her way, nerves on edge. She's started to learn how natural-or unnatural disasters brought out the worst in people. She just had to get in, find Davis, get out. Lock several bolts behind them.
If she even could.

There was a remnant of heat in the air. Part of this place had burned. The streets were quiet like there was no one else to try to get close. There wasn't even insulation left. She bit down on her lip. She'd never heard of a meteor mutation that let someone survive being burned alive.
Her eyes watered as she turned over body after body-thinking of tenth grade and the hundreds of corpses in Pompeii. What if he was next?

Davis had fallen like something had thrown him aside, but he wasn't burned like the others. He was naked, huddled in fetal position next to a few crumpled canisters. He wasn't under a pile of rubble. That was something, right?

She could see the dark lines in his sides, a beautiful muscled abdomen, not like she had seen all that many in her life. Clark never'd volunteered. But this was different, strangely sad vulnerability. Pale skin, he'd never looked this pale in the hospital. There was blood everywhere. She could smell it under the smoke.

Chloe felt for a pulse, the way she'd seen him do, fingers somehow tracing their ways to his cheek. Her fingers tingled with a ghost of roughness. His face was cold.

It was reflex, panic, shake him, shake him like she had before. Maybe he hadn't been ripped apart in the same way as all the others…but… There was so much blood.

He would live. She couldn't live with the other alternative and he would come back. He needed to finish this. Some disconnected part of her wondered when she'd started trust him more than Clark. Or what he needed to finish. Saving people? Just her?

She was going to stay here until the miracle. Chloe settled ahead of him and the canister, wrapped her skirt around her knees. Cocked the gun and aimed into the empty darkness. It was an hour on the clock.

Chloe didn't let go, drew careful circles on his cheek as now alarms blared and the city was blanketed by death. She had to keep herself calm somehow.

When Davis startled up his thoughts were clouded like a nightmare falling through empty space. Sickening and familiar, the taste of blood in the back of his throat. He wasn't alone this time-and he was warm.

Chloe had half clambered into his lap before remembering that those injuries of his probably still itched. The gun was left by the wayside forgotten.

"What are-you doing here?" His voice left his throat in a pained, wondering woosh of air. "I looked for you. You'd found somewhere safe."

"I couldn't stay."
She clutched to his bare shoulders in the cold, trying to get some warmth back at least until they made their way out. Davis hadn't started to shiver, that was a good sign.

They made their way out, leaning on each other- the girl with the too large gun and the young man with skin red enough to have died several times over. There was no one to see them leave.

Chloe asked him questions, but her voice wasn't like the tenacious reporter's. It was her- weakened with joy and relief. Why was he here? What had he seen? (Who had done this?)

He had only two answers.
You.
I don't know.
His eyes linked with hers and she saw the same fear that those rioters must have had before they died.
"I don't remember." He whispered.

"Ready." Lex's eyes were closed against his cheeks and his face was tense.

Clark didn't know what he was doing. It looked pretty easy didn't it? Pushing the electrodes against Lex's head, watching him arch with the shock? It wasn't. It was waking up the past and that hurt. It sure didn't help that he didn't even understand why Lex chose to help him. What he even felt about what he was. His secret. The whole truth.

How do you think I was going to react, Clark? Did you expect a thank you? Congratulations? A little awe?
Then. I'll do it.

(Clark didn't have the time to get scared. Think, oh this is another mask Lex wears; he's going to lock me up.)
So here they were. The tank had no one to man it but himself. Emotional choices had never been Clark's strong suit. He was lost with a computer program that wasn't Jor El's database, to explain it all step by step.

Lex was hard and dark and ruthless- probably wouldn't have had that many reservations about doing this himself. But strapped into wires, he looked so breakable.

It made Clark think of what it felt like to be covered in green kryptonite and submerged in the tank. Lex would have done anything to protect him, had done anything to get Lionel off his back once upon a time. Lex's mind had nearly been destroyed by something like this before. And he was putting him in all over.
Clark's hand quivered over the lever.

He even wasn't sure if this would reverse the process and bring out Zod's memories. With Chloe's suggestion, some friend of Lex's called Hamilton. It was the only thing that could give them a fighting chance. Was it worth it?

In the end it was Lex. Lex, of the constant questions and fragile fingers that never were weak. Lex.
His Lex who pulled the lever.

By the time they had picked their way back to apartment complex, thankfully not too obviously looted, that scared expression of Davis's hadn't faded away. Chloe should have been grateful that he wasn't up to deep thought. As it was, she didn't get the chance to take him room to room, blush while pointing out 'shower' and 'bathroom' and watch his mouth fall open when she told him there was just one bed and she wanted him to stay there. Instead, all her energies were focused on getting into her bedroom and clearing the bed of text books before he collapsed.

She tugged on his hand until he stumbled with her into the lumpy twin she studied for finals in. He leaned against the wall an awkward angle and barely straightened up until she pulled him to her. This regeneration, whatever he did, took too much out of him. He wasn't going to hold a vigil to keep her safe, hopefully. He needed to heal.

"It's safe to rest now." She whispered. Two locks and a security bolt. She didn't know if the precaution was even necessary. She thought the people had left the building a long time ago. "For once, I'll let a guy take the bed."

"Don't know where I'd be without you." he said, so low she could've blinked and missed it.

"For the record, I'm glad you're out of 'the Bodysnatchers', too."

Her hand looped around his shoulder where she sat cross legged in the bed, ash and blood scar-like on her knees. He didn't seem to have much energy to get himself more comfortable than that. She could stay here all night. His head was a weight against her chest. She swallowed back quickness in her breath at the intimacy. The rightness of it.

He wasn't peering down at her bust, though. He'd caught a glimpse of some of the congealing blood on her second good pair of white sheets.

"Davis, it's no problem. Bleeding happens. I wish I could've brought you with me sooner. "(He didn't probably. He'd been loading as many stretchers as he could, until the last moment. She wondered what had happened to those people.)

"This wasn't the first time, Chloe." His lashes were cracked open and for the very first time she realized how long they were.

"What do you mean?"

The blood.
"I had…blackouts sometimes. When I woke up..."

"-you were covered in it."

"Something with super strength killed the mob."

She knew the words he wasn't saying. Just because he was capable of it didn't mean he was.
He could have bled that all on his own.

"You're staying here, Davis. "

"I need to find out."

He started to struggle to sit up, just a little, which for him should have been potential risky to her life and limb. But she knew deep down he didn't want to win this.

"I don't want you drag you into all this…if..."

She held tighter.
"You're still scared and paranoid. You lost blood. I'm not at my best, now, either. Just get some sleep. Okay? Research tomorrow."

He nodded into her shoulder, okay, and she thought her heartbeat calmed him.
She reached out to close his eyes with her hand and thought better of it, drew the rest of the sheets around him.

Fifteen minutes later, Davis had fallen asleep in her lap. Chloe leaned back awkwardly, nails making slow patterns back and forth in the back of his hair. His fingers had curled around her arm like he was little boy who didn't want to let go.

Clark hadn't walked one step away. He'd stayed there trapped in the spell of the static and Lex stiff in the chair. His x-ray vision could catch Lex's eyes moving back and forth under his lids. Just like REM sleep.

When Lex woke up it was as if he hadn't slept at all.

"Lex?" Clark asked, fingers closing around the metal that held Lex in place. Lex pushed himself up and out. Clark must have twisted the bars apart without noticing. Lex wasn't looking at them or Clark's hands. He didn't move for a very long time.

Elbows on his knees, eyes open; he stared at nothing and saw it all. He knew everything.

Lex didn't ask how do I live with it now? He had stopped asking him that sort of question. Clark wanted, then contrarily, to draw him close, to ask the questions that he would never answer.

Tell yourself he'll be the death of you. That always works.
Lex wouldn't be able to handle the truth. He'd lost part of his identity in that shower. He'd crack too.

This was all Clark asked.
"So what weapon were you-Zod looking for?" Did he have it already, was it too late?

Lex lifted his gaze.
"Not what, Clark. Who."

At nine am sharp, the battery powered coffee pot started to whistle. For once, Chloe was glad to be an impoverished college student too poor to buy a proper one. Hot water!
Water. Damn it.

Davis was in her shower, and she tried not to let her mind wander to the fact that he was naked, or how he'd felt like he'd wanted to be with her, or his hands. She looked longingly at the door, currently without a lock, sighed. She had the worst timing for things like this. Always.

Chloe blew into the steam of her cup as she watched a little of the hastily shot news broadcast with the volume on low. The way the clip was shot looked liked the Blair Witch Project, while the window behind the reporter-in-studio was broken.

"Police and emergency crews were greeted by a gruesome scene at Metropolis General Hospital today…"

It would have looked like fiction, had she not seen it with her own eyes before in the dark. Lit up, it looked that much worse. News images didn't censor any of it clawed bodies, mushes of flesh and bone. She'd have to burn those clothes of hers.

While the nervous reporter declared that there were 'animal attacks of unprecedented concentration and ferocity' and advised everyone to stay behind safely closed doors, Chloe thought about what Davis said.

Blackouts could have meant low blood sugar as readily as…whatever he thought they did. She'd had enough experience with meteor rock infections to know that those powers were one of the first steps on the crazy train. She wasn't willfully blind. There was a large margin of risk.

When he babbled it out, it had all been between the lines. He thought he was the killer. She wouldn't, ever. She wasn't being willfully blind. She'd just never been so sure of anyone like she'd been of Davis.

The news footage was starting to loop, no commercials, it was bad. "Struggling Metropolis another thing to fear on its streets…"
Chloe took the remote and shut off the TV.

She turned to see Davis, dressed in just sweats, wet, with that look on his face. Super-hearing. Oh damn it.

(She couldn't convince him that he had gotten the blood all over him in a perfectly innocent way.)

"It's not as if I went to save people as a naked paramedic, Chloe." He walked back to her as if he wasn't supposed to be there.

"You're not a killer." She knew Davis but the lack of memories wasn't so easily explained by a knock on the head. He looked so horrified and broken that Chloe wished she'd studied more forensics in high school.

"You don't believe it could be me, do you?" (They'd known each other for just three days.)

"Get it through your head. You save people."
She looked down at his hands (so tense) and tried to think of something else to say that wouldn't sound completely pathetic.

Lacking that, she reached out to be lifted; felt his breath unnaturally warm on her neck, felt the coolness of his eyelashes close against her skin. He didn't kiss her. Was she going to be hyperaware of him all of her life?

"Do something for me." She whispered.

She walked away from Davis, towards the bed, past it, shoving the closet door open. Her fingers fumbled across some old sweatshirt she'd found of Clark's when she was repacking stuff. He'd probably forgotten she'd had it.

The best thing about unrequited crushes was getting caught out the literal cold. 7th grade. Clark had draped her in it, still warm from his body and she'd looked ridiculous but she'd near about had an orgasm anyway. Back when she'd-*that*-with Jimmy (and not had one), drunk out of her mind, he'd asked her why a hot chick was wearing such an ugly shirt.

It had long since been washed clean of Clark's scent, and she'd stopped wearing it, but it was a comfort thing.

Davis looked at her, at the closet and she kept thinking of her little epiphany in one of them.

"Ready to take a field trip?" Chloe asked. If she couldn't put his mind at ease, at least she could try and make him remember who he was.

Clark and Lex ended up taking one of Luthorcorp's fuel efficient jets to Washington. Sure Clark could have ripped open the five walls of the Pentagon if he wanted to, without effort at all. But he had sounded so young, confiding, "I can't actually fly."

Now Clark had apparently started thinking of what he could do with all this classified knowledge and stared at him closedly over the seat. So afraid of being weak. Was this uncomfortable? It wasn't at Lionel levels and frankly Lex was tried of seeing all of the apocalyptical mess, in full 3d definition to go along with the radio broadcasts.

'He'd' killed about fifty people because they were in his way. Lit the walls on fire and watched them scream, a few stuffed shirt bureaucrats under ruins of rubble. That was a change from one. But the pure hateful joy of it was much stronger in these new memories. The actions had a clear, concise purpose. They contained more logic, perhaps than his; it wasn't Clark, Clark, Clark.

Control. Just what he'd wanted and it didn't look beautiful.
The sight of it all inside Lex's lids just wouldn't go away. Nor did the knowledge, that in some parallel world it would have been him.

"That bad, then?" Clark's eyes wandered to his throat for on any sound and gave a murmur of dissatisfaction.
Lex wondered when Clark had started expecting him to answer.

There was very little else listen to. Radio broadcasters constructed conspiracy theories and televangelists babbled on about the wrath of God. Around them, Metropolis had undergone a crumbling collapse; first the people, then the infrastructure. Mobs murdered each other in streets and the good Samaritans were lucky if the people they helped didn't slit their throats for the supplies they were about to hand out to others.

Lex didn't really think of what was waiting them in there. Braniac- Kryptnn's most comprehensive database, some kind of horror story. And Krypton's living weapon too, if Braniac been successful. Just to level the world. Going into the danger wasn't making the ultimate sacrifice. It was just trying to blot the rest out. This was getting habitual.

It was not until the serial killer business that Clark was tense enough to break his silence. Lex assumed he wasn't gifted with being in two places at once.

"Have you ever wondered how many of these people we run into every day that take advantage of situations like this?" Killers in their midst, that was what Clark meant to say. "Why doesn't anyone stop them?"

"Human nature is lousy, Clark. You never can count on just it to see you through. You always need a Plan B."
Clark didn't remind him of all the 'Plan Bs' in his past and how they'd been a series of excuses.

"I've never pulled someone into action like this. I don't know if I can handle it."

"If you had a choice between me and ending all this, you'd choose ending it. I would. "
Clark turned to the same unknown destination out the window he'd memorized, flopping his hair over his eyes.

"I would expect you to be a little more positive." Clark whispered, voice toned down. What about their little talk had been positive?

"Truth is I don't know what to say. Would you like a Sun Tzu line?"

"Lex… Braniac's as much of a killer as Zod. Just in case we don't get back. We should get everything we need to off our chests now. Maybe, some things I did…ended up affecting your life in negative ways. Despite everything, I still consider you my friend."
It was costing Clark to say that much. "I'm not strong enough to stop this without you. I know you never show it…but I wish I could make this right somehow." He wanted him to forget the memories.

Lex at least could make an effort.
"You don't have to worry about blaming yourself for permanently shattering my psyche. The first time the shock therapy was worse. Thanks for coming back for me then, even if I scared you off."
The rest was twisted, complex- things he doubted Clark would hear now. Phelan-his first kill. Things Clark's never would hear. Let him remember him as the friend in need.

"Sometimes I think I almost know you."
Clark reached out his hands, large tapered fingers and dry palms and took hold of his. There was warmth, the kind you gave to someone whom you'd just befriended. Lex remembered this smile; the pure smile was divided from his eyes. He was so innocent yet.

"About your faith in humanity…" Clark whispered. "Good people don't leave people they care about behind." Another one of Jonathan Kent's famous sayings?

Lex clamped his mouth shut, turned away and never caught Clark's look.

(Clark had a brief, glancing; completely crazy thought maybe he was not yet a Kryptonian. Not even a decent human being.) Lex missed the words he never said. I'm sorry. Shouldn't have given up on you.

Clark let go and Lex watched the clouds part for the buildings, five-sided walls glowing with sickly green light.
If they didn't, then it just had to be just him they left.

If Davis thought Chloe was taking him back to the scene of the crime he was sadly mistaken. It was actually more juvenile than all that. The Screaming Byron Theatre. Bowie maniacs, who knew? It was damp and huge, abandoned enough that he felt completely protected from the world out there and afraid of what he could do all at once.

Davis was temporarily distracted from the train of thought, when after jimmying open one of the doors, Chloe bolted the locks. All four of them. She flicked two of the switches, but it wasn't enough light at least for her to see very well by.
Davis was cursed with the vision to see the gentle sway of her hips, the purposeful steps she took, drawing attention to the smooth curves of her calves. He was different and dangerous to-everyone, but hormones were universal anyway.

Davis followed as she picked her way across theatre seats, caught her arm before she and the water bottles in her hand went sprawling. She was a warm weight against his chest and he felt like a kid gone truant from school for the seconds it took her to right herself and smile with a mumbled thank you.

(He didn't know exactly what they were doing. Especially now. He'd never done this. They were locked up together behind solid stone walls. Nothing between her and another of his blackouts.)

She'd been the first person to ask him to do this. And the first one. Ever.

"What is this place?"

"Safe. My dad used to tell me to come here in case of an earthquake. This place was built in 1867 with foundations solid enough to withstand bombing"

Davis settled himself in the seat next to her, careful not to grip anything tight like before. Gabe had never said anything about what he was.

"This is beautiful." He said.

Chloe nodded, crossed her hands over her lap, too long sleeves of her sweater nearly dropping off her.

"I used to come here to brood. Nothing seems quite so terrible when you can get away from it all." Her eyes glowed with optimism in the half-light and Davis wondered at what made her brighter than anything else.

"So." She whispered. "We can imagine there's a movie on. And talk. If you want."

There wasn't that much about him Chloe didn't know.
I don't know what I am. I need you close too much. That scares me and you too.

"This isn't safe for you."

"It's the best way now. I want to help you, Davis." Chloe knew him but she didn't know his past. That's what she needed to understand.

What usually came out of Davis's mouth was a detailed list of the homes he remembered, McBride and Forester--a chronology. There was a point he got to where he just didn't know.

Instead he told her the truth.
All of a sudden he'd just been. At eight years old-he'd woken up in with social workers around him, barefooted, dressed in a hospital gown, a smudge of blood over his eye. They'd whispered words like memory loss and trauma, as if he was too fragile to understand.

"I don't know the beginning. Where am I supposed to start?"

She pursed her lips, already digesting those little bits of information in her fact bank. Still didn't know what that meant to him.
"Tell me about the first time you felt safe."

This was one of his best-kept secrets. More private than the blackouts had been

"I ran away from the homes I was sent to about four times." There had been the beatings or the indifference and the indifference was always worse. "The first time-- she found me in an old building I had been running with-"

"A gang." Chloe filled in before he could ask her how she knew. "The way you picked the gun up. You held it like a knife."

He looked at her, just a brief nod of his head. Someone had listened to him, believed in him. Her eyes reminded him, just for a moment.

"I needed to do something to be initiated. The guys would tie you up, hands behind your back 24 hours, rough you up for a while, leave you in an abandoned warehouse or something. Watch you. If you were alive twenty-four hours later you were strong enough. I--I didn't take it too well." So badly, they'd thought he was dead after four hours and left.

Inside the four glowing stone walls Davis hadn't been able to breathe. He hadn't pounded on the rock or even moved. And the woman had come for him somehow. Lifted him up, taken him to a hospital as her dying son covered in burns and green tinged rubble.

"She saved me."

The woman had pushed and pleaded and that must have done something. Davis lived, though now he understood why. She'd taken him back to a tiny sparse apartment, to her real son, comatose with tubes stuck all inside him. They sat on the couch and she'd asked him all about himself.

Only weeks later, when the money had too low for food had she taken him back to a Catholic home. Am I going to miss you, Davey. She'd put a Bible in his hands, all covered over in brown paper, one of the only things she'd owned. He'd stayed by the window for weeks after she left, hoping.
He'd never heard from her again, but always looked. They'd told him she was a bad woman and he never believed it.

"I wasn't supposed to feel safe, but I did."

"Yeah." Chloe smiled, looking down in distraction. "I know that." There was some realization in her face, and whatever he wanted it to be, it wasn't just emotion.

"What is it?"

"This talk is familiar." She closed her eyes, breathed out. "I think I might have a start. You have to really go back to what you saw, Davis."

She pressed cool fingers into his shoulder until he had to as well. "Do you remember anything in particular about the warehouse? Anything at all that was unusual?"

"I could have almost sworn the rocks looked—green."

Chloe stared at him for the longest time.

"And it felt like your skin was being flayed off."
Chloe knew that much from Clark. Knew he would just lie there limp like an insensible mass whenever Kryptonite touched his skin. Firsthand knowledge. Could it be possible he had a…brother, of sorts?

"Yes."

Davis had been in Kansas. He could have come down in the shower.

She licked her lips, suddenly dry without the water. "The meteor shower. It explains why you have more than one ability and the weakness to the green rocks. They're called Kryptonite rocks here in Kansas-from your-home. You're not meteor infected. If we don't get anything else, we can start there."

Chloe had never said flat out that he was an alien.
Davis waited for the shock, but it never bowled him over. It felt like it had been coming for a very long time. She knew about him and it didn't seem the sort of thing that needed to be run screaming from, at least this very moment.

"You know that for sure?"

"You're not the first one I've met. There's someone who can help more than me."
She was smiling in the dark. It was just a little too soon to say how she knew. Davis didn't want to tear her past wide open. He wasn't the first thing in her life.

Chloe started by defining every single thing she knew about the shower. After an hour, her words started to slow a little at the ends. She had stayed up all night with him.

"So then Class U meteor freaks. They're the ones… that… are… exposed. To the rocks. They lose their minds, more often than not." Davis was conscious that Chloe's head was a breath from his shoulder. The pressure of it was light, and she wasn't asleep.

In the empty theater the barely hesitant, 'that's me, I think', echoed. Charlie had wanted her heart, beating and Kryptonite laced. Like her mother's heart.

"I'm a freak, too."

"If anyone can push out of that swinging -it's going to be you."

Chloe laughed a little. "I'm just lucky to see the crazy train coming. Dad didn't. It was hard on him."

Davis hadn't heard a word about dad before, other than Chloe's rushed cell call to 'Gabe' before the phone lines cut out. She hadn't said much then other than 'He's making it'.
Maybe her father had closed himself off after mother 'left' and Chloe had started to think of herself having to be alone in the world. All grown up and self-sufficient like she was now.

"I kind of wish I could call him now." She whispered, eyes liquid flickers in the light.
Everything about her voice said she didn't want to talk about it. Everything about her voice said she needed him to say something.

"You won't deal with it alone. I'll be here, every step of the way."
Here he was, just an hour after being convinced that he was the darkest thing on earth. Not that being sane was something he could even count on for himself. "We'll learn."

It felt like one of those moments of silence- anticipation of loss, a second later Chloe was twisting her gaze down, wiping the back of a hand across her face.

"Sure we will." She batted the problem all away. Just like that. Now to another manner of business. "You might be surprised, but we didn't come up here tonight to research you. I made the decision a while back."

She fumbled in her lap, fingers sliding under that infuriating sweater, that pale gold skin of hers peeking out from underneath her top as her hands tugged. Davis almost looked away, stuttered something perfectly true to kneeling at church and confessing impure thoughts.

He then noticed Chloe's hands, holding out a pack of leathery meat. That was the surprise.

"Beef jerky." She said. The smile had just reached her eyes, amusement peeking through where she'd caught onto his reaction. "I'm not letting you run yourself down, you know."

He tugged some from the bag in acquiescence, raising his eyebrow. That made her happy. Made her feel normal and like they were two kids playing hooky again.

By nature, the jerky was messy and noisy and no one could eat it delicately. She was sucking on each of her fingers when she ate, in silent question 'how is yours?' He remembered her taste, remembered the feeling, exquisite and terrible and real all at once. Davis thought for the first time, that maybe this had been a very bad idea.

Chloe just barely flushed at the fact that his gaze hadn't shifted. White teeth bit into soft lips. "I'm too hungry to be picky." She explained.

"You must be used to the taste by now, right?"

"I grew up on macaroni, actually." He murmured, only once glancing down to the watch in his pocket, knowing the hour came steadily nearer.

She didn't say much more, drawn back into her thoughts, at least until….

"Do you think we can stay here? Just us?" she asked him.

Temporarily robbed of voice, Davis nodded. At eleven, a little before then, he'd tell her to lock the door between them.

Apparently satisfied with his non-answer, Chloe reached a hand out across the empty seat rest, sticky with salt. Before she slept for real she held onto his and, half in his lap she smoothed her hand back and forth. She hadn't missed that glance at all.

Next up: Things get a LOT heated. And shiit starts to hit the fan. As in. Lex and Clark passively -aggressively flirt, Chloe and Davis tackle what could be happening and parent and freak issues together, Clark and Lex confront Braniac, Chloe and Davis ...do i really have to specify? it's ME!, Braniac turns on his Ultimate Superweapon- which aptly happens to be-Davis.

Comments =luv, just what a poor college student needs!