Next part up! Thank you so much for your encouraging comments! They really picked up my day!

Also: M rating for this, beforehand.

The jet was hastily landed more than a thousand yards closer to the Pentagon than the safety regulations had allowed.

The Pentagon itself had started to crumble That's what it looked like at least, to Clark. Just what the farm would have been like if he had started manifesting powers a little earlier.

It looked as if someone with his same powers was just playing around. Braniac's games resulted in a few more thousand lost lives every time. And Clark never could see the pieces.

He started to feel the Kryptonite after a few more steps in.

"You have to stay behind." He told Lex, grimacing. Braniac wouldn't care about humans in the crossfire, even former vessels of Zod.

Lex didn't have any of Zod's abilities now. He just had the memories to let Clark know he had to disable the power grid that seemed to be sapping all of Earth's energy systems.

"Somehow that sounds like a terrible battle strategy. I didn't come to play the maiden in distress."

"Look-I'm not that naïve. I've done this before."

A few more steps in and Clark folded, dark veins worming across his face. Lex knelt and Clark stiffened on reflex.

"You survived for years this way?" Lex whispered-slowly-intimately so it didn't seem quite like an insult...more like…

"If you are weakened-how are you going to get in without getting caught?"

"I'll disable the grid." Clark pushed out. "You'll stay here- alive."

"Let me think about that. No."

"I'm going to protect you, Lex. You won't ever feel violated like this again."

"You would really do all this for me?"

Lex's eyes stopped Clark. Heated and awed and so intense. Clark flinched at the touch ghosting over his cheek, stepped forward, thought no no this was not him, this was not everything he wanted. Dammit now was not…

"How else can you protect me Clark? You can't tell me you are going to make me forget when this is over."
Heated. Intense. Dark.

Clark didn't quite-trust Lex yet- it was true-but that didn't mean he automatically looked for the star blade in his pocket. But now cutting off all his air-the blade was unmistakable.

The safe feeling in his gut plummeted.

"What are you doing?"

Lex would be the death of him, sooner rather than later. And he was looking more crazed by the second.

"Professor Fine, I've got your boy!"

It was time to go.
Davis's wristwatch had survived long enough to tell him that. The leather had been shredded by something sharp and brutal (from the inside, close to his skin) but the dials worked just fine. The digits signaled eleven pm, in stark contrast to their dark little hideaway from the world.

Chloe's hair brushed his fingers. She nuzzled closer to the warmth, though, half pressed into his lap.
"Wake up." He whispered.

She pulled away too slowly to be startled awake. It was just about the time the attacks had started happening. Chloe had to know that too.

"I've got to leave now."

"Davis. No."

She did jump up when he started to go to open the door himself. He just needed her to lock the door behind him, all three locks from the inside. That was more than she would do. She stood in his way fisting her hand in the arm of the sweatshirt.

It was stupid to go into certain death because of a whim, she reasoned.

It wasn't a whim that filled his mind of images of her blood staining his hands, pale skin and red, and the warm scent of blood as a gnarled thing went through her. She didn't even blink; put her hand on the third lock.

"No. I don't care how twisted you make it sound. You can't give me a reason to let you do this. It doesn't even make sense."

Explain.
There were the attacks he was sure he was deep in, the blank moments and the blood. The onset of fear came first. What would it take to get her to understand she was in danger?

"I just know. I can feel it before it happens. I do now. I'm scared for you."

"Funny, I think that's my job." She said.

The locks were all in place again. Davis had to start over. He never got the door open. Physically, Chloe never tried to stop him.

"I'll follow you. I'll go right back to met Gen. Set myself up as the next sacrifice to whatever psycho really is out there. Or we can do this together, here, where the potential for either of us getting torn into shreds is exponentially less."

Her eyes didn't waver; and he couldn't breathe because she meant it. What drove people to those choices, the unknown, darkness, certain death? Why?

A jagged, snug blanket of nothingness was waiting for him. Yet, she said, it could be dozens of things-the stresses of newly developing abilities. She made it sound so reasonable. Maybe it was in his head.

"I can still feel it." Davis said.

"So can I. Trust me." The please might have broken his certainty. He just needed this for a little while.

"Do I have a choice?" He asked.

"Nope. I'm going to prove I know what you are. I win. You lose. Really simple." Chloe caressed his cheek, very briefly and out of tune with her words.

She stared until Davis sat down, hesitantly. Eyes on the closed door. Some part of him wondered if he loved or hated her for this choice.

"First you need to tell me exactly what the blackouts feel like."

The blackouts felt like exactly nothing to Davis once they really came on. The blackouts-maybe- were like some out of body experience. He didn't know. It was before the blackouts that he started to feel it.

"My senses start dampening first. I feel giddy-"

"That could also come from really, really low blood sugar." Chloe pushed her mouth into a half-smile. "I don't have chocolate."

It should have made it better. When he braced his hand on the armrest she jumped at the metal crumpling. Like that.

"It's not too late to tell me to go." She didn't have to.

"Davis, stop looking like that. It's not my funeral. Is it really that unbelievable that I trust you?"

Yes. Yes it was. She knew the odds.

The darkness wasn't friendly now and more than anything he was afraid that he wouldn't hold out against whatever it hid. If she didn't make it he wouldn't be able to forgive either of them. Why him? Why?

Chloe turned toward him, as if she was going to say something serious before thinking better of it.

He still didn't know the answer when she leaned over and kissed him, lips dry, breath nervous. She wasn't just half into his lap now, held onto his hand, moved it over where the muscles of her knee tensed and relaxed. Skin.

He didn't try to pull away as it went on, had to close his fist to keep from going for more. He barely had the presence of mind to notice when his mouth opened against hers-shaky and exuberant, un-graceful as if this was completely new. She made a soft, satisfied noise in her throat. He pulled her close so her weight pressed in on him, because something about it seemed to speak to his new senses more than any other perception. Just for now. If it was the end of everything it wouldn't be so bad to let go.

Chloe pulled back so quickly he had to convince himself it wasn't something that he had dreamed up. Her mouth was red though, and she had to clear her throat.

"I'm telling you, you know how control your strength." She smoothed her skirt back over her knees, back in her seat.

There was a choking sound-but that couldn't have been him. He felt like someone had lit a match under him and left it burning. At least, he hadn't torn the seat to pieces. She had the chance to pull away.

"It's not much different from controlling what you do when you think you're blacking out."

Chloe was not quite, like most women he'd ever seen, with hair that never got mussed and who never stopped to think. She weighed everything out-he knew that look on her face, the way she chewed on her lip, the way her eyes lit up in anticipation of victory.

Chloe wasn't flirting now, but showing him just what he'd done, or the physical equivalent. Davis screwed his eyes shut tight before another vaguely threatening sound came out of him.

"I know you won't hurt me." She whispered. "So there is no point in closing yourself off. Is there?"

It was more than just this moment. The big picture, a lifetime's worth of unspoken words.

"I don't know why or how you believe in me. But…I...I need it."

Davis didn't understand the hows or whys. It made no sense, because even now those nightmares of blood were supposed to block out her face- the deceptive fantasy that maybe things could go alright just- this time. Being near her had created an addiction that he didn't know how to break if he tried. He wouldn't.

"I want that."
He thought maybe-that was what he was looking for all this time. He loved her.

"What did you say?"

"I –lo—"

"Wow. That's quite an insider to spring on a girl."

His hand had gotten under hers, on her knee and he didn't remember putting it there.

"It's okay." she said. "You're a great guy, you know that? The truth is-I just don't know how to say this."

Chloe kept looking down at her lap instead of the blacked out screen or him when she talked. She'd always looked at him. Just the same way the social workers told you that you had to be moved on. You were just not a good fit for that particular home at that particular time.

She wanted someone to be there. She wanted friendship.

Davis felt like the bottom had been blown out of his world. For so long his world had been simply what he wanted to become. It had changed. All of it.

Chloe blew out a breath. "I rehearsed this when you were asleep."

"I understand." But it didn't stop hurting any less. Didn't keep the blackness from squeezing at him so he wanted to curl around himself. The emotions always made it more volatile somehow. He wouldn't ever be a danger to her.

It was a reflex, a life's worth of experience that told him this was the point it all changed. He had to be awake for this. Davis was ready to swallow it. I just really like being able to help you, Davis. It's just something I do.

Clark had harbored fears about being in Lex's control shortly after their friendship had even begun. Lying helpless at Braniac's feet did little to correct that assumption.

Braniac still looked like he had as Professor Fine. Maybe a little more run down, but the sharper cheekbones lent him an additional air of menace.

Clark couldn't run, he couldn't move, he couldn't ask for Lex's help, he couldn't try to fight back… This exceeded his everyday run-of-the-mill 'Lex betrayed me' nightmares. He felt angry enough to destroy something. 'Stupid, stupid-Dad was looking out for you; you always trust the wrong ones' but mostly Clark felt like a piece of meat.

Around him, the computers emitted metallic shrieks, the screens showing ten percent- eleven percent…Braniac was starting it. Clark shut his eyes- and knew that these screens showed him the endgame-this was the weapon. The thing they had to stop.

"I need information." Braniac explained in his curious monotone.

"Take it." Lex was saying. "I just want my-LIFE-back. I want you to stop sapping Washington D.C. and Metropolis. I want you to take him and go fulfill your mission in whatever hole you came from or I'll kill him."

"I don't care so much for that one."

"Of course you do. He has the information you need; now that thing in me is gone. He was more than willing to hold me up as a sacrifice for this world. I can do the same."

When Braniac chuckled, Clark could hear it across the room, enough to make his hair stand on end. He was walking right up to Lex.

"Why shouldn't I take your little piece, too?"

Lex didn't back up. "Why do you think I don't know what it takes to stop you?"
He had made his first stupid move.

"Oh? I didn't." Again- Braniac said- in that curious, detached-amused voice. His skin was starting to glow- currents of yellow, green coding shone over 'human' skin. Clark could see that much with what he could still use of his vision.

"We'll see just what you are." Braniac's fingertips were starting to morph into a computer-like probe.

Lex just-stood there. Didn't try to run. Nothing.
Clark couldn't get up under his own power, but somehow yelling 'no' was a reflex. "I don't care how much you might hate me. No! Coward!"

With his Kryptonite sensitized skin, it nearly broke Clark when Lex delivered one solid, booted kick to his ribs. It sent him skidding across the floor, split his eyebrow on a torn hunk of rock wall. This wasn't Lex at all.

Through watering eyes, Clark saw the dials of the power grid glowing ahead of him. He'd gotten too close for it to be a coincidence. He felt ridiculously light, like he was about to throw up any second.

Lex had been his friend. Lex was still? His friend.

This was Lex's plan, and if he'd gotten them this far, the most Clark could do was muster through the pain and take the grid out.

It took a couple of tries to even flick at the metal. Clark rose, staggered, collapsed over the grid and that almost did it.
The green lights inside the Pentagon disappeared entirely. There was still enough light for Clark to see the blood dripping from his lips.
Clark thought maybe he saw Lex breathe a sigh of relief. That's all he did.

Braniac hadn't panicked at all. Oh hell.
'It's begun.' was all that Braniac said.

Fine's body was glowing. Clark pushed himself off of the machine-past another green panel of Kryptonite. His feet were heavy-had he ever been strong on his own? He fell just eight feet from them. Impotent.

Lex was rooted in place-eyes shut-the same sickly light glowing in his skin. He wasn't even aware. Metal from Fine's fingertips reached out to Lex, pushing against his skull like electrodes. Whatever it was-it was bad. Clark knew it, like he knew- he had to move now. He had to.

Clark didn't know which happened first-Fine barely saw him coming. He crawled the last few steps, but couldn't move past the barrier. He rammed into it. Again. Again. And then the only heartbeat he heard was his. It was not supposed to end like this. Lex was not a fragile thing he loved; he wasn't ever supposed to break. His eyes burned red and heat vision crackled past the barriers onto Fine's robotic arms- into his glowing face.

The light started to dim then and he barreled –clumsily- un-heroically- into a smoking Fine. He took the star blade and that moment he stopped thinking about how many portals into other evil dimensions he could open. (Lex wouldn't even breathe.)

Clark would have stabbed Fine to death, but Fine was already dead.

It would have been easier to not to look- but it was impossible for Davis to look away from her. Call it self-destructive tendencies. Feelings. There was the 'tackling problems' look again.

"Being afraid of you was never being afraid of what you could do to me, but what you had done already. I was sure I in love with my best friend, and then the adrenaline just faded. I wanted to be free from it, but I never was. I picked you up, and you're not going anywhere."

Chloe looked up then and Davis saw her eyes weren't unreadable at all. This was something more than an impasse or a checkmate. Not a rejection. There was a chance, more than even odds. She was staying because of something as tremulous as feeling something.

"I'll wait." That was the way it was supposed to be. That was the way he wanted it-to be sure he wasn't going to grab hold of something just to tear it apart. But adrenaline just wasn't like that. Adrenaline made you need.

Davis could see new things, the way her hands relaxed, saw the hidden, small smile of hers that could have lit up the entire theatre. This was right and it wasn't and this was completely crazy. But when she climbed into his lap, straddling the seat, he just held her there. Waited for her to say something sensible, to redefine his world again.

Chloe said that the door was locked. Just in case, but it wasn't keeping them apart like it should've.
She really didn't have to say all that much more; he had gotten good at rationalizing. The fear of her changing her mind hadn't quite left him yet, the remnants of adrenaline coursing through his system. The kiss happened quickly enough. Her breath lingered, pulling something out of him again. It could have been the darkness in him putting her at risk-but-he wasn't a prisoner of his own body.

She did it again and this was so far from his first experience-a stepsibling asking him, wanna make out? at sixteen. Chloe wasn't playing, going slow like she was afraid of looking desperate. Her sweater still ended up lost in the dark space across the row of theatre seats.

It wasn't that he wanted her so much he had a hard time breathing or that she went careful and still when his mouth grazed her earlobe. He just wanted something more personal, wanted this moment to be nothing but them communicating- no more stuff between them.

Before her, Davis hadn't always thought of things in terms of touch. Sure, there was holding oxygen masks over people's faces with the right kind of pressure… All of his touches hadn't been loaded. Brushes in and out of elevators, handshakes-efficient, but stay out of the way.

It was definitely different. His fingers tingled on her shoulder, sensations were more, and she said he could be careful. The bones slid underneath her skin as she huffed, frustrated, "No Davis, off, first."

It didn't take him long to know it was his clothing she had an issue with. She pulled at the cotton, so hard it almost tore before finally deciding the best idea was to pull it over his head.

"That's better." Her hands smoothed flat over his chest. "You smell like you again."

This was about the time he said something about defining what exactly they wanted out of this. He felt things for her. And she felt warm and soft and far too quiet. She'd just slipped down, out of the seat and his hands scrabbled and found her back. She wasn't hurt, she hadn't lost her balance. What?

He could see the color of her eyes even in the dark when they flickered. He pressed his shoulders into the seat.

"Feeling in your extremities definitely means your nerves are all in working order." She whispered.

Chloe pressed his hand to her mouth, kept it there; and kissing hands was what you just read about. He traced his finger against her upper lip-again engrossed with this feeling- touch and softness and the fact that he could do this and she could smile at him. Chloe licked it. She hadn't missed much of anything that he had been thinking really. Davis felt a bolt of something strong-but not like darkness. He was unable to stop looking at his hand, or the way her lips just tugged, enclosed… He dug his free hand a little deeper into the seat. His throat burned.

"We should talk." Right? You still want to?

"I…really like you. I'm still scared. I really…" She said. "Do you have to be a gentleman, now?"

Davis knew where this was going. He'd, well done it enough to know what went where, but this particular…He'd always been afraid that it would be a little degrading. I'll show you I care by sucking you off. But the treacherous part of him that still hadn't quite wrapped his mind around the fact that this could be real didn't want to hear it. All his skin was prickling, a ghost of pressure. Maybe she'll still respect you when you get out of here.

It could have been a yes.
"We do need… to talk."

"…And to decode the mystery of Davis Bloome." Chloe nodded, that was the whole point, ends of her hair mussed where his fingers had combed through it, breath brushing him. Almost.

"What do you feel like?"

He knew what happened, and what went where but this was so different. She was actually patting his knee and telling him to relax, but her voice was a little hoarse, for once anything but relaxing. Then her lips touched him and he thought that if he was jumbled before, then what was this?

It felt like…
Davis could see everything in the darkness and that made it that much worst. Her mouth was impossible soft. Stunted, too light in some places, too much pressure in others. Almost a kiss, drawing up closer, enveloping, teasing away, leaving careful trails of fire. It took all his strength to start breathing again. He couldn't stop looking at her, somehow forgetting that teetering on the edge of the complete loss of control was anything but ideal. She was watching him with a cursory curiosity, somehow catching onto his reactions, not so gentle then and he couldn't quite classify this look of hers anymore.

like…
He closed his hands over something, few strands of her hair, wrapped them around his fingers. He couldn't make himself remember they should have been keeping watch and how could he expect to keep her safe if he didn't even know how to think?
She seemed to gain a little confidence there, went faster. The build of a terrible kind of suction that seemed to be pulling his thoughts into a maelstrom. For once Davis couldn't hear her heartbeat. There was a wall of sound- thick breaths rushing out of him. He thought maybe he'd never get out. The images in the dark blurred and unfocused on themselves, in anticipation of that coming closer and closer. Her free hand scraped briefly at his back-her mouth closed completely on him. All he knew is that it had to be here, with her, while this meant what she wanted it to.

like…
There was no embarrassment, just motion and instinct and the way she seemed to know, inexperienced but somehow firm hands. His skin burned and he might have made a sound in his throat moving perfectly on his own now. The air was cool. No point in fighting this now, you're going to feel this for fucking ever.
Her skin, his skin, and she was with him somehow, however much more he seemed to want. More than this feeling and the warmth and the slow movement of her fingers clenching against his knee. His throat felt thick, around him wasn't a blur anymore-his senses had focused.

Everything was unbearable- the smell of her blood and the more basic human arousal, how stuttering her heart rate was, how easily something would tear through her.
It felt like a blackout.

If Lex wouldn't breathe, Clark's coward speech wouldn't help him now. Somewhere along the line, Clark convinced himself that Lex was breathing again. Braniac hadn't crashed him. Braniac had put himself into Lex. Better or worse?

Clark pushed his hands against his chest with a bare fraction of even human strength and tried to breathe for two. This was how they started after all. When Lex gasped in his next breath he wasn't glowing anymore. Clark clenched the bloody Starblade in his fist, but those weren't Braniac's eyes.

Clark had expected something from him, anyway. "What was that Clark? One kiss before the end of the world?"
All Lex said was, "You saved my life," in the same wondering way he'd said it once. Then, "Do I know you?"

He felt like he'd lost something.

Clark found himself in a too common position when it came to Lex. He was struck dumb. He couldn't move, and he was going to expel the contents of his stomach in a heartbeat.

Then he told Lex they were friends.

"You need help."
Braniac had done more than something. Lex's memories were gone. All of them. And the Kryptonite weakened him until Clark felt just about dead.

Blood trailed across the corner of Lex's mouth.
"I think that's you." he said. "I'm going to get you out. Do you trust me?"

Lex. Once master manipulator, friend. Alive, but compromised. Even if he saw Clark as a stranger, he'd get him out, half dragging, if he had to. He did better than that, had Clark half on his feet before Clark protested. He looked back a moment- to Clark- to the burned corpse and Clark's stomach knotted.

"Check the pockets." He didn't have the strength to scrabble through them himself. It sounded more like someone rummaging garbage than a would-be hero, but it was the only thing they had left to try.

Clark didn't have time to wonder at how Lex didn't empty Fine's pockets as if he was handling checks. He caught a glimpse of the small metal control in his hand before he was out cold.

Davis had felt the blackouts. Blackouts were the freedom of not knowing. Misty red fueled adrenaline, his body pushed to its limits. His worst nightmare.

Davis was already halfway there. His hand had fisted in her hair before she pulled away. He was panting, incipient orgasm vanishing into panic. He was in control.

Chloe tried to smile, scrubbing her wrist over her mouth, swallowing a breath in before pressing a kiss to his shoulder.
"I didn't really expect it to work the first time around, anyway."

Davis didn't even think it was safe for them the usual way anyway. He hadn't done anything like this since quite a while before he had acquired his freakish strength.

It took a great deal of care not to fall over and crush her, but he hugged her. He was so tense it must have felt like she was being immobilized.

"I'm sorry. I thought you were dead before… and I just…wanted to...try…"
She was so quiet he could barely hear her.

He had hurt her. He hadn't wanted to. He always did this-one way or the other- and always dispensing advice- when you find real love hold onto it- made him feel like the biggest hypocrite in the universe.

"It's not you." His voice came out husky. "You make me feel like I can't control anything."

She hadn't been hurt-he hadn't turned into some monstrosity you saw in 'the Mist' -it was okay-so long as- he meant to agree with her.

Chloe was supposed to set their boundaries. He pulled out of the seat, blinking quickly, kneeling on the floor and still towering over her. He wiped at his eyes because they were watering too. Closer.

"That doesn't mean you have to…" She quickly crossed and uncrossed her legs, uneasy, maybe for the first time.

"Davis..."

He laid his hands on her lap, reined in the urge to close them.

"Shh. This is okay. You just have to tell me."

He brushed a large, unsteady hand over the back of her neck (careful now) and pulled her mouth to his again. Closing his eyes wasn't an option now, not if he wanted to do this the right way. She calmed down a little, mouth slick. Her hands rubbed over his shoulders.

"We can't control everything."

It didn't take that much-the harder pressure of her chin into his shoulder, sweat on her forehead, the nuzzle of her mouth, a foreign taste on her lips that somehow he connected with this. He lurched against her and the leg of the seat, the sharpness of her knee digging into his side.

His mouth and hands slid across her hair and into the crook of her neck. Chloe made a faint- high sound- tumbling from the seat onto his lap, over him as he planted his elbows on the carpet and tugged her nearer. She smiled when she said-I get it now, her hair tickling gently at his neck. Her smell-saturated with the coffee she drank so much- paper and ink and living skin, not blood now.

She wriggled closer, and he slid trembling fingers into her hair. The soft press of lips made his mind foggy. She pushed her hands against where his collar would have been, careful pants coming from her throat. There was only the salty tang of the jerky-she didn't taste like blood. His fingers tangled there until she squeaked and batted at his fingers- oh he hadn't eaten enough.

"Sorry."

"Hmmm. Don't think so."

He drew her up to him- lowered himself onto her-he didn't really know. A near-attack was toned down to the muffled thud of her back on the dusty carpet. He wanted it-now-to bury himself in warmth-something pure and real. He wanted something to touch and cut through the shell he felt himself becoming. He wanted to tear her open and understand why she saw him at all. Some of the images going through his head he couldn't even deal with. He didn't want to hurt her. Would he? Third time was the charm, they said.

"I won't hurt you." Anything but reassuring, especially when his hands were locking around her jostling wrists.

He could have thought of this all day-but she had gone from concerned to teasing again. Chloe's eyes shut briefly, then squinted up at him.

"I take it the standard two-minute rule doesn't apply either?" she joked at him. After what they had been doing before it's not as if she was really shocked at all.

"Chloe, there's no two-minute rule."

"But Jimmy said-" Davis growled, not like he even thought about doing it. Not that he was labeling her in terms of 'mate' in his head- it was a feeling.

"Easy, tiger." A warm breath tickled at his neck. "They're in my jacket pocket." Chloe whispered. "That was what I was supposed to tell you, right?"

She wasn't the first girl he knew who carried them, but… she was the first who actually blushed while saying it. Davis bit his lip hard enough to draw blood that never came. Of course, he hadn't counted on Chloe actually touching him while she blushed.
There was such a breathless, dazed happy look on her face that Davis froze. His fingers were actually trembling. Not like before. Not at all-like before.

"I've given Clark so much advice on this I never thought I'd be going there again or having sex. Or either at the same time. No, you won't fracture my pelvis. When the human- when my body is relaxed, the bones are less easily broken. Like an unconscious person carried by a tornado."

"Somehow, I hope you're not unconscious."

It was a scientific principle, she said, and experience. He wouldn't hurt her, he hadn't hurt her before. Fear lingered like a lead weight in his chest where his human heart would have been. Just another thing he had to lose.

Davis had always thought of this as more romantic somehow-wanted to run his fingers across her throat and learn what it was like to breathe with her. Wanted it to be the first time again.

Sick adrenaline swam through him. There were too many what ifs. He needed to set this right-into something he could believe in. He fell into her, into the sensation of surprisingly callused fingers sliding across the small of his back. If they were breathing, he couldn't hear any of it.

Her head tilted up against his, touch a fraction to rough for human skin. She squirmed. He hadn't undone a belt buckle that wasn't his before.

Chloe kissed him hard and her skin was pebbling with goose bumps. The generator had gone out and now would be a good time, she said.

The conscious part of Davis acknowledged it was much dustier and dirtier here than it had been on the seats. Chloe was small and he was about as fragile as the ton of brick and heavy glass that had trapped him. She was wearing a skirt. If she-well- if she had control it was less risky that she would hit her head on one of the seat legs…

Chloe had a mind of her own as to what she wanted. After the third time, he just gave up. Rolled atop her again to the clatter of something heavy and metal sliding across the floor.

Chloe shook her head, drawing out a breath for both of them.

"Leave it over there. That's my tazer."

She had a feeling she wasn't going to need it at all.
"Maybe."

"No really. Unless you really take too long."

Davis leaned his head on her shoulder, and let himself smile. He wasn't weighing the odds right now.
"You said so. I trust you."

"You should. I'm getting streetwise."

"I think you're on your way." (They were on their way.)

There was no fear, just her thumb pressing softly into his cheek, the amused dart of her tongue across her teeth.
"Davis, shut up."

He didn't really do that at all. But, all in all, breath hitching and warm, he didn't really think she thought of it all that much. She was different that anyone else, she met him advance for advance- elbow propping on the carpet and collapsing under them both. It was an instinct-he didn't know if it came from just him after all. She curled her knees loosely around his waist, unwary of the predatory instinct that made the sweat drip into his eyes.

Davis knew she wasn't hurt (not yet not ever); this let him hear the smallest of pain indicators. There were just anticipatory muscular contractions in her back; a loose grip on one of the metal seat legs, like she was bracing herself for yet another revelation. Eyes soft and trusting and hungry.

The feeling in his chest tightened and loosened suddenly. His hand dug into her hip and he had every moment of it… What he had intended as a long (gentle) hard push crumpled her face in shock. He was not human now-no human powers, no ultra-human control.

Davis felt warmth that didn't come from his own freakish genetics. He thought it would sear him alive-how soon before those dark defense reflexes came in. Take it all. Take everything. Take it before it takes you down. He was made this way. He did not understand this—he couldn't stop it. In his mind- he could choose.

She didn't murmur and reassure. Chloe breathed in and out, one-two-three. Coached herself through this aloud like she was learning how to use the oxygen mask on her own, the same step-by-step way she tackled everything else. Leaned up and rubbed her cheek against his and both parts of him understood this.

It sensed like an x-ray could have. Nerves signaled another change. Another instinctual reaction. Fight or Flight both ended in death, for it, but there was a middle ground. The female counterpart to male sexual aggression.

He hitched her closer. Careful, careful, (he couldn't let go) and her mouth opened with a dry rush of air. Chloe's nails rasped against his back. But even that was careful. Almost chaste. Human. He felt.

Davis had always searched for some sense of belonging. And this moment was right. This was right to him.

"He said 'It's begun.'" Clark repeated. Leave the outright deception to Zod, Braniac didn't even know the meaning of it. He was the computer.

Lex narrowed his eyes and listened as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. So far he knew Minton Fine was a terrorist with big time aspirations and a deadly super weapon. That didn't keep him from having questions-how did you know to save me? That would never change.

But at least right now, he had an entirely different focus. The control was definitely monitoring something.

"This looks more like a bio-link to me." Lex said, looking over him carefully. Their jet was already half way over the D.C. skyline and Clark was still felt the kick.

Clark shut his mouth and nodded. Could be.

The control screen showed a three-dimensional graph of blips and waves, each successive wave that appeared spiking an angry-red.

"Those are someone's brain waves." Lex said.

Brainiac had taken a monitoring chip and planted it, waited until this weapon was ready to be used. Clark thought maybe-it could have been someone his age-a boy-planted until he began changing.

"Something's." Clark corrected. If Chloe was here she could have read the graph. All Lex could say was that whoever it was under extreme stress.

The program-or whatever it was- was 89% loaded. Not enough time, but not yet fully activated.

"It could be anger or this thing's majorly worked up."

Not the first time someone's sick invention had overrun its design. The meteor rock had turned nearly everyone he knew into something monstrous, and if it had been engineered this way… Unlike the systems Clark had knocked out, he couldn't just turn this thing off.

"It's too late."

Lex steepled his fingers on his knee.

"Not necessarily. How good of friends are we, Clark?"

"Good." Clark said too quickly. Wondered if he could stand this chess game of theirs for another second. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"We did have the birds and the bees talk already…?"


Endnotes: Just in case that wasn't clear, Braniac implanted a chip in Davis which administers hormones that make Doomsday more dangerous than usual. This means Davis may indeed, turn into a much different kind of horny monster in the middle of your prons. Umm. hee?