![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficTitle: The Villain Of The Story
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,016
Author’s Note: Betaed by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vagrantdream.
Characters/Pairings: Davis, Chloe, Lex, Eric Summers
Last Part: Chapter 12
Summary: Chloe’s boyfriend is dead. Davis isn’t.
Long months of keeping the Red locked inside permitted Davis the control to hold himself steady as Eric invited him in, brought him up to his room. Then Davis exploded, grabbing Eric by the lapels and slamming him against the closet door so hard it almost cracked. He knew Eric had his powers now. It didn’t make much of a difference.
“You didn’t have to do that! I talked him down!”
Eric breathed deeply, trying to be nonchalant about Davis flinging him around like a ragdoll. “He was planning to kill whoever ran him over. We both know it.”
“No we don’t. He was an innocent man. You still believe that, right, innocent until proven guilty?”
Eric shoved Davis back, pitching him into a bookshelf. It cracked, spilling paperbacks onto the floor. Davis fell on all fours, the breath knocked out of him.
“I did it for you!! Do you know how many people I’ve saved? Have you kept track? Women, kids, old folks. I’m a fucking hero. So what if he was innocent? I still beat the spread. You really think God is going to judge me for one little high school student? You think God never killed an innocent person? All the firstborn in Egypt, you think they all deserved it?”
Davis wiped the blood from his mouth. “No one deserves it, Eric.”
“I think you’d better go.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me too?”
“I’m only supposed to kill murderers, right? I think I’d be in the clear. You’re just a has-been, trying to relive past glories.”
Davis spat blood on the floor. “Nothing I did was glorious.”
***
Davis didn’t go to school the next day.
He tried to. He picked up his backpack and walked to the place where he and Chloe once waited for the bus together, but when he saw her there alone, as forlorn as the figurehead of a wrecked ship… He couldn’t even bear to look at her. She was shut to him by a moat of sadness. He walked home, locked himself in his room, and looked in his Bible. The words were cold and dead on the page.
He turned the gossamer pages, looking for some comfort he could offer Chloe, and when the pages wouldn’t turn fast enough he ripped them out of the book. None of it offered any hope, any salvation, not to Chloe or him. He threw the Bible, putting a dent in the wall, and it landed on its spine and fell open, the pages stirring three times before settling.
Something made him walk the miles over to that fallen book, pick it up and strum his eyes over the pages like fingers in a lover’s hair. He read aloud, his voice catching and cracking.
“Then she said, ‘Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.’
“When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.”
***
Chloe was still waiting for the bus when he returned to her. Davis could move pretty fast when he wanted to. He stepped out of the cornstalks.
Chloe turned, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“I heard what happened,” Davis said. “I’m sorry.”
She rubbed fresh tears off on her sleeve.
“I’m here. If you need anything. I know I wasn’t before, but I am now.”
The tears finally stopped coming. “Shut up, Davis.”
She threw her arms around him and pulled him close with all the strength her tiny body could muster.
“Just shut up.”
***
The funeral was small, cramped somehow. Davis wore his Sunday suit, with a new black button-down that had practically bankrupted him.
“You look nice,” Chloe said guiltily. She sat next to him, head only supported by his shoulder. She had webbed his hand in both of hers and that was the only thing right in this hell. It almost made it all worth it.
The preacher read verses about green pastures and laying down burdens and Davis felt like laughing, like he’d heard a private joke. He wondered if he would ever feel like laughing again after today.
Chloe let a drawing of herself that Justin had given her drift down into the grave. Davis dropped two roses in. They rolled off the coffin to the bottom of the grave, two red eyes blinking.
***
Chloe didn’t go inside for the wake. She stayed out by the grave, the midday sun beating down with blasphemous cheer. Davis’s only concession to the heat was loosening his tie. He stood by Chloe, her lightning rod, ready to shield her from the ills of the world the moment she asked him.
“Am I a good person?” she said at last.
“The best.” Davis coughed. “At least, last time I checked…”
”I’ve never done anything really bad, I swear to God. But everyone’s entitled to do something really bad once in their life, right? Something for them to be ashamed of and something they can be forgiven for. Everyone needs a regret.” Tears had started to flow again, and Davis couldn’t bear to stand apart from her. He melted to her like quicksilver.
“Yeah, I guess,” he whispered into the smell of her hair.
She looked up at him, her eyes full and brimming with tears. “So can you let me be bad, just this once? I’m not a bad person, I just need to do something bad. Just once.”
“Yes.”
She kissed him. It wasn’t much more than an invitation, a confirmation, a yes to a question he’d never asked and always been asking. When she pulled away, it was to bury her tear-stained face in his chest.
“You were always my choice.”
He petted her hair until she stopped crying, then he cupped the back of her neck, tilted her face to his, and kissed her without hesitation. It was long, thought it had nothing to do with passion or lust. It was just his way of saying ‘I forgive you.’
***
Lex stood carefully abreast of the funeral, knowing he wouldn’t be welcome, but still intrigued. An autopsy had revealed Gaines had Kryptonite in his bloodstream. He had been a Kryp. It made Lex wonder who had killed him. It had to be someone strong enough to ram through a brick wall.
Lex didn’t want to suspect Clark, but he couldn’t rule it out.
More presently, he watched Davis comfort Chloe. He would offer his advice, but Davis seemed to have things well in hand. Maybe he would donate to Justin’s favorite charity in Davis’s name. That seemed the kind of thing that would impress Chloe more than flashy cars.
“Mr. Luthor,” his assistant intoned, announcing her presence.
“Yes, Gina?”
“There’s a man to see you. He says it’s urgent.”
“Bring it up,” Lex turned his back on the fresh grave. “I could use a laugh.”
The man was obviously one of Phelan’s old informants, now as lost as a bee without a queen. He clutched a thickened manila envelope to his chest. “Phelan told me to bring this to you if I hadn’t heard from him for three months. It’s been three.”
Lex held his hand out. “Well, here I am.”
“He said there’d be a reward.”
“Gina, cut him a check.”
The man handed Phelan’s envelope to Lex.
“How much, sir?” Gina asked.
“Well, he was a good mailman… what’s the going rate for a postage stamp?”
After a few flicks of her wrist, Gina handed the check to the courier.
***
They slept on the same floor that night. Going to Chloe’s house, which was empty as a punctured lung with Gabe away on business. They drank wine coolers that Gabe had forgotten were in the fridge and Chloe talked about Justin, like she was purging it. She had worn a black mini-dress over black pants to the funeral; they were the only dark clothes she owned. When she kicked off her pants, Davis could see the pale crescents of her ass. He took off his jacket and tie and Chloe burrowed into him like he was a security blanket, the magic kind that actually worked.
“I think Justin was murdered,” she said, safe in his arms. The current explanation was that a drunk driver had crashed into his house, then backed up and drove off. Chloe didn’t buy it. No one really did. “I think it had to do with his powers.”
“You could drive yourself crazy thinking about this,” Davis said, not sure if he wanted to push her onward or make her back off. He felt as ugly as he had after killing Kelvin. Uglier.
“I think it might’ve been the commandos.” She was quiet a moment, her face resting against his chest. “People are dying, Davis. I want to stop this. I want to pick up the rock and show the world all the filthy things wiggling around underneath. Will you help me lift it?”
Davis looked up at the ceiling, holding onto Chloe as tight as he could. “I will. I promise.”
“Thank you.” She kissed the patch of skin exposed at his collar. “Now, how well do you know Lex Luthor?”
They kept talking until Chloe drifted away to the sound of his heartbeat. He straightened her dress before he went to sleep himself.
He bore the pleasure of her touch like a weight. There was still one thing he could deny himself, one way he could refuse to benefit from Justin’s death and his own hypocrisy. He wouldn’t touch Chloe, not until he was sure she wanted him and not the grief. Otherwise, hopefully, she would use him as a salve, a stepping stone to someone who deserved her. And if it was him she wanted, for whatever insane reason, then he would acknowledge that when he could deal with it. Someday far in the future.
***
“Hiya, Lex. If you’re watching this, I guess I’m dead. Now don’t break out the bubbly just yet; I want to take the bastard who did this down with me. I figure it was either you or the Kent kid, trying to protect his secret. If it’s you, knowing his secret makes you his next target. And if it’s him, I think you’ll complicate his life quite nicely. Enjoy the show.”
Lex leaned forward, hands on his knees. He watched Phelan’s tape cut to a shaky handheld view. Bob Rickman was on a cell phone in the middle of a vacant lot, talking business, his plans for the Kent property. Davis slid out of the shadows like they’d been embracing him.
“I want you to give my father back his land. And then I want you to get out of Smallville.”
“And I want to bulldoze your farm and put up a shopping mall. God answers the prayers of the guy with the biggest pocketbook.”
“Not always.” Davis invaded Bob’s space, towering over him. Rickman didn’t look scared at having 6’1 of Kansas farmboy bearing down on him. Just the opposite. “How’d you cheat my dad?”
“Oh, like this I imagine.” Bob grabbed Davis’s hand. “Why don’t you go for a drive, Kent? And once you’re cruising along at about 70, why don’t you drive into a tree or something?”
Davis held onto Bob’s hand and slowly closed his fingers. “Don’t tempt me.”
“What! Ahhh!” Bob screamed, the camera zooming in on blood pouring through Davis’s fingers. “What are you!?”
Davis struck him in the throat, once, hard. Rickman flew back ten feet, landed, and didn’t get up.
“I wish I knew.”
Lex stopped the tape.
Took a drink of vodka.
Rewound it.
Watched it again.
Author’s notes: This chapter covers 1x15 Nicodemus.
This is one case where my character’s feelings mirrored my own. Davis and Chloe had been on the merry-go-round for so long that I knew the most expected thing would be for them to continue to be separated by Justin’s death, but having Chloe actually say “fuck it, I like this boy” and then going from there… fun. Because for a while there, it seemed like I was in danger of having every aspect of the story move forward except for the Chloe/Davis… not good in a Chloe/Davis story. I mean, Clark and Lois have probably done it up the butt by now.
The idea of Phelan giving out Davis’s secret was a nice little Chekov’s gun, since I could pretty much spring it whenever the story was slowing down and have some instant drama. Drama in a can!, you might call it. Better believe that’s going to get some follow-up next time.
A lot of times, when a character in a story is a Christian, and not black, it’s usually that they’re a serial killer or a bigot or something, and I played a little with that, but I also wanted to show some positive aspects to Davis’s Christianity without being preachy or all ‘Left Behind’-y. It’s something that’s important to the character, otherwise it wouldn’t be there. Plus, that’s the most femslash I can work into the story, at least until the Davis/Chloe/Lois threesome. Joke. Maybe? Yes.
So Davis’s life isn’t just a constant state of descent and doom and gloom, but there are glimmers of hope even when it looks like he’s totally screwed, and one of those is that his faith has been tested and is coming back a bit stronger than it was before. Plus, now he’s got Chloe, even if he has no idea what to do with her.
Next time, Chloe and Davis go on a date. Uh, squee?
Fandom: Smallville
Rating: R
Word Count: 2,016
Author’s Note: Betaed by
vagrantdream.Characters/Pairings: Davis, Chloe, Lex, Eric Summers
Last Part: Chapter 12
Summary: Chloe’s boyfriend is dead. Davis isn’t.
Long months of keeping the Red locked inside permitted Davis the control to hold himself steady as Eric invited him in, brought him up to his room. Then Davis exploded, grabbing Eric by the lapels and slamming him against the closet door so hard it almost cracked. He knew Eric had his powers now. It didn’t make much of a difference.
“You didn’t have to do that! I talked him down!”
Eric breathed deeply, trying to be nonchalant about Davis flinging him around like a ragdoll. “He was planning to kill whoever ran him over. We both know it.”
“No we don’t. He was an innocent man. You still believe that, right, innocent until proven guilty?”
Eric shoved Davis back, pitching him into a bookshelf. It cracked, spilling paperbacks onto the floor. Davis fell on all fours, the breath knocked out of him.
“I did it for you!! Do you know how many people I’ve saved? Have you kept track? Women, kids, old folks. I’m a fucking hero. So what if he was innocent? I still beat the spread. You really think God is going to judge me for one little high school student? You think God never killed an innocent person? All the firstborn in Egypt, you think they all deserved it?”
Davis wiped the blood from his mouth. “No one deserves it, Eric.”
“I think you’d better go.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me too?”
“I’m only supposed to kill murderers, right? I think I’d be in the clear. You’re just a has-been, trying to relive past glories.”
Davis spat blood on the floor. “Nothing I did was glorious.”
***
Davis didn’t go to school the next day.
He tried to. He picked up his backpack and walked to the place where he and Chloe once waited for the bus together, but when he saw her there alone, as forlorn as the figurehead of a wrecked ship… He couldn’t even bear to look at her. She was shut to him by a moat of sadness. He walked home, locked himself in his room, and looked in his Bible. The words were cold and dead on the page.
He turned the gossamer pages, looking for some comfort he could offer Chloe, and when the pages wouldn’t turn fast enough he ripped them out of the book. None of it offered any hope, any salvation, not to Chloe or him. He threw the Bible, putting a dent in the wall, and it landed on its spine and fell open, the pages stirring three times before settling.
Something made him walk the miles over to that fallen book, pick it up and strum his eyes over the pages like fingers in a lover’s hair. He read aloud, his voice catching and cracking.
“Then she said, ‘Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law.’ But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.’
“When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.”
***
Chloe was still waiting for the bus when he returned to her. Davis could move pretty fast when he wanted to. He stepped out of the cornstalks.
Chloe turned, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“I heard what happened,” Davis said. “I’m sorry.”
She rubbed fresh tears off on her sleeve.
“I’m here. If you need anything. I know I wasn’t before, but I am now.”
The tears finally stopped coming. “Shut up, Davis.”
She threw her arms around him and pulled him close with all the strength her tiny body could muster.
“Just shut up.”
***
The funeral was small, cramped somehow. Davis wore his Sunday suit, with a new black button-down that had practically bankrupted him.
“You look nice,” Chloe said guiltily. She sat next to him, head only supported by his shoulder. She had webbed his hand in both of hers and that was the only thing right in this hell. It almost made it all worth it.
The preacher read verses about green pastures and laying down burdens and Davis felt like laughing, like he’d heard a private joke. He wondered if he would ever feel like laughing again after today.
Chloe let a drawing of herself that Justin had given her drift down into the grave. Davis dropped two roses in. They rolled off the coffin to the bottom of the grave, two red eyes blinking.
***
Chloe didn’t go inside for the wake. She stayed out by the grave, the midday sun beating down with blasphemous cheer. Davis’s only concession to the heat was loosening his tie. He stood by Chloe, her lightning rod, ready to shield her from the ills of the world the moment she asked him.
“Am I a good person?” she said at last.
“The best.” Davis coughed. “At least, last time I checked…”
”I’ve never done anything really bad, I swear to God. But everyone’s entitled to do something really bad once in their life, right? Something for them to be ashamed of and something they can be forgiven for. Everyone needs a regret.” Tears had started to flow again, and Davis couldn’t bear to stand apart from her. He melted to her like quicksilver.
“Yeah, I guess,” he whispered into the smell of her hair.
She looked up at him, her eyes full and brimming with tears. “So can you let me be bad, just this once? I’m not a bad person, I just need to do something bad. Just once.”
“Yes.”
She kissed him. It wasn’t much more than an invitation, a confirmation, a yes to a question he’d never asked and always been asking. When she pulled away, it was to bury her tear-stained face in his chest.
“You were always my choice.”
He petted her hair until she stopped crying, then he cupped the back of her neck, tilted her face to his, and kissed her without hesitation. It was long, thought it had nothing to do with passion or lust. It was just his way of saying ‘I forgive you.’
***
Lex stood carefully abreast of the funeral, knowing he wouldn’t be welcome, but still intrigued. An autopsy had revealed Gaines had Kryptonite in his bloodstream. He had been a Kryp. It made Lex wonder who had killed him. It had to be someone strong enough to ram through a brick wall.
Lex didn’t want to suspect Clark, but he couldn’t rule it out.
More presently, he watched Davis comfort Chloe. He would offer his advice, but Davis seemed to have things well in hand. Maybe he would donate to Justin’s favorite charity in Davis’s name. That seemed the kind of thing that would impress Chloe more than flashy cars.
“Mr. Luthor,” his assistant intoned, announcing her presence.
“Yes, Gina?”
“There’s a man to see you. He says it’s urgent.”
“Bring it up,” Lex turned his back on the fresh grave. “I could use a laugh.”
The man was obviously one of Phelan’s old informants, now as lost as a bee without a queen. He clutched a thickened manila envelope to his chest. “Phelan told me to bring this to you if I hadn’t heard from him for three months. It’s been three.”
Lex held his hand out. “Well, here I am.”
“He said there’d be a reward.”
“Gina, cut him a check.”
The man handed Phelan’s envelope to Lex.
“How much, sir?” Gina asked.
“Well, he was a good mailman… what’s the going rate for a postage stamp?”
After a few flicks of her wrist, Gina handed the check to the courier.
***
They slept on the same floor that night. Going to Chloe’s house, which was empty as a punctured lung with Gabe away on business. They drank wine coolers that Gabe had forgotten were in the fridge and Chloe talked about Justin, like she was purging it. She had worn a black mini-dress over black pants to the funeral; they were the only dark clothes she owned. When she kicked off her pants, Davis could see the pale crescents of her ass. He took off his jacket and tie and Chloe burrowed into him like he was a security blanket, the magic kind that actually worked.
“I think Justin was murdered,” she said, safe in his arms. The current explanation was that a drunk driver had crashed into his house, then backed up and drove off. Chloe didn’t buy it. No one really did. “I think it had to do with his powers.”
“You could drive yourself crazy thinking about this,” Davis said, not sure if he wanted to push her onward or make her back off. He felt as ugly as he had after killing Kelvin. Uglier.
“I think it might’ve been the commandos.” She was quiet a moment, her face resting against his chest. “People are dying, Davis. I want to stop this. I want to pick up the rock and show the world all the filthy things wiggling around underneath. Will you help me lift it?”
Davis looked up at the ceiling, holding onto Chloe as tight as he could. “I will. I promise.”
“Thank you.” She kissed the patch of skin exposed at his collar. “Now, how well do you know Lex Luthor?”
They kept talking until Chloe drifted away to the sound of his heartbeat. He straightened her dress before he went to sleep himself.
He bore the pleasure of her touch like a weight. There was still one thing he could deny himself, one way he could refuse to benefit from Justin’s death and his own hypocrisy. He wouldn’t touch Chloe, not until he was sure she wanted him and not the grief. Otherwise, hopefully, she would use him as a salve, a stepping stone to someone who deserved her. And if it was him she wanted, for whatever insane reason, then he would acknowledge that when he could deal with it. Someday far in the future.
***
“Hiya, Lex. If you’re watching this, I guess I’m dead. Now don’t break out the bubbly just yet; I want to take the bastard who did this down with me. I figure it was either you or the Kent kid, trying to protect his secret. If it’s you, knowing his secret makes you his next target. And if it’s him, I think you’ll complicate his life quite nicely. Enjoy the show.”
Lex leaned forward, hands on his knees. He watched Phelan’s tape cut to a shaky handheld view. Bob Rickman was on a cell phone in the middle of a vacant lot, talking business, his plans for the Kent property. Davis slid out of the shadows like they’d been embracing him.
“I want you to give my father back his land. And then I want you to get out of Smallville.”
“And I want to bulldoze your farm and put up a shopping mall. God answers the prayers of the guy with the biggest pocketbook.”
“Not always.” Davis invaded Bob’s space, towering over him. Rickman didn’t look scared at having 6’1 of Kansas farmboy bearing down on him. Just the opposite. “How’d you cheat my dad?”
“Oh, like this I imagine.” Bob grabbed Davis’s hand. “Why don’t you go for a drive, Kent? And once you’re cruising along at about 70, why don’t you drive into a tree or something?”
Davis held onto Bob’s hand and slowly closed his fingers. “Don’t tempt me.”
“What! Ahhh!” Bob screamed, the camera zooming in on blood pouring through Davis’s fingers. “What are you!?”
Davis struck him in the throat, once, hard. Rickman flew back ten feet, landed, and didn’t get up.
“I wish I knew.”
Lex stopped the tape.
Took a drink of vodka.
Rewound it.
Watched it again.
Author’s notes: This chapter covers 1x15 Nicodemus.
This is one case where my character’s feelings mirrored my own. Davis and Chloe had been on the merry-go-round for so long that I knew the most expected thing would be for them to continue to be separated by Justin’s death, but having Chloe actually say “fuck it, I like this boy” and then going from there… fun. Because for a while there, it seemed like I was in danger of having every aspect of the story move forward except for the Chloe/Davis… not good in a Chloe/Davis story. I mean, Clark and Lois have probably done it up the butt by now.
The idea of Phelan giving out Davis’s secret was a nice little Chekov’s gun, since I could pretty much spring it whenever the story was slowing down and have some instant drama. Drama in a can!, you might call it. Better believe that’s going to get some follow-up next time.
A lot of times, when a character in a story is a Christian, and not black, it’s usually that they’re a serial killer or a bigot or something, and I played a little with that, but I also wanted to show some positive aspects to Davis’s Christianity without being preachy or all ‘Left Behind’-y. It’s something that’s important to the character, otherwise it wouldn’t be there. Plus, that’s the most femslash I can work into the story, at least until the Davis/Chloe/Lois threesome. Joke. Maybe? Yes.
So Davis’s life isn’t just a constant state of descent and doom and gloom, but there are glimmers of hope even when it looks like he’s totally screwed, and one of those is that his faith has been tested and is coming back a bit stronger than it was before. Plus, now he’s got Chloe, even if he has no idea what to do with her.
Next time, Chloe and Davis go on a date. Uh, squee?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-08-13 11:09 pm (UTC)You know, I ran into this dilema when I wrote my Failsday fix-it, this thing that Chloe and Davis' seperation should be more involved, but you can't write drama for the sake of drama and sometimes those two are like "Enough! We can haz hugz now!" and my Davis (*takes great pleasure in calling him that*) kinda came up with the same "maybe someday" conclusion.
It's Catholics who really aren't shown in the most positive light on TV. I may be an atheist now that I'm an adult, but I was raised a Catholic and the treatment they often got on TV is kind of offensive to me still. I liked Davis' being Catholic - it added a whole dimension to his character - and I like it here, because he's punishing himself being close to Chloe but not letting himself accept any gratification (I don't mean sexually) from that. If she wants something physical, it will be only to please her, not himself. It's handled in a way that's very Catholic in a way I can relate to, but not stereotypical.
AND THERE WERE CUDDLES!
I also like that Chloe realized that it was kinda . . . inappropriate to choose that moment to smooch Davis. I like that she owned up and yet did it, unlike Lana who made eyes at Clark at her boyfriend's father's funeral and came off like a low-class tramp. I also like the comment about his kissing her having nothing to do with passion or lust. It's like when he kisses her in "Abyss" it's not a sexual kiss; he's just communicating something and it's nice.
Clois buttsex = lulz
no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 04:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-13 11:43 pm (UTC)ahahaha.
can't wait for more :D
no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 08:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-14 04:05 pm (UTC)I really love that you stopped the back and forth Davis pulling away from Chloe thing. And giving him a little hope. It was really well done.
And the last part great cliffy and that is so Lex!
Great job and update soon! I can't for a Chlavis date!