How We Got Here (Part Six)

December 21st, 2011

Clark touched down in the woods again, but didn't speed right to the house. He waited. He held two bottles, much as she did that night. One for him and one for her. If they were going to sort through the mess that was them and the last three, maybe even four, years, then they'd need them. He gripped both tight and sped to the house, only stopping at the porch. He stared at the closed door. It was quiet inside. She had stopped overturning furniture, at least. Maybe she'd found her purse and her keys. Maybe she was gone.

He wasn't sure if the thought left him relieved or saddened. He didn't want to do this, but on another level, he really did. He needed to. He needed to find out what was between them, if anything. before he could do something as alternately big and small as put a pen to paper. And, whether she knew it or not, she needed to see what was there, too, before she left.

He took a deep breath and opened the front door. It was dark inside, but that didn't mean she was gone. He could hear her breathing. She didn't need to turn the lamp on for him to see her, but she did. She was sitting in his father's chair, staring ahead of her, her finger's still grasping the lamp's tiny chain.

"Still can't find my purse," she said, still not looking at him. "I was going to go to a motel." She shrugged and pulled one of his mother's throws closer around her shoulders. "I want to. I don't want to be here and I'm damn sure you don't want me here."

"Why would you think that?" he asked softly.

She shrugged again. "You left."

"So did you."

She met his eyes then. "I'm not talking about ancient history," she said, her voice tired. "I'm talking about tod..."

"Maybe we should be talking about ancient history," he said quickly, seeing his opening. "Maybe we should be talking about how we got here."

She glanced away. "Jesus, Clark. What's the point? We changed and we grew apart. It happens to everyone."

"No. You left and you changed."

"I left because you changed," she said, her voice laced with anger.

It might have made him back off, made him feel guilt at the truth of the words and the bitterness with which she said them. But that bitterness kept him going. It told him something. It told him she still cared, at least a little. And that was as good a place as any to start from.

He nodded his head at her and moved into the dining room.

She followed after a moment. "Clark, if you think you can just jerk your head and make me..."

"But you did." He smiled to himself as he placed the bottles on the table, even more sure of this. If she didn't care, she wouldn't have followed him in. "Anyway, I had a thought."

"All by yourself?"

He turned to her as she smirked and crossed her arms. "Hilarious." She wasn't wearing his clothes anymore. She must have unearthed some of his mother's old things. He recognized the oversized sweatshirt and the stretch pants from those years se kept insisting she was fat and working out to that terrible Richard Simmons video. "Anyway, I thought it was time we had a talk." He moved aside.

She stared at the bottles. "What's this?"

"Should be familiar to you. One bottle for you and one for me."

June 1st, 2010

"What's this?" he asked as she moved into the dining room, giving his arm a playful sort of bump as she passed.

"This is what we need." She placed both bottles down along with her rather large purse and turned, leaning against the table, one hip jutting out. The shirt rode up just a little and he could see skin between the edge of it and her jeans. Both were worn and frayed, as if she'd worn them to death before leaving them forgotten in her drawers. And he supposed she had. So why was she suddenly dragging them out now?

He tore his eyes from that stip of skin and focused on the bottles. "So what we need is... booze?" He picked up the bottle with the black label. "Jack Daniels."

She plucked it out of his hands with a smile that might be descirbed as playful. "That's for me, as I said."

"So what's this." He picked up the other.

"Be gentle with that," she whispered, leaning in. "You get that on your shirt and it'll leave a hole."

He placed it down gently, then turned to her. "Okay. What's going on?"

Her smile faltered, but stayed in the end. "Nothing yet. I just figured we've had more stress than we can handle lately and we needed to get rid of some of that tension. Hence..." She uncapped her bottle and took a swig, then grimaced. "Ugh. That's disgusting. I would have got some of the good stuff, but I don't have Oliver's budget."

"So... you're going to get drunk."

"Oh, no." She giggled and picked up the second bottle, setting it in front of an empty chair. "We're going to get drunk." She took the chair across from it and sat, plopping her bottle down.

"Chloe, I..." He shook his head. "I know things have been weird lately, but getting drunk isn't going to help anything."

"I think it will. We aren't driving anywhere, considering we've both been told not to leave town," she finished out of the side of her mouth. "Considering how much things suck right now, they can't get worse and..."

"And I can't get drunk." He sat down, trying not to smile. But she hadn't stopped smiling and he couldn't remember the last time she smiled this long around him and there was something about this night that felt... familiar and nice and like so many other nights between them before things got so spectacularly screwed up. "I mean, I really can't get drunk. I even tried once after my dad died and..."

"Please don't get depressed, Clark." She shook her head. "You start off depressed and that's where you end and I have bigger aspirations for our drunken night."

He tried not to smile again and failed. "You really think I'm going to get drunk?"

She leaned over the table, whispering. "Might as well give it a try."

He stared at the metallic bottle warily. "What's in this?"

"I don't know for sure. Emil shot off words like Ethanol and purest form and combustion engines until my eyes glazed over." She shrugged. "Remember, chemistry was my worst subject. But all I know for sure is that I didn't have the lid secure on the ride over and it burned a hell of a hole in my passenger seat." She leaned back in her chair. "If it can do that, I bet it has a shot at getting you drunk."

He stared at it, then at her again.

"Who knows what's going to happen?" She uncapped her bottle again. "This might be our last free night together, Clark."

He stared at the bottle again. "And this is what you want to do with it?"

She lifted her bottle to her lips, but didn't tilt. "Pretty much."

"Well..." He uncapped his. "If this is what you want..." He lifted it, noticed that, with every tilt, hers seemed to mirror his. He thought of this last year and how close they were getting to... getting close again. If this was what she needed, then he'd do it. He tossed her aside and would, at this point, do anything to have her back, trusting him, in the room with him, smiling at him like none of this f*cked up year had happened. If this was all it took... "Cheers." He lifted the bottle and hers, again, mirrored his.

He swallowed, then pulled away with a grimace...

December 21st, 2011

"That is disgusting," she said, blinking rapidly and taking long,deep breaths.

"That's what my budget can afford." He uncapped his own bottle and sniffed, but didn't sip. "I'm surpised you want to do this."

"If anyone needs a drink, it's me," she said, tipping it back again and making a rather disgusted face.

"Can't be any worse than what you had that night."

"That night?" She rolled her eyes. "Clark, I pretty much came clean about what I had that night being weak tea."

"Well, that's pretty gross." He took a sip of his and frowned.

"Where'd you get yours, anyway?"

He shrugged. "I still talk to Emil."

"I heard he's a little sketchy these days."

"Oh, you heard?" He took another sip.

"I may have been away, but I keep up at least a little. How's Ollie, by the way?"

"I don't know." Clark said, dropping his smile. "We haven't really talked much since your funeral." He tried not to make it sound like a dig, but it did.

"It was an opportunity," she said softly, "and I took it."

"An opportunity for what?"

"To get out." She took a slug from her bottle. "I knew there was no other way."

June 1st, 2011

"There's no way I'm forgetting that," Clark said, wiping his eyes.

"You have no choice." Chloe giggled. "You're drunk. I can say anything now."

"Worse than saying Principal Kwan was hot?"

"I could get into older, now-dead guys. What's the harm? Lionel took pretty good care of himself, actually. For an older guy..."

"That's it. I'm getting a pen." Clark stood and moved... or kind of stumbled to the kitchen. He was drunk. Who knew?

"What?"

He hugged the walls as he moved to the junk drawer. There were about a million pens and... "Damn it. No pads."

Chloe apeared at his side. "Good. So let it go."

He pulled out a sharpie. "Never." He pushed past her into the dining room.

"Clark!"

He ran in and to the nearest wall, poising his marker. "Let me see..."

"Your mom will never forgive you," he heard Chloe say behind him.

He deflated, his marker making a squiggly line. "I guess not." He giggled and held up his own hand. "So... Chloe hearts Lionel Luth..."

"No!!!!"

He found himself flattened against the wall. If he had his wits about him, it wouldn't have happened, but he was kind of drunk. Chloe was right. And Chloe was right about another thing. That stuff, whatever the hell it was, could do some damage to things beside him. Not only was his mother's lace tablecloth sporting a hole, the table beneath it was missing a rounded chunk. He'd worry about just what was going into his body if he didn't feel so nice right now.

Not just nice, but tingly. He turned, under her weight, and those tingles increased, gathered to where she was pressing against him. She felt nice and strangely heavy right now, but kind of light, too, everywhere she pressed. And she was pressing against all of him, it seemed, as she stretched for that sharpie. He let her have it, nicely distracted as he was, let her throw it across the room.

"There," she crowed triumphantly. "Enough of that."

He stayed still, his wrists in her hands as she grinned up at him. "I might still remember it."

"But you might not." She giggled, then seemed to sober a bit. "Anyway, I wasn't being serious, about them, I mean... I was only..." She moved backward, but tripped against the chair, pitched backward.

He moved forward, catching her, glad he was good for that much, drunk as he, apparently, was. He held her head just above the table. "Careful."

"I'm fine." Her hands pressed aganst his chest. He realized, perhaps a bit late, that she was trying to get him to let her up. But it really was a bit late. By the time he got her on her feet, his hands were on her hips and in no hurry to leave, as much as he told them to let go.

"Jushht making sure," he said, kind of slurred and wishing he had something better to say. "Why'd you wear that?" he ended up asking, grabbing onto the one thing of substance swimming through his mind.

"What?" She blinked at him, then looked down. "Oh. Uh... It's just an old outfit."

"I know. You don't wear stuff like that anymore. Tight stuff." It came out sounding kind of miserable. He tried to smile, so it didn't sound that way, but that strip of bare skin was under his thumb and his mouth kept dropping open, his breaths coming out choppy.

"I... I didn't want to ruin anything new," she said, glancing down at where he was rubbing her.

He tried to stop, then, but he was still working on closing his mouth. "Come on." He managed a smile then. He'd get his thumb to stop rubbing, but he kind of didn't want to. And he didn't think she wanted him to, either. his senses might be a little dull, but he could hear her heart hammering, hear her breath speed up. "You had to know..."

Her eyes met his, but seemed to drift down to his lips. "Know what?" she whispered.

"I liked that shirt," he whispered back. "It always..." He stopped there. "Never mind."

"What?"

"Nothing. It's embarrassing." He let her go and moved back to his chair. He kind of had to now. He needed a little cover.

"Nuh-uh." She followed him back and took the bottle when he reached for it. "You have to tell me. If I basically admitted Lionel Luthor was hot..."

"I can't." He gripped the bottle back quickly before she burned herself. "It's kind of rude, too."

She giggled and perched a hip on the table, leaning back to grab her own bottle. "Maybe this is that kind of night. The night we say all the rude, embarrassing, crazy things we never say. I mean, there's pretty much no tomorrow and who knows when we'll meet again after. This is our night, Clark. The last night of Clark Kent and Chloe Sullivan." She stood then, gesturing grandly. "It's time to go nuts. Do something absof*ckinglutely cr..."

"It makes me look at your boobs." He said it, then covered his mouth.

She stared at him, then laughed. "What?"

He took a minute and took another sip. It burned. He suddenly thought of old Selsun Blue commercials from when he was little and how the tingling means it's working and he supposed that burn would tell him if the fact that he seemed to have hardly any wits about him. "I think you knew," he said, gathering his wits again. "I think... that's why you wore that."

She barked out a laugh. "You think I wanted you to look at my boobs?"

He shrugged, spilling a little of his bottle. His shirt gained some more tiny, little holes, not that he cared. "I keep hoping if that's why..." He froze. "I meant wondering if... I mean... I don't know what I mean."

Chloe did take his bottle, then, shook it lightly, stared inside it. "I think you're drunk, Clark," she said, capping the bottle.

"I think I maybe may be, too." He said, staring at those boobs he didn't want to stare at -- or didn't want to want to stare at. Didn't he have a girlfriend with perfectly good boobs for staring at? Sure, he and Lois had kind of broke up, but she left that message. Maybe she didn't want to break up. He stared up at Chloe. "I need to go."

"Go?"

He stood and his chair clattered to the floor. "I... I'm getting confused. I mean, I... I'm sorry. I am drunk and that was rude and I shouldn't be looking at..."

"Clark..." She moved around the table and took him by the arms. "I meant what I said. This is our last night." Her eyes seemed so serious. "I don't know if you and I will ever see each other again after this."

His mind seemed to spiral back to another time, to other words falling from her lips (I don't know if I'm ever going to see you again) before she kissed him.

And maybe she was right. Maybe this was that night to do and say every crazy thing they'd never...

He leaned down, met her lips. He had to. This was their last night.


PART FIVE

PART SEVEN