Chlark Fanfic: Truth or Dare, Chapter 1
A new Chlark fic, written for the wonderfully talented & uber-awesome ellyfanfiction's birthday.
Have a wonderful birthday, Elly. You have the honour of being the first fanfic author I read, and also my inspiration to start penning fics myself. Thanks for bringing me and thousands of other readers such joy. You truly rock.
Have a wonderful year! :-D
PS: I have no idea how long this fic will end up being, so I’m not making any projections. We’ll just see where it goes.
Icon by writrgurl. Thanks babes.
Story title spawned from the events of laurelnola's I'm Just a Kid fic. Are our minds in sync or what? :)
Title: Truth or Dare
Author: BabyDee
Pairing: Chlark
Rating: NC17 (though this chapter is PG13)
Warnings: Smut - eventually!
Timeline: Season 6, after Crimson.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Summary: After Clark’s snide but revealing comments to her at Lana’s engagement party, Chloe wonders what else Clark might be thinking about...
Feedback: …always. J
Chapter 1
Chloe…I’m not surprised to see you celebrating here. After all, once Lana’s off the market, all those years of unrequited pining might actually pay off.
I can’t say I haven’t thought about it.
“Listen, Chloe - about what I said last night…”
“Oh, here we go,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Let me guess: this is the part where you stammer and say you didn’t really mean it, you weren’t yourself, you were under the influence, yadda yadda yadda...correct?” she said with more than a hint of her usual snark.
“Well…sort of.” Actually she’s spot on. Yesterday night had been Lana and Lex’s engagement party, and…well, I hadn’t been invited. Even if I had been invited, I would have had no interest in attending. Lana’s my ex, you see, and we broke up because I couldn’t be honest with her about my origins. And my origins are…well, they’re pretty hard to believe, unless you live in or around Smallville.
But I digress. As I was saying, I’d had no plans to see my ex celebrating her pending union to another man, a man I was once friends with but who is now my adversary. Unfortunately, that had been before Lois showed up on my doorstep looking like a two-dollar hooker and plastered me with her lipstick which, unfortunately, had been laced with red kryptonite.
I guess have to give you the Cliffs Notes version of my origins. I was born in a galaxy far, far away. And no, that is not a cliché, I really was. It was called Krypton - like the element, only way bigger. My parents sent me to earth in a spaceship only minutes before my planet imploded, so I’m the last remaining member of my dearly departed planet. The reason they chose earth is because the yellow sun gives me superhuman abilities, and makes me pretty much indestructible. The only thing that can cause me physical pain is green kryptonite - radioactive fragments of my home planet. The non-radioactive pieces are red, and they don’t hurt me. But when I’ve been exposed to them, I tend to hurt others - thankfully, not physically. But that in no way excuses my behaviour last night.
Anyway, Lois kissed me. In an instant, I’d received a major RedK hit, and had crashed and ruined the party in my own inimitable RedK style. And that had involved insulting my mother, verbally demeaning my best friend Chloe, physically assaulting Lex and abducting the pregnant bride-to-be.
Yeah, not my finest hour.
Chloe was shaking her head. “A rambling, half-hearted apology is not gonna solve anything, Clark. You haven’t addressed the real problem here.”
I tilted my head curiously. “Which is?”
“That you’re repressed.”
“I’m not repressed!” I said defensively.
“You are, too.”
“Am not.”
Chloe sighed. “Clark, you’re as repressed as they come. You keep everything so tightly hidden and covered up that by the time you’re inadvertently forced to open up, you explode like a pressurised container that’s been shaken and stirred.”
I remembered what my Mom had said to me this morning after she’d been able to incapacitate me and I was back to my usual self.
"Clark, you've walked around here for years bottling everything up, basing every decision on what's best for other people," she'd chided gently. "You never stop to think what's best for you."
My brow furrowed as I considered her words in context with Chloe’s. “You really think that’s it?”
She folded her arms and raised a brow quirkily. “You really think you’d charge around crashing your ex-girlfriend’s engagement party and verbally lamping her, your Mom and your best friend if you’d been straight with us and ironed out your issues before hand?”
Again, I considered this with the wise words of my Mom.
Every time you’ve been affected by Red Kryptonite, it hasn’t changed who you are; it’s just stripped away your inhibitions. I think you need to start being more honest about how you feel.”
I have to admit they had a point. “Maybe you’re right,” I conceded. “But it’s not like I could tell Lana my secret -”
“Why not?” Chloe cut in.
“Well - she’s with Lex now…”
“Why didn’t you tell her before she got with Lex?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Only as complicated as you let it be. You told me, after all, didn’t you?”
Chloe never cuts me any slack. “Well…that was different.”
She folded her arms. “How so?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know; I guess in a way I could trust you not to react in a weird way, or look at me like I was some kind of freak.”
“Which means that there must have been some underlying trust and acceptance issues between you and Lana which prevented you from telling her.”
“Thank you, Chloe. And since when did you become a psychoanalyst?” I grumbled. Chloe’s always been too smart for her own good.
“I’m just trying to get you to be honest with yourself and let your inner feelings out a bit more. That way, the next time you get doused with RedK, you won’t feel the urge to tear strips out of everyone you care about.”
I sighed in resignation. I’d said some pretty mean things, so she wasn’t plucking this stuff out of the air.
“Okay. So what do you suggest?”
She rubbed her hands together. “How about a little game of Truth or Dare?”
I frowned. I know the game she was talking about. I’d played it often enough with Chloe and Pete when we were younger, though I tended to stick more to the Dare questions and had been less than honest with the Truth ones. “How’s that gonna help?”
“It’ll get you more comfortable with opening up and saying what you really feel when you feel it.”
“I’m not so sure…” I began hesitantly.
“There you go again, retreating into your shell like a turtle,” she sighed. “Clark, I already know your secret, so it’s not like there’s much left to hide.”
Ha. That’s what she thought.
“But suppose you ask something that I don’t feel comfortable answering?” I asked fearfully. It’s always been harder for me to keep the truth from Chloe, and…well, lets just say there are some things I don’t want her knowing about. She’s my best friend, and if she knew some of the thoughts swirling around in my head…thoughts involving her…
“That’s the whole point of the exercise, Clark. You need to be more open to speaking your mind instead of covering your feelings up.”
Still I hesitated.
Her gaze softened. “Look, it’s a two-way street, okay? If you think I’m getting too pushy or personal, then you ask me something you think I won’t be too happy sharing, and I’ll have to tell you the truth, as well,” she replied. “Whatever the case, we have to answer all Truth questions honestly and all Dares must be taken. Deal?”
I shook her hand. “Deal.”
We did our secret handshake, and snapped our fingers at the end of it.
“Great. Then let’s begin.”
Suddenly I felt like a reality TV show contestant. I started to move over to the chair on the other side of the living room.
“No, no!” she exclaimed. “What are you sitting all the way over there for? I’m not putting you on trial, Clark.” She tugged my hand and pointed to the sofa. “Sit here.”
That wasn’t too bad. I duly sat where she’d indicated.
“Good.” Chloe then sat on the other side of the sofa so she was next to me but facing me at the same time.
“That’s better. Now you’re not so far away for it to feel like an interrogation, and also not so close to me that you’ll feel like I’m invading your personal space.”
I smoothed my palms down my jeans. Maybe she felt she wasn’t too close to be personal, but there were sections of my anatomy that clearly thought otherwise.
“Nervous?” she asked.
“A little,” I admitted out loud. A lot, I admitted inwardly. My heart was beginning to pound like a big bass drum. Then she reached out and patted my knee.
“Just relax, Clark,” she said reassuringly. “We’ve played this dozens of times before. And it’s just little ol’ me, okay?”
Her hand on my knee caused a tingling sensation to radiate through my entire leg. I began to fervently hope that she didn’t slide her hand a little higher.
Okay, I’m lying. I was kind of hoping she would. Which is weird, because Chloe and I are just friends, always have been. Although there was this one time…
“Clark? Are you ready to begin?” I heard her voice break through my reverie.
“I guess,” I sighed.
“Remember, this is a two-way street. You get to ask me anything you’ve ever wanted to.”
Hmm. That certainly took some of the pressure off things. If she decided to get personal, then so would I. Knowing Chloe, once I started asking searching questions, she’d back off, sooner or later.
And if she didn’t…well, then I’d finally get to see what really made her tick.
“Okay Chloe,” I said aloud. “Let’s do this."
***
Chapter 2…