Chapter 5: Vanilla Games
The chill of the Fortress never left his bones. Not during the long, silent flight back to Metropolis. Not as he changed, the fabric of his suit scratching against skin that felt both numb and hypersensitive. Not as he stood in the elevator of his building, watching the numbers climb, each ding a hammer strike on the silence in his head.
Lois was on the couch, laptop glowing on her knees, glasses perched low on her nose. The familiar scent of her perfume—jasmine and coffee and ink—hit him like a physical blow. It was a scent of home, of sanity, and it made the sickly-sweet phantom of pink kryptonite cling thicker to the back of his throat.
“Hey,” she said, not looking up. “Late one. Trouble in… wherever.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. He cleared it. “Trouble.”
He walked to the window, staring out at the city lights, his reflection a ghost overlaid on the skyline. In the glass, he saw her look up, study his rigid posture.
“You okay, Smallville?”
“I will be.”
He heard the soft click of her laptop closing. Felt her approach before her arms slid around his waist, her cheek pressing between his shoulder blades. The warmth of her seeped into the cold place inside him, a slow thaw against a glacier of shame.
He turned in her embrace, pulling her close, burying his face in her hair. He held her too tightly, he knew, but she didn’t complain. She just held him back, her fingers tracing slow circles on his back.
“Come to bed,” she murmured after a while.
He followed her. Their bedroom was a sanctuary of soft blues and grays, of framed Pulitzer citations and a cat-shaped alarm clock. Normal. Human. Fragile.
He undressed slowly, each movement mindful. He had to be mindful. The memory of another body, of how he had moved with it, with her—of how he had broken restraints to fuck her harder—threatened to crash through the careful walls he was building. He pushed it down, locked it behind a door of ice.
Lois was already in bed, the sheets pulled to her waist. He slid in beside her, the cool cotton a shock. He turned to her, cupping her face, and kissed her. It was tender, slow, an apology written in the gentle pressure of his lips. She responded in kind, her hands coming up to thread through his hair.
He had to remember. Her bones were like bird bones. Her skin bruised like peach skin. Every touch was a calculation, a constant, subconscious attenuation of his strength. He traced the line of her jaw, the slope of her shoulder, his touch feather-light. When he entered her, it was with a trembling slowness that was agony. He propped himself on his elbows, taking his weight off her, moving in a careful, measured rhythm.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him closer. “Clark,” she whispered, her breath warm against his ear. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
But he wasn’t. Part of him was still in a crystal chamber, feeling a different kind of heat, hearing a different kind of cry. He focused on the feel of Lois’s heartbeat against his chest, the soft sighs she made, the way her body tightened around him in a gentle, rising wave. Her climax was quiet, a shuddering sigh against his neck. His own release, when it came, was a shallow, muted thing, a distant echo of the cataclysm he’d experienced hours before.
Afterward, he held her as she drifted to sleep, listening to the steady, trusting rhythm of her breath. He stared at the ceiling, the phantom scent of ozone and sex and pink crystal still haunting him. His body ached with a profound and lonely exhaustion.
The next day smelled of rain and pretzels. He was walking back from a minor disturbance at the docks—a stalled tanker he’d nudged back to sea—his mind purposefully blank, his collar turned up against the damp. The normalcy of the street was a balm: the rumble of buses, the arguments on phone calls, the life of it all.
He turned a corner into a narrower, quieter street, lined with delivery entrances and dumpsters.
And she was there.
Leaning against a brick wall, one foot propped behind her, arms crossed over the familiar, defiant ‘P’ on her chest. Her cape was gone. She wore only her uniform, and it seemed to gleam under the overcast sky, a splash of impossible color in the gray alley. She was eating an apple, a loud, crisp bite breaking the urban hum.
He stopped walking.
Power Girl finished her bite, chewing slowly, her eyes never leaving his. She swallowed.
“Clark Kent,” she said, her voice a familiar, smoky tease that slithered down his spine. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“What do you want, Kara?” The name felt like ash in his mouth.
She pushed off the wall, taking a few steps toward him. The space between them charged, thickening. “Just checking in. See how you were settling back into… domestic bliss.” She took another bite, talking around it. “How was it? The vanilla sex with your wife?”
He felt his jaw tighten. “Don’t.”
“Oh, come on. I felt how wound up you were. All that Kryptonian power, all that frustration.” She tossed the apple core into a dumpster without looking. It landed with a dull thud. “All that force. You have to hold back so much with her.” She stepped closer, well into his personal space. Her scent wasn’t jasmine and coffee. It was ozone and something wild, something untouched by Earth. “Your cock must be aching for someone who can take what you really want to give her.”
Her words were a physical touch, a spark on tinder. The memory of yesterday—the sound of breaking polymers, the feel of her hips in his hands, the raw, unfiltered power of his own release—flooded back, hot and immediate.
“You’re sick,” he said, the words weak.
“The kryptonite’s gone, Kal. This is just me.” Her smile was a razor. “This is what you saw. What you felt. And you’re still thinking about it.” She reached out, not touching him, but her finger traced a line in the air a millimeter from his lips. “I can see it in your eyes. You’re a terrible liar.”
He grabbed her wrist. It was a mistake. The contact was electric. Her skin was warm, her pulse a steady, powerful beat under his thumb. She didn’t pull away. She leaned into it.
“Let me go, or take me somewhere,” she challenged, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Your choice. But we both know which one you’re gonna pick.”
The war inside him lasted only a second. Shame lost. Need won.
He shot into the sky, yanking her with him, her wrist locked in his grip. She laughed, the sound ripped away by the wind. He flew fast and hard, not toward the Fortress, but away from the city, over barren, frozen tundra where nothing and no one could see or hear.
He found a stark, wind-scoured plateau of rock and set down, releasing her so abruptly she stumbled back a step. The landscape was a monument to desolation.
“Here?” she laughed, spreading her arms. “Romantic.”
“No one to hear you scream,” he said, the words leaving him before he could stop them.
Her eyes glittered with dark delight. “Promises, promises.”
She didn’t wait. She closed the distance, her hands grabbing the front of his shirt, her mouth crashing against his. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a battle. Teeth clashed, tongues fought for dominance. She tasted of the apple, sharp and cold. He gripped her hair, pulling her head back to deepen the kiss, to punish her mouth with his. She moaned into him, a sound of pure conquest.
Her hands shoved at his clothes, tearing the shirt open, buttons pinging off the rock. His hands went to the zipper of her uniform, yanking it down with a metallic scream. He pushed the material off her shoulders, baring her to the waist. The cold air pebbled her skin, her nipples hardening into tight peaks. He took one in his mouth, biting down just shy of pain, and her back arched, a ragged “Fuck!” torn from her throat.
She clawed at his belt, got it open, shoved his pants and briefs down his hips. His cock sprang free, already fully hard, straining. She wrapped her fist around him, her grip tight and knowing. “This is what you needed,” she hissed, stroking him. “Not her careful little hands. This.”
He spun her around, bending her over a smooth, sloping face of rock. She gasped as her bare stomach met the freezing stone, but the sound twisted into a laugh. He kicked her boots apart, spreading her legs wide. He didn’t prepare her, didn’t tease. He positioned himself at her entrance, wet and ready from their brutal foreplay, and drove into her in one deep, unforgiving thrust.
The impact drove the air from her lungs in a choked grunt. She was impossibly tight, impossibly hot, clenching around him like a fist. He held still for a heartbeat, buried to the hilt, feeling her body stretch to accept him. Then he pulled back and slammed into her again.
And again.
There was no rhythm, only force. His hips pistoned, each thrust a hammer blow that shook her whole body forward on the stone. The only sounds were the slap of flesh, the grunt of his effort, the sharp, choked cries she made with each penetration. He gripped her hips, his fingers digging into the muscle, surely leaving bruises that would last for days on anyone else. On her, they would be gone by sunset. It meant he could use all his strength.
“Is this,” he grunted, driving into her, “what you wanted?”
“Yes!” she screamed, her voice scattering over the empty tundra. “Harder! Fuck me harder, Kal! Give it to me!”
He obeyed. He fucked her with a mindless, frantic violence, every repressed ounce of his power, every shred of his fury and self-loathing channeled into the motion. The rock beneath her scraped her skin. Her cries grew more frantic, less formed, just guttural sounds of pleasure-pain. He reached around, his hand finding her clit, rubbing it with rough, calloused fingers.
“Come for me,” he growled in her ear, his thrusts becoming shorter, harder, deeper. “You wanted this. Now fucking come on my cock.”
Her climax seized her with a scream that ripped through the frozen air. Her body clamped down on him, a series of convulsive spasms that milked him relentlessly. It triggered his own, a raw, shattering release that felt like it was tearing something loose inside him. He emptied himself into her with a final, brutal thrust, a ragged groan torn from his chest as he collapsed over her back, spent.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing steaming in the cold air. The wind whistled over the rock, a lonely, mocking sound.
He pulled out, the separation suddenly stark and obscene. He straightened up, looking down at her where she lay splayed against the stone, her uniform around her waist, her skin marked with red abrasions from the rock. She pushed herself up slowly, a lazy, satiated smile on her face. She turned, not bothering to cover herself.
“See?” she said, her voice hoarse. “No broken human. Just a good, hard fuck.” She zipped her suit up slowly, the sound obscenely loud. “You needed that. You’ll need it again.”
She stepped closer, her hand brushing his softening cock, making him flinch. “I’ll be around, Kal. Whenever that itch needs scratching.” She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear. “And you will itch.”
With a sonic boom that cracked across the empty landscape, she was gone, a streak of red and white vanishing into the cloud cover.
Clark stood alone on the rock, the cold finally seeping into his bones. Below him, on the stone, a small, dark patch melted the frost. He dressed mechanically, his movements numb. He looked at the sky where she’d vanished, then down at the city glowing far on the horizon, a galaxy of lights where Lois was waiting, where his life was.
He took a deep, shuddering breath of the freezing, clean air, and flew toward it, the weight in his chest heavier than any planet.