She's Having My Baby

Chloe/Clark. Rating-R for sexual situations and language.
Summary: Chloe agrees to help Clark investigate a series
of strange disappearances from a Metropolis park involving
romantic couples. When she and Clark are kidnapped while
posing as a couple, they discover what's happening to the
couples, and face some serious consequences of their own.

Part 1
“I told you, Clark, I’ve given up reporting.”

“I need you on this one, Chloe. Please.”

“What’s wrong that you can’t work with Lois?”

Clark hesitated at that, and then shrugged. He usually answered her questions right away, but this time he was hedging.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You want me to dive headfirst back into the shark-infested waters of journalism but you don’t want to be upfront with me? That’s not a very good way to start a working relationship.”
“She and I aren’t really talking much lately.”

“Because…?”

“We had a disagreement about the way she’s handling things. I’ve been doing a lot of the legwork, Chloe, but only her name is going on the stories that we investigate together. I don’t think that’s fair.”

“I agree, that doesn’t sound fair. Has Lois given you a reason why?”

“She says she has seniority, and that technically I’m not supposed to be working on stories with her. I’m the obit guy.”

“Lois isn’t unreasonable, Clark.”

He snorted at that.

“She’s not,” Chloe defended. “She’ll come around. It just takes her a little while to admit when she’s wrong. She will, though. You wait and see.”

“Until that happens, I want to work with you on this story. Come on…Torch 2.0?”

Chloe heaved a sigh. She couldn’t deny that Clark’s offer had a certain amount of appeal. It would be nice to investigate and co-write a piece. She missed writing sometimes. Perhaps more than she’d care to admit.

“Okay. What’s the story?”

“Couples keep going missing—”

“Oh no…”

“Not like last time. They turn up again 72 hours later with no memory of where they’d been, apparently nothing wrong with them.”

Chloe waited for the punchline. “And?”

“That’s it.”

“So…you want us to get captured and see where they’re going?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you plan to get the attention of whoever’s doing this?”

“The couples are all disappearing from the Easton Park. I say we go there, pose as a couple, and…”

“Get ourselves taken. Okay. I’m game.”

“Just like that?” he said, eyeing her suspiciously.

Chloe shrugged. “Why not? I don’t have anything better to do this weekend.”

****
Easton Park was one of Chloe’s favorite places in Metropolis. It wasn’t as large as Central Park, but it was serene and lovely, with a nice pond, ducks, and beautiful flowers that bloomed in the summer wherever the eye could see. Unfortunately it was winter, and the park was covered in snow.

Evening was falling, which is when the couples tended to go missing. No children played on the jungle gym, spun on the merry-go-round, swung in the swings, or slid down the slides. No youthful laughter filled the cold air at this time of the evening, though several dedicated fitness enthusiasts could be seen jogging the paths that crisscrossed through the trees. She looked straight ahead and saw the golden globe of the Daily Planet glowing dully in the last watery rays of gray light from the cloudy winter sky.

As though he could read her mind, or track where her eyes were looking, Clark said, “You miss it. Admit it.”

Clark’s big hand was warm and covered hers completely. “Sometimes,” she said truthfully. “But I really am looking forward to stretching my wings. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to it some day.”

They sat on a bench and watched the lamps flicker on. Across the pond from them sat another couple, kissing passionately.

“Shouldn’t Scotty have been beamed us up by now?” Chloe asked. She felt uncomfortable with the other couple’s public display of affection, but Clark didn’t seem to notice.

“We’ll wait for it,” he said. He put an arm around her, pulling her close, as though they were a real couple, and not best friends pretending.

“May I ask you a personal question?”

Clark smiled. “You don’t have to ask me if you can ask.”

“Are you lonely?”

Clark looked down. “Yes. I’m very lonely.”

“I’m lonely too.”

Clark looked down at her, frowning. “You’re engaged—”

“To Jimmy, yeah, I know.”

From her tone Clark was surprised Chloe didn’t tack on a ‘don’t remind me.’ “So why are you lonely?”

“I don’t know. I feel so disconnected from him. We can be lying in the same bed and—”

“Please, Chloe. I don’t want to hear this.”

“Hey, I’ve listened to your problems with Lana plenty of times, even though it hurt to hear it. You can do the same for me.”

Clark looked as though he’d sucked on a Kryptonite-laced lemon. “Okay. You were saying?”

“We can be lying in the same bed and I feel like I may as well be alone. We don’t talk anymore. We make love maybe once every couple of weeks. Even then it’s not love we’re making, but having perfunctory sex—”

“I get it, I get it,” he said, looking as though he were sitting on something sharp.

“I’m lonely too,” she said. “Jimmy and I aren’t even married yet and we’re already growing apart.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“Yeah. No luck. He always comes up with some excuse to leave, or pretends he’s asleep.”

“I’m sorry, Chloe,” Clark said, sounding sincere. “You’re going to have to find a way to talk or you’ll—damn!”

“What?”

The couple across from them was gone.

“They’re gone.”

“So?”

Clark looked at her. “I saw them seconds ago. If they’d gotten up and walked away we’d still see them leaving, but they’re just gone.”

Chloe searched the park. Clark was right. The parking area was so far away it wasn’t visible from the pond. The open space was such that if they’d been sitting on the bench seconds ago, as Clark had said, they’d still be near the water walking away.

“Maybe you just thought it was seconds ago, Clark, and lost track of time talking to me.”

“When you said “‘Yeah. No luck,’ they were sitting there. I looked at you and said that you were going to have to find a way to talk to Jimmy, and when I looked back around, they were gone. Unless they can move at super speed, something took them.”

“Why take them and pass us over?”

“Maybe we weren’t convincing enough,” Clark said. “We’re coming back tomorrow night, and we’ll have to put on a good show.”

On to Chapter 2