Red Shoes

Paring: Kal/Chloe, later Clark/Chloe

Spoilers: None, set between season 2 and 3

Chapter One

Chloe had been sitting in her car for an hour by the time she finally got out and headed for the elevator. She nearly turned back to her car again but somehow managed to find the courage to call the elevator and push the button for his floor.

As the doors opened, she found herself faced with his front door but suddenly her confidence deserted her again. She got out but stayed beside the elevator so he couldn't see her through the window beside his door.

He wasn't the boy she remembered and she didn't know what to expect. When she'd first seem him at the club, she'd thought it was a mistake because the Clark she knew didn't go clubbing, she thought it was just someone who looked like him. Nevertheless she'd searched the crowd and after a few minutes she saw him again, leaning up against the bar, flirting with a blond woman.

Normally she could describe Clark as easy going, modest and unassertive.

The Clark standing at the bar though, she would describe him as cocky, arrogant and reckless.

She watched as he tossed back drinks with abandon, in-between make out sessions with her. Then the blond must have said something to upset him because his smirk disappeared and he said something that made her slap him.

He smirked, tossed back another shot of something brown, made a joke to the bartender then headed out. She ducked behind another patron as he looked in her direction, for once thankful that she was short.

When he had passed her she followed him outside and watched as he climbed onto a motorcycle. She hesitated in the doorway for a moment then decided she had to follow. She ran to her car and kept her eyes on him as she started the engine and began to follow him. She had kept her distance, knowing her red beetle was rather obvious, and had tailed him all the way to this apartment complex.

Which is how she now found herself outside his door, trying to find the courage to knock. Uncertainty wasn't something she was used to but she seemed to be feeling a lot of it of late.

Clark had been her friend ever since she'd come to Smallville, she had trusted him completely but now, after he'd lied about Lana and run away, she wasn't so sure.

Lionel Luthor had always been the bad guy, until he'd ridden to the Torch's rescue and she'd started to change her opinion. Then he bribed her and now he was blackmailing her into betraying her own friend, something she would never have thought she was capable of.

Her black and white life was quickly devolving into a massive shade of gray and her confidence was nothing but bravado these days.

Her mind was swarming with questions. Why had he run away? Why was he partying? Why was he making out with other women when he knew Lana would be devastated? Where had her best friend gone? What the hell did she do now that she had found him?

She raised her hand a couple of times but never actually managed to walk over to the door and knock. She looked back towards the elevator, thinking how much more inviting it looked when contemplating the return journey than the one that had brought her up here.

Hating herself for her weakness, she pressed the call button again.

"Doors open," she heard Clark call.

Busted!

She closed her eyes and prayed for the ground to open up and swallow her, but she wasn't that lucky. She knew she had little choice but to go in now and after a deep breath, she walked to the door, grasped the knob and went in.