The inside of Chloe’s wrist smells like caramel, and Lana licks her there. She trails her tongue all along the soft forearm, tracing all along the blue veins that branch out under the white, white skin. She nibbles when she reaches the inside of an elbow, and looks up.

Chloe’s eyes are closed – eyelashes fine blond fans against the flushed pink of her skin.

Lana isn’t thinking about how much she misses Whitney right now. She isn’t thinking about how Clark looked in his suit at Lex’s wedding. She isn’t thinking about meteor rocks, and she certainly isn’t thinking about her parents.

What she is thinking about is how much she wants to take off Chloe’s shirt and how she didn’t know that she needed this.

Lana runs her hand up Chloe’s leg. She can feel the long, elegant line of Chloe’s shin bone, the tensing of Chloe’s trim thighs, and she can’t help but smile when Chloe sighs because Lana didn’t know that she wanted to hear that – a soft, breathy sound, skittering across Lana’s skin. Tingling over Lana’s lips.

And kissing Chloe is like learning a new language. One that’s soft, and slow and filled with long, languorous vowel sounds. Lana wants to learn to be fluent, kisses Chloe again. Tangles their tongues, and nips at Chloe’s lower lip. So soft, swollen, red. Flushed and *she* did that.

She tries to shift, to pull Chloe’s shirt off, but Chloe wraps her arms around Lana and keeps her close. Chloe blazes trails up Lana’s back with her fingernails and Lana moans, pressing tighter, feeling Chloe’s body fixed against hers. Loves the feeling of Chloe’s breast in her hand through thin cotton, loves the taste of Chloe’s neck, the sweet skin Lana gently bites.

Pushes Chloe onto her back, and finally, finally gets the t-shirt off. Lana smiles again, looking into Chloe’s eyes. They’re so blue, and dark in Chloe’s sweet, pink face. Lana kisses her again, letting her hands roam over Chloe’s body.

It seems like her hands belong to the swells and curves she finds. Lana presses soft, gentle kisses all on each of Chloe’s freckles, licks at the hollow at the base of Chloe’s long, white throat, and sucks on pert pink nipples. Chloe moans, sighs, and tries to get closer, wrapping her legs around Lana and this *this* is what Lana has *always* needed.

But she’s never known it before now. And isn’t that strange?

Lana chases shivers and shudders with her lips, her tongue, her fingers until she’s pulling down Chloe’s underwear, and making love to her… and she can’t really think of it any other way as she brushes a kiss on a trembling thigh before pressing into Chloe’s wet heat with her fingers.

Chloe’s panting, she’s gasping, she’s arching her beautiful hips up and pushing onto Lana, and Lana flicks her thumb over Chloe’s clit and the sound Chloe makes is just so wrenchingly beautiful and plaintive that Lana can’t help but kiss Chloe there, too. She makes Chloe come with her mouth and her hands, and then she crawls up Chloe’s body and they kiss for what might be hours because Lana doesn’t really know anymore.

Time is cupping them in the palm of its hand, supporting them without passing, so it’s still the dead of night when Chloe rolls Lana over, and it doesn’t take very long for Chloe to make Lana shatter.

Earlier, Lana was curled on her side, crying quietly. Hoping Chloe wouldn’t notice. She was worried about Whitney. Worried about Clark. Worried about her grades. Worried about the Talon. Feeling like she was losing herself, bit by bit, trying to pull herself back together in the dark, but she wasn’t quite quiet enough, and brought Chloe to her side, all concern and bright eyes.

They talked, and Chloe teased the pieces of Lana back into a whole, and somewhere along the line when Lana stopped paying attention, they were flirting and then they were talking about kissing, and Chloe blushed, and got quiet.

“I haven’t…I mean. I’ve never had a *real* kiss,” Chloe had admitted, looking anywhere but at Lana.

And she hadn’t said anything, just stared, confused. Chloe was funny and beautiful and why hadn’t anyone ever kissed her? It seemed just plain *wrong,* and Lana was about to say so when Chloe rolled her eyes and sighed and leaned in.

Maybe she hadn’t ever imagined it, but Chloe’s lips had been so *soft* against Lana’s, and she’d leaned in, too, surprised when Chloe pulled back and smiled mischievously. “Now I have, though.”

Lana wasn’t thinking about anything by how Chloe’s lips had felt, and she was talking before she decided to. “No,” she was saying, “you haven’t,” and then they were kissing, hot and open mouthed and Lana had the presence of mind to be satisfied that *she’d* finally surprised *Chloe*.

Now Lana’s curled beside her, learning how to sleep twined around Chloe’s body with something very much like hope brushing through her like silk -- a soft slide of happiness with every breath she takes.

The bed next to Lana is warm when she wakes up. Steam curls out of the bathroom, smells like peaches and shampoo – like Chloe, and the smile that curves Lana’s lips isn’t so unexpected. Not as unexpected as it should have been.

She should feel awkward, like she always did with Whitney. Should wonder what Chloe’s thinking, why Chloe wasn’t there when she woke up, but instead Lana’s just…sure.

She’s sure that last night was *right*, can’t conceive of the idea that it wasn’t. Because she’s still high. Still feels the shape of Chloe’s moans on the tips of her fingers.

And who would have thought that Chloe…or even that *Lana*….

It’s strange, in a way. Lana’s spent a life holding change at bay, keeping things from being *different* as much as she can . But even as she’d been resisting change, it grew into her life – twirling, insidiously, like kudzu, through the length and breadth of her person and *she’d* changed.

Changed so quietly and so profoundly that she couldn’t even see *this* coming. And now that it has, she can’t even think of it happening any other way because Whitney’s gone. He’ll come back, but he’ll be different, and the only thing Lana regrets about her video letter to him is that he’ll get it at a bad time. Doesn’t like the idea of making things harder for him, but can’t stand lying. Can’t stand waiting, either.

She knows it might not be fair, but she just…needs. Someone.

And, try as he might, Clark’s never *there*. He’s busy, and not terribly reliable, and Lana needs someone to hold her during the little things, not just the big things. And Clark won’t be that person. It’s more than that. He *can’t* be that person.

Chloe sings off key in the shower, and she’s really *good* at being around when Lana needs her and maybe she’s what Lana wants. Really wants. Because last night…she was what Lana needed. Who Lana needed.

It’s a different – a change. And maybe Lana could get used to that kind of change.

She’s a new person in the fresh morning light, and she feels luminous, like she’s taking in the sun and reflecting it back across Chloe’s room.

Lana stretches slowly, spreading out across the bed and thinking caramel flavored thoughts. Waits for Chloe, and just smiles, blood humming with anticipation as it rushes through the many chambers of Lana’s heart.