SV Fic: "Fall Into Your Dreams" 1/? (Chlex)
Title: "Fall Into Your Dreams" 1/?
Author:
dannyblue
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Lex
Summary: An AU. The start of a very unusual relationship.
Rating: PG-13...but who knows where it will go.
Spoilers: No real spoilers for the show. This is an AU in which life took many different turns for the characters.
Disclaimer: Smallville and its characters do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: All you have to do is ask.
Notes: I had ideas for two possible SV stories. One was an action/adventure type deal involving Oliver. The other was this. My muse decided she wanted to write this. (shrug) Yes, after a long parting of the ways, my muse and I are trying to work things out and renew our partnership. And, if this is what she wants to write, this is what we'll write. :D
Feedback: Yes, please.
She didn’t really remember the accident, or the time right before.
She remembered leaving the coffee shop, but not getting into her car. But, of course, she must have.
She remebered this flash of white light burning into her eyes. And, looking back, she realized it must have been the headlights of the truck that sideswiped her.
She remembered fear pounding in her chest.
She remembered the sound. The loud, grinding crash that still echoed in her ears sometimes.
She didn’t remember the pain, for which she was grateful. She already had enough real, daily pain to deal with. She didn’t need the memory of more.
Everyone told her how lucky she was. Aside from the three-day coma and now bum right leg, she’d come out of the accident relatively unscathed, considering. She hadn’t suffered brain damage, wasn’t paralyzed or disfigured. She had only a few noticeable scars, most of which could be completely erased by a good plastic surgeon if she cared to bother. But, really, they weren’t so bad.
Of course, the cane she now needed just to walk across a room put her dream of being an intrepid reporter (breaking into secret facilities, going undercover, chasing after the big stories) out of reach.
But it wasn’t like she couldn’t still write, couldn’t still report. In fact, she was doing damned good as a freelancer. And the book she’d written while recuperating about Metropolis’s first genuine, female serial killer was doing quite nicely. It hadn’t made her a millionaire, or a household name or anything. But she’d made enough to buy a nice car, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood. And, according to her agent, a couple of the networks were interested in doing a TV movie. Just sign on the dotted line, and she’d be in another income bracket overnight.
Yep. They all said she was lucky, considering.
And, funny thing was, Chloe agreed with them. Yes, she’d lost so much. But she could’ve lost so much more. She could be scrounging to make ends meet, to pay for food and the roof over her head as she tried to find a new way to make a living. She could have more to worry about than a constant pain in her right leg that never really went away.
She could be dead.
Her life had changed. Changed in ways she’d never expected or wanted. But, somehow, in spite of it all, she was happy.
Then, the dreams started.
**********
It started as one of her favorite dreams.
She was running under a bright blue sky, the wind whipping through her hair. She was out of breath but laughing, her legs pumping as hard and fast as they could. And there was no pain at all.
For what felt like hours, she just...ran.
She ran through the park, the one in the city not too far from the Daily Planet. She used to go there sometimes to eat lunch.
Then there was a flash, and she was running through a cornfield, of all places. Why her mind chose a cornfield was beyond her, since the closest she’d ever gotten to one was driving by in a car. But she supposed it made sense to her subconcious. And, really, she didn’t care. Just kept running.
And, then, the dream just changed.
There was this flash of scenes, like those fast cuts they did in some television shows. And, suddenly, she wasn’t running anymore. She was standing in a shadow-darkened room, staring at a wall.
At first, she was too disoriented to do anything but stare. To notice that, to her left, a fireplace was roaring away, trying valiantly to push back some of the shadows with golden light. In front of her, between her and the wall, was a table, one an antique collector would probably pay a fortune for. And, to her right, too far for the firelight to reach, there was just darkness.
Then, she frowned. Okay, this was new. At least, she didn’t remember having a dream like this before.
She started to turn, to try to take in more of her surroundings. But that’s when the ever-present pain hit like a sledghammer. And her right leg just gave out, like it suddenly realized she didn’t have her cane, and she shouldn’t be able to stand upright without it.
Chloe crashed forward, her hands slamming against that antique table so hard it left her palms stinging.
“Dammit,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Lowering her head, she squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself to breeth. Her leg always hurt, even when she took the really good pain killers. But it hadn’t hurt quite this much in a long time.
“Who are you?”
Chloe let out a startled yelp. Instinctively, her body tried to spin around, to see who was there. But, with her right leg still so much dead weight, all she managed to do was lose her balance again, and fall against the table again.
“Who are you?” the voice continued, a smooth, rich baritone that sounded more surprised than truly angry. “How did you get here?”
And Chloe suddenly realized a complete stranger was seeing her in the over-sized t-shirt she’d gone to bed in. And, yeah, he was a figment of a dream. But that didn’t stop the heat of embarrassment she felt crawling up her neck.
Using the table for support, she tried once again to turn...
**********
Slowly, Chloe’s eyelids fluttered open.
Her bedroom was dark, the only illumination the moonlight haze glowing through the semi-sheer curtains.
Meaning she’d woken up way too early.
With a soft groan, Chloe reached up to rub her tired eyes. Turning her head, she squinted at the clock on her bedside table.
It wasn’t even 5 am yet.
“Oh, no way,” she mumbled. One of the advantages of working as a freelancer was that she didn’t have to get up at the break of dawn to get ready for work. No long commutes to the office. So, she’d gotten into the habit of not getting up until at least the sun was out.
It wasn’t a habit she intended to break now.
Turning over onto her side, so her back was facing the clock, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to claim her again. In the quiet and dark, with nothing else to focus on, her attention strayed to the familiar ache in her right leg. But she knew the pain was worse when she thought about it, so she didn’t.
Instead, she thought about the dream.
It had been really...well, weird. And surprisingly vivid. It had felt almost real. Heck, she could almost feel her palms still stinging from slamming into that antique table.
But it had just been a dream. And, like so many dreams, it was forgotten by the time she drifted back to sleep.
***************
Chloe yawned as she put her electric toothbrush back in its holder. It had been a long and busy day and, now, all she wanted to do was climb into her comfy bed and not think about all the work she had to do tomorrow.
“I need a vacation,” she decided. She loved her work. But spending some time in a place where laptops and deadlines didn’t even exist would be nice. Well, for a couple of days.
Taking her cane from where she’d lean it against the counter, Chloe made her way out of her en suite bathroom.
Rubbing her tired eyes, she sat on the edge of her bed and leaned her cane against the wall, where it would be in easy reach as soon as she woke up.
Suddenly remembering something she didn’t want to forget to do tomorrow, she made a quick note in the notepad she kept on her nightstand for just such an occasion. Then, with another yawn, she got under the covers and cut off the lamp with a soft CLICK.
Settling her head on the pillow, she closed her eyes.
It didn’t take long for sleep to claim her.
****************
Chloe woke into the dream with a gasp.
Her head jerked up, eyes flying wide to take another dark room, this one filled with shadows and moonlight, a hazy, silver-blue glow falling like rain from the window high up in one wall.
Strands of long, messy blond hair were hanging in her eyes, making it hard to see. Instinctively, she tried to push the hair out of the way.
And that’s when she realized she couldn’t move her arms.
Not only that, but they hurt. Felt tired and strained.
Her mind a mess of confusion, she threw her head back, and could barely see her hands extended above her, her wrists shackled and chained to a long, silver bar.
And she was just hanging there, the balls of her feet just touching a cold, bare, floor. And the nightshirt she’d been wearing when she went to bed was gone, leaving her in nothing but a pair of panties and a lacy camisole.
“What the hell?” she said. Or tried to. The gag in her mouth made the words come out muffled and incomprehensible.
Fear started to push through the cloud of confusion. As ice cold panic settled over her, her heart started to pound in her chest.
This is just a dream, a small voice shouted from the corner of her mind. It’s just a dream.
And, somehow, she did know it was a dream, even though she’d never known when she was dreaming before. But knowing it was a dream didn’t make her heart stop pounding. Didn’t make her arms stop aching.
And her leg hurt. Her leg rarely hurt in her dreams, which was why she enjoyed sleeping so much more now than she used to.
But, now, her leg was throbbing, the strain of being up on the balls of her feet too much for it.
Straining, pushing up with the toes of her left foot, she managed to hook her hands over the bar. With her arms supporting more of her weight, she was able to lift her right leg off of the floor. That hurt too, but not as much.
Then she just hung there, wincing as the added strain sent sharp little pains shooting through her arms. Gasping for air and feeling like she was suffocating with that gag in her mouth.
It’s just a dream, the little voice said over and over again, a mantra she was supposed to take comfort from.
Only, for some reason, she couldn’t.
Then, something warm came to rest against her back.
Chloe jumped, a startled scream pushing against the gag.
“Shhhhhh,” she heard, as another hand came to rest on her shoulder. “It’s alright.”
It was the same voice. The voice from before, from the dream she couldn’t remember until now.
She tried to turn her head, to see who was beind her, touching. But she couldn’t. It was like she was frozen face forward, able to move nothing but her eyes.
The hand on her back was moving, sliding up her spine, stopping to caress the nape of her neck.
She lowered her head, her body instinctively trying to get away from his touch. But nothing could stop the hand now playing with the strands of her hair.
“Relax,” he said, voice as smooth and dark as the shadows.
Suddenly, his body was pressed against hers. She could feel his bare chest against her back, feel his heat through the thin fabric of the camisole.
And, she was trembling, shivers passing through her body like little quakes. Her hands clutched the bar so tight, she could feel the metal cutting into her skin. “No!” she said, voice muffled against the gag.
“Shhhhh,” she heard as she felt his cheek come to rest against the top of his head. “It’s alright.”
And a hand, so warm it almost burned, came to rest just beneath her breast. Slid like satin, soft and slow, across her ribcage. Pulled her back and pressed her even tighter against him.
This is just a dream, the little voice jabbered in her head. So you can wake up.
Just wake up!
***************
Chloe woke with a startled scream trapped in the back of her throat.
She sat up so hard she nearly threw herself out of the bed. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She just kept moving forward, trying to get away from that heat pressing against her back.
She’d all but thrown herself into the center when she realized there was sunlight. Sunlight filling every corner of her bedroom.
The bedroom in which she was completely alone.
Finally fully awake, Chloe pressed her hand over her pounding heart, breathing deep as she tried to catch her breath.
Squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to stop shaking.
TBC
Author:
dannyblue
Characters/Pairings: Chloe/Lex
Summary: An AU. The start of a very unusual relationship.
Rating: PG-13...but who knows where it will go.
Spoilers: No real spoilers for the show. This is an AU in which life took many different turns for the characters.
Disclaimer: Smallville and its characters do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.
Distribution: All you have to do is ask.
Notes: I had ideas for two possible SV stories. One was an action/adventure type deal involving Oliver. The other was this. My muse decided she wanted to write this. (shrug) Yes, after a long parting of the ways, my muse and I are trying to work things out and renew our partnership. And, if this is what she wants to write, this is what we'll write. :D
Feedback: Yes, please.
She didn’t really remember the accident, or the time right before.
She remembered leaving the coffee shop, but not getting into her car. But, of course, she must have.
She remebered this flash of white light burning into her eyes. And, looking back, she realized it must have been the headlights of the truck that sideswiped her.
She remembered fear pounding in her chest.
She remembered the sound. The loud, grinding crash that still echoed in her ears sometimes.
She didn’t remember the pain, for which she was grateful. She already had enough real, daily pain to deal with. She didn’t need the memory of more.
Everyone told her how lucky she was. Aside from the three-day coma and now bum right leg, she’d come out of the accident relatively unscathed, considering. She hadn’t suffered brain damage, wasn’t paralyzed or disfigured. She had only a few noticeable scars, most of which could be completely erased by a good plastic surgeon if she cared to bother. But, really, they weren’t so bad.
Of course, the cane she now needed just to walk across a room put her dream of being an intrepid reporter (breaking into secret facilities, going undercover, chasing after the big stories) out of reach.
But it wasn’t like she couldn’t still write, couldn’t still report. In fact, she was doing damned good as a freelancer. And the book she’d written while recuperating about Metropolis’s first genuine, female serial killer was doing quite nicely. It hadn’t made her a millionaire, or a household name or anything. But she’d made enough to buy a nice car, and a nice house in a nice neighborhood. And, according to her agent, a couple of the networks were interested in doing a TV movie. Just sign on the dotted line, and she’d be in another income bracket overnight.
Yep. They all said she was lucky, considering.
And, funny thing was, Chloe agreed with them. Yes, she’d lost so much. But she could’ve lost so much more. She could be scrounging to make ends meet, to pay for food and the roof over her head as she tried to find a new way to make a living. She could have more to worry about than a constant pain in her right leg that never really went away.
She could be dead.
Her life had changed. Changed in ways she’d never expected or wanted. But, somehow, in spite of it all, she was happy.
Then, the dreams started.
**********
It started as one of her favorite dreams.
She was running under a bright blue sky, the wind whipping through her hair. She was out of breath but laughing, her legs pumping as hard and fast as they could. And there was no pain at all.
For what felt like hours, she just...ran.
She ran through the park, the one in the city not too far from the Daily Planet. She used to go there sometimes to eat lunch.
Then there was a flash, and she was running through a cornfield, of all places. Why her mind chose a cornfield was beyond her, since the closest she’d ever gotten to one was driving by in a car. But she supposed it made sense to her subconcious. And, really, she didn’t care. Just kept running.
And, then, the dream just changed.
There was this flash of scenes, like those fast cuts they did in some television shows. And, suddenly, she wasn’t running anymore. She was standing in a shadow-darkened room, staring at a wall.
At first, she was too disoriented to do anything but stare. To notice that, to her left, a fireplace was roaring away, trying valiantly to push back some of the shadows with golden light. In front of her, between her and the wall, was a table, one an antique collector would probably pay a fortune for. And, to her right, too far for the firelight to reach, there was just darkness.
Then, she frowned. Okay, this was new. At least, she didn’t remember having a dream like this before.
She started to turn, to try to take in more of her surroundings. But that’s when the ever-present pain hit like a sledghammer. And her right leg just gave out, like it suddenly realized she didn’t have her cane, and she shouldn’t be able to stand upright without it.
Chloe crashed forward, her hands slamming against that antique table so hard it left her palms stinging.
“Dammit,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Lowering her head, she squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself to breeth. Her leg always hurt, even when she took the really good pain killers. But it hadn’t hurt quite this much in a long time.
“Who are you?”
Chloe let out a startled yelp. Instinctively, her body tried to spin around, to see who was there. But, with her right leg still so much dead weight, all she managed to do was lose her balance again, and fall against the table again.
“Who are you?” the voice continued, a smooth, rich baritone that sounded more surprised than truly angry. “How did you get here?”
And Chloe suddenly realized a complete stranger was seeing her in the over-sized t-shirt she’d gone to bed in. And, yeah, he was a figment of a dream. But that didn’t stop the heat of embarrassment she felt crawling up her neck.
Using the table for support, she tried once again to turn...
**********
Slowly, Chloe’s eyelids fluttered open.
Her bedroom was dark, the only illumination the moonlight haze glowing through the semi-sheer curtains.
Meaning she’d woken up way too early.
With a soft groan, Chloe reached up to rub her tired eyes. Turning her head, she squinted at the clock on her bedside table.
It wasn’t even 5 am yet.
“Oh, no way,” she mumbled. One of the advantages of working as a freelancer was that she didn’t have to get up at the break of dawn to get ready for work. No long commutes to the office. So, she’d gotten into the habit of not getting up until at least the sun was out.
It wasn’t a habit she intended to break now.
Turning over onto her side, so her back was facing the clock, she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to claim her again. In the quiet and dark, with nothing else to focus on, her attention strayed to the familiar ache in her right leg. But she knew the pain was worse when she thought about it, so she didn’t.
Instead, she thought about the dream.
It had been really...well, weird. And surprisingly vivid. It had felt almost real. Heck, she could almost feel her palms still stinging from slamming into that antique table.
But it had just been a dream. And, like so many dreams, it was forgotten by the time she drifted back to sleep.
***************
Chloe yawned as she put her electric toothbrush back in its holder. It had been a long and busy day and, now, all she wanted to do was climb into her comfy bed and not think about all the work she had to do tomorrow.
“I need a vacation,” she decided. She loved her work. But spending some time in a place where laptops and deadlines didn’t even exist would be nice. Well, for a couple of days.
Taking her cane from where she’d lean it against the counter, Chloe made her way out of her en suite bathroom.
Rubbing her tired eyes, she sat on the edge of her bed and leaned her cane against the wall, where it would be in easy reach as soon as she woke up.
Suddenly remembering something she didn’t want to forget to do tomorrow, she made a quick note in the notepad she kept on her nightstand for just such an occasion. Then, with another yawn, she got under the covers and cut off the lamp with a soft CLICK.
Settling her head on the pillow, she closed her eyes.
It didn’t take long for sleep to claim her.
****************
Chloe woke into the dream with a gasp.
Her head jerked up, eyes flying wide to take another dark room, this one filled with shadows and moonlight, a hazy, silver-blue glow falling like rain from the window high up in one wall.
Strands of long, messy blond hair were hanging in her eyes, making it hard to see. Instinctively, she tried to push the hair out of the way.
And that’s when she realized she couldn’t move her arms.
Not only that, but they hurt. Felt tired and strained.
Her mind a mess of confusion, she threw her head back, and could barely see her hands extended above her, her wrists shackled and chained to a long, silver bar.
And she was just hanging there, the balls of her feet just touching a cold, bare, floor. And the nightshirt she’d been wearing when she went to bed was gone, leaving her in nothing but a pair of panties and a lacy camisole.
“What the hell?” she said. Or tried to. The gag in her mouth made the words come out muffled and incomprehensible.
Fear started to push through the cloud of confusion. As ice cold panic settled over her, her heart started to pound in her chest.
This is just a dream, a small voice shouted from the corner of her mind. It’s just a dream.
And, somehow, she did know it was a dream, even though she’d never known when she was dreaming before. But knowing it was a dream didn’t make her heart stop pounding. Didn’t make her arms stop aching.
And her leg hurt. Her leg rarely hurt in her dreams, which was why she enjoyed sleeping so much more now than she used to.
But, now, her leg was throbbing, the strain of being up on the balls of her feet too much for it.
Straining, pushing up with the toes of her left foot, she managed to hook her hands over the bar. With her arms supporting more of her weight, she was able to lift her right leg off of the floor. That hurt too, but not as much.
Then she just hung there, wincing as the added strain sent sharp little pains shooting through her arms. Gasping for air and feeling like she was suffocating with that gag in her mouth.
It’s just a dream, the little voice said over and over again, a mantra she was supposed to take comfort from.
Only, for some reason, she couldn’t.
Then, something warm came to rest against her back.
Chloe jumped, a startled scream pushing against the gag.
“Shhhhhh,” she heard, as another hand came to rest on her shoulder. “It’s alright.”
It was the same voice. The voice from before, from the dream she couldn’t remember until now.
She tried to turn her head, to see who was beind her, touching. But she couldn’t. It was like she was frozen face forward, able to move nothing but her eyes.
The hand on her back was moving, sliding up her spine, stopping to caress the nape of her neck.
She lowered her head, her body instinctively trying to get away from his touch. But nothing could stop the hand now playing with the strands of her hair.
“Relax,” he said, voice as smooth and dark as the shadows.
Suddenly, his body was pressed against hers. She could feel his bare chest against her back, feel his heat through the thin fabric of the camisole.
And, she was trembling, shivers passing through her body like little quakes. Her hands clutched the bar so tight, she could feel the metal cutting into her skin. “No!” she said, voice muffled against the gag.
“Shhhhh,” she heard as she felt his cheek come to rest against the top of his head. “It’s alright.”
And a hand, so warm it almost burned, came to rest just beneath her breast. Slid like satin, soft and slow, across her ribcage. Pulled her back and pressed her even tighter against him.
This is just a dream, the little voice jabbered in her head. So you can wake up.
Just wake up!
***************
Chloe woke with a startled scream trapped in the back of her throat.
She sat up so hard she nearly threw herself out of the bed. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. She just kept moving forward, trying to get away from that heat pressing against her back.
She’d all but thrown herself into the center when she realized there was sunlight. Sunlight filling every corner of her bedroom.
The bedroom in which she was completely alone.
Finally fully awake, Chloe pressed her hand over her pounding heart, breathing deep as she tried to catch her breath.
Squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to stop shaking.
TBC