My Own Personal Cheerleader

May 16, 2015 21:50

Your Username: FutureScribbler/Hotcrossedbunny
Username of the requester: Malugargula
The prompt: Chloe/Jason - fanfic where Lana never went to Paris so Jason arrives on SV after S3, still becomes the coach and meet Chloe at the school.
Title of the work: My Own Personal Cheerleader
Pairing: Chloe/Jason
Type of fill: Fic
Rating: PG-13
Length: 3,368
A/N: I have taken many liberties.

My Own Personal Cheerleader
“I can explain”.

“You have no idea how much I hope that that is true Chloe”.

“I can, I swear it Jason”, the diminutive blonde declared as she grabbed for his arm. She was out of breath having just run out of the school after him, “just give me a chance”, she begged.

“Fine”, he stood his ground and folded his arms, staring down at her.

Chloe took a deep, shaky breath and tried to remind herself that all that she had to do was talk. She was good at talking. Excellent, in fact. She had got her allowance raised by twenty four point two percent when she was only five years old. Suddenly her verbal skills appeared to have dried up under his unwavering gaze, “Please”.

“I said fine Chloe”, he responded shortly.

She swallowed as the ball in her throat, which had been plaguing her since he had first turned his cool, distant gaze on her, grew even larger. He had never said her name like that before. Whenever he addressed her, or even referred to her, his rich baritone always held a mixture of warmth and mirth. Always. From the first time that they had met and she had given him a false name. When he had discovered the truth. When he had followed her to Smallville. Even when they were arguing. He had never treated her like this before. She had never dreamed that he could be so cold towards her.

“I’m sorry”. The words were heartfelt but not sufficient. She could see the pain in his eyes and his jaw tense. She never wanted to see him like this. “Baby, I’m so sorry”, her hand found its way back to his arm. He was so tense that she thought he might break in two.

“For what exactly?” He asked shortly. He didn’t take a step back from her, he was too strong to retreat, but he did move his limbs so that she was no longer touching him. It was as if he couldn’t stand to have her close to him.

“For everything”, she replied, blinking back the tears. She had never seen him like this, she had certainly never thought that she could cause him this much pain.

“For what exactly? For ignoring me?” He suggested tightly, “For dressing up in a cheerleader costume and fawning over Clark? For coming onto him dressed in nothing but his football jersey? For begging him to fuck you? For letting me see it?” His mouth quivered, “For being in love with Clark for years?”

“For drinking that damned stuff”, Chloe answered desperately, grabbing hold of his arms again.” That was what made me act like that. You know that it was only the drink. You drank it too”. He had to understand what had happened. She hadn’t been herself, if she had been ...

“Do I?” He demanded, this time his hurt outweighing his pride as he retreated from her touch. “Because the funny thing is that when I drank that gunk my eyes went straight to you”.

Her lips formed into a silent “Oh”.

“They always do”, he continued coldly.

“Please baby, just listen to what I’m saying. It was just bad luck that I happened to be looking at Clark at the same moment that I happened to be dehydrated. If the janitor had got in my way at that moment then I would have fancied myself in love with him and ... I don’t know, dressed up like a janitor to seduce him. What do you do to get into a janitor’s bed?” When she put it like that, he had to understand, he always had a lively sense of humour. He was always teasing her out of her bad mood, even when she didn’t want him to.

“Well it wasn’t the janitor”, Jason stated unimpressed, “No, it was the man you’ve been in love with for years. The man who has some dark and mysterious secret. The man who you always defend. Who you are always running off to be with. The man who gets to put his arms around you in public and have everyone know that he knows you. Who ...”

“It’s just”, she broke in desperately. She could see how it must appear from his perspective but his continuing with that line of thinking wouldn’t help.

“When I drank that potion Chloe”. During the course of their conversation, his eyes had not once been anywhere but on her and yet she suddenly felt as if he were focusing even more on her, “I was looking at you”. He took a step towards her yet it didn’t seem conciliatory. “Because I am always looking at you, and I’d love to be able to blame that potion for everything that would be a lie. I hated Clark when I was under the influence and it made me do things that I would never normally do but it didn’t create that hatred. I wanted to kill him when he touched you, looked at you, spoke to you ... That isn’t something that just magically appeared out of nowhere. Nor was the love that I feel for you”.

She stared at him. He had never said those words before.

“I love you Chloe” he reached up to caress her face, his voice thick and beginning to crack.” And I want you to be happy so if you have decided that now you are safe and back home that some fling you had over the summer isn’t enough for you”, his voice did break. “If the thrill is gone and”, he blinked and cleared his throat, “if you think that he is going to make you happy then go be with him”.

“No, Jason. Just wait, listen to me”, she began in desperation but stopped as his lips pressed against her forehead.

“Chloe”, he placed his hands on either side of her head and moved so that they were staring into each other’s eyes and their foreheads rested against each other. “I know that you never want to hurt anyone, that you want to make this all alright but one of us is going to end up with a broken heart. I’m okay with it being mine, it just can’t be yours”. With that, he turned and walked away.

Chloe stared after him too hurt and heartbroken to response. She opened her mouth and shut it, unable to do anything else. Through the tears that filled her eyes and began to trickle down her cheeks, she watched him stride away from her, get into his truck and drive away.

~*~
Jason sat in his apartment in Smallville with his head in his hands. The ‘deluxe studio apartment’ consisted of a room which was smaller than the closet of the bedroom he had grown up in and cost less per month than he normally spent on a midweek restaurant dinner. He was slumming it but it was worth it to be with Chloe.

Wearily, he raised his head, he looked around the small space. Every inch of it reminded him of his lost love: the kitchenette where they had attempted to reheat some Italian leftovers, the floor where they had played scrabble, the settee where they had watched movies the bed where they had ... Never mind.

If he breathed in he could still smell the faint scent of her perfume

If he strained he could still hear her dulcet voice moaning in his ear.

“Jason open this god-damn door before I break it down!”

“Chloe?” That couldn’t just have been his imagination.

“I mean it Teague!” Her voice was heard again, strident if slightly muffled. He stared at the door to his apartment in confusion. What on earth was she doing there? Had she come to return his stuff? To deliver yet another blow to his already broken heart?

Before he could decide what he should do, he found himself staring down at her. Lost for words.

She was beautiful, angry, and tear stained. In spite of everything that had passed between them and the heartbreak she had wrought, he longed to reach out and hold her. She did not feel the same way, she pushed him back and stormed into his apartment.

He closed the door and turned to face her. “Chloe, I ...”

“No”, she held up her hand. “You’ve had your turn to talk, now listen!”

He gazed at her in shock but obeyed.

“Clark and I have been friends forever. I have been in love with him since the first time that I saw him and that is the kind of thing that everyone says that you will grow out of but I didn’t, it just grew over time until it became this huge all consuming thing”, she got out all in one breath. She had rehearsed what she was going to say on the way over there and he would hear her out this time if she had to tie him down to make it happen.

Jason opened his mouth but she forged on, “It was really quite convenient, pining over someone who is pining over someone else. It’s easy. I mean its depressing but there is always an excuse when they don’t want you back so that is easier than actually putting yourself out there for someone who could actually like you back and then blowing it.”

“Alright”, he muttered coming over to the couch and sitting (or rather falling) down. It was a lot to take in all at once.

“Baby”, Chloe sat down (more gracefully) on the coffee table and reached over to take his hands. This time he didn’t stop her. “I’m not going to say that I didn’t care about Clark, I did, or that he wasn’t my school girl crush, he was but ... It isn’t everything that it is cracked up to be”.

He stared at her, long and hard as if trying to work out if she were real or toying with him or ...

Before he had the chance to get any more confused, Chloe persisted. “Clark and I went on one date and it wasn’t that great. Even before he left me t go after Lana”.

“He left you?” Jason exclaimed in surprised, apparently unable to help himself.

“Yeah, to go out into a tornado to save Lana”, Chloe explained and, in spite of the seriousness of the situation, almost succumbed to laughter at the expression on his face. “Yeah, that’s the thing with Clark, most of the time when he does something that you think is simply unforgivable he has a really good reason for it. Either that or some weird secretive silence. One or the other”.

“Sounds like a swell guy”, Jason muttered bitterly.

“He is”, Chloe stroked his hand to try to pacify him. “He’s kind of my own personal superhero”.

“Look Chloe”, Jason pulled his hands away from hers, “I’m trying to be supportive here but I really don’t need to hear a list of the guy’s virtues”.

“Well, too bad”, Chloe wrested control of his hands once more.”Because here they are: noble, smart, nice, kind, good with the elderly and children alike, no one better if your cat is stuck in a tree and surprisingly good at algebra. Oh, also very handy and has a tendency to rescue people”.

“How is a guy supposed to compete with that?” Jason expostulated, trying to get up but finding himself prevented by Chloe.

“But he has his fair share of defects too: he is habitually late, very secretive, is incapable of seeing things in anything other than black and white, he gives the wrong people too many chances and the right ones too few, he bites his finger nails rather than cutting them like a normal person, he can be very selfish, and he never noticed me except when he needed something”. The pain in her eyes was evident in the sorrow in her voice. She knew it and that he would pick up on it. There was no helping it. She reached up to stroke his cheek. Her pain hurt him and she didn’t want that but she had to make him see. “All over Clark is a great guy. Someone to be looked up to admired, he deserves his own cheerleader but I am tired of being it”.

Jason stared at her with hope for the first time that day.

“I have wasted so much of my life being a groupie, researching things for Clark, just waiting around. I’ve been his cheerleader for years and I’m sick of it. I don’t want to be cheering for someone who doesn’t the same for me”, she lifted his hand to her mouth and kissed the palm gently.

He looked at her, a small hopeful smile forming around his lips as he began to understand what she was saying.

“Last summer should have been the worst in my life. I was presumed dead, away from my friend and family, scared, and wearing that ridiculous disguise in Paris with rather shaky French on some half baked exchange scheme. I wanted to be invisible, I was trying me best to be and you saw me”, she smiled at the memory.

“You will never be invisible to me”, he promised her pulling her to sit on his knee. “Every single day in that small café I saw you sitting there”, he caressed her face. “I had to speak to you”.

She smiled at him. “You were pretty persistent”.

“I was”, he smiled, remembering those days.

“I was trying to get away from you, I was so scared that you would blow my cover, but I couldn’t tear myself away from you”, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“I know the feeling”, he smiled ruefully.

“And it wasn’t because you were handsome”, he rubbed her nose against his.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Which of course you are. Or because you are rich, or because I was bored and lonely and you took me on fun outings. Nor was it because of your jokes - which suck, by the way”, she rubbed his shoulder as she informed him of this last, ego bruising, fact.

“Not very flattering”, he pouted, any real sense of injury gone.

“It was because you were sweet”, she explained and upon noting his confused expression tried to explain. “You saw a girl who was sad and lonely and you couldn’t help but get involved. I know that that doesn’t make sense to you because in your mind that was the only course of action possible, but trust me, most people are not like that. And you had this joie de vivre which was new to me”, she continued happily, “and you smile more than anyone else I have ever known, and yes it was an exciting romantic adventure the kind that should be turned into a summer romcom but it was just you. I love you so much”.

“You do?” He stared at her. This was more than he had dared to hope for.

“I do. Everything about you”, she confessed and he grinned, pulling her even closer to him. “And I want to be with you. Now, does that answer all of your questions?” She changed her position so that she was straddling his lap. She would not be refused this time.

“Oh yeah!” He grinned at her like a fool.

“Good, because there is one thing in particular - which is more reason enough to be with you by itself - that a boy like Clark can’t give me but you can”, she leant in until he could feel her breath on his cheek.

He smirked cockily.

“Write me a note to get me out of gym”, she teased.

“Brat”, he growled, pulling her closer to him, grinding himself again her, “I’ll give you note”. The threat of his terrible vengeance only made her giggle. He flipped her over so that she was pinned underneath him but neither of them could stop smiling. They were both exactly where they wanted to be.

“Say it again”, he challenged

“Note”, she kissed him.

“The other thing”, he replied, chuckling warmly.

“I love you coach”, she tried again still tittering.

“Chloe”, he warned and she relented: “Jason, I love you Jason with all of my heart, soul, body and even my pom-poms”.

“Even your pom-poms? Well it doesn’t get any better than that”, he kissed her again only this time he didn’t break away.

“I love you, I love you”, he repeated as he began to kiss his way down her neck and a pile of clothes began to form next to the settee.

~*~
“Chloe?” Jason asked, as they lay in bed together, tangled his his very male sheets, his voice muffled by her neck and hair.

“Ummm?”

You know that I don’t want you to be my cheerleader, right?”

“Yeah”, she replied sleepily.

“Good”, he said with a kiss to the back of her head.

There was silence.

“What else?” She wondered.

“Hmm?”

“You are thinking about something, I can tell. Tell me, whatever is it”, she coaxed.

“You didn’t get rid of that cheerleader costume, did you?” He finally asked.

“Men”, Chloe rolled her eyes,”no I didn’t. I still have it and that naughty school girl one too. It was buy one get one free”.

“I love you so much”.

An evil smile formed on her lips. “Prove it!”
 
Previous post Next post
Up