Fic: His Girl Friday (1/9)
Fic: His Girl Friday (1/9)
Summary: He had to figure out where they stood. Otherwise, they couldn't go forward
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural/DCU
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: G
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #58 Dinner. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9a, Part 9b
The early morning sunlight filtered through dirty windows to illuminate a messy, crowded apartment. Dust motes danced like tiny pixies in the slanting golden rays. Newspaper piles, clean laundry and half-unpacked boxes covered every spare surface.
The boxes had been pushed aside haphazardly to make room for a person to walk. At one end of the apartment, sandwiched between two large boxes and a half-filled bookcase, sat a rickety old futon.
Dean Winchester was sprawled across the bed, quietly contemplating the tiny blonde woman who slept in his arms. He'd been with a lot of women in his life - but last night was a first for him. The first time he'd let a woman take him to bed and simply held her - nothing more.
Chloe Sullivan was unlike any woman he'd ever been with. He was struck by that as he lay there, watching her sleep, mouth slightly open and drooling on his chest. She was a classic beauty - with the kind of face you expected to see in a museum rather than on a magazine cover. But when she smiled, it warmed him like pure sunshine.
The fact that she was still asleep troubled him a little. She typically only slept about three hours a night. He suspected that she was dealing with some heavy emotional baggage. She'd been sobbing last night when he carried her to bed.
Chloe didn't sob. She got mad, but she didn't break down. It was part of what he respected about her. Dean hadn't known what to do. He didn't deal with emotions well - his or anyone else's. He hadn't expected to find her in this state. The last time he'd seen her, she was helping save a bunch of people from a genetics lab. Back there doing the hero thing; she'd seemed large than life.
When he'd come to Metropolis to find her, it had been with the idea of making sure that she was safe from a demon. He hadn't bargained on finding her an emotional wreck. He'd been at a loss for what to do. So he'd carried her to bed - and held her, stroking her hair in an attempt to calm her until she fell asleep.
Now, as he ran his fingers through her soft golden hair, he wondered what would happen when she awoke.
***
Consciousness returned to Chloe like the gradual onset of spring after a bitterly long, cold winter. First she became aware of lying on her side, with the calming sound of a heartbeat in her ear and the warm, soothing feeling of someone stroking her hair.
She felt protected and cherished, a feeling she hadn't had since her mother left and she'd started pretending to be strong for her father's benefit.
She lifted her head, and blinked muzzily. She was reminded of mornings before the meta abilities kicked in. Back when it took two cups of coffee to get going in the morning. She blinked again - and found herself staring into Dean's hazel eyes.
“Morning,” she rasped out.
“Yup,” he smiled back at her.
She glanced down at the drool spot on his chest, and frowned. “I think I messed up your shirt.”
“That's okay,” he said softly. “It's not my only one.” He reached up and brushed her hair from her face. “You okay?”
She looked down again, and shrugged. “The verdict's still out on that.”
“You want to tell me what's got you so worked up?”
“Just - bad memories,” she said.
“This have anything to do with that stuff Lex Luthor was talking about?”
“Some,” Chloe said. She tilted her head as if considering what to say. “I didn't remember what he did to me. Now I do.”
He pulled her closer, and tucked her head under his chin. “Was it bad?”
“As far as human lab rat experiences go, it wasn't exactly Flowers for Algernon.”
He felt his jaw clench in anger. Lex Luthor better pray to God that they never crossed paths again. “I'll kill him,” he muttered out loud.
Chloe grew very still. Dean glanced down and wondered if he'd just blown it. At last she slowly shook her head. “You aren't the first person to consider doing just that. Hell, I've even had my moments.” She sighed and shrugged. “They say the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. By now, Lex is an old hand at cheating both.
“It just makes taking him apart on the front page of the paper that much sweeter.”
Dean looked at her with a faint smile. “You're one tough chick.”
She shrugged. “My side has all the superheroes. What does Lex have?”
“A hella-sexy assistant?”
Chloe's lip twisted as she raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously. I can't blame him for having good taste.”
“I would have preferred if he had sharks with fricken' laser beams attached to their heads.”
Dean winced. “You had to bring up the sharks.”
“My point exactly.”
He looked down and met her wry smirk with a grin of his own. He wanted to stay with her like that, but the insistent pressure on his bladder reminded him that nature needed his attention.
“You mind?” He nodded toward the bathroom.
“Go ahead.”
Getting there was an adventure in itself. He wasn't sure when Chloe had moved in, but if not for the layer of dust on everything, he would have been tempted to say yesterday.
“So how long have you been here?” he asked as he picked up his duffel, and stepped around boxes and disassembled furniture.
“Three - maybe four years?”
“You're kidding, right?” he asked incredulously as he reached the bathroom. It was roughly the size of a closet, with a tiny square of open floor between the shower, sink, and toilet.
“It's more of a place to land than anything,” her voice sounded apologetic. “I'll get around to cleaning the place up - someday.”
He stripped to the waist, and ran a sink full of water. “If you need some help . . .” There was a long, quiet pause. Dean wondered what she was thinking as he washed up, brushed his teeth and changed shirts.
“That sort of depends,” Chloe said carefully.
He left his dirty shirt on the counter, and his duffel on the floor. “On what?” he asked as he crossed the apartment to where she sat at the kitchen table. She had cleared a space by moving the piles of newspapers from the table to the extra chairs, and was now sitting with her feet tucked up under her, munching on a plate of Oreos with milk.
“On . . .” She bit her lip. “On whether you think I'll be here very long.”
He knew what she was asking - whether he wanted her back. More than anything he wanted to just tell her that was the case. But they had a lot of issues to resolve before they could make that kind of decision.
He reached across her and snagged a cookie from her plate. As he dunked it in her milk, he wondered what prompted her to get them. He could remember eating them with Sammy when they were kids.
Sam was very methodical about the way he ate his Oreos. He would take them apart and eat them layer by layer. First the side that didn't have cream stuck to it, then he would clean the cream off the other side with his teeth, before eating the other end. And only then, taking a drink.
Dean wasn't that picky. He would dunk a cookie until it was so full of milk that it had almost fallen apart, before stuffing it in his mouth and reaching for the next one. Sam probably got maximum satisfaction for his cookie, but Dean got maximum cookie for his satisfaction.
Chloe seemed to be halfway between him and Sam on the cookie satisfaction scale. She took each cookie, and dunked it halfway, before tapping it on the edge of her glass to shake off the extra liquid, and biting off just the milk-soaked part. She repeated the process until the cookie was gone.
Isn't that the way she was with everything? If he and Sam were two ends of the same spectrum, she was halfway between them. Sam was light to his dark, and she was a million mottled values of grey.
Dean shook his head. Waxing poetic wasn't his style. And it didn't help him to resolve the questions that he had surrounding Chloe. He'd trusted her, and she'd run out on them. No matter that her reasons were noble; he had to figure out where they stood. Otherwise they couldn't go forward.
“That kind of depends on you, Chloe. What happens when Ollie Queen comes knocking on your door, wanting you to save the world again? You going to cut us out of things and run off, or are you going to trust us to have your back?”
She frowned and shook her head. “It wasn't exactly my preferred choice, Dean,” Chloe said bitterly. “I didn't see another way.”
“Because of all those secrets,” Dean said just as bitterly. “Right. I noticed that it didn't really matter that you left us. I still ended up with Lex Luthor pointing a gun at me.”
“I'm sorry about that.” She looked down at the empty plate and picked at the crumbs. “When Lionel Luthor was out to get me, the first thing he did was fire my dad. I guess the rotten apple didn't fall far from the diseased tree.”
Dean shook his head. “I don't buy it.”
“What?” she looked up at him suddenly, and raised an eyebrow. “I wasn't aware that I was selling anything.”
“Maybe not,” Dean muttered. “But I think somewhere along the way, maybe you bought the biggest load of grade-a bullshit I've ever seen. You may not realize it, but the crap flows down.”
“And in Dean-ese that means?” She leaned back and crossed her arms.
“This whole thought that you have to keep everyone at arms length.” Dean stabbed the table with his index finger for emphasis. “Somewhere along the way, you bought into this idea that the only way to keep the folks you care about safe was to keep them out of your life.
“You like living up on a pedestal, Chloe? Seems kind of lonely to me.”
She looked away and sighed. Her expression was closed off. It reminded him maddeningly of Sam at sixteen when he argued with Dad. In frustration, he reached out, grabbed her arm, and hauled her around to face him.
“Listen to me, dammit!”
She glared at him, eyes flashing defiance. She tried to pull away, but he held her firmly. When she figured out that he wasn't going to let her go, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fine. Start talking.”
Dean sighed and shook his head. He felt lost as to how to get through to her.
“Look,” he said with a sigh. “I don't know anything about this world you live in. I know Batman from Blue Beetle. But what makes you think that you're the weak link in the chain? Couldn't Mr. Clean have grabbed any one of those guys and tried the same thing?”
“With Lex and me, it's personal,” she said.
“Yeah, I admit he gets his jollies torturing you,” Dean nodded. “But that's another reason why you should have someone watching your back. Besides, if you cut yourself off from everyone and everything, then you may as well stick a bow on your head, an apple in your mouth and go ring his doorbell.”
She shut her eyes and shook her head. But Dean felt encouraged by the full-on grin that she was fighting.
“So what do you say?” He tilted his head down to catch her eyes with his. “Are you going to let me in?”
“Sort of goes both ways, doesn't it?” Her gaze turned challenging.
He sighed and knew exactly what she was talking about. “Sam.”
She nodded. “Pot, this is the kettle calling.”
He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, and looked around her messy apartment. “Tell you what, why don't I help you clean this place up? We can talk while we're working.”
She nodded. “Why not? I've got some days off coming to me. Perry might actually be happy if I used one. You want to call Sam at whatever dive you two rented and tell him to come help.”
Dean paused. “About that . . . He's not here, exactly.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You let him out of your sight?”
“I'm not that bad,” Dean shook his head.
“And I'm not that short.”
“Alright, fine.” He rolled his eyes. “Sam went to Memphis to see Jo. I didn't want to cramp his style.”
“You sure that's all it is?” She tilted her head to the side.
“No, but the rest can wait.”
“Sure,” she said with a sigh. “It's not like we don't already have a lot of secrets to cover.” She shrugged, unfolded herself from the table, and wove her way through the boxes to the bathroom.
Summary: He had to figure out where they stood. Otherwise, they couldn't go forward
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural/DCU
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: G
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #58 Dinner. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9a, Part 9b
The early morning sunlight filtered through dirty windows to illuminate a messy, crowded apartment. Dust motes danced like tiny pixies in the slanting golden rays. Newspaper piles, clean laundry and half-unpacked boxes covered every spare surface.
The boxes had been pushed aside haphazardly to make room for a person to walk. At one end of the apartment, sandwiched between two large boxes and a half-filled bookcase, sat a rickety old futon.
Dean Winchester was sprawled across the bed, quietly contemplating the tiny blonde woman who slept in his arms. He'd been with a lot of women in his life - but last night was a first for him. The first time he'd let a woman take him to bed and simply held her - nothing more.
Chloe Sullivan was unlike any woman he'd ever been with. He was struck by that as he lay there, watching her sleep, mouth slightly open and drooling on his chest. She was a classic beauty - with the kind of face you expected to see in a museum rather than on a magazine cover. But when she smiled, it warmed him like pure sunshine.
The fact that she was still asleep troubled him a little. She typically only slept about three hours a night. He suspected that she was dealing with some heavy emotional baggage. She'd been sobbing last night when he carried her to bed.
Chloe didn't sob. She got mad, but she didn't break down. It was part of what he respected about her. Dean hadn't known what to do. He didn't deal with emotions well - his or anyone else's. He hadn't expected to find her in this state. The last time he'd seen her, she was helping save a bunch of people from a genetics lab. Back there doing the hero thing; she'd seemed large than life.
When he'd come to Metropolis to find her, it had been with the idea of making sure that she was safe from a demon. He hadn't bargained on finding her an emotional wreck. He'd been at a loss for what to do. So he'd carried her to bed - and held her, stroking her hair in an attempt to calm her until she fell asleep.
Now, as he ran his fingers through her soft golden hair, he wondered what would happen when she awoke.
***
Consciousness returned to Chloe like the gradual onset of spring after a bitterly long, cold winter. First she became aware of lying on her side, with the calming sound of a heartbeat in her ear and the warm, soothing feeling of someone stroking her hair.
She felt protected and cherished, a feeling she hadn't had since her mother left and she'd started pretending to be strong for her father's benefit.
She lifted her head, and blinked muzzily. She was reminded of mornings before the meta abilities kicked in. Back when it took two cups of coffee to get going in the morning. She blinked again - and found herself staring into Dean's hazel eyes.
“Morning,” she rasped out.
“Yup,” he smiled back at her.
She glanced down at the drool spot on his chest, and frowned. “I think I messed up your shirt.”
“That's okay,” he said softly. “It's not my only one.” He reached up and brushed her hair from her face. “You okay?”
She looked down again, and shrugged. “The verdict's still out on that.”
“You want to tell me what's got you so worked up?”
“Just - bad memories,” she said.
“This have anything to do with that stuff Lex Luthor was talking about?”
“Some,” Chloe said. She tilted her head as if considering what to say. “I didn't remember what he did to me. Now I do.”
He pulled her closer, and tucked her head under his chin. “Was it bad?”
“As far as human lab rat experiences go, it wasn't exactly Flowers for Algernon.”
He felt his jaw clench in anger. Lex Luthor better pray to God that they never crossed paths again. “I'll kill him,” he muttered out loud.
Chloe grew very still. Dean glanced down and wondered if he'd just blown it. At last she slowly shook her head. “You aren't the first person to consider doing just that. Hell, I've even had my moments.” She sighed and shrugged. “They say the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. By now, Lex is an old hand at cheating both.
“It just makes taking him apart on the front page of the paper that much sweeter.”
Dean looked at her with a faint smile. “You're one tough chick.”
She shrugged. “My side has all the superheroes. What does Lex have?”
“A hella-sexy assistant?”
Chloe's lip twisted as she raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously. I can't blame him for having good taste.”
“I would have preferred if he had sharks with fricken' laser beams attached to their heads.”
Dean winced. “You had to bring up the sharks.”
“My point exactly.”
He looked down and met her wry smirk with a grin of his own. He wanted to stay with her like that, but the insistent pressure on his bladder reminded him that nature needed his attention.
“You mind?” He nodded toward the bathroom.
“Go ahead.”
Getting there was an adventure in itself. He wasn't sure when Chloe had moved in, but if not for the layer of dust on everything, he would have been tempted to say yesterday.
“So how long have you been here?” he asked as he picked up his duffel, and stepped around boxes and disassembled furniture.
“Three - maybe four years?”
“You're kidding, right?” he asked incredulously as he reached the bathroom. It was roughly the size of a closet, with a tiny square of open floor between the shower, sink, and toilet.
“It's more of a place to land than anything,” her voice sounded apologetic. “I'll get around to cleaning the place up - someday.”
He stripped to the waist, and ran a sink full of water. “If you need some help . . .” There was a long, quiet pause. Dean wondered what she was thinking as he washed up, brushed his teeth and changed shirts.
“That sort of depends,” Chloe said carefully.
He left his dirty shirt on the counter, and his duffel on the floor. “On what?” he asked as he crossed the apartment to where she sat at the kitchen table. She had cleared a space by moving the piles of newspapers from the table to the extra chairs, and was now sitting with her feet tucked up under her, munching on a plate of Oreos with milk.
“On . . .” She bit her lip. “On whether you think I'll be here very long.”
He knew what she was asking - whether he wanted her back. More than anything he wanted to just tell her that was the case. But they had a lot of issues to resolve before they could make that kind of decision.
He reached across her and snagged a cookie from her plate. As he dunked it in her milk, he wondered what prompted her to get them. He could remember eating them with Sammy when they were kids.
Sam was very methodical about the way he ate his Oreos. He would take them apart and eat them layer by layer. First the side that didn't have cream stuck to it, then he would clean the cream off the other side with his teeth, before eating the other end. And only then, taking a drink.
Dean wasn't that picky. He would dunk a cookie until it was so full of milk that it had almost fallen apart, before stuffing it in his mouth and reaching for the next one. Sam probably got maximum satisfaction for his cookie, but Dean got maximum cookie for his satisfaction.
Chloe seemed to be halfway between him and Sam on the cookie satisfaction scale. She took each cookie, and dunked it halfway, before tapping it on the edge of her glass to shake off the extra liquid, and biting off just the milk-soaked part. She repeated the process until the cookie was gone.
Isn't that the way she was with everything? If he and Sam were two ends of the same spectrum, she was halfway between them. Sam was light to his dark, and she was a million mottled values of grey.
Dean shook his head. Waxing poetic wasn't his style. And it didn't help him to resolve the questions that he had surrounding Chloe. He'd trusted her, and she'd run out on them. No matter that her reasons were noble; he had to figure out where they stood. Otherwise they couldn't go forward.
“That kind of depends on you, Chloe. What happens when Ollie Queen comes knocking on your door, wanting you to save the world again? You going to cut us out of things and run off, or are you going to trust us to have your back?”
She frowned and shook her head. “It wasn't exactly my preferred choice, Dean,” Chloe said bitterly. “I didn't see another way.”
“Because of all those secrets,” Dean said just as bitterly. “Right. I noticed that it didn't really matter that you left us. I still ended up with Lex Luthor pointing a gun at me.”
“I'm sorry about that.” She looked down at the empty plate and picked at the crumbs. “When Lionel Luthor was out to get me, the first thing he did was fire my dad. I guess the rotten apple didn't fall far from the diseased tree.”
Dean shook his head. “I don't buy it.”
“What?” she looked up at him suddenly, and raised an eyebrow. “I wasn't aware that I was selling anything.”
“Maybe not,” Dean muttered. “But I think somewhere along the way, maybe you bought the biggest load of grade-a bullshit I've ever seen. You may not realize it, but the crap flows down.”
“And in Dean-ese that means?” She leaned back and crossed her arms.
“This whole thought that you have to keep everyone at arms length.” Dean stabbed the table with his index finger for emphasis. “Somewhere along the way, you bought into this idea that the only way to keep the folks you care about safe was to keep them out of your life.
“You like living up on a pedestal, Chloe? Seems kind of lonely to me.”
She looked away and sighed. Her expression was closed off. It reminded him maddeningly of Sam at sixteen when he argued with Dad. In frustration, he reached out, grabbed her arm, and hauled her around to face him.
“Listen to me, dammit!”
She glared at him, eyes flashing defiance. She tried to pull away, but he held her firmly. When she figured out that he wasn't going to let her go, her shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fine. Start talking.”
Dean sighed and shook his head. He felt lost as to how to get through to her.
“Look,” he said with a sigh. “I don't know anything about this world you live in. I know Batman from Blue Beetle. But what makes you think that you're the weak link in the chain? Couldn't Mr. Clean have grabbed any one of those guys and tried the same thing?”
“With Lex and me, it's personal,” she said.
“Yeah, I admit he gets his jollies torturing you,” Dean nodded. “But that's another reason why you should have someone watching your back. Besides, if you cut yourself off from everyone and everything, then you may as well stick a bow on your head, an apple in your mouth and go ring his doorbell.”
She shut her eyes and shook her head. But Dean felt encouraged by the full-on grin that she was fighting.
“So what do you say?” He tilted his head down to catch her eyes with his. “Are you going to let me in?”
“Sort of goes both ways, doesn't it?” Her gaze turned challenging.
He sighed and knew exactly what she was talking about. “Sam.”
She nodded. “Pot, this is the kettle calling.”
He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, and looked around her messy apartment. “Tell you what, why don't I help you clean this place up? We can talk while we're working.”
She nodded. “Why not? I've got some days off coming to me. Perry might actually be happy if I used one. You want to call Sam at whatever dive you two rented and tell him to come help.”
Dean paused. “About that . . . He's not here, exactly.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You let him out of your sight?”
“I'm not that bad,” Dean shook his head.
“And I'm not that short.”
“Alright, fine.” He rolled his eyes. “Sam went to Memphis to see Jo. I didn't want to cramp his style.”
“You sure that's all it is?” She tilted her head to the side.
“No, but the rest can wait.”
“Sure,” she said with a sigh. “It's not like we don't already have a lot of secrets to cover.” She shrugged, unfolded herself from the table, and wove her way through the boxes to the bathroom.