His Girl Friday (2/9)
Fic: His Girl Friday (2/9)
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
Dean tackled the unpacking with the same focus and attention to detail that he showed when he was hunting or cleaning a weapon. By now, Chloe knew when to offer help, and when to stand out of his way and take direction if it was offered. Whatever plans they had to talk got shoved by the wayside as he became absorbed in the task of taking her old life out of boxes, and setting it to rights.
In a weird way, she felt reluctant to set her stuff brought out like this. It was as if she were nesting, or maybe putting down roots. She’d circled the globe, hopping into and out of danger while her old life had remained safely here. Tucked away so that she didn’t have to think about it.
Now, she wondered what dragging it back into the light of day would mean. And whether doing it with Dean by her side was a sign that she was letting him in, or he was nailing her feet down so that she wouldn’t follow him when he left town.
They started with organizing the boxes. Dishes and silverware moved to the kitchen. Clothing went onto a rack in a corner behind an oriental screen. Boxes of awards went into the corner with her desk. Once the piles had been turned into organized chaos, he set to work reassembling furniture while she cleaned and shelved dishes. Then she wove her way around the room to the boxes of clothing, and started assessing the wardrobe for what she could keep, and what should be tossed.
Four months of very physical hand-to-hand combat instruction with Dean had helped to slim her down to the point that a lot of her clothing was going into the pitch pile. She was sad to see some of her 'you won a Pulitzer, so you should treat yourself to a whole new wardrobe' tailored business suits and dresses go, but she was happy to note that she could now fit back into clothing that she hadn't seen since her senior year of high school. Not that she'd actually wear any of it, considering how out of style it was.
“Crows baseball jersey. I must have stolen that from Pete. Guinness t-shirt I got with Lois during the pub-crawl last St. Patty's day. It's a little big. I could probably sleep in it. Army boots. Those would have been useful back at that farm in Oklahoma. Leather bracelet? Must have come from Chad.” She muttered as she picked through the ever-shrinking pile.
“Hey Chlo --” Dean rounded the corner just as she came to some kind of goth Cinderella outfit that had to have come from the slutty French witch. She stood there, face flushed bright red as he eyed the black bustier with avid interest.
“That yours?”
“Long story.” She dropped it back into the box.
“I like long stories.” He smirked at her.
“Oh, you'd like this one,” she rolled her eyes. “I was possessed by the spirit of a slutty French witch, who apparently clawed her way back from the great beyond just to catch the sales at Hot Topic.”
“How many times have you been possessed?” Dean narrowed his eyes.
“Enough to know better,” Chloe said as she started ticking off possessions on her fingers. “The slutty French witch was on my birthday. The second time was Dawn Stiles. She was my competition for prom queen - not that I really wanted it.
“It pissed her off that she died before she won, and she came back ready to recreate the whole pigs’ blood experience for prom night using yours truly to do the deed.
“And then there was the girl who managed to convince everyone - me included - that I was crazy.”
“You never do things the normal way, do you?” Dean shook his head. “Most people, they get a demon all up in them. You --”
“In my defense, it wasn't just me. The slutty witches also got Lois and Lana. And Dawn jumped from Lois to me to Clark. And you've never been confused until you get knocked down by a six-foot-four jock screaming the crown is mine, bitch.”
“And the ghost?”
“Wasn't fun.” Chloe shook her head. “Especially since her killer was an orderly in the hospital that my well-intentioned friends tried to have me committed in.”
“And all of this was before your healing ability kicked in?”
She nodded.
“How the hell did you get out of that podunk town alive?”
“It helps that I knew a couple of superheroes when they were in their amoeba state,” she shrugged.
Dean shook his head. “We really need to finish that talk. And now I think I've got a few more questions of my own.”
Chloe nodded in agreement, and followed him around the shade to see that he was starting to hang her awards on the wall over her computer. She followed him back to that corner and alternated between handing him supplies, questions, and answers on an as-needed basis.
“How do you want to do this?” He pointed from the blank wall to the stacks of framed awards and newspaper pages that were propped against the baseboards.
“How about the two front page sections in the middle, with the awards around them?” Chloe said.
Dean nodded and climbed up on her desk to put the nails into the walls. He knocked on the wall with his knuckles in what Chloe assumed was an attempt to find the two by four studs. Then he tapped a nail in place and held out his hands for the first frame.
“So when did you get interested in the freaky stories?” Dean asked.
Chloe shrugged as she passed up the framed newspaper. “I think when I was a kid. Dad had a warped sense of humor. He taught me to read by making me sound out old stories from the Weekly World News.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Dean hung the photo, and then sat a tiny level on the top to straighten it out. He looked over his shoulder and grinned down at her.
“Nope,” She shrugged as she reached for a second nail. “See Dick. See Jane. See Bigfoot playing Go Fish with Elvis in a flying saucer. I guess you could say that I was kinda twisted at an early age.”
“Awesome,” Dean chuckled.
“To be fair to Dad, it wasn’t all him, either. When Mom . . . I guess she was committed, but at the time I thought she left us. Anyway, with her gone, I spent my formative Metropolis years with my Dad’s parents while Dad was out trying to make ends meet. Grampy Sullivan used to entertain me with stories of Ireland.
“My career, so to speak, began freshman year of high school. I was put in charge of the school paper that year.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“And you were the editor?”
“No one else wanted the job,” Chloe said. “At least, no one assertive enough to shout me down. I looked at it as a stepping-stone. Because I was the editor, I could get access to more resources. It made investigating things in that warped little hamlet so much easier.”
Dean looked over a framed certificate as she handed it to him. “Is this what a Pulitzer really looks like?”
“Yep,” she nodded. “Well, that and $10,000.”
“$10,000 will buy a lot of bullets,” Dean said.
“I donated my award to the high school journalism department.”
“The way you go on about it, I kind of wanted to see it.”
“Sorry it’s so much of a letdown. Pulitzer is about excellence in writing. The awards reception was very low key.
“There’s a bigger award given to the paper for service to the community. It comes with a little gold medal. I could take you to see it tomorrow. You can ogle it to your heart’s content.”
“If you want.”
***
There was a comfortable lull in conversation while Dean hung the much-coveted award. But as Chloe handed him his next nail, he noticed a tense expression on her face. He wondered if she was working up the nerve to ask him about his secrets.
“So why didn’t you tell me that Sam was meta?” she finally asked.
Dean shrugged as he set the nail and tapped it home. “Same reason we didn’t tell you about the demon general. Sam’s powers were going toward holding it in check.
“We didn’t know you well enough to trust you with the information in the beginning. And when we finally did. . .” He trailed off sheepishly. “There really isn’t a good way to come out and say: my brother is secretly a psychic. And by the way, he has a demon locked in his head who could potentially take over the world if it ever got out.”
“You handled it just fine right there, Sparky,” Chloe snapped. “Wait a minute. Were going toward holding it in check? Past tense?”
“You noticed that,” Dean sighed.
“I noticed that? Number one: what happened? And number two: were you going to tell me?”
“Number two: I was picking my moment.” Dean jumped from the desk, sat the hammer down, and grasped her by the forearms. He pulled her close, intent on keeping her from retreating while he explained. Hoping that he could make her see his side of things.
“And number one: it escaped. That’s why Sam is in Memphis. He’s checking on Jo. The last time this thing was free, it tried to use her as bait. Sam is safeguarding the roadhouse against anything like that happening again.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Chloe asked.
Dean sighed, and pulled her close to him. “It wants to hurt me, Chloe. Me specifically. And it knows that it can do that through you.”
“The players have changed, yet the lines are eerily familiar,” Chloe said wryly.
He laughed mirthlessly. “I guess so.”
“So what are we going to do, Dean?” Chloe asked.
Dean shrugged. “Just keep doing what we do. Sooner or later, it’ll make a move. All we can do is stay sharp until then.” He stroked her hair as he spoke. Secretly, he was glad that she wasn't pulling away. Holding her like that brought him more comfort than she could ever know.
Chloe nodded against his shoulder. “So, are we okay?”
“We’re getting there,” Dean said. Despite his words, he still felt keenly the rift that sprang up between them when she'd ditched him back at Bobby's. He shut his eyes and shook his head. Before that, he felt like they had been on the verge of something special. Now it was like they were at opposite ends of a chasm, looking across at each other, but not sure if they could trust each other enough to bridge the gap.
A sudden thought hit him. Something Sam had said a while back about the difference between trying to get a woman into bed and trying to get a woman into his life. Dean glanced down at her speculatively. A faint grin tugged at his lips.
“What?” Chloe raised an eyebrow.
“Why don't we go out?”
“What, like this?” she looked down at her Kiss me - I'm Irish t-shirt and tattered shorts.
He grinned at that. “I think you look damn fine. But I was thinking more like a date.”
“Date?” Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Like a date date?”
“Yeah, you know - you dress up. I take you somewhere nice, and we try to get to know each other better . . .” He broke off, shut his eyes and shook his head. “And by get to know each other better, I mean get to know each other better. Not get to know each other better.” He shook his head. “Nevermind.”
“You are just a walking double entendre,” Chloe chuckled. “But I know what you meant.”
“So go out with me?” Dean looked at her hopefully.
“Sure. Why not?”
Not the answer he was looking for. But by the look on her face and the tilt of her head, Dean figured she was saying yes out of curiosity more than anything. Which was fine in his book. He could deal with curiosity. Especially if it got him what he wanted.
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
Dean tackled the unpacking with the same focus and attention to detail that he showed when he was hunting or cleaning a weapon. By now, Chloe knew when to offer help, and when to stand out of his way and take direction if it was offered. Whatever plans they had to talk got shoved by the wayside as he became absorbed in the task of taking her old life out of boxes, and setting it to rights.
In a weird way, she felt reluctant to set her stuff brought out like this. It was as if she were nesting, or maybe putting down roots. She’d circled the globe, hopping into and out of danger while her old life had remained safely here. Tucked away so that she didn’t have to think about it.
Now, she wondered what dragging it back into the light of day would mean. And whether doing it with Dean by her side was a sign that she was letting him in, or he was nailing her feet down so that she wouldn’t follow him when he left town.
They started with organizing the boxes. Dishes and silverware moved to the kitchen. Clothing went onto a rack in a corner behind an oriental screen. Boxes of awards went into the corner with her desk. Once the piles had been turned into organized chaos, he set to work reassembling furniture while she cleaned and shelved dishes. Then she wove her way around the room to the boxes of clothing, and started assessing the wardrobe for what she could keep, and what should be tossed.
Four months of very physical hand-to-hand combat instruction with Dean had helped to slim her down to the point that a lot of her clothing was going into the pitch pile. She was sad to see some of her 'you won a Pulitzer, so you should treat yourself to a whole new wardrobe' tailored business suits and dresses go, but she was happy to note that she could now fit back into clothing that she hadn't seen since her senior year of high school. Not that she'd actually wear any of it, considering how out of style it was.
“Crows baseball jersey. I must have stolen that from Pete. Guinness t-shirt I got with Lois during the pub-crawl last St. Patty's day. It's a little big. I could probably sleep in it. Army boots. Those would have been useful back at that farm in Oklahoma. Leather bracelet? Must have come from Chad.” She muttered as she picked through the ever-shrinking pile.
“Hey Chlo --” Dean rounded the corner just as she came to some kind of goth Cinderella outfit that had to have come from the slutty French witch. She stood there, face flushed bright red as he eyed the black bustier with avid interest.
“That yours?”
“Long story.” She dropped it back into the box.
“I like long stories.” He smirked at her.
“Oh, you'd like this one,” she rolled her eyes. “I was possessed by the spirit of a slutty French witch, who apparently clawed her way back from the great beyond just to catch the sales at Hot Topic.”
“How many times have you been possessed?” Dean narrowed his eyes.
“Enough to know better,” Chloe said as she started ticking off possessions on her fingers. “The slutty French witch was on my birthday. The second time was Dawn Stiles. She was my competition for prom queen - not that I really wanted it.
“It pissed her off that she died before she won, and she came back ready to recreate the whole pigs’ blood experience for prom night using yours truly to do the deed.
“And then there was the girl who managed to convince everyone - me included - that I was crazy.”
“You never do things the normal way, do you?” Dean shook his head. “Most people, they get a demon all up in them. You --”
“In my defense, it wasn't just me. The slutty witches also got Lois and Lana. And Dawn jumped from Lois to me to Clark. And you've never been confused until you get knocked down by a six-foot-four jock screaming the crown is mine, bitch.”
“And the ghost?”
“Wasn't fun.” Chloe shook her head. “Especially since her killer was an orderly in the hospital that my well-intentioned friends tried to have me committed in.”
“And all of this was before your healing ability kicked in?”
She nodded.
“How the hell did you get out of that podunk town alive?”
“It helps that I knew a couple of superheroes when they were in their amoeba state,” she shrugged.
Dean shook his head. “We really need to finish that talk. And now I think I've got a few more questions of my own.”
Chloe nodded in agreement, and followed him around the shade to see that he was starting to hang her awards on the wall over her computer. She followed him back to that corner and alternated between handing him supplies, questions, and answers on an as-needed basis.
“How do you want to do this?” He pointed from the blank wall to the stacks of framed awards and newspaper pages that were propped against the baseboards.
“How about the two front page sections in the middle, with the awards around them?” Chloe said.
Dean nodded and climbed up on her desk to put the nails into the walls. He knocked on the wall with his knuckles in what Chloe assumed was an attempt to find the two by four studs. Then he tapped a nail in place and held out his hands for the first frame.
“So when did you get interested in the freaky stories?” Dean asked.
Chloe shrugged as she passed up the framed newspaper. “I think when I was a kid. Dad had a warped sense of humor. He taught me to read by making me sound out old stories from the Weekly World News.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Dean hung the photo, and then sat a tiny level on the top to straighten it out. He looked over his shoulder and grinned down at her.
“Nope,” She shrugged as she reached for a second nail. “See Dick. See Jane. See Bigfoot playing Go Fish with Elvis in a flying saucer. I guess you could say that I was kinda twisted at an early age.”
“Awesome,” Dean chuckled.
“To be fair to Dad, it wasn’t all him, either. When Mom . . . I guess she was committed, but at the time I thought she left us. Anyway, with her gone, I spent my formative Metropolis years with my Dad’s parents while Dad was out trying to make ends meet. Grampy Sullivan used to entertain me with stories of Ireland.
“My career, so to speak, began freshman year of high school. I was put in charge of the school paper that year.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
“And you were the editor?”
“No one else wanted the job,” Chloe said. “At least, no one assertive enough to shout me down. I looked at it as a stepping-stone. Because I was the editor, I could get access to more resources. It made investigating things in that warped little hamlet so much easier.”
Dean looked over a framed certificate as she handed it to him. “Is this what a Pulitzer really looks like?”
“Yep,” she nodded. “Well, that and $10,000.”
“$10,000 will buy a lot of bullets,” Dean said.
“I donated my award to the high school journalism department.”
“The way you go on about it, I kind of wanted to see it.”
“Sorry it’s so much of a letdown. Pulitzer is about excellence in writing. The awards reception was very low key.
“There’s a bigger award given to the paper for service to the community. It comes with a little gold medal. I could take you to see it tomorrow. You can ogle it to your heart’s content.”
“If you want.”
***
There was a comfortable lull in conversation while Dean hung the much-coveted award. But as Chloe handed him his next nail, he noticed a tense expression on her face. He wondered if she was working up the nerve to ask him about his secrets.
“So why didn’t you tell me that Sam was meta?” she finally asked.
Dean shrugged as he set the nail and tapped it home. “Same reason we didn’t tell you about the demon general. Sam’s powers were going toward holding it in check.
“We didn’t know you well enough to trust you with the information in the beginning. And when we finally did. . .” He trailed off sheepishly. “There really isn’t a good way to come out and say: my brother is secretly a psychic. And by the way, he has a demon locked in his head who could potentially take over the world if it ever got out.”
“You handled it just fine right there, Sparky,” Chloe snapped. “Wait a minute. Were going toward holding it in check? Past tense?”
“You noticed that,” Dean sighed.
“I noticed that? Number one: what happened? And number two: were you going to tell me?”
“Number two: I was picking my moment.” Dean jumped from the desk, sat the hammer down, and grasped her by the forearms. He pulled her close, intent on keeping her from retreating while he explained. Hoping that he could make her see his side of things.
“And number one: it escaped. That’s why Sam is in Memphis. He’s checking on Jo. The last time this thing was free, it tried to use her as bait. Sam is safeguarding the roadhouse against anything like that happening again.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Chloe asked.
Dean sighed, and pulled her close to him. “It wants to hurt me, Chloe. Me specifically. And it knows that it can do that through you.”
“The players have changed, yet the lines are eerily familiar,” Chloe said wryly.
He laughed mirthlessly. “I guess so.”
“So what are we going to do, Dean?” Chloe asked.
Dean shrugged. “Just keep doing what we do. Sooner or later, it’ll make a move. All we can do is stay sharp until then.” He stroked her hair as he spoke. Secretly, he was glad that she wasn't pulling away. Holding her like that brought him more comfort than she could ever know.
Chloe nodded against his shoulder. “So, are we okay?”
“We’re getting there,” Dean said. Despite his words, he still felt keenly the rift that sprang up between them when she'd ditched him back at Bobby's. He shut his eyes and shook his head. Before that, he felt like they had been on the verge of something special. Now it was like they were at opposite ends of a chasm, looking across at each other, but not sure if they could trust each other enough to bridge the gap.
A sudden thought hit him. Something Sam had said a while back about the difference between trying to get a woman into bed and trying to get a woman into his life. Dean glanced down at her speculatively. A faint grin tugged at his lips.
“What?” Chloe raised an eyebrow.
“Why don't we go out?”
“What, like this?” she looked down at her Kiss me - I'm Irish t-shirt and tattered shorts.
He grinned at that. “I think you look damn fine. But I was thinking more like a date.”
“Date?” Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Like a date date?”
“Yeah, you know - you dress up. I take you somewhere nice, and we try to get to know each other better . . .” He broke off, shut his eyes and shook his head. “And by get to know each other better, I mean get to know each other better. Not get to know each other better.” He shook his head. “Nevermind.”
“You are just a walking double entendre,” Chloe chuckled. “But I know what you meant.”
“So go out with me?” Dean looked at her hopefully.
“Sure. Why not?”
Not the answer he was looking for. But by the look on her face and the tilt of her head, Dean figured she was saying yes out of curiosity more than anything. Which was fine in his book. He could deal with curiosity. Especially if it got him what he wanted.