Fic: Tis the Season (1/8)
Fic: Tis the Season (1/8)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: The holidays brings cultists to Metropolis. Fortunately, it also brings Dean, Sam and Chloe. While there, Sam runs into an old friend.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Sarah Blake
Pairing:Chloe/Dean Sam/Sarah
Rating: Nc-17
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #92 Christmas. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Pa rt 7, Part 8
Dean hated museums. He'd been inside a couple. Once or twice. --Okay, he'd been stealing a cursed amulet at the time, but he had been there long enough to know that he was not a museum kind of guy.
For one thing, museums were hands-off types of places. They kind of frowned at people like Dean, who liked to pick things up and turn them over to see what was underneath them. For another, with his steel-toed boots, torn jeans and flannel shirts, Dean looked like the kind of guy museum security watched closely.
Thirdly, while the museums were filled with pictures of naked chicks, they were all either covered with fig leaves, humping a goat-man, or had three square breasts.
That was why out of all the things he could be staring at, the one thing that caught his attention was not a naked chick, but a devil mask.
It wasn't really a devil. Dean hadn't met a demon yet that looked like a devil of the European Catholic morality play variety. But this mask conformed to that image: ruddy complexion, horns, pointy beard and mustache.
“Take a picture, it'll last longer,” Chloe said as she walked up behind him.
“Think so?” Dean asked as he casually slipped an arm around her and pulled her up against his side. It was comforting to hold her close. While aesthetically, he could admire the way she looked in the clothes she wore while she had her Daily Planet hat on, the shoes that made her three inches taller were a little bit much. He liked the way she fit right under his chin at her natural height. Besides, he was a little concerned she'd fall down the stairs or something tottering around on those heels.
But that was it, really. In the two months since they'd been attacked and tortured by the demon that they knew as Meg, his downstairs brain had yet to put in an appearance. And while Chloe and he hadn’t exactly taken their relationship to the next level, she seemed a little concerned that the suggestive comments had dribbled away into nothing.
His girlfriend even cared about that side of him. Who knew?
“Probably,” she said as she wrinkled her nose at the mask. “Although why anyone would want a picture of that thing is beyond me. That mask definitely wants this room to suffer.”
“Why is it even in a Christmas exhibit?” Dean asked.
“This is The Many Faces of Christmas.”
“Yeah? Well that is one of Christmas' fuglier faces,” Dean said. “Kinda looks like the type of holiday we used to have.”
“That bad?” Chloe rested her cheek against his chest.
“I don’t know,” Dean said as he looked across the room at a Santa dressed as Uncle Sam (the one who wore the stars-and-stripes, not Chloe’s Uncle Sam).
Chloe rubbed comforting circles across his back and smiled at him encouragingly.
“My Mom loved Christmas,” he said. “She loved everything about it from the carols to the cookies. She would put the decorations up Thanksgiving Day and take them down on New Year’s. The last Christmas she was with us, I was determined that I was going to sneak out of bed and see Santa. She must have been on to me, because she made Dad dress up in a red suit and put my presents under the tree that night.”
He shut his eyes and shook his head. When he opened them again, Chloe was looking at him with sympathy in her expression - but not an ounce of pity.
Once again he was struck by how fortunate he was to find Chloe. In the two months since they’d been attacked, she’d helped him to hold himself together, and navigate through the healing process. All while dealing with her own demons.
He’d long-ago realized that he had deep feelings for the petite blonde in his arms. But in moments like this - when it felt like they were connected heart and soul, and no other girl would understand him like she would - that he realized that she was the one, and that he would never be able to let her go.
“We had been staying with Mike, Dad’s business partner. Then dad just up and moved us out a couple of days before Christmas. He tried, but it just wasn’t Christmas. After that, Dad usually went hunting during the holidays. It was mostly just Sam and me.”
He released a bitter chuckle. “What kind of dad avoids his kids on Christmas?”
“It must have been hard for him,” Chloe said quietly. “The holidays are a hard time to be alone.”
The quiet conviction in her voice reminded Dean that Chloe had also lost her mom, and although her father was completely unlike John Winchester - Chloe had chosen to shut him out in order to keep him safe from her enemies.
“How many?” he asked
“What?” Chloe looked up at him in confusion.
“How many holidays have you been alone?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Chloe shook her head.
“It does to me.”
“When I was younger Dad and I spent the holidays with Grampy and Grammy Sullivan. Their last couple of years, I used to volunteer at the retirement home. I guess after that I just kept volunteering around Christmas. It was something I did to keep myself busy, and keep my mind off of things.” She shrugged. “It’s fine Dean, really. I’m not alone anymore. I have you and Sam.”
Dean nodded. If he had his way, none of them would ever be alone again.
“So,” she pulled back to look him in the face. “You want to tell me about this Sarah chick and how Sam knows her?”
Dean grinned at that. “We met Sarah a few years back. She worked for her dad’s auction house. The place was handling a haunted painting, and she ended up helping us solve the case.”
“And that’s when she became a hunter?”
“Sarah isn’t a hunter,” Dean shook his head.
“Like I’m not a hunter?” Chloe raised an eyebrow.
“Touché,” Dean said. “But seriously, Sam said that Sarah uses her dad’s business contacts to find cursed or haunted objects and then she finds hunters to dispose of them. So in a way, she’s like a paranormal employment agency.”
“Like Monster dot com, only with real monsters,” Chloe laughed. “So she’s a digger. Like me.”
“Are we having this argument again?” Dean touched his forehead to hers. The tiniest of smirks tugged at the corner of his lips.
“Probably for the rest of our lives.”
Her words created warm fuzzies that tickled his insides. He liked the idea of having Chloe with him for the rest of his life. Hearing her say things like that reminded him of things that she'd unconsciously told him when they were in Colorado Springs: that she hoped someday he'd marry her. He doubted that she remembered telling him that. And he was pretty sure that she'd be embarrassed if he brought it up again. But it was there. She felt the same way he did. She didn't plan to leave him.
“Think we’ve given them enough time to get reacquainted?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
Chloe gave him an incredulous look, and then rolled her eyes. “I think I’ve told you how disturbing it is that you’re this involved in Sam’s sex life.”
“What? I just want Sam to be happy.” Dean held his hands up, palms facing her in a warding gesture. “It’s not like his thing with Jo went anywhere.”
“Dean,” Chloe said. She tilted her head in an exasperated gesture. “I know you’ve still got your training wheels on in the relationship-having department, but seriously, it’s not a good thing to jump into and out of relationships casually. If you do that then you’re not really in a relationship to begin with.”
“And in English that Simple Caveman Grog can understand?” Dean poked her in the side.
“Don’t,” she swatted his hand as she shied away from his touch. “It’s called going on the rebound. Rebound relationships hardly ever work.”
“But Sam and Jo weren’t together,” Dean said. “You have to be bound . . . before you’re . . . that sounded way less kinky in my head.”
Chloe grinned at him. “You look like you’re getting your sea legs back, sailor.” She hooked her fingers into his belt loops and pulled him bodily closer to her. She backed into a recess in between a model of a Norse feast hall, and a display of a carved Yule log. There, they were out of the way of the flow of museum patrons.
Dean shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I hope so,” she grinned a mischievous grin at him. “I’ve kind of missed that side of you.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Maybe. Just a little bit.”
“Uh huh,” Dean said. Then he gave her an apologetic look. “It’s still kind of weird.”
“It’s okay to be weird,” Chloe said. “As long as it’s not, you know, bad-weird.”
“And if it is?”
“Then we can kind of circle at the outer marker until its good weird. Then maybe fly a little closer.”
“I’ve never been a big fan of flying,” Dean confessed.
Chloe gave him a sad smile and touched the side of his face. He leaned into her touch and shut his eyes.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let you crash. You’ve just got to trust me.”
He pinned her with a sad smile. “I know. It’s just . . .”
“Yeah.” She pulled away. A blank look descended on her face, and the warm light went out of her eyes. “I know. We should . . .” She trailed off while she looked over her shoulder. “Find Sam and Sarah.”
Dean watched her as she walked away. He felt colder, like he was somehow letting her down, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He considered kicking the giant log display, but then remembered - museum. Instead he scratched the back of his neck. “Well, damn it.”