Fic: Tis the Season (5/8)
Fic: Tis the Season (5/8)
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, Part 7, Part 8
The Doorman at the Apricot Tree confirmed that the man in the three-piece suit was Jack Hidleberg, so their next stop was public records.
Before long, they were nose-deep in a list of properties owned or managed by the Hidleberg families, looking for one that would make an ideal spot for a sacrificial ritual. The process was slow going, since the family owned a lot of properties.
While Chloe coaxed the city's ancient relic of a computer through lists of title transfers, It didn't take long for Dean to get bored. He wandered aimlessly through shelves containing blueprints and maps before finally sitting next to Chloe and pulling out the journal that she'd given him.
He hadn't planned to journal his thoughts. Because Sam was likely to go all emo on him and give him that brave little soldier look. But Chloe had bargained him into it in exchange for following his lead on their last hunt.
He'd been pretty lucky. Sam and Chloe mostly pretended that they didn't even see him writing. Occasionally when he glanced at Chloe, he could see the faintest hint of a twitch at the corner of her mouth. But nothing that would make him give up the writing in disgust.
Truth was, she was right. All those feelings that he'd been ignoring were festering.
He hardly wanted to think about it. And writing it down made it seem so real. It would be so easy to pretend that it never happened. Thanks to Isaac's metahuman ability to amp-up other meta abilities, Chloe's own healing gifts had taken away the physical evidence that she'd been harmed at his hands. If it wasn't for the nervous way she was bouncing her right leg, he would never guess that the tight confines of the room bothered her at all.
He shut his eyes again. If he could just get the images out of his head, and keep them out of his dreams. But they were stuck there. And once he got past the girly factor of writing down his feelings, it was actually kind of helping to dislodge them. And hell, if writing down his thoughts was good enough to help Dad cope with losing Mom, then it was good enough for him to deal with what Meg had done to him.
Which was good, because he wanted to be closer to Chloe. He wanted to want her the way he used to. Most importantly, he wanted to be able to touch her out of love, without being forced to remember the way it felt when Meg used his hands to bounce her head off the hood of the Impala or the way they'd both been used to fulfill the demon's perverse roofie date rape scenario.
He'd wanted their first time to be special. Earth shaking. Memorable. Now all he wanted to do was forget it. Erase the slate and start clean with her.
He sighed as he tapped his pencil on the open cover of the journal. He hadn't really given it a lot of thought - mainly due to the horror of the whole event - but he and Chloe needed to sit down and discuss that aspect of what had happened.
He was pretty sure that Chloe wasn't having quite the same issues with it that he was. The horror of being once-more buried alive probably overshadowed everything else. Especially since she’d been unconscious at the time. But the fact was that the demon had forced unprotected sex on her. And Dean didn't even know if she was on the pill or not.
They needed to have a heart-to-heart about what had happened, and figure out if there were any long-term consequences. And if so, what to do about them.
“Chloe?” He began hesitantly.
“Uh-huh?” she glanced sideways at him from the computer.
“Nothing.” Dean glanced down. His nerve failing him. He didn't understand why he could go head-to-head with a windego without giving it a second thought, but confronting his girlfriend with yet more horror over their shared ordeal was enough to make him lose his nerve.
Just great. One more worry.
One thing was for certain: if he wanted to forget that this thing ever happened, that was one way to ensure that he'd never forget.
He really hoped that Meg was rotting in the pit of despair.
* * *
“Here's another list of warehouses,” Chloe said as the dinosaur dot matrix printer spit out address after address on grey-bar paper. “It's a lot of work, but I figure that it would be easier to check into them than following Hidleberg around on some wild goose chase. And if we don't find anything, then we can always go back to hanging around outside the Apricot Tree. Until he moves his victim.”
“It's getting kind of late to go exploring,” Dean said as he looked to the window - and the purpling sky beyond. He looked at Chloe with a smirk and a wink. “First thing tomorrow we can roust Sam and Sarah out of their hotel and make them help us.”
Chloe's lip twisted wryly. “So, you want to go home and watch bad holiday specials?”
“I'd rather hit the bar and see how much I can hustle at pool,” Dean said.
“You know, you could at least try to be good, Dean. Santa is watching.”
“You talk like he's real.”
“That's because he is,” Chloe said.
“You're kidding, right?” Dean said incredulously.
“Dean, we just spent Halloween stalking a headless horseman because we thought he might be a thought golem. If belief can create a headless horseman, then why not Santa?”
Dean looked at her incredulously. “You've met him, haven't you?”
“Yeah, I have.”
He put his hands on his hips. “Is there anyone you haven't met?”
“Russell Crowe. But not for lack of trying.”
“Boyfriend. Sitting right here.”
Before she could snark back, her cell phone vibrated. She shot Dean an apologetic look and left him to thumb through the extensive list of warehouses while she answered it.
“Hello? . . . Dad!”
Dean loved the way her entire face lit up when she spoke to her father. He hoped that he could one-day be the reason she wore that expression.
“Where are you?”
Dean watched as it seemed that storm clouds dimmed her Emerald green eyes.
“You’re still in France? I was hoping you would be home in time to go with me to Midnight Mass. But hey, at least we'll get to spend Christmas together.” Her face fell. “You're not? That's . . . That's okay. Really.” Her lips drew up in a forced smile. “I understand. We'll have Christmas later.”
Dean frowned.
“Dad, stuff happens. I should know. Remember the year I was stuck in Gotham? Having the Sullivan Family Christmas in January is practically a tradition. . . It's fine really. I've got Sam and Dean with me. . . . Don't you think you should meet them before you ask me a question like that? . . . Yes, as a matter of fact, I am too old to be grounded . . . We're planning on spending the holidays with Lois, Clark and Mrs. Kent. . . . No, Uncle Sam is in Geneva this year. . . Okay, I'll tell Lois. . . Love you too. Nollaig Shona Duit'.”
She smiled at Dean in a way that he knew meant that she was trying to convince herself that she was happy with the way things were turning out.
“Well, I have some good news. We don't have to explain our living situation to my dad,” she paused as her eyes cut upward in thought. “At least, not yet. He's getting suspicious, though.”
“Chloe.”
“It's fine, Dean.” Chloe said with a wave of her hand.
Dean tilted his head and raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Liar.”
Chloe shut her eyes and exhaled slowly.
He held his arm out to her. “Come here.” She didn't resist as he folded her into a comforting embrace. “So what's the deal?” He asked.
“He's working through Christmas,” Chloe said. “He got a contract to help Waynetech set up a new factory, and he's working extra hours to set up the logistics.”
“That sucks,” Dean said in sympathy.
“I planned to tell him, you know,” she said in an offhand way. “About me being meta. About Mom. And about what's going on. I wanted him to have one of the charms we wear. So he'd be safer. And now. . . In a way, it's my fault. I spent so much time pushing him away.” She shook his head. “Kind of funny that . . . now that I'm ready to try again, he's all tried out.”
“I'm sure it's not that,” Dean said. He just couldn't reconcile the doting voice that he'd heard Chloe speak with on the phone with a man who would avoid his daughter at Christmas. There had to be some kind of bigger issue going on here.
“Maybe it's time that I faced facts: Dad and I just relate better on the phone.”
Dean knew that he needed to get her mind off of things.
“You want to put up a tree?”
“Tree?” She blinked at his non-sequitur. “I thought you hated Christmas?”
“Maybe my heart grew three sizes,” Dean said. “Come on, we need to show your old buddy Santa that I'm not a total Grinch.”
Chloe smiled faintly in response. “Okay,” she said tentatively.
Her response encouraged him, so he took her hand and pulled her to her feet. Then he tucked her under his arm and against his side. “It'll be fine, you'll see. We'll even call the lovebirds and see if they want to come help us. Assuming they even want to leave their little love nest. I don't think Sam has ever gotten to pick out a real tree.”
“Did you guys have a Christmas tree?” Chloe asked with a bemused smile.
“We rented this one place that had a big metal tree in the attic,” Dean said. “Sam wanted a tree that year, so we put it up for kicks. You could put this big spotlight on it to make it glow green. That was a trip. When we put it up, it increased the crappy TV reception. So we left it up until we moved in April.”
“We always had a simple tree,” Chloe said. “Just the tree lights, and a few things my Grammy made. I put it up every year until Lana moved in with us. I think I still have Grammy’s things in a box somewhere.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she warmed up to Dean’s idea.
“Let's just not get one of those scraggly ones, like the kind that Charley Brown picked out,” Dean said.
“Hah! Knew you watched Christmas specials,” she grinned at him.
“Had to,” Dean shrugged. “Sam wanted to.”
“It wasn't such a bad tree,” Chloe said as she put her head on his shoulder. “All it needed was a little love.”
Dean chuckled at her. “You're a sucker for those fixer-uppers, aren't you?”
“Takes one to know one,” She lifted her head again to stare into his eyes. “Sometimes you appreciate something a little more if you put real effort into it.”
Dean stared into her eyes as if mesmerized. “I think you're right,” he said softly.
** *
By the time Sam and Sarah left the motel, a light snow had started to blanket Metropolis in Christmas white.
“The snow here is different than it is in New York,” Sarah commented as she tilted her head back to let the lacy white flakes dust her eyelashes. “It’s not so wet.”
“We’re in the middle of the country,” Sam replied. “Not quite as much moisture as out near the coast.”
“Before my mom died, we used to take family trips to someplace warm for Christmas,” Sarah said as she ran a gloved hand along a staircase railing. She scooped up the powder and formed it into a ball. “It’s kind of strange to have a white Christmas. I’m pretty used to a green one.” She stopped to give him an impish grin.”
“Don’t you dare!” Sam shook a finger at her. Her grin widened as she lobbed the snowball at Sam. It hit his outstretched hand and broke apart. The momentum sent the remainder of it into his face. Sam brushed it away, and looked back at her with his own evil grin. “Oh you are so getting snow down the back of your sweater for that one.”
“No!” She laughed and took off running. Sam chased her down the sidewalk. He stopped only to scoop up more of the falling powder. By the time he caught up with her, they had reached the tree lot. She ran, full-tilt down the first row of haphazardly placed fir trees, weaving in and out in an effort to avoid Sam.
Sam stopped and packed the ball of snow in his hands a little tighter. Suddenly, the tree behind him shook, and then jumped at him.
“What the hell?” Sam pushed the tree off him, and then looked up to see Dean standing there with a smirk on his face.
“Look out for the Christmas Tree monster, Sammy!” Dean chuckled.
“You jerk!” Sam frowned at Dean.
Just then, Chloe and Sarah stepped from the second row of trees. “There you are!” Chloe walked over to Dean. She stopped and looked in confusion from Dean and Sam to the fallen tree. Then she frowned at Dean.
“Dean!”
“What? It was just a joke!” He chuckled. “He screamed like a little bitch, too.”
“Someone’s getting coal in their stocking.” Chloe put her hand on her hips and frowned at him before turning to Sarah. “Sorry about this,” Chloe said apologetically. “Dean’s getting into the Christmas spirit and taking it out on us.”
“It’s fine,” Sarah waved Chloe’s apology off. “Dean and I have met.”
“Okay.” Dean clapped his hands together and rubbed them in anticipation. “Let’s find the perfect tree.” With a gleeful chuckle he took off down the row.
“What’s with Tiny Tim?” Sam raised an eyebrow in confusion.
“He’s--” Chloe pulled her lips into a thin line. “My dad isn’t coming home for Christmas. So Dean is trying to make up for it.”
“Chloe,” Sam looked at her with liquid brown eyes.
“Its okay, Sam,” she smiled tightly. “Really - it is. I’ve got you guys, and my cousins.”
Sam and Sarah looked at each other, then Sarah turned to Chloe. “Well, somebody just chased me over half of Metropolis with a snowball. I’ve worked up a real thirst. Think they have hot chocolate over at the concession stand?”
Chloe shrugged. “I’m pretty sure of it.” She linked arms with Sarah, and the two girls walked back toward the entrance. Sam turned and followed Dean’s path deeper into the lot of trees.