Chlollie Fanfic: Love For Realsies, Chapter 22
Did y'all think I'd forgotten you? Surely not, my sugarplums!
Here's Chapter 22 of Love For Realsies. It's a lot more than her sanity that Chloe's ready to sacrifice for the Archer! ;-)
Enjoy!
Title: Love for Realsies
Author: BabyDee
Pairing: Chlollie
Rating: NC-17 (this chapter PG-13) Sequel to Just for Funsies.
Warnings: None
Timeline: Season 9 (Conspiracy- Checkmate)
Disclaimer: All characters belong to the CW & DC comics.
Summary: Chloe finds it increasingly difficult to resist Ollie’s affections.
Feedback: …is a terrible thing to keep to yourself. J
***Winner of 3 Chlollie Fanfic Awards: Best Romantic Fic (3rd Place), Best Multi-Chapter Fic (2nd Place), Best Fluff Fic (1st Place)***
Read previous chapter here.
Read story from the beginning here.
Chapter 22
She really didn’t want to bother Clark again, but she was fast running out of options. Sighing, Chloe picked up her cell again and dialled his number.
“Did you find him?” were the first words out of Clark’s mouth.
“Yep,” she said glumly.
“Ooops. From your tone of voice, I’m guessing you’re not quite riding the hot blond like you expected to be.”
“I’m not, Clark, not even close,” she said, her voice shaking. “In fact, I fucked up utterly.”
“Okay, this is bad,” he said, sounding alarmed. “You never swear. What’s going on?”
She took a deep breath. “Oliver saw me kiss you at Crater Lake.”
“Uh-oh…”
“It gets worse,” she said grimly. “He heard you say you loved me.”
Silence. Then: “Please tell me he didn’t hear you say it back to me.”
Her only response was a deep sigh. Eventually she spoke. “He did.”
“Oh, God. Chloe, I’m so sorry…”
“It wasn’t your fault, Clark, please don’t blame yourself,” she said. “But I need a really huge favour from you. Could you come and tell Ollie that he got the wrong end of the stick? He isn’t talking to me right now.”
Clark gave a deep sigh. “Chloe, if I’m the reason he’s so upset, it’s a safe bet to say I’m the last person he’d want to see,” he said gently. “Much as I’d love to help, you have to do this one on your own; if I get involved, it’ll only make things worse.” He paused. “And besides, he has kryptonite.”
She snorted. “Come on, Clark. He’d never actually use it on you…” she began.
“You wanna bet?” he said derisively. “He has before.”
“He has not!” she gasped, shocked.
“Has, too.”
“When?”
“When you disappeared with Davis,” he said softly. “Oliver was ready to kill him to get you back; I wasn’t. I tried to talk him out of it, he said I was wasting valuable time and shot me in the back with a kryptonite arrow.”
Her eyes widened till they looked like mini saucers. “What?!”
“Yep. Right in the middle of the left shoulder, where he knew I couldn’t reach to pull it out.”
“Are you serious?” she whispered in disbelief.
“I wouldn’t lie about something like this, Chloe. Oliver was determined to get you back, by any means necessary. He chuckled. “My God, he’s had feeling for you for a lot longer than six months, it seems.”
Chloe’s mind whirled as she tried to make sense of it all. The lengths that Oliver had gone to, to protect her…what he would have done if they’d been able to find a way to truly defeat Davis…that he could actually incapacitate Clark if it meant that he, Ollie, could find a way to save her…
“Chloe, you there?” Clark said, interjecting her thoughts.
“I did not know this,” she eventually said. “No-one told me, I’m…I still can’t believe it!”
“Believe it,” he said curtly. “Ask him yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“Would that I could,” she sighed. “But how do I get him to let me in? He’s totally blanking me at the moment.”
“You’re a smart girl, Chloe, you’ll think of something,” he said reassuringly. “If you have to camp outside that elevator and wait for him to come down, then that’s what you’ll have to do. But make sure you resolve this thing tonight; waiting will only make things worse.”
She nodded. “Okay. Thanks, Clark; wish me luck, and sorry to have bothered you.”
“Not at all, Chlo. Good luck.”
The line went dead, and she immediately tried Ollie’s number again, but his cell was still turned off. Scowling, she pushed the buzzer for his floor, pressing it over and over and over, determined to drive him nuts until he acknowledged her existence or the batteries ran out.
It worked. Ten minutes of buzzing broke his resolve and his voice came angrily over the intercom. “What part of ‘I don’t want to see you,’ are you failing to get?” he snapped.
“What part of ‘I need to talk to you’ are you failing to understand?” she shot back.
Big mistake. There was an ugly, wrenching noise and shortly after she heard the elevator humming as it made its gradual descent. Sighing in relief, she waited for it to reach the basement floor and opened the grate.
Her relief was short-lived. Sitting forlornly in the corner of the elevator was Ollie’s intercom, its wires hanging out bizzarely from the back where it had been ripped out of the wall.
Furious, she stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse floor. And pressed it again. And again…
No response. Oliver had disabled the express elevator, effectively cutting off all communication with her.
Chloe sank to the floor and buried her face in her hands, close to tears. Briefly she considered calling Clark again for help, but decided she’d bothered him enough for one day; and besides, she’d hate for him to get krypto-shot again, which was a very real possibility considering Ollie’s black mood.
But Clark had been right. She had to get into that apartment before midnight, or she could kiss Oliver Queen goodbye.
“Come on…think, Chloe, think,” she muttered to herself. “What would Ollie do to get into a restricted area?
As soon as she’d thought the words, the answer came to her, clear as crystal. Her eyes widened as she hatched a plan, evn as rational thought immediately shot down the idea as suicide.
But love, as Chloe had come to realise, didn’t operate in the realm of ‘rational’.
With grim determination, she got to her feet and headed back to the Ferrari.
***
“I must be crazy,” she muttered to herself as she stared at the tiny speck of light that represented Oliver’s balcony. “I must totally, completely, one-hundred percent certifiably cuckoo.”
Despite the discouraging litany, Chloe continued to set up her apparatus on the Daily Planet rooftop. There was a slight breeze in the air, which gave her more than a little cause for consternation. But Oliver had tutored her well.
The zip wire’s designed to be wind-resistant, he’d explained patiently all those months ago as he gave her a crash course in its use. The navigation is all in the wrist; how you direct it will determine where you end up. As long as you’ve calibrated the trajectory to your correct weight and height? Piece of cake.
Chloe glanced over the horizon and gulped. Staring across the vast expanse of sky between the Daily Planet rooftop and the Clocktower balcony, it certainly didn’t feel like a piece of cake, pie, or any other such pastry-based confectionery. It felt like a big fucking deal, especially when the wind picked up, whipping her hair wildly around her face.
But she was a woman in love, and women in love often did crazy things.
Quickly she typed in the requisite data into the computerised panel of the zip frame, and then raised the bow to her eye level, just as Oliver had taught her. She narrowed her eyes as she focused on the target.
“Straight down the centre,” she whispered to herself, repeating Oliver’s words, and released the arrow. It whizzed through the air, the force of the projection almost sucking her forward. Quickly she braced herself; not a moment too soon, as the anchor whizzed around the support pole and locked into position.
Perfect.
Chloe inhaled deeply and held on tightly to the other end of the wire. Now for the hard part. Her heart hammered erratically in her chest as she actually contemplated jumping off the side of the building with only a wire for support. Okay, so she was in love, but she wasn’t that far gone, surely?
Just then, the light on the balcony went off, making the decision for her. Steeling herself against fear and rationality she took a deep breath, clutched tightly to the wire with her gloved hands, uttered a quick prayer, and leapt.
The edge of the building disappeared and she found herself freefalling for a few seconds before straightening out. The wind whistled through her hair, city lights whizzing past as she sailed through the air.
“Ten seconds,” she whispered. That was how long it took to get from DP rooftop to the Clocktower. She’d made the journey a fair few times with Oliver, and she always complained that it was over too soon.
This time, however, it couldn’t be over soon enough.
As she approached the other building, a nagging feeling took root in the pit of her stomach and alarm bells began to ring faintly in her head. Something was…off…
She narrowed her eyes, and then widened them as she realised what the problem was.
She wasn’t heading for the balcony. She was making a beeline for the Clockface window - a fact which was made all too clear when the light in the den came on moments before she was due to make contact with it.
“Oh, shit,” she squeaked in terror, hunching her shoulders and tucking herself into as tight a ball as possible just before impact. “Oh, SHIIIIIIIIT…..!”
***
He didn’t want to go to sleep, but staying awake was proving to be unbearably painful. Hard as he tried, but he just couldn’t seem to stop replaying that dastardly moment in his brain.
I love you, Chloe.
I know. I love you too, Clark.
Oliver squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, angry at himself. What he needed was to stop thinking about her once and for all. He had taken the first steps to continuing his life without Chloe Sullivan by his side and cut off all communication, effectively freezing her out. Come tomorrow, he would get Victor to reprogram the Watchtower and remove every trace of her from it. Granted, the lease was in her name, but it was his money that had paid for the original let (a little fact that Jimmy Olsen had neglected to share with her), and it had been his money keeping it going ever since. If she wanted to challenge him on his heavy-handed eviction tactics, she was welcome to battle it out with his lawyers.
Oliver waited for a feeling of smug satisfaction to come over him; it didn’t. Not that he expected it to. He rubbed his brow with his fingers and closed his eyes, feeling defeated. Healing would take time, he knew.
Sighing tiredly, he switched off the lamp and headed for his bedroom.
And that’s when he heard it: a distinct thunk, which sounded suspiciously like it had come from his balcony.
Immediately he went into full alert, his hands reaching for the compound bow that was never far from arm’s reach. Another noise disturbed the quiet night, a slight creaking that was all too familiar. Zip wire.
There was no time to think. Quickly he positioned himself a safe distance from the window and trained his arrow at the shadowy figure that was hurtling towards the glass at top speed, pressing the illumination button on his universal remote control before dropping it to the floor.
Light flooded the room just as a screeching mass came crashing through his window. Frosted glass shattered and flew everywhere with a deafening smash, the fragments seeming to fly through the air in slow motion as a small blonde figure in green and black sailed through the air and landed with a thump on the floor and rolled right across it, propelled by momentum, stopping only when her back hit the wall.
He stared aghast. “Chloe?” he said hoarsely. The bow he was holding slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor, deploying an arrow which whizzed through the empty window.
“Ow!” she groaned in pain, writhing on the floor and rubbing her right wrist as she glared up at him. “How the fuck do you make that shit look so easy?”
***
Chapter 23…