Chloe Sullivan (ladyofwatchtowr) wrote in madisonvalley, @ 2017-05-29 12:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | !closed, !completed gdoc, ~2017 may, ~25 points, ~~dean winchester (boundtothehunt), ~~~chloe sullivan (ladyofwatchtowr) |
Who: Chloe Sullivan and Dean Winchester
What: An unlikely meeting
When: Memorial Day
Where: On the way to Starbucks
Warnings: Nah
Status: Closed/completed gdoc
Chloe had discovered these interesting pieces of advancement called Tablets. A few questions to a salesperson got her a demonstration then a thousand more questions followed until she’d stumped the sales guy. She bought one to toy around with, and see what kind of improvements she could make on it. The compact size along with an attachable keyboard made it ideal for transporting and working anywhere. Right now she was jabbing at it with a stylus on her way to Starbucks.
Which meant she wasn’t looking where she was going. Chloe rounded a corner in her usual rush then bounced clean off the chest of someone. It not only made her stumble back, but since she’d been off balance she fell flat on her butt. “Ow!” After a blink of confusion she looked up with something of a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”
***
Usually, Dean liked to think he was more aware of his surroundings. Usually he wasn’t dealing with quite as big a war waging inside him. The Mark had been starting to come around, come free, he could feel it. He knew that once the wards Constantine had put around it broke, it was only a matter of time. Soon enough he was going to have to start putting his affairs in order. He didn’t have any idea what that entailed, but he’d figure it out soon. Being caught up in himself stopped him from reacting fast enough to prevent the collision or even try to catch the girl before she was on her ass.
He didn’t smile in return, looking down at her. The first of many people he was bound to hurt. At least it was just a fall, not something far worse.
“Okay?” he asked, stretching out a hand to help her up.
***
“Yeah,” Chloe answered amidst a laugh. She took the help to her feet before checking to make sure she hadn’t broken the tablet. “My fault and not the first time that’s happened.” There were no cracks in the screen so she sighed in relief then tucked it away in the satchel she had over her shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” she said with another smile. If she was bothered by him not smiling it didn’t show. “I should learn to just get where I’m going before sticking my nose in my research.”
***
Dean snorted. That sounded like Sam. His brother, the big nerd.
“Right. Well maybe watch where you’re going. You never know when you’re going to walk into someone not as nice as I am.” Even him, one day soon enough. Probably. He couldn’t say for sure, but he knew that once the Mark took over, something as small as that would set him off, send him into a rage he couldn’t control.
***
Chloe chuckled again, but this time it was a little more awkward. “Look, can I make it up to you? I was on my way to get some coffee…”
She raised her brows with that girl next door smile still on her face. Either she wasn’t picking up on his internal war, or she was ignoring it. The truth was, Chloe was plain old human...so far as she knew...and was a genuinely nice person.
***
She was cute, sweet, young. Innocent. One of those small town faces that was full of possibility. She was the kind of girl that Dean had spent his life protecting. He’d fought so girls like her could live without knowing what went bump in the night.
She deserved better than being contaminated with him.
“Look, that’s nice of you to offer and all but I don’t think that’s a good idea.” But maybe he should embrace life while he still had it.
***
Oops! He might be misunderstanding, at least that was what Chloe thought. “It’s just coffee,” she said quickly. “I’m not asking you out or anything. I don’t know too many people yet, and when I literally run into someone who doesn’t call me a freak then hey. Be friendly.” She shrugged with a smile. “So, no need to get a girlfriend all worried or anything.”
Because he had to have a girlfriend when he looked like that with that chest. Chloe had given up on the idea of having a boyfriend that looked like Clark...or this guy she just bounced off of.
***
He wasn’t misunderstanding. Not much anyway.
Dean sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “No that’s….” It was dangerous. He was getting to be dangerous. Being around him was what wasn’t the good idea, but he could hardly start explaining to some random girl on the street about how he carried around the most dangerous curse in existence, how it was eating through his humanity a little at a time. That would sound crazy, and definitely instill a fear that didn’t need spreading.
He had people who were going to take care of it, of him. No one needed to get hurt.
“Okay.” It was a crap idea but he was never known for good ones. “I can do a cup of coffee.”
It might be good for him, to have a moment of normal.
***
He might be surprised to learn just how much Chloe had been exposed to her in her 19 short years. Maybe not crazy supernatural stuff, but things just as dangerous. Somehow it never dimmed her personality.
She watched him kind of go through his internal debate then beamed him a smile when he agreed. “Great!” She jerked her head in the direction of Starbucks. “I’m Chloe, by the way.”
***
He considered not answering, not introducing himself, but that would sort of defeat the purpose of the moment of normalcy. He’d agreed because, for the length of a cup of coffee, he wanted to just forget about all the bad. He wanted to look at some small town innocent and remind himself that whatever else had happened, whatever had led up to this, he’d been doing it for people like her. And he’d done good.
“Dean,” he offered, and quickly moved on, hoping that she wouldn’t have time to remember it. Somehow adding one more person to remember him when everything was over was too much. “You really ought to keep your eyes open, you know. Never know what’s walking around this place.”
Not who. What.
***
The first thing anyone would learn was that Chloe didn’t miss a thing and she didn’t forget. “Nice to meet you, Dean,” she said with another smile. “And yeah. You’re right. But that immortal guy is back to normal and all the aliens in town are friendly so I felt pretty safe not paying attention.”
Welcome to Chloe Sullivan, Dean. She’s kind of like a face full of ice water sometimes with how casually she just dropped information, all wrapped up in a blonde petite package.
***
That immortal guy had kidnapped one of Dean’s only friends, the chick he lived with, but more than anyone he blamed himself for not being able to help her. That was on him.
“That’s a surefire way to get yourself killed.”
He might not have hunted in his time here, almost not at all, but Dean still kept his eyes open. But then, he’d been trained to do that, spent his whole life looking over his shoulders, and after thirty years of it, the habit kind of stuck.
***
“I’ve done worse,” she said with a shrug. “Besides. This place is kind of lousy with bored superheroes.” Which was a nice failsafe. She knew from her research that bad stuff happened all the time. Just look at the recent development, and that was just one guy. Some of her notes mentioned dinosaurs.
“And before you ask, no I’m not crazy.” Chloe’s smile was rather smug. “I’m a reporter. Back home, anyway. Here I’m just the person that gets the viruses off your computer that you got from spending too much time on porn hub.” She rolled her eyes.
***
That actually, probably unexpectedly, got a little bit of a laugh out of Dean. Clearly she wasn’t as innocent as she looked, and at least knew how much time guys spent looking at porn. He didn’t think he was unique in his habits there.
“Everyone’s something they’re not here. You’re not special there.” He wasn’t a hunter here. He wasn’t going to be much of anything sometime soon. “Doesn’t mean you should go looking for trouble.”
Trouble found people easily enough without their help.
***
“Now how am I supposed to figure out anything if I don’t poke my nose around?” Chloe was completely unrepentant. Sure she got herself into more than her fair share of trouble, but she kept learning a trick or two along the way.
“So what did you do back home?” she asked in unapologetic curiosity. A few features gave her some clues. He had a solid build so he was active. There was something about his expression, especially around the eyes, that told her he’d seen more than his fair share of badness. A quick glance at his hands revealed scars of varying age. What it all added up to, however, she wasn’t sure.
***
This girl was going to get herself in a lot of trouble one day. Of that, Dean was completely sure. She obviously didn’t know what was good for her, and didn’t seem to care much about her own safety. She was the kind of person who caused problems for people like him.
Once again, Dean hesitated before answering the question about himself. Not because he didn’t think it was a good idea to let her get to know him this time. As a general rule, hunters didn’t just come out and say that they were hunters. It required a belief in things that a lot of people weren’t ready to embrace.
But then again, a lot of the things he hunted were here, pretending like they lived normal lives.
“Do you believe in monsters?” he countered. “Werewolves, vampires. Angels, demons. That kind of thing?”
***
Did she get herself into trouble? Hell, yes. But Chloe was the type to take the trouble she got into on herself, and didn’t expect anyone to get her butt out of the fire. She got into, she could get herself out. She almost most of the time managed it, too.
Chloe considered his question without a mocking laugh or strange look. “Well, aliens exist so why not? Just because I’ve never run into them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.” But it would be cool to do so.
***
“That’s a start.” It wasn’t the best answer, but it was better than a flat out no. “They’re there. And they’re out to kill you. It’s my job to stop them.”
Which sometimes meant working with them against something bigger and badder.
Which sometimes meant carrying the worst curse to grace mankind, sometimes meant losing the fight against the evil it carried and accepting that he needed to die before he did something.
***
“Yeah?” If Dean meant to scare her it backfired. Now Chloe was looking up at Dean with even more interest. There was a spark in her eyes. This was information she’d never heard of before and now she wanted to know everything.
“Even angels want to kill you? Isn’t that kind of the opposite of what angels are supposed to do? I mean, they’re supposed to keep you from walking into traffic, or hide your car keys for ten minutes and the delay is just long enough you miss getting into the seventeen car pileup you would have been involved in if you hadn’t had to look around.” Chloe rambled. It was one of the things she did best when something caught her interest. That and being able to walk in heels sideways as she talked to and looked at you.
“And you kill these things? Sooo...that makes you kind of a superhero too.” A finger got wagged at Dean. “How do you kill an angel anyway? Aren’t they incorporeal? Do you have like some kind of tricorder thing that picks up on their energy readings so you know they’re there? And doesn’t killing an angel give you super way bad karma?”
Welcome to Chloe Sullivan, Dean. We hope you enjoy your stay.
***
He hadn’t really been intending to scare her. It was just what usually happened. That or being written off as delusional.
“Nah.” Talking about work wasn’t so bad, actually. It sort of didn’t suck when a lot of things did right now. “There’s plenty of ways to kill angels. Who are just huge bags of dicks by the way.” With very few exceptions. “You’ve got banishing sigils, you’ve got...it’s sort of a magic gun.” The Colt was more complicated than that, but it was an easy explanation. And there was the First Blade, but Dean was trying not to think about that. The thoughts made the Mark itch. “Easiest way’s just an angel blade. One of their own weapons do them in and we’ve usually got one laying around.”
How much of that was truth, she didn’t need to know.
“Thing is, you’ve just got to catch them in a host. Which they’ll always be in if they’re wandering around on Earth.”
***
Chloe giggled for Dean’s description of angels. “Well, that isn’t surprising, really. I mean whenever anything bad was going to be done to we puny mortals it was an angel that was sent to deliver the nasty.”
She listened to the list of ways to deal with angels as if memorizing each detail, nodding some along the way. The last bit was odd, however. “Wait. They possess human bodies? Like demons or ghosts do? Ew! What the hell is wrong with these things? We’re not just...puppets, thank you.”
She made a face with a small wrinkle of her nose as she almost stepped off the curb. Fortunately, not into traffic, but she really wasn’t watching where she was going for as lost in this information as she was.
***
“They’re volunteers,” Dean explained, glancing over at her. Another time he probably would have just hauled her back onto the sidewalk, put her safely on the inside of it to keep her on track. Another time he would have been feeling more like the protector of innocent civilians than the guy bound to hurt them all. “A demon can take whoever they want; an angel’s got to get them to say yes first.”
Which was how Dean’s other brother had wound up completely screwed over. Because Dean hadn’t been willing to say yes, Michael had gone to Adam instead. Just one more thing for him to feel guilty over. One more drop in the pile of crap that was the life he was leaving behind.
“Result’s the same though. You say yes, your life’s over.” Vessels died with the angels, or they were just kept. Actually, angels were probably worse in that respect. As long as the body was in one piece, people still got to live if the demon in them decided to move on.
***
Chloe just went with the stumble as if it happened all the time.”What would make you want to just give your life over to something that isn’t going to respect you except for your body?” She paused then chuckled. “That’s like the worst douchebag boyfriend ever.” It was an amusing comparison, at least to her.
“So that’s what you did back home,” she said, moving on. “What do you do here? Unless there’s a bunch of demons and angels running around I don’t know about.”
***
Faith made people do all sorts of crazy things. Dean didn’t bother explaining that. But if an angel went to someone who had been praying for something, someone who heard angel and thought goodness, heard the voice of someone close to their god, well, he couldn’t blame them for saying yes. They didn’t know the truth. They shouldn’t know it. It wasn’t his job to go around educating civilians, and there was nothing left in them to care about once they were taken over.
“Nah, here we apparently just let the monsters run free.” The way Dean said it made it obvious he wasn’t a fan of that plan. But in the interest of saving his own skin, he went with it. Trusted that Sam knew what he was doing back when he’d said no hunting them. “As long as they’re not hurting anyone, I guess.”
***
“What about what happened with that guy who went all Conan the Barbarian recently?” That had actually been kind of scary. Chloe had laid low. She might seem like she didn’t have two survival brain cells to rub together, but underneath her blatant curiosity was the knowledge that she really was very much a vulnerable human. Dumb she was not.
“Didn’t he hurt a bunch of people?”
***
“That’s people stuff, not monsters.”
That was different. Hunters didn’t get messed up in people. Even when people were psychos or total dickwads, they were still humans and that was what they were fighting to protect. Even when they deserved to be put down, that wasn’t his job. Dean dealt in monsters. The supernatural.
“People aren’t the job.”
***
“Oh.” Chloe’s brows came down as she mulled that over for half a second. “Good point.” She shrugged. To be honest, she wasn’t sure what the difference was. Protecting people was protecting people whether it was from monsters or people that acted like them. But she didn’t think she knew this guy well enough to press him.
“Well, if I ever run into the Creature from the Black Lagoon can I give you a yell before it starts hauling me off for the lake?” Yes, she was joking, but she wasn’t trying to mock him.
***
Even if she did ask, Dean wasn’t so sure that he’d be able to explain the difference in any way that sounded like one. It boiled down to the simple fact that there were not humans, and there were humans, and his job was protecting the latter from the former.
He laughed a little, it probably sounded more than just a little tired and more than just a little forced, and shook his head. “If I’m still around, yeah. You can give me a call. Or my brother’s here. He’s almost as good.”
And likely to stick around more than Dean was. He was going to have to say goodbye to all this soon enough.
***
Chloe grinned for the laugh. It was small, but she got the impression it didn’t happen often. She was glad she could bring it out of him.
“Almost as good?” She chuckled. “Let me guess. You’re older.” Not that she had siblings, but she’d seen enough sibling rivalry to recognize it.
***
Once Dean had laughed a lot more than he did now. The closer to his end he got, the less there was to laugh about and the harder it was to find it in him. It wasn’t so bad finding it again for a moment.
“Yeah.” It wasn’t rivalry though. Not that part. They had plenty of other crap to bicker over. “So I’ve been doing it longer.” He’d been pulled right into the life when Dad had gone off the rails. Sam had at least had a few years when he’d had to grow up a little. And even then, Dean had taken to it a lot better. It was the only thing he was good at.
***
“Yeah, right,” Chloe said with an amused grin. “Regardless, it’s nice to know there’s someone who can haul my butt out of the fire.” She smirked with one brow arched as she pointed at Dean. “If...and it’s a big if...that ever happens because I’m pretty good at running away.”
***
“Good.” Running was safer. And would keep her, anyone actually, out of the way while the monster was dealt with. It was always better if the civilians just stayed out of the way where they’d be safer.
The job was keeping them safe, as much as it was killing things.
Not that Dean was going to be doing the job anymore.
Reaching Starbucks, Dean had a lot of opinions about the crap they passed off as coffee but kept them to himself this once, he held the door open and very sternly told the girl, the kid really: “One coffee.”
He’d make it quick, too. He’d already spent more time talking to her than was probably a good idea.
***
Chloe would argue that for civilians to stay out of the way and safe all the time would mean everyone not going outside ever. Life was risk. Sometimes more than others, but living in fear of What If was not an option.
And if he ever...ever...called her a kid she would prove to him just how sharp her tongue could be, and how quick her mind. The insistence on only one cup of coffee made Chloe grin as she walked in. “I remember. Just one.” But he hadn’t specified what size.
***
Dean would argue back that people were stupid a lot of the time and there was risk and then there was unnecessary risk.
He got the sense that one cup of coffee wasn’t going to go over quite as firmly as he intended it to. But he’d agreed to it and it was something like a last hurrah, a last second of a normal life before things went to shit. Things were definitely going to shit.
“I mean it,” he insisted, waving her over to the counter to order. He’d pay for it; what was he going to need cash for when he kicked it?
***
“I know,” Chloe said in an almost too innocent tone of voice. She beamed a smile at Dean as she reached the counter, gave her usual weird order that earned her a look from the barista then an extra large Americana for Dean.
That sweet, big eyed smile was turned back to him. “What? Size is everything.” That grin came back as she gave him a wink.
***
Any other day, Dean would have appreciated that comment, probably at least thought of if not actually made a lewd comment. Most days he probably would have even flirted a little. She was young, but she was cute, and as long as he wasn’t going to wind up in jail for her he saw no problem with that.
Today he just shook his head. “Go sit your ass down.”
***
No, he wouldn’t have gone to jail. Choe was less than a year away from being legally allowed to drink. Her cuteness made her seem younger, and she had accepted that, if not entirely used to it.
She laughed as she moved past him to go find a table, her hand patting his arm as she went by. “Yes, sir.”
***