Headtrip (3/7)
Spoiler warning: I came up for the idea for this fic long before there were spoiler warnings that Supernatural was going to be doing something similar this season. Just in case, though: If you don't want to be spoiled for a future episode, don't read.
Fic: Headtrip (3/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: On their way to Metropolis for Christmas, Dean, Sam and Chloe take a detour though Colorado Springs to investigate a series of mysterious deaths, but Dean is still broken, Chloe looks ready to run and Sam is just worried about holding things togeather.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13.
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #40 Sight. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Once Chloe cleaned herself up and changed into a one of her form-fitting, low-cut blouses and a pair of jeans, the three of them headed over to the club.
Club Nocturne was an interesting mix of Goth, punk, and tourist. Inside, it looked as if the industrial park three blocks north had crept up the street and spilled inside. Naked girders sprouted from the floor and stretched to hold the ceiling high above them. Here and there, heavy metal chains hung like beaded curtains to block off alcoves and give the occupants privacy. A metal platform that had been scarred by a cutting torch and then liberally riveted was bolted to one wall to serve as a bar.
Dean couldn’t quite classify the music. It was distantly related to speed metal, and also distantly related to an F-16 fighter jet. Which was to say that it was fast and loud.
Now, Dean could see the wisdom in Chloe’s disguise. She would have at least looked like a tourist. Instead, they looked like they’d gotten lost, and accidentally stumbled in looking for a phone to call a cab. They claimed a table, that also looked like a crazed blowtorch operator had had some fun with it, and ordered a couple of drinks.
“Strategy? Sam asked as his eyes tracked across the room warily.
“How about this,” Dean suggested. “In a few minutes, I’m going to get up and got to the Jake. While I’m gone, you two get into an argument. Make it loud: one of those overdramatic, Lifetime Channel confrontations. While you guys have the bouncer’s attention, I’m going to poke around.”
Chloe and Sam looked at each other and nodded.
***
Once Dean finished off his beer and slipped off into the crowd, Sam counted slowly to ten in his head. Then he turned to Chloe and gave her one of those okay, here we go looks.
“Isn’t this fun?” He pitched his voice unnaturally high and cheerful.
“Fun? Not the word I’d use,” Chloe threw herself into her performance, narrowing her eyes, and for all the world looking like a pissed-off girlfriend. Sam grinned inside, secretly enjoying the game.
“Oh come on,” he frowned. “It’s not bad.”
“Not bad? Have you noticed the way we stick out? This is totally not my kind of place. I bet they drink blood for fun.”
“So you want to go home?” He looked at her incredulously.
“Well, I’m sure not going back to your place,” she raised her eyebrows and looked down her nose at him.
“Fine,” Sam said. “You’re a tease anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice climbed in pitch. By now they were starting to draw a crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam could see the bouncers headed their way.
“Jeez! Drama much?” Sam snarked.
“Whatever!” She picked up her glass and threw the contents at him.
Sam wiped the stinging contents from his eyes and frowned at her. Chloe’s own face was a thundercloud of anger, but underneath it all he could see her eyes sparkle with the same enjoyment he was getting from their little drama.
“You could just walk home,” he said.
“Glad to.” She crossed her arms. By then, the bouncers had reached them. One of them started to lay a beefy hand on his shoulder, but then reassessed Sam’s size and instead just tapped him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, sir?” he said quietly. “We’d like for you and your date to leave.”
Sam stood and threw his hands in the air.
“Fine! I’m going.” He looked pointedly at Chloe. “Alone.”
“Oh point me toward the pavement, creep!” Chloe said angrily. She stood, and stomped toward the exit.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” Sam yelled after her. The bouncer tapped Sam’s shoulder again. “I’m going!” Sam pulled away from him, and headed after Chloe.
***
Dean watched the bouncer for the moment when his attention locked onto Sam, Chloe and the scene they were making. When he was certain he could slip off to the offices without being detected, he walked past the restrooms, and into the back.
The first unmarked door he came to turned out to be a storage room. Mindful of the fact that his time was short, he produced his homemade, disguised EMF.
A quick scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary, so he moved on to the next unmarked door. That room proved to be the office. Scans there, too, came up negative, so he resorted to old-fashioned sleuthing. Time spent around Jo and Ellen had taught him what belonged in the office of a club - and what did not.
When he could hear Chloe and Sam’s argument through the door and down the hall, he knew his time was almost up. He located the security cameras and pulled the footage for the past two weeks. Then he opened the door, and slipped back up the hall.
Chloe and Sam were already waiting for him at the Impala two blocks up from the club. When he got there, Sam looked up and raised an eyebrow expectantly.
“The place is clean,” he shook his head. “But I did get the security feed.”
“Hopefully that’ll give us some leads,” Chloe said. “Because after that show Sam and I put on? I think they’ll remember us at that club.”
***
When they returned to the hotel, Dean ordered a pizza (The dinner of champions. When leftover, also the breakfast of champions.). As he hung up the phone, Chloe emerged from the bathroom wearing a pair of jeans, a t-shirt from a band named The Pogues, and a ball-cap with a shamrock on it.
The second she sat down on the bed next to him, Dean reached over and stole the ball cap.
“Hey!” Chloe reached for it. “Give me that!”
“No,” he shook his head and held the hat out of her reach. “You’re too pretty to hide behind a hat.”
“Oh, you thought I was real pretty before,” Chloe snarked as she pushed him over, and tried to crawl over him to get at the hat. “What the hell did you do to your hair!” She parroted his gruff voice from earlier that morning.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said as he dropped the hat so she couldn’t grab it, and looped his arms around her waist to keep her from diving for it. “I was just shocked. It was just such a drastic change that it surprised me.”
“More like a gut reaction,” Chloe grumbled.
“Will you stop it?” Dean said. His eyebrows met as he glared up at her. “I get that you’re not happy about it. But stop taking it out on me.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Hey guys? Get a room.”
“This is a room,” Dean snapped at Sam.
Sam rolled his eyes. “When you two are done fighting your personal damage out, you want to come look at this footage. I think I’ve found a likely suspect.”
Chloe and Dean looked at each other. Dean raised his eyebrows in a silent request for a truce. Chloe nodded, and rolled from on top of him. They both moved to stand behind Sam.
“What have you got, Sammy?”
“This guy,” Sam said as he cued up a grainy image of a dark eyed man with a pink mohawk. “I’ve seen him talk to each of the victims the last time that they went to Club Nocturne before their deaths.”
“He looks pretty normal,” Dean said sarcastically. “Any clues to indicate he’s not human?”
“Or even superhuman?” Chloe knelt and leaned closer to the screen.
“Nothing yet. But now that we’ve got a photo, we can check with the local police databases. Maybe registered offenders databases.”
Chloe nodded. “Maybe in the morning, we can go back to Club Nocturne and see if anyone knows him.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “I’ll check regional online databases. If you want to, you can get some sleep.”
“Maybe later,” Dean said. He went back to sit on the bed, and pulled out the journal that Chloe had given him. He looked at her and held up the book to show her that he was making good on his promise. Chloe smiled in response as she crawled under the covers next to him.
Sam looked over his shoulder at them and raised an eyebrow at Dean in question.
Dean looked from Chloe to Sam, and shook his head as if to say that he wasn’t going to answer Sam’s question. Sam rolled his eyes in response, and turned back to the computer. A sort of domestic harmony fell over the room to the accompaniment of Chloe’s steady breathing, the scratch of Dean’s pen, and the clacking of Sam’s keyboard.
Fic: Headtrip (3/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: On their way to Metropolis for Christmas, Dean, Sam and Chloe take a detour though Colorado Springs to investigate a series of mysterious deaths, but Dean is still broken, Chloe looks ready to run and Sam is just worried about holding things togeather.
Author: pen37
Beta: Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean
Pairing:Chloe/Dean
Rating: Pg-13.
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #40 Sight. The table is here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Once Chloe cleaned herself up and changed into a one of her form-fitting, low-cut blouses and a pair of jeans, the three of them headed over to the club.
Club Nocturne was an interesting mix of Goth, punk, and tourist. Inside, it looked as if the industrial park three blocks north had crept up the street and spilled inside. Naked girders sprouted from the floor and stretched to hold the ceiling high above them. Here and there, heavy metal chains hung like beaded curtains to block off alcoves and give the occupants privacy. A metal platform that had been scarred by a cutting torch and then liberally riveted was bolted to one wall to serve as a bar.
Dean couldn’t quite classify the music. It was distantly related to speed metal, and also distantly related to an F-16 fighter jet. Which was to say that it was fast and loud.
Now, Dean could see the wisdom in Chloe’s disguise. She would have at least looked like a tourist. Instead, they looked like they’d gotten lost, and accidentally stumbled in looking for a phone to call a cab. They claimed a table, that also looked like a crazed blowtorch operator had had some fun with it, and ordered a couple of drinks.
“Strategy? Sam asked as his eyes tracked across the room warily.
“How about this,” Dean suggested. “In a few minutes, I’m going to get up and got to the Jake. While I’m gone, you two get into an argument. Make it loud: one of those overdramatic, Lifetime Channel confrontations. While you guys have the bouncer’s attention, I’m going to poke around.”
Chloe and Sam looked at each other and nodded.
***
Once Dean finished off his beer and slipped off into the crowd, Sam counted slowly to ten in his head. Then he turned to Chloe and gave her one of those okay, here we go looks.
“Isn’t this fun?” He pitched his voice unnaturally high and cheerful.
“Fun? Not the word I’d use,” Chloe threw herself into her performance, narrowing her eyes, and for all the world looking like a pissed-off girlfriend. Sam grinned inside, secretly enjoying the game.
“Oh come on,” he frowned. “It’s not bad.”
“Not bad? Have you noticed the way we stick out? This is totally not my kind of place. I bet they drink blood for fun.”
“So you want to go home?” He looked at her incredulously.
“Well, I’m sure not going back to your place,” she raised her eyebrows and looked down her nose at him.
“Fine,” Sam said. “You’re a tease anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice climbed in pitch. By now they were starting to draw a crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam could see the bouncers headed their way.
“Jeez! Drama much?” Sam snarked.
“Whatever!” She picked up her glass and threw the contents at him.
Sam wiped the stinging contents from his eyes and frowned at her. Chloe’s own face was a thundercloud of anger, but underneath it all he could see her eyes sparkle with the same enjoyment he was getting from their little drama.
“You could just walk home,” he said.
“Glad to.” She crossed her arms. By then, the bouncers had reached them. One of them started to lay a beefy hand on his shoulder, but then reassessed Sam’s size and instead just tapped him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, sir?” he said quietly. “We’d like for you and your date to leave.”
Sam stood and threw his hands in the air.
“Fine! I’m going.” He looked pointedly at Chloe. “Alone.”
“Oh point me toward the pavement, creep!” Chloe said angrily. She stood, and stomped toward the exit.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” Sam yelled after her. The bouncer tapped Sam’s shoulder again. “I’m going!” Sam pulled away from him, and headed after Chloe.
***
Dean watched the bouncer for the moment when his attention locked onto Sam, Chloe and the scene they were making. When he was certain he could slip off to the offices without being detected, he walked past the restrooms, and into the back.
The first unmarked door he came to turned out to be a storage room. Mindful of the fact that his time was short, he produced his homemade, disguised EMF.
A quick scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary, so he moved on to the next unmarked door. That room proved to be the office. Scans there, too, came up negative, so he resorted to old-fashioned sleuthing. Time spent around Jo and Ellen had taught him what belonged in the office of a club - and what did not.
When he could hear Chloe and Sam’s argument through the door and down the hall, he knew his time was almost up. He located the security cameras and pulled the footage for the past two weeks. Then he opened the door, and slipped back up the hall.
Chloe and Sam were already waiting for him at the Impala two blocks up from the club. When he got there, Sam looked up and raised an eyebrow expectantly.
“The place is clean,” he shook his head. “But I did get the security feed.”
“Hopefully that’ll give us some leads,” Chloe said. “Because after that show Sam and I put on? I think they’ll remember us at that club.”
***
When they returned to the hotel, Dean ordered a pizza (The dinner of champions. When leftover, also the breakfast of champions.). As he hung up the phone, Chloe emerged from the bathroom wearing a pair of jeans, a t-shirt from a band named The Pogues, and a ball-cap with a shamrock on it.
The second she sat down on the bed next to him, Dean reached over and stole the ball cap.
“Hey!” Chloe reached for it. “Give me that!”
“No,” he shook his head and held the hat out of her reach. “You’re too pretty to hide behind a hat.”
“Oh, you thought I was real pretty before,” Chloe snarked as she pushed him over, and tried to crawl over him to get at the hat. “What the hell did you do to your hair!” She parroted his gruff voice from earlier that morning.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said as he dropped the hat so she couldn’t grab it, and looped his arms around her waist to keep her from diving for it. “I was just shocked. It was just such a drastic change that it surprised me.”
“More like a gut reaction,” Chloe grumbled.
“Will you stop it?” Dean said. His eyebrows met as he glared up at her. “I get that you’re not happy about it. But stop taking it out on me.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Hey guys? Get a room.”
“This is a room,” Dean snapped at Sam.
Sam rolled his eyes. “When you two are done fighting your personal damage out, you want to come look at this footage. I think I’ve found a likely suspect.”
Chloe and Dean looked at each other. Dean raised his eyebrows in a silent request for a truce. Chloe nodded, and rolled from on top of him. They both moved to stand behind Sam.
“What have you got, Sammy?”
“This guy,” Sam said as he cued up a grainy image of a dark eyed man with a pink mohawk. “I’ve seen him talk to each of the victims the last time that they went to Club Nocturne before their deaths.”
“He looks pretty normal,” Dean said sarcastically. “Any clues to indicate he’s not human?”
“Or even superhuman?” Chloe knelt and leaned closer to the screen.
“Nothing yet. But now that we’ve got a photo, we can check with the local police databases. Maybe registered offenders databases.”
Chloe nodded. “Maybe in the morning, we can go back to Club Nocturne and see if anyone knows him.”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “I’ll check regional online databases. If you want to, you can get some sleep.”
“Maybe later,” Dean said. He went back to sit on the bed, and pulled out the journal that Chloe had given him. He looked at her and held up the book to show her that he was making good on his promise. Chloe smiled in response as she crawled under the covers next to him.
Sam looked over his shoulder at them and raised an eyebrow at Dean in question.
Dean looked from Chloe to Sam, and shook his head as if to say that he wasn’t going to answer Sam’s question. Sam rolled his eyes in response, and turned back to the computer. A sort of domestic harmony fell over the room to the accompaniment of Chloe’s steady breathing, the scratch of Dean’s pen, and the clacking of Sam’s keyboard.