missthis_ass | [oct 5]

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[oct 5]

For the past two weeks, Chloe has been keeping busy, moving Nate's notes from his apartment to her own, going through the things he'd left behind and deciding what to do with it all. It's a little bit like someone has died, she realizes as she folds the last of his shirts and packs them away to give to charity, going through the same motions she'd gone through when she and her mother had finally accepted her father was dead.

That's the thought that does it. Nathan Drake isn't dead, but that moment still happens, where she drops one last shirt into a box and realizes she's done this all before.

And fuck that.

There's nothing important left behind, all his notebooks are already at her place, so she hastily labels the box for charity, then gets the hell out of that apartment where they'd spent so many nights together over the past few months. There is no way in hell she's acting as if Nate is dead, not when this is hardly the first time one of them has walked away from the other. That's what they were known for. They would get together, do a job, fall into bed, then one of them would turn their back on the other. She's not mourning something that's happened a dozen times before.

That night she puts in a little extra time, dabbing on some lipstick, choosing a pair of boots that don't look like she's spent the last three hours hiking through mud, as well as her favourite jeans and a red tank top. To hell with a pity party, she's simply not going to do it. Tonight she's going to find herself a bar and she's going to get herself a drink and she's going to have fun.

She bypasses the loud clubs and pulls her car into the lot of a slightly tamer place, only because that's what she needs tonight. There will be time for a party, but not now. Right now she wants a bar where she can talk to a stranger if they interest her. A place where she doesn't have to shout to be a heard.

A place, apparently, where she can find Sam Winchester. As she pushes open the door, he's the first thing she spots, taller than anyone else nearby, and she heads in that direction with a faint smile. Maybe he'll let her take him for a drive.

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At the sound of approaching footsteps, Sam cut a sideways look toward in their direction, trying not show how on edge he felt. It had been well over a month since he'd helped free Betty of that demon, a month since he'd woken up something inside himself that he thought he was done with, and everything had been relatively quiet since. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that it couldn't last, that there was something always lurking behind him, or in him, something insidious and just out of sight.

Still, when he saw that it was Chloe, he relaxed, even if only by a fraction. His smile didn't quite reach his eyes but it was no less genuine.

"Hey," he said turning on his stool to face her.

There's something not quite right in his smile. Chloe is observant, she's had to be in her line of work, reading the gestures and facial expressions of others to know whether or not she's gotten away with her current lie, and Sam's smile doesn't quite go all the way to his eyes. She doesn't think it's has anything to do with her, though, and so she doesn't bother to comment on it. Not yet, anyway, she has no idea where this night might decide to go.

"Hey," she answers, tilting her head to look up at him. "You, darling, look like you're in need of a drink just about as much as I am. It's on me."

It's probably not his first tonight, not if he's here, but that's fine. Chloe usually isn't one for drinking to excess and there's no way in hell she would ever risk her car by driving under the influence, so she can have one and Sam can have as many as he likes.

She already has a plan.

Huffing out a soft laugh, he scrubbed a hand across the back of his neck as he smiled sheepishly.

"Yeah, you're not wrong," he admitted, flagging down the bartender and gesturing to his empty beer. "Thanks."

His smile softened and he took a moment to look at her. Outwardly, she looked as pulled together as ever, but there was something harder in the set of her jaw.

"You okay?" He asked, his brow creased with concern.

"Oh, you know how it is in this place," she answers, leaning against the bar to order a beer of her own. Then she turns, one elbow on the bar, her body angled toward Sam and she smiles. "Darrow likes to give and take, doesn't it?"

She's not here to talk about Nate. That man has haunted her in some form or another since the moment they met, infuriating and attractive and insensitive and complicated and obnoxious. What she needs right now is to just get away from thinking about him for a little while. He's gone now. Nothing changes that. Nothing brings him back.

But that's been the case for as long as they've known each other. They've moved in and out of each others' orbits for years. Just because he might be out of hers now for a little longer than usual doesn't make it something worth crying over.

"So I've heard," he said wryly. Not wanting to delve too deeply into pity, he bit his tongue before admitting that it seemed like Darrow took from him more often than it gave.

"I, uh. I guess it would be a pretty stupid question, asking if you wanted to talk about it."

She angled toward him and smiled, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. When he did the same, his smile didn't quite reach his either.

"I decidedly do not want to talk about it," she tells him as their drinks arrive. Chloe pushes Sam's toward him, then lifts her glass and touches it lightly against the rim of his. "What I want to do is buy a seemingly equally troubled and yet terribly handsome man a drink or two, then show off to him with my fast car."

And wherever the hell things go from there, she's comfortable with it either way. A big part of her, of course, would happily take Sam back to her place right now, but she figures she ought to at least buy him those drinks before she goes straight for the metaphorical kill.

"Unless you're not the fast car sort and then I'm sure we can find other things to do," she adds with another grin.

With another huff of laughter, Sam said, "I can appreciate a fast car."

Cars would always be something his brother and father shared-- he'd always cared more about practicality, but he knew more about them than he'd ever been given credit for.

"It's been a while since I've taken a drive, for anything other than work," he admitted, clinking his glass against hers and then bringing it to his lips.

"Then let's find another reason for it," she answers with a little grin, then takes a long sip of her drink. Driving is Chloe's work most of the time, especially in Darrow, where jobs are relatively limited for her particular skill set, but she does simply love driving. Regardless of the reason.

"Unless you want to talk about why that smile doesn't quite look genuine?" she asks. "I'm not going to lie and say I'm a good listener, but I'm not adverse to giving it a shot. Especially if you make the story interesting."

She doesn't want to talk about losing Nate because, for all it hurts, that's a boring story. It's typical and expected and rather irritating in just how mundane it really is.

"God, no," Sam said with a laugh, shaking his head as he took another deep swig from his beer. "Normally, I'm the one pushing people to talk, but I think I'm starting to understand the benefits of just shutting up and drinking."

He'd already thought about it enough. He'd had a whole week to do it, cramped up in Marcus's apartment, coming down from the high of too much power. Now, forgetting while in the company of a beautiful woman sounded a hell of a lot better than anything else he could've come up with.

"A man after my own heart," Chloe says with a teasing grin, pressing her hand to her chest. When drinking doesn't work for her, she turns to driving too fast or shooting targets, or a convenient and attractive partner.

"We can talk about anything else in the world," she tells him, finishing the last of her beer. She's not drunk, knows better than to have too much when she's planning on driving, and no one else in this world gets to drive her car. "Like how it is we kissed the very first we met and haven't again since then. Terribly disappointing, darling, I'll tell you that much."

Huffing out a surprised laugh, Sam said, "Yeah, uh. Disappointing sounds about right." He turned on his stool to face her more fully, one elbow resting on the bar counter.

"Those were, uh. Kind of weird circumstances. We probably shouldn't have been waiting for a repeat of those," he admitted, with a crooked smile.

"Whatever were we thinking?" Chloe asks, although she knows what she had been thinking for the past several months.

Nate. She had been trying for Nate, trying to be the woman she still suspects he wants, the woman who will settle down and marry him and give him that beautiful daughter in the photo album she's now in possession of. Chloe has to hope he never would have expected that much of her, never would have honestly thought she would ever be happy taking the same route he'd gone with Elena, but she knows he still would have wanted it.

But at least part of the point of tonight is that she not think about Nate and so instead of letting herself really go down that path, she sets her beer on the bar top and lays her hand on Sam's arm. "It was a good kiss, wasn't it?" she asks, though she doesn't give him a chance to answer. Instead she slides her hand up his arm and hops down from her stool, getting close enough to Sam's that she can kiss him for the second time. Long and slow.

She loves Nate, but how she's missed things like this.

"It was," he managed to say just as she slid from her stool, inserting herself into his space and leaning in. He had to stoop to meet her, but he didn't keep her waiting, his hand sliding to her jaw, fingers curling along the back of her neck as he pulled her in.

This was a good kiss, and not simply because it was the first he'd had in a depressingly long time. It was better, now, because it wasn't tied to some spell. There was nothing but the two of them, and perhaps their shared loneliness.

His hand fell to her waist, feeling the warmth of her through her clothes, and she was right. He couldn't think of a single reason why they'd waited so long.

Never in her life has Chloe let herself get too attached to anyone, not since her father's death. It's a dangerous thing, letting down her guard, so she learned not to, and no matter how much she loves Nate, she doesn't feel even the slightest bit of guilt over any of this.

It's always been a much safer way to live.

She likes Sam's hand on her waist, the weight of it, and when the kiss breaks and she pulls back to look at him, she's grinning. He reminds her a little of Charlie, a very favourable comparison, as far as Chloe's concerned. "Done with that beer?" she asks. "Ready to get out of here?"

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[oct 5]

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