“So let me get this straight. You've never been drunk?"
“Nope.”
“Like . . . Never ever?”
“No.”
“But you've had alcohol? Right?”
“Dean, I am Catholic.”
Dean gave Chloe a befuddled look. “So you didn't even try to get drunk as a teenager? How did you manage that?”
Chloe shrugged. “My friends and I were pretty straight-laced; if you discount the stuff we did while scoobying.”
“Scoobying?”
“It's a verb.”
“On what planet?”
“First Buffy: Season One. Thus saith the Joss.”
“How many major felonies did you and your friends commit while scoobying?”
“Cracking computer databases is one thing. Recreational boozing is another.”
Dean smirked. “You have a majorly screwed-up definition of straitlaced.” He bit his lip thoughtfully. “So did you and your straight-laced friends ever go out?”
“Lois used to take me out all the time. Let me tell you: Army Rangers know how to party.”
“Seriously. I'm not getting this. Almost every teenager on the planet has at least one incident of underage drinking in their past. What makes you different?”
Chloe smiled at him. “Honestly? Lois was a serious lush. I guess watching her get drunk and then fling her underwear around any room, especially a room full of soldiers so scared of the general that they wet themselves in her presence? That kind of thing puts you off the whole getting-drunk scenario. By the time I was legal and I could go out drinking with co-workers at The Planet, the meta thing kicked in, and I couldn't get drunk.”
Dean shook his head. “Random.”
“Kind of like this conversation,” Chloe said.
“Car trips are like that sometimes,” Dean replied.
Chloe leaned back against the door and nodded. In the weeks that she had been traveling with Sam and Dean Winchester, she had seen most of the mid and southwest. Now they were crossing Arkansas, bound for Memphis.
Moments like these held a magical and strange kind of tranquility. Sam's even breathing was a soothing music from the backseat that ran in harmony with the nervous tapping of Dean's thumbs on the steering wheel. She knew that just beyond the window, miles and miles of rice fields stretched out to touch the horizon.
Though cars passing were rare, the occasional glow from a headlight would trace the contours of Dean's handsome features, and halo his light brown hair. Chloe liked the sense of peace that she felt during those moments.
Life as a reporter/Justice League member had always been a bit of a Gypsy-normal. Although she kept a studio apartment in Metropolis, she was carrying on a hot and heavy affair with Mabel, the couch in the break-room of The Planet. It had gotten to the point that her bed wasn't on speaking terms with her.
Now that she was currently being carted across the United States like a Samsonite, her life was actually the most stable that it had been in a long time. There was enough irony to keep a dry cleaner in business for a long time.
Yes, her network of family, friends, Planet staff and fellow League members (pretty much the same thing since Clark married Lois, and how incestuous was that?) were only a phone call away. But more importantly, there were actually stable factors in her life that she could count on beyond deadlines, paychecks and bald evil geniuses.
She smiled over at Dean, and wondered what he would make of the fact that he was becoming a stable constant in her life. She was a little surprised to find that she liked the idea. But would that freak him out? She doubted very seriously that many people strung the words Dean and stable together in the same sentence that didn't also include the word not.
“So what's in Memphis?” She asked.
“Girl,” Dean said shortly.
“Oh.” Years of practice with the Big Dumb Alien that married her cousin (and didn’t that sound like a bad 50’s B flick?) had made her really good at pretending to not be hurt. But it felt like Dean had just sucker punched her in the gut. She knew he had a reputation as a total player, but since she'd started traveling with the boys, he'd been incredibly discreet.
If she didn't know better, she would have said that he wasn't picking up girls at all. But she knew that couldn't be right. She'd heard enough talk from other hunters around Ellen's to know about Dean's tomcat reputation.
“Didn't realize this was a booty call,” she snarked. Inwardly, she was kicking herself for giving a damn. She'd been down that road one too many times with Clark to let herself care that lopsidedly again.
“What?” Dean shot her a startled look. “No, nothing like that. It's Jo.”
“Jo?” She breathed out. Relief flooded her, followed quickly by self-recrimination over her reaction. “Ellen's daughter, Jo?”
“Yeah.” Dean gave her a speculative look. “You know her?”
“Never met her,” Chloe shook her head. “But Ellen's mentioned her a time or two. Other than you two and Ellen – she's the only other hunter that knows I'm meta.”
“That's a story I haven't heard,” Dean said. “How did you meet Ellen?”
“That's an interesting story,” Chloe said. “Ellen was there when I almost got my head popped off like a rooster on Sunday when the padre is coming to dinner. I had a friend get rock-fever and kinda’ go dangerous on me.”
“Rock fever?”
“It's Smallville.” Chloe shrugged. “Sometimes the green space rocks make you do the wacky.”
“Huh,” Dean said. “How did you survive to adulthood?”
“It wasn't on looks, I can tell you.”
“And yet you got those too.”
“Flattery, Mr. Winchester, will get you --”
“A lot further than you're going to admit.” Dean flashed her a killer smile.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Can we please pull over? There's no room for me in here with your ego.”
“I'm hurt.”
“Not yet, you're not,” she said.
“Kinky.”
“Getting back on the subject,” Chloe rolled her eyes. “I was leading my friend on a goose chase across Nebraska to get him away from Smallville. He caught up with me at Ellen's, and we had it out right in front of her. Obviously, things turned out okay.
“Before that, though, she'd asked me what I was hunting. I didn't think a lot of it at the time. But later on, when I found out about this whole other world that existed outside of meta humans and super freaks. I remembered her.”
“And she sent you our way,” Dean said. “Wonder why?” The tone of his voice gave Chloe the impression that he knew exactly why Ellen suggested that she learn how to hunt from them. But she reined in her natural curious impulse. She'd meant what she told Sam and Dean in Tulsa. She trusted them. And trusting them meant trusting in the information they gave her. She wasn't going to dig into their past if they didn't want her there.
“Who knows,” she shrugged. “So what's Jo doing in Memphis?”
“Same thing Ellen's doing in Nebraska. Tending bar. Keeping her ear to the ground. Passing information along to hunters.”
“So she's kind of like a supernatural smoke-spotter?”
“That's a good analogy,” Dean said.
“In the metahuman community, they call that person a Watchtower.”
The speculative look was back in Dean's face. But Chloe noted that he didn't ask about the information she'd given him. The boundaries that they'd set up back in Tulsa seemed to be working.
“So this is about a case?” Chloe asked.
“Won't know until we get there,” Dean said. “Which we should in a couple of hours.”
/>“I can drive, if you want.”
“Not likely sweetheart.”
She shrugged, and turned to stare out the window. In the distance, the stars reflected out of the water-filled rice fields. It was impossible to tell where sky ended and earth began.
