Story: when you run dry i'll flood your pain

Summary: AU / Chloe Sullivan might as well have a sign taped to her forehead that reads TALK TO ME IF YOU HAVE A TIGHTS FETISH AND NEED SOMEONE TO HACK THE NSA.

Notes: An answer to the question, What would change in Chloe's life if she left Smallville before Shit Got Weird? And the answer, as it turns out, is, Not fucking much. Lois was a joy to write, I swear, that bitch is ace.

The bad part of Chloe Sullivan's Thursday begins with: "So I was thinking."

"Stop that, right now," Chloe advises from where she is hunched over her desk. "It's dangerous. These are new shoes."

"You're hilarious," says Lois, making a face at Chloe and perching her butt on a pile of very important documents that Chloe would appreciate not being mussed.

Chloe swallows the urge to push her onto the floor, and instead, remembering that Lois is her best (read: only) friend, leans back in her swivel chair, lacing her fingers over her stomach. "Hit me, Lo."

Immediately, Lois is in Chloe's personal space, her heels clacking against the metal of the desk drawers. "You heard about Watterson's new source, haven't you? So far they've got a 100% success rate on the rats in the DA's office."

"Not shocking," points out Chloe. "I could throw darts at the office directory in City Hall and get that sort of accuracy on corrupt ADAs."

"Come on Chlo, it's Gazette 101—it's not enough to know they're corrupt, prove they're corrupt." With a truly admirable amount of restraint, Chloe refrains from reminding Lois of the fourteen reprimands Lois has on her record for going off on a lead without proper proof or editor's sanction. Looking smug and vaguely hypocritical, Lois continues, "So I was thinking—I've got the best legs in this office, you've got the best butt. We could totally snatch this source away from Watterson."

"Are you serious?" asks Chloe after a pointed pause. "Did you actually just suggest we prostitute ourselves for a source?"

Because Chloe is the one being hypocritical now, Lois levels her with an incredulous look. "Didn't you sleep with Green Arrow the last time he was in town?"

"Oh shut up, you've practically got Superman's toothpaste in your medicine cabinet," mutters Chloe, shuffling some papers on her desk and trying not to think about Green Arrow. She is (moderately) successful. "Anyway, you know how skittish sources on the DA's office are—I doubt whoever he is, he's going to abandon his handler for us, however nice we may look in pencil skirts."

"You have like no imagination," says Lois, and she slides off Chloe's desk, taking most of the papers with her onto the floor. "Meet me by the Madison entrance to Robinson Park at seven, okay? And wear a short jacket."

"Yeah, whatever," says Chloe. Her mess of files preoccupies her now, and she flaps a hand at Lois to get lost. "Martinis are on you tomorrow."

"You're the best!" declares Lois, and off she clacks. Faintly, Chloe hears her call for one of the coffee interns by the wrong name ("It's Mark, Miss Lan—what? Yes, okay, a nonfat macchiato, sure, right away"), but she's too busy trying to remember if the financial records were sorted by date or credit card.

Credit card, she finally decides after staring at the rows of numbers blankly. Probably.

"Need a hand, Sullivan?"

She bares her teeth at Bruce as he grins at her, rocking back on his heels. "You look like you need a drink. Let me buy you one."

"It's three in the afternoon," Chloe says, "and I don't think your flavor of the week would appreciate me taking up your valuable time, Bruce."

"Natalia has the attention span of a Pomeranian," says Bruce dismissively, bending over in his ridiculously expensive suit to sweep up the few sheets of bank records that have abandoned ship and tried to defect to Richards' desk across the aisle. "I'm sure I can give her a tennis bracelet and she'll forgive me."

"You are a despicable human being," says Chloe disapprovingly. "If you actually had any interest in dating me, I'd still say no."

"Aw, Sullivan, don't be that way." Because he has a charming smile and knows how to use it, Chloe is supremely unimpressed with the flash of white teeth he shoots her way. "So what's this I hear about an editorship in the works? I was sure they'd have to pry your desiccated fingers off of the corruption beat when you finally died of a heart attack at seventy."

"Oh, is it seventy this week?" Chloe affects surprise, and presses a hand to her heart. "What's expanded my lifespan twenty years?"

"I haven't had to rescue you from getting shot in the head this week," says Bruce. He has a shit-eating grin that accompanies this statement, and anyone listening—like, say, Richards, who should probably take over the page six gossip column from Fatima Reyes and is not even pretending to be writing an article anymore—would assume he's joking. Chloe knows that he isn't, and even more, he's angry about something she's done.

She really, really does not have time to deal with Bruce being pissy. "Listen, Bruce, I appreciate your concern for my safety and the health of my heart, and I also appreciate that you are very ineptly trying to discern if Edgar is considering making me a junior editor and washing off the target painted on my back, but I have to magically get an MBA this afternoon and figure out what the hell is going on with these damn credit reports, so—"

"Why of course I'll take time out of my incredibly busy schedule to help you," interrupts Bruce, affecting a considerate expression. "My MBA is your MBA, Sullivan. What am I looking at?" He hooks the unoccupied swivel chair from Becky's desk and swings it around to settle into it in one smooth motion. "Wow, I didn't know you could get access to these sorts of records. Are these Maurice Unser's credit cards? All seven of them?"

From her position of staring blankly at him, Chloe can see where his hair swirls out from a little dot in the center of his head. It's nice hair—thick, dark, with a hint of curl. She considers grabbing a fistful of it and slamming his head against her desk, but it's unlikely to get rid of him. She would know, as they met when she hit him in the head with a metal folding chair. He got over the blow with remarkable alacrity.

"Yes," she hears herself blankly replying. "Don't you have meetings to go sleep through, Bruce?"

"You're a doll for being concerned, Sullivan. My afternoon is clear, though—I worked through lunch. All right, so, first things first, I don't think anyone can magic $500,000 out of thin air, even Maurice Unser, so you probably want to ask that police friend of yours to track where this half a million appeared from." Bruce points, seemingly at random, to a line of text. "Chloe? Hello?"

She sighs, closes her eyes, rubs the left one, and fishes a pad of post-its and a pen from the left drawer of her desk. "All right, go through that again."

Chloe meets the Green Arrow during a jaunt to Star City when she is chasing a lead that is trying to flee the country in an insultingly unsubtle manner. In a trench coat and perhaps ill-advised heels, Chloe is questioning the portly gentleman who runs the books on Pier 45's unsanctioned activity. In uncomfortably tight-looking leather, Green Arrow is sprinting across a rooftop after a pair of would-be rapists.

They meet when the rapists slither down a fire escape, dodge two Dumpsters, and try to take Chloe hostage. The Green Arrow, from a nearby roof, notches an arrow and notes that they are incredibly dumb. Quietly agreeing, Chloe pulls mace out of the pocket of her trench coat and blasts the one holding her throat full in the face. He squawks in alarm and indignation—she is a midget wearing four-inch heels, hostages wearing shoes like that don't normally carry mace—and his partner bolts for a corner.

Looking bored, the Green Arrow drops him with some sort of gas-bearing contraption, and he and Chloe truss up the teenagers without a single word exchanged between them. Chloe doesn't say anything because she has lost the portly gentleman and now needs another way to find out what is in the shipping manifesto of the Queen Yvonne. The Green Arrow has recently adopted a silence policy, and is valiantly attempting to make it a worthwhile policy by actively putting it in practice.

"Thanks," Chloe finally says, offhand, once she has finished calling 911 and given up on the ship as a line of inquiry altogether. "I'll see you around or whatever—what's your name? Robin Hood?"

"Green Arrow," says the Green Arrow, giving up silence in favor of dignity.

Chloe meets his dignified stare and raises him an incredulous eyebrow. "Wow, you're, uh, really scraping the barrel with that one, aren't you?"

"Excuse me?" says the Green Arrow, but Chloe has already wrapped her trench more securely around herself and off she strides, in dangerous-looking shoes and stockings with thin black seams up the back, towards the nearest bus stop.

Two weeks later, Chloe is fucking the Green Arrow behind heavy drapes in a semi-respectable hotel on the orbit of the business neighborhood in Star City proper. She considers saying something when he breaks into her room—like maybe Just how original do you think you're being? Because, actually, you're like the fourth superhero to think I'm worth a little slap and tickle or You're going to pay for the hole you made in that window, right?—but she ends up being pleasantly surprised when he backs her into the minibar and begins to very competently strip off her silk robe.

Unlike Clark, he doesn't take the time to peer into her eyes and declare an everlasting affection and concern for her safety. Unlike Bart, he doesn't smell like tacos and give her an asinine nickname. And unlike Bruce, he hasn't come with the intention of scaring her away from the mayor's lack of interest in pursuing Gotham's drug cartels. So, really, he's the nicest superhero to ever hit on her. Which is not the only reason why she lets him be the first to undo her robe, but it factors in a little bit.

At six-fifteen, Chloe very politely tells Bruce to fuck off and go buy his legs of the week a placating tennis bracelet, shuts down her laptop, and packs up Maurice Unser's credit records for locking up in Edgar's office safe. "Sullivan," he grunts as she knocks on his office door and lets herself in. "You got something good there?"

"It's Unser, of course there's something good here," says Chloe. "I just have to find it. Looks like he's really fond of the Caribbean right before tax season."

"Aren't we all?" mutters Edgar. He looks tired, glasses hanging from a chain around his neck, the creases in the corners of his eyes deepened by shadows. When Chloe was a little girl, she used to read Edgar Reeve's Sunday editorial in the Daily Planet every week. When he wrote about Metropolis' corruption problem, she would cut out the editorial and pasted it to her wall. Working for him at the Gazette is like working for Santa Claus, with worse hours and death threats.

Luckily for Chloe, she likes bad hours and death threats. "You should get home, Edgar, before Margot decides you aren't worth it and leaves you for Commissioner Gordon."

Edgar gives Chloe a look that indicates her sass is appreciated, if going unremarked upon. "You're one to talk, Sullivan. Are you and Lane up to something?"

Chloe drops the files on a corner of Edgar's desk and promptly affixes a virtuous expression to her face. "I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Reeve. I'm going to go home and have a bubble bath and read up on Unser Steel's performance for the last three quarters." She smiles at him, and he tries to glare at her.

"It better be front page material, Sullivan!" he yells after her as she pulls his office door shut and swings by her desk to pick up her bag.

In the elevator, she glances at her profile and decides that her jacket is cropped enough that Lois won't be able to complain about her butt. Absently, she is deciding between a hot dog from Sal's on Twelfth or grabbing a salad at Café Europa on her way to Robinson Park when the elevators slide open with a bright ding and there, looking thunderous, is Watterson.

"Hey, Rick," she says, sliding past him into the lobby of the Gotham Gazette building. "You okay?"

"My fucking print," he grunts, which could mean a variety of things, and Chloe gives him a slightly impersonal smile and she walks out of the lobby into Gotham, with its shitty air quality and rush hour traffic problem.

Chloe goes for broke and compromises; she gets the hot dog with relish and mustard from Sal, then a large black coffee from Café Europa. She makes it to the Madison entrance to the park with two minutes to spare, and she takes those two minutes to wipe the mustard from the bottom of her lip, reapply her lipstick, and fluff her hair.

Promptly at seven, Chloe turns on the recorder in her pocket and slips it between some picked seams into the lining of her coat, where someone who pats her down won't be able to find it. Twenty minutes later, Lois strides up Madison, brazenly strides in front of the M1, and is almost hit by a taxi as she crosses to join Chloe at the entrance to the park. "Yo, Chlo!" she yells, and the taxi driver leans out the window to curse her and her mother and her offspring.

"Hey, Lois," says Chloe, trying not to smile because that will encourage Lois. "You're late."

"Oh, bite me," says Lois. "Watterson should still be back at the Gazette, mistakenly believing it to be six-twenty because I changed the time zone on his computer and cell phone."

"He's going to file a complaint with Edgar about this," points out Chloe as Lois links their arms and begins to drag her into the park. "And Edgar might listen; there's the distinct possibility Watterson's source is going to flip about this and disappear."

"Please, look at these," says Lois, kicking out one of legs and admiring the line of her calf as it disappears into the soft curve of her stilettos. "These are the legs that Superman is fucking. If they can't land us a source in the DA's office, what good are they? Besides," she continues, "I'm not going to propose that this guy put all his faith in us. Watterson can keep running the ADA corruption beat. It's old news. I want new stuff."

There is a small, sinking feeling in Chloe's stomach. "This isn't about—"

"Of course it is," says Lois. "We live in Gotham. It's always about Batman. I want to know what the DA's office thinks about him. Not what they say they think about him, either—what they actually think."

"They think he's a psychologically unstable ninja who dresses up like a giant bat," says Chloe, keeping her voice with effort steady and light. "What more do you want? A profile? The DA's office doesn't even have an open file on him."

Lois wears her hair with the upper half swept up, curled away from her face and clipped to the back of her head. It leaves the planes of her face bare, and the fading sun highlights the wrinkle that forms in her forehead. "Chloe, you can't be serious. You're Conspiracy Theory Chloe and you don't think the DA's office has an open file on Batman? Please. Please. You weren't this naïve when you were seven."

"I don't understand your obsession with Batman, Lois. He does good things for Gotham. He does a lot of good for Gotham, and he can only do that while he's still masked."

This is an old, worn debate. "He's dangerous."

"How is he dangerous? He doesn't even kill people! And you are dating Superman, Lois, so you can't recycle that stupid line about 'Why the mask if he just wants to protect people.' Batman is the least dangerous thing in Gotham right now, unless you're doing something illegal, and you want to unmask him on the front page of the Gazette."

That familiar, infuriating expression has crossed Lois' face; she is going to stubbornly cling to her goal if it kills her. "Chloe, Batman broke into your apartment. He tried to coerce you into dropping a lead. Does that sound like an honest man to you?" Chloe opens her mouth, but Lois cuts her off a second later. "He's not like Superman or the Green Arrow, Chloe, so don't even try. We both know it."

For the fourteen thousandth time, Chloe deeply regrets ever mentioning to Lois that Batman visited her at home. She is still thankful that she didn't mention his physical demonstration of how fragile she is; if Lois knew the particulars of that first meeting, she would probably stop trying to unmask Batman's secret identity and start actively researching ways to castrate him through Kevlar.

"I can't help you with this source if you're only going to use it for Batman," says Chloe, stopping in the middle of the path. They've gone around a few corners by now; the gated entrance to the park has vanished, and the weak sunlight is filtered heavily by the thickness of the overhang. There is just enough light for Chloe to make out Lois' anger. "You know how I feel about this," continues Chloe, almost begging now—she doesn't want to make her cousin wander through Robinson Park at night, but she also doesn't want to have Bruce's face splashed across the cover of the Gazette and all his work undone.

Lois' eyebrows are slung low across her eyes. She looks murderous as she twists the strap of her purse between her hands. "I can't believe that you want to protect him, Chloe. He's dangerous."

"He's a good man," says Chloe, trying to regulate the nervous tick that makes her want to run her fingers through her hair. "Gotham needs him."

"Gotham's problem is corruption. You say it yourself, all the time—the problem isn't the drug dealers or the pimps or the cartels, it's the politicians. Batman can't beat up the mayor and convince him to confess to money laundering. He's not going to solve Gotham's disease, he's only treating the symptoms."

Chloe knows, very intimately, that this isn't true. But she can't afford to tell Lois, especially now, why that is. With a sigh, she gives in and rubs her forehead with her fingertips. She doesn't want to alienate her cousin, and she can't really afford to have Lois asking questions about why Chloe is giving her the silent treatment to protect a vigilante that, as far as Lois is concerned, has only interacted with Chloe when he broke into her apartment and issued verbal threats.

"Those symptoms are crime statistics that make 1920s Chicago look like Pleasantville," Chloe finally says, unable to force the weariness out of her voice. "Gotham needed the sort of symbol Metropolis has had for years; and he's working, Lois. Better than the Gazette, at least."

Lois is not fully convinced—that is patently obvious by the set of her mouth—but in a sort of divine deus ex machina sort of way, Watterson appears from around the bend, hands cupped around a lighter and cigarette. He doesn't stop, but gives Lois a vicious, "I didn't realize you were so technologically gifted, Lane," as he strides past, shoving his lighter into the back pocket of his jeans and breathing deeply.

"Oh, fuck all," says Lois, and, their argument apparently forgotten, says, "How about martinis tonight, then?"

Chloe exhales lightly and grins. "Yes, please."

"You're quiet," says the Green Arrow on the last night Chloe spends in Star City. She's just clicked send on the email to Edgar with her article, and in two hours the police will get an anonymous tip about a ship leaving Star City Harbor with a certain wanted fugitive. Why two hours, the Green Arrow had asked, and Chloe had taken great delight in telling him exactly how long it takes to print the morning edition of a paper, and how in two hours there would be not enough time to do so for any paper other than the Gazette.

"Like you're one to talk," mutters Chloe, and she reaches out and punches him in the general area of where she assumes his arm is. In the darkness, he still has his sunglasses and voice distorter active; it is a little disconcerting to know that he can see her perfectly, and she can't see anything at all. "I'm trying to remember if I packed everything."

"Hopefully not everything," says the Green Arrow, who has an unhealthy attachment to her forest green stilettos. Chloe has set them aside, along with a pair of sheer black thigh-highs ringed with lace, on a chair by the bed. She isn't really the sort for five-day whirlwind affairs, but she apparently dresses for them regardless.

"Mm," says Chloe, "no, not everything." She kisses him and wriggles backwards out of bed, feeling her way towards the chair. "I hope you appreciate how deeply sexy this is, as I certainly can't see enough to do so."

"It's a little to your left," replies the Green Arrow, "and I assure you, I am enjoying every millisecond of this."

Chloe grins in what she hopes in his direction, and by touch lifts her left leg onto the chair and begins to unroll a thigh-high up over the arch of her foot. She takes her time, feeling the sticky-smooth quality of the silk netting as it rises over her toes, ankles, swell of her calves, and the bend of her knee. As a final step, she puts on the heels, and she hasn't finished removing her foot from the chair when he steps into her, knocking them both backwards against the wall, and she lifts a leg to wrap around his waist.

"Every," he reiterates as he slips into her, "millisecond."

Afterwards, knackered and vaguely certain that he has ripped her stockings to shreds, Chloe lies back against the tumble of bed sheets and pillows and comments, "I don't know what you did before I came along, if you were this horny." This isn't meant as an invitation, or an accusation, or even really an introductory topic to a conversation—this is just Chloe commenting on the sheer volume of filthy sex they have participated in over the past five days.

Proving perhaps Chloe should keep her mouth shut more often, the Green Arrow stops running a finger up and down along the inside curve of her knee. "Chloe."

"Oh god," she says, flailing and trying to slap a hand in his general direction. "Whatever placating bullshit you're about to share with me—please, don't."

He sounds more amused than offended when he finally says, "I was actually going to ask if you wouldn't mind if I stopped by, sometimes, when I'm in Gotham."

"Sure," says Chloe, because she hasn't really been out since she and Harvey called it quits, and she happens to be fond of filthy sex. "What do you want me to do, rig up a searchlight with a giant arrow cut-out?"

"Somehow I don't imagine that'll be necessary," he says. Chloe absently gnaws on one of her cuticles and examines her choices. She feels pleasantly limp, itchy from the scratches on her back, and she has a front-page scoop for the Gazette. As far as she can tell, she has yet to make a poor decision tonight. Perhaps contracting a highly satisfying sexual relationship with the Green Arrow will continue the trend.

"Have you left?" she finally asks a few minutes later. She hasn't heard any rustling, but he's not really the type to fall asleep with her curled gently in his arms; and maybe she fell asleep whilst cataloging the marks on her person?

There is silence for five long seconds, and then she sighs and makes to push herself further along the bed, to switch on the lamp on the bedside table and check the alarm on her cellphone—but her fingertips only make it to the edge of the pillow when she feels his hands, hot and large and one with a thumb larger than the other, pin her ankles against the mattress and he licks his way up her inner thigh.

"Nngh," says Chloe artlessly, and she arches her back and her fingertips fall away from the bedside table to clutch for the headboard. "Oh god, yes—"

Chloe has her regular—an appletini, heavy on the tini—and Lois goes a little crazy and orders something with grapefruit juice and sake. Looking bored, the bartender fishes them out from under the counter a bowl of trendy triangle-shaped crackers, and goes off to make their drinks.

"So," says Lois. "I guess that was a bust."

"And also a dumb idea," says Chloe. She bites into one of the crackers, and makes a face. "I'm already vetoing this place. These crackers are terrible."

"You can't veto before you've had your drink," Lois says into the bowl of crackers. She already has four in her mouth. "God, you made up the rules. Clearly, fucking Green Arrow is taking up too much of your precious brain space."

"Who I sleep with has no bearing on my mental capacity," says Chloe. The bartender returns with two martini glasses and two shakers; Chloe's glass gets a thin slice of green apple, and Lois' has a cluster of pomegranate seeds on the bottom. Chloe gives him four points for presentation, and then another two because his wrist arches as he pours in a clear, long line, and he pours both shakers at once without spilling a drop.

"Seven," says Lois, as she reaches for her glass. She takes a sip, makes a face, swallows, and takes another. "Mmm," she finally hums.

Chloe's first sip washes away the remnants of the cardboard crackers; her second she savors. It is indeed heavy on the gin and light on the apple. "Six for prep, five for taste," she says to Lois. "I guess I'm not vetoing, this is pretty good."

"God, what did I order," responds Lois. "This tastes great, but it feels like a sledgehammer. How much sake is in this?"

Given that Chloe can smell it from the next barstool, she feels qualified to answer: "A lot."

"Seven for prep, four for taste, and then I'm giving a two bonus because Jesus H. Christ on the Ohio River, this could knock out Edgar in two servings." Lois promptly knocks back the rest of her drink and flags the bartender. "Give me another one of these things, and can we get a menu?"

"Do you want to talk about tonight?" Chloe sips at her appletini and sets it back on the bar. She doesn't, really, but it's usually better to be upfront with Lois about her less attractive qualities, which include a willingness to steal sources from another, non-rival reporter, and her bulldog stubbornness when it comes to nailing Batman to the wall.

"I think you should tell me why you're protecting Batman," says Lois. She is still eating the damn crackers, but with one hand as she peruses the menu. "Why don't we get this Asian tapas thing? It's like seven little plates of overpriced noodles."

"I'm always up for overpriced noodles," replies Chloe. She doesn't even try to look at the menu; she fiddles with the edge of her cocktail napkin instead. "And I'm not protecting Batman, Lois—"

"Sorry, wait a second," says Lois, holding up her hand and flagging the bartender again. "Can we get the Asian tapas?" she says, almost slapping him in the face with the menu and not really asking at all. The young hipster gentleman looks a little annoyed, but he lets it melt into ironic insouciance and saunters off to tell the kitchen. "Anyway," she continues, once he and his little ass have swayed away, "please, do not insult your cousin and closest friend by telling her that you aren't protecting the B-man. Because you are, and you're being kind of subtle about it, I guess, but I can tell because (a) I work with you, and (b) I am a reporter and you should stop forgetting that I am good at my job."

That is fair. A lesser woman would shift guiltily in her chair; Chloe fiddles more with the cocktail napkin. She does, on occasion, forget how brilliant a reporter her cousin is, because Lois Lane has a mouth like a sailor and legs like a Victoria's Secret model and is proud of both to the point of vocal obscenity. "You are," she agrees. "For example, I still don't know how you figured out the where and when on Watterson's source." She isn't avoiding, so she clarifies, "Not that you have to tell me—I'm making a point."

Lois stares at her, and without breaking eye contact eats three more crackers at once. "Fine," Chloe finally says, and she takes a fortifying sip of her drink. "Batman—might have asked for my assistance, once or twice. About—cases." Lois chokes on her crackers, and tries to take a drink before realizing her glass is empty.

"You are sidekicking for Batman?" she hisses. Looking psychotic and paranoid, she swivels her head around three times to take in the rest of the bar, which is empty except for three burned out-looking graduate students in U of Gotham t-shirts and a couple on a date. It's only eight on a Thursday, so the lack of patrons isn't shocking.

"No," says Chloe, trying not to feel insulted. "I consult. On matters that he needs my computer expertise to crack. Occasionally, I help him out with Gazette-related business."

"You are fucking Batman's sidekick!" continues Lois in a harsh whisper. "I can't believe it. Your own flesh and blood! Look at me! How could you not tell me?"

"Um, hold up," says Chloe, and she actually holds up a hand before she feels like someone from Mean Girls and awkwardly puts it back down. "You were dating Superman for how long before you finally told me? This was top of the shelf stuff, Lo, and you know that every time I sweep your apartment for bugs, someone from Gotham City PD is back the next morning, putting them back when you go to work."

"Superman's a low blow," mutters Lois. "And yeah, I guess the GCPD is full of angsty little bitches that would probably be all over your ass if they knew you were hacking into NSA or like setting fire to walls or whatever for Batman."

"You are such a special person," Chloe says, and then, under her breath, "firewalls, for the love of," and then she raises her voice a little and continues, "Lois, the point is—I know him. And I trust him to be doing the right thing."

Chloe can see Lois slotting this information in amongst all the other nuggets she has labeled in her mind under BATMAN. Thanks to a little problem Lois calls her abandonment issues, Chloe does not trust easily. "Has he apologized about trying to shank you or whatever that one time?" Lois finally asks.

"Sort of," says Chloe diffidently. "He bought me this voice-activated wireless keyboard."

"What," says Lois. The bartender has come back with another glass and is pouring her drink when she asks, "Is that like a nerd sex thing?"

"No," says Chloe. She picks up her glass, sticks the apple slice between her teeth, and waggles it at the bartender by the stem. This is no longer a one-martini conversation.

"Good," mumbles Lois into her drink. "Because, let's be honest, I doubt your boyfriend would be pleased that some other guy is buying you kinky nerd sex toys."

Chloe holds up two fingers. "One, not my boyfriend. Two, not a kinky nerd sex toy."

From across the bar, Lois zeroes in on the platter of overpriced noodles as they're carried out of the kitchen by a young waitress whose is ill-advisedly attempting dreadlocks. "Whatever," she says, gnawing on one last handful of crackers. "You and Pleather are knocking boots, and people tend to frown when I call him your fuck-buddy in the bullpen."

"That's because schoolchildren regularly tour the Gazette's offices," Chloe reminds her. "As charming as you are, no one wants you corrupting the poor, innocent boys and girls of Gotham."

"Please," says Lois dismissively. "They live in Gotham. If they're poor or innocent, they're doing it wrong."

"Your Asian tapas," murmurs the waitress, setting the platter down on the bar between them. "Can I get you anything?"

"Chopsticks," says Lois. The waitress poorly disguises her look of disgust.

"We don't use chopsticks at Bar Noir," she says. "I can get you some sticks from a tree outside, if you'd like?" She's clearly cultivating a bristling personality so she can make all the little hipster graduate students in the lit program at U of Gotham fall in love with her; Chloe gives her points for delivery, but subtracts for the lack of overall linguistic dexterity.

"We're fine with forks," she interrupts, lest she and Lois be there all night, and with a small sniff, the waitress disappears into the back of the bar.

"God, what a bitch," says Lois. Seconds later, with her mouth half-full of noodles in some sort of spicy peanut sauce, she continues, "Anyway, I'm having Tights over for dinner next week, and I thought you should come meet him or whatever. If you bring Pleather and try to double-date, I will cut you."

"I'll be in and out in seconds," promises Chloe. She is already mentally filling her calendar with things she could be doing next week—deadlines, dinner dates, maybe go and physically drag Harvey out of his office so they can catch up over bad Chianti and cannoli at that place on lower 57th—because the last thing she, or Clark, wants is for them to pretend not to know each other as Lois serves burnt spaghetti.

Perhaps, Chloe reflects as she spears an asparagus tip artfully draped over a pile of rice noodles, this incident with Batman is indicative of Chloe needing to come clean with Lois about all of her superhero-involved relationships. But.

Telling Lois about That One Time Chloe Almost Slept With Her Secret Boyfriend seems like a bad idea. Chloe is tired, wants to be drunk, and should be home by eleven. Opening up the can of worms re: her magical ability to attract masochistic superheroes is unlikely to accomplish any of her goals. "Text me the date," she says, and slides the asparagus into her mouth.

What Chloe prefers to remember about her years in Smallville constitutes three things:

(1) The Torch

(2) The look of constipated joy on the principal's face the day Chloe and her father went in to officially have her records transferred to Gotham PS143, and

(3) Those really awesome earrings Lana's Aunt Nell made her as a Christmas present when she was fifteen

She wasn't exactly shocked and heartbroken when Lana Lang and Pete Ross turned out to be shitty at long-distance friendships, but she'd sort of expected Clark Kent—her, you know, best friend or what the fuck ever—to at least respond to her emails once or twice the fall after she and her father moved to Gotham.

Whenever Lois gets on one of her detailed rants about the components of Chloe Sullivan's abandonment issues, she never fails to mention Evidence #2, the four years Clark Kent spent radio-silent. Lois knows all about Clark because when he up and emails Chloe mid-spring semester her junior year at U of Gotham, she promptly goes hysterical, deletes the email, and gets shit-faced with Lois at some Kleinfeld frat party in the Village.

"Four fucking years," Chloe yells out on the front lawn of the frat house, waving her red cup emphatically. "Jesus fucking Christ, it would've been more believable if he like fucking lost my email address or some shit like that." This situation seems to call for more swearing, so she adds a context-less "fuck" at the end.

"What a dick," agrees Lois, only slightly less wasted at this point than Chloe. "What did he want? Some reconciliation shit or something?"

An interested-looking frat brother comes over to see if Lois—who is wearing fuck-me heels and a skirt that is really more of a belt and really awesome hair—is drunk enough to consider sleeping with him. "Back the hell up, Romeo," she says when he is four steps away and opening his mouth. "I paid your cover charge, and I'm sure as fuck not sleeping with your scrawny chicken ass. My cousin? Going through some issues."

The frat brother backs up good-naturedly, putting up his hands. "Sure thing. If you get itchy, though, find me inside. Name's Reece."

"What the fuck ever," says Lois. As he turns away, she says to Chloe, "That chicken ass thing was a little harsh, he actually has a really nice butt. Did you want to sleep with him? Should I call him back? He'd so not complain about you taking out your anger about this fucktard Kenny Clare or whatever."

"Clark Kent," Chloe corrects her automatically, and then she groans and tosses back the rest of her drink. "May his name live on in infamy and in correlation with venereal diseases."

"Amen," says Lois, and then: "This calls for shots. Oi! You! Chicken ass! Where can a girl get shots in this house?"

Two hours later, blitzed out of her mind and feeling infinitely more zen about the situation, Chloe stumbles back to her dorm with the intention of drinking four glasses of water and sleeping until three the next afternoon. She is drunk enough that finding Clark loitering on the front steps of her dorm isn't a physical shock.

"Chloe?" he says, after a double take. He looks like a scandalized church mouse, if scandalized church mice came the size of Mack trucks.

"Clark?" she says, and then has to stabilize herself on a fence post to keep from face-planting. "Jesus, like this night could get any more fucking surreal. What do you want? Do you need me to hack, like, Lex Luthor's personal computer or whatever? Because dream on, I've got a BAL of like 0.9 and am possibly going blind."

"No," he says, but he looks very guilty about something. "I wanted to apologize—in person, you know, after that email I sent you. I realized it wasn't very personal."

Chloe narrows her eyes, both in an attempt to focus her rapidly roving pupils and to appear more insightful. "I bet you told your mom, and she yelled at you, didn't she?"

(What Chloe prefers to remember about her years in Smallville constitutes four things, actually, (4) being Mrs. Kent's fucking ace cookies.)

Were Chloe less intoxicated, Clark awkwardly shuffling from foot to foot would probably be less amusing, but she cackles in a borderline hysterical fashion and says, "Is this like a twelve steps to recovery from being a neglectful ass program? Because Clark, let's be honest—we were like best friends or what the fuck ever, but I actually went to college and matured or something and the amount of time I now spend thinking of you ranks slightly below Two and a Half Men reruns."

In her head, this is much less harsh.

"Chloe," he begins, and then he shakes himself and for some reason he holds himself differently—and when he straightens his shoulders she can see that he is even taller (everyone is taller than her now, it is supremely unfair) and broader and also still just as hot as he was when she was fifteen, fuck, and there is a sharpness to his eyes, and he says, "I was an ass," and his swearing doesn't even sound like the pope committing sacrilege, it just sounds sad but full, with complete understanding of the truth.

"Wow," she says a little dumbly, and then she admits, "I am too drunk to deal with this. Come on, you can sleep on my floor and apologize tomorrow afternoon when I am sober."

The next morning, Chloe kicks Clark in the head as she goes to pry a cup of coffee from her automatic machine, and by the time he's gone out and bought her a muffin and she's on her third cup, she feels much better about attempting this heart-to-heart. In order to prep herself, she's thrown her favorite silk kimono on over her pajamas and dunked her head in a sink down the hall.

In the mirror, she'd slicked her hair back from her face and nodded to herself. "If he's worthy of it, forgive him," she'd whispered. "Otherwise, fuck him."

Over muffins, Clark tells her that he is an alien. Chloe spills coffee all onto her robe, and then sighs, and then begins to laugh. Because she is curious and maybe a bit of a masochist, she makes him go through all the times he blew her off or made out with her and then forgot about it due to outside effects of his being a fucking creature from space. In the end, she nods sagely and says, "Why did you tell me this now?"

"You deserved to know," he says. That odd carriage is back in his shoulders; Chloe is sober enough now to appreciate the difference in makes in his voice. He looks older, a little sadder. She heard about Lex sweeping Lana off her feet and making her the fifth Mrs. Luthor—maybe that is causing Clark's regret? But that seems unkind, even coming from the person Clark magically forgot to keep in touch with for four years, so she suppresses it. "You dealt with a lot of my bad lies and I trust you."

He puts a bit of emphasis on the present tense. Personally, if Chloe were him, she wouldn't trust someone she hadn't seen in four years to keep a secret like her origin planet not being Earth, but she supposes if anyone has earned the lifelong trust of anyone else, it is Chloe Sullivan of Clark Kent's.

"Okay," she says. "So, what are you planning to do about this thing? You've got this look."

In the future, Chloe will learn that This Look is the hero look, and she will see it so many (fuck Jesus) times that it will be burned onto her retinas—but this her first exposure to it, to the tightening lips and the bright eyes and the slightly imbecilic far-away gaze, and it is intriguing in its newness. It gets old real fast, but for now—for now, Chloe gets sucked in.

A slightly inebriated Lois toddles off home to fuck with the GCPD officers who monitor the bugs littering her apartment ("Might as well give the fuckers some joy in their pathetic lives," she tells Chloe. "Sometimes I turn on HVC and let 'em listen to diamond prices for four or five hours while I work. It soothes me to know I'm ruining their day.") and Chloe turns in the opposite direction. Technically she and Lois live in the same neighborhood—close enough to Finnigan's to reap the benefits of having a rotating door of police officers nearby, and far away enough that they won't get shot up by someone with a beef with the GCPD—but she has business tonight.

The cold air clears her head, and by the time she reaches the outskirts of Gotham Heights, she is almost freezing and on her third rendition of why do I help Bruce with this, I could be at home and in bed with some nice John Fowles and a Chianti right now. Her heels are old favorites and haven't started to pinch her feet, but her toes are cold and she's forgotten her scarf at home.

Fall in Gotham Heights is much prettier than fall anywhere else in the city, mostly because only the residents of Gotham Heights can afford gardeners, and Chloe takes the time to appreciate the rare sight. It's a little after ten, and the old-fashioned lampposts give off glows like regularly spaced fireflies, lining pavement that is actually tended-to and trees that are trimmed and loved.

She reaches the gate that leads to the grounds of Wayne Manor, and presses the buzzer. "Alfred!" she says when there is the tiny click on the other end of the line. "Hey, it's Chloe. Can you let me in?"

"Of course, Miss Sullivan," says Alfred. "Should I send a car up for you?"

"No worries," she says as the gates buzz and swing open. "I walked here from the metro stop, I can handle another mile."

A mile is a slight exaggeration, but only very slight. Chloe makes sure to shut the gates behind herself, taking the chance to sweep for any tails. No one is very interested in Chloe visiting Bruce Wayne—the regularity with which he takes her out for lunch is intriguing to no one because Chloe and Lois know every gossip reporter in the city and are slightly terrifying to 96% of them—but being overly cautious won't hurt anyone.

The dirt drive up to the manor itself is flanked by young maples and oaks and is carefully tended to by Alfred's terrorized team of gardeners. Chloe mostly relies on spatial memory and the light from the moon to keep her from drifting onto one of the side paths that lead to the tennis courts, pools, rose gardens, and that intense, labyrinthine apple orchard that dot the grounds.

Alfred has kindly left on the lights at the front steps, and he is waiting with the door partially ajar when Chloe finishes climbing the marble steps and navigating a set of vaguely intimidating columns that hide the door itself.

"How are you doing this evening, Miss Sullivan?" he asks, taking her coat. He knows by now to leave her bag.

"Oh, you know," says Chloe, smiling at Alfred because Bruce may get on her nerves but she adores Alfred, just like everyone else who has ever met him. It must be some freaky English butler thing. "Exhausted from another day of scouring the streets of Gotham for the elusive truth."

"Continue to fight the good fight," advises Alfred.

"Until someone shoots me," agrees Chloe, perhaps a little cheerfully for someone who has visited the University of Gotham Medical Center for gunshot wounds four times in the past six years. "And how are you doing, Alfred? Have you strangled Master Wayne yet? I promise, I'll deliver a truly touching character reference at your trial should you ever decide to do so."

"That is a comfort to me," Alfred says so dryly Chloe cannot help the quick stab of envy. "Master Wayne is in his playroom, if you would like to join him."

"Oh goody," deadpans Chloe. "My excitement, it can barely be contained."

As Alfred disappears back to wherever he secrets himself, Chloe takes four lefts and a right and counts Ming vases and undiscovered Monets (four Mings, two Monets) until she reaches the Dali, and then she takes another left. She then counts to the fourth door, which is the library.

In the Batcave, Bruce is drinking some vile-looking Jamba Juice wannabe and wearing sweats as he glares at his computer monitors. "Sullivan," he barks without looking up, "what the hell did you do to my OS?"

"Ah, there's the charming Bruce Wayne I know and love," she says, tossing her bag onto a nearby chair and casually hip-bumping him out of the way. "Maybe I updated it from the Stone Age. I realize you have Lucius in here occasionally to meld wires or whatever he does, but seriously, I don't care that the guy went to MIT, he knows nothing about the full potential of this system."

"Oh, and you do?" says Bruce.

"You're being rhetorical, aren't you, dear?" she asks, taking the time as she types in a command line to give him an indulgent wink over her shoulder. "Give me twenty seconds to finish this and I'll walk you through the new toys, okay? Okay. Go, like, glower at your batarangs for not being shiny enough or something."

Bruce—who has insisted on many an occasion that he does not glower, and he certainly doesn't do it in a manly, brooding fashion—folds his arms across his chest and watches her with what he probably thinks is an intimidating stare. It might even be; Chloe wouldn't know. She lost her ability to be intimidated back when Lionel Luthor had a tendency to buy her coffee and subtly threaten her life over lattes when he was bored.

"Okay," she finally says when she's finished. "Let's go through this slowly. I've just installed some new software on here. Most of it is interfacing for that new program I told you about—for the satellites I hacked last month? So let's see if you remember how to access those." With a few final clicks, she steps back and lets him have the keyboard. It's probably insulting for someone of Batman's caliber to have their hand held as they're walked through complex government hacking, but Chloe is nothing if not efficient at making her scorn known.

He's reaching for the keyboard and giving her the eyes that say he is very unamused when about fourteen sirens go off at once and there are a few thunderous clicks and a load roar. Bruce swears and dives for a suit on a stand nearby, and Chloe pulls out her phone to see if there's something up on the Gazette's Twitter. Fatima hasn't put anything up, though, just some links a half-hour old about the arts round up for the weekend.

"What's this—" she begins, and that's when she gets the text.

Need you. Gazette roof. Bring a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

"Chloe," Batman roars over the sound of the Batmobile's engine revving. "I need you on the comm."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Chloe has a half-second to make a decision, and the red flash ofJOKER SIGHTING BY GCPD, WEST 87th across the console in front of her basically makes it for her.

Give me a few hours, emergency, she texts back, and reaches for the headset lying next to the keyboard. "Batman, I'm live," she says. "Accessing GCPD radio, now."

"So I was thinking," Lois begins, throwing open the door to Chloe's dorm room. "What if I did McNamara's assignment on the Donovans?"

Chloe immediately throws her pen across the room and, unsurprisingly, misses Lois by a large margin. "Dammit, I was going to do the Donovans!"

"There are plenty of them," Lois points out. "Those Irish, they breed like rats. I was thinking I would focus on—"

"—Fiona Donovan," Chloe finishes with her. "God dammit, Lois. We could share the byline, but I think McNamara was serious when she said she'd fail us on principle if she got another assignment from Lane and Sullivan."

Looking petulant, Lois sulks her way across the room to Chloe's bed, where she promptly throws herself across the covers and hugs Chloe's giant cat pillow to her chest. "She's only doing it to make it fair to the rest of the class—we're the only ones with even the smallest chance at an A, at this point."

This may or may not be true; Ally Gestalt and Nina Illych both have a fair hand with the words, and Raj Pamook can pick a potential headline out of a lineup at fifty yards. But McNamara, for all her bitching, seems to like Lois and Chloe's style—enough to let them double up on half the assignments they've had so far for Organized Crime and Water Gallows: Corruption and the Mob in Journalistic Politics.

"I really like Fiona Donovan," says Chloe into the silence as Lois pulls her sulkiness around her like a little black cloud of despair and petulance. "She's got style."

"I know," mumbles Lois into the cat pillow. "Did you read about Liam Murphy getting off last week? An acquittal after two hung juries? It was a piece of beauty. The lady's a savant."

U of Gotham offers the Gazette for free to students who live in dorms; Chloe had picked up a copy on her way to breakfast and read about Liam Murphy's miraculous trial results over oatmeal and vaguely hazelnutty coffee in the dining hall. At the time, she'd dropped a spoonful of oatmeal and raisins onto the sports section and read the headline again—Murphy had been up for triple homicide and a few minor counts for messing around with some blues from the GCPD. The case, according to the new source Chloe was cultivating in the DA's office mostly via cranberry muffins and excessive cleavage, was airtight against him. The DA was asking for three consecutive life sentences.

"No one else could do this right," Chloe finally says. She pulls another pen from the cup on her desk and taps it against the edge of her laptop. "Fiona Donovan deserves top game."

"Let's be honest," Lois points out, rolling onto her back and letting her hair fan out over the edge of the bed. "Fiona Donovan would probably catch anyone else. She might even catch us if we're alone."

"But if we're together," Chloe reluctantly finishes, "we'll watch each other's backs."

This has Very Bad Idea written all over it, in McNamara's red pen annotating hand. Still, Chloe can't really keep herself from pushing her swivel chair in a half-circle and letting her fingers fall over the keys of her baby. "I guess it's about time I see if all those cranberry muffins are paying off."

Lois flips over again and comes to her knees, reaching for the bag she's left on the floor. "If we want Donovan, we're going to need to get into Jameson's down in the Cauldron. I mean, I've always wanted to be a redhead."

"Lois," Chloe says in a vaguely long-suffering voice, but she has trouble maintaining it as she queues up her email and starts typing, "I hope you realize that not all Irish women have red hair. I, for one, am going to try to stick with the blonde."

"That's because you're cute and nonthreatening," Lois says, and steals Chloe's absent roommate's Internet cable. "As I am tall and a bitch, I need all the help I can get." After a few taps, she's blasting Flogging Molly and trying to find out if the library has a copy of The Boondock Saints they can check out by Tuesday. "We could pass for County Corkers, couldn't we?"

"Um, you mean our ancestors, right? Because I sure as hell can't come up with a passable County Cork accent in two weeks, and there's no way even you can get one that will survive a Friday night at Jameson's." Everything Chloe needs to know about the background checks at Jameson's Irish Pub is saved on a file in her computer, along with info on most of the other shady bars in the Cauldron. "Okay, let's see—they're pretty strict about the Irish thing, but there's a bouncer on shift from nine to twelve who has a thing for the Knights, so can you borrow that skintight jersey thing from Sheila?"

"Yeah," says Lois, making a note of it and then picking at her bottom lip with her thumb and forefinger. "I know Wendy's gotten in there once or twice when she was dating that O'Whatever on the baseball team, and he's got an uncle in the Donovan's chop shop. I'm not sure I want us made for U of Gotham students, though."

"Too obvious," agrees Chloe. "No one actually knows what the Colby College kids look like, because they spend all their time never leaving their campus. There's someone in the Colby student admin office who owes me a favor; I can get us some temporary IDs from there."

"Too flashy," Lois points out. "Colby's at least thirty grand a year; no way some kid from the Heights is going to risk the Cauldron on a Friday night—they've got their trust funds to worry about. I dated the head of the admissions interns at Kleinfeld last year, though. It's in the Village, so if we put on some determined faces and our rape whistles, we could pass for some co-eds."

Chloe looks at herself in the reflection of her computer screen, and gives herself a mental make-over—Kleinfeld's colors are yellow and black, she'll need some new green eyeliner, and if she wants to look like enough of a moron to be attempting entrance to Jameson's and not get shanked on principle, she's going to need a push-up bra.

"Yeah," she says, and grins at Lois, fast and filthy, over her shoulder. "Oh yeah. We can so do this."

It's way, way too late for the train out in the Heights, so Chloe clamps down the irrational fear of dying in poverty that having an apartment in Gotham inspires and heads to intersect Grand Avenue, where hopefully there will be some sort of cab at this hour. She is picked up after seven blocks and thoroughly fleeced for the drive to the Gazette building.

"Take this, you motherless scoundrel," she tells the driver, and thrusts a twenty through the window at him. "Feed your starving children."

"They thank you for your generosity," says the driver with a small degree of humor. Chloe acknowledges it with a brittle grin, and then she girds herself mentally and physically, cinching the tie on her trench coat firmly and pulling out her ID card to swipe entrance to the building. She takes an elevator to the bullpen, then the last four flights of stairs to the roof.

It's a Thursday night, and most of Gotham around the Gazette building is winding down—the investment bankers have to work tomorrow, and the college students have classes. It takes a few seconds for Chloe's eyes to adjust to the deepness of the shadows behind generators and HVAC units. She still can't make out the Green Arrow's form in any of them, and she's considering investing in glasses when there's the slightest twitch from her peripheral and she turns quickly, mace out just in case.

"Thanks, Chlo," the Green Arrow says in a slow, pained voice. "Glad to know that if I ask for first aid in the future, you're probably going to respond with a crowbar." He's hunched over ten yards away, sitting on a cement block with his gear next to him. Behind him, the bat signal is shining from the roof of the GCPD across town. She hopes whatever the fuck Bruce flitted off to do after his smackdown with the Joker, it's not related to the Green Arrow almost dying on her.

With that in mind, she reaches into her purse and tosses him a small first aid kit. "Do you need anything really big?" she asks. "Stitches? A tourniquet? What happened?"

"The Irish mob," he says. "As it turns out, Gerard Donovan has even less of a sense of humor than his big sister, especially at having her jewelry forcibly repossessed." It takes him so long to open the first aid kit, her fingers are itching by the time he's finished fumbling with the clasp and digging through for some gauze. "Nothing bad, just a graze, but it hurts like a mother—"

"Why are you here?" Chloe finally interrupts. "Patrolling, I mean. Why aren't you back in Star City? Believe it or not, Batman seems capable of ridding the streets of crime and pestilence. Didn't he threaten you the last time you patrolled Gotham?"

"Maybe," the Green Arrow says with a small grunt. He begins to strip off his vest, and Chloe turns around, crossing her arms against her chest and fighting irritation and exhaustion. "Besides, I missed you."

"Don't be a moron, you saw me two weeks ago," says Chloe. "Why are you bothering Edith Donovan? She's rotten, of course, she's a Donovan, but she's not exactly a Luthor."

"The necklace"—he's interrupted by a quick hiss, and Chloe's fingers twitch but she tightens them around the sleeves of her coat and hunches her shoulders against the wind—"is a remnant of a very special collection of Nigerian tribal pieces that should probably be on display in the National Museum in Lagos. Which is where it will be going, tomorrow morning."

"I didn't realize Edith's tastes ran that way," muses Chloe. She ignores all of the noise behind her, and files the tidbit away into her mental safe until she can put it in her digital file on the Donovans.

"I'm done," says the Green Arrow after a few minutes, sounding a little amused. "I didn't realize you were that squeamish about blood."

Chloe turns and he's vertical now, his vest haphazardly zipped, the first aid kit mostly useless now that he's rifled through everything. "I'm not," she says. "Did you disinfect that properly?"

"Do you want to check?" he offers, and grins. He might even be winking at her; she'll never know.

Which is kind of the point. "No," she says. "You're standing out like a sore thumb up here, you should head out."

"Can't I get a kiss?" he asks. He's definitely winking. She can tell by the self-satisfied tone that his voice has adopted, even through the distorter. "Here I am, valiantly defending the streets of Gotham against the Irish menace, and I can't even get a kiss from the Gotham Gazette's finest reporter?"

"She's dating Superman, I hear," says Chloe dryly. "You're welcome to try, though."

He drops the first aid kit, and she takes four large steps back towards the stairs. "I don't think so, buddy. This is Gotham—I can see everything, and I'm not up for some kinky blindfold action on the roof of my office. Especially not at two in the morning."

"I trust you to close your eyes," he murmurs, and reaches out for her. She takes another step, and backs into the door to the stairs.

"I don't," she says, gripping the door handle. "You do realize that I actively attempt not to put myself in a position to learn anything about you, I hope. I'm not an idiot, and I really don't want the emotional drama of finding out your secret identity. Sex on the roof of the Gazette building is a really good way for me to find incriminating scars or hair color or what your voice sounds like."

He's stopped moving towards her, which seems like a good sign.

"I'm not your girlfriend," she continues. "You're not my boyfriend. We are two people who enjoy having sex with one another. It just so happens that I don't know your name. For both our sakes, it should stay that way."

Chloe means: She has enough trouble getting kidnapped and threatened and almost blown up just on her own merits as one of the Gazette's star reporters; she really doesn't need to worry about accidentally dropping the Green Arrow's name, not when she's the gatekeeper to Superman and Batman and Impulse.

It looks like he doesn't understand what she means. She tries again, remembering all the things Lois has told her in the past about her abandonment issues and inability to form lasting relationships with men and all that other Cosmo psychobabble. "I like that I have no idea who you are."

"Do you."

It's not a tone of voice she recognizes. "Yes," she hazards. "It's very relaxing." (It's also sexy as hell, all things considered, although Chloe might be biased because they have really, really good sex.)

"Right then," he says, and forcibly unclenches both his fists and then in four quick steps he's gotten her around the waist and through the door to the stairs, and he slams it shut behind them, the click of the door knob loud in the inky blackness, and the metal of the door cool against her shoulder blades.

She doesn't even realize he's taken the glasses off until she feels the brush of his eyelashes against the curve of her belly, and when her hands go to anchor themselves against his shoulders, they clutch at his hair instead. Fuck you, she thinks, fuck fuck fuck and she forces herself to release his hair, not to notice anything, to turn off her brain. It mostly works, because that's when he licks a finger and slips it up her skirt.

When Chloe calls Lois for emergency martinis two days after the fact, all she tells her is that Batman broke into her apartment in the middle of the night and told her to lay low on the Fratelli story, lest someone intervene and lay her low themselves. Lois bitches, calls Batman a whiny little drama llama, and then gets drunk and even angrier at this insult to Chloe's ability as a reporter.

What actually happens, the night Chloe meets Batman, is:

Chloe's second week at the Gazette, she stumbles across a career-maker. It's also potentially a Chloe-killer, so she makes the conscious decision not to call Lois in on it, lest it be the death of both of them. The middle of Tuesday night, Chloe wakes up from a fitful sleep in the middle of the night and goes to get a glass of water.

She never makes it, because Batman is waiting in her living room. In what feels like half a second, he has her pressed against the back wall, a hand loosely cupped around her throat. "You don't want to do this," he says, voice sounding like someone dumped paving gravel down a garbage disposal. "Leave Fratelli to me."

Briefly, she considers pretending to be terrified. She's too tired to sustain the illusion, though, so she doesn't bother at all. "I'm going to nail Ethan Fratelli to the wall," she tells him. It's hard to make out his face, even the exposed lower half, in the muted glow of the lights outside her window. (Open window, she hopes. If he broke it, she's going to kill him.)

"That's a bad idea, little girl," Batman growls.

"I'm too short for this pose," she tells him, exasperated and tired, and she pushes his arm in an irritated sort of way. He lets go, and she tries to establish some personal space. It works, because he seems to prefer staying in the shadow of her couch. "Listen, I appreciate that you don't want Fratelli murdering me or whatever, but I'll be fine. I mean, I might die, but that's my fucking choice."

Batman's cape swirls dramatically; she wonders how he's managed to accomplish this without any hint of breeze in her apartment. It's a little impressive, so she gives him points for showmanship. "My city," he says. "My responsibility."

"You're going to need the Gazette eventually," she tells him, heading towards the kitchen for some cold water. "I realize Gordon is your go-to man right now, but there's only so much the GCPD can do without using the Gazette. You need for Gotham to let you do your work. Only the Gazette can accomplish that."

At the tap, she offers him a glass. He doesn't respond, unsurprisingly, but she's made the tactical error of letting him crowd her into a small space, and he proceeds to use a lot of short words to describe what Ethan Fratelli is likely to do to an attractive piece of ass poking its nose where it doesn't belong. His voice is throaty and deep and loses all of its clinical detachment, developing a cruel thoroughness.

Chloe gets fed up three sentences into her potential rape. She reaches for a folded chair from where it is propped against the kitchen table and slams it, with considerable speed, if not force, towards Batman's face.

He tumbles back into her living room, and she finishes her water. "Listen, asshole," she says, once she has set the tumbler down and he is waiting, alarmingly patiently, for her in the living room, "I've been writing front page since I was fifteen and after Lionel fucking Luthor, you're like a vaudeville villain, okay? I'm going to write the corruption beat until I'm seventy and wrinkled and you can either let me do my job or hulk around threatening me back into my ivory tower. I'm gonna tell you, better and scarier men that you have tried the second, and it hasn't worked."

There is a pause, during which Chloe imagines Batman blinking slowly.

"I'm not your babysitter," he says.

"Glad we cleared that up," she says. "Now get the hell out of my apartment. I have to go meet with Fratelli's PA in six hours and I'm not doing it on four hours of sleep."

Between one blink and the next, he's gone. He's left her a batarang stuck in the door to her bedroom, at which she snorts before removing it and tossing it towards her bag by the door. She'll get someone in the chemistry department in U of Gotham take a look at it; she has a feeling figuring out as much as possible about Batman is really only going to help her position over the coming years.

Chloe realizes when she unlocks the front door of her apartment that she doesn't have clean underwear for tomorrow (today?). "Fuck," she tells the black emptiness of her living room. The fish tank gurgles in the corner. With vicious precision she kicks off her heels towards the couch and then uses the flat of her foot to push the door closed. Everything is in a pile in the wicker basket by her closet door; she doesn't even try to unearth the laundry basket, she just takes the wicker hamper and drags it out the front door and down to the elevators.

The basement of her building smells perpetually damp and of baby-sick and she is too tired to be worried about whatever the bottoms of her panty hose are picking up from the concrete floors. She can't even get up the energy to mutter angrily to herself as she takes the top off the hamper and dumps all of its contents into the first open washer.

"Hey," says a guy messing with the last washer on the left, looking harassed but inoffensively charming. "Do these things not take coins?"

Chloe points to the box by the door. "Card," she says. He looks a little confused, and she empties a capful of detergent into the washer, before swearing and fishing out a sweater that is dry-clean-only. After a few seconds she continues, "Put in five dollars, it gives you a card. Use the card to wash your laundry." She mimes pouring detergent into the machine. "You put your dirty clothes in this handy little machine, and then you apply soap and press 'permanent press' for your darks—"

"Very funny," says the harassed but inoffensively charming new tenant. He pulls out his wallet and goes to inspect the box by the door. There are directions—in both English and Korean!—that should make sure he doesn't blow up the building or something. Chloe flicks the sweater a few times to ensure that it wasn't soiled by detergent, and then she slams the door to the washing machine shut and clicks to start.

As she tries to leave he holds out a hand, and it would be really rude not to shake it. Chloe reminds herself that it isn't his fault that her day has been a total ass, and she forces a smile and returns his grip. It's strong, friendly, and very definitely interested.

"Chloe Sullivan, 6A." She does her best not to sound interested. It isn't hard, she's been awake for much longer than probably healthy.

"Imagine that—I just moved in to 6B. I'm Kyle," he adds, as she nods distractedly and shuffles towards the elevators. "Kyle Rayner."