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Title: Lucky Charm
Author: scifichick774
Rating: NC-17
Category: Romance/Humor/Drama
Spoilers: Anything that I’ve heard about the third season is fair game.
Summary: Future fic. Chloe’s plans for her upcoming twenty-first birthday fall through, and she finds herself assigned to cover a conference that she can’t get out of. Chloe/Lex
Disclaimer: Not mine, no infringement intended, please don’t sue.
Feedback: YES!! REVIEW!!
Archival: Sure – just let me know where.
Author’s Note: Please don’t kill me. Please, please don’t kill me. I can think of no other way to put this than my muse needed smut. And since none of my other fics are at the point where that’s a viable option… Okay, you get the point. This won’t be a long one (less than ten chapters if it works out how I’ve planned it) and the smut should come fairly quickly. So, you know, don’t throw rocks at me or anything for starting a new fic.
~*~*~*~*~*~
“You could always come home, you know,” Lana pointed out on the other end of the line.
“Lana, my dad’s not even going to be in town. What would be the point of going to Smallville for my twenty-first birthday if he’s not even going to be there?” Chloe argued, balancing the phone between her head and shoulder as she spoke.
“I could bake a cake or something.”
Chloe let out a somewhat sour chuckle and started shuffling through the papers on her desk.
“Well, as…dangerous…as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”
“You’re sure? I mean, doing *something* in Smallville is better than doing nothing at all.”
‘I so don’t need your pity,’ she thought to herself.
Of course, the nagging little voice in the back of her head told her that she did indeed need Lana’s pity, or at least wanted it. Why else would she have tortured herself by calling Lana and admitting that her former plans for her twenty-first birthday went down the drain when she decided the guy she had seen for the last three weekends wasn’t worth a fourth? Or he was and she was just getting pickier about who she went out with.
“I’m sure I can come up with something,” Chloe said. ‘Like going to the liquor store and getting drunk while I make fun of whatever’s on TV that night…God, I’m pathetic.’
“I could come to Metropolis. We could have a girl’s night out,” Lana suggested sweetly.
“No, no, that’s okay. Pete would kill me if I exposed you to big city life,” Chloe responded with a smile. Lana giggled.
“You’re probably right,” she admitted. “I’d suggest that you give Clark a call, but ---”
“Yeah,” Chloe agreed without Lana go into the specifics of the fallout of her friendship with Clark. There was no need to drudge up painful memories, especially when both the girls had moved on and the last time she had seen Clark he was still has inconsiderate toward her feelings as he had ever been.
“Will you at least call and tell me what you ended up doing?”
“You sure you want to know?” Chloe teased. ‘Hey, I’m a writer; I can come up with a decent lie to make Lana blush.’
“I’m sure,” Lana said. “Even if it means you getting drunk and hooking up with some random guy – I want to know.”
Chloe let out a laugh and brought her hand to the phone.
“Okay, but you were warned. Listen, my boss is signaling me. I’ll have to talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay. Byeee.”
Chloe cringed ever so slightly as Lana’s chipper voice lilted through the phone. Sure, her friends on the internet would use cute little greetings like ‘byeee’ when they were instant messaging her, but Lana was the only person she knew who actually did it in person. It was a little frightening.
“Sullivan!”
Chloe snapped out of her thoughts and patted down her skirt to soothe it as she walked briskly to Perry White’s office. At first, graduating early and working for the planet right out of college had seemed like a dream come true, but the stories she had been assigned to for the last year had been nothing even close to as good as the ones she had written for the Metropolis University Oracle, or even for the Torch for that matter.
She had seemed to get all the special interest stories, the ones with no substance, and no real need for a reporter at all. Chloe knew it was part of working her way up through the ranks, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“Sullivan, I have an assignment for you,” Perry White, her editor at The Daily Planet started as she walked into his office.
“Okay,” she said. “But you do realize that I’m off for the weekend, right? Natalie in personnel already approved the days ---”
“You’re a reporter, you go to the news, it doesn’t come to you,” White said. “It’s not like you can choose when it happens.”
‘If this is another story about some old lady and the number of cats she owns, I’m going to shoot myself,’ Chloe thought, only half-kidding.
“Now, I need you to cover a convention.”
“A convention,” Chloe repeated in a dry, unexcited voice. ‘Like I didn’t have to go to enough of those when I was living with my dad.’
“Not just any convention, Sullivan,” White continued with an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm considering that he was talking to someone he considered to be a rookie. “They’re having meetings too.”
‘Woop-dee-doo,’ Chloe thought sarcastically. White stopped right in front of her and folded his arms across his chest as he gave her a scolding look.
“This is the first really big thing I’ve given you and you look like your dog just died,” he commented. Chloe arched an eyebrow back at him.
“No offense, sir, but a convention – even if it does include meetings – doesn’t sound like something ---”
“There’s talk of some high-level mergers that might go down there, young lady.”
Chloe furrowed her brow as she tried to think of what he could be talking about; her eyes suddenly widening with the realization of what was being said.
“You’re sending me to Las Vegas?!”
“You’ll need to leave first thing in the morning,” White said with a cocky smile and grabbed a piece of paper off the desk. “Take this down to personnel and they’ll give you your itinerary and all the reservation stuff they’ve set up for you.” Without another word, he turned his back on her and circled his desk to sit down. When he looked back up and saw her still standing there, he gave her a pointed glare. “Well? Go on,” he said, making a shooing motion with his hand.
“Sir, I ---”
“Look, I know you had a nice long weekend planned - probably were going to spend some time with your sweetheart - but we all make sacrifices in this business, Sullivan, and ---”
Chloe held up her hand to stop him from saying anything else, and then proceeded to turn on her heel and leave the office.
Her first ‘big assignment’ and it wouldn’t even require real investigative work. It was disappointing, but Chloe had to admit that the prospect of spending her twenty-first birthday in Las Vegas was a hell of a lot better than what she had been considering doing – even if she did risk running into her dad.
‘Las Vegas has a lot of people,’ she told herself as she boarded the elevator to go down to the personnel office. ‘There’s no way I’ll run into him --- except that he’s *going* to the same conference that I’ve been assigned to cover.’ Chloe sighed and leaned back against the railing after she pushed the button for the floor she wanted.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened to let someone else on board. Ian Connor, a reporter a few years her senior and the man she had cancelled her former birthday plans with, walked on and went to stand next to her even though there was plenty of room in the elevator car.
“Sullivan,” he greeted with a cocky smirk.
“Connor,” she retorted with a tiny grin.
“So – change your mind about Saturday? No sense in spending your birthday alone,” he said, leaning a little closer to her. Chloe arched an eyebrow at him.
“I never said I was going to spend it alone,” she pointed out in a mocking tone accompanied with a fake smile. Ian grabbed at his heart.
“Ouch,” he said lightheartedly. “So, who’s the lucky guy?”
Chloe turned to face the front of the elevator again and gave a light shrug of her shoulders.
“Don’t know yet,” she said. “Perry’s sending me to Vegas to cover the convention.” She barely resisted laughing when she saw Ian’s jaw drop out of the corner of her eye.
“Whoa. How’d you get that gig?”
“It’s not like it’s going to take any real skill, Ian. All I have to do is report what happens. Now if I got to investigate ---”
“No, I mean, every reporter for the planet has been clamoring for that piece. Free travel, free room and board, possible story of the year. How’d *you* get it?”
Chloe narrowed her eyes at his accusatory tone.
“I have no idea,” she admitted carefully. “I told Perry that I already requested this weekend off, but he was adamant about it.”
“Okay, that seals it. You must be sleeping with somebody pretty big to ---”
“Like I said, I have no idea why he wanted me for the assignment,” Chloe said, cutting him off. “If you want to know so badly, then maybe you should ask him.” The elevator doors opened and she strolled off, trying not to let his insinuation that she was sleeping with a higher-up get to her. “Email me and let me know what you find out.”
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