Summary: In which Oliver sleeps on a bed of nails, and (maybe) finally gets to lay Chloe on a bed of roses.
Prompt: meetin4 (LJ) asked for a story or fan vid to the melody of Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses.
Spoilers: Everything.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: I love this song. I had a crush on Jon Bon Jovi when all the girls around me were salivating over the Backstreet Boys. And I remember this one performance where he actually cried singing the last verses of this song. I was (am) hooked on an IV drip of acetaminophen while writing this so maybe that's why the imagery imploded to Wonderland and chess. I can't decide if this is the sappiest or the most disintegrated thing I've ever scraped together, but I can tell you I had a lot of fun writing it.
P.S. There's a little banner on my LJ if you're visually inclined.
"Good morning, Metropolis! Rise and shine because we are looking at clear skied Monday. A nice 60°F, the smallest hint of a breeze, don't waste it huddled under the pillows."
Oliver stirred on the bed as the nagging voice bounced off in his skull, feeling trapped in whatever constricting clothes he must have collapsed on the bed in.
"Coming up, we have Jenna, winner of a $25.000 pie contest, former waitress and now owner of the renamed Lulu's Pies diner. She'll be handing us the recipe for her mouth-watering Moon Pie and her true Hollywood story."
The woman's voice was rising higher, dragging him, unwilling, out of the arms of Morpheus and Smirnoff. He threw out his arm at random, flailing in the vague direction of the bedside table to shut down the annoying radio alarm clock he had no recollection of setting up.
"For those of you who partied too hard last night, here's a little something from Bon Jovi to soothe your hangover. They'll be hitting our town next week. Catherine Grant here, making your morning a little bit brighter!"
The weeping guitar blasted through the room's sound system then, raising the curtain on the marching band keeping its own beat in his head. He gave up with a grunt, rolling over on his back to blink owlishly at the ceiling, before painstakingly sitting up. He looked down at his wasted and wounded self, still clad in the muddy, bloody white suit.
He tried hard to capture the moment, and the film started rolling in his mind's eye. Stills of a roulette wheel, a red satin qipao, insane black eye shadow, a dragon tattoo, French kissing the pavement, a poor wooden excuse for a coffin, sharp teeth and drool tailing him, numbers swiveling down to an all meaningful 0, flames licking at the broken edges of ruined walls, and then…. mirrors… Someone he thought lost staring back at him through the looking glass. Who did you destroy? Taunting answer within the question he silenced - for the last time in a while hopefully - with the bottle of vodka now lodged in his head. It all felt like a terribly written horror movie starring his haunted self that should never grace the silver screen. Yet, somehow, it had been strangely effective.
And then the montage segued into his most recent but recurring nightmare. Shooting a mannequin in the back. The laughing monkey banging his cymbals before the blow. Her, in a bloodied white gown of her own. Red eyes, and a vice-like grip on his throat. Her again, face framed by those smooth blonde strands, tear filled eyes searching for the man that she knew. Her compelling, mistakenly reassuring gaze. Hauling her away from the murderous red eyes. And her bloodshot, tear swollen eyes, green tainted by the dark hue of his sunglasses, with the grave of an innocent and so much more between them. He swallowed hard, quenching the familiar guilt churning in his stomach with the slightest drop of resurrected good will.
He pushed his iron-laden limbs into a standing position, and caught sight of a napkin branded with Roulette by the radio. He picked it up and unfolded it warily.
I might have stacked the deck, but the real dealer believed in the hero you tried to bury. You still have something to lose. -V.
His brows furrowed in thought, mind too muddled to produce anything clear cut just yet. He made his way to the bathroom through the apartment he had deserted, stripping himself of the soiled clothes, and letting the hot stream of water massage his beaten body. And the steam obscured the shower glass, but cleaned his windshield. He dressed carelessly and walked down to the loft. Perched on the platform in front of the large glass clock that once enclosed his deepest secrets, he refilled every corner with memories of past, buoyant team meetings.
The events of the previous two days seemed so impossible... unbelievable that someone had orchestrated them for him. There was no way Victoria had acted alone, that much he knew. And then his gaze zeroed in on his father's chess board displayed in the cabinet, on the shelf right below the Queen family picture. A man possessed, he stepped toward it from what felt so far away that it took an eternity before his fingers got to graze the familiar white queen.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
"Are you sure you want to open up your king like that?"
She sent him a sly look from under her eyelashes. "And what exactly should I be worried about, Mr. I've-been-in-the-Chess-Club-among-countless-other- pretentious-prep-school-societies?"
"Hey, I've never been in a chess club," he said defensively. "My father taught me." He hesitated, and then offered gently in reminiscence: "This is actually his playing set."
They locked eyes for a moment, and he was met with her soft, but not pitying, expression. He cleared his throat. "Anyway, that's a rookie mistake there, Sidekick. I expected more from you."
She crooked an amused eyebrow at him. "Oh, I don't know, you seem sure enough of yourself for the both of us. I can't help it if I sometimes function backwards."
"Yes, well, with this opening plan, you'll lose all your key players before you even get a shot at whatever harebrained move you're planning."
"We'll see about that. One has to practice believing impossible things."
He smirked. "Are you trying to take me to Wonderland, Alice?"
"I've been there enough times myself that I'm turning into the White Queen."
Almost an hour into the game, he had scored more than she had and thought he had it in the bag, when she somehow turned the tables on him, snatching his queen. Three moves later, she was circling in on the checkmate and he was having trouble picking up his jaw from the floor.
"How the hell did this happen?"
"Maybe you invested too much in the overall harmony of your pieces, but left the development of the most valuable one for last. See, I think the whole outcome can depend upon how successfully the Queen plays her role," she told him with a half-smile that made him wonder whether it was more than chess they were talking about. Her insistence in playing a bigger part came to mind, among other things.
"So you're saying I'm done for without my Queen. Game over?" he intoned, with the hint of a challenge. "I seem to recall winning a few by sacrificing her."
"Maybe, maybe not. My memory is not quite up to working both ways yet," she teased, "but I do know a chess game is kind of like life. You can't alter the past but if you analyse the present, you can change the consequence."
"Maybe I'll just yield a pawn and gain a new Queen then."
They never found out though, because Victor's update on Lex's project files finally came in, alerting them through the monitors.
It was like heading home, slowly, step by step. Cautiously feeling his way, like one tests uncertain ice; her gauging his reaction and holding his weight. Trading barbs: a three-ton truck being too much and a tricycle, not enough. He had to point out the danger she had opened herself to because this had to be her wildest play ever.
"Chloe, I'm not the only one you put at risk."
"If you're worried about our little club and Lex, don't be," she answered unblinkingly, punctuating the behest with a dismissive toss of her hair that for some reason almost flipped his stomach. "I played my cards close to my chest."
That wasn't the issue. Suppose this was a game, then " - Lois was what? She was just another ace up your sleeve?" Unintended, apparently. Still, it didn't change that "I could have killed her."
There was the old sly look. "No offense to your manhood, but I made sure your gun was loaded with blanks, just in case."
He couldn't contain a breathy snort, because really by now, her thoroughness didn't warrant even a hint of surprise. "I trust you, Oliver. Just," she paused, lips pressed in a grim line, as she spared him a cursory glance, "not that much."
And as she sipped on her coffee, a myriad of unbidden desires coursed through his veins pushing his tongue against his teeth. Flying back to a place where he deserved that kind of blind trust. Seeing through her to the reason she was just this extra side of harder, more distant, than he expected. Being as close as the Holy Ghost was to pour the gratitude overtaking him into her heart. And - what he would later chalk up as the parting salvo of his sexually driven, alcohol-gulping, pill-popping self - taste the beverage on her glossy lips because she had never looked so… downright sexy. The only, albeit important, thought he voiced though was: "Did Clark know about this?"
The disbelief on her face was plain. And he plainly understood why Clark wouldn't risk it. The fact that she did, solely of her own volition, out of dedication that he aspired to merit, subconsciously crystallized just what she meant to him.
Looking intently at her, he was taking at shot at wording it. "The places that I'd sunk to - the depths you must have had to go to bring me back…", he trailed off as her aura softened - mouth curved upward, little twinkle in her eye, blush at praise that should be given to her in buckets. And all he could do, which wasn't nearly enough, was murmur: "Thank you…"
Ever the picture of modesty, she sent him the ball back: "You proved it to yourself. Even with your face in the gutter, you still had the hero in your heart."
A fighter and a hero... She was saying all of the things that he longed to believe. So he reached out and took her hand, and then some otherworldly truth descended like a dove and lighting on him. Prickles of electricity ran all through his body, defibrillating any part of him that hadn't been in sync with her. There was a reason he'd have given a king's ransom in dimes yesterday to see her, first and foremost, through that abandoned payphone before Clark flew him back to her. And the truth was… above and beyond what he offered in response to her expectant expression when the moment hovered.
"You saved my life, Chloe - both the myth, and the man." Man and myth? Really? Another one of those movies they shall not make of me when I'm dead.
All she did was grace him with a Mona Lisa smile and drop her eyelids in what he felt as a wordless siren call, but took as a cue to bring this reunion to a casual end.
That night, Oliver plopped on his bed in proper sleeping attire for once, sore for a better reason than his signature bar brawl. He stretched his arm out to shut down the forgotten radio still playing, when he was stopped in his tracks by that weeping guitar…
"Back by popular demand, Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses. Might give you perspective if you're intent on losing control tonight."
He closed his eyes, and let the music fill him, retracing his steps today and parcels of the last time he'd heard it before today coming back to him.
Maybe it was the second, or the third, hotel bar he'd hit since hightailing it down south. Tumbler after tumbler of whiskey scarfed down were failing to drown the haunting image she'd made the last time he saw her, all the others just tagging along. His actual vision, though, seemed to be bent judging from the incompatibility of the beefy barkeeper and his crooked wig. There was a flash of blonde hair in his side view, and he spotted the woman giving him the eye, disappointingly blue. Next thing he knew, he was saying yeah, and succumbing to a quasi-fatal fit of laughter at the realization that this was - uncharacteristically - the second, or the third, blonde he dragged to bed since leaving.
And he must have died and went to hell, because he was still thinking of her while slipping the key card through the lock. He should have died to defend her. Once again, he was not alone, but utterly lonely.
Well, tonight, he was alone, but just a little less lonely. And he may not be laying anyone down on a bed of roses, but he was no longer sleeping on a bed of nails.
A year and a half later
"Oliver, are you sure this is the order you want me to make?"
"Yes, Enriqueta dear, for the tenth time, I am."
"But there must be another way we can welcome you back to Star City. The QI board -"
"Reuniting with a bunch of stuffy old men - however much I respect some of them - is not at the top of my wish list."
"Well, if you insist -"
"I do."
"Ay, ay, ay, you're lucky I owe everything to your father, muchacho. Here I thought that showing the world you had a girlfriend was you growing up. Can't you even try the long distance? You know, I spent three years away from Alfonso before- … ¡Dios mío! Are you laughing?"
"Yes - I - am. You - thought… Queti…" Oliver tried again in an amused tone. "My girlfriendis coming with me."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh. I guess you still don't really believe that I grew up."
"You will always be un niño for me."
"So, I can count on you and your magic fingers?"
"¡Claro que sí!"
"Muchas gracias y hasta pronto."
He turned his phone off and smiled at Chloe as the plane picked up speed for the liftoff. Maybe they couldn't fit a honeymoon in their calendars just yet, but a thousand red rose petals would be awaiting her on his bed.
Sitting here wasted and wounded at this old piano
Trying hard to capture the moment this morning I don't know
'Cause a bottle of vodka is still lodged in my head
And some blond gave me nightmares, think that she's still in my bed
As I dream about movies
They won't make of me when I'm dead
With an ironclad fist I wake up and french kiss the morning
While some marching band keeps it's own beat in my head
While we're talking
About all of the things that I long to believe
About love, the truth, what you mean to me and the truth is
Baby you're all that I need
[Chorus] I wanna lay you down in a bed of roses
For tonight I'll sleep on a bed of nails
I wanna be just as close as your Holy Ghost is
And lay you down on a bed of roses
Well I'm so far away the step that I take's on my way home
A king's ransom in dimes I'd give each night
To see through this pay phone
Still I run out of time or it's hard to get through
Till the bird on the wire flies me back to
You I'll just close my eyes, whisper baby blind love is true
[Chorus]
Well this hotel bar's hangover whiskey's gone dry
The barkeeper's wig's crooked
And she's giving me the eye
Well I might have said yeah
But I laughed so hard I think I died
Ooh yeah
Now as you close your eyes
Know I'll be thinking about you
While my mistress she calls me to stand in her spotlight again
Tonight I won't be alone
But you know that don't mean I'm not lonely
I've got nothing to prove for it's you that I'd die to defend
[Chorus]x2