A Long Way From Here

3

There were few things in Chad's life that he outright enjoyed without having the taint of his Hollywood persona stamped across it. Ironically, cooking was one of them. Not that he was a Wolfgang Puck or Bobby Flay, but Chad did know his way around a kitchen (providing it was his own) and he genuinely liked cooking for himself or for what close friends he had. Well, that was basically Owen, his mom, and sometimes a few friends from middle school that he'd stayed in touch with before he became Chad Dylan Cooper instead of the sometimes annoying blond kid from down the street who'd rather read lines for a school play than join a game of pick up basketball.

Besides, there was something all at once soothing and almost arrogant about cooking for himself, and knowing that whatever he was cooking would be good. Not that Chad had anything against arrogance; half of his life was spent playing an arrogant little bastard. At least now; there had been a time when he had been that arrogant little bastard. Chad much preferred the life he led outside of Hollywood. The paychecks were nice, but it was all together easier to be just Chad.

"Maybe not arrogant," he told himself as he slid the bell peppers and zucchini he'd chunked into the pan, ignoring the sizzling as he turned to quickly wash up the cutting board and knife. "Confidence building. Something goofy like that."

He chuckled at himself as he slid the chicken into the pan. The sizzle from the pan created a pleasing smell as it seared the seasoned chicken in the oil before Chad flipped it carefully, giving the peppers and zucchini a quick stir before lowering the heat and letting them all sauté together. It was a very simple meal, nothing like what he planned for Sonny's first night in London. He had a cheat recipe for pork Wellington that someone had sworn up and down was just as amazing as beef Wellington but about fifty times easier and healthier than the full recipe. It was tradition with a twist.

The noodles were just hitting al dente when someone knocked at his door. He wasn't concerned about rabid fans or stalker paparazzi, not here. The flat he'd bought several years before was in one of the nicer areas of London and he had good security with it. In fact, if anyone tried entering that wasn't already approved he'd know about them before they managed to hit the lift. However, there were only a handful of people who would be passed into the building without question, and that made Chad pause for a moment as he pulled the noodles from the burner and set them, pot and all, at the sink.

Owen was always an automatic pass, but Owen was still in the States finishing up some personal business that he'd gone over to deal with in the first place. His 'in person' pitch to Sonny had really just been the icing on the cake. His parents—but they were currently sitting in the Mediterranean enjoying a week's long cruise south of Greece, not mucking about in a chill London drizzle at nine o'clock at night.

In fact, none of the handful of people who would be passed in without pause would actually be out in said drizzle, especially since it started as a fairly nice deluge of icy water before softening to the habitual wetness of the last few weeks. He hadn't even considered an emergency (though Chad would have known after a heartbeat's worth of terror that any true emergency would have come across the phone first) as he left his pasta and sizzling chicken and vegetables to answer the door.

So assuredly unworried was he that Chad didn't even check who it was before opening the door, a green kitchen towel slung over his shoulder as he started to smile a welcome to his visitor.

"Hello, Chad," said a voice that he hadn't heard in years, a voice that he recognized in an instant even as his eyes began processing the changes in Sonny Monroe of the course of the last five years. "Long time, no see."

"But your plane isn't due in till tomorrow!" he exclaimed as he took in her dripping wet figure and the pale cheeks that spoke of time in the cold air. She wasn't even smiling, which was just as foreign an expression on her face as was the taller, more mature figure she presented even in comfortable and untrendy clothes. Of course his opinion wasn't in any way skewed by the fact that the wet denim and cotton clung to her like a second skin; Chad Cooper was more mature than that. Some days.

Sonny frowned at him and if Chad had been a little less shocked at her sudden appearance Chad would have been even more disconcerted by the way her brow furrowed at him. Then she shrugged. "Is it, Chad? Is it really?"

"Yes!" he shot back, still flustered with an edge of creeping annoyance. Thirty seconds and she'd already managed to get under his skin—had she even said more than a dozen words? It had to be some kind of record, a karmic response to the hell he'd put her through back at Condor Studios when he was riding high on his first success with Mackenzie Falls.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" she asked him, and Chad breathed in deeply against the sudden urge to smack his hand to his face in exasperation.

"Of course, please, Sonny, come in. Mi casa es su casa and all that," Chad told her as he stepped back, easily snagging her duffel bag and hoisting it so that it wouldn't drag a wet trail across the wooden floor of the small foyer. Even as he shifted the heavy luggage to one hand he was checking for his cell phone in his back pocket; there was no excuse for Sonny being stranded at the airport.

She stepped in, wincing as her shoes squelched a little, and Chad sighed. "Don't worry about it— I'll get the floors dry once you stop dripping on them."

She bristled at the careless comment even as she followed him. "I wouldn't be dripping on your floor if I hadn't been forced to take a cab in the pouring rain after waiting for my promised ride for three hours."

The heat in her voice threw him back for a moment to the last time they'd spoken. Even if the circumstances were completely different, Chad couldn't help feeling the helpless anger begin to swell in his stomach that she would twist everything he said. And as quickly as it surged through him, white-hot and vicious, Chad throttled it back. Gracious hosts didn't open their homes to a guest only to turn around and strangle them in a fit of rage. Psychotic hosts, maybe. Deranged? Oh, definitely. But the last time Chad checked he was completely sane.

And then you offered your place to Sonny Monroe for the duration of filming. Jackass, he called himself silently as he reigned in his temper as he wouldn't have five years before.

"I know it's not your fault that you're soaked, Sonny," Chad told her, his jaw clenched. "And believe me, when I get a hold of Owen I'm going to find out why I didn't know you were coming in today. But for now, let's just get you dried off, alright?"

He glanced back at her as Sonny gave him a faintly suspicious, "Fine," but Chad refused to rise to the bait, even though the habit nearly had him doing so. Chad wasn't even sure that Sonny realized she'd already fallen into their old patterns—not that he wanted to, because their old patterns also meant that there was actual insult and injury to the verbal sparring.

"I don't think I have anything I can wear," she added softly as she followed behind him. Chad fought the urge to smack himself in the face. "My duffel is pretty old. I'm almost positive that everything in it is soaked through."

He stopped dead, turning to look at her. He could all but feel the blood rushing downward from his face as he contemplated Sonny Monroe naked in his apartment. Oh yeah, there was definitely rushing downward. She'd been a pretty girl, a very pretty girl, and that girl had grown into a striking woman. And Chad was, after all, just a man.

"Tell me you're joking," he demanded. "You've got to have something in your carryon?"

Sonny shook her head at him and he sighed gruffly. "Alright. Alright, I can handle this. Stay here for a sec," he told her, retracing back down the hall to the foyer, nearly clipping his shoulder on the archway that made it a foyer instead of part of the hall as he brought himself up short to turn into the kitchen. He went straight through it to the door on the other end, hauled it open and dumped the wet bag and clothing within it there next to his washer and dryer.

That, he could deal with later. For now… he really needed to make sure that all inappropriate thoughts about Sonny were kept to a minimum. After all, rolling around in passionate embraces was part of the script, so he had something to look forward to. Sort of.

Chad paused to check on his dinner, stirring it up quickly and turning the chicken before slipping through the arch that led to the dining room, and another arch that led back into the hall past the T section that split to the bedrooms. His room was here next to the kitchen and well away from the two guest rooms he maintained. Well, a guest room and Sonny's room, now, exactly where she needed to be on the other side of the apartment.

The closet space of every bedroom in the flat was ample; it was a thing that had attracted Chad when he'd initially been searching for a place to call home in London. The closet space was a holdover from his CDC days when appearance was everything, hair product was something he couldn't live without, and wrinkles were an unforgivable faux pas. And while Chad may have ditched the excessive hair love and the need to look like he'd been freshly dry cleaned, he had learned one thing that he still lived by.

What gets hung neatly stays unwrinkled.

It had started Chad on a habit of hanging everything, from suits and coats to t-shirts and undershirts and right down to his pajamas. He lived by that rule—it made life so much easier and it made him presentable in far less time than if he had to send his clothes out to be pressed or (god forbid) do it himself, because the last time he'd ironed anything his shirt had been burned through. (It was a very near thing when his mother called it a miracle that Chad could even do his own laundry.)

He needed to run some things through the wash, but he had plenty of pajama pants to share out, and a few t-shirts that looked like they would hold up to anything Sonny could do to them. He snagged them both, gray flannel pants and a dark blue shirt with a football logo on it before hurrying back out, the sizzle of the meal steady and still smelling unburned.

"Here, Sonny," he said as he slid around the corner into the main hall, hands out and clothes proffered. "Clean and dry and freshly washed. More or less."

She arched dark brows at him, her lips pursed for a moment before she reached out and took the clothing. "It's Allison. And thanks." Her hair was beginning to dry in the warmth of the apartment, the ends curling and her bangs beginning to fall into the familiar shape that suited her face so well.

Chad knew he was asking for it as he smiled innocently at her, gesturing her around the corner to the right and to the end of the hall. "Oh, you'll always be dear Sonny to me."

She only glared, clutching her carryon close and holding the dry clothes out from her body to avoid wetting them. "Can you just show me where I'm going to be staying, please? I'm cold, I'm wet, and if it's not too much to ask I'd really like to take a shower now."

His jaw clenched. He knew it was just a little irrational to be annoyed that she was rebuffing his attempts to lighten the mood, but it didn't make him feel any better as he nodded curtly and took her to the door on the left at the end of the hall. "This is yours for the duration," he told her quietly, carefully keep his tone even and empty, using every bit of his skill not to betray anything he was actually feeling.

Chad opened the door and stepped inside, Sonny following him with an apprehensive look around. Whatever she might have been nervous about quickly vanished as her worry was replaced with pleasant surprise. Almost relief, the realization of which sent another surge of annoyance through Chad as he stepped back to let her enter fully.

"The bathroom is over there," he pointed, "though it's connected to the other guest room. The curtains are thick enough to block the light out, but we face west so late afternoon and sunset are about all you need to worry about."

She nodded at him before tilting her head to the side as she moved her eyes from her temporary home to his. "Alright, thanks. I'll get cleaned up now."

She was damning him with faint praise there. This time the grimace came through, just a hint, but her face never wavered as she waited for him to leave. "Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes. Is that enough time?"

She nodded again before all but herding him out the door. He flinched when the lock was thrown behind him, but again Chad found it hard to logically be annoyed, even though he was. She was a young woman, accustomed to protecting herself, living along in New York City. Locking doors was a matter of habit. Instead of giving in to the annoyance Chad just let his head hand for a moment before heading back to the kitchen, suddenly nearly sprinting as he wondered if his dinner was getting ready to set off the smoke alarm.

"Damn it," he cursed as he pulled the sauté pan from the burner, but on close inspection the meat was still whole and uncharred, the vegetables merely cooked through a mite more than he wanted.

The pasta was still warm enough for the water to be steaming around the chunked onion and garlic cloves he added for flavor. Chad grabbed the waiting serving dish and fished the pasta from the steaming water carefully, leaving the onion and garlic behind. It was only the work of a few moments to slide the chicken and sautéed vegetables over the pasta, the now empty pan going to the sink on Chad's way to the fridge.

What had been enough food for a meal plus leftovers was now woefully small for the both of them. Luckily he had some greens from the market—Chad didn't hesitate as he dragged out another serving dish, this time a bowl, dumping the field mix into it before digging out the balsamic vinegar dressing her was fond of.

But even these mundane tasks and the residual annoyance he was still going on wasn't enough to make him stop thinking of the last time they'd spoken, the last time he'd seen her before she'd left Condor Studios, So Random, and him. It was on that particularly vicious thought that Chad finally dug his cell from his pocket and dialed Owen's number with violent jabs of motion.

Chad didn't give his friend any time to speak before hissing, "She's here, Owen. She took a taxi from the fucking airport." There was a space of silence while Chad reined his temper in for the umpteenth time. "You said eighth at seven—what is she doing here now?"

There were rustled papers and the shifting of objects through the phone before Owen managed to bite out, "Bloody fucking hell. Coop, mate, I'm sorry, I mixed it up. I told you backwards; the plane was supposed to be in the seventh at eight. Must have got in early then," he surmised as Chad's fingers clenched around the phone till his knuckles showed white.

"Fuck, Owen," Chad growled. "This isn't exactly an auspicious beginning to the project—she thinks I ditched her there on purpose."

"Well, you didn't, surely she'll understand it was a mix-up?" Chad snorted at Owen's hopeful surmising of his friendship with sonny, shaking his head even though he knew the other man couldn't see it. "Huh. Could this be related to her sudden reticence in learning she was to be your flat mate?" Owen's voice took on smug edge. "Or is this something new, you sly dog?"

I wish, Chad thought.

What he said was completely different. "No, this isn't new. Not at all. We've always butted heads." It was almost cathartic, admitting to Owen that Chad had all but brought disaster to the cast by suggesting sonny. But talent was talent, and she had it. Which made it better to tell the truth now. "But the last time I saw her… Look, it was just bad."

"It can't be that bad, Coop."

It was his fault. Chad knew it. But this might be the first time he actually admitted it to someone else, and knowing that it was his fault didn't make it easier.

"I may have called her a no talent hack right after So Random won its Emmy."

There was dead silence from the phone for a moment, then, "I hate to borrow your phrases, Chad, but that's fucked up. Not right. Not right at all."

"I know," Chad started, but he heard the click of the bedroom door down the hall being opened. "I have to go, she's coming out and I've got to make this work. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

He didn't wait for a reply before hanging up the phone and shoving it back into his pockets. The kitchen towel on his should was dragged down to be tossed next to the sink as Chad made a grab for one of his knives and a serving fork from the drawer behind him. He was carelessly slicing the chicken breasts when she came in, eyes guarded but no longer as angry as they had been before.

"I'm done," she said softly, giving him an excuse to look at her properly.

Christ, but she looked good in his clothes. The shirt was tight across her shoulders and chest, looser at the waist to snug again at her hips. It was riding up, as well, leaving there absolutely no reason to imagine what his own pajamas looked like on her. They looked good.

Too good, he realized, shifting his hips to the left so that he was standing firmly behind the island as he continued to slice the chicken into strips. It wouldn't do to let his new house guest in for the view he was currently sporting. Hormones be damned, he wasn't about to give her a reason to leave. But how was he going to do this for two and a half months?