Chloe's life changed after Lois and Clark found each other.
The three of them had always worked at the Daily Planet together; after Chloe had gone to MU and Clark off to his small town college, the two of them had worn Lois down enough to convince her to get a degree of her own. Afterwards, it had only seemed natural that they all work at the same place; Chloe got them jobs from the inside, by that time, she had been promoted to a full-fledged reporter herself. Lois and Clark (especially Clark, those super powers of his came in handy when covering a story) were brought up to her status a lot faster than it had taken Chloe to get there. Lois was more hardheaded than her younger cousin was and Clark had that special little advantage of his…not that she minded. Chloe loved working with them, it was better than the all-nighters at the Torch and made much more of an impact.
Things got a little—no, a lot—different one night as Chloe charged into Lois's office, steaming styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a newly typed article proudly in the other. She had been covering a Luthorcorp conference for the first time, normally that was Clark's area of expertise, and was eager to show them how she had done. The first sight that had greeted her as the door swung open was her two friends on top of Lois's desk with half of their clothes off. For what seemed like hours but have only been a few seconds, she watched them kiss each other and stare into each other's eyes like they were the only people alive in the universe.
That was it. Enough was enough. A muffled sob rang from her throat and she had dropped her coffee when her numb fingers could no longer hang onto it. It hit the carpet with a thud, its contents spilling across the floor like blood from a heart that could no longer function. They had looked up at her, Lois with slight pity and fear in her brown eyes, Clark with apprehension and more than a little pity in his blue ones. It was harder for her to handle the emotions frozen on their faces than it was for her to handle the fact that they were about to have sex in the Daily Planet. Lois and Clark. Together. In one of the only places that she had ever thought of as home.
Chloe had run off down the hallway, ignoring Jimmy calling her name as she ran past his office, ignoring how she was staggering towards the elevator like a drunken person in heels and that she was doomed to fall down eventually with no one to catch her.
Amazingly, she had gotten inside the elevator without tripping, falling on her face and making a fool out of her self in front of all the cretins working the graveyard shift. No one else was inside of it, so she was alone in desperately punching the button for the first floor. Chloe didn't think that Lois would go after her, but Clark might, and she couldn't listen to his explanations and apologies. She just couldn't. If she had to see the pity on his face one more time she would throw herself off of a building, the Daily Planet being the most likely candidate since this was were it had happened and since she practically lived here.
Despite herself, Chloe felt almost guilty as she fled to the safety of her Volkswagen Bug. How long had Lois and Clark been sneaking around because of her? They probably knew that she would react this way, they weren't trying to hurt her.
That didn't lessen her pain, if anything, it made it worse. If they had casually just thrown it out there, given her some time to get used to it, Chloe would have slowly but surely adapted to it and it would have been another part of life. Lois knew that Chloe still harbored her high school crush on Clark, but she wouldn't have tried to get in her older cousin's way. Lois was more of his type anyways, the kick down the door and run in with guns loaded type, willing to do anything to save a life. Chloe thought of herself as more of a sidekick than a superhero. Research girl.
Things were different now…she wasn't sure if she could ever get that image out of her head. The only thing that she could do was to act like this didn't affect her at all, try to happy for them. Lois deserved to be with someone, and Chloe wasn't about to take that away from her.
As she drove her car through the slick Metropolis streets, she noted for the first time that it was raining. Chloe laughed slightly, and the sound had an extremely hysterical tone to it. Could her night get any more cliché?