I love how Chloe in TLL looks so much more like Claudia, yet is still so recognisable as the Chloe Frazer we've known from the very beginning. Chloe's nose and mouth are more like Claudia's than they used to be, her face shape too. Most importantly though, Chloe's eyes are Claudia's. Chloe feels so expressive, so human, because she has that shine of intrigue and liveliness in her eyes that is so innately Claudia's. She is still very much Chloe Frazer, but the wonders of technology and how far it's progressed since U2 mean that now she can be so much more, and I will forever be fascinated and in awe of it.
The evening air was humid and Chloe’s shirt clung to her sweat slicked skin. She and Nadine were sitting outside a bar in Kuala Lumpur, enjoying a celebratory beer having just finished their most recent job. To anyone walking by they must have just looked like a couple of tourists enjoying a drink. They certainly didn’t look like two thieves who had just taken a small, ancient carved figurine of Badang from a museum, replacing it with a very convincing forgery, and who were planning on selling the original to an incredibly wealthy private collector. They definitely didn’t look like that.
Chloe flexed back her shoulders and held in a small grunt of discomfort. It had only been two weeks since India - since the train and Asav, since she had got the absolute shit kicked out of her - and her ribs were still sore. Both she and Nadine had taken quite the beating. Not that Nadine showed any signs of having taken a beating. She was just carrying on as normal. Only Chloe was grunting and straining against healing muscles and knitting bones. That was part of the reason why they had both agreed to smaller jobs, to give themselves time to recover and time to get to know each other without a hail of bullets raining down on them. Filching an ancient figurine from a museum was child’s play, but the pay was decent and the lack of being shot at was a bonus.
They had scoped the place, Nadine made a note of cameras and security, she caused a distraction, and Chloe picked the lock on the case and nabbed the artefact leaving its very well made forgery in its place. Easy. So easy it was boring. They just had to hold onto the figurine until they could make contact with the buyer’s man. It would become considerably less boring when they got paid.
“Your ribs still bothering you?” Nadine asked. Her beer sat half-drank on the table top, condensation gathering on the glass surface of the bottle. Nadine leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, giving Chloe a very nice view of her chest.
It was tempting to lie, to down play the couple of ribs she’d cracked in one of her many, many, falls, but Nadine had been the one who had patched her up. She had seen the motley of bruises that ran up Chloe’s ribs and curved around her back. She had held her hand against the heat of the pain and felt the bones beneath flex in a way they weren’t supposed to. She had not felt - or had pointedly chosen to ignore- the way Chloe’s heart hammered up a tempo in the broken cage of her ribs.
Chloe should tell the truth, but she was also who she was and some habits weren’t worth breaking.
“Nah,” she said with a little sneering smirk to go along with her lie. “Just stretching.” She did it again to add credence to her idiocy. And, ooh-boy, was it a mistake. The action pulled the air from her lungs and stretched white hot across her side. “See? Totally fine,” she wheezed.
Nadine huffed a disbelieving breath and shook her head. Her hair was loose and the action made her curls bounce. “Sure.” She snatched up her beer and leaned back in her seat.
She was handling the humidity better than Chloe was. It helped that she was wearing a tank top and loose fitting pants. Chloe had imitated a museum employee and wore a once crisp white shirt and black slacks that clung uncomfortably to her sweat slicked skin. Nadine had snorted when she’d first seen her in the outfit. “Very professional,” she had said and then laughed. She looked relaxed, perspiration lingered on her skin, making it glisten in the low light. The scar along her collar bone and neck stood out vivid pink tinged with silver, and Chloe let her gaze wander along its length.
It was difficult to not let her eyes linger there.
It was difficult to stop her gaze from lingering on Nadine in general.
“You should take a picture. It’ll last longer.” Nadine turned her head to look at Chloe.
Oops! Caught staring. Chloe probably should have felt embarrassed but she just grinned back at her. “I’ve got plenty of pictures.”
Nadine sipped her beer. Her expression was contemplative. Her big brown eyes searching. “You haven’t asked how I got it.”
“Would you tell me?” She didn’t want to drag up bad memories but, oh, she just itched with curiosity to know. It had to be quite the story.
“I might.” She shrugged.
Chloe tapped her fingers against the bottle in her hands. Nadine didn’t seem bothered. The small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth suggested she was hoping Chloe would ask about it.
“I’m surprised you don’t already know,” Nadine said. “It’s not some big secret.”
“Well, I suppose it’s just one among many. Mercenary work isn’t exactly for those hoping to remain unscathed.”
“Ja.” Nadine chuckled. “Neither is treasure hunting yet you seem…” Her eyes trailed over Chloe, raked right on up her from uncomfortable shoes to the sweaty mess of her hair. “… unscathed.”
Chloe didn’t blush under Nadine’s searching gaze. She was utterly incapable of blushing, but she did feel a pleasant warmth prickle beneath her skin.
“I’ve been lucky,” She said. And she had been. She had fallen from great heights, crashed through roofs, been thrown from moving vehicles, shot at, played with knives, hell, she’d even run with scissors, and she didn’t have much in the way of scars to show for any of it. She had always counted herself as fortunate that she’d never taken a serious injury to her face; that the few small scars she did have could easily be covered. There were a few small nicks on her hands; maybe a couple of smaller looking cuts along her torso. Nothing like Nadine’s scar. But then she had always been very good at getting other people to take risks for her. It wasn’t that she wasn’t capable of taking these risks herself, or even that she didn’t get the thrill when she fell through the air, reaching for a ledge that looked like it might be out of reach, just that she had always found that men desperately wanted to be the ones who jumped first. That so very many of them had this notion that if she mentioned something they decided that she was asking them to do it for her. And who was she to stand in the way of their fragile masculinity? If they wanted to hurl themselves off of the top of an ancient Cliffside ruin out of a false sense of chivalry then more power to them.
Her fingers went to her ribs, where the bone was still knitting together and still left her breathless when she moved too much. There would be no scar from this injury either. No tally of her efforts on her flesh. Ridiculous. She almost sounded like she wanted the scars.
She snatched up her beer, winced at the pull on her side, and sat back in her seat, placing her foot up on the table edge. Nadine’s eyes flicked down to Chloe’s foot, to where the hem of her trousers pulled up and revealed the bare skin of her ankle. How very Victorian. Chloe smiled.
“So, what’s the worst you’ve got?” Chloe indicted around Nadine with her bottle.
“We comparing war wounds now, Frazer?” Nadine looked back up.
“You got a better way to pass the time, china?”
Nadine exhaled an amused breath, shaking her head again, curls bouncing distractingly. “You think I’m hiding something worse than this?” She pointed to the long scar down her neck.
“Dunno. Maybe.” Chloe grinned around the lip of her beer, gazing at Nadine over the top of it. “Come on, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“You first.”
“Whoa, how come I have to go first?”
“Because of this.” Nadine again pointed to her visible scar. “I’m already ahead of you. Just giving you a chance to catch up.”
Chloe raised her eyebrows. Now it was a competition. A competition needed a winner and a loser, and a prize. She eyed Nadine again, eyes raking up her lean form, lingering on all her favourite places. It was such a blatant leer that even the densest of people would be able to decipher what she was thinking. Nadine’s brow climbed, her head tilted back and her lips quirked, just stopping before matching Chloe’s appreciative leer.
“I don’t need your charity but I’ll take it.” Chloe took a swig from her beer and considered. She didn’t have anything that could compete with the one scar she could see. Nadine was probably hiding a constellation of old bullet wounds beneath her tank top and she’d have an interesting story to go with each one. “Ja, I got this one fighting off an entire rebel army single handed, whilst on fire and wrestling a bear.” While Chloe would be showing her a nick on her finger from a particularly vicious paper cut.
Chloe drained her beer and slammed the bottle down on the table. She undid her shirt cuff and began rolling her sleeve up her arm. Nadine cocked her head. “I got grazed by a bullet,” Chloe explained, she turned to the side once her sleeve was rolled up high enough and showed Nadine the short thick line where the bullet had sliced through her flesh. It looked more like a burn than a bullet wound. It was one of her ever-so-slightly more noble wounds, since she’d got it helping Nate and Sully escape from Lazarevic. It had sort of been her fault that they needed to escape, but, whatever.
Nadine looked unimpressed. “That the best you’ve got?”
“You don’t play your trump card straight away.” Chloe leaned back in her seat. “What else you got?”
Nadine pressed her finger tip to the top of her thigh. “Here.” She moved her finger a couple of inches down. “And here. Bullet wounds.”
Chloe’s eyes followed where Nadine was pointing. She could imagine the scars, little blooms of pink and silver in her skin like violent flowers. She could imagine how they’d feel under her own fingertips. The smooth skin of Nadine’s thigh then the raised bump of the scars, the rough edges. She hated that Nadine had ever been hurt like that but, oh, how she wanted to trace her fingers over these little blemishes.
She hummed and tilted her head to the side. Licking her lips she pushed thoughts of Nadine’s thighs and how they’d feel from her mind. “And I’m just supposed to take your word for it?”
“I’m hardly going to take my trousers off here to show you.”
Chloe smirked. “But you’ll take them off later for me, right?” So much for not thinking about Nadine’s thighs.
Nadine froze. She sucked a sharp breath through her teeth. Her lips drew back, nearly a snarl, she almost looked angry, but then she shook her head sharply. “What else you got?” she said, her tone all business once more.
Chloe slipped to perch on the edge of her seat. She placed her hands down flat on the table. “Not exactly a big scar but there’s lots of them.”
Nadine leaned forward and stared down at Chloe’s hands. “Do I need a magnifying glass?”
“What? No. Only if you’re trying to find Sam’s nob.”
Nadine laughed. “This business is rough on the hands,” she conceded.
There were little marks all over Chloe’s hands. Her knuckles had been split in India and were still healing. Beneath the fresh wounds there were old marks, scratches and cuts along her fingers, marring the back of her hands. Even without the scars her hands would be considered a mess by any beautician’s standard. Her palms were rough with calluses and her finger tips hard. She had gripped Nadine’s hand in her own and knew they were just the same.
“So this one.” Chloe tapped her finger against one of the smallest marks on her hand. Nadine frowned down at it. “I got while running round the Cappadocia Monasteries.”
“Who were you running from and why?”
“Former business associate and there had been some confusion as to the where about of the artefact we had agreed to retrieve.”
Another laugh. “Why am I not surprised.”
“It wasn’t not my fault that he lost track of it. And it definitely was not my fault that it turned up two days later in my luggage. He was just a really unobservant person.” Chloe pointed to a different mark and went into another story “Now this one…”
She didn’t really remember how she got each individual marks. Some of them she was pretty sure actually were paper cuts, but she wove Nadine a different tale for the more prominent ones, stitching fiction into true stories of her small adventures. Nadine nodded along. Hair bobbing and swaying with each movement. Sipping her beer, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips. “…And this one.” Chloe pointed to a scar on the middle finger of her left hand. “I got playing that game where you stab between your fingers as quickly as you can.”
“Why am I not surprised that you nearly cut off you own finger?” Nadine muttered.
“You go!” Chloe leaned back triumphantly. Part way through her various stories they had switched from beer to something stronger. The bottle of baijiu sat on the table and Chloe reached for it, pouring herself a generous measure.
Nadine exhaled. She slowly pulled up the hem of her tank top revealing taut abs and Chloe nearly choked on her drink.
“Knife,” Nadine said. “Didn’t go in too deep but left its mark.”
Below the lowest rib to the left was a small, inch long scar. Only the tip of the blade must have sunk into her flesh. Compared to the one on her neck it wasn’t very impressive at all. But still…
But still Chloe stared at it. Still she looked at the way the flesh differed in texture to the skin around it. Still she wondered how it would feel beneath her finger tips. Beneath her lips. Her tongue.
She shook her head sharply.
“What else you got?” Nadine was smirking. Like she knew Chloe was staring, like she knew what Chloe was thinking, and like she knew that Chloe had nothing that could possibly compete.
Chloe tilted back her glass and regarded the liquid within. She slugged it back and grimaced at the taste.
“I’ve had better baijiu,” She said.
“Go to China if you want better baijiu, it’ll still taste rotten though. You’re stalling.” Nadine’s smirk widened. She spread her arms back along the back of her seat, all casual confidence.
Chloe would be annoyed if it wasn’t such a sexy look on her. She licked her lips and stared down at her empty glass. She had nothing. No reason for the inane game. Nothing to show for it. The stakes were… She wasn’t sure; she just knew that she’d somehow lost, and that in losing maybe Nadine had lost too. Her lips twisted to the side s she concentrated on the inside of her glass. “Hello there,” she murmured. There was a last drop of baijiu in the bottom of her glass that she hadn’t noticed. One last little hopeful drop clinging on. She settled the glass back down on the table and stood up. She stretched, shoulders back, boobs forward, acknowledging the way Nadine’s eyes dropped to her chest, ignoring the breath stealing white hot pain across her ribs. She stepped around the table and sat down next to Nadine.
“What?” Nadine said warily.
“You can’t see this one,” Chloe replied. She took hold of Nadine’s hand in her own and raised it to her head. She leaned forward slightly and, keeping her eyes locked on Nadine’s, directed Nadine’s hand to the back of her skull, easing her fingers through her hair to where she wanted them. She watched as Nadine’s questioning gaze gave way, the frown that pulled at her brow, the way her lips parted.
“How did you get that?” Her question was a whisper. It sent shivers down Chloe’s spine.
“I fell.”
Nadine’s breath caught. Her eyes snapped up to Chloe’s, flickering, searching. She had seen Chloe fall before. Had waited by her for her to wake up.
“It was a long time ago,” Chloe explained. “And I mean a loooooong time ago.”
Nadine’s touch was soft, or as soft as it could be. The pads of her fingers were rough, broken and calloused, they moved back and forth over the lump, the slight distortion to in Chloe’s skull. Chloe dropped her hand but Nadine’s remained there, feeling along Chloe’s scalp.
“I was thirteen. There was this old building with old scaffold outside. Me and some mates climbed it.” She laughed. “They were all afraid to climb to the top.”
“But not you,” Nadine said softly. The corner of her mouth twitched, amused and proud all at once.
“But not me,” Chloe agreed. Nadine’s fingers continued their movement, rubbing gentle circles. “I climbed right to the top and had a little dance around up there. It was a good view. Could see my house.”
“And then..?”
“And then,” Chloe paused for dramatic effect. “And then I climbed back down.”
Nadine’s fingers stilled. Her head tilted in confusion. “Not what I was expecting.”
Chloe laughed softly. “When we were leaving I slipped on the steps. Fell backwards and hit my head on the kerb.”
“Ouch.”
“I don’t really remember. My mates had to tell me about it. Last I remember I was standing at the very top of the scaffold, arms spread wide and welcoming in the sun.”
“This explains so much about you.” Nadine’s fingers started up again, massaging Chloe’s scalp and Chloe leaned into it.
“Does it?”
“Ja. Bashed your common sense out.”
Chloe hummed and closed her eyes. Nadine’s fingers felt so good. Her touch was precise, the pads of her fingers scraping Chloe’s scalp in circles. It was gentle, relaxing, and, oh, such a turn on. It was a turn on in the way so many didn’t think Chloe would appreciate. Slow, methodical, precise in the way it built anticipation.
“Don’t go to sleep on me, Frazer.”
Chloe opened her eyes. Nadine had shifted closer, or maybe she had done it herself. They were practically in each other’s laps. Far too close for sitting together in public in Malaysia.
Nadine’s lips were parted and her breathing was slow and weighted.
Chloe smiled slowly. “You’re blushing.”
“Like you can tell.”
“I can tell,” Chloe said, her voice oddly breathless.
Nadine’s eyes narrowed. She drew in along slow breath that trembled, and she withdrew her hand. Instantly Chloe missed the contact. Her head suddenly felt naked and cold without the pressure of Nadine’s fingers there. She caught Nadine’s retreating hand, her fingers clasping around her wrist.
“Careful,” Nadine said, her tone serious. “We’re going to get into trouble if we continue.”
“When aren’t we in trouble?” Chloe countered.
“Five minutes ago. No trouble happening then.”
“In ten minutes we could be back at the hotel and getting into more trouble.”
Nadine tugged her hand free from Chloe’s grip. She picked up her glass and tipped back her drink. “I was wondering how long it would take you. I was starting to think that you weren’t going to do anything about… this…”
If her ribs hadn’t been busted she probably would have done something a lot sooner.
She watched as Nadine stood up and stretched in one fluid motion, hands above her head, fingers locked. Her shoulders popped and she grunted, dropping her arms to her sides.
“Maybe I have been. Maybe I was just being subtle,” Chloe said.
“You call this subtle?” Nadine laughed. “’I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’.”
“Hey, you’re the one offering to take your pants off for me.”
“What, you don’t believe me about my scars?”
“Oh, I believe you but I should still see the evidence. That’s just good sense.”
“Something we’ve established you don’t have.” She moved away from Chloe, round the table to pick up the case with the loot in.
Chloe watched her. Watched the flex of her muscles as she hefted the case, the way her tank top pulled up and exposed a section of lower back as she bent down. “You coming,” Nadine asked over her shoulder.
“Here’s hoping,” Chloe murmured. She pushed herself to her feet and hurried after Nadine.
