The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross ~Chapter Nine~
Title: The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross
Author: The Satyr Icon
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set in Icon AU; Freshman Year
Classification: Smallville; Chloe/Clark; Pete Ross; het_fic
Disclaimer: All characters, references, and other things pertaining to 'Smallville' are property of the WB, DC Comics, Tollin-Robins, Al Gough & Miles Millar, and J. Siegal & J. Shuster; I am just writing for fun, and if I owned them, all would be good and clean in the World.
Summary: Pete and Clark go camping, but why is Chloe coming along? and why does that infuriate Pete?
Word Count: 46,164
Written: Start: Plot: December 2004 Actually Writing: July 2006 Finished: August 2007
Chapter Eight
http://the-satyr-icon.livejournal.com/81139.html
~The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross~
~CHAPTER NINE~
The site really wasn't a few more miles to the where the boys always set up camp like Pete had said to Chloe; he just wanted to take the smiles off the faces of Clark and his girlfriend (that were pretty much gone, anyways). They walked, or in Chloe's case, trudged, for about 40 more minutes through the cottonwood forest. The teens went through a couple of small clearings that Chloe had hoped that they were the camp-grounds but each time her head dropped with disappointment when Clark told her that they weren't stopping at all, especially near the second clearing. That area made him feel awful; his muscles and bones felt like they were on fire, stomach churned, and he felt that body parts raced within him to see which parts would escape from his mouth or butt somehow. Clark took one more step and slumped against his girlfriend, nearly toppled her. It was his turn to give a pitiful look to Chloe, who was now pulling him along, helping him survive.
"Did a...meteor crash around here?" Chloe asked Pete with a groan; she had seen Clark use his powers, had seen him use them when he would show-off for her (like getting her a Venti from a Starbucks in Metropolis, proudly showing her the receipt) or when he fought the meteor freaks, and Clark looked like a God, super-strong, with other powers and abilities far beyond...humankind. In her eyes, he could do just about anything...as long as he wasn't around the meteor rocks. They were Clark's secret weakness: big fat chunks of a green glowing meteor to even the thinnest sliver. The rocks could affect him very badly, possibly even kill him. Just like Chloe knew about his powers and abilities, she also knew that final secret between them and she knew how to save him: when the rocks started to hurt him, had him in pain, maybe even killing him, she knew that she had to get the pieces of the rocks away from him quickly. Or drag him away, like she was now.
Pete nodded at her question, paying no mind that she was struggling with her big lug of a boyfriend; Clark out-weighed her by at least 100 pounds. Pete had to drag Clark around for years, either in the forest or by Greg Arkin's tree house, or by the river, or by Crater Lake, so he didn't feel the need to help; it was Chloe's turn. "Yeah...way over there. I found the crater, but Clark didn't want to see it. Why?"
Chloe looked at Clark, his eyes closed tightly, a dry tongue licking his lips. It didn't look hot to her as usual. "Oh...just wondering..."
The three made it out of that clearing, and Clark felt better, walking on his own, thanking Pete for not helping with a good natured shove on his shoulder that made Pete stumble and the tallest of the campers gave a look to Chloe that made her squirm while she walked along side him, holding his hand. The big guy laughed off feeling sick, saying something in the area must have kicked off an allergic reaction. Pete wondered why he didn't have any medicine for it. Chloe laughed and said the Clark's pharmacy doesn't carry that kind of medicine. That remark set off Pete; he asked why Clark never seemed to get sick other than with that allergy. Clark shrugged the question off like always, saying his family's organically grown food was a huge factor in keeping him healthy. Chloe chimed in that it was all the chores making him all big and strong. The couple laughed when Pete made fake retching sounds. Finally, Pete reached the top of a thickly treed rise, and let the sun and wind bear down on him.
"Hey! We're here!" Pete Rodney Ross wondered if town founder, Jebadiah Obadiah Small, felt the same exhilaration when he found the spot that would become Smallville that he himself had now overlooking the campsite: the ground that he stood on sloped to the boy's favorite place to camp, a grassy flatland, a wide expanse that had a simple meandering creek with pebbly banks. There weren't as many trees on the opposite of the creek; the grassland became fields of wheat and corn a mile away. Pete spun around, looked at Clark and Chloe, and also wondered if the town founder had seen the same tired and grimy faces like Pete saw staring back at him. "The view was even more beautiful than last year!"
"We're here?" A bright, toothy smile flashed on Chloe's tired face. "This is really the place, no joking, not going any farther?" She looked hopefully at Clark, eyes wide, face soft. He nodded back and she hugged him tightly before Pete could react and scold them. They hustled up the rise and stood by Pete, wanting to bask in the sun, too. Clark loved the place, it was peaceful, quiet, a place like his Loft, a place that offered him a sense of solitude...well, the Loft did offer a sense of solitude before Chloe moved to town. Now, the upstairs room in the barn that his father called the "Fortress of Solitude" had some trinkets that marked the blond's presence. He liked sharing it, like he shared the camping trip with her.
Chloe, on the other hand, was too tired and feeling too icky to really appreciate the beautiful view. Her snarky attitude, never took time off, however. "I never thought I'd be so happy to see a vast empty space. "
"C'mon..." Pete shook his head; was she going to complain the whole trip? "You're not going to bag on the walk here are you?"
"No, Pete. It was a stroll compared to the Trail of Tears..." She rubbed her neck; her shoulders and neck muscles were achy, from carrying her backpack and dragging Clark along. She squinted because it was windy; the whooshing air was hard on her eyes and Pete's eyes, too. Clark didn't have any problems at all, but like always, pretended that he did, and he squinted, too. "I'd like it more if I wasn't ...you know."
"This is where we camp every year," Clark whispered to Chloe, caressing her hand in a way she liked, his thumb stroking her knuckle. "It's awesome here: we fish, we spot animals. It is like our own private Smallville." Before Pete looked at them, Clark leaned over and kissed the top of her hat. She beamed, and she whispered into the wind, barely audible, "I love you, too."
Suddenly, Pete dumped his backpack and broke off into a run, yelling at Clark, hollering that he was slower than cold molasses. Clark quickly let go of Chloe's hand, set down the small ice chest that he had held on his hip, shrugged off his backpack and she watched her boyfriend run down the slope after his friend. She laughed at them, how Pete was screaming that the last one to the stream was a rotten egg and how Clark was totally running at what she knew was a slow pace for him. She heard Clark yell out that she was going to be the rotten egg, since she was going to be last. She grinned and didn't mind being the last one to get to the river; she wasn't going to run, not in her body's condition. But she dropped her backpack and went down to congratulate Clark, who was laughing and kicking water on Pete's legs at the creek's edge.
Clark greeted her on the grassy bank with a smile that warmed her wind-chilled skin, and his hand found her little hand. She squeezed back. They stood close, and Clark motioned towards the water. "Does it look familiar, Chloe?"
"Oh man! That's right! Pete laughed, realizing what Clark meant before Chloe.
"No..." She looked at Pete, then Clark, her eyebrows furrowing, suspicious. "You guys don't do some weird hazing thing and dunk the new person in the water, do you?" She started to pull away from her boyfriend. "If that's the case...I'm outta here!"
Clark laughed and shook his head. "No...we're not going dunking you. This creek weaves it's way from over there," he pointed past the forest from which they walked out, pointed towards his house. "This is the one we rafted on in 8th grade..."
Chloe remembered, along with Clark and Pete; for their English class term project, they had the brilliant idea to re-create the raft scene from Tom Sawyer. They spent most of their spring break making the raft, Clark doing most of the actual woodwork, Pete taking pictures with his camera and video-taping it with his camcorder, and Chloe writing about it. They took it (with help from Clark's dad, who transported the raft in the back of his truck) to the river. The water was calm and they floated peacefully for 30 minutes or so. However, instead of going right at the fork in the river's path, they went left, and ended up in very choppy water. Then things got worse; the river suddenly became water-water rapids, and the young teens were thrown into the water. Pete got to the banks first, and Clark held onto a boulder in the water. Chloe wasn't so lucky; her boot was caught in the branches of a submerged tree, and after screaming for Clark, she went under the foamy water. Seconds after her world went black, Clark got to her, dragged her to the muddy banks and performed CPR. He didn't care that she coughed up water all into his face, or cried in his arms so hard she threw up; Chloe was safe. It was the first time he saved her life. For their efforts, they got an A grade on their report.
She shivered and leaned into her protector. "Oh...THAT river." She grabbed a rock and tossed it into the water angrily. Then she looked at Clark. "Hey...that river isn't miles and miles and miles from your house," she wondered, "it's just like - -," she calculated in her head, " - - like six or seven city blocks. Why did we do the Smallville Death March through the forest?"
"Clark's fault," Pete said simply. "The big guy here always get sick somewhere out here," Pete told her, and Clark's head bobbed in agreement. "He'd get sick anywhere, like around here....the stables over at Lana's place...Crater Lake...the tree house that we had with Greg Arkin." Then Pete remembered something and told Chloe, "Clark was so sick once that he fell while climbing the ladder to get into the tree house. Greg was looking out the doorway and said that Clark landed right on his head and bounced a few feet!" Pete laughed at the memory. "He had the stupidest look on his face when we got to him. It was sorta funny."
Chloe gasped, her hand at her open mouth, eyes wide. In her mind, she saw her boyfriend's head cracking the ground, his neck snapping, his body falling limp. She clutched at Clark. Anger flared up in her, at Pete, for him making light of Clark's fall. "You had to be there, I guess," Chloe said ruefully at Pete. "He coulda broke his neck..."
Clark saw the look in his girlfriend's eyes; she was giving Pete 'The Chloe Death Stare'. Even he was afraid of that. He smiled weakly at his petite protector. "I shook it off...rubbed some dirt on it."
"We tried to eat lunch in that last clearing one time," Pete explained to Chloe, looking at the path, not at her stare, "but he got sick after he ate some green pea salad. He got awesome distance hurling it...and ... - - "
"Okay, stop!" She scrunched her nose; she saw Clark do many things, but not throw up, and it wasn't on her priority list. She looked up at Clark, "I'm sorry, babe, but that's just icky gross."
"Sorry," her boyfriend mumbled, head swaying on his neck. She saw the disappointed look on his face; he saw her throw-up a few times before, from illness or bad food and didn't act all squicky like she was acting. She smiled at him meekly, said sorry and he winked slowly. "Instead of following the river for miles to get here and me getting really sick," his voice more clearer, louder, "Pete and I take the less direct route through the forest...and I just get moderately sick."
"My poor baby". Chloe smiled, and Clark blushed. Pete rolled his eyes. She asked, "So you guys walk miles and miles for this spot?
"This," Pete splayed out his hands, grinning, "is a hidden spot. Not on any map that Clark and me could find. It's a special place."
"I'm sure it is special," Chloe grinned. The wind whipping through the valley and they decided to first set up their tents before they did anything else. Clark got his pack and Chloe's, too, at her direction, and Pete surprised her by wanting to help her with her tent. She was all for it, since he was acting all mean and distant, and didn't mind when he did all the work. She didn't know that he purposely did a half-ass job of setting up the tent, and his smile wasn't from a job well done, but in anticipation of what might happen to the tent at night time.
Chapter Links
Prologue ~ One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~ Ten ~ Eleven ~ Twelve ~ Thirteen ~ Fourteen ~ Fifteen ~ Sixteen ~ Epilogue
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