The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross ~Chapter Fifteen~
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 Fourteen
http://the-satyr-icon.livejournal.com/130308.html
~The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross~
~CHAPTER FIFTEEN~
"Of course I KNOW, Clark!" Pete's voice rumbled inside the hole, reverberating again the walls. "How could I not? You're MY best friend!" Above them Clark's knees buckled at his friend's declaration. In the pit, Chloe's legs wobbled, too, but she tried to look calm while her friend rubbed his aching throat. Pete shot her a look, too. "And I know that you know his secret, too."
"What?" Chloe piped up; she made a promise to Clark to keep the fact that he was special, and she meant it. She gave Pete her best 'I-have-no-idea-what-you're-talking-about-face', but, by the serious look on his face, she was failing miserably. "I'm not hiding anything!"
"Oh God Chloe!" Pete laughed bitterly. "You're awesome at exposing cover-ups...but you suck at being sneaky! How many times did you almost spill his secret today?" She dipped her head as she stepped away from him, silently guilty. He looked back up. "Now get your butt down here, Clark!"
"Chloe's right...you hurt your head...you're delirious," Clark said, "I..."
He hesitated; it was so hard to continue to lie to his best friend. Years of carefully constructed tactics, years of fibbing and misleading everyone by Clark (and his mother and father), were emotionally draining on super-powered young man. He relished that he no longer had to lie to Chloe; after she moved from Metropolis to Smallville in the eighth grade, he did hide the truth from her, afraid she'd write a newspaper article for the local paper about him, exposing him. When she learned of his powers, his abilities, and their other-worldly origins, she took it all in stride, ecstatic that he had them, just as she was pleased to be his girlfriend. Clark wanted to tell the truth to Pete but he was so used to hiding the truth. "I..."
"Clark." Pete's voice was no longer frantic or loud. He spoke almost calmly, as much as his hurt throat let had him. He looked up expectantly, like he knew, despite the wind whipping above him making a howling sound, that Clark could hear his voice. "I know your secret....I know that..."
"That I'm a 'meteor freak', Pete?" Clark yelled down; he hated that term, one that Chloe had used to describe the people that were affected by the odd green rocks, fragmented pieces of the meteors that struck the town in 1989, rocks that were Clark's weakness. Just the thought of his best friend saying it made him mad.
"You're not," Pete said, his face glistening in the rain, looking up at his friend holding a lantern. He swallowed and took a breath. "You're...from another planet."
Clark stood up. He knew that he could say that Pete was crazy, that he'd be right back, leave them both in the muddy fissure, run back to the camp in seconds, get some rope, run back, waste time, pretending that it took him minutes to go and come back and use the rope to get Pete and Chloe out of the hole. His life was ruled by that subterfuge, that deception.
He could do that. Or...
Clark jumped into the pit.
"Look, up there in the sky!" Chloe gasped and pointed at Clark, his body outlined in the glow of the the lantern in Clark's hand as he dropped into the hole. Like she always had, she couldn't keep her eyes off of him.
And as for Pete, while he stood by Chloe, he watched Clark silently, thinking back to that day when they were ten years old, playing basketball, and how it seemed like being up in the air like a plane was second nature to Clark. There was nothing out of control of Clark's free fall. He had the grace of a bird, even though he was deathly afraid of heights. Pete's eyes, like Chloe's, followed Clark as he dropped down to them. Then, Clark landed, not in a heap like Pete and Chloe, but feet first, barely flexing his knees at impact. The ground was soft and wet and he splattered mud on their pants.
"So...I was right," Pete said. He looked away and took a step away from his friend of eleven years, someone as close to him as a member of his own family. So many times he wondered, and now he knew he truth. He spun around. "I was right..."
"You...guessed?" Clark's voice quavered.
"No!" Pete yelled with a ferocity that Chloe bit her lip and she slide behind Clark, scared. He was almost a foot shorter, but Pete stood right up to Clark, and poked him in the chest. "I knew! I knew that you were gifted, man! I knew for freakin' YEARS, CLARK!" His arms flailed, spit spewed from his mouth, he was so wound up. "YEARS!" He wiped his eyes, angry tears welling up. Then he stopped and turned away from Clark, and Chloe. His voice was barely audible, but Clark winced when he heard Pete's words. "You are my best friend, Clark. But you didn't tell me."
With his back turned on his friends, Pete continued, louder, for Chloe's ears. "Do you know why when we were kids we weren't allowed to play in your storm cellar, Clark? Hell...even now we're not allowed to go down there..." He knew why, but let Pete talk. "Remember that one time, me, you, Lana and some other kids...we played 'Hide and Go Seek.' God, we were five or six years old." Pete smiled at the memory. "It was Lana's turn to be "It", and everyone ran all crazily around your farm to find a good spot. We split up, and I thought I found a great spot. The storm cellar door wasn't locked that day, and I went down there. It was dark. I felt for a switch and a light bulb flicked on and I saw...it."
"Saw what?" Chloe's voice, full of curiosity. She stepped around and stood by a silent Clark, who was absorbing his friend's tale, knowing the answer. The rain and cold didn't matter now.
"A spaceship," Pete said simply. Clark reached and held Chloe's hand. Before she she could interrupt again. Pete said, "There it was, a big, gleaming silver...spaceship, just like I'd seen on television or in my comics. I walked around it, in total awe. I touched it - - " Pete reached out in the dark, imagining his fingers against the spaceship's hull. "- - and it was real. The metal was so smooth, and so cold." He shivered at the memory. "It looked like a huge bullet with fins."
He turned and looked at Clark. "Then... your dad came down there. I jumped when he called out my name. I thought I was so busted. But, you would have been proud Chloe," He added, looking at her, "I said to Mr. Kent straight out, 'this is why Clark can do the stuff he can do, huh?' straight out." Pete grinned, both at his childhood brashness and at his reporter friend; Chloe smiled back, envious that he asked a question that she never could. Looking now at Clark, Pete continued, "Even then, I couldn't have helped but notice that you were gifted, man. You did stuff that no little kid could do. I said that to your dad, too. And you know what your dad told me?" He thought back, how Jonathan Kent reached out and held his shoulder, looking intensely into his eyes. "He said the words that changed my life. Six little words, Bro. Six words that I took as serious as if my momma or dad said them to me. Your dad said this to me: 'let's keep Clark's secret a secret'..."
Those six simple words hung in the air between Pete and Clark.
"All these years you knew," Clark whispered, wondering why his parents didn't tell him, wondering why his best friend didn't let on with what he knew about him. Then he looked at Pete, realizing why keeping the secret was so important. "You're not freaked out...that I'm not from this planet? That I am not even a human being?"
"I can't believe you even asked that, Bro!" Pete's face was full of shock and disgust. "If I was freaked out...if I didn't think that you were something other than my best friend...do you think I'd lie for you all these years? I wanted to protect you, Clark!" His face twisted with emotion. "Not because you were from outer space, but because we are best friends!' The pit fell silent again. Then the secret-keeper spoke. "All these years, I kept that promise...to your dad, your mom...to you." He wiped his eyes again. "Years of playing dumb and making excuses for you..."
Clark was sad, watching his friend cry was difficult. He'd seen Pete weep plenty of times when they were younger; tears spilling over broken toys or from getting hurt, caused by scraped knees and basic childhood accidents, things that never happened to Clark.
"Did you think your parents were the only ones good at making up reasons why you could do what you could do?" He stepped up to Clark again, and Chloe moved behind her boyfriend once more. "So many lies. I had to cover up why you were able to push that kid through a wooden DOOR back in first grade...cover up why you never break out in a sweat in P.E. class...other personal things about you..." He shook his head thinking of just what he had say when Clark did something that seemed extra-ordinary. "I always had to explain that MAYBE you could run faster, throw farther or was that much smarter than all of us in class!" He sighed, getting a headache from the releasing of pent-up emotions, throat hurting from talking so much. "Now you're stopping all those 'meteor freaks' that pop up here in town, more work for me to cover-up." But he had more to say, the most important words to him.
"All I ever wanted...was for you to tell me the truth yourself, Bro. I wanted you to tell me the reason why you could do what you do...And what do you decide? You tell ...her."
"Hey!" Chloe didn't like the way Pete was pointing at her. She glared at him, and flicked some mud at him with her boot. Chloe gave him satisfied when she heard the thick wet splat against his pant leg. "Meanie!"
"Stop it, you two!" Clark said, in a deeper voice than Pete or Chloe heard him use with them. They froze; Pete stopped pointing, putting down his hand and Chloe put her boot down after shaking off the mud. He pushed them apart. He looked at Pete. "I didn't just tell Chloe. I tried to keep my heritage a secret. She found out the hard way." She nodded as Clark started to tell Pete just how Chloe found out about his true alien origin, about his super powers and amazing abilities.
Pete listened to his friend, already hearing Chloe's side of the story, that Clark fixed the flat fire when they went on a date after she got her license. Boring stuff. Then Clark said that, when the tire hit a rut, the car flipped, and that he caught it in mid-air, using his super-speed to jump out of the vehicle. "Wait a second." Pete said and Clark stopped talking. "You caught her Lincoln?" Clark and Chloe nodded. "Whoa."
"Petey," Chloe's voice was gentle. "I don't think Clark wanted me to know before you. It just happened that way. I do know that he was going to tell you on this camping trip."
"We went camping plenty of times," Pete laughed. "And you've known me since forever. You had plenty of time for you to share with me."
"Dude..It wasn't like I wanted to keep things from you...but I have no idea whats going on with me." Clark started to explain. "It's not like zits or growth spurts or anything...human. I'm AM different." Then he added, in a hushed tone as reached out to his friend's shoulder, much like his earth father did years ago, "You're more than just a secret-keeper, more than just my best friend, Pete." The young men looked at each other, Chloe now wiping her eyes at her boyfriend's words. "My mom and dad said when I came to this planet the day of the meteor shower, they didn't find me. I found them. I found you, too, Pete." As Pete and Chloe had tears streaming down their faces, Clark finished, "Pete...you're the brother that I found. You always have been...you always will be."
"You're my brother too, man," Pete said, grinning. "We're blood brothers, remember?"
"GROUP HUG!"
Clark and Pete looked at Chloe, who was smiling despite the tears. She grabbed both of them and hugged them tightly, and the boys did the same to her. All the ill feelings that Pete had against Clark, and also for Chloe were gone, and Clark appreciated Pete's friendship even more, feeling the full weight of burden that his friend had on his shoulders. They held each other, until Chloe whimpered, "I'm being smushed."
"Bro, I have to know," Pete wondered while he stepped away from Clark and Chloe. He rubbed his throat. "If you can lift a car...just how strong strong are you?"
"He's more powerful than a locomotion," Chloe swooned. The boys looked at her and she grinned, rubbing the knot on her head from the fall.
"I could lift Daisy when I was twelve," Clark explained. Daisy was the name that his father gave their red John Deere 1946 Model B tractor, a trusty hunk of steel that was a trademark on their farm; while they could probably buy a more modern machine, Jonathan Kent loved riding on Daisy, and Clark did as well. Whenever Daisy broke down, they never thought of getting rid of her, but painstakingly repaired her. "I guess I'm stronger now."
"Punk!" Pete laughed, followed by a groan. "You pretended to struggle when you lifted weights with me! How fast are you?"
"Faster than a speeding bullet," Chloe blurted out. The guys just looked at her. She frowned and leaned against Clark. "I think I have another concussion."
"Mom clocked me at about 120 miles per hour once..." If they could see him clearly, Pete and Chloe could see that Clark was blushing. "I might be faster nowadays."
"Damn, man," Pete said, voice wavering. "And all this time time I thought you were a slow poke. I know now that you got some major hops."
"Prolly able to leap a tall building in a single bound!" Chloe definitely had some type of low grade concussion.
"What else," Pete wondered, wiping the rain from his face; the weather started to be a bother again now that the confrontation was over. Clark told him about his heat vision and shook his head when he was asked if he could fly.
"He's a great kisser," Chloe gushed.
"Chloe!" Clark looked over at his girlfriend and she smiled a bit too big and toothy for him; maybe she was concussed worse than usual.
"Too much info there, Chloe," Pete groaned, rubbing his throat again. Clark explained that he was allergic to meteor rocks, and Pete guessed at that years before, making sure they weren't around Clark when they played outside or when they went on the camping trips. The rain seemed to be picking up, and the wind howled into the pit. "We should get out of here back to the camp." Clark and Chloe nodded, and she told Pete that all their gear was packed to go home. But before Clark could do anything to get them out of the hole, Pete asked another question. "So...Smallville's hero is really disguised as Clark Kent, mild mannered farm boy?"
"No, I am still just Clark Kent, your mild mannered homeboy..."
Then the earth gave away again; one of the walls crumbled. Pete and Chloe instinctively hid behind Clark's back, peeking around his arm and to the teens' shock, there was a passage that glowed an eerie yellow. Then the light started to flicker slowly.
"We could leave," Pete mumbled, holding Clark's jacket sleeve. The night already had too much action for him, none of which included cheerleader Felice Chandler. He gave his taller friend a sideways glance; having Clark finally confide in him was worth missing out getting to second base with Felice again.
"I vote we go and come back when it's not raining and cold and I'm not suffering from both a concussion and cramps and have something to take notes with," Chloe chimed in, holding Clark's other sleeve. Her ears were buzzing, another sign she suffered a concussion, but she desperately wanted to investigate just what the heck happened, wanted to run in there.
"Do you two hear a hum?" Clark rubbed his ears; it was a high-pitched tone that was both annoying to him and oddly comforting, too, like he heard it before. Pete shook his head, but Chloe was relieved that she wasn't the only one hearing that noise. "I...I have to go check what's in there, guys...It's like the noise is calling to me..." He took a step forward, and the two hiding behind him followed him into the breach, Pete warily, Chloe happily.
Chapter Links
Prologue ~ One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~ Ten ~ Eleven ~ Twelve ~ Thirteen ~ Fourteen ~ Fifteen ~ Sixteen ~ Epilogue
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