The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross ~Chapter Eight~
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 Seven
http://the-satyr-icon.livejournal.com/78878.html
~The Bittersweet Ballad of Pete Ross~
~CHAPTER EIGHT~
The romantic glee that Chloe felt about Clark's super-romantic gesture to her was, unfortunately,short-lived. The happy blonde and the boys made their way deeper into the forest, going over fallen trees, following landmarks that kept them on track towards the campsite. Twice Pete slipped away and came back, looking relieved. Now, between tree trunks and saplings, around sparse thickets of bushes, she felt her bladder ache. She tried to go a few more yards, but couldn't anymore. "Umm...guys," Chloe said, dropping back, stopping and rubbing the insides of her thighs together, "I need to use the bathroom."
"We're in a forest, Chloe. There's no bathrooms here," Clark turned, tried not to smile at what he thought was a witty remark, especially when he saw her frown. He wondered when the city girl needed to use the woodland facilities. She looked around nervously, and even though she had meandered through the woods with the boys for a couple of hours, she finally saw the trees for the forest, and the trees weren't packed together as they were maybe a few hundred yards back. There wasn't much coverage, not for what she needed to do urgently.
"You're not going back, are you?" Pete asked, seeing the grimace on her face. He slid off his backpack, and wondered, with all the stops they were making, if they'd make the campsite by dusk.
"And get my butt lost?" Chloe was annoyed with Pete's lack of sympathy. "Besides...I need to go... now now now!"
Pete pointed, his finger aimed at some vague spot in the woods. "Just pop a squat over there."
Chloe looked at him, eyes wide. "You're kidding."
"Or...um - -," Clark sheepishly started to say while he set down his backpack. He looked at his now squirming girlfriend. He wished he could pick her up gently run her back to his house with his otherworldly speed. He saw the look on her face and he could tell she was thinking the same thing. "- - You could stick your butt out and do what you need to do..."
"Oh man...you're not kidding," Chloe said sadly, and the boys nodded to her. "Okay...I've been in worse situations than this. I can do it." She shrugged off her backpack, dug into her knapsack, took out the fat roll of Charmin toilet paper and quickly scampered between the trees, trying to find thick tree trunk to hide behind, or some bushes, anything to conceal her body parts and what she need to do badly. Chloe zigzagged through the foliage, or lack there of, and whispered, "I know you can hear me. Don't you dare sneak any peeks at me, Clark Kent. I know you are looking at my butt. My buns feel hot. Stop. You can do that later, though. It feels good on my back."
Usually, she didn't mind the warmth of Clark's heat vision on her, but the warm feeling wasn't helping her now with her achy bladder. Finally, unable to go on any further, unable to find a place suitable to hide, and not wanting to wander too far away, Chloe stopped looking and decided that being behind the tree she was standing near was good enough for her needs. She wrapped the flailing flannel around her waist, unbuttoned her pants, slipped them down with her undies, and tried to go about her business. But the rocks and the uneven ground weren't helping her; she squatted, wobbled, and settled herself down as best she could by holding onto the bark of the tree and the toilet paper. It was quiet, just the rustle of the leaves, but Chloe still didn't want to make any embarrassing sounds, especially because of Clark's hearing. She waited. And waited. And waited some more.
"Great," Chloe whispered to herself angrily. "My bladder feels like it's going to burst, then when I get my pretty butt exposed to nature...not a single...ahhhh." Chloe's wait was happily over. She closed her eyes and grinned. Hunching forward, she tried not to mess the soles of her boots and when she shifted on her heels, she dropped the toilet paper and saw it roll away from her, snagging on a rock. "Drat!"
Chloe was happy that she was flexible, able to twist this way, and turn that way, curl up and stretch out, but she wasn't on her blue tacky-grip yoga mat, wasn't in the privacy of her bedroom, and she wasn't in her soft, pliableleggings and tee-shirt. No, today was the day Chloe Sullivan decided to reach out with her Doc Marten boots on, and with her pants and undies at her ankles. Instead of grabbing the roll of toilet paper, Chloe lost her balance, overcompensated by rocking back too much and ended up falling into the watery mess. Her pants, panties, legs and butt were suddenly wet and sticky.
"OH NO! OH MY GOD!"
"Chloe!" Clark yelled, a little too loudly for Pete's ears, who rubbed them after the outburst. The super-powered teen took a quick step, but fought the urge to run to her because he quickly scanned the area where her scream came from and he could see the peachy color of her thighs. "What happened?"
Chloe sat, looked over to where the boys were, covered her exposed hip with hand (Clark scolded himself; she said not to look), embarrassed to move anymore. "I fell over! I'm a mess!"
Of course, Pete laughed at that, thinking it was hilarious. "You fell over! CLASSIC!"
"It's not funny, Pete!" Chloe was close to tears. " Shut up!"
"It IS funny," Pete answered back again. He laughed harder at her friend's predicament. Clark felt bad; he wanted to zip to his girlfriend's side, and he wanted to slug Pete for making fun of her. Neither was a viable option.
"No...really...it's not funny...this sucks," Chloe whimpered. She slowly picked herself up, feeling the dirt stick to her bottom and to the backs of her thighs. She felt icky. Then she felt queasy. Now she knew why Clark's heat vision felt so good on her lower back: she learned in the worst way possible that it was her time of the month. After she moved, she could spot all the tale-tell signs on the dirt, her boot-heels, her pant legs, and her undies. She got the toilet paper and cleaned up as best she could under the circumstances. However, the dark leakage continued from her body. She crouched, helpless. A few minutes passed and her legs started to ache.
"Hey, Chloe," Clark yelled out. "You've been out there for a while now...You okay?"
"Not really," she mumbled, knowing his super-hearing could pick it up. Then she yelled it out, for Pete.
"Just pick yourself up and clean yourself off and come on," Pete said and strapped on his backpack. He had a feeling that this situation wouldn't be over for a while.
"I can't!" She couldn't let her boys see her all soiled, especially in this manner. The black jeans did hide some wetness in the dark tint of the material...but she was already feeling gross, and walking around in her condition would make more of a mess...and that would NOT feel good at all.
Pete let out a long annoyed sigh. He thought now they'd make it to camp by midnight. "Why not?"
"I just can't!"
"Chloe," Pete shouted, giving Clark an exasperated look, "we're all friends...so what if you peed on your shoes?"
"I wish that's all I did!"
"Chloe....stuff happens." Clark remembered something to prove that point. "Heck, one time Pete got explosive diarrhea." She chuckled hearing that; she'd laugh harder, but she didn't want to fall over again or move around; her boots were already squishing into the dirt. Besides, it was good to laugh at Pete's misfortune since he laughed at her.
"DUDE!" Pete's eyes went wide, and memories of gripping his lower abdomen and screaming out in terror, wondering if the madness would ever stop, flooded his mind, like he had flooded his pants.
Clark looked at the shocked, shamed expression on his friend's face, and added, "A few years ago, I was so sick I hurled all over the place. Projectile vomit!"
"Ew!" She scrunched her nose at Clark's admission. But she thought of Pete's horror and again giggled.
"So really, Chloe," Clark explained, trying to make her feel better, "you're maintaining a tradition."
"I'll feel better about that fact when I get what I need!" Her buns, among other things, were getting cold.
"What do you need?" Pete hollered out. "Walls and a toilet?"
Chloe bit her lip then spoke. "It's personal!"
"We all have body functions, Chloe..."
"Pete...your my friend," Chloe sighed resignedly, "but it's girlpersonal stuff! " Clark and Pete looked at each other wide-eyed, and the reality of Chloe's predicament hit them; it wasn't just an ordinary, run of the mill bathroom humor, but something more...feminine. They were speechless; what could they say to console her now? Both knew that they certainly couldn't laugh at her now. "I take it by the silence you both understand now!" They both yelled out that they understood.
She started to think what she'd do if she were in her bathroom; she'd take care everything so easily. This time, though, instead of having everything within reach inside the cream-colored walls of her bathroom, what she needed was in what her boys had with them: her backpack, which had her other pants and her other undies. And she brought along, just in case, thank god she thought, some of her winged Stayfree maxi-pads. She looked over at her boys, with a sad frown; she couldn't just walk to the boys, wet and sticky and get her stuff.
Chloe took a big step in her relationship with her boyfriend. "Clark...umm...in my backpack," she began slowly, whispering just for his ears only, "I have some ...pads."
"Hey Chloe," Clark yelled, nervous about what she was going to ask him next, "want your backpack?"
"I can't really move, Clark," Chloe yelled back and sighed. She whispered again. "You'll have to hand them to me."
"Um...You sure you don't want your back pack?" Clark pleaded. He never had to handle feminine products before. He and Chloe never really talked about her time of the month before, either; she would warn him that she wasn't going to be pleasant to be with like usual during the week, not to get mad if her snark was more biting than normal, and to be ready to ply her with coffees and candies and that was that about the matter. Then he heard her whisper out to him...
"Clark..." Her voice was light, worried he'd be a guy and act all squeamish, and not act he was supposed to act, like her...man. "Please, please help me."
"Don't worry, Chloe, I'm doing it, Clark shouted and she smiled. Pete just watched his friend, wondering why Clark was carrying on a one-sided conversion with his girlfriend. Clark turned, saw Pete's look and smiled, and shouted out to Chloe yell louder.
"OK," She answered back, guessing that Pete might be looking at Clark all weird, but whispered to her boyfriend that the pads were in a plastic bag, at the bottom the backpack. "I need pants - - " She whispered again to Clark, " - - and um...undies."
"Oh...okay." Clark unzipped her backpack, rolled his eyes at Pete like it was a pain to do what Chloe asked, reached down to the bottom of the backpack, found the bag and he held it while he felt for her pants. He yanked out a pair of maroon khakis, and he saw her undies, folded neatly. He grabbed the ones on top, a white and blue square. He tried to remove the undies from the bag before Pete could see, but the cotton unfurled and Pete saw what Clark was holding, and the design on the panties.
Chloe heard Pete's loud laugh again. "What? Why are you laughing?"
"It's just that your undies are," Clark said loudly, gazing at the small pieces of fabric, holding the softest material he ever felt on his fingertips, "cute."
Her mind skimmed through which ones she brought and cringed. One of the three extra pairs she packed wasn't a normal brief, but a tiny bikini. It was also a novelty style, with her favorite cartoon character silk-screened on them, "Underdog". Right on the front panel of fabric was the anthropomorphic hero, a faint-yellow beagle flexing his muscles in a droopy blue cape and a baggy red costume with a "U" on the chest. On the back of the undies, on the right side, was a large "U". Ever since she was a little kid, Chloe loved the "Underdog" cartoon, loved that she found Underdog undies, and loved that Clark reminded her of being like "Underdog", so much so that she wanted to go to Lana Lang's Halloween costume party as Underdog's girlfriend, "Sweet Polly Purebred" and have Clark dress up like "Underdog".
Then a thought flashed in her head: maybe he had already seen her in those undies, in her bras...or less. But she knew Clark wouldn't try anything like that; she'd notice if he did, by how much he'd blush or something, and so far, he hadn't looked that way to her. He looked at her with puppy-love eyes, not like a satyr would, desirous and lustful, like she looked at him. Right now though, her pretty undies were in his hands, and she knew what he was doing. "Stop ogling at my undies!"
"We're not!" Clark quickly bunched up the undies in his fist, and clutched her pants, with the bag of pads hidden in the folds. He set down the backpack, and looked over to her again, but not using any powers to actually see her.
"Speak for yourself, Clark! Stop being a perv!" Pete said, and laughed some more. He was having some fun; sure it was at Chloe's expense, but now his mood darkened again. His laughter died he realized that Clark was the first one between them to have in their hands the undies of the girl they were dating.
"Quit Joking!" Chloe shouted, her legs shaking, aching from crouching. She held onto the tree, but the bark was falling off from her fingers gripping the surface so hard. "Don't make this harder than it is!"
"Okay," Clark said, and walked out in her direction, into the trees. "Here I come with your stuff."
"I know you can follow My voice - - " She yelled, but her voice dropped to a whisper as she started to untie her boots; she'd had to take off her pants, and underwear, and put the clean ones on. She continued, "but you have to close your eyes...or look away when I say so, alright?...My butt isn't covered up well."
"Okay!" Clark could find Chloe without using his vision powers, not using his telescopic sight, the infra-red vision that he was developing or his ability to look through objects; now, ever since the carnival, he seemed to be attuned to her presence, sometimes strong by closeness or faint by separation, but attuned: now he was guided by his ears, listening to the quickening beat of her heart, the fast shallow breaths rushing in and out of her lungs, and he was led by his nose, able to pick out her scent, breathing in the unusual sweetness of her skin, separating from other smells that surrounded her. He just had to relax, and there were the familiar sounds and scents. He walked towards her, eyes closed like she asked but sooner than she wanted, guided by whispers, heartbeats, and sweet scents. He didn't misstep or walk into anything.
"Keep your eyes closed! Keep them closed!" Chloe was peeking out from the round, jagged edge of the tree-trunk that she hoped hid her butt, and she desperately didn't want Clark to see her half-naked or any evidence of what she did at the tree. He got closer, and stopped when she said so. "Sorry," she whispered, her voice barely above a sigh. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay, Chloe. Really." A genuine smile appeared on his face, and her frown melted; Clark may have been fifteen, but he was her man. They had been through a lot together lately, near-deaths and last second saves, and they both grew closer during those times. It wasn't a crazed "meteor freak" or an out of town biological-terrorist like Professor Sivana this time, it was the two of them sharing something very intimate, bigger than anything they have shared before, a big step for them as a couple.
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
"Okay, before I do something stupid like jump up and hug you," Chloe smiled, "turn your back so I can get dressed." He did, and she stood, grimaced at the sticky, wet feeling, and stripped off her shoes, undies and pants. She winced when she stepped on a pointy rock; her sox didn't provide the protection her boots offered her feet. Silently, she cleaned up again, and he handed back to her first the baggie at her prompting, then the cute undies. She was a little more relaxed, feeling cleaner; she joked, "You can't see behind your back, right? No eyes back of your head so you scope me out?"
"No," He laughed. "At least they haven't developed yet, darn it."
"Clark!" She squealed and smacked his back playfully; things were back to normal. She arranged the pad in the undies like she needed to, slipped on the undies, followed up with the khakis, zipped and buttoned and leaned on Clark while she put back on her boots. She balled up her dirty clothes and hop-stepped over the wet ground, and stood by Clark. "Not to squick you out even more," Chloe's eyes darted from her boyfriend, "but...things weren't supposed to start for a few more days."
"Oh." He didn't care what Pete or their parents would say or do to him; he leaned in and gave her a kiss on her cold cheek. It wasn't a Midol, or four of her precious 'Clark' chocolate candy bars, but it did help her feel better, even when she saw him noticed the wet marks in the dirt, and shrugged with a smile; she adored him even more. He didn't care about that stuff, he cared for her. He took her hand and they walked out to Pete.
"Sorry," Chloe said again, red-faced, this time to her friend when she saw him. Not only did she share this moment with Clark, she had to share it in a way with Pete. She was worried he was mad, by the way he leaned against tree, arms folded. He wasn't mad at her, he was mad that he was no where as close to the girls that he liked, girls like Felice, Erica, and, even though he never mentioned it, Lana, like Clark was with Chloe.
"It's 'aight." Pete smiled despite the way he felt and surprised her with a quick hug. "Wanna go back? I'd understand if you want to..."
"No." She shook her head. Then she gave both boys a big fake smile. "If I can maintain the 'embarrassing body functions tradition', I can maintain the whole camping trip experience."
"I knew you wouldn't quit," Pete grinned. They walked on and Pete watched them; Chloe walked closer to Clark, leaning on him, and at times, it seemed that he lifted her over logs and carried her on his hip effortlessly when they needed to go up hill. Maybe his eyes were playing with him, Pete wondered, like a few times in the past. With each new step, Pete's sympathy for Chloe faded, and his anger at them, for being teenagers in love, for not hanging out with him, for treating him like a third wheel, a third wheel even on HIS camping trip, had returned.
"I'm getting tired," Chloe admitted, hanging on to Clark's arm. They stopped for some juices or water, and snacked. She wasn't cramping up yet, but the walking with the backpack, and the need for the pad was getting to her. She looked at Clark and let her bottom lip puff out.
"We're almost there," Clark lied. He didn't want to discourage his girlfriend. He smiled at her, sat on a collapsed tree trunk, and she sat on his thigh, explaining to Pete that she could only sit on soft surfaces now. "Just a few more...yards to go."
"Yards?" Pete looked at Clark and Chloe, sitting together, looking at her head forlornly on his shoulder, and tried to hide a smile. "More like a few miles..."
"Bleech." Chloe stuck out her tongue and tummy tightened up with that new information. She leaned on her boyfriend even more. Yup, this was her last camping trip, she decided. "You two go on. And carry me with you!"
Clark looked at his best friend with a glare in his eye as the girl on his thigh sagged and whimpered. "Thanks Pete."
Pete took a drink of his Gatorade, and savored the taste; it was cold, like the revenge he was getting on Clark and Chloe, treating them as badly as they had been treating him.
Chapter Links
Prologue ~ One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~ Ten ~ Eleven ~ Twelve ~ Thirteen ~ Fourteen ~ Fifteen ~ Sixteen ~ Epilogue
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