Author's Notes: I do not own the characters. This is one of the early ideas I had that I've fleshed out more recently. It was just my way of acknowledging Pete's existence in one of my stories, in a way that fits the somewhat limited character development the writers had given him.
FROM SLAM DUNKS TO DUNK TANKS.
"Thanks for the ride."
Clark climbed out of the Mustang convertible as it was put in park. Now changed into his usual shirt and jeans combo, he hadn't managed to keep the grin off his face ever since clambering out of the dunk tank at school. He had made his way to the shower rooms to get changed, feeling a sense of ease that he couldn't recall ever feeling before. At least not recently. There was something liberating about actually getting dunked. It didn't involve his secret and it didn't involve meteor freaks. No, for those few seconds between the seat giving way to when he re-emerged from beneath the water, he felt normal. Just like any other high school kid. The trading of taunts before that ball hit its target also felt like a breath of fresh air. He would need more time to put his finger on exactly what it was, but it made him feel comfortable in his own skin, and like he wasn't carrying the weight of the world on his broad shoulders.
"Don't mention it, Smallville. It's the least I could do after that easy shot. Seriously, it was harder to miss," bragged Lois, earning an eye roll from Clark.
Lois had been grinning equally goofily ever since taking part in the dunking. She was used to taking on guys who thought that as a girl, she didn't have what it takes, so seeing Clark sitting there scoffing as football after football went wayward didn't bother her in the least. In truth, she was kind of surprised herself that she had actually managed to land the ball at the third attempt so her display of elation was partly based on that surprise. The bigger surprise for her was how easy and natural it felt to saunter over to Clark to rub in her victory in the manner that she did. It wasn't a wisecrack or snarky comment which would be her usual way of dealing with such things, but rather that she just had to ruffle his hair and beam at him for getting his comeuppance. Seeing Clark smile back equally happily only stretched her smile wider. Later that night, she would reflect on her day and realise that moment as being very flirty in nature - she ruffling his hair, him splashing her back - but right now it was all about savouring the victory. The moment had left her with a sense of happiness that she had not felt for a very long time. Who knew pep rallies could be so much fun?
"It was a lucky shot," insisted Clark.
Clark wanted to keep up with the taunting, knowing that Lois would never be able to bite her tongue. In the short time he'd known her, he'd learned that she talked an awful lot, and liked to have the last word in everything. It was also fun to watch her tie herself in knots as she applied 'Lois Logic' to any situation.
Lois narrowed her eyes. She could tell from his demeanour that he was still trying to egg her on. She wasn't sure exactly what it was, but his personality seemed to do a complete 180 whenever he was speaking to her. Whereas normally he would be brooding and oh-so-small-town polite, his interactions with her brought about a semblance of self-assurance and more than a little cockiness. He would meet sarcasm with sarcasm, argue and stand his ground.
"Believe me Smallville, there was nothing lucky about that shot."
"Yeah right!" Clark grinned. "It was a total fluke and you know it."
Lois climbed out of her car, jogging round to walk in step with Clark up to the house.
"Nuh uh, Smallville. You're just embarrassed about having got dunked by a girl," she said, patting him on the shoulder twice before carrying on up to the house at a brisk pace, not turning around to see Clark shaking his head.
It didn't hurt that Clark presented a captivating image for any girl with a pulse, what with his piercing blue eyes, megawatt smile and the well-toned muscle being revealed beneath the soaking wet t-shirt clinging to him. She had to give him that - the farmboy certainly had his appeal. That she knew in fairly vivid detail what was under the t-shirt was something for her own memory to treasure. Nevertheless, it was true: he had been dunked by a girl.
Lois dashed upstairs once they'd entered the house. Clark knew his dad would be out in the field but normally his mom was at home preparing dinner when he got back from school. She'd left a note on the kitchen counter to say she'd popped out to run an errand. Clark put his bag down and headed over to the fridge for a nice refreshing drink, hearing the bathroom door close upstairs.
"There goes the hot water," he grumbled to himself, shaking his head and taking a swig of chilled lemonade. Lois was obviously a two-showers-a-day sort of person.
The phone trilled loudly. Clark went over to answer it and was totally surprised by who was calling.
"Hello?"
"Hey hey hey man, what's up!" It was Pete!
"Pete!" Clark lit up. "Hey, how have you been?"
"Aw, things are good here, man. Senior year, hangin' with the big dogs, you know how it is. The Boss is making his mark, I can tell you that!"
Clark was delighted to hear from his long-time friend. It had been so long since they'd last spoken and so many things had happened in that time. Just hearing Pete's voice made him reminisce about the hundreds of one-on-one games out in the yard, shooting hoops until it got dark. Those days belonged to a more innocent time and brought home that they were both getting older.
"You need to come back to Smallville when you can, Pete. There are so many people that miss you," said Clark.
"Or you need to zip over to Wichita, Clark. It's another world from Smallville. Not as big as Metropolis but still plenty to see. We could hang out, you could meet my friends, and I know my mom and my brothers would be psyched to see you too."
They spent the next few minutes chatting about the previous year, recalling amusing anecdotes from when they were kids, and general friendly chit-chat. Then Pete mentioned that he'd spoken to Chloe before ringing Clark.
"Honestly Clark, I had no idea anything had happened to Chloe. I read a story about it in the local paper and I didn't know what to say or do. I tried calling you a couple of times but no-one was in. Plus I had a summer job working for a mechanic who was showing me the ropes on tuning. He worked me hard and I guess it kept my mind off everything that was going on," Pete explained apologetically. "I'm sorry I didn't speak to you sooner."
"That's OK," Clark replied. "I wasn't around much myself. Jor-el saw to that. I was gone for almost 3 months and when I returned, I wasn't exactly myself. It was only a few days after returning that it sunk in what had happened to Chloe."
"She filled me in on how you found her once you realised she was alive. If anyone could, I knew it would be you."
Clark chose to lighten the tone once more by regaling Pete on an eventful first week of senior year. They talked about Abigail Fine and her mom. Pete couldn't recall anything about Abigail other than the name 'Scabby Abbie' going round the halls. He couldn't put a face to the name. He was even more surprised when Clark told him about just how drastic her plastic surgery had been - transforming Abigail from ugly duckling to beautiful swan in the space of one summer. He was not at all surprised to learn that meteor rock was somehow involved. All the crazy happenings in Smallville had their roots in the alien minerals littering the county.
Clark heard the receiver upstairs being picked up and the beep of buttons being pressed as a number was dialled, before a frustrated sigh could be heard on the line. He picked up on Lois muttering about the lack of call waiting in this small farming town.
"Lois, I'm on the phone," Clark called out.
"Right. I need to ring the General from the house so he knows I've not skipped town."
Before she could say any more, Pete piped up. "Wait, Lois as in Chloe's cousin?"
"The one and only!" she answered over the phone flippantly, making Clark sag his head and groan. "Who is this?"
"Pete Ross. I'm friends with Clark and your cousin," said Pete proudly.
"So you're the Pete she mentions all the time."
"The one and only!" replied Pete, echoing Lois' earlier words, and pleased that Chloe was talking about him fondly. He had missed her just as much as he had Clark.
Clark cleared his throat noisily to indicate his growing irritation with Lois for not hanging up. "Well now that you two have been introduced, I'd like to get back to my conversation if you don't mind."
"So Chloe tells me you're staying in Smallville?" queried Pete, ignoring Clark's request.
"Yeah, I kinda have to. I didn't finish my senior year so I need to get the credits before I can leave this cowpoke town. The General insisted on the tough love approach."
Clark sighed resignedly. Lois could talk for days, and Pete wasn't averse to chatting away for hours on end either. It was almost as if he weren't there.
"The General?"
"My dad," explained Lois. "He's the one who enrolled me at Smallville High. Thanks to him, I get to experience the joys of calculus and the wonders of American classical literature. Who knew Poe could be such a riot!"
Pete noted the sarcasm. Lois sounded exactly as Chloe had described her. Blunt, opinionated, headstrong, and a lot of fun.
"So you're staying with the Kents until then?"
"Yeah. Smallville offered and I said yes."
"I'm sorry. Smallville?" asked a confused Pete. Lois obviously had a way of referring to people by anything other than their given name that he wasn't familiar with.
"Oh that's my little pet name for my favourite flannel-decked farmboy. Suits his 'yes Ma, yes Pa' Boy Scout charm to a tee."
Clark was sure that Lois was grinning smugly at that. He was equally sure that Pete was amused. He really wanted to talk to Pete but it seemed as though, as with everything else around him, Lois had hijacked her way in and taken over. He needed to retort with something snappy that would hopefully make Pete cut in and Lois butt out.
"Your favourite farmboy, huh? Just how many farmboys do you know, Lois?"
That hushed Lois up and made Pete step in, just as Clark had wanted. However, Pete was now completely interested in how Lois was fitting in. He had been listening to their little exchange and saw that Lois had a gift for riling Clark up. That fact alone made her different to just about everybody he'd come across.
"Now hold on. If you're staying at the farm, where do you sleep? I know the Kents don't have a spare room. Usually when I stayed over, we would bunk in the barn or camp out in the fields."
"I sleep in Clark's bed."
Lois' mouth had blabbed out the words before her brain had had the chance to filter them.
"Really? Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" exclaimed Pete. He didn't know it but Clark and Lois were both blushing beet red right now.
If Clark and Pete had been having this conversation face to face, Clark was sure his buddy would be patting him on the back. He rubbed his hand over his face, willing for a change of subject. No, scratch that. He desperately needed Lois to get off the phone now.
"Uh...I-I mean I sleep in his room, and he sleeps on the couch," Lois clarified, suddenly wishing she hadn't picked up the phone. She needed to steer the conversation away from what she was certain Pete's mind was thinking right now. Me and the farmboy together? As if!
"OK then," Pete laughed. When speaking to Chloe, she'd filled him in on what had happened to her, and when mentioning Lois she had talked about how Lois had tried to track down Clark after seeing the video Chloe had left him. "So you came to investigate what happened to Chloe, and ended up being enrolled at school to gain your missing credits. I can dig that."
"Yeah, I came to Smallville looking for Clark to see if he could shed any light on the explosion at the safe house. He was worse than useless though. I found him on a stormy night, suffering from amnesia and butt naked in the middle of a cornfield. Hell of an introduction!"
Pete practically coughed down the phone, incredulous. Chloe hadn't mentioned this story. Maybe she didn't know it.
"Lois!" Clark whined, aghast. It was a hugely embarrassing moment for him to be completely out of it and on display to a total stranger, and yet here she was blurting that unwanted tale to his good friend. Nobody needed to know about that night.
Lois carried on nattering like she was talking to an old friend. "So like the kind and caring person I am, I took him to the hospital but before he was seen by a doctor, his mom spotted him wandering the corridors. I left him with her. It was only after they'd left that I found out he was the guy Chloe was talking about. I tracked down his mom here at the farm."
"Wow!" Having been filled in on most of what had happened over the last few months, Pete knew that Clark's mom had been keeping a vigil by her husband's bedside as he recovered from a serious heart attack. With Mr Kent's condition and Clark being AWOL for so long, it was clearly a very difficult time for Mrs Kent.
"And since then, Lois has decided that I'm not entitled to any privacy. The last time I had a hot shower, you walked in on me in the bathroom," Clark announced, addressing Lois as she was still in the conversation.
"I needed the mirror!" Lois responded defensively.
"You were wearing my shirt and nothing else!" an exasperated Clark retorted. He hadn't meant to reveal that little detail but Lois knew how to grind his gears.
They both stood quietly holding the receivers as they heard Pete in hysterics. Once he'd gathered himself, he summed up the state of play.
"Now let me get this straight. Some girl old enough to be a college freshman finds you butt naked in the middle of a field, takes you to hospital, you let her stay at your house, you let her sleep in your bed, she can walk in when you're in the bathroom, she uses up all the hot water and she wears your clothes?"
"Yeah," both Clark and Lois nervously uttered in unison. It was a pretty accurate summation and a real eye-opener as to their behaviour around one another.
"Man, things sure have changed in Lowell County," Pete chuckled.
Clark sighed loudly once more. He was close to tearing his hair out.
"Lois, you can have the phone once I've finished talking with Pete. Until then, it would be great if you would just hang up." He hoped it came across as authoritative.
"Fine!" she grumbled, before perking up to finish speaking with Pete. "Pete, it was nice talking to you."
"Oh, the pleasure was all mine, señorita!" Pete replied as suavely as he could. Both Clark and Lois rolled their eyes and shook their head - Clark because it was another example of Pete believing he was a ladies' man and Lois because she was used to guys throwing corny dialogue her way.
Once Clark noted the upstairs receiver being replaced and heard Lois going into his room, he turned his attention back to his friend.
"Pete, what're you doing?"
"Oh come on man, you need to loosen up just a little bit. Lois can't be that bad, right?"
"She's worse than that. She never listens to me and she's bossy, rude and irritating," Clark complained, getting so agitated that he didn't hear the bleep from the phone as Lois eavesdropped on the conversation once more.
"Be that as it may Clark, you gotta level with me here. Is she hot?" Pete enquired.
Lois quietly put the receiver to her ear to find out what Clark's reply might be. She wasn't sure why she was so interested in his opinion, except for her insatiable curiosity. Like his opinion matters anyhow!
"She's uh...she's...she's..." Clark stuttered, unsure of what to say. The question had left him flustered. It would have done anyway as he always became shy when challenged this way, but after the pep rally dunking he'd felt very conflicted. He found himself actually liking her on some level, deep deep deep down.
"I knew it! You didn't deny it so don't try to say she's not."
"Pete!" Clark admonished his friend. "Did you not hear me before when I said she's bossy and rude?"
"Clark, those are things to do with her personality, and you've only known her for what, a couple of weeks? Once you get to know her, I bet that changes."
"Huh!" Clark scoffed. Lois raised her eyebrows and stared open-mouthed at the receiver.
"You wanna know what I think? I think she's doing you a favour by leaving you with cold showers," suggested Pete.
Both Clark and Lois were now staring at the receiver in their hands. Here was Pete - a guy that had known Clark since they were kids - suggesting that Lois - a girl Pete had spoken to over the phone for only a matter of minutes - was blatantly flirting with him, and that he was obviously receptive despite what he might claim.
"But I'm asking you, if you laid eyes on her and didn't know her, would you think she's hot?" Pete asked again.
Clark realised he'd been backed into a corner. He wavered. "She's alright I guess."
"You guess?" prompted Pete.
He sighed yet again. "OK. She is pretty. While it's like she lives to torment me and not give me a moment's peace, she does have a great smile and she's alright to talk to when she leaves the military brat at the door. If nothing else, things are never dull with her around."
The words had more than a grain of truth to them, and it was something Lois picked up in his voice that told her he was being genuine. Part of her now felt guilty for bulldozing her way through every facet of his life but on the flip side, it was too easy and way too much fun to push his buttons. She was getting to know him in a way that wouldn't normally be possible with his being such a closed book. That he could point out what he saw as flaws yet still find some good points with her said a lot about his character. No matter what, he always tried to find the good in people.
Clark was somebody who looked out for the people he knew. Once he felt that Chloe was still alive - for reasons unbeknownst to Lois - he had investigated into what might have happened, figured out where Chloe might be being held, and then figured out where she'd been taken to. He had found her in the nick of time, just like he'd saved Lois in the nick of time from being horribly disfigured at the plastic surgery clinic when Dr Fine went rogue. Lois was learning that Clark would always be there when it really mattered. Provided he hasn't taken one on the noggin and forgotten who he was of course!
"Whatever man," Pete's voice broke her out of her thoughts. "Look, you maybe don't wanna hear this but you need to get past Lana and move on. Sometimes, moving on is what it takes to figure out what you want and who you wanna be."
"Yes, oh wise one," Clark countered. "It sounds like someone's actually been doing some reading in Wichita!"
That drew a laugh from Pete, making Clark grin widely once again before Clark clarified the Lana situation. This aroused Lois' curiosity even more though she was at a loss to explain why.
"Pete, Lana and I were over a long time ago. She went to Paris for a few months before coming back. We're just friends now."
"So no more following her around like a lovesick puppy?" Pete asked. Lois raised a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggle as she didn't want to get caught listening in. Pete however had called Clark's Lana obsession exactly how Lois herself saw it. They might be friends but Clark could not hide his feelings of longing whenever Lana's name was mentioned, and that longing was only amplified whenever he saw Lana. They might have broken up but Lois could tell that Clark had never really let go of Lana. He would struggle to give any other girl the time of day as long as he continued to cling onto the forlorn hope of ever getting Lana back.
"Hey I didn't do that!" Clark retorted, getting defensive.
"Yeah right!" muttered Pete under his breath. Lois echoed that thought in her mind.
"Look man, it sounds like you have a lot to figure out. Now I have to get going, but it was great to catch up with you and Chloe. We'll talk again soon, alright. Plus I really wanna meet Lois and see if she's as hot as you think she is!"
"Pete!" Clark drew out the name as a warning to cut it out before smiling. "I'm really glad you called too. We'll catch up soon, I promise."
"Yeah. Say hi to your folks for me, Clark, and tell them my mom sends her regards."
"I will. Take care, Pete, and say hi to your family from us too."
"Will do. Peace out!" said Pete.
Clark said goodbye and replaced the receiver on the wall. It had been a good day, all things considered.
Barely a minute later, his father walked into the kitchen to get a drink and inform Clark that he was heading over to Ben's briefly. Clark told him that he'd just got off the phone with Pete.
"Oh!" exclaimed Jonathan. "How is Pete? It's been a while since we've heard from him."
Clark filled his father in on their brief chat before Jonathan headed over to Ben's. A few minutes later, Lois came back downstairs.
"Hey Lois, the phone's free if you wanna ring your dad."
"Thanks," answered Lois, walking over to the phone and lifting the receiver.
As Clark opened the fridge to find something to eat, Lois spoke once more.
"You do too, you know."
"What?" he replied, glancing back over. He had no idea what she was talking about.
Lois began dialling as she explained. "Have a great smile I mean."
Clark's jaw dropped. Lois had heard him compliment her to Pete over the phone after thinking she'd already put the receiver down. She'd heard everything! As glad as he was that he and Pete hadn't discussed anything regarding his secret, he was still both embarrassed and extremely annoyed that Lois had eavesdropped on their conversation. She really had no concept of boundaries.
"You...!" he started to complain, only to be shushed by Lois as she began talking to her father when he answered. She ignored the daggers being aimed her way. She had marked her target, gone for it and hit it dead-on, coming away smiling. Much like at the dunk tank.
FIN.