09/23/10
I really struggled with this one...
CxB Week
That's the Spirit Thursday: School or haunted theme; artist's choice!
Just a Little Bit Longer
It was a tradition that every Halloween, after trick or treating, Clark would go into Querl's room and they would set up a fort on his bed. They tied the corners of the sheets to the bedpost and drape other sheets over the sides. One year they tried propping up the center more with a baseball bat but it kept falling over and hitting them so they boys were forced to be content with lying on the bed facing each other.
Though Brainy didn't understand most human traditions, he had to admit he rather enjoyed this one. After the fort was set up they would turn off all the lights except for Clark's old night light that he gave to Querl when he first came to live at the Kent farm. The night light, a porcelain teddy bear that plugged into the wall and had a switch along the cord that controlled its brightness, sat by their pillows and they pretended it was a camp fire.
The part that followed was not Querl's favorite part of the evening. For long into the night Clark would tell what he called "ghost stories", ones that almost always occurred somewhere in Smallville, sometimes right on the Kent farm.
Now Querl didn't believe in ghosts, it was a scientific impossibility, but he learned that first Halloween, when his skepticism left him for a moment, a brief moment, that if he shivered Clark would put his arm around him. Once this happened the stories were simply stories and he didn't have to worry about anything; not about hiding his true appearance from their school or the rest of the town, not about the parts for his time pod that didn't exist yet, nothing other then listening the sound of Clark's voice.
As midnight would come closer he would rest his head against Clark's chest and wish Halloween would last just a little bit longer.