Written for the Smallville Sunken Ships Prompt Exchange
Username of the requester: futurescribbler
The prompt: Home Economics assignment.
Clark supersped into the kitchen of the farmhouse and was immediately blinded and coughing by the great waves of smoke filling the room.
"Mom?" he asked worriedly, waving an arm before his face to clear the air.
"No, Clark. Sorry, It's me," came Chloe's reply. He saw her materialize out of the smoke carrying...something on a tray. "I needed to work on my midterm assignment for Home Ec and your mom said I use the kitchen here since it is way better stocked than the one at my apartment with Dad." He saw her grimace as the black lump on the pan was tossed on top of the stove. "Unfortunately, even with Martha Kent's kitchen at my disposal, I still don't think this is going to earn me even a passing grade." She looked disconsolately at the burned whatever-it-was on the tray as the smoke waves rolling from it slowly dissipated.
Clark looked at the lump closely, trying to figure out what it was supposed to be. Eventually he gave up when not even his X-ray vision could penetrate the lump of char. "Uh, Chloe...what is it?"
Still looking glum she replied, "Your mom's apple pie recipe."
Clark blinked, looking at Chloe, then the lump. Then Chloe. Then the lump. "Uh, how could that thing possibly be my mom's recipe for apple pie?" He moved closer to it and saw a strange shard of...apple(?) rising from the edge of the pie. Knitting his brows in confusion, he asked, "Is that apple...blue?"
Chloe shrugged. "Well, yeah. I thought I'd take your mom's recipe and spice it up a bit. I thought it would be fun if instead of just apple colored, it was actually blue inside. And maybe the crust could be spicy-like. Any it sure needed a lot of sugar, but I thought it might be tastier to use maple syrup instead. And...," she looked at the lump before finishing, "And maybe I shouldn't have tried to mess with perfection."
Clark nodded sagely in agreement. His mom's apple pie was the best in the state. Not even the chefs at Luthor mansion could do better. They had given up years ago and just bought them straight from Martha Kent.
Chloe looked up at him again and Clark was shocked to see tears brimming in her eyes. "The problem is Clark that I need to turn in this pie to Mr. Fisher by the end of the day for my final grade. He's been great letting me work around what I needed to do to get the last issue of The Torch out before the break, but he was very clear on this. Pie is due today by 3 o'clock or it is a zero. My GPA would plummet if I fail this assignment." She wiped the tears away. "How could I possibly get a zero in Home Ec? It's ridiculous!"
Clark pulled her into one of his great, warm hugs. "It's ok, Chloe. I'll help you. Do you have enough supplies to make another pie? If we hurry, we can do another."
He felt her take a shuddering breath against him. He ignored the feel of her breasts rising and falling against him as she did so. She was a friend in need, he shouldn't be thinking how nice her breasts felt.
"Yeah. I have enough for another pie." Then she pulled back and gave him a mock-stern look, which was slightly ruined by her wet lashes and flushed face. "But I have to do all the major work myself. This is my project, and Mr. Fisher has been wonderful. I won't cheat."
Clark grinned down at her. "Agreed." She looked down at the "pie" that had finally stopped smoking and Clark followed her gaze. "Do you think Shelby might want it?" Clark asked dubiously.
That startled a laugh out of Chloe. "No. It don't think it is fit for either human or canine consumption. I fear it is destined for the trash. Or maybe we should bury it. Might be safer that way."
Clark smiled at her as he reluctantly released her from the hug. "Ok, I'll take care of it. You pull out exactly what the recipe says." He glared at her gently. "Without any creative changes."
Chloe laughed again and made a little cross-my-heart gesture. "I promise."
Careful to use potholders on the still-hot pan - even though he didn't need them - Clark picked up the pan with the black lump of "pie" and raced out the door.
He took the lump three counties away and buried it under and old shed where it would hopefully never be found. Except maybe by future archeologists who might confuse it with a sacrifice to some strange apple god.
Then he raced back to the farmhouse kitchen. He came through the door just as Chloe put out the last ingredients. All traces of tears gone, Chloe looked like her normal happy and bright self as she turned to him. "Alright, Clark, we are good to go. Apples, butter, sugar, spices...and no blue food coloring." She smiled happily, always willing to laugh at herself. "So why don't you get started chopping these apples into slices and I'll grease a new pan?"
"Sure," he smiled in reply taking up the basket of farm-fresh apples.
It was a challenge for Clark to work on the pie at mortal speed. He often helped his mom in the kitchen, but he could do so at superspeed without thinking. With Chloe, he had to be more careful. As it was, he knew he had chopped the apples maybe just slightly too fast if Chloe's exclamation of "You're done already?" was any clue. After that, he purposely tried to do tasks that couldn't be done at superspeed like cracking eggs and separating the yolks. After all, for this, scrambled eggs would be useless.
But it was nice, working together with Chloe in the cozy kitchen of the farmhouse. Especially after Clark subtly sucked out all the lingering smoke and blew it out through the open screen door. The air slowly started to fill with the good, homey smells that he was used to while in here with his mom. The apples were fresh and crisp, while the sugar and spices added their own notes to the air. As he looked over at Chloe, he had to smile. She was wearing one of his mom's aprons and she had a smear of cinnamon across one cheek. Domestic Chloe was a strange sight. And utterly adorable.
As he watched, she finished glazing the top of the pie crust with egg white for shine. Turning, she placed the basting brush and bowl of extra egg white in the sink, before returning back to his mom's recipe card where it rested on the countertop. Cocking one leg out, she leaned forward over the counter, reading his mom's delicate handwriting for the thousandth time.
Clark found himself staring at Chloe's backside as it stuck out at him. He snug jeans slid down slightly in the pose revealing a tantalizing scrap of very red, very lacy, very tiny thong panty along with an exquisite inch of bare skin only partly hidden by the bow of the apron strings.
His best friend was hot!
He found he couldn't look away. That is until Chloe straightened up and turned around. Suddenly he found himself staring awkwardly at the cheerful floral print of his mom's apron demurely covering her front.
"Uh...Clark? You ok?," she asked. Clark's eyes shot up to find hers. She still had the smear of cinnamon on her cheek.
He very suddenly had to fight the urge not to go lick it off her.
Clark felt his face flooding with hot blood at being caught staring at Chloe's rear end then wanting to lick her. "Yeah, yeah..." he stammered awkwardly. "I was jut trying to remember if there was anything else to do before putting the pie in the oven."
Chloe looked almost...disappointed. Wait...could she be OK with him ogling her? No way. They were just friends. That had been clear for two years now. In fact, with Pete gone, she was his very best friend. That was the only way he should think about her.
She was basically Pete.
Except Pete didn't have an ass like that or wear very red, very lacy, very tiny thong panties. Or if he did, Clark really didn't want to know.
"Oh, ok then," she said. "Well, unless you recall otherwise, I think it is time for this bad boy to go into the oven." She picked up the ready-to-bake pie. "Clark, can you open the oven, please?"
Still feeling slightly awkward due to an unexpected tightening in the fit of his jeans, Clark moved over to the oven and opened the door for Chloe to slide in the pie. It had come out quite well, though it wasn't quite as perfect-looking as the ones his mom made. The crust was slightly off on one side and the filling wasn't exactly even, but he thought it would still get Chloe a good grade. From what Chloe had said, the main grading element would be the taste.
Closing the oven door, Chloe pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and started tapping away. "I need to run home and get some things really quick, but I'm going to set a timer on my phone for 30 minutes to come back and check on it." She looked up from the phone and smiled at Clark. "Though you'd call and let me know if it was turning into a coal again before that, right?"
Clark smiled back genuinely. "Right."
It was actually good Chloe was going to leave for a bit. There was one final step in the baking process of his mom's famed apple pies that wasn't listed on the recipe card. He could take care of that before Chloe returned.
"I'll call you if anything starts to go amiss in the baking, " he assured her.
Like any small town, Smallville thrived on gossip and speculation on everything - from which underclassmen would move into Varsity sports next year to how much Old Man Jeffers had exaggerated the size of the catfish that lived in Crater Lake.
But one of the most popular topics of discussion was what Martha Kent did to her pies to make them so damn good.
Some claimed it was a shaving of fresh exotic vanilla beans that she ordered secretly from Madagascar. Others thought it was the hand-picked fresh apples she purchased from the Dresher Farm. Others thought it was a tablespoon of molasses added to the sugar at a critical point in the mixing.
Some even claimed she sprinkled the top with meteor rock ground into a fine powder to make it "out of this world."
Weirdly, the last guess was actually the closest to the truth.
The secret was heat-vision.
In the last few minutes of baking, Clark would blast the pies with a concentrated burst of his heat vision which would superheat the pie into a explosion of flavor.
But of course, he couldn't do that with Chloe looking on. So he would have to time the Heat Vision Flavor Boost carefully.
The timer he had set on his end went off and Clark made his way back to the kitchen. He had set the alarm very carefully. He couldn't hit the pie with his heat vision too early or it wouldn't cook evenly. But he also had to have enough of a time window to do it before Chloe got back. Opening the oven door and seeing the nearly-done pie inside, Clark smiled to himself. He had timed it perfectly. He took a deep breath as he readied his heat vision. Unlike most of his powers, his heat vision was directly connected to his hormones. He usually had to think of something that got his blood up to trigger it - anger worked, but he was a teen-aged male. So he usually though of sex instead.
Usually it was imagined sex with Lana that he used as a trigger, but instead his mind drifted to Chloe and how she had looked bending over. Then he thought about wanting to lick the cinnamon from her face afterwards. He had hugged Chloe a thousand times, and sometimes when he had wrapped his arms around her, he would touch bare skin.
Chloe had the softest skin. And lips too. He knew that from their few stolen kisses.
His eyes lit up and fire shot from them at the unassuming pie.
Clark carefully and slowly raked his gaze across the pie's top, giving the crust an even treatment, first up, then back down. He was on the second pass when he heard an angry exclamation from behind him.
"Clark! What are you doing! Don't just stand there with the oven open! It still has to finish cooking for another 10 minutes at least!," came Chloe's angry voice.
Clark had been so intent on keeping his gaze moving slowly and evenly that he hadn't paid any attention to his surroundings. Chloe wasn't due back for another few minutes yet, but it appeared she had returned early. Unfortunately, her cry startled Clark and his burning gaze raking over the pie's top in a jagged, searing swipe.
"Oh no..." Clark breathed, seeing the damage done to the pie's crust.
Coming up behind him, Chloe echoed his words. "Oh no!" she cried.
"How is this possible!?" Chloe moaned. "I was even early! It should have been perfect! And how the hell did it even happen like that?!" She gestured at the bizarre shape of the burn on the pie's top.
"Uneven heating? The oven is old..." Clark offered.
They both looked down at the pie's top. It was a perfect gold brown except for the jagged swipe of burned crust across the top.
"It's too late to make another and that looks awful. What do I tell Mr. Fisher?"
Looking at the shape, Clark recalled a project he had made for wood shop last year. "I have an idea..." He opened a drawer and pulled out a sharp knife and carefully began cutting away the parts of the crust that were burned.
Chloe watched him worriedly for a moment before her face cleared, then brightened. "Oh I get it!" She put out her hand and Clark understood she was asking for the knife. He placed the handle into her grasp carefully. Their fingers touched just the slightest amount and Clark swore he felt a spark at the light contact. If Chloe felt it too, she didn't show it. She used the knife to carefully cut into the crust, clearing away the burned parts of the crust and refining the shape. After a few moments, Chloe put the knife down and carefully surveyed her handiwork. The top of the pie's crust was now decorated with a cut out of a stylized 'S'. The effect was actually quite decorative as the apples in their gooey filling were visible through the shape.
"For Smallville, " she smiled at Clark widely.
"For Smallville," Clark agreed.
"But now for the true test, " Chloe declared. Chloe turned back to the pie and using one colorfully painted finger, she very carefully swiped at some of the warm-but-no-longer-scalding filling that was oozing up through the cuts in the pie. Then she popped the finger coated with the sweet sticky stuff into her mouth and sucked, closing her eyes in enjoyment. "Mmmmm..." she hummed in pleasure.
Clark couldn't look away at the unexpectedly hot sight of Chloe sucking on her sweetened finger with her eyes closed in something akin to orgasmic bliss. He found his jeans no longer as comfortable as he continued to watch her.
Finally, her eyes opened and Chloe caught her staring at him, but this time it was her that blushed in embarrassment. "Uh, yeah, so it's really good." Turning quickly back to the pie, she again used her finger to swipe at some of the gooey filling oozing along the sides of the S-shaped outline in the crust. Once her finger was satisfactorily coated in the sweet goo, she turned back to Clark. "You try, " she said offering the sticky finger.
"That's ok, Chloe, I've had..." Clark started to say, but as soon as his lips opened, Chloe stuffed her finger inside his mouth.
The flavors exploded on his tongue and he found his own eyes closing as he concentrated. Apples, cinnamon, sugar, a hint of lemon - a riot of sweet and tart overlaid on a new and exciting flavor. It took him a moment to figure out the last was the taste of Chloe's skin and suddenly he couldn't get enough. His hands reached up to grip hers, keeping her from pulling it away from his mouth. Using his nimble tongue he carefully wiped her delicate finger clean of pie filling. He heard he breathing quicken, but she didn't try to pull away. He heard her groan in pleasure and sigh his name.
He'd never heard her say his name like that. Never dreamed he would want to, but now he found he did. And Chloe's skin...had it always tasted this good?
"Clark!" Chloe's voice said with sharp alarm, breaking the spell. His eyes flashed open and he suddenly felt very foolish. Then he saw the panic in her eyes and his awkwardness was forgotten as he saw her distress.
"What?" he asked sharply, responding to her panic.
"It's almost 3! I have to get out of here now to make it to school in time to turn this in!" Chloe cried, pulling away and grabbing up her discarded purse.
"Right." Clark agreed, turning to pull out one of the pie carriers his mother used from a cabinet. They packaged up the pie, and Chloe was out the door.
Then she came rushing back in.
Clark blinked in bafflement as she tore back towards him. "What's wrong? Did you forget...?" he started to ask, but to his surprise Chloe planted a fast kiss on his lips.
Her lips were soft and tasted of the tart and spice of the pie.
Then as quickly as it started, it was over.
Pulling away quickly, Chloe said only, "Thanks, Clark!, " then raced back out the door.
Clark could only stare at the door in wonder, his lips feeling slightly tingly from the brief contact.
Later that evening Clark was hanging out in the barn's loft when he heard Chloe's car pull up. He knew the sound of her car's engine as well as he knew the sound of the family trucks.
His heart started racing and he found himself feeling oddly nervous. He'd had hours to think about it and couldn't figure out what had happened today. He wasn't sure what it was about today, maybe it was just the right time, but he had seen Chloe differently today. He had finally started looking at her as not just his friend, not even as an available alternative to Lana, but someone...more.
He heard her footsteps below. "Clark? You out here?," she called.
"Yeah, Chloe. Up here."
A moment later she appeared, carrying a saran-wrapped plate and two forks. She smiled and made a show of holding the plate and silverware. "I come bearing a gift."
He smiled in response. "That wasn't necessary."
She shrugged slightly before moving around to where he sat on the couch. "I think it was. You were a life-saver today."
Clark moved over on the couch to give her room, before shrugging his own reply. "I didn't really do much. You did all the big work."
"Ok, fine, then. I claim all credit for this Grade-A masterpiece." She grinned at him as she set the plate down.
Clark grinned in response. "Really? You got an A?"
Chloe nodded happily as she started stripping the saran wrap from the generous pie slice. As the plastic came off, they both sniffed appreciatively as the scent of the apples and spice drifted up. She must have warmed it up before coming out to the barn. Handing Clark a fork, and loading up her own, they both took a bite of the pie.
An expression of bliss crossed Chloe's features again as her eyes closed while she savored the pie. Clark couldn't figure out what it was about that look, but it was a serious turn-on. He'd never seen such a look on her until today, but he liked it.
The bite finally gone, Chloe opened her eyes again. "Clark, I saw the recipe. I made this pie myself. There is absolutely nothing special about the recipe or ingredients of this pie...and yet..." For just a moment the blissed-out expression returned as she rolled her eyes, before looking back at him normally again. "Is there something about your kitchen? The oven? I mean it did cook the top all weird. Is that the secret?"
Using the fork to claim another bite of pie, Clark said innocently, "I have no idea what you are talking about, Chloe."
Chloe let out an annoyed breath. "Fine. Keep the secret. What is it with your family and secrets anyway?"
Clark smiled at her mild annoyance.
Waving her fork at him threateningly, Chloe declared, "I'll uncover your secrets eventually, you know."
Feeling a little nervous, Clark asked, "The pie related ones?"
"Of course! Those are the only ones that really matter," Chloe said with finality, her eyes twinkling.
Taking another forkful of pie, Clark took a deep breath, then decided to go for it. "Chloe, would you like to have dinner with me?"
Chloe loaded her own fork with pie, not looking at him. "Yeah, sure, I guess as long as it is ok with your folks." Then she looked at him, smiling. "Though now I'm afraid I might have spoiled our appetites with this."
Clark shook his head, then words followed in a rush. "No Chloe, that's not what I mean. I mean, well, of course you can stay for dinner if you want, but I meant do you want to have dinner with me? Just me, I mean."
Chloe just blinked at him in surprise, the forkful of pie she held forgotten momentarily. Then, very slowly, she lowered the fork and the uneaten bite back to the plate. "Clark, just so I'm clear...are you asking me out on a date? Like a date-date?"
Clark felt himself flushing. "Yeah, I am." Then he rushed on again, "We can go anywhere you'd like...or I can cook! I'm actually a pretty good cook, you know."
Chloe's shocked expression melted into a soft smile. Then it turned radiant with that heart stopping grin that showed all her teeth and lit up her eyes. "I know, and if you want, I can make dessert!"
Clark grinned back. "It's a deal."
Still smiling at each other, they finished off the last of the pie together.
- THE END -
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