Shirts
Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to Warner Brothers and DC Comics.

Clark Kent was having another ordinary day at school.

At least, until he walked into the offices for the school newspaper, the Torch. Chloe, a whirlwind of activity, was rifling through file folders in the file cabinet, yanking pages out of files seemingly at random and stacking them on top of the cabinet.

She waved distractedly at him. "Oh, hi, Clark! Just sit down somewhere – anywhere!"

Clark sat down at Chloe's desk, figuring she wouldn't miss her chair for the moment. "What're you working on?"

"Ha!" exclaimed Chloe. She extracted one last piece of paper from a file in the very back of the drawer, smacked it down on her pile, then slammed the drawer shut, which gave off a rather satisfying-sounding thump as Chloe brought her pile of papers over to her desk, standing opposite Clark. She began flipping through them and belatedly remembered his question.

"Oh, what's this?" She gestured at the papers. "Wall of Weird stuff, really. There might be a connection among all these little things I never really looked at before, but it started when a kid accidentally ate a really small piece of meteor rock and then when he tripped and fell inside his house, his yell actually shattered the windows." She held up a piece of paper. "The Inquisitor ran the story about a year ago, but nobody actually believed it."

Clark smiled. "That is, until my favorite reporter friend found something."

Chloe snorted good-naturedly and leaned across the desk to thump his shoulder. "I'm your only reporter friend, Clark."

Now, Clark hadn't had much reason to think Chloe's outfits might flatter her appearance any, but that day was warm, and she'd undone a couple of buttons on her T-shirt.

And after thumping his shoulder, she happened to lean over to peer closely at a piece of paper in the pile, and her shirt front fell a bit.

It was as if his eyes were programmed to home in exactly at the spot where her shirt opened, and he could see right...

Down.

Her.

Shirt.

His throat went dry, and he could feel the heat rush to his cheeks as he tried not to think about his best friend's gorgeous-looking breasts—

"Hey! Clark?!" Chloe was snapping her fingers in front of his face.

"Huh? Wha?" Clark licked his lips, coughed unconvincingly, and shifted in his chair. "Sorry, Chloe, what'd you say?" He hoped his voice didn't rasp as much as he thought it had.

Chloe had a faint smile on her face as she put one hand on her hip and pointed at him with her free hand. "Clark, d'you remember how I kissed you back in eighth grade and told you that was to get it out of our systems so we could be friends?"

Clark frowned. "Uh, yeah, I do." He could feel the tension slowly evaporating, sure that Chloe hadn't noticed him getting an eyeful earlier. Although come to think of it, she liked wearing those shirts that didn't leave much to the imagination.

"I'm starting to wonder if I was wrong."

Clark's eyes widened in alarm. "Chloe?" he squeaked.

Chloe burst out laughing, covering her mouth to try and muffle the peals of laughter that left her leaning against the desk to keep herself upright.

As her laughs subsided, Chloe reached over to pat Clark's arm. "Clark! If you could've seen yourself!"

"I don't understand. Can you just explain?" Clark spread his hands and looked pleadingly at Chloe.

"Clueless boys," Chloe huffed. She leaned over again and said, "Clark, tell me what you see."

Don't lookdon'tlookdon'tlook—damn it! His eyes had dropped down, again, to that gap her shirt left, and her lips turned up in a smirk. His cheeks burning again, he hastily looked back up at her face. She gave him a saucy wink.

"You're seeing I'm a girl, for once?"

Clark fiddled with the strap on his backpack. His heart was beating so fast he was sure Chloe could hear it, even without super-hearing. He tried to lick his lips, and futilely swallowed, hoping he could come up with something brilliant to say in the next few seconds…

"I guess I do," he admitted, for lack of any better answer.

"Well, that's good, because otherwise I'd wonder what you were looking down my shirt for," she stated.

"Look, I'm sorry about that," Clark babbled.

"Oh, hush. If I was offended, Clark, believe me, you'd know," Chloe replied as she moved to shut the door to the office. "Now how about we stop wasting time and you show me if you've learned anything about kissing in the last couple of years?"

Without further ado, she plopped herself in Clark's lap, and Clark shortly after thought it was a good thing Chloe liked wearing those tight shirts all the time.

Author Notes: I've started watching Smallville recently, and I'm at the end of the first season. I think Clark and Chloe would go well together, so here's my sort of vaguely AUish ficlet for that. :) (And honestly, who hasn't noticed Chloe wears rather tight shirts?)