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~May
Jonathan Kent thought he was going crazy. At first it was just little things: the tools he figured he must have put away last night when he was so tired he didn’t remember it. The tractor with an engine that wouldn’t even turn over yesterday that today purred like a contented kitten. The fenceline that should have been a mess after three months of neglect but was, in fact, in great shape. Little things that saved him so much time during the day, when it was just him struggling with the chores and the repairs and the maintenance, that he didn’t want to question them too closely, just thank the Almighty for the lucky break and go on to the next item on the list.
But then the jobs he found completed for him got bigger. He walked into the barn to discover all the bales of hay already loaded onto the wagon—a job that would have taken him hours to do, and left him with sore muscles to boot. Not the kind of thing one would forget one had done. He drove out to the pasture and found the cows already fed and watered. And when he got back to the house, after sitting in his truck for a long time, just thinking, Martha praised him for weeding her vegetable garden for him. He didn’t deny it--he didn’t want her working so hard, after all, even though the... accident had been almost two months ago and the doctor said she should resume her “normal routine.” Jonathan felt the doctor didn’t understand just what a physically active routine was “normal” for his wife. But he also didn’t want to correct her because he didn’t have a good explanation for what had really happened—not one that wouldn’t raise her hopes unreasonably, anyway.
After the accident, after Clark disappeared, leaving Lana crying, Chloe fuming, and Pete rambling on about the red Kryptonite ring he’d taken with him—not to mention Lex scheming and hinting and investigating in ways that Jonathan didn’t even want to know about—life on the farm had gotten considerably more stressful for the Kents. Not just because Clark was gone, and they loved him and missed him and worried about him, although that was a major part of it—and not just because they were mourning the loss of another child, one most people hadn’t even known they were expecting. There were—practical considerations they had to deal with. Some days the practical left a bitter taste in Jonathan’s mouth, as if it were just plain wrong to worry about shoveling horse manure or tilling a field when his wife was lying in bed crying. But the s—t had to be shoveled anyway—that’s what his father had always said, and in this at least the cold-hearted b‑‑‑‑‑d had been correct.
So Jonathan had cleaned up the remains of the storm cellar, scattered across the field in splinters of wood and shards of glass sticky with peach juice and chunks of concrete, and he’d filled in the impressive hole with dirt and s—t and weeds and any other biological refuse he could find, until his back and his arms ached and the shelter that had once housed the ultimate secret was just a bare patch of ground in the middle of green. And he had fed and watered the stock, baled the hay, repaired the machinery, taken care of the dozens of chores around the farm that normally would have been split between him and Clark—with Clark, he admitted now, getting the larger share, or at least most of the ones that relied more on speed or strength than experience and dexterity.
At first he had dragged himself inside at the end of the day and collapsed on the couch, too tired even to eat the dinner that wasn’t waiting for him. Then there came a few disastrous days when he tried to do Martha’s chores as well, like vacuuming up his mess or—horror of horrors—making dinner. He still wasn’t sure if it was her inborn independent spirit that prompted his wife to venture downstairs for the first time in days, or the sickening acrid smell of chicken burnt beyond recognition. At any rate he didn’t want her doing too much... but even if they had both been in the best of health, and fifteen years younger, he didn’t think they could have run the place on their own. Not when they were used to relying on—
And then Jonathan always thought of the first time Clark had encountered the red Kryptonite and had accused his father of just using him for his abilities, to do the work they otherwise would have paid multiple men to do. Clark could do it, he was part of the family and it was a family farm, and G-d knows Jonathan and Martha worked themselves to the bone for it as well. But they certainly didn’t pay him the same wages they would have given to the four hired hands he replaced. And they weren’t exactly rolling in money even with his help, so they could hardly indulge him in the kinds of clothes and gadgets and other toys his friends had, in addition to their free time. They’d always taught Clark that lying was wrong—except when it was a lie about his abilities or origins. They’d taught him to always help others in need—unless it was going to expose his abilities. They’d taught him to treat his friends fairly, to be straight with them—but not to tell them anything about who he really was, even if the secrets destroyed those friendships. Some days Jonathan just couldn’t tell right from wrong anymore.
Some days he thought it was a wonder Clark hadn’t run until now.
Jonathan knew they would have to do something soon. The medical bills, the repair bills, the feed bills were adding up as they did every month, but the farm just wasn’t producing as much. The creditors had just gotten used to the Kents not being heavily in debt; they weren’t eager to reopen those accounts, no matter how sympathetic they might be to their particular circumstances... which Jonathan had no intention of trotting out anyway. When Martha had mentioned talking to her father again, Jonathan had said nothing. When Lex arrived in his shiny silver Porsche that cost more than their house and offered assistance in a convoluted, serpentine deal meant to make Jonathan feel as though Lex actually owed them something, Jonathan had also said nothing, just shook his head in that resolute manner Lex knew far too well. To his credit the younger man had understood and left without protest. When the bank called the next morning to say their loan had been extended, Jonathan gave in and accepted the aid that was considerably less subtle but put more distance between them and the Luthor heir, and it helped a little.
So it had been two months now, and suddenly Jonathan was discovering that chores he’d been hoping he got to by the end of the summer had been finished overnight. Jobs he would have assigned to Clark, if he’d been there, jobs they would have worked on together. If it was a malevolent spirit, they certainly had an interesting method of haunting a place. Jonathan chose not to guess at malevolence. In fact he chose not to guess at all, but merely took note of what had been done each day, all the time wondering if whoever had done it was watching him right now.
One night he left some baked chicken out on the porch, feeling like the shoemaker setting out elf-sized boots. The next morning he saw that it had been torn to shreds, the bones scattered across the floor, probably by the neighbor’s dogs, and he was left with another chore to do before Martha got up and saw it. That night he left out some homemade cookies in a plastic bag, pinned to the porch rail. The next morning he saw that they hadn’t been touched, and that bothered him more than if they had been mysteriously taken.
Jobs began to be finished during the day as well as at night. Jonathan would head to the pasture to check on the stock—because even though someone else had been consistently feeding and watering them each day, as Clark would have, he always needed to check—and when he came back to the house he’d find that the barn door had been rehung, that the leak in the chicken coop had been patched, or, one day, that Martha’s vegetable garden had been weeded. She professed to be amazed at his energy and warned him not to work too hard, so he couldn’t exactly ask her if she’d happened to glance out the window and actually seen who’d been fixing things.
After a week it hit him that all of Clark’s normal chores were being done, as well, so Jonathan tried to get up early, to be in the barn or the stable or the field where Clark would have been, to catch his invisible assistant, but of course that never worked. He ventured up to the loft at random times, both day and night, to see if anyone had been living there, but there were no signs of any human presence. Of any sentient presence, he should say.
It was strange how quickly he got used to it, though. Sometimes Jonathan would act like Clark had been there, he had done those chores, but his father had just missed him—like all teenagers, he was in a hurry to get done, to go spend time with his friends in town, to take a walk across the fields with Lana. She was such a nice girl, even if there was a little bit of tension, of history, between Jonathan and her aunt. The next time he ran into Clark, he would tell him to invite her over for supper. When he caught himself thinking things like that, was when Jonathan really began to worry about his sanity... He was not a man given to daydreams. He couldn’t afford them.
So when Jonathan walked into the barn one morning and saw Clark standing there, calmly feeding the horses, for a moment he truly thought he had lost his mind. That the hallucinations and the subsequent downward spiral had begun. In a way he was almost relieved, at least in a room with padded walls he’d get a bit of rest—
And then Clark had looked up at him, just for an instant, with those piercing green eyes he got from neither of his parents, and reality had come whooshing back into Jonathan’s chest like a strong wind, and he had to grab the front of a stall to steady himself. “Clark,” he croaked, and he realized he hadn’t said the name aloud in... weeks.
“Hi.” Flat, emotionless, even in that one syllable. Just feeding the horses, another ordinary morning full of routine, boring chores.
Jonathan didn’t know what to say, or rather he didn’t know what to say first. The words came out in a jumble of sounds that made no sense. Clark didn’t look at him derisively, though—in fact he didn’t look at him at all.
“Clark,” he finally managed, “you wanna come inside, have some breakfast?” Hardly profound, but it was a start.
“I haven’t eaten for two months,” the dark-haired boy replied, tossing more hay into a stall. He sounded—not bitter, not angry, just... cool. Distant. “I don’t need to eat. I just need sunlight. Like a plant.”
Like a plant. Or at least, not like a human. Jonathan tried to think of those eyes as alien eyes, those hands stroking the horse’s nose as alien hands, an alien soul in alien skin in made-in-America clothing. For a few moments, a few weeks ago, it had been easy. But right now he only saw his son.
“Then, um, come in and say good morning to your mother,” Jonathan suggested, feeling more confident. There was a chance Clark would run, blur away almost faster than the eye could see, if Jonathan pushed too hard—but if he didn’t push, he wouldn’t believe he was solid and real.
The teenager—just a guess at his age, really—shrugged. “I will when I’m done with my chores.” There was something else in his tone, too, or rather something was lacking—the willingness to please, perhaps. He didn’t smile in reassurance, his eyes didn’t apologize, his words didn’t agree with Jonathan—they merely stated what he planned to do, which would likely occur no matter what Jonathan, or anyone else, had to say about it. It was—autonomy in the most frightening sense, not confidence or maturity or self-possession but rather... unconnectedness with those around him. Jonathan stared at his hands for a long moment, trying to spot the glint of the gold and red ring Pete had been so upset about—but he didn’t see it. So he had no theories for who this person was, and why he occupied the body of his son. But Jonathan figured having Clark’s body back was the first step.
~early June
Lana almost did something theatrical and overdramatic, like dropping the tray of drinks she carried, the first time she saw Clark walk into the Talon after so long. Her mind flashed back to the last time she’d seen him, when he was riding away on that motorcycle, running away from that still-mysterious explosion, his mother’s miscarriage that he somehow felt responsible for, and who knew what other secrets that tormented him. For a moment Lana had finally understood, in an abstract way, why Clark Kent—so mind-numbingly average on the surface, in most respects—could be so unpredictable, so deceptive, so evasive. And then the moment was over, because Lana told herself that this was Clark Kent she was dealing with, the boy she’d known since she was five years old, and maybe he had some secret fixation like unwisely playing with chemistry sets in his storm cellar, but that hardly justified or even explained a lot of his behavior. It certainly didn’t justify or explain his abrupt departure from Smallville.
She had pictured him returning a thousand times, and usually it had been some variation on the scene when Whitney had returned from the Marines. Okay, it hadn’t really been Whitney, it had been Tina Greer, but the point was, Lana had imagined Clark walking into the Talon with an expression on his face that was either sheepish or haunted, depending on her mood, and then time would slow down as she dropped whatever she was holding and ran into his arms, and everyone would understand her operatic sweep of emotions and be awed at the power of their... relationship. It was strictly supposition, of course, but nonetheless she felt it was realistic, since it had in fact happened to her before.
So when Clark started across that tile floor, Lana was prepared to dump the tray of cappuccinos and mochas and hurl herself at him, feel those strong arms around her again—except instead of gazing upon her like she was food to the starving man, he gave her a half smile, nodded a greeting that would have been appropriate had they last seen each other earlier that day instead of three months ago, and sat down at a table. The cappuccinos and mochas were thus spared, although Lana thrust them into the hands of one of the new girls and made her way to Clark immediately.
“Clark,” she stated, not sure how to react.
He looked up at her, green eyes still beautiful, but somehow... looking a little more through her than at her. “Hey, Lana.” He sat back in the chair, faded red t-shirt a little stained with tractor grease, jeans a little ragged from working in them, dark hair a little too long and tangled. She thought she ought to run her hand through it, just casually, to straighten it, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.
“You’re... back.”
“Yes.”
This was the most idiotic conversation ever, Lana decided. Of course he was back. He was sitting right here at a table in her coffee shop. There was no fanfare, no plaintive alternative rock ballad on her personal soundtrack, no omens or portents warning of his arrival. He was just... here. Like he often was. Like he often had been, at least, with the exception of the last three months.
She pulled out a chair and sat down next to him, brown eyes searching his face for any hint of... anything, any clue that he understood how she might have felt after he blithely drove off to Find Himself. The only thing she found was... detachment.
“When did you get back?” Lana finally asked, forcing a little smile onto her face.
“About a month ago,” he told her easily, and despite her unease she couldn’t help but react to that news.
“A month?” she repeated, surprised. She hadn’t heard a word, not even a whispered rumor she wouldn’t allow herself to believe. Immediately she wondered who else knew and hadn’t told her.
“There was a lot of work to do on the farm,” Clark told her, and it wasn’t presented as an excuse so much as... a fact. As how it was, no use being sorry for it. “This is the first time I’ve come into town.”
Lana thought of all the times in the last month she’d passed Mr. or Mrs. Kent on the street or in the grocery store, said hello, exchange pleasantries, without them giving her any hint that Clark had returned. She felt a little bit of anger. Clark was her friend, and before he left they’d become more than friends. Why wouldn’t they want her to know he was back? The Kents kept their secrets close to them, apparently.
The thoughts showed easily on Lana’s face and Clark added with a shrug, “I didn’t want anyone to know I was back.” He smiled just a little, the first trace of genuine, recognizable emotion she’d seen on him since he walked in the door. “Lex claimed he knew I’d been back for weeks.” Clark shook his head, slightly amused. “I already ran into Pete and Chloe on the way over here.”
Lana’s lips tightened into an even thinner line. “I’m the last on the list, huh?” she observed thornily.
Lana swore Clark started to roll his eyes at her comment but stopped himself just in time. “There wasn’t a list, Lana,” he said, and again his tone was so flat it chilled her—he didn’t sound angry or defensive or placating, or any of the other things he should have sounded like, would have sounded like, if he had been the Clark she knew.
It hardly mattered whether or not she believed him on this particular point. Lana was just angry at him—angry at him for bringing them closer only to run away, angry at him for being gone without a word for months, angry at him for coming back and acting like nothing had happened. “I suppose you can’t tell me where you went, or what you did,” she said accusingly.
Clark gazed at her steadily. “I could,” he replied. “But I’m not going to.”
“I can’t accept that, Clark,” Lana told him, trying to sound more reasonable than she felt. “We agreed to be honest with each other—“
“’Honest’ is a dirty word in Smallville,” Clark interrupted, with just a tiny touch of bitterness, and that scared her more than the lack of emotion.
“Clark, what are you talking about?” She had no idea what he meant, but she felt accused. “When have I ever been less than honest with you?”
Clark looked like he had a hundred answers to that question, none of which Lana probably wanted to hear, but instead of saying any of them he pushed his chair back from the table. “Good to see you again, Lana,” he said, and she gaped at him—it was as if he were learning a second language and only had a firm grasp on the basics of conversation, not the more complicated nuances. “There’s still a lot of work to do on the farm. I don’t think I’ll be in town much this summer.”
“Well that will be something new, won’t it,” she replied acidly, and the sarcasm just sounded wrong coming from her.
He tipped his head a little, as if he were examining a bug under a microscope, then shrugged and stood. He took only a couple of steps before Lana felt herself crumble and jumped to her feet. “Clark, wait—“
“Hey—“ Lana had stepped right in front of one of the new servers and her tray full of drinks, which tipped precariously from her palm. Lana started to turn, reach for it, something, when suddenly the tray was straightened and Clark was, somehow, four steps closer than he had been an instant ago. “Thanks,” the dark-haired girl smiled, “I got it.” Both of them gripped the tray to steady it, and Clark was blinking like he was a little confused. After a moment he let go of the tray and stepped back, gave a good-bye nod to Lana, and was gone.
“Who was that?” Alice asked curiously, looking after him.
“Just—“ Lana didn’t know how to answer that, and she found herself furious with Alice for even asking. “Clark,” she spat, like his name was a curse. Alice arched an eyebrow at her questioningly but Lana ignored it, choosing instead to run off to the back room where she could be alone with the crockery and dirty linens for a little while.
~late June
Relieved to see that the light in the Talon was still on, even though it was almost ten o’clock and closing time, Clark parked his truck in front and hefted the carton of pies his mother had baked that day. What with one chore and another—not to mention his rather cool relationship with Lana—he hadn’t been able to deliver them earlier, and frankly he was hoping that she might be too eager to close up and go home to trap him into a conversation.
There were still customers lingering when he pushed through the doors—or rather, three teenagers he vaguely recognized from the football team who were talking and laughing in a corner. Clark passed them unnoticed and went to put his pies in the refrigerator behind the counter. When he finished he pulled out the receipt his mom had written and moved to the register, ready to help himself to the appropriate amount of cash. That was how he and Lana had always done things, if he made a delivery while she was otherwise occupied. And at the moment, her not being in the room meant she was ‘otherwise occupied’ to Clark.
Ah, a problem. It was a new kind of cash register, one with more bells and whistles than the old clunker. Lex had probably sprung for it after having to wait for his change one time too many as someone icepicked the drawer open. Clark started to x-ray it, looking for the catch, when someone came out from the back room.
“Can I help you?” It wasn’t Lana but rather the tall, dark-haired new girl he’d seen around a couple times. Assisted by her thick-heeled boots, they stood almost eye-to-eye.
“Yeah, I just dropped off some pies,” he told her, holding out the receipt. “Is Lana here?”
“I’m closing tonight,” the girl told him, shooing him away from the register and tapping at it. She handed him the cash, tucked the receipt away, and asked with a small smile, “It’s Clark, isn’t it?”
“Um... yeah,” he replied, a bit hesitantly. “Clark Kent.”
“Alice Wilson,” she greeted. She held the smile for a moment longer than was actually necessary, until a thunk and peals of laughter arose from the other side of the room. Alice rolled her eyes, which, Clark noticed, were a rather startling blue. “Excuse me a minute.”
Alice beelined for the three jocks, and Clark found himself admiring the way her black skirt swished across the back of her legs. And the way the ribs in her white tank top curved just so. He leaned back against the counter, deciding that he would wait to see if the three other teenagers gave her any trouble.
“Excuse me,” she began, in a tone that suggested she’d had dealings with them already this evening. “We’re closing now. You have to go.”
“Aw, come on,” the blond one protested. “We’re just starting to have fun.”
“Well you can go have fun somewhere else,” Alice replied firmly.
“But we wanna stay here and have fun,” the beefy one insisted with an obnoxious grin.
Clark straightened up, preparing to intervene. He couldn’t believe Lana had left the girl here alone, not when Lana herself had faced similar belligerent customers at the end of the night. “Well, here’s the way I see it, boys,” Alice told them coolly, crossing her arms over her chest. “You have three options for how you’re going to leave here tonight.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” taunted the dark-haired one.
“A,” Alice began, “you boys pay your bill and walk out of here quietly, under your own power.” They seemed to find this option entertaining. “B, I call the police, and you walk out of here in handcuffs.” This suggestion was met with derision. “Or C”—Alice looked them square in the eyes—“I pick you up and throw you out myself.”
The three teenagers laughed unpleasantly. Even Clark had to admit that antagonizing them was probably not the wisest course of action Alice could have taken. He started walking over just as the blond one stood up—apparently he had the notion of intimidating Alice with his greater height and bulk. Well, he was correct on one of two counts, anyway.
“I don’t think me and my friends are going anywhere,” he replied with a smirk. “So why don’t you join us for some coffee, honey?” He grabbed Alice’s wrists.
“Hey!” interjected Clark quickly.
“Oh, good,” Alice said flatly, not turning towards Clark. “It’s gonna be C.” There was a flurry of movement that Clark didn’t quite follow completely, and an instant later Alice had the blond football player bent facedown over a table, wrists pinned behind his back, the table’s mosaic pattern digging into his face. He yowled in surprise, and Clark’s eyes widened.
But there were two more jocks to worry about it. “Hey, you b---h!” exclaimed the beefy one, surging up from his seat. Clark decided it was okay to superspeed, just a little bit, to keep him from clubbing Alice off his friend with a meaty paw, and in a millisecond he had both him and his dark-haired friend pushed firmly against the wall, a hand not quite at their throats. But almost.
“I forgot to mention D,” Alice commented mockingly. “The tag-team approach.” She turned back to the blond. “Now—what were your plans for the rest of the evening, honey?”
The boy gasped as she squeezed his arm. “Hey! Come on, that’s my passing arm!” he protested.
“It’d better be your bill-paying arm, too,” Alice told him, “because you and your buddies owe eight dollars and fifty cents.”
“Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “My wallet’s in my pocket...”
Alice let his arms loose, but kept him bent over the table, and he scrabbled the billfold out. He tossed a ten dollar bill on the table beside his head. “I’ll be right back with your change, sir,” she replied pleasantly, finally letting him up.
“Keep it,” he assured her quickly, rubbing his wrists as he backed towards the door. “As a tip.”
“Why thank you, sir, that’s very generous,” Alice answered cheerfully. Clark let the other two go and they hurried to join their friend. Alice’s expression turned serious. “I don’t want to see any of you in here again. Is that understood?” Although they didn’t exactly agree, she assumed from the way they tried to retreat manfully that they got what she was saying.
Shaking her head, Alice went back to the register to ring up the sale. “Hey, thanks for the assist, Clark,” she called to him.
Clark was still a little confused about what had just happened. “Um... you’re welcome. Was that like—judo or something?”
Alice smiled a little bit, a kind of secretive smile. “I come from the mean streets of Gotham, you know,” she informed him, locking up the register. “Girl’s gotta know how to defend herself these days.”
“You look like you’ve got it down,” he admitted. They were quiet for a moment while she finished a few last-minute chores. “Would you like a ride home?” Clark offered. “I mean, those guys could be out there still...”
“Well, Clark, I can take care of myself pretty well,” Alice assured him, and he started to back off immediately. Why should she trust him after all, when he was practically a total stranger? “But I’ll take you up on your offer—just so you don’t worry.” She grinned, and Clark found himself smiling in return. For a moment he wondered why the action made his face hurt—then he realized it was because he hadn’t used those particular muscles a lot lately.
A few minutes later he found himself maneuvering just a little to open the truck door for her, but definitely not looking at that flash of pale skin as she climbed in. “Where do you live?” he asked, sliding behind the wheel.
“Broderick Street. Not too far.”
Clark felt like he ought to say something. No—he wanted to say something. But he wasn’t sure what. Fortunately Alice appeared to have overcome that dilemma. “Are you coming to the Talon’s ‘Christmas in July’ party next week?” she asked, her voice a shade on the hopeful side of neutral.
Clark shrugged and stared straight ahead at the road. “I dunno,” he confessed. “There’s a lot of work to do on the farm...”
“That’s too bad. But Lana said you usually weren’t in town much during the summers, so...”
Clark felt a sudden flash of anger. “Why were you talking about me with Lana?” he asked suspiciously.
Alice gave him a look that suggested his reaction was a little out of place. Which he supposed it was. Clark braced himself for a well-deserved chill. “I thought you were cute,” she replied cheekily, and Clark’s head whipped around to stare at her. Alice winked, Clark blushed—and quickly turned back to the road. He wasn’t sure if she was serious or not—but she didn’t appear to be angry. “Turns out,” Alice continued dryly, “asking Lana if you had a girlfriend—not a good idea.”
Clark had to agree with that one. “Yeah,” he sighed. “Lana and I have known each other for... a long time.” And if that wasn’t the lamest relationship summary of the year...
They were quiet for a couple of dark blocks. “So, why organic produce?” Alice suddenly asked out of nowhere.
“Uh, well...” Clark shrugged. “I guess my parents figured they could make more money off it. Niche market, you know.”
Alice chuckled, and Clark decided he liked that sound. “A surprisingly honest answer,” she decided.
Clark’s jaw tightened again, like a slash of red slicing through his mind. “Why wouldn’t I give you an honest answer?” She had been talking to Lana, after all...
If Alice noticed another little bipolar moment, she tactfully ignored it. Strange, she didn’t seem nearly nervous enough for a girl who was riding in a truck, in the dark, with a six-foot-four guy she barely knew who might have some kind of mental disorder. Although she did know judo. Or something. “Not that I know a lot of organic farmers, you know, but all the ones at the hippie grocery stores in Gotham acted like they had some big philosophy about Mother Earth and evil chemicals and technology being bad.”
Oh. “Well, my dad doesn’t use any synthetic pesticides or anything anymore,” Clark explained. “He thinks they’re bad for the environment. And dangerous to work with. But he didn’t actually give them up until my mom proved to him that organic produce could bring in more profit than conventional.”
“Hmmm.” Clark wasn’t sure what that sound meant. “You guys have a booth at the Farmer’s Market?”
“Yeah.”
“You gonna be there tomorrow morning?”
Clark grimaced. He hadn’t been to the Market since—since before he’d left town. Too many people who knew him well enough to recognize him and ask where he’d been, but not well enough to realize he didn’t want to talk about it. “I’ll probably stay at home, get some work done.”
“Too bad.” She’d said that about the Talon’s party, too. It was a funny sort of tone she used, one that made him feel like he was the one missing out on something. Like maybe it would be fun to go, for a little while at least. “My mom is undertaking the Herculean task of trying to teach me how to cook, so... I think we’re going to the Farmer’s Market to score some, I don’t know, vegetables or something.”
“You don’t like vegetables?” Clark asked, letting a little bit of a tease creep into his voice.
“That’s my house up there, with the porch light,” Alice told him, pointing a pale arm past his face. He turned. “I like some vegetables. I like the kind of vegetables that other people prepare for me.” He pulled, regretfully, in the driveway. Alice suddenly leaned closer to him and Clark froze, until he realized she was only trying to see around the car they had stopped behind. “My mom is peering suspiciously out of the window,” she reported with some irritated amusement, and if Clark squinted he could indeed make out a partial, vaguely feminine face half-covered by a curtain. Alice turned to him contemplatively. “Wanna pretend to make out with me and see her freak?”
“I, um...”
“Sorry, sometimes I’m just obnoxious like that,” Alice grinned. Clark was still getting over the fact that he might have said yes. “Besides, she’d probably come running out here with a baseball bat or something.”
“Well, that wouldn’t be good.” Smooth, Clark, very smooth.
“Anyway, I’ll see you later, I guess.” She hopped out of the truck, and Clark hurriedly thought he should have opened her door or walked her up to the porch. “Thanks for the ride!” she called back. “Come by the Talon sometime during the day, okay, Clark?”
“Okay, I’ll do that,” he promised out the open window of the truck, watching her skip lightly up the porch stairs. How she could skip in boots like that he wasn’t sure. He waited until the door had shut behind her before backing out.
“Are you Mr. Kent?” Jonathan turned from unstacking crates with a friendly smile that froze on his face, just for an instant, when he saw the... girl... woman... creature standing in front of their stall. Easily over six feet tall—especially in the, um, combat boots?—she was also wearing a black miniskirt with an unnecessary number of zippers and a sleeveless top that appeared to have been cut from a French maid’s uniform. A French maid who liked not only white eyelet but also black laces. He wasn’t even going to think about the thick, studded leather bracelets around each wrist. Although they did match the collar around her throat nicely.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered breezily. “What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for something I can take home and eat with little to no preparation. Is Clark here?”
Jonathan blinked at the—rapid change in subjects. Yes, that’s what it was. The girl smiled sweetly and he thought she looked mostly normal, if a little pale, from the collar up. He was about to answer when a large object appeared beside him to blot out the sunlight. “Alice!” Clark said, with more enthusiasm than Jonathan had heard from him in several weeks. Which wasn’t much, granted, but still...
He set the crates he was carrying down a bit too easily, but Alice didn’t seem to notice. “Hey, Clark,” she greeted cheerfully. Somehow Jonathan didn’t expect ‘cheerful’ from someone who dressed in all black—and combat boots—at the height of summer. “I told you last night I’d stop by for something to nibble on.”
Alice’s smile didn’t waver, and neither did Clark’s, although his eyebrows crept up fractionally and he risked a glance at his father, who rolled his eyes and went to the other end of the table to help a customer. Teenagers.
“So... what exactly are you looking for?” Clark ventured, surveying the produce he’d been unloading. “We do have a lot to choose from...”
“Hmmm,” Alice answered thoughtfully, moving closer to Clark so she could see from his point of view. “I have a feeling you’re more experienced in this area than I am, so I’m willing to kneel before your greater knowledge.”
Clark was sure the saying was ‘bow before your greater knowledge,’ but... whatever. He wondered if combat boots were hot. To wear, that is. “Maybe if you could give me some... guidelines about what you like, I could suggest a few things.”
“Well,” Alice decided, “I guess it goes without saying that everything here is fresh and clean and wholesome...”
Clark laughed suddenly. “Well, we do wash everything off, but don’t forget, ‘organic fertilizer’ is pretty much cows—t.”
“Clark Kent!” his mother chastised, bagging up some bread nearby. “We’ll have no more dirty talk here.”
Clark’s jaw dropped, but Martha smiled pleasantly at the woman who had bought the bread and didn’t give him a second glance. He slowly turned back to Alice, who was smirking now. And he knew he was blushing. Maybe he could blame it on too much sun?
“So come on, Clark, show me what you got,” Alice suggested, raising her eyebrow.
She raised the other one when Clark reached into a random crate and held a piece of produce out to her. “Well, these are really nice—“
Alice stared. Clark stared. After a very long moment of staring, the two of them dared to meet each other’s eyes over the record-setting zucchini Clark hefted between them. Alice’s lips twitched. “Let’s slow down a little here, Clark,” she suggested, admirably straight-faced. “I’m kinda new at this whole vegetable thing.”
“Right,” he agreed quickly, replacing the zucchini. He was never going to be able to eat them again, he just knew it. “Zucchinis are kind of... overwhelming.” He looked over the table. “Um... How about spinach?” Right, spinach. There was no way anyone could make a sexual innuendo out of spinach. “You just peel the layers off and eat it raw.” Whoops! Guess they could.
“Convinced me,” Alice assured him. “I’ll take—a head? Is that what they’re called? Anyway, as long as I can coat it in oil I’ll be fine.” Clark turned away to put the spinach in a bag. It took a little bit longer than usual for him to turn back. “How about tomatoes? I think I could handle tomatoes.”
“We have the best tomatoes,” Clark enthused, certain they were finally off the vegetables-as-sex track. Not that it had been bad, but... “Especially this time of year. Red, ripe, firm, and when you bite into them the juice goes everywhere.” Guess he spoke prematurely. Too soon, that is.
“Sounds delicious,” Alice answered, holding out the bag as Clark added a few tomatoes. “I think I’ve got the makings of a really nice salad here. Salad’s easy, right? Nice and cool on a hot summer night.”
“Yeah.” Speaking of hot... Clark decided maybe he shouldn’t have worn his old jeans into town. They were kind of ragged from work, and apparently a size or two too small.
“So what else can I put in my salad, Clark?” Alice persisted.
“Um...” Clark’s mind searched its depths of vegetable knowledge. It didn’t have to go too deep. “Mushrooms.”
There was a silence. “Mushrooms,” Alice repeated dully. Mushrooms were officially the most unsexy vegetable in existence, Clark determined. “No.” She shook her head, dark curls flying.
“Okay, mushrooms were a bad idea,” Clark admitted. “How about... carrots?” He picked up a handful and dangled them in front of her.
Alice examined them skeptically. “I guess one could say carrots are kind of a starter vegetable,” she conceded slowly. “To help you work your way up to the zucchini.”
Regrettably Alice pulled some cash out of her pocket, signaling to Clark that it was not only time to add up her purchases, but also time for her to leave. He decided he would definitely make it to the ‘Christmas in July’ party, if only for a little while. “It feels kind of weird just paying for this on a street corner,” Alice admitted, causing Clark to lose count of the change he was digging from the lockbox. “I mean, usually I go to commercial establishments.”
“Well, once you get a taste of homegrown Kent, you’ll never want anything else.” And, oh my G-d, did he just say that out loud? From the look on Alice’s face, yes, he did.
“I hope you’ll be able to count me as a loyal customer in the near future,” she smiled at him. “I guess I better go now, though. Let you service your other customers.”
Clark found himself reluctant to see her go. “Um, hey, Alice—“ he began, searching wildly for an excuse. His eyes fell on the buckets he’d lugged from the back of the truck earlier in the day. “We don’t just have vegetables at Kent Farms, we also have flowers, too.”
“Oh, gladiolas!” She actually seemed excited to see them and Clark hoisted a bucket of water onto the table, almost forgetting to make it look heavy. Alice trailed slender, pale fingers over the delicate petals crowded onto tall stalks. “They’re beautiful,” she breathed, then sighed and shook her head. “But unfortunately, my money today is allocated only for edible items.”
“Wait a minute.” Clark suddenly felt a little bit brilliant. “Last week, I was at the Talon, and I rushed out, kind of—mysteriously.” Fire-spitting meteor mutant terrorizing workers at an outlying smelting plant. “I didn’t have time to leave you a tip.”
“Oh, you don’t have to—“
Clark scrutinized the available blooms. Choosing the right color was of obvious importance. Brilliant yellow streaked with orange and red for Chloe. Pale pink for Lana, of course. Deep purple tinged with black for Lex. Pete—well, Pete could care less about flowers, but his mom would like the elegant white ones. But for Alice... “Here.” He handed her a stalk of dark scarlet blooms, their hearts like black velvet. “For excellent service.” He smiled, suddenly worried that he’d ruined a nice moment with an inappropriate remark.
Instead Alice returned his smile, but it was a different smile than he’d seen before—a slow, shy, almost crooked kind of smile that for some reason seemed more valuable than a wide grin. “Thank you, Clark.” There was a long pause, a comfortable pause, as Clark leaned on the bucket of gladiolas and Alice held her bag of produce. Then finally Alice started to move away. “I’ll see you later, Clark. Okay?”
“Okay,” he promised, watching her leave.
At the other end of the table, Jonathan and Martha shared a look. For some reason, they both had a feeling that their son would be spending a lot more time in town this summer.
Christmas in July, the marquee above the Talon proclaimed. Gimmicky promotional scheme, Clark added darkly in his mind, pulling up in the truck. It seemed to be working, however, as every parking spot nearby was taken, forcing him to leave the truck two blocks away. Not that walking in the blazing summer heat actually bothered him, of course; but it did make him think, bitterly, that he wouldn’t have to deal with the truck at all if he could just run into town, a trip of approximately ten seconds. But then people would ask questions, wouldn’t they? And he couldn’t have that...
Clark noticed a small child giving him a wide berth as they passed on the sidewalk and he thought maybe he should let up on the stormy expression a little, if only for a brief while. Jonathan had practically kicked him off the farm that afternoon, after Clark had broken the saw while brooding instead of paying attention to his work. And then flung the pieces into the next county in frustration. And then melted the metal into a shapeless pile of goo when he retrieved the pieces and tried to weld them back together with his heat vision. And then freaked Jonathan out by playing with the molten metal with his bare hands—it had a really cool, kind of slippery texture to it and of course it didn’t hurt Clark in the least, but still, Jonathan had rather forcefully suggested that maybe now would be a good time for Clark to go into town to ‘that coffee thing’ he had mentioned earlier.
So now Clark was in town, and he was in absolutely the perfect mood to deal with his friends, whom he had for the most part successfully avoided since returning to Smallville. Too much work on the farm, you know. He didn’t bother to put much effort into making it sound like the whole truth, but so far no one, not even Chloe, had called him on it.
Clark pushed through the doors of the Talon and was immediately assaulted by the blast of air conditioning, which had apparently been set on a temperature designed to produce snow from the room’s atmosphere. But it didn’t bother Clark any more than the blistering dry heat outside had.
When he changed into something clean for his trip to town, Clark had carefully avoided anything red that could be remotely construed as Christmasy and instead dressed in all blue, although from the looks of the crowd it seemed as though he were one of the few patrons who had resisted the temptation of holiday colors. The place was jam-packed—Lana would be ecstatic and falsely modest about it—and Clark had to look for almost a minute before he located a seat in the back corner. Well, at least that fit his mood.
No sooner had he slid into the chair and settled in to glower at people, however, than his vision was filled with something fuzzy and obnoxiously, cheerfully red. Accented in fluffy white. Eyes rising up, and up, and up, Clark finally met Alice’s bright blue eyes above a wan smile. He’d seen... costumes... like that in the movies—in the unrated movies he and Pete snuck down to Pete’s parents’ den to watch on Cinemax late at night—but never on a real person. Personally Clark had never seen the appeal of a naughty Santa’s elf in short, tight red velvet before, but now... he was beginning to understand. Although he figured Alice must be freezing in that outfit, given all the... bare skin on display.
She adjusted the matching red and white Santa hat on her dark curls and told him dryly, “I’m Santa’s little helper.”
“Little?” was all Clark could sputter, and Alice quirked an eyebrow at him. “I mean,” he added hurriedly, cheeks reddening just a bit, “I don’t think of elves as being quite so tall.” Yeah, tall, that’s what he meant...
“Are you saying I’m a freakishly tall, gawky, hideous elf?” Alice asked him, her tone dangerous, and Clark scrambled to placate her. Great, one more thing he’d gotten completely wrong today...
“I, um, well, no, I meant—“
Alice grinned at him suddenly. “Just yanking your chain there, Clark,” she assured him, and he gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. “You have that saying here, right?”
“Yes, yes we do,” Clark confirmed, “although we stopped using it two years ago.”
Alice made a face at him. “Well, Smallville has always been the nation’s leader in the field of teen slang,” she deadpanned, and he smiled at her easily. More easily than he had smiled in a while—since the last time he’d seen her, in fact. “What can I get for you?”
“What do you recommend?” Clark asked, leaning back and trying to act like a serious coffee connoisseur.
“Well, sir,” Alice recited professionally, “we have several holiday-themed drink specials today, including the Creamy Coffee Nog”—Clark grimaced—“Spiced Cider Jubilee”—he raised his eyebrows, unconvinced—“and Holiday High Tea. Tempted?”
“I think,” Clark began carefully, “what I want isn’t on the menu.”
Alice gave him an appraising look. “Well, I suppose I could take a custom request. What did you have in mind?”
Clark drew it out a bit, almost fumbling when he thought about how ridiculous it was that he was attempting to flirt with someone. “Black coffee,” he finally decided.
Alice rolled her eyes at his disappointing response, and he grinned. “You want me to stick a candy cane in that for you?”
Clark thought that should really be his line, but he decided to be open-minded about the banter. “Go ahead. I feel wild today.”
Alice snickered a little and left to fill his order, and Clark had to admit he enjoyed the view as her stiff skirt swung around her legs. And were those—yes, yet another pair of black boots at the bottom of her fishnets. He wondered how many pairs of boots this girl owned—surely her closet was filled with them.