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“Good morning, Clark.”
“Hey, Al—“ And then Clark actually looked up from his stack of books. And swallowed. Hard. Swallowed hard, that is. “Alice,” he finished, trying to sound as casual as he completely didn’t feel.
She was wearing knee-high black leather platform boots that elevated her at least three inches—that would be to six-one—and that laced up the back. She was also wearing a rather snug-fitting t-shirt with black sleeves and a red front, which was emblazoned with a drawing of a girl in black with knee-high platform boots that laced up the back. The cartoon girl was pointing one black-gloved finger sternly at the floor and ordering, “BEG!” Clark felt a very strong urge to drop to his knees and for a moment seriously wondered if the drawing had been printed with Kryptonite ink. Alice was, additionally, wearing a red-and-black pleated plaid skirt decorated with various unnecessary zippers and safety pins. The amount of fabric taken up by the skirt was actually less than the amount of fabric Clark desperately wished he could add to the front hem of his blue t-shirt right now. He settled for holding his books in a way that he hoped wouldn’t be totally obvious... at least, perhaps, to someone who’d grown up in a household of all women.
Finally Clark made it up to her face and realized, ashamed, just how long it took him to get there. She didn’t look offended, however, just smiled at him with that crooked smile that was half-teasing, and he couldn’t help but smile back. “You look really pretty today, Alice,” he told her sincerely.
Her smile blossomed. “Thank you, Clark.” She stepped a little closer. Although Clark knew his body didn’t actually need oxygen, he suddenly found it difficult to breathe. “I saw the shirt and thought of you.”
The look on Clark’s face was pure joy as he contemplated this. “Really? How about the boots?” Alice raised both dark eyebrows and Clark’s expression suddenly turned to horror as he realized he’d said that out loud. “Um, I-I mean—“
Alice smiled. “Do you like the boots, Clark?” she asked quietly, flicking a piece of lint that may or may not have actually existed off Clark’s shirt. Clark decided that was one of those questions that didn’t really need an answer. In fact, words seemed to be extremely overrated right at this moment, and all he could think about was that in those boots, he would only have to drop his head three inches, and that was hardly anything at all, and—
“Ms. Wilson!” Clark actually jumped at the sound of Principal Reynolds’s voice, dumping his stack of books all over the floor with a crash that was definitely not cool. Frankly, he was amazed to discover that he was still standing in the hall of Smallville High, instead of in his bedroom or the shower or the barn having a particularly detailed fantasy.
Alice looked just as annoyed to be interrupted as she turned to face the head of the school. “Principal Reynolds.”
“Ms. Wilson,” the large, dark-skinned man repeated. “I have repeatedly warned you since the beginning of the school year that the Smallville High dress code is slightly less liberal than the one you apparently enjoyed in Gotham City.” Alice rolled her blue eyes. The principal pressed on. “I’m done warning you, Ms. Wilson. That outfit is not appropriate to wear in this school and you will have to change immediately.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Alice protested, glancing down over herself and seeing nothing offensive.
Principal Reynolds narrowed his eyes at her. “Your skirt is too short, and your shirt contains a sexual innuendo,” he replied, pointing out the obvious. “Your attire constitutes a potential distraction from academics for your fellow students.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Alice insisted.
Principal Reynolds glanced over Alice’s shoulder. “Do you find Ms. Wilson’s attire distracting... Mr. Kent?”
Clark looked up suddenly from where he’d been trying to figure out the exact architecture of the elaborate zipper structure on the back of Alice’s skirt. Looking between Alice and Principal Reynolds blankly—and blushingly—he replied, “I’m sorry. What was the question?”
The older man’s expression said his point had been made. Alice gave Clark a look of exasperation and he shrugged apologetically. “You can change into your gym clothes for the rest of the day,” Principal Reynolds decided. “Tomorrow, wear something more appropriate, or you’ll be facing detention.”
Clearly irritated, Alice shot back, “Well, I don’t have gym this semester, so—“
“Then you’ll have to go home and change,” the principal replied.
“Fine.” Alice sighed and started to turn away, towards the front doors, when Principal Reynolds called her back.
“Ms. Wilson. I don’t believe you have a permission slip on file allowing you to leave the school grounds during the day on your own recognizance.”
“What?!” Alice exclaimed. Clark really thought Principal Reynolds shouldn’t be antagonizing Alice so much... after all, she was taller than him.
“Your parent or guardian hasn’t signed a form saying you can leave the school grounds during the day without an adult present,” the principal clarified, and Clark swore Alice’s eyes actually lit up in anger.
“I know what ‘recognizance’ means,” she spat furiously. Clark straightened up, ready to restrain Alice if she, say, tried to claw Principal Reynolds’s eyes out. And no, the words ‘restrain Alice’ did not make him think things completely unrelated to the present situation. Really.
“You can wait in the office while the secretary calls your mother at work,” the older man went on stiffly. “She’ll have to come get you and take you home.”
“You can’t do that,” Alice told him. Clark noticed the crowd they were attracting and moved away from the wall, blocking a few more gawkers’ lines of sight. “She can’t just leave work whenever she wants!”
“You should have thought of that before wearing that outfit to school today,” the principal concluded. Lesson learned, neat and sweet. Clark had to admit he was probably right. “To the office.”
Alice huffed, sighed, rolled her eyes, and shook her head, clearly trying to calm herself down a bit. Clark found himself actually relaxing a bit as she did so—he hadn’t realized how tense he’d become during the heated exchange. “I’ll see you later, Clark,” she told him, following the principal down the hall.
“Bye.”
“Dude, she is a major hottie,” Pete decided, slapping Clark on the arm. Clark almost jumped, he was so surprised to see him. “Leather chicks must love that farmboy charm.” If there was any bitterness in his tone, Clark missed most of it and pointedly ignored the rest.
“Yeah, it was really charming how I threw my books all over the hallway,” Clark grumbled. He still hadn’t picked them all up yet, although that may have been because a couple of them somehow ended up ten feet away. He supposed he should be glad no one was injured by one.
“I can’t believe she thought she could get away with that outfit. Here, Clark.” Lana helpfully dropped his algebra notebook into his arms. “I mean, if she dropped her books in the hallway, she couldn’t even bend over to pick them up without showing—everything.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing, Lana,” Pete replied, straight-faced.
“Maybe it’s matching underwear, it’s meant to be seen.” And oh s—t, was Clark developing some kind of disease that compelled him to say, out loud, whatever he was thinking? Because that was seriously going to be a problem, especially considering the looks Pete and Lana were giving him—shocked and amused from one, shocked and appalled from the other. “Like with cheerleaders,” he added quickly, shifting uncomfortably for more than one reason.
“Even cheerleaders don’t wear outfits like that,” Lana sniffed after a moment. “She looks like she should be out—“ Lana was about to say, “out on a street corner,” but that would be extremely mean, so she softened it to, “out at a club or something. It’s a good thing she’s never worn anything like that to work at the Talon, or I would have sent her home to change, too.”
Technically Clark agreed with her reasoning. He would much rather see Alice in that outfit in, say, this Goth club he remembered from Metropolis... or perhaps in his loft... at any rate, somewhere he wasn’t trying to concentrate on the quadratic formula. But for some reason Lana’s tone rankled him. “I have to get to class now, so—Bye.” And he was gone, leaving both Lana and Pete staring after him.