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“Hey there, Clark.” Alice slapped him firmly on the back and jumped in front of him, walking backwards down the school hallway as he headed towards his locker. Clark was mystified as to how she could even walk forwards in her chunky-heeled boots without falling face-first onto the floor. They practically made him trip just looking at them.
“Hey, Alice,” he greeted with a smile he hoped wasn’t too entirely goofy. “You get that algebra homework done finally?” Once again, their alleged homework cram time had devolved into a—not a make-out session, whatever Pete seemed to think in his warped little mind, but just... conversation. Interesting conversation unlike what he usually got in Smallville, about books and movies and music that he was certain most of his friends had never heard of and would never like, with frequent opinions thrown in that Clark found himself amazingly, completely agreeing with.
“Yeah, I beat it into submission around midnight,” she assured him, casually sideswiping someone who drifted too close to her path. “Sorry,” Alice called off-handedly. “How about you?”
“Well, I—“
“G-------t! Watch where you’re going, freak!”
Clark turned back to face the boy Alice had cut off, recognizing him from the football team—Tim something. The look on his face was pure murder, although Clark couldn’t see any good reason for the sudden outburst. Alice had barely touched him.
“Dude, road rage,” Alice shot back, unconcerned about Tim’s towering, athletic build and rumored bad temper. “Learn some self-control.” She looked back at Clark. “Anyway—“
“Hey, b---h, s—k this!” Tim shouted across the hall, holding up his middle finger.
“Hey!” Anger flashed through Clark like a small, sudden explosion and he didn’t even think, just started towards Tim with a look in his eyes that made even the thick-headed jock pause and glance around for allies and/or potential exits.
“Clark!” Alice grabbed his arm with a surprising amount of strength. “Come on, he can play with himself all day, he doesn’t need our help.”
With a final pointed glare at Tim that clearly said That was your only warning, Clark adjusted his bookbag and continued on towards his locker. Alice looped her arm through his in a manner that would have been highly suggestive and worthy of comment in anyone else—but with Alice it was just par for the course, where the distinctions between good signs, bad signs, and no signs were impossible to determine.
“So Clark, there’s something really important I have to ask you,” she began casually, and it sounded as though she had rather rapidly put the whole ugly incident behind her. Clark, however, was still stewing a little and thinking very unpleasant thoughts about Tim—although which insulting word he was angrier about, b---h or freak, he wasn’t sure.
“What’s that?” he asked, tone more serious than he’d intended.
Alice smiled a little bit and squeezed his arm. G-d, every brush of fingertips against his shoulder from Lana had been cataloged, analyzed, savored, brooded over, infrequent and full of portent as they always were—and Alice just overloaded his senses, always punching his arm or straightening his collar, completely undermining all his attempts to be careful, to keep his distance, to control his strength. It wasn’t exactly a bad thing, Clark decided, just... unsettling.
“So,” Alice continued, with the air of one unveiling a plan they hoped was great but might, on the other hand, not be, “there’s that school dance on Friday.” Oh yes—the Back to School Fling, the senior social committee called it. Only semi-formal, which to Clark meant nothing rented or choking. “I want to go”—Clark raised his eyebrows in surprise; he hadn’t thought Alice was the school-dance type—“just to see what they’re like around here, you know, if they’re different from Gotham—“
“If we dress up the farm animals and set bales of hay around?” he teased, feeling lighter as he reached his locker. Unfortunately, arriving at their destination meant Alice released his arm and leaned against the locker next to his while he worked the combination.
“I had assumed the farm animals were reserved for the formal occasions,” Alice countered dryly. “But anyway, the thing is, I don’t want to go by myself. That would just be weird.” Clark gave her a sideways glance, then concentrated very hard on digging his history book out of his locker. Was she—was Alice—asking him to go to the dance with her? And how quickly could he say yes without looking like a huge dork? “So I was wondering if you would go with me.”
Five... four... three.. two... one... “Sure.” That’s it, nice and casual, like it happens every day. Like the girl with the most beautiful blue eyes you’ve ever seen asks you out on a date all the time, and gives you that brilliant but crooked smile every time you say yes. Suddenly an unpleasant thought, like a chunk of ice down the back on a perfectly mellow spring day, shot through his mind—what if it wasn’t a date, what if it was just supposed to be—“As friends?”
Clark gave himself a vicious mental kick when the words slipped out unintentionally. Oh, G-d, now she was looking disappointed, but not disappointed enough that he could assume she’d wanted it to be a real date, and she was going to pretend “as friends” was what she’d wanted all along, and she was going to assume that’s what he wanted, and then it was going to be two weeks of awkward dancing around the subject of who liked who and in what context and with what provisions—
“Well, actually,” Alice admitted, “I was thinking more ‘friends with potential.’” Clark’s head whipped around at her words, clinging to the faint hope. “But, you know, if you just want ‘friends,’ I could dial it down...”
“No!” he replied, a little too quickly, and felt himself blushing. D—n. If he weren’t already blushing he’d blush again from the embarrassment of blushing. Which made about as much sense as anything at the moment. “Um, you know,” Clark added, trying to sound reasonably cool, “’friends with potential’ is fine.”
“I think it’s a little more flexible,” Alice agreed innocently. “Gives you more room to maneuver.”
Clark made a very uncool fumble with his textbook as his mind went straight to the gutter. Alice, as usual, seemed to enjoy his discomfort—which sometimes annoyed him, but as long as he suspected it was actual flirting and not just mockery, Clark could learn to deal with it. Maybe even flirt back... someday. She seemed to like his little grin and the lingering flush in his cheeks well enough anyway. “Yeah,” he answered, having completely forgotten what he was agreeing with.
Alice smiled and started to move away towards her first class. “Alright then. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay.” Okay, Clark repeated in his head, practically thrusting himself into his locker to hide his face-splitting grin of triumph. Good job, smooth sailing, ‘friends with potential’ dance with Alice... Nothing, he decided, could take his day downhill from here.
“Clark?” Clark almost knocked the door off his locker spinning around. Lana’s eyes widened and she jumped back a bit before breaking into a nervous giggle. S—t.
“Uh, sorry, Lana,” he apologized quickly, once again reminded of his status as biggest loser on the planet (and possibly other planets as well). “Just kind of startled me.”
“It’s okay, Clark,” she assured him, as though he were a child who needed constant approval, he thought to himself suddenly. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I’m sorry.” As though he were so insecure he was offended by the slightest affront. She cleared her throat. “Um...” Lana did her little giddy, slightly embarrassed smile, rolling her almond-shaped eyes (and how exactly did one get almond-shaped eyes in Smallville, Kansas?) as if she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “The Back to School Fling is Friday, and, um... I was wondering if you... were going?”
Oh. That. And here he was worried it was something serious. Clark grabbed his last notebook from his locker and shut the door gently. “Yeah, actually,” he answered casually. “Alice and I are going.”
Her face fell, for a long instant, and he didn’t even need superpowers to notice it before she pasted her pale pink, slightly shiny smile back on her face. Lana wore a lot of make-up, Clark realized for the first time. Her lips were kind of... glossy and sticky-looking, her eyes were encrusted with green and black goop, and her cheeks had twin spots of color that was clearly not her natural blush—since she was blushing right now, the color mismatch was obvious. Her hair was still pretty, though.
“That’s great,” Lana enthused. As though he were a moron who wouldn’t notice how she really felt. “Well, I’ll see you there. I was going to ask David.”
She watched for his reaction closely, Clark felt, but he just gave her a medium-sized smile. “That’s nice.” He let them stand there, awkwardly, for a moment, just smiling his same friendly smile, watching her swing a bit in the wind. Clark felt a little bit mean, a little bit powerful, and a lot like he’d better be getting to class. “I gotta run to chemistry now, so...”
Lana nodded quickly. “Yeah, of course.” As if she were giving him permission to leave her presence. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Bye.”
“So... Alice must be excited about going to the dance,” Martha began carefully, adding some cinnamon to whatever potentially delicious creation she was stirring up at the counter.
Clark smirked a bit, trying not to get his white button-down shirt dirty as he gulped some orange juice. “Mom, I know you think she’s a little weird...” he assured her, in that patient, slightly patronizing tone that mothers of teenagers knew all too well. “But she’s really nice.”
“Ohhhh,” Martha replied knowingly and Clark rolled his eyes affectionately. “Well, I must admit I think her clothes are... somewhat unusual, but she’s always been very polite, in those few seconds before you whisk her off to the barn to ‘study’.”
“Mom!” Clark protested, cheeks reddening a bit. “Alice and I are just friends.” Martha raised an eyebrow. “Friends with potential,” he clarified.
“Friends with potential,” Martha repeated curiously. “That’s a new one.”
“Well, it’s better than, ‘let’s just dance around the subject of whether we’re friends or more than friends for two years until eventually someone gets tired of it and moves on.’”
Martha turned from her mixing bowl to stare at her son, who looked more than slightly embarrassed that such a response had come out. “Oh, honey,” she replied sympathetically, which really wasn’t the reaction Clark had been hoping for right before he left on his big possibly-a-date. “Figuring out how you feel about someone is definitely not the easiest thing in the world...”
“Yeah, well...” Clark had to get out before this turned into a big ‘you’ll get Lana back someday’ pity party. Because he didn’t feel sorry for himself, and he was less and less certain he actually wanted Lana back. Not that he’d really ever had her in the first place. “Some people make it easier than others.” Martha smiled a little. “I gotta go now, Mom, so...”
“Okay, sweetie.” Martha stretched up to give him a kiss on the cheek, which he pretended to be embarrassed at. “Be home by midnight, alright?”
Punctuality was something Clark could just never seem to get right—either he was running late or he was awkwardly early and ended up standing around like a dork, waiting for other people to show up. This evening the latter pretty well described his activities as he tried to look casual waiting in the near-empty high school gym, where the DJ was still setting up his booth and occasionally giving Clark a look of suspicion.
Just when Clark was reduced to giving the gourd and Indian corn decor way more study than it deserved, he heard the click of heels behind him and turned, hoping to see that Alice had made it at last. Instead, it was Lana, dressed in a pale pink slip of a dress that looked more like a modest piece of lingerie. She looked... nice. No sense in denying that. But his disappointment was genuine as well.
“Clark!” As though she were surprised he actually made it after all. “You look really nice.” As though she were surprised he actually owned any clothing other than flannel and t-shirts. And the way Lana was looking him up and down made Clark vaguely... uncomfortable.
“Um, thanks,” he replied, not smoothly. He thought about making a self-deprecating comment about his mom picking out his clothes, but that would only reinforce her belief that he was a total doofus about that kind of thing, and—geez, had Lana always managed to complicate things that should have been simple? The answer that came immediately to Clark’s mind was, of course, yes... although he had to acknowledge that in some things, she’d had a great assist in the Unnecessary Complexities Department from him. Around about this time, Clark realized he probably should have told her that she looked nice, but now the moment had passed.
Lana glanced around a little desperately, then spotted David coming up behind her and grabbed his arm to yank him closer. She smiled blindingly at him—then glanced at Clark, who just whipped out his usual friendly greeting. “Hey, David.”
“Hey, Clark,” David replied, straightening the collar of his red dress shirt. It appeared to be—silk, maybe. Something slightly shiny and no doubt expensive, anyway. Oh, and did Clark notice that it was red? Clark supposed he shouldn’t fault David for liking that color, since it was one of his favorites also, but somehow Clark got the feeling that the new boy just wore it to make himself more noticeable. And that he had purposefully tried to be one of the dressiest people in the room—like that would make people think he was more important or something. Clark decided that it must be nice to have that as the kind of thing you worried about. And he decided this sarcastically.
Fortunately Pete and Chloe arrived before Clark was forced to attempt real conversation with either David or Lana, both of whom seemed intent on just standing there awkwardly while the gym filled up with students. “Dude!” Pete greeted, slapping Clark’s palm. Clark was not allowed to slap back, just in case.
“Wow, Chloe, that’s really...” Clark racked his brain for a vocabulary word to describe the blond’s dress. “...feathery.” The concoction Chloe wore vaguely resembled a 1920’s flapper dress, but with layers and layers of bright yellow feathers instead of... well, whatever a dress was usually made of. Like fabric.
Chloe beamed at him. “Isn’t it great?” She spun around, so they could get the entire effect of the gown, and little yellow feathers spun off and floated lazily to the gym floor. Clark had the quick, unsettling thought that this was what a dress made of Big Bird’s hide would look like. “I can’t believe it was only ten bucks at the thrift store. Ten bucks! I kept thinking there must be something wrong with it, like a stain or something, but no, it’s perfect!”
Lana discreetly flicked a stray feather off her own dress, lest it ruin the line of the straight column of pink satin. “So, Clark,” she began inquisitively, looking around, “where’s Alice?”
“Um, I haven’t seen her yet,” Clark was forced to admit, and if he were a different sort of person, he would have sworn there was a flash of mean satisfaction in Lana’s eyes. “We were just supposed to meet here, so...”
“Man, I can’t wait to see what she’s wearing,” Pete laughed. “I’m thinking, black leather, or maybe plastic, miniskirt, like a dominatrix thing or something.”
“Pete!” The admonition came from several directions—from Clark for what he perceived as mockery towards Alice, from Chloe for what she perceived as objectifying another young woman, and from Lana for saying the word ‘dominatrix.’ For his part David seemed to have no objections to the language.
Clark was about to extend his chiding when a figure coming up behind the group caught his eye. Alice had definitely not gone for the dominatrix look tonight... and though Clark would be revisiting that particular imagery later in the evening, and possibly for several evenings in the future, he had to admit that she was breath-taking just as she was. And by that he literally meant he forgot to breathe for several seconds while looking at her. (Not that it bothered his body much, but still.)
He thought at first that her dress was strapless, but as she strolled closer he saw that there were tiny white strips of fabric entrusted with holding the top up. Briefly he hoped they were the victims of sub-par manufacturing that would give out halfway through the night. The skirt ended just below her knees—longer than many of the clothes she wore to school—and appeared to be white with black lace layered over much of it. Once he got down to looking at her shoes he noticed that instead of the usual heavy black boots they were more like those old-fashioned tuxedo shoes with... spats or something, white on top and black on the bottom, with black laces that Clark assumed were more decorative than functional. And, given that this was, in fact, Alice, the shoes also had heels that were about five inches high. Putting her just an inch or so shorter than Clark, something he found oddly... pleasant. And her hair was done up, too, somehow, in some classy sort of style that Clark couldn’t even begin to describe; with that and her bright red lipstick, Clark decided she looked like one of those pin-up girls from the ‘40’s, like the ones on the yellowed calendar he and his dad had found hidden in the barn last summer and chuckled at. Although humor certainly wasn’t the emotion inspired by the look in real life.
Alice smiled, one of her little creaky smiles that he could tell was a nice one because she didn’t get it out too much, and he felt himself smile back—stupidly, he was sure. The others finally realized Clark was paying no attention whatsoever to them and turned to see what he was staring at, and then Alice’s smile became tighter, more defensive, that little slash of irony that accessorized most of her outfits at school.
“Wow, Alice.” As usual, Chloe was the first to speak. “You look really... nice.” Her tone indicated a little more disbelief than Clark thought was necessary. “Where’d you get that dress?”
Alice shrugged and Clark found himself mesmerized by the bunches of white fabric that moved with her. “The vintage store where I worked in Gotham.”
“Your shoes are really cool,” Clark told her impulsively, then felt a little silly until she brushed past Lana and Chloe and approached him with another smile that was more real than not.
“Thank you, Clark.” She reached up—not very far up, with those heels—and straightened his collar, even though he was pretty certain it wasn’t crooked. “You look nice.”
“Thanks.” Clark was, fortunately, completely oblivious to the glances that passed between his friends behind Alice’s back, which ranged from amusement to disbelief to maybe a little bit of envy.
The dance proceeded very much as usual—crowds of people in nice clothes bumping into each other in the dimness of the “mood lighting,” lame jokes from the DJ before he blasted popular radio hits, the boys tapping their feet to the fast songs and goofing around while the girls made constant trips to the relative coolness of the ladies’ room, giggling about some lame dance move someone had attempted. It all felt very... normal to Clark, maybe not the most fun he’d ever had but definitely a pleasant way to pass the time. The pounding music seemed to loosen him up, like the sonic massages Lex talked about getting in Metropolis, and he laughed cheerfully at the face Pete had made in response to some joke neither of them had really heard.
Alice didn’t seem to be enjoying herself as much, Clark noticed after a few songs. She seemed kind of—bored. Well, he didn’t know what they did at school dances in Gotham—maybe they had... laser light shows or circus acrobats or something. He leaned in close to her, on the pretext of having to almost shout his question into her ear, and asked, “Having fun?”
Alice took a deep breath, gave it some thought, and started to answer in what Clark feared was the negative, when suddenly a new song began and she grinned. “I love this one!” she told him, grabbing his hand. “Come on!”
Clark resisted, although she was surprisingly strong. “Um, I don’t really—“
“Come on, Clark,” she insisted, tugging. “Dance with me.”
“Dude, Clark doesn’t dance,” Pete informed her, laughing at the very idea. “The last time he tried to dance was in fifth grade, when he knocked over a row of desks while trying to do ‘the Robot.’”
And thank you, Pete, for remembering that, Clark thought, hoping the darkness hid his embarrassed blush.
“It’s a dance,” Alice pointed out with indignation. “What is the point of attending a dance if you aren’t going to dance?”
“I dance,” Pete protested.
“If you say so,” Chloe shot back, indicating her opinion of his skill.
“See, that’s why more guys don’t dance,” he told them firmly. “Because other people make fun of them if they don’t look as cool as those guys on MTV.” Chloe rolled her eyes. “Fortunately, Pete Ross has a little more confidence than your average teenager.” With that, he took Chloe’s hand and pulled her towards the throng.
Feeling somewhat victorious, Alice turned her gaze back to Clark, who tried to shrink away. “Really, Alice, I’m terrible, I trip over myself walking, I—“
“Nonsense. Come on.” Well, Clark figured, if he was going to make a fool of himself, he might as well do it in front of the entire school and the girl he liked. Just so he wouldn’t have to worry about it happening at some later point.
Alice arranged him on the floor. “You just have to find your rhythm,” she advised him, putting her hands firmly on his hips. Clark raised his eyebrows and decided total humiliation might be worth it. “Here, put your hands on my arms. Good. Now, just—listen to the music, and move in a way that feels good.”
And if you said
This life ain’t good enough
I would give
My world to lift you up
I could change my life
To better suit your mood
Because you’re so smooth
Lex would be so much better at this, Clark thought desperately. Lex had natural grace, even when walking, grace that Clark couldn’t even hope to match. And Alice, Alice looked so beautiful, with that full skirt brushing back and forth across Clark’s legs, her body moving to the music as naturally as if she were breathing--
Suddenly Clark realized he had been swaying his hips—rhythmically no less—in a manner that seemed to meet with Alice’s approval, and he grinned at her suddenly. “Just don’t think about it so much,” she suggested. “Don’t think, just do it.”
And it’s just like the ocean
Under the moon
It’s the same as the emotion
That I get from you
You got the kind of loving that can be so smooth
Give me your heart
Make it real
Or else forget about it
Clark pulled her a little bit closer and thought about the roughness of the lace on her dress under his hands, the smoothness of the skin on her arms around his neck, the warmth of her body, the deep throbbing of the music he could feel in his chest. He usually didn’t let himself think about his summer in Metropolis—too many bad memories, too many tempting memories. But with the red K lowering his inhibitions, he had danced, in clubs he wouldn’t legally be able to enter for another four years, and he had enjoyed it. And no one had ever complained about his technique. Not that they would, of course, either because he was a six-foot-four guy with the glint of a determined hedonist in his eyes, or because he was flashing hundred dollar bills like they were about to go extinct. But Clark had a feeling the real reason his partners had never snickered about his dance moves was because he was just d—n good. He pulled Alice closer still.
I’ll tell you one thing
If you would leave it’d be a crying shame
In every breath and every word
I hear your name calling me out
I’m from the Barrio
You hear my rhythm on the radio
You hear the turning of the words so soft and slow
It’s turning you
Round... and round...
Pete was in the middle of one of his patented “boogie down” moves—more appropriate to a disco song than Santana, but whatever—when Chloe tugged his arm and directed his gaze towards the middle of the dance floor. They weren’t the only ones staring, either, but Chloe for one wasn’t tearing her eyes from the site of Clark Kent’s butt in black trousers that hadn’t seemed too tight a few minutes ago, just to take a census of the gawkers. Lana broke away from twitching a safe ten inches apart from David to stare as well, open-mouthed and disbelieving and slightly irritated, like she was witnessing another hallucination just when she had thought she was sobering up.
Clark and Alice weren’t exactly dirty dancing—although now Clark’s hands were sliding down Alice’s hips, directing her instead of the other way around—but they were moving together in such a natural way, as if their bodies knew exactly how to coordinate with each other, that Chloe briefly wondered if they had choreographed it beforehand. No amount of practice, though, she decided, could fake the intensity in Clark’s eyes as he stared at Alice—not really stared down, because of those heels that would have snapped the ankles of any other girl—like he was telling her where his legs and his hips and his arms were going to go next just by the exact shade of green-blue-grey his eyes turned under the stage lights.
Give me your heart
Make it real
Or else forget about it
As Rob Thomas’s voice trailed off, Clark dipped Alice—not one of those cheesy Lawrence Welk dips performed by someone’s racy grandparents, but a slow, sensual bend, with one of Alice’s feet wrapped around his leg and his arm around her lower back, supporting her easily as they both leaned towards the floor at an impossible angle. When they straightened back up, the smiles that passed between them indicated they were in a world of their own.
Until of course Pete interrupted by jostling Clark’s elbow. “Dude!” he exclaimed, awestruck. “Where’d you get those killer Patrick Swayze moves?!”
Normally Clark might have been a little embarrassed, but at the moment he was too thrilled to care. His heart was pounding with excitement, Alice was beaming at him, and he’d just had way more physical contact with her than at almost any point since they’d met. “Just another one of my superpowers,” he tossed off lightly. Pete chuckled nervously and Clark knew he’d be asking about that later.
Right now, though, the plaintive guitar chords of a slow song were starting, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Clark to slide his arms around Alice’s waist, drawing her close enough to feel her breath on his cheek as they swayed gently back and forth. All around them other couples paired up—Chloe and Pete, with her smacking his hands every time they wandered out of ‘just friends’ territory; Lana and David, with her forcibly repositioning him so she could keep an eye on Clark and Alice without turning her head—but Clark felt like his vision, his very focal length, had narrowed to encompass only Alice and her beautiful blue eyes, pale skin, dark hair, red lips.
Still feels like our first night together
Feels like the first kiss
It’s getting better baby
No one can better this
Still holding on, and you’re still the one
The first time our eyes met
Same feeling I get
Only feels much stronger
Wanna love you longer
He couldn’t have described the way he felt, even if he’d wanted to. Everything seemed so right, so perfect, like there was nothing else in the universe except he and Alice and this song and the darkness, and he could go on holding her and rocking, just a little, side to side, until the entire cosmos collapsed around them. Even if Clark was being careful not to squeeze her too tightly, he didn’t feel guilty or resentful or frustrated by it—that was just the way things were, the way they were meant to be, and it wasn’t really that difficult after all. He didn’t need to say anything, she could read it all in his eyes—not specifics, perhaps, but the emotions, the things that really mattered, not where he came from or what he could do, but how he felt. What he promised.
You still turn the fire on
So if you’re feeling lonely, don’t
You’re the only one I’d ever want
I only wanna make it good
So if I love ya a little more than I should
Clark could feel her shifting closer, as if that were possible, and his gaze dropped to her lips. With someone else, this would be a carefully-strategized battle plan, with the angle and distance and velocity calculated, not to mention all available intelligence scrutinized to determine if she would be receptive. But somehow, with Alice, he just knew. It was as essential as taking a breath ought to be... but never automatic. Clark leaned towards her, head tilting, a thrill spiraling through him as she moved closer, her eyes fluttering shut.
Please forgive me...
And then the entire building shook with the force of an explosion.
Note: This wasn’t supposed to be continued, of course... It was just supposed to prevent Clark and Alice from kissing just yet, and to make Clark run out of the dance to save people.