ethrosdemon ||| Smallville

Ahead of the Curve
by ethrosdemon

Email: naturallycalm@yahoo.com
Rating: PG
Pairing: none
Improv: #3 calendar, gloss, end plastic
Spoilers: general
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Smallville and all it's characters, plots and setting are owned by WB and other major, soul-sucking corporations.
Dedication: To Zahra, you humor me in the best of all possible ways.

-----

Chloe pulls up the calendar interface on the shiny, new iMac in the Torch office. Maybe not so shiny, really, since Lana splattered coffee on the side of the monitor. She said it was her, Chloe wonders if it was really Clark. She starts filling in the squares with the information for the week after next, getting it ready ahead of time so she won't have to worry about it when the dead-line looms.

Monday: Fish sticks, tater-tots, peas for the hot lunch; the beginning of basketball spirit week

Tuesday: Lasagne, salad; retro-day for spirit week

She glances from time to time down at the printout that the secretary popped in her mail cubbyhole in the front office. Her box's on the bottom shelf, far right, next to Miss Jennings, the student teacher from Kansas State. Chloe thinks Miss Jennings, Kelly, looks younger than she does, exuding that plastic, cookie- cutter cheer of young people with a purpose in life. Chloe almost asked her last week how many years she thinks she'll actually teach. Imagined the puzzled look on the freckled face and didn't ask, pinned it at five years.

Coming to the end of the list, Saturday: Sadie Hawkins's Dance, Chloe rolls her eyes and sighs. Sometimes she just doesn't get how Smallville can be so far behind the curve of the rest of the country. Girls really can ask guys out any time of the year now; there isn't any need for rigged scenarios like this anymore. But she stops there and considers it, hard.

She thinks of herself as strong, independent, a very modern Chloe, but she hasn't ever come close to brazenly walking up to a stray, attractive guy and asking him to the movies, much less to a dance. Her self-esteem-o-meter is about to hit warning levels when she realizes it's not really because she couldn't, more like she can't ask who she wants to, so why bother? Yeah, Sean, and that was, well, whatever, but none of the jocks or over-achievers will ever be. Clark. She tends to gloss right over that when anyone else is in the room. Just in case the meteors gave them mind-reading abilities.

But she knows no one's asked Clark yet. That for some reason, girls never ask him out, or flip their hair at him, smile a second too long, and Chloe pays attention to those things. She doesn't really get it. He has his total spazzmo moments, but most girls at Smallville High dated guys who chewed tobacco and spit it into empty Coke cans or who thought a wacky night out included knocking over mail-boxes with bats. When you look at it from that perspective, falling down the steps every once in a while, well all the time, wasn't really all that lame in comparison.

She knows she's not the only one to notice Clark. Not the only one in town, just the only one around here.

Once, Pete told her he thinks the reason Clark doesn't get any dates is because people think he's gay, because he's too pretty not to be. Pete shrugged at that, and they both laughed, but Chloe wonders if Pete made that up or someone *said * it to him. She thinks it's number two.

Which is right in line with the Lex thing. The other person who seems to notice the whole Clark package, and Chloe's face pinches at the thought. Jealousy. Of someone who wasn't a threat, because Chloe knows Clark loves Lana, or thinks he loves her in that `please-kick- me way' he has, very not gay. Lana never inspires the same kind of worry that Lex does, though. There's Whitney and Clark's own inability to make any kind of move. With Lex, it's something else entirely, something scary. She has no room to feel slighted, no possession in that scenario, nothing to lose. But it's the principle of the thing. Lex has so much, has everything, literally, and Chloe doesn't think he *deserves * Clark too. Even in his own fantasies. But she could be projecting, just jealous for no reason, because Lex's seeming fixation could be berserk friendliness. He might play it cool so much he doesn't know his personal smiles and casual touches appear like flirting when measured against the normal facade. But she thinks he knows exactly what he's doing every second of every day.

Chloe knows she can't ask Clark to a dance, but considers what Lex would do if the next time he's lurking at the Beanery when she and Pete and Clark show up, she asked him instead. Her frustration and slight anger flips over considering it. It would be worth the look on his face, on Clark's face, and as she ends tonight's work, closes the open windows on the computer and reaches to switch off the machine, she thinks she just might do it.



back to top