Lar ||| Smallville

Easy
by Lar

EMAIL: HERE
RATING: PG-13
SHIP: Pete
IMPROV: bluff--trial--scorch--free
DISCLAIMER: Not Clark, not Lex, but still not mine.
SUMMARY: Pete's the one who has it all easy. Right?
NOTES: I promised ethrosdemon a fic. I resolved to write more. Two birds, one stone.

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All things considered, Pete has it pretty easy. His dad's the mechanic in town, as in THE mechanic, talk about job security, so there's none of those panicky late night whispers from his parents bedroom to give him pause to think. His brain is occupied with the usual teenage boy-thoughts: girls, football, girls, basketball, girls, hockey, girls, cars, and when there's free time, girls.

Not quite the only things, really, if he admits to himself that in between filling up the mental spank bank with the way Chloe looked in the green sweater and the way Lisa Mills bent over at the lockers when she dropped her backpack, there's some serious time spent wondering when the Wall of Freaks is gonna have one of their pictures up there. When his trial period of being just Normal is going to end without any warning at all, and he's going to wake up to find out he's got an extra eye. His nightmares center around that happening, or his skin turning to liquid one little neon-green patch at a time, so they end up saving him in a little pan and washing him down the sink instead of burying him. Or things that are even worse, things that he won't even consider in the light of day.

Sometimes he throws opens the curtains when the alarm goes off and stands there with the sun scorching those memories off the inside of his eyelids, a wash of red-orange-black-white spots that stay with him through his shower and breakfast with his parents. Listening to them talk about regular bullshit, like his dad missing the garbage pickup and his mom burning the waffles is a security blanket. If his mom catches him looking particularly spooked sometimes, it's easy enough to bluff his way out of concerns that might lead to places he's not going to go. Mention a test, drop the name of a girl he's going to ask out, so easy to lull her into thinking that it's all just another perfect day here in Smallville.

So if Pete tends to check Chloe out a little more carefully than usual, earns himself a really good remark about the growing trend of perverseness she's getting to see from him, it's all cool. If he lets Clark ramble on about Lex or Lana again without paying too much attention to the flow because he's looking for something utterly weird in his friend's face, or skin, or yeah, maybe looking for that third eye he's been worried about growing himself, it's worth the snarky comment Clark's bound to give him when he catches him being inattentive. Anything to reassure himself that they get another day to be normal, keep out of the growing statistics that Smallville seems determined to add to every damn day. Keep the nightmares in the dark where they belong.

Yeah, Pete's got it pretty easy.

-end



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