Sour
by zahra

Email: frans_angel@hotmail.com
Feedback: I’ve tried asking, pleading, and begging. I’m at the bloodletting stage now.
Rating: PG-13
Spoiler: Pilot, Metamorphosis and Hothead
Pairing: Clark/Whitney
Disclaimer: I know they’re not mine, you need not remind me.
Summary: Whitney goes looking for Lana’s necklace.
Dedication: To the most beauteous Larstar for all her blogging aid, to Kass for whipping me, and to W.H.O. for saying that even Whitney had redeeming characteristics.
Notes: Psuedo-sequel to a little piece called ‘Sacrifice’
Improv #3: gloss, calendar, end, plastic
Lar’s Whitless Improv: empty, rain, letter, wander

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The place where they strung him up is right outside Luthor Corp. Plant Number Three. Across the road, twenty yards straight ahead and six to the right. Always thinking in football terms, even at night, in the dark. In the rain.

It’s pouring, and if things keep up this way, tomorrow’s practice will be reminiscent of wrestling in the pigsty with his older brothers. There’s no way Whitney’s going to find what he’s looking for in this weather, and he should just give up. Apologize for the lost necklace and cut his losses, but that really doesn’t interest him right now. He just needs to make the effort. Atone for his sins. Needs to do something right for a change.

The plastic flashlight isn’t doing him one iota of good, but he can find his way in the dark well enough. No need to go wandering when Whitney knows exactly where he’s going. It’s not as though he hasn’t been there before. Many, many times. But he tells himself that this time is going to be his last, that he’s just here to find Lana’s necklace. And if he knows that it’s a lie, it’s okay. It’s not as though he’s come back here once or twice and imagined Clark still up there. Jerked off while imagining glossy, black hair plastered to Clark’s forehead and boxers down around bound ankles, while Whitney gives him the kind of blowjob he’s only read about in his dad’s copies of Penthouse Forum.

Really, it’s never happened, and it’s not the point.

He just wants to get this done. Look for the stupid thing amidst all the mud and rain and slime, not find it, and go home for the day. Make it to the next. Keep trudging along in his prosaic high school existence until the day his college acceptance letter arrives. His ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.

Football is his ticket to freedom, and Smallville will become just some place that he was from once upon a time. Someplace he’s left. Only bi-yearly holiday visits marked on the calendar as reminders. All he has to do it just make it to the end of the year. Get through without any more incidents, without breaking down. It gets harder every time he sees him, but he’s made it this far, it would be disastrous if he were found out now.

Queer. Sinner. Fag.

The words sound empty, but they hit home all the same. All the things that Whitney is. All the things he can’t admit to. That he will deny until the day he dies. Easier to persecute them than to admit being one of them.

It was easy enough when it was happening for him to go along with it. Easy enough to convince his teammates that Kent was as good a choice as any. Anonymous enough that no one felt the need to stand up for him, to raise the ‘why’s and ‘what if’s'. Just enough on this side of invisible that no one else noticed the wistful second glances that Whitney occasionally shot Clark’s way.

Not the ‘stay away from what’s mine’ looks of property trespassing, more along the lines of ‘what if I was fucking the most beautiful boy in the school, as opposed to the most beautiful girl.’ Of course those are only thoughts, observations, but Whitney’s been making lots of those about Clark since the school year began. Because it’s impossible not to notice the way that gangly eighth graders sprout into gay porn stars over the summer. Tall and lean, with enormous hands and cocksucker lips and an ass to die for. Clark would’ve been perfect for the football team; it would’ve been Whitney’s perfect cover. It all could’ve worked out, but Whitney’s life doesn’t run _that_ smoothly. And there’s always got to be a catch, and this one happens to be in the form of his girlfriend. Of course.

Only in another universe could Whitney do what he really wants. Trade in the Barbie Mobile for an Aston-Martin V12 with blue eyes and black lacquer. It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it. But he can’t really reconcile his actions with his thoughts. Two plus two are making three, and occasionally five, and he thinks it’s because all he can see is Clark on his knees in front of Lana. Puppy-dog looks and scattered books, and why doesn’t he look at Whitney that way?

Stops in the corn and blinks rapidly, rain running into his eyes and trying to grasp onto fleeting mental images of Clark in his boxers, tied to splinter-happy crosses with pleading eyes.

That’s not how he wanted Clark to be, not the first time. But on some level he’s willing to take him any way he can get him, and it really was only a joke. Honestly. And if he keeps repeating it to himself he just might begin to believe it eventually. Or not. Can’t really convince _himself_ of this fact, even if his platitudes and promises were enough to convince Lana in the end.

But it’s easy to convince people who want to believe. Whitney learned that one a long time ago. So, it will never happen again. Or it will never happen now. He’s lost his chance, and it’s not how he planned it at all. Not how he wanted it to be with the first guy he fell for. Clark Kent. And it a truth that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. Sour. But what’s done is done, and all he can do now is stalk through the green corn and pray that Lana’s necklace hasn’t been washed away.

-finis-