daniel webster (occupation: recluse) (ex_published349) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-19 15:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | driver, superman |
Who: Stella and Dominic, and then Clark and Driver.
What: Meet and greets.
Where: Passages, then Metropolis.
When: Yesterday.
Warnings/Rating: Safe.
Stella was in a rare mood when she stepped into the Passages Hotel that evening, and it wasn’t exactly a good mood. A cab had dropped her at the foot of the property and she stepped out in a cloud of girl-gone-clubbing: two inch heels, a dangerous red dress to mid-thigh, and a cosmo buzz. She paid the cabbie to go away, and since even drunk she could navigate those heels fine, he did. She wasn’t speaking to Clark at the moment because he’d had some high-and-mighty things to say about her evening’s events, but all the same when he had pushed her to go through the door so he could have some high-visibility superhero time, she’d given in. Pushing her fingers through her bob of red curls, Stella wove up the stairs toward Clark’s door, swinging her sequined clutch and ignoring Clark’s concerned narrative of caution as she climbed on her spiky heels.
She would have made it just fine, she was sure, but she stopped short when she saw the new decorations that the building had added after the most recent injury of an Alter and host. “What the...” She squinted at the medical posters, but she stopped paying attention to where she was walking and took a bad step. Stella’s heart took a dramatic leap to her throat as she windmilled backward at the top of the stairs.
Dominic wasn’t in the hotel to go through his door. He hadn’t liked what he’d seen through there one bit. No, instead he’d come back to the hotel to take a look at the added emergency center and list of rules that people had already begun to buzz about on the journals. He had to admit, too, that the hotel was a nice respite from the outside world. Maybe it was his growing fondness for quiet, still places, but the hotel really did feel like a cool, silent sanctuary, even though the doors loomed large and uneasy in his imagination.
He climbed the stairs a few steps behind the pretty redhead in the terrific red dress, keeping his eyes on the carpet after a few moments of quietly appreciative looking. Before he knew it, though, movement drew his eyes back up. The girl looked like she was going to fall.
Steady hands slid around her middle and a hand braced against the small of her back quickly and reflexively. There was no chance to think about it until she was steadied on the stair, and he didn’t let go until she seemed sure on her feet. He dropped his hands then, a little embarrassed, but mostly just concerned. “Are you alright?”
Stella clung to her rescuer, breathing hard, and for once she wasn’t being coy about it. The smell of the cranberry juice and cocktail was pretty strong over traces of her expensive perfume, and her curls had the rough touch of hairspray and an unsuccessful attempt at the flattening iron. It took her some time to recover from the near fall, pushing back against his chest and righted her balance on the mile high heels, eyes slightly wide in the field of freckles that took years off her face. “Almost fell,” she said, dumbly, giving the staircase a look as if its attempt to kill her had been intentional.
“I got distracted by all the signs about dying and I almost died. I think that means something, but I don’t know what.” Her hand was still flat against the man’ chest, and now she slowly turned her attention from her plight to him, her breath steadying and her pupils widening out appreciatively. “I haven’t seen you before. Are you going off to be a hero behind the door too?” She hiccuped and covered her mouth, blushing.
“Seems symbolic,” he said, and laughed a little, the laughter of relief after potential catastrophe. She was clearly buzzed, which would explain how she’d almost fallen from the top of the staircase. He could safely say he had never worn high heels, but he could imagine they might make a dangerous combination with stairs under the influence of alcohol. He didn’t pull away from her, and let her lean on him as long as she needed to while she recovered from the shock. “A hero? I don’t know about that.” The ‘too’ was interesting, though. “Are you a hero?” The question, under any other circumstance, would be completely absurd, and by his tone he was well aware of that.
“Me? No,” Stella said, hiccuping again and finally pulling her hand back and teetering the last few inches to the safety of the landing. She moved back from the stairs and in a series of movements more suited to the intimacy of the bedroom, she kicked off the heels. They bounced along a few feet behind her, and she pushed her fingers along her scalp with difficulty, scratching and then withdrawing because any attempt to comb her hair out would result in a disastrous snarl. “My Alter is, though. He won’t shut up about it.” She sighed, tragic. “I was trying to have fun tonight, you know? It’s not fair.”
“Your...Alter brought you here?” he asked. That didn’t bode well, if she’d been dragged here against her will from a night of partying. It brought Noah to mind, and the problems he’d mentioned about being controlled by the person in his head. Dominic was not keen on experiencing that. The Driver’s uncontrolled but unintentional influence was enough on its own. “I agree. We should get our own time to ourselves.”
Stella’s eyes shifted from side to side as she considered allowing her new acquaintance believe she was here entirely against her will. “...Well,” she said, twisting the sequined bag in her hand as she ran her eyes over the flickering fixtures, trying to orient herself, “maybe not exactly brought me here. But he was whining about it so much it got distracting.” This was halfway true, and Clark disapproved of half-truths, but not as much as he disapproved of outright lying. Stella looked at the man again, taking in his appearance and trying to identify his place in life. “What’s yours like?”
“Quiet,” he said, with a small smile. “He can be violent as well, I guess, but only if people provoke him. I would say he tries to be a decent person, but he doesn’t always succeed. Hero I don’t think would be the right word.” He shrugged. “I can say at least that I haven’t had to listen to him whine, or do anything else, really. He doesn’t talk.” It was a little disturbing, to be honest, all that silent, forceful emotion with no words to tie to it, but he didn’t let that on, kept the description as light as possibly for his disoriented new acquaintance. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Stella,” she said, immediately, putting her hand out between them in a gleam of red nails and a happy smile that seemed to come naturally to her. “Not a lot of guys try to be a decent person, so there’s something, right? Clark is way decent. He doesn’t have to try. Must be the farmhouse upbringing.” Another overbright smile, but she was trying too hard with that one. “Too bad we can’t all have one of those. Maybe yours just doesn’t have much to say.” She padded a few steps around him on nylons wearing into strings at the toes, and then looked for the right hallway.
Despite the near death experience and the oppressive atmosphere in the hotel, Stella was by far the most upbeat person Dominic had met since arriving in Las Vegas, which he could admire, even if bubbliness and optimism weren’t things he was very good at personally. He took her hand when she offered it and shook it firmly, but not so hard as to seem like he had anything to prove. “Clark?” he asked. Why was that ringing a bell? “No, he really doesn’t. He keeps himself to himself.” He watched her as she walked around him, and waited for her to pick a direction. He wouldn’t mind walking with her a little, even if his door was down one of these hallways.
The most Stella could say for her personality in comparison to Clark’s was that at least she had more natural positivity. Despite Clark’s inherent goodness, he sometimes had a tendency to find the cloud instead of the silver lining. Maybe it came with expecting the worst as soon as you found out you were ET--or maybe when you found out you were the last one of your species. Clark hid that lurking disappointment and sadness pretty well, but Stella was emotional and keen for everyone else to be emotional too. She knew.
Stella was pleased with the shake, but a little disappointed that Dominic didn’t seem to be in any danger of falling madly in love with her in the first five minutes, seeing as he didn’t give his name nor his Alter’s. Determined to make the best of this, she found her hall and wandered down, hooking her finger on the chain around her neck and pulling the gold key free. The big S probably explained the Clark association to Dominic almost immediately. “Nice,” she told him, referring to his Alter’s personality as she freed the key, “but boring.”
Funnily enough, Dominic had made that same mistake a lot recently, and perhaps hadn’t analyzed where it came from as much as he should have, considering the nameless gentleman at the back of his head. “I don’t think I’d mind boring,” he mused. Boring sounded practically thrilling, these days. He was actually starting to miss his old life, where he’d worked a stupid office job and searched fruitlessly for a place in the world of journalism while filing papers and spending a lot of time with friends. His affinity for the company of others seemed to be fading, lately, or dulling, or maybe just growing more specific. He looked down, spotted the S insignia, and revised his original hopes. “Oh,” he said. “Nevermind the boring, then.” He looked up at her. “You won the lottery,” he informed her matter-of-factly.
Stella propped up one elbow on the frame of Clark’s door, a door so blatantly American farmhouse that the peeling paint and weathered brown wood were an affront to her very personality. In that sheath of a red dress and the irritated flush to her freckles, she looked like something recently from a glossy fashion magazine, up until the point she raised the key and shook it at him like a schoolmistress with a ruler. “Don’t you start on me, mister. You don’t know what it’s like to have a lovesick kid who wants to save the world up here, alright?” She gave an enthusiastic tap of her raised hand to the crown of her head. “Everything is let’s help, Stella! and don’t you think you could be nicer, Stella! and what about Lois, Stella?” She shoved off the door frame and tossed her curls. “At least yours knows when to shut up.”
Dominic couldn’t help but smile when she started shaking that key at him, despite that flush of annoyance. He tried to stifle it. “I’m sorry. I should have thought it through better. That must be difficult.” He thought it sounded alright, if maybe a little on the maddening side. At least Superman didn’t have a potentially murderous streak, right? But that was clearly not what Stella wanted to hear. “Do you help, when he asks you too?”
“Well maybe some. But he hasn’t asked me to fight off bad guys or anything yet.” Stella gave the door a vindictive little push with her toes, wrapped in opaque spiderwebs that did nothing but catch and tear at the old wood. “Probably only a matter of time. Though he might be worried enough that I’d get hurt. He cares about stuff like that.” She dropped both hands to let them swing, girlish, at her sides. The gold gleamed in her hand.
Dominic glanced down at the key where it glittered. Personally, the idea of crossing through the door was something he didn’t even want to consider, despite the fact that Stella’s looked friendly, in a careworn sort of way. What might lie on the other side was too steep an unknown, and so far, thankfully, the Driver hadn’t insisted anything. “I’m glad,” he said. Judging by her balance issues with the stairs, the idea of Stella in combat did make him a little apprehensive. Admittedly, she’d likely do a lot better while sober and in sensible shoes. “You’ve gone through,” he said. She had her key out, and seemed comfortable enough with it that it seemed like a safe guess. “What’s it like?”
“Depends on where he ends up,” Stella said. She stepped forward without hesitation, another sign that she had done this before, and with the chain loose around her wrist, she put the key in the lock. The farmhouse door swung open to reveal... a broom closet. The closet had mops, brooms, buckets, stacks of paper recycle bins, chemical concoctions in spray bottles, and no few dust bunnies. Behind one of the shelves there was a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit calendar from two years ago showing the faded orange glow of March’s blue bikini. From beyond, the sound of an occupied office in full swing filtered through the hotel door, the ringing of phones and the shout of voices, furious typing and the clatter of mugs.
“Oh, this is his office,” Stella informed Dominic, still chatty and eying the closet with faint disappointment. “Not as exciting. The other doors go other places, besides the farm, the North Pole, or on top of this huge skyscraper, I kid you not.” She turned her head and looked at him with interest. “Can you come in?”
The closet through the door was strange, but friendly in comparison to what Dominic had seen through his own door a couple weeks before. The sheer normality of it was profoundly comforting. He could connect the office to what little he knew of that Clark, the one who worked at a newspaper and changed in phone booths. It would be a neutral zone, easygoing. “I didn’t know the doors went different places,” he said. He hadn’t looked through his own again to know. It was enough to spark a very small amount of curiosity in him, where before there had been only distrust and fear.
Could he come in? That was a damn good question. “I haven’t been,” he said. The presence at the back of his mind, silent as usual, turned his attention on the door, and Dominic looked through it, finding it more and more difficult to turn away. Maybe if he stepped through someone else’s door, nothing would happen. “I could, I think. If you want honesty, it frightens me that I don’t know what will happen to me if I do. But if I don’t, I’ll never know.” He tore his eyes from the door at last. “Are you going in?”
Stella pondered the closet as if it held the vast secrets of humankind. “I guess so. I don’t have anything else to do tonight, and Clark is nice about coming back if I really want to and no one is in mortal danger.” Stella didn’t seem to think that insulting Clark’s constant do-gooding habits and complimenting them when they were beneficial to her was a hypocritical at all. She rocked back and forth on her bare heels, either thinking or conversing with Clark, it looked the same to watching eyes. She put the key back around her neck. “If you’re worried about who you’re going to turn into, Clark says he can handle almost everything. Besides, he’d just have to push you back through a second later.” She paused a moment, head inclined. “It’s easier to know what is you and what is him after you do this a couple times,” she said, as if she was an old sage imparting wisdom. “For me, anyway.”
It was the last thing Stella said that pushed Dominic over the edge. If going through would give him better insight, even if the prospect was frightening, then it could be worthwhile. Stella seemed genuine enough that he believed her, and if the shape of her key was any indication, he could probably trust her Clark to do the right thing as well. "Alright," he said. "There's always the quick eject option," he agreed, the idea that he could be pushed back comforting him somewhat. He smiled faintly. "You first, though," he said, not bothering to disguise his nervousness, just touching it with humor.
Stella nodded and then turned to face the door. She made a little wrinkle of her nose at the closet--and at the prospect of that disembodied feeling to accentuate her natural unimportance in the world--and stepped through.
In that one step, she seemed to grow. After all, Clark Kent had a good fifteen inches on Stella, if not more. For a split-second, the man silhouetted in the darkness of the closet was comparatively huge, but then he turned around and faced the doorway, and somehow in the process he became smaller. Something to do with the way he wore the suit and the shirt with the thick collar, the retiring tip of his head to one side, the coke bottle glasses that hid the brilliant blue of his eyes. He regarded the space across and then gave the unfamiliar man a neutral but friendly smile that had nothing of Elvis or the savior of Earth. “Hi.” One would think Clark Kent would be somewhat... more, even out of costume. Superhuman looking, or at least profoundly handsome, which demeanor could not hide. It wasn’t just the glasses that made him less than Superman, it was the way he held himself. He was used to being on the ground, being in closets, not hiding but being... normal, without glory. His hair was messy. He was Clark. He put out one hand--which was admittedly large--as if to shake, but he stopped it short of the doorway, an inviting gesture without being overly encouraging. “It’s safe.”
Dominic stared. That was Superman, on the other side of that door. Clark Kent, savior of the Earth, everything the comics had ever said he was. He felt like he ought to say something, felt like he was meeting a celebrity. But, more than that, he now felt a real obligation to go through the door, as opposed to the simple curiosity that had pulled him on before. “Hey,” he said. He played it cool. Superman, no big deal. “I guess I can trust you,” he said, because hey, if he couldn’t trust Superman, who could he trust? He glanced down the hall, looked up at Clark again, and then stepped through the door before he could second guess himself any further, dreading the outcome as much as he anticipated it.
The Driver was a little taller than Dominic, though height hardly mattered considering what he gained in muscle and an almost tangible stillness by stepping through the door. It took a brief moment for him to settle, but it was only a split second, really. He glanced down, and gave himself a quick check. Everything was intact. No blood, no wound where it was expected. Nothing.
He was not so unassuming as Clark by a long shot. Black jeans, worn, dark boots, and a white satin jacket with a pattern of pulled diamonds. The jacket was distinctive, the bright yellow scorpion on its back even more so, and he wore it without thinking that it might look unusual. It was armor, and he liked it, and that was all there was to it. It was his favorite jacket. What other people thought wasn’t important.
Where Dominic was contemplative and thoughtful, it was often difficult to tell, as now, what was going on behind the Driver’s eyes. They were slate blue, dark in the middle and even darker along the outside. He was handsome enough to draw attention, but his silence and his long stares made him unnerving to some. When he didn’t talk, people often tried to read his gaze to fill in the gaps. He generally alternated between painfully expressive or closed off entirely, his eyes as flat as the painted ovals on a dolls’. He was always thinking, though, even when he had nothing to say.
He knew who Clark Kent was.
The Driver slid his hands into his pockets, and found his driving gloves there. He ran his thumb over the holes in the fabric of the left. He smiled, just a little, but he didn’t say a thing.
Clark might have been young under the Superman logo, but he had been around the world, earning his journalism stripes and making his coworkers wonder if the same Clark Kent, war correspondent, was the quiet young man hired three weeks ago. These days, of course, no one said anything to him. He knew they knew, and they knew he knew they knew. It was awkward, and it was even worse than being the new guy in the office. Now he was the new guy that was a space alien in his spare time, and even in a room full of reporters, no one knew what to do with it just yet. This was the second time he had been in The Daily Planet offices since coming through the door. They probably they would have recovered from the shock by now, and he expected that he was going to have to get through this office with speed. The confusion of a second body would help, but not if the second body was a danger to his door and the people in it.
There was more to Clark than there had been before the Driver stepped through the door. It was the way he was standing; arms crossed over his chest so thick that with his palms wrapped above his elbows it didn’t matter how badly the suit was fitted, the muscles stood out against his shoulders. The glasses gleamed in the dim light of the closet. “Who are you?”
The Driver could hear the people outside the door, and expected they’d probably have a good long walk before they could clear the building. Stares didn’t ruffle him, so the prospect held no horror. Clark Kent’s imposing stature didn’t seem to have any effect either. He wasn’t intimidated, mostly because there was no point. The guy was, apparently, Superman. If he pissed him off, it wasn’t going to really matter how well or how viciously he could take down anyone else who attacked him. Why, then, waste time sizing him up?
The Driver blinked in response to Clark’s question, and shifted onto his other foot. He didn’t give a name, or directly answer his question. He never had when anyone else had asked him. There was a reason Shannon had called him ‘Kid’, and paid him under the table to work at the garage. His name was his business, and only barely that. He hadn’t given it in so long, he wasn’t sure he knew it himself anymore.
The silence stretched on long enough that it seemed The Driver wouldn’t answer at all, and then he said, “I’m not gonna give you a reason to want to know.” He thought that should be good enough to suffice. It was also more words than he often used in an entire day, and it was a courtesy that he’d offered them at all. His accent was thick Brooklyn, instantly identifiable, pulling his quiet voice into a soft slur.
Clark looked over the person in his closet as he waited for a reply. He was shockingly proprietary about this place, the building, the city, the planet, the door. It was his, and just because some people didn’t think it was real didn’t mean anything to him. He was able, and he would protect it. “I don’t know you. You’re a stranger and I don’t know what you can and can’t do here. This place is my responsibility. I’m sure you know everything about me. If you want to through that door--” Without turning he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the door out of the closet, directly facing the smaller cupboard door from which they’d just exited the hotel. “--I need to know your name. Stella’s friend said you were quiet.”
The Driver wasn’t interested in a fight, but he also didn’t have any kind of answer that Clark would probably like. He thought his request over, and found it reasonable enough, but knew as well that he could only meet it halfway. He shrugged, a raise of heavy shoulders and an easy drop. “People call me the Driver,” he said. He offered no explanation for why, or what that implied or entailed, or why they didn’t call him by his given name, whatever that might be. He seemed perfectly comfortable with whatever the outcome of this conversation might be. He wouldn’t begrudge this guy if he shoved him back through again. He’d like to stretch his legs some, but there would be other opportunities.
Clark thought about that while he watched the guy in the closet. The dim light had absolutely no effect on him, because he could focus his eyes in different ways and find a schematic of colors that humans could never see. He could also see through the man, and even down to a range that exuded from his skin, a range Clark only saw in living beings that he equated (admittedly without real scientific basis) with soul. That light was what made Clark a vegetarian, despite his farmhouse upbringing. He saw it here, and he didn’t see anything to imply this man wasn’t anything but a man, so finally he relented, a visible thing that dropped his arms down. Having someone to deflect attention would help. “Driver. Okay. I’m Clark.” As if he didn’t know. “I’ll give you a tour.” He smiled a Kansas smile and opened the closet door. It was around the curve of a corridor, and as long as they hurried, no one would notice where they’d come from. All eyes turned to them once they stepped out into the maze of cubicles, though. Clark gave the heads popping up out of carpeted walls a sheepish smile and a bizarrely embarrassed wave. Then he started walking toward the elevator. Quickly.
The Driver kept his hands in his pockets, nodded in response to Clark’s introduction, and followed him out of the closet and through the office. The people who stared at them as they passed had to have marked what a strange pair their made - the sheepish man in the glasses, and the stoic one in the white jacket with a bright yellow scorpion stitched into the back. Stares were met with stares in return, and per usual, nobody wanted to hold his gaze for very long. Eventually, people began to purposefully avert their gazes to avoid his, and, point made, he turned his eyes ahead again, following Clark toward the elevator. He cared what these people thought about as much as he cared what anyone else did. Their opinions or raised eyebrows didn’t even really register once he’d made sure none of them were going to try to stop his progress toward the elevator. When they reached it, he pressed the button, and waited patiently, glancing over at Clark to judge how much of that sheepishness had been an act, and how much of it was true discomfort. Really, he was curious why the other man had even bothered to let him step out into his world, but he wasn’t in the habit of questioning good luck.
The elevator ride down to the main floor was awkward, but elevators full of strangers were always awkward. As soon as the elaborate bronze doors closed, Clark’s expression went from sheepish to unmistakably sad, hints of regret making the blue eyes behind the glasses more human than anything else about him. “I know it’s too much to say they would just pretend everything was like it was, but it would have been nice to have a life, you know?” Clark said, suddenly, watching the doors and not the Driver, obviously expecting to be able to carry on a conversation with a stranger in exactly this manner. People in Smallville did it all the time.
People didn’t usually come to the Driver looking for advice, but they did often talk to him, or at him, confessing things in part because he listened a great deal more than he spoke. He was used to it by now. “I used to think that,” he said, surprising himself a little by speaking. He was getting practically talkative. Must be the guy in his head.
The Driver had an opportunity to have a life once too, and it had been taken from him. Now, he faced a world where all was barren, and the only person who had ever made him really feel anything had slipped through his fingers. It was no wonder that he hadn’t pressured Dominic to go through a door. What was there waiting for him?
The elevator reached the lobby, and the Driver stepped out, getting a feel for the place. It was a lot... shinier than LA, he could tell that just by looking outside through the lobby doors.
Shoulders a little bowed, Clark stepped out of the lobby into the pleasant noonday sun. He squinted upward and stared at the expansive blue sky, and he took a deep breath that expanded his broad chest against the cheap tie and buttons. “I guess it was just a hope, anyway.” He started to turn his head to look at the Driver, but something distracted him; some sight too far away for a normal man to see through the towering buildings or perhaps something only he heard over the honk of bright yellow cabs navigating the street.
“I have to go,” he said, suddenly, looking a little worried, though not frightened. Lois. “I need to go talk to someone. You’re going to have to take the tour thing on your own. Look, if you need anything, shout my name, and I’ll be right there.” Clark visibly steeled himself, straightened his tie so aggressively that it slid askew, and--was gone. A small cloud of road dust and pebbles tumbled out to meet the cabs as air filled the space he had been seconds before, leaving the quiet man in the loud jacket alone on the Metropolis sidewalk.