Job Arakkis isn't as cheap as your girlfriend (youre_welcome) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-04-04 21:19:00 |
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Entry tags: | lois lane, spider jerusalem |
Who: Max Main and Job Arakkis
What: Clash of the (media) Titans. Sort of.
When: Bright and early Monday morning. More like late morning, but it's close enough.
Where: The offices of the Seattle Times
Warnings: Job has a foul mouth (although it's toned down - work, and all), and Max seems to have little problem dishing it right back.
When the Chief walked into Max’s office at the Times that morning with a shit-eating grin on her face, she knew she was in trouble. The old blowhard only looked that happy when he was going to be smug about something, and she turned her chair and crossed her legs at the knees, the shiny black heel she wore drawing a look from him as she folded her arms over her chest. She didn’t have to wait long for him to say anything, but before he did, the cleaning crew came in to spruce up Copeland’s old desk, and Max had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t Copeland coming back from Libya that made the Chief so happy.
“Well, Main, you’ve had a year to get me the scoop on who the men behind the masks are. Your new deskmate claims he’ll have that story on my desk within the week,” he said - a challenge, and Max had promised him that when he gave her the job all those months ago.
Max grinned at him, hiding whatever she was feeling, and she leaned forward, the deep vee of her sweater drawing his attention (intentionally). “He might be lying,” she said, simply.
The Chief chuckled, enamored of the idea of being the one paper in the nation to expose a Mask. “I don’t think so, Main. Show him around. He’s your new desk partner. Maybe he’ll let you share a byline, unless you’ve got something better?” he asked with a chuckle, calling back to her as he walked out. “Fact check it.”
Max reached for her cellphone, already dialing to warn Thomas as soon as the cleaning crew left, but then her desk phone was ringing. Mr. Arakkis, it seemed, was at the front desk.
And if his general stance and the argument he was currently engaged in with the woman behind it were any indication, it wasn’t a place he intended to remain for much longer.
In a long black coat and heavy combat boots, the latest addition to the writing staff looked out of place, more suited to stalking the streets of Ranier Valley than the (mostly) quiet hallways of the Times. The only sign that he might be more literarily-inclined was the battered satchel slung over his shoulder, which he was careful to keep close to his person throughout the encounter, and the pen stuck behind his ear. The satchel contained the very same article the Chief had spoken of, and while it was still very rough at this point and there were more gaps in it than Job would have liked, he felt good about it. A great start to what could very well be a great position.
...Now if only he could get past the vapid, hateful woman in front of him. ‘I can’t let you through right now’ his ass. He spared a moment to wish the plague on her, or perhaps a flesh-eating bacterium, before returning to his protests.
“What’s he afraid I’m going to do, break something? I’m housetrained, or more so than the rest of your glassy-eyed readership, I even promise to restrain any sudden urge to mark my territory all over my brand-new desk.” The calculating gleam in his eye made it difficult to tell if he was being serious or merely searching for which buttons could be pressed most effectively, but he was clearly offended at whatever had been said regardless. He only wanted to get inside, after all, see where he would be working, get the lay of the land before he resumed his research. It wasn’t as if he were asking for anything major, and, long used to just traipsing into the office without warning, the waiting game he was currently faced with was nothing short of unbearable.
But she would not be intimidated, especially not by someone who looked like nothing more than a soccer hooligan, no matter how loudly he protested. She calmly reminded him that it wasn’t her call and that it would really be appreciated by all involved if he kept his voice down and waited his turn like everyone else, and, much to his surprise, actually turned her back to him, effectively ending the conversation. He remained standing, sputtering wordlessly for a few moments in incredulous shock, then obediently found a seat, shooting her a petulant look from across the room as he waited.
Max only caught the end of his sarcastic question as she neared in a pencil skirt and stilettos. There was no indication she’d had a baby only a month earlier, and she moved with a confidence that was incongruous with the generally expected picture of motherhood. She had his ID in his hand, without the picture that she’d take him to have taken in a few minutes, and her brown gaze was intelligent, cataloguing the threat.
By the time she was close enough to speak, a smile graced her red-tinted lips, and her training slipped into place like an old, comfortable shoe. “Arakkis,” she said, voice slightly low and husky for a woman, and she held out a hand for a handshake. “Good to finally meet the fucker who thinks he’s taking my story,” she said, no demure damsel in the statement, and nothing but challenge in her gaze. “Main. Welcome aboard.”
He extended his own hand to shake hers, momentarily reminded of the origin of the gesture; strangers, checking for concealed weaponry on the other to ensure they weren’t caught off-guard. The more things change, he reflected with wry amusement, and merely smirked in response to her barb, an expression that, for a moment at least, gave him the appearance of a particularly vicious shark. She was sharp, he’d give her that. And she didn’t sound like she was going to give the story up without a fight. He could respect that. “Well the way I hear it, your trail’s gone cold. I figure that’s practically an invitation in itself. ...That and I’ve got one thing you don’t: an inside source.”
It was funny how quickly everything came back. Almost ten years out of the loop, ten years in relative seclusion away from the fast-paced world of deadlines and lead-chasing, and it was all lurking right at his fingertips as if he’d never been away, all the tricks and dances. “Great to be here though. From what I can tell I couldn’t have lucked out with a better deskmate, so.” He paused for a moment to adjust his bag then craned over her shoulder to look past her, clearly impatient to be getting to the ‘good’ stuff. “So. Now that we’ve got the ass-sniffing out of the way, let’s get a move on. When do I get to see my desk, anyway?”
“Who said I was done sniffing?” she asked, no offense taken to his crassness. Her grip was incongruous with the skirt and heels she wore, strong and calloused in interesting places. She took the badge she had between her fingers, and she snapped it onto his sleeve, before turning and walking just ahead of him, her mind racing. He was older than she’d expected, probably more seasoned, and getting him to just give the fucking story up wasn’t going to happen - years of working with difficult men told her that much.
She led the way between rows of desks, the pit where the beat writers lived and worked, and she looked over her shoulder at him. “Ever think I might be waiting for the right moment?” she asked him, her expression confident enough to make it believable. “Which one are you closing in on? Or is that confidential information?”
“For an entire year?” He scoffed, a momentary whiff of something that made his stomach turn on the next inhale causing a flicker in the ever-present smirk. Probably someone’s garbage left at their desk a few days past the sell-by date, not entirely unusual. “I’m not sure when your ‘right moment’ is if you’ve had to wait that long for it, but if you’ve actually been sitting on it for this long just waiting it’d better be fucking revelatory.” Flicking at the new badge, he bent his head to examine it for a moment before glancing around at the desks and offices beyond them.
“Now who’s trying to horn in on the story?” He chuckled, the accompanying grin designed to be grating. “Keep your panties on, you’ll find out when I’m good and ready to share. But I’ve already closed in, it’s just a matter of finding proof the common man will accept.” Unfortunately ‘I saw it in my dreams’ didn’t exactly jibe with the more sane sect of society, and the places more likely to accept a story based on that alone weren’t anything he wanted to be associated with.
Max hadn’t ever gone to journalism classes, but she didn’t need that background to get Arakkis’ number. The man wore old-school reporter on his sleeve like a medal. She’d always admired his sort, the kind that believed in the importance of telling the people the shit they were being kept in the dark about, and if his desires didn’t clash so strongly with hers just then she would have appreciated his version of honesty sharing her desk. He was no Copeland, with his traditional morals and charm, and Max led him to the office they would share, and made a grand, sweeping gesture with a wrist that was bare of jewelry a reporter could ill afford (she’d left those items at home).
“Welcome home,” she said, moving to her own desk and slipping up on it, smoothly crossing her knees in the slim skirt. He didn’t seem the sort to be swayed by heels and legs, but it was better to find out if he was - all ammunition was good ammunition in a war that was happening so close to home. “I had Sentinel on the hook, but then he disappeared on me,” she confessed, intentionally giving something so she could get something in return.
Both heels and legs were noted - he was only human, after all, and hadn’t gotten anything even approximating laid in more years than he cared to admit or think about - but with his own brand of professionalism he did little more than note it. Approaching his own desk he trailed his fingers absently along it, as if trying to get a feel for it, before dropping into the chair and raising his feet up onto the table, crossing his legs at the ankle and lacing his fingers behind his head. The perfect image of relaxed.
If she had expected a trade-off of information, she was in for disappointment; Job didn’t make a habit of sharing his information until the story was practically in print - he’d found it cut down on people trying to steal it from him that way. Instead he fixed her with a coolly interested look, one he might have graced his source with if given the opportunity to speak with him face to face rather than over the internet. “Tough break. Which one’s that, I don’t think I’ve come across him much in my research so far.”
Oh, he was good. She watched the show of relaxation, and she noted the lack of reciprocal information. “I’m supposed to fact check you,” she finally said, twirling her own chair around like she couldn’t care less about his masks or his stories. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t beat you out there with information. Let’s see, for you to skip right from the stink of the news desk to Page One and an office, well, it can’t be a fucking tiny Mask, can it?” she asked, giving him a look over a shoulder, unconcerned. “But you haven’t published it yet, so you don’t have it as in the bag as you want me to think you do.”
“Like you said, biding my time,” he quipped, throwing her own words right back at her; if he was at all concerned by the truth of her words it certainly didn’t show. He would get the full story soon enough, he always did, regardless of what he had to do to get it. He wasn’t burdened by the love of playing by the rules, after all.
With a deep breath, he pulled his boots off the desk and fixed her with a grin that might have fit better as a gargoyle’s rictus. It warned that he knew exactly what he was doing and what he had, and that she was severely underestimating him and they both knew it. Whether it was true or not was irrelevant, in this game it was all about intimidation and holding your cards as close to the vest as you could until it was time to play them. At least, it had been the last time he’d been in it, and he figured it couldn’t have changed all that much in his absence. “Well, I’d better get going. Leads to chase, minds to fill, you know how it is. Lovely to meet you, and I look forward to the future power grapples. I’ll see you when I see you.” He gave a lazy salute, and headed out to get the rest of the bureaucratic bullshit out of the way so he could get down to business.
He had a feeling this was going to be one hell of a ride.