Jonathan Copeland (lightofday_) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-10-14 20:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | lois lane, superman |
Who: Max and Johnny
Where: Her apartment
What: He made chicken soup
When: An hour after their conversation on the network
Johnny wasn’t kidding when he said that he’d make her chicken soup, truthfully he was having the worst week of his life. He was pretty sure that if he didn’t deliver the story he promised he may as well not actually go back to work. He was stressing out, but he busied himself making Max her chicken soup and tried not to think about it.
He hadn’t meant to be so sharp with her, and he made a mental note to apologize to her for it once he got there. The soup was good and hearty and even if he didn’t buy the flu story for a moment he hoped it would make her feel better. It was made from scratch, and it reminded him of home when he tasted it.
He packaged the soup up and walked the little ways down the hall to her apartment and knocked on the door.
Max had put two beers on ice, and then she’d stood at her bathroom mirror and tried to do something about her face. The swelling had finally gone down some that evening, but the glorious bruise (red at the center and purple at the edges) that blossomed across her right jaw and cheek only looked worse beneath layers of makeup. She’d cursed, and then she’d washed off the makeup and left her hair loose, to at least obstruct the brightly-colored skin somewhat. Her arm didn’t worry her. She wore a long-sleeved henley, and the bandage at her forearm was hardly noticeable under the thick fabric.
When the knock came at the door, she wondered (again) if this was anything other than completely idiotic, but she hadn’t seen anyone all day, and she was starting to go stir crazy with it. She’d been thisclose to going to the warehouse to check if Thomas had picked up his car, but then Johnny had messaged her, and now she was on her way to open the door and give him some barely believable lie about falling on the stairs.
She pulled open the door, and she looked down at the soup in his hands, then up at his face. “How domestic, Smallville.”
Johnny forgot for a moment that he was supposed to be surprised by the sight in front of him, so it took him a moment before he registered that he should probably be more concerned about her face. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to pretend like he didn’t notice it, or just brush it off. Instead he grinned a bit, “That’s some flu,” he said gently. “Soup will still help, let me in.”
The reaction wasn’t what she’d expected, and it made her chuckle quietly as she pulled the door open. “Come on in, Johnny,” she said, closing the door behind him and then walking past him into the kitchen. She opened the freezer, and she pulled out the two beers within, and she looked over to where she expected him to be following her. “Who taught you how to cook?” she asked, which seemed like a very mundane question given everything that had happened recently.
Johnny grinned a bit as he stepped inside, other than her face she looked well, he wondered about her arm but he definitely wasn’t going to ask about it. There was a part of him that wanted to tell her, just so she’d know what he was up to. He was pretty sure that after he published his article this was going to be the last time they’d hang out in a friendly manner. No matter how he managed to smooth it over, he was setting himself up to be quite the jerk.
He shrugged at her question, “My mama,” he answered easily. “She figured I needed some kind of domestic skill, I never could figure out how to get the streaks off the mirror.”
Max popped open her beer, and she took a seat at the bench at the far end of the kitchen, behind the modern version of the picnic table that was never, ever used. She inclined her head to the stove, and she took a long swallow of the beer. “Kitchen’s all yours, Martha,” she said, and she sat back. She hadn’t been spending a lot of time with men who didn’t think saving the world was entirely on their shoulders lately, and there was something appealing about a man whose biggest concern in life was making chicken soup and bringing it to a co-worker. She crossed her legs, long legs bare under a pair of gray running shorts, and she set the cold beer against her jaw. “Still pissed at me?”
He opened up the container of the soup he’d brought, it was still hot and he looked around in cupboards and found a bowl and opened a drawer and found a spoon and poured her a bowl of the soup. And took it over to her and set it down on the table in front of her. “Be ready to have your life changed forever.”
He went back into the kitchen and grabbed the beer she’d set out, he took a long drink after she asked her question about if he was still pissed at her or not and he thought his words over carefully. He wasn’t mad at her, there was no way he could be. He hadn’t just done it for her, but somehow he wondered if he was supposed to be mad.
Oh, she thought he was pissed, alright. She’d asked a friend to do something that could get them fired, and then he’d done it and bitched at her about it. The bitching was a good thing; she respected him more after it than she had before it. Not standard female behavior, but Max had given up trying to be a girl a long time ago. Even here, in this kitchen with this man and the beer, she was one of the guys, and she knew it. A woman would have gotten coddled about the bruising by the blue-eyed, handsome man at the door. Hell, a woman would have wanted to get coddled. And maybe part of her did, but it was the same part of her that had scribbled fairy tales into her diary under the blankets at night secretly, so her father wouldn’t find out about it. She barely remembered that girl.
“If soup can change my life forever, Smallville, there has to be something more to it than chicken and noodles,” she teased, taking another long swallow of the beer.
Johnny walked over to the table and sat down across for her and took another drink of his beer. “Just eat it,” he said clearly very sure of himself. “And for the record Max...I’m not pissed about what you asked me to do, I’m not even pissed that I got more fired than I usually do, I’m not trying to win a Pulitzer here. I hate letting people down,” he said looking down at the table. “And yeah I did you a solid, but I let my boss down,” the part about how he was about to let himself down to make up for it went unsaid. She didn’t need to know that. She’d know soon enough. “I have learned one lesson in my life and that’s that every action has a consequence. I’m not too sure that I want to know what the consequences of this particular action are going to be.”
She noticed how fast that beer was going down, and she finished her own before tasting the soup. It was, admittedly, heaven. Her mother, the constant gardener, made soup at home, and this was almost as good. Honestly, the only thing that made it come in second was the memories associated with her mother’s blend. She let the warm broth slide down her throat, and she made an appreciative sound as she put the spoon down. “Let it never be said you oversell yourself, Johnny,” she told him, holding out the empty beer, a silent request for a replacement.
“Big won’t fire you, Smallville. He never does, not really. You’re his star,” she said, because she didn’t understand the bond between the two men, but she knew it was there. “And you didn’t do me a solid; you did society a solid. This isn’t about me.” It wasn’t, either. “I don’t give a shit if people recognize me for me, but the last thing anyone needs is me being a pressure point for those men. Got me?”
He stood up to get her another beer and got himself one as well. He wasn’t a big drinker, but he didn’t mind it too much once in a while. “Glad you like it,” he said setting the opened beer in front of her.
He sat back down and nodded, “I know, but I’d better bring him something good, and you know I hate lying, this isn’t something that I do, Max. Society or not, I’m a reporter not a superhero.” Any thought he had about telling her the truth was gone, simply because she had a point, she didn’t need to be a pressure point. And he knew better than anyone that personal relationships were a liability. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m not saying that what I did was right either.”
“Protecting them is right,” she insisted, spooning up a spoonful of soup and handing it to him with almost comical care not to lose all of it in the process. “You might not be a superhero, Johnny, but the superheroes need regular assholes like us sometimes,” she said, the smile on her face, an open one. “When I came over from Musings, I wanted to be a reporter so bad that I could taste it. I wanted to tell the world the truth at all costs.” She shrugged, and she reached for the fresh beer. “Well, now I know that sometimes the cost can be too high. The world needs heroes.” She laughed at herself, then, and sat back. “I sound like a broken record.”
He nodded but he didn’t respond, as far as he was concerned if they were all going to be out doing the things they did they would need all the help they could get, but they also needed to be prepared to suffer consequences. “Fair enough,” he said and took another drink of his beer. He wanted to agree with her, Sentinel wanted to agree with her, but Johnny Copeland was about to throw all of these opinions under a bus.
“Oh, no. You aren’t getting off that easy,” she said, pointing the beer at him as she spoke. “Talk.”
He smiled a bit and shrugged, “I think that it’s our job to tell the truth, and to find the truth because the minute we stop doing that is the minute we lose our integrity. I don’t want to lose that, I agree that the world needs heroes, Max. Don’t misunderstand me on that, alright? We do need heroes. Absolutely we need heroes, but they can still be heroes even if I write a story that says some heroes walked into a bar for a meeting. I’m not trying to unmask anyone, I wouldn’t support that. But I don’t support turning a blind eye to it either.”
There was, admittedly, something to what he said. It was the perfect thing for a reporter to say, a real reporter, one that saw the story and the truth and didn’t think about the consequences of telling it. It was what she would have said a month earlier, before the Bat and Robin and Sentinel. Before talking to Oracle, before seeing children almost die trying to save adults they didn’t even know. “What if telling the truth, telling people about the bar, could get those heroes killed?” she asked. “What then?”
“Come on Max,” he said looking at her incredulously, “This is me we’re talking about. You think I want to get anyone killed?” he asked almost disappointed. “I just think that heroes run the risk of getting themselves killed every day that they’re out on the street doing the jobs they’ve tasked themselves with. Whether or not I write a story about them isn’t going to change that. They’re not a secret, if they want to be a secret they need to stop walking into damn bars.”
“I just think they sacrifice enough. I don’t want to make them give up anything else,” she admitted, tipping back the remainder of the beer. “And I don’t want them feeling responsible if the stupid, unmasked woman with them ends up being used as leverage.” She was a little buzzed now, the combination of beer and the pills she’d taken for the pain in her jaw and arm catching up with her. “They’re good. They wouldn’t realize it’s better to sacrifice the woman, if it came down to it.” That was just smart military training talking; the good of the many and so on.
“That’s what makes them heroes, sacrificing the woman isn’t an option. And honestly if they’re going to be heroes then they have to know that anyone they associate with is going to be leverage someday. Not that I want to see you used as leverage, but you’re running in the wrong kind of crowd for that.”
She laughed a little. “Smallville, I’m not concerned about myself.” She wasn’t either. “So write the real article,” she challenged. “If it’s so important that the world knows what happened in that bar, write it.” Her expression, her posture, everything about her said that she didn’t think he would.
“Maybe I am,” he shot back quickly and sternly. “I don’t know what happened in that bar, Max, I don’t care to. That is done and over with, I’m over it. I just hope you know that we can’t protect them forever. The time is going to come where someone else is going to get the story, and maybe we can attempt to do a little damage control after the fact, but...We should be on it first, not the other way around.”
“We?” she asked, putting the beer down and leaning on the table, toward him. “You joining the cause, Johnny?” she asked, and she sounded quietly impressed. There was a firm certainty in his words that she hadn’t expected from this particular man, but Max had never been a good judge of the male members of the species. Her expression softened, and she returned her attention to her soup for a minute. “So, you’re saying hit the stories first, and hit them with the angle we want them to believe? That’s almost sneaky, Smallville.” She quirked a grin as she looked up from the soup bowl. “Quit glowering at me, or I’m going to take the fish in the divorce.”
She put the spoon down, and she sighed as she looked at him again. “I didn’t set out to be involved in this,” she admitted with rare honesty. “But it happened, and now I’ve got to make it fit with everything else. I screwed up, asking you to cover-up the story, and I get that.” She touched her hand to her bruised jaw, and she remembered what Luke had looked like, bleeding and pale in the Bat’s car. “I let emotions get in the way of turning the story to everyone’s advantage.”
“Hell no, I’m not joining any cause, but I don’t think that it’s entirely fair for all sides of every story not to be told,” he corrected quickly. “Look when you write about what I write about, there are always two sides, usually more, and it would be irresponsible for me not to present those sides. The news doesn’t make decisions for people but it should give them the power to make those decisions for themselves. I don’t roll like Fox News,” he said smiling wryly.
He took another drink of his beer and shook his head, “I did it, screw up or not, I did it. But I just want you to understand where I’m sitting on this, and I need you to understand that you aren’t the only one with an agenda, and when it comes down to it,” he paused and gave her a serious look, “And it will come down to it...Just think about what you know about me, and before you knock me on my John Brown hindquarters...Remember who I am, alright?” And that was all he was going to say about that, she knew he was following a lead, she was smart she would put two and two together to make four. He just hoped that she wouldn’t put two and two together and make five. Five was bad for all of them and it meant his secret was that much closer to being out.
“White collar crime is different, Johnny. Different than this. No one goes out and dresses up as a white collar criminal for Halloween and gets themselves shot in the face. There are kids involved in this, and men who are willing to give up everything in order to keep people safe in a corrupt system that just doesn’t work.” she argued. “Telling the news is one thing, but making it more dangerous for those people? No, not everyone needs to know that. If Monroe had run down that story and it was anyone other than me in the bar it would have been-” she paused, collecting her thoughts and letting the soup spoon fall and slosh. “Imagine it had been Russo in the bar. Imagine Monroe posts his name: Russo In Bed With Vigilantes! What do you think would have happened there? And how the hell does society benefit from that knowledge? Because, I promise you, Monroe would have gone for the name.”
“I’m not suggesting anyone get shot in the face, I’m not suggesting that we do anything harmful, but continuing to hide it is going to make people wonder who they can trust, and when people feel like there’s a conspiracy against them they panic. They start asking questions, and there is nothing scarier or more dangerous than an uninformed public. A single person can be good, but people as a whole are alarmists. But,” he looked at her seriously. “If you really want to protect these people, and keep your name out of it, then for the love of God be more careful. I don’t want to know what you were up to, or what the situation was, I am sure it was dire. But come on...How stupid could all of you have been. In the day and age of cell phones and social networking? Just imagine for a moment if I wasn’t working at the paper, if you weren’t working at the paper, if this was anyone else and the news got out. I’m all for fighting the good fight, but this was irresponsible and dangerous for everyone involved. If they start getting sloppy, people are going to get hurt and the public will turn on them so fast it’ll make their heads spin.”
“Somewhere public was the only option,” she argued, barely letting him finish what he was saying. In retrospect, she weighed the decision to go into the bar, with the option of making Luke keep walking somewhere secluded and risking being alone in the dark with an injured boy when the mask killer realized he’d been tricked. She’d had no weapons, and she’d known Luke’s injury was a severe one. She was accustomed to making decisions under pressure, and even sitting in the kitchen the day after it seemed like the right choice - but only if the desired outcome had been Luke’s survival. If the desired outcome had been an undetected escape, then she’d seriously screwed up.
She pushed the soup bowl aside, and she looked at him, really looked at him. “Two months ago, I would have agreed with everything you just said. Today, I know you’re right about the sloppiness, and I know you’re right about controlling the message, but it’s not so easy to worry about logistics when emotions are involved, Johnny.” The last was said quietly, tired, and she gave him a halfhearted smile. “Thanks for the soup. I owe you two, now, it seems.”
“Max, I’m not questioning anything, I don’t want to know,” he said honestly. Frankly he didn’t want to talk about it at all. The sooner they could veer off this line of conversation the better as far as he was concerned.
“I get that,” he said conceding for now, he didn’t want to argue with her, he didn’t believe in this argument and it wasn’t worth it to him. He nodded at her and finished his beer quickly and sighed. “You’re welcome, there’s more of it in the container, enjoy it. You can even keep the container, but you might have to fight Mason off, that soup cured his bronchitis three years in a row,” he said as he pushed himself away from the table. “I’ve got to head back, for once I’m actually chasing a lead,” he said giving her a wink. “Put a steak on that,” he said pointing to his own jaw.