I Moderate (i_moderate) wrote in we_archive, @ 2006-02-09 01:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | lana lang, theodore kord |
i_seekthelost Time Warp Whip Lash [ Ted ]
She wasn't the only one in business attire buying groceries. There were harried mothers in pants suits trailed by small children in soccer uniforms or dressed up in pink leotards trying to sneak fruit or cookies into baskets. Lana watched them, talking away on small communicators, the ones the television called cellular phones. They seemed to juggle so much. And no one thought twice about it.
There was even a woman well into her forties with a young child carried in some sort of sling on her chest. Another woman was following her, dutifully collecting baby products. Lana had never seen a woman in her forties with a child that was her own. At first she'd assumed grandmother, grandchild and daughter. But the younger woman was too subservient. And then a discreet listen revealed she was a nanny.
One hand dropped to her waist and Lana looked away. There was so much that was new in this place. The people, the manners. She hid herself away in her office, reading papers and trying to catch up on paperwork her new secretary said she was behind on. Playing politics at a University was distasteful, but it was something she knew how to do.
Living in this new world ? It was something else entirely.
She slipped her cigarette case out of her purse, needing a smoke to sooth her nerves. She couldn't look this off put in public. She'd learned the hard way about Luthors and public appearances. But the woman with the baby turned and glared at her as she flicked on her lighter. And the younger woman dutifully disappeared around the curve of the end of the aisle.
Lana inhaled and was exhaling slowly, feeling everything tension slipping away, when a young bright eyed young man in a bright red apron came trotting after her.
"Ma'am, you're going to have to put that out or leave. There's no smoking inside the store."
Lana looked around, cigarette between her index and middle finger. The woman with her baby was still glaring and now the nanny had returned. Lana realized she'd been tattled on.
"My apologies. I'll go outside."
"You can't leave your cart in the aisle, m'am."
She paused again, "Then where do you suggest I put it ?"
The boy gave her a look, huffing a bit, and took control of the car, wheeling it up to the front and then to the side. "If you're not back in fifteen minutes the items will be replaced."
Lana stepped out through the doors of the supermarket, and seriously wondered if she wanted to go back inside.
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/09/2006 18:18:57
Ted was by no means a chef. The TV dinners had contained too much sodium for him in his ‘former life’ and the doctors had to hammer the fact into the then former super heroes’ head that he had to learn how to make something editable. It took him a while, but he found he was most comfortable with actually cooking from scratch, if he could. Healthier and he tending to think of cooking as a project. He wasn’t going to be on TV, but no one would die from his cooking.
He was in the produce section, not so far away from the entrance, and while he hadn’t seen the reason why the redhead wasn’t given a bum rush, he heard the stock boy’s threat. If Ted was one thing, he was a gentlemen.... to strangers, anyway. The dark-haired man set down the tomato and walked over to the kid. “Couldn’t help but overhear,” He began agreeably, “but let her take her time. You’re only talking yourself into more work.”
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/09/2006 20:51:50
The stock boy wasn't immediately impressed by some would be prince charming.
"Singles night is tomorrow. You can pick her up then." He looked generally unimpressed with smokers as a whole. But then again, the supermarket claimed to be one of those organic, all natural super-chains. And the symbol beside his name (Kip) on the bright green plastic tag was a muscle building apple.
Outside through the glass, Lana blew out another curl of smoke, arms wrapped around her middle against the cold.
The stock boy didn't even glance her way. "Fifteen minutes and things get restocked. That's the rules."
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/09/2006 21:24:08
Kip. Maybe if the guy's name was something that didn't sound like fishing bait, Ted might have dropped it and gone on with shopping.
But no, some kid named Kip decided to sprout an attitude. "Y'know, I always thought these organic food places were run by old hippies, 'Kip'. Hardly the type to be sticklers for rules." He shook his head wistfully. "Who knew?"
What he was about to do was the lamest, most lame thing known to man kind. Sure, the lady was cute, but he wasn't about to do this for her. He took the cart then, pushing it away from the kid. "So I'll take this off your hands," Ted was now doing this to annoy the kid whose parents so obviously hated him they named him Kip. "Don't want the hippie scum burning you with their eye beams of nature, after all.”
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/09/2006 21:44:22
Kip glowered. He wanted to do something, but he didn't know what. It made his eyes squint and his nostrils flare.
"Then you can't stand here. This is for carts only."
Lana glanced through the doors at that moment and saw what looked like a pissing contest between an unseasoned buck and a stag that was clearly humoring him.
She dropped her cigarette, stubbed it out and stepped back in through the doors.
"Ahem ?"
Kip glanced her way. Then the man's way and stomped off, tension all over his back.
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/11/2006 13:51:02
Ted looked at Kip with a bemused skeptical glance, he wondered how long the poor kid had lived here, or was he born here, or what. As the woman approached, the easy confidience he had slightly faltered. Sure, he could toy with some punk with insults, jibes, and remain it being civil. Girls? Women? Anything other than a granny or good friend? He had a hard time.
Hey, he had been friends with Kara Zor-L, he reminded himself. If he could be friends with a buxom young blonde feminist with super strength and survive, making nice to normal girls wasn’t that hard. He was successful at work. "Of all the things this place sucks up, you'd think they'd take a few friendlier folks, y'know? " Ted sighed, shaking his head. "I hope I didn't make too much of an ass of myself." He offered the cart to the redhead.
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/11/2006 15:38:26
"This place..." She tilted her head. Was he like her, Jack, Lex and Lois ? "If I said I've been to New York City, would you think I was crazy ?"
She curled her fingers around the handle-bar of the cart. "Thank you, by the way."
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/11/2006 15:58:31
"Maybe if you were from New York City, yeah." Ted replied with a smirk as he put his hands in his khakis' pockets. "I'm from Chicago, so I'm biased."
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/11/2006 16:13:05
"Ahh." Lana smiled. "Well actually, 'I left my heart in...Metropolis.'" She held out her hand. "Lana Lang."
She pushed the cart a bit to the side to get them out of the way of incoming shoppers.
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/11/2006 16:51:01
"Ted Kord. Been to Metropolis once or twice." He cracked a grin, feeling more at ease. He heard of Lang before...
"For business, actually, before I ended up here." One could take that a certain way, that was for sure. He shrugged. "... wait. Lang? Lewis Lang? Are you related to him?" His eyes lit up, remembering how often Dan Garret had referenced him. Ted suddenly seemed like a school boy.
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/11/2006 16:58:36
She smiled. "You could say we're related. He's one half of the two people directly responsible for my existence." The smile became a grin. "Though mom would say I'm all his fault. He's my dad."
Her eyes twinkled. "You're an egyptologist ?"
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/11/2006 17:19:42
“Archeology was my minor, this close to having it become my major when my mentor died.” Ted’s smile wavered for a moment though his shoulders eased. A subject he knew.
“My mentor, professor, Dan Garrett, was a huge Egyptologist. I kinda liked his ideas and his energy. It was all to piss off my dad, who wanted me to run the family business before I met Professor Garrett.” Ted never liked talking about his father, “But I never suspected I would like it, being always following modern gadgetry and stuff.”
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/11/2006 18:02:12
"The Egyptians were ahead of their times. They're still ahead of our times. Can you imagine trying to build a pyramid in this day and age or put up an obelisk ?"
She smiled. "I suppose I should have introduced myself as Dr. Lana Lang, South Asian Archeology. Dad had Egypt covered, so I had to find my own spot"
She glanced around the supermarket. "Would you like to maybe get some coffee after we finish shopping ? I never met, Doctor Garrett, but if you had an Egyptologist as a mentor, we can swap dig stories. He did take you out, didn't he ?"
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/11/2006 18:47:23
I remember catching something a few years ago on TV on the Discovery Channel. No, Nova, and how they were attempting to recreate the pyramid thing. They completely failed at it but they tried to make it look like it was a success. Da-- Professor Garrett would have pitched a fit." He nearly pitched a fit at the show as well.
"Doctor? Oh, hey, wow. Sure, that's be great." He nodded at the mention of coffee, actually happy with the prospect of talking to someone normal for a change. "He took me to a few places, yeah. We just connected, I was going to turn it into my major but. Things happen."
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/11/2006 18:55:09
She smiled at the mention of the NOVA special. She had no idea what channel that was, but she could well believe an attempt was made and had failed, horribly.
"I hadn't planned on going for my Ph.D. It's usually too much of a hassle for a woman. But, like you said, things happen."
She looked back at her cart. "Now to find things that I can cook on a hibachi."
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/11/2006 19:25:59
"More determined than me. I fell back to a computer science degree, and I'm only a Masters." Hibachi? Sounded vaguely asian, so he chalked that up to preferences Dr. Lang picked up while in Asia. “Can’t help but wonder, what do you mean, it’s hard for a woman to get her PhD–“
Ted, was enormously dense sometimes when he realized what she was wearing. “It’s tough for anyone?” He ended sheepishly, uncertain what to say to same him from his blunder.
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/11/2006 19:37:43
"That's nice of you to say." Lana continued, not noticing at all that he'd even made a blunder. "But even with a noted archaeologist father and Lex Luthor likely pulling strings, they still gave me the what for. As brutally as they could."
In her steel-tipped heels, and tight cigarette skirt and coat top, gloves on her hands now that she wasn't smoking, Lana wouldn't have thought she looked out of place.
"And when it came to teaching classes, well, despite having had personal experience on the field, I was lucky to get a handful of co-eds."
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/12/2006 20:28:47
Ted stared at Dr. Lang for less than a second, uncertain what to say next. Sure, women still weren’t equal in his existence (despite the long winded rants his father would spew about), but it currently wasn’t as bad as it had been for Lana. “Well, Dr. Lang, I don;t think we’re from the same existence. It sounds like you just walked out of that one movie... what was it called.... Mona Lisa something... Not that I’d really know.” Last girl Ted had been seeing loved that movie, he wanted to gouge his eyes out. “It doesn’t sound like my existence, currently.”
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/12/2006 21:48:06
She hadn't heard of the movie either. But she was curious about his existence as he called it, and the differences between his and hers. Especially since now that he knew she had her doctorate, he was going out of his way to call her Dr. Lang.
Not many did.
"Your existence, well dimension, sounds stacked frankly." She said with a bit of a wink. In her time a woman using stacked to describe anything was more than a bit naughty.
"It's not as easy to tell a girl college is for an MRS and not a Ph.D ?"
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/12/2006 22:02:32
Ted respected those who went through the time and trouble to get a doctorate’s degree. They deserved the title, and it sounded like she came before the women’s lib, so it had to been harder for her. Besides, he could just imagine Bea in his mind’s eye smacking him upside the head for not giving some respect.
“Uh... stacked?” He repeated, thinking for a few moments. The first refrence was sadly another adjective that he could describe Bea, but he very much decided that Lana didn’t mean that. Then came the cheating reference, and he decided that might be closer to what she was thinking. “I guess, maybe a little. You actually sound like you came before the women’s lib, where I’m from.”
Ted paused for a moment, not sure how to answer her second question. “I guess there are a few girls go to college to meet guys, marry a rich one I guess. Didn’t happen to me, I dressed to poor.” He gave a slight grin. “But most go for a BA, not a doctor’s.”
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/12/2006 22:09:04
"Women's lib ? Well, we've got the vote. But there's some still sore about having had to leave work to the men and go back in the kitchen after the war. A decade isn't going to change that. And some of the girls growing up, like me, who saw that and thought about other possibilities, well... we've been busy fighting our own battles and not leading a movement."
She shrugged and pushed her cart down an aisle. "Maybe we should have. It's something to think about at any rate. Though, I admit, I thought I'd gotten out of needing to learn how to cook when I did marry a rich man." She grinned at Ted. "Years later, of course."
She peeked towards his groceries. "You seem to be an man of your dimension then, assuming they've taken up other tasks in the balance of the sexes. Do you cook ?"
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/12/2006 22:30:01
"It takes about two decades." Ted said with a grin. "Just trust me on this one, the ladies from your time will get to it. My dad hated it, he's a bit of a conversative. Complained all the time about the 'femi-nazis'."
Ted wasn't carrying a lot, just some vegetables though he had been caught in the middle of his usual kamikazi shopping trip. "Okay, where I came from, I had a heart condition. I guess this was genetic and the fact I ate a lot of prepared dinners with sodium, and been living a bachelors' life. My family has good money but uhm, I'm not so good with money because of prior engagements for a while."
He shrugged. "So I pretty much dined on food that wasn't good for my heart and my doctor said I had to learn how to cook with fresh ingredients. No more of that salt stuff. I'm not good at it, but no one's died from it yet. Here, I guess my body healed itself and my heart's okay, but I'm not risking the second chance."
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/13/2006 20:13:51
"Seems wise." She replied. "And it's good to know there's some truth to the myth that men live longer when they're married." She smiled. "Well, to women who cook."
She shook her head, after a pause and asked delicately. "Femi-nazi ? Is Nazi not a strong word where you're from ?"
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/13/2006 23:00:59
"Or men who cook. I've known a few good male chefs, a lot of the popular cooks in my existence have their own TV program." There was a period that lasted a week that Ted attempted to keep up with Emrill. It didn't turn out so well.
"Uh... it's a very strong term. It's uhm... complicated. Just... coined by a guy who's not comfortable with women being more aggressive. Me? I kinda like it."
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/13/2006 23:07:50
"Aggressive women ? " She smiled at him, with more than a hint of mischief in her eyes. "Or the term ? Though I suppose." She added, her voice going a shade deep. "That some men might find a woman in a tightly pressed uniform, minimal jewelry and what there is of it, all angles and sharps, attractive."
She pushed the cart ahead of them blithely. "There are certain tribes in Africa where women lead over the men. Quite strictly in fact. The men seem to adore it."
There were nearing the meat and fish section and Lana paused to peruse, not looking back at Ted's reaction.
From: [info]i_countcalories Date: 02/14/2006 22:43:31
"Yeah, uhm... yeah?" Ted said, looking a little embrassased. "I mean, it's just... uh... well. I like knowing what a person wants, not second guessing. I guess... ah..." Oh boy, he knew he had burried himself in a hole and bowed his head, huched up his shoulders. "Guys are dumb, honest."
There had been a time he hadn't been so awkward. Every time he took one step ahead, he took two steps back. He didn't know what to say about the tribes in Africa for a moment. "Like I said, guys are dumb. We like structure."
From: [info]i_seekthelost Date: 02/16/2006 05:46:49
She picked up a steak, nodded to herself, put it down in her cart and turned back to Ted. "There's nothing wrong with knowing what a person wants. I never quite understood the whole American concept of a man needing to guess and guess right. It's not as if he can read minds."
She thumbed the ring on her hand a moment. "It's knowing where things fit. Things and people."
Lana glanced down at the fresh meat and fish section. "Getting anything ?"