stands_for_hope: (Default)
[continued from here]

Finishing his article, clearing everything with Keith, those things took time. That was why it took a few hours before Clark was ready to make his usual call to Lois that night. He had worried that he might not make the time window that she cleared every day to talk to him and the others, but he was proud to say that he'd left himself an even half an hour as long as everything was to schedule.

After the fifth time she didn't pick up (didn't so much as text or ping him), it became clear that things were very much off schedule.

Clark made his way back to the main floor where everyone seemed to congregate and headed straight for Tony, holding up the phone to him.

"I know we're all tired and we've certainly had a long day, but... can you find out where Lois's phone is from the number here?"

In all the madness of the day, all the fighting and the close calls and the weakness brought on by the proximity of kryptonite, he'd lost track of her heartbeat. Usually, it was simple enough to pick up over the phone once again, a steady pulse that he could find his way back to once the phonecall had ended.

He couldn't hear her. He couldn't tell where she was. And she wasn't answering her phone. She always answered her phone. He didn't want to think anything was wrong, but he wasn't naive enough to discount something like this. Not after today. Not after they'd pulled out kryptonite weapons.
stands_for_hope: (extra: circe)
[continued from here]

Autumn had well and truly come to Metropolis and things had settled down into a steady routine.

ExpandRead more... )
stands_for_hope: (hmmm (comics) (glasses))
[continued from here]

It took a few weeks, but soon enough, the apartment had become an entirely settled little commune between the five of them. Steve's things had arrived as Clint had promised, they'd been installed in the new apartment, and the group had made the changes they'd discussed for everyone's comfort with one addition: with Steve bunking with Jim, the room he'd initially intended to take had become a general office/library/art room for everyone to use when they felt like a bit of time alone. For as silly as the concept sounded, all of them had ended up using the room a time or two and it had definitely kept things peaceful despite the addition of two new people.

Considering that the apartment was home to four superheroes and a world-famous journalist, it was amazing how easily they all fell into a routine. Jim, Lois, and Clark would usually leave for work around the same time and Steve, always an early riser, had taken to making them something to munch for breakfast on the way after he returned from his morning run. Having also gotten a position at the community center (teaching kids art and art history), Steve would leave with Diana an hour or so after that. Everyone filtered back into the apartment at different times and whoever was feeling up to cooking would usually start dinner when they got in. If no one was feeling up cooking, one of the two 'old' men would treat takeout.

Today, however, Jim's site was currently closed for due to an issue with the plumbing contractors and some unfortunate flooding that had occurred overnight. That was why Clark texted Jim and invited him to come visit he and Lois at the Daily Planet offices and go out for lunch together.
stands_for_hope: (house of am)
[continued from here]

Steve wakes up slowly, happy and warm and content enough he's not sure where he is at first. The clues he gets initially aren't helpful because they're such universal parts of his life, as far as his hindbrain is concerned, that they're just a part of 'how he should wake up'.

There's a warm body up against him, deep brown hair pressed up against his nose and mouth that smells like home, a ratty old mattress beneath him that's too firm for anyone but someone like him--

And a metal arm across his stomach. Huh. That shakes some things loose.

It doesn't halt the grin on his face, though. That's... probably never going away, or at least it won't be budging anytime soon (probably until Jim looks at him, disgusted, and tells him to 'stop lookin' like a loon'). Instead, he just reaches over to grab his phone from the the bedside table (amazing the things that survive a plain crash when they're kept in the right pocket) and peers at the time.

Huh. Nearly two. That's fair. But--

"Hey, sleepyhead. You get some good rest?"
stands_for_hope: (sadface (costume))
[continued from here]

Clark knew as soon as the information hit the newsroom that it was going to be a bad day. Lois looked up from her desk and met Clark's eyes and the both of them picked up their coffee and their coats and headed for the door. The way the world was, the way the news worked now, they knew they couldn't beat the television or the radio, but maybe they could beat Jim finding out about what'd happened, given his tendency to shut out the world while he was at work.

Unfortunately, one of the guys working interiors with Jim had his radio on and, having forgotten his headphones, he'd been sharing his music with the rest of the crew. It was an oldies station, a mix of the forties, the fifties, and the sixties, and it was pretty much music except on the hour mark, when they read out the news.

"-op story of the moment, just came through: a plane containing Captain America of all people went down somewhere off the coast Florida, right smack dab in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. Would you believe that? Officials are saying it happened a couple of days ago but search crews have had no luck finding any trace of the Captain or the small aircraft he was traveling in and are requesting any and all assistance in looking for our missing hero--"
stands_for_hope: (saving people (comics) (costume))
That morning, there wasn't a paper that didn't have a variation of one headline:

Captain America Comes Out in Support of Superman

The quotes were all different, though: 'He's here to help, same as me.' 'I've never met a kinder, more civic-minded man.' 'I've fought beside him and I'd do it again; there's very few people I'd trust to have my back like Superman.'

The Planet was the only one who had a full interview to go along with the statement that had been distributed to the various publications, an exclusive as written by Lois Lane who was starting to get known as the woman to go to if you needed to talk to a harder-to-find superhero. Lois didn't mind that one bit, honestly, though Cat Graham had started to ask her if she knew any of their numbers to get herself a date.

Later, on another day, Clark might wonder if that had been as much of a catalyst as anything. Because that was the day that Lex Luthor decided to make his play.

The massive spider mecha seemed to appear out of nowhere, towering over parts of the downtown area that had only just begun to be rebuilt. The streets were suddenly filled with rolling war machines, filled to the brim with alien soldiers speaking a language that was unfamiliar and strange to anyone who might hear it. Strange flying ships made their way from the outskirts of the city inward, terrifying the people as they scattered them from the streets. And all of them, each and every one of them, wore red, blue, and gold... and sported the s-like curve as an emblem.

The invasion had begun.
stands_for_hope: (deep distress (comics))
[continued from here]

Metropolis was an incredibly large city, true to it's name, and that meant that things that happened in one part could be entirely unnoticed by another part. It was one of the saving graces of the mess that had been made by the Kryptonians in the downtown area: a lot was lost and a lot of it was important, but the city continued running and thriving.

Even in the lives of those intricately tied together, the same is true.

In one place, the man now going as James William Rogers was finishing up the heavy work on his latest construction project after weeks of extensive physical labor. His phone buzzed as soon as it turned from 4:59 to 5:00 pm.

In the offices of the Daily Planet, Lois Lane was receiving a package that had been sent by one Clint Barton, which contained a variety of paperwork which had been assembled to make Jim Rodgers a real person in the eyes of the government and whatever financial institutions were required.

And lastly, having been rather unpleasantly pranked by some of his co-workers, Clark Kent was sitting in the wrong restaurant waiting for people to show up. Except that his ears picked up the sound of an explosion and he was shooting out of his seat a moment later, money left for what food he'd eaten as he tugged his clothes away and changed into Superman.

The bridge to New Troy had been attacked, by what Clark couldn't figure out, and he struggled to stablize the suspension wires manually while the bridge was evacuated when a shot came seemingly out of nowhere and hit him in the gut with what felt like the force of a mack truck and a woozy sickness that fluttered against his memory to a certain day and a certain night and a terible terrible accident. But that was secondary to what he had to do, namely get the innocent people to safety, even if they were staring at him a little timidly over the fact that he seemed to look ill. And was wobbling.

He didn't care, he'd get it done. He'd save them.

But aftewards? After he melted the suspension wires back together and after he got the people off of the bridge, and after he managed to find himself an alley to be sick in and a dumpster to curl up behind, Clark pulled up his phone and dialed his roommate's number.

Jim. Alley off of Falstaff and Sullivan. Please come pick me up. Need help.

Which was when he finally let himself pass out.
stands_for_hope: (lois: watching)
[continued from here]

The day had arrived. The trap had been set.

They'd gone to Lois's apartment the day before and made their intentions clear, hoping that with a short period of time, the HYDRA forces wouldn't be able to pull together anything that was too hard to handle.

Jim's paycheck had come in, so he'd treated a rather delicious dinner for the three of them, which had been followed up with some surveillance work, a couple of flights over the various buildings to scout for good positions (both to look for snipers and to drop Lois), and a watching of The Incredibles since there weren't any good games on.

Lois hadn't quite gotten Jim into a french braid with flowers, but she had managed to twist up a few smaller braids and tuck the remainder into a pony tail to keep the worst of it out of his face. If Lois was happy about it as much for it's utility as to give Jim a firm, physical reminder of the people who cared about him... well, she wasn't about to say it out loud.

Clark was with them until roughly half an hour before and informed them just before he left that Captain America was on the ground, apparently sketching one of the ruined and as yet unrepaired buildings on a bench nearby with large 'easel case' while the Falcon was half a mile away on a rooftop. Thankfully, while a good portion of the surrounding area had been destroyed during the attack on Metropolis, this neighborhood was semi-functional (if largely empty during the weekend) so he wasn't entirely out of place.

That just left Lois, her HYDRA pin tucked in place at her collar, and Jim in the empty office room, doing their best to psych themselves into believing this would work.

...and Clark going to investigate the singular figure hiding out on one of the higher rooftops nearby.
stands_for_hope: (Default)
[continued from here]

When Lois and Clark went into work the next day, they were expecting a few things. One was that Perry was going to be on their ass about the story they were working on, given that he hadn't gotten quality work out of two of his reporters for over a week. Another was a possible comment or two from Lombard regarding the fact that they'd both come in at the same time (which, of course Lois shut down because it was none of his damn business, thank you very much).

Cat Grant stalking up to Lois with a grumpy expression to inform her that Captain America was here to see her was not one of those things, not even remotely.

That was why they shared a look as Lois went straight to her desk and Clark detoured to head up to the roof for a Very Important Phonecall.

Here abut Winter Sldir he got from Lois before he'd even made it to the top floor. She'd used the trick before, pretending she was finishing off a message to shoot him some information he needed, but that also meant that she probably wouldn't be able to tell him more until after the man was gone. Either way, the man was here, which meant their plans may or may not be off to a brilliant start.

RING RING

He really hoped Jim was somewhere he could answer his phone.
stands_for_hope: (Default)
[continued from here]

It'd been a few days and Clark had spent most of them listening into the various communications going through the city. It hadn't allowed him to finish a story on his own, which had had Perry on his ass, but thankfully Lois had his back and had insisted that the two of them were working on something entirely worth the loss of a column or two.

Lois had stayed over until they called her to tell her that she was allowed to go back to her apartment. She'd given the officer over the phone a bit of a Talking To over how long it'd taken them to allow her back, but she'd hung up the phone and flopped on the couch and stayed an extra day because she'd gotten to enjoy the company of the two men. Getting to know Jim had been especially fun, more so than she'd thought it would be.

But the idea of going home wasn't exactly pleasant when she knew there was at least one spot where a man had died in the middle of her living room, so she waited until Jim got home from work and Clark had informed them that the HYDRA chatter machine seemed to be quiet before she proposed that they bring her back to her apartment.

The second they walked in, Clark typed on his phone and showed the message to both of them.

The Room Is Bugged. Center lamp. Kitchen table. Bedroom.
stands_for_hope: (little smile)
[continued from here]

They'd fallen into a routine pretty easily.

Clark had managed to write up something about the church bust without incriminating either of them, which meant that his Perry had been pleased enough with his work for the day and had only yelled at him for five minutes about his failure to show up in the office the whole day. Lois had ribbed him a little, which had been remarked upon as she usually gave the new guy hell if he did anything remotely out of the line, and then she'd ribbed him a lot. He hadn't minded too terribly much since he had visited her afterwards at her apartment and she'd done plenty of kissing to make it better.

With a second person in the apartment, he'd started to fix it up a little, bringing home new linens, keeping the fridge stocked more regularly, and he'd even managed to find a new couch for them through a very kindly older woman and Craigslist.

True to his word, he'd gotten some rudimentary identification for Jim and he walked through the door with a spring in his step, closing the door behind him and plopping it down on the kitchen table with a smile.
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