Fic: "Great Shades of Elvis" (SV, 1/1)
Great Shades of Elvis
Spoilers for "Perry", "Crusade", "Gone", "Devoted", "Recruit", "Krypto", "Blank", general Superman mythos
Summary: “Like I was telling you, every generation has a Perry White. You’re the one this time around. I was the last one.”
Great Shades of Elvis
Perry White tightened his grip on the baseball bat as he walked through his apartment. Something had woken him up at - he squinted at the VCR - two o’clock in the morning and he was fully willing to beat the hell out of whoever or whatever had done it. He had to get up in four hours - as the new editor of the Daily Planet’s Metro section, he actually had duties to attend to first thing in the morning.
Plus, it took a good night’s sleep to deal with Lois Lane.
As silently as possible, he stepped from carpet to linoleum and glanced around the dark kitchen. Nothing. He sighed, straightening his back and relaxing his hold on the baseball bat, and turned on the lights.
“Hello, Perry.”
A man he’d never met before was sitting at his kitchen table. “Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my apartment?” he demanded, lifting up the bat again.
The man chuckled. “Calm down, boy,” he said and took a swig from the beer bottle in his hand. Not only did this guy break into my apartment, but he raided my fridge too? “Pull up a chair. By the way, your taste in beer leaves a lot to be desired.”
Perry frowned. There was something…familiar about the man, but how that could be, he didn’t know. He was sure he’d never seen him before. Carefully, he walked towards the table. “Do I know you?”
The man smirked. “Well, that’s a matter of interpretation, son. You see,” he said, gesturing a bit with the bottle in his hand, “unto every generation there is a Perry White, a man in the background, but holding a secret so powerful that kings would bow before him if they knew.”
Clearly, the guy was insane. “Okay, I’m gonna back away slowly and I’m gonna reach for my phone and the nice men from the institution you escaped from will come and take you away. Don’t worry; I’m sure you’ll feel better once you’re back on your medication.”
The man laughed and set down the beer bottle. “You know, I wish my encounter had been this entertaining. But no, I had a guy with next to no sense of humor. I think we’re getting better at this.”
“Better at what?” Perry asked. Okay, so the guy isn’t a raving lunatic, he’s just the regular kind. Or something.
“At being Perry White,” said the man. “Like I was telling you, every generation has a Perry White. You’re the one this time around. I was the last one.”
“Screw this, I’m calling the police.” Perry turned around and stepped towards the phone -
- Only to find the guy standing right in front of him. “Sorry, friend, but that’s not going to work.”
“What the hell is going on?” Perry demanded. “Who the hell are you?”
“I told you, I’m Perry White. Well, the last Perry White. We need to have a little talk, son.” The man pushed him towards the kitchen table and Perry found himself falling into one of the chairs. “Fine,” he said to the guy, “then talk.”
The man smirked again and took a drink from the bottle. “Like I said, every generation has a Perry White, among others. There’s always a Perry White, a Lois Lane, a Clark Kent.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “A Superman.”
“You’ve lost me on that last one.”
The guy nodded. “We’ll get to that. First, about Lois and Clark.”
“What about them? I haven’t seen Clark Kent in ten years, since I met him in Smallville.”
“But you remember him.”
“Tractors falling from the sky are kind of hard to forget. Can we please get on with this? I have to actually go to work today.”
The man gave him a knowing grin. “Let me guess - Lois Lane’s going to want to bust your chops about something first thing in the morning.”
“Bust my chops? God, what century are you from?”
“Eh, it was a nineties thing. Be glad you won’t have to run around the Daily Planet exclaiming ‘Great shades of Elvis!’ every time something unusual happens. Or ‘Great Caesar’s ghost!’ Our predecessors were really getting tired of that.” The man took another swig. “Moving right along. Lois Lane and Clark Kent. You’re going to have a hell of a time with those two, my friend.”
“What do you mean?”
The man leaned forward, as if sharing an immensely powerful secret. “You see, this time around they have…a history, I guess you could say. They already know each other, though it’s been awhile. You won’t have any time to get used to the idea, to let folks ‘round the newsroom acclimate to the situation. Things are gonna be a bit explosive from the beginning.”
Perry frowned. “Wait, are you saying that Clark Kent is going to come to Metropolis, that he’s going to work at the Planet?”
“It’s the same old story,” the man confided. “It always happens this way. Clark Kent comes to Metropolis, begs Perry White for a job, and eventually gets it. He meets Lois Lane and falls in love with her. She brushes him off in favor of Superman. Things continue like that for a while, but eventually they end up together. It’s a cosmic cycle or something. The important thing is that Clark Kent has to get that job, and you have to pair them to work together.”
“Why?”
“Well, if you don’t, then first, they’ll never fall in love, second, he’ll never tell her the truth and she’ll never figure it out, and last -” He said this with a mischievous grin. “Last, you’ll miss out on the best damn investigative reporting team in the history of journalism.”
“Tell her the truth about what?” Perry asked, ignoring the rest. What was he, some kind of matchmaker? And he already had Lois Lane working for him - how much better could things get?
The man smiled. “About Superman. You knew there was something weird about Kent back in Smallville, didn’t you? And you read all about the so-called meteor mutants and how often he was involved in taking them down, or saving someone. I’ll let you in on a secret.” He gestured for Perry to lean in further. “It’s all true. Clark Kent isn’t exactly from around here.”
“Meaning?”
“The kid’s an alien! Sometime in the next week, Lois Lane is guaranteed to get herself into trouble. Not that she doesn’t seem to do that on a weekly basis already, but this will be different - more dangerous than her usual escapades. Out of nowhere, a guy in blue and red spandex will swoop down out of the sky and rescue her. This is Superman, and she will sigh after him like a teenage girl. Unfortunately, he’s really Clark Kent.”
“What are you saying? He’s some kind of superhero? Like…Spiderman or something?”
The man shivered involuntarily. “Crossing the DC and Marvel universes is a big no-no. It’s like…like crossing the streams. Very bad idea. Don’t do that again. There’ll be plenty of superheroes in the JLA before long.” He paused. “The Flash, Aquaman, Green Arrow - has Bruce entered the story yet? Ah, well, probably went to boarding school with Lex Luthor or Lucy Lane. I’m almost jealous, Perry. Almost.”
“You know what?” Perry said. “I’m getting tired of this crap.” He lifted his baseball bat and swung at the intruder -
And hit nothing but air.
Dazed, Perry looked around. How did he get back to his bedroom, and where was the bat -
A dream.
A very, very strange dream.
He sighed, rubbing at his eyes, and then reached over to turn off the alarm. Six o’clock. Time to get up and start another lovely day in Metropolis.
He paused a moment at the door of the conference room and watched Lois Lane return to her desk. The girl looked tired, Perry decided. Maybe that’s what the dream was really about. His subconscious had come up with a wild and crazy way of telling him that Lane needed a break. An enforced break, if need be. A partner to help take the load off her shoulders might just be the thing.
Shaking his head, he made his way to his office, stopping short of the door when he realized someone was in there.
A tall someone.
With dark hair.
Come on, Perry, he chided himself. Just how many tall and dark-haired guys are there in Metropolis alone?
He turned to look at his secretary, who was staring at him with a concerned look on his face. “Alice,” he asked, “who’s that in my office?”
She glanced down at a little handwritten note. “A Mister Clark Kent, Mr. White,” she replied. “He says you know him from Kansas?” She frowned, as if trying to imagine what the illustrious Perry White could have ever been doing in Kansas.
“Thank you, Alice,” he said softly in defeat. “Would you get Lois over here - tell her to just barge in as usual, okay?” Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and stepped inside.
He took a moment to study Clark Kent. The boy - he had aged some in the last ten years, but “boy” still seemed the right word - stood when Perry reached his desk. There was something unnerving about him, about the glasses and the strangely frumpy clothing, and Perry had to bite his tongue to stop from asking what color of spandex he was hiding under his clothes. “Hello, Clark,” Perry finally said.
The boy smiled. Alien. Only an alien would have such white yet slightly crooked teeth. “Mr. White, I’m sorry to just drop in like this -”
Perry shook his head at the heavens (really the floor of the advertising editor’s office) and gave in. “You’re hired.”
“ - and I have a copy of my resume, and my portfolio. Oh, and a list of references - what?”
Perry didn’t remember Clark Kent being such a rambler back in Cow Butt, Kansas, but he supposed that was what spandex and glasses did to a man. “You’re hired. Give me that resume and portfolio.”
The boy did as asked, handing over a sheaf of paper. Perry flipped through it, skimming the occasional paragraph. After a minute, he set the packet down on his desk and said, “Yup. You’re still hired.”
Clark frowned. “But you barely even looked -”
“Chief, you wanted to see me?”
Silence was not something Perry usually associated with Lois Lane, but he completely understood why Clark Kent fell silent at the sight of her. She was a beautiful young woman, and if he were twenty years younger and not her boss, he’d do the same dazed-staring-worshipping thing that Clark Kent was doing right now.
It helped that she’d turned and stared at Clark herself.
“Well,” Perry said after a moment, “I take it you two know each other.”
Lois spoke. “Um, yeah, like ten years ago. God, Smallville, how’ve you been?”
“Um, pretty good, I guess -” Clark started but Perry decided to interrupt before the little reunion got out of hand. “Excellent. Lane, meet your new partner. He can have the empty desk next to yours.”
Lois turned back toward him. “Partner? I don’t need a partner, Perry.”
Perry sat down and tossed Clark Kent’s portfolio into a desk drawer. “Lane, you’re overextending yourself. God help us all if you get sick working yourself to death. Where would I get my front page winners? I want Kent to work the city beat with you for a while and we’ll see how it works out in a couple of months. You two already know each other and you haven’t tried to kill him yet, so it’s not like you can’t work together.”
“Uh, no, Mr. White,” Clark stammered. “We’ve, um, we’ve made a good team before.”
Lois laughed. “You and me, a team, Smallville?”
For a moment, the naïve boy disappeared, replaced by a man tall with confidence. That must be the superhero, Perry told himself. “Well,” said Clark, “there was that time with the cheerleaders, and then at Met U with the football team - oh, and of course the whole thing where we thought Chloe was dead -”
“All right, all right, Smallville, I get the point. Nothing wrong with your memory these days, is there?” She smirked. “Chief, are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into? The first - what, six months? - I was in Smallville, Clarkie here had amnesia twice.”
Clark gave her a smirk of his own. “Shelby sends his love.”
“Oh, don’t you dare bring that dog into this. It’s not my fault I hit him -”
“Enough!” Perry shouted, fighting the urge to roll his eyes like a teenage girl. The flirting was getting out of control. He could already feel the betting pools grow heavy with cash. He pointed at Clark. “You’re hired.” He pointed at Lois. “You’re partners until I say otherwise.” He stood up and walked to the door. Opening it, he said, “Now get to work. Both of you.” The unlikely pair scrambled to exit his office. As they made their way to their desks, he could hear them talking:
“…your mom?”
“I didn’t know you guys still talked.”
“Well, email mostly, but come on - your mom is awesome. Why didn’t she tell me you were back in town? She could have warned me and then this crazy idea of Perry’s would never have happened.”
“How am I supposed to know why she didn’t tell…”
Perry closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Are you all right, Mr. White?” Alice asked.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Yeah, I think so.” He turned around and closed himself in his office. Leaning back in his desk chair, he thought back to his strange dream. “Great shades of Elvis!” he tried. “Great Caesar’s ghost!”
Hm. Neither one really felt right.
Ah, well. He’d figure out something. Eventually.
At least he wasn’t the one wearing spandex under a three-piece suit in the middle of August.
The End
Spoilers for "Perry", "Crusade", "Gone", "Devoted", "Recruit", "Krypto", "Blank", general Superman mythos
Summary: “Like I was telling you, every generation has a Perry White. You’re the one this time around. I was the last one.”
Great Shades of Elvis
Perry White tightened his grip on the baseball bat as he walked through his apartment. Something had woken him up at - he squinted at the VCR - two o’clock in the morning and he was fully willing to beat the hell out of whoever or whatever had done it. He had to get up in four hours - as the new editor of the Daily Planet’s Metro section, he actually had duties to attend to first thing in the morning.
Plus, it took a good night’s sleep to deal with Lois Lane.
As silently as possible, he stepped from carpet to linoleum and glanced around the dark kitchen. Nothing. He sighed, straightening his back and relaxing his hold on the baseball bat, and turned on the lights.
“Hello, Perry.”
A man he’d never met before was sitting at his kitchen table. “Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my apartment?” he demanded, lifting up the bat again.
The man chuckled. “Calm down, boy,” he said and took a swig from the beer bottle in his hand. Not only did this guy break into my apartment, but he raided my fridge too? “Pull up a chair. By the way, your taste in beer leaves a lot to be desired.”
Perry frowned. There was something…familiar about the man, but how that could be, he didn’t know. He was sure he’d never seen him before. Carefully, he walked towards the table. “Do I know you?”
The man smirked. “Well, that’s a matter of interpretation, son. You see,” he said, gesturing a bit with the bottle in his hand, “unto every generation there is a Perry White, a man in the background, but holding a secret so powerful that kings would bow before him if they knew.”
Clearly, the guy was insane. “Okay, I’m gonna back away slowly and I’m gonna reach for my phone and the nice men from the institution you escaped from will come and take you away. Don’t worry; I’m sure you’ll feel better once you’re back on your medication.”
The man laughed and set down the beer bottle. “You know, I wish my encounter had been this entertaining. But no, I had a guy with next to no sense of humor. I think we’re getting better at this.”
“Better at what?” Perry asked. Okay, so the guy isn’t a raving lunatic, he’s just the regular kind. Or something.
“At being Perry White,” said the man. “Like I was telling you, every generation has a Perry White. You’re the one this time around. I was the last one.”
“Screw this, I’m calling the police.” Perry turned around and stepped towards the phone -
- Only to find the guy standing right in front of him. “Sorry, friend, but that’s not going to work.”
“What the hell is going on?” Perry demanded. “Who the hell are you?”
“I told you, I’m Perry White. Well, the last Perry White. We need to have a little talk, son.” The man pushed him towards the kitchen table and Perry found himself falling into one of the chairs. “Fine,” he said to the guy, “then talk.”
The man smirked again and took a drink from the bottle. “Like I said, every generation has a Perry White, among others. There’s always a Perry White, a Lois Lane, a Clark Kent.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “A Superman.”
“You’ve lost me on that last one.”
The guy nodded. “We’ll get to that. First, about Lois and Clark.”
“What about them? I haven’t seen Clark Kent in ten years, since I met him in Smallville.”
“But you remember him.”
“Tractors falling from the sky are kind of hard to forget. Can we please get on with this? I have to actually go to work today.”
The man gave him a knowing grin. “Let me guess - Lois Lane’s going to want to bust your chops about something first thing in the morning.”
“Bust my chops? God, what century are you from?”
“Eh, it was a nineties thing. Be glad you won’t have to run around the Daily Planet exclaiming ‘Great shades of Elvis!’ every time something unusual happens. Or ‘Great Caesar’s ghost!’ Our predecessors were really getting tired of that.” The man took another swig. “Moving right along. Lois Lane and Clark Kent. You’re going to have a hell of a time with those two, my friend.”
“What do you mean?”
The man leaned forward, as if sharing an immensely powerful secret. “You see, this time around they have…a history, I guess you could say. They already know each other, though it’s been awhile. You won’t have any time to get used to the idea, to let folks ‘round the newsroom acclimate to the situation. Things are gonna be a bit explosive from the beginning.”
Perry frowned. “Wait, are you saying that Clark Kent is going to come to Metropolis, that he’s going to work at the Planet?”
“It’s the same old story,” the man confided. “It always happens this way. Clark Kent comes to Metropolis, begs Perry White for a job, and eventually gets it. He meets Lois Lane and falls in love with her. She brushes him off in favor of Superman. Things continue like that for a while, but eventually they end up together. It’s a cosmic cycle or something. The important thing is that Clark Kent has to get that job, and you have to pair them to work together.”
“Why?”
“Well, if you don’t, then first, they’ll never fall in love, second, he’ll never tell her the truth and she’ll never figure it out, and last -” He said this with a mischievous grin. “Last, you’ll miss out on the best damn investigative reporting team in the history of journalism.”
“Tell her the truth about what?” Perry asked, ignoring the rest. What was he, some kind of matchmaker? And he already had Lois Lane working for him - how much better could things get?
The man smiled. “About Superman. You knew there was something weird about Kent back in Smallville, didn’t you? And you read all about the so-called meteor mutants and how often he was involved in taking them down, or saving someone. I’ll let you in on a secret.” He gestured for Perry to lean in further. “It’s all true. Clark Kent isn’t exactly from around here.”
“Meaning?”
“The kid’s an alien! Sometime in the next week, Lois Lane is guaranteed to get herself into trouble. Not that she doesn’t seem to do that on a weekly basis already, but this will be different - more dangerous than her usual escapades. Out of nowhere, a guy in blue and red spandex will swoop down out of the sky and rescue her. This is Superman, and she will sigh after him like a teenage girl. Unfortunately, he’s really Clark Kent.”
“What are you saying? He’s some kind of superhero? Like…Spiderman or something?”
The man shivered involuntarily. “Crossing the DC and Marvel universes is a big no-no. It’s like…like crossing the streams. Very bad idea. Don’t do that again. There’ll be plenty of superheroes in the JLA before long.” He paused. “The Flash, Aquaman, Green Arrow - has Bruce entered the story yet? Ah, well, probably went to boarding school with Lex Luthor or Lucy Lane. I’m almost jealous, Perry. Almost.”
“You know what?” Perry said. “I’m getting tired of this crap.” He lifted his baseball bat and swung at the intruder -
And hit nothing but air.
Dazed, Perry looked around. How did he get back to his bedroom, and where was the bat -
A dream.
A very, very strange dream.
He sighed, rubbing at his eyes, and then reached over to turn off the alarm. Six o’clock. Time to get up and start another lovely day in Metropolis.
He paused a moment at the door of the conference room and watched Lois Lane return to her desk. The girl looked tired, Perry decided. Maybe that’s what the dream was really about. His subconscious had come up with a wild and crazy way of telling him that Lane needed a break. An enforced break, if need be. A partner to help take the load off her shoulders might just be the thing.
Shaking his head, he made his way to his office, stopping short of the door when he realized someone was in there.
A tall someone.
With dark hair.
Come on, Perry, he chided himself. Just how many tall and dark-haired guys are there in Metropolis alone?
He turned to look at his secretary, who was staring at him with a concerned look on his face. “Alice,” he asked, “who’s that in my office?”
She glanced down at a little handwritten note. “A Mister Clark Kent, Mr. White,” she replied. “He says you know him from Kansas?” She frowned, as if trying to imagine what the illustrious Perry White could have ever been doing in Kansas.
“Thank you, Alice,” he said softly in defeat. “Would you get Lois over here - tell her to just barge in as usual, okay?” Without waiting for a response, he opened the door and stepped inside.
He took a moment to study Clark Kent. The boy - he had aged some in the last ten years, but “boy” still seemed the right word - stood when Perry reached his desk. There was something unnerving about him, about the glasses and the strangely frumpy clothing, and Perry had to bite his tongue to stop from asking what color of spandex he was hiding under his clothes. “Hello, Clark,” Perry finally said.
The boy smiled. Alien. Only an alien would have such white yet slightly crooked teeth. “Mr. White, I’m sorry to just drop in like this -”
Perry shook his head at the heavens (really the floor of the advertising editor’s office) and gave in. “You’re hired.”
“ - and I have a copy of my resume, and my portfolio. Oh, and a list of references - what?”
Perry didn’t remember Clark Kent being such a rambler back in Cow Butt, Kansas, but he supposed that was what spandex and glasses did to a man. “You’re hired. Give me that resume and portfolio.”
The boy did as asked, handing over a sheaf of paper. Perry flipped through it, skimming the occasional paragraph. After a minute, he set the packet down on his desk and said, “Yup. You’re still hired.”
Clark frowned. “But you barely even looked -”
“Chief, you wanted to see me?”
Silence was not something Perry usually associated with Lois Lane, but he completely understood why Clark Kent fell silent at the sight of her. She was a beautiful young woman, and if he were twenty years younger and not her boss, he’d do the same dazed-staring-worshipping thing that Clark Kent was doing right now.
It helped that she’d turned and stared at Clark herself.
“Well,” Perry said after a moment, “I take it you two know each other.”
Lois spoke. “Um, yeah, like ten years ago. God, Smallville, how’ve you been?”
“Um, pretty good, I guess -” Clark started but Perry decided to interrupt before the little reunion got out of hand. “Excellent. Lane, meet your new partner. He can have the empty desk next to yours.”
Lois turned back toward him. “Partner? I don’t need a partner, Perry.”
Perry sat down and tossed Clark Kent’s portfolio into a desk drawer. “Lane, you’re overextending yourself. God help us all if you get sick working yourself to death. Where would I get my front page winners? I want Kent to work the city beat with you for a while and we’ll see how it works out in a couple of months. You two already know each other and you haven’t tried to kill him yet, so it’s not like you can’t work together.”
“Uh, no, Mr. White,” Clark stammered. “We’ve, um, we’ve made a good team before.”
Lois laughed. “You and me, a team, Smallville?”
For a moment, the naïve boy disappeared, replaced by a man tall with confidence. That must be the superhero, Perry told himself. “Well,” said Clark, “there was that time with the cheerleaders, and then at Met U with the football team - oh, and of course the whole thing where we thought Chloe was dead -”
“All right, all right, Smallville, I get the point. Nothing wrong with your memory these days, is there?” She smirked. “Chief, are you sure you know what you’re getting yourself into? The first - what, six months? - I was in Smallville, Clarkie here had amnesia twice.”
Clark gave her a smirk of his own. “Shelby sends his love.”
“Oh, don’t you dare bring that dog into this. It’s not my fault I hit him -”
“Enough!” Perry shouted, fighting the urge to roll his eyes like a teenage girl. The flirting was getting out of control. He could already feel the betting pools grow heavy with cash. He pointed at Clark. “You’re hired.” He pointed at Lois. “You’re partners until I say otherwise.” He stood up and walked to the door. Opening it, he said, “Now get to work. Both of you.” The unlikely pair scrambled to exit his office. As they made their way to their desks, he could hear them talking:
“…your mom?”
“I didn’t know you guys still talked.”
“Well, email mostly, but come on - your mom is awesome. Why didn’t she tell me you were back in town? She could have warned me and then this crazy idea of Perry’s would never have happened.”
“How am I supposed to know why she didn’t tell…”
Perry closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Are you all right, Mr. White?” Alice asked.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Yeah, I think so.” He turned around and closed himself in his office. Leaning back in his desk chair, he thought back to his strange dream. “Great shades of Elvis!” he tried. “Great Caesar’s ghost!”
Hm. Neither one really felt right.
Ah, well. He’d figure out something. Eventually.
At least he wasn’t the one wearing spandex under a three-piece suit in the middle of August.
The End