Work Text:
April 3rd, 8:53pm
“Hi Hal.
“It’s Barry.
“I know you won’t get this until you’re back, but I thought I’d call and leave you a message.
“Yes, I know you’ve only been gone a week. Hopefully this isn’t coming across as desperately clingy, but I only got the idea today, and you finally got a phone.
“Speaking of the Bat Family Plan, hi Tim. I know you can listen to this, but I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t. Call it a favor, or a professional courtesy. Thanks.
“So today at work I remembered you telling me about your time in the Air Force, just an offhand comment you made about how excited everyone was hearing their name during mail call. How much they appreciated the care packages, and letters from girlfriends back home.
“Before you even start, get your mind out of the gutter. That’s not happening, so give up now before you’re disappointed.
“Back to my idea: I know I can’t send you Funyuns, or even get these to you while you’re deployed, but maybe it could be something you could bring with you next time around. If you want to. I just… thought it could be nice. Like an audio postcard.
“I’ll admit, I’m a little disappointed that I can’t send you physical postcards. I’d find the cheesiest ones I could, the kind that makes you groan every time you see them in a gift store. I maintain that the Central City ones are classic, not boring, and that no, those aren’t the same thing. You know which ones I mean: the ones with that quintessential view of the skyline, or a night shot with ‘Greetings from Central City!’ in a curly font. Maybe I’d get you one of those, but I think we can do better. The Flash Museum has quite the collection, and I’m sure Madame Tussaud’s has some featuring their wax Green Lanterns.
“So now that I’ve talked your ear off about postcards, I guess I should give a life update? There really isn’t that much to say – you know me, it's ‘same as always.’ I’ll try to come up with something more interesting for next time. Don’t worry; I plan to give you plenty of ammunition to make fun of me for my dorky ideas.
“Okay, signing out now. Greetings from Central City. Wish you were here.”
April 17th, 10:22pm
“Greetings from Central City! I’m sure wherever you are the views are a bit more exotic, though I doubt their postcard game is as strong. And if it is, bring me one? That would be quite the souvenir.
“I had a run in with a, uh, mutual acquaintance the other night. You know, the one who’s always overdressed for the weather. Let’s call him… Wile E. Coyote. He was up to a lot of his usual tricks, you know, sticks of dynamite, unseasonal icebergs, the works.
“I was a little surprised to see him, honestly. He hasn’t been around recently, and I’d kind of hoped he’d decided to pack up the rockets and the anvils after so many unsuccessful encounters with the Roadrunner. Mr. E. Coyote is also usually better at working around alarm systems, which makes me think he must have something more involved planned than today’s falling piano gag.
“Sorry if the Loony Toons analogy was confusing. Clark caught some reruns recently with Jon, and mentioned how he can’t appreciate those cartoons like he used to before Mr. Mixy– Mr. Mispit– his eccentric friend in the purple bowler started messing with him.
“I’ll try to keep you updated. Work at the lab has been pretty much the same, and probably not the kind of thing you’d want me to go into. If I’m wrong about that, let me know; I’m more than happy to ramble on about work if given the chance. Maybe I could pull out some old chemistry textbooks and read from those to spice it up.
“Bye until next time. Wish you were here.”
May 7th, 9:42pm
“Greetings from D.C. Did you know that the Hall of Justice has a gift shop? I didn’t, but I think you’d get a kick out of it. The Green Lantern night lights were probably my favorite, though they didn’t get the hue quite right. They also had a lot of postcards. They were pretty standard, you know, impressive looking shots of the Hall, or of the statues of the League. I may have bought a couple of the corniest ones.
“I was late for today’s meeting – I know, big surprise – and walked in to Ollie and Bruce going off on each other. At first I assumed it was one of their usual arguments about… well, anything really, but when I asked J’onn to catch me up, he just pointed at the screen. I’d thought it was a standard presentation since the formatting mimicked what Bruce usually uses, but the content wasn’t his customary statistics and reports. Instead, in proper Powerpoint bullet point form, it laid out the “evidence” that Batman was having a secret, years long love affair with billionaire playboy philanthropist Bruce Wayne.
“The whole thing was surprisingly well researched and put together; he had timelines of sightings of the two of them, clips of their interactions the few times they’d been seen together in public, and years worth of Gotham Gazette articles, all with proper footnotes. I’ve been to conferences with less professional looking presentations. Which kind of makes me think that Dinah or Mia put it toge– I’ll stop, you don’t need to hear my conspiracy theories.
“As much as I’d like to, I can’t really blame Ollie for the prank. Bruce has been a bit… much at recent meetings, going off on long tangents about topics we’re all familiar with, that kind of thing. I caught Clark nodding off at one point, and Diana on her phone, though they’ve been fairly absent as of late, which I’m sure was part of the problem.
“If you happen to hear this before we talk, maybe try being a little extra patient with Bruce? It’s not anything life threatening, but I managed to catch him before he did his usual disappearing act and he’s going through some personal stuff. I don’t want you to walk into an avoidable fight if you’ve just gotten back.
“I’ll sign off now. Thinking of you, and wish you were here.
“And don’t worry – I got you a copy of the Powerpoint.”
May 20, 3:12pm
“Greetings from Coast City! I’ll continue to defend Central whenever you start comparing the two, but even I can admit that it’s nice to be out of the Missouri humidity. As long as I stay away from the beaches and those monstrosities you West Coasters call freeways, that is.
“I just came from Helen’s birthday party. It was good to see everybody again – I try to visit whenever I’m in Coast for more than a couple minutes at a time, but thankfully there haven’t been any major crises lately. Jim and Sue say hi, and so do all of the kids. Unsurprisingly, they were all very disappointed that you weren’t able to make it, but Sue took about a million pictures and sounded more than willing to help you relive the highlights.
“Before you ask, I saved the drone so that you can give it to Helen in person, which you’re obligated to do. She made me pinky swear, and I’m not about to break such a sacred tradition. Janice had mentioned Helen’s been into art recently, so I got her some colored pencils Kyle recommended. I’m glad I asked, instead of being horribly passé and getting something horse themed. It’s so hard keeping up with their interests.
“Yes, yes, I realize what I just said. I’ll pause for a moment so you can make all those jokes about me and keeping up.
“Jason recently lost his first baby tooth, and cornered me to show me both the space where it used to be and the shark tooth he wanted in its place. Apparently you told him some story about aliens getting their fangs reattached by space surgeons? It took some convincing to get him to believe that no, I didn’t have access to, uh, blue team resources to implant the tooth myself. You’d better start thinking of something to say to him, because he said he’s already got three shark teeth and has been scouring the beach so he can have a whole set.
“Bye for now. Until next time.”
June 11, 6:42 pm
“Greetings from Central City. I’m in the lab this time, so if you hear beeping in the background, that’s the spectrometer protesting the latest software update. Of all the duties of my job, being on the phone with tech support is probably my least favorite, and with software issues I’m just as stuck as everyone else.
“It’s been a busy week, and not just in the lab. I had yet another run in with that mutual acquaintance. What did I call him last time? I can’t remember. These are going to be so incomprehensible if you’re listening to these out of order.
“So I show up, and as soon as I enter the building Santa and all of his reindeer jump out, and… Oh my god, Hal, please never tell him that I called him that. I like to think we have something of an understanding, and I don’t think he’d appreciate… Oh stop, I can hear you laughing at me.
“It’s nice.
“Iris jokingly referred to these calls as my therapy sessions. I… I hope it’s not coming across that way.
“Anyway, long story short, no one was hurt. Santa was sent packing, and all the good boys and girls got their presents back. The whole thing felt off again, too easy, despite capturing Blitzen. I’m going to stop now. I can feel the hole I’m digging myself into with this metaphor.
“I also ran into Jessica yesterday. We responded to the same call from Metropolis, and talked a little after things wrapped up. She’s really starting to come into her own; she handled things so much more confidently than she could have even a couple months ago, and as you like to say, in your business, confidence is everything. I asked her to send my regards, which hopefully you’ll have received long before this recording.
“I suppose I could have told her more, but I couldn’t get that story you told me about Kyle out of my head. You remember, the one where he went off on a long and descriptive monologue about how he’d redesign your bosses’ ‘red bathrobes’ that was broadcast to the entire Corps like some ‘reply all’ horror story? Even without that playing through my head, I didn’t want to bother her too much.
“And… I know we haven’t been together together long, but you know what ‘Barry says hi’ means.
“...
“Looks like the spectrometer’s finally done, so I’ll let you go now. Wish you were here.”
July 7, 11:03pm
“Greetings from the Central City forensics lab again, which I’m sure is no surprise. There’s always an uptick around holidays, thought the 4th isn’t our busiest by a long shot.
“So I finally got some closure with... is Jack Frost taken? It’s so hard to remember these days; it feels like every other week there’s someone new with a gimmick. You know what? I’m just going to use it. Everything else I can think of is even sillier.
“I was right about those previous encounters. Jack had been tracking Heat Miser response times for months so he could work them into an intricately planned Rube Goldberg heist. I have his data now, and am looking forward to work calming down enough that I can really dig into it. It’ll be good information to know, since not all of us have smart jewelry to track this stuff for us.
“The entire thing was for his sister. If you remember, she’s been in a coma since last year. I don’t know why he felt he couldn’t go through the ordinary channels; maybe he thought she wouldn’t be treated well because of her record. We made some arrangements for her. I mean, the whole thing is experimental, so he probably shouldn’t get his hopes up, but I...
“I… I just…
“…
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get emotional over the phone. I guess I just didn’t realize how much stuff had been piling up recently, between work, and the other job, and just, you know, life. I’ll call Iris or Ralph or Jay tomorrow, so please don’t worry. I probably should have figured out how to delete one of these before I started this, huh? Though with the security measures on your phone I’d probably have to simultaneously shut down three separate servers in three different cities.
“Maybe the format was a bad idea. With an actual postcard, I could rewrite it if I didn’t like how it came out. I mostly ramble into the phone for these, and call in the lull after some big event because it’s when I have time.
“To be clear, I’m absolutely not saying I want you to do anything differently with your job. I know how much it means to you, and that’s one of the things I lov—
“...
“These calls aren’t a representative sample of life when you’re away, is what I’m trying to say. Sorry if that all came out as a jumbled mess.
“I miss you.”
July 10th, 1:23pm
“First of all, sorry about the last call. You know I don’t like being like that, and I’m sorry I dumped all that out there in such a… public way.
“As an update, you’ll be proud to know that I used one of my hundred vacation days. I stayed in and got through some of the reading I’d fallen behind on. It was glorious, and you would have been bored out of your mind, so be glad I got to do that while you were away.
“...
“Oh geez, I hope you couldn’t hear that over the phone. Maybe I shouldn’t have called yet. I, uh, went for a very long run this morning and haven’t gotten to refuel yet, so I apologize in advance if all my metaphors are food related.
“Did I mention that Patty caught me making one of these? Of course she walked in right when I was saying the ‘Wish you were here’ part, and, unsurprisingly, she hasn’t let me live it down. I now have postcards from the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, because apparently that is both a thing that exists and an accurate representation of how ridiculous I am.
“Oh, sorry, that’s the door. I should have timed the pizza delivery with my call better. I thought–”
“Hey Bar.”
“Hal, you… brought me food.”
“Wow, that hits me right here. I fly across the universe to see you, and you only have eyes for Chinese takeou— Mmmph!”
“Hmmm.”
“...”
“...”
“So, anything big happen while I was gone?”
“Nothing that can’t wait.”