Good neighbors
Isn't that in a Frost poem? "Good fences make good neighbors"? I suppose that's all Rossi and I need, then: good fences. We were assiduous about keeping on the respective right side of ours tonight, having beer and pizza, talking about family and work. He even gave me a back rub after noticing how tired I was.
I have to blame the family for it. Two birthday parties in two days; two melodramatic productions from la famiglia Canto. No wonder I went running to his apartment to escape them, if only in my head.
And I will respect his boundaries and keep my libido on its leash. Not his fault. Not mine. Just happens, and I do prefer to sleep alone. I've adjusted to free agency, as I told him - in more ways than one.
7/24/2005
Logfile from Leah.
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Old Brownstone Apts #210 - Rossi
An ancient, faded elegance sketches the boundaries of this apartment, hinted at in crown molding and worn, faded floors. High walls span to high ceilings, pale yellow with the barest of white trim; at one end, three high windows gape to let in day's light or night's dark with equal indifference. A small kitchen pocks a hollow in one wall, a doorless entry that offers glimpses of an metal-framed refrigerator and a cabinet-hung microwave. On the other side of the small living room, a short hallway offers entrances to bathroom and bedroom, both doors battered with the wear and tear of age.
In the living room are the basic accoutrements of comfort: sofas, chairs, table, television. Spartan accessories, betraying little of the owner; that task is left for the walls, hung with pictures of family and friends. Through them all runs the thread of blue, NYPD's uniform tailored to pride and vigor.
--
Evening. The last dregs of sunset spread their ashes across the sky, framing the outline of the distant city through Rossi's window. Let the environmentalists make their outcry; for their sins, God rewards the gas-guzzling ants of New York with spectacular shows. Clad in faded jeans and the remnants of work -- unbuttoned, pale green dress shirt, rolled at the sleeves; the thin white of a cotton undershirt -- barefoot Chris hangs on the edge of his sofa, reading the sprawl of files across his coffee table. A beer, bedewed, seeps its water stain into the worn wood at his wrist; an open pizza box on the floor betrays his evening meal: white pizza, cheese-rich.
Outside his door, Leah takes a minute to scrub weary lines out of her forehead and cheeks with one loose fist that she then turns on the door for a few sharp raps. For all the easy casualness of the hour, and the visit, she's still dressed from the day's activities: good jeans, silk shell, baseball jersey flapping over top. And the tiredness, and the annoyance pinching a line between pallidly hooded eyes.
Inside, Chris drags his relutant attention away from his reading (evidence, statements, scrawled in pen and typed in whiteout-friezed forms) for a pinch of his own: brows, hooked into a chain of distraction. "Yeah, hold on," he calls, unfolding to stand. A long step over the coffee table, and then to the door; one eye screws to the peephole, widens in recognition, and blinks. Chain rattles. Deadbolt snicks. Puzzled, wary, Rossi opens the door and stretches himself in its place, elbow hooked up to the door's frame. "Canto. What's up?"
"My family," Leah declares. "I'm seeking refuge. Let me in."
The answer eases some unspoken tension in the lean frame. "Long as it's not mine," Rossi quips, and turns away, invitation enough. The door is open; she need but walk through. "What'd they do?"
Walking through, then, Leah makes for a couch and flops thereupon, letting her legs sprawl out any which way before her in a pretense of comfort. She tucks her hands behind her head, winging out her elbows for bracing, and sighs. "Oh, the usual, I guess. Mom's birthday yesterday, my oldest brother's today, and do you think they could combine the celebrations into one? No. Of course not. It has to be a whole weekend of hugging, crying, quiet sniping, yelling, and so on. Guiltapalooza 2005. I figured you'd understand, and they can't find me here." She owls her eyes at him with mock innocence. "Protect me from the bad people, Detective?"
A grin turns crooked and white against Rossi's expression, a sparse moment of hospitality before he bends with belated haste to the coffee table's disarray. Photographs, papers, bunch in rebellion on the short path to the concealing file folder. "If you want. No fighting," he warns with a squint of his own, pausing quarter-turned to quirk a brow at Leah. "I'm not up for any crap tonight. --Want a beer? There's pizza left, if you want it."
Leah pats her tummy. "After all the food that Mom stuffed into us today? Oh, hell, yeah. Why not. I'll take whatever you're having." She sits up, absently rubbing hands on thighs, and lets her gaze wander politely around the place. "Nice. Looks better, anyway. And you got a better apartment than mine. Jerk of a landlord. I knew I should've flirted with him."
Headed for the small alcove that serves as an office, Rossi disappears into police privacy with the rattle of drawers, baritone pitched out for, "It used to be Parker's. You know him? In Vice." Inside the alcove, a hiss of cardboard and heavy thump prompts a curse. Chris resurfaces rubbing his arm, charting a new track for the kitchen and: "Anyway, I just took his lease. He's dodging some chick. She showed up here a couple of nights ago, looking for him. --Sam Adams okay?"
"Yeah, I think we met at some PBA ball. I love being my brother's date to those things; makes for fun conversation." Leah loosely twines her hands in the empty span between her knees and stares out the windows. "And that's fine, sure." Some amusement creeps into the interstices of her distraction, caulking her tone back to its normal voluptuous furl. "What'd you do with the girl?"
The refrigerator hums, spilling radiance onto the worn kitchen tiles. "Slept with her," it says with Rossi's voice, accompanied by the clink of bottles. A cabinet door claps to the chime of more glass, and then Chris is back in the living room again, skirting the pizza's broken moon with plates, a glass, and beer for two.
"I think I love you for your predictability most of all, Rossi," is Leah's response, heavily amused, indeed. She takes her beer and nurses a slow, savored swallow from it. "--Mmm. Better. Thanks. You gonna tell Parker?"
A cynical eye peers at Leah through a tumble of hair, and Chris tosses himself into a waiting armchair, punishing its ancient springs with familiarity's recklessness. Brooklyn's timbres twist. "Christ, Canto. I was kidding. Though she was hot -- but Parker says she's the stalker type, and I don't need that shit. Sent her to a bogus address Parker wrote out for me. She could always find him at the station anyway, but no stalker walks into a room full of cops."
Leah, completely unabashed, let alone unfazed, just pokes thoughtfully at the pizza before selecting a slice to slop onto her plate. "Oh, don't get your boxers in a twist. Prickly thing, aren't you? Been a long week down at the station?" She trades beer for plate, takes a bite, and draws the cheese long, with evident great pleasure, to chomp up the string to the crust again. Swallowing, she points the slice at him. "/You/ need to relax. Or something. Yoga. Sabby's all hot for your energy, but the rest of us aren't as impressed."
"It's always a long week at the station," Rossi says, reclaiming his old beer for one last, elegiac swig before popping the top of the next. A pizza slice for him, cheese tendrils spooled into a coil on its bed; he sits back with a foot hooked on the table's edge, plate balanced on his knee. "And this /is/ relaxing. Pizza, beer, something to read-- hey. That MA guy, Lazzaro? Turns out he's not bad."
"Haven't met him yet. Should I invite him to my next dinner party?" Leah snorts into her next bite. "I thought you were still tilting at windmills over MA on your turf."
Chris shrugs, slouching into his chair. Shadowed eyes regard Leah, limpid with a simulacrum of innocence. "Don't know what you're talking about. We ended up working on some calls last night. They see some weird shit, and I don't mean normal New York weird. Big, blue, talking shag rug-weird."
Leah takes a swig of beer, eyeing him curiously in return around the bottle. "Uh-huh. Maybe you should put in for a transfer. Though Beston would be devastated, and I'd not wish that on him, poor guy. Shag rugs? What the hell kind of mutation is that?"
Another shrug, smaller and tighter with associated discomfort. "Damned if I know. Just ... weird. Wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley after a few beers. Although he seemed nice enough," Rossi adds scrupulously. Any as yet unspoken thoughts are postponed for the time it takes to christen his new drink and bite into pizza, indifferent to grease.
"You /talked/ to the shag rug." Entertained, Leah leans forward. "C'mon, now you have to tell me all of it. I promise I'm not wired. Off-duty."
"Tell you what? He was lost, he wanted to take the subway, he would've started a freakin' riot. We gave him a ride. --Although," muses Chris, propping his bottle's mouth to his own to study the reflection of beer behind the glass, "guy had /no/ sense of humor. Check this out. Lazzaro told me this one last night, on the way back: Knock knock."
Leah sputters through a swallow, though the liquid remains inside, not actually spraying. "Oh, /hell,/ no, Rossi. There will be no knock-knock jokes, or I'm leaving."
Chris leans forward in his seat, stretching an arm past his foot to nudge his beer back onto the table. "C'mon," he insists, eyes alight. "This one's good. The Rogaine mutant didn't get it, but -- knock knock. It's only one."
Leah buries her face in an elbow-propped hand and groans. "Fine." And she drags it out with emphatically flat emphasis, just so he /knows/ it's under protest: "Who's there."
"Little Boy Blue," says the man, with childish relish.
Through the cracks of her splayed fingers, Leah's eyes squeeze shut. A woman expecting a death blow would be as tense as she. "Little Boy Blue who."
Rossi's glow is nigh seraphic. "Michael Jackson."
Silence.
"/Christopher!/"
Leah mutters, choking on a laugh, "Goddammit."
"How can you not find that /funny/?" demands Rossi, laughter ripping across his own voice, even at the retelling. "Man. Mutants. That's got to suck, not knowing from funny."
Leah tips her head into her hand and gives him a cocked grin. "Must come with the fucked-up genes," she theorized. "Then again, if /I/ were a shag rug, I might be a little humor-challenged, too. Well. As if I weren't already, but maybe I can blame that on the fam."
A grimace from Chris, whose own family troubles drag a shadow across the lingering sparks of his amusement. "Yeah. Speaking of -- you talked to Julia. I hadn't figured. You know she called me?" Small traces of tension draw taut lines across his face, stilling the mobility of his expressions.
Leah does a decent job of containing her glee to just a spark in squinted eyes. "Yeah, I thought she might. Sorry," and that sounds reasonably genuine, too. She is, after all, eating the man's pizza and drinking his beer. "I can imagine what she must've said."
"If you can imagine, I shudder for you, Canto," says Rossi, baritone arid even amidst the moraine of the subject. "I take it you two talked ... intimate details? --Shit." It is, despite expectation, a remarkably resigned curse. "She started giving me advice. It ever occur to you it might not be a good idea to tell a woman how her brother is in bed?"
Leah looks blank. Then looks pissed, in a distant-warning kind of way. Thunder on the horizon, which she visibly pushes back in order to say calmly, "Not all of us have weird, strained relationships with our siblings, Rossi. Sex is just another topic for discussion as far as I'm concerned. My family's always been pretty open that way, and -- well, /you/ know Julia." Her tone slides from faintly rueful to faintly scornful. "Do I at least get a gold star for not calling /Gabe/?"
Green eyes show a brief rimming of white. "Yeah," Chris supposes, slouching still further to drop his chin on his chest. "I guess you get that. --Beston says hi, by the way. I tell you we got stuck babysitting a mountie this past week?" Subject change.
And now Leah looks disappointed, but fleetingly. She accepts the change with as much grace as she can dig up, between another bite of pizza and another swallow of beer. Shakes her head. "Don't think so, no. A real Canadian one? With the hat and everything?" Her gaze glints; her mouth hooks. "Sexy damn uniform. Can I meet him?"
"Hat and everything," Rossi affirms, adding wryly, "No horse, though he's got a dog. Come by the station when we're there, and we'll introduce you. He's apparently good-looking; half the women in the station follow him around like cocker spaniels. I swear if he said 'roll over,' they'd be naked and on the floor in a heartbeat. --You'd like him," he adds, thoughtlessly.
"I guess so," says Leah, dry to wry. "You think so much of me, I can tell. Well. Being a mountie's bitch wouldn't be so bad. Bet he'd open the door for me wherever we went."
Irritation spikes across Rossi's face, and is sculpted in mimicry above with a hand's dash through hair. "I didn't mean -- he's just an interesting guy, is all. Annoying," he makes a point of adding through another swig of beer, "but still ... interesting. Don't let him know I said that, or he'll never stop talking. And yeah. He's got all the charms. Didn't know you were into that."
Leah says demurely, "I like manners. I'm weird that way."
"Weird in a lot of ways," agrees Rossi, rising (predictably) to the bait. A jaded eye peeks at Leah, layered with memory, before clearing offense with a blink. "So how is your family, anyhow?"
"Weird," Leah bites off as if it were greasy pizza. "Same as yours. Too much in each other's business, not enough tending to their own." A moment's simmer, then a shrug's hunched cock. "Whatever. You know? Mom wants me to get a real job -- and a real husband and kids, of course. DJ celebrated his birthday today by getting spectacularly drunk and bawling out his wife right in the middle of dinner. Guess they need a little counseling, huh? Never saw /that/ coming," she mutters cynically. "Michael's just -- well, he's thinking about taking the lieutenant's exam, and he's seeing this woman, and there's all kinds of emotional flailing and then apologizing drunkenly on my phone at three in the morning. Hell, they're making Hannah look normal by comparison, and my sister has /never/ been normal. I just want to disown them all and start over." She gives him a mild blink. "Maybe I'll adopt yours instead."
An eyebrow peaks over a dubious glitter, humor creeping back into the edges of Chris' mien. "Mine?" he echoes, skepticism spiced with the first savory of a grin. "Man. Your family really does have you freaked. Back in the Rossi household, Paul's trying to square off with his Cap by trying to convert all the non-Catholics in the precinct. Emphasis on the ones with dark skin. Pop's pissed at Gabe, who's decided to move back home for a while. Gabe's seeing some married woman in his orchestra. Mom's pissed at Julia, because one of her one-nighters called for her at home, and Mikey's -- well, Mikey."
Leah points out, "I get along with all of them. Well, except Paul, but if I threaten to go public on his Botox use, I could probably get him in line. You /know/ he's using it." She slumps back into the couch's embrace, balancing her beer on her leg, and toys with a smile. "I could be the stabilizing influence."
"There's a change of nightmares," murmurs Rossi into the muzzle of his beer. "You? A stabilizing influence? Damn." The question of Paul's Botox use he bypasses, the barest twitch of a lip betraying a sympathy of thought; baritone plows on regardless, supposing, "It's easier with other people's damage. Beston's kid seems fine to me, and his ex-wives -- well, the second one's a bitch -- but the others seem fine. Drive /him/ crazy."
"Dear Beston," muses Leah as she studies her beer and picks with a lazy thumbnail at the label. "He's dirty, isn't he?"
Silence from Chris. A slivered regard settles on Leah, unblinking, unreadable; the beer bottle, lowered, cocks itself between loosely-clasped hands. "What the hell kind of question is that?" he asks, blank. "Shit. I thought you liked him."
Leah picks a little more, and the laziness moves into and through her voice like a cat's stretching reach. "I do, Chris. I honestly, truly do. But you hear things, okay?" Flicker of pale-brown eyes, squinted with concern at him. "I worked pretty tightly with the force back when I was doing investigative work for the Post, and there's my family connections, too. Just curious. IA's dogging him. You know that."
"IA's dogging /me/," Chris says flatly, a shutter sliding closed behind his face. Hostility peers out from green eyes, a stranger, more alien hobgoblin than his more customary, open temper; lips twitch into a mirthless grin. "I don't think they like the way I maintain the company car. --What're you hearing about Beston?" The lean body angles forward, elbows propping on knees, jaw harsh on the head's jut into feral focus.
Leah admits, "Scuttlebutt. Whispers. Stuff in his jacket, his name on a list -- I don't know. Maybe they're watching you to get at him. You think of that? For, surely, Detective Rossi is above personal reproach on the job, except for the car thing." She sighs, flaps her hand. "I just had a stray and random attack of worry about you. I won't let it happen again, God knows."
A vein stretches in sharp relief in the hollow of Rossi's temple, pinning the fragile and powerful line of skull. "Yeah," he says after a moment, reluctantly easing the rigidity of his pose. The couch melts into the unknotted spine, cradling the arc of shoulders and fingers' curl on armrests. "Those've been around for a while. Nothing serious." Lips crimp a more honest grin for Leah, barely warming the hood of splintered eyes. "Appreciate the thought, though. Beston's not dirty."
Leah rewards him with the flat stare of 'bullshit, bunky,' but doesn't push it. "All right. Never mind, then. Just getting it out there." She takes another drink, finishing off the bottle, but not relinquishing its comforting prop just yet. "Thanks, by the way."
"For what?" One hand waves at the refrigerator behind him, accompanied by an awkward back-and-up twist that verifies it still exists where expected. "There's more beer if you want it. --And pizza," Chris adds, eyeing the cold wedge on his plate without enthusiasm.
"For having sex with me," Leah answers. "Oh, thanks, I'm good. Maybe in a bit."
"/Fuck/, Canto. Don't just blurt it out like -- and I wasn't doing you a favor. You get that?"
Leah grins. "Doing yourself one?"
Rossi shows his teeth, couching himself deeper into the armchair. The table shivers under his leg's resentful push. "Not fucking likely. Not that you were bad, Canto. In fact, you were damn good. But I've got more trouble than I want, already." Sweet-talker, Chris.
Leah's eye-roll leads to her whole head tipping back. "Good God. Try to express a little honest gratitude, and out come the claws. Remind me to stay out of your pants in the future, please."
"/Please/," seconds Rossi, with a heartfelt sincerity that has no resemblance to flattery. Beer wobbles on the table again, and is rescued by a reluctant hand. "This bar is closed, Canto. No more tapping. You should go check out Lazzaro. He's in the building; bet you and he would hit it off together."
"Or this mountie of yours." Leah stretches out her leg to prop her foot against the coffee table's leg. She's good support that way. "Don't worry, though. I'm not interested in tapping Chris Rossi's keg o' love if he's going to be still so damned uptight and weird about it. A girl wants sex, she can get it most anywhere -- and anyway, I have other things on my mind." She flutters her lashes at him mockingly. "I promise not to jump you. It'll be hard to restrain myself, but I will do it for /you./"
Another flash of teeth, bared by a curl of lips -- but there is some self-deprecating humor behind it, for all it twists with irritation into a tangled weave. "Bite me," Chris says, wry. "Called your friend Sabitha Melcross the other day, for coffee. Needed to talk to someone who wasn't -- you know. Business."
Leah reminds him, "Been there, done that. How was Sabby? She doing okay?"
A small wince proves Chris, too, has a memory. "Seemed like. You haven't talked to her since you told her about us, I take it? -- is there anyone you know that you didn't tell? -- Take it she and that guy Travis aren't an item anymore. And before you get some smart-ass idea of hooking us up, forget it."
"Shucks," drawls Leah, pro forma. "I did nudge up to that suggestion, but she didn't seem to like it, so I left it. She probably already has a nice chew-toy of her own, anyway." Dark irony weights her voice, but she moves on nimbly before the sink catches the rest of her. "I told two people, Rossi: Julia and her. What, you want to start circumscribing the discussion of my sex life? Should I write up reports and submit them for your approval first? How about, for a change, you fucking trust my judgment and treat me like an adult?"
A glare shoots down a forefinger's point, spliced off a loose, beer-bottle clasp. "That's fighting," Rossi observes. "Chill out, Canto. Anyway, I need some women in my book I haven't screwed or fought with. Or screwed /and/ fought with, whichever. She was the only one that wasn't in either category, so I took her out for coffee and dessert. --She doesn't talk about herself a lot, does she? Or is it just with her chick friends?"
Leah simmers through slitted eyes at him, but-- "Fine. We can argue another time. Just point that glare somewhere else, man, before I do something about it." One arm slops over her stomach in a half-fold, and she rubs the empty beer bottle against her temple at some phantom itch. Around it, she backs into an expression's wary inquisitiveness. "I . . . guess she doesn't, yeah. I haven't known her long, though. She's got buttons you cannot press. As in, do /not/ press them. Maybe she's trying to avoid that, sparing you the eruption by keeping things to herself. And she's so damned young sometimes, Chris. You have to keep that in mind, along with the whole Travis thing."
"Young," echoes Rossi, absent-mindedly mimicking Leah's temple-rub with his own warming bottle. Eyes shift under the forgiving fan of lashes, prisming the room's light into greys and greens. "When the hell did we get old? The vics get younger and younger, and so do the perps. One of these days I'll wake up and find out I'm Beston. --Ever get the feeling people're playing some different game than the one you've got rules to, Canto?"
Flatly: "Every day of my life, Rossi."
"Great." A glimmer of truth. "We gotta get ourselves that playbook, someday."
Leah says after a long moment, "Honestly? I don't think I want it. Those are deep waters to swim in. Remember that Flatbush Five case I helped break?" A brief grin at her hubris, but hell, a reporter's gotta do-- "Up to my /ears/ in shit from Albany and the mayor's office, and political this and threatening that, when all we wanted was to put bad guys behind bars. Imagine: some high-ranking scum are using mutants in white slavery and prostitution rings, and it's the papers and the police are in the wrong. And now? Hell. The MRA's passed, Magneto and his merry men are still on the loose, the whole country's on edge, and I just want to crawl under the covers sometimes and /stay/ there." She shakes her head. "I /don't/ want to play games. I just don't. I suck at it, and it leads to pain or worse."
The cop shrugs, hard-eyed pragmatism battling with inbred idealism. Chris -- the man -- palms a grimace for Leah, catching its corner in a crook of fingers and elbow-propped arm. "Power to the people," he quotes with bitter flippancy. "I ever hand it to you on that one, Canto? Guess I didn't. It was good work. Not a lot of that going around," he adds, cynicism riding his voice from comment to throat's quenching. "The MRA'll make more work for us, anyway. Easier, or harder ... who the hell knows? The union's for it."
"Yeah?" Leah manages to work up some interest at that, responding to his gesture. She's a slumped lump, herself, but at least wrung-out into civil and honest reactions. "And thanks. Years ago. I've not done shit since then, I think. Got distracted into the talking-head biz, and . . ." A sigh swallows the rest of her words. "Sorry. No bitching from me; I'll deal. The union wants them registered, too?"
"Near's I can tell," Rossi says into the hollow echo chamber of his beer. His gaze quills at Leah, nudging at her through the melt of spine. "Ever since that thing over on Liberty -- you know how it is. The uniform on the street, big bad freak mutant; it's easier to feel safe if you think you got a safety on the gun."
Leah draws out a small smile. "Yeah, I hear that, loud and clear. Like you and that rug you had."
Black brows draw together, digging a furrow between them -- but Rossi has his own honesty. "Like the rug," he agrees, self-deprecating and rueful. "Damn, though. You should've seen him, Canto. You would've had the baseball out cocked and loaded, too. As it is, doubt it would've made a dent even if I did shoot him. What do you do against a perp who ... who's made out of water? Hit the civilian on the other side?"
Leah suggests morbidly, "Flamethrower. Boil the bastard to steam."
"Don't know what your family's carrying around in their trunks, Canto, but flamethrowers aren't exactly normal police issue."
Leah laughs a little. "Oh, come on. Requisition it. It'd be like something out of a movie, and what /are/ you supposed to do?" she asks, shifting to more serious ground. "I hope the rank and file is getting hellaciously good training on Mutant Contact 101."
"/They/ might," says Rossi moodily, "but we're not. And since when does the NYPD have a flamethrower in its armory? --Should ask Vashant," he adds with sudden interest, peering into the interior of his bottle before abandoning it on the floor beside his chair. "He told me once we got a tommy gun down there from the Roaring Twenties."
Leah stirs upright to reach for her pizza and leave the bottle behind, lone empty sentinel on her side of the table. Absently she brushes down the ruffled prickle of her hair, which only hedgehogs it worse, but she's intent on the remaining slices of pizza. Picks one out and starts eating methodically. "A tommy gun," she muses between bites. "No shit? I got a cousin who works a property room down in Staten Island. I wonder what they have there. Nothing that interesting, probably."
"Old case files," prophesizes Rossi, turning his steady regard onto Leah, thoughtful. "We shipped up a whole warehouse of them out there, back in the '80s. --How you feeling, Canto? You're looking sort of ... done."
A sardonic grimace. "No, really?" Leah drops her gaze to the pizza, then pushes the plate back onto the table and herself back into the couch cushions. The move jars the table; she grimaces anew. "I'm just tired," she says with more than a little wariness, as automatic as her polite munching. "A lot on my mind. It's not important, though. Thanks, anyway."
Lips skewed awry, Chris drags himself out of his chair to bridge the barrier of coffee table. "Scoot over," he orders, even as he sinks into the couch's open cushion. An arm stretches for Leah, the other brought up to smother a yawn. "C'mere. I'll trade you massages. My shoulders're killing me."
And now, an automatic, protective hunch, half-turned from him. Over that shoulder, Leah eyes him with frank and open disbelief. "When in God's name did you turn into some touchy-feely drama student? Or musician? Oh, man. This is Gabe's influence. It must be."
"Shut up, Canto," Rossi says on a weary drag of baritone. Given her resistance, he slumps his spine against the couch's corner, head dropped back to splay black hair in a halo. "Believe it or not, the Rossi's are good at being physical. One way or another. Well." A glimpse of self-directed mockery. "You've had the /other/, anyway."
"Well, and the Cantos aren't." Leah says it to the cushion she's staring down at, not him, and then her spine unbends vertebra by vertebra. "I'm sorry. I /am/ tired. And tense. And -- pissed, though I don't know why, unless I put that on my family, too. But taking it out on you isn't the way to go." Pause. "I'm not used to your being nice to me, Chris."
Advises Chris, comfortably, "Don't get used to it. I'm tired. And," he discovers on a thin note of surprise, "not pissed." The mild wonder that spins the word off is telltale, at least; he blinks up at the ceiling, observing idly: "High. -- You apologized. That's an unnerving trend you got going there."
Leah wonders with elaborate curiosity, "Was there or was there not mention of a massage?"
"Only if you're taking me up on it," Chris tells the ceiling gravely. He tugs a leg up onto the sofa to join him, knee crooked to prop against the back cushions. An elbow pushes back, dragging him erect to blink under a fall of black. "I really need a haircut. --C'mere, kid." A hand summons, patting the open space between his legs. "Papa Chris'll take care of you."
"Yes," murmurs Leah as she scoots back and folds a hand around his knee, "I remember." She drops her head forward, a penitent's pose, and props it on her other hand's heel. ". . . You were good, too. Did I mention? If you don't mind my talking about it. Again. I like to keep the air clear, Rossi. That's all. Everyone getting their full and proper due."
"You're a three-year old," says Chris, amused, turning knuckles to good use: punching bad guys during the day (pow!); assuaging the ache of conscience during the night. Gentle fever eases its way through skin and muscle, molding a path down the shoulder's blade. "Thanks, though. About the ... other thing. Good to know all that practice comes in handy."
"I prefer 'idealist,' thanks," Leah shoots back, slumping more heavily on her hand's prop. "I suppose it'll be beaten out of me in another few years; I'm already more cynical than I ever thought I'd be. Getting out of the TV business will be good for me. I hope." Absently her hand describes a finger's pattern over his knee -- stops. Withdraws. Silent apology. And her tone moves to briskness, faintly vibrating through the dorsal contact: "And you're welcome. I'll keep you out of my conversations with my friends, if you'd rather. I'm not looking to cause trouble. --Well, /much./"
Another flare of amusement, rubbing the sharpness off Brooklyn's nap. "You may be a pain sometimes, Canto, but at least you're honest. It doesn't matter." Chris' grin is patent in his voice, tangible even at the ends of soothing fingers. "Long as you keep Julia from calling me with advice on new tricks. Christ. I almost shot myself right there. --You know she slept with Spiccati in Vice?" Turnabout between siblings is fair play.
Leah murmurs, "Trigger callus."
"/Fuck/." Hands still on Leah's back, hot and familiar through the fabric. And strong. Bruisingly strong, though they ease a second later, with an apologetic, "Sorry. --Christ. She told you about that, too?"
Leah's breath sucks in, lets go again in a tremor. "Hey, watch it." Still trembling. She forces it to stop, with shoulders' unconscious twitch, and to speak calmly, lightly. "It might've come up. Did I push one of /your/ buttons?"
"Of all the images I might want in my mind during sex, my sister with Spiccati is the last of them," grates Chris, shifting around Leah to adjust her, one shoulder and upper arm's stanchion turning under wide palms. "I'm no Sigmund. --Should try it, though." Ruminative, that, and wry, tipped off indignation's precipice. "The trigger callus thing, that is. Someday."
Leah protests, "I'm sure he's a very nice man. Or, well, competent. Or whatever Julia looks for. Maybe the callus was enough for her." With her obliging move comes obliging words: "I'm game if you are."
Grudgingly, Chris acknowledges, "He's a good cop." As for her /obligingness/, well. Amiable Leah. Rossi answers that with silence, manipulating his way down her arm to the loose warmth of a hand. Fingers connect, bracing each other; he turns her palm up to his thumbs' circling press. "You're getting out of TV? What, no more Leah Canto on -- what is it, CNN?"
Leah's back unrolls back against his chest, quiet as a flower's bloom, and she tips her head there to watch his literal handiwork. "Yes," she says, as quiet, from a clinical remove at odds with her physical trust. "I got out of the contract this past week. A buyout, so that'll pay the bills until I get the next big thing. I'm publishing a story next month, and maybe MSNBC or someone will call to put me on with a yelling host -- not holding my breath, though. They want screamers, to keep the MRA in the news and keep their ratings high, and I don't scream. Well," she amends, "not on TV anyway. So, maybe I'll go file for unemployment tomorrow. Something."
The quiver of Rossi's laugh communicates itself through chest to back, skin to skin with only the slightest of fabric barriers. "You looked good on TV," he observes, wrapping his other arm around her into the prop between his knee and Leah's arm. The better to massage your hand with, my dear. "Too much make-up. Here. Gimme your other hand. --Publishing where?"
Stretching out one leg on the couch, with the other to keep her anchored to the floor, Leah surrenders her hand and the admission of, "Rolling Stone. Not as MTV-y as it sounds, though: it's a piece about the mutant shelters Lowe and Worthington are funding around the country, and it is, honestly, pretty damn good. Maybe it'll open some doors." Her tone perks a bit. "I did get a nibble from it, from the Times."
"Leah Canto, rising star." The stroking thumbs ease, pace slowing (andante) across the writer-fingers and -callus: match to his, barbed across the third finger, and another on the fore. Trigger. Chris peers at the twine of their fingers together over her shoulder, drowsy gaze paled with distant curiosity. "You ever think of shooting for a full-time gig with a place? Not like the CNN gig. A column or something. --Something not mutants."
Leah's fingers wiggle idly in that starfished clasp; she leans her head into his and watches, too. "That's what they're offering, actually. Some mutant-affairs blog on their Web site, just like MA in the NYPD. Ha. I /should/ go meet Detective Lazzaro properly," she muses. "Hell, it'd free up my schedule so I could still freelance and do commentary if the calls come in. I've been a nine-to-fiver at a paper, Chris, and you know, it's not all it's cracked up to be. More like six-to-midnighter, for one thing, and shit pay for the work, and you don't get to play Woodward and Bernstein /every/ week. I guess I've adapted to free agency; I don't want to give it up."
Eyebrows creep upward, sketching a bemusement visible to Leah only in profile. "What the hell's a blog?" asks Chris, untangling his fingers to begin the slow, deliberate hike up her arm. "Like a ... oh. Right. Web, article, thing? --Yeah. I'll introduce you to him, if I get a chance. He can tell you about the shit that goes down in Mutant Land." Shag rugs, goop-glued vics, Springtime for Magneto and Germany, oh my.
Hesitation for the space of a breath, and then Leah twitches in that 'I'm about to move away from you' way, warning against the wrap of arm and the drown of warmth. "Yeah, a Web log, like a diary online. A lot of the big papers have a stable of bloggers, especially around election time, to spew out moment-by-moment updates as they happen. Don't know; we'll see." She hesitates again, turns her head to consider him with pensive, pallid eyes. "An introduction would be nice. Thank you."
"No problem," says Chris, dropping his hands to thighs at the signal; a press of the couch-caught leg pushes him back, back, into the brace of the cushions' curve. Heavy-lidded eyes smoke a sleepy grin at Leah, addendum for, "--Ask him to tell you some jokes. You can put them on your blog. If the Times don't take you after that, Playboy will."
Leah scoots away, following her stretched leg's fold on the cushions, and she hugs it as she worms around to face him over its crook. "That bad, huh?" She plays with a smile briefly, drops it. Her gaze hasn't lost its thought, or its wanness. "Thank you for the massage, too. I would offer to reciprocate, but at the moment, my nerve endings are twinging for something a little more." Unconsciously her chin lifts in defiance, sternness, decision. "It's a bad habit, I know, but I won't subject you to it."
Chris blinks, rounding those shiny, black-laced eyes at her for a heartbeat's span before closing them around a yawn. "Get some sleep," he advises, swinging to lower both feet to the floor, his head dropping into both hands a half-second later. Muffled, New York's bunched accent tacks on, "Crap. What time is it? --I'm ready to crash."
"Late, and time for sleep." Leah does pat his shoulder, then use it to lever herself up to standing. "Go crash, Rossi. I'm off to do the same, I think. Gotta get up bright and early if I want to beat the rush to the unemployment office."
A pair of fatigue-blurred eyes sneak a glance at Leah through parted fingers before Rossi sighs and straightens to stand. Gentleman. Always. Except when not. "Yeah. Early shift tomorrow. --Thanks for stopping by," he says punctiliously, skirting the table to pop open the door. The dangling chain rattles, ticking its pendulum timer against the door. Lips curl: a wisp of a smile. "Good luck."
"Same to ya, Detective. Good night," and Leah, polite and pure Leah, tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his cheek, innocent as a sister, before slipping out into the hallway and away.
[Log ends.]
I have to blame the family for it. Two birthday parties in two days; two melodramatic productions from la famiglia Canto. No wonder I went running to his apartment to escape them, if only in my head.
And I will respect his boundaries and keep my libido on its leash. Not his fault. Not mine. Just happens, and I do prefer to sleep alone. I've adjusted to free agency, as I told him - in more ways than one.
7/24/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Brownstone Apts #210 - Rossi
An ancient, faded elegance sketches the boundaries of this apartment, hinted at in crown molding and worn, faded floors. High walls span to high ceilings, pale yellow with the barest of white trim; at one end, three high windows gape to let in day's light or night's dark with equal indifference. A small kitchen pocks a hollow in one wall, a doorless entry that offers glimpses of an metal-framed refrigerator and a cabinet-hung microwave. On the other side of the small living room, a short hallway offers entrances to bathroom and bedroom, both doors battered with the wear and tear of age.
In the living room are the basic accoutrements of comfort: sofas, chairs, table, television. Spartan accessories, betraying little of the owner; that task is left for the walls, hung with pictures of family and friends. Through them all runs the thread of blue, NYPD's uniform tailored to pride and vigor.
--
Evening. The last dregs of sunset spread their ashes across the sky, framing the outline of the distant city through Rossi's window. Let the environmentalists make their outcry; for their sins, God rewards the gas-guzzling ants of New York with spectacular shows. Clad in faded jeans and the remnants of work -- unbuttoned, pale green dress shirt, rolled at the sleeves; the thin white of a cotton undershirt -- barefoot Chris hangs on the edge of his sofa, reading the sprawl of files across his coffee table. A beer, bedewed, seeps its water stain into the worn wood at his wrist; an open pizza box on the floor betrays his evening meal: white pizza, cheese-rich.
Outside his door, Leah takes a minute to scrub weary lines out of her forehead and cheeks with one loose fist that she then turns on the door for a few sharp raps. For all the easy casualness of the hour, and the visit, she's still dressed from the day's activities: good jeans, silk shell, baseball jersey flapping over top. And the tiredness, and the annoyance pinching a line between pallidly hooded eyes.
Inside, Chris drags his relutant attention away from his reading (evidence, statements, scrawled in pen and typed in whiteout-friezed forms) for a pinch of his own: brows, hooked into a chain of distraction. "Yeah, hold on," he calls, unfolding to stand. A long step over the coffee table, and then to the door; one eye screws to the peephole, widens in recognition, and blinks. Chain rattles. Deadbolt snicks. Puzzled, wary, Rossi opens the door and stretches himself in its place, elbow hooked up to the door's frame. "Canto. What's up?"
"My family," Leah declares. "I'm seeking refuge. Let me in."
The answer eases some unspoken tension in the lean frame. "Long as it's not mine," Rossi quips, and turns away, invitation enough. The door is open; she need but walk through. "What'd they do?"
Walking through, then, Leah makes for a couch and flops thereupon, letting her legs sprawl out any which way before her in a pretense of comfort. She tucks her hands behind her head, winging out her elbows for bracing, and sighs. "Oh, the usual, I guess. Mom's birthday yesterday, my oldest brother's today, and do you think they could combine the celebrations into one? No. Of course not. It has to be a whole weekend of hugging, crying, quiet sniping, yelling, and so on. Guiltapalooza 2005. I figured you'd understand, and they can't find me here." She owls her eyes at him with mock innocence. "Protect me from the bad people, Detective?"
A grin turns crooked and white against Rossi's expression, a sparse moment of hospitality before he bends with belated haste to the coffee table's disarray. Photographs, papers, bunch in rebellion on the short path to the concealing file folder. "If you want. No fighting," he warns with a squint of his own, pausing quarter-turned to quirk a brow at Leah. "I'm not up for any crap tonight. --Want a beer? There's pizza left, if you want it."
Leah pats her tummy. "After all the food that Mom stuffed into us today? Oh, hell, yeah. Why not. I'll take whatever you're having." She sits up, absently rubbing hands on thighs, and lets her gaze wander politely around the place. "Nice. Looks better, anyway. And you got a better apartment than mine. Jerk of a landlord. I knew I should've flirted with him."
Headed for the small alcove that serves as an office, Rossi disappears into police privacy with the rattle of drawers, baritone pitched out for, "It used to be Parker's. You know him? In Vice." Inside the alcove, a hiss of cardboard and heavy thump prompts a curse. Chris resurfaces rubbing his arm, charting a new track for the kitchen and: "Anyway, I just took his lease. He's dodging some chick. She showed up here a couple of nights ago, looking for him. --Sam Adams okay?"
"Yeah, I think we met at some PBA ball. I love being my brother's date to those things; makes for fun conversation." Leah loosely twines her hands in the empty span between her knees and stares out the windows. "And that's fine, sure." Some amusement creeps into the interstices of her distraction, caulking her tone back to its normal voluptuous furl. "What'd you do with the girl?"
The refrigerator hums, spilling radiance onto the worn kitchen tiles. "Slept with her," it says with Rossi's voice, accompanied by the clink of bottles. A cabinet door claps to the chime of more glass, and then Chris is back in the living room again, skirting the pizza's broken moon with plates, a glass, and beer for two.
"I think I love you for your predictability most of all, Rossi," is Leah's response, heavily amused, indeed. She takes her beer and nurses a slow, savored swallow from it. "--Mmm. Better. Thanks. You gonna tell Parker?"
A cynical eye peers at Leah through a tumble of hair, and Chris tosses himself into a waiting armchair, punishing its ancient springs with familiarity's recklessness. Brooklyn's timbres twist. "Christ, Canto. I was kidding. Though she was hot -- but Parker says she's the stalker type, and I don't need that shit. Sent her to a bogus address Parker wrote out for me. She could always find him at the station anyway, but no stalker walks into a room full of cops."
Leah, completely unabashed, let alone unfazed, just pokes thoughtfully at the pizza before selecting a slice to slop onto her plate. "Oh, don't get your boxers in a twist. Prickly thing, aren't you? Been a long week down at the station?" She trades beer for plate, takes a bite, and draws the cheese long, with evident great pleasure, to chomp up the string to the crust again. Swallowing, she points the slice at him. "/You/ need to relax. Or something. Yoga. Sabby's all hot for your energy, but the rest of us aren't as impressed."
"It's always a long week at the station," Rossi says, reclaiming his old beer for one last, elegiac swig before popping the top of the next. A pizza slice for him, cheese tendrils spooled into a coil on its bed; he sits back with a foot hooked on the table's edge, plate balanced on his knee. "And this /is/ relaxing. Pizza, beer, something to read-- hey. That MA guy, Lazzaro? Turns out he's not bad."
"Haven't met him yet. Should I invite him to my next dinner party?" Leah snorts into her next bite. "I thought you were still tilting at windmills over MA on your turf."
Chris shrugs, slouching into his chair. Shadowed eyes regard Leah, limpid with a simulacrum of innocence. "Don't know what you're talking about. We ended up working on some calls last night. They see some weird shit, and I don't mean normal New York weird. Big, blue, talking shag rug-weird."
Leah takes a swig of beer, eyeing him curiously in return around the bottle. "Uh-huh. Maybe you should put in for a transfer. Though Beston would be devastated, and I'd not wish that on him, poor guy. Shag rugs? What the hell kind of mutation is that?"
Another shrug, smaller and tighter with associated discomfort. "Damned if I know. Just ... weird. Wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley after a few beers. Although he seemed nice enough," Rossi adds scrupulously. Any as yet unspoken thoughts are postponed for the time it takes to christen his new drink and bite into pizza, indifferent to grease.
"You /talked/ to the shag rug." Entertained, Leah leans forward. "C'mon, now you have to tell me all of it. I promise I'm not wired. Off-duty."
"Tell you what? He was lost, he wanted to take the subway, he would've started a freakin' riot. We gave him a ride. --Although," muses Chris, propping his bottle's mouth to his own to study the reflection of beer behind the glass, "guy had /no/ sense of humor. Check this out. Lazzaro told me this one last night, on the way back: Knock knock."
Leah sputters through a swallow, though the liquid remains inside, not actually spraying. "Oh, /hell,/ no, Rossi. There will be no knock-knock jokes, or I'm leaving."
Chris leans forward in his seat, stretching an arm past his foot to nudge his beer back onto the table. "C'mon," he insists, eyes alight. "This one's good. The Rogaine mutant didn't get it, but -- knock knock. It's only one."
Leah buries her face in an elbow-propped hand and groans. "Fine." And she drags it out with emphatically flat emphasis, just so he /knows/ it's under protest: "Who's there."
"Little Boy Blue," says the man, with childish relish.
Through the cracks of her splayed fingers, Leah's eyes squeeze shut. A woman expecting a death blow would be as tense as she. "Little Boy Blue who."
Rossi's glow is nigh seraphic. "Michael Jackson."
Silence.
"/Christopher!/"
Leah mutters, choking on a laugh, "Goddammit."
"How can you not find that /funny/?" demands Rossi, laughter ripping across his own voice, even at the retelling. "Man. Mutants. That's got to suck, not knowing from funny."
Leah tips her head into her hand and gives him a cocked grin. "Must come with the fucked-up genes," she theorized. "Then again, if /I/ were a shag rug, I might be a little humor-challenged, too. Well. As if I weren't already, but maybe I can blame that on the fam."
A grimace from Chris, whose own family troubles drag a shadow across the lingering sparks of his amusement. "Yeah. Speaking of -- you talked to Julia. I hadn't figured. You know she called me?" Small traces of tension draw taut lines across his face, stilling the mobility of his expressions.
Leah does a decent job of containing her glee to just a spark in squinted eyes. "Yeah, I thought she might. Sorry," and that sounds reasonably genuine, too. She is, after all, eating the man's pizza and drinking his beer. "I can imagine what she must've said."
"If you can imagine, I shudder for you, Canto," says Rossi, baritone arid even amidst the moraine of the subject. "I take it you two talked ... intimate details? --Shit." It is, despite expectation, a remarkably resigned curse. "She started giving me advice. It ever occur to you it might not be a good idea to tell a woman how her brother is in bed?"
Leah looks blank. Then looks pissed, in a distant-warning kind of way. Thunder on the horizon, which she visibly pushes back in order to say calmly, "Not all of us have weird, strained relationships with our siblings, Rossi. Sex is just another topic for discussion as far as I'm concerned. My family's always been pretty open that way, and -- well, /you/ know Julia." Her tone slides from faintly rueful to faintly scornful. "Do I at least get a gold star for not calling /Gabe/?"
Green eyes show a brief rimming of white. "Yeah," Chris supposes, slouching still further to drop his chin on his chest. "I guess you get that. --Beston says hi, by the way. I tell you we got stuck babysitting a mountie this past week?" Subject change.
And now Leah looks disappointed, but fleetingly. She accepts the change with as much grace as she can dig up, between another bite of pizza and another swallow of beer. Shakes her head. "Don't think so, no. A real Canadian one? With the hat and everything?" Her gaze glints; her mouth hooks. "Sexy damn uniform. Can I meet him?"
"Hat and everything," Rossi affirms, adding wryly, "No horse, though he's got a dog. Come by the station when we're there, and we'll introduce you. He's apparently good-looking; half the women in the station follow him around like cocker spaniels. I swear if he said 'roll over,' they'd be naked and on the floor in a heartbeat. --You'd like him," he adds, thoughtlessly.
"I guess so," says Leah, dry to wry. "You think so much of me, I can tell. Well. Being a mountie's bitch wouldn't be so bad. Bet he'd open the door for me wherever we went."
Irritation spikes across Rossi's face, and is sculpted in mimicry above with a hand's dash through hair. "I didn't mean -- he's just an interesting guy, is all. Annoying," he makes a point of adding through another swig of beer, "but still ... interesting. Don't let him know I said that, or he'll never stop talking. And yeah. He's got all the charms. Didn't know you were into that."
Leah says demurely, "I like manners. I'm weird that way."
"Weird in a lot of ways," agrees Rossi, rising (predictably) to the bait. A jaded eye peeks at Leah, layered with memory, before clearing offense with a blink. "So how is your family, anyhow?"
"Weird," Leah bites off as if it were greasy pizza. "Same as yours. Too much in each other's business, not enough tending to their own." A moment's simmer, then a shrug's hunched cock. "Whatever. You know? Mom wants me to get a real job -- and a real husband and kids, of course. DJ celebrated his birthday today by getting spectacularly drunk and bawling out his wife right in the middle of dinner. Guess they need a little counseling, huh? Never saw /that/ coming," she mutters cynically. "Michael's just -- well, he's thinking about taking the lieutenant's exam, and he's seeing this woman, and there's all kinds of emotional flailing and then apologizing drunkenly on my phone at three in the morning. Hell, they're making Hannah look normal by comparison, and my sister has /never/ been normal. I just want to disown them all and start over." She gives him a mild blink. "Maybe I'll adopt yours instead."
An eyebrow peaks over a dubious glitter, humor creeping back into the edges of Chris' mien. "Mine?" he echoes, skepticism spiced with the first savory of a grin. "Man. Your family really does have you freaked. Back in the Rossi household, Paul's trying to square off with his Cap by trying to convert all the non-Catholics in the precinct. Emphasis on the ones with dark skin. Pop's pissed at Gabe, who's decided to move back home for a while. Gabe's seeing some married woman in his orchestra. Mom's pissed at Julia, because one of her one-nighters called for her at home, and Mikey's -- well, Mikey."
Leah points out, "I get along with all of them. Well, except Paul, but if I threaten to go public on his Botox use, I could probably get him in line. You /know/ he's using it." She slumps back into the couch's embrace, balancing her beer on her leg, and toys with a smile. "I could be the stabilizing influence."
"There's a change of nightmares," murmurs Rossi into the muzzle of his beer. "You? A stabilizing influence? Damn." The question of Paul's Botox use he bypasses, the barest twitch of a lip betraying a sympathy of thought; baritone plows on regardless, supposing, "It's easier with other people's damage. Beston's kid seems fine to me, and his ex-wives -- well, the second one's a bitch -- but the others seem fine. Drive /him/ crazy."
"Dear Beston," muses Leah as she studies her beer and picks with a lazy thumbnail at the label. "He's dirty, isn't he?"
Silence from Chris. A slivered regard settles on Leah, unblinking, unreadable; the beer bottle, lowered, cocks itself between loosely-clasped hands. "What the hell kind of question is that?" he asks, blank. "Shit. I thought you liked him."
Leah picks a little more, and the laziness moves into and through her voice like a cat's stretching reach. "I do, Chris. I honestly, truly do. But you hear things, okay?" Flicker of pale-brown eyes, squinted with concern at him. "I worked pretty tightly with the force back when I was doing investigative work for the Post, and there's my family connections, too. Just curious. IA's dogging him. You know that."
"IA's dogging /me/," Chris says flatly, a shutter sliding closed behind his face. Hostility peers out from green eyes, a stranger, more alien hobgoblin than his more customary, open temper; lips twitch into a mirthless grin. "I don't think they like the way I maintain the company car. --What're you hearing about Beston?" The lean body angles forward, elbows propping on knees, jaw harsh on the head's jut into feral focus.
Leah admits, "Scuttlebutt. Whispers. Stuff in his jacket, his name on a list -- I don't know. Maybe they're watching you to get at him. You think of that? For, surely, Detective Rossi is above personal reproach on the job, except for the car thing." She sighs, flaps her hand. "I just had a stray and random attack of worry about you. I won't let it happen again, God knows."
A vein stretches in sharp relief in the hollow of Rossi's temple, pinning the fragile and powerful line of skull. "Yeah," he says after a moment, reluctantly easing the rigidity of his pose. The couch melts into the unknotted spine, cradling the arc of shoulders and fingers' curl on armrests. "Those've been around for a while. Nothing serious." Lips crimp a more honest grin for Leah, barely warming the hood of splintered eyes. "Appreciate the thought, though. Beston's not dirty."
Leah rewards him with the flat stare of 'bullshit, bunky,' but doesn't push it. "All right. Never mind, then. Just getting it out there." She takes another drink, finishing off the bottle, but not relinquishing its comforting prop just yet. "Thanks, by the way."
"For what?" One hand waves at the refrigerator behind him, accompanied by an awkward back-and-up twist that verifies it still exists where expected. "There's more beer if you want it. --And pizza," Chris adds, eyeing the cold wedge on his plate without enthusiasm.
"For having sex with me," Leah answers. "Oh, thanks, I'm good. Maybe in a bit."
"/Fuck/, Canto. Don't just blurt it out like -- and I wasn't doing you a favor. You get that?"
Leah grins. "Doing yourself one?"
Rossi shows his teeth, couching himself deeper into the armchair. The table shivers under his leg's resentful push. "Not fucking likely. Not that you were bad, Canto. In fact, you were damn good. But I've got more trouble than I want, already." Sweet-talker, Chris.
Leah's eye-roll leads to her whole head tipping back. "Good God. Try to express a little honest gratitude, and out come the claws. Remind me to stay out of your pants in the future, please."
"/Please/," seconds Rossi, with a heartfelt sincerity that has no resemblance to flattery. Beer wobbles on the table again, and is rescued by a reluctant hand. "This bar is closed, Canto. No more tapping. You should go check out Lazzaro. He's in the building; bet you and he would hit it off together."
"Or this mountie of yours." Leah stretches out her leg to prop her foot against the coffee table's leg. She's good support that way. "Don't worry, though. I'm not interested in tapping Chris Rossi's keg o' love if he's going to be still so damned uptight and weird about it. A girl wants sex, she can get it most anywhere -- and anyway, I have other things on my mind." She flutters her lashes at him mockingly. "I promise not to jump you. It'll be hard to restrain myself, but I will do it for /you./"
Another flash of teeth, bared by a curl of lips -- but there is some self-deprecating humor behind it, for all it twists with irritation into a tangled weave. "Bite me," Chris says, wry. "Called your friend Sabitha Melcross the other day, for coffee. Needed to talk to someone who wasn't -- you know. Business."
Leah reminds him, "Been there, done that. How was Sabby? She doing okay?"
A small wince proves Chris, too, has a memory. "Seemed like. You haven't talked to her since you told her about us, I take it? -- is there anyone you know that you didn't tell? -- Take it she and that guy Travis aren't an item anymore. And before you get some smart-ass idea of hooking us up, forget it."
"Shucks," drawls Leah, pro forma. "I did nudge up to that suggestion, but she didn't seem to like it, so I left it. She probably already has a nice chew-toy of her own, anyway." Dark irony weights her voice, but she moves on nimbly before the sink catches the rest of her. "I told two people, Rossi: Julia and her. What, you want to start circumscribing the discussion of my sex life? Should I write up reports and submit them for your approval first? How about, for a change, you fucking trust my judgment and treat me like an adult?"
A glare shoots down a forefinger's point, spliced off a loose, beer-bottle clasp. "That's fighting," Rossi observes. "Chill out, Canto. Anyway, I need some women in my book I haven't screwed or fought with. Or screwed /and/ fought with, whichever. She was the only one that wasn't in either category, so I took her out for coffee and dessert. --She doesn't talk about herself a lot, does she? Or is it just with her chick friends?"
Leah simmers through slitted eyes at him, but-- "Fine. We can argue another time. Just point that glare somewhere else, man, before I do something about it." One arm slops over her stomach in a half-fold, and she rubs the empty beer bottle against her temple at some phantom itch. Around it, she backs into an expression's wary inquisitiveness. "I . . . guess she doesn't, yeah. I haven't known her long, though. She's got buttons you cannot press. As in, do /not/ press them. Maybe she's trying to avoid that, sparing you the eruption by keeping things to herself. And she's so damned young sometimes, Chris. You have to keep that in mind, along with the whole Travis thing."
"Young," echoes Rossi, absent-mindedly mimicking Leah's temple-rub with his own warming bottle. Eyes shift under the forgiving fan of lashes, prisming the room's light into greys and greens. "When the hell did we get old? The vics get younger and younger, and so do the perps. One of these days I'll wake up and find out I'm Beston. --Ever get the feeling people're playing some different game than the one you've got rules to, Canto?"
Flatly: "Every day of my life, Rossi."
"Great." A glimmer of truth. "We gotta get ourselves that playbook, someday."
Leah says after a long moment, "Honestly? I don't think I want it. Those are deep waters to swim in. Remember that Flatbush Five case I helped break?" A brief grin at her hubris, but hell, a reporter's gotta do-- "Up to my /ears/ in shit from Albany and the mayor's office, and political this and threatening that, when all we wanted was to put bad guys behind bars. Imagine: some high-ranking scum are using mutants in white slavery and prostitution rings, and it's the papers and the police are in the wrong. And now? Hell. The MRA's passed, Magneto and his merry men are still on the loose, the whole country's on edge, and I just want to crawl under the covers sometimes and /stay/ there." She shakes her head. "I /don't/ want to play games. I just don't. I suck at it, and it leads to pain or worse."
The cop shrugs, hard-eyed pragmatism battling with inbred idealism. Chris -- the man -- palms a grimace for Leah, catching its corner in a crook of fingers and elbow-propped arm. "Power to the people," he quotes with bitter flippancy. "I ever hand it to you on that one, Canto? Guess I didn't. It was good work. Not a lot of that going around," he adds, cynicism riding his voice from comment to throat's quenching. "The MRA'll make more work for us, anyway. Easier, or harder ... who the hell knows? The union's for it."
"Yeah?" Leah manages to work up some interest at that, responding to his gesture. She's a slumped lump, herself, but at least wrung-out into civil and honest reactions. "And thanks. Years ago. I've not done shit since then, I think. Got distracted into the talking-head biz, and . . ." A sigh swallows the rest of her words. "Sorry. No bitching from me; I'll deal. The union wants them registered, too?"
"Near's I can tell," Rossi says into the hollow echo chamber of his beer. His gaze quills at Leah, nudging at her through the melt of spine. "Ever since that thing over on Liberty -- you know how it is. The uniform on the street, big bad freak mutant; it's easier to feel safe if you think you got a safety on the gun."
Leah draws out a small smile. "Yeah, I hear that, loud and clear. Like you and that rug you had."
Black brows draw together, digging a furrow between them -- but Rossi has his own honesty. "Like the rug," he agrees, self-deprecating and rueful. "Damn, though. You should've seen him, Canto. You would've had the baseball out cocked and loaded, too. As it is, doubt it would've made a dent even if I did shoot him. What do you do against a perp who ... who's made out of water? Hit the civilian on the other side?"
Leah suggests morbidly, "Flamethrower. Boil the bastard to steam."
"Don't know what your family's carrying around in their trunks, Canto, but flamethrowers aren't exactly normal police issue."
Leah laughs a little. "Oh, come on. Requisition it. It'd be like something out of a movie, and what /are/ you supposed to do?" she asks, shifting to more serious ground. "I hope the rank and file is getting hellaciously good training on Mutant Contact 101."
"/They/ might," says Rossi moodily, "but we're not. And since when does the NYPD have a flamethrower in its armory? --Should ask Vashant," he adds with sudden interest, peering into the interior of his bottle before abandoning it on the floor beside his chair. "He told me once we got a tommy gun down there from the Roaring Twenties."
Leah stirs upright to reach for her pizza and leave the bottle behind, lone empty sentinel on her side of the table. Absently she brushes down the ruffled prickle of her hair, which only hedgehogs it worse, but she's intent on the remaining slices of pizza. Picks one out and starts eating methodically. "A tommy gun," she muses between bites. "No shit? I got a cousin who works a property room down in Staten Island. I wonder what they have there. Nothing that interesting, probably."
"Old case files," prophesizes Rossi, turning his steady regard onto Leah, thoughtful. "We shipped up a whole warehouse of them out there, back in the '80s. --How you feeling, Canto? You're looking sort of ... done."
A sardonic grimace. "No, really?" Leah drops her gaze to the pizza, then pushes the plate back onto the table and herself back into the couch cushions. The move jars the table; she grimaces anew. "I'm just tired," she says with more than a little wariness, as automatic as her polite munching. "A lot on my mind. It's not important, though. Thanks, anyway."
Lips skewed awry, Chris drags himself out of his chair to bridge the barrier of coffee table. "Scoot over," he orders, even as he sinks into the couch's open cushion. An arm stretches for Leah, the other brought up to smother a yawn. "C'mere. I'll trade you massages. My shoulders're killing me."
And now, an automatic, protective hunch, half-turned from him. Over that shoulder, Leah eyes him with frank and open disbelief. "When in God's name did you turn into some touchy-feely drama student? Or musician? Oh, man. This is Gabe's influence. It must be."
"Shut up, Canto," Rossi says on a weary drag of baritone. Given her resistance, he slumps his spine against the couch's corner, head dropped back to splay black hair in a halo. "Believe it or not, the Rossi's are good at being physical. One way or another. Well." A glimpse of self-directed mockery. "You've had the /other/, anyway."
"Well, and the Cantos aren't." Leah says it to the cushion she's staring down at, not him, and then her spine unbends vertebra by vertebra. "I'm sorry. I /am/ tired. And tense. And -- pissed, though I don't know why, unless I put that on my family, too. But taking it out on you isn't the way to go." Pause. "I'm not used to your being nice to me, Chris."
Advises Chris, comfortably, "Don't get used to it. I'm tired. And," he discovers on a thin note of surprise, "not pissed." The mild wonder that spins the word off is telltale, at least; he blinks up at the ceiling, observing idly: "High. -- You apologized. That's an unnerving trend you got going there."
Leah wonders with elaborate curiosity, "Was there or was there not mention of a massage?"
"Only if you're taking me up on it," Chris tells the ceiling gravely. He tugs a leg up onto the sofa to join him, knee crooked to prop against the back cushions. An elbow pushes back, dragging him erect to blink under a fall of black. "I really need a haircut. --C'mere, kid." A hand summons, patting the open space between his legs. "Papa Chris'll take care of you."
"Yes," murmurs Leah as she scoots back and folds a hand around his knee, "I remember." She drops her head forward, a penitent's pose, and props it on her other hand's heel. ". . . You were good, too. Did I mention? If you don't mind my talking about it. Again. I like to keep the air clear, Rossi. That's all. Everyone getting their full and proper due."
"You're a three-year old," says Chris, amused, turning knuckles to good use: punching bad guys during the day (pow!); assuaging the ache of conscience during the night. Gentle fever eases its way through skin and muscle, molding a path down the shoulder's blade. "Thanks, though. About the ... other thing. Good to know all that practice comes in handy."
"I prefer 'idealist,' thanks," Leah shoots back, slumping more heavily on her hand's prop. "I suppose it'll be beaten out of me in another few years; I'm already more cynical than I ever thought I'd be. Getting out of the TV business will be good for me. I hope." Absently her hand describes a finger's pattern over his knee -- stops. Withdraws. Silent apology. And her tone moves to briskness, faintly vibrating through the dorsal contact: "And you're welcome. I'll keep you out of my conversations with my friends, if you'd rather. I'm not looking to cause trouble. --Well, /much./"
Another flare of amusement, rubbing the sharpness off Brooklyn's nap. "You may be a pain sometimes, Canto, but at least you're honest. It doesn't matter." Chris' grin is patent in his voice, tangible even at the ends of soothing fingers. "Long as you keep Julia from calling me with advice on new tricks. Christ. I almost shot myself right there. --You know she slept with Spiccati in Vice?" Turnabout between siblings is fair play.
Leah murmurs, "Trigger callus."
"/Fuck/." Hands still on Leah's back, hot and familiar through the fabric. And strong. Bruisingly strong, though they ease a second later, with an apologetic, "Sorry. --Christ. She told you about that, too?"
Leah's breath sucks in, lets go again in a tremor. "Hey, watch it." Still trembling. She forces it to stop, with shoulders' unconscious twitch, and to speak calmly, lightly. "It might've come up. Did I push one of /your/ buttons?"
"Of all the images I might want in my mind during sex, my sister with Spiccati is the last of them," grates Chris, shifting around Leah to adjust her, one shoulder and upper arm's stanchion turning under wide palms. "I'm no Sigmund. --Should try it, though." Ruminative, that, and wry, tipped off indignation's precipice. "The trigger callus thing, that is. Someday."
Leah protests, "I'm sure he's a very nice man. Or, well, competent. Or whatever Julia looks for. Maybe the callus was enough for her." With her obliging move comes obliging words: "I'm game if you are."
Grudgingly, Chris acknowledges, "He's a good cop." As for her /obligingness/, well. Amiable Leah. Rossi answers that with silence, manipulating his way down her arm to the loose warmth of a hand. Fingers connect, bracing each other; he turns her palm up to his thumbs' circling press. "You're getting out of TV? What, no more Leah Canto on -- what is it, CNN?"
Leah's back unrolls back against his chest, quiet as a flower's bloom, and she tips her head there to watch his literal handiwork. "Yes," she says, as quiet, from a clinical remove at odds with her physical trust. "I got out of the contract this past week. A buyout, so that'll pay the bills until I get the next big thing. I'm publishing a story next month, and maybe MSNBC or someone will call to put me on with a yelling host -- not holding my breath, though. They want screamers, to keep the MRA in the news and keep their ratings high, and I don't scream. Well," she amends, "not on TV anyway. So, maybe I'll go file for unemployment tomorrow. Something."
The quiver of Rossi's laugh communicates itself through chest to back, skin to skin with only the slightest of fabric barriers. "You looked good on TV," he observes, wrapping his other arm around her into the prop between his knee and Leah's arm. The better to massage your hand with, my dear. "Too much make-up. Here. Gimme your other hand. --Publishing where?"
Stretching out one leg on the couch, with the other to keep her anchored to the floor, Leah surrenders her hand and the admission of, "Rolling Stone. Not as MTV-y as it sounds, though: it's a piece about the mutant shelters Lowe and Worthington are funding around the country, and it is, honestly, pretty damn good. Maybe it'll open some doors." Her tone perks a bit. "I did get a nibble from it, from the Times."
"Leah Canto, rising star." The stroking thumbs ease, pace slowing (andante) across the writer-fingers and -callus: match to his, barbed across the third finger, and another on the fore. Trigger. Chris peers at the twine of their fingers together over her shoulder, drowsy gaze paled with distant curiosity. "You ever think of shooting for a full-time gig with a place? Not like the CNN gig. A column or something. --Something not mutants."
Leah's fingers wiggle idly in that starfished clasp; she leans her head into his and watches, too. "That's what they're offering, actually. Some mutant-affairs blog on their Web site, just like MA in the NYPD. Ha. I /should/ go meet Detective Lazzaro properly," she muses. "Hell, it'd free up my schedule so I could still freelance and do commentary if the calls come in. I've been a nine-to-fiver at a paper, Chris, and you know, it's not all it's cracked up to be. More like six-to-midnighter, for one thing, and shit pay for the work, and you don't get to play Woodward and Bernstein /every/ week. I guess I've adapted to free agency; I don't want to give it up."
Eyebrows creep upward, sketching a bemusement visible to Leah only in profile. "What the hell's a blog?" asks Chris, untangling his fingers to begin the slow, deliberate hike up her arm. "Like a ... oh. Right. Web, article, thing? --Yeah. I'll introduce you to him, if I get a chance. He can tell you about the shit that goes down in Mutant Land." Shag rugs, goop-glued vics, Springtime for Magneto and Germany, oh my.
Hesitation for the space of a breath, and then Leah twitches in that 'I'm about to move away from you' way, warning against the wrap of arm and the drown of warmth. "Yeah, a Web log, like a diary online. A lot of the big papers have a stable of bloggers, especially around election time, to spew out moment-by-moment updates as they happen. Don't know; we'll see." She hesitates again, turns her head to consider him with pensive, pallid eyes. "An introduction would be nice. Thank you."
"No problem," says Chris, dropping his hands to thighs at the signal; a press of the couch-caught leg pushes him back, back, into the brace of the cushions' curve. Heavy-lidded eyes smoke a sleepy grin at Leah, addendum for, "--Ask him to tell you some jokes. You can put them on your blog. If the Times don't take you after that, Playboy will."
Leah scoots away, following her stretched leg's fold on the cushions, and she hugs it as she worms around to face him over its crook. "That bad, huh?" She plays with a smile briefly, drops it. Her gaze hasn't lost its thought, or its wanness. "Thank you for the massage, too. I would offer to reciprocate, but at the moment, my nerve endings are twinging for something a little more." Unconsciously her chin lifts in defiance, sternness, decision. "It's a bad habit, I know, but I won't subject you to it."
Chris blinks, rounding those shiny, black-laced eyes at her for a heartbeat's span before closing them around a yawn. "Get some sleep," he advises, swinging to lower both feet to the floor, his head dropping into both hands a half-second later. Muffled, New York's bunched accent tacks on, "Crap. What time is it? --I'm ready to crash."
"Late, and time for sleep." Leah does pat his shoulder, then use it to lever herself up to standing. "Go crash, Rossi. I'm off to do the same, I think. Gotta get up bright and early if I want to beat the rush to the unemployment office."
A pair of fatigue-blurred eyes sneak a glance at Leah through parted fingers before Rossi sighs and straightens to stand. Gentleman. Always. Except when not. "Yeah. Early shift tomorrow. --Thanks for stopping by," he says punctiliously, skirting the table to pop open the door. The dangling chain rattles, ticking its pendulum timer against the door. Lips curl: a wisp of a smile. "Good luck."
"Same to ya, Detective. Good night," and Leah, polite and pure Leah, tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his cheek, innocent as a sister, before slipping out into the hallway and away.
[Log ends.]