Testing
I tried my leash a little tonight. Called up Scott Summers, asked him to meet me at Harry's for a bite and a chat. Nathan was in the room. I don't think he had a weapon on him, but probably. Probably. He let us talk, anyway. Didn't say anything afterward, either: just sat and watched me walk out. He probably called Tom right away.
I've gotten in the habit of checking all my locks, doors and windows, several times before I can go to bed. Like it matters.
You shouldn't like me, Scott. My God, you should not.
10/7/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry's Bar
An old tavern that stands from Revolutionary Times, Harry's is a common hide-away place for humans and mutants alike, although surprisingly quite a bit of the latter can be found, for all of the owner's devil-may-care attitude towards them. Modestly furnished in dark woods, it holds a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere that appeals to many, although almost never crowded. Up against one wall stretches the bar itself with several red leather barstools stationed in front of it and an impressive selection, behind the counter. Most of the rest of the room, however, is occupied by a few tables and booths, for people to dine at. Definitely not any kind of white-collar establishment, but the company it keeps is good.
--
Leah sits in a booth along one of Harry's walls, dressed in sweater and jeans and studying a menu with pinched, distracted eyes. Friday night in the place is busier than the rest of the week, but the swirl of noise and odor and traffic hardly touches her attention, let alone draws it from her reading, which has her enthralled as if by dark enchantment.
Scott walks in with measure and caution, dressed in slacks, polo, pull over, glasses. There is a slight scanning tilt of his head until he notes Leah, and changes his pause into a directional pace (measured, measured). "Mind if I sit down?" once in range.
A startled jerk drops the menu from Leah's tight hands, and she scrambles to recover it even as she bites her lip and twists her head to blink up at him. Then smile, belatedly and thinly. "Uh, 'course not. Hi, Scott. Good to see you again." She stops there, sits up and back a little against the booth's seat back.
"Sorry," is said with regret as menu is dropped, but Scott believes in follow-up. He sits down. Across from her, of course. "Good to see you as well, Leah. What's up?"
Leah shakes her head quickly. "I'm a klutz," she assures him wryly, "and ... end of the week. Busy week. You know how it is." The menu goes back on the table, in a nicer, controlled way, and she folds her hands behind it, blinking wanly at him above. "Nothing's up. Just thought, 'Hey, haven't seen Scott in a while. Wonder if he's still bugging Rossi and Lazzaro, or what.' So ... hi."
"I'm not. Which I'm sure disappoints them." Scott picks up his corresponding menu and examines the front. "Had a lot of interesting stories, then? Sorry again for startling you."
"I'm sure," Leah murmurs. "--Stories. Um. I /am/ working on a new one, but ... but nothing new, really." She shifts seated posture, hunches shoulders. Goes for light and breezy: "Friends of Humanity. Fun, huh?"
Scott's eyebrows do a jump -- and his shoulders immediately come forward. He looms over the table, but less as a threat and more as a startled and protectively brooding bird. "What?"
Leah jerks back in response, eyes wide. "The Friends. I--I'm doing a story. About them. On them." She captures her choppy defensiveness in an irritated alto lasso and tightens. "It's just a story, Scott. About the message they're getting out with that pirate-radio thing."
With effort, Scott moves himself straight-backed, politely removed, but his forehead remains clenched. "Are you telling me because you were worried I'd crack a paper and see it?" he asks, cautious, "Or because you wanted to give me a head's up? Will this piece be dangerous for you, Leah?"
"I'm telling you--" and Leah might be a bit clenched, too "--because you asked if I had any new stories. So, there you go. That's my new story." She rakes her hot, pale stare over the rest of the bar. "Where's the waiter? Man, the staff sucks tonight."
"Right. However, it's a fairly loaded story. Sorry for my reaction," Scott states more than apologizes.
After a minute, two things happen: a harried waiter, some college kid stuck in the 'burbs, arrives for their order; and Leah backs down. Well, the latter might happen first, because she mutters, "Yeah, I know. It's not a big deal; don't worry about it." And /then/ there is a kid for her to tell, "House burger, the works, and onion rings instead of fries."
"Just onion rings for me." It sounds dangerously decadent, but most solemnly so. And Scott's attention returns to Leah. "Isn't it?" he asks, blandly.
When they're alone again, Leah slumps against the seat back and stares at her hands on the table. "I just want to write a fair story," she says, voice tight again, near to trembling. "I'm a reporter, aren't I? Don't I have /some/ kind of obligation to objectivity? To the truth?"
"Have you discovered anything indicating they're not a violent terrorist group that commits murders on tape?" Scott asks, remaining that utter bland. "Everyone deserves a fair trial, of course."
"Even terrorists," Leah agrees in her tightness. "Even dangerous mutants."
"Of course. Of course, it looks to /me/," that rare emphasis, "that they're slaughtering those mutants with the misfortune not to look human, to try to tie in on old . . . hysterias, but I'm willing to grant they're hysterical themselves."
Leah swallows. "It pays the bills. Okay? I'm sorry I don't have better options right now. Kinda too old, and poor, to go back to school; don't want to wait tables..." She brushes her hands sharply off the one between them, down into her lap, and she stares out over the room again. Looks weary, and still pale and pinched. "We're all kinda hysterical, in the right circumstance," she says quietly. "Don't know if you've noticed that or not."
"There's nothing wrong with doing a piece on the FoH," Scott back-tracks, almost, his forehead half relaxing. "But hysteria, although natural, rarely excuses murder. Lynching, dragging . . ."
Leah flinches and looks back at him, somewhere between angry and haunted. "You think I don't /know/ that?"
"Of course you do," Scott soothes, in as far as his voice is capable when he is being all uncomfortable, "I'll just be curious to see how the, ah, article comes out."
Leah backs down further, and then there is food to distract, arriving hot and delicious without commentary from the waiter (no dummy, he, to strained vibes). Desultorily she picks at an onion ring. "So will I," she replies, cryptic and quick. "Guess we'll see. It's a living, huh? A terrible one. Can we -- can we change the subject, please? I'm sorry," and she puts a hand over her eyes for a moment.
"All right. What would you like to talk about?" Scott shifts, and his fingers pull an onion ring apart with distraction, even as his forehead goes smooth enough.
"How're you?" Leah's smile slants awkward. "God, I'm trite. But you know."
"Tense, but well enough. I'm always tense." Scott meets awkward smile with slight one. "Nate's doing well, the school's quiet."
Leah nods and puts her burger into good enough order for a lift to her mouth and a bite. "Glad to hear it. Reminds me, I should give Alyssa Carter a call, see how she's doing--" Breaking off, she blinks at him, and her mouth goes flat again. "If that'd be all right. I don't want to get her in trouble."
"You won't get her in trouble. She does, I believe, receives phone calls," is said with just a hint of unnecessary irony. But Scott softens it. "I'm sure she'd be glad to hear from you."
"Maybe I won't tell her about the Friends thing." Another uncomfortable smile. Another bite of burger. Leah finds refuge in simple acts, finds stabler ground for conversation. "Glad about the school. And Nate. And, yeah, tense. We're all tense these days, I think. Too much going on."
"Probably wouldn't be wise. She's a bit wound up." Scott's fingers having quite dissected the onion ring, Scott removes them and glances down into his mess. Well. Edible. He takes a small bit, chews on it. "It's a tense world right now, yes. May be for a while."
Leah bites again. Chews, swallows. Ventures, "You haven't gone drinking again, have you?"
"No," Scott says, solidly, definitely. "I've," lip twitch, "recovered."
Leah studies him solemnly. "All better now?"
"As well as I am liable to get in this life and a tense world."
"Lucky you," says Leah and has a quick drink from her water, eyes squinched shut. There. Collected again. "Well, that's good. Glad to hear it. Your being better, I mean. Can't surrender your control to a night of drinking, right?"
"Not too often," and the caution returns. "Can you?"
Leah grimaces. "No. But I tend to do my drinking at home, so it doesn't matter, huh? No one there but me to deal with the mess."
"It's unfortunate to live at a school. Difficult to do that," Scott notes tragically.
Reluctant sympathy moves Leah into a smile and an easier slouch at the table. "How /did/ you end up a teacher, anyway? Did I ever ask that?"
"No one else wanted to teach shop. I'm a graduate," Scott says, less tragic, quick intensifying of smile. "Private schools tend to be a bit incestuous."
Leah murmurs, "Oh, the jokes I could make with that opening..."
Scott spreads a hand. "Want to?"
Leah looks startled, then a little sad. "No. No, probably not. Not when I don't even know why you--shit. Why you spend time with me. Can't afford to piss you off."
"I like you," Scott says simply, and eats another onion scrap. "Not likely to change."
"Really?" Leah presses palms to the tabletop as if for anchoring. "Well. Thanks, I guess. After all we've been through ... anyway. I'm not very good with jokes, so let's forget that." She makes a rude noise. "I'm all promise, no delivery."
"That's all right. I won't hold you to it." Scott tries another accentuated smile. "And, yes, I do like you."
Leah says softly, "Thank you," and goes for an onion ring. Hers. Not his. No poaching. She focuses very intently on eating it in short, neat nibbles.
"You're welcome," Scott's voice is quiet. Another small section of his. Watching, brows slightly furrowed.
Unfortunately, an onion ring, no matter how large and crunchy-good, cannot last forever, and so Leah must speak anew, once it's gone and she's napkinned away stray crumbs. "What else?" she asks, rather rhetorically because she's already supplying the 'else.' "News, politics, the weather, the playoffs -- do you follow sports at all?"
"I'm fairly reclusive. I do follow . . . badmitton. Tennis." Scott mimes (with some embarrassment) a racket.
Leah blinks slowly. Then grins. "Do that again."
Scott suspends himself with his hand still partly in the air. "What?"
Leah waves /her/ hand peremptorily. "The swing thing!"
"Oh." Scott repeats the racket. "This?" he asks, incredulously.
Leah nods. "It's cute," she declares.
"Oh." Scott repeats it one more time. "Will cute win me friends and influence people?"
Leah bites down on a new onion ring, smiling. "Seems to work for a lot of folks in the world. You could get a cult going."
"Based on rackets?" Scott tries it out a thi-- no, enough. He drops his hand. "Literal rackets, that is . . . not whatever those other rackets are. Criminal rackets?"
"Criminal rackets," Leah agrees. "But nah, a cult based on cute. --Don't mind me. I'm weird tonight. Wired. Something -- I don't know."
"That's all right. Don't we ... ah, yes, that Pokemon. I remember Pokemon." Scott's expression hardens.
Leah makes round eyes. "Did Pokemon do something to you? I'm sorry if I'm opening old wounds--"
"One of the girls had a Charizard doll. That spoke its name every time someone stepped a little too hard. Activated by /vibrations/." Emphasis for loathing.
Leah winces. "Did you kill it? Did you kill it /dead/?"
"No. I hired an assassin." Scott sighs.
Leah turns over this nugget of information carefully before speaking to it. "Don't suppose you still have his number?" Her smile's a little too tight.
Scott notes. Scott is puzzled -- but he allows concern to be just an undertone. "Afraid not. They keep their movements secret."
"Like ninjas," Leah supposes a little regretfully. Time for another burger-bite retreat.
"Know someone that needs offing?" Scott asks, with a light harrumph.
Bite. A grim one. "Several."
"I could help?"
"Could you?" Leah puts the burger down and grants him the weight of smoked brown eyes. "You don't strike me as an assassin, Scott."
"Well. I tend to avoid actually /killing/ people," Scott admits, and sticks his hand in the onion rings.
Leah murmurs, "Pity," but then shakes her head. "No. That's wrong. Killing's wrong. What /could/ you do?"
"Knock someone out," Scott puts in with confidence.
Leah mimes a fist's blow bashing some poor schmuck's head, with a hopeful expression.
Scott nods. "One of many possible methods."
Leah's gaze flicks sideways, into the bar's crowd. "That'd be great. I know a guy -- no, never mind," and she tents herself bitterly over an onion ring caught in both hands like a fly in mantis's claws. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw!
"Never mind?" Scott prompts, proompts.
A succession of emotions slaps through Leah's face like the shuffling of greasy, grimy playing cards. "We all know people we'd like to knock out. Ha. I'm making a joke again."
"Really?" Scott is incorrigible, but serious.
"Sure," Leah breezes on a grin. "I'm joking. This is me joking. Do you like it?"
A beat, a pause, and Scott attempts a grin of his own. "Sure."
"Because you like me," Leah prompts, prooompts.
"That's always part of it," Scott accedes readily.
Leah continues, "And you like jokes. Right?"
"Certainly, although I apparently have odd tastes."
Smiling, she reminds him, "You do like me. Odd, right there. We're odd ducks. The pair of us."
"Why is that odd?" Scott tilts his head, very slightly.
The easiness falters. "Because I'm a professional bigot?"
"Are you, now?" Neutrality, safety, merely requesting clarification of information.
Leah thins her lips. "So people like to say about me. I'm a conservative who writes conservatively about mutant affairs. Not that popular in this town sometimes."
"Hardly the same as a professional bigot. Unless /you/ think so." Again with the unusual emphasis, quiet expression.
Leah eats the last crescent of her gnawed onion ring. "...Means I'd get paid to write bigoted things," she says, attempting fine, clinical remove. "Who'd ever do that to a reporter?"
Behind the glasses, Scott's eyes focus intense. "Is someone doing that to you?"
"No."
"So you're not a professional bigot, right?"
"Right."
Scott leans back. "Well, then. Just a conservative."
"Are you?" Leah asks without looking up from her burger.
"On most issues."
Leah nods. "No one's a hundred-percent anything. I've voted liberal before, myself. Depends ... depends." With a sigh, she rests her hand against a propped fist. "Shades of grey -- they make me nervous sometimes."
"It would be easier if they didn't exist. However," Scott says slowly, and folds his hands in his lap.
"World's not an easy place. Not supposed to be, either," Leah adds. "My parish priest always said that, growing up. Life's tough, but that's what makes it worth the trouble."
"I suppose it would be very boring if it were easy. Could do it in our sleep." Scott eyes the onions darkly.
Leah has abandoned her food to indifference and entropy. "Sleep's good. I should probably get some -- sorry, Scott. It's been a rough week, I guess."
"I'm getting that impression." Smile damps down to partial. "Go get some rest."
Leah smiles back and slides out of the booth. A twenty goes on the table (bit crumpled, but good honest money all the same!), and then her hand does, as she leans over to kiss his cheek. "Thanks," she says. "Just ... thanks."
Scott tilts his head, and behind the glasses, the eyes slide to mark the motion. "You're welcome, Leah. Any time."
"We'll see," she says again, sadly, and then she walks away.
[Log ends.]
I've gotten in the habit of checking all my locks, doors and windows, several times before I can go to bed. Like it matters.
You shouldn't like me, Scott. My God, you should not.
10/7/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry's Bar
An old tavern that stands from Revolutionary Times, Harry's is a common hide-away place for humans and mutants alike, although surprisingly quite a bit of the latter can be found, for all of the owner's devil-may-care attitude towards them. Modestly furnished in dark woods, it holds a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere that appeals to many, although almost never crowded. Up against one wall stretches the bar itself with several red leather barstools stationed in front of it and an impressive selection, behind the counter. Most of the rest of the room, however, is occupied by a few tables and booths, for people to dine at. Definitely not any kind of white-collar establishment, but the company it keeps is good.
--
Leah sits in a booth along one of Harry's walls, dressed in sweater and jeans and studying a menu with pinched, distracted eyes. Friday night in the place is busier than the rest of the week, but the swirl of noise and odor and traffic hardly touches her attention, let alone draws it from her reading, which has her enthralled as if by dark enchantment.
Scott walks in with measure and caution, dressed in slacks, polo, pull over, glasses. There is a slight scanning tilt of his head until he notes Leah, and changes his pause into a directional pace (measured, measured). "Mind if I sit down?" once in range.
A startled jerk drops the menu from Leah's tight hands, and she scrambles to recover it even as she bites her lip and twists her head to blink up at him. Then smile, belatedly and thinly. "Uh, 'course not. Hi, Scott. Good to see you again." She stops there, sits up and back a little against the booth's seat back.
"Sorry," is said with regret as menu is dropped, but Scott believes in follow-up. He sits down. Across from her, of course. "Good to see you as well, Leah. What's up?"
Leah shakes her head quickly. "I'm a klutz," she assures him wryly, "and ... end of the week. Busy week. You know how it is." The menu goes back on the table, in a nicer, controlled way, and she folds her hands behind it, blinking wanly at him above. "Nothing's up. Just thought, 'Hey, haven't seen Scott in a while. Wonder if he's still bugging Rossi and Lazzaro, or what.' So ... hi."
"I'm not. Which I'm sure disappoints them." Scott picks up his corresponding menu and examines the front. "Had a lot of interesting stories, then? Sorry again for startling you."
"I'm sure," Leah murmurs. "--Stories. Um. I /am/ working on a new one, but ... but nothing new, really." She shifts seated posture, hunches shoulders. Goes for light and breezy: "Friends of Humanity. Fun, huh?"
Scott's eyebrows do a jump -- and his shoulders immediately come forward. He looms over the table, but less as a threat and more as a startled and protectively brooding bird. "What?"
Leah jerks back in response, eyes wide. "The Friends. I--I'm doing a story. About them. On them." She captures her choppy defensiveness in an irritated alto lasso and tightens. "It's just a story, Scott. About the message they're getting out with that pirate-radio thing."
With effort, Scott moves himself straight-backed, politely removed, but his forehead remains clenched. "Are you telling me because you were worried I'd crack a paper and see it?" he asks, cautious, "Or because you wanted to give me a head's up? Will this piece be dangerous for you, Leah?"
"I'm telling you--" and Leah might be a bit clenched, too "--because you asked if I had any new stories. So, there you go. That's my new story." She rakes her hot, pale stare over the rest of the bar. "Where's the waiter? Man, the staff sucks tonight."
"Right. However, it's a fairly loaded story. Sorry for my reaction," Scott states more than apologizes.
After a minute, two things happen: a harried waiter, some college kid stuck in the 'burbs, arrives for their order; and Leah backs down. Well, the latter might happen first, because she mutters, "Yeah, I know. It's not a big deal; don't worry about it." And /then/ there is a kid for her to tell, "House burger, the works, and onion rings instead of fries."
"Just onion rings for me." It sounds dangerously decadent, but most solemnly so. And Scott's attention returns to Leah. "Isn't it?" he asks, blandly.
When they're alone again, Leah slumps against the seat back and stares at her hands on the table. "I just want to write a fair story," she says, voice tight again, near to trembling. "I'm a reporter, aren't I? Don't I have /some/ kind of obligation to objectivity? To the truth?"
"Have you discovered anything indicating they're not a violent terrorist group that commits murders on tape?" Scott asks, remaining that utter bland. "Everyone deserves a fair trial, of course."
"Even terrorists," Leah agrees in her tightness. "Even dangerous mutants."
"Of course. Of course, it looks to /me/," that rare emphasis, "that they're slaughtering those mutants with the misfortune not to look human, to try to tie in on old . . . hysterias, but I'm willing to grant they're hysterical themselves."
Leah swallows. "It pays the bills. Okay? I'm sorry I don't have better options right now. Kinda too old, and poor, to go back to school; don't want to wait tables..." She brushes her hands sharply off the one between them, down into her lap, and she stares out over the room again. Looks weary, and still pale and pinched. "We're all kinda hysterical, in the right circumstance," she says quietly. "Don't know if you've noticed that or not."
"There's nothing wrong with doing a piece on the FoH," Scott back-tracks, almost, his forehead half relaxing. "But hysteria, although natural, rarely excuses murder. Lynching, dragging . . ."
Leah flinches and looks back at him, somewhere between angry and haunted. "You think I don't /know/ that?"
"Of course you do," Scott soothes, in as far as his voice is capable when he is being all uncomfortable, "I'll just be curious to see how the, ah, article comes out."
Leah backs down further, and then there is food to distract, arriving hot and delicious without commentary from the waiter (no dummy, he, to strained vibes). Desultorily she picks at an onion ring. "So will I," she replies, cryptic and quick. "Guess we'll see. It's a living, huh? A terrible one. Can we -- can we change the subject, please? I'm sorry," and she puts a hand over her eyes for a moment.
"All right. What would you like to talk about?" Scott shifts, and his fingers pull an onion ring apart with distraction, even as his forehead goes smooth enough.
"How're you?" Leah's smile slants awkward. "God, I'm trite. But you know."
"Tense, but well enough. I'm always tense." Scott meets awkward smile with slight one. "Nate's doing well, the school's quiet."
Leah nods and puts her burger into good enough order for a lift to her mouth and a bite. "Glad to hear it. Reminds me, I should give Alyssa Carter a call, see how she's doing--" Breaking off, she blinks at him, and her mouth goes flat again. "If that'd be all right. I don't want to get her in trouble."
"You won't get her in trouble. She does, I believe, receives phone calls," is said with just a hint of unnecessary irony. But Scott softens it. "I'm sure she'd be glad to hear from you."
"Maybe I won't tell her about the Friends thing." Another uncomfortable smile. Another bite of burger. Leah finds refuge in simple acts, finds stabler ground for conversation. "Glad about the school. And Nate. And, yeah, tense. We're all tense these days, I think. Too much going on."
"Probably wouldn't be wise. She's a bit wound up." Scott's fingers having quite dissected the onion ring, Scott removes them and glances down into his mess. Well. Edible. He takes a small bit, chews on it. "It's a tense world right now, yes. May be for a while."
Leah bites again. Chews, swallows. Ventures, "You haven't gone drinking again, have you?"
"No," Scott says, solidly, definitely. "I've," lip twitch, "recovered."
Leah studies him solemnly. "All better now?"
"As well as I am liable to get in this life and a tense world."
"Lucky you," says Leah and has a quick drink from her water, eyes squinched shut. There. Collected again. "Well, that's good. Glad to hear it. Your being better, I mean. Can't surrender your control to a night of drinking, right?"
"Not too often," and the caution returns. "Can you?"
Leah grimaces. "No. But I tend to do my drinking at home, so it doesn't matter, huh? No one there but me to deal with the mess."
"It's unfortunate to live at a school. Difficult to do that," Scott notes tragically.
Reluctant sympathy moves Leah into a smile and an easier slouch at the table. "How /did/ you end up a teacher, anyway? Did I ever ask that?"
"No one else wanted to teach shop. I'm a graduate," Scott says, less tragic, quick intensifying of smile. "Private schools tend to be a bit incestuous."
Leah murmurs, "Oh, the jokes I could make with that opening..."
Scott spreads a hand. "Want to?"
Leah looks startled, then a little sad. "No. No, probably not. Not when I don't even know why you--shit. Why you spend time with me. Can't afford to piss you off."
"I like you," Scott says simply, and eats another onion scrap. "Not likely to change."
"Really?" Leah presses palms to the tabletop as if for anchoring. "Well. Thanks, I guess. After all we've been through ... anyway. I'm not very good with jokes, so let's forget that." She makes a rude noise. "I'm all promise, no delivery."
"That's all right. I won't hold you to it." Scott tries another accentuated smile. "And, yes, I do like you."
Leah says softly, "Thank you," and goes for an onion ring. Hers. Not his. No poaching. She focuses very intently on eating it in short, neat nibbles.
"You're welcome," Scott's voice is quiet. Another small section of his. Watching, brows slightly furrowed.
Unfortunately, an onion ring, no matter how large and crunchy-good, cannot last forever, and so Leah must speak anew, once it's gone and she's napkinned away stray crumbs. "What else?" she asks, rather rhetorically because she's already supplying the 'else.' "News, politics, the weather, the playoffs -- do you follow sports at all?"
"I'm fairly reclusive. I do follow . . . badmitton. Tennis." Scott mimes (with some embarrassment) a racket.
Leah blinks slowly. Then grins. "Do that again."
Scott suspends himself with his hand still partly in the air. "What?"
Leah waves /her/ hand peremptorily. "The swing thing!"
"Oh." Scott repeats the racket. "This?" he asks, incredulously.
Leah nods. "It's cute," she declares.
"Oh." Scott repeats it one more time. "Will cute win me friends and influence people?"
Leah bites down on a new onion ring, smiling. "Seems to work for a lot of folks in the world. You could get a cult going."
"Based on rackets?" Scott tries it out a thi-- no, enough. He drops his hand. "Literal rackets, that is . . . not whatever those other rackets are. Criminal rackets?"
"Criminal rackets," Leah agrees. "But nah, a cult based on cute. --Don't mind me. I'm weird tonight. Wired. Something -- I don't know."
"That's all right. Don't we ... ah, yes, that Pokemon. I remember Pokemon." Scott's expression hardens.
Leah makes round eyes. "Did Pokemon do something to you? I'm sorry if I'm opening old wounds--"
"One of the girls had a Charizard doll. That spoke its name every time someone stepped a little too hard. Activated by /vibrations/." Emphasis for loathing.
Leah winces. "Did you kill it? Did you kill it /dead/?"
"No. I hired an assassin." Scott sighs.
Leah turns over this nugget of information carefully before speaking to it. "Don't suppose you still have his number?" Her smile's a little too tight.
Scott notes. Scott is puzzled -- but he allows concern to be just an undertone. "Afraid not. They keep their movements secret."
"Like ninjas," Leah supposes a little regretfully. Time for another burger-bite retreat.
"Know someone that needs offing?" Scott asks, with a light harrumph.
Bite. A grim one. "Several."
"I could help?"
"Could you?" Leah puts the burger down and grants him the weight of smoked brown eyes. "You don't strike me as an assassin, Scott."
"Well. I tend to avoid actually /killing/ people," Scott admits, and sticks his hand in the onion rings.
Leah murmurs, "Pity," but then shakes her head. "No. That's wrong. Killing's wrong. What /could/ you do?"
"Knock someone out," Scott puts in with confidence.
Leah mimes a fist's blow bashing some poor schmuck's head, with a hopeful expression.
Scott nods. "One of many possible methods."
Leah's gaze flicks sideways, into the bar's crowd. "That'd be great. I know a guy -- no, never mind," and she tents herself bitterly over an onion ring caught in both hands like a fly in mantis's claws. Gnaw, gnaw, gnaw!
"Never mind?" Scott prompts, proompts.
A succession of emotions slaps through Leah's face like the shuffling of greasy, grimy playing cards. "We all know people we'd like to knock out. Ha. I'm making a joke again."
"Really?" Scott is incorrigible, but serious.
"Sure," Leah breezes on a grin. "I'm joking. This is me joking. Do you like it?"
A beat, a pause, and Scott attempts a grin of his own. "Sure."
"Because you like me," Leah prompts, prooompts.
"That's always part of it," Scott accedes readily.
Leah continues, "And you like jokes. Right?"
"Certainly, although I apparently have odd tastes."
Smiling, she reminds him, "You do like me. Odd, right there. We're odd ducks. The pair of us."
"Why is that odd?" Scott tilts his head, very slightly.
The easiness falters. "Because I'm a professional bigot?"
"Are you, now?" Neutrality, safety, merely requesting clarification of information.
Leah thins her lips. "So people like to say about me. I'm a conservative who writes conservatively about mutant affairs. Not that popular in this town sometimes."
"Hardly the same as a professional bigot. Unless /you/ think so." Again with the unusual emphasis, quiet expression.
Leah eats the last crescent of her gnawed onion ring. "...Means I'd get paid to write bigoted things," she says, attempting fine, clinical remove. "Who'd ever do that to a reporter?"
Behind the glasses, Scott's eyes focus intense. "Is someone doing that to you?"
"No."
"So you're not a professional bigot, right?"
"Right."
Scott leans back. "Well, then. Just a conservative."
"Are you?" Leah asks without looking up from her burger.
"On most issues."
Leah nods. "No one's a hundred-percent anything. I've voted liberal before, myself. Depends ... depends." With a sigh, she rests her hand against a propped fist. "Shades of grey -- they make me nervous sometimes."
"It would be easier if they didn't exist. However," Scott says slowly, and folds his hands in his lap.
"World's not an easy place. Not supposed to be, either," Leah adds. "My parish priest always said that, growing up. Life's tough, but that's what makes it worth the trouble."
"I suppose it would be very boring if it were easy. Could do it in our sleep." Scott eyes the onions darkly.
Leah has abandoned her food to indifference and entropy. "Sleep's good. I should probably get some -- sorry, Scott. It's been a rough week, I guess."
"I'm getting that impression." Smile damps down to partial. "Go get some rest."
Leah smiles back and slides out of the booth. A twenty goes on the table (bit crumpled, but good honest money all the same!), and then her hand does, as she leans over to kiss his cheek. "Thanks," she says. "Just ... thanks."
Scott tilts his head, and behind the glasses, the eyes slide to mark the motion. "You're welcome, Leah. Any time."
"We'll see," she says again, sadly, and then she walks away.
[Log ends.]