Dinner to go
Don't know if I can ever go back to that place. Rossi'll be disappointed. He does love their garlic bread. Strong enough to kill a vampire two blocks away.
Shit. Shit, woman, what's gotten into you? Seeing Percy's a surprise, seeing Bahir's a surprise- Yeah. Yeah, there we go. Percy palling around with the asshole brother of the guy you used, or who used you, in that damn alley. I'm justified, especially when he starts pulling the "slut" attitude again. Man needs to grow up and enter the twenty-first damn century.
Dinner with Rossi. Bed with Rossi. Forget Percy, forget the al-Razi twins, just forget it all. Another interview in the morning, anyway. Onward and upward, Leah Canto. Your public needs you.
1/26/2006
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mirth breathes to richen warm words in Arabic, "-- and it's not like we even manufactured the radios in the first place, hang the merchant, why don't you?" Tucked into a booth with posture a languid half-sprawl, casual in theater-geek garb, battered backpack slung to the floor beside his feet beneath the table: Percy hardly looks the part of airplane salesman as his fork winds wide, fat fettucine round its tines.
Pushing angel hair pasta around the edge of his plate, Bahir eyes Percy with mild disbelief. "Uh huh." His coat is folded over his bag, the strap of which snakes out over the edge of the seat and onto the floor. Long sleeves pushed back from bared wrists, he stretches to pull bread from the basket between them and break it over his pasta. "And you had no notion the use to which those radios were going, of course."
The bell over the door jangles brittle brass announcement of Leah's cold-swept entrance: she puffs on her fingers and then rubs them over the slacks of her chocolate suit with brisk, warming strokes. She doesn't spare a glance around the place, just heads to the takeout counter and leans over with a friendly, "Order for Canto? Yeah, with the extra garlic this time, thanks. Okay, I'll wait."
"Well -- you know, /generally/. I mean I'm familiar with what radios are generally--" Percy's nattered Arabic dies in his throat with a blink of surprise and a flash of memory as sharp recognition distracts him (sight: bronze hair against cream pillow, scent: woman and need and sex, sound: bitten back, bitten down, escaping /anyway/) when Leah's voice draws his casual glance toward the counter. He coughs and clears his throat. "Uhm," he slides a look back at Bahir, sheepish, and concludes: "Fuck."
A mild, noncommittal hum dying aborning, humor fades from Bahir's expression; eyes narrow and lips thin, chill all but frosting the glasses. Sparing the glance Leah fails to offer, Bahir skims a sharp look toward the door, toward /her/ -- a look that sticks. He follows her progress across the restaurant with a sudden flare of irritation and takes a vicious bite out of the crust of the bread. "Friend of yours? She fucked Adel in an alley. I will have to give you some sort of acknowledgement for at least taking her inside."
Leah hunkers down on her elbows and stares with contented, bovine blankness into the kitchen while she waits for her order to get up -- well, until the boy behind the cash register gives her one too many dirty looks. She chips off a smile from her chilling expression and turns on her elbow to stare around the dining room instead. Tables. Diners. Dark heads -- two dark heads. Her eyes narrow to a surprised frown.
"Picked her up in a bar. Or she picked me up. Or something like that." Percy's brows pull down as his memory sorts through conversational details that are heavy on the comparison of sexual escapades and on Gilbert & Sullivan, but loose on anything heavier. "I think she might've told me about that," he adds thoughtfully. Still Arabic. He fiddles with his noodles, somehow disinclined to eat them, as he slants another glance along to Leah, brows lifting.
Bahir pares a thin smile off for Leah: a baring of teeth. "Something like that."
Leah's brows go down at Percy's going up, and as for Bahir . . . She bares her teeth right back, a bitch-queen's smile, and she pushes off from the counter and glides toward them. "Hi. Gosh. I'm not interrupting a date, am I?"
Percy lowers dark lashes over the gleam of sudden amusement in his eyes, demurely coiling noodles around his fork. "Hi, Leah." He says the name easily, two fingers of his left hand lifted in idle salute. "I'm certain we shall survive," he adds, English and crisp Oxonian, before dipping his head slightly to slide the bite into his mouth. Chew swiftly; swallow.
"You're just interrupting," Bahir says, transition back into English clumsy, accent heavy over his words -- but not quite as heavy as biting irritation. He makes no play at a smile.
"Like the rude slut I am," Leah tells Bahir, reaching for mocking sorrow (her pheromones prickling irritation, battle-eagerness) and ending up with stiff frostiness (her mind bubbling with memories of their last encounter, the street, the wind, his scarf, his words, his hateful stupid ignorant raghead words). "Well, I'll just say hi to Percy and leave you two lovebirds alone, shall I?"
"Hi," Percy says sunnily in English. Rude, slut, muses Percy's brain, amused as it identifies Bahir as one, himself as the other. He lifts his ice-water for a sip and murmurs over the rim of the glass, in mild-voiced Arabic, "Somehow I don't think she likes you."
Eyes narrow over a slanted smile, Bahir matches her chill with cold cheer. "Exactly." Lacing his fingers, he rests joined hands on the table's edge, barely sparing a glance for Percy. He answers in English, "It's mutual," before falling to Arabic, "You really /can/ get that anywhere, can't you?"
<< Not even going to speak English, probably talking about me, oh, like I'm the stupid one here, boys? I think not, I think not! >> Leah hangs onto her smile like a bulldog with a bloody bone. "That sounds lovely. Percy, I had no idea your tongue was talented that way, too." Brief spike of passion's chemicals; longer, more languid slide of tangy, juicy sensations (bed, scarves, sheets, tongues, oh, tongues and flesh and sweat and sliding slipping sweating loving laughing now now now).
Percy cants a lazy grin up at Leah. "Oh, didn't I say?" he asks lightly. He lets fingers splay over his chest, manicured digits over worn black fabric, partially obscuring blocky text (STAG MANER?). "Linguist. -- There's actually a joke about that," he adds, helpfully. He reaches for another piece of bread. Dry as sere and slipped back into Arabic, he says to Bahir, "I surely can. I could try and feel shame, if you like."
Teeth set and Bahir's jaw clenches, working to swallow. English breaks again, forced brittle: "How about your feet? Are they talented?" For demonstration, fingers walk a line away from his water glass and then turn up in rude salute. He ignores Percy.
Leah's mind helpfully produces a wholly three-dimensional, full-sensory impression of Percy's naked foot. Then naked back (the lick of tongue along clean-lined muscles, the heat and tensile strength). Then-- "Cunning linguist," she answers smartly, completing the joke and ignoring Bahir. "You know, you probably did. I just forgot, in all the craziness that night." Lusty not-scents warmer, and her thoughts drift from remembering the way Mr. Talhurst the younger had caught his breath at the little-death height of orgasm to vague plans with Rossi, Christopher Rossi, her detective, her lover, her love.
"It was a good night," Percy agrees, slightly subdued and apparently deeply fascinated with the coil of fettucine around his fork. His libido, well in hand; no chemical answer for Leah's boistrous sexuality. His mind muses malcontentedly, and not all that loudly, upon puns.
Exhaling carefully, Bahir lashes self-control over a rising pheromonal tide, anger and arousal strangled in equal measure. Fingers tight on his fork, he stabs the pasta aside.
Light Leah fingertips brush Percy's shoulder. "Well, it's a good memory," she allows. "I've gotten all shacked up, anyway. No more catting around. --Aren't you just so thrilled, Bahir? Your slut has settled down. Do remember me to your brother. Your /darling/ brother." Her vocal hiss slithers into, through, with, after telepathic seething: using/being used, alley/church, wafer in mouth/Adel in mouth, guilt and sin and skyrocketing pleasure and hellfire, burning unto the end of time.
"No more, huh?" Percy's eyes gleam sardonic as he slants his glance first up at Leah, and then back to Bahir again. Then he tucks into more pasta, chemicals' influence seeping to quiet the sex drives in the vicinity. Chew, swallow, speak again: "Congratulations."
"I will. I may have to remind him," Bahir says, eyes fixed on Leah's lips. "I'm afraid he's quite forgotten you."
Hurt. Anger. Leah's lust pheromones have faded away, but hello, hot fresh battle-fire! It struggles against Percy's calming blanket, spitting and hissing like a cat allover wet, like her mind's crackling thoughts: << Who's the slut, then, who's the slut, he's the slut, he's the slut, and you're probably no better, twins together, no better, bet you two get it on all the damn time, and you're jealous, jealous, pretty-boy petty-boy jealous! >> Now it's Bahir she focuses on, and the other man ignored. "You son of a bitch." Quiet and calm and clear. "You want to say what's really on my mind, or you like hiding behind the fake-accent and passive-aggressive shit?"
Percy jerks a little straighter, away from the back of his seat. "Hey," useless conciliation, an undercurrent of swear-words in a variety of languages, "watch it, what the hell?"
<< Shut up, >> Bahir says, words dropped bright and sharp into Percy's mind; he doesn't spare him a glance. He leans toward Leah, dark eyes widening in surprise. "I'm sorry? It was just a fuck, in an alley. And a blowjob, I guess," he corrects clinically. "And you expect you're particularly memorable?"
HurthurthurtANGER. "I expect," Leah spits, "to be treated like a human fucking being. How about that, Bahir al-Razi?" Spiteful imagery twines through her foremind, vengeful fantasy of twinned bodies twined (so there!) and Percy gliding over and around them, naked and gleeful, a dolphin in menage-a-trois play (so THERE!), and oh, her chemicals swirl just like him, imagined him, into familiar, happy fire. "I don't like the way you're judging me. I really don't. Where do you get off?" << With /who/ do you get off? >> her mind sniggers (AdelPercyPercyAdel). "How did I piss you off so damn much that you're gonna pull this attitude on me?"
Percy falls silent, all obedience as he leans his elbow against the table's edge, two fingers laid softly over his lips. Nerves' jangle is muted; it's all muted, the worried winding thoughts not really forming into a reaction more concrete than << well ... this is awkward. >>
"Treated like a human fucking being." Words echoed back, Bahir laughs: short, sharp -- /bitter/. "I'm sorry. I just don't like you. Does that terribly disappoint you? You're welcome to -leave-."
Leah looks at him. Looks at Percy. Looks at him again. "Yes," she says, dampened and done. "I apologize, gentlemen. Do enjoy your dinner. Excuse me." << Jerk hate hate jerk, well, way to go, girl, way to fucking go. >> She nods to them, turns, and walks back to the counter.
Percy follows her with a silent glance. << Human being. >> The thought twines pity and stirred-up aggravation before it eases back into calm again even as Percy eases back against the back of his seat, gaze drawn back to Bahir. Appetite is more or less dead. In Arabic, he murmurs, "That was unpleasant."
Bahir sits back, watching Leah cross to the counter. He pushes his plate; he pushes his drink. He lifts his hand and flags for the check.
The order's ready, but -- "/Yes/, more garlic bread, dammit, that's what I said! Get it. Now." The boy does. Leah pays. The takeout bag goes under her arm. Leah goes outside, and the bell rings her cheerily away.
[Log ends.]
Shit. Shit, woman, what's gotten into you? Seeing Percy's a surprise, seeing Bahir's a surprise- Yeah. Yeah, there we go. Percy palling around with the asshole brother of the guy you used, or who used you, in that damn alley. I'm justified, especially when he starts pulling the "slut" attitude again. Man needs to grow up and enter the twenty-first damn century.
Dinner with Rossi. Bed with Rossi. Forget Percy, forget the al-Razi twins, just forget it all. Another interview in the morning, anyway. Onward and upward, Leah Canto. Your public needs you.
1/26/2006
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mirth breathes to richen warm words in Arabic, "-- and it's not like we even manufactured the radios in the first place, hang the merchant, why don't you?" Tucked into a booth with posture a languid half-sprawl, casual in theater-geek garb, battered backpack slung to the floor beside his feet beneath the table: Percy hardly looks the part of airplane salesman as his fork winds wide, fat fettucine round its tines.
Pushing angel hair pasta around the edge of his plate, Bahir eyes Percy with mild disbelief. "Uh huh." His coat is folded over his bag, the strap of which snakes out over the edge of the seat and onto the floor. Long sleeves pushed back from bared wrists, he stretches to pull bread from the basket between them and break it over his pasta. "And you had no notion the use to which those radios were going, of course."
The bell over the door jangles brittle brass announcement of Leah's cold-swept entrance: she puffs on her fingers and then rubs them over the slacks of her chocolate suit with brisk, warming strokes. She doesn't spare a glance around the place, just heads to the takeout counter and leans over with a friendly, "Order for Canto? Yeah, with the extra garlic this time, thanks. Okay, I'll wait."
"Well -- you know, /generally/. I mean I'm familiar with what radios are generally--" Percy's nattered Arabic dies in his throat with a blink of surprise and a flash of memory as sharp recognition distracts him (sight: bronze hair against cream pillow, scent: woman and need and sex, sound: bitten back, bitten down, escaping /anyway/) when Leah's voice draws his casual glance toward the counter. He coughs and clears his throat. "Uhm," he slides a look back at Bahir, sheepish, and concludes: "Fuck."
A mild, noncommittal hum dying aborning, humor fades from Bahir's expression; eyes narrow and lips thin, chill all but frosting the glasses. Sparing the glance Leah fails to offer, Bahir skims a sharp look toward the door, toward /her/ -- a look that sticks. He follows her progress across the restaurant with a sudden flare of irritation and takes a vicious bite out of the crust of the bread. "Friend of yours? She fucked Adel in an alley. I will have to give you some sort of acknowledgement for at least taking her inside."
Leah hunkers down on her elbows and stares with contented, bovine blankness into the kitchen while she waits for her order to get up -- well, until the boy behind the cash register gives her one too many dirty looks. She chips off a smile from her chilling expression and turns on her elbow to stare around the dining room instead. Tables. Diners. Dark heads -- two dark heads. Her eyes narrow to a surprised frown.
"Picked her up in a bar. Or she picked me up. Or something like that." Percy's brows pull down as his memory sorts through conversational details that are heavy on the comparison of sexual escapades and on Gilbert & Sullivan, but loose on anything heavier. "I think she might've told me about that," he adds thoughtfully. Still Arabic. He fiddles with his noodles, somehow disinclined to eat them, as he slants another glance along to Leah, brows lifting.
Bahir pares a thin smile off for Leah: a baring of teeth. "Something like that."
Leah's brows go down at Percy's going up, and as for Bahir . . . She bares her teeth right back, a bitch-queen's smile, and she pushes off from the counter and glides toward them. "Hi. Gosh. I'm not interrupting a date, am I?"
Percy lowers dark lashes over the gleam of sudden amusement in his eyes, demurely coiling noodles around his fork. "Hi, Leah." He says the name easily, two fingers of his left hand lifted in idle salute. "I'm certain we shall survive," he adds, English and crisp Oxonian, before dipping his head slightly to slide the bite into his mouth. Chew swiftly; swallow.
"You're just interrupting," Bahir says, transition back into English clumsy, accent heavy over his words -- but not quite as heavy as biting irritation. He makes no play at a smile.
"Like the rude slut I am," Leah tells Bahir, reaching for mocking sorrow (her pheromones prickling irritation, battle-eagerness) and ending up with stiff frostiness (her mind bubbling with memories of their last encounter, the street, the wind, his scarf, his words, his hateful stupid ignorant raghead words). "Well, I'll just say hi to Percy and leave you two lovebirds alone, shall I?"
"Hi," Percy says sunnily in English. Rude, slut, muses Percy's brain, amused as it identifies Bahir as one, himself as the other. He lifts his ice-water for a sip and murmurs over the rim of the glass, in mild-voiced Arabic, "Somehow I don't think she likes you."
Eyes narrow over a slanted smile, Bahir matches her chill with cold cheer. "Exactly." Lacing his fingers, he rests joined hands on the table's edge, barely sparing a glance for Percy. He answers in English, "It's mutual," before falling to Arabic, "You really /can/ get that anywhere, can't you?"
<< Not even going to speak English, probably talking about me, oh, like I'm the stupid one here, boys? I think not, I think not! >> Leah hangs onto her smile like a bulldog with a bloody bone. "That sounds lovely. Percy, I had no idea your tongue was talented that way, too." Brief spike of passion's chemicals; longer, more languid slide of tangy, juicy sensations (bed, scarves, sheets, tongues, oh, tongues and flesh and sweat and sliding slipping sweating loving laughing now now now).
Percy cants a lazy grin up at Leah. "Oh, didn't I say?" he asks lightly. He lets fingers splay over his chest, manicured digits over worn black fabric, partially obscuring blocky text (STAG MANER?). "Linguist. -- There's actually a joke about that," he adds, helpfully. He reaches for another piece of bread. Dry as sere and slipped back into Arabic, he says to Bahir, "I surely can. I could try and feel shame, if you like."
Teeth set and Bahir's jaw clenches, working to swallow. English breaks again, forced brittle: "How about your feet? Are they talented?" For demonstration, fingers walk a line away from his water glass and then turn up in rude salute. He ignores Percy.
Leah's mind helpfully produces a wholly three-dimensional, full-sensory impression of Percy's naked foot. Then naked back (the lick of tongue along clean-lined muscles, the heat and tensile strength). Then-- "Cunning linguist," she answers smartly, completing the joke and ignoring Bahir. "You know, you probably did. I just forgot, in all the craziness that night." Lusty not-scents warmer, and her thoughts drift from remembering the way Mr. Talhurst the younger had caught his breath at the little-death height of orgasm to vague plans with Rossi, Christopher Rossi, her detective, her lover, her love.
"It was a good night," Percy agrees, slightly subdued and apparently deeply fascinated with the coil of fettucine around his fork. His libido, well in hand; no chemical answer for Leah's boistrous sexuality. His mind muses malcontentedly, and not all that loudly, upon puns.
Exhaling carefully, Bahir lashes self-control over a rising pheromonal tide, anger and arousal strangled in equal measure. Fingers tight on his fork, he stabs the pasta aside.
Light Leah fingertips brush Percy's shoulder. "Well, it's a good memory," she allows. "I've gotten all shacked up, anyway. No more catting around. --Aren't you just so thrilled, Bahir? Your slut has settled down. Do remember me to your brother. Your /darling/ brother." Her vocal hiss slithers into, through, with, after telepathic seething: using/being used, alley/church, wafer in mouth/Adel in mouth, guilt and sin and skyrocketing pleasure and hellfire, burning unto the end of time.
"No more, huh?" Percy's eyes gleam sardonic as he slants his glance first up at Leah, and then back to Bahir again. Then he tucks into more pasta, chemicals' influence seeping to quiet the sex drives in the vicinity. Chew, swallow, speak again: "Congratulations."
"I will. I may have to remind him," Bahir says, eyes fixed on Leah's lips. "I'm afraid he's quite forgotten you."
Hurt. Anger. Leah's lust pheromones have faded away, but hello, hot fresh battle-fire! It struggles against Percy's calming blanket, spitting and hissing like a cat allover wet, like her mind's crackling thoughts: << Who's the slut, then, who's the slut, he's the slut, he's the slut, and you're probably no better, twins together, no better, bet you two get it on all the damn time, and you're jealous, jealous, pretty-boy petty-boy jealous! >> Now it's Bahir she focuses on, and the other man ignored. "You son of a bitch." Quiet and calm and clear. "You want to say what's really on my mind, or you like hiding behind the fake-accent and passive-aggressive shit?"
Percy jerks a little straighter, away from the back of his seat. "Hey," useless conciliation, an undercurrent of swear-words in a variety of languages, "watch it, what the hell?"
<< Shut up, >> Bahir says, words dropped bright and sharp into Percy's mind; he doesn't spare him a glance. He leans toward Leah, dark eyes widening in surprise. "I'm sorry? It was just a fuck, in an alley. And a blowjob, I guess," he corrects clinically. "And you expect you're particularly memorable?"
HurthurthurtANGER. "I expect," Leah spits, "to be treated like a human fucking being. How about that, Bahir al-Razi?" Spiteful imagery twines through her foremind, vengeful fantasy of twinned bodies twined (so there!) and Percy gliding over and around them, naked and gleeful, a dolphin in menage-a-trois play (so THERE!), and oh, her chemicals swirl just like him, imagined him, into familiar, happy fire. "I don't like the way you're judging me. I really don't. Where do you get off?" << With /who/ do you get off? >> her mind sniggers (AdelPercyPercyAdel). "How did I piss you off so damn much that you're gonna pull this attitude on me?"
Percy falls silent, all obedience as he leans his elbow against the table's edge, two fingers laid softly over his lips. Nerves' jangle is muted; it's all muted, the worried winding thoughts not really forming into a reaction more concrete than << well ... this is awkward. >>
"Treated like a human fucking being." Words echoed back, Bahir laughs: short, sharp -- /bitter/. "I'm sorry. I just don't like you. Does that terribly disappoint you? You're welcome to -leave-."
Leah looks at him. Looks at Percy. Looks at him again. "Yes," she says, dampened and done. "I apologize, gentlemen. Do enjoy your dinner. Excuse me." << Jerk hate hate jerk, well, way to go, girl, way to fucking go. >> She nods to them, turns, and walks back to the counter.
Percy follows her with a silent glance. << Human being. >> The thought twines pity and stirred-up aggravation before it eases back into calm again even as Percy eases back against the back of his seat, gaze drawn back to Bahir. Appetite is more or less dead. In Arabic, he murmurs, "That was unpleasant."
Bahir sits back, watching Leah cross to the counter. He pushes his plate; he pushes his drink. He lifts his hand and flags for the check.
The order's ready, but -- "/Yes/, more garlic bread, dammit, that's what I said! Get it. Now." The boy does. Leah pays. The takeout bag goes under her arm. Leah goes outside, and the bell rings her cheerily away.
[Log ends.]