Lunch break
Assholes in the squadroom-
No, never mind them. Mind him. He's right; it'll pass. ("This too shall pass," as Aunt Ginnie always says, and damned if she's not right.) In the meantime, screw them and the horses they rode in on. I've got bigger worries: this interview (what do you mean, you can't do it until Monday? What the hell, CNN?), the phone calls my sister keeps making without leaving any messages ("what the hell" to you, too, Hannah), Nathan gone all quiet and weird on me (did Tom get to him? Find out?), my boyfriend not afraid to mix it up with the Master of Magnetism just because he can and he's immortal, of course. . . .
I'll kick his ass if he does it again. Then I'll kick Lensherr's ass. So mote it be.
2/1/2006
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
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New York Police Department - Lobby
Great brass double doors lead into the precinct lobby, a crowded hall that teems with life under the dictatorship of the officer on duty. Long benches line the walls, ports of rest for the patient and the weary. To either side of the reception desk, hallways painted in peeling puke-green stretch back into the building proper, routing past labeled and busy offices: squad rooms, interrogation rooms, holding pens and file rooms. Ordered chaos is the name of the game; traffic and noise roil through the crowded passages, lit by electric fluorescence and dust-rich light.
--
The lobby door gives way before the hearty push of one Leah Canto, who flaps her brown overcoat back from her hunter-green pantsuit once she's inside, like a pigeon settling ruffled feathers. She even shakes herself and glances back irritably at something outside in the cool, overcast day. But then -- onward. She swaggers up to the desk and leans on it with familiarity. "Hi, Sergeant. How goes? I'm here to pick up a delivery."
The sergeant, dispensing of a cuffed hooker and her pimp with irritated resignation, ("Goddammit, Jacko, I see Atlanta sporting one more black eye--") plows an elbow into the desk and leans over it, red-rimmed eye bulbous and solemn in like companionship. "Tall?" he quips, over the rancor of the queue. "Dark? Good-looking? I'm all yours, kid."
Leah grins through the din around them, eyelashes fluttering spiky short. "You know I could never handle you all by myself. I need to work up to your magnificence. Can I just have a Detective Rossi to go? Hold the special sauce."
"My heart's breaking," Johnson retorts, regret paddling its paws through the Bronx-spiced backwash of his sigh. He sinks back, a mountain for Mohammed (peace be upon him!) and waves a callused hand: pen and pencil, rather than trigger and butt. "Go on back. He's in MA today on that whole Magneto business. --/Next/! Jesus /Christ/, Dubya. You again? Who'd you kill /this/ time?"
Leah's expression dims somewhat as she backs through the crowd and reorients on the frosted-glass door into the depths of the stationhouse. Through the portal (abandon all hope, ye who--), she paces out the industrial-green walls to Mutant Affairs' territory, absently nodding to the clerks and uniforms she passes (and a passing murmur of "Italian heat" from one--). Her attache case goes brown and sturdy in front of her, and she poises on the threshold, peering.
Chris Rossi is, for a change, the quiet eye in a storm, a hub around which argument skirls and thunders. Bodies rage in busywork around him, fielding the rattle of phones and impatient interviews. The Homicide detective himself, leaned long-limbed and quiescent on a chair, rocks back on a desk-pinned foot to obstruct the flow of traffic and fellow cops. "--maybe the condom," he lazes out, and drops his head back to regard the ceiling with distant interest. "Follow that lead. Hell, even mutant dicks need protection."
"His more than most," is Leah's approaching (warning) drawl on her navigation through the hurricane. Alto lofts easily over the noise: reporter's prerogative, Brooklyn's birthright. She is all focused on him, though, to inform solemnly, "You just know the terrorist leader of outlaw mutants is getting him a whole /mess/ of honeys. Maybe a literal mess. I heard about this one girl in Kansas, born with a mutation that would make you--"
The grin Chris fields up is a sleepy thing, deceptively so; the glitter of eyes behind the black lashes is more intent than the mask suggests. An arm stretches to reel her in, claiming an arm to drag her down, down, into the pale blue of his shirt's collar and the greeting of a kiss. Around the room, detectives glance askance. "Some things even cops don't need to know," he advises on the breath-caught end of it. "Is it lunchtime already? Shit."
Leah puts her hands on his shoulders to take her weight, and she gives the kiss back. With earned interest. "Yeah, it is. I'm hungry as hell." She tugs at his tie on her straightening up. "For food, anyway. And the pleasure of your company, if you would be so kind, Sir Christopher?"
Red and blue plaid hisses through her fingers, pulling Chris up on its end. Cops mutter, backhanded gossips that they are: isn't that--? Yeah. Captain know? Friends of Humanity. Mutant /affairs/, murmur murmur, /Magneto/--
"All yours," says Rossi, snagging his dark suit coat off a chair's back to hide holster, gun, and badge in its cloak. Stretched to his full height, he casts a muddy pool of shadow over Leah's feet. Green smiles down, tight around its corners. "What do you feel like? --Ignore these assholes. Most of them are eunuchs. Wouldn't know what to do with a woman if they had one naked in their laps."
Leah turns a thoughtful stare slowly around the room, taking them all in, challenging them with cool eyes and pursed lips. "I see," and she loads the low statement with rich, thrilling pity. "I feel like getting out of here, I think. Let's figure it out from there, all right?" Her hand slides into his; her palm is clammy, and her fingers are tensely shaking.
The fingers that curl around hers are warm, and strong, and -- memory, hot and spiced, tickles the rub of skin -- callused. Trigger and hammer. "Sounds good to me," Chris says easily, turning his own lambent mockery against (into) his colleagues. They stare back at him, shaping opposition for a heartbeat's breadth, then disperse. Back to the grind. Back to the stupidity of citizens, ringing in their hysterical sightings of a long-fled terrorist. "Answered a call today from some lady who swore she saw Pezhead trying on women's underwear at Macy's. Feel like a burger?"
"Did it fit him? And yeah, burger's fine. Something sloppy and gross," says Leah with determined, bloodthirsty cheer. She sticks close to his side on the way out, however, and still trembles through their contact: suppression that bleeds heat through the cracks in her set expression.
An arm claims her shoulders (claims /her/) with arrogant, forthright possessiveness, pairing them down the corridor and through the lobby. Johnson's absent-minded, politically indifferent wave washes them into the streets beyond, where pale, anemic winter light washes down on the pallor of concrete and old ice. "Magneto in a lace thong isn't an image I feel like carrying around with me," Chris informs. "Should've asked her. Want to try Pat's? There's Chubby's, too."
Leah mutters, "Pat's," and steers them that way, up the street, with her shoulder digging hard and angry into his chest. "--Goddammit, Chris. God/dam/mit."
The long stride is brought up short, forcing a collision on the hasty man behind him. "Did you want me to keep us a secret?" asks Chris over the other man's snarled curse, baritone thinning towards wariness. The black head bows to hers, baring the line of neck to shoulder. "MA knows about Mags visiting you. Not to mention the love affair the dickhead has with /my/ hide. We might as well have targets painted on our backs."
"/No/," Leah ejaculates and thumps a soft fist into his shoulder. Her head bows under his, then she sucks up a breath and stares up at him. "It isn't that. It isn't /you/. It's them." Weariness, bitterness, drag at her vowels like a trawling net heavy with dead fish. "I didn't think it'd be like that. I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you. /Or/ ashamed, dammit. I just thought . . . I don't know."
"They'll get over it," Chris says, with challenge riding rough under the Brooklyn timbres. A finger's knuckle scrapes a caress along her jaw, tipping it up to meet his kiss: PDA, and critics be damned. "You know how it is. You're a reporter, I'm a cop, and there's that whole Friends business, and me pulling shifts in MA -- give it a little time."
Leah breathes resignation against his mouth. Closes her eyes, shakes her head, pulls a little away. "Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway." She blinks at him. "It /is/ nice to see you. I didn't say that before. They runnin' you ragged still?"
The detective grimaces, shadow dipping into the corner of his mouth and haunting the swift flicker of eyes. "Yeah, well." Movement again: forward, onward, ahoy mate! His pace, less hasty than before, tugs them back into the current of traffic. "With this whole Magneto breakout thing -- and the Feds are thinking that Pezhead might want some payback for it. Doesn't sound like his accommodations went in for the five star treatment."
Leah doesn't reclaim his hand, and the attache case thumps against her leg between them. "Well, shit, Chris. You got backup? Is anyone watching you like they're watching me?"
"You are," Chris says, and grins sidelong. "Magneto comes prancing up, you'll bitchslap him to death. I figure I'm set. Sorry I haven't seen much of you lately. I'm a crappy boyfriend."
A nudge of shoulder into his arm. "Hey. I want apologies from you, I'll give you the script to read. We're cool." Leah stumps off another few paces, then admits, "I've been shut away tryin' to get a new gig lined up, anyway. You haven't missed anything. Unless you like watching me work the phones in my third-best bra and old track pants."
"Sexy," says Chris, and baritone investing the word with amused heat. A hand's splay warms her back, sliding down to settle in the spoon where spine meets pelvis. "I sent Julia by with chocolates, but she said she ate half of them before they got to you. Figures."
"And got mad when I pointed it out," Leah sighs, reluctantly leaning into his steps' sway. "Like I was supposed to know she's got her period right now. She's like that /all the time/."
Chris chuckles, curling the sound deep in his throat to mix with the rumble of passing cars. "Women," he says, imprudently. And adds, even more recklessly, "Then again, so are you."
Leah complains to the traffic, the sidewalk, and the Lord God in Heaven, "I really wish I knew why I bothered with this man. At least a vibrator has an off button."
"Vibrator doesn't massage your feet. Then again," Chris amends, derailing his own argument with the afterthought, "you can probably buy something that does. Sharper Image, or Brookstone, or one of those high priced gadget stores."
"Mmm, yuppie shopping." Shooting him an amused grin, Leah breaks free to get the door and hold it open for him. Burger-and-fries smells waft out, and the rumble of a busy lunch hour in full-throated progress. "Tempt me not, loverboy. I'd make you try it out on me. Then do it to you."
"Game for pretty much everything, Canto. And if you didn't know /that/ already--" The sneer is a humorous thing, mostly lost behind the tussle of precedence; Chris straight-arms the door, propping it open in turn to gesture Leah through underneath. "Not worth the money, though. Tucci's got that whole hot tub thing set up at his place. He invited us over for the superbowl. Interested?"
Leah backs into the restaurant so that she can stare at him in horror. "He won't be naked, will he?"
The door slams shut behind widened eyes and pocket-hidden hands. "Tucci? Nah." A pause for thought. "He might wear a speedo."
Leah considers. "Do I have to wear one?"
"/You/ can be naked," Chris says kindly. Jealousy appends, "As long as none of the other guys see."
"So kind," Leah purrs and stretches up to lightly kiss his lips. "Now, feed me. We can negotiate the hot-tub business over food, dammit. And no more Magneto talk, okay?"
"He's not invited." Given a taste, Chris -- sensualist that he is -- demands more, sliding a hand through Leah's hair to shape its fingers to her head and drag her close. A deep kiss, and a demanding one, watched with patient disinterest by Pat behind the counter. So. And. "Where you want to sit?"
Leah answers shakily, "Down." She's flushed. And shaking, yes. "Before I /fall/ down, please, good sir. Bar's fine. Hi, Pat."
Smug Chris. Self-satisfied Chris. (Amorous Chris.) He releases his woman with a thumb's caress of cheekbone, and slides himself onto a barstool with a chin's tilted greeting for Pat. "Hey, man. How's the leg? --I got tonight off. You want to go to a show? Something, you know. Straight."
"I'm dating a man afraid of gay cowboys," Leah tells Pat sadly and elbows the bar. "Yeah, we can do that. I have a thing downtown, but I can meet you back up here after your shift?"
"Six," Rossi supplies, adding on top of that for Pat's benefit, "/Gay/ cowboys. I walk in expecting some kind of Western, and instead I get homo porn. That shit's not right. --It's Wednesday, so we could probably get into anything we want. Even--" The baritone wavers slightly before forging bravely, determinedly onward, "--some kind of musical."
Leah notes, "And there goes the 'straight' part of the evening. --I'll have a Miller Lite, Pat. D'you still make that big-ass sloppy Joe with the chili fries on the side?"
Says Chris, defending the heterosexual male rearguard: "Women like musicals. Some of them aren't so bad," he'll allow, grudgingly. Pat, a miser with speech to compensate for generosity of hospitality, nods a short acknowledgment of Leah's question before stumping away, assuming it an order. "Regular for me, Pat. --So what've you been doing with yourself besides hanging out in your underwear?"
Leah slouches over folded arms and slides him a faint, strained smile. "Trying to keep my head from blowing up from all the shit in it these days. The Friends, the deal with Summers--" she leaves that entire subterfuge right there, in rigidly sparse words "--jerking CNN around because they're jerking /me/ around. . . . Maybe you're right and I shoulda been a cop."
"If being jerked around is your idea of a fun time, then yeah, being a cop was probably the best way to go." Chris peels a white, sharp smile for his inherited, natural enemy. "Only thing better is jerking around the press, when you get a chance. That make reporters above or below us in the food chain?"
"Probably about equal." Leah's eyes light with mica battle-flare. "We're symbionts. We feed on each other. Like something on the Discovery Channel. But I get to be the remora."
"Those the little fish that latch onto sharks? Because you got a pretty good pair of jaws on you."
Leah amiably snaps her teeth at him and then takes a swig from the beer deposited before her. "So, yeah, not much really. Oh, I had a drinkin' night out with your buddy Ray Hubbard awhile back. He wants to have a threesome. I said I'd pass it along."
Brows fold, plowing a line to darken Rossi's face. A hand splays through hair, raking it up into hedgehog bristles. "Ray Hubbard?" he echoes. The saturnine face goes blank. "Ray Hubb-- daisy guy? He wants to ... shit. Why are you talking about threesomes with that fairy?"
Leah peers up the bar in the hopeful direction of food. Her tone is breezy, unconcerned. "Well, he wants to steal me away from you, so we kinda settled on a compromise."
Amusement twitches Chris's mouth askew. "Hubbard? Steal you?" Unspoken, the incredulous and inevitable scorn: from /me/? Arrogance drags the cop's body long, sprawling it across bar and stool in a predator's languid, lazy grace. /I'd like to see him try./ "He wants you that bad?"
Leah's peer swerves to scope him and then rest on his face. Her shoulder tilts insouciant smugness: /So would I./ "He does," she replies, rounding her eyes and her voice to sweet, girlish tones. "All that money, not to mention the sexy accent . . . He did offer me a job, too. Aren't I just the luckiest reporter ever?"
"Reporter," Chris picks out of the chaff, "not girl? He wants your brains and not your body? Freak. Told you he was gay."
"I'm wondering, myself," she sighs. "Yeah, my brains. My writerly skills." She waggles her fingers at him. "I could have swooned over the table, except for the part where I wasn't about to."
"What's he want you to write for him? PR?"
Leah nods, sitting up as her burger finally arrives. She digs out a chili-drenched fry, pops it for a quick chew and swallow. She looks pensive. "Not like I don't have the cachet right now, you could say, but . . . He's a redneck, Chris. I think he's even anti-immigration, never mind mutants and racism. I'm trying to get away from that shit, aren't I?"
"Some people'd say that's just being a conservative," Chris points out, inhaling gratefully as his own burger is slapped down next, beer a froth-lipped, short order date. "You going all liberal on me, Canto?"
Leah scowls. "Not you, too."
Chris grins. "You know me. I don't care either way. Stay out of my business, I stay out of yours. Never noticed that I arrest more of one kind or the other."
"Criminal stupidity," quoth Leah pedantically, "crosses all political affiliations."
"Not to mention genetic variation," quips Chris. His next thought, ineptly timed, is lost entirely in a mouthful of burger. "--?"
Sloppy Joe dribbles out of Leah's chewing, nodding reply. "--."
Says Chris, mouth free for a moment's expletive, "Damn." And then it's beer. "How's that friend of yours, the pregnant one. I don't remember her name--"
"Jaz -- and wait a minute." Leah stops eating, burger suspended in nettled abeyance. "Did I tell you she's expecting again, or are you still going with the 'well, maybe she's just fat, then' schtick, you asshole?"
"I can't remember," the man is honest enough to confess. "What, I can't just have an eye for detail? Christ, Leah. I /am/ a detective. I detect things. I see shit, I draw conclusions. --She really is fat, though."
Leah smacks his shoulder.
Rossi rolls an eye at Leah over the rim of his glass. "Figures. Speak the truth, and the press tries to smack you down. This country's going to shit."
Leah smacks the back of his head.
Beer splashes, building a soggy pool around Chris' hamburger. He curses. "Goddammit, woman. My /food/."
"It's all ending up in the same place," says heartless Canto. "I'm paying, anyway. Suck it up, and leave off my friends, man. That's not cool."
"Since when are /you/ paying?" demands the indignant diner, fishing a sad and floppy french fry out of the widening puddle. A strain of ketchup touches liquid and spreads, staining the gold an ominous red. "I was going to /eat/ that."
Leah judges the fry critically. "I think they have pills for that now," she observes. "Since I just said so. What, I can't pay sometimes? I make more money than you do, Mr. Civil Service."
Chris gently lays the fry out in a small coffin of its brethren. "I'm a decorated officer. You got no idea. Anyway, Pat's is my place, I pay. We go out to lunch at some press club place, /you/ pay. Can't let a reporter pay for my lunch. It'll look bad."
Jocularity slithers away, and Leah mutters around her beer's mouth, "Yeah, like it did back in the squadroom."
The corpse is abandoned. Chris cuts a glance up. "That still bothering you? Don't worry about it. They won't say anything to my face. Assholes. It'll die down as soon as Twinker's wife throws him out again."
Leah hedgehogs her irritation at him, bristly and prickly. "It still bothers me, yeah. Should I not come around again? God forbid I disrupt the brotherhood of police--"
"Screw the squad room," says Chris, with the armored cynicism of his breed. A heel hooks on the bar stool's footrest; Rossi drops an elbow to his knee, gargoyling across it to slant solemn-eyed, grim-eyed defiance back at her. "They'll get over it. It's -- you know. MA. Mutants. We pay -- /they/ pay attention to this mutant debate shit. Some of them are still on the fence about it. Give it a little time."
"And me time with them?" She asks it mostly of herself, though, less pissed off than piqued. She has another bite before putting the sloppy Joe back in its sloppy basket and goes for the napkins. A watery glance his way. "/I/ should be on the damn rag, at this rate. Spitfire, aren't I?"
The crimp of lips is telling, at least: wry, if not resigned. "It's been a rough few weeks," Chris says, baritone gentling more cautiously than its wont. He straightens back into his seat, elbows pinning a frame around his plate, shoulders and head limned by the pub's dull gold light. "I figure you got a right. I should've been around more. Got the entire weekend and Monday off. How about we skip town? Beston knows this B&B."
Leah gently wipes her fingers clean and then her eyes. "And leave Tucci and his hot tub in the lurch for the big game?" she rallies, chuckling. "No way. I was promised that man in a Speedo, and I'm gonna get it. Which side is he rooting for, anyway?"
"Steelers," says Chris. "They knew they had Tucci in a speedo rooting for them, they'd give it up right now and save themselves the embarrassment."
Leah decides, "Then we'd better go for the Seahawks. You know how long it's been since that team's been /any/where? And Seattle's prettier than Pittsburgh by a damn long shot." She runs a light finger over the back of his hand, up his wrist. "But a B&B would be nice. Sometime. Let me get this CNN thing straightened out, and we'll plan."
The hand flexes, turning whiplash-fast to grasp at hers. "Spontaneity," Chris chides. "What's that quote? Carpe diem. How often do three-day weekends come around, anyway? Hole up in a B&B, turn off the phones, leave your computer behind, avoid newspapers--"
Gripping back, Leah reminds him sadly, "Gotta work. Or else no B&B."
"Don't feel like being the little woman and living off my wages?" Rossi's mouth twists.
Leah's eyes narrow. "Didn't know that was an option."
"It wasn't. Do you want it to be?"
Leah pauses. Her voice is unsteady 'round the edges. "What would I do all day? I don't like bonbons or soap operas, and I don't even own a housecoat."
"You could put your hair up in curlers." A hand flips lightly at her hair, threading bronze between fingers. "Answer the door in your third-best bra and sweats. Scare the grocery delivery boy. --I'm just saying. If you need to not work for a while, wait until the noise dies down, you're covered." The baritone feeds itself, digging through self-deprecating apology. "Civil servant wages, though. You're not getting any sports cars."
The bright head tilts into the caress; Leah's eyes never leave his. "After I do the CNN thing," she says at length, low and surer. "That'd be . . . nice. More than nice. Thanks, Chris."
Discomfort -- embarrassment -- hunches Chris's shoulders, hitching them towards his ears. Love, trapped wildling behind masculine dignity: well-a-day. "Yeah, well." It rounds its spine in his voice as well, arching its back like an uneasy cat. "You know. Anytime. We'll get you a big bathrobe to lounge around in."
"To replace the one you /stole/ from me."
"It was disgusting. Getting rid of it was a favor."
Leah sucks in a breath. "My mother gave me that robe! When I got my first apartment on my own."
Chris has the grace to look fleetingly guilty. "How the hell was I supposed to know that? --It was still disgusting," he plows on, willfully overrunning the obvious. "I'll get you a better one."
"Egyptian cotton," she replies immediately, shrewd as Shylock. "Pure white. With a hood. Monogramming optional."
"Civil servant salary, Canto. What do I look like, Ray Hubbard?"
Leah studies him. Then pops a fry for a cud's munch. "No. But you could. He /is/ interested, like I said--"
Chris closes his eyes. "I could beat you to death with your own arm. Resisting arrest. Something. Room full of cops, nobody'd argue with me."
Unconcerned, Leah swallows beer to chase the fry. "Uh-huh. You want to explain /that/ to my mother at the funeral? Never mind the robe."
"Sorry, Mrs. Canto. There was this whole thing with Leah wanting me to get it on with some gay rich guy so I could afford to pay for her robe. You didn't know she had a thing for gay guy sex?"
Leah elbows the bar and puts her head in her hand. "Chris . . ."
"Sure. Used to take me to watch gay porn. Had a thing for cowboys, too. Big hats, animals between the legs--"
"/Christopher/ Lucius Rossi--"
"--not to mention the /motors/--"
Helpless laughter drowns him out. "Which reminds me," Leah sniffs. "Scott took me on a ride on his bike the other night. Man knows how to ride. We should do that sometime."
White shows rims around sharp-etched green. "Ride /Summers/? Christ, Leah. When I said I was game for pretty much anything--"
Leah slumps over with a fresh peal of laughter. She can't speak for a minute, then: "--you, and him, and /lube/--"
Facetiousness is one thing. Imagery is another. Chris winces, despite himself, and exacts revenge by way of a swat at Leah's rump. "Yeah. That's going to haunt me. What is with you and the man-on-man action anyway, Canto?"
Leah jumps at the swat. "Should ask you the same damn thing, since you're all hinky about it." She leers, though. "You're both pretty. Maybe that's it."
"Pre--" Chris breaks off, outrage woven in a false, sprung note through his deepening accent. "/Pretty/?"
"Pretty," confirms the wordsmith on a slow nod. "Breathtaking, even. Put the two of you side by side -- mmm, yeah, that'll work. --This is what happens when you leave me to my own devices, Rossi. And I do mean 'devices.'"
"Should lock you up in the apartment with your devices," says Chris sourly, surfing a bitter note that dissipates almost as quickly as it appears. "Put up a peep window, and charge for the show. Obviously, I'm leaving you alone way too much. You need some distraction." The rich voice shifts, suggestive under the glitter of eyes and darkling brow, making plain what his definition of 'distraction' entails.
Leah contentedly agrees, "Obviously," with a prim fold of hands on the bar. Lashes sweep low over her own eyes, which slant to her half-finished meal. "I think my sloppy Joe's gone cold. How's your burger?"
Finished, by its cooling and congealing state, seconded by Chris's disdainful glance. "Yeah, I'm done. It was good. Just not as hungry as I thought I was. --You?"
"Ditto." Leah does rescue one last French fry, dripping with greasy chili. "So, back to work?"
A wrist forces back the sleeve of the other, cloth spared the indignity of grease-bright hands. "In a bit," Chris admits. "Fat lot of good it'll do. Phone duty, with Pezhead on the loose. Everybody and his brother's got a sighting of some kind."
Leah slopes her hand down his biceps. "Then we'll take a walk first. Find a park. Enjoy Mother fucking Nature."
"Screw /Nature/." The green-eyed gaze traces the path of her hand, then skims up again in easy, febrile heat: into smile, into voice, into the head's tilt towards hers, brow to brow in intimacy's murmur. "How long has it been?"
"Too goddamned long," Leah murmurs back, eyes wide into his. She rests a hand on his thigh. "We could make out in the Buick."
A laugh catches in the back of Chris's throat, and is reshaped into a cough before it reaches maturity. "I got a better idea back at the precinct. The bunk room should be empty right now. How much time do you have?" The palm roves, past the outer casing of fabric, winnowing, burrowing, exploring towards skin and the banked fire.
Leah wiggles under his fingers, breath catching as he finds skin. Her grin flashes. "Enough time. Long as I'm downtown before four. Think we can manage it?"
"I'm pretty sure we can manage it," agrees Chris, sparing a hand to toss cash on the bar before straightening off the stool. Hands, strong hands, frame Leah's hips, dragging and pulling up and off to mold her against his frame. "And if not -- well, we obviously need to practice, don't we?"
Arms slip up and around his neck, and Leah drags his mouth down for a greedy kiss: mine, all mine. "Yes. And no time like the present." Her eyes are hot, are smoky, are incandescent with gleeful lust. "Race you there."
Chris grins into that kiss, answering greed with possessive heat: mine, all mine. "After you," he says, baritone napped with desire. Speed first; a slower, remorseless, relentless pace later. In his place behind the bar, Pat rolls tolerant eyes and claims his fee, thumbing through the cash. Errant youth. Live forever.
[Log ends.]
No, never mind them. Mind him. He's right; it'll pass. ("This too shall pass," as Aunt Ginnie always says, and damned if she's not right.) In the meantime, screw them and the horses they rode in on. I've got bigger worries: this interview (what do you mean, you can't do it until Monday? What the hell, CNN?), the phone calls my sister keeps making without leaving any messages ("what the hell" to you, too, Hannah), Nathan gone all quiet and weird on me (did Tom get to him? Find out?), my boyfriend not afraid to mix it up with the Master of Magnetism just because he can and he's immortal, of course. . . .
I'll kick his ass if he does it again. Then I'll kick Lensherr's ass. So mote it be.
2/1/2006
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
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New York Police Department - Lobby
Great brass double doors lead into the precinct lobby, a crowded hall that teems with life under the dictatorship of the officer on duty. Long benches line the walls, ports of rest for the patient and the weary. To either side of the reception desk, hallways painted in peeling puke-green stretch back into the building proper, routing past labeled and busy offices: squad rooms, interrogation rooms, holding pens and file rooms. Ordered chaos is the name of the game; traffic and noise roil through the crowded passages, lit by electric fluorescence and dust-rich light.
--
The lobby door gives way before the hearty push of one Leah Canto, who flaps her brown overcoat back from her hunter-green pantsuit once she's inside, like a pigeon settling ruffled feathers. She even shakes herself and glances back irritably at something outside in the cool, overcast day. But then -- onward. She swaggers up to the desk and leans on it with familiarity. "Hi, Sergeant. How goes? I'm here to pick up a delivery."
The sergeant, dispensing of a cuffed hooker and her pimp with irritated resignation, ("Goddammit, Jacko, I see Atlanta sporting one more black eye--") plows an elbow into the desk and leans over it, red-rimmed eye bulbous and solemn in like companionship. "Tall?" he quips, over the rancor of the queue. "Dark? Good-looking? I'm all yours, kid."
Leah grins through the din around them, eyelashes fluttering spiky short. "You know I could never handle you all by myself. I need to work up to your magnificence. Can I just have a Detective Rossi to go? Hold the special sauce."
"My heart's breaking," Johnson retorts, regret paddling its paws through the Bronx-spiced backwash of his sigh. He sinks back, a mountain for Mohammed (peace be upon him!) and waves a callused hand: pen and pencil, rather than trigger and butt. "Go on back. He's in MA today on that whole Magneto business. --/Next/! Jesus /Christ/, Dubya. You again? Who'd you kill /this/ time?"
Leah's expression dims somewhat as she backs through the crowd and reorients on the frosted-glass door into the depths of the stationhouse. Through the portal (abandon all hope, ye who--), she paces out the industrial-green walls to Mutant Affairs' territory, absently nodding to the clerks and uniforms she passes (and a passing murmur of "Italian heat" from one--). Her attache case goes brown and sturdy in front of her, and she poises on the threshold, peering.
Chris Rossi is, for a change, the quiet eye in a storm, a hub around which argument skirls and thunders. Bodies rage in busywork around him, fielding the rattle of phones and impatient interviews. The Homicide detective himself, leaned long-limbed and quiescent on a chair, rocks back on a desk-pinned foot to obstruct the flow of traffic and fellow cops. "--maybe the condom," he lazes out, and drops his head back to regard the ceiling with distant interest. "Follow that lead. Hell, even mutant dicks need protection."
"His more than most," is Leah's approaching (warning) drawl on her navigation through the hurricane. Alto lofts easily over the noise: reporter's prerogative, Brooklyn's birthright. She is all focused on him, though, to inform solemnly, "You just know the terrorist leader of outlaw mutants is getting him a whole /mess/ of honeys. Maybe a literal mess. I heard about this one girl in Kansas, born with a mutation that would make you--"
The grin Chris fields up is a sleepy thing, deceptively so; the glitter of eyes behind the black lashes is more intent than the mask suggests. An arm stretches to reel her in, claiming an arm to drag her down, down, into the pale blue of his shirt's collar and the greeting of a kiss. Around the room, detectives glance askance. "Some things even cops don't need to know," he advises on the breath-caught end of it. "Is it lunchtime already? Shit."
Leah puts her hands on his shoulders to take her weight, and she gives the kiss back. With earned interest. "Yeah, it is. I'm hungry as hell." She tugs at his tie on her straightening up. "For food, anyway. And the pleasure of your company, if you would be so kind, Sir Christopher?"
Red and blue plaid hisses through her fingers, pulling Chris up on its end. Cops mutter, backhanded gossips that they are: isn't that--? Yeah. Captain know? Friends of Humanity. Mutant /affairs/, murmur murmur, /Magneto/--
"All yours," says Rossi, snagging his dark suit coat off a chair's back to hide holster, gun, and badge in its cloak. Stretched to his full height, he casts a muddy pool of shadow over Leah's feet. Green smiles down, tight around its corners. "What do you feel like? --Ignore these assholes. Most of them are eunuchs. Wouldn't know what to do with a woman if they had one naked in their laps."
Leah turns a thoughtful stare slowly around the room, taking them all in, challenging them with cool eyes and pursed lips. "I see," and she loads the low statement with rich, thrilling pity. "I feel like getting out of here, I think. Let's figure it out from there, all right?" Her hand slides into his; her palm is clammy, and her fingers are tensely shaking.
The fingers that curl around hers are warm, and strong, and -- memory, hot and spiced, tickles the rub of skin -- callused. Trigger and hammer. "Sounds good to me," Chris says easily, turning his own lambent mockery against (into) his colleagues. They stare back at him, shaping opposition for a heartbeat's breadth, then disperse. Back to the grind. Back to the stupidity of citizens, ringing in their hysterical sightings of a long-fled terrorist. "Answered a call today from some lady who swore she saw Pezhead trying on women's underwear at Macy's. Feel like a burger?"
"Did it fit him? And yeah, burger's fine. Something sloppy and gross," says Leah with determined, bloodthirsty cheer. She sticks close to his side on the way out, however, and still trembles through their contact: suppression that bleeds heat through the cracks in her set expression.
An arm claims her shoulders (claims /her/) with arrogant, forthright possessiveness, pairing them down the corridor and through the lobby. Johnson's absent-minded, politically indifferent wave washes them into the streets beyond, where pale, anemic winter light washes down on the pallor of concrete and old ice. "Magneto in a lace thong isn't an image I feel like carrying around with me," Chris informs. "Should've asked her. Want to try Pat's? There's Chubby's, too."
Leah mutters, "Pat's," and steers them that way, up the street, with her shoulder digging hard and angry into his chest. "--Goddammit, Chris. God/dam/mit."
The long stride is brought up short, forcing a collision on the hasty man behind him. "Did you want me to keep us a secret?" asks Chris over the other man's snarled curse, baritone thinning towards wariness. The black head bows to hers, baring the line of neck to shoulder. "MA knows about Mags visiting you. Not to mention the love affair the dickhead has with /my/ hide. We might as well have targets painted on our backs."
"/No/," Leah ejaculates and thumps a soft fist into his shoulder. Her head bows under his, then she sucks up a breath and stares up at him. "It isn't that. It isn't /you/. It's them." Weariness, bitterness, drag at her vowels like a trawling net heavy with dead fish. "I didn't think it'd be like that. I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you. /Or/ ashamed, dammit. I just thought . . . I don't know."
"They'll get over it," Chris says, with challenge riding rough under the Brooklyn timbres. A finger's knuckle scrapes a caress along her jaw, tipping it up to meet his kiss: PDA, and critics be damned. "You know how it is. You're a reporter, I'm a cop, and there's that whole Friends business, and me pulling shifts in MA -- give it a little time."
Leah breathes resignation against his mouth. Closes her eyes, shakes her head, pulls a little away. "Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway." She blinks at him. "It /is/ nice to see you. I didn't say that before. They runnin' you ragged still?"
The detective grimaces, shadow dipping into the corner of his mouth and haunting the swift flicker of eyes. "Yeah, well." Movement again: forward, onward, ahoy mate! His pace, less hasty than before, tugs them back into the current of traffic. "With this whole Magneto breakout thing -- and the Feds are thinking that Pezhead might want some payback for it. Doesn't sound like his accommodations went in for the five star treatment."
Leah doesn't reclaim his hand, and the attache case thumps against her leg between them. "Well, shit, Chris. You got backup? Is anyone watching you like they're watching me?"
"You are," Chris says, and grins sidelong. "Magneto comes prancing up, you'll bitchslap him to death. I figure I'm set. Sorry I haven't seen much of you lately. I'm a crappy boyfriend."
A nudge of shoulder into his arm. "Hey. I want apologies from you, I'll give you the script to read. We're cool." Leah stumps off another few paces, then admits, "I've been shut away tryin' to get a new gig lined up, anyway. You haven't missed anything. Unless you like watching me work the phones in my third-best bra and old track pants."
"Sexy," says Chris, and baritone investing the word with amused heat. A hand's splay warms her back, sliding down to settle in the spoon where spine meets pelvis. "I sent Julia by with chocolates, but she said she ate half of them before they got to you. Figures."
"And got mad when I pointed it out," Leah sighs, reluctantly leaning into his steps' sway. "Like I was supposed to know she's got her period right now. She's like that /all the time/."
Chris chuckles, curling the sound deep in his throat to mix with the rumble of passing cars. "Women," he says, imprudently. And adds, even more recklessly, "Then again, so are you."
Leah complains to the traffic, the sidewalk, and the Lord God in Heaven, "I really wish I knew why I bothered with this man. At least a vibrator has an off button."
"Vibrator doesn't massage your feet. Then again," Chris amends, derailing his own argument with the afterthought, "you can probably buy something that does. Sharper Image, or Brookstone, or one of those high priced gadget stores."
"Mmm, yuppie shopping." Shooting him an amused grin, Leah breaks free to get the door and hold it open for him. Burger-and-fries smells waft out, and the rumble of a busy lunch hour in full-throated progress. "Tempt me not, loverboy. I'd make you try it out on me. Then do it to you."
"Game for pretty much everything, Canto. And if you didn't know /that/ already--" The sneer is a humorous thing, mostly lost behind the tussle of precedence; Chris straight-arms the door, propping it open in turn to gesture Leah through underneath. "Not worth the money, though. Tucci's got that whole hot tub thing set up at his place. He invited us over for the superbowl. Interested?"
Leah backs into the restaurant so that she can stare at him in horror. "He won't be naked, will he?"
The door slams shut behind widened eyes and pocket-hidden hands. "Tucci? Nah." A pause for thought. "He might wear a speedo."
Leah considers. "Do I have to wear one?"
"/You/ can be naked," Chris says kindly. Jealousy appends, "As long as none of the other guys see."
"So kind," Leah purrs and stretches up to lightly kiss his lips. "Now, feed me. We can negotiate the hot-tub business over food, dammit. And no more Magneto talk, okay?"
"He's not invited." Given a taste, Chris -- sensualist that he is -- demands more, sliding a hand through Leah's hair to shape its fingers to her head and drag her close. A deep kiss, and a demanding one, watched with patient disinterest by Pat behind the counter. So. And. "Where you want to sit?"
Leah answers shakily, "Down." She's flushed. And shaking, yes. "Before I /fall/ down, please, good sir. Bar's fine. Hi, Pat."
Smug Chris. Self-satisfied Chris. (Amorous Chris.) He releases his woman with a thumb's caress of cheekbone, and slides himself onto a barstool with a chin's tilted greeting for Pat. "Hey, man. How's the leg? --I got tonight off. You want to go to a show? Something, you know. Straight."
"I'm dating a man afraid of gay cowboys," Leah tells Pat sadly and elbows the bar. "Yeah, we can do that. I have a thing downtown, but I can meet you back up here after your shift?"
"Six," Rossi supplies, adding on top of that for Pat's benefit, "/Gay/ cowboys. I walk in expecting some kind of Western, and instead I get homo porn. That shit's not right. --It's Wednesday, so we could probably get into anything we want. Even--" The baritone wavers slightly before forging bravely, determinedly onward, "--some kind of musical."
Leah notes, "And there goes the 'straight' part of the evening. --I'll have a Miller Lite, Pat. D'you still make that big-ass sloppy Joe with the chili fries on the side?"
Says Chris, defending the heterosexual male rearguard: "Women like musicals. Some of them aren't so bad," he'll allow, grudgingly. Pat, a miser with speech to compensate for generosity of hospitality, nods a short acknowledgment of Leah's question before stumping away, assuming it an order. "Regular for me, Pat. --So what've you been doing with yourself besides hanging out in your underwear?"
Leah slouches over folded arms and slides him a faint, strained smile. "Trying to keep my head from blowing up from all the shit in it these days. The Friends, the deal with Summers--" she leaves that entire subterfuge right there, in rigidly sparse words "--jerking CNN around because they're jerking /me/ around. . . . Maybe you're right and I shoulda been a cop."
"If being jerked around is your idea of a fun time, then yeah, being a cop was probably the best way to go." Chris peels a white, sharp smile for his inherited, natural enemy. "Only thing better is jerking around the press, when you get a chance. That make reporters above or below us in the food chain?"
"Probably about equal." Leah's eyes light with mica battle-flare. "We're symbionts. We feed on each other. Like something on the Discovery Channel. But I get to be the remora."
"Those the little fish that latch onto sharks? Because you got a pretty good pair of jaws on you."
Leah amiably snaps her teeth at him and then takes a swig from the beer deposited before her. "So, yeah, not much really. Oh, I had a drinkin' night out with your buddy Ray Hubbard awhile back. He wants to have a threesome. I said I'd pass it along."
Brows fold, plowing a line to darken Rossi's face. A hand splays through hair, raking it up into hedgehog bristles. "Ray Hubbard?" he echoes. The saturnine face goes blank. "Ray Hubb-- daisy guy? He wants to ... shit. Why are you talking about threesomes with that fairy?"
Leah peers up the bar in the hopeful direction of food. Her tone is breezy, unconcerned. "Well, he wants to steal me away from you, so we kinda settled on a compromise."
Amusement twitches Chris's mouth askew. "Hubbard? Steal you?" Unspoken, the incredulous and inevitable scorn: from /me/? Arrogance drags the cop's body long, sprawling it across bar and stool in a predator's languid, lazy grace. /I'd like to see him try./ "He wants you that bad?"
Leah's peer swerves to scope him and then rest on his face. Her shoulder tilts insouciant smugness: /So would I./ "He does," she replies, rounding her eyes and her voice to sweet, girlish tones. "All that money, not to mention the sexy accent . . . He did offer me a job, too. Aren't I just the luckiest reporter ever?"
"Reporter," Chris picks out of the chaff, "not girl? He wants your brains and not your body? Freak. Told you he was gay."
"I'm wondering, myself," she sighs. "Yeah, my brains. My writerly skills." She waggles her fingers at him. "I could have swooned over the table, except for the part where I wasn't about to."
"What's he want you to write for him? PR?"
Leah nods, sitting up as her burger finally arrives. She digs out a chili-drenched fry, pops it for a quick chew and swallow. She looks pensive. "Not like I don't have the cachet right now, you could say, but . . . He's a redneck, Chris. I think he's even anti-immigration, never mind mutants and racism. I'm trying to get away from that shit, aren't I?"
"Some people'd say that's just being a conservative," Chris points out, inhaling gratefully as his own burger is slapped down next, beer a froth-lipped, short order date. "You going all liberal on me, Canto?"
Leah scowls. "Not you, too."
Chris grins. "You know me. I don't care either way. Stay out of my business, I stay out of yours. Never noticed that I arrest more of one kind or the other."
"Criminal stupidity," quoth Leah pedantically, "crosses all political affiliations."
"Not to mention genetic variation," quips Chris. His next thought, ineptly timed, is lost entirely in a mouthful of burger. "--?"
Sloppy Joe dribbles out of Leah's chewing, nodding reply. "--."
Says Chris, mouth free for a moment's expletive, "Damn." And then it's beer. "How's that friend of yours, the pregnant one. I don't remember her name--"
"Jaz -- and wait a minute." Leah stops eating, burger suspended in nettled abeyance. "Did I tell you she's expecting again, or are you still going with the 'well, maybe she's just fat, then' schtick, you asshole?"
"I can't remember," the man is honest enough to confess. "What, I can't just have an eye for detail? Christ, Leah. I /am/ a detective. I detect things. I see shit, I draw conclusions. --She really is fat, though."
Leah smacks his shoulder.
Rossi rolls an eye at Leah over the rim of his glass. "Figures. Speak the truth, and the press tries to smack you down. This country's going to shit."
Leah smacks the back of his head.
Beer splashes, building a soggy pool around Chris' hamburger. He curses. "Goddammit, woman. My /food/."
"It's all ending up in the same place," says heartless Canto. "I'm paying, anyway. Suck it up, and leave off my friends, man. That's not cool."
"Since when are /you/ paying?" demands the indignant diner, fishing a sad and floppy french fry out of the widening puddle. A strain of ketchup touches liquid and spreads, staining the gold an ominous red. "I was going to /eat/ that."
Leah judges the fry critically. "I think they have pills for that now," she observes. "Since I just said so. What, I can't pay sometimes? I make more money than you do, Mr. Civil Service."
Chris gently lays the fry out in a small coffin of its brethren. "I'm a decorated officer. You got no idea. Anyway, Pat's is my place, I pay. We go out to lunch at some press club place, /you/ pay. Can't let a reporter pay for my lunch. It'll look bad."
Jocularity slithers away, and Leah mutters around her beer's mouth, "Yeah, like it did back in the squadroom."
The corpse is abandoned. Chris cuts a glance up. "That still bothering you? Don't worry about it. They won't say anything to my face. Assholes. It'll die down as soon as Twinker's wife throws him out again."
Leah hedgehogs her irritation at him, bristly and prickly. "It still bothers me, yeah. Should I not come around again? God forbid I disrupt the brotherhood of police--"
"Screw the squad room," says Chris, with the armored cynicism of his breed. A heel hooks on the bar stool's footrest; Rossi drops an elbow to his knee, gargoyling across it to slant solemn-eyed, grim-eyed defiance back at her. "They'll get over it. It's -- you know. MA. Mutants. We pay -- /they/ pay attention to this mutant debate shit. Some of them are still on the fence about it. Give it a little time."
"And me time with them?" She asks it mostly of herself, though, less pissed off than piqued. She has another bite before putting the sloppy Joe back in its sloppy basket and goes for the napkins. A watery glance his way. "/I/ should be on the damn rag, at this rate. Spitfire, aren't I?"
The crimp of lips is telling, at least: wry, if not resigned. "It's been a rough few weeks," Chris says, baritone gentling more cautiously than its wont. He straightens back into his seat, elbows pinning a frame around his plate, shoulders and head limned by the pub's dull gold light. "I figure you got a right. I should've been around more. Got the entire weekend and Monday off. How about we skip town? Beston knows this B&B."
Leah gently wipes her fingers clean and then her eyes. "And leave Tucci and his hot tub in the lurch for the big game?" she rallies, chuckling. "No way. I was promised that man in a Speedo, and I'm gonna get it. Which side is he rooting for, anyway?"
"Steelers," says Chris. "They knew they had Tucci in a speedo rooting for them, they'd give it up right now and save themselves the embarrassment."
Leah decides, "Then we'd better go for the Seahawks. You know how long it's been since that team's been /any/where? And Seattle's prettier than Pittsburgh by a damn long shot." She runs a light finger over the back of his hand, up his wrist. "But a B&B would be nice. Sometime. Let me get this CNN thing straightened out, and we'll plan."
The hand flexes, turning whiplash-fast to grasp at hers. "Spontaneity," Chris chides. "What's that quote? Carpe diem. How often do three-day weekends come around, anyway? Hole up in a B&B, turn off the phones, leave your computer behind, avoid newspapers--"
Gripping back, Leah reminds him sadly, "Gotta work. Or else no B&B."
"Don't feel like being the little woman and living off my wages?" Rossi's mouth twists.
Leah's eyes narrow. "Didn't know that was an option."
"It wasn't. Do you want it to be?"
Leah pauses. Her voice is unsteady 'round the edges. "What would I do all day? I don't like bonbons or soap operas, and I don't even own a housecoat."
"You could put your hair up in curlers." A hand flips lightly at her hair, threading bronze between fingers. "Answer the door in your third-best bra and sweats. Scare the grocery delivery boy. --I'm just saying. If you need to not work for a while, wait until the noise dies down, you're covered." The baritone feeds itself, digging through self-deprecating apology. "Civil servant wages, though. You're not getting any sports cars."
The bright head tilts into the caress; Leah's eyes never leave his. "After I do the CNN thing," she says at length, low and surer. "That'd be . . . nice. More than nice. Thanks, Chris."
Discomfort -- embarrassment -- hunches Chris's shoulders, hitching them towards his ears. Love, trapped wildling behind masculine dignity: well-a-day. "Yeah, well." It rounds its spine in his voice as well, arching its back like an uneasy cat. "You know. Anytime. We'll get you a big bathrobe to lounge around in."
"To replace the one you /stole/ from me."
"It was disgusting. Getting rid of it was a favor."
Leah sucks in a breath. "My mother gave me that robe! When I got my first apartment on my own."
Chris has the grace to look fleetingly guilty. "How the hell was I supposed to know that? --It was still disgusting," he plows on, willfully overrunning the obvious. "I'll get you a better one."
"Egyptian cotton," she replies immediately, shrewd as Shylock. "Pure white. With a hood. Monogramming optional."
"Civil servant salary, Canto. What do I look like, Ray Hubbard?"
Leah studies him. Then pops a fry for a cud's munch. "No. But you could. He /is/ interested, like I said--"
Chris closes his eyes. "I could beat you to death with your own arm. Resisting arrest. Something. Room full of cops, nobody'd argue with me."
Unconcerned, Leah swallows beer to chase the fry. "Uh-huh. You want to explain /that/ to my mother at the funeral? Never mind the robe."
"Sorry, Mrs. Canto. There was this whole thing with Leah wanting me to get it on with some gay rich guy so I could afford to pay for her robe. You didn't know she had a thing for gay guy sex?"
Leah elbows the bar and puts her head in her hand. "Chris . . ."
"Sure. Used to take me to watch gay porn. Had a thing for cowboys, too. Big hats, animals between the legs--"
"/Christopher/ Lucius Rossi--"
"--not to mention the /motors/--"
Helpless laughter drowns him out. "Which reminds me," Leah sniffs. "Scott took me on a ride on his bike the other night. Man knows how to ride. We should do that sometime."
White shows rims around sharp-etched green. "Ride /Summers/? Christ, Leah. When I said I was game for pretty much anything--"
Leah slumps over with a fresh peal of laughter. She can't speak for a minute, then: "--you, and him, and /lube/--"
Facetiousness is one thing. Imagery is another. Chris winces, despite himself, and exacts revenge by way of a swat at Leah's rump. "Yeah. That's going to haunt me. What is with you and the man-on-man action anyway, Canto?"
Leah jumps at the swat. "Should ask you the same damn thing, since you're all hinky about it." She leers, though. "You're both pretty. Maybe that's it."
"Pre--" Chris breaks off, outrage woven in a false, sprung note through his deepening accent. "/Pretty/?"
"Pretty," confirms the wordsmith on a slow nod. "Breathtaking, even. Put the two of you side by side -- mmm, yeah, that'll work. --This is what happens when you leave me to my own devices, Rossi. And I do mean 'devices.'"
"Should lock you up in the apartment with your devices," says Chris sourly, surfing a bitter note that dissipates almost as quickly as it appears. "Put up a peep window, and charge for the show. Obviously, I'm leaving you alone way too much. You need some distraction." The rich voice shifts, suggestive under the glitter of eyes and darkling brow, making plain what his definition of 'distraction' entails.
Leah contentedly agrees, "Obviously," with a prim fold of hands on the bar. Lashes sweep low over her own eyes, which slant to her half-finished meal. "I think my sloppy Joe's gone cold. How's your burger?"
Finished, by its cooling and congealing state, seconded by Chris's disdainful glance. "Yeah, I'm done. It was good. Just not as hungry as I thought I was. --You?"
"Ditto." Leah does rescue one last French fry, dripping with greasy chili. "So, back to work?"
A wrist forces back the sleeve of the other, cloth spared the indignity of grease-bright hands. "In a bit," Chris admits. "Fat lot of good it'll do. Phone duty, with Pezhead on the loose. Everybody and his brother's got a sighting of some kind."
Leah slopes her hand down his biceps. "Then we'll take a walk first. Find a park. Enjoy Mother fucking Nature."
"Screw /Nature/." The green-eyed gaze traces the path of her hand, then skims up again in easy, febrile heat: into smile, into voice, into the head's tilt towards hers, brow to brow in intimacy's murmur. "How long has it been?"
"Too goddamned long," Leah murmurs back, eyes wide into his. She rests a hand on his thigh. "We could make out in the Buick."
A laugh catches in the back of Chris's throat, and is reshaped into a cough before it reaches maturity. "I got a better idea back at the precinct. The bunk room should be empty right now. How much time do you have?" The palm roves, past the outer casing of fabric, winnowing, burrowing, exploring towards skin and the banked fire.
Leah wiggles under his fingers, breath catching as he finds skin. Her grin flashes. "Enough time. Long as I'm downtown before four. Think we can manage it?"
"I'm pretty sure we can manage it," agrees Chris, sparing a hand to toss cash on the bar before straightening off the stool. Hands, strong hands, frame Leah's hips, dragging and pulling up and off to mold her against his frame. "And if not -- well, we obviously need to practice, don't we?"
Arms slip up and around his neck, and Leah drags his mouth down for a greedy kiss: mine, all mine. "Yes. And no time like the present." Her eyes are hot, are smoky, are incandescent with gleeful lust. "Race you there."
Chris grins into that kiss, answering greed with possessive heat: mine, all mine. "After you," he says, baritone napped with desire. Speed first; a slower, remorseless, relentless pace later. In his place behind the bar, Pat rolls tolerant eyes and claims his fee, thumbing through the cash. Errant youth. Live forever.
[Log ends.]