1/5/07 - Jean
---
The door to the bedroom is closed; the door to the apartment, likewise. Rossi is not in either. Bundled in a heavy leather overcoat, muffler wrapped around his throat, he prowls the sidewalk across from his complex, wrestling with his cell phones. Leather gloves do not assist dialing, programmed or no. "/Fuck/," he curses into the line. Somewhere in the city, a cell phone rings.
Hospitals such as Lennox Hill have rooms for their doctors as well as their patients. Not very stylish, more of a converted janitor's closet, but there is a metal bunk bed with utilitarian mattresses, a light that can be turned off, and a chance to catch a few minutes' sleep. It's to one of these that Jean has been summarily exiled, with orders that MRI experiments can wait until she's actually gotten some food and at least two hours of rest into her.
Jean's cell phone, unfortunately, has other ideas. U2 provides a more melodious ring than is traditional, but the hand that snaps out from the near mattress to strike at it is no less speedy, or less startled for it. "Jean," the answer is hoarse, and whispered muzzily.
"/Jean/," Rossi's voice grates from the other end, heedless of sleep or its confusion. "You're not Ororo. Crap. What did I--" The phone rasps through a hiss of wind. In the darkness of the sidewalk, the detective leans back against a wall and considers the lighted window of his apartment. "Screw it. You'll do. What the hell did I do to you poodles, anyway?"
"Wrong number?" Jean questions, alightly more alert and punctuated by an audible yawn, and then an equally audible bang, and a sharp "GodDAMNIT!" as she sits up, hits her head, and realizes she's taller than the bunk bed's lower bunk, in that order. "Jesus Christ..." is sighed into the darkness, as one hand massages the crown of her head, and the other presses her cell phone against her cheek, lighting the little room with the blue glow of the buttons. "What's got you questioning your karma today? I've been sitting at Lennox Hill for three days now, so I'm a little out of the loop."
Rossi hunches a bitter shoulder against the wind, sidestepping into the convenient hollow of a store's metal-grated front. "Two girls doing God knows what in my bedroom," he says into the phone, a hand pushing the lapel of his coat up to shield his face. "Who knows what shit they've found by now. I mean, Jesus Christ, I know baldie's missing a sense of humor, but -- Cassy and Mira?"
On the other end of the line, Jean's hand stops rubbing her head and clutches at her hair instead. "-You- got Cassy and Mira?" she questions, the incredulity in her tone not precisely flattering. Aloft, the other sleeping doctor in the room grumbles grumpily at the noise. Rising the rest of the way, after a final poke of her fingers against bruised and sulky scalp to make sure she's not bleeding, Jean makes a blind grab for her lab coat by the door, and wanders out.
"That's what I want to know," Rossi says, and even through the static on the line, his baritone is a sullen, moody thing. In person, he scuffs his foot against the concrete wall of his nook, worn, broken cop shoes rasping across the uneven surface. "They're not that bad yet, but I swear to fucking God, in about two hours one of them is gonna break into my gun safe and end up shooting herself through the knee."
"Take them to the zoo," is Jean's advice, as she steps into a room occupied only by an elderly coma patient. Some wag of a resident has left his for-purposes-of-stimulation TV playing episodes of House, M.D. "It works for -Nate-."
"Nate's, what. Three?"
"Three. And the difference between toddlers and teenagers isn't as much as you'd think," Jean states, with a wry twist of her lips. "They get into less trouble if they're too tired to think. Run them around the Bronx Zoo a few times... or wait." An actual idea occurs to Jean, and she taps at a lower lip. "Your sister's FDNY, right?"
"Julia," Rossi says with some resignation. "If you're seriously thinking about exposing her to them -- or them to her, I'm not sure which. Either way, it's bullshit." The shoe bumps a little more viciously against the wall. "Seriously. What'd I do? He need some asskissing or something? Because if that's what big baldie needs, that's what I'll do. I can kiss ass with the best of them."
"Cassy apparently wanted to be a firefighter, at one point," Jean explains her brainstorm, before a rude snort crosses the cellular airwaves. "The images from that would be priceless, but... no. Maybe he thinks you'll be a good influence?" she suggests. "Show them that not all examples of The Man are going to make trouble for them?'"
The silence on the phone is not complete; it is filled with the hum and whirl of background noise: passing traffic, a distant horn, the wail of a neighboring siren. "You've got to be shitting me," Rossi says. Incredulity paints his baritone dark. "Me, a good influence? Are you yanking my chain? Baldie's been a bit of a-- but he's not an /idiot/."
"My best friend's dating you," Jean points out, idly leaning forward to check the patient's charts, and just as idly sending out a tendril of telepathy to take a look at the quiescent brain behind the aging face. Helloooooo, anyone home? "You've got to have -some- redeeming virtue down there somewhere."
"I can make instant macaroni and cheese out of a box," Rossi says promptly, flattening his back against the wall before letting his head fall back. Black hair ruffles across his brow, wind-touched. "I put the toilet seat down if there's company. My apartment's clean, I pay my taxes, and I stay out of other people's business. How's that for redeeming?"
"See? Perfectly good role model," Jean pronounces. "Better trained than any of my college boyfriends, at least. Seriously, though, get them out of your apartment over the weekend. Take them sight-seeing. -Don't- let them con you into giving them money."
"Alternately," Jean muses. "You -could- leave them with your mother."
"Jesus Christ." A hand rakes wildly through hair, knuckles scraping against concrete to prompt a curse. "This is your idea of a good plan? Fuck me. Julia's a better plan. --You know them. Tell me what I should know. What're their sheets? I know their yellows; what about /them/?"
"I think it will be a learning experience for all three of you." Jean's answer comes in the richly-irritating tone of a teacher who's seen and taken advantage of an oppotunity to impart Life Skills. But, on the move again, leaving the room in favour of the elevator, and perhaps the cafeteria, she does relent enough, or take pity enough, to sketch out brief characters of "Cassy's a livewire, but she's been through a lot, between being a street kid to Worthington House, to Blindspot, to... this. I haven't been able to get really close to her, but I wonder how much of the pranks and the jokes are a shield. Mira's... a pretty normal kid, all in all. -Bright-. Knows it, too. She's got a good family -- her mother's no fool."
Rossi glances up at the apartment's lights again. Bodies move against the shade of the blinds. "If they blow up my home," he says flatly, "I'm considering us even. In between Forge electrocuting me and this, we're even. Tell baldie that, would you?"
"I'll... see that he hears about this." Eyes going absent after thumbing the elevator's call button, Jean mentally red-tags the telephone conversation for purposes of sharing later. "And like I said -- take them out of the apartment a lot, and don't let them back in 'til they're too tired to do more than watch TV. Toddlers, teenagers, dogs."
"I don't have either of those," Rossi reminds, his head settling against the cold stone again. Eyes half-lid, hiding the pale glimmer of color under shadow. "Toddlers or dogs. It's the teenagers that're the issue. --Hey. So how's-- You know. How's she doing?"
"Which 'she'?" Jean wonders, alone in the elevator, and with a wry glance at the button on the panel that would take her up to Kitty's room.
Rossi pauses warily. "How many are there?"
"About half the human race is female, Rossi," This bit of humour aside, Jean explains that "Kitty and Piotr got hit by a drunk driver on New Years, and Kitty's stuck intangible. I've been at Lennox pretty much straight, since that. Jubilee and Rogue... issues there." she concludes delicately. "Moira's rampaging about New York in fine form, although I don't think you've met her yet, and I haven't had time to sit down with Ororo since New Year's Eve Day. She was looking forward to seeing you then, though."
"Oh," Rossi says, and winces a little. "She was?" And then, heartfelt, adds a betraying little, "Fuck. --Sorry to hear about you-- wait. Stuck intangible? Damn. You guys ever take the holidays at anything slower than a sprint?"
Jean laughs at that, and resolutely stabs the button that will take her to where what passes for food in a hospital lives. "Not in a few years. S'a little telling that Logan got me two tickets to the Caribbean for Christmas... but without flight dates on them."
"Arm and a leg," Rossi judges, rubbing fingers across his forehead. "I'll see if -- I don't know a Moira. Should I know a Moira? What's her mutation? Natural disasters?" He exhales a writhing cloud of steam and braces himself against the wall. Up in the apartment, the lights turn off. Then they turn on again. He sighs. "Gimme advice, Grey. What does Cadbury like?"
"Moira MacTaggart," Jean clarifies. "Nobel laureate, baseline human, 'mother of the mutant race'... Charles' girlfriend." There's a small, private smirk as she says that, a hint of long-ago girl-child commenting on a parent's love life. But the auditory wince translates to her mind eventually, and the smirk turns to a wry smile. "How much apologizing do you need to do?"
"Nobel laureate." He repeats the phrase without giving it the attention due its importance, conversational filler to cover the mind's race. "Who says I need to apologize?"
"The fact that you want to know what she likes, it's not her birthday, past Christmas, and not yet Valentine's Day," Jean replies. "If you were the random small gift type, you'd already have cornered me to ask. Although I guess it -could- be a New Years resolution," she admits.
Rossi scrubs at his face, fingernails scraping against the receiver's mouthpiece. "It's not an apology," he informs. "I got nothing to apologize for -- except the timing, I guess. I drank a bit more than I thought. Doesn't matter. I just figured I'd do something nice for her. I can do nice shit," he adds defensively, the baritone hunching over preemptive hostility. "I'm capable."
"Uh-huh." But a beat later, Jean awards the phrase of "Potted plants." to the lucky contestant at the other end of the line. "Not cut flowers."
"Dammit." The detective stretches his jaw behind his hand, considering. "I suck at flowers. Plants. Florists. Whatever. What the hell kind of plant? I mean, cactus? Poison ivy? Venus flytrap? Marijuana?"
"Give her something that makes you think of her," Jean suggests. "So... I'd -hope- poison ivy wouldn't be on the list."
The pause is lengthy, and baffled. "What kind of plant would make someone think of me?" Rossi demands. "Dandelion? Something dead? What?"
"...I think I'd peg you as boxwood" Jean decides. "Tough, boxy hedge that keeps the garden in line, and the drunks off your lawn. But this isn't about me, it's about you, and what plant would make you think 'Ororo'. That's the one you get her, and then you can tell her why." There's a pause and a crooked smile, and the chime of an elevator releasing her. "Romantic and thoughtful, see?"
"I can't just give her chocolates?" Rossi asks. He is far too manly to be plaintive, but he certainly comes close.
"Hey, you wanted to know what -she- liked. Chocolates are a general double X chromosome thing." Jean is far too sympathetic a soul to be laughing at Rossi, but she certainly comes close.
The detective sighs and rubs at his eyes with his fingertips, birthing novas behind his eyelids. "Plants. Right. Something that makes her think of me. Fanfuckingtastic. I'll think about it. --Thanks, Grey. How you holding out? Hanging in there?"
"Or you of her." Jean agrees, before an ambivalent sort of noise escapes her. "Hanging," she agrees. "Sometimes by a thread. It'd be nice if people would stop breaking my kids for a bit."
"Nothing I can do about that," Rossi admits. He breathes into his palm, veiling his face in white mist. "Anything I can do for you that won't kick me off my sofa?"
"Naw," Jean assures, waving a dismissive hand even though Rossi can't see it. "I'm going to go see if the cafeteria has anything besides roast cardboard in gravy, then it's a shower, then it's a couple consults I got roped into taking a look at."
Rossi pushes off of the wall, turns one last glance up to the apartment light, then steps out onto the sidewalk. "Knock yourself out with that," he says wryly, checking automatically down the street before jogging across the moisture-slicked asphalt. "I got a couple of seriously scary teenagers shacking up in my bedroom."
"And I'm sure you'll take good care of them," Jean assures, before signing off with a "Don't get yourself shot."
"Fuck," he jags, and that must serve as his farewell. The phone flips shut under the jerk of a thumb. Detective Rossi takes the stairs up to the front door and keys himself inside.
[Log ends]
Rossi gets a little hysterical about the women in his bed. The little ones. TWO OF THEM. Jean is NOT HELPFUL.
The door to the bedroom is closed; the door to the apartment, likewise. Rossi is not in either. Bundled in a heavy leather overcoat, muffler wrapped around his throat, he prowls the sidewalk across from his complex, wrestling with his cell phones. Leather gloves do not assist dialing, programmed or no. "/Fuck/," he curses into the line. Somewhere in the city, a cell phone rings.
Hospitals such as Lennox Hill have rooms for their doctors as well as their patients. Not very stylish, more of a converted janitor's closet, but there is a metal bunk bed with utilitarian mattresses, a light that can be turned off, and a chance to catch a few minutes' sleep. It's to one of these that Jean has been summarily exiled, with orders that MRI experiments can wait until she's actually gotten some food and at least two hours of rest into her.
Jean's cell phone, unfortunately, has other ideas. U2 provides a more melodious ring than is traditional, but the hand that snaps out from the near mattress to strike at it is no less speedy, or less startled for it. "Jean," the answer is hoarse, and whispered muzzily.
"/Jean/," Rossi's voice grates from the other end, heedless of sleep or its confusion. "You're not Ororo. Crap. What did I--" The phone rasps through a hiss of wind. In the darkness of the sidewalk, the detective leans back against a wall and considers the lighted window of his apartment. "Screw it. You'll do. What the hell did I do to you poodles, anyway?"
"Wrong number?" Jean questions, alightly more alert and punctuated by an audible yawn, and then an equally audible bang, and a sharp "GodDAMNIT!" as she sits up, hits her head, and realizes she's taller than the bunk bed's lower bunk, in that order. "Jesus Christ..." is sighed into the darkness, as one hand massages the crown of her head, and the other presses her cell phone against her cheek, lighting the little room with the blue glow of the buttons. "What's got you questioning your karma today? I've been sitting at Lennox Hill for three days now, so I'm a little out of the loop."
Rossi hunches a bitter shoulder against the wind, sidestepping into the convenient hollow of a store's metal-grated front. "Two girls doing God knows what in my bedroom," he says into the phone, a hand pushing the lapel of his coat up to shield his face. "Who knows what shit they've found by now. I mean, Jesus Christ, I know baldie's missing a sense of humor, but -- Cassy and Mira?"
On the other end of the line, Jean's hand stops rubbing her head and clutches at her hair instead. "-You- got Cassy and Mira?" she questions, the incredulity in her tone not precisely flattering. Aloft, the other sleeping doctor in the room grumbles grumpily at the noise. Rising the rest of the way, after a final poke of her fingers against bruised and sulky scalp to make sure she's not bleeding, Jean makes a blind grab for her lab coat by the door, and wanders out.
"That's what I want to know," Rossi says, and even through the static on the line, his baritone is a sullen, moody thing. In person, he scuffs his foot against the concrete wall of his nook, worn, broken cop shoes rasping across the uneven surface. "They're not that bad yet, but I swear to fucking God, in about two hours one of them is gonna break into my gun safe and end up shooting herself through the knee."
"Take them to the zoo," is Jean's advice, as she steps into a room occupied only by an elderly coma patient. Some wag of a resident has left his for-purposes-of-stimulation TV playing episodes of House, M.D. "It works for -Nate-."
"Nate's, what. Three?"
"Three. And the difference between toddlers and teenagers isn't as much as you'd think," Jean states, with a wry twist of her lips. "They get into less trouble if they're too tired to think. Run them around the Bronx Zoo a few times... or wait." An actual idea occurs to Jean, and she taps at a lower lip. "Your sister's FDNY, right?"
"Julia," Rossi says with some resignation. "If you're seriously thinking about exposing her to them -- or them to her, I'm not sure which. Either way, it's bullshit." The shoe bumps a little more viciously against the wall. "Seriously. What'd I do? He need some asskissing or something? Because if that's what big baldie needs, that's what I'll do. I can kiss ass with the best of them."
"Cassy apparently wanted to be a firefighter, at one point," Jean explains her brainstorm, before a rude snort crosses the cellular airwaves. "The images from that would be priceless, but... no. Maybe he thinks you'll be a good influence?" she suggests. "Show them that not all examples of The Man are going to make trouble for them?'"
The silence on the phone is not complete; it is filled with the hum and whirl of background noise: passing traffic, a distant horn, the wail of a neighboring siren. "You've got to be shitting me," Rossi says. Incredulity paints his baritone dark. "Me, a good influence? Are you yanking my chain? Baldie's been a bit of a-- but he's not an /idiot/."
"My best friend's dating you," Jean points out, idly leaning forward to check the patient's charts, and just as idly sending out a tendril of telepathy to take a look at the quiescent brain behind the aging face. Helloooooo, anyone home? "You've got to have -some- redeeming virtue down there somewhere."
"I can make instant macaroni and cheese out of a box," Rossi says promptly, flattening his back against the wall before letting his head fall back. Black hair ruffles across his brow, wind-touched. "I put the toilet seat down if there's company. My apartment's clean, I pay my taxes, and I stay out of other people's business. How's that for redeeming?"
"See? Perfectly good role model," Jean pronounces. "Better trained than any of my college boyfriends, at least. Seriously, though, get them out of your apartment over the weekend. Take them sight-seeing. -Don't- let them con you into giving them money."
"Alternately," Jean muses. "You -could- leave them with your mother."
"Jesus Christ." A hand rakes wildly through hair, knuckles scraping against concrete to prompt a curse. "This is your idea of a good plan? Fuck me. Julia's a better plan. --You know them. Tell me what I should know. What're their sheets? I know their yellows; what about /them/?"
"I think it will be a learning experience for all three of you." Jean's answer comes in the richly-irritating tone of a teacher who's seen and taken advantage of an oppotunity to impart Life Skills. But, on the move again, leaving the room in favour of the elevator, and perhaps the cafeteria, she does relent enough, or take pity enough, to sketch out brief characters of "Cassy's a livewire, but she's been through a lot, between being a street kid to Worthington House, to Blindspot, to... this. I haven't been able to get really close to her, but I wonder how much of the pranks and the jokes are a shield. Mira's... a pretty normal kid, all in all. -Bright-. Knows it, too. She's got a good family -- her mother's no fool."
Rossi glances up at the apartment's lights again. Bodies move against the shade of the blinds. "If they blow up my home," he says flatly, "I'm considering us even. In between Forge electrocuting me and this, we're even. Tell baldie that, would you?"
"I'll... see that he hears about this." Eyes going absent after thumbing the elevator's call button, Jean mentally red-tags the telephone conversation for purposes of sharing later. "And like I said -- take them out of the apartment a lot, and don't let them back in 'til they're too tired to do more than watch TV. Toddlers, teenagers, dogs."
"I don't have either of those," Rossi reminds, his head settling against the cold stone again. Eyes half-lid, hiding the pale glimmer of color under shadow. "Toddlers or dogs. It's the teenagers that're the issue. --Hey. So how's-- You know. How's she doing?"
"Which 'she'?" Jean wonders, alone in the elevator, and with a wry glance at the button on the panel that would take her up to Kitty's room.
Rossi pauses warily. "How many are there?"
"About half the human race is female, Rossi," This bit of humour aside, Jean explains that "Kitty and Piotr got hit by a drunk driver on New Years, and Kitty's stuck intangible. I've been at Lennox pretty much straight, since that. Jubilee and Rogue... issues there." she concludes delicately. "Moira's rampaging about New York in fine form, although I don't think you've met her yet, and I haven't had time to sit down with Ororo since New Year's Eve Day. She was looking forward to seeing you then, though."
"Oh," Rossi says, and winces a little. "She was?" And then, heartfelt, adds a betraying little, "Fuck. --Sorry to hear about you-- wait. Stuck intangible? Damn. You guys ever take the holidays at anything slower than a sprint?"
Jean laughs at that, and resolutely stabs the button that will take her to where what passes for food in a hospital lives. "Not in a few years. S'a little telling that Logan got me two tickets to the Caribbean for Christmas... but without flight dates on them."
"Arm and a leg," Rossi judges, rubbing fingers across his forehead. "I'll see if -- I don't know a Moira. Should I know a Moira? What's her mutation? Natural disasters?" He exhales a writhing cloud of steam and braces himself against the wall. Up in the apartment, the lights turn off. Then they turn on again. He sighs. "Gimme advice, Grey. What does Cadbury like?"
"Moira MacTaggart," Jean clarifies. "Nobel laureate, baseline human, 'mother of the mutant race'... Charles' girlfriend." There's a small, private smirk as she says that, a hint of long-ago girl-child commenting on a parent's love life. But the auditory wince translates to her mind eventually, and the smirk turns to a wry smile. "How much apologizing do you need to do?"
"Nobel laureate." He repeats the phrase without giving it the attention due its importance, conversational filler to cover the mind's race. "Who says I need to apologize?"
"The fact that you want to know what she likes, it's not her birthday, past Christmas, and not yet Valentine's Day," Jean replies. "If you were the random small gift type, you'd already have cornered me to ask. Although I guess it -could- be a New Years resolution," she admits.
Rossi scrubs at his face, fingernails scraping against the receiver's mouthpiece. "It's not an apology," he informs. "I got nothing to apologize for -- except the timing, I guess. I drank a bit more than I thought. Doesn't matter. I just figured I'd do something nice for her. I can do nice shit," he adds defensively, the baritone hunching over preemptive hostility. "I'm capable."
"Uh-huh." But a beat later, Jean awards the phrase of "Potted plants." to the lucky contestant at the other end of the line. "Not cut flowers."
"Dammit." The detective stretches his jaw behind his hand, considering. "I suck at flowers. Plants. Florists. Whatever. What the hell kind of plant? I mean, cactus? Poison ivy? Venus flytrap? Marijuana?"
"Give her something that makes you think of her," Jean suggests. "So... I'd -hope- poison ivy wouldn't be on the list."
The pause is lengthy, and baffled. "What kind of plant would make someone think of me?" Rossi demands. "Dandelion? Something dead? What?"
"...I think I'd peg you as boxwood" Jean decides. "Tough, boxy hedge that keeps the garden in line, and the drunks off your lawn. But this isn't about me, it's about you, and what plant would make you think 'Ororo'. That's the one you get her, and then you can tell her why." There's a pause and a crooked smile, and the chime of an elevator releasing her. "Romantic and thoughtful, see?"
"I can't just give her chocolates?" Rossi asks. He is far too manly to be plaintive, but he certainly comes close.
"Hey, you wanted to know what -she- liked. Chocolates are a general double X chromosome thing." Jean is far too sympathetic a soul to be laughing at Rossi, but she certainly comes close.
The detective sighs and rubs at his eyes with his fingertips, birthing novas behind his eyelids. "Plants. Right. Something that makes her think of me. Fanfuckingtastic. I'll think about it. --Thanks, Grey. How you holding out? Hanging in there?"
"Or you of her." Jean agrees, before an ambivalent sort of noise escapes her. "Hanging," she agrees. "Sometimes by a thread. It'd be nice if people would stop breaking my kids for a bit."
"Nothing I can do about that," Rossi admits. He breathes into his palm, veiling his face in white mist. "Anything I can do for you that won't kick me off my sofa?"
"Naw," Jean assures, waving a dismissive hand even though Rossi can't see it. "I'm going to go see if the cafeteria has anything besides roast cardboard in gravy, then it's a shower, then it's a couple consults I got roped into taking a look at."
Rossi pushes off of the wall, turns one last glance up to the apartment light, then steps out onto the sidewalk. "Knock yourself out with that," he says wryly, checking automatically down the street before jogging across the moisture-slicked asphalt. "I got a couple of seriously scary teenagers shacking up in my bedroom."
"And I'm sure you'll take good care of them," Jean assures, before signing off with a "Don't get yourself shot."
"Fuck," he jags, and that must serve as his farewell. The phone flips shut under the jerk of a thumb. Detective Rossi takes the stairs up to the front door and keys himself inside.
[Log ends]
Rossi gets a little hysterical about the women in his bed. The little ones. TWO OF THEM. Jean is NOT HELPFUL.