5/7/07 - Magneto
Two stories of mansion north of New York City, dimmed lights, and live classical music make for a dignified gathering of old white men (and a few women as well, though most of them seem to be a great deal younger and carrying trays of alcohol and appetizer). Conversation is a constant low murmer regarding many fascinating topics. The classification of mutation as a genetic disease. Mutant conspiracy in the government. Mind control and weapons of mass destruction.
Erik is on the fringes of the worst of it. Sipping idly at an elegant flute of champagne, he watches and listens without a tremendous amount of expression or reaction. Another old white male in the shadows close to the wall in a tuxedo that is black upon black upon black, as usual. No cause for concern, here.
Something of more concern in the younger men who wander through the occasion, clad in tuxedos that fit ill -- or rest uneasily on shoulders unaccustomed to such rented finery. Earpieces, unobtrusively flesh-colored, betray their affiliation if the hum of metal under jackets does not otherwise give it away. Security: New York's Finest, some. Rented arms, others. No cause for attention, here. Except. Except except except.
Uncomfortable in a black tuxedo of his own, thick brows angled low, Det. Chris Rossi follows a tray of puffy pastry things out of the recesses of the building into the gathering itself. He is resplendent in his borrowed garb, almost (not quite) to the manner born. Innate arrogance and hostility substitute for true self-confidence in such an environment. Scarred fingers worry at square cufflinks, black onyx in a bed of silver: that much, like the guns at hip and strapped to the ankle, is real.
Magneto is comfortable. Oddly so, all things considered -- his posture prim and upright beneath the close-tailored lines of tux, cuffs, and collar. He sips as he prints face after wrinkled face into his memory. He says little and does less. UNTIL. Until weaponry accompanied by familiar metal repair work crosses through the wide open space ahead. The slightest of magnetic buzzes traces through the latter. And then the earpiece goes silent.
The detective stumbles a little, a shiver interrupting his smooth stride. It takes a moment longer for him to register the earbud's silence -- reports are not ongoing, after all, and the partygoers are not the wildest of bunches. He stops on the edge of the floor, his hand going to his ear. Eyes harden under the swift lowering of eyelids; his gaze skips hastily around the room. Old men. Old men everywhere. He turns, searching, his right hand checked over the panel of his tuxedo coat.
One corner of Erik's mouth curls gently upward over the rim of his glass when Rossi turns. He swallows the rest of his champagne, drops his glass, and pushes away from the wall at his back to enter the bare edge of the light cast off by one of the room's few sources. The shadows it casts beneath brows, nose, and jaw briefly make his identity unmistakeable, but in half a beat, he is gone again. Moving forward.
Bodies everywhere -- but somewhere along the line, Rossi has learned to recognize the way the man moves. Familiarity snipes at the periphery of his vision, and he turns his head sharply to track it, too late. More bodies herd. His hand contracts, the ring on its finger winking dull, sullen red in a bed of gold. With a muttered apology he pushes through guests, a dog on the hunt for an old, canny lion. His other hand grabs at a fellow officer in passing. He murmurs: what? Something. The guard looks after him, blank.
Another tremor. A ghostly touch, hardly there at all. Erik is having no trouble at all keeping tabs on his detective, for all the apparent trouble the detective is having in attempting to keep tabs on /him/. He circles around wide, prowling again at the party's edges to avoid the odd glance thrown his way. The occasional stalled conversation as somebody /wonders/ drifts in his wake, but most of them shake it off, and his track finally begins to curve in after Christopher.
Rossi pauses nearly in the center of the room, turning in circles once more to track the source of that unnerving, familiar tickle in his bones. His face is intent, professional, stripped clean of extraneous irritation. Ignore, please, the quick leap of a muscle in his jaw and the way cords stand out in his throat as he scopes out the room, a wary dervish in the middle of luxury. Passersby eye him askance and mutter behind their hands. Really, it's impossible to find good hired help these days.
He pauses. He stares through a mass of bodies, eyes narrowed. Shoulders stiffen. He does not need speech to say it. Where. The. Fuck.
A few short meters away, Erik is enjoying himself with a touch here from one direction - a prod there, from another. He is distinguished from those around him, now, stiff shoulders and cold eyes squared directly to Rossi where the others mingle at all angles around him. A rock in the bigot stream.
Erik may be the man with the feather, but Rossi makes a very bad kitten. He twitches first one way or another, answering those little pokes of magnetism, then sinks his heels into the ground and makes one last circuit. A shift in the current; a knot in the flow of bodies. Green eyes sweep past Magneto, widen marginally, then swing back. You. Chris's mouth moves in a soundless, four-letter word. It requires no imagination at all to interpret it.
Yes. Erik smiles thin when Christopher finally manages to get a lock. The lazy hand he lifts for an odd sort of half-wave is accompanied by a more forceful magnetic shove back into the clump of aging baby boomers at Rossi's back.
Chris staggers back. The gathering of older men behind him, knocked like bowling pins by the more solid weight of the NYPD ball, breaks apart with a crash of dropped glasses and scattered hors d'oeuvres. They are well-bred bigots, at least. Their immediate expostulations are well-modulated, and notable for severe, restrained eloquence. The cop pays no attention. Sleeve dampened by champagne, a stray fried prawn pawed off his lapel, he bulldogs his way forward towards Erik, a hand readied to catch the man by the elbow. Body language. Let's you and me go for a walk, ASSHOLE.
Not quite anticipating such a /direct/ response, Erik is caught somewhat by surprise, and has no time to do anything more than pull his arm belatedly out of the way, leaving his upper arm and back more accessable than the backwards jab of his elbow. And still, he chuckles. Christopher is displeased. He has made a fuss. Things could be worse.
Stained and rumpled as Chris is, he is not so foolhardy as to manhandle Erik Lensherr, Master of Magnetism, Magneto himself, out of a crowded party.
No, wait. He is.
"Outside," Chris orders, his arm reaching to sling around Erik's shoulders, the image of a man meeting an old (old, old, old!) buddy by surprise. Teeth flash in the quick slash of a smile; if it has a somewhat harder edge than true affability might demand, well. Who can blame him? "How about we check out the balcony? The view's a hoot."
Decidedly more comfortable and confident in treacherous waters, Erik has no compunctions about pushing an arm of his own around Rossi's back in return. He is clean cut and well-groomed, grizzled beard grazed close to his jaw and silver hair neatly styled, and he moves with dignity and grace despite the parasite he has acquired. "As you wish. Are you alright? You seem distressed."
"Can't imagine why," Chris says -- almost sings, his harsh baritone growing briefly melodious -- as he steers their steps towards the french doors nearby. He stiffens but submits to Erik's arm, the line of his jaw carved out by a rough chisel. He, too, is clean cut and well-groomed, hair in order, jaw shaved, and if his stalk is a little stiff-legged and more reminiscent of a suspicious rottweiler's than a man heading out for a smoke with his best pal, surely he can be excused. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Celebrating the mutant problem?" Erik tries without real hope for deception, his brows lifted and innocent. What else would he be doing here? "I must say, I am surprised to see /you/ here. I am almost /certain/ that you socialize with the afflicted on a reasonably regular basis." Erik gestures the french doors open a little carelessly with a flick of his free hand.
Chris says with fresh exasperation, "I need the money, and you never know what kind of low-lifes show up to these things. You never heard of subtlety?" It fails as a reproach, given that it emerges as more of a lyric than a question. He steps up his pace out of the room. The night outside is cool and sweet, the day's heat having given way to a pleasant breeze and night-blooming flowers. With the socializing taking place inside, the balcony is empty of company; broad and terraced, it looks out over a steep hill of equally expensive homes and views.
"However do you determine what qualifies as a 'low-life' in these conditions?" Much as they opened, the doors sweep silently closed after them, dimming conversation and music to little more than a muffled murmer behind them. Has Erik ever heard of subtlety? Perhaps not. He drops the arm he has around Christopher and moves to step away for the balcony's ornate railing. "I will hire you, if you are in such dire need."
"The Friends, in case you were wondering," Chris bites out through gritted teeth. His voice jangles, melody battling with monotone, with mixed success. He closes fists around the iron of the railing and leans, stiff-armed, to frown across the landscape. "Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass. You still owe me a good leather overcoat. Not to mention a fucking car."
"The Friends of Humanity? /Here/? What a terrible coincidence." Brows knit, theatrically muddled, Erik braces his hands firmly against cool iron as he too peers harshly out over the lay of the land. "I could simply destroy the entire building."
Chris's hands tighten. Knuckles press white through the scarred skin. "You could," he says. His voice shivers a little, stapled down at the edges, and he glances askance at Erik with eyes made colorless by the dark. Dryly, he adds, "I'd rather you didn't."
Magneto's, in turn, are bleached light by what little moon there is to see by. They knife from the open space beyond the balcony to Rossi, and then back out again. Calculating.
"Don't," Chris says, the word stark and sharp. A little less abruptly, he adds, "Or else I'll start singing again, and -- Christ on a pogo stick, I don't think I could stand that."
A slow breath gruffed through his sinuses, Erik firms his grip about the iron in it until the metal conforms to the shape of his hand, creaking mild protest that is lost easily enough in an oncoming breeze.
The detective does not breathe for a moment, his shoulders rising around his ears, then exhales with a impatient jerk of the same. He props his elbows on the railing and knits his fingers loosely together to scowl out at the dark. There is silence for a little while. It is not, perhaps, entirely restful.
"It would look like an accident."
Chris's hands make fists. "I haven't recognized any Friends inside."
"You didn't recognize any terrorists either." Erik turns his head slowly to narrow cold eyes along the railing at Rossi.
Teeth show bright, moon-flecked. It is not a smile. Chris straightens, less spry than in months past. "You want to wipe out an entire building full of people on the off chance you might get someone who doesn't like mutants."
"None of them like mutants, or haven't you been paying attention?" Erik pushes off the railing, a restless military pace carrying him close to the balcony's middle.
"People change their minds." Chris's voice bites, the Brooklyn accent bleeding across his baritone. Not irritation so much as -- strain, perhaps. He shoves his hands in his pockets, ruining the line of his jacket. "Bunch of bored rich people. Today they swing one way, tomorrow they swing another. You don't kill people just because they don't like you."
"Government revolves around the wealthy. You are fooling yourself if you believe that nothing will come of these gatherings." Squared hands closed into fists, Erik pauses only briefly before brooding onward to the opposite end of the balcony. "I am under no obligation to explain myself to you."
Chris's hands dig fiercely into his pockets. He watches Erik under lowered brows, eyes wary in a blank face. "You're the one who's talking," he says. "You tear this place down, a hundred more will pop up to replace each one who dies."
"I will kill them too," says the man who has not really bothered with killing anyone who did not very much deserve it in quite some time, now. Back turned to Rossi, Erik braces back against the railing and scowls.
"Ever hear about an eye for an eye and the whole world's blind?" The cop takes a step back, measuring the gap between himself and Erik with critical eyes. They knife from the open space beyond the balcony to Erik, and then back out again. Calculating. He sinks his shoulders into the doorposts and waits, frame tight.
"No." Erik has not. He remains upright and rigid. Noble, perhaps, although certainly lacking something. "I suspect that anyone who has the time on their hands to sit around and think of those sorts of things does not have any idea of what they are talking about."
Chris chuffs a quiet snort, the ring on his finger winking as he scrubs at the lower half of his face. "Gandhi," he supplies. "Mahatma. Skinny Indian guy. Sat around and pissed off the British. You don't strike me as the Boddhisatva type," he allows, slouching a little more comfortably against the wood. "Or whatever it is that the Hindus call it. You don't ever get tired of blowing shit up and killing people?"
Magneto frowns harder, attention turned firmly inward despite the ongoing scrape of his eyes over the surrounding hills. "Mahatma Gandhi was a human." So there. "I tire of being ineffectual."
Silence answers him. It is watchful. Alive. A hunted animal learns to recognize the footsteps of its enemy. "If I were a priest," Chris says, "I'd tell you to go to confession. Burden of sins, and all that jazz."
"I trust that God is fully aware of what I have done and what I have wished to do." As his transgressions are glaring and plentiful. He probably has an entire album of Magneto-involved transgressions that requires constant maintinence to remain up to date. Erik tucks his scruffed chin to scowl down at the bony curl of his knuckles around the railing.
Chris drags himself up against the wall. Inside, near the closed door, masculine voices rise in a small debate that barely scratches the surface of argument, hampered as it is by pure civility. "Road to hell and good intentions," he says. He ambles forward again, limping a little, to lean on the same railing that supports Erik. "It takes more than a generation to make a change, man. They've barely started. It's only been, what. A decade since people found out about mutations?"
Magneto gives Chris a look that is unmistakably skeptical and condescending. He is young and stupid and human, worst of all. "Ah, well, When you phrase it just so--" Erik pushes back from the railing and turns back for the doors, "I will be in my apartment, drawing up plans for world peace."
And yet Magneto continues to haunt him, like a boil on his backside. A boil in thigh-high boots. Chris straightens. "I'll see you out," he says, falling into step beside Erik, and -- because he is young and stupid and human, worst of all -- slings his arm around Magneto's shoulders, a buddy, a pal, a mensch. "Maybe we can get you some of those little crab puffs on the way."
He is not so tolerant this time. Coarse and irritable, Erik pistons a bony elbow into Rossi's gut in time with a shoulder-driven shove whose message is fairly clear. He is no longer in the mood.
The detective is a solid enough mass, but bony elbows, well. Chris, already reaching for the doors, lets out a whoosh of air at that unfriendly gesture. Mean! He hiccups, coughing through the unexpected exhalation: a so-dignified picture to present to the room inside as one of the french doors swings open. Startled, mild eyes frown at the incoming pair. Honestly. The /quality/ of Security these days--
Magneto does not so much as spare Christopher a glance over his shoulder. He pushes in through the open door and onward with broad shoulders braced against anyone foolhardly enough to cross his path. Where he goes, nobody knows!
[Log ends]
Chris runs into everybody's favorite terrorist mastermind when Erik crashes a party Rossi's working security for. Two hot men in tuxes. Small shrimp hors d'oeuvres. What could go wrong?