7/18/07 - Beckah
---
Rebecca Reed strikes a pretty noticeable figure. It is helped even more by the success of the new club that she stands as the musical face for. Purgatory is a success, a mutant friendly and Inner Circle patroled success, and so she has been getting a lot more recognition. The four armed woman is walking the sidewalk in Brooklyn, doing her best to avoid being too much of a spectacle. Her dreadlocks are tied back in a loose tail, wrapped over by a black bandana. She's wearing her glasses today too, their black frames throwing off the lines of her pierced up face. A pair of plastic bags loaded with big square dustsleeves on vinyl records swing from her upper left hand. Her ower pair are crossed over her stomach as she walks, in typical 'pay no attention to the arms behind the curtain' fashion. She is still a sore thumb.
Christopher Rossi, on the other hand, is a sore body, which trumps sore thumb in that it involves more skin, more muscle, more bone, and more blood. Dourly clad in a thin leather jacket and jeans, he steps off the bottom stair of his apartment complex with a duffel slung over his shoulder, black hair tugged by the draft of his own movement. His face is a lovesome thing of sickly green bruises and healing scabs; the stiffness of his movements signals more injury under the clothes, the dark blue turtleneck folded high to frame his jaw.
At the curb, a long black car waits for the man with a magazine-reading attendant leaned against the hood. The detective stops, looks at the car, then turns around. Never mind. Going back /up/--
It is in this reversal of direction that Beckah takes notice of her favorite cop. At first, she does not note the bruises and scabs, but only a familiar face and shape. "Hey! Chris!" So much for trying to be low key. She hastens a few steps toward him, blissfully unaware of the car, it's attendant, or his magazine. "Chris!" she calls a second time, to make sure he notices her before disappearing up into his building. Once she is a few steps closer, the shadow of bruising on his face comes into sight. "Ooh, shit," she declares.
Not at all low key. The broad, slouched frame stiffens, half-turning. By the car, the waiting man straightens and moves, with a haste and grace that speaks of dangerous training -- /cop/, it shouts, before he subsides and pauses, waiting with sharpened attention for....
...for Chris to recognize the accosting voice and relax, his face clearing. One step down again, back to street level, and: "Becks." His baritone, always dark, is gravel-black and hoarse. He shifts his duffel with an awkward shift of his shoulder. Green eyes skip down, then up again. "You got four arms."
"Have since I was like fifteen," she notes with a little smile. Beck's cheeks flush a tad at the fact that she had forgotten Rossi knew she was a mutant, but not exactly how she was. "Surprise?" She smiles a little awkwardly as she finishes closing the space between them. "You okay man?" she asks, eyes roaming over him and trying to take stock of his injuries. "Looks like you've had some... stuff."
'Stuff.' Chris's mouth twitches towards a crooked half-smile, one that almost (not quite) reaches the pale flicker of eyes. The man at the car eases himself back against the hood, an eloquent glance meeting the detective's. "I look like shit," he translates, and drops the bag. It bumps against the stairs, sagging to a puffy slouch; less elegantly, Chris follows it down, folding with caution to take up a seat on the bottom steps. "I had a thing. The usual. How you been?"
"Busy man, busy," Beckah shares with a little laugh. Her smile is growing in much the way it always does when she finds her favorite detective. There is something in that snark that puts her at ease. Her lower arms unwrap from her middle, which is considerably more fit and trim than previous impressions of her had implied. "New club open, thing's a big hit. It's keeping me on my toes." She lifts her own bag, "Out buyin' new music to play."
"Heard about it," Chris admits, carefully positioning his elbows on his knees to hang his torso off them. His head dips, the upper edge of his nape bared; a fold of the cloth bares more stripes of ugly olive green and purple, dyed in a vivid bruise across the skin of his neck. "Meant to go check it out. Got busy. Probably wouldn't have let me in anyway," he adds thoughtfully, to his toes. A sidelong glance quizzes Beckah. "You're hot stuff."
Beckah grins at Rossi in playful predation. "You didn't say that when you thought I was a fatty," she notes. She lets out a laugh, though, to show there is no hard feeling. "Why wouldn't they let you in? Christ man, just say you're with me and you'll be through the door faster than a blonde girl with big boobs." She winces at the sigh of more bruising on his neck. "Jesus Christ, Chris. Someone really worked you over, huh? You sure you're okay?" Concern pushes her brows together beneath the black rims of her glasses.
Chris reaches for his collar, touching the fabric as though to push it up over the marks -- then drops his hand, grimacing. "Fuck," he offers by way of resignation. A strain of blackened self-contempt rides under the word, tainting the rest of the thought. "I'm like one of those goddamn abused wives. Magneto tried to kill me the other night. Shit happens. I'll live. --Thought they had some kind of policy about humans at that new club."
Beckah's eyes go a little wide at hearing what happened there. "Magneto? Are you--" She stops and makes a very weird face, pursing her lips tightly shut and lowering her brows. "That isn't cool." She crosses her lower arms again, and one upper one as well ends up across her chest, holding it's opposite's elbow. "There's no rule about humans, man. The only rule is that no one is going to get any shit for being a mutant it here. People can relax and be themselves, you know?" Her smile shows that this is definitely something she is proud of and something with her conviction behind it. The smile though, is oddly reluctant to show up after her aborted question ab out Magneto.
"Mmf," says Chris, letting his head loll down again, as though its weight is too much for him to support on his own. He turns it slightly, once more to give Beckah a glance over the line of his arm. "Nice," he thinks to add after a thoughtful moment. "You can be a four-armed kewpie doll, and I can be a jackass, and everything's perfect in this perfect of all perfect worlds."
A boot lifts a little, like she's considering giving him a kick for his sarcasm. She thinks the better of it though, probably sympathy over the ass-beating he has had recently. "Hey, it isn't all sunshine and lollipops. Security is tighter than fuck to make sure no one, human or mutant, does anything stupid." She shrugs her shoulders, "I'm tired of feeling like I have to hide from people and I like the idea of helping with a place where other people don't gotta hide. What's so wrong with that?"
Chris looks back down at his feet. Cop shoes. Hi, Chris. Hi, shoes. "Who's complaining?" he asks them, laconic in his drawl. A bit sulkily, he adds, "People watch me all the time to make sure I don't do anything stupid. Wave hi to the fucking Irish babysitter on the corner. You have your own shadow? You haven't really made it until you got a portable bodyguard. I'm not talking the latex condom type."
"I have them at work. Does that count or am I still a nobody?" She smiles a bit more playfully now, moving up a couple of steps so that she can lean against a wall while she talks. Her bag swings against her leg a couple of times with plastic rustling noises. "So this whole Magneto thing. How come he tore you up so bad?" Perhaps a slip, perhaps a bet on his use of an abusive wife in his imagery, "He doesn't usually do that if you see him?"
The detective's shoulders hitch into a crooked shrug. "Mmf," Chris says again, pushing himself up to rake fingers through his hair. Bared, the wide brow shows a long cut running across the angle of his right eyebrow; he lowers his hand and flattens it on his thigh, ignoring the small tremor that makes its grip unsteady. "Who the fuck knows? It's Magneto. He didn't get the memo about how I'm a charming, lovable son of a bitch. All part of the glamorous life of being a cop. He show up at your club?"
"Nah, haven't seen anyone so notorious in there." This is technically true! Erik has not been in the building while it is open yet! Beckah is not lying! Really! She instead chuckles, "If he did, he'd probably fall in love with the place. It's all industrial themed in there, lots of metal." She does not, however, seem to think this is as dangerous as it could be seen. "The craziest thing we've had in there was that Zenith chick, what's her real name? Zoe, yeah, she showed up opening night and danced in the air for us."
"Zoe," Chris says, and drops his face in his hand. Fingers muffle what he says next. It is probably obscene.
Obscenity breeds interest. Beckah leans forward with a curious grin blossoming on her face. "Zoe what?"
Fingers splay open a little. One discomfort-dulled green eye lowers at Beckah. "Forget it," Chris says, half the words slurred against his palm. "I know her, is all. Knew her," he amends. "She a regular?"
"Knew her? Like Biblically Knew her?" Beckah can't help herself. Rossi's opened up her immature side and she is hiding behind it firmly. "I wouldn't say regular. I'm pretty sure someone got her an invitation to the opening party to make sure we had a famous mutant there."
Chris says flatly, "Christ. You have a dirty mind, Kewpie doll. You can't go around asking a guy if he's screwed random chicks. Isn't there supposed to be some kind of rule about that?" His hand lowers, fisting against the low stone steps. The knuckles' scabs show shiny against the skin, crinkling with the spread of fingers. "How're things with you and your boyfriend?"
The four-armed 'doll' smirks brightly back at him. "In other words, you nailed her, huh?" She isn't relenting one inch. Her tone fades considerably though at the mention of that boyfriend. "We haven't spoken in like two months. There was this... thing."
"'Thing,'" Chris echoes, one of his eyebrows arching. The expression pulls other cuts askew, tugging skin awry. "What thing? --I didn't say I nailed her. Jesus."
"Well, uh..." Beck trails off for a moment, trying to find the right way to phrase this. "I've got this friend who shows up at my place unannounced sometimes. Just kind of waltzes up like he owns the place and raids my booze. You ever had a friend like that?" She continues without waiting for the answer to the question, scratching behind one ear at knowing what she just said and how it might register with the detective. "Andre walked in one night while he was there and he flipped out at me."
Chris's shoulders quiver in a soundless laugh that shows oddly mirthless on the harsh, battered face. "Wouldn't say a friend," he says to no one in particular, his gaze drifting somewhere beyond the Irishman on the curb. "Magneto used to do that to me. Didn't peg Andre for the jealous type."
With an awkward little chuckle, Beckah nods her head. "Yeah." Perhaps that is not the normal sort of a reply to stories of Magneto and booze-raiding. She runs a hand back through her dreadlocks, "He lost it pretty good and I threw him out of my place. I was drunk to begin with. And I haven't seen him sense. Pretty much hard to accomplish living next door. I get the feeling he's dodging me."
"Two months," Chris says. He props his chin on the backs of hands that fold closed around each other to halt the slightest of tremors. "Takes two to avoid for that long, pinky. Given your proximity. You done with him?"
"I don't think he understands me much, man." She shrugs her shoulders slowly, with the kind of achey finality of a break-up one didn't plan, but isn't taking back. "I think he's still about 17 in the head. I'm not too much of a cow, right Chris?" Beck asks, with sudden concern.
"You're a barking heifer," Chris says promptly. "You can't help it. You got boobs."
Becks carries on as if Rossi hadn't been Rossi. "We were going out since late December, something in there. He still hadn't kissed me on the lips. He's got issues."
"I'm not kissing you on the lips."
"Good! I don't want to get whatever STD you caught from screwing Zenith." Beckah crosses her lower arms more tightly once more, trying her best to look smug.
Chris looks at Beckah, his eyes blank. The thousand yard stare, to the third power. "Or anywhere else," he completes. "Admittedly, I got issues, but fuck me. I think I've earned mine. So you dating this -- guy, whatever, person, you got showing up in your apartment?"
Beckah actually chokes over that question. "No, no. Hell no." She shakes her head, laughing out her discomfort with the idea. "Actually, I made him pretty mad the other night. So not even if I wanted to. He's too old for me. I kind of have a thing for someone else but..." She waves the subject off. "How about you? Still with uh, what's her name? Something all exotic sounding, right?"
"Cadbury." Chris refocuses with slow difficulty, his gaze skating across her once, twice, before the third time snags and hooks long enough for him to blink and frown. Something like the old humor quirks his mouth. "Exotic if you've never eaten a chocolate. Yeah, we're still together, more or less. She's got work, I got--" Again, a small, soundless quiver of his shoulders. "--I got Magneto. Makes it hard to hook up. Heading over there for a few days."
After all of this, she makes a weird little face. She pulls her brows together and wrinkles her nose. "You're a cop and all, right? So if something /really/ fucking weird were going on the city, you'd know about it, right?" Beck chuckles a little bit at asking this, like she isn't so sure of herself in it.
The strained baritone manages to sound wry through the grate of healing. "Spill it, Becks. What's going on?"
"So I heard this rumor. About there being two Magneto's." She shrugs her shoulders, trying to sound completely noncommital and trying to keep herself tucked neatly behind the barrier of it.
Chris is not noticeably moved, though it is possible -- barely possible -- that the green eyes sharpen behind the sleepy almost-smile droop of his eyelids. "Yeah? Where'd you hear that?"
"This friend of mine. The one that hits up my booze supplies." Beckah seems interested in the facade of Rossi's building, looking up at it and away from him.
"And where'd your friend hear that?"
"Dunno man. He didn't tell me." She is at least being honest there.
"Funny thing to tell you," Chris observes, one hand twitching in an abortive gesture before it closes again, safe and tight around the other hand. "Not all that many people know about Magneto. I mean, to talk about him beyond -- 'hey, did you see the newspaper today' sort of stuff."
"It just made me wonder, you know? I heard this weird ass rumor about him. Then I see how bad he roughed you up..." Beckah sighs a little bit, deciding that this is the moment in which her glasses need to be adjusted and her bandana needs to be tugged into the perfect position. "Kind of made me think."
The green eyes skew towards Beckah. They blink sleepily. "Think what?"
"What if it was the /other/ Magneto that hurt you? You know, not the one you know."
Chris says mildly, "Magneto's a terrorist. He's killed -- fuck. Dozens of people. Probably more than are on the books. You find something inconsistent in him trying to kill another cop?"
"You said he shows up at your place, right? You've got Magneto, like you said." Beckah's smile is not nearly so confident or genuine as it usually is. She's still not so good at lying to people she trusts. "It seemed inconsistent like that."
"Only if he isn't a sociopath," Chris points out, unknitting his fingers to bury the lower half of his face behind their lattice. He regards her with dispassionate interest. "They do that sort of shit. Make friends with people and then kill them. Seems pretty typical for a terrorist."
"Yeah, you got a point there," she admits. With a little chuckle, she shrugs her shoulders. "Just something I thought would be interesting to mention, you know?" Beck leans to glance down the street, "I should probably, you know, take off." Now that she has been awkward, it is time to escape.
Chris does not move, making a leash of his very stillness. His frame sags a little further; the shadows of fatigue across his face deepen, accentuating an uncharacteristic vulnerability. "Hate it when people steal my booze," he says at seeming random, and rubs idly at the hollow of his temple. "Guy who shows up in my apartment drinks all my scotch. Yours?"
"Every fucking drop of my whiskey when I have it. He hits the vodka when I'm out." Beckah shrugs her shoulders. Chris's technique at keeping her in place has succeeded. She likes the man too damn much to simply turn her back on him and walk away. Especially when he is looking at her with the kind of expression he is wearing at that moment.
Chris draws his fingertips across closed eyes, massaging the parchment-thin eyelids. "Whiskey," he says a bit hollowly. "Corner liquor store thinks I'm a lush. What exactly did your visitor say about Magneto? You remember how he said it?"
"Weird shit, Chris. Real weird shit." She shakes her dreadlocked head slowly, letting out a little sigh. "I didn't hear too much about it. Same conversation where I pissed the guy off is where he told me this weird rumor crap." Beck then adds, "I tell the guy at my liquor place that I have a lot of parties"
"Magneto's got a twin. Just like that?"
"Weirder, man." Beckah chuckles once more, though this time it has more to do with expecting disbelief. "A bunch of stuff about how there's this second Magneto in the city, Magneto from like an alternate reality. Like Bizzaro World in the comics or the mirror universe on Star Trek." She winces a bit behind her glasses, clearly bracing for the laughter she assumes is coming.
Green eyes flare, looking at Beckah for a single, frozen heartbeat: the alien, clinical regard of a raptor watching a field mouse. "Just like," Chris says in a curiously unaccented voice, Brooklyn's tincture sheared away. He lowers his head again. The scarred hands tremble a little, finding their way to his head to slide through silver-streaked hair. There is no artifice in the deep voice's quaver. "Jesus Christ. I'm so tired."
Worriedly, Beckah moves to put herself down onto the step beside Rossi. The quivering of his hands and the sound of his voice shocking her way out of her little line-walking routine. "Man, Chris, are you sure you're okay? You need a drink or something?"
Chris flinches away from proximity, dropping his hands and straightening with an abruptness that jerks a hiss out between his teeth. "I can't do this right now. Fuck this. You tell your friend--" He pushes off from the steps, snagging his duffel with a hand as he goes. The Irishman waiting with increasing impatience nearby pushes off the car, eyebrows lifting inquiringly. "--You tell him, 'the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.'"
Color Beckah clueless instead of her usual overly bright red. "Uh. You got it, Chris." She watches him go, the pain evident in his movements making her wince.
Remain clueless. Chris limps his way towards the car, ignoring his companion's droll commentary as he opens the passenger side and helpfully shoves the detective in like a maladroit porter. He is getting a ride to his destination, at least; the scorned babysitter casts a final, interested glance at Beckah before rounding the car's front to drop into the driver's seat.
The engine roars to life. Rossi does not look at Beckah again.
[Log ends]
Beckah runs into Rossi on his way to Xavier House. Beckah spills some beans. Rossi is too chewed up to deal with it. Life is hard. :(
Rebecca Reed strikes a pretty noticeable figure. It is helped even more by the success of the new club that she stands as the musical face for. Purgatory is a success, a mutant friendly and Inner Circle patroled success, and so she has been getting a lot more recognition. The four armed woman is walking the sidewalk in Brooklyn, doing her best to avoid being too much of a spectacle. Her dreadlocks are tied back in a loose tail, wrapped over by a black bandana. She's wearing her glasses today too, their black frames throwing off the lines of her pierced up face. A pair of plastic bags loaded with big square dustsleeves on vinyl records swing from her upper left hand. Her ower pair are crossed over her stomach as she walks, in typical 'pay no attention to the arms behind the curtain' fashion. She is still a sore thumb.
Christopher Rossi, on the other hand, is a sore body, which trumps sore thumb in that it involves more skin, more muscle, more bone, and more blood. Dourly clad in a thin leather jacket and jeans, he steps off the bottom stair of his apartment complex with a duffel slung over his shoulder, black hair tugged by the draft of his own movement. His face is a lovesome thing of sickly green bruises and healing scabs; the stiffness of his movements signals more injury under the clothes, the dark blue turtleneck folded high to frame his jaw.
At the curb, a long black car waits for the man with a magazine-reading attendant leaned against the hood. The detective stops, looks at the car, then turns around. Never mind. Going back /up/--
It is in this reversal of direction that Beckah takes notice of her favorite cop. At first, she does not note the bruises and scabs, but only a familiar face and shape. "Hey! Chris!" So much for trying to be low key. She hastens a few steps toward him, blissfully unaware of the car, it's attendant, or his magazine. "Chris!" she calls a second time, to make sure he notices her before disappearing up into his building. Once she is a few steps closer, the shadow of bruising on his face comes into sight. "Ooh, shit," she declares.
Not at all low key. The broad, slouched frame stiffens, half-turning. By the car, the waiting man straightens and moves, with a haste and grace that speaks of dangerous training -- /cop/, it shouts, before he subsides and pauses, waiting with sharpened attention for....
...for Chris to recognize the accosting voice and relax, his face clearing. One step down again, back to street level, and: "Becks." His baritone, always dark, is gravel-black and hoarse. He shifts his duffel with an awkward shift of his shoulder. Green eyes skip down, then up again. "You got four arms."
"Have since I was like fifteen," she notes with a little smile. Beck's cheeks flush a tad at the fact that she had forgotten Rossi knew she was a mutant, but not exactly how she was. "Surprise?" She smiles a little awkwardly as she finishes closing the space between them. "You okay man?" she asks, eyes roaming over him and trying to take stock of his injuries. "Looks like you've had some... stuff."
'Stuff.' Chris's mouth twitches towards a crooked half-smile, one that almost (not quite) reaches the pale flicker of eyes. The man at the car eases himself back against the hood, an eloquent glance meeting the detective's. "I look like shit," he translates, and drops the bag. It bumps against the stairs, sagging to a puffy slouch; less elegantly, Chris follows it down, folding with caution to take up a seat on the bottom steps. "I had a thing. The usual. How you been?"
"Busy man, busy," Beckah shares with a little laugh. Her smile is growing in much the way it always does when she finds her favorite detective. There is something in that snark that puts her at ease. Her lower arms unwrap from her middle, which is considerably more fit and trim than previous impressions of her had implied. "New club open, thing's a big hit. It's keeping me on my toes." She lifts her own bag, "Out buyin' new music to play."
"Heard about it," Chris admits, carefully positioning his elbows on his knees to hang his torso off them. His head dips, the upper edge of his nape bared; a fold of the cloth bares more stripes of ugly olive green and purple, dyed in a vivid bruise across the skin of his neck. "Meant to go check it out. Got busy. Probably wouldn't have let me in anyway," he adds thoughtfully, to his toes. A sidelong glance quizzes Beckah. "You're hot stuff."
Beckah grins at Rossi in playful predation. "You didn't say that when you thought I was a fatty," she notes. She lets out a laugh, though, to show there is no hard feeling. "Why wouldn't they let you in? Christ man, just say you're with me and you'll be through the door faster than a blonde girl with big boobs." She winces at the sigh of more bruising on his neck. "Jesus Christ, Chris. Someone really worked you over, huh? You sure you're okay?" Concern pushes her brows together beneath the black rims of her glasses.
Chris reaches for his collar, touching the fabric as though to push it up over the marks -- then drops his hand, grimacing. "Fuck," he offers by way of resignation. A strain of blackened self-contempt rides under the word, tainting the rest of the thought. "I'm like one of those goddamn abused wives. Magneto tried to kill me the other night. Shit happens. I'll live. --Thought they had some kind of policy about humans at that new club."
Beckah's eyes go a little wide at hearing what happened there. "Magneto? Are you--" She stops and makes a very weird face, pursing her lips tightly shut and lowering her brows. "That isn't cool." She crosses her lower arms again, and one upper one as well ends up across her chest, holding it's opposite's elbow. "There's no rule about humans, man. The only rule is that no one is going to get any shit for being a mutant it here. People can relax and be themselves, you know?" Her smile shows that this is definitely something she is proud of and something with her conviction behind it. The smile though, is oddly reluctant to show up after her aborted question ab out Magneto.
"Mmf," says Chris, letting his head loll down again, as though its weight is too much for him to support on his own. He turns it slightly, once more to give Beckah a glance over the line of his arm. "Nice," he thinks to add after a thoughtful moment. "You can be a four-armed kewpie doll, and I can be a jackass, and everything's perfect in this perfect of all perfect worlds."
A boot lifts a little, like she's considering giving him a kick for his sarcasm. She thinks the better of it though, probably sympathy over the ass-beating he has had recently. "Hey, it isn't all sunshine and lollipops. Security is tighter than fuck to make sure no one, human or mutant, does anything stupid." She shrugs her shoulders, "I'm tired of feeling like I have to hide from people and I like the idea of helping with a place where other people don't gotta hide. What's so wrong with that?"
Chris looks back down at his feet. Cop shoes. Hi, Chris. Hi, shoes. "Who's complaining?" he asks them, laconic in his drawl. A bit sulkily, he adds, "People watch me all the time to make sure I don't do anything stupid. Wave hi to the fucking Irish babysitter on the corner. You have your own shadow? You haven't really made it until you got a portable bodyguard. I'm not talking the latex condom type."
"I have them at work. Does that count or am I still a nobody?" She smiles a bit more playfully now, moving up a couple of steps so that she can lean against a wall while she talks. Her bag swings against her leg a couple of times with plastic rustling noises. "So this whole Magneto thing. How come he tore you up so bad?" Perhaps a slip, perhaps a bet on his use of an abusive wife in his imagery, "He doesn't usually do that if you see him?"
The detective's shoulders hitch into a crooked shrug. "Mmf," Chris says again, pushing himself up to rake fingers through his hair. Bared, the wide brow shows a long cut running across the angle of his right eyebrow; he lowers his hand and flattens it on his thigh, ignoring the small tremor that makes its grip unsteady. "Who the fuck knows? It's Magneto. He didn't get the memo about how I'm a charming, lovable son of a bitch. All part of the glamorous life of being a cop. He show up at your club?"
"Nah, haven't seen anyone so notorious in there." This is technically true! Erik has not been in the building while it is open yet! Beckah is not lying! Really! She instead chuckles, "If he did, he'd probably fall in love with the place. It's all industrial themed in there, lots of metal." She does not, however, seem to think this is as dangerous as it could be seen. "The craziest thing we've had in there was that Zenith chick, what's her real name? Zoe, yeah, she showed up opening night and danced in the air for us."
"Zoe," Chris says, and drops his face in his hand. Fingers muffle what he says next. It is probably obscene.
Obscenity breeds interest. Beckah leans forward with a curious grin blossoming on her face. "Zoe what?"
Fingers splay open a little. One discomfort-dulled green eye lowers at Beckah. "Forget it," Chris says, half the words slurred against his palm. "I know her, is all. Knew her," he amends. "She a regular?"
"Knew her? Like Biblically Knew her?" Beckah can't help herself. Rossi's opened up her immature side and she is hiding behind it firmly. "I wouldn't say regular. I'm pretty sure someone got her an invitation to the opening party to make sure we had a famous mutant there."
Chris says flatly, "Christ. You have a dirty mind, Kewpie doll. You can't go around asking a guy if he's screwed random chicks. Isn't there supposed to be some kind of rule about that?" His hand lowers, fisting against the low stone steps. The knuckles' scabs show shiny against the skin, crinkling with the spread of fingers. "How're things with you and your boyfriend?"
The four-armed 'doll' smirks brightly back at him. "In other words, you nailed her, huh?" She isn't relenting one inch. Her tone fades considerably though at the mention of that boyfriend. "We haven't spoken in like two months. There was this... thing."
"'Thing,'" Chris echoes, one of his eyebrows arching. The expression pulls other cuts askew, tugging skin awry. "What thing? --I didn't say I nailed her. Jesus."
"Well, uh..." Beck trails off for a moment, trying to find the right way to phrase this. "I've got this friend who shows up at my place unannounced sometimes. Just kind of waltzes up like he owns the place and raids my booze. You ever had a friend like that?" She continues without waiting for the answer to the question, scratching behind one ear at knowing what she just said and how it might register with the detective. "Andre walked in one night while he was there and he flipped out at me."
Chris's shoulders quiver in a soundless laugh that shows oddly mirthless on the harsh, battered face. "Wouldn't say a friend," he says to no one in particular, his gaze drifting somewhere beyond the Irishman on the curb. "Magneto used to do that to me. Didn't peg Andre for the jealous type."
With an awkward little chuckle, Beckah nods her head. "Yeah." Perhaps that is not the normal sort of a reply to stories of Magneto and booze-raiding. She runs a hand back through her dreadlocks, "He lost it pretty good and I threw him out of my place. I was drunk to begin with. And I haven't seen him sense. Pretty much hard to accomplish living next door. I get the feeling he's dodging me."
"Two months," Chris says. He props his chin on the backs of hands that fold closed around each other to halt the slightest of tremors. "Takes two to avoid for that long, pinky. Given your proximity. You done with him?"
"I don't think he understands me much, man." She shrugs her shoulders slowly, with the kind of achey finality of a break-up one didn't plan, but isn't taking back. "I think he's still about 17 in the head. I'm not too much of a cow, right Chris?" Beck asks, with sudden concern.
"You're a barking heifer," Chris says promptly. "You can't help it. You got boobs."
Becks carries on as if Rossi hadn't been Rossi. "We were going out since late December, something in there. He still hadn't kissed me on the lips. He's got issues."
"I'm not kissing you on the lips."
"Good! I don't want to get whatever STD you caught from screwing Zenith." Beckah crosses her lower arms more tightly once more, trying her best to look smug.
Chris looks at Beckah, his eyes blank. The thousand yard stare, to the third power. "Or anywhere else," he completes. "Admittedly, I got issues, but fuck me. I think I've earned mine. So you dating this -- guy, whatever, person, you got showing up in your apartment?"
Beckah actually chokes over that question. "No, no. Hell no." She shakes her head, laughing out her discomfort with the idea. "Actually, I made him pretty mad the other night. So not even if I wanted to. He's too old for me. I kind of have a thing for someone else but..." She waves the subject off. "How about you? Still with uh, what's her name? Something all exotic sounding, right?"
"Cadbury." Chris refocuses with slow difficulty, his gaze skating across her once, twice, before the third time snags and hooks long enough for him to blink and frown. Something like the old humor quirks his mouth. "Exotic if you've never eaten a chocolate. Yeah, we're still together, more or less. She's got work, I got--" Again, a small, soundless quiver of his shoulders. "--I got Magneto. Makes it hard to hook up. Heading over there for a few days."
After all of this, she makes a weird little face. She pulls her brows together and wrinkles her nose. "You're a cop and all, right? So if something /really/ fucking weird were going on the city, you'd know about it, right?" Beck chuckles a little bit at asking this, like she isn't so sure of herself in it.
The strained baritone manages to sound wry through the grate of healing. "Spill it, Becks. What's going on?"
"So I heard this rumor. About there being two Magneto's." She shrugs her shoulders, trying to sound completely noncommital and trying to keep herself tucked neatly behind the barrier of it.
Chris is not noticeably moved, though it is possible -- barely possible -- that the green eyes sharpen behind the sleepy almost-smile droop of his eyelids. "Yeah? Where'd you hear that?"
"This friend of mine. The one that hits up my booze supplies." Beckah seems interested in the facade of Rossi's building, looking up at it and away from him.
"And where'd your friend hear that?"
"Dunno man. He didn't tell me." She is at least being honest there.
"Funny thing to tell you," Chris observes, one hand twitching in an abortive gesture before it closes again, safe and tight around the other hand. "Not all that many people know about Magneto. I mean, to talk about him beyond -- 'hey, did you see the newspaper today' sort of stuff."
"It just made me wonder, you know? I heard this weird ass rumor about him. Then I see how bad he roughed you up..." Beckah sighs a little bit, deciding that this is the moment in which her glasses need to be adjusted and her bandana needs to be tugged into the perfect position. "Kind of made me think."
The green eyes skew towards Beckah. They blink sleepily. "Think what?"
"What if it was the /other/ Magneto that hurt you? You know, not the one you know."
Chris says mildly, "Magneto's a terrorist. He's killed -- fuck. Dozens of people. Probably more than are on the books. You find something inconsistent in him trying to kill another cop?"
"You said he shows up at your place, right? You've got Magneto, like you said." Beckah's smile is not nearly so confident or genuine as it usually is. She's still not so good at lying to people she trusts. "It seemed inconsistent like that."
"Only if he isn't a sociopath," Chris points out, unknitting his fingers to bury the lower half of his face behind their lattice. He regards her with dispassionate interest. "They do that sort of shit. Make friends with people and then kill them. Seems pretty typical for a terrorist."
"Yeah, you got a point there," she admits. With a little chuckle, she shrugs her shoulders. "Just something I thought would be interesting to mention, you know?" Beck leans to glance down the street, "I should probably, you know, take off." Now that she has been awkward, it is time to escape.
Chris does not move, making a leash of his very stillness. His frame sags a little further; the shadows of fatigue across his face deepen, accentuating an uncharacteristic vulnerability. "Hate it when people steal my booze," he says at seeming random, and rubs idly at the hollow of his temple. "Guy who shows up in my apartment drinks all my scotch. Yours?"
"Every fucking drop of my whiskey when I have it. He hits the vodka when I'm out." Beckah shrugs her shoulders. Chris's technique at keeping her in place has succeeded. She likes the man too damn much to simply turn her back on him and walk away. Especially when he is looking at her with the kind of expression he is wearing at that moment.
Chris draws his fingertips across closed eyes, massaging the parchment-thin eyelids. "Whiskey," he says a bit hollowly. "Corner liquor store thinks I'm a lush. What exactly did your visitor say about Magneto? You remember how he said it?"
"Weird shit, Chris. Real weird shit." She shakes her dreadlocked head slowly, letting out a little sigh. "I didn't hear too much about it. Same conversation where I pissed the guy off is where he told me this weird rumor crap." Beck then adds, "I tell the guy at my liquor place that I have a lot of parties"
"Magneto's got a twin. Just like that?"
"Weirder, man." Beckah chuckles once more, though this time it has more to do with expecting disbelief. "A bunch of stuff about how there's this second Magneto in the city, Magneto from like an alternate reality. Like Bizzaro World in the comics or the mirror universe on Star Trek." She winces a bit behind her glasses, clearly bracing for the laughter she assumes is coming.
Green eyes flare, looking at Beckah for a single, frozen heartbeat: the alien, clinical regard of a raptor watching a field mouse. "Just like," Chris says in a curiously unaccented voice, Brooklyn's tincture sheared away. He lowers his head again. The scarred hands tremble a little, finding their way to his head to slide through silver-streaked hair. There is no artifice in the deep voice's quaver. "Jesus Christ. I'm so tired."
Worriedly, Beckah moves to put herself down onto the step beside Rossi. The quivering of his hands and the sound of his voice shocking her way out of her little line-walking routine. "Man, Chris, are you sure you're okay? You need a drink or something?"
Chris flinches away from proximity, dropping his hands and straightening with an abruptness that jerks a hiss out between his teeth. "I can't do this right now. Fuck this. You tell your friend--" He pushes off from the steps, snagging his duffel with a hand as he goes. The Irishman waiting with increasing impatience nearby pushes off the car, eyebrows lifting inquiringly. "--You tell him, 'the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.'"
Color Beckah clueless instead of her usual overly bright red. "Uh. You got it, Chris." She watches him go, the pain evident in his movements making her wince.
Remain clueless. Chris limps his way towards the car, ignoring his companion's droll commentary as he opens the passenger side and helpfully shoves the detective in like a maladroit porter. He is getting a ride to his destination, at least; the scorned babysitter casts a final, interested glance at Beckah before rounding the car's front to drop into the driver's seat.
The engine roars to life. Rossi does not look at Beckah again.
[Log ends]
Beckah runs into Rossi on his way to Xavier House. Beckah spills some beans. Rossi is too chewed up to deal with it. Life is hard. :(