OOC: Storm Commentary

[xmm_rossi]

Log: When The Lights Go Down
Date: 7/24/07
Players: Storm & Rossi
Commentary two, done after a long hiatus. Sorry, Magneto. This one might be better than the last one, now that I've got my chops back. Or ... something.
Let's talk Chris/Ororo, shall we? (And this is how I manage to screw myself time and time again when doing commentary: I end up writing a whole bunch of stuff at the beginning, before I even get to the log, so by the time I get to the log itself I'm just wiped. You'd think I'd learn one of these days, and yet, it never seems to happen.)
So. Chris/Ororo.
It is ludicrous that Rossi is dating Ororo, and vice versa: the two are not in each other's league -- which is to say, Rossi is not in /Ororo's/ rather than the other way around. Up until now, barring Leah, Rossi has mostly dated neighborhood girls: a quick fling, an acrimonious breakup, on to the next one. The length of his relationships has been about 2-3 months for a long one; 2-3 weeks for a normal one. Leah, a girl named Beth before her, and Ororo are the closest thing he's come to a long-term relationship, and for Ororo -- well, they've only been together, what. 7 months, maybe? Less than a year, at least.
As I say, Rossi is not in Ororo's league. And yet, they date. What draws Ororo to Rossi is conjecture on my part, though I'll happily make guesses: Rossi is fundamentally a good man, albeit an angry and cynical and vulgar one, and there is a limited pool of good men out there who are both strong enough and grounded enough not to be actively threatened by the fact that Ororo has god-like powers. He's intelligent, he's a ruthless pragmatist -- in fact, there's a lot to admire in him.
As for the obvious reasons of why Rossi would date Ororo: she's hot, she's funny, she's low-key, she's intelligent, she understands the necessities of the work he does and doesn't place demands on him, she's independent. Easy.
Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. I've mentioned this in previous commentaries, but it bears repeating in this one. In a lot of ways, Ororo is ... I suppose the best way to put it is "protective covering" for Rossi. In the last two or three years he's lost two women that he's been close to or felt responsible for, women that he wasn't able to protect even though (in one case at least) he promised that he was. It was a stupid promise, which he knows consciously, but since he fundamentally believes that Leah's death was due to a failure on his part -- which isn't far wrong, really -- conscious knowledge doesn't mean jack shit.
Vulnerable women terrify him. Since Leah's death, he's been increasingly distant with vulnerable people, barring his family, who have a sort of monolithic invulnerability about them simply by virtue of being ... well. The people that they are, I suppose. But friends who aren't cops or FDNY, normal civilian friends? Those he's distanced himself from. He has always been a fairly private person; now he's gone towards the far extreme, where he almost never exposes himself in any way, save where absolute necessity is concerned.
Ororo is, in a way, a rebound relationship in the sense that she is almost the complete opposite of Leah. She is powerful. She is intensely proud and private, with very few visible vulnerabilities. If someone tried to smack her, they would pay. She has the power in their relationship, which is confusing and a bit baffling to Rossi, but he figures that the advantage of that -- never having to be the person who fails to be there when he's needed -- balances that out.
In a lot of important ways, the two of them are pretty bad for each other. Their relationship is more like a friendship with benefits rather than a true romantic emotional attachment.
Okay. I should really get on with the actual log.
Ororo is on the floor.
There is a bottle of wine on the floor with her, as well as a glass, although the glass is not on the floor; it is cradled, almost empty, in her hand. Her legs are folded beneath her, in pink pajama pants. She has managed not to spill any wine on the snug white tank top she wears over it. Or, for that matter, on the floor. It may only be a matter of time.
The window is open, allowing for the circulation of night air in its gentle circuit through the quiet room. The door is closed, but the lamps are lit, leaving a strip of golden light to betray its occupant's presence inside.

Ororo has an awesome wardrobe. Parenthetical comment. It's easier to dress my dude. He's got a closet full of cheap dark suits and then some sweats and some civvies. This is why I almost never play women. Too much trouble with the clothes. (Well. This is /one/ of the reasons, anyway--)
A comment about the drinking. The last time there was real alcohol involved in a Rossi/Ororo scene was -- I think New Year's, which Storm commented for me. (Yay, Storm!) Alcohol has not figured strongly in their times together, for some fairly obvious reasons. Alcohol lowers the guard, in both of them, and these are two very guarded people. I would almost say /especially/ around each other, except that I don't know that that's the case. I mentioned above that Chris likes Storm because she's proud enough not to place emotional demands on him; I think that in his mind, he reciprocates by not placing emotional demands on her. Which is to say, he tries to hide his vulnerabilities because he refuses to be the -- well, the one who goes first. If that makes any sense at all. He's already in a position of weakness; why exacerbate it?
We've chatted about it from time to time, and it seemed like it wouldn't be an awful idea for Storm to be the tipsy one. She has plenty of reason to take refuge in a quiet drink and some alone time, as it happens. The AU Storm has been and gone; they've met, and this Storm finds very little to respect in the woman who she might have become. The paths they took were so wildly divergent, and the choices that AU Storm had to make were so different than the ones that this Storm had to make -- faced with the possibility and the knowledge that she has it in her to become that other woman, if given the right conditions, she's lapsed into emo and, I think, some private self-loathing.
She is entitled!
The visitor who comes on quiet feet down the hallway is steady on an uneven gait, the bare hitch of a limp adding the smallest dragging scuff to the rhythm of his stride. Black and silver hair is orderly; the clothing -- T-shirt, jeans -- is casual, a far cry from the more formal style affected during the work week. Then, he has little need of work attire lately.
Chris pauses outside the room, leans into the post, and glances down at the light. His head props against his forearm; the other hand, dangling a six-pack of Logan's imported beer, lifts to thump gently at the closed door. "Cadbury. You in?"
Ororo considers pretending she is not, and then laughs, ruffling her free hand through horribly unruly silver-white hair and then letting her head roll back to thunk against the bed behind her. She calls, "--Yes."

Backstory reminder: Chris is staying in the mansion -- we never really specified whether it was in a guest room or in Storm's room; I'm inclined to think guest room, just for propriety's sake, and also to give Storm some space (a la no demands!) -- because AU Magneto tried to kill him. For a man who ends up in the hospital almost once a month, this particular attack rattled him more than you might expect. There are a lot of reasons for this, which I don't think are worth going into right now; suffice it to say that he's been a bit rocky for a while, and isn't quite himself at the moment. It shows in the rest of this log, I think: he's far more tentative than he usually is, almost to the point of being nonexistent.
My significant other stopped knocking on doors about three months into our relationship. Chris still knocks. Chris always knocks: even on his own doors, when he suspects Ororo might be there. No demands. There's always a separation. He has an almost morbid respect for her privacy, because he wants the same for himself. IT IS NOT HEALTHY.
The limp is a legacy of Deadpool's charming visit; it comes and goes, though there's almost always a hint of it when he's moving slowly. It's exacerbated by fatigue or injury. It hasn't been enough to permanently desk him, and he's careful to hide it when he's being official or on the job. It's when he's in private, or when he's fairly confident that it doesn't matter, that he lets himself favor that leg. It's a bad habit, and like a lot of bad habits, completely thoughtless. Someday he'll break himself of it. He just needs to realize he's doing it, first.
Sorry, Logan. Your beer's better than the crap Rossi usually gets. Tough cookies.
Green eyes hide behind a fan of lashes, the hint of their color contemplative in their inspection of the door. "Mind if I come in?" His voice echoes hollowly against the wood. "I brought beer."
Ororo waves her hand imperiously at the door, and then snorts when she realizes how ineffective this is. "Yes, Chris, yes, come in," she says. "I don't need any beer." She drains the contents of her glass and then sets it very carefully down on the floor, hefting the bottle by its neck.

Permission asked and granted. Chris comes in. The rules of privacy and personal space are followed.
I haven't liked my posing in a while, though it's been a sort of ... quiet grumble in the back of my mind rather than anything that I actually did anything about. As I recall, this scene I realized just how un-Chris-like Chris was being, and dragged my complainy ass into actual effort. The pose above is the kind of apathetic half-assed posing I've been doing of late.
The beer is a peace offering, or -- something. I don't remember exactly /why/ he brought beer, except that I think he was feeling the need to be ... I don't know. He was needing comfort of some sort. Human companionship. He has very few peers in the school, either in age or in experience. Well, beyond Sean, and he's out staring at a rift. Comfort of this sort is easier to find among men -- no, not /that/ kind of comfort, you prats -- since boundaries are automatically respected between guys. However, Ororo is his girlfriend, and he's heard rumors about the other Storm. He baffles for a while, not sure what he should do: leave her alone to deal with it? Show up so she can cry on his shoulder? (Hah. Ororo, cry on his shoulder. The very idea makes him snort.) So he compromises. Show up to let her talk if she wants to, with the beer as an excuse for being there, and otherwise, let her tell him to go away. No harm, no foul.
It does him good to think about someone else right now. Even if it's a bit of a mental stretch to think of Ororo as needing him for anything.
The door opens. "/I/ need it," Chris informs, straightening on the threshold to quiz Ororo with a glance before stepping in to close the door behind him. The beer clinks quietly in its cardboard carrier, bumping against his thigh as he picks his way across the floor. He wears socks, at least; shoes are something else again, lost somewhere (his room?) to leave him beyond casual in the homely confines of the mansion. "Private drinking's supposed to be a sign of-- whatsit."
Ororo does not wear socks. Her feet are bare, toes peeking from beneath her where she sits. She pours herself some more wine, the deep red splashing just a little from the mouth of the bottle; she sets it down again and then sucks briefly on her fingertips. "Then it's a good thing you came, isn't it?" The bottle thunks again as she sets it down. There is very little left in it to slosh.

Barefoot Chris. He doesn't remove his shoes unless he's pretty damn comfortable with it being okay: in his own apartment, say, or at the family home. Or now, at Xavier House. His level of comfort in that regard is betraying; he's spent too much time with the mutants. I should probably note that the rest of MA does spend a lot of time with mutants, but they don't /consort/ to the extent that Chris does. His reputation is starting to take a hit as a result in the precinct; he has gone native, as it were, and fellow officers in the MA department occasionally eye him askance. There is a point when too much fraternization with the enemy crosses a line, and in dating Ororo, he's pretty much crossed it.
This is not something that he has ever bothered to share with Ororo. Beston has had more than a few things to say about his latest choice in girlfriend. Chris has let him get some very good advice off his chest, a lot of it related to "rebound" and "Leah" and "issues," and then has politely ignored it all.
Ororo is sexy. Finger-licking sexy! somehow the licking of fingertips is inextricably linked in my mind to Ororo's player. KFC commercials have become very confusing to me.
"I was planning on sharing." Chris pauses beside her, looking down at her with a hitch of brows that borders on the curious. He lowers himself carefully to his haunches, the steeple of one hand touching down on floor, and plants the beer next to his feet. "Might as well. It's Logan's. No cash out of my pocket. Had a bad day?" His glance takes in the wine, idly measuring the level in the bottle.
Ororo laughs and takes a swallow of the wine, lowering the glass again with fingers curling around its shapely curve. She tips her head, rolling it on her shoulders with eyes fallen closed and a long breath puffed through her lips. The flush that heats her skin is invisible, drawn from the slow burn of the alcohol. "Mmm." The noise is noncommittal. She opens her eyes a crack, peeking at Chris through the dark fan of her own eyelashes. "The other me is, apparently, a lush."

He starts out-- and I suppose ends up, to be completely honest --so bizarrely distant in this scene. Curiosity? Of course he's curious. He's always curious. Except today, when he's ... not. (And later, he encounters Jason and there is a lack of emotional response there that's incredibly uncharacteristic of him. More on that in a different commentary!) He's become so self-contained, curled up inside himself when it comes to the people that he should be the least self-contained with, that it's almost like he becomes a different person.
Ororo's player used to say, way back when, that she wasn't very good with the physical. Those days are long gone! She is incredibly sensual with Ororo's posing, which is really great insofar as I'm concerned, since I'm also a more physical poser than a verbal one. The way that she poses that physicality is also extremely sensual, which is one up on me; she conveys a lot of personality in the /way/ she writes a gesture, which is sometimes more expressive than what the character is actually saying. Yet another sign of a person who pays attention to things that I do not pay attention to! By comparison, my physical posing has become very clockwork: does this, does that, does the other thing. There is not so much personality conveyed there anymore.
Argh. I'm getting annoyed again at my own roleplay. Not productive. Moving on.
Chris lowers himself to sit on the floor, tailor fashion, the stiffness of his face veiling the discomfort of redistribution. The bruises on his throat are fading rapidly, but they still stripe a lurid yellow and green across dark skin; likewise the scabs on face and arm and hand, darkened almost to black, crinkle with the small twists of body and expression. "So you thought you'd try it out and see what the big deal was?" He tips the wine bottle back to glance at the label. "Haven't met her. Is she much like you?"
"She is nothing like me," Ororo grouches. "She is pathetic. Also," Ororo says, "--also. Also she is in an abusive." Her hand gestures wobblily through the air, and she eyes it, and then curls it into a fist and drops it to the floor. "Physically abusive. And possibly sexual! Possibly sexual, physically abusive relationship with a psychotic, /violent/ woman who grows bones out her body and breaks them off to stab people with." She tips her wine-glass against her lips and drinks /more/.

Wait. Not really moving on. I remember what I was going to say earlier. To my point about the way she writes the character; unlike a lot of players, she manages to find a voice for each character that is distinct. That is to say, even without gender particulars or names in poses, you could probably pick out which character is, just in the /way/ she writes them. This is a pretty neat damn trick! Given that a lot of players can't even write two different /personalities/ between one alt and the next, she's a great model for how to make different voices and styles distinct to each character.
Okay. Now back to the log.
I've gotten way too much practice writing injuries. At some point I'm just going to write it into Rossi's desc. "He's probably hurt somehow." Save myself so much trouble. Ignore my pose. It's sort of stupid. I will note for those of you who are playing older characters: now that I'm in my 30s, my bruises hang around FOREVER. I have a bruise on my leg from Aikido that, I swear to God, I got back in June. Things do not heal anymore. EVER.
Also, if I had anything round enough to sag, it would be sagging. This is what you people have to look forward to.
Ororo's pose. Her litany of things that she's outraged about regarding her counterpart is kind of -- cute. I shouldn't think so, but it's true. She's offended on so many counts, and the way she delivers the is kind of adorable. "And possibly sexual!" I don't get the sense that it's the lesbian relationship that she's offended about, as much as it is the fact that she's in an /abusive/ relationship -- and Chris's assumption is that it's not so much the fact that she's in an abusive relationship as it is the possibility that the other Ororo is the one who's receiving the abuse.
Which, honestly? He has a little bit of a problem taking seriously because anybody less likely to allow herself to be abused than Ororo, he has a hard time imagining.
The bottle thunks back onto its base and clatters, rolling on its edge before thudding back to stability. Chris regards Ororo with green-eyed curiosity. "Never seen you like this." A pause for consideration lasts long enough for him to fish a bottle out of the pack and pop off its cap. Mist curls around its mouth, tickling his fingers. He dangles it, thinking. "Can't see you like that, either. Didn't know you swung both ways. Not that there's anything wrong with that," he adds punctiliously.
"I don't," Ororo snarls. She drains the glass and then gives a little shudder at the flood of souring taste on her tongue. Too much at once. "--Least, didn't. Never have," she mutters, rubbing at an eye with one palm as she puts the glass down on the floor.

Chris -- is sort of at a loss. It's weird that he should be, when he's spent a lot of time in his personal and professional life being there for people. However, he's never been there for someone who's ... invulnerable, if that makes any sense? He's always been there for people from a position of power: as an equal, or as a superior in strength and authority and what-have-you. For a change, he isn't, and he isn't sure what to do. He's also never seen Ororo like this, and it's almost like he's wincing a bit, in that way that guys do when women say, "I'd like to take this relationship to the next level." By nature he deflects when things get too serious and start hitting a little too close to himself, and Ororo follows the same pattern -- so what to do when Ororo actually shows this side of herself? She's upset. Not godlike powers and Nature Goddess upset, but drunk girlfriend upset.
Well, shit.
It's ironic. Of the two of them, he's the more manipulative. He's learned to be, and has been, so much so that the behavior is embedded in his mannerisms and his practical day-to-day behavior. I'll talk a little more about this later, but if it were anyone else, he'd gently (or not so gently) lead the person to talk more, to spill the stuff at the bottom of the well. On the other hand, since it's Ororo--
I said it before and I'll say it again. He's kept that partition between them high and strong, and he's got mixed feelings about letting it go down. So instead of doing what he would normally do, he sort of ... well, for lack of a better phrase, stalls for time. He picks out the most trivial and the most meaningless point out of the list that Ororo gave, and turns it towards something that could be humorous. It's a strategy that will give her an out, and give him an out, except it's not really what Ororo needs, is it? On the other hand, it might be what she wants--
Except she's drunk. Hunh.
That first swallow of beer, so refreshing, so /needed/, is postponed a moment longer: long enough for Chris to lean forward with his free hand, reaching to brush a light caress against that dusky cheek. "Times change," he says, fortune cookie wise. And then adds wryly, "Hopefully not like that. Call me a spoilsport, but if Magneto being King of the city is what it takes for you to find your inner lesbian, I'd rather you stayed straight. --How the hell do you cuddle with a woman who has bones growing out of her body?"
Ororo shifts, sliding onto her knees and leaning forward into him with an expression of inebriated solemnity. She reaches up to wind her fingers through his, pressing palms together, and she lifts his knuckles to her lips to brush the ghost of a kiss against them: it is a surprisingly tender gesture considering what she has to say next. "Chris, if you stab out my eye, I will end your life. I want you to know that."

Well. Maybe it /is/ what she needed. Flippancy is often what Rossi needs, or a hard smack upside the head; given that Ororo in many ways reflects the same personality traits central to Rossi, it makes a certain amount of sense that his habit of deflection would be appropriate to the situation.
I laughed at Ororo's pose. Once more, please ignore mine. Such crap.
They are, both of them, rather touchy-feely people -- with each other, certainly. I am not qualified to say whether Ororo is that way with others: students or colleagues or friends, or what have you. Rossi is a very physically demonstrative person, himself. It's a cultural thing as much as it is a personality thing; personal expression is difficult for him in a meaningful way, so he subverts that inability in demonstration. He is a man of action, not words, yo! (Ahem.)
He reaches out to people that way, often without invitation, though in a casual context. On the job he does it deliberately, either for threat or to encourage confession and intimacy: he is, as I've said before, a manipulative man. His reaching out in the normal course of things is as much a part of that as of anything; it helps build this atmosphere of trust. He brushes hair out of a girl's face, he touches the back of a woman's hand, he backhands a thump against a guy's chest. These are all things that help build up an atmosphere of familiarity and intimacy that might be completely absent in reality. These little physical gestures go into building this feeling of trust in him. They're paternal or big brotherly in the case of women; in the case of men, he becomes a mensch, a man who has your back. People have mentioned before that he gives off a feeling of safety and security, and this is not by chance.
Like I said before, he does it in a fairly calculating fashion when he's on the job. The problem is, that sort of thing becomes habit, ingrained in your personal behavior. So now it's gotten to the point where he doesn't even realize he's doing it. Believe it or not, he learned a lot of these tricks while he was in seminary.
The smile brightens slitted eyes, brushing the nap of Chris's bruised voice dark without reaching his lips. "You say the sweetest things, Cadbury," he says gravely, taking his turn to raise her knuckles to his lips. The press of breath across her fingers is warm and moist, stirred with the trace of a laugh that does not quite make it to the light of day. "Jesus. Is that what happened to her?"
"Among other things." Ororo closes her eyes and sighs, scooting forward to curl into the shelter of his side rather than flop back against the bed again. "I'm supposed to want to help her or something. Help them. I just want them all to go /away/." It is almost petulance, in her voice. Drunken petulance. "If I'm not strong enough for a broken world, why do I have to /see it/?"

Chris is easily distracted by the kiss and the humor, but for the record, it isn't because he's easily distracted in general by sexuality. It's because he chooses to be. Again, with the avoidance -- it happens several times in this log, which is kind of sad, but I suppose not really a surprise, given the stuff I mentioned up above.
Rossi has not been a truly happy man in the time that I've played him -- this isn't really a big deal, since honestly, how many really happy people are there on the grid in general? -- but he's reflected that in person by not being prone to laughter. Up until he started dating Storm, he rarely ever laughed at all. A smile, maybe, or a chuckle, or a note of amusement in his voice. Actual laughter, I posed maybe six times over the course of two years.
He's become far more amenable to laughing since he started dating Storm. I've talked a lot about how Storm is bad for him; let's talk a second about how Storm is good for him! He's ... happier in a way, I guess. He's more open, which is completely contradictory to what I said above. "Open," I mean, in that he lets himself express more of the happier side of him rather than the cranky, depressing, cynical side. He's not as harsh. His tempers are cooler. This could be as much a function of age and experience as Storm's influence, but there's this about being aware that your girlfriend could fry your ass like a wet Toad: you learn to stay away from pyrotechnics.
Let's talk about Ororo again. Once more, she's just endearing in the way she complains. It's a serious complaint for her; she is honestly feeling the unfairness of it, and resenting like hell her counterpart for perceived failures. But there's a comical aspect to the way that she expresses herself, whether deliberate or no, that turns it into something almost like flippancy.
Chris is not the only one who gets avoidy and deflecty! If you're being honest and people think you're joking, that's not your fault, is it? IS IT? You can say what you really mean and people don't take you seriously and they're not paying attention and that's all their fault so fine, we can move on to something else that's not so embarrassing and painful and see if I open myself up again.
And whew, that's over with, right? I made the attempt. You failed. Yay--! I mean, too bad....
"Can't carry the entire world," Chris says, supporting his untasted beer on the firm floor while he shifts to make room for her: flank, side, the hollow of his shoulder where it meets the neck. His voice has a lower, deeper purr layered into it, from this proximity; he glances down at her, his arm sliding around her back, and stabilizes himself with an adjustment of weight. "Not a fan of your -- what the hell do you call it? Double? Twin? Sister? You?"
"Nightmare," Ororo mumbles sourly into his neck. She nuzzles there and breathes the scent of his skin and exhales in a long slow gust. "She couldn't carry any of it. She lives in a hole and scrounges for scraps. Magneto's leavings. She lets that idiot /bitch/ knock her around." She tips her head up and looks to Chris with an odd clarity in her face, as though she's seeing past the alcoholic fog, rather than through it. "It's like there's nothing left of me."

Oh. Okay. Here is where I actually kicked myself in the ass and started to think about my poses a little bit, in a semi-futile attempt to drag myself out of the sinkhole of suck that has been my RP for the last few months. Honestly. Why do you people still play with me?
Chris is one to talk about not being able to carry the whole world, but see? He speaks from a position of authority! He's been there! He knows! Once more, Ororo's physical posing blows me out of the water. I love the line about the way she looks at Chris, "seeing past the alcoholic fog, rather than through it."
He's trying to be supportive, but ... you know. With him, you sort of have to watch his body as separate from his speech. He's by nature a physical animal, so his physical reactions in times of stress or discomfort are often more honest than his intellectual ones; that is to say, by nature he responds first with his actual instincts, and then wrestles away control and does something else. His body is supportive. His mind, a little clearer -- or a little more guarded, I guess I should say -- makes him sound a lot more neutral than he really should be. If he were, say, being that supportive boyfriend for Storm.
Boyfriend. Girlfriend. Somehow these words do not fit right for Storm and Rossi. They sound too, hm. Something.
His pulse beats strong under that warm skin, in spite of Magneto's -- some would say /his/ -- best efforts. The bruises crease, folded into his glance down to meet her gaze. His remains quizzical. "Haven't met her," he says again, and though there is the tug of curiosity in the words for the absent woman, his attention is there, in the room with them. "Then again-- I don't know what the hell I'd do if Magneto killed off an entire city and the world came crashing down around me. Maybe she did the best she could do under the circumstances."
"Everyone makes /excuses/ for her." Ororo scrunches her eyes tight shut and fists a handful of Rossi's shirt. "She /broke/. She's nothing more than chaos and bad habits and worse memories. You don't /have/ to know, at least you're /dead/, I'd rather die than turn into--" She breaks off into an incoherent, frustrated, unhappy noise and drops her head, hitting her forehead hard into his shoulder.

There's this about Chris, which is a trait that he and -- now that I think about it -- Charles gets from the player. We are none of us unquestioningly supportive. People who are unfortunate enough to be my friends know that when they dump their problems out on my lap, they need to tell me to just shut up and listen and be supportive, or else they'll automatically get the devil's advocate. Which sometimes is not what people need! I think there may be some sort of mental defect in my makeup.
Perspective is constitutionally such a big thing in Chris's life. So much of what he does is filtering through the Rashomon effect, that it's become sort of second nature to him to see the alternate perspectives. I imagine it maddens his friends as much as it does mine. He doesn't tend to have knee jerk reactions to take up the cudgels on his friends' behalf; he used to when he was younger, and it got him into fights that could easily have been avoided. As an older man and as a (laughably) wiser one, he's learned to take that minute and consider things from other points of view before acting. He no longer takes things at face value, which is one of those traits that he lost along with his faith when he left the seminary.
This particular habit makes him both more forgiving and more unforgiving than he was as a younger man. He's more tolerant, certainly, but once that tolerance has been expended it's pretty much impossible to win your way back.
Ororo's contempt of her counterpart is understandable to Chris. In an odd sort of way, he's got experience there where she might not; he was literally on the verge of being changed into a different person when he was windexed. Given that possibility and the reality of being altered into someone less than who he was, he opted to try to get himself killed. Faced with the same choice, he'd make the same decision -- and he'd do it better.
That said -- Storm wrote in her commentary of the New Year's log that of the two, pride and life, she's more interested in saving Chris's life. And here, in a sort of backhanded way, she's presenting him with the same choice: Storm's pride, or Storm's life. Which is to say, she's kind of opening the door for him to make a judgment on which would have been more important. And like Storm, Chris makes the wrong decision, or rather, the self-interested decision: he chooses AU Storm's life rather than AU Storm's pride.
The way Ororo burrows into Chris here is just endearing, dammit.
He exhales at that collision, his arm curling up around Ororo's shoulders to join the other one, looping from the other side. "Rather be dead than someone else?" he asks, his voice a gravel rumble. "I can see that. Still-- she used to be you. Or she could've been you. Hard not to make excuses when it's--" He trails off. The sybarite mouth thins into an exasperated, baffled line. "It could've been you. I don't see you being as bad as that unless there was a damn good reason."
Ororo curls into Chris, hip first and torso following. Her squirm resettles her in the drape of his arms, and she presses her cheek into his shoulder instead. Softer! She stares at the ugly bruising of his throat for a long moment and breathes a soft, unhappy sound. "I hate her," she tells him.
Warmth wraps itself around Ororo, a fragile armor, for all its solidity. That mortal heartbeat bumps quietly, evenly, in the hollow of his throat. "Hate's a strong word." Chris says into her hair. "You sure you hate /her/?"

"breathes a soft, unhappy sound." I love Storm's vocal qualities. They are ridiculously evocative. You could eat her voice and her poses of her voice with a spoon, dammit, no chocolate needed. They're like dessert. Excuse me while I rave a little about the hotness of her writing.
I guess in a way he's paying her a compliment by /not/ being just supportive. Which is to say, he gives her credit for enough strength that he assumes she wants challenge rather than easy stroking. He might be wrong. Men are spectacularly stupid that way sometimes.
He's not particularly wise, but it's not a far stretch to translate Ororo's hatred of her alternate self into contempt for whatever it is inside her that makes it possible for her to become that self. Uh. And you get 50 points for untangling that sentence. I emphasized the mortality in Chris's reply pose because -- well, there's not a whole lot that he can do for her, and mortality is, in a quaint way, one of Chris's strengths. He's impermanent, for all he seems to survive the most ridiculous encounters EVER. He's fallible, even with the best of intentions. It's meant to be a complement to the fallibility of that other Storm, or rather, the imperfection of /this/ one.
It got a little obscure and most of it was in my head and it didn't really work. Well. Sometimes it doesn't! It was Ororo's look at the bruising that triggered it. I blame her.
Ororo closes her eyes and doesn't answer that aside from the audible tremor in her breath, matched by the chill that runs down her spine.
A hand, scarred and worn, disengages itself from the tangle behind her shoulders and traces a meandering path down her cheek. The green-eyed gaze drifts, picking blindly at the small signs of personality about the room. "Just surviving's never enough for you poodles." It might almost be pity in his voice. Almost.
"I was a rat once, Chris." Ororo's voice is quiet. "I won't be again."
"But you could be if you needed to." Chris's shoulders lift. Perhaps it is meant to be a shrug. "Not a lot of people who could make it on the streets."

"Oh, damn," I said on channel.
"What?" Storm asked.
"He didn't answer the right question."
I don't know how that happened. I think it was a mental breakdown on the part of the player -- but somehow the context of Ororo's reply, that she was a rat once and won't be again, was completely lost in Chris's response. I handwave this, and say it was deliberate on the character's part. The question of "is survival enough?" is a tricky one; it's certainly not for Chris, though admitting that is one of those deep-down uncomfortable things that he tends to shy away from.
Why he's not inclined to answer it is a little more complex. He's a pragmatist at heart -- that is to say, that's how he identifies himself. When he left the seminary, he made (he thought) a clean break; he left his old self behind and began fresh, and part of leaving the old self behind was losing all the stupid idealism (the adjective is his opinion) behind. His contempt for the young man he was in seminary is equal to, if not greater than, the contempt that Storm has for AU Storm. The difference is that he can't delude himself that he's not a product of his younger self.
After he lost his memories and regained them (the second time, I should specify, when he lost 15 years instead of just a few isolated incidents) he was careful to tell people who encountered his younger self that that was a different person: he was no longer that man. He does everything he can to emphasize the differences between who he was and who he is; even bringing up his seminary past is a facet of that. Mocking it or dismissing it places it firmly in the area of triviality, and lessens its importance in his life.
He pities the poodles because he thinks that they're idealists, and he associates that with inevitable failure. I think this is where Chris lies to himself more than anywhere else: he's brutal to himself, and in a lot of ways far more honest than your average person. But in this one fcet, he's about as blind as it's possible to be.
He's not big on self-analysis. That's what commentaries and players are for.
Ororo growls in her throat, at first wordless and then spoken. "Being scum isn't a /talent/. No. No, /life/ isn't enough." It is almost a sneer that emphasizes the word. She tips her head back to find his face with squinting eyes. "Is it enough for /you/?"
"Low blow," Chris says, a smile twisting his mouth askew, a thing of angles and corners that doesn't reach the laggard shadow of his eyes. Again his shoulders hitch; in discomfort, this time. Awkward resettlement. "Fuck me, I don't know. Isn't there a rule about asking questions like that?"

So the question comes up, and it's one that he's not prepared to answer himself, and since there's a danger with questions that if you ask them, you have to be prepared to answer them, he -- diverts a little. He loses the thread of meaning in life and moves it to ability in life.
Ororo swats it right back, and here's where it could go two ways. One of the tricks that Chris has when he's getting to know something or coaxing them to open up to him is by telling them something about himself, some experience, some vulnerability; he gives a little and that in turn makes other people give back a lot more. He gives off an impression of being a private person, I think? So when he opens up enough to share something about his experiences or his thoughts or what-have-you, the person he confides in tends to feel privileged, somehow, which builds a connection between them. On top of that, now there's a burden of reciprocation; this man has permitted me in to see something not a lot of people see. I should let him in, in turn.
If you ever listen to NPR's This American Life, there was a segment on it one day where a man talked about standing in the subway station, waiting with a bunch of other people, and saw this complete stranger walking down the ranks of waiting subway-goers, muttering. When he got close enough to the narrator, the narrator realized that this man, probably homeless, was pointing to each person in turn and saying, "You're in," or "You're out."
What they were in or out for, who the hell knew. But when the homeless man got to him and said, "You're in," and moved on, the narrator felt an emotional response, like a relief or a triumph. It's the same silly feeling of whatever-it-is that people feel when a cat walks into a room and ignores everyone else to come straight to them, or when a small child decides to adore you and nobody else. Flattered, maybe? It's a basic human response, and Chris knows how to use it to his advantage.
And here, where he could use it to his advantage to maybe get Storm to open up more to him -- he chooses to step away and hide. The reasons are the same annoying, block-headed reasons he does it again and again in this log. He deflects, and awkwardly, since he's a bit torn about which way to go. And of course he makes what /I/ think is the wrong decision. Sometimes I could just smack him upside the head.
Storm makes the point in her commentary that when Chris really does open to her, Storm tends to drive the knife home. This isn't far wrong! It's not necessarily bad for Chris -- save in the point that it sort of discourages him from opening up to her -- but emo is one of those things that I enjoy in other characters, and absolutely writhe about playing in mine. I don't feel that I do it very well, frankly. I probably need practice. On the up side, I think that also sort of helps him not try to manipulate her by opening up. So you get the positive and the negative on this one; subversive though the motive is behind his self-exposure, that doesn't make the exposure itself any less real.
"You asked /me/," Ororo says sourly. She pulls back a little further, shifting back on her ass to curl her arms over her knees. "It's too bright in here. We can talk if the lights are off." She looks over at her lamp as though she is seriously considering the pros and cons of lightning bolts versus getting up. "I'm so tired, Chris. I promised I wouldn't lie anymore, but sometimes I almost feel like I don't do anything else." She bows her head in towards her knees, curling in on herself. "I'm drunk," she adds. "I think."
"You're drunk," Chris says, his arms falling away to push himself up -- the beer bottle, forgotten, is jostled and rocks in reaction, prompting a startled glance -- so he can limp towards the light. "And I'm sober. I'd be a shithead to take advantage of you. I'd be a cop," he amends, skating black humor over the correction. His stoop to investigate the light switch is rewarded by a click and sudden darkness; the night pours in on padded feline feet, purring around them to tease dilating eyes.

Chris recognizes his player's annoyance and apologizes! (No, no really.) Poor Ororo. :( She has an awful boyfriend. And he explains himself there, though the way he phrases it sounds like it could almost refer to sexual rather than emotional intercourse. It would be unfair for him to take advantage of her -- to manipulate her when she's not only drunk, but emotional -- into baring more of herself to him. Which is stupid, because she's his girlfriend, not a respected colleague or boss, and relationships /open up/ to each other, and that's supposed to be how it /works/--
Back at the beginning, though -- in the New Year's log if I'm not mistaken -- Chris said something that meant a lot more than I think Ororo realized.
Uh, let's see if I can find it....
"What do you /think/ I want from you?" Ororo demands, the fume of her breath flaring her nostrils. The sound of rain beating its torrentous rhythm against the walls of the apartment building provides percussion accompaniment to their conversation.
The broad back stiffens; shoulders set. "No," Rossi says bleakly, and he turns back to her, arms bracing him against the counter behind him. The coffee machine, plugged in, offers domestic counterpoint to the battering of rain. "I don't play that game, Ororo. I don't. I can't. I play it on the job, and it has to stay there or else I can't-- I won't know how to not be the cop anymore. There won't be anything left. I can't do that anymore."

Ororo is getting the leftovers of his relationship with Leah. So much of that relationship was based on deception and manipulation: her hiding the Friends association; him using the cop side of himself first to get information from her, and then to protect her. It was an ugly, miserable, destructive cycle, and there wasn't really an out for either of them. Right there, near the beginning of their relationship, Rossi told Storm that he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't play the kind of mind-games that he's capable of playing, because he wants -- he /needs/ -- to be something other than a cop somewhere in his life. For good or ill, that part of his life is Ororo.
See, and the problem is, being a cop is so much a part of his behavior patterns, embedded in his worldview and his interactions with people, that it's totally artificial for him to reject it. So he turns into this fumbling, awkward, stupid man who can't find his ass with both hands.
Lucky Storm.
There has been more than one occasion where he's been ashamed of the things he's done as a cop to get what he needs to make his case, or get his guy, or whatever. That dig about 'I'd be a cop' above is betraying, in its way. It's his acknowledgment that he's too old to change, even though he's making this sort of praiseworthy attempt to be something other than what his instincts urge him to be.
"That's better," Ororo says. She looks to the window and the points of starlight visible in the cooling night. She sighs and shifts again, letting shoulders rest against the bed behind her. "Now come back here," she adds, waving vaguely in what she suspects is his direction.
The shadowy bulk of Chris moves cautiously across the floor, limned by starlight and the glow of outside electricity. His socked feet hiss against the floor; a small bump and a curse identifies the location of the beer bottle, hastily rescued and swung up in a possessive hand.
The scents of soap, shampoo, and that other scent distinctly Chris's own, ride the small breeze. He sinks back down beside her, legs stretching out in a loose-limbed sprawl.
Ororo leans against him. After a moment silent, she closes her eyes and breathes a low chuckle in her throat, honeyed and warm. She says, "Hi."
He is strong enough to bear her weight. His lean against her in reply first bumps, then holds, so the dark head can rest on the light one. "Hi," he says, his voice like ripped black velvet. Humor wades through it, lazy and mild. "Hey, Cadbury."
"I think we used to be simpler, Rossi." Ororo laughs through the words, even though as humor goes it's not very funny. "Maybe that's a lie, too." She walks a pair of fingers down his thigh, watching her hand with a sort of distracted interest.

I don't actually have that much more to say in this log, (she says, two million paragraphs later.) Ororo says that she doesn't want to lie anymore, but -- well. Her player will have to comment on how much of what she's said to date is truth, above. Chris has spent the entire Rp being awkward and not really himself. Or rather, being himself, but not really being ... uh, well. Himself.
Yeah, I really have run out of stuff to say.
Also, man, I am pooped. And I was pooped then, too.
"A long time ago," Chris says, settling the march of his spine against the edge of the bed. His head rolls back, black strands twining with silver; the starlight plays with it, picking out the yin and the yang and weaving them both together into an ill-defined plait. "Things used to be easier. Just surviving used to be enough." Tacit answer to an earlier question.
"I guess it did," Ororo murmurs, letting her hand lie where it falls on his leg. Her eyes drift closed again and she exhales another, slower breath. She wets her lips, but doesn't speak; she makes just a soft hum of a sound, and then nothing left but quiet.

I don't know why he answered her. Too late for it to matter. He needed the distance from the question so it wouldn't be as meaningful, I guess?
Honestly.