9/20/08 - Emma, Leonardo
---
Central Park. Saturday. That means weekend wear! Unfortunately, weekend wear usually means suits and such for Emma. Except when she doesn't have any meetings, and can manage to sneak out of the office. Hello, jeans! Stylish ones, to be sure. Dark. Paired with sheer white over white in the form of a blouse and camisole. It's enough to draw a comment from anyone familiar with her. Bah. "...matter of opinion. Are you claiming to be the expert here, Officer?" Emma bats back at the dark haired man at her side.
"/Detecti/--" the Brooklyn-draped baritone begins, with the blankness of a Pavlovian response: title, objection. Rossi cuts himself off, a grimace seconding the resignation that zips through his mind, and glances wry humor down at the woman beside him. He is more formally dressed, if cheaply; the entire price of his attire -- dark blue suit and pants, black shirt, appalling silver and blue polka-dotted tie -- could well fit into the cost of Emma's stylish jeans. "Yeah, fine. I'm the expert here. When was the last time you had to interview an accountant turning into purple jello?"
Leonardo isn't dressed for summer, unless you count lighter material in his jacket. He's walking in Emma and Rossi's direction, reading papers in a folder, then he hears it... a sexy beast of a thousand horrors. His head raises and he thinks 'Oh god oh god, I'm not prepared, I didn't prepare!', but he stops a few feet from them and says, "Oh, Miss Frost, Detective, what a coincidence seeing you two here." Smile!
"Well. I wouldn't go so far as to say /jello/, but I've seen a purple accountant or two," Emma laughs, enjoying the score she just made upon him. She takes his arm, just to dig a little more, and just in time to catch the frantic patter of Leo's thoughts. She stops, stopping Rossi with her, and blinks at Leo. "Mr. Maxwell." One can almost hear the unspoken 'darling' dripping in the air.
Creepy. Maxwell, that is. The thought chases purple accountants down a rabbit hole, "--some shit you just shouldn't put in your mouth--" Rossi says cryptically, surrendering his arm to Emma without visible objection, and pauses obligingly to squint at Leonardo. /He/ (the cop) has a pretzel from one of the ubiquitous carts that skate around the park. He breaks off a piece, pops it in his mouth, and chews with great deliberation before swallowing. That there's NYPD irony. "You," he greets without enthusiasm. One can almost hear the unspoken 'asshole' clawing through the air.
Not surprising that Emma's talons have more finesse.
"It's been a long time, I was not aware you two were still associated." Leonardo says with the most neutral tone, still smiling as he thinks, << Bastard, still sleeping with Miss Frost, I should have that invisible kid put a damned horse head in his bed. >> Stray thoughts, but he shakes his head and tries to actually /talk/ to her. << Miss Frost? Can you hear this? I have to ask you something. >>
Emma's fingers dig deeper into Rossi's arm, but it's clear it's not in response to anything /he/ has said. Her attention is fixed oddly upon Leonardo. "I wouldn't call it association..." she trails off suggestively. Suggestive to just about /anything/. Her eyes peels off of Leo and slide to the corner of her lids which are tilted up toward Rossi's face. That's the only evidence she may have heard Leo's stray thoughts. << How clandestine, Mr. Maxwell. >> Humor and patience coat her mind voice--the sensation both oddly intimate and just plain odd.
Rossi blinks once at Emma's response to Maxwell, his mind directing a questioning << ? >> towards her that is speckled with suspicion and an unfortunate sense of humor. One that might get him in trouble if, say, a certain weather witch were around. "Just ... good friends," he tells Leo blandly, dropping his scarred hand on Emma's around his elbow, a proprietary gesture that would be more platonic if his thumb did not slide a lover's caress across her fingers. Eyelids droop, black lashes veiling much of the expression in his green eyes; his gaze drops to meet Emma's, sardonic amusement glittering in them. Shame on her. Shame on him. Tsk. "Want some pretzel?"
"If you're offering me, no. And it's nice to know that Miss Frost keeps such good company." << Don't impale him with a street light, don't impale him with a street light... >> he mentally chants as his hands ball into fists. << I have an invisible man. I know you're a powerful woman, and I'm in a position to make him do whatever you want, so do you need a person like that? >>
<< Rossi, darling. Don't flinch, >> she chides. Blue eyes meet green, and she smiles slyly. << I don't think he likes you very much right now. >> She slides out of Rossi's thoughts and transfers attention and gaze back to Leo. She tightens her grip on Rossi's arm, pressing her chest into it slightly. Invisible men? Hmmm. << Perhaps. You would need to tell me more. >>
The rusty response that filters through to Emma from the detective is cynical in the extreme. << What're you up to, Frost? >> He is a red-blooded male, and past history aside -- the hedonistic backdrop of Rossi's personality registers the pressure of Emma's breasts against his arm and appreciates it, if from a risky remove. << I can live with him not liking. You know about this fuckwit and that whole mutant experimentation thing, right? >> /Lazzaro/, growls a dozing hostility behind the shuttered eyes, and he turns a lazy grin towards Leo. "Wouldn't say good," he demurs aloud, looking the other man up and down with insulting deliberation. "Definitely not /good/."
Circuits are moved, wires are bent, things click, pop, there goes a street lamp's glass. He jumps in surprise, but quickly calms down and sighs. "The city needs to do something about their electrical efficiency." That, and Emma needs to stop touching Rossi, and Rossi needs to stop being an ASS! << Let's see, if I pay the invisible guy enough money, I can definitely... >> He gives Rossi a friendly smile, then focuses on Emma again, much more pleasant. << He's a bit mentally unstable, but not to a dangerous degree from what I can tell so far. He's been raised to suppress his powers, and he needs to use them or he feels like he'll do something bad. Basically, he needs someone to tell him to do bad things and keep him under control, and of course pay him. Of course being an invisible man, I haven't seen him yet, but he'll return to my office in a week for sure. >>
<< Oh, I know, >> Emma returns, eyes dropping into shadow behind her lashes. << I know. >> /Her/ mental voice is not rusty, but it still grates like disused metal tearing apart under pressure. << And what I'm up to is nothing more than ensuring that he remains harmless and neutered. >> And if there is a certain sadistic satisfaction to be gleaned from her actions, OH, WELL. << He wanted to make me his queen. Of his new world utopia. After the asteroid hit, >> she adds as an afterthought. One that is utterly and completely deadpanned.
Her eyes flicker wide and toward the sound of popping glass. << And you are telling me this because... >> she bats back to Leo.
Rossi's silent reply is unprintable. For a split-second, his feelings towards Leo surge towards the violent, before reining back: self-control! he has lots! /His/ therapist is actually /good/, in every sense of the word. << Fucker, >> he says agreeably, casts a startled glance up, seconds it with a grimmer glance back to Leo, then deliberately lowers his head to offer Emma a kiss of farewell. Platonic. And ... not. Don't flinch, Emma! "I should get going," he observes. "I got a meeting. See you later?" Undefined as the 'later' is, it leaves open all sorts of possibilities.
"Yes... later." << Gonna kill that bastard, skin him and dump him in a pit of fiber glass... >> he thinks as Rossi is offered a friendly goodbye wave. << I'm telling you because, well, no one gets as rich as you legally, unless somehow you're mind controlling /everyone/. This guy can be ordered to kill people, it's very obvious, he's easily controlled and yet he lacks a certain amount of self control. If you tell him it's alright, he'll lose his sense of guilt and just do it. You don't have anyone you want to kill? Some filthy Human bastard? >> He offers Rossi another glance after thinking that, then looks back to Emma.
Flinch? As if. Emma's face is full of wickedness as her hand slides from his elbow, up his arm, and around the ack of his neck to hold Rossi's lips in place a second longer than he intended. "Of course, darling." She releases him and steps back, eyes wide with promise both pleasant and not so for him, then turns back to Leo. "Perhaps we should find a phone and call the city to discuss their maintenance issues," she suggests. << That is a /very/ insulting attitude. >> If at least partially correct. << Why bother with mind control when other methods are just as effective? >>
Deaf to Leo's homicidal intentions, although possibly not unaware of them, Rossi lifts his eyebrow at Emma, a silent laugh skittering from his mind to hers, and ambles off with a parting nod to Leo. Irrational, the quixotic, tangled affection that mutely bids farewell to the woman. Then again, the detective is not noted for his instincts for self-preservation.
[Log ends. Continuation at: Emma Frost's LJ.]
Rossi proves romanticus interruptus to Leo. On this one, he's totally on the side of the evil manipulative telepath. Up is down, black is white, human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria--
As it happens, Chris returns to his desk just in time to catch the slideshow that he uses as a screensaver fading into his winter photograph of the Emmatue. He pauses to watch the gaudy -- if shapely -- abomination pose coyly against a backdrop of snow and expensive gardening, before it gives way to a more generic photo of Yankee stadium.
Tucci, passing behind him on his way out of the Captain's office, pauses to watch naked Emma Frost pass across his horizon. His mouth purses in a soundless whistle. "Damn," he says, as he usually does. "I would do that."
"It's twenty feet tall," Chris points out, willfully misunderstanding. As he always does.
"I got nothing against big women."
"Probably frigid, too."
Tucci makes a suggestion that would not, all things considered, be considered an appropriate comment in any work environment save this one. Or one that involves hard hats, say. Chris grins, pro forma, and tosses his crumpled napkin into the wastebasket beside his desk.
"That's a guy who really kisses ass," Tucci remarks, still on the subject of the statue.
"Flowers would've been cheaper."
"Flowers are for pussies," says the three-time divorced Tucci. His leer is not an attractive thing; then again, his is not an attractive face. "A 20-foot statue, on the other hand--" He makes a rude gesture that is descriptive of rewards suitable to the gift. There is a question mark in his eyebrows' lift.
Chris, seeing it, simply shrugs and shakes his head. "Doubt it," he says. Too late, he realizes his error. "Not her type," he tacks on imprudently, and then swears.
There are all sorts of places Tucci can go with this. Later, he will pursue it. For now, he is incredulous with all the righteous indignation of any red-blooded American male who expects quid pro quo on behalf of all his brethren, even if the ties between them are limited to a single chromosome and some dangly pieces. "You're shitting me," he says. "No featherbed jig? No laying the pipe? No mattress mambo? No uppy downy? A 20-foot statue and he didn't even get to varnish his cane?"
The Captain, whose timing is inclined towards the miraculous, chooses this moment to shout for Chris through her open door. He rises with grateful haste and beats his retreat, snagging files off his desk as he goes.
"Didn't even get to walk the dog?" Tucci continues behind him, hunching over his colleague's computer in patient wait for the next showing of Emma-liciousness. "Visit the Netherlands? Yodel in the valley? Have a hot roll with cream?"
There are actual gentlemen in the NYPD. It is a pity that none of them work with Det. Rossi.
Central Park. Saturday. That means weekend wear! Unfortunately, weekend wear usually means suits and such for Emma. Except when she doesn't have any meetings, and can manage to sneak out of the office. Hello, jeans! Stylish ones, to be sure. Dark. Paired with sheer white over white in the form of a blouse and camisole. It's enough to draw a comment from anyone familiar with her. Bah. "...matter of opinion. Are you claiming to be the expert here, Officer?" Emma bats back at the dark haired man at her side.
"/Detecti/--" the Brooklyn-draped baritone begins, with the blankness of a Pavlovian response: title, objection. Rossi cuts himself off, a grimace seconding the resignation that zips through his mind, and glances wry humor down at the woman beside him. He is more formally dressed, if cheaply; the entire price of his attire -- dark blue suit and pants, black shirt, appalling silver and blue polka-dotted tie -- could well fit into the cost of Emma's stylish jeans. "Yeah, fine. I'm the expert here. When was the last time you had to interview an accountant turning into purple jello?"
Leonardo isn't dressed for summer, unless you count lighter material in his jacket. He's walking in Emma and Rossi's direction, reading papers in a folder, then he hears it... a sexy beast of a thousand horrors. His head raises and he thinks 'Oh god oh god, I'm not prepared, I didn't prepare!', but he stops a few feet from them and says, "Oh, Miss Frost, Detective, what a coincidence seeing you two here." Smile!
"Well. I wouldn't go so far as to say /jello/, but I've seen a purple accountant or two," Emma laughs, enjoying the score she just made upon him. She takes his arm, just to dig a little more, and just in time to catch the frantic patter of Leo's thoughts. She stops, stopping Rossi with her, and blinks at Leo. "Mr. Maxwell." One can almost hear the unspoken 'darling' dripping in the air.
Creepy. Maxwell, that is. The thought chases purple accountants down a rabbit hole, "--some shit you just shouldn't put in your mouth--" Rossi says cryptically, surrendering his arm to Emma without visible objection, and pauses obligingly to squint at Leonardo. /He/ (the cop) has a pretzel from one of the ubiquitous carts that skate around the park. He breaks off a piece, pops it in his mouth, and chews with great deliberation before swallowing. That there's NYPD irony. "You," he greets without enthusiasm. One can almost hear the unspoken 'asshole' clawing through the air.
Not surprising that Emma's talons have more finesse.
"It's been a long time, I was not aware you two were still associated." Leonardo says with the most neutral tone, still smiling as he thinks, << Bastard, still sleeping with Miss Frost, I should have that invisible kid put a damned horse head in his bed. >> Stray thoughts, but he shakes his head and tries to actually /talk/ to her. << Miss Frost? Can you hear this? I have to ask you something. >>
Emma's fingers dig deeper into Rossi's arm, but it's clear it's not in response to anything /he/ has said. Her attention is fixed oddly upon Leonardo. "I wouldn't call it association..." she trails off suggestively. Suggestive to just about /anything/. Her eyes peels off of Leo and slide to the corner of her lids which are tilted up toward Rossi's face. That's the only evidence she may have heard Leo's stray thoughts. << How clandestine, Mr. Maxwell. >> Humor and patience coat her mind voice--the sensation both oddly intimate and just plain odd.
Rossi blinks once at Emma's response to Maxwell, his mind directing a questioning << ? >> towards her that is speckled with suspicion and an unfortunate sense of humor. One that might get him in trouble if, say, a certain weather witch were around. "Just ... good friends," he tells Leo blandly, dropping his scarred hand on Emma's around his elbow, a proprietary gesture that would be more platonic if his thumb did not slide a lover's caress across her fingers. Eyelids droop, black lashes veiling much of the expression in his green eyes; his gaze drops to meet Emma's, sardonic amusement glittering in them. Shame on her. Shame on him. Tsk. "Want some pretzel?"
"If you're offering me, no. And it's nice to know that Miss Frost keeps such good company." << Don't impale him with a street light, don't impale him with a street light... >> he mentally chants as his hands ball into fists. << I have an invisible man. I know you're a powerful woman, and I'm in a position to make him do whatever you want, so do you need a person like that? >>
<< Rossi, darling. Don't flinch, >> she chides. Blue eyes meet green, and she smiles slyly. << I don't think he likes you very much right now. >> She slides out of Rossi's thoughts and transfers attention and gaze back to Leo. She tightens her grip on Rossi's arm, pressing her chest into it slightly. Invisible men? Hmmm. << Perhaps. You would need to tell me more. >>
The rusty response that filters through to Emma from the detective is cynical in the extreme. << What're you up to, Frost? >> He is a red-blooded male, and past history aside -- the hedonistic backdrop of Rossi's personality registers the pressure of Emma's breasts against his arm and appreciates it, if from a risky remove. << I can live with him not liking. You know about this fuckwit and that whole mutant experimentation thing, right? >> /Lazzaro/, growls a dozing hostility behind the shuttered eyes, and he turns a lazy grin towards Leo. "Wouldn't say good," he demurs aloud, looking the other man up and down with insulting deliberation. "Definitely not /good/."
Circuits are moved, wires are bent, things click, pop, there goes a street lamp's glass. He jumps in surprise, but quickly calms down and sighs. "The city needs to do something about their electrical efficiency." That, and Emma needs to stop touching Rossi, and Rossi needs to stop being an ASS! << Let's see, if I pay the invisible guy enough money, I can definitely... >> He gives Rossi a friendly smile, then focuses on Emma again, much more pleasant. << He's a bit mentally unstable, but not to a dangerous degree from what I can tell so far. He's been raised to suppress his powers, and he needs to use them or he feels like he'll do something bad. Basically, he needs someone to tell him to do bad things and keep him under control, and of course pay him. Of course being an invisible man, I haven't seen him yet, but he'll return to my office in a week for sure. >>
<< Oh, I know, >> Emma returns, eyes dropping into shadow behind her lashes. << I know. >> /Her/ mental voice is not rusty, but it still grates like disused metal tearing apart under pressure. << And what I'm up to is nothing more than ensuring that he remains harmless and neutered. >> And if there is a certain sadistic satisfaction to be gleaned from her actions, OH, WELL. << He wanted to make me his queen. Of his new world utopia. After the asteroid hit, >> she adds as an afterthought. One that is utterly and completely deadpanned.
Her eyes flicker wide and toward the sound of popping glass. << And you are telling me this because... >> she bats back to Leo.
Rossi's silent reply is unprintable. For a split-second, his feelings towards Leo surge towards the violent, before reining back: self-control! he has lots! /His/ therapist is actually /good/, in every sense of the word. << Fucker, >> he says agreeably, casts a startled glance up, seconds it with a grimmer glance back to Leo, then deliberately lowers his head to offer Emma a kiss of farewell. Platonic. And ... not. Don't flinch, Emma! "I should get going," he observes. "I got a meeting. See you later?" Undefined as the 'later' is, it leaves open all sorts of possibilities.
"Yes... later." << Gonna kill that bastard, skin him and dump him in a pit of fiber glass... >> he thinks as Rossi is offered a friendly goodbye wave. << I'm telling you because, well, no one gets as rich as you legally, unless somehow you're mind controlling /everyone/. This guy can be ordered to kill people, it's very obvious, he's easily controlled and yet he lacks a certain amount of self control. If you tell him it's alright, he'll lose his sense of guilt and just do it. You don't have anyone you want to kill? Some filthy Human bastard? >> He offers Rossi another glance after thinking that, then looks back to Emma.
Flinch? As if. Emma's face is full of wickedness as her hand slides from his elbow, up his arm, and around the ack of his neck to hold Rossi's lips in place a second longer than he intended. "Of course, darling." She releases him and steps back, eyes wide with promise both pleasant and not so for him, then turns back to Leo. "Perhaps we should find a phone and call the city to discuss their maintenance issues," she suggests. << That is a /very/ insulting attitude. >> If at least partially correct. << Why bother with mind control when other methods are just as effective? >>
Deaf to Leo's homicidal intentions, although possibly not unaware of them, Rossi lifts his eyebrow at Emma, a silent laugh skittering from his mind to hers, and ambles off with a parting nod to Leo. Irrational, the quixotic, tangled affection that mutely bids farewell to the woman. Then again, the detective is not noted for his instincts for self-preservation.
[Log ends. Continuation at: Emma Frost's LJ.]
Rossi proves romanticus interruptus to Leo. On this one, he's totally on the side of the evil manipulative telepath. Up is down, black is white, human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria--
As it happens, Chris returns to his desk just in time to catch the slideshow that he uses as a screensaver fading into his winter photograph of the Emmatue. He pauses to watch the gaudy -- if shapely -- abomination pose coyly against a backdrop of snow and expensive gardening, before it gives way to a more generic photo of Yankee stadium.
Tucci, passing behind him on his way out of the Captain's office, pauses to watch naked Emma Frost pass across his horizon. His mouth purses in a soundless whistle. "Damn," he says, as he usually does. "I would do that."
"It's twenty feet tall," Chris points out, willfully misunderstanding. As he always does.
"I got nothing against big women."
"Probably frigid, too."
Tucci makes a suggestion that would not, all things considered, be considered an appropriate comment in any work environment save this one. Or one that involves hard hats, say. Chris grins, pro forma, and tosses his crumpled napkin into the wastebasket beside his desk.
"That's a guy who really kisses ass," Tucci remarks, still on the subject of the statue.
"Flowers would've been cheaper."
"Flowers are for pussies," says the three-time divorced Tucci. His leer is not an attractive thing; then again, his is not an attractive face. "A 20-foot statue, on the other hand--" He makes a rude gesture that is descriptive of rewards suitable to the gift. There is a question mark in his eyebrows' lift.
Chris, seeing it, simply shrugs and shakes his head. "Doubt it," he says. Too late, he realizes his error. "Not her type," he tacks on imprudently, and then swears.
There are all sorts of places Tucci can go with this. Later, he will pursue it. For now, he is incredulous with all the righteous indignation of any red-blooded American male who expects quid pro quo on behalf of all his brethren, even if the ties between them are limited to a single chromosome and some dangly pieces. "You're shitting me," he says. "No featherbed jig? No laying the pipe? No mattress mambo? No uppy downy? A 20-foot statue and he didn't even get to varnish his cane?"
The Captain, whose timing is inclined towards the miraculous, chooses this moment to shout for Chris through her open door. He rises with grateful haste and beats his retreat, snagging files off his desk as he goes.
"Didn't even get to walk the dog?" Tucci continues behind him, hunching over his colleague's computer in patient wait for the next showing of Emma-liciousness. "Visit the Netherlands? Yodel in the valley? Have a hot roll with cream?"
There are actual gentlemen in the NYPD. It is a pity that none of them work with Det. Rossi.