Pax Gelatis
Don't remember the last time I found it this hard to get out of bed.
Because she's in it.
I should tell her. I'll tell her. She has to know. She's not stupid. Women, though. They act like they know everything and then it turns out they don't know anything at all.
I'll tell her.
Next time.
---
1/9/2006
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
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Old Brownstone Apartments #300 - Leah
Plentiful light and air combine to make this tall and narrow apartment seem larger than its floor plan suggests. Directly opposite the entry's little foyer, a trio of high, leaded-glass windows dominates the main area: the central living room, the kitchen next to the entry, and the eating nook in the corner between kitchen and window. On the other side of the apartment lies private space: a tiny office next to the entry, the bedroom on the other side of a short hallway, and the bathroom between.
The decor is simple but pleasant with many touches of nature, from the polished woods of floor and furniture to the scattered arrangements of seashells, dried flowers, and framed landscapes that complete the essence of a peaceful haven.
--
"So I /said/," says Leah as she lifts the colander out of the sink and shakes it a little to release hot drops below and hot steam above, "'I can pay for my own damn lunch, I'm not exactly broke.' But you know how friends are. She had to pay for my clothes. My shoes. My lunch?" She snorts and dumps the pasta into a bowl. Reaches for the olive oil on the counter nearby, shakes her head, and runs her free hand back through prickly hair. "What's lunch to someone like Minnie? Anyway, we had a good time. Her party /was/ great. I met a mayor's aide, even." Her gaze shoots, mellow and pallid brown, across the kitchen. "How was your New Year's? --Let me guess. Magneto on Christmas, Genghis Khan on New Year's Eve."
"New Year's in Times Square," corrects Chris against the refrigerator, open-shouldered, open-humored obstruction. An arm splays him half-crucified against the metal, wrist propped over the upper edge; the other, fisted around a beer bottle, gestures in chary disgust. "Julia's idea. She's on an anti-men kick. See how long /that/ lasts. Tourists everywhere. Give me Magneto, anyday."
Leah notes, "Apparently, we can do that. He came /here/? On freaking Christmas?" Again she shakes her head as she starts mixing olive oil and garlic shaved to translucent slices into the noodles. At her far elbow, a pot of sauce burbles sleepily to itself, occasionally belching an especially loud pop of sweet marinara scent. "Is it even safe for me to be back here now?" Her tone isn't as light as her words. "Maybe I'll go stay with Julia. T'hell with men and mutants alike."
The affectionate older brother allows, wry, "If you're willing to share your privacy, or find your shoes buried under a week's worth of dishes. Go for it. --You could always shack up with me for a while," he tacks on over an idle swig, desultory with beer and invitation. "Then again, Metalhead knows I know you now, so--"
"He could come after you?" Leah asks quietly, focusing on getting a perfectly even mix of pasta and embellishments. Her shoulders twitch tension under a loose, lazy blue blouse, tucked into dark jeans.
Chris grins, green eyes abrupt with humor. Black as she's made: "Hasn't killed me yet. Not that he's tried. I'll stick some pipe cleaners on my head next time. Tell him I'm growing into my mutation. --No worries." Cheerful arrogance, NYPD style. "What's he going to do? Beat me up with a frying pan? Angela used to do that."
Leah snorts. "You earned it from her. What have you done to piss Erik Lensherr off? Sleeping with me can't be enough. I'm not yet a crime, I'm pretty sure. --Where're the plates? I think this is ready. You wanna try the sauce? It might want more oregano."
White T-shirt notwithstanding, Rossi is swift to volunteer, stooping to poke nose, tongue, and criticism into Leah's service. "Smells good," he congratulates, dropping a hand to stuff into blue jean pockets. "Don't think the guy needs a reason. Think we don't see eye to eye on my personal charm, though. --Let me get that." Plates clatter and clank over the thump of a cabinet. "These new?"
"Well, since you were so kind as to break the ugly old ones I had--"
"Straight out of the sixties," Chris agrees, lacking the good taste to be abashed. A fingernail flicks off a plate. "Where'd you get these?"
Leah levels him a frankly astonished look. "Rossi? Is that you?" She leaves off stirring the sauce to step up to him and put a warm hand to his forehead. "Are you in there? Who replaced my detective with a pod person off the Queer Eye show?"
The free hand bats at Leah's, timed to the head's jerk away. "Secure in my sexuality, Canto. Own a Hello Kitty oven mitt," Rossi reminds, slouching into self-proclaimed masculinity and the thumb's dangle off a belt loop's precipice. A shoulder leans into the wall, abandoning interest in matters of taste and accoutrements. "You should keep more breakable shit around. Good for stress."
"Works for you?" Leah arches back, then snorts and returns to the stove. She picks up the saucepan in one hand, the pasta bowl in the other, and imperiously nods him towards the dining table, where a cloth-shrouded basket of rolls, a breathing wine bottle, and a salad's leafy profusion already wait. "Maybe I'll get a punching bag put in the office. Get an email that pisses me off, hit the thing. A bitchy phone call, a rejected story -- it'd get plenty of workout."
"Healthy," says the inner city philosopher, ambling obediently out into the open spaces and civilization's sinecure. "Lets all those negative vibes out. Leaves you feeling clean, smelling fresh-- Why're you cooking me dinner again? Am I still in trouble?"
Leah comments, "You sound like a Massengill commercial, my hand to God. Next you'll have me walking on a beach in a gauzy white gown, /feeling/ fresh." She sits the food down before she does: a slow hitch of seat into seat, a cloudy study of his face. "You aren't in trouble." Quiet, again. She dishes out pasta onto her plate and passes the bowl over. "Should you be?"
The man reflects a certain cynical amusement back at her. "Cops invented that trick, Canto. Used to pull it on traffic pulls. Unless you're banging someone in CSU, I'm good to go. --Are you?" he adds as an afterthought, oh-so-casual. Chris sinks a hip into a chair, replacing beer with bowl, and cloudy with balmy. Black frames green, and slivers. "Doing someone in CSU, I mean."
"No. Not CSU -- and not CSI, either," Leah adds with prissy precision, cop-bred and reporter-trained. Her noodles get a slathering of sauce next, just enough to soak but not drown them. Her amusement is as heavy, thick. "Hate that show. It's ruined what people think lab techs do. When was the last time CSU went off in a goddamned Hummer and /sunglasses/ to solve the red-ball crime singlehandedly? If they did . . ." She cocks her head and a bright smile at him. "Maybe I /would/ do one of them. You wouldn't mind, right?"
"Saw one the other day," Chris admits, clarifying over a scoop of pasta: "That show. Red-headed asshole. Think it was ... Miami? Something like that. Changed the channel. Just looking at the guy pissed me off. If you're going to do one of /those/ guys, do the blonde chick. Or the black chick." Rossi, gentleman born, gives the matter grave consideration, and concludes, "Any of the chicks."
Leah trips lightly, trilling with sultry affectation, "/Slash/. --Pass the salad."
Salad passes. So does cultural ignorance. "Though slash was gay."
"What, and chick-on-chick isn't gay?" Leah fluffs salad onto her plate. "Dear God, Christopher. We need to get you out more. A lot out. Like, Harvey Fierstein out."
"Chick-on-chick is hot," Chris clarifies kindly. "Not gay. It's different. Like -- except it depends on the chick." Leaf-dyed eyes grin at Leah, ingenuous. Inviting. Not at all innocent. "Screw men. You want to be a lesbian, I'll support you. Even help you find a girl your type."
Leah wonders, "Your sister? If she's good enough for your pal Vincent--"
Chris winces. A bun, chosen at random from the available offerings, is sacrificed with vim and vigor, the heart plucked out of the beast. "/Not/ Julia. Like hell am I going to watch her get it on with you or anyone else. Christ. And Lazz-- shit, Canto. I'm trying to eat, here."
"So--" Leah tucks a neat bite of pasta into her mouth, chews, swallows "--I guess that wild orgy with the four of us in a penthouse suite downtown is out of the question. And I'd /so/ been looking forward to it."
"Only way you're fitting Lazzaro and me in a bed together is if we're dead." The butter knife pauses, and lifts in preparation: declaratory statement in the offing. "That happens, make sure there're pillows between us. No touching."
Leah marvels, "Even in death? I had no idea homophobia could be posthumous. Thank you for the education, Detective."
"New pope in power, who the hell knows? Not taking any chances. Anyway, Lazzaro'll probably have himself vacuum packed." Chris chews his way through a piece of bread, darkling brow easing over whimsy. "Fewer germs."
"Who would've thought Howard Hughes ever would've ended up working Mutant Affairs?" Leah spins out rhetorically. She scoops up a bun, too, and uses it to mop another bite into order and up to her mouth. Then, whimsical in turn: "And how are you gonna be packed?"
Sauce. Splut. "Cremation," says Chris, dabbing futilely at a splash on his shirt, a gore-choked stain in the making. "Always hated the whole dress uniform shindig. Stick me in a ziploc and toss me in the Hudson. Better yet, sell me off in little bottles. 'Genuine NYPD memento.'" White flashes up, chipped in chance hilarity. "Tourists'll love it. --Dammit. Why do I always wear white with red sauce?"
Leah answers kindly, "An unerring fashion sense. To go with your Hello Kitty oven mitt -- are you shitting me about that?" She cranes an inspection of the stain. "You wanna take that off and stick it in the wash? I probably have another shirt you could wear. Protect your manly pride."
"You just want to see me naked."
"I did make you dinner."
Chris thinks. "Fair trade. --Damn," he adds on the cusp of regret. "I bought Tucci a bagel this morning. Should've made him strip for it."
Leah picks herself up and ruffles his hair in passing. "Before or after you gouged your eyes out?" she wonders before disappearing in the bedroom for a moment. Reemerging with a big blue flannel shirt, fuzzy grey with age, she drapes it over his shoulder. Then drapes her hand over his other one, and rests her chin on his head. "I made dinner," she tells him soberly, "because you made dinner for me, not that long ago, and you saved me from getting jacked up by Magneto, for all I know. And because of those three little words you love so much. All right?"
The black hair hisses to Chris's tilt up, the slide of skull into the hollow of neck -- and then to the right and back further still: into shoulder and the downtug of a twining arm. "Yeah," he says, and sighs a kiss into the soft, sensitive skin of her throat. "Don't know if I /saved/ you from anything. Gimme a few days and I will, though. You know I'm an asshole, right?"
"Yup," Leah murmurs (the pulse of the plosive against his mouth, with Adam apple's bob). She hugs him and then lets him go to resume her seat. "However, I'm a bitch, so we seem to be well matched. I'm sure I'll survive."
"Wouldn't have it any other way," Rossi informs with dark-voiced charity, and scrapes back in his chair to strip. "Other than the whole Pezhead thing, it's been pretty quiet, actually. Lab's catching up." The words tangle in cloth, muzzling consonants and thinning vowels; he emerges on the other side of modesty, tanned (still!) and framed in a white undershirt before blue slips on over it. "This rate, we'll be all clear by the time Valentine's rolls around."
Leah snarks, "Happy day for the girlfriends and wives of the squad. /Pez/head. God, Chris. Tell me you did not say that to his face. And never will."
The pale, light-limned glance skips up, surprised. "You don't think he looks like a pez dispenser? With the helmet, and the--" A hand sketches circles around the black halo of head.
"--Megalomaniacal, insane evil?" Leah supplies helpfully.
"Think they'd make one for me if I asked?" Chris wonders aloud. "As a favor to the NYPD?"
Leah curls her fingers over her brow, shielding a closed-eyed mask of exaggerated dismay. "No. I'm pretty sure on that one." A splinter of brown peeks at him, above humor tugging at her mouth like a kitten with a string. "But if you ask, please do tell me the response."
Rossi experiments with his spoon, thumbing its bowl in futile demonstration. "Arm them with lasers or something," he suggests, mining the depths of ludicrous fantasy. "Shoot the fucker's head off. The ultimate secret weapon. Available in a cereal box near you."
"Lasers," Leah repeats with wonderment's flatness. "In a /cereal/ box. Right. And coming to a candy store near you: Saturday Night Specials and anthrax."
"Could happen. Republicans in power--" Chris grins. Adds magnimously: "This is good pasta, Canto."
Leah lowers her head on a murmured, "Thank you. Got the recipe from your mother." She has a bite of it herself. The bite of the innocent and the worthy, yea verily.
Rossi, demonstrating great restraint, does not toss a piece of bread at Leah. It rolls between his knuckle and thumb, however, highly speculative. "So what else have you been up to? --Maybe you /should/ crash at my place for a while," he adds, thoughtful. "We can stick in some kind of alarm at your place -- it'll give us a heads-up if some shithead comes calling."
While her squint calculates the distance and likely speed and trajectory of the bread missile, Leah answers, "I've been living the life of a saint. Ask anyone. The Newsweek thing comes out tomorrow, and then . . ." Her expression shakes a minute, but she recaptures it, bland and bright and endlessly pleasant. "Well, then I'll work on the next thing, same as always. As for your place -- hell. When do we get engaged? I can't live in sin with a man, Rossi. My mother would keel over and die." Mournfully she stares at him across the table. "You don't want my mother dead, do you?"
"No idea," Chris admits. "We talking natural causes? --Your mom doesn't need to know. What's the big deal? You use your apartment like a closet, and just ... live down in mine. We don't have to share the same bed if you don't want." Baritone twists, dipping into uncharacteristic diffidence. Rossi eyes Leah warily. "Think of it as a sec-- wait. Your mom? How old /are/ you?"
Leah gives him wariness right back. "Old enough. You gonna make a crack about my age now? Jesus."
Rossi objects, "Staying single because of your /mother/--" Not chaste. He plants his elbow on the table and thumbs the base of his fork, waggling its tines at Leah. "Turning over a whole new leaf? Trying out this new virginity scam?"
Outrage sparks in her eyes, but Leah just lowers her head and meekly offers, "Yes. I'm scheduled to get my hymen repaired on Friday. I hope it pleases you, to be able to pop my cherry all over again. Master."
"/That/," says Chris sternly, "is a little sick, Canto." The fork wags again, lecturing by proxy, then returns to the squirreling away of pasta. More pacific, Brooklyn's baritone finishes, "--Like you better the way you are, anyway."
"It's expensive as hell, too," Leah notes. "Plastic surgery from hell, and people -- women -- /pay/ for it. As a gift to their husbands." She degenerates into a moment of low-voiced Italian curses, then shrugs it away. "Well, I like me the way I am, too, and you know, the thing with my mom -- ah, hell. We don't have to get into that here. I can turn this place into a closet if you think it's best." Civilian's deference.
Diverted, Chris begins, "--you're shitting me. Seriously? That's--" Sick. Yes. Pasta frolics at the end of his gesture, threatening blue flannel the way it did white cotton. Frivolous thing. He subsides, shoulders hunching over discomfort. "It's just an idea. Moving in. You don't have to if you don't /want/ to."
Leah rises quickly, verbally, in, "No, no, it's fine! It's a good idea. And the alarm, like you said." Her shoulders hunch eloquent, easy irritation. "I'm trying to do the right thing," she tells her half-demolished plate, a little desperately. "Like it's easy for me to follow orders and -- and not just live my life. I'm living two or three lives right now, all at the same time. Like some damn undercover cop."
Black-sharded eyes glance askance, sharper for all the deprecating aspect. "You want me to just tell you what to do, I can," Chris says, picking words out, stitching them in with a crafter's care. "You could just take orders, do what we agree, Summers and me, but--"
Leah's eyes come up, flared and wary-wide. Hope-wide. "So you did talk to him?"
"Yeah." Metal drops to the plate, jittering along its rim before coming to a rest against bread and salad. Chris straightens. "We talked. He's got some people watching you. And Magneto coming by on Christmas yanked in some bodies from the Westchester police."
"Shit," Leah breathes out unsteadily. Her gaze drops back to her plate. Hands move uselessly with utensils, feinting at a bite, not carving or taking it. "All for little ol' me."
The other elbow joins the first, hands bridging the gap. Chris leans into them, somber-eyed and briefly quelled. "It makes you feel any better, they're just about as hot to grab Magneto or the Friends. Either one'll do." Lips slash an unpleasant line -- then ease under the glance up. "So what's this Times piece? Do I get a heads-up?"
"Newsweek?" Leah asks listlessly. She manages a bite. Still not looking at him. "I interviewed one of the Friends leaders. One of their reporters interviewed me. We're both publishing our stuff in the same issue. A retrospective, a perspective, whatever, on the whole movement. On my little corner of it, too," she wrings out of embittered alto. The light slanting through bristly bronze hair strikes sudden wet diamonds off her lashes. She bites. She chews. She swallows. "That's it."
Chris looks, marks the trembling of moisture, and makes no comment. He takes up his fork again. He bites. He chews. He swallows. "Will the Friends buy it?"
Leah chokes a laugh. "Yeah, they will. I wrote it when I was still on their side, man. What's getting me /now/ -- shit." She puts her elbows on the table, too, and rests her head against one flopped-over hand. "I want to /deny/ it. But I can't. Then they'll know. Right? But if I try to go along with the follow-up interviews and inquiries, back up what I wrote, I'll blow it. I'm not that good an actor. I want to tell the Friends to fuck off, but I have to keep toeing their line. Right?" She looks up, dry-eyed again and resolute. "Right?"
"A little longer," says Chris, dropping the fork again to lean, lean long, lean hard across the corner of the table. A hand chases the line of cheek, warming it with callus-striped strength: fingers braiding around ears, through bronzed and burnished hair. "Just long enough for us to get a better lead on them. I'd turn the bastards over to Pezhead myself, if I--" The thinned mouth jags. "Just a little longer."
Squeezing her eyes shut, Leah leans into the touch. "I know. I know, I do. I'm playing along. I won't screw things up. It's just--" Her head drops, curves away from him. "It's hard," she finishes, then sucks in a breath, straightens in her chair, and resumes eating with calm, unhurried precision.
"Yeah. I know. You're doing good." He retreats reluctantly, hand closing around forsaken heat. Metal chitters, skipping over pasta and plate. The baritone nudges at brightness. "You should've seen the last time I went undercover. Freaking disaster."
"Yeah?" Leah looks at him. Tries on a smile. "I can't imagine. What did they have you do?"
"Ice cream truck." Belatedly wary, Chris fists his chin and frowns. "Don't laugh."
"I'm not laughing," Leah protests. Look at her not laugh. Look at her eat a bite of salad. Eat, Leah, eat. "Go on. Tell me about it. Did you wear the hat, too? The cute white hat?"
Chris sinks into his seat, resignation painted in deep, broad brush strokes across his expression. "Yeah. Stupid white hat, stupid white uniform. There was this --Goddammit. You're /laughing/. For the record, the neighborhood kids loved me."
Leah pouts. "I'm /not/. Up yours, Rossi. And of course they loved you. You're good with kids. You treat them like the retarded pets they are."
"They freak me out," Chris advises, unwilling to be commended, in jest or in earnest. He flicks a pebble of bread-stuffs at Leah, eyeing that outthrust lower lip with jaded scorn. "Too damn short to be healthy. Anyway, that was the last time. I look too much like a cop to do Narco."
Batting at the bread, and missing, Leah bends over to fumble around for it on the floor. Muttered curses drift up like the waft of sweet Italian dining's aroma. "--Homicide is all the better for it," she assures him on her sitting up (a little flushed from the change, and huffing a breath). She throws the bread back at him. Smiles. "The whole city is. Praise God and pass the ammunition."
"First and last time Julia was ever allowed to say grace at Thanksgiving dinner," remembers Rossi, ducking the bread -- too late to evade it -- and forced as a result to brush it piecemeal out of his hair. "Figure I'm better off there, anyway."
Leah does laugh at him now, watching the cleaning attempt. "You look like a squirrel on PCP," she advises. "Hang on, I have to find my camera."
The hand quickens, brushing, combing, barricading the peevish slice of a glance. "Dammit. --You ever been bit by one of those things? Back when I was a uniform--" No good end to /that/ story. Chris straightens with triumph, starfishes his hand under a dour eye, and tosses a lettuce leaf. "You're making a mess."
"Me?" Leah squeaks and flings a carrot slice like a wee discus at his head. "/Me/? You started it, asshole. Making mess of /my/ home--"
"Fucking rabbit--" And there, wobbly, goes a slice of radish, a lopsided UFO to harass the scullied integrity of Leah's hair.
Leah squalls, "Goddammit!" and sidearms a full roll at him, followed by a noodle, flailing like a lost flagellum through the cold and naked air.
Splat. Chris blinks, face spliced across by pasta. "Well," he says, and peels it away, leaving a bloody, ragged tear across the bridge of his nose and the crest of a cheek. "At least it's al dente."
Blankly Leah stares at him for a frozen, radish-crowned moment. Then she puts her head back and /laughs/ from deep down in her belly. A hand splays over her face as if to hold it in, but she can't stop, only trail off into undignified, hiccuping giggles. "--Al dente. Oh, God. Jesus God."
Chris endures, high on his injured dignity. A napkin's sweep and sprawl scrubs him clean: ruddy-cheeked, full-lipped, somber. "Christ, Canto. This how you treat /all/ your guests?" A long arm stretches to pluck out the radish, only to relocate it with better symmetry on the apex of her crown. "There'd better be dessert, is all I'm saying."
Leah sniffles back laughter's tears. The radish, thus dislodged, tumbles to her shoulder and bounces high and wide and far for the kitchen. (It lands all of a foot away. Ah, well.) "I'm sorry," she says, not at all meekly, and still grinning. "And yeah, we can rustle up something sweet. After you clean up this mess."
"Don't see how this is /my/ fault," objects Chris, trailing fingers down his shirt to discover, indignant: "Crap. You got it all over my undershirt, too. /Dammit/." The chair clatters, whining at his press back and up. The flannel tosses to the sofa, the undershirt following shortly after. Half-naked, gleaming smooth-skinned under the apartment's lights, he prowls into the kitchen to wreak vengeance on another beer.
Turning in her chair to follow him, Leah entirely abandons dinner, such as it's become, and sprawls, legs awry, and still damn grinning. "Sweet," she repeats, eyeing him like the window of a candy store. Then she helps, "The dustpan and broom are in the pantry, right there."
"I'm getting a beer," announces Chris with frigid displeasure, the words heavy and ponderous over the hiss and slam of the refrigerator door. Less irritably, he adds, "I'll grab you one, too. --So what /is/ for dessert?" The black head, rumpled, crumb-speckled, pops around the kitchen entrance to peer hawkish interest at Leah. Eye candy, right back atchya. "You?"
Leah hooks a finger under her collar and tugs it. Wide, innocent eyes. "If you want. Or there's gelato." She considers. "Or both."
Chris stretches, snaking around the entryway to pass Leah her bottle. "I'll get it," he informs, leaving it to the imagination whether he refers to dessert, dustpan, or woman. Amusement shows razor-edged and bright before he retreats, moving in his mysterious ways through the kitchen's innards. "Ignoring all the shit with the Friends and Magneto. Would you /want/ to move in with me?"
"What, like, forever and ever?" A practiced twist breaks the cap's seal, and she tosses the skittering disc onto the table, where it ends up nudging a carrot slice in forlorn greeting. Leah drinks. Leah looks at her guest. Leah looks hard at him, in fact. "Dunno. You asking?"
Forever. Unseen in the kitchen, white rims green in a flare of -- something. "Yeah," Chris says, scraping himself off the counter's edge to hunt for dustpan and broom. Pantry, there. He swings the door open and stares blankly at cans. "I guess. I'm not in my apartment much. Spend as much time crashing at the precinct as I do in my own bed, or at Mom's place. Doesn't seem worth it to drive back here every night, y'know? Sort of quiet."
Leah stays casual, nearly indifferent. "Yeah. But hey, if it's a problem -- I mean, you need your sleep after shifts. I know that. And I'm a clutterbug."
Chris steps out of the other room, an NYPD cover catalog armed with broom and dustpan. "I'm neat," he announces with defensive fervor, aiming disapproval at the escaped radish. "You cleaned my apartment that one time. You a packrat?"
Politely Leah draws in her legs' sprawl from the encroachment of righteous Cleanliness. "I can be," she says judiciously. "Mostly, I tend to scatter shit around while I'm working. You've seen it. Papers, notes, laptop, food, drink, monkeys and goats and invisible cats -- you name it, I got it when I'm deep in a story. All over the place."
"Nowhere near as bad as when I'm working a case -- but it's probably a bad idea," he'll grant, sweeping up radish, crumbs, lettuce, carrot, with a feline and finicky attention for each that spares no trace evidence for CSU miracles. "Press, cop, same apartment -- wouldn't end well, I guess."
"People would talk," Leah puts in while her gaze soaks hungry, wistful, on him while he's turned to his task. Her lashes shutter the vulnerability away, and she makes a long arm to fetch up her wineglass. "Can't have that. Some kind of conflict in our jobs, too, right? Like political rivals shacked up. Carville and Matalin."
Chris snorts into the last, careful scoop of debris. One swift glance finds its way through black locks and over a shoulder's hill; then it's back to the kitchen again, and the bang of the garbage and pantry door. "Little professional courtesy'd probably make that good, though you know how it is. Guys find out I'm dating the press, they'll never let me hear the end of it." The freezer hisses.
Leah asks, so lightly, "What, they don't know? That we're -- dating?"
"Beston does," baritone admits, over the scrounging and the slamming. "And Julia. And Mikey. And, well, Yamaguchi -- you've never met him, have you? He came in from Chicago a few months ago. Other than that--"
"Dating," repeats Leah, as if she can't not. The word clunks to the floor, and she stares at it for a disbelieving moment. "I did like the flowers. And we're trading dinners for each other--"
Like a puppet in a theater show, Chris's head and torso pops into the frame of the breakfast nook. "Not /dating/," he backtracks hastily, belatedly. "I mean, shit. I know we're not -- I meant, you know. Seeing each other. Sort of. Whatever it is we're doing." A hand gestures between them, sketching some amorphous and tangled skein before diving into the refuge of his hair. "This."
Leah is as quick to say, "Right. I know. Never mind -- sorry." She drinks deeply of wine and blinks a few times into the swallows. "Thanks for picking up, anyway. Appreciate it."
"--And we're not," Chris finishes with unnecessary care. "Dating, I mean. We've actually been out of the apartments, what. Four? Five times? And you're seeing other people--" Almost a question: a defensive opening.
"I'm not." She drains the glass, thunks it on the table. Stares back at him: almost defiance. "Spent the night with a guy before New Year's, but that's it. Unless you want to get monogamous--"
Chris pauses to stare back, thoughts stuffed to spilling behind his eyes. "I got the gelato," he says instead, voice quelled to truce. "Bowls? Or do you want to just eat right out of the container?"
Leah glances aside. Looks back. "Chris . . ."
"Yeah?" Two spoons. He pops one in his mouth to taste the metallic tang, and bows his head over the gelato's lid.
"Nothing." Surrender, bitter as acid etched into her slumped face, slumped shoulders. Leah climbs to her feet and moves for one of the cupboards, silent, to get the bowls.
With a liquid, sullen pop, suction fails to Chris's demanding pull. "Got it," he announces, and stretches an arm to reel Leah in. Green eyes turn down to her, quizzical. "What?"
The bowls come with her, one in each hand, and Leah presses them in the warm space between them. She closes her eyes. Shakes her head. Then looks back up at him. Tonelessly she says, "I don't want to lose you, but I don't know if I even have you, or if I ever will. How that could even happen. I did fuck a guy. It was once. I didn't want to make a fight out of it. Or a big deal. Okay?"
"Yeah?" asks Chris, and abandons the gelato, tucks his spoon behind his ear (where it balances, shiny and oh, ridiculous, /not/ ridiculous) to wrap his other arm around her. Grave attention touches her, caressing with its regard the fragility of face and brittle strength behind the bone. "Was it good?"
"Yeah," says Leah, and memory moves her briefly against him. Shame moves her away, a half-laugh's bastard deprecation. "Yeah, it was. Just to get /away/ from my life, like I was someone else -- I guess I needed that. It's over, anyway. I'm me. Here I am. Whee."
"Nothing wrong with that." A hand frees itself to touch where the gaze traced, to roam over the path marked out by green eyes. "I do the same thing. Half the beds I jump into-- anyway." Lips curl like smoke, shadow-touched and darkened. "Not like I'm qualified to judge. So you need to do it from time to time. I get it."
The brittle gaze fastens on his, and Leah chews at her lower lip with unconscious rumination. "No problem?" A smile twitches. "Well, ain't you just the best boyfriend ever. I might have to keep you."
The clasping arm tightens, squeezing; a hot, dagger slash of jealousy slices behind the carved face. "Yeah. About that." Jealousy bounds behind the baritone, loosed from its chains. Chris shows his teeth. "If we start dating for real? You're not sleeping with other men."
Leah's breath catches. She pushes at his chest with the bowls and glares. "No shit, Sherlock. Can't date me for real if you squeeze me to death, though."
For that, the reward is laughter, trapped in that bright and fallible gaze. "Point," Chris concedes, that selfsame amusement shivering across his baritone. The strong arm eases, loosing her; the spoon finds its place again in his mouth, and waggles obscene salute at Leah's nose. "You serving up, or what?"
Smiling a little, a little more naturally than before, Leah flicks a dismissive finger against the spoon's waggle -- clink! -- and agrees, "Serving up. Outta my way, big guy."
Obedient, see how obedient! Chris moves, pressing his way around Leah with a caress of the hand and a brush of warm body to print his presence against her awareness. "I'll be out in the living room," he announces, mumbling around the spoon's obstruction. "You got another shirt I can borrow?"
"Now, why," wonders Leah to an emptied kitchen, "would I permit you /another/ shirt after you've already been through two?" She digs her spoon into the container and starts a-scooping. Smiling still. "You can sit in your filth and like it, Rossi. Or just take it off and leave it off. All the same to me."
The spoon spits out into a hand, and is tossed willy-nilly on the dining room table. Cha-chunk. "Heartless brat," he accuses, eyeing the discarded dinner with an unenthused eye for cleaning. "I'll catch a cold. Sniffle all over you."
Leah grunts. "The hell you will. I'll kick you out so fast-- Oh, don't worry about that; I'll get it," she says to his study of their meal. "You did the floor, after all. C'mere and get your bowl, and I'll get on that. And then -- living room."
Chris grins at the spoon, cutting humor out of whole cloth, and pads back into the kitchen to interrupt gelato-dishing. Interfering, obstructing arms: a feline, feral demand for attention. "You're hot when you play Mom, Canto."
Laughing, Leah tries to fend him off with /her/ spoon and a good deal of wiggling between, within those arms. "TMI, Rossi. I'm not wanting to know that about your relationship with your ma, thanks--"
The black head lowers itself to the sensitive curve where neck meets shoulder, lips, breath and hands hot and exploring. Nibble nibble, giant mouse-- "I got a thing for women with ladles," he tells the darkness of skin and pulse. "I probably need to talk to a shrink about it. Or you could just give me some therapy."
The spoon clatters to the floor. "Ass," Leah breathes and slinks against him, a leg trapping one of his against the lower cupboards. Her arms slide up his back, and she twists his head for a proper kiss. "--Therapy? Therapy. God. I don't even wanna know. What, on my couch? Talkin' about your mother and how she yelled at you during toilet-training, fucking you up for life?"
"I was thinking something a little less talk-heavy," Chris says, drowning the words between his mouth and hers. Black lashes fan, thick; the jump of blood pulses beneath the bronze skin, quickening to the slide of hands. "A little sex therapy, maybe." He turns her, pins her back: hips against hips, and the counter's edge for a makeshift manacle.
Leah answers with her body and its breath shuddering delight and hot longing against him. "Whatever you want," she murmurs, leaning in. "Anything, anything you want--" Tasting. Touching. But not talking, not anymore, and the gelato melting in the room's ambient heat on the counter beside her.
[Log ends.]
Because she's in it.
I should tell her. I'll tell her. She has to know. She's not stupid. Women, though. They act like they know everything and then it turns out they don't know anything at all.
I'll tell her.
Next time.
---
1/9/2006
Logfile from Leah of X-Men MUCK.
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Old Brownstone Apartments #300 - Leah
Plentiful light and air combine to make this tall and narrow apartment seem larger than its floor plan suggests. Directly opposite the entry's little foyer, a trio of high, leaded-glass windows dominates the main area: the central living room, the kitchen next to the entry, and the eating nook in the corner between kitchen and window. On the other side of the apartment lies private space: a tiny office next to the entry, the bedroom on the other side of a short hallway, and the bathroom between.
The decor is simple but pleasant with many touches of nature, from the polished woods of floor and furniture to the scattered arrangements of seashells, dried flowers, and framed landscapes that complete the essence of a peaceful haven.
--
"So I /said/," says Leah as she lifts the colander out of the sink and shakes it a little to release hot drops below and hot steam above, "'I can pay for my own damn lunch, I'm not exactly broke.' But you know how friends are. She had to pay for my clothes. My shoes. My lunch?" She snorts and dumps the pasta into a bowl. Reaches for the olive oil on the counter nearby, shakes her head, and runs her free hand back through prickly hair. "What's lunch to someone like Minnie? Anyway, we had a good time. Her party /was/ great. I met a mayor's aide, even." Her gaze shoots, mellow and pallid brown, across the kitchen. "How was your New Year's? --Let me guess. Magneto on Christmas, Genghis Khan on New Year's Eve."
"New Year's in Times Square," corrects Chris against the refrigerator, open-shouldered, open-humored obstruction. An arm splays him half-crucified against the metal, wrist propped over the upper edge; the other, fisted around a beer bottle, gestures in chary disgust. "Julia's idea. She's on an anti-men kick. See how long /that/ lasts. Tourists everywhere. Give me Magneto, anyday."
Leah notes, "Apparently, we can do that. He came /here/? On freaking Christmas?" Again she shakes her head as she starts mixing olive oil and garlic shaved to translucent slices into the noodles. At her far elbow, a pot of sauce burbles sleepily to itself, occasionally belching an especially loud pop of sweet marinara scent. "Is it even safe for me to be back here now?" Her tone isn't as light as her words. "Maybe I'll go stay with Julia. T'hell with men and mutants alike."
The affectionate older brother allows, wry, "If you're willing to share your privacy, or find your shoes buried under a week's worth of dishes. Go for it. --You could always shack up with me for a while," he tacks on over an idle swig, desultory with beer and invitation. "Then again, Metalhead knows I know you now, so--"
"He could come after you?" Leah asks quietly, focusing on getting a perfectly even mix of pasta and embellishments. Her shoulders twitch tension under a loose, lazy blue blouse, tucked into dark jeans.
Chris grins, green eyes abrupt with humor. Black as she's made: "Hasn't killed me yet. Not that he's tried. I'll stick some pipe cleaners on my head next time. Tell him I'm growing into my mutation. --No worries." Cheerful arrogance, NYPD style. "What's he going to do? Beat me up with a frying pan? Angela used to do that."
Leah snorts. "You earned it from her. What have you done to piss Erik Lensherr off? Sleeping with me can't be enough. I'm not yet a crime, I'm pretty sure. --Where're the plates? I think this is ready. You wanna try the sauce? It might want more oregano."
White T-shirt notwithstanding, Rossi is swift to volunteer, stooping to poke nose, tongue, and criticism into Leah's service. "Smells good," he congratulates, dropping a hand to stuff into blue jean pockets. "Don't think the guy needs a reason. Think we don't see eye to eye on my personal charm, though. --Let me get that." Plates clatter and clank over the thump of a cabinet. "These new?"
"Well, since you were so kind as to break the ugly old ones I had--"
"Straight out of the sixties," Chris agrees, lacking the good taste to be abashed. A fingernail flicks off a plate. "Where'd you get these?"
Leah levels him a frankly astonished look. "Rossi? Is that you?" She leaves off stirring the sauce to step up to him and put a warm hand to his forehead. "Are you in there? Who replaced my detective with a pod person off the Queer Eye show?"
The free hand bats at Leah's, timed to the head's jerk away. "Secure in my sexuality, Canto. Own a Hello Kitty oven mitt," Rossi reminds, slouching into self-proclaimed masculinity and the thumb's dangle off a belt loop's precipice. A shoulder leans into the wall, abandoning interest in matters of taste and accoutrements. "You should keep more breakable shit around. Good for stress."
"Works for you?" Leah arches back, then snorts and returns to the stove. She picks up the saucepan in one hand, the pasta bowl in the other, and imperiously nods him towards the dining table, where a cloth-shrouded basket of rolls, a breathing wine bottle, and a salad's leafy profusion already wait. "Maybe I'll get a punching bag put in the office. Get an email that pisses me off, hit the thing. A bitchy phone call, a rejected story -- it'd get plenty of workout."
"Healthy," says the inner city philosopher, ambling obediently out into the open spaces and civilization's sinecure. "Lets all those negative vibes out. Leaves you feeling clean, smelling fresh-- Why're you cooking me dinner again? Am I still in trouble?"
Leah comments, "You sound like a Massengill commercial, my hand to God. Next you'll have me walking on a beach in a gauzy white gown, /feeling/ fresh." She sits the food down before she does: a slow hitch of seat into seat, a cloudy study of his face. "You aren't in trouble." Quiet, again. She dishes out pasta onto her plate and passes the bowl over. "Should you be?"
The man reflects a certain cynical amusement back at her. "Cops invented that trick, Canto. Used to pull it on traffic pulls. Unless you're banging someone in CSU, I'm good to go. --Are you?" he adds as an afterthought, oh-so-casual. Chris sinks a hip into a chair, replacing beer with bowl, and cloudy with balmy. Black frames green, and slivers. "Doing someone in CSU, I mean."
"No. Not CSU -- and not CSI, either," Leah adds with prissy precision, cop-bred and reporter-trained. Her noodles get a slathering of sauce next, just enough to soak but not drown them. Her amusement is as heavy, thick. "Hate that show. It's ruined what people think lab techs do. When was the last time CSU went off in a goddamned Hummer and /sunglasses/ to solve the red-ball crime singlehandedly? If they did . . ." She cocks her head and a bright smile at him. "Maybe I /would/ do one of them. You wouldn't mind, right?"
"Saw one the other day," Chris admits, clarifying over a scoop of pasta: "That show. Red-headed asshole. Think it was ... Miami? Something like that. Changed the channel. Just looking at the guy pissed me off. If you're going to do one of /those/ guys, do the blonde chick. Or the black chick." Rossi, gentleman born, gives the matter grave consideration, and concludes, "Any of the chicks."
Leah trips lightly, trilling with sultry affectation, "/Slash/. --Pass the salad."
Salad passes. So does cultural ignorance. "Though slash was gay."
"What, and chick-on-chick isn't gay?" Leah fluffs salad onto her plate. "Dear God, Christopher. We need to get you out more. A lot out. Like, Harvey Fierstein out."
"Chick-on-chick is hot," Chris clarifies kindly. "Not gay. It's different. Like -- except it depends on the chick." Leaf-dyed eyes grin at Leah, ingenuous. Inviting. Not at all innocent. "Screw men. You want to be a lesbian, I'll support you. Even help you find a girl your type."
Leah wonders, "Your sister? If she's good enough for your pal Vincent--"
Chris winces. A bun, chosen at random from the available offerings, is sacrificed with vim and vigor, the heart plucked out of the beast. "/Not/ Julia. Like hell am I going to watch her get it on with you or anyone else. Christ. And Lazz-- shit, Canto. I'm trying to eat, here."
"So--" Leah tucks a neat bite of pasta into her mouth, chews, swallows "--I guess that wild orgy with the four of us in a penthouse suite downtown is out of the question. And I'd /so/ been looking forward to it."
"Only way you're fitting Lazzaro and me in a bed together is if we're dead." The butter knife pauses, and lifts in preparation: declaratory statement in the offing. "That happens, make sure there're pillows between us. No touching."
Leah marvels, "Even in death? I had no idea homophobia could be posthumous. Thank you for the education, Detective."
"New pope in power, who the hell knows? Not taking any chances. Anyway, Lazzaro'll probably have himself vacuum packed." Chris chews his way through a piece of bread, darkling brow easing over whimsy. "Fewer germs."
"Who would've thought Howard Hughes ever would've ended up working Mutant Affairs?" Leah spins out rhetorically. She scoops up a bun, too, and uses it to mop another bite into order and up to her mouth. Then, whimsical in turn: "And how are you gonna be packed?"
Sauce. Splut. "Cremation," says Chris, dabbing futilely at a splash on his shirt, a gore-choked stain in the making. "Always hated the whole dress uniform shindig. Stick me in a ziploc and toss me in the Hudson. Better yet, sell me off in little bottles. 'Genuine NYPD memento.'" White flashes up, chipped in chance hilarity. "Tourists'll love it. --Dammit. Why do I always wear white with red sauce?"
Leah answers kindly, "An unerring fashion sense. To go with your Hello Kitty oven mitt -- are you shitting me about that?" She cranes an inspection of the stain. "You wanna take that off and stick it in the wash? I probably have another shirt you could wear. Protect your manly pride."
"You just want to see me naked."
"I did make you dinner."
Chris thinks. "Fair trade. --Damn," he adds on the cusp of regret. "I bought Tucci a bagel this morning. Should've made him strip for it."
Leah picks herself up and ruffles his hair in passing. "Before or after you gouged your eyes out?" she wonders before disappearing in the bedroom for a moment. Reemerging with a big blue flannel shirt, fuzzy grey with age, she drapes it over his shoulder. Then drapes her hand over his other one, and rests her chin on his head. "I made dinner," she tells him soberly, "because you made dinner for me, not that long ago, and you saved me from getting jacked up by Magneto, for all I know. And because of those three little words you love so much. All right?"
The black hair hisses to Chris's tilt up, the slide of skull into the hollow of neck -- and then to the right and back further still: into shoulder and the downtug of a twining arm. "Yeah," he says, and sighs a kiss into the soft, sensitive skin of her throat. "Don't know if I /saved/ you from anything. Gimme a few days and I will, though. You know I'm an asshole, right?"
"Yup," Leah murmurs (the pulse of the plosive against his mouth, with Adam apple's bob). She hugs him and then lets him go to resume her seat. "However, I'm a bitch, so we seem to be well matched. I'm sure I'll survive."
"Wouldn't have it any other way," Rossi informs with dark-voiced charity, and scrapes back in his chair to strip. "Other than the whole Pezhead thing, it's been pretty quiet, actually. Lab's catching up." The words tangle in cloth, muzzling consonants and thinning vowels; he emerges on the other side of modesty, tanned (still!) and framed in a white undershirt before blue slips on over it. "This rate, we'll be all clear by the time Valentine's rolls around."
Leah snarks, "Happy day for the girlfriends and wives of the squad. /Pez/head. God, Chris. Tell me you did not say that to his face. And never will."
The pale, light-limned glance skips up, surprised. "You don't think he looks like a pez dispenser? With the helmet, and the--" A hand sketches circles around the black halo of head.
"--Megalomaniacal, insane evil?" Leah supplies helpfully.
"Think they'd make one for me if I asked?" Chris wonders aloud. "As a favor to the NYPD?"
Leah curls her fingers over her brow, shielding a closed-eyed mask of exaggerated dismay. "No. I'm pretty sure on that one." A splinter of brown peeks at him, above humor tugging at her mouth like a kitten with a string. "But if you ask, please do tell me the response."
Rossi experiments with his spoon, thumbing its bowl in futile demonstration. "Arm them with lasers or something," he suggests, mining the depths of ludicrous fantasy. "Shoot the fucker's head off. The ultimate secret weapon. Available in a cereal box near you."
"Lasers," Leah repeats with wonderment's flatness. "In a /cereal/ box. Right. And coming to a candy store near you: Saturday Night Specials and anthrax."
"Could happen. Republicans in power--" Chris grins. Adds magnimously: "This is good pasta, Canto."
Leah lowers her head on a murmured, "Thank you. Got the recipe from your mother." She has a bite of it herself. The bite of the innocent and the worthy, yea verily.
Rossi, demonstrating great restraint, does not toss a piece of bread at Leah. It rolls between his knuckle and thumb, however, highly speculative. "So what else have you been up to? --Maybe you /should/ crash at my place for a while," he adds, thoughtful. "We can stick in some kind of alarm at your place -- it'll give us a heads-up if some shithead comes calling."
While her squint calculates the distance and likely speed and trajectory of the bread missile, Leah answers, "I've been living the life of a saint. Ask anyone. The Newsweek thing comes out tomorrow, and then . . ." Her expression shakes a minute, but she recaptures it, bland and bright and endlessly pleasant. "Well, then I'll work on the next thing, same as always. As for your place -- hell. When do we get engaged? I can't live in sin with a man, Rossi. My mother would keel over and die." Mournfully she stares at him across the table. "You don't want my mother dead, do you?"
"No idea," Chris admits. "We talking natural causes? --Your mom doesn't need to know. What's the big deal? You use your apartment like a closet, and just ... live down in mine. We don't have to share the same bed if you don't want." Baritone twists, dipping into uncharacteristic diffidence. Rossi eyes Leah warily. "Think of it as a sec-- wait. Your mom? How old /are/ you?"
Leah gives him wariness right back. "Old enough. You gonna make a crack about my age now? Jesus."
Rossi objects, "Staying single because of your /mother/--" Not chaste. He plants his elbow on the table and thumbs the base of his fork, waggling its tines at Leah. "Turning over a whole new leaf? Trying out this new virginity scam?"
Outrage sparks in her eyes, but Leah just lowers her head and meekly offers, "Yes. I'm scheduled to get my hymen repaired on Friday. I hope it pleases you, to be able to pop my cherry all over again. Master."
"/That/," says Chris sternly, "is a little sick, Canto." The fork wags again, lecturing by proxy, then returns to the squirreling away of pasta. More pacific, Brooklyn's baritone finishes, "--Like you better the way you are, anyway."
"It's expensive as hell, too," Leah notes. "Plastic surgery from hell, and people -- women -- /pay/ for it. As a gift to their husbands." She degenerates into a moment of low-voiced Italian curses, then shrugs it away. "Well, I like me the way I am, too, and you know, the thing with my mom -- ah, hell. We don't have to get into that here. I can turn this place into a closet if you think it's best." Civilian's deference.
Diverted, Chris begins, "--you're shitting me. Seriously? That's--" Sick. Yes. Pasta frolics at the end of his gesture, threatening blue flannel the way it did white cotton. Frivolous thing. He subsides, shoulders hunching over discomfort. "It's just an idea. Moving in. You don't have to if you don't /want/ to."
Leah rises quickly, verbally, in, "No, no, it's fine! It's a good idea. And the alarm, like you said." Her shoulders hunch eloquent, easy irritation. "I'm trying to do the right thing," she tells her half-demolished plate, a little desperately. "Like it's easy for me to follow orders and -- and not just live my life. I'm living two or three lives right now, all at the same time. Like some damn undercover cop."
Black-sharded eyes glance askance, sharper for all the deprecating aspect. "You want me to just tell you what to do, I can," Chris says, picking words out, stitching them in with a crafter's care. "You could just take orders, do what we agree, Summers and me, but--"
Leah's eyes come up, flared and wary-wide. Hope-wide. "So you did talk to him?"
"Yeah." Metal drops to the plate, jittering along its rim before coming to a rest against bread and salad. Chris straightens. "We talked. He's got some people watching you. And Magneto coming by on Christmas yanked in some bodies from the Westchester police."
"Shit," Leah breathes out unsteadily. Her gaze drops back to her plate. Hands move uselessly with utensils, feinting at a bite, not carving or taking it. "All for little ol' me."
The other elbow joins the first, hands bridging the gap. Chris leans into them, somber-eyed and briefly quelled. "It makes you feel any better, they're just about as hot to grab Magneto or the Friends. Either one'll do." Lips slash an unpleasant line -- then ease under the glance up. "So what's this Times piece? Do I get a heads-up?"
"Newsweek?" Leah asks listlessly. She manages a bite. Still not looking at him. "I interviewed one of the Friends leaders. One of their reporters interviewed me. We're both publishing our stuff in the same issue. A retrospective, a perspective, whatever, on the whole movement. On my little corner of it, too," she wrings out of embittered alto. The light slanting through bristly bronze hair strikes sudden wet diamonds off her lashes. She bites. She chews. She swallows. "That's it."
Chris looks, marks the trembling of moisture, and makes no comment. He takes up his fork again. He bites. He chews. He swallows. "Will the Friends buy it?"
Leah chokes a laugh. "Yeah, they will. I wrote it when I was still on their side, man. What's getting me /now/ -- shit." She puts her elbows on the table, too, and rests her head against one flopped-over hand. "I want to /deny/ it. But I can't. Then they'll know. Right? But if I try to go along with the follow-up interviews and inquiries, back up what I wrote, I'll blow it. I'm not that good an actor. I want to tell the Friends to fuck off, but I have to keep toeing their line. Right?" She looks up, dry-eyed again and resolute. "Right?"
"A little longer," says Chris, dropping the fork again to lean, lean long, lean hard across the corner of the table. A hand chases the line of cheek, warming it with callus-striped strength: fingers braiding around ears, through bronzed and burnished hair. "Just long enough for us to get a better lead on them. I'd turn the bastards over to Pezhead myself, if I--" The thinned mouth jags. "Just a little longer."
Squeezing her eyes shut, Leah leans into the touch. "I know. I know, I do. I'm playing along. I won't screw things up. It's just--" Her head drops, curves away from him. "It's hard," she finishes, then sucks in a breath, straightens in her chair, and resumes eating with calm, unhurried precision.
"Yeah. I know. You're doing good." He retreats reluctantly, hand closing around forsaken heat. Metal chitters, skipping over pasta and plate. The baritone nudges at brightness. "You should've seen the last time I went undercover. Freaking disaster."
"Yeah?" Leah looks at him. Tries on a smile. "I can't imagine. What did they have you do?"
"Ice cream truck." Belatedly wary, Chris fists his chin and frowns. "Don't laugh."
"I'm not laughing," Leah protests. Look at her not laugh. Look at her eat a bite of salad. Eat, Leah, eat. "Go on. Tell me about it. Did you wear the hat, too? The cute white hat?"
Chris sinks into his seat, resignation painted in deep, broad brush strokes across his expression. "Yeah. Stupid white hat, stupid white uniform. There was this --Goddammit. You're /laughing/. For the record, the neighborhood kids loved me."
Leah pouts. "I'm /not/. Up yours, Rossi. And of course they loved you. You're good with kids. You treat them like the retarded pets they are."
"They freak me out," Chris advises, unwilling to be commended, in jest or in earnest. He flicks a pebble of bread-stuffs at Leah, eyeing that outthrust lower lip with jaded scorn. "Too damn short to be healthy. Anyway, that was the last time. I look too much like a cop to do Narco."
Batting at the bread, and missing, Leah bends over to fumble around for it on the floor. Muttered curses drift up like the waft of sweet Italian dining's aroma. "--Homicide is all the better for it," she assures him on her sitting up (a little flushed from the change, and huffing a breath). She throws the bread back at him. Smiles. "The whole city is. Praise God and pass the ammunition."
"First and last time Julia was ever allowed to say grace at Thanksgiving dinner," remembers Rossi, ducking the bread -- too late to evade it -- and forced as a result to brush it piecemeal out of his hair. "Figure I'm better off there, anyway."
Leah does laugh at him now, watching the cleaning attempt. "You look like a squirrel on PCP," she advises. "Hang on, I have to find my camera."
The hand quickens, brushing, combing, barricading the peevish slice of a glance. "Dammit. --You ever been bit by one of those things? Back when I was a uniform--" No good end to /that/ story. Chris straightens with triumph, starfishes his hand under a dour eye, and tosses a lettuce leaf. "You're making a mess."
"Me?" Leah squeaks and flings a carrot slice like a wee discus at his head. "/Me/? You started it, asshole. Making mess of /my/ home--"
"Fucking rabbit--" And there, wobbly, goes a slice of radish, a lopsided UFO to harass the scullied integrity of Leah's hair.
Leah squalls, "Goddammit!" and sidearms a full roll at him, followed by a noodle, flailing like a lost flagellum through the cold and naked air.
Splat. Chris blinks, face spliced across by pasta. "Well," he says, and peels it away, leaving a bloody, ragged tear across the bridge of his nose and the crest of a cheek. "At least it's al dente."
Blankly Leah stares at him for a frozen, radish-crowned moment. Then she puts her head back and /laughs/ from deep down in her belly. A hand splays over her face as if to hold it in, but she can't stop, only trail off into undignified, hiccuping giggles. "--Al dente. Oh, God. Jesus God."
Chris endures, high on his injured dignity. A napkin's sweep and sprawl scrubs him clean: ruddy-cheeked, full-lipped, somber. "Christ, Canto. This how you treat /all/ your guests?" A long arm stretches to pluck out the radish, only to relocate it with better symmetry on the apex of her crown. "There'd better be dessert, is all I'm saying."
Leah sniffles back laughter's tears. The radish, thus dislodged, tumbles to her shoulder and bounces high and wide and far for the kitchen. (It lands all of a foot away. Ah, well.) "I'm sorry," she says, not at all meekly, and still grinning. "And yeah, we can rustle up something sweet. After you clean up this mess."
"Don't see how this is /my/ fault," objects Chris, trailing fingers down his shirt to discover, indignant: "Crap. You got it all over my undershirt, too. /Dammit/." The chair clatters, whining at his press back and up. The flannel tosses to the sofa, the undershirt following shortly after. Half-naked, gleaming smooth-skinned under the apartment's lights, he prowls into the kitchen to wreak vengeance on another beer.
Turning in her chair to follow him, Leah entirely abandons dinner, such as it's become, and sprawls, legs awry, and still damn grinning. "Sweet," she repeats, eyeing him like the window of a candy store. Then she helps, "The dustpan and broom are in the pantry, right there."
"I'm getting a beer," announces Chris with frigid displeasure, the words heavy and ponderous over the hiss and slam of the refrigerator door. Less irritably, he adds, "I'll grab you one, too. --So what /is/ for dessert?" The black head, rumpled, crumb-speckled, pops around the kitchen entrance to peer hawkish interest at Leah. Eye candy, right back atchya. "You?"
Leah hooks a finger under her collar and tugs it. Wide, innocent eyes. "If you want. Or there's gelato." She considers. "Or both."
Chris stretches, snaking around the entryway to pass Leah her bottle. "I'll get it," he informs, leaving it to the imagination whether he refers to dessert, dustpan, or woman. Amusement shows razor-edged and bright before he retreats, moving in his mysterious ways through the kitchen's innards. "Ignoring all the shit with the Friends and Magneto. Would you /want/ to move in with me?"
"What, like, forever and ever?" A practiced twist breaks the cap's seal, and she tosses the skittering disc onto the table, where it ends up nudging a carrot slice in forlorn greeting. Leah drinks. Leah looks at her guest. Leah looks hard at him, in fact. "Dunno. You asking?"
Forever. Unseen in the kitchen, white rims green in a flare of -- something. "Yeah," Chris says, scraping himself off the counter's edge to hunt for dustpan and broom. Pantry, there. He swings the door open and stares blankly at cans. "I guess. I'm not in my apartment much. Spend as much time crashing at the precinct as I do in my own bed, or at Mom's place. Doesn't seem worth it to drive back here every night, y'know? Sort of quiet."
Leah stays casual, nearly indifferent. "Yeah. But hey, if it's a problem -- I mean, you need your sleep after shifts. I know that. And I'm a clutterbug."
Chris steps out of the other room, an NYPD cover catalog armed with broom and dustpan. "I'm neat," he announces with defensive fervor, aiming disapproval at the escaped radish. "You cleaned my apartment that one time. You a packrat?"
Politely Leah draws in her legs' sprawl from the encroachment of righteous Cleanliness. "I can be," she says judiciously. "Mostly, I tend to scatter shit around while I'm working. You've seen it. Papers, notes, laptop, food, drink, monkeys and goats and invisible cats -- you name it, I got it when I'm deep in a story. All over the place."
"Nowhere near as bad as when I'm working a case -- but it's probably a bad idea," he'll grant, sweeping up radish, crumbs, lettuce, carrot, with a feline and finicky attention for each that spares no trace evidence for CSU miracles. "Press, cop, same apartment -- wouldn't end well, I guess."
"People would talk," Leah puts in while her gaze soaks hungry, wistful, on him while he's turned to his task. Her lashes shutter the vulnerability away, and she makes a long arm to fetch up her wineglass. "Can't have that. Some kind of conflict in our jobs, too, right? Like political rivals shacked up. Carville and Matalin."
Chris snorts into the last, careful scoop of debris. One swift glance finds its way through black locks and over a shoulder's hill; then it's back to the kitchen again, and the bang of the garbage and pantry door. "Little professional courtesy'd probably make that good, though you know how it is. Guys find out I'm dating the press, they'll never let me hear the end of it." The freezer hisses.
Leah asks, so lightly, "What, they don't know? That we're -- dating?"
"Beston does," baritone admits, over the scrounging and the slamming. "And Julia. And Mikey. And, well, Yamaguchi -- you've never met him, have you? He came in from Chicago a few months ago. Other than that--"
"Dating," repeats Leah, as if she can't not. The word clunks to the floor, and she stares at it for a disbelieving moment. "I did like the flowers. And we're trading dinners for each other--"
Like a puppet in a theater show, Chris's head and torso pops into the frame of the breakfast nook. "Not /dating/," he backtracks hastily, belatedly. "I mean, shit. I know we're not -- I meant, you know. Seeing each other. Sort of. Whatever it is we're doing." A hand gestures between them, sketching some amorphous and tangled skein before diving into the refuge of his hair. "This."
Leah is as quick to say, "Right. I know. Never mind -- sorry." She drinks deeply of wine and blinks a few times into the swallows. "Thanks for picking up, anyway. Appreciate it."
"--And we're not," Chris finishes with unnecessary care. "Dating, I mean. We've actually been out of the apartments, what. Four? Five times? And you're seeing other people--" Almost a question: a defensive opening.
"I'm not." She drains the glass, thunks it on the table. Stares back at him: almost defiance. "Spent the night with a guy before New Year's, but that's it. Unless you want to get monogamous--"
Chris pauses to stare back, thoughts stuffed to spilling behind his eyes. "I got the gelato," he says instead, voice quelled to truce. "Bowls? Or do you want to just eat right out of the container?"
Leah glances aside. Looks back. "Chris . . ."
"Yeah?" Two spoons. He pops one in his mouth to taste the metallic tang, and bows his head over the gelato's lid.
"Nothing." Surrender, bitter as acid etched into her slumped face, slumped shoulders. Leah climbs to her feet and moves for one of the cupboards, silent, to get the bowls.
With a liquid, sullen pop, suction fails to Chris's demanding pull. "Got it," he announces, and stretches an arm to reel Leah in. Green eyes turn down to her, quizzical. "What?"
The bowls come with her, one in each hand, and Leah presses them in the warm space between them. She closes her eyes. Shakes her head. Then looks back up at him. Tonelessly she says, "I don't want to lose you, but I don't know if I even have you, or if I ever will. How that could even happen. I did fuck a guy. It was once. I didn't want to make a fight out of it. Or a big deal. Okay?"
"Yeah?" asks Chris, and abandons the gelato, tucks his spoon behind his ear (where it balances, shiny and oh, ridiculous, /not/ ridiculous) to wrap his other arm around her. Grave attention touches her, caressing with its regard the fragility of face and brittle strength behind the bone. "Was it good?"
"Yeah," says Leah, and memory moves her briefly against him. Shame moves her away, a half-laugh's bastard deprecation. "Yeah, it was. Just to get /away/ from my life, like I was someone else -- I guess I needed that. It's over, anyway. I'm me. Here I am. Whee."
"Nothing wrong with that." A hand frees itself to touch where the gaze traced, to roam over the path marked out by green eyes. "I do the same thing. Half the beds I jump into-- anyway." Lips curl like smoke, shadow-touched and darkened. "Not like I'm qualified to judge. So you need to do it from time to time. I get it."
The brittle gaze fastens on his, and Leah chews at her lower lip with unconscious rumination. "No problem?" A smile twitches. "Well, ain't you just the best boyfriend ever. I might have to keep you."
The clasping arm tightens, squeezing; a hot, dagger slash of jealousy slices behind the carved face. "Yeah. About that." Jealousy bounds behind the baritone, loosed from its chains. Chris shows his teeth. "If we start dating for real? You're not sleeping with other men."
Leah's breath catches. She pushes at his chest with the bowls and glares. "No shit, Sherlock. Can't date me for real if you squeeze me to death, though."
For that, the reward is laughter, trapped in that bright and fallible gaze. "Point," Chris concedes, that selfsame amusement shivering across his baritone. The strong arm eases, loosing her; the spoon finds its place again in his mouth, and waggles obscene salute at Leah's nose. "You serving up, or what?"
Smiling a little, a little more naturally than before, Leah flicks a dismissive finger against the spoon's waggle -- clink! -- and agrees, "Serving up. Outta my way, big guy."
Obedient, see how obedient! Chris moves, pressing his way around Leah with a caress of the hand and a brush of warm body to print his presence against her awareness. "I'll be out in the living room," he announces, mumbling around the spoon's obstruction. "You got another shirt I can borrow?"
"Now, why," wonders Leah to an emptied kitchen, "would I permit you /another/ shirt after you've already been through two?" She digs her spoon into the container and starts a-scooping. Smiling still. "You can sit in your filth and like it, Rossi. Or just take it off and leave it off. All the same to me."
The spoon spits out into a hand, and is tossed willy-nilly on the dining room table. Cha-chunk. "Heartless brat," he accuses, eyeing the discarded dinner with an unenthused eye for cleaning. "I'll catch a cold. Sniffle all over you."
Leah grunts. "The hell you will. I'll kick you out so fast-- Oh, don't worry about that; I'll get it," she says to his study of their meal. "You did the floor, after all. C'mere and get your bowl, and I'll get on that. And then -- living room."
Chris grins at the spoon, cutting humor out of whole cloth, and pads back into the kitchen to interrupt gelato-dishing. Interfering, obstructing arms: a feline, feral demand for attention. "You're hot when you play Mom, Canto."
Laughing, Leah tries to fend him off with /her/ spoon and a good deal of wiggling between, within those arms. "TMI, Rossi. I'm not wanting to know that about your relationship with your ma, thanks--"
The black head lowers itself to the sensitive curve where neck meets shoulder, lips, breath and hands hot and exploring. Nibble nibble, giant mouse-- "I got a thing for women with ladles," he tells the darkness of skin and pulse. "I probably need to talk to a shrink about it. Or you could just give me some therapy."
The spoon clatters to the floor. "Ass," Leah breathes and slinks against him, a leg trapping one of his against the lower cupboards. Her arms slide up his back, and she twists his head for a proper kiss. "--Therapy? Therapy. God. I don't even wanna know. What, on my couch? Talkin' about your mother and how she yelled at you during toilet-training, fucking you up for life?"
"I was thinking something a little less talk-heavy," Chris says, drowning the words between his mouth and hers. Black lashes fan, thick; the jump of blood pulses beneath the bronze skin, quickening to the slide of hands. "A little sex therapy, maybe." He turns her, pins her back: hips against hips, and the counter's edge for a makeshift manacle.
Leah answers with her body and its breath shuddering delight and hot longing against him. "Whatever you want," she murmurs, leaning in. "Anything, anything you want--" Tasting. Touching. But not talking, not anymore, and the gelato melting in the room's ambient heat on the counter beside her.
[Log ends.]