OOC: Windex commentary (Part I)
LJ Entry: Windex
Date: 10/28/2005
Players: Emma, Percy, Rossi
Requested by: Emma
Continued in Part Two
Summary: Our story to date. Chris Rossi, detective, is called up by a panicked young friend, Alyssa, after she is apparently assaulted on the street by a friend of hers, Percy Talhurst. Chris takes Alyssa's statement, then hauls in Percy for questioning, during which he discovers that Percy is a mutant. Percy suspects that Jason (aka Mastermind) is behind the false accusation, and so turns him over to Rossi. Rossi and Vincent go and arrest Jason, who only attacked Alyssa under Emma's orders. Sabitha Melcross is a mutual friend of both, and during the first visit to her after Percy's arrest, she lets slip information that allows Chris to link mutants to SIN House. Frightened, Sabitha attempts to keep him from investigating further, resulting in Rossi's new interest in the fraternity. In a panic, Sabby calls Percy, who serves as White Bishop, and points out that this could lead Rossi to the HFC. Percy labors to keep Chris alive, and convinces Emma to erase Rossi's memories related to the HFC members, SIN, and its connections.
Logs of the entire storyline are located here.
Weekday evenings in the Bay Horse have little of the meat market feel about them, though camaraderie and merriment is evident enough in the FDNY's presence: unmistakable and joyous, with the inevitable attendant noise. Off-shift, off-hours, strength and arrogance tumble in and out of the outdoor garden, sketching a noisy pantomine for the benefit of other guests. This is how we party, blue-collar style.
In the pub itself, a quieter dignity holds sway, a matter of patron choice rather than chance; the gathering without invites willing participants. Inside are the diners and the drinkers, scattered at tables and booths in private conversation. Against one wall, a group of four men in suits sit intent over discussion, voices muted though gestures and thoughts sketch more vigorous meaning. Emotion bleeds in a tangle around their table, a miasma of worry and irritation; men of argument and reason: NYPD detectives, thinking cops.
Noise from outside rises and falls with the swing of doors, catcalls and whistles threading through the normal din accompanying the entrance of a lone woman who smirks and adds a little extra sway to her hips for the benefit of those who continue watching until the doors close on the view. Emma weaves her way through the establishment, pulling attention to her like a trainwreck. You know you should look away, but you just can't. Lady in Red. Carmine clings to curves that should have a warning sign attached, and hitches tantalizingly high on thigh as she slides onto a stool at the bar. Loose, messy, dark curls and eyes the color of chocolate fondue complete the alter-image illusion. An attentive (would they be any other way) 'tender leans close and exchanges a few words with her, provoking a laugh as she swivels around to scan the room, physically and telepathically.
There are enough thoughts for a meal at the detectives' booth, though of a rough and ready kind. Discussion concluded, three of the men peel themselves up to depart. The last, dark-haired and somber, shakes his head to their question: he'll pay. "Later, Rossi," says the bald one of the group, while the eldest drops a fraternal hand to his shoulder in passing -- and then Chris Rossi is the man alone, with his half-empty beer and shadowed fatigue. Trained, that mind, and quiet behind a disciplined shield (the frail protection available to a flatscan) the surface thoughts move in patient patterns, worrying at a web of knowledge and fact. Hands scrub at the tired face; he slumps into their concealment, brooding.
The first part of this log doesn't really require all that much explaining, so I'll probably skim through it pretty fast. For all that it takes up a good half of the RP, it's actually -- ahem -- foreplay. The real meat of the ... okay. I need to find a new metaphor. The real substance of the log doesn't start until after they get to the hotel room, and that's really what's worth commentarying.
Rossi is at the pub with Beston, Tucci, and Yamaguchi, three Homicide detectives (one of them his partner) who have carried work with them even to their off hours. The case they're on is the Amati one, I seem to recall, which was not only a red-ticket case in that it was getting some publicity in the media, but also a particularly bad case in that it was personally affecting all the detectives on it. Beston, as the primary detective, is finding it especially difficult. This is unusual for John; he tends to be the one who can detach himself from a case that might traumatize even more experienced detectives. His armor is thick, and has withstood the test of time. The fact that he's finding it difficult means that Rossi is finding it difficult as well. Tempers have flared. Fists have been thrown. And for a change, Chris is the one who's being the rational one, who's coming between Beston and the target of the moment. It's a reversal of roles, and while Rossi is not normally a peacemaker, he's fully capable of playing the role. Still....
The case haunts him, too, and he is more than ready for the kind of diversion that he normally uses in order to shut his brain up. Sex, drinking, and fighting. Sometimes all three. His brain is particularly tenacious, and once it gets its teeth into something, it's exceedingly difficult to make it let go and let him /rest/, for pity's sake.
At this point in time, Rossi has had several lessons with Jean in telepathic shielding. Enough to make him decent at it, for a flatscan, if not particularly practiced. It's not second nature to him yet (he's getting close, nowadays, motivated by a kind of paranoia that he's not quite aware of) and he's still not entirely convinced about the necessity for it. As an intellectual exercise in discipline, he finds it interesting, and so practices it when he remembers. The reality of telepathic manipulation, and the kind of damage it can do is still little more than academic to him. To alter a man's mind entirely? He cannot really believe in it, either the possibility, or the motivation. To Rossi, his mind is much like his soul, and so inviolable to all save the hand of God.
This doesn't mean that he can't comprehend the possibility, mind. In a Jean log from a little over a month before, Chris flat-out presents the opportunity to her: if you want to erase me, now's your chance. It's not so much permission as it is a challenge; should I be paranoid? Is there something to be paranoid about? The answer relaxes him at this point. The same answer, if given two months later, would meet with a far different response.
Rossi hitches his shoulders in a shrug, though behind the green-eyed grimace, professional paranoia still needles in starts and fits: Cassidy and Averillix. << Protecting his own--? >> "Just saying," Chris warns over the belated grope after shields, haphazard protection at best. "Don't talk to Archer. Or Lazzaro. So if you're thinking about wiping out my memories, now's the time to do it." Challenge, that, riding the back of sentient anxiety.
Jean is unamused, expression suddenly growing cold and removed, tone likewise as she states that "I'm not thinking of that, and I find it pretty damn' offensive that you think I'd just casually violate your brain like that, rewrite history to suit myself. If I'm classing you as a threat because of some unsupported belief that you're not 'one of us' and can't be trusted, then what the hell makes me any different than Magneto?" She rises then, movements smooth but swift, and turns to get herself some more coffee.
Doubt flashes its white belly under dark waters, swimming eel-like across currents of hostility before submerging again. Biding its time. "I'm sorry," Rossi says after a moment, to the press of fingers paling against the mug. Baritone muffles, parsed through the barrier of a mouth-muzzling hand. "This ... sucks." An understatement, raw though it is with black humor; worry chases muted fury in a quick-stepped ouroborus. The second apology, unvoiced, carries more sincerity. << Sorry. >>
In general though, Chris's attitude towards telepaths is remarkably nonchalant, for the same reasons as listed above. Chris truly believes himself to be an open book at this point in time. Beyond the professional necessity of not discussing a case, or not revealing information that is in his trust, he feels he has nothing to hide. What you see is what you get, with ol' Chris. He does not consider himself particularly complicated or, for that matter, particularly interesting. Along those same lines, he's really fairly philosophical about the whole thing. Seeing as how telepathy is something he doesn't quite get, why worry about it? He has no particular objections to telepaths. Stay out of my head, and I'll stay out of yours. From the same log:
"Welcome to my world, Detective Rossi," Jean replies ironically, fingers lingering near the hale of the coffee pot, before she changes her mind and gets herself a glass of milk from the fridge instead. "The reason I'm so aggresive an optimist is that I -have- to believe that some day this will get better, get easier, or else I'll probably end up drunk, destructive or dead. But it's all right. Everyone, even other mutants, has a problem with telepaths," she explains, standing down from the bristle.
Does he? Rossi pauses to consider, reeling through interaction and reaction in the book of fading memory. Physical mutations: for those, an atavistic discomfort. Mental -- "I can see that," he supposes clinically, and casts a pale frown across the coffee mug. "The ... moving shit around with your brain freaks, a bit. And the talking in my head."
"And it's understandable. This is something that's new, and the human race has a habit of freaking out over new things. The guy who invented the wheel was probably thought to be thwarting the will of the animal spirits or something," Jean offers, motions somewhat edgy as she makes her way back from the kitchen. "Of course, wheels don't have minds or feelings, and they never get tired, angry or upset, or try and divide out when it's an appropriate time to be a wheel, and when to pretend they're not. Or whether it's all right to be a wheel in the comfort of your own home. They just roll... and I think my metaphors just went metastatic."
"Drink more coffee," suggests Rossi kindly, riding a line of ragged and wry humor. He follows his own advice for a breath's silence, gaze splintering over and behind black; on the next exhalation, admits, "Not freaked so much about the being able to read my mind. Or change it, I guess. Normally," he amends. "Seems a little unreal. Nothing I can do about it anyway. Forget it. --Not why I came."
Basically, we have here an innocent, odd though that word sounds when applied to Rossi. In a strange way, for all his cynicism and experience, that's exactly what Chris is when it comes to the world of mutation. He's starting out green. He thinks that his knowledge of people and the way people work will apply in this new world as well, and he's right to some extent -- people are still people, and therefore still do stupid things for stupid reasons. What he forgets, for some peculiar reason (and this is why I say that he's innocent) is that mutation gives a man new and exciting ways to be a schmuck. Not to mention that if you give a man more power, he will become more corrupt. At heart, Rossi has faith in basic human decency, though he would be incredulous if someone accused him of it. In his quaint naivete, he grants people with superpowers the same restraint he would presume if he grew telepathic powers overnight.
And yeah. He'd have a completely different response to this situation, nowadays. More on that later.
The turn of the woman at the bar was evidently some sort of signal, though it is a few moments more before she's approached. Apparently, anyways, though is illusion necessary for people to play age old parts? Those minutes before attention is distracted are spent shifting through the layers of thoughts of the other patrons until a few distinctive possibilities are left, and a couple of them end up walking through the door. The blonde gentleman talking earnestly to his companion is ruled out, and Emma's attention drifts Rossi-ways. Ah. Yes. That's him. A smooth line and offer of a drink directs her focus to a man at her elbow as her drink arrives, and she smiles as she pulls the glass toward her. She replies with a "No thanks. I see my date for the night," sweeps a heated look over him, and sweeps off the chair to head in the tired looking detective's direction. "Are you a hero?" she asks, dropping into the seat opposite.
The black head jerks up, hands dropping away; the shield flinches, proving itself a conscious act, not yet habit. A nightmare stares at the telepath from behind startled green eyes, battering its wings in angry frenzy -- and then is thrust into silence. Discipline reforms protection and dignity, hooding the gaze and the face in errant amusement. "Depends on what kind you're looking for," says lazy baritone, proving itself Brooklyn-scored. Rossi sinks back into his seat, masculine appreciation leaping quick-formed and -finished. "You have a fire you need put out?"
I'm afraid poor Emma let herself in for a lot of teasing when people read this log. "A hero? Are you kidding me? You said that to him? Gosh. How does Emma ever get any men?" And the answer to that is, of course, "By picking straight men with /eyes/." Distracted though Rossi is, and -- I'm sorry, Emma, I know you tried! -- awkward as the pickup line is, he's perfectly willing to go along. Because he has 20/20 vision, and the woman? She is hot. Just what the doctor ordered.
Right in this pose is the beginnings of what will eventually become his mental shield, the very crime scenes that haunt his nightmares. He uses it for the first time on Bahir when that enterprising young man attempted to use his telepathy on him, with lamentable results for all. I like the image of his thoughts as unhooded birds, bating angrily; I am also amused by Rossi's easy drop into the banality of the one-night stand conversational exchange. Innuendo is not subtle, my child. And even in that one pose it's pretty obvious that whatever Chris might thing about his own transparency, he really isn't. There are secrets and images that he keeps carefully hidden, though he might willfully forget them at his convenience.
"Yes. I'm afraid I'm in desperate need of saving from an evening of bores and lechers," Emma purrs, setting her clutch at the edge of the table between them and folding one leg over the other, and tucking both feet around the corner of the booth seat, so that the lengths of shapely skin hang into the aisle, visible to those wanting a longer look. "Protect me? I'll buy you a drink for the effort," she bargains with all the confidence of a woman who has likely never been told no.
Tonight will not be the night to break that trend. "I'll buy," suggests Rossi, lifting a hand to snag attention from a passing waiter, his gaze skimming down for that, yes, longer look. The warmth of a crooked grin informs the concluding, "Can't say I'm scintillating conversation at the moment, though. If you're looking for an ear to bend, I can do that. --Beer?" The waiter stoops to the patrons, attentive to their every breast. Er ... breath.
Confidence is an aphrodisiac to most men. They're drawn to the ones who are sure of themselves, who have self-confidence -- sometimes even arrogance, though that not quite so much. Women who're withdrawn, who lack confidence, who attack before they can be rejected, or who expect to be rejected, who latch on too quickly as though worried they'll get away, or who seem to /need/ them for validation -- these are women that men run away from.
Women who know what they want and go after him? That's hot. That's also, to Chris's worldview, perfect. He does not take the innocent or the ones who betray even a hint of wanting something more, or something different than what he has available. A player sometimes, yes, but never a heartbreaker. Not intentionally, at any rate.
"Sure," Emma agrees with a smile at the waiter that turns inviting when shifted to Rossi. "Well, as enchanting as it would be to find a conversational genius, I admit I'm only interested in your body. I need a warm one to discourage the unsavory types, you know? You /are/ warm, aren't you?"
The waiter trips obediently away. Across the table, green eyes widen marginally, surprise fading swiftly to a tug of new interest; behind them, case-buried thoughts turn and redirect, sparing a moment's attention for the woman. "Heart's beating," says Rossi, wry-voiced over a fist's tap of chest. "Blood's moving, brain's doing something." Humor -- suggestion -- slides around the man's voice, rubbing against its nap. "How warm do you need my body to me?"
Emma pulls her legs in under the table and faces him fully, leaning forward so that v-kneck's plunge offers a shadowed peek, and drops her voice to intimacy's (or conspiracy's) range. "Need? Not terribly, I suppose." A handful of curls slide forward to shield the flick of brown eyes back toward the bar, and the man who'd approached her earlier. "But just what kind of hero is charging to my rescue?"
"A pretty useless one," says the man with self-deprecating frankness, self-mockery biting across the forefront of his mind. The barest flicker of glances acknowledges that enticement of cleavage, complicity between flesh and fabric, and interest deepens, nudging the rich baritone into matching intimacy. "Chris Rossi," he introduces, leaning into the arm's offer of an open hand. "You?"
Okay. Right around this point is where I point out the obvious, and then just skip a whole lot of the log. (1) Rossi is easy.
...no, that's about it. That's all I got. He's easy. Morgan is hot. From this point onward, it's mostly just that.
In fact, I'm sort of tempted to just skip all the foreplay and go s--
Okay, there I go again. Ahem. Sorry. It seems worth it to skip all the prelude stuff and jump straight to the scene in the hotel room, which is where things really start to get relevant. However, I will not. Because I am pig-headed and stubborn, and I might run into something I actually want to say about this all. Rossi's fully aware that his behavior is escapism, and that he's neither picky, nor particularly challenging. He's a slut, and there's nothing admirable about that, even to a guy who's been brought up in the machismo of a heavily masculine-dominated family and profession. The self-mockery is as much for that as it is for his own strangely convoluted sense of self-worth. He does not view himself a hero. There is nothing heroic about what he does daily, nor does he have a desire to be heroic. Heroes are people who get a lot of other people killed. Nonetheless, there's a twinge about that. He should be better than he is.
Even the arrogant, cocksure Rossi has his undercurrent of self-doubt.
Emma passes cool fingers into his grip accompanied by a smile dipped in temptation. "Morgan. And a shame, really. The useless bit, I mean," she adds to the name exchange, letting melted chocolate-colored eyes drip down his frame and pause at the tables edge before sweeping back up with a twitch of her brow.
Rossi ghosts a chuckle, straightening a little under that assessment; a formidable body, with its own athletic grace -- and, aware of review, its own pride. Physical presence uncurls for the reminder, filling the quiet booth with its promise: of arrogance, of power, of potential threat. "Depends on the situation," says Chris, drawing his thumb's brief caress across the back of her hand before releasing it. "Reptiles, rodents, opening things--" The veiled gaze skims across Emma in turn, admiring. "--handcuffing things--"
He's very much a physical guy, which I've mentioned in, um, several other commentaries. And like a lot of men who have control over their bodies, people who are athletes and know how to extend their presence, he can turn it on and off at well. An incalculable menace, or awareness, an internal switch that he can flick to make other people as aware of him as he is of them. There's something hot about potential threat, and he knows full well that women find that hint of danger attractive. He uses it in the interrogation room; he uses it in the bedroom; both places are boards for play, and the physicality is just another tool.
"Oh, really? Come with your own set then?" 'Morgan' purrs, amusement answering the heady nimbus of Chris' expanding self-awareness. Hand retrieved, she curls it against her cheek in support, relaxing into the banter. Under the table her foot knocks lightly against his leg as she rearranges hers.
"One set, standard issue," Rossi answers gravely, canting a smile through the black splice of lashes: a slow, knowing thing, like the faint heat that imbues eyes and the baritone's smoke. "Or if silver doesn't go with the outfit, I got plastic ties that work just as well. First, though, you need arresting. Are you feeling criminal?"
'Morgan's' wandering foot returns with more deliberate aims this time, trailing up the outside of the detectives calf. "Well, I'm feeling naughty at least," she murmurs, loosing her powers to tease the slowly building embers of interest. "Though, I'd hate to be charged with police brutality afterwards. You /are/ police, I assume?"
Chris lifts the hand with its heavy gold Academy ring, red stone catching light to fleck tanned skin with color. "Blue to the bone," he admits without apology -- the shuttle of thoughts bumps again, distracted from the warp and weft of case (the patterns of bruises on childish skin; the faint surprise on the cherub face) to discover a burgeoning thread of desire. His leg shifts under the table, meeting foot with like caress, and intrigue wonders, "What kind of brutality do you have in mind?"
The stone is an occasional prop, and one that I have a peculiarly difficult time keeping track of. I like it, mind -- I like the weight of it, the color, and the dullness of its gleam against his dark skin -- but somehow it keeps slipping my mind. Odd. I used to have a ring like that, too. However, for whatever reason, there it is. And then it disappears, because I forgot it exists.
Bad. I'm usually better with props than I was in this log. I forgot the drinks he ordered, too. Suckage.
The reminder of the job (both in the ring and the question) drift his thoughts back from the case, which is probably annoying to Emma. She has difficulty keeping his mind on the situation at hand, ironically, until the moment when sex is out of the equation altogether. Then his attention is all hers. Chris's priorities are not quite in alignment with what they should be -- but then again, if they were in alignment, this entire scene would be unnecessary. Even when the forefront of his mind is concentrated on desire, just behind the curtain there's something else busily at work, sifting through data and attempting to fit pieces together. Making lists and links. He's actually a pretty analytical guy, for someone who comes off as erratic and emotional.
There's a lazy curiosity here. Police brutality. Morgan's into the rough stuff? Chris can do that. It might be a relief, actually, not to have to be gentle, or considerate: just two bodies driving into each other, insensate and demanding, feeding lust and passion and need--
'Morgan' works her foot across his knee to rest against the seat's edge, toes brushing more daring touches in rhythm to the cadence of her reply, "Blue's a lovely color." A deft mental touch smoothes away the edges of those distracting thoughts, blurring them until they fade behind the immediacy of his present situation. "Tsk. I don't bite and tell, sir. It'd spoil the fun."
They go, those grim thoughts, fading into background noise and seeming irrelevance, and tiny lines of strain go with them. Present situation, indeed. Pale eyes brighten, focusing fully -- at last -- on the woman; the armor of his mind ripples with it, shivering in the wake of restless energy, redirected. "Not even a hint?" asks Rossi, leaning further into the table (into /her/) on his baritone's invitation. He shifts again under that table, reacting to that impudent foot, and a hand stretches to catch at hers. "Anybody survive your rubber hoses?"
More than one manipulation needed during the course of the night to keep Chris on track. Long enough to reel him into the hotel room, anyway. His attention can be formidable, when it's finally fully focused on someone; he has a lot of energy, and when it's all sent your way, wow. I do more showing, not telling, later on in the log, I seem to recall. She doesn't touch lust in him yet. Subduing the voices is good enough, for now; it gives natural passion room to rise and fill in the nooks and crannies left by their retreat.
One of the unfortunate aftermaths of this entire scene is that sex no longer quiets the voices anymore. In fact, though I didn't actually document it on livejournal, Chris found it difficult to be aroused by anything afterwards, for at least a little while. He chalked it up to fatigue and stress, which is not unheard of, either at his age or in his field. The reality is that that even though memory was erased, there was pleasure tied into violation at the end of the scene, and though he can't consciously recollect it, some part of him does, and remembers arousal as being tied into death of self. His kinks are many and varied, but nihilism isn't one of them.
Her hand is easily captured, entangling with his upon contact. "Would you run if I told you no?" she responds, allowing her foot to express her interest while maintaining an expression of heavy-lidded unconcern.
"I'd probably have to stay and investigate it," says Chris, twining his hand around hers to explore her skin with lazy fingers. His smile flares again, rich-hued and heated. "Since I'm a cop and all. In the line of duty."
"Mmm. And what would your investigation require, /Officer/?" 'Morgan' tips back provocatively, enhancing the reception of his senses and focusing them on her. Around them, the rest of the pub stretches to the very edges of his perception.
He is a sensualist, Chris Rossi, with all the hypersensitivity that entails; human, but no less formidable for it. The impressions of his senses capture Morgan and cast them back at her, slow lust's mirror: the silk of skin under his roaming fingers; their mingled scents in breath's eddy; the tickle of amusement just beneath the throat, twining around the black velvet of voices. "Interviews, interrogations--" The gleam of green eyes. "--Collecting evidence ... I prefer the hands-on approach."
I have an odd image of Rossi as a telepath. It would be a catastrophic and bewildering thing for him and the people around him, I'd imagine. He is very much a sensualist, and despite lacking mutant hypersensitivity, he does well enough with his own mundane, homo sapiens senses that it'd probably be very disconcerting to everyone around him: he'd probably never be able to stop projecting his own sensual experiences to others.
Good grief. Is this even possible? That'd be keen and weird. (How would you temporarily turn a flatscan into a telepath? Hm.)
Must not get distracted. Back to commentary.
He's not kidding about the hands-on approach. The philosophic approach towards life, that it's not the destination, it's the journey that matters? Crap, insofar as he's concerned. Destination is all. However, for all his scorn for the journey over the destination business, there's a fierce satisfaction in the building of a case for him, so for all his complained irritation about the labor it takes to build a case, that's really where he revels, showing his true colors. He's a hunter, first and foremost, and landing his quarry is the natural culmination of all the work. It's the prize at the end of the road. He says one thing, but he practices another.
This is the real reason he's a callback for his one-night flings. He is not an impatient lover. He is a ruthless, thorough, and relentless one.
"Do tell me there's a search involved, darling," 'Morgan' insists, her voice thickening and tightening around Chris' attention with a velvet touch. She pulls her knee up to the seat and scoots around the curve closer to him, using the greater accessibility of the new position to pull her fingers from his grip and trail their tips over the back of his hand, and up his arm. "Do I get a trip to the precinct?" is whispered, tone and movements pulsating with sultry grace.
That black head bends to hers, intimacy and that lucid, lucent physical awareness encompassing her in its animal cloak. "I'd insist on a search," Chris murmurs, threading his hand through dark curls, a cradle for that fine and frail curve of skull. His thumb traces the hollow of temple, following the long line of face: across cheek, along jaw, until fingers tickle and graze along the sensitive skin of throat. "A very /thorough/ search, and a ride downtown. You never know what you'll find on a suspect."
"I could tell you what you'd find right now? In case you need to familiarize yourself with feminine... entrapments on the way to the station," 'Morgan' breathes, her hand drifting up from his arm to trace patterns under and around his tie.
"A little advance warning?" The guiding hand coaxes Morgan's head to meet his, dark brow touching pale. The sizzle of a smile scythes at her, lambent fever behind the color; breath brushes her cheek as Chris turns his head, lips tickling across the scroll and pinna of her ear. "Rule one of police work," he confides, voice furred and gentle. "Everybody lies."
Foreplay. Foreplay. More foreplay.
I pause only because it is ironic that Chris mentions this first rule of police work. It's true that everybody lies. He's in the lamentable position of being the one person in this entire scene who isn't. Doesn't. How he hates lies, whether those are lies told to other people or lies you tell to yourself. And he's about to become the victim in the world's greatest lie: a lie that other people will make into his truth. It's all very sad. We blame Sabitha and Percy. Wankers.
I note that I haven't had much to say about my poses to this point, and that's because -- well, I haven't really been reading them, seriously. Foreplay is not one of my strengths, and so I cringe a little when I read my own inadequacies. In the words of Hilary Booth of Remember WENN: "Oh, the words are fine. Many of these same words occur in Shakespeare and Marlowe and Ibsen. It's the way you've /arranged/ the words that I don't like." Sensuality. I need to work on that. I'm not a particularly sensual person IRL, being more of a bull in the teashop. Awareness. I need to work on awareness of my surroundings and my senses. I'll get right on that.
A nearly unvocalized moan escapes, and 'Morgan' dips her head, sliding her cheek across his, skin catching on skin, to whisper in sheer, light tones, "Well then, I'd better tell you I've no desire for your services, Officer." She pulls back and purses her lips, letting desire and calculation lighten her eye as she loosens his perceptions to return awareness of their surroundings. "Maybe you should show me to your car? Wouldn't want people to think you were accepting illict favors..."
The pub's noises, restored to all their dimly raucous glory, shivers a blink from the desire-drunk eyes. Rossi pulls back reluctantly, his hand sliding across the slope of throat and shoulder, scalding as it goes. "Am I?" he asks, a laugh caught in the back of his throat. His wallet, produced from inside the dark grey suit coat, surrenders bills to pay the check; he slides out of the booth to unfold, proving himself a man of stature. "Where're we going?"
"The station, I thought?" Morgan quips in anticipatory good humor, shimmying along the seat to complete the bend and skimming upwards mere inches along from him as she stands. Heels bridging most of the height difference between them, she's nearly on eye level with him to trade the ghost of a wink before bending and reaching past him for her clutch.
Amusement turns Chris's mouth askew, pooling shadow at its corners, and masculine applause skims down her figure afresh, given the full canvas to admire. "Got an interrogation all ready and waiting," he promises, catching up his own leather overcoat to bunch over an arm. It is crisp outside, chill with the headlong onset of autumn. The door opens on a gust of cold air, sharp-toothed and hungry for bare skin.
'Morgan' steps out into the evening air and turns into him, hands and arms tucked in between them. "It's cold," she explains, mischief lilting her voice. "Maybe you'd better search my room first. Who knows what criminal activity I have concealed there. I took a cab, but the hotel's just around the corner."
Leather mutters, unbundled to skirl around Morgan's shoulders in heavy, Rossi-scented warmth: the fresh smell of shampoo, of soap, of gun metal and oil. Broad, strong hands close on the woman's upper arms, pulling her into his heat; eyes glitter, cast colorless in the pub's glare. A knuckle urges the woman's chin up -- "Lead the way," baritone husks, alight -- and lips press over hers, burning, enticing, /inviting/ with passion's kindling fire.
Uh, good grief, there's a lot of foreplay. I think we actually stopped here because Emma's player had to go home from work.
I made dinner. I was home for the day, for some reason. I cannot remember why. (Was I sick?) Oh, and look! It's the leather overcoat! Poor leather overcoat. We loved you well. My memories of this entire first, well, two-thirds of this log are a little vague, in part because I was actually working in the other window, and in part because I think there were long periods where one or the other of us wasn't really posing, for one reason or another. Real life distractions, perhaps? As a result, I kept losing the thread of what was going on, and where we were headed. I suspect that's why we had so MUCH foreplay (sorry!) when really, we had something specific in mind that we had to get to, albeit by a circuitous route. Percy was waiting for us at the hotel, and we had to get our little butts over there in order to actually get around to windexing Rossi's brain.
Poor brain. Poor Rossi. Yes, well. Foreplay. Ignore that, if you please. Moving on....
'Morgan's' hands curl into his shirt, siphoning the energy and funneling it back in a hungry embrace that once again accentuates sensation and perception. A moment later, she pulls back with a small gasp and exchanges shirt for jacket's edges, pulling it tightly around her as she stares back, wide- and wild eyed. "C'mon then, hero," she invites, turning to saunter triumphantly toward the night's arrangements.
The walk is brisk and, as promised, short: too abbreviated for kindled lust to die, though time enough for work to encroach on the detective's mind again. Snags and knots and disconnected strands stretch behind the simmer of desire, knitting to a different need. The hotel is a discreet one, its facade without ostentation, the quiet lobby beyond a paean to wealth and understated taste. Rossi's eyebrows arch in recognition over the livery of its bellhops, those silent and wraith-like minions who glance askance at their arrival and choose, most tactfully, to take no notice. "Flying high," he observes as they cross the foyer.
"Always book the best when you're traveling on the company's dime," 'Morgan' tosses smugly over her shoulder as heel's brisk staccato slow, then stop outside the elevator doors. She presses the button for the seventh floor. Not the penthouse level, please note. There is such a thing as being /suspicious/.
Indeed. Suspicion walks at her heels, suited and shod, and eats fish on Fridays. The elevator door doors close behind them, stitching them into wood paneling and mirrored elegance. Privacy, with all its opportunities. Chris crooks a grin, hand planting straight-armed into the wall beside Morgan, corraling her into the small chamber's corner to steal another kiss: a deep, dark thing, demanding and urgent. "Am I on the company's dime?" he wonders against her lips.
It's a trying thing, trying to seduce Rossi when one's a telepath. A normal flatscan would never know how easily diverted he is from one's seductive wiles -- and in favor of what? A dead child and a sordid crime scene. It is not flattering. Inherent caution has time to rear its head, as it often does with him; he can usually override it, or chooses to. He is, after all, a cop, and not insignificant in handling himself physicality. He has confidence in his ability to take care of himself, and while he listens to his instincts, he can dispense with them in favor of sex. Provided they do not yell too loudly. In this case, they're more a niggle than a scratch, so he makes a choice of need over native suspicion, and plunges into sensuality again to muffle, for a little while, the voices.
"Depends," she returns, coyly, using his tie as a leash to hold him in place while she responds, the taste smooth and bittersweet. "Am I going to need to bribe my way out of this?" The elevator's rise is ponderous, a legacy of the age and reputation this hotel has.
"You might," allows Chris with throaty intent, accepting leash and preempting it to bury his face in her neck. "Never know when you'll meet a dirty cop." Breath, lips, teeth move insistant fire over bare skin, chasing the throb of heartbeat. His free hand moves to drag her against him; flames lick across his mind, tasting graphic, pornographic intent. The tangle of their bare limbs, the anticipation of release, of oblivion, of mindless, embodied /peace/--
Morgan presses close, sliding her hands up and over his shoulders, his jacket falling from her shoulders, yet pinned to the mirrored wall by the contact of shoulder blades. Image is met with image, teasing his passions higher and slipping yet another telepathic finger unnoticed into his thoughts, pulse monitored and matched. The elevator bounces to a stop three levels shy of their destination, and the doors slide open on an elderly prima donna who gasps at the sight, and then glares at the impertinent giggle that bubbles over Rossi's shoulder. Morgan turns her face from his questing lips and buries her nose in the join of shoulder and neck, to blink at her and ask silkily, "Mind pressing number seven again? Can't quite reach it."
/He/ can, hero of the day that he is, bending a humorous and entirely unrepentant grin at the old woman before stretching his own arm to poke the button. Reluctant courtesy peels him away from Morgan, doing nothing to appease his indignant audience; between their bodies, betrayed by the mirror, Rossi's hand follows the line of her body down shoulder and ribs to the flare of hip. "Long elevator ride," he observes, willfully, wickedly inane. Air chills, where bodies once shared heat. (His fingers stroke lower, ardently adventurous.) "Suppose we could've done the stairs."
Shame on Morgan, taking advantage of her telepathic powers to feed a not inconsiderate sexuality. Tsk. She'll pay for that later.
...Well, no. She won't. I do remember that Shaw's player IMed me at one point hereabouts, wondering what on earth I was doing to make Emma's player blush. Just how explicit are you being, dude? Not very, really. I was not, say, actually trying to be hot as much as I might've if I didn't have the windexing coming up. My attention and creative reserves were really being saved for that part of the scene, so this part of it was kind of throwaway. Er, my apologies, Emma. I have mentioned in other commentaries that I have three levels of physical posing. This was somewhere between mid-level, my usual, and really sensual, where I'm actively making the effort. I was lazy. But, you know, windexing! I'd never played that before, and I was vaguely anxious!
"Somehow I don't think we would have been able to climb them," Morgan replies, matching his entirely reprehensible tone and wrapping herself back into his arm, loath to waste a precious, exhilarating second. She captures a leg between hers and slides up the length of his body, nuzzling a kiss to the underside of his jaw in passing to restoring full height. Three floors pass a little quicker that the preceding four.
The race of heartbeat and quickened breath answers for Chris's enjoyment of that last span, though a thoughtless murmur -- "Who said anything about /climbing/..." -- answers for his mind's trend. No need to be a telepath for that reading in truth, all sound, all sense, all sensation focused on Morgan, even the persistent, mordant voices of duty (of death) silenced in the face of that vast appetite. The elevator coasts to a stop; the doors slide open even as Rossi presses her into the corner again, capturing that slim body for a sanity-devouring kiss.
Morgan twines her arms around his neck and strains to tiptoe, tipping her hips forward and snaking a leg around behind his. The press of his emotions augment her own not uninterested urges and lock down sense of purpose, memory of the goal for a breathless, black-edged, desperate moment. But underneath the illusion of Morgan, it is Emma's Frost whose body trembles against Rossi's, whose mind weaves into his. She inhales on a gasp and pulls back, panting for breath and discipline. "My room. 713."
It is a blessed reminder. Rossi emerges for air, eyes blind and drunk, and he maneuvers them out of the elevator into the hall, shoulder jarring the closing doors as they pass. Sconces light the corridor, pale gold against high-crowned ceilings; distracted, impatient, Chris casts one swift glance around before tumbling Morgan against the nearest wall. "Which way?" he demands, hands prowling. Left? Right? Left. Laughter steers him, them, down the passage.
Rossi would be vindictively pleased if he knew that his attentions affected Emma that much. (Well, he would if he retained any knowledge or memory or, you know, /anything/ about this night.) On the other side of the fence, Rossi's player is vaguely touched -- no, seriously -- by Emma's pose, proving that Chris is having a significant impact on Emma, despite all her dire purpose and ice queen control. The woman is only human, after all, and Rossi is certainly ... hm. /Something/, anyway. To make Emma forget her reason, even if only for a moment? Score.
Missed out, Emma. You coulda had him! All yours, if only for a night! Of course, she ends up having him anyway. Just not in the way he had in mind. Pity.
I recall that it was around here that Emma's player protested along the lines of, 'Good grief! Can we get to the hotel room?' I told her it was her fault, for poking at his bestial urges with her uber power. To be honest, I had completely lost track. Of everything. Because ... see above with the possibly being sick, doing work, and making dinner. I was a little discombobulated. The scene flowed strangely in my mind. Time is confusing.
So are Rubiks cubes.
Morgan fends him off long enough to snag the poor forgotten jacket from the floor of the elevator, spinning under the force of his turn and hitting the wall with a crack that only serves to curve her lips in a sensuous smile, eyes narrowing to dusky centered slits. She runs fingernails down through hair to collar and pulls it from his neck, exposing it to the dip of her head and teeth. Lipstick marks the spot, and then she's tugging and pushing him (whichever way the bodies face) toward the room bearing the number 713. This time, as they stumble to a stop, it's she who holds him in place, a hand pressed to his chest, the other working the clasp of her purse. Securing the card between index and middle finger, she tosses the handbag away and swipes the card in one slick motion, hardly pausing to check the security's indicator had flashed before trying the handle.
The indicator turns green, and barely in time; pity the door, slammed open without consideration for its delicacy. Heat, built to raging in Rossi's mind, batters at his own abused shields and tumbles them like Jericho's walls; given its outlet in privacy, restraint drops its bridling hand and floods them both with voracious hunger. Mirth dances with need in the green eyes as Chris herds her in, kicking the door shut behind them. "Nice place," he informs, without so much as a glance to check. "Nice room. Nice dress. Nice neck--"
Morgan backpeddles through the door, turning the retreat into a playful visual tease as she lifts her chin to peer down her nose at him, tongue wetting her lips in a caress. "Going to search the place, officer, or do I have time to hide the incriminating evidence?" She reaches over to slide a shoe off and quirks a brow as she opens the drawer at the desk and drops it in.
"No secrets," mocks Chris, stalking Morgan with the springy, silent stride of a predator. His suit coat sheds itself across a sofa's back, showing the leather harness of holster and deadly, sullen gun. Reason surfaces, struggling through the maelstrom of passion; it pauses him beside a chair, gaze skimming across the suite's neat interior. Something, some voice nudges, whispering at instinct. "First step's patting down the suspect."
Good God, Chris. Shut up. What the hell are you saying? You're embarrassing me. He really is capable of more creative foreplay conversation. I swear he is.
Just not, for some reason, today. However! Thank God, we are close to the main course of the scene. There is something about the room that triggers Chris's alarm bells, though I don't remember what it is. Signs of habitation absent, perhaps? That seems reasonable.
...wait. Did she drop a shoe in the desk drawer? That's weird. That's weird, isn't it? It's weird.
Morgan kicks off her other shoe, sending it spinning under the chair while she surges forward, wrapping herself around Chris in a flurry of arms and legs that directs him to the nearest convenient surface, be it wall, floor, or bed. An telepathic finger strokes the edges of his passion, coaxing it back into full flame and driving competing thoughts from his mind. Training? Reason? Pshaw. Something more primal and pleasurable than survival instinct drives him.
Instinct struggles against that soothing touch, batting back with moth wings ... but lust is a fiercer, hotter fire. It consumes reason whole, conspiring with that alien influence to make Rossi -- meek? No. Chris growls and slams into the wall, capturing Morgan in strong arms and ravening, driving urgency; then it is her turn, thrown with impatient violence onto the bed so hands, lips, practiced and parting limbs can press her down, down, into the blackness of heady, dizzying lust.
See? She does it again. How is this fair? Driven as far as he is, Chris is fairly rough and ready (ahem) with Emma. He's a possessive lover, and a dominating one by nature; there is never any question in bed who's finally in charge, though he's willing to allow his bed partner to be a partner in the real meaning of the word. Give and take, yes. A lot of take. However, in the taking, a /lot/ of giving. Sort of. Occasionally more like forcing. Force of nature--
--and okay, I'm really tired. I will take a break now, because I seem to have lost track of that thing that makes my fingers go. Mind. That's it.
Incidentally, wow. My posing is bad. Uh, sorry again, Emma. I seem to be doing a lot of apologizing in this commentary....
And down she goes, gathering Rossi into her and taking him with her, setting the room spinning into a draining kaleidoscope that begins with need so pressing it overwhelms and ends in her arms. Fabric on fabric, skin on skin, heat and moisture and pulsing beat blending and drowning out everything but the red and black and white and silver colors of desire and then fountains upwards again into gasping blue clarity. Her fingers work expertly at shirt buttons, tugging against belt and holster and straining muscles.
An esoteric and arcane thing, the shoulder holster with its ugly burden. Reminded, Rossi shrugs out of it with an eel-like twist, shoulders wrenching at leather to drop it in a tangled heap on the floor. The tie is next, already loosened; then, as before, it is her turn. Teeth flash white at Morgan, and clever, practiced fingers slide under dress fabric, unwrapping the best-crafted devices of men to bare flesh and fever.
Freed the the restriction of fastenings and bindings, Morgan slithers farther up on the bed underneath him, knees and hips taking the place of hands in the passion stoking and twist underneath him as she leverages herself against him, pushing him to his side and back.
She catches roaming hands and reverses roles, throwing a leg over his chest and curling atop him, wrists held above his head. Dropping her face to his, she teases ears and nose and chin and mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, slowing the frantic tempo of their foreplay to taunting seduction before smirking down at him and whispering, "Give me a minute. I wanna hide a little more evidence. I don't think I could convince the boss to reimburse me for the dress..." and shifting off him, rolling toward the side of the bed closest the closet and bathroom.
Chris groans, heartfelt, though amusement skeins rich through the sound. One forearm hides the heavy-lidded eyes, drowning green behind shadow. Breath catches, rasping in the throat even as the hasty pulse pounds in deafened ears. Pounds, beats, gallops -- and then slows, bit by bit, as need quiets and is restrained, mastered to make room (once more) for intelligence. Again curiosity nibbles at the forebrain, some nagging note of things awry; behind it, more immediate, the case spills its sobering baggage afresh, demanding attention.
'Morgan' eyes him speculatively before rising from the bad and padding on stockinged feet toward the bathroom, content to leave him with his thoughts for the moment. Once the door shuts, however, all sex-induced lethargy fades in a flurry of movement that begins with a phone call. A signal. Two rings, hang up, and then one. Dress and other unillusioned affects of the appearance alteration are tossed in a wait bag, exchanged for low waisted, wide legged pants and simple camisole top. Comfortless distraction.
It is not long before there comes a brisk quadruple knock at the door, Percy leaning with shoulder braced against its frame and watching his fingernails with mild interest as he waits to be allowed ingress.
Intellect and its constant battle with body; one gives way so another can take control, an endless tussle between the two. He's perfectly comfortable with humor in sex (some men aren't) because if you think about it, sex really is rather strange and silly. I note for the record that the reins he puts on his temper are the same kinds of reins he puts on his libido. That is to say, they come from the same place. He has a tendency to strong passions, whether those be anger, lust, love, and so forth. While he hasn't really been driven by love and hate so much, the others -- the kinds that'll give Percy a headache -- are constantly requiring check, so it's become second nature to him to recognize when they're heading for a bender and drag them into check.
There comes that case again. Damn that case. Doesn't matter to Morgan. She's already gotten Rossi right where she wants him--
And this is where the real substance of the log starts. Hi, Percy. The full commentary is apparently going to require too much room to be acceptable as a single LJ entry, so I'll take it to Part Deux.
Date: 10/28/2005
Players: Emma, Percy, Rossi
Requested by: Emma
Continued in Part Two
Summary: Our story to date. Chris Rossi, detective, is called up by a panicked young friend, Alyssa, after she is apparently assaulted on the street by a friend of hers, Percy Talhurst. Chris takes Alyssa's statement, then hauls in Percy for questioning, during which he discovers that Percy is a mutant. Percy suspects that Jason (aka Mastermind) is behind the false accusation, and so turns him over to Rossi. Rossi and Vincent go and arrest Jason, who only attacked Alyssa under Emma's orders. Sabitha Melcross is a mutual friend of both, and during the first visit to her after Percy's arrest, she lets slip information that allows Chris to link mutants to SIN House. Frightened, Sabitha attempts to keep him from investigating further, resulting in Rossi's new interest in the fraternity. In a panic, Sabby calls Percy, who serves as White Bishop, and points out that this could lead Rossi to the HFC. Percy labors to keep Chris alive, and convinces Emma to erase Rossi's memories related to the HFC members, SIN, and its connections.
Logs of the entire storyline are located here.
Weekday evenings in the Bay Horse have little of the meat market feel about them, though camaraderie and merriment is evident enough in the FDNY's presence: unmistakable and joyous, with the inevitable attendant noise. Off-shift, off-hours, strength and arrogance tumble in and out of the outdoor garden, sketching a noisy pantomine for the benefit of other guests. This is how we party, blue-collar style.
In the pub itself, a quieter dignity holds sway, a matter of patron choice rather than chance; the gathering without invites willing participants. Inside are the diners and the drinkers, scattered at tables and booths in private conversation. Against one wall, a group of four men in suits sit intent over discussion, voices muted though gestures and thoughts sketch more vigorous meaning. Emotion bleeds in a tangle around their table, a miasma of worry and irritation; men of argument and reason: NYPD detectives, thinking cops.
Noise from outside rises and falls with the swing of doors, catcalls and whistles threading through the normal din accompanying the entrance of a lone woman who smirks and adds a little extra sway to her hips for the benefit of those who continue watching until the doors close on the view. Emma weaves her way through the establishment, pulling attention to her like a trainwreck. You know you should look away, but you just can't. Lady in Red. Carmine clings to curves that should have a warning sign attached, and hitches tantalizingly high on thigh as she slides onto a stool at the bar. Loose, messy, dark curls and eyes the color of chocolate fondue complete the alter-image illusion. An attentive (would they be any other way) 'tender leans close and exchanges a few words with her, provoking a laugh as she swivels around to scan the room, physically and telepathically.
There are enough thoughts for a meal at the detectives' booth, though of a rough and ready kind. Discussion concluded, three of the men peel themselves up to depart. The last, dark-haired and somber, shakes his head to their question: he'll pay. "Later, Rossi," says the bald one of the group, while the eldest drops a fraternal hand to his shoulder in passing -- and then Chris Rossi is the man alone, with his half-empty beer and shadowed fatigue. Trained, that mind, and quiet behind a disciplined shield (the frail protection available to a flatscan) the surface thoughts move in patient patterns, worrying at a web of knowledge and fact. Hands scrub at the tired face; he slumps into their concealment, brooding.
The first part of this log doesn't really require all that much explaining, so I'll probably skim through it pretty fast. For all that it takes up a good half of the RP, it's actually -- ahem -- foreplay. The real meat of the ... okay. I need to find a new metaphor. The real substance of the log doesn't start until after they get to the hotel room, and that's really what's worth commentarying.
Rossi is at the pub with Beston, Tucci, and Yamaguchi, three Homicide detectives (one of them his partner) who have carried work with them even to their off hours. The case they're on is the Amati one, I seem to recall, which was not only a red-ticket case in that it was getting some publicity in the media, but also a particularly bad case in that it was personally affecting all the detectives on it. Beston, as the primary detective, is finding it especially difficult. This is unusual for John; he tends to be the one who can detach himself from a case that might traumatize even more experienced detectives. His armor is thick, and has withstood the test of time. The fact that he's finding it difficult means that Rossi is finding it difficult as well. Tempers have flared. Fists have been thrown. And for a change, Chris is the one who's being the rational one, who's coming between Beston and the target of the moment. It's a reversal of roles, and while Rossi is not normally a peacemaker, he's fully capable of playing the role. Still....
The case haunts him, too, and he is more than ready for the kind of diversion that he normally uses in order to shut his brain up. Sex, drinking, and fighting. Sometimes all three. His brain is particularly tenacious, and once it gets its teeth into something, it's exceedingly difficult to make it let go and let him /rest/, for pity's sake.
At this point in time, Rossi has had several lessons with Jean in telepathic shielding. Enough to make him decent at it, for a flatscan, if not particularly practiced. It's not second nature to him yet (he's getting close, nowadays, motivated by a kind of paranoia that he's not quite aware of) and he's still not entirely convinced about the necessity for it. As an intellectual exercise in discipline, he finds it interesting, and so practices it when he remembers. The reality of telepathic manipulation, and the kind of damage it can do is still little more than academic to him. To alter a man's mind entirely? He cannot really believe in it, either the possibility, or the motivation. To Rossi, his mind is much like his soul, and so inviolable to all save the hand of God.
This doesn't mean that he can't comprehend the possibility, mind. In a Jean log from a little over a month before, Chris flat-out presents the opportunity to her: if you want to erase me, now's your chance. It's not so much permission as it is a challenge; should I be paranoid? Is there something to be paranoid about? The answer relaxes him at this point. The same answer, if given two months later, would meet with a far different response.
Rossi hitches his shoulders in a shrug, though behind the green-eyed grimace, professional paranoia still needles in starts and fits: Cassidy and Averillix. << Protecting his own--? >> "Just saying," Chris warns over the belated grope after shields, haphazard protection at best. "Don't talk to Archer. Or Lazzaro. So if you're thinking about wiping out my memories, now's the time to do it." Challenge, that, riding the back of sentient anxiety.
Jean is unamused, expression suddenly growing cold and removed, tone likewise as she states that "I'm not thinking of that, and I find it pretty damn' offensive that you think I'd just casually violate your brain like that, rewrite history to suit myself. If I'm classing you as a threat because of some unsupported belief that you're not 'one of us' and can't be trusted, then what the hell makes me any different than Magneto?" She rises then, movements smooth but swift, and turns to get herself some more coffee.
Doubt flashes its white belly under dark waters, swimming eel-like across currents of hostility before submerging again. Biding its time. "I'm sorry," Rossi says after a moment, to the press of fingers paling against the mug. Baritone muffles, parsed through the barrier of a mouth-muzzling hand. "This ... sucks." An understatement, raw though it is with black humor; worry chases muted fury in a quick-stepped ouroborus. The second apology, unvoiced, carries more sincerity. << Sorry. >>
In general though, Chris's attitude towards telepaths is remarkably nonchalant, for the same reasons as listed above. Chris truly believes himself to be an open book at this point in time. Beyond the professional necessity of not discussing a case, or not revealing information that is in his trust, he feels he has nothing to hide. What you see is what you get, with ol' Chris. He does not consider himself particularly complicated or, for that matter, particularly interesting. Along those same lines, he's really fairly philosophical about the whole thing. Seeing as how telepathy is something he doesn't quite get, why worry about it? He has no particular objections to telepaths. Stay out of my head, and I'll stay out of yours. From the same log:
"Welcome to my world, Detective Rossi," Jean replies ironically, fingers lingering near the hale of the coffee pot, before she changes her mind and gets herself a glass of milk from the fridge instead. "The reason I'm so aggresive an optimist is that I -have- to believe that some day this will get better, get easier, or else I'll probably end up drunk, destructive or dead. But it's all right. Everyone, even other mutants, has a problem with telepaths," she explains, standing down from the bristle.
Does he? Rossi pauses to consider, reeling through interaction and reaction in the book of fading memory. Physical mutations: for those, an atavistic discomfort. Mental -- "I can see that," he supposes clinically, and casts a pale frown across the coffee mug. "The ... moving shit around with your brain freaks, a bit. And the talking in my head."
"And it's understandable. This is something that's new, and the human race has a habit of freaking out over new things. The guy who invented the wheel was probably thought to be thwarting the will of the animal spirits or something," Jean offers, motions somewhat edgy as she makes her way back from the kitchen. "Of course, wheels don't have minds or feelings, and they never get tired, angry or upset, or try and divide out when it's an appropriate time to be a wheel, and when to pretend they're not. Or whether it's all right to be a wheel in the comfort of your own home. They just roll... and I think my metaphors just went metastatic."
"Drink more coffee," suggests Rossi kindly, riding a line of ragged and wry humor. He follows his own advice for a breath's silence, gaze splintering over and behind black; on the next exhalation, admits, "Not freaked so much about the being able to read my mind. Or change it, I guess. Normally," he amends. "Seems a little unreal. Nothing I can do about it anyway. Forget it. --Not why I came."
Basically, we have here an innocent, odd though that word sounds when applied to Rossi. In a strange way, for all his cynicism and experience, that's exactly what Chris is when it comes to the world of mutation. He's starting out green. He thinks that his knowledge of people and the way people work will apply in this new world as well, and he's right to some extent -- people are still people, and therefore still do stupid things for stupid reasons. What he forgets, for some peculiar reason (and this is why I say that he's innocent) is that mutation gives a man new and exciting ways to be a schmuck. Not to mention that if you give a man more power, he will become more corrupt. At heart, Rossi has faith in basic human decency, though he would be incredulous if someone accused him of it. In his quaint naivete, he grants people with superpowers the same restraint he would presume if he grew telepathic powers overnight.
And yeah. He'd have a completely different response to this situation, nowadays. More on that later.
The turn of the woman at the bar was evidently some sort of signal, though it is a few moments more before she's approached. Apparently, anyways, though is illusion necessary for people to play age old parts? Those minutes before attention is distracted are spent shifting through the layers of thoughts of the other patrons until a few distinctive possibilities are left, and a couple of them end up walking through the door. The blonde gentleman talking earnestly to his companion is ruled out, and Emma's attention drifts Rossi-ways. Ah. Yes. That's him. A smooth line and offer of a drink directs her focus to a man at her elbow as her drink arrives, and she smiles as she pulls the glass toward her. She replies with a "No thanks. I see my date for the night," sweeps a heated look over him, and sweeps off the chair to head in the tired looking detective's direction. "Are you a hero?" she asks, dropping into the seat opposite.
The black head jerks up, hands dropping away; the shield flinches, proving itself a conscious act, not yet habit. A nightmare stares at the telepath from behind startled green eyes, battering its wings in angry frenzy -- and then is thrust into silence. Discipline reforms protection and dignity, hooding the gaze and the face in errant amusement. "Depends on what kind you're looking for," says lazy baritone, proving itself Brooklyn-scored. Rossi sinks back into his seat, masculine appreciation leaping quick-formed and -finished. "You have a fire you need put out?"
I'm afraid poor Emma let herself in for a lot of teasing when people read this log. "A hero? Are you kidding me? You said that to him? Gosh. How does Emma ever get any men?" And the answer to that is, of course, "By picking straight men with /eyes/." Distracted though Rossi is, and -- I'm sorry, Emma, I know you tried! -- awkward as the pickup line is, he's perfectly willing to go along. Because he has 20/20 vision, and the woman? She is hot. Just what the doctor ordered.
Right in this pose is the beginnings of what will eventually become his mental shield, the very crime scenes that haunt his nightmares. He uses it for the first time on Bahir when that enterprising young man attempted to use his telepathy on him, with lamentable results for all. I like the image of his thoughts as unhooded birds, bating angrily; I am also amused by Rossi's easy drop into the banality of the one-night stand conversational exchange. Innuendo is not subtle, my child. And even in that one pose it's pretty obvious that whatever Chris might thing about his own transparency, he really isn't. There are secrets and images that he keeps carefully hidden, though he might willfully forget them at his convenience.
"Yes. I'm afraid I'm in desperate need of saving from an evening of bores and lechers," Emma purrs, setting her clutch at the edge of the table between them and folding one leg over the other, and tucking both feet around the corner of the booth seat, so that the lengths of shapely skin hang into the aisle, visible to those wanting a longer look. "Protect me? I'll buy you a drink for the effort," she bargains with all the confidence of a woman who has likely never been told no.
Tonight will not be the night to break that trend. "I'll buy," suggests Rossi, lifting a hand to snag attention from a passing waiter, his gaze skimming down for that, yes, longer look. The warmth of a crooked grin informs the concluding, "Can't say I'm scintillating conversation at the moment, though. If you're looking for an ear to bend, I can do that. --Beer?" The waiter stoops to the patrons, attentive to their every breast. Er ... breath.
Confidence is an aphrodisiac to most men. They're drawn to the ones who are sure of themselves, who have self-confidence -- sometimes even arrogance, though that not quite so much. Women who're withdrawn, who lack confidence, who attack before they can be rejected, or who expect to be rejected, who latch on too quickly as though worried they'll get away, or who seem to /need/ them for validation -- these are women that men run away from.
Women who know what they want and go after him? That's hot. That's also, to Chris's worldview, perfect. He does not take the innocent or the ones who betray even a hint of wanting something more, or something different than what he has available. A player sometimes, yes, but never a heartbreaker. Not intentionally, at any rate.
"Sure," Emma agrees with a smile at the waiter that turns inviting when shifted to Rossi. "Well, as enchanting as it would be to find a conversational genius, I admit I'm only interested in your body. I need a warm one to discourage the unsavory types, you know? You /are/ warm, aren't you?"
The waiter trips obediently away. Across the table, green eyes widen marginally, surprise fading swiftly to a tug of new interest; behind them, case-buried thoughts turn and redirect, sparing a moment's attention for the woman. "Heart's beating," says Rossi, wry-voiced over a fist's tap of chest. "Blood's moving, brain's doing something." Humor -- suggestion -- slides around the man's voice, rubbing against its nap. "How warm do you need my body to me?"
Emma pulls her legs in under the table and faces him fully, leaning forward so that v-kneck's plunge offers a shadowed peek, and drops her voice to intimacy's (or conspiracy's) range. "Need? Not terribly, I suppose." A handful of curls slide forward to shield the flick of brown eyes back toward the bar, and the man who'd approached her earlier. "But just what kind of hero is charging to my rescue?"
"A pretty useless one," says the man with self-deprecating frankness, self-mockery biting across the forefront of his mind. The barest flicker of glances acknowledges that enticement of cleavage, complicity between flesh and fabric, and interest deepens, nudging the rich baritone into matching intimacy. "Chris Rossi," he introduces, leaning into the arm's offer of an open hand. "You?"
Okay. Right around this point is where I point out the obvious, and then just skip a whole lot of the log. (1) Rossi is easy.
...no, that's about it. That's all I got. He's easy. Morgan is hot. From this point onward, it's mostly just that.
In fact, I'm sort of tempted to just skip all the foreplay and go s--
Okay, there I go again. Ahem. Sorry. It seems worth it to skip all the prelude stuff and jump straight to the scene in the hotel room, which is where things really start to get relevant. However, I will not. Because I am pig-headed and stubborn, and I might run into something I actually want to say about this all. Rossi's fully aware that his behavior is escapism, and that he's neither picky, nor particularly challenging. He's a slut, and there's nothing admirable about that, even to a guy who's been brought up in the machismo of a heavily masculine-dominated family and profession. The self-mockery is as much for that as it is for his own strangely convoluted sense of self-worth. He does not view himself a hero. There is nothing heroic about what he does daily, nor does he have a desire to be heroic. Heroes are people who get a lot of other people killed. Nonetheless, there's a twinge about that. He should be better than he is.
Even the arrogant, cocksure Rossi has his undercurrent of self-doubt.
Emma passes cool fingers into his grip accompanied by a smile dipped in temptation. "Morgan. And a shame, really. The useless bit, I mean," she adds to the name exchange, letting melted chocolate-colored eyes drip down his frame and pause at the tables edge before sweeping back up with a twitch of her brow.
Rossi ghosts a chuckle, straightening a little under that assessment; a formidable body, with its own athletic grace -- and, aware of review, its own pride. Physical presence uncurls for the reminder, filling the quiet booth with its promise: of arrogance, of power, of potential threat. "Depends on the situation," says Chris, drawing his thumb's brief caress across the back of her hand before releasing it. "Reptiles, rodents, opening things--" The veiled gaze skims across Emma in turn, admiring. "--handcuffing things--"
He's very much a physical guy, which I've mentioned in, um, several other commentaries. And like a lot of men who have control over their bodies, people who are athletes and know how to extend their presence, he can turn it on and off at well. An incalculable menace, or awareness, an internal switch that he can flick to make other people as aware of him as he is of them. There's something hot about potential threat, and he knows full well that women find that hint of danger attractive. He uses it in the interrogation room; he uses it in the bedroom; both places are boards for play, and the physicality is just another tool.
"Oh, really? Come with your own set then?" 'Morgan' purrs, amusement answering the heady nimbus of Chris' expanding self-awareness. Hand retrieved, she curls it against her cheek in support, relaxing into the banter. Under the table her foot knocks lightly against his leg as she rearranges hers.
"One set, standard issue," Rossi answers gravely, canting a smile through the black splice of lashes: a slow, knowing thing, like the faint heat that imbues eyes and the baritone's smoke. "Or if silver doesn't go with the outfit, I got plastic ties that work just as well. First, though, you need arresting. Are you feeling criminal?"
'Morgan's' wandering foot returns with more deliberate aims this time, trailing up the outside of the detectives calf. "Well, I'm feeling naughty at least," she murmurs, loosing her powers to tease the slowly building embers of interest. "Though, I'd hate to be charged with police brutality afterwards. You /are/ police, I assume?"
Chris lifts the hand with its heavy gold Academy ring, red stone catching light to fleck tanned skin with color. "Blue to the bone," he admits without apology -- the shuttle of thoughts bumps again, distracted from the warp and weft of case (the patterns of bruises on childish skin; the faint surprise on the cherub face) to discover a burgeoning thread of desire. His leg shifts under the table, meeting foot with like caress, and intrigue wonders, "What kind of brutality do you have in mind?"
The stone is an occasional prop, and one that I have a peculiarly difficult time keeping track of. I like it, mind -- I like the weight of it, the color, and the dullness of its gleam against his dark skin -- but somehow it keeps slipping my mind. Odd. I used to have a ring like that, too. However, for whatever reason, there it is. And then it disappears, because I forgot it exists.
Bad. I'm usually better with props than I was in this log. I forgot the drinks he ordered, too. Suckage.
The reminder of the job (both in the ring and the question) drift his thoughts back from the case, which is probably annoying to Emma. She has difficulty keeping his mind on the situation at hand, ironically, until the moment when sex is out of the equation altogether. Then his attention is all hers. Chris's priorities are not quite in alignment with what they should be -- but then again, if they were in alignment, this entire scene would be unnecessary. Even when the forefront of his mind is concentrated on desire, just behind the curtain there's something else busily at work, sifting through data and attempting to fit pieces together. Making lists and links. He's actually a pretty analytical guy, for someone who comes off as erratic and emotional.
There's a lazy curiosity here. Police brutality. Morgan's into the rough stuff? Chris can do that. It might be a relief, actually, not to have to be gentle, or considerate: just two bodies driving into each other, insensate and demanding, feeding lust and passion and need--
'Morgan' works her foot across his knee to rest against the seat's edge, toes brushing more daring touches in rhythm to the cadence of her reply, "Blue's a lovely color." A deft mental touch smoothes away the edges of those distracting thoughts, blurring them until they fade behind the immediacy of his present situation. "Tsk. I don't bite and tell, sir. It'd spoil the fun."
They go, those grim thoughts, fading into background noise and seeming irrelevance, and tiny lines of strain go with them. Present situation, indeed. Pale eyes brighten, focusing fully -- at last -- on the woman; the armor of his mind ripples with it, shivering in the wake of restless energy, redirected. "Not even a hint?" asks Rossi, leaning further into the table (into /her/) on his baritone's invitation. He shifts again under that table, reacting to that impudent foot, and a hand stretches to catch at hers. "Anybody survive your rubber hoses?"
More than one manipulation needed during the course of the night to keep Chris on track. Long enough to reel him into the hotel room, anyway. His attention can be formidable, when it's finally fully focused on someone; he has a lot of energy, and when it's all sent your way, wow. I do more showing, not telling, later on in the log, I seem to recall. She doesn't touch lust in him yet. Subduing the voices is good enough, for now; it gives natural passion room to rise and fill in the nooks and crannies left by their retreat.
One of the unfortunate aftermaths of this entire scene is that sex no longer quiets the voices anymore. In fact, though I didn't actually document it on livejournal, Chris found it difficult to be aroused by anything afterwards, for at least a little while. He chalked it up to fatigue and stress, which is not unheard of, either at his age or in his field. The reality is that that even though memory was erased, there was pleasure tied into violation at the end of the scene, and though he can't consciously recollect it, some part of him does, and remembers arousal as being tied into death of self. His kinks are many and varied, but nihilism isn't one of them.
Her hand is easily captured, entangling with his upon contact. "Would you run if I told you no?" she responds, allowing her foot to express her interest while maintaining an expression of heavy-lidded unconcern.
"I'd probably have to stay and investigate it," says Chris, twining his hand around hers to explore her skin with lazy fingers. His smile flares again, rich-hued and heated. "Since I'm a cop and all. In the line of duty."
"Mmm. And what would your investigation require, /Officer/?" 'Morgan' tips back provocatively, enhancing the reception of his senses and focusing them on her. Around them, the rest of the pub stretches to the very edges of his perception.
He is a sensualist, Chris Rossi, with all the hypersensitivity that entails; human, but no less formidable for it. The impressions of his senses capture Morgan and cast them back at her, slow lust's mirror: the silk of skin under his roaming fingers; their mingled scents in breath's eddy; the tickle of amusement just beneath the throat, twining around the black velvet of voices. "Interviews, interrogations--" The gleam of green eyes. "--Collecting evidence ... I prefer the hands-on approach."
I have an odd image of Rossi as a telepath. It would be a catastrophic and bewildering thing for him and the people around him, I'd imagine. He is very much a sensualist, and despite lacking mutant hypersensitivity, he does well enough with his own mundane, homo sapiens senses that it'd probably be very disconcerting to everyone around him: he'd probably never be able to stop projecting his own sensual experiences to others.
Good grief. Is this even possible? That'd be keen and weird. (How would you temporarily turn a flatscan into a telepath? Hm.)
Must not get distracted. Back to commentary.
He's not kidding about the hands-on approach. The philosophic approach towards life, that it's not the destination, it's the journey that matters? Crap, insofar as he's concerned. Destination is all. However, for all his scorn for the journey over the destination business, there's a fierce satisfaction in the building of a case for him, so for all his complained irritation about the labor it takes to build a case, that's really where he revels, showing his true colors. He's a hunter, first and foremost, and landing his quarry is the natural culmination of all the work. It's the prize at the end of the road. He says one thing, but he practices another.
This is the real reason he's a callback for his one-night flings. He is not an impatient lover. He is a ruthless, thorough, and relentless one.
"Do tell me there's a search involved, darling," 'Morgan' insists, her voice thickening and tightening around Chris' attention with a velvet touch. She pulls her knee up to the seat and scoots around the curve closer to him, using the greater accessibility of the new position to pull her fingers from his grip and trail their tips over the back of his hand, and up his arm. "Do I get a trip to the precinct?" is whispered, tone and movements pulsating with sultry grace.
That black head bends to hers, intimacy and that lucid, lucent physical awareness encompassing her in its animal cloak. "I'd insist on a search," Chris murmurs, threading his hand through dark curls, a cradle for that fine and frail curve of skull. His thumb traces the hollow of temple, following the long line of face: across cheek, along jaw, until fingers tickle and graze along the sensitive skin of throat. "A very /thorough/ search, and a ride downtown. You never know what you'll find on a suspect."
"I could tell you what you'd find right now? In case you need to familiarize yourself with feminine... entrapments on the way to the station," 'Morgan' breathes, her hand drifting up from his arm to trace patterns under and around his tie.
"A little advance warning?" The guiding hand coaxes Morgan's head to meet his, dark brow touching pale. The sizzle of a smile scythes at her, lambent fever behind the color; breath brushes her cheek as Chris turns his head, lips tickling across the scroll and pinna of her ear. "Rule one of police work," he confides, voice furred and gentle. "Everybody lies."
Foreplay. Foreplay. More foreplay.
I pause only because it is ironic that Chris mentions this first rule of police work. It's true that everybody lies. He's in the lamentable position of being the one person in this entire scene who isn't. Doesn't. How he hates lies, whether those are lies told to other people or lies you tell to yourself. And he's about to become the victim in the world's greatest lie: a lie that other people will make into his truth. It's all very sad. We blame Sabitha and Percy. Wankers.
I note that I haven't had much to say about my poses to this point, and that's because -- well, I haven't really been reading them, seriously. Foreplay is not one of my strengths, and so I cringe a little when I read my own inadequacies. In the words of Hilary Booth of Remember WENN: "Oh, the words are fine. Many of these same words occur in Shakespeare and Marlowe and Ibsen. It's the way you've /arranged/ the words that I don't like." Sensuality. I need to work on that. I'm not a particularly sensual person IRL, being more of a bull in the teashop. Awareness. I need to work on awareness of my surroundings and my senses. I'll get right on that.
A nearly unvocalized moan escapes, and 'Morgan' dips her head, sliding her cheek across his, skin catching on skin, to whisper in sheer, light tones, "Well then, I'd better tell you I've no desire for your services, Officer." She pulls back and purses her lips, letting desire and calculation lighten her eye as she loosens his perceptions to return awareness of their surroundings. "Maybe you should show me to your car? Wouldn't want people to think you were accepting illict favors..."
The pub's noises, restored to all their dimly raucous glory, shivers a blink from the desire-drunk eyes. Rossi pulls back reluctantly, his hand sliding across the slope of throat and shoulder, scalding as it goes. "Am I?" he asks, a laugh caught in the back of his throat. His wallet, produced from inside the dark grey suit coat, surrenders bills to pay the check; he slides out of the booth to unfold, proving himself a man of stature. "Where're we going?"
"The station, I thought?" Morgan quips in anticipatory good humor, shimmying along the seat to complete the bend and skimming upwards mere inches along from him as she stands. Heels bridging most of the height difference between them, she's nearly on eye level with him to trade the ghost of a wink before bending and reaching past him for her clutch.
Amusement turns Chris's mouth askew, pooling shadow at its corners, and masculine applause skims down her figure afresh, given the full canvas to admire. "Got an interrogation all ready and waiting," he promises, catching up his own leather overcoat to bunch over an arm. It is crisp outside, chill with the headlong onset of autumn. The door opens on a gust of cold air, sharp-toothed and hungry for bare skin.
'Morgan' steps out into the evening air and turns into him, hands and arms tucked in between them. "It's cold," she explains, mischief lilting her voice. "Maybe you'd better search my room first. Who knows what criminal activity I have concealed there. I took a cab, but the hotel's just around the corner."
Leather mutters, unbundled to skirl around Morgan's shoulders in heavy, Rossi-scented warmth: the fresh smell of shampoo, of soap, of gun metal and oil. Broad, strong hands close on the woman's upper arms, pulling her into his heat; eyes glitter, cast colorless in the pub's glare. A knuckle urges the woman's chin up -- "Lead the way," baritone husks, alight -- and lips press over hers, burning, enticing, /inviting/ with passion's kindling fire.
Uh, good grief, there's a lot of foreplay. I think we actually stopped here because Emma's player had to go home from work.
I made dinner. I was home for the day, for some reason. I cannot remember why. (Was I sick?) Oh, and look! It's the leather overcoat! Poor leather overcoat. We loved you well. My memories of this entire first, well, two-thirds of this log are a little vague, in part because I was actually working in the other window, and in part because I think there were long periods where one or the other of us wasn't really posing, for one reason or another. Real life distractions, perhaps? As a result, I kept losing the thread of what was going on, and where we were headed. I suspect that's why we had so MUCH foreplay (sorry!) when really, we had something specific in mind that we had to get to, albeit by a circuitous route. Percy was waiting for us at the hotel, and we had to get our little butts over there in order to actually get around to windexing Rossi's brain.
Poor brain. Poor Rossi. Yes, well. Foreplay. Ignore that, if you please. Moving on....
'Morgan's' hands curl into his shirt, siphoning the energy and funneling it back in a hungry embrace that once again accentuates sensation and perception. A moment later, she pulls back with a small gasp and exchanges shirt for jacket's edges, pulling it tightly around her as she stares back, wide- and wild eyed. "C'mon then, hero," she invites, turning to saunter triumphantly toward the night's arrangements.
The walk is brisk and, as promised, short: too abbreviated for kindled lust to die, though time enough for work to encroach on the detective's mind again. Snags and knots and disconnected strands stretch behind the simmer of desire, knitting to a different need. The hotel is a discreet one, its facade without ostentation, the quiet lobby beyond a paean to wealth and understated taste. Rossi's eyebrows arch in recognition over the livery of its bellhops, those silent and wraith-like minions who glance askance at their arrival and choose, most tactfully, to take no notice. "Flying high," he observes as they cross the foyer.
"Always book the best when you're traveling on the company's dime," 'Morgan' tosses smugly over her shoulder as heel's brisk staccato slow, then stop outside the elevator doors. She presses the button for the seventh floor. Not the penthouse level, please note. There is such a thing as being /suspicious/.
Indeed. Suspicion walks at her heels, suited and shod, and eats fish on Fridays. The elevator door doors close behind them, stitching them into wood paneling and mirrored elegance. Privacy, with all its opportunities. Chris crooks a grin, hand planting straight-armed into the wall beside Morgan, corraling her into the small chamber's corner to steal another kiss: a deep, dark thing, demanding and urgent. "Am I on the company's dime?" he wonders against her lips.
It's a trying thing, trying to seduce Rossi when one's a telepath. A normal flatscan would never know how easily diverted he is from one's seductive wiles -- and in favor of what? A dead child and a sordid crime scene. It is not flattering. Inherent caution has time to rear its head, as it often does with him; he can usually override it, or chooses to. He is, after all, a cop, and not insignificant in handling himself physicality. He has confidence in his ability to take care of himself, and while he listens to his instincts, he can dispense with them in favor of sex. Provided they do not yell too loudly. In this case, they're more a niggle than a scratch, so he makes a choice of need over native suspicion, and plunges into sensuality again to muffle, for a little while, the voices.
"Depends," she returns, coyly, using his tie as a leash to hold him in place while she responds, the taste smooth and bittersweet. "Am I going to need to bribe my way out of this?" The elevator's rise is ponderous, a legacy of the age and reputation this hotel has.
"You might," allows Chris with throaty intent, accepting leash and preempting it to bury his face in her neck. "Never know when you'll meet a dirty cop." Breath, lips, teeth move insistant fire over bare skin, chasing the throb of heartbeat. His free hand moves to drag her against him; flames lick across his mind, tasting graphic, pornographic intent. The tangle of their bare limbs, the anticipation of release, of oblivion, of mindless, embodied /peace/--
Morgan presses close, sliding her hands up and over his shoulders, his jacket falling from her shoulders, yet pinned to the mirrored wall by the contact of shoulder blades. Image is met with image, teasing his passions higher and slipping yet another telepathic finger unnoticed into his thoughts, pulse monitored and matched. The elevator bounces to a stop three levels shy of their destination, and the doors slide open on an elderly prima donna who gasps at the sight, and then glares at the impertinent giggle that bubbles over Rossi's shoulder. Morgan turns her face from his questing lips and buries her nose in the join of shoulder and neck, to blink at her and ask silkily, "Mind pressing number seven again? Can't quite reach it."
/He/ can, hero of the day that he is, bending a humorous and entirely unrepentant grin at the old woman before stretching his own arm to poke the button. Reluctant courtesy peels him away from Morgan, doing nothing to appease his indignant audience; between their bodies, betrayed by the mirror, Rossi's hand follows the line of her body down shoulder and ribs to the flare of hip. "Long elevator ride," he observes, willfully, wickedly inane. Air chills, where bodies once shared heat. (His fingers stroke lower, ardently adventurous.) "Suppose we could've done the stairs."
Shame on Morgan, taking advantage of her telepathic powers to feed a not inconsiderate sexuality. Tsk. She'll pay for that later.
...Well, no. She won't. I do remember that Shaw's player IMed me at one point hereabouts, wondering what on earth I was doing to make Emma's player blush. Just how explicit are you being, dude? Not very, really. I was not, say, actually trying to be hot as much as I might've if I didn't have the windexing coming up. My attention and creative reserves were really being saved for that part of the scene, so this part of it was kind of throwaway. Er, my apologies, Emma. I have mentioned in other commentaries that I have three levels of physical posing. This was somewhere between mid-level, my usual, and really sensual, where I'm actively making the effort. I was lazy. But, you know, windexing! I'd never played that before, and I was vaguely anxious!
"Somehow I don't think we would have been able to climb them," Morgan replies, matching his entirely reprehensible tone and wrapping herself back into his arm, loath to waste a precious, exhilarating second. She captures a leg between hers and slides up the length of his body, nuzzling a kiss to the underside of his jaw in passing to restoring full height. Three floors pass a little quicker that the preceding four.
The race of heartbeat and quickened breath answers for Chris's enjoyment of that last span, though a thoughtless murmur -- "Who said anything about /climbing/..." -- answers for his mind's trend. No need to be a telepath for that reading in truth, all sound, all sense, all sensation focused on Morgan, even the persistent, mordant voices of duty (of death) silenced in the face of that vast appetite. The elevator coasts to a stop; the doors slide open even as Rossi presses her into the corner again, capturing that slim body for a sanity-devouring kiss.
Morgan twines her arms around his neck and strains to tiptoe, tipping her hips forward and snaking a leg around behind his. The press of his emotions augment her own not uninterested urges and lock down sense of purpose, memory of the goal for a breathless, black-edged, desperate moment. But underneath the illusion of Morgan, it is Emma's Frost whose body trembles against Rossi's, whose mind weaves into his. She inhales on a gasp and pulls back, panting for breath and discipline. "My room. 713."
It is a blessed reminder. Rossi emerges for air, eyes blind and drunk, and he maneuvers them out of the elevator into the hall, shoulder jarring the closing doors as they pass. Sconces light the corridor, pale gold against high-crowned ceilings; distracted, impatient, Chris casts one swift glance around before tumbling Morgan against the nearest wall. "Which way?" he demands, hands prowling. Left? Right? Left. Laughter steers him, them, down the passage.
Rossi would be vindictively pleased if he knew that his attentions affected Emma that much. (Well, he would if he retained any knowledge or memory or, you know, /anything/ about this night.) On the other side of the fence, Rossi's player is vaguely touched -- no, seriously -- by Emma's pose, proving that Chris is having a significant impact on Emma, despite all her dire purpose and ice queen control. The woman is only human, after all, and Rossi is certainly ... hm. /Something/, anyway. To make Emma forget her reason, even if only for a moment? Score.
Missed out, Emma. You coulda had him! All yours, if only for a night! Of course, she ends up having him anyway. Just not in the way he had in mind. Pity.
I recall that it was around here that Emma's player protested along the lines of, 'Good grief! Can we get to the hotel room?' I told her it was her fault, for poking at his bestial urges with her uber power. To be honest, I had completely lost track. Of everything. Because ... see above with the possibly being sick, doing work, and making dinner. I was a little discombobulated. The scene flowed strangely in my mind. Time is confusing.
So are Rubiks cubes.
Morgan fends him off long enough to snag the poor forgotten jacket from the floor of the elevator, spinning under the force of his turn and hitting the wall with a crack that only serves to curve her lips in a sensuous smile, eyes narrowing to dusky centered slits. She runs fingernails down through hair to collar and pulls it from his neck, exposing it to the dip of her head and teeth. Lipstick marks the spot, and then she's tugging and pushing him (whichever way the bodies face) toward the room bearing the number 713. This time, as they stumble to a stop, it's she who holds him in place, a hand pressed to his chest, the other working the clasp of her purse. Securing the card between index and middle finger, she tosses the handbag away and swipes the card in one slick motion, hardly pausing to check the security's indicator had flashed before trying the handle.
The indicator turns green, and barely in time; pity the door, slammed open without consideration for its delicacy. Heat, built to raging in Rossi's mind, batters at his own abused shields and tumbles them like Jericho's walls; given its outlet in privacy, restraint drops its bridling hand and floods them both with voracious hunger. Mirth dances with need in the green eyes as Chris herds her in, kicking the door shut behind them. "Nice place," he informs, without so much as a glance to check. "Nice room. Nice dress. Nice neck--"
Morgan backpeddles through the door, turning the retreat into a playful visual tease as she lifts her chin to peer down her nose at him, tongue wetting her lips in a caress. "Going to search the place, officer, or do I have time to hide the incriminating evidence?" She reaches over to slide a shoe off and quirks a brow as she opens the drawer at the desk and drops it in.
"No secrets," mocks Chris, stalking Morgan with the springy, silent stride of a predator. His suit coat sheds itself across a sofa's back, showing the leather harness of holster and deadly, sullen gun. Reason surfaces, struggling through the maelstrom of passion; it pauses him beside a chair, gaze skimming across the suite's neat interior. Something, some voice nudges, whispering at instinct. "First step's patting down the suspect."
Good God, Chris. Shut up. What the hell are you saying? You're embarrassing me. He really is capable of more creative foreplay conversation. I swear he is.
Just not, for some reason, today. However! Thank God, we are close to the main course of the scene. There is something about the room that triggers Chris's alarm bells, though I don't remember what it is. Signs of habitation absent, perhaps? That seems reasonable.
...wait. Did she drop a shoe in the desk drawer? That's weird. That's weird, isn't it? It's weird.
Morgan kicks off her other shoe, sending it spinning under the chair while she surges forward, wrapping herself around Chris in a flurry of arms and legs that directs him to the nearest convenient surface, be it wall, floor, or bed. An telepathic finger strokes the edges of his passion, coaxing it back into full flame and driving competing thoughts from his mind. Training? Reason? Pshaw. Something more primal and pleasurable than survival instinct drives him.
Instinct struggles against that soothing touch, batting back with moth wings ... but lust is a fiercer, hotter fire. It consumes reason whole, conspiring with that alien influence to make Rossi -- meek? No. Chris growls and slams into the wall, capturing Morgan in strong arms and ravening, driving urgency; then it is her turn, thrown with impatient violence onto the bed so hands, lips, practiced and parting limbs can press her down, down, into the blackness of heady, dizzying lust.
See? She does it again. How is this fair? Driven as far as he is, Chris is fairly rough and ready (ahem) with Emma. He's a possessive lover, and a dominating one by nature; there is never any question in bed who's finally in charge, though he's willing to allow his bed partner to be a partner in the real meaning of the word. Give and take, yes. A lot of take. However, in the taking, a /lot/ of giving. Sort of. Occasionally more like forcing. Force of nature--
--and okay, I'm really tired. I will take a break now, because I seem to have lost track of that thing that makes my fingers go. Mind. That's it.
Incidentally, wow. My posing is bad. Uh, sorry again, Emma. I seem to be doing a lot of apologizing in this commentary....
And down she goes, gathering Rossi into her and taking him with her, setting the room spinning into a draining kaleidoscope that begins with need so pressing it overwhelms and ends in her arms. Fabric on fabric, skin on skin, heat and moisture and pulsing beat blending and drowning out everything but the red and black and white and silver colors of desire and then fountains upwards again into gasping blue clarity. Her fingers work expertly at shirt buttons, tugging against belt and holster and straining muscles.
An esoteric and arcane thing, the shoulder holster with its ugly burden. Reminded, Rossi shrugs out of it with an eel-like twist, shoulders wrenching at leather to drop it in a tangled heap on the floor. The tie is next, already loosened; then, as before, it is her turn. Teeth flash white at Morgan, and clever, practiced fingers slide under dress fabric, unwrapping the best-crafted devices of men to bare flesh and fever.
Freed the the restriction of fastenings and bindings, Morgan slithers farther up on the bed underneath him, knees and hips taking the place of hands in the passion stoking and twist underneath him as she leverages herself against him, pushing him to his side and back.
She catches roaming hands and reverses roles, throwing a leg over his chest and curling atop him, wrists held above his head. Dropping her face to his, she teases ears and nose and chin and mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, slowing the frantic tempo of their foreplay to taunting seduction before smirking down at him and whispering, "Give me a minute. I wanna hide a little more evidence. I don't think I could convince the boss to reimburse me for the dress..." and shifting off him, rolling toward the side of the bed closest the closet and bathroom.
Chris groans, heartfelt, though amusement skeins rich through the sound. One forearm hides the heavy-lidded eyes, drowning green behind shadow. Breath catches, rasping in the throat even as the hasty pulse pounds in deafened ears. Pounds, beats, gallops -- and then slows, bit by bit, as need quiets and is restrained, mastered to make room (once more) for intelligence. Again curiosity nibbles at the forebrain, some nagging note of things awry; behind it, more immediate, the case spills its sobering baggage afresh, demanding attention.
'Morgan' eyes him speculatively before rising from the bad and padding on stockinged feet toward the bathroom, content to leave him with his thoughts for the moment. Once the door shuts, however, all sex-induced lethargy fades in a flurry of movement that begins with a phone call. A signal. Two rings, hang up, and then one. Dress and other unillusioned affects of the appearance alteration are tossed in a wait bag, exchanged for low waisted, wide legged pants and simple camisole top. Comfortless distraction.
It is not long before there comes a brisk quadruple knock at the door, Percy leaning with shoulder braced against its frame and watching his fingernails with mild interest as he waits to be allowed ingress.
Intellect and its constant battle with body; one gives way so another can take control, an endless tussle between the two. He's perfectly comfortable with humor in sex (some men aren't) because if you think about it, sex really is rather strange and silly. I note for the record that the reins he puts on his temper are the same kinds of reins he puts on his libido. That is to say, they come from the same place. He has a tendency to strong passions, whether those be anger, lust, love, and so forth. While he hasn't really been driven by love and hate so much, the others -- the kinds that'll give Percy a headache -- are constantly requiring check, so it's become second nature to him to recognize when they're heading for a bender and drag them into check.
There comes that case again. Damn that case. Doesn't matter to Morgan. She's already gotten Rossi right where she wants him--
And this is where the real substance of the log starts. Hi, Percy. The full commentary is apparently going to require too much room to be acceptable as a single LJ entry, so I'll take it to Part Deux.