OOC: About that cake commentary
Log: About that cake
Date: 1/16/2006
Players: Sabitha & Rossi
Somewhere between the time I promised to do this commentary -- counter-commentary! I have promised at large to counter-commentary any commentary that involves Rossi -- and now, I did another commentary about the Windex scene that turned out to have some repercussions on this scene. So there you go, then. My character is wiser than I am; he knew what he was doing, even if the player didn't ... and so here we go, Chris dropping in on Sabitha out of the blue, after weeks of unconscious avoidance.
The reasons for staying away are detailed elsewhere, so it isn't really worth it to go into it here. His issues with Sabby aren't things he's conscious of, whereas Sabby's issues with Chris (if any!) are her department, not mine. At any rate, his current reason for visiting is a quaint one, and rather endearing in a lopsided, muddle-headed way. He has recently begun to date Leah -- has entered a relationship with Leah -- and is sheepishly informing those around him, rather like an alcoholic beginning the first steps of treatment. Hello. My name is Chris, and I'm in a Relationship.
Why he feels it's necessary to announce this is something of a puzzle to most people. Excepting Beston, who knows Chris better than any person alive (and perhaps Emma, who has had, after all, a front-row seat to the Chris Rossi psyche) the general opinion has been that Chris: 1) has gone queer; 2) has been watching Lifetime or Oxygen movies on cable; 3) has decided to stake out his territory; or 4) is playing some bizarre practical joke. Beston, who knows him better, recognizes it as an act of commitment to Leah, whether she's aware of it or no. Rossi is open enough with the easy emotions of anger or dislike. Love, however, is agonizingly difficult. Girlfriends in the past have slipped into conversation like idle afterthoughts, random characters who get picked up mid-scene with little explanation, then fade out of conversations over time unless the break-up is particularly entertaining or unusual. For Chris to mark the beginning of a formal relationship with an announcement is a significant change.
John eyes it with interest, worries privately, and keeps his mouth shut.
Bank holidays typically mean a day off. Sabitha finagled half a day; a busy morning faded into a lazy afternoon filled with napping and DVDs and then drifted into an evening that finds her stretched on her couch, picking through the remains of a salad while she balances a book open on her lap. A single lamp sends its warm glow spreading through the room from its place behind her shoulder, and low, folksy music smooths the mood in murmuring undertones.
Down the corridor, the elevator chimes a sleepy note and yawns to disgorge Chris Rossi, still clad in the accessories of work: long black overcoat, blue suit beneath, tie, gun, badge -- and cynicism, a vapor trail that bobs and eddies in his wake. He steps into the hallway with a roll of the head, stretching the neck's broad column down the few paces it takes to a certain door. Knock knock. "Yo, Melcross. You in?"
Bank holidays. I didn't even register that until later, to be honest. This would be because I had to go to work. (Bank holidays. Pshaw.) If I have to go to work, so does Rossi. There are no holidays in Homicide. The elevator heralds his state of mind -- tired, a little sleepy -- while the cynicism is as much a part of his work attire as the actual clothes he wears. Chris has a way of introducing himself at a door as though the conversation has already started. There's no formal 'Hello. This is the beginning of our exchange,' just as there's no real 'Goodbye. This is the end.' Bizarre though it is, he's got a Tibetan Buddhist thing going for him, where everything is part of everything else. He does not tend to think 'now I am here,' 'now I am there.' It's all an ongoing dialogue, and the people he's exchanging it with never really /leave/. This is why he so often picks up the phone with a curse word, or a bit of thought from somewhere or something else.
I don't know how to put it any better. Basically, I guess I'm saying he doesn't compartmentalize in quite the same way that I do. I'm not entirely sure how he does, to be honest. I know he does, because he has to, to keep what he does from poisoning everything else in his life. I just don't know /how/. Anyway.
I like Sabby's set. It places her in time, in mood, and in environment with subdued language; you immediately get the feeling of emotional ... passivity? Neutrality? Something along the pensive side, certainly.
Sabitha pivots toward the door, shifting on the couch to peer at it in heavy silence. Her fingers tap against the friendly pages of her book and then she slides it shut and deposits both book and salad on her coffee table. She tugs at the hem of her knit sweater, pulling it over her hips as she crosses to the door to swing it open. "Hey, Chris." A quick glance takes in said accessories of work, and her lips twist into a small smile. "Not here on business, right?"
"You murder anyone in the last few days?" Chris wonders, with all evidence of honest interest. He leans on the threshold, settling into a leg's crossed brace and a shoulder's press into the lintel; hands plow back into pockets, shaping bulges at his hips. "I was in the neighborhood. Figured I'd just check in with you, see how you were doing--"
Rossi was rather quiescent in my head that day, which is to say that he didn't have much to say for himself. Small talk. Bah. There are days when I can see him more clearly than other days; I always know what he's doing, really, but he doesn't always talk to me. This was one of those times.
Looking at the difference between Rossi when he first visited Sabitha, all those long months ago, and now, is kind of entertaining. That time he was on the job, albeit without official recognition; he was following up on another murder in the same building. It's always something with this building: if it isn't mutant murder, it's mutant arrests, or Hummers through the ceiling. Even by New York City standards, the rent on this particularly high-priced establishment has to be taking a hit, don't you think?
This is the problem with dropping a commentary and then picking it back up again later. You lose track of what you were thinking when you started.
"Been tempted," Sabby answers with a quiet quirk of a smile. "But I'm still squeaky clean, officer. Come in?" She steps sideways and jerks her head in indication. "Did someone in my apartment get murdered again? Because if so, I'm going to consider moving."
The detective rolls his shoulders in a lopsided shrug, unpinning himself to straighten and saunter into the apartment proper. "Not unless you've got a body somewhere that isn't stinking up the place yet. Just dropped by to see if I could catch up with some people -- you seen your buddy Percy, lately? -- and figured I'd see what was up." Rossi stops, parking himself in the middle of the room. Pale eyes grin at Sabitha. "So. What's up?"
Not an official visit, and yet, Rossi has a twitch of unease over the thought that rolls his shoulders. Why, he's not entirely sure. He won't worry about it. The reason he's in the building is to visit Percy, to ask him about Leah. He's just found out recently that Leah slept with Percy, and somewhere in the back of his mind is a nagging, uneasy question about the whys and wherefores of it. Did Percy influence her to sleep with him? Was it purely coincidence, and good timing on Percy's part? Convenient guy at the convenient moment? He doesn't really expect Percy to admit influencing her, but he wonders, oh, maybe just a little bit....
There are three reasons why Rossi isn't so comfortable with visiting this building anymore, now that I think about it. Jean, Percy, Sabby -- and Magneto, come to think of it. Four points of unease, intersecting on this one spot.
Sabitha's spine stiffens silently as she strolls toward the kitchen. She directs a look at Chris over her shoulder. "Saw him Saturday. Do you want something to drink? Munch on? I just finished dinner."
Chris trails idly after Sabitha, a dark hound at her heels. "I grabbed something at the precinct," he admits. "I'm fine. Unless you want to go out for dessert. Joe's sandwiches aren't what you'd call high cuisine. Sort of begs for something afterwards to wash the taste out of your mouth."
Since I started this commentary, the XMM drinking game popped up. I get a drink for watching Sabby go to the kitchen. Do I get another one for her offering food or drink to cover unease? It's an impulse that Chris recognizes and takes for granted, because he's much the same way. Hospitality is equated to food or drink, Italian-style, and even his worst enemy would get an offer of a beer or something once he walked in the door. Even, come to think of it, Magneto, though it would be an offer made tongue-in-cheek, as it were.
There's a whole story about Joe and his sandwiches. 'GI Joe,' Chris calls him: an Afghan who used to be a doctor, and is now running a deli somewhere on 3rd. His son was grabbed by Homeland Defense last summer, under suspicion of being a terrorist sympathizer. This has pissed Joe off enormously. The NYPD vouched for the son, which did pretty much no good whatsoever. At any rate, the boy's finally back. THis is a relief to the squadroom, since Joe's sandwiches have never been very good, but they'd gotten absolutely horrible while the boy was being held by the feds.
Suggest to the squadroom that they get sandwiches somewhere else, and they'd give you a blank look. But it's /Joe's/.
Men don't like change. They are kind of dumb.
Sabitha shakes her head and disappears behind the swinging curtain of her freezer door. "Night in for me tonight," she shares emphatically, and pulls back to waggle a carton of ice cream, peanut butter cup, at Chris. "Not high cuisine either, but I promise it's tasty. Want some?"
"Sure." Green buckles with white in a swift, easy grin. "I'll take whatever. Mom never let us have sweets when we were kids. You should've seen me when I started living on my own." Chris props himself up in the kitchen's frame in much the same way he did the entrance, black head tilted for a deceptively sleepy regard.
"Hog wild? Footloose and fancy free?" Sabby suggests with a sideways glance at Chris as she goes about the task of pulling down bowls and searching out spoons.
"Dessert for every dinner," Chris bats back cheerfully, digging out his hands at last to strip them of gloves, one by one. "And lunch, and breakfast. Only reason I didn't balloon up to a thousand pounds was Julia. And Beth."
Hi, Beth! Chris's ex-girlfriend Beth, the only one that he can remember in clear and vivid detail. Sensualist that he is; it's an unfortunate telepath (or a lucky one) who is in the room with him when his mind veers around to her. She was one of the few women that he has ever truly loved, outside of family. Like any man in love, he managed to royally fuck up his relationship with her by doing pretty much the wrong thing at every turn. It would be nice to say that he learned from his mistakes.
Chris is sort of a moron.
"Incentive to stay fit and lean, was she?" Sabby asks with half a smirk as she pries scoops of ice cream from carton to bowls. "Or just good exercise?"
The gloves shove into a pocket, leather fingers peeking out to wave. "Both." Chris's baritone gleams; so, too, does the shuttered gaze. "Then there was the Academy, so -- ended up never having time to fatten up. You're not Italian, so you don't know how it is with my family. They see you gain weight, they damn well tell you."
Very, very good exercise. They had lots of sex. On tables, on the floor, on counters, against the wall....
Lots of sex against the wall. They had a tranquil relationship, in comparison to what he had with Leah, but it was definitely exciting, until the job claimed the hole that the Church left. It was an odd thing, that; when he found Beth, he thought that human love was enough to fill the loss of faith, and for a while it worked. Unfortunately, the job satisfied something deeper than even that. Beth was utterly unlike Leah. She was quiet, gentle, accepting, stable -- and, sadly, wise.
Thus, no more Chris and Beth. It takes someone with really self-destructive tendencies to stay in a relationship with Chris. Some things can't be salvaged.
"Along with every other mistake you could possibly make in your life, I imagine," Sabby answers, and shoves a bowl across the counter toward Chris.
Chris runs a knuckle down the length of his nose, nudging the scratch that crosses its bridge. Rue. "Yeah, well. It's something else when your old man starts bringing a girdle to the table. --Thanks," he offers up, courteous poppet. And: "So what else is new? Sorry for dropping in on you the other night."
I have no comment to make here, except I got to write 'poppet.' This does not describe Rossi very well. The scratch is from, I recall, Magneto trying to squash him with an SUV a few nights before. This is turning into a tradition between the two men.
The girdle was, incidentally, Sgt. Rossi's, and he was bringing it to the table so he could show his wife how ridiculous he'd look in one. It was a thing. After he retired, the old man started putting on a lot of weight, and Mrs. Rossi commented on it -- which was her perogative, after so many years of marriage -- and Sgt. Rossi, who was rather sensitive about it, dug his heels in and started wearing a girdle.
Which he unbuckled one night at the dinner table, after an especially large meal, and slapped down on the table next to the lasagna. It was a company dinner, in that Father Matthew was there, as were Julia and Chris. Chris and Julia were vastly entertained. Father Matthew was entertained. Mrs. Rossi was mortified. She threw away the girdle right then and there, and put the family on a strictly vegetarian diet.
This lasted for all of three weeks. Sgt. Rossi dropped 5 pounds, started exercising regularly, and eventually got his weight down to a manageable level. When his friends complimented him on the accomplishment, he shuddered and informed them that his wife was a wonderful woman, but the things she did to vegetables should be illegal. The children agree.
"A girdle? Honestly?" Sabby lifts her brows as she turns to face Chris with her bowl cradled in her hands, silent indication that it's time for him to get out of the doorway so she can find a seat. "Nah, it was good. I always like to see you guys. Hey! I saw that the boys in blue had a big night the other night. Were you in on that?"
The cop claims his ice cream in both hands, like a good boy, and ambles out into the living room with the passing, "Big night? Oh. You mean the Pezhead thing? Not supposed to talk about it. Retaliation," he clarifies, spooling himself into a chair. "Hush hush. Doesn't matter. Feds have him, anyway."
Retaliation. They know all about retaliation, Vincent and Chris. It's getting to become a thing. "Hey, look. We have to bring down some mutant whose arrest will probably spark assassination attempts. Someone call Lazzaro and Rossi." His refusal to talk about it appears a tacit admission, but at the same time it's really not. He would be just as taciturn (such as he is capable of) were it colleagues who were the arresting officers. Rossi does occasionally know when to keep his mouth shut.
Not enough to keep from calling Magneto 'Pezhead,' though.
Sabitha smiles slowly. "Pezhead? /Really/, Chris?" She swings herself into her bedroom quickly to snatch up a knitted through and slings it round her shoulders before she drops onto the couch. "Good. One less thing to worry about."
"Magneto," Chris concedes, thumbing his coat's buttons to let it fall open across the battered suit. "Lensherr. Whatever you want to call him. --You don't think he looks like a pez dispenser with that pot he wears on his head? Helmet, whatever?"
"Can't say I've ever sat around and thought about it," Sabby returns, and jabs her spoon into a mound of ice cream with violence. "What's up with that thing, anyway?"
Rossi has. Rossi has thought about it a lot. He keeps meaning to ask Magneto the next time he sees him. Then again, each time he sees the man, he assumes it will be for the last time, and it never seems to come up in between the pain and the yelling and the hurtling of giant missiles of death and the MURDEROUS ATTEMPTS ON HIS LIFE.
Distracts him from the main subject. Also, Magneto owes him a coat.
Chris won't forget about the coat. He liked that coat. He was hot in that coat.
"What thing?" Ice cream. Yay!
"Helmet," Sabby reminds. "Keep up, Chris."
Explains Chris, "Thought you were talking about pez." It could happen. His fork sketches a descriptive question mark in the air, and is punctuated in turn by the laconic, "No clue. Brain waves from Mars, maybe? Or he figures he looks cool in it. Getting fashion advice from Queer Eye for the Tonka Truck Guy."
I should not use the word 'laconic' to describe anything Chris does. Because he isn't.
I fail to attend to my props, and abruptly, the spoon becomes a fork.
Spoon. Unless Magneto has been messing with it.
Sabby fixes it for me. I laugh myself sick. Let us move on.
"He does wear a cape," Sabby allows, and digs out the chocolatey goodness of a peanutbutter filled cup with intense concentration.
"Must never have seen the Incredibles," laments Chris.
"Doesn't strike me as the sort for animated features." Ice cream disappears from her spoon and melts slowly on her tongue.
This, Rossi will allow, is a possibility. "Probably scared of making the kids cry," he suggests, spooning -- spooning! -- ice cream with a lazily tortuous precision. "Was starting to think he was following me around. At least I won't see him popping up around any corners for a while."
Chris is a Pixar fan. Goober. He pretty much is his inner child. Every Pixar movie that has ever come out, he has found an excuse to view on opening night, and his young nieces and nephews are good for a revisit later on during the run. Along the same lines, while he himself does not own a DVD machine, and only rarely watches television at all, he personally owns the two Warner Brothers Cartoons Golden Collections on DVD. Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner? He's all over that like white on rice.
Nobody will ever know.
This is, by the way, a fantastically lame commentary. I'm sorry.
Sabitha's gaze raises sharply to settle on Rossi over the hovering curve of her spoon. "Following you around?"
"Kept running into him. --Didn't I tell you this? Shit. How long has it been since we've talked?" The spoon pops into the corner of Chris's mouth and dangles there, waggling ludicrously with his solemn-eyed speculation. "Just saw you last week, right?"
"Running into /Magneto/?" Sabby asks. Her hovering spoon falls to her bowl with a faint clatter as she leans forward. "What the fuck, Chris?" Her hand, now free, waves spastically through the air. "Yeah, saw you last week. With Vincent, remember?"
...oops. Did we say that out loud? Shit.
Chris gestures a dismissive hand, recalling over a muffled clink of teeth and metal, "Right. Bahir and your boy Percy. How about before then? Shit. I honestly can't remember. Been busy," he excuses, popping the utensil out of his mouth to wave apology. "Sorry."
"I think before Christmas," Sabby answers impatiently before she prompts, "Magneto?"
"Dickhead doesn't appreciate me," Chris mourns, rummaging through his hair to make a tangle of the black locks. "Think he might be allergic to my face."
Exasperation colors Sabby's voice as she picks up her spoon and twists it between her fingers. "/Chris/."
A glance spits mordant humor at Sabby. "/Melcross/," Chris chips back, solemn. "What? I had a couple of run-ins with Pezhead. I'm not dead. What's the big deal?"
There are things that Rossi would rather Sabby not know, and the fact that he and Magneto appear to be developing some sort of strange homicidal-terrorist-and-poorly-trained-cocker-spaniel relationship is one of them. Rossi is reluctant to admit this even to himself. One encounter is a fluke. Two encounters is a freak. Three encounters is .... something else altogether.
There are a lot of things Rossi keeps to himself, and doesn't share with Sabby. There are a lot of things he doesn't share with anybody but Beston, in fact. IA and the rest of MA knows all the details of every encounter they've had. However, the private stuff -- the personal stuff, that he was scared shitless, that he thought he was about to buy it and all he could think about when he thought his life was teetering in the balance was that Tucci still owed him $12 -- this is stuff he only shares with John.
He's never found a PC confidante, except in the most erratic and inconsistent ways, which is rather sad. He's had moments of intimacy with people, where he shares things -- once with Sabby, for instance; a glimmer or two with Leah -- but other than that, he really doesn't. He's very open and still very, very private. It's kind of a pity. He just doesn't seem to find much chemistry with PCs, which is the player's fault.
Sabitha subsides back into the couch and scoops up a pair of bites in rapid succession before she turns her attention to the task of seeking out another cup. "Not dead is good."
"There you go, then." Pragmatic philosophy. Chris laps up another spoonful, turns the metal around, and reflects a distorted Sabitha back at her. Amusement wonders, "Does it drive you nuts, knowing cops?"
Sabitha blinks confusion up at Chris through quiet eyes. "No. Why?"
The man shrugs, winces, and straightens. "Just curious. I've got you figured as a worrier. --Then again, you used to be a lot more stressed, before."
Sabitha's smile flickers upwards. "Did I? When?"
"Before." The spoon ticks off months. "Back -- before. Damn. I'm all eloquent and articulate and shit, tonight."
This is a generalized statement, an impression that Chris has of Sabitha being stressed -- but when pressed, he finds he's completely unable to specify a time or an occasion when he remembers her being stressed. What he doesn't remember, of course, is the entire windex incident. Being unable to recall it, and yet still having a ghost image of that memory, he's left only with the vague impression that Sabitha has chilled out a lot over the last few months.
Without really considering it much, he figures this is why he does not hang out with Sabitha as much. She no longer needs a cop. She's got Percy, and stability in her life now, and Kessler. This is rather a curious discovery on my part; Rossi has apparently encountered this sort of behavior in the past, from victims and from friendly acquaintances -- and this is, I think, another reason why he has almost no friends who aren't cops or closely related to cops. To civilians, cops are security, safety, stability, but also a reminder of unstable and precarious times in their lives. So they cling to them, until they can find their own feet again, at which point they would rather not have the reminder in their lives anymore.
Rossi seems to have assumed, without thinking about it, that his lack of contact with Sabitha lately is a repeat of the same behavior. This is rather sad, really, although he doesn't think so. When he first noticed the pattern as a uniform, he gave it serious thought and wondered about what was happening, and why it was happening. His partner at the time, Sgt. Jerry Arinas, was a wise veteran who helped him figure it out. At the time, he was indignant and slightly hurt. Nowadays, he shrugs and accepts it without really worrying about it. People do what people do, and they are what they are. This may also explain why he doesn't make confidantes of people who aren't cops. Like any sane man, he doesn't voluntarily put himself in a position to be hurt, so withdraws fairly swiftly when he unconsciously feels the beginning of the pattern.
"A veritable Shakespeare," Sabby agrees easily. Her spoon arcs dismissal in the air. "So. Magneto's been stalking you. What else?"
Chris considers. "Beston's talking about retiring again. Got a new muffler for the Buick. I'm dating Leah. Need to buy a new coat. --Oh." Important. He hunches forward again, planting elbow on knee, and squints down a forefinger's jab at Sabitha. "I need to find out where you got that cake."
Sabitha leans forward sharply. "You're dating Leah? Like, dating dating?"
"Did you hear me about the cake?" demands Chris, only to tack on a bitterly heartfelt, "Women. Can't keep their minds on the important stuff."
And now we come to the real reason for the visit, which is to tell Sabitha about him and Leah. As I mentioned before, Chris is making a conscious choice to tell everybody who might be interested that he and Leah are an item. It's a kind of flag of defiance, a bold and brash glove thrown in the face of the gods, as it were. Here it is. Here we are. Come and get us.
...which sounds all find and noble until you realize how quickly he plowed through that revelation, scurrying through it like an embarrassed teenager. The hand is quicker than the eye. Pay attention to the /cake/, Melcross!
There's a kind of closure to telling Sabby that they're dating, I think. He met Sabby through work, but he really knows her through Leah. Leah and she are no longer friends, but he and she are still friendly. And they've talked about her before. It seems fair to tell her what's up.
"I don't know where the cake came from." Steadfastly, Sabby bulldozes back to her subject of choice. "Seriously, Chris. /Really/ dating?"
Discomfort hiccups at Chris's expression, dragging its lines into an awkward, remote mask. "What does that mean, '/really/ dating'? There some sort of definition for dating I don't know about? Christ." He plows back into his seat, molding his spine to its back with a thoughtless flinch. "We've been on dates."
"Exclusive?"
Chris's chin drops to his chest. He glowers. "Maybe."
To confess that he is dating someone exclusively is tantamount to (although it really shouldn't be) confessing that he loves Leah. This is a significant vulnerability. He has admitted it to Beston; he has admitted it to Leah. He is not ready to make this admission to anybody else yet. It's still too new, and too fragile.
Sabitha's eyes fix on Chris with disbelieving consideration. "Wow."
He stirs restlessly. "What?"
Sabitha tilts a shoulder upward. "Makes sense," she answers after a moment. "You two always seemed hung up on each other."
"Hung /up/?" Incredulity skips in Chris's jerk up, tangling with its own outraged echo. "Hung /up/? On each other? What the fuck? Like /hell/."
His dignity is bruised. Hung up? Moping around like some love-sick teenager? As if.
Sabitha sits back hard and drops her spoon into her bowl, left to rest on her lap. "Sorry," she pacifies with quick words and an avoidant gaze. "Just. Into each other."
Rossi subsides, albeit with reluctance, irritation -- moody, prickly, ready to snatch and snarl -- an ill-tamed and unwelcome visitor behind the baritone. "Yeah, well. Shit happens. Wouldn't have figured it a year ago."
"Things change," Sabitha allows, and studies her ice cream in silence for a moment before she extends her bowl across the space to Chris. "You want the rest of mine?"
"Nah. I'm set." Chris proves it with the clink of utensil on bowl lip, and the clatter of the same spoon, discarded. Once more the spine curves, pillowing elbows on knees, and through that turtled, protective hunch, pale eyes inspect Sabitha. "You okay?"
He is not oblivious, after all. Sabitha has been strangely quiet and withdrawn the entire time -- brittle, even, or fragile -- and while he was initially thinking he would cajole her out of her humor, this has obviously not worked. Something is off about Melcross, but he will not pry; he respects the need for closed doors. I've mentioned this before in other commentaries, probably many times, but because he forces confessions out of people during the course of his work, in his private life he is almost gunshy about respecting emotional and intellectual privacy.
Sabitha slides her bowl to the coffee table in lieu of delivering it to Rossi's hands and flashes a bright smile. "Nearly got a three day weekend this week. Half a day today. Good for the relaxation. Do you guys have to work through the holidays? You flip coins for that or something?"
"Traded." A laconic answer for a complicated, convoluted construct. Fingers flip, tracing the diagram -- this for that, him for her -- while behind it, annoyance subsides and is supplanted by curiosity. "Yamaguchi took Christmas, I took Tucci's MLK, and he's got Beston's Fourth. I think it works out somehow. Either that, or I've screwed myself over for the next two years. You still doing the NYPD benefits gig?"
I don't understand holidays. Days off, I mean. They always puzzle and surprise me when they happen. I've actually gone into the office a couple of times in real life, only to discover that the place is locked up and empty.
You would think I would get a clue. Instead, I unlock the office, sit in mine, start working, and dimly wonder where everybody else is. Or else I end up working through the entire long weekend anyway, and curse the fact that work has seen fit to screw me over when other people get the weekend off.
If I don't get long weekends, neither does Rossi.
Sabitha's smile widens half a titch and then subsides again. "Sounds like fun. I'm a little disappointed there aren't fist fights, though." A shift of her head tilts confirmation at him. "Yeah. Just kind of biding my time right now. Everyone's recovering from the holidays."
"How was your trip?"
"Oh, it was good," Sabby answers. She shifts up to slide a foot beneath her as she leans against the couch's arm for support. "Did lots of museums. Theatre. Saw the royal ballet one night, that was awesome. Have you been?"
"England?" Rossi shakes his head. Softens enough to grin, a crooked bite of expression that mellows the harsh face. "Outside of that whole thing in Italy, I haven't been out of the states. Haven't been out of New York or Jersey since I graduated the Academy."
"I thought you might've traveled or something, while you were there." Sabby tips her head back into the comfort of couch cushions and regards Chris in silence for a second, two, before she adds, "It was my first time abroad."
"Yeah?" Chris settles back, slinging his arm over -- ow -- over (ow, ow) over the chair's back. "You went by yourself, right? Meet up with any friends or something?"
Small talk it is, then. Distraction. And pulled stitches, thanks to old Pezhead.
Rossi is an American, through and through. But there was a time in the old country, when he could see himself living there forever, a European, in touch with his roots--
--that didn't last. He liked it to visit, but the people infuriated him. They were so ... their work ethic was off, and their cultural assumptions were strange, and in general they just ticked him off.
Sabitha eyes Chris's sling before green eyes sweep back to his and she shakes her head, a tight, short movement. "No, just me."
"And a whole country of British guys." The cop looks sober. "Some of them even straight."
"Some of them," Sabby agrees easily.
"Enough of them?"
Sabitha lifts her brows. "For /what/?"
"For a good time." Chris grins, stretching a leg to poke gently, oh so gently! at Sabitha's space. Poke. "Little bit of culture--"
...he did like the women, though. In Italy. He liked them a lot. Far more mature than American women.
Ahem. Moving on...
Sabitha rolls her eyes upward and retreats back into her own space. /Hers/. "I didn't go to England to get laid, Chris."
Chris protests. "Didn't say you did. Just saying, you go to a foreign country, you get to meet the people...."
"You see things... go to the theatre, stare at the Rosetta stone," Sabby counters.
"Go out to dinner, meet interesting women -- guys -- try not to get mugged," Chris suggests. "Avoid Eurodisney."
"No Eurodisney in London. They do have a big ferris wheel, though."
"Can you buy Elmo on it?"
I have no idea where that came from. Elmo?
"Dunno. Didn't ride it."
"Then what's the point?"
"Dunno," Sabby repeats over a half-curved smile. "Didn't ride it."
"City with a ferris wheel, and /you/ went to see museums." Chris steeples his fingers and regards Sabitha sorrowfully over their tips. "Sometimes I wonder about you, Melcross."
"How I got to be this fabulous?"
"Go to a city and ignore the ferris wheels. Christ. Might as well head to Atlantic City and ignore the gambling."
Chris really is a child. He likes ferris wheels. He likes roofs. He likes high places. He likes looking down at things and seeing it spread out below him, peaceful and beautiful. Even though he knows it's a lie, he occasionally feels the need for the illusion. He suspects that God's got myopia, and that's why you never hear from Him anymore. He's too high up. Can't blame him, says Chris. If I were God and I knew what scumbags humans were, I'd never come down either.
"I've never been gambling," Sabby shares.
"I can show you gambling in two easy steps," Chris advises, opening a palm to offer it to Sabby, face up in demand. "First you give me money, and then I take it."
Sabitha eyes Chris's open palm dubiously, lips pursed.
Patiently, Chris says, "I can't show you if you don't give me the money. Step two is sort of dependent on step one, see."
"I'm pretty fond of my paycheck, sorry," Sabitha apologizes. "I'll give you more ice cream?"
The hand retracts. "In a spoon?" Chris eyes her thoughtfully. "How're things going with Kessler, by the way?"
"I was thinking a bowl, but we can manage a spoon if you want." Sabby's brows knit as she stares at Chris. "How on earth did you get from gambling to Matt?"
A finger spins an idle wheel. "Keep up with me here, Melcross. Gambling, love -- so what's the story? You two still ever get past the ... what was it, the third date?"
I have very little to say here. Small talk, you know? And it's 5:35 AM for me, so I'm a little delirious.
Love is a huge gamble for Rossi, and he's not really a gambling man. Reckless, yes. But not a gambler. He dislikes vulnerability -- his own, anyway -- and the feeling of not being fully in control. Love is about as out-of-control as you can get, in his experience. Also the most vulnerable. Physical pain has never been much of an issue for him; he's experienced it often, ever since he was a child, so it's an old and familiar irritant, hardly worth mentioning. Emotional pain, though, is something else. It's always fresh, and it's always new, and you never get to develop calluses. Just new scars.
Sabitha snorts so softly as to be almost inaudible. "Gambling, love. Right." A sharp shake of her head feathers strands of hair into her face, and she shoves them back with a hand. "Yeah, we're still dating."
"Going good?" Green eyes laugh behind the grave face.
"Yeah," Sabby replies simply.
Those smiling eyes widen, gently mocking. "Exclusive?"
Sabitha's lips twist. "No."
"Relieved?"
Sabitha snorts a laugh. "I'm not you, Chris."
I think Chris was scoping her out here. He's taking her mood in this moment to be part of the chain of repetition that he thinks he recognizes, where people find other sources of stability and comfort, and slowly distance themselves from him. He won't stop her -- he rarely does, I think, having learned through painful experience that friendships have a lifespan and that keeping it around when one party doesn't want it is nothing but an exercise in masochism -- but he'll check to make sure that she's got support structures in place when she disconnects from him. He knows about Percy (or rather, doesn't know; she's going through the separation with him right now) so it's just a case of wondering if Kessler's part of that network.
"And yet somehow, I'm the one being all monogamous," quips Chris with wry self-deprecation, unraveling himself to stand. "Then again, I'm practically over the hill."
"Ridiculously ancient," Sabby agrees, and unfolds her legs to follow suit. She studies him in silence for a moment, head tilted back to take in the entire picture. "I think it might suit you."
"Old age?" Chris's lips quirk; a hand plunges into his pocket, fishing out gloves. "I'm hurt, Melcross. I thought I was good at nubile youth."
"Monogamy," Sabby corrects.
It's an interesting thought, and Chris pauses to consider it. Although ... Sabby says monogamy, and what it really is, is /Relationship/ in all its capitalized glory. Something outside of the family and the job. Something all his own, even if it is fraught with the overtones of disaster.
He senses the impending tragedy, and the damned Italian in him responds to it with delight. They're never so happy as they are when they can be miserable.
Chris sobers slightly, looking down at Sabitha. "Yeah," he concedes at last. "Maybe. I'll give it a shot. See how it goes." Something moves behind his expression, quicksilver and fleeting -- a softening, quaint peace -- and then disappears. "How about you and Kessler?"
It's the concept of it more than the reality of it that gives Rossi peace. He loves Leah, but it's a painful thing, like holding onto a hedgehog with both arms. He can't find peace there, and he knows he won't, but it satisfies something else in him. It's been a very long time since he's opened himself to the possibility of love.
Sabitha watches that something with a quiet sadness until it disappears and then shakes a snappy smile onto her features. "Matt? Nah, I doubt it. Just... a bit of comfortable fun, y'know?"
"Cotton candy," says Chris, kindly. "Yeah, I get it. Pink. Bubblegum-flavored. Exactly what I thought when I first met the guy. 'This guy'd be great on a cardboard stick--'"
"Tastes great, too," Sabby answers with a fast waggle of her brows.
Rossi chuckles. "Hell on your face and hair, though," he finishes, baritoning digging deep into innuendo. "I should get going. I got stuff. Thanks for the ice cream, Melcross. Next time you're near the precinct, call me. I'll buy you the best hot dog this side of the Atlantic."
"If only I ate them," Sabby returns with half a smile. "I'll stop by anyway. Don't get yourself killed out there, k?"
Hah. If only she knew.
"Pezhead's locked up, and his amorous and evil designs on my ass are locked up with him," says Chris, dragging on his gloves en route to the door. A grin scythes over his shoulder at Sabby. "What's to worry?"
Nod back to The Incredibles. We're superheroes. What could happen? He doesn't even mention the Friends, which are the real problem. His problem. Not hers.
Sabitha trails several paces behind Chris with slow, dragging steps. "World's safe and sound," she agrees.
"Worrier," challenges Chris, pausing with a hand on the doorknob to glance down at the straggling woman. An eyebrow climbs; an arm reaches, hooking to reel her into his ribs: unprompted, cheerful affection.
Such a physical animal, and he figures if it's good-bye of some sort, whether final or not, he might as well give the poor kid a hug. She looks like she needs it. He is very touchy-feely -- more with women, obviously, than with men -- but it's because he's learned that women like comfort, and he's able to give it, and it's not like he /minds/ being up close and personal with women. So what's the harm? He always has enough strength for other people. Other people are easy. It's his own need that's the difficulty.
Sabitha buries her face against Rossi's chest for a moment. One breath, two, deeply inhaled, and then she unravels herself from the cop and tips a smile up at him while hands smooth at her hair. "It's in my job description."
The smell of leather, the tang of gun oil, and under it the heartbeat of Rossi's scent itself: his own, unique. "You need a new job," Chris tells her, solemn as a sage. Then the chin lifts, the smile twists, and out he goes -- into the hallway, back to the real world. "Later, Melcross."
"Later, Chris." Sabby smiles once more, and then shuts the door on Rossi, the hallway, and the real world.
I am sleepy. I return to my conference call. That is all I have. Sabitha does a lovely final pose, and voila! We have log!
Okay. Done now.
Date: 1/16/2006
Players: Sabitha & Rossi
Somewhere between the time I promised to do this commentary -- counter-commentary! I have promised at large to counter-commentary any commentary that involves Rossi -- and now, I did another commentary about the Windex scene that turned out to have some repercussions on this scene. So there you go, then. My character is wiser than I am; he knew what he was doing, even if the player didn't ... and so here we go, Chris dropping in on Sabitha out of the blue, after weeks of unconscious avoidance.
The reasons for staying away are detailed elsewhere, so it isn't really worth it to go into it here. His issues with Sabby aren't things he's conscious of, whereas Sabby's issues with Chris (if any!) are her department, not mine. At any rate, his current reason for visiting is a quaint one, and rather endearing in a lopsided, muddle-headed way. He has recently begun to date Leah -- has entered a relationship with Leah -- and is sheepishly informing those around him, rather like an alcoholic beginning the first steps of treatment. Hello. My name is Chris, and I'm in a Relationship.
Why he feels it's necessary to announce this is something of a puzzle to most people. Excepting Beston, who knows Chris better than any person alive (and perhaps Emma, who has had, after all, a front-row seat to the Chris Rossi psyche) the general opinion has been that Chris: 1) has gone queer; 2) has been watching Lifetime or Oxygen movies on cable; 3) has decided to stake out his territory; or 4) is playing some bizarre practical joke. Beston, who knows him better, recognizes it as an act of commitment to Leah, whether she's aware of it or no. Rossi is open enough with the easy emotions of anger or dislike. Love, however, is agonizingly difficult. Girlfriends in the past have slipped into conversation like idle afterthoughts, random characters who get picked up mid-scene with little explanation, then fade out of conversations over time unless the break-up is particularly entertaining or unusual. For Chris to mark the beginning of a formal relationship with an announcement is a significant change.
John eyes it with interest, worries privately, and keeps his mouth shut.
Bank holidays typically mean a day off. Sabitha finagled half a day; a busy morning faded into a lazy afternoon filled with napping and DVDs and then drifted into an evening that finds her stretched on her couch, picking through the remains of a salad while she balances a book open on her lap. A single lamp sends its warm glow spreading through the room from its place behind her shoulder, and low, folksy music smooths the mood in murmuring undertones.
Down the corridor, the elevator chimes a sleepy note and yawns to disgorge Chris Rossi, still clad in the accessories of work: long black overcoat, blue suit beneath, tie, gun, badge -- and cynicism, a vapor trail that bobs and eddies in his wake. He steps into the hallway with a roll of the head, stretching the neck's broad column down the few paces it takes to a certain door. Knock knock. "Yo, Melcross. You in?"
Bank holidays. I didn't even register that until later, to be honest. This would be because I had to go to work. (Bank holidays. Pshaw.) If I have to go to work, so does Rossi. There are no holidays in Homicide. The elevator heralds his state of mind -- tired, a little sleepy -- while the cynicism is as much a part of his work attire as the actual clothes he wears. Chris has a way of introducing himself at a door as though the conversation has already started. There's no formal 'Hello. This is the beginning of our exchange,' just as there's no real 'Goodbye. This is the end.' Bizarre though it is, he's got a Tibetan Buddhist thing going for him, where everything is part of everything else. He does not tend to think 'now I am here,' 'now I am there.' It's all an ongoing dialogue, and the people he's exchanging it with never really /leave/. This is why he so often picks up the phone with a curse word, or a bit of thought from somewhere or something else.
I don't know how to put it any better. Basically, I guess I'm saying he doesn't compartmentalize in quite the same way that I do. I'm not entirely sure how he does, to be honest. I know he does, because he has to, to keep what he does from poisoning everything else in his life. I just don't know /how/. Anyway.
I like Sabby's set. It places her in time, in mood, and in environment with subdued language; you immediately get the feeling of emotional ... passivity? Neutrality? Something along the pensive side, certainly.
Sabitha pivots toward the door, shifting on the couch to peer at it in heavy silence. Her fingers tap against the friendly pages of her book and then she slides it shut and deposits both book and salad on her coffee table. She tugs at the hem of her knit sweater, pulling it over her hips as she crosses to the door to swing it open. "Hey, Chris." A quick glance takes in said accessories of work, and her lips twist into a small smile. "Not here on business, right?"
"You murder anyone in the last few days?" Chris wonders, with all evidence of honest interest. He leans on the threshold, settling into a leg's crossed brace and a shoulder's press into the lintel; hands plow back into pockets, shaping bulges at his hips. "I was in the neighborhood. Figured I'd just check in with you, see how you were doing--"
Rossi was rather quiescent in my head that day, which is to say that he didn't have much to say for himself. Small talk. Bah. There are days when I can see him more clearly than other days; I always know what he's doing, really, but he doesn't always talk to me. This was one of those times.
Looking at the difference between Rossi when he first visited Sabitha, all those long months ago, and now, is kind of entertaining. That time he was on the job, albeit without official recognition; he was following up on another murder in the same building. It's always something with this building: if it isn't mutant murder, it's mutant arrests, or Hummers through the ceiling. Even by New York City standards, the rent on this particularly high-priced establishment has to be taking a hit, don't you think?
This is the problem with dropping a commentary and then picking it back up again later. You lose track of what you were thinking when you started.
"Been tempted," Sabby answers with a quiet quirk of a smile. "But I'm still squeaky clean, officer. Come in?" She steps sideways and jerks her head in indication. "Did someone in my apartment get murdered again? Because if so, I'm going to consider moving."
The detective rolls his shoulders in a lopsided shrug, unpinning himself to straighten and saunter into the apartment proper. "Not unless you've got a body somewhere that isn't stinking up the place yet. Just dropped by to see if I could catch up with some people -- you seen your buddy Percy, lately? -- and figured I'd see what was up." Rossi stops, parking himself in the middle of the room. Pale eyes grin at Sabitha. "So. What's up?"
Not an official visit, and yet, Rossi has a twitch of unease over the thought that rolls his shoulders. Why, he's not entirely sure. He won't worry about it. The reason he's in the building is to visit Percy, to ask him about Leah. He's just found out recently that Leah slept with Percy, and somewhere in the back of his mind is a nagging, uneasy question about the whys and wherefores of it. Did Percy influence her to sleep with him? Was it purely coincidence, and good timing on Percy's part? Convenient guy at the convenient moment? He doesn't really expect Percy to admit influencing her, but he wonders, oh, maybe just a little bit....
There are three reasons why Rossi isn't so comfortable with visiting this building anymore, now that I think about it. Jean, Percy, Sabby -- and Magneto, come to think of it. Four points of unease, intersecting on this one spot.
Sabitha's spine stiffens silently as she strolls toward the kitchen. She directs a look at Chris over her shoulder. "Saw him Saturday. Do you want something to drink? Munch on? I just finished dinner."
Chris trails idly after Sabitha, a dark hound at her heels. "I grabbed something at the precinct," he admits. "I'm fine. Unless you want to go out for dessert. Joe's sandwiches aren't what you'd call high cuisine. Sort of begs for something afterwards to wash the taste out of your mouth."
Since I started this commentary, the XMM drinking game popped up. I get a drink for watching Sabby go to the kitchen. Do I get another one for her offering food or drink to cover unease? It's an impulse that Chris recognizes and takes for granted, because he's much the same way. Hospitality is equated to food or drink, Italian-style, and even his worst enemy would get an offer of a beer or something once he walked in the door. Even, come to think of it, Magneto, though it would be an offer made tongue-in-cheek, as it were.
There's a whole story about Joe and his sandwiches. 'GI Joe,' Chris calls him: an Afghan who used to be a doctor, and is now running a deli somewhere on 3rd. His son was grabbed by Homeland Defense last summer, under suspicion of being a terrorist sympathizer. This has pissed Joe off enormously. The NYPD vouched for the son, which did pretty much no good whatsoever. At any rate, the boy's finally back. THis is a relief to the squadroom, since Joe's sandwiches have never been very good, but they'd gotten absolutely horrible while the boy was being held by the feds.
Suggest to the squadroom that they get sandwiches somewhere else, and they'd give you a blank look. But it's /Joe's/.
Men don't like change. They are kind of dumb.
Sabitha shakes her head and disappears behind the swinging curtain of her freezer door. "Night in for me tonight," she shares emphatically, and pulls back to waggle a carton of ice cream, peanut butter cup, at Chris. "Not high cuisine either, but I promise it's tasty. Want some?"
"Sure." Green buckles with white in a swift, easy grin. "I'll take whatever. Mom never let us have sweets when we were kids. You should've seen me when I started living on my own." Chris props himself up in the kitchen's frame in much the same way he did the entrance, black head tilted for a deceptively sleepy regard.
"Hog wild? Footloose and fancy free?" Sabby suggests with a sideways glance at Chris as she goes about the task of pulling down bowls and searching out spoons.
"Dessert for every dinner," Chris bats back cheerfully, digging out his hands at last to strip them of gloves, one by one. "And lunch, and breakfast. Only reason I didn't balloon up to a thousand pounds was Julia. And Beth."
Hi, Beth! Chris's ex-girlfriend Beth, the only one that he can remember in clear and vivid detail. Sensualist that he is; it's an unfortunate telepath (or a lucky one) who is in the room with him when his mind veers around to her. She was one of the few women that he has ever truly loved, outside of family. Like any man in love, he managed to royally fuck up his relationship with her by doing pretty much the wrong thing at every turn. It would be nice to say that he learned from his mistakes.
Chris is sort of a moron.
"Incentive to stay fit and lean, was she?" Sabby asks with half a smirk as she pries scoops of ice cream from carton to bowls. "Or just good exercise?"
The gloves shove into a pocket, leather fingers peeking out to wave. "Both." Chris's baritone gleams; so, too, does the shuttered gaze. "Then there was the Academy, so -- ended up never having time to fatten up. You're not Italian, so you don't know how it is with my family. They see you gain weight, they damn well tell you."
Very, very good exercise. They had lots of sex. On tables, on the floor, on counters, against the wall....
Lots of sex against the wall. They had a tranquil relationship, in comparison to what he had with Leah, but it was definitely exciting, until the job claimed the hole that the Church left. It was an odd thing, that; when he found Beth, he thought that human love was enough to fill the loss of faith, and for a while it worked. Unfortunately, the job satisfied something deeper than even that. Beth was utterly unlike Leah. She was quiet, gentle, accepting, stable -- and, sadly, wise.
Thus, no more Chris and Beth. It takes someone with really self-destructive tendencies to stay in a relationship with Chris. Some things can't be salvaged.
"Along with every other mistake you could possibly make in your life, I imagine," Sabby answers, and shoves a bowl across the counter toward Chris.
Chris runs a knuckle down the length of his nose, nudging the scratch that crosses its bridge. Rue. "Yeah, well. It's something else when your old man starts bringing a girdle to the table. --Thanks," he offers up, courteous poppet. And: "So what else is new? Sorry for dropping in on you the other night."
I have no comment to make here, except I got to write 'poppet.' This does not describe Rossi very well. The scratch is from, I recall, Magneto trying to squash him with an SUV a few nights before. This is turning into a tradition between the two men.
The girdle was, incidentally, Sgt. Rossi's, and he was bringing it to the table so he could show his wife how ridiculous he'd look in one. It was a thing. After he retired, the old man started putting on a lot of weight, and Mrs. Rossi commented on it -- which was her perogative, after so many years of marriage -- and Sgt. Rossi, who was rather sensitive about it, dug his heels in and started wearing a girdle.
Which he unbuckled one night at the dinner table, after an especially large meal, and slapped down on the table next to the lasagna. It was a company dinner, in that Father Matthew was there, as were Julia and Chris. Chris and Julia were vastly entertained. Father Matthew was entertained. Mrs. Rossi was mortified. She threw away the girdle right then and there, and put the family on a strictly vegetarian diet.
This lasted for all of three weeks. Sgt. Rossi dropped 5 pounds, started exercising regularly, and eventually got his weight down to a manageable level. When his friends complimented him on the accomplishment, he shuddered and informed them that his wife was a wonderful woman, but the things she did to vegetables should be illegal. The children agree.
"A girdle? Honestly?" Sabby lifts her brows as she turns to face Chris with her bowl cradled in her hands, silent indication that it's time for him to get out of the doorway so she can find a seat. "Nah, it was good. I always like to see you guys. Hey! I saw that the boys in blue had a big night the other night. Were you in on that?"
The cop claims his ice cream in both hands, like a good boy, and ambles out into the living room with the passing, "Big night? Oh. You mean the Pezhead thing? Not supposed to talk about it. Retaliation," he clarifies, spooling himself into a chair. "Hush hush. Doesn't matter. Feds have him, anyway."
Retaliation. They know all about retaliation, Vincent and Chris. It's getting to become a thing. "Hey, look. We have to bring down some mutant whose arrest will probably spark assassination attempts. Someone call Lazzaro and Rossi." His refusal to talk about it appears a tacit admission, but at the same time it's really not. He would be just as taciturn (such as he is capable of) were it colleagues who were the arresting officers. Rossi does occasionally know when to keep his mouth shut.
Not enough to keep from calling Magneto 'Pezhead,' though.
Sabitha smiles slowly. "Pezhead? /Really/, Chris?" She swings herself into her bedroom quickly to snatch up a knitted through and slings it round her shoulders before she drops onto the couch. "Good. One less thing to worry about."
"Magneto," Chris concedes, thumbing his coat's buttons to let it fall open across the battered suit. "Lensherr. Whatever you want to call him. --You don't think he looks like a pez dispenser with that pot he wears on his head? Helmet, whatever?"
"Can't say I've ever sat around and thought about it," Sabby returns, and jabs her spoon into a mound of ice cream with violence. "What's up with that thing, anyway?"
Rossi has. Rossi has thought about it a lot. He keeps meaning to ask Magneto the next time he sees him. Then again, each time he sees the man, he assumes it will be for the last time, and it never seems to come up in between the pain and the yelling and the hurtling of giant missiles of death and the MURDEROUS ATTEMPTS ON HIS LIFE.
Distracts him from the main subject. Also, Magneto owes him a coat.
Chris won't forget about the coat. He liked that coat. He was hot in that coat.
"What thing?" Ice cream. Yay!
"Helmet," Sabby reminds. "Keep up, Chris."
Explains Chris, "Thought you were talking about pez." It could happen. His fork sketches a descriptive question mark in the air, and is punctuated in turn by the laconic, "No clue. Brain waves from Mars, maybe? Or he figures he looks cool in it. Getting fashion advice from Queer Eye for the Tonka Truck Guy."
I should not use the word 'laconic' to describe anything Chris does. Because he isn't.
I fail to attend to my props, and abruptly, the spoon becomes a fork.
Spoon. Unless Magneto has been messing with it.
Sabby fixes it for me. I laugh myself sick. Let us move on.
"He does wear a cape," Sabby allows, and digs out the chocolatey goodness of a peanutbutter filled cup with intense concentration.
"Must never have seen the Incredibles," laments Chris.
"Doesn't strike me as the sort for animated features." Ice cream disappears from her spoon and melts slowly on her tongue.
This, Rossi will allow, is a possibility. "Probably scared of making the kids cry," he suggests, spooning -- spooning! -- ice cream with a lazily tortuous precision. "Was starting to think he was following me around. At least I won't see him popping up around any corners for a while."
Chris is a Pixar fan. Goober. He pretty much is his inner child. Every Pixar movie that has ever come out, he has found an excuse to view on opening night, and his young nieces and nephews are good for a revisit later on during the run. Along the same lines, while he himself does not own a DVD machine, and only rarely watches television at all, he personally owns the two Warner Brothers Cartoons Golden Collections on DVD. Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner? He's all over that like white on rice.
Nobody will ever know.
This is, by the way, a fantastically lame commentary. I'm sorry.
Sabitha's gaze raises sharply to settle on Rossi over the hovering curve of her spoon. "Following you around?"
"Kept running into him. --Didn't I tell you this? Shit. How long has it been since we've talked?" The spoon pops into the corner of Chris's mouth and dangles there, waggling ludicrously with his solemn-eyed speculation. "Just saw you last week, right?"
"Running into /Magneto/?" Sabby asks. Her hovering spoon falls to her bowl with a faint clatter as she leans forward. "What the fuck, Chris?" Her hand, now free, waves spastically through the air. "Yeah, saw you last week. With Vincent, remember?"
...oops. Did we say that out loud? Shit.
Chris gestures a dismissive hand, recalling over a muffled clink of teeth and metal, "Right. Bahir and your boy Percy. How about before then? Shit. I honestly can't remember. Been busy," he excuses, popping the utensil out of his mouth to wave apology. "Sorry."
"I think before Christmas," Sabby answers impatiently before she prompts, "Magneto?"
"Dickhead doesn't appreciate me," Chris mourns, rummaging through his hair to make a tangle of the black locks. "Think he might be allergic to my face."
Exasperation colors Sabby's voice as she picks up her spoon and twists it between her fingers. "/Chris/."
A glance spits mordant humor at Sabby. "/Melcross/," Chris chips back, solemn. "What? I had a couple of run-ins with Pezhead. I'm not dead. What's the big deal?"
There are things that Rossi would rather Sabby not know, and the fact that he and Magneto appear to be developing some sort of strange homicidal-terrorist-and-poorly-trained-cocker-spaniel relationship is one of them. Rossi is reluctant to admit this even to himself. One encounter is a fluke. Two encounters is a freak. Three encounters is .... something else altogether.
There are a lot of things Rossi keeps to himself, and doesn't share with Sabby. There are a lot of things he doesn't share with anybody but Beston, in fact. IA and the rest of MA knows all the details of every encounter they've had. However, the private stuff -- the personal stuff, that he was scared shitless, that he thought he was about to buy it and all he could think about when he thought his life was teetering in the balance was that Tucci still owed him $12 -- this is stuff he only shares with John.
He's never found a PC confidante, except in the most erratic and inconsistent ways, which is rather sad. He's had moments of intimacy with people, where he shares things -- once with Sabby, for instance; a glimmer or two with Leah -- but other than that, he really doesn't. He's very open and still very, very private. It's kind of a pity. He just doesn't seem to find much chemistry with PCs, which is the player's fault.
Sabitha subsides back into the couch and scoops up a pair of bites in rapid succession before she turns her attention to the task of seeking out another cup. "Not dead is good."
"There you go, then." Pragmatic philosophy. Chris laps up another spoonful, turns the metal around, and reflects a distorted Sabitha back at her. Amusement wonders, "Does it drive you nuts, knowing cops?"
Sabitha blinks confusion up at Chris through quiet eyes. "No. Why?"
The man shrugs, winces, and straightens. "Just curious. I've got you figured as a worrier. --Then again, you used to be a lot more stressed, before."
Sabitha's smile flickers upwards. "Did I? When?"
"Before." The spoon ticks off months. "Back -- before. Damn. I'm all eloquent and articulate and shit, tonight."
This is a generalized statement, an impression that Chris has of Sabitha being stressed -- but when pressed, he finds he's completely unable to specify a time or an occasion when he remembers her being stressed. What he doesn't remember, of course, is the entire windex incident. Being unable to recall it, and yet still having a ghost image of that memory, he's left only with the vague impression that Sabitha has chilled out a lot over the last few months.
Without really considering it much, he figures this is why he does not hang out with Sabitha as much. She no longer needs a cop. She's got Percy, and stability in her life now, and Kessler. This is rather a curious discovery on my part; Rossi has apparently encountered this sort of behavior in the past, from victims and from friendly acquaintances -- and this is, I think, another reason why he has almost no friends who aren't cops or closely related to cops. To civilians, cops are security, safety, stability, but also a reminder of unstable and precarious times in their lives. So they cling to them, until they can find their own feet again, at which point they would rather not have the reminder in their lives anymore.
Rossi seems to have assumed, without thinking about it, that his lack of contact with Sabitha lately is a repeat of the same behavior. This is rather sad, really, although he doesn't think so. When he first noticed the pattern as a uniform, he gave it serious thought and wondered about what was happening, and why it was happening. His partner at the time, Sgt. Jerry Arinas, was a wise veteran who helped him figure it out. At the time, he was indignant and slightly hurt. Nowadays, he shrugs and accepts it without really worrying about it. People do what people do, and they are what they are. This may also explain why he doesn't make confidantes of people who aren't cops. Like any sane man, he doesn't voluntarily put himself in a position to be hurt, so withdraws fairly swiftly when he unconsciously feels the beginning of the pattern.
"A veritable Shakespeare," Sabby agrees easily. Her spoon arcs dismissal in the air. "So. Magneto's been stalking you. What else?"
Chris considers. "Beston's talking about retiring again. Got a new muffler for the Buick. I'm dating Leah. Need to buy a new coat. --Oh." Important. He hunches forward again, planting elbow on knee, and squints down a forefinger's jab at Sabitha. "I need to find out where you got that cake."
Sabitha leans forward sharply. "You're dating Leah? Like, dating dating?"
"Did you hear me about the cake?" demands Chris, only to tack on a bitterly heartfelt, "Women. Can't keep their minds on the important stuff."
And now we come to the real reason for the visit, which is to tell Sabitha about him and Leah. As I mentioned before, Chris is making a conscious choice to tell everybody who might be interested that he and Leah are an item. It's a kind of flag of defiance, a bold and brash glove thrown in the face of the gods, as it were. Here it is. Here we are. Come and get us.
...which sounds all find and noble until you realize how quickly he plowed through that revelation, scurrying through it like an embarrassed teenager. The hand is quicker than the eye. Pay attention to the /cake/, Melcross!
There's a kind of closure to telling Sabby that they're dating, I think. He met Sabby through work, but he really knows her through Leah. Leah and she are no longer friends, but he and she are still friendly. And they've talked about her before. It seems fair to tell her what's up.
"I don't know where the cake came from." Steadfastly, Sabby bulldozes back to her subject of choice. "Seriously, Chris. /Really/ dating?"
Discomfort hiccups at Chris's expression, dragging its lines into an awkward, remote mask. "What does that mean, '/really/ dating'? There some sort of definition for dating I don't know about? Christ." He plows back into his seat, molding his spine to its back with a thoughtless flinch. "We've been on dates."
"Exclusive?"
Chris's chin drops to his chest. He glowers. "Maybe."
To confess that he is dating someone exclusively is tantamount to (although it really shouldn't be) confessing that he loves Leah. This is a significant vulnerability. He has admitted it to Beston; he has admitted it to Leah. He is not ready to make this admission to anybody else yet. It's still too new, and too fragile.
Sabitha's eyes fix on Chris with disbelieving consideration. "Wow."
He stirs restlessly. "What?"
Sabitha tilts a shoulder upward. "Makes sense," she answers after a moment. "You two always seemed hung up on each other."
"Hung /up/?" Incredulity skips in Chris's jerk up, tangling with its own outraged echo. "Hung /up/? On each other? What the fuck? Like /hell/."
His dignity is bruised. Hung up? Moping around like some love-sick teenager? As if.
Sabitha sits back hard and drops her spoon into her bowl, left to rest on her lap. "Sorry," she pacifies with quick words and an avoidant gaze. "Just. Into each other."
Rossi subsides, albeit with reluctance, irritation -- moody, prickly, ready to snatch and snarl -- an ill-tamed and unwelcome visitor behind the baritone. "Yeah, well. Shit happens. Wouldn't have figured it a year ago."
"Things change," Sabitha allows, and studies her ice cream in silence for a moment before she extends her bowl across the space to Chris. "You want the rest of mine?"
"Nah. I'm set." Chris proves it with the clink of utensil on bowl lip, and the clatter of the same spoon, discarded. Once more the spine curves, pillowing elbows on knees, and through that turtled, protective hunch, pale eyes inspect Sabitha. "You okay?"
He is not oblivious, after all. Sabitha has been strangely quiet and withdrawn the entire time -- brittle, even, or fragile -- and while he was initially thinking he would cajole her out of her humor, this has obviously not worked. Something is off about Melcross, but he will not pry; he respects the need for closed doors. I've mentioned this before in other commentaries, probably many times, but because he forces confessions out of people during the course of his work, in his private life he is almost gunshy about respecting emotional and intellectual privacy.
Sabitha slides her bowl to the coffee table in lieu of delivering it to Rossi's hands and flashes a bright smile. "Nearly got a three day weekend this week. Half a day today. Good for the relaxation. Do you guys have to work through the holidays? You flip coins for that or something?"
"Traded." A laconic answer for a complicated, convoluted construct. Fingers flip, tracing the diagram -- this for that, him for her -- while behind it, annoyance subsides and is supplanted by curiosity. "Yamaguchi took Christmas, I took Tucci's MLK, and he's got Beston's Fourth. I think it works out somehow. Either that, or I've screwed myself over for the next two years. You still doing the NYPD benefits gig?"
I don't understand holidays. Days off, I mean. They always puzzle and surprise me when they happen. I've actually gone into the office a couple of times in real life, only to discover that the place is locked up and empty.
You would think I would get a clue. Instead, I unlock the office, sit in mine, start working, and dimly wonder where everybody else is. Or else I end up working through the entire long weekend anyway, and curse the fact that work has seen fit to screw me over when other people get the weekend off.
If I don't get long weekends, neither does Rossi.
Sabitha's smile widens half a titch and then subsides again. "Sounds like fun. I'm a little disappointed there aren't fist fights, though." A shift of her head tilts confirmation at him. "Yeah. Just kind of biding my time right now. Everyone's recovering from the holidays."
"How was your trip?"
"Oh, it was good," Sabby answers. She shifts up to slide a foot beneath her as she leans against the couch's arm for support. "Did lots of museums. Theatre. Saw the royal ballet one night, that was awesome. Have you been?"
"England?" Rossi shakes his head. Softens enough to grin, a crooked bite of expression that mellows the harsh face. "Outside of that whole thing in Italy, I haven't been out of the states. Haven't been out of New York or Jersey since I graduated the Academy."
"I thought you might've traveled or something, while you were there." Sabby tips her head back into the comfort of couch cushions and regards Chris in silence for a second, two, before she adds, "It was my first time abroad."
"Yeah?" Chris settles back, slinging his arm over -- ow -- over (ow, ow) over the chair's back. "You went by yourself, right? Meet up with any friends or something?"
Small talk it is, then. Distraction. And pulled stitches, thanks to old Pezhead.
Rossi is an American, through and through. But there was a time in the old country, when he could see himself living there forever, a European, in touch with his roots--
--that didn't last. He liked it to visit, but the people infuriated him. They were so ... their work ethic was off, and their cultural assumptions were strange, and in general they just ticked him off.
Sabitha eyes Chris's sling before green eyes sweep back to his and she shakes her head, a tight, short movement. "No, just me."
"And a whole country of British guys." The cop looks sober. "Some of them even straight."
"Some of them," Sabby agrees easily.
"Enough of them?"
Sabitha lifts her brows. "For /what/?"
"For a good time." Chris grins, stretching a leg to poke gently, oh so gently! at Sabitha's space. Poke. "Little bit of culture--"
...he did like the women, though. In Italy. He liked them a lot. Far more mature than American women.
Ahem. Moving on...
Sabitha rolls her eyes upward and retreats back into her own space. /Hers/. "I didn't go to England to get laid, Chris."
Chris protests. "Didn't say you did. Just saying, you go to a foreign country, you get to meet the people...."
"You see things... go to the theatre, stare at the Rosetta stone," Sabby counters.
"Go out to dinner, meet interesting women -- guys -- try not to get mugged," Chris suggests. "Avoid Eurodisney."
"No Eurodisney in London. They do have a big ferris wheel, though."
"Can you buy Elmo on it?"
I have no idea where that came from. Elmo?
"Dunno. Didn't ride it."
"Then what's the point?"
"Dunno," Sabby repeats over a half-curved smile. "Didn't ride it."
"City with a ferris wheel, and /you/ went to see museums." Chris steeples his fingers and regards Sabitha sorrowfully over their tips. "Sometimes I wonder about you, Melcross."
"How I got to be this fabulous?"
"Go to a city and ignore the ferris wheels. Christ. Might as well head to Atlantic City and ignore the gambling."
Chris really is a child. He likes ferris wheels. He likes roofs. He likes high places. He likes looking down at things and seeing it spread out below him, peaceful and beautiful. Even though he knows it's a lie, he occasionally feels the need for the illusion. He suspects that God's got myopia, and that's why you never hear from Him anymore. He's too high up. Can't blame him, says Chris. If I were God and I knew what scumbags humans were, I'd never come down either.
"I've never been gambling," Sabby shares.
"I can show you gambling in two easy steps," Chris advises, opening a palm to offer it to Sabby, face up in demand. "First you give me money, and then I take it."
Sabitha eyes Chris's open palm dubiously, lips pursed.
Patiently, Chris says, "I can't show you if you don't give me the money. Step two is sort of dependent on step one, see."
"I'm pretty fond of my paycheck, sorry," Sabitha apologizes. "I'll give you more ice cream?"
The hand retracts. "In a spoon?" Chris eyes her thoughtfully. "How're things going with Kessler, by the way?"
"I was thinking a bowl, but we can manage a spoon if you want." Sabby's brows knit as she stares at Chris. "How on earth did you get from gambling to Matt?"
A finger spins an idle wheel. "Keep up with me here, Melcross. Gambling, love -- so what's the story? You two still ever get past the ... what was it, the third date?"
I have very little to say here. Small talk, you know? And it's 5:35 AM for me, so I'm a little delirious.
Love is a huge gamble for Rossi, and he's not really a gambling man. Reckless, yes. But not a gambler. He dislikes vulnerability -- his own, anyway -- and the feeling of not being fully in control. Love is about as out-of-control as you can get, in his experience. Also the most vulnerable. Physical pain has never been much of an issue for him; he's experienced it often, ever since he was a child, so it's an old and familiar irritant, hardly worth mentioning. Emotional pain, though, is something else. It's always fresh, and it's always new, and you never get to develop calluses. Just new scars.
Sabitha snorts so softly as to be almost inaudible. "Gambling, love. Right." A sharp shake of her head feathers strands of hair into her face, and she shoves them back with a hand. "Yeah, we're still dating."
"Going good?" Green eyes laugh behind the grave face.
"Yeah," Sabby replies simply.
Those smiling eyes widen, gently mocking. "Exclusive?"
Sabitha's lips twist. "No."
"Relieved?"
Sabitha snorts a laugh. "I'm not you, Chris."
I think Chris was scoping her out here. He's taking her mood in this moment to be part of the chain of repetition that he thinks he recognizes, where people find other sources of stability and comfort, and slowly distance themselves from him. He won't stop her -- he rarely does, I think, having learned through painful experience that friendships have a lifespan and that keeping it around when one party doesn't want it is nothing but an exercise in masochism -- but he'll check to make sure that she's got support structures in place when she disconnects from him. He knows about Percy (or rather, doesn't know; she's going through the separation with him right now) so it's just a case of wondering if Kessler's part of that network.
"And yet somehow, I'm the one being all monogamous," quips Chris with wry self-deprecation, unraveling himself to stand. "Then again, I'm practically over the hill."
"Ridiculously ancient," Sabby agrees, and unfolds her legs to follow suit. She studies him in silence for a moment, head tilted back to take in the entire picture. "I think it might suit you."
"Old age?" Chris's lips quirk; a hand plunges into his pocket, fishing out gloves. "I'm hurt, Melcross. I thought I was good at nubile youth."
"Monogamy," Sabby corrects.
It's an interesting thought, and Chris pauses to consider it. Although ... Sabby says monogamy, and what it really is, is /Relationship/ in all its capitalized glory. Something outside of the family and the job. Something all his own, even if it is fraught with the overtones of disaster.
He senses the impending tragedy, and the damned Italian in him responds to it with delight. They're never so happy as they are when they can be miserable.
Chris sobers slightly, looking down at Sabitha. "Yeah," he concedes at last. "Maybe. I'll give it a shot. See how it goes." Something moves behind his expression, quicksilver and fleeting -- a softening, quaint peace -- and then disappears. "How about you and Kessler?"
It's the concept of it more than the reality of it that gives Rossi peace. He loves Leah, but it's a painful thing, like holding onto a hedgehog with both arms. He can't find peace there, and he knows he won't, but it satisfies something else in him. It's been a very long time since he's opened himself to the possibility of love.
Sabitha watches that something with a quiet sadness until it disappears and then shakes a snappy smile onto her features. "Matt? Nah, I doubt it. Just... a bit of comfortable fun, y'know?"
"Cotton candy," says Chris, kindly. "Yeah, I get it. Pink. Bubblegum-flavored. Exactly what I thought when I first met the guy. 'This guy'd be great on a cardboard stick--'"
"Tastes great, too," Sabby answers with a fast waggle of her brows.
Rossi chuckles. "Hell on your face and hair, though," he finishes, baritoning digging deep into innuendo. "I should get going. I got stuff. Thanks for the ice cream, Melcross. Next time you're near the precinct, call me. I'll buy you the best hot dog this side of the Atlantic."
"If only I ate them," Sabby returns with half a smile. "I'll stop by anyway. Don't get yourself killed out there, k?"
Hah. If only she knew.
"Pezhead's locked up, and his amorous and evil designs on my ass are locked up with him," says Chris, dragging on his gloves en route to the door. A grin scythes over his shoulder at Sabby. "What's to worry?"
Nod back to The Incredibles. We're superheroes. What could happen? He doesn't even mention the Friends, which are the real problem. His problem. Not hers.
Sabitha trails several paces behind Chris with slow, dragging steps. "World's safe and sound," she agrees.
"Worrier," challenges Chris, pausing with a hand on the doorknob to glance down at the straggling woman. An eyebrow climbs; an arm reaches, hooking to reel her into his ribs: unprompted, cheerful affection.
Such a physical animal, and he figures if it's good-bye of some sort, whether final or not, he might as well give the poor kid a hug. She looks like she needs it. He is very touchy-feely -- more with women, obviously, than with men -- but it's because he's learned that women like comfort, and he's able to give it, and it's not like he /minds/ being up close and personal with women. So what's the harm? He always has enough strength for other people. Other people are easy. It's his own need that's the difficulty.
Sabitha buries her face against Rossi's chest for a moment. One breath, two, deeply inhaled, and then she unravels herself from the cop and tips a smile up at him while hands smooth at her hair. "It's in my job description."
The smell of leather, the tang of gun oil, and under it the heartbeat of Rossi's scent itself: his own, unique. "You need a new job," Chris tells her, solemn as a sage. Then the chin lifts, the smile twists, and out he goes -- into the hallway, back to the real world. "Later, Melcross."
"Later, Chris." Sabby smiles once more, and then shuts the door on Rossi, the hallway, and the real world.
I am sleepy. I return to my conference call. That is all I have. Sabitha does a lovely final pose, and voila! We have log!
Okay. Done now.