8/6/05 - Sabitha
Captain had a uniform take me to Mom and Pop's. I ... think. I don't remember it. Whatever that gas was, it got me good.
Melcross woke me in the morning to check up on me.
My brain feels like it's moving through soup. Thick soup. I remember enough, though. Forgot about the last talk I had with Sabitha until it was too late to matter. Best way to get over that, I guess, and now we've traded. Know why she dreams, now. Someday she might tell me what she dreams.
Won't push it. New York's got enough broken people to go around.
Docs gave us little pink pills to take because of the gas. Think I might've taken too many. Can't remember how many I swallowed. The way my head is pounding, I hope the OD is something good, like death. Mom's got me sleeping on Paul's bed. He'll be pissed if the side-effects are anal leakage.
---
Saturday mornings are for lazy relaxing. Yogurt and cereal eaten on the couch, still in pajamas while sneaking a peek at morning cartoons. Well. Two out of five isn't bad? Sabitha's still in her pajamas and sitting on her couch, but she's hardly relaxing, and there's no breakfast or cartoons in sight. Just a cell phone, clenched nervously, and a deep-cut frown smearing across her features. In the corner, her laptop still shows front page of the New York Times. Her fingers twitch across the keypad of her cell. The first call produced no fruits. The second begins to ring, and she tucks the phone against her ear, anxiously.
Somewhere in Brooklyn, in a multi-storied, anorexic house pressed intimately against other, equally anorexic houses, a cell phone trills its piercing summons. For the man sprawled on the nearby bed, a forearm protecting his closed eyes from the light trickling through the shaded window, the phone's wail rouses little more than a twitch. Then a stir. Blindly groping, a hand fumbles for the nightstand and thumbs across buttons until: "Rossi."
"Hey. You ok?" Sabitha barely bothers with a greeting, and doesn't bother with an identification. Relief colors her voice in clear, broad strokes - he answered, and he knows his name, and these are both good signs.
It is a moment before the thick, sleep-hagged voice answers again; in the bed, Chris discovers the energy to flop his free arm across his eyes in place of the old barrier, and drowsily considers the voice piping from the phone. "Yeah," he says at last. "Awake. Who's this?"
In her usual mood, Sabitha'd quip something about how he ought to recognize her voice or feign hurt or any number of things. Today, she replies, "Shit. Chris. Sorry. I didn't think you'd be asleep. Didn't even think... sorry." And then she remembers, "Sabitha. News is crawling with you and Vincent, you know. Mostly Vincent, but they said your name."
"Sabitha," echoes Chris, reluctantly opening his eyes behind the arm. (One eye. Then the other. No need to rush these things.) Somewhere in the slow, stirring chambers of his waking mind, a memory prods. There's something ... something about Sabitha -- no, he's forgotten it. "News," he says instead, drowning the word in a yawn. And. "Vincent. Poor fuck. They interview him already?"
"Yeah," Sabitha answers. She's wide awake, in direct contrast to Chris's sleepy tones. "I don't know when, or for how long, but... hell." Concern laces itself through her voice, thick and heavy. "I couldn't get hold of him. He's probably sleeping, too. You're both /ok/, right?" Sabitha's desperate to reaffirm that fact, as far as possible. Memories? Can wait until this is dealt with.
Says Chris, lucid and clear-voiced for this one fragment of thought: "Gassed us." Another yawn, fighting wakefulness; with a small sigh, Rossi drops his heavy arm back to the bedcovers and regards his brother's childhood bedroom ceiling with incurious surprise. Nixon glowers back at him from a campaign poster. "Knocked us out with the security. Docs say we're okay. Gave us some pills."
"/Gassed/ you?" Sabitha questions in bright surprise. A bit of information missing from the morning reports. "What... Chris, what /happened/?" And then, quickly backtracking as she pushes herself from her seat to stand, and then pace toward her kitchen, "I mean. I know you can't say. But... /gassed/?"
"Mmf," offers Rossi, lifting a hand and squinting through thumb and forefinger to dreamily squish Nixon's head. I crush you, Nixon. That heroic feat accomplished, he surrenders sleep altogether and drags himself up to the squeak of springs, turning to drop bare feet on the floor and bury his face in his hand. Brooklyn's accent emerges muffled and confused from behind its veil. "Shit. It's all over the news anyway. She killed herself. Crazy, melodramatic bitch."
Sabitha stops in midpace. Halfway to the kitchen, with bare toes that curl down into her carpet and fingers that curl tightly around her phone. There's a lingering pause that spans several seconds, unnoticed on Sabitha's end, before her brain catches up with her thoughts and she manages to ask, "She's really dead?"
At the other end of the line, Rossi assays a tentative, painful hook of a grin. "If she's not, she'll really hate the autopsy." Another yawn bids fair to swallow the phone entirely, and Chris gropes for a bottle of pills on the bedstand, cracking open a newly-closed eye to inspect the tablets through the plastic. Inside the wakening brain, things grudgingly begin to move. Make connections. Click. "They're pink," he reports.
Sabitha exhales slowly, a rush of breath that carries over the line. "They're doing an autopsy, then." She's silent while Chris gropes, and returns to her couch without whatever she was headed toward the kitchen for in the first place. Drops into a corner heavily. So far gone are her thoughts that her response to the pill color is to repeat, "She's really dead."
In his parents' house in Brooklyn, Chris opens his eyes in truth at last, regards a world haloed by pain, and pinches the phone between ear and shoulder to force the container's cap. "I saw the body. I know mutants can pull some weird shit, but even in mutant-land you need a heartbeat," he says, dryly. "Unless someone's changed the rules on me. --I'm okay. Are /you/ okay?"
"You saw the--" Sabitha breaks off, and answers, abruptly. "Just a second, Chris." She drops the phone to the couch next to her. Drops her head forward, to bury it in her hands, elbows planted on her knees, while she pulls in a few choking breaths. Calm down, Sabitha. Deal with it. Fucking /accept/ it. She leans back, tucks her arms around her middle. Pushes down any audible reaction, and shoots up to stand. Tense energy rumbles through her form as she paces across to the kitchen and yanks a bottle of water from the fridge, quickly uncapped and swallowed down. And then she goes after the carton of cigarettes on her table with viscious, fumbling violence. She emits a single, loud, "/FUCK/" in her effort before plastic and cardboard are successfully stripped away, and finally, a good five minutes later, she returns to the phone, with a heartbeat that's mostly returned to normal and a cigarette smoking between her lips. She reclaims the phone, and lies in even tones. "Sorry. Someone at the door. Selling fucking magazines." And backtracks. "What's pink?"
The pause is enough time for Rossi to pour tablets onto his hand, consider standing, then reject the idea to swallow them dry. One. Two. Three. ('Take one with food,' the label says. "Shit," Chris says.) "The pills," he tells Sabitha, replacing them on the bedstand before toppling backward with a thump. "Saw the body. She killed herself. I'm sorry," he adds belatedly, exhausted frustration creeping into his voice. "I shouldn't've let it happen. Fuck. I wasn't fast enough, and the damn gas--"
"Why do you have pills?" Sabitha questions quickly. She takes a long, slow inhale of smoke, pulling it soothingly into her lungs, and then sputters into a surprised, bitter laugh. "She's better off dead. New York's better off with her dead," she answers with an edge of anger, unsupressed, before she dials it back. Closes her eyes to continue, "Shit. This is bad for you guys, isn't it?"
A pause. "Lazzaro should be okay," Chris tells the darkness behind his eyelids, baritone slipping into a mellow, impenetrable cordiality, professional comfort. "It wasn't his fault. He's the MA golden boy right now; he's brought in some big collars. It'll be a bit rough for a while. IA'll probably shake down the entire department." The question of the pills he bypasses altogether. How many did he take? Crap.
"And you?" Sabitha's eyes open brightly, focus on the spiraling smoke rising from her cigarette.
"Teflon Chris," Rossi lies. A hand flexes against the bedclothes. "Don't worry about it. IA loves me. --What did the news say? Haven't seen the paper yet."
Sabitha frowns, doubtfully, but doesn't push the question. Inhales smoke and nicotine. "Not much," she shares after a moment. "That she's dead. Suicide pill, it said. Named you and Vincent as the interrogaters. Quote from Vincent, said an investigation's gearing up... /hell./ They can't try to blame you for this!" she segues badly. "She was a fucking /superwoman/. There are half a dozen things she could've done..." There's a pause, and she adds, "I mean, the tapes are going to show that, right? And the information. About her mutations."
Chris shrugs, unseen, and presses the ball of his palm into his eyes: and lo, there were stars. "Don't worry about it," he says again, with more finality than before. "You knew about her mutations? How'd you get that ... oh. Right. You knew her. I forgot about that. How well did you know her?" Bedsprings creak as he rolls, dragging his legs onto the bed with him in a curled, slightly sprawled fetal position.
Sabitha's fingers scissor together, nearly crushing her cigarette in the process. There's a lengthy pause as her brain halts, and then drags itself into slow, grinding gear again. "Knew about her, mostly," she finally offers. She forces a light laugh. "Fuck, Chris. I'm gonna worry, so you might as well enjoy it. Or something. What're the pills for?"
In repose, Chris' face is a stark, forbidding mask. Fortunate for Sabitha that there is a city between it and her. Memory has battled its way through pain and fatigue, and come loping to its master with a full catalog of his foregone confession. To Sabitha. "Fuck," he says involuntarily, tightening on the bed. Too late now. Distraction: "The pills? They're for -- I ... don't know. Didn't check. Keep my dick from falling off, I hope. Can't remember what the gas was. How'd you know about her?"
"That'd be a tragedy to the women of New York," Sabitha agrees blandly. Leans forward to tap ash from her cigarette, and finds herself pausing again. Frozen in a half-hunched position. Hell. There's another of those silences, unnoticed on Sabitha's end as her brain shuffles through a variety of options. Her fingers twitch. She stubs the cigarette out. "She fucked with a friend," she finally answers. And then, almost unwillingly, adds, "That, and" a breath "personal experience."
Green eyes flash open, staring sightlessly at a tattered US Marines recruitment poster. Rossi stills. "She told us some stuff," he says after a moment, carefully neutral. "We figured she was lying."
Decision made, there's no more hesitating silence from Sabby's end. Just an undercurrent of tenseness running through her voice. "What'd she tell you?"
"Torture," Rossi says, making quick calculations behind his eyes: in for a penny-- "Kidnapping. Murder. Psychotic shit. I mention she was a teenage drama queen?"
Sabitha laughs very shortly. "Yeah. She is," she agrees. "But not a liar."
"She said she let some live. That you, Sabitha?"
"No. She didn't have a choice about me." Sabitha's on her feet again, pacing now just to pace. Get it out.
Teeth show white in the quiet bedroom. Not a smile. "Good," Chris says, abruptly savage. Then mellows, carefully, to: "Horatio. --What did she ...."
Sabitha approaches the table, taps out another cigarette. Flares it into life with perhaps a bit too much vengeance. Her voice is even, but tight. "Psychotic bitch. Went insane. Wanted a body double. Spent a month making me into one." A pause, briefly, for a long inhale, a closing of her eyes. "Left me like that for four months." And then she hits that point, where things pile too high, and she shakes her head and breaks off. Changes the subject. Excuses herself. "Hey, I want to see if I can get hold of Vincent. Try again. You know if he should be home, or at the station?"
"Home, I think," Chris says, stitching a hint of normalcy to the end of a strained silence. "He was still at the station when the Captain sent me home. Unless those sadistic SOBs at IA still have him locked up in interviews."
"Home. I'll try again, then." Sabby's tone remains tense despite the normality of her words and Chris's voice. Vague comfort is sought in another draw of nicotine. "You're sure you're ok?" she checks again.
"Yeah." Rossi manages a smile to paint his voice, pained and tight though it is. "I'll be fine. Check on Lazzaro. Good luck."
Sabitha hesitates once more. "Let me know if anything... happens?" she requests. Another draw. She'll have this one gone in ten minutes, tops, at this rate.
Her answer is a quiet, "Mmf," which could be taken as either consent or demurral. Chris shifts, turning himself to the other side to stare at the small pill bottle, its instructions turned away into a lamp's porcelain. "Hang up, Sabitha. Call Lazzaro. Make sure he's okay. --Thanks for checking on me," he adds as an afterthought, gratitude slipping into the tired voice. "I appreciate it."
Sabitha seems reluctant when it comes right down to it - the tiredness in that voice is blatant, and she's not entirely certain if it's the sort that comes from a long night or something worse. Christopher Rossi is not someone easily read, especially over the distance of a phone line. In the end, she simply nods, and agrees, "Ok. But... seriously. I'm not joking, ok? I want to know. And I'll find out anyway, and then track down your ass to beat it if you haven't called." There's a light edge there, joking, to smooth over the seriousness of her words.
This time the smile is more sincere, flashed through faded warmth and the twitch of a lip, and the baritone's exasperated, almost affectionate, "Sabitha Melcross. I am going to hang up the fucking phone. And I could take your cute little ass in a New York minute. Believe it." A thumb slides across the cell phone's buttons and pushes, firmly. And on his brother's bed, Chris closes his eyes against pain, turning his face into the soft oblivion of pillows.
That earns, finally, a genuine laugh from Sabitha, and she stares at the phone for a moment before swiftly redialing. She waits just long enough for him to pick up on the other end, and speaks without waiting for a greeting. "In your dreams, Rossi. Your ass is mine." A pause, and she adds, "Go back to sleep." And then hangs up with the press of a button and scrolls through to Vincent's number.
[Log ends]
Melcross woke me in the morning to check up on me.
My brain feels like it's moving through soup. Thick soup. I remember enough, though. Forgot about the last talk I had with Sabitha until it was too late to matter. Best way to get over that, I guess, and now we've traded. Know why she dreams, now. Someday she might tell me what she dreams.
Won't push it. New York's got enough broken people to go around.
Docs gave us little pink pills to take because of the gas. Think I might've taken too many. Can't remember how many I swallowed. The way my head is pounding, I hope the OD is something good, like death. Mom's got me sleeping on Paul's bed. He'll be pissed if the side-effects are anal leakage.
---
Saturday mornings are for lazy relaxing. Yogurt and cereal eaten on the couch, still in pajamas while sneaking a peek at morning cartoons. Well. Two out of five isn't bad? Sabitha's still in her pajamas and sitting on her couch, but she's hardly relaxing, and there's no breakfast or cartoons in sight. Just a cell phone, clenched nervously, and a deep-cut frown smearing across her features. In the corner, her laptop still shows front page of the New York Times. Her fingers twitch across the keypad of her cell. The first call produced no fruits. The second begins to ring, and she tucks the phone against her ear, anxiously.
Somewhere in Brooklyn, in a multi-storied, anorexic house pressed intimately against other, equally anorexic houses, a cell phone trills its piercing summons. For the man sprawled on the nearby bed, a forearm protecting his closed eyes from the light trickling through the shaded window, the phone's wail rouses little more than a twitch. Then a stir. Blindly groping, a hand fumbles for the nightstand and thumbs across buttons until: "Rossi."
"Hey. You ok?" Sabitha barely bothers with a greeting, and doesn't bother with an identification. Relief colors her voice in clear, broad strokes - he answered, and he knows his name, and these are both good signs.
It is a moment before the thick, sleep-hagged voice answers again; in the bed, Chris discovers the energy to flop his free arm across his eyes in place of the old barrier, and drowsily considers the voice piping from the phone. "Yeah," he says at last. "Awake. Who's this?"
In her usual mood, Sabitha'd quip something about how he ought to recognize her voice or feign hurt or any number of things. Today, she replies, "Shit. Chris. Sorry. I didn't think you'd be asleep. Didn't even think... sorry." And then she remembers, "Sabitha. News is crawling with you and Vincent, you know. Mostly Vincent, but they said your name."
"Sabitha," echoes Chris, reluctantly opening his eyes behind the arm. (One eye. Then the other. No need to rush these things.) Somewhere in the slow, stirring chambers of his waking mind, a memory prods. There's something ... something about Sabitha -- no, he's forgotten it. "News," he says instead, drowning the word in a yawn. And. "Vincent. Poor fuck. They interview him already?"
"Yeah," Sabitha answers. She's wide awake, in direct contrast to Chris's sleepy tones. "I don't know when, or for how long, but... hell." Concern laces itself through her voice, thick and heavy. "I couldn't get hold of him. He's probably sleeping, too. You're both /ok/, right?" Sabitha's desperate to reaffirm that fact, as far as possible. Memories? Can wait until this is dealt with.
Says Chris, lucid and clear-voiced for this one fragment of thought: "Gassed us." Another yawn, fighting wakefulness; with a small sigh, Rossi drops his heavy arm back to the bedcovers and regards his brother's childhood bedroom ceiling with incurious surprise. Nixon glowers back at him from a campaign poster. "Knocked us out with the security. Docs say we're okay. Gave us some pills."
"/Gassed/ you?" Sabitha questions in bright surprise. A bit of information missing from the morning reports. "What... Chris, what /happened/?" And then, quickly backtracking as she pushes herself from her seat to stand, and then pace toward her kitchen, "I mean. I know you can't say. But... /gassed/?"
"Mmf," offers Rossi, lifting a hand and squinting through thumb and forefinger to dreamily squish Nixon's head. I crush you, Nixon. That heroic feat accomplished, he surrenders sleep altogether and drags himself up to the squeak of springs, turning to drop bare feet on the floor and bury his face in his hand. Brooklyn's accent emerges muffled and confused from behind its veil. "Shit. It's all over the news anyway. She killed herself. Crazy, melodramatic bitch."
Sabitha stops in midpace. Halfway to the kitchen, with bare toes that curl down into her carpet and fingers that curl tightly around her phone. There's a lingering pause that spans several seconds, unnoticed on Sabitha's end, before her brain catches up with her thoughts and she manages to ask, "She's really dead?"
At the other end of the line, Rossi assays a tentative, painful hook of a grin. "If she's not, she'll really hate the autopsy." Another yawn bids fair to swallow the phone entirely, and Chris gropes for a bottle of pills on the bedstand, cracking open a newly-closed eye to inspect the tablets through the plastic. Inside the wakening brain, things grudgingly begin to move. Make connections. Click. "They're pink," he reports.
Sabitha exhales slowly, a rush of breath that carries over the line. "They're doing an autopsy, then." She's silent while Chris gropes, and returns to her couch without whatever she was headed toward the kitchen for in the first place. Drops into a corner heavily. So far gone are her thoughts that her response to the pill color is to repeat, "She's really dead."
In his parents' house in Brooklyn, Chris opens his eyes in truth at last, regards a world haloed by pain, and pinches the phone between ear and shoulder to force the container's cap. "I saw the body. I know mutants can pull some weird shit, but even in mutant-land you need a heartbeat," he says, dryly. "Unless someone's changed the rules on me. --I'm okay. Are /you/ okay?"
"You saw the--" Sabitha breaks off, and answers, abruptly. "Just a second, Chris." She drops the phone to the couch next to her. Drops her head forward, to bury it in her hands, elbows planted on her knees, while she pulls in a few choking breaths. Calm down, Sabitha. Deal with it. Fucking /accept/ it. She leans back, tucks her arms around her middle. Pushes down any audible reaction, and shoots up to stand. Tense energy rumbles through her form as she paces across to the kitchen and yanks a bottle of water from the fridge, quickly uncapped and swallowed down. And then she goes after the carton of cigarettes on her table with viscious, fumbling violence. She emits a single, loud, "/FUCK/" in her effort before plastic and cardboard are successfully stripped away, and finally, a good five minutes later, she returns to the phone, with a heartbeat that's mostly returned to normal and a cigarette smoking between her lips. She reclaims the phone, and lies in even tones. "Sorry. Someone at the door. Selling fucking magazines." And backtracks. "What's pink?"
The pause is enough time for Rossi to pour tablets onto his hand, consider standing, then reject the idea to swallow them dry. One. Two. Three. ('Take one with food,' the label says. "Shit," Chris says.) "The pills," he tells Sabitha, replacing them on the bedstand before toppling backward with a thump. "Saw the body. She killed herself. I'm sorry," he adds belatedly, exhausted frustration creeping into his voice. "I shouldn't've let it happen. Fuck. I wasn't fast enough, and the damn gas--"
"Why do you have pills?" Sabitha questions quickly. She takes a long, slow inhale of smoke, pulling it soothingly into her lungs, and then sputters into a surprised, bitter laugh. "She's better off dead. New York's better off with her dead," she answers with an edge of anger, unsupressed, before she dials it back. Closes her eyes to continue, "Shit. This is bad for you guys, isn't it?"
A pause. "Lazzaro should be okay," Chris tells the darkness behind his eyelids, baritone slipping into a mellow, impenetrable cordiality, professional comfort. "It wasn't his fault. He's the MA golden boy right now; he's brought in some big collars. It'll be a bit rough for a while. IA'll probably shake down the entire department." The question of the pills he bypasses altogether. How many did he take? Crap.
"And you?" Sabitha's eyes open brightly, focus on the spiraling smoke rising from her cigarette.
"Teflon Chris," Rossi lies. A hand flexes against the bedclothes. "Don't worry about it. IA loves me. --What did the news say? Haven't seen the paper yet."
Sabitha frowns, doubtfully, but doesn't push the question. Inhales smoke and nicotine. "Not much," she shares after a moment. "That she's dead. Suicide pill, it said. Named you and Vincent as the interrogaters. Quote from Vincent, said an investigation's gearing up... /hell./ They can't try to blame you for this!" she segues badly. "She was a fucking /superwoman/. There are half a dozen things she could've done..." There's a pause, and she adds, "I mean, the tapes are going to show that, right? And the information. About her mutations."
Chris shrugs, unseen, and presses the ball of his palm into his eyes: and lo, there were stars. "Don't worry about it," he says again, with more finality than before. "You knew about her mutations? How'd you get that ... oh. Right. You knew her. I forgot about that. How well did you know her?" Bedsprings creak as he rolls, dragging his legs onto the bed with him in a curled, slightly sprawled fetal position.
Sabitha's fingers scissor together, nearly crushing her cigarette in the process. There's a lengthy pause as her brain halts, and then drags itself into slow, grinding gear again. "Knew about her, mostly," she finally offers. She forces a light laugh. "Fuck, Chris. I'm gonna worry, so you might as well enjoy it. Or something. What're the pills for?"
In repose, Chris' face is a stark, forbidding mask. Fortunate for Sabitha that there is a city between it and her. Memory has battled its way through pain and fatigue, and come loping to its master with a full catalog of his foregone confession. To Sabitha. "Fuck," he says involuntarily, tightening on the bed. Too late now. Distraction: "The pills? They're for -- I ... don't know. Didn't check. Keep my dick from falling off, I hope. Can't remember what the gas was. How'd you know about her?"
"That'd be a tragedy to the women of New York," Sabitha agrees blandly. Leans forward to tap ash from her cigarette, and finds herself pausing again. Frozen in a half-hunched position. Hell. There's another of those silences, unnoticed on Sabitha's end as her brain shuffles through a variety of options. Her fingers twitch. She stubs the cigarette out. "She fucked with a friend," she finally answers. And then, almost unwillingly, adds, "That, and" a breath "personal experience."
Green eyes flash open, staring sightlessly at a tattered US Marines recruitment poster. Rossi stills. "She told us some stuff," he says after a moment, carefully neutral. "We figured she was lying."
Decision made, there's no more hesitating silence from Sabby's end. Just an undercurrent of tenseness running through her voice. "What'd she tell you?"
"Torture," Rossi says, making quick calculations behind his eyes: in for a penny-- "Kidnapping. Murder. Psychotic shit. I mention she was a teenage drama queen?"
Sabitha laughs very shortly. "Yeah. She is," she agrees. "But not a liar."
"She said she let some live. That you, Sabitha?"
"No. She didn't have a choice about me." Sabitha's on her feet again, pacing now just to pace. Get it out.
Teeth show white in the quiet bedroom. Not a smile. "Good," Chris says, abruptly savage. Then mellows, carefully, to: "Horatio. --What did she ...."
Sabitha approaches the table, taps out another cigarette. Flares it into life with perhaps a bit too much vengeance. Her voice is even, but tight. "Psychotic bitch. Went insane. Wanted a body double. Spent a month making me into one." A pause, briefly, for a long inhale, a closing of her eyes. "Left me like that for four months." And then she hits that point, where things pile too high, and she shakes her head and breaks off. Changes the subject. Excuses herself. "Hey, I want to see if I can get hold of Vincent. Try again. You know if he should be home, or at the station?"
"Home, I think," Chris says, stitching a hint of normalcy to the end of a strained silence. "He was still at the station when the Captain sent me home. Unless those sadistic SOBs at IA still have him locked up in interviews."
"Home. I'll try again, then." Sabby's tone remains tense despite the normality of her words and Chris's voice. Vague comfort is sought in another draw of nicotine. "You're sure you're ok?" she checks again.
"Yeah." Rossi manages a smile to paint his voice, pained and tight though it is. "I'll be fine. Check on Lazzaro. Good luck."
Sabitha hesitates once more. "Let me know if anything... happens?" she requests. Another draw. She'll have this one gone in ten minutes, tops, at this rate.
Her answer is a quiet, "Mmf," which could be taken as either consent or demurral. Chris shifts, turning himself to the other side to stare at the small pill bottle, its instructions turned away into a lamp's porcelain. "Hang up, Sabitha. Call Lazzaro. Make sure he's okay. --Thanks for checking on me," he adds as an afterthought, gratitude slipping into the tired voice. "I appreciate it."
Sabitha seems reluctant when it comes right down to it - the tiredness in that voice is blatant, and she's not entirely certain if it's the sort that comes from a long night or something worse. Christopher Rossi is not someone easily read, especially over the distance of a phone line. In the end, she simply nods, and agrees, "Ok. But... seriously. I'm not joking, ok? I want to know. And I'll find out anyway, and then track down your ass to beat it if you haven't called." There's a light edge there, joking, to smooth over the seriousness of her words.
This time the smile is more sincere, flashed through faded warmth and the twitch of a lip, and the baritone's exasperated, almost affectionate, "Sabitha Melcross. I am going to hang up the fucking phone. And I could take your cute little ass in a New York minute. Believe it." A thumb slides across the cell phone's buttons and pushes, firmly. And on his brother's bed, Chris closes his eyes against pain, turning his face into the soft oblivion of pillows.
That earns, finally, a genuine laugh from Sabitha, and she stares at the phone for a moment before swiftly redialing. She waits just long enough for him to pick up on the other end, and speaks without waiting for a greeting. "In your dreams, Rossi. Your ass is mine." A pause, and she adds, "Go back to sleep." And then hangs up with the press of a button and scrolls through to Vincent's number.
[Log ends]