7/13/06 - Eve, Vincent
---
< NYC > New York Police Department - Mutant Affairs
Next door to the larger Homicide squad office is Mutant Affairs, labeled in brass letters on the door's smoked glass. Painted in the same dingy, puke-green shade of the hallway, the squad room is a small and busy office, with walls covered by pictures of wanted mutants and clippings of those who still lack a name. Detective desks claim the linoleum floor, islands of order in the ebb and tide of traffic. At the far end of the room, a door leads to a conference room, cluttered with file drawers and the detritus of a responsibility that covers the entire city.
It is broiling in Mutant Affairs, compliments of the broken fan and likewise broken air conditioning. Complaint (scents) moves sluggishly through the small squad room, traveling on the backs of passing bodies. Suit coat removed, tie loosened, pale blue shirtsleeves rolled up to elbows, Chris Rossi lounges in a chair before Vincent's desk and props his feet on its edge. A file splays open on his lap, light reading for the drooping gaze and fingertwirl of pen. He is a man at ease in another man's bed.
Eve, uniformed, strides into the squad room at the side of a Mutant Affairs detective. They're chatting casually as he waves her to his desk and she pulls up a chair across from him. She proceedes to fillout some paperwork, still occassionally tossing comments back and forth with the detective.
Jacket over his shoulder, red tie still clipped neatly into place (though by this point in the week, he's looking a little undead thanks to a heavy five o'clock shadow and deep circles around his eyes) Vincent sweeps briskly in and half-turns immediately to settle his coat across the back of his chair. "Rossi, get your feet off of my desk before I put a bullet in one of them." Without the jacket to cover it, his shoulder holster looks like bondage gear gone wrong - the butt of his glock nestled firmly into place at his side.
A glance skips up past Eve to Vincent, green-eyed and unfocused; the twirling pen swings, thumped against the outthrust of thumb to rebound into a knuckle. Rossi lifts his head to that most /amiable/ of greetings, a grin cutting crookedly across the dark face. "Screw you, Lazzaro," Chris says pleasantly back -- but the braced foot drops, thunking to the floor, the ankle of the other drawn up to the knee. "You look like shit. Rough shift?"
With all the comings and goings in the squad room, Eve doesn't notice Vincent's arrival until she hears his name. Brown eyes flicker from paperwork to Vincent with a raised eyebrow. A muttered comment to the detective she arrived with, she signs off on the paper work. A few steps across the room bring her to Vincent's desk. "Hey."
"Rough week," Vincent amends, but does not elaborate. "Is that my fucking pen? Give -- give me my pen!" A clumsy snatch is made for said pen. Probably unsuccessfully. Vincent smells very strongly of an alpine forest, in the meanwhile. Degree for men. Large amounts of it. It is in the course of this that he sort of pauses and hesitates. "...Hi, Eve."
The other man's grin deepens, adding a sardonic glitter to the black-spliced gaze. Eve's approach drags his attention elsewhere -- the pen, oops! pops just out of reach -- and Rossi tips his head up in a nod for the uniform. "Yo," he greets, slouching in the seat. "You new? Haven't seen you around before. --Jesus /Christ/, man. What did you do, rub your car's air freshener over your head?"
"Returned, anyway," Eve replies with a nod of her head. "I was down in Baltimore for a few years, but here before that. Eve Laszlo." She gives Vincent a sidelong glance. Toes tap. "Always so thrilled to see me," she observes mildly.
Vincent pushes back off the desk, and out of an awkward lean across Rossi's torso after his (expensive) ballpoint - the butt of his gun thumping Rossi stupidly in the side of the face along the way. And even in trying to regain his dignity, he glances aside. /His/ pen. Rossi is /touching it/ with /dirty hands/. He clears his throat and knits his brows. "Doesn't exactly look like your leaping out of your dorky police hat to get to me either, sweetheart."
"Watch where you stick that thing, asshat," Rossi snaps, drawing back with a wince for the collision: manly man that he is, his free hand thumps backhandedly at the other man's retreating torso before rubbing against his temple. "Rossi," he adds to Eve, shoving the pen behind his ear. "Chris Rossi. Homicide and MA. Overlap. Welcome to the one-nine."
Eve raises her eyebrows and gives Vincent a 'bitch, please' look. "That's a change of tune. A few days ago you said the uniform was hot. Who put your panties in a twist?" she questions acidicly. "As for the hat -- I just got it back. Left it at his apartment." Rossi is ignored momentarily, amidst conflicting female emotions.
Thump. Vincent grunts against the blow, and promptly thumps Rossi right back - open handed over the back of his head. "That was when I was scoping you as potential girlfriend material. Unfortunately, now that you've fucked Rourke you're under quarantine."
"Fuck," Chris Rossi says with good-natured annoyance, the pen unhinged from its precarious seat to pop back into his lap. He stoops, scrambling to retrieve it; on his rise, he wonders idly, "Mike Rourke? Ian Rourke? Harvey Rourke?" An eye squints at Eve, lazily speculating. "Patty Rourke?"
"Hah. Girlfriend? You were looking for an easy fuck, just like him." Eve breaks her glower at Vincent to glance aside at Rossi. "Harvey, unfortunately. I get the feeling I'd've been better off with Patty." Gaze travels back to Vincent. "But he's being a bit petty about the whole thing."
"I don't do easy fucks, lady. There was this one thing with Rossi's sister -- but she's different, trust me." The fact that he is having this conversation in front of several of his coworkers is present in some minor hesitation a minute later, and Vincent looks down to Rossi for help.
The Homicide detective pulls his sprawled leg in, unconsciously drawing away from Eve: as a hale man might from a diseased. "Harvey Rourke?" Rossi echoes, Brooklyn's accent dragging disbelief through the deep baritone. An elbow hooks over Vincent's desk. "Writes for the Post? Drinks a lot, swears a lot, sleazy little shithead? --Crap, Lazzaro. You lucked out. If she'd screw that, you don't know where she's /been/."
"Fuck you," Eve directs to Rossi. "A guy goes home with a girl he's just met - hey, good for him. We try it?" She extends a spread hand. "And I can make a mistake as easily as the next person." She shakes her head and searches for Vincent's eyes, mouth sad. "And, amazingly, I didn't come over here to ask for a fuck, so I fail to see where it's any of your business who I sleep with."
"I know. Hence the quarantine," Vincent mutters, voice lowered in a somewhat less than subtle attempt to take the conversation below everyone within ten miles' radar. Assistance received, he looks up to meet Eve's sad look with more confidence than he possessed five minutes ago, and lifts a brow. "Hey, you brought the flirtation angle with the hot uniform thing. Don't push this on me."
White slashes in a grin's slant, the eyes above cynical and humorless. Rossi fishes the pen out of his lap and tosses it to Vincent's desk. "Learn to take a joke, Laszlo," he says cordially, fisting the rumple of his dark head. "But seriously: Rourke? You couldn't smell the yellow from a mile away?" As an afterthought he remembers to add askance to Lazzaro, "Stop talking shit about my sister."
"You're hilarious," Eve returns flatly. "He said some pretty nice things about you, too." Though tone seems to imply she believed not a one of them. "I wanted a one-night thing. I got one. If you've never done it, you're lying." She stares down Vincent's new found confidence with self-assurance of her own. "/That's/ the reason I left with him, not you. If you want to hold it against me, fine."
"I'm not. Your sister is hot. That's a compliment, assclown." Vincent leans in against his chair as he speaks, a skeptical look passed off to Rossi before he tilts his chin back over at Eve. "I'm not saying I've never had a one night stand. Just that I've never had one with Harvey Rourke, or anyone else who might make my dick fall off."
"That's okay then," Rossi allows, tapping a paired fingers on the top of the other man's desk before slouching further, attention skewing back up to Eve. "Rourke's not so bad," he adds over his shoulder to Vincent. "I wouldn't sleep with him, but he's not a /complete/ waste of meat. For a press guy."
"He's sniffing around a story on mutants in leather outfits, for what it's worth," Eve offers after a long pause, letting the subject drop. A peace offering, of sorts. "I don't know anything other than that, but I figure that's your deparment. Might want a heads up." A thoughtful furrow appears between her eyes. "Dudley Do-Rights, he called them."
"Leather outfits?" This does not sink in immediately, though Vincent's brows do - pressing low over black-dusted brown as he eyes her across the desk from him. "Oh. Poodles. Great. As for Rourke, have you ever actually talked to the guy when he's trying to get into somebody's pants? He's like a cock with a mouth."
Rossi's mouth slants into a hard grimace, lips pressing flat and pale for a split second's irritation. "Poodles," he seconds, adding wryly, "You'd think the jackass would be smarter, considering Magneto wants to give him the gift that keeps on giving. --Hung out with him a couple of times." Eyebrows lift at Eve from his loose-limbed sprawl. "I know all about it. Thanks, though," he grants. For trying.
Eve blinks. "/Poodles/? I don't even want to know." She gestures at Rossi. "I assumed -- I was just warning you that you might be getting some help from the New York Times," she explains wryly. "I don't expect he's long for this earth. He's still on that Magneto thing."
Brows still knit, Vincent eventually looks down to start pushing things slightly back into place across the surface of his desk. Pen holder here, name board there. Fingerprint smudges are rubbed away with a knuckle.
Det. Rossi considers Eve through lowered lashes, pale eyes gleaming behind the shield of black. "He works for the Post," the New Yorker says after a long moment, accent skimming dry. "It's a step up from The Enquirer, but a long way off from the Times. Hope you got all your stuff from his apartment, or you might not see it again once Pezhead's done."
Eve taps a finger against her hat. "This was it." An object she now wishes she /didn't/ have back. Her gaze shifts to Vincent again, who she studies briefly. "I've got things to do. Let me know when I'm through being punished." Beat. "Or quarentined. Whatever." A bob of her head to Rossi and she strides out. Her confidently straight posture is, perhaps, a little more forced than normal.
Nameplate nudged gently into its appropriate right angle, Vincent does not look up after Eve. He does, however, lower his voice several notches, excluding the rest of the department when he speaks again. "I think she likes me."
"I can feel the love from here," Rossi drawls, watching that feminine ass depart with clinical, critical dispassion before refocusing on Vincent. The fingertips tap again on the desk, a hand's count of thumps before they fold under Chris's jaw. "You seriously lost out to Rourke?"
"What, like it's surprising? Welcome to my life." More matter-of-fact than he is sulky, Vincent doesn't hesitate to rub away even fresher fingerprints before he in turn rubs one hand over the other, and tugs open a drawer to reach for ideally located disinfecting wipes.
The corner of Rossi's mouth curves, warping back towards its grin: easier, this time, and touched with the flavor of actual amusement. "Sucks to be you, man." His gaze trails to the emptied door, baritone finishing dismissively, "Other women in the sea. One of these days we'll all pitch in and buy you a blow-up doll. Plastic, no pores, anatomically correct -- and you can Lysol her all you want and she won't bitch."
"Thanks, asshole." Remarkably, there is not a tremendous amount of gratitude to be found in the hardened lines around Vincent's faint scowl as he works the cloth over his hands and then balls it up to drop it aside into his trash can.
"Anytime. You're a brother in blue, peachcakes. We look out for own." Rossi mocks without malice through the curve of his fingers, the fading smile half-lost behind knuckles. Brows press low, watching the progress of cleaning. Abrupt change of subject. "You going to Melcross's funeral?"
"You know how I know you're gay, Chris? You call me peachcakes. And you talk about Harvey's meat." Left without anything to do with his hands, Vincent folds his arms across his chest and looks down at his desk, back in reasonably happy balance. "Yeah."
The green eyes are clear over the loose fist, pallid color brilliant against the dark skin. "You know how I know you're gay, Vincent?" Rossi asks. "You passed up a chick panting to bone you, just to hang out with /me./ -- She sent me a letter. When I didn't have my memory."
"She waltzed out of the bar with a guy who humiliated me right in front of her without so much as a wince. Not to mention, I'm serious about the quarentine thing. There's no telling what Rourke's been sticking himself in." Dark eyes still turned down on his desk, there's a distinctly awkward pause before Vincent acknowledges the second half of the conversation again. "Oh yeah?"
"Not Mystique, anyway," Chris says absent-mindedly, his own gaze dropping to find that patch on the table so fascinating to the other man. "She turned blue at him instead." The corner of his mouth quirks, harsh fluorescent light clinging to the angles of his face as it shifts through expressions, one by one. "She talked like she was planning to die. Just -- covering bases, you know?"
Again, silence - this time until Vincent unfolds his arms to scratch twitchily at his temple. He then moves to step back around his desk. Away from Rossi. "Yeah - Chris. Not right now, okay?"
"Yeah." The dark, lean face -- already shuttered -- closes further, leaving it more saturnine than before. Rossi pulls himself up, arm dropping away, straightening in the rickety chair. "You okay, man?"
"Of course I'm ok. I'm fantastic. Just...mind your own damn business." Right hand still up at the back of his head, Vincent does not look back to Rossi. He just walks for the door, leaving his jacket behind.
Green eyes watch Vincent go. The file in Rossi's lap flips shut, nestled in the hollow of his crooked leg. His desk is clean; Chris leans into it again, hand dropping to rest on the polished surface. Fingerprints. There will be fingerprints. Jaw tightened, a frown digging across his brow, Rossi returns to reading.
[Log ends]
Rossi gives Vincent a hard time about his (1) cleanfreakness; (2) a girl wanting to shag him; and (3) having lost out on easy poon to Rourke, of all ridiculous people. He does not make friends with Eve. Imagine that.
< NYC > New York Police Department - Mutant Affairs
Next door to the larger Homicide squad office is Mutant Affairs, labeled in brass letters on the door's smoked glass. Painted in the same dingy, puke-green shade of the hallway, the squad room is a small and busy office, with walls covered by pictures of wanted mutants and clippings of those who still lack a name. Detective desks claim the linoleum floor, islands of order in the ebb and tide of traffic. At the far end of the room, a door leads to a conference room, cluttered with file drawers and the detritus of a responsibility that covers the entire city.
It is broiling in Mutant Affairs, compliments of the broken fan and likewise broken air conditioning. Complaint (scents) moves sluggishly through the small squad room, traveling on the backs of passing bodies. Suit coat removed, tie loosened, pale blue shirtsleeves rolled up to elbows, Chris Rossi lounges in a chair before Vincent's desk and props his feet on its edge. A file splays open on his lap, light reading for the drooping gaze and fingertwirl of pen. He is a man at ease in another man's bed.
Eve, uniformed, strides into the squad room at the side of a Mutant Affairs detective. They're chatting casually as he waves her to his desk and she pulls up a chair across from him. She proceedes to fillout some paperwork, still occassionally tossing comments back and forth with the detective.
Jacket over his shoulder, red tie still clipped neatly into place (though by this point in the week, he's looking a little undead thanks to a heavy five o'clock shadow and deep circles around his eyes) Vincent sweeps briskly in and half-turns immediately to settle his coat across the back of his chair. "Rossi, get your feet off of my desk before I put a bullet in one of them." Without the jacket to cover it, his shoulder holster looks like bondage gear gone wrong - the butt of his glock nestled firmly into place at his side.
A glance skips up past Eve to Vincent, green-eyed and unfocused; the twirling pen swings, thumped against the outthrust of thumb to rebound into a knuckle. Rossi lifts his head to that most /amiable/ of greetings, a grin cutting crookedly across the dark face. "Screw you, Lazzaro," Chris says pleasantly back -- but the braced foot drops, thunking to the floor, the ankle of the other drawn up to the knee. "You look like shit. Rough shift?"
With all the comings and goings in the squad room, Eve doesn't notice Vincent's arrival until she hears his name. Brown eyes flicker from paperwork to Vincent with a raised eyebrow. A muttered comment to the detective she arrived with, she signs off on the paper work. A few steps across the room bring her to Vincent's desk. "Hey."
"Rough week," Vincent amends, but does not elaborate. "Is that my fucking pen? Give -- give me my pen!" A clumsy snatch is made for said pen. Probably unsuccessfully. Vincent smells very strongly of an alpine forest, in the meanwhile. Degree for men. Large amounts of it. It is in the course of this that he sort of pauses and hesitates. "...Hi, Eve."
The other man's grin deepens, adding a sardonic glitter to the black-spliced gaze. Eve's approach drags his attention elsewhere -- the pen, oops! pops just out of reach -- and Rossi tips his head up in a nod for the uniform. "Yo," he greets, slouching in the seat. "You new? Haven't seen you around before. --Jesus /Christ/, man. What did you do, rub your car's air freshener over your head?"
"Returned, anyway," Eve replies with a nod of her head. "I was down in Baltimore for a few years, but here before that. Eve Laszlo." She gives Vincent a sidelong glance. Toes tap. "Always so thrilled to see me," she observes mildly.
Vincent pushes back off the desk, and out of an awkward lean across Rossi's torso after his (expensive) ballpoint - the butt of his gun thumping Rossi stupidly in the side of the face along the way. And even in trying to regain his dignity, he glances aside. /His/ pen. Rossi is /touching it/ with /dirty hands/. He clears his throat and knits his brows. "Doesn't exactly look like your leaping out of your dorky police hat to get to me either, sweetheart."
"Watch where you stick that thing, asshat," Rossi snaps, drawing back with a wince for the collision: manly man that he is, his free hand thumps backhandedly at the other man's retreating torso before rubbing against his temple. "Rossi," he adds to Eve, shoving the pen behind his ear. "Chris Rossi. Homicide and MA. Overlap. Welcome to the one-nine."
Eve raises her eyebrows and gives Vincent a 'bitch, please' look. "That's a change of tune. A few days ago you said the uniform was hot. Who put your panties in a twist?" she questions acidicly. "As for the hat -- I just got it back. Left it at his apartment." Rossi is ignored momentarily, amidst conflicting female emotions.
Thump. Vincent grunts against the blow, and promptly thumps Rossi right back - open handed over the back of his head. "That was when I was scoping you as potential girlfriend material. Unfortunately, now that you've fucked Rourke you're under quarantine."
"Fuck," Chris Rossi says with good-natured annoyance, the pen unhinged from its precarious seat to pop back into his lap. He stoops, scrambling to retrieve it; on his rise, he wonders idly, "Mike Rourke? Ian Rourke? Harvey Rourke?" An eye squints at Eve, lazily speculating. "Patty Rourke?"
"Hah. Girlfriend? You were looking for an easy fuck, just like him." Eve breaks her glower at Vincent to glance aside at Rossi. "Harvey, unfortunately. I get the feeling I'd've been better off with Patty." Gaze travels back to Vincent. "But he's being a bit petty about the whole thing."
"I don't do easy fucks, lady. There was this one thing with Rossi's sister -- but she's different, trust me." The fact that he is having this conversation in front of several of his coworkers is present in some minor hesitation a minute later, and Vincent looks down to Rossi for help.
The Homicide detective pulls his sprawled leg in, unconsciously drawing away from Eve: as a hale man might from a diseased. "Harvey Rourke?" Rossi echoes, Brooklyn's accent dragging disbelief through the deep baritone. An elbow hooks over Vincent's desk. "Writes for the Post? Drinks a lot, swears a lot, sleazy little shithead? --Crap, Lazzaro. You lucked out. If she'd screw that, you don't know where she's /been/."
"Fuck you," Eve directs to Rossi. "A guy goes home with a girl he's just met - hey, good for him. We try it?" She extends a spread hand. "And I can make a mistake as easily as the next person." She shakes her head and searches for Vincent's eyes, mouth sad. "And, amazingly, I didn't come over here to ask for a fuck, so I fail to see where it's any of your business who I sleep with."
"I know. Hence the quarantine," Vincent mutters, voice lowered in a somewhat less than subtle attempt to take the conversation below everyone within ten miles' radar. Assistance received, he looks up to meet Eve's sad look with more confidence than he possessed five minutes ago, and lifts a brow. "Hey, you brought the flirtation angle with the hot uniform thing. Don't push this on me."
White slashes in a grin's slant, the eyes above cynical and humorless. Rossi fishes the pen out of his lap and tosses it to Vincent's desk. "Learn to take a joke, Laszlo," he says cordially, fisting the rumple of his dark head. "But seriously: Rourke? You couldn't smell the yellow from a mile away?" As an afterthought he remembers to add askance to Lazzaro, "Stop talking shit about my sister."
"You're hilarious," Eve returns flatly. "He said some pretty nice things about you, too." Though tone seems to imply she believed not a one of them. "I wanted a one-night thing. I got one. If you've never done it, you're lying." She stares down Vincent's new found confidence with self-assurance of her own. "/That's/ the reason I left with him, not you. If you want to hold it against me, fine."
"I'm not. Your sister is hot. That's a compliment, assclown." Vincent leans in against his chair as he speaks, a skeptical look passed off to Rossi before he tilts his chin back over at Eve. "I'm not saying I've never had a one night stand. Just that I've never had one with Harvey Rourke, or anyone else who might make my dick fall off."
"That's okay then," Rossi allows, tapping a paired fingers on the top of the other man's desk before slouching further, attention skewing back up to Eve. "Rourke's not so bad," he adds over his shoulder to Vincent. "I wouldn't sleep with him, but he's not a /complete/ waste of meat. For a press guy."
"He's sniffing around a story on mutants in leather outfits, for what it's worth," Eve offers after a long pause, letting the subject drop. A peace offering, of sorts. "I don't know anything other than that, but I figure that's your deparment. Might want a heads up." A thoughtful furrow appears between her eyes. "Dudley Do-Rights, he called them."
"Leather outfits?" This does not sink in immediately, though Vincent's brows do - pressing low over black-dusted brown as he eyes her across the desk from him. "Oh. Poodles. Great. As for Rourke, have you ever actually talked to the guy when he's trying to get into somebody's pants? He's like a cock with a mouth."
Rossi's mouth slants into a hard grimace, lips pressing flat and pale for a split second's irritation. "Poodles," he seconds, adding wryly, "You'd think the jackass would be smarter, considering Magneto wants to give him the gift that keeps on giving. --Hung out with him a couple of times." Eyebrows lift at Eve from his loose-limbed sprawl. "I know all about it. Thanks, though," he grants. For trying.
Eve blinks. "/Poodles/? I don't even want to know." She gestures at Rossi. "I assumed -- I was just warning you that you might be getting some help from the New York Times," she explains wryly. "I don't expect he's long for this earth. He's still on that Magneto thing."
Brows still knit, Vincent eventually looks down to start pushing things slightly back into place across the surface of his desk. Pen holder here, name board there. Fingerprint smudges are rubbed away with a knuckle.
Det. Rossi considers Eve through lowered lashes, pale eyes gleaming behind the shield of black. "He works for the Post," the New Yorker says after a long moment, accent skimming dry. "It's a step up from The Enquirer, but a long way off from the Times. Hope you got all your stuff from his apartment, or you might not see it again once Pezhead's done."
Eve taps a finger against her hat. "This was it." An object she now wishes she /didn't/ have back. Her gaze shifts to Vincent again, who she studies briefly. "I've got things to do. Let me know when I'm through being punished." Beat. "Or quarentined. Whatever." A bob of her head to Rossi and she strides out. Her confidently straight posture is, perhaps, a little more forced than normal.
Nameplate nudged gently into its appropriate right angle, Vincent does not look up after Eve. He does, however, lower his voice several notches, excluding the rest of the department when he speaks again. "I think she likes me."
"I can feel the love from here," Rossi drawls, watching that feminine ass depart with clinical, critical dispassion before refocusing on Vincent. The fingertips tap again on the desk, a hand's count of thumps before they fold under Chris's jaw. "You seriously lost out to Rourke?"
"What, like it's surprising? Welcome to my life." More matter-of-fact than he is sulky, Vincent doesn't hesitate to rub away even fresher fingerprints before he in turn rubs one hand over the other, and tugs open a drawer to reach for ideally located disinfecting wipes.
The corner of Rossi's mouth curves, warping back towards its grin: easier, this time, and touched with the flavor of actual amusement. "Sucks to be you, man." His gaze trails to the emptied door, baritone finishing dismissively, "Other women in the sea. One of these days we'll all pitch in and buy you a blow-up doll. Plastic, no pores, anatomically correct -- and you can Lysol her all you want and she won't bitch."
"Thanks, asshole." Remarkably, there is not a tremendous amount of gratitude to be found in the hardened lines around Vincent's faint scowl as he works the cloth over his hands and then balls it up to drop it aside into his trash can.
"Anytime. You're a brother in blue, peachcakes. We look out for own." Rossi mocks without malice through the curve of his fingers, the fading smile half-lost behind knuckles. Brows press low, watching the progress of cleaning. Abrupt change of subject. "You going to Melcross's funeral?"
"You know how I know you're gay, Chris? You call me peachcakes. And you talk about Harvey's meat." Left without anything to do with his hands, Vincent folds his arms across his chest and looks down at his desk, back in reasonably happy balance. "Yeah."
The green eyes are clear over the loose fist, pallid color brilliant against the dark skin. "You know how I know you're gay, Vincent?" Rossi asks. "You passed up a chick panting to bone you, just to hang out with /me./ -- She sent me a letter. When I didn't have my memory."
"She waltzed out of the bar with a guy who humiliated me right in front of her without so much as a wince. Not to mention, I'm serious about the quarentine thing. There's no telling what Rourke's been sticking himself in." Dark eyes still turned down on his desk, there's a distinctly awkward pause before Vincent acknowledges the second half of the conversation again. "Oh yeah?"
"Not Mystique, anyway," Chris says absent-mindedly, his own gaze dropping to find that patch on the table so fascinating to the other man. "She turned blue at him instead." The corner of his mouth quirks, harsh fluorescent light clinging to the angles of his face as it shifts through expressions, one by one. "She talked like she was planning to die. Just -- covering bases, you know?"
Again, silence - this time until Vincent unfolds his arms to scratch twitchily at his temple. He then moves to step back around his desk. Away from Rossi. "Yeah - Chris. Not right now, okay?"
"Yeah." The dark, lean face -- already shuttered -- closes further, leaving it more saturnine than before. Rossi pulls himself up, arm dropping away, straightening in the rickety chair. "You okay, man?"
"Of course I'm ok. I'm fantastic. Just...mind your own damn business." Right hand still up at the back of his head, Vincent does not look back to Rossi. He just walks for the door, leaving his jacket behind.
Green eyes watch Vincent go. The file in Rossi's lap flips shut, nestled in the hollow of his crooked leg. His desk is clean; Chris leans into it again, hand dropping to rest on the polished surface. Fingerprints. There will be fingerprints. Jaw tightened, a frown digging across his brow, Rossi returns to reading.
[Log ends]
Rossi gives Vincent a hard time about his (1) cleanfreakness; (2) a girl wanting to shag him; and (3) having lost out on easy poon to Rourke, of all ridiculous people. He does not make friends with Eve. Imagine that.