8/2/06 - Eve
---
=NYC= Mutant Affairs - New York Police Department - Upper East Side
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.
The heat is stifling, even with the air conditioning on; the decree from the mayor's office throttles the fans, limiting the exhalation of chill from the metal vents. In the Mutant Affairs office, coats and ties are discarded and loosened, tempers too tired to fight the ennervating humidity. Absent Vincent, it is Rossi who lays claim to that detective's desk, long legs slung across the Lysoled top, lap stretched to play prop to an open file.
Eve isn't looking too hot. Her face is drawn, dark stress lines etched around mouth and eyes, brow deeply furrowed. Flickering brown gaze quickly searches out a familiar face: "Rossi." She weaves through the maze of desks. Her palm seeks the desk and she leans heavily. She blinks, shuffling her rattled brain into enough order to find words. "Magneto's watching the DMV."
Rossi snores.
Really.
Snores.
He inhales, a sucking sound that stirs the broad shoulders; head tucked in the shutter of a hand, he yawns and straightens, eyes narrowing with a jerk of head to stare moodily at Eve. "Of course he's watching the DMV. You think terrorists get TV? What else would they watch? The IRS?"
Eve's lips press flat with a brief shake of her head. "No, no, I mean /right now/." A glance is briefly thrown over her shoulder to the door, back toward the encounter. "I talked to him," she adds, voiced lowered with something almost like awe. Her eyes widen at Rossi.
"Putz," Rossi says rudely, and slouches further down in his chair. The file closes, flattened on his lap under a dropped hand. "Him, not you. What'd have to say for himself? Don't suppose he had anything useful to say?"
Eve's shoulders push back and her head cocks to the side. "Not much," she replies. Worry is replaced by confusion across her features, her expressions uncommonly unguarded in the face of recent distress. "Nothing about the DMV. I, uh, didn't stay long," she admits, eyes flickering to a point over Rossi's head. That is to say, she fled. Like a terrified bunny rabbit.
"Probably a smart idea," Rossi agrees, and gestures towards the nearby chair -- take a seat -- before stretching an arm for a phone. "Which DMV? They'll send SWAT over in plastic gear, they won't find shit, they'll come home. We've done it a thousand times. What the fuck is Lensherr doing with-- oh." Resignation flattens his baritone, wringing the Brooklyn accent dry. "X-ID. Of course."
Eve shifts her weight to allow her hand to raise from the table and spread in front of her. "He's gone now, I'm sure." The hand lowers to rest upon her belt, fingers plucking at the blue of her uniform. "He'll know I would call." Lips pull into a frown. She nods. "So I assumed."
The handset lifts, the dialtone loud in the murmurous quiet of the squad room. "Relax, Laszlo," Rossi drawls, head tipping back to squint at Eve. His free hand flicks again to the chair, pointed: sit. The hedonist mouth quirks crooked, slanting towards a grin. "You met our resident leader of the free peoples and lived to tell the tale. Join the club."
"/You/ relax," Eve retorts inanely, without any heat to the words. "I just met a /terrorist/. I am momentarily not relaxed." Without much thought given to the action, she sits. Good cop, Laszlo. Stay. Her gaze flickers back to meet Rossi's settling into something less unseeing. "You met him." It is statement, not question. "Jesus."
"Met him." Hah. Rossi pins the handset between ear and shoulder, hand freed to take up a pencil and tap its eraser against the immaculate table. "He shows up in my apartment from time to time. Eats my food. Steals my guns. Drinks my whiskey. He acts like he thinks he's my roommate. Doesn't pay any rent. I take it back. He acts like my brother. --Which DMV?"
"He ... what?" Eve blinks, lacking comprehension. "God, why?" Her thoughs scurry silently off upon unknown tracks, eyes clouding again. Hands, in her lap, clasp together with whitened knuckles. "What? Oh, Harlem," she waves in what she thinks is a northen direction.
Eyes narrow at Eve over the drape of legs, and then Rossi twists to stab the eraser into the numberpad. The SWAT's line is a matter of memory, for those who labor in Mutant Affairs. His report is laconic, and to the point: Magneto sighted. Uniform. DMV. Harlem. Probably X-ID. "--the fuck do I know. Knock yourselves out," he says by way of farewell, and drops the handset onto the cradle with a glance back to the woman. "I'm damned if I know. Maybe he thinks I'm funny or something. Barring he's tried to kill me or jack my shit up three, four times, he's been pretty decent. For a terrorist."
Eve only half listens to the report, retreating once more to the comfort of private thoughts. Attention snaps back as Rossi hangs up, mouth forming a silent 'o'. "You're not that funny," she decides, though the jab falls flat. The fear still lingering in solemn brown eyes, the plaintive look upon her face, and the hunch of her shoulders collide to paint Eve in a childlike light, younger than her 29 years.
"You're not that hot," Rossi quips back, cracking his jaw to sink his temple into the prop of knuckles. Lips curved in a warped hook of cynicism, he lifts his chin at Eve and observes, "He didn't kill you, so you got nothing to worry about. Next time, maybe. Just stay out of the line of fire. You okay?"
Eve snorts a laugh, one corner of her mouth turning fractionally upwards. "Well, neither are you." She leans forward to fold her arms along the edge of the desk, lowering her forhead to settle upon it. "Comforting," comes, muffled. "Yeah, I'm fine." She's silent. Then, without lifting her head, confides, "I puked."
From his lazy slouch across Lazzaro's desk, Rossi bends a swift, white-edged grin at the other cop. "Better than what I did when I first met him." Fingernails scratch idly at the plane of jaw, rasping against stubble.
Eve's head raises a few inches to peer over her arms at Rossi. "Yeah? What'd you do, then?" Her mouth twiches into a forlorn scowl. "I haven't puked on the job since my first homicide. What the hell kind'a cop am I?"
The grin angles askance, humor unraveling to be replaced in kind by wry self-mockery. "I bled." The free hand lifts, opening to bare the scar-etched back to Eve before gesturing: across the long, lean torso hidden by the pale blue shirt. "I bled a hell of a lot. If puking's the worst you get after meeting Pezhead, you're luckier than a hell of a lot of other cops."
"Pezhead?" Eve arches an eyebrow with a flicker of a smile. "You have a pet name for Magneto?" She wrinkles her nose across the desk at him. "That's so cute." One of her hands raises to scratch at her temple, and once done she props her cheek against it. "He shouldn't be allowed to just walk around like that. Meeting people."
"You're absolutely right," Rossi says, eyebrows lifting. The deep baritone lightens, coasting up towards bemusement (false) and impressed realization (insincere). "Fuck. Why didn't I think of that? We should arrest him or something. Put him away. Damn. You have the /best/ ideas, Laszlo. Let me take a goddamn memo. I got a pencil right here. Where does Lazzaro keep his paper? Jesus Christ. I think he has his post-its numbered."
Eve scans the desk for something she might throw across at Rossi, but finding nothing is forced to settle for a roll of her eyes and a scowl. "It should be some sort of universal law," she clarifies. "He's supposed to be enigmatic and removed. Not in line at the DMV." Though, technically, he was not. It makes a better point. Her gaze skitters across the desk as she speaks, lighting upon Vincent's nameplate with a downward turn of lips.
The pack of post-its waves at Eve, flipped through by an impatient thumb. They are pink. "Told you he was gay. Seriously. You're standing in line at the DMV and you realize Magneto's standing behind you. You think even a New Yorker's not gonna let him cut?" Black humor skeins through the dragging baritone, thickening the treacle of accent across the swells of consonants. "Wouldn't call him enigmatic. He talks, if you get him started."
"Well. He should be," Eve insists stubbornly, eyes following the wave of the post-its. "He was rather terse, with me. Though he was technically outside the DMV. Not in it," she feels compelled to admit. A moment later she rises to lean across the desk in an effort to grab the post-its from Rossi's hand.
Rossi surrenders the pad without argument, and sends the pencil flipping after it, end over end in a dangerous little somersault. "It's because you're a woman," he says, compounding insult with injury. His expression waxes wise. "He's got his own harem. One of them's blue and a complete nutjob. I've met her. I don't blame him for not wanting to talk much with chicks anymore. If Mystique showed up in my bed, I'd start batting for the other team in a heartbeat."
Eve slides back across the desk to resettle in her chair, too proud for such a meaningless accomplishment. "You think everything's about gender, don't you?" She studies the post-its in her lap, unruffled by the comment, flipping through them with a finger. "He's a nutjob," she points out. "Birds of a feather."
"Everything's about whatever I feel like it being," Rossi announces with a fine display of megalomania: birds, feathers, quack. He stretches himself longer still, leaving a fine streak of fingerprints across the desktop to harass Lazzaro with when his shift starts. "I'm not entirely sure he /is/ nuts, actually. A murderer, yeah, and a terrorist, but I'm pretty sure he's about as sane as they come."
"Insanity's a prerequisite for terrorist, you ask me," Eve opines, gaze shifting from pink post-its to Rossi, following his fingers' path. "You two have a fucked up relationship." She stirs, pushing back from the desk in her chair and tossing the post-it pad to the desk top.
"Me and Lazzaro?" Rossi asks, leaning into his elbow and glancing aside to pluck up the nameplate. Det. Vincent Lazzaro, it reads in polished brass. Chris leaves more fingerprints to plague his fellow cop, and winks its metal reflection at Eve. "Guy loves me. We're like brothers."
"Fucked up," Eve repeats evenly, bracing a hand against the desk's edge as she stands. Then, "I'm still on duty, technically." A thumb jerks toward the door of the squad room as she takes half a step toward it. She hesitates. Hand rises slightly from her side, in vague gesture. "Thanks."
The detective's mouth twists into a saturnine line: part grin, part grimace. His wrist flicks; the nameplate clatters back to the desk, crooked. "Anytime, Laszlo. Have a good one. Stay away from terrorists. Look both sides when crossing the street. Don't do drugs." Another yawn bites through the words, stretching them long like taffy as he sinks back into the chair. "Stay in school."
Eve shakes her head with a puff of breath. "You're an asshole, Rossi," she carols, as long strides carry her out -- feminine frame calmer and straighter than when she arrived.
[Log ends]
Eve met Magneto, and comes to tell Rossi in MA. He's about as comforting as a brick bat. Jackass.
=NYC= Mutant Affairs - New York Police Department - Upper East Side
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.
The heat is stifling, even with the air conditioning on; the decree from the mayor's office throttles the fans, limiting the exhalation of chill from the metal vents. In the Mutant Affairs office, coats and ties are discarded and loosened, tempers too tired to fight the ennervating humidity. Absent Vincent, it is Rossi who lays claim to that detective's desk, long legs slung across the Lysoled top, lap stretched to play prop to an open file.
Eve isn't looking too hot. Her face is drawn, dark stress lines etched around mouth and eyes, brow deeply furrowed. Flickering brown gaze quickly searches out a familiar face: "Rossi." She weaves through the maze of desks. Her palm seeks the desk and she leans heavily. She blinks, shuffling her rattled brain into enough order to find words. "Magneto's watching the DMV."
Rossi snores.
Really.
Snores.
He inhales, a sucking sound that stirs the broad shoulders; head tucked in the shutter of a hand, he yawns and straightens, eyes narrowing with a jerk of head to stare moodily at Eve. "Of course he's watching the DMV. You think terrorists get TV? What else would they watch? The IRS?"
Eve's lips press flat with a brief shake of her head. "No, no, I mean /right now/." A glance is briefly thrown over her shoulder to the door, back toward the encounter. "I talked to him," she adds, voiced lowered with something almost like awe. Her eyes widen at Rossi.
"Putz," Rossi says rudely, and slouches further down in his chair. The file closes, flattened on his lap under a dropped hand. "Him, not you. What'd have to say for himself? Don't suppose he had anything useful to say?"
Eve's shoulders push back and her head cocks to the side. "Not much," she replies. Worry is replaced by confusion across her features, her expressions uncommonly unguarded in the face of recent distress. "Nothing about the DMV. I, uh, didn't stay long," she admits, eyes flickering to a point over Rossi's head. That is to say, she fled. Like a terrified bunny rabbit.
"Probably a smart idea," Rossi agrees, and gestures towards the nearby chair -- take a seat -- before stretching an arm for a phone. "Which DMV? They'll send SWAT over in plastic gear, they won't find shit, they'll come home. We've done it a thousand times. What the fuck is Lensherr doing with-- oh." Resignation flattens his baritone, wringing the Brooklyn accent dry. "X-ID. Of course."
Eve shifts her weight to allow her hand to raise from the table and spread in front of her. "He's gone now, I'm sure." The hand lowers to rest upon her belt, fingers plucking at the blue of her uniform. "He'll know I would call." Lips pull into a frown. She nods. "So I assumed."
The handset lifts, the dialtone loud in the murmurous quiet of the squad room. "Relax, Laszlo," Rossi drawls, head tipping back to squint at Eve. His free hand flicks again to the chair, pointed: sit. The hedonist mouth quirks crooked, slanting towards a grin. "You met our resident leader of the free peoples and lived to tell the tale. Join the club."
"/You/ relax," Eve retorts inanely, without any heat to the words. "I just met a /terrorist/. I am momentarily not relaxed." Without much thought given to the action, she sits. Good cop, Laszlo. Stay. Her gaze flickers back to meet Rossi's settling into something less unseeing. "You met him." It is statement, not question. "Jesus."
"Met him." Hah. Rossi pins the handset between ear and shoulder, hand freed to take up a pencil and tap its eraser against the immaculate table. "He shows up in my apartment from time to time. Eats my food. Steals my guns. Drinks my whiskey. He acts like he thinks he's my roommate. Doesn't pay any rent. I take it back. He acts like my brother. --Which DMV?"
"He ... what?" Eve blinks, lacking comprehension. "God, why?" Her thoughs scurry silently off upon unknown tracks, eyes clouding again. Hands, in her lap, clasp together with whitened knuckles. "What? Oh, Harlem," she waves in what she thinks is a northen direction.
Eyes narrow at Eve over the drape of legs, and then Rossi twists to stab the eraser into the numberpad. The SWAT's line is a matter of memory, for those who labor in Mutant Affairs. His report is laconic, and to the point: Magneto sighted. Uniform. DMV. Harlem. Probably X-ID. "--the fuck do I know. Knock yourselves out," he says by way of farewell, and drops the handset onto the cradle with a glance back to the woman. "I'm damned if I know. Maybe he thinks I'm funny or something. Barring he's tried to kill me or jack my shit up three, four times, he's been pretty decent. For a terrorist."
Eve only half listens to the report, retreating once more to the comfort of private thoughts. Attention snaps back as Rossi hangs up, mouth forming a silent 'o'. "You're not that funny," she decides, though the jab falls flat. The fear still lingering in solemn brown eyes, the plaintive look upon her face, and the hunch of her shoulders collide to paint Eve in a childlike light, younger than her 29 years.
"You're not that hot," Rossi quips back, cracking his jaw to sink his temple into the prop of knuckles. Lips curved in a warped hook of cynicism, he lifts his chin at Eve and observes, "He didn't kill you, so you got nothing to worry about. Next time, maybe. Just stay out of the line of fire. You okay?"
Eve snorts a laugh, one corner of her mouth turning fractionally upwards. "Well, neither are you." She leans forward to fold her arms along the edge of the desk, lowering her forhead to settle upon it. "Comforting," comes, muffled. "Yeah, I'm fine." She's silent. Then, without lifting her head, confides, "I puked."
From his lazy slouch across Lazzaro's desk, Rossi bends a swift, white-edged grin at the other cop. "Better than what I did when I first met him." Fingernails scratch idly at the plane of jaw, rasping against stubble.
Eve's head raises a few inches to peer over her arms at Rossi. "Yeah? What'd you do, then?" Her mouth twiches into a forlorn scowl. "I haven't puked on the job since my first homicide. What the hell kind'a cop am I?"
The grin angles askance, humor unraveling to be replaced in kind by wry self-mockery. "I bled." The free hand lifts, opening to bare the scar-etched back to Eve before gesturing: across the long, lean torso hidden by the pale blue shirt. "I bled a hell of a lot. If puking's the worst you get after meeting Pezhead, you're luckier than a hell of a lot of other cops."
"Pezhead?" Eve arches an eyebrow with a flicker of a smile. "You have a pet name for Magneto?" She wrinkles her nose across the desk at him. "That's so cute." One of her hands raises to scratch at her temple, and once done she props her cheek against it. "He shouldn't be allowed to just walk around like that. Meeting people."
"You're absolutely right," Rossi says, eyebrows lifting. The deep baritone lightens, coasting up towards bemusement (false) and impressed realization (insincere). "Fuck. Why didn't I think of that? We should arrest him or something. Put him away. Damn. You have the /best/ ideas, Laszlo. Let me take a goddamn memo. I got a pencil right here. Where does Lazzaro keep his paper? Jesus Christ. I think he has his post-its numbered."
Eve scans the desk for something she might throw across at Rossi, but finding nothing is forced to settle for a roll of her eyes and a scowl. "It should be some sort of universal law," she clarifies. "He's supposed to be enigmatic and removed. Not in line at the DMV." Though, technically, he was not. It makes a better point. Her gaze skitters across the desk as she speaks, lighting upon Vincent's nameplate with a downward turn of lips.
The pack of post-its waves at Eve, flipped through by an impatient thumb. They are pink. "Told you he was gay. Seriously. You're standing in line at the DMV and you realize Magneto's standing behind you. You think even a New Yorker's not gonna let him cut?" Black humor skeins through the dragging baritone, thickening the treacle of accent across the swells of consonants. "Wouldn't call him enigmatic. He talks, if you get him started."
"Well. He should be," Eve insists stubbornly, eyes following the wave of the post-its. "He was rather terse, with me. Though he was technically outside the DMV. Not in it," she feels compelled to admit. A moment later she rises to lean across the desk in an effort to grab the post-its from Rossi's hand.
Rossi surrenders the pad without argument, and sends the pencil flipping after it, end over end in a dangerous little somersault. "It's because you're a woman," he says, compounding insult with injury. His expression waxes wise. "He's got his own harem. One of them's blue and a complete nutjob. I've met her. I don't blame him for not wanting to talk much with chicks anymore. If Mystique showed up in my bed, I'd start batting for the other team in a heartbeat."
Eve slides back across the desk to resettle in her chair, too proud for such a meaningless accomplishment. "You think everything's about gender, don't you?" She studies the post-its in her lap, unruffled by the comment, flipping through them with a finger. "He's a nutjob," she points out. "Birds of a feather."
"Everything's about whatever I feel like it being," Rossi announces with a fine display of megalomania: birds, feathers, quack. He stretches himself longer still, leaving a fine streak of fingerprints across the desktop to harass Lazzaro with when his shift starts. "I'm not entirely sure he /is/ nuts, actually. A murderer, yeah, and a terrorist, but I'm pretty sure he's about as sane as they come."
"Insanity's a prerequisite for terrorist, you ask me," Eve opines, gaze shifting from pink post-its to Rossi, following his fingers' path. "You two have a fucked up relationship." She stirs, pushing back from the desk in her chair and tossing the post-it pad to the desk top.
"Me and Lazzaro?" Rossi asks, leaning into his elbow and glancing aside to pluck up the nameplate. Det. Vincent Lazzaro, it reads in polished brass. Chris leaves more fingerprints to plague his fellow cop, and winks its metal reflection at Eve. "Guy loves me. We're like brothers."
"Fucked up," Eve repeats evenly, bracing a hand against the desk's edge as she stands. Then, "I'm still on duty, technically." A thumb jerks toward the door of the squad room as she takes half a step toward it. She hesitates. Hand rises slightly from her side, in vague gesture. "Thanks."
The detective's mouth twists into a saturnine line: part grin, part grimace. His wrist flicks; the nameplate clatters back to the desk, crooked. "Anytime, Laszlo. Have a good one. Stay away from terrorists. Look both sides when crossing the street. Don't do drugs." Another yawn bites through the words, stretching them long like taffy as he sinks back into the chair. "Stay in school."
Eve shakes her head with a puff of breath. "You're an asshole, Rossi," she carols, as long strides carry her out -- feminine frame calmer and straighter than when she arrived.
[Log ends]
Eve met Magneto, and comes to tell Rossi in MA. He's about as comforting as a brick bat. Jackass.