Fucking Irony
Phone message to Jean Grey from Chris Rossi
"Hey, Doc. I need a hand. Ran into a telepath who needs to get a little lesson in the A-B-Cs of staying the fuck out of other people's minds. Give me a call if you're up for it, would you? Thanks."
---
After lunch, and while peace may be found far from the madding crowd, a Manhattan department store is hardly the place to find it. Caught up in holiday cheer -- no un-PC and litigable /Christmas/ here, thank you Feldstone & Crimps Assoc., LLC -- the mad shoppers of New York City compete and contest in the arena of consumerism. Witness Det. Chris Rossi, fingering his badge with wistful temptation as he eyes a pack of quarreling women, hunched in a jackal pack over a nest of ties. Overcoat, suit, gun: he smacks of officialdom, barring only that one shiny mark of authority. If only.
Percy is beginning, if only in his mind's eye, to resemble a pack mule; several bags slung over his left shoulder, the crinkle of plastic crackling in his ear as he moseys through the store, narrowly avoiding a collision with a pair of high-speed shoppers narrowing in on some gloves and snorting into a scowl in their wake.
Squabbling jackals eyed from the other side, Bahir makes a detour most pointedly around them, moving all at angles. Prickling at the edges, he hunches within his coat, a mere two bags on his arm. Up ahead, a figure clearly after his own heart: Rossi. Bahir spares a look back over his shoulder, hitching his shoulder at the women, before turning forward, mild sense of familiarity matched with a dusty memory. He pauses steps away, considering the tangle over the ties with a certain sardonic curve to his lips.
Irritating. High-pitched. /New York/. Dislike and aggression bash back and forth between the women, bared in thought and squabbling voices; nearby, less urgent, Rossi shakes his head -- the swift, pale glance skips over Bahir before turning back, tugged by a matching, puzzled recognition -- and steps back: to gloves. To scarves. To ... oops. "Sorry about that, ma-- Talhurst?" Bare hands, flown up to catch and hold, drop away. "I'll be damned."
Percy jerks back and straight and blinks at Rossi, owlish. One hand reaches to tangle through his air, first reaction dampened immediately with the slam of invisible fingers over his base chemistry (because it's irrational and stupid!), and he flashes a wry grin. "Rossi," he drawls, languid. "Hi."
Bahir wants at those ties. The women are blocking the ties. Therefore, he encourages dislike, he buffers aggression, and he steps back out of the way.
"Haven't seen you in a while," Rossi realizes, thrusting hands in his pockets to focus on the other man: a heartbeat's measuring, mining inspection. "The ... auction thing, wasn't it? Heard you got your apartment totalled by a Hummer. Tough luck." Sympathy coasts on the amused baritone, lobbed through the rising background noise of female voices. The tie crowd disperses slightly as bodies separate, colliding with hostility and reeling away like startled, peevish atoms.
The brow creases in memory."That sounds about right. Yeah, the auction." He snorts again, unconscious mimicry in the way his hands seek out the deep pockets of his own overcoat, and dryly adds, "Magneto owes me a ceiling. My lawyer was surprisingly unwilling to file in civil court--" Percy breaks off on an eye-roll, glance slanting towards the women and the ties. "Honestly, this season," he mutters, under his breath. It's a skittering glance that catches Bahir, notes him, steadies there for a moment, and then slips back to the tie display. "Christmas spirit my /ass/." It doesn't stop him from nudging it along: smoothening calm in chemical format, loosed in a broad wave to ease the tension in the room.
Attention fixing grumpily, Bahir frowns. The women settle around the ties, his attempts to aggravate met with a wall of calm. He pries with a wedge of resentment, jamming between chemicals and emotions. He fists his hands in their pockets, frown slipping to a scowl. Puzzlement bleeds to suspicion, suspicion leads to an idle scan. Finding Percy, he sighs, pressure easing with a bland look that skips over to Rossi, lingering thoughtfully.
Oblivious Rossi, handicapped with his homo sapiens senses -- though the swell and subsequent fall of antagonism nearby catches his passing attention. Once more he glances askance; once more a quizzical recognition picks up Bahir and finds him jarring: a pepper shaker without the salt. "I ever catch up to Magneto again, I'll make sure to mention it," he tells Percy, refocusing. Leather-cloaked shoulders ease, responding to that encouragement of calm. "You're lucky you weren't there. Where're you staying, in the meantime?"
"I, err, was there, in point of fact," Percy notes with a pained look, though humor drapes the words and warms them. Manicured fingers slip from his pocket to pinch the bridge of his nose between thumb and middle finger as, wryly, he notes, "My company was less than amused. -- My brother knows a fellow at the Marriott Marquis, so he's putting me up there for the moment."
With tabled scarves between them, Bahir lets his hands and mind wander: his hands smooth over this scarf and that one, lifting and twisting, checking weave and price; his mind dips, brushing past Percy and Rossi both in idle scrutiny. He leans against the chemical control on Rossi's emotions, muddying calm.
The strong back flexes, elbows hooking slightly wider to claim more personal space; behind the barrier of disciplined shields, the detective's mind knits, idly chasing the warp and weft of memory. "Your company? You running something out of your apartment? So much for gratitude." His accent roughens, unconsciously picking up the nuances of nearby cacophony: the snark and the smack of the New York breeding. Hard on the word, satisfied realization strikes."--Gratitude. Twin. Dates. /That's/ where I know him." Bahir. He wheels to rediscover the man.
"Just entertaining," demurs a humble Percy, though his glance slants to follow Rossi's to Bahir, mouth twisting slightly. "You know him, too? Good grief." He snorts. "Lovable chap, Bahir al-Razi. His brother's off with Sabby somewhere, or was, this morning." He shifts to fold his arms over his chest, lifting one hand from their cross to waggle fingers at Bahir in half an idle wave.
Attention pulling back as eyes turn in his direction, Bahir shifts awkwardly. He drops the scarf in hand, radiating mildly guilty innocence. He lifts a hand, an abortive wave in return. He sidesteps around the table and crosses to the other two. "Rossi, right?" he asks, a light touch of condescension making confirmation superfluous. "Hello again, Percy. Spreading Christmas cheer?" A touch of thwarted chaos drips over the last question, leaving trails of irritation.
"Good memory," drawls Rossi, answering the question, rhetorical or not. His chin lifts in a greeting of sorts, casual and inconsequential; his gaze skips past Bahir's shoulder, absent-mindedly looking for the ghost of that absent brother. "Small world. Then again, this time of year, you run into pretty much everybody at these damn stores. --Didn't know you knew Talhurst or Melcross."
Percy's mouth curves into the shadow of a smirk. "Everywhere I go," he lilts, too brightly, before darkness invades for a scowling growled, "Bloody season. Ran into Serena in Bloomingdale's this morning, and it's the second time today I've tripped over Bahir."
"Oh, yes, my brother and I both have met them. Adel and Sabitha seem to know each other well." Bahir says, perfectly bland, innuendo all the stronger for it. He does not, quite, use the word 'biblically'; his manner says it for him.
Green eyes sharpen, focusing on Bahir in the leading edge of irritation. "Yeah? Melcross is fun," Rossi will allow, restlessness informing the deep voice and planted stance. A shift nudges him towards the aisle's traffic, a stone in the currents of movement through the department. "So, what. Your brother and Sabby, and you and Talhurst?" Mild, mild curiosity. Oh, /so/ mild.
Amber eyes narrow at Bahir and Percy starts to speak, before Rossi's words draw him up short. He coughs. "That," he notes, quite mildly himself, "is the sort of thing you'd think I would remember."
Bahir grabs irritation and winds, smile lightly sweetened. "Fun? I wouldn't know. I've always found her a bit--" A bit something unspoken, apparently, words falling off. Shivering a smile in Percy's direction, Bahir spreads his hands. "You would, wouldn't you? Interesting assumption." Dark eyes rest on Rossi. /Interesting/.
"Shopping buddies," finishes Rossi, patiently flattening implication. The fine mouth curls, bleeding shadow in a corner. "Got a problem with Sabby? Not everybody's ... cup of tea, I suppose. --How's she doing?" he adds in Percy's direction, weight resettling on the balls of his feet. Irritation unspools and darkens, its thread thickening to annoyance.
Percy's expression shifts, tightens, closes down, as he squares his shoulders. "She's pissed at me."
"I don't like shopping much." Bahir bats back. "No particular problem, we just don't seem to get along." Pleased about that, he adds, "Though we do have interesting conversations." Hands-off approach taken to Rossi's annoyance, he flicks a glance at Percy to turn attention there. "What -did- you do? She's always so pleasant."
Surprise mates with curiosity and skims behind Rossi's mental aspect, painting shadow puppetry against his shields. His voice adds to Bahir's, wondering, "Thought you two were -- what was the phrase? BFF?" Annoyance fades, subsumed by dry amusement for recollection; further back, further in, erratic, unrelated facts web in conjecture.
Percy gives Bahir a very bland look, which slants soon enough to encompass Rossi as well. He shrugs his shoulders. "Who knows?" He tucks his hands back in his pockets, his face twisted into a rueful grimace. "Women."
Irritation briefly flashes to Rossi, but Bahir soon returns to Percy, smirkingly coaxing. "You must have some idea. Did you forget her birthday?"
"Shit," says Rossi, blankly and without heat. "You know, I have no idea when that is."
"I don't know either," Percy informs Rossi sadly. Then, to Bahir, ever-so-bland. "I made fun of her Christmas tree. I went to Egypt without her. And I didn't bring her anything back. Uh ..." Percy scratches his head. "I had to leave her concert early to throw up."
As Percy offers explanations, Bahir narrows his eyes, shifting through unguarded thoughts. "I thought you were all about Christmas cheer."
Rossi is a veritable cornucopia of said cheer. Lips twitch, black sweeping across green to veil a smile. Somber, aloud, he says, "--throw /up/. You're a crappy friend."
Or maybe, snipes Percy's surface thought in a dark-edged, lazy blend of sarcasm, it has something to do with that whole thing where he pretended to go to Egypt when really he was just hiding in his apartment and avoiding her for like a week and a half -- "Really, Bahir. Irony. We've discussed this. -- I know," he adds, solemnly, to Rossi. "I suck."
Bahir's fingers curve as he draws inwardly back, outer stance shifting only in a switch of weight from foot to foot. "You're not very good at that, are you," he sighs, faux sorrow winding lazy through his voice, "Recognizing irony in return. This is getting repetitive. I never thought I was particularly subtle." Lies. He thinks he's ninj.
"...and after she bailed you out, too." A clean thought, and a clear one, abruptly derailed; Rossi's smile fades marginally, brows twitching together over disorientation. Sudden restlessness: erratic, uninvited. Arms straighten in their pockets, straining the leather of his overcoat over the press of impatient knuckles. "Maybe I should step out and leave you two to it."
Percy twitches, just a little bit, and cants a glance at Rossi, brows lifting. "That's not necessary," he assures swiftly. "We're not really doing anything to be left to."
"Bailed him out?" Attention fragmenting, Bahir refocuses on Rossi: sounding again the note of disorientation, playing down restlessness.
A hand excavates itself to gesture at Percy, then reroutes to scratch at the raptor nose. "Mmf." Confusion muddies his trailing glance, canting Rossi's head to bank unease. "Talhurst had a little misunderstanding a while back. Just another funny story," he supposes, baritone burring over Brooklyn's terrain. The detective frets, and stays.
Percy grimaces darkly, one hand reaching to scrub at the back of his neck. He glowers at Bahir, not bothering to block the pheromonal prickle of irritation. "Yeah," he concurs, half a growl. "Funny."
Dark smile darting in response to Percy's words, Bahir cants his head. "Sounds like. How's it go?" He nudges, a suggestion of a suggestion to tell -- an unnecessary reminder -- but the majority of his focus lingers on Rossi. He measures the confusion and unease, sliding a sour note of doubt among their chords.
Again the detective stirs, face darkening, redrawing itself in harsher, heavier lines. Alien distraction jerks the orderly mind askew, tangling the fine lines of logic and reason behind barriers of training; Rossi's shoulders lift, hunching to cramp the loop of muffler. "His story," he says blandly, while unsettled apology scythes at Percy.
"I think," Percy notes reflectively, with a narrow-eyed look at Bahir, "I'd need a few drinks in me to tell it with proper /flair/." His look slips back to Rossi, searching briefly, though not exactly quizzical. Beneath the bland glance lingers concern, and the beginnings, as his eyes flick back to Bahir again, of suspicion.
"That sort of funny, hmm?" Words unconsidered, Bahir matches Percy's gaze for the appearance of innocence, a brief, ephemeral glance. "You really seem like you have quite enough flair as is." Subtle as a child with a sundae, he twirls a mental finger through the froth of distraction, pulling it to a point, sprinkled liberally with self-doubt.
Rossi stirs again, breath quickening -- only for abrupt realization to slam across his face. On the same breath, protection jags to assault, a javelin of immediate anger hurled to the attack, tipped with memory in all the exquisite, terrible homo sapiens senses. Decomposition in the nose, trickling to paint the back of the tongue; heat on the skin, latex and rubbery, dead flesh under the hands; familiar, dispassionate voices, ("Maybe seven, eight years old. Landlord keyed himself in after a neighbor complained about the smell--"); and sight. Blood pooled and dried, an insect-bored torso, the gape of a small head and popped, squashed eyeball--
The detective peels his gaze wider and skims his neighbors, suspicion bright and brittle.
Percy barely twitches at the unexpected spike of anger in his vicinity; he's watching Bahir, bland, and with that spike, suspicion creases his expression into a scowl. "I'd hate to disappoint an audience," he says quietly.
Battered back, mouth dry and palms damp, Bahir coughs out a sharp, "Fuck."
Green eyes narrow, pinning on Bahir. A moment later, so does an arm, lashing out to gather the front of Bahir's shirt in a strong, vicious fist -- and /pull/. Rossi snarls. "/You/."
Amber eyes go round, though Percy does nothing to interfere: all he does is take a single pace back, watching.
Pulled from his perch, Bahir stumbles forward to replant his feet, off-balance in every way. He grimaces, hand on Rossi's wrist combined with an entirely unsubtle telepathic suggestion: Let go. Aloud: "Your job sucks."
The fist eases, grudgingly, though retaliation is swift in coming: fury batters at the telepathic intrusion, a tidal wave of punishment mated with other crime scenes, other nightmares, all rendered in the glorious, encompassing recall of a born sensualist. Rossi drags Bahir closer, head dropping to head, black brushing black while green eyes gleam. Lips move by the twin's shell-like ear, breath hot and intimate across the ominous baritone. "I'll tell you this once and once only, dickhead. You stay out of my mind, or I'll jam your head so far down your throat, you'll be able to lick your balls from the inside. Got that?"
Percy has no words, no chemicals, no input to offer whatsoever: he observes with a breath caught in his throat, a faint moistening of his lips for the intensity, but that's all.
Head bowing under the onslaught, Bahir slams up broken shields; the tension in his body subsides immediately as the influx wanes: images, sounds, /smells/ -- oh, god, the smells. His head lifts, teeth set in a bright non-smile. "Fuck off," he growls. Laying a mental stumbling block over Rossi's sense of balance, he shoves him away.
More than a few surreptitious and more blatant stares already turn towards the men; such unpleasant encounters are an invariable side-show to Christmas shopping: quarrels over bargains, over inventory, over Christmas cheer. Heedless, Rossi staggers with that sudden vertigo, turning on a heel while the other leg throws itself out -- and the fist tightens again, afresh, jerking with the toss of weight. "Son of a /bitch/--"
<< Bahir >> Percy thinks the name at him, loudly, with a casual, cold bite to the mental voice -- skill and habit the fallen Bishop had not thought to use again, not so soon, certainly not in this context. << Stay out of his head. >> Heated in disdain, he snarls aloud, uncertain whether the younger man's telepathy is such that Percy can be heard with nothing more than thought, "Are you /stupid/, Bahir?"
Bahir fetches up against a wooden table, jostling a carefully ordered display and earning a bruise scheduled to appear the next morning. << Good idea, >> he tosses back at Percy, mental tones all the more acidic for his chill. Sticky fingers retreat from Rossi's mind, balance restored. He lifts his hand up off Rossi's wrist and spreads hands wide, an innocent gesture -- See? No weapons. -- meaningless but for intent. "Well, hell. -You- didn't notice."
Detective Rossi straightens, rediscovering gravity and orientation. A hard, hostile look speeds down the length of his arm, measuring Bahir's sincerity before the fist slowly, gently disengages. "That's a bad habit you got there, Peeping Tom," he grits, while spectators gape in avid, hopeful expectation of further violence.
Anger's loosed from its tight rein in an instant, flaring up and dangerous and sparking off its fuel -- such fuel -- to leave Percy standing still, speechless, fists tight at his sides, staring at Bahir with cold, cold eyes. He speaks, softly: "What were you looking for?" The words are jagged with the snarl he can't suppress, control stripped away from anger to slam down against encroaching fear, and he advances on Bahir in first a single step, and then another. A tiny, tight smile. "What," he growls, in Arabic, "did you find?"
"You don't think you maybe, possibly--" Bahir straightens his clothing, cuffs tugged with an air of heavy irony. "--overreacted?" He reviews, arriving at a soft-edged conclusion, as near as he treads to apology: "Possibly not." Tendrils uncoil, brushing Percy's emotions; touch begins to press anger back only to spiral inward in a tight flurry of conflicting chemicals. Neatly contained, he clears his throat. Very nearly coy, he blinks round at Percy once, mother-tongue smooth and dry: "You're in a bit of a mood."
A foreign language, beyond the grasp of understanding, gnaws half-moon bites out of already frayed patience. The thin skin around hooded eyes tightens, drawing taut under the ridge of brows. "Move along. Nothing to see here." Rossi snaps cliche at their audience, his badge stripped and flashed in an abrupt hand. The backswing of his glance touches on Percy, tracing back the skein of Arabic to Bahir.
<< Stay. Out. >> "Of mine," Percy says, very softly, in English. "Of his. You cross boundaries you were never meant to cross." << Like a child would. Like a toddler. >> The next words he speaks, on a small smile, are laced with quiet contempt. "Teething, Bahir?"
Shoulders set in an adolescent sulk, Bahir breaks eye contact to watch Rossi's hands as he manhandles attention away. Judging it a good cause, he floats the empathic suggestion of boredom toward stragglers. Biting the inner corner of his lip, he works words out on his tongue, not quite giving them voice. He growls, soft and wordless. "Not /meant/ to cross?" he echoes back.
Gold winks an implacable eye at Bahir, limning its reflection across Rossi's fingers. "Ethics aside, get /this/," says the detective, baritone flayed to the bone. "I catch you roaming around other people's minds without their permission, I will throw you in jail so fast, you won't know what hit you." The badge blinks against a breast pocket, settled in place to punctuate promise: the shield of authority, right hand of God and New York City.
Percy's mouth quirks, ever so slightly. "Not meant," he affirms, quietly. Then: "Would you look good in orange, do you think?"
"There ought to be a /law/," Bahir says, tone one of bland disapproval.
"Try me." Rossi's lips thin, slashing a stark, blade of a line. "I'll find one."
Percy grins bleakly, gone quiet.
His replies measured against their probable responses, Bahir finally tips his head. "You know, I don't think I will. It seems I was impolite."
Rare, that there should be any resemblance at all between Percy and Rossi, and yet -- for the passage of a second, the barest fraction of one -- there it is, in the hook of mouth, in the silent face. "That's one way of putting it," agrees the detective, antagonism gargoyled and metal-winged behind the eyes. "I think you might be done shopping here for the day."
Skepticism echoes in the word, murmured -- in fact barely vocalized. "/Impolite,/" mutters Percy.
Posture coiling to perfect stillness, Bahir bridles at the words of both. "I think I might be," he finally says, every inch as immature as accused. "Was leaving anyway." Feet drag as he turns and heads off, ducking curious looks.
Hands dug into pockets again, Rossi watches Bahir go, unblinking, coyote to insulted cat. The white noise of the department store hisses and murmurs around them, tangling strands of conversation across displays and sales. That slim back lost at last, the cop turns his head, profile picked out in remote, sharp lines against traffic. "You knew." Not a question.
Percy huffs a sigh, slipping his hands back into his own pockets with a crinkle of bags against his shoulder. "I knew he could," he allows, voice edging dark and irritated as he continues, "I didn't know he was /going/ to."
"You been having trouble with him?"
Percy slants a surprised look at Rossi, dark brows sweeping upwards. His lips twitch. "Not to my /knowledge/," he says, voice gone very dry, though there is a flicker of nervous worry across his expression, which tightens into a grimace.
Under the dig of brows, green eyes read Percy's face with a scholar's dispassion before turning back after the departed telepath. A muscle leaps in Rossi's jaw; the lean frame, restless and untethered at last, stirs into motion. "He tries that shit again, call me."
Percy blinks once and then again, as he reaches with one of his hands, freed of its pocket, to scrub at the back of his neck. "Okay."
Already poised for departure, Rossi pauses just long enough to tip a nod of farewell. There. The ghost of a smile, laggard but meant. "Merry Christmas, Talhurst." And off he goes, into holiday cheer. Ho ho fucking ho.
[Log ends]
Bahir al-Razi goes window-shopping in Percy and Rossi's brains, and makes a headache.
"Hey, Doc. I need a hand. Ran into a telepath who needs to get a little lesson in the A-B-Cs of staying the fuck out of other people's minds. Give me a call if you're up for it, would you? Thanks."
---
After lunch, and while peace may be found far from the madding crowd, a Manhattan department store is hardly the place to find it. Caught up in holiday cheer -- no un-PC and litigable /Christmas/ here, thank you Feldstone & Crimps Assoc., LLC -- the mad shoppers of New York City compete and contest in the arena of consumerism. Witness Det. Chris Rossi, fingering his badge with wistful temptation as he eyes a pack of quarreling women, hunched in a jackal pack over a nest of ties. Overcoat, suit, gun: he smacks of officialdom, barring only that one shiny mark of authority. If only.
Percy is beginning, if only in his mind's eye, to resemble a pack mule; several bags slung over his left shoulder, the crinkle of plastic crackling in his ear as he moseys through the store, narrowly avoiding a collision with a pair of high-speed shoppers narrowing in on some gloves and snorting into a scowl in their wake.
Squabbling jackals eyed from the other side, Bahir makes a detour most pointedly around them, moving all at angles. Prickling at the edges, he hunches within his coat, a mere two bags on his arm. Up ahead, a figure clearly after his own heart: Rossi. Bahir spares a look back over his shoulder, hitching his shoulder at the women, before turning forward, mild sense of familiarity matched with a dusty memory. He pauses steps away, considering the tangle over the ties with a certain sardonic curve to his lips.
Irritating. High-pitched. /New York/. Dislike and aggression bash back and forth between the women, bared in thought and squabbling voices; nearby, less urgent, Rossi shakes his head -- the swift, pale glance skips over Bahir before turning back, tugged by a matching, puzzled recognition -- and steps back: to gloves. To scarves. To ... oops. "Sorry about that, ma-- Talhurst?" Bare hands, flown up to catch and hold, drop away. "I'll be damned."
Percy jerks back and straight and blinks at Rossi, owlish. One hand reaches to tangle through his air, first reaction dampened immediately with the slam of invisible fingers over his base chemistry (because it's irrational and stupid!), and he flashes a wry grin. "Rossi," he drawls, languid. "Hi."
Bahir wants at those ties. The women are blocking the ties. Therefore, he encourages dislike, he buffers aggression, and he steps back out of the way.
"Haven't seen you in a while," Rossi realizes, thrusting hands in his pockets to focus on the other man: a heartbeat's measuring, mining inspection. "The ... auction thing, wasn't it? Heard you got your apartment totalled by a Hummer. Tough luck." Sympathy coasts on the amused baritone, lobbed through the rising background noise of female voices. The tie crowd disperses slightly as bodies separate, colliding with hostility and reeling away like startled, peevish atoms.
The brow creases in memory."That sounds about right. Yeah, the auction." He snorts again, unconscious mimicry in the way his hands seek out the deep pockets of his own overcoat, and dryly adds, "Magneto owes me a ceiling. My lawyer was surprisingly unwilling to file in civil court--" Percy breaks off on an eye-roll, glance slanting towards the women and the ties. "Honestly, this season," he mutters, under his breath. It's a skittering glance that catches Bahir, notes him, steadies there for a moment, and then slips back to the tie display. "Christmas spirit my /ass/." It doesn't stop him from nudging it along: smoothening calm in chemical format, loosed in a broad wave to ease the tension in the room.
Attention fixing grumpily, Bahir frowns. The women settle around the ties, his attempts to aggravate met with a wall of calm. He pries with a wedge of resentment, jamming between chemicals and emotions. He fists his hands in their pockets, frown slipping to a scowl. Puzzlement bleeds to suspicion, suspicion leads to an idle scan. Finding Percy, he sighs, pressure easing with a bland look that skips over to Rossi, lingering thoughtfully.
Oblivious Rossi, handicapped with his homo sapiens senses -- though the swell and subsequent fall of antagonism nearby catches his passing attention. Once more he glances askance; once more a quizzical recognition picks up Bahir and finds him jarring: a pepper shaker without the salt. "I ever catch up to Magneto again, I'll make sure to mention it," he tells Percy, refocusing. Leather-cloaked shoulders ease, responding to that encouragement of calm. "You're lucky you weren't there. Where're you staying, in the meantime?"
"I, err, was there, in point of fact," Percy notes with a pained look, though humor drapes the words and warms them. Manicured fingers slip from his pocket to pinch the bridge of his nose between thumb and middle finger as, wryly, he notes, "My company was less than amused. -- My brother knows a fellow at the Marriott Marquis, so he's putting me up there for the moment."
With tabled scarves between them, Bahir lets his hands and mind wander: his hands smooth over this scarf and that one, lifting and twisting, checking weave and price; his mind dips, brushing past Percy and Rossi both in idle scrutiny. He leans against the chemical control on Rossi's emotions, muddying calm.
The strong back flexes, elbows hooking slightly wider to claim more personal space; behind the barrier of disciplined shields, the detective's mind knits, idly chasing the warp and weft of memory. "Your company? You running something out of your apartment? So much for gratitude." His accent roughens, unconsciously picking up the nuances of nearby cacophony: the snark and the smack of the New York breeding. Hard on the word, satisfied realization strikes."--Gratitude. Twin. Dates. /That's/ where I know him." Bahir. He wheels to rediscover the man.
"Just entertaining," demurs a humble Percy, though his glance slants to follow Rossi's to Bahir, mouth twisting slightly. "You know him, too? Good grief." He snorts. "Lovable chap, Bahir al-Razi. His brother's off with Sabby somewhere, or was, this morning." He shifts to fold his arms over his chest, lifting one hand from their cross to waggle fingers at Bahir in half an idle wave.
Attention pulling back as eyes turn in his direction, Bahir shifts awkwardly. He drops the scarf in hand, radiating mildly guilty innocence. He lifts a hand, an abortive wave in return. He sidesteps around the table and crosses to the other two. "Rossi, right?" he asks, a light touch of condescension making confirmation superfluous. "Hello again, Percy. Spreading Christmas cheer?" A touch of thwarted chaos drips over the last question, leaving trails of irritation.
"Good memory," drawls Rossi, answering the question, rhetorical or not. His chin lifts in a greeting of sorts, casual and inconsequential; his gaze skips past Bahir's shoulder, absent-mindedly looking for the ghost of that absent brother. "Small world. Then again, this time of year, you run into pretty much everybody at these damn stores. --Didn't know you knew Talhurst or Melcross."
Percy's mouth curves into the shadow of a smirk. "Everywhere I go," he lilts, too brightly, before darkness invades for a scowling growled, "Bloody season. Ran into Serena in Bloomingdale's this morning, and it's the second time today I've tripped over Bahir."
"Oh, yes, my brother and I both have met them. Adel and Sabitha seem to know each other well." Bahir says, perfectly bland, innuendo all the stronger for it. He does not, quite, use the word 'biblically'; his manner says it for him.
Green eyes sharpen, focusing on Bahir in the leading edge of irritation. "Yeah? Melcross is fun," Rossi will allow, restlessness informing the deep voice and planted stance. A shift nudges him towards the aisle's traffic, a stone in the currents of movement through the department. "So, what. Your brother and Sabby, and you and Talhurst?" Mild, mild curiosity. Oh, /so/ mild.
Amber eyes narrow at Bahir and Percy starts to speak, before Rossi's words draw him up short. He coughs. "That," he notes, quite mildly himself, "is the sort of thing you'd think I would remember."
Bahir grabs irritation and winds, smile lightly sweetened. "Fun? I wouldn't know. I've always found her a bit--" A bit something unspoken, apparently, words falling off. Shivering a smile in Percy's direction, Bahir spreads his hands. "You would, wouldn't you? Interesting assumption." Dark eyes rest on Rossi. /Interesting/.
"Shopping buddies," finishes Rossi, patiently flattening implication. The fine mouth curls, bleeding shadow in a corner. "Got a problem with Sabby? Not everybody's ... cup of tea, I suppose. --How's she doing?" he adds in Percy's direction, weight resettling on the balls of his feet. Irritation unspools and darkens, its thread thickening to annoyance.
Percy's expression shifts, tightens, closes down, as he squares his shoulders. "She's pissed at me."
"I don't like shopping much." Bahir bats back. "No particular problem, we just don't seem to get along." Pleased about that, he adds, "Though we do have interesting conversations." Hands-off approach taken to Rossi's annoyance, he flicks a glance at Percy to turn attention there. "What -did- you do? She's always so pleasant."
Surprise mates with curiosity and skims behind Rossi's mental aspect, painting shadow puppetry against his shields. His voice adds to Bahir's, wondering, "Thought you two were -- what was the phrase? BFF?" Annoyance fades, subsumed by dry amusement for recollection; further back, further in, erratic, unrelated facts web in conjecture.
Percy gives Bahir a very bland look, which slants soon enough to encompass Rossi as well. He shrugs his shoulders. "Who knows?" He tucks his hands back in his pockets, his face twisted into a rueful grimace. "Women."
Irritation briefly flashes to Rossi, but Bahir soon returns to Percy, smirkingly coaxing. "You must have some idea. Did you forget her birthday?"
"Shit," says Rossi, blankly and without heat. "You know, I have no idea when that is."
"I don't know either," Percy informs Rossi sadly. Then, to Bahir, ever-so-bland. "I made fun of her Christmas tree. I went to Egypt without her. And I didn't bring her anything back. Uh ..." Percy scratches his head. "I had to leave her concert early to throw up."
As Percy offers explanations, Bahir narrows his eyes, shifting through unguarded thoughts. "I thought you were all about Christmas cheer."
Rossi is a veritable cornucopia of said cheer. Lips twitch, black sweeping across green to veil a smile. Somber, aloud, he says, "--throw /up/. You're a crappy friend."
Or maybe, snipes Percy's surface thought in a dark-edged, lazy blend of sarcasm, it has something to do with that whole thing where he pretended to go to Egypt when really he was just hiding in his apartment and avoiding her for like a week and a half -- "Really, Bahir. Irony. We've discussed this. -- I know," he adds, solemnly, to Rossi. "I suck."
Bahir's fingers curve as he draws inwardly back, outer stance shifting only in a switch of weight from foot to foot. "You're not very good at that, are you," he sighs, faux sorrow winding lazy through his voice, "Recognizing irony in return. This is getting repetitive. I never thought I was particularly subtle." Lies. He thinks he's ninj.
"...and after she bailed you out, too." A clean thought, and a clear one, abruptly derailed; Rossi's smile fades marginally, brows twitching together over disorientation. Sudden restlessness: erratic, uninvited. Arms straighten in their pockets, straining the leather of his overcoat over the press of impatient knuckles. "Maybe I should step out and leave you two to it."
Percy twitches, just a little bit, and cants a glance at Rossi, brows lifting. "That's not necessary," he assures swiftly. "We're not really doing anything to be left to."
"Bailed him out?" Attention fragmenting, Bahir refocuses on Rossi: sounding again the note of disorientation, playing down restlessness.
A hand excavates itself to gesture at Percy, then reroutes to scratch at the raptor nose. "Mmf." Confusion muddies his trailing glance, canting Rossi's head to bank unease. "Talhurst had a little misunderstanding a while back. Just another funny story," he supposes, baritone burring over Brooklyn's terrain. The detective frets, and stays.
Percy grimaces darkly, one hand reaching to scrub at the back of his neck. He glowers at Bahir, not bothering to block the pheromonal prickle of irritation. "Yeah," he concurs, half a growl. "Funny."
Dark smile darting in response to Percy's words, Bahir cants his head. "Sounds like. How's it go?" He nudges, a suggestion of a suggestion to tell -- an unnecessary reminder -- but the majority of his focus lingers on Rossi. He measures the confusion and unease, sliding a sour note of doubt among their chords.
Again the detective stirs, face darkening, redrawing itself in harsher, heavier lines. Alien distraction jerks the orderly mind askew, tangling the fine lines of logic and reason behind barriers of training; Rossi's shoulders lift, hunching to cramp the loop of muffler. "His story," he says blandly, while unsettled apology scythes at Percy.
"I think," Percy notes reflectively, with a narrow-eyed look at Bahir, "I'd need a few drinks in me to tell it with proper /flair/." His look slips back to Rossi, searching briefly, though not exactly quizzical. Beneath the bland glance lingers concern, and the beginnings, as his eyes flick back to Bahir again, of suspicion.
"That sort of funny, hmm?" Words unconsidered, Bahir matches Percy's gaze for the appearance of innocence, a brief, ephemeral glance. "You really seem like you have quite enough flair as is." Subtle as a child with a sundae, he twirls a mental finger through the froth of distraction, pulling it to a point, sprinkled liberally with self-doubt.
Rossi stirs again, breath quickening -- only for abrupt realization to slam across his face. On the same breath, protection jags to assault, a javelin of immediate anger hurled to the attack, tipped with memory in all the exquisite, terrible homo sapiens senses. Decomposition in the nose, trickling to paint the back of the tongue; heat on the skin, latex and rubbery, dead flesh under the hands; familiar, dispassionate voices, ("Maybe seven, eight years old. Landlord keyed himself in after a neighbor complained about the smell--"); and sight. Blood pooled and dried, an insect-bored torso, the gape of a small head and popped, squashed eyeball--
The detective peels his gaze wider and skims his neighbors, suspicion bright and brittle.
Percy barely twitches at the unexpected spike of anger in his vicinity; he's watching Bahir, bland, and with that spike, suspicion creases his expression into a scowl. "I'd hate to disappoint an audience," he says quietly.
Battered back, mouth dry and palms damp, Bahir coughs out a sharp, "Fuck."
Green eyes narrow, pinning on Bahir. A moment later, so does an arm, lashing out to gather the front of Bahir's shirt in a strong, vicious fist -- and /pull/. Rossi snarls. "/You/."
Amber eyes go round, though Percy does nothing to interfere: all he does is take a single pace back, watching.
Pulled from his perch, Bahir stumbles forward to replant his feet, off-balance in every way. He grimaces, hand on Rossi's wrist combined with an entirely unsubtle telepathic suggestion: Let go. Aloud: "Your job sucks."
The fist eases, grudgingly, though retaliation is swift in coming: fury batters at the telepathic intrusion, a tidal wave of punishment mated with other crime scenes, other nightmares, all rendered in the glorious, encompassing recall of a born sensualist. Rossi drags Bahir closer, head dropping to head, black brushing black while green eyes gleam. Lips move by the twin's shell-like ear, breath hot and intimate across the ominous baritone. "I'll tell you this once and once only, dickhead. You stay out of my mind, or I'll jam your head so far down your throat, you'll be able to lick your balls from the inside. Got that?"
Percy has no words, no chemicals, no input to offer whatsoever: he observes with a breath caught in his throat, a faint moistening of his lips for the intensity, but that's all.
Head bowing under the onslaught, Bahir slams up broken shields; the tension in his body subsides immediately as the influx wanes: images, sounds, /smells/ -- oh, god, the smells. His head lifts, teeth set in a bright non-smile. "Fuck off," he growls. Laying a mental stumbling block over Rossi's sense of balance, he shoves him away.
More than a few surreptitious and more blatant stares already turn towards the men; such unpleasant encounters are an invariable side-show to Christmas shopping: quarrels over bargains, over inventory, over Christmas cheer. Heedless, Rossi staggers with that sudden vertigo, turning on a heel while the other leg throws itself out -- and the fist tightens again, afresh, jerking with the toss of weight. "Son of a /bitch/--"
<< Bahir >> Percy thinks the name at him, loudly, with a casual, cold bite to the mental voice -- skill and habit the fallen Bishop had not thought to use again, not so soon, certainly not in this context. << Stay out of his head. >> Heated in disdain, he snarls aloud, uncertain whether the younger man's telepathy is such that Percy can be heard with nothing more than thought, "Are you /stupid/, Bahir?"
Bahir fetches up against a wooden table, jostling a carefully ordered display and earning a bruise scheduled to appear the next morning. << Good idea, >> he tosses back at Percy, mental tones all the more acidic for his chill. Sticky fingers retreat from Rossi's mind, balance restored. He lifts his hand up off Rossi's wrist and spreads hands wide, an innocent gesture -- See? No weapons. -- meaningless but for intent. "Well, hell. -You- didn't notice."
Detective Rossi straightens, rediscovering gravity and orientation. A hard, hostile look speeds down the length of his arm, measuring Bahir's sincerity before the fist slowly, gently disengages. "That's a bad habit you got there, Peeping Tom," he grits, while spectators gape in avid, hopeful expectation of further violence.
Anger's loosed from its tight rein in an instant, flaring up and dangerous and sparking off its fuel -- such fuel -- to leave Percy standing still, speechless, fists tight at his sides, staring at Bahir with cold, cold eyes. He speaks, softly: "What were you looking for?" The words are jagged with the snarl he can't suppress, control stripped away from anger to slam down against encroaching fear, and he advances on Bahir in first a single step, and then another. A tiny, tight smile. "What," he growls, in Arabic, "did you find?"
"You don't think you maybe, possibly--" Bahir straightens his clothing, cuffs tugged with an air of heavy irony. "--overreacted?" He reviews, arriving at a soft-edged conclusion, as near as he treads to apology: "Possibly not." Tendrils uncoil, brushing Percy's emotions; touch begins to press anger back only to spiral inward in a tight flurry of conflicting chemicals. Neatly contained, he clears his throat. Very nearly coy, he blinks round at Percy once, mother-tongue smooth and dry: "You're in a bit of a mood."
A foreign language, beyond the grasp of understanding, gnaws half-moon bites out of already frayed patience. The thin skin around hooded eyes tightens, drawing taut under the ridge of brows. "Move along. Nothing to see here." Rossi snaps cliche at their audience, his badge stripped and flashed in an abrupt hand. The backswing of his glance touches on Percy, tracing back the skein of Arabic to Bahir.
<< Stay. Out. >> "Of mine," Percy says, very softly, in English. "Of his. You cross boundaries you were never meant to cross." << Like a child would. Like a toddler. >> The next words he speaks, on a small smile, are laced with quiet contempt. "Teething, Bahir?"
Shoulders set in an adolescent sulk, Bahir breaks eye contact to watch Rossi's hands as he manhandles attention away. Judging it a good cause, he floats the empathic suggestion of boredom toward stragglers. Biting the inner corner of his lip, he works words out on his tongue, not quite giving them voice. He growls, soft and wordless. "Not /meant/ to cross?" he echoes back.
Gold winks an implacable eye at Bahir, limning its reflection across Rossi's fingers. "Ethics aside, get /this/," says the detective, baritone flayed to the bone. "I catch you roaming around other people's minds without their permission, I will throw you in jail so fast, you won't know what hit you." The badge blinks against a breast pocket, settled in place to punctuate promise: the shield of authority, right hand of God and New York City.
Percy's mouth quirks, ever so slightly. "Not meant," he affirms, quietly. Then: "Would you look good in orange, do you think?"
"There ought to be a /law/," Bahir says, tone one of bland disapproval.
"Try me." Rossi's lips thin, slashing a stark, blade of a line. "I'll find one."
Percy grins bleakly, gone quiet.
His replies measured against their probable responses, Bahir finally tips his head. "You know, I don't think I will. It seems I was impolite."
Rare, that there should be any resemblance at all between Percy and Rossi, and yet -- for the passage of a second, the barest fraction of one -- there it is, in the hook of mouth, in the silent face. "That's one way of putting it," agrees the detective, antagonism gargoyled and metal-winged behind the eyes. "I think you might be done shopping here for the day."
Skepticism echoes in the word, murmured -- in fact barely vocalized. "/Impolite,/" mutters Percy.
Posture coiling to perfect stillness, Bahir bridles at the words of both. "I think I might be," he finally says, every inch as immature as accused. "Was leaving anyway." Feet drag as he turns and heads off, ducking curious looks.
Hands dug into pockets again, Rossi watches Bahir go, unblinking, coyote to insulted cat. The white noise of the department store hisses and murmurs around them, tangling strands of conversation across displays and sales. That slim back lost at last, the cop turns his head, profile picked out in remote, sharp lines against traffic. "You knew." Not a question.
Percy huffs a sigh, slipping his hands back into his own pockets with a crinkle of bags against his shoulder. "I knew he could," he allows, voice edging dark and irritated as he continues, "I didn't know he was /going/ to."
"You been having trouble with him?"
Percy slants a surprised look at Rossi, dark brows sweeping upwards. His lips twitch. "Not to my /knowledge/," he says, voice gone very dry, though there is a flicker of nervous worry across his expression, which tightens into a grimace.
Under the dig of brows, green eyes read Percy's face with a scholar's dispassion before turning back after the departed telepath. A muscle leaps in Rossi's jaw; the lean frame, restless and untethered at last, stirs into motion. "He tries that shit again, call me."
Percy blinks once and then again, as he reaches with one of his hands, freed of its pocket, to scrub at the back of his neck. "Okay."
Already poised for departure, Rossi pauses just long enough to tip a nod of farewell. There. The ghost of a smile, laggard but meant. "Merry Christmas, Talhurst." And off he goes, into holiday cheer. Ho ho fucking ho.
[Log ends]
Bahir al-Razi goes window-shopping in Percy and Rossi's brains, and makes a headache.