Participants:
| Scene Title | Interruptus |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Moments after her confrontation with disguised Company agents, Minea barges in on Felix's hotel room. Felix isn't alone in his hotel room — but he's about to be, for awhile. |
| Date | February 10, 2009 |
Like The Holiday Inn — Felix's Room
It's no longer that seedy hotel near Midtown. This is somewhat further out in the boroughs, a plain, clean chain motel. The one travelling businessmen might stay in. And to all appearances, that's what Fel's been. To Teo's shock, no doubt, he's deeply asleep - limp as a rag, and more or less draped along the line of Teo's back. He doesn't snore, doesn't move, barely even breathes, in fact.
Having been gently rebuked or remonstrated once or twice for snoring already, Teo stuck his face in the pillow. His brain doesn't need a lot of oxygen anyway, the job that Abby's done reengineering it. The stuffed cotton is dimpled deep around the point of his nose, eyelids flat against cotton-skinned creases, arms underneath and muscled frame wreathed in pillows, content as a basking kitten under the fierce heat of Felix's speedster metabolism.
It's been a shit start to the week, professionally speaking, and personal matters promise to make things worse. He enjoys the simplicity of this momentary serenity for what it's worth.
Sleep would be nice. Sleep is something everyone needs. But sleep is going to be interrupted. At the same time that there's a phone bleating and making it's prescense known, there's another sound.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Ivanov, let me in" Miena's voice comes through the door, gracious in it's volume and understanding of those who might be sleeping on either adjacent room. The phone likely the front desk warning of impending visitor.
I….oh, god, the dreams. What? Fel is for the moment utterly lost. It takes him a few seconds to stumble towards the door, blinking like an owlet as he hastily belts a dark blue robe around himself. It's like the only color out of monochrome Felix believes exists is blue. The peephole darkens, and then he's drawing the door back on its chain to peer narrowly at her. "What happened? What're you doing here?" he wonders, hoarsely.
Minea, favoring left side far more than she was when he'd seen her at dinner last is on the other side, irritated, scowling, right hand bearing coffee and a white and green box of donguts. She's heavily favoring her left arm right now. "Someone broke into my loft. I couldn't sleep. Einliter's dead, your pretty much the other person in this shit ass city who I trust. let me in. It's fucking cold"
The baby terrorist, on the other hand, reacts first with a graceless grunt; still profoundly unavailable for coherency or thought. Second by bouncing on overtaxed bedsprings under Felix's weight, and third by panicking into a mad scrabble onto the floor.
Though Teo ordinarily goes through a reasonably lengthy transitory stage in emerging from unconsciousness, adrenaline clicks him straight from asleep to awake. There's no need for instruction or question. He snags his jeans in one hand, gun in the other. Doesn't lay the latter to rest when he hears Minea's voice, but it does go instead into its holster.
Minea, favoring left side far more than she was when he'd seen her at dinner last is on the other side, irritated, scowling, right hand bearing coffee and a white and green box of donguts. She's heavily favoring her left arm right now. "Someone broke into my loft. I couldn't sleep. Einliter's dead, your pretty much the other person in this shit ass city who I trust. let me in. It's fucking cold."
Felix asides, out of the corner of his mouth, to Teo, "IT's fine. A friend. Put your damn pants on," To Minea, he asks, "Not followed?"
Incredulity marks Teo's brow. "What the fuck is she going to think about this if she comes in and sees this?" he hisses, dragging his pants on, up, arranging them and himself in it to prevent painful or otherwise embarrassing accidents. His discarded underwear is swept underneath the bed with one naked foot, the nearest next article of clothing snagged in a hand. Felix's. Resisting the urge to waste a moment on a roll of his eyes, he sends the oxford shirt flying into the cheaply-upholstered armchair, and snatches a sweater up. "What's wrong with you? Don't give me the whole list."
"Christ, Kitty. The first words should have been I've got a piece of ass in the bed, go get a different room instead of were you followed" She shakes her head. "Course I wasn't followed. Go back to your friend, i'll go get a room here. Want the coffee before I go?"
"We don't have all night, no," Fel says, with mock regret. "No, come in," Fel says, "Just….a second," He glances back over his shoulder at Teo, a bit impatiently.
Maybe Teo should just shoot him. Deckard would probably like him again. His features freeze over into a glare that could probably take the skin off anybody else, but Felix being selectively cut from marble, it probably does nothing but remind the older man indulgently of the good old days when the Sicilian hiss and spat and hackled from across the breadth of a diner. His head disappears under the hem of his sweater, tattooed arms, and he hauls it down. A cursory glance over the mattress reassures him that there's nothing heinously sticking showing.
The corner of his mouth twitches fiercely.
He isn't going to laugh. Teo isn't going to laugh. That would be stupid. This whole thing is stupid. He drops himself on his haunches against the wall, reaches up to tug the tiny chain of the desk light. The room abruptly glows yellow.
"Get her decent Kitty. I can wait at least" And she can. Coffee balanced on box, a shoulder holster on tonight instead of hidden in her belt. Minea's impatiently patient. Shooting looks and curious about what constitutes A piece of ass of Felix
Kitty. Of all the nicknames. Satisfied there's no overt indecency, Fel tugs the door open, having released the chain lock. "Come in," he says, with a sigh in his voice. "You're not the only person I'm offering sanctuary to, tonight. It's not what it looks like."
'It' happens to be cross-legged on the carpet, jeans properly sealed around his hips, a sweater hanging roughly even off his shoulders, and a .9 in his hands, watching Minea through pallid eyes, out-of-place more for his mannerisms than anything else: an urban elf small amid furniture and incandescent bulbs. Teo looks like a refugee from justice. Is. That might work just as well: curfew is an ugly reality for his ilk and most of New York City. "Buona sera," he greets the woman, politely.
"Kitty, really, I can go rent another ro… Cravaggio…." The urban elf is spotted, his name spoke. Not what it looks like. right. Minea's eyes dance backa nd forth between Teo and Felix. "Buona Sera" thrown back at Teo before 'Well, at least I wasn't only fucking a phoneix operative. You aimed higher though" The woman strides further in to lay the box and coffees down. Not caring a whit that kitty's "ass" was a guy.
"I…." Felix is, in fact, a terrible liar. He expels another of those slow sighs. "What do you mean?" he wonders, locking the door and picking up a coffee. "And what happened tonight?"
Teo's brow finds a new line when she implies that. His rank. Sounds like someone fucking talked. Conrad Wozniak — yeah, he's figured — was a decade his senior and more experienced in every department of life that the Sicilian can think of. To him, it doesn't stand to reason she could have figured that out alone. It's a decidedly obstinate set that his jaw finds, defensive, automatically wary as the next battered creature that was extricated from death's jaws and hauled out of HomeSec's noose.
Doesn't stop him from asking: "You all right, signora?"
"Window was open half an inch. Someone was waiting. Didn't notice it, just far too happy to have power and be able to get some work done. They got a taste of how badly they fucked up by coming into my place. Nothing was stolen" Minea peels off the jacket, keeping her arm close once it's off. "But someones going to be rethinking about trying to get in close and take a run for me. I'm fine Cravaggio, gunshot's irritated. Nothing some ice won't take care of" She snags one of the four coffee's and passes it over to Teo. 'Get the look off your face. Was wozniak I was screwing. Long before I knew he was with you guys" She assumes the look is him trying to figure out who she was bedding, not how she figured his rank out within the phoenic hierarchy.
"Dunno, maybe they saw my computers thorough a window while prowling and I interrupted them. They were pretty good though. I played tag around my kitchen and they left when I got the upper hand" Minea glances to Felix as she takes a seat, rubbing gingerly at her upper left arm. "Super speedy, one of them. Smacked a hand into my chest and sent me flying along the floor. Power went out a couple hours later so I said fuck it and came to find you. Christian's dead, Wozniak's dead. I seriously need to make more friends Kitty."
In the meantime, Teo deliberately avoids the speculative look his evening's keeper sends him. Stays where he is, seated on the floor, gun in hands, foul temper on his face albeit mollified faintly by Minea's verbal confirmation of what he had already deduced in private. She wasn't the only woman using Conrad for that, and he was a good man — which isn't even a thing he thinks in lewd terms. Someone you could trust enough to get naked with.
Heh.
"No ID, no badge. How many? What were they dressed like?" he tilts his head, studies the woman from over the top of his coffee cup.
"Please, of all the nicknames to give me," Felix says, looking faintly pained. "A little too…." he doesn't finish the thought. Teo's asking the relevant question. "You're safe here, s'far's I know. Doesn't sound like a random break-in. After some document or info you might have, or you yourself?"
"Might have been me. Laptop wasn't touched. black clothing, balaclava's, gloves, two of them. They knew how to approach. One's got a sizeable dent in his head from a cast iron pan. Do you know how hard it is to fight in four inch high stiletto's?" Minea takes her own coffee "I've called you Kitty since the first time I gave you morphine Felix" Minea twitches as she take sip from her coffee. "Got any ice here?"
Yes. No. Maybe. Teo isn't sure how much is left, after— "Micino could call for room service," he says, crooking a thumb away from his beverage and over at the Russian. "There's a Registered healer I know you could get to, too — SCOUT Cap's brother. Appreciate it if you wouldn't mention me.
"He's too nice a guy for me to want to see arrested for consorting with terrorists," he says blandly enough. As opposed to…
His features go still as he considers the unit she described. Two men, one Evolved, meddling with someone with espionage and similar teamwork in her background. Makes a kid wonder. "There's a clandestine organization I know about," he hazards, finally. "Could be anyone, mind you. HomeSec. Christian's old enemies. But you might want to know about the other fish swimming in your pool, just in case."
"This Company — they strike that openly?" Fel seems displeased at the idea, as he drifts over to a seat at the table, settling himself comfortably. "There's an icemaker down the hall. I'll get you some in just a second. Evolved…"
Teo's words give the woman pause, not because she knows exactly who did it, their card is sitting back at her loft. But because of what else that Teo said. "Christian's enemies. I'm pretty sure that Christian's death wasn't.. normal. What if it was the same people?" Minea looks to the arm and shakes her head. "I'll let it heal, on it's own. I already had someone special look at it but ice will bring down the swelling. I changed the bandage at the loft" She glances to Felix. "Evolved. He dismantled my gun "
There's a brief flare of teeth across Teo's features. "If by openly you mean they chased a spook down her rabbit hole and got away unidentified, si. Openly." The .45's nozzle tilts sideways, swiveling past the legs of the endtable to glare at the wall. "If it was the same people, I hate them and hope they get hurt, but I still don't know what they want with you.
"Chris didn't have a lot of friends, but I don't know what kind of people he pissed off." He tucks his lower incisors underneath the rim of the cup's lid, pries it off with a faint pop. Craning his head, he spits it out onto yesterday's paper atop the table.
"I agree. The chances the supposed accident was an actual accident are slim to none," Felix agrees, tone professorial, even as he slouches down in the chair. Not smoking - it's a non-smoking room, but he's pulled a black cigarette from that pewter case, tapping it idly against the tabletop, and eyeing his dim reflection in the room's window. "Do you have somewhere else safe you can set up?"
"I can requisition a new safe house, likely nothing as big since I don't need that much space anymore" Minea answers. "Chris didn't have friends, but it's not like his line of work doens't make with it some pissed off people cravaggio" She points out to Teo. "For all I knwo, maybe it was someone who thought I had some art since I do deal in art"
Whatever his rank is, it isn't in Teo to bristle at a tone of voice that proposes to illuminate him even if he had already reached that conclusion by himself — insofar as he assumes nothing. His brow furrows slightly, a look of confusion more at home on his face than the incipient hatred and ill temper that has held sway over it for the past few minutes. It smooths, after a moment. He raises his cup of coffee slightly: polite acknowledgment. And then he rises to his feet and snags a few stray articles of clothing off the floor.
Boxers from underneath the bed, another jacket. There's little mystery as to where he plans to go— 'out' probably covers it, but given the hour and curfew, prospectively unwise. "We owe you a few good turns," he remarks. "Someone will check in with you, but we'll stay out of your shit if you want us to. Glad you're all right, signora."
Felix nods, gravely. "I'll do what I can. You're welcome to stay here tonight," he says, without even a twinge of regret for the time with Teo lost. Though there's one glance, just an instant, but enough to give him away. Stupid longing. "Let me call down, get an extra bed."
"Phoenix needs to stay out of my affairs, same as I'm staying out of its affairs unless otherwise ordered to. But it's thankful, your offer" There's a motion made to Teo as he rises, sit sit sit as Minea herself stands. "I'll go get a room. I have cash on me. Get it where you can Felix. Same goes for you Caravaggio. I disrupted, not the other way around. Enjoy the donuts, i'll get a room on the same floor at least" Her purse and jacket are scooped up.
There's something distinctly sullen about the glance Teo directs at the honorable lawmen from over his shoulder, matching Felix's longing note for note in brilliant orchestral counterpoint. He has grace enough, at least, not to shut the bathroom behind him before he manages to find a half a smile and an odd blush, a verbal rejoinder: "You're already in my fucking affairs, signora." There's a click of doorjamb meeting frame, lacking only the paranoia to lock it; the younger man allows the Feds their privacy while he uses his own to get himself dressed.
Fel has dignity enough not to blush, at least this time. "You're sure?" he says, but it's demurral merely for politeness' sake, really. He doesn't seem terribly ashamed of having been caught out with Teo in his bed.
"Then when I leave you better get back to fucking" Spoken to the closen door behind the baby terrorist. "Yeah, i'm sure. I'll go get one, slide the number and keycard under the door for you and bunk out. I got my weapons with me. Don't let him leave, it's vicious outside tonight. That and he probably needs a good night's sleep." She's not embarrassed for him either. "Enjoying your key to the city?"
NOW Felix blushes. He doesn't protest, but draws his head back a little in silent embarassment. "I…." He hesitates, coughs. "Enh. That whole thing…we both know it's bullshit. Just them spinning it as best they can. Like I was out there alone like Rambo, or some stupid shit like that."
"Total bullshit. I think I lost an ovary, and you get a key to the city. Crazy" Minea taunts the Fed. "Enjoy it. At least they see an evolved getting rewarded instead of dragged in with cuffs. That's a change. Let me get out of your hair. Serious though… him. Keep him in, tonight at least. Sorry I interrupted."
"I keep getting that response," Felix says, flipping the cigarette end over end, fidgeting. "I know. I'm sort of the token minority they can pat on the head, but I hope it'll help. Somehow," He shakes his head. "Teo doesn't obey me," Most of the time, he adds, mentally. "But I'll try and convince him."
"I won't go tattling and shut it Felix. Be the token black kid going on the school bus with all the other white kids. Someone has to do it. Why not you? " her hand closes on the door to let herself out. "Nah, likely doesn't. I couldn't get Wozniak to obey me either. Just the first time when I told him to give me my keys back, but even then, I still had to knee him in the nuts. Night Kitty"
Felix snorts at that, amused. "I'll do what I can. Even if it means being a mutant Uncle Tom. I fucking love my job, maybe I can do some actual good. I'm sorry for your loss," he adds, more softly. "Good night, Minea. Let me know how I can help you."
"Everyone says they're sorry. Stop saying your sorry. Feel sorry for him. Bastard's being buried like I told you, opposite a virgin mary statue. Since I can't put a gravemarker in a police station" But with that, Minea steps out the door, closing it behind her, off to go get herself a room hopefully on the same floor.
There's a twenty second gap between Minea's departure and Teo's arrival back in the room. Fully clad and, implicitly, armed, he knocks the bathroom door open with his knee and tosses a handful of inscrutable something at Fel's head. Assuming the man catches it, it turns out to be a folded piece of paper laddered with close black print: Biblical verse, from the book of Hosea. There's something in it, fattening out the makeshift envelope, but it's paperclipped shut.
"Give that to Chris, would you? Just throw it in with whatever else they're doing." He looks irritable. Profoundly. Less pale than he had when he first walked in through Felix's door, but raw all the same.
Fel, on the other hand, is perfectly calm. A little reflective, in fact. He notes, takes it, smoothing the piece of paper out with a long hand, before he lights his cigarette. He shouldn't, really - a nonsmoking room. He scans it, but doesn't open the package. And then waits with that absolutely feline patience, watching Teo with an inscrutable expression - not rising from his seat, sitting wreathed in spice-scented smoke like an oracle.
"You fucking heard her, didn't you?" Teo hooks a foot under the strap of the green messenger bag lying at the foot of the bed, flips it up into the air and his hand, wasting as much agility, physicality a man his age is allowed to. Temper darkens his brow, scowling; the buzzcut makes the expression look harsher than it would have two weeks ago. He hauls the bag on. "Stay out of Phoenix's shit unless she's ordered to. It's exactly what you said.
"No offense taken: I know you two are just doing your jobs. You'd just be doing your jobs, but it'd be my job to get whoever gave you that order to choke and fucking die, so if it's all the same to you—" It's the story of Jacob and angel. The first thing Chris ever pulled out of the airwaves for him.
"I've no interest in pursuing PHOENIX, and that's not what I'm ordered to. Not yet, anyway. Mopping up the last of the vanguard threat, at the moment. Someone sent us a box of hands, for no readily apparent reason. Not murdered, it'd seem…." Fel looks merely weary, as he explains, exhaling through his nostrils. "We're your allies, Teodoro," he reiterates, letting the hand with the cigarette fall to the tabletop, as is half-tempted to lean on it. "I'm doing my best to fandance SCOUT's attention away from you all, even though Parkman paid me a call in the hospital."
Parkman. The name goes through Teo like a knife, sets the lines of him into sharp relief and harsh angles. Never met the man. Knew too well for that, and there is no end to his regret that Catherine had revealed both her own ability and Hana's association to him in order to produce visual references for enemies that, by then, weren't. On the other hand, Teo has an infinite talent for regret. Catholic: he's doomed to pour over all of his mistakes for all eternity, as a bereaved lover pours over their final moments.
Heh.
His features chill further at the mention of hands, betraying him by itself, if the coincidence of times, bleach, drunken misery hadn't done enough. "I guess when you're ordered to," a glance cast at the door out which Minea had departed. 'You' is plural. "You'll be sweet enough to give us a heads-up and headstart, si? You choose to stay with the FBI because they're stupid, or what?" Restless, tired, wired. His socked feet turn half a miniature circle on the carpet; he sees his shoes. Goes to them.
"Because I've done some good there, and will again," Fel says, long face increasingly mournful. He's said more than once that Teo needs to break this off. That he should himself. But to be confronted so baldly with the necessity, and Teo's departure - it hurts. "I'll do what I can. They may fear me compromised already, though. That's been the gist of the interviews I've had, though my SAC's blessing and the results we came up with serve for now…."
A melancholy expression should not be able to weigh against that much fiercely articulated logic. Teo knows this. He's a smart kid, or at least, smarter than he believes he is. Still, it galls him. He doesn't like to see anyone in pain, and is compelled by the inertia of habit, here, of evoking different faces in the older man. "Why would you make it worse?" He must mean Felix's situation, having been compromised, the lot of it. That must be what he means.
Felix cocks his head at Teo. "What do you mean?" he wonders, grinding out the cigarette only fractionally smoked, and rising to put his hands in his pockets.
"Arguing." Teo gestures at nothing, an arc of his arm through empty air. "You know I'm right. You don't want to have to choose later, when people could actually die." There's no real question in his mind which one Felix would choose.
Felix Ivanov isn't like Christian, who spat in the man's eye and roared off to join the guerrillas on his motorcycle; nor is he Minea, who seems oriented in precise and unchanging equivalent quantities of moral principle and professional loyalty. Felix tends to seem as crazy about his job as he is about anything else; cheating one moment, obsessively married the next, but always obsessively married the next.
There might be a time when Fel leaves the Bureau. Leaves law enforcement entirely. But in so doing, he'll also leave something vital of himself behind. "You're ….I'm confused," he says, quietly, watching Teo still. "Between PHOENIX and my job? It's not a choice I should have to make. Phoenix is not the threat, from what I understand."
The second boot stomps up onto Teo's foot, the panels of leather stuffed up, on, underneath the cuff of his pant leg. Fully shod, his knee jigs forward, then back, forward, trying to decide where he is supposed to walk. The door is that way. Felix is there. He winds up standing still for a long moment. "What you understand and what your government understand are different. Why are you—" his mouth finds a white line, cutting himself short. He knows why. Same reason he hasn't left yet.
It starts as a nod - Fel's still in that robe, dark blue cloth, and turns merely into him bowing his head. Perhaps to the inexorability of the argument. "Weakness, same as always," he allows, voice smooth. "And greed."
Teo knows better. He really does. Simultaneously, he's breaking somebody else's heart and giving himself a migraine, doing this, but irrespective of all that there's suddenly a man kneeling at Felix's feet, a kiss up at the line of Felix's mouth, rough fingers — one of them still nicked by his own switchblade — curling on the blue terrycloth V of the robe tied shut around the older man's waist. Apologetic or grateful. Perhaps both. It suited his vanity, being the object of greed, more than whatever his other hapless swains have ever offered. Not so much the good Catholic boy in the end.
 February 10th: A Courteous Lowlife |
 February 10th: Academia Nuts |