Vanessa & David | Friday evening
Jun. 29th, 2012 06:24 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsConsidering that North may be reliably staying put for now, Vanessa shows up at his door with the birthday present she's been holding hostage.
Now that she was sure he was in the country and had been here for a few days Vanessa was reasonably sure he would at least stay put long enough to bring him his now rather belated birthday present. There was nothing like transporting illegal firearms across the city to make a girl want to be sure of delivery. She parked her Ducati out in front of the brownstone to minimize travel distance, though it may have left some question as to whether or not the cars she had parked between could get out without hitting her. It was New York, they could yell if they needed her to move. Vanessa was still pulling her helmet off when her finger depressed the button on the intercom for North's apartment.
The building door clicked open a minute later, and David was waiting by his door with a slight smile and a warm welcome when Vanessa came into view. Having spent the day indoors with nothing to occupy him but network feeds and the last of a series of carefully broken cuckoo clocks to fix, the man was dressed casually in loose jeans and a plain white T-shirt, bare feet completing the ensemble.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Engel?”
"Did you forget about the hostage situation, Mândrule?" The metamorph pulled off her backpack and held it up by one strap. "Since it appeared you would not be vanishing again for parts known or unknown I thought it best to negotiate a release. After all, hostages can be such a messy business." Vanessa smiled and, as she came up to David's door, greeted him with a kiss on his cheek. "I also vaguely recall a request for making a certain mental image a reality at a later date? Though, given your recent...incarceration I'm not sure whether or not letting you drink is a great idea. If you can't be trusted with whiskey I'm sure I can find someone else who would appreciate the bottle." While she spoke Vanessa was taking visual stock of the spy. He looked a bit less beaten down. His face had a bit more color, the bags under his eyes had shrunk some. It wasn't exactly a remarkable turn around but at least he didn't look like he was teetering on Death's threshold, liable to topple through it at any moment.
“Ah,” he nodded as he shut the door, congenially allowing the visual stock taking without a fuss, performing a more covert one of his own. “My birthday present, ja?” Moving closer, the spy openly eyed the back pack and rubbed his hands together in exaggerated glee with a broad smile to complete his excited look. He stopped just shy of crowding Vanessa before wagging a finger at her. “I was hospitalised for being a drug addict not an alcoholic.” Though who was to say that he had not been both? “You cannot, in good conscience, keep me from good whiskey, Shatz. What are your terms of release?”
"Oh, negotiations." The comment came with a characteristic flirting smirk just before Vanessa turned and sashayed further into the apartment. Her motorcycle helmet found a spot on the edge of his coffee table and Vanessa herself found a spot on the couch. The metamorph leaned back as if she owned the piece of furniture. "Amant, one addiction can easily be substituted for another. This is why so many narcotic addicts cannot drink alcohol and why NA and AA meetings keep the attendees well stocked in coffee. Caffeine is usually the replacement drug of choice." She considered him, head tilted, and unzipped her bag without taking her eyes off the spy. "I think I can only be party to supervised consumption. You are not to be trusted, dragul meu." The last was tinged with enough flirtation to erase any possibility of it being seen as a judgement for David's recent...incarceration. Vanessa was one to adapt and keep moving, after all, not inspect uncomfortable facts with the sun shining through a magnifying glass.
“Well, if meine Schöne wants coffee, I do have a perfectly serviceable coffee pot. Although I’ve been told that it smells rather strongly of brandy, strangely enough.”” David drawled as he trailed behind her, his derrière finding purchase on the other end of the couch, legs crossed knee-to-ankle so that he could sit facing her. “And I prefer an alcohol addiction to a caffeine one.” For rather obvious reasons, given that while he needed his powers to be triggered on demand, he did not necessarily want them running constantly and unpredictably.
He held Vanessa’s gaze even as he tracked the movements of her hands out of habit. The laptop on his table let out a pinging sound, which David ignored in favour of returning his guest’s smirk with one of his own. “Although if you are to be my supervisor, I do not think I will mind very much.”
"I think an alcohol addiction is a bit more potentially problematic in the long run, no?" Her eyebrow crept upward as she spoke, though Vanessa produced a bottle of Jack Daniel's single barrel. "I thought with you being out of the country recently you ought to be welcomed back to this side of the Atlantic with Tennessee whiskey rather than Irish or Scotch sorts." Her hand remained around the square bottle even as David's closed around its neck. "But I will still be watching you, motănel." With that, Vanessa released her grip on the bottle. Her attention turned back to the open bag in her lap so she could carefully pull out a wrapped box. "Though you may object to my supervision if I cut you off, amorul meu."
“I would,” David agreed, although he looked entirely unconcerned at the thought as he looked over the bottle in his hands once she had relinquished it. “If only because that would result in removing myself from your diverting presence.” Tilting his head to the side, he considered the box in Vanessa’s hands, and raised a brow at her. “Except that you may be spoiling me into having to throw out that contingency plan. More presents, Kätzchen?”
"So you can't bear to be near me unless inebriated, fluturaș?" A hand clutched to her chest over her heart. "I'm wounded, frumosule. Truly, excruciatingly wounded." Vanessa fell silent, head hanging and fake sniffling filling the pause. Then, after a few moments, she straightened as if nothing had happened. "However, your inability to be near me whilst sober aside, the Jack was never your gift." She supposed a thirty dollar bottle of whiskey counted as a decent gift for a fair few people on both sides of the gift giving equation. It didn't really speak from the heart, though, did it? Unless the recipient was an alcoholic with Jack as their drink of choice, perhaps. Vanessa brushed the thought away and refocused on her friend.
"People generally celebrate birthdays. I'm sure you've heard of this peculiar ritual where associates of the individual who has managed to survive for another full year take said individual out and buy them copious amounts of alcohol? I believe it has something to do with reaffirming one's vitality by getting so sloppy drunk that one is reminded that being alive means doing horrifically stupid things. Like getting pissed the night before a meeting, taking home a really inconvenient stranger, earning a hangover of extraordinary proportions, et cetera." Vanessa smiled. "Only I'm liable to actually hospitalize someone if I go into a bar and not necessarily because they deserve it and you...aren't exactly what I would deem a social creature. Thus," she gestured to the bottle in his hands, "drinks with an associate in private rather than public. No matter what anyone says, though, drinks do not replace actual gifts should associations make such things appropriate."
“That is a rather lengthy explanation for getting me a gift other than a bottle of American whiskey, Süsser,” David observed drolly, standing and briefly disappearing into his kitchen to retrieve two glasses and a bucket of ice for the alcohol. He paused by his laptop on the way back, but settled back into his seat soon enough to open the bottle and pour them both a drink. “I have, indeed, heard of such a social ritual amongst friends, though its meaning eluded me.” A glass was handed to her over the mysterious box, accompanied by what passed as a cheerful smile for him. He appreciated Vanessa’s tact, but the application of the f-word on his person was not going to send him into spasms. Well, at least he hoped not. And if she was trying to avoid her rather emotional outburst at him in the medical lab during his… stay, then, well. It was not as though the German man was about to dwell too long on it either. “But we learn something new each day.”
David toasted her with his glass, and when the both of them had placed their glasses on the coffee table, leaned forward and eyed the box. “Now, Entlein, I do enjoy your company so long as you are not depriving me of something I enjoy, copious amounts of alcohol or not. But I dare say I will not live to see my next birthday if you kill me with curiosity now.”
With an impish grin, Vanessa raised the package to her ear and shook it gently. It gave away no discernible noise. After all, who wanted to give it all away by letting stuff clank about in there? Vanessa had, perhaps, gone a little overboard with the packing peanuts and tissue paper but she figured it was just part of the unwrapping. Sort of like, happy birthday now scavenge in your box for your gift! She watched her friend, paused, then shook the box again. "Shit, I might have forgotten to put the actual gift in here before I wrapped it." A frown forming, the box was placed in her lap where it received a very disappointed look from the investigator. Vanessa took a moment to mourn her supposed forgetfulness, then held the box straight out to David. "Happy birthday, I got you a box." A broad grin graced her face.
“Dankeschön,” he said, slightly exaggerating the formal thank you as he accepted the gift with both hands as was done in polite company. “It is a very lovely box.” Turning it first one way, then the other, David quirked a brow at Vanessa’s glee, her theatrics amusing him as always. He hefted the box to eye level and peered at her over the surface of the wrapping paper. “Does that mean I need not open it?”
Vanessa gave him doe eyes. "And not appreciate all the tissue paper and packing peanuts? That's practically ammunition for when your colleagues annoy you!" Very slowly a wide grin spread over her lips. "I mean, after all, I believe in safe, nonviolent things to throw at people. If no one else, Jubilee tends to earn some peanut lobbing every now and again."
“I’m surprisingly comfortable with the thought of lobbing her out the window instead,” David informed her seriously. “But since I like you, I will bite.” Slipping a small kitchen knife from under the couch arm rest, he drew it down the length of the box, divesting it of wrapping paper in under ten seconds – no, he never got the memo about how presents ‘should’ be opened. Flipping the lid, he grabbed a foam peanut and tossed it at Vanessa’s head before rifling through its considerable contents. When fingers encountered metal, he frowned at his companion, taking in the way her grin threatened to split her face in two.
So he tipped the box to the side and let its contents spill out onto the coffee table until the first glimpse of black metal was spotted. Immediately righting the box and placing it on the floor, he bent and fished out first one pistol and then the next, letting out an appreciative whistle as he studied them. German-manufactured H&K Mark23s were not on the public market, which meant that they were not easy to come by legally. He flipped one firearm over and nodded. The serial numbers had been filed off.
“You spoil me, Kuschelbär,” he informed her with a smile, obviously very pleased with the gift. He had coincidentally held off getting replacements for the ones he had lost in Genosha while in Germany because of the presence of an X-Men.
A small smile graced Vanessa's lips and replied casually, "I believe in taking care of my man, soţul meu. Clearly this," she gestured to the firearms, "is one of the more important needs a man has, no?" Her smile broadened just a little bit. While she utterly despised shopping, Vanessa was incredibly fond of weaponry. A friend she could appropriately give a deadly weapon to as a gift was, hands down, the easiest person she could ever shop for. And the only sort of person she didn't actually mind shopping for.
"Very important. And very useful," David agreed, running his fingers down the ridged metal. A second rummage through the box revealed a box of ammo and some long clips which he removed from a mountain of foam and tissue. "You know, this may actually be too much, Susser. I --"
Whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by the ringing of a cellphone, which David had to retrieve from his study table after excusing himself. For a minute or so, he spoke rapid French at the person in the other line, his German accent having disappeared completely from the word 'hello'. Then, he turned and looked consideringly at Vanessa.
"Would you like to go to France, femme?"
After blinking quite rapidly several times English, and very possibly comprehension in general, had seemed to have fled Vanessa. Somehow what came out of her mouth in reply to his query wasn't even in Romanian. It was Spanish. "¿Perdón?" Had he really just had a conversation in French and then invited her...to France? Clearly you need more sleep and fewer nights tailing dirty bags, Nessa, she told herself mentally.
“France, femme,” David repeated, sounding somewhat impatient, although he was clearly amused by the way his eyes were crinkling at the sides. “I have work to do in my home country but I promise my mother will not be present this time and we will go wherever you wish when I’m not obliged to be elsewhere. It’s the least I could do for you, no?”
Was he still on the phone with whoever that was? France was, quite clearly, not David's motherland, or fatherland as the case may be. Which meant he had to still have the other person on the line. How was she always his wife in foreign countries? This course of thought had done nothing to erase the completely dumbfounded look off Vanessa's face. She eventually stumbled over something approximating a, "Sure," followed by an increasingly more audible and believable, "but if she shows up to criticize me again we are never stepping foot in that country again."
He chuckled at her floundering, then spoke into the phone again, and the conversation was concluded fairly quickly from there. Tossing the phone onto the table, he reclaimed his seat on the couch and picked up a gun, loading it as he shot a mild smirk at Vanessa. “Well, I hope you have nothing pressing going on in the next week or so.”
Vanessa opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out so she shut it soon after. Her brow furrowed, her eyes narrowed and she felt like she'd just been pranked or something. "When are going to France, why am I always your wife in Europe and...which me is married to you?" Lucas was going to love her for this one. Maybe she could get all her outstanding paperwork done tonight. Or maybe she could do that from the airport since tonight was effectively her last night to sleep for "the next week or so."
“Tomorrow, of course,” David replied, completely unrepentant as he finished with one gun and picked up the other. “You know how these things work. My name’s Arnaud Blanc, financial consultant, which would make you Mrs. Blanc, my American wife. We’ll get my ‘IT team’ to cobble up identification papers once you’ve settled on your identity…” he trailed off and looked thoughtfully at her. “I’m actually not too sure, I suppose I could have made you my sister, but I didn’t think you spoke French. And I believe our faux divorce papers never went through.”
"I was very negligent with filing the papers," Vanessa returned with, perhaps, a bit of a petulant note in her tone. She popped her chin on her palm, elbow on her knee and leaned toward the spy. "And I meant, literally, which me." Her free hand swept down from her temple to indicate her actual, physical body. "Blonde, brunette and redhead are all completely feasible, technically. Though the redhead may be a bit young for Arnaud, Frenchman or no. So really it's blonde or brunette." She couldn't even remember the last time she had left the country in her own body, pinkified as it may be currently or no it still counted as her body.
“I don’t have a preference,” was the German’s shrugged and honest response as he set both guns on the table and began clearing up the mess he made. He even had to fish out a peanut from his whiskey glass. “As long as you’ve never entered France under that identity.” He held up the soggy peanut. “You’re all right with this, yes? No furious Lucas Bishop coming to knock down my door while I lay prone on my bed tonight?”
"Clearly you do not remember Lucas very clearly, comoara mea. The man attempts to raise stoicism and unflappability to an art form." Truth be told, he really probably wouldn't hold it against her. Vanessa considered, for a moment, whether or not she should really leave him and Adrienne alone with the office right now. Then again, could she let David go off alone either? She was, admittedly, still a bit worried about the man after his medlab vacation. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, per se. Accidents happened. One had happened a few weeks ago. It was better she leave Adrienne to sink or swim with Lucas than risk something happening to David overseas with no one close enough to notice in time.
With that settled in her mind, that left Vanessa to figure out which one of her was going to be leaving the country. "You may need to have a blonde wife, bărbat. I know I've never gone to France while in my own body, nevermind a pink," her nose wrinkled in clear disapproval, "version of it. I can't guarantee the same for the brunette's body regardless of the identity attach I attach to it."
“Well then,” the spy said nudging the box back under the coffee table as he poured them a second round of drinks. “It appears that Arnaud got married.”
Now that she was sure he was in the country and had been here for a few days Vanessa was reasonably sure he would at least stay put long enough to bring him his now rather belated birthday present. There was nothing like transporting illegal firearms across the city to make a girl want to be sure of delivery. She parked her Ducati out in front of the brownstone to minimize travel distance, though it may have left some question as to whether or not the cars she had parked between could get out without hitting her. It was New York, they could yell if they needed her to move. Vanessa was still pulling her helmet off when her finger depressed the button on the intercom for North's apartment.
The building door clicked open a minute later, and David was waiting by his door with a slight smile and a warm welcome when Vanessa came into view. Having spent the day indoors with nothing to occupy him but network feeds and the last of a series of carefully broken cuckoo clocks to fix, the man was dressed casually in loose jeans and a plain white T-shirt, bare feet completing the ensemble.
“To what do I owe the pleasure, Engel?”
"Did you forget about the hostage situation, Mândrule?" The metamorph pulled off her backpack and held it up by one strap. "Since it appeared you would not be vanishing again for parts known or unknown I thought it best to negotiate a release. After all, hostages can be such a messy business." Vanessa smiled and, as she came up to David's door, greeted him with a kiss on his cheek. "I also vaguely recall a request for making a certain mental image a reality at a later date? Though, given your recent...incarceration I'm not sure whether or not letting you drink is a great idea. If you can't be trusted with whiskey I'm sure I can find someone else who would appreciate the bottle." While she spoke Vanessa was taking visual stock of the spy. He looked a bit less beaten down. His face had a bit more color, the bags under his eyes had shrunk some. It wasn't exactly a remarkable turn around but at least he didn't look like he was teetering on Death's threshold, liable to topple through it at any moment.
“Ah,” he nodded as he shut the door, congenially allowing the visual stock taking without a fuss, performing a more covert one of his own. “My birthday present, ja?” Moving closer, the spy openly eyed the back pack and rubbed his hands together in exaggerated glee with a broad smile to complete his excited look. He stopped just shy of crowding Vanessa before wagging a finger at her. “I was hospitalised for being a drug addict not an alcoholic.” Though who was to say that he had not been both? “You cannot, in good conscience, keep me from good whiskey, Shatz. What are your terms of release?”
"Oh, negotiations." The comment came with a characteristic flirting smirk just before Vanessa turned and sashayed further into the apartment. Her motorcycle helmet found a spot on the edge of his coffee table and Vanessa herself found a spot on the couch. The metamorph leaned back as if she owned the piece of furniture. "Amant, one addiction can easily be substituted for another. This is why so many narcotic addicts cannot drink alcohol and why NA and AA meetings keep the attendees well stocked in coffee. Caffeine is usually the replacement drug of choice." She considered him, head tilted, and unzipped her bag without taking her eyes off the spy. "I think I can only be party to supervised consumption. You are not to be trusted, dragul meu." The last was tinged with enough flirtation to erase any possibility of it being seen as a judgement for David's recent...incarceration. Vanessa was one to adapt and keep moving, after all, not inspect uncomfortable facts with the sun shining through a magnifying glass.
“Well, if meine Schöne wants coffee, I do have a perfectly serviceable coffee pot. Although I’ve been told that it smells rather strongly of brandy, strangely enough.”” David drawled as he trailed behind her, his derrière finding purchase on the other end of the couch, legs crossed knee-to-ankle so that he could sit facing her. “And I prefer an alcohol addiction to a caffeine one.” For rather obvious reasons, given that while he needed his powers to be triggered on demand, he did not necessarily want them running constantly and unpredictably.
He held Vanessa’s gaze even as he tracked the movements of her hands out of habit. The laptop on his table let out a pinging sound, which David ignored in favour of returning his guest’s smirk with one of his own. “Although if you are to be my supervisor, I do not think I will mind very much.”
"I think an alcohol addiction is a bit more potentially problematic in the long run, no?" Her eyebrow crept upward as she spoke, though Vanessa produced a bottle of Jack Daniel's single barrel. "I thought with you being out of the country recently you ought to be welcomed back to this side of the Atlantic with Tennessee whiskey rather than Irish or Scotch sorts." Her hand remained around the square bottle even as David's closed around its neck. "But I will still be watching you, motănel." With that, Vanessa released her grip on the bottle. Her attention turned back to the open bag in her lap so she could carefully pull out a wrapped box. "Though you may object to my supervision if I cut you off, amorul meu."
“I would,” David agreed, although he looked entirely unconcerned at the thought as he looked over the bottle in his hands once she had relinquished it. “If only because that would result in removing myself from your diverting presence.” Tilting his head to the side, he considered the box in Vanessa’s hands, and raised a brow at her. “Except that you may be spoiling me into having to throw out that contingency plan. More presents, Kätzchen?”
"So you can't bear to be near me unless inebriated, fluturaș?" A hand clutched to her chest over her heart. "I'm wounded, frumosule. Truly, excruciatingly wounded." Vanessa fell silent, head hanging and fake sniffling filling the pause. Then, after a few moments, she straightened as if nothing had happened. "However, your inability to be near me whilst sober aside, the Jack was never your gift." She supposed a thirty dollar bottle of whiskey counted as a decent gift for a fair few people on both sides of the gift giving equation. It didn't really speak from the heart, though, did it? Unless the recipient was an alcoholic with Jack as their drink of choice, perhaps. Vanessa brushed the thought away and refocused on her friend.
"People generally celebrate birthdays. I'm sure you've heard of this peculiar ritual where associates of the individual who has managed to survive for another full year take said individual out and buy them copious amounts of alcohol? I believe it has something to do with reaffirming one's vitality by getting so sloppy drunk that one is reminded that being alive means doing horrifically stupid things. Like getting pissed the night before a meeting, taking home a really inconvenient stranger, earning a hangover of extraordinary proportions, et cetera." Vanessa smiled. "Only I'm liable to actually hospitalize someone if I go into a bar and not necessarily because they deserve it and you...aren't exactly what I would deem a social creature. Thus," she gestured to the bottle in his hands, "drinks with an associate in private rather than public. No matter what anyone says, though, drinks do not replace actual gifts should associations make such things appropriate."
“That is a rather lengthy explanation for getting me a gift other than a bottle of American whiskey, Süsser,” David observed drolly, standing and briefly disappearing into his kitchen to retrieve two glasses and a bucket of ice for the alcohol. He paused by his laptop on the way back, but settled back into his seat soon enough to open the bottle and pour them both a drink. “I have, indeed, heard of such a social ritual amongst friends, though its meaning eluded me.” A glass was handed to her over the mysterious box, accompanied by what passed as a cheerful smile for him. He appreciated Vanessa’s tact, but the application of the f-word on his person was not going to send him into spasms. Well, at least he hoped not. And if she was trying to avoid her rather emotional outburst at him in the medical lab during his… stay, then, well. It was not as though the German man was about to dwell too long on it either. “But we learn something new each day.”
David toasted her with his glass, and when the both of them had placed their glasses on the coffee table, leaned forward and eyed the box. “Now, Entlein, I do enjoy your company so long as you are not depriving me of something I enjoy, copious amounts of alcohol or not. But I dare say I will not live to see my next birthday if you kill me with curiosity now.”
With an impish grin, Vanessa raised the package to her ear and shook it gently. It gave away no discernible noise. After all, who wanted to give it all away by letting stuff clank about in there? Vanessa had, perhaps, gone a little overboard with the packing peanuts and tissue paper but she figured it was just part of the unwrapping. Sort of like, happy birthday now scavenge in your box for your gift! She watched her friend, paused, then shook the box again. "Shit, I might have forgotten to put the actual gift in here before I wrapped it." A frown forming, the box was placed in her lap where it received a very disappointed look from the investigator. Vanessa took a moment to mourn her supposed forgetfulness, then held the box straight out to David. "Happy birthday, I got you a box." A broad grin graced her face.
“Dankeschön,” he said, slightly exaggerating the formal thank you as he accepted the gift with both hands as was done in polite company. “It is a very lovely box.” Turning it first one way, then the other, David quirked a brow at Vanessa’s glee, her theatrics amusing him as always. He hefted the box to eye level and peered at her over the surface of the wrapping paper. “Does that mean I need not open it?”
Vanessa gave him doe eyes. "And not appreciate all the tissue paper and packing peanuts? That's practically ammunition for when your colleagues annoy you!" Very slowly a wide grin spread over her lips. "I mean, after all, I believe in safe, nonviolent things to throw at people. If no one else, Jubilee tends to earn some peanut lobbing every now and again."
“I’m surprisingly comfortable with the thought of lobbing her out the window instead,” David informed her seriously. “But since I like you, I will bite.” Slipping a small kitchen knife from under the couch arm rest, he drew it down the length of the box, divesting it of wrapping paper in under ten seconds – no, he never got the memo about how presents ‘should’ be opened. Flipping the lid, he grabbed a foam peanut and tossed it at Vanessa’s head before rifling through its considerable contents. When fingers encountered metal, he frowned at his companion, taking in the way her grin threatened to split her face in two.
So he tipped the box to the side and let its contents spill out onto the coffee table until the first glimpse of black metal was spotted. Immediately righting the box and placing it on the floor, he bent and fished out first one pistol and then the next, letting out an appreciative whistle as he studied them. German-manufactured H&K Mark23s were not on the public market, which meant that they were not easy to come by legally. He flipped one firearm over and nodded. The serial numbers had been filed off.
“You spoil me, Kuschelbär,” he informed her with a smile, obviously very pleased with the gift. He had coincidentally held off getting replacements for the ones he had lost in Genosha while in Germany because of the presence of an X-Men.
A small smile graced Vanessa's lips and replied casually, "I believe in taking care of my man, soţul meu. Clearly this," she gestured to the firearms, "is one of the more important needs a man has, no?" Her smile broadened just a little bit. While she utterly despised shopping, Vanessa was incredibly fond of weaponry. A friend she could appropriately give a deadly weapon to as a gift was, hands down, the easiest person she could ever shop for. And the only sort of person she didn't actually mind shopping for.
"Very important. And very useful," David agreed, running his fingers down the ridged metal. A second rummage through the box revealed a box of ammo and some long clips which he removed from a mountain of foam and tissue. "You know, this may actually be too much, Susser. I --"
Whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by the ringing of a cellphone, which David had to retrieve from his study table after excusing himself. For a minute or so, he spoke rapid French at the person in the other line, his German accent having disappeared completely from the word 'hello'. Then, he turned and looked consideringly at Vanessa.
"Would you like to go to France, femme?"
After blinking quite rapidly several times English, and very possibly comprehension in general, had seemed to have fled Vanessa. Somehow what came out of her mouth in reply to his query wasn't even in Romanian. It was Spanish. "¿Perdón?" Had he really just had a conversation in French and then invited her...to France? Clearly you need more sleep and fewer nights tailing dirty bags, Nessa, she told herself mentally.
“France, femme,” David repeated, sounding somewhat impatient, although he was clearly amused by the way his eyes were crinkling at the sides. “I have work to do in my home country but I promise my mother will not be present this time and we will go wherever you wish when I’m not obliged to be elsewhere. It’s the least I could do for you, no?”
Was he still on the phone with whoever that was? France was, quite clearly, not David's motherland, or fatherland as the case may be. Which meant he had to still have the other person on the line. How was she always his wife in foreign countries? This course of thought had done nothing to erase the completely dumbfounded look off Vanessa's face. She eventually stumbled over something approximating a, "Sure," followed by an increasingly more audible and believable, "but if she shows up to criticize me again we are never stepping foot in that country again."
He chuckled at her floundering, then spoke into the phone again, and the conversation was concluded fairly quickly from there. Tossing the phone onto the table, he reclaimed his seat on the couch and picked up a gun, loading it as he shot a mild smirk at Vanessa. “Well, I hope you have nothing pressing going on in the next week or so.”
Vanessa opened her mouth to reply but nothing came out so she shut it soon after. Her brow furrowed, her eyes narrowed and she felt like she'd just been pranked or something. "When are going to France, why am I always your wife in Europe and...which me is married to you?" Lucas was going to love her for this one. Maybe she could get all her outstanding paperwork done tonight. Or maybe she could do that from the airport since tonight was effectively her last night to sleep for "the next week or so."
“Tomorrow, of course,” David replied, completely unrepentant as he finished with one gun and picked up the other. “You know how these things work. My name’s Arnaud Blanc, financial consultant, which would make you Mrs. Blanc, my American wife. We’ll get my ‘IT team’ to cobble up identification papers once you’ve settled on your identity…” he trailed off and looked thoughtfully at her. “I’m actually not too sure, I suppose I could have made you my sister, but I didn’t think you spoke French. And I believe our faux divorce papers never went through.”
"I was very negligent with filing the papers," Vanessa returned with, perhaps, a bit of a petulant note in her tone. She popped her chin on her palm, elbow on her knee and leaned toward the spy. "And I meant, literally, which me." Her free hand swept down from her temple to indicate her actual, physical body. "Blonde, brunette and redhead are all completely feasible, technically. Though the redhead may be a bit young for Arnaud, Frenchman or no. So really it's blonde or brunette." She couldn't even remember the last time she had left the country in her own body, pinkified as it may be currently or no it still counted as her body.
“I don’t have a preference,” was the German’s shrugged and honest response as he set both guns on the table and began clearing up the mess he made. He even had to fish out a peanut from his whiskey glass. “As long as you’ve never entered France under that identity.” He held up the soggy peanut. “You’re all right with this, yes? No furious Lucas Bishop coming to knock down my door while I lay prone on my bed tonight?”
"Clearly you do not remember Lucas very clearly, comoara mea. The man attempts to raise stoicism and unflappability to an art form." Truth be told, he really probably wouldn't hold it against her. Vanessa considered, for a moment, whether or not she should really leave him and Adrienne alone with the office right now. Then again, could she let David go off alone either? She was, admittedly, still a bit worried about the man after his medlab vacation. It wasn't that she didn't trust him, per se. Accidents happened. One had happened a few weeks ago. It was better she leave Adrienne to sink or swim with Lucas than risk something happening to David overseas with no one close enough to notice in time.
With that settled in her mind, that left Vanessa to figure out which one of her was going to be leaving the country. "You may need to have a blonde wife, bărbat. I know I've never gone to France while in my own body, nevermind a pink," her nose wrinkled in clear disapproval, "version of it. I can't guarantee the same for the brunette's body regardless of the identity attach I attach to it."
“Well then,” the spy said nudging the box back under the coffee table as he poured them a second round of drinks. “It appears that Arnaud got married.”
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