Log: Angelo & Rachel (backdated)

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Angelo and Rachel reunite for the second (third?) time when she breaks into his rooms for the umpteenth time



The sun was already high in the sky when Rachel finally emerged from her rooms, freshly showered with damp hair loosely braided across one shoulder. She briefly considered bothering her next door neighbour, but figured that Haller probably needed some time outside of her riveting company.

Besides, she had her own list of people to check in on, short though it may be.

Which was why five minutes later found her outside someone else's door, looking somewhat pensive as she contemplated it, idly spinning a pair of scissors on an index finger. She had no idea if he was the same man she had last seen, but there really was only one way to find out.

Rachel placed her ear to the wood and picked the lock.

Angelo was on the couch. Possibly he would have liked not to be on the couch, but Joyita was giving him very little choice in the matter where she was sprawled heavily across his legs.

Man and dog both glanced up sharply at the sounds of the lock being picked.

Then the door swung open to admit a lithe redhead who slipped quietly into the suite. Vivid green eyes settled on Angelo almost immediately, and she paused in the process of slipping a bobby pin back into her hair to offer him a sheepish grin.

"Hi?"

"You could have knocked", he said dryly, for the hundredth time and really just for the sake of saying it now. "Hello, Rachel, I wondered when you'd be back."

Her sunny grin in reply was so bright, it was almost blinding. She bounded forward to ruffle both his head and the dog's. "Don't lie, Jellybean. You definitely thought I was dead this time."

"No, no", he insisted, pulling away from the ruffling but with a huge smile of his own. "Things come in threes, you had to still be alive somewhere."

"Same place I was the last time," she admitted, dropping to the floor in front of him to cross her legs. She reached out to grasp at his hand. "How are you?"

He almost did lie that time, squeezing her hand, some reassuring lie about how he was just fine... but he couldn't. Not with her.

"Don't know if you saw the post, you had your own mourning to do, but... Mom's dead."

"I know," she said quietly, her smile gentling as she scooted nearer so that she could lean her chin on the couch. "So is Dad. And everyone else on Muir. Remy died too."

Rachel looked sad as she tugged his hand nearer to place a gentle kiss on his palm. But it was obvious that it was a far cry from the grief she had felt the first time she had returned to him and the devastation she had experienced during her second homecoming. She was... calm. Quiet.

"I'm glad you made it out okay."

"Didn't think I would, for a while there", he admitted. "Didn't think any of us would. And some didn't... but here we are."

It was the only thing left, that some of the people he loved most had survived. Amanda. Jean-Phillipe. Rachel.

"Yeah," she nodded, giggling when Joyita licked at her hand then shifted around until she could lean her back against the couch. She kicked her feet out under the coffee table, tugging Angelo's arm around her and against the damp rope of braid, as handsy as the last time he'd seen her. (Physical comfort always worked best.) "I brought David back too. Haller, that is."

"...yeah, how did you two wind up away from the rest of us, anyway?" he asked, settling comfortably back on the couch with his arm around her, only making a brief face as her wet hair soaked into his sleeve.

"We were fighting the Dark Phoenix," she said. "With Emma. He did... something stupid. The Dark Phoenix was going to kill him, so I pulled him into the Astral Plane with me. I... I couldn't save Emma, though."

"Emma's alive", he said gently. "She made it, even without you getting her out."

"Oh. Oh. That's... good. Great," she said, surprised. Then she laughed. "I should go see her soon then. Sooraya?"

"Yep." He smiled slightly. "She got a bit scorched around the edges a few times, but Xorn fixed most everything when he brought us out. Except Laurie's arm."

"Laurie? Who's-- Oh. The med student? Doug's girlfriend? What happened to her arm?"

"She lost it", he said simply. "Part of it, anyway, about below the elbow - in the fight on Muir, somebody's powers..."

"Friendly fire?" She arched her brow -- unseen by Angelo -- and retrieved the pair of scissors she had been toying with earlier from the pocket she had dropped it into in favour of messing up his hair. "That sucks."

"No, not friendly at all", he said grimly. "It was one of the Brotherhood or maybe one of the Dark Riders, I just don't know which one, so... somebody. What are you doing with those?"

"How much experience do you have with hair cutting?" She asked instead, picking up and dropping her damp brain against his sleeve and waggling her brows at him with a mischievous grin. Like they weren't having a completely sombre conversation or anything. Not at all.

"Not much." He raised his eyebrows at her. "Why, do you want that cut off?"

"It's to my waist," she grumbled with a pout. "I don't know how some people do it. It gets everywhere and gets caught in everything. I'm like a shedding cat." She wasn't exactly doing stealth work at the moment, but getting around with the extra weight on her head would definitely pose a problem if she had to.

"I could get at it by myself with a knife probably. I don't really trust that many people to hold pointy things to my head."

"You are not", Angelo said firmly, "hacking your braid off with a knife. Give me those and let's see if I can't do a bit better than that."

She muttered something about it not being the first time anyway, but obediently handed him the scissors over her shoulder. "Shouldn't we maybe move to the kitchen or bathroom for this though?"

Because, dude. It was a lot of hair.

"...yeah, probably", he decided. "Let's make it the bathroom, you can lean over the bath."

They trooped to the bathroom, dog at their heels and arms hooked at the elbows (because obviously it reassured certain persons that the other person was actually there. Kind of.). Gamely leaning over the bath as instructed, Rachel eyeballed her adoptive brother and the pair of scissors in his hand before shrugging.

"Go on. Zero enjoyment points playing Rapunzel here." Haller, in particular, seemed to enjoy tugging on her braid to keep her in line, even in his zombified state -- her words, not his.

"All right." He sat back on his heels, studying her hair. "Let's get this untied, or you'll just have a chunk missing in the back."

"Can't you just, like, hack off a bit at the end first?" She picked up the waist-long braid and eyed it warily. "It'd be easier than untying it now and having to deal with all the loose ends." At least this way the hair tie would keep it more or less in place for easier disposal.

"...I guess?" Angelo said uncertainly. "I've never cut a girl's hair before. Guys are easier, you can just cut it all almost to the skin."

"... Not gonna lie, bro. Having second thoughts here." She did have a set of pretty sharp knives she could use. Granted, Korvus and Kitty used to do her hair-cutting. But she had actually taken a knife to her hair when she was traipsing across South America on her own.

"I'll still do a better job than you and a knife", he retorted. "If you won't wait to see a real hairdresser. Do you want a crop cut?"

"Do you know how creepy the sound of scissors held by a stranger is? That schnikt schnikt sound in your ears? Like Logan's bloody claws?" Rachel demanded, shifting subtly away from him with a scandalised expression on her face. She crinkled her nose at him and, not going to lie, considered the crop cut. "To my shoulders, maybe?" At least that way she could maybe, possibly still get someone she trusted enough in the mansion to fix it later.

"...yeah, all right, I can work with that." He picked up her braid, then laid it flat and straight against her back to see where it was at her shoulders. "Okay, so I cut off up to here and then untie it and try to tidy it."

"Okay," she agreed. Unbraided it would probably be longer than the point he was poking at just below her shoulders, which would then give him an inch or so to work with. "Let's do this."

"Right." Decisively, he picked up the scissors.

****

"...Ray? I think we need to go find somebody else."

"Bugger me."

Gathering herself to her feet, Rachel eyeballed Angelo's expression for a moment before heading over the mirror by the sink.

"I dunno... I can maybe pass it off as a grungy edgy kind of look?" Except she really couldn't. She ran her fingers through the uneven ends brushing the backs of her shoulders. "But you have officially lost all rights to nag about knives and haircuts."

"I could still try to fix it?" he offered apologetically. "But I don't blame you if you don't trust me with scissors anymore. I wouldn't."

"Nah, it's cool," she said, swinging her head left and right experimentally and running her fingers through the now shoulder-length hair (uneven though it may be). She gathered the hair into a short ponytail at her nape and secured it with an elastic, the bobby pins disappearing back into it. Stray strands of red fell the the tiled floor. "I'll find... someone. This'll do in the meantime."

Rachel picked up the rope of hair lying in the bath tub and hefted it consideringly. "Maybe I should keep this as a souvenir. Doug said I gained another five years hanging around in the A.P. and this is all I got out of it."

Angelo chuckled. "You should. Tie up the loose end and hang it on your wall."

"I'll frame it up and everything," she grinned, rolling her shoulders with a satisfying crack. "So much better."

He winced at the sound of the crack.

"...let me make it up to you. I do much better backrubs than haircuts."

"See, that's the kind of thing you should've started off with," she complained, but it was all good-natured as she tied off the loose end and held it out of Joyita's reach, tempting the puppy. "It's just my neck, though. From carrying around that weight on my head."

The dog tried to jump for it, of course.

"Should clear up now the weight's gone, then, but the offer stands if you want."

"Oh, I want," the woman declared, scratching behind Joyita's ears. "But not now. I gotta go... check in on some people." Back to David first, though, just to make sure that he was still alive and not dying from the crick in his neck he was bound to have from sleeping in the chair beside her bed. And then maybe Molly. "You should call Sooraya and the three of us can go get a meal together. I don't suppose you have a list of people who didn't make it during the Shift?"

"Course I do", Angelo said more quietly. "Our people, anyway, every last name."

"Good. I need a look at that list."

Whether it was to assuage worries or to know who to mourn she did not say and Angelo didn't ask. But the pair did not emerge from his room till way past dinner time.