2019-11-13 - I Will Be Your Shield

Rebecca has finished the regular workday. Not that her workday tends to be anything regular. She is still on call 24/7 for her boss, which is why she can afford this luxury apartment in the murder building. Really, Byron should be the people who stayed despite all that a rent break or something. To compensate for the sleeping pills and shrink visits his building has visited upon them all.

The blonde is in pajama pants and a tank top, her sleepwear, with fuzzy slippers on her feet which look like she went out and skinned a muppet for its fur. In this town? Maybe she did. Her hair is back in a short ponytail and she has a cup of tea beside her where she sits on her sofa, watching an old movie. Looks like The Glass Slipper, with Leslie Caron and Michael Wilding from 1955. A take on Cinderella.

Clack go the locks on the door. The security system saw Itzhak. He texted twenty minutes or so ago, and he's putting his phone back in his pocket with a bemused quirk of his mouth as he turns the knob. "I forget every damn time about that. Hi."

He's freshly showered, as he always is as soon as he gets off work. Can't abide the grime and grease that comes with his profession, which might make people wonder why he's a mechanic, but that's just him. Weird and contradictory. His curls are damp and he smells like the faintly herbal soap he uses as he comes in and gets his boots off, standing in the entrance way. He's wearing the beautiful silkscreened Reinhardt hoodie Bex got him.

Rebecca looks up as her tablet alerts her to him coming into the building. She gets up and gets another mug out, and pours some from a teapot for him. She's there at the kitchen island when he comes in, and flashes him a smile. "Hey, want some tea? I made plenty."

She grins broader at the hoodie. He knows how to make her feel appreciated by wearing that gift. "Sugar? Honey? Milk?" she offers, raising the mug in explanation. "What brings you here tonight? Not that I don't appreciate it, just wasn't expected."

Itzhak saunters over to the island. He can totally saunter in Boba Fett socks, rolling up like he expects Bex to jump on the back of his motorcycle. And yet he can be a little bashful at times with her, and seems like now is one of those times as he ducks his head and looks at her sidelong through his black eyelashes. "Tea? Uh, sure, uh, however you like it." He's wearing the hoodie unselfconsciously, like it's just part of his life now.

Rebecca leans up to kiss his stubbly cheek gently. "Well I'm glad you're here. I was just watching old movies." She adds a little sugar and just a dollop of milk to the tea. Nothing fancy, which her boss would likely be apoplectic over. "Just regular old Lipton. My grandmother used to drink it all the time when we kids were little and she would watch us in the afternoons til mom or dad got home." She hands him his mug and heads back to the couch where her own mug is sitting on a barrel-turned end table.

Itzhak slings himself on the couch, stretching out those long long legs in front of him. This couch is an old friend by now. He settles his arms along the top of the couch, head tipped back, and sighs like it's been a long day. "Wanted to see you." He finally answers her first question, and cracks an eye at her, beckoning her over to snuggle on him. "Talk about some stuff. You know."

Rebecca sips her own tea for a moment, then she moves to snuggle up to Itzhak, resting her head in his lap and looking up at him curiously. "How's your back, and chest?" where she carved him up like a tasty prey item in the Garden during Masquerade." She gives him a secretive little smile at the memory of that. "And talk about what, hm?"

Itzhak can't help smiling over that memory, too. He tips his head down at Rebecca (looking over his nose) and strokes her sleek blonde hair, the fine strands catching on his violin callouses. "I'm fine, sweetheart. You gotta try harder than that." There goes the eyebrow. He's going to give her the opportunity to try harder, too.

He considers the question of what it is he wants to talk to her about. Then he tugs off his hoodie and lays it over the arm of the couch. Underneath he's wearing one of his snug, soft heather-gray t shirts, and he pulls aside the collar to show her...a bite mark on his neck. A pretty serious one, purple and blue, and in a similar spot to where he likes to sink his teeth into her. Someone sunk teeth into him. "So, been kinda messin' around with a guy."

Rebecca perks up and sits up a little to get a better look. "Wow, those are some bites. I was gonna say, I didn't think Isolde had it in her," she notes with a grin. She runs her fingertips over one of the marks. "That is ridiculously hot to even think about. You and a guy who likes to bite," she fans herself and lets out a breath.

Itzhak blushes right down his bitten neck. Face red, neck red, and down inside his shirt, his chest is red. He sighs and this time it's relieved. "Oh man. I was worried you might be mad. Yeah, he likes roughing me up. So...you think that's hot?" Cautiously his eyebrows go up at Bex.

Rebecca is utterly amused at the blushing, and she presses her lips to one of the bite marks gently. "Mmmhmm," she notes. "Super hot. I'd love to be able to watch that. You and a guy playing rough with you. Yes please." She chuckles. "Is he hot too?" she asks, arching a brow at him.

Itzhak blushes hotter when Rebecca kisses the bite mark, and shifts his hips in that way he does when things start happening downstairs. "Ah, fuck, Bex," he mutters, tipping his chin up to let her have room. "Oh yeah. He's hot as hell. Um. Actually, you might know him." But then he dithers! He doesn't say the guy's name right away, busy being flustered. One big hand slips to Bex's waist.

"Oh?" Rebecca queries, trailing kisses down his neck a little, then giving him a tiny nip before sitting up to reclaim her tea with a mischievous grin on her face. "Who is he? I promise not to embarrass you if I run into him in public."

Itzhak shivers, eyes drifting half-closed. This big, rough dude is reduced to shivering when she does that. He clears his throat and gives her a mock-annoyed look when she sits up, like oh is THAT how you want to play it. But he glances away again, embarrassed. "Uh. His name's Javier. De la Vega. He's...the captain of the force in town."

Good Lord, Itzhak, really?

"Captain de la Vega? The cop?" Rebecca asks, blinking over the rim of her teacup. "Really? I don't know him well other than from the Gohl business and then that wolf in the Dream but," she ponders a moment, "Not too shabby. Good for you, Itzy!" Siiiiip.

Startled, Itzhak barks a laugh and then covers his face, red as a tomato, and cracks up into his hands. Rebecca might not have seen him get this flustered, but here he is, kind of losing it over her deadpan congratulations. "Oy gevalt, that's what you got to say? 'Not too shabby'?" He surfaces, grinning wryly at her, all his crows-feet showing. "C'mere you." Arm around her, he kisses her temple.

His right arm looks different. There's a new scar on it--but such a scar it is, seared white and curling up and down his forearm, delicate and fernlike. Itzhak just has all kinds of new marks to show her today, no wonder he wanted to come over.

Rebecca leans in to kiss him with a chuckle. "What, I can't be proud that my man scored a hot piece of cop ass? Or well the cop scored him?" She glances at his arm. "What's this?" she asks, tracing a finger over the scar gently.

"Probably he more scored me," Itzhak has to admit. He turns his arm over, letting the scar shine in the light. "I was Over There, with Izeleh," he murmurs. "Got messed up. She had to jolt me to help me. That's called a Lichtenberg figure. Happens when you get struck by lightning." The figure erases tiny feathery bits of his knuckle ink, splashes up his upper arm to do the same to the bottom of his sparkplug-with-crossed-wrenches tattoo. Most of it is on his forearm, in spiraling fractal fern leaves. "Arm's pretty sore, still kinda stiff. But hell, I still got a bow arm, can't complain."

That Itzhak is a sort of modern shaman, stepping boldly across the border between the worlds to get into trouble, is something that sometimes it's easy for even him to forget. Then this kind of thing happens.

Rebecca looks worried. "You sure you're ok? Electrical shock can really do damage. I can do some of that myself." He knows she can, but she hasn't zapped anything full force. Yet. If those damn goblins come back though...

She rubs the scar lightly. "Is Isolde ok? She didn't get injured, did she?" Her concern for them both is genuine.

"Yeah. Little beat up, but a buddy helped out." Itzhak gestures to his right side. "There's a lot more of it under here. Izeleh is fine. She's a survivor." There's unmistakable affection in his voice. "Nothing even touched her. I'm the one's too dumb to get out of the way." ...Too stubborn to move, is what he really means, when someone's in danger. If only he had a big blue energy rectangle in real life!

He finally drinks some of the tea and starts untensing, one muscle at a time. Whew. That was a lot to get through. "So, I guess you could say I been busy," he says, eyebrows popping up in that wry way of his. "Fucking a cop, gettin' into fights across the border."

"Always the tank, my Reinhardt," Rebecca murmurs. She sets her tea back down and snuggles up to him again. She leans her head on his shoulder. "Now all I can think of is you and the cop. Sheesh. I'm gonna be the one to need a cold shower."

Itzhak hitches one shoulder, with a pleased, slight smile. Yeah, Reinhardt is his hero in more ways than one, and they both know it. "Yeah? Well, you wanna hear about it?" He nuzzles her nose with his big crooked schnozz, voice growing warm. "I gotta warn you, he is not a nice guy. And neither am I."

"Ooooh yes please. Tell me the whoooole, sordid, X-rated story. But not in here." She gets up and gives him the come hither finger curl as she traipses towards her bedroom.

If Itzhak had dignity, he wouldn't scramble to his feet so fast. But he doesn't, and he way doesn't in the face of that offer. "Yes ma'am." Rebecca has six feet and change of lanky, beaky ex-con following her into the bedroom.