Disclaimer: I don't own Legion. I make no money from writing this work of fiction.
Copper Pans-:-
There are bags filled to the brim with food sitting in the kitchen like guardians of cooking and Winema found herself weeding through them and then organizing them into their proper places in the cupboards or fridge respectively as Londo actually cleaned his living room.
The man is actually panicking, but Winema doesn't comment on it and lets him continue mopping the tiles that spanned the entire property with a sort of frenzy. He has this look on his face that screams Panic Attack, and she can't help but watch it play out as she tries to open one particular packet of food; chicken and turkey. If he's like this, like a person who cares, he'll need food and Winema can cook and talk when he's ready, at the same time.
His grey head looks her way, finally, when he hears the clang of his pans—the ones he hasn't used in forever since he was more the instant gratification type who used microwave dinners when hungry—and he seems to realize exactly what he had been doing for the last four hours since he'd woken up that morning. Just a day after running into the smaller Wazzo woman… Feeling something other than the need to look for more things to experiment on in the jungle.
When she notices him register her having come in, she holds up two of the pans from the cupboards, "Which one of these is better suited to cook meat?"
He blinks. The question takes a second to process, but he then he points to the copper colored one, his hands still gripping the mop so hard that his knuckles are white.
She puts the other pan back where it came from, balanced precariously atop crystal goblets and wooden serving bowls meant for salads and once and a while even pasta dishes, and turned on the stove. She let the pan start to heat up as she washed her hands in the sink that faced the kitchen, the flow of the water very powerful, almost in an uncomfortable way, and looked pointedly at Londo so he would either go back to making his home more presentable or talk to her. She really wanted to know what was going on that had him so out of it.
He acknowledges the look and does something she had never thought he really would do. He starts talking, but also continues with the cleaning, too far into it to stop just yet, not with only the bathroom, operating room, kitchen and half of his bedroom done. He had to finish the living/computer/chemical room. But words could fall while he did that.
"I ran into your daughter the other day," he starts, just a little hesitant.
She turns off the water at this and gives him a little smile that he doesn't see but can sense when she turns to the meat, grabbing a small knife from a block of wood holding at least a dozen of its shiny copies on the other side of the counter. His words come again, punctuated in a way by the knife slicing through the meat and making them small enough that they measured just a bit smaller than Winema's pinky finger.
"She just happened to be in my favorite caffeine shop when…Brin and I used to visit New Metropolis. I was shopping for the food you see there and just happened upon the place. She told me I was next in line and…"
"…And?" Winema coaxed, leaving the meat for a moment to see if he had any butter in with the other goodies. Going into the second bag she found a whole tub of margarine and even some seasoning she might use later. It wasn't as though she couldn't guess what had happened, she knew her daughter enough to know what most likely happened. She just wanted confirmation.
He finds himself letting up on the pressure of the mop and tries not to smile while finishing, "She got this pissed off, angry as hell look and asked me, and I quote, "What the fuck are you doing here?" in this completely teenage way. She looked like she even would have tackled me and kicked my ass if other people weren't around."
Winema did laugh at this, bending a little at the waist even as she plopped a spoonful of butter into the pan. The yellow stuff melted and turned into a circular puddle as she turned and grabbed all of the meat and even the seasoning. She dropped the meat into the butter and let it sizzle for a second before adding the seasoning, just a little.
"And then on the way out she asked if I was there for Brin," he continued, "She was so protective. She's too short to do that by the way."
"She isn't that short."
"She barely comes up to my chest, Winema, she's too short to be so overprotective of my son. It is like having a kitten protect an Alaskan wolf. That's not only weird, it's humiliating."
She acknowledges that he's actually using her name, but doesn't say anything about it. She's afraid he'll break off speaking about this entirely and she won't find out why he's acting so differently.
"And then when she followed me outside, I actually noticed why she was there…"
"Oh? And what was that?"
He sighs, placing the mop in the water bucket and crossing over to sit on one of the chairs surrounding the kitchen counter. He looks worn out and she thinks that the real world has come slamming into him and whatever her daughter did must have hit him harder than a wrecking ball to make him feel something other than his pride at his work.
"She was picking up food and coffee for my son."
"Was he there?"
"No."
"Then how do you know that it was for him?"
He gives her a little glare, holding up his hand and then started ticking off reasons on his fingers, "She ordered for herself a peppermint drink, which she swung around and didn't seem to notice was dripping a little, but she also ordered those disgusting strawberry cookies with black coffee that she paid close attention to make sure that she not only didn't spill a drop, but also made sure the cookies didn't break in half. She ordered them like she had done it before. They were for Brin."
"That's nice."
"No, that's not nice," he argues, getting this look on his face that makes Winema smile a little more, "That is terrifying. Even more so than her kicking my ass."
"Do I detect some parental concern?"
"No!" Londo snarled, getting up from his spot to dig in the fridge where he saw her put away the beverages. He didn't even think about how he was supposed to listen to her bitch and moan at these times; it just seemed natural to talk like this around her. At least for now.
His voice echoed within the confines of the cooling machine, but she could make it out, even as he moved around the drinks he had bought and she had organized, looking for something specific, "I'm not concerned. Brin can take care of himself. He's almost an adult, he can do as he likes."
When he shuts the door to the fridge, he comes out with a bottle of cheap, white wine and goes for the drawer just next to Winema's hip that has the corkscrew in its confines, one hand just slightly pressing her the other way and then pulling out the device. She doesn't say anything, but allows him to muddle in his scattered thoughts and readies herself in case the cork comes flying out of the bottle. She's been hit by far too many of those and they hurt for hours if they hit the wrong body part.
She loosens her stance a little when the cork comes out easily and goes back to turn the meat. Londo grabs two champagne glasses from the cupboard and pours the wine into both. The one for himself is filled close to spilling out of the glass and the one he pours for her only reaches to the middle.
"So why are you freaking out on your tiled floors?" she prods, accepting the glass and taking a little sip. Wine, cheap or expensive, has always tasted the same to her and she still can't get drunk off of it. A perfect alcoholic beverage to have around a (now slightly less) mad scientist.
The wine vanishes, or at least half of it vanishes, down his throat, and he kind of just stares at the black haired woman before him a moment. His next words are careful, but deliberate and he's sure that he sounds like a jackass.
"I…I don't know. It just sort of hit me this morning that you were right. My son is on the cusp of dating someone for the first time and I find myself realizing I…I don't know anything about him now. He has a life I know nothing about. I want to know about him, but I don't know how."
"Ah, it is parental concern. But I can answer that question if you'd like," Winema said, turning off the stove to turn to the cupboards and grab a plate for each of them, one red glass for him and one a beige wood for her. She is deliberate and careful as she levels the pan above the plates and pours the meat, half and half, onto their plates and he assists her, unconsciously, by bringing out a fork for the each of them. He wonders for an instant why his forks are the tiny kind generally used for eating really expensive pie, but then shakes his head and starts in on his helping.
A fantastically good feeling settles into him like nesting as the food enters his mouth and he shuts his eyes in pleasure. Lord, he hasn't tasted home-made food in so long that this pathetic little meal, one piece of turkey or chicken in ten charred from sitting for too long, tastes like a meal from a five star professional chef and he enjoys it for another moment before swallowing and motioning her to answer his dilemma.
"You could actually dial the vid-phone and talk to him," Winema starts, turning back around to the fridge and pulling out the salad dressing and then turned back to him, covering half of her meat in the dressing, like an avalanche of snow over a rocky, dark desert, "Or you could ask someone who's actually met him. Like me."
He takes off his glasses, setting them on the other end of the counter, but doesn't look up at her, choosing to stare at what she had done to her share of the food. He, himself, couldn't stand ranch on anything other than salad or the roses he ate sometimes, and Brin hadn't liked the stuff at all. It made him curious about something other than their current conversation.
She notices the look and with no embarrassment or even hesitation, squirts just a little of the dressing onto the side of his plate, offing him something else as well, "I could at least tell you something small about him, if you'd like."
He pauses, it seems his whole body goes stiff even, for a moment of contemplation, but the result is the same whether he had paused or not. The answer is simple and some part inside of him opens up a part of his mind that he wasn't aware that he had.
"Tell me."
"Well, he bakes. It seems when I went into the Legion HQ he implied that he had done a lot of baking before and he thought the friend of his I asked to take me to him wanted some of the cookies he had in the oven at the time. Is that something?"
Londo's eyes had widened in her recounting of visiting his son in his new home and nothing comes to mind to answer her question as he chewed on the meat with the ranch.