>> "Oh, well I'm sure there's still quite a few of your cop friends who'd be interested about our little dinner date and sleep over we had. Unless, of course, that's the reason you're working here now?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Rupert answered curtly. Any amusement he'd had with this conversation had been quite thoroughly gouged out by the woman's attempted snipe at his religious conscience. "I didn't quit the force because of you." No, he'd quit the force because of her fiancée. That was a fact she did not need to know.

Long moments passed. Long moments that couldn't be leading to anything good.

>> "Actually, you're not that bad of company, as long as you don't have a gun or remote in your hand. But it beats sitting around bored in the shop. Huh. Who'd'a thought?"

Well that just made his day, didn't it? Rupert's face twisted into a scowl. Yeah, his anger management was getting better. But it wasn't perfect, and this woman--this mutant--was clearly pushing it.

"Just leave, Lee." He growled. "What the hell are you trying to do, here? I'm not serving your kind." Lee's parents had obviously failed her, growing up: they'd never handed down one very important lesson. Poking the caged bear? It wasn't the wisest thing in the world.

Lee simply shrugged when Rupert said not to flatter herself. By the way his voice was sounding, she was getting to him. Again. Good. He was getting to her, so it was only fair since he was deciding to be an ass of exquisite form that day.

When she came out and said that, surprisingly, Rupert wasn't all that bad of company, he scowled. A deeper scowl than she'd yet seen that day.

"You have, and you will," Lee said simply, softly. "All without knowing it. And it hasn't killed you.

"And that's all most of us want, you know," Lee continued softly, then shook her head at Rupert. "I think I'm feeling awake enough without coffee. And they do say coffee's bad for you if you drink too much. Hmm..." With a sigh, Lee bent down and picked up the ten dollar bill Rupert had dropped on the floor and set it back on the counter. "I think you dropped something," she said, then turned without waiting for an answer, a smile growing on her face once more.

"I thought we had really shared something special over dinner," Lee said as she walked away, her voice growing louder with each step she took away from the zealot. "And then what we shared after dinner...I really thought you were a better guy, Rupert," Lee finished with a sigh, the smile gone from her face to be replaced with a slightly disappointed frown as she glanced over her shoulder while her hand reached out to pull the door open.

>> "You have, and you will. All without knowing it. And it hasn't killed you. And that's all most of us want, you know. I think I'm feeling awake enough without coffee. And they do say coffee's bad for you if you drink too much. Hmm..."

The woman had a point. A good point. That very fact--and more than that, the fact that Rupert's indignantly open moth couldn't find anything to combat her--was not helping his rising temper. He shut his mouth. Shut it, and replied with a scowl. If he'd served mutants without knowing, then they deserved to be served--deserved it, for being pleasant enough to lay low.

>> "I think you dropped something."

That little smile. That smug little smile, as the woman turned. Rupert didn't look down at the bill she'd set in front of him. Hamilton mocked him from the counter. Who the hell was Hamilton, any way? He wasn't a president. Either that, or Rupert had forgotten more of his elementary school history than he'd thought. The scowl turned into a jaw-clench. She couldn't just leave it at that. Oh no.

>> "I thought we had really shared something special over dinner. And then what we shared after dinner...I really thought you were a better guy, Rupert."

If little Lee got to have a parting shot going out the door, than so did Rupert. He grabbed the bill in a crumpling grip, shoved open the little swinging door that separated the kitchen and counter from the rest of the shop, and strode out. "What did we share, Lee? A few slices of eggplant and a conversation that didn't end in us at each other's throats? Yeah. Big deal." He was over to where Lee was, now. He took the ten dollar bill, and rudely shoved it back at her. "Good guys end up dead, Lee. So do all their friends. I'd rather be a bad guy, if it means saving lives from you freaks. Take your damn money and go back to your damn boyfriend."

When Lee had reached the door, she was thinking that she was going to escape without Rupert saying anything else. She was wrong, though, as Rupert stormed up behind her. Turning slowly to face him, Lee blinked. "And look at us now," she replied. "For us, Rupert, I'd say that that does constitute something special, wouldn't you?"

But no, that wasn't the end of it. They were fighting. Not just verbally, but now, it seemed, over which one of them would be stuck with the ten dollar bill when they parted ways. Almost as if whoever ended up with it was the one who had lost in their little encounter.

Looking down at the bill Rupert had crumpled up in his hand, Lee wrinkled her nose. "I don't want that," she told him, a hint of disgust in her voice. "Just look at it, all dirty after you dropped it on the floor, and wrinkled with how you grabbed it."

With Rupert's last comment, Lee's face sobered, the disgust and the previous smile being wiped off in a second. "Everyone dies," Lee whispered. "You can be a 'bad guy', and get hit by a bus tomorrow, or be a good guy and live to be an old man, and neither of them have a thing to do with what you, or I, think of you.

"And you know, I'm actually glad, now, that you didn't serve me. If you're going to insist on acting like this, I don't want to take anything from you." Including the money that was actually hers, which he had dirtied.

>> "Everyone dies. You can be a 'bad guy', and get hit by a bus tomorrow, or be a good guy and live to be an old man, and neither of them have a thing to do with what you, or I, think of you."

"Fat lot of difference it makes, anyway," Rupert scowled, even as she was continuing:

>> "And you know, I'm actually glad, now, that you didn't serve me. If you're going to insist on acting like this, I don't want to take anything from you."

Rupert was taken aback for a moment. Only a moment. And then, as he did so often, he shouted out the first thing to blaze through his mind: "You can't do that. You can't just take what I was doing, and turn it around. I refused to serve you; you can't just refuse to be served. Now take your money back. I don't want it." He shoved the ten dollar bill towards her chest, and let it go.

Maybe it was a good thing that Rupert didn't actually have a gun at the moment, Lee realized as she watched the man getting more and more worked up. She didn't actually want to die, after all.

And then he got even more upset as she commented that she was glad he had ended up not serving her, thrusting the crumpled up bill at her again. And letting go, again, so that it once more drifted down to the floor, because Lee was not reaching out to take it.

"I'm not refusing to be served," Lee explained, nice and calmly compared to Rupert's anger and scowling. "I'm just...glad now that I wasn't. There is a difference, you know."

That said, and with a quick glance at the floor where the ten dollar bill was currently sitting, Lee finished pushing the door open. "Get over yourself, Rupert," Lee said to say goodbye. "You're going to end up killing yourself with all this stress and anger." Lee then left, walking out into the chill air outside the coffee shop.