DC: Courting Vipers ch 7

Chapter 7: Meet the Family Drama


Leslie felt herself go into a state somewhere between shock and mild panic when she received Tony’s text message.  It wasn’t like she had been so stupid as to think her parents would never find out about her interactions with Copperhead; she was blonde, but she wasn’t blonde, thank you.  Still, she had hoped they wouldn’t find out this soon.  She was really in for it now.

She was in the Hummer with the door halfway shut when it was suddenly pulled away from her.  Guiltily she looked up at Copperhead, blushing as she met his amber eyes.

“Where do you think you’re going?” He demanded, scowling dangerously.  “You’re not just going to walk out on me, not without telling me what’s going on.”

She let out a defeated sigh.  She really didn’t have the time for this, so hopefully the truth of the matter would make him back off.

“My parents found out.” She mumbled quietly.

“Found out what?” He asked, lifting an eyebrow.

“About you,” she answered, “Or more accurately, that I keep talking to you and running into you.”

“So?”

She stifled a humorless laugh.  His candor was just incredible sometimes.

“So,” she emphasized impatiently, “I’m in trouble.  So now I have to go home and receive my just punishment from my parental units.”

He studied her for a moment, his expression blank, before promptly walking around the Hummer and opening the passenger side door.

“Okay then, let’s go.” He said casually, climbing into the passenger seat and tossing his costume in the back.  Leslie couldn’t stop her mouth from dropping open as she stared, dumbfounded.

“No.  No, you are not that crazy.  Luiz, I am going to get the crap grilled out of me for this.  Why the frick do you think I would want you along?” she asked, almost sputtering in her shock.

“Hey, if your family has some problem with me, chica, then they can say it to my face.” He answered steely, his pupils thinning.  The sight chilled the young heiress.  He was ticked.  And over this?  Was he ticked off at her, or at her family on her behalf?  Whatever it was, she wasn’t sure she entirely liked seeing these flashes of his anger.  Something about it made him look less human than normal.

She tried to put it out of her mind as she shook her head and reluctantly began the drive back home.



Luiz decided very quickly he didn’t like this sort of silence Leslie was making him live through as she drove back to her family mansion.  Sure, her talking non-stop could get irritating fast, but that was part of her natural state, he had realized.  This sort of anxious quiet state?  That wasn’t at all natural for her, and considering how it came about, Luiz figured it was a pretty bad sign and took note of it.  Once or twice, he tried to break up the silence, attempting to get her to engage in conversation, but it didn’t really work.

Before long they arrived, greeted by the intercom at the gates in a rather rude manner.

“Leslie Colleen Smith,” a crisp, feminine voice said tersely, “You will park your brother’s Hummer in garage B, and then you will join us in your father’s office.”

She didn’t offer a response, but rolled her window back up as the gate slid open.

“That sounds like you’re being summoned to a board meeting to get fired from a desk job,” Luiz remarked, furrowing his brow, “Was that your mother?”

“Yes, I know; delightful, isn’t she?” Leslie shook her head slightly.  He didn’t respond, but raised his eyebrows and sucked in a breath through his teeth.  Despite his earlier accusations, he thought he could see what she had meant about constantly putting on an act around different people.  In that case, what kind of people were her parents?

I suppose I’m going to find out. He thought, feeling a touch of irony for some reason.  He cast about for something to say, but couldn’t come up with anything as Leslie pulled into a garage, parking the Hummer next to some sports car.  They exited the vehicle in silence, Luiz snatching his costume from the backseat and falling in step behind her as she entered the house, attempting to keep his focus from wandering.  It wasn’t easy; he found himself automatically trying to case the mansion, taking notice of small, telltale signs of the security system, vent locations, what he could see that looked valuable, what wasn’t bolted down… and what looked like hidden panels or false walls that might be hiding small vaults.

“Please tell me you’re not trying to think of what you could possibly steal.” Leslie mumbled after having glanced over her should and caught him looking around.

“Bit late for that, chica,” he answered, snatching a heavy fountain pen off a sideboard they passed, “Plus I think in just a little more detail than you give me credit for.  And anyway, I behaved last time I was here.  Is this made with silver inlay?  Because it feels like pewter.”

“What the—?!  Give me that!” She hissed, snatching it out of his hands.  “Keep your greedy mitts to yourself, you kleptomaniac!”

“I’m not a klepto, I’m a jewel thief.” He said indignantly.  “Wouldn’t pick it up if it didn’t look valuable.”

“Yeah, right!” She snorted, but he was pretty sure he glimpsed the flash of a smile on her mouth, and he held back a crooked grin.

“Come on, you think I’m funny.” He said, nudging her a little, as they passed by something else that caught his eye.  He halted mid-step, turning to do a double-take.  Leslie kept right on walking and talking as he slipped through the open door into an adjacent room.  Whether it was a den or a study, he wasn’t sure; but he didn’t really care, as he had eyes for one thing: the old World War II aerial transistor radio he had spotted resting on the fireplace mantle.  In that moment, his golden eyes lit up and the corners of his mouth twitched upward.

“Hel—lo, beautiful.”



Leslie hadn’t noticed Luiz had slipped away from her and vanished until she reached her parents’ study and looked over her shoulder to address him.  An empty hallway was all that greeted her.

“Luiz?” She whispered uncertainly down the hall.  When she received no response, she hissed a little louder, “Luiz!”

“Leslie?” Her father’s voice, cracking like a glacier in a cold tone he rarely used, issued from the other side of the door, only just muffled.  “Come in!”

Feeling more than a little irritated and thrown to the wolves, she yanked open the door with a scowl and stomped in, crossing her arms and looking resolutely down at her shoes.

“Leslie Colleen Smith, uncross your arms!” Her mother snapped, sounding disgusted, but she didn’t budge beyond briefly thrusting her chin into the air to show what she thought of that.  Her father didn’t seem overly concerned by it, instead leaning forward on his elbows across the desk, giving her the ‘business stare’.

“Young lady,” beginning in a dangerous tone, not that she had expected anything else from her no-nonsense father, “Your brothers tell us you’ve been keeping secrets behind our backs.  You’ve been frequently encountering some criminal and spending time around the man without giving it a second thought and acting like it’s nothing.”

“Since when do you care whether or not I have secrets?” She snapped back, looking up and glaring at him.  “Since when are the two of you ever involved in anything I do?”

“That’s not the point—“ her mother began.

“Yeah, it kind of is!” She interrupted, speaking over her and raising her voice, her temper flaring.  “Maybe if you were ever around and had ever thought to ask me yourselves, I would have said something!”

To her right, she caught Steven and Tony looking her way at the edges of her peripheral vision, but chose to ignore it.  All three of them knew Leslie would probably dance around the subject had her parents been involved and brought it up themselves, but she was too upset with both of them to acknowledge it at the moment.

“Leslie, did you never stop to consider the consequences?” Her father asked steely, working to regain control of the conversation, and for a moment her irritation wavered.

“Well yeah,” she admitted, “I’m not stupid, I know super-criminals are dangerous, even the less-heard-of—“

“I’m not talking about the obvious danger,” her father cut her off, “Even homeless drunks and red-light district women can tell you super-criminals are dangerous.  I mean, did you consider the consequences closer to home?”

This gave her a moment of pause.  The danger closer to home?  That Copperhead might rob them blind?  That he could threaten the lives of her family?  Perhaps she hadn’t given that as much thought as she could have, but—

“Do you have any idea what this could mean for our family, young lady?  For the business?  You of all people should know that gossip starts fast and dies slow!”

She looked up in disbelief, her mouth falling open.

“You’re worried about the impact my hanging out with a criminal might have on your business?!” She exclaimed.

“It’s not just the business, girl, and you know that!” Her mother interjected.  “Think of the media, the social aspects and impacts!  You’re an heiress to a fortune—“

“Hey!” Steven grumbled.  “We’re here too, you know.”

“—and the news will be all over any scrap of a rumor that you’ve taken up with disreputable people!” Mrs. Smith continued loudly.  “We shall become the laughingstock of the business world in Gotham City!  Nobody in high society will ever trust us again; once word gets out you’re rubbing shoulders with the wrong people, the entire family will be stonewalled out of fear!  Not,” she added, “that I would be able to blame anyone for doing so.”

Leslie uncrossed her arms so she could drop them to her sides, gently clenching and unclenching her fists.

“Are you kidding me?  Seriously?  I try to be nice to someone and treat them like a person, regardless of whether or not it could go really wrong, and all you care about is whether or not it means you get invited to so-and-so’s next black-tie event?!” She scoffed, shaking her head, completely thrown.  She couldn’t believe this!

“Leslie—“ her father began in a manner that was clearly going to belittle her, baby her, tell her she couldn’t possibly even begin to comprehend the big picture.  She wasn’t going to have any of it.

“Don’t you dare!” Her voice erupted in a yell.  “Don’t even start!”

“Don’t talk to your father that way, you disrespectful little terror!” Her mother bellowed, getting up in her face, a painted nail slicing through the air as she waggled a finger dangerously.  “I know we didn’t raise you to be so thoughtless and insolent!”

“Me, thoughtless!” Leslie shrieked, nearing hysterics, her breath coming in sharp bursts.  “You know what, screw this!  Why should I even listen to you?!  All you care about is looking good in front of cameras and people!”

Silence fell as though she had just physically attacked both of her parents.  All three of them were breathing heavily, faces flushed with anger.  This sort of thing never happened.  Leslie waited for her brothers to jump in, for Stevie-wonder to say something about how she was just the same as the rest of them, and for Anthony to hastily try to calm everyone down.
 
Their silence was instead broken by something else entirely.

“So I wasn’t expecting this to be a complete family feud to the extreme, but I’m actually kind of entertained.”

Stunned, the Smith family turned as one toward the door, and Leslie covered her mouth to conceal her reaction upon seeing Luiz leaning on the doorframe, holding her grandfather’s old WWII radio and grinning shamelessly.  He glanced at her, his smile going slightly more crooked, and winked.

“Didn’t know you had it in you, princesa.” He chuckled.  “Color me impressed.  So… is this the family, then?”

His tail slid back and forth across the hardwood floor as he spoke, and the rest of them seemed to snap back to their senses.

“Sir,” Mr. Smith started, “Sir!  You are breaking and enteri—“

“Eh, correct me if I’m wrong, señor, but I’m technically not breaking and entering if she invited me in.” Luiz interrupted, his tone completely unimpressed as he nodded to Leslie.

“You brought this criminal with you?!” Mrs. Smith screeched, her hands flying up to entangle themselves in a ruined perm.  “LESLIE COLLEEN SMITH!!”

“What did you think, that I was stalking her?” He snorted.  “Give me a break, yeesh!  We just keep running into each other.  She brought me along because she was having some Sophie woman and her pin-sticking diablos make me a suit.”

The effect of mentioning Sophie making a suit was what finally did it.  In the blink of an eye, Mrs. Smith swooned and had to be caught by Tony, who tried to push her back onto her feet, and Mr. Smith’s face went from red to stark white to a pale shade of green.  Automatically he started to grope around his desk for a phone—probably to finally call the police, Leslie realized—but she was faster by far, snatching the cordless handset and two cell phones off the desk before anyone could stop her.

“Leslie!” Tony gasped as she tossed the phones to Luiz, whose smile only got wider in his smug triumph.  Mr. Smith was the first to fully recover, his eyebrows narrowing as his scowl shifted from his daughter to the thief.

“What do you want?” He asked angrily, to which Luiz slowly shook his head and clicked his tongue in disapproval.

“Well for one thing, a little human decency and respect won’t hurt,” he replied, “For someone with such high standards, you’re rather rude, ya sabes.  For another, I wouldn’t mind forgetting this place and everything in it if you just let me take this.”

“Granddad’s old radio?” Tony asked, as he and Steven goggled at it in shock.

“Fine, fine,” Mr. Smith said in exasperation, waving a dismissive hand, “Take the radio if you want, but go.  And don’t ever contact our daughter again, or we will—“

“What?!” Leslie’s outburst cut off her father’s threat, and to her surprise, Luiz echoed her response.

“What.” He said blankly, taken by surprise.

“Well, I guess that’ll make him happy,” Tony mumbled awkwardly, “Since sis keeps setting the Justice League on him and all.”

“Wait, you set the Justice League on him?” Steven asked doubtfully, shooting her a startled look.  She didn’t even bother trying to protest the point as Luiz nodded vigorously.

“Chica es mala suerte.” He remarked before frowning at the Smith parents again.  “Does this go both ways, then?  Because most of the time, she finds me.”

Leslie tossed him a significant look at that, but neither one could say a word before both of her parents and her eldest brother quite vocally insisted “no contact” meant no contact.  She watched a small change flicker over Luiz’s face, a flash of irritation, just barely perceptible.  Was he possibly as upset about this as she was?

Her musing suddenly snapped something into place in her mind.  She wasn’t just angry at her parents’ reactions, she wanted to be able to see and talk to this ridiculous snake-man whenever she felt like it.  Luiz had been more straightforward with her than her family from day one, and in any event, she had just dropped a pretty penny on a suit for him.  This of course meant Leslie was entitled to see said suit and the man wearing it when she so pleased.

“Alright, alright,” Luiz finally said, keeping his voice low with just a hint of barbed venom in his syllables, “Keep your shirts on.  I’ll be leaving.  But if I get even the slightest inkling that you’re calling the police when I’m gone…”

He curled back his lips in a sneer, revealing his teeth like he had done to Leslie at the mall a couple of months ago.  The words “why don’t you use your imagination” echoed in her thoughts, and a shiver moved through the length of her spine.  Heat threatened to rise in her cheeks, and she did her best to avoid looking directly at the Metahuman.  Instead she glanced between her parents and her brothers, unsurprised but vindictively pleased to see the fear and alarm on their faces.

“I do not appreciate threats, sir—“ her father began again.

“You are a psychotic—“ her mother started.

Luiz deliberately ignored them both, and turned towards her.  Her face was definitely beginning to burn now, but still she turned to face him, pulled by some force she couldn’t put a name to.

“Gracias, señorita.” He purred, tilting his head and grinning.  Leslie gave another small shiver, but managed a half-smile in return.

“De nada.” She answered, the Spanish words slipping out of her mouth automatically.  There was a sharp intake of breath behind her—probably Steven, if she had a guess—but she didn’t care.  She felt inexplicably delighted, like the two of them were children sharing some special secret that nobody else would fully understand or appreciate.

He slipped out the door, breaking the spell, and the rest of the Smith family erupted into angry discussion.  Leslie continued to stare at the door a moment before trotting forward and wrenching it open to look down the hall.  But Luiz had vanished and wasn’t entirely shocked to find the hallways empty.  Disappointment started to chew away at her insides then, and it was a minute or two before she realized her parents were talking to her.

“Leslie, are you even listening?” Her father snapped.  “Leslie!  Leslie Colleen!”

She turned back, glaring at them all.

“She’s not listening.” Steven muttered, rolling his eyes.  “What a shock.”

“Shut UP, you jerk!” She shouted, the floodgate of emotion finally bursting and pouring forth her anger unchecked.  “This is all your fault!  This would’ve been fine if you hadn’t stuck your fat head into my business!”

“Hey,” Steven’s face started turning a violent shade of red as he growled at her, “Maybe you should take a reality check, twerp!  You wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with if you had used your brain and not started talking to a psycho basket-case in a costume!”

Indignant rage trickled into her anger as she took a threatening stride toward her brother.

“He is NOT a psycho!  You don’t even know him!”

“Whoa, chill!” Tony yelped, jumping between them and grabbing the collars of their shirts to keep them apart.

“Oh, what?” Steven snorted back at her as though nothing had occurred.  “And you do?”

His words hit with the full force of a backhanded slap in the face.  Leslie opened her mouth to protest, but no words came to her.  She closed her mouth for a second, then reopened it only to realize she had nothing to defend herself with, and closed her mouth once more.  Her anger was turning inward, outward, twisting all around.  What could she say to defend Copperhead?  Could she say anything?

He’s right though, a tiny little voice in Leslie’s head remarked.  Steven’s right.  I really don’t know anything about Luiz, not beyond his names and a criminal career, and I don’t even know a lot about those, either.

Something in her core tried to uncoil, tried to go limp in admission of defeat.  But she wouldn’t let it.  Not here, not now, and not in front of her family of self-serving, self-important sharks.  Her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply, her chest heaving.

“I’m going to my room.” She said through gritted teeth, wiggling free of Tony’s grip.

“This is far from over, young lady.” Her mother warned.

“Whatever.” She muttered unhappily, hunching her shoulders and crossing her arms as she darted from the study, blinking back the sting of tears.



Thunk-thunk-thunk.

“Les?”

She let out a frustrated growl, grabbing one of her pillows and folding it around her head to cover her ears.  The last thing she wanted was more pathetic apology attempts from Tony.

“Come on, kiddo!  You know I didn’t mean to let anything slip!” He called through her bedroom door.  “You’ve gotta stop doing this.”

She stuffed the pillow against her ears as best as she could.  She could sulk all week long if she wanted.  In a way, that was sort of the intent.  If Crystal or one of the Beauregard sisters needed her for anything, she’d come out of her room, but otherwise she was content to stay where she was.  She had a feeling her parents would eventually confine her there anyway; if she was going to be locked up like a prison, she wanted it to be on her terms, not theirs.

“Seriously, Leslie.” Tony’s voice lost its authoritative edge and there was a heavy, muffled thud.  He had probably planted himself on the floor in the hallway.  “You’re not accomplishing anything with this.”

Some logical part of her agreed; there really wasn’t a point in continuing to act like a child over what had happened.  She pushed those thoughts away.  This wasn’t really much of a victory for her, but it was something.

“Come on, you need to at least eat supper.” Her brother continued.  “We’re having sandwiches.  Like, deli-fresh sandwiches.  With actual baked-fresh bread.”

Like a traitor, her stomach let out a hungry growl at the very mention of fresh sandwiches.  She wasn’t starving herself—Leslie had long been the most accomplished at slipping out of her room to get midnight snacks—but the thought of freshly-made supper, even sandwiches, made her mouth water.  She gave a small swallow to moisten her throat.  She was not going to give in now.  She rolled over on her bed and shut her eyes tightly, wishing her brother would give up and go away already.

She wasn’t aware of having drifted off to sleep until a soft rustling noise woke her up.  Eyes opening wide, Leslie remained curled in her covers a second, heart beating fast.

“Hello?” She whispered.  The room had gone rather dark, save fro the light of the full moon shining in through the open window.  Immediately she tensed.

She hadn’t left her window open at all.

A warm breeze blew in through the room, small encouragement, and she sat up, keeping her blanket drawn around her protectively.

“Hello?” she said again, a little louder this time.  There was a pointed silence, the sort that occurs when somebody lurking out of sight is trying hard not to make a sound.  Feeling fractionally more bold and suspicious, she called out in a loud stage whisper, “Copper?”

She wasn’t aware of it until it moved, but she watched a long, sinuous coil of muscle twitch and whip out of sight, vanishing from the side of the window frame.  Unable to quell an impulsive rush of excitement, she slipped off the edge of the bed, trotting toward the window.  Her foot came into contact with something soft that crinkled against the wall, and she hastily moved away to get a better look at it.

“A paper bag?” She muttered to herself, bending down to scoop it up in both hands.  It was warm and a heavy, comforting aroma wafted from the bag as she lifted it.  Taking a quick glance outside and seeing no one, she pulled the window shut and latched it before opening the bag.  Wrapped carefully in wax paper and cut in two portions on warm bread was, undeniably, supper.  Probably not the same supper her family had made, given her parents’ dislike of such plebian foods as tuna salad melts, but it smelled and looked delicious.

The sandwich wasn’t the only thing in the bag, however.  The corner of a folded piece of paper caught her eye as well.  Curious, Leslie pulled the paper out and unfolded it, revealing slanted, spiky handwriting.

Quit being so stubborn, princess.

Instantly she smiled from ear to ear, feeling happy again as she hugged the bag and the note, giggling softly.