Falling Upside Down (Riley)

It had been an eventful day. First he'd traveled on a plane for the first time in his life, for eight hours, then he'd traveled on a subway for the first time and gotten lost. He'd managed to finally find himself somewhere near where Riley's apartment building was and was now trusting his legs and feet only and walking.

He dragged his suitcase bumpily down the sidewalk behind him, a backpack secure on both shoulders. Hey Riley, good to see you! How'ya been? He grinned to himself at imaginary Riley's ecstatic reaction to his surprise arrival, and quickened his pace, scanning the building numbers for the one her letters had come from. Two real, actual paper letters, one with a tiny feather stuck in the envelope - an accident from one of the owls no doubt. He'd written one back in the middle but the second letter had arrived just yesterday. And of course text messages had flown back and forth there for a month, though the frequency had dropped off.

A small voice in the back of his head was warning him that surprise visits were bad ideas. What if Riley had another guy in her apartment? Not that she wasn't allowed to see other ....people... was she allowed? No, of course she was, they weren't going steady as Mama would say, and it had been months and he wouldn't blame her, of course, and Antonio's brow creased unhappily the more he thought about how fine he'd be if Riley was shacking up with some New York hipster.

Finally the correct building loomed beside him and Antonio took a deep breath and plunged inside to the warm lobby. New York in October had a cold bite to it he wasn't used to, and he quickly found the elevator and headed toward it.

"Excuse me. Sir. You can't go up there."

'Tonio turned around, an easy smile on his face, to find a uniformed doorman headed for him. "Sorry, what? My friend lives here. Well, up there," he added, pointing at the ceiling. "I'm surprising her, so -"

The doorman was shaking his head. "I'm going to have to call up to your friend, sir. You understand."

"But the elevators are right...there... okay, fine." Antonio grudgingly turned around and followed the man back to the front desk.

"Name?"

"Antonio Fer- wait, my name or hers?" He leaned his elbows on the chest high counter, peering with interest at the set up the doorman had on the desk.

"Your name," the man said. "Then hers, if you don't mind." He adjusted the computer screen so Antonio couldn't catch a glance of the screen.

"Right, of course." Antonio settled back down, examining the expensive looking interior of the lobby. "Antonio Fernandez to see Riley Grace."

"Mmhmm." The doorman picked up a phone and kept 'Tonio in place with his eyes while he waited for the resident to pick up.

Several bowls of colorful peppers were set neatly aside, along with the slender strips of tender chicken she'd been marinating since that morning. It was odd, she mused, that she had no problem eating chicken or even turkey, given her mutations and abilities. Riley only had the caveat that she did not want to meet the animal providing her with a meal...packaged chicken and turkey from the supermarket was perfectly safe.

Turning to find her wok in order to begin heating it, she frowned to see a large padded envelope still on the very end of her counter. Riley grimaced as her mind finally kicked in, remembering at long last that she was supposed to have delivered the envelope to the doorman this morning so he could hand it off to the mailman.

"Blast it...Vincent, Boris, you two behave...I have to take this downstairs to Alfred, okay?" Quickly covering the ingredients and ensuring that her stove was still off, she grabbed the envelope and her keys, just as her phone chimed. It was the double ping that meant Alfred was calling from the desk, but she ignored it since she was on her way down to see him as it was.

Perhaps, she thought, bouncing from foot to foot in the elevator, the last box of her things had arrived from LA. That would be a wonderful surprise, considering how long ago she'd packed and sent them off. The door finally opened in the lobby, and she padded out of it, eyes cast down in one last critical look at the envelope in her hands. "Sorry I didn't pick up, Alfred...I was coming down to see you anyway. Would you mind seeing that the mailman picks this up-" Riley said brightly, finally looking up as she approached the desk.

Blue eyes blinked, her mind taking a moment to process the sight that greeted her there.

The handsome, smiling sight she'd missed so terribly.

Keys and envelope alike fell to the floor as she flung herself forward, arms wrapping around him tightly, her voice refusing to emerge in anything other than a breathless rush of words and air. "You're-here-you're-really-here-I-can't-believe-it-I've-missed-you-so-damned-much." The words stopped when she kissed him soundly, heedless of Alfred lofting a graying brow at the both of them.

"Hey Ri-ack!" Antonio grabbed the counter with one hand and Riley with the other as she nearly bowled him over. The doorman lost his nice hat to the gust of wind as her wings counterbalanced them. "Yeah, I'm mmmph."

Her lips pressed against his, and Antonio returned the kiss, his body suddenly aching for more human contact. Of the female variety. Of the Riley variety. She pulled back, and he smiled at her. "Hey. Hope you don't mind me dropping in like this."

The doorman snorted as he bent over to retrieve his hat.

She was breathless as she clung to him, suddenly unsteady on her feet, his warmth and presence eliciting a rush of pleasure across her senses. Riley bit her lip and shook her head, trying to even out her expression and failing in epic fashion. "Oh yes. I mind. Terribly." she gave up and giggled, cupping his face in her hands as she pulled back.

Blowing a loose copper curls out of her eyes, she pulled back and retrieved her keys and her envelope. "Alfred, I'm so sorry..." she winced as she watched him set his hat back on his head. "...would you mind giving this to the mailman for me?" The envelope was settled in the basket atop his desk as she smiled sheepishly.

"Not a problem, Miss Grace. Why don't you stop by later or sometime tomorrow, and we can have Mister Fernandez leave a copy of his ID so he can come and go more freely." He added with a smile, setting back to the task of reorganizing his windswept desk.

"Come on, 'Tonio...the boys will be so excited to see someone they know!" Riley all but bounced as she grabbed his hand and pulled him into the open elevator. She pressed the button for the seventeenth floor and gently squeezed his fingers. "I am so happy to see you...I can't even explain it...when I left LA...I wasn't sure I would see you again." she added softly.

He looked up at the mirrored ceiling of the elevator, and tugged her closer to him, accidentally knocking over his suitcase. "Yeah, I wasn't sure how that was going to work out either." Antonio brushed some hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. "Someone had to make sure you were behaving yourself out here, though. I volunteered." He grinned, avoiding a playful swat from Riley.

"I was flunking out - I told you before, Professor Beauchamp is failing all the mutants he has in his classes. And he's like, vital to the chem department, and I had him for like half my classes." Antonio sighed theatrically. "Well, not anymore. UCLA and I have agreed to disagree on discrimination tactics, and I got offered a place in New York a couple days ago."

She settled comfortably into his side, wrinkling her nose at the mention of the Professor she'd heard so much about from him in the past. The man was decidedly legendary - both for being a brilliant chemist and for being a traditional bigot. How he'd survived being at a school with an equally legendary reputation for liberality, Riley had no idea.

Nor, she mused, did she know why UCLA had suddenly decided to turn tail and begin ejecting mutant students for the most trivial of reasons.

But it didn't matter. There was nothing they could do about it, so really, why dwell on it?

Riley sighed, not budging from his side until the elevator door opened to admit them into the hallway of the seventeenth floor. "This way..." she smiled, helping him right the suitcase and skipping ahead of him to the far end of the hall. The door was marked with scrolled lettering #17F, and flanked by a pair of delicately sculpted topiary plants, as were the others, the only differences being the shapes. She unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer, off to one side to allow him space to enter.

As he did and the door closed behind them both, she dropped her keys into the basket on the side table, and watched as Vincent and Boris half-flapped and half-hopped their way over to him with a great degree of noisy enthusiasm.

Antonio took in the swanky apartment, and then saw the owls hopping and screeching their way toward them. "Aah! Oh, hey guys." He backed up a little, a nervous smile on his face. "Vincent and Boris, long time no see." He still had no idea which one was which, despite meeting the birds several times.

"Looks like they're doing well," he said, edging slightly to the side and putting his suitcase in front of him in case the owls got any funny ideas.

It was adorable, really, that he was a little nervous around a pair of birds that really acted like goofy puppies most of the time. But then again, when roused to anger, even small burrowing owls had lethal beaks and claws.

Still hard for her to fathom, some days, that these two featherheads could hunt for themselves.

"Ok...ok...take it down a few notches you two..." she laughed, pinning her copper curls up with a few pins from the pocket of her snug jeans. She lofted a brow as they clicked their beaks at her and hopped over to her feet.

Riley leaned down to gently scratch each of them atop their heads. "...why don't you go investigate your perches and start settling in for the night. I left you treats..." A soft laugh escaped as they promptly made off down the hallway to their room, leaving the two humans behind without a second thought.

"Pretty sure you can put the suitcase and the backpack down now...have you eaten? I was about to make a stir-fry..." she padded past him, stole a quick kiss, and made her way into the kitchen, busying herself with the ingredients she'd left out.

He brightened at the mention of food. "Sounds great to me." Antonio shrugged out of the backpack and left it by his suitcase, then followed Riley to the kitchen.

Leaning on the countertop, he reached over and snagged a pea pod from a plastic container. "So, how have you been?"

With the piles of ingredients uncovered, she dug the seasoned wok out of the cabinet below the ridiculously large gourmet stove. Considering it was just her and two birds that didn't need to be cooked for, she still felt like it was ridiculous huge and overwhelming to live on her own in the apartment. Her thoughts wandered off on her for several moments as she heated the wok, adding sesame oil at the right moment and watching it shimmer as it heated almost instantly.

"I've been...alright." Riley said at last, dropping the chicken into the wok and stirring it rather vigorously as was necessary. Reaching for the soy sauce, she added some to the wok and then added each of the vegetable ingredients in turn, stirring frequently.

"Haven't found a school yet. Most of the universities here don't have the extensive bio programs we had out at UCLA. It's looking like I'll have to change my degree completely if I want to get my Masters. I'll have to decide by next week if I want to start class in January with the new semester." she continued, stirring a bit more intently for several moments, blinking as she stared sightlessly into the wok. A sigh emerged and she gazed over at him, wrinkling her nose as her wing protested being moved back.

"I miss the sun in LA. It's too cold here...reminds me too much of Montana. And if the winter is even slightly like it is back home, it's going to suck." Riley muttered, turning back to the wok, and finally adding the noodles.

"And I missed you. A lot." She turned the heat under the wok off, and retrieved two plates from another cabinet. Doling out two heaping portions, she withdrew a pair of chopsticks from a drawer for herself, before holding up another pair and a fork for him to choose from.

Antonio took the fork with no hesitation, and smiled. "I missed you too. Andyour cooking, holy shit this smells good." They sat down, and he reached over and took her hand before they started eating. "I've never been out of California in my life. Well, unless you count Mexico. I'm, uh, looking forward to the snow."

He covered his momentary confusion with a grin, and retreated to his bowl, putting a huge forkful of stir fry into his mouth. That wasn't what he'd meantto say. Antonio met Riley's eyes and grew thoughtful. Keeping it light and fun was how he liked it, but when she'd moved away there had been a decidedly Riley-shaped hole in his life. And...here he was, at her apartment before he'd even seen the place he was going to live at.

He shoved another forkful in, chewing enthusiastically. "Mmmm!"