Rusty/Carly friendship love.
"Did you know he was going to frisk me before I could come in here?" Rusty asked, approaching his friend just as she more or less tackled him with a hug he hadn't been prepared for and surrendered to with a quiet "ow".
"Sorry. I could try to have Tony killed for that." Carly couldn't helping looking hopeful at the prospect of getting rid of her least favorite guard, though she strongly doubted that Marcello would fire him for such a small offense. If Carly herself had been the one he'd attempted to 'frisk' it would have been a different thing entirely, but Rusty was a man, one who her husband wasn't very happy about her friendship with, and so Marcello would probably let it go. She understood why he considered Tony such a valuable employee, but frisking the thief wasn't allowed.
In her opinion, it was plain mean.
"Its alright. No harm done. I'm just wondering if he treats all of your friends like common criminals." Rusty smirked when Carly finally let him out of the embrace. She'd said she was bored on the phone, but he hadn't grasped the severity of the situation until arriving at her new place. Seeing Carly living in a home that was so different from her apartment in Los Angeles, answering to "Caroline" by her husband, and having one to begin with seemed very unlike the vampire slayer he'd come to know during the weeks spent preparing for the museum job in California. The woman standing before him hardly reminded him of the girl who'd helpfully flirted with that frightening security guard to keep him from getting caught.
Rusty imagined that her husband didn't approve of such things, which struck him as odd considering that Marcello San Giacomo was a known mobster. A man who benefitted greatly from the "import/export" business shouldn't be so closeminded.
"Just the good looking ones." Carly took a seat on the couch, watching Rusty hesitate before he sat down beside her. She couldn't say it didn't bother her that yet another friend seemed to be uncomfortable with her new marriage, but Rusty wasn't the type to visit frequently regardless. He was always busy with one "job" or another. As long as he remembered to give her a call once every few months to let her know that he wasn't in another mexican jail, she was fine with it.
"You better watch your mouth, if someone overhears you flirting with me, I'm a dead man." Rusty assumed it took a little more than harmless, friendly flirtation to get Carly's new husband to send in the armed gunmen, but he enjoyed teasing her about it. Although he had to admit that Carly was attractive--and his type of broad, as Saul put it--there was never anything between them, for various reasons that they were always happy to repeat.
"I would never, Rusty. You're too old for me." She laughed, taking the pillow from behind her back and holding it in her lap securely. The only problem with her new place of residence was that Marcello was so excessive. A mountain of pillows doesn't make you any more comfortable than one good, sturdy one, but he never picked up on that, in spite of all of her hinting. Displaying wealth seemed to give him a sense of pride. Carly didn't understand it, but she respected it just the same.
"And you're too skinny for me." He remarked, winking at her. Rusty's former response to that question was a comment on Carly's age, but they both agreed it wasn't a decent comeback. Aside from the basic requirement of being legal, no woman was considered too young or too old when they had something to offer him. Not that he didn't consider it his duty to return the satisfaction to whatever woman he was with; Rusty considered himself a very giving man. But he enjoyed women of all ages, and found something different to admire in each and every of them.
Except for Maria, and that was a story he always hated revisiting.
"Not to mention how you look like you're auditioning for Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. Did one of them retire or something? I didn't know they were hiring." Carly didn't think Rusty could top her comment, so she held back on looking smug while she waited for him to try. If he was going to try at all. There was something to be said for admitting defeat, but it wasn't a saying that Rusty Ryan was a fan of.
"You know, for a sassy little mob wife, youre mean spirited." He shook his head, reaching up to rub his eyes in frustration that was half real, half part of their usual exchange. Eventually, she'd wear him down just by being herself, and he'd find a way to distract her from taking one shot at him after the other, but they weren't there yet. He hoped it would be avoided on the first day of his trip, if for no other reason than the headaches that followed. They were hell to get rid of if they kicked in at the beginning of the trip.
"I'm not a mob wife!" Carly insisted, laughing again. She didn't consider it a lie because she knew that Rusty understood the truth. Sure, she was a mob wife. But first and foremost, she was a good mob wife And good mob wives don't go talking about their husband's business to their friends, no matter how trustworthy or equally menacing they may happen to be.
"And I'm not a thief." Rusty grinned. He had to admit, he was a little proud of her for being able to stick to the story. Most women would rather give in and avoid the aggravation. However, that was never Carly's style. She was often very good at facing her very literal demons head on. And as long as those demons didn't involve a past love who Rusty knew without asking that she still thought about, Carly was likely to come out on top.
"You're not a thief." She smiled. "Youre an opportunity seeking freelance acquistion expert." She knew it sounded better in her head, but it said enough without saying very much. Her husband was considered as much a mobster as Rusty was considered a thief, and that was all there was to it. If she didn't outright call Rusty a thief, she certainly shouldn't be expected to call her loving husband a mobster.
"Have you found a nice term for 'vampire slayer' yet?" Rusty was curious enough to ask, crossing his arms. When he first met her, Rusty assumed that Carly's calling would be a burden for the young woman to bear. Faced with the responsibility of protecting the world from vampires, he envisioned most women running in the opposite direction. Carly'd taken pride in proving him wrong. While she didn't particularly like killing things, Rusty was pretty sure that she enjoyed the sense of power and control that went along with it.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Carly answered nervously, her voice rising the tiniest bit as she launched the pillow at him, hitting him just below his face. If her husband knew the truth about her, Carly figured she probably would have a nice little comfort title for 'vampire slayer', but since he didn't, she tried not to think about it very much. Her days of slaying nightly appeared to be long gone. Unless, of course, she dared to tell him, and Carly didn't think either of them were ready for that.
"What are you...oh. Oh." He found himself withholding a sigh over the situation. The more he saw, the less he was happy with. And if Rusty had it his way, he'd find the guy Carly was so hung up over, and attempt a matchmaking effort of sorts. With the connections he'd gained over the years, Rusty didn't think that Sam guy would be very hard to track down. Carly'd just chosen the wrong place at the wrong time. If the end result was them getting back together and her divorcing her man of the moment, it would be worth the effort.
Besides, he didn't like the idea of her just giving up on something that had meant so much to her. He'd made the same mistake himself, and it was one that he had yet to stop regretting. It only seemed fair that if it didn't work out for him and Isabel, it should at the very least happen for the people around him. Luckily, Danny and Tess had managed to put their relationship back together. He didn't see why Carly couldn't do the same. It wasn't as if her ex was the detective.
"Someday." She nodded. "So, how's...Ingrid?" Carly asked, hoping she'd gotten the name right. From what she could remember, there had been a few. One that she'd met who was disappointingly blonde, and then others that she'd only heard about. She figured that he never ended up getting serious enough with any of them to introduce to his friends. Rusty seemed to have that problem almost as much as she did. Although her marriage made Carly believe that part of her life was over. She'd committed herself to someone for the rest of her life, end of story. As damning and frightening as it sounded, she was growing to see the pros and cons of marriage, and she was pleased to become aware that there were starting to be more pros. Marrying a mobster and then being stuck in a world of drama and disappoint would just suck. Possibly soap opera style.
"Inessa. And she's good." He corrected. Ingrid was last month. She'd had a few problems with dating a man who she claimed was 'emotionally unavailable' to her, and promptly called it off. Rusty couldn't say he was all that broken up about it. They'd had fun, both knew it was temporary, he wasn't exactly sure what 'emotionally unavailable' meant, but if it had something to do with his refusal to watch "Titanic" with her that one night, that was on her. In his opinion, a man didn't have to sit around with a woman and watch tearjerkers to be in touch with his emotions. Not that certain movies hadn't gotten to him in the past, but Leonardo DiCaprio's presence was notably absent in all of those.
He liked Meg Ryan.
Maybe it was the name.
"I'm sorry, you horny male sex object with your love of playing musical beds, I was confused. I'll try to get it right next time." Carly laughed. She didn't know she was supposed to remember all of his 'girlfriends' names. It was pretty impossible. Although she was getting the hang of them starting with the letter "I". She thought he probably found it subconsciously comforting or something, or it was just one of those coincidences that seems really weird when you hear about it later.
"Look who's talking. The nymphomaniac female sex kitten with her love of playing musical flat surfaces." Rusty shot back, hoping that she'd let him have his insult without making another one. Her constant need to always win in their conversations was amusing, but sometimes, it was discouraging as well. He felt like talking to her could turn into an oral exam at any moment.
"Shut up." She giggled, practically starting to blush at how true his remark was. She couldn't even defend herself, so she figured she might as well just laugh about it. "So...anyway, you asshole, how are Danny and Tess doing?" Carly almost regretted asking that question the second after the words were out. Not knowing many successful married couples, she used them as her model. They'd never fallen out of love, even after their divorce, and had somehow worked things out enough to get back together. That was the way it was supposed to be. The divorce rate might have been soaring, but traditionally, marriages were started because people were determined to make them last. And to Carly, since they were actually doing quite well with that, they were something to aspire to.
"They're good. He's making up for Madrid by taking her to Hawaii." The usual.
"That's great." Carly smiled, looking over at the window as she heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. With Marcello and Celestino expected to be in business negotiations, there was only one other person who it was likely to be. And she drove like a maniac, too. "That's just Isabella."
"Who?" Rusty asked, getting up and looking out the window. It was an instinctive thing. In some ways, he was always expecting his ex wife to turn up in a moment when he was least prepared for it. Married or not, he considered them to have enough unfinished business to attend to that an eventual crossing of paths was inevitable.
"Isabell-a." She said, shaking her head. "I thought you were over her."
"I am. I'm as over her as much as you're over Sam."
"Then I think we're both in trouble." Carly sighed.
"At least we have our looks." Rusty replied, attempting to comfort both her and himself.
"And our horny nymphomaniac tendencies." She added.
"That too."