xp_logs | Jay and Crystal

After searching for people to rescue, Jay and Crystal chat about alcohol, sex, and the X-Men.

No one. Not another person for almost an hour and he was beginning to think that they should change their route. "Yanno, Ah could do for a nice break tonight. Forget sleep, Ah'm gonna go to the bar, have a drink an' just relax. Gonna try and stop countin' the number of times Ah've screwed up."

Crystal turned her head slightly to look at Jay, a slightly questioning look on her face. "Oh?" she said simply.

"Oh yeah. Just gonna go drink and be merry, yanno? Cause Ah ain't had such a shit weekend in a long time. How was yer weekend?" he asked.

"My weekend was less memorable than yours, apparently," Crystal said. "What is it, exactly, that has gone so wrong for you that you have lost count of the times you believe you have messed up?"

"Ah almost got hit by lightnin' and then Ah dropped mah radio in the water. Ah fell in the water and like a dumbass, couldn't get out. Then Ah forgot to tie the boat up and yanno, it's just been a rotten weekend all around. At least when we get back, Ah can go out to the bar. Need to be somewhere where Ah don't screw up as much."

Crystal frowned slightly. "All of this does not sound so horrible to me. Were you severely injured? Did something you did or did not do cause harm to someone else? If not, if you came here to help people, especially if you succeeded, I do not see how this can have been such a rotten weekend for you." Surely it has been a horrible weekend for the people whose lives were affected by the flood, but for you?

"Sure, if you're thinkin' positive, then that sounds like a great weekend. C'mon, it's been pretty shitty. Makes me feel like an artard cause of it. Makes me kinda glad that Ah didn' join the team. It ain't a good thing for people to rely on me. Ah ain't that reliable. Yanno?"

"And you believe that 'drowning your sorrows' with alcohol will help you?" Crystal asked, one eyebrow raised slightly. "Look at the people here. Something unfortunate happened, but people from far away stopped what they were doing and came to help people they had never met. You came to help. Surely that says something about you, does it not? What does that have to do with whether or not you joined 'the team'?" By now, Crystal was well aware of what "the team" meant, even if it did still seem like an odd way to refer to the X-Men.

"Ah ain't gonna drink myself sick. Ah just wanna get laid," he said, shrugging. "Yer preachin' to the wrong guy about good deeds and stuff. It don't say a whole lot if Ah can't help people the way Ah'd like to. It's just like the team. People rely on you to do stuff right and if you don't, things go wrong and everyone's not only mad but they're hurt."

A strange, shocked look came over Crystal's face, her eyes widening a bit. She couldn't quite comprehend how imbibing alcoholic beverages help you with Jay with the... endeavor he apparently wished to undertake, but, at the moment, she wasn't quite sure if there was a way to question this rather odd and quite unexpected statement. "Just... like the team?" she questioned instead. "Have you ever been a part of the X-Men? Unless I misunderstood you somehow, I believe that you told me, only moments ago, that you did not join them."

"No Ah havn't," Jay said a little too bitterly without meaning to. "But everyone else has and then you're the last to know about anythin' you're friends are doin', unless you ask all the time. That just gets annoyin'. No offense but Ah'm a lil' sick of bein' treated like Ah'm not apart of somethin' special because Ah'm not on the team. It's like some secret club and all the shit that goes down fucks their minds to hell. But Ah'm not suppose to know what's going on right? So's how am Ah suppose to be there for 'em?" Jay realized he was suddenly flying a little too fast and overlooking the fact that he was suppose to be looking for people period and slowed his flight down, dropping his climb a few notches.

'Everyone else has'? Jay was sounding like a child here. Crystal thought as she slowed her speed to match Jay's. Crystal wondered if that was how she had come across, years ago, when she had asked for information about Jennie while her then-roommate was missing. She certainly hoped not; she had been concerned about specific information about a specific person, and had not been whining in general about not knowing 'anything'.

"Jay." Crystal kept a neutral tone, not wanting to sound condescending, even if he was acting in an immature manner. "Please correct me if I am wrong, but... you are a guest at the school, yes? You are not a student there, and you are not a staff member there. You do not wish to join the X-Men, but you wish for them to inform you of the details of what they do when they do not reveal this information to either the ones who are supposed to be there, the students, or those who are in charge of their safety, their teachers?"

"I used to be a student at the school, as you once were," Crystal continued, "and later I returned to join the staff. Now that I do not fall into either of those two categories, I do not expect to be told anything about what the X-Men do. As for your friends, specific people, what they choose to tell you is up to them. Do you really expect them to tell you all of the details about what occurs to them? Hopefully, if you make plans with them and they are called away, they let you know that the plans have changed, but other than that..." Crystal would have shrugged lightly, but flying as she was with her arms out and to the side, the motion would have been an odd one. She couldn't help but think that, almost a year after Attilan had rejoined its its original dimension, Forge was still the only person in New York who knew what had really happened on the island. "I am not on the team, Jay." 'You don't know the reality of the situation.' Scott's words from four months ago came into her mind. "We do not know what it is like for them."

"It'd be nice to know. They're mah friends. Like second family here. How could you say that? Just cause we're livin' there don't mean that we shouldn't have some idea. This ain't just not knowin' whats going on but actually knowin' how mah friends are. All Ah know is that they go through a lotta shit. That's it. Ah don't know what happens, just that they go through some pretty bad mental stuff and then they come back, havin' to see a therapist cause of it? C'mon Crystal," he said. "Who wants to talk to a therapist? Even when Ah was younger, it wasn't cool to talk to a therapist. Now it's not about being cool, it's about keepin' yer mind together. And who's gonna wanna, especially with a therapist? Ah know Ah wouldn't. Took me forever to talk about..." Jay hesitated and continued. "..some stuff but Ah still did. To mah friends. Not some therapist."

He descended a little more. "Sometimes friends are all ya got. Sam don't go tellin' momma what he does and Paige don't either. If they're tight lipped around a therapist, you can be damn well sure that they're talkin' to their friends about it. It's about being there and to be there, sometimes ya need a little info to go off of. Ah don't need details. Just need to know if they need that support, need to know to be there for 'em. Not walk in blindly to talk to 'em, only to have 'em have a mental breakdown on me and Ah have to ask 'em what happened."

"As frustrating as it might be," Crystal told Jay, remembering Jennie after her return from Europe that seemingly long-ago September, "you can only be there for people as much as they want you to be there for them, and in the way that they wish for you to be there for them. If someone does not wish to talk about something, they probably have a reason for it. Whether it is because they think they need to spare you from something, or whether it is because talking about it would be too painful, it is up to them to decide when and what they tell you." Indeed, Jennie clearly hadn't been ready to talk to Crystal immediately upon her return, and as much as Crystal had wanted to know the details right away, it had been more than a month after Jennie was brought back to the mansion before she had been willing to tell Crystal what had happened to her that summer, and even then that might not have happened had Crystal not pointed out how she had told Jennie about her attack on Logan.

"They will tell you in their own time, if they so wish," Crystal said, offering Jay a small smile. "If they do not," and here she did actually give a slight shrug, "then they do not. Pressuring them for information they do not wish to give will not help; this I have learned from personal experience."

"Yeah Ah know," Jay mumbled. "You're right but just cause you arn't don't mean that Ah'd wish it was any different. Just worried about the lot of them, keepin' all their shit to themselves ain't healthy. Ah know that from personal experience. Eats ya up inside until you hate who ya are or what you're doin'." Jay turned towards a house and decended until he landed on the roof top.

"Sorry, Ah need a break. Mah wings are killin' me. And Ah'll be so glad to get home today and needin' ten million showers when Ah do." He sat down for a moment, pulling off his shoe and then one of his socks. "Ah havn't had dried feet the whole weekend. Just call me Mr. Wrinkle," he said, bunching up his sock and throwing it at her face.

The shock Crystal felt was evident, clearly displayed on the Attilani princess's face. Removing his shoe and sock was one thing, even if it was not a very polite thing to do, but actually throwing the sock? At her? A slight frown crossed her face as she moved a bit to the side in the air, the sock sailing by her ear before having its trajectory reversed by a conjured wind. "I believe this belongs to you," Crystal informed Jay as the sock landed near his foot, her tone mostly polite with an edge of iciness in it. "It must have became caught in a gust of wind."

Obviously Jay was pleased with himself for the smirk on his face grew as he picked up the sock and wrung it out. "Must of," he agreed innocently. Instead of putting his socks on, he put his shoes on and stuffed the socks in his back pocket as he stood up, stretching. "Yanno what you need? Either a good lay or good dryer. Ah reckon the dryer won't change much but the lay will."