Cammie & Kevin

[x-scorpion.livejournal.com]

On Thursday afternoon before the play, Cammie investigates some sweet, sweet metal and ends up finding something else. ((Back dated before the opening night because of ditziness.))

It took all of twenty minutes for Kevin to end up back in the metal shop. He'd stopped in to see Professor Xavier, threw his one bag into a guest room and had gone off to the metal shop. He missed that room. He did so much stuff with wood as part of his powers training in California that the feel of metal was fading from his hands. Besides, Yvette was doing rehearsal stuff or something like that and he needed to occupy himself so he didn't go and blow the surprise. His iPod was hooked up to a pair of speakers and, as usual, were blaring more loudly than was really polite but Kevin justified that it was the middle of the day and most of the mansion's residents were at work or in classes and not around to get annoyed by the stream of Children of Bodom and Arch Enemy that was coming from the speakers while he worked.

There were huge sheets of metal hanging out in the shop that Kevin had stockpiled before he'd split for the west coast in addition to all the other odds and ends that had accumulated in his absence. There hadn't been this much untouched metal in the shop since Forge had first given him the keys to the place. Clearly he had work to do, even if it was only stuff that would be started and finished some day in the future. He wasn't exactly staying long. But Kevin wasted no time and soon he had a few of the machines on and was cutting through a sheet of metal. What he was making he wasn't sure, but the metal always told him what it wanted to be anyway. It would work out.

It was the music that drew her in first. Cammie liked metal, so hearing it blaring brought back good memories of going almost deaf in the one situation she could even stand crowds – a mosh pit. So she followed it, not caring if she got lost along the way. After all, she still didn’t have this place completely down. Though she knew enough that she trusted herself not to get lost and stuck in a closet somewhere.

The source of the music was a shop of some kind, not something she was normally in to but everyone had their thing. Not that Cammie didn’t enjoy doing things with her hands. She was still quite fond of hotwiring cars and/or bikes. Even though it wasn’t ‘her thing’ she walked on in anyway. She didn’t know the person working on the metal, but she knew the music.

“So, who the hell are you?” she asked, her voice carrying, just barely, over the music.

The voice really did just barely make it over the music, to the extent that for a second Kevin paused and listened to the song thinking there was some vocal he didn’t remember in it. When the song continued on as usual he flipped the switch on the machine to shut it down, because losing a few fingers because he was maybe hearing things wasn’t his idea of a vacation in the sun. Not that the sun here should even count. Once he looked around he found the source of the voice and grinned.

He had to turn the music down because while the green-haired intruder could speak loud enough to be heard over it he couldn’t. Kevin was fairly soft spoken, not out of choice but more that his volume just didn’t go up that high before he had to yell to be heard. “Miss, you’re intruding on a sanctuary here and you’re asking who I am? Well, that’s kinda rude.” Kevin was all soft vowels with his quiet Georgia accent. The composite Southern mix he’d spoken with a year ago was completely gone.

“I reserve the rights to varying amounts of rudeness as I see fit,” she said, grinning. “And knock off the Miss, that’s scary,” she said. If she could be said to have any sort of accent at all, it was a faint New England one. “I don’t know you, so I asked who you were. Next thing was going to be ‘cool music’ but you sort of ruined that for me. And this isn’t a sanctuary, it’s a room full of scrap metal.”

"Yes, Miss," he told her with another grin. "You weren't here when Ah left so that makes you new enough to not have any claim on this place as some seasoned resident. If ya ain't following, it means Ah ain't beholden to tell you who I am. Especially when you're ignorant enough to be just callin' this a 'room of scrap metal.'" Kevin clutched his chest, "That hurts. It does."

“Geh, it’s like talkin’ to a cop, all the ‘miss’es,” Cammie muttered. “Well, if it’s not scrap what is it? It doesn’t look like you’ve made it into anything yet. I don’t do stuff like this; I was here for the other kind of metal. The stuff you were killing your eardrums with,” she said simply.

“Didn’t know you were here before, after all.”

“Funny, cops never called me ‘Miss.’ Ah feel left out now.” He couldn’t keep up the straight face, though. “Only been back in the place for less than a half hour, gimme some time to make it into something. It’s material. Not scrap. And it’ll be art when it’s done. Like that angel outside. That was made from ‘scrap,’ too. Lots of it came from the Blackbird. Just gotta realize it’s potential’s all.”

Kevin shrugged and inspected the cut he’d been making. “Yeah, was here, went and exploded Starsmore by accident, went off to Muir, that sucked, came back for a while, other stuff sucked, stayed anyway, something else sucked worse, got the FBI to let me go off to California to work on powers stuff that always sucks. Ah’m just back for a little while. Ah wanted to see Yvette in her play. Family support an’ all. You goin’ to see ‘em all in it tonight?”

“That’s a nice complicated trip to get back and make some art,” she said, going over that roadmap in her mind. “And no. I don’t do well in crowds where I’m not allowed to punch the person closest too me,” Cammie said with a shrug. “It’s hard to explain, but I don’t do places where people are going to bump into me accidentally,” she said. It was different in a fight, then it was okay.

“’Sides, I don’t do Shakespeare.”

"I make plenty of art back west. It's a complicated trip to see my sister, even if she ain't blood she's still kindred." He shrugged but her comment about bumping into people got his attention. Kevin tilted his head to the side a bit and gave her a curious look. "You got a no touching people thing, too?"

“You could say that,” she said. This shirt was long sleeved, so the green on her left arm wasn’t quite so visible. “If I’m not careful… well, let’s just say the lucky ones are the ones puking their guts out,” she said, shrugging, her hands hanging out of her pockets slightly. Only the green fingers were visible, and the bandages. “So, I take it you also can’t/don’t touch people.”

"You could say that," he echoed. "The lucky ones are the ones with the mummified arm. The unlucky ones lose the arm. Or more." Kevin turned and found a block of wood that had been there since before he'd left. "Ah'm working on it just bein' really extensive exfoliation but Ah gotta pay attention for that and," he pulled off a glove and wrapped his bare hand around the wood. He watched it dry out, crack and start to turn to dust. Kevin was putting forth the effort to control the spread so it covered the whole of the outside evenly. In less than half a minute he let go and held out with his gloved hand a block of wood identical in shape but half the size of the original. "Unless you're made of something inorganic the fate's the same no matter what part of me touches you."

“Sucks to be you,” she said, though it was said completely without the malicious joy that came with the saying. “Sucks to be a lot of people here, I’m figuring out. I’m lucky; I got my control pretty much down. I’m not so much with the accidental deaths anymore.”

"Yeah, it does." Kevin shrugged and pulled his glove back on. Once there would have been a self-pitying tone to go along with those words out of his mouth, but it was suspiciously absent this time. "Weigh the pros and the cons and a lotta us come out over done on the con side. But it's not so bad. Not generally. Ah mean, there could be a case made for why my mutation's so bad, but Ah can still walk around so long's Ah'm careful and covered. But then ya got people like Yvette that're stuck being dangerous and looking different. But then she's got more friends who'd do more for her than a lotta other people so you can only feel bad for her to a point." He shrugged again. "S'all perspective."

After a pause the rest of her words clicked. "Anymore?"

“Anymore,” Cammie said again simply. “Or any less some days,” she grumbled. Jean-Paul had been a close call.

"Guess Ah've gotta share my Death Touch mantle now, huh?" Not that is was something particularly worth sharing. It was a curious thing for Kevin, though, to actually meet someone else who killed with a touch. She seemed to be more well-adjusted about it than he was. "What do you actually do anyway?"

“Yep. I’m a master of the Touch ‘o Death,” Cammie said flippantly. She shrugged at the last part, “You know, I’ve never been quite sure. I can drink and eat things that would kill you and I make people sick. Oh, and I killed a bunch of rats, pigeons and squirrels in Houston back in January. That was fun,” getting stabbed was now on her list of things Never to Do Again.

“Squirrels aside, they should probably thank you for bringin’ down the vermin population.” He was mildly interested in whether her mutation would get him sick or his mutation would wither her first. Not that he really wanted to find out but things like that made him wonder if one mutation would be canceled out by the other. Or maybe he’d just get sick and she’d get a mummy arm and they’d both be screwed.

“You’d think that, but then you’d be wrong and all that jazz,” Cammie said, “So tell me, you got CDs of the stuff you were listening to or am I going to have to steal your iPod for awhile?”

Kevin gave her a pained look which then turned into a longing one directed toward his iPod. Looking back at her he said, "If you go grab that nifty laptop they issued you and bring it down you can steal all my music and it can still be playing. Win-win and all that."

“I suppose if you’re going to make me work for it,” Cammie said, dropping her shoulders and rolling her eyes melodramatically. “You’ll have to keep it blasting though so I can find my way back here. This place is like a maze. Only with quite a few less raging cow-men,” for a girl who hated Shakespeare she had a weird collection of trivia facts about classical lit and the like.

"Ah just think Ah'd like watchin' you walk away," he told her with a grin. Suddenly he was giving himself about three days before he got smacked by someone. Kevin reached to turn the music up, mostly to cover whatever reply she was going to say which he was willing to bet would come with a glare, but stopped his his hand hovering over the volume dial. "Cow-men?"

“Ha!” she laughed once, loudly, “Well, can’t turn down that, I suppose. I’ll make sure I put on a show just for you,” she said chuckling. “Cow-men, the minotaur in the labyrinth or whatever it was? Greek story, read the details in high school. Decided the Greeks were fucked up.”

Well, that wasn’t the reaction he was expecting. It was a reaction that brought a grin to his face, though. “I thought the minotaur was a bull? Cows are female, y’know. Greeks, though? Totally messed up. All the incest. There’s just something wrong in your brain when you look at your sister and think ‘Damn, Ah gotta get summa that!’ Y’know?”

“Cows, bulls, they all tip the same,” Cammie returned, “I don’t care which one is which. And yes, there is something very, very wrong with that. Or thinking that you really, really want to bang your mom. Or that it’s okay to turn the girl you want to screw into a tree. Greeks: Very Fucked Up People.”

“You sayin’ my fantasies about you as a tree are screw up?” Once again he was clutching his chest. “I’m hurt. Wounded. It’s brutal. You’d be so hot with bark! Not that you’re not now, but bark makes everythin’ sexier. A woman covered in bark? Mmmm.”

“Yeah, but without lube your twig would end up getting really roughed up,” Cammie said simply.

Kevin brushed off the comment and pointed out, "It'd be worth it for all the fire we'd make."

“That sounds more like a bad camping trip than sex,” Cammie said. “And I’m not keen on being kindling to the fire. If there’s wood involved, someone is using lube,” she said laughing.

"No fire fetish?" Kevin sighed. "Alright, lube, but only because you're hot."

“You’re so considerate,” Cammie said smiling brightly. “Just because of that, I’ll leave out the whips. Unless you like that kind of thing.”

"My momma said you always had to give a lady what she wanted," he told her, playing up the accent with something thicker and more drawling than his own. "I could be up to negotiations maybe."

“Good, because I have a long list of demands,” Cammie returned, shaking her head.

"Could you put those in writing for me?" Kevin smirked at her. "Or, you know, writing them on yourself in body paint works, too. I could help with that."

“Well, if that’s the way you’re going to go, I find my ass is firm enough to make a perfect writing surface. Pens tickle though,” she said, her grin just wicked.

"Metal's not the only art I do," he told her very seriously. "Got brushes upstairs. Then again, hard to give up all that squirming." While Cammie was wearing the grin one would associate with temptation Kevin was the picture of innocence despite his words. He was downright angelic, at least in his expression.

“Ooooh, calligraphy, maybe you should go into tattoo art. Then, if I can find out how to keep people from dying from my blood you can work your magic on my hot ass,” Cammie returned.

"I'm okay with using normal paint and having to redo it on a weekly basis or so until you get that figured out," he said with the most gracious tone he could manage.

“Well, draw up some designs for me and we’ll see what you can do,” she said, and was actually part serious. “I’ve always loved body art, but you know, the problem with being poisonous,” she said with a shrug. “Tattoos for the deadly ones of us.”

"What do you like?" His question was a genuine one. He really would do up some sketches and paint on her. Alright, probably not on her ass, though there'd be no complaints if she wanted him to, but wherever she wanted. Maybe a neck tattoo. It was hard finding exposed skin when you had to wear long sleeves all the time.

“Japanese art is cool. I like flowers, as stupid as that is, there’s also certain punk album covers. Skulls are too over done, you know?” Cammie said.

"Flowers? You?" He wouldn't have pegged her for flowers, honestly. Something a little harder edged. But Kevin liked the juxtaposition inherent in that. "Cherry blossom trees, maybe?"

“Yeah, fucked up, isn’t it? When I was a kid, my mom had a garden out front that was great. Cherry blossoms, I could do. Oh, you know what a ‘bleeding heart’ is?” she asked.

"Ah dunno, not really. There are more screwed up things than you liking flowers. Severed baby heads, for example. Suitably gothy if that's what you want but entirely messed up." But then some people really liked trying to be more evil than others. Funny that the guy listening to death metal didn't really subscribe to that point of view. Way to go against the stereotypes to fuck with their heads. "Bleeding heart? Nope. Not really a flower person. I could find out, though. They your favorite?"

“Yeah, I don’t go goth. I’ll let you in on a secret, though I love it now I only started on the punk scene to explain the fact my hair was green,” she said with a laugh. “Bleeding hearts are… yeah, I guess they are. They grow on a bush and they do look like bleeding hearts. I think it says quite a bit.”

Kevin laughed over why she'd gotten into the punk scene. He also considered the bleeding hearts flowers. He could find pictures of them online, probably. If he was lucky the person at the florist shop he was going to later would have something better than internet pictures for him to go off of. Though he did narrow his eyes at her and ask, "They're pink, aren't they?"

“Pink goes with green,” she said with a grin. “They look like cut open hearts. Morbid, but pretty.”

"Well, yeah, they're complimentary colors. But still. You and pink. It's like you and flowers. Not the weirdest combination I could imagine but still kinda...weird. I was really hoping for a bulldog with a spiked collar on your butt who you could nickname Snow Pea." And that name had totally been pulled out of thin air. Kevin wished he'd come up with something better than Snow Pea, though.

“You kidding? His name would be kitten. And he’d have at least three heads. Or look like Cerberus from Billy and Mandy.”

"Bleeding hearts and Kitten," he reiterated with a nod. "Billy and Mandy? Huh?" Not that Kevin was really the king of pop culture but normally the references had a vague ringing of familiarity. This one, though, was lost on him.

“Yeah. Two kids. Friend of the Grimm Reaper. Pretty funny. I also wouldn’t mind getting a GIR tattoo. Invader Zim owns 1/12th of my soul,” she said, grinning.

"But if you start to sing the Doom Song Ah'm totally taking back that you being hot thing." Though Kevin mentally added GIR onto the list as well. Maybe he could just made GIR into Kitten while peeing on a bleeding heart's bush. It'd be like multitasking. Only bad.

“Don’t worry, I’m more prone to quoting Purple,” she promised.

"Hot status remains intact, then." Because otherwise he might feel inclined to hit the hot girl over the head with something and that just wasn't very polite.

She laughed, “As if there was ever any doubt. I’ll go get my laptop and then I’m coming back to steal your metal. Whether or not you chose to be wearing something hot is your choice.”

Kevin's straight-faced response was, "I'll be slathered in Crisco. And waiting."

“Oooh, sexy,” she said as she turned and headed to get her computer. Hot metal awaited her.