Kevin & Yvette | Backdated! Thursday morning

[x-wither.livejournal.com]

Yvette finally comes home to the mansion and Kevin is there to play body guard, distract her with tricks and foil her sneaky plans.

Yvette managed to keep the smile on her face right up until the door of her room closed behind her and Kevin. Then she sagged a little, pain flickering across her face. “It is good to be home,” she said, voice a little tight with strain. “But I think I would like to be resting now.”

Kevin wrapped an arm around Yvette protectively, allowing her weight to rest on him if she needed the help. Everyone had been worried about Yvette and relieved to see her back in the mansion safely, but it also meant everyone wanted to tell the girl how happy they were that she was alright and home. He may have growled quietly at them all when the strain on his friend had become noticeable to Kevin. He'd certainly taken on a bit of a guard dog aura ever since his conversation with Forge after Yvette's surgery.

"Yeah, rest'd be good for ya. Want me to get you anything?" His contact with Yvette was as careful as always. It wasn't just because his mutation still made him a danger to her, but also because he didn't want to treat Yvette any different than he always did. He didn't want her to get used to a way of interacting with him that was going to have to go away. He knew how badly that could sting.

She took the support gratefully, letting him guide her to the bed. “Some juice, perhaps?” she asked, struggling to pull back the covers and making a small frustrated noise. “The doctors are saying to be drinking a lot and… oh, damnit.” It was a word she’d picked up off the journals. “I am, how you say? The wuss. I cannot do anything.” Definite frustration with her invalid status was showing in the small girl who had spent so much time caring for others.

The curse, tame as it may be on the grand scale of curses, took Kevin by surprise and he blinked down at Yvette with wide eyes. "You're not a wuss, you're hurt and healin'. Don't worry, Ah'll do it for ya." Kevin pulled the covers back from her bed easily with one hand as he kept his other arm around her for support still. "Just gotta let folk help out's all. Anything else? More'n juice, Ah mean." He gestured to the bed and started to help her into it. It was strange, but Kevin had become acutely aware of just how tiny Yvette was as of late. It didn't help dispell the feeling of her being fragile.

A grateful sigh escaped her as she settled into the bed and Kevin pulled the covers over her again. “I should be eating, I suppose, but I do not feel so hungry,” she admitted. “And I am glad you are here, Kevin. It is hard, to not be able to do the things I am always doing and you do not mind so much if I am the cranky person.”

"Ah'm pretty sure Ah've been cranky enough with you before that it's just karmic payback or somethin' anyway." His tone was light, lighter than it had been through most of this ordeal, and he gave her a smile. The smile widened a little when he told her, "Don't worry, you'll be less glad and more annoyed when ya can't get rid of me. But Ah'll go get you some juice. Maybe some fruit or something so it can hang out until you get hungry?"

“I will never be glad to be rid of you,” she told him seriously, before smiling back at him. “Fruit is sounding like the idea. There should be the juice in the suite kitchen; Angel was saying she would make sure there was plenty before she was going to the training.” She adjusted her pillows so she could sit up and rested back with a weary sigh. “I did not know the lying about would be so tiring!”

"Ah think that's just boredom," he told her as he walked out of her room and into the kitchen of the suite. "Boredom makes me sleepy, maybe it makes you sleepy, too. Or maybe it makes me lazy and lazy makes me sleepy. Somethin' like that anyway. Somehow boredom leads to tired, Ah know that much." He stared into the fridge, Kevin's eyes picking out a half dozen half gallon cartons of juice. "Uh, 'Vette? What kinda juice you want," he asked loud enough for the question and confusion to make it to her from where he was. "There's apple, orange, berry, pineapple-mango, peach fuzz--what's the fuzz?--and somethin' with strawberries, mangos, and raspberries and pineapple in it."

She laughed at that. “I think Angel is overdoing things a little, yes?” she called back. “The berry is sounding good – may I please have some of that?” As always, her good manners made her almost old-fashioned sounding, which was why the earlier curse word in English had been such a contrast.

A little? Angel was maybe overdoing things a lot. He couldn't exactly hold it against her. People were worried and they overcompensated when they did that. It was understandable. Of course, that didn't mean it wasn't still a lot of overdoing it. "Your wish is my command," Kevin replied a little more cheerfully than he felt.

A few minutes later he re-entered Yvette's room with a tall glass of purple juice in one hand and a bowl of fruit in the other. "It's almost like ya got your own minions and everything." He made a face as he thought about the implications of calling himself Yvette's minion.

"Not the minion. More like the, how you say... Prime Minister." She accepted the juice with a 'thank you' and sipped at it. After all the time on a drip, it was still good to drink again. "It could be the game, yes? I am the princess in her tower, and you are my Grand Vizier, making sure I am safe." Dimples appeared in her cheeks as she grinned at him.

"Do Ah get a funny hat to go along with that title? And do Ah gotta be evil? Wasn't Jafar the Grand Vizier in Aladdin? He got a funny hat. But then he went insane. You think the funny hat made him go insane? Maybe Ah should skip the funny hat." Kevin was rambling. He didn't much care because for the first time in many days he wasn't rambling for intentional distraction or because he was so worried he wanted to scream. He was just rambling because it was odd enough that it'd likely make Yvette smile, a goal he had on days she was feeling her best as well.

He was rewarded with a giggle. "You can be as evil as you are wanting to be," she replied, shaking her head at him. "And if Angel or I make you the funny hat, we will put the tinfoil in it, so you are not going insane, yes?"

"Is that the secret?" Kevin tilted his head and gave her a suspicious look. "Tinfoil equals sanity? Ah think Ah missed that in psych class or somethin'."

"Angel is telling me. There are people who are wearing the hats made of tin foil, to stop the radio waves making them crazy, yes?" Yvette mustered an innocent expression, although the corners of her mouth twitched. "So, if we are making your Grand Vizier hat out of the tin foil, you will not go crazy either! Well, more than you are already being," she added, teasingly.

Kevin shot her a good-natured glare. "Yeah, yeah. Kevin Ford: Madman on the Streets! Everyone beware!" He gave her a gentle poke in the side and a half-grin. "Hey, Ah ever show you what all that training at the Annex taught me to do?"

She giggled and batted his hand away, before shaking her head. "No, I do not think you have." Her face alight with interest, she leaned forward. "Please to be showing me?"

She got a bit of a grin. "You're the only person who'd wanna see what all that trainin' did for me." Kevin grabbed an apple from the bowl of fruit he'd brought in to her and pulled at the fingers of his other glove with his teeth until it could be pulled free of his hand entirely. "Alright, you watchin'? Hold out your hand."

He waited for Yvette's hand to be held out palm up and then Kevin very carefully took hold of the apple with his bare hand, holding it with only his thumb and middle finger. His attention was undividedly on the fruit as the skin began to dry, crack and flake away quickly. Nothing else seemed to happen after that, though he kept holding onto it. A few moments later Kevin dropped the apple into Yvette's outstretched hand. There was no skin on it and the ashes from the core fell out of the hold left behind. It would have been flawless if not for the bruising around either end of the hole created to core the fruit.

Yvette's eyes widened, and her mouth dropped a little open in awe as she held up the apple, examining it. "You did all that just by the concentrating?" she asked. "It is the amazing thing!"

He tried to look humble but mostly looked a touch embarrassed by the awe Yvette seemed to be wrapped up in, what with the way her jaw was trying to rest on her chest and all. "Yeah, well, it still doesn't turn off. But if Ah pay attention Ah can usually tell it where to go. Carving's gotten interesting with it. When, y'know, Ah don't go and maim or gouge it instead."

"But such control... you hardly even left the mark!" She beamed at him. "I would like very much to see the carving with it sometime, when I am allowed to be walking around?"

"You haven't seen all the apples with hand prints carved outta them," he told her with a shake of his head and a sigh which was more tired than he felt. There had been days, though, when the exhaustion in that sigh had been heartfelt. "Ah could always bring some smaller blocks of wood up tomorrow or something. Decorative logs," he smiled. "Or maybe Ah should wait until you can help me with 'em?" His tone was kept light enough that she could interpret that as being when she was better or when she was off the inhibitor, but it was her choice how to take it. Even if he meant the latter.

"I would like that," she replied, taking a bite from the apple. Even despite her lack of appetite, it tasted far better than anything she'd had in days. She wasn't thinking about what would happen when she was well, not just yet - she wanted to enjoy being able to touch, to feel, just for a little while. "It is tiring, yes?" she asked, catching the sigh. "Perhaps you should have the nap also?" She gave him a rueful little smile. "Since I am also tired."

"Coordinated nap time, huh?" Kevin narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously. "You're not just trying to get me to fall asleep so you can sneak boys past the Grand Vizier, are you? 'Cause it won't work, missy. Ah'm a very light sleeper." A fact which was actually not being embellished. Months of sleeping with someone in your bed while being terrified of hurting them could do that to a person.

"Oh dear, you are discovering my sneaky plan," she laughed, although the blush had returned. "I will have to cancel the delivery now."

Kevin was grinning at the blush on Yvette's cheeks. "And here Ah didn't even know they had that sorta thing for delivery. Gotta brush up if Ah'm gonna thwart your sneaky plans." He shook a finger at her scoldingly.

Yvette's response was to grin, poke her tongue out at him, and take another bite of her apple.