Dori & Kevin | late Friday morning

[x-wither.livejournal.com]

Kevin goes wandering for some fresh air and is happened upon by Dori, who it turns out still weirds him out a bit.

He was attempting to not go insane. It wasn't that watching over Yvette was sanity destroying, it was just that he wasn't used to being inside for so long staring at walls. Yvette was currently in trustworthy and capable hands so Kevin had taken off to shower, shave and then wander through the woods. He needed the air, the sun. The long sleeved tee shirt he'd worn out of the mansion was now hanging from a back pocket and he was left only in the ribbed tank he had worn beneath it. The color on his arms and chest that was visible hinted at no tan lines on his upper body, though, suggesting he was used to walking around in less. The problem was around here there were too many people. He had to worry too much about hurting those who weren't paying attention. Twigs and fallen leaves crunched under foot as he walked and Kevin stopped to pick up a fallen twig. As he continued walking he pulled off one glove and touched a fingertip to the twig, focusing as he moved to strip the twig of its bark.

Doreen was high up in the trees with Monkey Joe, at first anyway. She got a great view of approaching people from perches that only a few, like Mr. Logan, ever bothered to check. She smelled Kevin, it seemed odd that even out of the hospital, he smelled a bit like decay. She couldn’t quite figure out why and figured it was a powers thing. Either way, she and Monkey Joe worked their way down until she was only a six or so feet above him.

“Hello,” she said as brightly as she could manage.

Dori's appearance shattered Kevin's concentration. He glanced up at her and when he glanced back at the twig half of it was flying away as ashes on the wind. He pulled his bare fingertip from it and sighed. The twig was tossed to the ground and Kevin refocused his attention on the girl in the tree. "Hey, Dori. How're you doin'?" He looked her over quickly, checking for signs of exhaustion and the like. She at least looked better. "Your tail's back up."

“Yeah, I like being outside,” she said, as Monkey Joe sat down by her feet and started chewing on an acorn. “And, well, it’s what I do, I guess. It feels right. It’s hard to be depressed when it feels like you’re flying. Even if I am only faking it.”

Kevin watched the actual squirrel curiously, then his focus returned to the girl with the squirrel tail. "How're you doin' when you're inside, though?" She seemed pretty focused on outside and how hard it was to be depressed out here, but that said nothing to how she was the rest of the time. Everyone had to go inside at some point.

“I dunno,” Doreen said with a shrug, “When it’s nice out though, why bother, right?”

"Nice dodge," Kevin commented quietly. "If Ah was someone else Ah'd probably overlook it and move on, y'know. But avoidin' stuff isn't how ya deal with it. So maybe you should spend some time indoors and deal with whatever's goin' on in your head."

“But… I mean… I really do like it out here and I do have all the squirrels to talk to,” Doreen said, squatting down on the branch.

"That point would be good enough if you weren't using outside and squirrels and whatever else as a wall to hide behind," he told her gently. "Believe me, whatever you're not dealing with, whether it's 'Vette or somethin' else, it's not gonna get better 'cause of the blinders. It'll just fester and get worse."

“She smells different right now, it’s weird,” Doreen said. She went from her crouching position to straddling the branch easily, “But I really do like talking to the squirrels,” Monkey Joe started clicking angrily and Doreen looked down at him, “Yes, I like you the best. But that’s not the point right now.”

"'Cause she's sick?" Dori had said in the hospital that sick people smelt different to her. Kevin thought maybe that was it. He wondered if pheromones had scents and if they did if she could smell them. All the worry and the tension and the anxiety probably would make things and people smell off, too. "Look, Ah'm glad hangin' with the furry guys makes ya happy. Ah just don't want ya to run away from something and come back to it later and realize it just got worse when you weren't looking. That's all." There was a note in his voice that suggested Kevin knew all too well what happened when you did that.

“I dunno, I can see things fine from here. I mean, the mansion’s not on fire and it’s nice to watch people come and go sometimes. I’ll come in to have some food later, but I also brought some with me. Do you want some peanut brittle? It’s really tasty,” Doreen said, going through a pouch she had brought outside with her. Some food for the squirrels and some for her.

"No, thanks." It seemed to Kevin that Dori was pretty happy in her land of denial given that she kept sidestepping the entire idea that she wasn't dealing with something. She was good at avoidance, he'd give her that. But he really was worried it was going to bite her somewhere uncomfortable sometime soon.

“Are you sure? I mean, it is really good. I guess I got lucky, the diet person said I could pretty much eat all junk food if I wanted. But I really miss hamburgers sometimes. Or the type of hotdogs they’d have at baseball games,” she said, taking a bite out of a chunk of the peanut brittle she had broken off for herself. Her two front teeth, slightly bucked, cut right through it with ease. Here, she wasn’t as self conscious about her appearance as she was back home, another good thing she figured.

"You can't eat hamburgers or hot dogs?" Kevin sounded not just shocked but a little scandalized. He didn't have any dietary restrictions insofar as his mutation or health concerns went and he was quite happily a carnivore. "Can you eat chicken?" The thought of being without chick stung worse than hamburgers. It would've been truly tragic.

“Well, I can eat them. They just make me sick. I can have some chicken. More than hamburger, but I don’t like how much it hurts when I eat too much,” Doreen said, munching on the peanut brittle, the sweet taste mingling with the taste of the nuts made her happy in a simple way. She gave a piece to Monkey Joe, who was asking for it loudly.

"So're you on a," Kevin hesitated, not wanting to say something that may have offended her but then realized he had no other phrasing for it, "squirrel diet? Like nuts and acorns and stuff?" He was hoping he didn't sound like too much of an idiot for asking it, but he was pretty sure he did anyway. Kevin's consolation was that Dori was generally upbeat enough that he didn't think she would be offended by the question. Well, hopefully.

Doreen giggled, “Yeah, I guess I am. I mean, now that I think about it… I can have like eggs and stuff, but yeah. Lots of nuts and fruits.”

"Huh." He guess it made sense and the giggling Kevin would take as indication that she wasn't offended. "Mutations do weird things to people's nutritional requirements and stuff."

“Yeah, I guess so. Kyle said he’s the same way, only it’s sort of in reverse of mine,” Doreen said, taking another bite of the candy and breaking off another piece for Monkey Joe, “I suppose I get to do more than just look the part, huh?”

"Ah'm pretty sure the skittering around in the trees already qualified ya for that one." He didn't think squirrels were supposed to eat peanut brittle, though. Dori would know more about that than him though, so Kevin didn't question if it was really a good idea to keep feeding Monkey Joe the sugar coated nuts.

“I could also eat from bird feeders,” Doreen suggested. “But that seems a bit extreme,” she didn’t mention she had found a chewed up one in her bedroom back home once.

"Also," he added, "why would you want to?"

“Monkey Joe says that’s where they keep the best nuts and seeds,” Doreen explained with a smile.

Kevin looked at her a bit curiously, blinked a few times and gave himself a mental shrug. How was he going to argue against a squirrel where seeds were concerned? "Ah guess he'd know best."

“Well, he’s a city squirrel, so that’s how he got his food,” she said, giving her friend a pat on the head, “Now I feed him, so I think he eats better. But he still has a thing for birdseed.”

"Everyone's got their junk food cravings, Ah guess. Even squirrels." Though the more he was around Dori and Monkey Joe the weirder the friendship seemed to Kevin. He thought he should get more used to it, like how he just sort of accepted that Catseye was a girl sometimes and a cat sometimes, never a cat with a girl inside. But she was sometimes a girl with a cat inside.

“Yeah, but it’s not really junk,” Doreen said, scratching Monkey Joe, “It’s actually good for him. I make sure he eats other good things too and stays out of garbage and lets people eat their own french-fries before he tries to take them.”

"At least you got him well trained." Kevin made a bit of a face at himself for his wording. That seemed like the wrong way to phrase it, though how else would he phrase it? Monkey Joe was a pet, after all. Maybe that's why he thought Dori and Monkey Joe were sort of off. She talked about him as if he were a person.

“Well, it’s not hard really. I mean, it’s more like I tell him what he can and can’t do. You don’t really train your friends,” Doreen returned.

Kevin resisted the urge to ask if she had human friends. Actual friends, not just people she interacted with because they were there. It would have been rude and he'd been raised better than that, but it was a tempting question to pose. "Right. Well, Ah should get goin'. Gotta make sure "Vette doesn't need anything." Because the conversation had just reached Kevin's limits of sanity and he wasn't above fleeing.

“Okay! Tell her I said hi,” Doreen said brightly, breaking off another piece of candy for herself.