xp_logs | Angel & Kevin | Monday afternoon

After her day of moping, Angel uses her feminine wiles on Kevin until he caves and agrees to a bit of wheelchair racing.

Kevin cracked open an eye when he heard movement. It was too quick to be Yvette which meant it could have been someone sneaking in with the intention of waking her up. Somehow Kevin had ended up with coordinated nap times as he'd taken to watching over his friend and making sure she had everything she needed, including time away from other, very concerned people. He was sprawled out on the couch of the suite's common area and when he spotted the red head of hair he leaned up. "You don't have any wheelchairs hidden away, right?" He'd been sleeping, it was the first thing that popped out of his mouth. Kevin had no control what came out of that thing during times of semi-coherence.

Angel jumped a foot in the air even without a powers flare to help her get the distance. "Kevin, you just scared ten years off my life!" she chided, clutching at her heart. "I forgot you were doing 'watch' now." She frowned and then blushed a little as she focused on what he'd actually said - she'd been focusing so much on being quiet so she could get into the room with Yvette. Not because she'd wanted to wake her but they shared the room and she'd needed socks.

"Do I look as if I've got a wheelchair hidden in my clothes?" She pointed a finger at him and glowered. "And you better not say yes."

Kevin pulled his hood off as he sat up and scratched the back of his head, effectively causing his hair to stick up in any and all directions it could manage. "Ah never said you were hidin' it in your clothes." But he did narrow his eyes as he pretended to scrutinize her outfit for possible hiding places. "Ah don't think summer clothes really are good for hidin' wheelchairs in anyway. Ah might hafta check the closet, though. Just to make sure it's not hiding in there. Waitin' to make people two-dimensional instead of three-d."

Angel huffed and put her hands on her hips but her glare turned into a grin. She hadn't gotten to spend much time with Kevin since he'd reappeared and then with Yvette getting hurt, she'd been too much of a mess to seek him out. "You're a weirdo," she teased, hoping over the back of the couch and slid down to join him. "But no, no wheelchair in the closet sadly. Though I bet the Professor probably has a few spare around here somewhere!"

He shrugged and gave her his best innocent expression when he was deemed a weirdo. "It's part of my charm. Goes with the accent, the cooking, the ability to show up with flowers," he gave her half a grin and that was more than most people were getting out of him lately. "Ah don't think you should go 'round stealin' the Prof's spare chairs, though. One, he's probably got like a telepathic anti-theft thing going on. Two, Ah don't trust you drivin' them things."

She sputtered at that. "Don't trust my driving? You saw me in the hospital with Yvette, she was giggling as much as she could all things considered with her internal organs still healing. I drive wheelchairs just fine!"

He gave her a playful, narrow-eyed look. "Ah saw you going up onto only one wheel at one of those turns. That's just not safe drivin', missy. You oughta be fined or somethin'."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Angel sniffed. "Yvette only screamed once and she reassured me that it was all in fun." She stuck her tongue out at him. "You know what I think? I think you're either jealous or scared. Or scared jealous. You either want to be pushed around or are too scared to be! ...did that make sense outside of my brain?"

Kevin thought through what she'd just said. "Um, no, actually. Ah don't think it did. Maybe it just doesn't make sense in my brain?" He pulled his hood back up so she could lean his head back and slouch down on the couch. He poked at Angel's side lightly. "You alright, though? Everyone was all stressed with 'Vette in the hospital and all..."

She squeaked and scrunched up against his poking fingers. "Damn you for having fingers!" After he'd retracted the evil digits, she flopped against the back of the couch as well. "I'm tired," she admitted. "Completely wrung out. Yvette's one of my best friends and it was really hard just ... knowing she was hurt and knowing there was nothing in the world that I could do."

"Ah know the feeling." Kevin took in a deep breath, held it for a few moments, then let it out in a sigh. "She's home now, though, and better, so at least everyone can relax now." There was something in his voice, though, that suggested he didn't believe everyone could relax or that the worst of it was over. Yvette would live, but some things were worse than facing death sometimes. It was all perspective.

Angel scrunched her nose at him and carefully poked him in the shoulder. "Come on, Gloomy Gus, spill. Or I'll strap you down to a wheelchair and force you to spill."

Kevin made a bit of a face and poked her back, though he aimed for a hip instead of something ticklish this time. "S'nothing. Ah just don't think healin's gonna be the hard part for her. And when she hits the hard part everyone's gonna think the hard part is done and they'll all have moved on and won't even notice. And that'll make it harder."

She retaliated by tugging on one of the strings to his hoodie - lazy retaliation at it's best. "But you know and you told me so know I know and the teachers would know, so you do think that would help?" Angel asked as she worked out the logic in her head. "I've never dealt with anything like this before - how do we help?"

"We can't," he told her seriously. "And Ah dunno if the teachers get it. No one else will get it. Imagine you can never be near people. You live in the desert alone. Only then you find a village and you get to be part of it for the first time in a long time. Then after just a short time you wake up alone in some cave and you never find another person again. Now multiply what you imagine that'd feel like by a whole lot. That's what it's gonna be like when they take the inhibitor off. Take it off, away and destroy it. All the normalcy she can have and it's not just being taken away. It's being obliterated. You can't help with that."

She'd known it was hard to never touch someone but with how Kevin put it... Angel's gaze dropped down to her lap and she watched as she twisted the bottom of her shirt between her hands. Considering that, all of her problems seemed really stupid. And she'd never really thought about what it was going to be like to take the inhibitor off, either.

Angel blinked and used just a bit of her powers to make sure it didn't look like her eyes were welling up with tears. She thought Kevin was cool and he was her friend - she didn't want him to see her turn into a pile of useless girl. "Then ... what do we do?" she asked, not looking at him.

Kevin shrugged. "Pay attention and figure it out from there. Maybe she'll just be grateful for the experience, but it'll still sting." Kevin hadn't been very social when he'd effectively been neutered powers-wise last summer. People actually saw him less often than they had before. And he hadn't taken the leeching back of his powers well either. California had turned out to be the only thing that made it a little okay for him. He'd rather not know what he was missing, though. Kevin still wasn't sure if Yvette would've preferred to know what she was missing and miss it anyway.

"If I pay anymore attention, I'll be labeled a stalker and arrested," Angel said with a small smile. "No, but I can do that, I really can. I think the only thing we can do is just do what she's comfortable with and just be there for her." Kevin might know more about it but Kevin wasn't Yvette, so there was such a large gray area that they didn't know about. "In the mean time, I guess we just try and take care of ourselves, too."

Kevin was nodding along until she got to that last bit. At that point he eyed her from the corners of his eyes. "Is this the part where you try to kick me out to go sleep in a bed?" Either that or it was the cue where she told him he should feed her so she didn't wither away. He was pretty okay with the latter. The former would take a fair bit of struggle to accomplish.

"Want to try and get over your fear of wheelchairs?" Angel asked brightly.

"One," he ticked the point off one a finger, "Ah don't have a fear of them. Two," he ticked the point off on a second finger, "No. Thanks. No, thanks."

She turned towards him, eyes getting wider by the second. "Oh come on Kevin, pleeeeaaaase? For me? It would make me feel better, it really would!"

Kevin crossed his arms over his chest stubbornly and slouched down further on the couch. "That's evil, manipulative, girl logic at use right there."

Angel thought about it for a moment. "Yep! Is it working? I could cry, too. I know how to turn on the water works."

His eyes narrowed at her. "You wouldn't." Kevin didn't sound too sure about that, though.

Angel leaned back, hand on her chest and a sincere look on her face. "Oh, I wouldn't would I? Do you know how many male cousins I have? The amount of times I got out of getting in trouble by immediately bursting into tears and blaming it on them - too many times to count. I'd totally cry to get you to do this for me."

"And here Ah thought you liked me too much to be so mean to me," Kevin grumbled. He slumped down a bit more. By now his chin was on his chest and his butt was just barely on the edge of the couch. He was either going to fall off, be dragged off or get pounced any minute now, Kevin was sure of it.

"This is for your own good! And to show you I'm an awesome wheelchair driver! I'll even melt down any kind of metal stuff you need me to, without complaining! Or melting them into weird patterns before you can play with it!" Now she was whining but considering the effect of the sulking and threat of tears, Angel figured it was a sure thing.

She was whining. That was hard to resist. Kevin actually considered putting his hands over his ears. As it was his eyes were squeezed shut a bit and he was making this face some people made when there was an awful, high-pitched screeching going on. Like with nails on a chalkboard, for instance. "How's that for my own good?" He was still stubborn, after all.

"Because it's fuuuun. You never have any - Yvette wouldn't want you to wither into the couch until you became part of it for good, like some weird grumpy couch gargoyle." Also, Angel was very, very bored and Kevin was fun when he wasn't trying to pretend he didn't even know what the word meant.

"Ah do too have fun," he objected in a near whine that he was ignoring happened to be in his voice. True, he hadn't had much fun since returning to New York, but a friend recovering from surgery could do that to a guy. "Will you stop whinin' if Ah say yes?" Because, really, the whining was the part he couldn't take. Kevin thought any moment now there would be some lip wibbling and he'd be done for.

Instantly, the woebegone look left Angel's face and she squealed, throwing up her hands in victory. "Of course because it means I won!" She grabbed his elbow and tugged as she jumped off the couch. "Come on, let's tell Yvette and see if she's up for being a judge on speed and stuff."

Kevin found himself instantly tugged up and off the couch. There must have been some subconscious decision to help her get him up because he didn't remember Angel being all that strong to manage that so easily on her own. "Ah really hate you sometimes, y'know that?" He sighed and let him be dragged off for Wheelchair Wars 2009.