Jean-Paul and Johnny

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An afternoon game of Scrabble turns into a serious discussion.



Johnny looked down at the Scrabble board he had brought, now settled between them on Jean-Paul's kitchen table amid a shared bowl of cinnamon-sugar popcorn and a pair of sodas. This visit was going as most of the others had: the man had let him in without protest, they had discussed briefly how he was feeling (at least, a version of the answer he could stand hearing and Jean-Paul could stand giving) and settled in to pass the time. He now rested his chin against his knuckles as his eyes went from the board to his letters and back again. It wasn't a particularly serious game, given their idle handling of the score and the lenient application of rules that had allowed several of the teen's French vocabulary words to find their way onto the squares and leave them both grinning faintly upon each occasion, but he still didn't want to get stuck playing something totally unimpressive. Finally, he decided on pert five-letter word and slid the appropriate tiles into place, offering the older man a smile, "Your go."

"Hmm." Jean-Paul considered. 'Newfie' materialized on the board, incorporating the last 'e' in Johnny's previous play and with the 'n' resting over a triple score square. "Merci. Your turn."

The teenager's features sank with feigned despair, but he was smiling even before he could bring a dramatic hand to his brow, "Are you sure you're not the one with precognition? Jeeze..." Johnny reached for his soda and drummed his opposite hand on the table, thinking. The abundance of vowels lined up on his block was almost painful and even closer to useless. He settled on the word 'fae' with visible sheepishness and a only a slight bolstering to his score.

"If I told you, you would never play with me again, would you? So you will just have to wonder." Jean-Paul built 'founder' off of Johnny's latest, but held back the 's' on his tile rack. "Do you mind if I ask you something?"

"You just committed yourself to another game," came Johnny's reply, far from unhappy with the notion despite the now-apparent fact that he was getting verbally thrashed. It was nice to just be around Jean-Paul again. He studied his refreshed line-up of letters as his turn came round anew, blinking and raising his light eyes at the sudden question. He shook his head, "I don't mind. Ask anything you want."

Well, there was the invitation. "Why are you upset with Nathan?"

The shock was immediate, the beginning of a transition in his face that set his lips into a pursed, narrow line and knit his light brows in and pulled his gaze down to the table. Johnny had not expected that. He had been doing his best not to think about Nathan (save during his trips to the gym with Lil) and his part in all of this and had been enjoying some success, especially the last few days. But now those thoughts were all rushing back and it set his synapses into a heated tangle of anger and accusation toward the absent man. "...Why do you think I am?" he managed to ask quietly. Jean-Paul did not need this extra stress upon everything else.

"Possibly because I spent a lot of time restraining myself around people I wished to throttle." Jean-Paul looked up from his tiles. "More because I have noticed that where you were once his friend, you hardly speak to him now, unless he speaks to you."

Johnny could feel the man's eyes on him and sunk back in his chair, keeping his own gaze resolutely lowered. He shook his head, "We weren't friends. We aren't friends. What should I have to say to him?" There was more bitterness in the young man's tone than Jean-Paul had ever heard there and his hands, resting folded close together on the table, were balled up tight.

"That is two questions you have asked to my one," Jean-Paul pointed out mildly. "And you have still not answered mine."

The man's calm tone did not help to settle Johnny's mood, but he pulled in a deep breath and tried to let it, a small guilt finding its way onto his features and coaxing his fists out of their tight curl. The regret, and the restraint, was not for Nathan. "Because it's his fault," he said at last, raising his eyes to look the short distance across the table, "Everything. He told me. And maybe you can forgive him, but I can't." His anger brought a small shudder in his final words and he clenched his jaw shut, swallowing a sudden tightness in his throat that left it almost aching.

"Johnny, I want to be sure that I am not misunderstanding this." Jean-Paul voice was calm, but his brows were raised slightly. "Nathan told you that what happened to me in Moldova was his fault?"

"...Yeah." It was all he could choke out for a moment, but he remembered the exchange with a sharp intensity, down to the sixth sense that had been throbbing at the base of his skull all the while. Even the memory of it left his traditional senses acutely on edge and his chest growing tight. "He said that he knew it could be dangerous, but he took you with him anyway. And that this only happened because they were trying to capture him and got you instead."

Jean-Paul was quiet for a time, turning a tile over between his thumb and forefinger. "Johnny," he said quietly, "it is not Nathan's fault that I went with him on that trip. I do know of his past. He tried to warn me of the risks, even offered to go alone or to send me with someone else. I decided to go with him. I cannot say that I am sorry."

"You don't put your friends in danger like that," Johnny insisted weakly after listening to the length of Jean-Paul's words, much of the remaining vehemence drained from him by force when faced with the older man's account. He didn't understand it. "You just don't."

"He did not put me in danger. I chose to go with him. I know it may not seem so, but there is a difference." Slowly, he set the tile back into place. "I doubt that Nathan is taking that distinction into consideration either, but it is not fair to blame him. He is no more at fault than Scott would be simply for leading a mission where someone was hurt. He did his best to see that we would both be safe, but it was not enough. That is how it happens sometimes."

Johnny couldn't see the difference. He watched Jean-Paul silently, waiting for the words he thought might make him understand but which only left him unsure, his remaining anger dwindling out into frustrated wear as he thought them over. It was so much easier when there was someone to blame apart from chance and a group of unnamed sadists he was certain they would never tell him word one about. So much less random and unsettling.

...But that didn't make it right, did it? The teen stayed quiet.

"I am not going to ask you to agree with me," Jean-Paul went on, "but try to put yourself in his shoes, if you can. However much you blame him for what happened to me, I assure you, he is being even more brutal to himself."

Johnny's attempt to understand the man's perspective yielded something that was not unfamiliar and which put fresh knots in his stomach. Watching somebody he loved end up in harm's way, knowing what was happening but being unable to do anything about it and being left to results there was no way to begin apologizing for. He remembered his mother and it suddenly left him wanting to cry. Especially now that his role was coming into view. Just like Darren. You looked at him like Darren looked at you. And even his father had never lashed out the way he had.

"...I was out of line, huh?" Johnny murmured weakly at length.

He hadn't expected the boy's expression to crumple, nor had he been braced for the flash of pain in his eyes. It caused an odd disorientation, a fearful moment of "What did I do?" before he pulled himself back to the present. He hadn't hurt Johnny. It was something else.

"I...no, not really. You didn't have all of the relevant information. But you have a different perspective now, that is all." He moved to stand by the boy's chair, squeezing his shoulder firmly. "All right?"

"I had enough," the teen replied quietly, only raising his reluctant eyes to Jean-Paul as the man's hand settled upon his shoulder. Knowing Nathan should have been enough. His own ability to relate only made it worse, his shame that much more acute with the presence of complete hypocrisy.

"I am still having a hard time understanding why he would say such a thing to you."

Johnny recalled pressing the man for details, in desperate need of some explanation and eventually earning the one that he did. Perhaps it had been the honest sentiment of a guilt-wracked mind or an uncertain man yielding to his obvious need for a scapegoat or even his own need for rationale. Perhaps it was all of these things or something else entirely. He shook his head, "...I don't know. It was the night I came to see you. I was pressing him for details...for a reason...I guess he had to say something."

"I will have to ask him myself, non?" Jean-Paul smiled slightly, hoping to coax the boy into better spirits. "Come on. It is stuffy here. Let us go find a tree."

The man's smile lifted his spirits more than the suggestion that accompanied it, though the resulting confusion was an apt (if temporary) distraction. "Find...a tree?" Something about the idea of Jean-Paul climbing trees almost made him laugh, though the idea of Jean-Paul recently out of the infirmary and climbing trees left him equally amused and uncertain.

"I am very good at climbing trees, I will have you know." Jean-Paul pretending to sulk. "Even without flying."

Finally, Johnny smiled, unable to help himself in the midst of Jean-Paul's pouting. "Really?"

"I will show you. Pick a tree, any tree." He considered. "As long as it will hold my weight."

Still visibly amused, Johnny nodded in agreement and pulled his slim body up from its chair. Some fresh air sounded like a good idea, anyway. He slipped his hoodie over his head, it was too warm outside for it now, and tossed it on the back of his seat before allowing the older man to shepherd him toward the door and the vacant hall. He remembered Nathan leading him out to the medlab stairs by his shoulders and sobered slowly, looking at Jean-Paul before they had made more than a few steps beyond the doorframe. "...Do you think he'll forgive me?"

"I doubt he thinks there is anything you have done that needs forgiving," Jean-Paul said, growing a bit more serious. "Honestly? If you speak with him, I think it will make him feel better about things, at least to an extent."

Johnny felt himself nod. He hoped so. "I'll talk to him. Promise."