xp_logs | Jay & Nathan Evening

Jay comes upon Nathan and checks for a pulse. He gets a shoe to the head instead.

It was well enough on into the evening that the heat had gotten a little less fierce, and Nathan was quite comfortable, sitting in his padded deck chair and dozing slightly. Domino had brought him out a drink and his bottle of pills and told him sternly that she'd be back to check on him in a couple of hours. He wasn't sure just how long ago
that had been. Nor did he care. This was far from an unpleasant way to spend an evening.

The problem with Jay's landings the last few months was not with how he balanced, but how hard he came down to the ground. He'd had to replace his converse twice now and it was slowly begining to look like he had to replace the third. His abrupt landing was meant to be
precise, but the buoyancy of the dock bounced him up, tripped and separating him from his shoe. It bounced, skidded and disappeared into the water, just before he could even think to scramble and catch it.

Nathan nearly jumped out of his skin as he sat up rapidly. It was lucky that Dom had also brought out one of the little folding tables, because if his drink had been sitting on the arm of the deck lounge he'd have sent it flying. As it was, the sharp movement and the
instinctive sucking in of breath left him doubled over and wheezing.

Jay was at Nathan's side instantly, apologetic and floundering. "Shit! Sorry, sorry! are you alright?" His hand was on Nathan's back, hunched over and panicked. "You ain't havin' a heart attack, are you?"

Nathan managed to shake his head, but it took him a long moment to be able to reply, as the wheezing touched off a bout of labored coughing. "Fine," he finally managed to rasp, reaching out with a shaking hand for his drink.

The drink found Nathan's hand without anymore attempt and Jay fretted, though he had nothing to help with. "You sure? Ah mean, do you need Jean or somethin'? Ah'm really sorry, Ah didn't mean to scare you. Thought you telepaths could sense people from all over." If Nathan croaked on him here, Jean-Paul would never forgive him.

"It's okay," Nathan said, his voice a little stronger once he'd had a couple of sips of the lemonade. "Just moved too fast." Jay's last comment even evoked a flicker of a pained smile. "Was napping. Then the deck jumped and boom, there you were."

"Oh hell, Ah'm not that scary," he removed his hand, satisfied. Now the shoe crisis. "You old people gotta stop doin' that, pulling that ohmygodAh'mdying thing on us younger folks," he said, pulling off his shoe and going barefoot.

"Ask yourself what my usual reaction would be to someone actually managing to sneak up on me." Nathan tried to settle back into a more comfortable position, mostly unsuccessfully; all the jolting had woken up the worst of the stabbing pains in his side. Stay intact, Mr. Lung, I know you can do it... "Then count yourself lucky that I'm old and can restrain myself, and thus you didn't wind up in the lake."

"Ah don't think that's a good idea, tobe honest. Before Ah'd be a floppin' feathery mess. Now Ah think Ah'd sink." Which was why the converse was considered a lost cause at this point. With the one shoe in hand, he walked to the edge of the dock and looked down where the
dark waters hid the other shoe.

"I've laked many people, but drowned none." Nathan closed his eyes, wondering why his shoulder was throbbing in time with his side. Pain and the way it radiated was such a bizarre thing at times.

"Yeah but Ah'm pretty sure none of 'em has wings that weigh more than they do," he replied. "Hey, how deep do you think this is? Four feet? Six? Ah can do six, barely."

"If you want to check, feel free. I used to be able to lift the old Blackbird easily - I think I can haul you out of the lake if you run into difficulty."

"All right, but if Ah die--" he started, looking over his shoulder as he unbuckled his belt and shed his jeans without an ounce of shame from what was beneath. Two seconds later, he jumped in.

Nathan tried not to groan. "It would serve you right if a set of impressionable eyes came walking down the path right now."

"Well yer awake now. You'd know if someone was," Jay said, spitting out the water and brushing his hair from his face. 'It's only for a second." Blue disappeared down into the water, swimming down and finding the depth roughly to his assumption. He couldn't see much and
searched around blindly before he had to come up for air.

"Damnit, can't you use your--" he spit again. " --powers to find mah shoe?"

The Converse flew out of the water, bounced off Jay's head, and landed on the dock.

"Ow -- smart ass," he barked. "Ah can't believe Ah just did a self lakin'--" His fingers gripped the inner boards on either side of him and he pulled himself half up. "Don't look ol' man, unless you swing that way."

Nathan's eyes, as a matter of fact, hadn't opened throughout the whole process. There was a faint, mischievous smile playing on his lips, however. "Next you'll be saying this was vengeance for waking me up out of my nap."

He pulled out of the water completely and fished his jeans from the dock, feeling refreshed but he didn't particularly look forward to sitting in his jeans again. Still, they were pulled on in silence as he toyed with the idea of chucking something at Nathan. Maybe his
drink.

Nathan thought of pointing out that throwing anything at the invalid was a bad idea, but discarded the idea as quickly as it had come. You only made such jokes with people who weren't hugely and sometimes hysterically uncomfortable with telepathy.

"It's kinda creepy that you're all quiet. Makes me think your plottin' somethin that old men only laugh about."

Nathan opened his eyes - a bit reluctantly. "We don't usually have much to talk about," he pointed out. "And trust me, I don't have the energy to plot these days."

"Yeah but you got one of 'em plotty faces. If you wasn't so tired and broke, you'd be all Out with the new, In with the old! sorta deal." Leaning over, he shook his hair out and whipped it back, running a hand over it to stay in place. His wings flapped a few times
out of habit, shaking off the excessive water and very much a poster boy for jeans. Too bad there was no one to appreciate it.

"Lucky for you I am that tired and broke, then, isn't it?"

"It'd be wrong if you wasn't. Ah reckon when Ah get your age, Ah'll be a complete wreck then," he joked lamely and plucked both shoes from the dock. "Kinda makes you and Jean-Paul perfect for each other, except you're straight and he ain't."

"I think Jean-Paul would probably take exception to being classified as a complete wreck," Nathan said dryly.

"Sorry," he said with a weak smile. "Ah didn't mean it that way. Ah just meant that you two seem like good friends. You know, misery loves company n' all that." Better but not by much, he thought to himself.

"Just digging yourself a deeper hole, here, Guthrie," Nathan murmured, raising an eyebrow. "But I know. It's no fun staring your own mortality in the face, and when you're your age, anyone over the age of thirty counts as decrepit and going downhill fast."

"Well, in that kinda way, yeah.. sorta. Wait, can you explain that last bit. Whaddya mean staring mah own mortality in the face?" He stood by and attempted to wring his shoe out.

"You just volunteered for the team," Nathan said, instead of treading any deeper into philosophical waters that he didn't really think Jay was capable of swimming. "You can look at me and see some of the potential consequences of that decision."

"Oh yeah, well, Ah knew what you meant. Ah just didn't know how to work it right in mah head," he said. "Though Ah don't really think of it like that. Ah heal, you don't, but, Ah guess if you have enough people messin with yer head, something's gonna go wrong." He didn't
know what happened to Nate, only what he could read in reports, but there was enough detail to make an assumption.

Both of Nathan's eyebrows went up. "And precisely what do you mean by that?" he asked, frowning.

"Ah just.." his explination died on his tongue at the look Nathan was giving him and the realization that he could have probably worded that better, not saying the first thing that fell on his tongue.

"I didn't retire because something went wrong with my head," Nathan said, teeth gritting despite his best efforts to stay relaxed.

"Ah didn't mean it that way," he said defensively. "Ah just meant... it ain't all peaches and cream, yanno, havin' telepathy." Backpeddling was like doing so uphill. It just didn't work.

His perverse sense of humor got the better of him. "Go on," Nathan murmured, eyes narrowing. He was curious to see just what kind of hole Guthrie was digging himself here.

The thing with a Guthrie was that he should have known when to stop long ago. "Yanno," Jay started, clapping his shoes together and stretching forward before stepping back two paces. "--Ah'm just gonna go," he gestured behind him. "Got stuff to do like put mah head in a
meat grinder - stuff like that."

"Without even telling me why you landed on my dock?" Nathan asked dryly.

"Just to see if yer okay and got a pulse? Talk? Ah dunno. Something like that." He couldn't help but shrug helpessly and felt like an ass because of what he'd said earlier. Telepathy was always hard to get over andtrying to talk about it without offending someone was even
harder.

Nathan put two finger to his throat for a moment. "Heart appears to be beating," he said. "Although you wouldn't be the first to check and see if I'm still breathing. People seem to be doing that periodically. You'd think I had injured lungs or something."

"Well, reports are kinda brutal and y'all arn't gettin' any younger." He shrugged. "From what Ah see, you've done alotta good at the cost of yer health. It ain't right but maybe it's what makes the next generation --" a hand brushed through his hair uneasily. "Godamn that sounded geeky. Ah'm startin' to sound like Forge."

"Don't worry about sounding geeky," Nathan said. "Finish your sentence." Maybe if Jay started working some of these things out aloud, he'd get his own wants and motivations a little better
straightened out.

"Okay uh, well, if the older generation steps down, it makes the youngin's step up and not in that ol' cocky way, that they gotta prove somethin'.If ol' Reliable's around, no one's gonna be on their guard like they could cause ol' Reliable's got their back and they ain't gonna grow from that." He wasn't sure he was entirely making sense.

Nathan's lips were twitching, despite himself. "In other words, by knowing when to wander placidly out to pasture, we old warhorses can both prevent all of you... new young stallions from challenging us just for the fun of it, and from taking us for granted?"

After listening hard, Jay made a face and finally shifted into a crouch, stretching his wings out low. "Ah think yer makin' fun of me but Ah can't tell for sure."

"Not really." The almost-smile didn't go away, though. "It's not a bad observation." And it's nice to see you actually thinking about how the group dynamics work, Nathan thought, but didn't say.

There was enough silence between the pair o fthem that made him uncomfortable and he stood up suddenly, drawing his wings back and gesturing behind him. "Ah should get back, yanno?" The school was in the other direction.

"You need anything before Ah go? he asked and backed up two paces towards the edge.

"Since the temporary loan of your healing factor isn't an option, I'll make do," Nathan said, closing his eyes again. "The day's designated nursemaid should be out to make sure I'm still breathing sooner or later."