xp_logs | Culinary confessions: Jay & Jean-Paul (backdated Sunday at three a.m.) (Reply)

Jean-Paul can't sleep and Jay comes back from work, restless. The pair talk on the rooftop and bribary follows.

Rhythmic in time to the beat he'd left at Silver, Jay breached mach one, steady in his flight. His mind wandered through the cool air that smoothed over his cheek and thankful that the air had cleared of it's humidity. The club had been so hot, full of bodies, sweat, drunken leers and energy that could charge a city block. The late night was settling in comparison, the mansion quiet as he drew near and pulled up at the last second, swiftly scaling the wall and landing on the edge in a quiet crouch.

He didn't realize there was someone else on the roof, cast in a silhouette, one he might have recognized.

Perhaps that wasn't to be wondered at; after all, the moon-silvered outline was blended with that of the couch that had become such a familiar part of the rooftop landscape.

"Well done," came the quiet voice. Jean-Paul hefted one of the water bottles from in front of the couch. "Here, catch. The wind has a way of stealing the moisture right out of you." Warning given, he lobbed the plastic bottle, easy and underhand. "Good night for flying?"

"Pretty good." He caught the water bottle easily as a silent invitation and broke the seal, drawing his wings back as he neared. Stopping short of the couch, Jay stepped on one heel of his foot, pulling off the trademarked converse, then the other. He climbed unsteadily up on the couch, wing pulled up over the fixture that was the Speedster and settling just by Jean-Paul's shoulder, wondering why the older man was up so late. Instead of asking, he took a long thirsty drink of his water.

"It seems like almost everyone managed to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight," Jean-Paul said, though whether it was simple observation or an explanation of his presence was unclear at first. "So I had to be contrary."

He smirked, closed the bottle off and fell easily into a habit of flipping and catching the water bottle with one hand by the head. Leaning forward, elbows on knees, he was quiet before he shook his head. "You always gotta be different?" he asked.

"It has gotten to be a habit," Jean-Paul confessed, his smile more heard than seen in the dark. "Though I think I have gotten better about it since coming here. It is much harder to do the aloof, uncaring ice prince when it is not so distasteful to be part of the gang, hm?"

He caught the bottle a last time and shuffled it through his hands, looking down at it as he cleared his throat, uncomfortable to think about the 'gang'. "Yeah," he agreed, despite himself. "Didn't know you put yourself up there with Princess. That's new. News to me anyways."

"Pardon?"

"Ah meant you puttin' yourself in the same category as Crystal, except you could prolly pass fer a princess too," he joked lamely, knowing any wit he had tonight was left back at Silver. "Ahhhh..." he sighed. "Ah should stop while Ah'm ahead huh?"

"The man has uncommon wisdom for his age," Jean-Paul said with a laugh. "But what has you out and restless tonight?"

He shrugged. "Ah just came back from work, other than that, switchin' rooms. Dani n' Ah ain't gonna room together anymore."

"Oh yes? Was there a fight? Calisse!" Jean-Paul cursed and began chaffing his arms, glaring down at his own skin as if it had offended him. "That was very quick."

Jay startled and glanced down at Jean-Paul, confusion drawing his brows together. "What's wrong with you?"

"Ah, desole." The words were tinged with annoyance. "Jeanne-Marie accidentally touched me a few minutes before you showed up. It cancels out our powers, otherwise I would have been flying myself. It feels like the world's worst case of pins and needles when it wears off, and I was expecting it to last longer. But what was this about you and Danielle?"

Metal feathers bristled with annoyance and he pointed the bottle at Jean-Paul's face head on. "Don't do that again unless you wanna be a Beaubier kabob, okay?" He shook his head, bangs falling in his eyes as he rolled them. "Jesus... damn Canadians.."

Jean-Paul snorted. "I like you Jay, but not so much that I will forgo time with my only living relative to be safe near you. If you are so hazardous to my health, perhaps you need pinioning."

"Funny guy." He unscrewed the bottle and finished it off before smacking his lips. A sigh slipped from him and he set the bottle down. "Sorry, Ah didn't meant to be so rude. It just gets mah blood pumpin' and... it sorta scares the shit outta me."

"With good reason." Jean-Paul sat up a bit. "But you notice, I am not punctured, bleeding, or pinned to the sofa in an unpleasant way. So you have something under control, even if not so much as you would like. Perhaps you should spend more time around twitchy Canadians, until it gets to be old hat."

"One Canadian likes to grab me by the neck--" Logan. "And the other likes to break mah bones till Ah'm bleedin' and beggin' to live." Garrison. "Twitchy don't sound all that bad. Maybe if he smiled now n' then." He nudged the Canadian in the shoulder.

"Dieu, are you backing the wrong horse. You should try talking to the newly arrived import; she is much nicer." Jean-Paul considered Jay's silhouette from his current position. "Hmm. Not so much an angel right now as a gargoyle, I think. But that is better, I think -- less preaching, more protection."

"Ah never preach," he argued and ran a hand through his hair, hooking on his neck, embarrassed. It was weird to take it as a compliment and he hoped that Jean-Paul couldn't see the change of colour in his cheeks.

"I was speaking more to the associations with the iconography, but never mind." Jean-Paul stood and stretched. "I am not going to sleep any time soon. If I bribe you, will that get the story out of you?"

If anything could sober Jay, that could. His hand dropped away and hung out from resting on his knee as he blew a sigh. "Oh yeah, that, well... she was usin' her powers on me while we was sleepin'. She liked to sleep wiht me a lot." He shrugged. "Everything was good to start but it sorta got weird."

Jean-Paul frowned at the sudden loss of that sheepish smile, wishing he'd kept his curiosity to himself. "I am sorry to hear that." It was never a good thing to be used. "Care to be bribed anyway? It is not too late to make pie."

"Only if you ain't gonna smack mah hand everytime Ah try n' snag somethin'," Jay replied, somewhat sour but there was a hint of genuine interest in moving away from a topic that so clearly could dampen him.

"Oh, fine. Spoil my fun." The speedster sighed, as if Jay had just stolen the last light of day from his vision. "But if we wind up with a pie the size of a cupcake, it is on your head."

-------

Culinary confessions: Jay & Jean-Paul make pie at three in the morning.

"So when she came back from the professor, Ah was already packin'," he said, checking the measurement of the sugar. At least Jean-Paul had this cut to memory. Jay didn't and he was trying to be a good student by proving that he could. "It felt like a breakup."

"Well, perhaps it is not in the romantic sense, but it was still a loss of comfort, non?" Jean-Paul stopped grating lemon peel and looked up. "And perhaps some loss of trust that she was at the root of things, even if she did not mean to hurt you."

"Yeah Ah know," he said, banging the measuring cup on the counter top to make it even and checking the measurement again. He picked up the sugar to add but then set it down on the counter. "But Ah think it was more than that," Jay murmured.

"How do you mean?" Jean-Paul had been trying to listen more than he spoke lately. For all his recent exposure to psis, he had to keep reminding himself, he was no telepath. He thought that he was making fairly good progress... even if it was still something of an effort.

"Like--" Jay stopped, dumping the sugar in and shaking the measuring cup, evening out the sugar again. "--she was tryin' to convince me that Ah might like girls," he started and stopped, dropping the sugar out into the bowl and reaching for the brown sugar then. "It was weird," he confessed in a voice that reached far deeper than any awkward situation could go.

"That you might like girls in general, or that you might like her?" Jean-Paul passed a carton of blueberries to Jay. "Because there is difference enough between the two to make for some very different assumptions as to motive."

"She wanted me to try n' kiss her, said maybe Ah'd like it, yanno?" He shrugged and took the blueberries, flipping the sink on. "Maybe yer right, but it got weird after that. She slept with me whenever Shiro wasn't and hell, she even touched me like Ah was her boyfriend. You ever had someone like that?"

The older man contemplated. "Not exactly," he said, stretching the words to fill the moments he needed to finish his internal debate. "There was a girl I knew when I was in the circus who tried to sneak into bed with me once, said she wanted to marry me and all of that nonsense children are convinced will help them make sense of growing up. But we got it straightened out, thank goodness. That is not your situation, though -- Danielle is old enough to know what she is asking and the weight behind it. Do you think she was drawn to you as a woman to a man, or might it have been her powers tangling with what she felt for you as a friend? It is only a guess, of course, but if she was not even aware of what she was doing at night...?" So much for simply listening.

"Ah dunno," he replied honestly. "It's hard to tell with her. We sorta fell into it like you do with doing the same things together over and over. Like routine, except--" His shoulders sagged in defeat, giving up when he hadn't even started. "Ah dunno what to do about it."

"I do not mean to be trite, but breaking routine can be as simple as doing something else. You have made a start -- you have a little distance, you have a room to yourself. So, what else?"

"Space? Time, Ah guess? She was pretty upset that Ah was packin'. Maybe she just needs time." He shook his head in disbelief. "Just like a break up, two in one month."

"That might help, particularly since you are not exactly across the world from each other." The speedster scooted the unfilled pie crust in Jay's direction. "But you and Shiro have broken up? Or did I miss one?"

"No, you got that one dead on. We're better as friends anyways. Got nuttin' in common except a whole lotta physical chemistry." A faint smile lifted at that and he picked up the bowl, mixing the contents before pouring it into the empty shell.

"There are worst places to start," Jean-Paul mused. "But at least you seem to have ended it amiably."

"Ah was lucky he forgave me--" Jay stopped what he was saying, scrapping through the rest of the bowl with a spatula and carried on like he hadn't really said that. "Shiro's a good guy." So was Kevin... who he wasn't talking to. So was Kyle, who he also wasn't talking to. As short as a time they were dating, it seemed a lot longer to Jay.

"You will get no argument from me on that count." Jean-Paul began cutting the rolled-out crust on the counter into strips. "He grew up well."

"He seems to like you a lot. Fumbles over your name like an idiot." There was a subtle hint there, one that he wasn't sure he was hitting properly but he still felt it with Shiro a lot, even when the conversation about Jean-Paul was fleeting. "But who wouldn't be huh?" he added that last bit, just so not to embarrass Shiro too much. "You're Jean-Paul Beaubier - Ah love sayin' that. It's always catchy."

"I think you still have stars in your eyes, young man. This is what comes of flying around after dark." Jean-Paul reached for the eggwash, hoping the faint heat under his skin hadn't quite turned into a blush. He did not think Jay would let that go and he absolutely did not need to be teased about Shiro, not with...everything else going on.

Even though Jay wasn't looking, his grin was broad, ear to ear, brimming on a knowing chuckle and fixed his concentration on the topping. "Ah ain't sayin' nuttin' more," he replied. His eyes momentarily caught Jean-Paul's before dropping to what he was doing and they both knew he would say it again, many many times over.