xp_logs | Jay & Kevin

Jay leaves for work and notices Kevin's door open. He remembers to return something. The encounter has one feeling awkward and the other oblivious.

Setting his guitar down next to the suite door, Jay disappeared back in and returned out with his vintage amp hanging from one arm, picking up his guitar and cord in the other. The damn thing was heavy and he lifted it up, just to give it an extra heft before he headed down the hallway, spotting the door to Kevin's suite open.

Kevin had taken to leaving the suite door ajar because it was only him in it and if people were looking for him he wanted them to find him easily. Half the time he was drawing in the unoccupied bedroom he'd set up as an art studio for anything not involving metal work that he did down in the shop. That's where he was no, classical music traveling through the space as he painted.

Nudging the door open with his converse, he gave a tap on the frame, leaning in a fraction. "Hey, anyone home?" It wasn't weird to see the suite doors open, nor did he think it rude to knock before he came in. "Kev?"

Whose voice it was didn't even register to Kevin. He was too distracted with what he was doing. "Yeah, Ah'm in here," he called, assuming if someone was wandering in that it would be someone he wanted to see. Who else would come in, right?

Jay rounded the corner and paused at the bend with all his equipment in hand, offering a brief smile. "How's it going?" he asked, setting down the amp and going through his pocket. "Heard you was back, surprised, to be honest. Didn't think you would."

There was a tension that set into Kevin immediately when he saw who'd walked in. It was there in his voice when he spoke as well. "Ah've been here since the summer. Since Yvette got hurt. Ah just, there were people who put a lotta effort into makin' a case for me to stay. Jane won that battle. That's all."

"Well Ah reckon she's a smart one, that one." Jay nodded and pulled out a bunch of papers from his back pocket. He dropped a few and was forced to set down his guitar to pick them up. "Ah ain't been around much - too much school, Red X trainin' and gettin' mah shit together, yanno. Silver too - they got me doin' all this bartendin' flare. Ah feel like mah biceps are gonna burst out from their --uh.. skin."

Kevin really wasn't sure what to make of this. How did Jay do that? He always managed to just plow on ahead with whatever mood he wanted them to be in completely regardless of whatever had happened the time before. Like how he'd ended up with half his hand withered off from grabbing Kevin. Or how Kevin had withered most of Jay's shirt away. "That's good." He was being awkward, he knew he was being awkward. "That stuff's goin'...well. Right?"

"Yeah," he started to lie, then hesitated and his shoulders dropped as he flipped through his papers. "No. it ain't. But don't tell anyone else that. okay? Ah'm suppose to be on some higher program but Ah can't even get past the first baby program in the danger room without killin' somethin' by accident. We're workin' on it tho -- oh here, this is it. Someone set me your mail. Don't know why--" he stepped forward, offered it with a genuine smile. Sometimes there was only things that Kevin could know because he knew Kevin wouldn't repeat it.

"Oh." It was the response to the fact that things weren't going well, not to the fact that Jay had his mail. But he took the mail with a casual, "Thanks. Must've forgot Ah haven't lived in your suite in a while." He wasn't really sure what else to say. They weren't friends. To Kevin's thinking they never had been but here Jay was acting like they were, and like he needed them to be. What was he supposed to do with that?

"Sure, no problem. It was in mah box--" Jay shrugged as he turned around, picking up his guitar, cord and amp, juggling the three before he turned back around, raising the guitar. "Sorry Ah can't stick around. They asked me to play backup at Silver for a band. Ain't singing but yanno, it's still somethin'" Another shrug, if only because his hands were too full to run through his hand. "So see ya 'round sometime."

"Yeah, no problem. See ya." Kevin finally sounded as confused as he felt. He'd keep trying to keep it off his face and out of his voice but he failed miserably there at the end when he finally saw his freedom from the situation in sight. Oops?