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xp_logs2010-04-16 06:13 pm
x-quebecois.livejournal.com) wrote in xp_logs2010-04-16 06:13 pm
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Kevin & Jean-Paul, Friday Evening (backdated)
"Cause all the walls of dreaming, they were torn right open,
and finally it seemed that the spell was broken -
and all my bones began to shake, my eyes flew open..."
"Blinding" - Florence & the Machine
Kevin and Jean-Paul have dinner, burn the chicken, and get some things straightened out. Mostly.
Dinner. It was such a normal word. It was so innocuous. It did nothing to expose the tension and almost nervous energy that ran beneath it. The last time Kevin had seen him had been in the middle of the woods with the hints of that euphoria using his mutation could bring running through him so quietly. Kevin was considerably more relaxed now than he'd been that day in the woods, but the memory of that interaction rang loudly through his mind along with the letters from Jean-Paul.
Once again, he ran away.
That last line repeated through Kevin's brain over and over again. He told himself all of this was a bad idea. In his need to distract himself from that line and the glaring point it was making to him Kevin had started the chicken early. The various pieces of poultry had been cleaned when he'd gotten the e-mail from Jean-Paul. They had sat in an egg and buttermilk mixture in the refrigerator since then after being sprinkled with black pepper. The spices had been mixed in with the flour already. Kevin had floured, then re-battered and floured the chicken pieces again. Each battered piece lay on a dish to one side of the stove while he waited for the oil in the pan to get up to the temperature he needed. He waited and he let a string quartet version of The Beautiful People fill the suite, stealing his attention away from the thoughts in his head for the moment.
Jean-Paul brought the salad. And that was really all he had to bring with him. Morgan had cleared out the hard liquor from his suite, as promised, which left only wine and he was not willing to trust himself with that, either. He'd considered bringing some kind of dessert, but there was no way he was going to attempt it himself and buying something ready-made from the store felt... cheap. So he turned up with the makings of a salad and not much else, save a good deal of uncertainty and a hope that this might turn out differently than he was anticipating.
He knocked.
The noise disrupted the mellow Kevin had settled into with the music and the rhythm of getting the chicken ready for frying. He frowned, but moved to the door with his eyes lingering on the heating oil. Watching oil heat probably wasn't any more effective than watching water boil, but it was oddly transfixing and meditative. Maybe he'd just had an oddly exhausting week, though.
He could have just called out for the person to enter, but Kevin didn't want to risk it being someone other than Jean-Paul. There was a strangeness and intensity to his interactions with the older man, even through exchanges of letters and drawings, that he didn't particularly want someone else present for. It was a relief to open the door and see his anticipated dinner companion on the other side. "Hey." Kevin gave him a small smile and gestured Jean-Paul to enter the suite.
And then the nerves set in. Kevin wasn't even entirely sure why they did.
"Merci," Jean-Paul said, nodding as he automatically returned the smile. It was small, but it was real, even if it did fade a moment later. He moved through to the kitchenette because it was familiar and he was going to need to cut up the salad components, anyway. His steps were slow, though, and he made sure he didn't actually precede the younger man through the suite - it was Kevin's, after all. "You are well?" He looked up to catch the Southerner's eyes as he asked, more behind the question than simple pleasantries.
The phrasing was odd to Kevin. You didn't ask people if they were well unless you thought they were ill, right? Maybe it was a language thing. Sometimes when people learned English as a second language the phrasings were so proper that they were taught that they didn't really come off right to native speakers. That was what the Southerner put it down to, the second language thing, and mentally wrote off the phrasing because of it. "Yeah, Ah'm good." Somehow it just seemed so forced and fake to follow that with a question about how Jean-Paul was, as if he were a gossipy old lady or something.
Kevin gestured to a stretch of counter that had a bowl laid out for the salad along with a cutting board and an appropriate knife. "D'you need a peeler for anything, too?" Carrots, they needed peeling sometimes if you were putting them in salads.
"Non, I brought the small carrots that were not always small," Jean-Paul said. He knew they hadn't always been small, that they weren't really baby carrots, because he'd watched a show on the Food Network that showed him how they were made. "Unless you prefer your cucumber peeled?"
The question about the cucumber was completely ignored so Kevin could give Jean-Paul a funny look about the carrots. For a moment the nervous energy fled. "That weren't always small? They got shrinkage? You figure out how to make big carrots morph into tiny carrots?"
Putting the bag he carried on the counter, Jean-Paul pulled a bag of baby carrots out and showed it to Kevin. "They were regular carrots, but a machine peels them and cuts them and makes them small." He shrugged, not really understanding the point of it, himself, but it wasn't really his place to worry about it. He just wanted to eat them. "There is the cucumber, as well. Tomatoes, onions, peppers, olives. I did not know what you might like and so I brought many things."
"Ah like my version better," he said and went about measuring the oil's temperature. He liked his mental image of carrots going under cold water and shrinking up into little carrots. If guys had to deal with that why not carrots, too? The oil wasn't quite ready but it was close. "Ah'll eat pretty much anything, but that all sounds good." Kevin was hoping they believed in putting lettuce in salad in Quebec, too, since lettuce hadn't been listed.
Pulling a head of iceberg lettuce and one of romaine from the bag, Jean-Paul nodded. Spinach came next, and he set about getting the greens readied before he began chopping up the rest of the vegetables. A strange tension thrummed through him - there were things he wanted to say, things he wanted to ask, but it seemed too soon. It would be rude to simply start asking, but he didn't want to leave them unsaid through all this.
The greens taken care of, he paused as he took the outer layers from the onion and looked toward Kevin, saying, "You are more relaxed, I think, than when I saw you last." Truthfully, the younger man was moving with a fluidity, a laxness of muscle, that Jean-Paul hadn't seen in him before and he was curious as to its cause. It was almost like someone had been winding him tighter and tighter and now... now they had released him, a little at least.
"Sorry," Kevin apologized automatically. "It wasn't a very good day." That was the single most evasive answer he could remember ever giving Jean-Paul. He hadn't had tons of times to give him evasive answers, sure, but he'd always told him the truth without blinking. Kevin scowled at the oil but mostly it was directed at himself. His eyes didn't move from the pan. "It happens. After Ah train with my mutation. The relaxin', Ah mean. And Ah get sorta...cranky, sometimes, when I'm doin' stuff with them. Like Ah got with you in the woods. So'm sorry."
Cranky wasn't really the most accurate way of putting it but he didn't want to admit while in this sort of proximity that he'd been worried he might have eventually been tempted to eat through half of Jean-Paul's arm or neck or torso just because it'd feel good. Sure, Kevin was trying to run him off sooner rather than later if running was what he was going to do, but he didn't want to run Jean-Paul off that badly.
"You do not need to apologise," Jean-Paul said, tipping his head to the side for a moment as he took in Kevin's expression. "I imagine that I would be very cranky, as you say, if I could not fly. And I feel better after a flight or a run than before." True, a great deal of that had to do with sheer exhaustion and he wouldn't necessarily have qualified that as feeling better, but it got his point across, he hoped. "It is just that... it is noticeable, that is all." He didn't really know what to say after that, since he felt like he might have given too much away as it was - the very fact that he'd paid enough attention to see something so minute probably said a great deal about how he'd been spending his time. He wasn't sure it was something that should have been said just yet.
Kevin wasn't entirely sure he'd term how he felt after using his mutation as "better." It was a rush, it felt amazing, but it made him a little sick to his stomach in a way as well. Physically he felt better, but mentally he was worse off every time. Who needed to know that, though, right? He wouldn't even tell his therapist that. "The tension's a side effect of not usin' my mutation," Kevin explained but he didn't volunteer any more information. He was trying to get Jean-Paul to understand what he was observing in the younger man without painting too vivid a picture of it all. Kevin busied himself with placing the first few pieces of chicken in the oil that had finally gotten hot enough.
Which still seemed very logical to him, Jean-Paul thought, though he continued preparing the vegetables. It was possible he chopped them faster than was technically safe, but what use was super speed in the kitchen if it couldn't get the menial tasks out of the way more quickly?
It all looked very nice, once he'd finished, and he turned to watch Kevin as the chicken cooked. "The last drawing," he said, apropos of nothing. "Why was there a devil in the wave?"
Eyebrows furrowing, Kevin glanced over at the older man. He was clearly confused. "What devil?"
"Devil - it might not be the right word. But it seemed to have pointy teeth. And a horn. Like a narwhal," Jean-Paul said, using one finger to imitate a horn coming from his forehead. "There were eyes and a nose and teeth. I was curious about why it was there."
He blinked once, then stared for a bit and blinked again. "Ah ain't put no devil in the waves. What sorta person gives someone they-" Kevin cut himself off. "Who gives someone a devil in the waves? Why would Ah go and do that?"
"I do not know. This is why I asked," Jean-Paul said. "It seemed to be a horn and teeth. Like it would eat one of the birds." And it really had. He wasn't sure what it might have meant with the devil, but since the devil was apparently in his imagination, now he didn't know what to do with anything.
More blinking ensued. "Um...Ah dunno what to tell you. Ah didn't put a devil in the waves." He could see some interesting symbolism if he had, but since he didn't Kevin wasn't sure what to say about it. "People see all sorts of things in art that aren't really there. Or Ah guess just that wasn't put there when it was done by the artist." He wondered if Jean-Paul thought the devil was lurking in the waves to swallow freedom, which was what a lot of people associated birds with. Flying was freedom, right? Kevin wasn't entirely sure, himself.
Shrugging, Jean-Paul leaned one hip against the counter and nodded. "I thought I should ask," his smile was rueful. It would figure, he supposed, that he wasn't seeing things that Kevin had intended him to see in the artwork. Inching a little closer, Jean-Paul kept a close eye on the younger man as he approached. "I thank you for the drawing again, of course. Devils aside, it is beautiful."
"You know you don't have to thank me, right?" Kevin noticed the slow creeping closer that Jean-Paul was doing. He wasn't sure if the man was attempting to be slick or just move slowly enough that Kevin didn't freak out. Either way, he made no move to stop the Quebecois, just flipped the pieces of chicken over in the oil. "But you're welcome. Even if you think there's a devil hidin' in the waves." Kevin was fairly certain that now all Jean-Paul would see when he looked at the drawing was his imaginary devil. There was probably no hope of him seeing the actual point now.
"Hm..." Jean-Paul nodded. "It is not something I want to take for granted, oui?" Not everyone had somebody slipping drawing beneath their door, after all. A smile lit his face rather suddenly and he said, "But you should pay more attention to your windows, I think. There can be many interesting things outside them. Sometimes when you do not expect them." Not that the last letter he'd sent really counted as such a thing, but... he had an idea. And that might, depending on how things wound up going between them once they were finished with their tentative dancing around one another, lead to some very interesting things outside Kevin's windows.
Kevin noted the smile and suppressed a little half-smile of his own for having somehow caused it. "Ah do pay attention to my windows, just not all the time." There was a vague gesture to the one closed door in his suite. That door led to the room he'd appropriated as his work room for painting and smaller projects that didn't require the machinery in the workshop downstairs. "There's whole canvases filled with what's out my windows." Some of them were filled with the stuff that you only saw from up on the roof. The flier's deck was useful, even if you couldn't fly.
Inching closer still, Jean-Paul checked to see what Kevin was wearing - the hood was down, but the gloves were on, covered by some other, plastic-y looking gloves that he supposed were to protect the cloth from the food. He tilted his head to the side, noting the rest of Kevin's clothing carefully before finally stepping up behind the younger man and peering over his shoulder at the chicken. A small smile on his lips, he raised one hand to rest very carefully against Kevin's side, the pressure light, barely-there, and asked, "What sorts of things from outside your windows did you put on the canvases in the room over there?"
"Trees," Kevin began to list with a faintly distracted tone to his voice, "skies, hills in the distance. Y'know, sunsets and sunrises. Stars." He'd gone very still at first when Jean-Paul stepped in behind him, but the hand on his side let him relax as if it somehow made it okay and allowed him to have eyes in the back of his head to anticipate every move the man made. Maybe Kevin was just making good on his word to trust the older man. Who knew such a thing was possible. "Paint nature, draw people," he murmured and moved carefully to remove the chicken from the pan. He was careful to not let hair brush up against the face peering over his shoulder and moved slowly enough that Jean-Paul could adjust, move with him rather than just awkwardly try to get out of the way as some people would have.
"Why?" Jean-Paul asked quietly, shifting slightly to take Kevin's movement into account before clarifying, "Why do you paint nature, as you say, and draw people?" He kept his voice low, aware of the younger man in a way that went somewhat beyond the norm - he had to be. But he also wanted to hear the answer to his question.
"Dunno," Kevin answered and shrugged only the shoulder that wasn't near Jean-Paul's face. "Just how Ah do it for whatever reason." He tested the oil temperature with a thermometer and then picked up an uncooked piece of chicken with a vinyl glove-covered hand to place it into the pan. Three other pieces followed before he wiped his hand on the towel nearby and leaned back a little to let it cook. "Don't you got stuff that's just sorta habit and there's no reason you can't do it another way but you just don't?"
"Mm... I do not know," Jean-Paul said, thinking about it. There was a certain rhyme and reason to his actions. If he tried to pinpoint it, he could tell you why he flew instead of running or ran instead of flying. He could explain why he preferred carrots over potatoes, though most would likely find the logic nonexistent. "It is an interesting question, though." Quirking another smile, he continued, "I will think on it." Then, still watching the movements of Kevin's hands over his shoulder, Jean-Paul murmured, "May I ask you something?"
"Can't really stop you from askin' me somethin' anyway, can Ah?" The tone was more polite than the words themselves and it took any of the harsh edge off of the response.
"But will you answer, if I ask?" Jean-Paul paused for a moment, then said, "That did not count as my question."
"Ah can't promise that until you ask it." Kevin was pretty sure he could have just said 'yes' and probably not have had to end up being a liar, but he couldn't really anticipate anything very well with Jean-Paul. He really didn't know what he could be asked that he wouldn't answer, but Kevin couldn't guarantee Jean-Paul might not find that one thing and ask it.
There were many questions that Jean-Paul would have liked to ask, most belied by the vaguely serious tone of voice with which he'd spoken. This was a tentative thing, he felt. Tentative, hesitant, but he didn't feel like it had to be, necessarily. And so he asked the serious question rather than the ones that might make Kevin laugh. Those, he supposed, he could save for later. The fingertips of his free hand found the younger man's elbow and slid very slowly down his cloth-covered forearm while he spoke. "The nature of your mutation... is it only your skin that it affects?"
Kevin went very still when he felt Jean-Paul's hand moving down his arm. "It ain't my skin to start with," he explained, voice gone very quiet suddenly. "It's sebum. Sebum coats your skin and your hair. Normally people ain't got sebaceous glands on the bottoms of their feet or their palms or their lips but Ah guess my mutation put 'em on my hands and feet. So anywhere there's sebum there's my mutation." Questions like that were usually about limits. Barriers. Kevin swallowed hard.
"I see," Jean-Paul said, considering the younger man's stillness for a moment before sliding both of his hands very, very slowly upward to either side of Kevin's spine. Flipping the hem of the Southerner's hood carefully backward, he then slipped his fingertips into the fold of fabric and raised it. He measured the movements in increments, watching Kevin as he pulled the cloth upward.
Eyes rolled upward as if they would be able to see the movement of the cloth he could feel. It wasn't until the hood was almost completely over that Kevin could see what Jean-Paul had done to hide his fingers from the damage that Kevin's hair could have done to them on contact. Smart. Yet he said nothing.
With a gentle flick of his fingers, Jean-Paul righted the fabric and stepped in just a little closer to Kevin's back while he returned his hand to its place on the younger man's side. There were no questions, really, about what Kevin's mutation could do. He'd said 'organic decay.' There wasn't a lot of wiggle room, when it came right down to it. Which meant that Jean-Paul's next question came from lips that were rather close to the younger man's ear, now safely separated by inorganic fabric. "Is this okay?"
Taking the time to swallow the small lump in his throat, there was the barest nod from Kevin. "Yeah, it's okay." He'd been tempted to ask for clarification of 'okay' and 'this' but he figured the answer was pretty much yes to all of those anyway. He'd finally stopped being so still but from how close that voice had sounded the tension in his body wasn't much of a surprise. At least it wasn't to Kevin.
"Mm... bon," Jean-Paul murmured, waiting for another moment before allowing his chin to rest on Kevin's shoulder. "I am no expert in this cooking of chicken as you are doing it," he said, just the hint of a smile in his voice, "But I think it might need turning, oui?"
"Probably." His voice was a little too quiet and a little too uneven for Kevin's own good. He tried to ignore that, though, and focused on flipping the various pieces of frying chicken over in the oil. He was very careful with his movements, almost as if he were scared he'd somehow harm them if he moved too carelessly. It was obvious worry over Jean-Paul being so close but Kevin reminded himself that there were three layers of cloth on his upper body and the other man had only proven himself mindful of physical restrictions where Kevin was concerned.
The chicken, though it smelled very good, was not nearly so interesting to Jean-Paul as the younger man. He was too busy trying to take in everything of Kevin that he could to concentrate. He knew he'd have to in a moment, though, and so he shifted slightly and asked, "Where are the frosting bunnies?"
The question brought the Southerner's attention away from the sizzling oil. The smile followed quickly after he registered just what Jean-Paul had said. "Cavortin'," was his answer, smile spreading still. "Or, y'know what they say 'bout bunnies. They might be off makin' more frostin' bunnies. Ah hear their numbers're down from all the pillagin'."
"Scandalous," Jean-Paul said with a quiet laugh. "Is a world full of pillaging really the sort to bring new frosting bunnies into? I imagine they are far more... delicate, oui? Than their parents. And if what they say is true, would the parents have time to care for them adequately while making more and attempting to survive the pillaging?"
"Ah dunno. Maybe the elders'll sneak off with them while moms and dads and older bunny siblings go off to comfort the pillaged. Granbunny will raise the little bunnies until they got appropriate sugar content goin' on and then they'll be sent off to battle." It was hard attempting to keep his tone adequately serious enough through that. Everything always came back down to the frosting bunnies, didn't it? The entire basis of their whatever-this-was came down to frosting bunnies.
"Appropriate sugar content?" Jean-Paul asked, laughing quietly again. "You mean size does not matter?"
"It's not 'bout the size of the bunny," Kevin said in a solemn scold. "It's 'bout the quality of the frostin' he's made of. Or she's."
"Are lady bunnies made of the same frosting as the men?" Jean-Paul wasn't even attempting to hide the laughter anymore.
Kevin leaned his head to the side so he could turn it just enough to look at Jean-Paul through slit eyes. "Now what kinda question is that, askin' what sorta frostin' a lady's got between her ears?" He then tsked and shook his head with his most disapproving expression on.
Snorting, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Not a good one, I think." His eyes had crinkled up at the corners, though, and he settled in comfortably behind Kevin, nose finding the crux of the younger man's neck and taking up residence there.
There was something just a little bit self-satisfied about Kevin's smile. The ridiculousness of their never ending frosting bunny tales had put a smile on Jean-Paul's face for longer than Kevin had ever seen one there before. And he seemed pretty darn comfortably settled in where he was, too. What was it about Jean-Paul and Kevin's neck? "This gonna be a habit, huh?" His head tilted a little, giving the other man more room and trying to indicate he meant where Jean-Paul was, not what they'd been talking about.
"If you do not mind," Jean-Paul said, understanding the movement and what it offered him while also implying that dinner would be a lovely habit to maintain as well. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he liked the scent of the younger man and he did find the positioning comfortable.
"Not really." He poked a little at the chicken still cooking through and finally managed to relax against the other man. Somehow Kevin still thought there were things, important type things, that needed to be said between them. He couldn't really think of any of them right now, though. So he focused on the chicken, pulling it out of the pan, letting the oil cool down to the right temperature and putting the last batch of battered pieces into the pan. The vinyl gloves finally came off and got tossed over to the side.
Kevin tried to remember what else hadn't been said that was somehow important. What was left that could still make Jean-Paul leave when he found out?
"Bon," Jean-Paul repeated, knowing he needed to say things but reluctant to, now. Kevin knew, obliquely, about his childhood and his tumultuous relationship with his sister, his tendency to run away. That should probably be addressed, since he had no intention of running from the younger man... but he couldn't think of a way to bring that up that wouldn't disrupt the odd quiet that had settled over them.
Uncertainty was something that Jean-Paul had grown very accustomed to during the last several months. Uncertainty, anger, frustration. He felt neither of the latter two and there was a distinctly different flavour to the first than he was used to. Finally, his voice quiet, he said, "I returned to the mansion because of what was done to my mind. But that is not... the whole of it, I think. What was done, it changed something with my mutation. I do not understand it, but I am attempting to. It can be... very dangerous. Concussive blasts, they are what worry me. I think you should know, oui?"
Oui was the answer Kevin immediately thought but didn't say. It was hard to lean over so he could look at the Quebecois without dislodging the man's chin so Kevin gave up and just tried to look at him from the corner of his eye. "What's a concussive blast?" It sounded serious but beyond that the words were just words to the young man.
"Invisible energy," Jean-Paul answered, trying to remember how Doctor McCoy had phrased it. "It happens when I am asleep, mostly. Twice, it has happened when I was awake, but... those were different situations. It pushes people and things away, breaks them. I cannot control it."
Invisible energy that broke people? "Does the energy break stuff or is it the pushing that breaks it?" The distinction was important to Kevin. The distinction would inform limits and boundaries.
"It is the pushing, as you say. Things break when they fall." Jean-Paul didn't say anything else for a moment, thinking over what he needed to say. He didn't know what else to say.
"What makes it happen?" It was, very possibly, the most important fact in terms of setting limits and restrictions. Kevin's sebum made things decompose so avoiding that would keep you safe. If he knew why the concussive blasts happened then he'd be able to avoid getting hurt by them, right?
"It is... hard to say, for the moment. I have not been able to make one happen, you see? But I think... I believe that it is when I am trapped. Panic, maybe?" Pausing again, Jean-Paul took a slow breath and then said, "My dreams, they are not pleasant. And so they happen often when I am asleep."
"So nightmares make 'em happen and maybe panic? How do you get to sleep?" Maybe he didn't really, that would explain why Jean-Paul looked so tired so often. You couldn't control your dreams so that made sleeping together in both senses of the phrasing a hard limit. No sleep because of Jean-Paul's mutation and no sex because of Kevin's, weren't they a pair?
After flipping over the pieces of chicken Kevin turned very carefully so that he could face the other man but remain close to him. "So's it just the panic sorta trapped that does it," Kevin asked while gloved hands slid, cloth over cloth, up to Jean-Paul's waist from his hips.
Head tilting to the side just the slightest bit, Jean-Paul considered Kevin for a moment before nodding slowly. "Oui. I think. Memories of my capture seem to cause them most." His lips quirked ruefully. "Being threatened and trapped."
"So long as Ah'm not threatenin' you," the Southerner reiterated and took a step forward to push the older man backward, "or sleepin' with you then Ah'm safe and you won't hafta worry 'bout breakin' me, right?" He was very calm as he spoke, just as he moved very slowly forward. One step at a time Jean-Paul was getting closer to the counter behind him.
His brows rising a little, Jean-Paul nodded. "In short... oui." He wasn't entirely sure where he was being walked, but he wasn't objecting. "Though, to be fair, you could sleep. I just would not."
"What's the point if you don't get to sleep, too? That ain't fair." It was clear from the way he said it that fairness was the important thing here. Being equal was important. Another three steps and Kevin felt the resistance of the other man's back hitting the other counter. Another small step brought Kevin's hips against Jean-Paul's. His hands slid from the older man's hips to grasp the edge of the counter to either side of him. It was very obvious what Kevin was doing.
The smirk he wore was far more cocky than any expression he normally wore. "So this sorta trapped ain't a problem, right?"
Fighting to keep his expression straight, Jean-Paul said, "Non, this trapping, it is not a problem." He felt his lips turning upward at the corners again, though, as his hands rose and he let his wrists rest on Kevin's shoulders. "Was this only for demonstration, mon ami, or are you thinking of doing something with this trap you have set?"
"Ah'm considerin' it," he answered vaguely. Kevin let his eyes do what he never let them, wander downward from Jean-Paul's face to his mouth, then downward still until he found where their bodies met at the hip. There his gaze lingered until Kevin pulled it back upward. His eyes never made it to the other man's; they stopped at his lips. "Can't go forgettin' the chicken though. Could go and do that if Ah do somethin' with my trap." The smirk intensified for a moment and Kevin's eyes finally moved up to catch the older man's gaze again. "'Less you like burnt chicken."
"I... believe I can live with burned chicken," Jean-Paul said, voice quiet as he watched the younger man's eyes travel downward, then back upward again. He caught all the little pauses, could guess where they lingered, and the smug little quirk of his lips told that tale plainly enough. "That is, of course, if you think you can, also." His hips shifted as he moved his feet just a little farther apart.
"Never burnt chicken Ah wouldn't eat." That smug look only made Kevin's smirk worse. His hips pressed forward to fully pin Jean-Paul against the counter and Kevin leaned in until his lips were separated from the other man's by little more than a breath. "Gonna find out how much you understand limits," he whispered.
Rather uncharacteristically, Kevin left his hands on the counter. It was an immense amount of trust that had him closing that small distance to kiss the older man. Kevin was always self-controlled. He was always in control of situations he was in as much as possible. But he didn't guide the kiss, he didn't put forth the effort to control Jean-Paul's movement. There was an incredible amount of restraint there in that kiss, but the confidence also present hid it well. Kevin knew exactly what he was doing and how to navigate. He'd simply never learned to temper his own intensity.
Jean-Paul held himself perfectly still as Kevin leaned in, closed that bit of distance. His mind worked furiously, though, noting the positions of the younger man's hands as well as smaller things that might, ordinarily, have seemed inconsequential - like his nose. Jean-Paul was acutely aware of Kevin's nose and, for that matter, his own. The devil really was in the details, he supposed, as he kissed the Southerner back.
Noses really were very inconvenient. So were chins and cheeks. What had seemed like Jay's insistence on damning the consequences had taught Kevin awareness. It had hammered the caution into him until it became second nature. Like breathing, Kevin was careful without thinking about it. All of his usual tension when he was so close to someone, particularly in new situations, was absent.
A hand slid up Jean-Paul's spine to rest between his shoulder blades. It pressed inward to pull the other man in closer. All the while Kevin was completely relaxed. All he needed was for Jean-Paul to trust both of them so he could relax, too.
Moments inched by and Jean-Paul let his muscles loosen along his shoulders, tension leaving him slowly as he moved one hand to rest at the nape of Kevin's neck. His thumb moved forward and backward in a slow arc there, the cloth smooth beneath his skin. It wasn't conscious thought that had him parting his lips, but he had to agree with whichever subconscious impulse had had him do it.
If Kevin wasn't so preoccupied he may have looked very smug in that moment. His lips followed Jean-Paul's without hesitation. The deepening of the kiss brought Kevin's other hand up and by time his tongue found the other man's gloved fingers framed the Quebecois' jaw from temple to chin. He trusted Jean-Paul but he'd not give up the better parts of this to prove it.
The shift was palpable. Some of that tightly clenched restraint fled once Kevin was in a position to control the kiss. His head tilted a little, the kiss deepening further while Jean-Paul remained firmly pinned by the younger man's hips.
A quietly pleased sound grated from Jean-Paul's throat, more a low vibration than anything else, and he slid his free hand downward, then around Kevin's waist so it could take up residence at the base of the younger man's spine. And then he made himself stop thinking - or stop analysing, at least. He concentrated on Kevin instead, on the way he tasted, his scent, the feel of him pressed in so close. Jean-Paul focused on those things and another soft sound escaped him.
The faint upward quirk at the corners of his mouth were impossible to suppress. People could be so careful about the sounds they made. They could be so thoroughly unwilling to let anything slip. It was a vulnerability, in a way, to admit the sorts of things sounds like those did. Kevin was incredibly pleased with himself for causing that reaction. He was encouraged.
If it was possible to lay claim over someone with your mouth then that's what their kiss turned into.
Over the course of his life, Jean-Paul had kissed a great many people in a wide variety of settings and used an even wider array of technique to do so. He could quite conclusively say that this was... the most possessive kiss he had ever experienced - specifically, the most possessive toward himself. It was a surprise - a pleasant one, but still a surprise. And he found himself returning the wordless sentiment in kind. That, too, was a surprise. He wouldn't let himself think of it for the moment, but later... later he was going to have to consider it more in depth. Possession... it could lead to so many things.
Possession was precisely what Kevin wanted, and he wanted it from both ends. He wasn't the jealous sort and he wasn't the clingy sort but he liked that feeling of just knowing someone was his. And he wanted Jean-Paul. He wanted him and he didn't want to have to share the older man with anyone else in the same way. People could be anything they wanted to be to Jean-Paul, as long as it wasn't what Kevin was to him. Kevin should have held that back a bit since Kevin was something to the other man but that something remained undefined thus far.
It was, however, the impending need for oxygen rather than any sensible decision that drew the kiss to an end that left the Southerner gasping for air. The moment their lips parted Kevin's eyes opened so he could watch Jean-Paul, the expression on his face, his reactions. He only drew as far away as he needed to in order to let the other man move without worry, though.
Jean-Paul kept his eyes closed for a moment, held his breath for a beat longer than was necessary, and then exhaled very, very slowly. His eyes opened then and caught Kevin's, one brow rising as his fingers curved at the nape of the younger man's neck to keep him close. This was new. It was new, but he didn't want to run away from it. "Bonjour," he said softly.
Of all the things to say after someone finally kisses you and that's what he gets? There were worse things to say and Kevin supposed it was probably one of those things where silence seems oddly inappropriate so you've got to say something and so you open your mouth and say whatever occurs to you. He smiled, though, because it really was a ridiculous thing to say and because he was obviously being kept right where he was.
"Hey." The expression on Kevin's face matched the tone of Jean-Paul's voice. A very light brush of lips followed and the Southerner whispered, "Chicken's burning."
"I will eat it anyway," Jean-Paul muttered, finally letting himself smile. It was a quiet expression, one that very few people had ever seen from him. It took up residence in his eyes and never really left even when his lips weren't curled upward at the corners anymore.
That was a new expression. There was a softening to Jean-Paul's face Kevin hadn't seen before, a sort of quiet affection. It made Kevin smile a little, too. He wasn't entirely sure what that look on the other man's face meant, but Kevin was pretty darn sure it meant he won. Despite his previous, valiant attempts to lose, he'd managed to win.
"Least you won't stick me with all the burnt stuff." One step backward, then another and Kevin pulled the other man along with him. He should at least get the chicken out of the oil and the oil turned off. There were ovens for reheating and all anyway.
"Non," Jean-Paul said. "That I would not do." He moved the plate of chicken farther from the stove top and then considered their options for the evening where dinner was concerned. And where other things were concerned as well. "It would be rude, would it not?" He smiled again, as he spoke.
"Yeah, but that don't mean you won't be rude if you wanna be." Kevin had to extricate himself from the other man so that he could tend to the chicken. It wasn't as burnt as all that, really, but it'd probably be sort of dry. It could be worse, right? He got the pieces of overcooked chicken onto the plate and turned off the burner. The pan with the hot oil was moved to another burner while Kevin tried not to think about how much more comfortable he was pinning Jean-Paul to a counter. He got contact so rarely that he was always acutely aware of its loss.
"But I do not want to be rude," Jean-Paul said, shaking his head as he watched Kevin finish off the chicken. He considered what he'd said, then amended his statement. "Not to you, at least." Which was only fair. He didn't particularly mind being rude toward others when they bothered him. Or even when they didn't bother him, per se - when they existed too close to him. At least he wasn't, generally, fickle when it came to his rudeness.
Wearing a little half-grin, Kevin turned to look at Jean-Paul over his shoulder. "So you're cool with bein' rude long as it's not to me? Well, ain't Ah special." The grin turned into a smirk before he turned back around to figure out if he was putting the chicken in the oven for later or pulling the plate off the counter for now.
"Oui, what is the saying here?" Jean-Paul asked, face and tone very serious. "Like a flake of snow." Raising one hand, he fluttered his fingers. He broke into another smile, though, and shook his head. "Other people, they are not so... calm, I think. I do not know how else to say it."
"Snowflake," Kevin corrected. "A special snowflake." Though he then glanced back to narrow his eyes at the Quebecois for calling him a special snowflake even if only in intent. "There're calm people. And Ah can be...not calm." He frowned at himself. "What's the opposite of calm? Tense? No, that's the opposite of relaxed. Ah'm no good with words." Kevin went back to staring at the chicken but he wasn't exactly hungry right now. He wanted his hands on Jean-Paul, not on chicken. Maybe he was hungry but that urge wasn't registering as being important enough to notice. "Are you actually hungry?" It was obvious in his voice that Kevin wasn't particularly.
"Not really," Jean-Paul said, an easy expression sliding onto his features as he answered Kevin. He stepped backward, planting himself against the counter in much the same way that the younger man had put him there earlier. "Is being a special snowflake bad?" Amusement colored his voice as he tipped his head to the side.
Kevin put the plate of chicken into the oven for safe keeping before he turned around and saw where Jean-Paul had retreated to. Smiling a little, he took a moment appreciate the view from across the kitchen before moving to slowly close the distance between them. "Well, it's not usually a compliment. Y'know, it's sorta one of those ways you make fun of someone without bein' overtly rude."
When he got to Jean-Paul Kevin's hands went to the older man's hips, though there was enough pressure from the push of his palms that the pinning effect was still there. "And Ah thought you weren't lookin' to be rude to me none?" The smile was replaced by a small, playful smirk.
"Ah,"Jean-Paul said, nodding. "That was not my intention." He returned the smirk in kind, reaching out to hook his fingers in the fabric of Kevin's shirt. This, at least, he understood. The language of movement, the push and pull of purely physical interaction... he hadn't forgotten that. Maybe Shrine had thought it too insignificant to tamper with.
"You have sprung another trap for me. Are you going to put it to better use this time?"
"Ah'm pretty sure you walked into the trap and just waited for your escape to get cut off," Kevin replied, his voice becoming more of a murmur as he leaned in closer to the other man. "Qualify 'better.'" Kevin didn't give him a chance to qualify anything, though, because the next moment his lips were pressed to Jean-Paul's once more.
Jean-Paul felt that he'd qualified enough statements for the evening and, since Kevin seemed to have a fairly good idea of what 'better' meant, he wasn't going to worry about it overmuch. Instead, he concentrated on giving as good as he got whilst trying see if he could last longer without breathing than the younger man.
It wasn't desperate, not yet, but there was a certain quality to the kiss that told him it could, very easily, become desperate. He didn't find himself opposed to that possibility. In fact, he was interested in seeing how much of a reaction he could get from Kevin while going about his teasing as quietly as possible.
It was pretty clear to Kevin that his hands, happy as they were, weren't going to be able to stay on Jean-Paul's hips. There was almost this quick ramping up the kiss experienced where it started as something almost alright for public display and rapidly became something that suggested things very inappropriate for public display. Given the privacy of the suite Kevin wasn't overly worried about it, but it meant he needed to make sure he could take control completely of the kiss in case Jean-Paul forgot who he was kissing and what that meant. Begrudgingly, one hand left the Quebecois' hip and moved up to cradle his jaw, fingers sliding up and around the back of his neck while Kevin's thumb extended out along the jaw itself.
Moment by moment, breath by breath, Jean-Paul challenged Kevin to keep pace with him in the kiss, to take it higher, faster, hotter. And he did it all without taking control, without breaking contact or doing more than curling his fingers in the fabric of Kevin's shirt at his sides. Holding him there, keeping him close - a passive request, just loud enough for someone who was paying very close attention to hear, to understand.
You couldn't get this close to Kevin and not have him pay attention to as many small details as possible. The hold on him was loud enough to scream for the Southerner. His weight shifted, hips taking that weight and using it to pin Jean-Paul in place. It was Kevin's own quiet scream. He wasn't intending to go anywhere or let the older man go anywhere either. Jean-Paul was his and that small hint of possession crept back into their kiss.
Jean-Paul let it, enjoyed it. His mind stopped churning and he felt, for the first time in a long while, like he might not need to fly to pieces to keep himself sane.
and finally it seemed that the spell was broken -
and all my bones began to shake, my eyes flew open..."
"Blinding" - Florence & the Machine
Kevin and Jean-Paul have dinner, burn the chicken, and get some things straightened out. Mostly.
Dinner. It was such a normal word. It was so innocuous. It did nothing to expose the tension and almost nervous energy that ran beneath it. The last time Kevin had seen him had been in the middle of the woods with the hints of that euphoria using his mutation could bring running through him so quietly. Kevin was considerably more relaxed now than he'd been that day in the woods, but the memory of that interaction rang loudly through his mind along with the letters from Jean-Paul.
Once again, he ran away.
That last line repeated through Kevin's brain over and over again. He told himself all of this was a bad idea. In his need to distract himself from that line and the glaring point it was making to him Kevin had started the chicken early. The various pieces of poultry had been cleaned when he'd gotten the e-mail from Jean-Paul. They had sat in an egg and buttermilk mixture in the refrigerator since then after being sprinkled with black pepper. The spices had been mixed in with the flour already. Kevin had floured, then re-battered and floured the chicken pieces again. Each battered piece lay on a dish to one side of the stove while he waited for the oil in the pan to get up to the temperature he needed. He waited and he let a string quartet version of The Beautiful People fill the suite, stealing his attention away from the thoughts in his head for the moment.
Jean-Paul brought the salad. And that was really all he had to bring with him. Morgan had cleared out the hard liquor from his suite, as promised, which left only wine and he was not willing to trust himself with that, either. He'd considered bringing some kind of dessert, but there was no way he was going to attempt it himself and buying something ready-made from the store felt... cheap. So he turned up with the makings of a salad and not much else, save a good deal of uncertainty and a hope that this might turn out differently than he was anticipating.
He knocked.
The noise disrupted the mellow Kevin had settled into with the music and the rhythm of getting the chicken ready for frying. He frowned, but moved to the door with his eyes lingering on the heating oil. Watching oil heat probably wasn't any more effective than watching water boil, but it was oddly transfixing and meditative. Maybe he'd just had an oddly exhausting week, though.
He could have just called out for the person to enter, but Kevin didn't want to risk it being someone other than Jean-Paul. There was a strangeness and intensity to his interactions with the older man, even through exchanges of letters and drawings, that he didn't particularly want someone else present for. It was a relief to open the door and see his anticipated dinner companion on the other side. "Hey." Kevin gave him a small smile and gestured Jean-Paul to enter the suite.
And then the nerves set in. Kevin wasn't even entirely sure why they did.
"Merci," Jean-Paul said, nodding as he automatically returned the smile. It was small, but it was real, even if it did fade a moment later. He moved through to the kitchenette because it was familiar and he was going to need to cut up the salad components, anyway. His steps were slow, though, and he made sure he didn't actually precede the younger man through the suite - it was Kevin's, after all. "You are well?" He looked up to catch the Southerner's eyes as he asked, more behind the question than simple pleasantries.
The phrasing was odd to Kevin. You didn't ask people if they were well unless you thought they were ill, right? Maybe it was a language thing. Sometimes when people learned English as a second language the phrasings were so proper that they were taught that they didn't really come off right to native speakers. That was what the Southerner put it down to, the second language thing, and mentally wrote off the phrasing because of it. "Yeah, Ah'm good." Somehow it just seemed so forced and fake to follow that with a question about how Jean-Paul was, as if he were a gossipy old lady or something.
Kevin gestured to a stretch of counter that had a bowl laid out for the salad along with a cutting board and an appropriate knife. "D'you need a peeler for anything, too?" Carrots, they needed peeling sometimes if you were putting them in salads.
"Non, I brought the small carrots that were not always small," Jean-Paul said. He knew they hadn't always been small, that they weren't really baby carrots, because he'd watched a show on the Food Network that showed him how they were made. "Unless you prefer your cucumber peeled?"
The question about the cucumber was completely ignored so Kevin could give Jean-Paul a funny look about the carrots. For a moment the nervous energy fled. "That weren't always small? They got shrinkage? You figure out how to make big carrots morph into tiny carrots?"
Putting the bag he carried on the counter, Jean-Paul pulled a bag of baby carrots out and showed it to Kevin. "They were regular carrots, but a machine peels them and cuts them and makes them small." He shrugged, not really understanding the point of it, himself, but it wasn't really his place to worry about it. He just wanted to eat them. "There is the cucumber, as well. Tomatoes, onions, peppers, olives. I did not know what you might like and so I brought many things."
"Ah like my version better," he said and went about measuring the oil's temperature. He liked his mental image of carrots going under cold water and shrinking up into little carrots. If guys had to deal with that why not carrots, too? The oil wasn't quite ready but it was close. "Ah'll eat pretty much anything, but that all sounds good." Kevin was hoping they believed in putting lettuce in salad in Quebec, too, since lettuce hadn't been listed.
Pulling a head of iceberg lettuce and one of romaine from the bag, Jean-Paul nodded. Spinach came next, and he set about getting the greens readied before he began chopping up the rest of the vegetables. A strange tension thrummed through him - there were things he wanted to say, things he wanted to ask, but it seemed too soon. It would be rude to simply start asking, but he didn't want to leave them unsaid through all this.
The greens taken care of, he paused as he took the outer layers from the onion and looked toward Kevin, saying, "You are more relaxed, I think, than when I saw you last." Truthfully, the younger man was moving with a fluidity, a laxness of muscle, that Jean-Paul hadn't seen in him before and he was curious as to its cause. It was almost like someone had been winding him tighter and tighter and now... now they had released him, a little at least.
"Sorry," Kevin apologized automatically. "It wasn't a very good day." That was the single most evasive answer he could remember ever giving Jean-Paul. He hadn't had tons of times to give him evasive answers, sure, but he'd always told him the truth without blinking. Kevin scowled at the oil but mostly it was directed at himself. His eyes didn't move from the pan. "It happens. After Ah train with my mutation. The relaxin', Ah mean. And Ah get sorta...cranky, sometimes, when I'm doin' stuff with them. Like Ah got with you in the woods. So'm sorry."
Cranky wasn't really the most accurate way of putting it but he didn't want to admit while in this sort of proximity that he'd been worried he might have eventually been tempted to eat through half of Jean-Paul's arm or neck or torso just because it'd feel good. Sure, Kevin was trying to run him off sooner rather than later if running was what he was going to do, but he didn't want to run Jean-Paul off that badly.
"You do not need to apologise," Jean-Paul said, tipping his head to the side for a moment as he took in Kevin's expression. "I imagine that I would be very cranky, as you say, if I could not fly. And I feel better after a flight or a run than before." True, a great deal of that had to do with sheer exhaustion and he wouldn't necessarily have qualified that as feeling better, but it got his point across, he hoped. "It is just that... it is noticeable, that is all." He didn't really know what to say after that, since he felt like he might have given too much away as it was - the very fact that he'd paid enough attention to see something so minute probably said a great deal about how he'd been spending his time. He wasn't sure it was something that should have been said just yet.
Kevin wasn't entirely sure he'd term how he felt after using his mutation as "better." It was a rush, it felt amazing, but it made him a little sick to his stomach in a way as well. Physically he felt better, but mentally he was worse off every time. Who needed to know that, though, right? He wouldn't even tell his therapist that. "The tension's a side effect of not usin' my mutation," Kevin explained but he didn't volunteer any more information. He was trying to get Jean-Paul to understand what he was observing in the younger man without painting too vivid a picture of it all. Kevin busied himself with placing the first few pieces of chicken in the oil that had finally gotten hot enough.
Which still seemed very logical to him, Jean-Paul thought, though he continued preparing the vegetables. It was possible he chopped them faster than was technically safe, but what use was super speed in the kitchen if it couldn't get the menial tasks out of the way more quickly?
It all looked very nice, once he'd finished, and he turned to watch Kevin as the chicken cooked. "The last drawing," he said, apropos of nothing. "Why was there a devil in the wave?"
Eyebrows furrowing, Kevin glanced over at the older man. He was clearly confused. "What devil?"
"Devil - it might not be the right word. But it seemed to have pointy teeth. And a horn. Like a narwhal," Jean-Paul said, using one finger to imitate a horn coming from his forehead. "There were eyes and a nose and teeth. I was curious about why it was there."
He blinked once, then stared for a bit and blinked again. "Ah ain't put no devil in the waves. What sorta person gives someone they-" Kevin cut himself off. "Who gives someone a devil in the waves? Why would Ah go and do that?"
"I do not know. This is why I asked," Jean-Paul said. "It seemed to be a horn and teeth. Like it would eat one of the birds." And it really had. He wasn't sure what it might have meant with the devil, but since the devil was apparently in his imagination, now he didn't know what to do with anything.
More blinking ensued. "Um...Ah dunno what to tell you. Ah didn't put a devil in the waves." He could see some interesting symbolism if he had, but since he didn't Kevin wasn't sure what to say about it. "People see all sorts of things in art that aren't really there. Or Ah guess just that wasn't put there when it was done by the artist." He wondered if Jean-Paul thought the devil was lurking in the waves to swallow freedom, which was what a lot of people associated birds with. Flying was freedom, right? Kevin wasn't entirely sure, himself.
Shrugging, Jean-Paul leaned one hip against the counter and nodded. "I thought I should ask," his smile was rueful. It would figure, he supposed, that he wasn't seeing things that Kevin had intended him to see in the artwork. Inching a little closer, Jean-Paul kept a close eye on the younger man as he approached. "I thank you for the drawing again, of course. Devils aside, it is beautiful."
"You know you don't have to thank me, right?" Kevin noticed the slow creeping closer that Jean-Paul was doing. He wasn't sure if the man was attempting to be slick or just move slowly enough that Kevin didn't freak out. Either way, he made no move to stop the Quebecois, just flipped the pieces of chicken over in the oil. "But you're welcome. Even if you think there's a devil hidin' in the waves." Kevin was fairly certain that now all Jean-Paul would see when he looked at the drawing was his imaginary devil. There was probably no hope of him seeing the actual point now.
"Hm..." Jean-Paul nodded. "It is not something I want to take for granted, oui?" Not everyone had somebody slipping drawing beneath their door, after all. A smile lit his face rather suddenly and he said, "But you should pay more attention to your windows, I think. There can be many interesting things outside them. Sometimes when you do not expect them." Not that the last letter he'd sent really counted as such a thing, but... he had an idea. And that might, depending on how things wound up going between them once they were finished with their tentative dancing around one another, lead to some very interesting things outside Kevin's windows.
Kevin noted the smile and suppressed a little half-smile of his own for having somehow caused it. "Ah do pay attention to my windows, just not all the time." There was a vague gesture to the one closed door in his suite. That door led to the room he'd appropriated as his work room for painting and smaller projects that didn't require the machinery in the workshop downstairs. "There's whole canvases filled with what's out my windows." Some of them were filled with the stuff that you only saw from up on the roof. The flier's deck was useful, even if you couldn't fly.
Inching closer still, Jean-Paul checked to see what Kevin was wearing - the hood was down, but the gloves were on, covered by some other, plastic-y looking gloves that he supposed were to protect the cloth from the food. He tilted his head to the side, noting the rest of Kevin's clothing carefully before finally stepping up behind the younger man and peering over his shoulder at the chicken. A small smile on his lips, he raised one hand to rest very carefully against Kevin's side, the pressure light, barely-there, and asked, "What sorts of things from outside your windows did you put on the canvases in the room over there?"
"Trees," Kevin began to list with a faintly distracted tone to his voice, "skies, hills in the distance. Y'know, sunsets and sunrises. Stars." He'd gone very still at first when Jean-Paul stepped in behind him, but the hand on his side let him relax as if it somehow made it okay and allowed him to have eyes in the back of his head to anticipate every move the man made. Maybe Kevin was just making good on his word to trust the older man. Who knew such a thing was possible. "Paint nature, draw people," he murmured and moved carefully to remove the chicken from the pan. He was careful to not let hair brush up against the face peering over his shoulder and moved slowly enough that Jean-Paul could adjust, move with him rather than just awkwardly try to get out of the way as some people would have.
"Why?" Jean-Paul asked quietly, shifting slightly to take Kevin's movement into account before clarifying, "Why do you paint nature, as you say, and draw people?" He kept his voice low, aware of the younger man in a way that went somewhat beyond the norm - he had to be. But he also wanted to hear the answer to his question.
"Dunno," Kevin answered and shrugged only the shoulder that wasn't near Jean-Paul's face. "Just how Ah do it for whatever reason." He tested the oil temperature with a thermometer and then picked up an uncooked piece of chicken with a vinyl glove-covered hand to place it into the pan. Three other pieces followed before he wiped his hand on the towel nearby and leaned back a little to let it cook. "Don't you got stuff that's just sorta habit and there's no reason you can't do it another way but you just don't?"
"Mm... I do not know," Jean-Paul said, thinking about it. There was a certain rhyme and reason to his actions. If he tried to pinpoint it, he could tell you why he flew instead of running or ran instead of flying. He could explain why he preferred carrots over potatoes, though most would likely find the logic nonexistent. "It is an interesting question, though." Quirking another smile, he continued, "I will think on it." Then, still watching the movements of Kevin's hands over his shoulder, Jean-Paul murmured, "May I ask you something?"
"Can't really stop you from askin' me somethin' anyway, can Ah?" The tone was more polite than the words themselves and it took any of the harsh edge off of the response.
"But will you answer, if I ask?" Jean-Paul paused for a moment, then said, "That did not count as my question."
"Ah can't promise that until you ask it." Kevin was pretty sure he could have just said 'yes' and probably not have had to end up being a liar, but he couldn't really anticipate anything very well with Jean-Paul. He really didn't know what he could be asked that he wouldn't answer, but Kevin couldn't guarantee Jean-Paul might not find that one thing and ask it.
There were many questions that Jean-Paul would have liked to ask, most belied by the vaguely serious tone of voice with which he'd spoken. This was a tentative thing, he felt. Tentative, hesitant, but he didn't feel like it had to be, necessarily. And so he asked the serious question rather than the ones that might make Kevin laugh. Those, he supposed, he could save for later. The fingertips of his free hand found the younger man's elbow and slid very slowly down his cloth-covered forearm while he spoke. "The nature of your mutation... is it only your skin that it affects?"
Kevin went very still when he felt Jean-Paul's hand moving down his arm. "It ain't my skin to start with," he explained, voice gone very quiet suddenly. "It's sebum. Sebum coats your skin and your hair. Normally people ain't got sebaceous glands on the bottoms of their feet or their palms or their lips but Ah guess my mutation put 'em on my hands and feet. So anywhere there's sebum there's my mutation." Questions like that were usually about limits. Barriers. Kevin swallowed hard.
"I see," Jean-Paul said, considering the younger man's stillness for a moment before sliding both of his hands very, very slowly upward to either side of Kevin's spine. Flipping the hem of the Southerner's hood carefully backward, he then slipped his fingertips into the fold of fabric and raised it. He measured the movements in increments, watching Kevin as he pulled the cloth upward.
Eyes rolled upward as if they would be able to see the movement of the cloth he could feel. It wasn't until the hood was almost completely over that Kevin could see what Jean-Paul had done to hide his fingers from the damage that Kevin's hair could have done to them on contact. Smart. Yet he said nothing.
With a gentle flick of his fingers, Jean-Paul righted the fabric and stepped in just a little closer to Kevin's back while he returned his hand to its place on the younger man's side. There were no questions, really, about what Kevin's mutation could do. He'd said 'organic decay.' There wasn't a lot of wiggle room, when it came right down to it. Which meant that Jean-Paul's next question came from lips that were rather close to the younger man's ear, now safely separated by inorganic fabric. "Is this okay?"
Taking the time to swallow the small lump in his throat, there was the barest nod from Kevin. "Yeah, it's okay." He'd been tempted to ask for clarification of 'okay' and 'this' but he figured the answer was pretty much yes to all of those anyway. He'd finally stopped being so still but from how close that voice had sounded the tension in his body wasn't much of a surprise. At least it wasn't to Kevin.
"Mm... bon," Jean-Paul murmured, waiting for another moment before allowing his chin to rest on Kevin's shoulder. "I am no expert in this cooking of chicken as you are doing it," he said, just the hint of a smile in his voice, "But I think it might need turning, oui?"
"Probably." His voice was a little too quiet and a little too uneven for Kevin's own good. He tried to ignore that, though, and focused on flipping the various pieces of frying chicken over in the oil. He was very careful with his movements, almost as if he were scared he'd somehow harm them if he moved too carelessly. It was obvious worry over Jean-Paul being so close but Kevin reminded himself that there were three layers of cloth on his upper body and the other man had only proven himself mindful of physical restrictions where Kevin was concerned.
The chicken, though it smelled very good, was not nearly so interesting to Jean-Paul as the younger man. He was too busy trying to take in everything of Kevin that he could to concentrate. He knew he'd have to in a moment, though, and so he shifted slightly and asked, "Where are the frosting bunnies?"
The question brought the Southerner's attention away from the sizzling oil. The smile followed quickly after he registered just what Jean-Paul had said. "Cavortin'," was his answer, smile spreading still. "Or, y'know what they say 'bout bunnies. They might be off makin' more frostin' bunnies. Ah hear their numbers're down from all the pillagin'."
"Scandalous," Jean-Paul said with a quiet laugh. "Is a world full of pillaging really the sort to bring new frosting bunnies into? I imagine they are far more... delicate, oui? Than their parents. And if what they say is true, would the parents have time to care for them adequately while making more and attempting to survive the pillaging?"
"Ah dunno. Maybe the elders'll sneak off with them while moms and dads and older bunny siblings go off to comfort the pillaged. Granbunny will raise the little bunnies until they got appropriate sugar content goin' on and then they'll be sent off to battle." It was hard attempting to keep his tone adequately serious enough through that. Everything always came back down to the frosting bunnies, didn't it? The entire basis of their whatever-this-was came down to frosting bunnies.
"Appropriate sugar content?" Jean-Paul asked, laughing quietly again. "You mean size does not matter?"
"It's not 'bout the size of the bunny," Kevin said in a solemn scold. "It's 'bout the quality of the frostin' he's made of. Or she's."
"Are lady bunnies made of the same frosting as the men?" Jean-Paul wasn't even attempting to hide the laughter anymore.
Kevin leaned his head to the side so he could turn it just enough to look at Jean-Paul through slit eyes. "Now what kinda question is that, askin' what sorta frostin' a lady's got between her ears?" He then tsked and shook his head with his most disapproving expression on.
Snorting, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Not a good one, I think." His eyes had crinkled up at the corners, though, and he settled in comfortably behind Kevin, nose finding the crux of the younger man's neck and taking up residence there.
There was something just a little bit self-satisfied about Kevin's smile. The ridiculousness of their never ending frosting bunny tales had put a smile on Jean-Paul's face for longer than Kevin had ever seen one there before. And he seemed pretty darn comfortably settled in where he was, too. What was it about Jean-Paul and Kevin's neck? "This gonna be a habit, huh?" His head tilted a little, giving the other man more room and trying to indicate he meant where Jean-Paul was, not what they'd been talking about.
"If you do not mind," Jean-Paul said, understanding the movement and what it offered him while also implying that dinner would be a lovely habit to maintain as well. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he liked the scent of the younger man and he did find the positioning comfortable.
"Not really." He poked a little at the chicken still cooking through and finally managed to relax against the other man. Somehow Kevin still thought there were things, important type things, that needed to be said between them. He couldn't really think of any of them right now, though. So he focused on the chicken, pulling it out of the pan, letting the oil cool down to the right temperature and putting the last batch of battered pieces into the pan. The vinyl gloves finally came off and got tossed over to the side.
Kevin tried to remember what else hadn't been said that was somehow important. What was left that could still make Jean-Paul leave when he found out?
"Bon," Jean-Paul repeated, knowing he needed to say things but reluctant to, now. Kevin knew, obliquely, about his childhood and his tumultuous relationship with his sister, his tendency to run away. That should probably be addressed, since he had no intention of running from the younger man... but he couldn't think of a way to bring that up that wouldn't disrupt the odd quiet that had settled over them.
Uncertainty was something that Jean-Paul had grown very accustomed to during the last several months. Uncertainty, anger, frustration. He felt neither of the latter two and there was a distinctly different flavour to the first than he was used to. Finally, his voice quiet, he said, "I returned to the mansion because of what was done to my mind. But that is not... the whole of it, I think. What was done, it changed something with my mutation. I do not understand it, but I am attempting to. It can be... very dangerous. Concussive blasts, they are what worry me. I think you should know, oui?"
Oui was the answer Kevin immediately thought but didn't say. It was hard to lean over so he could look at the Quebecois without dislodging the man's chin so Kevin gave up and just tried to look at him from the corner of his eye. "What's a concussive blast?" It sounded serious but beyond that the words were just words to the young man.
"Invisible energy," Jean-Paul answered, trying to remember how Doctor McCoy had phrased it. "It happens when I am asleep, mostly. Twice, it has happened when I was awake, but... those were different situations. It pushes people and things away, breaks them. I cannot control it."
Invisible energy that broke people? "Does the energy break stuff or is it the pushing that breaks it?" The distinction was important to Kevin. The distinction would inform limits and boundaries.
"It is the pushing, as you say. Things break when they fall." Jean-Paul didn't say anything else for a moment, thinking over what he needed to say. He didn't know what else to say.
"What makes it happen?" It was, very possibly, the most important fact in terms of setting limits and restrictions. Kevin's sebum made things decompose so avoiding that would keep you safe. If he knew why the concussive blasts happened then he'd be able to avoid getting hurt by them, right?
"It is... hard to say, for the moment. I have not been able to make one happen, you see? But I think... I believe that it is when I am trapped. Panic, maybe?" Pausing again, Jean-Paul took a slow breath and then said, "My dreams, they are not pleasant. And so they happen often when I am asleep."
"So nightmares make 'em happen and maybe panic? How do you get to sleep?" Maybe he didn't really, that would explain why Jean-Paul looked so tired so often. You couldn't control your dreams so that made sleeping together in both senses of the phrasing a hard limit. No sleep because of Jean-Paul's mutation and no sex because of Kevin's, weren't they a pair?
After flipping over the pieces of chicken Kevin turned very carefully so that he could face the other man but remain close to him. "So's it just the panic sorta trapped that does it," Kevin asked while gloved hands slid, cloth over cloth, up to Jean-Paul's waist from his hips.
Head tilting to the side just the slightest bit, Jean-Paul considered Kevin for a moment before nodding slowly. "Oui. I think. Memories of my capture seem to cause them most." His lips quirked ruefully. "Being threatened and trapped."
"So long as Ah'm not threatenin' you," the Southerner reiterated and took a step forward to push the older man backward, "or sleepin' with you then Ah'm safe and you won't hafta worry 'bout breakin' me, right?" He was very calm as he spoke, just as he moved very slowly forward. One step at a time Jean-Paul was getting closer to the counter behind him.
His brows rising a little, Jean-Paul nodded. "In short... oui." He wasn't entirely sure where he was being walked, but he wasn't objecting. "Though, to be fair, you could sleep. I just would not."
"What's the point if you don't get to sleep, too? That ain't fair." It was clear from the way he said it that fairness was the important thing here. Being equal was important. Another three steps and Kevin felt the resistance of the other man's back hitting the other counter. Another small step brought Kevin's hips against Jean-Paul's. His hands slid from the older man's hips to grasp the edge of the counter to either side of him. It was very obvious what Kevin was doing.
The smirk he wore was far more cocky than any expression he normally wore. "So this sorta trapped ain't a problem, right?"
Fighting to keep his expression straight, Jean-Paul said, "Non, this trapping, it is not a problem." He felt his lips turning upward at the corners again, though, as his hands rose and he let his wrists rest on Kevin's shoulders. "Was this only for demonstration, mon ami, or are you thinking of doing something with this trap you have set?"
"Ah'm considerin' it," he answered vaguely. Kevin let his eyes do what he never let them, wander downward from Jean-Paul's face to his mouth, then downward still until he found where their bodies met at the hip. There his gaze lingered until Kevin pulled it back upward. His eyes never made it to the other man's; they stopped at his lips. "Can't go forgettin' the chicken though. Could go and do that if Ah do somethin' with my trap." The smirk intensified for a moment and Kevin's eyes finally moved up to catch the older man's gaze again. "'Less you like burnt chicken."
"I... believe I can live with burned chicken," Jean-Paul said, voice quiet as he watched the younger man's eyes travel downward, then back upward again. He caught all the little pauses, could guess where they lingered, and the smug little quirk of his lips told that tale plainly enough. "That is, of course, if you think you can, also." His hips shifted as he moved his feet just a little farther apart.
"Never burnt chicken Ah wouldn't eat." That smug look only made Kevin's smirk worse. His hips pressed forward to fully pin Jean-Paul against the counter and Kevin leaned in until his lips were separated from the other man's by little more than a breath. "Gonna find out how much you understand limits," he whispered.
Rather uncharacteristically, Kevin left his hands on the counter. It was an immense amount of trust that had him closing that small distance to kiss the older man. Kevin was always self-controlled. He was always in control of situations he was in as much as possible. But he didn't guide the kiss, he didn't put forth the effort to control Jean-Paul's movement. There was an incredible amount of restraint there in that kiss, but the confidence also present hid it well. Kevin knew exactly what he was doing and how to navigate. He'd simply never learned to temper his own intensity.
Jean-Paul held himself perfectly still as Kevin leaned in, closed that bit of distance. His mind worked furiously, though, noting the positions of the younger man's hands as well as smaller things that might, ordinarily, have seemed inconsequential - like his nose. Jean-Paul was acutely aware of Kevin's nose and, for that matter, his own. The devil really was in the details, he supposed, as he kissed the Southerner back.
Noses really were very inconvenient. So were chins and cheeks. What had seemed like Jay's insistence on damning the consequences had taught Kevin awareness. It had hammered the caution into him until it became second nature. Like breathing, Kevin was careful without thinking about it. All of his usual tension when he was so close to someone, particularly in new situations, was absent.
A hand slid up Jean-Paul's spine to rest between his shoulder blades. It pressed inward to pull the other man in closer. All the while Kevin was completely relaxed. All he needed was for Jean-Paul to trust both of them so he could relax, too.
Moments inched by and Jean-Paul let his muscles loosen along his shoulders, tension leaving him slowly as he moved one hand to rest at the nape of Kevin's neck. His thumb moved forward and backward in a slow arc there, the cloth smooth beneath his skin. It wasn't conscious thought that had him parting his lips, but he had to agree with whichever subconscious impulse had had him do it.
If Kevin wasn't so preoccupied he may have looked very smug in that moment. His lips followed Jean-Paul's without hesitation. The deepening of the kiss brought Kevin's other hand up and by time his tongue found the other man's gloved fingers framed the Quebecois' jaw from temple to chin. He trusted Jean-Paul but he'd not give up the better parts of this to prove it.
The shift was palpable. Some of that tightly clenched restraint fled once Kevin was in a position to control the kiss. His head tilted a little, the kiss deepening further while Jean-Paul remained firmly pinned by the younger man's hips.
A quietly pleased sound grated from Jean-Paul's throat, more a low vibration than anything else, and he slid his free hand downward, then around Kevin's waist so it could take up residence at the base of the younger man's spine. And then he made himself stop thinking - or stop analysing, at least. He concentrated on Kevin instead, on the way he tasted, his scent, the feel of him pressed in so close. Jean-Paul focused on those things and another soft sound escaped him.
The faint upward quirk at the corners of his mouth were impossible to suppress. People could be so careful about the sounds they made. They could be so thoroughly unwilling to let anything slip. It was a vulnerability, in a way, to admit the sorts of things sounds like those did. Kevin was incredibly pleased with himself for causing that reaction. He was encouraged.
If it was possible to lay claim over someone with your mouth then that's what their kiss turned into.
Over the course of his life, Jean-Paul had kissed a great many people in a wide variety of settings and used an even wider array of technique to do so. He could quite conclusively say that this was... the most possessive kiss he had ever experienced - specifically, the most possessive toward himself. It was a surprise - a pleasant one, but still a surprise. And he found himself returning the wordless sentiment in kind. That, too, was a surprise. He wouldn't let himself think of it for the moment, but later... later he was going to have to consider it more in depth. Possession... it could lead to so many things.
Possession was precisely what Kevin wanted, and he wanted it from both ends. He wasn't the jealous sort and he wasn't the clingy sort but he liked that feeling of just knowing someone was his. And he wanted Jean-Paul. He wanted him and he didn't want to have to share the older man with anyone else in the same way. People could be anything they wanted to be to Jean-Paul, as long as it wasn't what Kevin was to him. Kevin should have held that back a bit since Kevin was something to the other man but that something remained undefined thus far.
It was, however, the impending need for oxygen rather than any sensible decision that drew the kiss to an end that left the Southerner gasping for air. The moment their lips parted Kevin's eyes opened so he could watch Jean-Paul, the expression on his face, his reactions. He only drew as far away as he needed to in order to let the other man move without worry, though.
Jean-Paul kept his eyes closed for a moment, held his breath for a beat longer than was necessary, and then exhaled very, very slowly. His eyes opened then and caught Kevin's, one brow rising as his fingers curved at the nape of the younger man's neck to keep him close. This was new. It was new, but he didn't want to run away from it. "Bonjour," he said softly.
Of all the things to say after someone finally kisses you and that's what he gets? There were worse things to say and Kevin supposed it was probably one of those things where silence seems oddly inappropriate so you've got to say something and so you open your mouth and say whatever occurs to you. He smiled, though, because it really was a ridiculous thing to say and because he was obviously being kept right where he was.
"Hey." The expression on Kevin's face matched the tone of Jean-Paul's voice. A very light brush of lips followed and the Southerner whispered, "Chicken's burning."
"I will eat it anyway," Jean-Paul muttered, finally letting himself smile. It was a quiet expression, one that very few people had ever seen from him. It took up residence in his eyes and never really left even when his lips weren't curled upward at the corners anymore.
That was a new expression. There was a softening to Jean-Paul's face Kevin hadn't seen before, a sort of quiet affection. It made Kevin smile a little, too. He wasn't entirely sure what that look on the other man's face meant, but Kevin was pretty darn sure it meant he won. Despite his previous, valiant attempts to lose, he'd managed to win.
"Least you won't stick me with all the burnt stuff." One step backward, then another and Kevin pulled the other man along with him. He should at least get the chicken out of the oil and the oil turned off. There were ovens for reheating and all anyway.
"Non," Jean-Paul said. "That I would not do." He moved the plate of chicken farther from the stove top and then considered their options for the evening where dinner was concerned. And where other things were concerned as well. "It would be rude, would it not?" He smiled again, as he spoke.
"Yeah, but that don't mean you won't be rude if you wanna be." Kevin had to extricate himself from the other man so that he could tend to the chicken. It wasn't as burnt as all that, really, but it'd probably be sort of dry. It could be worse, right? He got the pieces of overcooked chicken onto the plate and turned off the burner. The pan with the hot oil was moved to another burner while Kevin tried not to think about how much more comfortable he was pinning Jean-Paul to a counter. He got contact so rarely that he was always acutely aware of its loss.
"But I do not want to be rude," Jean-Paul said, shaking his head as he watched Kevin finish off the chicken. He considered what he'd said, then amended his statement. "Not to you, at least." Which was only fair. He didn't particularly mind being rude toward others when they bothered him. Or even when they didn't bother him, per se - when they existed too close to him. At least he wasn't, generally, fickle when it came to his rudeness.
Wearing a little half-grin, Kevin turned to look at Jean-Paul over his shoulder. "So you're cool with bein' rude long as it's not to me? Well, ain't Ah special." The grin turned into a smirk before he turned back around to figure out if he was putting the chicken in the oven for later or pulling the plate off the counter for now.
"Oui, what is the saying here?" Jean-Paul asked, face and tone very serious. "Like a flake of snow." Raising one hand, he fluttered his fingers. He broke into another smile, though, and shook his head. "Other people, they are not so... calm, I think. I do not know how else to say it."
"Snowflake," Kevin corrected. "A special snowflake." Though he then glanced back to narrow his eyes at the Quebecois for calling him a special snowflake even if only in intent. "There're calm people. And Ah can be...not calm." He frowned at himself. "What's the opposite of calm? Tense? No, that's the opposite of relaxed. Ah'm no good with words." Kevin went back to staring at the chicken but he wasn't exactly hungry right now. He wanted his hands on Jean-Paul, not on chicken. Maybe he was hungry but that urge wasn't registering as being important enough to notice. "Are you actually hungry?" It was obvious in his voice that Kevin wasn't particularly.
"Not really," Jean-Paul said, an easy expression sliding onto his features as he answered Kevin. He stepped backward, planting himself against the counter in much the same way that the younger man had put him there earlier. "Is being a special snowflake bad?" Amusement colored his voice as he tipped his head to the side.
Kevin put the plate of chicken into the oven for safe keeping before he turned around and saw where Jean-Paul had retreated to. Smiling a little, he took a moment appreciate the view from across the kitchen before moving to slowly close the distance between them. "Well, it's not usually a compliment. Y'know, it's sorta one of those ways you make fun of someone without bein' overtly rude."
When he got to Jean-Paul Kevin's hands went to the older man's hips, though there was enough pressure from the push of his palms that the pinning effect was still there. "And Ah thought you weren't lookin' to be rude to me none?" The smile was replaced by a small, playful smirk.
"Ah,"Jean-Paul said, nodding. "That was not my intention." He returned the smirk in kind, reaching out to hook his fingers in the fabric of Kevin's shirt. This, at least, he understood. The language of movement, the push and pull of purely physical interaction... he hadn't forgotten that. Maybe Shrine had thought it too insignificant to tamper with.
"You have sprung another trap for me. Are you going to put it to better use this time?"
"Ah'm pretty sure you walked into the trap and just waited for your escape to get cut off," Kevin replied, his voice becoming more of a murmur as he leaned in closer to the other man. "Qualify 'better.'" Kevin didn't give him a chance to qualify anything, though, because the next moment his lips were pressed to Jean-Paul's once more.
Jean-Paul felt that he'd qualified enough statements for the evening and, since Kevin seemed to have a fairly good idea of what 'better' meant, he wasn't going to worry about it overmuch. Instead, he concentrated on giving as good as he got whilst trying see if he could last longer without breathing than the younger man.
It wasn't desperate, not yet, but there was a certain quality to the kiss that told him it could, very easily, become desperate. He didn't find himself opposed to that possibility. In fact, he was interested in seeing how much of a reaction he could get from Kevin while going about his teasing as quietly as possible.
It was pretty clear to Kevin that his hands, happy as they were, weren't going to be able to stay on Jean-Paul's hips. There was almost this quick ramping up the kiss experienced where it started as something almost alright for public display and rapidly became something that suggested things very inappropriate for public display. Given the privacy of the suite Kevin wasn't overly worried about it, but it meant he needed to make sure he could take control completely of the kiss in case Jean-Paul forgot who he was kissing and what that meant. Begrudgingly, one hand left the Quebecois' hip and moved up to cradle his jaw, fingers sliding up and around the back of his neck while Kevin's thumb extended out along the jaw itself.
Moment by moment, breath by breath, Jean-Paul challenged Kevin to keep pace with him in the kiss, to take it higher, faster, hotter. And he did it all without taking control, without breaking contact or doing more than curling his fingers in the fabric of Kevin's shirt at his sides. Holding him there, keeping him close - a passive request, just loud enough for someone who was paying very close attention to hear, to understand.
You couldn't get this close to Kevin and not have him pay attention to as many small details as possible. The hold on him was loud enough to scream for the Southerner. His weight shifted, hips taking that weight and using it to pin Jean-Paul in place. It was Kevin's own quiet scream. He wasn't intending to go anywhere or let the older man go anywhere either. Jean-Paul was his and that small hint of possession crept back into their kiss.
Jean-Paul let it, enjoyed it. His mind stopped churning and he felt, for the first time in a long while, like he might not need to fly to pieces to keep himself sane.