Kevin & Jean-Paul, Morgan & Jean-Paul - Early Sunday Morning (backdated)

[x-quebecois.livejournal.com]

Kevin and Jean-Paul are both restless, so they attempt to distract one another before the plane leaves India.


Kevin had an aisle seat. Someone somewhere had a very bad sense of humor. He was waiting to see who had the window seat beside him so he could attempt to convince them to swap. People loved window seats, though. Kevin's only preference was further away from people. Planes made him twitchy for this reason. He pulled his hood further over his head so it began to obscure his eyes and he waited, mind utterly distracted by the images of what his powers had done to a human body. What they had done intentionally.

Jean-Paul couldn't sit still. He'd originally been seated somewhere in the front, but it was quiet there. Too quiet - funny, how that worked. People wanted the seats closer to the front because the roar of the engines was less pronounced there. The ride was smoother. But no ride was smooth for him, not when he was boxed in on all sides, contained by metal and plastic, cloth to make it look pretty, but it was a more tangible cage than most of the ones he'd experienced recently and he didn't fancy going down in very literal flames.

The burns on his right side twinged as he thought that, but he kept limping along. He was going to fidget himself into needing new bandages if he didn't find some way to calm down.

Shifting his eyes to the side, Jean-Paul considered his situation. This didn't bode well. The plane wasn't even off the ground yet. He caught sight of a vaguely familiar hood as he headed toward the back of the cabin and so he moved toward it.

Kevin was trying to draw. He still hadn't met his planemate and so he was attempting to wait patiently. Maybe he'd get lucky and the seat wouldn't be occupied. The picture on the page was barely there but he'd started with the most grisly bit first, the half-withered and rotting face. When someone stopped by him in the aisle he didn't take much notice at first, not until they hadn't moved. Eyes moved without his head tilting up until he absolutely had to. He knew that frame, he was pretty sure. When his eyes got high enough to glimpse the mouth Kevin knew who it was. He'd memorized that mouth. "Hey." He hadn't managed to sit up straight or look up high enough for eye contact and he didn't exactly sound chipper, but he hoped Jean-Paul didn't take it personally.

"Aisle or window?" Jean-Paul asked. In the end, he didn't really care if he was taking someone else's seat. They could have his. It would be like a trade. And they would probably think that they were getting the better end of the deal, wouldn't they? That was good.

"Rather have window. Not much chance Ah'm gonna accidentally decompose the wall." It was definitely possible, the decomposition bit, but unlike people in aisles the wall didn't move. The window wouldn't brush against him. He wouldn't need to be on high alert all the time and he wouldn't need to be quite so high strung as he was right now. The tension in his neck and jaw was beginning to ache.

"Move over, then," Jean-Paul said, gesturing with his left hand for Kevin to shift. The flight attendant was giving him the evil eye - he'd passed her three times and he was fairly certain she knew he wasn't anywhere near the seat labeled on his ticket. But if he could avoid aggravating her further, he might be able to get away with it. Maybe.

"Um. Okay." Kevin grabbed his iPod that had been tucked into the pocket of the seat in front of him along with his unopened can of soda and moved from his own seat to the one beside it. "Is this actually your seat or are you stealin' someone else's?" He wasn't bothered by it, he just hoped the person whose seat it actually was didn't happen to be attached to it for some reason. Kevin pushed his hood back enough to see the other man after putting his seat belt on, though he didn't exactly tighten it.

"I am borrowing it," Jean-Paul said, settling gingerly into the seat beside Kevin and ignoring his seat belt entirely because he wasn't going to strap himself into a death trap - that would have been silly. And painful. A small part of his mind attempted to point out that it was a valid safety feature, but the rest of him reminded that small part that seat belts had done none of his family any good when they were in cars and a plane was far more likely to kill everyone in it, no matter whether they were wearing seat belts or not. The small part of his mind decided not to bicker. "They can have mine, if they would like." He gestured toward the front of the plane. That wasn't going to keep him distracted, though, and so he looked toward Kevin's sketchbook. "What are you drawing?"

The question closed down the Southerner's expression and when he spoke his voice had dropped in volume. "Stuff Ah'd rather forget. Or not think 'bout. Since Ah can't Ah figured maybe if Ah drew it...then Ah could get it out of me for a while." He handed over the book, page open with nothing but a mangled face that looked half like long rotted fruit sketched out roughly.

Jean-Paul noticed Kevin's expression more than the page he looked at when he glanced toward the sketchbook. It was obvious that he didn't understand what he was actually looking at, though he had enough tact not to say as much. It was the way Kevin's expression had closed off that worried Jean-Paul. Still, he said nothing for a moment, one fingertip tracing a cheek that looked more like a shriveled apple than a cheek. He had options here - he could brush the conversation off, as he might have with someone else. That would have been easy. Change the subject to something inane. Leave it there. Or he could ask a question that might not garner him any favour with the younger man, but would at least give Jean-Paul the chance to demonstrate he respected Kevin enough to be concerned.

"What happened?"

"He put Yvette in danger, tried to throw her off the train and kill her when we got attacked." Yvette was very possibly the one person Kevin was protective of enough to choose to do what he did. It had made choosing to do it again easier. They were bad people, right? He didn't know that. They were the people on the other side of the line. They'd worked for a bad man. A man who had hurt people. He wasn't sure that made them all bad as well but if he was going to have a moral dilemma over it all he should have had it before he melted half the guy's face off.

"Ah," Jean-Paul said, knowing Yvette was alright but none of the details. He placed the sketchbook carefully on Kevin's lap. "And so..." He gestured toward the picture, the question implicit - was the apparent damage intentional? Jean-Paul was fairly certain it had been.

Kevin nodded. "And so. Ah never...well not on purpose anyway." He went silent for a moment, thinking with an ever deepening frown appearing on his face. "Ah orphaned myself when Ah manifested. Did you know that?" It wasn't a secret around the mansion, but Jean-Paul hadn't been there when Kane had taken Kevin in on the warrant for his father's murder.

"Non," Jean-Paul said. "I did not." His voice was quiet as he spoke, his left hand moving carefully toward Kevin so that the younger man could see it, know it was coming, when he settled his hand on the Southerner's knee. It was an open-ended reply - Kevin could continue, if he wished. Or he could stop. Jean-Paul felt a strange stillness settle over him as his attention zeroed in on the younger man. He focused, putting his own issues aside, boxing them up and placing them in the back of his mind to be dealt with later - if at all.

The hand brought Kevin's gaze to it and that's where it remained, fixed and reluctant to go anywhere else. "That's why Ah wear so many layers and why Ah get panic attacks still sometimes from people gettin' too close. It's why Ah wouldn't use my mutation for a long time after Ah manifested. Why Ah tried to run you off instead of..." he trailed off, not really wanting to vocalize what he'd really wanted. "Why Ah get nightmares still sometimes. Of my dad and that day." He gestured to the sketchbook and there was horror in his quiet voice when he said, "Ah did that on purpose."

There was no point in reminding Kevin that he'd done it to protect a friend, to help someone else. Jean-Paul couldn't even begin to fathom what the younger man must be feeling - to have a mutation capable of doing what Kevin's could do, to use it offensively, to know you had intentionally inflicted that on someone else... he shifted his hand until he found Kevin's, then laced their fingers together. Saying he was sorry - it didn't seem like enough. But there was little beyond physical contact that he could offer the younger man, given how empty words might sound.

Kevin wasn't sure how he was going to reconcile doing damage to someone. They'd been trying to hurt Yvette. He'd have killed her if he could most likely. He'd been after the train's engine and could have killed everyone on board the train. Hurt people would have been killed after damage was already done to them and they were just trying to get those people to safety. If anyone had deserved the disfigurement that man had. And Kevin hadn't killed him. He could have and he'd known it but he hadn't. Of course, the fall off the train might have killed him or he might have bled to death in the dirt by the train tracks but Kevin himself hadn't done either of those things. Right?

The hand in his was a distraction, but it was one that shot panic through him rather than comforting him. Kevin didn't pull his hand away, just stared and then looked up at the older man. "People can see that, y'know. They're gonna 'ssume things. 'Cause it sorta indicates...things."

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, looking at Kevin rather than their hands. "It does." He could have left it at that, which might have been the wise thing to do, but he shifted his hand until his palm was a little closer to Kevin's and continued, "But my hand, it likes where it is. Which means, I think, that I like where it is. And so it is alright for people to see, oui?"

"Only if you're okay with the things they're going to think." Kevin frowned a little at their hands. "Ah've got a best friend with a crush on me," he said very quietly so it would only be Jean-Paul that could hear him. "And Ah don't want her seein' nothin' that implies somethin' unless," he trailed off and he finally looked back up to Jean-Paul. "Unless you mean what it makes it look like. Unless you're really sure you mean it. 'Cause if you wanna not be totally sure when it's just you and me that's fine, but Ah ain't riskin' her heart for somethin' you think you might take back. She's too important." But he hadn't pulled his hand free because Kevin wanted Jean-Paul to be sure and mean it. He kept his grip on the other man's hand loose, though, to make it easier to free his hand of Kevin's if he chose to.

"I do not do things if I do not mean them," Jean-Paul said, the words simple and true. "I do not... flaunt things, but I do not hide them, either."

"Ah don't like bein' flaunted anyway." Jay was a flaunter. All his supposed pride about being Kevin's boyfriend and announcing it to the world all the time. It had only made the Southerner supremely annoyed and uncomfortable. However, Jean-Paul's confirmation caused Kevin's fingers to curl over and his hand's grip to become more firm on the other man.

"Bon," Jean-Paul murmured, settling his shoulders against the seat and attempting to get comfortable. The flight wasn't even underway yet, but he thought it might be a little more managable now.

The plane had eventually gotten up into the sky and Kevin had eventually let go of Jean-Paul's hand in order to finish working on the sketch he'd begun. There were pages of rough sketches of the man and his withered face. Some drawings were more detailed than others but they were all focused on the grotesque visage Kevin had left behind him on that train. It was hours into the flight before Kevin shoved the sketchbook into the pocket of the seat in front of him. He was yawning but he didn't want to sleep. Every time he closed his eyes all he could see was Yvette falling and himself reaching for that man with a bare hand. It made him shudder.

"You are tired?" Jean-Paul asked, brows rising a bit at the suppressed yawn. He'd finished off his third Coke a little over fifteen minutes ago and was working his way through his fourth cup of coffee. Sometimes he really hated his metabolism. He'd need to get something to eat from one of the flight attendants soon. He wasn't actually tired, but he was just paranoid enough to want the caffeine.

"Yeah, kinda." Kevin wasn't entirely willing to admit he was tired because he didn't think any actual sleep would be restful. He also wasn't sure just how workable sleep was on the plane. He didn't usually end up on such long flights so staying awake by drawing was much easier on them.

"Sleep, then," Jean-Paul said. "Rest. I will keep others from disturbing you." He offered Kevin a small smile. "I make a good pillow, oui?"

Kevin playfully eyed Jean-Paul up and down. "Ah dunno, you look like you might be kinda bony." He added an equally plaful prod to the man's ribs as if testing his theory. A smile began, faltered and then slipped away. "Ah don't think Ah can sleep none anyway."

"Bony?" Jean-Paul said, looking down at himself. "Not you, also. Everyone claims I am too thin..." He tugged at the hem of his shirt almost mournfully. "I am, how do you say, a string bean?" He wasn't really, but he was hoping to make the smile come back.

"Ah'd've gone for asparagus but Ah guess without the hair you're more bean-like." Then a small, affectionate smile did come back. "Ah'm sure you're a good pillow," Kevin told him in a somewhat placating tone with a pat to the back of Jean-Paul's hand to match. Kevin's eyes had a sneakingly up-to-no-good look to them. "Y'know, 'cause Ah like my mattresses more firm'n pillow soft anyway."

"Mattresses?" Jean-Paul felt his brows rising even as a smirk turned the corners of his lips upward. "This is what they are calling it now? We had better innuendo in my day..." Reaching over, he caught Kevin's wrist and snorted. "You are not so far from too thin, yourself."

Kevin took Jean-Paul's hand gently and removed it from his wrist. "Ah'm not too thin." He then placed the man's hand on his stomach, flexing the muscles beneath Jean-Paul's touch. "Ah'm a bit off from bony or thin." One corner of his mouth quirked upward.

Eyes sliding to the side, Jean-Paul checked to see what the people in the seats across the aisle from them were doing. They were sleeping - convenient. "Mm..." The smirk widened just the smallest bit as the heel of his palm pressed down, rotated, and then lifted a bit. "Only a bit?" His hand slid down just a little lower, repeating the motion as he asked, "You are sure it is... only a bit?"

"You suggestin' Ah'm less than that off?" Kevin's gaze flickered between the hand on his abdomen and the face of the man to whom it belonged. Since the hand wasn't migrating Kevin didn't worry about it, just gave the other man a rather expectant look. "Think Ah need to work out more? Kinda flabby?"

"Flabby?" Jean-Paul asked, expression mock-serious as he considered that. Leaning over, his lips barely brushing the shell of Kevin's ear through his hood, he whispered, "Flex again, let me see. I think that is not the word for it."

"Soft? Well padded?" As Kevin offered up these alternative words for the Quebecois he did as requested and flexed the muscles under Jean-Paul's hand. "Squishy?"

"Non," Jean-Paul replied, reminding himself that they were in public and, while things appeared to be a little more official now than they had been before, that did not necessarily mean he was allowed to take liberties. Or at least not as many as he wanted to. He smiled against the clothe separating them, lips trailing down to the side of Kevin's neck. "You need better adjectives, mon ami."

"Like?" The tone was intentionally prompting. If Jean-Paul disagreed with Kevin's adjectives then surely he could provide his own, right? He'd taught literature once, that had to mean he had a decent vocabulary. With Kevin's luck it'd all be in French, though.

"Beau homme," Jean-Paul replied. "Talentueux. Intelligent..." He paused to consider, then let his hand slide over Kevin's stomach and said, "Très distrait." He quirked a brow. That about covered it, though he supposed the younger man's stomach wasn't necessarily talented or intelligent, but it was very distracting, certainly. Kevin, in general, was very distracting. Jean-Paul was fairly certain that he didn't even realise it most of the time. "Très distrait."

Kevin understood "intelligent," obviously and he knew that "très" meant a lot. He was a little confused about the rest, though. "What's 'distrait' mean?" His voice had dropped to a much quieter volume without Kevin quite realizing it. "Ah dunno what most of the rest means either. Ah don't think my stomach's all that smart, though. Just knows if it's hungry or not."

Laughing softly, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Distracting, mon ami. Very distracting. It is a good thing, oui?" The flight attendant passed them at that moment and he considered asking for something to eat, but he was far more interested in Kevin than food for the time being. "As for the rest..." He smirked again. "I could write them down for you and you could look them up, I think. To learn them." His tone was teasing, obviously.

"Why do Ah wanna learn 'em when Ah could listen to you translate instead?" He might have liked the accent just a little bit. In fact, Kevin might have really liked the accent. And even the French. Not knowing what Jean-Paul was saying was kind of annoying sometimes, but he liked the way the words sounded. He liked the way English sounded when Jean-Paul said it, too.

"You like me to butcher your language?" Jean-Paul smiled, though, and allowed himself a gentle tug on the fabric of Kevin's shirt before sliding his hand back to his own lap. It was far too tempting to push boundaries as it was and they'd only just decided that there were boundaries. "Handsome, I think. Handsome young man," he murmured, voice dropping to match Kevin's now. "Talented, oui? Not your stomach, of course. Intelligent," he didn't even try to pronounce it the way the Americans did. Their vowels were too flat and it was obvious that the Southerner understood it. "And very distracting. There are others, I think, but none of them what you were saying." English was full of ugly words. It had beautiful ones, yes, but so many of them were short or simply malformed. An amalgamation of other languages that often made no sense to anyone, not even the people who spoke it from birth.

"You don't butcher it no more'n people who're raised with it," Kevin told him and tried to suppress the smile coming to his face. So he was very distracting and handsome, huh? Laura liked to go on about how he was cute but Kevin was pretty sure she wasn't serious. Jean-Paul, on the other hand, seemed very serious. The Southerner reached out and stopped the retreating hand before it could settle too comfortably in the older man's lap. Fingers laced together even as Kevin's other arm raised to hide another yawn. "Ah dunno," he began with a teasing voice, "my stomach might be talented. If Ah had a tattoo of a dancing girl on it maybe it could put on a show."

"You could do this with your arm as well," Jean-Paul said, laughing quietly. Tilting his head to the side, he considered the younger man for a moment before leaning his seat back as far as it would go. They were in the economy seating section, so it was not very far, but it was something, at least. "Come, rest. If you are sleeping, you will be less distracting." He was smirking as he said that last bit, raising the armrest separating their chairs before moving his own arm up and out of the way.

"Sleep ain't gonna be that restful," Kevin replied somewhat mournfully. "Ah've gotta be a real light sleeper with other people or you end up shirtless and then sorta chestless and that's probably not a very good look on you." He tugged on the shirt, looking at how thick the material was. "That wouldn't last long." Kevin was going to say something else but the words died in his mouth as he looked at the material more closely.

"I believe that the shirt will survive," Jean-Paul said, trying and failing to suppress a rather self-satisfied smirk.

Eyes narrowing, Kevin pulled off a glove slowly. The movement was very deliberate and his hand crept closer at an impossibly slow pace until he quickly poked Jean-Paul in the ribs. Nothing happened. There was no familiar pull like he felt went his powers ate away at something. There was no noticeable difference in the fabric at all. Kevin poked the older man again, this time maintaining contact for a longer period of time just in case.

Pursing his lips, now, in an effort to keep himself from outright grinning at the look on Kevin's face, Jean-Paul raised his brows. He had to clear his throat to keep himself from laughing before asking, "Is this your new form of innuendo? It is more... demonstrative, oui? A practical application?"

That got Jean-Paul a friendly shove. "Uh, no, not innuendo." He was scrutinizing the shirt, bare hand laid flat against it now. It wasn't one of Kevin's, that was the most confusing part. Jay had appropriated some of Kevin's shirts and had them altered to be Jay friendly with his wings. It was annoying but understandable. This wasn't one of Kevin's shirts, but it wasn't anything organic either. "Go shopping recently?"

"Maybe," Jean-Paul said, shrugging a little. "It seemed like a good idea, oui?"

"Oui." When Kevin said it the word sounded more like wee than weh like when Jean-Paul did. The Southerner pulled his glove back on and was still giving both Jean-Paul and the shirt an oddly suspicious look. "Still, it wasn't necessary or nothin'. It's a pain in the butt to find stuff Ah won't just decompose on contact and even if you were plannin' to brand me and claim me as your own," he trailed off and shrugged a little. "Most people wouldn't've."

"I am not most people," Jean-Paul said, tone serious even though he still wore the reluctant smirk. It made sense to him, if he was thinking of attempting something vaguely official with someone whose mutation restricted touch that he'd make the effort to make things a little easier for that someone.

Moving the hand closest to Kevin to the nape of the younger man's neck, he trailed his thumb along the muscles there. "Relax, at least."

Kevin was such a sucker for touch that Jean-Paul's hand at the back of his neck caused him to let his eyes fall shut and his head fall forward almost immediately. "Yeah," he muttered, "Ah'm startin' to really get that. The not most people thing, Ah mean." It was very possibly why Kevin seemed to feel so drawn to the older man but the Southerner wouldn't vocalize that point at all. His shoulders fell down and forward, tension leaving him the longer the other man's touch continued, but he did not move yet.

Jean-Paul let the smile return, softening the smirk on his lips, and didn't reply verbally. Rather, he continued to knead away the tension in Kevin's neck. He was winning. He wasn't sure what he was winning, but he knew he was. And Jean-Paul was nothing if not competitive.

A small sound came from Kevin and his head fell further forward. The weight of his head pulled his body forward until the top of his hooded head connected with the seat in front of him. "You keep that up and Ah really will fall asleep probably." He was pretty sure that was meant to be a warning, he just wasn't sure why it was supposed to be effective or to what end.

There was a particularly tight knot on the right side of Kevin's neck, near where his shoulder and neck met, and Jean-Paul hummed softly as he worked it out. Mostly, he was agreeing that he would probably succeed if he kept it up, which was the point. "The seat is not so comfortable, when you lean like that," he said as he concentrated on what he was doing.

A small moan of contentment was followed by the words, "Ah dunno, feels pretty comfy right now." In about five minutes it would be less comfortable and then Kevin would frown, possibly pout at it and then resign himself to the normal, uncomfortable manner of sitting in the seat. Planes, they really sucked.

"I know something that is more comfortable," Jean-Paul said, letting his hand work slowly downward, to the stretch of cloth between Kevin's shoulder blades. The muscles there were taut as well, so he focused on loosening them before continuing, "Would you like to know what it is?"

"Mm..." The Southerner was a bit distracted by the hand working its way down his back. That felt...really nice. He didn't always carry so much tension around with him. Once he had, but now it was solely due to the guilt of what he'd done to a man who most would say had deserved it anyway. "Whassat?"

"Moi," Jean-Paul said, keeping his fingers busy as they moved lower and lower.

"We gotta get into that bony thing again?" Kevin was smiling, though. It was a lazy sort of smile but a smile nonetheless.

"I am not so bony and we know that you are not. There is no thing to get into." Jean-Paul's tone was reasonable, like he knew his logic was infallible. That was belied, somewhat, by the fact that, after a moment's pause, he murmured, "Please?"

The please only made Kevin's smile broaden. "Want me passed out on you that much, huh?" The tone was teasing, but Kevin straightened, made sure his hood was pulled over his head as far as it would go, and then moved to lay his head against the other man's shoulder. He wasn't accustomed to being in this position, really. Kevin was usually the laid on, not the layer. It took him a moment of leaning against the other man before shifting to curl into his side more. The movement half-buried Kevin's face against Jean-Paul's chest and it was, overall, markedly more comfortable.

Draping his arm over Kevin's shoulders, Jean-Paul didn't answer, once again. Instead, he let his fingertips drift up and down the inside of the younger man's inner arm and contemplated the flight attendant making her way back toward them. He needed something to eat. And something more to drink. But he could always ask her later. Not much later, but fifteen minutes wouldn't hurt him.

Kevin was all too comfortable where he was. So much of his tension had been worked out of his muscles where he carried the bulk of it. Jean-Paul somehow knew how to distract him from his own thoughts as well. It meant when Kevin closed his eyes it wasn't a half rotted face he saw, it was just blackness. It was just the blackness inside his shut eyes and that was amazing. He yawned again, nestled down closely and let himself drift. It was strange, but he trusted Jean-Paul. And he trusted the other man to keep other people safe from Kevin as much as he trusted the older man to keep himself safe from the Southerner.


Jean-Paul needs to stay awake during the flight but he's run out of caffeine-packed products, so he attempts to enlist Morgan's help without waking Kevin up.


Kevin's breathing had evened out a while ago and Jean-Paul had occupied himself with finishing off his coffee and asking the flight attendant for another - in addition to something to snack on. She'd brought him several bags of peanuts and an apple, which he'd eaten carefully so as to keep the crunching to a minimum. He'd finished the coffee and one bag of peanuts - those really weren't going to hold him over and he knew it. It wasn't until he'd leaned his head back and only just caught himself as his eyes were closing that he realised he was going to need to do better than coffee and peanuts to keep himself awake.

Or, perhaps, it was more that he was going to need more coffee and peanuts to manage. He had two packs of honey roasted goodness left and he was seriously considering calling the flight attendant when he realised he couldn't actually reach the call button. He stretched for it, mindful of the Southerner sleeping against him, but he was a good three inches shy of it. Which meant it was doing him no good. He didn't want to wake Kevin, though, and so he sat there for a few long minutes as he tried to work out a solution to his problem.

He remembered passing Morgan on his way toward Kevin and, checking to make sure, Jean-Paul found she was sitting a few rows up and across the aisle from his current location. So he sacrificed one of the bags of peanuts and began tossing them at her in an effort to get her attention. It was awkward, considering he had to use his injured arm to do the tossing, and the flight attendants were going to hate him. Lucky for him, if they decided to pitch him out the side of the plane via some secret and cunningly hidden hatch, he'd be able to make sure he didn't hit the ground and go splat.

Vanessa couldn't remember ever having slept on a plane. She found them uncomfortable and a little stressful. Planes were full of sitting ducks just asking for a bad guy to blow their asses up. On top of that she was naturally so energetic that she just twitched and got restless enough to expect her mind to explode from the strain of containing herself. She'd already annoyed the flight attendants a good half dozen times or so by very slowly pacing the aisles. She'd also proposed to Lex they join the mile high club but those bathrooms were really too small to do anything that would actually be pleasurable in them and her shiny new stitches wouldn't appreciate it. Damn it all.

And then the peanuts came. She looked around after the first one ricocheted off of the headrest in front of her. It wasn't quite eye level for her so the peanut bounced off the headrest and then off her chest and into her lap. What the fuck?

Jean-Paul was fairly certain that he'd at least gotten Morgan's attention. He frowned, though, when she didn't turn around. After waiting a moment, he tossed another peanut at her.

The next peanut bounced off her arm and drew her eyebrows together. Who the fuck was throwing shite at her? The trajectory definitely came from behind her. When she twisted in her seat she found Jean-Paul poised and aiming another peanut her way. Her eyes narrowed at him as she fought off the wince from the twinge of pain that twisting like that caused.

Smiling, Jean-Paul ate the peanut he'd almost launched at Morgan and grinned. "I need coffee," he whispered, voice just loud enough for her to hear.

"And I look like your bleeding maid girl?" She shook her head at him, ponytail swaying slightly with the motion. "Get your own bloody coffee you lazy bastard."

"I cannot," Jean-Paul said, demonstrating the distance between his outstretched hand, finger pointed, and the call button. "Please?"

"What, someone hack you off at the ribs and no one told me? I bet sitting up straight'd help with that loads. Or just bloody stretching." She waved a hand at him dismissively. "You're well and truly hopeless, Beaubier."

"S'il vous plaît?" His voice was still quiet, though he'd stopped trying to demonstrate how difficult reaching for the button was now. "I do not want to wake him."

Now she was just giving him a funny look. Wake him? Wake who? Figuring she was only getting the answer one way Vanessa got up and walked very carefully over to the man. There she found one Kevin Ford positively cuddled up against her friend. White eyebrows shot upward at once, red eyes going a little wide. She shifted so someone could move past her in the aisle and then leaned against the seat in front of Jean-Paul. "Robbing the cradle, mate?" Her voice was much quieter now that she was near the actual sleeping boy. Vanessa gave him another look and adjusted the term from boy to young man. He'd never been her student so at least she didn't really qualify him as a kid.

"There is no cradle," Jean-Paul said, quirking a rueful smile. "Just the danger of me falling asleep. Which is why I ask for the coffee." His fingers weren't tracing random patterns on Kevin's arm anymore, at least.

"Toddler bed," she asked with a quirked eyebrow. Okay, maybe he wasn't jailbait and thus did not qualify for cradle dwelling, but the guy was young so it had to qualify him for something. He looked awfully comfortable sleeping on Jean-Paul. She'd assume her friend had been appropriated except for the fact that he didn't want to wake up the guy and the fact that his own arm looked damned comfortable wrapped around the young man.

Vanessa's eyes narrowed at him and she grumbled, "Bloody sleep issues. Black? Cream? Sugar? Speak now before I change my mind. Last time I was nice to a mate I got bile spewed on me." God, that was disgusting. Vanessa reaffirmed in her mind that no, she did not want children.

"Cream only, thank you," Jean-Paul said, smiling. "And I am in no danger of throwing up on you, this I can promise." He paused, then said, "Can it be a very big cup of coffee? I do not want to have to throw more peanuts at you when it runs out." Which was really very considerate of him, he thought.

Vanessa replied to him in a hushed, flat, utterly dry voice. "Aren't you thoughtful?" She gave his head an affectionate rub as if he were a Buddah and she wanted some luck before toddling off toward the back of the plane. It was a good ten minutes before she came back to him with a large cup of coffee turned a nice toffee color from the cream.

"So I had to flirt to get you the big cup," she told Jean-Paul as she held the cup out to him. "I might've promised the flight attendant dinner the next time she was in New York if she checked up on the bloke in row thirty-six with the other bloke sleeping on him and kept you in coffee. Apparently blue's her favorite color," she finished wryly.

The smirk that turned up the corners of Jean-Paul's lips was rather impressive. "Merci, Morgan. This will be very helpful." And hopefully keep him from blasting a hole through the side of the plane. He was pretty sure nobody would appreciate that, not even the mutants who could fly.

"Uh-huh. What're friends for?" She glanced toward the back of the plane where said flight attendant was watching Vanessa, who in turn smiled and gave her a little wave. "Aye, and you let me know if she checks on you or not 'cause she promised to keep you in coffee for me."

Taking a sip of the coffee Morgan had gotten him, Jean-Paul nodded. "Oui, I will be sure to tell you."

She was about to go back to her own seat and her book but Vanessa paused. She looked between Jean-Paul and the sleeping Ford. They looked very comfortable like that. It made her smile but she suppressed it for the most part. "So is this a thing? That you're doing? I mean, the two of you?"

"I believe it is an official thing, oui," Jean-Paul said. "And... we are dating?" It was a question mostly because he wasn't sure that was quite the right word for what they were doing. Dating implied going to restaurants and movie theatres. They'd eaten together and had watched TV. That probably counted. He smiled.

He smiled. Vanessa could count the times she'd seen her friend smile since his return on one hand without needing all her fingers. Usually he smiled when they were being ridiculous, like when he flew out windows with her clinging to him. This was an altogether different smile and it brought one to her own lips as well. "I just hope he knows if he fucks it up that I'll be looking for him." It wasn't exactly a threat, but it was very obviously a protective gesture where Jean-Paul was concerned. Everyone had their ticks, protecting people she loved was Vanessa's. It had only gotten worse since Mike's murder.

Jean-Paul was pretty sure that Kevin wouldn't be the one fucking things up between them, but he didn't say anything about that. Instead, he let the smile linger and waggled his eyebrows at Morgan. "Merci."

"You look like the cat that got the cream, Monseuir Beaubier." Vanessa's smile had broadened, though. Jean-Paul seemed - dare she say it? - happy. That was unexpected given his general state of mind since having turned back up in New York a few months ago. He hadn't been all doom and gloom, just mostly doom and gloom. Maybe this thing with Ford would be good for him. Maybe good for both of them, but she didn't really know the kid much. Was he normally the sort to sleep on people? That didn't add up for her somehow.

With a teasing grin, Vanessa told him, "Younger man looks good on you, grandpa."

"Younger man looks good all on his own," Jean-Paul replied, thinking of the way the younger man's abs had flexed beneath his hand.

Vanessa quirked an eyebrow and let her eyes roam over the younger man in question. She didn't get to say anything before he began to stir.

Kevin was just awake enough to have heard most of the last bit of conversation. The vibration in Jean-Paul's chest from speaking had brought the Southerner closer to consciousness. Now he was waving a hand dismissively in the direction of the other voice and cracking open an eye to see who it was. "This is an incest-free official thing, maybe dating zone here, Miss Lennox." He gestured to the area of their two seats, then wrapped his arm around Jean-Paul's waist and cuddled in closer.

Smirking, the metamorph tipped an imaginary hat in the guy's direction. "Aye, sir."

"And Ah won't mess it up," Kevin muttered before burying his face against Jean-Paul's chest again.

Vanessa wore such a smirk on her face at that and gave her friend a significant look. Someone had been more awake than she'd thought.

"Mm..." Jean-Paul let his cheek rest against the top of Kevin's head. "I think we are good, mon ami." The smile lingered.

"Mmhm," was the only answer from the Southerner. Gloved fingers curled into the fabric under his hand as if to hold on more tightly to the other man. Two of his fingers hooked through a belt loop and Kevin didn't realize he uttered the word, "Mine," aloud.

Vanessa grinned and gave Jean-Paul an affectionate kiss atop his head. "Someone's smitten," she whispered into his ear. She wasn't specific as to which one of them she was referring. In truth, she meant both of them. Without another word the metamorph turned and went back to her own seat.