Vanessa & Jean | Late Monday Morning

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Vanessa stops by the mansion to pick up the clothes she promised Jean-Paul she'd get for him, but she also stops by the medlab to sniff out some information.

Things didn't add up for Vanessa. Jean-Paul wouldn't come back to get a bag of clothing he'd left in his suite but she knew he had the time to do it. He never told her what was wrong with Kevin, only that he would be okay. Kevin's journal told her he was seriously injured if he was on Morphine, his ribs were cracked and he was trying to figure out where his boyfriend was. The boyfriend who was diligently tailing the woman who claimed to have taken Kevin's mutation away.

As promised, she'd come to the mansion to get the clothes Jean-Paul had left. She also wanted to talk to Jean to see if her suspicions were correct. The bag she'd gotten out of his suite, which was looking more sparse than it had the last time she'd seen it, was dangling from one hand and her motorcycle helmet was grasped in the other. Jean was probably around the medlab somewhere but for now she was watching the sleeping, injured kid that didn't now why he'd been left apparently. If nothing else Vanessa wanted to be able to look Jean-Paul in the eye and tell him she checked on his boyfriend even if he wouldn't. Coward.

Jean was indeed in the medlab, more specifically in one of the office areas. She had some music playing, but nothing too loud to wake anyone up. Sipping a cup of coffee, she flipped through a magazine, not really reading any of the articles. The presence of someone familiar made her close the magazine, the music clicking off in her wake as she walked into the patient areas.

“He’s pretty banged up but he’ll live.”

"Looks like shit," Vanessa said as she nodded. She didn't take her eyes off of the guy in the bed. "What did it?" She suspected the answer was Jean-Paul but she wanted it confirmed.

Jean turned to glance Kevin over. "Jean-Paul. He was having a bad dream. There was an accident. Wrong place wrong time," she said. She had never once thought Jean-Paul had did it intentionally.

She looked back to Vanessa. "Haven't really seen you much since I've been back. Keeping busy, I take it?"

"Concussive blast threw the kid into the wall?" She wasn't willing to deviate from that topic yet and so Vanessa ignored the question. "And Jean-Paul hasn't been in since it happened?" How fucked up was that? The kid is publicly asking where he was and Jean-Paul just...wouldn't show up? She'd have broken up with Lex if she was that hurt, that medicated and wanted him that badly only for him to never turn up. Especially when he had no reason to stay away. At least no real reason.

Jean quirked an eyebrow, then slowly nodded. "Yeah, seems so," she said, keeping she and Jean-Paul's 'discussion' to herself for the moment. She seemed little a bit too pointed in her questioning. Her suspicions were slightly raised.

"Why so curious?"

Frowning, Vanessa glanced back at Kevin before answering. "Because he landed heavily when he came in the window. He avoided telling me why Kevin was in the medlab so I found out when I looked at the journals. Because I offered to have someone else take over the surveillance I'm having him do so he could stay by his boyfriend's side but he ignored the offer and said he'd get his notes into me on time from now on. Because he asked me to come here to get this," she raised the bag she was holding, "when you and I both know damn well it wouldn't cost Jean-Paul much to come here and get it himself."

Vanessa raised an eyebrow at Jean. "I'm guessing all that might have something to do with why you held him hostage yesterday morning?"

Jean folded her arms as Vanessa explained. She felt somewhat relieved that he at least went to one of his friends instead of blindly out in the wild blue yonder somewhere. It still didn't mean she liked that he had gone.

"He was already trying to leave when I got there. I tried to talk him out of going and stay with Kevin but he already had his mind made up that he is the bane of humanity and no one should love him so he should run far far away. He tried to rabbit in the middle of the conversation. I stopped him," she said.

Yes, she was still a bit riled up at his sheer pigheadedness.

"Is he okay?"

"Stopping him with telekinesis was probably a bad idea what with that telepath who fucked with his brain last year," Vanessa told her in a tone more gentle than she would have used with most people. "He's...distracting himself. With work if the seven pages of notes are any indication." Vanessa sighed. Jean-Paul needed to be smacked upside the head, she just didn't think that was going to do any good.

And now she needed to find someone else to tail Haven. She also needed something else for Jean-Paul to do. She wasn't going to leave him with access to someone who supposedly could remove mutations right after his slammed his boyfriend into the medlab. She looked back at Kevin who was still fast asleep. "Hell of a way to break up with someone, innit? Land him in the medlab and then just take off? I mean, from what you're saying it doesn't sound like he has any intention of staying with the kid if he doesn't think he deserves to be loved. And if him asking me to get his shit is any indication he's not coming back to the mansion."

Jean sighed softly, closing her eyes with a nod. She rubbed her forehead, frowning. "I know. I lost my head in the moment. I'd forgotten how stubborn the both of us could be. It got out of hand. After all he'd been through, I didn't want to see him just abandon it all, all that happiness, because of one stupid accident," she said.

She glanced back up to her. "Distraction and escape are his two favorite coping mechanisms, it seems," she said, nodding a little as she folded her arms again. As Vanessa looked toward Kevin, she followed her gaze, staring down at him. He had no idea. He had asked her to find out about Jean-Paul. She was almost hesitant to tell him, afraid to see the look in his eyes at the words: he's gone.

"I hope he'll be back. I think he loves Kevin, too much. But I think he's afraid, so terrified of hurting him that all he sees is the pain he could bring him instead of the joy. He's blinded by it. He told me Kevin's waiting for someone who doesn't exist and cannot exist. But I don't believe it," she said, brushing a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes.

"If he talked to Kevin, I think it might help. But right now, you're right...the mansion is pretty much off limits in his eyes at the moment."

She didn't know what to do short of marching into the city, clubbing him over the head, and dragging him back to the mansion.

Which wouldn't go over very well. Probably. The only other option she could foresee was time. But time could also do more harm than good, depending on how things went.

"You should apologize to him. You know, so maybe he ends up with another person he might eventually talk to." Vanessa didn't sound all that confident that he would talk, but increasing the number of people available might increase the chances that he would. Or so she could hope.

"They care about each other a lot. You can tell when you see them together. The way the kid keeps fixating on Jean-Paul's absence in that journal of his. Wonder if Jean-Paul's thought about the harm of not coming back. Leaving isn't exactly painless for the person being left." Or so she had gathered. Vanessa had been abandoned by her mother in spirit but she hadn't really been left by anyone else. Then again, when you didn't let people close you minimized the possibility of being left.

Finally Vanessa shrugged, sighed and turned back to the redhead at her side. "I doubt I can do much good getting Jean-Paul to pull his head out of his ass long enough to come back here and see him. I'll try but...someone's gotta tell the kid he's not coming back."

Jean nodded. "I will apologize. Can't say he probably won't try to pull a Houdini at the hint of my presence but we'll see how it goes," she said with a rueful smile.

She leaned against one of the empty beds, shaking her head. "I don't think so. At this point, I think he's clouded himself with the idea that Kevin's better off with him gone and doesn't want to think of anything else." It was easier to leave and have someone else clean up the mess than to face it.

"It's worth a shot," she said, glancing back to Kevin. She fell silent a few moments.

"I'll tell him."

Vanessa shrugged. "I can pass on a note to him if you want to go the less direct route." She gave one last look to Kevin and frowned. "Thanks. For telling him. Don't envy you the job. I've gotta get back to the city." More importantly, she had to figure out how to pull Jean-Paul from surveillance without telling him why. She gave Jean a small grin. "One of these days when you're not on the clock we should have a decent conversation that doesn't involve my friend the idiot, aye doctor lady?"

"I'd prefer to talk to him in person. Though it'd probably be best to have someone around in case things get heated," Jean said. Crowds could be good or bad depending on circumstance. In this case less suffocating.

She wordlessly nodded to Vanessa's gratitude, still staring at Kevin. It wasn't something she wanted to do but had to. If she were in the same position, she'd want to know.

As for the potential for future, less dramatic discussions, Jean laughed, then nodded. "I'd like that."

The thing about the mansion was there was usually some sort of melodrama going on. Sometimes she was in the eye of the storm, sometimes hovering around the edges. Either way not many escaped the impact. After awhile you got used to it.