xp_logs | Kevin & Jean-Paul | Monday afternoon

Jean-Paul, worried that Kevin will injure himself further if left to his own devices, shows up with a plan that involves a cookbook and a bag of groceries. Things go considerably better than the last time the pair were face-to-face.

Jean-Paul shifted the bag of groceries he carried so that he could raise his hand and knock on Kevin's door. This felt odd. But not as odd as just flying around over the city would have felt, especially after he'd found out Kevin had gotten his mutation back. Someone needed to make sure he didn't do something like attempt to lift his television or something like that with more than the power of his mind.

The thought made him snort softly and he nearly dropped the cookbook he held under his other arm.

It was a slow shuffle to the door, though not because Kevin was in immense amounts of pain. The percocet didn't have him quite as out of it because his dosage had been brought down from what it had been for the past two weeks, but it was still keeping his various spikes of pain at bay. No, Kevin was just a bit groggy and easily distracted so his mind wandered a half dozen times between the couch and the door. "Ah'm comin'," he called halfway there.

On the way Kevin stopped at his freezer and grabbed the bags of peas he'd slid into Kevin-proof pillow cases. By the time he got to the door an elbow was holding peas to one side of his ribs while his bandaged hand held another to his other side. When it registered who was at the door Kevin didn't greet him. No, instead he said, "You always catch me with my peas out. That's rude, y'know." Then he stepped back and gestured Jean-Paul in with his good hand, which was safely stashed away in a glove despite his otherwise naked upper body.

"Some would say this is a skill," Jean-Paul replied, stepping inside and closing the door before he tipped his head toward it and raised his eyebrows. "I knocked, did you notice?" There was a vague smile on his lips even as he headed for the kitchenette.

"Would Ah been standin' there for all the world to see my peas if Ah didn't?" Kevin was both amused and slightly confused at the playfulness lurking in that question from Jean-Paul. He slowly trailed along to follow the Quebecois, trying to figure out what he was up to. "Ah might have a gold star 'round here somewhere if you feel like you earned a prize for learnin' manners." His tone was playful, though, and easily went with that very obviously medicated sound of his voice. Sarcasm would have been completely misread with his voice like this, but Kevin thought he sounded like he always did. Poor misguided Kevin.

"You should save your golden stars," Jean-Paul sad, putting the groceries down and then turning around with the cookbook so Kevin could see it. In very big, very bold letters, it told whoever happened to read the cover that it was a Traditional Southern Cookbook. "You never answered the question about whether you had food or not and so I thought I would attempt to make you something." The lines were all kinds of blurred between them, but he wasn't just going to leave Kevin to his own, lonely devices. His own lonely, painful devices.

Opening the cookbook, he flipped to a recipe for something called Chicken and Dumplings. "I thought this, oui?" He showed Kevin the recipe.

The mere thought of food made Kevin's stomach growl. Being as out of it as he was eating wasn't really happening as much as it was supposed to be. He actually couldn't remember the last time he ate and suddenly he was starving, even though somewhere in the back of his head he was fairly certain he'd been eating more than it felt like he was. Being one handed wasn't really helping much either. "Are you gonna explode my kitchen? 'Cause Ah ain't in any sorta state of mind to be properly supervising you tryin' to cook, never mind tryin' to cook Southern." But chicken and dumplings sounded like Heaven on a stick.

"I will follow the directions very carefully," Jean-Paul said. "And I will pay very close attention to things. No potatoes in microwaves, oui?" He sat the cookbook down and began pulling things from the bag of groceries. He put a bag of baby carrots on the counter in front of Kevin, then paused and opened them so he could eat one while he got everything else ready.

Kevin, as quickly as he was able to in his state, hied away with the bag of carrots. He didn't exactly hie all that far, though, since he made it to the kitchen table before sitting down and pulling one out to chomp on. Why didn't he eat raw carrots more often? These were delicious. That could have been the starvation talking, though. "Ah'll be watchin' you. Sorta. Kinda. Well...Ah'll be tryin'. Just make sure you get me out before the smoke kills me if you burn the place down, okay?"

"Oui, this I think I can do," Jean-Paul said, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it on one of the chairs Kevin wasn't sitting in. He stole himself another carrot, then read the recipe over a third time before he started preparing everything. This wasn't as bad as trying to cook something he was familiar with, at least. He wasn't second guessing himself so much as rereading the same few lines of the recipe over and over again to make sure he was doing it right.

While the chicken boiled, he prepared the dough. "Are you planning on any other injuries? It seems you have gotten many recently. You should take a break, non?"

"Thought 'bout cuttin' off my ear but then realized Ah like people bein' mostly symmetrical so Ah'm not gonna do that." He bit into another carrot. "Think Ah'll take a break or retire or somethin'. Recruit people into my service as teddy bears, stay high on percocet for a while, all lap of luxury and stuff," Kevin told Jean-Paul while he watched the other man scuttle about the kitchen.

In went the shortening, in went the flour, in went the salt. Jean-Paul let himself relax a little as he poured in the milk. "Lap of luxury?" He snorted softly, then pulled the flour over to the counter and sprinkled it so he could roll out the dough. "I think this is a good plan." He nodded toward Kevin's hand. "They found the bandages and things for you? To keep it from infection, oui?" He wasn't sure how well antiseptic ointments and things would work on Kevin, now that he had his mutation back.

Kevin held up his useless, unmoving hand. It was wrapped in what looked like black bandages. "Not 'xactly. They got bandages, let 'em decay off everything else and then we shredded the shirt Ah was wearin' yesterday to wrap 'round my hand to keep the bandages on the part of my hand that's got no skin." He felt like he should have emphasized that he had no skin on the palm of his hand just because, well, there was no skin there! But Kevin thought maybe the sentiment packed enough effect all on its own.

Craning his neck as if to see what Jean-Paul was doing in the kitchen better, Kevin narrowed his eyes. "You're doin' it wrong." Then he relaxed into the chair and went back to devouring carrots.

"I am doing what the cookbook tells me to do," Jean-Paul said, pointing one doughy finger at the open book. "If it is wrong, you should send a letter to the editor, oui?" He finished rolling it out, then covered it with a damp paper towel to keep it from drying out and rinsed his hands off. Once that was taken care of, he settled at the table across from Kevin. He pulled the bag of carrots a little closer to himself so he could eat a few, then sat back and let out a slow breath. He didn't know where the lines had been redrawn between them. After crunching a carrot, he asked, "The pain medication, it is working well?"

"Mmhmm." Kevin was only half-listening because he was busy frowning at the rogue bag of carrots. The carrots let themselves be kidnapped! They'd flown the coup! And now they sat there, pretending innocence. His eyes narrowed further and he swiped the bag back across the table to himself. The bite into the first carrot he pulled out was a loud, crunching bite. He had to show those carrots who was boss!

After chewing and swallowing his sacrificial example to carrots everywhere Kevin tried to tune back into the conversation he was supposed to be cooperating in. "Huh? Oh! Yeah. The pain's not really hangin' out for dinner. Probably 'cause Ah forget to eat, but y'know." He shrugged. "Sorta aches or throbs sometimes, but Ah'm used to that and then Ah get another dose of percocet and it numbs out again."

"Being burned," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "It is not so fun." He gestured toward the shoulder he'd burned in India. "At least you do not have to take doses that would likely kill normal people. May I have another carrot?" He'd seen how proprietary Kevin had become of that bag.

Jean-Paul got a suspicious look for his question, but Kevin pulled a carrot out and handed it to Jean-Paul. He'd be damned if he was going to hand over the whole bag to be held hostage by the crazed Quebecois. "He's not really lookin' all that crazed though," Kevin muttered to himself, not realizing it was aloud. "The burnin' only hurts where the first and second degree burns are. Ah can't feel the real deep ones 'cause my nerves got burnt away. Sounds like how it is when my mutation acts on folks. Just no feelin' at all."

Kevin got something of an odd look from Jean-Paul at the 'crazed' comment, but he let it go in favour of taking the carrot and munching it as he nodded his understanding of the situation. "Is there anything they can put on the burn itself?" He didn't know how organic or non-organic ointments were these days.

"Yeah, until it starts gettin' skin-like again. Then probably not. Or maybe since it'll be scar tissue there won't be sebaceous glands or somethin'. Those things are the problem anyway. Once they come back and start workin' no more topical anything and no more real bandages. Just my shirt." Kevin frowned at the bandaged hand holding the bag of peas to his ribs still. "Ah really liked that shirt." Granted, he liked all his shirts.

"It was a very nice shirt," Jean-Paul said, holding back a smile. Standing again, he checked on the chicken, taking it from the pot and putting it in a bowl. Then he tested the broth to make sure it tasted alright, since that just seemed like the sensible thing to do, and cut up the dough into dumplings. They went into the boiling water and Jean-Paul took the bowl of chicken over to the table, pausing along the way to get a plate and a fork.

Pulling pieces of chicken off the bone, he put several on the plate and slid it, along with the fork, across the table to Kevin, then started in on the rest of the bowl. He'd have to be quick, of course, since the dumplings needed stirring to make sure they didn't stick to the bottom of the pot.

Eyes going wide, Kevin immediately took up the fork and speared a piece of chicken. While chewing on the first piece he said, "Best boyf-erm...person ever." He probably could have covered that better, followed up with something but instead he busied his mouth with the act of eating. Boiled chicken wasn't the best chicken you could ever have in your life, but it was still chicken and it was cooked and it hadn't exploded and he was still hungry!

"Mm..." Jean-Paul let the slip go, choosing to finish the chicken a little faster then was entirely necessary before adding a few more pieces to Kevin's plate and taking the bowl back to the pot. He spent a bit of time stirring, then straightening up the mess he'd made, then stirring a bit more and checking the dumplings. They hadn't congealed and stuck to the bottom, at least. He added some pepper and a little more salt, then put the chicken in and turned the heat down to let the whole thing cook some more.

Propping his hip against the counter after getting two bowls down, Jean-Paul said, "Friend. I think this is good, non? Just friend."

The chicken was nearly gone from Kevin's plate by the time Jean-Paul had spoken to him. Kevin was so focused on there actually being food, especially food he was eating, that it took him a bit to register what the man was talking about. Friend didn't have the same sort of bite it had had when Jay had said it after they'd broken up. Then again, similar things rarely came off the same way with Jean-Paul as they had with Jay. All in all, Kevin thought he could handle being friends with the Quebecois, primarily because they had spent some time actually being friends in the first place.

The Southerner nodded as he swallowed down the last bit of chicken. "Friend is good, long as it works. But if it stops workin'," he shrugged. Then he hoped he could respect Jean-Paul the way Jay had never respected him and leave the older man alone if that was his request. "We'll figure it out."

Serving up the actual chicken and dumplings, Jean-Paul grabbed spoons and headed back to the table. "Oui. We will figure it out, as you say." He put one bowl in front of Kevin, then sat in the seat he'd so recently vacated. "Eat." Then he smirked just the smallest bit. "Tell me how they are wrong."

Kevin eyeballed the bowl's contents warily, but it was all for show. He remained that way, staring suspiciously at the dumplings for several long moments. Finally Kevin took up his spoon and steeled himself for the worst. Oddly enough, they weren't bad. They weren't right, but they weren't bad. While still chewing he said, "Ain't chickeny 'nuff."

"This is because you ate so much of it before the rest was finished," Jean-Paul said, scooping up a spoonful and trying it for himself. For a lot of flour and some chicken, it wasn't too bad. Hand creeping across the table, he made a move on the carrots.

A fork pointed at Jean-Paul while Kevin's bandaged right hand tried to slap away the creeping hand attempting to steal his rightly appropriated carrots away. "You gave me that chicken fair and square and that means you done messed it up." Kevin took another bite, this time looking more contemplative as he chewed and swallowed. "But that ain't it. You ain't make it with the broth from boilin' the chicken, did you?"

Jean-Paul stole a few carrots despite Kevin's attempts to keep them away from him, then gave the younger man a flat look. "I... cooked it all in the broth from the chicken. This is what the book said to do."

His fork waved that answer away dismissively and made a belated attempt to stab at the thieving hand. "The dumplings. You're supposed to make those with broth and then cook it all in the rest of the broth!" See, Kevin knew he was trying to make sense somewhere in there.

Sitting back in the chair, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Non, ami. This is not how the recipe went."

Kevin's mouth fell open a little and he wore a look of disbelief. "You're gonna trust a book over me when it comes to my people's cookin'?" Shaking his head, he told Jean-Paul, "See, that right there is a mark of a lack of trust and loyalty."

"You said you could not supervise me in the kitchen," Jean-Paul said, eating some of the chicken from his bowl. "And so I followed the book. You cannot fault me for following the directions when you were not able to tell me the proper way to do it."

"You told me to tell you how they're wrong," Kevin pointed out. "So Ah'm tellin' you. And you're all on the book's side. You can have less chickeny dumplings when you make it or you can make it the right way next time 'cause now you been told." He scooped up another dumpling to eat. "Ain't no one holdin' it 'gainst you this time 'round."

Jean-Paul picked up his bowl and leaned back in the chair, balancing it on two legs with a bit of concentration, before he continued eating it. "Well, I will try your way next time and we will see." Not that there'd need to be a 'next time' any time soon, of course. The recipe had made a lot of dumplings.

A leg stretched out and Kevin tried to find one of the floating legs of the chair with his foot. If Jean-Paul was going to show off his amazing balancing act then Kevin was going to try to knock him over. It wasn't anything malicious, just a bit of mischief that seemed like a good idea. "See? Was that so hard?"

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, shifting a little in an attempt to see what Kevin's foot was doing. It wasn't like he'd actually fall over, of course, but it was sort of the principle of the thing. "Very difficult."

When he saw the older man's eyes go down toward his foot Kevin instantly dropped it and acted like he'd just been swinging it casually. Of course the look on Kevin's face failed horribly at looking casual. "Next time we'll get you a script so it's easier."

Waving his spoon a little, Jean-Paul finished off his bowl and sat it on the table, though he kept the chair balanced. Then, nodding toward Kevin's injured hand, he asked, "When do you need the bandage changed?"

Kevin shrugged. "Week or so. It'll get to air out, look gross, get swabbed and covered in goo and bandaged and then those will decay off my skin and then wrapped in my washed used-to-be-a-shirt and it'll be fine for another week or whatever." He was back to trying to find the leg of Jean-Paul's chair. Kevin's foot found the bottom of one leg and pushed it up as quickly as he could.

Jean-Paul felt the chair shift beneath him and reached down to make sure it didn't fall over even as he shifted to accommodate the movement. "Tsk," he said, smirking again. "Not fast enough."

"Unfair advantage," Kevin grumbled, a heartbeat away from crossing his arms over his chest sullenly. He resisted the urge and mostly glared mildly at the man. "You woulda deserved it." Okay, now Kevin was just making it up.

"Deserved being tipped over backward by an invalid?"

"Poetic justice?" Then Kevin kicked Jean-Paul in the shin, though not hard since he was wearing only socks. "That's for callin' me an invalid."

"Ow," Jean-Paul said, tone flat. "You are an invalid."

"Wonder what that says 'bout you."

"What do you mean?"

"Ah'm an invalid, supposedly, but you're here hanging out with me, cookin' for me, feelin' all guilty that Ah might be all alone tryin' to move my tv with the power of my mind. And," Kevin went on, "you ditched me when Ah became an invalid. That's shady." He was obviously joking about the whole thing, not bringing it up to somehow rub salt in a wound.

"Ah..." Jean-Paul considered that for a moment, then shrugged. "It says..." He paused, though. "I do not know what it says. But there is a very large pot of food over there on your stove."

Kevin's left hand closed over the bag of carrots and pulled it into his lap, eyes narrowing at Jean-Paul as he did. "Mine."

"I paid for them."

"So? Ah'm conquering the table and takin' 'em as my booty."

There was a very short pause before Jean-Paul asked, affecting a British accent, "Do you have a flag?"

Eyes narrowing, Kevin pulled the pillowcase off the discarded bag of peas, stuck it on his spoon and waved it around. "Yep!"

Laughing finally, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Fine, fine. You have the carrots, also."

"Darn right Ah do!" Kevin gave a firm nod, then dug out a couple carrots and offered them over. "Ah can be a benevolent dictator." He may have tripped over the last two words a little bit.

"Merci, ami. Merci," Jean-Paul said, taking the carrots with a smile.