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xp_logsJean-Paul turns up at Kevin's suite after this text exchange. Things get playful for a bit, then get very serious and a new line is drawn.
Puttering around the suite really did get old quickly these days. Kevin was pretty sure he'd never like the so-called "life of luxury" because he'd get so bored he'd want to stab himself in the eye. Okay, maybe not. He was already down a hand, he didn't think he really needed to lose an eye as well.
Kevin kept shuffling out of his suite and down the hall to the rec room to steal movies and then shuffled back to his suite with his booty. He wondered if there was anything interesting on pay-per-view. Or maybe movie channels. Did he have movie channels? Kevin didn't really spend a lot of time with cable normally and once he was sitting there hitting the button to flip through channels he quickly realized why. TV sucked.
Jean-Paul knocked. He had a plastic bag of baby carrots and another of random vegetables from the grocery store. Someone needed to make sure Kevin was eating more than the chicken and dumplings. Of which there should still be plenty, considering the size of that pot. "Is the door still locked?" He asked, wondering if it wouldn't just be easier to try the handle to keep the Southerner from having to shuffle to the door.
"Nope," came the answer while Kevin continued to frown at the television as the images quickly flipped by. He'd taken the time to actually put a shirt on this time. In fact, he was nearly fully covered with clothing for a change, even if he had sacrificed most of the layers he would have normally insisted upon. After all, people entered at their own peril, right?
Turning the handle, Jean-Paul stepped inside and then closed the door behind himself. He tossed the carrots onto the couch next to Kevin, then went to put the rest of the vegetables in the refrigerator. "What are you watching?"
"Nothin'. TV sucks." But Kevin stopped long enough to grab the bag of carrots and rip a small hole at one corner so he could start to fish them out. "Ah don't like TV. But Ah think Ah ran outta movies, or maybe Ah just slept through 'em all, Ah dunno." Giving up, he tossed the remote toward where he figured Jean-Paul would end up on the couch and sighed.
Walking to the couch, Jean-Paul picked up the remote control and sat down, then flipped to the discovery channel. Mythbusters was on. They were burying someone alive, dropping a text dummy from several stories up onto water, and testing myths about soda's various and sundry properties. "Dropping something from that high will definitely break bones," he said, pointing at the TV.
"'Cause you drop people from that high all the time," Kevin asked just before biting into the carrot. Jean-Paul seemed just a little too confident in his comment and Kevin raised an eyebrow while his eyes slid to the side to look at the other man. "Are you secretly a hit man or somethin'?"
"Non," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "But I have to know how dropping someone will affect them, you see? More so that I make sure I do not drop them. Also, because my mutation gives me some protection from falling or hitting things, but not so much that I would make it through a fall from a very great height." He pointed at the screen. "You see, they lost the test mannequin's leg."
"'Cause you drop people from very high?" Somewhere it probably made perfect sense that Jean-Paul needed to know how dropping someone would affect them. Kevin was sure it made sense somehow. Except he couldn't see why you'd need to know that unless you actually were dropping people from very high up.
"In theory, I could," Jean-Paul said, watching the funny one with the earring talk about the foam coming out of the test dummy. "But this would be frowned upon, I think." He looked toward the carrots. "May I?"
Kevin's eyes narrowed, but he held out the bag of carrots. "People usually don't approve of throwin' people to the ground from way high up. It's sorta rude." He was watching Jean-Paul's hand very carefully, checking that he didn't steal an excessive amount of carrots.
"Merci," Jean-Paul said, munching on the carrots as the men on screen moved on to the soda myths. He waited a few moments, then quirked a brow at Kevin. "You would like the television in your bedroom?"
"Couch ain't comfortable when you gotta sit upright all the time," Kevin explained with a somewhat sour look on his face. "If Ah lay on my back Ah can't breathe very good. Lay on my stomach and it's just hard to watch the screen." He sighed. Obviously his life was so hard, right?
"I could move the couch so you could see better."
"Face down ain't gonna be helped by movin' the couch," Kevin countered.
"Point," Jean-Paul said, eating another carrot. "Would you like me to move it now?"
"Um..." Now he didn't know how to answer. He wouldn't get the tv back out without someone doing it for him, for one. Second, it would relegate anyone who came to hang out to his bedroom for the most part which could be awkward. Third...it involved Jean-Paul in his bedroom. While he was there, too. "Ah dunno if Ah'm ready to commit," Kevin finally answered. "It's good in theory but maybe...maybe Ah should think 'bout it more."
Jean-Paul quirked a brow. "You could always try to move it with the power of your mind again."
"Yeah...maybe if Ah work the muscles they'll manage to get strong enough to move it 'ventually."
"Brain magic," Jean-Paul said, wiggling his fingers in Kevin's general direction. He smiled, shifting around until he was leaning against the arm of the chair before turning the television off, since neither of them seemed particularly interested in what was actually happening on the screen. "I have to get a work visa."
"That why you got two black eyes?" Kevin thought about mentioning it before but the carrots had more or less taken priority. And then the implications of what Jean-Paul had just said made sense. "Why d'you gotta get a work visa? Where you workin'?"
"Vanessa has begun an investigation agency for District X and I am helping her," Jean-Paul replied. "But this is not why I have black eyes, non. Doctor Grey-Summers, we disagreed about... things. It seemed pointless to try avoiding her, of course. She can stop me - with the power of her mind." He paused, then said almost philosophically, "Her mind muscles are very strong, oui?" But he stood by his assertion that women were complicated and that this was the reason he slept with men instead.
"You coulda moved but you didn't? You let yourself get hit?" Kevin was now staring at Jean-Paul with wide eyes and a jaw that had fallen open just a little bit. "Seriously? Aren't doctors supposed to heal people, not injure them so they got more patients?"
"I did not move because she can stop me," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "And stopping me - it is not so good. She did this last week. After..." He gestured toward Kevin's ribs. "And it made another concussive blast. I thought the hitting, it was better than that. I was very rude, also."
"Whatever, rude people suck but you don't go and hit someone for that." Kevin shook his head and crunched into another carrot. "How'm Ah the invalid? Yeah, Ah go and get my ribs cracked for love and my hand blown up for morals...but you let yourself get hit by a girl and you did it for no reason." He pointed a slightly wagging finger at the other man. "Ah think you oughta be supervised!"
"By whom?" Jean-Paul asked, suppressing a smirk. "You could not shuffle fast enough to keep up with me, I think, even if I walked."
"Ah'll just put a leash on you," Kevin said, deciding as he spoke. "And get a wagon. Then if you wanted to go too fast you'd have to pull me along. Like a sled dog. Always wanted one of those."
"Sled dogs, they shed their fur everywhere," Jean-Paul said, making a face and then wishing he hadn't. Wrinkling his nose hurt. A lot. "Ow." He managed to keep himself from raising his hand to touch his nose. "Anyway, your wagon would fall over, I think."
The younger man only shrugged. "Well if Ah'm holdin' onto your leash then you'd end up draggin' me around and since Ah'm already an invalid that'd just be rude. And you already know what would happen if you went and dropped me when you were up in the air and do you really wanna be responsible for that? You might end up with more black eyes from the doctor lady."
Snorting, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Mon Dieu, I am not that rude." At least he hoped he wasn't. "And I would like to avoid more black eyes very much, merci." It wasn't like he'd want to hurt Kevin any more than he already had, after all.
"See, Ah told them that just 'cause you're wannabe French don't mean you ain't got any manners. Do they listen to me? Nope!" Kevin bit into another carrot with a satisfied look on his face. "Ah'm thinkin' white. With blue flames."
"They? Who is 'they'?" Jean-Paul asked, then had a bizarre moment where he envisioned Kevin painted white with blue flames. "For what would you be painted these colours?"
Kevin blinked at him, staring in slight confusion. "My wagon. Not me. The wagon'll be white with blue flames. Y'know, the one you're tippin' me over in?"
"I am not tipping you over," Jean-Paul pointed out. "And should the wagon not be red?"
"Why would Ah want a red wagon? Everyone's got a red wagon. What if someone steals my wagon when Ah step away from it? What if they steal my wagon and Ah've got your leash hitched to it and then they done stole you away, too?"
"I would not mind tipping someone else over if they stole this wagon of yours that is not red and does not really exist," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "So it would be easy for you to get the wagon back."
"Well they ain't gonna steal it if it ain't red anyway." He wasn't sure why they wouldn't, but Kevin was pretty darn sure he could make something passable up.
"What if they want to steal it even more because it is unique?"
"Maybe they just want my sled dog."
Jean-Paul opened his mouth to reply, but paused instead and then said, "I do not shed. I have no hair to shed." He rubbed at the back of his head just to demonstrate his point. "So I would not make such a good sled dog."
"Uh...you realize shedding ain't required to be a sled dog, right? They shed 'cause they got lots of fur, which they got so they can stay warm in the cold." Kevin grinned a little bit, the expression knowing. "You don't get cold, really, so even though you don't got the fur to keep you warm you can still be a sled dog since you don't need it."
"Fine," Jean-Paul said, shaking his head. "You win. The logic is ridiculous, but I cannot find its fault." He waved his hand, toward Kevin. "The leash, the wagon, the sled dog."
The surrender made Kevin grin widely. "Ah'm thinkin' your leash should be blue to match the flames. And your collar should be white."
Expression not changing in the least, Jean-Paul asked, "Do you have any carrots left?"
Kevin looked down at the mostly filled bag, then held it out to the Quebecois. "Fine, Ah'll share."
"Merci," Jean-Paul said, reaching over to take a few from the bag. "Have you thought more on moving the television to your room? At the least, I might find you other movies to watch."
He could strand people in his bedroom to watch movies with him...or stay upright. "Yeah, Ah want it in the bedroom." Besides, it wasn't like he'd need to worry about someone concussive blasting it out a window again anyway. "But more movies would be awesome."
Nodding, Jean-Paul stood up and put the remote controller on couch, then shrugged off his jacket and laid it over the arm. A moment later and he was turning on the light near the television so he could see which cables needed unplugging. The VCR and DVD player would need to come along, but he could move those later. "What movies would you like, do you think?"
"Ah dunno. Not boring stuff? Maybe funny stuff. Wait, no, that's probably a bad idea." Just because he couldn't feel it didn't mean his ribs would appreciate laughter. "Action movies? Horror? Brain's not really workin' that much to help, sorry." And Kevin might have been an eentsy bit distracted what with the jacket coming off and the view being so much better for that.
"Action movies," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "The new Clash of the Titans has come out, I think. I am sure there are others I can find." He tipped the television forward a bit so he could make sure he had all the right cords undone, then lifted it and checked to make sure he wasn't going to trip and kill himself on those same cords before heading toward the bedroom. "Not so sure of the horror movies, though."
"Something doesn't have to be new to be worth watching," Kevin told him while he watched Jean-Paul with the television. He could have claimed he wanted to be sure the other man wouldn't drop it and that reasoning would have stood up to most people. Mostly he just wanted to watch the movement of muscles hidden beneath sleeves when Jean-Paul picked it up. Kevin even trailed after the older man at a polite distance to keep up his observations.
"This is true," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "There is the movie about cars, oui? The Fast and The Furious?" People seemed to like the cars in that movie, though he couldn't see the appeal, himself. He'd enjoyed the aesthetics of watching it, of course. Who wouldn't?
Setting the television down near Kevin's bed, Jean-Paul tipped his head to the side and then tried to judge if he'd picked a good spot or not. "Lay on the bed, as you usually do. Tell me if this will be alright."
Kevin was already squinting at the placement and instead pointed to a spot atop his dresser. He was pretty sure having the tv so close to the bed was a bad idea for his eyes or something and the dresser was at least across the room and a bit off to the side. "Could you put it there?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, lifting the television again and moving it to the place Kevin had indicated. "Better?" There was even a power outlet that he'd be able to use next to the dresser, so long as the placement worked.
Damn, it was fun watching Jean-Paul move that around. Kevin knew the flatscreen wasn't particularly heavy, but it was still a nice view. He might have been beginning to understand why women liked watching construction workers so much. "Let's see." Kevin crawled onto his bed and then more or less flopped down on his stomach. After getting comfortable with a pillow mashed up under his head, Kevin looked over at the tv. He grinned. "Perfect! Ah knew havin' minions was a smart idea."
"I am not a minion," Jean-Paul said, purely for the sake of saying it, since he was sure Kevin would come up with some kind of argument to make the point that he was, in fact, a minion. Given that the placement was alright, he plugged the television in and then went to get the DVD/VCR player and the remote controls. Once that was all hooked up, he stood back and nodded to himself. "There."
"But you're doin' minion work," Kevin countered while he watched Jean-Paul exit the room. He really did like that view and always had. That probably wouldn't change any time soon either, broken up or not. The Southerner helpfully remained sprawled out on his bed, staring at the black screen of the television and watching Jean-Paul move when he re-entered the room. "See? Good minion!" He grinned and then his cell phone began to beep. "Dang it." With a groan Kevin crawled back off the bed and went padding into the kitchen for a glass of water to pop his next percocet with.
Jean-Paul quirked an eyebrow, but didn't comment when Kevin left the room. Instead, he turned the television on and ran through the basic set-up so the cable channels would work. He also shuffled through a few DVDs to see what Kevin might have that would be entertaining until he could find something action-like for the younger man. "Are you getting your peas?" He called, pausing to wonder where the carrots had gone. He found them on the bed and so he picked them up, eating a few while the set-up for the cable finished.
"No," Kevin called back. "Ah'm gettin' my pain meds. Peas have Metallica for their alarm. Percocet's more annoyin' so Ah wake up if Ah'm asleep when it goes off." Which he usually was, really. He came into the room and went crawling back onto the bed. As he passed Jean-Paul, though, Kevin swiped the gloves hanging out of the other man's back pocket. "Ain't cold enough to need 'em for warmth and ain't really durable enough to be used for working gloves," he said as he flopped over. Kevin recognized the gloves and the material on sight. They were Kevin-proof.
"What are you going to use them for?" Jean-Paul asked, eating another carrot as the set-up finished and the default channel turned on. "You are doing nothing but laying. Surely you do not need the gloves for that." And also, they were Jean-Paul's.
"Shadow puppets maybe." Kevin was looking very amused with himself. He quirked an eyebrow upward while attempting to figure out a way to use the gloves as puppets without wearing them over the gloves he already had on. "What were you gonna use 'em for?"
"Je ne sais pas," Jean-Paul replied. "It seemed like a good idea to have them." And now he didn't. He didn't know why he'd stuck them in his pocket. Habit, probably. That and the hoodie he was wearing were both habit. He was probably going to need to break those sometime soon. Or now. Now worked, too. Walking over to the bed, he put the remote on the bedside table, then the carrots, and reached for the gloves.
For a few moments Kevin just looked at that out stretched hand. He held the gloves as far from it as he could and even though he knew Jean-Paul could swipe them away any moment Kevin did it anyway. "You feel like reachin' out and touchin' someone?" He couldn't help that amused, teasing note in his voice while he dangled the gloves so they'd wiggle a bit where they were suspended in the air.
That wasn't fair.
Of course, if Kevin wasn't going to play fair, Jean-Paul knew he could play just as dirty. That didn't mean he would, of course. "How fast does your medication take to start working?" He raised his brows. "I think it must be very fast."
"Sorta dosed out so it's always in my system," Kevin told him, still grinning. Of course, the percocet did have him in the sort of happy, relaxed place that tended to make him a lot more playful. Where playful went flirtation followed and while he fully understood why it was an entirely bad idea to flirt with his ex-boyfriend it was also harder to not do it than let himself say or do what he wanted.
That stance would probably have to be evaluated at some point. A point when Kevin could be more objective. Like when Jean-Paul wasn't around.
Very carefully, Jean-Paul stretched for the gloves, concentrating so he could balance without bracing himself on the bed. "Always at this level? Because... oui. You seem very relaxed." Just a little farther - it wasn't like there was much moving Kevin could do, after all.
Kevin tried to stretch even further. That was probably bad for his ribs too but he couldn't really feel them. Well, he could feel them, he just couldn't feel it if they hurt. "That a complaint? Ah could try to be more grumpy 'round you if you want."
"Not complaining," Jean-Paul said, feet lifting off the ground entirely so he could get to the gloves. "Observing only." Of course, getting to them didn't mean Kevin was going to let go of them.
Kevin was definitely not letting go of them if he could help it. Jean-Paul couldn't just walk in here all geared up for being Kevin-proofed for no reason without getting a bit of hell for it. When Kevin realized Jean-Paul was levitating Kevin shoved the gloves under his body, still clutched in his hand. "You dirty, rotten cheater."
"You are holding my gloves hostage," Jean-Paul pointed out, tone reasonable. He was hesitant to actually have his hand following Kevin's beneath the younger man given that the broken ribs were currently situated that way. So instead, he frowned. "May I have them back? S'il vous plaît?"
He pretended to think about it, then Kevin shook his head. "Nah. Ah mean, it ain't like you need 'em right now anyway. They're gonna hang out here. Have a sleep over. They've got teddy bear aspirations and Ah'm a teddy bear down so Ah should at least let 'em audition. It'd be rude not to."
Hovering there, Jean-Paul considered cutting his losses and letting Kevin just have the gloves. But there was something about the principle of the matter, the fact that they were his and yeah, it was a habit he needed to break, but still. He had a point, he was sure. "A sleepover? With my gloves? They are not such good teddy bears, you know." Pausing, Jean-Paul frowned just slightly. "And why do you need a teddy bear?"
"Ah dunno. Ah could stuff 'em. Make 'em little ears. Ah'm an artist or somethin', y'know." And now he was thinking about how he could turn a pair of gloves bear-like. Months from now he would blame the percocet. Then again, months from now he might not even remember this. "Ah like teddy bears. Yvette was a good one once she relaxed, but she's all spiky again. Laura's more the cuddly kinda teddy bear than the sleepin' kind. So Ah'm in the market for one of them, Ah guess." It occurred to Kevin that he hadn't actually said why he needed one. Instead he'd sort of just rambled.
"Sleepin' alone don't feel right." It was Jean-Paul so he told the truth. Maybe he shouldn't have for the same reason.
"Why?" Jean-Paul asked, though he was fairly certain he shouldn't. He should just back out of this as gracefully as possible and leave. Instead, he stayed where he was, hovering.
"Ah dunno." Kevin suspected it was because he'd been so used to sleeping with someone once. It had been a long time since then, but the impression had been made. "Maybe it's just a habit Ah ain't been any good at breakin', y'know? Ah was real used to wakin' up to someone and Ah didn't adjust back to not." After a thoughtful pause Kevin held Jean-Paul's gloves out to him. "Ah think that adds another point on my ribs bein' my own damned fault."
Jean-Paul waited for a moment before taking the gloves. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them on, since he figured it'd be harder to steal them if he was wearing them. "It was both of us, did we not decide this?" His voice was quiet as he spoke. "There is a movie about an assassin in the DVD player, if you would like to watch it. I can go to find you other films, also."
"Ain't sayin' it was all my fault, just something that didn't occur to me before. You don't gotta go find me other movies. Ah'll probably just fall asleep anyway." Kevin was good about boundaries, especially if people got hurt otherwise. He might have struggled with them sometimes or gotten angry about them needing to be there, but he would abide by them. He had since he was sixteen and had even gotten somewhat hyper vigilant about enforcing them on other people's behalves. So why had he had such a problem abiding by the only real boundary they needed to keep Kevin safe from Jean-Paul's mutation? Kevin was pretty sure he knew now. He was just too damn stubborn to give up something that he wanted, apparently.
He was a hypocrite.
"Do you want to watch the film?" Jean-Paul asked, knowing he should go now. It was the perfect time, really. Kevin was medicated - again. He was tired. He'd likely go to sleep. But Jean-Paul stayed where he was, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Yeah." Movies with assassins were excellent distractions. Kevin really didn't want to mope about their break up, especially with potential for them to pull off this whole friendship thing. Distractions were entirely necessary at the moment.
Reaching for the remote again, Jean-Paul turned on the DVD player and then set the movie to play. Then he made to stand, pausing to brush his glove-covered fingers over Kevin's hair. "Text if you need anything, ami."
Kevin bit the inside of his lip until the contact between them went away. "Ah won't. Don't wanna bug you. You got stuff to do." Or at least he assumed Jean-Paul had stuff to do for that investigative agency. If he was honest Kevin still wanted Jean-Paul around just as much as he had the first time he'd woken up in the medlab after his ribs had been cracked. If he let himself think it was okay then Kevin would even try to get it. So he had to tell himself now that it wasn't allowed. It wasn't possible. It wasn't going to happen.
"You do not bug me," Jean-Paul said, standing. "Truly. And I do not have the work visa yet. So I am not allowed to work officially."
"Officially bein' the key word there, Ah'm sure. Vanessa's your friend, Ah don't think you're stuck with nothin' to do."
"Kevin..." Jean-Paul paused, rubbing one hand along the back of his neck. "I am not sure it is allowed. But if you need me... if you do, I will come, oui? It is not a bother. Please, do not let me find there is something I might have done from someone else, oui?" Awkward, but Jean-Paul didn't know how else to say it. He wanted to be with Kevin, but he couldn't trust himself with the younger man's safety. And so he couldn't let himself bend the rules just because he wanted to - broken ribs and worse could happen all over again if he did that.
Shaking his head as much as he could without picking it up off the pillow, Kevin said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but no. Ah don't wanna ask you. 'Cause everyone's self-preservation depends on not draggin' you into situations. The less you're 'round me the better for you, really. Ah don't want you gone from my life, but...Ah sorta think if Ah can lean on you too much Ah'll never stop. And then when Ah'm healed Ah got no excuse. And it'll be harder to stop then, y'know?"
"I understand," Jean-Paul said, nodding. He considered that for a moment, what it meant, and then he pulled the gloves off so he could put them on the nightstand near the remote and the carrots. If they were going to be breaking habits, he supposed he should start, too. "Get well soon, mon ami."
The whole time Jean-Paul was pulling off the gloves Kevin's eyes were nowhere else. He watched them come off, but more importantly he watched them get laid aside. Pain medication or not, Kevin understood the significance. He understood what that meant. "Yeah..." He was still staring at the gloves. "Guess they're sleeping over after all."
"You are an artist, remember?" Jean-Paul asked, subdued now. "Homemade teddy bears, this was your plan, was it not?"
"Ah'm so far away from my plan that Ah can't even see it in the distance and look at what it was supposed to be," Kevin muttered. His plan hadn't involved any of this. It hadn't involved Jean-Paul coming over when Kevin texted him. It hadn't involved them breaking up - never mind apparently breaking up for the third time, or so it felt like. It hadn't involved finding another someone to lose that he wanted to keep. Jesus, his plan involved a cabin in the middle of the woods alone where he wouldn't have any of this to run into over and over again. One of these days he was really going to make good on that plan. Just Kevin all alone in the woods.
Jean-Paul cursed quietly in French for a moment, then walked around to the other side of the bed and, making sure he wasn't thinking about anything at all as he shifted the younger man's hood up and over his hair. Not thinking was the important part. If Kevin kicked him out, that was one thing. But that tone, that expression - it broke Jean-Paul's willpower every time, no matter the situation. "Plans change," he muttered, toeing his shoes off and oh so carefully sliding an arm around Kevin's waist from behind.
Kevin went very still. He hadn't quite realized what Jean-Paul was doing until he felt the arm around his waist. This had to be a monumentally bad idea. On a scale of a little bad to blowing up the president this was like epic villain disclosing his whole evil plan to the hero right before he pulls it off level bad idea. So he just wasn't going to move. And maybe not breathe. No, he needed to breathe. He'd just be very, very still until Jean-Paul decided it was a bad idea, too, and tried to get out of it gracefully. Of course, all that stillness had his muscles twisting into rigid knots. "Plan changes suck. Ah hate my plan changes. Soon as Ah convince the courts Ah'm taking my original plan back up. That plan was way better than any of the ones Ah've had since." He was mostly speaking in a quiet mumble, audible but not necessarily meant for anyone in particular.
"Original plan?" Jean-Paul asked, pressing his nose to Kevin's shoulder for a moment before letting himself relax a little. He needed to keep himself on an even keel, because this felt like he was walking over a mine field. Hands couldn't wander. Definitely not. On top of cloth. Fitting himself a little closer to the Southerner, he muttered, "What was your original plan?"
"A cabin in the woods. Alone. No one 'round for miles. Maybe the mountains. Somewhere cold. Maybe even Alaska." Kevin was not relaxing. He could feel Jean-Paul relax and that just molded the older man to his back even more closely. "That way everyone would be safe. From me anyway."
"I remember," Jean-Paul said, still softly. Kevin had told him, once, that he could go to Alaska with him. Because Jean-Paul had nowhere else to go, nowhere that called to him, nowhere and no one to go with.
That wouldn't happen now.
Very softly, so softly it might not be heard at all, Jean-Paul murmured, "I do not want to leave you."
Kevin heard. It took him a little bit to fit the sounds into words and figure out what was said, but he'd heard it. "You ever think 'bout how the right thing to do ain't always the smart or logical thing to do? Stealing to feed your starving family. Killing someone for raping or abusing or killing other people. Just examples, but you get what Ah mean?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said. He knew those things very well, having stolen to eat when he was young, having killed someone for murdering the closest thing he'd ever had to a real father, having slaughtered countless others for violating his mind.
"If the smart thing to do ain't always the right thing, if the 'right thing,'" he made finger quotes with his left hand he held up, "ain't even always the right thing...how're you supposed to be sure it's the thing to do? The right thing to do ain't supposed to hurt people, right?"
"Right," Jean-Paul agreed quietly. He thought he was following the logic, possibly. It was sort of convoluted, but it also had a sort of symmetry to it that worked, in a way.
"So then how come the right thing is always bitin' me in the ass while Ah'm doin' it? Even when Ah do it right the whole way start to finish it's got its teeth in me. Y'think the right thing gets how uncomfortable that is? Or that it scars? Or that it's really not incentive to keep up the behavior even if the alternative's worse 'cause it scars other people? How's that fair? And Ah don't wanna hear that life ain't fair. Ah'm already the poster child for not fair, okay?" There was a bitter tone creeping into Kevin's soft voice as he spoke. He was sick of pulling the short stick. Someone else should get the damn short stick for a change.
"Okay," Jean-Paul said, nosing along Kevin's shoulder to his neck and then just sort of staying there. "The right thing to do, the right thing... if it is not always so right. Then must you do the right things always? It is better to steal the food to feed one's children than to let them starve. And so... you do this thing. Because the alternative... it was not acceptable, oui? Is it fair to the children that they go hungry? Non, I think not. And so... you do what is better than right."
He didn't really know what he was saying, except that he didn't want to leave. Jean-Paul really didn't. And it made a bizarre sense to him, some visceral part of himself, that they would have this conversation now, of all times, when nothing felt solid beneath their feet.
"But what if stealing that food cut enough profit that someone loses their job? Is it fair that they lose their job because you can't figure out a different way to feed your kids? Is it fair that someone who works hard to take care of their employees has to let one go because of you? Is it fair if that employee's got someone depending on them who can't do for themselves? And how do you know that employee won't end up in the exact same position because you went and stole that food?" Kevin chewed on his lip thinking about it. "If people lose on all sides how is it right at all?"
"Supermarkets and garbage bins, Kevin," Jean-Paul said. "These are the places you steal from when you are hungry. Open air markets where an apple or a pear will not be missed. It is impossible to steal whole meals, things like this." He didn't know what else he might say. If you looked at the repercussions of every action you took, you'd go slowly but surely insane. "The right thing would be for everyone to have food so no one needed to worry about theft or starvation. But this is not the case. And so people make do."
"You don't get the point. You're bein' too literal. Besides, enough apples equals an orchard. Lots of little things add up to a big thing eventually. It's like dots. Put enough on a canvas and color 'em the right way and you've got pointillism. You've got an image and you've got art and all it took was enough tiny little dots." But Kevin wasn't really talking about starving families or businessmen or grocery stores or markets. He was talking about them. He was talking about his life.
"The right thing," Jean-Paul said, voice very quiet now, "would be for me to go." But he didn't move away from Kevin. Rather, he pressed his forehead to the younger man's neck and managed to keep himself from tightening his arm around Kevin's waist.
"See," Kevin whispered, "that's what Ah mean. How's it fair that the right thing takes away everything important to me? What do Ah get left with from doin' the right thing 'cept a hand that might never work right again? That's what Ah get for doin' the right thing. That and bein' alone. Ah wanna know who got too many long sticks and shoved all the short ones at me. 'Cause Ah'm sick of 'em. Ah don't wanna play the game no more."
"Would we, the two of us, be able to take precautions as you said? Because I find it difficult, Kevin. It is harder than anything else, I think, to be with you and not let myself do simple things. Things I have always taken for granted until my mutation changed. Is it fair to you, making you wake up alone always?"
"There are things people give up willingly because they think the pay off is worth it. Ah don't like waking up alone. Ah don't like bein' the only one in the bed at night. But Ah can handle it. And if Ah knew that you were there when Ah woke up, just in another room, then it'd be worth it." But then they were back to the same problem they'd run into before, weren't they? "It's just you can't promise me the one thing that'd make it worth giving up. At least you can't anymore."
"That I will not leave," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "Would this pain, these broken bones... would you think they were worth it, if I had not run this time?"
"Yes." He didn't even need time to think about it. "And Ah told you before. Ah got my broken bones because Ah didn't want you to have to have nightmares. Ah knew what could happen. And Ah thought it was worth it to try to get you out of whatever was goin' on in your head. It hurt like hell, and it still does if Ah stop taking the percocet, but Ah never cared 'bout the ribs. Yeah, it could've been worse, but Ah knew what Ah was doing and Ah made sure to come from the side of the bed by the wall, not the window. Ah wasn't never gonna go out the window and break most of the bones in my body.
"I'm never gonna decide that physical pain's more important than emotional or mental pain. Ah'm just not. My ribs'll be healed a lot sooner than the stuff in your head. Ah know you don't wanna hurt me, but why should my choice be to let you suffer through other stuff or lose you? Why's that my choice?"
"I never meant for that to be your choice," Jean-Paul said. In truth, he'd never considered it that way, never thought of the way it would seem to Kevin, of the choices and options he was taking away from the younger man with his own actions. "If there was another incident, if the precautions failed... would you find some other way to try to wake me?"
Kevin thought about that. How did you wake people? Jean-Paul could be a pretty deep sleeper when he was in a nightmare. An especially obnoxious ringtone and calling his cell could do it. Any loud noise, really. "Ah could hit you with rocks from a sling slot," he offered as a solution, but not seriously. "Not sure how everyone else would feel about an air horn but that's gotta be loud enough to wake you up." Kevin also considered that if they weren't in the same room it'd be a lot less likely that Kevin would even know Jean-Paul was having a nightmare in the first place, really.
"Something softer than rocks might work," Jean-Paul said, his tone dry. "Like a shoe. And throwing a shoe would be a great deal quieter than a horn." But could he promise, in the end, that if something like this happened again, he wouldn't leave for good?
Jean-Paul considered that for a long moment, then considered the situation in which he found himself now. He wasn't doing a very good job of staying away, not by anyone's standards. If he couldn't stay away, then the chances of him actually leaving permanently were very, very slim. He'd be willing to say nonexistent, just because he couldn't make himself not check on Kevin.
"Really Ah was thinkin' somethin' in the Nerf family. They got those little bows and arrows and stuff. Or the Nerf footballs. Ah'm just not sure they'd wake you up. Rocks would have to be the back up plan. Or maybe a squirt gun we keep in the fridge. Ah figure maybe if Ah squirt you with cold water it'd wake you up." It was also possible Jean-Paul would have the same reaction as a cat and start avoiding his bed, too. Oops?
"Water might work," Jean-Paul conceded, snorting softly at the image of Kevin using a water gun to squirt chilled water at him. "You would not believe now, though, if I told you I would not leave. Would you?"
"Ah could use food coloring as incentive for your subconscious to reprogram you," Kevin said with a grin. "Or maybe slightly bleached water." He quickly grew quieter and more serious, though, at the question posed to him. "Ah dunno. Ah might. If you said you wouldn't leave again two 4days after you left then Ah wouldn't've. Now...Ah dunno. Now you've got to deal with what you did. With the fall out. You get what it means if you leave now. And Ah don't think you'd doubt me if Ah said you wouldn't get forgiven for it a second time. You wouldn't get friendship either. You'd never see me again if Ah could help it. If you left again. A person's as good as their word. You already broke yours once. Breaking it again..that's irreparable."
Food colouring or bleach, friendship or a relationship or nothing at all if he fucked it up again. Jean-Paul knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew those things. And he knew, reasonably speaking, that he would likely not flee if something like this happened again. But he couldn't be sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that he wouldn't. If it were truly bad... but then, what good would leaving do him, anyway? He'd just find himself slinking back, as he had this time. Speaking very quietly still, Jean-Paul said, "I will not leave you again."
Those were certainly the words Kevin wanted to hear. Did he believe them? Yeah, he was pretty sure he did. Jean-Paul had come back after disappearing but that didn't change that he had split when Kevin wasn't in a position to stop him. What counted in his favor was that he'd come to check on Kevin after finding out about the new injury to Kevin's hand. What gave him more points was that he had cooked for Kevin even though they both knew Jean-Paul's culinary skills, or lack thereof, was a sore spot for him. And he had come on no notice and without being asked to today.
They both had to deal with Jean-Paul having left. They both got the fall out that came from that action. They both had to deal with Kevin's decision that they couldn't be together if Jean-Paul was just going to split again. But Jean-Paul did what he didn't necessarily have to do and came back to keep whatever he could. "Swear it on my soul?"
"Yes," Jean-Paul answered, the word leaving him slowly, carefully, like he was weighing it for truth and integrity, perhaps evaluating it for flaws. There was in uncertainty in the tone, but he was trying to figure out if he could trust himself with this in the same way that Kevin was apparently trusting him.
Kevin considered the tone when Jean-Paul answered. He'd basically just picked an alternate of swearing on your mother's grave. But he figured that if Jean-Paul believed in souls then he'd probably care about Kevin's more than his own. The almost hesitancy could have been him not sure he really wanted to swear that, or it could have been him thinking about the implications of Kevin's stipulations. Either way, Kevin nodded. The motion was so very small so it didn't dislodge Jean-Paul where his face was buried in the back of Kevin's neck. "Alright. If you're sure, then alright."
"Okay," Jean-Paul said, letting out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. "Okay." It was quieter this time. Sometimes, language in general failed him.
Finally, Kevin began to relax incrementally. It was a slow process and he half watched the movie while it happened. Not until he'd got almost liquid and limp beneath the weight of the older man pressed to his back did Kevin speak again. "So...that mean we're dating again?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, shifting backward a bit so he wasn't laying atop Kevin so much. His weight hadn't been resting on Kevin, anyway, but Jean-Paul felt it was better to be cautiuos now. "If you do not mind giving up your freedom, of course."
"S'not really giving up freedom." There were a whole lot of things that restricted a person's freedom, like prison and caste systems. Kevin didn't think not sleeping with someone really counted. "Besides, you gave up ever bein' able to have actual intercourse sex long as you're with me. It's like a trade off. No sex for you, no sleeping for me."
"Actual intercourse sex?" Jean-Paul asked, obviously amused. "Compared to all the fake intercourse sex I have been having."
Kevin reached back blindly with his good hand and tried to swat Jean-Paul. "Compared to all the non-sex sexual activity you've been having." He paused and started to grin, though he didn't turn his head so Jean-Paul could see the expression. "And, really, we could always invest in those glass dildos if there was a real pressing need to be able to penetrate someone."
"Your fingers work well enough," Jean-Paul murmured, smiling. "And I think a white collar would work very well."
Kevin grinned. Now those were vivid memories. Happy, vivid memories. "Twenty minutes tops. That's what you got after Ah fall asleep. No nap time for you in here. Dem's da rules, Frenchie."
Snorting, Jean-Paul muttered, "Frenchie." He'd head for the living room once Kevin fell asleep. There was probably a book he could read out there.
Puttering around the suite really did get old quickly these days. Kevin was pretty sure he'd never like the so-called "life of luxury" because he'd get so bored he'd want to stab himself in the eye. Okay, maybe not. He was already down a hand, he didn't think he really needed to lose an eye as well.
Kevin kept shuffling out of his suite and down the hall to the rec room to steal movies and then shuffled back to his suite with his booty. He wondered if there was anything interesting on pay-per-view. Or maybe movie channels. Did he have movie channels? Kevin didn't really spend a lot of time with cable normally and once he was sitting there hitting the button to flip through channels he quickly realized why. TV sucked.
Jean-Paul knocked. He had a plastic bag of baby carrots and another of random vegetables from the grocery store. Someone needed to make sure Kevin was eating more than the chicken and dumplings. Of which there should still be plenty, considering the size of that pot. "Is the door still locked?" He asked, wondering if it wouldn't just be easier to try the handle to keep the Southerner from having to shuffle to the door.
"Nope," came the answer while Kevin continued to frown at the television as the images quickly flipped by. He'd taken the time to actually put a shirt on this time. In fact, he was nearly fully covered with clothing for a change, even if he had sacrificed most of the layers he would have normally insisted upon. After all, people entered at their own peril, right?
Turning the handle, Jean-Paul stepped inside and then closed the door behind himself. He tossed the carrots onto the couch next to Kevin, then went to put the rest of the vegetables in the refrigerator. "What are you watching?"
"Nothin'. TV sucks." But Kevin stopped long enough to grab the bag of carrots and rip a small hole at one corner so he could start to fish them out. "Ah don't like TV. But Ah think Ah ran outta movies, or maybe Ah just slept through 'em all, Ah dunno." Giving up, he tossed the remote toward where he figured Jean-Paul would end up on the couch and sighed.
Walking to the couch, Jean-Paul picked up the remote control and sat down, then flipped to the discovery channel. Mythbusters was on. They were burying someone alive, dropping a text dummy from several stories up onto water, and testing myths about soda's various and sundry properties. "Dropping something from that high will definitely break bones," he said, pointing at the TV.
"'Cause you drop people from that high all the time," Kevin asked just before biting into the carrot. Jean-Paul seemed just a little too confident in his comment and Kevin raised an eyebrow while his eyes slid to the side to look at the other man. "Are you secretly a hit man or somethin'?"
"Non," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "But I have to know how dropping someone will affect them, you see? More so that I make sure I do not drop them. Also, because my mutation gives me some protection from falling or hitting things, but not so much that I would make it through a fall from a very great height." He pointed at the screen. "You see, they lost the test mannequin's leg."
"'Cause you drop people from very high?" Somewhere it probably made perfect sense that Jean-Paul needed to know how dropping someone would affect them. Kevin was sure it made sense somehow. Except he couldn't see why you'd need to know that unless you actually were dropping people from very high up.
"In theory, I could," Jean-Paul said, watching the funny one with the earring talk about the foam coming out of the test dummy. "But this would be frowned upon, I think." He looked toward the carrots. "May I?"
Kevin's eyes narrowed, but he held out the bag of carrots. "People usually don't approve of throwin' people to the ground from way high up. It's sorta rude." He was watching Jean-Paul's hand very carefully, checking that he didn't steal an excessive amount of carrots.
"Merci," Jean-Paul said, munching on the carrots as the men on screen moved on to the soda myths. He waited a few moments, then quirked a brow at Kevin. "You would like the television in your bedroom?"
"Couch ain't comfortable when you gotta sit upright all the time," Kevin explained with a somewhat sour look on his face. "If Ah lay on my back Ah can't breathe very good. Lay on my stomach and it's just hard to watch the screen." He sighed. Obviously his life was so hard, right?
"I could move the couch so you could see better."
"Face down ain't gonna be helped by movin' the couch," Kevin countered.
"Point," Jean-Paul said, eating another carrot. "Would you like me to move it now?"
"Um..." Now he didn't know how to answer. He wouldn't get the tv back out without someone doing it for him, for one. Second, it would relegate anyone who came to hang out to his bedroom for the most part which could be awkward. Third...it involved Jean-Paul in his bedroom. While he was there, too. "Ah dunno if Ah'm ready to commit," Kevin finally answered. "It's good in theory but maybe...maybe Ah should think 'bout it more."
Jean-Paul quirked a brow. "You could always try to move it with the power of your mind again."
"Yeah...maybe if Ah work the muscles they'll manage to get strong enough to move it 'ventually."
"Brain magic," Jean-Paul said, wiggling his fingers in Kevin's general direction. He smiled, shifting around until he was leaning against the arm of the chair before turning the television off, since neither of them seemed particularly interested in what was actually happening on the screen. "I have to get a work visa."
"That why you got two black eyes?" Kevin thought about mentioning it before but the carrots had more or less taken priority. And then the implications of what Jean-Paul had just said made sense. "Why d'you gotta get a work visa? Where you workin'?"
"Vanessa has begun an investigation agency for District X and I am helping her," Jean-Paul replied. "But this is not why I have black eyes, non. Doctor Grey-Summers, we disagreed about... things. It seemed pointless to try avoiding her, of course. She can stop me - with the power of her mind." He paused, then said almost philosophically, "Her mind muscles are very strong, oui?" But he stood by his assertion that women were complicated and that this was the reason he slept with men instead.
"You coulda moved but you didn't? You let yourself get hit?" Kevin was now staring at Jean-Paul with wide eyes and a jaw that had fallen open just a little bit. "Seriously? Aren't doctors supposed to heal people, not injure them so they got more patients?"
"I did not move because she can stop me," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "And stopping me - it is not so good. She did this last week. After..." He gestured toward Kevin's ribs. "And it made another concussive blast. I thought the hitting, it was better than that. I was very rude, also."
"Whatever, rude people suck but you don't go and hit someone for that." Kevin shook his head and crunched into another carrot. "How'm Ah the invalid? Yeah, Ah go and get my ribs cracked for love and my hand blown up for morals...but you let yourself get hit by a girl and you did it for no reason." He pointed a slightly wagging finger at the other man. "Ah think you oughta be supervised!"
"By whom?" Jean-Paul asked, suppressing a smirk. "You could not shuffle fast enough to keep up with me, I think, even if I walked."
"Ah'll just put a leash on you," Kevin said, deciding as he spoke. "And get a wagon. Then if you wanted to go too fast you'd have to pull me along. Like a sled dog. Always wanted one of those."
"Sled dogs, they shed their fur everywhere," Jean-Paul said, making a face and then wishing he hadn't. Wrinkling his nose hurt. A lot. "Ow." He managed to keep himself from raising his hand to touch his nose. "Anyway, your wagon would fall over, I think."
The younger man only shrugged. "Well if Ah'm holdin' onto your leash then you'd end up draggin' me around and since Ah'm already an invalid that'd just be rude. And you already know what would happen if you went and dropped me when you were up in the air and do you really wanna be responsible for that? You might end up with more black eyes from the doctor lady."
Snorting, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Mon Dieu, I am not that rude." At least he hoped he wasn't. "And I would like to avoid more black eyes very much, merci." It wasn't like he'd want to hurt Kevin any more than he already had, after all.
"See, Ah told them that just 'cause you're wannabe French don't mean you ain't got any manners. Do they listen to me? Nope!" Kevin bit into another carrot with a satisfied look on his face. "Ah'm thinkin' white. With blue flames."
"They? Who is 'they'?" Jean-Paul asked, then had a bizarre moment where he envisioned Kevin painted white with blue flames. "For what would you be painted these colours?"
Kevin blinked at him, staring in slight confusion. "My wagon. Not me. The wagon'll be white with blue flames. Y'know, the one you're tippin' me over in?"
"I am not tipping you over," Jean-Paul pointed out. "And should the wagon not be red?"
"Why would Ah want a red wagon? Everyone's got a red wagon. What if someone steals my wagon when Ah step away from it? What if they steal my wagon and Ah've got your leash hitched to it and then they done stole you away, too?"
"I would not mind tipping someone else over if they stole this wagon of yours that is not red and does not really exist," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "So it would be easy for you to get the wagon back."
"Well they ain't gonna steal it if it ain't red anyway." He wasn't sure why they wouldn't, but Kevin was pretty darn sure he could make something passable up.
"What if they want to steal it even more because it is unique?"
"Maybe they just want my sled dog."
Jean-Paul opened his mouth to reply, but paused instead and then said, "I do not shed. I have no hair to shed." He rubbed at the back of his head just to demonstrate his point. "So I would not make such a good sled dog."
"Uh...you realize shedding ain't required to be a sled dog, right? They shed 'cause they got lots of fur, which they got so they can stay warm in the cold." Kevin grinned a little bit, the expression knowing. "You don't get cold, really, so even though you don't got the fur to keep you warm you can still be a sled dog since you don't need it."
"Fine," Jean-Paul said, shaking his head. "You win. The logic is ridiculous, but I cannot find its fault." He waved his hand, toward Kevin. "The leash, the wagon, the sled dog."
The surrender made Kevin grin widely. "Ah'm thinkin' your leash should be blue to match the flames. And your collar should be white."
Expression not changing in the least, Jean-Paul asked, "Do you have any carrots left?"
Kevin looked down at the mostly filled bag, then held it out to the Quebecois. "Fine, Ah'll share."
"Merci," Jean-Paul said, reaching over to take a few from the bag. "Have you thought more on moving the television to your room? At the least, I might find you other movies to watch."
He could strand people in his bedroom to watch movies with him...or stay upright. "Yeah, Ah want it in the bedroom." Besides, it wasn't like he'd need to worry about someone concussive blasting it out a window again anyway. "But more movies would be awesome."
Nodding, Jean-Paul stood up and put the remote controller on couch, then shrugged off his jacket and laid it over the arm. A moment later and he was turning on the light near the television so he could see which cables needed unplugging. The VCR and DVD player would need to come along, but he could move those later. "What movies would you like, do you think?"
"Ah dunno. Not boring stuff? Maybe funny stuff. Wait, no, that's probably a bad idea." Just because he couldn't feel it didn't mean his ribs would appreciate laughter. "Action movies? Horror? Brain's not really workin' that much to help, sorry." And Kevin might have been an eentsy bit distracted what with the jacket coming off and the view being so much better for that.
"Action movies," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "The new Clash of the Titans has come out, I think. I am sure there are others I can find." He tipped the television forward a bit so he could make sure he had all the right cords undone, then lifted it and checked to make sure he wasn't going to trip and kill himself on those same cords before heading toward the bedroom. "Not so sure of the horror movies, though."
"Something doesn't have to be new to be worth watching," Kevin told him while he watched Jean-Paul with the television. He could have claimed he wanted to be sure the other man wouldn't drop it and that reasoning would have stood up to most people. Mostly he just wanted to watch the movement of muscles hidden beneath sleeves when Jean-Paul picked it up. Kevin even trailed after the older man at a polite distance to keep up his observations.
"This is true," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "There is the movie about cars, oui? The Fast and The Furious?" People seemed to like the cars in that movie, though he couldn't see the appeal, himself. He'd enjoyed the aesthetics of watching it, of course. Who wouldn't?
Setting the television down near Kevin's bed, Jean-Paul tipped his head to the side and then tried to judge if he'd picked a good spot or not. "Lay on the bed, as you usually do. Tell me if this will be alright."
Kevin was already squinting at the placement and instead pointed to a spot atop his dresser. He was pretty sure having the tv so close to the bed was a bad idea for his eyes or something and the dresser was at least across the room and a bit off to the side. "Could you put it there?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, lifting the television again and moving it to the place Kevin had indicated. "Better?" There was even a power outlet that he'd be able to use next to the dresser, so long as the placement worked.
Damn, it was fun watching Jean-Paul move that around. Kevin knew the flatscreen wasn't particularly heavy, but it was still a nice view. He might have been beginning to understand why women liked watching construction workers so much. "Let's see." Kevin crawled onto his bed and then more or less flopped down on his stomach. After getting comfortable with a pillow mashed up under his head, Kevin looked over at the tv. He grinned. "Perfect! Ah knew havin' minions was a smart idea."
"I am not a minion," Jean-Paul said, purely for the sake of saying it, since he was sure Kevin would come up with some kind of argument to make the point that he was, in fact, a minion. Given that the placement was alright, he plugged the television in and then went to get the DVD/VCR player and the remote controls. Once that was all hooked up, he stood back and nodded to himself. "There."
"But you're doin' minion work," Kevin countered while he watched Jean-Paul exit the room. He really did like that view and always had. That probably wouldn't change any time soon either, broken up or not. The Southerner helpfully remained sprawled out on his bed, staring at the black screen of the television and watching Jean-Paul move when he re-entered the room. "See? Good minion!" He grinned and then his cell phone began to beep. "Dang it." With a groan Kevin crawled back off the bed and went padding into the kitchen for a glass of water to pop his next percocet with.
Jean-Paul quirked an eyebrow, but didn't comment when Kevin left the room. Instead, he turned the television on and ran through the basic set-up so the cable channels would work. He also shuffled through a few DVDs to see what Kevin might have that would be entertaining until he could find something action-like for the younger man. "Are you getting your peas?" He called, pausing to wonder where the carrots had gone. He found them on the bed and so he picked them up, eating a few while the set-up for the cable finished.
"No," Kevin called back. "Ah'm gettin' my pain meds. Peas have Metallica for their alarm. Percocet's more annoyin' so Ah wake up if Ah'm asleep when it goes off." Which he usually was, really. He came into the room and went crawling back onto the bed. As he passed Jean-Paul, though, Kevin swiped the gloves hanging out of the other man's back pocket. "Ain't cold enough to need 'em for warmth and ain't really durable enough to be used for working gloves," he said as he flopped over. Kevin recognized the gloves and the material on sight. They were Kevin-proof.
"What are you going to use them for?" Jean-Paul asked, eating another carrot as the set-up finished and the default channel turned on. "You are doing nothing but laying. Surely you do not need the gloves for that." And also, they were Jean-Paul's.
"Shadow puppets maybe." Kevin was looking very amused with himself. He quirked an eyebrow upward while attempting to figure out a way to use the gloves as puppets without wearing them over the gloves he already had on. "What were you gonna use 'em for?"
"Je ne sais pas," Jean-Paul replied. "It seemed like a good idea to have them." And now he didn't. He didn't know why he'd stuck them in his pocket. Habit, probably. That and the hoodie he was wearing were both habit. He was probably going to need to break those sometime soon. Or now. Now worked, too. Walking over to the bed, he put the remote on the bedside table, then the carrots, and reached for the gloves.
For a few moments Kevin just looked at that out stretched hand. He held the gloves as far from it as he could and even though he knew Jean-Paul could swipe them away any moment Kevin did it anyway. "You feel like reachin' out and touchin' someone?" He couldn't help that amused, teasing note in his voice while he dangled the gloves so they'd wiggle a bit where they were suspended in the air.
That wasn't fair.
Of course, if Kevin wasn't going to play fair, Jean-Paul knew he could play just as dirty. That didn't mean he would, of course. "How fast does your medication take to start working?" He raised his brows. "I think it must be very fast."
"Sorta dosed out so it's always in my system," Kevin told him, still grinning. Of course, the percocet did have him in the sort of happy, relaxed place that tended to make him a lot more playful. Where playful went flirtation followed and while he fully understood why it was an entirely bad idea to flirt with his ex-boyfriend it was also harder to not do it than let himself say or do what he wanted.
That stance would probably have to be evaluated at some point. A point when Kevin could be more objective. Like when Jean-Paul wasn't around.
Very carefully, Jean-Paul stretched for the gloves, concentrating so he could balance without bracing himself on the bed. "Always at this level? Because... oui. You seem very relaxed." Just a little farther - it wasn't like there was much moving Kevin could do, after all.
Kevin tried to stretch even further. That was probably bad for his ribs too but he couldn't really feel them. Well, he could feel them, he just couldn't feel it if they hurt. "That a complaint? Ah could try to be more grumpy 'round you if you want."
"Not complaining," Jean-Paul said, feet lifting off the ground entirely so he could get to the gloves. "Observing only." Of course, getting to them didn't mean Kevin was going to let go of them.
Kevin was definitely not letting go of them if he could help it. Jean-Paul couldn't just walk in here all geared up for being Kevin-proofed for no reason without getting a bit of hell for it. When Kevin realized Jean-Paul was levitating Kevin shoved the gloves under his body, still clutched in his hand. "You dirty, rotten cheater."
"You are holding my gloves hostage," Jean-Paul pointed out, tone reasonable. He was hesitant to actually have his hand following Kevin's beneath the younger man given that the broken ribs were currently situated that way. So instead, he frowned. "May I have them back? S'il vous plaît?"
He pretended to think about it, then Kevin shook his head. "Nah. Ah mean, it ain't like you need 'em right now anyway. They're gonna hang out here. Have a sleep over. They've got teddy bear aspirations and Ah'm a teddy bear down so Ah should at least let 'em audition. It'd be rude not to."
Hovering there, Jean-Paul considered cutting his losses and letting Kevin just have the gloves. But there was something about the principle of the matter, the fact that they were his and yeah, it was a habit he needed to break, but still. He had a point, he was sure. "A sleepover? With my gloves? They are not such good teddy bears, you know." Pausing, Jean-Paul frowned just slightly. "And why do you need a teddy bear?"
"Ah dunno. Ah could stuff 'em. Make 'em little ears. Ah'm an artist or somethin', y'know." And now he was thinking about how he could turn a pair of gloves bear-like. Months from now he would blame the percocet. Then again, months from now he might not even remember this. "Ah like teddy bears. Yvette was a good one once she relaxed, but she's all spiky again. Laura's more the cuddly kinda teddy bear than the sleepin' kind. So Ah'm in the market for one of them, Ah guess." It occurred to Kevin that he hadn't actually said why he needed one. Instead he'd sort of just rambled.
"Sleepin' alone don't feel right." It was Jean-Paul so he told the truth. Maybe he shouldn't have for the same reason.
"Why?" Jean-Paul asked, though he was fairly certain he shouldn't. He should just back out of this as gracefully as possible and leave. Instead, he stayed where he was, hovering.
"Ah dunno." Kevin suspected it was because he'd been so used to sleeping with someone once. It had been a long time since then, but the impression had been made. "Maybe it's just a habit Ah ain't been any good at breakin', y'know? Ah was real used to wakin' up to someone and Ah didn't adjust back to not." After a thoughtful pause Kevin held Jean-Paul's gloves out to him. "Ah think that adds another point on my ribs bein' my own damned fault."
Jean-Paul waited for a moment before taking the gloves. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them on, since he figured it'd be harder to steal them if he was wearing them. "It was both of us, did we not decide this?" His voice was quiet as he spoke. "There is a movie about an assassin in the DVD player, if you would like to watch it. I can go to find you other films, also."
"Ain't sayin' it was all my fault, just something that didn't occur to me before. You don't gotta go find me other movies. Ah'll probably just fall asleep anyway." Kevin was good about boundaries, especially if people got hurt otherwise. He might have struggled with them sometimes or gotten angry about them needing to be there, but he would abide by them. He had since he was sixteen and had even gotten somewhat hyper vigilant about enforcing them on other people's behalves. So why had he had such a problem abiding by the only real boundary they needed to keep Kevin safe from Jean-Paul's mutation? Kevin was pretty sure he knew now. He was just too damn stubborn to give up something that he wanted, apparently.
He was a hypocrite.
"Do you want to watch the film?" Jean-Paul asked, knowing he should go now. It was the perfect time, really. Kevin was medicated - again. He was tired. He'd likely go to sleep. But Jean-Paul stayed where he was, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Yeah." Movies with assassins were excellent distractions. Kevin really didn't want to mope about their break up, especially with potential for them to pull off this whole friendship thing. Distractions were entirely necessary at the moment.
Reaching for the remote again, Jean-Paul turned on the DVD player and then set the movie to play. Then he made to stand, pausing to brush his glove-covered fingers over Kevin's hair. "Text if you need anything, ami."
Kevin bit the inside of his lip until the contact between them went away. "Ah won't. Don't wanna bug you. You got stuff to do." Or at least he assumed Jean-Paul had stuff to do for that investigative agency. If he was honest Kevin still wanted Jean-Paul around just as much as he had the first time he'd woken up in the medlab after his ribs had been cracked. If he let himself think it was okay then Kevin would even try to get it. So he had to tell himself now that it wasn't allowed. It wasn't possible. It wasn't going to happen.
"You do not bug me," Jean-Paul said, standing. "Truly. And I do not have the work visa yet. So I am not allowed to work officially."
"Officially bein' the key word there, Ah'm sure. Vanessa's your friend, Ah don't think you're stuck with nothin' to do."
"Kevin..." Jean-Paul paused, rubbing one hand along the back of his neck. "I am not sure it is allowed. But if you need me... if you do, I will come, oui? It is not a bother. Please, do not let me find there is something I might have done from someone else, oui?" Awkward, but Jean-Paul didn't know how else to say it. He wanted to be with Kevin, but he couldn't trust himself with the younger man's safety. And so he couldn't let himself bend the rules just because he wanted to - broken ribs and worse could happen all over again if he did that.
Shaking his head as much as he could without picking it up off the pillow, Kevin said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but no. Ah don't wanna ask you. 'Cause everyone's self-preservation depends on not draggin' you into situations. The less you're 'round me the better for you, really. Ah don't want you gone from my life, but...Ah sorta think if Ah can lean on you too much Ah'll never stop. And then when Ah'm healed Ah got no excuse. And it'll be harder to stop then, y'know?"
"I understand," Jean-Paul said, nodding. He considered that for a moment, what it meant, and then he pulled the gloves off so he could put them on the nightstand near the remote and the carrots. If they were going to be breaking habits, he supposed he should start, too. "Get well soon, mon ami."
The whole time Jean-Paul was pulling off the gloves Kevin's eyes were nowhere else. He watched them come off, but more importantly he watched them get laid aside. Pain medication or not, Kevin understood the significance. He understood what that meant. "Yeah..." He was still staring at the gloves. "Guess they're sleeping over after all."
"You are an artist, remember?" Jean-Paul asked, subdued now. "Homemade teddy bears, this was your plan, was it not?"
"Ah'm so far away from my plan that Ah can't even see it in the distance and look at what it was supposed to be," Kevin muttered. His plan hadn't involved any of this. It hadn't involved Jean-Paul coming over when Kevin texted him. It hadn't involved them breaking up - never mind apparently breaking up for the third time, or so it felt like. It hadn't involved finding another someone to lose that he wanted to keep. Jesus, his plan involved a cabin in the middle of the woods alone where he wouldn't have any of this to run into over and over again. One of these days he was really going to make good on that plan. Just Kevin all alone in the woods.
Jean-Paul cursed quietly in French for a moment, then walked around to the other side of the bed and, making sure he wasn't thinking about anything at all as he shifted the younger man's hood up and over his hair. Not thinking was the important part. If Kevin kicked him out, that was one thing. But that tone, that expression - it broke Jean-Paul's willpower every time, no matter the situation. "Plans change," he muttered, toeing his shoes off and oh so carefully sliding an arm around Kevin's waist from behind.
Kevin went very still. He hadn't quite realized what Jean-Paul was doing until he felt the arm around his waist. This had to be a monumentally bad idea. On a scale of a little bad to blowing up the president this was like epic villain disclosing his whole evil plan to the hero right before he pulls it off level bad idea. So he just wasn't going to move. And maybe not breathe. No, he needed to breathe. He'd just be very, very still until Jean-Paul decided it was a bad idea, too, and tried to get out of it gracefully. Of course, all that stillness had his muscles twisting into rigid knots. "Plan changes suck. Ah hate my plan changes. Soon as Ah convince the courts Ah'm taking my original plan back up. That plan was way better than any of the ones Ah've had since." He was mostly speaking in a quiet mumble, audible but not necessarily meant for anyone in particular.
"Original plan?" Jean-Paul asked, pressing his nose to Kevin's shoulder for a moment before letting himself relax a little. He needed to keep himself on an even keel, because this felt like he was walking over a mine field. Hands couldn't wander. Definitely not. On top of cloth. Fitting himself a little closer to the Southerner, he muttered, "What was your original plan?"
"A cabin in the woods. Alone. No one 'round for miles. Maybe the mountains. Somewhere cold. Maybe even Alaska." Kevin was not relaxing. He could feel Jean-Paul relax and that just molded the older man to his back even more closely. "That way everyone would be safe. From me anyway."
"I remember," Jean-Paul said, still softly. Kevin had told him, once, that he could go to Alaska with him. Because Jean-Paul had nowhere else to go, nowhere that called to him, nowhere and no one to go with.
That wouldn't happen now.
Very softly, so softly it might not be heard at all, Jean-Paul murmured, "I do not want to leave you."
Kevin heard. It took him a little bit to fit the sounds into words and figure out what was said, but he'd heard it. "You ever think 'bout how the right thing to do ain't always the smart or logical thing to do? Stealing to feed your starving family. Killing someone for raping or abusing or killing other people. Just examples, but you get what Ah mean?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said. He knew those things very well, having stolen to eat when he was young, having killed someone for murdering the closest thing he'd ever had to a real father, having slaughtered countless others for violating his mind.
"If the smart thing to do ain't always the right thing, if the 'right thing,'" he made finger quotes with his left hand he held up, "ain't even always the right thing...how're you supposed to be sure it's the thing to do? The right thing to do ain't supposed to hurt people, right?"
"Right," Jean-Paul agreed quietly. He thought he was following the logic, possibly. It was sort of convoluted, but it also had a sort of symmetry to it that worked, in a way.
"So then how come the right thing is always bitin' me in the ass while Ah'm doin' it? Even when Ah do it right the whole way start to finish it's got its teeth in me. Y'think the right thing gets how uncomfortable that is? Or that it scars? Or that it's really not incentive to keep up the behavior even if the alternative's worse 'cause it scars other people? How's that fair? And Ah don't wanna hear that life ain't fair. Ah'm already the poster child for not fair, okay?" There was a bitter tone creeping into Kevin's soft voice as he spoke. He was sick of pulling the short stick. Someone else should get the damn short stick for a change.
"Okay," Jean-Paul said, nosing along Kevin's shoulder to his neck and then just sort of staying there. "The right thing to do, the right thing... if it is not always so right. Then must you do the right things always? It is better to steal the food to feed one's children than to let them starve. And so... you do this thing. Because the alternative... it was not acceptable, oui? Is it fair to the children that they go hungry? Non, I think not. And so... you do what is better than right."
He didn't really know what he was saying, except that he didn't want to leave. Jean-Paul really didn't. And it made a bizarre sense to him, some visceral part of himself, that they would have this conversation now, of all times, when nothing felt solid beneath their feet.
"But what if stealing that food cut enough profit that someone loses their job? Is it fair that they lose their job because you can't figure out a different way to feed your kids? Is it fair that someone who works hard to take care of their employees has to let one go because of you? Is it fair if that employee's got someone depending on them who can't do for themselves? And how do you know that employee won't end up in the exact same position because you went and stole that food?" Kevin chewed on his lip thinking about it. "If people lose on all sides how is it right at all?"
"Supermarkets and garbage bins, Kevin," Jean-Paul said. "These are the places you steal from when you are hungry. Open air markets where an apple or a pear will not be missed. It is impossible to steal whole meals, things like this." He didn't know what else he might say. If you looked at the repercussions of every action you took, you'd go slowly but surely insane. "The right thing would be for everyone to have food so no one needed to worry about theft or starvation. But this is not the case. And so people make do."
"You don't get the point. You're bein' too literal. Besides, enough apples equals an orchard. Lots of little things add up to a big thing eventually. It's like dots. Put enough on a canvas and color 'em the right way and you've got pointillism. You've got an image and you've got art and all it took was enough tiny little dots." But Kevin wasn't really talking about starving families or businessmen or grocery stores or markets. He was talking about them. He was talking about his life.
"The right thing," Jean-Paul said, voice very quiet now, "would be for me to go." But he didn't move away from Kevin. Rather, he pressed his forehead to the younger man's neck and managed to keep himself from tightening his arm around Kevin's waist.
"See," Kevin whispered, "that's what Ah mean. How's it fair that the right thing takes away everything important to me? What do Ah get left with from doin' the right thing 'cept a hand that might never work right again? That's what Ah get for doin' the right thing. That and bein' alone. Ah wanna know who got too many long sticks and shoved all the short ones at me. 'Cause Ah'm sick of 'em. Ah don't wanna play the game no more."
"Would we, the two of us, be able to take precautions as you said? Because I find it difficult, Kevin. It is harder than anything else, I think, to be with you and not let myself do simple things. Things I have always taken for granted until my mutation changed. Is it fair to you, making you wake up alone always?"
"There are things people give up willingly because they think the pay off is worth it. Ah don't like waking up alone. Ah don't like bein' the only one in the bed at night. But Ah can handle it. And if Ah knew that you were there when Ah woke up, just in another room, then it'd be worth it." But then they were back to the same problem they'd run into before, weren't they? "It's just you can't promise me the one thing that'd make it worth giving up. At least you can't anymore."
"That I will not leave," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "Would this pain, these broken bones... would you think they were worth it, if I had not run this time?"
"Yes." He didn't even need time to think about it. "And Ah told you before. Ah got my broken bones because Ah didn't want you to have to have nightmares. Ah knew what could happen. And Ah thought it was worth it to try to get you out of whatever was goin' on in your head. It hurt like hell, and it still does if Ah stop taking the percocet, but Ah never cared 'bout the ribs. Yeah, it could've been worse, but Ah knew what Ah was doing and Ah made sure to come from the side of the bed by the wall, not the window. Ah wasn't never gonna go out the window and break most of the bones in my body.
"I'm never gonna decide that physical pain's more important than emotional or mental pain. Ah'm just not. My ribs'll be healed a lot sooner than the stuff in your head. Ah know you don't wanna hurt me, but why should my choice be to let you suffer through other stuff or lose you? Why's that my choice?"
"I never meant for that to be your choice," Jean-Paul said. In truth, he'd never considered it that way, never thought of the way it would seem to Kevin, of the choices and options he was taking away from the younger man with his own actions. "If there was another incident, if the precautions failed... would you find some other way to try to wake me?"
Kevin thought about that. How did you wake people? Jean-Paul could be a pretty deep sleeper when he was in a nightmare. An especially obnoxious ringtone and calling his cell could do it. Any loud noise, really. "Ah could hit you with rocks from a sling slot," he offered as a solution, but not seriously. "Not sure how everyone else would feel about an air horn but that's gotta be loud enough to wake you up." Kevin also considered that if they weren't in the same room it'd be a lot less likely that Kevin would even know Jean-Paul was having a nightmare in the first place, really.
"Something softer than rocks might work," Jean-Paul said, his tone dry. "Like a shoe. And throwing a shoe would be a great deal quieter than a horn." But could he promise, in the end, that if something like this happened again, he wouldn't leave for good?
Jean-Paul considered that for a long moment, then considered the situation in which he found himself now. He wasn't doing a very good job of staying away, not by anyone's standards. If he couldn't stay away, then the chances of him actually leaving permanently were very, very slim. He'd be willing to say nonexistent, just because he couldn't make himself not check on Kevin.
"Really Ah was thinkin' somethin' in the Nerf family. They got those little bows and arrows and stuff. Or the Nerf footballs. Ah'm just not sure they'd wake you up. Rocks would have to be the back up plan. Or maybe a squirt gun we keep in the fridge. Ah figure maybe if Ah squirt you with cold water it'd wake you up." It was also possible Jean-Paul would have the same reaction as a cat and start avoiding his bed, too. Oops?
"Water might work," Jean-Paul conceded, snorting softly at the image of Kevin using a water gun to squirt chilled water at him. "You would not believe now, though, if I told you I would not leave. Would you?"
"Ah could use food coloring as incentive for your subconscious to reprogram you," Kevin said with a grin. "Or maybe slightly bleached water." He quickly grew quieter and more serious, though, at the question posed to him. "Ah dunno. Ah might. If you said you wouldn't leave again two 4days after you left then Ah wouldn't've. Now...Ah dunno. Now you've got to deal with what you did. With the fall out. You get what it means if you leave now. And Ah don't think you'd doubt me if Ah said you wouldn't get forgiven for it a second time. You wouldn't get friendship either. You'd never see me again if Ah could help it. If you left again. A person's as good as their word. You already broke yours once. Breaking it again..that's irreparable."
Food colouring or bleach, friendship or a relationship or nothing at all if he fucked it up again. Jean-Paul knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he wanted to do. He knew those things. And he knew, reasonably speaking, that he would likely not flee if something like this happened again. But he couldn't be sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that he wouldn't. If it were truly bad... but then, what good would leaving do him, anyway? He'd just find himself slinking back, as he had this time. Speaking very quietly still, Jean-Paul said, "I will not leave you again."
Those were certainly the words Kevin wanted to hear. Did he believe them? Yeah, he was pretty sure he did. Jean-Paul had come back after disappearing but that didn't change that he had split when Kevin wasn't in a position to stop him. What counted in his favor was that he'd come to check on Kevin after finding out about the new injury to Kevin's hand. What gave him more points was that he had cooked for Kevin even though they both knew Jean-Paul's culinary skills, or lack thereof, was a sore spot for him. And he had come on no notice and without being asked to today.
They both had to deal with Jean-Paul having left. They both got the fall out that came from that action. They both had to deal with Kevin's decision that they couldn't be together if Jean-Paul was just going to split again. But Jean-Paul did what he didn't necessarily have to do and came back to keep whatever he could. "Swear it on my soul?"
"Yes," Jean-Paul answered, the word leaving him slowly, carefully, like he was weighing it for truth and integrity, perhaps evaluating it for flaws. There was in uncertainty in the tone, but he was trying to figure out if he could trust himself with this in the same way that Kevin was apparently trusting him.
Kevin considered the tone when Jean-Paul answered. He'd basically just picked an alternate of swearing on your mother's grave. But he figured that if Jean-Paul believed in souls then he'd probably care about Kevin's more than his own. The almost hesitancy could have been him not sure he really wanted to swear that, or it could have been him thinking about the implications of Kevin's stipulations. Either way, Kevin nodded. The motion was so very small so it didn't dislodge Jean-Paul where his face was buried in the back of Kevin's neck. "Alright. If you're sure, then alright."
"Okay," Jean-Paul said, letting out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding. "Okay." It was quieter this time. Sometimes, language in general failed him.
Finally, Kevin began to relax incrementally. It was a slow process and he half watched the movie while it happened. Not until he'd got almost liquid and limp beneath the weight of the older man pressed to his back did Kevin speak again. "So...that mean we're dating again?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, shifting backward a bit so he wasn't laying atop Kevin so much. His weight hadn't been resting on Kevin, anyway, but Jean-Paul felt it was better to be cautiuos now. "If you do not mind giving up your freedom, of course."
"S'not really giving up freedom." There were a whole lot of things that restricted a person's freedom, like prison and caste systems. Kevin didn't think not sleeping with someone really counted. "Besides, you gave up ever bein' able to have actual intercourse sex long as you're with me. It's like a trade off. No sex for you, no sleeping for me."
"Actual intercourse sex?" Jean-Paul asked, obviously amused. "Compared to all the fake intercourse sex I have been having."
Kevin reached back blindly with his good hand and tried to swat Jean-Paul. "Compared to all the non-sex sexual activity you've been having." He paused and started to grin, though he didn't turn his head so Jean-Paul could see the expression. "And, really, we could always invest in those glass dildos if there was a real pressing need to be able to penetrate someone."
"Your fingers work well enough," Jean-Paul murmured, smiling. "And I think a white collar would work very well."
Kevin grinned. Now those were vivid memories. Happy, vivid memories. "Twenty minutes tops. That's what you got after Ah fall asleep. No nap time for you in here. Dem's da rules, Frenchie."
Snorting, Jean-Paul muttered, "Frenchie." He'd head for the living room once Kevin fell asleep. There was probably a book he could read out there.
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