Kevin & Jean-Paul | Friday afternoon
Aug. 27th, 2010 01:12 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
x-wither.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
xp_logsJean-Paul meets Kevin at the Burn Clinic in NYC. From there they debate God's proprietary claim, wander off to an art gallery, are traumatized by splatter art, debate Jean-Paul's level of shady accomplishment (with no help at all from Vanessa on the phone) and end up at Jean-Paul's secret - and entirely empty - apartment in the city for a much needed nap.
Bandage changes were the highlight of Kevin's life. Really. He got to have the improvised bandages removed, cleaned, dried and in the mean time he got to stare at his completely messed up looking hand. And he got to come all the way to the city for it! He was the luckiest cupcake in the pan, wasn't he? At least this time he wasn't stuck with them smothering his hand with honey. This time he got to stare at his skin grafted palm while he waited for them to deal with the bandage clean up. "It doesn't look hairy."
"This is because it is not hairy," Jean-Paul said, quirking a smile. "And so it would not look that way." He flipped a few more pages in the magazine he was reading, but the article about the young actor who got poison oak everywhere was verging toward vulgar and he thought it would be a better idea to actually pay attention to what his heavily medicated boyfriend was saying about his palm. Closing the magazine, he quirked an eyebrow and asked, "Does it hurt now?"
"They'd be really crappy pain meds if it hurt. Between the hand and the ribs Ah'm almost tingly." He didn't actually tingle, but Kevin felt like he should be tingling. Maybe he could imagine the tingle vividly enough to induce feeling it. It'd be kinda cool if his hand was tingly.
Kevin held his skin grafted hand out toward Jean-Paul. He wiggled the fingers very slightly because he wasn't supposed to move his hand at all really and he didn't want to accidentally rip his thigh meat off his hand. That'd be awkward. "Wanna touch my thigh?" he asked with a mischievous grin.
Jean-Paul smirked at that, shifting over until his fingertips could move up the inside of the thigh that the skin graft hadn't been taken from. "If I wanted to touch your thigh, I would do so here."
The grin full of mischief quickly disappeared beneath the teeth that bit into Kevin's lower lip. "That's..." he was going to say cheating but Kevin wasn't actually sure it qualified as cheating. There had to be a rule that you broke in order for it to be cheating, right? "Distracting."
"Oui, I know," Jean-Paul said, smirk intensifying for a moment before he let his hand fall away. "And I am not sorry for it."
Kevin's eyes tracked the hand that left his thigh, head tilting as they did. "Yeah...me neither." In fact, he could have stood having that hand there a bit longer. Then again, the eventual reaction that would come from that could turn out to be inconvenient so maybe the hand was better off somewhere else. Somewhere not Kevin.
"We are waiting for your bandages, non?" Jean-Paul looked at the skin grafted palm, since Kevin was still holding it out for him to see. The stitches looked odd, but then he realised it was because they were made of some thin, metallic something or other - the metal looked strange, stitched that way. He was just glad it didn't hurt.
"Yeah. They basically gotta wash the ooze and stuff out, then dry 'em and then they're tryin' soakin' 'em in antibiotic and antiseptic stuff in hopes some of it can seep into the edges." Kevin indicated the area where his damaged flesh met the clean expanse of skin they'd taken from his inner thigh, which was now also stitched, bandaged and healing as well. He just kept on adding stuff that needed healing, didn't he? That healing factor thing would come in real handy right about now. "When they're clean and dry and stuff they'll come back, re-wrap me, inject more antibiotic into the hand and Ah can wander off since the doc already did all her poking she needed to do."
"So long as it is all clean when they return it," Jean-Paul said, nodding. Having to reuse bandages seemed odd to him, but Kevin's mutation meant that a great many things he, himself, would have taken for granted had to be carefully worked around. "Where would you like to wander, then, once they have finished with you here?"
"Somewhere with pretty colors?" Kevin was kidding, playing up the medicated sound of his voice intentionally. After a moment he smiled and tried to think more seriously about it. "There's a gallery with some stuff Ah wanted to see. Not sure Ah can fully appreciate it in my current...state, or that Ah should even really hang around potential groups or crowds or whatever, though."
"We could go," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "Just to see if it is crowded, oui? And if not, then a visit would not hurt." He fiddled with the pages on the magazine, then set it aside entirely and stood up so he could walk around behind Kevin. "Are you going to need to ice your ribs in the middle of the gallery?"
Head tilting backward to follow Jean-Paul as the older man moved along behind him, Kevin smiled slowly. "Why, are you lookin' forward to the show? Ah'm almost normal-people colored now."
Shifting Kevin's hood up, Jean-Paul pressed a kiss to the Southerner's temple, then pulled a sad face and said, "I was only just beginning to like the greens and yellows."
"Don't worry, Ah'm still green and yellow. Just not purple and maroon no more." Kevin told him this in a reassuring tone, as if this were a great consolation to the Quebecois.
Jean-Paul sighed melodramatically, hip propped against the exam table behind Kevin. "There is nothing I can do for this, I know. Still. It saddens me."
"That Ah'm not gonna be yellow and green for much longer? Don't worry, Ah'm an artist. Ah can paint it all back on for you." He probably couldn't do it well, especially not with percocet coursing through his blood. Since Jean-Paul was behind him and still, though, Kevin took the opportunity to let his head fall back until it rested against the other man. "Least now we know you've got a weird healing bruise fetish."
"Oui, we know that now, at least," Jean-Paul agreed, quirking another smile. "We can do many interesting things with this in the future, I am sure." Of course, right as he said that, the doctor turned back up, followed by a nurse. It wasn't like he planned on moving, though, since Kevin was leaning against him.
The doctor paused when she saw the tableau that awaited them in the room. Her head tilted very slightly to the side, eyes widening a bit to match the movement. "Hello..."
"This is Jean-Paul," Kevin explained. His eyes turned up to look at Jean-Paul. "Your name's too long. You need a shorter one that's quicker to say." His eyes went back to the doctor. "It's okay, he's my boyfriend and since Ah ain't got any family he gets to stay, right?"
He looked a little hard to argue with. He also looked incredibly comfortable which wasn't something the doctor had witnessed with the young man in any of their appointments thus far. With the explanation of who the other man was Dr. St. Lawrence relaxed and smiled. "Of course he may stay. All we really need to do is bandage you back up anyhow." She gestured toward Kevin and the nurse came forth to apparently do the bandaging.
Dr. St. Lawrence turned her attention to the man standing and serving as pillar for her patient. "You're making sure he doesn't try to use his hand for anything, I hope. No stretching, clutching, picking things up or using it at all really."
"So far, he has only tried to move his television with the power of his mind. That did not work so well, and so I moved it for him." Jean-Paul offered the woman a smile. "But oui, I am seeing that he does not use it." Then he grinned. "It helps that he is easily distracted."
Dr. St. Lawrence laughed at that and raised a critical looking eyebrow in Kevin's direction. "I wouldn't suggest attempting to move anything else with the power of your mind."
"You never told me not to," Kevin pointed out while he watched the nurse wrapping his hand back up. He'd gone very still and very tense when her hands had extended toward him.
"This is quite true. In the future consider yourself prohibited, Mr. Ford."
Kevin gave the doctor a salute with his good hand as he glanced up at her. His eyes immediately returned to the nurse and he kept himself dedicatedly against Jean-Paul as much as he could.
The doctor returned her attention to the boyfriend. "I promise to keep him easily distracted if you'll promise to continue looking out for him when I can't see him. He's on a pretty heavy dose of his medication considering his injuries and I wouldn't want to see him exacerbate his condition and prolong his healing merely from being too medicated to think twice about something. Like climbing several flights of stairs." At the last she cast a wary eye at her patient again.
"There is an elevator," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "And he shuffles, so I think there is not so much danger of him walking the stairs, oui?" He offered the doctor a smile, one hand settling at Kevin's waist as the younger man continued to tensely watch the nurse. "Mostly, he sleeps. This is best for him, is it not?"
"Yes, sleep is best. You may want to remind your boyfriend every so often of where that elevator is, though." Her eyes were still fixed on Kevin.
Kevin raised his good hand in surrender. "It was late and Ah was confused and sleepy and really hungry! Ah don't ever use the elevator so Ah forgot 'bout it."
Dr. St. Lawrence's eyes moved back up to Jean-Paul with a raising eyebrow. "You see what I mean?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, nodding. He rested his chin on Kevin's head. "No stairs for you, mon aime. The doctor, she says as much."
Kevin frowned but obviously didn't mean it. "But Ah like the stairs."
"Until the doctor says otherwise, the stairs do not like you."
Kevin just kept frowning until the nurse finished with the Kevin-proof bandaging and started on the gauze. He relaxed just a little.
"You'll need to make an appointment for a week from now for another bandage change and evaluation of your healing," the doctor told Kevin. "It's possible that we won't have to replace the bandages next week and we'll be able to leave them off."
"Really?" Kevin couldn't help the hopeful note.
"Mmhmm," she nodded and looked over his chart briefly. "The graft area should be healed enough from the surgery for it by then. The stitches won't be able to come out for another week or so after that so we can be sure it took well enough."
Jean-Paul watched the nurse as she finished wrapping gauze around the Kevin-proofed cloth. "And the place on his leg that the skin for his hand came from," he said, directing the question toward the doctor. "Is there anything special that must be done to care for it?"
The doctor nodded. "It's not bandaged but it needs to be exposed to open air as much as possible to aid healing. Also it should be warm compressed twice a day to help draw out any potential infection. Otherwise he just needs to keep up his antibiotic regiment."
"I will remember," Jean-Paul said, quirking another smile. "Even if Kevin does not. He is very good about setting his alarms for his medicines, though. A different ringtone for each." Looking down at Kevin, he asked, "You are ready for the gallery now?"
"Peas for beeping, King Nothing for pain pills," Kevin mumbled. "With yogurt. King Nothing means yogurt, too." Obviously his coherence was waning again. His doctor just watched him with an amused sort of smile.
It wasn't until the nurse was on the other side of the room and on her way out the door before Kevin looked up at Jean-Paul. "Yeah, Ah'm ready. Invalid-to-go!"
Dr. St. Lawrence tried very hard not to laugh and simply said, "I'll see you in a week, Kevin," before exiting the room herself.
Jean-Paul suppressed the urge to snort and, instead, carefully backed away from the table so he wouldn't unbalance Kevin. "Let us go, then. I do not know where the gallery is, but I am sure we will find it easily. So long as you remember directions and things." At the worst, he could always use his mobile to get directions.
Kevin sat upright on his own as Jean-Paul inched away and then stood up. By the time he was heading out the exam room door he had turned toward Jean-Paul. He wore an expression of confusion, complete with knit brow. "Why would we want directions and things? That takes away the fun!"
"Because I do not want to be lost in the city." True, being lost was something of a relative term for him, since all he had to do was fly up and get his bearings there, but that was besides the point.
Pouting ensued. "Killjoy."
"I am a preserver of your health - your thigh will not be so thankful, I think, if you use it so much without resting."
"Who said it wasn't gonna get any rest? Wander, get lost, sit down for a while, wander, get lost some more, sit down again. It's a fool proof plan, Ah tell ya."
"This is not a foolproof plan," Jean-Paul replied, but he didn't actually sound bothered as they left the burn clinic. "This is a plan that will likely involve getting a taxi."
"Taxis are for suckers," Kevin proclaimed. "And hot chicks. Hot chicks always manage to get taxis." He looked down at himself and then eyed Jean-Paul. "We don't count."
Jean-Paul pointed at his nose. "No," he said. "We do not."
Kevin's nose twitched on contact. "Ah thought you were anti-car?"
"I am," Jean-Paul said. "I do not like them at all. And so I do not mind that we do not count as hot chicks, as you say."
"So that mean you're gonna stumble 'round with me and get lost or you're gonna make me take a cab and you're gonna follow along?" Kevin's eyes turned upward as he spoke and he traced a line through the sky as if following Jean-Paul flying overhead.
"I will walk with you to make sure you do not stumble," Jean-Paul said, waiting to see which way Kevin would go when they got to the first intersection. "We will see how far we get, oui?"
"We're gonna get to China," Kevin proclaimed sagely, or as safely as one could while under the influence of pain medication. Odds were more likely they'd end up in Chinatown than China, but Kevin didn't need to fixate on that. He simply turned right at the intersection and walked like he knew where he was going. That was the key, if you looked like you knew where you were going then people didn't question you much on it. At least that was the working theory here.
"Mmhm..." Kevin nodded and held up his bandaged right hand. "Ah had 'em embed a chip. They just gotta scan my hand at the gate or whatever. Nifty, huh?" He managed to keep an utterly serious look on his face as he said it even with the odd look he got from someone passing him by.
"Liar," Jean-Paul said, laughing softly. "They do not do that, not even here, in the United States." They took another turn, to the left this time, and he wondered how long it would be before Kevin decided to take a rest. They had a limited amount of time, after all - only so much time before the Southerner needed to redose on his medication.
"Times are a changin'!" Kevin proclaimed in a thick, Southern accent more reminiscent of a stereotypical Baptist preacher than his real accent. He continued without letting up on the accent. "They will be able to scan your whole life in your hand soon! They will make us robots. They will make us tools of the Devil!"
Tone dry, Jean-Paul said simply, "You are a tool of the Devil, then, are you not? If they have put this chip in your hand already."
Kevin nodded, the most forlorn look on his face that he could manage...which wasn't very forlorn at all really. "Ah've been taken by the Devil. But it's okay. Ah can be reclaimed for Jesus! Ah can rise above this unholy temptation and give my life to Jesus still!"
Leaning in close, Jean-Paul whispered against the cloth of Kevin's hood, "I do not think Jesus would like the thoughts I think when I look at you. Are you so sure you would like to be reclaimed?"
Thinking about what thoughts those could be gave Kevin a whole slew of thoughts of his own. "Mm...no one said nothin' 'bout you givin' your life to Jesus," he muttered, clearly distracted.
"And what of the thoughts you sometimes think when you look at me?" Jean-Paul asked, grinning at the evident distraction in Kevin's voice now. "I am thinking Jesus, he would not like those any better than my thoughts."
"What d'you mean sometimes?" Kevin's eyes slid to the side, trying to see Jean-Paul past the edge of his hood. "'Sides...Jesus is all 'bout love anyway. He won't mind. Ah mean, ain't like we're havin' sex outta wedlock. Can't have wedlock and can't have sex with me anyway."
Jean-Paul grinned. "This depends on your definition of sex, does it not?"
He stopped short of the shifty eyes, but the inclination for them was there. "We're talkin' in the classical sense of the word. Y'know, penetrative intercourse and all that." After a brief pause Kevin added, "Fingers don't count."
"I think they do," Jean-Paul said, still grinning.
"If they did," Kevin began quite seriously, "then girls everywhere are havin' sex with themselves instead of masturbatin'."
The look on Jean-Paul's face was comical, the way it had gone from mischievous to vaguely disgusted at that imagery. He winced at the metaphorical whiplash to his poor nose, then said, "I will give up sex now, merci. God may have my soul."
There was no power on earth that could have stopped Kevin from laughing at that expression. "See, Ah knew you'd come. To God. Or Jesus. Or someone."
"I am not happy about it," Jean-Paul said, looping an arm over Kevin's shoulders as they took another left down a busy street. "My soul goes grudgingly to God or Jesus or someone only because you have scarred me with the images in my mind now of girls having sex with themselves."
Kevin grinned, the expression full of mischief. "No one said you had to go and have mental images 'bout it." He leaned into Jean-Paul, grateful for something to lean against and for the fact that the older man could navigate them both better than Kevin could himself. That whole one foot in front of the other thing only went so well for so long for him. His head also tilted back so Kevin could attempt to speak quietly into Jean-Paul's ear. "You could always just think 'bout me havin' sex with myself instead..."
"This is what I was doing!" Jean-Paul said, snorting softly. "And then you said the thing with the girls and you turned into a girl in my mind and it was not so good. Especially with your talk of ovaries last week."
"You're very easily traumatized, aren'tcha?" Kevin directed the pair of them around a corner to the right and was mostly sure they were getting close to where they needed to be. "If Ah knew you were that easy then...Ah dunno, Ah'd talk less."
"You would not," Jean-Paul said, certainty evident in his voice. "You enjoy traumatising me."
"Ah'm not sure 'traumatizing' is the word Ah'd use for what Ah like to do to you." Kevin grinned, widely and without shame.
Pointing his finger at the end of Kevin's nose again, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Tsk. Your God, he does not like you to have these thoughts. It was written down, even. In a very large book."
"Pfft." Kevin waved a hand dismissively, but also stumbled since he was busy being cross-eyed staring at the fingertip at the end of his nose. "God wants me to be happy. Makin' you make them noises makes me happy. So God endorses it. If He didn't then he wouldn't make it feel good." He smiled at his own sound reasoning.
"Ridiculous," Jean-Paul said, momentarily distracted from their banter by the sudden need to make sure Kevin stayed upright. "Doing drugs feels good and that is not allowed." He considered that for a moment. "Someone told me once that it was this way, maybe, because we were meant to overcome the temptation. That seems more ridiculous to me."
Kevin shook his head in apparent disagreement. "Drugs feel bad to your soul." He said this as if it were all the argument one needed against the Quebecois' points.
"Your soul does not seem to feel so bad," Jean-Paul said.
"Are you accusin' me of bein' a drug addict? Ah don't do drugs. Ah'm on pain killers that Ah'm not abusin' for entirely medical purposes." Now it was Kevin's turn to point a finger at the end of Jean-Paul's nose. "There's a difference."
"This does not change the fact that you are taking drugs and they are not hurting your soul."
"Medication," Kevin argued still, "not drugs. You're very hung up on accusin' me of bein' a bad person, aren't you?"
"Only because if you are too good, I do not get to keep you. God or Jesus or whatever will keep you."
"Ain't gonna happen. God can't go an gimme you and then take you back. Ain't no take backs in heaven."
"Yeah," Kevin answered and started toward the door without letting the previous thread of conversation go. "But if Ah get taken away it still does the same thing, don't it? Still don't have you. And He can't do that."
"I think He can do whatever He likes," Jean-Paul said, following Kevin inside. "This is the point of being God."
"Mm...nope, gave that up when He gave us free will." A gloved thumb traced a crescent shape over Jean-Paul's neck, outlining half of the scar there. "Mine. He ain't changin' that."
Jean-Paul sort of sucked when it came to religious debates, even ridiculous ones, and so he stopped trying to prove a point - he wasn't even sure he'd had a point to begin with. More, he'd just wanted to do a bit of teasing. Still, he didn't manage to keep himself from saying, "Your argument is that you do not want it to be one way and so God will not make it be this way. This does not make so much sense."
"Nah, my argument is that God's a stand up guy and while He does stuff we don't like and don't understand He's not about to give us a choice and not make us live with it. If we make one He doesn't like then we get the consequences, He's not going to just change the rules. That's the Devil's territory, bein' all shady and stuff. God's pretty direct. If Ah end up in hell 'cause Ah chose you," Kevin shrugged a little. "It's my choice. Ah knew the risks. Ah chose you anyway."
Sometimes Jean-Paul wished he believed in God. It was all well and good, theorizing, but in the end... he had nothing to back up his theories with. No conviction, no faith - he believed they were alone in the universe, not even the clockmaker to stand back and watch his invention spin itself into oblivion. "You are still very medicated," Jean-Paul said, nudging Kevin toward a bench at the center of the gallery. "How is your leg?"
"Leg-like. Has bones, skin, well mostly, ligaments, tendons, tissue, blood...still attached." He sat down while he rattled off the list of various bits that were in the leg. "Ah can name the muscles and the bones. They make you learn that stuff in anatomy art classes." Kevin squinted at Jean-Paul, then continued to squint all down the other man's body. "Ah could draw you pretty accurately without your skin."
"You did that once," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "I like me with my skin on, oui? You do, also." He settled on the bench next to Kevin. "But I meant is it hurting, your leg. Where the skin graft came from."
"Nah. Mostly it's just itchy." Kevin tugged on his hood, making sure it was over his head as far as possible, then sort of fell over to the side until he was using Jean-Paul's shoulder as something of a pillow. "Well, the stitches are probably the itchy part. And the sorta pokey part. The leg's just there. Feelin'...weird."
"This is probably not so good for your ribs," Jean-Paul commented, though he only shifted a little so he could try to make the half-slouch Kevin had going on more comfortable.
"They'll get over it." A moment later Kevin was up and moving across the gallery toward a sculpture. It was stonework, but it looked more like it belonged in an Escher painting than in three dimensions. Kevin was suddenly much more alert as he stared at the sculpture, fingers hovering near the stone where they traced its weaving lines without touching. "Ah can't do stuff like this," he whispered, voice reverent.
Standing, Jean-Paul followed Kevin, brow quirking as he walked around the other side of the sculpture. "Because it is stone and you work with metal?"
The Southerner nodded slowly. "Ah can do some stuff in stone. Ah did somethin' for Angel 'round January or February. It was Catseye's idea." It was Catseye's idea because he'd had a pining sort of crush on Angel at the time. It was weird how long ago that felt emotionally. "But stone ain't really my medium. Ah could do something like this in wood with my mutation. If Ah planned it out well enough Ah could probably do it in metal. But that ain't all of it either." Kevin's head tilted, looking at the stone structure from a different perspective. "This just ain't how my brain works. Ah'd never think of somethin' this...intricate. Ah tend to be a lot more simple and windin' and knotted. This is more like a puzzle. Ah'm not real good with them."
"Mm..." Jean-Paul walked around the piece, wishing he could touch it and knowing that wasn't allowed - he could have followed the lines of it better if he was touching it. "It is beautiful."
"Yeah it is." Kevin was in awe, and also just a little bit envious. He'd have loved to be able to do this sort of surrealism but it just wasn't his strength. When it came to sculpture he was almost entirely an abstract sort of guy. That's just what came out of his hands, out of his head. He might have been a little off base calling his art simple, but to Kevin it was. It wasn't intricate the way this was, but then the most complicated things seemed simple at first, didn't they?
Kevin appeared to have fallen in love with the piece of stonework. Jean-Paul had to smile a little at that. He was more of a 2D man himself, preferring paintings and sketches to most sculptures. So he wandered off a bit to see what he could find, keeping Kevin in sight even as he peered through a doorway to the left. Blinking, he stepped back out of the room he'd just entered - there were three canvases, very large ones, covered in splotches of different coloured paint.
Fallen in love was certainly a fairly accurate representation of how Kevin felt about that sculpture. If he could have afforded to buy it he would have without a second thought. Unfortunately, that wasn't really something he could afford so he settled for trying to commit it to his currently hazy memory. He also made a mental note to inquire after the artist with the girl sitting at the desk near the door. Just as he was having that thought he realized he was alone at the sculpture. "Jean-Paul?" Blinking, Kevin looked around and peered around the stonework in front of him. He found a very befuddled looking Quebecois off at the other side of the room but did not drew nearer to the man.
"Ah... oui?" Jean-Paul stuck his head back into the room full of splotches just to make sure he'd seen that right, then looked back at Kevin. "I like the sculpture better," he said, attempting to keep his voice low enough that the girl at the front wouldn't hear him. He didn't want to offend anyone, but... the splotches were orange and pink and green. They hurt his eyes to look at them.
Eyebrows knitting together, Kevin's expression turned thoroughly confused. "Me too. Better'n what?" He looked around, seeming to notice the paintings on the wall for the first time. Kevin was the sort who would always gravitate toward the sculptures and then pay attention to the paintings only after he was done appreciating the others. He didn't like the paintings that much either, actually. They were all sorta typical...
Jean-Paul pointed through the door at the first of the splotches. "Better than those." He didn't want to step on other people's ideas about what art was, but the pink and green and orange combination was really beginning to make his eye twitch.
Kevin shuffled along toward where Jean-Paul stood. For once he wasn't shuffling due to a distracted, disconnected sort of view on where he was going. He really wasn't sure he wanted to see what laid through the door that was being pointed at. When Kevin got there and saw the splatter art his nose wrinkled. "That ain't my sorta art movement. At least pink and green are complementary colors?" The orange didn't really fit but he was trying real hard to find a positive here.
Voice lowering just a bit more, Jean-Paul said, "Pink and green make people go insane. This is why they are not allowed to paint prisons these colours any more."
"In psychology yellow is the color of insanity," Kevin told Jean-Paul sagely. "Maybe the artist should have used yellow instead of orange. Then the paintings could drive people bat sheee-uh....crazy."
Turning slowly to look at Kevin, Jean-Paul fought a smirk. "Could drive people what?"
Kevin's reply came quietly and sheepishly. "Insane?"
Hooking his arm over Kevin's shoulders again, Jean-Paul steered them away from the room full of splotches. "That is not what you said."
"Crazy?" The hopeful note was hard to mistake for anything else. "Drive 'em crazy? Ah think the percocet's gettin' to my brain-mouth coordination. Yeah, that's it." It was too bad for Kevin's "theory" that he was more coherent now than he had been twenty minutes prior.
"I think not," Jean-Paul said, taking one of the cards from the front desk as he directed their steps toward the door. "On all the fronts of what you just said."
"What, it didn't drive you crazy? Ah saw your eye twitchin'." They were out the door and back on the sidewalk before Kevin had realized they'd even been heading for the door. "Am Ah bein' sent home for bad behavior?"
"My eye was twitching, as you say. It was best to leave before the rest of me began to twitch also."
Kevin was frowning, but he was also dutifully being led away from the gallery by the Quebecois. "You're gonna remember to remind me, right? 'Bout the sculpture bein' there?" He even prodded Jean-Paul in the side with a finger. "You won't forget?"
"I will not forget," Jean-Paul said. Then he showed Kevin the card he'd taken from the front. "You see? I am ahead of you already."
"Don't get used to it. Ah'll be back on my game in...five weeks." That seemed like a very long time from now when Kevin thought about it like that. His feet were also started to drag a bit as he walked. "Ah should probably call my ride back to the mansion. Sorta need to fall over for a while. Probably sleep off the exhaustion." Healing, apparently, required a lot out of his body because Kevin could only be so active for so long before he felt the acute need to collapse. Or maybe that was the percocet talking.
"Do you have medicine with you?" Jean-Paul asked, pulling back a bit so he could look at Kevin. "I have an apartment here, in the city. It is closer than the mansion, if you would like to see it."
An eyebrow probably would have darted up if Kevin wasn't feeling so tapped for energy suddenly. Instead it just sort of moseyed on upward. "Since when d'you have an apartment? Why didn't Ah know you had one?"
"Since a while ago," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "And I do not know - I do not use it, you see? I thought I would use it more, when I was first at the mansion again. But then... well." He shrugged. "But you did not answer the question - do you have the medicine? It would be a pointless offer, would it not, if you got there and were in pain."
Kevin's eyes had narrowed and now he was mostly squinting at Jean-Paul. He pointed a finger at the tip of the older man's nose until it made contact. "You. Are shifty. And speedy. And could go get my pills even if Ah didn't have 'em." The hand that wasn't busy pointing at Jean-Paul's nose went digging into a pants pocket and came out with a pill bottle. Kevin shook it and it made the rattling sound typical of pills in a plastic bottle. "But Ah got 'em."
"Shifty?"
"Mmhm. It's like shady. Only not as good as shady. Shady's like level five. You're level two."
"Why am I a level two only?"
Kevin's finger pulled back so he could point at Jean-Paul again, this time smooshing the tip of his nose ever so slightly. "Because."
"I am more than a level two," Jean-Paul said, just ever so slightly indignant now. It was like his honour was being impinged, only he couldn't do anything about it because Kevin didn't realise he was impinging it and Jean-Paul couldn't explain just how very shady he'd been recently. He wondered if Kevin had actually believed his story about burning the bad memories along with his clothing that time at the boathouse.
"What proof have you got? C'mon, you're gonna argue for your shadyhood, on what grounds Mr. Beaubier?" The exhaustion was obviously getting to Kevin because he had just butchered Jean-Paul's name to a degree he never had before. Not even when he'd done it intentionally.
"I think we will worry about my evidence later," Jean-Paul said, lowering his arm so it was more around Kevin's waist, though he wasn't holding on so much as supporting. "Once you have slept some, oui?" He paused for a moment to get his bearings, oriented himself, and then headed down the street with a bit more purpose in his stride. His apartment wasn't so far away as it had been when they'd started at the burn clinic.
"Hell no. And give you time to come up with stuff Ah can't make you prove? Or give you time to forge proof? Pfft! Ah'm tired, Ah ain't that dumb. If you ain't got your evidence to list off now you get no upgrade. You hear me, Frenchie? No. Upgrade." He tried to stomp his foot to emphasize his point but Kevin only ended up stumbling.
Jean-Paul stopped to steady Kevin, then pulled his mobile from his pocket and hit the second speed dial. "Vanessa, ami - tell my boyfriend I am shady," he said when his friend picked up.
Vanessa pulled her phone away from her ear, stared at it for a bit, then put it back up to her ear. "Uh. You want me to tell him how you steal people's cups or how you drop dismembered bodies from very great heights?"
"The first," Jean-Paul said, handing Kevin the mobile. Maybe that would keep him distracted long enough for them to actually get to the apartment.
Kevin looked at the cell phone, confused, then at Jean-Paul, then the phone again. Eventually he put it up to his ear. "'Lo?"
"Hey there jail bait," Vanessa greeted, the smile evident in her voice.
"Ah'm not jail bait."
"Are you legal to drink yet?"
"Yeah."
"Really?" God, she'd need a new way to tease Jean-Paul about his boyfriend's age now. Maybe she'd settle for calling him a he-cougar or something. "Well then, why haven't we gotten you pissed yet?"
"Ah ain't got much of a temper." Kevin was a little confused why she'd want to get him mad. He turned to Jean-Paul. "Your friend got a rage thing?"
"What did she say?" Jean-Paul blinked, stopping them at a light and then crossing when it was safe.
"She wants to piss me off 'cause Ah'm twenty-one," He told Jean-Paul.
Meanwhile Vanessa was on the phone going, "Not pissed off, just pissed."
"She wants to piss," Kevin translated. He turned his attention back to the phone and asked, "What, like a golden shower? That's gross."
Vanessa sighed. "Oi! No. Jesus Christ, kid, how many drugs are you on?"
"Just one every eight hours. Ah've upgraded! Or is that downgraded? Uh..." Kevin tried to figure out which one that counted as but gave up. "Ah'm less medicated?"
"This is you less medicated?"
"Um...yeah. Is this you less medicated," he asked her.
"Aye, but tell your boy toy he owes me a six pack."
Kevin shifted his eyes to Jean-Paul. "She wants you to get her pissed on."
"Drunk," Jean-Paul said, snorting softly. "I owe her alcohol." Leaning over, he said into the phone, "Would you tell him I am shady now and stop speaking of liquor?"
"He's way shady, mate," Vanessa deadpanned, still trying to figure out how a six pack turned into getting a golden shower.
Kevin wasn't convinced. "What, and Ah'm supposed to believe someone just tellin' me that 'cause she wants someone to pee on her?"
"I'm not into water sports, kid."
"That's 'cause water polo's lame," Kevin agreed.
Vanessa sighed. "Your boy likes to steal cups. You shouldn't leave out the good china."
"Ah'm an orphan, what makes you think Ah got china?"
Vanessa shrugged to herself. "You're an artist right? Some say you're decent. You could make money off that."
Kevin looked at Jean-Paul, "She wants me to sell art to get money to go to China."
Vanessa sighed again. "Oi! Kid! Focus here! You're bloke's a mad shady underworld sort who steals coffee mugs for DNA and hangs out with little old ladies with blue hair."
"Blue-haired ladies are shady?" He was just getting more confused and held out the phone to Jean-Paul. "Ah think she's been starin' at them splatter paintings."
Taking the phone back, Jean-Paul asked, "What is this about blue-haired ladies?"
"I told him you hung out with the old biddies who swipe people's china," Vanessa replied casually.
"Why would I do that?"
"You said you didn't want me telling him about the dismembered bodies. I was trying to up your street cred here, homes," she deadpanned.
"Old ladies are not shady. And I do not hang out with them." Jean-Paul frowned at his phone. "You are no help."
"Hey, your boyfriend thinks I'm into water sports. I can only work with so much. It's not my fault you keep him drugged out of his mind."
"That would be the doctors," Jean-Paul said, snorting softly. "Merci, mon ami, but I will need to call you back. We are near my apartment."
"You still owe me a six pack," she reminded him. "Good luck with the doped up boy toy." Then Vanessa rang off.
Pausing outside the front of an older apartment building, Jean-Paul gestured toward it. "The top floor - for you, we will take the elevator, non?"
Kevin looked up at the building, eyes squinting the higher he got and the brighter the sun became. "So why'd you get an apartment and never use it? Why get it at all?" He took in as much as he could of the architectural design as he was led through the front door.
"Because I thought I would use it," Jean-Paul said again, waving to the man at the front desk. He picked up his mail in his free hand - credit card offers and little else, it seemed, then headed for the elevator. "And it is... good to have somewhere to go that is close, oui?"
"You're gonna abandon me for your apartment when you get all legal to be snoopy, huh?" Kevin would have feigned some sort of melodrama but he was too tired for it. Instead he stared at the ceiling of the elevator. "You ever wonder if they make the ceilings mirrored just for the people foolin' around in the elevator?"
"I believe they do this so it seems larger and people who do not like being in small spaces, it does not bother them so much," Jean-Paul said, also glancing upward. This was the second time he'd ever used the elevator. Usually, he just used the window. It wasn't like he had to worry about burglars, given how high up his apartment was. "I will not be abandoning you. You said yourself, I am speedy. It is not so difficult to get from the mansion to the city when I fly."
"Speedy Gonzales was Mexican," Kevin informed Jean-Paul. "You need to talk to your union about having more diverse representation. The only French mascot is Pepe Le Pu and he's busy representin' the smelly folk of the world. You wouldn't want him as your mascot anyway." Kevin was still staring at the ceiling as the elevator moved upward and he spoke. "How long's it take?"
"We are almost there," Jean-Paul said, watching as the lights on the buttons lit and then faded. When they arrived at his floor, he stepped out and led the way to his door. "It is not so nice, of course. There is not so much furniture." Just the bed in the bedroom, still without a frame, a nightstand, a lamp. He did have a couch, at least, though the only things of value in the place were obviously the pieces of artwork he'd hung in all the rooms except the bedroom.
The rest of the place, though - it seemed almost transitory. A stop partway along someone's route to somewhere else.
Kevin broke off from Jean-Paul and wandered through the mostly empty apartment. "Still don't spend no time here, huh?" He was willing to bet all the kitchen had was take out cartons, microwaveable stuff and stuff that didn't need cooking, like produce and milk. He paused in front of a wall in the living room opposite the couch. There familiar drawings were framed. They were the drawings Kevin had done after he'd found Jean-Paul in the boathouse burning clothes. "Wondered where they ended up when you took off."
"I brought them with me," Jean-Paul said, though he obviously didn't need to, since the pictures were right there. "I spent more time here, recently, before going back to sleep on your couch at the mansion."
"How much time is 'more'? 'Cause it barely looks like you've moved in. 'Cept the stuff on the walls, anyway." Stuff on walls usually went up last, after everything was in and organized. After the place was livable. At least Kevin was pretty sure that's how these things worked. Kevin wandered along the walls, looking over his own art that was framed like there it was, something important, and the other pieces, not all of which he'd seen before. He got to the door to the bedroom and simply followed along the wall through it and around the room, paying less attention to what lay inside it than what was on the walls. Or rather what wasn't.
"More... it is a relative term, non?" Jean-Paul shrugged off his jacket and tossed it at the couch, then went to lean against the door frame of the bedroom. "There is nothing of interest here, I think. Except the bed, maybe, if you are still tired."
"Why nothing on the walls?" He turned and leaned against the wall, hood safely up to protect it from his hair. "Ah mean, if you don't use glass frames you could still put something up. Wakin' up to empty walls is sorta depressin', ain't it?"
"I do not want to risk it," Jean-Paul said with a shrug. "It is nicer to wake up to bare walls than broken frames and battered artwork, I think."
"Prints in matte frames," Kevin told him. "You're not gonna batter 'em. It's like pressing cardboard against the wall really hard. Just gonna end up flatter."
"Are you going to criticise my decor or take your medicine and sleep for a bit?" Jean-Paul was smiling as he asked, though, brows raised teasingly.
"Not due for meds for a while." Kevin was eying the bed as he spoke. He was tired. He wanted nothing more than to just pass out for a few hours or so. But there was one potential problem. "Is it Kevin-proof?" There was no reason it would be. In fact, it would be a lot easier for Jean-Paul to buy sheets if it wasn't. He could always strip off the tee shirt he had on under his hooded shirt and use that as a sort of pillow case so nothing decayed away beneath him. Kevin just wasn't sure how restful sleep would be if he was worrying about how Jean-Paul would be down a bed if he messed up.
Quirking a smile, Jean-Paul nodded. "Oui. I thought it would be good to have two sets of sheets, you see? So sleep for a bit. Your phone, it will remind you when you need the medication."
Being in the midst of mentally preparing himself for really restless sleep, Kevin was more than a little surprised to hear that the bed was a Kevin-friendly zone. It showed plainly on his face. "You don't spend any time here and you only spent more time here after you ran away from the mansion...but the bed's Kevin-friendly?" An eyebrow quirked and he was clearly confused about it all.
"I bought two sets for the mansion," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "And I brought one here when I ran away. Because sleeping with sheets is better, oui?" Then he smiled. "And I have told you before. I am an optimist."
"You're lucky Ah didn't tell you where you stick your optimism after you ditched out like that," Kevin grumbled, but he was leaning against the wall taking off his shoes while he did. Kevin-proofed or not, it was unlikely he'd take any of his layers off to sleep. It wasn't as comfortable, but it was an unfamiliar place. He trusted Jean-Paul and would take the man at his word if he said it was safe, but Kevin's own paranoia wouldn't let him drop all his safety measures and dive right in.
Kevin approached the bed, but paused beside it just as he was going to climb on top of it. He looked at Jean-Paul and asked, "Twenty minutes?" Then he nodded sideways indicating the bed.
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, walking over to the bed himself and pulling the sheets back. "Twenty minutes."
The Southerner just smiled and crawled into bed after Jean-Paul, using the older man as the familiar and comfortable pillow he'd become. Sometimes it was all about the little victories. Kevin considered this one of them.
Bandage changes were the highlight of Kevin's life. Really. He got to have the improvised bandages removed, cleaned, dried and in the mean time he got to stare at his completely messed up looking hand. And he got to come all the way to the city for it! He was the luckiest cupcake in the pan, wasn't he? At least this time he wasn't stuck with them smothering his hand with honey. This time he got to stare at his skin grafted palm while he waited for them to deal with the bandage clean up. "It doesn't look hairy."
"This is because it is not hairy," Jean-Paul said, quirking a smile. "And so it would not look that way." He flipped a few more pages in the magazine he was reading, but the article about the young actor who got poison oak everywhere was verging toward vulgar and he thought it would be a better idea to actually pay attention to what his heavily medicated boyfriend was saying about his palm. Closing the magazine, he quirked an eyebrow and asked, "Does it hurt now?"
"They'd be really crappy pain meds if it hurt. Between the hand and the ribs Ah'm almost tingly." He didn't actually tingle, but Kevin felt like he should be tingling. Maybe he could imagine the tingle vividly enough to induce feeling it. It'd be kinda cool if his hand was tingly.
Kevin held his skin grafted hand out toward Jean-Paul. He wiggled the fingers very slightly because he wasn't supposed to move his hand at all really and he didn't want to accidentally rip his thigh meat off his hand. That'd be awkward. "Wanna touch my thigh?" he asked with a mischievous grin.
Jean-Paul smirked at that, shifting over until his fingertips could move up the inside of the thigh that the skin graft hadn't been taken from. "If I wanted to touch your thigh, I would do so here."
The grin full of mischief quickly disappeared beneath the teeth that bit into Kevin's lower lip. "That's..." he was going to say cheating but Kevin wasn't actually sure it qualified as cheating. There had to be a rule that you broke in order for it to be cheating, right? "Distracting."
"Oui, I know," Jean-Paul said, smirk intensifying for a moment before he let his hand fall away. "And I am not sorry for it."
Kevin's eyes tracked the hand that left his thigh, head tilting as they did. "Yeah...me neither." In fact, he could have stood having that hand there a bit longer. Then again, the eventual reaction that would come from that could turn out to be inconvenient so maybe the hand was better off somewhere else. Somewhere not Kevin.
"We are waiting for your bandages, non?" Jean-Paul looked at the skin grafted palm, since Kevin was still holding it out for him to see. The stitches looked odd, but then he realised it was because they were made of some thin, metallic something or other - the metal looked strange, stitched that way. He was just glad it didn't hurt.
"Yeah. They basically gotta wash the ooze and stuff out, then dry 'em and then they're tryin' soakin' 'em in antibiotic and antiseptic stuff in hopes some of it can seep into the edges." Kevin indicated the area where his damaged flesh met the clean expanse of skin they'd taken from his inner thigh, which was now also stitched, bandaged and healing as well. He just kept on adding stuff that needed healing, didn't he? That healing factor thing would come in real handy right about now. "When they're clean and dry and stuff they'll come back, re-wrap me, inject more antibiotic into the hand and Ah can wander off since the doc already did all her poking she needed to do."
"So long as it is all clean when they return it," Jean-Paul said, nodding. Having to reuse bandages seemed odd to him, but Kevin's mutation meant that a great many things he, himself, would have taken for granted had to be carefully worked around. "Where would you like to wander, then, once they have finished with you here?"
"Somewhere with pretty colors?" Kevin was kidding, playing up the medicated sound of his voice intentionally. After a moment he smiled and tried to think more seriously about it. "There's a gallery with some stuff Ah wanted to see. Not sure Ah can fully appreciate it in my current...state, or that Ah should even really hang around potential groups or crowds or whatever, though."
"We could go," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "Just to see if it is crowded, oui? And if not, then a visit would not hurt." He fiddled with the pages on the magazine, then set it aside entirely and stood up so he could walk around behind Kevin. "Are you going to need to ice your ribs in the middle of the gallery?"
Head tilting backward to follow Jean-Paul as the older man moved along behind him, Kevin smiled slowly. "Why, are you lookin' forward to the show? Ah'm almost normal-people colored now."
Shifting Kevin's hood up, Jean-Paul pressed a kiss to the Southerner's temple, then pulled a sad face and said, "I was only just beginning to like the greens and yellows."
"Don't worry, Ah'm still green and yellow. Just not purple and maroon no more." Kevin told him this in a reassuring tone, as if this were a great consolation to the Quebecois.
Jean-Paul sighed melodramatically, hip propped against the exam table behind Kevin. "There is nothing I can do for this, I know. Still. It saddens me."
"That Ah'm not gonna be yellow and green for much longer? Don't worry, Ah'm an artist. Ah can paint it all back on for you." He probably couldn't do it well, especially not with percocet coursing through his blood. Since Jean-Paul was behind him and still, though, Kevin took the opportunity to let his head fall back until it rested against the other man. "Least now we know you've got a weird healing bruise fetish."
"Oui, we know that now, at least," Jean-Paul agreed, quirking another smile. "We can do many interesting things with this in the future, I am sure." Of course, right as he said that, the doctor turned back up, followed by a nurse. It wasn't like he planned on moving, though, since Kevin was leaning against him.
The doctor paused when she saw the tableau that awaited them in the room. Her head tilted very slightly to the side, eyes widening a bit to match the movement. "Hello..."
"This is Jean-Paul," Kevin explained. His eyes turned up to look at Jean-Paul. "Your name's too long. You need a shorter one that's quicker to say." His eyes went back to the doctor. "It's okay, he's my boyfriend and since Ah ain't got any family he gets to stay, right?"
He looked a little hard to argue with. He also looked incredibly comfortable which wasn't something the doctor had witnessed with the young man in any of their appointments thus far. With the explanation of who the other man was Dr. St. Lawrence relaxed and smiled. "Of course he may stay. All we really need to do is bandage you back up anyhow." She gestured toward Kevin and the nurse came forth to apparently do the bandaging.
Dr. St. Lawrence turned her attention to the man standing and serving as pillar for her patient. "You're making sure he doesn't try to use his hand for anything, I hope. No stretching, clutching, picking things up or using it at all really."
"So far, he has only tried to move his television with the power of his mind. That did not work so well, and so I moved it for him." Jean-Paul offered the woman a smile. "But oui, I am seeing that he does not use it." Then he grinned. "It helps that he is easily distracted."
Dr. St. Lawrence laughed at that and raised a critical looking eyebrow in Kevin's direction. "I wouldn't suggest attempting to move anything else with the power of your mind."
"You never told me not to," Kevin pointed out while he watched the nurse wrapping his hand back up. He'd gone very still and very tense when her hands had extended toward him.
"This is quite true. In the future consider yourself prohibited, Mr. Ford."
Kevin gave the doctor a salute with his good hand as he glanced up at her. His eyes immediately returned to the nurse and he kept himself dedicatedly against Jean-Paul as much as he could.
The doctor returned her attention to the boyfriend. "I promise to keep him easily distracted if you'll promise to continue looking out for him when I can't see him. He's on a pretty heavy dose of his medication considering his injuries and I wouldn't want to see him exacerbate his condition and prolong his healing merely from being too medicated to think twice about something. Like climbing several flights of stairs." At the last she cast a wary eye at her patient again.
"There is an elevator," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "And he shuffles, so I think there is not so much danger of him walking the stairs, oui?" He offered the doctor a smile, one hand settling at Kevin's waist as the younger man continued to tensely watch the nurse. "Mostly, he sleeps. This is best for him, is it not?"
"Yes, sleep is best. You may want to remind your boyfriend every so often of where that elevator is, though." Her eyes were still fixed on Kevin.
Kevin raised his good hand in surrender. "It was late and Ah was confused and sleepy and really hungry! Ah don't ever use the elevator so Ah forgot 'bout it."
Dr. St. Lawrence's eyes moved back up to Jean-Paul with a raising eyebrow. "You see what I mean?"
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, nodding. He rested his chin on Kevin's head. "No stairs for you, mon aime. The doctor, she says as much."
Kevin frowned but obviously didn't mean it. "But Ah like the stairs."
"Until the doctor says otherwise, the stairs do not like you."
Kevin just kept frowning until the nurse finished with the Kevin-proof bandaging and started on the gauze. He relaxed just a little.
"You'll need to make an appointment for a week from now for another bandage change and evaluation of your healing," the doctor told Kevin. "It's possible that we won't have to replace the bandages next week and we'll be able to leave them off."
"Really?" Kevin couldn't help the hopeful note.
"Mmhmm," she nodded and looked over his chart briefly. "The graft area should be healed enough from the surgery for it by then. The stitches won't be able to come out for another week or so after that so we can be sure it took well enough."
Jean-Paul watched the nurse as she finished wrapping gauze around the Kevin-proofed cloth. "And the place on his leg that the skin for his hand came from," he said, directing the question toward the doctor. "Is there anything special that must be done to care for it?"
The doctor nodded. "It's not bandaged but it needs to be exposed to open air as much as possible to aid healing. Also it should be warm compressed twice a day to help draw out any potential infection. Otherwise he just needs to keep up his antibiotic regiment."
"I will remember," Jean-Paul said, quirking another smile. "Even if Kevin does not. He is very good about setting his alarms for his medicines, though. A different ringtone for each." Looking down at Kevin, he asked, "You are ready for the gallery now?"
"Peas for beeping, King Nothing for pain pills," Kevin mumbled. "With yogurt. King Nothing means yogurt, too." Obviously his coherence was waning again. His doctor just watched him with an amused sort of smile.
It wasn't until the nurse was on the other side of the room and on her way out the door before Kevin looked up at Jean-Paul. "Yeah, Ah'm ready. Invalid-to-go!"
Dr. St. Lawrence tried very hard not to laugh and simply said, "I'll see you in a week, Kevin," before exiting the room herself.
Jean-Paul suppressed the urge to snort and, instead, carefully backed away from the table so he wouldn't unbalance Kevin. "Let us go, then. I do not know where the gallery is, but I am sure we will find it easily. So long as you remember directions and things." At the worst, he could always use his mobile to get directions.
Kevin sat upright on his own as Jean-Paul inched away and then stood up. By the time he was heading out the exam room door he had turned toward Jean-Paul. He wore an expression of confusion, complete with knit brow. "Why would we want directions and things? That takes away the fun!"
"Because I do not want to be lost in the city." True, being lost was something of a relative term for him, since all he had to do was fly up and get his bearings there, but that was besides the point.
Pouting ensued. "Killjoy."
"I am a preserver of your health - your thigh will not be so thankful, I think, if you use it so much without resting."
"Who said it wasn't gonna get any rest? Wander, get lost, sit down for a while, wander, get lost some more, sit down again. It's a fool proof plan, Ah tell ya."
"This is not a foolproof plan," Jean-Paul replied, but he didn't actually sound bothered as they left the burn clinic. "This is a plan that will likely involve getting a taxi."
"Taxis are for suckers," Kevin proclaimed. "And hot chicks. Hot chicks always manage to get taxis." He looked down at himself and then eyed Jean-Paul. "We don't count."
Jean-Paul pointed at his nose. "No," he said. "We do not."
Kevin's nose twitched on contact. "Ah thought you were anti-car?"
"I am," Jean-Paul said. "I do not like them at all. And so I do not mind that we do not count as hot chicks, as you say."
"So that mean you're gonna stumble 'round with me and get lost or you're gonna make me take a cab and you're gonna follow along?" Kevin's eyes turned upward as he spoke and he traced a line through the sky as if following Jean-Paul flying overhead.
"I will walk with you to make sure you do not stumble," Jean-Paul said, waiting to see which way Kevin would go when they got to the first intersection. "We will see how far we get, oui?"
"We're gonna get to China," Kevin proclaimed sagely, or as safely as one could while under the influence of pain medication. Odds were more likely they'd end up in Chinatown than China, but Kevin didn't need to fixate on that. He simply turned right at the intersection and walked like he knew where he was going. That was the key, if you looked like you knew where you were going then people didn't question you much on it. At least that was the working theory here.
"Mmhm..." Kevin nodded and held up his bandaged right hand. "Ah had 'em embed a chip. They just gotta scan my hand at the gate or whatever. Nifty, huh?" He managed to keep an utterly serious look on his face as he said it even with the odd look he got from someone passing him by.
"Liar," Jean-Paul said, laughing softly. "They do not do that, not even here, in the United States." They took another turn, to the left this time, and he wondered how long it would be before Kevin decided to take a rest. They had a limited amount of time, after all - only so much time before the Southerner needed to redose on his medication.
"Times are a changin'!" Kevin proclaimed in a thick, Southern accent more reminiscent of a stereotypical Baptist preacher than his real accent. He continued without letting up on the accent. "They will be able to scan your whole life in your hand soon! They will make us robots. They will make us tools of the Devil!"
Tone dry, Jean-Paul said simply, "You are a tool of the Devil, then, are you not? If they have put this chip in your hand already."
Kevin nodded, the most forlorn look on his face that he could manage...which wasn't very forlorn at all really. "Ah've been taken by the Devil. But it's okay. Ah can be reclaimed for Jesus! Ah can rise above this unholy temptation and give my life to Jesus still!"
Leaning in close, Jean-Paul whispered against the cloth of Kevin's hood, "I do not think Jesus would like the thoughts I think when I look at you. Are you so sure you would like to be reclaimed?"
Thinking about what thoughts those could be gave Kevin a whole slew of thoughts of his own. "Mm...no one said nothin' 'bout you givin' your life to Jesus," he muttered, clearly distracted.
"And what of the thoughts you sometimes think when you look at me?" Jean-Paul asked, grinning at the evident distraction in Kevin's voice now. "I am thinking Jesus, he would not like those any better than my thoughts."
"What d'you mean sometimes?" Kevin's eyes slid to the side, trying to see Jean-Paul past the edge of his hood. "'Sides...Jesus is all 'bout love anyway. He won't mind. Ah mean, ain't like we're havin' sex outta wedlock. Can't have wedlock and can't have sex with me anyway."
Jean-Paul grinned. "This depends on your definition of sex, does it not?"
He stopped short of the shifty eyes, but the inclination for them was there. "We're talkin' in the classical sense of the word. Y'know, penetrative intercourse and all that." After a brief pause Kevin added, "Fingers don't count."
"I think they do," Jean-Paul said, still grinning.
"If they did," Kevin began quite seriously, "then girls everywhere are havin' sex with themselves instead of masturbatin'."
The look on Jean-Paul's face was comical, the way it had gone from mischievous to vaguely disgusted at that imagery. He winced at the metaphorical whiplash to his poor nose, then said, "I will give up sex now, merci. God may have my soul."
There was no power on earth that could have stopped Kevin from laughing at that expression. "See, Ah knew you'd come. To God. Or Jesus. Or someone."
"I am not happy about it," Jean-Paul said, looping an arm over Kevin's shoulders as they took another left down a busy street. "My soul goes grudgingly to God or Jesus or someone only because you have scarred me with the images in my mind now of girls having sex with themselves."
Kevin grinned, the expression full of mischief. "No one said you had to go and have mental images 'bout it." He leaned into Jean-Paul, grateful for something to lean against and for the fact that the older man could navigate them both better than Kevin could himself. That whole one foot in front of the other thing only went so well for so long for him. His head also tilted back so Kevin could attempt to speak quietly into Jean-Paul's ear. "You could always just think 'bout me havin' sex with myself instead..."
"This is what I was doing!" Jean-Paul said, snorting softly. "And then you said the thing with the girls and you turned into a girl in my mind and it was not so good. Especially with your talk of ovaries last week."
"You're very easily traumatized, aren'tcha?" Kevin directed the pair of them around a corner to the right and was mostly sure they were getting close to where they needed to be. "If Ah knew you were that easy then...Ah dunno, Ah'd talk less."
"You would not," Jean-Paul said, certainty evident in his voice. "You enjoy traumatising me."
"Ah'm not sure 'traumatizing' is the word Ah'd use for what Ah like to do to you." Kevin grinned, widely and without shame.
Pointing his finger at the end of Kevin's nose again, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Tsk. Your God, he does not like you to have these thoughts. It was written down, even. In a very large book."
"Pfft." Kevin waved a hand dismissively, but also stumbled since he was busy being cross-eyed staring at the fingertip at the end of his nose. "God wants me to be happy. Makin' you make them noises makes me happy. So God endorses it. If He didn't then he wouldn't make it feel good." He smiled at his own sound reasoning.
"Ridiculous," Jean-Paul said, momentarily distracted from their banter by the sudden need to make sure Kevin stayed upright. "Doing drugs feels good and that is not allowed." He considered that for a moment. "Someone told me once that it was this way, maybe, because we were meant to overcome the temptation. That seems more ridiculous to me."
Kevin shook his head in apparent disagreement. "Drugs feel bad to your soul." He said this as if it were all the argument one needed against the Quebecois' points.
"Your soul does not seem to feel so bad," Jean-Paul said.
"Are you accusin' me of bein' a drug addict? Ah don't do drugs. Ah'm on pain killers that Ah'm not abusin' for entirely medical purposes." Now it was Kevin's turn to point a finger at the end of Jean-Paul's nose. "There's a difference."
"This does not change the fact that you are taking drugs and they are not hurting your soul."
"Medication," Kevin argued still, "not drugs. You're very hung up on accusin' me of bein' a bad person, aren't you?"
"Only because if you are too good, I do not get to keep you. God or Jesus or whatever will keep you."
"Ain't gonna happen. God can't go an gimme you and then take you back. Ain't no take backs in heaven."
"Yeah," Kevin answered and started toward the door without letting the previous thread of conversation go. "But if Ah get taken away it still does the same thing, don't it? Still don't have you. And He can't do that."
"I think He can do whatever He likes," Jean-Paul said, following Kevin inside. "This is the point of being God."
"Mm...nope, gave that up when He gave us free will." A gloved thumb traced a crescent shape over Jean-Paul's neck, outlining half of the scar there. "Mine. He ain't changin' that."
Jean-Paul sort of sucked when it came to religious debates, even ridiculous ones, and so he stopped trying to prove a point - he wasn't even sure he'd had a point to begin with. More, he'd just wanted to do a bit of teasing. Still, he didn't manage to keep himself from saying, "Your argument is that you do not want it to be one way and so God will not make it be this way. This does not make so much sense."
"Nah, my argument is that God's a stand up guy and while He does stuff we don't like and don't understand He's not about to give us a choice and not make us live with it. If we make one He doesn't like then we get the consequences, He's not going to just change the rules. That's the Devil's territory, bein' all shady and stuff. God's pretty direct. If Ah end up in hell 'cause Ah chose you," Kevin shrugged a little. "It's my choice. Ah knew the risks. Ah chose you anyway."
Sometimes Jean-Paul wished he believed in God. It was all well and good, theorizing, but in the end... he had nothing to back up his theories with. No conviction, no faith - he believed they were alone in the universe, not even the clockmaker to stand back and watch his invention spin itself into oblivion. "You are still very medicated," Jean-Paul said, nudging Kevin toward a bench at the center of the gallery. "How is your leg?"
"Leg-like. Has bones, skin, well mostly, ligaments, tendons, tissue, blood...still attached." He sat down while he rattled off the list of various bits that were in the leg. "Ah can name the muscles and the bones. They make you learn that stuff in anatomy art classes." Kevin squinted at Jean-Paul, then continued to squint all down the other man's body. "Ah could draw you pretty accurately without your skin."
"You did that once," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "I like me with my skin on, oui? You do, also." He settled on the bench next to Kevin. "But I meant is it hurting, your leg. Where the skin graft came from."
"Nah. Mostly it's just itchy." Kevin tugged on his hood, making sure it was over his head as far as possible, then sort of fell over to the side until he was using Jean-Paul's shoulder as something of a pillow. "Well, the stitches are probably the itchy part. And the sorta pokey part. The leg's just there. Feelin'...weird."
"This is probably not so good for your ribs," Jean-Paul commented, though he only shifted a little so he could try to make the half-slouch Kevin had going on more comfortable.
"They'll get over it." A moment later Kevin was up and moving across the gallery toward a sculpture. It was stonework, but it looked more like it belonged in an Escher painting than in three dimensions. Kevin was suddenly much more alert as he stared at the sculpture, fingers hovering near the stone where they traced its weaving lines without touching. "Ah can't do stuff like this," he whispered, voice reverent.
Standing, Jean-Paul followed Kevin, brow quirking as he walked around the other side of the sculpture. "Because it is stone and you work with metal?"
The Southerner nodded slowly. "Ah can do some stuff in stone. Ah did somethin' for Angel 'round January or February. It was Catseye's idea." It was Catseye's idea because he'd had a pining sort of crush on Angel at the time. It was weird how long ago that felt emotionally. "But stone ain't really my medium. Ah could do something like this in wood with my mutation. If Ah planned it out well enough Ah could probably do it in metal. But that ain't all of it either." Kevin's head tilted, looking at the stone structure from a different perspective. "This just ain't how my brain works. Ah'd never think of somethin' this...intricate. Ah tend to be a lot more simple and windin' and knotted. This is more like a puzzle. Ah'm not real good with them."
"Mm..." Jean-Paul walked around the piece, wishing he could touch it and knowing that wasn't allowed - he could have followed the lines of it better if he was touching it. "It is beautiful."
"Yeah it is." Kevin was in awe, and also just a little bit envious. He'd have loved to be able to do this sort of surrealism but it just wasn't his strength. When it came to sculpture he was almost entirely an abstract sort of guy. That's just what came out of his hands, out of his head. He might have been a little off base calling his art simple, but to Kevin it was. It wasn't intricate the way this was, but then the most complicated things seemed simple at first, didn't they?
Kevin appeared to have fallen in love with the piece of stonework. Jean-Paul had to smile a little at that. He was more of a 2D man himself, preferring paintings and sketches to most sculptures. So he wandered off a bit to see what he could find, keeping Kevin in sight even as he peered through a doorway to the left. Blinking, he stepped back out of the room he'd just entered - there were three canvases, very large ones, covered in splotches of different coloured paint.
Fallen in love was certainly a fairly accurate representation of how Kevin felt about that sculpture. If he could have afforded to buy it he would have without a second thought. Unfortunately, that wasn't really something he could afford so he settled for trying to commit it to his currently hazy memory. He also made a mental note to inquire after the artist with the girl sitting at the desk near the door. Just as he was having that thought he realized he was alone at the sculpture. "Jean-Paul?" Blinking, Kevin looked around and peered around the stonework in front of him. He found a very befuddled looking Quebecois off at the other side of the room but did not drew nearer to the man.
"Ah... oui?" Jean-Paul stuck his head back into the room full of splotches just to make sure he'd seen that right, then looked back at Kevin. "I like the sculpture better," he said, attempting to keep his voice low enough that the girl at the front wouldn't hear him. He didn't want to offend anyone, but... the splotches were orange and pink and green. They hurt his eyes to look at them.
Eyebrows knitting together, Kevin's expression turned thoroughly confused. "Me too. Better'n what?" He looked around, seeming to notice the paintings on the wall for the first time. Kevin was the sort who would always gravitate toward the sculptures and then pay attention to the paintings only after he was done appreciating the others. He didn't like the paintings that much either, actually. They were all sorta typical...
Jean-Paul pointed through the door at the first of the splotches. "Better than those." He didn't want to step on other people's ideas about what art was, but the pink and green and orange combination was really beginning to make his eye twitch.
Kevin shuffled along toward where Jean-Paul stood. For once he wasn't shuffling due to a distracted, disconnected sort of view on where he was going. He really wasn't sure he wanted to see what laid through the door that was being pointed at. When Kevin got there and saw the splatter art his nose wrinkled. "That ain't my sorta art movement. At least pink and green are complementary colors?" The orange didn't really fit but he was trying real hard to find a positive here.
Voice lowering just a bit more, Jean-Paul said, "Pink and green make people go insane. This is why they are not allowed to paint prisons these colours any more."
"In psychology yellow is the color of insanity," Kevin told Jean-Paul sagely. "Maybe the artist should have used yellow instead of orange. Then the paintings could drive people bat sheee-uh....crazy."
Turning slowly to look at Kevin, Jean-Paul fought a smirk. "Could drive people what?"
Kevin's reply came quietly and sheepishly. "Insane?"
Hooking his arm over Kevin's shoulders again, Jean-Paul steered them away from the room full of splotches. "That is not what you said."
"Crazy?" The hopeful note was hard to mistake for anything else. "Drive 'em crazy? Ah think the percocet's gettin' to my brain-mouth coordination. Yeah, that's it." It was too bad for Kevin's "theory" that he was more coherent now than he had been twenty minutes prior.
"I think not," Jean-Paul said, taking one of the cards from the front desk as he directed their steps toward the door. "On all the fronts of what you just said."
"What, it didn't drive you crazy? Ah saw your eye twitchin'." They were out the door and back on the sidewalk before Kevin had realized they'd even been heading for the door. "Am Ah bein' sent home for bad behavior?"
"My eye was twitching, as you say. It was best to leave before the rest of me began to twitch also."
Kevin was frowning, but he was also dutifully being led away from the gallery by the Quebecois. "You're gonna remember to remind me, right? 'Bout the sculpture bein' there?" He even prodded Jean-Paul in the side with a finger. "You won't forget?"
"I will not forget," Jean-Paul said. Then he showed Kevin the card he'd taken from the front. "You see? I am ahead of you already."
"Don't get used to it. Ah'll be back on my game in...five weeks." That seemed like a very long time from now when Kevin thought about it like that. His feet were also started to drag a bit as he walked. "Ah should probably call my ride back to the mansion. Sorta need to fall over for a while. Probably sleep off the exhaustion." Healing, apparently, required a lot out of his body because Kevin could only be so active for so long before he felt the acute need to collapse. Or maybe that was the percocet talking.
"Do you have medicine with you?" Jean-Paul asked, pulling back a bit so he could look at Kevin. "I have an apartment here, in the city. It is closer than the mansion, if you would like to see it."
An eyebrow probably would have darted up if Kevin wasn't feeling so tapped for energy suddenly. Instead it just sort of moseyed on upward. "Since when d'you have an apartment? Why didn't Ah know you had one?"
"Since a while ago," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "And I do not know - I do not use it, you see? I thought I would use it more, when I was first at the mansion again. But then... well." He shrugged. "But you did not answer the question - do you have the medicine? It would be a pointless offer, would it not, if you got there and were in pain."
Kevin's eyes had narrowed and now he was mostly squinting at Jean-Paul. He pointed a finger at the tip of the older man's nose until it made contact. "You. Are shifty. And speedy. And could go get my pills even if Ah didn't have 'em." The hand that wasn't busy pointing at Jean-Paul's nose went digging into a pants pocket and came out with a pill bottle. Kevin shook it and it made the rattling sound typical of pills in a plastic bottle. "But Ah got 'em."
"Shifty?"
"Mmhm. It's like shady. Only not as good as shady. Shady's like level five. You're level two."
"Why am I a level two only?"
Kevin's finger pulled back so he could point at Jean-Paul again, this time smooshing the tip of his nose ever so slightly. "Because."
"I am more than a level two," Jean-Paul said, just ever so slightly indignant now. It was like his honour was being impinged, only he couldn't do anything about it because Kevin didn't realise he was impinging it and Jean-Paul couldn't explain just how very shady he'd been recently. He wondered if Kevin had actually believed his story about burning the bad memories along with his clothing that time at the boathouse.
"What proof have you got? C'mon, you're gonna argue for your shadyhood, on what grounds Mr. Beaubier?" The exhaustion was obviously getting to Kevin because he had just butchered Jean-Paul's name to a degree he never had before. Not even when he'd done it intentionally.
"I think we will worry about my evidence later," Jean-Paul said, lowering his arm so it was more around Kevin's waist, though he wasn't holding on so much as supporting. "Once you have slept some, oui?" He paused for a moment to get his bearings, oriented himself, and then headed down the street with a bit more purpose in his stride. His apartment wasn't so far away as it had been when they'd started at the burn clinic.
"Hell no. And give you time to come up with stuff Ah can't make you prove? Or give you time to forge proof? Pfft! Ah'm tired, Ah ain't that dumb. If you ain't got your evidence to list off now you get no upgrade. You hear me, Frenchie? No. Upgrade." He tried to stomp his foot to emphasize his point but Kevin only ended up stumbling.
Jean-Paul stopped to steady Kevin, then pulled his mobile from his pocket and hit the second speed dial. "Vanessa, ami - tell my boyfriend I am shady," he said when his friend picked up.
Vanessa pulled her phone away from her ear, stared at it for a bit, then put it back up to her ear. "Uh. You want me to tell him how you steal people's cups or how you drop dismembered bodies from very great heights?"
"The first," Jean-Paul said, handing Kevin the mobile. Maybe that would keep him distracted long enough for them to actually get to the apartment.
Kevin looked at the cell phone, confused, then at Jean-Paul, then the phone again. Eventually he put it up to his ear. "'Lo?"
"Hey there jail bait," Vanessa greeted, the smile evident in her voice.
"Ah'm not jail bait."
"Are you legal to drink yet?"
"Yeah."
"Really?" God, she'd need a new way to tease Jean-Paul about his boyfriend's age now. Maybe she'd settle for calling him a he-cougar or something. "Well then, why haven't we gotten you pissed yet?"
"Ah ain't got much of a temper." Kevin was a little confused why she'd want to get him mad. He turned to Jean-Paul. "Your friend got a rage thing?"
"What did she say?" Jean-Paul blinked, stopping them at a light and then crossing when it was safe.
"She wants to piss me off 'cause Ah'm twenty-one," He told Jean-Paul.
Meanwhile Vanessa was on the phone going, "Not pissed off, just pissed."
"She wants to piss," Kevin translated. He turned his attention back to the phone and asked, "What, like a golden shower? That's gross."
Vanessa sighed. "Oi! No. Jesus Christ, kid, how many drugs are you on?"
"Just one every eight hours. Ah've upgraded! Or is that downgraded? Uh..." Kevin tried to figure out which one that counted as but gave up. "Ah'm less medicated?"
"This is you less medicated?"
"Um...yeah. Is this you less medicated," he asked her.
"Aye, but tell your boy toy he owes me a six pack."
Kevin shifted his eyes to Jean-Paul. "She wants you to get her pissed on."
"Drunk," Jean-Paul said, snorting softly. "I owe her alcohol." Leaning over, he said into the phone, "Would you tell him I am shady now and stop speaking of liquor?"
"He's way shady, mate," Vanessa deadpanned, still trying to figure out how a six pack turned into getting a golden shower.
Kevin wasn't convinced. "What, and Ah'm supposed to believe someone just tellin' me that 'cause she wants someone to pee on her?"
"I'm not into water sports, kid."
"That's 'cause water polo's lame," Kevin agreed.
Vanessa sighed. "Your boy likes to steal cups. You shouldn't leave out the good china."
"Ah'm an orphan, what makes you think Ah got china?"
Vanessa shrugged to herself. "You're an artist right? Some say you're decent. You could make money off that."
Kevin looked at Jean-Paul, "She wants me to sell art to get money to go to China."
Vanessa sighed again. "Oi! Kid! Focus here! You're bloke's a mad shady underworld sort who steals coffee mugs for DNA and hangs out with little old ladies with blue hair."
"Blue-haired ladies are shady?" He was just getting more confused and held out the phone to Jean-Paul. "Ah think she's been starin' at them splatter paintings."
Taking the phone back, Jean-Paul asked, "What is this about blue-haired ladies?"
"I told him you hung out with the old biddies who swipe people's china," Vanessa replied casually.
"Why would I do that?"
"You said you didn't want me telling him about the dismembered bodies. I was trying to up your street cred here, homes," she deadpanned.
"Old ladies are not shady. And I do not hang out with them." Jean-Paul frowned at his phone. "You are no help."
"Hey, your boyfriend thinks I'm into water sports. I can only work with so much. It's not my fault you keep him drugged out of his mind."
"That would be the doctors," Jean-Paul said, snorting softly. "Merci, mon ami, but I will need to call you back. We are near my apartment."
"You still owe me a six pack," she reminded him. "Good luck with the doped up boy toy." Then Vanessa rang off.
Pausing outside the front of an older apartment building, Jean-Paul gestured toward it. "The top floor - for you, we will take the elevator, non?"
Kevin looked up at the building, eyes squinting the higher he got and the brighter the sun became. "So why'd you get an apartment and never use it? Why get it at all?" He took in as much as he could of the architectural design as he was led through the front door.
"Because I thought I would use it," Jean-Paul said again, waving to the man at the front desk. He picked up his mail in his free hand - credit card offers and little else, it seemed, then headed for the elevator. "And it is... good to have somewhere to go that is close, oui?"
"You're gonna abandon me for your apartment when you get all legal to be snoopy, huh?" Kevin would have feigned some sort of melodrama but he was too tired for it. Instead he stared at the ceiling of the elevator. "You ever wonder if they make the ceilings mirrored just for the people foolin' around in the elevator?"
"I believe they do this so it seems larger and people who do not like being in small spaces, it does not bother them so much," Jean-Paul said, also glancing upward. This was the second time he'd ever used the elevator. Usually, he just used the window. It wasn't like he had to worry about burglars, given how high up his apartment was. "I will not be abandoning you. You said yourself, I am speedy. It is not so difficult to get from the mansion to the city when I fly."
"Speedy Gonzales was Mexican," Kevin informed Jean-Paul. "You need to talk to your union about having more diverse representation. The only French mascot is Pepe Le Pu and he's busy representin' the smelly folk of the world. You wouldn't want him as your mascot anyway." Kevin was still staring at the ceiling as the elevator moved upward and he spoke. "How long's it take?"
"We are almost there," Jean-Paul said, watching as the lights on the buttons lit and then faded. When they arrived at his floor, he stepped out and led the way to his door. "It is not so nice, of course. There is not so much furniture." Just the bed in the bedroom, still without a frame, a nightstand, a lamp. He did have a couch, at least, though the only things of value in the place were obviously the pieces of artwork he'd hung in all the rooms except the bedroom.
The rest of the place, though - it seemed almost transitory. A stop partway along someone's route to somewhere else.
Kevin broke off from Jean-Paul and wandered through the mostly empty apartment. "Still don't spend no time here, huh?" He was willing to bet all the kitchen had was take out cartons, microwaveable stuff and stuff that didn't need cooking, like produce and milk. He paused in front of a wall in the living room opposite the couch. There familiar drawings were framed. They were the drawings Kevin had done after he'd found Jean-Paul in the boathouse burning clothes. "Wondered where they ended up when you took off."
"I brought them with me," Jean-Paul said, though he obviously didn't need to, since the pictures were right there. "I spent more time here, recently, before going back to sleep on your couch at the mansion."
"How much time is 'more'? 'Cause it barely looks like you've moved in. 'Cept the stuff on the walls, anyway." Stuff on walls usually went up last, after everything was in and organized. After the place was livable. At least Kevin was pretty sure that's how these things worked. Kevin wandered along the walls, looking over his own art that was framed like there it was, something important, and the other pieces, not all of which he'd seen before. He got to the door to the bedroom and simply followed along the wall through it and around the room, paying less attention to what lay inside it than what was on the walls. Or rather what wasn't.
"More... it is a relative term, non?" Jean-Paul shrugged off his jacket and tossed it at the couch, then went to lean against the door frame of the bedroom. "There is nothing of interest here, I think. Except the bed, maybe, if you are still tired."
"Why nothing on the walls?" He turned and leaned against the wall, hood safely up to protect it from his hair. "Ah mean, if you don't use glass frames you could still put something up. Wakin' up to empty walls is sorta depressin', ain't it?"
"I do not want to risk it," Jean-Paul said with a shrug. "It is nicer to wake up to bare walls than broken frames and battered artwork, I think."
"Prints in matte frames," Kevin told him. "You're not gonna batter 'em. It's like pressing cardboard against the wall really hard. Just gonna end up flatter."
"Are you going to criticise my decor or take your medicine and sleep for a bit?" Jean-Paul was smiling as he asked, though, brows raised teasingly.
"Not due for meds for a while." Kevin was eying the bed as he spoke. He was tired. He wanted nothing more than to just pass out for a few hours or so. But there was one potential problem. "Is it Kevin-proof?" There was no reason it would be. In fact, it would be a lot easier for Jean-Paul to buy sheets if it wasn't. He could always strip off the tee shirt he had on under his hooded shirt and use that as a sort of pillow case so nothing decayed away beneath him. Kevin just wasn't sure how restful sleep would be if he was worrying about how Jean-Paul would be down a bed if he messed up.
Quirking a smile, Jean-Paul nodded. "Oui. I thought it would be good to have two sets of sheets, you see? So sleep for a bit. Your phone, it will remind you when you need the medication."
Being in the midst of mentally preparing himself for really restless sleep, Kevin was more than a little surprised to hear that the bed was a Kevin-friendly zone. It showed plainly on his face. "You don't spend any time here and you only spent more time here after you ran away from the mansion...but the bed's Kevin-friendly?" An eyebrow quirked and he was clearly confused about it all.
"I bought two sets for the mansion," Jean-Paul said, shrugging. "And I brought one here when I ran away. Because sleeping with sheets is better, oui?" Then he smiled. "And I have told you before. I am an optimist."
"You're lucky Ah didn't tell you where you stick your optimism after you ditched out like that," Kevin grumbled, but he was leaning against the wall taking off his shoes while he did. Kevin-proofed or not, it was unlikely he'd take any of his layers off to sleep. It wasn't as comfortable, but it was an unfamiliar place. He trusted Jean-Paul and would take the man at his word if he said it was safe, but Kevin's own paranoia wouldn't let him drop all his safety measures and dive right in.
Kevin approached the bed, but paused beside it just as he was going to climb on top of it. He looked at Jean-Paul and asked, "Twenty minutes?" Then he nodded sideways indicating the bed.
"Oui," Jean-Paul said, walking over to the bed himself and pulling the sheets back. "Twenty minutes."
The Southerner just smiled and crawled into bed after Jean-Paul, using the older man as the familiar and comfortable pillow he'd become. Sometimes it was all about the little victories. Kevin considered this one of them.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}