xp_logs | Kevin & Jean-Paul | Sunday Night (Reply)

Kevin heads back to his suite to find a partially naked Jean-Paul as promised in Kyle's journal. A sort of goodbye follows.

Potentially nsfw

It didn't take very long for Kevin to head out of the library where he'd been holed up with various art books and up to his suite. There was the promise of a partially naked Quebecois in the suite, after all. When presented with the decision between a dead silent library and books of painted naked people or an actual partly or mostly naked person lingering with the painted naked people just wasn't the thing to do. Sure, Kevin and Jean-Paul had been spending more time doing their own respective things rather than being together and their dynamic seemed to have shifted to something less intense and consuming, but not everything had shifted between them.

The stairs were taken two at a time and Kevin's usual meandering pace was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't exactly in a hurry, per se. But there was certainly something he wanted at the end of the line.

Jean-Paul had closed his laptop after telling Kevin he could be in a state of undress when the younger man got back to the suite, a smile tugging the corners of his lips upward. He unbuckled his belt first, leaving it hanging for a moment as he stood and pulled his shirt off over his head. Dropping the fabric on the arm of the chair, the Quebecois stretched, ignoring the apparent creak of muscle and bone as he reached for the ceiling.

Fairly certain that Jean-Paul would have come back through the window rather than the door, Kevin was forced to stop and unlock the door to the suite. Locks could be so inconvenient at times. Once he had the door open, though, it took but a moment for his eyes to land on precisely what he'd come for. Shirtless and stretching so Kevin could watch the muscle move under his skin. He didn't even enter fully. Kevin just stood in the doorway and took his time appreciating the view as his eyes moved from the top of Jean-Paul down.

Letting his arms fall to his sides, Jean-Paul quirked a small, satisfied sort of smile and arched an eyebrow. "You were fast, mon aime. Are you sure your secondary mutation is not speed?" Then he reached for his belt and pulled it very slowly from the loops on his jeans, quirking an eyebrow as he did.

Kevin was a little too busy with his lip caught between his teeth to answer. He chose to finally drift inside the suite and let the door swing shut behind him. His messenger bag got deposited on a chair en route to Jean-Paul. The Southerner stopped a bit outside of arm's reach from the older man, though, and perched on the arm of the couch. After all, Kevin appreciated a good show and that belt was making a potentially interesting migration. "Mm....pretty sure it ain't. But never underestimate the power of an increasingly naked man."

Jean-Paul hooked his finger through the buckle and popped the button on his jeans. "Oui? And this power? It makes you stay there instead of here?" The zipper slid down with that faint, metallic click as the teeth parted and then the Quebecois tipped his head to the side just a bit before freeing the buckle from his finger and looping the belt so he could offer it to Kevin one handed.

Eyes on the offered belt, Kevin had to decide. He knew exactly what he'd end up doing with that if he took it. He'd lose his rather ideal view, but then interactivity was an acceptable trade off. "Keeps me where the view's best." Teeth trapped his lip again for a moment. "You sure you want to give me that?" There was a hint in his voice that he had clear plans for what would happen if he took it.

Jeans sliding down his hips just a bit, Jean-Paul kept his hand extended, the belt there for the taking if Kevin wanted it. "I would not offer it if I was not." Simple truth.

It was always that simple, wasn't it? Even after months of being together Kevin still had it in his head that relationships had to be more complicated and filled with secret meanings. The scars of relationships past. He stood and closed just enough space between them to reach out and take the belt. Kevin didn't speak, just kept his eyes on Jean-Paul while a gloved hand ran along the leather.

Jean-Paul's grip on the belt had been loose, at best, and he released it easily when Kevin took it. He waited for a moment, eyes on the younger man's fingers, before he looked up so he could watch Kevin. Blunted thumbnails edged beneath his own waistband, the pads catching at the material of his boxers as Jean-Paul slid them very, very slowly over his hipbones, his jeans inching lower with that slight movement.

Kevin's eyes were intent, following every small movement, every advance of those jeans toward the floor. Silent still, the Southerner began to walk around Jean-Paul in a wide arc. Distance maintained his view of the other man and kept Kevin from his reach as well. He stopped behind Jean-Paul, gaze sketching out every muscle he could see under the skin. His eyes moved from the curve of the older man's neck to the edge of his shoulder blade down the slope of his spine and lingered just below the waistband of his jeans. It was a hell of a view, and one never taken for granted.

One step was taken closer, but Kevin was prepared to shift to the side if Jean-Paul started to turn around. He wanted to be at the other man's back. Lightly, gloved fingertips grazed down from Jean-Paul's ribs to his waist.

A shiver worked its way down Jean-Paul's spine at that touch, light as it was, and he let his eyes half-close even as he continued the slow-motion slide of cloth off his body. A thought flickered through his mind that he was glad he didn't have to deal with socks, since he was almost never cold enough when inside to need to wear them, but then his attention refocused entirely on the presence behind him, the touch he could barely feel through sense-memory.

That shiver was half felt as Kevin watched the effect of it in Jean-Paul's back. He leaned forward far enough that his nose was bare millimeters from the skin of the other man's neck. The tip of his nose traced an invisible line from the nape of Jean-Paul's neck down and out over his shoulder. Kevin could feel the heat of the older man on his skin.

A hand reached around, fingers gently looping around the Quebecois' wrist. Kevin didn't so much grip the wrist as simply encircle it and guide it back behind Jean-Paul's back. His belt was wound around it in a loop.

Jean-Paul's other hand stopped moving when Kevin took hold of the first and he let his eyes close entirely. Breath on his shoulder told him vaguely where the younger man was and so he let his head fall forward slightly, exposing the mark Kevin had left on his neck so many months ago.

The belt shifted from one hand to the other so Kevin could reach forward and circle the other wrist just as he had the first. Leather looped around it, then back around the first. His hood brushed against Jean-Paul's shoulder while Kevin watched his hands weave the belt around Jean-Paul's wrists in a figure eight until he could buckle it around them.

Through his hood Kevin's forehead came to rest between Jean-Paul's shoulders, eyes fixed on the bound wrists at the base of the other man's spine. Gloved palms flattened against the other man's arms and slid up toward his shoulders. Kevin was in no hurry now that he had what he wanted and that was abundantly clear in the slow care of his movements.

Standing here, touching him, it was like the past few months had never happened. It was like they'd been just as connected and attached to one another as they'd been in the summer. Before Kevin had spent weeks doped up while his ribs healed. Before Jean-Paul got a job that kept him in the city most of the time. Before Kevin spent half his time working to win his freedom back from the courts. That contact that went past touch - past skin - was right there at the surface again. And for the first time Kevin realized it had gone missing. Because suddenly he realized he'd missed it.

Slow, steady breathing belied the acceleration of Jean-Paul's pulse as he tested the restraint, wrists flexing back and forth before relaxing again. He was not an innately patient man, but in this... in this, with Kevin, it did not seem like patience so much as a build-up of anticipation. The almost electric awareness of the younger man, the rekindling of something he hadn't even realised had gone out.

Exhaling a slow, barely audible breath, he felt himself sliding into a familiar place, an infinitely comfortable, safe place where only they existed. Jean-Paul lifted his chin again, head still tipped slightly to the side, and whispered, "Bonjour."

That single, seemingly unimportant word brought a smile ghosting across Kevin's lips. His hands rounded the curve of Jean-Paul's shoulders as he quietly replied with, "Bonjour," in an accent that wasn't quite as good as it had once been. His hands moved down Jean-Paul's chest until his fingers could slide down along the muscle of his stomach. There was something else on the tip of his tongue. Something he had taught himself in French once. But Kevin kept those words from his lips, unsure if the impulse was one he ought to follow. Instead he let his fingers find cloth and push it down the older man's body just as slowly as they'd moved over his arms and chest and stomach.

A tightness in Jean-Paul's chest loosened and he felt tension he hadn't known he was carrying bleeding from his shoulders. He wanted to turn around. He wanted to face Kevin. But he held himself still because that was part of this and he didn't want to break the moment. Goosebumps rose across his shoulders, though, and they very obviously had nothing at all to do with the temperature in the room.

Jean-Paul's jeans and boxers finally fell to the floor, leaving him bare save the belt woven around his wrists. Kevin could admit that he liked the Quebecois best without clothes. That was hardly a secret here. Fingertips traced their way back up the outsides of his thighs until they found the top edges of the V his muscles had defined. They followed until they found Jean-Paul's hip bones and it was there they finally stopped. Kevin's hands held onto the other man by his hips, his grip firm enough to be useful but light enough to barely press into the skin.

In the stillness of his hands it became Kevin's lips that wanted to move. He raised his head, careful to keep skin from brushing skin. Brief brushes of lips, contact too short for kisses to properly form, mapped a line up Jean-Paul's spine and across one shoulder. Kevin's mouth stopped precisely where they both knew it would and he wondered if eventually this scar would fade. He wondered if one day Jean-Paul would no longer carry the mark of his mouth. He whispered, "Mine. Even when you're not."

"Yes," Jean-Paul said, the word thick on his tongue because his mind had slipped into a place where English wasn't paramount, only the feel of Kevin's lips on that spot, but he needed the younger man to know, to understand. It went deeper than a scar, this thing between them. It ran deeper and affected more things than he could ever truly explain and he didn't want to imagine a time when he wouldn't be Kevin's.

Affirmation unknotted something deep in Kevin that he hadn't realized had gotten all knotted up. There was something there he couldn't quite touch, couldn't even find words for in his mind. It was a palpable sensation but it refused to be more than something he sensed. It was the rightness of this. Of them. Of this thing they did and shared between them that went beyond any description Kevin could afford. Times like this Kevin didn't think the word "relationship" adequately encompassed what they had.

They owned each other.

If they were really honest with one another, that's what it came down to. They didn't belong together, they belonged to each other. Kevin felt an inarguable surety that no matter what else ever came, this man was his. Nothing could ever change that. They could be on other sides of the planet, marry other people, not speak for decades and this man would still be his. He knew it the way a person knew they were alive.

Kevin's mouth wrapped around the scar he'd made. His teeth pressed down just enough for the skin to give way under the pressure. He didn't bite. He didn't do anything but that. Then his lips were pulled away and whispering into Jean-Paul's ear. "You're not lately," Kevin told him. "But you remember, you still are. No matter what, you're mine under it all." He wasn't really sure if Jean-Paul understood what he meant.

Jean-Paul nodded slowly because the only other option left to him was French that Kevin wouldn't understand. You marked me. I asked you to. No one else will be able to take that away, to undo it, to erase it from my skin. Ever. He didn't want them to be able to. "S'il vous plaît," he finally said, knowing this was something Kevin would understand even despite the thickened Quebecois accent. Jean-Paul wasn't even entirely sure of what he was asking for, but he needed something - contact, reassurance, something.

What he got were two words whispered so quietly that even though they were spoken into his ear Jean-Paul would need to strain to hear them. "Je t'aime."

Fingers curling backward, into the fabric of Kevin's shirt, Jean-Paul held the younger man where he was for a moment, eyes suddenly wide open. Je t'aime. Perhaps he had misheard. "Pardon?"

There was a moment of wondering if Jean-Paul really hadn't heard him or if he just wanted to make sure Kevin had meant it enough to repeat it. Either way, he repeated himself, this time more loudly but still in a whisper.

Moving carefully, Jean-Paul stepped out of his jeans and boxers where they'd fallen about his ankles and shifted until he was facing Kevin, hands still bound at the small of his back. He leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to the younger man's temple through the fabric of his hood, then murmured, "And I you." Like gold to airy thinness beat, he thought, knowing this would follow him always.