xp_logs | Kevin & Amara | Thursday morning

When Kevin comes in from a run to steal fruit from the kitchen he finds a very cranky Amara. He puts forth his best and least obvious efforts to distract her, then steals something else entirely.

"Oh for crying out loud!" Amara wasn't usually the sort of person who got cross. Sure, she had a temper, and she could be pretty stubborn sometimes, but usually over things that actually mattered. Not over a bad batch of cupcakes. She'd tested one of them - even though it hadn't risen properly - and then had promptly spat it out, realizing there was far too much salt in there. She threw the rest of the cupcake towards the bin, scowling. She made these cupcakes on a regular basis, what was wrong with her?

Kevin was coming in from running and had chosen the kitchen as an entrance point because there was likely fruit in the fridge he could steal which his own fridge was sorely lacking. What he found upon entry was Amara tossing out cupcakes. "Did they take your stuff without askin'?" He gave the cupcakes and Amara a wide berth just in case one or all of them exploded. Amara didn't look all that happy so it was possible she would explode as well.

"No," she said after taking a deep breath, pulling herself back together now that there was someone else around. "I messed the recipe somehow, there's far too much salt in them." Back to the drawing board it seemed. Maybe she'd manage to get it right if she paid more attention.

Her answer drew a questioning look from Kevin. "Ah ain't a baker at all, but it don't seem like salt's got any place in cupcakes. Maybe that's where you went wrong in the first place. Any recipe with salt in it you should toss." He nodded as if he believed he knew what he was talking about and went rifling through the fridge. "Or maybe you shouldn't bake angry the way you shouldn't talk to folk when you're angry. Anger's full of bad juju and stuff. Now you've got salty, bad jujucakes. No one likes bad jujucakes." Somehow he managed to sound very wise despite uttering moronic, made up words like jujucakes.

"No, there's supposed to be a little bit of salt in them," she replied dismissively, tipping the rest of the batch into the bin. "And I wasn't angry until the cupcakes turned out badly. I was fine before that." For certain definitions of fine. She was definitely not her usual chipper self. She took a deep breath, pausing before looking over to Kevin. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be taking this out on you."

"That's right, you should be takin' it out on defenseless cupcakes who can't try to stand up for themselves," he told her from inside the fridge. Kevin emerged moments later with an apple in one hand and an orange in the other. For a while he had avoided oranges because trying to peel them with gloves on or having to use a knife all the time became an annoyingly acute reminder that his mutation handicapped him. He'd finally gotten over that when he had gained enough control of his powers to decay just the peel off. Even if sometimes that tactic backfired on him and the end result was, well, gross. Apple peels were easier somehow.

"I don't know, they did sort of have it coming." She looked over the mess she'd made of the kitchen, and then just sighed. "I think they've won this round, though. All that effort, and all I have to show for it is a messy kitchen." Where was her cupcake deliciousness? This was entirely unfair.

"And salty cupcakes," he reminded her rather unhelpfully but also quite cheerfully. Clearly he was going to be annoying for anyone who was cranky at the moment. "You never know, maybe someone around here likes salty cupcakes. Or, you could give them to people you don't like so they think they are getting awesome, delicious homemade cupcake and instead they get pillowy saltiness instead."

"I wouldn't do that!" Amara replied rather indignantly. "Even if there was someone I didn't like. That's extremely rude." She scowled a little, starting to pack up the ingredients she hadn't put away yet. She could make a new batch, but she didn't want to waste the ingredients.

"Note to Self: Amara is not shady." Kevin nodded once and took a bite out of his apple. "You could always have let the squirrels have them or the telekinetics could use them to let the energy manipulator sorts use them for target practice. Ah'm pretty sure little things are harder to hit."

"Baked goods aren't very good for animals," she countered. "Or otherwise I would have saved them for my rat." If Amara wasn't as cranky as she was, she might have recognized that Kevin was doing exactly what she so often did - try to look on the bright side of things. But for now it was annoying.

"I could let my kitten pounce on and chase it around the suite so they don't all go to waste." He wasn't sure he should do that, but if he didn't let her eat it then maybe it would be okay. Then again, the kitten wasn't all that much bigger than the cupcake would be.

"You could," she agreed, slamming the fridge door closed. "You are the one who would be cleaning up crumbs for days, however."

"Ah'm pretty sure they make vacuums for that. There's a rumor they've got this insane suction thing goin' on that really helps with that sorta thing." He watched her placidly, eating his apple and staying out of her way. "So how come you're so pissed off? Ain't just cupcakes, right?"

"I know what a vacuum is," she snapped. "I have been living here long enough to work that out." At his question she paused, taking a deep breath as she realized how rude she was being. "There's no reason," she replied, trying to calm down a little. "I haven't made such a stupid mistake when baking since I was..." She trailed off, frowning. The clear memory she had of her mother teaching her how to bake in their kitchen in Nova Roma couldn't possibly be a true one, but she couldn't figure out how she did learn to bake. "Well, since I was very young. And I'll have you know I have a terrible temper."

"You're pissed off for no reason except that you messed up your cupcakes?" His eyebrows went up but he remained fairly unfazed by her outburst. "Yeah, Ah guess you really do have a temper if messin' up cupcakes throws you over the edge like this. You should really try some deep breathing or meditation or somethin'. Ah mean, don't you like rip up the earth and bring lava out with your powers? Usually losin' control of your temper makes powers stuff happen with lots of people. Think of how the cupcakes'll suffer if you go and turn the kitchen into a lava pit. Plus, Ah'll get all burnt up and when you calm down you'll be overcome with guilt 'cause Ah won't be pretty no more and you don't want that."

"I have things perfectly under control!" She raised a hand, which was -- okay, it was shimmering with the waves of heat emanating from her. She took a deep, sharp breath, and the heat began to recede. "I can not use most of my powers unless I am in my fireform. It is then you have to worry." She looked over to him, running a critical eye over him. "And you are not all that pretty." A smile teased at the corner of her lips, the last comment an attempt at something of a joke.

"Ah'm very pretty," he insisted. Kevin's statement was punctuated by another bite into his apple. Even has he chewed he was grinning at Amara. "And if you really didn't think Ah was then you would've kept a straighter face when you said that. Ah've got a things for fiery girls, but Ah'd really like to not be set on fire. Y'know, because on top of it marring my obvious beauty here Ah'm pretty sure it would hurt a lot. And that would suck."

"It would hurt a lot," Amara said with more of a smile. "I would not like to have to do that. But I must say--" She snapped her mouth closed for a moment before saying John's name. "You are not the only pretty person I know who likes fiery women." She finished the sentence in a different manner than she'd intended when she started, but it worked fine. If Kevin didn't notice the strange pause.

He noticed the pause, but Kevin chose not to comment on it. It could have been there for any number of reasons and pointing it out would do nothing for the flow of their banter. "Ah can understand the allure, obviously. But are you tryin' to tell me that your heart's been stolen out from under me by another? 'Cause Ah can challenge him to a duel! Or her." Kevin frowned and looked more hesitant. "It's not a her is it? 'Cause my daddy said Ah wasn't to ever hit a girl, even if she was hittin' me and it's just no good to go disobeying a man who ain't alive to lecture you about it."

"No no no, not a girl," she replied with something of a blush. "But there might be another. I don't know if I should be telling you now, if you're going to be challenging him to a duel. I wouldn't want to see either of you getting hurt on my behalf."

Kevin seemed to consider this for several moments. "Well, Ah guess if you really don't want me to challenge him to a duel then Ah won't. It wouldn't be very gentlemanly for me to go against the wishes of my fiery goddess." He grinned, because who could possibly call a girl their fiery goddess and not grin?

"I'm not a goddess," Amara said sharply. Kevin might have only been flirting, but she tended to be a little touchy in regards to religion. "But I appreciate that. It's probably best if we try to avoid silly fights if you are to retain that pretty face of yours."

Sidestepping her apparent disgruntledness over false idols, Kevin grinned and said, "See? Ah knew you thought Ah was pretty. Was that really so hard to admit? Looked real easy from over here."

"I'm simply going along with your assessment of your looks," she replied, a slight smile returning to her face. "You already know you're easy on the eyes, you don't need me to confirm that."

"Is 'easy on the eyes' better or worse than 'pretty'?" Kevin mused aloud. She was starting to smile again so Kevin figured him pretending to be sort of narcissistic was working. "And Ah don't know any such thing. Ah know one girl thinks Ah'm cute. And that you think Ah'm easy on your eyes." His smile was charming and playful at the same time. "For all Ah know your eyes could only like blondes. Or Asian guys. Or really femmy Frenchmen."

Amara laughed a little at that. "I'm sure there is more than one person that has a favourable opinion about your looks." She shook her head. "I'm not entirely sure I have a type. I haven't really paid much attention to men before recently."

"So you've been payin' attention to women?" He had all the curiosity in his voice and expression that one would expect from a guy his age. Amara plus girl love equaled hot, whether or not he had his plate full of his own people and complications.

"No!" She blushed scarlet again. "I haven't been paying attention to anyone." There was a pause. "Well, that's not exactly true. I did notice people. I just didn't act on it." She wasn't without eyes, she'd certainly looked at her fair share of attractive men. She'd just believed it was necessary not to do anything else other than look.

"'People' is gender neutral," Kevin pointed out helpfully. In his head there was Amara and there was Laura and there was a very beautiful and mostly naked togetherness going on. He kept it from showing on his face, but Mental Image Land was also Happy Land. Very, very, very happy.

His comments certainly weren't helping her blush die down any time soon. "I can recognise whether women are attractive or not, I just have never found myself attracted to one." Since apparently that needed to be made clear. "But I am attracted to men." Just to clarify things even more.

Kevin wound up frowning thanks to her handy clarifications. It really put a damper on Happy Land when the real versions said they didn't like girls that way. His shoulders slumped. "See, so you have a type. Your type is 'male.'" Smirking a little, he added, "And 'Kevin.' 'Cause your eyes think Ah'm easy." The grin he wore left no doubt that he wasn't serious. Kevin found himself highly entertaining.

"Fine, my type is male," she conceded with a smile. "And you're not the only attractive male I know, so I'm not sure you count as a type by yourself."

"No, ma'am, Ah'm not the only attractive male in the world," Kevin agreed, his Georgia accent thickening on purpose. "But Ah assure you that Ah'm the only one like me you'll find this far north." He inclined his head in a gesture as if tipping an invisible hat to her.

Amara raised her eyebrows at that, grinning a little. "And what is so special about you that I would not find someone like you around here?"

Kevin sighed, wilting a little as he did, and shook his head. "Y'know, Ah won't hold that against you since you're technically a foreigner." The last word came out more like two syllables than three. "There's a certain way of doin' things down South that just ain't embraced up here. Certain level of politeness and respect. Particularly for women. Yankees just don't seem to know how to cherish their women the same as we do. All crass and not botherin' to do simple things like open doors, pull out chairs, pick up checks. They call it bein' modern but it just ain't right." He was mostly talking out of his ass, of course, but Kevin really had been raised to do those things. He couldn't attest to whether or not northern guys did any of that or not because he wasn't a girl and neither of the guys he had dated were northerners. Though Jay had been remarkably like a yankee sometimes.

"You don't disrespect a woman, especially not in public. You don't berate a woman. You don't raise a hand in anger to a woman. You take care of her and treat her as much like a princess as you can. Because women are sacred in a way, revered. They give life. They're beautiful. They're graceful. They're all these things we man can't ever be. And that makes y'all something to be treasured. But that's just my backwards Georgia ways talkin'." He gave Amara a much more genuine smile. "Down South you abide those rules or your momma beats 'em into you. Probably your daddy, too. Yankees, they just don't get that."

Amara listened carefully as he spoke, a warm smile on her face. "That doesn't sound particularly backward to me," she said once he was finished. "I can't imagine why it wouldn't be more widely embraced." Nova Roma didn't have quite the same sort of set of morals, but Amara couldn't help but wish now they did. It honestly sounded lovely.

Kevin rubbed at the back of his neck with the heel of his hand so as to avoid contact with his apple. "D'you look 'round much? Notice how men and women interact out there on the street? 'Cause Ah see guys screamin' at what looks like their girlfriend who's tears and then there's the people who are jerks and beat their women and all that. Yeah, it's backward. And there's just..." he searched for the right words but wasn't sure he could find them. Kevin sighed. "We'll just say that people think it's real odd that Ah don't just fall in bed with girls for reasons other than my mutation. They don't get that level of politeness. And to them it seems sorta dated and cheesy and like an act. But it ain't one."

"Well, I admire it," Amara said firmly. "Perhaps that makes me backwards as well, but much of the behaviour I have seen between men and women in America in unheard of in Nova Roma, or at the least very much frowned upon. I am used to being astounded at the manner in which people treat each other here, but it is nice to hear that not everyone is like that."

"No, we're not all like that." Kevin's voice had grown quieter as he had gotten more serious. He was soft spoken normally so his voice now was more of a loud whisper than what people would typically think of as a "normal" volume. "Some of us would rather bend over backward to make a woman smile than ever cause her pain." He gave Amara a small, lopsided smile. "Just look at how much better your mood is now if you want proof."

Amara paused for a moment, then laughed a little. "That is very sneaky of you," she replied with a broad smile on her face. "It's true, I am feeling much better. Thank you." The bad mood she'd been had all but vanished thanks to Kevin's antics.

Kevin her a bow with a somewhat ridiculous flourishing hand gesture to go along with it. "Happy to be of service, oh golden beauty." He was giving her quite a wide, stupid grin when he straightened.

"You are too much," she replied, laughing again and shaking her head. "But I feel like I should find a suitable way to express my gratitude. I usually offer to provide some sort of baked goods, but I don't think that would be a very good idea given today's attempt."

Kevin waggled his eyebrows at her and laughed. "See, Ah'd say you should gimme a kiss." He tapped his cheek. "Right here. But Ah've got no hood and Ah'm sorta all sweaty so that's out, too." He gave her the saddest pout he could manage - which wasn't very sad at all - and sighed. "Guess Ah'll just have to go without the cupcake or the kiss and somehow, somehow manage to get by."

"Well, perhaps I'll just have to owe you one of them. To be claimed at your discretion." There weren't many people Amara would promise future kisses to - or kiss at all, to be honest, but she had the feeling Kevin was the sort of guy who wouldn't take advantage of the promise.

She got another waggle of eyebrow as he bit into his apple. "Guess that'll all depend on how salty your cupcakes are and if you're wearin' lipstick, huh? Gettin' lipstick outta my hood could be hard. Ah'm not sure, but Ah think it would be."

"Oh, now you're being picky about my cupcakes and my kissing, are you?" She grinned back. "Perhaps I should rescind my offer, and you'll just have to be satisfied by my heartfelt gratitude."

That got her full out puppy dog eyes and pouty face all at once. Kevin even added a sniffle. "But, but...you're the one who threw away the salty cupcakes. Ah'm a guy. If you gave me a salty cupcake and was all cute about it Ah'd still eat it."

"I wouldn't give you a salty cupcake," she said with a smile. "Not even if you deserved it. I promise, any cupcakes I give away will have the correct amount of salt in them."

"So, really this is about the kissing." Kevin smirked a little. "You wanna mark up my hood with your lipstick so everyone knows you were there and if you can't then it's no kisses, just gratitude, huh?"

"Yes, that's exactly it." Amara laughed. "You're the one rejecting my kisses on the lipstick basis. My lipstick is feeling very insulted right about now."

He was back to pouting a bit. Kevin made an effort to look like he was really struggling with the decision. He slouched and sighed and then let his eyes flick back up to Amara. "Well, alright. Ah'm gonna have to have a talk with my hood, but Ah guess if it gets me a kiss..." Technically he could decay the lipstick off his hood anyway so it wasn't exactly anywhere resembling an actual issue.

"How could you resist?" She smiled. "If you're very lucky, I'll hunt down some of that silly kiss-proof lipstick. And then you don't have to worry about lipstick marks."

"Ah dunno...Ah figure if you've got enough of the normal stuff on then Ah could probably coerce you into a full on cheek kiss and my mutation wouldn't even get to your lips before it was done 'cause it would be so busy trying to get through your lipstick. It'd be like the highlight of my life." He said nothing of his mutation's recent peculiarities or that Laura had managed to kiss his cheek without repercussion from his mutation months ago.

"Somehow I doubt it would be the highlight of your life," Amara grinned. "I do not think my kisses are that exciting." Granted, her kissing skills had improved rapidly rather recently, but that wasn't really the point.

"Have you ever kissed yourself?"

"Well, no," she admitted. "But I have not kissed so many people, so I presume they would not be."

"You presume, but you don't actually know. Ah could have a very uneventful, empty life for all you know. That kiss really could be the highlight of my life and now you've gone and made it sound like some little, minor thing." Kevin sighed and shook his head.

Amara laughed at that. "Aren't you dating..." Her forehead creased as she tried to think. "Someone. Or you were. I don't think you're completely lacking when it comes to that."

A wide, shameless grin spread in answer to Amara's comment. "Ah've got two...non-exclusive complications. Not sure there's really any better way to phrase it. But, hey, it could still make my week." Kevin leaned so his cheek went forward as he tapped it again with a small waggle of eyebrow.

Amara shook her head, laughing. "Alright, fine. Hold on." She dug around in the pocket of her jeans for her lipgloss, generously reapplying it before flashing him a little bit of a grin and leaning in to drop a quick kiss on the offered cheek. She trusted Kevin enough to believe he wouldn't have suggested it if it honestly wasn't safe for her to do so.

While Kevin had total confidence that he could control the direction of the decay so that it ate away whole layers of lipgloss before getting to her lips, he also hadn't been expecting her to actually go for it. Lip gloss was a new, untested variable here. It didn't look particularly dense or difficult. All but the briefest of kisses would likely have any decay through the layers of gloss before her lips pulled away and Kevin thought it would just be downright wrong to pull away from a girl like that who had her lips attached to him regardless of where they attached.

So Kevin decided to see just how slick he was. Amara's lips were moments from contact when his head turned and he caught her lips with his own. He pulled it off seamlessly, or so it likely appeared from the outside, but he could feel the nerves fluttering in his stomach and Kevin just knew if he hadn't done it Amara would have ended up with some full bodied exfoliation going on. Even the worry about how quickly he would decay lip gloss couldn't diminish the vast amounts of pride he had in himself for managing to coerce a girl - a very pretty girl, at that - to slater on lip gloss to kiss him on the cheek even though he had the awesome Death Touch skin. Seriously, it had to take skill to convince anyone to do that sort of thing, right?

Amara was startled by the new direction of the kiss, but she didn't yank herself back, simply breaking the kiss after a couple of moments, a smile on her face.

"Now that was very presumptuous of you," she said, attempting to sound haughty but simply just sounding amused. Amara had been trialling this new attitude towards kissing that was fairly less prudish than she'd been in the past - she'd been told (more than once) that kissing was not always the big deal she'd made it out to be, and she certainly had come to enjoy kissing John a lot, so clearly her attitude in the past had been wrong. Which is largely why Kevin just got a smile and a joking chide, rather than her jumping down his throat. And also because there was something more than a little endearing about someone stealing a kiss like that, especially when it was someone usually very particular about their personal space.

"Well, see, Ah was worried 'bout you," Kevin explained in an incredibly sincere voice. "Ah was pretty sure Ah could control the decay but then Ah realized Ah didn't know how fast Ah'd decay through somethin' like lip gloss. It's not somethin' Ah've got experience with. So then Ah got worried Ah'd decay through it too quickly and you'd end up with like two layers of skin exfoliated off your face and you probably wouldn't miss it or notice and you wouldn't feel it but it just seemed like a risk Ah didn't like. Ah can't really feel when Ah decay through one substance and move onto another so Ah'd have no way to know when Ah got through the lip gloss and, really, pullin' away from you just woulda been wrong. And rude. Very rude." Kevin paused and gave Amara a rather sheepish smile. "So, really, the thing to do to be least rude was, uh, detour you. And the only guaranteed safe place to kiss me is my lips and Ah'm very, very good at makin' sure there's no other skin contact durin' a kiss. So, you see, in the end the right thing to do was to just kiss you." He was suppressing a smile that threatened to break out right across his face by the end of his explanation.

Amara couldn't help but grin back at that him. "Well, I will give you the benefit of the doubt since you've been very sweet to me today. And it's entirely possible you deserved the kiss." Should she really be kissing someone else given her... whatever it was with John? Possibly not. But given that she wasn't entirely sure what it was, she probably did have a little bit of lee way. Or at least she hoped.

Kevin bowed to her with a flourish, transferring his apple to his other hand so he could balance both pieces of fruit in one grip. Then, while still bowed, Kevin plucked Amara's hand from her side and placed a very polite and chaste kiss on the back of her hand. "My lady." He couldn't help it, he was sort of in a cheesy mood. Obviously, Kevin was drunk on his success in convincing a girl to kiss his cheek even without a hood to be a barrier. It was sort of like being drunk on power but it involved a lot less conquering.

Amara blushed at that, glancing down for a moment before looking back up at him and executing a curtesy. "My knight in shining armour," she replied with a little incline of her head.

The grin Kevin gave her was completely ridiculous and bordered on proud beaming. "See, you really did make my week."