Vanessa & Jean-Paul | Wednesday Evening

[x-quebecois.livejournal.com]

Jean-Paul gets a call while working a case. He and Vanessa chat a bit about this and that.


Jean-Paul was crouched atop a roof in lower Manhattan, watching one woman scurry along and another stalk her. Carefully. If he hadn’t been watching for it from above, if he hadn’t known to look for the blonde with the scarf, he would never have seen it. The stalker was good.

After the last case he’d worked with Vanessa, he was determined not to let this case end the same way. Luckily, their client had come to them before fleeing the city to parts unknown, which meant they had a slightly better chance to nip this entire issue in the bud. It would have been nice if the police had believed their client when she’d said she was being stalked, but since they hadn’t, it was more work for him, which was nice.

The sun was setting behind him, leaving the street beneath him in ever-lengthening shadows, but at least the light wasn’t coming directly in his eyes. Of course, then his phone started vibrating against his hip and he checked the display to see who it was. Quirking a brow, he answered. “Bonjour, mon ami. How are the very green hills of Wales?”

“Green. Very green. Aye, and filled with ponies. At least Llanmadoc Hill is.” Thanks to Rhiamon’s painstaking efforts Vanessa was able to pronounce that damnable double-L sound properly. It sort of sounded like a cross between hacking and a lisp but the woman had promised Vanessa she’d get better at it the more she said it. “How’s the city? You’re not making Laurie do all your paperwork, are you?”

“Only sometimes,” Jean-Paul said, grinning as he leaned against the wall edging the roof. “She is very helpful, it is not my fault if she helps herself to the papers on my desk... the city, she is well. I am watching a stalker just now, but she is far enough away, I think, that I have a few minutes to speak. The client, she is very nearly to her home now. You are enjoying the ponies?”

“The ponies are calming. You’re letting the stalker follow our client all the way to her house? Are you sure she’s still in the non-violent stage of stalking? Because if you get our client hurt I am coming back early so I can beat the snot out of you. Just so we’re clear.” Ah, who needed to relax when they could threaten their best friend with a beating?

“Oui, she is nonviolent just now. And she was the roommate, so she knows already where the client lives,” Jean-Paul said. “Calming - I did not think ponies were calming. Are they far away? I think you should see them from far away, or else they smell and are not so calming at all.”

Vanessa couldn’t help laughing softly at Jean-Paul’s sage advice regarding the ponies on the hill. “They don’t smell if they’re taken care of, I think. I made friends with one. A...foal? I think that’s the word for a baby. He was very cute. And wee. For a horse, anyhow. I’ve got a bruise on my arm from his love nip, but it was alright. His owner was sweet and gave me carrots to feed him and his mum took to me alright once I gave her a carrot, too. They are very mellow beasties, so they calm me. I’m very zen aside from you having stalkers maim our clients.”

“There is no maiming,” Jean-Paul said, snorting. He paused for a moment so he could hop over to the roof of the next building over, then said, “The stalker, she is taking pictures. With her telephone, I think, but not of the client. The locks have been changed and the client is worried enough to have put bars on her windows. She will be fine, though I will watch for tonight. I would have, anyway, but threats of beatings to come, they have reinforced my plans. Also, the baby horse bit you? This is why I do not like large animals so much. I am glad you are zen, though, as you say...”

“He didn’t bite me, he gave me a love nip,” she corrected with an almost petulant tone. “You’ve never managed to nip someone affectionately? I’m pretty sure if he bit me for real I’d be sporting a broken bone or at least some stitches. He just wanted to show how much he liked me. I nip people I like, too.” Including Jean-Paul, come to think of it. “Speaking of love nips, I got a text from Will today. He seemed...distinctly giddy.”

“Giddy?” Jean-Paul didn’t take his eyes off the stalker as he settled on the other roof, though he couldn’t help the smile on his lips. “Are the two of you gossiping about me now?”

“There was a very sweet, sincere apology about how much he liked me but how he needed to stop sleeping with me because he was trying to convince you to make him permanent. I, of course, very gracefully bowed out of the race for his libido since I have no permanent designs on him myself anyhow.” She could project the tone of voice of him saying the things he was texting her and in Vanessa’s head he was very adorable about it all. “I didn’t get much more other than convincing you to make him permanent, though.”

“Ah, Will,” Jean-Paul said, laughing a little. “Oui, we are taking things slowly, but there are possibilities.” Many possibilities. None of which he could really go into while keeping track of the stalker from a rooftop without letting his shadow give him away. “We will see how things go. And Thom? How is he? I assume he let you shoot things, non?”

“Permanent possibilities,” she mused mostly to herself. That explained all the exclamation points. How very cute. “Thom is good. There’s been shooting and knife fighting skills brush ups. He says I’m getting rusty with how terribly nonviolent I am these days. He is one of the few men I know who can make that sound like a terrible thing while also not sounding blood thirsty. His Lady Friend,” the capitals could be heard in the way she said it, “is teaching me to help tend the vegetable garden.”

“Vegetable garden?” Jean-Paul tipped his head to the side. “Tomatoes and potatoes and squash and things? I did not know you could garden. We should put something on the roof, I think. So I am not paying so much for vegetables and things in the markets, oui? Though I am not so familiar with gardening, myself. You will need to teach me.”

“Tomatos and potatoes and squash and onions and peppers and things, yes.” She found herself smiling about it, which was a bit strange but Vanessa was willing to go with it. “We’ll need to investigate the rooftop options with the building owner. I was thinking of window boxes outside my place and the office, but since we’re the only ones with access to the roof that could work if the roof is stable enough for it. Not all roofs are made for standing on, you know. I don’t know anything about gardening. Well, I didn’t. I’m getting better at it. It’s very...zen.” Clearly there was a trend going on here for Vanessa.

“Zen? From all these things, I think we will both be like Buddhist monks at the end of the gardening and things if they are really so zen. Next, we will be buying tiny ponies, also...” Jean-Paul had to hop another building to keep the stalker and his client in sight. “Tiny ponies who will probably hate me and try to eat me. Like pigs.”

“I think I need to come down on the side of rooftops not being the proper place to house ponies.” Though she did like the ones that hung out on the hill. She didn’t think they would have been nearly as happy in the city with all that noise, no room to run and nothing to graze. “And are you mocking my zen? I’m never zen so let me enjoy my momentary mellow. It’ll probably be gone by time I get to my apartment from the airport anyway. And, uh, why are pigs trying to eat you?”

“Mm... pigs are not eating me. I am eating them. But pigs will eat people. The movies say so.” Jean-Paul grinned again. His client had made it to her building and was inside now. He just had to keep an eye on the stalker to see what she did. “Bacon is delicious. Will makes very good breakfasts.”

Vanessa grinned from the subject shift back to Will. Interesting. “Has he made you many?” The question was designed to give her an idea just how much time the two were spending together. She knew they hadn’t been alone together until this past weekend so his answer would be telling, but she wasn’t going to push for information either. At least not yet. Vanessa drew her knees up to her chest, feet balanced on the edge of the wooden swing on which she sat, and she laid her head down on an arm curled over her knees. It was quite comfortable out here like this in the dark.

“Three,” Jean-Paul said, knowing that telling her that would give something away but not particularly concerned with it. If he couldn’t tell her, then who could he tell?

Three? She had to rotate the phone away from her mouth when she started to giggle. That was why Will had been so giddy, then. Once she could control the giggling her mobile was back in position so she could say, “I’m glad you have someone looking out for your stomach. Breakfast is very important and very hard to get as take out. And this way I know you’re not starving or burning down your kitchen. I wouldn’t have thought he was a cook, though. I don’t know why, I just didn’t peg him for it.”

“It is not so difficult to make the eggs and the bacon,” Jean-Paul said. “It is the toast that is difficult. Because you can burn it so quickly.” Then he shrugged. “Also, I can hear the giggles, even when you try to hide them. You are not so sneaky.”

She dissolved into giggling lightly again. “The toaster is out to get you, mi amor. It thinks you have a drinking problem so it burns your toast to help curb the hang over, you see. It refuses to understand that with your metabolism a hang over is impossible. And you still burn bacon. Don’t try to lie, my love. I’m going to have to text darling William when it’s a decent hour over there to encourage him to feed you.”

“Mm... he feeds me well without the encouragement,” Jean-Paul’s tone was entirely satisfied. “Thom’s lady friend, she thought the gardening would be zen, as you say?”

“She thought it would help in ways that shooting stuff doesn’t. She scolded him about teaching me to bottle and basically told him me being a mess was all his fault. There might have been something about how he should have done better by his daughter even if I wasn’t his biologically.” The smile spreading across Vanessa’s face could be heard in her voice. She liked Rhiamon a lot.

“Teaching you to bottle? What does this mean?”

“Have you ever heard someone say that someone bottles their emotions?”

“Ah, oui - I thought it had something to do with guns.”

“Nope. Killing stuff is sort of a coping mechanism in our ‘family,’ so to speak,” she explained much more casually than one likely thought she ought to. “Bad day? Kill someone. Bad week? Kill lots of someones. We sometimes took jobs based on how shitty we all felt. I don’t kill anyone anymore and shooting targets isn’t nearly as cathartic. So, Rhiamon thinks I need new coping mechanisms.”

“Oui, this could be a good thing,” Jean-Paul said. “I do not have so many good coping mechanisms, as you say.” Which was entirely true. He had one tried and true method of coping, but that hadn’t proven very useful in recent years. “Running away from things, it does not count, I think.”

“I don’t think that counts as coping, no. We are a very beautiful mess together, aren’t we mi amor?” Neither of them had useful coping mechanisms and while they both functioned very well from day to day Vanessa knew neither of them were as stable or well-adjusted as they made themselves look. In truth, their respective levels of stability were probably direct inversions of how stable they came off as.

Smiling despite himself, Jean-Paul nodded. “Oui, a beautiful mess.”