xp_logs | Meggan and Kevin (Backdated)

Two nights before he leaves, Kevin drags Meggan out of bed for an unexpected midnight run to the Waffle House. Conversation veers from caffeine overdoses, to what Meggan would look like if she could turn into a mermaid, before he finally breaks the news that he’s leaving town.

Not being all that attached to that many people left in the mansion meant that Kevin didn't really feel the need to personally tell most people he was taking off. Legally, he didn't have to tell anyone. Maybe that was still new and novel and shiny for him. Maybe that's why he didn't want to bother telling most people he was taking off. Angelo knew he would be heading out when he was done at ELPIS and Laura knew, but that was about it. Sure, he had to tell other friends like Cammie and Laurie but they were busy, like a lot of his friends, so he figured a general farewell on the journals would do. Meggan was different though. He didn't like to admit it, particularly not when he felt so damn guilty about it about a half a beat later, but she was special. She was the girl who he would pursue eventually when he was single and she'd been done with high school for a year or two. Meggan had wormed her way into his heart without her realizing she was doing it. Her he wanted to tell properly that he was taking off for a while, particularly since he wasn't sure when he would be back. Hell, maybe he'd never come back. This was what had him knocking on the door of her suite at half past midnight. She was a teenager on summer break, she couldn't possibly be asleep, right?

Meggan had only been half asleep, but at the knock she jolted to complete awareness and looked at the clock. A little late, but it wasn’t an absolutely awful time for people to knock. She wasn't sure when it would be, but it certainly wasn't now. Maybe something was going on. She rubbed her eyes, slipped her shoes on, and padded quickly to the door. She blinked, before grinning. “Kevin? Hi there!” At the last second she remembered to keep her voice hushed, so as not to accidentally disturb Molly’s rest. “Did something happen? Is something wrong?” She hoped not, and if it was just her door he was knocking at, it probably wasn’t something bad.

"What? No, nothing's wrong." He was smiling, half because of why he was actually there and half because she jumped to the mansion-wide conclusion of something exploding if she was being woken up. "Ah didn't figure you for bein' asleep this early. But, y'know, Ah can always come back in the mornin' to drag you off to the waffle house instead of now... But Ah just want you to know what sorta sacrifice we're talkin' 'bout me makin' by doing that. Ah could die of waffle lust in the next eight hours!"

Meggan could understand waffle lust well, and couldn’t help but laugh. “No, no, don’t go. Now’s perfect, Kevin. Now’s good, now’s great. We won't let the waffle lust get you.” After a second, she asked, “Would the Waffle House be okay about pajamas being worn? Or should I change first?” The outfit wasn’t ratty or anything---it had pictures of the One Ring from Lord of the Rings all over both the pants and shirt—but sometimes restaurants didn’t like when people did that. A note! She should leave a note, too, so Molly didn’t wonder where she’d gone, if she woke up.

Kevin gave her a speculative once over, trying his damnedest to suppress his smile. "Nah, Ah think they'd be good. It's cute, the whole geek thing you've got going on. Geek girls are all the rage, they'll be fine with it." There was something somewhat endearing about Meggan running off to the Waffle House in the middle of the night with him while she was still in her PJs. "Maybe they'll mistake you for a college student taking summer classes or somethin'. College kids'll show up to just about anything in pajamas if they can swing it."

“Good,” Meggan smiled. She was pleased it wouldn’t be a problem. “Maybe, yeah. Just give me one tiny minute to write Molly a note,” she said, as she dashed back inside. It didn’t take long to write the note, it was finding a brightly neon colored post-it to write on that took most of that time—Molly couldn’t possibly miss it if she woke up, given how it was stuck to the middle of the mirror. As she crept back out, gently closing the door behind her, she nodded to Kevin. “Now we can go, me looking like a college studying person.”

"Yep. Tousled and half awake, you're very collegiate." He laughed quietly as they made their way through the student wing of the mansion and down to the garage. He was going to need to buy a car once he was in Georgia so he could go traipsing around the country without having to worry about whether trains ran where he wanted to go and stuff. Kevin put that out of his mind, grabbed the keys for one of the communal cars and thought, instead, of waffles.

“Waffle questing while half awake’s better than sound asleep and missing out any day of the week,” Meggan commented. Sneaking out for treats from the Waffle House after a particularly desperate yearning was almost the same as those late night food raids as far as she was concerned. She was also craving blueberry waffles. Anybody else eating there was probably equally tousled in the hair department, which wasn’t that bad. “If there were pockets for keys in my top, I’d have let you take my car,” she whispered to him.

Kevin draped his arm around Meggan's shoulders and whispered back in his most conspiratorial tone. "Focus and Ah, we got ourselves a complicated love affair, see. It's really a love from a distance sorta thing, see. Watchin' me from across the garage turns her high beams on and, y'know, seein' her has the same sorta effect on me. Our whole relationship would just be movin' too fast if Ah slipped inside 'er and drove 'er, you know? And she'd feel like she was cheatin' on you and you don't want Focus feelin' guilty like that, do you?"

Meggan nodded knowingly, barely able to keep a straight face. “So no cheating for Little Miss Focus on this day. Got it,” she finally laughed. Or rather, no cheating this night. “She’ll just have to settle for longing looks from afar, with sad, dim beams missing the good amount of glare, and no drivers until much later to keep the guilt at bay,” she joked. With dimming batteries, if she kept to that analogy.

"Our love," he began wistfully and opened the passenger door for Meggan, "is a forbidden love. It's true. Like all great loves." He even cast her Ford Focus a longing look while Meggan was getting into the car.

Meggan bounced in, nodding her thanks. As she buckled up, she added teasingly, “Forbidden, and timeless…but you just can’t stay away from her no matter what, can you? Her paint job’s too pretty a blue, and her seat’s too soft!”

Once Kevin was behind the wheel he shot Meggan a grin. "What can Ah say? Ah'm a man that appreciates a soft seat in a lady." With that he grinned again and started the car.

***
“Thank you,” Meggan smiled as the waitress left, having taken their orders. A nice stack of blueberry waffles with a pad of butter and a bit of syrup, a raisin muffin, and a glass of orange juice would be coming her way. It should be good. And Kevin was right, there were a few other rumpled people sitting in various booths with books. Studying.

Kevin's eyes fell on a pair of girls in a booth with textbooks scattered over their table wherever there wasn't a cup or plate. He assumed they were studying for finals for summer classes. "This is totally gonna be you during your first year of college, huh?" He nodded toward the booth. "Up at the Waffle House at stupid hours of the night studying and drinkin' so much coffee you start to vibrate."

Five of those cups were for just one girl, from the look of the scattered cups. “I’m not much of a coffee person, but I’ll probably become one here when those finals are looming,” Meggan admitted with a laugh. Joining the frantic, close to being sleep deprived at the end of the semester students, until she dragged herself away. “I might even vibrate so much that I wouldn’t be able to stop from halfway floating in the booth.” So long as it wasn’t too far above the books to read them.

"If you're floatin', wouldn't it make it harder to take notes and find the book you need to double check somethin' and stuff. Seems like a blows-in-the-wind kinda existence. Unless you can stay still. Then it might be OK, Ah guess." Why was he now picturing Meggan as a balloon that some poor kid had let go of? There goes Meggan, floating her way to the sun.

“A few inches up, not so many vibrations, then, if I paid very close attention to it,” Meggan amended with a grin. “I’m still in reach of my books and I can take notes, and I’m not thumping my head on the ceiling, high above everyone’s heads. I could alternate, decaf, caffeinated? Not so much caffeine at the first, not right away, and I’m still wide awake for study.” Surely that could work, if she wasn’t used to the stuff. Build up a tolerance. She might not drink so much at once as that one girl over there, just ordering her sixth and seventh cup.

"Ah think you can actually just ask for them to fill it half decaf and half normal instead of havin' to alternate. Then you'd keep like consistent levels of caffiene. 'Cause what if you start to crash? And then you jolt back awake and then you crash and then you jolt? Eventually you're gonna whack your head on the ceiling from all that joltin' and next thing you know you've missed your finals while you were conscious." Kevin shook his head. "That ain't no way to study."

That would be painful. “Good idea,” she chuckled. “Teachers wouldn’t accept the excuse of ‘I missed the exam by five little minutes because I whacked myself into unconsciousness with the ceiling after a caffeine crash.’ And all the other studying types would wonder just why there’s an unconscious person laying in the booth come sunrise,” Meggan said with a feigned wince. That, or they wouldn’t notice, being so very frazzled as they dashed out the door—onward to their tests.

Kevin nodded along in agreement as she spoke, wearing his most serious expression he could muster. "Exactly. And no one wants to be the girl who claims the ceiling attacked her. That's worse than Catseye tore up your term paper or Angel incinerated it when she had a nightmare." He paused, thinking about all the perfectly viable excuses for lost homework that were possible with mutants. "Actually, 'the dog ate my homework' sounds way more plausible when you compare it against those, huh? Even though it's not as likely."

“A tragic reputation to have in college—to be someone late for a final exam because they were knocked out by the ceiling. Ceiling attacks do mess with punctuality,” Meggan sighed melodramatically. They’d probably just think she was a bit on the loony side. Mutant powers run amok on homework or lateness would take some convincing. She had to agree with Kevin there. Even if the dog eating homework sounded like a blatant lie, there was the very slim possibility that there was a dog doing something like that somewhere. Powers were harder to explain.

"Yeah, it'd be all 'there goes that chick who gets in fights with the ceiling again' and then they'd like nudge each other and laugh and talk 'bout how maybe you need a straight jacket or something." He wondered if she could escape a straight jacket. She can do a whole shapeshifting thing, right? "If someone put you in a straight jacket, could you like shapeshift your arms away so you could get out of it or somethin'?"

Meggan had to think about that one. “I might be able to make myself bendy enough that I’d eventually be able to twist out.” She hoped. “I used to have very sharp, pointy teeth. I wonder if I could chew my way free, if I did those again? They'd really think I was nuts, if I started on that,” she grinned. It depended on how thick it was, she assumed. It would also taste terrible. If she were upset enough, or in enough of a conflicting mess, then maybe her skin would get to be crawling in reaction, almost like it was rubbery, and help with it even more. She'd have to try that intentionally sometime, in private.

"So you can't just, like, decide you wanna know what it's like to be a snake and suddenly poof no arms?" Kevin frowned, clearly disappointed. "That's no fun. Here Ah was gonna ask you to be a mermaid for me. Always wanted to meet a mermaid." He didn't really, but Meggan as a mermaid would've been kinda cool. If she had a real fish tail and everything, anyway.

“Missing arms and legs, no, it really doesn’t work that way, no snake me will be seen,” Meggan chuckled. “Feathers or scales, yes, that's something I can do. I could grow fish scales on my legs like a mermaid, and make gills to stay underwater for a while, make them look very close to fish, but I don’t think I could merge them for a tail.” Would have been fun to show it off for him if she could.

Kevin frowned and deflated, slumping back against the booth cushion. "Darn. Now you've gone and broken all my dreams. Ah totally wanted a mermaid Meggan of my own." After a moment he realized how that whole 'of my own' bit might sound. Kevin and his pet mermaid. That'd go over real well with her psychotically protective sister, huh? "Y'know, not like, my own. Just, y'know, a Meggan mermaid that Ah could, like, hang out with and stuff."

Meggan understood what Kevin had meant, and nodded reassuringly. “I know. It was such a nice dream to have, though. If I could make one, you’d be getting splashed by my nonexistent tail as you wandered on by, between all the hanging out.” Sort of like a dolphin, but it likely worked for mermaids, too.

"Is that like, the friendly mermaid version of being laked? Instead of dumpin' me into the lake you bring the lake to me?" She could hide out and splash people when they weren't looking. They'd get all weirded out because there's not supposed to be anything in the lake that could do that. They'd think they were nuts. It would be sorta awesome.

“Yes! No swimming required for you or climbing back out, you just have to towel off. People might start to wonder why you ended up sopping wet every single time you went for a walk, though. Camouflaged mermaid at work,” Meggan giggled. If the mermaid version of her went into hiding underneath a boat immediately following the splash, people would never see her. It would be wonderful!

"You could claim you were doin' hit and runs to bring attention to the plight of the marine critters or somethin'. It could be like an anti-pollution campaign. We could take you to the ocean and you could splash people whenever they threw stuff in it. And then throw the stuff back at them." Kevin snickered to himself at that mental image. People would be so freaked out and confused if their trash came back out and beamed them in the head.

“There’d be so much splashing going on,” Meggan guessed. She would constantly be at work with that tail, if she took it to the ocean. “They’d just see my tail as I escaped under the waves, and think the carp were gigantic this time of year,” Meggan added. “Until the fish net gets thrown back at them.” From the look of the waitress headed their way with plates, it must be time for the waffle goodness to begin.

"You should make sure you carry a knife," Kevin advised, before being distracted by the food set down. Obviously buttering and syruping his waffles was of the utmost importance and meant all other thoughts and actions had to be immediately suspended until that was completed. It wasn't until he cut into his waffles that he finished his earlier thought. "So you can get outta the nets, Ah mean. Ah dunno that arms would be enough all alone."

“You’re right. For the mermaid version of me, I have to wonder where I’d carry it for emergencies,” Meggan wondered as she poured syrup over her waffles. She reached for the muffin to put a small of amount of butter on that, before the rest went to the waffles. “No legs, no pants, so maybe a pocket in a special kind of shirt?” Instead of the requisite clam shells and nothing else, if Disney was to be believed.

"You could strap it to your fin," Kevin offered most helpfully after taking a bite of waffle. "Or keep it strapped to your arm? A pocket just seems like it might get all tangled and awkward. Here you are, mermaid Meggan, strugglin' to get your knife out so you can escape and meanwhile you're being hauled outta the water by tuna fishers. That'd be a terrible way to get caught. Then you'd get sold some sort of side show and your sister would be yellin' at me again for gettin' you in trouble and stuff. And Ah'd really like to avoid Amanda getting any more crazy protective big sis on me, y'know?"

“Making sure not to lose it whenever I splashed people,” she pointed out. A bite of muffin, followed by waffles was the best way for this to go. “Aw,” Meggan laughed. In that sort of scenario, she could picture Kurt and Amanda’s faces. “She wouldn’t blame you.” She thought about that, before amending that. “Too much, I hope. She would wonder why I was suddenly being caught by tuna fish people and how I got there. If all that were possible, I could tell her it was my fault for going mermaid?” Hoping it would only be a glancing blow for blame.

"Rogue mermaid!" he corrected with a pointing fork. "You'd be like the rebel of the underwater world! Other mermaids would have posters of you on the walls of their...um...coral reefs or somethin'. They'd wanna be a rebel like you, stand up for the little fish and try to keep their ocean clean! You could be a real inspiration." Kevin nodded once, then ate another bite of waffle...which was approximately the size of his mouth.

“Yeah. If there were other mermaids, they could be added to that, getting their faces on those posters, too. So I’m not the only one in the sea,” Meggan smiled. She tilted her head to think, before adding, “Rocky underwater caverns of some kind for the walls, if there’s no coral reef for miles and miles. Because they have to have a wall somewhere.” Meggan was impressed that Kevin could shovel such a large slice in without choking. Oh, and there was a delicious strawberry amongst the blueberries. Must have been a strange midnight deal of ordering blueberries and getting an extra strawberry for free. Or she was just lucky, she decided, taking a large bite into it.

"Mmhm," he nodded, chewing up his waffle. He could possibly try to form coherent sounding words, but there was a little too much waffle in his mouth for that to be anything like polite so he held off and waited until he'd swallowed. "Underwater caverns works for mermaid bedrooms. Though, do you need to have a bed if you're a fish? Don't they just sorta shut their eyes and float? You'd never have to worry 'bout sleepin' wrong and ending up with a crick in your neck or somethin' at least. Unless you accidentally collided with, like, a sunken ship or something. That could hurt."

“There’s that, yeah,” she grinned after swallowing a particularly large portion of waffle. Collisions with sunken ships would be bad if you thumped against them, but regular boats when you’re asleep? With propellers? That would really be scary. “Maybe they could have a rope, to keep the currents from making them drift far from home when they’re asleep,” Meggan suggested. “Rope gets tugged too hard when they’re halfway down what people think of as a hall, they wake up and fix things, or just instinctively paddle backwards. Unless they have something like a door, and can close it.” Another thought struck her. “Do you think they’d need covers if there’s no bed?”

"What would they cover? Just, like, drape a sheet over themselves?" Kevin tried to picture that but all he came up with was a mermaid dressing up as a ghost for Halloween and being tethered to her wall. "Maybe they could, like, wrap themselves in seaweed, Ah guess? But ain't the point of covers sorta to stay warm and wouldn't they already be warm since they're mermaids and they're made for bein' in the cold water all the time?"

“They might not have another way to signal to others that they’re just going for a nap, since they can’t curl up on the floor of the cavern, so—seaweed knitted coverlets, or an abandoned quilt from the breathing world that doesn’t shrink when it’s wet, or a clam shell in the hair,” Meggan reasoned with a smile. The quilt would have come from a boat sinking, but the shells might just be for show. “They’d cover their middle and just drift. Where the scales met skin might get a little more chilly than the rest? Even if the rest is made for it, that little area could be vulnerable to chills, and need warming.” Only Kevin could make her seriously consider the logistics of a mermaid's sleeping habits in tropical waters.

"Ah dunno, Ah figure if they were real mermaids their skin would be, like, cold-proof or something. Like Bobby." He considered that while chewing another bit of waffle. If mermaids were mutants then they could just exist down their with their fin and their gills and their resistance to the cold. But wouldn't they need shark-type teeth and to really like sushi, too? "Y'know, Ah saw somethin' on TV, don't remember what it was, that said if mermaids were real they'd need all this blubber to keep them warm in the water so they'd kinda look like a mini-whale only with skin-colored skin and arms instead of the fishy part coming all the way up. They did a CG model and everything. It was not hot like if you went and shapeshifted into a mermaid."

Meggan nodded as she ate, believing that temperature proof made much more sense. She missed out on catching that special—a shame, since it sounded fascinating. She couldn’t help but grin at the hotness comment. “So you’ve got blubber floating everywhere like the whale, making it tougher to serenely float around. Or zip away and stay a myth. Did they say anything about shark eyes for the CGI mermaid? Sharks sleep with their eyes open, and have the third eyelid thing for protection. So nothing hurts it. Wouldn’t the realistic mermaid need those added in?” At that point, the only way for a sailor to think the mermaid looked like something from Disney, was if his eyes were like Mr. Magoo’s, only seeing slivers of what was there. A myth evolves from bad eyesight.

"Ah dunno, probably. Ah didn't pay that much attention to it. Once it got to the point of it bein' a whale in a bikini Ah sorta zoned out. It totally traumatized me. Y'know, Ah had all those hopes of findin' Ariel washed up on shore, mute and wearin' a sail and stuff." Kevin grinned and took another bite of waffle. "Have Ah told you that you're the best waffle house girlfriend Ah've had? You should know that before Ah disappear on ya."

If it ever aired again, she would watch it all carefully and find out. Poor CGI mermaid, she had a popular Disney myth to overcome. “Aw. You know, you’d also have to deal with a singing crab and fish tagging along on every date, too, if your hopes had been fulfilled,” Meggan pointed out with a small laugh. Every date near a pond or the ocean. She tilted her head, then, more than a little curious at the ‘disappear’ comment. Was he going somewhere? “Thank you for that,” she grinned, before she found and ate a stray raisin hidden beneath a waffle. “Are you going away someplace? Is it another vacation?” She was going with the first possibility, even if there was a chance it could be wrong.

"Home, actually." It felt weird to call it that. It felt weirder to consider it would be anything else. "Figure it's 'bout time Ah went back to Atlanta, visit mom's grave, see what happened to dad's, that sorta thing. Dunno how long Ah'll be gone, though. Ah might travel for a while. Been in one place for a long time, y'know?" One place didn't bother him that much, really. But there was something about the way he'd felt out at the West Coast Annex that he never got when he was here. He was calmer and more centered. Kevin couldn't help wondering if that had more to do with the people around him or just his state of mind. Maybe if he wandered around long enough he'd figure out how to recapture that and bring it back with him. People here were family, it wasn't like he could leave indefinitely.

“Oh,” Meggan said as she nodded sympathetically, understanding sometimes people just needed to go away for a little while. It had happened with others with the school, she knew that. She would really miss Kevin, but was glad he had told her before heading out. “Well, then, when we finish eating…can I just give you a great big goodbye, happy travels, I hope you find everything you’re looking for hug? Maybe two. Good Luck Hugging can’t hurt, right?” Before they finished eating would just increase the chance of them getting them all sticky from a stray bit of syrup flying off her meal.

"How could Ah say no to two hugs?" Kevin grinned. "And don't worry, Ah've got the artform of the hug down in a non-decomposin' sorta way. Ah avoid stuff because accidents have happened before and without a healin' factor it ain't pretty. But that don't mean Ah ain't capable of gettin' 'round my mutation for just 'bout anything." After all, at one point he spent the vast majority of his nights sleeping next to someone else. He still did now sometimes, but it was also technically safer these days. It was just that "technically" part Kevin didn't like.

Meggan had thought of that, and was relieved. “That’s good. Because I was ever so carefully working out a way to aim for your middle for the hugging, where there’s more shirt than skin.” Just in case. “Either way, you’re getting those hugs from me before you leave this restaurant. Or the parking lot,” she promised.

Rather nonchalantly, Kevin shrugged and said, "It's cool. If you refuse to dislodge Ah'm just gonna pick you up and carry you off all barnacled onto me and stuff, y'know," then took another bite of waffle. Meggan wasn't that much shorter than Kevin, he had maybe a half a head on her but as long as he managed to get his hood up before she pounced him he could probably pull it off just fine. With all her parts still intact by the end of it.

“Not too barnacled, unless it’s temporary barnacling. You should be able to peel me off you without too much trouble. Eventually,” Meggan half-jokingly added. Just another few bites of blueberry waffle, and her part of the meal would be done. Not counting that waffle, there wasn’t much left on her plate, aside from crumbs and two drops of cooling butter. First washing hands, then possible clinging was the way she was hoping to go about it.

"Ah was thinkin' a temporary barnacle. Maybe moonlightin' to see how you like the barnacle life. Ah don't think your sister would appreciate me running off to points unknown with you 'cause Ah wouldn't peel you off me and you, like, turned into a permanently adhered barnacle by accident. Pretty sure she'd hunt me down and do real painful things to me even if it was totally innocent barnacling." He completely ignored that 'barnacling' wasn't actually a word and stole his last bit of waffle. He also ignored that there were waffle houses all over the South and took a moment to mourn his last Waffle House waffle bite before he swallowed.

“That could work. Temporary barnacling is better than permanent.” With temporary barnacling, you could go swimming alone in the future. She wasn’t bothered by the fact barnacling was made up, it fit the scenario. Planking didn’t sound like a real word until recently, after all. “Hey, maybe Kurt would understand even if it confused him, if Amanda didn’t,” Meggan reasoned with a grin. “Then we could both beg her not to hunt you down, or cast any spells, tell her I’ll eventually peel off. Someday. The force of the cling will wear off, and I’ll be sitting on the ground.” She glanced down at her plate. Down to the last waffle portion, she mused as she took that last nibble. Her final nibble with Kevin, at least for a short while.

"Like one of those window cling things that just sorta falls off eventually? Wait, am Ah supposed to leave you sittin' there on the ground when you peel off? 'Cause that seems sorta rude. After all that time bonded together, me and my barnacle, and then Ah just leave you laying on the side of the road? Man, Ah'm a crappy ship, ain't Ah? No loyalty at all." Their server showed up to clear away the dishes and leave the check, which Kevin snagged as usual.

Meggan nodded her thanks to the waitress as the server gathered her plate and drink. “The little Garfields stuck to the windows with suction cups? Just like those!” That would be a bad way to end it all, if she just fell to the street after losing a grip. “You’d help me up, I’m sure,” she teased after a moment. “So there’s loyalty. Instead of me just laying around on the hard sidewalk, rubbing my back or head, wondering where your ship sailed off to.” That would be painful.

Kevin left money for their waffles under a glass and stood up, holding a gloved hand out to Meggan. "My ship would never ditch you like sad, lonely Garfield. Ah like ya too much for that." A hint of a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. "But Ah'd like ya more if you came with a singin' crab and fish everywhere you went. Ah might even try to convince Laura to let me convince you to go on a date with me just for that."

Meggan took his hand as she scooted out of the booth, before laughing. “Good. If crabs and fish started to sing and dance around here, it would be from someone casting a spell that went really wonky. Or a dimension where they do that collided with ours. I might start thinking it was like the singing bubbles all over again, and time for a nap,” she said wryly. “Or I’d start singing along, and you'd get one strange text message.” She knew she would just go with the craziness, since it might be fun if they were real.

"If you ever end up with singing crustaceans you should definitely text message me. Whichever of those three reasons are to blame," he told her as they made their way out of the Waffle House. "'Cause that's the sort of crazy mansion hijinx that Ah shouldn't have to wait until Ah'm back to hear 'bout, y'know?" Once they were outside Kevin pulled his hood up over his head. Girls could be sneaky about their Attacks of Hug and he needed to be prepared with what forewarning he had, after all.

“Oh, I will. At the very first sign of magically singing crustaceans, fish, or kitchen appliances, I will text you right away. Or if they just start a conga line,” Meggan promised. If the crabs and the fish started carrying tunes, then if she ever ate lobster, she would end up wondering just what kind of singing voice it had in life. Him pulling up his hood was her signal—she let go of his hand for a moment, and leaned in to give him a great big hug. Softly, she whispered, “Hope you find everything you’re looking for.”

His laughter over congaing appliances died down with her whispered words which instead brought a soft, almost bittersweet smile to Kevin's face as he nodded. Kevin's arms had wrapped around her waist automatically when she hugged him and he even pulled her off the ground a little bit. "Thanks. Dunno what Ah'm looking for, really," he returned just as quietly, "but Ah hope Ah find it, too." Peace. Maybe that was what he was looking for. Solid ground in the less literal sense and not having nightmares about how his dad died quite so often. Closure, that was probably what he was after though he wouldn't put it into those words, of course.