Jean & Jean-Paul | Sunday Evening (backdated)

[x-quebecois.livejournal.com]

Jean-Paul comes home and find an unexpected guest sitting on his doorstep.

TRIGGER WARNING

Jean-Paul didn't typically use the front door of his building - it was so much easier to just use the windows to get in and out. He avoided the hustle and bustle of the street, the pointy elbows and glaring eyes of the various people who lived and worked around his apartment. However, on this particular afternoon, he found himself landing in an alley not far away and walking toward his front steps - which turned out to be fortuitous, as there was a familiar figure huddled on those steps, bundled up against the cold. Blinking, he quirked an eyebrow. "Bonjour, mon ami - you are well?" He hadn't had a chance to talk to Jean after the concert once she'd been rushed back to the mansion, but he gathered that wall wasn't necessarily well from her expression... and the fact that she was quite literally sitting on his stoop.

Jean had known he was coming, but she didn't lift her head. It stayed tucked between her knees.

"Sorry I would've called but..." She reached into her purse and held out something that was in far too many pieces to be considered functional.

"My phone is not working."

The clinical term was 'obliterated.'

Taking the phone in all its many pieces, Jean-Paul let his brows drop and offered Jean his other hand. "Come, my friend. It is warmer inside and I think you might need that, oui?"

Jean finally sat up. Her eyes distant, as if in a daze. She took his hand and pulled herself up off the ground, only half remembering the weekend bag beside her as she caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye.

"I...do you mind if I stay here for a couple of days?"

Jean-Paul leaned down and picked up Jean's bag, putting the broken pieces of her phone in his jacket pocket before grabbing his keys. "You are always welcome for as long as you need to stay," he said, moving up the few steps to the door and unlocking it. "I have the spare room and I have begun collecting decks of cards. I think we will have many games ahead of us, non?"

While Jean-Paul was unlocking the door Jean took the opportunity to look up at the building. She found herself counting the windows, then glanced down at him. He had been speaking.

"What? I'm sorry..."

"Nothing, Jean," Jean-Paul said, shaking his head just a little. "Come inside. I must check my mail, but then we will if you like the guest room, oui?"

Jean nodded. She smiled faintly.

"I think this is the first time I've been to your place."

"I think so, also," Jean-Paul said, nodding. "I was not here so much, obviously, while I was on the case that took me abroad. Another friend stayed here, but now that I am back... well." He shrugged expressively. He wasn't really one for decorating beyond the artwork Kevin had given him. That he kept in a place of prominence. The rest of it, though... knickknacks scattered here and there - the snow globe Jake had brought him as a late birthday gift, a few pieces of technological things that Will had left and never bothered to come back to get after things had cooled between them. "But it is comfortable, I think."

One could tell a lot about a person from their home. From what she saw it didn't really look like...his except for one or two things. The art she recognized but the place seemed cold. He wasn't cold.

"It's nice, but not what I expected."

Jean-Paul shrugged, walking through the apartment so he could put Jean's bag in the spare bedroom. "I am not here so much. More now, of course. But busy with work." There were shelves, at least, holding his books - both his literary pieces and the multitude of cookbooks he's purchased so he could relearn recipes. "Please, make yourself comfortable."

"Thanks," Jean said.

Jean slipped off her gloves and put them in the pockets of her coat before taking her coat off and draping it over her arm. She looked around for a moment before finally putting the coat on the coat rack she'd eventually found.

"Any exciting cases?"

Smiling, Jean-Paul shook his head. "Infidelity, people who jump their bail, missing persons. It is slow at the moment." The Quebecois tipped his head to the side, brows arching again as he asked, "What brings you here, mon ami? Surely not only a very broken phone." He laid the pieces of her mobile on the counter in the kitchen, going to the refrigerator for two bottles of water before offering one to her.

The word 'infidelity' made Jean straighten, though simply because of the word association with marriage. Wrapped up in said idea, she didn't notice the water.

"Scott and I....had a fight," she said. Her voice was surprisingly calm. Too calm.

"Ah," Jean-Paul said, nodding slowly as he twisted the top off his bottle. Did he want to attempt to navigate the undoubtedly muddy waters of marital unrest that Jean and Scott were apparently mired in? He'd never actually been very good at his own relationships. Still, he could listen, at least. Be a sounding board, if she wanted to talk. "If you do not mind my asking, what did you argue about?" Scott had been all concern as they got Jean away from the concert - true, the Quebecois hadn't seen them after that. Anything could have happened. But it seemed an odd turn around.

Jean folded her arms, looking away. She let out a breath.

"I...the whole reason I had a panic attack was...back in California I had a miscarriage. I was at a concert...a man kicked me in the stomach," she said. She closed her eyes. It was easier to say it now, not effortless but at least the man she told it to wouldn't treat her like a pariah.

She rubbed her forehead.

"I didn't tell him. I kept it to myself...because of a lot of things but...the longer I kept it, the harder it became to tell him....When I finally did he accused me of lying to him. Said he trusted me, I was his best friend...I was...but I lied to him..."

Her voice was not marked with sadness or distraught like in the past. Instead it held some of her old fire.

"Ah, mon cher ami," Jean-Paul said, putting his water down without taking a sip. "Je suis tellement désolé." He shook his head, not quite sure where to begin, what to say. She didn't look like she was going to break, at least.

Jean glanced up, managing a faint smile. "Wow...I've made you launch into French," she said, brushing her hair away from her eyes. She kept her hand pressed against her forehead for a few moments before letting it drop.

"Right now I'm angry...and numb...I'm curious how they can both occupy the same space."

"It is not so hard, sometimes," Jean-Paul said, switching back to English. "I think, often, it is a protection for yourself, oui? If you are angry, you cannot hurt so much. And if you are numb, you do not let yourself feel the hurt." It would probably kick in later, that emotional pain, but considering what Jean had apparently been dealing with for the past year and a half, he thought maybe she'd just decimated her metaphorical emotional nerve endings.

Jean shook her head. "I don't like it," she said.

"I don't want to be weak anymore. I want to feel anger. I don't know what I expected telling Scott...maybe this...I just...I don't know what to do now, Jean-Paul. This hurdle was always there and now that we're over it we're broken...and I can't look at him without seeing that look in his eyes and hearing the words on his lips and we can't even be in the same room."

She clenched her fists.

"And I've been adrift for so long just...just...just...lost. Like a wounded bird and I don't want to be that. I'm tired of everyone worrying...I know...its for the best but I don't want to be seen as frail...."

Shifting over so he was standing directly in front of Jean, Jean-Paul took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. "Jean, you are one of the strongest people I know. Being upset because of what has happened - all the things that have happened... this does not make you weak. It does not make you frail. It only shows that you are human."

Jean stared at him, unblinking.

"I want to forget. I just want to forget."

"But you cannot forget and so you must move on. This is not so comforting, I know, but it is the only thing to do, oui? Sometimes... often, it is a lie that time makes things easier. Sometimes nothing makes things easier. But you have friends and we will help you. You are not alone." Jean-Paul didn't actually know what Scott might have said to so thoroughly upset Jean and he was fairly certain he didn't want to know. Of course, it could just be that the panic attack and all the memories it had dredged up were what Jean wanted to forget, but there was no telling, not really. There was so much in the recent past that could make her feel that way.

Jean nodded, falling silent for a little while before she glanced over.

"You said something about cards?" she said.

Moving over so he could pull open one of the drawers in the kitchen, Jean-Paul quirked a small smile and showed Jean the variety of decks he had stashed in there. "Oui. One from every location I have been for the past several months. Take your pick, mon ami."

Her eyebrows rose, a look of wonder briefly crossing her expression.

"You've been busy," she said. After a moment she reached out and made her selection: a deck of cards with intricately decorated metallic filigree on them.

After a moment, she smiled softly.

"Thank you."