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xp_logsKevin meets Jay, and is introduced to religion.
Jay was carrying a small evergreen tree into the mansion. Okay, well, it was actually the top of a tall evergreen tree with the bottom limbs cut off but if you could fly and there were a bunch of wild evergreens nearby you would also take advantage to get something for a Christmas tree.
He's found a stand somewhere in a shed and it really wasn't a big one. There was no reason he and Sam couldn't have a little tree in their suite. He wanted to pretend this Christmas season was normal and not the anniversary of.... Of it all.
Kevin was trying to acclimate to being around people. Davey had said it was important for him to get used to people coming and going, something about it being "good for him to see that people were free to leave" or something. He hadn't really been paying attention.
Most of the people were boring. They didn't do anything that was interesting to watch just...walked around trying to leave the house or go into the house and to their bed. But the bird man- he had a tree inside.
"What are you doing?"
"Bringin' up a Christmas tree to me 'n my brother's space," Jay said, shifting the tree so he could better see the other man. He wasn't sure he had ever met him before, or seen him around, but there seemed to be new people here all the time.
"I'd'a gotten one for the mansion while but I weren't sure how people would feel about that."
“Whit’s Christmas? An why does it have ye bringin’ a tree inside. They grow outside!” Where they could be free to grow as large as they wanted, where he could tell himself he could feel the thrumming of their roots as they “talked” to each other.
Jay wasn't sure he had ever met someone who didn't have at least a concept of Christmas; even little kids had absorbed enough to know a little. He stared at Kevin and tried to think of why they did bring in trees.
"We bring in trees to decorate 'em with things like paper chains and stars and lights and all that to honor the birth of Jesus Christ. Then you put the gifts ya give each other under them, like." He said, hoping this was a fine explanation.
“Who’s that?” Kevin asked, face twisting up in confusion. “Why’s his being born so special? Did he like trees?”
Oh Lord.
This man was a proselytizer dream, but confronted with him Jay didn't know quite what to say.
"Jesus is the son'a God and the Lord and..." He hefted the tree in his hands. "Listen, I'm getting pine needles all over the hallway, why don't y'all come up with me and I can make you something to drink or eat and I can explain better when I got my Bible out and don't got my hands full?"
This….was new. Nobody had ever invited him in before. Was this what Davey had meant when he said that people were nice here?
He meant to say ‘okay’ but what came out instead was “Are you sure?” As he followed the other man up the stairs. “Whit’s a Bible?”
"Wouldn't'a invited ya if'n I didn't mean it," Jay said. "We're neighbors after all. The Bible is the Good Book," Jay explained as he looked for his words. "It's a Holy Book and the words of God and the stories and psalms. Didn't no one ever tell you about religion?" He knew he sounded a little annoyed, but he just wants sure how Kevin had no basis.
He stopped in front of his and Sam's door. "Could ya get the door for me, please?"
“Oh.” Kevin said, awkwardly following the man. “Nobody told me about anything…..” Then, much quieter, “I can’t read.”
"S'alright, plenty 'a people can't." This was more familiar territory to Jay than not knowing about God and Jesus. Sure he didn't know many people around the man's- whose name he should really get- age who were illiterate, but it wasn't all the strange to him.
"'S why they got preachers and suchlike," he said, setting down the tree and getting the door himself. "Hell, even people that do read go 'n listen. I do. Readin' ain't as important as listenin', sometimes."
Kevin still felt.....wrong. "Not used to people talking to me."
Davey talked, and he was good at listening to Kevin. Even if Kevin got the feeling that sometimes Davey wished he wasn't. "Are people supposed to do that?"
"What, listen?" Jay asked as he ushered Kevin into his and Sam's suite. He brought the tree over to the stand he had already brought up.
"Yeah, though a lotta people ain't that good at it."
“No…..talk to you.” Kevin said, brow furrowed. “Nobody ever talked to me. Had to learn to talk from-“ he didn’t want to think about it. The very memory of his father made him nauseous. “It is……good to talk to people? Does that make you good?”
"Talkin' ain't good or bad by itself. It's what you're sayin' that matters. Now you hold this tree still while I screw it in," Jay said, beckoning Kevin over.
Kevin frowned but tried to hold the tree still anyway. “When I did get talked to……I don’t think it was good. I don’t know how to be good.”
Jay got down on his belly to tighten the tree stand. He used this as an excuse to think over what he was going to say. "Well you're helpin' me when I asked for help. I reckon that's a good place to start on bein' good, helpin'." He decided on saying, as if Kevin was a little child.
“Well you were….nice.” Kevin said lamely. “Like Davey’s nice.”
"Bein' nice is generally a good thing," Jay joked as he came up and looked at his tree. The tree wasn't perfectly straight but it'd do. "Why don't you sit and stay a spell? You can help me with making popcorn strings too, if'n you like and if not I did promise you something to drink."
“……whit’s popcorn?” Everyday people said new things to him as if he was supposed to know what they were. Many times these things were food. The people here seemed to think about that a lot.
"It's a way to cook corn kernels." Jay remembered how exciting seeing popcorn pop on the stove was as a child and Kevin seemed so... Childlike. "You'll wanna watch it cook. You sound some sort of British; you want me to make you tea too?"
“Corn?” Kevin’s head titled to the side like a confused animal. There were so many new words. Too many new words. “A’ve never had tea. Whit is it?”
"A hot drink," Jay said and was incredibly grateful that he was used to being around children. And that he liked them. This was a whole lot like the "why?" phase.
Jay busied himself by setting up a kettle and a pot for popcorn on the stove, giving some sideways glances at Kevin.
Did the other man know how to be safe around a hot stove...? (Was he even a man? Was he a child whose mutation made him look like an adult?)
Kevin watched attentively, as if he'd actually remember what all the man was doing when this was done.He would not. "Who...told you how to do this?"
Jay actually couldn't remember for certain.
"Uh. My Mama or Daddy, I suspect. I ain't sure. Maybe my big brother or sister." He shook the handle of the popcorn pot a little, to spread the kernels out.
"Oh." Kevin said softly. He didn't have those, he'd killed his father and his mother had never been a mum...
Thankfully, the popcorn started popping so Jay didn't have to find an answer for Kevin. The cover of the pot started shaking and Jay turned away from the stove to find a bowl. And a mug to put Kevin's tea in, the kettle also starting to wail.
Kevin stared at the stove and reached out to touch, the closer his hand got to the metal the warmer it felt. It felt…good, maybe if he touched the thing the corn was in…
Jay turned just soon enough to see Kevin about to touch the metal if the pot or maybe the burner beneath it and reacted automatically, just like Kevin was the twins when they were little or a kid at church or the community center. He grabbed Kevin by the wrist to stop him from touching.
"Don't touch the metal or the burner! You'll burn yourself!" He scolded.
Kevin recoiled like he’d been shot when Jay touched him. Face twisted up in shock, both that someone was unafraid to touch him and that that someone cared. He was frozen like that for a long while, confusion visible in every part of his face.
When Kevin recoiled like that at touch, Jay had an entirely different assumption that Kevin being shocked someone cared. It made quicker sense to assume he recoiled from trauma. Jay released his wrist quickly.
"I'm sorry, didn't mean t' grab ya. I just don't want you getting burned. You see that handle there? When pots are hot that's what you grab, okay?"
It wasn't an unfair assumption to make. The few times Kevin had been touched in his life had not been pleasant, but Kevin had been able to put together "burn" and "don't" to figure out that Jay wasn't trying to hurt him.
"Okay." Kevin said quietly. "....Thank you."
Jay switched the burners off, the popcorn pot still shaking and the kettle still wailing. He poured the popcorn into the bowl he got and took a moment to collect himself. He felt both too old and too young for this. Hell, he felt like Sam.
He poured the hot water into a mug and told Kevin to pick out whatever tea he'd like from the cabinet.
Kevin stared at the teas in the cabinet for a long time. He didn't know what any of them were, what the symbols on the box meant, or why they might be different colors. Eventually he picked one at random, and then stared at the little packet in his hands, trying to figure out what to do with it next, he mostly just fiddled with it. "Whit is a.....popcorn string?"
"You sew popcorn on a thread and it's like a decoration you can put on th' Christmas tree. I don't know if people outside of America do it." Jay supposed it was something they might not do where corn was not so abundant. He had already started on his garland. "You wanna try?"
Kevin frowned, foot tapping anxiously. "Can you- can you do it first? So I can see?"
Jay nodded and started in his own strand. "Listen," he said, thinking. "If you still want to be hearin' about the Christmas story my church is putting on a pageant, all acted out. Why don't you come with me?"
"You- you want that?" Kevin asked, eyes leaving their careful observation of Jay's hands to stare at his face. Confused, head cocked to the side. Was this a friend?
"If'n you'd like," Jay said, shrugging as he kept stringing the popcorn.
Kevin nodded, almost childlike and eager. "Yes. That- good. Yes."
Jay was carrying a small evergreen tree into the mansion. Okay, well, it was actually the top of a tall evergreen tree with the bottom limbs cut off but if you could fly and there were a bunch of wild evergreens nearby you would also take advantage to get something for a Christmas tree.
He's found a stand somewhere in a shed and it really wasn't a big one. There was no reason he and Sam couldn't have a little tree in their suite. He wanted to pretend this Christmas season was normal and not the anniversary of.... Of it all.
Kevin was trying to acclimate to being around people. Davey had said it was important for him to get used to people coming and going, something about it being "good for him to see that people were free to leave" or something. He hadn't really been paying attention.
Most of the people were boring. They didn't do anything that was interesting to watch just...walked around trying to leave the house or go into the house and to their bed. But the bird man- he had a tree inside.
"What are you doing?"
"Bringin' up a Christmas tree to me 'n my brother's space," Jay said, shifting the tree so he could better see the other man. He wasn't sure he had ever met him before, or seen him around, but there seemed to be new people here all the time.
"I'd'a gotten one for the mansion while but I weren't sure how people would feel about that."
“Whit’s Christmas? An why does it have ye bringin’ a tree inside. They grow outside!” Where they could be free to grow as large as they wanted, where he could tell himself he could feel the thrumming of their roots as they “talked” to each other.
Jay wasn't sure he had ever met someone who didn't have at least a concept of Christmas; even little kids had absorbed enough to know a little. He stared at Kevin and tried to think of why they did bring in trees.
"We bring in trees to decorate 'em with things like paper chains and stars and lights and all that to honor the birth of Jesus Christ. Then you put the gifts ya give each other under them, like." He said, hoping this was a fine explanation.
“Who’s that?” Kevin asked, face twisting up in confusion. “Why’s his being born so special? Did he like trees?”
Oh Lord.
This man was a proselytizer dream, but confronted with him Jay didn't know quite what to say.
"Jesus is the son'a God and the Lord and..." He hefted the tree in his hands. "Listen, I'm getting pine needles all over the hallway, why don't y'all come up with me and I can make you something to drink or eat and I can explain better when I got my Bible out and don't got my hands full?"
This….was new. Nobody had ever invited him in before. Was this what Davey had meant when he said that people were nice here?
He meant to say ‘okay’ but what came out instead was “Are you sure?” As he followed the other man up the stairs. “Whit’s a Bible?”
"Wouldn't'a invited ya if'n I didn't mean it," Jay said. "We're neighbors after all. The Bible is the Good Book," Jay explained as he looked for his words. "It's a Holy Book and the words of God and the stories and psalms. Didn't no one ever tell you about religion?" He knew he sounded a little annoyed, but he just wants sure how Kevin had no basis.
He stopped in front of his and Sam's door. "Could ya get the door for me, please?"
“Oh.” Kevin said, awkwardly following the man. “Nobody told me about anything…..” Then, much quieter, “I can’t read.”
"S'alright, plenty 'a people can't." This was more familiar territory to Jay than not knowing about God and Jesus. Sure he didn't know many people around the man's- whose name he should really get- age who were illiterate, but it wasn't all the strange to him.
"'S why they got preachers and suchlike," he said, setting down the tree and getting the door himself. "Hell, even people that do read go 'n listen. I do. Readin' ain't as important as listenin', sometimes."
Kevin still felt.....wrong. "Not used to people talking to me."
Davey talked, and he was good at listening to Kevin. Even if Kevin got the feeling that sometimes Davey wished he wasn't. "Are people supposed to do that?"
"What, listen?" Jay asked as he ushered Kevin into his and Sam's suite. He brought the tree over to the stand he had already brought up.
"Yeah, though a lotta people ain't that good at it."
“No…..talk to you.” Kevin said, brow furrowed. “Nobody ever talked to me. Had to learn to talk from-“ he didn’t want to think about it. The very memory of his father made him nauseous. “It is……good to talk to people? Does that make you good?”
"Talkin' ain't good or bad by itself. It's what you're sayin' that matters. Now you hold this tree still while I screw it in," Jay said, beckoning Kevin over.
Kevin frowned but tried to hold the tree still anyway. “When I did get talked to……I don’t think it was good. I don’t know how to be good.”
Jay got down on his belly to tighten the tree stand. He used this as an excuse to think over what he was going to say. "Well you're helpin' me when I asked for help. I reckon that's a good place to start on bein' good, helpin'." He decided on saying, as if Kevin was a little child.
“Well you were….nice.” Kevin said lamely. “Like Davey’s nice.”
"Bein' nice is generally a good thing," Jay joked as he came up and looked at his tree. The tree wasn't perfectly straight but it'd do. "Why don't you sit and stay a spell? You can help me with making popcorn strings too, if'n you like and if not I did promise you something to drink."
“……whit’s popcorn?” Everyday people said new things to him as if he was supposed to know what they were. Many times these things were food. The people here seemed to think about that a lot.
"It's a way to cook corn kernels." Jay remembered how exciting seeing popcorn pop on the stove was as a child and Kevin seemed so... Childlike. "You'll wanna watch it cook. You sound some sort of British; you want me to make you tea too?"
“Corn?” Kevin’s head titled to the side like a confused animal. There were so many new words. Too many new words. “A’ve never had tea. Whit is it?”
"A hot drink," Jay said and was incredibly grateful that he was used to being around children. And that he liked them. This was a whole lot like the "why?" phase.
Jay busied himself by setting up a kettle and a pot for popcorn on the stove, giving some sideways glances at Kevin.
Did the other man know how to be safe around a hot stove...? (Was he even a man? Was he a child whose mutation made him look like an adult?)
Kevin watched attentively, as if he'd actually remember what all the man was doing when this was done.
Jay actually couldn't remember for certain.
"Uh. My Mama or Daddy, I suspect. I ain't sure. Maybe my big brother or sister." He shook the handle of the popcorn pot a little, to spread the kernels out.
"Oh." Kevin said softly. He didn't have those, he'd killed his father and his mother had never been a mum...
Thankfully, the popcorn started popping so Jay didn't have to find an answer for Kevin. The cover of the pot started shaking and Jay turned away from the stove to find a bowl. And a mug to put Kevin's tea in, the kettle also starting to wail.
Kevin stared at the stove and reached out to touch, the closer his hand got to the metal the warmer it felt. It felt…good, maybe if he touched the thing the corn was in…
Jay turned just soon enough to see Kevin about to touch the metal if the pot or maybe the burner beneath it and reacted automatically, just like Kevin was the twins when they were little or a kid at church or the community center. He grabbed Kevin by the wrist to stop him from touching.
"Don't touch the metal or the burner! You'll burn yourself!" He scolded.
Kevin recoiled like he’d been shot when Jay touched him. Face twisted up in shock, both that someone was unafraid to touch him and that that someone cared. He was frozen like that for a long while, confusion visible in every part of his face.
When Kevin recoiled like that at touch, Jay had an entirely different assumption that Kevin being shocked someone cared. It made quicker sense to assume he recoiled from trauma. Jay released his wrist quickly.
"I'm sorry, didn't mean t' grab ya. I just don't want you getting burned. You see that handle there? When pots are hot that's what you grab, okay?"
It wasn't an unfair assumption to make. The few times Kevin had been touched in his life had not been pleasant, but Kevin had been able to put together "burn" and "don't" to figure out that Jay wasn't trying to hurt him.
"Okay." Kevin said quietly. "....Thank you."
Jay switched the burners off, the popcorn pot still shaking and the kettle still wailing. He poured the popcorn into the bowl he got and took a moment to collect himself. He felt both too old and too young for this. Hell, he felt like Sam.
He poured the hot water into a mug and told Kevin to pick out whatever tea he'd like from the cabinet.
Kevin stared at the teas in the cabinet for a long time. He didn't know what any of them were, what the symbols on the box meant, or why they might be different colors. Eventually he picked one at random, and then stared at the little packet in his hands, trying to figure out what to do with it next, he mostly just fiddled with it. "Whit is a.....popcorn string?"
"You sew popcorn on a thread and it's like a decoration you can put on th' Christmas tree. I don't know if people outside of America do it." Jay supposed it was something they might not do where corn was not so abundant. He had already started on his garland. "You wanna try?"
Kevin frowned, foot tapping anxiously. "Can you- can you do it first? So I can see?"
Jay nodded and started in his own strand. "Listen," he said, thinking. "If you still want to be hearin' about the Christmas story my church is putting on a pageant, all acted out. Why don't you come with me?"
"You- you want that?" Kevin asked, eyes leaving their careful observation of Jay's hands to stare at his face. Confused, head cocked to the side. Was this a friend?
"If'n you'd like," Jay said, shrugging as he kept stringing the popcorn.
Kevin nodded, almost childlike and eager. "Yes. That- good. Yes."
