xp_logs | Backdated: Sarah and Jono, followed by Paige and Jono

After seeing his new room, Jono flees straight to Sarah. They catch up on things.

Silly string, tinfoil, glitter... Welcome home, all right, Jono thought while applying himself to the one thing that hadn't seemingly changed since he left. The basement, and the way to Sarah's room. It wasn't that much the garish decorations he was fleeing, but the attention and the strange feeling of gratitude at being welcomed back. Nonetheless, his head needed clearing up badly, and if anyone could help with that it was Sarah.

He wasn't quite sure what to do at the door, and ended up knocking, although he'd never bothered with that before. His absence and the changes done in the meanwhile had left him feeling like nothing he knew was right anymore.

There was the sound of movement behind the door as Sarah pushed herself off the bed and nudged Oscar out of the way with her foot. The door opened slowly, and she grinned almost immediately. "Since when did you have to knock on the door? Regardless of what the rumors say, I still don't bite unless you ask me to." She considered hugging him, but finally decided to wait until she let him in before tackling him. Better for everyone that way. "Missed you.

"Self-preservation," he muttered, inching in. "You could've been up to something my delicate sensibilities wouldn't survive." He seemed to nearly sigh in relief when the door closed behind him. He gave the dog a glance, not a very interested one, then looked up at Sarah. "God, Spikey, going soft? Missed you too."

Rolling her eyes, she rested her hands on her hips. "Would you rather I beat the hell out of you instead? Better yet, shut up or I'll make you hold my hand." 'Going soft' my ass. I'll show you 'going soft'. She flopped down on the bed, reaching over to her nightstand to grab a cigarette and her lighter. But she didn't light up just yet. "So, any parties while you were gone that I should be jealous of?"

He climbed next to her on the bed, pushing the puppy away when it tried to settle himself between his legs. "Is your hand all you want me to hold?" Jono asked, making a desperate attempt at their usual flirt, then made a face - or as much as he could make a face - at his lame try. "Yeah, you wouldn't believe the orgies those lab assistants get up to in their super secret institutes. I took pictures, but Auntie Emma confiscated my camera."

"You're a telepath and you can't tell? I'm obviously not thinking it loud enough." She gave him an easy smile, and tossed a bone to the floor to distract Oscar. He scrambled after it, and promptly decided Jono wasn't all that fascinating anymore. "That's a shame about your pictures. Would have made for one hell of a show and tell session afterwards." Taking a moment to light a cigarette, she pulled her legs up under her, but left room for touching if he wanted to. "Must have been such a shock on those 'delicate sensibilites' of yours."

"I'm a malfunctioning telepath," Jono explained, squirming to get comfortable and finally just lay down, his head on her thigh. A clear sign he'd come for their particular brand of comfort. "Yeah, a good old slide show of debauchery. I was horrified. Astonished. Flabbergasted.."

"Ooooh. I'm sorry I missed it." Looking down at her free hand, she pulled the bone in, flipping it over twice to make sure she'd gotten it all. Her newly inspected hand then found its way to his face, figertips running gently along his forehead, through his hair, and on his cheek. She let the silence hang, taking a long drag off of her cigarette, sending the smoke high into the air above them.

Jono's chest flattened with some strange muscle memory of breathing in timewith her exhalation, as if he'd been the one to inhale the smoke in the firstplace. He closed his eyes. "So now you know how I am. How're things with you?"

"I can't complain." There was a pause as she took another drag from her cigarette. Who am I kidding? "Boyfriend's on the straight and narrow, and suddenly I'm the fucking posterchild for what he doesn't want to be. It's tempting to just go back to growling at people from the boiler room. That's what I feel like sometimes."

"Only sometimes?" Jono's words seemed to be shrouded in the smoke. "What's Shinobi on about? The tunnels? The dying?"

"The X-men." She leaned back to the ashtray on her nightstand, and then pushed herself back up to sitting again. "Apparently Captain Fuckwad gave him a lecture, accompanied by a slide show. 'And this, is Sarah dead.' That's what changed everything, because now it doesn't matter that I survived, only that I was laying dead in the tunnels for a while."

"Isn't it a bit of a moot point in your case?" Jono opened his eyes lazily, looking up at her. "Dying, I mean. I think it's comforting to know you can actually survive death." He ignored the obvious paradox in what he'd spoken, and rested his hands on his chest.

"I thought so too. I guess we're just weird like that." She reached out her hand, and curled it around one of his. "I talked to Nathan the other day. Told him that I would put you back together myself if I had to."

He squeezed her hand, black wrappings around his fingers rough against her skin. "Duct tape," he muttered, eyes half closed again, as if he was sleepy. "That's all you need. Just tape the pieces that are left over back together."

"I'll have to buy some the next time I'm out. A couple rolls should do it, you think?" She smiled, and for a moment, she took in the quiet again. Welcome back Sparky.

"Probably. The silver sort's more durable than the black, so go with that." Jono let his eyes close fully again, almost nuzzling his cheek into her thigh. "Thanks, Spikey. It's nice to be home." And he really meant it, she could tell.

"How cute. You'll be all shiny and attract people like Clarice." She grinned again, and leaned forward to kiss his forehead. "Silver is the first step to glitter addiction, you know."

"At least I'll go well with my new room. Did you see what they did to it?" Jono lifted his hands on either side of her face, holding her down for a second as he projected the image of it into her mind.

Her eyes widened for a moment before she started laughing. "No wonder you're down here." She continued to giggle, still bent down over him even though he wasn't holding on to her anymore. "And here I was thinking you were down here because you liked me. But it's only because I'm not blinding."

"I swear I lost my eyesight for a moment when I stepped in." Jono twirled a strand of her dark hair around his finger, then frowned and let his hand fall back on his chest. "And yeah, I like the dark around here."

"Door's always open. Even when it isn't." She hoped he already knew that, but it never hurt to say it again. She curled her free hand around his when he pulled it back, and gave him a conspiratorial smirk. "Though you may want to knock first if the door's closed. I may be doing something shocking inside."

"I need to get my camera back." Jono raised his eyebrows, looking at her upside down face. "So I'll be prepared in case it's something really shocking. Such as trying on a new pink skirt."

"Pink?" She made a face, shaking her head. "Not likely. Maybe wearing the other skirt without any underwear, or something, but not pink. Don't think there's enough alcohol in the world."

"See, you can't shock me," Jono said smugly. "But I promise I'll knock anyway. Apparently the staff has rediscovered the meaning of 'privacy' since I left. All those new single rooms."

"It's the school changing to meet the needs of our sex lives. Very considerate of them." She nodded, then shrugged and added, "Though my single stems more from most of this place being too scared of me to actually sleep in the same room with me."

"That's one way of ensuring you're left alone," Jono admitted, shifting to lie on his side, staring at the centre of the room. "Do you mind if I stay here tonight? Don't really feel up to going to that nightmare of a room."

"Nah. You're welcome to stay as long as you like." Sitting up, she ran her fingers through his hair again, the most comforting thing she could come up with. "I won't kick you out, I like you too much."

"I'm your nightlight," he repeated what she'd told him several times, his hand hanging off the edge of the bed. "Might be too bright for you soon."

"I'll deal," she insisted, but inside she didn't feel quite so confident. She knew he could feel it, and she hated that. Hated that she couldn't hide it better. Hated that she couldn't be the rock he needed. She wriggled out from under him, and curled up beside him instead. She tried again. "I'm not letting you go. Ever."

He felt her settle against his back. "It's odd to have everyone telling me I'll pull through or something. This must be what dying of a disease feels like. Except I'm not contagious." He hoped he'd have something lighter to say, but the thing about Sarah and her room was he felt easiest to be himself, morbid himself, there.

"I can stop," she murmured, hand resting gently on his side. "If you'd rather not hear it from me."

"Yeah. I'd rather just skip trying to be cheered up. Especially by you, it doesn't feel right." He turned halway on his back, craning his neck to see her. "Let's ignore it. So we don't have to get embarrassed about being soft later."

She eyed him, grip on his side tightening just slightly. "Sparky, you call me soft one more time and I'm going to push you off the fucking bed. Are we understood?"

She could almost feel the relief that coursed through Jono. "Fuck you," he said with all the cheer he could muster, eyebrows twitching.

"Uh-huh. You'll have to get in line. Maybe I can fit you in sometime before Christmas."

Jono elbowed her. And not too gently.

And later the same night. Jono can't sleep so enter Paige. They discuss things. Much the same things that have already been discussed before.

It'd been a while since she'd been to the boiler room. A long while really, she can't remember the last time, just a vivid, gleeful memory of blinking lights and that was long before. She's not sorry; she's never liked it down here. It's dark and damp and there's cement for flooring. But, Paige knows that's where Jono will be. He'd got back today and she'd managed a little smile with her passing glance but there was not going to be any loud public displays in the hall. They both knew they'd find each other, later, when everyone else was asleep. That was their time.

Paige had been smart enough to wrap herself up in her blanket before making her way downstairs, as well as adding a pair of thick woolen socks to her current wardrobe. The tail of her duvet dragged along the stairs as she made her way down them, with a soft little dragthump. He'd left the door slightly ajar, and Paige pushed it open with her hip, closing it again with her shoulder until it made a solid click. There was a faint glow from the other side of the room and she blinked, trying to adjust. "Hey."

Wrapped up to the best of his abilities, Jono was still leaking light. It was more than enough for him to find his way around the guitar, which was resting on his crossed legs, black and sleek. A narrow rectangle of different light bled from the hallway as Paige entered, and Jono looked up from his corner, more sensing her greeting than actually hearing it through his headphones. He relaxed his fingers from the strings and nodded at her. "Hey."

Not bothering with shyness or formalities, Paige crossed over to him, coming to sit until her shoulder was pressed up against his and she could lean into to him. A breath she didn't know she'd been holding escaped in a sigh. "Glad you made it back. Was beginning to wonder if I should start worrying or something."

He merely lifted one hand free and pushed the headphones off before sliding his arm around her. The guitar slipped to the other side and he stared at the far wall. "Oh, don't do that, sunshine," he said after a while. "I'm bloody well near indestructible."

"You make it hard to tell sometimes," Paige replied, curling up into his side as if seeking refuge. Weeks of tension seemed to slowly crack and melt away, leaving her shoulders loose and no where near her ears. "I might have just fretted a little. You know, here and there."

"I'm just going through a stage," Jono said, making a weak attempt at humour. A much better coping mechanism than his normal acidic or just plain sulky depression. He stretched his free arm, setting the guitar standing against the wall, and a little eruption of light sliced through his sleeve near his wrist. "Bugger," he said rather conversationally, and pulled up his knee, settling his hand on it. "Fretting is what got me in this situation. Soon I'm past being a torch and a long way into becoming a bonfire."

Paige watched quietly, eyes shifting carefully around as he moved almost as one would watch birds as the park. Suddenly she felt nervous and slightly ill at being packed in so close to his side, worried once more that he would break under her as he didn't really seem to have come back in much better shape than when he'd left. But, he would have said something if there was an issue. He always said something if there was an issue, however minor, even if it was a telltale hand in her hair. "I do hope you're not blaming me for the fact that you're getting to involve more lights than a boy band stage show."

"No. After all, it wasn't your fault you got sucked into a strange dimension of valkyries. Besides, we need to look at the positive side of this." Those words from Jono were about as plausible as an alien clawing its way out of his chest, and he seemed to recognise the irony even as he said it. "Really," he added. "That's what the esteemed psionics finally agreed on was the best course of action. Positive thinking." But nothing in his thoughts was positive; beneath the irony came vast amounts of impotent rage and bitterness, like a charred edge to everything he said. "How were things back here?"

"Who are you and what have you done with my boy?" Paige asked, looking up to see the black material that formed his jaw. "I asked for lifesaving miracle, not brain transplant. I liked your brain. It was squishy and manipulable." Sighing, Paige returned to her comfortable nuzzling position. "Tense. They're always tense. People keep disappearing, spraining brains, getting kidnapped, cheating on their significant others, finding out that we have psychos in the school, blah. Nothing all that different, really. I bought a Nerf gun and didn't kill anyone, though, so we'll chalk it up to a win."

Jono looked at her from the corner of his eye. "Who knows. They certainly had their way with me more than once, they could've very well taken out my brain," he managed to keep in all comments about the likelihood of having a brain, "and put it in a pickle jar somewhere." He twisted his wrist, watching the wound in his arm gape open and glow with a pale yellow colour. "There's a psycho loose in the school?" he asked, affecting a mildly surprised tone, then craned his neck to see her face. "It's you, isn't it? It's only a matter of time before you slaughter everybody with your Nerf gun."

"'Had their way'?" Paige asked, raising her eyebrows. "Do I need to take the next plane out to defend your honour, heart?" It was so much easier to be cute and amusing, than it was to contemplate too deeply exactly what he was saying. She watched the glowing out of the corner of her eye, even as he ducked to see her. "I admit it. It's me. Your departure was just too much for me and I snapped. As for the Nerf gun. Well. No one suspectsthe girl with the Nerf gun."

"Just as much no one expects the Spanish Inquisition?" The humour was more and more forced now, and Jono leaned his head against the wall, staring at the far corner of the boiler room. He was quiet after that, just idly resting his arm on her shoulders, and would've seemed to be at peace if it hadn't been for the very clear signs of definitely not being that. "Paige?"

Paige just hummed in agreement, his forced tone making all her playful words suddenly cold and brittle. She settled for listening to the less than gentle vibrations against her ear, and the way it harmonized against the pounding blood that beat a rhythm at her throat. Her eyes were shifting to half closed when she spoke, and they finished closing at his question. "Yes?" she asked quietly, without any of the drowsiness her posture would suggest.

There was another heavy pause, and she could almost hear the thoughtsturning in Jono's head before he actually spoke. "In case I never get to tell you again, I love you." The words were careful, as if he was afraid it was somehow the wrong thing to say. "And it's sort of stupid to actually realise it now, but there you have it. I can't seem to do anything without being contrary." He leaned his cheek against the top of her head.

"Oh, Jonothan..." she said quietly after a while, an overwhelming sadness coming over her. She wouldn't believe it, not yet and here in front of him, but his words were a sort of final judgement. And it terrified her. Pressing herself closer Paige slipped her arms around him, clinging to a too frail waist. "I know. I know. Don't say it like that."

"Not much choice to say it any other way, is there?" He sounded defeated. "Right now I wish you didn't like me at all so you wouldn't have to go through this. It'd be easier." He patted her back somewhat awkward suddenly, as if ashamed of the emotion. "When- If this goes badly," he rolled his eyes, "and I don't know how it go well, I don't want you to see me, whatever I become. All right?"

"You. Shut up. Shut up right now or I will smack you, coming apart at the seams or no." Paige pulled back, leaning on the arm that was around him to look up and stare definately. "Because here's the thing. I love you. This means that nothing will be going wrong. If something does go wrong, then I'd rather love you and hurt than hate you and not, not to mention the big part where it will merely be a bump in the road towards you becoming whatever the heck you want to. You got that? Do I need to repeat it with accents on certain words like love, nothing and wrong?"

"Or you could give it to me in writing," he said, but then shook his head. He was trying to protect her, wasn't he? "I'm not really informed about the sort of nightlife incorporeal beings have, but I'll definitely ask Askani when I have the change, but," he paused, agitated. "But that's why you've got two boyfriends. One breaks or evolves or whatever the hell, and there's still the other left." He wasn't quite sure at which point encouraging Paige to spend more time with Angelo had become a good idea, but there it was.

Paige drew back and smacked him, glaring; not hard enough to be a punch, but too fiece to be just a slap. She generally didn't believe in physical violence. Jono was the exception. "Don't you dare try and make my relationships with Angelo and yourself less than they really are. As if you're to be replaced. As if one of you is a spare! Both of you are... are different parts of me. You can't just expect to remove yourself from my life, remove part of myself from me, with no more than a few instructions."

The glow from Jono intensified and he stared hard at her for a second before his shoulders slumped and he gave up on the fight. Pointless. "Fine. All right. I just don't want you to feel like you're obliged to do something about me when this thing goes past the point of no return. I'm not going to be much use to anyone. I'm sorry."

"Shush," she answered in a soothing tone, her expression softening instantly. Stretching up, Paige kissed his cheek gently and settled into his lap as if she didn't plan on moving this side of ever. Any uncertainty she had was pushed aside for the task of comforting. "Just shush. We'll figure this out, all right? One way or another, maybe even bad before good, we'll figure this out. I... I promise."

He wanted to demand how she could promise something like that, but bent his head instead and kept quiet. The last thing he wanted now was to aggravate her more, or himself. Part of him wondered if he would get better by just staying still and quiet and pretending everything was fine, but the rest of him knew that'd just make things worse. "Yeah," he said finally. "Trust the genius with the Nerf gun, why don't you."

"Personally I think that just proves my genius," Paige replied with ease, nuzzling up against him, squirming until she was curled up under his ducked head, just trying to get some kind of reaction out of him. Perhaps, if she were being honest, she would say she needed the touch more than him. Just some sort of sign that he knew she was really there. "Who's going to fear a girl with a Nerf gun, I ask you? No one. And that will be their last mistake. Evil cackle here."

"Knowing you, I'd be scared when you pointed that thing at me." Jono adjusted his arm around her, and turned a little to lean his cheek on her hair again. "But maybe that's just me. You spoke to me about taking over the world; I may never trust you around weapons again."

Paige smiled serenely, reaching up a hand to stroke his hair, fingers reaching just to the place near his temple. "You're just a wimp, heart. There's really nothing we can do for that. If it makes you feel any better, that suits me just fine." Eyes falling to a comfortable half closed, Paige ignored the double meaning.