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Jay has been off since Kaleb has returned, but he's trying hard to make things right for his friend. Working hard unpacking the house and getting things in order once more, when he isn't at work or doing community work. In general he seems to be drifting, but puts up a good front when he has to, and he can feel something weird in Kaleb lately after their last upheaval with him getting hurt away from them. He tries hard for his friend.
Like now. Jay comes through the patio door that joins their rooms through a balcony, bearing a cup of coffee. "Kale? Hey. Take a study break?"
Kaleb went to school, didn't melt, came home and has been routinely declining going out but for 1-2 times a week because they don't own a pool table. But home it was, and was taken to jsut… makign home, homier. He looked up camped out in the patio, not unpacked and feeling… not… done. Arching an eyebrow he said "Oh shit you fixed the coffee pot? That's amazing. yeah have a seat. the view is… kinda cool."
"Yeah." No, he didn't. After Maximus got hold of the last coffee machine, it was toast. But Jay had bought another machine with his wages and kept it in his room to fend off any attempts to 'fix' it. Jay sets the mug down on Kaleb's armrest and takes a load off, looking over their new view. "It's different, huh?"
Kaleb asked Jay to make the coffee go anyways so it wasn't too bad living off a carafe. Kale looked at the cup, and warmed a bit of a smile for the gift of coffee. the book on some math class was set aside and the coffee taken up. "Thanks." Jay wasn't really his valet, Kaleb usually just fell apart without his tour guide to real life. "Little different. Maybe a little different is what we need. maybe. Hey, um…thanks for the help with moving my albums. I think the new arrangement works. how's your stuff coming along?"
Jay nods slowly in agreement as he settles in. It's autumn now, but the sun is still warm and he lets his wings stretch out a little bit, catching the clear October light and filtering it through crimson feathers. "Different is good sometimes." He takes in a deep breath, eyes searching the slice of sky rather than the buildings. "Of course, Kale. What friends are for. Ah'm unpacked. Ah didn't have much, so it really only took a night to unpack my clothes from the bag and a couple little things. The longest part was trying to assemble all the other stuff you insisted Ah had to have." A tiny twitch of a smile on his mouth.
Kaleb knew Jay didn't have a lot. It was really what drove Kaleb to share what he had. He knew why Jay didn't like having stuff, but maybe hoped it would weigh him down long enough to help him roost and not run. "I'm a… what was it Vanesss called me on the phone? needy prima-donna?" The grin widened finding the criticism of him exaggerated and funny. "Hey, Glad you're here, man. I couldn't have done it without you…Like I literally have not put shelves together before."
Jay's brows flick upward as he looks to his friend, looking confused, likely over A) who the hell is Vanesss but also why he's be called a needy prima-donna. Jay squints a little, then rolls his eyes, a corner of his mouth lifting vaguely as he looks away with a shake of his head. Disagreeing mutely.
"No problem, man. Ah'm good at physical labor. Ah learned a lot of borin' skills helpin' back home." Jay easily accepts the gratitude and seems to think nothing of it. "Vic knows how to do stuff, too. You'd be fine, Kale. And Max can build stuff Ah'm sure." The shelves might have ended up committing genocide or something, but they'd exist. "Yer cool, man."
Kaleb might agree they most certainly would not be a unitasker of max laid hands on them. "You /do/ need some stuff your my bro, not a hobo…" He quizzical looked from the skyline to Jay, "Hobro?" He shook his head, "She called. Me having to go to my ex's wedding is stupid. my purple have the stupidest rules I swear. How about you? how'd the jam session go?"
Jay arches a brow at Kaleb, smiling at Kaleb lightly when he makes up a new word. "Ah don't need a lot of stuff, Kale. Ah've been in the city fer six months, and honestly, Ah didn't leave a lot behind at home when I left. Ah like that word, though. That's fun." Jay leans back a little and looks even more confused. "What…wedding? What ex? Am Ah really that out of touch that Ah got no idea what you're talkin' about?" The final question about him is met with a knot in his stomach and terse shake of his head. "You first."
Kaleb took a deep breatha nd stretched out actually getting a bit of a chuckle out of the protest. This too, in time he'd fix. He sipped the coffee enjoying not being the most bitter thing in the room. Coffee was generally reliable for that. "So… last year I dated this gal for, eh, she put up with me for a while. She was, what I like to call in the 'least awful' category. Still she is human and her dad's some sitting judge that's got a beef with ppowered persons and is… a real pain in the ass to put it bluntly. I stomached it for a bit and frankly she did all sorts of social things that I don't have to worry about and keeps other people away away from me. But she used the words 'is that so bad' so I broke up with her on the pretense she's going to Sarah Marshall this fall and I was going to Europe so there was no real point." He eyed Jay, "This makes me a son of a bitch apparently." For those keeping track of the point totals at home. "I didn't even care that she was constantly flirting with other fellas. The harder she tried to make me jealous the harder I fucking ignored her." He smirked, "Really frosted her cookies let me tell ya. Anyways, she met some guy and she is stiiiiiiill trying to make nah, don't do it. But why would I? But she's getting married and I got invitation to go. And she was SUPER nice about it which means a- she wants to figure out if I'll go, b- if I go alone or not and if not with hwo so she can go ON about it later, and 3- to try to flaunt this dude in my face. But… her mum is tight with mother so… I have to go." He saluted withthe coffee. something something 1% problems.
Jay turns his head to regard Kaleb quietly while he explains this intermingled bologna with some random person's wedding. He considers it pretty evenly, brows dipping slightly while he nods during the final three count down. "You meant 'c', but yeah, Ah get it. Ah mean…" Jay shrugs and scoops a hand through his hair. "That's pretty much how most functions down south go. You gotta invite everyone, and if yer second-cousin twice-removed doesn't go or somethin', that whole family hears about it for the next year and a half." Okay, so maybe there a few things that are similar between those two very different castes of people. He considers it for a moment longer and brows pop up toward Kaleb. "You wanna take Ninette? She's an heiress, gorgeous, an' about as sharp an' pointy as you are." Jay smiles very slightly. You want to borrow my beard, bro? "If anyone's gonna outshine a gal on her wedding day, it's her."
Kaleb warmed a grin to Jay and considered. "I'll keep Ninette in mind. Max said HE wants to go…in dress and all… and I told him he'd have to pass the Marshall panel of nit-pickiness." He took a deep breath. "Sooooo much can go wrong and Kellan's jsut ready to watch the world get torched. If you can believe as much as I find all of this total bullshit he actually hates it more than I do?" The eyebrow went up. "Lot of people could get hurt. Really hate the world for bein this way but damn the view up here is somethin ain't it? So waht's up with you anyways?"
Jay lids his eyes at Kaleb when he says Max would go in a dress and the 'Kaleb, no' comment goes without saying with that look. "You want to invite a /man in drag/ as your date, because yer ex is going to try to make you jealous, but you have to go because of your mother, and /Kel/ is the one who wants to watch the world burn? No, Kaleb. Ah don't say this often, but you're wrong." Jay shakes his head and lays his head back a bit, whistling in a loop when he thinks about that mess. "Look, if you didn't have to do this for family and appearances, Ah'd fly by and watch you basically tell everyone to go fuck themselves an' toss yerself out of yer own family with Max, but Kaleb…this /ain't/ the circumstance."
He takes a deep breath and shakes his head again. "Ah hate feeling like a broken record, man. It's the same as always, but worse. Daire an' Ah had an argument." Wings shiver with the thought, and his chest tightens, fending off the feeling with another deep breath. "We caught up in the livin' room, holdin' on to each other, an' made plans to go out to an orchard together this fall before we went in to listen to music. We were listenin' to records on yer floor because Ah didn't want to disturb any of your stuff, stretched out next to each other, wrapped him up under a wing, kinda…bein'…well, you know." Color soaks into his pale cheeks. "Sayin' nice stuff to each other an' takin' notes on songs. It was sorta romantic an' nice. An' Ah told him that the situation was hard because Ah want to be the man who helps him feel like he can be him, always. Ah want to do the work. An' bein' at an arm's distance is hard. So he puts m'hand over his heart an' he tells me he loves me, but he made a decision, an' it ain't fair, but that's how it is. Which Ah /know/, course." Jay tries to give the short version, but it becomes progressively more difficult to explain as he goes on.
"So Ah'm just full of questions all the time, and Ah stupidly ask him if Josh knows that he loves me, too. The answer is no, but it don't matter because Ah guess…Ah don't matter? Ah don't know." Jay smiles, wide and quick, frail as he shrugs, one leg bouncing. "An' he snaps at me and gets up to go. Ah guess Ah'm just expected to be happy with livin' this half life. Do everythin' with him, take him out, hang out, write music together, play together, curl up together, share all these things with each other, an' then send him on home to his 'real' boyfriend." Jay crosses his arms over his chest, quickly using his thumb to swipe away a quick tear, then crosses his arms again. "He says he's sick of feelin' like the bad guy, when he hasn't done nothin' wrong. Don't know what to do because bein' not around me hurts, but bein' around me seems to hurt me—but that ain't it, you know? Bein' with him never hurts. It's the distance that hurts. It's the distance that feels like it's killin' me. Now who's the prima donna, huh? An' now there's that open mic Ah know he'll be at because we talked about it and planned it an' Ah just got… /bees/ in my stomach. They ain't butterflies, they're bees."
Kaleb listened and stays quiet. One leg came up over the arm of the chair so he could turn his focus that way without interruption from things flying by or whatever. Finalyl after a while he opened with, "I can't give you advice. I'm only now jsut starting to figure this stuff out. but that's a hard place to be in. Seems like, and this is my amateur opinion, like he can give 80 but the heart is craving 180 and he's in a thing. He can only give so much and that sucks. I mean… I dunno what I mean." Echo's jaw sat tight really chewing this one over.
"It ain't what it ain't but you can get what he's got to give and that's gonn ahave to be enough cause there is no more to take. That's.. rough." As for the primadonna Kaleb cracked a wry grin, "I'll lend you my tiara. Hey, you remember the thing with Lorna?" Which might be the first time he's really brought it up since the breakup. He seemed to be goin some place with this.
Jay nods and pops his brows up slightly while Kaleb tries to chew it all over. "Sam says he's just leading me on and usin' me, especially if Josh don't know." Inhaling a sharp breath and stretching his back, wings stretch slowly. "That he's tryin' to have his cake and eat it, too, and of course he's mad, because he comes out ahead while Ah…stand here. Because friends don't hold each other and say they love each other. Either way, Ah'm stuck. Ah don't want to lose what little pieces he can give me…but…" The man closes his eyes and frowns, shaking his head slowly. "Ah just want to be stronger. Or maybe Ah don't want to feel this way. They got groups at this church down the way that're supposed to 'fix' people." Because that's a great idea!
"Yeah. Yeah Ah remember the thing with Lorna. Why?"
Kaleb sat quietly and really thought about it. "I really tried my ass off to make her happy. Shit I'm out 1.2 million dollars I'm going to eventually have to be held accountable for, but I cared about her. SHe tried to care back as best as she could I think, but it wasn't gonna work out. What she needed wasn't anything I had that I could offer her and she chose something else. Grantedthere was other shit going on, but in teh end that jsut wasn't gonna work. I don't htink it's a matter of cake and eating all teh cake. It's like… you hold onto the parts you can. Does he care about you? Yeah He care about Elixir? Yeah. But he had a choice and he chose. It doesn't mean that he cares about you any less. Sounds to me like he's trying to salvage teh relationship best as he can and it's a shitty situation. NOW…" Kaleb held up a finger and leaned forward, "Now if you decide to pursue other personal happiness and he tries to stop you? I'll make sure he goes tone deaf. I'll figure it out." Because no one hurts his birb deliberately.
Jay sits in silence while Kaleb recounts his relationship with Lorna and what a raging disaster that was over all. "You an' Lorna were fundamentally different, though. Ah see where you're comin' from on there, but there's salvagin' the relationship, Kale, an' then there's leading someone around by the nose, an' Ah don't know where this is." He takes a smooth breath. "Then there's the part of me who says if Elixir don't know the situation, is it fair to him. The guy's a tool, but you think that he has any idea how his boyfriend is with me? And then Ah don't want to think about it because Ah know it's just going to mean Ah lose more of what Ah got with him." Jay turns to look at Kaleb for a long moment. He's trying to be fair, he is. He's trying hard to keep a level head. "How do Ah learn to live with this? Ah want to be strong for this—fer him an' me, but at what point am Ah bein' a sucker? Am Ah really never allowed to ask questions about what's going on, or feel…/hurt/?"
Kaleb arched an eyebrow, "Why do you give two shits about Elixir? You ain't datin em. You don't even like em. You owe him nothing and he doesn't validate you. Look it's a tough race. Two horses neck in neck but one horse wins. What we don't do is shoot the second horse. You honour the race. It's not about sides or winnin or even right and wrong Jay. It's about hurt and figuring out what you want, and what you want isn't a thing right now. THe consolation prize has got to be enough right now or you'll driver yourself battier than a cat in a house of rockin chairs…" He paused and blinked at Jay asking hesitantly, "Is that… is that one right?" He was trying to figure out the Jay-isms here. "It ain't what you want to hear, but it's how the situation sits and ya know, I feel for ya."
"Ah give two shits because Ah'm not a terrible person, Kaleb," Jay points out with dim exasperation. "Fer a while, Josh was one of the only people around here Ah could consider a friend until he started getting mean about things. Even if Ah didn't like him at all, or know him, there's a basic concern about…Ah don't know!" Jay tries to explain, flicking his gaze upwards while he tries to explain the nuances of not being a shitty person to Kaleb Miller. "Folks might argue it's Daire's responsibility to tell me where the line is, but if Ah feel like Josh might take exception to some of the stuff he lets me do, it's still mah responsibility to say somethin'. Because Ah sure as hell wouldn't want someone else holdin' mah girlfriend's hand, or pullin' 'em in close by the belt loops and whisperin' things in their ear. Can you imagine what Max would do if he saw somethin' like that?" He tries to point out the problem of his guilty conscience by putting it in context for Kaleb.
"It weren't a race, Kale. Daire ain't a prize to be won, you can't talk about people that way," He murmurs softly, dipping his chin and skating a hand through his hair. "An' that one's…kinda right. Ah don't know where the line is, an' if Ah ask, he gets mad at me. This whole thing's just my fault, an' Ah already know it is. If Ah would've just told Josh yes, he would've stepped aside. He didn't even want him." Jay sighs and shakes his head a little bit, confounded by the whole thing. "He didn't even want him, an' now Ah feel guilty because the guy comes over, lets me love him, then goes back home t'someone who didn't want him."
Kaleb kicked back in his chair and sat and listened and opted to learn something here because he genuinly was concerned about Jay's feelings and how his brain operated. How would Max feel if Kale let someoe else get handsy? "How would Max feel? Well… I suppose he might slap them with an atomic wood chipper. But, as much as I do love Max he's not nevessarily a good baseline? But… I see what you're saying. How would I feel if I saw someone doin that to him? Well I'd have questions, yeah, but they'd be to him and I trust him. I mean maybe the dude is conflicted. I can't play like I wasn't doing that whole thing with my ex…so… it's complicated." Both eyebrows went up a bit. Hey he got the thing withthe animals right! Check it ou- oh yeha, focus, Miller. Time to focus. Ahem. Fingers laced together and Echo was silent for a while. He looked to Jay and said gently, or tried to make his voice make the sound like he was. He was a work in progress on this whole empathy thing. "Jay you want my observations right now or you want me to just listen?" At least he recognized there was a difference and the look he gave hte bird was not one of judgement, but one of caution.
Jay inhales a deep breath, letting his eyes swim all the way up to the ceiling before it drops. "Neither," he tells Kaleb bluntly as he gets to his feet, trying to shake free of that feeling. "Yer a good friend, Kaleb, but you don't understand what Ah'm tryin' to say, or how Ah'm feelin' about this." It's with kindness, the look that he gives the sonic, mouth curving lightly. "An' you got other things to deal with. Ah just wish Ah was stronger. An' sooner."
It's a funny trick, how Jay can talk about something and make it sound light or oppressive with the tone of his voice. His wings tremble with the effort of cramming everything back down into the pit of his stomach as he unfolds his legs and gets to his feet, summoning up the strength to lift his tone as light as air. "It just hurts," Jay smiles to Kaleb. "It hurts to feel warm, an' safe, an' understood, an' loved, an' have to let it go over an' over." Vulnerable for a split second, Jay dips his head and sniffs as the good ol' boy glances away, shifting his weight on his legs. "Shakes a man." Summing up simply, Jay slides his hands into his pockets and shifts towards the door. "You want a sandwich? Ah'm…gonna make myself a sandwich."
Kaleb nodded slowly. He could throw money at any problem to make it go away. Every problem but this one. The snobby sonic took a deep breath. Jay wasn't wrong. He didn't understand feelings. He in fact had few and found it an uphill challenge to find human feelings relatable at all. Kaleb's been called many things from cold hearted to pathological, and he had to wonder how much of that was, in fact, true. Where in Jay's words were true there was a sting of disappointment and he accepted, no, nhe couldn't relate. Something hurt he cut it off and retreated. He was, at the matrix, incomplete in that regard.
His brow knit looking to Jay not quite knowing hoe to do the whole apology thing. He was supposed to be able to be there for him and maybe that didn't mean fixing. His jaw tightned and relaxed a couple times but he nodded, "Sandwich sounds good. Hey, Jay?" Dammit words were not his friends. WHy was he doing this. Stop. Stop.
Everyone had their strengths and weaknesses, and while Jay didn't have many friends in the world, he still knew that it wasn't fair to try to make Kaleb someone he wasn't just because /he/ needed it. That was selfish. Selfish like wanting to be with someone who didn't want you back.
The flier nodded slowly, dipping his head and flicking a forced smile back to Kaleb. Abruptly pausing with a hand on the doorframe. "Yeah, Kale?" Expecting a request for no cheese or something as he looks back toward his friend.
Kaleb left his hands in his pockets and was standing staring at the patio for a while. His tongue ran along his lower lip thoughtfully. "When I was gettin through that breakup" THAT one. He didn't even mention her by name such was just letting it go, "You and Jeani-… Ms. Grey " He stopped himself from adressing her in teh familiar while she was not in teh room. Small formalities were respect shown. "You two pointed somehting important out to me and that's sometimes I… WE, Jay, are too generous. Sometimes if you relaly care about somethin? Well it's okay to be a little selfish. When someone asks you if you want something and you do next time? Stand up and tell them yes. Yes I do." Blue eyes lift from teh ground up to his best pal with a slight shake of his head, "Because I will have words someone that tries to come after you for that. You worry about bein happy. You do get to do that too. Sometimes it's messy but sometimes it's just healthy to be a lil selfish. Sometimes it's just better to take the couch. Sometimes… well sometimes it's better to get over ourselves and accept we got a pal, yeah?" In part he might be discussing Jay, in part himself. "Also no mayo. People keep putting mayo on everything and it's an abomination."
"Ah…don't really know what the take away on that is," Jay hesitates to say, though hey, it must've been good advice at the time if he gave it to Kaleb. But the message seems to get muddy somewhere in the middle in there.
He understands the mayo, though. That part's easy at least. Jay nods gently, tapping his fingers on the doorframe slightly. "Sure thing. Coming right up, man."
Kaleb shrugged and said simply, "If you care about somethin and you have a chance to hold onto it do it with both hands. Can't fix now but ahead of us? Ya know." Maybe he did or didn't. He made a note to himself to wait to see signs of 'I want that' from Jay and to engineer or economically destroy anything that interrupted that. For now though sammich. "Well I'm not you. My advice ranges from stop that, to just do it to fuck the fuckin fucker." Said ina true high society New York accent. There was a faint smile. "So, thank you for having questionable taste in friends I suppose." He followed Jay to the kitchen and offered, "Hey, I got tickets to a thing coming up. Kind of a bunch of snobs there, but they'll be art snobs. It's to a gallery thing where they got art that was inspired by the change in mood of modern music. Thursday. Consider it."
Jay listens, but the advice doesn't necessarily seem to strike home as he walks into the kitchen, followed, but keeping his focus pretty clear and a back full of guarded feathers to Kaleb. "Ah didn't know Ah was queer, Kaleb. /That's/ why Ah didn't say yes immediately." Exhausted and a thread of irritated in there as well. "Ah was afraid of how Ah was feelin', bein' attracted to this man, an' the only person Ah had to talk about it was Josh, who regularly told me Ah was a delusional idiot, or stupid. It took me a week an' a friend's death to sort mahself out. So, yeah, mah questionable taste in friends sure has served me real well in the past." Jay's voice piqued with irritation which rippled through his feathers while he pulled things out of the fridge and dropped them to the counter. "This 'hindsight twenty/twenty' speech is just…makin' me feel bad. Can we please just…let it go? I'll go to whatever it is yer talkin' about, just…leave it alone."