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JP's been working on the car and actually did appreciate getting help on the wrench time. Just because he could make the car move without all of the things being in tact in no way meant this was healthy long term for the car. Bird on a wire said Elmo was in town so JP waited around for him to be done with the side job, bundled up in his leather jacket, jeans, and red and white striped scarf having a cig while he tried to stay warm and bide his time. Heat was a commodity, gang!
Elmo comes along, toolbox in hand, looking cheerful as he always does after he fixes up somebody's wiring—this time a poor family in the M.T. overburdened with children. He's also carrying a paper grocery bag full of food that said family pressed on him. "Hey," he greets JP, and then scowls as he get closer. "Why are you out here freezin' your tuchus off?"
JP took a drag off his cig and exhaled slowly, leaning on teh wall waiting. A wry grin stretch across his swarthy face, "What're you worried about my tuchas for?" He was pretty certain that was his ass or something equally as important. It was a safe bet. "What's in teh bag?" He skipped over the part why he was in the cold.
"I'm worried it's gonna fall off." Elmo sets down all the stuff he's carrying. "I dunno what they gave me. I mean, they told me, but I wasn't listening." This from a guy who's never involuntarily gone hungry. "Chicken and sweet potato pie, I think?"
Oh shit, food? NOW he was very interested. He croaked an amused retort, "Yeah well if it does I'll let you worry about reattachin it" Elbows tucked in as he nodded his approval. His head tilted and he offered, "Ya know… you said yous ain' much a cook. You need someone to take care o'that I don' charge much. Jes' a wing and a thigh." The grin settled easy on him like a man that's never sweat much in his life. It wasn't true but he wasn't the sort to ever lead with that. "Maaaan mi mama? Does some blessed things with yams. You gotta have em with sea salt, butter, lot of butter, brown sugar?Soooo damn good."
Elmo seems intrigued by the offer of cooking. "Yeah, maybe we could do that. And I can show you how to make kugel and matzoh balls. Anyway, what's going on? I'm gonna make you go inside, you're making me cold just lookin' at you."
JP snorted and sassed back, "Wht are you mi mama now?" He paused and squint to Elmo, "I dunno. You got a yam buuuuut I think you are too tall to be one, Liza Bonaventure, mon ami." Still teh promise of heat and food for a while and hanging out seemed time well spent. Objectivly he offered, always too proud to ever even ask for help, but will trade all damn day long, "Sides, can' have you gettin that food poisonin. That yenta lady we met'lltear my head off." Hey he learned who not to piss off.
Elmo nods wisely. "She will. You can't tick off a yenta. Come on." He hauls his stuff back up and beckons JP somewhere less made of ice and snow. "You hungry? You gotta eat if you're cold. Southerners, you don't know how to be cold."
JP laughed tilted his head with a squint, "Aww, you offerin t'do dinner with your favourite felon?" Only to someone else who's done time and understood things from a certain perspective did he make that joke. JP looked around and said simply, Hand over the grocery bag at least." He didn't wait and grabbed it to poke at it, nosy as ever, but he wasn't going to make Elmo carry everything by himself. "Ooooh! She put some peppers in here too? Hot damn."
JP grinned to Elmo and considered motioning for him to follow him. He had the bag of food and that grin was getting a bit sharp with mischief. Looking left and right he motioned Elmo to follow hi to where one of teh apartment buildings had a fire escape. Gearhead laid his hand on the building. Nothing happened. He frowned and tried again. Still nothing. He handed the bag of food off to Elmo again, and ran and just nicked a run with his fingers landing in a sloppy crouch. Standing and pulling his leather jacket and shirt back down to cover his ass he took the bag back with a nod. The fire escape ladder dropped. "Couldn't get the ratcheting mechanism from th'buildin. Had to hit metal. Glad it wasn't iced ya know. C'mon, no lights on the 7th." Oh so they were taking groceries on a B&E trip now?
Elmo watches this with growing bemusement, until it's clear what JP is doing. He sighs. "Why you gotta be such a troublemaker." But he follows him up the fire escape anyway, after having a fast look around.
JP was halfway up the fireescape and looked down around the bag of groceries at him with an impish grin up to no good. "Better question. why you always come wit' me? Beeecause you don' wan' me like everyone else cause you ain' like everyone else neither, Eh'mo." He considered that laughing letting the French roll off him in that languin Cajun drawl, "Et je pense que tu aimes ca. Aaaaahaha" It amused him but up up up they went and pausing he looked to elmo, in teh window, to Elmo and laid his hand on the window whistling at the altch like it was a puppy coaxing it to move. Finally it went and he muttered to Elmo, "Here's our stop" An apartment like any other in the squallor that was beloved Mutant Town. It wasn't much but it was taken care of well.
"Someone's gotta be responsible around here," Elmo replies, loftily, like he isn't totally participating. Immediately he checks the lights by touching the nearest on/off switch. There's a faint hum, and he grimaces. "Wiring ain't the best." He's setting down his toolbox and flipping it open before he's done speaking.
JP paused and looked around the place casing it likely. "Youmy PO now that it? Bein all super hero? Savin citizins from me." He made bites in the air his way like a pooch. Oh yeah. Viscious. Ridiculous was more like it. He paused and noticed a few things on the wall, and some tchotchkes. The groceries were set down and fell quiet. With a serious tone he murmured "Oui…" Something 86'd his mood. He sinced and fingers flexed into a fist for a moment, butit was a quiet, thoughtful tone when he asked Elmo, "Think we can help 'er out?"
Elmo looks up, already most of the way through unscrewing the switchplate. He stops to come over and see what's got JP so down. "Help who out?"
JP bit his lip and tapped the little votives and tiny Catholic statues and candles with pictures she had set up. He pointed to the wall that had a certificate of nursing and then some service medals framed with a cpicture of a man in uniform, maybe WWII? Likely He pointed murmuring, "These? Votives. You keep this stuff out when yous prayin for someone yous rememberin?" He looked to Elmo and held up a small ceramic statue of a curly haird dude in a robe tha looked like, you now, all curly haird dudes in robes and sandles. "St. Christopher. She los' a kid too." He paused and sis a walk through nodding to Elmo. "You can fix it?" The lights, maybe… everything. It shook him a bit but this was apparently his attempt to /do/ something.
Elmo takes the figure, looking it over. "I've been in a dozen places I seen these in Mutant Town," he says, quietly. "Didn't know what they meant." He puts it back in its place with great care and looks at JP, concerned. "I dunno what I can fix, beyond the wiring. What're you thinking?"
JP had a sensitive spot for family, but especially where ti was loss of a kid. Of all teh things to take seriously at least he picked a good one. He looked down scratching behind his head. "We see what's drippin an' broken and maybe just make shit lil less difficult. For now fix…that, and I'll see what's up wit' the chicken. Maybe we make her leftovers." He paused and offered with a shrug, "Maybe we jes' make her dinner I dunno"
THe apartment was not in great shape and aside from the electrical there were a number of small things that could use a tweak. The radop was a little dodgy and the bathroom door was loose on its hinge and thre were a couple things that could jsut be shored up. For now JP abandoned the food in favour of just starting to clean up the kitchen a bit. "Elmo, where you wan' be in 10 years?"
Work was always the way Elmo expressed care and it's no different now. He goes back to fiddling with the wiring, with a complete disregard for safety and grounding that should make his mutation painfully obvious. "Ten years?" he says, cutting and stripping away the coating of various wires. "Buddy, I dunno where I want to be tomorrow. How about you?"
JP snorted succeeding the point, "Indoors. Might have a lead on another sometimes gig though so that might pay out." He broke out the food finally getting everthing with the door scaqured away. it's subtle but things work better when they are less noticable. "I jes, I dunno. Sev an' I are gon' start scoutin some places out. COlette's gon' head home I think. SHe hats the cold. But also means if she do? There goes our bankrollin. So I'm gonna see what we can't figure out instead. It'll be good. Better than bein in concrete yeah?"
The lights suddenly intensify, then a couple of the elderly bulbs go out. "Whups," Elmo mutters. He climbs up on things to get at one, unscrews it, and taps the end with an experimental air. Despite the filament being out, the bulb turns on again—kind of pink. Elmo mutters over it and keeps messing with it. The light turns varying shades of pink and red, but he can't seem to manage to get it to turn plain again. "Great, now her living room's gonna look like a whorehouse." He screws it back in anyway, then joins JP in the kitchen to poke around there. "She's leavin? Oh well. Nothing good lasts, huh? What places you looking at?" He flashes JP half a grin and shoulders him companionably. "Anything's better'n that."
JP watched looking up from actually fixing, oh hey, food was happening, though he was raiding her cupboards to spice it up. He stopped though watched Elmo with a fixed fascination. His mode broke with a laugh at that, "Maaaan, if I ever have a place, Elmo, you's absolutely more than welcome to make it look like a whorehouse." He nudged ELmo's shoulder back and chuckled, "Shit, maybe yours you keep doin that. Fo'real? I dunno what we lookin at. Can't stay in my car forever. I miss legroom. Couple wsmall warehouses that an'get fixed up tho. Place t' park. Work. Not like I'll be runnin mah own garage anytime soon I guess." He squint and looked around confiding back to Elmo, "Not like I ever hol' down a 9 t' five."
Elmo gives JP a look that's equal parts charmed and amused. "Are you flirting with me?" See what casual social contact comes to? Touch a guy, he gets ideas. He starts opening cupboards to see what goes where. "Me neither, till the judge said I hadda. Just work whenever, before that. Dunno what's so wrong with it, but he said somethin' about learning responsibility." He rolls his eyes.
JP paused and would snicker but squint to Elmo and said honestly "DOes this look responsible to you?" He looked around as they stood in Miriam Richter, R.N.'s apartment. "Yes. yes it does. See, we're creatin our own community service or somethin'." He still diddn't answer the other question though, given his brazen attitude flirting with everything with a pulse he wsn't going to say he wasn't. He shrugged, "I mean yeah but, I mean I dig ya, but not cause what you said at lunch." He considere snad shook hsis hea d putting chicken divvied up on plates. "I dig your vibe man. You run /at/ shit. I dig it."
Elmo agrees, saying, "This is real responsible. Except maybe for where we're not really supposed to be here, /technically/. See, nobody understands." If Nurse Richter knew, surely she would approve. He says, "Hmph," responding to JP's digging him, but he can't help but be flattered. "Yeah, well. That's where the fun stuff is, right?"
JP chuckled with a dimpled grin shakin his head, "Eeeeh tha's what they say, but eh you got somethin' goin for ya. I don' wanna mess that up." He handed the chicken to ELmo, ta da! Fixed! Heat level 4. He was nice. Also Nurse Richter only had tobasco to work with. "Ya know, we should do a once a week break in, fuckin clean people's houses or somehting. Tha's be hysterical. Maybe not alla time. But like adopt a couple places."
Elmo laughs. "That's why I hang around you, JP. You got the best ideas." He means it, too. Taking the plate, he tries a bite of the chicken and makes a weird face. "…I'm trying to decide if this is really good or it's going to kill me."
JP chortled and added more tobasco and pepper onto his chicken. "What the conversation? Ooooh if is the chicken? I gotta build you up a tolerance. Is how I live, mon ami. Hot cars, hot merchandise, hot food. An' lemme tell you ain' no one does that better than my people." he winked and sat on the counter rather than at the table. Looking around he sighed, "IMan, I miss havin a kitchin tho."
JP finished everything and actually did the dished contemplating waht else is gonna go with a lentel. How does one dress up lentels?! He considered something and asked jsut outright."You up to anythin with work and stuff this weekend? THey got a new Steve McQueen movie playin. I figured out how t'get t'see it for free if we cna get the speaker box to work." He paused and threw it out there, "Think about joinin. Whole flick, race cars, chase scenes and those I-talian roads? So good."
Elmo glances up at JP with a curious little smile. "Sure. Love to. We can get that speaker workin', no problem." He's not going to call it a date if JP isn't.
JP consideres that and seemed… satisfied with that answer. "I' swing by your place come nab ya. Be nice t'watch someone else runnin from Johnny Law, yeah? C'mon. Grab your gear. We' bailin before she' gets back." Well, he was at least in a better mood. He put the small statue of St. Christopher back, but a wuarter turn to the left. Let her wonder all that out. Sometimes it was alright to leave people with a little hope.