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JP was everywhere wasn't he? Everyone has their bad pennies that keep turning up and this season Lucian seems to keep having Jean-Pierre turn up again, and again, and again even in family business. Why this was remained unanswered, though he did, or will have, made a soul deal with the manin 1986 to make sure his kid was unharmed. Was that still binding if it hasn't happened yet? He didn't know.
What JP did know was if he fell 4 stories out that apartment window and landed on the car? Well teh car would break his fall but it was still made of metal and that… well that would still suck. Ask him why he knows these crazy fun facts sometimes. For now he made it down to the second floor through clever navigation and aimed for the trash bins. It was inelegant, and absolutely less subtle than intended. "Ow~!*"
Nineteen-eighty-six. Only twenty years away, and that's a flash in the pan to someone as old as Lucifer Morningstar. The gentleman enjoys rising with the sun, apparently, because he meanders among the streets of Brooklyn in a fine coat long before anyone but the dock workers and slaves of public transportation shuffle outside. A certain dewy crispness to the air beckons. He breathes in the saturated fragrance of petrichor and wet mulch used on a few of the garden beds, where afforded by the working class neighbourhood, things to be appreciated. Maybe the hint of tomato metallic spaghetti sauce is as fine as the bakery pumping out bread, but he is just as enamoured of leaded gasoline fumes and other urban perfumes. So he happens to be turning by an alley among the buildings, chewing on a bun he really doesn't need, no doubt aware that destiny seizes him by the shoulders to haul him close.
Close to a car sure to be flattened noisily. Undoubtedly when a collision of a fast-moving body and a stationary object occurs, the whole neighbourhood hears. Now if he is at ground zero +/- 10, what then? Ten inches, ten feet, at the end of the day the blond is prospectively exactly where he should be.
"Hell's bloody bells." Is that someone falling? He thrusts out a hand and telekinetic force ripples into being, the better to keep shattered glass and bent metal from ruining his very nicely polished shoes. Good thing for the universe he's in a vaguely good mood.
Luckily there wasn't too much collateral damage. The culprit did lay there winded for a moment. There were worse things than a 12' fall. With a groan JP peeled himself from the hood of that Chevy. "Yeaaaaah we be fixin you later, huh?" He sat up slowly and caught the sight of Lucian there before him and in quite a daze he asked, "I die already? Tha' seems early. … They send you. I in trouble?" Yes. Usually, but hey, at elast someone recognized Lucian around here.
Not too much damage other than the halo of broken material and scratched paint hanging suspended in the air. One thing to be snow blind, being paint blind is another thing entirely. The fine particles rotate, banished into a pile atop the dented hood. "I imagine someone will regret having a new hood ornament." Cut glass English can hardly be overlooked, doubly as a result of the owner's voice being perfectly understandable to someone used to the Cajun bayou or the Kree home world. Universally understood when he wants to be, that's him. "I assure you, death wears much less interesting clothes than I do. We're friends of old."
JP coughed air back into his lungs and grinned in spite of feeling hit with a car. Hell it was sort of a usual state. Hand rubbed the back of his head, "Eeeh, generates business." He pointed to Lucian with a lopsided grin that has charmed many out of common sense. It came easy to him, but was no less genuine. "S'good to see you. I was just thinkin bout you funny enough." He paused and held out a hand defensivly, "Don't worry I wasn't like… namin names… like that time…" Not that Lucian wouldn't notice one of his unknown names being spoken by a tongue that shouldn't be able from anywhere. All teh same the mortal had a healthy fear and respect of Lucifer to not do something so flagrant and foolish.
The telekinetic impulse vanishes, collapsing into itself. The spiraling particles drift to the ground from the lump they were balled into. "Business," he replies. "Of course, the venal human heart would fixate upon that." He hardly sounds surprised at the least by what JP mentions, and his eyes almost roll heavenward. Thanks to the divine message forwarding service, none of this is surprise. "Yes, you were rather loud about that." Funny enough, indeed. But the bombardment even now of people thinking his name or image or some variation mean the poor man is a constant tuning fork. His smirk is limited at best. "Have you decided you had an end to the mortal coil?"
JP pushed himself to a sit and sat there on the fender letting the world reorient itself. "At the question a modest grin stretched on that stubbled mug of his, "I dunno no car part called a mortal coil, but I took a look at this one earlier and it need a new serpentine belt for shure." He paused and just continued on in his mother tongue remembering Lucian can just understand it because he was just groovy like that. "And be fair, we got bills and they are hard as… well they're really difficult to make up here." At least he caught himself before applying lazy analogy and explaining the man's culture to him. Finally there was a slight concerned look and he asked Lucian a ridiculous question for the sheer courtesy of it, "You got some time? Ya know, I was thinkin about a lot of stuff an I was thinkin ya know prayin for an answer I might be legit dead before I hear back. I had… questions." Don't they always start that way?
Modesty has no part in the presence of Lucifer, and he wouldn't know what to do with it anyways. Put him in front of a mirror beside modesty and he would fail to see the personification of a virtue he finds to be barely worth the purpose. "Now it needs a new roof and struts, and far too many things for me to bother naming, really." Descriptive, isn't he? On the other hand, he can probably manage very well understanding how the pieces of a relatively simply motor go together, considering he assembled cacti and stars for the hell of it. Literally. Bad pun, aside. "Yes, you have commercial concerns to follow. No one will fault you for that. Simply put that the time in the garden was intended to avoid the veniality. Of course, no one listened when I said you would be bored." He hardly speaks of anything too concerning, unless one believes the tales, and the man behind the tales, for whom such things were a few months ago instead of longer. "Questions, dangerous things. You'll owe for them."
JP sliiiiid off the car. Yup. he'd be walking this one off a bit. He had to agree, "Way bored… i'd put money on me being kicked out for disturbin the peace. Also, I don't think the car belongs to Veniality. I mean not a lot of Italians on this end." Yeah he had no idea what it meant. He considered the issue of owing a favour and nodded slowly, "Hey man, I suppose that's fair. Ain't nothin free. I'd be suspiscious if it don't. So… what'chu need from me?" Looking around the bruised Cajun offered free of bullshit, "Hey man, we are who we are, but at least we're honest about it. That I can work with, right?"
The long slide is something worthy of mild interest on the angel's part. He cuts a rather remarkable smirk when he wants to, though that's not at this juncture. For now he hardly wants to lure notice from the neighbours bound to poke their heads out and see what sort of individual ruins their peace and quiet on a good morning. "Enough," he says. "Italians can be found everywhere. Or Catholics, or simply humans. Last I checked, Italian dogs were exempt. I haven't any particular need out of you as yet. But if you want answers, you will be sharing them in return."
JP considered this and nodded. He wiped a hand that had some dirt and plaster off his hand onto the side of his jeans and held it out to shake on that. There. He cleaned it off for him and everything. He may be a lot of things, a thief certainly, a degenerate? Absolutely, and at once timea killer (but that person needed it, your honour). Beyond that he tried to be an honest businessman in these things. "That's fair. If nothin else if I don't have it, well, ya know I'm good for getting it." Including information he shouldn't have had and didn't want in the first place.
The hand taken daren't besmirch Lucian's. If only. Alas, things are not so pristine nowadays that the dirt refuses to cling to the eldest of the seraphim, the second creature ever made. He does not chuckle, but rather arches his eyebrows. Fair hair dances over his brow, barely moved by the whisper of a breeze. "See, reasonable. Have it then. You want something, what is it? Otherwise I am content to eat." He pushes the last of the bun into his mouth.
JP was an agreeable fella at least and the handshake was solid. Oh, food options? He fished around in his pocket for a wallet that wasn't his…nope wrong one. He checked the other one (also not his) and nodded, "C'mon then. We'll do both. Place not far, super nice." Oh mortals. Bruised hand withdrew , though he paused to check his arm and with a wince pulled a small piece of glass from it. Yup. Unfun part of the life. He pinched it shut for now as they walked. "So… Sir, you remember a time we were ever….well to sound crazy 'in the future'? Did, um, hey did that happen, man?"
Lucifer hasn't anything better to do with his time at the moment. Lux is closed, his brother sleeping, the consort working as she is wont to do. Dad is lurking about somewhere. He could use a bit of mortal attention, presumably. He walks along after JP, letting the man lead the way. He has some idea of where he wants to go; who is the seraph to gainsay him? "I can say many things will happen, but you know the funny thing about tomorrow and today? Hundreds of unconscious decisions you make can alter things in a way to never make the future happen. Not the one you think happens. I'm not talking about being hit by a car, or hitting a car, but you choose to turn left or right and things may alter."
JP plodded along like he does listening. Now he wasn't a very educated man, but that didn't mean he was stupid by any stretch or a stranger to theoretical concepts or how the world really worked. Both eyebrow stretched upward listening to the original Prodigal Son… pro Sun as the case were. He figured semantics and trivia on that point could wait. "Woah… You've done this before, huh?" He chewed on the inside of his cheek as they wandered down teh block, "But that happened? I'm not crazy then. Alright, follow up question then. If we make a deal in a time that ain't happened yet, I'm assuming the terms and conditions are still standing as regardless of the order of events and all…" He paused and looked back t o the Morningstar and admitted, "Worried about my kid. Had some weird nightmares and stuff a lot lately. Just trying to figure out what's what ya know?"