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Two weeks.
That's how long JP has been calling Elmo in the dead of night for… stupid shit. Sometimes it was because a song was stuck in his head, other times just to have someone to talk to. Sometimes it was even to ask where Elmo 'Where is the thing?..okay got it thanks' and hang up without anything drawn out at all.
Some say friendship is magic, but JP's friends tend to just say friendship is aggrivating.
Elmo has received these calls with varying levels of tolerance. When JP just wants someone to talk to, he tends to be willing, even touched. When JP calls because he wants to know what Elmo did with the 1/16th angled wrench, he's less good-natured about it. This morning, he's in the upstairs apartment, looking around the pile of mail, scowling.
JP was sleeping in like the asshole he was. Sure, JP thinks he gets to sleep in? No. There was the sound of that possum that was scuttling around under the bed. Seriously it was hard to tell if that's Sev or not some days. But there he was snoring, sprawled butter-side-down in his bed in a t-shirt, shorts, and one sock, but a boot on the foot with no sock. Don't think too hard on that.
Elmo looks in on JP, and gets more annoyed than ever. And still doesn't have the heart to wake him up, knowing how little sleep he's getting these days. So he checks for the possum. That disgusting thing is getting a spark to the behind if he sees it.
The thing is heard. The mail was scattered: a couple invoices, and an opened letter from an attourney's office that lay open and unfolded. Ugh. At least there no bats or pigeons. It could be worse one supposed.
Elmo sees the seal of the law office and snatches up that letter. Reading it rapidly, he first is horrified. Then, right back to angry. He tosses it in the pile and snarls under his breath in Yiddish.
JP might sleep forever except a pigeon smacked into the window behind his headboard with a *THWACK!* Talk about jumpy he was half off the side of his bed with his knife in hand trying to figure out what was goin on. "Allez-vous en. Je n'ai pas pris ta pomme, connard…oh." Oh you're in what is now home, JP, not prison. "Merde." Step one: carefully fold the knife. Step two: wipe sleep from face and go hunt food since it's… not dark out and we're all awake anyways. "Oh… bon jour, Sparkplug."
"Would you toss out that fershtunken thing hiding under your bed?" is how Elmo greets his friend and partner. "It's disgusting, JP, you know that?" He really looks like he hasn't been sleeping, and from his tone, it's caught up with him.
JP ran his fingers through his hair and shuffled, one boot and one sock on, to the kitchen to topne the fridge and rescue the juice. "Fiiiine, I'll hit up the parkin meter an' the laundromat. When you become ma mere, hmm? Juice? C'mon siddown. I' make you a quiche." A quiche?!
"The possum!" Elmo doesn't quiiiite yell, but he's ramping up to it. "The one that ISN'T Sev! It's gross!" He glowers.
JP squint to Elmo and just stared at him and blinked. He turned and said loud enough, "Sidney, you gotta go, mon ami." Looking back to Elmo he made the look like ya happy? and with that dug out the pie crust he'd apparently had and some eggs and a bowl. :Onions o' no onions?"
No, Elmo isn't happy. He's wound up and furious over nothing—or rather, furious over everything, sizzling with it for lack of a target. But he snorts, kind of amused. "Please, I'm Jewish, the answer is always onions." He picks up the letter and gives JP a hell of an irritated look. "This what you were tryin' to read the other night?"
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 11
JP arched both eyebrows up like onions it is. At the question and the angry waggling of paper he won a brief glance and a non-committal shrug. "Eh, started to. Oh! I found some fantastic oregano from this lil Greek lady. She hook me up so long as I talk to her an no' her sister, hmm? Hilarious." He grinned a bit and opened the juice setting it on the counter as he started putting veggeis and spinach in the mix. "Stopped. Had t' change alightbulb."
"You asked these guys to prosecute the Superintendant for bein' an asshole?" It's a rhetorical question, Elmo can read it right there, and he swings into high. "This is a stupid risk, JP! Just when you're getting off parole? This is exactly the kind of attention you don't want!"
JP let his shoulders fall and said "Distric Attourney…" He poured everything together that he was fixing over there and put it in the oven. Pausing he clarified to Elmo, "It was important…" Glancing to the windows and back again he leaned on the counter looking back to Sont-Touch-Me Elmo(tm), " Also they needed t'know he' a dick."
"Oh, that's great. That's great. The District FERSLUGGIN' Attourney." Elmo flings the letter back on the counter with a big dramatic gesture. "They know he's a dick! It's his job to be a dick! Oy vey izt mir, you're just ASKIN' to get rolled! I am NOT letting you go back, Jean-Pierre, do you hear me!" JP can hear him, all right; he's only yelling it at him.
JP may or may not have read the rest of it whre the letter gets insulting. Truth was the letter was overly grandeloquent in nature and was obviously above what he was used to picking out and grabed what he needed from context from the English he was familiar with. Either way he seemed to gather loud and clear it was a big resounding: get bent. He wa incredibly observant though and the angrier Elmo got the more that grin warmed on his amused mug. Hands leaning on the counter at rest he boasted, "They have to catch me firs', then? Then they gotta hold me. G'luck."
The more smug JP gets, the more wound up Elmo gets. And this amount of smug puts him right over the top. He makes furious hands at JP, big clawing grasping motions. "OR THEY COULD JUST SHOOT YOU!"
*POW!* *POP!* *POP!* There goes an entire circuit's worth of light bulbs! Elmo flinches, swearing.
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 4
JP only heard the *POW!* before the popping began when his instincts kicked in and he was tackling Elmo to cover putting his back to the noise. His pulse was racing and he was unarmed and- wiat… those weren't gunshots.
Breeeeeeeeathe Jena-Pierre. Breathe. "Don…go scarin me like that, Elmo."
Elmo yelps as his entire world suddenly goes tumbling, with JP to the face. Landing hard on his back, his partner on top of him, he gasps, wind knocked out of him. Clutching JP, he breathes rapid and shallow. "…I…I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."
JP took that moment, and though the bulbs were out there was plenty of light from the windows at the other end. He admitted, "Well yeah they could shoot me, but it really lacks creativity. I mean we did that already. They got' come up with somethin new. Its the rules." JP and his rules. "Jes' cullin the weak. We'll get super bulbs this afternoon."
Elmo huffs a breathless little laugh and shoves his face into JP's neck, risking beard burn. "Sure. Them's the rules." He grips JP by the hair, tight for just a second, then lets him go. "Get offa me. I gotta get a broom." Trying to regain his mad-on.
JP stood up and walked, carefully around the edge of the kitchen trying not to step on the glass. After all he did only have one boot on. "Well we got seven minutes. Heh, guess is a good think I'm not makin an omelette or we'd be pickin bits o bulb outta breakfast." Arching an eyebrow he boggled and was at least nw awake. "So this about the cops now? I mean the letter pretty much sayin baise toi, sooo I mean I don' think they comin."
Elmo climbs a little unsteadily to his feet, brushing himself down. "You didn't get cut, did you?" Fetching the broom, he starts sweeping up the mess, grumbling savagely to himself in Yiddish. "It's sayin kinda worse than that, is the thing. It's callin' you uneducated and a menace. Okay, none of that is untrue, but that's not the point." The scritch-scritch of the broom and tinkles of broken glass as he sweeps punctuate his kvetching. "The point is these assholes ALL know each other. And they can make it worse for you, next time you show your face. A lot worse. They got a million dirty tricks they can use to arrest you and hold you without charging you, stuff like that. The civil rights movement gets treated like that all the time. Only thing that stops 'em is the whole movement hollerin' at the door to the lockup, so, I guess what I'm sayin' is, it's not that we can't piss 'em off. It's that we need backup. And a plan."
JP paused and tuuuuurned slowly with a wry, too-smug grin sliding a hands down his abs, "Damn right i'm cut. Aaaaall over." Oh god peacock mode engaged. There'd be no living with him after this. The words Elmo illuminated him with brought the parade of self-assurance to a bump in the road. "Yeah… well…" it wasn't entirely wrong. It did sting though. His jaw tightened and he had to consider this. "Yeah…well…fine."
Elmo grunts, sweeping like a guy who does a lot of sweeping of broken light bulbs. He looks up, just in time to catch JP feeling himself up. On cue, he blushes. "Oh Christ," he mutters. "Stop that!"
JP feigned ignorance, "DUnno whaaaat you talkin about. Givin up? I ain't. Believe me I ain't… but… maybe them barrels was just part one." At that note the oven buzzed. JP got the wimp-mittens, er, oven mitts to fish out that quiche. "Eh, he can call me stupid. Maybe he right. I don' gotta be one of them damn… X-Men t'get shit done. He only armmin me wit' an advantage by underestimatin all my sassy ass has planned."
"I hate it when people call you stupid," Elmo grumbles. "They don't know nothin'. Nothin! Does give you an advantage, though. What they don't know can hurt 'em real good." The glass all swept up and put away, he hangs up the broom and washes his hands. He rolls his eyes at JP, not willing to give in, and very obviously Not Looking at those abs. "You know what I'm talking about, ya yutz."
JP dropped the glass dish on the burner on top ov the stove and turned the oven off. The spatchula was carefully set to cut teh creation in half to let the excess heat escape. Turning there he was in his boxers waving a spatula round in oven mitts, "Yeah well… I won' lie, buggs the hell out of me. But, ya know, I'm used to fancy assholes judgin' me and makin sure we don' get t' go to no school anyway. They jes' challenge me t'try harder an prove em wrong." He grinned and turned back to fish out plates or tupperware lids. Whichever he had that was clean that he could put food on.
"Pricks," Elmo growls. "All of 'em." At least his fury isn't solely directed at JP, now? Even if possibly another circut is endangered. "I'm smart and who cares? It don't mean a single thing. Didn't keep me outta prison." Finally, though, he consents to getting a mug and drinking some juice. Low-blood-sugar mutant is a menace to himself and others. And maybe he eyes JP while he's turned around and can't see him doing it.
JP was dancing a half step but stopped there was a pause to rally himself whileElmo was off doing other things. It was faint, but it was there: His fists tightening in the oven mitts for a moment before distracting himself. It hit him hard, but like a tomcat he'd never just admit it. Yup, there it was, the little dance and letting it go humming, "Fast as fast can be, you never touch me, I'm tha' Jennybread Maaaaan." Hey, no oen said his English was that great.
Elmo watches JP dance and sing to himself and a reluctant smile finally tugs at his mouth. "Jennybread. That's adorable. Hey." He thwaps JP lightly on the bicep to get his attention. "Nobody gets to call you stupid while I'm around. Next time someone does? I'm gonna make 'em sorry."
JP stopped and looked over his shoulder to Elmo arching an eyebrow looking confused? Thoughtful at that. The wall of hubris broke and more genuinly he offered, "They won' know what hit em. Merci, Sparkplug. Not… used to havin someone fight this hard t'defend me…" He paused and handed Elmo breakfast.
Elmo raises his eyebrows right back. "Well. It's about time you get used to it, then." Taking the plate, he grins crookedly at JP. "'Cause you're stuck with me, now."
JP took a slice for himself andgrinned, bemused. "Soooo why you rollin up here ready for war? This all about cause I ask you how t'spell 'patriotizin' the other day?" He found a fork while losing the oven mitts of mightyness, which was a damn shame as it clashed withthe rest of what he was wearing so spectacularly.
Elmo shakes his head and makes an attempt at eating. Just tiny slivers of the quiche at a time. Steady as she goes. "Nah, just." He shrugs. "Everything's …a lot." And he's working himself way too hard but he won't admit it. "It's kinda overwhelming. Doug, you know, guy who owns Atomic? Called me and talked about how he thinks I'm better for Jay than he is, and…I don't know how to handle that, JP. He's a mensch, and I'm some jackass ex-con, what's he thinking? And…" he stops, shakes his head again. "That's the least of my worries, yannow?"
JP tilted his head and considered that with his mouth full nodding, "Hey, it may be true. WHat you think you'll do with that knowledge if it so, man?" Oh sure now he gets throughtful. "Ya better than most of us, an remember, being criminals? Ain' nothin our ancestors ain' been convincted of too jes' for breathin man. Just cause we criminals don' mean the law was just t'begin with like that… piece a'shit Mr. Lawyer man." He reached over, letting the fork rest on teh plate, and balled up the rejecton letter and gave it a careless lob tinto teh middle of the room. Back to breakfast. "Someday I hope I come t'work man an you jes ain't here. Not because I don' wanna see you, but because I do. I wanna see you succeed so bad an' get out of this place. Mark my words, you can change the world, an' it gonna need you… but you can' do all that from here an Mutant Town ain' wher eyou gonna retire and die man. I swear t'god though I'm a be so proud of you when that happens. Hurt like hell, but I think… a good hurt. Guthrie's are good guys. Cept Sam. He punch me. He as dirty as I am even if he don't seem it."
Elmo shrugs again, a long one this time. "I'm bad at people, and I get pissed off at everything and get in fights, and I got a rap sheet for assault, but sure, I'm better for Jay than Doug. Sure." Intense sarcasm in the Yiddish fashion. He quiets to listen to JP say all that. Frowns. "The hell you talkin' about? What's that supposed to mean, I'm better'n you? You tellin' me you want me to leave?" Tension shivers in his voice, ready to get worse in a hurry. Way worse.
JP considered that and could so very easily lie, but it really wasn't his way and he couldn't bring himself to that. He shook his head, "Never. When it time though? Not now, someday you'll outgrow all this. The garage. Even me. Anchors pull you up, bu higher you climb man? THey weigh you down and you gotta cut lose on that. As for assault?" He grinner and was lost in his wistful amusement, "Merde, t'me? Tha's one of the hottest damn things about you. I know somethin get out of sorts I am in GOOD company up to my elbows in other people's teeth, blood, and broken bones. An' let's face it the people we pull shit on start this stuff. I ain' even feel bad."
Elmo is…confused. JP telling him that he looks forward to him leave the garage in the future? In that wistful, affectionate tone he gets? Elmo's mad doesn't know where to go. "You're givin' me shpilkes in my kishkas, you ain't talkin any sense. Don't talk like that." For a minute he debates whether he's too upset to eat, but JP's cooking is that good; he keeps going. And finds a tiny smirk to bring out, as JP rhapsodizes about their mutual violent tendancies. "Yeah, see, here I can make that do some good. Here with you."
JP looked at Elmo, then down, then up again and offered in that odd, affectionate tone, "I don' wan you t'go. If I ever thought I'd want you t'take off I'd never said yeah, I'll take up your crazy idea, move to another state away from my kid and all teh craziness that keeps tryin t' put me behind bars f'breathin. T'do what? Invest my whole future into a guy I hardly knew? But I knew who you were and that? That's a guy I'm willin t' hang my whole world around, Sparkplug. Y'got everythin from me, an' I'm happy about that. You see this face? This the face of a man who' fuckin thrilled. But…" He took another bite and held up a finger to say hang on, lemme chew, "That don't mean some day you won't need to. That time come you can' jes throw away your whole future choosin that moment t'start standin still. THis place'll be here I'll be here. You? You gon' have things for doin. An' frankly? I really…really don' look forward t' you ever not bein here, but that don't mean there ain't things that need doin."
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 2
JP looked back down at his quiche and just set down the plate to wander over by the pool table and tried to focus and just busy himself with … something. Anything. He finally removed the one shoe so he wasn't walking lopsided and for failure to know wha he wanted to move where, hands gripped the edge of teh pool table railing and his knuckled blanched. Quiely he said, "Chere, I don' like it either. Hopefully none this happenin all too soon. QUiet the fuck enough aroun' here as it is."
|ROLL| Elmo +rolls 1d20 for: 3
Elmo sets his plate down too. Gently, because you don't waste food. And then stalks over to JP, grabs his shoulder, and pulls him around to face him. "You shut the hell up!" He shoves him. He's almost incandescent with anger, shaking with it, eyes hot and furious. Lip curled in the snarl he gets when someone is about to get lit up. "Don't you fucking stand there and tell me what I'm gonna do! You think I'm gonna leave you and— and— and WHAT? Join the X-Men? Work for Tony Stark? Fuck that and fuck you! I'm doin' exactly what I want in exactly the way I want it and I'm not gonna listen to you tell me it ain't good enough for you!"
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 11
JP was jostled and was also not inclined to fight back. Not because Elmo couldn't take it but JP was well aware he didn't possess an off switch and didn't want to excalate this beyond measure. It already hurt anyways so what was the point of that. "Fuck that and fuck me? Damn right fuck me, Elmo. Don't make that mistake of burnin away here. I ain' tellin you what you wan' t'do. I'm tellin you what you need t'consider somedayI don' think yous gon' bail, Elmo. I ain't sayin leave someday cause I don' love you, I'm sayin it cause I do ya prick." That look was even and true to form, he worked on not gettin his voice into yelling or such, but the emphasis was there carrying hte undertone of 'please trust me on this and jsut listen' which of course came out, "Dammit, Sparkplug."
|ROLL| Elmo +rolls 1d20 for: 12
"I know you do!" Another circuit blows—*BLAM!* Elmo startles, badly, electricity flaring to life, then dying away with a chorus of soft fizzes and pops. He breathes hard, closes his eyes. Laughs a little. "I'm gonna have to replace every fuse in this damn garage." He rubs his face. "Jeanushka. Look. Don't…don't do this to me. Don't do it to yourself. We got a lot going for us. We got a lot to do. Just…just be here with me and do it with me, okay?"
JP was now wide awake even though his coffee wasn't done and there was a warning look and fingers splayed, palm down, at Elmo, "Woah! Look I know you get t' storm off an' go home an cool off but this' all I got, so please kindly do not….burn our garage down. Sil vous plait. Hmm?" Taking a deep breath fingers raked through that brown-black hair of his. Everything was complicated and he jsut got up. This was way post-putting pants on levels of 'complicate'. He shook his head as he still had at least several years before trying to change his mind and see some reason. "Look I ain' goin anywhere. I ain' ever leavin this place. Stay. Go as far as you wanna. Come back. I ain't… goin no where. I'm jsut sayin you should. You owe that to you."
Elmo looks at his partner. Confusion, hurt, distress; eyebrows tilted up in unhappiness. "You're too tall to see the future. Stop tryin'."
JP took a deep breath and hung his head, "I never said… I seen the future." He turned to stalk out of the kitchen to fetch jeans and a t-shirt. "I said… I went there. Some… woman - sounded cute-" Sure, focus on teh important parts there, JP, "She grabbed me and took me there. Here but… there."
"You went to the future?" Elmo follows, brow furrowed. At least he's not in danger of burning the garage down. "Well, what happened? You'd better tell me, after all this."
JP said defensivly, "I had my jacket on, calm down." Because nothing truly terrible could happen with his jacket. He put it in the rules. Taking a deep rbeath he shook his head, "You remember that Lucien guy who went with us t'sort all that angel stuff out in New Orleanes?" An eyebrow went up as he slid his jeans on to actually be up for the day. "He' there too. But it was like… mid 80's sometime. Everyone was kinda goin around like they all stoned. An' there these giant robots that come the fuck out of nowhere and target ad arrest you. THey ain' tiny like Bambam downstairs, they're like six stories tall. Aaaaanyways, I made a deal with the guy t'look after Amelie an… I went t'check it out."
Elmo leans on the doorframe, arms crossed, frowning. "Yeah, I remember him. Tall, real good lookin'." He waits for JP to keep going.
JP waded over and dug out a belt to fit into the loops. He tooka deep breath with that sigh that told the story as unbelievable as it was, "If it make you feel any better the garage still there. And… Amelie was all grown up. Moved. Travel to France. Write me alla time from what I could tell. Maaan my wall' covered, chere." He grinned with that wondrous ear to ear grin, " She never f'get me. But there these giant robots annnnnnd we needed t'see what happen soooo turn out Mutants are all illegal and stuff? Like we legit hunted. Scary as helll but no one's allowed t' have an opinion or break any rules or these big ass purple robots come out and hun'chu down. So naturally…" he shrugged looking back up to Elmo, "I had t'say hi"
Elmo echoes JP's smile, although his is complicated and not as sunny. It fades at the news mutants are hunted. "Doesn't surprise me that much. It's headin' that way as it is. Just like Germany." He hmphs. "naturally, you had to."
JP nodded sloly and squint his eyes in that sort of blissful ride off into teh sunset sort of memory. "I stole a car to make em come after me to buy Lucien some time. Really got their attention immediately, but like everyone was kinda after my skinny ass too." He cocks his head with a smug half grin admitting, "Kinda felt like a rockstar. Won' lie. But they show up aaaaand I ran attum and… I laid hands on it and took… " He had to laugh with a grin, "I took control of the whole damn robot an' jsut turned it on some the other robots. THey break the one I grab another.. It was… so excellent."
Elmo really does smile, now, because that is so JP. "Kinda wish I coulda seen that. You musta been hell on wheels. So, what then?"
|ROLL| JP +rolls 1d20 for: 6
JP paused and queezed his jaw taking a deep breath, "THen… it… well it ended poorly. Et j'avais fini." He buckled his belt looking around avoiding looking at Elmo directly and went back for his coffee. "Whatever happen Ms. cute-voice sent me back here or somethin. But I woke up an' it was 1965 again."
Elmo frowns, puzzled, watching JP pass him. "Okay, so…this been eatin' at you, I guess." He's putting pieces of conversation together rapidly in his head. "Why are you tellin' me I gotta leave, though? Because I don't get that part. Is it because I wasn't there?"
JP took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "COuldn' find you, Sev… no one man. If anyone was underground it was oretty good cause I was there for maybe couple hours. But …naw. You weren', Sparkplug." That was oddly the hard part to admit. "I was able to take over the robot though. Sentinals they was callin em but they didn' look no 100 years old."
Elmo spreads his hands, palms up, looking helpless, trying to say something—but gives up. He approaches JP instead. "Look. That might happen. And it might not. I've read enough books about time travel to know that nobody knows how it works. That coulda been anything. Coulda been some kind of…of experiment, like putting a rat in a maze. We don't know."
JP shook his head and shrugged, "Took a bunch of them robots out. Got to wake the city up. Bring the proverbal man to his knees so maybe someone do somethin about somethin." He nodded oddly… satisfied, "Ain'a bad way t'go out, Sparkplug." After a pause he laughed warming a grin, "Kinda prefer it that way really. Like James Dean."
"Yeah, well, not if I have my way." Elmo hugs JP. Presses his face against his chest. "My way, we buy a house in the bayou next to your family's and you have a dozen grandkids and we fish and drink and get in fights with punks just like we used to be." He leans on him, exhausted. He started out far too short of sleep and too long on angry energy, and now he's out of the anger, too. "And if…if I go anywhere? If that happens? I'm takin' you along, too. I'm not leaving you alone, JP. Ever. So get it out of your head."
JP sighed and slid his arms around the angry electrician. He sighed, resting his chin on Elmo's head with an upward headtilt, "Cept one problem wit' you' plan." Arms wrapped around, he gave Elmo's shoudler a squeeze.
"There is no problem with my plan. It's perfect." Elmo sighs, too. Because oy gevalt, this JP. "What?"
JP wobbled Elmo from one side to the other with a laugh that settled deep into his chest like it was the most obvious of problems. "Cause no sunnovabitch gon' be layin a hand on my lil girl." So he says now. She still has 15 years or so to make him change his mind.
