05 / 04 / 11 - Jean-Paul, Tom
It is afternoon-to-evening when Jean-Paul shows up at Tom's door. If he beats Isabel there, it is only because he cheated. He knocks.
Man, by the descs, these guest rooms are big. Stretched out on the bed blankly watching television to which he is not really paying heed, Tom does not hear the door knock at first; without his extra senses to inform him of his visitor, Jean-Paul might be stuck standing there while the telepath within sulks all by himself. Happily, there is a third party in the room who elicits a curse from Tom by launching himself off him -- bounding as from a trampoline -- and racing to the door with a noisy series of barks.
Rumpled and covered in tiny white hairs, Tom walks over, shoves the excited Sunny aside with his leg and grasps him by the collar, and opens the door. His aspect is a little run down and tense. When he sees who his visitor is, his eyebrows fly up towards the fall of dark hair across his forehead.
Yeah, well, they were designed so that Emma Frost would not /suffer/ -- or at least not suffer /too much/ -- if forced to come pal around for a day or two. Of course they are big. Anyway. Jean-Paul thrusts his hand forward across the threshold. It holds a four-pack (not six; they just pack them that way) of ~gourmet~ ginger ale.
Restrained by Tom's grasp on his collar, Sunny attempts to stand up on his hind legs, or at least to pull himself far enough forward to shove his nose into the bottles. Tom drags him back and forces his waggy-tailed butt down onto the guest room floor with a weary kind of resignation in his exhalation; with his free hand, he reaches up to take the bottles one-handed. Sunny's tongue lolls out as he looks hopefully toward Jean-Paul who might be here to provide him with some form of steak (you never know). God. Dogs. Anyway, with eyebrows still upswept, Tom says, "Thanks," and after about a heartbeat's hesitation, he corrects himself, "Thanks, Pan." He adds, "I have some ice," and starts trying to work Sunny backwards with little tugs on his collar.
Jean-Paul ignores poor Sunny in a particularly feline way. Sorry, dog. "Okay." He hesitates before stepping over the threshold, but he steps over to follow after as Tom brings Sunny back. "So what's -- I mean. How are you, I guess?"
Tom clears his throat. He doesn't say anything for a moment; he busies himself with putting the bottles down on a surface and persuading his dog to sit down with his bone where he can comfortably be ignored for awhile. Then he says, "I don't really know why Brandt decided it would be better to be /vague/," in a kind of frustrated bitch tone, like he couldn't have circumvented that and sent out his own email if he wanted. Continuing on tense, frustrated, anxiety visibly ratcheting up in expression and stance as he speaks, staring down at the ginger ale bottles rather than looking back up at Jean-Paul: "Grace found -- she found the Shadow King in my head. Or in and out of my head, I guess."
Drawing up behind Tom, Jean-Paul clasps his shoulder. His hand lingers in bracing, warm weight. "What?" (No, really, what?)
Tom remains tense under the press of Jean-Paul's hand, his throat working in a swallow as he braces his weight on the knuckles of his fists against the table. He seems to have forgotten about going and getting ice. "He's in the files," he says. "Like a telepathic ghost. Basically. Lives in the astral plane. We ran into him in Colorado -- I guess that was before you were here. Fucked up Kelsey's head and she shot people. I fought him when I was twelve with some people and got spanked." He ducks his head, nostrils flaring with the shaky exhalation of a breath.
Hand falling away, Jean-Paul's brow furrows. "In the--?" What? He shifts, leaning against the counter, or table, or whatever. He folds his arms in a loose cross and glances over at Tom. "So ... what does that mean?"
"He's been in my head," Tom says. He shifts, a twitch visibly rippling down his spine as he leans on whichever indiscriminate surface, requiring its function as an anti-gravity device. "Working on me. Eating my -- self-control, I guess. My restraint." He turns his head, gaze flicking across Jean-Paul's face only briefly before he looks away and out toward the wall. "Grace tried to shore me up but I guess we all figured it's better if I'm in fucking blinders until we can--" He breaks off there, though, biting down on his lip, with a kind of pallor seeping across his him beneath the warm hue of his skin.
Jean-Paul looks alternately hopeful, fearful, and uncertain, and it doesn't take telepathy to mark the shift of emotion across his features. He ends with an echoed strain to Tom's tension. "/Why/?"
"Power?" Tom says, with a weary break of his breath. He steps back from its surface, and turns aside, a restless shift that becomes a kind of idle spurt of energy, pacing around the living room in a loose circle around dining table and couch. "Punish me for standing up to him like eight years ago?" Subjective time, what? He lifts a hand to rub at his eyes with thumb and middle finger. "Take me, take my power. Son of a bitch hasn't taken enough from me already. I don't know." Maybe for emphasis, he says it again. "I don't know."
Still and silent, Jean-Paul watches as Tom paces. The quiet draws long before he breaks it with a question: "Anything I can do?"
"I don't know," Tom says, third time's the charm. He sinks down into one of the chairs, the one nearest, and buries his face in his hands, heels of his hands pressed against his eyes with his elbows propped against his knees. "I'm blind as a bat and I don't know what's happening. I'm scared. The last time I fought the Shadow King on the astral plane..." He trails off again. Have some more angst, JP. That's why you came by, right?
That is totally why. Jean-Paul follows after Tom -- a little belatedly, but he follows -- to drop his hand back on the younger man's shoulder. He pats. All better? "I don't know what to say. I guess ... I guess I just wanted you to know you had friends, and that we care about you. Isabel got on my case a little for not coming up sooner. She'll be by."
A little strangled, Tom says, "Thank you." He is quiet for a moment, a quiver shivering down his spine where he leans on the brace of his elbows. He draws a breath through his nose, holds it, and drops his hands. His eyes are dry, but between the concentrated breathing and the work of his throat -- well. Shifting in his seat, he cants his head to look up at Jean-Paul. "It's safe, I think -- I mean, I can't do much."
Jean-Paul graduates from patting Tom's shoulder to rubbing his back: escalating in the face of the care taken to keep his eyes dry. "Whatever," he says, a little gruff as he brushes off the last, like he isn't all paranoia and cowardice. "Why is this where we put misbehaving psionics, anyway? Putting Isabel up here was a terrible idea when she had that loop."
"Well, it's more comfortable than banishing Meredith to the chapel with me," Tom says. He shifts a little in his seat, indecisively, and then blows a long breath past his lips, a kind of sharper frustration entering into the noise. He says, "I wish Lilah would get back already."
"She will be, and if she isn't, they can pull her out of the field," Jean-Paul reassures Tom. But hey, good thing the plot ends tonight? "Chapel needed better beds."
"Yeah," Tom says. He sits there looking gloomy for a moment, and then lifts his gaze again. He studies Jean-Paul's features for a moment at his canted angle, although what he expects to read there who knows.
Jean-Paul looks both worried and tense, and while he is flatscan baffled with a total failure of understanding, he stands at Tom's side because he can't do anything else. That's enough to read in his features for a start.
After a moment, Tom looks down. Then he gets up out of his chair with an awkward slowness to the motion. With a weird hesitation in his movements, tense and anxious, he ducks his head as he moves to reach for what temporary reassurance he might glean from a hug.
Whatever reassurance Tom might find, Jean-Paul willingly gives it: he's a little stiff himself, but it is more the whole 'oh yeah you got shot' thing than any awkwardness. As he wraps his arms around Tom, he says, "If you don't mind, I'll pray for you." Dear God: plz fix.
"I don't think I am getting myself to church," Tom sort of mumbles in answer. His awkwardness is of a kind born of uncertainty, in himself more than in Jean-Paul, but in the execution it makes little difference; still, he eases a little after a beat, or maybe it is that he steadies. His eyes scrunch tight shut, the rest of his face scrunching up to join them in a squished grimace. "Pray for the others who will help me get out of this, too," he says softly. "I don't know how much they will face."
Jean-Paul looks a little surprised by the request, but he acquiesces easily: "Sure," he says. He pulls Tom in like hugs will fix it. FEELING BETTER?
Quiet for a long moment like that, Tom maybe pretends that hugs will fix it, too. But then he shifts, drawing away again, arms falling back -- he never quite clung, which is good because Jean-Paul is gimpy, but you know -- and ducks his head as he sidles back toward the table that he left the ginger ale bottles on. "Thanks," he says. And then he says, "I was going to find my ice."
"Maybe I should let you do that," Jean-Paul says, settling on his heels. Then if Tat logs on she won't kill us.
"Okay," Tom says. He glances up and over at Jean-Paul like he is going to say something else, and then he doesn't. Stepping around the dog calmly gnawing on a bone on the floor, Tom slips off into bedroom, and through it to bathroom.
Jean-Paul watches Tom a moment, but his gaze doesn't linger. He heads the other way: out, out, and away. "Later, Tink," is said at some point before that.
Check-up, check-in, check-on.