06 / 13 / 11 - Adam, Jean-Paul
=XF= Shooting Range - Training Facilities - Chemeketa Military Base
Spaced a little ways from the main training complex by the curve of a narrow path, the outdoor shooting range is backed by a retaining wall of grey brick. Unshielded from wind and weather, the firing point is a stretch of flattened concrete with individual places marked in black paint. The even ground between firing point and the black and white movable targets arrayed to the south is green with close-cropped grass. Lanes are marked off between individual targets by rows of dark spokes poking out of the earth. Three poles on either side of the range reflect wind speed and direction in the flap of triangular flags in red, white and blue.
It is the afternoon. It is a bright, sunny California afternoon, so people should be bright and sunny, except life doesn't work like that. Adam doesn't look bright /or/ sunny as he finishes the last shots from the rifle pressed against his shoulder. In fact, he looks rather like a person stuck with a particularly distasteful responsibility that, if it must be completed, will at least be completed reluctantly. He lowers the rifle and then pulls his ear protection down from his ears to hang about his neck.
A bright and sunny afternoon leaves most people squinting against the light, but not Jean-Paul. He glances over at Adam on fighting the range occupied and does not, with a remarkable show of restraint, make a face. He stays back, unpacking his gun from the case and checking it over, unloaded, in pre-practice routine. He glances across the distance to see how Adam did.
He did -- all right. Perhaps not as well as he used to do when he first arrived in X-Factor, but probably only the instructors are paying enough attention to tell things like that. At any rate, he does well enough to hang onto his cert. Really, Jean-Paul seems more interested in how Adam did than Adam does: he barely looks at the target before disposing of it. He does glance at Jean-Paul, however, and also manages to not make a face. Look how cordial! "Good afternoon," he says. Cordially.
"Afternoon." A little more clipped than courteous, Jean-Paul moves through the habitual routine with an ease that is very out of place with his utter lack of a basic firearms cert. One might expect him to fumble, but instead he handles the handgun with a thoroughly professional ease.
Adam's gaze lingers on the handgun Jean-Paul handles in the manner of a person who has briefly gotten lost in thought and has forgotten that they're still looking. He remembers himself after a few moments and pulls his gaze away to refocus on his own task: breaking down and cleaning his rifle. He sets up at one of the tables to begin. He works slowly and deliberately and similarly without fumble. The silence settles a long time before he breaks it with words quite clearly dredged from reluctant responsibility. "I am sorry," he says, "for -- the other day. In the cafeteria. It was childish and entirely inappropriate of me."
Jean-Paul is just about to slide his ear protection back in place when Adam speaks up. Glancing over, he pauses a moment before looping them back down around his neck. He advance to the line but he has yet to load his gun. "Yes, it was. What provoked /that/?"
"I was angry," Adam says, eyes lowered to his rifle. He glances, quick and brief, to Jean-Paul, a thin, hard, humorless smile pursing his lips. "Does it matter?"
"Yes. It matters. Jamie thinks of you as a friend, or something like, anyway," Jean-Paul says as he sights down the line. He squares toward the target, shoulder to Adam, but he continues addressing him and delays the start of his chore. "You weren't just being an ass to me. You were being one to him."
Adam swallows, falling silent for a few moments as his gaze falls back to his firearm. "Yes," he says. "I know. I apologized to Jamie." His lips twist into a frown, perhaps because he is remembering HOW GREAT that conversation went.
Tension in his jaw relaxing a fraction, Jean-Paul says, "Good." He glances over, and then forward again. "I don't care what your problem is with me, but keep it away from him."
"Of course," Adam says quietly. His jaw works in a way that suggests he is close to continuing, but he doesn't manage quite yet.
Jean-Paul leaves Adam plenty of silence to fill in the moment which stretches after. He -- I don't know. He does something with the targets, sets it up, sets a distance to give an excuse of another pause before he fires.
So the silence stretches, albeit not comfortably. He watches Jean-Paul from under a lowered brow, halfway surreptitious, and hedges. Eventually he said, "I wasn't ready to hear what you said. Or it wasn't what I wanted to hear. Or -- something of that nature."
Jean-Paul pauses, gun lowered, to look back at Adam. With a slight frown, he tracks back along that train of thought to ask, "When you came by, you mean. I don't think you even heard what I said."
Adam exhales something like a laugh, except that is rather voiceless and humorless. "I heard," he says, quiet and wry. "You have to understand--" He stops and, after a beat, glances subtly around the range to check for any incoming colleagues. (Mostly) satisfied that no one is eavesdropping, he says, "I never told anyone. Not until I got here. It has been hard enough to speak of it to friends, and finding the willpower to speak of it to you--" He pauses a beat and shakes his head, just once, very slightly. "I didn't want to hear that what I needed to do was find that again to speak to someone else. A stranger, even." He glances to Jean-Paul, then back to his rifle. "That's all."
"We /are/ strangers," says Jean-Paul. There is something a little ruthless to the way in which he says it. "You made sure of that."
"I am not the only difficult person between the two of us," Adam retorts.
"Really!" Jean-Paul turns to Adam with an expression of some surprise. "That would apparently be news to Alden. I haven't told anyone -- /anyone/ -- about your ... questions. But because I didn't have some magic answer for you, you went to tell him -- what, exactly? Stop making your problems my fault. I told you how I made peace and I told you how you might find your own. If that isn't good enough for you, nothing is."
There is a flash of frustration, directed distantly towards absent friends. "I told Charles that I acted stupidly and it turned out just as you imagine anything would turn out after acting stupidly. I have no idea what he said to you, and I certainly didn't ask -- or /want/ -- him to say anything. I have admitted to you where I acted unfairly, where I acted childishly, where I acted unreasonably. What else do you want?" Adam has no attention to spare for his rifle anymore. "If you wanted me to leave, you did not have to dredge up the memory of my divorce to spur me out. You do not have to attack me now just for trying to /explain/."
Jean-Paul gestures, short and sharp with his free hand. "Forget it. Enough. I spoke about your ex-wife without really thinking about it. But nothing being said now is to any point. So forget it."
"Almost an apology," Adam says, crisp but quiet to his rifle. He resumes whatever step of cleaning the rifle he left off on.
"Passive aggressive snark does not suit you, Rutledge," Jean-Paul says before firmly pulling on his ear protection. "Grow up." (lol)
"Neither you, but you seem quite comfortable with it," Adam replies. Grown-up-like. (i h8 u)
Jean-Paul doesn't /quite/ go la-la-la, but with his ear protection now in place he has every excuse not to hear Adam. He loads his gun and does all appropriate safety check things in the last steps before firing. Vague, right?
I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I.
STUPID HEAD
I AM RUBBER YOU ARE GLUE
NO HE DOESN'T