Adam, Ilad, Jean-Paul, Lori
We must be planning to talk classified information over breakfast, because for now we have the kitchen to ourselves. Lori's hair is still back in its messy sleeping braid as she ladles out pancakes onto the pan. There's a big batch of batter, so everyone can have some!
Oh, good. Jean-Paul will forego a sandwich then in favor of one of Lori's pancakes. He draws into the kitchen with hair still damp from a shower and his shirt clinging high on his back where he failed to entirely dry before slipping it on. He is wearing only a white undershirt and black trousers. He lacks button-up, tie, jacket, and holster. No one better attack.
This seems to be an oddity, if Adam's frown is any indication when he does not find the usual sight of their cook making breakfast. He looks fatigued, perhaps lacking in sleep, and is actually still in his pajamas -- knit pants and a t-shirt. He is even less prepared for an attack than Jean-Paul. A gleam of metal flashes not at his ear, but between his fingers as he turns it over in his good hand. (The other hand is subject to the hospital sling keeping his left arm immobilized.) He draws into the kitchen to watch this pancake production with some distant curiosity. Like -- what are pancakes?
Lori's eyes go first to the inhibitor in Adam's hand, her curiosity snagged there in turn. "How many will you want?" she polls both of the men. She is wearing her holster at the moment, over her worn and faded pajama T-shirt. Lori is PREPARED.
Jean-Paul's inhibitor is on his ear. Maybe I should mention that. Don't worry, Adam! Nothing personal! "I can start with four," he says, like a fattie.
When Lori's gaze drops to peer at it, Adam tucks the inhibitor away in the pocket of his knit pajama pants with a hint of self-consciousness. He glances at Jean-Paul as the other man answers first, then tells Lori, "Three is fie. Thank you."
"Okay," Lori agrees. She already has a small one started, and she flips that one off first to eat rolled up one-handed as she works. Jean-Paul's go in first. Artfully, Lori joins them to make...a mutant Mickey Mouse? It has three ears, if that's what it is. She looks at JP, touches her own ear. "Why the--?"
Jean-Paul, oblivious to freakish horror show of the pan, heads for the fridge to pull out a jug of milk. "What?" he asks, looking back to catch the gesture. He looks slightly surprised by her question. His, "Elizabeth," carries a sort of dubious 'duh', like 'why aren't you'. DUH.
Adam frowns at Jean-Paul's explanation, and his hand goes back in his pocket to touch back to the metal consideringly. He moves further into the kitchen and abandons the consideration for a brief moment to set the kettle on.
"I miss an order?" Lori asks Jean-Paul with raised eyebrows. She does seem struck by the idea, so she looks at her pancakes and then away into the B&B. "Can you flip this when it's ready?" Lori asks Adam since he's handy. Then she can go grab an inhibitor for herself.
Jean-Paul hesitates before replying, uncertain. "I don't know. If Chol didn't mention it to you, then no, I guess. Ibis said she mentioned it to him." Pouring a glass of milk, he does not volunteer to take Adam's spot at the pan. His pancakes are gonna be awful.
"Um." Adam looks at Lori like omg-really? He looks down at the pancakes through the fuzz of painkillers. "I don't--" He blinks at them. "How do I know when they're ready?"
Lori hovers the spatula over the top surface. "When nearly all of those bubbles have popped. And you can sneak a peek at the bottom if it's brown, too." She lifts the edge of the extra freakshow ear. "Just a sec." She disappears off into the B&B. Have fun!
Jean-Paul watches Adam sidelong as he caps the milk and lifts the glass to take a sip.
Adam steps slowly in front of the skillet and takes up the abandoned spatula to watch the pancakes with an overabundance of nervous attention that suggests he has very little faith in his ability to not ruin them.
Jean-Paul watches Adam with an overabundance of sardonic attention that suggests he has very little faith in his ability to not ruin them.
Adam hovers the spatula nearer like he might do something like pop and bubble, but he doesn't. He glances at his kettle, which sounds like it's coming close to boiling. Uh-oh.
Lori returns in no hurry, settling outside of the kitchen to look at the inhibitor in her hands. She turns it this way and that, though her gaze is unfocused. "They're so simple and so complicated," she comments.
Jean-Paul ignores the kettle, too, to turn to Lori with the arch of his eyebrows. "If you say so."
Adam seems fairly relieved for Lori to return. "I might have ruined them," he warns her as he holds the spatula out.
Lori counter-eyebrows. "What does that mean?" she asks Jean-Paul. She slides the inhibitor on, and comes to rescue Adam. "Oh! Just a little extra brown." She turns it quickly. One ear is lost on the way, but she reattaches it on the others side.
"They look pretty simple to me," Jean-Paul says as he watches -- critically! -- the flipping process.
"I don't cook," Adam says in his defense, like /honestly/ woman, you should never have left him with them in the first place. He scuffs back over to the kettle as it starts to whistle, face creased in a frown, and turns off the heat before realizing he hasn't had time to get out a mug and tea yet. SIGH. He does that first. "Maybe /you/ should have flipped them," he tells Jean-Paul.
Lori plates the mutant mouse and offers it out, slightly too brown at all. "Complicated in what they /do/," she explains. That's totally what she meant, DUH. "Like that it will work against Elizabeth, but doesn't do anything to me." She grins at Adam. "Pancakes are a life skill."
"I've never really thought about," Jean-Paul admits as he takes the place with a, "Thank you," that does not include pancake-burner, Adam. He swans on by, ignoring the MAYBE YOU SHOULD'VE DONE IT, to pull out butter and just maybe maple syrup, because I guess he is Canadian.
"I thought you were talking about the pancakes," Adam admits with a frown. It is clearly the fault of the drugs. He finds both mug and teabag and fills up a cup of tea.
"I'm not sure how you can make pancakes complicated. Unless you're requesting a giraffe or something." Adam gets...a water molecule? The three joined blobs are mostly the same size, rather than being ear-shaped. "I've had to fill in in the kitchen enough times you pick up tricks. Bar food ain't fancy."
"Those look simple, too," says Jean-Paul like a total fool in response to Adam. He and his pancakes and his maple syrup sit down somewhere convenient to the stove.
"Thank you," Adam says, words precise, as he accepts the plate from Lori while his tea steeps. Since it is clearly an eat-in kitchen and there are seats to be had, he sits down at Jean-Paul's table. He has the butter and syrup, after all.
Lori puts on her own pancake finally. This one is lovely and competely round and large. She keeps putting fingertips to her ear, distracted. "What does it feel like?" finally asks Adam. "When it does affect you?" She grins. "Not the pancakes."
Jean-Paul shares the butter and the syrup, too: he nudges first one and then the other over toward Adam. He watches him with a distant sort of curiosity, waiting for reply to Lori.
Adam shifts in his seat, vaguely discomforted at the question. Perhaps bowing to peer pressure, he pulls the inhibitor from his pocket and sets it at his ear. "Quiet," he answers. "Muted." He tips his head just slightly to Jean-Paul as the other man nudges over butter and syrup. He starts with the first.
"Huh," Lori says. "Sounds nice." She looks around, like she's thinking of the B&B being metaphorically quieter. Then she has to concentrate on flipping her huge pancake.
Ilad does not look terribly professional this morning as he meanders into the common area. Drawn by sound and smell, he ambles barefoot and half-dressed with a towel slung across his naked shoulders; his hair is a damp tousled rumple, a few scattered gleams from his shower lingering across the broad expanse of golden-olive skin and strength left apparent by his lack of shirt. Scars mar its surface, the ancient white slash of a knife that curves up from his hip towards his ribs, and on his other side, a considerably less ancient (but still old) gunshot scar. Since he is not wearing a shirt it is perhaps not surprising that he also doesn't have a holster, although a small gleam of metal in his hand reveals itself not to be a telepathic inhibitor but, uh, a cigarette lighter.
Gaze just briefly arrested by Ilad's entrance, Jean-Paul's glance jags across to the lighter in short order. He arches an eyebrow. "Morning," he greets.
"It's not--" Adam considers a moment longer as he spreads butter. "It's strange." He glances over at the sound of Ilad's approach, brows hitching upwards as his gaze drops for the briefest moment to skin left bare and damp. Then he mumbles a quick "Good morning" and turns his attention firmly back to the pancakes.
Lori is teasingly appreciative in her gaze on Ilad, but then she goes back to collecting condiments for her pancake and sitting down. She eats one-handed, and finally gives in and takes of her inhibitor to hold it. Hello, tricksy little thing. You look funny inside. "Morning. Want some?" she asks Ilad.
Ilad blocks a yawn with his fist, eyes briefly scrunching shut, and then drags his hand through the dark, damp waves of his hair, scratching at his scalp as he glances across his teammates. "Boker tov," he says, like anybody in here knows what that means, Ilad. Maybe he forgot Isabel left. He considers the breakfast assembly in process with a slight baffle of his expression. "No bacon?"
"If you want to make some," Jean-Paul says, tone leading in an 'oh I won't make you but boy that sounds tasty' kind of way. It is probably more readily understandable than arcane gestures.
"My first thought upon seeing my colleague making pancakes was not to ask for an additional selection," Adam says with muted humor as he drizzles a small amount of maple syrup on his pancakes.
"I can make it bacon-shaped," Lori offers on a laugh. She gets up to put the sort of rectangular pancake on, and then returns to her food. She's hungry! She gives Adam a smile of appreciation for his comment, though she doesn't seem particularly bothered.
"Then I suppose I will not give you any bacon," Ilad tells Adam, as he sidles on into the kitchen area to investigate the bacon prospect with the twitch of a faint smile in Lori's direction like no offense, he just can't start his day without murdering a pig.
Jean-Paul watches Ilad scout out a murdered pig and says, off-hand, "Doesn't bacon like -- spit?"
"That wasn't exactly--" Just give it up, Adam. Clearly Ilad is serious about you not getting any bacon.
"Sometimes," Lori contributes about spitting bacon, but she seems confused about how the question relates. She'll just eat. On nom, nom. She uses enough syrup to make everything a sticky mess. Yum. Oh, and she puts the inhibitor back on.
Ilad glances down, like, oh yeah, he forgot to finish getting dressed. He lifts a shoulder in a partial shrug as he fetches bacon from the refrigerator and sets himself up with a pan on the stove. "I suppose," he says, like a man who also isn't bothered by hot grease in the slightest.
"Live dangerously," Jean-Paul murmurs as he forks off a bite of mutant pancake to mop up maple syrup. He does not make it a sticky mess. He uses /just enough/.
Adam has absolutely no comment about half-dressed men cooking bacon. Srsly. He eats his pancakes.
Lori looks away from half-naked cooking not because she's uncomfortable, but because her next question is mostly professional-related. "Chol--or--" She looks at Jean-Paul too, vaguely. Sorry, Adam. "Sometime before shit hits the fan again, I wondered about talking about what I could have--done to be more effective."
"I would like to meet the bacon that could burn /me/," Ilad remarks with an idly satisfied air as he lays out raw strips in the pan. He puts the lighter in his pocket, fiddling with the gas range instead. He glances over his shoulder at Lori, picking up a spatula with eyebrows twitching up. "Your first real combat, hm?" he says. His voice is a little quiet.
Jean-Paul's gaze returns to Lori, and the quiet echoes in the slow shift of his expression. "Want a suggestion?"
The line of Adam's jaw goes hard and his fingers tense on his fork. He trains his gaze on his pancakes as if to continue eating, but his utensil just sits there clamped in his still hand.
Lori frowns at Adam's reaction, but she nods in response to Jean-Paul. "Barring some frat boys who pulled the whole place into a bar fight on New Year's Eve one year, yeah."
Ilad falls quiet, leaving Jean-Paul to speak as he watches the bacon starting to sizzle pleasantly in the pan.
"Learn the gun. Learn everything you can about it, every part and how they are different and the same across different guns. Learn every way you can foil it, particularly the most small, the most subtle ways in which you can fuck one up," Jean-Paul says, level but quietly intense. "And make sure that people know what you can do. I don't know. I was half expecting -- I don't know, Ibis. You're not Ibis." It is almost apology.
Adam slowly, carefully, slices off a piece of pancake and eats its.
Lori nods emphatic agreement. That apparently makes sense to her. "I'm a lot different than a telekinetic. Even though that's what they thought I was." She swirls a bite around in the syrup but doesn't lift it. Not syrupy enough yet. "Half this stuff-I don't think of doing until someone asks me if I can."
"Learn from the experience," Ilad says, taking his spatula to the bacon. "But do not let it weigh you down."
Jean-Paul just says, "Learn," in final echo, and then applies fork to plate and eats its /pancake/.
Adam eats his stupid goddamn pancakes I hate all of you.
Lori snorts at Jean-Paul. Apparently she finds that ttly helpful. She nods to Adam. "Sorry," she murmurs, and falls silent, apparently ceding him the next topic.
Ilad hums a few quiet notes beneath his breath as he crisps up the bacon in the pan.
Jean-Paul watches Ilad crisp up the bacon with absent-minded hunger. It smells good, okay?
Adam fails to respond to Lori's apology or take up the responsibility of the next topic. He is just all-around useless.
Lori eats in silence. She's not gonna break first! Mm. Syrupy.
Ilad transfers bacon from its hot pan to a plate, cutting off his humming as he turns off the heat. Then he ambles away from the stove and over to the table to proffer his offering to the general breakfast. "I remember the first time I was in a firefight," he says, sliding the plate onto the table. Now. PANCAKES? Maybe you shouldn't have let him pick the conversational topic, guys. "Nearly pissed myself."
"My first time was pretty bad," Jean-Paul says, and little more before he reaches over to lift a couple of pieces of bacon. Only once he has taken a bite does he say, "Thanks."
So close to bacon, but Adam swallows hard and pushes his chair away from the table. "Thank you for breakfast," he says in a quick mumble to Lori before turning to make his way out of the kitchen.
Lori is happy to accept some bacon. She laughs, a sound of relief, at Ilad's comment. "God. Even knowing in theory I could--" She gestures. What, isn't quite clear. "Seeing him aiming at me--" She looks up at Adam leaves. "You're welcome," she says, a bit helplessly. "Dammit," she says, once he's gone.
Ilad crunches into a piece of bacon, watching Adam's departure as the combination of semi-nudity and blood reminiscence prove too much for his sensitivities. His eyebrows draw up, and then he glances back across the table at the others. "I didn't start adding to my scar collection until much later, strangely enough," he says. "After I got cocky, I suppose."
Jean-Paul glances after Adam but says nothing, and only shakes his head at Lori. He snorts at Ilad.
Lori laughs, a low breath. "Don't get cocky. Noted." She stares after Adam longer than the others. "What's--?"
Ilad tips his head, glancing back at Lori. "I believe he is ... troubled," he says mildly, and eats more breakfast quietly in the aftermath of this understatement.
Jean-Paul says more nothing. OH SHIT ADAM RUBBED OFF ON HIM.
RUB RUB.
"I can see that," Lori says. She looks down at her plate, and finish her pancake. Maybe she will go make another! That will require her to do things with batter and spatula that require concentration.
"Yes, well." Ilad's mouth twitches at one corner. He glances at Jean-Paul for some reason, and then away. "He has earned it." He takes another piece of bacon from the plate and crunches into it, chewing momentarily before he glides onto a smooth topic change. "I am glad that we do not face an indoctrinated child as well as a pack of bloody-minded terrorists," he says. "We all received Ibis's intelligence, hm?"
A brief flash of temper lighting Jean-Paul's eyes at the shift of topic, he says, "I can't believe she dragged him into this shit."
"My half-brother's around that age," Lori comments, lips thinning. "Did she break it to him, what he was really involved in?"
Ilad shakes his head. "I doubt it," he says. "No need, beyond extracting him from Elizabeth's ... clutches." He crunches grimly on bacon and then adds lowly, "That is a boy who has seen enough filth."
Jean-Paul Adams again, silent and cranky.
"Yeah," Lori says, and shivers. She's read all of those reports, by now. "I hope he never has need to recognize that kind of deception again, though."
Ilad says something untranslatable and sits back in his chair, pulling his towel down across his shoulders to mangle it idly between his hands.
Lori eats her last pancake by hand. "Guess I'll go start practice with this," she says, and pats the gun in the holster. She eyes her pajamas, now reminded of them. And get dressed too, undoubtedly. She heads out.
Oops, my turn. Jean-Paul murmurs a sort of, "Uh huh," to Ilad and THEN THE CAMERA FADES OUT ON THE SCENE BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE IS HAPPENING. THE END.
Mmm, breakfast. Ilad is so rude.