The X-Project

Backdated to 5th July around Lunchtime




Laurie slumped into one of the kitchen chairs with a pained groan, gently placing the heat pack against her shoulder as she rolled it experimentally. She’d made sure she stretched after the latest danger room session but the battering she’d taken had still left her bruised and bloodied. She really needed to learn agility as well as speed; it did her no good being fast if she couldn’t duck out of the way of unexpected attacks.

An eyebrow quirked upward and Kevin glanced over his shoulder to find a familiar figure more or less wilting at the table. "Long night of gamblin' and whiskey?" Laurie looked about that beat up, but Kevin was sure the real cause would be a lot less cinematic than that. "You hungry?"

“I think I could eat an entire cow,” Laurie admitted with a grin at his previous comment. They both knew that while she was no longer quite as vocally against either of those things, it wasn’t something she regularly partook in, and certainly not to the point of making herself ragged the next day. It was something she wondered about at times, if, had her life taken a different path, she might currently be out spending her time dancing and doing all those things nineteen year olds who weren’t trying to get into medicine did. “And danger room fun and games. I think Paige and Garrison got a degree is sadism somewhere and didn’t let the rest of us in on it.”

"That like the Marquis de Sade Academy? That explains all Paige's cackling when she looks at the needles." Kevin had no idea if Paige actually cackled over anything, but it sounded good. He glanced at the cookie sheet, then at the dough he'd made for the biscuits. "Ah'm short a cow, but Ah got gravy and eventually biscuits if you want." It wouldn't be that hard to pull some more dough out for a couple more biscuits, and Lord knew he had enough gravy for a dozen biscuits anyway. Kevin would just feed leftovers to Jean-Paul so extra never went to waste either way.

“I do think those might be magical words, Kevvie,” Laurie said, eyes twinkling slightly at the horrible honorific. “I’ll have as many as you feel like making for me, and then add about two or three more.”

She relaxed back further, rolling her head on her neck as she adjusted the heat pack. She’d leave it on for a few more minutes and then take it off to give the muscle a rest.

The nickname got her something rather close to approximating a glare. "Don't even try it. Monet only gets away with it because she's stronger and faster and could hand me my butt without tryin'. You? No dice. And no biscuits if you keep it up." By now he was gesticulating in her direction with the spoon he'd been stirring the gravy with. A moment later it was put down so uncommonly bare hands could pull out more dough for biscuits. Two for him, six for her.

“Says he who is no longer immune to tickling should he try to get handsy,” Laurie noted with a grin, nodding her head in the direction of his bare hands. “And you would never deny a starving girl a meal, not even due to bad nicknames. You’re all noble and Southern that way.”

He just glared at her again and grumbled something quiet and near inaudible under his breath. "Why would Ah be gettin' handsy with you? Don't you have a boyfriend who'd try to kill someone if they tried to hit on you or something? That wasn't to say anything about how he had no interest in hitting on, or groping, anyone other than his own boyfriend anyhow.

“You’re the one who threatened violence if I called you Kevvie,” Laurie noted, raising an eyebrow. “And Eamon wouldn’t kill anyone, least not for that. As far as I know he doesn’t get jealous like that, and even if he did, I figure he knows I can take care of myself.”

"Ah never threatened violence," Kevin pointed out. "Ah said you don't get to get away with it, you assumed that meant violence from me if you used it. Ah'll just avoid you and refuse you biscuits and gravy." Refusing a man food was devastating if you could pull it off. Kevin thought it should work that way for girls, too.

“You wouldn’t do that,” Laurie noted, leaning forward to put her chin on her crossed arms. “You’re too nice to go denying people food.”

"Ah just might. Shouldn't push your luck then, huh?" He gave her a glance over his shoulder as if to suggest he'd be keeping an eye on her and then put the sheet of biscuits-to-be into the oven.

“If I didn’t push my luck, I’d never get anywhere in life,” Laurie noted, but she leaned back in her seat again and readjusted her heat pack before pushing out one of the chairs. “Come sit down and talk to me, how’s being able to touch people feeling?”

Technically he had nothing that needed attention at the oven so Kevin sighed and went over to sit down across from Laurie. His shoulders may have been slumped in a slight look of defeat, though for no more reason than it seemed appropriate with Laurie. "Who said Ah'm touchin' anyone? Not everyone's like Yvette and Jared and jumpin' for joy over all this, y'know."

“Any reason you’re not jumping for joy?” Laurie asked, although she had some idea as to why. He’d been powerless before and had them come back. It would have to seem like just more of the same, she thought. Still, she could be wrong, there could be some other reason.

"If it can disappear then it can reappear. You wanna be the one who loses an arm or half your face when my mutation suddenly remembers it exists again?" Kevin wondered how it was that everyone else seemed to be overlooking that wholly obvious fact. Why was no one considering that mutations, two of which were extremely dangerous to others upon skin contact, could show up just as suddenly as they'd gone? Why was no one else thinking about how dangerous it was to not be warning everyone to treat them as being just as dangerous as always?

“I want to show you something, if you’ll let me,” Laurie said, putting her heat pack down on the table. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

That was, of course, Kevin's cue to become entirely on edge. "Show me what?" He tried to keep that wary tone out of his voice, but she was putting down the heat pack and that meant she needed her hands for something. Something that could involve touching.

Laurie leaned forward and gave him a hug, careful to not hold him too tight, or make it hard for him to get away. After a moment, she brushed her lips lightly against his cheek in a soft kiss before pulling back and looking him in the eye.

“Did you know that babies in NICU do better when they’re touched regularly?” Laurie said, sitting back into her own chair and picking up the heat pack again. “We’re not entirely sure why yet, but human touch is a powerful healer, even just the sensation of a hug, the feeling that someone is there and cares. I guess we think the danger is worth it to show a friend we care.”

That wasn't awkward for Kevin at all. Nope, not in the least. That explained perfectly why he was about as stiff as a tree trunk while Laurie did that. "You wouldn't say that if your face looked like a mummy's right now," he told her quietly, clearly uncomfortable. Kevin then promptly got up to check on the gravy and put as much distance between the two of them as possible in the mean time. The hood on his long sleeved shirt was pulled up over his head as he moved.

“Possibly not, but it doesn’t, and I have a feeling you would know long before any of us if your powers returned. Enough warning to protect people, I would think.”

"Ah didn't know my mutation was gone, you shouldn't assume Ah'd know it was back." Kevin was hiding in his clothes again. His face, throat and hands were the only exposed skin on him. "Or maybe it comes back when someone's touching me. Gone one second, there the next and Ah ain't gonna be ready to even try to do nothin' 'bout it if it does."

“Okay,” Laurie replied, trying to keep the sadness she felt for him out of her voice. She didn’t think he wanted her pity, and it certainly wouldn’t help. “So, what happened at the faire? Why do you think your powers are gone?”

"All that happened at the faire is Cammie bought a glass vulva sculpture, we looked at art, found out that Jared guy's a dick and then went out for food and to be nice to Yvette we brought the dick with us. Doctor McCoy says my x-gene's gone, that's all Ah know." Laurie worked in the medlab, shouldn't she know more about this than him? There was what Yvette said about some lady saying she could help them but Kevin didn't know that had anything to do with it.

“So, nothing unusual happened?” Laurie asked, wondering. She’d read what Dr. McCoy had given them, but she wasn’t allowed to look at patient records, so she really only had what had been released to the rest of the mansion. “If your x-gene is gone, that’s pretty permanent, wouldn’t you think?”

"Tests can be wrong," he told her with a surety in his voice that would not be argued with. "Weirdest thing that happened at the fair was Cammie and Yvette gettin' along for half a minute." He stirred the gravy, keeping his eyes there rather than on Laurie.

“Would a second opinion help?” Laurie asked, she pressed the heat pack into her shoulder and relaxed back into the kitchen chair. “We could ask Moira to come and do some tests, or take you into New York, there’s a good genetic counselor there who we could get an appointment with.”

"Not really." He liked Nathan but Kevin dreaded seeing that man's wife. He swore one day he'd start having nightmares involving Moira and one more blood draw or something. She was a nice lady but Muir Island wasn't ranking near the high points of his short life. "Muir said there was no off button and that was true...right up until my mutation vanished. Like Ah said, tests can be wrong."

“What was it you did?” Laurie asked, curious.

There had to be a reason behind Kevin’s stubbornness, his inability to even conceive that this change might be a permanent one.

"To get shipped to Muir?" He shrugged and checked on the biscuits in the oven. "Exploded Jono when he ran into me while playin' soccer." He said it almost casually, but Kevin didn't feel casual about it in the least. At least Jono Starsmore had survived his collision with Kevin. He didn't have to carry around the scars of that encounter like others did.

“No, before that, before you came to the mansion, what first made you so afraid of touching people?” Laurie asked, shaking her head at his answer. She’d known about Jono, and while that had probably added to his issues, it wasn’t the catalyst.

It was public record that Kevin had killed his father when he'd manifested. A number of people around the mansion knew, too, thanks to the restrictions the court put on him traveling. After all, there was a reason Kevin was still living somewhere Charles Xavier owned. If Laurie had forgotten about his dad though... "Ah don't wanna talk about it."

“You don’t have to,” Laurie noted, closing her eyes as she leaned back. Danger room training had been exhausting, and she wasn’t about to push Kevin to talk about things he didn’t want to relive. His reaction was just so Pavlovian, she was positive that there were more then just accidents in his past. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, you know. I’m sorry if I did.”

"S'ok," he said with a dismissive sort of tone. He knew she didn't mean it and he wouldn't hold it against her because of that. That trail of disfigured bodies he'd left behind him, the irreparable damage he caused haunted him. His father, Jono, that girl who called herself Chakra, Jay, that guy in India who was going after Yvette, the other guy in India who was going after Mister Farouk...thinking about them all made his blood run cold.

Derailing the conversation blatantly, he pulled the cookie sheet out of the oven and asked, "Still hungry?"

“I am,” Laurie said, smiling brightly at him. She wasn’t willing to push him if he didn’t want to talk; it wasn’t really her place, even if they’d managed to become somewhat friends over the last while. “Bring on the biscuits and gravy.”

Grateful she took the change in topic, Kevin fetched a couple plates and the necessary utensils. He really did pile six biscuits onto a single plate and smother them in gravy for her. His own plate held two biscuits equally smothered. "There's more dough and more gravy, too," Kevin told her as he set her plate down in front of her. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to sit within hugging distance of her, though.

“If I promise I won’t hug you again unless you ask, will you stop freaking out on me?” Laurie asked, taking the utensils and cutting up one of the biscuits. She took a bite, and closed her eyes in pleasure. They were just that right sort of buttery fluffiness that she loved, and the gravy was perfect. “Delicious.”

"Depends, will you actually abide by your word?" It was real easy to say she wouldn't go around hugging him without permission but a different thing entirely to make good on said promises. "Thanks, Grandma would appreciate it. Enlightenin' the North one Yankee at a time with her biscuits and gravy recipe."

“I’ve not broken it yet,” Laurie noted, taking another bite. “You think I’d have some reason to?”

Kevin shrugged and finally sat down, though he kept an eye on her. "People think they've got reasons and they're in other folks' best interest all the time. Plenty of people've broken their word for me to not just assume everyone's gonna keep theirs."

“Okay, so I don’t usually tell people this but here goes, laugh at me and I do something nasty to you,” Laurie started, taking a deep breath to steady herself. Even in her head what she was about to say sounded too much like a fantasy novel. “I’ve got too much honour for that, if I give you my word on something, I’ll keep it. It’s why I almost never give my word to anyone, for any reason.”

An eyebrow raised, fork paused halfway to his mouth. "You're like the queen of paving the road to hell with good intentions from everything Ah've heard. You realize that, right?" Okay, so maybe not the ideal response there. He took a bite of his biscuit and tried again after swallowing. "Ah'll trust you on it."

“Really?” Laurie asked; far more amused by the rumours then she probably should have been. She had owned her own meddling ways long ago, and tried to lesson the effect of her urges when she could. Still, she was a first class meddler, and she knew it.“I’m glad you’ve decided to, especially since I never actually gave you my word.”

She grinned at him widely, but didn’t move any closer, while she might not have voiced a declaration; she certainly had no intention of making him uncomfortable.

"That's alright, you only get two chances." The way he said it implied that Kevin meant it exactly as he'd stated it. He'd give her a second chance and if she couldn't keep her distance to one that wouldn't make him want to inch - or run - away then he'd be done with her. Given the way he'd once gone off on her and stopped speaking to her for telling Jay things he didn't feel were any of the guy's business Kevin was pretty certain he could manage it.

“Touche,” Laurie murmured, taking another bite of her food.