The X-Project

It's Kevin's birthday. So Jean-Paul attempts to grill. Nothing explodes.


Jean-Paul shifted the paper bag he was carrying to his left hand and raised his right so he could rap his knuckles on Kevin’s door. As he’d told the younger man, he wasn’t really interested in making some kind of massive celebration out of birthdays, but since he happened to have found out when Kevin was turning twenty-one, he’d decided it might be nice to do something a little... well. Nicer than usual.

To that end, he’d bought fillet mignon instead of flank steak. This was his only real concession to or acknowledgement of the importance of the day. No one else would even notice, he was sure. Kevin might, but they weren’t really the sort to make a big deal out of it, were they? Jean-Paul rather enjoyed that aspect of their relationship.

Kevin had charcoal stains along the thumb and outside of his right hand. His fingertips had lighter stains of black as well, though when he opened the door none of that was as noticeable as the streaks that went along one side of his jaw and across his forehead. Charcoal wasn’t his forte, but Kevin was trying to get better at it. That meant practice. Practice meant dirty.

He almost might have been hiding in case anyone decided they needed to pinch him or spank him or whatever other embarrassing stuff people liked to do on birthdays.

It was a great relief to the Southerner when he opened the door to find Jean-Paul. At least there’d be no unwanted spanking there. “Hey.” He gestured the older man into the suite with a charcoal-covered hand.

“Bonjour,” Jean-Paul said, quirking a smile at the dark streaks on Kevin’s face. “Busy with art today, oui?” He walked into the kitchenette and put the paper bag on the table. “It is almost like warpaint, I think, but in the wrong places.” He indicated the spots where Kevin had gotten charcoal on himself, still smiling, before continuing, “I have things for cooking.” Then, the only other thing that might indicate today was different from other days - he finished, “I thought I might try cooking, if you do not mind. On the grill.” So it wasn’t really cooking so much as grilling. For some reason, that distinction made him feel better.

An eyebrow went up and was quickly followed by its mate. “You...wanna grill dinner?” To someone else the surprise might have sounded like it had to do with grilling, but really it was that Jean-Paul wanted to cook. The most responsibility the Quebecois typically took for their many dinners together was bringing take out or buying specific stuff and having a recipe suggestion for Kevin to make. The Southerner’s cooking repertoire had grown significantly since he’d begun dating the older man. “You sure? Ah mean, if you wanna Ah won’t stand in your way.” Kevin turned to peer at the brightness outside his window. “Y’know it’s hot out and you’re gonna get hotter over the grill, right?”

Deadpanning, Jean-Paul said, “Aime, I am always hot. Have you not told me this yourself?” Then he grinned, a brief flash of of expression - there and gone a moment later. “But oui, I would like to grill dinner, if you do not mind.”

“At least it won’t matter as much when you catch it on fire,” Kevin replied cheerfully. “Lemme just wash the charcoal off.” He turned and went to disappear into the bathroom to wash his hands and see just how bad the streaks on his face were that Jean-Paul had mentioned. Once he was clean again Kevin ditched his slightly charcoal smudged tank for a new white one and headed back out. “Alright, master of the grill, let’s go.” A hand gestured toward the door for Jean-Paul to lead the way.

Picking up the bag from the counter again, Jean-Paul headed for the door and smiled. “You are supposed to tell me that I will cook it very well, not that it will not matter so much if I catch it on fire.”

“Ah thought Ah was supposed to be honest,” came the defense as the door to the suite shut behind Kevin. “You’ll do fine...with me watching over your shoulder.” The Southerner grinned over at Jean-Paul, the look at once impish and innocent both.

“Can you grill potatoes?” Jean-Paul asked, his own expression guileless as they walked toward the stairs leading to the ground floor.

“Yeah, and since it’s you Ah’m pretty sure you can explode ‘em, too.” Kevin kept himself out of arm’s reach as they went down the stairs just in case Jean-Paul felt like thwapping him for that one.

Snorting, Jean-Paul shook his head. “No respect,” he said, then quirked another smile. “But I think you are right. I could explode them, if I tried very hard not to pay attention.” But he’d looked up a recipe specifically to make sure he didn’t blow anything up. Recipes... he shouldn’t need them, but he’d use them on occasions like this. Sometimes it was better to admit defeat than to continue making a fool of oneself. “How do you like your steak? I cannot remember what you answered when I asked you last.”

“Medium,” he answered while trying to hold back the smirking smile that wanted to erupt in the face of Jean-Paul and his potato exploits. “Ah’m pretty sure you wouldn’t need to try to not pay attention to the potatoes to make ‘em explode. Just sayin’. Ah think you can explode them with a lot less effort than that and all.” The grin Kevin wore was boyish and clearly up to no good.

“It is possible you are correct,” Jean-Paul said, letting his smile droop. Suddenly, he brightened. “You are very distracting, did you know? I am sure it will be all your fault, should the potatoes explode tonight.”

“My fault?” The offended tone was there in an instant, as was Kevin’s innocent look. As the pair of them came off the stairs and headed toward the kitchen to exit from the doors there Kevin asked, “How is it my fault? Ah don’t do anything to distract you.” A lie. “It’s your own darned fault if you can’t focus proper!”

“Tsk, tsk, “Jean-Paul said, putting the paper bag on a picnic table. “You are a very bad liar.” Looking toward the grill, he found that the charcoal he’d put there earlier was still there, so he set about readying it. The lighter fluid was there, as well, and he pulled a box of matches from his pocket. “I can focus very well when you are not standing about being distracting.” And Kevin was very good at being distracting. Perhaps not quite so good as Jean-Paul, but the Quebecois had a number of years’ worth of experience under his belt.

“Does that mean Ah should go away?” He gestured, thumb pointing over his shoulder in the direction he might retreat in. “‘Cause Ah’m not real sure Ah can stand around not bein’ distracting either. Ah could just stand here, but who says that won’t distract you too? It’s hard to say what’ll set you off and what won’t. Should Ah have brought my charcoal and sketch book with me to keep me non-distracty?”

“You would be covered in charcoal again and that would be distracting,” Jean-Paul said, building the little pile of coals up into a pyramid the way the instructions on the bag told him to. He eyed the pyramid critically before squirting on a good bit of lighter fluid and striking the match. “I think you cannot help it,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants and then going back for the paper bag that had the makings of their dinner in it. “Also, I think you should not leave. I would be unsure of when you would come back and that would make me jumpy, oui? I am far more likely to explode a potato if I am jumpy.”

“So Ah’ve got a whole ‘darned if you do, darned if you don’t’ thing going on?” His eyes were on the flames in the grill and how they had shot up when the flame of the match had met the lighter fluid. Some things were just ingrained. They were there in your cells. No amount of growing up would stop a guy from looking at tall flames and thinking ‘cool.’ Or so Kevin thought anyway. His eyes turned back to his boyfriend only after they had died down below the actual metal grill the meat would sit on. “You could just not make potatoes.”

Jean-Paul waited until the flames were at a good level before turning and meeting Kevin’s gaze. “But I bought the potatoes for you.” The implication was that, since he’d bought them for Kevin, he’d have to cook them. No matter what.

That was...well Kevin would have said ‘sweet’ if it was a girl but the word just didn’t seem to fit when he was thinking of Jean-Paul. “‘Cause you wanted to fill my Saturday with projectile potato shrapnel?”

Deadpanning, Jean-Paul nodded. “Oui. It will help you learn to dodge things.”

Kevin blinked at him. “Thought Ah was learning to fall not dodge.”

“Dodging and falling, they can sometimes be the same thing, non?” Practically speaking, of course, it would probably help if Kevin didn’t have to dodge things or worry about falling, but since that might not be an option... well. Jean-Paul was working with what he had in an effort to make sure neither of them got hurt.

Pulling things out of the bag, he sat the tin foil down, then pulled the steaks out of their packaging and put them on one of the paper plates he’d brought along with him. The potatoes followed, and two ears of corn. The website he’d looked at had assured him in multiple places that he could actually grill the vegetables without too much trouble. If they exploded, he was going to write a rather angry email to them.

Kevin watched silently as each item was pulled from the paper sack and placed out on the table. Potatoes, steak, corn... “Are you feelin’ real patriotic or something? This is like stereotypical American. Add either beer or a couple cans of Coke and it could be a marketing campaign.” It wasn’t a complaint, though. Kevin was fully in favor of everything...assuming it didn’t explode or catch on fire in an attempt to replicate the charcoal’s look.

“Well, I did not think you would like poutine so much, and so I thought this would be better,” Jean-Paul said, wishing he could make poutine and not have the Americans look at him like he’d lost his mind - again.

“What’s a...poutine?” It sounded vaguely like a curse word in another language, like puta only French. Trying to figure out what sort of food that could be from that mental association wasn’t particularly pretty. “Is that like head cheese? Or haggis? Made out of miscellaneous genitalia?” These were the unfortunate places Kevin’s brain went after thinking poutine was synonymous with whore stew.

Jean-Paul actually turned away from the food he was preparing so he could look at the younger man properly and make sure Kevin understood that the look he was getting said something along the lines of ‘you’re crazier than I am.’ “Poutine is French fries with gravy and cheese curd,” he said slowly. “I do not know why you think of genitalia, but they are not in it.” He spoke slowly, as though the younger man might not quite follow. Then his nose wrinkled. “Haggis?” He could think of no words to adequately describe his distaste for that particular dish.

“That sounds gross.” After the mental images he was having of miscellaneous genitalia stuffed into a penis skin like some sort of sick sausage variant one would think that the truth of what the dish was would get a more welcome reception, but no. “Ah mean, it doesn’t sound as gross as what Ah thought it was, but still. Gross. People should really think ‘bout naming stuff. ‘Curd’ just doesn’t have the sound of something you wanna put in your mouth the way ‘waffles’ does,”

Jean- Paul went back to seasoning the steak and vegetables, still shaking his head a bit. "Rude," he said, obviously teasing.

“Young people these days,” Kevin began with his most disappointed tone he could manage. “Ain’t got no respect for their elders!”

"Certainly none for me," Jean -Paul said, wrapping the potatoes and ears of corn in tin foil.

“Why would there be any for you?” He tried to keep the smile off his face and the curiosity in his voice as genuine as possible.

"Because I am old," Jean-Paul said. "I am old and I have very few good years left."

“Guess Ah should marry you soon so when you die and Ah inherit all your money Ah’ll have better standin’ to say Ah really loved you, right?” The grin was back to being impish and Kevin’s attempt to turn his expression more innocent failed spectacularly.

“That is an option, I suppose,” Jean-Paul said, though he snorted before turning to check on the coals. “But then it would turn out that I would never die, oui? This is how the stories of the gold diggers go. They marry for money thinking the other person will die quickly. And then the other person never does. This is karma, is it not?”

“Nah, that’s just Yankees. In the South we got more patience for these sorts of things ‘cause we don’t go movin’ as fast as people up North do. Ah could hang ‘round for ten, twenty, even thirty years waitin’ for you to kick the bucket. By then Ah’m still young enough to date twenty year old gold diggin’ girls after you’re done and buried.” Kevin spoke with an authority of someone who had given this much more thought than he actually had.

"I will write a will," Jean-Paul said. "And I will leave you only a little. The rest will go to charities and things." He waited a moment more to make sure the coals were hot enough, then put the steaks on the grill. Looking at them slightly askance, Jean-Paul attempted to convince himself that the food wasn't in any real danger of catching on fire.

“Ah’ll just have to wait until you’re delirious with your near death state of mind to get you to change it,” Kevin said with a casual shrug. “Like Ah said, Ah can be patient. And Ah’ve got time.” Moving over toward the grill, Kevin took up a spot just behind Jean-Paul and watched over the other man’s shoulder just in case anything wanted to try to explode. As his arms moved to encircle the Quebecois’ waist Kevin muttered, “Ah’ll have plenty of time to get really good at having affairs behind your back for when you’re too old to get it up.”

"Plenty of time?" The noise Jean-Paul made was almost noncommital. "Tsk... you have shared your plan with me now, though. I will have to end things between us before it gets to that point." Picking up the grill tongs, he snapped them twice to get a feel for them.

“You wouldn’t go and do that,” Kevin whispered, lips brushing along the side of Jean-Paul’s neck. He pressed a kiss over what was likely going to be a scar on the older man’s neck. “You wouldn’t wanna get rid of me enough to actually end things.”

"I could do it in a very nonpersonal way," Jean-Paul said, reaching over to the table with the tongs so he could pick up the corn and potatoes without actually having to move. "Have my lawyer draw up an official notice so that I did not have to be the one to tell you."

Fingers slipped beneath the cloth of Jean-Paul’s shirt seeking skin. Once they found it Kevin’s hands stilled there on the older man’s stomach. “You’d get me to fall for you and have your lawyers break up with me? That’s just wrong. Cowardly. You ain’t never struck me as a coward.”

Jean-Paul didn't mention that he had a tendency to run away from things. Kevin knew that. "Maybe." He quirked a little smile, though. "I still have some work to do before we get to that point, do I not?"

“Which one? The one where your lawyers break up with me or the other one?” Somehow Kevin didn’t want to mention anyone falling for anyone else aloud again. Their conversation seemed to have steadily declined from playful to something more subtly serious as they continued on.

"Until I make you fall for me, as you say," Jean-Paul answered, flipping the steaks while focusing intently on Kevin in an attempt to read the younger man's reaction without actually looking at him.

Kevin stood silently for a moment and thought about how exactly he wanted to reply to that. While he considered his options he mirrored Jean-Paul’s usual stance when Kevin was cooking by pressing his nose into that spot just behind the other man’s ear. His eyes kept watch on the steaks while the rest of his face more or less buried itself in Jean-Paul’s skin. “Not really any work left to do there,” Kevin eventually whispered, only pulling his mouth away from skin long enough to speak.

"Ah," Jean-Paul murmured, blinking at the steaks because he hadn't been expecting that. He wasn't even sure he should have been expecting it or not, only that he hadn't been. He wasn't sure how to respond. "Aime," he murmured, "I would not be able to have my lawyer write you for me. You could wait for a very long time and I would not think to do that." English, it seemed, had failed him once again.

“You’re not really in any danger of me havin’ affairs anyway,” Kevin murmured quietly against skin, though he tried to make sure he was loud enough to be heard. “So you don’t really gotta worry ‘bout the lawyer anyway, right?”

"Oui," Jean-Paul said, turning the vegetables so he'd have something to do with himself. He found Kevin's hand beneath the material of his shirt and nodded slowly. "This is good. I do not have a lawyer on retainer."

“That mean you’ve retired from your life of crime or just your life of celebrity?” He knew in a factual sort of way that Jean-Paul had once been well known or even famous. He assumed it had to do with skiing but maybe Jean-Paul had a sex tape out there somewhere that was really to blame for it. Either way, he’d never known the man as any sort of celebrity and Kevin sort of hoped to keep it that way. Their relationship had enough complications as it was.

"Surely you would not make me give up my life of crime," Jean-Paul said, frowning at one of the steaks that seemed to be getting darker faster than the other. "And I was never very good at being in the spotlight, I think. I enjoyed it, but I was not made for it, in the end."

“Depends. How often you been caught in your criminal exploits? ‘Cause Ah ain’t coming in for conjugal visits when you end up in prison and Ah’ll be darned mopey that my person’s all imprisoned and stuff. And Ah’m not sure prison would help keep you out of the spotlight, that Ah’m allergic to by the way, so Ah’ll be avoiding you when you’re in that, too.” A single hand came out from under Jean-Paul’s shirt to point to the darkening steak. “You should move that one over that,” Kevin told him with a gesture.

Jean-Paul did as Kevin suggested, then said, “As I said, I was never very good at being in the spotlight, so I do not think it is anything you need to worry about just now. Or ever, really.” Indeed, if he had his way - and it seemed that he would, considering his powers these days - he would remain permanently out of the spotlight.

It had come with some benefits, but mostly it had involved a lot of headaches from the camera flashes, unwanted advances from strange men in seedy bars, and something of a complex where his favourite sport was concerned. “I will remember, though, that you are allergic to it just so that I may avoid it better.”

“Good plan. Ah endorse this plan.” Said endorsement came with a kiss pressed just under Jean-Paul’s jaw. “Long as you don’t get caught then you don’t gotta give up your life of crime, but Ah’ll have to break it off when you get a conviction with more than a year of jail time. Sorry, it’s just how things gotta be. We can reconsider things when you get out dependin’ on how things stand for us both then.”

“The key, then, is to not be caught, oui?” Jean-Paul poked at the steaks, then straightened up a little and poked at the browner of the two again. “I think it has caught on fire.”

“It’ll survive. It’s still edible right now. Just flip it over and keep it further from the heat’s all.” He paused, then asked, “If Ah’m backseat grillin’ it still counts as you cooking, right?”

“You do not have the tongs, so you are not cooking,” Jean-Paul said, prodding the steak until it was farther from the heat. Then he clicked the tongs together again, just for good measure. A few moments passed before he muttered, “It is still on fire.”

“Stick it on a plate and smother out the flame, then stick it back on the grill to finish cooking if it needs it.” After a moment of pause he added, “You shouldn’t do that with paper plates. Just so we’re clear, those’ll catch fire, too.”

“It is not that much on fire,” Jean-Paul muttered, though he picked the steak up with the tongs and moved the steak to a plate so he could extinguish the bit of fire that he caught at one end. Once he was satisfied that it wouldn’t be ruined, he returned it to the grill. Of course, by that point, it was fairly certain the other steak had caught on fire.

This was not going as easily as he’d hoped it would.

“You’re the one who keeps complainin’ it’s on fire. Just consider it flavor unless it looks like charcoal. Ah mean, you are cooking it over fire, you gotta expect that the fire’ll think it’s sexy and try to get a good fondlin’ in or somethin’.” He grinned even though Jean-Paul couldn’t see it unless he turned his head. Kevin figured it wasn’t worth getting upset over even if it did turn into blackened mignon and if he didn’t make it sound like a big deal maybe Jean-Paul would be less paranoid.

"Mm..." Jean-Paul wasn't sure about all that, but Kevin did have a point about how it was cooking over a flame. Some charring was to be expected. And if he kept flipping them so quickly, the steaks would never be finished. "I would like them to not be burned, even if the fire does, as you say, think them sexy."

“Sexy burns,” Kevin replied knowingly. “You just can’t help it. It’s hot. Unavoidable, really. You’re gonna have to accept it burnin’ or you’re goin’ to have sub-par steak. You really wanna be that guy whose steaks people look at and think ‘wow, well Ah’m sure they’re quite nice on the inside’? It’s like sayin’ someone has a nice personality when all they want’s for you to pin ‘em against a wall and leave marks.”

"You have strange analogies," Jean-Paul said. "Very strange." He was smiling, though. "I think the aluminum foil is not one of these things that is sexier when burned."

Kevin shrugged a little knowing that Jean-Paul could feel the gesture unless he was just focusing that intently on what he was grilling. “Aluminum foil ain’t tryin’ to be sexy. It’s covering up other stuff. Might as well be a nun’s habit right now. That makes it sexy and fetishistic all on it’s own.”

"Fetishistic?" Jean-Paul wasn't sure that was even really a word, but he smiled a little anyway. "I am not so sure that is so, but for you... I will pretend." It was slightly easier to relax and not worry so much about the steaks when he wasn't pay such acute attention to them.

“Course it’s a word. Would Ah say it if it weren’t a word? How can you even say somethin’ that ain’t a word? What’s a not-word? A noise? A picture? An abstract intuitive feelin’ thing?” Kevin’s argument came out as a muffled, meandering sort of ramble against Jean-Paul’s skin just behind his ear. Clearly his passion wasn’t in the defense of the word but that didn’t mean he couldn’t debate it anyway.

"I like the last one," Jean-Paul said. "The abstract, intuitive feeling. Thing." Turning the vegetables again, he considered the steaks again, but didn't turn them. They might actually have grill marks if he didn't fiddle with them for another minute or so. And if they didn't spontaneously combust.

“Ah’m not sure that makes sense. But you got more experience with these things.” Kevin fell silent again, face burrowing more comfortably against the side of Jean-Paul’s neck as he did. He was watching the food on the grill, but unless he thought something really would explode or melt into goo he wasn’t going to interrupt. He was a guy, he could handle burnt food even if there should have been a rule against charred food on your birthday.

“Oui,” Jean-Paul said, nodding while attempting to not dislodge Kevin. “I have much more experience than you.” He waited a few more moments, then flipped the steaks and smirked just the smallest bit at the nice grill marks on them. Then he quirked an eyebrow Kevin couldn’t see and said, “I think the linguists would argue with me more than you about what makes a word a word. According to them, I am very conservative in my views of language.”

Kevin shrugged a little, though it didn’t dislodge him from where he was pressed against Jean-Paul’s back in the least. “Betcha linguists would argue with me ‘bout whether or not half the stuff Ah say is actually a word so that’s okay. What do they know anyway?” Aside from language, anyway. Language was about communication, right? So as long as people understood what he was saying it didn’t matter did it? Jean-Paul understood him and that was all that mattered here.

“Actually, I think that they would say that the way you speak is some kind of indication of your regional influences and the divergence of Southern, as you call it, from the rest of the English language. They would most likely enjoy it if you said every word they could think of to ask you to say so that they could trace the differences and catalogue them.” The thought made Jean-Paul smile a little again. “I think that they do not understand the love of a language in its original form, maybe. But I could be wrong in thinking this.”

“Was that some sorta underhanded slight to the regional influences and divergence of Southern when Ah talk or somethin’?” Kevin made a face, then intentionally dropped his natural accent to speak like a newscaster from the midwest to the best of his ability. “I could speak like this. If I really wanted to and I wanted to put in the effort to remember to pronounce things the way people up here do.” Still with his bland accent in use, Kevin then whispered, “But there’s no heart to this, is there?”

“It was not an insult,” Jean-Paul said. “Or... I did not mean it that way. Only that linguists enjoy finding and analysing variations in language. I believe they quite like comparing American English to British English, oui? Because there are some things here, like the languages of the Native Americans, that influenced the way modern American speak.” He considered twisting around so he could look at Kevin properly, but he had no desire to dislodge the younger man, so he simply said, “Heart - it counts for much, does it not?”

“Not to everyone it doesn’t.” Smiling a little to himself, Kevin slipped back into his own accent. “For a minute there, you were startin’ to sound like one of them...them linguists.” He said it as if it were a dirty word. “Gotta watch that or Ah’ll have to start worryin’ ‘bout how much heart you’ve got.”

“Know thy enemy,” Jean-Paul replied, smiling. “It is best to be able to point out where their logic is wrong. And so I must know their logic.” At least, that was the theory. And it had been many, many years since he’d looked at anything even remotely related to linguistics. It just wasn’t an area he was particularly fond of.

Eying the steaks critically once more, Jean-Paul took one of them off the grill and put it on a plate, then cut it in half to check how well it had been cooked. “This one is mine, oui? Because it is not so nice looking.”

“You’re calling dibs on the ugly one?” The question was asked with obvious amusement in Kevin’s voice. “Do you always call dibs on the ugly alternative? Should Ah be reassessin’ my self-esteem here?”

Jean-Paul snorted softly. “Désolé, aime - have you checked your mirror today? Your self-esteem needs no reassessment, I think.”

“Ah dunno,” he began with a note of playfulness in his voice. “Ah’m havin’ a fat, bloated girl kinda day.” Kevin couldn’t even manage to say it with a straight face and ended up laughing. When the laughter faded several moments later he whispered into Jean-Paul’s ear, “But you are doin’ real well at keeping all your attention on the grill.”

“It is not so difficult,” Jean-Paul said, his tone almost contemplative. “Especially when I cannot actually see you.” It was hot enough outside, especially with the grill, that he might have been uncomfortable, but it was nearly impossible to feel like he wanted to be anywhere else, in any other position. “Also, I am... paranoid? Oui, this is the word. And so I am paying extra attention.”

“‘Cause you think the potatoes are gonna explode?” Kevin craned his neck more than he really needed to and pretended to cast a critical eye on the potatoes. “Ah think you can relax a little. They don’t look like they’re gonna turn into projectiles or nothin’.”

“You remember the microwave,” Jean-Paul said, tone darkening just a shade. “I did not think the potato would explode then and it did. I must be vigilant, oui?”

“The microwave survived. You were more upset about it than the microwave. The potatoe died in the field, it was gonna happen sooner or later.” A hand came out from under Jean-Paul’s shirt to point at the remaining steak and the wrapped ears of corn. “Willin’ to bet those’re all done.”

Jean-Paul took the rest of the food off the grill and set them on the appropriate plates. “I brought knives and forks. And some things to put on the potatoes. And your butter for the corn.” Because God knew, Jean-Paul didn’t have a particular brand of butter that he preferred, but Kevin was particular about those sorts of things.

Kevin was forced to dislodge himself as Jean-Paul went about dividing items between plates and all that. He settled himself down on a bench of the picnic table where everything else was laid out. “There should be a grill up on the flier’s deck,” he mused to himself. “Or at least a small enough one that we could bring it up there, sit on the roof and eat and stuff.” He remembered when Jean-Paul had stuck Nathan’s couch up there and Angel had camped out up there on it for a few days. That’d be handy, too.

“You do not like the grill here? With the grass and the picnic table?” Jean-Paul asked, sliding a plate toward Kevin. He had to admit, the flier’s deck would be more interesting for him, since he enjoyed heights and never needed to worry about them, but he wasn’t entirely sure anyone else would necessarily feel that way. “We could always simply go there now, if you wanted.”

Kevin had an entirely undignified and less-than-manly pout on his face. “You want me to move? When the food’s all right there?” That was just...well it was wrong is what it was. “Next time. Food starts up there. This movin’ thing is way overrated.”

Laughing, Jean-Paul shook his head. “Non, aime. I was asking if you wanted to move. If you do not, then I will remember that you would like to try cooking meat up high next time and we will try it that way.” He settled across from Kevin and began the somewhat delicate job of unwrapping his tin foil-covered corn. There was, in all honesty, no telling what might be inside now that it was off the grill. No guarantee that it would be edible.

At least he’d tried.

“How do you always manage to make it sound weird? ‘Cooking meat up high’ just don’t sound the same as ‘barbecue on the roof.’ Actually,” he thought, peeling tin foil off of his potato, “it sounds sorta dirty. Like it should be an innuendo or a whatsamacalit...a euphemism! Yeah, that’s the word. It sounds like it should be a euphemism for a really dirty sex act. Like the mile high club, only more X-rated.” The tinfoil was balled up and set to the side and the tinfoil from the corn followed. Nothing had secretly exploded and the potato actually appeared to be cooked fully, miracle of all miracles. That meant Kevin began mashing up its insides and adding butter, sour cream, shredded cheese and bacon bits to it. A baked potato was not complete without bacon bits. Nothing was, really.

“I would have to say something more about cooking your meat up high, would I not? To make it truly dirty, oui?” Jean-Paul’s food didn’t look inedible. He was vaguely impressed.

“Ah think you can leave out it bein’ mine to go for the slightly more subtle angle. That’s real useful for pryin’ ears.” With that thought Kevin paused, bacon bits still shaking out onto the loaded potato, and swept his eyes around for any potential prying ears. At least Yvette wasn’t around so he didn’t need to worry about another round of feeling like an ass because sex was being vaguely discussed where she could hear it. He loved the girl like family, but he really thought she needed to loosen up about that whole thing a bit at her age. With no one within hearing range in sight Kevin went back to his potato.

“I am not always what people would call subtle,” Jean-Paul pointed out, silently noting that the food didn’t look very pretty, either. The thought made him smile just a little before he began putting butter and sour cream on his potato. He’d forgotten to bring those little pins for the corn, the ones you stuck in the ends so you could hold those and keep your fingers from getting dirty, but he wasn’t horribly concerned. “And there are no prying ears that I can see. Which does not change the fact that I was not speaking innuendo.” He grinned.

“Yet,” Kevin replied as he finished buttering his corn. “You weren’t speakin’ any innuendo yet. You never know with you, do you?” He grinned and finally took up his knife to see if the steak was as edible as it looked.

Cutting off a piece of his steak, Jean-Paul ate it, then grinned. “I keep you on your toes, oui?”

“You keep me on my somethin’ or other,” Kevin muttered, a small smile straining to make itself known at the corners of his mouth.