Ew.

[h_hollister]

The joys of being in Los Angeles without your own method of transportation. Huzzah.

Since she was so new to Los Angeles, Hippolyta had taken to wandering around the city via bus, just going nowhere in particular, trying to learn and remember where everything was. She had a sinking feeling that she'd be there for a long while to come.

Los Angeles was both breathtakingly beautiful and heart-wrenchingly ugly. Sometimes in the same smegging block. What a weird town.

In her wanderings, she'd ended up in Hollywood. She saw the Chinese Theater from the wrong side of a grimy window. The stars on the sidewalks ticked past as the bus lumbered through the crowded streets. Palm trees drooped in the afternoon sun, sheltering the interesting street people under them. Droopy droopy sick trees.

Matched her mood.

The notion that she'd be seeing Wade shortly did nothing to improve said mood.

The bus squealed to a stop, letting off a stream of people, letting on a trickle. In that trickle, something she noticed subconsciously prodded her to pay attention, and she blinked. Did a double take.

She could have sworn...

As the bus started up again, she stared as a slender young man took a seat a few rows ahead of her, her view partially blocked by a fat man standing in the way. The boy's head was down, he had earphones on. He was obviously ignoring everything around him. She kept staring, craning her neck around her fat friend, not entirely sure if she was right... Then, suddenly, the boy lifted his head, turned so she could see his profile. Her subconscious had been right.

Jean-Paul.

Bloody hell.

Her heart started pounding in her chest. Did she want to see him? Did she want him to know she was here? What the hell was he doing in LA? And why the hell did he look so damn pale? Had he seen her, too? Would he try to avoid her?

To hell with it. Friend. Friend good. Need friend.

As the bus pulled into yet another stop, she stood up and moved as quickly as she could to an empty seat across from him. If he'd seen her, he gave no outward sign. She reached a hand across the aisle and touched his sleeve.

"JP?"

Comments

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

Bad night. Worse day. Jean-Paul took the bus when he had to go from one end of this god-forsaken city to the other; flying was faster, but it was the landing that was awkward and conspicuous, and taxis were way expensive. So, bus. Smelly crowded bus full of sweaty ugly people, screaming sticky children and fat stupid fucks sitting too close to him. Ugh. He could get through it as long as he ignored everyone else--and when Jean-Paul got to ignoring people, he really ignored them.

So when someone touched his sleeve and said his name, when he'd been enjoying his comfortable solitude, he nearly had three heart attacks.

He jumped about two feet in the air--okay, hyperbole, more like a couple inches, which nobody noticed, thank God. "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ASS SHIT MOTHERFUCK!!" Okay, they noticed that.

"--Hippolyta? Christ, you scared the crap out of me!"

He glanced at the other passengers. "Well what the fuck are YOU looking at?" The staring stopped as people looked away.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She winced when he started hollering. "Sorry! I'm sorry! Shit." She glanced around at the stares, and punctuated his little bit of snark with her own. "Don't mind them, they woke up on the wrong side of the pod."

She stared at him for a second, trying to think what to say next. "Didn't know you were bumming around this shit town, too, JP. You piss in everybody's cornflakes, too?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Nah. I live...d here. Dunno for how much longer." He shrugged, fiddling with the CD player hidden somewhere in one of his many pockets o' shoplifting. It had been playing something loud and angry and full of screamy guitars that just sounded staticy and faint to anyone else; it went silent suddenly as he turned it off. "Howsabout you? It is so sad that I don't know where any of my friends live except like... Greg."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She listens to the screamy guitars cut off, and grins. "Well, it's about as sad as me not knowing you lived here. Heh. Some friends we are, huh?

"I got stupid, called Dez a bitch, insulted her fiancee to his face, and then ran like a kicked puppy. Ended up here, god only knows why. First place to pop into my head. I'm with that Decepticon I was telling you about in the Basement. He probably thinks I'm insane. Which I probably am.

"You okay? You look like you got whapped with the 'barfy' stick."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Ouch. Are you at least getting nookie out of it?" He sits hunched over, his elbows on his knees and his hair in his face. He is a teenaged boy, after all.

"I'm fine." This is pretty much his default response whenever anyone asks him if he's okay. It's not like he'd ever admit otherwise. In truth, Basement people usually see him stoned out of his mind, which helps with the pain and the nausea. He's already planning out his next hit, which he hopes will happen once he reaches his stop.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Hrmph. Well, not so much since we got here, no. Call it 'not in the mood.' Or whatever."

She studies him after he asserts that he's 'fine,' and notes the dark shadows under his eyes, the way he's shaking. He seems much less the fun-loving JP that she sees at the Basement, and much more a very sick, skinny boy.

"Your definition of 'fine' leaves me wondering what your basis for comparison is," she murmurs to him, ignoring the fact that they're on a stinking bus, surrounded by strangers. "You've got a place to crash, right?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"That really sucks. Everyone should get nookie. Not like there's anything else to do in fucking LA."

He shrugs, tugging on where his white stripe would be if he hadn't dyed his hair. "Yeah," he says distractedly even though it's a lie. People tend to get all up in arms when he says he sleeps on park benches or rooftops or dumpsters, so he doesn't, anymore. It's easier to be dishonest.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"I have plenty of nookie on tap, fret not." Too much nookie. With two very different men. Christ.

"Good," she answers to the 'yeah,' recognizing immediately that eyeshift and posture. She's seen that before. When she was still on the Dwarf, and somebody was lying to her while she was interrogating them. Oh, bugger.

"Well, the Motel 6 ain't much, but it's a roof over our heads. You should swing by. We can get trashed. Tee needs to build up his tolerance anyway." Casually. Trying to keep him from bolting. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out the motel's card. She'd swiped it so she could rememer the address, but she had it memorized now. "Here. If you're in the neighborhood."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Uhm." There's this weird little blip thing, where the entire scene seems like a skipped record. What actually happens is that Jean-Paul jerks into superspeed because he thinks ten times faster, or more, while like that; to normal people, it just looks like they blinked and something changed.

It lasts about half a second and then it's gone; it could have been imagined, for all anyone knows.

"Okay," he says, taking the card and pocketing it. He actually has no intention of doing so, since he's fairly sure it's another one of those pity things, where people try to get him to sleep at their house (Greg did it, Bobby did it) so they feel less guilty. Whatever.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She blinks, and something's changed. She blinks again, her eyes slightly crossing, wondering what the smeg just happened. Bzuh...?

She covers her confusion by opening up her big mouth. "So, know any good restaurants in town? I'm thinking I'm going to introduce Tee to sushi. Just to see the look on his face when he realizes it's raw. Call me a bitch, but he's just so much fun to fuck with."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"I don't, actually. I spend all my time in hustler bars and diners. I'm sure sushi bars are a dime a dozen here, though. You should introduce him to Polish food... that stuff is nasty."

He's clearly pretty willing to talk about anything that isn't himself.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Polish food? Isn't that an oxymoron?" She grins at him, the relief of seeing somebody she knows showing on her face. "Well, better than Scottish food, I suppose. Haggis. I mean, really. HAGGIS, JP.

"So, since you're the local... Anything interesting I should take in while I'm here? And where are the good neighborhoods to visit? And if I move to the valley, will I automatically lose 50 IQ points and start talking like an idiot?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Pretty much anything from Europe that isn't French or Italian makes me want to puke. Russian food is terrible and evil and should never ever exist." He makes a face and sticks out his tongue. "Uhm, stay away from Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue. Red light districts. I think it takes a while for the draining of IQ points to occur, the people I know who move here had it happen in stages. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"God, do not remind me about Russian food. When Dez and I were there..." She trails off. Nope, still can't quite bring herself to discuss Nadezhda. "Well, it sucked. Basically sucked a lot."

She's studying him again, noticing how translucent the skin around his eyes and nostrils are. She makes an intuitive leap, and realizes that the boy does seem to spend a lot of time in the bathroom while they're hanging in the Basement...

Oh, bloody, buggery smeg. He must be back on cocaine again. At least. At the very least.

"I am trying to resist the notion of being a Los Angelist for the rest of my life. But, okay, Sunset, Western, off the list of potential places to live. Anywhere else?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"If you see a bar called Numbers... don't go in." He grins and shrugs a little, rattling off a couple other streets to avoid, and some that he actually likes. He glances out the window briefly, but it's nowhere near his stop, so he sits back.

Jean-Paul is pretty obviously homeless, on drugs. He's the kind of kid wholesome families cross the street to avoid walking near; with his ripped-up jeans and studded denim jacket and facial piercings, he looks more like he belongs in a mosh pit than on a public bus. He's talking like they were on a street, normal voice, not lowering it or whispering at all.

"So... that's it. There's this really nice diner down where I used to live, they make FANTASTIC pancakes. I practically cream my pants whenever I walk in the door."

Yeah, that's Jean-Paul for ya.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Jean-Paul, are you sick?"

Whispered. Out of the blue. Another one of those intuitive leaps. She knows what he does for a living, she's no fool. She may act like one at times, but the reason she was such a damn fine security officer was because she was able to snatch at subtle clues from people's behavior. And JP is behaving like he doesn't give a flying smeg what happens to him. She knows that feeling. It usually hits her when she's feeling at her most self-destructive.

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

He frowns a little, and then his face smooths out. This is his Ice Prince face--completely devoid of emotion. One of the side effects of whoring is that you get really good at acting. They like it when you seem happy, when you act like you've got nothing better to do in the world than flirt and have sex with old men. So he's good at schooling his face into blankness.

It takes him a while to think of an appropriate response; the ones that immediately come to mind all sound defensive. No. Why? What's it matter to you? None of your business.

"No." He tries to keep himself sounding flat and neutral, but his tone implies that this is not up for discussion.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Right. Sorry. Forgive my big nose."

He's lying. She knows that flat 'no.' She's used it before herself.

Damn. Damn! He's sick. Do Greg and Key know? She makes a mental note to pop into the Basement when she gets back home... back to the motel later.

"Pancakes, you said?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

His face completely changes. He's back to the normal, if sickly and unwashed, teen boy he was before.

"Yeah, they're fantastic pancakes. They'll even put on whipped cream on them in the shape of a smiley face if you ask. And they don't ask questions, like 'why is this kid eating enough food to feed a starving African nation for a year'."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Heh. With smiley faces in whipped cream, it sounds like exactly the kind of place Tee would enjoy. You know, I don't think I've ever seen anybody eat that many donuts before."

Oh, JP. Please, tell me you don't have what I think you have. Let me be drawing some insane conclusion, like I always do.

She's perched on the edge of her seat, totally unbalanced. When the bus lurches, she falls forward a bit, her hand slapping out to the aisle floor in front of her to check her fall. It scrapes up good, the top layer of skin opened up, oozing blood from tiny wounds in her palm.

She hisses through her teeth as she straightens up. "Smegging hell." She glances at it for a second, and, sure enough, the blood is already starting to vanish. She clenches her hand into a fist and smiles at JP. "I really hate these buses, I really do."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

He flinches almost imperceptibly at the sight of blood. That's been an automatic reaction ever since he came to the Nexus, after knowing he was positive--for a long time he was terrified of anyone finding out. (For good reason. The first guy he actually told freaked out and stopped talking to him.) Then the fucking duck hallucinations came and he admitted it on Sages (although very few people saw that) and they stopped. And while he's not exactly hiding it like he used to, he's also not really inclined to jump up and give a musical number (http://gorillamask.net/famguyaids.shtml) about his HIV status.

"You okay?" He plays it off like his reaction was just sympathy to her getting hurt.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Yup." Did JP know about the nanos? Had she told him? Hrm. Well, Greg and Dawnie had seen her get shot in the thigh with a crossbow bolt, so they knew... But that didn't mean that they blabbed about it all over.

God, she barely knew her friends at all.

That feeling of lonliness reinforced itself by about one hundred percent, and she settled back in her seat, frowning a bit.

"You want to go grab a bite, JP? I'm starving, now that we're talkin' pancakes. My treat." A weak smile. "C'mon, lemme treat ya." Her voice lowers considerably. "I'm still set for cash. I've got about eight grand to my name right now, so I can squeeze in some pancakes in my budget."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

He hesitates obviously. Jean-Paul pretty notoriously hates letting people pay for him; he feels like he always has to do everything by himself, like letting people take care of him is compromising his independence. (He'd know, if he actually talked sometime to his alternate, that they're very similar that way.) It's irrational and stupid and he knows it is, but he can't stop thinking that way anyways. A lot of this is reflected in his face.

"Uhm."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She sees that hesitation, and gets a glimmer as to why. Bloody stubborn boy. She's the only one allowed to be stubborn around here, damn it all.

"C'mon. Pancakes. And possibly waffles. And squirting each other with the creamers. Have you ever done the ol' 'fork in the eyeball' trick? Get a creamer in your fist, hold it up to your face, and then stab it with a fork. All this white goo comes out and makes people snort coffee up their noses. It's grand fun. Lister used to do it all the smegging time. Put Rimmer right off his food, it did."

Huh. She just mentioned Rimmer without turning into Weepy Willow and her Phalanx of Kleenex. Cool.

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

He eyedarts, looking from side to side.

"We'll split it." The bill, he means. He's really, really not willing to let other people pay for him and, well, he's Jean-fucking-Paul, he's about the most stubborn, mule-headed boy in the world. On the other hand--he's hungry, like he always is, and he's really got nothing better to do. All his non-Nexus friends are whores, hustlers, and dealers.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"...Okay." She had absolutely no intention of letting him pay for even half, though. She may not have much right now, but she knows she has more than he does. But, if agreeing to let him split it gets him fed and happy for a bit, that's what's important

Oh, JP, what am I gonna do with you?

"So where is this Pancake Heaven? Lead the way."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"It's in a few stops--I used to live, like, two blocks over. Always thought of pulling a Sands and shooting the cook, but... How does that even begin to make sense, anyway?"

He leans back a little and looks out the window. It occurs to him now that if he goes with Hippolyta, that means his drug hit is postponed.

Well... crap. Maybe he can slip off to the bathroom for a few.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"I dunnow, who the heck is Sands?"

She continues studying the boy, trying to keep the concern for him off her face. Her 'crazy protective' is kicking in again. She pushes it down. Last time she got all nuts protective, she ended up alienating her best friend.

"Well, when we get to the right stop, say the word, JP." She too leans back, turns away from him for a second, so she can bite her lip and inspect her palm. Damn buses.

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"He's from this movie called Once Upon a Time in Mexico. He hangs out in Trans a lot, whatever. Anyway he had this thing where he'd go around to all these restaurants and order the same thing, and when he finally found the one that was the best, he'd shoot the cook. Something about restoring balance to the country. I STILL don't get the logic behind this."

Jean-Paul looks... pretty normal; the sickness is subtle, only makes it look like he's trying a little too hard to be normal. Hippolyta wouldn't be able to tell, from looking at him, that he's exhausted and cranky all the time and the first thing he does upon waking up in the morning is vomit.

Unless she has MAD PSYCHIC POWERS he doesn't know about.

Does she? He's starting to worry.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Never saw it. Never visit Trans, either. Not my bag. I'm more of a 'doofball comedy' gal than a 'horrorshow' gal. Because I'm wild and crazy. Picture me with an arrow through my head when I say that."

Nah, she's not psychic, just really good at reading people. And, ya know, crazy overprotective and likes jumping to conclusions. She has the mat and everything back home.

"You talk to Key or Greg recently?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Trans isn't that bad. I go there for the free booze and food that surprisingly has only been poisoned, like, once. Key thinks stepping inside is going to get you attacked by vampire werewolf demon succubi from Hell." He shrugs.

"Ummm. Jesus, I can't remember when the last time I was in Basement was... why?"

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Eh. Just wondering. Making silly small talk. Since I bolted, I haven't visited the Basement either. I'm none too good at keeping up with my friends, sometimes."

The bus grinds to another halt, and more people get on and off.

"This stop? Or the next one, love?"

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

He looks. "Yeah, this one." He gets up and scoots around the other people, making sure Hippolyta is following him. It's bright outside but he doesn't squint. "S'this way." He wanders off down a street in a rather seedy part of the city, nonchalantly.

"So what've you been doing lately, anyway? Aside from the hidey."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

Walking through this seedy neighborhood, her instincts kick in, and she tenses, ready for a fight. She hasn't been in a neighborhood like this since that one shore leave on Mimas several years back. Smeg.

"Not much. Wandered out to the Santa Monica pier a couple days ago. Trying to learn where everything is in this godforsaken hole. Working damn hard on keeping my temper with Tee. Man doesn't know shit from shinola, and sometimes he pushes my buttons. Still like him, though."

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Yeah? Shit, I just know where I need to go and spend the rest of my time in Nexus. That's more interesting. Around here, it's just people smashing cars into each other and eating lead. Boring." He pauses. "Not that the Nexus's been any better, really."

In a couple blocks there's a run-down looking diner. It's not much to look at, but Jean-Paul seems to like it. The bells on the door make a tinkling noise when it opens.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

Wow. This isn't just a greasy spoon. This is a greasy spoon, fork, knife and waitress.

Approval.

"I hear ya about the Nexus. I'm... trying to avoid it." Because Wade's off wallowing in his angsty past and not telling me jack shit.

There's nobody up front, so she just shrugs and slips into one of the sticky booths, making damn sure she's facing the door.

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes it gets kinda overwhelming. Overwhelming and RETARDED." He sort of flops into the seat, not seeming to care about the disgustingness. Well, he is Jean-Paul, King of the Gross.

"The food is a lot better than the decor." He grins, waiting for one of the waitresses to notice them and come out of hiding.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Seriously. This shit is bananas. How many blinking signs do you think we need before the whole 'oh noes where am I question mark exclaimation point exclaimation point eleventy one!' trend stops?"

She's trying to figure out a way to slip him some cash. Some excuse that'll make him happy to take it. Hm.

[lust-for-life.livejournal.com]

"I KNOW. God. It's not like there aren't a million signs around explaining exactly where you are. Maybe someone should put up an illustrated one. It's like nobody goes there on PURPOSE anymore." He rolls his eyes expressively.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"There are still a few that do," she smiles, thinking of Nick Fury and his hilarious domestic woes.

"So, what sort of funny dances do we have to do to get service around here?"