I Maked You This and Didn't Eatted It. [Jesse]

[Jesse Adams]

The blond didn’t particularly want to elaborate on panty raids. It had been nothing more than a stupid prank by the older kids at camp, and certainly nothing he’d wanted to participate in. The only girl he could even think about pulling something like that on was Fiona, and he didn’t really want to get on her angry side. Not when she was pregnant. It was the same logic he’d used to keep Ty’s name. Don’t angry your more or less only friend. Who happens to be pregnant. No.

“You didn’t specify,” he countered, despite knowing that Clement was right. Who was he to give him ideas that would have wrecked his first camping trip? “It’s more fun at camp. Apparently.”

As he watched his bunny flop, the looks that passed over Clement’s face actually surprised him. He recognized them, mostly because when he was Clement’s age, he’d been the one making those kinds of faces. His answer actually took the teenager by surprise. Who didn’t own a swimsuit? “... You need a swimsuit, Clement. Seriously. I’ll buy you one if I have to.” Mostly because he felt bad for the kid. Who had to swim in their clothes if they didn’t have to? “I need to get gas in the car anyway. Maybe this weekend we’ll go.” He didn’t mind doing things like taking the kid to the mall with him. If nothing else, he was company.

“Not that I know of.” Inwardly, Jesse cussed himself for voicing the fact that HE CARED. Because. You know. He didn’t. “You just made yourself a couple enemies in your first, what? Hour here? For all I know you have a target on your back.” Not that anyone would get to him anymore. Not if they didn’t want an angry blond on their hands.

Though he had good points, Jesse just shrugged them off. It was true, dealing with two dipshits was infinitely better than eleven, and made him that much happier that he had been barred from the trip. At least he maintained some semblance of privacy behind closed doors.

“Yeah, if you want.” Cue another awkward neck rub. Jesse had all but lost the social skills that existed between normal friends, not operatives. (Not that he’d really had friends among Gabriel’s allies anyway.) Offering time with the bunny that Clement clearly liked was friendly, right? He did have to scoff, though. “I’m not his dad. I’m... not that.” He didn’t want to be anyone’s dad, thank you very much. He couldn’t see it ended any way but badly, not with the role model he’d grown up with. In comparison, Max’s attempted ‘parenting’ was miles better.

And yet he’d still run away. Considering the lengths he’d gone to remain hidden, he supposed it wasn’t surprising that his former comrade hadn’t come after him. He’d said multiple times that he hated him, and Jesse had shot it right back at him.

This was why he didn’t do relationships anymore. It was too hard to keep people happy.

Looking back at Ty, a half hearted smirk appeared on his face. “He does sometimes. Maybe he’s got an identity crisis going on.” It wouldn’t surprise him, honestly.

What did surprise him, however, was Clement’s question. The blond blinked before looking at the textbook, then promptly shoved it under the covers. “A little, yeah,” he admitted, keeping his gaze on Ty, who was pushing a small plastic ball across the floor with his face. “It’s nothing special. I can swear in it.” Which, while technically true, wasn’t all he could do with it. He had a decent grasp on the language, and even without Gabriel encouraging his studies, he’d continued reading all he could about it. There was something about the angry sounding words for mundane things that was... soothing. In a weird way. “Why?”

[Clement Evans]

Shaking his head, he wondered what sort of camp Jesse had gone to that things like touching girls' underwear was fun. And decided he didn't really want to know. It wasn't that Clement was particularly respectful of women, either, it was just the whole underwear aspect of it. He'd feel the same about touching other guys' underpants, moreso probably, since, as Jesse had said, they were pigs.

As a kid who'd never owned a lot of things, including pajamas, socks, underwear, and weather-appropriate coats (and more than once only a single t-shirt), owning a swimsuit did not register as a necessity. There had been nothing wrong with going in the lake in his jeans and shirt... except for a bit of chafing afterward. And the Hammel staff at the camp hadn't objected. They'd even offered to help rinse his stuff out in the bathrooms (which he'd turned down - he'd been handwashing his stuff since he was seven).

"You don't have to buy me one. I have money for that stuff, and I don't need a swimsuit." He shrugged, frowning. "It's getting too cold out to swim outside and I don't care about the pool." Besides, he'd still go in with a shirt on. Clement wasn't exactly body-conscious, but he knew people stared when any part of him wasn't clothed. And usually made stupid comments about how he ought to eat more or get more sun that he typically returned with a four-letter comeback that got him in trouble. The irritation in his face smoothed as he ran his fingers down Ty's side. He could feel the little beast breathing, feel the little heart beat.

"You should go where you want to, not blow a trip to get something I don't need," he murmured.

It probably would've made Jesse feel better to know that Clement didn't hear 'caring' in his concerns, but something between 'warning' and 'ragging', and they were very different things. Closer to 'watch your back because you're an idiot' than 'I worry about you'. Too much more of it and Clement would probably get a little paranoid.

"I've always had a target on my back," he said mildly. "And on my front."

It was friendly, and one of the nicest offers Clement had gotten while at Hammel, but he knew if Ty was in his room he wouldn't get anything done, and he still had a fuckton of homework.

"Foster dad then," he said.

There wasn't really... wetness where Ty had licked him. A little, but it wasn't like a dog had licked him. It was amusing and sort of weird to be bunny-licked. Clement wondered what he tasted like.

He had four of the rabbit's toys in his hand when Jesse pushed the book under his blankets. (Why? Was it cold?) He shrugged. "I speak Korean."

Jesse knew that. He probably wasn't as fluent in German as Clement was in Korean (which Clement thought of as a good thing, he was forever mixing his languages), but it was interesting. "Did you choose it or did someone talk it to you?"

Korean would not have been Clement's first choice for a second language, but the decision had been taken out of his hands. "So how do you say hello?"

[Jesse Adams]

The camps Jesse had attended when he was younger were actually quite reputable. At least during the day, and if you discounted mischief seeking teenagers. He’d been content to run around during the day and participate in ghost stories around the fire. Nothing that would get him sent home early, or even shame his father.

No, that came much later.

If only Jesse had known about Clement’s material history. He had grown up with extras of everything. Even swim shorts. Unnecessary, probably, but at the time it had simply been how things were done in the Adams household. You didn’t get attention from your father, but at least you had lots of things. Expensive things, usually.

“I didn’t say I had to. I offered, that’s all.” If he didn’t want to take it, fine. But Jesse wasn’t dragging him anywhere near water without one. “It’s not blowing a trip if I’m going anyway,” he pointed out, but ended up shrugging. “But if you don’t want to, fine. If you change your mind... I guess tell me.” This was awkward. He hadn’t really thought about Clement turning the offer down.

He also didn’t know what to do with himself when it came to building any kind of friendships without the offer of material things standing. He was a little too much like his father in that regard, and he knew it.

His comment about the target made Jesse twinge slightly inside, he just didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he knew what it felt like to have a target himself. “Yeah, well, doesn’t always have to be that way.” Like it or not, he now had a blond watchdog on his side.

A blond watchdog that didn’t like being called anything related to dad. Again, he shook his head. “Not his foster either. Just his owner.” If that. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to call it, but it was definitely not ‘dad’ in any capacity of the word.

“I know you speak Korean. I’ve heard you do it.” Admittedly he hadn’t been quite sure what he was speaking at first. At least he did now. “No one talked to me in it. It just seemed like a good thing to do.” With Gabriel’s encouragement, of course.

Clement’s question gave him pause. Not because he didn’t know how. He knew the words. He just... hadn’t really spoken it much in the past two years. ” Guten Tag,” he finally said, wanting to kick himself. For all the angry ways Germans could say things, saying hello was just... weird. Especially when you couldn’t muster a German accent to save your life. “How’d you do it in Korean?”

[Clement Evans]

Clement's trailer had lacked both attention and material things, two things he'd always known but that were becoming more apparent at boarding school. Seeing the stuff the kids had in their dorms, brought out to use when not in class, heard them talking about what they missed from home, complaining about the food or how they had to do their own laundry or late allowances. Concepts Clement hadn't previously been aware existed. A bit like swimsuits. Glimpses of those public pools in Cali had shown him that kids wore different clothes when they went in them, but Clement hadn't known why. Still didn't. He knew Minho'd had one, but he'd been too embarrassed to ask to see it.

Shrugging, he said, not knowing Jesse's financial status (not that he would've taken advantage of it if he had), "I get money for clothes. It'd be dumb not to use it for what it's for." The older boy's insistence made him pause though. "How important is having a swimsuit? No one cared that I didn't have one at camp."

He looked down at Ty. The little rabbit looked singularly unconcerned. Clement still didn't understand why kids a lot older than him seemed to wanted to spend time with him, like Mia and Jesse. He didn't feel like he ought to impose. Even when he'd been a dongsaeng he hadn't asked for anything. Minho'd scolded him a lot for it. But he wasn't at that point with either Mia or Jesse, though Mia was starting to feel much more like a noona than a sunbae.

"Yeah, I know. Someday I'll be big enough and smart enough that assholes will leave me alone." That was the hope, anyway. Clement wasn't holding out for six one and two fifty, but he was only just starting to understand exactly how far behind he was in physical size. Being held back so many times kept him around kids his own height and weight, hadn't shown him how he compared to kids his age. Hammel showed him what ninth graders looked like, and he was indignant about it. He was seeing how far he was behind in book-smarts and general knowledge too, and some days it made his head ache. He heard the ninth graders read Romeo and Juliet in English. Clement still hadn't made it all the way through Ramona the Pest. And it seemed like the knowledge he did have had very little by way of practical application (abnormally high number of Korean speakers at Hammel notwithstanding).

"A good thing to do?" That was certainly the oddest reason Clement had ever heard for learning a language. One he'd never heard Jesse speak, and one he'd just said no one had spoken to him.

"Guten Tag," he repeated. Another thing he was finding out, most other languages had much shorter ways of saying hello than Korean did. Formally, anyway.

'How do you say --- in Korean' was a slightly more complicated question than it was in other languages. So Clement prefaced it with the usual proviso. "It depends on who you're saying it to. If you're saying it to someone not a stranger who's younger or is a good friend, you can say 'annyeong'. For everything else, you say 'annyeonghaseyo', and you bow when you say it." Bringing Ty's toys back over to him, he dropped them on the floor and snorted. "You'd use the first one on pets, too. Annyeong, Ty."

*dongsaeng - a younger sibling
*noona - in this case it would mean a close older female friend to a younger male
*sunbae - the term for an older student. The Japanese equivalent is senpai.

((wrap?))

[Jesse Adams]

Jesse shrugged at Clement's questions. "I don't know. I guess it's important if you're planning on swimming a lot?" As for the money for clothes, well, he let that one slide. "If you're not going to, you don't really need one." For him it had been a staple, but he had also done a lot of swimming and beach time. It probably wasn't important if you didn't do that kind of stuff.

"Yeah, well, until then, the assholes can deal with people bigger than them." He had no problem putting bullies in their places. ... So long as he didn't get caught. Or did as little damage as possible so as to avoid trouble. Hell, maybe the faculty would be happy to see him defending someone.

Okay, maybe that was wishful thinking.

The blond shrugged again. "Yeah. If you're going to learn a language for no reason, might as well be an angry one." Swearing in German was always fun. He'd had other reasons for learning at at first, but they really no longer applied.

He listened to Clement's rundown of how to say something so simple in Korean. How did they turn things so... complicated? "... Annyeong," he murmured curiously, before flopping back onto his bed. "Whatever. Just play with Ty." Despite acting gruff about it, he really didn't mind the fact that Clement was back. He was an odd sort of company, but it worked. Kind of.

But he still didn't care.

(Wrap!)