milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Jay comes in through his door, holding it propped open with a kit bag while he ferries several other bags in and dumps them on a table.

The view through the open door is of a jungle, green and humid with a sluggish muddy river flowing slowly. Jay bounces down the gangway of a houseboat till all his belongings are off the boat and inside the bar.

Time to repack and move on.

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"Wonderful. You look like you've had a day where you don't need to be cookin'." Bonnie adds. "Want help carrying this lot upstairs?"

"A home-cooked meal is the best idea I've heard all day." He grins. "Please?" He passes her one or two of the lighter bags.

She takes the bags, puts them in one hand, and grabs a heavier one in the other.

"Where have you been?"

"Just backing up from Cambodia. Time to be moving one. I didn't realise how much stuff I'd taken with me from the bar till I started packing up."

"It sounds like you did real good work there." Bonnie says.

"We did good. The flip on those bikes you did up set up those villages with twice as many new bikes and start-ups to teach people how to look after them. You did that too."

Doesn't hurt that it will also keep Bonnie and her family in the black for a good long while.

"I'm just the grease monkey, but I appreciate it. I'm glad I didn't just make profit from 'em."

"You, are the queen of the grease monkeys." He grins. "We didn't exploited them. You don't have to worry about that."

"Good. So long as they got their share of the money." Bonnie says with a nod. She trusts Jay to do that.

"Don't worry. I took care of that." He didn't keep any of the split for himself. All of it went back into the villagers or to a fund for Bonnie's kids.

He dumps all his stuff upstairs and offers her his arm. "When you're ready, beautiful."

She takes his arm, as proudly as she would that of any of her boys.

When they get down to the bar, she opens her door, to the smell of delicious chicken pie.

"Terry, leave the cookies, it's nearly dinner." she says, catching her errant granddaughter with her hand in the jar.

Jay smiles and says hello to Terry, and anyone else who is around.

Billie is coasting on some of the kitchen furniture, and turns around to make 'up-py' signs at Jay when he comes in.

Bonnie goes over to the cooker to turn down the potatoes.

"Hi Jay." Terry says, putting the cookie back.

The kitchen is looking fairly tidy, for Bonnie, though she seems to have stockpiled about fifty rolls of tin foil in the pantry.

"Hey Princess!" Jay picks Billie up and swings her around, balancing her on his hip.

"How's life, Terry?"

"Sucks." Terry says, casually.

"That's not very polite language to be using in front of guests." Bonnie says, putting the lid back on the pot of vegetables.

"Fine, it fucking sucks!" Terry says, flaring up. "I'm not going back go to school ever again!"

Bonnie, who has heard enough swear words in her time to not even remotely flinch at this, tells Terry to go to her room and cool off before dinner. Terry does so, slamming the door.

"Sorry about that." Bonnie says, turning back to Jay with a sigh. "Getting her to school is a daily battle again at the moment, we're looking at moving her."

Billie, who looked a bit alarmed at the door slamming, snuggles her face into Jay's shirt.

Jay holds Billie close, cooing to calm her. "It's alright, little one. It's alright." He kisses the top of her head. He nods after Terry. "Want me to talk to her?"

"Thanks, but she needs to know she cain't speak to you like that." Bonnie says. "She might talk later when she calms down."

Hearing Jay come in, Ted has come downstairs and stuck his head around the door.

"Hey honey, we've got a bit of time before dinner if you wanted to talk to Jay now?" she says. Looking back at Jay. "I'm gonna have to start payin' you fer yer adolescent therapy services at this rate."

"Hey Ted." Jay nods, ignoring Bonnie's comment about therapy. "Shall we go sit outside and talk?"

"Can I show you something upstairs?" Ted asks.

Bonnie gives Jay a grateful glance but leaves them to it.

"Of course." Jay nods. "Lead on." He follows Ted upstairs.

Ted takes Jay into his room and closes the door behind him, checking none of the others are outside. The room is a fairly typical teenager room, except that on closer inspection, it's mostly full of boxes of comics rather than any other possessions. Some of his own comic art is on the walls, and in progress on the desk.

He pulls a box from under his bed. All the comics are very carefully wrapped.

"I collect comics." he says. "My Dad used to collect them with me before he died and I have his collection too. He taught me to try to buy two copies of each one I get - one to read, one to keep. Three if it's a special edition and I want to keep a set complete. I don't have complete sets of most stuff I collect though, because I missed a bunch when I was in juvie."

He carefully removes a comic from one of the boxes and unwraps it, careful not to put his fingers on the paper itself. He puts it on his bed.

"Aunt Bonnie said you had access to the future. Is this worth anything?"

"I'm going to admit I don't know but I'll do some research for you. My gut reaction is yes, it might be worth quite a bit. Especially in good condition."

He cocks his head to Ted. "Can I ask why you're looking to sell it on now?"

"I don't need to sell it right away, I just want to know if I can rely on it later if I need to." Ted says.

"My brother Stuart, he's not like me. He's got a practically perfect GPA and he needs to go to college. And I don't think Aunt Bonnie should be payin' to keep me under her roof when I graduate high school. I work part time at the comic book store but I don't earn an awful lot, and my grades are rubbish because I got so behind when I was in juvie that I just gave up. She thinks I can scrape through my diploma, and my boss wants me to, otherwise I'd quit school now."

He shakes his head. "Aunt Bonnie works so hard to feed us all. That Turtle, he's such a freakin' mess. He's up to his eyeballs in debt, and he's drinkin' again. Last time he came fer visitation he was so drunk she wouldn't even bring Billie out to see him, and he sat on our porch cryin' and she sat and talked to him fer a bit then drove him home. I woulda given him a kickin'."

"I'll look into it for you. Let you know what you might expect to get for them if and when you need to. How about you put together a list of the issues you have and I'll get some numbers for you."

"Hey, we each work to the skills we have. I'm adopted but and I know what it's like to have brothers you feel you've got to live up to. I have an older brother who's the golden boy of the family. When I was a kid, my adopted father expected me to be as good as him. Which I was very, very much not. And I'm still not. Took me a long time to work out I had to be me to get what I wanted out of life. Hell, I'm still bent about it. But I'm damn good at what I do and I enjoy it. Sounds like the comic store is something that'll suit your passions and skills. And as long as that makes you happy and together, that's all that matters."

"I have to admit, I've offered to kick Turtle's ass a few times myself." Jay shrugs. "I'm just glad the thing with the bikes panned out so Bonnie has some extra cash."

"Yeah, she's able to pay the bills now, thanks to you." Ted says. "Thanks. She won't take my wages, I tried."

He nods. "Stuart is ten months younger than me and we're in the same grade. We look similar enough some folks can't even tell us apart and they think we're twins. But, well, I guess I was Dad's favourite before he died. We had more in common."

He glances out of the window, hearing a sound.

"Oh, speak of the devil..." he motions to Jay to come over. Turtle is getting off his bike just outside the house. "Tempted to go have some words before he gets to the doorbell."