Jesse’s a pretty smart kid, but he isn’t the brightest sometimes. Now would be one of those times.

You know kids, or at least kids that have grown up in an area like he has. They tend to experiment. Jesse’s never bothered, with any of it. So when he was approached by a tougher then thou drug pusher and his groupie fan club, he declined rather then buy the shit to get away from the thugs. When pushed and pressed, he once again declined and turned his nose to them rather then buy the shit and get away from them, throw it away, and go crawling to the relative safety of his trashed apartment.

That’s when Jesse found out that wannabe gang bangers don’t like being ignored. Really, a one on one fight with Jesse and a healthy person is unfair. Jesse knows a few good techniques to bring a bigger man to his knees, but in a fight, it’s hard to get close enough to a persons body to use those techniques, and he’s ubber skinny and undernourished. Four big guys to Jesses one tall thin frame is beyond unfair. Well...it’s fair to the four men, not to Jesse. Not that he cares very much that he got beaten up, except that they didn’t kill him. Worthless bunch of idiots couldn’t even finish the job.

They’d taken what little money he had had and his CD player had gotten broken so he’d just left it lying on the sidewalk, but his earphones still hung in his ear. He was dressed in ratty black pants and a long sleeved blue button up shirt unbuttoned over a black, nondescript tee-shirt despite the evenings heat. He was as thin and pale as ever so his size 26 pants were still sagging at his hips, held by a belt. He’s tall, his hair hanging around his face and chin unevenly and naturally black and white. His blue eyes look as tired as they ever had been. His nose was still bleeding but his lip had clotted and stopped. Already a bruise was beginning to show on his pale skin around his eye. It didn’t hurt. Not compared to how much his stomach twisted in pain.

He scrounged up a quarter from the gutter and ten minutes later another from an ally that it probably rolled into and the owner wasn’t willing to go after it. Standing at a payphone, he’d used the card the ‘Satin worshiping, teen age boy eating’ fix-it woman and dialed the number, let it ring, slipped the card back into his pocket.

It's later than Viv would normally take a call, but she's not doing anything at the moment besides freezing. She had been thinking about calling Uriel, but then the phone started ringing. Maybe, it was him. She answered without looking at the caller I.D. "Kildares' Kwik Fix, Viv here."

Now what? What was he suposed to say? I just want company? A kid who never wants company wants company? I don't know where my angel is and your the only phone number I have besides my boss and I'm sure as hell not calling him. Well, it sounds as good as anything he had. Again, he's not the brightest at times and getting the sense beat out of him isn't helping him along. He should have thought of something to say before dialing the number, rather then just breathing into the receiver for a minute like an idiot.

"I...can you fix bloody noses too?" Idiot. "It's Jesse. I hot wired your truck a month ago." Well, how many people really hot wired Viv's truck? It can't be a daily thing right? And he hadn't given her his name that day.

She really could probably fix anything, maybe even death, though I don't think she'd be willing to go that far. As for hotwiring her truck it was not at all a common occurance, she remembered him. "Where are you?" she asked, not answering his question about the bloody nose.

She stood up and went looking for her jacket. She found it, shrugged it on and picked up her truck keys before leaving her apartment and locking the door.

"Watson and Third street in front of a grocers."

Of course, if she remembered him, she should remember what end of town he's from, and so she should know at least that general area he might be located if she didn't know the streets themselves. He was cradaling the phone against his shoulder, holding his nose with two fingers and tipping his head back to try and stop the bleeding. He touched his now scabbing lip with another finger.

She starts the truck while still holding the phone in the crook of her neck. She sits in park for a minute and talks. "Give me about ten minutes, and if it's bleeding bad sit down and lean your head forward after you hang up." she says.

"Foreward?" He'd always been told to tip his head backwards when he got his frequent bloody noses in gym class and at home. "Ok." And even though he'd always been told the opposite, when he hung up the payphone, he settled his thin from onto the curb and leaned forward like she'd directed him too.

And waited.

She pulls up to the curb, a little bit sooner than she'd said she would. Surprising to know she'd hurried?

She put the truck in park and left it running, before climbing out. "You called?" she says sarcastically as she walks over to his hunched over form sitting on the side walk.

He lifts his head to look at her. Head rush. He swayed a little and then shook his head to clear it, causeing him to become more dizzy then before. Black eye, bleeding nose, split but no longer bleeding lip, headphones still in place.

He let go of his nose, it dripped, he swiped at it with his sleeve.

"Yes. Look at this shit." Gesture at his face when his nose dripped again. He wiped it again on the long sleeve.

"Someone got you with an ugly stick. Sit still, this will hurt but not long." She tells him.

This is more than she can heal with her limited healing abilities, she can take it away and reverse it though. So she does, compared to some of the things she's healed lately, this is a cakewalk. She tries to ignore that using even a little magic turns her hands blue once she's done. She shoves them in her coat pockets.

"Better?" she asks him.

Again, he felt a little creeped out when she made the hurt on his face, and the bleeding stop. It did nothing for the pain elsewhere, of course, but that didn't matter. That he could live with. He could have even delt with the pain on his face, he just wanted his damned nose to stop bleeding...and though he wouldn't admit it, company.

"Fuck you," he said to her ugly-stick comment. "Yeah, thanks." His tone hasn't changed at all. Drooning almost.

"You really should stop telling me that, I have a boyfriend you know." More sarcasm in light of his "Fuck you." comment.

"So wanna tell me what happened? Or should we talk about something else." She asks more softly. Her hands are still in her coat pockets, still freezing, probably still blue.

He'd seen her hands tint blue, noticed her put them in her pockets. But just like her swallowing razors, throwing them up, then eating seven meals, he was afraid to ask. Living with an angel and seeing magic done, having it done on him a few times, does not mean he understands, nor feels comfortable with it. It scares him. But try getting him to say those words outloud. Go ahead.

He ignored her sarcasm to his swearing. "I got jumped." Well, obviously. "Fucking faggots. They jumped me because I wouldn't buy their pixi powder." Cocain Viv, you might get the street term. Maybe not. Wow, his tone can change! It's gone from that usual angsty 'nothing matters' to bitter.

She knows the street slang. She works for drug dealers on occaision, though not much at all lately. "Pushers, great. Can't give me more to go on can you?" She asks. No sarcasm here, she really wants to know. Perhaps the assholes will become one of her next examples.

"Why does it matter." He picked at a weed growing between the cracks in the sidewalk with cut fingers. "Nothing I can do about it now anyways." He doesn't even think that she might do such things for a living. She said she was a 'handy man' and so to him, that's her job and it's what she does.

He doesn't seem to be showing any of the usual male wounded pride symptoms at having been beaten up. Actually, he sounds like he could care less, if a little disappointed. His whole demeaner says 'too bad they didn't kill me.' Really, he's trying to stop cutting and starving himself, but he's still wanting to die, if only to become like Engle. Because now he believes in angels.

"Nevermind." she says,s he really shouldn't go beating the crap out of some punks and possibly drilling holes in them, what would Uriel say, not that she would tell him. She really has been trying to cut back on the carnage though.

"You need a ride home?" she asks.

"uumm."

Damn it. He wants company. Not a ride. He frowned at her feet, lifte dhis eyes back up and stuffed his hands into his pockets. They'd taken his money but that's why he kept his ATM card in his shoe. They'd taken his knife too. Damn scavengers.

"I was gonna go eat. Wanna come?" Standing now, slouching, hands in pockets. He looked over his shoulder at the ATM in the wall. No way in hell he'd use that in this end of town. People were standing on the corner, just waiting for someone to withdraw money so they could jump them.

"You were going to eat?"she asks. She doesn't laugh, but she remembers the last time. "Fine where are we eating?" she asks. "I can't leave my truck running here all night if I expect to keep it."

Where? Shrug. He doesn't know the names of restrunts, or where they are. How often do you really think he eats at one?

"Yeah, got a problem?" He knows what she's thinking when she confirmed that he was going to eat. He walked over and slid into her truck like he had the first time. And like the first time, she'd not actually said he could get in the truck, but this time it seemed closer to an invitation then the last time. Last time he'd invited himself. "Don't care. You pick."

"Who doesn't have problems? If you truly don't care I'd rather eat at my apartment but I'm cheap....The diner work for you again?" she asks him as she buckles her seat belt. She pulls out into the street and makes her way towards the better end of town.

Gasp!

Jesse pulled the seatbelt across himself without being asked this time. Mostly because it had pissed her off so terribly the last time when he wouldn't. And this time, he wasn't out to piss her off, and she'd just come and stopped his bloody nose for him without asking for anything in return. He can at least be comprimisable.

"Diner's fine," slouch. "You didn't seem like the boyfriend type to me," because she'd said people piss her off so easily. He'd lasted twenty minutes without driving her mad. She said most didn't last two. A boyfriend required more then a twenty minute conversation.

"He's not normal people, or it would never work, he's the sweetest person alive. Shut up before you start." She warns after her moment of mushiness. She is nuts about the boyfriend though, hopelessly, utterly crazy over him.

She drives to the diner. At least her hands are only pale and white. She shouldn't get too many stares in a well lit public place now that they aren't blue.

It's what he's started calling everyone 'magical' that isn't his angel. Freaks. Even though he still calls himself freak too. Because he's not normal. He scowled at her when she warned him not to start with the questions that he was definatly going to ask anyways.

"He's like...a freak then?"

His eyes were on her pale hands.

"Turn the heat on." It wouldn't bother him any.

She gives him a warning glare, her boyfriend may well be a freak to some people, but she suspects he's very sensative about it. He takes great pains to hide just how different he is. "Don't call him names, you don't even know him. He just isn't like all the other pieces of shit out in the world."

She pulls into the diner. There would be no point in turning on the heat before going into a restaurant with the air running, it would only seem even colder. She likely will when she leaves though.

"I wasn't calling him names," he replied sourly. "I was asking a legitimate question." He slouched more. "So he's a freak then. It's no wonder you can put up with him." By freak, he hadn't meant anything more then someone that was magical. He didn't know her boyfriend was 'different'.

He unbuckled and got out, slunked towards the Diner and held the door open.

She nods at him while he hold the door opened and she goes inside. It's freezing. She zips up her jacket. At least eating will restore some of her body heat, but she'll still be under temp.

She makes her way to a booth near the back and away from occupied tables.

He scowls and follows her through and to the booth. The waitress brings menus and water and *gasp again* Jesse ordered a salad, then waited for Viv to order and the waitress to leave.

"Whats wrong with you?" Not exactly politly, but at least he's asking now. Though he;s still rather afraid of the answer he's going to get.

Viv orders a steak dinner and a meatloaf dinner. She gets an odd look from the waitress.

"We're not going to talk about what's wrong with me in public. Save it for in the truck." she tells him.

He gives the waitresses back an odd look for giving Viv an odd look, mostly because he's feeling bitter and partly just because he can. He returned his eyes to Viv then.

"How did I know it had to be something like that." He's not happy that his suspicions were right and it had to be a freak thing. "Fine."

"Why wouldn't you expect it to be something like that, what was going on when you met me. I'd think it would be a clue. " She tells him. She grabs a few packages of crackers from the condiment tray on the table and eats them while waiting for the food.

Shrug.

He watched her eat the crackers and after a while, the food came. It became apparent fast that 'eating' when spoken through the mouth of Jesse, consisted of putting way to many toppings on the salad, drowning it in too much dressing, and puching it around the plate with his fork.

Pain seared upward in his stomach when he actually ate one relitivly dry leaf. He flinched, took a drink of water to push the leaf down into his stomach, the water made his stomach churn.

"Hows the fixing business?"

"I think that should be obvious, people are forever breaking things." She said. "It's not like I'll ever run out of work." She ate her food, meatloaf then steak. She's begining to catch on, he hadn't really been that bent on eating. "What are we doing here? seriously?" she asked.

"What's it look like. Eating, duh." And he defiantly stuck another leaf of lettuce into his mouth and chewed. And chewed. And chewed more then he had to really and finally swallowed, refused to touch his stomach when it lurched. He didn't take a drink this time. Just pushed more leaves around the plate.

Looking up at her, he scowled. "You don't have to wait. Go. Leave, I don't care. I'll pay for yours." My, my, he's a moody bugger isn't he.

Viv gave him a scowl she normally only used on her brother. "What's you problem, sheesh? You wanna play twenty questions with me, and I don't get a turn? And no you won't pay for mine, either." she told him shaking her head at both suggestions, him paying and her leaving.

She really did wonder what was going on with this kid. Since she had pretty much given up an evening with her boyfriend to come play medic with him, she was rather intent on finding out too. She won't be gotten rid of easily.

"I'll pay for it," he insisted. He pushed more leaves around, leaned forward and reached into his boot, his legs so thin that they boots flapped against his legs, too loose to fit. He pulled his card out and lay it on the table. "Whats up? I can't go home. That's what. I just wanted..company..." This last so quiet it's obvious he didn't want to admit that.

Not he who could live alone, without people.

"And why can't you go home?" she asked. She dropped a wad of cash on the table. "Save your money." She told him testily. Viv gets uptight when people pay for things, she's probably too used to doing every thing herslf as well. Still she knows what it is to want some company. It's how she wound up with a boyfriend, he'd just been her friend at first.

Jesse frowned at the money. He hated being payed for too, even though he needed every cent he could get really. He caught his lip between his teeth and gnawed for a moment, frowning at the money and hesitating to answer.

"Engle'll kill me. I can't go home right now." Shrugg.

He stabbed at an olive and it rolled away from the prongs of the fork.

"And what did you do, that is so worthy of killing you for?" She asked him. She flagged down the waitress and ordered a basket of chicken strips, her stomach was still talking. And eating had thus far made he slightly warmer.

He hesitated again, stabbed once more, more viciously at the olive and pierced it. The juice squirt at him and stained a spot on his undershirt. He didn't seem to care much. Finally he put down the fork and pulled back his sleeve. He held his arm low, where no one else would see he was showing her five or six deep, open gashes in his arm. Obviously he wasn't trying to kill himself, just cut.

"He'll murder me for that. I've...been pretty good....about not doing it." Indeed. Every inch of his arm was covered in scars, some of the pink and still new, but other then those cuts, there were no others. Some of the scars spelled out words. Loser. Freak. 'Fuc' but the rest of that one ran up into his sleeve. Can you guess.

Obviously he saw himself as a fuck up as well as a freak and loser. He pushed the sleeve back down.

"You could have told me while I dealt with your nose. Anything special spur you on?" she asked. She'd already determined last time, the cutting was in part to make some of the stomach pain ebb. She shook her head slightly, her brother could probably help the kid with his stomach, but she wasn't on the best of terms with him at the moment.