Disclaimer: I don't own Warehouse 13
Artie had already sent Pete and Myka on their artifact retrieval for the day as Jinks and I walked into the room. He tried to avoid talking to us, just like he had done with them.
"So let's talk Brother Adrian." I decided to be as obvious as possible
"Dear God, help me." he responded while trying to get away from us
"So what does this brother want you to do? Convert?" I continued
Artie moved away again as Steve spoke up.
"Don't shave your head" he quipped
"You either" Artie retorted
He tried to deflect us from helping him again by mentioning our own problem, the metronome. Though he should know by now that I won't back down, I knew he had a point. We needed to get rid of the metronome connection as soon as possible, we all agreed about that. We allowed him to kick us out of the room, for now. It wasn't over.
According to what Artie told us, Steve and I had to go back to his hometown to get us off the metronome. Which meant we were going to New Jersey. He seemed very anxious about our trip. I knew it wasn't about the metronome itself. He'd wanted to get us off the thing as much as I've wanted to for weeks now. Something else was bothering him. I wasn't sure what it was, but I was determined to find out. He wouldn't talk to me on the plane and I didn't like that he closed himself off from me again. I tried my usual sarcasm, but he wouldn't budge. Why didn't he want to talk about his mom?
He was being so obvious about his discomfort that I didn't need Pete's vibes, Leena's aura reading ability, or even his own lie detector power to see it. Being the team hacker certainly didn't help in this instance either though. I was an investigator, I could get to the bottom of this myself. He knew that I worried about him, especially when he tried to keep stuff from me. We'd just talked about that a few weeks before.
"So this is Jinksy Land," I exclaimed as we exited the car
Finally, as we got to his mother's door he said by way of explanation, "My mom and I had a fight."
That seemed fairly obvious to me, so I brought up the only thing I could think of that they could have possibly fought about.
"About the gay thing?" I asked confused
"No, this is New Jersey, not North Carolina." he responded with some of his usual sarcastic humor
"Can we just do this?" he said in an exasperated tone
That certainly cleared that up, but he still seemed tense. Mrs. Jinks opened her door and gave us each a hug.
"Mom, mom, this is my friend Claudia,"
Her greeting was much warmer than I had anticipated, considering what he had just said to me. Though he hadn't actually explained anything to me at all.
"Wow, how awkward for you." I blurted out uncomfortably while smiling awkwardly at the same time
She led us into her kitchen served us some tea. I mentioned that he still drank it and mentioned it in relation to her occasionally. She looked really happy to hear that. That made me smile. All the while though Steve still looked agitated. He left the room after arguing with his mother.