xp_logs | Nathan and Shiro on the Blackbird on the way home, Tuesday night

On the way back from Hungary, Nathan thanks Shiro for saving his life. The two of them have something that doesn't just pass for a civil conversation, but actually is.

He had shed the uniform jacket and, with Wanda's help, slipped into an Institute sweatshirt. The kevlar brigandine had been entirely too heavy given the state of his ribs at the moment. Wanda had tsked over the growing rainbow of bruises on his chest, and Nathan had amiably suggested that she leave the scolding to Moira, which had made her laugh and point out that he needed all the scolding he could get.

New shirt having been acquired, along with another painkiller, he moved carefully over to where Shiro was sitting on one of the benches in the passenger cabin. "Hey. Mind if I join you?"

Shiro looked up from his art history textbook. Even with three weeks to go until he started college, he wanted to be on top of everything. The scowl he usually reserved for Dayspring was nowhere to be found. "If you wish," he said curtly, shrugging. Shiro silently prayed that if Dayspring wanted to talk then the conversation would go much better than his with Domino did. Fat chance, though, he supposed.

Nathan lowered himself carefully into the spot beside Shiro, wincing a little as he took a too-deep breath. The smile he gave Shiro was totally unfeigned, though, and without the slightest edge of sarcasm. "Thanks," he said simply. "For playing catch."

Shiro cut off the biting remark that was begging to be said. Something along the lines of how much he'd have saved himself if he'd just let Dayspring plummet. He regarded the older man for a moment before replying. "I was doing my duty," he said, his tone neutral. "And I would not have heard the end of it if you had fallen off the building."

"A twenty-story fall isn't an issue for me - if I'm awake and able to use my telekinesis. But there was no way I would have come to before I hit the ground," Nathan said, quietly but with a fair amount of certainty. The shock of the hit when he'd been that deep in a meditative state would have ensured that. "You saved my life," he said, eschewing the flippant metaphors.

"I suppose I did," Shiro said slowly, dog-earring his page and shutting the book. "You're welcome." It even felt odd to say those words to Dayspring.

Nathan nodded, smiling - and then laughed. "I still can't believe it was a coatrack," he said, coloring just a little. They had found it in the ruins of the maintenance shed, before they'd come down off the room upon Nimrod's capture. "I'm never going to live that down."

"The mighty Cable, brought down by a pointy rod of wood," Shiro snorted. "You choose the strangest ways to be taken out of action."

"Someone's going to drop a piano on my head one of these days, you just watch," Nathan said, another laugh slipping out, this one a little too enthusiastic. "Ow," he protested half-heartedly, still smiling even as he put a hand to his side. "At least I know the new leathers work."

The thought of a safe falling on Dayspring, which he'd walk out of once he entered the lock combination just like in the cartoons, made Shiro chuckle. "It is good that you are doing something right, then."

Nathan grinned, catching the mental image but not commenting on it. "Hey, all due credit to Scott for coming up with the idea, not me. Although they're damned heavy." He gave Shiro a thoughtful look. "Bet you were surprised by the extra weight when you caught me."

"I nearly dropped you," Shiro admitted, just barely ashamed. "I have never had to catch someone in midair before. I will have to speak with Cyclops about adding an element like that to my training."

"Shouldn't be too hard to get you some practice with that," Nathan said after a moment's consideration. "Easy enough to pick someone who can catch themselves if you don't quite manage it. Although hopefully you won't have teammates falling off buildings too often." He gave Shiro another wry grin. "I mean, they'll write this one up in the Big Book of Stupid Cable Tricks under 'coatracks, ballistic', and everyone else will know to avoid it."

"Or I could simply catch dummies, droids, or sacks of bowling balls," Shiro suggested. "And that book is going to have to be made like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; in electronic form because there is not enough paper in the world to type it all out," he teased, grinning.

"Are you kidding? Whole new storage technologies will have to be invented at some point, Shiro," Nathan said, almost with a straight face. Near-death had always made him a little on the silly side.

"Forge has a new project when we return home, then." Shiro could do silly, too. It was a coping mechanism. It probably made some people more nervous, but it kept Shiro cool. And Dayspring talking to him like an equal, like a partner, definitely required cool.

"Ah, Forge. What would we do without him? Although I'm a bit frightened of the day when they finally let him at the Blackbird. I have images of it developing the capability to transform into a giant robot or something."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Shiro replied straight-faced. "Blackbird Gundam? Sugoi."