Kyle and Forge. More questions.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Not backdated. Happens right nowish. Kyle asks Forge about his actual level of scariness. Forge answers honestly - and then they talk about hurling, building asses and pizza.



Finding Forge was never a problem. The mixed metal and plastic smell overlayed on top of a normal human being made him easy to track. Kyle had followed the smells from outside the suite that Forge shared with Angelo, down to the gym. And then stood leaning against the wall watching Forge flip himself upside down on the parallel bars.

"Dude, you're totally stealing my mojo here." He said, once Forge was stable, and aware that he was there. While startling him might've been funny if he was right side up, upside down ran the risk of making him fall or something.

Forge adjusted his grip, swinging his legs around until he was parallel to the floor, supported only by his arms. Legs shaking with the effort, he slowly pulled his knees to his chest, then dropped, letting his legs snap outwards and carry him in a half-flip to the ground. Landing mostly on his right leg, he frowned. "Dammit," he cursed. "I'm never going to get the right stress tests on the new prosthetic if I keep landing on my good leg. Jubilee would throw a rosin bag at me. Bad habits, all that. And you can keep your mojo. Some of us don't have feral super-agility and have to work at it."

"Dude, why don't you just jump up and down on it?" Kyle asked, eyeing the new leg. "Or is that like, not enough stress?" He didn't know, and while it was kinda cool to watch Forge build stuff, the science end of things just made Kyle's head hurt.

Forge shook his head. "Too predictable. When I first got the new arm, once I could use it Hank pretty much put me in Jubilee's hands for physical therapy, and she shoved me at the bars. More natural motion than just bench-testing, and it's always different. You never move the same, so you get a more complete interaction between the machine and the rest." He reached down to adjust a set of screws around his artificial knee as he spoke. "A regular limb is designed to flex and provide support around multiple force vectors at once. You've got gravity providing stress, plus bones and muscles pulling in different directions, plus weight and balance factoring in - this lets me test it in as thorough a manner as I can."

He sat down on the mat, reaching for a towel to mop the sweat off his brow. "Not to mention that trying to run laps turns into a comedy routine with me."

Kyle nodded, mostly understanding everything Forge had said, and guessing at the rest. "So... if I offer to help, because I can do the flippy crap, can I get a favor out of you? I mean, I can at least remind you to not land on the good leg, or something." He looked over at the bars, and then over towards the heavy bag. "Hey, could you do something that's not flipping around to test it? I mean, not jumping, but maybe kicking?"

"I don't do kicking," Forge insisted. "You know me and violence, just... anyway, what do you need?" He'd had a hunch that Kyle had a reason for dropping by rather than just to comment on his former roomie's exercise routine.

"I meant the kicking the bag, not me." Kyle protested. "And, well, I need to ask you a question. And I need you to be totally honest with me, because I don't know anyone else who can answer this in the same way." Well, anyone who was -there-. He could call Jay, but it wasn't something he wanted to ask over the phone. And Kurt had already given him the other hand of the answer.

"Ask away," Forge said, rolling forward onto his hands, then flopping down, legs stretched out.

"Am I seriously, like, scary?" Kyle asked, after sitting down and leaning against the wall. "And I don't mean like, in a funny way, or like, the stuff I eat is scary." He pointed with his bandaged hand down at his feet and then with the good one at his ears. "I mean, not just this stuff either."

Forge bit back the immediate "No" that sprang to mind. Kyle had asked for honesty, and that deserved more than the quick polite answer. "I think..." he began, then paused. This was something that was important. It needed the right words.

"I think that if I didn't know you," Forge said carefully, "that yeah, you'd probably intimidate me. I mean, I've seen you go all grr, and how... natural it seems. If I didn't know better, and I thought that was all you are, then yeah, you'd terrify me, dude."

"Fuck." Kyle said quietly. And for a long minute, he sat silently, looking at his hands and feet. And then ran the good hand through his hair, letting out a grunt. "Next time I ask you a question like that, just lie to me." And then he shook his head. "Except, don't, because that'd suck. Okay. I gotta figure out how to either, be less grr, or less scary." And wasn't -that- a daunting prospect, he thought.

Forge shook his head, rolling to a crouch. "I said if I didn't know better. Yeah, I've seen you tear up a friggin' dinosaur with your bare hands, man. But I've also seen you act like a goofball on the DDR machine, and bring me food and stuff when I'm working, and the way you are with your friends. If some Joe Random person on the street looks at you, they see fangs and claws and think 'scary'." He stood up, holding his left arm out in front of him. "And when they look at me, what do you think they see? Not all of who I am, that's for sure."

"Wait, you saw it? Was I awesome?" Kyle asked. "Because I totally don't remember anything clearly between falling off the dinosaur's head and hitting the ground. And then the next thing I remember was waking up with Garrison carrying me around like I was a sack of laundry, and needing to take a leak really bad."

"I wish I'd have had a video camera, dude," Forge insisted. "Totally badass."

Kyle pointed at Forge's arm. "You need a camera finger, is what you need." He folded his legs up indian-style and used his teeth to undo the tape on his bandages. "And what I need is to see if these are less stumpy yet. It's not like the toes, where I had toebuds."

"And I dunno, I mean, Joe Schmo from Buffalo I don't give much of a crap about. It's, like, am I gonna have to explain to every other new person here that I don't eat people? And..." Kyle continued to unwind the bandages, leaving them in a heap in his lap. "And I'm being emo again. Goddammit."

Forge smirked. "I just tell them you haven't eaten anyone. This week."

The wadded up bandages hitting Forge in the head made a nice whuff sound, and then Kyle returned to removing the inner layer, setting it aside. Throwing bandages that weren't clean and white at people was just gross. Once his hand was unwrapped, he looked at the stumps closely. "Do these look bigger to you?" He asked.

"Ugh, you trying to make me hurl?" Forge said, wrinkling up his nose and recoiling. "A bit, maybe?"

"What?" Kyle looked at his hand, and shrugged. "Okay, I guess that's kinda gross. But I mean, dude, seriously. You built yourself a leg and an arm. Why is it gross when I'm regrowing my fingers but not gross when you're building limbs, or you know, when you built Haroun a new butt."

"Did you see Haroun with all the cyberware removed?" Forge asked, shuddering with the memory. "Not a sight I really want to remember. I mean, I'm not squeamish at the sight of an injury or anything. It's just... I know your healing factor works, I don't need to see it working. It's like watching Catseye change - once is enough."

"You still built the guy a new -ass-." Kyle protested. "You lose all rights to be grossed out when you built asses." He made a face, and then began carefully re-bandaging his hand. Healing or not, having it exposed to the air made his fingers itch. Something about nerve endings, not that he could really remember what Dr. Grey had told him.

"You should see what I've done for artificial bile ducts and heart valves, then," Forge countered, rolling his shoulders and stretching. "So, if you're not too worried about being scary, want to go grab some pizza? Pizza so trumps emo, dude."

Kyle stood up, after retaping the bandages with the roll of tape he'd pinched from the infirmary after the second checkup. "Yeah. Emo makes me hungry." And eating meant he didn't have to think about it, and he could work on it later. There was always that appointment with Doc Samson.