Laurie and Kyle - contagious grumpy and cheering up

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Just some slice-of-life casual stuff. Laurie's in a bad mood and Kyle distracts her from it just by being Kyle.



Laurie pushed the button on the TV remote and stared blindly at the happy couple suddenly assaulting her ears from what appeared to be a sunny beach. She reminded herself that wanting people to die in a fire simply for existing and being happy, even if in an admittedly obnoxious way, was not the sort of attitude one should be giving into. Besides, it was a fictional television show, feeling irritated with fiction was about as useful as a hippo with a gift voucher to a beauty salon.

She'd been down in the Medlab for most of the day, helping Jean with the research into her mother's condition and a possible solution to it. She knew Dr Summers-Grey was trying her best, but sometimes she wished she could just wave her hand and make everything okay. Your mother just wasn't meant to get sick, it should be some sort of law of the universe that your parents neither got sick, nor in any serious problem that could cause you worry.

Kyle didn't realize he was grumpy until he'd broken his pencil in half by accident and then in half again on purpose. He hadn't been grumpy when he started his crossword, and now he was pissed off enough to destroy a perfectly good pencil. Except he didn't really feel cranky either, just jumpy and like he wanted to hit something without any good reason to do so.

Which meant something was up, and unexplained cranky usually meant that someone was leaking.

Sure enough, when he got up from where he'd sprawled on the floor and looked over the back of the sofa, there was Laurie, looking like someone had just stolen her cupcakes and smashed them into her face. Without any cupcake on her face. "Dude. You're like, doing that thing again."

"Huh?"

Laurie looked up and noticed Kyle looking at her over the sofa.

"Oh. Um, sorry. I didn't know anyone else was in here."

She didn't mention that there could have been an entire elephant in the room covered in pink tulle and she probably wouldn't have noticed.

"I am stealthy. Like ninja." Kyle said. And then amended it with a "but not real ninja, they're bad," for the sake of not having to get the ninja-are-evil lecture from Shiro or Clarice, just in case they heard about it later. "Also I was crosswording because there was a totally good baseball crossword in the paper and I wanted to do it before Garrison f'ed it all up."

"He tries hard." Laurie said, tone somewhat distant as she turned back to the TV. "Is it the cryptic one, or the easier one?"

She'd always had problems with the more cryptic crosswords but the easy ones tended to be a fun way to pass time.

"Cake one. I'm totally not up for insane crosswords." Kyle said. "So, why so totally grumpy? Because you were leaking. Are leaking. Something." He didn't feel quite so pissy now, but Laurie still smelled like she was gonna get riled up.

"Just tired of saccharine television shows that haven't a hope in hell of really reflecting life. I mean, do network executives even look at the crap they've putting out anymore?" Laurie replied, crossing her arms and settling in for a good old fashioned pout. Childish? Yes, definitely. Making her feel better? Moderately, to be sure.

"Nope. Network execs are totally clueless." Kyle agreed. "This is why we need to get a video camera, and make our own show. We can put it on youtube and make a billion million dollars." He was fighting the urge to mope and have a good grumbling session himself, but he also knew it was Laurie's power, not his actual mood. And hopefully distracting Laurie would help both her mood and the contagious grumpy from her power.

Laurie brightened slightly at this, pondering if they could actually do it.

"You know, we wouldn't need a special effects budget either, because we could just get Forge to make something, or one of the other kids to help out. Kyle, that's a brilliant idea. We'd need masks though, so people wouldn't know who we were, or where we're from." Laurie mused, looking up at Kyle with renewed good humor. There was still a tiredness there, hiding behind her eyes, but at least she had something to distract her now.

Kyle made a loud pffting noise. "Masks, schmasks. We just get one of the geniuses to like, blur us out, or something." He got up and paced around the room. "Or... orororor, nono, get this, we get Shiro to animate it. Lifestyles of the wacky and mutated. I bet we could totally talk him into it! This is the dude who wrote a Danger Room scenario based on Mario."

"Perfect!" Laurie cried, sitting up to follow Kyle's progress with her eyes. "Wasn't he saying something about having to do some kind of animation for class as well?"

Laurie's enthuasiam was contagious - doubly so because of her power, and Kyle was gesturing wildly now as he paced. "Dude. He totally was. Okay, okayokay, we have to, like, get paper, and write this down. And then we have to find Shiro. Before he goes and does something else for his project!"

Laurie leaped up from her sitting position on the couch, raising a hand to point upward in a stylistic Hero pose. "Onward! To Shiro!" she cried with a large grin.