Kyle and Forge, lunchtime

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Kyle and Forge after textbook-buying, and before lunch-eating, on Greek Food, being shot at, and how confusing women are. And much complaining about Laurie from Kyle.



Forge looked up from his rapid-fire texting and smirked when he saw the pile of textbooks walking towards him, supported by two very familiar clawed feet. "I told you, dude," he said as he hit Send and slid his PDA into a pocket, "I could have just driven the car around."

"Dude, just help me put these down before I fall over. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to need all these books for -five- classes?" Kyle grumbled. At least he hadn't had to buy a laptop, which was -also- required, not that that made a lick of sense to him. People, at least the ones with legible handwriting and possibly not having claws, could just take notes the normal way. "I swear to God, I'm gonna be broke until payday. I think I have enough to maybe buy -myself- lunch one day this week."

"I'll spot for lunch today," Forge answered, reaching up to start taking books off the top of Kyle's stack. "There's this neat little Greek-Korean fusion deli in Alphabet City, great lamb bulgogi. I get the feeling you could probably stand to sink your teeth into some red meat after the fun in Kosovo, yeah?"

A biting retort asking Forge if he was trying to imply that he had some kind of red meat habit very nearly came out before Kyle first realized that this was Forge, who was allowed to make those jokes and then realized that he -did- have a red meat habit. "Greek-Korean?" He instead repeated, with a quizzical expression on his face once the books were off the stack. "I'm not eating kimchee, dude. Or anything that smells like it'll make my face hurt. How's their... those little pastry things with spinach and cheese?"

"Spanikopita," Forge surmised, then nodded. "Great with hot sauce, although you can get that on the side and they won't look at you funny. Here, let me give you a hand..." He pulled what looked like a stack of dull metal plates out of his satchel and began clicking them together. Once he'd assembled a small platform, he slid his fingers over a small panel and the platform began humming and floating in the air. Forge dutifully began stacking the books on it as he continued to speak nonchalantly. "So yeah, getting shot is apparently a pain in the ass. Or the leg. I've managed to avoid it, thankfully. But I doubt that's why you're all butt-hurt at Laurie. What gives?"

"She's been a bitch to me like for months?" Kyle said by way of explanation. "It's like, every time I say anything, she's like telling me how stupid I am, or how much she knows better than I do, and puh-lease." He rolled his eyes, and once enough books were off the stack in his arms that he could get a hand free, he poked at the floating platform a few times before shrugging and putting the last of his books on it. "Cool... no wooshy noises, so it's not a hover... thingy. Cool floaty thingy." He commented. "She's just had this whole ... attitude lately. Like she gets to decide what people talk about and like she gets to make jokes about stuff without actually having been there and I don't get what crawled up her ass."

"She's not the sharpest crayon in the box," Forge agreed, "but look at how things have been for her. Finding her deadbeat dad, her mom going in for cancer treatment, kind of hard to be a kid when you've got all that stuff being thrown at you. So she tries to go the other way, act like how she thinks an adult's supposed to act, all in control and stuff."

He shrugged and chuckled. "Of course, she forgets that she's still the girl who coos over a pet pig and tends to jump people under mistletoe in the hallways."

"Pigs are for eating, not petting." Kyle responded automatically. It wasn't that Pablo the Pig's existence offended him, it's that it sat on the line between things you eat and things you take care of, and it made him very uncomfortable. "Yeah, but then she's all like oh-em-gee why are you mad at me when -we're- all stressed out. I mean, shit, I don't make jokes about her mom having the lady parts cancer, why should she get to make jokes about my mutation or how many times I've been kidnapped?"

"If I had to guess?" Forge said with a 'who knows' gesture, "she wants to be seen as one of the 'big kids'. It's like... there's stuff I wish Jennie would loosen up about, so I joke about it, and wind up making her mad. Yeah, it's dumb, but it's me trying to say that I understand. But really, I don't. And neither does Laurie. She has no idea what it's like to have people look at you for being different, she doesn't know what people like you or Yvette or Kurt go through on a daily basis. But she wants to pretend like she does, to be part of that."

~Don't yell at Forge. Don't yell at Forge. Don't. Yell. At Forge.~ It wasn't Forge's fault that Laurie was stupid, Forge got it, and that's why he was entitled to jokes that only a few other people could make without being thrown out a window. It was still pissing Kyle off that his friend was defending Laurie, who even after explanation after explanation still didn't get why Kyle was so annoyed with her. "It's not just that. It's her whole ... like she knows better than everyone. Like she gets to decide what people can talk about or who gets to ask for a seat upgrade..." Kyle said, watching the humming platform float it's way into the trunk of Forge's car warily and forcing himself not to glare. "For fuck's sake, Monet was cooler about it and she's actually one of the people who sits in first class all the time! I mean, what the hell! You'd think the girl with more money than sense would be the one to be the snob about it!"

Forge shrugged again. "I'm not making excuses," he said, "I'm just throwing out possible reasons. Hey, you think I know anything about how women think? Please, I'm a genius, not a miracle worker. I can barely figure out my own girlfriend most days. I wouldn't even try and guess what goes on inside Laurie's head. Probably lots of flowers and unicorns and cotton candy."

Kyle snorted, and the snort turned into a laugh. "And pet pigs. Seriously, who keeps a pig? Does she know that thing is gonna grow up to be the size of a ... crap, I don't know what something else the size of a pig is. It's a tiny pig but it's gonna be bigger than Angelo's dog." Which was saying something. A frustrated noise that sounded a lot like "Hnngnh." came out of Kyle's mouth and he looked up at the sky. "Women! Seriously, all the women I know who make sense can't even drive yet. Christ, you'd think I'd be more pissed at Yvette for getting me shot, but at least she makes sense when she's dumb!"

Forge threw up his hands and walked around to the driver's side door. "Women. Can't live with them, can't reduce them to their component molecules and reassemble them into a more logical configuration. Except my girlfriend," he added quickly, "she's awesome. So hey, lunch? Which reminds me that I promised I'd bring Catseye home some pastrami."

"See, that's a woman that makes sense." Kyle said as he got in the car and reclined the passenger seat as far back as it would go. "I mean, she thinks she's a cat, but at least she makes -sense-. I can't argue with pastrami or sleeping all day." He briefly considered if it would be feasible to talk Catseye into calling Laurie StinkyGirl, and then dismissed it. If Catseye was going to come up with a mildly insulting nickname, she'd do it all on her own. "So did you guys get a mouse present too? How'd Crystal take that?"

"She brought mine to me in the lab. And we had a little talk about 'when ShinyBitsBoy and WindyGirl have their door closed'..." Forge said with a smile. "It's... having the gang back together is good. Can't believe it was so long ago that we were hiding out from the Halloween party and you were learning about your intestines' hatred for chocolate."

Kyle scratched at his leg where the bandages were still covering a healing wound and shook his head. "Dude, if you start in on how old we are, I'm gonna leave you a squirrel in your desk." And now that the necessary threat was done, he could be serious without feeling like a loser. "But yeah, it's good having everyone back. We should do something cool, like, uh. I dunno, something. Well, once Jay's less ass-busted. I think he said something about being home in a couple of days or next week or something like that last time I checked in."

Forge thought for a while, then donned his sunglasses and revved the sports car's engine. "I have just the idea."

Comments

[x-wallflower-.livejournal.com]

Hee. Loved this guys. Especially Forge's little machine that moves stuff about.