Laurie and Morgan | Saturday night

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Morgan falls into line with the corrupting older sister role by taking Laurie north to drown her sorrows, as requested.

Laurie took a sip of the pint of beer in front of her and then wrinkled her nose in distaste. "People drink this stuff for fun?" she said after a long pause, and then took another sip before placing the glass back on the table.

Morgan shrugged and eyed a guy a couple tables over who was eying the two of them. She'd taken her roommate to a small town dive bar a little over an hour north of the school. It was dingy enough and far enough away that no one from the mansion would ever find them there. It was also a small enough town to cause the bar to need all the business they could get. Claiming Laurie as her sister and tipping the bartender very well earned them as much peace as you would get in the place. "It's an acquired taste. I didn't like it for a while. I could get you something sweet, but something sweet that doesn't taste like alcohol is going to have a lot of it in it and you'll probably be on your ass in five seconds flat."

"What's that one with vodka and orange juice? A hammer or something? I'm sure it was some kind of farming tool or handy man thing or whatever. I'll try that one." Laurie said, after pursing her lips in a thoughtful gesture for a moment. The on your ass in five seconds flat seemed pretty good to her. She'd wanted an experience, something to prove to herself that she wasn't the prude and bitch that Kyle and the others seemed to think she was.

It was hard to not feel like one was willingly raping the younger woman of her innocence when she said things like that. Morgan shook her head at her. "Screwdriver, love. It's a screwdriver. I'll drink the beer," she slid the pint glass across the table so it sat in front of her beside her glass of water, "and get you a screwdriver. And then you're going to start to explain why the girl who is so staunchly anti-underage drinking wanted to go out to a bar, yeah? At least by your forth drink of that thing."

"I guess." Laurie said somewhat reluctantly. She hoped all those weird things she'd heard about drinking making it easier to talk about awkward things were true, because the thought of actually telling Morgan about her reasoning, and Kyle and everything else really made her want to hide.

Hello handbasket, where are we going, Morgan asked herself wryly as she walked back from the bar, glass in hand. She'd asked the bartender to make it a little on the weak side but no so weak you wouldn't be able to taste the vodka. She didn't want to completely thwart Laurie's efforts since that might cause any number of backfiring consequences. She did, however, want to protect her from her own strange desire a bit. Turns out he hadn't made it that weak at all.

Laurie took a quick sip and then smiled brightly at Morgan. Now this she could drink, it tasted mostly of orange juice with a slight bitter undertone that while not pleasant was bearable. "This is perfect, thanks."

She took another drink, a deeper one this time and she could feel the sides of her mouth tingle slightly after a few moments. It would be a lot longer before the alcohol absorbed through her stomach however. She made a mental note to herself as she drank, if she could think of it as a scientific experiment, it almost made it okay.

"You'd probably like Amaretto sours and pink ladies, too. They're sweet, they don't have much alcohol burn. If you're not trashed after that maybe I'll introduce you." Morgan took a long drink from the appropriated beer and watched Laurie and her new best friend. Well, every girl needs a tool. Of course, Morgan thought Laurie would be better off if hers vibrated instead of coming in liquid form but what could you do?

Silence fell comfortably between the two girls for a few moments before Morgan thought to ask, "You have eaten recently, right?"

"I had lunch." she said softly, taking a long sip of the orange juice and then placed the half empty glass on the table. She was aware she shouldn't be drinking so fast, and yet she had no interest in 'shouldn'ts' right now.

Morgan resisted smacking herself in the forehead. "You know, for such a smart kid you really plan poorly sometimes, Peaches." Laurie was against drinking and wanted to be a doctor so surely she knew she should have eaten something more recently than lunch to help avoid a massively unpleasant hangover. On the bright side she'd only have to face liquid coming back up. The metamorph supposed that counted for something.

"There wasn't so much a plan, as a...I suppose a reaction." Laurie muttered, still not really looking at Morgan as she focused on the ice in her glass. She took another long drink, finishing it off before placing it down again. "Can I have one of those...um, a New York tea? The alcoholic one, not the one with ice that tastes like some horrible blasphemy of real tea."

The girl had an admirable enthusiasm for the task at hand but Morgan didn't move yet. "We're going to teach you about pacing yourself now," she told the teenager and slid her glass of water over to her. "Your head will thank you in the morning if you drink some water. What were you reacting to?"

Laurie pouted unconsciously for a moment and then picked up the glass of water to take a drink. This whole drinking thing seemed a lot more complicated then she'd been led to believe. It had rules, which seemed pretty weird considering. "Kyle. He's such a...he just yelled at me. I was trying to be friendly, and just you know, get on with things, and then he just goes off on me. I mean, he's the one that told me I couldn't do anything to fix things and then he gets angry at me for accepting that and trying to ignore it. Why can't he just make sense? Why are boys all so stupid?"

"Usually because they're boys," was the offhand response Morgan gave her. It was more or less true if you were going for the simplistic view of life. "So, uh, what'd you do to get him all hackles up in the first place? Seems like a pretty laid back guy normally so the going off on you thing just seems kind of against form. Of course, I don't exactly hang out with the kid."

Laurie took another sip of water, hair falling across her face. "We had a fight. I called, I um, I got angry. I said he didn't know how to control himself because he was a feral and that wasn't my fault. I didn't mean it though! I mean, how could he even think I believed that? I was just saying things, just, you know, because I was angry. "

"Why were you angry in the first place?" Morgan suddenly imagined this was what it was like to have small, bickering children and trying to find out who really broke your crystal vase. That was a horrifying thought and she downed half the remaining beer because of it.

"He made this whole report thing where he accused me of making a fight worse and I was just trying to stop him from hurting someone. I didn't know he was going to get so bent out of shape about it. I guess maybe I overreacted a bit, but he could still have talked to me about it before he went all aggro on the official report at me. It's not like I'm a heinous bitch who never listens....except that's exactly how he thinks of me, so how the hell would he expect me to react? Why shouldn't I just be what he expects."

Laurie finished her glass of water and pushed it back toward Morgan. "I want that ice tea now, please."

Unlike Yvette, the brightness of Morgan's glowing eyes never changed, but the rapid blinking got the point across just fine. "Well, if you're gonna go be all polite about it..." She was up and off once more. She replaced her glass of water she'd shoved off on Laurie and got the girl a Long Island Iced Tea, which she was sure might result in Laurie blacking out. Nothing caused a person to swear off drinking faster than blacking out for the first time. At least, not unless you were a fucking idiot. Or so Morgan's opinion went.

She placed the new glass in front of Laurie and looked over the bartender in time to see his curious eyes immediately divert. The five dollar tip per drink he was getting from her bought his blindness so far as anyone needed to be concerned. Morgan shot a glare at a dingy biker who may have never used a razor in his life. His eyes were focused well below Laurie's eyes before moving to approximately the same place on Morgan's body. She flipped him off, hand in front of her cleavage he was trying to see through the cloth, and she sat back down. "Okay, so recap for those of us not present. You guys were in a fight and you tried to calm him down so he didn't hurt someone? At all or just too badly? Sometimes you really need to put hurt into someone to get them stop without you having to kill them." Morgan cleared her throat. "Not that killing is in any way condoned by Xavier and not that anyone would ever be able to kill so easily..." other than people like her and Nate.

Laurie took a deep gulp of the ice tea, spluttered, put it down and then spent the next few seconds trying to get a cough under control. She'd been feeling slightly ill off and on since the whole thing in New York, the latest manifestation of which seemed to be an itchy, sore throat.

"I thought he was going to kill the guy." Laurie admitted after getting herself under control. "It was stupid, yeah? I know that. I overreacted and I made a bad choice, and it made things worse. But at the time, I just thought I was doing the right thing. Look, this is what happened. We were at this museum, checking out some of the exhibits and then we went to get some hot dogs. Only this guy, um, some weird guy who turned into a dinosaur, he attacks us. Anyway, he's got me in some kind of weird choke hold thing and I managed to kick him, or beat him off or something. And that's kinda all I remember till I woke up and Kyle was on top of him, sort of chewing on his arm or something."

"Chewing? On his...arm?" In all of Morgan's many varied experiences which involved fighting or killing she honestly couldn't say chewing on people had precisely been a tactic ever employed by any side of the fight. Morgan forced her mind away from that mental image and asked what she felt was the most pertinent and obvious question, "Exactly how many times had you been in a fight, a real attack type of fight, at that point?"

"Well, there was the dinosaurs." Laurie noted, trying to cast her thoughts backwards and blanking completely. She couldn't remember an actual fight. There was the time she'd killed Haller but that wasn't a fight, and the time she'd spent learning combat techniques from Garrison but that wasn't really a real fight. She'd been kidnapped by those terrorist guys but that hadn't exactly been the same thing either. Then there was...India, but she'd been helping people there, not fighting them.

She took another drink, being careful this time not to take so large a gulp as she had. She could feel her fingers starting to tingle now, and her lips now that she thought of it.

"So you over reacted and freaked out in your first real combat type of situation you've been in outside of the...dinosaurs." Morgan still couldn't manage to say that and sound like she didn't think she was making up bedtime stories. It didn't matter how aware she was that i had really happened, it was hard to put into the column clearly marked Reality.

"Yeah." Laurie noted, blushing softly.

It didn't sound quite so...untenable the way Morgan said it. It had seemed, almost like an unacceptable failure at the time. She'd been afraid Scott was going to kick her off the team, or that they'd never let her anywhere near a combat situation again. It was just all so messy, and unplanned and horrible. She'd thought she'd do better, she had training, she was a sensible sort. She shouldn't have freaked out so badly, it just wasn't like her, not at all.

She picked her drink up again and took another sip, blinking at Morgan slightly and then smiling wryly.

"I guess I screwed up big time."

The look the girl received from the mercenary was almost withering in its clear question of whether or not she was an idiot. "Let me repeat, first combat situation and you freaked out. You freaked out by trying to calm him down. Sure, it backfired but you thought it would help. It's not like you freaked out and then friendly fire took out his bleeding eyeball! Jesus. I once shot Aleister in the leg and that was on my fourth day out on the job. Luckily for Aleister he had a healing factor for his mutation." Morgan shrugged. "All the training in the world can only prepare you so much for the real thing, because the real thing is a fuck ton scarier, Peaches. You didn't screw up nearly as badly as you could have, no matter what the outcome of your attempt to deal with the situation was. I think they'd have been a lot more upset if your 'help' resulted in a dead dinosaur person-thing."

"I don't know if you've noticed this, but I don't exactly deal with criticism well. Garrison thinks I'm a complete spazz and refuses to train me at all. Kyle hates my guts and I think Scott would probably rather I was anyone's problem but his. I don't think they really care whether it was my first day out or not. They probably think I hadn't been listening well enough, or I'd have done better." Laurie muttered, taking another gulp of the ice tea and then realising she'd drunk half of it in as many minutes. That was no doubt not good.

"I'm going to repeat this when you're sober but for the sake of keeping you talking while you're willing I'm going to say it now as well." Morgan paused and waited for Laurie to actually focus on her so she knew her roommate was paying attention. She even waved her hand and snapped a couple times to be sure Laurie was focusing and not staring off into space without noticing anything. "Step one is to learn from your mistakes. You're not, you're wallowing. Common consequences of wallowing in your mistakes is lowered confidence and an excess of emo. The byproduct of that is sometimes becoming too scared to go back out of fear you do the same thing again. You only get better with time, with practice and by being willing to stuff it all up."

She shrugged and resisted the urge to tell Laurie she was being stupid. She was, but stating it quite that bluntly wouldn't do any good. "I'll train you. I may not be as inhumanly strong or durable but I've plenty of experience. My problem in class is remembering to not teach the kids most of what I know. I don't promise to protect your feelings. Actually, I definitely won't, I'm going to tell you exactly what you do wrong, when and guess as to why. Actually, I could take a serious mimic of you and even explain the gist of exactly why. The offer is there if you want it, but you'll have to work your ass off with me. Gar's a cop, I'm a soldier. It's a different mindset and a different approach." She tried to not infer the brainwashing many people ascribed to military tactics of mental conditioning.

"It wasn't his fault. Not, you know, not his approach. I wasn't doing really well, and I didn't tell him I wasn't and then I used my mutant abilities on him because I thought he wouldn't notice it, and he'd keep teaching me even though I sucked hugely at everything." Laurie mumbled softly, her flush getting deeper.

She wasn't entirely sure why she was telling Morgan all of this, especially considering how bad a light it painted her in. She'd been somewhat flailing around and falling over for awhile now, and she wasn't surprised that almost everyone had given up on her now, it wasn't like she hadn't given up on her.

She finished her drink and pushed the empty glass toward Morgan before pulling the glass of water her suite mate had put in front of her closer.

That certainly changed things. It didn't change Morgan's offer but she understood why Garrison wouldn't want to deal with training the girl. "You should have told him. And you definitely shouldn't have used your powers on him." She tried to keep the scolding tone out of her voice but it crept in there anyway.

Morgan was watching Laurie closely. The way her shoulders slumped and the look on her face made Morgan frown a bit. She nudged the younger girl with her foot under the table. "Giving up is for suckers and losers, kid. You want to set yourself up for defeat fine but don't think it's going to work on me, too." After all, it looked like Laurie possibly getting into that cycle where even she wouldn't believe in herself. That meant only a really stubborn would keep insisting she could do anything. Morgan was hugely stubborn.

"You sure you want to deal with the aggravation of it all? I'm improving, Master Lee and Doug have been seeing to that, but I still have problems telling people when I'm drowning." Laurie explained, feeling somewhat frustrated with herself, but knowing that just because she knew that was an issue, didn't mean she'd find it any easier to get past. "I'd like to try, I know I need the training, but I'd rather not make yet another person angry at me if I can help it."

Morgan considered the options. Laurie might annoy the fuck out of her, it was true. She might want to put the girl through a wall if she did this. Then again, she'd come to know Laurie pretty well from living with her. She also read subtle body language really well. "I don't do anger easily, or at all most of the time. Frustration and mild annoyance, even extreme annoyance, aren't the same things as anger. If I get desperate I can train you with a Manuel suit on so you can't hide the drowning." She was joking about the last thing. Manuel was too weak physically to last long, even when it was Morgan borrowing his body.

"I'm still surprised he let you do that. You might not want to do that though, Manny and I, our powers don't interact too well. It's the same reason Marius doesn't like to touch me at all without some kind of cloth between us. Some sort of weird powers loop, I guess. I'm not an empath, but when you combine what I can do with someone who can control your emotions, it's not pretty. But I think I could probably just wash really good before we started training, maybe wear long sleeved workout gear or something. I can't really control the stuff that's on my skin, but I won't deliberately use my powers on you, if you're willing to take my word on it. I'd understand if you weren't."

Laurie took a long drink of water, feeling slightly floaty now but still perfectly able to think, and talk. She did notice that her reaction times had slowed however, which was interesting. Maybe this whole drinking thing wasn't the complete loss of control she'd been led to believe.

"There are reasons why he does." Reasons she'd explained to Laurie when she'd shown up with pie that she couldn't tell her. Manuel's lack of control over his empathy was his own business to either disclose or not. She wouldn't take that right away from him. "I have some speculation on how well you and Manuel may manage to get on without powers being a factor, but it's only speculation." Namely, she thought if he could control his powers then there wouldn't be the weird feedback Laurie was talking about. If Manuel didn't project there would be nothing to loop in the first place. "Besides, I was kidding about that part. He's not physically up to a training session and while I'm not as bad when I wear him around it's still bad enough. Plus, the limp doesn't help me." Though it would help Laurie in a fight with Morgan-as-Manuel. That wasn't the kind of cheap confidence boost the girl needed though.

Morgan wrinkled her nose a little. "You've never given me a reason to not trust your word. Not yet. Considering I don't put much stock in treating people based on how they've interacted with others in entirely different situations chock full of circumstances that's about all I need."

"Well, you may regret it horribly, but I'm not going to deny I need the help." Laurie noted, pushing her half finished glass of water away. "I think I'll have another of those ice teas, if you would. When do you want to start with the training?"

Her shoulders had pulled back slightly, a more confident set to them, and she smiled at her suitemate with a wry grin. She was feeling quite mellow at this stage and the things that had seemed like the end of the world were far away, and not quite as untenable as they seemed. She wondered if this was what they talked about when they mentioned alcohol giving certain people a sense of false bravado.

A mental note was made to find a motel that wasn't entirely rat infested to take Laurie to so the kid could sleep off what would likely be an incredibly drunken stupor. There was no way she was going to take the girl back to the mansion tonight. "Are you aware of the delayed effect alcohol has on people?" Morgan didn't actually bother to see if Laurie was aware of the concept. Instead she got up and went to fetch her suitemate another Long Island. Trial by fire. She'd see how enthusiastic Laurie was about drinking after tonight. Note to self: Make sure said motel is near a dinner. A greasy one.