Nathan and Kyle, Monday

[x-cable.livejournal.com]

Before the news about Jane, Kyle comes upon Nathan making lunch in the kitchen.


Nathan was doing his best to minimize the time spent alone in the boathouse. Since Moira and Rachel were still on Muir, this involved such clever strategies as raiding the main kitchen in the mansion for food. He didn't necessarily seek out company with whom to eat, but being in the midst of the mansion's more crowded psychic atmosphere did definitely help.

He'd assembled the ingredients for a stir-fry, figuring that someone else would probably appreciate the leftovers. He was chopping the vegetables meticulously when he sensed the approach of a familiar mental pattern, and looked up in time to see Kyle come through the door.

"Hey," he said. "You at all interested in stir-fry?"

"Dude, when am I -not- interested in food?" Kyle had caught the smell of fresh vegetables from a few rooms away and had gone investigating. Finding Nate making stir-fry was a bonus - far easier to get food out of Nate than most people, he understood some of Kyle's less practical reasons for sharing food. "Hang on, gimme a sec to wash my hands and I'll help." Obviously Lorna's lessons in hand-washing hadn't worn off yet and weren't likely to anytime soon. "Just not onions. They get to me faster than anyone else." And he'd taken so much crap for -that-in class.

Nathan obediently glanced at the onion, which floated itself back to the fridge just in time for the door to open and admit it. "Not all that fond of them myself," he said with a brief smile and a shrug. "You could look after the meat, if you wanted."

Kyle pulled one of the knives out of the block and gave it a once-over glance before grabbing a cutting board. "Probably better if I don't. Bad habit of snacking on it. You won't have any left if you let me near it." Which is why he just bought extra for himself. Eating raw beef wasn't as bad as raw chicken, but a few people still were sort of weird about how casual he was about it. "I can take a whack at carrots or peppers or whatever though."

"Have at them." Nathan took the meat for himself, given that, and started to slice it meticulously. Cooking was soothing in a way, too. Why hadn't he been doing more of this lately? Oh, right, because you've had no appetite... "So, how goes the job? Settling down a little, I hope..."

Carrots were easier to start with, but instead of moving them to the cutting board, Kyle took them over to the sink and began stripping off the outermost skin with the claw on his thumb. "Finally, yeah. Zanne jumped on and is helping with the stuff we have to contract out for, so the backlog isn't much of one at all, and most of what is there is either we can't figure out Mr. Marko's notes, or we can't figure out what's really wrong." Or ordering stuff, but that wasn't backlog. "I actually got time to -see- the inside of the locker room last week, and not just to fix clogs."

"Oh, yeah?" Nathan's smile was a bit awkward. "I've been... off. Haven't been down there at all." He knew that some of his fellow X-Men must have noticed by now that he wasn't training. No one had asked any questions, however. The visible bruises had probably helped with that. He had to wonder if the questions would start coming now that they'd faded, though. Nathan's smile turned rather fixed.

"It was kinda touch-and-go there, I was pretty much sleeping, doing homework, training and working and eating on the bus or like, while I was doing homework." The now-peeled carrots finally went onto the cutting board, and Kyle began cutting them into pieces with exacting motions, pushing the carrots along and only barely moving the knife. "When you're not all ass-busted, we should schedule time in the DR -there was a sort half-done thing you did down there that I wanted to work through. The whole minimize-injuries takedown thing?"

Nathan frowned at him, trying to think back to what Danger Room scenarios he'd been working on in... damn, before Christmas. He'd had a whole batch of them on the go, he remembered. Which would Kyle have... "Oh," he said flatly, as the answer hit him. "That one."

"It looked pretty useful, I mean, given how many times we've had that kind of thing happen." Kyle went on chopping, turning what were carrots into a pile of matchstick carrot pieces, and using the dull edge of the knife to push them along onto a handy paper plate. "And you kinda just left it there, so I figure once you're healthy or whatever, over this winter flu thing, maybe we can get back to it?"

"I'd rather not. That program's past its best-before date," Nathan said curtly, his chopping growing a little more aggressive. He'd had the best of intentions with it. Non-lethal takedowns were always the ideal, but when you were facing several mutants, especially if they were trying to kill you, and weren't allowed to retreat...

He was the only one here who really knew just how the young operatives from Taygetos fought. And six weeks ago, he'd been able to turn his mind to helping train the rest of the team to fight them.

But that had been six weeks ago.

Kyle's knife stopped mid-push and a few pieces of carrot slid off the side of the cutting board. "Dude, huh? I mean, if we're gonna keep having to deal with that shit, we should train for it, right?" He set the knife and cutting board down and turned to look at Nate in confusion.

"You're perfectly free to train for that shit, Kyle," Nathan said, almost shredding the meat at this point. "Don't let me stop you. In fact, if you want to finish that program yourself, go for it," he offered brusquely.

"Uh, dude, me plus programming the Danger Room lies the bad place. I'm lucky I can turn the thing on and load stuff." He'd managed to follow about ten minutes of Forge's explanation and then gotten lost and confused. "I'm just... I mean, what the hell, you were all about getting kids out of bad places before. I mean, hello, look who you're talking at!" Kyle didn't miss the meat being turned into shredded-meat-product, and took a step backwards away from Nate automatically.

"Did you miss me saying that I've been off?" Nathan didn't raise his voice, but there was definitely a snarl there now. "As in, not on duty, since history has repeated itself for the millionth time and I'm busted-ass again?" There was really no chopping left to be done to this meat; Nathan tossed the knife in the direction of the sink, where it landed with what seemed like an overly-loud clatter. "As for me failing to show interest in getting kids out of bad places, is it written down somewhere that it's my job? My holy cause? My goddamned reason for being, so I have to do it with Elpis, with the X-Men, spend every fucking day of my life living with it?"

That Kyle managed not to retreat to the other side of he room was only due to an absolute trust that Nate wouldn't really ever do anything to hurt him, and that if somehow, Nate was crazy again, that they were right in the kitchen and someone would notice. Kyle sure as hell could think loud enough to summon one of the telepaths at the least. "Whoa, whoa, it's okay, I'll drop it. It's cool. I was just confused, that's it." And in his head, the echo of "Yeah, right. Time to call Doc Moira." came almost silently, so subtly sarcastic that Kyle wasn't sure if it was him, or the Not-Really-Kyle.

Nathan took a deep breath and then let it out, rubbing at his jaw, then his eyes. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that." He made himself concentrate on putting the stir fry together, forcing himself to smile - although it was possibly the least convincing smile ever. "Nothing like having to pay for your lunch by listening to me rant. I'd better make it good stir-fry, huh?"

"Hey, shredded beef rocks out pretty hard in stir-fry. Bonus, no Lorna to be like "Mister Gibney are you shredding beef with your claws, blah, blah, french chef spinning in his grave, germs, blah blah I forget the rest of the lecture." And since Nate had already shredded the meat, they were halfway there. And running off now to call Doc Moira would just look suspicious, and Nate had been weird, so Kyle felt that yes, he certainly deserved some damn good stir-fry and he could just be goofy until he'd eaten and then he could call Doc Moira. Or Ani. Or whoever he could get ahold of. "But you're letting me mash garlic. No one ever lets me do it and so I get to this time." That he made sound-effects while mashing was probably why no one ever let him. Maybe.

"Knock yourself out, champ," Nathan said, and told himself that it was perfectly okay to not try and fill the silence with half-assed small talk. Cook, Dayspring. He could flagellate himself about biting Kyle's head off later.