Angel and Julian; Angel and Forge

[x-firestar.livejournal.com]

Angel wants nothing to do with Julian, despite his best efforts.



There weren't any tears. There couldn't be - Angel was so upset that as soon as she started to cry, the tears evaporated right from her cheeks. She didn't really know where she was going just that she had to get away from Julian. From Esme. Even John - she couldn't look at him right now, she was so ashamed and upset at the moment.

She bit back a sob when she stumbled over her stupid shoes. Julian hurried through the ballroom and into the mansion proper. "Angel?!" he called out, trying to find her. Coatless, panicked, he ran in the direction of the suites, pushing himself in an attempt to bridge the lead she had.

Rounding a corner, she was suddenly there- the faint essence of steam raising off her cheeks. "Angel!" She didn't stop, if anything, his shout only quickened her pace. "Angel, please, I didn't mean to!"

Angel gritted her teeth and bolted, finding an open door and hitting the ground running. Until her shoes tripped her again; she didn't end up face first but it was a close thing, just windmilled for a moment. "Leave me alone, Julian!" she yelled as she caught her balance.

The momentary stumble was all he needed to catch up, but was unfortunately too short to get ahead of her. "No! Angel, I'm sorry- I didn't want to kiss her!" He set his hand on her shoulder and pulled himself forward, "Just...just stop and listen, please!"

Most people didn't think she could get very angry because she was pretty even keeled most of the time. If by even keeled, you meant hyper, excited and short of a life time sugar high. But when she got mad, she got mad - Kyle knew that.

Angel spun around, hands clenched at her fist, and shrieked, "Listen? Listen?! Listen here, Keller, I'm not listening to you or Esme or anyone! You were ... Esme..." Her jaw clenched and then she deflated, covering her face with her hands. "I'm fucking naive, okay? You proved that to me. Just go back inside and leave me alone."

"Angel, please- you're not naive! I'm so, so, so sorry- I didn't want to, no," he grasped her arm to keep her from walking away- it was hot, but no more than a pot of hot chocolate. "Please, Firefly, just give me a chance to explain!"

At his nickname for her, Angel's head shot up. "Don't. Call. Me. That!" she hissed. Maybe she should hear him out but suddenly she didn't want to be the mature one. Not after that. "And let me go!" She yanked backwards but he was determined to keep her there so she could listen to either his pathetic excuses or the reason he was going to dump her.

She knew how easy it would be to use her powers - she was stronger with them and she could make him let her go. But she knew that it would be wrong and it'd be a ticket right off the X-Men. Angel wasn't letting him take that from her as well.

Instead, she stomped on his foot hard, knowing it was fighting dirty but she didn't care. Angel shoved him away as he stumbled backwards. The next moment she was gone, a wave of heat washing over everything as she took to the skies where she knew he couldn't follow her.


The pain shot through him like a lightning bolt and the sudden wave of heat sent Julian tumbling to his ass, knocking his head against the house. In the haze, he could just make out the firy form of Angel jetting through the sky- having the freedom to go where he could not.

"Angel..." he muttered. Slowly, carefully and with a throbbing pain in his foot, Keller got to his feet. Looking back up again, she was gone. "Damnit," he whispered, holding back the tears. After a long moment, Julian went back inside- forming a plan in his head (which was no easy task given the headache building by the second). Tomorrow, he'd find her tomorrow and apologize...with chocolates and flowers. All he could hope was that she'd take him back.



Never borrow a jacket from the shortest guy in the mansion.



Forge smiled as he wandered out behind the mansion, looking up at the stars with his jacket slung over one shoulder. Chaperoning the prom was somewhat of a half-obligation for those Xavier's alumni who still were hanging around the school, but with an X-Men mission leaving in the morning, the young inventor had decided to make an early withdrawal. Crystal had headed up to their suite to make a brief call back to Attilan, so Forge found himself enjoying the night air and the momentary solitude away from the noise.

His brow furrowed as he smelled... something burning? He looked up to see a small piece of smoldering blue cloth flutter down from the sky, as he saw what looked like a low-flying meteor zoom by overhead, leaving a trail of scattered embers that might have been part of a prom dress at some point. Letting out a sigh, he hesitated only for a moment before following the trail to a large tree.


With a frustrated curse, Angel huddled further back against the bark of the tree she had ended up in. She'd been burning so hot and fast after she'd flown off from her fight with Julian that she'd burned right through her prom dress. She sniffled in self-pity, trying to artfully arrange the burned scraps of cloth against her skin so that it gave her some modesty.

She would have tried the leaves but, knowing her luck, they would have been poisoned or something. Something mean. Like her boyfriend.

Angel hiccuped and cursed, again, for being so stupid.

Reaching the treeline, Forge stopped to listen. Was that... crying? No. No. It absolutely could not be crying. This was not going to be the second year in a row that a crying student was going to sidetrack his plans for the evening. It would be an absolutely incalculable injustice of astronomical proportions...

He sighed and thumped his head against the trunk of the tree. Of course someone was crying. And given the particular nature of the burned cloth and the slight smell of singed satin from above him, it wasn't hard to figure out who.

"Not the best of evenings, Angel?" he said casually, pitching his voice to carry up into the branches.

Unbeknown to her, at Forge's voice she copied his earlier movement by thumping her head against the tree. Of course someone would find her. The universe was having one hell of a time with her that night. She couldn't have been left alone in her tree full of potential poisoned leaves with only a handful of dress left. No, of course someone would find her.

"The universe thinks it's funny," Angel responded, wondering where her shoes had gotten off to or if they'd been burned to cinders. Well. That wasn't a loss, those had been uncomfortable. "My boyfriend's an asshole and I managed to forget that this dress? Is like one of the few things that will go up in flames the moment I use my powers."

She left her face against the bark and wiped at her cheeks; at least they weren't burning up the moment they fell, that had to be an improvement.

"Oh," Forge said, surreptitiously removing his small PDA from his pocket and hitting the journals.

[SEARCH: Jones, Angelica + boyfriend]

"That... yeah, that can suck when... when..." A small ping caught his attention and he glanced at the answer on the small screen. "...when Julian is an asshole. Yes, for he is your boyfriend, of course."

[SEARCH: {students} + Julian {lastname}]

*ping!*

"What's young Mister... Keller? Yes, Keller. What, um, happened?"

One of these days, Forge thought, he was actually going to have to pay attention to the new kids.

Angel peered suspiciously down at Forge but couldn't see him through the various limbs and leaves. She didn't know what he was doing but it was probably something - well, Forge-ish. If he built her a toaster doodad to get her out of the tree, she was slagging it.

"I caught him kissing Esme during prom," she said, feeling just about cried out. "He ran after me to, I don't know, apologize or something but I took off." She sniffled once more. "I'm sorry, I know you have better things to do than talk to almost naked girls in trees."


Yes! Yes I do!, Forge thought.

"No, of course not," he found himself saying as he tapped more search commands into his PDA and was rewarded by photos he'd taken only hours before of Julian - oh, that's the guy. What a total smarmodon -dancing with a blonde that the facial recognition software identified as one of the Stepford quadruplets.

Sighing and pocketing the miniaturized computer, Forge leaned against the tree. "Besides, you're a trainee now and that technically makes you a teammate and we're supposed to kind of, you know, look out for each other's well-being and stuff. So, then... um..."

You have no idea how to handle this! his inner voice shouted. Quick! What would Pete Wisdom do?

"Do you need someone to go kill him for you?" he asked reflexively, then slapped his forehead.

There was a choking noise from the tree for a moment as Angel registered what he had said. "Forge, that's ... kind of sweet, if really demented," she said after a moment, laughing weakly, "but I think I'll settle for just setting his damned text books on fire for a week and, you know, breaking up with him. Fire, cleansing, you know. Supposed to be good for me, I think."

Julian could wait, the problem would still be there tomorrow, but she had more pressing concerns. "But, hey, as teammate to teammate - for the love of god, tell me you're wearing a jacket. This bark is really uncomfortable and I've got a stick down my bra and all I wanna do is go to my room but I'm mostly naked and either that punch was really sugary or the adrenaline is doing weird things to me."



Despite not even being able to see Angel, Forge blushed bright red and stepped away from the tree, holding his jacket out behind him. "Um, yes. Jacket. Of course. For your nakedness. Please be careful, it's Attilani royal tailoring and it's not fireproof..."

Angel had been in and out of trees with Kyle as long as she'd been living at the mansion so even missing most of her clothes, it was a simple matter of clambering down. She made sure to land out of sight so all he saw was an arm snake out to snag the jacket and yank it around the tree trunk.

A moment later and she slightly shrieked, "Why are you so short?!" as she stepped gingerly from around the tree, holding the jacket closed for dear life. He was only an inch taller than she was, so the bottom of the jacket was very close to not really hiding much of anything.


"Blame genetics," Forge protested. "Besides, not as if I haven't seen you in your Supergirl undies when I had to pull you out of that Thermal Gigantinator machine a year ago." Even still, he thought, far different situation. Of course, as long as he thought of this as heroically saving a teammate from a horrible fate, he would just be able to get back to the mansion without somehow being microwaved.

"Do you, um..." Do NOT ask her to talk about it! "...do you need to talk about it?" Dammit!

It was kind of startling to realize that she had wider shoulders than Forge. Then again, he was skinny as a stick and Angel sported the stereotypical swimmer's build. "Thank god I don't have breasts," she muttered to herself as if Forge wasn't even there, one hand clamped around the front and the other on the bottom.

She glanced up at him as she shuffled towards the house. "Um, actually no. Thanks for asking. I don't want to either cry more or burn up this nice, but itty, jacket."


Forge reached the door first and opened it, looking in and holding it open for Angel while he studied his PDA again, calling up the mansion's security subroutines. "Okay..." he droned, calling up a small mid-air hologram of the mansion blueprints. "If you head from here... through the sun room, take a left, up the stairs at the end of the hall, then left again and straight down, you have a clear path to your room."

Angel stared at him for a moment, face blank. "Give me that thing," she said, risking letting go of the bottom of the jacket to grab his wrist. She made him show her this time and this time she got it, playing it over in her mind. "Got it. Thanks, Forge, I'll return the jacket tomorrow."

She thought about it. "I'll get it dry cleaned first, though."