xp_logs | Fred and Angelo, Backdated to Late Night June 8th

Angelo spots Fred sulking in his truck after a less-than-stellar day.

Fred had run out of ideas in fairly short order.

He'd driven around the town till his old pickup almost fell apart...again. He'd cursed at the top of his lungs, which for Fred was pretty loud. He'd even smashed a dilapidated brick wall he'd found in an abandoned lot to pieces.

And he was still angry. Angry at his som'bitch dad for talking about Mom like he did. Angry at himself for overreacting. Angry at his hometown for being...what it was. Just. Angry.

As it was he'd come down to sitting in the bed of his pickup outside the garage, gulping from the largest bottle of Golden Grain this side of the Mississippi, and listening to the most depressing music he had as he stared up at the sky.

Well I met you at the Blood Bank
We were looking at the bags
Wondering if any of the colors
Matched any of the names we knew on the tags....

Fred sighed, the worst part was the way they'd looked at him. Yvette and Julian and...Callie. Looked at him like he was a monster on the loose. He couldn't really blame them. He'd acted like a damn child. He was glad he hadn't run into any of them when he'd gone back in to clean up his mess...especially Callie. He wasn't sure he'd be able to look her in the face again.

Fred sighed, and took another swig from the bottle as the bittersweet Bon Iver song washed over him...

"You gonna share that?" came a quiet Mexican-accented voice from the side of the pickup. "Trade you for company."
Fred looked over at Angelo, and sighed a bit. He didn't really want anyone else to be as miserable as he was right now...but he really couldn't bring himself to tell off all of his friends in a single day. He nodded silently and held the bottle out for Angelo to take...

Taking that as a full invitation, the shorter man hauled himself up into the pickup before accepting the bottle. "Kind of cold to be out here at this hour."

"Can't feel it," He said simply, and drank from the bottle again when it was returned to him. He took a few mouthfuls of the grain alcohol, and sighed before handing the bottle back wordlessly.

"Right", Angelo remembered, taking his next share. "Heard about the thing with the TV." That was the closest to a prompt he'd offer for now.

Fred nodded, "Yea. Dad's a bigot. Never woulda figgered..." there was a slightly slur buried somewhere in his Texan, but it wasn't to pronounced. Overall he looked seemed more tired than drunk, "And my Ma, who's been...gone... for a while hates mutants, too." Fred snorted and lit up a cigarette, "Guess it happens, huh?"

"You mean your dad says she did", Angelo pointed out. "Never can tell what might've happened if she'd lived to know you were one. As for your dad... yeah, it happens. Sucks, but it happens."

"...yup." Fred drank from the bottle again, and passed it to Angelo again. He sighed in a lungful of smoke and exhaled slowly as he looked up at the sky, wishing it would all just make sense so he could get some sleep...

Angelo leaned back slightly to take a look at the stars, too. "You findin' it any help, bein' out here just you an' your whiskey?"

"Help or not, s'better'n bein' inside." Fred shrugged slightly, "I, uh, didn't behave the best when I saw...never mind. Y'know what happened already. Anyway, I didn't want to run intah anyone that was there...kinda embarrased..."

"Yeah, I know how that gets." He glanced sideways. "Not gonna make you go back inside, but I'm not goin' back in just yet either."

Fred let his shoulders relax a litte, "Thanks. I, uh...I appreciate it..."

"Everybody needs someone around once in a while. An' hey, if you need to vent that's not at innocent TVs..."

Fred couldn't even manage a smile at the joke, "I...it shouldn't bother me. That man ain't my life...he's barely even my past..." Fred snorted, and puffed a cloud of smoke, "...but...I don't know...it's not about venting...it's...*sigh*..."

"When'd you last see him?" Angelo asked quietly. "Face to face?"

"Year and some change. Two in August," Fred said matter-of-factly, "We never...never really saw eye tah eye...even when I was a kid...he..." Fred splashed more of the grain alcohol against the back of his throat, "...he was never an easy man to love..."

"But he's still your blood. Counts for somethin', even when you don't want it to." Another sidelong look. "He kick you out?"

"He didn't want me there and I didn't wanna be there. Worked out pretty well for everyone involved," Fred said, with a bit more of a snap to his voice than was usual. He tensed his hand around a stray piece of brick that had fallen into the bed of his car and it crumbled to powder almost instantly. Fred sighed, "I haven't heard hide nor hair of the man since. Only person I still talk to from there is Uncle Frank, and he's...well...me an' him have a lot in common..."

Angelo sighed. "Guessin' your dad doesn't know about that part. Families, huh?"

"To hell with 'im. I..." Fred rubbed the back of his head, "I...it's not like I was planning on going back anytime soon anyway..."

"Would've been nice to feel like that was your choice, though." He wasn't looking at Fred now, instead somewhere indeterminate in the sky. "I know that one."

"You know..." Fred stopped speaking for a moment, and barked out a humorless laugh, "I remember hearing the jokes, yea? Jokes about muties and...I mean, I never thought about steppin' in. Sayin' anything. Didn't wanna rock the boat, you know? Now..." Fred's voice trailed off, and he simply took another his from his Morely...

"I used to do more than that", Angelo admitted. "All the guys did, back where I grew up. An' then one day... everythin' changed on me."

"You, uh...yah changed?" Fred asked evenly. Even in his emotional state, knew that this was as sensitive a topic for Angelo as his own past.

"I... manifested", he confirmed, voice wooden. "One minute to the next, my friends weren't my friends anymore, so I ran." That wasn't even close to the whole story, but it was as much as Fred needed to know right now. Angelo hadn't come out here to talk about himself.

Fred nodded, and looked back up at the stars in the sky, "We...live in a pretty shitty world, sometimes."

"Only way to deal with it I ever found is work to make it better." He shrugged slightly. "So that's what I do. Elpis, the X-Men, gonna be a lawyer someday... there's a lot to be done."

"It just...feels like a lot, most of the time...like there's to much trash and not enough janitors..."

"But the janitors we've got work pretty damn hard." He shoulder-bumped Fred, briefly. "And there's nothin' but time. We'll get there."

"It..." Fred rubbed his eyes. It was late, he'd been sipping grain alcohol for hours, and he was being emotional. All of this added up to a very disenchanted Fred Dukes, "I...I dunno...guess I'm just feeling sorry for myself mostly..."

"You had a bad night. Everybody's allowed to feel sorry for themselves sometimes. Specially when you find out your dad's an asshole."

"Always knew he was an asshole, just not a bigot..." Fred actually managed a small semblance of a smile.

"More of an asshole", he amended himself. "But at least he's small-time, right?"

Fred shook his head, "Trust me, Earl Dukes has never done anything 'small' in his life..."

"Local big talker", Angelo said dismissively. "Not even elected. If he gets out of Texas, that's when to worry about him. 'til then, it's the active ones you've got to watch."

Fred nodded, though he didn't quite know how he felt, thinking about his father as a 'threat'...

Everyone anti-mutant, and all too many pro-mutants, were a threat in Angelo's world. Some less than others, that was all. He nodded back. "You gonna be okay?"

Fred nodded his head, "Yea. I'll...I'm fine. Thanks....thanks for talkin...."

"Anytime. Offer stands about the ventin', too. Up to an' includin' a spar if you need it."

"I appreciate it. Thank ya..." Fred gave Angelo a half hearted smile and held up his half-empty bottle in a toast to the other mutant...

Angelo didn't have a bottle, seeing as Fred was holding it, but he toasted back with his cupped hand anyway, in the spirit of the thing.