Jennie and Forge - Saturday Night

[x-roulette.livejournal.com]

Forge's birthday isn't over yet, not until Jennie's done with him at any rate...



"So, here you are, birthday boy," Jennie said, setting the drink down in front of Forge. It was, as the bartender assured her, the 'fruitiest thing fifteen bucks would buy.' Jennie herself believed that birthdays should be weeklong events, which is why the night after Forge's birthday he found himself kidnapped and taken to Harry's by a tattooed brunette. Jennie took the seat across from Forge and set her own drink down. "And a coke for me, since legality is still three months hence," she added, giving it a habitual but unnecessary stir.

Forge grinned with glee and looked at the almost-fluorescent blue drink that sported half a dozen slices of fruit and two paper umbrellas. "I think this needs to come with a MSDS safety sheet," he said cautiously. "Or a waiver or something. But I smell rum, and I do like rum. Mmm, rum." While far from a lush, Forge's time in Attilan had included a six-month stint on a fishing boat, where he'd quickly been initiated in the seagoing traditions of the island nation. Most of which involved tales of impossible-to-catch marlins that increased in size with each shot of Attilani dark rum.

He took a sip through the green curly straw and smiled. "Ooh, good stuff. So, happy birthday to me. And you," he pointed at Jennie with one of the umbrellas, "You have been a busy little bee lately. I've been looking at the training logs."

"You know, most guys I know would take a drink like that as an insult. This is but one of the many reasons why I like you," Jennie laughed. She pulled the cherry out of her coke and ate it quickly, pausing while she chewed before continuing, "Yes, Fearless Leader thinks that I should be let loose upon the trainees, for reasons known only to him. I'm still itching to use Mr. Marko's dodgeball demonstration, but I wanna wait until I can get my clutches on JayJay."

Forge shrugged, twirling the paper umbrella on the end of one metal finger as he took another sip of his drink. "I think Jay gets the point. He's flailing right now, and he needed to hit that wall right off the bat. I think that if he can get his shit together, he'll be one hell of an asset. But that's a big if."

He sighed, one hand absently brushing against the pocket where his communicator habitually resided. "We're down our arguably strongest and weakest members with Cable and Angelo gone. No idea what Lil and Garrison's status is going to be after whatever's going on with Alpha. And the most potential among the new trainees is likely to be a seventeen year old redhead fueled by Pocky and Red Bull." He raised his drink in a salute. "Thank god for the not-quite-old guard like us, yeah?"

Jennie clinked her glass against Forge's and then set it back down on the table thoughtfully. "Well, honestly, tactically if you looked at our generation, we weren't gaining any real heavy hitters. The key now is to think less about firepower, and more about precision. We can be just as effective as if we had Nate with us as without. In fact, and I hate to say this, we might be better off with Nate taking on a training role, as we could keep him barely on-roster what with all the serious debilitating injuries he usually incurred. I swear to you it was like a secondary mutation."

Jennie flicked her bangs out of her eyes before pulling a pen out of her purse and one of the bar napkins. "But see, let's count how many actives we got, like 17? Because Sam and Shiro got themselves benched, so we're not hurting for manpower at the moment." The doodles she did while on comms had slowly morphed into lists like the one she drew up. Some days she wondered if Scott's subtle nudging towards the leadership courses were a direct consequence of leaving the notepad in the comms room.

"It's what he was built to do," Forge replied. "Wasn't his choice, but hey, that's life. Shame not to take advantage of it. Same as Jay. Yeah, it's some fucked-up stuff that was done to him, but it'd be a bigger tragedy to not find a way to use that. To use a chess analogy, when a pawn gets promoted to a knight, you can't keep treating it like a pawn."

He took a drink and shrugged once more. "Too ruthless?"

"Poooossibly," Jennie drawled. "We're talking about people here, and not chess pieces. If you recall, someone tried to turn me into a weapon as well. So we gotta think, it's not about someone being a weapon, it's about being able to defend yourself and others when the need arises. So, you need to bring things like morale into the equation, because it's better to have a team that's firing on all cylinders, rather than the walking dead. Otherwise you have things like that, er, boxing match that I read about. I'm sure it looked good on paper, but beating the snot out of each other is not how I would have handled that."

"As for JayJay, if you recall, I joined the team for about the same reason. But I can't wholly understand what's going on in his head, as I was able to go back to normal. Had Kyle not gotten his undies in a knot, I would have suggested they work together. But now I know that way lies madness," Jennie tapped her pen against the table thoughtfully. "Marius might be more suitable, similar experiences, similar instincts, plus I noticed that Marius can usually talk someone down from being completely retarded. Most of the time anyway. As long as Jay doesn't hit his buttons. Which, now that I think about it, he probably will," Jennie made a face. "Hard."

"We are what we do," Forge mused. "Heroes, weapons, saviors, destroyers. It's the end result that matters, not how we feel about it. I asked Scott about the codenames once. He maintains that we have to keep some degree of separation - Scott the teacher and husband versus Cyclops the X-Man. I don't subscribe to that theory. I am who I am, in or out of uniform."

He laughed quietly. "But hell with it, I declare no more shop talk on my birthday. Day after. Whatever. What about you? Still dancing?"

"Yeah," Jennie said thoughtfully. She rolled her shoulders uncomfortably. "Trying to anyway. Program gets more intensive this year, so I have to careful about injury. One blown ligament and there goes my future at dance. I mean, you can be Forge all the way through, but I have to balance Jennie with Roulette." She swirled the ice in the glass with her straw. "It gets hard sometimes," she added quietly. "Like, who am I? All that jazz. Am I the flighty dance student or superhero? If I had said all that stuff about training to my friends from school, they'd freak. It's weird, the shallow me, the me I used to be, I don't think she's there anymore, you know?"

Forge thought about that, turning the now half-empty glass around and around between his fingers. "I never saw it like that, for me anyway," he admitted. "Teammate to the X-Men, boyfriend to Crystal, mentor to Sarah, partner to Paige, friend to you and Kyle and Marius and Jay and Cats and Angie and Doug. To me it's all one and the same. I can't..." He tapped the side of his head, looking into the glass before him. "It's all the same in here. I can't separate it, not how I'm wired."

He took a long drink straight from the fishbowl-like glass and leaned back. "Which is why I get Jay. He doesn't know who he is. He still wants to be someone who doesn't exist anymore. He needs to accept the now and get past... past... what is in this, anyway?" Forge's tone didn't change as his mind seemed to shift gears like a truck going from fourth to first on an interchange. "This is good."

"Ah, but you have embraced your mutantcy and it's all mutants all the time for you. I, on the other hand, have to try to function in a world that's not. I mean, once we start "othering" each other, we'll get into trouble," Jennie took another sip of her sadly non-alcoholic drink. "And Jay, he's still angry," she added, "he's angry and he's locked into a beta role, so it'll be harder for him to take steps to make changes. I'll do what I can with him, but I forsee needing to have Garrison on call if Jay gets out of hand. That shit doesn't go away overnight. I'm still an alpha, and I will most likely deal with Jay as an alpha would, which might not always be what the situation needs. He'll need his alpha, which is Garrison."

It made Jennie uncomfortable, still, the stuff she couldn't shake from her time in Campbells's hands. But that didn't mean she wasn't afraid to use Kyle's beta role to her in the past when things got heated. It had taken Kyle years to break his beta role, and Jay was eons below Kyle in that development. It was going to take some time and patience. But still, she reminded herself, one day at a time. Jennie smiled at Forge. "And that, my friend, is probably the four different types of rum you're feeling now."

"Mmm, rum," Forge sang, returning his attention to the elusive curly straw that seemed to be evading his attempts to finish the bright blue drink. "Alpha; the instinctive sub...subconsciously coded lead individual in a linked pack. Beta; the individual looking to sup... supplant the alpha. Jay's... textbook beta, right? Wants respect, but always self-sabotages." He rubbed his temples with his hand, staring at patterns of condensation on the table. "Kyle's better at the whole pack mentality thing. Too complicated for me. Biologicals. Bah. Machines behave orderly."

Jennie checked her watch. "Not even nine o'clock and you're losing basic English. I'm goooood," she grinned and put her hands behind her head. "At this rate you'll be spooning the clock in the main hallway in no time." Forge was too drunk to talk serious anymore. Jennie would leave it for another day.

"Metabolic absorption rate," Forge explained, patting his chest with his prosthetic hand proudly. "Only about hundred pounds of biomass, correspondingly low hemostatic volume, and there's something... weird with my liver and spleen. Marius grew me a spleen! Best present he ever got me. Where was I just now? Spleen, yes. Anyway, it's simple ratio chemistry. Lower mass and blood volume plus high proof alcohol equals a very easy buzz. You should learn chemistry. Is fun."

"I took mathematical chemistry last semester," said Jennie. Mentally, she was already calculating how many Bahamalama-dingdongs it was going to take before Forge lost his pants. It wouldn't be a birthday without someone losing their pants, after all.

"Pssssshft!" Forge hissed, waving a hand. "Worthless unless you can actually get right in there with it. Chemistry's science. Science's gotta be hands-on, you know? Two-fisted punching the laws of physics until they bleed. For Science!"

The last exclamation was punctuated by Forge's right fist hitting the table hard enough to bounce his drink into the air, where it was deftly caught by his left hand. The dissonance between the still mechanically-precise movements of his left arm as compared to the mostly-intoxicated clumsiness of the rest of Forge's body was enough to look either comical or creepy to anyone who hadn't become accustomed to the young mutant's odd mannerisms.

Swirling the glass to watch the last of the blue liquid slosh around, Forge hummed softly to himself before asking, barely audibly, "Jennie? We're going to win, right?"

Jennie ran a finger down the side of her glass, the expression on her face a strange one. One that belonged on someone far older. "As long as there's breath in my body," she murmured, and then looking up at Forge she smiled. "We'll win, hon. I promise."

"Yaaaaaay..." Forge drawled, before draining the last of his drink and spinning the remaining paper umbrella like a top between his fingers, watching it flit around the table like a helicopter. "Another year around the sun. Almost thought the planet wouldn' make it this year, but darn if it wasn't the little planet that could. Hooooo-ray."

Slowly, he lowered his forehead to the table, almost looking like a penitent in solemn prayer.

Most penitents didn't snore, though.

The snoring was briefly interrupted by a flash and the sound of a shutter clicking. Jennie lowered her phone with an impish smile and began tapping the beginnings of a text message. This was a moment that was worth sharing, and Jennie was nothing if not generous.

When the message was sent Jennie smiled fondly at the young inventor and ruffled his hair. "Happy birthday dorkface. Here's to another year."

Looking back up, she caught the bartender's eyes. "Some water over here?" she gestured, before picking up Forge's arm and letting it fall back to the table with a heavy thunk. "And maybe a wheelbarrow," she added.

We'll win, Forgie. With moments like these, we will definitely win. I promise.