Doug and Kyle: Anger Management

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Kyle Gibney stops by X-Force's brownstone with a request for tech support, and gets the chance to vent some of his frustration over Forge's idiocy. Doug in turn offers the opportunity to work off a bit of that anger and energy.



It was -not- pouring down rain like the last time Kyle found himself at the row of apartment buzzers at the brownstone apartments that the members of X-Force lived in. And thank God, he thought because after a look at how many of those buzzers weren't labeled, and considering the risk of buzzing one at random and getting someone way scarier than Amanda, he walked back outside, made sure his backpack was secure on his back, and went up the fire escape.

He remembered at least one journal thread where people were talking about how Jubilee had used the fire escape to steal food, so he knew the person he was looking for had an apartment with a fire escape and after that it was just easy to track it by smell. It wasn't the one that smelled like smoke and spicy food, or the one that smelled like smoke and spicy food and books, or the one that smelled like books, and he knew where Ms Sofia's was because he'd crashed on her couch and made her eggs.

So it had to be the one with the fancy curtains and blinds and also the little blinking whatever with the red light and was maybe a camera that looked different from some of the other little blinking whatevers with lights. So he knocked on the window, since that one also smelled
sort of like the hot-air burned-dust smell of a lot of computers and also like paint and chalk. It had to be the right one.

Doug had been prepared for a break-in when the motion sensor on the fire escape triggered, grabbing an escrima stick from the stand by the couch, but when the 'intruder' knocked politely and turned his face enough toward the camera for Doug to identify him, he let the weapon slip back into its place. He undid the locks and pushed the window open, looking out to the man perched easily on the railing. "Is there something I can do for you, Kyle?" he asked neutrally but curiously. "And any particular reason you chose the fire escape instead of phoning or something?"

"More fun?" Kyle slid his backpack off one shoulder. "So, I did something to my laptop and I dunno what and... " He shrugged, leaving a good half of the sentence hanging in the air, all the parts about why he couldn't just get it fixed at the mansion and who would've normally fixed it for him and how he felt about the whole situation. "Oh, and seriously, your bosses totally scare me and I figured I wasn't gonna play buzzer roulette and risk getting I dunno, whatever'd by them."

Anger, frustration, and a slight tinge of embarrassment were coloring Kyle's body language, and Doug figured he could complete the sentence that Kyle hadn't. And as a result, he could probably guess why Kyle was angry and frustrated. Probably the same reasons Doug was feeling much the same way. "Fair enough," he allowed. He couldn't argue with Kyle's logic, certainly. He wouldn't want to play 'buzzer roulette' and get Remy if he were the other man, either. "Let's see it," he said, holding out a hand for Kyle to put the laptop in.

Doug opened the case and raised an eyebrow. "Dunno what you did, huh?" he asked dryly. The keyboard, which had been custom-reinforced to allow for Kyle's elongated and claw-like fingernails, had been...pretty clearly pushed beyond its limits by its frustrated
owner.

Kyle looked off towards the sky and shrugged. He hadn't thought the excuse would get past Doug in the first place but it had been easier than explaining the long sequence of events that had led to angry key-pounding. Besides, if anyone would get it, it'd be Doug. "So, uh, yeah. I mean, I guess I could get Doc McCoy to fix it but then..." Then he'd have to explain, and there'd be a conversation that involved eleven-syllable words and probably the term 'anger
management'.

Kyle felt he was managing his anger just fine. Taking it out on inanimate objects was a lot less expensive than flying to California and taking it out on ... other things.

"But then you'd have to sit through a patented Doctor McCoy Lecture," Doug completed for him. "Oh, I get it." He waved rather unselfconsciously toward where a desktop keyboard conspicuously
missing more than a few of its keys stuck out of a trash can, and a fresh-out-of-the-box one currently rested in front of his 'personal' computer on a desk in the living room.

The laugh that came out of Kyle's mouth was harsh. "Yeah, and I don't carry around a thesaurus in my head, so, you know, I'll pass." He glanced at the keyboard, and then at the black scrapes on the corner of Doug's desk and then laughed again. "Must be nice to be able to use 'em outta the box. I got no idea where I can get another one of these. Not like I can just go down to the Best Buy or whatever." Well, he could. It just wouldn't last him very long, and he'd probably get distracted by DVDs anyway.

"I can probably fix it," Doug said after assessing the damage. "Most of the damage is cosmetic, so it shouldn't be that difficult. And I know a couple suppliers that handle really wacky equipment requests." He set the laptop aside. "It'll take me a little bit, but no
worries."

"I'm sure there's parts in the labs, I just dunno what they look like or how to put them in or.." And Kyle sure as hell wasn't going to ask the person who would know because that's how the laptop had gotten busted up in the first place. Not that there hadn't been a profanity-laden voicemail, or two, or twelve. "Like, little bit like an hour, or like little bit I should record all my classes for the next couple of days and use my old desk computer for homeworks?"

"You know, you need to just stop cutting yourself off or you're going to explode," Doug said to Kyle, folding his arms across his chest. He could see the frustration peaking in the way Kyle's gestures were getting shorter, and his pacing more animated.

Breathe. Kyle reminded himself to breathe, evenly and deeply, to loosen the anger that had wound itself around his thoughts. "Already did that, that's why my laptop's busted." He said, with an shrug that would've looked indifferent to anyone else. "And it's not just him. He's just Chief Idiot of the Idiot Tribe." Everyone left. They always came back but it was the leaving that got to him.

He caught the skeptical look on Doug's face and shrugged again. "Okay, mostly it's Forge, and it's not like I can just fly out there and punch him in the mouth." So he'd pounded on his keyboard a few times. The broken claws and bloody fingers from the cracked plastic had cleared his head long enough to get through the rest of the day.

"I...have to admit I gave serious thought to commandeering a Frost Industries private jet to fly out there and beating Chief Idiot about the head and shoulders myself." And Emma probably wouldn't have even objected all that much, either. "But at the end of the day, it probably wouldn't solve anything." Besides, Forge could be remarkably hard-headed and stubborn even when it was clear he was being an idiot.

"Yeah, he knows how to use a taser." Kyle said bitterly. "Pretty sure if he's not answering emails, he's not gonna actually talk to us anyway." Whatever bug had gotten up Forge's butt, Kyle didn't know, and it was pretty hard to find out when your phone calls and voice mails weren't getting answered. "But dude, I'm just sayin', hitting him in the eye would feel pretty good right up until I felt really shitty about it."

"Hnh." An idea occurred to Doug, one that might be a bit more productive in the long term than punching said irritating inventor friend of theirs in the eye. "You got workout gear on you?" he asked Kyle, looking at the backpack and moving toward a closet.

"I got sweatpants." Kyle almost always carried a pair. Putting his foot through the ass of his jeans in the men's room just once was enough reason to start keeping a spare pair of sweatpants rolled up tightly in the bottom of his bookbag. "You got tape?" It wasn't hard to figure out. "Wouldn't wanna claw up anything important." There weren't a whole lot of other things that Doug could be suggesting. "You know, like your face."

"You kidding? I buy tape in bulk," Doug said with a laugh, pulling out a gym bag. "We might not have any high-tech Danger Room here, but who needs high-tech to vent a little frustration by pounding the crap out of each other?"