Kyle and Dori - morning workouts!

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Kyle has adopted Dori as 'his' trainee. Because he reminds her of him at that age only a girl and a lot geekier. So he drags her out at 5:30 to go running because X-Men trainees need cardio - and also to try to start teaching her some lessons about responsibility and working with a team.



Dori slept on her stomach, her tail pushing aside some of the blanket and twitching slightly in the air. Her normal sleeping attire was a Raider's jersey and a pair of shorts. She had left her window open, screen included, overnight so a few squirrels had wandered in and were sleeping at various places on the bed with her. Monkey Joe had his place of honor on the pillow right next to her.

She was, in a word, dead to the world.

Bribery worked wonders. Kyle knew the room would be empty except for Dori and he had warned her, if somewhat vaguely. A month prior. But he had warned her. And unlike Jean-Phileppe, who was an adult, and seemed to have every expectation that a great deal of his training would in fact, suck, Dori was almost too chipper about it.

Which was why he had brought along an airhorn. And a peanut-butter donut for Monkey Joe. The poor squirrel didn't really deserve to be woken up at 5:30 in the morning, and Kyle was going to apologize.

Doreen had really sensitive hearing. And though she was generally a pretty heavy sleeper, especially later in the year, there were some things you didn't sleep through. An air horn at five thirty at the morning was not one of them. There was a panicked fleeing of squirrels in all directions as Dori shot up, her tail about ten times it's normal size. Monkey Joe responded with his own version of loud, angry noises.

"Huh!? What?!"

"Good morning, fuzzbutt!" They hadn't assigned Dori a trainee name, so Kyle was going to go down the list, in order from most awful to least awful until one was assigned. He pulled the donut out of the pocket of his hoodie and put it down in Monkey Joe's 'corner' of the room, by his pet bed and other assorted squirrel things. "Time for morning PT."

Doreen had gone to bed maybe three hours ago, "Huh?" she said. Because now being on top of not awake, she was completely deaf.

"Morning PT. As in I bribe your squirrel to not murder me, and then drag your ass out of bed at really early in the morning to go running. Dress warm, it's really goddamn cold outside." Kyle pointed to his sweatpants and hoodie. "No shoes though. You're gonna wanna get used to being barefoot in cold weather, because eventually you're gonna be kicking some dude in the face in like, Alaska or something."

Doreen looked at him and at her clock, "But I just went to bed..."

"Yeah, I know, you smell pretty tired, but.." Kyle shrugged, appearing not in the least bit sympathetic. "You wanna be a superhero, sometimes you don't get to sleep." He'd only pull out the Batman card if she protested more. Kyle'd done research... if you could call watching that Batman movies while he edited one of Laurie's papers and ate pizza 'research'.

Doreen titled her head to one side. This wasn't how the fantasies of Kyle in her room normally went, "No more sleep?"

"No more sleep. Batman wouldn't sleep." There now he'd gone and used up his Batman card. He was going to have to go buy a Batman t-shirt now. Kyle crossed his arms and looked like he was in way too good a mood for five-thirty in the morning. "Hey, Mr. Marko did this to me like, five days in a row, only he dumped a box of ice on my bed. I'm not -that- mean." Yet.

"Who did what to who?" Dori asked, stumbling out of bed. She didn't bother reaching for her shoes, not only did she not care for them, she was too tired to figure out exactly what was going on. Three hours of sleep had a way of doing that to a person. "Batman can do anything," she muttered, shuffling towards the door, not making any move to actually open it.

Shorts and a t-shirt. It was thirty four degrees out. Kyle was going to make her work, but he didn't want to get the poor kid sick. He scratched his head and looked around the suite. "You know what, I'm gonna go stand in the hallway, and wait for you to get dressed. You have like, half a minute to find some pants and a jacket or else I'm gonna go get a box of ice." He definitely felt kind of like a jerkass here.

"Okay," Doreen said, she still wasn't fully awake, but she managed to find a bear of sweat pants and a shirt. The shirt having the "Starfleet Academy" logo and athletic program thing on it. She was, even mostly dead to the world, a total nerd. She padded out her door with a yawn, "I found pants."

"Five points to whatever spaceship you're from." Kyle said, grinning. "And I didn't even have to get ice. Sweet." He pulled a winter hat down over his ears - it was damn cold out there - and led Dori out to the back porch. "This is a thing that I like to call morning cardio. We run until either I get bored or we catch up with Laurie. You'll probably call it "why is Kyle such a meanie?". Jean-Philippe called it morning torture, and a bunch of stuff that Laurie says is swearwords in French."

Doreen yawned, the cold did a bit to wake her up though her brain was still very, very sluggish, "Where is Laurie? Why would we want to catch up with her?"

"I have no idea." Kyle said. "You might wanna stretch. Maybe not. There's like, debate on if it's helpful or not." He didn't, because there just wasn't much use and stretching was kinda boring. "Laurie sometimes goes jogging in the morning, and sometimes she goes other stuff. You get to jog because we wanna make sure you're doing cardio." And by 'we', Kyle meant Kyle. Mostly.

Dori shivered, "Who's we? And I run around plenty. I'll run around later."

"No, you're gonna do it now." Kyle said plainly. "Serious time, a lot of what you're gonna be doing if you wanna actually be on the X-Men is gonna suck. I don't mean like get covered in dirt or have to touch something icky suck. I mean suck. It's gonna be stuff you don't wanna do, and stuff you hate, and dammit, if you're gonna do this, you're gonna not end up dead because nobody took you seriously." He hasn't quite expected to get to the d-word but there it was. "And some of that is having a stupid codename and some of it is putting up with someone dragging your ass out of bed at five in the goddamn morning to run four miles."

Doreen groaned, her brain was finally starting to thaw out and though she spent a lot of her time that she wasn't doing homework, writing fanfiction, posting on message boards and otherwise being an internet troll out in the trees, she didn't want to go running around barefoot in the cold in the morning after a really bad night of raiding that just ended a couple of hours ago if that.

"This sucks."

"It beats being dead." Kyle said. "You manage all four miles and there's peanut butter waffles in my freezer for you."

"You mean we'll have breakfast together?" Doreen said instantly lighting up, "Let's go! Come on!" she said, she was now on the go.

Kyle had to take a second to recover before setting off at a fast sprint to catch up. "Note to self", he thought. "The carrot works way better than the stick with Dori."

---

Kyle wasn't all that much into peanut butter waffles, but he'd seen them at the store and figured they'd make a fantastic reward for Dori. And Monkey Joe, who had demanded one, or so Dori had said, as soon as they came out of the toaster. Watching a squirrel try to hold onto and eat an entire whole waffle was goddamn hilarious. "So, actually you didn't make bad time, I'm pretty impressed. Which means tomorrow I'm gonna make you figure out your heart rate so we can get it up, but you did good for me waking your ass up at dawn."

"You mean I have to do it again?" Doreen said, the waffle that was hanging from her mouth snatched by a happy Monkey Joe, "Why? I mean, I did awesome today, right?"

"You did okay today." Kyle corrected. "How many people on the X-Men do you think don't bother with some kind of exercise routine at least four or five times a week?" He held up a closed fist. "Big fat zero." Maybe. He wasn't actually sure but it sounded good. "And I know, you totally run around and stuff but it's not the same. It's like... even athletic dudes who join the army gotta do the army's exercise stuff. At least at first. You get black leathers and a real codename, you can pick whatever exercise you wanna do as long as you're in shape and aren't fucking up missions or in the Danger Room. Until then, you're doing cardio with me or Laurie or somebody, kay?"

"Awww, but I run around all the time on my own when I'm not on the internet. You know that," Dori said, taking a bit of waffle.

"I just explained this, Dori. Geez." Kyle set down his fork and raked a hand through his astoundingly messy post-jogging hair. "This isn't about how much exercise you get, it's not about your health, it's about working with people and being part of a team and doing things you don't wanna because the guys who know more than you do want you to do stuff." He was starting to get worried this wasn't going to get through to her. She wanted to be a Superhero! and Save The World! and even if she said she knew it might suck, Kyle was really worried that she didn't have any idea. How could she?

"I know, I know," she muttered, "I'm just saying I get plenty of work out and stuff."

"I'm not saying you don't. Geez, I'm not a total jerk here." Kyle frowned, trying to replay the conversation in his head to figure out how they'd gotten to this point. "Okay, back up. What do you think I'm saying?"

Doreen titled her head, taking another bite of waffles, "That I have to do this every morning?"

Kyle nodded. "Okay, right. You got that part. Why do you think I'm gonna make you get your taily butt up at lame o'clock in the morning?" His poor waffle was going ignored, but he'd eaten before he went running.

Doreen chewed on her waffle to think about that, "Because it's like basic training or something, right?" Kyle's waffle wasn't really going ignored. Monkey Joe was inching in closer and closer.

"Right. Your squirrel is going to get a bath if he eats my waffle." Kyle said, his grin showing teeth, but not malice or anger. "I have a squirt bottle." For his cat. Who still tried to steal food and was currently locked in Kyle's bedroom so Shamu and Monkey Joe wouldn't have antics. "What do you think I'm trying to teach you here?" Maybe he had come on too strong. He'd been a lot less sheltered when he's been a trainee. Jail, kidnapped half a dozen times, experimented on. Twice! "I'm not gonna jump down your throat no matter what you say. I'm totally over being mean. Today."

Monkey Joe made clicking noises that could have been the equivalent of 'bring it,' but Dori grabbed him and put him over by her again. "That you have to do things even if you don't want to sometimes?" Doreen offered, "I know you're not going to jump down my throat, it's like on TV tropes, the drill Seargent stuff. I love that site."

"I have no idea what that is." Kyle said. "And yeah, basically. And that sometimes you have to do that stuff you hate because you want to do something else you really want to do. Like, not playing your computer game until stupid early in the morning because your jerkass teammate makes you go running at 5 am."

"But I was helping guldies! We were doing a kingslayer run because the title is only going to mean something for a little bit longer, so we have to get it for people now and it takes forever to kill Arthas because he's made of stupid," Doreen explained.

Kyle took a moment to eat half his waffle, and try to make sense of that. "I have no idea what any of those words mean when they're in the same sentence, but I'd bet Doug does, and that he'll tell you the same thing I'm gonna tell you. If you wanna do this, no more two in the morning killing the guy made of stupid." And he was so emailing Doug after this.

"Okay," Doreen said, "We normally don't go that late though, but we kept trying. We finally got him again," so now she had killed Arthas on heroic mode a grand total of three times, and wiped almost a hundred, "But yeah..."

"Could be worse. Laurie was up half an hour before I was." Now there was someone even Kyle thought was a little crazy. "And you've got time for a shower and a nap before classes."

"Yeah, and if I'm still tired I can just nap in math class," Doreen said happily. Or drink more Mt. Dew than any one person should be able to humanly handle, "Thanks for breakfast," she said, standing up and grabbing Monkey Joe who still had a huge piece of waffle in his mouth.

"Or crazy idea, you could nap after classes, and not panic when exam time comes?" Kyle said, then shrugged, since he'd done much the same as Dori a few times when he'd been dragged out at 5am. "Nah. That's crazy talk..."