xp_logs | Miles & Gabriel, Wednesday afternoon

Gabriel meets Miles and the two new Latinos get to know each other a little.

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters wasn't Brooklyn Visions Academy. For one, none of the teachers at Visions had claws or tails, although there were more than a few who could be considered hirsute. And even though Visions offered pretty small class sizes compared to public school, Xavier's was even smaller. Miles wouldn't be able to get away with Wikipedia summaries for English class anymore. So he was sure that he was making his parents proud by actually sitting down to read The Grapes of Wrath instead of pawning it off to Ganke and "helping" with his Spanish homework in exchange.

Miles got approximately three-and-a-half pages in before Steinbeck's prose left him wondering if the pantries stocked cans of Monster. Alternatively, some fresh air might help keep him awake, so he pulled on a hoodie and headed outside. A large and probably very old oak tree seemed to call his name (are there any spiders who live in oak trees? he wondered) so he settled down at the base to continue reading. The change in scenery didn't do much to keep his attention, though, so he climbed up to a sturdy branch to read there. A couple more configurations followed until finally he scooted down the branch, wrapped his legs around it, and hung upside-down.

There. Much more comfortable.

Now liberated and free from a busy schedule of theft, sex and bartending, Gabriel was finding it difficult to fill some of his time during the day. So he'd done what any lazy, loafing teenager with no obligations might do in a mansion full of do-gooders: Used his super-speed to find the most isolated, distant part of the grounds and lit up the only joint he'd been willing to bring with him from the city.

It hadn't been worth it. He wasn't high, exactly, although he had become mildly paranoid he was going to get caught and kicked out. So to compensate, he'd sat in the middle of the grass and smoked a cigarette to cover up the smell of pot with the smell of tobacco. And, just in case he needed a further alibi, he had another cigarette in his mouth that he had yet to light.

All of which was to say that the sight of the new kid hanging in a tree was only a little bit more surprising and amusing than it usually might have been, and had he not been more concerned with not smelling like a Colombian-run grow house, he would have started cracking up.

Instead, Gabriel settled for a grin. "Oye, new guy - you know that's dangerous, right?"

Miles looked up (down?) for the source of the call. He didn't have super senses like Kyle did, but they were acute enough that he could catch a whiff of someone who smelled like the hallway in Uncle Aaron's apartment building. "You really gonna say that when you're the one with the cancer stick?" he called back. "Those things'll kill you."

"Fair enough." Gabriel used his powers to speed toward the tree, standing close enough from the guy to be seen but with enough distance that he wouldn't be the cushion when the kid eventually plopped down from his branch. He made a show of putting the cigarette back in his pocket. "One less smoke that I will inhale today. You're a life-saver. I'm Gabriel, by the way. Don't know that we've been officially, in-person introduced."

One more to add to the list, Miles thought, and this time not even with his costume on. Maybe he was making a difference already. "Miles Morales. Nice to meet you. I just transferred here a coupla days ago. You a teacher here? Not really setting a good example for impressionable people like me," he teased.

"Oh god, me, teach?" Gabriel wrinkled his nose. "Do I look that old?" It might not have sounded that way, but that was an actual question - his faster-than-usual aging process meant he'd started to lose track. "No, no, no. I'm just an inmate. Resident, maybe. Jury's still out - I haven't been here all that long myself."

"You're older than me so I assume you're a teacher. That's just what I'm going on until told otherwise. Hold on a sec." It was getting weird talking to someone who was upside-down (right-side up, whatever), so Miles stuffed his book into the pocket of his hoodie, reached up to grab the branch for leverage, and somersaulted off the tree. As always, he nailed the landing.

"So you here for powers stuff, then? I heard that the school offers to teach any mutant no matter how old they are. Not that you're old! I just mean, you know, not in school anymore."

Gabriel blinked for a second, processing Miles' acrobatics until he realized the kid was staring at him expectantly. "What?" He ignored what he could only assume was a muted eye roll. "Sorry, you just — nice flip." He sighed, crossing his arms. "I'm here for powers stuff. Not in school - definitely not high school, definitely not college. I was in the city, making things happen for a while. Now I'm here." He waved his hands idly, as if blurring all the things that happened in between.

"Where in New York? I'm from Brooklyn. Same thing happened to me, pretty much. Stuff." Miles imitated Gabriel's vague hand gesture.

"Queens. I'm not from there, though. Texas born and raised." Gabriel shrugged. "New York's better." He shifted positions, then decided to just take a seat on the grass. "You're, what?" He gave Miles a once-over. "14? What stuff could there possibly be?"

"Fifteen." Miles didn't pout when he corrected Gabriel. Definitely not a pout. "Yo, look at me. How long have you been in New York? There's plenty of 'stuff' for people who look like me. Even more when they're mutants. ¿Usted es tejano, no?"

"Sí, sí. Pero vamos, tutéame o me haces sentir viejo." Gabriel probably hadn't spoken that much Spanish since leaving Queens. Possibly since leaving Texas. "I grew up in El Paso, right on the north side of the border. Been in New York for, what..." He counted in his head. "18 months? 19? Maybe closer to 2 years. Something like that."

"Lo siento." Miles settled down on the ground next to Gabriel. Yeah, he definitely smelled like Uncle Aaron's place. Not the odor he'd think a man who looked like him would have. "Why'd you go to New York? Trying to make it on Broadway?"

Gabriel snorted. "No. Not even close. I - " He eyed Miles, trying to decide he was trustworthy, but the mild high meant he ended up speaking before he really made a decision one way or the other. "I came out, and my parents weren't pleased. So I put 8 hours between us. And after it became clear we weren't going to have a tearfelt, heartwarming family moment, I figured I'd put a little more." He pulled a blade of grass out of the ground. "You've lived in Brooklyn your whole life, yeah?"

Ah, that made sense. A classic story, if television was anything to go by. Miles offered a small sympathetic smile because that's all he knew to do. "Yeah. Never really left New York much at all. I went to San Juan once for a month a couple of years ago to visit relatives but that's all. We don't take fancy vacations or anything. Or vacations at all unless you count a day to Long Island, which, spoiler alert: it isn't."

"Not missing much. Not that I've seen much either - Texas is weird. Austin's fun, though. Good music scene. Great tacos. New York's don't really compare. But they're very different places." Gabriel crossed his legs. "So is San Juan. You oughta talk to that doctor - you know the one I mean, or you will. You guys probably have some things in common."

"¿La boricua?" asked Miles. "Pero like, I've never really cared much about traveling. I like New York. I like Brooklyn. It's never been hard getting what I want. There's this great cuchifritos joint just down the block from my home. And Chinese takeout next door. Don't need much else, right?"

"You think?" Gabriel shrugged. "This as far from home as I've been, and I'm not talking distance." He turned to glance at the mansion. "From what I hear, you're likely to end up somewhere different if you stay long enough."

"That sounds ominous. Different how? You mean 'cuz like the X-Men live here and they get into all sorts of shenanigans?" There are worse ways to live, although Miles's priorities were a tad different than other people's. "Which stories have you heard so far? This prettyboy Julian told me about robot dinosaurs and living inside a Dungeons and Dragons game."

"Those are two surprisingly nerdy things for Julian to say. I got repeated mentions of demons, and that field trips are bad." Gabriel repeated the hand-waving gesture from earlier. "I don't know. I've seen some things, so I'm not trying to sweat it too much. A cat lady and her deranged girlfriend threatened to kill me the night before I got here. Can't imagine anything being weirder than that."

Nearly getting killed by a glow-in-the-dark gangster while pretending to be a superhero only to be saved at the last minute by a pair of real superheroes who couldn't have been 10 years older than him might have rated up there, but life wasn't a competition so Miles didn't give up that much.

"I'm sure if you try hard enough, you can," Miles said instead. "So's that how you got here? Almost killed, got saved, moved here? From what I've seen that's a pretty common origin story." Miles frowned. Did he actually just say "origin story?"

"Aw," Gabriel grinned. "Nerd. So, that's your story, I'm guessing?"

"I'm not a nerd." Miles was really going to have to work on his acting if he was going to be a convincing liar. "It's . . . something like that. There's lots of bad people out there. But also lots of good ones."

"And plenty of people somewhere in between," Gabriel added, mostly thinking about himself. He thought there was something naive about Miles' worldview but decided to keep that view to himself. "Keep talking like that, you're a shoe-in for the X-Men, for sure."

"That's the plan. And that was something I didn't need to admit." Miles looked away in embarrassment. "I am making a great first impression. Let's go back to the part where we were speaking Spanish so I sound more sophisticated."

"Hey, relájate. Tu secreto está a salvo conmigo." Gabriel suppressed the urge to ruffle the kid's hair. It's not like he was surprised to have a wannabe hero around, even if he had absolutely no way to identify with that. "You've got ambition. Or at least, an ambition. That's pretty great. Like, at 15, I wanted to be a baseball player."

"Heh. We all did. That or futbol. The Dominicanos in my neighborhood go crazy during the season. What're you doing now?"

"Lying on the grass talking to you," Gabriel joked. Truth be told, that was as certain as he could be right now. "I've been working at a bar in Chelsea, pouring cocktails and flirting for tips. Feels like I'm gonna do something else soon, though. Couldn't tell you what." God, he felt like a walking endorsement for staying in school.

"Funny. You should try your hand at comedy," Miles suggested wryly. "You could always teach. Everyone here's so good-looking, you could teach them how to make money by flirting, too."

Gabriel laughed. "Somehow, I doubt that's the kind of thing the teachers here want students to think about. And besides, I couldn't handle all the competition anyway. I'm not sure I'm all that good at it." He was lying. He was very good at it.

"Well, you're not Emma Stone," Miles admitted sadly. "But you're also not Iggy Azalea. So you might have a chance, amigo."

"Oh, gee, gracias." Gabriel rolled his eyes. There was a joke to made about that Iggy Azalea line about Louboutins, but he couldn't quite figure it out. "Not like I'm tryna impress you anyway."

Miles put a hand over his heart and looked up at Gabriel with wide eyes. "That hurts. Right here. Even after that flip off the tree you liked so much."

"You're young, my friend. You'll heal. And if not, we've got a trained medical staff on the premises, apparently."

"Wepa," Miles cheered in jest. "I should, uh, probably get back to the boring book about poor white people. Kyle - Mister Gibney - whatever he's called, he's a lot tougher than he looks."

"He'd have to be," Gabriel nodded as he rose to his feet. "Go to it. Hit the books. I probably have places I should be anyway." He really didn't. Gabriel extended his fist for a bump. "Great to meet you, X-Man of the Future."

Miles smiled brightly as he bumped back. "You too, Teach."