Kyle, Angel and Julian - job offer

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Angel and Julian bring in their new Gen-X mentor. It's probably the only easy thing they've had to do with Gen-X since it's inception.



It felt a bit like deja vu, Angel thought as she sat in the kitchen with Julian, flipping through files and reading papers. Well, mostly. Last time they had done this Julian had still had his hands.

Angel cast a sideways look at the door to see if Kyle was coming yet, and upon seeing that her view was Kyle-free looked back at Julian. "How are you?"

Still on pain killers, the words didn't register to Julian at first, the focus of his complete attention on turning the pages through the fog in his mind. Then he realized that Angelica's voice wasn't imagined. Looking up to meet her eyes through the slightly glassy surface of his own he smiled, "Well enough, Firefly." He held up a stump, "Whoa, wait, no..." he collected himself, taking a deep breath while closing his eyes, then letting it out as a sigh. Words flowed with the long, slow exhalation of held breath, "I don't call you that anymore, do I?"

"It's alright," Angel assured him gently. "Drugs are a trip, huh?"

The book slammed shut, accidentally. Meeting her eyes once more, "I'm starting to see the appeal."

"Oh man this isn't the kind of meeting where someone sets me on fire while I'm floating upside down, is it?" Kyle's tone was a little forced-jokey, because that was J, and J had no hands and that - that was pretty goddamn freaky, but he sure as shit wasn't saying so. "Cause whatever it is, Thomas Jefferson did it."

"Only if you're mean to us," Angel quipped, putting on a smile for Kyle as she cleaned up the files she'd been flipping through and set them aside. "Take a seat."

"This is not making me feel less like you're gonna set me on fire, Angel." Kyle plopped down into the seat, oddly not sprawling or lounging like usual. "But on the other hand like, if I'm Alexander Hamilton and you're George Washington, that'd make J here, Thomas-Thomas and I really need to stop listening to Hamilton. I think it's making Xavin and Rahne think I'm crazy."

"They're not the only ones," Angel said with a bit of a smirk. "But alright, we're here on Serious Business. Jess stepped down as a mentor, and we thought we could handle it with just the two of us but um....that's not really working out. There are a lot of kids." And Julian was on medical leave. But Angel had enough tact not to say that out loud.

After a beat of silence passed, Julian pressed on. "You're popular with the students, for...whatever reason. We'd like you to join us as a mentor for the Ne....um..." he paused and collected himself. "For the next little while, I mean...in an interim capacity, in case we can't find someone who may be better suited. Or...if you're interested, you could just take the job."

Kyle opened his mouth to retort back at Julian and then snapped it shut, and laughed. "Yes, interested, yes, job, man, how much percocet are you on right now?" He leaned forward, and rested his chin on one hand. "Angel, you uh, know I'm quitting the X-Men, right? I mean I kinda haven't exactly you know, shown up for anything lately, so it's not a secret but... I don't wanna set you guys up to have to find someone new if that's gonna be a thing."

"The answer is blue," Julian interjected, keeping his face deadpan at the others' curious expression. A beat of silence passed between the trio, Julian went back to turning pages.

Angel shrugged at Kyle and mouthed Painkillers. You know, before saying out loud, "Yeah, I sort of figured that when you stopped showing up for Danger Room sessions." That might've been just as well. One less mentor on a team risking mutilation of some kind. "You know the kids, you're good with them - well, most of them, but no one is great with Maya except like two people. So as far as I'm concerned you've basically got the job."

"Eh, Maya's... like I'm an easy target, right? White, dude, seems straight, if she wants to like, use me as a target dummy for her teenage pissiness.." Kyle shrugged. "What's she gonna do to me? She's like, fourteen. If she wants to go after me, it means she might not lash out at her peers who are actually pretty, you know. I mean. Yana. Xavin. Mosta alla those kids have some shit going on." He actually did know how old she was even if he kept lowering how old he accused her of being. "J, Percoset's yellow bee-tee-dubs. Oxy's blue." The dumb ass shit he remembered from Red-X Emergency Responder training. "Okay, so basically it's powers training, get the monsters to work as a team, keep them from killing each other and themselves."

He raked both hands through his hair and made a chuff-bark-noise. "Lay it on me, how bad has it been because man I know those kids bitch about the adults. Super hearing, hard to miss it."

Angel couldn't help but smile as she pulled the files over for Kyle to look at. This was exactly why she wanted him - he already knew what was going on. "Alright, well you know most of them already, so it won't be hard to catch you up...."