Quentin & Kyle, Tuesday morning

[xp-erverse.livejournal.com]

Quentin and Kyle meet during their morning runs and get along well. Really well. Like, really well.


Summer's arrival meant that Quentin could stop hermitting in his room when not at work and instead be an outdoor hermit. Today was a nice enough day for a run so, water bottle in hand, phone strapped to his bicep, and earbuds in place, he did a quick warmup on the front lawn before jogging down to the more secluded areas of the property.

He estimated he had only gone about half a mile before he had to stop and catch his breath. It was typically hot and humid for a New York summer day, and he knew he'd gotten out of shape over the winter — his struggle abs were struggling even more than usual to be seen — but this was worse than he had imagined. Ugh, he was going to have to start taking fitness seriously, wasn't he? How pedestrian.

Kyle heard whoever was definitely not making their couch-to-marathon goal for the week long before he saw them, or even smelled them. Summer meant all the little forest critters were awake, eating, making babies, pooping everywhere - the smell of deer shit was far overpowering everything else, but the sounds of someone getting their lungs to catch up was pretty distinctive. So it wasn't any of the regular jogging folks, because even Laurie had obsessively jogged once her arm healed up enough.

He crossed over a log - it was an off-trail kind of day - and then caught the faint smell of hair dye right before also catching the flash of bright pink. Kyle only hesitated for a second, Quentin was hostile, but he was an entertaining kind of hostile. "Man I would not have figured you for a jogging kinda guy." He said, a little louder than usual - but coming out of the forest all silent-ninja was creepier than "random guy yelling".

Quentin's own extra senses alerted him to the interloper before they announced themselves verbally. A psychic signature he had only noticed in passing before and not the quiet guardedness of either Clint or Gabriel, whom he would have expected to meet down here. He popped out an earbud and looked up at the stranger, and raised a curious eyebrow. The guy was an otter if he had ever seen one, although more lupine than mutseline.

"Yeah, well," he replied in between breaths, "telepathy doesn't give me the enhanced metabolism to stay so svelte without putting in the work."

"Naw, I figured you for like.." Kyle said with a shrug. "I dunno, nothing so boring as jogging, because it is boring as fuck." He pointed at his own ear buds, and then pulled them off his sweaty neck. "I mean I barely get through on like mixing it with parkour and loud ass music and I still don't wanna."

"Usually you jog alone, as in without other people," Quentin retorted. He stood back up, chest still heaving, and took a greedy swig from his bottle. "Why'd you figure me for anything? Do I even know you?"

"Usually I jog with other people just so its less boring." Kyle said. "And eh, no but on the journals you seen like the kinda dude who would not wanna spend an hour he could be, I dunno, whatever, Gabe, pot, yelling at that Maya kid, whatever. You don't seem like you like being bored."

The faintest hint of a grin ghosted Quentin's lips before he shut that shit down and maintained his resting bitch face. "There's enough hours in the day for all of that. Except maybe schooling that little b . . . brat. Eternity isn't long enough for that."

"Man that kid. Like." Kyle raked both sets of claws through his hair and let out a frustrated noise. "Man I have taught some hateful little shits but that kid takes the cake and shits on it and throws it at people. I get being pissed off at the world but it is so freaking hard not to go yell in her face."

Quentin shook his head. "There's no art to her trolling, either. You can't just yip at every little thing. You have to be more discriminatory. Some day she's gonna find herself at the wrong end of a psychic mindwipe. Once I figure out how to do that . . ."

"I hope you like tea cause, pretty sure that'll get you the tea-and-a-lecture meeting about powers." Kyle said. "I mean, I hate the kid, but going all erase-rewrite on her's probably, I dunno, over the line. I mean she's harmless basically, she's just hateful."

"No, I'm hateful," the telepath corrected, "She just has some sort of undiagnosed personality disorder that should require constant sedation."

"Nah, you're too purposeful to be hateful." Kyle threw out. "I mean, at least from over here, all your, okay call it hate, but I'd bet there's a better word to describe it, it all has a reason, right? Maya's just a shit." He scratched at his neck as he spoke and then pulled a face. "Shit hold on I have..." He pulled his shirt up half off his chest and contorted his arm behind his back. "Fucking pine needles." He muttered. And the shirt came off, along with a few pine needles. "Jesus that itches."

Struck by a sudden thirst, Quentin drained half his water bottle to soothe it. "Why do you even have pine needles all over you?" he asked, not bothering to hide his roaming eyes taking in the sight before him and committing it to memory.

"Parkour." Kyle said, flicking pine needles off his side - and aiming a few at Quentin once he noticed the staring. "Well, I mean really more like just being fucking Tarzan, it's not free running if you're up a tree but it's the same skills. It's less boring than jogging and it's come in handy a couple of times."

Quentin flinched and tried to bat away the little projectiles. He picked one that got stuck on his own shirt and telekinetically launched at Kyle in reprisal, and it landed square in the valley between the older man's well-developed pectorals. "So you're basically just looking for an excuse to get lyme disease?"

"Immune." At least Kyle was almost one-hundred percent he was, because with as much time as he'd spent out here, he'd have it by now. "Immune to pretty much everything, healing factor takes care of it. No colds, no flu, no stds." He finally, carefully plucked the last pine needle - the one that Quentin had so artfully placed - off his chest and started to pull his shirt back on, only to catch the collar with an untrimmed claw, leaving a jagged rip a few inches long. "Fuck. I ruin more shirts..."

"Ah. Convenient." While it was a good thing Quentin was the telepath so Kyle couldn't detect the images playing in his head now, it didn't help when his body made it clear what he was thinking about. He started some toe touches and lunges to cover up even as he knew it wouldn't do any good.

"Pretty damn convenient." Kyle was unsuccessfully trying not to laugh, and it came out as a few snorts, and a muffled noise as he rubbed his face. "Jesus this whole thing though, like, I'm all ripping my clothes by accident and you're... " He snorted again. "You're super -you-, and man some bad porn writer in San Francisco is seriously writing this right now only instead of you dating Gabe you're like, single and we fuck in a tree."

Quentin stopped mid-lunge and looked Kyle straight in the eye, his expression deadly serious. "First, Gabriel and I are fucking, not dating. Do I look like the kind of fa . . . idiot who dates? Second, this is much too self-aware for porn. At least for good porn. And third . . . since when do you suck cock?"

"Don't, but that's cause most guys I know aren't into getting their dicks tore up." Kyle opened his mouth and pointed to his teeth. "And uh, dude? Bi. I mean, if dated a dude, slept with that dude, slept with another dude like once counts. I just don't don't like, do it a lot." He snorted out another laugh. "Man the best porn is self-aware. I mean, shit, if porn can laugh at itself it's great."

"Uh huh." Still hunched over and with his imagination running wild about what Kyle in bed with another man would look like, Quentin discretely tried to adjust himself. He stood up when he was satisfied that he was not sticking out at full mast. "You don't have to defend your sexual orientation to me. There aren't any fucking points."

"Wait you mean I bought those flip cards they use in the Olympics for scoring for nothing? Shit." Kyle retorted. "Man, no points, no toaster." He dramatically threw up his hands. "Naw, I mean, I know, but like, even you were surprised just now. I mean, I'm not like stealth queer, I'm just like, picky about what dudes I'm into."

"Masc for masc, no fats, no femmes." Perhaps Quentin was projecting his own online hookup experiences. He snorted derisively, more at his own history than Kyle. "Thoughts on spice and rice?"

"Eh, femme's okay. Nothing wrong with that." Kyle shrugged. "I don't have like, a race pref? I just like dudes who are, I dunno, aggressive or something. Angry, into not looking like a passer, confidence is pretty hot." He smirked, and eyed Quentin - shoulders, hands, ass. "I bet you know dudes like that." He was so going to get teek tossed into a tree or something.

Well, this wasn't turning out to be the afternoon run Quentin had planned for. Crossing his arms over his chest, he sauntered a few steps closer to Kyle. "I can't lift that much," he said in response to the unspoken worry. A ghostly hand ran down Kyle's chest, though, to demonstrate what he was telekinetically capable of doing. "Aggressive and angry? Got some frustration to work out?"

"Oh jesus that's weird." It was not a complaint, if the shift of Kyle's hips and groin had anything to say about it. "Always, but like, it's also... fuck, it's hard to explain.." It was especially hard to explain right at that second. Hard was a general problem for Kyle right then. "It's just what I'm into. I like people who aren't scared to get into a fight. Something pretty hot about people, I mean, dudes or girls, who are like, capable of taking care of shit."

"Maybe I'll tell you what I learned to do with TK to myself when I was 15," Quentin teased, stopping just a couple of feet away from Kyle, close enough to see the droplets of sweat clinging to the hairs on his chest, to breathe in the smell of exertion through the woods. He licked his suddenly chapped lips. "Through lots of trial and error. And, you know, I don't fight. Physically. With words, though, but that's different."

"Fightin with words is still starting or ending a fight. You just have a different set of weapons." Kyle pulled his shirt up to swipe at his face. "Fuck I am going to have to go dump a box of ice to get through the day not thinking about... " he shook himself all over, again, trying to get the specific mental image of Quentin's questionable TK talents out of his head. "Fuck I have to go teach in an hour, and it's Rahne, and if I have to leave the room to jerk it during her english class I'm making you help."

Quentin really was not trying to invade Kyle's mental privacy. If there was one lesson that was hammered into his head every day, it was to keep out without explicit permission. Still, Quentin's shields were mediocre at best, and Kyle's were even worse. What harm was there just to peep? "Is that a threat or a promise?" he asked, now standing so close than his hand "accidentally" brushed against Kyle's package. "An hour? That's enough time to live out what you've got going up here." He tapped Kyle's forehead, grinning.

"See, told you this was someone's half-decent porn." Kyle grabbed at the finger poking him in the forehead and dragged a claw - a move that managed to be both aggressive and intensely, painstakingly careful at the same time - across Quentin's palm.

The gesture sent a shiver — more of a tremor, really, was how intense it was — down Quentin's spine. It was all he could do not to just bend over right there. At least they weren't far from the mansion entrance. Quentin estimated four and a half minutes before they could shed the clothes that seemed so restrictive now. "We gonna stay out here and keep talking or go to my room and make it more than half-decent? Hope you're not allergic to chinchilla fur . . ."

"Seriously, you have a chinchilla?" Kyle was momentarily distracted, because like jogging, Quentin didn't see the type for a pet. "Dude, breaking all my assumptions about you. Jogging. Pet owning. Dee-Tee-Eff..."

Quentin hooked a finger around the waistband of Kyle's shorts and gently tugged, urging him to return inside. "Why don't we go see how I can further enlighten you?"