xp_logs | Nathan and Doug, Friday afternoon

Sometime after his adventures with the robotic squid, Doug wanders into the kitchen and finds Nathan making a chocolate jalapeno cake to take with him to Muir for Moira. The two of them chat idly, then less idly as the subject turns to the X-Men. Doug gives voice to some of the thoughts he's been having on that score; Nathan is supportive, but warns him to take a balanced perspective on idealism and realism, whatever road he winds up following.

Humming to himself, Nathan checked on the chocolate melting in the double boiler. "Come along," he muttered disapprovingly at the sight of still-solid chunks. "I don't have all day..." Shaking his head, he turned away, waving a hand at the bowl with the egg whites. The whisk started to beat the mixture energetically, and he leaned over to retrieve a proper-sized pan from the cupboard.

Still bored. Bored bored bored. Boredy boredy boredy bored. Doug wandered down towards the kitchen. Maybe a snack would make him less bored. Upon finding the kitchen already occupied, Doug smiled. Conversation! Maybe that would lessen his boredom. From the way Nathan was puttering with chocolate and eggwhites, he rather suspected a cake was in the offing. And then he noticed the jalapeno peppers sitting off to one side.

Nathan laughed, noticing the dubious look. "Yes," he said, "the jalapeno peppers are going into the chocolate cake." The chocolate stirred itself behind him, and a cupboard across the room opened, the flour coming floating out.

Doug nodded slowly, a skeptical look on his face. "I guess this means Doc Mactaggart really _is_ pregnant," he said, somewhat amused. "Making it for when she comes back, or do you have plans to go over there and see her?" he asked.

"You can appreciate a combination of chocolate and spice without being pregnant," Nathan protested mildly as he continued to assemble the cake. "But yes, it's for Moira. Clarice is dropping me off on Muir a little later tonight."

"Taking the Ferguson Express, eh? She should start charging for it," Doug said whimsically. "Not that she'd be that mercenary," he continued. "Yana, on the other hand..."

"Illyana wouldn't charge me either," Nathan said with a certain amount of confidence. "Well, not charge me money, at least." He turned his attention to the egg yolks, but not before raising an eyebrow at Doug. "So. Bored."

"Bored," Doug agreed. "Angie's in New Orleans. And not that I need her to have fun, but I am completely at a loss for anything to do."

"Mmm. All done your homework?" Nathan said, mostly teasing.

"I feel like Paige. I'm a week ahead on my reading, I helped Dani make lunch for the little kids, I did some coding work for Forge with that crazy robotic squid. And I am still bored." Doug fidgeted with the stool he was sitting on.

"You need a hobby, Douglas," Nathan said with a chuckle.

"I have hobbies!" Doug said somewhat desperately. "The band, D&D, Magic...just none of them seem to be helping me with the boredom thing."

"You could always ask Scott to help you with the boredom problem?"

"Um, no. Boredom does not equal 'please take me out and run me into the ground some more, Mr. Summers'," Doug replied with a sardonic grin.

"He's still doing that, huh?" Nathan asked, although he knew the answer perfectly well.

"I don't think he took the turtle-on-Roomba thing very well," Doug said, with a grin of remembrance. "But I think it was worth it. And it wasn't as though I was going to do anything to hurt Horatio. He's such a cute turtle."

Nathan kept his thoughts on Scott and the fact that he was overidentifying with the turtle wisely to himself. "I wish I had the boredom thing going on," he said idly. "Seems like there's too much to do lately, and not just because I was stupid and took on six classes this term."

"Working yourself into the ground isn't any better than not having anything to do, boss man," Doug said. "You holding up okay with everything?"

Nathan chuckled, peering at his chocolate. Almost melted. "If you'd asked me this question a week ago, you'd have gotten a 'No, not really'. Things seem to be settling down, though." He paused for a moment, smiling a bit, and then shrugged mentally. "Looks like I might be wearing one of those leather suits soon after all."

Doug paused for a long moment at the oblique mention of the X-Men, his thoughts rather jumbled on the subject. "I...think you'd be a good addition," he eventually said diplomatically.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "Why the sudden 'Look at me, I'm ambiguous!' mental blast there, Doug?"

Doug shrugged. "I dunno." He chuckled dryly. "That ambiguous enough for you?"

Nathan gave him a long, speculative look. "Hmm. The ambiguity stems back to the blood drive, doesn't it?"

"Sort of. More the realization that I think I have no desire to be an X-Man." And there it was, out there in front of god and man.

"Who said that you had to?" Nathan asked simply.

"Nobody," Doug admitted. "But it's just that a lot of the people in this mansion seem to idolize the X-Men and their entire goal seems geared towards earning a set of leathers. And I still can't figure out whether Mr. Summers running me through all this training is geared towards a set of my own, or whether I'm supposed to learn something else from it."

Nathan snorted softly, taking the chocolate off the heat and adding the butter. A knife floated out of the knife rack, chopping the jalapeno peppers into very fine pieces, which then levitated over to the chocolate. "Scott is not about to try and recruit you, Doug - you can take that as a given. You don't think you've learned anything from the training?"

"Other than a very long lesson in what Kevlar does and does not do, and coming to this realization that I don't want to be an X-Man, I'm not sure," Doug replied. "I don't know what I'm _supposed_ to be learning."

"Maybe that's it, then," Nathan said evenly. "To show you that you have the wrong instincts, and that maybe you don't want to correct that. Of course," he went on with a crooked grin, "there's the possibility that it's still to a large extent punitive."

"Well, duh. I mean, I know that 5AM run from the other day was," Doug said with a grin. "But I still say that it was well-earned."

Flour, egg yolks, vanilla... Nathan stirred the mixture, levitating the bowl with the egg whites over to where he stood. "You know," he said, "what the team does, in a lot of ways, is a lot more difficult and dangerous than anything I did as a mercenary. There's nothing wrong with not wanting that kind of lifestyle, Doug."

"I don't," Doug admitted. "Besides, isn't the Professor's dream for a world where people don't _have_ to put their lives at risk? I think that HeliX was a much better idea for that, but then some FoH jackasses went and torched the freakin' coffehouse, and everyone's run off with their tails between their legs." Doug blew out an explosive frustrated breath.

Nathan stopped what he was doing, trying to analyze what he was sensing. Charles was encouraging him to do this, to take a minute if what he was getting wasn't clear to him. "Have you ever heard the term 'realpolitik'?" he asked finally.

"Coined by Bismarck," Doug said after a moment. "Compromising rather than toeing a hard doctrinal line."

"Not quite," Nathan disagreed. "Politics based on practical concerns, rather than theory or ethics."

Doug nodded. "Okay. But back in Bismarck's day, it mostly meant keeping the peace through a balance of power and avoiding things like arms races. At least, that's the way _I_ read the history," he said deprecatingly.

"Divorce it from its historical context for a minute - and yes, I can't believe I'm saying that," Nathan said, pouring the batter carefully into the pan. "The problem with the idea of compromise is that it's too often seen as weakness, as backing down from your position. The problem with that is that there's no movement to be had if you don't."

"Like the American political system. Both parties are so busy demonizing the other that stuff rarely gets done unless one party essentially controls all three branches of the government?"

Nathan blinked. "Well... sort of, I suppose. But I'm getting off-track." He finished pouring the batter and lifted the pan, bringing it over the oven door, which opened at his approach. "You say that the Professor's dream is about a world where people don't have to put their lives at risk. That's true. But we don't have that world right now, Doug, and we may not for a long time to come. That's what makes the X-Men necessary."

Doug nodded slowly. "I kinda suspected that's where you were headed with that whole thing," he admitted. "And I understand what you're saying. But at the same time, I think there's got to be better, less violent ways to achieve the same goals. Red X, for example."

Nathan sighed. "And what can Red X do about Magneto? Or Mistra?"

Doug shrugged. "Yeah. I know. The likelihood of talking people like that down are relatively low. But my point is, what if, through activism and stuff, mutants were an accepted part of police forces or the military? Then we wouldn't have to resort to what occasionally amounts to vigilanteism."

"And that's a worthwhile goal to aim for," Nathan said amiably, although he had trouble not raising an eyebrow at the idea that Doug seriously thought that talking to either Magneto or the Mistra directors was even feasible. "But does that mean that the problems that require the vigilanteism are going to go away while you work towards it?"

"Not necessarily." Doug smiled at Nate. "I know you think I'm being a bit pie-in-the-sky idealistic here, but at the same time, if nobody works to change the status quo, then we're never going to get anywhere."

Nathan frowned a little. "Uh, am I missing something? Did my mouth open and inform you that there was no point to idealism when I wasn't keeping an eye on it?"

"Um, not really?" Doug said uncertainly. "I just imagine you're trying to keep me a bit grounded in the real world while I'm off dreaming my brighter tomorrow." He grinned.

Nathan didn't respond to the grin. His eyes narrowed a little, and although his voice was mild when he spoke, there was a definite edge to it. "I'm not about to step on anyone's idealism, not even in the name of encouraging them to be more practical about it," he said. "But you want to watch that train of thought very carefully, Douglas. The people who do the un-idealistic work are not missing the boat, or falling behind, or failing to live up to the best potential of the dream."

Doug paused for a moment. "I didn't mean to imply that they were," he said apologetically. "Just making a bit of a joke that fell flat about someone holding me back so I don't wind up someplace completely unrealistic."

Nathan relaxed a little, although his gaze didn't get any less intent. "You don't think that way," he said with a certain amount of confidence. "It's an extreme. When you're one of the people pushing the envelope, it's sometimes very easy to look down your nose at the people on the ground trying to hold back the tide."

"I didn't mean to imply that I was," Doug reiterated. "I have the utmost respect for you, and Mr. Summers, and Ms. Munroe, and Ms. Blaire, and Mr. Al-Rashid. I just kind of came to the realization that the X-Men aren't for me. And that's even aside from the fact that I'd probably be a bit of a liability in the field."

Talking in circles. Nathan shrugged, letting it go, and smiled. "So long as you find your niche one way or the other, that's the important thing," he said fondly.

"And maybe that's been the whole purpose of Mr. Summers' training," Doug said. "I mean, it hasn't all been brutally early runs around the lake..."

"If it's given you food for thought, it's been a success," Nathan said, and then chuckled. "And hell, it probably hasn't been bad for your general fitness level, either."

Doug snorted. "You're probably right. Not that I was exactly a layabout couch potato before, but yeah."

"There, see? Win-win situation. Scott gets to be sadistic, you get lots of exercise." Nathan grinned. "You can't ask for a better deal than that."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

x-rahne.livejournal.com

And it's easy for people who are holding back the tide or have been swept up in it before to end up looking down their noses at the people who are talking about how it should be -- or painting broad strokes to tell people who are too far back to see the details, right Nathan?