Kyle, Doug, DDR, giant bananas and girls.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

The boys talk. Kyle doesn't understand girls. Neither does Doug, really. also, Forge is being kicked in the ankle sometime today.



Enhanced hearing didn't help much when you had a set of wireless earphones in. It also does very little when your attention is focused heavily on the flashing lights and patterns of the game machine. Coordination came easily to Kyle, but the attention he needed to not get distracted by the other noises and by the background images on the game was the hard part. The short songs were easy. The longer ones, he had to concentrate.

The DDR game, with its custom after-market modifications to allow for side effects of mutant powers, as well as differing musical tastes, seemed to be the hit of the mansion. You could usually find someone killing some time on it in the rec room, and today was no exception. Doug smiled slightly at the intent look on Kyle's face and decided not to interrupt him, electing to head towards the large video game collection, browsing through it for something fun to play.

The trick, Kyle had decided, was to plug in a set of earphones and hope no one (like his roommate) came by hell-bent on screwing up his run of perfect scores. He has a goal, and that was to see Jubilee eat her shoes in jealousy.

So far, it wasn't working out very well, but he figured one of these days, he'd get a set of earphones that blocked out all those little side noises. Like someone playing Mario Kart and the bawling noise that the game made when the Baby Mario Brothers lost.

Kyle plucked the earphones out of his ears and stomped the game back to the menu before looking over at the television. Blond hair, sitting just a touch too close to the screen, goofy looking T-shirt from a bookstore. Doug. And not the cool one. Kyle frowned.

To be fair, Doug had turned the volume down on the television, hence why he was sitting close to the screen. He just hadn't allowed for Kyle's mutant-enhanced senses. Oblivious to the frowning feral mutant behind him, Doug began another course, grinning when the Baby Brothers' special attack sent their cart careening behind a huge Chain Chomp.

"Dude." Kyle started. "You could at least play something -cool-, and not ..." He trailed off, distracted by the apperance of a giant banana on the screen.. "Man, that's just... " He shook his head. Nerds. At least Forge played games that didn't have -giant freakin' bananas- in them.

Doug paused the game and turned, raising an eyebrow at Kyle's assessment of the game he was playing. "It isn't always about what's cool," he said quietly. "Sometimes it's just about having fun and not taking yourself too seriously."

"In a totally cool way." Kyle argued. "Without. Giant. Bananas." He snorted. "Can you, you know, do whatever and turn into Cool Doug? Because he's... you know, -way- cooler than you."

Doug did his best to hide the involuntary wince at what had become a running joke. Even if Kyle had maybe become convinced that Doug was indeed _not_ twins, he still couldn't seem to accept that someone as nerdy as Geek Doug could also be Cool Doug.

Kyle was, at best, not the most socially adept creature. So the wince went entirely unnoticed in favor of his attempts to catch as few nerd cooties as possible. "So, .. no giant bananas, and ..." He frowned. "You take that dance class, right?"

It was kind of hard to be angry at Kyle when it was painfully obvious how astonishingly oblivious he could be. "Yes, I take the dance class," he replied, continuing his game.

"Jamie said girls like that stuff, but.. " Kyle shrugged. "I don't -get- it. I don't. Back home, that stuff was for, well, a guy would get beaten up for stuff like that. But then, Forge was at the dance and he did okay and ... " He threw up his arms. "What the hell. I don't get girls, I don't get people."

"You're not supposed to get girls," Doug said with a grin. "They like it that way. But really, most of the secret is just in paying attention to them, and doing nice things. That's most of what dancing is about. Paying attention to them so that you don't step on their feet or anything, and doing something nice in getting dressed up and getting to be close to each other."

"Someone needs to write this stuff down!" Kyle protested, stomping and causing the DDR machine to squawk back at him. He glanced over at it and frowned. "Hell. 's gonna screw my high score and dammit, I just -got- high score on this thing." With a quiet growl, he kicked the pad again, and then snorted. "Remind me to kick Forge in the ankle. The real one. I think the weasel made it so I can't back out of menus or something."

"It's not really all that complicated," Doug replied, pausing his game to look at Kyle. "Girls like to know that they're important. You do that by paying attention to them, doing nice things for them. But most of all, you just have to be yourself."

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because every girl wants a guy with claws and a fangface." He shook his head violently and then shrugged. "Nevermind. 's not a big deal." Because the last thing he wanted to do was admit that the claws and fangs still really, really bugged him.

Which would have worked fine, except for the fact that Doug was essentially a walking lie detector. But he doubted the direct approach would work very well on Kyle. "You _do_ remember where you are, right, Kyle? Normal is subjective, and nowhere is that more apparent than here. You've got two guys with wings, one who looks like something straight out of the Bible, a guy who has to wear sunglasses all the time so he doesn't knock a hole in the nearest wall, a guy with a prosthetic hand and foot...the list goes on. You just gotta be content with who you are."

"Yeah, and a big blue furry guy who does my monthly checkups to make sure I'm not gonna get any more fucked up looking." Kyle shrugged. "I still miss real teeth and toenails that don't shred my pants." He sighed. "And the more I talk about it the more I get all pissed about it so I should probably just shut up and deal, huh?"

Doug shrugged. "Whatever works best for you," he said. "But for myself, I've found that bottling it up usually doesn't work, and leads to crankiness and yelling matches down the line."

The DDR pad was now bleeping insistantly, and Kyle stomped again, trying to shut it up. "Okay, computer guy? Help? Make it stop?" He asked. "And I dunno, I mean, Clarice is cute, but, Shiro. And Dani and Catseye are like, all over Forge, and Dr. Maddy's sister or whatever she is, and ... " He shrugged. "I dunno. I just feel like I don't fit in. Again."

Doug stood up from the couch, and tapped experimentally at the pad. "Hm. I think you're right, and Forge tweaked it a bit so that when you log your data file in, a few things are a bit different from normal." He backed out of the menu and closed out Kyle's session for him. "And try not to worry so much about finding a girl or anythinglike that," he said. "Trust me, I made a complete idiot out of myself when I first got here. Things like that happen when you least expect them. I know it's cliche, but that's because it's true."

Kyle growled quietly. "Definitly kicking him in the ankle then." He said with a snort. "You're older though, and yeah, okay, you're a big nerd, but you've got a hot girlfriend." Even if she was -weird-, but Kyle wasn't saying that. "I don't get girls. I ... " He shrugged. "I dunno, maybe all the people who told me about girls didn't get them and were just full of crap."

"It's possible." Doug smiled. "Want to know a secret? Marie-Ange and me getting together was really kind of an accident, it just happened because of some stuff that happened to the two of us. And it happened at a time when I was completely not expecting anything from anyone. And I _still_ don't get what I did to deserve her. But it's not really about deserving. It's just about finding someone who makes you happy. And who you make happy."

"And I bet the next thing you say is that I shouldn't be too worried about it, cause I'm fourteen and I've got a ton of time, right?" Kyle said. "Doc Samson said the same thing. Its still annoying." He stepped away from the DDR machine and flopped down on the floor in a sunny spot. "Everyone tells me that."

"Oh, I'm not saying it can't be annoying, but the trick is not to try too hard. That usually just leads to embarassment. Trust me on that." Doug smiled wryly at the memory of his first few months at the mansion. Odd that he could feel like such an old hand, dispensing wisdom to the newbies, after such a short amount of time. "You _do_ have a lot of time," he continued. "I'm not saying don't keep trying, just don't try too hard, you understand the difference?"

"No." Kyle said, a touch lazily. The sunbeam was starting to make him a teeny bit lethargic. "Feels like whenever I try its too hard, and whenever I don't, its not enough." He shrugged and folded his arms under his head. "You know, for a guy who plays video games with bananas, you're not bad." he said, somewhat abruptly. Lethargy was making him -entirely- uninclined to try to think first, speak second.

"Thanks, I think," Doug replied with a grin. Past that, it looked like Kyle was sort of headed toward a nap in the sunbeam, so Doug turned back to his game, making sure to turn the volume down even more so as not to disturb the other boy.

"You owe me a DDR game..." Kyle muttered, half-asleep. "Makin' you do that freaky computer guy thing on the DDR machine when I wake up."

"Cross my heart," Doug said softly. When Kyle finally fell asleep, as evidenced by a sort of rumbling purr, Doug paused his game for a moment to drape a blanket over the younger boy, then returned to his game with a smile.