capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

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WHO: Alex & Lorna
WHERE: A random cafe in the City
WHEN: Friday, after Alex has broken up with Scatty and gotten punched by Scott and Josh
WARNINGS: None
SUMMARY: Alex and Lorna meet in a cafe to catch up. Alex sulks.
FORMAT: Para

Alex shows up at the cafe five minutes ahead of schedule. He's earlier than Lorna, so he slides onto a seat and waits for her, staring broodily out at passers-by. His shades are on to hide the two-and-a-half bruises he's currently sporting, courtesy of Scott and Scathach and a baby one from Josh. He's briefly contemplated staying in his room the entire weekend until they fade but he did agree to meet Lorna before all of that happened and he doesn't want to blow her off-- she'll know something is up.

Besides, maybe she'll cheer him up.

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Lorna walks in shortly after him, shooting a small smile as she sits down with him. Okay, she can already tell he's sulking about something. But what could that be?

"Alex, what's gong on?"

"Nothing," he said and attempted a smile. He could at least try, right? "What do you want to order?" He pushed the menu across the table to her, taking off his shades instinctively as he did so.

Bad move.

Lorna's eyes widened at the sight of his eyes, and she couldn't even muster an answer about food.

"Alex, what the hell happened to you?!"

"Noth--" he began, then realised too late his shades were in his hand. Damn! She'd been with him in the fight against Emplate, too, so he couldn't pass it off as that.

"Got decked. Thrice," he admitted reluctantly. "By three different people."

"Who hit you?" she demanded, almost angrily. Honestly, she wasn't a fan of people beating up Alex, no matter how many times she'd tried it herself.

He wasn't sure why he felt compelled to tell her this, considering her penchant for overreacting when it came to his injuries-- and these were really minor, embarrassing ones-- but Alex spoke anyway.

"Scathach, then Scott, then that kid Josh," he said stonily. "I kind of deserved it anyway."

"You dumped her, didn't you?" she said, eyeing him carefully.

"I'm not really sure who dumped who," he admitted. "But we're over."

"I see," Lorna commented. She was inwardly smirking, mostly because she'd very much called this the second she'd heard about their little relationship. However, she could gloat later. Right now, Alex was obviously upset, and if they weren't friends, they weren't anything at all. "I'm sorry, Alex."

Talk about dramatic, though. Was there a line up to Alex's face?

"Yeah," he mumbled while not looking at her expression, then obviously drew himself together. "I'll be be training the team and working out the Danger Room training exercises."

He'd gotten over Annie pretty fast. What was there to say Scathach wouldn't be any different? He was upset, yes, but that had more to do with guilt over how it had ended than actually missing her.

Of course. Typical Alex rushing to to responsibility instead of focusing on how he felt. "How is your team going?"

She chose to go with it. For now.

"Pretty well," he said, forcibly wrenching his mind away from his emotional woes. It was a trick he'd learnt from Scott and how he'd dealt with Annie, and to a certain extent Maddie. "We're learning to work better as a unit and the Danger Room scenarios are really helping in learning to improvise tactics."

So much like his brother.

"Good to hear," Lorna gestured to the menu. "What do you think you'll get?"

"Pasta," he said, gesturing to the relevant entry on the menu he'd already scoped out while waiting for her. "I'm famished. What about you?"

"I think I'll get the ceaser salad," Lorna commented as she looked down. "It looks pretty huge."

When it finally arrived, Alex was gratified to note that the pasta did look pretty appetising, as did her salad.

"So how've you been doing?" Never mind the fact that he'd just seen her over the weekend. And he wasn't going to slurp up the noodles. He wasn't going to slurp up the noodles. He wasn't--

Ah, hell.

Lorna ate her salad, not even bothered that he was slurping his noodles. Lorna had pretty much lived with him forever, and she was quite used to his eating habits by now.

"Alright," she told him. "I try to keep busy."

"What with?" He asked curiously. Alex couldn't imagine there was anything much to do around the old Institute, and as far as he knew, she wasn't working. Powers training? Meditation? That couldn't take up a whole day, could it.

"Well, sometimes Remy almost kills himself doing man things around the house, so I usually check up on that," Lorna gave him a smirk. "I venture a lot around the city, though. I also have the most interesting conversations on the network, meditate and keep my powers controlled."

He shifted slightly at her mention of Remy but covered it up quickly with even more slurping of his pasta. The Cajun had meant well and had good points to make, even if he really had no place butting his nose into his friendship with Lorna, and even if it had been slightly irritating. "Sounds like a good life," he mused with a quick smile in her direction, in return.

Okay, so this was already much better than staying in the Institute moping and feeling sorry for himself.

"It's a life," Lorna shrugged and ate her salad a little more. "But cheer up, Alex. Or I'll be forced to find a volcano for you and I to venture around."

A pause.

"Do you do anything else besides the X-person thing? A job? I've heard people actually live something of a normal life here."

"I'll cheer up, but I hear Eyjafjallajökull's pretty big right now," Alex said and grinned because he was a geophysics geek like that, and exciting active volcanoes always got his heart racing somehow.

"I don't think the bodyguard thing with Alison counts as a real job," he said almost thoughtfully. "I'm still working with X-Men, even if I'm getting paid for it."

"I heard about that!" Lorna continued, grinning along with him. "Don't you wish you could be just a little closer to it? Get a piece of it up close?"

"Yeah!" He agreed, enthused. "Have you seen photos (http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/eyja_04_19/e01_23056097.jpg) of it? It's amazing. Not exactly fitting for a superhero mission, but I could study it forever. I think we both could."

"I know," she nodded along, just as enthused as he was. "But I've been following it! It's just...so amazing. I'd study it forever too."

A beat.

"I wish we could be over there...just to see it."

"They closed the airways, though, and I don't think you could fly us that far using your powers," he pointed out (with his fork) as he attacked more of his pasta. "And Scott won't give me leave again so soon, especially not when he's still mad at me over leaving Scathach."

"No, that's too--" Lorna paused and dropped her utensil. "He really has no right to treat you like that. Not after Jean..."

Lorna missed Jean.

"That's what I told him," Alex said moodily and stared at her dropped fork. He missed Jean too. She had been the heart of the team and of his brother, and it was just very different knowing she wasn't around. He could tell his brother was different with Emma standing by his side. He'd gotten very angry when he'd heard about what Scott had done to her, but somehow not half as angry as when he'd walked out on Maddie. He'd been disappointed, instead, that history had repeated itself.

"He said I should have stuck on with Scathach, tried to work it out."

"You can't try to work out what's not there, Alex," Lorna pointed out. "Besides, it's not as if you dated her for that long. And from the sounds of it, you could have hurt her a lot worse. If you stuck with her if you didn't feel anything, that's worse than letting her go in the first place."

"Exactly!" He exclaimed with some measure of relief. Alex was suddenly very glad Lorna understood him on this and was taking his side. He'd had to defend his actions to every one else before this and it had gotten very tiresome. He briefly wondered if she was comparing it to the hurt he had caused her over cancelling their wedding for Annie, but shelved that aside firmly. That was in the past.

"I could have done a lot worse and that was exactly what I was trying to avoid. Scott just doesn't see it my way."

"You've done worse in the past," she eyed him for a second, then picked at her salad. "If you ask me, this is all really overdramatic."

No one had jumped to her rescue when Alex had hurt her, because it wasn't necessary. It wasn't anyone's business but their own, and no one else needed to step in. Maybe if Sasquatch didn't realize this, she should stick to dating people her own age.

"I'm just going to lie low until this blows over and hope I don't run into her at the Institute," he mumbled. Aside from going out for his bodyguard jobs with Dazzler, everything else was going to be all about training the team and X-Men work. Alex also hoped his bruises would heal fast.

Suddenly the utensils on the table started to float and twist in between them. "Alex?"

"Yes?" He said questioningly but distractedly, lost mostly in his own world-- such that he failed to see the utensils between them being manipulated by her powers. Again.

"Cheer up," she told him, letting the metal rise above even higher. "You're making a scene."

That'd be her, though, since everyone was staring at them now.

Edited 2010-04-24 21:50 (UTC)

He looked up finally at her, slightly startled by the metal she was manipulating-- then smiled. "Trying to get us kicked out again, are you?"

"Or just playing until you look up," she smiled, and let the utensils twist around a little longer.

"Well, you have my attention now," Alex said, still smiling and doing his best not to think unhappy thoughts for once. It was working, too. It was a really good thing the City wasn't big on discrimination.

"I'll try not to cause a riot this time," she mused. "But as usual, I make no promises."

"Good, because you'll have to stop it if you do. Crowd control really isn't my forte," he returned with the ghost of a smirk. More likely he'd be calming her than the crowd down, in all honesty.

"I know, Alex. I think we both learned our lesson the last time," Lorna grinned. Even if that whole thing had been completely her fault, whoops!

"Yeah. You haven't run into any mutant haters here, have you? I'd hate to think what'd happen with no one around to calm you down."

Okay, now he was teasing her just a little.

"You haven't seen any deaths on the news, have you?" she teased, giving him a small smirk. "Really, Alex. I can control myself."

His smile faded at that and he put his fork down. "Even Pestilence?" He asked quietly, voice snagging slightly on something. Honestly, ever since seeing Warren lose control the way he did in Washington, that worry had been at the back of Alex's mind. He knew that given time, she would get better- he was from her future, after all- but what if being in the City changed things?

Lorna's smirk washed right off her face, and she turned her head to look away from him. No, no, no.

"I don't want to talk about that, Alex."

He let some of the worry bleed onto his face, reaching out to close his hand over hers.

"I know, but I'd hate to find you in an alley again the way you were that night."

She watched him as he did that, wondering why he had to bring this up. Why.

"It won't happen again. I'll make sure of it."

He paused for awhile, clearly skeptical. Alex would never understand what Apocalypse had done to her, but that didn't mean he would stop trying.

"If you say so..."

"It's not like it happens much in the future, right?" she told him grimly. Honestly, the only reason that even happened was because of Jono.

Right.

Right?

Right.

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because he loves her

he will mend her broken heart that he broke