(Untitled)

[morespeed]

WHO: morespeed and hackeralastair, anyone else who wants to jump in.
WHERE: Spark Roast, the only coffe shop in the city.
WHEN: Early Sunday afternoon
SUMMARY: JP meets with Alistair. They have a lot to discuss. JP wants to hear all about himself.
FORMAT: Prose opening, I'll follow your lead after that.
NOTES: Ahahaha now in the right community. /fails

Comments

[hackeralastair]

Alastair was going a bit stir-crazy these days. Between the 'porter's constant revolving door of friends and friends of friends and being suddenly in charge of both his and Weasel's projects at work, he couldn't find the time to breathe, let alone have a social life. Jean-Paul's call was a welcome break, he agreed without hesitation to meet him at the coffeeshop just to get out of the house.

Even if this wasn't his JP, judging by the reaction to the nickname.

It wasn't warm enough yet for his favorite coat, so he had on his leather winter jacket, but the sunglasses and bright red hair were obvious to anyone who might have seen him before. He went straight to the counter and ordered up his usual latte before looking around. There he is. All right, here we go. Alastair took his coffee and drifted over to the table where Jean-Paul sat.

"Uh. Hi."

[morespeed]

"Ah, hello."

Jean-Paul had been tracking Alistair since he arrived. There something about this man that had made him important to another version of JP; there was no why to know what that was just from looking at him, but Jean-Paul had so little to go on otherwise he couldn't help himself. Nice jacket (not as cool as his own), good sunglasses (he didn't have any, one point for Alistair), red hair (undecided).

Jean-Paul was shallow.

"Please," he said, standing up and gesturing to the seat opposite his own but, confusingly, also putting out a hand to shake. It wasn't easy to fall back on his rarely-used reserves of politeness. "Alistair, yes? It's good to meet you in person."

[hackeralastair]

Alastair shook the offered hand first, before sliding into the seat. "Yeah, hey. I know, the comms are good and all but nothing beats being face to face." Such a lame thing to say, but he didn't know what else to do yet. The past couple of weeks of people being switched in and out hadn't prepared him for actually facing an alternate version of a friend.

"I guess, with all the X-people and their school and whatever, you haven't had too hard a time settling in," he chanced. "A lot of people you know, or should probably know. Right?"

[morespeed]

Jean-Paul sat too, then sipped at his coffee. "You're right. It takes a while to get used to talking to people that way, and it's hard to get to know more than the most basic details."

He smiled, swiping a strand of hair out of his eyes. "I don't know how much my... other self told you about his time with the X-Men, or if he was even part of the team. But I did know many people at the Institute, as an active team member and later solely as a teacher. And more recently, when I joined the team again and we were forced to move to our own...fortress, I suppose it could be called. I can't pretend that I liked all those people, or even most of them. And so many of them are different here, in a lot of ways." He glanced back at Alistair, half smiling. "As I'm sure you know. But there's so many of them, it can be a little tiring at times. Even I run out of insults eventually."

[hackeralastair]

That made Alastair laugh a bit around a sip of his latte. "Yeah, you're Jean-Paul all right. He always did have that same attitude. I didn't press too much about the X-business, he didn't seem inclined to share and I kind of didn't care. As long as whatever we were doing was more interesting, we didn't talk too much about our pasts."

Thinking about it brought one other thing to mind, something Alastair had nearly forgotten in the time since his friend was ported out. He looked down at the table and the coffee cup between his hands. "He, uh. Saved my life once, too."

[morespeed]

Laughter was good; Jean-Paul smiled in return, sharp and hard. "I can think of a lot of things more interesting than sitting around listening to myself talk about how unappreciated I was among the other big children wearing spandex, especially here. There never seems to be a quiet moment in this city."

And speaking of, that sounded like exactly the sort of thing that would happen in this world. Jean-Paul leaned forward. "He did? Well, you must tell me how! Exciting, dramatic adventures are much more interesting than me telling you how Emma and I once smoked all of Logan's cigars. Especially if I'm the one being exciting and dramatic." He leaned back in his chair, raising an eyebrow. "Unless it's something you'd rather not talk about?"

[hackeralastair]

"Oh, no...no worries. It wasn't anything terribly traumatic on my part," Alastair assured. "There were these things attacking people all around the city, feeding on their emotions. One chased me into an alley, and he was one of like...two people who responded to my call for help. I drew the thing out into the open and he killed it before it could hurt me." He paused and scratched his chin. Funny, how long ago that seemed, now. "It wasn't some kind of epic throwdown, but it was my life being threatened and I'm kinda glad it got saved."

[morespeed]

"Hah, of course." Jean-Paul looked thoughtful, gulping down another sip of his still-hot coffee. "Was this the first time you met? Or had you known each other before?"

He smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, I feel like a police officer interrogating a witness. If I'm asking anything too personal, please just tell me so. You won't hurt my feelings."

[hackeralastair]

Alastair shook his head. "There's not a lot I haven't said publicly on the comms by this point, I'm not bothered. Uh...no, actually, he was pretty much the first person to welcome me to the City, when I first got here. We went out for coffee," he added with a lame laugh. "My first day here. After that, I mean...we didn't hang out every day, or all the time, but we talked a lot and ran into each other once in a while."

He offered Jean-Paul as casual a smile as he could. There was something so familiar about him that this meeting was coming off far less awkward than he anticipated. For now, at least.

[morespeed]

"That's funny, the way the your introduction to him has been echoed by my introduction to you..." Jean-Paul smiled, tracing figures on the table top with one finger. "Perhaps whatever entity runs this city has a sense of humour?"

He did feel oddly at ease; maybe working with the X-Men had mellowed him out more than expected, or maybe this who alternate-world scenario subconsciously made him seek out allies like this young man, as strange as the connection between them might they might be. For some reason Jean-Paul didn't want to question it too hard right now.

"I think I would like it," he continued, not quite meeting Alistair's eyes. One might almost think he was nervous. "If we were able to forge such a friendship between ourselves? I can't ever promise to be the same Jean-Paul that you knew, but...maybe I can be his equal."

[hackeralastair]

That same funny feeling from long ago, of being in the presence of someone who understood, who knew how much life sucked but went on being a day-to-day hero anyway, made Alastair very nearly blush. "It's kind of dumb to expect anyone to be the same as someone else...even if they kind of are," he admitted. "I don't want to really compare, it's cool just...getting to know each other here and now. So...yeah, sure. As long as you don't mind hanging out with a hacker kid who likes motorcycles and techno music and isn't all that big on skiing." He smirked, then. "And has a big mouth.

He didn't really address the comment about entities running the city...it made him think of the Porter and how much he hated it. Especially at times like this, with Saitou leaving and coming back, and dead friends staying dead. Instead, he concentrated on the rest, and found himself nodding in agreement. "Friends is good. Can never have too many, right?"

[morespeed]

"Techno music I can take or leave. Get me drunk and I'll dance to anything," Jean-Paul said, counting off on his finger with a smirk. "Hacking will quite possibly prove useful at some point. Motorbikes...well, we could race, if you don't mind losing. And not being a fan skiing would normally be a deal-breaker, but I'm much more into snowboarding these days anyway."

He dropped his hands to the table again, his smirk broadening into a grin. "And I can hardly fault someone for having a big mouth. As long as no vitriol is poured on me, I will gossip with you until the sun sets. You'll live to regret saying you can never have too many friends, when I start introducing you to the million X-Men just so I can talk about them behind their backs."

[hackeralastair]

Alastair cackled a bit. "I always did want to race my bike against someone with super-speed. Come springtime, you are so on." He arched an eyebrow in challenge over the edge of his coffee cup. "...I've got a Ducati street bike."

He took a sip, seemed to mull it over, and set the cup back down. "So was life treating you normal back home, or was it one of those end-of-the-world issues people come in talking about sometimes? I never can tell, there's obviously so many different dimensions all criss-crossing here."

[morespeed]

"Oh, really?" Jean-Paul met Alistair's stare head-on, not even trying to keep the superior smirk off his face.. "Funny, it was a Ducati that led to me re-joining the X-Men. Someone managed to escape them because they had no one who could keep up with his bike...so they came to me to make sure it wouldn't happen again. I hope your pride can cope with losing."

But then he laughed, dissipating whatever macho persona he might have been projecting for a moment. "Viarge, it is never quiet back home. We just exiled ourselves on a hopefully-self-sufficient island to escape Norman Osborn and his terrible haircut. But what about you?" Jean-Paul leaned forward. "Tell me about your world."

[hackeralastair]

"Really now." Alastair took that smirk as a challenge, all right. "None of their guys could keep up with a bike? That's sad. Well, then. It sounds like something I definitely want to do! The police force is stretched pretty thin so there's usually stretches of highway that are totally unguarded - where I can really open her up."

And then it happened. One word triggered his power, and the rest of his comment spilled out involuntarily in French. "Osborn...oh god, that guy. I know he's around this place somewhere, I'm always seeing the back-and-forth between him and Stark..."

He paused, and then shook his head in order to give himself a moment to reset his mind to English. "Crap, it happened again...."

[morespeed]

"A little law-bending in the name of fun never hurt anyone!" Jean-Paul declared with a determined nod. "Except all those times it possibly did. I hope you fill that thing with rocket fuel, or I'm going to be bored."

He watched with interest, head slightly tilted, as Alistair launched into French. "Hmm. I take it you weren't supposed to do that?" he asked in his native tongue. "Can you understand me? One of the children at the school used to have powers like this, I think."