(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."