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ax_main Quatre finally meets the famous software genius Nolan Ross. Conversation is awkward, but they make it kind of work in the end.
Quatre was loving high school birthday parties! They were a lot more fun than the galas and charity events he had been to where he had to dress in a tux. Here he could just talk, about life, school, and other things instead of having to talk about business plans and mergers.
He loved it.
He pulled himself away from the dance floor, fixing his cheap dollar store pirate hat as he made his way over to the table filled with all different kinds of refreshments. That's when he noticed another with strawberry blond hair drinking something that looked amazing, but probably had alcohol in it. All the pretty drinks did.
"Hello." He smiled and waved at the other. "Enjoying the party?"
Simply because Nolan could not afford to drink very much anymore did not mean that he had to drink anything as horrible as soda. So here he was, sipping from a virgin margarita that completely looked the part, along with the slice of lime and the salted glass rim. A little almond and grapefruit juice had replaced the tequila and, voilà! Fancy party drink. Not quite as good as the original, but certainly drinkable. Dressed in a dark red polo over a white one with a flipped collar, a pair of green chino trousers and his favorite red wingtips, he could almost pretend that this was a party he knew how to navigate.
The wave caught his eye before he realized he was being addressed, and he looked briefly surprised before recovering. Of course, he'd done his homework on the students at school - especially the ones who were heir to billion-dollar companies, and were wearing gloves in order not to inadvertently sense your emotions.
"Hi," he answered, his trademark small, tight smile on his lips, like he either wasn't sure he was allowed to smile fully, or he wasn't sure the situation warranted it. "Don't I look it? I really must up my game, Shinobi will not appreciate."
Quatre saw the smile on the other's face, but wasn't deterred at all as he moved over to fill a cup with punch, which he sniffed and was glad that he didn't smell anything other than fruit. "You're Nolan Ross, right? We switched over to your software and we haven't looked back."
Quatre held out his gloved hand with a small smile. "I'm Quatre."
Nolan showed no hesitation in shaking Quatre's gloved hand. "I remember that contract. I'm glad everything is running smoothly."
Well, that made Quatre beam and he pulled his hand back to take a small sip of his punch. "Yes. You invented quite an amazing thing." He gestured towards the school. "When did you get arrive here?"
"A few weeks ago," Nolan replied easily, in full professional, don't-trust-anyone mode. Not that it showed, of course. He was certain that rumor of the one seizure his board had witnessed had reached the Winner Corporation. These things never stayed quiet, and any sign of weakness could draw the sharks, in this world.
He really wished there were fewer heirs of prominent multinational companies at Xavier's; Shinobi alone would have been perfect.
"What about you?"
"About a month." Quatre replied and surprised himself on how it hadn't seemed that long at all. He wondered how Nolan was able to run his company from the mansion, all the other company kids were heirs like Quatre, but Nolan ran his company already.
It was probably best not to business into the conversation, so he steered away from it entirely. He tilted his head towards the drink in Nolan's hand. "What are you drinking?"
"Margarita, sans tequila," Nolan answered with a small smile, not adding the 'sadly' he wanted to. It was best to let Quatre think he wasn't drinking alcohol out of choice, given the actual reason.
"Really?" Quatre questioned, giving the drink another look and was far more interested now. "It looks delicious, what is in it if it's not alcohol? I mean, I've heard of virgin daiquiris, but never any other cocktails."
"Some ground almond and grapefruit juice stand in for the tequila," Nolan replied, and then offered, "Would you like one?"
"Sure. It sounds delicious." Quatre replied and watched Nolan prepare the drink in fascination.
Nolan went all out for Quatre's drink as well, salting the rim of a glass before preparing the mix in a shaker. It gave the cocktail a nice little foamy top as he strained it into the glass, and he added a slice of lime for garnish. "Let me know what you think."
Quatre took the glass, sniffed it, then took a sip when the scent was sweet and appetizing. He let it sit on his tongue for a moment, tasting the mix before swallowing and smiling at Nolan. "That was very good. You came up with that all on your own?"
"The internet is full of great suggestions," Nolan replied with a shake of his head. He paused. "Along with terrible suggestions, and cat memes."
"Mmmm, you must have gone diving in the dark areas." Quatre replied as he took another sip, remembering the old cheeseburger memes. "At least you didn't fall into the weebl stuff. My cousin did back when I was younger and would stop singing the badger song."
"That's... tragic," Nolan settled on as an appropriate adjective.
"Very." Quatre nodded and took another drink, glancing at the other before just deciding to ask. "May I ask why you are here at the school?"
When he had heard the Nolan Ross had joined the school, he had been surprised, but hadn't gone out of his way to find out why. It was Nolan's business and if he wanted to share with Quatre he could, or not.
"Why are any of us here?" Nolan asked. "I need Professor Xavier's help." In one form or another, it was why they were all here. And it was the extent of what he was willing to say on the subject. "And if my absence adds to my aura of mystery in business circles, all the better."
"Ah." Quatre replied, taking the obvious hint that Nolan didn't want to talk really about what he was doing specifically at the school and that was fine. Quatre laughed quietly at the last words. "The headlines will go crazy, wondering where you're spending your time. Could you be at a spa or maybe out in South America building houses, no one knows."
Quatre gave a nod to show that no one would find out through him and took a sip of his drink.
"My PR team are having a blast," Nolan dryly stated. Well, when they weren't tearing their hair out, anyway.
"Do you dance?" Quatre asked, hoping that wasn't too much of a random jump as they had been facing the dance floor. "I only knew ballroom dancing until my roommate Trowa showed me. It's fun."
"For other people, maybe," Nolan stated with a wince. Ballroom and otherwise. He was terrible at all of it. "I have two left feet. I'm not sure my PR team would be enough if I started dancing at parties. Who's your roommate?"
"Trowa?" Quatre glanced out on the dance floor to see if he could find the brunet, but gave up quickly when he couldn't. "Tall, thin, always serious? He hangs out with Tessa a lot."
Then he was probably all right. Nolan did not want to look too closely at how much he trusted Tessa. Perhaps he should, since it made him vulnerable, but... No, he did not want to. Foolishly, maybe. He shook his head. "We haven't met." He paused, and admitted, "I haven't exactly been mingling with the student body."
"Don't put all the blame on yourself, Trowa isn't the most social person either." He turned his head a little to look at Nolan and bit his bottom lip. "Are you alright? You seem," Quatre searched for the right word. "Tense."
Nolan looked briefly pained about Quatre's assessment. "I should step up my acting. I'm not used to high school parties." That shouldn't surprise anyone, given that he was years ahead in school.
Quatre shook his head. "I don't think you should try acting at all. I'm not used to high school anything so I'm not sure if I'm doing anything right, but I can still have a good time. See, I've already met someone new, which I consider fun."
Nolan Ross wasn't technically new, but Quatre hadn't been there when his father had met for the software switch so he was counting the other as new.
"You sound entirely more upbeat in general than I do on my best days," Nolan assured the other boy with one of his usual tight-dry smiles.
"Thank you. I try very hard to keep that going, though Prozac and sugary drinks help a lot." Quatre gave a small smile. "I'm joking."
"Thank you for clarifying," Nolan dryly stated. He knew far too many Hamptonites who might not have been. In fact, he wasn't entirely convinced that Quatre wasn't joking, no matter what he said.
Quatre stared down at his drink and decided to just be frank with the other, it was what Trowa would do. "Would you like me to leave you be? I don't think my presence is making you feel very comfortable."
"I wasn't feeling very comfortable to start with," Nolan assured him with a shake of his head. He tried to meet honesty with honesty. "I'm not used to interacting with much of anyone my own age."
Quatre was surprised that frankness had gotten him somewhere and he nodded a little in understanding. "Neither am I. I just try to be as friendly as possible and hope for the best, though with some here that doesn't seem to work."
He thought of Inu-Yasha and Yuri, frowning a little at the melted down ice in his glass.
"You do friendly, I do forever slightly awkward," Nolan remarked, his tone full of gentle snark. "We have different styles."
Quatre couldn't help the actual laugh that burst out of him at that and he quickly tried to stifle it with a hand over his mouth. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to laugh at that. I just find it funny that you created a company from the ground up and I have been trained how to handle everything that could ever happen to a company, but put us at a high school party and we have no idea. I don't even drink, which is apparently weird for teenagers even though I'm far below the legal age."
"Virgin margaritas are as good as the real deal, anyway," Nolan remarked, nodding towards the cocktail in Quatre's hand before taking a sip of his own.
"Agreed." Quatre considered his empty glass and held it out to Nolan. "May I have another?"
Nolan reached out for the glass and moved back towards the drinks table. "At least I have an alternate career in case I ever get tired of NolCorp."
"You would be by far the most interesting bartender." Quatre replied, wondering if it was possible to go from a big company owner to doing something like that. The idea was nice, even if it was most likely impossible.
Nolan chuckled at the pronouncement, even as he fixed the cocktail. "You," he told Quatre, "must not have met many interesting bartenders."
"I have not met any bartenders," Quatre admitted, but then smiled. "But a bartender who can mix a non-alcoholic margarita while also being able to explain how to write code for a revolutionary software has got to be something."
"I'll give you that one," Nolan agreed, lips twisted in amusement. "I'd like to meet a bartender like that, actually."
"That could be your bars theme. Drinks and tech. Train all your bartenders in mixology and technology." Quatre thought that would make for an interesting place and if nonalcoholic drinks were on the menu Quatre would visit frequently. "I'd invest."
"I'll turn to you when I want to start my reconversion," Nolan assured him with one of his soft-dry smiles.
"I look forward to it." Quatre smiled and glanced over at the dance floor. "You really don't even want to try and dance? I assure you, you can't be worse that I was."
"There's always someone worse out there," Nolan replied, his smile a thin, airy thing. "I'd need a lot more than that to actually want to dance." And he didn't see the point if he didn't want to.
"Like what?" Quatre asked, he wasn't going to force the other to dance if he didn't want to, but he was curious to know. "What would make Nolan Ross want to dance?"
"I'll let you know when I figure it out," Nolan assured him lightly.
"I'll be waiting." Quatre replied and when Nolan finished his drink he took it gratefully and sipped it.
"Don't hold your breath," Nolan advised him.
Quatre was loving high school birthday parties! They were a lot more fun than the galas and charity events he had been to where he had to dress in a tux. Here he could just talk, about life, school, and other things instead of having to talk about business plans and mergers.
He loved it.
He pulled himself away from the dance floor, fixing his cheap dollar store pirate hat as he made his way over to the table filled with all different kinds of refreshments. That's when he noticed another with strawberry blond hair drinking something that looked amazing, but probably had alcohol in it. All the pretty drinks did.
"Hello." He smiled and waved at the other. "Enjoying the party?"
Simply because Nolan could not afford to drink very much anymore did not mean that he had to drink anything as horrible as soda. So here he was, sipping from a virgin margarita that completely looked the part, along with the slice of lime and the salted glass rim. A little almond and grapefruit juice had replaced the tequila and, voilà! Fancy party drink. Not quite as good as the original, but certainly drinkable. Dressed in a dark red polo over a white one with a flipped collar, a pair of green chino trousers and his favorite red wingtips, he could almost pretend that this was a party he knew how to navigate.
The wave caught his eye before he realized he was being addressed, and he looked briefly surprised before recovering. Of course, he'd done his homework on the students at school - especially the ones who were heir to billion-dollar companies, and were wearing gloves in order not to inadvertently sense your emotions.
"Hi," he answered, his trademark small, tight smile on his lips, like he either wasn't sure he was allowed to smile fully, or he wasn't sure the situation warranted it. "Don't I look it? I really must up my game, Shinobi will not appreciate."
Quatre saw the smile on the other's face, but wasn't deterred at all as he moved over to fill a cup with punch, which he sniffed and was glad that he didn't smell anything other than fruit. "You're Nolan Ross, right? We switched over to your software and we haven't looked back."
Quatre held out his gloved hand with a small smile. "I'm Quatre."
Nolan showed no hesitation in shaking Quatre's gloved hand. "I remember that contract. I'm glad everything is running smoothly."
Well, that made Quatre beam and he pulled his hand back to take a small sip of his punch. "Yes. You invented quite an amazing thing." He gestured towards the school. "When did you get arrive here?"
"A few weeks ago," Nolan replied easily, in full professional, don't-trust-anyone mode. Not that it showed, of course. He was certain that rumor of the one seizure his board had witnessed had reached the Winner Corporation. These things never stayed quiet, and any sign of weakness could draw the sharks, in this world.
He really wished there were fewer heirs of prominent multinational companies at Xavier's; Shinobi alone would have been perfect.
"What about you?"
"About a month." Quatre replied and surprised himself on how it hadn't seemed that long at all. He wondered how Nolan was able to run his company from the mansion, all the other company kids were heirs like Quatre, but Nolan ran his company already.
It was probably best not to business into the conversation, so he steered away from it entirely. He tilted his head towards the drink in Nolan's hand. "What are you drinking?"
"Margarita, sans tequila," Nolan answered with a small smile, not adding the 'sadly' he wanted to. It was best to let Quatre think he wasn't drinking alcohol out of choice, given the actual reason.
"Really?" Quatre questioned, giving the drink another look and was far more interested now. "It looks delicious, what is in it if it's not alcohol? I mean, I've heard of virgin daiquiris, but never any other cocktails."
"Some ground almond and grapefruit juice stand in for the tequila," Nolan replied, and then offered, "Would you like one?"
"Sure. It sounds delicious." Quatre replied and watched Nolan prepare the drink in fascination.
Nolan went all out for Quatre's drink as well, salting the rim of a glass before preparing the mix in a shaker. It gave the cocktail a nice little foamy top as he strained it into the glass, and he added a slice of lime for garnish. "Let me know what you think."
Quatre took the glass, sniffed it, then took a sip when the scent was sweet and appetizing. He let it sit on his tongue for a moment, tasting the mix before swallowing and smiling at Nolan. "That was very good. You came up with that all on your own?"
"The internet is full of great suggestions," Nolan replied with a shake of his head. He paused. "Along with terrible suggestions, and cat memes."
"Mmmm, you must have gone diving in the dark areas." Quatre replied as he took another sip, remembering the old cheeseburger memes. "At least you didn't fall into the weebl stuff. My cousin did back when I was younger and would stop singing the badger song."
"That's... tragic," Nolan settled on as an appropriate adjective.
"Very." Quatre nodded and took another drink, glancing at the other before just deciding to ask. "May I ask why you are here at the school?"
When he had heard the Nolan Ross had joined the school, he had been surprised, but hadn't gone out of his way to find out why. It was Nolan's business and if he wanted to share with Quatre he could, or not.
"Why are any of us here?" Nolan asked. "I need Professor Xavier's help." In one form or another, it was why they were all here. And it was the extent of what he was willing to say on the subject. "And if my absence adds to my aura of mystery in business circles, all the better."
"Ah." Quatre replied, taking the obvious hint that Nolan didn't want to talk really about what he was doing specifically at the school and that was fine. Quatre laughed quietly at the last words. "The headlines will go crazy, wondering where you're spending your time. Could you be at a spa or maybe out in South America building houses, no one knows."
Quatre gave a nod to show that no one would find out through him and took a sip of his drink.
"My PR team are having a blast," Nolan dryly stated. Well, when they weren't tearing their hair out, anyway.
"Do you dance?" Quatre asked, hoping that wasn't too much of a random jump as they had been facing the dance floor. "I only knew ballroom dancing until my roommate Trowa showed me. It's fun."
"For other people, maybe," Nolan stated with a wince. Ballroom and otherwise. He was terrible at all of it. "I have two left feet. I'm not sure my PR team would be enough if I started dancing at parties. Who's your roommate?"
"Trowa?" Quatre glanced out on the dance floor to see if he could find the brunet, but gave up quickly when he couldn't. "Tall, thin, always serious? He hangs out with Tessa a lot."
Then he was probably all right. Nolan did not want to look too closely at how much he trusted Tessa. Perhaps he should, since it made him vulnerable, but... No, he did not want to. Foolishly, maybe. He shook his head. "We haven't met." He paused, and admitted, "I haven't exactly been mingling with the student body."
"Don't put all the blame on yourself, Trowa isn't the most social person either." He turned his head a little to look at Nolan and bit his bottom lip. "Are you alright? You seem," Quatre searched for the right word. "Tense."
Nolan looked briefly pained about Quatre's assessment. "I should step up my acting. I'm not used to high school parties." That shouldn't surprise anyone, given that he was years ahead in school.
Quatre shook his head. "I don't think you should try acting at all. I'm not used to high school anything so I'm not sure if I'm doing anything right, but I can still have a good time. See, I've already met someone new, which I consider fun."
Nolan Ross wasn't technically new, but Quatre hadn't been there when his father had met for the software switch so he was counting the other as new.
"You sound entirely more upbeat in general than I do on my best days," Nolan assured the other boy with one of his usual tight-dry smiles.
"Thank you. I try very hard to keep that going, though Prozac and sugary drinks help a lot." Quatre gave a small smile. "I'm joking."
"Thank you for clarifying," Nolan dryly stated. He knew far too many Hamptonites who might not have been. In fact, he wasn't entirely convinced that Quatre wasn't joking, no matter what he said.
Quatre stared down at his drink and decided to just be frank with the other, it was what Trowa would do. "Would you like me to leave you be? I don't think my presence is making you feel very comfortable."
"I wasn't feeling very comfortable to start with," Nolan assured him with a shake of his head. He tried to meet honesty with honesty. "I'm not used to interacting with much of anyone my own age."
Quatre was surprised that frankness had gotten him somewhere and he nodded a little in understanding. "Neither am I. I just try to be as friendly as possible and hope for the best, though with some here that doesn't seem to work."
He thought of Inu-Yasha and Yuri, frowning a little at the melted down ice in his glass.
"You do friendly, I do forever slightly awkward," Nolan remarked, his tone full of gentle snark. "We have different styles."
Quatre couldn't help the actual laugh that burst out of him at that and he quickly tried to stifle it with a hand over his mouth. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to laugh at that. I just find it funny that you created a company from the ground up and I have been trained how to handle everything that could ever happen to a company, but put us at a high school party and we have no idea. I don't even drink, which is apparently weird for teenagers even though I'm far below the legal age."
"Virgin margaritas are as good as the real deal, anyway," Nolan remarked, nodding towards the cocktail in Quatre's hand before taking a sip of his own.
"Agreed." Quatre considered his empty glass and held it out to Nolan. "May I have another?"
Nolan reached out for the glass and moved back towards the drinks table. "At least I have an alternate career in case I ever get tired of NolCorp."
"You would be by far the most interesting bartender." Quatre replied, wondering if it was possible to go from a big company owner to doing something like that. The idea was nice, even if it was most likely impossible.
Nolan chuckled at the pronouncement, even as he fixed the cocktail. "You," he told Quatre, "must not have met many interesting bartenders."
"I have not met any bartenders," Quatre admitted, but then smiled. "But a bartender who can mix a non-alcoholic margarita while also being able to explain how to write code for a revolutionary software has got to be something."
"I'll give you that one," Nolan agreed, lips twisted in amusement. "I'd like to meet a bartender like that, actually."
"That could be your bars theme. Drinks and tech. Train all your bartenders in mixology and technology." Quatre thought that would make for an interesting place and if nonalcoholic drinks were on the menu Quatre would visit frequently. "I'd invest."
"I'll turn to you when I want to start my reconversion," Nolan assured him with one of his soft-dry smiles.
"I look forward to it." Quatre smiled and glanced over at the dance floor. "You really don't even want to try and dance? I assure you, you can't be worse that I was."
"There's always someone worse out there," Nolan replied, his smile a thin, airy thing. "I'd need a lot more than that to actually want to dance." And he didn't see the point if he didn't want to.
"Like what?" Quatre asked, he wasn't going to force the other to dance if he didn't want to, but he was curious to know. "What would make Nolan Ross want to dance?"
"I'll let you know when I figure it out," Nolan assured him lightly.
"I'll be waiting." Quatre replied and when Nolan finished his drink he took it gratefully and sipped it.
"Don't hold your breath," Nolan advised him.
