ax_main | Nolan and Shinobi | Backdated to 25/11

Nolan and Shinobi retreat into the Hamptons for a weekend getaway. Some fairly serious conversation ensues, but Shinobi manages to heroically continue drinking.

Boat parties were wonderful, and the perfect opportunity to wear something that wouldn't have fit at all in the halls of Professor Xavier's mansion. Besides, there was something oddly comforting about being back in the Hamptons. Not only was it a welcome break from work, and his side projects, but it was a welcome break from a life that had been forced upon Nolan, a welcome return to the life he had been making for himself before his mutation had fully manifested.

And trolling Hamptonites, especially with Shinobi, was among the most cathartic experiences he had ever known. That was why he'd offered a weekend in the Hamptons, rather than in the City; the Graysons were holding a party, and he could use the catharsis for reasons he had not yet chosen to share with anyone.

He'd even allowed himself a couple of glasses of champagne, exceptionally, and he was nearing the end of the second one as he tracked down Shinobi on the boat's deck. "I think I've reached my fill of finding new and inventive ways not to answer any questions about where I've been these past few weeks," he remarked. Unless Shinobi wanted to stay much longer, Nolan found that this sort of sport was best cut short before it turned sour.

Though he greatly loved the sort of attire typical to this sort of nautically-themed event--and his navy blue blazer and pristine white trousers were of notably fine quality, even in present company--Shinobi didn't actually go to many yacht parties. Combining alcohol, a slippery deck, and metal propellers had always an unnecessarily hazardous one, and the sort of crowd they attracted were generally not his preferred company. However, tagging along with Nolan lent a new and enthralling luster to the whole proposition, and the Shaw heir had wiled away his time flitting from one little clique to another, spreading gossip and tall tales with a lack of restraint that bordered on the unconscionable.

When Nolan finally found him again, he was fairly radiant with enjoyment, and looking terribly pleased with himself. "I prefer deception to evasion, myself," Shinobi confided. "I think I've told six different iterations of where I've been and what I've been up to this last little while to six different social circles. I can't wait until they get together and try to hash out what I've actually been up to."

He looked thoughtful a moment, then added, "Perhaps before the next one I can get Clarice to pop me about some of my old haunts. That would really help heat up the argument, don't you think?"

"I'm in favor," Nolan confirmed with an amused little smile. Anything to confuse the Hamptons elite would be welcome; their attendance together had only added to the rumor mill. Even if Nolan didn't enjoy Shinobi's company so much, that would have made it worth it on its own. "Shall we go before they corner us again?"

"Oh please god yes," Shinobi breathed in a rush, looping an arm through one of Nolan's. "As entertaining as it is to watch these amateurs try to keep down their confusion, I'm running out of amusing lies with which to answer their fumbling attempts to pump me for information. And it's starting to feel a bit unsporting, you know? I really should try to keep myself from engaging in a battle of wits with unarmed opponents."

"I take it you haven't run into the hostess," Nolan remarked idly. He finished the last sip of champagne, then led them towards the way off the boat, finding an appropriate ledge to abandon his empty glass. Whatever Victoria Grayson was, witless was certainly not it. Come to think of it, Nolan couldn't imagine where that battle of wits might lead them. "Of course you haven't. I'm not sure the party would've survived."

"The hostess usually makes a point of seeking me out," Shinobi sniffed. "I can't help it if she has deplorable taste." He casually dropped his own champagne flute over the side with an insincere, "Whoops," as he followed Nolan to the gangway. "Anyway, I'm almost sorry I missed it, now. A party needs a bit of Machiavellian drama to liven it up! The lot I ran into couldn't hope to scheme their way out of a pedestrian Whitewater-level scandal."

"I'm sure she'll be equally offended when she finds out we've gone without you having sought her out," Nolan remarked easily, headed back towards dry land. His car was parked a little way off, and he pulled the keys from his pockets, ring caught on a curled finger.

"Yes, well," Shinobi waved a hand airily, "my family fortune is bigger than her family fortune, so nyah. And it's not as though she could actually hope to tarnish my reputation in high society, at this stage, neh? Also, have I told you recently what an angel you are for driving tonight?"

"I think you've mistaken me for your other extremely wealthy friend," Nolan replied lightly. "The prettier one." It was not even a dig at himself; anyone with eyes would deem Warren prettier than Nolan.

"You're perfectly pretty," Shinobi insisted. "I've always thought so. Not my fault you're not in to that sort of thing. Warren's more ... a work of art you put up in a corner somewhere and admire when you want to feel good about your taste in aesthetics. You're a much realer sort of lovely."

"Thank you," Nolan told his friend with a quizzical look, beeping the car open as they walked up to it. Top down, despite the chill on the air; as long as it wasn't raining or unduly cold, the top would stay down. This was the Hamptons. "I think. What sort of thing am I not into?"

"You know," he returned, cuddling into Nolan's elbow and briefly resting his cheek on the taller boy's elbow with a vapid smile. "The casually making out with gorgeous friends thing. I'm told it can complicate a relationship, but I've yet to actually notice. Though I suppose that could be because I don't have that many actual friends. Not that I would identify as such, anyway."

"Ha," Nolan let out as he acknowledged what Shinobi meant. "No, you're right, I'm not into that sort of thing." Despite most of his friends being gorgeous, yes, don't think he hadn't noticed. But there were some things he would not jeopardise, and his very few friendships were definitely it. He patted Shinobi's arm, then disentangled himself as they reached the car. "Come on, let me drive us home. Pretend to deserve that angel moniker you so generously bestowed upon me."

Shinobi let him go easily, though not without a disappointed huff. "You're much nicer than me, certainly," he said, crossing around to the passenger side. Generally speaking, he didn't much care to drive, so this was a happy circumstance, indeed. "You have actual scruples, and everything! But I suppose I set the bar entirely too low to make for a very good comparison. Anyway, you're decent enough that I haven't felt the need to fake my way through our last few years of friendship in order to swindle your company out from under you once I come into my inheritance. Given NolCorp's present net worth, you should take that as a compliment."

The motor was purring by the time Shinobi was done with his little speech, and Nolan gave him an amused look. "I love you too."

There was nothing else to reply to that, of course, and he pulled into the street, then pushed the car along, speeding towards his house.

"I will never understand your fascination with unhealthy rates of speed," Shinobi all but whined, fastening his seat belt and sinking back into his chair uneasily. Tokyo had gotten him used to walking everywhere, or relying on public transportation, and that trend had more or less continued in Paris. As a result, though he technically had a driver's license (and probably a car--he would have to check with Sebastian's people about that, at some point), he really wasn't comfortable with vehicles except as a passenger. Even then, he preferred to travel sedately. The fact that he could just phase to avoid the personal damage that might result from any accident that might occur on the road didn't seem to comfort him much, either. "It's not as if the house is going anywhere."

"I'm not even over the speed limit," Nolan protested. He'd been about to start actually speeding the minute they were out of town, but with the reminder that Shinobi was not one for speed, he actually stayed under the limit when he hit the town sign. "How's this?" he asked, resisting the urge to step on it on the straightaway.

"Bearable," the other teen told him, sitting up straighter in his seat. "Though this is why I prefer the city; all the open space between here and there just strikes me as unnatural. Alien to man's normal state. We were meant to live pressed up together, with all the usual conveniences within easy walking distance."

"One of many ways in which we differ," Nolan remarked with a small smile. Although he valued most things in moderation - unlike Shinobi, again - and so the isolation of Xavier's was a little too much for him. He'd been perfectly happy dividing his life between New York and the Hamptons.

"I suspect you may just be harboring a secret masochistic streak," Shinobi told him with a smirk. "It's all right, you know--we rich people are supposed to all be totally depraved. It comes from having everything we could possibly want, from a conventional, material standpoint. It means we have to get inventive with our kink in order to really derive any satisfaction from it."

"I don't feel very kinky," Nolan allowed after a moment's thought. "You'll tell me that I am, without even knowing it, I suppose?" Which Nolan might well consider, but, at least when it came to sexual matters, he'd only ever been very vanilla in his aspirations, and experiences, so far.

"I strive never to do what people expect," he said. Shinobi grinned. "It's probably why most of them find me so irritating. Either way, I have no idea what you are, Nolan. You've always managed to completely elude my normally-keen sense for these things. I suppose it doesn't matter, in the end, though. You do whatever makes you happy, and I will keep cheering you from the sidelines."

"Given my track record with relationships so far, I wonder whether 'what makes me happy' isn't going to be aromanticism," Nolan whispered more than said, his tone as offhanded as usual. He followed it up with one of his brief, dry smiles to take the edge off of the statement. Shinobi could take it to reference Talia, and that would be fine by him. "But I'm proud to have been extraordinarily elusive. Perhaps they can write that on my gravestone." He had, subconsciously, begun to drive faster again.

Shinobi did his best not to shrink back into his seat again as their acceleration increased. "Elusiveness is a trait greatly to be admired, in my opinion," he said, wishing he had a flask of something to take a bit of that nervous edge off. "And I certainly am not an expert when it comes to romance, as such--perhaps aromanticism is the way to go! I mean, asexuality works for some people--I can't comprehend it, personally, but it's true! As long as it's what you actually want, and not just a result of a bad experience. Awful people already have too much influence in the world, without controlling your love life, too."

There was a very hint of a smile playing on Nolan's lips, but then he glanced at Shinobi, only taking his eyes off of the road for a split second. "And how are things with your favorite YouTuber of the moment?"

"Oh, it's all champagne and caviar, just now," Shinobi said. "Though I think I've heard it's always like that, right at first. I'm cautiously optimistic, however." He made a face. "Between you and me? I sort of hope her infatuation with internet notoriety passes quickly. I respect that she does not wish to live entirely hidden away because of her mutation--in theory--but the publicity makes my inner-sneak cringe, sometimes." Not that he would ever attempt to discourage Tamara, of course. But she did not have Warren's, or even Simon's, advantages when it came to being protected from the results of a poor decision becoming the topic of mass scrutiny.

"I like her videos," Nolan replied honestly. That was about the one thing he was certain of, when it came to Tamara Kurtz. "I'd have thought you'd enjoy being potentially associated with a mutant celebrity - one more than Warren, anyway."

He gave a disconsolate snort. "Her videos are brilliant--I never said they weren't! They just make me a bit ..." Shinobi waved a hand, groping for the word, "Comment dit-on ... anxious, I suppose. And I liked Warren's celebrity when it was independent of his mutant status. Now, I can't help but worry about the gigantic target it paints on him. I'm running myself ragged trying to put the best possible spin on it I can, but there's only so much I can do." The glower he leveled at Nolan was unconvincing, but he made the attempt. "Please don't tell him any of that."

"There's not much fun telling people things they most likely already know," Nolan assured Shinobi offhandedly - as if that was ever his reason for keeping Shinobi's confidence. "So you're afraid for her, like you're afraid for him." That sounded as if she had become a friend of Shinobi's, rather than just someone to have 'French lessons' with.

"I wish you wouldn't put it that way," he grumbled, folding his arms indignantly across his chest. "It makes me sound like a damsel in one of those deplorable dime-store romance novels. I am concerned, in a perfectly dignified and totally legitimate way. We know there are crazy people out there who would pull any given mutant apart, regardless of anything they'd actually done, if given the opportunity. More importantly, we," he indicated Nolan and himself, "know there are even more dangerous individuals out there who will try to find a way to use this to turn a profit."

"I'm not sure which are the most dangerous," Nolan replied honestly. "But I know which are the most insidious." Perhaps that settled the first issue, and made Shinobi right. Perhaps. "Either way, your concern is perfect dignified, and legitimate," he added, not to placate Shinobi, but because it was true. "You'd make a wonderful damsel, though."

"I make a wonderful anything," Shinobi insisted. "Anyway. I'm sure we didn't migrate all the way into the Hamptons just to pick apart my nascent anxieties, whether valid or invalid." His pretty face twisted up briefly in confusion. "Why did we migrate all the way into the Hamptons, anyway? I assume it was for more than trolling purposes."

"Couldn't I simply be fighting cabin fever?" Nolan asked rhetorically. Of course, Shinobi knew him better than that. "Besides, trolling those people is as good as therapy, and a lot less taxing." Fortunately, he was now pulling up the driveway of his beach house. They wouldn't have to have this conversation in the car.

"You could," Shinobi allowed as the car rolled to a stop. "Except I've never known you to be afflicted with anything like cabin fever in the past. As a matter of fact, I worry sometimes that the day will come I'll have to drag you bodily out of your workshop to get you to socialize properly." He unbuckled his seat belt and stepped out onto the smooth concrete. "And you can troll this incestuous crock-pot of feeble ambition just as easily online as you can in person. So I admit my curiosity has been piqued. But I will let it go unsatisfied, if that is your preference." What were friends for, after all, if not to turn a blind eye to one's obvious coping mechanisms?

"Not cabin fever in the usual sense, then," Nolan admitted as he led the way towards the front door. "But I do miss my life." If he said so quietly, and a lot more evenly than he usually spoke, it was because of how deep that truth cut.

"Of course you do," he said. "Your life was fantastic. It still is, in my opinion, despite the ... complications. But I certainly understand why you might think our current living arrangements somewhat lackluster in comparison to summer homes and a condo in the city. And actually turning up in the office every day! There's quite a lot to miss."

"There is," Nolan confirmed as he let them into his home. He wasn't sure whether Shinobi was teasing him about the office, but it was all too true. He'd gotten it all, everything he wanted, and then he'd been cut off from it all, and for what? "Would you want to know?" he asked, à propos of nothing, as he switched the lights on. "If I had a horribly vague vision about something that might affect you, would you want to know?"

It was, of course, not the main reason why they were here now, but it had certainly been on his mind lately.

"Well, of course I would," Shinobi said as he followed his friend inside. "Who doesn't want some little hint of insight into the future? But not at the cost of your health. Simon's still looking into that, isn't he? I could make some subtle inquiries elsewhere, if you think it would help."

"No," Nolan said immediately, headed into the kitchen. He gestured for Nolan to help himself, if he wanted to keep drinking; Nolan was only grabbing a glass of water to take his pills. "No, the treatment's keeping things in check for now, and there's nothing more medicine can do for me. I'm working with the Professor about... the rest of it." He paused. That hadn't been what he'd meant to talk about at all. It wasn't as if he could control when he had his visions. "I had a vision about Warren. About his father, really, I think. The details are..."

"Warren's father," Shinobi repeated, pausing in the act of pouring himself another neat vodka from Nolan's well-stocked bar. His tone had taken on the icy quality one normally only heard when he spoke of Sebastian Shaw. "If you can recall any of the details without unnecessary discomfort, I certainly would not mind hearing them." The man was an obstacle, after all. Any inkling they could obtain of what he might do in the future was potentially useful.

"I think... he'd collapsed at his desk," Nolan said, frowning at the recollection. He shook his head, frustrated beyond belief. "Fat lot of good this mutation does anyone. I don't even know when this is happening."

"Collapsed at his desk," Shinobi murmured, looking thoughtful. His gaze sharpened suddenly, and he looked toward Nolan. "I know I don't need to tell you not to tell Warren about this, but ... do not tell Warren about this." It would only need to a number of unnecessary complications. And for all Warren opposed his father at every turn ... he knew his friend still harbored hope they would be able to work out their differences, one day. It was charming, but utterly not grounded in reality. "Do you recall anything else?"

"Someone was screaming - a woman," Nolan said, and then shook his head again. "If this is going to be killing me slowly, I wish it would be a bit more helpful in the meantime."

"Please don't talk like that," Shinobi chided. "We'll figure this out. Somehow. You have the benefit of the best minds that could be applied to such a problem. I refuse to accept that this is a foregone conclusion."

"How about this," Nolan replied, his tone more heavy on the dry than the soft, instead of its usual balance of both, "if this is going to feel like it is boiling my brain away, one vision at a time, I wish it would be a bit more helpful as it does." He took a couple of steps away, and a deep breath, very obviously attempting to compose himself.

"That would be nice," he said, finishing off his drink and re-capping the expensive vodka. "But I'd still call it a secondary consideration. Honestly, as useful as precognition might be, I'm not prepared to trade your life for a glimpse into the future. If that's the price, I'd much rather be surprised."

Nolan would have been very happy to keep living believing himself to be a baseline human, with his mutation mostly latent. But to actually be baseline? He did not know where he would be now, where NolCorp would be, whether he would even have met Shinobi, if it weren't for his mutation. It had been a last minute gut feeling that had taken him to the science convention where they had met.

But this was all immaterial, and after a few seconds' silence, he turned back to Shinobi to give him one of his tight-dry smiles. "Not as if we have a choice."

"I suppose not," Shinobi conceded, pouring himself a fresh drink. "So long as you don't expect me to be happy about it. The illusion of freedom is all that allows me to endure my moments of sobriety."

Nolan smiled briefly in acknowledgment of Shinobi's words. "I'm not exactly pleased with it myself." He moved to get himself a glass, but only to fill it with water. He had told himself that he would take advantage of the weekend to talk to Shinobi about Lil, and what he had found out, but now that they were here, Nolan wasn't sure that he wanted to bring it up. He felt like such an idiot.

"Well, that's enough of that," he said, waving the topic away as though it were a fly buzzing around his face. "Mustn't spoil a perfectly good weekend away with that sort of talk, neh?" Shinobi took another, more measured drink from his glass and exhaled beatifically. "We're young, wealthy, and beautiful, and the whole world is our oyster. Which rather makes me wonder why we don't do weekends like this more often."

Nolan winced at the question, but at least there was a solution he could reach for. "I've been meaning to talk to Clarice Ferguson. Entering into a deal with would make this sort of thing a lot less risky for me."

"There's a lot to be said for minimizing risks," Shinobi nodded placidly. "Not all of them, of course--life would be even more tedious, if there were no risk involved at all. But certainly we shouldn't be foolhardy about it." His shoulders rose and fell. "I don't know the girl all that well, but she seems like a fairly accommodating sort. At least, she was willing to play along with my fun at the party in October."

"She seemed a bit confused by that dance-off," Nolan remarked with an amused, still slightly tight smile.

"Then everything went according to plan. I thrive on my peers' confusion." He chuckled, then quickly made a face. "I have no idea what would surprise the other one, though; I suspect I could fill her bed with live scorpions, and her expression wouldn't change. Seems unsporting, somehow."

"Please don't do that," Nolan said immediately, before he could think to restrain his emotional response. "I - like her." Which was something he preferred saying to 'she's been a good friend.' He had liked people before, and they had betrayed him. He did not want to judge people as being good friends anymore.

"Nan desu ka?" Shinobi murmured, genuinely perplexed. "I wouldn't know where to get the scorpions, anyway."

He shook his head, then added a bewildered, "I'm sorry, but are you quite sure? It's just ... I've known popup software updates that were more personable. The Microsoft Office paper clip seems like a pillar of charm and affability, by comparison. She just seems very," flat, "unemotive, I suppose."

"She's..." Nolan shook his head, because there was no point trying to put Tessa into words; on the contrary, it would be doing her a disservice. "Don't look into where to get the scorpions." That was all that mattered, and he did not mean literal scorpions... although those too.

Shinobi held up his hands in surrender. "Wakarimashita," he said. "I understand. No scorpions." They probably wouldn't provoke a very interesting reaction, anyway. "One day, you'll have to regale me with the story of how you added Robot Girl to your extremely limited list of familiars. I honestly cannot imagine what the two of you would find to talk about, though that may just mean my imagination is more limited than I've always flattered myself."

"Apparently," Nolan agreed, somewhat flatly, then shook his head with a sigh. "Sorry. I'm..." Getting a hell of a migraine. He finished his glass of water, then helped himself to another, as if that was going to help. But at least it gave him something to do while he figured out what to say next. He still hadn't by the time his glass was full, so he went with the first thing that came to mind. "I think Lil might be a bully."

That certainly was one way to bring it up, Nolan, well done.

"Really," said Shinobi, brows rising. "I admit, I didn't get much of a sense of that before--she seemed quite genial, to me. Of course, that's based entirely on a one-time interaction, which was necessarily brief. All the same, just for the sake of argument, what has led you to that suspicion?"

"Something she said," Nolan answered all too neutrally, after taking a drink of water. "So I hacked her school records. I don't know why I hadn't yet."

"Probably some lingering sense of ethics that I hadn't managed to quite erode as yet." He canted his head curiously. "And?" To all appearances, Shinobi was not invested one way or the other in whatever Nolan had uncovered; of greater interest to him was why the information seemed to have unsettled him so.

"She'd mentioned..." Nolan paused, frowning, but then went ahead regardless. "She'd mentioned beating up boys who'd taken liberties, and that was - by all means. They deserved it. But..." He shook his head. "She's apparently beaten up girls, too. Do you know what her mutation is?"

"Invulnerability, I think she'd mentioned," Shinobi said. "Does make the implication a bit more troubling than it would normally be, doesn't it? Still, school records often omit a great deal of fairly significant context. Mine would probably turn your hair white."

"They haven't," Nolan replied simply, looking over at Shinobi.

"I shouldn't be surprised," he said, smirking languidly. "You do like to be well informed, and it's not as though I've ever made much of a secret of my decadent side."

Nolan grabbed a stool and sat on it, leaning his elbows on the kitchen island. "I know school records only tell half the story, at best. But she did say something intimating that violence was her usual response to conflict."

"Well, that's not terribly unusual for a teenager," Shinobi pointed out, his tone wholly reasonable. "Hormones, and all that. And particularly teenagers raised in a more rustic sort of environment."

"Well that's not terribly the sort of person I want to be close to," Nolan replied without missing a beat, straightening up on the stool.

"I'm certainly not defending it," he said, still slouching easily and sloshing his drink around the bottom of his glass. "I have a lifelong and exceedingly keen dislike of physical violence, taught to me by my estimable father. And you've barely known the girl a couple of months, neh? Distancing yourself now will certainly be easier than distancing yourself later. Still," Shinobi reflected, "it seems a bit of a shame."

Only a month, actually, but that only made Shinobi's point more valid. So his conclusion surprised Nolan. "Does it?"

"Well, yes. How long have I known you?" he asked rhetorically. "And I can count the number of people I've seen you genuinely warm up to on one hand. I was honestly worried you'd never bother again, after That Woman." Shinobi never spoke her name. And while he'd never gone out of his way to make her life miserable, as such, he had worked to ensure her options after leaving NolCorp were limited, at best. "It's just disappointing, I suppose. But too much honesty can be as hazardous as not enough, can it not?"

"You're not making a very good case for opening myself up to more people, bringing up Siobhan," Nolan remarked with raised eyebrows, his tone particularly dry. Or was he talking about Talia?

"I shouldn't have to make a case for it at all," Shinobi said, waving his hand dismissively. "You either want to, or you you don't. For a while there, I thought perhaps you did. At least, to a greater extent than I'd expected. But it's hardly any of my business, is it?"

Whatever life he had left, came the beginning of Nolan's answer, but he knew better than to say it out loud, "I don't intend to become a hermit. But whether I do or don't hardly hinges on whether or not I keep seeing one person."

"Of course not," the other teen agreed with a nod that sent his unruly bangs cascading over his eyes for a moment. After a another sip from his glass, his hand slithered toward Nolan's arm, where his long fingers rested, very gently--and very briefly. "Sumimasen. I didn't mean to bring up all of that, really. I'm just sorry to see you disappointed again. I'd hoped for better."

It was odd, how little they touched each other, Nolan thought to himself, as Shinobi pulled his hand back after barely a second had passed. He was self-aware enough to know how touch-starved he was, and Shinobi was his closest friend in the world. And yet touch had never really been a part of their friendship. He filed that away for later thought, and gave his friend a wan, tight smile. "It'll teach me not to hack someone completely the moment they show interest." His small smile dimmed, and he added, almost to himself, "But I think her interest was genuine." He looked up at Shinobi. "That's a step up, at least."

"That you think the interest was genuine somehow just makes it all the more disappointing," Shinobi sighed. And poured himself another drink.

"Isn't that the way of these things?" Nolan asked, leaning his forearms on the island and looking over at Shinobi. "You find someone of interest, who finds you of interest. Things move along until you learn enough about them, or they about you, to know you're not right together."

Shinobi blinked. "I think you may be asking the wrong person. I can't remember the last time I found a potential romantic partner genuinely of interest, before Tamara. Prior to that, the only people I really thought were interesting were you and Warren. But it's really not the same thing, is it? I'm as much a novice when it comes to actual intimacy as anybody. I'm afraid I'm mostly only good for the superficial stuff. And I make a point of making sure nobody ever knows that much about me." Which was probably why he was so very unqualified to speak of these things; he'd never had the interest or the capacity before. He still wasn't altogether certain of the latter, either.

Nolan still wasn't certain whether he would end up actively disliking Tamara, but he found that it didn't matter after all. He gave his friend a small, but genuine smile. "I'm glad you've found someone of interest to you now."

"Arigatou," he murmured. "Still, it's an unfamiliar sort of situation. And it's certainly possible she might learn enough about me, eventually. But I suppose we shall see." Shinobi held up his glass in salute. "Kampai."

Nolan only had a glass of water to raise, but he did all the same. "Kampai." It was just like Shinobi to think that it might only be Tamara having an issue with him, and not the other way around, but Nolan didn't point it out. He drank the rest of his water, then pushed a hand back through his hair. "What do you want to do tomorrow? Brunch in town before we drive back?"

"Only if there's some way to do brunch shockingly," Shinobi told him firmly. "I won't stand for anything as low-key as this boat party for my grand exit. Otherwise, we might as well just grab a couple of Egg McMuffins from the drive through as we bid this den of hollow, grasping avarice an un-fond adieu."

"Shut up, I love it here," Nolan retorted with an amused little frown, and only a hint of dryness. "Besides, nothing is ever a good enough reason for MacDonald's."

"Spoken like a man who hasn't had a decent hangover since his arrival at Xavier's," Shinobi retorted. "But fine. We can tweak the Hamptonites' collective noses one last time before we take our leave. I'll pick out something from my formal Japanese collection."

"I'd dress to match, but cultural appropriation isn't my color," Nolan replied without missing a beat. "However, I'm sure we can arrange for our outfits to clash in the most congruous ways."

"Now that you mention 'appropriation', I can't help but recall I might have a kaftan tucked away somewhere. That would certainly raise eyebrows." Grinning, Shinobi finished off the contents of his latest glass. "As long as I don't have to do the polo shirt thing. That is a Nolan thing. And I'd hate for people to mistake us for twins."

"I will gladly keep the polos to myself," Nolan confirmed, smiling with amusement. "I live to subvert their fashion trademarks."