ax_main | Tommy and TJ

Alt-sibling time at the NYE party!

Tommy'd gone along with Bobby and Kurt, in the end, though of course they weren't going to stick to his side all night. He'd done a quick look-around for Billy, but the dork was nowhere to be found. Probably hunkered down with the boyfriend and ignoring the world, like Tommy'd been trying to do. He didn't exactly feel like dancing, had basically promised not to bail, and there wasn't a whole lot else to do in the decorated school gym. So for the moment, at least, Tommy was hanging back near the snack table, nursing a coke, listening to the music, and trying not to think.

It was kind of odd, given how acutely aware TJ was that alternate family wasn't really family at all, that her alt-father and her alt-brothers felt so much like family already. Probably something to do with how lonely she would have felt otherwise, but TJ wasn't going to look at it too closely, because that way lay angst. Introspection wasn't exactly her favorite thing to do.

So she wasn't going to examine why she was so happy to spot Tommy by the snacks. She was just going to roll with it, and so she bounced over to him, her black dress remarkably covering more of her blue fur than some of her everyday outfits.

"Heeey, brother-from-another-world," she greeted him, leaning against his side with a bright grin. "How's your New Year's Eve going?"

TJ popped up at Tommy's side, and if he hadn't been paying just enough attention he'd have assumed she'd teleported in, except without Kurt's bioweapon issues. He had to get it together, or he was going to be accused of bringing the party down. "If it isn't the kid sister," he joked, the knowledge that she had at least two years and a good four inches on him making the joke worth using. "How's it going, short stuff?"

That would usually have earned him a good-natured swat of her tail, but she'd retracted it for the evening, as it didn't work with the tight dress as it was. So, instead, she poked him in the ribs. "Do I sense a need to compensate? It's going great. I mean, the party's a success, that's all I need."

"Oh yeah?" Tommy grinned at her, swatting her hand away without putting a whole lot of effort into it. "Anyone I need to go threaten? I've never had a sister before, I figure I should be playing the part properly."

"I've never had brothers before, but if you start pulling that shit I might just disavow you and be left with Billy," TJ warned him, her grin sharp as she dropped her hand. She turned around to survey the small crowd of partiers, folding her arms under her breasts. "I don't know if there's anyone I'd kiss at midnight, but I'm open to suggestions."

Tommy snickered, not taking the threat to heart. (Not that it would matter; she'd be disappearing back into time soon anyway.) "Depends on what you're looking for," he shrugged. "Who's your type?"

The Proudstars, apparently. TJ forced herself to keep smiling, and answered, "Not white boys. Terrible sense of rhythm."

This was alright, joking around and smiling, even if it only felt skin-deep. Better than the memory of electricity and the sore throat from screaming. stop that. Loser. "I'd be offended by that if you weren't right," he replied, keeping the grin on. "There's Otabek; he does a lot of dj shit. He's from something... East. Uzbekistan? Kazakhstan? Something like that. But he's off competing somewhere. Skating. I haven't seen him since, like, Thanksgiving."

"I'm pretty sure my type involves being here," TJ pointed out with an amused smile. She hip-checked him. "What about you? You got someone you'd like to kiss at midnight?"

One name popped into mind, a very, very different blue-skinned girl. But she and Alex were doing a thing and having a New Year's date was too much like the kind of thing people in relationships did, and that wasn't them. He didn't think. Not a normal one, anyway.

"Why limit myself to one?" He finished his coke and dropped the can back on the table with a cocky grin. "It would be a waste."

That was a great way to say no, and TJ approved with a nod and a smile. "Well, superspeed's on your side on that one."

He could plant one on everyone in the room between 12:00 and 12:00:01, but of the people in the room, maybe one third would get or appreciate the joke. If that. He gave her a scornful look instead. "Please. Some things I like to make sure girls remember." And he waggled his eyebrows for good measure.

TJ laughed at that. "And a good thing, too." She grabbed a sweet and popped it into her mouth. "Now come on, come and dance with me!"

He wanted to say no, to take the chance to slip out of the gym and... Go somewhere. Maybe just run for a while and see where he ended up. Or go up to Billy's room and check in, see if he needed the company. But he wouldn't need Tommy for that, would he?

"Sure," Tommy said instead, insides more hollow than he liked. "Assuming you guys actually have rhythm in your universe."

"Those of us who aren't white boys do," she retorted, grin sharp. "We've got rhythm coming out of our butts." A hand on his elbow tugged him towards the dancefloor.

Did being blue actually make someone not-White? That gave Tommy pause for a second to think over. Because at least in this world, rainbow hues aside, Kurt and Wanda were both... German. Maybe it was different where TJ had come from, maybe because it was a debate he really didn't feel qualified to start, or maybe it was because in that moment she really reminded him of Shen, but Tommy - for once - let it go instead of going full obnoxious about something he was pretty sure he didn't understand.

He shrugged it off and let her pull him into the middle of things, the lights and the music washing over him and driving off some of the tight, horrible tension he'd been carrying around for the past two days. "Did your Xavier's have dances and stuff, or were you too busy saving the world?" He asked, raising his voice to be heard over the noise.

"We've got kids of all ages there," TJ replied with a shake of her head, finding the rhythm easily, and enthusiastically. She loved dancing, and it showed. "It's not really a high school now, so, no, not really. I don't know whether they ever did!"

It could have been because music was a kind of vibrating energy, but dancing had always come fairly easily and fluidly to Tommy. Everything about music did, except playing it. Piano lessons gone... poorly. Mostly because being taught at someone else's speed had been a painful disaster. Teaching himself guitar was going somewhat better. Dancing had always been the easiest of everything, and he fell into her rhythm without having to think about it. "All ages, like kindergarten too? How early do mutants show their stuff where you're from?"

"I was born this way, just like Kurt," TJ answered with a small smile. "Depends on the kids, really. Some don't find out until they hit puberty, some are born with their stuff already active. I was a mixed bag." Everything to do with her physiology was there from the start - not just being blue, but the night vision or the wall-scaling... and the talent for acrobatics. But her two active mutations, the possession and the hex bolts, those had taken longer to show up.

Tommy nodded. "I could've gone with getting mine earlier. Would suck for the kids with the really weird-ass powers, though."

"When did you get your speed?" TJ asked curiously.

"About... Three and a half years ago? Maybe closer to four? I can't remember the exact date. I know I was eleven."

"Did the world slow down all of a sudden?" She only had her uncle P's account of his manifestation, and that conversation dated back a whiiiile.

Tommy thought back, tried to recapture the moment of realization. "Yeah. That's what it always looks like. You guys all stop. Everything stops, and I can move through it all at my normal speed. I don't feel fast, it's that everything else is slow." He'd ducked away from Frank's fist, thought for a moment that he was dreaming or imagining it all, until the world restarted and Frank had punched air instead.

"I really can't imagine what that's like, in the day to day," TJ stated. What was dancing like, even? Even speedcore wouldn't keep up with their mutation. But Tommy had decent rhythm, and he wouldn't have that if he hated it? Mostly she hoped he wouldn't be dancing with her if he hated it.

"Slow," Tommy repeated, and flashed her a bright, sharp grin. He was getting used to it, though; at least to other people's reactions. Even when he took what felt like hours to think over something it inevitably seemed like he was shooting his mouth off immediately. "It's not like I'm processing life at a thousand times regular speed all the time. Only when I want to." Well, mostly. His brain still seemed to jump from thought to thought faster than most people's could, but it's not like he was doing anything useful with it. It was more like having sixteen different earworms all at the same time.

"Huh." She twisted her lips in an uncertain line. "I never figured out whether I envied Uncle P for his mutation or not. Not that I'm unhappy with my lot," she added, flashing a sharp smile.

That whole 'uncle P' thing was weird, especially since the version of him Tommy knew would be more likely to try and put him through a wall than put up with being called that. "Not me," Tommy replied with false cheer overlaying the dark twisting up inside that had been eating him for the last two days. "Between the speed and the explosive glory, I'm really all any team needs."

"Explosive glory?" TJ echoed. She hadn't known about that!

"Shake anything fast enough, for long enough, and the molecules get a messy divorce," Tommy explained, making a mushroom-cloud shape with his hands as illustration. "Can't your Tom do that?"

"He's not my Tom, and we were only there for a few days," TJ replied. He probably could do it, yeah, she just hadn't seen it - and hadn't thought to ask, because why would she have? "That's seriously badass, though."

"Thank you," Tommy accepted the praise as his due. "Thank you very much. Maybe it's a next-gen thing," he offered as an explanation. "You, me, Billy - we've all got a power cluster, not just one thing. Maybe whatever kids any of us end up having will just keep stacking 'em."

"Oh, totally," TJ confirmed easily. Moira had ranted about that long enough. "Dad - and this Kurt - are great examples, too."

Tommy nodded. "Yeah, he said that his parents were mutants. Sucks not to know what their powers were, though I'm guessing blue had to be a part of it somewhere. Frank and Mary were straight-up baselines; so are the Kaplans. All I can figure is that whatever magic did this to Billy and me rewired our x-genes along the way."

Blue was definitely a part of it, but that wasn't a conversation TJ ought to have with anybody but Kurt, and only if he asked. "Yeah, I never really understood all the magic stuff," TJ stated with a shrug that somehow worked well with her dancing.

"Join the club," Tommy snorted. The song changed up, something with a little more beat to it, and he let the music carry him for a little while rather than try and figure out another topic of conversation.

That was fine with TJ, who loved dancing too much to ever feel like she needed to complement it with something else. She could forget about everything else, in moments like these. She wasn't cut off from her world, from her friends; she was dancing, and with family of a sort. That was all there is, and that was the way parties should go.