ax_main | Vance and Pyro

When you have a fight with your girlfriend, obviously, the thing to do is get fixated on fixing something doable. Pyro and Vance bond while getting what they need to fix the hole in Vance's wall.

Pyro wasn't entirely sure why it felt important to fix that stupid hole now, but it did. And if nothing else, he was very good at just going along with something without questioning it much. So he'd grabbed the new kid and they'd headed to a nearby hardware store. A long talk with the clerk had led him to the conclusion that it would probably be best to replace the drywall altogether, but also that it was way too much hassle for a hole like that. So in the end, they just grabbed a small patch of drywall and some spackling paste, and they were going to hope for the best.

"If this doesn't work out," he was telling the kid as they walked out of the store, "then we can do the whole drywall thing."

"Sure thing," Vance said, nodding as he walked alongside Pyro. It wasn't his first wall repair; sometimes his dad had thrown things when he'd gotten too upset. So Vance had gotten into the home repair game fairly early. It was easier to fix a wall than to explain why it looked like someone had thrown a rock through it. "Even if we have to do that, should be plenty doable with two of us."

"If you say so," Pyro stated, not having any experience at all with home repair. His experience of having a home was pretty slim to start with. "I'll just follow your lead on that one, newbie." Calling him that wasn't anything hostile; Pyro tended to shy away from calling most people by their human names, and he was a newbie.

Vance shrugged. "I mean, it's just drywall, and it's not like we're trying to make it look, like.....fancy or something, right?"

Pyro snorted. "Oh yeah. We're so fucking fancy." He shook his head. "If it's all that easy, we could still go back and get the whole thing. But it sounded way more complicated than 'apply small piece of drywall, spackle the shit out of it as needed'."

"Oh, for sure more complicated," Vance agreed, grinning at Pyro's response. "Just not the end of the world."

"I'd hope not," Pyro confirmed, and glanced at the kid beside him. "You picked a mutant name yet?"

Vance blushed. He knew his mutant name was kinda dumb, but it was also cool to him. He had super powers right? So he should have a comic book name.

Besides, he couldn't come up with anything else.

"Marvel Boy."

"Wow, way to be humble, Marv," Pyro remarked with a smirk. Hey, it was that or laugh, and he didn't want to laugh at a teammate's mutant name. Marv, though? That didn't work. He'd probably call him MB. There was no way he was actually calling him Marvel Boy, not with a straight face.

Vance shrugged, "If I'm gonna have comic book powers, I should have a comic book name, right?" Besides, what else did you call a dude with TK?

"I never really read many comic books," Pyro stated with a brief pout. "Sorry."

"Aw, man, I wish I'd brought some with me when I left home. I would've let you borrow them," Vance lamented.

"I'm not a big reader, anyway," Pyro answered, shaking his head. They had pictures, so it wouldn't be as bad as Wanda's books, but still. "But thanks, man."

"Of course," Vance said brightly. "We're teammates."

The kid had the right spirit that way, Pyro would give him that, and so he gave him a small smile. Okay, closer to a smirk, but it was Pyro; what did you expect? "What's your story, anyway? Wanda never really said."

"Nothing all that special," he said, shrugging. "Left home, ran into Wanda, Pietro, and Lance. Ta da! What about you?"

Pyro shrugged. "I'd been living on the street when Magneto found me."

"Same here. Well, except the Magneto part. Were you a runaway too?" Vance asked.

"Yeah," Pyro confirmed without going into details. "Bunch of us like that."

"It's good. That there's a place for us, y'know?" Vance mused as they walked. "I mean, in lots of places, it's like we're the freaks right? But here, we're just....us."

"Fuck anyone who'll call us freaks, anyway," Pyro muttered, a little darkly.

"Guess so," Vance said, nodding. He wasn't as angry as Pyro seemed to be, or to as angry as...a lot of the others, honestly. But he understood why they were so upset.

Pyro shot the kid a look. He 'guessed so'? What was that? "What, you think we are freaks?" Well, to be fair, they were, but Pyro loved that about them. He just didn't want any flatscans calling them that like it was a bad thing.

Vance shook his head 'no.' "Of course not."

"Well then, fuck them," Pyro pointed out. Nobody called them freaks but themselves.

"Yeah," Vance agreed, emphatically, if only because it seemed pretty important that he did so.

"Yeah," Pyro confirmed with an approving smirk.

They walked in companionable silence for a moment, before Vance asked, "So how'd you get roped into fixing my wall, anyway?"

"It just seemed like the thing to do," Pyro answered with a shrug.

"Just felt like fixing a wall?" Vance asked, sounding amused but good-naturedly so.

"Why not? Seems more productive than fucking around on our games," Pyro replied, completely ignoring how out of character it was for him to volunteer to do something like this. Nothing to see here, move along. He wasn't telling the newbie about his fight with Mage.

That...wasn't exactly an answer, really. Not that Vance knew Pyro all that well, but he could still spot a clear evasion. "I guess," he conceded, rather than pick a fight.

"What about you?" Pyro asked. "I mean, you know more than me about fixing walls, clearly. Why wait so long?"

Vance shrugged a bit awkwardly and blushed lightly. Now that Pyro put it that way, he felt like a schmuck for not having just taken care of it himself. That would've been the right thing to do, right? "I guess...I just wasn't sure if it was my place? I didn't want to mess it up and upset anyone, y'know?" That was the honest truth.

"Oh, we upset each other on a daily basis," Pyro assured him. "It's sort of our thing. But we're still tight. Don't worry about shit like that." He wasn't sure how fixing a wall could have upset anyone, but they all had different trauma. He didn't want to share his, he wasn't going to ask about MB's.

"You've been here awhile, right?" Vance asked.

"Yeah," Pyro confirmed with a nod.

He smiled. "So I oughta take your word on it, I guess. And, I mean, I don't know why I wouldn't. Everyone has been really cool so far."

"You've seen us get on each other's case enough," Pyro pointed out. And yet they were still a team. In a way those kids at Xavier's could never be. That said it all.

"True. But, I mean, that's what family does, right?"

Pyro smirked at him, although it was pretty damn close to an actual, proper smile. "Yeah. Yeah, it is." He clapped his free hand on MB's shoulder and squeezed it approvingly, before letting go. "Next time there's a hole in your room, don't wait for someone like me to decide to do something about it, all right?"

Vance nodded. "Sure thing, man. No problem."

"I mean, unless you like that hole there," Pyro remarked, getting started on the ribbing.

"Hey, it was a gift from Fatale," Vance said, joshing the other boy right back.

"I bet. Gift that keeps on giving. This can still go in the trash," with a gesture at the bag he was carrying over one shoulder, "if you wanna keep that alive."

"See, but then she might think I'm going sentimental," Vance joked.

"And you wouldn't want that," Pyro mock-sympathized. "Covering up the hole it is."

Vance nodded faux-seriously. "You get it."

Pyro actually laughed at that, a rare open expression on his face that made him look younger than he usually did. "You're all right, MB."

Vance grinned, cheeks pink with the cold and the pleasure at apparently having been accepted. "Thanks, man. You're not so bad yourself." He elbowed Pyro gently.

"Fuck you, I'm the fucking best," Pyro retorted immediately, now sporting his usual smirk.

"If you say so, man, if you say so."

Pyro flipped him off, but he was still smirking.

What did you know. Sometimes following his instincts was a good idea. He felt better already, from getting out and the thought of doing something constructive. And the newbie really was all right. Nothing with Mage was fixed, but one thing at a time. First up, that fucking hole.