Teddy and Warren, backdated

[ax_angel]

(Pre aliens) Teddy and Warren go for a flight then discuss srs mutant bznss. They're blond, they're buff, and they're having deep thoughts okay guys.

Warren stood on the very edge of the roof, bare toes curled over into the gutter, arms and wings outstretched. The wind still had a wintery bite to it, so he wasn’t shirtless, but wore a thin t-shirt that didn’t help much. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the cold, more that it didn’t feel bad, exactly. Today, it almost felt good.

Anything to get him out of his own head.

He opened his eyes and was about to fall when he spotted someone else in the air. He smiled and waved. “Teddy!”

The weather had been nice enough that day that flying outside seemed like a great plan, especially since he had that jacket that Warren's guy had made for him. Stretching his wings out, Teddy soared higher than he'd dared back in the fall, remembering those first lessons with Tamara with all kinds of warm fuzzy feelings wrapped around them. There might be another snow dump tomorrow, or another riot in the park to shatter his good mood, but right now things were looking all kinds of up.

Teddy banked and headed back over the school, glancing down when he heard his name. Warren was on the roof waving, and Teddy waved back. Was he planning to come up, or should Teddy go down? He finished his circle and headed back Warren's way, just in case he was supposed to come down.

Warren leapt off the roof and beat his wings a few times, hard, to meet Teddy halfway. "Nice day for it! Were you on your way somewhere?"

One thing Teddy still hadn't figured out was hovering, and he tried to angle his wings differently to slow down and fall in beside Warren. "Nope. Just taking advantage of the lack of snow to get some air time. The Danger Room's not even remotely close to enough."
"There's no substitute." Warren noticed the awkward and gestured forward, so they could move. He grinned. "Need real wind in your hair! How fast can you go? Wanna get the lead out?"

"I have no idea what my top speed is," Teddy confessed, his smile growing. "Not Beaubier-fast, obviously, but it'd be interesting to find out. Where to?"

Warren chuckled. "No one is Beaubier-fast." If he sounded proud, well, he was. "The lake! Let's go!" He beat his wings hard and took off, still grinning wildly.

Warren had a head start, both right then and in flying in general, but once Teddy got oriented in the right direction, he was hot on his heels. That was the neat thing - he could make his wingspan bigger, his shape more aerodynamic. Not much, because flying needed concentration as well, but enough to let a few strong beats bring him just about even. The rushing wind sounded loud in his ears, his muscles warming as he pushed himself faster.

Best. Feeling. Ever. Warren gave a "wooo-hooo!" into the wind as he beat his wings, caught a good current, and used it to lift himself higher. "This is the best!"

Teddy's competitive side had kicked in the moment Warren had picked up speed, and he kept his eyes on the lake as it got closer. Let Warren waste time goofing around with air currents -- Teddy pushed more muscle mass into his back and shot forward again.

Warren's eyes meant he didn't miss a trick. He watched from behind, amazed at how Teddy's form rippled and then worked, machine-like, perfect. Then he laughed out loud and beat his wings, pushing off the current and catching up. "How even??"

And given that Warren was able to catch up easily when Teddy was going flat-out already -- that meant he definitely had an advantage, especially since he was built for this and Teddy was only pretending. The urge to prove it ebbed a little, and Teddy did a not-terrible version of a barrel roll, grinning wide. "My powers are awesome, that's how!"

Warren clapped for the roll and said, "You've been practicing!"

"When I can!" And yeah, Warren was right on that as well -- the feeling of the wind in his hair, the view of the ground below and knowing this was something so few people ever got to experience this way... it was pretty special. And he was very, very lucky. It wasn't the first time he'd thought that over the last few months, but something like this drove it home that much more.

“You’re built like a flying tank and it’s awesome!” Warren shot forward, then lifted on a current, all hollow bones and air.

Teddy laughed, watching him go, then focused on getting himself restabilized as he cut his way through the air. "More of a torpedo, but that works too!"

"True!" Warren did a barrel roll of his own, then had to extend his wings and catch the air again, slowing himself down. He laughed. "You're way too aerodynamic to be a tank." Aaaaaand now his hair was in his face. He gave his head a toss to get it out of his eyes.

Was he preening while he was flying? (Was it bad form to make bird jokes about a guy with wings?) At least Warren was wearing a shirt this time. Not that Teddy minded the view, Warren was gorgeous and he knew it. It was just... more awkward sometimes. Not always knowing where to look. The lake was approaching fast, and Teddy turned his full attention back to the flight, banking in to drop toward the ground and land.

Warren, on the other hand, took on a full nose dive, zooming toward the lake at an alarming speed and laughing against the wind. At the very last possible moment, he opened his wings. His feet splashed against the surface of the lake, then he beat hard and lifted. "Wooooohoo!"

Teddy whooped as Warren skipped himself off the surface of the lake, his own landing jarring his knees as he lost his focus. Teddy stumbled, caught himself before he fell, and pulled his wings back in and made them vanish to prevent himself from over balancing in the other direction. "Nice!"

Warren touched down, bare feet tripping slightly on the lakeshore, and came to stop facing Teddy. He lifted his wings and shook them out. "You're killing the aerodynamics. You're going to be faster than me in no time. If you stop fighting the currents." He smirked slightly.

"Sometimes an air current could use a good punch," Teddy joked back, though he absorbed the suggestion rather than rejecting it outright. "Do you sense them somehow, or is it just an experience thing?"

Warren laughed at Teddy's response, running his hands through his unruly hair to try and help the product he'd assiduously applied this morning take back control. "My feathers pull at my skin a certain way, so I can feel them--but I didn't know how to use them instinctively or anything. I watched a lot of documentaries on birds. Like, so many."

Teddy's eyes flicked up to watch Warren fuss with his hair, envying for a moment - but only a moment, he was getting better - Warren's total physical confidence and the ease with which he fit into his skin. A weird way to phrase it, but Teddy knew what he meant even if the word choice was a bad one. "I guess I need to pull up the Nature Channel and see if they've got anything useful on bats," he laughed, folding his arms in front of him for lack of anything else to do with them. "Though if it involves echolocation, I'm up a creek."

Warren chuckled and finally stopped screwing with his hair. He shook his wings out once more, though. "Do you have strong feelings about Tamara? I ask because most people do. She has bat wings, sorta. She might know the good ones to watch."

"Tamara? Yeah, she's fun. We've been practicing flying together -- at least when the weather was better last fall. I based my wings off of hers after I bombed on the feathered versions," Teddy confessed with a sheepish grin.

"Heh, nice," Warren clapped Teddy on the shoulder briefly, looking impressed. "She did a bunch of reading up and researching when she was still trying to get hers to work. It was touch and go. We ended up in the pond once when they opened on accident. It was hilarious."

"Oh man -- she must have been pissed," Teddy laughed, shaking his head at the image. "Tamara hates being cold at the best of times, never mind cold and wet."

"She was embarrassed, more like," Warren admitted with a chuckle. He leaned forward like he was telling a secret and lowered his voice. "It was her fault. I was carrying her and her wings flipped out and we went down. But I never told you that."

Teddy caught himself leaning in to listen, pulling back with a chuckle after Warren's warning. "My lips are sealed." And that, he mused ruefully to himself, was the problem with people who knew exactly how charismatic they were. It was far too easy to get caught up in the nonsense, to skim along the surface as easily as Warren had skipped across the water in the lake. "I haven't seen that much of her lately, to be honest. She fell off the face of the earth for a while when she and Shinobi started going out -- and then I was a hermit myself for a while. Ships passing in the night."

“Same,” Warren admitted. “Though I was worried that was my fault. I still make time to fly every day so I don’t lost my mind, but every time I think I’m caught up on work and school, something else happens and there’s a ton of press to arrange.

“I wanted to be a superhero not a cover boy, but...” Warren gave a shrug and made a face like, what can you do.

"Yeah, I'm not sure I buy that," Teddy teased him gently. "You were getting headlines long before all of this started." he gestured vaguely back at the school.

“True.” Warren chuckled, utterly unashamed. “Gossip Girl headlines and the odd speculation about what kind of CEO I’d make aside, then, this was not what I had planned.”

Teddy had to grant him that. He nodded, tucking his hands into his pants pockets as he relaxed a little more. "I don't think any of us expected the kinds of curveballs this year's thrown at us so far." He looked at Warren then, really looked at him, and a frown creased his brow. "How are you holding up?" he asked, his gentle concern unfeigned.

Warren’s smile echoed that gentleness, of a sudden. It was... kind of nice to be asked, like that. “Shit’s always hitting the fan,” Warren admitted, “so I’m pretty much constantly on defense. All three of us are, because when I suffer so do Simon and JP, god knows. But it’s not bad, honestly. I like being busy, and at least it’s for something I believe in instead of just the endless pursuit of more money because money.”

Thank goodness he'd made the distinction about scorekeeping-money versus survival-money, because Teddy might have lost some sympathy there, but no -- Warren knew what he was talking about. "Still it's got to be exhausting, especially now. It feels like the stakes just got raised on us way higher than they should."

"Right? I've been shitting my pants, not gonna lie." Warren sighed. And of course it had come right after the whole Murderworld thing, and then the damn Brotherhood being a bunch of, "God, those jackasses. What were they thinking?" He didn't expect he'd need to say who.

Teddy walked along the muddy ground toward a bench that faced the lake. "I'm pretty sure they're not thinking. Not that I'm any great expert. But as much as they talk a big game, they're just kids like us, except they're alone. Especially since Magneto left them. I'd be willing to bet they're running on anger, and on fear. And that can push people to do really stupid things."

“It’s not like they have no alternatives, though,” Warren said thoughtfully, following along with his hands in his jeans pockets. “Xavier said they could come here. It looked like they might, for half a second. Now—never gonna happen.”

"Some of them are making the jump." Teddy dropped to sit on the bench, sprawling back and sticking his legs out in front, only realizing after he was sitting that Warren couldn't exactly do the same thing. Oops. "Scott's brother and Fatale. Not that the shuffling around has changed their numbers any," he admitted, "but it means there's hope that some of the others will come around. Or come back." And the less said about Billy's clenched-teeth muttering about all of that, the better.

Warren nodded and slid onto the bench sideways, pulling one leg up under him, letting his wings hang off the side and throwing an arm over the back. He rested his head on that hand, facing Teddy. "I was hoping it was just a matter of time before Alex came. Scott's happy--not that you can tell from looking at him, but, heh, Scott.

"I don't know though. If that fuck-up didn't convince them to come... and hell, it convinced some of us to bail..." Warren frowned. Tessa was a loss--and Illyana... he guessed he should've seen it coming, but he hadn't.

"The trouble is that they're not entirely wrong." Teddy held up a hand. "Hear me out. There are good reasons to be afraid, and to be angry. Look at what happened to Nick, or anything to do with the Right. So there's no way to honestly convince them they'll be safer here, or that they shouldn't be upset.

"The difference is in methods, and moral codes, in what's 'too far,'" Teddy kept going, trying to pick his way through the complicated, half-formed ideas. "And you can't force those on anyone. No-one enjoys missionaries," he joked dryly. "Maybe all we can do is be effective good examples."

Warren cocked an eyebrow. “Sadly that’s not as impressive as blowing things up. But I’m working on it. And—I get it. I’m scared and angry too. Just like, it’s really shortsighted and selfish to act out like that right now.

“The time... might come,” he admitted. “But I’d rather try and hold it off than bring it on.”

"Yeah, no, I'm with you on that one." Teddy nodded, the cool spring air finally getting to him -- at least that was probably the reason for the shiver that ran up his spine. "I just keep hoping there's more to it than that. I didn't expect Tessa to jump ship. Something about that-" he trailed off, worrying with his teeth at the ring in his lip. "I don't know. Maybe it just caught me off-guard."

Warren shook his head and ruffled his feathers, looking annoyed of a sudden. "Same here. Though--part of me is hoping there's some bigger game to it. I mean. Tessa always sees things like she's up in the air, you know? Birds-eye view of situations, not just geography. I keep hoping she's... double-agenting or something."

"Now that's a real possibility." Teddy considered it for a second, watching the ripples on the lake. "I like it better than the idea that she's decided the Brotherhood's on the right track. Not to mention the kind of damage she could do if she decided to... but I guess that's true for any of us, to a certain extent."

"Whether with our powers or our knowledge... yeah." Warren blew up, sending hair flying back out of his eyes. "Could be that I'm just wishful thinking about Tessa. She's pretty, uh, inscrutable is the word. But I can't even wrap my head around the idea that someone so logical could think the Brotherhood's methods are necessary at this point, let alone worth supporting. It's... like, no way."

Teddy nodded. "To play devil's advocate - even though I pretty much agree with you - she's got a lot of experience with extremist groups, more so than any of us. Maybe it's got to do with something that happened when she was a kid." He shrugged, lips pressed together. "But if she's there on a mission for the Professor or something like that, then the worst thing we could do is blow her cover. So either way, mean as it sounds, we're better off if we assume the worst."

"Which sucks." Warren made a face, feathers ruffling as if offended. "Also, something in me hopes the Professor didn't send her over there. Feels... weird. She might've grown up super fast but she's still... like, a kid. Ugh."

"We're all still kids," Teddy replied quietly. "None of us are trained or ready for any of this, but what choice is there? Other than the Professor and Magneto, a couple of the teachers, there don't seem to be many adult mutants. And there's no way they're all in hiding." Teddy could have done it, unless he slipped up and exposed his strength one day, but not Warren or Kurt.

"We can get justice against The Friends of Humanity and the Right through the courts, if there's ever enough evidence against them, but when it comes to policing mutants, what can they really do? Nothing that we'd want to see, that's for sure." Teddy shuddered at the mental images that notion brought up.

"I'm a hundred percent for us policing--ourselves and even in general, if need be. But... I was doing that before I met Xavier, and I feel like a lot of others were leaning that way too, you know? That feels like something we would've done without him; he's just giving us a framework to be safer and more effective. If I feel like he's using us like chess pieces... I'm out." Warren sighed a little, shaking his head. "If Tessa went to him, saying she wanted to do a thing, I guess she's gonna do it anyhow so he might as well back her up. But if it was his idea, I don't know.

"Maybe I'm not explaining it right. Maybe I'm being arbitrary." He smiled wryly.

Teddy shook his head. "No, I get it. There's so much good happening here at the school, and there's so much potential for awful all at the same time. I trust the Professor, at least I think I do, but the only reason I can be even remotely confident that that's even my own opinion is because apparently telepaths have a really hard time reading me. At least that's what Ms. Frost and Jean say. Most everybody else doesn't even have that."

"Huh," Warren eyed Teddy thoughtfully. That did give his opinion extra weight--and there was also something comforting knowing that for all Teddy may trust the Professor, he was a skeptic at heart. Warren knew he liked this guy, but that was getting deeper. "Part of your mutation, I guess? That's handy."

"I think so?" Teddy shrugged, the breeze tugging at his hair again. "My guess is that it has something to do with the shapeshifting. Maybe my brain is too slippery," he laughed at himself a little.

"All I really know is that Ms. Frost has one wicked stink-eye and Jean can't see me unless I'm practically in arm's reach. Whatever it is, I'll take it. I like the reassurance that I'm probably not brainwashed."

"Guess I'll just have to check with Jean for mine," Warren said with a chuckle. That was definitely the telepath he trusted most. "I mean, I could ask Ms. Frost, but for one, she's a grown-up, and for another, once you've seen someone in a corset it's hard not to think about them... in a corset. Dangerous around a telepath." Warren winked. And definitely was thinking about Ms. Frost... in a corset...

Teddy laughed, caught off-guard, and shook his head. "Got to admit that's not a problem I've had. I think you're on your own there."

"It's super distracting in math class." Warren laughed too.

"Aha! I think I've discovered the reason for my grades," Teddy grinned. "It'll be me and the straight girls forcing the rest of you guys into a curve. I'll wave to you from the top five."

"I wouldn't put it past Ms. Frost," Warren said, though his chuckle was fond. He liked her, actually! Just. Corset. Also, hot. And scary. "I feel like she'd enjoy pitting the whole school against each other that way. Survival of the fittest. Or math-oriented... est..."

"I think a decathalon would go over better with the parents than a battle royale," Teddy joked back. Though... yeah. He was more used to being entirely invisible to teachers (and classmates and ... everybody, at least before sophomore year and his brief brush with the popular crowd), and while that really hadn't been great, he almost preferred it to the way Ms. Frost looked at him sometimes. Like he was a specimen she wanted to dissect, or an annoyance she'd rather see gone.

"Let's hope the idea doesn't occur to her, all the same." Warren was still smiling.

Teddy chuckled low. "If it does it'll be because she pulled it out of your mind, not mine."