Wolverine was in the garage, cursing under his breath at a stubborn alternator when Cyke finally decided to show up.
“Listen, One-Eye,” he barked from under the hood, “Xavier said be here right after school. We ride the same damned bus so where the fuck have you been!?” He stood up and threw down the socket wrench with a satisfying loud clatter.
“Hello to you too, Neanderthal.” Cyke said fussily as he came around the car and brushed himself off. “I didn’t want to mess up my good clothes, so I had to find something to put on.”
The dark boy eyed the taller teen up and down. Cyke’s coveralls looked like they’d just come from the package and had never seen an honest speck of dirt in their life. “Your ‘good’ clothes.” Wolverine said sardonically. “Riiiiiight.”
“I’m not going to get grease all over my school clothes like a fucking …a…a…” The look on the shorter boy’s face made him choose his next words a little more carefully than he’d originally planned. “Uh, like you.” He looked Wolverine up and down, the black shirt, the beat up jeans. “Didn’t you wear those jeans to school today?”
“You checking out my wardrobe or my ass?” Wolverine barked in laughter, which only increased as Cyke flushed.
“Aren’t you worried about getting them dirty?”
“Christ, you are something else.” Wolverine pinched the bridge of his nose in the universal lord-give-me-strength gesture. He was standing in a garage covered in grease, having a conversation with Assface about clothes. This little chat needed to end STAT.
“Whatever. Tell me you know something about cars,” he growled.
“Of course I know fucking cars!” the quarterback bit off furiously. He stalked over to the other side of the garage to a car tarp and pulled it back to showcase a shiny red Alfa Romeo with white pinstripes. “Mine!” He said proudly. Dear god, his chest even puffed out. Ugh.
Wolverine firmly stamped down the desire to gawk at the slick ride and settled for making a jerking off gesture to convey the lie that he was not at all impressed. “You mean your dad’s. You didn’t buy that with your own money, did you?” he sneered.
“Well…no,” Cyke muttered, rubbing his hand in discomfit across the back of his neck. “But I keep it up, everything, by myself.”
“Congrats, you get a gold star. Look, you can polish your chrome later; help me change in the oil in this heap.” Wolverine gestured to the less than impressive green and rust colored gardener’s truck.
They two boys busied themselves above and below the truck, and Wolverine was working mindlessly on cleaning the rings for the new oil filter when Cyke’s voice floated up from below the engine.
“So you and Rogue, huh?”
He grunted noncommittally.
“Soooo…” There was a pause, one he didn’t like as he suspected what was coming. “How do you two…”
“Often and vigorously,” Wolverine snarled.
The trolley slid from under the car and Wolverine looked down at the face of the quarterback by his feet, a stupid grin on the guy’s face. “You know what I mean. Her powers. How do you-” and he made a fist pump.
Wolverine out a foot on the trolley right between Cyke’s legs and glowered down at him. “You wanna ask that again?”
Cyke glanced down at the steel-toed boot inches from his crotch, sighed, and scooted the trolley back under the truck. “Just curious,” a grumble floated up from below.
“Hey!” Wolverine snapped, “I don’t ask about you and Red’s sex life, do I?!” He deliberately dropped a lug nut down a crevice in the engine and smirked in satisfaction when Cyke grunted as it bounced off his forehead.
“It’s pretty awesome, now that you mention it.”
Wolverine grimaced at the smug tone of the other teen’s voice and growled warningly. “You wanna share secrets and giggle have a fucking slumber party! I’m here to work!”
Cyke sighed, “Fine, just thought since we’re stuck down here until god knows when talking would pass the time.”
“You keep yapping and you’ll be seeing God a lot sooner than you think.” That shut him up.
After a few minutes the drip of oil stopped and Wolverine peered down through the engine casing. “You done, One-Eye?”
“Yeh,” came a muffled voice and one of the legs poking from underneath the car nudged out the pan full of dirty oil.
Wolverine opened two quarts of oil and shoved their necks into the opening in the engine. Second later a choking splutter came from under the car, following by a stream of curses and a flurry of legs. He grabbed the trolley and hauled Cyke out from under the car, only to be met with the sight of the quarterback’s face and shoulders covered in oil.
The explosion of laughter that burst from him only increased as Cyke wiped two fingers over his glasses so now the red shone through the gooey mess. The bigger boy jumped to his feet and scrubbed the back of one hand across his mouth to shout, “You did that on purpose, you asshole!”
Choking on his own hysterical chuckles, Wolverine managed to splutter, “I did not! You said you were done!”
“I was done with draining the oil. I wasn’t done cleaning the rings to screw the plug back in! Look at me!” Cyke held his arms wide apart, as if touching himself in such a state was beyond comprehension. “You fuckhead!”
“I asked you if you were done, and you said yeh!” Wolverine shouted back.
“I wasn’t done done! You didn’t ask me if I was done done!” Cyke railed, getting right in Wolverine’s face and splattering him with oil as he shouted.
“Who the fuck asks if someone is done done?!”
“I do!”
“I mean someone besides a pansy!” Wolverine couldn’t help it, he started laughing again so hard he doubled over and clutched his stomach. “Oh god, you idiot,” he wheezed.
Bad move. With his head down he didn’t see Cyke’s fist come down on the back of his neck.
Wolverine hit the floor with a thud but, with a growl, he was up and all over the other boy in a second. He lunged at the quarterback, who tied up his arms in a wicked lock and they wrestled across the floor, shoving and straining while they cursed each other. Wolverine powered his foe into a workbench and tools rattled as the peg board behind them shook wildly. Cyke braced himself against the workbench at his back and shoved as hard as he could, muscling Wolverine back across the garage floor, The floor turned into a slick surface when they kicked over the full oil pan, and they fell to the floor in a greasy tangle of arms, legs, and vulgarities.
“Motherfucker!” Cyke choked through a mouth full of oil as he put Wolverine in a half-nelson and ground the other boy’s face into the slimy concrete.
“YOUR mom enjoyed it last night!” the smaller boy ground out as he pushed them both up with one arm and flipped them over so he was on top and threw a couple of elbows behind him that connected satisfactorily with quarterback’s ribs.
“Don’t talk about my mom!” A fist wound in Wolverine’s hair and pulled viciously, wrenching his head back. Wolverine had to stop trying to hit Cyke to twist out of the painful grip, which allowed the bigger teen to jump on his back once again and pin him to the floor once more with a crazy twisting of arms and immobilized one leg and forced his shoulders into an awkward angel. “All-state wrestling champ, runt!” Cyke taunted. “Let’s see you get out of this one!”
Wolverine broke wind, loud, juicy, and horrible against Cyke’s stomach pressed against his ass. “Gut bomb!” he hooted as the other boy scrambled away from him in disgust. Wolverine collapsed on the floor, guffawing hard in between gasps for air. A moment later he heard a disturbing noise and looked over to see the athlete sprawled on his back, giggling. Cyke raised his head to look over at the dark boy pool lying with his cheek in a pool of dirty oil in hysterics and lost his shit all over again.
“What’s going on here?”
The two slime-covered boys looked up to see Angel towering over them with his wings outspread until they almost touched the opposite walls, and kept laughing so hard that Wolverine started to hiccup. The shorted teen managed to pull himself up to his knees while Cyke struggled to a sitting position in between giggles.
“Changing the oil,” Wolverine gasped up at the stern faced man.
“Uh-huh,” Warren said skeptically as he leaned down and offered a hand to each teen to pull them to their feet. Unfortunately he did not factor in the slick floor and, as he attempted to pull Cyke and Wolverine up, his feet shot out from under him in two radically different directions, and he crashed to the ground in a tangle of feathers and limbs.
Sobering up immediately at the thunderous look on Angel’s normally serene face glaring at them from the ground, both boys scrambled to their feet with only minimal slippage and wrested the man to his feet. They shot panicked looks at each other, knowing they were already on thin-ice and Warren could sink them for another few weeks of punishment for this.
“Oh god, sorry Mr. Worthington!” Cyke stammered as he grabbed a shop towel and tried to scrub away the filthy smears of oil now splashed across Angel’s wings.
Wolverine spun on the spot and rooted frantically across the workbench. Grabbing a tub of Orange Goop (A/N garage degreaser soap), “This’ll help!” he shouted as he slapped a blob onto a wing and rubbed it vigorously, trying to get the muck out.
“Guys! Guys!” Warren spluttered as he tried to fend off the grimy towel Cyke was now scrubbing at his sweater sleeve, which only succeed in working the horrible slime into his expensive angora sweater. He whipped his head to the side to see Wolverine slap another heap of orange something onto his contour feathers, sticking them together even more. “Guys!” He flapped his hands helplessly at the two nervous teens attacked him with degreaser and grimy shop towels until he felt a couple of his larger feathers get pulled out.
Then he lost it. “ENOUGH!” Angel shouted and flapped in a panic.
A wing caught each boy hard and sent them tumbling back. Wolverine landed on the workbench where a hammer promptly fell off the peg board and onto his head, knocking him and sending a spectacular gush of blood over his face. Scott crashed back and slammed into the door of the gardener’s truck with a crunch. Angel looked around in horror at the sight of one unconscious boy with bone showing through his split scalp and the school darling quarterback laying on the floor groaning the clutching his now dislocated shoulder.
An hour later Wolverine was up and bouncing around the med lab in boredom while Dr. McCoy put Cyke in a shoulder brace. Angel slumped in a corner, surrounded by his now gummed-together black and orange wings, his face a picture of defeat.
“Alright, Mr. Summers,” McCoy said soothingly, “just keep this one for a few days, ice it regularly and it should be fine in a week or so.” Cyke shifted his shoulder slightly and winced only a bit before nodding. “It’s good thing football is over or this could have ended your season. But you’ll be right as rain in time for summer training.”
Angel groaned in the corner and covered his face with one hand. Thank god, if he’d permnentaly taken out the star quarterback he would have been tossed out so fast his wings would’ve gotten road burn. As it was he was plain lucky Wolverine was a healer and didn’t appear to be suffering from any side effects from having his cranium split open. Well, if the kid did have brain damage it would have been indistinguishable from his normal behavior.
“Please stop that,” he said pleadingly to dark teen who was currently balancing a couple of scalpels on his fingertips, sharp side down.
“What? Oh, sorry,” Wolverine muttered as he tossed them back onto a tray with a clattered then, catching a stern look from McCoy, tried to re-arrange them in the order he’d found them, making even more noise.
After a few seconds, McCoy rested one huge blue hand over the boy’s. “It’s alright, son. Why don’t you go sit over there while I finish up with Mr. Summers.” He nodded to a chair over by Warren in the corner.
Wolverine skulked over to the chair and sat down, his hands between his knees and his head bent low. “Sorry,” he muttered to Angel.
The winged man looked right then left at his wings and sighed exasperatedly.
“I always screw shit up.”
Angel looked down at the dark head bowed low. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in exhaustion. The kid certainly didn’t make things easier for himself, but Angel had overreacted in the garage. The boys had been trying to help, in their own ham-fisted and moronic way, but he bhad revealed grey matter on one and nearly torn the arm off another in his carelessness.
He laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, “Kid, you’re a lot of trouble, no doubt.”
Wolverine’s head slumped lower, “No kidding. I can’t do anything right.”
“I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Just-“ Angel sighed “clean up that mess downstairs…and don’t tell Xavier I brained you….” He couldn’t believe we was saying this. “And we’ll call it even.” Made a deal with the damn devil, that’s what he did.
Wolverine hopped up, grabbed Angel’s hand, and pumped it hard, causing the man to wince. Christ the kid had a grip. “Deal!” He swiveled his head around to look at Cyke over his shoulder, “You ready, Scooter? We gotta clean up the garage.”
Cyke hopped down from the stretcher, rolled his shoulder again with no wince this time and nodded. “Let’s go.”
The two boys walked down the hall, talking quietly about their narrow escape from further punishment and the work the truck still needed. Angel shook his head in amazement. Those two had hated each other’s guts with a fiery purple passion just a few days ago. Today he found them laughing their asses off in the garage after what looked like a shit fight. Angel was quite certain he was never that inconstant and ridiculous when he was their age.
Christ, kids. No matter how long he worked at Xavier’s he would never understand them.
“Ah now, Mr. Worthington,” Dr. McCoy said with a slap of his hands. “Let’s see what he can do about those wings. You’re not allergic to polyethylene are you? No? Good, I think I have just the thing.”
Four hours later Angel left the med lab a few feathers short and thin on patience. He wondered if Xavier might consider a request for a leave of absence for mental health reasons.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
YAY! With this chapter I have broken the Top 10 of Most Reviewed Stories. You guys rock!
I am a comment whore! Feed the beast! LOL!
I am a comment whore! Feed the beast! LOL!