Template:Featured Articles/30-2023
Gabriel was silent for a bit at that, sipping his beer. "Well," he said, starting to move back from his perch and toward the ladder. "I think I'll take my chances with the aqueducts." Jubilee grabbed onto the leg of his pants in a loose grip, tugging downwards as she raised an eyebrow at his attempted exit. “Sit the fuck down, idiot. I’m not about to grill you.” "Now who's being angry?" Gabriel jerked his leg free of her grasp. If anyone in X-Force was going to tussle him and send him plummeting to sure injury off the side of the vehicle, it wasn't going to be Jubilee. "I don't think there's a conversation for the two of us to have up here." “Then sit and keep me company anyway,” She didn’t reach for him again, just turned back to the stars as she picked up her beer and took a deep drink. He was now far more irritated than he'd been at any point during a trip where he'd been confined to enclosed spaces with co-workers whose hygiene habits he often found to be questionable. And for her, of all of them, to bring up his mood, well, he might have found that laughable if he weren't so annoyed. He turned his back to her, unsure whether to sit or not, and hit his vape. “You understand I care about you, right?” She took another sip of her beer, frustrated that she couldn’t ever seem to say the right thing to people despite having been trained and quite good at it during professional events. Give her sweaty rich white man and she was golden. Put in an ounce of actual personal stakes however and she was a continual source of just not having the right words for any of it. Gabriel unsuccessfully tried to blow smoke rings as he exhaled. He was glad she couldn't see him roll his eyes. "Sure," he said, because it felt rude to say nothing, and she'd essentially forced him into civility by accusing him of being angry. There were very few people on X-Force with whom he wanted to talk about feelings, and he didn't think she was on the shortlist. "I appreciate that," he added, because he did, in a way. “Cool, so like, think of all the awkward as fuck questions and observations as my way of trying to be present for you. I suck at it, and I don’t expect anyone to actually listen to me but like, yeah. It wasn’t meant to make you leave.” Jubilee pushed her hand up, letting the smoke from his vape drift through her fingertips. “Dude, you gotta pulse your throat. Kinda like a really small cough.” "I know how to blow a smoke ring," he said, not even bothering to hide his irritation. “Sure,” Jubilee replied, taking a drink and turning back to her stars. They’d need to leave soon, better to get all her ‘outside’ in before they did. “I’m gonna shut up now.” Gabriel didn't say anything for a second, sipping from his beer. "Yeah," he said. "I'll leave you to that." And in an instant, he was gone. |
