2 June 2001
Alpha Flight
Wildchild/Northstar

Disclaimers: If any of them were ours, they'd get drunk more often. And dance.

Authors' Note: It just occurred to us that we ought to give Kyle a little attention.

Stellar
by Janete

Kyle hunkers down on the roof of Alpha's Toronto house and stares at the summer pollutant sky.

It's been too hot and smoggy in Toronto to work seriously during the days, so like all other sensible, non-corporate people on earth, most of Alpha Flight has inverted its Circadian rhythms, started daysleeping and playing at night when the air is thinner. Only Heather's still on a day-schedule. Kyle's only seen her for a couple of hours every day. Red eyes from the bad air and the brightness and she comes and curls up on the couch with them while Kyle's still in his pajamas and Puck's wandering around in those oddly truncated Judo pants of his.

And sometime around eleven or midnight, somebody -- and he thinks it might have been Northstar -- dropped into the pile of people in front of the TV with a bottle of sub-zero Stoli and a fifth of Crown Royal and announced they were going to get stupid drunk on the roof.

Which has been, all things considered, pretty fun. Kyle's been drunk before, but only for the sole purpose of passing out and being not-Kyle for a while. Whereas this is. Social. Yeah. Friendly and stupid and more group-togetherness than he would have bet Alpha Flight had in it. Most of them in cutoffs and undershirts and Aurora in that gravity-defying bikini top that makes him grateful for his oversized cargo shorts, and even if she's insane she's gorgeous, and her brother in just shorts, showing off those flat muscles of his and somehow ignoring everybody's eyes on him.

And Kyle is . . . not happy exactly, but kinda like belonging. Puck ruffles his hair and twists a handful of it until Kyle screams like a sissy girl. Which is sort of the point -- he's the only guy on the senior team with long hair, and unlike Heather he doesn't tie it back, and it is a hazard, and he's keeping it anyway. Damn it.

Pulls himself together once the dwarf gets off him and turns around to see Northstar and Walter wrestling over the saltshaker that's apparently part and parcel with the tequila and lemon that've wandered up to join them. Long, muscled bodies, sweaty, damn it, and making serious attempts to mash each other into the loose gravel lying around on the tar paper. Rolling, eventually, towards the edge. They pause when Heather sticks her head up and screams at them to be careful. Just long enough for Northstar to break free, grab the salt shaker, and fall over the edge.

"Jean-Paul!" Heather wide and horrified and maybe, Kyle thinks, just a little stunned.

Because he pops right back up, grins at her like only a man standing in empty space can, and drops down onto the roof, evading Walter and offering the shaker to Heather when she comes storming over.

She hits him. Really a lot of times, actually. Over and over, mostly on the head, not hard enough to say, knock his teeth out, but probably enough to rattle his brain if he has one.

"Ouch! Chrisse, Heather, stop it. Ow ow ow. Wal-tair, Heather's beating me. Make her stop. Ow!"

"You get your ass kicked by a girl, that's your problem."

"Oww! Always beating me, Heather. Stop it!" And just batting back at her, softly, shit-faced drunk and just wayyyy too happy and apparently he's forgotten what a bastard he's supposed to be.

Kyle catches himself grinning at the spectacle and doesn't bother to stop. Heather can make anyone look (and feel) helpless, anyway, but somehow the effect's that much funnier on Jean-Paul. Like Heather's bear-hugging a cactus and somehow winning just the same.

Besides, having Jean-Paul and Heather distracted makes it possible for him to lick a salt-stripe from Aurora's palm before taking another shot without getting his ass pummeled by five feet eleven inches of joual rage. Kyle's good, but speed counts for something.

As severe drunkenness and being on a rooftop counts against the guy who can't fly.

Or even glide.

Maybe Heather'd catch him by the hair. Maybe.

He eases off the new and fun game of grinning at Aurora, despite the fact that she has a habit of showing off every last one of those pearly whites when she grins.

Kyle appreciates that in a woman. Like maybe she could at any moment just reach out and chuck him on the canines.

No one ever chucks him on the canines.

Or scratches behind his ears for that matter. Kyle shakes it off. It's always way too easy to get maudlin about the belly-rubs his mother never gave him when he's drunk.

And he is, most assuredly, drunk.

Much drunker than Puck, who's apparently just a cleverly designed empty keg, infinitely drunker than Heather -- though she might be faking it some. Not drunker than Walter, though. Wal-tair. Walterbear. Heh.

Walterbear is singing. In French. With Jean-Paul doing a tinkerbell act around his head.

Kyle makes himself a solemn promise to remember this in the morning. Poor JP. Probably never gets to act like a complete fairy. Not ever. Now for himself, he could dress in a pink tutu and hit on the archbishop and no one would twig.

Unless they just assumed that the whole of Alpha Flight had gotten hit with Big Gay Photon Rays. Huge ones. In lavender. And Heather and Aurora would have hot, sweaty, cyborg lunatic lesbo sex. Wow, would they have a lot of sex.

Lots and lots of sex. In public. Yeah. Because it would be . . . there'd be aliens making them do it. Or Magneto. And Jean-Paul would leap to save them, promising to fuck the hell out of Walterbear in their place, but Walterbear would be in the lab saving lives and also naked and it would have to be Kyle.

Because Puck and Wolverine had finally declared their unspoken love.

So, there are Kyle and Jean-Paul, stripping down to the howls of millions across the world, only the howls won't be for them because Aurora and Heather are having incredibly hot lesbo sex but that's OK because when Jean-Paul gets one look at his mighty, manly, man-tool --

"Kyle!"

Kyle blinks, shakes himself, attempts to stand up and falls right back on his ass. Ooofs as Puck stands on his chest. "Wha?"

"You, my friend, are shitfaced."

And then jumps off and walks away.

Leaving Kyle flat and happy on the roof. Staring at the not-really-dark sky, thinking residual thoughts mostly about Aurora and Heather getting it on. He rolls over, eventually, and licks a strip off a white arm, rolls the sharp-salty Aurora taste around in his mouth and thinks about what else might taste like that . . .

"Um, Kyle?"

So he looks, and he really must be shitfaced, because it takes some time to process that he's licked the wrong twin. Though the absence of a shirt -- or, well bikini top, anyway -- shoulda clued him in. But considering all the hot lesbo sex, you couldn't expect Aurora to keep her top on, not with breasts like that. They could rule the world just by pointing her shirtless at the enemy. Or maybe just whore her and her brother at the next Canada Day party on Parliament Hill.

Canada Day had been good, actually. They hadn't been doing security for a change, just being Canadian Content, prowling around and getting petted by drunk college kids. Groped by the occasional roving band member whose band wasn't due on one of the open stages for a couple of hours. Kyle'd attracted a following of skinny Goth kids with a lot of piercings, and he hadn't quite figured out whether he liked them or even what they were doing at an event so unashamedly nationalist that it was being televised, for fuck's sake, on the fucking CBC.

And then Northstar had come prowling through. Dark and lithe and dripping sex appeal, just in jeans and one of those way-too-see-through Stanfield undershirts he liked, letting his nipples and the shadow of his belly button show. Beer bottle in one hand sorta casually. And while Kyle and his multi-pierced followers watched, the next wave of hyperactive, shiny-faced celebrants swept forth and just swallowed Northstar. Petted him and rubbed up against him and did some fairly obvious groping and it occurred to Kyle then, too, that they should have charged admission.

Kyle smiles blearily up at Jean-Paul now, suspecting that maybe he said that last part out loud. Contemplates life with his nose broken.

"Hey, JP, don't hit 'im just 'cause he's drunk." Walterbear, warm and kinda furry in spite of being human and mostly naked himself, props Kyle up. Hands him the bottle and braces his head while he drinks.

Oddly focused for a second, enough to very clearly hear Jean-Paul say, "Are you going to share that?"

Sets the bottle down, perfectly upright, and crawls forward. Into Northstar's lap. Takes that pretty, pale face between his palms and pours the last mouthful between his lips. Waits for the man to swallow. And then kisses him.

Hard.

And shares.

"And with that, I'm going to bed. If God loves you, I will forget everything that happened tonight."

Kyle watches Heather weave vaguely towards the open window and continues sharing with Jean-Paul. The tequila's gone, but Kyle's finding he still has quite a lot to share.

Pauses only when sharp teeth close hard on his ear. Low, distinctly female growl. "Wrong choice, fur-boy," and then Aurora and her Tits of Maximum Goodness are gone, too, and Jean-Paul's look is somewhere between amused, arch, and utterly plastered.

Walter yawns. "Right. I'm off."

And then Jean-Paul's very much gone and Kyle's face is very much pressed to the roof. He attempts to lever himself up, only to have something large and distinctly Walter-like land on him with a whuff of air.

"You didn't have to throw me, JP!" Walter yells.

"You really, really didn't." Kyle gasps.

"I, Jean-Paul, have made a mountain of men!"

And suddenly there's still more weight, and a large amount of pain along with it, but there's wrestling, too, which is fun, and not very painful at all, except when Jean-Paul or possibly Walter bites him, which has its fun moments too.

It ends, not unpredictably, with a very real danger to life and limb. Kyle scrambles back a little, and finds himself hung out over the edge of the roof. His centre of gravity past the point of no return, and just way too drunk to think of twisting somehow back to safety. No agility at all, and it's just fucking embarrassing that he, Kyle, mutant-feral survivor, is going to end his career by smashing his brains out on Alpha Flight's front steps.

It's going to be a big mess, too. Bloody and messy and it's possible -- just possible -- that he's pissed the guys off enough that they might forget to mention it until morning, and when the letter carrier trips over him -- pretty woman, early thirties, recycles their junk mail for them in the big, blue box -- she's going to need years of therapy. Another good Canada Post employee down the tubes. Another not-too-bad Alpha Flight employee too, for that matter.

And about one more second to wonder if he's going to puke before he hits the ground, and then Jean-Paul grabs him by the back of his shorts and hauls him in.

Stands behind him for a minute, still hanging onto his waistband, one arm around his chest to hold him steady while he shakes. Knocks his forehead gently on the back of Kyle's skull.

"Sobered you up?"

"Ooooh, yeah." Beat. "Tell me you didn't do that on purpose."

"I didn't. If I were going to drop you off a high building, I would do it when Walter was not around to save you." Snarky, but something shaky underneath. Cold skin, suddenly, on both of them. And Jean-Paul's fingers are still there in the back of his shorts, knuckles half-rubbing along the base of his spine.

What occurs to Kyle at this point isn't that they should go inside, or even anything about being drunk and a hazard to himself and others. More to do with Toronto being really pretty at night. The smog's a low, reflective wall against the sky, lit white-orange by the streetlights. And there must be an air layer between it and them, because there's real oxygen moving now. Smells good, even.

He wishes it would rain. He hopes, really hopes, that Jean-Paul doesn't stop touching him any time soon.

Kyle turns his head, eventually, and stares up at the razor-line curve of Northstar's jaw. Tilts his head back even farther and kisses it. Gets a moment of startlement when the hands on him still, and he wonders if he's pushed it one step too far.

Whisper of air behind them. "I'm going to bed. Take care." Walter's already gone by the time Kyle figures out that he was watching, that he definitely saw the kiss. Not that he'd tell, or anything, but just having it witnessed is freakish enough. Which is odd, because it hadn't seemed to matter before he nearly died.

"It's OK. Go to bed and in the morning it won't have happened." It's comfort, and he should be grateful for it, but instead he's just fascinated by the way "OK" comes out through a quebecois accent. Adds it to this list of English-in-French words to get Jean-Paul to say as often as possible. "Bye" is good, too. Pretty much anything monosyllabic, because the accent swallows the word, and for a second you're locked into the sound, and the way it doesn't mean anything but still brings this of low-grade arousal with it.

The arm's gone from his chest, and the touch from his back. He turns around and Jean-Paul's stepped back, enough to let Kyle get by. Just being. Well, polite. Wayyyyy too understanding, being as how it's Jean-Paul, and he doesn't usually give you slack in anything but the rope you need to hang yourself.

This is different, yeah. But still.

Black hair, white skin, hands shoved in the back pockets of his shorts. One of his runners is untied.

Kyle thinks about his goth kids from Canada Day. The one boy -- black t-shirt that turned out to say Amnesty International, though Kyle'd thought at the time it was the name of a band, black jeans. Rings through his eyebrows and the rims of his ears, and a very small stud in his tongue. How he'd caught Kyle's wrist, sometime after Northstar vanished into his throng of supporters. Took him very seriously off behind the sound trailers, like he had something to show him. And then backed him up against one hot aluminum wall, and kissed him.

First kiss from a stranger. Maybe the fifth adult, sexual kiss of his life. Not much a record, really. But good. Warm hands on the back of his neck. Hot and humid and he'd pushed back at the thigh rubbing between his legs.

And in spite of the fact that he's never done it before -- never initiated -- it's easy. Just step in, tilt your face up, open your mouth, and kiss. Hold Jean-Paul's head down a bit because he's so goddamned tall. Lick the inside of his mouth. Make sure you get your legs tangled with his so that you can be sure you understand each other.

He gets pushed back, but not for a while, and when he does, it's a pink-faced, panting Jean-Paul holding him off.

Who says, "Don't."

"Why not?"

"Because you're drunk, and this isn't very funny."

Oh. Ouch.

"I didn't mean it to be. Just want you."

"Not likely."

Kyle thinks about that. Decides it's not the answer he was going for and then decides to celebrate the alcohol-induced loss of his inhibitions by throwing his not-inconsiderable mass against Jean-Paul and bearing him down. Sitting on his legs and grinning for a second, then bending and kissing him -- very gently, no tongue at all -- on the mouth. Because, and let's get this very clear, this isn't about forcing, just convincing. And about the really wonderful body underneath him, and the many interesting ways in which he's decided he likes it and wants to explore it.

And after a couple more of those kisses, he gets an arm around his shoulders like he wanted, and slides off to one side, sort of props himself up and gets kissed a few times. Good ones. Wet and messy and friendly. Oddly not pushy. Just once or twice hands rove over him, down from his lower back and up from his thighs, and he's not proud of it, but he tenses. Not quite ready to go there. But still wanting. Hanging on every time the man tries to roll back.

And fuck he's hard. Going to have to do something about that. Later. Alone. Just because . . . not yet. Maybe ever, but definitely not yet.

Eventually, Jean-Paul disengages. Lifts Kyle's hands off him one at a time, kisses their knuckles, and gives them back. Gets up into a crouch and tugs on the loose hair lying across Kyle's head, and stands.

"I need to go. It's not personal, I'm just restless."

And he really is. Vibrating, almost. Which probably has something to do with sex, but more the way you can't keep him in a meeting for more than an hour, and how riding in a car with him is hell. Can't sit still.

"Yeah. OK."

And he goes. Just stands there, still like a picture for a second, then takes off. Hits the cloud layer so hard you can see it break open. And gone.

Kyle wonders what the air's like up there. Must be nice. Stars. Yeah, definitely stars. Good view. Maybe you can see into people's windows, check out what they're up to. Heh. Peeping superhero. How come nobody ever accused Superman of that? Honest face, maybe.

And rolls onto his back, stares at the clouds re-forming. He's almost aching hard, almost ready to take care of that. For now he just lays flat and hooks his fingers into the waist of his shorts. Stares at the sky and thinks some.

janete
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