Here's to questioning our sexuality, blue aliens that are still hot
Who: Logan and Neena What: Drinking and making plans and talking about sexy blue aliens When: Recent Where: The Inferno Status: complete Rating: PG-13
“Beer.” Logan said, dropping into a stool and leaning his elbows on the bar. He looked … tired. He even felt it a little, and he needed a good comfort beer. Hopefully Neena would have the right kind of thing. He gave her a half smile. “Surprise me.”
"You look like maybe California fucked you back, man," Neena responded, while opening up a fridge below the bar. There were a selection of California craft beers in there that she curated just for people like Logan. Who would drink any beer you handed them but sometimes appreciated the best.
She pulled out a bottle of Russian River Blind Pig and set it on the counter, then quickly popped the top off of it before he could whip out a claw to do it for her. There was enough weird shit happening in her bar without adding a show. "This one's voted the best IPA a year back, give it a try."
“Been one of those months,” Logan said, taking the bottle and knocking back about a third of it. It was too good to down in one go and he wanted to savor it.
“Damn. Breaking out the good stuff for me.” He wondered if she was busy later that night. “How’s shit going for you?”
Anticipating Logan's whim, Neena went ahead and grabbed up a second bottle for him to drink and set it down next to the first one. This definitely looked like a two beer kind of evening. "One of those months? What, did your christmas decorations actually succeed at nearly killing you? I find that kind of hard to believe, Logan."
She shrugged a shoulder, not meeting his eyes and instead picking up some peanuts that had fallen out of their dish. "Shit's okay. You know, dream crap, Orange county crap, bar ownership crap."
“Yeah, Snoopy cut my head off.” Logan toasted the evil dog, and took another swig. He didn’t go into further detail about the exact nature of why his month had been bad, but ‘I knocked up two women’ wasn’t exactly something that was for casual conversation. Besides, it was up to them to share any and all news.
“What did you dream last? Maybe I can help you with it.”
Most of the stuff going on in Neena's dreams wasn't a subject for casual conversation, either. She wrinkled her nose and shook her head at him, "I know you're a member of the X-Men. I may or may not be friends with a guy connected to your group, but in my past dreams it's... complicated."
Complicated in that way in which she knew that she was supposed to be on a team helping to train the younger Xavier students with Cable, but that she'd also been replaced by a doppelganger who could even mimic her mutation. No one knew she was being held captive, and no one was ever going to find her. The stuff before that wasn't that great either. Neena especially often puzzled through the fact that Milo Thurman had been the man to give her that name in her dreams - a husband she’d never had in the real world and a man she’d never met. In this reality it had been... a foster family? Did Milo even exist?
Things like this could drive a person fucking crazy. "Whatever. Meanwhile I've made out with a blue alien guy with this bitching arrow weapon and Aria showed me her blue self."
Logan nodded. “You’re not that far along, but shit’ll get better, worse, really worse, better again, an’ kinda repeat like that forever.”
Such was the life of a mutant. Never a dull moment. Even the adventures had adventures.
“Did she show you her blue self or did she show you what it’s like to embrace eternity?” Logan asked, leaning forward and intensely curious.
"I have so much more to look forward to, wow." Neena replied, her tone dripping with sarcasm. It hadn't slipped past her that Logan knew more about her own life than she did, and she was sure he wasn't the only one. There was that Laura kid who'd made jokes about her being lucky, too. If they were going to offer up more information, they would have. There wasn't any point in being pissed off at the lack of a heads-up. Probably Logan showing her his claws was the only briefing he figured she needed.
"Embrace... what." Neena looked at him, forgetting her other thoughts for a moment, then blinked twice and rolled her eyes. "Oh my god. It's some kind of sex thing, isn't it?"
There were some things that couldn’t be said, or shared, but only experienced. And Logan didn’t know everything about Neena. They hadn’t exactly made much pillow talk. Though drink talks were common.
He laughed. “Kinda. It’s like.. a mind thing on top of the sex thing. Real hard to explain but you gotta experience that.”
"Okay I don't know how I was in your dream land, but here in the real world I'm a straight woman. And I get that she is, as she told me, kind of gender neutral so it's not really like I'm suddenly gay, but... no. I don't know. I just... I don't know." Neena shook her head.
She almost wanted to start drinking, herself, but there were times when it looked bad to be the bartender who was also imbibing. So instead, she changed the subject. "So what's going on with you, anyway?"
Logan pulled his phone out, tabbing through it until he found what he was looking for. A really hot naked selfie of Aria in all her blue Asari glory. “This do anything to you?”
"Does she know you have that picture?" Neena asked, before her brain really engaged with the photo he was showing her. If she'd been pouring drinks the glass would have been overflowing, or perhaps the bottle simply would have dropped to the floor. Thankfully, the only thing that dropped was her mouth.
"Uh..."
“Yep.” Logan grinned, watching Neena’s reaction. It was a telling reaction, reminding him of one of the times he’d noticed Kitty staring at Emma’s breasts, back before Kitty knew what being attracted to a woman was.
“Clearly, it does somethin’ for you. Your bisexuality is showin’ darlin’.”
"Bisexu-what now?" Neena grumbled, wrinkling her nose. "Look, do we have to label it? We're like at least fifteen years past the wine coolers college exploration times. I didn't even go to college, but that's not the point. Aria is clearly a special case and I have no idea what I'm doing. And you're dodging my other questions on top of it. Some friend you are."
She decided to flip off her own rules, then, and went to gather up the combination of alcohol she'd decided to name 'the brain bleach'. "Fuck this."
“If it makes you feel better I was thirty before I realized that some men do it for me.”
Why did he smell jalapeno? Logan grimaces, wrinkling his nose and looking at the alcohol she was putting together like she was a mad scientist creating a monster that would devour the world. That sort of horror.
“What the fuck are you even doing?”
"What does it look like I'm doing?! I'm mixing up some brain bleach." Neena snorted, and poured a little extra absinthe into the glass. The color of the mixture was still obnoxious and kind of a scary green, and she decided it might be fun to light it on fire.
But then she remembered what all was poured into it, and thought better of it. "Now that I know my crappy ass dreams don't have anything to do with jalapeno vodka, I mix it up whenever I want. And now I get to add the fact that you're bisexual to the list of facts I can melt right out of my head."
She blinked, and added, "Not that I'm homophobic. I don't care who you fuck, but I can't get the mental image of you and gambit out of my head, because my brain decided that's someone on your exceptions list."
“Mix me some too,” Logan said, regretting it immediately as the smell assaulted his heightened senses. He was sure that Neena was trying to kill herself - but he wouldn’t miss this for the world.
And he wasn’t going to help. “Remy yeah. Kurt. Hercules a few times. Thor once.” He coughed Scott.
"You and Kurt?" Neena decided she was going to need another one at that rate, but she knew better than to drink that many of these if she was planning on staying upright for any length of time. So she got out a second glass and started mixing up Logan a drink, too.
"I mean I've only ever really heard of you guys at this point, we haven't had too many in person encounters. But damn. You two always came off more like brothers, you know?"
“Yeah.” Logan leaned back, eyeing Neena for her reaction. It was interesting, but honestly she hadn’t dreamed enough of them to really understand how close he and the Elf were. “Maybe a little in some ways, but not that kinda brother. Was more of a… benefits type thing. Loved him, but not the kind of love where you get married.”
"Yeah, I know all about that kind of love." Neena grumbled, while getting out a couple of drink stirrers so she could mix up the contents of each glass. She'd discovered the drink was better when blended together a bit. Not that it wasn't still a little rough going down.
She slid Logan's over to him, and then held up hers. "Here's to questioning our sexuality, blue aliens that are still hot, and... dudes we love but not enough to marry."
“Three things we have in common,” Logan agreed. He raised his glass as well and then knocked it back. It damn near killed him, but he managed not to cough. “Darlin’, I can heal, are you sure you ain’t tryin’ to kill yourself?”
He gestured at the drink incredulously, then set the glass down. “Maybe we gotta find you some other outlet.”
The drink went down like fire and burnination, and Neena was still often impressed by the fact that Harley had managed to drink more than two. She let out a sputtering cough, and braced one hand against the bar for a few seconds, while shaking her head. "Not trying to kill myself. Just trying to kill some brain cells. Maybe a liver or two. If the last two years haven't already done that for me."
Before the drink decidedly melted her insides, she grabbed some pepto from under the bar and made herself a shot of that. "Besides, it's fine when there's a pepto chaser. And I don't need another outlet. My habits are perfectly unhealthy, leave me alone."
“I come back and that nearly killed me,” Logan pointed out. Still, he gestured for her to mix him another one. He could already feel his throat healing up and it was oddly addictive. “Why do I think your habits ain’t actually helping.”
He rested his palms on the bar, “Neena, do you want to shoot a bad guy?”
"My habits are fine- What?!" Neena stopped mid-pour to stare at Logan for a few seconds, while visions of shooting live targets danced in her head. She'd gone on that ride along with Yondu, but he'd seen most of the action, and all she'd really brought along was a backup taser.
Shooting a real person? That would go a long way towards improving her mood. "Gods yes. FUCK yes, I want to shoot a bad guy. Oh right, your drink."
Neena finished mixing him up another glass of brain bleach and handed it over. "I feel like this stuff is just a waste on a guy like you, but maybe it actually gets you a little drunk."
“I get a short buzz, good enough.” And it kept her from drinking any more if he was doing all the drinking. As for the shooty, he leaned on his elbows, grinning at her.
“They’re terrorists. Real bad guys. Ever run into Hydra in your dreams?”
It was a good place to start.
"Not personally, not so far. There was a thing with... AIM..." That was a thing that had to do with the husband she never even remembered having but who she was somehow stuck feeling emotions for. Which was still an odd place to be even as drunk as she was becoming. "But no Hydra. I've heard of them, of course, I have a security clearance. Means you hear about all kinds of terrorists. Are you telling me they're HERE?"
That was bad. Bad for innocent people, and bad for them. Good for her, though, if it meant she got to shoot some of them and no one would arrest her.
“They’re basically Nazi AIM. An’ they’re here in this world. Ain’t sure if the roots are the same, but they probably profit from the far right sector. They’re real interested in people like us, an’ makin’ super soldiers. I’m sure the Agency wouldn’t mind if we took a few of them out.”
He really hoped she was into shutting them down.
"Man look at me, so lucky to have a friend like you right when I need to shoot people the most." Neena grinned in a toothy manner, then pointed at the door to bar. "Let me just get my weapons. I'll meet you at the door. Assuming I can walk. Maybe I'll get a cup of coffee first."
“Shoulda thought about that before you drank that much brain bleach,” Logan taunted her. He was already dialing a number on his phone. “Ride’ll be here in five. It’s gotta fuel up first.”
"I didn't know you were gonna take me out on a shooting adventure before I drank the bleach. Next time warn a girl." Neena grumped. She kept a piece underneath the bar, but grabbing that while everyone was watching would betray its position. So instead, she started heading towards the office. "See you in two."