strangetrip | [Backdated April 28th] Frustrations

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[Backdated April 28th] Frustrations - OTA

Alec found himself walking down the hall tense and unable to really form a coherent thought except a lot of swearing directed toward Peter. He hadn't expected to punch the kid - to really punch the kid. Even when they fought in the parking lot, Alec had held back. That punch - he had meant to hurt Peter. And then after, when he had he was pissed off that Peter hadn't defended himself.

In his walking as he dwelled on the events that just transpired, Alec saw the vending machine. That damn vending machine.

He closed the distance between him and it and then Alec began to punch it. Not the glass - that would be too easy - Alec punched the metal. The metal dented with each hit, his knuckles getting raw and bloody quickly from it.

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That made more sense than maybe Alec was ready for. He stared at her in tensed silence for a moment, his shoulders stiff, before even his shoulders seemed to relax a little.

"Yeah. Yeah I know." Alec just wasn't sure what he'd do if Peter's life came crashing down around him and the kid was changed like he was. Peter didn't deserve for that to happen.

Emma considered, the viking fading and color returning to her eyes as she let the projection go. "That fast metabolism of yours, is it high enough to make drinking a waste of good alcohol?"

She shook her head before she even heard his answer. He didn't really need to get drunk right now. "Come on to the kitchen. Cooking's better for working through stuff anyway. There's a first aid kit for your hands, and then you can help."

"I've been told I'm good at chopping and dicing." Skills that Emma had taught him. He even offered her a small smirk as he started to follow her. "The answer, by the way, is that if I drink enough, I can get drunk for a bit. Usually a half hour at a time." And a bottle or more of the good stuff.

Too bad the only Rasputins here were Illyana and Piotr. Mikhail's vodka might have helped him with the getting drunk thing. Not that it qualified as good booze, but it packed a serious punch.

"Chopping and dicing is a good first step. Dani used to say 'chop vegetables, boil water' as a way to work through feelings, everything from grief to frustration to being overwhelmed. Of all her coping strategies, it's the one I understand the best and use the most." As much as Emma cooked here, she still found herself in the kitchen when she was upset.

"It's meditative, and when you're done, there's food. Dani would also say even an idiot white boy can learn to make soup. So there's hope for you yet."

When they got to the kitchen, she went for the first aid kit to start. He wasn't going to be chopping anything with his knuckles all busted up, although a quick glance showed they were already starting to heal.

"Who's Dani?" He listened to Emma explain everything. It was clear Dani was important in her life somehow. And he was okay with being called an idiot. It reminded him of Max.

"I can do that myself." He meant the first aid kit. He had enough training in it, after all.

Who's Dani? sounded like a simple question, but the answer was anything but. Dani was much better experienced than explained.

"Dani is... She's like family. A friend. And a mentor or teacher. When my powers got amped up," some bitterness there, at the thought of Cortez and what he'd done to her and Sabine, and others, although she loved her projections now, "and we moved to Scotland, she was there and was the one who helped me figure out how to use them.

"You would probably really like her. Assuming you could avoid getting punched for being," an idiot white boy, but Emma's already said that, and Alec doesn't know Dani to hear the nuances involved, "well, you."

He paused as if seeming to consider the idea of being punched for being him and then nodded as if to say 'that's fair'. Alec knew he was annoying and a pain-in-the-ass most of the time. "I like most of you X-gene freaks." Said with complete affection even if he tried to mask it with something more surely. It was true. There were few mutants here he didn't get along with.

Alec looked toward her after finishing cleaning his wounds. "Maybe one day I'll meet her here."

"I hope not." She didn't know what being pulled to another reality would do to psi bonds, but she was positive Pyro wouldn't survive losing Dani on top of Bobby and Emma. And she wasn't sure about Nathan either.

"Too many people need her back home. Besides," she said, looking around, "I'm not sure the inn is ready for Dani."

Starting for the fridge, she paused, realizing she didn't have any idea what she wanted to cook. "But I will borrow another idea from her. Chopped: Redhead. You pick out four ingredients, and I'll figure out something we can make with them.

He got that. He didn't exactly want to wish this place on Max and the others, but then, at the same time, maybe he did. Maybe they could just hang out here and not have to worry about all the bullshit back home. With people like Pike around, he wondered if Logan could be cured completely. Because of that simple fact, Alec was sure Max and Logan would never arrive - people didn't get to be happy like that.

"Alright." Alec walked over to the fridge. "You know I suck at this, right?" He knew field cooking, but actual cooking was a Logan thing.

He opened the door and looked inside. He picked out carrots, potatoes, eggplant and what looked like freshly killed and prepped rabbit from one of the people who liked to hunt at the inn. He put them on the table. "... this okay?"

Emma smiled, "That's great," and wondered if Alec's need to do a good job overrode any tendency to troll, or if he was just being nicer at a game he almost certainly wasn't familiar with than some people would be.

Coniglio alla messinese would be easy, and they could roast the carrots and potatoes at the same time. She grabbed a colander. "You start by dicing the eggplant, and put it in here with some salt." Eying the amount of eggplant, she cupped one hand and used fingers of the other to show the diameter of about how much salt should be right, "About this much.

"I'll start on the rabbit." It had been dressed, but not butchered, and it would cook faster in pieces. From the past times he'd helped out in the kitchen she knew Alec could and probably would watch her doing that while dicing the eggplant, adding one more technique to his skill set.

Alec got to work pretty quickly - doing things like this definitely helped with keeping his mind off of other things that were far less pleasant. Maybe it was one of the reasons he still did some of the training back in Manticore. It helped him not to think.

"Is there anything you don't know how to cook?"

All Alec saw on the table before them was four separate foods. How they could be turned into one, he didn't know.

"There are an infinite number of dishes I don't know how to cook." Cutting up the rabbit took little time at all, and then Emma started grabbing additional ingredients and setting up her mise en place.

"Carrots and potatoes in bite size pieces," she instructed, before getting back to answering his probably hyperbolic observation. "It's more knowing food, and how it can work together."

She tried to think of what she knew about Alec, that could help with examples. She so often thought in analogies, she usually fell back on them to explain things. "Okay, crazy example, but say you and I were trapped in an office building for some reason and I was hurt. No first aid kit around. You would be able to look around, find things that would work, right? Because you know what sorts of things need to be done, and what the 'real' supplies are meant to do. Cooking is kind of like that. Except usually without the being trapped or injured."

He got the analogy. It was a good one and she was right about him being able to do something like that. He continued to cut up the food.

"There's this guy back home who loves to cook. Women seem to like that kind of thing." If you liked former millionares who read poetry and cooked gourmet food, that is.

Women seem to like that sort of thing. Really, Alec? "Being able to cook your own food is a good life skill. And it can be a chance to be creative. It involves all the senses. There are worse ways to try to impress women. Or just to make friends."

Emma knew she wasn't the most social of people, introvert to the core and self-conscious on top of that. But cooking for people, or with them, it made it easier to talk to them.

"I'm not really that creative." He could replicate the meals she showed him, though, to the exact amount of spice, but if the roles were reversed and he had to make some sort of meal out of four things, he'd fail.

"Is that why you do it? To make friends?" Alec was also not good at making friends.

Emma laughed, shaking her head slightly. "I cook for lots of reasons. Starting with I have to eat. Other people have to eat, and this is one thing I can actually do that's productive and useful. It reminds me of my grandmother, and other people I miss. It can be a kind of meditation or art or play, depending on my mood. And I'm good at it." It was probably that last bit, combined with people needing to eat that made it good for making friends.

"People have opinions about food, feelings and memories too. Food has meaning, for most people, beyond just being fuel. It's also something where 'agree to disagree' isn't going to hurt anybody. And when my hands are busy with something I know how to do, it's easier for me not to get self-conscious and awkward talking to someone I don't know well."

Alec... Had never thought about food that much. He had always seen food as sustenance and necessary, but food as memories and gatherings and all that stuff - maybe that's why Logan was so adamant about making gourmet food.

"My friend Joshua's been trying to cook, but it's almost always something to do with macaroni and cheese. I think he'd even make it into a dessert if he could figure out how."

"Macaroni and cheese is rarely a bad thing. And experimenting with what you know you like is a good start. Sounds like Joshua has the right idea."

Emma thought for a moment. "Kugel. It's not exactly mac and cheese, but a sweet noodle kugel is the closest thing I can think of to a dessert version." Their sufganiyot experimentation had gone so well (eventually), that later TJ and Emma had tried replicating TJ's Aunt Kate's kugel recipe. Hm. Maybe Kitty would like some sometime.

"We could make it sometime, if you wanted."

"Uh.. sure. Yeah." He wasn't overly attached to macaroni and cheese, but he did like spending time with Emma for some reason. He knew he could be a pain-in-the-ass so having someone who put up with him was always nice. She had some weird calming affect on him.

"If you want, I mean."

Emma had a higher tolerance than some for pains-in-the-ass who were actually pretty decent guys, and Alec wasn't that bad, really, as long as you gave him something to focus on instead of making trouble.

"It's kind of what I was talking about. Kugel's a good example of comfort food, even more for someone who grew up with it as part of their culture. Plus, making it could a kind of connection to your friend, when he's not here and your not there. And if you do get back there, you could make it for him, or teach him how to make it. There's a lot more there than just the physical ingredients or the process of baking it."

Alec opened his mouth to say he didn't need to feel a connection to Joshua, but for some reason the words didn't actually leave his mouth. His lips closed and he continued cutting the vegetables into the right size for the dish they were creating. He thought on her words, though. "So you think we remember all this then, huh?"

Emma wondered what Alec had been about to say. She felt like maybe she could guess, but maybe she was just... could you project someone else's feelings onto another person? Because that.

"I think it's better to assume we'll remember. If I'm wrong, we don't really lose anything by having believed we'd remember. But if we do keep all of this, and we haven't treated our time here as real..." She shrugged. "Or maybe I'm just not ready to accept not going home."

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[Backdated April 28th] Frustrations - OTA

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