"We're drinking to you being alive," she said, clicking her glass to his. "And everyone else."

And with that, she made like a big girl, and upended her glass. She came up coughing, which was ridiculous; she'd drunk things a lot stronger in the future, and a lot less refined. Apparently, dreams don't prepare a girl for real drinking.

No time like the present to fix that.

"That's awful," she gasped, and clicked her cup down back on the counter. "Another one please, barkeep."

She leaned against the table as he poured, and gave her wet hair a quick finger-combing to get it out of her face. "Why did you say this is a bad idea?"

>>"We're drinking to you being alive. And everyone else."

"Cheers." Gawain shot the rum and shook his head, the alcohol burned all the way down, and the burning felt good. The second warm thing after the cold shower.

Maxine came up coughing. Gawain chuckled at her. Not such a big bad girl after all.

>>"That's awful. Another one please, barkeep."

Gawain poured, from the same stuff, there was no need to start mixing just yet.

>>"Why did you say this is a bad idea?"

He looked at her over the glass he handed to her.

"You, me, alocol, just woken up from the apocalypse?" he smirked "Gee I got no idea."

Had he just implied what she thought he'd just implied? Had he tossed in a little bad boy smirk, while he was at it? She was afraid that once she started laughing, she'd never stop: she managed to hold it in, her shoulders shaking with the effort, and a look on her face best translated as wrong pick up line, wrong time, but good effort.

"Honey, you have no idea what I did with boys in the apocalypse. If you are thinking sexy thoughts, you'd better save it until the drinks kick in. I would need to be very, very, very, very,"

"Very,"

"Drunk."

"Nothing personal," she added, tipping back her glass again, and setting it on the counter with a keep 'em coming lift of the eyebrow.

"For today," she promised, placing a hand over her heart, "your chastity is safe with me."

>>"Honey, you have no idea what I did with boys in the apocalypse. If you are thinking sexy thoughts, you'd better save it until the drinks kick in. I would need to be very, very, very, very, Very Drunk."

Ouch.
The X-men need to stop wearing a huge X on their chest. Really, it's just asking for it.

>>"Nothing personal. For today, your chastity is safe with me."

"Whenever is it not" Gawain smirked, filling up the glasses again. He had no illusions about Maxine.
...
Well, not many.

She was way out of everyone's league, even when she was not fresh off the train from hell.

Shots followed, of a less painful but not less dizzying kind. At some point, the couch seemed like a reasonable compromise between standing in the kitchen and tripping over Rex who busied his tangly self with an empty bottle.

"So" Gawain said, filling up glasses again "Wanna tell me what happened after I checked out?"

The couch was nice. It was... a very nice couch. It had a kind of sag in the middle, and the cushions were getting a little flat: it had been a hand-me-down from the aunt of a friend; a happy first apartment, have our old furniture, we're getting a new one gift. It was sort of beige-ish brown-ish. She'd made it more stylish, with fuchsia throw pillows. There was even a boy sitting on one end of it; a boy who kept the drinks coming, and who stayed on his own side. She stayed on the other, a pillow snugged up to next to her chest. The boy would probably be more comfortable, but...

Maxine was not yet very, very, very, very, very drunk, but she was close enough to start talking.

"I met someone," she said, playing with the stem of the cherry in her cup. It wasn't a cocktail cherry, with that artificial lipstick red coloring; it was a normal cherry. She'd had some in the refrigerator. Around drink five, it had seemed the cutest thing in the world to have a cherry in her gin-vodka-something. She didn't know what this was, only that it was tasting better all the time.

"We survived the first months together. It was... it was bad. The city was destroyed; everything was. We thought it was just Manhattan at first, though. We thought—" She giggled, her hands tightening around her glass. "—we thought we would be rescued."

God, had they really been that naive?

"Things were bad. Almost everyone was dead—it was mostly mutants that survived. Well, mostly mutants that survived after; we were probably outnumbered at first, but survivors thinned out fast in the first months." Darwin favored the x-gene; what could she say that the Theory of Evolution hadn't? "There weren't any cops or... or laws, not for a long time. Groups started to form. You had to join one, if you wanted to survive; that's just how it worked. We joined the wrong one. He... I..."

She took a long swallow; ice clicked against the empty bottom as she lowered it.

"So anyway, I killed him. Then I formed my own group." She put the cherry in her mouth, and neatly snipped it from its stem with her teeth. "The Amazons."

The smile she turned on her male listener was perfectly queenly.

"Everything was better after that. We made a name for ourselves quick. Only idiots messed with us after that, and idiots are the easiest ones to kill."

She spit the cherry pit into her empty glass, and shoved it towards him with a certain post-apocalyptic finesse. "More, please."

>>"I met someone. We survived the first months together. It was... it was bad. The city was destroyed; everything was. We thought it was just Manhattan at first, though. We thought—we thought we would be rescued."

The X-men didn't make it. Not just Maya, or god knows who else from the Mansion... the X-men, as a team. The good guys did not make it. Not to the end of the story: they did not even make it to where it really began.
Now there's a depressing thought.

Gawain sipped whiskey to that.

>>"Things were bad. Almost everyone was dead—it was mostly mutants that survived. Well, mostly mutants that survived after; we were probably outnumbered at first, but survivors thinned out fast in the first months. There weren't any cops or... or laws, not for a long time. Groups started to form. You had to join one, if you wanted to survive; that's just how it worked. We joined the wrong one. He... I..."

He had seen enough post-apocalyptic movies to piece that together. He had never been in one, though, not even with his brand new movie walking abilities. No electricity and random zombies were just not his thing.

>>"So anyway, I killed him. Then I formed my own group. The Amazons. Everything was better after that. We made a name for ourselves quick. Only idiots messed with us after that, and idiots are the easiest ones to kill."

Bam. There it went. What happened to Maxine Ralls after the world ended.
She survived.

Gawain was kind of fixated on the cherry. It looked very innocent in the midst of the words coming out of her mouth. Killing people? It did not sound unbelievable at all.
The cherry disappeared.

>>"More, please."

He took the glass and refilled it, looking at Maxine with the pillow to her chest before he handed it back to her.

"Well, that..."

Sucked on an epic level?
Was never going to happen?
Was unexpected?
Was not so bad?

"Is a lot to deal with."

Here, have a drink to that.

"A lot...?" Maxine said, poking at the ice in her new drink with the cherry's stem. One by one, she held them underwater, trapping them until they could bob their way free.

When he said it, it was such a bad thing: a lot to deal with, like it was some kind of burden.

That wasn't right.

When she'd woken up this morning, it wasn't baggage she'd been carrying. She'd felt good; she'd felt strong. Sitting here in her living room, under lights powered by reliable electricity, with the hum of cars outside, it was easy to make it out as a horror story: Young woman survives in apocalypse! Mental scaring results, but she soldiers on anyway!

What had really happened to her, though?

She'd been taught a lesson early, and she'd taken it to heart. She'd survived when most of the world crawled under rocks and died. More than survived: the Amazons had thrived. The apocalypse had been run by the big boys, and she'd been alpha bitch among them. There were things she would change, if it all came true tomorrow, but really, what the hell? She'd kept her people safe. That, she'd do again any day, apocalypse be damned.

Gawain just hadn't made it that far. When he'd died, society's corpse was still bleeding on the ground. She'd made a fortress of its bones. He hadn't been through it; he couldn't understand.

That wasn't his fault; it was hers.

"Yeah. I guess you're right," she tipped her glass back, and took a long cold swallow. Then she put the pillow she'd been hugging down, and scooched her way over to his side of the couch.

"You're a good listener. Thank you." For giving her the chance to be a Queen. Maybe one day, she'd be able to return the favor.

Maxine leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.

>>"A lot...? Yeah. I guess you're right,"

She did not seem as broken as she... should have been?
It was wrong either way.

Maxine dropped the pillow and scooted closer. Gawain downed the rest of his drink, and sat back as the warm fuzzy dizzyness spread out through his body. He was successfully entering the atmosphere of couldn't-care-less.

>>"You're a good listener. Thank you."

Annnd, impact in 3, 2, 1.
Soft lips landed on his cheek that flushed even deeper than the alcohol blush in mere seconds. Gawain turned his head to look down at Maxine, definitely nearing the state of drunk, but surprisingly calm and collected for someone who just came back from running the post-apocalyptic hell. She was up close and personal, and did not look dangerous at all.
She never did.

"Y'know, Maxine" he murmured "Sometimes ya really just drive me nuts."

>> "Y'know, Maxine, sometimes ya really just drive me nuts."

With a grin, she clicked her half-empty glass against his, and drank to that. Her own cheeks felt warm, but it was a good warm; as pleasant and glowing as the one the alcohol had left in her stomach. She wiggled half-over him, set her glass down on the end table, and wiggled back... oooh, about a quarter of the way.

"I'm a girl," she said, resting her head on his chest. "It's what I do."

Her hair was still a little damp from the shower, and full of uncombed Irish curls. Had he ever seen it that way before? Usually she flat ironed and brushed it into submission long before starting her day. Against her cheek, he was all gangly growing bones, like her boyfriends from high school. It made her smile.

"You," she said, "are really... not comfortable. Hurry and grow up."

>>"I'm a girl. It's what I do."

Maya was a girl too. Gawain wondered through the haze of alcohol if other girls saw Maya just as annoying as...
... nah, no way.
The thought was actually so funny that it made him chuckle. As if any part-time lesbian mirrorwalker could mesure up to Maxine.

Said role model was snuggling up against his chest. Curls ticked his nose, which made him chuckle again. She looked like that animated girl from that movie. Mayhe he could take her in there and let them ahve a fight. Wouldn't that be fun to watch...

>>"You, are really... not comfortable. Hurry and grow up."

Gawain frowned into the curly hair.

"I am grown up." he protested "I am almost... nineteen... twenty years old. Ya jus' never noticed. Plus" he pointed out, tugging on a curl "Ya ain't as big and bad and old as you think, missy."

"Almost nineteen twenty?" She grinned. "Good decade. The roaring nineteen twenties, when flapper girls roamed the streets, stealing the hearts out of little seventeen eighteen boys."

She batted at his curl-tugging hand, rolling onto her back to look up at him. "I am the biggest, baddest girl you're ever going to meet," she said, aiming a poking finger at his chin with each new adjective, to emphasize her point. "You know what they called me? Queen Maxine. And it wasn't just my girls, either. I had a kid about your age just about wet himself when he realized he was talking to the Queen."

Good thing Miles hadn't: she'd have never brought a boy home to the fortress that wasn't already housebroken, no matter what she thought she could trade him for later.

"What? You think you're old enough to pitch in my league, Sir Gawain of Orkney?"

>>"Almost nineteen twenty? Good decade. The roaring nineteen twenties, when flapper girls roamed the streets, stealing the hearts out of little seventeen eighteen boys."

"Shuddup, Maxine."

She was obviously getting more comfortable. The same could not be said for him. The alcohol and the adrenaline was finally getting to him, and he was hyper aware of the fact that she was, quite frankly, lying across his lap like a cat.

>>"I am the biggest, baddest girl you're ever going to meet. You know what they called me? Queen Maxine. And it wasn't just my girls, either. I had a kid about your age just about wet himself when he realized he was talking to the Queen."

A queen cat.
That was it. She had been a queen. The queen of hell, but still a queen. Gawain did not like that one bit. He was not in denial, he knew exactly Maxine could easily turn into a royal b*tch. But there was something more than that. That was not the only possible future, only one on many.

>>"What? You think you're old enough to pitch in my league, Sir Gawain of Orkney?"

He snatched the poking finger out of the air, and used it as leverage to pull the rest of her up from his lap and onto the couch. It was half well trained moves and half stumbling, and she ended up on her back, with Sir Gawain of Orkney bracing himself against the frame of the couch above her with a well-deserved smirk.

"Are ya really gonna challenge me, your highness?"

Maxine's heart was pounding in her chest. Not the good beat that came with butterflies in the stomach; the kind that was bruising itself against the inside of her ribs, trying to find a way out of its cage.

The last boy who'd had her like this had gotten a knife slid between his ribs one cold, dusty night.

That hadn't been real, though. It had been a dream: a dream that might be something more, but life was clearly going on. This was the waking world; the real world. This was Gawain; she was safe. She trusted Gawain. He'd had her back, and she'd had his.

He had her on her back.

A queen wouldn't have let anything show on her face. Maxine wasn't sure how well she was doing with that, but she knew she at least had the smile down. Slowly, sweetly she drew the back of a nail over his chest in a figure eight, and whispered just what every man wanted to hear:

"How's your girlfriend?"

His heart was drumming against his ribs. He was so not planning this. He was not thinking a second ahead, and he was not ready yet to blame the alcohol.
The light touch on his shoulder made him shudder visibly, but the smile still slightly sobered him up. Smiling Maxine was never a good sign. Even one that was smiling up at him.

>>"How's your girlfriend?"

Yup, now he could see why they called her the queen. The shortest way to a man's heart is through the ribcage.

For a moment, his jaw tightened by itself, almost painful, as he stared at her, smile and all.
Deep breath. Breathing's good.

"Screw you, Maxine."

This had gone too far. Good thing it was a joke, because if it had been serious, it would have sucked.
Oh wait.

"Screw you." he muttered, sitting back "You really don' get it, do you. It's a freakin' game that ya don' get bored of, right? There is always someone to entertain the queen. You snap your fingers and people jump in front of bullets because you are so... goddamn... gah."

Yep, words were drowning themselves in alcohol by the dozens to avoid the shame of being involved in this conversation.

>> "Screw you, Maxine."

Wouldn't he just like to. She'd warned him up front, hadn't she? That wasn't going to happen unless she was very drunk. Tipsy wasn't going to cut it. Tipsy was just going to make something cutting come out of her mouth, when she could have just asked him to stop. He would have; he was a good kid.

She was pretty sure he would have.

>> "You really don' get it, do you. It's a freakin' game that ya don' get bored of, right? There is always someone to entertain the queen. You snap your fingers and people jump in front of bullets because you are so... goddamn... gah."

She edged her way back to her corner of the couch, and groped at the table behind her for her drink—

Her drink, which was over on his side of the couch. And empty. The cherry pit still sat at its bottom, chilled between melting ice.

"Who asked you to?" She asked quietly.

"Who goddamn asked you to?"

This. She was not drunk enough for this, either.