Bobby and Cain, Monday

[x-coldhands.livejournal.com]

Cain finds Bobby and tortures him until he breaks. It doesn't take much. And Scott's suite gets gutted in the process, at least.


Bobby looked up from his laptop as he heard the knock at his door, frowning a bit. He was trying to catch up on about 2 weeks worth of team logs, including all of the 'fun' he'd missed with Gideon, and now his concentration was broken. He sighed and got to his feet, padding to the door of the suite and pulling it open. "Hey. 'Sup?"

Cain looked down at Bobby, grin on his face. "Hey, Drake," he said jovially. "Got a little manual labor I need some help with upstairs. Figured since you been on vacation and skipped the regular team workouts, this oughta get the blood flowing. C'mon, grab some gloves and let's get ready to chuck some debris."

Bobby'd heard the crashes upstairs, same as everyone else, and he'd been curious about the cause, so he wasn't too upset to be recruited--and Cain's reason was a fair one. He owed some manual labor after the past couple of weeks. "Sure, okay. Gimme a sec." He slipped back into his room and dropped the laptop into sleep mode, then changed shirts into a ratty old t-shirt he wouldn't mind debris chucking in. Shoving his feet into a pair of canvas sneakers, he reported back to the door, almost smiling at the idea of some good old hard work to distract him from doing too much thinking. "Lead the way!"

Cain tried not to laugh out loud as he walked down the hallway, glad to be walking in front so Bobby couldn't see his smug grin. Finally, he paused in front of the door of what used to be Scott and Jean's suite. The door itself was barely hanging by the top hinge, and the wreckage of end tables and other assorted furniture could be seen inside.

"Fearless leader had himself a bit of a meltdown," Cain announced, gingerly removing the door from its frame and setting it aside.

Bobby's eyes widened as he took in the shambles of the room. "Holy shit," he breathed, guilty conscience immediately jumping to He found out. But he snorted as he realized that was ridiculous. It's not like Jean would send Scott a letter telling him they'd slept together, and Bobby himself would take the shameful secret to his grave. Except for maybe telling Terry. Maybe. "What happened to him?"

Behind Bobby, Cain was grinning like a kid at Christmas. "I ain't got a clue. Guy's had a stick up his ass so long, maybe all that repressed feeling bullshit finally just busted out. He did a number on the place, that's for sure."

Walking over to the balcony, Cain opened the large glass doors that had been miraculously untouched by the onslaught. Glancing back at Bobby, he jerked his head in the direction of the lawn. "Hey, if you can wrangle some kinda slide or something, it'll save us a ton of time carting this crap through the halls."

"Huh? Oh, sure..." Bobby slowly crossed the room, debris crunching under his feet, fingers absently running through his hair. "I mean...is he okay? Jesus..." He moved to the balcony and held his hands out to create the asked-for ice slide.

"Does this look okay to you?" Cain asked, keeping his voice friendly. Bobby didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd just up and screw another man's wife, much less be concerned about it afterwards. But Cain wasn't a bad judge of character most of the time, and Drake looked genuinely concerned for Scott's well-being. With a not-insignificant amount of fear and self-preservation in there, of course.

Cain whistled as he held up a shattered chunk of metal from the frame of the bed. "This is solid iron, y'see? He blasted it practically into slivers. Can you imagine what he'd do if he was actually pissed at someone? It'd be like stepping in front of a locomotive. I sure wouldn't envy the person who set him off like this." He paused, as if catching himself. "I mean, if it wasn't just general can't-cope stress, that is."

Bobby concentrated on the slide, reinforcing it, trying not to let Cain's words have the effect they were having anyway. A cold knot of fear formed in his stomach. If Scott ever did find out...

But he WON'T. Bobby turned away from the ice slide at last, forcing himself to look at the mess again. "Yeah, he's not someone I'd want to have pissed at me," he murmured quietly, moving into the room and pulling on a pair of work gloves.

Cain began shoveling broken furniture and fallen drywall onto the slide, watching it tumble down to a nice pile that could be carted off to the landfill. "Damn, looks like he busted up damn near everything," he muttered, lifting the couch up to scoop some broken glass out of the carpet. "Heard someone say he's been sleeping on the couch since his wife left him. Big bed all lonely and shit."

He snorted with a tinge of amusement. "Weepy bastard, huh? Letting a woman get to him like that."

Bobby dropped the piece of coffee table he'd just picked up, staggering a bit. "Could we...not talk about he and Dr. Grey?" he asked weakly, closing his eyes. I am a horrible person. How could I have done that? He took a deep breath and picked up the chunk of wood again, carting it toward the slide.

Cain smiled. This was where the knife was twisted. Kid sounded guilty, which was only fair. The one thing you don't do to a comrade, friend or not, and Drake crossed that line.

"Oh yeah," he remarked casually, dumping the remains of an end table onto the slide. "You had a bit of woman trouble yourself lately. Cassidy's daughter, right? Man, what is it with you guys and redheads? Nothing but trouble, I tell you. I oughta know," he said with a smile, patting his own short copper hair.

This was too much. The guilt was eating away at Bobby's insides, cold and burning all at the same time. "I...yeah," he breathed, forcing himself to move again, to scoop up a random pile of debris. Keep moving, don't think.

"She's a good kid, though," Cain said casually, putting emphasis on the 'kid'. "Too bad she's got so much bad blood with her old man. You oughta see the shouting matches they've gotten into. But y'know, what father ain't overprotective of his only daughter? Good thing you're doin' right by her."

Bobby made a choking noise and shook his head, face going red. "I'm not!" He leaned against the wall, face buried in trembling gloves. "God...I'm a horrible person," he moaned, in true melodramatic teenager fashion.

"You don't say," Cain drawled, sitting down on the remains of the king-size mattress he'd dragged out half onto the balcony. "Tell me something, Drake. What are you, nineteen? Twenty?"

"Twenty," Bobby answered from behind his hands, an automatic response.

"Twenty years old," Cain repeated. "Young enough to be stupid, or old enough to know better? Which've you been lately, Bobby?" He moved forward, his bulk seeming to take up the majority of the room as he stood to lean over the younger X-Man. "Seems to me you might've done something pretty damn stupid, way you're shaking like a leaf. That regret, or fear? I mean, yeah, look around." Cain swept a hand around the wrecked suite. "If a man does this kinda damage when he ain't focused, what's he going to do when he puts his mind to it? So tell me, Bobby, how bad did you fuck up?"

His worst fears were suddenly coming true, and Bobby moaned again, helplessly. "He knows, doesn't he?" he asked, barely above a whisper. "Oh god...I'm a dead man."

"You tell me," Cain said, looking down at Bobby. "You look around here, and you tell me what you think he knows."

Bobby started shaking, forcing himself to look at the chaos that was Scott's suite. "Fuck. I don't even know how it happened," he whimpered. "We were supposed to get dinner, and..." And then he'd done the unthinkable. He'd betrayed not only his girlfriend, but the man who'd been like a big brother to him for years. He slid down the wall as the tears started to race down his cheeks. "Oh GOD..."

"And 'oops, I slipped and fell into your wife'?" Cain shot back, sympathy left by the wayside. "And.. wait, what the hell is this?
Crying? For god's sake, you're twenty years old, you're an X-Man! Own up and take it like a man. Let me tell you," he said, backing away from Bobby to look around the room. "You got your own shit going on, and this... you weren't thinking, you stupid, stupid kid."

Bobby scrubbed his arm over his face, embarrassed and mortified and sick to his stomach. "It--she was--it just..." Okay, there was NO way he was going to say 'it just happened' even if that was how it felt looking back. Sex did not 'just happen'. He wasn't that stupid. "I know," he finally said, voice thick with the tears he was choking back. "I fucked up. Big time." He covered his face with his hands again and mumbled, "I suck."

Cain stood for a moment, then picked up the torn mattress, throwing it on the slide and watching it tumble down to join the rest of the rubble. "Now that's settled, get on up and let's get this work done, huh? C'mon, man up and drive on."

Bobby didn't answer for a minute, then sighed and got to his feet, face pale and shoulders hunched. "Yeah. All right." He squared his shoulders and started hauling the junk that until this morning had been Scott's possessions. He deserved this, and more. Much more. And I'll probably get it, too, he reminded himself, stomach flipping at the thought of the destruction in the room being directed at him.

As the two of them continued to work, emptying the room of everything that was broken, Cain watched Bobby closely. The kid looked like hell, like everything he'd believed in, he realized he'd turned to shit.

"Hey," Cain said as Bobby moved for the wrecked stereo, the only thing left in the main part of the suite. "Take a look around. What do you see left in here?" Before the younger man could answer, Cain held up a finger. "Nothing. Right now, Summers thinks he's got nothing. He's gonna fill that nothing with what he does. His work, the team, you know him. He's gonna obsess. And maybe he'll come after you, maybe he won't. Either way, you know it ain't nothing you don't have coming. But lemme let you in on something."

Cain motioned Bobby over to the balcony, to where the ice ramp was beginning to shine as it started to melt and evaporate. He nodded down to the pile of trash at the bottom. "That bunch of crap down there ain't good for nothin' anymore. Can't make it what it was. People get like that, like Summers right now. Like you. Y'think you screwed up so bad you ain't gonna see light again, you're in the shit so deep. But listen to me here, 'cause this ain't my first time at this kinda rodeo." He laughed and leaned against the wall, nodding at Bobby. "You man up, you take what you got coming, and you drive on from there. I ain't about to go spreading this shit around, ain't my place. So you gotta fix what you can, and take the rest. You man enough to do that, Bobby?"

Bobby swallowed and nodded, taking a somewhat shaky breath. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so." He stared down at the pile of junk in the yard and sighed. "Let's get this done."