Scott and Bobby, Thursday midmorning

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, Scott and Bobby run into each other in the library. It was a conversation that had to happen, but this might have been a little soon for both of them. There's no shouting, no hitting, and no trashing of the library. It might have been better if there had been.

(OOC: Set before Bobby's email to Terry.)


Bobby had comandeered a desk in the library and was trying to distract himself with a course catalogue from Westchester University. He still hadn't decided whether to try the college thing again or not, but it didn't hurt to see what they offered, and it gave him something to focus on.

The library was far from busy today. Almost entirely empty, actually, with only Bobby at his desk, Shan at hers as always, and a couple of people deep in the stacks. One of those people was Scott, who had been forced to conclude that none of his students were coming to see him this morning. Rather than sit and stare at the walls of his office, he'd decided to see if he couldn't snap the hell out of it and start doing some planning for the course he'd been considering offering this summer before his life blew up in his face.

With several books tucked under his arm, Scott headed out of the stacks, intending to take the books straight to the circulation desk and check them out. Then he saw Bobby.

Bobby was absorbed in reading the prerequisites for a history course that sounded interesting, so his initial glance to the side was brief, just a reaction to movement in his peripheral vision. Then his head snapped up, his eyes wide, scared, and pleading as he looked at Scott, all the color draining from his face. Oh....shit.

... well. He'd known this was going to happen. He'd just been hoping that it would have taken another day or two. Or six. Nausea roiled at the pit of his stomach as Scott considered his options. Ignore Bobby and keep walking towards the circulation desk. Walk back into the stacks and let him flee - because he certainly looked like he was at least toying with the idea of fleeing. Say something.

Scott walked slowly over to the desk where Bobby was sitting. He set his books down on the edge of the desk - and said nothing.

Bobby looked up at Scott with remorse, his mouth working as he tried to think of something to say, some way to frame an apology that would come anywhere near adequate. There was nothing. There just WAS no 'I'm sorry I slept with your wife' line of Hallmark cards, and the reason was you just. Didn't. DO IT. "S-Scott," he finally managed to whisper, and no more.

Scott looked away for a moment, taking a deep, shaky breath and then letting it out again. In the bright sunlight of the library, the toll the week had taken on him was perfectly obvious. He was pale and tired-looking, dark circles beneath his eyes and the scars on his face standing out lividly. "I suppose it was probably too much to expect that we'd manage to avoid each other for more than twenty-four hours once I finally left my new suite. Ah, well."

"I never meant for it to happen, I swear," Bobby pleaded, then closed his eyes, lifting his chin. Take it like a man, Drake. "...Hit me," he said calmly, eyes opening again, fixed on Scott's face. He wouldn't look away, wouldn't throw up, wouldn't cry.

Scott's jaw dropped, just a little, before he got control over his expression again. "You have got to be kidding me," he said in that hoarse, tired voice, looking away. "I won't say it hadn't occurred to me at first. But I'm not engaging in some macho game-" A little venom, there. "-just to make you feel better. I don't owe you that." He looked back at Bobby, the real eye as flat and empty as the prosthetic. "I don't think I owe you much at the moment."

It was almost a little disappointing. At least if Scott took a swing at him, he'd be getting what he deserved. "No. You don't," Bobby agreed quietly. "And I know there's nothing I can say to fix this, Scott. But for what little it's worth...I'm so sorry."

"I don't care." It was said impassively enough, the weariness still there in Scott's voice, but his jaw clenched. "You know, as angry as I knew you were at me for not being more supportive about Terry, I never thought you'd stoop this low."

"It wasn't like that!" Bobby replied, voice strangled. "I don't even know how it happened, Scott! I was just supposed to be meeting her for dinner, to catch up, and then..." He choked and fell silent. Scott didn't want to hear his explanations, and Bobby didn't blame him. If he were in Scott's shoes, he wouldn't care, either.

"Well. So you didn't think." Scott paused for a moment, his jaw twitching back and forth, as if there were all kinds of words in there struggling to get out and he was sorting through them, trying to find the ones that worked. "I'm not sure," he finally said, very precisely, "if that's better or worse. Part of me would almost have preferred it if you'd fucked my wife to say 'Fuck you'."

He hadn't had a chance to think. He'd been assaulted by sensation, by every touch and every word of Jean's, and...and..."Fine. If that makes it easier, then that's what it was." Bobby stood, scooping up his books. "It doesn't matter to me, since you'll hate me no matter the reason." He couldn't look at Scott anymore, face flushed with guilt all over again. "I'll try to stay out of your way from now on," he muttered. It was the least he could do, right?

"Don't you dare - don't you dare," Scott said, shaking a little with the sudden rush of bitterness and anger. "What happened is bad enough. You do not get to paint me as the one being irrational, the one that needs to be humored. I don't particularly have a whole lot of pride left, and if you take anymore of it I just may hit you."

"How in the hell was I doing that?" Bobby snapped in reply, gaze raising briefly to Scott's face, then dropping to the floor again at the expression there. "You're not being irrational. I fucked up, I know it, and I know there's no way I can ever fix it, but I'm trying!" He ran a hand through his hair. "...That's all."

Scott bit his lip, almost hard enough to break the skin, holding back the first response he would have made to that. "You want to know something, Bobby?" he asked unevenly, his breathing faster than it should be, but he couldn't slow it down, just couldn't. "When I stop to think about it, I don't suppose it really ought to matter to me. That you slept with Jean. It wasn't as if she was holding a torch for you for years and that's what made her leave. She left me. She left me because she didn't want to have to put up with me out of pity anymore, because I'm broken and self-absorbed and she got tired of putting up with it."

He took a step forward, his voice dropping. "You want to feel guilty? Feel guilty. I don't care. I don't. Care." His whisper was getting increasingly ragged, some of the raw misery just beneath the surface of his careful facade seeping through the growing cracks. "But don't feel sorry. You didn't do anything wrong, after all. She told me in that first email when she left that she doesn't even care enough to divorce me and told me to sleep around. Guess she's just taking her own advice."

Bobby just looked at him, throat working. He hated himself at that moment, more than he ever had in his life.

Scott knew that self-loathing look. Damn him, goddamn him right to hell... "Don't you dare make this about you," he said shakily. "Don't you dare. You did something stupid, fine. Sort it out, get over it. You made committments here. You're going to throw that away because of one stupid, stupid mistake?"

He was not giving Bobby Drake a pep talk. Not after this. He wasn't. Even if it was his job, and Bobby clearly needed it, and it was his damned job, and fuck, how he hated his fucking job right this second.

Bobby shook his head meekly. No, he wasn't going to throw it all away, he just wished he know how to get over it.

Fuck it. Fuck all of it. Scott rubbed his eye with a shaking hand. He couldn't do this. He couldn't. It needed doing, because Bobby was staring at him like he wanted to go off and commit ritual suicide, and Scott knew in a strange, detached sort of way that he could make sure that was what happened if he wanted, that he could push Bobby that far if he tried, and the fact that the realization had come to him made him feel sick to his stomach again.

Sick. He was sick - broken, like she'd said. Broken and crumbling into ever-smaller pieces by the day, and he could. Not. Do this. Shaking harder, tottering a little on his feet. Scott reached out, first to the books on the edge of the desk and then the desk itself, trying to steady himself.

"...Scott?" Bobby asked in a small voice, reaching out toward him despite himself, then jerking his hand back. "Wh--"

Scott held onto the edge of the desk. "I need to... I should..." Go back to the room. Lock the door and not come out until he could be trusted not to do anything stupid. Until he pulled it together. The laugh that slipped out was full of pain. "I thought I was handling this. I thought I was handling it and I'm not, why can't I handle this?" His breath was coming in ragged gasps at this point.

"Can I help?" Bobby whispered, his heart in his throat. This was partially his fault. He'd helped drive Scott to this, however unintentional. He'd been mad, yes, but he'd never, ever wanted to hurt him, not like this.

"Please don't," Scott said brokenly. "Don't, just don't... I'll get it together." Cain's words echoed in his mind, and he forced himself to straighten, wincing at the sharp pain in his stomach again. "I won't fuck up the team."

Bobby retreated a few steps, thinking maybe a little space might help. He nodded over and over, his throat closing up as he watched the man he'd first idolized, then loved, and now betrayed beyond all forgiveness, struggle to keep it together.

He wasn't doing this. He wasn't. Fucking control yourself, you pathetic piece of shit, Scott told himself brutally, and all at once his expression went flat again, like a switch had been flipped. "I can do my job. I can do my job." He could. He would. "You have to do yours." Stupid, trite, cliched, he was mouthing platitudes as if they meant anything, as if that would really make everything all okay. But he didn't know what else to do. So the Cyclops-shell mouthed platitudes and the Scott-pieces shattered and reformed in all the wrong shapes...

He was losing it. He was really, truly losing it. Ghost-white, Scott straightened, everything oddly distant all of a sudden. "We all do what we have to do."

Bobby swallowed and nodded once more, then stopped. He clenched his jaw, hands curling into fists at his sides. We all do what we have to do. Every breath he took hurt his chest, but the panic he'd felt was slowly ebbing. Scott was right.

Scott reached out and picked up his books. "You're not allowed to lose it over this," he said in that same detached voice. "You think you owe me something? Make that it." There. He'd done what he was supposed to do and been altruistic, and wasn't that nice? Using his leverage for good. Charles should give him cookies with his tea.

Arms clutching his books protectively against his ribs, Bobby just watched him, wide-eyed and pale. After a minute he jerked his head in a half-nod, waiting for Scott to leave before he dared move again.

"So, there," Scott said. "We've had the awkward discussion, it's done with, and now we're both moving on, right?" Stow the whole subject, put it away. Bobby had never been anything but a pawn in the first place. Victim. He was the victim here. Scott repeated that to himself, slowly, five times. That was the right way to look at it. The way that made sure at least one of them walked away from this and put the pieces back together. He and Jean were a lost cause. Bobby needed to be able to put this away and move on and he had no right, no right at all to get in the way of that. Some things were important and some things weren't.

"...Right," Bobby said numbly, still not moving. This was not at all how Scott was supposed to react, but he wasn't going to do anything to mess it up. He still had Terry to tell. The fewer people wanting to punch him, the better.

"Good man," Scott said and gave him a smile that was more than a little ghastly. Part of him rebelled at the whole facade, screaming in disgust, but it was a very small part. It could go away now. Right now. "I have to go check these books out and then go..." Somewhere. "Things to do."

YES! Bobby wanted to scream. Go, please just go! He wasn't going to move again until Scott was all the way across the room. "...Bye," he whispered, his mind boggling at how surreal this had all gotten.

"Later," Scott said in his best brisk tone and went over to the circulation desk to check out his books. His mind was busily separating each action in all of its component steps. Check out the books, leave the library, head to the elevator, up to the third floor, open the door, lock the door - and then he could let go. Five minutes? Maybe? Just five minutes. Five minutes, three hundred seconds, three floors. It was all so much more managable when you looked at it that way.