Scott and Pietro

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Before Scott heads off to the containment facility, Pietro stops in to see him.


It was strange how perceptions could change, Pietro thought. The red-tinted glasses had been all but synonymous with Summers for nearly his entire acquaintance with the other man.

Now they looked strange on his face.

Pietro leaned against the wall next to the couch and summoned up a reasonable facsimile of his usual smirk. "You're just not satisfied unless you're the center of attention, are you, Summers?"

"You know me. Just have to bring the drama, or I start feeling neglected." The glasses hid the look in Scott's real eye, but it didn't hide his pallor or the lines of pain in his face. "I'd sit up," he said, "but I don't think you'd appreciate me trying to throw up on your shoes."

"Thank you, they're new. And I think it's the impatience that's really deplorable," Pietro continued in much the same tone, though his expression was slipping. "I mean, if only you'd taken a minute to ask, I'm sure Xavier would have just given you a bigger office."

"But the only one bigger is his. I'd feel wrong." It was hard to keep up the banter. Jean's end of the link was seething, although she was trying to shield him. And he felt like shit warmed over, still. And that's just going to get worse, isn't it? "So," Scott said, striving for a light tone and not quite managing it, "I really need to watch these wrestling matches with unknown mutants."

"Yes, you do. And if you add selfishness to the mix and die on me, I'm never going to forgive you." Pietro set his jaw against the sudden roughness in his voice. "I've read the files, this eleventh-hour crap is an X-Men specialty. You hold on until we find the right ass to pull a miracle from."

"This isn't as bad, you know." Pietro didn't seem to get it right away, so Scott explained, managing to keep his voice mostly level. "As last summer, when Lyman had me. This is just... a problem. A medical problem, really, and given the quality of the minds that are on it, I'm not worried." Well, that was a flat-out lie.

Pietro snorted. "Oh, well, as long as it's not as bad as being tortured for information, I don't know why I was concerned. Sentimental in my old age, possibly."

Scott would have rolled his eye, but he suspected that would rather hurt at the moment. The headache certainly wasn't going away. "You know what I mean. No reason to think this can't be fixed." No reason to give up. Strangely, he could say and think that and believe it, which was reassuring. Jack Leary would be applauding him for making progress.

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to--" Pietro broke off, a sour expression crossing his face. "All right. If I'm trying to convince you, and you're trying to convince me, which of us is missing the point?"

"Hey, you're asking the man whose brain is apparently being cooked by his own powers at the moment. I think I deserve a gold star for speaking in coherent sentences," Scott said, a little too flippantly.

Pietro made a show of patting at his pockets. "I seem to be all out just now. But I should probably cut you a little slack before your wife comes back in and does something unfortunately telekinetic to me."

"Yeah, she's a little... fierce at the moment." Scott closed his eyes - then opened them again as the pressure behind them seemed to increase exponentially, all at once. His resolutely calm expression faltered a little.

Pietro caught the change, and his own expression wavered. "You know, it's a lot easier wishing my co-workers would catch strange and possibly deadly mutation-related ailments."

"Yeah. So many more challenges when we're not genocidally-minded psychopaths. Kind of counterintuitive, isn't it?" He was not going to be able to manage the conversation for too much longer. His eyes shut again, wearily - and this time, despite the discomfort, they didn't open again. "Sorry," he managed more faintly, not sure why he was apologizing.

"Don't be," Pietro said quickly. "I shouldn't have kept you this long. Buy you a drink when you're safely defused?"

"Going to hold you to that, you know. Maybe more than once..." Scott was faintly aware of Jean reaching down the link to him, on her way back from... wherever she had gone, but his grip on the link and everything else around him faded abruptly.

"By this time I should probably know better than to give you an inch," Pietro murmured. He shook his head once, heavily, and slipped out of the room.