Marius, Kyle, Scott. Breaking points.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

Kyle is not coping at all with the disappearance of Attilan, and mostly the disappearance of Forge. Marius is less than comforting. Scott intervenes.



Kyle had spent the days skipping between trying -and failing - to sleep, trying to run himself ragged so he could sleep, and avoiding any mention of the news. He hadn't turned on his computer since the day of the disappearance, and had taken to storming out of rooms where the television or radio was on.

Most times, he'd leave a room and then find himself in the gym, lifting weights or skipping rope, or, as this time, pounding the heavy bag until his hands hurt so much they were numb.

It didn't help, not at all, and all it did was get blood on a towel or his shirt or pants, and increase the uncomfortable stares that he got in the hallways. But he didn't know what -else- to do.

********

Marius entered the gym warily, mindful that sudden movements did not number amongst the smartest of reactions around this particular suitemate when agitated. All sources had pointed to the gym as Kyle's current location. He hadn't spoken to the boy much the last week, nor much of anyone, but that was the unfortunate result of the simple form of math Marius had retreated to after the disappearance of Attilan. Sleep was not forthcoming, and exercise made one fatigued. Fatigue enabled one to sleep. Therefore, if Marius wanted to sleep he would exercise. Running was his preference. Sometimes, if he ran long enough, there would come stretches of time where he didn't think about anything at all.

But even still, a week seemed a long time to avoid someone with whom he shared a flat. Kyle, like Jennie, had been direly quiet -- at least, to outwards appearances. The gym, Marius expected, meant the younger boy was once again venting his frustrations on the heavybag.

The expected was not what he found.

A bottle of water and one of Kyle's towels were on one of the weight benches. Kyle wasn't, nor was he at the bag or on the pull-up bar, or any of the assorted equipment. He was, in fact, in the back of the room, hunched into a corner, with his face buried in his arms.

He didn't even look up to see who had entered the room. He didn't need to, knowing Marius by scent, and by footstep.

Marius stopped. There was something disconcerting about walking in to the expectation of a blur of activity, sweat and bloodied knuckles and then finding . . . this.

"Eh -- mate, you hurt?" the Australian asked uncertainly, going to the most feasible explanation. He remembered Kyle's reaction when wounded in the Conservatory. He also remembered the beating the younger boy had given him in the woods half a year ago. Combining the scenarios wasn't something he wanted to experience. Marius made sure his approach was slow. "Kyle?"

"I'm fine." The response was muffled, Kyle hadn't bothered to pick his head up to answer. "Not hurt, I'm not gonna flip out." Marius wasn't the only one who remembered, and therapy or not, Kyle wasn't entirely comfortable with what had happened during the field trip, or during the moment of reason when they were rescued from Rory Campbell.

Marius took a moment to examine all the times he had uttered the words "I'm fine" in the past, and then juxtaposed them with all the times this statement had been sincere.

The Australian folded his legs under him and sat.

"Right," Marius said, arranging himself on the cold floor of the gym. "I feel it fair to give proper warnin' that I am neither the most patient nor the most socially adept. Under the circumstances I do not feel it would be appropriate to engage in my normal reaction, to whit: bugger off. With every moment that passes the odds of either of my deficits comin' to light increase exponentially, thus it can only be to our mutual benefit that you dispense with the pretense as quickly as possible. So . . ." Marius' habitual loftiness was shaved from the edge of his voice, finally revealing the faintest brush of underlying worry, "mate -- what're you doin'?"

"What does it look like?" Kyle muttered. He was sitting on the floor not doing -anything-. If Marius couldn't see that, Marius was dumber then advertised.

He hadn't wanted to 'talk' about it to anyone, Dr. Samson had been unusually accepting of Kyle's reluctance to talk, perhaps in light of the fact that Kyle not talking was itself very unusual.

And yet he found himself explaining. Or justifying. "This is just... it's incredibly fucked up, is what it is. People don't disappear without some kind of -something-. Magneto kidnapping people I can deal with, being kidnapped I can deal with but there's nothing to be mad at! They're just gone, poof, missing and nobody knows anything!" He'd picked his head up, mid-rant, and only belatedly realized that it would mean Marius would see evidence that Kyle wasn't actually 'fine'.

The actual words took a moment to sink in for Marius. He realized what he was hearing was significant, but the meaning was eclipsed by what he was seeing: Kyle's nose strangely red, and a face reflecting smeared dampness. Even his internal monologue was momentarily struck dumb.

Marius strove to recover quickly. He could think of only one appropriate reaction, and that was that, in the event of discovering another boy crying, you did not under any circumstances acknowledge the fact. "Here . . . look," he said, half-raising one hand in what he could only hope was placating rather than patronizing, "It's been a rough couple months. This week . . ."

There was no conclusion to that sentence, as offering further comfort required advice. Which Marius did not have.

"This week is the single most fucked up week I've had, um, lessee, ever." Kyle snapped. "It beats the dinosaurs -and- the coma dream, on you know, account of the entire island being bigger then both of them." He shook his head, not bothering to brush back the hair that fell in front of his face. "An entire fucking country goes missing, Forge goes missing, and they want us to just go on like usual!"

"An' our alternative would be -- what?" It came out more heated than he'd meant it to. Marius' hand curled into a fist; he pressed it against the floor and took a breath. "Let us think rationally here. What alternatives are open to us? All manner of investigation is goin' on. Local authorities an' the professor, an' I'm sure even the lot down in Snow Valley, an' --mate, what is there we can do?"

Looking up at the ceiling meant that Kyle didn't have to look at Marius. Looking at Marius would've ended up in hitting Marius and starting a fight just seemed like a whole lot of wasted energy. And he'd already bloodied one towel today wiping his knuckles off on it. He didn't need to stain another one. "Nothing, and that's why this really sucks. There's nothing we can do, if we could, they wouldn't let us. It sucks my ass, I can't help, even if I could, it would do shit all, and Forge is gonna be missing no matter what I do this time!"

Sod it. Marius was suddenly not in the mood to be the reasonable one. He was, in fact, not in the mood to be anything. Not reasonable, not patient, and not understanding.

The fact that Kyle didn't particularly deserve this crossed Marius' mind, and was dismissed.

"Right," the Australian said quietly. "It bloody sucks. It does indeed suck that two people to whom I have respectively owed my life an' a third whose only wish was that all matters pertaining to her wedding proceed smoothly an' without incident are now gone, potentially for terminal reasons. We've no way to know an' nothing to do, an' this -- this is far from abnormal." Marius lifted his yellow eyes to Kyle, narrow beneath his dark brows. "So naturally, the logical solution is to expend untold energy whinging about how nothing can be done."

"I wasn't fucking whining, or whinging, whatever the hell that is, until you got in here and started getting up in my shit!" Kyle spat back, unfolding from the corner and taking a long step towards Marius. "What the hell, man, now I'm not allowed to be upset? First you ask me what the hell is wrong, and then when I tell you, you get on my case for it!"

"Ah, my mistake. I thought we joined up with the X-Men to stop with the whole bit where we could do nothing but hang about bemoaning our impotent suffering. That was, as I recall, a mutual decision." Marius rose to his own feet in one fluid motion, not caring in the slightest that to look Kyle in the eye he had to look up. There was something strangely cold in the middle of his chest and stomach. "I am endeavoring to grow up. Under the circumstances I was expecting more in the way of company."

Marius was about ten seconds from having his ass handed to him on a silver platter. With those fluffy lettuce bits. "Dude, what the fucking fuck? I am totally allowed to be upset, and I am not bemoaning my suffering or whatever." He sure as hell wasn't impotent either, but he wasn't repeating that word to Marius. It would end badly, probably with some kind of snippy vocabulary lesson. "I joined the X-Men." and God, that was a weird thing to yell out loud, Kyle would realize much later. "So I could help, that doesn't mean I'm not allowed to be pissed off when I still can't help!"

"Do you really not comprehend this?" Marius snapped, fists clenching. It wasn't that he was blind to the warning signs, he simply no longer cared. "There's a soddin' country gone, Yvette's makin' posts askin' why do people keep gettin' hurt an' Jen doesn't leave her room an' now we're the ones supposed to keep ourselves together!"

Nice words, and lies -- but no force on earth was going to get him to admit the truth. There had been nothing Marius could do to help Forge, Crystal or Medusa, and now, seeing Kyle like this, it was painfully clear he couldn't even help the friends he had left.

So Marius shoved him.

"I don't want to keep my shit together!" Kyle yelled, shoving Marius back just as hard as he'd been shoved in the first place. "I kept it together just fine in front of everyone else and I was in here alone losing my shit and then you barged in!" Yelling felt right, as did the shove. It didn't take much more feeling right to stalk over to Marius and grab the front of his shirt to pull him up off the ground.

Kyle was tall and strong enough that leverage was not an option, but Marius was used to making due. Lips curling, the Australian twisted his body, snapped back, and whipped up one knee to take Kyle squarely in the side.

He hadn't been prepared for the knee, or really anything else. And so instead of hauling Marius to his feet and slamming him into a wall like Kyle had planned, he found himself with a knee in his ribs. His hands let Marius' shirt loose automatically, and a split second later, Kyle recovered, punching Marius in the stomach.

Marius wheezed and buckled around the blow, but on his way down he grabbed Kyle's sweaty shirt and jerked it part way over the boy's head in a move perfected over the course of years upon years of major sporting events. The yank stumbled Kyle a little, but considering their comparative mass it was mostly the thought that counted.

"It doesn't bloody matter!" Marius gasped, going for a punch of his own.

He couldn't avoid the returned punch and untangle his shirt at the same time. Kyle knew it was coming, it's what he would've done in the same situation. So he chose to take it, and in the process, yanked his shirt fully over his head, and threw it in Marius' face. "You can go to hell." He snarled. "AGAIN."

"Ah, witty comeback," Marius growled, ripping away the sweaty shirt. "Though I seem to have missed Jen's entrance, as I didn't catch the command to speak."

The wadded shirt flew right back to its owner, but that was a feint to catch the other boy's attention. Marius had always liked larger opponents. If he was going to barrel into something shoulder-first larger targets were definitely preferable.


They were on the floor, the situation rapidly descending further and further into 'not anywhere in the same galaxy as productive' territory, when footsteps they hadn't even heard crossing the gym towards them culminated in hands that reached down and hauled Marius to his feet and away from Kyle.

"Do you two of you mind telling me what's going on here?" Scott's voice was deceptively neutral as he let go of Marius and stepped between them. His body language - nowhere near neutral.

Kyle pulled himself to his feet and dropped onto one of the weight benches, looking down at the floor. Of all the people who could've broken up the fight, Scott was the -last- one Kyle wanted to see. He'd have taken the weird new guy or the sudden appearance of Jay or Dr. Voght over Scott. "Um." Kyle shot a guilty look at Marius and shrugged. "Uh. Physical ... uh.. activity to work out frustration?" Maybe if he made it sound less like a stupid fight then they wouldn't be grounded until the next century.

Kyle got a narrow-eyed look, in response to that. "I know what proper sparring looks like. That wasn't it. Marius?" Scott asked, turning towards the other young man. "I don't suppose you could shed any light on this?"

Looking at his new team-leader, only one alternative explanation to being found grappling with one's shirtless suitemate occurred to Marius, and while Jay had possessed many worthwhile qualities that was probably not the best way to go. He was suddenly too exhausted for anything but truth. Particularly with the extent of Kyle's skill at gut-punches beginning to make itself known now that he'd stopped moving.

"Apologies," Marius replied, surreptitiously dusting off his sweats, "the fault was mine. In reply to that requested glowin' radiance of explanation, that is. There might have been a bit of provocation." He ran a hand through his sodden hair and winced. Despite a torso that was probably going to be turning blue tomorrow Marius had no desire to elaborate further. It was unlikely that revealing that the little scenario had started by finding Kyle in tears would benefit either case.

Kyle rubbed a newly sore spot on his elbow and shrugged. 'What he said." he agreed. "Unless that was him saying it was my fault. Uh, in which case, totally not what he said." It was possibly unfriendly to say it was Marius' fault, but it -was- the truth.

"Good to see we're a veritable paragon of solidarity," Marius murmured. The accompanying eye-roll, fortunately, was suppressed.

Scott just shook his head. "I'd be lying if I said that X-Men don't occasionally get a little overexuberant with the hand-to-hand practice," he said simply, "or that none of us had ever smacked a teammate in the mouth out of sheer pique, but it's something that shouldn't happen more than once in a blue moon." He looked from one boy to the other, holding first Kyle's, then Marius's gaze for a moment. "There's been a lot of provocation, this last little while. But you need to be able to keep your heads, if you're going to be X-Men. The minute you lose control you cease to be effective - and it doesn't matter that you're standing in the gym right now. You need to be shooting for that same level of control in the field and out."

He truly didn't disagree on the point, though the headmaster's warning did do wonders towards underscoring to Marius his own blatant hypocrisy of scant minutes earlier. He was aware this, too, had no excuse. The Australian exhaled, his posture growing slack.

"Right." Marius scraped an olive hand through his damp hair again, compulsive. The boy may have had to concede Scott's point, but he did not feel particularly inclined to look at either him or his suitemate at the moment. "Right, you are right."

Kyle was used to control yourself discussions. What he wasn't used to was the feeling that this time, it was not just directed at him. And while the urge to point out how many times other, much older X-Men hadn't managed the same, he didn't break into a suspiciously Logan-sounding coughing fit. Just barely. He rubbed the back of his neck, still looking down at the floor guiltily, and remained silent. Anything said would either be a lie, or just make things worse.

"All right." Scott's voice was still even, and his body language was gradually relaxing to match, as well. "Both of you, get cleaned up. I'm going to expect you in the Situation Room at six PM tomorrow for a lesson in how quickly a lack of control in the field can get you and your teammates killed." A bit of steel crept into his tone as he continued. "I expect not to hear about the two of you opting for this form of stress release again, is that understood? If you must find a physical way to handle the stress, come see me, and I'll find you one that'll do some good."

Marius nodded. "Understood," he replied, choosing not to think too hard about the fact even one of Scott's idea of object lessons were preferable to being left alone with his thoughts.

"Got it." Kyle agreed. Not that he was necessarily done being angry at Marius for being a jerk. And yet, oddly, he felt, if not better, then at least less miserable. But that he could tell Marius later. Much later.