Scott and Lorna, post yelling

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Scott stops by Lorna's office to express his appreciation for the way she is handling a delicate situation.


Lorna scribbled in the margin of the essay she was marking, shaking her head over the strangely circuitous logic. Overall, not actually a bad job but every now and then she wondered if she was teaching the same class the students were in. And, if she wasn't, why she couldn't be in that class with them. It always sounded much more entertaining. Office hours were nearly over and then she'd need to go check on dinner and then she could go home. Which meant that in exactly one hour forty five minutes she'd have escaped the entirely justified wrath of her boss.

The man who appeared in her doorway might have been inclined to say something about chickens and eggs, had he been a mindreader. But he wasn't. He was simply attuned enough to what was going on in the mansion to hear of shouting, even if he'd been in the Situation Room at the time and hadn't heard it himself, and he also was lucky enough to have free run of the security systems when he wanted to review some footage

"...Scott." She was going to die. "Um...hi. Come in. Welcome back." If he sat down, maybe she could duck around him and get out the door? No, that wouldn't work. He'd follow her and he knew where she lived. Plus she'd probably break something when she vaulted over her desk. Better to stick this out.

"Funny thing." Scott was still showing some of the bruises from his adventures in Hungary. The palinka hangover had finally gone away, but he was tired and he was cranky and he was worried, and he had not expected to come home to a soap opera. "I was actually hoping to alternate between monitoring newsfeeds and waiting on Jean hand and foot today."

"She's a lucky woman to have you," Lorna said, shrinking slightly in her chair. Must. Stop. Looking. Guilty. She forced herself to straighten up. "Ah...you're a good guy to have around. If I were you, I'd probably still be in bed myself. Probably with a weepy movie on tv or something."

"Let's see. I could take Jean dinner... put on a terrible movie... try to not make her laugh, given her ribs... yeah, all in all a lot more palatable than talking to my brother's ex-fiance about why she felt the need to get in a fight with his ex-boyfriend in the foyer." Amazingly enough, his calm, level, reasonable tone didn't alter in the slightest.

New plan. Lorna gestured to the other chair across the desk, shifting it slightly. "Oh...do you want to sit down? Because...you probably want an explanation and...that should be had sitting down." Beg for mercy.

The reasonable tone might not have altered, but the look Scott was giving her could only be described as increasingly frayed. It had been a long week. Near death and near Jean-death and Nate getting himself shot, not to mention the homicidal history professor and her new Chechen sidekick, and all that implied. He really hadn't been ready for something this... banal to throw him for a loop.

And he was tired. If he sat down, he wouldn't want to get up, and the lack of motion would make him mellow. He didn't want to be mellow. He wanted to knock their heads together - hers, Shiro's, possibly his brother's, too.

The mental rant should have calmed him down. It didn't. "I would really be interested in knowing just how you propose to explain that."

That...was an excellent question. "Well..." I don't like his face. No, probably not going to work. "Really it's just sort of amazing that it took as long as it did. I've been wanting to do that since Alex showed up on my doorstep." Lorna winced and sat back in her chair, gripping the armrests. "You've talked to Alex, Scott. You probably know more than I do about what's happened between them. How can you let Shiro stay here and drive Alex away. I mean, Christ, he came to me. Can you imagine anyone less likely?"

Scott went red, then white, then blew like the proverbial volcano. "What is WITH the three of you?" His tone of voice could only be described as a bellow. In fact, it was more or less the battlefield-bellow he used when he absolutely had to be heard over the sound of everything blowing up around them. "You and my brother break up! Then he gets together with Shiro! Then we find out Shiro's feeding off him! Then you decide you need to defend his honor, and get into a pissing contest about which of you deserves how many chances and GODDAMN IT, IT'S LIKE A FUCKING SOAP OPERA! I'M WAITING FOR ALEX TO TELL ME HE'S PREGNANT AND DOESN'T KNOW WHICH OF YOU IS THE FATHER!"

Lorna went absolutely white, her eyes huge as she shrank ever smaller into her chair. She wasn't a large person to begin with and for a moment it looked like she might succeed in vanishing altogether. She opened her mouth, closed it again and made a small squeaking noise. "I..." This continued for several very long seconds. Then, as though a switch had been flipped, she frowned and sat back up, setting her jaw so her mouth wouldn't tremble. Her voice shook but only at the edges. "I think you're being unfair."

"I'M being unfair? Newflash, Lorna! Neither you nor Shiro are a sterling example of healthy relationship management! The two of you arguing over that is kind of like... like-" Words failed, and he made an angry gesture and went on. "How can I let Shiro stay here? How can I let Shiro stay here? And how dare you suggest I'm being an accessory to driving Alex away - he decided to leave, and much as I want to smack him upside the head for getting into yet another destructive relationship, I'm not going to compound that by treating him like some wounded puppy who needs coddling and protecting!"

She was on her feet and shouting before she knew she was angry. "HE WOULDN'T HAVE RUN IF IT WAS JUST ADDICTION!" The dish of paperclips rattled warningly and her hands clenched to fists, nails biting into her skin as she locked down her power. It was enough to let her drop her voice to regular, if heated, tones. "I know what it looks like when you really hurt him. I've done it. I didn't hit Shiro because I want Alex back, Scott. You have to know it too. You have to see it. ...this isn't just the power drain!"

Scott's expression went absolutely flat. "I am going to do my brother the favor," he said, biting off the end of each word, "of not assuming that he's been victimized yet again. I am going to take him at his word, that he's hurt but coping. Maybe you're right and there is something else, but you are not going to help him with that by picking a powers fight with Shiro in the foyer. And I am not going to help that by stomping into Charles's office and demanding he toss Shiro out on his ear."

Lorna leaned forward, bracing herself on her desk. "He is hurt. He is coping. But you're not doing him any favors by ignoring it." She looked down, staring without seeing at the papers on the blotter. There were so many things she could say here and yet it wouldn't make any difference. "I won't go picking anymore fights," she said finally, "and you might want to go find Alex. He came back to school with me after I went home to change my shirt."

The look Scott gave her could only be described as poisonous. "Thank you for your impeccable insight onto my brother's emotional state." There was a lot more he could have said, but the urge to get out of here before he tried to do something like slam her head into the desk was not one he particularly wanted to deny. "But I think you'd do better looking at your own reactions to the situation than criticizing me on mine." He turned on his heel and left without another word.

"Bite me," Lorna muttered and sat back down. Her students still would be expecting these papers back on time, whatever other drama was going on.