Scott, Jim, Cain, Lorna, and Betsy - backdated to April 4th

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Backdated to the evening of April 4th. Jim had good intentions, asking Scott out for a drink to talk about his zombie pirate father. Of course, it all went very wrong.


"I wish I'd hit him again," Scott said thoughtfully, staring down into his beer. "It would have felt better, knowing who he actually was." He looked up at Jim, raising an eyebrow. "Does it make me dysfunctional when I... kind of want to pound the man's face in?"

"Um, no. I mean, the abandonment was unavoidable, and he was a slave for a while, but after that you'd think he could have managed a phonecall." Jim sighed, rolling a coaster back and forth across the table. "Jean's got both her parents, right?"

"Yes, although that's a mixed blessing, given her mother." Scott took a sip of his beer, grimacing - not at the taste, but at his own train of thought. "I just hate the idea of him breezing back into our life, judging the choices I've made." A bark of laughter slipped out. "So maybe I'm doing it to him, in advance. Hell, I don't know why he scares the crap out of me, but he does."

Jim stopped rolling the coaster and gave Scott an odd look. "Parents in general tend to be intimidating, especially if you missed out on the independence-establishing phase in adolescence. But, um, judging your choices? The guy's a pirate. That's not exactly a solid ethical foundation."

"He's going to get here - if he even comes - talk to Alex and other people, and find out just how singularly I have fucked up in terms of keeping him happy and untraumatized," Scott said glumly. He'd had a few beers already, and was quite obviously losing a little of his usual mental filter.

"Again," Jim repeated, "pirate. If it goes that way, tell him he's free to provide the stable home-life from now on. Plus you might point out that Alex is twenty-two and now legally responsible for his own trauma."

Scott sighed and rubbed at the scars on his face absently. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. I just don't remember him," he said, grimacing again. "I should. I mean, I was fifteen. Thank you, fractured skull..."

"You really don't remember anything?" the younger man frowned. "I mean. . . no impressions or anything?"

"Not about him," Scott said slowly, after a long moment of silence. "More about Mom, and Alex... I think he must have been away a lot. I remember flying with him, I think." He smiled very slightly, almost involuntarily. "I used to dream about that, those first few years afterwards."

"All right, so maybe you can start with that," Jim suggested. "A flight in the Blackbird could be a good ice-breaker." The concept of forgetting your father was uncomfortable to the telepath. Disassociation sometimes created blanks, and fusion had caused a certain degree of confused splicing, but any memory not held solely by one of the alters was as accessible as a library book. Over the years Jemail had had to piece together so many of David's that by the end he could have recited the boy's entire life from heart. Still, he held back on the automatic suggestion telepathy might be able to uncover the memories; he didn't want to get the man's hopes up only to have it turn out the organic nature of the damage had rendered the early years unretrievable. That was something better discussed with Jean or the professor first.

"It's funny. I don't have to worry about telling him about the X-Men, because he met us first." Scott picked up his beer again and took another sip. It was maybe not such a bad thing. Cyclops could handle this situation a little more effectively than Scott could. He looked up at Jim, raising an eyebrow. "Speaking of dreams, I dreamed that he turned out to be evil after all. He had this file folder that he kept hiding from me because it contained all his secrets. And there was a lot of mwahahing. I think I may have been unduly influenced by all the evil parents we've had pop up."

"Maybe a little. At this point I think DNA testing should be mandatory. It feels like we've got enough legitimate evil relatives running around without leaving open the possibility some imposter's going to exploit the trend, like what happened to Lorna." Jim rubbed the back of his head, his bodylanguage creeping towards stilted. "But, um, I do sympathize. It sucks having to reorganize your brain to account for the glaring alteration of the last decade or so of your life."

Scott hadn't drunk enough to lose his awareness of nuances (not completely, at least), and something about Jim's choice of words raised a little red flag. He set his beer back down, and leaned on the table, eyeing the other man.

"You know that it sucks, do you? Given that I don't think you're reading my mind at the moment, I'm wondering precisely what you mean by that." He might not lose his awareness of nuances with a little alcohol, but he did definitely lose the art of the slow and graceful lead-up.

The younger man looked uncomfortable. "Um. Well. I may have sort of... not mentioned something. Um. You remember a little while after that thing with the Preservers when Moira and the professor had me benched?"

"I was a little self-absorbed and out of it at the time, but dimly, yes," Scott said dryly.

This really shouldn't have been difficult. Aside from general checking-in to see how the older man was taking the recent development, it was one of the reasons Jim had made one of his rare initiations to socialize. Of course, if it had seemed that easy we wouldn't have waited a week to get around to the conversation. Jim sighed.

"Um, well, they did it because I sort of had a similar experience."

Scott's eyes went very wide, although of course the stunned look was only there in the real one. "You... what? With who?"

"Um. My aunt's really my birth-mother. She left me with my uncle's family, and before I was old enough to be sat down for the Talk they were dead, or I'd had a psychological breakdown, or one of the million other things that kicks parentage to the bottom of the list of concerns." Jim lifted his glass and mumbled into the beer, "Alsotheprofessor 'smyfather."

Gabrielle was Jim's mother, and... "Um," Scott said, and then shook his head quizzically. "Charles is your... okay. Uh. Will you glare at me if I say that makes a certain amount of sense in retrospect?" He raised a hand. "Just in hindsight. I know about hindsight."

"Um, yes," Jim replied, his tone slightly flattened. "Yes, it does, which is why it might have been nice if Charles or Moira or someone had mentioned it when they first found out. Twelve years ago."

Scott gave a sympathetic wince, then shook his head again. "Your father," he said under his breath, half-wonderingly. "Damn. What a... well, he's hellishly hard to live up to even as a father figure."

"A little." Crippling fear of being a disappointment for because I'm mentally ill and only a middling psi compared to my genius-level, ridiculously proficient biological father? Yeah, no pressure there. "There were some 'adjustment issues'."

"Yeah, I bet. Damn." He'd said that already. Scott snorted and took a long drink of his beer. "How are you feeling about it now?" he asked somewhat tentatively.

"Better. There's still some weird moments, but mostly we've settled into a holding pattern." Jim sighed and took a drink of his own. "To be honest, though, I don't think there's any point trying to figure which of us has had it worse. I didn't know about Charles and Aunt Gaby, so in retrospect all those problems I had because I didn't think I had any family left just dig a little more. I did, and they were right there, but no one ever told me." Beer sloshed gently as he made a faint gesture towards Scott with his glass. "But still . . . the professor was looking out for me, and he helped me the best he could. And that was something you didn't get."

Scott made a face. "Well, Charles looked out for me," he said, but knew perfectly well that wasn't what Jim meant. "I just... I'd come to terms with the idea that he was gone. I didn't hold it against him." That sounded utterly ridiculous. "Now, when I think that he could have been there through... so much, it just stings. I guess. Something like that."

"Yeah." Jim scuffed at the back of his head. "Did he even explain why he didn't look for you? It wouldn't have been easy, I guess, but . .." Cyndi, who was less generous than Jim, had a thought for that. Chuck didn't know we existed until we started burning down mental hospitals. What was this guy's excuse?

"He thought we were dead," Scott said with a shrug. "I guess, after six years of being a slave, he wasn't inclined to believe otherwise." He smiled suddenly, although it was a wan expression. "I suppose he and I have something in common. I didn't look very hard for Jean after Alkali Lake, did I?"

Jim stared at Scott for a moment. Then, after a moment of consideration, winged a coaster at his head.

"Oh, knock it off. It's a commonality," Scott said irritably. "Probably means I should be more understanding." I don't want to be more understanding.

"If you're going to be bitter, keep it focused on your father. Let's keep the conversation to one issue at a time." Jim leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his stomach. "Look. If you want to get to know this guy, to relate to him, you'll find a way to relate. The same goes for him. So -- stop trying to over-analyze it. And him." Jim slimmed an eye at Scott. "And yourself."

"Might as well tell the sun not to blow," Scott muttered. "Although it would feel awfully good to stop trying to figure out what I should feel-" Or what I do feel. "-and just react."

"You really need to stop trying to pencil in your emotional reactions. They don't have a lot of respect for schedules, and good luck collecting the cancellation fees." Jim gave the other man a half-smile over his beer. "Providing you even feel safe making plans while the sun's blowing. How hard have you been hitting the booze?"

Scott opened his mouth and then closed it again, chagrined. "A little harder than I should have been, lately. That's probably a bad sign."

"Well, maybe," the younger man admitted. "But it is kind of natural. You can't really go backsies on abandonment issues. Just, please, don't go insane. It seems like a good idea at the time, but it's really not as cathartic as it looks."

Scott shook his head at the other man. "I still... I mean, Charles. You get Charles, and I get a pirate. I don't know which of us wins."

"For weirdness, you. For ridiculous irony, me." Jim's hand made its habitual migration to the back of his head again. "Um, by the way, could you keep it quiet? About the professor and me, I mean. I'm not really telling people. It's still a little weird, but mostly it's just nobody's business."

A large hand clapped on the back of Haller's shoulder, followed by a booming laugh. "What's nobody's business?" Cain drawled, pulling over a bench and joining the table, a pitcher-sized mug of beer clutched in one fist. "You two ain't down here sharin' make-up tips and giggling about prom dates like a buncha schoolgirls, are you?"

Jim's body attempted a backwards jerk. Luckily, the weight of Cain's hand on his shoulder rendered it entirely ineffective. "Um -- no," the telepath replied, glancing quickly between the two men. "I meant my relation to the professor not being public."

"Cain knows? Wait - of course Cain knows," Scott said thoughtfully, "because that would make you - uh-huh." He eyed the two of them.

"My favorite nephew!" Cain hooted, shaking Haller's shoulder exuberantly. "That means I get to give him all the shit I want, 'cause we're family."

"You mean you ration it?" Jim asked. Though theoretically deadpan, it was hard to get the appropriate tone with his head whipping from side-to-side.

"I was about to say," Scott volunteered, a suspicious gleam in his eye. "Or is a special, family-only type of shit?"

"Maybe we should take our drinks elsewhere? Starting to feel a bit bloated." Betsy turned her head to her companion on her left. "Lorna, what do you think?"

Lorna chuckled, sipping from her red drink, "You mean we don't get to tease your boyfriend about his daddy issues? But it's so much fun! It's like an anniversary, really!" Her hand dropped to Jim's frightening mop of hair and ruffled it with impunity. "Did you get him a present?"

"Just copious amounts of alcohol." Under Lorna's hand, Jim's blue eye narrowed in as close to a grimace as he got. He looked back at Scott and made a vague, apologetic gesture towards the other three. "Um --okay, so it's not completely secret."

Scott was giving all four of them a deadpan look. "Clearly not. I'm actually terribly impressed. How does it go... three can keep a secret if one of them are dead?" He took another long drink of his beer. "Next thing you'll be telling me Jean was in the loop, too."

Clearing his throat, the telepath resolutely studied his beer with an expression that had all the conviction of a man trying to bluff with a hand of twos, threes, and one coaster.

"Shit, who doesn't?" Cain grumbled, draining his beer and waving the empty mug at Harry. "Nate, Jean, Wanda thought it was pretty damn funny, considering her old man. Oh, Marie. Her too." He paused to receive another pitcher from Harry and take a quick pull. Smacking his lips loudly, the giant nodded at his nephew. "And these wonderful ladies, of course," he added with a nod to Lorna and Betsy.

Lorna winked at Cain and transfered her attention back to Jim. "So, no, really, is this a year anniversary celebration or something? Or a daddy finding meeting? I already know where my dad is, do I need to leave? Inquiring minds. Also, Betsy and I need chairs. These heels are killing me." She prattled on mostly to make her best friend turn more of those funny colors. It was her way of showing affection.

"Oh, she's only joking, luv." Betsy patted Haller's shoulder. She moved behind them and dragged two chairs over to their table, one after the other. She took her seat and smiled at the assembled group. Then her eyebrows raised curiously as a thought occurred to her and Betsy quirked her head at Lorna and pointed directly at Haller. "You didn't ask me out to celebrate the anniversary of him getting all his marbles back in the bag, did you?

"Would I do a thing like that?" Lorna tumbled into her own chair, mock pouting and looking around the table for support or defense, "Oh...wait, I totally would. No, I'm completely innocent this time. Only good intentions." She lifted her hand, "Scout's honor."

Jim, whose forehead was by now pressed against the table, tried to apologize without actually making eyecontact. "Sorry, Scott," he told the woodgrain, "the vindictive personality got into my email."

"I'm sort of sad I haven't gotten to meet your father, officially, Scott," Betsy said with a rueful expression. She clasped her glass in her hand and twirled it idly. With a sigh, she continued. "He seemed like such an interesting individual. So manly."

Scott proceeded to give Betsy one of those 'what the hell are you talking about, crazy woman?' he'd long since perfected for use with the women in his life.

"What?" Betsy said slightly amused as she brought her glass up to her lips. "You have a very active imagination and well..." She took a sip, the corners of her mouth upturned tightly in a repressed smile. "And your dreams didn't disappoint."

"Oh God," Cain moaned, draining the entire pitcher in one long chug. "Why do you gotta say things I can't unhear?"

"To punish us," responded the patch of table under Jim's face.