It's Monday Night Live!

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Featuring Artie Maddicks! Miles Blaire! Nightmarish apparitions of everyone who's invaded the mansion over the past year! Special guest appearance by Imaginary Bikini-Clad Kitty Pryde! Musical guest, Alison Blaire! And your host . . . Jamie Madrox!



"Mmm . . . huh? Oh, put the sunscreen on your front, too? Okay . . ."

Poke. Poke.

"Ow. Kitty, why're you poking me, I'm getting the bottle . . ."

Poke. Poke. "Not Kitty, Jamie! Not Kitty!"

Jamie blinked and rolled over, swimming back to full consciousness with a brief tinge of regret over the loss of what was shaping up to be a very interesting dream indeed, only to find himself face-to-frightened-face with his youngest roommates. "Artie? Miles? 'S'a'matter?"

Miles sniffled. "Had a bad dream." Next to him, Artie nodded emphatically. Jamie rubbed crusty sleep guck out of his eyes and sat up.

"Bad dreams, huh? You guys want to go get some cocoa and talk about it?"

Artie nodded again, but Miles frowned, shifting from foot to foot. "Miles want Alison."

"OK, then. Let me grab a shirt, and then me and Artie'll drop you off across the hall on our way to the kitchen. Sound good?"

Both boys nodded, and Jamie disappeared under the covers briefly--he'd had a shirt on when he went to sleep, but it seemed to have made a break for freedom, or at least the foot of the bed, sometime during the night--but it didn't take very long before they were crossing the hall, Miles clinging to Jamie's leg and even Artie, who at ten was generally far too adult for such goings-on, had a firm hold on his hand.

Miles transferred himself from Jamie's leg to Alison's as soon as the door was open wide enough for him to squeeze through, and she picked him up as soon as Jamie explained the situation, holding him close; the soft strains of a lullaby followed Jamie and Artie down the hall toward the mini-kitchen.

Jamie snagged a big bag of marshmallows out of one cupboard, the cocoa out of another, and put some milk on the stove to heat before landing in a chair across from Artie and offering the marshmallows.

"So, nightmares, huh, buddy? You feel like you wanna tell me about 'em? Might help."

It's very difficult to look miserable around a mouthful of marshmallows, but Artie managed; a kaleidoscope of ominous black-garbed, armed men swirled around his head, and Jamie winced.

"Glad you woke me up, then, that's some pretty heavy stuff. Gets scary here in the sitting duck pond."

Artie eyed him dubiously, and flashed a picture of Jamie riding gleefully off into the distance on a motorcycle while distinctly non-scary black-masked people looked around, bewildered. Jamie snorted.

"Wasn't like that at all, man. I didn't think I'd ever get out of the gate without getting shot and I nearly kissed the street twice at over a hundred miles an hour." He grinned conspiratorially as he went to mix the cocoa. "Don't tell Mr. Summers, but the first time I almost fell off, I wet myself. Kind of a good thing he put me in charge of washing it all month, I could get rid of the evidence."

Artie made a face, but sniffed the cocoa appreciatively when Jamie set a mug down in front of him, liberally marshmallowed. He took a sip, then looked back up curiously, flashing a cartoony-terrified Jamie.

"Oh, yeah. Scared of dying, worried about you guys, scared my drugged dupe would catch up with me while I was still on the bike . . . but it was doing something, which was better than sitting around waiting to get caught, y'know?"

Artie nodded bitterly, and popped up a picture of himself, tied up, while ominous figures snuck up behind him.

Jamie popped a spare marshmallow into his mouth, swallowed it nearly whole, and offered the bag again. "Well, maybe we should figure out what you can do in case it happens again, so you don't feel so helpless next time? What do you want to do when that happens?"

Artie shrugged.

"Cocoa is the drink of truth, man. Especially after midnight. C'mon, you can tell me, you know where I keep my Underoos."

Artie shrugged again, shot Jamie a warning look from beneath an Xed-out picture of a laughing face, and played a rather elaborate scene in which a much taller Artie, wearing an X-Men uniform, walked into a group of the black-clad men and started swiping at them with silver claws that jutted from his knuckles.

Jamie's eyebrows went up, but he hid the rest of his reaction behind his mug, and when he lowered it his face was thoughtful. "Actually . . . well, y'know, we can't do anything about the uniform until you're older--I think you'll make a good X-Man if that's what you want to do, though--we might be able to, sort of, do something about the claws."

Artie frowned, and started to get up. Jamie waved him back down. "No, no, hear me out, I'm not trying to make fun of you or anything, or try taping garden forks to your hands. What I was thinking was, you remember when I was having nightmares?"

Artie nodded and put his hands over his ears.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But, see, one of the things the Professor showed me how to do to get rid of those were some tricks to help me control my dreams. So I could make the rocks disappear, or bounce off, stuff like that. I bet if he showed you how to do that, then the next time you had a nightmare you could fight back, however you wanted to. It's a lot easier when you can win."

Artie flopped back down and took another sip of his cocoa, then flashed up a picture of himself, sleeping peacefully, and a question mark.

"Eventually, yeah. Maybe not right away. You've been dealing with this stuff a lot longer than I had to, so it might take you longer. But I think it'll work, and even if it doesn't I bet the Professor'll be able to figure out something that will. What say you and me and Miles go talk to him tomorrow?"

Artie nodded emphatically and reached across the table to squeeze Jamie's hand. Jamie grinned. "Hey, anything you need, I'm here, you know that."

Artie managed a faint, relieved smile in return.

"And until we get that taken care of, you can do me a favor, maybe? Help me out with something?"

Artie looked curious.

"Okay, I've got this treehouse--"

Artie frowned, and flashed a picture of Jamie relaxing in a palatial treehouse while a particularly forlorn-looking Artie wandered disconsolately across a barren plain.

"Now you're just being dramatic. Cut it out." Jamie grinned. "I didn't tell you about it because I built it for Kitty, dope."

Artie rolled his eyes, and the Jamie in the treehouse was buried in a swarm of plastic Cooties while the cartoon-Artie pointed and laughed.

"I give you three years before you notice some nice girl and I get my revenge. Anyway, I have this treehouse. Now, I bet you anything they're going to be putting in all kinds of new security stuff on the house, and I'm kinda thinking it might be fun to put up a security system on the treehouse too. You up for stringing some tin cans and building catapults?"

Artie blinked, then grinned; over his head a huge piece of masonry hurtled out from the walls of a white city on a hill and squashed a few hundred Orcs.

"Trebuchets! Genius! I can make those, no problem. Who says movies aren't educational?"

Artie thought for a moment, and the view shifted: a giant snowball hurtled out from the branches of a tree and plastered Doug, Alison, and Hank, while inside the treehouse Jamie, Artie, and Miles pointed and laughed.

"Well, we have to make sure they work, don't we? That's just sense."

Artie grinned, and the view shifted again: this time, the giant snowball hit an unsuspecting Kitty, coating her head to foot in snow.

"Oh, now, come on, she'd kill me."

Artie eyed Jamie reproachfully; over his head, a whip cracked soundlessly.

"Hey! I am not!"

The whip cracked again.

"Fine. But I'm telling her it was your idea."

Artie grinned, then blinked in surprise as it turned into a yawn halfway through.

"Aha." Jamie pointed at the younger boy's wide-open mouth. "That means it's last call for cocoa, buddy. Unless you don't think you're ready to go back to bed yet?"

Artie shrugged, a little nervously.

"You know you can wake me right back up again if you have another nightmare, right? And we'll come back in here and reheat the cocoa, or mismatch all of Doug's socks, or something. Anything you need to get you through tonight, and then we go see the Professor first thing in the morning."

Artie nodded, then shot Jamie a questioning look and a picture of himself asleep in bed with Jamie sitting in a chair nearby, looking out into the dark room.

"No problem. Pulled enough all-nighters over video games, I can do one to watch your back if that'll help."

Artie nodded, and got up, and Jamie thought he was going to put his mug in the sink until the boy stumbled around the table and threw his arms around Jamie's waist. Jamie returned the hug awkwardly, patting Artie on the back "Hey, kiddo, it'll be all right. You've got so many people in your corner it isn't even funny. You'll get through this, and someday you won't ever have to be scared of this stuff anymore." He smiled. "Now let's get you back to bed before Doug wakes up and has a fit because we all disappeared, huh?"

Another hour went by before Artie, with one last look over his shoulder to make sure Jamie was still awake, finally fell into a sleep that was, if not completely untroubled, at least uninterrupted. But even once the little boy finally completely relaxed, too deeply asleep for any nightmare to find him, Jamie kept his watch.

Comments

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Special guest appearance by Imaginary Bikini-Clad Kitty Pryde!

*snicker*

I wonder if I should be worried that the cute!child (tm) seems to be more convincing than the cute!girlfriend. Snowball-bombing your own girlfriend... *pouts*

Re:

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

See, normally he wouldn't be, except he did the thing with the whip, and you can't back down from the thing with the whip. It's a guy thing.

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[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Yes dear.

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[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, there's no way we'll get everything set up before the impending doom stops impending and starts being doom, so you probably don't have to worry about it this winter.

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[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

True, very true. And, of course, if either of you makes a noise I'm as likely to phase as anything else.