Scott and Jean-Paul

[x-cynosure.livejournal.com]

Jean-Paul stops in to make sure Scott is still breathing. Concussed Scott is rambly.




Even on medication, pain rarely did anything to make a person a heavy sleeper. Scott opened his eyes just in time to see Jean-Paul setting a small stack of graphic novels and DVDs on the coffee table.

The speedster glanced over as Scott lifted his head, then shrugged. "You should make sure people latch the door when they walk out. You never know what kind of person could just stroll in off of the street."

"Mm." Scott raised a hand to rub his eye, sighing. "I got too ambitious - hobbled around the mansion in advance of that appointment. Let's not even talk about how the actual trip to the hospital wore me out." He looked in the direction of the clock. "I appear to have lost a few hours."

"You probably needed too. You look like hell." Jean-Paul just managed to keep himself from brushing Scott's hair out of his face; as bad as he looked, he doubted the man was quite that far gone. "Do you need anything?"

Scott looked in the direction of the coffee table. "Refill on the water, maybe?" he asked, and watched Jean-Paul get up to refill his glass. "Wound up with a mild concussion on Saturday, too - I suspect I was trying to forget that a little too enthusiastically."

He hadn't been asked to leave, so Jean-Paul took the chair to the left of the couch. "And yet, no matter how often we try to trick ourselves, our bodies never seem to want to play along. Stubborn of them; you would think they would learn to trust our judgment."

"Mmm. I was talking to Julian earlier." A pause. "I think he wants my job." Something very close to a snicker escaped the man on the couch.

Jean-Paul shook his head. "In fifteen years, maybe. Tomorrow? Oh no. Indeed -- oh, hell, no. Not until I am convinced he will not try to stop incoming powerhouses with his chest."

"What, you don't think his venerable mentor might be teaching him bad habits, do you?" Another, softer laugh escaped Scott, and he shifted on the couch. "I have no room at all to talk."

"No, you do not. But you were also not in any of my classes the last I checked. So there is only so far I can go in expressing my disapproval of you turning yourself into human wreckage."

"Wait until you actually hear how I did it. A drone picked me up - and dropped me." Scott paused. "Isn't that about the stupidest thing you've ever heard?"

"It will be hilarious in about..." Jean-Paul considered the battered form on the couch. "Hmm. I would say three months, if we are drinking. Five if we are sober."

"I get to go let someone poke things into my knee and rearrange stuff, in another couple of days," Scott said. "I feel privileged and honored. I gather the surgeon in question is very good."

"How long are you stuck in the actual hospital?" Jean-Paul asked softly. He had exactly zero positive associations with hospitals; just the idea of a stay in one made the back of his neck prickle.

"I'll be out the same day, thank God. But it'll probably be the bed and not the couch for me for at least a couple of days afterwards, depending on how it goes. Jean's already threatened dire things if I push myself."

"I think I will have to side with Jean in this matter. I would rather see you back on your feet in the best condition possible rather than as soon as possible."

"Everyone always sides with Jean." It almost came out sounding like a real complaint. "You're think the woman could beat you up with her brain or something. Oh, wait."

"Oh, well then here is where I get to be, in the parlance, a special and unique snowflake. I am siding with Jean, my captain, because I really and truly do not want you in a wheelchair by the time you are my age, not because I fear yet another telekinetic will be looking for excuses to slingshot me into the lake."

Scott eyed him for a moment, working on the whole focus thing. As the mostly comfortable silence continued, he remembered that there had been more going on today than his adventures-with-crutches. In fact, he'd intended to say something on the journals, prior to falling asleep. "Do you suppose they were hiding up a tree or something?" he asked finally. "The Stepfords, I mean."

That was an abrupt enough change of topic that it threw Jean-Paul off for a moment.

"I do not see why they would have to. We are under the same roof, and I do not often walk around consciously working on my shields."

"Makes me worry," Scott muttered, folding his arms across his chest. "They've been here for long enough, training with Charles - they should have picked up some semblance of ethics. I'm really sorry." It was an awkward sort of apology, given that he himself hadn't really done anything that required it, but he felt like it needed to be said.

"It is no failure on your part, and it will blow over." Jean-Paul sighed quietly. "But thank you for the sentiment, anyway. Even coming clean, as it were, I am going to have to talk to some of the students personally."

"It can't hurt. I've discovered that they appreciate honesty," Scott said. "Honesty, and being treated like they can handle information - even if some of them really can't."

"Most of the kids here have been through a lot already." Jean-Paul considered. "I tend to assume that they can cope."

"So young in some ways, so grown up in others. And half of them are in that weird in-between stage anyway... I'm so glad I was always going on forty-five, no matter how old I was. Well, except for a couple of years there, but we don't talk about that phase."

"Mmm. I sometimes wonder if I missed out on anything, not having a normal childhood. But I cannot think of it in any other way, so..." He shrugged. "There is something to be said for growing up early."

"It'll be okay," Scott said, his concussed brain flittering back to their earlier topic. "I gather there were kids who understood. Or at least empathized."

"I am not sure if it is worse that they are able to or not." Jean-Paul snorted. "Sorry. I think I am just in a contrary mood. All told, the reaction has not been bad."

"You, in a contrary mood? Never." But he did get it - he thought. Sort of. As much as he was getting anything tonight. "It makes me think about New York," he said, not really thinking about what he was saying. "Trying to hold off that crowd of... zombies, I guess you'd call them, while Zanne and Adrienne defused the bomb. I fired into the crowd. More than once. I still sometimes see the bodies lying there, after... but I know what would have happened if they'd overrun us and that bomb had gone off."

"You make the choice you can best live with, even if it just comes down to numbers in the end. Even if the numbers do not quite add up." Jean-Paul shrugged wearily. "Ernst should have gone back to jail. He should have served his years for the guards he killed in his escape and for Raymonde. He should have kept suffering. I wanted him to. It would even have been the same number of bodies in the end. But letting that old man die would have cut too close to the bone."