Scott and Jean-Paul

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Jean-Paul pokes his head in to distract Scott from his increasing boredom.



"Luckily I know just where the lake is deepest," Scott said cheerfully, sketchpad on his lap as Jean-Paul appeared in the open doorway of the suite. "Also, quite expert at figuring out just how high is too high, after all the time working with the safeties in the Danger Room."

"We are dead men." Despite his gloomy prediction, Jean-Paul had crossed the space from the door to the couch in a heartbeat to get a look at the sketch. "Though my first inclination is to rule out 'too high' and correct the lake being 'too small'."

"Hrm." Scott replayed the video on the laptop sitting open next to him, and frowned. "Possibly. I can't really tell from this shot, but if you travel too much distance.... nuts."

"The good thing about the aerial mea...ramps like this is that you are looking for vertical distance. It is all about how high you can get, so you do not have to worry so much about the target size."

"Hm." Scott rubbed out some of his sketch, making some adjustments. "Doable then, maybe. We'd almost need a spotter, preferably telekinetic..."

"I am trying to decide if you are out of luck or incredibly lucky on that front," Jean-Paul teased.

"Probably the latter," Scott said cheerfully. "She's generally against anyone breaking bones when it's not strictly necessary. Little doctorly quirk, that..."

"Not that a few broken bones tend to teach us much. On a mildly related topic, how is the leg doing?"

Scott made a face. "A little slower than I'd like," he confessed after a moment, reluctantly. "Slower than I'd hoped, too. You don't heal as quickly past thirty as you did at twenty-five."

"Sadly, no." And even less so at nearly forty, but best not to think about that. "But you do have more projects that can be done off of your feet. Has Doreen come to talk to you about skiing in the Danger Room?"

Scott looked curious. "No, she hasn't. A skiing program, huh?" He laid down his pencil, clearly pondering the challenge. "Tricky. A rock wall is one thing."

"Mmm, yes. You largely have to worry about people moving up and down when they're climbing, no matter how fast they're moving. Skiing will have people all over the map."

"How good of you to think of my boredom," Scott said wryly, mouth tightening as he looked down at his leg, currently propped up on the coffee table. "Tell you a secret, though? Part of me was kind of glad, being unable to go to Hungary. And then Jean came back shot and Ororo's all banged up..."

"And you wonder what you might have done that would have caused things to go differently." Jean-Paul leaned back against the couch. "Maybe you would have a matching set of surgical scars now. But that doesn't help the feeling that you could have changed the outcome, I know."

"I feel like I should have wanted to go, too. These aren't the people who nearly turned me into a bomb," Scott said, his mouth twisting in something that might have been a smile, "even if they called themselves by the same name."

"Even if you did not want to go, you would have been there if you were able," Jean-Paul pointed out. "Do not beat yourself up so much because you could not go and be shot at with the others."

Scott shook his head - at himself, not at Jean-Paul. "Right. The lack of mobility is still getting to me. Most of the time when I get onto these trains of thought I can hop on the bike, or whatever..."

Jean-Paul considered the man beside him for a moment. "I could take you for a few aerial laps, if you are getting so restless." He worried less about Scott's weight than about being seen. There was absolutely no way to look dignified when carting around a passenger taller than you were.

Scott just smiled. "Don't worry about it," he said. "Much appreciated, but there are cures for restlessness that don't involve you having to drag around unwieldly cargo." There was a spark of real humor in his eye. "Including ramp design."