Scott and Haroun, Wednesday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Scott is craving physical activity, and Haroun offers to spot for him while he does some bench-pressing. It gives them the chance to talk about team business, including the trainees, and to make some actual social plans, too.


There was a surprise, Scott thought wryly as he walked into the gym. Haroun at the weights. "Do you never get tired of doing that?" he asked, wandering over in that direction.

Haroun grinned as he finished out his set. "Nope." he said, sitting up on the bench. "How else do you think I get guns like this, man?" he said, flexing playfully. "Not by sitting around putting cover pages on my TPS reports."

"Well, the rest of us can just stand by and watch in awe," Scott quipped, glancing away to give the gym a once-over. Now, what could he safely do... the relative lack of physical activity was driving him insane. Hank had suggested swimming, but that meant dragging out the damned goggles.

Haroun pouted. "Sounds like somebody's suffering from Paperwork Overload, coupled with injury-related restless. Get on the bench, Chief. I'll spot you."

"Paperwork Overload... isn't that a chronic, incurable sort of disease?" But Scott couldn't help perking up visibly at Haroun's offer, and was on the bench with remarkable swiftness for a man with only one good leg.

"I'm afraid it's treatable only with the sweat of hard physical activity. And no, not that kind, so don't even think about it." he said with a teasing grin. "What are you benching these days, Chief? This is still set for me, and it's probably just too much for you to handle."

"Uhhh... about 170 these days, maybe. I haven't precisely been keeping up with my usual exercise routine," Scott said a bit dourly.

Haroun blinked. "Chief, you're slacking on me!" he said, taking huge weights off the bar and adding back some much smaller ones. "Try that."

Scott glowered at him for a moment, then tried it. "Out of shape," he grumbled. "Don't need to tell me that... this taking it slow approach gets infuriating, although I suppose I should stop bitching." All he had was a banged-up knee, after all.

"And your knee hurting is stopping you from bench-pressing how, precisely?" Haroun teased as he spotted Scott's early efforts.

"The large blue person who smells a rat every time I so much as think about the gym is cutting into my bench-pressing time," Scott muttered. "Not to mention Jean reminding me every time she gets the chance that rushing things is going to lead to a permanent limp and 'you wouldn't want that, Scott, would you?' You'd think we were linked at the brain." He paused a beat. "Oh, wait..."

Haroun rolled his eyes. "Your doctor and your former girlfriend. You, my man, need to rediscover that you have a set of your very own. Tell Henry to fuck off and give Jean money to go shopping."

Scott made a face at the 'former girlfriend' comment. "Fiancee," he muttered, concentrating on the matter at hand.

"Oh, the wedding is back on now?" Haroun said as he watched Scott go through his reps, careful to be ready to lend a hand if needed. "How delightful."

"No, it's... damn it," Scott swore. "I don't know what we're doing." He knew what he wanted to do, and what he should do, and they were two very different things.

Haroun grinned down at Scott. "You have time, man. No need to rush things. We've got enough crazy around here without adding you going nutball over your dead fiancee rising from the grave or whatever explanation they are giving this week."

"Too late," Scott sighed. Amazingly, though, lifting the weights was settling him down. Must be the repeated motion. "One moment, it's like the last two years never happened. The next moment, I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing and in just how many different ways that reacting like the last two years never happened is highly dysfunctional."

Haroun shrugged. "To be expected, I think." he said after a long moment. "Not that I have any grounds for comment. Being, you know, artificial. And stumbling my way through my own deal."

"You seem to be stumbling fairly well lately," Scott said, smiling briefly. "Which is good to see."

Haroun shrugged. "Believe me, I know how fragile these things can seem. You think everything's just going fantastically well, and then BLAM! Right out of the blue, you've been PNGed and all your friends are snickering about you behind your back." he said, obviously reliving some memory or another.

"Now, don't get fatalistic on me..." Scott looked up at him ruefully, realizing how silly that sounded coming from him. "I know. Feel free to laugh in my face."

Haroun, obligingly, did just that. "I'm not all that fatalistic as I sound. But I've been burned before, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't wonder from time to time. Not very often, and not for very long, but I do wonder."

Oh, this was a nice feeling. Actual physical exertion. "Double-date some time?" he suggested, then smiled again, more wryly. Jean might not go for that - enough had crept down the link that he was perfectly aware that she had her issues with Alison - but was that supposed to stop him from encouraging her to work through that? "Might be fun... Jean and I have been trying to do the social stuff and see where it goes. Giving ourselves time and all that."

Haroun grinned and nodded. "How do you feel about Moroccan food?" he asked whimsically.

"I can honestly say that I have never had Moroccan food. So it would be an adventure." Scott grinned up at him. "And contrary to popular belief, I'm not against having those upon occasion. At least in the culinary sense."

Haroun grinned even wider. "Let me talk to Alison - maybe we can set something up. In the meantime, mister, I want to see your ass on the weight bench more often! I'm not unsympathetic to your knee being all screwed up, but there's stuff you can do in the interim to keep your muscle tone from completely turning into crap. And make sure you have a spotter - if no one's around, give me a call. I'll spot you anytime."

"I'd salute you but my hands are a little busy at the moment." It was more than lifting the weights that felt good, Scott reflected with a smile. Life went on. Clouds on the horizon or no clouds. "So," he said, changing the subject slightly, "speaking of weights and exercise and all that... how goes it with the larger, grumpier psi on the injured list?" A shift back to shop talk, but he didn't think Haroun would mind.

Haroun grinned. "Slowly, but that's the only way to treat an injury like his. He whines and groans like Jubilee, but he works hard and he honestly wants to get better. Especially for a psi like him, attitude is damned near everything."

"Mind over matter... good to hear." Scott ran through the other half-dozen things on the list of Things I Should Talk To Haroun About and picked one at random. "Any thoughts on the trainees? You've been supervising them quite a bit lately..."

"Dazzler has my full report." he said. "In brief, the trainees are moving along fairly nicely. We have a few ideas on the table for" and he snickered at the code-name "Hydrant, and I've noticed that Husk is running herself into the _ground_. Raised it as an issue with Dazzler, I understand you've already tried to get through to her?"

Scott sighed. "Yeah, but it did no good, and I think she's digging herself deeper and deeper." His jaw clenched. "It's not leaving us with many options."

"No, it isn't." he said firmly. "About _half_ this trainee class has a problem accepting orders or with authority in general." he grumbled. "She's been warned. If her shit continues, I suggest we yank her temporarily. If she whines or bitches too much about that and we don't see the forward progress we need to see,, then we pull her leathers and kick her out."

"It's not a question of authority, with Paige... or is it?" Scott raised an eyebrow at him. "Has anything happened in training?"

Haroun shook his head. "Not that I've seen, but I've only worked with her a few times. She's been working with Sam and Kurt quite a bit, I gather. Better to ask one of them."

That would be all the situation needed, if she did start messing up in training rather than simply snapping people's heads off. Scott gritted his teeth. It could still come to that, if this went far enough... or worse. "Other than the current issue, how do you rate her as a trainee?"

"Outside her tendency to work herself into the ground and not give herself any breaks, I give her high marks. She's smart, she learns from her mistakes, and she's reasonably cool under pressure." he said.

"Which just makes this all the more unfortunate," Scott muttered. "I should have taken her out of training in November until she got her head back on straight."

Haroun nodded. "Another set?" he asked, grinning down at Scott. "We'll get you back up into the Big Boy range soon enough." he laughed.

"You're damned right, another set. I now have all these frustrations to work off." The silence lingered for a few moments, until Scott snorted suddenly. "I think I'm obsessed, you know. I have trainee pairings spinning through my brain at all hours..."

"You ask me, I think you should just draw 'em from a hat or something. Totally random." he snickered.

"Oh, we'll do that," Scott confirmed. "On a regular basis. A little randomness adds fun to the training rotation, especially if you first let them get into a rut..."

Haroun grinned. "I like the way you think, Chief. Besides, life is random. Battle is random. But I think we should spring their partner on them _when the scenario starts_, and not give them any prep time whatsoever. Won't work well for Marie-Ange, but for the rest? Hell yeah!"

"Suggestion and the obvious sadism involved noted, and very much approved," Scott said with a winning smile up at him.