Screws Fall Out

Posted on Tue Jan 16th, 2024 @ 11:51am by Scott Summers & Bobby Drake & Jean Grey
Edited on on Thu Jan 18th, 2024 @ 11:21am

4,978 words; about a 25 minute read

Mission: Episode 0: X Lang Syne
Location: Breakstone Lake
Timeline: 1987

Jean was finishing up her run through the woods when the prick and pain of heartache caused her to slow her pace and eventually caused her to halt. The feeling sent a chill down her spine, immediately telling her that it was Bobby who was lamenting nearby.

Changing her direction, she made her way to the lake rather than the mansion where sure enough, she found Bobby dramatically freezing sections of the lake.

“You know…” Jean announced her presence as she approached him from behind. “If you freeze the fish with the water, they’ll die. Then no one can go fishing in the lake.”

Bobby jumped at the unexpected interruption. “Maybe. Frogs can survive being frozen solid every winter. Who knows? Fish might too.”

He looked away from Jean, a gamut of emotions on his face that he clearly didn’t want her to see. It didn’t matter that he knew she was a telepath. Bobby always put up walls. Walls within walls filled with madhouse doors, as if that would keep her from sensing what he plainly broadcast to the world.

“Did you want something?” he asked when she didn’t continue her run.

“I wanted to talk to you.” Jean said as she continued to walk towards Bobby. Her tone was sweet and delivered with enough sincerity that it made Bobby feel like he couldn’t doubt her. “I can tell you’re upset, with good reason.” News traveled through the school like wildfire, within minutes of it occurring, everyone had known that Bobby and Lorna had broken up. “So I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

Bobby looked down at his feet. “Well, now you’ve seen it.” His voice was harsher than he meant. “Sorry. I just don't know what I did wrong. I thought she was happy. But… I guess not.” He forged a perfect disc of ice in his hand and slung it out over the water. It skipped seven times before finally disappearing below the surface. “Now we’re just friends. Whatever that means after, you know, today.”

“That was a really good toss,” Jean commented on his skipping ice disc. She stood next to him on the dock, keeping her eyes fixed on the water along with him. “Let me try.” She held out her hand, a greedy open palm waiting for him to make a disc for her. “Sometimes you can be ‘happy’ and still want to break up with someone.”

Bobby spun up another disc and offered it to Jean without looking. “It’s really cold,” he warned. “And you’ll have to explain that happy breakup thing. Have you ever wanted to break up with Scott? Didn’t think so.”

“Did you just stop to explain to me that ice is cold?” Jean raised a quizzical eyebrow as she leaned forward enough to make eye contact with him. There was a hint of humor in her green eyes. “Sheesh, Bobby, I’m a redhead, not a blonde.”

She sat up straight and used the same technique as throwing a frisbee to throw the ice disc. It only skipped twice before sinking. “That was terrible... you do it again and I’ll watch.”

Jean returned to his previous comment about Lorna. “I’m saying that sometimes there is more to a relationship than being happy, that there are other factors that go into it.”

“Yeah…” Bobby sounded less than convinced. “Not being happy seemed to be a pretty big damn part of it according to Lorna. Whatever. If I don’t make her happy, then we’re better off as…friends.”

Instead of another disc, Bobby created a boulder sized chunk of ice and propped it up on an ice pillar that shot out of the lake. The pillar snapped under the weight of the block, leaving it to fall back into the water. It made a splash nearly halfway to the shore where they sat. It wasn’t exactly cathartic but there was an emotive burst from Bobby that bordered between hurt and enraged.

“I’m sorry, Bobby," Jean said with a frown. “People change, their opinions and their wants become something different. Which is unfortunate, but I think this breakup has more to do with her than it does with you.”

Jean created her own spheres and arcs of water, her telekinesis making more ripples and waves in the lake water than his ice. “It wasn’t because you did something wrong. I think Lorna changed and wanted something different.”

“How do you know? Did you read her mind?” Bobby felt the cruelty in his words as soon as they were out. “No, I know you didn’t. You didn’t read mine. You’d have a different take if you did.” He froze the nearby surface of the lake and turned Jean’s waves into speedbumps. “I can’t stop being a jerk right now. It had to be me, Jean. It’s just…” He trailed off, not really knowing how to finish that sentence, so he started a new one. “I don’t know how to do things.”

“I don’t know how I do a lot of things either,” Jean admitted with a shrug before she cracked the ice, breaking it into tiny icebergs that floated and melted away.
“What don’t you think you’re not good at? If you think you’re to blame, do you at least know why?”

Bobby looked at her askance, unwilling to face her full on. “Not something I exactly want to talk to a girl about,” he said. “I’m not… I can’t…” He blew his breath out through his lips. “Never mind.”

“Hey, I’m more than just the sum of my parts.” Jean was half joking but also half serious. “Sure, I could go get Scott and make him come down here to talk to you but let’s face it, he’s a lot less fun.”

She used fingers to flick lake water at him. Jean laughed a little at his annoyed smirk before her tone became sincere.
“I’m your friend and your teammate, you can trust me. I’m asking because I care about you, I don’t want to see you suffering in silence.”

“Yeah, then I could watch you two suck face when you think no one's looking.” Bobby stuck his finger in his mouth. “Blech!”

Looking around at the lake, the sky, the shoreline, everywhere but at Jean, Bobby searched for a distraction and escape but found none.

“Not about us being friends or not,” Bobby said. “Lorna didn't feel a spark between us anymore. I joked and asked if that was a quip about my powers and she said that was a perfect example. She didn't think I ever really loved her, not deep down, and she just wanted to go back to how it used to be.”

Recounting the ordeal brought a slump to Bobby's shoulders. The words weighed heavily on him but he said nothing more, not even a denial.

“Do you love her?” Part of Jean already knew the answer to that question, while Bobby was upset and dejected she didn’t feel that gutted sensation of heartbreak.

“Maybe. I mean maybe someday.” Bobby turned downcast. “Well, obviously it's not like she loved me either. But we were getting there. I guess I'm just not the kind of guy she wants to go there with.” Whatever ‘there’ was supposed to mean. Bobby didn't seem to be sure himself.

Jean gave him an empathetic little glance before her gaze returned to the water. Bobby really had tried with Lorna, Jean had no doubts about that. “Sometimes people don’t click, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to, they just aren’t with the right person. What made you ask Lorna out in the first place?”

“It was after the Morlock business,” Bobby said. “We clicked after coming back home, riding high on the rescue and shared a kiss.” He turned bashful. “It was my first. I don’t know if it was hers.” He pushed through that confession and kept talking. “Where do I go from here?”

“For starters, stop being a jerk!” Jean rebuked. “You even know you’re doing it and yet you still do it, it doesn’t help with anything.” She splashed him again, Jean wasn’t really mad at him but she also wasn’t above calling him out for his detrimental behavior. “And don’t feel self-conscious about your first kiss. Scott was the first person I kissed. We’re in this bubble together, so all of our milestones happen at a different pace compared to the rest of the world.” Jean confessed her own romantic history to Bobby, none of them were suave playboys.

“As for what to do now…” Jean looked out at the lake, its waters calm again. “That’s the hard part. We all live together and we still have to go out on missions together. To resent her will make life harder and potentially dangerous for all of us.”

She paused for a moment to let the gravity of her comment sink in. There were times when the X-Men were placed in incredibly dangerous situations, they all had to depend on and trust one another to stay safe, or worse, alive. Animosity towards Lorna in a situation like that could be hazardous.

“But I also understand that you don’t want to be friends with her, not right now...” Or when she finally acted on her desire to talk to Alex, a piece of the puzzle that Jean knew but didn’t feel right sharing. It wasn’t her place to share other people’s thoughts or motivations.

“I guess you just have to find some level of civility with her. I know you don’t hate her but she hurt you. In the real world you could just avoid her or never see her again and that would be fine… but we don’t live in the real world.” Jean sighed after that comment, their lives were so incredibly different compared to normal teenagers. But she knew that Bobby held the same conviction and drive that she did, which is why they continued to live here, to be X-Men.

“You’re going to have to be the bigger person about it. You’re going to have to forgive her for hurting you.”

Bobby sulked while Jean talked. It wasn't even that he was mad at Lorna. He was mad with himself. And maybe a little with Jean for rubbing in her relationship with Scott yet again. What made him so great anyway? His tall, gangly body and stupid sunglasses at night weren't so cool.

“I've already let her go,” Bobby said at length. “Now I'm just wondering why I bothered in the first place. Flirting was fun. Kissing was better. But Lorna was right. We weren't going anywhere. That's what hurt. The truth.”

Maybe he just wasn't cut out for relationships. He slung another ice disc. This one sank after only two skips. Bobby grimaced.

“Because you want to be in love, because the idea of being in a relationship is appealing.” Jean once again opened her hand to request her own ice disc. “Just because the first relationship you had didn’t work out doesn’t mean that you’re forever doomed in love. You just haven’t found your person yet.”

Bobby handed her another disc. “Easy for you to say,” he said, trying not to scoff. A pang of envy shot through him but quickly petered out. “You apparently found yours already. Your parents probably still love you too. Maybe I'll find a new mom and dad while I'm out getting all the things I'm lacking.”

“Bobby…” Jean hissed his name. “Don’t be a jerk and don’t compare yourself to others.”

Self-pity dripped from his every word but there was something else beneath. Shame. It pervaded everything else.

Jean adjusted her form and managed four skips with her disc this time. An improvement but not spectacular.
“You shouldn’t feel bad for trying to figure out who you are. We all fail and make mistakes, we all feel bad about ourselves. But you should give yourself some credit, because you tried, you put yourself out there that’s better than a lot of people can say… Why are you so hard on yourself?”

“Well, for starters I'm a big jerk.” A smirk crossed Bobby's face. “This really smart person told me that a bunch of times.”

Jean laughed at his response before her probity returned. “You just act like a jerk when you’re hurting, you want other people to hurt along with you.”

She requested another ice disc as they both continued to stare at the lake. “I can tell you what I like about Bobby Drake... For starters, he’s funny, which can be a lifesaver around this place. Things get so heavy around here sometimes and to have someone who can lift the mood makes a huge difference, laughter is healing.”

Jean took her new ice disc and skipped it across the water, four skips again. “And he’s generous and considerate. I don't know if anyone else would share the last serving of strawberry ice cream with me because they knew it was my favorite.”

Bobby didn't budge but the sidelong glance he shot her way showed he was listening.

“He’s brave. He’s the youngest person on our team and you think that would be a disadvantage, but it isn’t. He’s the first to step in and face a challenge, even if it feels wildly stupid or dangerous.” Jean finally looked over at him with one of her sweet smiles, she could melt ice with that smile. “What do you like about Bobby?”

A small pile of ice discs laid at Jean's feet. Bobby has been idly casting one after another while she was talking. Her question gave him pause.

“I don't know.” It was spoken in the soft tone of a horrific discovery.

He dropped the last disc he'd made. Unlike the others with perfectly smooth sides, this one was ugly with jagged contours. “I guess…nothing.”

“Oh Bobby…” Jean said with a frown, sadness in her voice that came from a place of love for him. “How do you expect to love someone, to give and receive it, when you have no love for yourself? That’s the real relationship that you need to work on.”

She picked up the ugly disc and with her telekinesis she smoothed it out until it was sleek like the rest of them. “When I came here, I didn’t want to live anymore but I also didn’t want to die. The world was so painful and ugly, everything I had experienced was just… too much. It made me wall myself off, hiding in a prison of my own design.”

Jean handed the now smooth disc back to Bobby. “I don’t think I could have pulled myself out of my remorse and fear on my own. I needed to come here and to meet all of you, it was only then that I was freed. But I had to take a risk and open myself up to people, it didn’t just happen on its own.”

So easy for her to say. Jean was smart and beautiful and had her pick of anybody she wanted. No one was holding a torch for Iceman. She was the first pick for everyone. He was the backup. What point was there in opening himself up to people who saw him as second rate?

“I'm not you, Jean,” he finally said. “I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm just not you. Your life isn't mine. I can't just jump into your shoes and make everything go away.”

“You’re right.” Jean agreed with him as she skipped another disc across the lake. “I’m doing too much talking and not enough listening. What do you want for yourself, Bobby?”

That question struck him like a jolt of lightning. “What do you mean?” There were a few things she could mean and his feelings on them ranged from confused to terrified.

Jean noticed the nerve her question struck but she didn’t shy away from it. “I mean, figuring out what you want in life is important, it gives you direction and purpose, it helps you make decisions and helps you find fulfillment. So, what do you want?”

“Maybe I want it all,” Bobby said. “Lots of money, fast cars, my own mansion full of Playgirl models. Living the big life.” He waited for the look of disgust from Jean that he felt was sure to come.

“Okay.” Jean acknowledged his wants without laughter or disapproval. “So we’ve got material possessions covered. Lots of people want nice stuff and lots of money. Is that all it takes to make you happy?”

Bobby shrugged. “It's a start.” He gave her a shifty side eye. “Peace on earth and good will toward men?” It wasn't funny but he chuckled anyway. “I don't know. Maybe I just need to go live my life and figure out what I want.”

“That’s fair.” Jean said with a shrug. “I guess admitting you don’t really know what you want for yourself is just as valid. Do you want to leave then, stop being an X-Man?”

“No,” Bobby said, both terse and intense. “You're all the only family I have.” There was still conflict in his eyes though.

Jean wrapped an arm around him and gave him a brief but reassuring hug. “You’re my family too.”

She paused for a moment thinking about everything that he was saying but also everything he wasn’t saying. Always a barrier, always deflection.

“So what are we going to do with you, Bobby? You want everything but nothing, you want to leave but you also want to stay. Are you sure you aren’t a house cat?”

Bobby snickered. “Is that a sly way of calling me a pussy?” Her hug did make him feel a little better. It made him open up a little more. “I feel like one. Maybe that's why I'm a royal screw up.”

“I can’t take your place as the school jerk.” Jean teased him and laughed a little, but she didn’t want to skirt past the statement that mattered. “Why do you think you’re a screw up?”

“Really?” Bobby rolled his eyes and sighed. “I can't keep a girlfriend to save my life. The junior kids on the team are better than me. I'm always in detention. Why would I not think that?”

Jean rolled her eyes and sighed the same as Bobby. “None of the things you mentioned make you a ‘screw up’ and some of those statements aren’t even true. And I know the dating pool around here isn’t extensive, but there will be other people to date at some point in time. Maybe the quest for romance takes a backseat for a bit?”

“Yeah, that's the plan,” Bobby said. “I don't want to feel this way again anytime soon.” He let out a sigh and stood up. “Enough sulking. Life is for the living… or something.”

At that, he gave Jean a light slap on the shoulder. “Tag! You're it!” And then he glided over the lake on an ice bridge.

“Oh, am I?” Jean scoffed and stood up with a grand sweeping motion, a wave rose out of the lake and crashed into Bobby.

Bobby threw up a wall of ice that deflected the wave like a point break.

“Nice try!” Bobby shouted as he took to the sky on an undulating ice sled that evaporated into mist as he passed through the air. “You're still it!”

Her green eyes narrowed as she focused on him. Bobby felt a small jerk as his momentum stopped and then a tug of telekinesis that pulled him back to the dock. “Not for long.”

While Bobby sailed through the air, he pulled together as much ice as he could at a very low density. A snowball struck Jean in the back between her shoulders.

“Think fast!” Bobby shouted.

A blanket of frosty snow materialized three feet over Jean's head and dropped into a free fall.

Jean was still dressed for a run in shorts and a sports bra, so when the snowball hit the bare skin of her back she gasped from the cold. She was too busy reeling around to look at Bobby to notice the impending snow.

When the snow fell on Jean, she shrieked from the cold soon-to-be-wet that now covered her from head to toe.

“Bobby!” she shouted and he heard that touch of irritation in her voice. Jean plucked him from air and flung him into the lake, his body making an epic splash upon impact.

Bobby laughed maniacally all the way into the water. The splash went up but never came down, frozen into place like a watery barricade. Bobby's laughter kept up with a melodramatic touch of pretend madness.

Soon the frozen canopy of the splash shattered as an icy cross between a Viking longship and Egyptian solar barge came barreling at Jean, its bow dipping up and down as the rapid glacial freeze in its wake propelled it forward. Bobby stood in the middle with his hands upraised.

“The Iceman cometh!” he bellowed like Shakespeare in the Park.

When it got near the shoreline, it dissolved into a fine mist that lingered in the air like a fog. Bobby was totally obscured from sight.

~* ‘I don’t have to see you to know where you are.’ *~ Jean locked onto Bobby’s thoughts and used them like a homing beacon. Finding him in the mist without the aid of her eyes was easy.

Jean opted for up rather than out of the mist, with an elegant leap she ascended upwards and lifted herself into the sky. From her view from above, she waited for Bobby to finally realize that she was no longer standing on the ground.

“You're still it!” Bobby shouted with his hands cupped to his mouth.

“Who is ‘it’?” asked another voice. “And what is ‘it’?”

Bobby rolled his eyes. Scott. Of course he'd show up and ruin their game. Or did he?

“The answer to both questions…” Bobby whirled around and sent a frosty jet of cold in Scott's direction. “...is you!”

The initial burst caught Scott in the chest. His tank top did nothing to block it. Scott dove forward in a diagonal tuck and roll. As he came up in a crouch, his hand was to his clamshell visor. “Tag!” he retorted with deadpan sarcasm.

Bobby caught a tight, narrow optic blast in the stomach that sent him flat on his back. “Okay…” The impact made him suck wind from the ground. “You win.”

Jean returned to the ground, her feet gracefully and silently making impact with the grass. She was still damp from the snow, her athletic clothes stuck to her body and her red hair’s natural waves were showing from the moisture. She gave Scott a small frown as she landed.
~* ‘You didn’t have to knock him over.’ *~

~That was smallest I could make it without risking penetration~ Scott folded his arms without regret. ~He blasted me first~

Jean walked over to Bobby and offered him her hand to help him up from the ground.
“Are you okay?”

“I'm good.” Bobby hopped to his feet without help, though he rubbed his midsection a time or two. “Nice shot, Scott.”

Scott nodded. “Likewise.”

The sarcasm between the two was downright immature. After a moment, though, the tension broke when they both started snickering at the same time.

Jean looked between them and their sudden laughter. “What?”

“We shot each other,” Scott said, now straight-faced. “That's funny.”

After Scott's taciturn delivery, Bobby tried to agree but started laughing even harder.

Jean folded her arms across her chest and gave Scott ‘the look’. Unamused green eyes that told him if he ever wanted to see her naked ever again then he better fess up.
“Oh really?”

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” Bobby asked.

“Maybe.” Scott smirked.

“Okay,” Bobby said. “Now!”

At the same time, Scott fired an optic blast at the ground to kick up a cloud of dust and Bobby summoned a flurry that filled the air with snowflakes. The frozen shit storm made a slogging, muddy mess of everything in the local vicinity.

Both teenage boys were laughing hysterically, particularly at how unamused Jean appeared to be.

Jean raised a telekinetic shield but not before being splattered with freezing sludge, leaving her whole body spotted and dotted with mud. A continued look of annoyance on her face at the cold miserable mess they had made of her and the dock.

“Fine, if you want to be gross, let’s be gross!” Jean bellowed before looking back to the lake. She dredged the lake bottom for mud and flung a ball at each of them, hitting them both square in the chest.

At first, it didn’t seem like the mud Jean threw was that terrible, but then the smell hit their noses. The lake mud consisted of a decomposing silt made of plant and fish matter along with duck feathers and algae, it smelled absolutely disgusting, a rotten aquatic odor that now permeated their noses.

It wasn’t until they realized what she had thrown at them did Jean finally start laughing. Her unimpressed irritation was replaced with utter delight.

“Ugh! That smells like a dead animal!” Scott crinkled his nose until his face grimaced.

Bobby tried to slap the smell out of his own face to no avail. “It smells like your gym socks wrapped up in Hank's gym shorts!”

“It smells like your breath first thing in the morning!” Scott fired back.

“It smells like Jean's breath when she takes your dick out of her mouth!”

Scott bristled at that. “It smells like your mother's gynecology exam.”

Bobby turned to ice form. “It smells like your ass after I cream you!”

“See me running?” Scott raised his hand to his temple in warning.

The two had a brief standoff until Bobby realized something. “Hey! I can't smell it anymore. Sucks to be you!”

And then he slid away on an ice bridge, leaving raucous laughter in his wake.

Scott looked at Jean, feeling as shitty as he looked and smelled. “Well, then.”

~I’m in trouble now~ Scott thought to himself.

~* ‘You aren’t in trouble’ *~ Jean looked towards Bobby as he skated away, he wasn’t sad anymore. Jean wanted Bobby to know that he wasn’t alone, that he’d always have them for support whenever he was ready to face his demons.

She walked over to Scott and kissed him, doing her best to not come into contact with the rest of his body. “Thanks for your help.”

“My what?” Scott still had no idea what was going on. He'd apparently interrupted a game of tag like Bobby and Jean were 12 again. Jean had not been happy with him then.

Between the two of them, Scott looked far worse and smelled like death incarnate. “Uh, you're welcome, I guess.” He turned back to the mansion. “Come on. Let's get cleaned up.”

“You do smell awful.” Jean laughed again as they started walking back towards the house together. She looked like a Dalmatian, her bare skin covered in random spots and freckles of mud.

She briefly shared with Scott her conversation with Bobby, his sadness over Lorna and their roundabout conversation about his unhappiness, which dissolved into horsing around, the immature activity that seemed to reach Bobby the most.

~* ‘He’s just holding back so much, he’d rather wall it off and suppress it than face it. I can’t seem to convince him that talking about it will make it better.’ *~

“Guys don't talk about feelings,” Scott replied out loud. “We act on them. Or…we don't.” His tone shifted. “That makes us frustrated. Then we either act on that or we don't.”

Scott peeled off his tank top and threw it in the trail side trash can. There was no saving it from Jean's vengeance. That quickly improved his countenance from revolting to just filthy. His summer tan was of the farmer variety, but his natural athleticism still showed.

“Sounds like Bobby burned off some frustration. Whatever's really bothering him is still hidden.” He smirked at Jean and her telepathic mind. “At least to most of us.”

“People get uncomfortable with that, especially when they don’t want to talk about things. It makes it more invasive and I become untrustworthy.” Once they reached the cut grass of the mansion grounds, Jean stopped for a moment and took off her mud caked sneakers and socks, they were too disgusting for going inside. She would have to wash them before she went for another run.

“Besides I already know more than I should.” The grass was cool under her bare feet. “I don’t want to cross a line and upset him or ruin our friendship.”

“Yeah, leave that to him,” Scott groused. If anyone could cross lines and ruin friendships, it was Bobby.

A suggestive smirk crept over his face. “I happen to know of a certain spigot and sprinkler we could set up overhead behind the garden shed.” He waggled his eyebrows. “We could…clean your shoes…before going inside.”

“Helping clean my shoes, that’s a new one.” Jean returned his smirk. “Only if you help me lace them back up afterwards.”

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