(no subject)

[seeingred]

WHO: Kurt Wagner & Scott Summers
WHEN: Late 2016
WHERE: Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters
WHAT: Scott arrives at the mansion and has his first real conversation with Kurt.
WARNINGS: Sad orphan boys. References to both of their traumatic upbringings, from which Scott is coming in fresh.

Scott scans the room he’s been given, afraid to touch anything. A bed, a desk, a dresser, all made of real wood instead of cheap MDF. A full-size closet and adjoining bathroom. A window with heavy curtains that looks out onto the grounds of Professor Charles Xavier’s sprawling ancestral home. He woke up this morning on a ratty couch in Jack’s apartment and now he gets to sleep in a mansion? Unreal.

The professor told the X-Men to leave Scott alone tonight, and Nightcrawler—Kurt—promised to grab him a towel and a change of clothes before disappearing in a puff of smoke. With two telepaths on their team, Scott’s determined already that no one actually needs to watch him to know what he’s doing, so escape is pointless. He checks the window anyway to see if it opens (yes) and how far off the ground he is (one storey). The walls appear well-insulated, and the bedroom door…

Tentatively, Scott pushes the door closed and turns the lock, hearing it click. He releases the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Never in his life has he been allowed to sleep in a room that locks from the inside.

Five minutes pass in serene silence, and then tap tap tap, on the door.

“Special delivery, Herr Summers,” says a pleasant, accented voice from just beyond the door. It’s obviously Kurt.

The neatly folded pile of clothes and towels in his arms are all branded with the X logo, screen printed on the shirt and sweatpants, and carved into the texture of the terry cloth. Charles loves a theme. Kurt’s been here the whole time watching it develop. Seeing the idea of the X-Men develop. Getting used to the idea that he could and would be able to make a difference.

To Scott, though, this has to be like the ground sliding out from under him. Kurt still remembers his first drive to the mansion, staring out the window in disbelief, hardly taking in anything Charles was saying to him. He saw the same thing in Scott… but even more shellshocked. Yanked out of a robbery he didn’t want to commit, and right into a stone and mahogany estate on the water.

There’s little hesitation before the lock turns and the door opens a crack—then stops. Scott peers out at Kurt, the red gleam of his glasses making it difficult to read his face.

“You can get inside even if I don’t open the door.” A beat. “Can’t you?”

“Ah, well, yes, I could,” Kurt admits. Scott hasn’t had time or cause to wildly rearrange the furniture in his room. “But that would be very rude, don’t you think?”

Another pause, and the door swings open with Scott stepping aside to allow him through. Kurt is right, but experience has taught Scott that manners won’t stop someone from invading his space if they want something. Kurt is a teleporter. Xavier is a mind reader. They’ve been nice to him. Really, really nice. But many people are until they suddenly aren’t, and Scott doesn’t know yet if they’re the kind of people who mean what they say. He feels like he’s fumbling blind, trying to figure out the rules of this place.

As tumultuous as his inner thoughts are, Scott is distracted when Kurt enters. He saw it before, but this is the first opportunity he’s gotten to properly stare at the other boy’s long spade tail. Like a demon, if demons were blue and furry.

“Sorry.” Scott drops his gaze to the floor. Very rude.

Kurt hardly even pauses as he sets down the bundle on the bed. “It’s alright, you’ll need to look sooner or later.” Just for emphasis, he uses his tail to grasp the handle and close the door behind him. The older he gets, the less the staring bothers him. He’s learned to tell the difference between harmless curiosity and malice, even if it always makes him hyper-aware of himself.

“Have you noticed my feet yet?” he asks, amused. “Even weirder than the tail.”

“Yes,” Scott says. “I watched you fight today. Your hands and feet are really flexible.”

He lingers by the door, arms held stiffly at his sides—a boy who’s learned to stay still and observe until it’s time to take action. They left Scott alone so he could process the day’s events, but his mind is buzzing with too many questions. He’s never seen anyone like the X-Men before, except in comic books. He’s never seen anyone like Kurt before, period. He doesn’t know what he’s allowed to say or do.

Manners. “Thank you, sir.” Just looking at the bundle on the bed, Scott can tell that it’s new clothes, or impeccably clean enough to pass as new.

“Ach, please, don’t call me sir. I’m just Kurt,” Kurt says, laughing nervously. He busies himself separating out the towels and the spare changes of clothes. He wasn’t sure what size to choose because while Scott is tall, he’s built like a scarecrow.

“You really were tough out there. When we had to fight, ja?” He pretends the towels need more folding, even though at this point he’s just kind of fluffing them. “Learned about me fast.”

Scott drifts forward a couple of steps, wanting so badly to believe in Kurt’s kind intentions. He’s wired to take people at face value—half the reason he fell under Jack’s influence for so long. The other half was fear. He isn’t afraid of Kurt, no matter how strange his appearance, but he is afraid of trusting the wrong person again.

“Hard not to learn. It was pretty flashy.” A little warmth enters his voice, a shade of the excitement that comes more naturally to other teenage boys. “You disappear and reappear in a puff of smoke. You have swords. You’re acrobatic. Is that part of your—” (What word did Professor X use?) “—mutation too?”

Kurt turns and leans on one of the bedposts so he can look at Scott, trying to see past the ruby lenses, searching for that hint of happiness. He really had given Kurt and the team a run for their money. At any moment he could have used those eye beams to throw Kurt through a concrete wall or two… but he didn’t. Not for lack of ability, but simply because he didn’t want them to get hurt.

“That’s right, my mutation. I do practice,” he insists, defending himself against an imaginary Xavier telling him that he needs more focus, “but this is how I have always been. It’s like you say, I am flashy.” An assessment that makes Kurt grin.

The second Kurt turns, Scott points his face away, down towards the items laid out on the bed. But his attention is still on Kurt, looking out the corner of his eyes—one of his few dishonesties, when he knows people can’t see through the reflective ruby quartz. Kurt’s teeth are very bright against the dark color of his fur. When he grins like that, it shows off his sharp fangs.

“Always?” Scott asks.

“Always,” Kurt echoes.

“I didn’t know I could teleport until I was about your age, though.” Kurt cautiously sits on the edge of the bed, next to the clothes and linens he just delivered. His pupiless eyes never leave Scott, his tail twitching and tapping. Everything Scott does and says is too familiar.

“When did you learn your mutation, Scott?”

“It was…” Scott shuts his eyes and touches his glasses, like he always does when he thinks a headache is coming, but nothing happens except the disorienting sensation that he’s stumbled into a dark room in his mind. “A few weeks ago.” He sounds uncertain. (Why is he thinking about trees?) Taking a deep breath, Scott squares his shoulders and forces his head to clear. “I blasted a hole through a wall of the group home. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, so I… left.”

He’d checked discarded newspapers in the weeks since he ran away, looking for a story about the “explosion” at the Essex House, and never found anything. If someone had died or gone to the hospital, there would’ve been something. Right?

“Group home?” Kurt’s eyes widen slightly, eyebrows creasing with concern and understanding. No family to run to when he needed them. No one for Xavier to contact. The Professor probably already knew. “Is that how you ended up with that man?”

Scott shrugs, his face averted. He doesn’t want to talk about the home or Jack or what happened in between, not just because it was unpleasant, but because his memory is so patchwork that he can’t be sure what really happened. It makes his chest go tight whenever he realizes he doesn’t remember something he should know. Things should be precise, orderly and certain. He doesn’t want these people to learn what a mess his head is.

But Charles Xavier saw. He spoke in his mind, responding to questions Scott hadn’t said aloud. Scott understands that he’s here for a reason. Of course Kurt wants to know what kind of problem they’ve taken on. “No. That was later.” Precision is important. Scott speaks slowly, not letting himself get tripped up by emotion. “I was on my own. There was an accident, and I used my powers because I wanted to help. It made everyone afraid instead. Jack saved me.”

Kurt can read between the lines and catch glimpses of the pain, even if Scott is very careful not to give any details. No specific locations, no new names, no real context. That’s fine, there’ll be plenty of time if Scott decides to open up. He gestures for Scott to sit next to him on the bed, not sure whether or not the younger boy will accept the invitation.

“I also experienced an accident before I came here. I was trying to save someone, but… my neighbors didn’t understand. They feared me.” Kurt takes a deep breath, followed by a slow exhale. If someone like Jack had shown up instead of the Professor, Kurt would have accepted the help, too. “Humans often expect the worst from us, but you protected them. And then you protected us.”

Scott stands stock-still at the invitation. He hasn’t changed his clothes in a week, and the day’s events are still on his skin. Sweat and stress and bruises under his sleeves. He’s afraid to touch the soft, clean bed. He’s afraid Kurt won’t like him if he doesn’t sit, and he wants very badly for Kurt to like him.

“It was the right thing to do.” What’s the right thing to do in this case? Scott’s hands flex self-consciously, before he holds them behind his back. “Where did you…” He goes silent, reconsidering the question he should ask. “What do I need to do to be like you?”

“Like me?” That’s new. People don’t usually aspire to be like Kurt, but now he has a uniform and all the responsibility that comes with it. “You mean like the X-Men?”

Scott nods. He has so many questions, but this is the only one that matters. “I want to do what you do.”

Kurt’s immediate thoughts are it’s too dangerous and you’re too young or even but you’ve been through so much. But he saw Scott fight, and he believed him when he said protecting people was the right thing to do. Kurt was about Scott’s age when the Professor started his training, and only a year older when he was given a pair of real swords. It’s not his place to deny Scott the chance to bring a little more hope into the world, even if it’s a world that rarely gave back to them.

“We use our gifts to help people. No matter who they are, human or mutant.” Kurt begins slowly, already composing the speech he’s going to give Charles about why they should recruit Scott. His thoughts start to snowball. “The Professor created the X-Men for this. He believes in a world where we can all live together, and we can show humans that we’re not the enemy. But! There is a lot of training, and we have to keep up with our education. This is a school, if you want to learn here, I—”

A deep breath and an apologetic smile. “Ach, Entschuldigung. Sorry. I’m getting carried away.”

Scott’s face doesn’t change for the entire time Kurt speaks—serious and intent, like this is the most important thing he will ever hear in his life. He understands some of this already. Professor Xavier had telepathically explained who the X-Men were, but it’s different, hearing it from someone who’s in the fight. For the first time, he meets Kurt’s eyes from behind his glasses.

“I’ll do it.” He stands taller, his chin rising. “Training. Studying. Whatever it takes. I can do it.”

Kurt’s smile cracks into a grin again, and instead of waiting for Scott to sit, he stands back up to meet him. Both of their eyes are hard to track, but in this moment they lock.

“Professor Xavier has the final say, but as the leader of the X-Men,” a statement he says with equal parts pride and anxiety, “I want you on my team, Scott. And I can be very persuasive. Don’t tell anyone, but he has a soft spot for me.”

Something clicks into place with Kurt’s words. It’s not a guarantee, not the complete puzzle, but one piece is one step closer to attaining what Scott’s hungered for his whole life. He’s not afraid of work. He’ll work harder than anyone has ever worked to earn a spot on the team.

“Thank you,” he says solemnly. “I won’t let you down, Kurt.”

“I know you won’t.” Kurt holds out a three-fingered hand to Scott. Scott’s so serious, but that makes Kurt even more fond, so much that it aches in his chest. This is helping mutants. “You’re with me now. With us.”

Scott looks down at Kurt’s hand for a second, and accepts it with a grip so hard that it borders on desperate. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Comments

[frost_queen Emma Frost ♕ White Queen]

Babiessssss 😭 this is SO cute

[passingthru KITTY PRYDE]

oh i love baby brothers...they're SO cute