Author's Notes: Pre-X1 and a part of the Xavier Institute Chronicles, though it can be read by itself, of course. I recommend you hit the little C2 button on my author's profile and go to the rest of the series. :)
Thanks: Sue Penkivech and Oldprydefan who beta'd this from way, way roughness. You can thank them for this being intelligible.
Marriage, Children, and Aneurisms
"We'll be doing a group assignment," Mr. Summers was saying as he surveyed the economics class. All Bobby could seem to hear was "Wah wah, wahwah wah wah wah…" Sort of like the teacher from Peanuts. In fact, it wasn't until he heard a collective gasp from around the room that Bobby paid attention much at all.
"Wait, what'd I miss?" he asked, leaning over a little towards St. John.
"Economics assignment on family budgeting," John whispered back. "Something about making fake families and pretending to be married."
"Lame," Bobby muttered, sitting back up straight. He hadn't even realized people still gave those assignments. However with a C- in the class, if it was a project, he might actually want to pay attention. For a little bit, anyway.
"I'll be putting you into four-person families. Two adults and two kids. How you choose to divide up the roles is your problem," Mr. Summers continued, either oblivious to or ignoring Bobby and John's whispered exchange. "You'll put together a budget with input from all four sides. What would the parents need to be paying for, what would the kids want…that sort of thing. It'll be worth one hundred points," a groan resounded through the room at that, Bobby among the grumblers, "and it's due in a week."
"So, like, wait," Jubilee interrupted, "you're, like, picking these families for us?"
"Correct," their teacher replied. "So…here's the breakdown:
Group 1: Piotr, Terry, Neal, and St. John
Group 2: Sam, Kitty, Bobby, and Jubilee
You'll be expected to turn in a complete budget by the end of the week as well as an explanation of how you came to that conclusion. For each adult you can assume they receive a $50,000 per year salary."
"Can I start receiving it now?" Bobby quipped automatically, his eyes darting to see if he'd made Kitty laugh. It was becoming a game for the two of them. He'd joke in the middle of class and she'd see how long she could keep a straight face. It was kind of hard to tell who won.
"I don't know, can you focus for forty hours a week to earn it?" Mr. Summers replied dryly. John snickered and, when Mr. Summers' back was turned, Bobby flipped his roommate off.
When class ended Kitty got their group's attention and called them over to plan how they would work on it. As always, she took the lead in their schoolwork. Bobby just didn't understand the point. All this work for a letter. Just…a letter. Not even money or something useful.
"We should divide up the roles and start figuring out what we'd need to be paying for," Kitty told the other three. "I mean, the parents could start figuring how much rent and food would be and the kids could start researching what kind of stuff their parents would need to provide."
Jubilee snapped her gum before shrugging, "I like, totally, could not be an adult. Not even for fake. I totally hafta be one of the kids."
"I'd be an excellent Dad," Bobby grinned. "We'd live in a box eating Twinkies and drinking Mountain Dew. We could steal the Twinkies from Hank! Think of all the money we'd save on food!"
Kitty laughed and rolled her eyes. "No one suggested that you be the dad, dork. I think Sam should be one of the adults. He's probably the most responsible of the three of us."
Sam blushed a little at the compliment. It was a little endearing to both the girls – the quiet Southern gentleman blushing at their praise. Bobby was oblivious bar none. But Kitty was right. It wasn't as though Sam had recently blown anything up or frozen any of the hallways.
"I'll try," Sam drawled quietly. "Kit, you'll be the ma, right?"
Despite the southern accent, Sam wasn't slow, and he'd apparently recognized that the only alternative would be working intensely with Jubilee. Bobby snickered at the look of panic on the other boy's face.
"Oh, yeah, I guess so," Kitty agreed, nodding. The relief on Sam's face was instant. In fact, if Bobby wasn't mistaken, the blond looked…happy. Now, why would that be?
"Okay," Kitty decided, tone authoritative. "So Sam and I will work on getting together the budget stuff for a place to live and food and utilities. You two go figure out what necessities you'd need. Things like clothes and stuff."
It wasn't until the next day that Kitty and Sam appeared, to Bobby, to have decided that maybe letting him and Jubilee go off to figure out how much money kids would require was a mistake.
A very, very large mistake.
"Jolt Cola is not a necessary expense, Jubes," Kitty explained, sounding exasperated and running a hand through her hair. She'd only just finished explaining to Bobby that it wasn't imperative for anyone to own an x-box, a GameCube, and a PS2 at the same time. She was wrong of course, Bobby knew, but she was kind of cute when she was frustrated.
"Looking at what you guys have here, we're apparently the nature family," Kitty continued, looking over their list in disbelief. "We just run around in the nude."
Sam's eyes went wide and he blushed so bright red that Bobby nearly iced the other boy's face - just to ensure it wouldn't burst into flame.
"Perhaps we oughta put some clothes on there," Sam offered in a slightly strangled voice. It appeared to Bobby that Sam definitely needed to get more at ease with the female figure if he was blushing that badly.
And why did Sam keep looking at Kitty like that?
"I'm not really much for runnin' around completely nekkid," Sam continued, his cheeks still bright red.
"You're missing out, Sam," Bobby deadpanned. "It's very freeing."
If possible, Sam's eyes went even wider.
Kitty and Jubilee burst out laughing as Sam hid his face in his hands.
"Bobby, you're going to scar him," Kitty chastised once she was able, lightly patting Sam on the back as he hid. She slid the list back across the table to the "kids". "You guys seriously need to fix that. Sam and I will get working on some of the more specific stuff. Car payments and that kind of thing. And then we'll get together tomorrow, okay?"
Bobby and Jubilee grinned and nodded. There'd been a fair amount that they'd wanted to add to that list anyway. Like dinosaurs! Who didn't need a good dinosaur?
He vaguely wondered if this would be what pushed Kitty over the edge.
The next few days' worth of meetings passed without much incident, surprisingly. Even if Kitty had vetoed the dinosaurs. ("You guys watch too many bad movies. Seriously.") But Bobby was starting to hate this project. First of all, it was a project assigned to him by a teacher in a school setting. He had to hate it just on principle. Then there was the fact that all of Kitty's free time was being spent with Sam. It was starting to get annoying. She was even insisting that the blond had a sense of humor!
Bobby was pretty sure that was just some kind of fabrication.
But it was unnerving. Everywhere they were, they were together. So, their fourth meeting day, Bobby suggested they all meet as a group during they time they usually just met with their partner.
"Why?" Kitty asked, raising an eyebrow.
"All this alone time is tearing this family apart!" Bobby insisted. What was he supposed to say? 'You hanging with Sam is kind of boring for me'?
Kitty snorted, but she smiled. Point. "O-kay."
Every time they were all in a room at the same time, Sam looked nervous, Bobby observed. Of course, since they always seemed to meet right after Jubes had downed about 100 g of sugar and enough caffeine to power a nuclear reactor, it wasn't really Sam's fault.
"And, like, he said, 'Totally', and she was all, 'Whatever', and…"
Bobby's eyes were starting to glaze over. "Wait! Hold on a second. We have to present this, right?"
"Kit and I were sorta thinkin' we could do a powerpoint," Sam offered in his usual, low-decibel way.
Kit and I.
Kit and I.
Bobby could not, for the life of him, figure out why that annoyed him. But it did.
"Well, what if Jubes and I don't want to do a powerpoint?" He asked, just to be contrary. "What if we had a special presentation in mind?"
Kitty was staring at him like he was some kind of space alien. "Since when do you plan projects in advance?"
Bobby stuck his tongue out at her.
"Ah…Ah guess we could…change it," Sam offered, unlikely to start a confrontation.
"Uh, no," Kitty interjected. "It's almost done! And it's good. Here…" She pulled out her laptop, pressed a few buttons in a rapid-fire pattern that Bobby couldn't even follow, and the slideshow started.
She was right. It was good. And, on the first page, so far it only had Sam and Kitty's names on it.
Samuel Guthrie and Katherine Pryde.
"BOBBY!"
Kitty's high-pitched near-scream shook him out of his musing on that. "What?"
Jubilee was giggling. "You, like, totally froze the table."
Bobby looked down. He'd done it again. Frozen something without meaning too. "Oops," he offered with a sheepish smile. "Is your computer okay?"
Kitty was already checking over the aforementioned device, talking to it under her breath as she did so. Like it was a pet or something. He was pretty sure he'd heard her call it Lockheed once, too.
"It should be. I'll check it more tonight." Bobby noticed that she didn't put it down again, choosing to keep it hugged against her chest. That much love for an electronic gizmo was not healthy.
"Like, so, turn the powerpoint back on," Jubilee asked, well…ordered. "I totally have to get my nails done today, so let's get this over with."
Kitty looked pretty nervous about putting the laptop down, but set it on a side table, one that Bobby wasn't touching, and the slideshow continued.
"Did y'all like it?" Sam asked once they'd finished watching. Apparently Kitty hadn't been the only one pouring her soul into the computer lately. From the look on his face it was obvious he'd been working pretty hard on it with her. And it was a pretty good powerpoint, Bobby had to admit.
"It was kick-ass," Bobby assured him, grinning. "Thanks to you two we'll get an A for sure!"
Sam was blushing again, though whether it was at being complimented or the profanity, Bobby couldn't be sure. And, knowing Sam, even as peripherally as Bobby did, one couldn't be sure.
"The only problem is neither one of us had any CDs left to burn it on to," Kitty explained. "So if one of you guys could bring one tomorrow morning before class, we should be ready in time."
"I, like, totally don't have anymore. I was burning Eminem just last night," Jubilee said apologetically. Well, as apologetically as anyone could talk at 300 miles per hour.
"I'll do it," Bobby promised, smiling back automatically when Kitty grinned at him in thanks.
The next morning, Bobby was up bright and early. Well, bright and early for him, anyway. 7 am. He knocked on Kitty's door. No response. So he pushed it open. She'd left it unlocked for him, it seemed. There was a note on the desk saying that she and Terry had gone to breakfast.
People actually ate that meal? Bobby had sort of thought it was a kind of urban legend.
Bobby slid the CD he'd borrowed from John into Kitty's laptop, with every intent of erasing it. As he waited for her computer to recognize the new disk was in there, he caught sight of a file. "Pictures". That could be interesting. He doubled clicked on it, and found all the pictures she'd taken with her camera. There were a bunch with him, and a bunch with Jubilee. Some of her and Piotr or her and John. A ton with Terry, of course. And some with…Sam? When had she ever taken pictures with Sam?
Distracted, Bobby began burning the powerpoint onto the CD.
He didn't even get why it bothered him so much. It's not like she was dating Sam or anything. And he didn't like her anyway! He didn't.
He was mostly positive he didn't.
The computer dinged as the powerpoint finished doing its thing, and Bobby ejected the CD and closed the laptop.
When he thought about it, Sam probably ate breakfast too. Bobby headed for the dining hall.
Scott Summers was getting a distinct feeling of trepidation as Bobby Drake loaded his group's project onto the classroom desktop. Scott had kind of been hoping that Kitty and Sam being in the group would have ensured nothing went too horribly wrong. But who knew what Jubilee and Bobby could have gotten up to when left together for too long?
Thankfully, it appeared that Kitty had been in charge of powerpoint construction (of course, he should've expected as much. Anyone that spent that much time in front of a monitor could probably control the machine through some kind of telepathic link like the one he had with Jean). In fact, everything was just great until they got to the end and…was that…?
It was. Porn was sliding onto the screen just easily as figures had been a moment earlier. Scott Summers was pretty sure this would be the end. The aneurism he was sure he was having would kill him, straight out.
Bobby Drake was horrified. How had…he hadn't…had he…?
John's CD…
Uh oh.
"BOBBY!" It came from all directions. His teacher, as well as his group. Except for Sam, who looked like he was going unconscious.
"I think Sam's down," Bobby said quickly, before they could jump him and rip his head from his neck. His attackers spun around to see Sam nearly paper white and sporting a nosebleed.
As Bobby jumped up to run he could've sworn he heard Mr. Summers muttering something about aneurisms. He hoped the Professor had budgeted enough into his medical plan to pay for that. It sounded expensive