Title: An Unexpected Thing
Summary: The Ultimate X-Men Scott/Toad bromance has never been explored. This is troubling and, while it is near impossible to explore it along the lines of what actually happened, there are always a couple other options.
Warning: AU based on the Ultimate X-Men Cyclops/Toad bromance. Their physical designs are based mostly off of issues #15 and #98. Mention of probable drug use and some swearing, but nothing much. Also, mild Jean Grey bashing (because we all know Toad and she didn't get along in Ultimates).
Disclaimer: LOL.
Dedication: To both Kelly1 and foxieglove who are gods in their work to portray the Brotherhood in wonderful light. Go and look at their work Right Freakin' Now.
-:-
Yeah, go ahead 'Honey'. Save my life.
-CSI.
i.
It is an unexpected thing, to find someone and simply take them home because it looks as if they might not survive the night with their skin frozen and their pulse barely there at the touch of hands that had been covered in thick leather, but taken off to feel at where the heart was supposed to make blood pump just right and cause veins along the neck to move up, down, up, down, rest…. It took a long time before the pulse was found.
Scott supposed that was why he brought the kid back to his apartment. It wasn't just the fact that the stranger was also, obviously, a mutant and couldn't go to a hospital without huge red flags being drawn by the staff and more questions asked than the older man was comfortable (or able) to give them; it was that Scott wasn't even sure he could get the kid (and he so was a kid, too; small hands, emaciated figure, a bandana and dreadlocks that only a kid below twenty years in age could successfully pull off) to the hospital before he froze to death—literally.
He supposed it was better this way, anyway. Scott had seen the young man wandering around under the bridge and along back alleys near Scott's flat for months; he was either homeless and couldn't afford the hospital or was into illegal activities that would be thoroughly questioned once he woke up in a clean, white sheet covered bed (a gurney; wires inside him and outside him and machines beeping every five seconds—Scott had been in situations like that and didn't fancy them turning out better for a kid off the street) with a doctor or nurse there to greet him.
The energy behind Scott's eyes was starting to build into a headache—like it did so often since he'd left his girlfriend a few weeks ago and tried to convince himself it was the right thing to do—and he stood from sitting on his favorite armchair (directly across from where he'd set the kid on the sofa) to make some tea or cocoa for himself and his guest when he woke up. Scott could chase his drink with an aspirin before then.
The younger mutant was wrapped tight in as many of the covers that Scott kept around the house (quilts, ottomans, silk shifts, three separate blankets he'd gotten from a hole-in-the-wall place in the colors of ocean tides and stitches that gave the illusion of waves on the beach) and was also placed atop a large pillow Scott had bought so long ago, he had forgotten it had existed for so long in his hall closet and he'd had to bat it against the door to his bathroom before he'd put it in the place of the other man. It had taken a while, but his breathing had regulated to somewhat normal and all that was really left was for him to wake up.
The water inside the electric coffee maker dribbled and boiled and Scott was glad that the steam didn't make that despicable, high pitched scream when the little red button on the handle alerted him to it being ready. He just shut off the 'On' switch and then poured the water into a cup that fit snug in his hand (water drops, little-little-little ones, flew from the inside of the cup and landed on his thumb and pointer finger, but weren't so bad that he'd bother to make noise at it).
Scott took out another cup ("Cinderella dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss a fellow!" Jean had sung and played hopscotch with the children she taught at their own alma matter the year before; the skeleton gray cup in his hand host to the lemonade Scott had made for the both of them) and added water to that for his guest. The sugary brown mix for generic cocoa spilling out from the packet after tearing it easily in his strong hands and mixing inside by simply swerving the water and the cup in clockwise circles; it would taste good when the kid woke up—if he accepted it.
Turning and walking back into his living room, Scott was surprised—and a bit shocked—to find open and blinding yellow eyes.
"….Hello," Scott greeted, quiet and slow as he set the cocoa down for the young man (those yellow eyes had peered down at Scott, once, from the top of a polished marble statue in the district that housed the television network's building; a small flash of amber that the other mutant hadn't expected to see when he'd looked upon Zeus trying to draw attention to Hera in their stone forms).
It took a moment for the young man to respond and when he did finally answer back, "Hello," the 'e' sounded more like a 'u' and tipped Scott off that, as well as being from the street, his guest was also British.
ii.
Mortimer Toynbee ("Call me Toad, please. I don't much like the whole name, and need to present myself as credible to my mutation, ya know?") turned into a surprisingly good roommate after Scott offered up the position a few weeks into them constantly running into each other after the first time Mort was in his apartment and finding out that Mort was, indeed, homeless.
"I don't need charity from some Yank that hauled my ass out of the cold out of pity," Mortimer had snorted when Scott had made the offer; his green hands covered in the meatball entrails he'd been smashing around in a large bowl to help Scott make dinner after a bit of a run in with his ex-girlfriend earlier in the day—same day Scott had offered to host a sort of two person engagement of watching the Yorkshire vs. Liverpool football game ("Not soccer. That's blasphemy there, mate.") with high hopes for fun that had been nearly dashed by the blood haired bitch.
"It's not exactly charity," Scott went on coaxing, occupied himself with making sure the beer he'd bought (technically, since Toad was British, it was perfectly legal for him to drink alcohol at only nineteen; he wasn't going to split hairs on American laws after he'd seen evidence along the teen's arms that suggested something stronger and worse, either) was in the freezer so it would be cold when the game started on the television currently blasting music and chaotic imagery on MTV, "You'd be required not to purchase or distribute that crap I assume you shoot up less and less. And you'd need to get some sort of job to help pay rent."
When Toad made to laugh at loud at the thought of anyone hiring him, Scott raised one hand while the other tossed onto the counter a small piece of paper he'd been holding onto for the last few days. The fine print read "janitorial position open, mutants and humans both welcome" and it triggered an interesting amount of reaction from Toad's facial features. He went from annoyed to offended to irritated to amused in a matter of seconds, so it was convenient for Scott that he wasn't drinking anything.
"Hah, hah, real funny."
"Hey, better than sitting in the freezing cold and hoping some nights that I come to pry your ass off the frozen ground before you're stuck in hibernation mode all winter, my friend."
iii.
The Raving Bitch called Scott up for a favor and, as Mort predicted when Scott left to go to it (all clad in that black leather Toad had only seen him take out for favors that revolved around another mutant cause and dealing with Jean's new boyfriend Logan), the Cyclops had come back three days later with far more bruising than Mort was comfortable with, as well as his leg sporting the kind of limp that spoke of a gunshot. To lighten the heavy feeling that swiftly set into the apartment—Scott lazying on the couch and surfing the channels that featured cooking and survival reality not something that boded well for anything unless it was nipped in the bud—Toad had wrapped up in his heaviest coat, complete with gloves Scott had bought him that accommodated his four webbed fingers and the scarf that reminded Mortimer of the Ravenclaw house style in all those Harry Potter books Scott still wasn't aware Toad had discovered under his mattress, and made Scott get dress to match. After managing that task, Toad had taken Scott out for coffee and those weird chocolate éclairs that they both loved so much; completely on Toad's own salary (compliments of that janitorial job he'd bagged once the manager of that suspicious government building—where nobody ever seemed to be, but still seemed to attract a fair amount of mess—realized that Toad really didn't mind blood and other body fluids and asked very few questions) and compliment.
They ended up wandering the park near their apartment before taking a seat on a bench that wasn't too bogged down in the snow still falling above them (the weathermen were all idiots; New York never lost snow on Valentine's, it just let the people believe it would).
When silence and talking about sports got tiring and started going around in a circle—Toad having finished his éclair and still nursing the piping hot Oreo and Cocoa mix drink—Scott finally broke and told Mortimer that the mission with Logan had not been why he was in a bad mood. The bad mood was the result of after the mission, when Scott asked Jean what she could possibly see in someone that had no respect for authority and acted like a complete ass; her answer simply being that she wanted to try a relationship with someone that wasn't like Scott.
Toad bit his lip, but surprised himself.
"There's nothing wrong with you. I wish she could see that, but… Listen, you've got to get over her. You broke up, after all."
"I know that, but we've been together since we hit puberty," Scott explained-slash-whined pitifully, (completely ignoring that he broke up with her, so this whole jealousy thing was his own damn fault) a few drops of his own pure black coffee splashing out and onto the white snow between his legs as his shoulders slumped, "Caring about what she says about me is kind of a part of my basic code now. She's all I know when it comes to girl stuff and all that shit."
"Mm, well, then, you may want to adapt a new sense of knowledge."
"Like how?"
Toad eyed the skyline as a jet travelled between a set of towering skyscrapers that shined with glass and reflected ever single falling snowflake, some of the little white bits of frozen condensation landing in his ebony dreadlocks.
"Hit on a guy?"
"…Bobby's right, you are kinda crazy."
"Naw, mate, I'm just saying—look, I've seen the way you occasionally take a second look at those mannequins at the mall when they're for men's underthings and all that. Not saying you're queer or whatever the proper Yank term is; but it's an option."
Scott resisted snorting at the other man, legs crossing and spine leaning back against the bench so that one arm snaked over the other side and he could probably grab at the snow just below his fingers.
"Since when did you become my relationship counselor?"
"'Bout the same time I caught you in the bathroom with that Sports Weekly magazine. You need serious help if you're doing yourself to that."
The laugh comes before the pop of a closed fist to Mort's shoulder, so the mild pain is taken in stride when the force sends Toad off of his side of the bench. He'd already set his drink between the two of them on the bench, so he didn't get anymore wet than some of the snow making its way into his jacket and past his scarf.