I don't own emotion, I rent.
Scott gets so tired of hearing the jokes about sticks and his ass. He's sick of hearing it hurled as an insult too, especially when the hurlers think that he can't hear them.
Everyone thinks they're being so creative and clever whenever they mutter something about him needing to pull that stick out, or that someone must have jammed it in a little further today.
It makes him ill.
The fact that they keep making these jokes, the fact that they believe them, tells Scott that they don't get him. That they don't know him.
Scott says nothing though. He remains cool and in control in the face of the bad jokes that they think he doesn't hear, and the grumbled complaints about him being an uptight jerk, a hardass, a kill-joy.
In the end though, they're on to something.
There's a line between Scott Summers and Cyclops that a lot of people just don't seem to see, a line that's drawn very clearly whenever the leathers go on. Once he's in uniform, he's not Scott anymore. He's Cyclops.
Scott is a classmate, a boyfriend, a guy with a penchant for cars and dry sarcasm.
Cyclops is not their friend. Cyclops is their field leader, their commander. Cyclops is a hardass. When the world's at stake though, should a leader be anything but?
Jean and Rogue see it. They get that line, they respect it. Remy's figured it out too. The way he almost viciously demarcates between Gambit and Remy is almost identical to the line Scott has drawn between himself and Cyclops.
Scott takes solace in the fact that at least those three understand – while Cyclops may be the head of a paramilitary team bent on stopping international (and sometimes even intergalactic) threats, Scott Summers is just a teenage boy who could use a friend once in a while.
