Chapter Two

      "This is so degrading!" Jubilee cried. "I mean how many times have I helped the X-Men save the world now? Like umpteen million? And I still have to do chores?" She was slowly mopping the bathroom floor between complaints as Bobby kept busy scrubbing the scum under the toilet seats.

      "You're preaching to the choir, Lee," Bobby told her. Actually, it wasn't preaching it was more like whining obnoxiously, but Bobby decided to keep that to himself. The less time he spent bickering with Lee, the faster he could spend some much needed time at the pool.

      Finished with the toilets and scrubbing the sides of the shower stalls, Bobby turned on the showerhead to rinse them off, the sound bringing back faint memories of his dream the previous night. Bobby had almost forgotten about it, which was his intention he supposed, after his incident in the Danger Room. It was still as baffling hours later as it had been that morning.

      "Hey Drake! The whales called they want their water back!" Lee shouted at him, waking him up from his daze. Bobby realized that he had been standing there for almost five minutes thinking about his dream, letting the shower continue to run all the while. "Oh sorry," Bobby said, turning to see Lee peering out the door into the hallway of the men's dormitory.

      "I think we're done Jubilee," he said, heading towards the door. She pressed her hand to his chest, stopping him in his tracks.

      "I'm watching this," she whispered to him.

      Curious, Bobby stuck his head out the door, to see Remy and Rogue standing in the hallway outside of Remy's room. Rogue appeared to be crying, a dozen roses were crushed on the floor by Remy's feet. "What's going on?" he asked the young teenage busy body.

      "I'm not sure," Jubilee told him. "Gambit tried to give Rogue the flowers and then she threw them at him and started crying. Now shut up, I'm trying to hear this."

      Bobby felt guilty that he was strangely interested in Rogue and Remy's little affair. It was like a soap opera, with some new twist each week, and all of the X-Men, from Cyclops to Jubilee, watched with interest. Now, Bobby could hear Rogue and Remy's voices.

      "C'mon, cher," Remy pleaded. "Give me a chance."

      Rogue's words came out from under a layer of sobs. "You don't understand Remy. If you so much as stroke me with a fingertip you'll be unconscious for hours. How are you going to have the kind of relationship you want when you can't even touch me?"

      There was a pause before Remy spoke up again. "But Rogue, I already know all that. I don't need to touch you to love you."

      "Sorry, Remy. I doubt that," she said. "I know your type. You're a charmer and a flirt. You don't go any longer than two days without getting laid."

      Remy didn't say anything.

      "Go ahead!" Rogue told him, "Tell me I'm wrong."

      There was a tense silence between them. Bobby and Jubilee held their breath in suspense. This week's episode was especially good, what would happen next?

      They watched as Remy tried to console Rogue, attempting to wrap his arm around her, but she pushed him away with a single gloved hand and pointed to the bare skin of her shoulders. "See, Remy," she said. "You've already forgotten."

      With that she flew down the hall, passing her two eavesdroppers as she did so. With the sound of his door slamming, Remy returned to his room dejected.

      Jubilee turned to Bobby. "Wow! You just gotta love those two!"

      "It's not funny Jubilee," Bobby reprimanded her. "Did you see how much he hurt Rogue? Gambit's such a jerk teasing her like that!"

      Jubilee looked at him surprised. "Geez, Drake. Don't get so hot and bothered about it!"

      Blushing, Bobby suddenly felt very embarrassed by his outburst.

      Suddenly, a knowing look came over Jubilee. "If I didn't know any better," she said with smile, "I might think that you had a little crush on our Southern Belle?"

      Bobby thought about it for a moment. The idea seemed ridiculous, having never really known Rogue that well. They had been members of the X-Men at different times in their lives, but she was beautiful, and vivacious, and sexy. At least that's what everyone was always saying. Maybe he was jealous of what Gambit had with her. All he knew was, when he looked at them together he felt angry and confused.

      Bobby put the thought out of his mind. "Whatever, Lee. I just don't like Gambit, that's all. He's an asshole. I've always thought so."

      "Sure," Jubilee said, with a tone that suggested, a little less than subtly, that she thought his response was forced.

      Bobby looked at his watch. "Shit!" he exclaimed. "I was supposed to start monitoring Emma Frost fifteen minutes ago! I completely forgot." Bobby darted out the bathroom towards the service elevator.

      "I'm not going to let this go Drake!" Jubilee shouted as he left.

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      Bobby sat in the medical bay for the second time in one day, watching the medical monitors this time, rather than finding himself attached them. It was Bobby's job every Wednesday to spend a few hours with Emma Frost, the mansion's resident comatose mutant, observing her heart and brain wave activity for any unusual spikes.

      But seeing as how Miss Frost had been a pretty reliable vegetable for the past five months, Bobby spent most of his time on duty reading the magazines scattered around the med-bay. Today's choices included Hank's Scientific American, Xavier's News and World Report and Rogue's Redbook, none of which really appealed to Bobby. So he decided instead to take a nap, an easy task in the med-bay.

      Within seconds, Bobby was dozing off to the soft electrical hum of the equipment but just as he was slipping into a light snore, Bobby woke from his sleep, startled, and certain that someone had whispered his name.

      He looked around the med-bay, but couldn't see that anyone had entered. Bobby shrugged, closing his eyes again, deciding he must have been dreaming.

      Then the voice moaned again, "Bobby Drake," still a whisper this time, not louder but more intense and seemingly right into his skull. Bobby opened his eyes, still finding himself alone, but certain now of what he heard.

      Glancing over at Emma Frost, he was struck by a wild notion. Could she have tried to communicate with him despite her coma? It wasn't impossible, Frost was a powerful telepath after all, not as powerful as Charles Xavier but she could definitely give Jean Grey a run for her money.

      Bobby shrugged off the idea. If Emma Frost was anything more than comatose it would have registered on the monitors, but reviewing her print outs, he could see her brain waves remained flatlined. Besides, why would the former White Queen of the Hellfire Club try to communicate with him? Why not a big shot, like Xavier?

      Bobby couldn't quite understand why Charles insisted on aiding her, one of the X-Men's deadliest adversaries, at the mansion. The stories he had heard painted Emma Frost as a nymphomaniac and a bitch. A single glance at her standard attire, a white leather corset, confirmed the first charge while the second seemed like an understatement. Among other highlights of her criminal career, Frost had tried to kill the X-Men, kidnap Kitty Pryde and take control of Storm's body.

But old cueball always did have a habit of harboring criminals, Rogue and Wolverine being good examples. Supposedly, Chuck saw some good in Miss Frost that the rest of them hadn't, and Bobby had to admit her story was rather sad. She had been left in a coma after an attack by an evil mutant known as Fitzroy. The madman had killed all of her young students, the Hellions, and left her for dead. If Jean Grey hadn't rescued Emma, she'd be dead too.

      But Bobby had enough concerns without Emma Frost or Remy and Rogue's sordid love affair. The chief of those concerns went by the name Opal Tanaka, Bobby's girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend, depending on who tells the story.

      Bobby refused to believe that it was truly over between Opal and he; not after two years of dating and growing close. She had even accepted the fact that he was a mutant, and a superhero for that matter. Or at least he thought she had accepted it.

      "There are those of us who prefer to live in the real world--" she had said only days ago, "a world I guess I thought could have pulled you into when we first started dating. Believe it or not, 'Iceman;' many people are more than happy with their normal, ordinary, boring everyday lives!"*

      Bobby had to admit, the words hit close to home. Opal always did have a way of pushing his buttons, especially when she was angry. At least she hadn't brought up the fact that longest relationship of his life had just ended like all the others, with a dejected and bitter girl running off disappointed.

      Bobby sighed, wondering if he'd ever meet a nice girl, without any baggage, and settle down. But how he could ask someone to love him when he was running off fighting Magneto or Apocalypse every weekend? Being an X-Man it seemed was the ultimate baggage. Why couldn't there be an Icewoman out there? Surely, she would understand.

      Bobby looked at his watch, seeing his time with Miss Frost, quite thankfully, had ended. "Later toots," he said, blowing the comatose woman a kiss, "it's been great but you're starting to give me the creeps."

* Opal's dialogue comes from UNCANNY X-MEN #305 by Scott Lobdell

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      Bouncing up the stairway to the men's dormitory, Hank McCoy felt the stairs bend beneath his three hundred pounds of blue fur and muscle. With two mighty leaps, the X-Man codenamed Beast reached his destination: the room of Bobby Drake, his best friend and team member.

      "Hey Bobby! You in there?" Hank roared, pounding the door with his oversized fist. He had searched the entire mansion looking for Bobby, but he had found all of the boy's usual haunts, from the pool to the billiard room, abandoned.

      "What?" Bobby moaned from inside the door.

      "It's me!" Hank cried, "You're old buddy Henry."

      "I know. Wadda ya want?"

      Hank scratched his head. Bobby was supposed to be the one X-Man who wasn't moody. "Are you going to let me in?"

      "I don't want company."

      "What's up Bobby?" Hank asked, concerned. "You've been locked up in your room all day. Is something wrong?"

      Bobby let out an unconvincing, "no."

      "Is it about Opal?" Hank asked. There was a brief moment of silence before he heard the door unlock from the inside, Bobby finally letting him enter.

      "You heard, huh?" Bobby asked him as Hank entered, taking a seat on Bobby's bed. "Who told you? Was it Jubilee?"

      "I heard it from Rogue after Danger Room sessions yesterday. She said Opal gave you quite the verbal assault in front of a crowd of her neighbors. Tough break, Bob."

      Bobby was sighing listlessly, kicking the carpet with his toes. "Why do all my relationships end like this, Hank? I mean, what do I do wrong?"

      "It's not your fault," Hank said, "Opal's just not suited for dating an X-Man, that's all."

      "But you date a human. Trish is just a normal woman and she doesn't have any problem with you being an X-Man."

      "Trish is a journalist," Hank said, trying to think an excuse to cheer up his friend. "She likes adventure."

      "So you're saying I should date someone in the news media?" he asked. "Can you get me Katie Couric's number?"

      "I'm not saying that my friend," Hank said smiling, "but I will suggest that you come with Sean and me to Harry's Hideaway tonight. Have a few drinks and take a load off. It'll do you good."

      Bobby shook his head. "I don't think so, Hank. I'm just not feeling up to it."

      Hank sighed, disappointed. After twelve hours of repairing the Blackbird Jet with Sean Cassidy, he was looking forward to a Boys Night Out now more than ever but it seemed all his pals were too busy or just plain anti-social to join him. Scott had a date with Jean, Warren referred to Harry's as a "dive" and Logan's plans for the evening involved taking a six-pack into the woods and getting drunk alone. Now, it seemed Bobby was going to follow the trend and wimp out on him

      "Alright," Hank conceded, heading for the door. "But next time the Professor asks me who programmed the Danger Room to simulate Natasha Kinski; I just might remember the name of a certain ice-spewing mutant horn dog."

      Hank watched Bobby turn red. Whether it was anger or embarrassment he didn't care, so long as his threat worked. "Alright," the younger man said, "I'll come. Just let me get my jacket."

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