Chapter 7: Logan's Tip
"Yo, Hank!"
Bobby raised an eyebrow as he poked his head into the empty lab. "He's not here. He must have stepped out. Come on, if we hurry maybe we can get our chores done before he comes back and he thinks of something else he can do to us." Bobby stepped in, followed by Jubilee and Mickie.
With the lights off, none of the three saw the intricate tangle of rope woven between Hank's strategically placed chair, lab table, mobile shelving unit, and computer station. They had no idea it was even there until Bobby tried to take a step over to the sink, and tripped over a strand of the rope.
Everything happened at once.
Something heavy came flying at him from off to the side; he had just enough time to raise one hand, deflecting it from hitting his head. It didn't, however, keep him from overbalancing. He tried to take a step back, tripped over another length of rope, fell backward, and landed in a trough of water with a wet splash that caused most of the water to spill from it. Bobby had, however, already started morphing into his ice form in surprise, and suddenly found himself sitting in a block of ice.
Jubilee had taken a step toward the sink, and tripped over another strand. From the ceiling came a shower of multi-colored paint, which came down in a river over her head as she screamed in shock and outrage, and engulfed her in a coating of yellow, blue, green, and red paint.
Mickie had started to go over to the cage in the corner, and stepped on something that moved under her foot. She barely had time to realize it was something set up on a see-saw on the floor before something wet and cold landed on her face, blocking out her view, and she tasted banana cream in her mouth. She screamed in shock as well, clawing at her face, trying to clear the thick, creamy stuff from her nose and mouth and eyes, so she could breathe and see.
Hank stepped out from the corner of the lab, switched on the light, and stood there petting Herbie as he smiled smugly at the three teenagers. "Ah, the tables have turned," he said, chuckling. Bobby howled in anger, reaching for the edge of the table to pull himself up, but the ice block refused to come free of the trough and he simply managed to bring the table over on top of him. Hank grinned as Bobby went back down under the falling table. "Literally, it appears." He walked calmly across the lab, lifted the table, and said to Bobby calmly, "Are you now going to apologize, my friend, for the prank you pulled yesterday? Or shall I refill the trough with additional water?"
"All right, all right!" Bobby knew when he was beaten. "All right, I give up! Yes, I'm sorry!"
"So'm I." Jubilee said, rather indistinctly because of the paint covering her face and mouth.
"Me three!" Mickie growled from under her cream-pie mask. Hank walked over to his lab chair, bent, and untied the rope from the leg of the chair. "Then I shall return to my work, and you, my young friends, have a great deal of cleaning up to do." He turned to his computer, ignoring the chorus of groans from behind him as the three kids started to clean themselves and the mess up.
* * *
"So what did Logan tell ya yesterday?" Jubilee asked Bobby as they were sitting at the kitchen table eating lunch later. They had spent the entire morning cleaning up Hank's lab after his prank on them, and all three were tired.
Bobby raised an eyebrow. "Logan didn't tell me anything."
Jubilee howled in mock frustration and swatted him with her open hand. "Bobby! Come on, we're dyin' to know! Like what did he tell you, already!?"
Bobby laughed as he put down his egg salad sandwich. "He told me Jean was doing her and Scott's laundry today, and that she'd left their basket of stuff down in the laundry room last night, and that she was going shopping this morning. She won't be back until late this afternoon, knowing her and Ororo. So I swiped it. There's mending in there…socks and stuff that have holes in it."
"What were you planning to do with it?" Jubilee asked, but Mickie already had an idea.
"You want me to…"
"Yeah," Bobby grinned. "I figured, since you worked in a dress shop, you might be able to…tweak…some of the mending a little…They'd never think you did it, especially since Jean's mending skills are bad enough to make a cat laugh."
Mickie shifted her face into cat form and laughed, before changing back. "I tried doing that to my parents once. I opened the toe seam of the socks and sewed up the sock tubes. Oh, Dad had a fit when he put his socks on upside down!"
"Can you do anything else?"
"What else is inside the basket?" Mickie brushed the crumbs off her lap and took her plate to the sink. "Come on, let's go look." They hurried up the stairs to Bobby's room.
He pulled the laundry basket out from under his bed, and Mickie and Jubilee fell to their knees, rummaging in the basket. "Oh, look, a pair of Scott's pants! Hey, the pocket's like, all ripped out. Can you put it back in?"
Mickie took the garment from Jubilee, examining it. "Yeah, I could. I could sew the pocket shut…or you know what, I could sew a flap into the bottom of the pocket so it feels like the pocket's all right, but it'll have a hole in it and anything he puts in the pocket will fall out while he's walking…"
Jubilee giggled. "Oh, yeah, that would be precious. But can you make it look like Jean's doing?"
"If I knew what her sewing looked like, yes."
Bobby rummaged under the bed again, tossing out socks, shirts, shoes, underclothing, t-shirts and old jeans before finally coming up with a badly-mended button-up shirt. "Jean tried to fix this for me a while back. See what you think."
Mickie inspected the shirt. The collar had torn free of the shirt, and Jean had tried to sew it back on using clumsy, awkward stitches. She had also gotten the collar twisted around, so the underside was facing upward. "Seamstress she is not," Mickie grinned. "Look at this. Yes, I can make it look like she did the mending; it won't be hard." She struggled to keep her voice innocent as she said, "I can fix this dress shirt, if you like…"
"Oh, really? If you can, that'd be great!" Bobby was looking into the basket, looking at the items in it, and didn't see the gleam in Mickie's eye, or the sly grin she gave Jubilee. Jubilee stifled her own laughter as best as she could, and grabbed the basket. "We'll just take this off to Mickie's room," she told Bobby cheerfully. "We'll put the basket back when we're done with it."
"Okay." Bobby promptly lost interest, starting instead to pick over the stuff he'd tossed out from under his bed. "Oh, geez, this is where my sock went…I've been looking for this one all week…"
Jubilee shut the door to his room and giggled as she hefted the basket. "Come on, Mickie, let's see what we can do with this stuff."
Once in Mickie's room they upended the basket on her bed. Socks spilled out, pants and shirts and underclothing spread themselves out all over the bed, including (to Mickie's secret embarrassment and Jubilee's utter delight) a sheer negligee that belonged to Jean. Jubilee held it up, giggling. "I wonder what Scott thinks when he sees her walking around in this?"
Mickie raised an eyebrow and looked at Jubilee. "Probably the same thing Bobby thinks when he sees you walking around in your pajamas. Remember the one you wore last night, when we all couldn't sleep and we came down and pitched into that gallon tub of ice cream? You dropped a glob of ice cream on your chest, and I swear Bobby was thinking seriously about leaning over and licking it off."
"Really?" Jubilee frowned. "I totally didn't catch that. Oh, wow." She giggled. "Maybe I'll tease him a little…"
"You're terrible." Mickie giggled as she got out needle and thread. "Come on. Let's see what we can do with this stuff."
She fell silent, working steadily through the pile. She didn't alter all of the clothing; a few socks here and there, 'adjusted' the pockets so that their contents would fall through the pant leg and to the floor while the wearer was walking, and then, in a mischievous turn of mind, she carefully altered an apparently-new pair of Jean's jeans to make it appear that Jean had bought them a size too small. It was easy; a bit of elastic, and the waistband shrank two inches.
She was putting all of the laundry back into the basket when there was a sound of the front door slamming. Jubilee stuck her head out of Mickie's door, listened for a moment, and then closed the door swiftly. "They're back! Jean and 'Ro are back!"
Mickie stood, holding the basket. "Which room are they going to?"
Jubilee listened to the sounds of footsteps. "Sounds like they're going to 'Ro's."
"Okay." Mickie went to the door, listened for a second, then said, "I'll take the basket back downstairs. You keep an eye out for them. If Jean looks like she's coming down, distract her!"
"Okay," Jubilee said, giving Mickie a thumbs-up signal. "Can do."
Mickie hurried down to the basement, dropped the basket of clothing off in the laundry room, making sure the basket was aligned with the other baskets of mending that had to be done. Ororo's mending basket had a few articles of Hank's clothes and a pair of Xavier's pants in it; Mickie decided, with a snicker, that everyone knew Jean's mending was bad, and therefore got Ororo to do most of it. Scott was just unfortunate enough to be married to Jean, and so didn't have an excuse to ask someone else to fix his clothes. Poor man.
She got back to her room with no difficulty, and Jubilee heaved a sigh of relief when she walked in. "They haven't left Ororo's room yet." She said. "They must have gotten clothes or something, cause, like, they're still up there." She indicated the closed door halfway down the hall that opened into the short flight of stairs to Ororo's attic room.
Mickie nodded. "She'll be going down to the laundry room soon. Maybe you'd better scoot. If she discovers what we did to their stuff, she'll explode."
"I'm gone," Jubilee grinned, and scooted out the door.
Mickie arranged herself innocently on the bed, picking up Bobby's shirt and starting to pick out the clumsy stitches that held the twisted collar to the shirt. Shaking her head at the ineptness of the mending, she set about removing the collar completely and turned the entire collar upside down before beginning to sew it back on. Bobby wouldn't figure it out until someone saw the seam at the back of the neck and told him. Guys were oblivious like that.
She was in the middle of the collar when her room door opened, and Jean poked her head in. Under her arm she held the basket Mickie had just sneaked back down to the laundry room; Mickie had to fight extremely hard not to give in to the giggles that simmered in the back of her throat.
Jean smiled wearily when she saw the shirt Mickie was sewing. "You must be better than I am with needle and thread," she said wryly, coming in and sitting down on Mickie's bed. "Do you mind if I sit with you while I do my mending? It's nice having someone to talk to."
Mickie tried to find an excuse to say no, but couldn't come up with one. Finally she nodded weakly, and Jean came in, set the basket down on the floor, and took the first article of clothing out.
Bobby peered around the edge of his room's doorframe, to see Jubilee peeking around hers. 'What's going on?" he whispered.
Jubilee whispered back, "Jean's in there doing the mending with Mickie! They're talking in there…I don't know how she's keeping a straight face!"
Bobby clamped a hand over his mouth, grabbed Jubilee's wrist, and dragged her into his room. Once inside, he fell backward on his bed, chortling heartily, as Jubilee herself rolled on the floor laughing hysterically. They both sat there, listening to the vague sound of voices, until Jean finally carried her basket to the room she shared with Scott, dropped it off, and went downstairs to help fix dinner.
It took a lot of effort for the three teens to keep straight faces when they finally went down to dinner. Scott and Jean ate slowly, unaware of the three pranksters' doings of the day. Finally they finished what was on their plates, and Scott stood up. "Come on, Jean," he said gently. "Time to get ready."
"Ready? Where are you going?" Jubilee perked up.
"Out," Scott said shortly. Turning to Charles, he said, "We'll be out all night, so don't worry about leaving the security system offline for our return, okay? Thanks, Charles." He ushered Jean out of the dining room.
They were all done with their meal, and Ororo and Rogue were gathering the plates to take to the kitchen before bringing out the dessert when Scott and Jean came back down. Jubilee choked on the sip of juice she'd just taken; Mickie looked very hard at her plate, feeling like her insides were going to turn to jelly. Bobby had a very slight tinge of frost on his cheek, like he was trying to hide a blush.
Scott was wearing the pants Mickie had 'altered' that day. So was Jean.
"I can't understand it," Jean said worriedly as she tugged at the waistband of her jeans. "I swear I just bought these two days ago. And they're already tight. Am I getting fat?" she asked Scott worriedly.
Scott raised an eyebrow. "You look fine, sweetheart," he said, and Mickie made a gagging face to Jubes and Bobby behind the couple's back. Jubilee almost choked again.
They headed for the back door, and Scott picked his car keys off the hook he hung them on. He stuffed them casually into his pocket, then reached for Jean's jacket. As he helped her shrug it on, the hole in the bottom of the pocket opened and his keys slid down the side of his leg, falling in a heap by his shoe. And something else.
Logan was just coming in the back door from smoking outside, and snickered, picking up Scott's keys and the flat little square packet. He held it up, pretending to look at it, though it was really so that everyone in the room could see the label. It said 'Trojan' on the outside of the plastic, and everyone knew what was inside; a condom. "Heh," He snickered. "Guess I know what's on yer mind, eh, Cyke? Matter of fact, guess we all know what's on both yer minds." He tossed the packet back at Scott. "Have fun. Don't wear him out, Red." And he turned and made his way back to the dining room table.
Scott's face was almost as red as his glasses. Jean's face was flaming. Without another word they hurried out, slamming the door behind them, and through the partially open window they heard Scott tell Jean, "See if I ever let you fix a hole in my pants again!"
The entire dining room cracked up. Mickie didn't have to hide her laughter anymore; she put her forehead down on the kitchen table and laughed until tears came to her eyes. Even Xavier was guffawing. Bobby and Jubilee gave her a 'high five' sign before they all joined in the general merriment.
Logan lingered in the dining room until the three kids got up, then followed them out into the hall and upstairs. "Ya did that, didn't ya, Bobby?"
Bobby leaned back against the banister and held his sides as he went into another fit of laughter. "Mickie did, actually," he admitted. "She used to work in a dressmaker's shop. She sewed the pocket so it would look like it didn't have a hole in it, but as soon as something was put into it the hole would open and dump the contents out. We didn't think it would work this well, though."
Jubilee giggled. "That was, like, so funny, wasn't it, Wolvie," she squealed. "Oooh, I'm gonna be laughing over that vision of Scott's face for a reeeallly long time." And she went off into another fit of giggles.
"Yer terrible, kid," he said, grabbing Jubilee in a headlock and rumpling her hair affectionately. "Git goin' to bed, will you."
"Yes sir," she said cheekily, pecking him on the cheek, ignoring his disgruntled look, and hurried off up the stairs. He faced Bobby and Mickie.
"Do yer best ta fergit what happened," he said. "Jeanie's a telepath; if she gits 'round ta realizin' it ain't her fault, yer surface thoughts're gonna give it away soon's she tries ta probe ya."
Bobby grinned. "We'll try, but it's gonna be all anyone thinks about for the next few days."
Logan chuckled. "Yeah. They'll never be able ta live it down."