Perv, Pixie, Protector
Part 4: Pie & Pervs
Westchester, Past
The McDonald's employee pointed to the Ford Escort that had been running in the parking lot for the past two hours with the radio turned up to Scott. "Occasionally, he'll come the drive thru for an apple pie. We tell him he can get two for just a penny more, but he's convinced that it will be the last one he'll get...anyway. He's scaring the kids in the playground."
Scott nodded and made his way over to Bobby's car. He remembered the last time this had happened - back when it was just the five of them and Bobby had borrowed (one of) Warren's car(s). Warren was less upset that (one of) his car(s) had been taken than he was that Bobby had eaten White Castle in them.
Luckily, the White Castle had closed a few years ago.
He knocked on the passenger side window. "Bobby? It's Scott."
Slowly, the window began to roll down. "Hi, Scott."
Scott took a quick count of discarded apple pie containers. "Would you like to talk?"
Bobby unlocked the passenger side door and turned down the radio.
Scott pushed aside apple pie debris from the seat and sat down. "Who is she this time?"
"Does it matter? All I know is that I'm driving back to the mansion, I stop for an ill-advised drive thru pastry, and then I get stuck with this thought that I am thoroughly unlovable. So why not get all the ill-advised drive thru pastry in hopes that I'll die from apple poisoning." Bobby shook his head.
"You're not unlovable, Bobby. You grew up in the suburbs with both of your parents and-"
"Scott, don't do that. Don't pull the orphan card. Your dad's a space pirate! Your brother is..." Bobby's mouth tightened at the thought of Alex Summers. "Alive. You both have a relationship. You both are in a relationship. Stable ones -"
Scott frowned, thinking about Lorna.
"You were meant for this life, Scott. You came to Xavier's and it was like you were meant to be here. Things fell into place for you - have purpose. And I?" Bobby held up another apple pie box. "I have bad pie and a degree in accounting."
Scott took the box away from him, noticed the pie inside and asked, "Can I?"
Bobby shrugged.
Scott quickly ate the pie quietly, noticing Bobby staring up at him intently. "Yes?"
"Do you have any advice?"
"On women?"
"Yeah. On women."
"Nope."
"Nope?"
"None."
"Then how do you do it?"
"I'm over six foot tall, have great abs, and say very little. Worked for me when I was eighteen and never altered the formula. Also, I'm good with my hands."
Bobby, 5'8", nice abs (currently being destroyed by ill-advised pie), and spoke too much nodded. "I'm hopeless. You're getting married again in a month...wait, is that why you're here?"
"I'm here because you are my friend and as a rule, I care more about you than the opinions of Jean's mother and sister on our centerpieces."
"Really?"
"They are all on speaker phone, talking about pale blue roses versus pale lavender roses. They all look the same to me." Scott ate the rest of the pie. "I just want her to be happy."
"Can I ask something stupid?"
"Shoot."
"Do you still think about Maddy?"
Scott took a deep breath. "I wish I didn't. It's hard. Wasn't always. At first, she was like an easy answer to this very difficult problem I had. Getting married to her was the easy part...getting married is always the easy part, discussion of rose colors aside. Realizing why you did the things you did and knowing they aren't the solutions you thought is probably one of the hardest situations I've ever been in."
"You mean when she became the Goblin Queen?"
"That was actually one of the easier aspects to deal with. I know how to fight. I knew what was right in the situation. But when Jean came back and I was still married to Maddy." Scott looked for a place to put the apple pie wrapper, found none, and set it on the dash. "The problem was never that I didn't love Jean. It was that she wasn't there. I did what I thought was right to move on and then, when everything was fine, she comes back in. Now, I have to confront every time I told Maddy that the reason I love her isn't that she looks like Jean and figure out if I was lying."
"Because Jean's your true love? Your soul mate?"
Scott looked down. "I don't believe in that sort of thing."
Bobby kept silent. The words Scott and Jean were said by everybody as if they were one word.
"When the Dark Phoenix was creeping up, we would have these talks. And I never felt safer. I never stopped blaming myself for her death until we found out that she was never dead at all. Sometimes, Bobby, I resent her for being in a coma and getting to wake up and return to life while the rest of us had to keep going and make room for her again."
Bobby remembered the X-Factor days. The news of Jean being alive was instantly exciting to him, and to Hank and Warren. He had always assumed that Scott was just being Scott in his quietness.
Scott shook his head. "You're a suburban kid. You're as far away from me as Warren is to all of us. Ever since the airplane crash, I've been constantly waiting for the next bad thing to happen. And when bad things happen to me, they involve weird shit. Your bad things...are solved with ill-advised pies. These things are horrible, Bobby."
"If you don't believe in soul mates, if you feel like something is going to happen, why even do it again?"
"It's what will make her happy."
"What about what would make you happy? I heard Betsy propositioned you in a towel. Knowing my luck, the closest I'll ever get to that is Jubilee."
Scott gave a small smile. "I bet you, four years, she will."
"Betsy will?"
"Jubilee."
"Ew." Bobby shook his head. "She's thirteen, Scott."
"Kitty and Piotr had a similar age gap."
"I'm not going to date Jubilee."
"It's not dating that I'm worried about, Bobby. Things happen. Stupid things. They especially seem to happen to you."
Bobby opened his mouth to protest when Scott gestured to the trash around his feet, all apple pie boxes.
"I promise I won't do anything stupid, Scott."
"You're a man, Bobby. All we can do is something stupid." Scott pointed to the drive thru. "Should we get more pie?"
"Obviously."