A Bottle Can't Hold You

AN: A very big thanks to Nightcrawler’s Shadow, my ever-faithful beta. Kurt’s accent is omitted purposefully: written accents tend to interfere heavily with a story’s comprehensibility, and I trust you all to know how it sounds.



Chapter 2: Katzenjammer



Kurt awoke to the sensation of fists pummeling entire body in a perversely regular rhythm, the majority of the blows trained on his head. His weak attempt at some sort of protest was thwarted by a swollen and impossibly dry tongue, a mutinous piece of flesh that threatened to choke him at a moment’s notice. After a brief moment of thrashing about to avoid his assailants, he realized that the pounding was his own heartbeat.



Wunderbar. Headache from Hell, tongue like Weißbrot. Hangover... again.



He opened his eyes and immediately regretted it, letting out a louder moan and trying to burrow headfirst into his pillow. Sunrise shot burning rays through a sloppily-drawn curtain, each photon seeming to cut a little farther into the space just above his eye sockets. Kurt lay facedown, hands wrapping the pillow around his head so that he could temporarily stave off at least one source of pain. He squeezed his eyes shut until the effort was rewarded with an even stronger pounding in his head, this time smashing against his eyeballs and making him see vaguely waffle-shaped patterns in yellow and black. Opening his eyes halfway was no better; the light scraping of his eyelashes brushing against his pillowcase sounded like palm branches being dragged along the world’s biggest aluminum trashcan.



Just getting out of bed was going to be terrible.



He willed himself to go back to sleep, to ignore the ungodly assault on his senses, to at least find some sort of momentary relief. No luck. He was going to have to face the day whether he wanted to or not; and he most certainly did not.



Three fingers patted blindly around the bed in search of the bottle, and three more set themselves to fumbling with the cap once it had been located. With eyes still closed, he rolled over to his side and flexed his spine, bringing his upper body off the bed at nearly a ninety-degree angle. Ah, the fringe benefits of mutation. In this new position, he took a deep swig from the bottle…



And barely restrained an agonized groan when the alcohol hit the two puncture wounds in his lower lip.



Oh, that’s right. One of the not-so-beneficial parts of being a sideshow freak.



Kurt forced himself to swallow despite every instinct that screamed at him to spit the offending liquid out, then slowly lowered himself back down onto his pillow. He lay in silence, trying not to move more than the amount it took to bring the vodka to his lips again from this position on his side. Ignoring the burn and sting, he continued to self-medicate for about a quarter of a bottle; in the mornings, before others had awoken, he measured time in fractions of bottles, having no other concept of its passing.



When he had regained a certain amount of stability, he allowed himself to open first one golden eye, then the other. His headache was mostly gone, thanks to the alcohol, and even the light was less of a bother than he had expected. The sun had now risen; Jean would be up, as would Scott. No one else would even be thinking about waking up for another half hour at least. Kurt’s early-morning ’porting wakeup calls had ended when…



No, not again!



Well, they had ended when he had found a need to crawl into a bottle.



Kurt placed the vodka and the cap on his nightstand, slowly moved into a crouch on the side of his bed, and began fiddling with his image inducer, switching the image back to his customary teenaged alter ego. In the three weeks since… since he had started this, he had become an expert at manipulating his watch. He had the settings for both personas memorized, and switching between them took less than a minute of tinkering. And if the Nightcrawler ever needed to hide marks on his blue-furred self, he could summon that image in about two. He idly wondered how long it would take before his appearance started deteriorating enough that he would need to use that last image.



Fumes from the vodka were rolling off of his breath. That wouldn’t do. Another inch or so came out of the bottle in one pull, the cap went back on, and Kurt padded off to the bathroom for the morning’s necessities.



He brushed his teeth three times with extra toothpaste, being sure to pay special attention to his tongue. His breath still smelled of alcohol, but the mint made it seem like nothing more than mouthwash. A hand delved into his pocket to check his stash of breath mints; nothing to worry about there.



Time to clock in for another day.



Kurt teleported the corner of the kitchen where he knew no one would be at this hour, startling Scott and Jean as always with his sulfurous bamf upon reentry. One would think that after a few years of living with that every day, they would have come to expect it. Then again, Kurt wasn’t entirely sure Kätzchen had ever quite gotten used to his eyes. She could never bring herself to meet them with her own.



“Morgen, fearless leaders,” he mumbled as he made a beeline for the pantry. Reaching inside, he pulled out what had become his breakfast for the past several weeks— a loaf of bread. White, wheat, potato; it didn’t particularly matter what kind it was to him. It was sustenance, and it was what his rebellious stomach would hold down.



“Morning, Kurt,” Scott replied, looking up from his newspaper. As a senior in high school, Scott had been a bit stiff and formal, to put it mildly; the second he graduated, he had apparently undergone an operation to shove the proverbial stick even farther up than it had been before. At the ripe old age of 19, he had been reading the paper religiously every single day for over a year. Rarely did he find anything interesting or useful; it was something he did as a badge of his adulthood. Kurt had once done a bit of math on a whim, and found that in a year, Scott devoted a full two weeks of his life to reading mindless drivel that did nothing to benefit anyone.



As a team leader, Cyclops had become nearly unbearable after he had turned eighteen. His overdeveloped sense of responsibility had merged with a heaping extra dose of moral certainty from being an “adult” in charge of “kids” who were often no more than a year his junior. Kurt had been glad of the times when Logan would knock Scott off of his pedestal with a simple observation here and there that highlighted just how inexperienced the younger man still was.



Then Logan had gone off to find answers or peace or whatever it was that he rode towards on that motorcycle of his. All Kurt knew was that the Wolverine’s absence stretched on for months. And all the while, Scott became more and more of a slave driver.



Currently, Cyclops had the X-Men running more sessions per day than Logan ever had, even as punishment. The sessions were not geared toward anything in particular; there was no lesson to learn, no challenge to help them further develop their powers. Scott merely pushed the difficulty higher and higher on the old simulations. It was pointless torture, and Kurt was pushed to the breaking point trying to keep up with Scott’s demands while covering over as many of his teammates’ mistakes as he could.



The students would have gone to the Professor to explain the situation, hoping that the voice of reason coming from the Institute’s highest authority figure would help. The Professor, however, troubled by increasingly-frequent calls from Muir Island regarding someone named Lucas, had notified the students that he would be leaving the Institute to visit Moira MacTaggart for at least a month, and that he was only to be contacted in case of extreme emergency. That had been three months ago, and Scott’s behavior had worsened almost daily.



He even refused to take any advice from Ms. Munroe and Mr. McCoy, both of whom he had begun addressing by first name, another self-bestowed privilege of his newly gained adulthood. The only credit Kurt could give Scott was that he hadn’t insisted that the others call him Mr. Summers… yet.



Kurt pulled himself back from his thoughts to find Jean looking at him quizzically. He made a quick check to see that his mental shields were still firmly in place; Jean had been caught head-hopping several times before, and Kurt didn’t particularly want her listening in on his thoughts about her now-fiancé.



“Was?” he asked after Jean’s gaze hadn’t wavered for nearly a minute.



“Are you… feeling all right, Kurt?”



“Ja, everything’s fine, why?”



Jean looked pointedly down, and Kurt then noticed that he’d idly plowed his way through three quarters of the loaf. He usually tried to stop at about half so that he could leave some for the others. He quickly twirled the plastic back around what was left of the bread, walked over to the pantry, and deposited it back in its place.



“My bad, Jean. Just not really thinking much this morning,” he said, hoping that that would be the end of it. In reality, he was thinking all too much, but he really didn’t want to discuss his issues with Miss Perfect.



“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about… something?” God, when the woman wanted to know something, she certainly didn’t take hints well.



“Yes, Jean, I’m sure. Thank you for asking,” he replied pointedly.



Kurt felt an odd sensation at the very front of his head, almost an itch. Jean was trying to access his prefrontal cortex, or more specifically, read his thoughts.



“Don’t do that, bitte,” he said, trying desperately to be civil with her despite his waning patience.



Jean looked startled, and a second later, the itching subsided.



Kurt grumbled inwardly and wandered over to the fridge, opening it to find nothing to drink. He didn’t feel like adding more acid to his stomach with orange juice, and Evan had earmarked both gallons of milk yesterday by swigging out of them. Not that Kurt minded the germs, but he didn’t want to encroach on Evan’s favorite source of much-needed calcium. He closed the fridge, crossed the kitchen, and pulled a glass from the cupboard. As he was filling it from the tap, the itch returned, intensifying to a nagging ache. After he asked her not to, she was not only trying to read his mind, but trying to break through his shields!



Nightcrawler finished filling his glass, gently set it down on the counter, and walked straight over to the stool where Jean was sitting. Bringing his face scant inches from hers, he began to speak in a very soft, very dangerous tone.



“So you really want to see what’s in here? That’s perfectly fine. Let’s have a little peek, shall we?”



Grabbing her head in his hands, Kurt summoned up a choice selection from his childhood memories, lowered his mental shields, and projected as loudly as he possibly could.



Blows rained down on him from all sides, pounding him into the cobblestones, fists and feet striking every exposed inch of him. He curled up in a ball, hiding his bloodied face, screaming into hands with broken fingers. Another snap came from one of the stronger kicks, and his scream turned to a whimper. He could barely breathe. Mutti, where was Mutti? Vati? Anyone? He only wanted to look at the toyshop window…



His tail was tucked between his legs like a dog’s, keeping it more or less out of harm’s way. He stroked his stomach with it, trying to mimic how Mutti made him feel better, but it wasn’t working. Everything hurt too much, and these people wouldn’t stop hitting him.



Someone grabbed his tail.



He tried to keep it hugged close to his body, but the hand was much too strong for an eight-year-old to fight. The fist ran down the tail, pulling the fur from the base to just before the tip. His tail was pinned to the ground, and someone shouted.



CRUNCH.



His tail.



Oh Gott im Himmel it hurt so bad, so bad! Had to get away, had to run away from the bad people and find Mutti and Vati and crawl in their bed and be safe, safe…



Something stabbed into his back, and he collapsed. This was his chance. He had to play dead. That was the only way to live. He didn’t dare move. A few more kicks came, and people started walking away. For every handful of people who he heard walking off, at least one kicked him again.



Two people stayed. They grabbed his feet and dragged him, face scraping along stone, to an alley, where they dropped him. The knife was pulled from his back, but instead of footsteps walking away, he heard the men fumbling with belts, heard trousers hit the ground…



A fist connected with Kurt’s nose, bringing him back into the present and sending him sprawling onto the ground. Scott stood above him, face contorted in impotent rage as Jean sat gasping and whimpering with her head on the cool granite of the counter. The snap of cartilage Kurt had felt just then was nothing compared to the hell he had been through; he almost laughed at the thought that Scott would believe it had hurt him. He lay on the ground for a moment to collect his thoughts, then pushed his nose back into place and got up to grab some ice and a rag. When he had found what he was looking for, he reached out and brought Jean’s head up to meet his eyes, his nose still running with a steady stream of blood.



“The next time you try to do that without my permission, you will know how it feels to be burned at the stake. I promise you this.”



With a final smirk at Scott, Nightcrawler disappeared with a sulfurous bamf, leaving the two X-Men in a coughing fit.



Glossary:

Katzenjammer: hangover.

Weißbrot: white bread.

Morgen: morning.

Was: what.

Ja: yes.

Bitte: please.

Mutti: Mommy.

Vati: Daddy.