Nil Desperandum

3

Dinner was, as usual, freaking incredible. When I first moved to the Mansion, I’d expected cafeteria style food. Heck, I’d gone to one of the most prestigious middle schools in Beverly Hills, and we were lucky to get mac and cheese. How I was mistaken. The Prof was a wealthy man from a very old, very good family, and he’d managed, through uncannily good investments, to bag an eight-figure annuity. Word on the street is that he was some kind of market mastermind and could predict the ups and downs to a T, but honestly, I think the dosh had a little more to do with the semi-annual visits from a solemn, one-eyed man wearing a perfectly tailored suit and tie as though he’d much rather it were a set of fatigues. His name was never mentioned, but I knew from the first time I saw him that he was important, cause Ororo let him smoke cigars in the house.

Anyhow, I digress. The food. Right. Well, because of the pots of money spilling out of his pockets, the Prof was apparently able to hire a wonderfully talented staff, the kitchen detail of which catered for us on an in-house basis, and when we slummed it and had mac and cheese, you can bet that there were at least three perfectly balanced and aged cheeses involved, and that the macaroni was probably hand made the day before. Yep. That kind of good.

I usually do my best to sit relatively alone at meal times, because even after all this time, I still get the willies if someone sits close enough to steal a forkful of my grub. I almost speared Kitty with a butter knife once, and I tell you, she would’ve been a sliced little bagel if she hadn’t phased, and fast. For some reason, even the semblance of solitude at Xavier’s is a little difficult, mostly owing to the few hundred students crammed into the dining room at any given meal time. Even then, we eat in two shifts.

I generally am ‘lucky’ enough to secure a table with the allegedly popular crowd. Um. That means the loudmouthed flirts who somehow manage to get looked up to. This includes Remy (obviously. Too obnoxious to let himself be left out of this category), Bobby (not so obviously), Rogue (by default of being his girlfriend, and also conspicuously absent that evening), Warren (blond and gorgeous), Kitty (best grades in school, whose main squeeze Piotr also wasn’t around), and Kurt (who’s as much of a flirt as Remy, only you blush when he kisses your hand, instead of running off to get an STD test). I like them. They’re good people. Good kids. Well, Kitty, Bobby, and Warren are kids. They’ve all had relatively normal lives, and even if their parents are a little weirded out about them being mutants, at least one of their parental party is alive. As for Remy, Kurt, and I, we’re…different. Your freak’s freaks.

We may strut around like we own the place, crack jokes and gum loudly, flaunt our powers, and dress flamboyantly, but really, if you go down deep enough, we’re only performing. The world’s our stage, and don’t we know it. It’s what we’re good at. And if you pick away long enough, you’ll find that we’re afraid of being alone. Well, not alone. We’re used to that. It’s more like…we’re sure that at some point, the curtains will drop, and we’ll have to take a bow and wipe off the makeup, hand in our costumes, and go back home, because this just isn’t it. It’s our stage, and we own it, for one night only. It’s just an audience, and soon they’re going to realise that our performance is rather unnecessary, even if it is entertaining. They might tip is, but they’ll still show us the door.

No matter how long we stay, no matter how allegedly concrete our positions as team members, we’re still scholarship kids. And maybe we cultivated that aura of detached aloofness that made the juniors stare in gap-mouthed awe, and caused the faculty to leave well enough alone when they saw we really needed it.

No amount of mysterious danger, however, has yet prevented Warren from staring down my shirt at every available chance.

‘Seriously, dude,’ I waved a forkful of steak at him, ‘my face is up here.’

He had the decency to blush a little, but a lazy grin slowly spread across his face, and I swear I heard a little ‘ting!’ as light reflected off his teeth. ‘I wasn’t looking for your face, Lee, I was looking at your tits, all right?’

Bobby snickered, but both Remy and Kurt leaned almost imperceptibly away from the table. ‘I. See.’ I replied, carefully laying aside my knife. ‘And if I were, say, to walk by you in the corridor and feel you up, you’d be cool with that?’

He shrugged. ‘Depends. How far you willing to go?’ he winked. My eyes rolled of their own accord. See how impressed I am. Really. Wunderkind.

‘As far as ten bucks’ll get me, sweetheart.’ His blush went deeper. He coughed, trying to play it off.

‘You’re thinking of LeBeau.’ He began. ‘Everyone knows he—’ his voice choked into silence, and his eyes lifted to a point just behind me. I’d felt whoever it was sliding up behind me just a fraction of a second before, and the look on his face told me exactly who it was.

‘Wolvie, what’s crackin’?’ I said, swivelling on the bench and looking up at him. He was holding a tray of food and idly nudging his asparagus with his knife, a suspicious look on his face.

‘We still on, kid?’ he asked, in a tone he tried to make casual but came off as deeply constipated.

‘You betchya. Eight thirty, same place?’

He shrugged. ‘Sounds doable. See ya then.’ His gaze flicked to my eyes only briefly before scanning along my fellow diners, and he sauntered away, leaving me with an odd kind of unbalanced feeling, and Kitty’s mouth hanging wide open.

‘You know, if I get a picture of you, the things I could do in photoshop do not bear repeating.’ I snarked, when he was probably out of hearing distance. She slapped my hand, probably harder than she realised.

‘”Sounds doable”? Ohmygod! You’re…was that a date kind of doable? Cause he definitely qualifies as grade A hot teacher material.’

‘Grade A, Kitty? You need to lay off watching Nickelodeon. He’s freaking backwoods Methuselah. Have you seen my web browsing history lately? It consists of clean-shaved pretty boys with six packs and polo shirts, not hairy wild men who’ve just stumbled in from the freaking Yukon and think asparagus is a disease.’

‘You were pretty on about Daniel Craig for just about ever.’ Said Bobby archly.

‘And anyhow, if y’like washboard abs, y’have only t’so mention de fact to Remy, who is more den happy t’—’

‘I wear polo shirts!’ Warren poked me. I shrugged.

‘Boys, boys, settle down. Jubilation Lee loves all my babies. Except for you, Worthington, cause you’re a schmooze.’ I reached over and ruffled his hair. ‘A very cute schmooze, but still. Anyhow, Daniel Craig defies the laws of old man-ness, because despite having a face like a toad, he’s sehr sexy, so he doesn’t technically count as a Methuselah, even if he did offer advice on the wheel.’ I protested. ‘And you’re not hairy, you’re fuzzy, elf, so stop pouting.’ I rubbed his shoulder reassuringly. ‘And you also have better abs than Remy.’ It was difficult not to be partial to Kurt. Sure, he had the religious thing going on, and that’s not really common in young people, but he was mellow, and if he was a total flirt, he managed not to be a whore, which was class, and he was just…genuine. I knew that in the extremely unlikely case of experiencing any soul-searching moments, Kurt was probably the best person to help out any deep introspections if I ever felt the need.

‘So?’ Warren prodded my shin under the table with his toe, ‘What’s going on between you and…Wolvie?’ his smirk could’ve greased axles.

‘Yeah, to whom you’re not attracted, right?’ Kitty leant forward on her elbows. Oh, God. The two of them were the biggest gossip mongers in the whole world. It was pathetic. I considered my options.

‘Look, I wasn’t gonna say anything, cause it’s not, like confirmed or anything,’ I managed to infuse a note of hesitance into my voice, ‘but last night I went down to the lab, and Dr. McCoy was bored, and I was feeling unwelcome in my room for some reason—’ I glared meaningfully at Bobby, ‘—and he ran a couple tests and it looks like I’m still mutating. Anyhow, Wolverine was there too, and he was interested in how secondary mutations work, but you all know how impossible Blue is to understand, and, well, basically he wants someone to use little words to explain.’

They blinked vacantly as one. Remy’s eyes narrowed. ‘And you’re jilting Remy t’go talk science wit’ de poster boy for Alaskan Survivor’s Weeky?’

I shrugged. ‘He offered beer. Good beer.’

‘Sounds like a date to me, Lee.’ Warren insisted.

‘Well, it’s not. Jesus, you guys are reading way too much into it. The poor guy’s probably just embarrassed. And anyhow, you all know he’s still…well…Dr. Grey.’

The name hung between us like a shroud. Bobby was the first to speak. ‘Yeah. He’d probably have asked Rogue, only she spends most of her free time with me these days.’ He looked a little guilty.

‘And there you have it.’ I said, triumphantly. ‘Anyhow, I didn’t jilt you, Gumbo. In fact, when I come get you for pool, you probably won’t fail as spectacularly as you usually do if I have a couple beers in me.’

‘Well, jus’ make sure dat homme keeps his hands to himself, hein? I don’t trust people dat ask pretty little Asian co-eds t’ explain scientific theories over alcohol dat dey’re not old enough to buy for demselves.’

‘So…you don’t trust about eighty per cent of the male population?’ Warren looked puzzled.

Remy rolled his eyes. ‘Sometimes, Worthington, y’ don’t know when t’ shut de hell up.’