Title: Stormy Monday
Author: Minisnoo (minisinoo@yahoo.com)
URL: http://www.themedicinewheel.net/
Fandom: Ultimate X-Men
Summary: "It was a dark and stormy night ..." A meeting and 
conversation at the fridge, S/O friendship.

Notes: Assumes events in Ultimate X-Men up through issue #21. 
But it's MY take. I think it's comprehensible, even if you're not up 
to date on issues. I don't have Mother Goose, so I have no idea 
how Little Miss Muffit is correctly spelled. :-)


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"They call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad . . ."

Ororo follows the sound of the voice, barely audible over the wind 
and rain and thunder outside. "It was a dark and stormy night," she 
thinks, sarcastically. What trouble could she get herself into?

"They call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad . . ."

She glances at her watch: 2:36. In the morning. What's he doing 
up? Shouldn't he be in bed with Miss Perky? Then again, she 
should probably be in bed with Blue. But she isn't. Henry doesn't 
want her in his bed anymore.

"Lord and Wednesday's worse, Thursday's oh so sad . . ."

On cat feet, she approaches the swinging door that leads into the 
kitchen, from whence comes the voice, and there, she leans against 
the jamb to watch covertly.

The fridge door is open and Scott's bent over, ass out, obviously 
looking for something as cooled air makes a bit of fog in the humid 
heat. Then he straightens up, chocolate milk in hand. If she were a 
betting woman, she'd be rich. Then again, she is a betting woman, 
but what fun is it when the answer's so predictable?

Scott's easy to predict, but not so easy to understand. She watches 
him as he tips back his head to chug milk. He doesn't know he's 
being watched. Lighting flashes in the window, outlining him for a 
moment, brighter than the flourescent over the sink. He's a 
beautiful man. In one of Jean's less annoying attempts to do the 
female- bonding thing, she and Ororo had rated the men at the 
mansion -- the professor excepted. Peter had gotten the highest 
marks for overall physical appeal, and Bobby, the award for cutest 
-- "like a cocker spaniel," Ro had quipped. "Cute but dumb." Jean 
had laughed. They weren't always nice. Beast had been determined 
to have a well-chiseled face under the fuzz, and the best voice to 
listen to. And Logan had won in the department of rawest 
sensuality. "Walking sex," Jean had insisted.

And Scott . . . Scott, they had both agreed, had the nicest body. 
Good face, but a nicer form. A beautiful man.

And right now, wearing only loose flannel sleep-shorts, most of 
that body is on display.

Pushing off from the door jamb, Ororo pads into the kitchen and 
Scott almost jumps out of his skin. "Jesus fucking Christ, Ro. Give 
a man some warning instead of just sneaking up on him!"

"I wasn't sneaking." Not entirely true. "You were singing."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. You sing nice."

He doesn't reply. He doesn't sing often, at least, not where she's 
heard him. Now, instead, he points out the window. "You pissed or 
something?"

"What?"

"The storm, Storm."

Smirking, she crosses to the fridge and opens it herself. He's still 
standing there with his jug of milk. The fridge light illumines his 
chest. He's hairy. She likes hair on a man. Maybe not quite as 
much as Hank has, but she likes hair. "Nope. It's all Mama Nature. 
I had nothing to do with it."

"Oh."

She studies the contents of the fridge and settles finally on a 
Corona, fetching out the bottle of lime juice to put in it. It's easier 
and less messy than a lime. The professor makes no attempt to 
prevent his students from drinking; he's said that he sees little point 
in pretending they couldn't get alcohol perfectly well themselves, if 
they wished, and he'd rather they drank under supervision. Ororo 
isn't sure what she thinks of that. Of course, if he'd made rules 
about it, she'd have felt compelled to break them. But as he hasn't, 
she actually drinks very little. Maybe that was his point.

In any case, she opens her beer and pours in the juice, then puts the 
bottle of juice away and tosses the beer bottlecap. "You want one, 
too?" she asks him.

"No. Thanks."

It occurs to her suddenly that she's never seen him drink liquor. 
Well, once. At New Year's, he'd had half a glass of champagne. 
But he doesn't drink beer. He doesn't drink anything alcoholic that 
she's seen. She doubts it's for anything so simple as puritan morals, 
and realizes how little she actually knows about him, even after 
being here almost a year and a half. What she does know are the 
predictable things. Like his milk, and the fact that he gets up with 
the sun, and that he's a perfectionist and then some. But why he 
doesn't drink beer . . . that she doesn't know. And how he came to 
be here in the first place, and where he'd been before? She doesn't 
know that, either.

"Why are you up?" she asks abruptly.

"Couldn't sleep."

"Well, duh."

He laughs. "What? My witty repartee doesn't excite you?"

"Oh, please, Cyclops." But she can't keep from smiling. A little. He 
is witty, in a dry and sarcastic way. "Why couldn't you sleep? Or 
did Little Miss Muffet kick you out of bed for sprawling and taking 
up most of it?"

He looks away. "Jean's asleep. And not in my bed. Or me in hers."

"Oh." Well. She hadn't expected that reply, and isn't sure how to 
respond. "Trouble in paradise?" But when a pained look passes 
over his face, she could kick herself for the sarcasm. Why must she 
always prod to wound?

"No," he says, and says nothing more.

She doesn't believe him. But these days, Blue is barely speaking to 
her, so who is she to judge Scott's love life? At least he'd finally 
gotten the girl he'd been pining for longer than was humanly sane, 
while her own relationship with Henry had fallen into a morass of 
doubts. After David's accusations that Xavier had manipulated her 
mentally, Hank no longer believes that she's in love with him. And 
to be honest -- and whatever she says -- she's not so sure herself. 
Her protests are mostly stubbornness. She hates it when someone 
else tells her what she thinks or feels, or should think or feel.

In any case, she has similar doubts about Jean Grey's true feelings 
for Scott Summers. And she wonders, abstractly, if Scott has 
doubts of his own. And if that's why he's up. It angers her that they 
must all live in such distrust that what they think and feel really is 
what they think and feel.

But what other options do they have? And what would she do with 
her life, if not this? She'd never before had much in the way of 
direction for her ambition. That was the problem. She'd had 
ambition, to be sure, but it might have been better if she hadn't, as 
the only outlet for it had been to see how many ways she could 
break the law without getting caught. That had been her idea of 
fun, and success. These days, she has other criteria, and it confuses 
her, because she isn't sure if it's genuine.

What makes her angriest is that, deep down, she wants it to be 
genuine.

But she also misses the thrill of doing the unexpected, and the not-
entirely-safe. "Hey," she says now. Scott is staring out the window, 
his milk forgotten in his hand. He looks around at her. "Do you 
want to go flying in the rain?"

He blinks, or she thinks he does. He's wearing the visor, not his 
glasses, so it's harder to tell, but she can see the red light of his 
eyes go out momentarily, then return. "Do I want to what?"

"Go flying in the rain."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"It's thundering and lightning out there."

"They're my friends, remember." And to underscore her point, she 
brings the swirling clouds together over the mansion in a crack of 
thunder that makes him start. "You too chicken to trust me not to 
drop you on your head?"

And he smiles. "No, I trust you. Mostly." Abruptly he pushes away 
from where he's leaning into the counter and screws the lid back on 
the milk jug, returning it to the fridge. "All right. I'm game. Let's 
go flying in the rain."

She holds out a hand to him. He takes it.




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