Girlfriends & Parents All Suck [Kitty, Bobby]

[Iceman]

Bobby and Paige had parted ways after getting out of the cab and into the school pretty much as awkwardly as any two people could. Paige had gone off wherever she had gone, and Bobby had gone upstairs. He wasn't going to his room, however.

He stopped at Kitty's door and knocked. He still wore the suit he'd worn to the premiere, though it was getting too hot inside with the jacket on, so he shrugged it off as he waited for Kitty to answer the door. He was tired. But he needed to talk.

Kitty had been sitting at her computer checking her e-mail, which as usual only had one or two messages in it, so the interruption was actually somewhat welcome. She hated the downward slide of the day into bedtime; she wished she could go to sleep right after dinner, like she had when she was a kid. Then she could get up even earlier.

She opened the door. It was Bobby, in a rumpled shirt and tie, with his rumpleder coat over his arm. "What's up?" she asked. "You're back early."

Bobby didn't even wait to be invited in; he walked into the room as if his feet weighed one hundred pounds each. "Yeah - the premiere was a disaster," he said in a surly tone. He went straight to the empty bed, which was once again bare, Hannah's sea of pink gone. It was strange, though, he still remembered it as Rogue's bed.

He collapsed onto it, dropping his coat and rolling on top of it. "Alison Blaire is a mutant," he said, staring up at the ceiling. "She announced it in the middle of the premiere. And her director made this huge scene and made everybody start freaking out. Oh, and she said that he tried to blackmail her before the premiere, which was why she came out." Bobby was clearly still a touch confused by the whole thing.

"That... makes no sense at all," Kitty said honestly. Miz Thang had come out right in the middle of a movie premiere? That in and of itself sounded like she was using her mutancy - if she was a mutant at all - for the publicity, which made Kitty kind of want to barf inside. "Why did everyone start freaking out? Did she have a scary power?"

And what was up with her director? Who blackmailed singers/actresses anymore? Who could get away with it?


Bobby put his hands underneath his head and responded to Kitty's questions. "They started freaking out because the director guy told them she had made threats on the premiere, that she was in league with a terrorist group - he pretty much fed all the crap a lot of people think deep down about mutants. And as far as I could tell, all she can do is make light. The director started choking like she was attacking him mentally or something, but she said she didn't do anything to him."

"You should figure out her power," Kitty said. "Too many crazy people around these days."

She sat down on her own bed, fitting her hands underneath her thighs and pulling her knees up to her chest to sit her chin on. "I don't think she should make light," she said. "I think she should probably be all 'hey so, my director is crazy,' but if she makes light everyone will think it's her for real and she's trying to pass it off as someone else. That's what I'd think. And anyway, how do you even know that she wasn't doing it? I know it'd be weird for her to strangle some dude at a premiere, but weirder things have happened, and what if she's just certified nuts?"

[Iceman]

Bobby shook his head, sighing. "We don't know. And we can't, really, unless we get her in here for some tests. I don't know where she's going now...but I assume Warren's taking her back to her house." He paused a moment, thinking as to what he thought of her. "I think she was telling the truth. She's just...well, she's a really good actress if she's--" Bobby stopped. She was, quite literally, an actress. So the possibility that she was doing a very good job of pretending not to be involved with something underhanded was, well...it was definently a strike against her.

"I don't know. I never got the feeling she was anything to worry about. But...well, Paige said the guy was perfectly conscious when she went over and socked him in the face." Bobby managed a smile at the memory of her recounting what she'd done to him in the cab.

But the though of Paige dampened his smile very quickly. "And then on the way home, somehow I screwed up and got Paige pissed at me..."

"What'd she get pissed at you about?"

Kitty wasn't sure whether she liked Paige. On one level, she was nice, smart enough at least from a distance, and had been genuinely worried about and seemed pretty good for Bobby. On another level... Kitty wasn't sure if she liked her. It was weird. She just got a bad vibe. It was a stupid vibe, Kitty knew, and causeless, but she still got it.

It might just be because she was Bobby's girlfriend. And Bobby was Kitty's friend, and someday a girl was going to hurt him, and Kitty would be unable to just walk up and sock her in the face. Or maybe that was it - Paige could do everything Kitty couldn't, was everything Kitty wasn't. Kitty'd never mastered cool. She tried to stick to nice and keep her head down.

"And what'd you say to her to make her mad?"


"I have no idea," Bobby said, bewildered even now looking back on it. "I guess...she asked if I was jealous of Warren...And...I guess she figured out that I..." He paused, craning his neck to look at Kitty. "I never told you we broke up, did I?"

He'd been so busy pretending nothing was wrong that he'd kept things pretty silent. "Well, we did. A couple days ago. And I guess she figured out today that I still like her. Which made her mad, because apparently I didn't act like I cared when we broke up," he said, his tone turning sarcastic. He obviously didn't see where Paige was coming from with that.

"So we argued, and...I don't know. The whole evening just kind of sucked."

[Iceman]

Kitty sighed, letting one of her feet fall back to the floor before flopping across her bed. "Bobby," she said, "you dork. Well, it's nice to get in on the secret, I guess, but seriously, you can't figure out that much?"

Boys were so weird.

"She obviously still likes you. If you acted like you didn't care, she probably thought she should break up with you and see if the distance made you more interested, and now she's trying to see if it did. And now she's pissed at you because it worked, and that proves you were only there for the chase in the first place."

Which made her disappointed in him, but with a girl who looked like Paige, she could see why most guys would just be there for the chase and the first two weeks. They wouldn't think there was anything else to her, or at least worth staying for.


When Kitty said Paige obviously still liked him, poor Bobby, his heart lifted slightly. But by the end of Kitty's words, he was lost. He wasn't sure he followed Kitty's logic, and he wasn't sure if she was saying he was only chasing Paige or Paige only wanted him to chase her. But he didn't worry too much about the details. "You think so?"

Then he remembered what she'd said in the car. "No, I don't think so. I mean, I don't understand you 'females', but I'm pretty sure when she said she can't make me happy and she's looking for something different, she wasn't speaking completely in code." Though girls did do that sometimes, it wasn't a Paige thing to do.

[Iceman]

"All girls," Kitty said, "speak completely in code. At least just consider it that way, okay? It'll help you a lot."

She was back in her element. Kitty loved being an agony aunt predominately because good sense and logical, linear thinking (and a female brain) made her almost perfect at it. She'd have Bobby and Paige sewn back together at the groin before you could say 'venereal disease.'

Ugh. The things she did for him...

"She's probably just saying that so you'll deny it. Girls do that a lot," she said. "She wants you to say 'no, you're perfect, I love you so much' and all that stuff. Maybe you didn't say it enough and that's why she broke up with you and stuff. And when she says she's looking for something different, well gosh, that's a blatant bid for jealousy. She's probably going to go flirt with Warren and see if she can make you beat him up. I mean, she's blonde. They all work basically the same way."

Now Bobby wasn't so sure. He sighed again, and was silent for a stretch of time as the gears in his brain turned. "You know...if it's going to be this difficult...Maybe I should just leave it alone. I mean, I really like her, I really do. But its just been one fight after another since we started going out. And the whole thing with--"

Bobby didn't even want to say the blue-skinned shapeshifter's name. It still left a horrible taste in his mouth. "If we hadn't been doing what we were, then I wouldn't have been tricked so easily. Which is my own fault. But...I think I need to just...let things die."

"Well, if that's what you want to do," Kitty said. "But you say you like her still, right? Shouldn't you go after the things you want?"

She propped herself up on one elbow, reaching over to her nightstand to click on the lamp, since all that had been lighting the room was hallway light and the computer screen. A warmer glow cast across the pair of beds, her pale blue one and the other bare one, giving a dark glow to her brown hair and a brighter one to Bobby's lighter. She felt warm and safe here, the way she had since she finally learned to call it home. Her parents and John and her Wuthering Heights essay-for-the-final faded to the outskirts of her brain as she pushed herself into the corner made by the walls and her bed, curling into it and pulling her pillow into her arms to hug. It was like burrowing, but somehow seemed healthier, at least in her head. She could see all the entrances and exits, her best friend was here and safe and his biggest problem was his girlfriend. Everything was going to turn out okay.

"Some girls are always going to be harder than others. If you keep it on with Paige, your relationship will probably always be, y'know... traumatic. It'll require upkeep. But it'll keep things interesting. Would you want to be with some girl who never fought with you? Who laughed at all your jokes and had your same taste in music and never got annoyed at you?"

[Iceman]

Bobby's only movement while Kitty spoke was to roll over onto his stomach. His face split into a plaintive smile as Kitty finished, showing that her description of a girl that would be 'uninteresting' to date didn't seem to bad to him at all. He laughed at himself, ducking his head for a moment, before turning back to serious matters. "Its not...all that I thought it was. What me and Paige had," he said, being perfectly honest with Kitty and with himself. "I mean, I really liked her, of course. But...I think I was really relieved to have someone who cared about me...like that...again." His volume lessened as he spoke, a subtle and unintended sign that he was started to think of much deeper and more complicated problems.

Of course - it all made sense. She wasn't a brunette with a random bleach streak, but she had the accent, she had the tomboy quotient, she had the hint of danger. "You can't keep dating Rogue over and over again," she said, with a tone of slight scolding. "Gosh, Bobby, I know where you're coming from here, but seriously. Your first love never really fades, but you're never going to move on if you don't... move on."

Her pillow twisted in her arms as she pushed it down and plumped it up to make it vaguely spheric.


Bobby winced, but didn't speak as Kitty continued.

"Maybe you should take a break from dating," she suggested. "Even if it's nice to have someone care. It'll be good for you. You need to learn to live without someone else, and then you can really offer a girl something, not just... issues, I guess."


Bobby ducked his head and ran his hand through his hand and down his neck, where he rubbed back and forth a few times before dropping his hand to the bed once again. "Yeah..." he said finally. "You're probably right. I kind of suck at dating, don't I?" He managed to smile at his own stupid past mistakes, though it wasn't without a bitter note to it.

He sobered quickly, looking down at his watch and watching the second hand tick. "I'm pathetic, aren't I?" he said, still poking fun at himself. "I mean...how long has it been since she left?" But his attempts at laughing at himself were weak, and easy to see through, especially for someone who knew him as well as Kitty did.

"You're not pathetic," Kitty said, and crawled out of her corner, glad she had her socks on so she didn't get her coverlet all screwy. She plumped down next to Bobby's stretched-out frame, seated near enough to lean up against what of him she could while he was laying down and placing her hand comfortingly on his back, rubbing like he was six years old and not going to sleep during naptime. "I'm sorry, that was harsh. I've been weird the last few days..."

No excuse, no excuse, no excuse -

She needed to stop loosening up all the way, maybe.

"She'll always probably have a big influence on you," she said. "She was your first girlfriend and stuff, right? I mean... it sticks with you. But you need to learn to make it just a memory and not some overhanging... thing, you know?"

[Iceman]

"She wasn't my first girlfriend," he said off-handedly. "But she was...I loved her, you know? As corny as it sounds..." He turned his head to the side, toward Kitty, and rested it on his arms. He felt comfortable, with her leaning on him and rubbing his back. It was why he'd come to Kitty that night. Because Kitty always knew how to help him. They were usually able to pull each other out of a funk. That was why their friendship had never wavered. Other people had come and gone in each of their lives, but Bobby never worried that Kitty would drift away from him.

Her comment that she'd been 'weird' the last few days stuck in his mind. He wondered if she meant more than she was saying - if perhaps her family issues were weighing on her mind. No, it was ridiculous to wonder if they were - of course they were. And Bobby hadn't been around as much as he should have been to help. Wrapped up in his own stupid relationship problems.

"How are you? Have you...talked to your parents? How're things going?"

"I'm fine," she said automatically, then stopped to think about it for a moment, since they were being all heart-to-hearty. "My dad calls me every day and tells me how the case is going, which is... like him, I guess. Evidently he has a girlfriend. They've been separated since before I went home for Hannukah, he said, they just came back and pretended so I'd feel better. They didn't think I was ready yet."

She wanted to and didn't want to meet Donna. Her dad hadn't said much but her name; Kitty wondered if she was his age or much younger, if she looked as fake as second wives usually did, if she was going to be a second wife at all. She wondered if her mom had a boyfriend. She'd been evasive on the subject every time Kitty called to check on her. She had an apartment in Chicago, was all she'd said.

"It's... less of a big deal. Dad kept the house. I just, you know... I don't want to have two families."

Bobby couldn't imagine how difficult it must be to have your parents separate. His had argued a lot, but he'd always got the feeling it was for the sake of arguing - his Dad liked to do that. The arguments usually happened about the other spouse's upbringing or family (neither spouse liked their in-laws very well), which always went back to religion, and neither spouse was an avid church-goer, so they didn't put a lot of personal feelings into the arguements most of the time. So nobody tended to get very hurt. Bobby had never worried that his parents would divorce.

"That's...That's rough, Kit," Bobby said. Now it was his turn to reach up and put his hand on her arm, rubbing her skin in an attempt at comfort. He knew how big family was for Kitty, and how much of a shock her parents' announcing their divorce must have been for her. He was sorry he hadn't been there when it had happened so he could have helped her more soon - but he'd been in custody, and there had been no way around that.

He remembered something that she had said to him a long while ago, when he'd been so down about his family ignoring his calls, ignoring that he existed. She'd offered that he come and have Thanksgiving with her family.

"Well, if you want, you can say 'screw you both' and have Thanksgiving at my place when it rolls around. I'd much rather have you there than Ronnie." He offered her a plain smile, hoping to see one in return.

[Iceman]

Kitty smiled, feeling sleepy and warm, looking down at her unmolested hand, curled on her lap, the right one supporting her weight. "I dunno," she said. "They're still my parents..."

She really, really didn't want to have to pick whose Thanksgiving she was going to go to. Of course, if she didn't, that meant she had to pick whose Hannukah she went to, too, not just go to the other house... but she would have to absolutely pick. Whoever's house she went to for Thanksgiving, she'd be telling them that she was going to spend the big holiday with the other. And what was she supposed to do over the summer?

Maybe she could take in a summer semester. It was too late to apply to college for one, but she could do some extra prep up at the school. Maybe get a correspondence course.

"I really just want it to be... normal, I guess," she said. "Two parents, one house. My dog. I don't know what they did with my dog. Mom always liked him better, so she might've taken him to the apartment... I don't know. I hope they didn't give him up.

"I'm glad your parents are talking to you again, though," she said earnestly. "You're going home for the holidays and stuff? That's good. Where's Ronnie going?"


"To hell," Bobby answered almost without thinking. He then turned his head to Kitty and gave her a plain grin. "I don't know. He might show up just to make Mom and Dad happy, or he might make some excuse to stay at school. He's at Boston U now.

"He'll get over himself," Kitty said staunchly. If she'd had siblings - and she'd always wished she had, even when she was little - she was sure that even when they got mad at each other, they'd stand by each other. It was what you did.

[Iceman]

"I'm sure they didn't get rid of your dog, though," he said comfortingly - since he didn't really know what to say about her hard decision between her parents for holidays, he could at least help her about her dog. "You should bring him here. I'd bring my cat here if my parents would let me."

"He doesn't like new places," Kitty murmured sleepily. He didn't. Besides, something would probably eat him. Toby was a rat terrier, tiny even for his species, and extremely excitable. And old. Her parents had had to board him at the vet's every time she came home the last few years because they didn't want the excitement of either a new person or Kitty from being gone so long to upset him; she hadn't even seen him in two years, he was so excitable.


"Well, the offer still stands if you ever get tired of 'em," he added, before changing the subject back to what she'd mentioned. "But, yeah, I'm going home for Christmas and stuff. Thats if things are still going okay by then. Which...who knows?"

Kitty smiled with a touch of sadness. "It'll be fiiiine," she said, shaking Bobby's shoulder gently. "I'm not sure you can be re-disowned, especially now they've already reowned you. I guess I'll have to see how shaken up stuff is at home."
"Do you want to go home and visit? I can go with you, if you want. We've got a long weekend coming up." Bobby offered. "Besides, I like Chicago. It's almost nearly distantly as cool as Boston." Bobby smiled a smug smile, full of stubborn pride in his hometown.

"Not really," Kitty said. "I... I don't know. This is their thing they need to work out. The last thing they need is to see their kid running around being another kink in the system. It's probably best if I stay up here."

She sighed. The sooner the whole thing was done with, the better. They didn't need to be thinking about custody. Besides, she was almost 18. In New York, she was an adult. She'd find a way to make it fair who paid for what part of college. It couldn't be that hard.

[Iceman]

"Well, don't let it drag you down, Kit," Bobby said, yawning and rubbing his eyes with the side of his hand. He dropped his hand to her leg and patted it, rubbing her knee in a friendly, comforting way. "You're one of the best people I know. And thats not--" Bobby paused, laughing in what was nearly a man-giggle. He laughed because she probably hadn't even been able to tell that he'd had a little bit to drink, but now that he'd started to mention it, he had to tell her. Which really wasn't funny enough to laugh at in the first place; but like was said, he'd had a bit to drink.

"--I had some wine--and thats not the alcohol talking," he said, laughing again. "Nah, I didn't even have that much. It was just at Alison's hotel room..."

[Shadowcat]

Kitty looked askance at bobby as he rubbed her knee. He was kind of... giggly. In a guy way. But it definitely was a giggle, not a chuckle.

"Bobby," she said, getting her lecturing voice out of its box, "you shouldn't drink."

She hadn't even had wine at Seder. Grape juice for the kids, always. Her parents always used to be so protective.

"One day you're going to get drunk and do something you'll regret," she recited from memory. "And you could end up hurting yourself or worse, someone else."

[Iceman]

Bobby rolled onto his back from his side, his shoulder up against Kitty's leg. "I'm not even close to drunk," he said with a wave of his hand. Though he wore a grin at her schpeal. "Somebody's been paying attention in health class," he teased her good-naturedly.

Stifling a yawn with his hand, and following it up with: "That makes one of us."

Then, in a somewhat sleepy tone, he mumbled, "D'you think the Cure's going to wear off everyone?"

He looked from the ceiling to Kitty's face. "I was thinking about it today. Before all this...crap." His eyes wandered past her, to fix on the wall behind her. "If it does...all the people who followed Magneto are going to come back. Or, well, some of them. The stupid ones. And...Jubilee will get hers back, eventually. And..."

Rogue. Rogue. Just say it; she knows you're thinking it.

"...all the other people who took the Cure..."

[Shadowcat]

"It's important to know the effects of your possible actions," Kitty said. Bobby rolled over and she had to resist the urge to poke him in the stomach. He was so not allowed to fall asleep in her room, even if it was on the spare bed. People would talk.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I think eventually. Maybe, like, at different speeds for everyone... I mean, everyone's got a different metabolism. I don't know. I'm not a science kid. You'd think they could just get re-Cured, but I guess that's too simple."

Kitty shrugged with one shoulder, the one not supporting her. "It'll be just like it was," she said. "Except everyone's going to come back P.O.d."

[Iceman]

Do you think Rogue will come back?

Ask. Ask. Do it.

"Do you..." Bobby paused to lick his lips. "Do you think...Rogue will come back?" He didn't want to admit it, but out of anyone, she was the most likely to go right back for the Cure.

And he also didn't want to admit it, but the feelings he'd covered up with time and with a new relationship, feelings he'd thought he'd moved on from, were obviously still there in the back of his mind, shaking some of the dust off of the memories and making him wish as he had so many times before that things had turned out differently with Rogue.

[Shadowcat]

And there... right there. There it went.

"Well gosh, Bobby, I don't know," Kitty said, biting back her sudden irrational anger without much success. "If she's doing well enough, I bet she'll stay out there and wait for another Cure to come along. One's bound to eventually, they did all that... research."

She waved her hand in a vague gesture and stood up from Rogue's bed abruptly, crossing back to her desk chair.

"Since we haven't heard from her in, you know, like a year, I think it might be safe to say she doesn't want to see our smiling faces."

The last was bit out with more venom than Kitty usually used under any circumstances. But she was really, really, really tired of hearing about Rogue, even more than she was tired of hearing about Paige. About Bobby's dumb Southern girlfriends.

"Maybe you should go find her if you're so keen on seeing her again," Kitty said. "She certainly doesn't seem like she wants to come back on her lonesome."

[Iceman]

Woah. Something just killed the conversation. Had talking about Rogue really pissed Kitty off that much? Bobby didn't understand why. All the same, he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to the ground. What Kitty had said had hit him where it hurt, but he tried not to show it. But she didn't get like this often, not nearly as often as most people did, so it struck him more.

How did he keep getting himself in these situations with girls?!? He was pathetic at understanding them.

There was undoubtedly an awkward silence, before Bobby finally stood. "Well...It's really late, I should probably get to bed. And...let you..." Go to bed, or check your email, or whatever it is girls do. Obviously I have no idea.

He blinked a few times, still seeming a little bit like someone who'd just witnessed a train wreck and was in shock. He made an attempt at apologizing. "I, uh...I'm sorry, I know you probably don't want to hear me complain and whine about all this stuff..." he said as he shuffled towards the door. "I'll, uh. See you tomorrow..."

[Shadowcat]

She was just sick of hearing about her. Sick of dealing with Bobby's stupid obsession, more than that, and more than either she was sick of... well, no, she was probably sickest about the obsession. G-d. He really knew how to drag a conversation into the depths.

She stared into the depths of her desk during the awkward silence, back where she hid the wire-rims she used to read when no one else was around, safe in their little gray case. It was getting dusty back there. Maybe she should -

Bobby started talking and edging to the door, so Kitty gave him the benefit of at least understanding some undertones.

For once, she didn't make cooing noises and apologize. Bobby's a big boy, she reasoned with herself, having to use a firm inner voice to stop the instinctive hug-leap. He doesn't need you to coddle him over every litle thing.

"See you," she said, and though it wasn't cold, it was definitely final.

[Iceman]

Bobby had half-expected Kitty to try and at least act like she wasn't mad - she usually couldn't be mad for very long before she felt bad about it, anyway. But apparently this time she was pissed.

This was why he'd become so introverted in the months after Rogue had left. Because after the first few weeks, he had seen people start to tire of him. So he'd just stopped talking about it. Stopped nagging Ororo about where Rogue was. Stopped making so many jokes, stopped grinning so much. He hadn't locked himself up in his room, but he'd pretty much internally locked himself up from everyone else no matter where he was.

And now, one little question, and Kitty was pissed. Bobby couldn't help but feel slightly annoyed by her. But whatever. They'd be fine in the morning.

Bobby opened her door and walked out, without responding to her 'see you'. He shut the door behind her and, shaking his head, walked off to his own room to get some sleep.