Twinkie Run (The Stars & Garters Remix) [X-men, Hank McCoy, Bobby Drake, Others, PG]
Title: Twinkie Run (The Stars and Garters Remix)
Author: likeadeuce, AKA Karabair
Summary: Junk food is banned from Xavier's School for the Gifted. Hank McCoy, a new member of the faculty, decides to bend the rules for the sake of his students. Meanwhile, fellow new teacher Emma Frost creates her own set of problems for Scott Summers.
Rating: PG
Fandom:X-men movieverse.
Thanks to: resolute for beta, harmonyangel for letting me babble about this, and for helping me know Henry McCoy well enough that I had the confidence to write it. And while I'm at it, I may as well thank sionnain for basically stealing her Emma Frost.
Spoilers: Spoilers for the first two X-men movies. Since the original story was written before X3, I've disregarded third-movie canon.
Original story: On the Road with Disposable Comestibles by escritoireazul
Twinkie Run (The Stars and Garters Remix)
After dinner, four nights in a row, the students at Xavier's School for the Gifted take advantage of one of the day's few unstructured hours to disperse and socialize with their friends, peers, and classmates. After dinner, four nights in a row, Robert Drake appears in the doorway of my lab, hands in his pockets, slouching as though he has no idea how he happened to find his way down here. Four nights in a row, Bobby is by himself.
It doesn't take a brilliant scientific researcher to detect a pattern of behavior.
"Dr. McCoy?" he asks.
"Robert!" I say, rising from my microscope. I spread my arms in an open friendly gesture, letting my voice boom in its best welcoming and avuncular manner. "What errand entices you into the catacombs of the mansion on this magnificent evening?" As long as Bobby maintains the fiction that he is simply down here for a stroll, that he could easily have ended up in half a dozen other places - a friend's room, or the Professor's office, or Ms. Frost's - I will pretend not to notice that he has been down here every night this week. When the boy is ready to talk, I will be ready to listen. Until then, I smile and head toward the supply cabinet.
"I was thinking," Bobby begins. "-- maybe you had some, ahh -"
"Some of these?" I reach into the cabinet, grab a four-pack of Hostess Twinkies, and toss them in Bobby's direction. His eyes light up and for a moment I can hear Scott's disapproving words in my mind - 'In loco parentis, Hank.' But I know the students here get a good basic diet, and I can't imagine any actual parent objecting to an occasional bit of processed sugar. Besides, I can hardly begrudge the boy a vice that I so frequently indulge myself.
I remove a package of the bright yellow pastries and set them in front of me on the counter, eagerly rubbing my hands. When my secondary mutation first manifested, leaving me in my current form that seems more beast than man, my employer at the time - employer and old MIT-classmate, Tony Stark - hired a corporate consultant in order to help me find ways to "best optimize my communication style." After spending some time listening to me talk and observing my interactions, she suggested that, rather than trying to hide or deny my appearance, I would best be suited by adopting gestures that exaggerated my behavior, to help me seem lovable and harmless. "Like a teddy bear," she said, "Or Burt Lahr as the Cowardly Lion."
This approach - while not appropriate to all occasions - has usually served me well in interacting with the students. Bobby watches me tear into the wrapper and grins, almost giggling.
He rips into his own snack cakes with equal brio. As he licks the crumbs from the plastic - a well-behaved boy, appreciating the permission to make a mess -- he mumbles, "Thanks, Dr. McCoy. I knew you'd come through."
"Please, Robert, call me Hank. When I hear 'Doctor McCoy' I want to reach for my tricorder." Bobby lets out a little laugh and I smile at him. "Thank you for not making me feel absolutely decrepit. I wasn't sure that young people still watched the original Star Trek."
"Oh, yeah," Bobby assures me. "They show it on the Game Show Network now, and they run this live computer-chat along the bottom of the screen? Just, like, making fun of the outfits and the cheesy effects and stuff. And sometimes we'd get online and try to see if we could get our comments in there, but -" He stops and looks down. "John, you know, he'd always type swear words, so of course they weren't going to - Anyway." He crumples the wrapper in his hand.
"Robert -" I begin, after a moment's silence. "Do you --?" He looks up at me, and I can't finish the question. Does he miss his best friend, who abandoned the X-men during a mission to join one of the team's greatest enemies? It isn't fair to ask the boy that, when I can see the answer in his eyes. "Do you want to watch a movie?" I say instead. "I was just about to put my work away and sit down with a DVD." He looks up with hope. I wince and hesitate, remembering what I have out from Netflix at the moment. "There are subtitles - You might not like it. It's Japanese."
"Samurai?" he says eagerly.
I think of Tokyo Story, the multi-generational family drama that I had been planning to rewatch. "Not exactly. Perhaps - is there something in your own collection that you would like to view instead?"
"If you like Japanese, I just downloaded a copy of 'The Grudge.' Not the one with Buffy." Bobby rolls his eyes. "The original. It's a lot scarier. We can hook my laptop up to the TV down here and -" He hesitates. "Only if you want."
"I can't think of anything better," I tell him sincerely. "I'll bring the Twinkies."
*
Scott Summers looks around the table at the senior faculty. "Somebody," he says with a scowl, "has been bringing junk food into the mansion. Lots of it. You all know the rules. Each student can have one small package from home a month, and can spend five dollars at the snack bar every Friday. That's it. The Professor feels strongly about this issue, and we need to get it cleared up before he and Logan get back from Muir Island."
Scott is not actually scowling at me, of course. He should be scowling at me, but he isn't, and I actually feel more guilty than I would if he were to accuse me. Scott doesn't suspect me, because he believes I am above reproach.
Emma Frost, who knows full well that I am not, pushes the designer glasses up the bridge of her nose, focusing her icy gaze on Scott, and drawls, "So - why do we care?"
"Well, Emma," he answers. "If students have junk food available to them, they'll skip meals, they'll hoard food, and they won't eat the healthy diet we've prepared for them."
I can't help thinking, It's a good thing I have all those snack cakes stashed down in the lab. Emma shoots a quick look in my direction, and gives that too-pleased smile she is so fond of, leading me to suspect that I was thinking it too loud.
"And again I ask, so what?" Emma repeats. "If children choose to get fat, they will get fat. It is not in our control."
Ororo, sitting between the two of them, looks across the table at me, and purses her lips in an expression I can read as There they go again. I nod at her, while feeling half-responsible for the situation, myself. The Professor had called me after Jean Grey's death at Alkali Lake, asking if I knew of any likely candidates to fill out the faculty at the school. I not only volunteered myself, but recommended Emma. It's a choice I don't regret - she's very good at her job - but I might have anticipated that she and Scott would mix like oil and water.
"That's exactly my point," Scott retorts to Emma. "It is in our control. When we take these students in, we take responsibility for their entire lives, including their health. Obesity is a national epidemic."
"So is anorexia," Emma answers lazily. "When's the last time you had a meal?"
Scott breathes in deeply before answering her. "I can feed myself, thank you," he says, looking down at his agenda.. "And the meal plans were approved by a physician. And the Professor is on my side. Next item." He can't resist a last look at Emma. "Unless you have some objection."
"I don't even care. It's certainly not as though I'm going to eat. . ." With a coy look at me, she says, "Henry, dear, what on earth is in a -" She speaks the word as though it's in another language. "Twinkie?"
"Sugar," I answer promptly. "Enriched flour, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, polysorbate 60 and yellow dye #5."
Ororo screws up her mouth. "You just know that because it's the line in Die Hard."
"I have never had the distinct pleasure of viewing Die Hard," I assure her. "And I certainly do not have the dialogue memorized. I know that because I am a scientist."
"Stark Industries has a line in junk food now?" Emma is eyeing me with a bigger smile than ever, and I wonder if she's thinking about blowing my cover.
Scott just glares. "If we can just move to the last item on the agenda -"
"Yes, let's," Emma agreed. She stretches her arms in the air so that her breasts strain against the low neckline of her sleeveless white top. "The next item. Dress code for female faculty."
"Wha --?" Ororo crosses her arms indignantly. Her own flimsy blouse doesn't leave much more to the imagination than Emma's.
"It's true," says Emma. "Rollneck sweaters and sensible shoes for all of us." Scott makes a choking noise of protest, and Emma says, in a honey-sweet voice, "Oh, forgive me. You didn't actually say that out loud, did you?" She leans back in her chair and announces to the room, "He was thinking it."
Scott's face, for a moment, is a mask of mute rage, and then he says, "Yes, I was. Thinking it. And if I was thinking it, you can imagine what a sixteen-year-old boy would -"
"If you were thinking it -" She curls her lip, and says theatrically. "Scott Summers, you see, was born with the soul of a middle-aged monastic and if a woman is capable of making him notice. . ."
"All right!" Scott jumps to his feet. "You know what? This meeting is over. So if you all want to get out of my office." He shakes his head. "But I'm serious about this thing with the sweets. Wherever they're coming from, it has to stop."
*
"I don't think Ms. Frost likes me," Bobby sighs, looking plaintively at the pile of books on the work table in front of him. The other students tore out of the lab as soon as I dismissed them, but Bobby, as per his usual habit, has hung back to talk to me. He looks more worn than usual, circles under his eyes as though he hasn't been sleeping.
"What did Em- Ms. Frost do?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "She just gets all over my case. I'm always caught up - well, usually - when I go in there. But like today -- one day, ever -- I haven't done the reading - and she reads minds. She has to know, right? She starts asking me questions, and I try to pass - I tell her I haven't done the reading, and she makes me read it out, in class, and she keeps asking me what it means."
He shakes his head, and I go to my desk and start rummaging in the drawer.
"You should have been there, Hank, she was seriously busting my b-ahh, my butt. It was completely unfair and - oh thanks!" He grins as I throw him a pack of chocolate cupcakes. "I swear." He rips open the paper. "I wasn't angling for candy but. . ." He takes a huge bite and speaks through the crumbs. "The thing is - you know M? Monet St. Croix, I mean. I swear she's never come to that class prepared all year, not once. And if Ms. Frost calls on her, she starts answering in French, then pretends she did it by accident, and she's obviously stalling so she can - well, Kitty thinks she's mind-reading people for the answers." He scowls. "Rogue probably lets her. And the point is, she gets away with it. Ms. Frost hasn't given her a hard time, ever. But I screw up once and she's on me all day. How is that fair?"
"Well -" I say, trying to decide how Emma would approach the question. I realize that I have known her for a long time when I'm capable of thinking like her. "-assuming that Kitty's surmise about Monet is true, and that Emma knows it -" I would not be at all surprised if it is, and I know Emma too well to defend her from the charge of blatantly favoring telepaths among her students; she probably considers M's ability to cover for her cheating to be a lesson well-learned. "Ms. Frost would probably say that Monet is making the best use of her skill. One that you, unfortunately, do not possess -"
"And so I have to read some five hundred year old play that nobody cares about," Bobby says. Swallowing the last of his snack cake in one bite, he mutters darkly, "I just don’t think she - ahh -- likes me?"
Bobby pauses as he speaks, because there's a flash of brown hair in the room, as Kitty Pryde comes running through the wall, and a few tables, before stopping in the middle of Bobby's. She looks down at the solid wood that has her form surrounded, swings her legs up through the table top, and comes to rest on its surface. "Left my bag," she reports, pointing to the next desk. She keeps sitting beside Bobby, though, and reaches out to snatch the second cupcake from his packet. "You're not so special, you know, Drake." She takes a dainty bite out of the pastry, then shows him her chocolate-spotted teeth. "Ms. Frost doesn't like anybody." Turning to me, she says a little haughtily, "I always do the reading, and she hates to call on me, because I have opinions."
Bobby lowers his eyes as Kitty talks. Her slim waist is only a few inches from his face, and the leg she carelessly swings brushes against his knee. I can see some color rising in his cheeks, as he asks, "Why would she call on you? You always talk anyway."
"I'm not ashamed of speaking up in a class," Kitty answers. "That's what I'm there for, and my mom says that smart girls are under an obligation to contribute to academic dialogue because the education system is determined to stifle us - there's all kinds of studies, right, Dr. McCoy? - and you'd think Ms. Frost would appreciate that, but instead - Hey, are there more Twinkies?"
"Only a few Little Debbies," I apologize, going for the drawer. "I'll need to restock shortly." I bring a cake to Kitty, set it in her hand, and say gently, "Classroom management is difficult, Katherine. If you have a question about Emma's pedagogical goals, you might consider asking her."
"Uh-huh -" Kitty opens the cake, splits it, and hands half to Bobby. "Is it true she used to be a stripper?"
"Katherine --" I warn.
She bites into the cake. "I heard it from Illyana, who heard it from Peter - who will probably claim he never said it, 'cause he likes to act like he never says anything. But I know he heard it from his cousin who knows Captain Russia - who's like the Russian Captain America, and he's all buddy-buddy with the real Cap, now that the Cold War is over. And of course real-Cap and that inventor-moustache-guy Tony Stark are like this -" She raises a pair of crossed fingers - "So what Peter's cousin heard is that the only way Emma Frost got her job at the school she was at before this one is that Tony Stark picked her up in a strip club."
I cough. Kitty's eyes widen. "Hank, I swear, I'm just saying what I heard." She turns to Bobby. "Hey, do you think Mr. Summers knows?"
Bobby frowns. "What does Mr. Summers have to do with --?"
Kitty rolls her eyes. "Hello, she likes him. Last week, he came in the room while she was talking about 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' and she totally dropped her pen so that she would have to bend down and pick it up. I bet she was reading his mind to see if he was watching and -"
At that moment, there's a tap on the frame of the open door. All of us jump a little, as Emma strolls in, the tight fabric of her skirt swaying with her hips. "Why yes, Katherine," says Emma. "You spoke of me and I appeared."
"I wasn't saying anything." Kitty slides off the table and goes to get her bag. As she moves - bless her -- she slips the snack cake wrapper into the back pocket of her jeans. "Me and Bobby - and I - were just going to -"
"-review the second act of Hamlet, I hope," Emma says. "Perhaps confirming for Mr. Drake that the young prince did not, in fact have a friend named 'Frankenstein.'"
The young people wave to me, almost manage to smile at Emma, and sprint for the door.
Bobby's voice echoes in the hall. "Why did you tell me it was Frankenstein?"
"I was saying Guildenstern. I can't help it you suck at reading lips!"
Emma looks after them until their voices fade, then shakes her head and pulls up on the table where Kitty was seated. "Let me guess," she drawls, in her satiny, bored voice. "I stifle Katherine's genius. I deny Robert his constitutional right to come to class unprepared, I unfairly favor students with telepathic ability and - oh, yes. Once upon a time, men used to pay good money to watch me dance. Once one lays it out like that, even I am surprised that I have not been fired."
"They're kids, Emma."
"I know." She looks down and flicks some crumbs off the table where Kitty was eating. "Oh, yes, my mission. Scott wants to know whether you are, perchance, supplying the children with contraband -- what was the phrase? -- 'disposable comestibles.'" She smiles. "I believe he thinks he is sending a message to you in your own idiom."
"Emma," I say gravely. "Old friend. Has Scott dispatched you here to interrogate me?"
"Never," she answers. "In fact, he specifically does not want to know what I know, because he will assume either that I obtained it unethically - by reading your mind - or that you confided in me - and he won't ask me to betray a confidence. Therefore, I can only assume, Scott believes I will be able to pressure you into confessing."
"My conscience is clear." I spread my hands. "There's not a bit of junk food in this lab." This is true. Kitty ate the last one. I make a mental note to do a Twinkie run tonight.
"Fine, then." Emma stands and stretches. "It's not as though I am particularly invested in Scott Summers' overcompensating control-freak crusades against sugar and fun. I am merely humoring him."
"Yes, Emma," I say, straightening up the last of my paperwork. "And why are you doing that?"
Emma raises an eyebrow, as she backs toward the door. "Because it passes the time, of course. Why else?"
*
A couple hours later, I come into Scott's office and see Emma bent over his desk.
"I hardly see how that's relevant -" he says, as he signals for me to come in and close the door.
Emma goes on with the previous conversation. "Don't you? Monet St. Croix is a spoiled little girl, and one can fit everything she will ever know or care about Shakespeare into a thimble. But she does show a notable ability to improvise in a critical situation. Robert Drake, on the other hand, is utterly lacking in imagination. He is capable of understanding the concepts perfectly well, but if he doesn't believe that he's fully prepared, he freezes in place -"
" - No pun intended -" I interject.
"I'm quite serious," Emma complains. Pointing at Scott, she says, with an injured air. "He doesn’t take me seriously."
"Using students' performance in their Renaissance Literature class as a psychological profile of suitability for combat missions?" Scott answers. "No, I really don't take that seriously."
"Please," she sniffs, once again looking at me for support. "You think Xavier didn't do that with the lot of you?"
"Leave the Professor out of this," Scott suggests.
"Don't worry," Emma says with a teasing smile. "I'm not accusing you of lacking imagination. Some of the children, in fact, lead rather rich fantasy lives. Miss Pryde for instance."
"Ahh, yes. . ." says Scott. "You heard that then?" He rubs his neck, beneath the shirt collar. To me, he says, "Kitty's apparently been spreading some stories around - aided and abetted by Jublilee, I'm sure. About Emma."
"You mean the one about Tony Stark and the Hellfire Club?" Emma says innocently. Then her lip curls into a smile, and I realize she's set him up for this moment. "Well, darling, that one's true. You see, I was dancing -" She moves her hip in a demonstrative manner. "And I caught the eye of a dashing young millionaire, who offered to take me . . . .out. On the way to the car, I made some disparaging remark or other about the driver obviously having attended a public school. Tony came back with some of his pseudo-egalitarian arguments, which I ripped to shreds. We argued about educational policy for the whole limo ride, and by the time we got back to his place," she smiles, "he had offered me a grant to start my own school."
Scott frowns, and moves for his file drawer. "Your résumé says you have a master's degree."
"I do. I did. I was adjuncting at Hunter." Leaning her hip against Scott's desk again, she confides, "The pay was shit. Do you see my point?"
With Scott's eyes hidden behind his shaded glasses, it should be difficult to tell where his eyes are looking, but for some reason it never is. He says, "As much as I'd like it to be that men will go to great lengths to, ahh, extricate themselves from an argument with you --"
Emma lowers her gaze at him. "You were going to say, 'to get you to shut up.'"
Scott manages a smile. "But you weren't going to, so -" He looks hopefully up at me. "Hank, did you want something?"
Emma laughs and pushes away from his desk. "I can see where I am not wanted in any case. But for the record. I do not object to the students knowing and repeating that story. It demonstrates the salient point that no individual should have any shame at using all of the assets at her - or his - disposal."
Bending down at just the right angle, I suspect, to give him a good look at her cleavage, Emma retrieves her portfolio case from his desk and smiles at Scott, then me, on her way out the door.
For God's sake, leave the man alone, I think in her direction, trusting she'll catch it.
But it's fun, she answers, as the door shuts behind her.
Only for you, Emma.
Don't be so sure about that, Henry.
When I turn back to Scott, he is leaning back in his desk chair, hands behind his head, looking at a spot on the wall to the right of me. I glance over to see a charcoal drawing, one of Peter Rasputin's. It's of Scott and Jean, beside the boathouse. She's leaning back into his body, and he's bracing her with his hand. Jean's hair is still very long, falling around her shoulders, which makes the scene a decade old, at least. Peter must have copied it from a photograph; it looks familiar, but I don't know whether that is because I've seen the picture, or because I was there the day it was taken. There must have been so many days like that.
In the end, there are never enough.
"Hank!" Scott says suddenly. He gets to his feet and turns his back to me. He starts to go through papers. He knows I've caught him looking.
"Scott," I say. "If Emma's bothering you --?"
He turns back to me. "Who says she's bothering me?"
"If Emma's rather obvious attentions are bothering you -"
His arms cross his chest, a defensive posture. "Yes?"
"You can simply let her know that you aren't interested."
He looks down at his hands - away from me for a moment, "Funny story," he says, then looks up at last. "I can't do that. That is one thing that I really really cannot let Emma Frost know."
For a moment, I don't understand. Then I say, "Oh." There isn't any way to lie to Emma, once she's determined to find out the truth, and Scott isn't it stupid enough to try. "Well," I say. "This isn't a problem, is it? This can be good."
"I don't know how." He walks to the window, and I follow him. We can see the boathouse from here. "I loved Jean for more than half of my life. I don't know how to move past that."
There are many things that one might traditionally say, at a moment like this. I don't have the heart to say any of them. I place my paw, tentatively, on his shoulder. He tries to smile.
A few silent moments later, I leave him alone.
I decide not to say anything about the Twinkies.
*
In the course of a lifetime, one inevitably encounters various moral dilemmas, large and small, and the most difficult calculations may lie not in differentiating the right from the wrong, but the trivial from the important.
I know, for example, that I am now on the right side of the school's junk food policy. The drawers in the lab have been cleaned out, and all that remain to be disposed of are a few wrappers. I could certainly purchase more snack items for myself, and keep them in my own quarters. Not even Scott would begrudge me that. As for the students, it is not as though they have any particular right to come into the lab and help themselves to free food. It's not as though that is particularly important. And yet. . .if the infraction isn't very important, why deny the children a simple enjoyment?
In keeping with cliché, I must confess that I actually toss and turn in my bed, for some time, pondering this conundrum. At last I throw off the covers - it is a hot night - and decide on a late night trip to the Big-Lots store to replenish my supplies. I retrieve my wallet, reluctantly pull on a trenchcoat over my clothing - my form is rather conspicuous for an undercover mission - and go in search of my fedora. I decide at last that I must have left it in the lab.
The sight I encounter on entering confirms by intuition that I have made the right choice. There is Bobby, rooting through the drawer where the snack cakes are wont to be found, and indulging in a series of colorful oaths.
“Robert!" I scold. "Such language only reveals a lack of intelligence and creativity.”
Bobby makes a face. “Yeah, well, intelligence and creativity don’t matter when there’s no more food.” He kicks an empty box across the room.
“Indeed," I agree. "This is why I have prepared to journey into the city to purchase -" I remember Emma's words, "Disposable comestibles." To his puzzled look, I elaborate, “Twinkies. Would you care to accompany me?”
Bobby's eyes brighten. “Can we take the jet?”
Young people can be rather delightful.
*
Since it is hard to remove the Blackbird from the premises inconspicuously - and since it would be difficult to park it at Big Lots -- we compromise and take one of the convertibles that belongs to the school. My own hybrid would have the advantage of near-silence, but I suspect Bobby would prefer a vehicle with more "cool points." So instead, I put the car in neutral and let him steer as I push it out of the driveway. We ride along the road with the wind in our hair, load up at Big Lots with Hostess bulk packs, and stop at the video store to rent both Evil Dead 1 and Evil Dead 2.
"The second one is a remake," Bobby explains, as we carry the packages back into the mansion. "It isn't a sequel, so some people would say it doesn't matter if you watch them in order, but you know, to see the evolution of the technique, it's really interesting." He reaches the side door to the lab before I do, and waits for me to take out the key. I have to set down some of the boxes to do this, and there is a good bit of shifting and trading off packages as we go about it. Meanwhile, Bobby is explaining the oeuvre of someone named Sam Raimi. "See, the second one kind of parodies the first one, and in order to really get what he's doing --" He turns back to the entrance hall at the same moment the light goes on and a throat clears. "Oh, crap," says Bobby. "Uhh, hi, Cyclops?"
"Iceman. Beast," Cyclops says crisply - and the use of the battle name seems appropriate. He's wearing glasses, not his visor, but the stance is one of a man ready to lead troops into combat. "Please explain to me what you're doing." I open my mouth and Cyclops points. "In five words or less. Two syllables, each. Max."
"Of course," I say, with my best open-armed gesture and innocent smile. "Twinkie run."
"Twinkie run," Scott repeats, his pose relaxing suddenly. He raises a hand to his forehead. "That's your way of saying that I basically have no control over anything that goes on here."
"You don't have to answer that, Henry." Another light flicks on, and Emma emerges from the hallway. "That's exactly what I have been attempting to explain to him. But Scott - " She steps forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. "-Scott isn't very good at accepting a lack of control."
Scott looks down at her hand, as though he's frozen in place for a moment. Then he smiles, and his arm slips around her waist. "Right, yes, you keep telling me." He leans in and kisses the top of her head, then gives a shy smile to me and Bobby. "It's been an interesting day."
"Oh," Bobby says, "Okay, ahh -" He looks at me, then Scott, then Emma, then back at me. "Am I in trouble?"
I shrug, then ask Scott, "Am I?"
We all wait for him, for a moment, and then he makes a sound that's like a laugh, and I wonder whether he has had a little bit to drink. "It occurs to me," Scott says, "that this probably isn't really all that important."
"Now it occurs to him." Emma says, then adds, in a confiding tone. "Scott's had a little bit to drink."
"Hey!" he protests, then laughs again. "All right, all right. You two -" He points at me, then Bobby. "-have a little something on us right now. We -" he looks down at the boxes of food. "-have a little something on you. So I'm just now thinking about - from a strategic point of view - the best thing for all concerned might be to reach a suitable compromise --"
"Well, Mr. Summers," says Bobby. "We were just about to watch a couple movies. And eat some, umm --" He points at the Twinkies. I kneel down, slit the film on the box, and put out a double pack as an offering.
Emma reaches out and takes it, then holds it out to Scott. "What do you say, Mr. Summers? You could stand to eat something."
He looks, skeptically, but tears the plastic. "I will if you will." Taking one cake, he hands the other to Emma.
She pulls the bright yellow Twinkie off of the paper backing and lifts it, turning it around in her pale manicured fingers. "Mine's broken," she announces, and attempts to hand it back to Scott. "This white - goo, or whatever it is? It's coming out of the back."
"That's what they do," Bobby assures her. "They're wonderful."
"Ahh," Emma says, still looking at the thing distrustfully. She lifts it to her mouth, takes a tiny bite, and chews carefully. Emma's lips purse, she swallows visibly, and then her tongue darts out and licks a bit of creme off the side of her face. "You missed a spot," Scott says, and reaches out to brush it off. She lets his hand linger then, obviously giving up on eating the thing gracefully or sexily, downs it in a couple bites. "I suppose," she says, with a look at all of us, "that there is a moral to this little escapade?"
Scott shrugs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?"
"No," Bobby says firmly. "Twinkies make everything better."
And tonight, at least, we decide to believe that they do.
END
Author: likeadeuce, AKA Karabair
Summary: Junk food is banned from Xavier's School for the Gifted. Hank McCoy, a new member of the faculty, decides to bend the rules for the sake of his students. Meanwhile, fellow new teacher Emma Frost creates her own set of problems for Scott Summers.
Rating: PG
Fandom:X-men movieverse.
Thanks to: resolute for beta, harmonyangel for letting me babble about this, and for helping me know Henry McCoy well enough that I had the confidence to write it. And while I'm at it, I may as well thank sionnain for basically stealing her Emma Frost.
Spoilers: Spoilers for the first two X-men movies. Since the original story was written before X3, I've disregarded third-movie canon.
Original story: On the Road with Disposable Comestibles by escritoireazul
Twinkie Run (The Stars and Garters Remix)
After dinner, four nights in a row, the students at Xavier's School for the Gifted take advantage of one of the day's few unstructured hours to disperse and socialize with their friends, peers, and classmates. After dinner, four nights in a row, Robert Drake appears in the doorway of my lab, hands in his pockets, slouching as though he has no idea how he happened to find his way down here. Four nights in a row, Bobby is by himself.
It doesn't take a brilliant scientific researcher to detect a pattern of behavior.
"Dr. McCoy?" he asks.
"Robert!" I say, rising from my microscope. I spread my arms in an open friendly gesture, letting my voice boom in its best welcoming and avuncular manner. "What errand entices you into the catacombs of the mansion on this magnificent evening?" As long as Bobby maintains the fiction that he is simply down here for a stroll, that he could easily have ended up in half a dozen other places - a friend's room, or the Professor's office, or Ms. Frost's - I will pretend not to notice that he has been down here every night this week. When the boy is ready to talk, I will be ready to listen. Until then, I smile and head toward the supply cabinet.
"I was thinking," Bobby begins. "-- maybe you had some, ahh -"
"Some of these?" I reach into the cabinet, grab a four-pack of Hostess Twinkies, and toss them in Bobby's direction. His eyes light up and for a moment I can hear Scott's disapproving words in my mind - 'In loco parentis, Hank.' But I know the students here get a good basic diet, and I can't imagine any actual parent objecting to an occasional bit of processed sugar. Besides, I can hardly begrudge the boy a vice that I so frequently indulge myself.
I remove a package of the bright yellow pastries and set them in front of me on the counter, eagerly rubbing my hands. When my secondary mutation first manifested, leaving me in my current form that seems more beast than man, my employer at the time - employer and old MIT-classmate, Tony Stark - hired a corporate consultant in order to help me find ways to "best optimize my communication style." After spending some time listening to me talk and observing my interactions, she suggested that, rather than trying to hide or deny my appearance, I would best be suited by adopting gestures that exaggerated my behavior, to help me seem lovable and harmless. "Like a teddy bear," she said, "Or Burt Lahr as the Cowardly Lion."
This approach - while not appropriate to all occasions - has usually served me well in interacting with the students. Bobby watches me tear into the wrapper and grins, almost giggling.
He rips into his own snack cakes with equal brio. As he licks the crumbs from the plastic - a well-behaved boy, appreciating the permission to make a mess -- he mumbles, "Thanks, Dr. McCoy. I knew you'd come through."
"Please, Robert, call me Hank. When I hear 'Doctor McCoy' I want to reach for my tricorder." Bobby lets out a little laugh and I smile at him. "Thank you for not making me feel absolutely decrepit. I wasn't sure that young people still watched the original Star Trek."
"Oh, yeah," Bobby assures me. "They show it on the Game Show Network now, and they run this live computer-chat along the bottom of the screen? Just, like, making fun of the outfits and the cheesy effects and stuff. And sometimes we'd get online and try to see if we could get our comments in there, but -" He stops and looks down. "John, you know, he'd always type swear words, so of course they weren't going to - Anyway." He crumples the wrapper in his hand.
"Robert -" I begin, after a moment's silence. "Do you --?" He looks up at me, and I can't finish the question. Does he miss his best friend, who abandoned the X-men during a mission to join one of the team's greatest enemies? It isn't fair to ask the boy that, when I can see the answer in his eyes. "Do you want to watch a movie?" I say instead. "I was just about to put my work away and sit down with a DVD." He looks up with hope. I wince and hesitate, remembering what I have out from Netflix at the moment. "There are subtitles - You might not like it. It's Japanese."
"Samurai?" he says eagerly.
I think of Tokyo Story, the multi-generational family drama that I had been planning to rewatch. "Not exactly. Perhaps - is there something in your own collection that you would like to view instead?"
"If you like Japanese, I just downloaded a copy of 'The Grudge.' Not the one with Buffy." Bobby rolls his eyes. "The original. It's a lot scarier. We can hook my laptop up to the TV down here and -" He hesitates. "Only if you want."
"I can't think of anything better," I tell him sincerely. "I'll bring the Twinkies."
*
Scott Summers looks around the table at the senior faculty. "Somebody," he says with a scowl, "has been bringing junk food into the mansion. Lots of it. You all know the rules. Each student can have one small package from home a month, and can spend five dollars at the snack bar every Friday. That's it. The Professor feels strongly about this issue, and we need to get it cleared up before he and Logan get back from Muir Island."
Scott is not actually scowling at me, of course. He should be scowling at me, but he isn't, and I actually feel more guilty than I would if he were to accuse me. Scott doesn't suspect me, because he believes I am above reproach.
Emma Frost, who knows full well that I am not, pushes the designer glasses up the bridge of her nose, focusing her icy gaze on Scott, and drawls, "So - why do we care?"
"Well, Emma," he answers. "If students have junk food available to them, they'll skip meals, they'll hoard food, and they won't eat the healthy diet we've prepared for them."
I can't help thinking, It's a good thing I have all those snack cakes stashed down in the lab. Emma shoots a quick look in my direction, and gives that too-pleased smile she is so fond of, leading me to suspect that I was thinking it too loud.
"And again I ask, so what?" Emma repeats. "If children choose to get fat, they will get fat. It is not in our control."
Ororo, sitting between the two of them, looks across the table at me, and purses her lips in an expression I can read as There they go again. I nod at her, while feeling half-responsible for the situation, myself. The Professor had called me after Jean Grey's death at Alkali Lake, asking if I knew of any likely candidates to fill out the faculty at the school. I not only volunteered myself, but recommended Emma. It's a choice I don't regret - she's very good at her job - but I might have anticipated that she and Scott would mix like oil and water.
"That's exactly my point," Scott retorts to Emma. "It is in our control. When we take these students in, we take responsibility for their entire lives, including their health. Obesity is a national epidemic."
"So is anorexia," Emma answers lazily. "When's the last time you had a meal?"
Scott breathes in deeply before answering her. "I can feed myself, thank you," he says, looking down at his agenda.. "And the meal plans were approved by a physician. And the Professor is on my side. Next item." He can't resist a last look at Emma. "Unless you have some objection."
"I don't even care. It's certainly not as though I'm going to eat. . ." With a coy look at me, she says, "Henry, dear, what on earth is in a -" She speaks the word as though it's in another language. "Twinkie?"
"Sugar," I answer promptly. "Enriched flour, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, polysorbate 60 and yellow dye #5."
Ororo screws up her mouth. "You just know that because it's the line in Die Hard."
"I have never had the distinct pleasure of viewing Die Hard," I assure her. "And I certainly do not have the dialogue memorized. I know that because I am a scientist."
"Stark Industries has a line in junk food now?" Emma is eyeing me with a bigger smile than ever, and I wonder if she's thinking about blowing my cover.
Scott just glares. "If we can just move to the last item on the agenda -"
"Yes, let's," Emma agreed. She stretches her arms in the air so that her breasts strain against the low neckline of her sleeveless white top. "The next item. Dress code for female faculty."
"Wha --?" Ororo crosses her arms indignantly. Her own flimsy blouse doesn't leave much more to the imagination than Emma's.
"It's true," says Emma. "Rollneck sweaters and sensible shoes for all of us." Scott makes a choking noise of protest, and Emma says, in a honey-sweet voice, "Oh, forgive me. You didn't actually say that out loud, did you?" She leans back in her chair and announces to the room, "He was thinking it."
Scott's face, for a moment, is a mask of mute rage, and then he says, "Yes, I was. Thinking it. And if I was thinking it, you can imagine what a sixteen-year-old boy would -"
"If you were thinking it -" She curls her lip, and says theatrically. "Scott Summers, you see, was born with the soul of a middle-aged monastic and if a woman is capable of making him notice. . ."
"All right!" Scott jumps to his feet. "You know what? This meeting is over. So if you all want to get out of my office." He shakes his head. "But I'm serious about this thing with the sweets. Wherever they're coming from, it has to stop."
*
"I don't think Ms. Frost likes me," Bobby sighs, looking plaintively at the pile of books on the work table in front of him. The other students tore out of the lab as soon as I dismissed them, but Bobby, as per his usual habit, has hung back to talk to me. He looks more worn than usual, circles under his eyes as though he hasn't been sleeping.
"What did Em- Ms. Frost do?" I ask.
He shakes his head. "She just gets all over my case. I'm always caught up - well, usually - when I go in there. But like today -- one day, ever -- I haven't done the reading - and she reads minds. She has to know, right? She starts asking me questions, and I try to pass - I tell her I haven't done the reading, and she makes me read it out, in class, and she keeps asking me what it means."
He shakes his head, and I go to my desk and start rummaging in the drawer.
"You should have been there, Hank, she was seriously busting my b-ahh, my butt. It was completely unfair and - oh thanks!" He grins as I throw him a pack of chocolate cupcakes. "I swear." He rips open the paper. "I wasn't angling for candy but. . ." He takes a huge bite and speaks through the crumbs. "The thing is - you know M? Monet St. Croix, I mean. I swear she's never come to that class prepared all year, not once. And if Ms. Frost calls on her, she starts answering in French, then pretends she did it by accident, and she's obviously stalling so she can - well, Kitty thinks she's mind-reading people for the answers." He scowls. "Rogue probably lets her. And the point is, she gets away with it. Ms. Frost hasn't given her a hard time, ever. But I screw up once and she's on me all day. How is that fair?"
"Well -" I say, trying to decide how Emma would approach the question. I realize that I have known her for a long time when I'm capable of thinking like her. "-assuming that Kitty's surmise about Monet is true, and that Emma knows it -" I would not be at all surprised if it is, and I know Emma too well to defend her from the charge of blatantly favoring telepaths among her students; she probably considers M's ability to cover for her cheating to be a lesson well-learned. "Ms. Frost would probably say that Monet is making the best use of her skill. One that you, unfortunately, do not possess -"
"And so I have to read some five hundred year old play that nobody cares about," Bobby says. Swallowing the last of his snack cake in one bite, he mutters darkly, "I just don’t think she - ahh -- likes me?"
Bobby pauses as he speaks, because there's a flash of brown hair in the room, as Kitty Pryde comes running through the wall, and a few tables, before stopping in the middle of Bobby's. She looks down at the solid wood that has her form surrounded, swings her legs up through the table top, and comes to rest on its surface. "Left my bag," she reports, pointing to the next desk. She keeps sitting beside Bobby, though, and reaches out to snatch the second cupcake from his packet. "You're not so special, you know, Drake." She takes a dainty bite out of the pastry, then shows him her chocolate-spotted teeth. "Ms. Frost doesn't like anybody." Turning to me, she says a little haughtily, "I always do the reading, and she hates to call on me, because I have opinions."
Bobby lowers his eyes as Kitty talks. Her slim waist is only a few inches from his face, and the leg she carelessly swings brushes against his knee. I can see some color rising in his cheeks, as he asks, "Why would she call on you? You always talk anyway."
"I'm not ashamed of speaking up in a class," Kitty answers. "That's what I'm there for, and my mom says that smart girls are under an obligation to contribute to academic dialogue because the education system is determined to stifle us - there's all kinds of studies, right, Dr. McCoy? - and you'd think Ms. Frost would appreciate that, but instead - Hey, are there more Twinkies?"
"Only a few Little Debbies," I apologize, going for the drawer. "I'll need to restock shortly." I bring a cake to Kitty, set it in her hand, and say gently, "Classroom management is difficult, Katherine. If you have a question about Emma's pedagogical goals, you might consider asking her."
"Uh-huh -" Kitty opens the cake, splits it, and hands half to Bobby. "Is it true she used to be a stripper?"
"Katherine --" I warn.
She bites into the cake. "I heard it from Illyana, who heard it from Peter - who will probably claim he never said it, 'cause he likes to act like he never says anything. But I know he heard it from his cousin who knows Captain Russia - who's like the Russian Captain America, and he's all buddy-buddy with the real Cap, now that the Cold War is over. And of course real-Cap and that inventor-moustache-guy Tony Stark are like this -" She raises a pair of crossed fingers - "So what Peter's cousin heard is that the only way Emma Frost got her job at the school she was at before this one is that Tony Stark picked her up in a strip club."
I cough. Kitty's eyes widen. "Hank, I swear, I'm just saying what I heard." She turns to Bobby. "Hey, do you think Mr. Summers knows?"
Bobby frowns. "What does Mr. Summers have to do with --?"
Kitty rolls her eyes. "Hello, she likes him. Last week, he came in the room while she was talking about 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,' and she totally dropped her pen so that she would have to bend down and pick it up. I bet she was reading his mind to see if he was watching and -"
At that moment, there's a tap on the frame of the open door. All of us jump a little, as Emma strolls in, the tight fabric of her skirt swaying with her hips. "Why yes, Katherine," says Emma. "You spoke of me and I appeared."
"I wasn't saying anything." Kitty slides off the table and goes to get her bag. As she moves - bless her -- she slips the snack cake wrapper into the back pocket of her jeans. "Me and Bobby - and I - were just going to -"
"-review the second act of Hamlet, I hope," Emma says. "Perhaps confirming for Mr. Drake that the young prince did not, in fact have a friend named 'Frankenstein.'"
The young people wave to me, almost manage to smile at Emma, and sprint for the door.
Bobby's voice echoes in the hall. "Why did you tell me it was Frankenstein?"
"I was saying Guildenstern. I can't help it you suck at reading lips!"
Emma looks after them until their voices fade, then shakes her head and pulls up on the table where Kitty was seated. "Let me guess," she drawls, in her satiny, bored voice. "I stifle Katherine's genius. I deny Robert his constitutional right to come to class unprepared, I unfairly favor students with telepathic ability and - oh, yes. Once upon a time, men used to pay good money to watch me dance. Once one lays it out like that, even I am surprised that I have not been fired."
"They're kids, Emma."
"I know." She looks down and flicks some crumbs off the table where Kitty was eating. "Oh, yes, my mission. Scott wants to know whether you are, perchance, supplying the children with contraband -- what was the phrase? -- 'disposable comestibles.'" She smiles. "I believe he thinks he is sending a message to you in your own idiom."
"Emma," I say gravely. "Old friend. Has Scott dispatched you here to interrogate me?"
"Never," she answers. "In fact, he specifically does not want to know what I know, because he will assume either that I obtained it unethically - by reading your mind - or that you confided in me - and he won't ask me to betray a confidence. Therefore, I can only assume, Scott believes I will be able to pressure you into confessing."
"My conscience is clear." I spread my hands. "There's not a bit of junk food in this lab." This is true. Kitty ate the last one. I make a mental note to do a Twinkie run tonight.
"Fine, then." Emma stands and stretches. "It's not as though I am particularly invested in Scott Summers' overcompensating control-freak crusades against sugar and fun. I am merely humoring him."
"Yes, Emma," I say, straightening up the last of my paperwork. "And why are you doing that?"
Emma raises an eyebrow, as she backs toward the door. "Because it passes the time, of course. Why else?"
*
A couple hours later, I come into Scott's office and see Emma bent over his desk.
"I hardly see how that's relevant -" he says, as he signals for me to come in and close the door.
Emma goes on with the previous conversation. "Don't you? Monet St. Croix is a spoiled little girl, and one can fit everything she will ever know or care about Shakespeare into a thimble. But she does show a notable ability to improvise in a critical situation. Robert Drake, on the other hand, is utterly lacking in imagination. He is capable of understanding the concepts perfectly well, but if he doesn't believe that he's fully prepared, he freezes in place -"
" - No pun intended -" I interject.
"I'm quite serious," Emma complains. Pointing at Scott, she says, with an injured air. "He doesn’t take me seriously."
"Using students' performance in their Renaissance Literature class as a psychological profile of suitability for combat missions?" Scott answers. "No, I really don't take that seriously."
"Please," she sniffs, once again looking at me for support. "You think Xavier didn't do that with the lot of you?"
"Leave the Professor out of this," Scott suggests.
"Don't worry," Emma says with a teasing smile. "I'm not accusing you of lacking imagination. Some of the children, in fact, lead rather rich fantasy lives. Miss Pryde for instance."
"Ahh, yes. . ." says Scott. "You heard that then?" He rubs his neck, beneath the shirt collar. To me, he says, "Kitty's apparently been spreading some stories around - aided and abetted by Jublilee, I'm sure. About Emma."
"You mean the one about Tony Stark and the Hellfire Club?" Emma says innocently. Then her lip curls into a smile, and I realize she's set him up for this moment. "Well, darling, that one's true. You see, I was dancing -" She moves her hip in a demonstrative manner. "And I caught the eye of a dashing young millionaire, who offered to take me . . . .out. On the way to the car, I made some disparaging remark or other about the driver obviously having attended a public school. Tony came back with some of his pseudo-egalitarian arguments, which I ripped to shreds. We argued about educational policy for the whole limo ride, and by the time we got back to his place," she smiles, "he had offered me a grant to start my own school."
Scott frowns, and moves for his file drawer. "Your résumé says you have a master's degree."
"I do. I did. I was adjuncting at Hunter." Leaning her hip against Scott's desk again, she confides, "The pay was shit. Do you see my point?"
With Scott's eyes hidden behind his shaded glasses, it should be difficult to tell where his eyes are looking, but for some reason it never is. He says, "As much as I'd like it to be that men will go to great lengths to, ahh, extricate themselves from an argument with you --"
Emma lowers her gaze at him. "You were going to say, 'to get you to shut up.'"
Scott manages a smile. "But you weren't going to, so -" He looks hopefully up at me. "Hank, did you want something?"
Emma laughs and pushes away from his desk. "I can see where I am not wanted in any case. But for the record. I do not object to the students knowing and repeating that story. It demonstrates the salient point that no individual should have any shame at using all of the assets at her - or his - disposal."
Bending down at just the right angle, I suspect, to give him a good look at her cleavage, Emma retrieves her portfolio case from his desk and smiles at Scott, then me, on her way out the door.
For God's sake, leave the man alone, I think in her direction, trusting she'll catch it.
But it's fun, she answers, as the door shuts behind her.
Only for you, Emma.
Don't be so sure about that, Henry.
When I turn back to Scott, he is leaning back in his desk chair, hands behind his head, looking at a spot on the wall to the right of me. I glance over to see a charcoal drawing, one of Peter Rasputin's. It's of Scott and Jean, beside the boathouse. She's leaning back into his body, and he's bracing her with his hand. Jean's hair is still very long, falling around her shoulders, which makes the scene a decade old, at least. Peter must have copied it from a photograph; it looks familiar, but I don't know whether that is because I've seen the picture, or because I was there the day it was taken. There must have been so many days like that.
In the end, there are never enough.
"Hank!" Scott says suddenly. He gets to his feet and turns his back to me. He starts to go through papers. He knows I've caught him looking.
"Scott," I say. "If Emma's bothering you --?"
He turns back to me. "Who says she's bothering me?"
"If Emma's rather obvious attentions are bothering you -"
His arms cross his chest, a defensive posture. "Yes?"
"You can simply let her know that you aren't interested."
He looks down at his hands - away from me for a moment, "Funny story," he says, then looks up at last. "I can't do that. That is one thing that I really really cannot let Emma Frost know."
For a moment, I don't understand. Then I say, "Oh." There isn't any way to lie to Emma, once she's determined to find out the truth, and Scott isn't it stupid enough to try. "Well," I say. "This isn't a problem, is it? This can be good."
"I don't know how." He walks to the window, and I follow him. We can see the boathouse from here. "I loved Jean for more than half of my life. I don't know how to move past that."
There are many things that one might traditionally say, at a moment like this. I don't have the heart to say any of them. I place my paw, tentatively, on his shoulder. He tries to smile.
A few silent moments later, I leave him alone.
I decide not to say anything about the Twinkies.
*
In the course of a lifetime, one inevitably encounters various moral dilemmas, large and small, and the most difficult calculations may lie not in differentiating the right from the wrong, but the trivial from the important.
I know, for example, that I am now on the right side of the school's junk food policy. The drawers in the lab have been cleaned out, and all that remain to be disposed of are a few wrappers. I could certainly purchase more snack items for myself, and keep them in my own quarters. Not even Scott would begrudge me that. As for the students, it is not as though they have any particular right to come into the lab and help themselves to free food. It's not as though that is particularly important. And yet. . .if the infraction isn't very important, why deny the children a simple enjoyment?
In keeping with cliché, I must confess that I actually toss and turn in my bed, for some time, pondering this conundrum. At last I throw off the covers - it is a hot night - and decide on a late night trip to the Big-Lots store to replenish my supplies. I retrieve my wallet, reluctantly pull on a trenchcoat over my clothing - my form is rather conspicuous for an undercover mission - and go in search of my fedora. I decide at last that I must have left it in the lab.
The sight I encounter on entering confirms by intuition that I have made the right choice. There is Bobby, rooting through the drawer where the snack cakes are wont to be found, and indulging in a series of colorful oaths.
“Robert!" I scold. "Such language only reveals a lack of intelligence and creativity.”
Bobby makes a face. “Yeah, well, intelligence and creativity don’t matter when there’s no more food.” He kicks an empty box across the room.
“Indeed," I agree. "This is why I have prepared to journey into the city to purchase -" I remember Emma's words, "Disposable comestibles." To his puzzled look, I elaborate, “Twinkies. Would you care to accompany me?”
Bobby's eyes brighten. “Can we take the jet?”
Young people can be rather delightful.
*
Since it is hard to remove the Blackbird from the premises inconspicuously - and since it would be difficult to park it at Big Lots -- we compromise and take one of the convertibles that belongs to the school. My own hybrid would have the advantage of near-silence, but I suspect Bobby would prefer a vehicle with more "cool points." So instead, I put the car in neutral and let him steer as I push it out of the driveway. We ride along the road with the wind in our hair, load up at Big Lots with Hostess bulk packs, and stop at the video store to rent both Evil Dead 1 and Evil Dead 2.
"The second one is a remake," Bobby explains, as we carry the packages back into the mansion. "It isn't a sequel, so some people would say it doesn't matter if you watch them in order, but you know, to see the evolution of the technique, it's really interesting." He reaches the side door to the lab before I do, and waits for me to take out the key. I have to set down some of the boxes to do this, and there is a good bit of shifting and trading off packages as we go about it. Meanwhile, Bobby is explaining the oeuvre of someone named Sam Raimi. "See, the second one kind of parodies the first one, and in order to really get what he's doing --" He turns back to the entrance hall at the same moment the light goes on and a throat clears. "Oh, crap," says Bobby. "Uhh, hi, Cyclops?"
"Iceman. Beast," Cyclops says crisply - and the use of the battle name seems appropriate. He's wearing glasses, not his visor, but the stance is one of a man ready to lead troops into combat. "Please explain to me what you're doing." I open my mouth and Cyclops points. "In five words or less. Two syllables, each. Max."
"Of course," I say, with my best open-armed gesture and innocent smile. "Twinkie run."
"Twinkie run," Scott repeats, his pose relaxing suddenly. He raises a hand to his forehead. "That's your way of saying that I basically have no control over anything that goes on here."
"You don't have to answer that, Henry." Another light flicks on, and Emma emerges from the hallway. "That's exactly what I have been attempting to explain to him. But Scott - " She steps forward and puts a hand on his shoulder. "-Scott isn't very good at accepting a lack of control."
Scott looks down at her hand, as though he's frozen in place for a moment. Then he smiles, and his arm slips around her waist. "Right, yes, you keep telling me." He leans in and kisses the top of her head, then gives a shy smile to me and Bobby. "It's been an interesting day."
"Oh," Bobby says, "Okay, ahh -" He looks at me, then Scott, then Emma, then back at me. "Am I in trouble?"
I shrug, then ask Scott, "Am I?"
We all wait for him, for a moment, and then he makes a sound that's like a laugh, and I wonder whether he has had a little bit to drink. "It occurs to me," Scott says, "that this probably isn't really all that important."
"Now it occurs to him." Emma says, then adds, in a confiding tone. "Scott's had a little bit to drink."
"Hey!" he protests, then laughs again. "All right, all right. You two -" He points at me, then Bobby. "-have a little something on us right now. We -" he looks down at the boxes of food. "-have a little something on you. So I'm just now thinking about - from a strategic point of view - the best thing for all concerned might be to reach a suitable compromise --"
"Well, Mr. Summers," says Bobby. "We were just about to watch a couple movies. And eat some, umm --" He points at the Twinkies. I kneel down, slit the film on the box, and put out a double pack as an offering.
Emma reaches out and takes it, then holds it out to Scott. "What do you say, Mr. Summers? You could stand to eat something."
He looks, skeptically, but tears the plastic. "I will if you will." Taking one cake, he hands the other to Emma.
She pulls the bright yellow Twinkie off of the paper backing and lifts it, turning it around in her pale manicured fingers. "Mine's broken," she announces, and attempts to hand it back to Scott. "This white - goo, or whatever it is? It's coming out of the back."
"That's what they do," Bobby assures her. "They're wonderful."
"Ahh," Emma says, still looking at the thing distrustfully. She lifts it to her mouth, takes a tiny bite, and chews carefully. Emma's lips purse, she swallows visibly, and then her tongue darts out and licks a bit of creme off the side of her face. "You missed a spot," Scott says, and reaches out to brush it off. She lets his hand linger then, obviously giving up on eating the thing gracefully or sexily, downs it in a couple bites. "I suppose," she says, with a look at all of us, "that there is a moral to this little escapade?"
Scott shrugs, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?"
"No," Bobby says firmly. "Twinkies make everything better."
And tonight, at least, we decide to believe that they do.
END