ssummerscyclops

[ssummerscyclops]

prjectx10​:

xx

Logan grinned. “Fine, you didn’t miss me, and you’re glad I’m not Stark, got it.” he rolled his own eyes now at that but didn’t say anything else, Scott had his own issues that Logan didn’t really like touching upon, that was a whole can of worms but if he wanted to open it up, fine, he’d sit and listen. Yes, even Logan could get along with Scott some times, he counted him among his friends after all despite some… questionable leadership choices over the years. 

“It’s not gonna go to hell again.” Logan shook his head. “because we’re all supposed to be this huge team and have each others backs. You just have to try and mingle with the rest of them, get to know them, there’s some good guys around here.” He tried to reassure him. 

“No.” Logan shook his head. “But I have to be okay with it and if they do drop the castle on us, at least we can band together against them. Unlike them, did you know the Avengers fought each other over the Accords?” he raised an eyebrow at the information he shared. “then again, some of us just pissed off to Genosha, so the x-men are no better.”

----

it’s not going to go to hell again. logan says the words as if their very lives haven’t been defined by all of the times the world has indeed gone to hell around them—as if scott’s mind is the only one continually creating and ending apocalypses with the rising and setting of the sun. how, he wants to ask—how can you possibly believe that after all the years we’ve spent showing up too late to save everyone, after all of the blood and bones that heal and then break in new places, after all of the pieces of themselves that they’ve willingly carved away that can never grow back? he’s not sure he really wants the answer—he’s not sure if belief like that is something that he can hold inside of himself without killing it. 

“are we really no better if we didn’t have another choice?” scott mirrors logan’s expression, an eyebrow raised behind his sunglasses, his arms folded across his chest. “the isa, the avengers—they’ve always been afraid of us. if most of us hadn’t fucked off to genosha we would have been the first ones tossed in ISA cells for not signing.” he sighs, rubs a hand over his temple before dragging it through his hair. “we all put our trust in charles at one point or another—i can’t blame anyone for doing it now, even if i don’t agree with him.” 

logan says that he has to be okay with it, and scott can’t help but wonder why—how many times has the enemy of their enemy actually come through to act like a friend when it mattered? why are steve rogers and wonder woman the only ones who can mount a proper fight against the accords—and better yet, can two gleaming symbols of hope like the two of them really know the full cost, the nature of this kind of suffering like the x-men do?

scott bites down hard on his bottom lip, and exhales slowly—logan is probably right, sowing dissention among the ranks is hardly useful at this stage, but that doesn’t mean it sits inside of scott easily, doesn’t mean that he doesn’t get the distinct acrid taste of bile in the back of his throat. “yeah, well, you know me—i’m known for how well i get along with others, and my infinite well of trust.” 

[ssummerscyclops]

Jacqui Germain

[ssummerscyclops]

I have stood here before Inside the pouring rain With the world turning circles Running ‘round my brain I guess I’m always hoping That you’ll end this reign But it’s my destiny To be the king of pain

original midi at https://www.angelfire.com/wv/weirdnesscentral/images/suede.mid

[ssummerscyclops]

emberbcrn​:

- 

she knows he had. he must have. she hadn’t been dead long but then how would she know what it was to be left behind? how would she know how it felt to watch the person you loved slip away like that, like hot sand through aching fingertips? she was the one running and turning away and dying, always the one who hurt the others. she hadn’t meant to, as empty a promise as that was. even now, she could swear his gaze was worse than any radiation poisoning.

jean swallows hard, resists the urge to shift under the look he was levelling at her. considering she’s the telepath in this encounter, she feels cut to the quick, flayed apart under his careful examination and she wants to turn on her heels - leave as fast as she had arrived - but jean grey is not a coward. she’s many things. she’s not that. no matter how many times she has to remind herself. and then scott speaks again and, inexplicably, there’s heat prickling in the corners of her eyes, traitorous tears springing up in the wake of his easy recitation.

less than thirty words and she feels undone. she remembers every time she had needled at him to read it, to watch the movie with her, to listen to her read it to him. she had wanted to fold him into that world so badly, to envelope him into the pages of her favourite novel and keep him close like a pressed flower.

and now he recites the words back to her with inflection so similar to her own that her heart soars before it crashes again, aching and empty in a hollow chest, and all she can do is offer him a smile, a gentle twist of her lips while she forces the sudden urge to sob back into the deepest recesses of her mind where even xavier himself could not find it if he went looking. because his cadence was pitch perfect, his recitation matching every beat, but missing the crucial part. admire and love you. “colour me impressed,” she manages, hoping her voice doesn’t sound as thick as it feels.

and if she wasn’t ready to cry before, the way he averts his gaze would have done the trick. god, how had they gotten here? there had been a time - shining and halcyon - where they had seemed like a golden couple on top of the world. damaged, yes - how could they not be? - but alive and glowing. those guileless kids were gone now. now there was just scott and jean, tasting of war and ash and the wreckage of something that once felt as solid as the ground beneath their feet. “i know,” she whispers. she always has known. “you’ve come to fight because you don’t know how to exist in peace,” she says and it isn’t a question. her hands ache to reach for him.

that isn’t who they are anymore.

----

god—he hadn’t meant to do this. 

he hadn’t meant to show up here and make himself a reminder of what was better left buried in salted earth in new york—to ruin the life and happiness that jean had carved out for herself here, that he couldn’t give her. but this is what he does, this is who he is—the pain and the misery got into the marrow of his bones when he was young, and charles xavier taught him how to weaponize it, to make sure that he could only love other people by razing the earth around them. he’d loved alex so hard after getting him back that he’d had to put physical distance between them, just to feel like he could breathe—and jean—after losing her—it had been impossible to separate the grief from the parts of their relationship he remembered soft around the edges, with sunlight streaming in from an unseen source, from between the two of them. 

he should leave—the library, the mousehole, sokovia itself, probably—but he’s rooted by the fact that yet again, he’s the one responsible for making her eyes glassy.

he swallows, shakes his head and lets his gaze fall to the floor, to a point just over her shoulder. “i’m—i’m so sorry, jean.” he says on an exhale of breath. “i didn’t mean to make this hard for you—and i’m not here because i don’t respect the fact that you asked for space—“ he drags a hand through his hair, bites down on his bottom lip hard enough to taste copper on his tongue. “it’s like you said, i don’t know how to exist in peace—and i didn’t know where else to go.” 

he meets her eyes at last, and the smile that pulls the corner of his mouth upwards is gentle, unbidden. “i won’t pretend like it isn’t good to see you, though.” it’s the only thing that scott knows about himself with any clarity, and the kind of certainty that even charles xavier couldn’t reach inside and change—seeing jean grey, even after enduring the ultimate hurt, will always feel a little bit like coming home. like a compass needle finally settling upon north after all of its restless spinning.

[ssummerscyclops]

vanhelsing-rising​:

Scott. Turning, Rachel looked at him in utter surprise. Scott Summers, whose hand had held hers to help her put a stake through the man that had Thralled her decades. A man who had tormented her family for even longer. If he could be even called a man at all. Instantly, Rachel was warm to his presence, a smile–if tight from hunger–stretching over her face. 

“Scott Summers,” she said aloud, stepping away from the door with the fondest of expressions. “What on earth are you doing in Sokovia?” What a random place to run into him. “You’re certainly quite far from your lovely school. And quite close to a rather unsavory situation.” She had heard of the UN’s go ahead to Lex Luthor’s little pet project. She operated outside such things, but she did pay attention. 

----

“i do my best work close to unsavory situations.” he says, and forces the corners of his mouth upwards. there was a time in his life when he would have been proud of that, how cyclops stalked through the world without the fear that scott summers felt, always mentally huddled in a corner of the orphanage, his eyes squeezed closed, his knees pulled into his chest. now—now it feels as though the boy is lost to him, as if he folded himself in so tightly that he disappeared and all that remains is the cyclops, is the red right hand of charles xavier that only knows what to do when the adrenaline spikes. “besides,” he clears his throat and shrugs his shoulders. “emma doesn’t need my help, and i’m not much of a teacher when shooting energy out of my eyes isn’t involved.” 

he raises an eyebrow, and meets her gaze. “i’m not the only one who enjoys being close to danger, apparently. you’re not—“ he bites down on his bottom lip, “he’s not—again, is he?” the rules of engagement with vampires had been—somewhat complicated and hard to believe at first, and he was far from an expert, but he was certain that the world didn’t need dracula running around and teaming up with people like the ISA. that’s not even to mention the fact that rachel had suffered for years, and had proven herself far too kind to be asked to go through it again.

[ssummerscyclops]

Our families can only hurt us when we let them

[ssummerscyclops]

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do haunted by the ghost of you Lord Huron ― The Night We Met

[ssummerscyclops]

glovedanddangerous​:

Looking up at the sound of a familiar voice, it was hard for Anna not to feel immediately like a caught little girl out late. Scott had that way about him, she supposed. So serious. So tense. She always thought he could use a beer. And he was here. In Sokovia. With the other X-Men coming in it felt like the team was just clicking back together. Along with all the team dynamics. What would the X-Men bring here? Away from Charles? Anna was making decisions now, she felt. She was finding her voice a little bit. It might all feel better away from the familiar they had all had before. 

But it didn’t stop the pseudo-sheepish expression at his words. Remy was out tonight, and she had been waiting for him to come home. Wondering if they could try to steal a moment together. The thought had her face coloring as she pushed to her feet. “I’m jus’ up waitin’ fer Gambit. That ol’ Swamp Rat was s’posed ta get back a couple hours ago.” He didn’t know about the new developments with Remy, but the two had been close before Sokovia. It wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary.

She couldn’t hug him. Not in the thin long sleeved shirt and leggings. Too many margins for error there. She wasn’t going to risk that. So she fixed him with a smile. “When’d’ya get here? I bet ya’ve seen Jeannie, right? An’ Logan?” Had they known he was coming? 

Nodding to the stove, she hummed. “I’m makin’ biscuits. Mixed up some honey butter, too. If ya want a snack. They’ll be out any minute.”

----

scott can’t help but smile once anna starts chattering--she and remy might think they’re slick, but it’s difficult to ignore the way her face softens once she mentions that ol’ swamp rat. he wonders if he should say something--tell her that he’s happy for her, that he remembers that gentle and new feeling all the time, with the sudden and striking pain and pleasure of fingers pressed against the purple skin of a bruise--but he decides against it, thinks that out of his mouth it would only sound acerbic and sad. what d’you know about love anyway, scotty? he hears her say in his mind, all of the warmth sapped from her voice. y’only ever lost. 

he swallows and nods his head, does his best to keep the smile in place on his face. he’d never gotten a chance to ask jean about telling the others, and even now he’s not sure what he would say--it’s not his journey, he’s not the one who decided they had changed so much to the point they were no longer recognizable to each other, and even now he’s not sure what he would say, if anyone were to stop and ask him. so he steps over it, eases onto a kitchen stool and shrugs his shoulders as casually as possible. “i’ve been keeping a low profile--i don’t want to--” he bites down hard on his bottom lip, exhales a breath. “get in the way of what people have built for themselves here. i just want to be useful, whatever that looks like.” 

he meets her gaze and nods more eagerly than he means to, causing the tops of his ears to flame with a sudden heat. “that sounds really good, actually. you know--” he pauses, bites down hard on the rest of the sentence as it comes, unbidden to his mind. he’s not going to say it, right up until the moment he looks at anna, who is so deliberate in taking care of the people that she loves, who is forced by the cruel, twisted hand of fate to keep her distance from them. he can let her get a little bit closer, even if it makes him want to draw his shoulders upwards, to find alex and curl up next to him, just to make sure he’s still there. “i think i could count one one hand the number of baked goods i’d had before i met you. you’re very talented.” 

[ssummerscyclops]

release

[ssummerscyclops]

sparesummers​:

“Any mirror would tell you that you’re turning into Dad. Unless the skunk-tailed girlfriend comes first.” Maybe it was xenophobic of him but Alex had never much warmed to Hepzibah; watching their dad cosy up to her made him think of Pepe Le Pew, and it had already been a tough pill to swallow learning that their presumed-dead father was churlishly prancing across the known universe as an intergalactic pirate. 

Still, there’s Scott’s big brotherly chiding to be addressed, and Alex gives a one-shouldered shrug, twisting the opposite side of his mouth in counterpoint. “It’s hard to know what to say sometimes,” he offers. “The rundown of who’s missing and might be dead, the particulars of who’s been possessed or just gone bad, or, y’know. The haircut I got. The new wireless headphones I bought.” It occurs to Alex once he says all this that Scott might just have been teasing – you never call, you never write, what am i, chopped liver? – and he flushes, a little, turning one of his feet sideways against the ground before catching himself and standing flat-footed again. 

It’s easier to let himself get ruffled up listening to Scott detail his oh-so-heroic trials and travails when it comes to being the star fly-boy of the family (Maddy was a pilot, but was she ever family? fuck) and Alex says acidly, “Okay, I get it. You persevered, you decided to bravely ford through the rushing rivers of self-doubt and recrimination so that no family need ever tumble from the sky again. When are they sending you your medals?” 

When Scott puts his hand on Alex’s shoulder, the younger Summers almost, almost shakes it off just to show that there’s still hard feelings. But a moment before, instead of the jab about the medals, Alex’s sarcastic comment of choice had been about canonization except that a saint has to be dead, first, and he’s not ready to beatify Scott. Not when he’s here and looking at Alex that way, like he used to when they were small and Alex wanted something. Anything. It never mattered what. 

you should have told me you wanted off genosha, Scott says in that blanket-fort tone of his, and Alex heaves a sigh that makes him feel dizzy. “I needed to hold the course,” Alex says, “for what that’s worth. For as long as I could. There’s too much of … some version of me bled into that dirt there.” He reaches up to hang on to Scott’s elbow, and then lunges in for a hug. It’s all angles and joints, but it’s the most elemental thing Alex knows about his brother, is the way he holds on.

“I’m glad we’re here,” Alex mutters into Scott’s shoulder, angrily. Sometimes it’s like he can’t feel any way else.

----

“fuck you for reminding me that dad is up there space swinging, alex. fuck you so much.” the words have no real bite to them—after all, christopher summers is a burden they both share ( and fuck his brother again for the mirror comment—he wonders if the resemblance would be lessened if he decided to go clean shaven or wear his hair differently—or if the little shit had said what he said knowing full well that there wasn’t any truth behind it, but it would make scott’s skin crawl nonetheless ) — and scott speaks the words on the tail end of a sigh that he heaves from the pit of his chest. it’s good, he reminds himself—their father is safe territory for the most part, the hate mutual instead of turned towards another, towards things that neither of them have the courage to speak out loud, to admit to, even to each other. 

it’s short lived—for as much as scott wants desperately to reach out, to use his body and build the home they never got around his younger brother, they will always end up speaking different dialects of the same language. i’m just as afraid as you are, even if it seems like i’m not, scott tries to say—alex only hears him say i’ve mastered the thing that frightens you, coward. i love her, alex says, better than you do. scott’s ears ring angrily with only your broken fucking heart means nothing at all to me. he rolls his eyes and moves to turn around when alex starts prattling on about medals and bravery, to leave his brother to—whatever it is he came to sokovia to do ( it’s not to be with you, his mind so helpfully supplies, with images of maddy and jean swimming in his memory, mixing together like watercolor ) —when he feels a hand on his elbow, followed by the crushing weight of alex’s body pressed against him in a hug. 

he holds on a little bit tighter, when alex admits that some version of me bled into that dirt there, and bites down hard on his bottom lip. alex doesn’t want to hear about how scott would have come if he’d known—he just wants his own bravery acknowledged, even if scott wonders about the cost of that courage, relative to the task. “that must have been—“ he swallows, doesn’t stop himself from smiling. “i’m proud of you, little brother. you’re braver than i was—i just, actually tried retiring, teaching at the school.” it sounds kind of pathetic, now that he says it out loud—but if he can’t say it to the only person in the world who shares this—godforsaken, miserable, messy blood in his veins—who can he say it to? “i couldn’t stomach it.”

[ssummerscyclops]

grlwonder​:

…

“Hmm, alright, fair. Noted. Just needed to make sure for uh,….covering my ass reasons to gauge how much to give you. I know a good chunk of the team here already and what they can take in terms of a challenge, I don’t want to accidentally send you flying across the countryside and get reamed out by my sister.” No, that sounded like a terrible induction (re-induction?) to the Mousehole. She was sure she’d be getting many Diana lectures in her very near future, knew it was inevitable based on the decisions that Cassie liked to make, but if she could avoid getting one for the first week or so then that would be fantastic. Cassie reached forward to take the hand he offered to shake, and nodded once. “I’m Cassie. And well – yeah. That’ll happen. It happened to most of the hero teams. I think the Birds of Prey held out the longest. The group of Titans I was leading back in the States wasn’t official by any means, but we’re done now anyway as well. For now, in any case.” Cassie had returned to the Mousehole, proverbial tail tucked between her legs, after a showdown with the Task Force just very recently. The risk finally outweighed everything else, Cassie had been a distraction to let her team get the hell out of dodge, and she wasn’t sure if or when they’d be able to return. Not for a long while, at least. “Sounds like you should show me, gives you an excuse to use it. Which you should do more often if you’re out of practice, before you need to use it.” That was why they were all here, right? To fight the good fight, to keep doing what they’d worked so hard for. “Not to mention, I’m pretty sturdy.”   Another smile curved her features, and Cassie shook her head. “Well, you’re right on one account. I’m a Titan - I was leading what was left of us back home until….well, until less than a week ago.” A sore spot still, both literally and figuratively. “But I’m not a meta-human.” Cassie reached for her lasso, wound around the belt loops of her pants, and it buzzed and crackled with electric energy once in her hands. With a crack, it was wound around one of the weights in the corner of the room, lightening expelled from the glowing lasso as blue eyes glowed gold to match. “I’m a demi-god.”

----

for a moment this isn’t a young woman with a shit-eating grin and all of the power in the world crackling beneath the tips of her fingers—her features shift to become the face of his younger brother, and they stand not in the cramped space of the training room, but within the steel confines of the danger room, poised to hit one another with the abandon of boys denied every chance during childhood to roughhouse and snap their milk teeth at one another. come on four eyes, alex taunts, don’t hold back this time! scott’s grin feels like it’s going to split his face down the middle, letting all of the cosmic energy flood out of him, as he pushes his visor up into his hair and opens his eyes. 

he swallows, and the headache pulses like a threat behind his eyes. they aren’t in the danger room, this is not his brother—the alex that he knows fights differently, doesn’t burn through his pain in brilliant blasts of light so much as hold it inside of himself, nurse it with as much tenderness as he’s capable of. no—this is someone else’s sibling, a vital piece of someone else walking around independent of the body it belongs to. 

“a mutant and a demi-god,” he laughs, more than a little breathlessly as the young woman unwinds the lasso from around her belt and turns on the light show. if she expends any effort at all in making it happen, she doesn’t show it—the only expression on her face is one that scott recognizes, that he might have worn once had he never fallen out of that plane, had he never laid eyes upon mr. sinister. confidence so assured it calcifies into something else—not cockiness, though the two could be easily mistaken—more like—the assurety of youth. “two leaders without people to lead, and two people forced to pull their punches. what a pair we make, cassie.” 

he turns his gaze towards a weight sitting nearby the one currently wrapped in chorded blue lightning, and pushes his sunglasses up into his hair. the beams are warm, and he can feel some of the edge bleeding out of him. he closes his eyes and fumbles for the ruby frames, raising an eyebrow in her direction after he sees he managed to melt cleanly through the barbell. “not quite a demi-god,” he shrugs, “but i can hang.”

[ssummerscyclops]

you had a dream. i have a plan.

[ssummerscyclops]

“It gets old, having your heart ripped out, being opened up that way.”

When My Brother Was an Aztec; ‘How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs’ by Natalie Diaz

[ssummerscyclops]

x

see, universe? you tried, but you couldn’t separate the fucking summers brothers. the misery of their bloodline will always love company.

@ssummerscyclops

[ssummerscyclops]

the streets of matchak are quiet, after the sun goes down—it’s not the same kind of quiet that tended to wrap itself around the school, the kind that comes with the idea of sanctuary from the rest of the world—its the same kind of quiet that all haunted places seem to have, robbed of their voice by violence, by the blood that never seems to fully leave the streets even after they’re cleaned. the repeated sound of scott’s sneakers against the pavement is the only thing that seems to indicate life—but it’s not as unsettling as it should be. 

there’s something freeing, about pretending to be the only person in the world, even if it’s just for a moment—the blood rushing through his veins, the energy humming in harmony inside of him instead of boiling into a threat to be contained by his far-too-fragile frame. 

he doesn’t startle until he hears another voice break through the fugue—causing the foundations of his fantasy to crumble away underneath his feet. its a voice that he recognizes as well, that he hadn’t expected to meet again, here, in the middle of the night on the quiet streets of sokovia. he smiles as he turns the corner, slows his pace to stand beside rachel and the closed door to the butcher’s shop. 

“i could melt the lock,” he pants, with a shrug of his shoulders. “if you really need me to—it definitely won’t go unnoticed though.”

Hemophagic || Open Starter

“Oh, for God’s sake,” the blonde swore as she approached the very clearly closed butcher shop. “I called ahead!” Slapping her hands against the glass, she sighed before muttering under her breath. “Bastard.” She had near perfect Sokovian, dammit. There couldn’t have been a miscommunication. And she was hungry. 

Running a hand through ice-blonde hair, Rachel Van Helsing sighed. She might have a ration in her emergency supply kit, but would it really be so wrong of her to break the lock on the door? The butcher had promised he would wait. She bit her lip, considering. Maybe there was a back door? That’d at least be more courteous if she must break in. Not that there was any way to really make a break-in courteous. What would Mother say if she were here? 

Her decision was yet unmade as she looked up to see someone approaching. Setting her carpetbag delicately on the ground, she straightened to her full height. “I don’t suppose you’re the butcher?” she asked, too hopeful.

[ssummerscyclops]

WHERE | THE MOUSEHOLE KITCHEN WITH | @glovedanddangerous​

scott doesn’t have as many nightmares as he used to—he’s managed to put most of what sinister did to him in the past, and most of the people that have become a part of his rag-tag family unit are here with him, and he could climb out of bed and confirm their safety with his own eyes. realistically, there’s little for him to be afraid of—but it doesn’t stop a memory wrapped in the gauzy fabric of a dream sneaking up on him, from reminding him of the feeling of cutting through air as he fell, of mr. sinister’s face looming over him with the threat of making scott endure yet another test, and causing him to wake up choking on air, his skin slick with sweat. 

he squeezes his eyes closed tightly, digs the heels of his palms into the sockets and exhales a long breath. he does what charles taught him, after he first came to the mansion and woke up screaming more often than not—focuses his attention on the things in his room he knows are real, until his heart rate goes back down and the energy inside of him doesn’t feel like it’s pooling like a bruise. going back to sleep doesn’t really feel like an option, so he fumbles for his sunglasses and decides to head towards the kitchen, which at this hour he expects to be quiet enough to avoid questioning. 

he pauses when he notices light already pooling into the dark hallway, and debates turning around, spending the hours until morning tossing and turning and trying to trick himself into sleep—but he can feel the beginnings of a migraine, and even the thought of a cup of coffee makes something inside of him feel like it’s unraveling gently. he peeks around the corner, and smiles warmly when he sees anna’s familiar face, enjoying the steam coming out of a warm beverage of her own.

“even in a different country, we keep meeting when both of us should be sleeping.” he says quietly, in an effort not to startle her. 

[ssummerscyclops]

alex can act like an ass all he wants, can stride into the hangar like he isn’t supposed to be in genosha, where at the very least charles and erik can watch over him and protect him if the worst comes to pass, but scott doesn’t think there will ever come a moment where seeing him, grown into his adult frame, scowl exactly where it supposed to be on his face, won’t feel like a victory of some kind. see, universe? you tried, but you couldn’t separate the fucking summers brothers. the misery of their bloodline will always love company, despite all odds. “you don’t call, you don’t write, and now you come all the way to sokovia to tell me i’m turning into dad?” scott drawls as he sets the container of supplies down, biting down hard on his bottom lip to keep himself from grinning wolfishly.

he turns to face his younger brother, and rolls his eyes. “i got sick, the first two times i tried to take the exam to get my license. i still feel like i’m going to throw up, right before i take off—but i wanted to be able to prevent—“ he sighs, and shrugs his shoulders. “what happened to us from happening again. so i—dunno, choked it down and learned how to do it.” he walks slowly down the ramp and stands in front of alex for a long moment, unsure of what’s allowed between the two of them now—scott had been—in a bad place, after he’d lost jean, and to say that things had gotten kind of ugly between them felt like something of an understatement. he settles for resting a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder, allowing his expression to soften the way it only does whenever its just the two of them. 

“it’s good to see you.” he says quietly, because it always will be--no matter how much alex may hate him, or how much they convince each other that space is better than proximity. “you should have told me you wanted off genosha--i would have--picked you up or something.”

@ssummerscyclops​

The thing is, he and Scott have always been a closed loop. 

Their powers don’t affect each other. They both draw down cosmic energy and have to release it in focused blasts, and if they don’t, they’ll either destroy their own bodies or everyone around them. They’d even (basically) been in love with the same woman. Ever since they’d fallen twisting through the sky clinging to each other like some living moebius strip, Scott and Alex have been two of a kind.

Which is why Alex has made a specific effort to find his brother in the hangar bay, because where else would they twine up into each others’ lives again, really.

“Did you know,” Alex says in lieu of ‘hello’ or ‘i just got here’ or ‘i can’t stand your face’ or ‘you look even more like Dad’, “that every time I try to get into the cockpit of a plane, I get hit with a migraine? The bad kind, too. Nausea and strobing lights and cold sweats. It’s as if somebody turned the inside of my skull into a disco ball, but without the, y’know. Fun.”

Alex gestures around at the aircraft. “And yet here you are, choosing it. Like it’s no big deal. I guess that means I’m blowing things out of proportion, huh.” He eyeballs Scott, wary. Surely Charles, Erik, one or the other or both, had contacted Scott to tell him his little brother had washed out of hacking it in Genosha, the mutant Promised Land. Surely Alex’s failure (disguised as his decamping because of irreconcilable differences of opinion) had been reported. 

…surely one of these days Alex will stop feeling like the Dawn to Scott’s Buffy. But until then he has an all-singing, all-dancing demon to get captured by, most likely.

Summerses.