Planetary Rendezvous

Warren regretted the words he said. 

Warren could’ve left whenever he wanted, but he didn’t. His Ego—or maybe his caring about Scott—kept him there. He couldn’t leave Scott to be alone.

And so, they had a strange duet as The X-Men team and housemates by day and night. Over the spring break, Scott asked Warren to help him practice landing from the sky, and they practiced until Scott made it perfect.

They showed each other the worst of themselves during the week. Until spring break, Warren didn't know Scott could say swear words. 

Scott mostly pushed himself too hard, so his legs sometimes couldn’t carry him to his room.
Then, Warren scooped him up and carried Scott to his room. 

Scott would have refused it if he wasn't hanging in the air. But he was in the game. And he knew what it meant. Scott was a professional at being a younger brother. He just can't lose.

The rivalry was rooted in constant competition from the very unnecessary awe of the professor, but it also moved their friendship forward. 

It made the professor not stop them—he found the dynamics of their relationship. And Warren couldn't agree more that Charles was right. 

Rivalry was an unusual kind of honesty.

Of course, the competition went strangely.

By the time Bobby returned for the semester, he smelled something in the air. Something between them. He didn’t know exactly what, but it was there. Bobby sensed it—some kind of affection.

And that suspicion was strengthened by Hank, their newest member’s words. He only said two words: Curious Adolescents.
It only fueled him.

“You two seem... close,” Bobby said to Warren one afternoon, his tone with suspicion.

“We're just friends, that's all. ” Warren replied the truth, only the truth.

Bobby wasn’t convinced. His imagination ran visions of Scott and Warren snuggling with each other, or worse, a kiss in the dark. He turned down the thermostat in his room three degrees just by his wild imagination.

But the truth was, Scott only spent much of his free time in his room reading books, lying on the bed, with his feet off the edge. The only difference was “his own room” had become Warren’s, lately.

He wasn’t a bookworm, but reading books was how he tried to understand people—how emotions make people act to people, how actions make relationships and emotions. 

It was a kind of struggle for him, a way to keep from depression. It was usually a novel. It helped him find some lost years of experience. 

Warren didn’t make any fun of Scott for reading. He wasn’t Bobby, and his reading volume was not surprising, considering how much he had to read to follow last school. This class was more free than before. 

Unlike Scott’s methods, Warren mainly understood people from real experience like the field study about social structures from the hero's activities. Criminals lived more diversely than he might have thought.

Warren took the chance to study him.

Scott was... delicate, so far. Although he had been lying on his bed, like he owned the place in Warren's room, Scott seemed to like he was invisible as if his presence didn’t matter like he was dead.

If he was Bobby, the bed would’ve been a mess of stains. Scott takes off his slippers neatly, arranges them by the side of the bed, pulls on his socks, and climbs in. 

Warren thought this was exactly what Scott looked like in his room at night. He certainly was there. Warren can see him. He cares.

This was new. Usually, quiet kids like Scott, don’t get closer to Warren first, so Warren had no idea how to deal with it.

Warren used to have his own routines before, especially at night. He normally wears a robe in his room or is half naked, letting his wings free in private. Unlike during the day when he strapped in tight.

Warren was careful at the beginning. Minded his wings' space they could take up. But Warren finally gave up. What was the point if it had already been taken.

On Wednesday, Scott even brought his eye mask, pulled it over his face, and fell asleep in 30 minutes flat in his room. Warren was surprised to find that Scott had taken a nap. Then he wakes up from it and goes back to reading his book. It was a strange situation. Warren didn't hate it. But he still couldn't dare lie down with Scott.

So Warren gave up sitting in a chair, like a guest. He would sit in a chair rather than be used as a feathered full-length pillow.

It would be lying if Scott said he wasn't boring and annoying. Scott knew that he annoyed Warren. Normally, Scott even wouldn't be around anyone else.

When he was in the orphanage, even when he didn't have the deadly gaze, he never went to the other kids' rooms to play. Not only because Mr. Milbury had told him, but he had a roommate named Nate to take care of. 

Nate was the only kid who didn't ask to change rooms, even though he complained to Scott directly.

Scott used to cry all night and had nightmares about Nate helplessly clinging to him like a little brother to keep himself from falling into the fire pit. As if a vision of the future.

Little brothers are annoying. They have the heart to depend on someone. Scott had told himself much before. Scott knew Warren probably would get tired of him or hate him, of course.

Scott always got hate from others, or he was sorted as an eerie kid because of his huge glasses. It’s a regular thing of his. Being hatred.

Scott wished Warren would give up Scott Summers.

If not, he never understood the guilt of Scott Summers' shameful thoughts that he would be easy by letting his brother die at the moment—at least the curse on his eyes wouldn't be part of him if he covered his head— at the fall.

He wanted to be accepted as someone who did his best as an older brother. 
He wanted to be accepted that his failures were inevitable.

But the truth is, he is Scott Summers.
Warren was Warren and he was Scott.

Eventually, Scott never gave up on his little brother, and Warren volunteered to be the one taking care of others without any pressure from outside.

They were people who wanted to care for others.

He told Scott quietly, that he understood what it was like to be alone. Warren sat down on the hard wooden chair and talked to Scott.
It was mostly a one-sided conversation.

Warren said he is an older brother, but it wasn't very convincing if told about the difficulties to a younger brother. He didn’t mind. It was not necessary to hide, lying to Scott, since Warren was already hiding his wings from the world.

He spent less time with his parents, just because Warren went to boarding school. Scott saw why Warren had never told him about his parents.

When he was at boarding school, he was hated and jealous just as much as he was loved. There was a balance between them.

Although he had an experience of being hated by someone. He had not felt sad or any other feelings at school. He remembered when got angry with someone, but he had no feelings for how to be sad. Warren thought he might only know how to expose anger. And he was also mad about that he only knows anger.

But Warren was an idealist. He used it appropriately and had opinions of the direction of society. Scott had to admit that Warren wasn't just a narcissist.

Warren comforted Scott, saying that he had an idea, that the world had alienated outcasts and many sick people. He wanted to use the wealth to help people like himself, the mutants, and Scott.

He saw the greater good, where everyone could live well.

Scott started to like Warren since then, and it was a kind of comfort with him. Not only because Warren told him his secret, but Scott also had similar thoughts to him. Scott would die to save others.

They weren't very young. 

…Although Warren mostly suggested something stupid like a teenager.

“How about practicing riding on my back while I fly,” Warren said this literally out of nowhere.

“What? Like, how. You’re not a magic carpet.”

“You don’t know that yet.” He thought it was nonsense. Scott never heard of such bullshit. But some part of him actually enjoyed it, somehow.

Today was Monday, the last day of their practice. Tonight should have been a day for some stupid talk about riding on his neck again, or Warren holding Scott like a bazooka so he can aim more effectively—like another day they have been together.

Before going to Warren's room, Scott had just come from the study and heard Hank's theory about how Warren sleeps.

No one else at the school knew how Warren slept. Hank said that Warren must sleep on his stomach, wings spread wide for stability.

Scott listened to it with interest and wanted to check if it was correct someday. He picked up the book and went to Warren's room. The room was unlocked.

“Don't mind me. I will go back to my room by midnight.”

“…It's 9 pm.” Warren wanted privacy. Real privacy. And Scott never gets out.

“Uh-huh,” Scott raised an eyebrow.

“Are you implying something?” 

“No, I’m protesting,” Scott replied, barely looking up. Scott wasn’t even really reading the book in his hands. He pretended his gaze just hovered over the pages as if he got a word. It’s hard to read while talking. He had to read it again in his room.

“…Then what do you want from me?”

“Nothing,” Scott replied.

“You’re annoying,”

“This is what younger siblings do.” Scott expected this.

“Did I act like this?” Warren seemed to have forgotten that he had been annoying Scott by flying outside his window every day.

“Pretty much,” Scott never forgot what Warren did.

Warren sighed. “Do whatever you want. When would Scott Summers hang out in someone else’s room?”

“Well, it could happen sometimes,” Scott replied.

“…You go to someone else's room other than me?” Warren was surprised, but calm. He was sure Scott wouldn't do that. Well, It was not technically a sure, but he was sure there would be no one closer to Scott than to him.

Warren thought that Scott should probably sit in the chair when he was in someone else's room since he was the only one who played sibling games with. No one's bed would be taken away except Warren Worthington. He thought he would probably help Bobby with his homework or play board games with him. He was sure it would be. It was jealousy.

When before, he thought Scott definitely liked him. Well, he thought it would be because they were both mutants. They got along well and lived in the same house.

But Warren wasn't sure if Scott hated him or not these days. So he thought he was getting started to hate Scott a little. But he still wanted Scott to rely on him.

It didn't matter if this stupid game was the start or end if Scott start believes in him as much as he does. Although winning would make him feel better.

Since neither of them could read the other's mind, and Warren was quick to act, he got up from his chair and moved next to the poster, to make Scott follow his gaze to start to chat. He really was an angel with big wings. 

Warren changed the poster in his room every day. Scott rarely spoke about himself, so Warren thought this was a way to catch more glimpses of what Scott might like.

College pennants. Wall posters of women …and men?…or Heroic posters Like Captain America and the Fantastic Four.

Each day, a new one appeared, but Scott’s reaction was always the same—unreadable. He was looking in silence. 

These pathetic attempts were never new to him. Many doctors attempted it when he was young after he woke from a coma.

Scott really was interested in Warren's collection, of course. But He didn't care more than to understand Warren's taste—nothing worth asking about. It was just another reasonable taste for a boy like Warren.

Although he had to admit that Scott had never expected Warren to be interested in men. 

If Scott asked, Warren would have been happy to give anything, even the most expensive one, but there was no request. 

His collections were left behind at the orphanage years ago. He didn’t want to carelessly take something only to leave it behind again. Ownership felt temporary and unimportant. 

But today’s poster was something different. Something pulled him into the poster, like it belonged to him in the first place.

He had been late to notice it, delayed by Warren or pretending to read, but his eyes found the wall eventually. Scott’s gaze finally rested on the poster.

It was an old astronaut poster, a little faded yet clear, Major Summers. His father.

The man in the poster was smiling, and confident, lined with fellow astronauts standing against the celestial background.

It was a face Scott hadn’t seen in years, a face he thought he had forgotten.

Not the father who with tears in his eyes, says goodbye, but an admired pilot. A hero.
But at some point, Scott sees another side behind its smile. A traitor, a runaway, a liar who breaks promises.

It was something else: a reminder of shame, nostalgia, and loss all have burnt together and turned to mixed ashes. The poster was a bad relic. 

Scott wondered why Warren had kept it. Valuing the flaw as some kind of collection was the most logical conclusion Scott could think of.

Official versions later erased him after he left the project, but this one remained—a mistake, a printing error, like something that accidentally survived his death.

And Scott wanted to have it.
He wanted to hide it so no one would see it, and wouldn't be thrown away.

It was a reminder of who Scott ever wanted to be, and who never wanted to be. It was his duty to get rid of it by hand himself.

Good times were gone, and no one cared about the Summers family anymore. Not the world, not his father, not even Scott himself.

He had learned to survive by forgetting himself. All his father had left were the letters of his family name.

But forgetting won't change the truth.
His father was gone, Scott still couldn’t even fly on his own, and the worst, he was just complaining to Warren about his life.

“Cool, isn’t it?” Warren’s voice cut through his thoughts. He also stared at the poster, which Scott just stared at. Warren didn’t seem to notice the resemblance. The mustache was enough to erase the connection between Scott and his father.

He seemed to like that poster. So Scott had let Warren keep to Summers' past.  It was a return to give Warren had told about his past.

“…Cool,” Scott replied. But Scott didn’t know how actually ‘Cool’ it was.

He had been in a coma when the project launched. The years spent in a coma felt like he hadn’t grown at all like he was stuck in time while the world moved on. There was no experience to fail or to succeed. Just… Stopped, like a dead person. When another winged mutant boy had watched it live.

Scott hesitated, then asked, imagining his father if he joined the project. “How was it?”

“Uhm?”

“…The launch.”

“Oh, the launch. It was successful. A huge step forward for humanity.”

“Everyone likes the moon,” Warren said, his voice filled with confidence. “Did you know there’s a blue area on the moon?” He was delighted to find common ground with Scott.

“You mean ‘Shadows’.”

“No, ‘The Blue Area’. Some say aliens live there.” Warren grinned, speaking with the confidence of someone who had seen it himself.

Scott didn’t answer.
If there's a space alien, it would probably be himself. 
Earthborn, Earthliving Scott Summers.

“You’re no different than Bobby.” Scott once glanced at him and he looked down at the book.

“Hey, I didn’t make it up.” 

“Little brother,” Scott smiled slightly behind his book. Warren didn't see it.

“Shut up,” Warren objected but seemed embarrassed. His face flushed slightly. But He also smiled too.