Who: Ororo and Rachel What: Ro's worried about Rachel - and Scott When: 4/4, after the age plot Where: Chez Summers Rating: PG Status: Complete
Ever since talking to Scott, Ororo had wondered if Rachel was doing any better. She was worried about her man, yes, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Rachel was probably just as upset, if not more so. She was knocking on the door of Scott and Rachel’s house, hoping she’d find one or both in. She didn’t want either of them to get mad, but she got the impression they both needed a little bit of looking after.
It was definitely true. Scott and Rachel tended to survive on take out, booze, coffee, and junk food for one thing. And then there was the part where they both tried to keep very busy, so that no one ever had to talk about anything.
Rachel had taken the day off of school. She wasn't even sure what the hell she was going to do with that if she was stuck like this. So she was home when Ororo knocked, and she headed to the door, bracing herself for whoever was behind it.
After all, looking like her mother probably didn't just disturb her and her father.
"Hey, Ms. Monroe..."
It was Rachel, not Scott, and even though she’d seen the pictures on the network, it was hard not to be astonished at just how much Rachel looked like her mother. “Hi,” Ororo said, smiling a little. “You can call me Ororo, really. I just wanted to sort of look in on you and your dad, what with everything that’s been going on lately.”
"You keep saying that, but I feel like it's disrespectful. Maybe it makes more sense at this age than before..." Rachel trailed off and shook her head, then stepped off to the side so Ororo could come in.
"Dad's working himself to death, so he'd be at the Ranch. But you can come in if you want. We've got some brand new k-cups. Cafe Du Monde! I ordered them myself. I'm actually pretty excited about them!"
Being excited about coffee was better than being depressed about her current state, at least.
“I mostly wanted to check on you, honestly.” She had to be honest. “Yeah, I’m worried about Scott, but given that Scott is ...” Awkward? In pain? “... sometimes not very diplomatic, I was worried about you, too.” Ororo came in, closing the door. “Are you a coffee addict, too?” She almost said already, but she didn’t want to actually talk about Rachel’s age. Not yet, at least.
"I've been a coffee addict since I was a teen," Rachel admitted, with a grin. She led Ororo to the kitchen, where the Keurig awaited to dispense delicious coffee to them both. Mugs were selected, then Rachel held up the brand new box and shook it in the air, putting on her very best grin, "Grams didn't buy into that 'coffee stunts your growth' stuff, and Dad was away. So I got to drink it my junior year and I was pretty much hooked by the time I graduated."
“Coffee is actually a cultural thing in Northern Africa, and both my parents came from there, so we did a lot of Turkish coffee when I was a kid.” Ororo smiled. “In the dreams, my mother was Egyptian, so even more coffee there. I’ve resigned myself to the addiction.” It could be worse, after all.
"Oh man, Turkish coffee." Rachel groaned a bit as she put a cup into the machine and started brewing up a mug, "I've been to a lot of foreign countries and I'm not ashamed to say that coffee is done in other places a LOT better than it's done here, nine times out of ten. I miss Turkish stuff. But I have no idea how to prep it myself, so I stick to stuff I know like... Starbucks, and tricks like adding chicory."
She held up the fresh mug she'd brewed, "Sugar? Cream?"
“Cream only, please. And honestly, Turkish coffee isn’t hard if you have a super-fine grinder. I should teach you how to make it.” Ororo smiled. “A grinder, good beans and a butane torch like for creme brulees or something is all you need.” She took the mug from Rachel, nodding her thanks. “How are you doing besides the obvious, Rachel? How are your powers coming along?” She genuinely wanted to know; she wasn’t just making small talk.
"I'm not sure that me with a blowtorch of any size is a good idea, but I could probably learn how to do the rest without bringing down some kind of disaster."
Rachel grabbed the cream out of the fridge and brought it over with the mug, along with a spoon, so that Ororo could help herself. Everyone was picky about how much of anything they liked in their coffee, and she definitely wasn't messing with that.
"As for the powers, well..." Rachel made a somewhat unconfident face as she started brewing her own coffee, "It's like, they come and go. But right now, they're perfectly in control. Kind of like you'd expect them to be after five years of practice, only I never had them."
“Maybe your dad can calibrate the lasers well enough so you don’t need a blowtorch,” Ororo kidded. But when she heard Rachel say that about five extra years, she sighed. “I confess I don’t really know what to do or say about that. You’re lovely - you look just like your mother, and I mean that in a good way. But I know this is so hard for you and your dad. I want to help somehow.”
"Hah, he's more likely to just blow the coffee out of the cup," Rachel joked. Her coffee now done brewing, she added some flavored syrup and then headed over to the kitchen table to add some cream.
She let out a sigh as she sat down near Ororo, and shook her head as she stirred the contents of her cup around, "I don't think anyone knows what to say when stuff like this happens. I mean, there's no greeting card for 'I'm sorry you grew up overnight', though you'd think with this being the place it is, someone would start making some."
“Someone should get on that.” Ororo was only half joking. She stirred her cream into the coffee, shaking her head. “Did your dad talk to you at all?” She wouldn’t really have blamed Scott if he couldn’t - they really weren’t a very touchy-feely family.
"We talked in texts?" Rachel shrugged one of her shoulders, looking a little sheepish. They really weren't very touchy-feely. Sometimes it felt like the gap between her and her dad had only grown wider since the marks showed up on her face.
"He said we'd deal with it and tried to be reassuring, but that's the same stuff he tells everyone else. We spend a lot of time not looking at each other or not being the house at the same time. Even before this. My school schedule, his work schedule. I spend time at Kitty's when she needs a sitter or something. But I feel like I'm staring at a ghost when I look in the mirror, so I know he must feel that way too."
Ororo sighed. “In all honesty, I kind of want to put you two in a room together and mediate. But I can’t.” It would be a little rude. “Just ... I know you know your dad better than I do, by a lot - but I can tell you he loves you so much. He’s just having a hard time missing Jean. But I kind of worried you’d feel like he was pushing you away. And he’s not.” Hopefully she was helping and not making an idiot of herself.
"You probably know him in ways that I'll never get to know him. Not unless I read his mind, and I'm trying very hard not to do stuff like that. It's rude," Rachel replied, sighing. But she didn't believe Ororo. It was hard to say so, since the woman was dating the guy in question.
"I'm not calling you a liar, here... I mean, I know he loves me, and I know he loved my mom. But I feel like he is, just, not because of this. It's been going on for a while. Ever since I seriously started dreaming, it feels like. We're just really good at pretending that it's because we're busy."
Ororo sighed. “Shit.” She didn’t like to curse, but she couldn’t think of much else to say. She didn’t want to interfere. It wasn’t her place. But she liked these two. She wanted things to be better.
She figured she ought to say as much out loud. “I want to talk to him, or try to fix it, but I can’t really. I don’t know. I can try to talk to your father, but I don’t want to get into your business.”
"Well..."
Rachel squinted one eye shut while she processed that. She definitely understood where Ororo was coming from. If the twins had an issue with Kitty, she'd be unsure as to what to say, or if she should be saying anything. But... the twins were a lot younger and she was kind of an aunt figure to them. Maybe it'd be different.
"I think the biggest issue is that I'm not a kid, right? I mean, even when I wasn't... older... I was still old enough that you'd think I didn't need anyone butting their noses into my business. And I don't know how Dad would react at all. I don't want to screw you guys up, either."
“Yeah.” Ororo grimaced. She looked down at her coffee mug. “How’s this. I’ll give it time. But if it’s been a while and things are still weird, or if something happens to make it really terrible, I’ll lock you two in a room and make him talk.” She didn’t want to get involved where she might not be needed - and Rachel was a grown woman. Really, she had been even before all this started. But if it turned out Ororo was needed, she’d jump in. She wanted them to be happy, simple as that.
That was a plan Rachel could get behind, and she nodded her head a bit. Ororo really was good for them, and they really did need looking after. She smiled a bit, "It might really come to that, though, just to warn you ahead of time. We're horrible and we really do need someone else's intervention sometimes. I mean... back in New York we had Grams to do the mother henning. She'd bake cookies and then shut us in the kitchen with them. Especially when it came time to talk about stuff that was going on at school. When he was home."
Ororo shook her head. “You guys.” She had no idea how they still had such a good relationship, if they never talked, but that would have been rude to say.
She figured it was best to change the subject. “What’ve you been doing to de-stress?”
"Yeah, it's a miracle we get along so well," Rachel joked. But her and her father had always had some kind of understanding in the background. They did things together, or talked without talking about the subject at hand. Rachel'd gotten pretty good at reading him, and she knew that was a trait she got from him. Just recently, it felt like it was falling apart.
A change of subject seemed like a good idea, "Well, you wouldn't believe it, but for a while there homework was a good way to decompress. School isn't very challenging for all I complain about it. I play a little World of Warcraft, too, and some console games. Kitty hooks me up with all kinds of things. Playing games is a great way to destress, since you can blow someone up who isn't real."
“Makes sense to me. I’ve never been much of a computer game fan, but I do admit a long-standing Tetris addiction back when the Game Boy came out.” Ororo smiled, sipping her coffee. “Kitty would probably think I’m a Luddite.”
"I don't know, Tetris on the Game Boy is pretty classic." Rachel couldn't even imagine Ororo playing with one of those, and it was pretty cool that she had, "I think she'd think that's pretty cool. I know I do. You seem more like... I don't know. You just don't seem like the kind of person that let loose and played video games when you were younger."
“I know I’m kind of ... I’m not much fun in the dreams.” Ororo admitted. “At least not so far. But I like to laugh. I like to try and remind myself that this life isn’t the same. I enjoy my job here. Helping people. Teasing your father.” That last one was too damn easy, though.
"Teasing my dad is always a good time, yeah. And no, it's not that you seem boring or anything, you just seem... Okay, I don't mean anything by this but I don't have a better way to say it. I mean it like a compliment, but you seem like you're a little above childish things like video games. That's all." Rachel ducked her head and turned her attention to her coffee, hoping that she didn't just completely insult Ororo. The other woman just seemed so graceful and noble and elegant. It was hard to imagine her goofing around like a gamer would.
Ororo wasn’t offended, and said as much. “That’s fair. And I don’t know. Especially here, I need to find a way to blow off steam. I worry about my kids at work, I worry about you two, I worry about Kitty” - and her and Rachel’s tangled relationship, at least on Kitty’s side - “and I don’t know. I have to smile, and tease, and make sure everyone around me’s okay. And putting my face in my cat’s fluffy belly helps, too.” She grinned.
"I hear putting your face in your cat's fluffy belly is actually medically therapeutic. I want one so bad. I hear that Dani used to have like three of them living here but she took them with her when she moved." Rachel wondered if bringing home a kitten would get her grounded or garner her a seal of approval.
It was spring after all, there'd probably be plenty of rescue kittens out there...
"... Do you think Dad would kill us if we went and got a rescue kitten and brought it home?" Rachel grinned at Ororo. Because if it was a 'we' situation he was likely to forgive it, right?
“Your father did say he liked taking care of Dani’s cats.” Ororo couldn’t restrain a laugh. She probably ought to say no, she figured, but Rachel could at least look after a small innocent life even if talking to each other was beyond her and Scott.
"Are you busy? We could go now!" This is where it was obvious that as old as Rachel looked, some part of her was still twenty-one years old. She grinned her best, most winning grin at Ororo, and secretly crossed her fingers under the table.
Maybe having something new and fluffy to take care of would get her mind off Kitty and all the rest of this, too.
“We can go. But,” Ororo added, laughing. “If your dad says no, it’s on you. I’m not at the place where I can tell his daughter that doing something would be a good or bad idea.”
"I'll take all the credit and or blame," Rachel promised. She finished off her coffee and got out of her chair, "And if he gets all pissed off about it, I'll be the one that has to take the cat back. But he can't possibly say no! Not if we pick out an awesome, cute, fluffy cat that has a personality."
“It’s true. He liked my little lady Smoke.” Ororo laughed. “Well. Not so little. But maybe a short-hair, if nothing else? Smoke does shed.”
"Maybe one of those little black and white tuxedo kittens. Those are always adorable and I think their hair is shorter." Rachel agreed, nodding. Plus, she'd heard that those kinds of cats were notoriously affectionate. That was definitely a boon when it came to winning her dad over.
"I could get it a red collar with a little bow tie. No one can refuse that."
“You might be right.” That did sound pretty cute. “Come on, let’s go to the shelter before I think better of this.” At least they’d be saving a life. There were too many shelters in Orange County that weren’t no-kill.