fanfic (X-Men): "Santa's Elves Aren't This Upscale"

[eliyes]

Title: Santa's Elves Aren't This Upscale
Rating: Pg-13 for language and saucy innuendo
Summary: Just a little Christmas shopping fic to kick off November.
Characters: Iceman, Northstar, White Queen
Author's notes: This is more or less for you, timemonkey ;3 Feel free to take it as a challenge/prompt/thing to be continued down any path you choose.


"Jean-Paul! Just the guy I'm looking for!" Bobby strode down the hallway towards the well-dressed man.

"Music to my ears," Jean-Paul said with a wry smile.

"Can you give me a couple of hours of your time this afternoon?" Bobby stopped in front of Jean-Paul and bounced on his toes, prompting a raised eyebrow.

"Ambitious, aren't you?"

Bobby shrugged. "Not really. I mean, I know my way around pretty well so it won't actually take that long. I just need some help figuring out what to do."

There was a long moment where Jean-Paul stared at Bobby with an increasingly disbelieving air while Bobby remained patiently expectant. Somewhere nearby, someone giggled.

Finally, Jean-Paul waved a hand. "What are you talking about?"

Bobby's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "Christmas shopping," he said, as if that should have been perfectly obvious.

"Ah." Jean-Paul gave himself a little shake. "And you need me for this why?"

"In light of your indisputable good taste and class, I require your services as a consultant to keep me from buying something hopelessly tacky."

"You practiced that, didn't you."

"All morning," Bobby admitted. "So? Can you? Will you? Please?"

Jean-Paul thought about it for a moment. While he did that, Bobby's eyes got increasingly puppy-like.

He sighed.

"Yes, I suppose. When? Are we meeting somewhere or leaving together?"

It wasn't until later, when they were actually in Manhattan, that Jean-Paul thought to ask who Bobby was shopping for.

"You know that secret Santa thing?"

"Yes?"

"I got Emma," Bobby said. He sounded so glum that Jean-Paul laughed at him.

"I see. And so you thought that since I am rich and possessed, as you said, of good taste, I would be useful in choosing something for the woman who has nearly everything?"

"Basically."

"I hardly know the woman, you understand."

"See, that's the problem. I know her a little too well." Bobby bumped closer on the sidewalk. "But none of the things she likes is anything I want to give her."

"Really? What does she like, then?"

Bobby rolled his head on his neck and his eyes in their sockets, and then reeled off a list. "She likes white clothes and white wine -- I'm never buying a woman clothes again, ever, and I can't afford her taste in wine. She likes tormenting Storm and Kitty, which I can't really condone. She likes to be tied up, she likes to see me cry, she likes me begging on my knees, she likes messing with my head..." He trailed off as he registered the astonished expression on his companion's face. "What? This can't be a surprise."

"Does Summers know you --?"

Bobby made a face. "What are you talking about? Of course he knows me."

"Does he know you know these things about Emma?" Jean-Paul clarified impatiently. "Have you done these things?"

"Yes and yes." Bobby waved a hand. "It's not what you're thinking. It has nothing to do with sex. Well, on my end, I'm not really sure about her, but I don't want to think about it since she's dating Scott, of all people, and anyway I need to get her something a little impersonal, if you see what I mean. But nice, because I don't want to piss her off and it's not like I hate her or anything."

They walked in silence for a moment, Jean-Paul frowning and Bobby staring at his toes as he surreptitiously covered what grimy snow that lingered on the sidewalk with a fresh, sparkling white coating of frost as they passed. Finally, the 'expert consultant' sighed.

"A book. That's what you should get her."

Bobby smiled. "She already has Born Normal."

Jean-Paul's surprised reaction owed as much to the fact that Emma Frost has his book as it did to Bobby Drake knowing this, but he quashed it quickly.

"Well, of course you must get her something new. Oh! Or a translation of a foreign classic."

"I suppose I could see what the latest Nobel Prize for Literature is," Bobby mused.

"Yes. And that did not take two hours."

"Nope. Follow me, there's a bookstore I like this way. Then maybe I'll feed you, huh?"

"I don't think I have much appetite," Jean-Paul muttered. When Bobby replied with a confused noise, he couldn't hold back any longer and incredulously asked, "She likes to make you cry?"

Bobby's laughter rang out through the crowd, as merry as any holiday bells could hope to be.

"What can I say, JP? She's a bitch!"

Comments

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

I'm sure someone would argue that Bobby and logic are not compatible, but I would disagree. (And point out that he's good with math, so obviously at least some types of logic are right up his alley.) JP had good cause to be puzzled, though; he hasn't quite mastered translating out of Bobby-assumes-you-understand, but it's a mark of something that Bobby is</I. assuming that with him. ;3 And puppy dog eyes FTW! \o/ I so love that Bobby has canonically been described as "pouty" by his male friends.

[hybridhelen.livejournal.com]

Pouty? Where and when?

Not that I disagree - I just want to see it!

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

(New) Defenders 142, for one. Hank remarks to Cloud that Bobby is practicing his pout, anyway. I suppose that's different from "pouty". ;3