Thanks are also due to the Left Turn at Westchester RPG folks for inspiring me even as they suck my free time into the Black Hole From Whence No Fic Emerges. Especially Minisinoo, for reasons that will shortly become obvious.

PG for mild sex references. Feedback to andraste@bigpond.com or on the list, whatever you prefer.

The real trouble, Charles Xavier decided, was that Scott had a point. He hadn't always been completely open and honest with his students. Perhaps he *should* tell them more about his past, if it was going to keep blowing up in his face. Quite literally, in this instance.

Of course, there was no need to admit that immediately.

"I don't see what has you so upset. We're a group of mutant superheroes. This kind of thing happens all the time. We still have a budget surplus this year so we can rebuild, and the tents were safe in the basement..."

"Don't understand why I'm upset?" Cyclops had turned almost the colour of his visor with rage, and he slammed his palms down on the professor's desk. They'd repaired to his office in order to have the illusion of privacy. Not to mention walls that were mostly intact. "You keep hiding things from us! And the things keep trying to kill us! I mean, we've all got deadly enemies from our pasts that we just forget to mention, but this is getting ridiculous! I'm starting to think that our next arch nemesis will be the evil guy you sat next to on a bus once! That's if it doesn't turn out to be you! Again!"

"Really, Scott, I tell you things about my past all the..."

"You didn't mention spending a year in the Lost City of S'n'p..."

"It's pronounced S'np, and if I told you about every lost city, forbidden planet and monastery made of ice I'd been to in my time..."

"...you didn't tell us that the lover you left in the Lost City of Sn'p was going to come looking for you and *crash the City on our lawn*..."

"That was hardly Cam's fault--surely you don't blame people for the actions of their evil sister-in-laws?"

"...you didn't tell us you had a fetish for alien royalty..."

"The Ki'r'hb aren't aliens, they're a human subspecies--like mutants or the Inhumans--and if we want to get technical Camirith is a member of the priestly cast..."

"...and you never thought to mention that you were gay?!"

"For the last time, Scott, I am NOT GAY!"

"Then how do explain the man you were kissing in what's left of our kitchen half an hour ago?!"

Charles greeted his student's confused fury with a bewildered shake of his head. "Unless the High Theocrastic Army brought a secret cadre of Nemian mages with them and they cast an amnesia spell of some kind, I can't imagine how you could reach that conclusion. You *do* recall that time you walked in on Lilandra and I while we were..."

"Don't remind me! I still have the nightmares." Scott calmed down slightly, and took a few deep breaths. "Alright, then: you never thought to mention that you're bisexual?"

"It just never came up in conversation. There aren't that many men I find attractive, and even fewer who find me attractive me in return, so they're statistically less likely to reenter my life brandishing weapons. Besides which, I don't see how it's any of your business."

"When every lover, friend and distant relative you've ever had turns up on our doorstep and tries to blow up the door then it's my business! We've had an army of... things... trample through the mansion once too often already, and this time they brought elephants!"

"Would it help if I explained that those weren't elephants? They're aquatic under normal circumstances, not to mention highly intelligent, more like whales than..."

"What would *help* is you warning us before I wake up to find armed creatures of some kind coming in through my bedroom window. Did I mention how much I hate fighting villains in my boxers?"

"Only three times in the course of the morning. Look, Scott, I'd like to keep you better informed, but if I don't know which parts of my past constitute a threat, how can I tell you about them in advance?"

Scott's colour subsided to a milder pink as he slumped into one of Xavier's amazingly intact office chairs. "Well, maybe if you told us a little more about some of the people you've met, the places you've been, the ... people you've slept with, we could figure it out together."

"I always got the impression that you didn't want to know. I thought you *liked* the idea that I was born middle-aged, bald and wearing a suit and tie. That I had no life of my own before I became your mentor, no sexuality. You never wanted to listen when I told you about that time Erik and I took on twenty sailors in a bar fight..."

"The first time I heard that story, there were only nine sailors," Scott said, smiling a little. Then the smile vanished. "*Please* tell me you weren't sleeping with Magneto."

"I'm afraid not. I mean, it's not that I didn't find him attractive, but sadly he wasn't interested. I made a drunken pass at him one night and there was some French kissing..."

"TMI!" Scott yelled, holding up his hands. He'd been spending too much time around the students lately.

"See? You don't want to know."

"Look, Charles, I'm an adult now. And it's *not* the idea of you having sex with men that bothers me. Frankly, it's the idea of you having sex at all. You're my... teacher." He paused for a moment. "But I can handle it. I'm a superhero, and a grown man, and I've seen worse things that you and--Camirith?--playing tonsil hockey amid the remains of our electrical appliances. So for the sake of mansion security, I want to know about all your lovers, of any gender and species..."

"Scott! Just because Cam has horns and a tail doesn't mean..."

"...any old friends who haven't gone insane and tried to kill us at least once already, any evil relatives we haven't locked up yet..."

"Well, there's my cousin, Steven, but he's just a slum lord, not a dangerously powerful mutant terrorist or an unstoppable force of nature..."

"...and any other possible long-lost children. If we have to deal with one more telepathic reality-warper, I'm handing in my resignation."

"I didn't *know* about Cassandra. Or David, for that matter. And although I agree that it's a rather large coincidence for my ex-fiancé to give birth to a powerful mutant who *wasn't* my child, I'm sure that I had nothing to do with Proteus. Well, reasonably sure."

Scott gave Xavier his best steely stare. "You do *know* how to use contraception, right? Because Jubilee was threatening to give you a demonstration involving a banana if you were having any trouble. I think Emma put her up to it."

Xavier stared right back. "If my memory serves, I taught you all you know. Although I don't think I was game to break out the bananas." Then he sighed heavily. "Remember that long, embarrassing lecture I gave you about what happens when the condom breaks? I spoke from experience."

Scott sighed too. "OK. Then just tell me--are any other acquaintances of yours going to arrive in the next week or so to wreck havoc?"

"Well, given that Magneto is dead for the moment, I doubt it. Unless Moira has begun stalking the earth in her new guise as the vengeful spirit of bad coffee."

"And... Cam?"

Charles Xavier never blushed. So he didn't blush now. "He can be a little exuberant, but that was a good year we spent together. As for whether he's staying when the City moves out of our garden, I haven't the faintest idea. For what it's worth, when I know I'll share the information."

"Right. Fine. Here," said Scott, brandishing a pen and a lined notepad. "Start sharing today. Begin with every entity you've so much as winked at, fantasized about or brushed against suggestively. In future, I also want you to go and see Hank if you have so much as a headache, and let Jean mindscan you regularly for hidden psychic entities. Not to mention alien eggs. I'll expect an itemized itinerary of your movements over the last fifty years or so by tomorrow morning, and a complete family tree stretching back at least seven generations by next week. Now I have to go and see if they managed to dig Logan out from under that gothic monstrosity out front." With that, he left the office. He might have slammed the door behind him, if it had still been there.

Charles chewed the end of his pen and contemplated the paper in front of him, before writing: 1) Sandra Bowen. Kiss behind bushes in fifth grade.

Cyclops would expect him to be thorough, after all.

By the time he'd reached double digits, however, he'd decided to leave out the embarrassing incident involving Christopher Summers and the distilled juices of the flowers of Melhyth V, which were a powerful aphrodisiac.

There were some things Scott really was better off not knowing.

The End

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