Like Fish
"Bobby," Rogue said, sounding weary, "It really doesn't matter how this happened, does it?"
"But I've figured it out," Bobby said. "See, we had a paperclip in the lock to keep it from actually, you know, locking, but it must have fallen out. Maybe it shrank. Because of the cold. In the freezer." In retrospect, it probably hadn't been a good idea in the first place, but it had worked for at least thirty-six hours, which had to be worth something. He opened his mouth to say so, got another look at Rogue's expression, and thought better of it.
"Can you freeze the lock?"
"Well, yeah. It's pretty much already frozen. Because we're in the freezer."
"I mean, can you freeze the lock so it opens?"
"I can freeze it so it'll stay shut."
"I don't think that's going to help," Rogue said.
"Professor Xavier and Mr. Summers will be back soon," Bobby said.
"They're not supposed to be back until tonight."
"Well, pretty soon." He hoped that the tour bus didn't break down or get attacked by Magneto or get stopped by government troops with new secret anti-mutant robots that shot laser beams out of their eyes. "Unless, you know, they get delayed."
"And that would never happen, right?" Rogue gave him one of the looks he didn't like, the one that said "You are a teenage boy." He wanted to point out that she was also a teenage girl, but he was never sure whether that was true in more than the most technical of senses.
"We'll figure this out," Bobby said.
"Can't you do something with your powers to get us out?"
"Well, can you?"
"What, like absorb your powers that don't work?"
"My powers work fine," Bobby said, stung. "Just not for this. It's like, you wouldn't say a screwdriver didn't work because you couldn't use it to hammer in a nail."
"I could," Rogue said. "If I hit the nail real hard." She glared at him.
"You wanted ice cream, too," Bobby pointed out. "And there's never any in the regular freezer in the kitchen anymore." The up side of Hank McCoy's arrival as their new doctor was that he had brought his extensive DVD collection and left it in the rec room to share; the down side was that snack foods left in the kitchen now had a life expectancy that could be measured in seconds.
"You said we could get it without freezing to death."
"We're not going to freeze to death," Bobby said.
"Isn't there supposed to be some kind of emergency release switch?" Rogue asked. She felt the frost-covered wall near the door gingerly.
"Is there?"
"It sounds right."
"Anybody in your head ever get trapped in a walk-in freezer?"
"You know, it's not like I'm a walking encyclopedia," Rogue said. "I can't just look stuff up. And it's not like everything in the world has happened to Logan or Erik --"
"Erik?"
"I mean Magneto."
"Sometimes that's seriously creepy," Bobby said.
"Try being me," Rogue said. "What's this?"
She peeled a frost-encrusted piece of paper off the wall and handed it to Bobby. Under it was a switch labeled "Emergency Release."
Go, my girlfriend's multiple personalities , Bobby thought, but had better judgment than to say it. Rogue flipped the switch and then tried the door. It remained shut.
"You didn't accidentally freeze it shut?"
"I don't think so," Bobby said. "Is that thing working?"
Rogue flipped it back and forth a few more times. "I don't know."
Bobby looked at the piece of paper in his hand. He brushed off the ice. It read:
Erik --
Fix emergency release switch. What if you are out next time? Would not be funny.
--Charles
"Umm," Bobby said, and handed the note to Rogue.
"I hate Magneto," Rogue said. "I bet he decided destroying humanity was more important than fixing the freezer."
"You have his memories," Bobby said. "Do you think you could --"
"He can manipulate metal," Rogue said. "Plus I bet he had a toolbox. What am I supposed to use, a box of fish sticks?"
Bobby looked at the boxes stacked against the wall. "That's a lot of fish sticks."
"It's really cold in here," Rogue said.
"We could try banging on the door again."
"Nobody's here but Hank, and he's probably in his lab. Or playing with the Playstation."
"The lab is just down the hall," Bobby pointed out.
"It has a sound-proof door," Rogue said.
"Since when?"
"Hank said it was in case we had someone with out-of-control sonic powers, but Scott thinks it's really just that we were getting on his nerves."
"How do you know that? And since when is it 'Scott?'"
"I listen sometimes when people talk. You should try it. And he said you could call him 'Scott' too, only you don't."
"That's not the point," Bobby said.
"And what is the point?" Rogue crossed her arms and glared at him. Bobby felt that the conversation was going alarmingly adrift.
"You're the best girlfriend ever?"
"That's nice." She didn't stop glaring.
"Getting out of this freezer," Bobby said. "That's the point."
"Right," Rogue said. "I think we're supposed to lie down under cardboard boxes."
"What?"
"For warmth," Rogue said. She looked dubiously at the large boxes of fish sticks stacked near the entrance. "Maybe we're supposed to take the boxes apart first?"
"How do you know this?"
"Maybe it's an army thing?" She shrugged. "Maybe somebody read a book about it. I don't know . Maybe I read a book about it and I just forgot reading it and I'm not actually being crazy right now. Can we concentrate on the fact that it's real cold?"
Bobby tugged at the door again. It refused to budge. He guessed they had about five more hours before the cavalry -- or at least, their telepathic teacher -- arrived. He tried to think of a way the situation was funny, but it really, really wasn't. He took a deep breath.
"You could absorb my powers," he said. "Then you wouldn't freeze."
Rogue looked at him for a long minute. "Thank you," she said. "That's real sweet and real stupid. If I do that, then you're going to freeze."
"I'm trying to be self-sacrificing here," Bobby said. "Don't mess it up."
"We just need to find a way to get out of here," Rogue said.
"I don't think there is one," Bobby said.
"We just have to keep trying."
"What if there isn't one?"
"Will you shut up about there not being a way out, and about freezing to death, and about self-sacrifice and stuff? It's not helpful."
"If we can't get out --"
"I swear, you are the most pessimistic person I have ever met. You're just like my great-aunt who kept saying she was dying for about twenty years."
"What happened to her?"
"She was eighty-seven years old, okay?" Rogue said a little uncomfortably. "And that's not the point."
"She died. Wonderful," Bobby said.
"You are not my great-aunt," Rogue said. "I thought I was the one who had trouble keeping stuff like that straight."
Bobby rested his forehead against one cool frost-covered wall. "Will you just promise me you'll absorb my powers if we're going to freeze?"
"Fine," Rogue said.
"Well," Bobby said. "Okay." Somehow he had expected her to keep arguing longer. "You're sure?"
"I said I'd do it. Now how are we going to get this door open?"
"I mean, you'd do the same thing if you were me, right?"
"If I were you, I would keep looking for a way out of this damn freezer," Rogue said.
Bobby thought about this for a while. He sat down on a box of fish sticks. "It's just that you're an optimist, right?"
Rogue sighed and ran her gloved hand through her hair. "Is the right answer here 'I love you and I would do anything for you, even freeze to death like a stick of fish?'"
"Whatever," Bobby said. He stared at his feet. Frost was beginning to form on the toes.
Rogue came over and sat down beside him. She kissed him on the shoulder through his shirt. He could feel the pressure, too quick to leave any lingering warmth. "We're not going to freeze to death, okay?" She took his hand in her gloved one. "Okay?"
"Okay," Bobby said, although he wasn't sure whether it was.
There was a sudden grinding noise. Bobby jerked his head up at the sound. He blamed the impulse to shout that the walls were moving on having watched Star Wars six times since Hank arrived at the mansion. "Is that the door ?"
The door cracked open, bringing with it what felt like a blast of warm air. Hank looked in at the two of them and blinked.
"Excuse me," he said. "I was just in search of some afternoon refreshments. I wasn't aware I was interrupting anything." He started to push the door closed again.
"Wait!" Bobby and Rogue both yelled. The door did not quite shut. After a minute Hank peered in again.
"If you're sure you're quite finished ..."
"We were just ..." Bobby said.
"Looking for some ice cream, but I think I'm not hungry anymore," Rogue said, and scrambled out the door. Bobby hung back, wondering if locating the ice cream for her would help salvage the situation.
Hank investigated the nearby boxes. "What a lot of fish sticks."
"By the way, the emergency release switch for the door is broken," Bobby said. "You might want to get that fixed."
The next time he investigated the freezer -- cautiously and with a chair propped in the door -- there was a note taped to the wall:
Scott--
Kindly repair or replace the emergency release switch for the door mechanism. Next time, I may not be hungry at a fortuitous moment, and the results could be quite unfortunate. Students should not be fish sticks.
--Hank
Bobby retrieved a pint of rocky road and left the note alone.