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Kurt Wagner flirts with just about everyone— Ororo, Maddie, Scott, Logan. He’s a flatterer, and no one on the team really minds it. “Yellow is certainly your color, fräulein ,” he says to Maddie one morning, beaming at her over the kitchen countertop. “Brings out your sunny smile.”
“Well, thank you, fuzzy elf,” she says, swishing her yellow skirt so it flows around her. She’s just about to start struggling with the French press when Scott walks into the kitchen, looking sharp in a sweater and slacks that Jean almost certainly picked out for him. “Mornin,’ Scott.”
“Oh! Hi, Maddie.”
“You look exceptionally handsome this morning,” Kurt says. “Where are you off to?”
“Brunch with Colleen,” Scott says, tugging on the collar of his shirt. “Uhm. Do you two want to come?”
Maddie raises an eyebrow. “And crash your brunch date?”
“It’s not really a date,” Scott says. “At least… I don’t think it is? I’m sure she’d say, you know, the more the merrier.”
“My decision hinges on whether this brunch restaurant has maple pepper bacon,” Kurt says. “Can you confirm or deny?”
“Uh. Confirm.”
“I’m in.”
Scott’s anxiety builds the closer they get to the restaurant. “What if it is a date?” he says, looking over worriedly at Kurt. “What if I wasn’t supposed to bring anybody?”
“Then Madelyne and I will gracefully ’port out,” Kurt assures him.
Once they’re in front of the restaurant, though, it’s clear Scott didn’t need to panic. Colleen’s already seated— with Misty and Jean. “Scott! Over here,” Colleen calls from the patio table. “I hope it’s okay Misty and Jeannie tagged along; Misty and I had some stuff to work on together this morning before brunch and I just sort of. Invited them.”
“No, that’s completely fine,” Scott says brightly. “I… might’ve brought Kurt and Maddie.”
Colleen grins. “We’re gonna need a bigger table.”
“Bloody Marys! One for me, one for Misty. Scott, do you want a Bloody Mary?” Colleen asks, leaning over Misty to look at him.
Scott’s forehead creases. “Um. Yes? Yes, please.”
“Bloody Mary for the gentleman!” Colleen declares. “Jean? Maddie? Kurt?”
“Coffee is good for me,” Kurt says, and Maddie agrees. Jean orders herself a mimosa with another regular orange juice on the side. Once the waiter disappears back inside to get their drinks, Colleen rounds on Kurt.
“So what’s your deal?” she says. “Where are you from? What are your hopes and dreams?”
“I can’t think of a better dream than to be enjoying brunch with you brilliant and beautiful ladies,” Kurt tells her. “And Scott.”
“Scott is brilliant and beautiful,” Jean says. Scott blushes a little, and Maddie snickers at him across the table.
They order breakfast— maple pepper bacon as Kurt was promised, plus eggs and bacon and grits and flapjacks.
Maddie finds herself watching Scott with his Bloody Mary. He takes a sip, makes a face, and then takes another sip. Makes another face. He slides it further away from his plate, as if he’s not planning to have any more, but then when he spots Colleen and Misty clinking their glasses together, he goes for yet another sip. His expression is pinched.
“Too spicy?” Maddie guesses, whispering to him from behind her menu.
Scott jumps a little, sloshing tomato juice on the tablecloth. “What? No. It’s fine.”
“Oh, shut up, you hate it .”
“It’s fine ,” he swears, taking another sip. His whole face is screwed up, and it looks like he’s trying to drink his drink fast enough that he doesn’t taste it. “I’ve just never had a Bloody Mary before.”
“You don’t need to be having one now .”
“I like it,” Scott lies. “It tastes good.”
“Uh-huh.” Maddie reaches across the table, ostensibly going for the collection of sugar packets in the middle, but then her arm swings wide and she topples Scott’s glass. Tabasco sauce, vodka and tomato juice shower the surface of the patio (conveniently missing Scott’s pants and shoes.) “Oh! Shit!” Maddie says, jumping up with a napkin at the ready. “I’m so clumsy. Sorry, Scott!”
“It’s… it’s fine,” he mumbles, but he shoots a shrewd look at her. Maddie looks mischievous. She doesn’t say anything else while she sponges up the amount of spilled drink that she can, and then she sinks back into her seat.
“Do you want another one?” Colleen asks.
Scott opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Jean levitates her glass of plain orange juice over to him. “No, I’m… I’m good,” Scott says, taking the orange juice gratefully. Jean and Maddie make eye contact and try to hold in the giggles.
Scott’s “courtship” with Colleen Wing mainly consists of the two of them planning outings and then bringing all their friends along. They go to an art museum. Colleen spends the whole time arm in arm with Misty, and Scott spends the whole time listening to Maddie describe different colors and shades.
One afternoon, after Scott, Colleen, Misty, Jean, Ororo and Maddie pour out of a movie theater matinee, Colleen says something to him. She’s squinting in the orangey glow of the sun, munching on popcorn, and she tells Scott, “She likes you. Go for it.”
Scott freezes like a deer. “Colleen… I didn’t mean—”
“You’re adorable,” Colleen confirms. “But I don’t know that you’re my type. Somebody certainly has her eyes on you, though.” And she nods toward Maddie.
This thing between Madelyne and Scott grows crooked and stunted, a weed sprouting through sidewalk cracks. Scott cares for her, then likes her, then wants her. Maddie skirts around him and then flirts with him and then feels guilty, and then repeats the process.
When Scott finally asks her out on a proper date, Maddie doesn’t say yes right away.
Her face sours. “You only like me because I look like my sister.”
“That’s not true,” Scott argues, but Maddie’s gone back to plucking dandelions. There’s a whole patch of them next to the lake house. She could keep this up for hours, maybe, and then find another way to ignore him, and he’d be there the whole time trying desperately to get her attention.
If it were someone else, he’d do the polite thing and go away. But Maddie’s not someone else. Maddie’s not quite like anyone else he’s ever known. And there’s a connection between them, something deeper and different than just her resemblance to Scott’s ex-girlfriend/best friend.
“Maddie,” he says finally, “let me show you something. Please.”
Inside, he points to the framed photo of the original five X-Men. “What do you see?”
Maddie shrugs. “You, my sister, the guys. I don’t get it, what’s your point?”
Scott chews the inside of his lip, a bad habit he picked up a long time before he jumped out of a plane clutching his brother in his arms. “I know that’s me because I have the visor,” he says, pointing to himself in the picture. “Hank, glasses. Warren, wings. Jean is the only girl, and Bobby… I can tell that’s Bobby because of process of elimination.”
Maddie stares at him. “Yeah, I still don’t get what you’re trying to say.”
He sighs, fidgets. “When Warren has his wings bound, it’s harder for me to tell the difference between him and Bobby. Unless they speak, I mean. And, uh, it depends on when I’m expecting to see them. Honestly, the day all the X-Men started wearing individualized costumes instead of those black and yellow uniforms was a game-changer for me.” Maddie shakes her head, lost. “I have prosopagnosia. It’s also called face-blindness.”
“Is that… because of the brain damage?” she asks, trying to be tactful but coming out plain confused.
Scott shrugs. “I mean… my childhood’s blocky, but I think I was like this before the plane crash. I think. Even with Alex. I don’t recognize his face , I recognize his voice, his hair, his clothes, the way he walks.”
“So you’re saying that Jean and I are completely indiscernible to you?” Maddie sighs.
“What? No!” Scott says. “You’re as different as night and day.” She crosses her arms. “Alright, maybe not night and day. But… dawn and dusk? I mean, people tell me you look identical but I don’t really… I mean, I see your eyes, your nose, your mouth. But it’s like a jigsaw puzzle where my brain can’t fit the pieces together. To me, your face and Jeannie’s face don’t look any more similar or different than everybody else around me.”
“We have the same hair,” Maddie reminds him.
“But you wear it differently,” Scott says. “You dress differently, you talk differently. That’s what I see. I see all these other things about who you are , Madelyne,” he says. “She’s someone I want to get to know better.”
Scott takes her to the beach at Westcott Cove, and they pack a picnic lunch and talk and talk and talk and talk. They talk about Jean, and whether it would be weird if the two of them got together despite everything. They talk about Sinister, and their shared childhood trauma. They talk about the X-Men, the adventures they’ve shared together already, the ones still to come.
Scott shows off by shooting a hole through a quarter with his optic blasts. Maddie shows off by building an impressive sandcastle complete with a moat. As the sun sets, they kiss, sharing a beach towel with their hands entwined.
About a month later, Maddie starts wearing that quarter on a chain around her neck.