A.N.: Hello, I've taken a long break, but I'm back with this story I've been working on in little bits for a while. I tried to think of a realistic way I could put Scott and Carol together in some X-Men universe. I was thinking more Scott pre-X-Men days and more like Jack Winters days. Hope you all read and review! Also if you've got time or any interest at all, I've put up a story called, "In the House of M" and would really love if anyone could check it out and let me know what they think!

Thank you!

The Beautiful and Damned

A bell rang clearly in the day, disrupting the acquired silence and peace on the campus of a local New York City high school.

A lonely boy looked down from the second floor of this school and apathetically watched the students hustling around and dispersing from classrooms, buzzing and walking to their next destinations.

They were as small as bugs from the lonely boy's viewpoint.

For some reason, this epiphany that these people seemed so small and slight made him feel even more insignificant and lonely than he already was.

The boy could dimly see the many darkened spots of gum all over the gray grounds below.

The skies above were drab and gray, textured by drizzling haziness overall.

With a finger to his face, the boy pushed his red sunglasses up his nose and ignored the others, who walked by him carelessly, not noticing him, or making a point to shove past him deliberately, as if he was not there and merely in the way.

Shaking his light brown bangs loose from his eyes, the boy thumbed his back pack strap and turned away from the miniscule world below to go and join the insignificance outside of his head.

Occasional loners or druggies, junkies, and hoodlums whom one could never really call friends, would nod his way or briefly acknowledge his existence in a way that was not hostile.

The boy pulled the hood of his gray hooded sweater over his head to conceal himself or disappear and wondered if he was like them.

School was out for the day, but the boy had nothing to look forward to afterwards, and was doomed to a detention, one of the many he often sat through or ditched.

Of course, he did not mind so much, because he did not like going home very much.

As usual, the boy, Scott, came in to check in his detention tardy, causing the teacher to give him wry looks and the other few attendees to snicker at him.

After checking in, the teacher told him to go sit in the back of the class and wait for further instructions.

Scott took a seat at the very back and slouched, taking out a paper and pencil to doodle idly.

A girl was already at his right and glared at him with disdain and made a noise of disapproval that he was sitting next to her.

With her clean blonde hair, white and perky smile, docile blue eyes, and preppy clothing; this girl was trying to make a point that she was not usually meant to be in detention.

She was also making it obvious that she was not thrilled at the prospect of the school's ultimate loser/freak/rebel/druggie/bad boy sitting besides her in detention. Breathing in the same air space.

Scott rolled his eyes and asked bluntly, "Yes, can I help you?"

The girl narrowed her deep blue eyes and rudely said, "I mean, like, do you have to sit here? I don't feel safe at all."

This comment was followed by a short and impatiently snobby giggle which Scott found to be annoying.

Again, he rolled his eyes and turned his head to the side to ignore her.

Scott then got up resignedly and picked his back pack up to move to sit behind her.

As the girl played with the ends of her hair, Scott abruptly held a pink high lighter to her side in a stabbing motion, causing her to gasp off guard.

With a whiplash of blonde hair to Scott's face, the girl spun around and glared at the pink high lighter.

Scott muffled a laugh, "Since I'm such a shady character, I must have a knife huh? Did I scare you Barbie? Of course, shanking cheer leaders during Detention is totally my thing…"

The girl glared at Scott and huffed angrily, "I am not a cheer leader, you stereo-typing pretentious bastard! And my name is not Barbie, its Carol."

Scott leaned back, satisfied, and placed his palm down on the back of his head, leisurely pulling his hood down off his head.

He laughed and sarcastically retorted, "So you stereo-type people and you're a hypocrite! Giving me your name already? I didn't even have to ask for it. What's next? Your number? I like this flirtation we have going. Maybe I'll play hard to get and not tell you my name. I think I like being referred to as the pretentious bastard."

Carol could not believe how aggravating and obnoxious this guy was. Nobody ever really stood up to her. She was too scary.

His condescending laugh was so agitating! Her temper got the best of her so instead of ignoring him, she muttered, "I don't care and I don't want to know your name. Obviously!"

Scott leaned back in his seat and played with the back of her chair by propping his foot there and jiggling the seat.

Before she could lose her temper and stop ignoring what he was doing, the teacher began handing out trash bags and called out, "Alright, break it up, you there in the back! We're about to start detention."

The teacher explained that today, they were going to pair up with partners and go around the school, picking up trash and litter.

The few kids groaned and grumbled but found their designated partners.

Scott, being a loner and very anti-social, did not have friends or acquaintances to be his partner.

Carol, being popular, skinny, and bitchy, had no friends in detention, especially since these were the types of people she ridiculed or ignored.

As the kids got up to leave with trash bags, Scott and Carol uneasily looked at each other, being the only ones left.

The teacher handed them their bag and cheerfully (a bit too cheerfully for a teacher looking after detention) said, "I guess you're stuck with each other. Get going! Be back in an hour with a full bag, or no detention credits!"

They both set off together to their trek around the school.

Scott hauled the trash bag in one hand and Carol followed behind sulkily.

Scott flipped his hair back off his forehead and brushed it back on his head, Carol narrowed her deep blue eyes and said haughtily, "You know that I don't intend on actually doing any work, right?"

Scott sighed and watched as a small group of various pretty girls were walking by to go home.

They smiled and laughed at Carol who waved back and called out, "Hey guys! Ugh, fuck detention. I have to spend all day with weirdos."

Scott snorted out laughter and Carol ignored him, and went over to socialize with her friends.

One of her friends, gushed, "Damn, sucks you have to do this, but at least you have that cute guy to help. What's his name again?"

Another girl, Becky, piped up, "I don't think I've ever seen him before."

Tiffany, a well-known brunette, divulged, "You bitches are so dumb! That's Scott Summers. He's been in our class for a while. He's like super anti-social though and totally has problems."

Becky asked in a serious tone, "Do the kids in detention all carry switchblades and brass knuckles?"

Carol shrugged, "I don't know."

Scott, finding this excruciatingly conceited girl to be infuriating, dropped the bag in defiance and sullenly walked away from it.

Tiffany whispered, "Uh oh, Carol, I think your detention date's ditching you."

Carol glared a second at her friend, but then turned and noticed that indeed, the despicable boy was walking away nonchalantly, with no apparent intentions of returning.

Carol sighed, "I'll catch up with you guys later, maybe."

She ran over to where the boy was walking and grabbed his arm.

Scott turned to look at the cranky blonde and looked down at her hand and then her petite body frame.

"Dude, you play softball or something, blondie?"

Carol grinned mirthlessly, "Since first grade. I'm not a cheerleader, and I'm not in the mood to go through this whole detention thing. You're marching back there and filling that bag up. Then we're both good to go."

Scott shrugged, "It doesn't really matter to me whether or not I miss detention. I always get them, so there's no point in trying to pass."

Was this guy for real? Everything about him dug under Carol' skin. Her grip on him tightened in frustration, and her finger s actually dug holes into the sleeve.

Scott began to panic a little, and tried to pull his arm from her very strong grasp.

He mumbled, "Uh, Carol? Y-you're hurting me. I thought you were exaggerating about this softball thing…"

She released him and laughed, "C'mon pansy, let's go pick up trash."

Scott rubbed his arm, staring at the shredding holes in his sleeve, and then stared at the petite blonde who was now walking away from him, leading him back to finish detention.

Now Scott was dragging forth a supple and nearly filled trash bag around, doing his best to ignore his blonde detention partner and the bored looks and annoyed or contemptuous sounds she made at him.

This along with the shuffling of worn-down sneakers from him, and the solid taps from her strappy gladiator sandals filled the void of conversation.

This caused ambitious and seriously concentration-handicapped Carol to finally snap with something that had been nagging on her mind all day.

"Wait-sketchy glasses guy; you really don't know who I am do you?"

Scott set the garbage-filled bag down thoughtfully and laughed, "Huh, Barbie has a penchant for inventing creative and epic comic book super hero names on the spot. First the caped villain: the Pretentious Bastard, and then the masked crime-fighting vigilant! Sketchy Glasses Guy. Man, Stan Lee's got nothin' on you. I'm gonna be a superhero one day and I'll have you to thank for the wonderfully thought-out superhero name. By the way, I will never reveal my real name to you, 'cause that's how superheroes roll."

With a frown, Carol wondered at how this poor 'hoodlum' could enrage her so quickly. She tried again, "Carol? You surely must have heard that name before."

A smirk twitched at his already lopsided grin and was followed by an answer, "Beautiful, perfectly chipper-sounding. What do you want me to say? Your highness? As far as I know if I have had the wondrous fortune to glimpse you at school, you were probably blended into the blob of hot girls and in general; people in the blurry upper part of my periphery vision that I ignore. Do you even know my name? No, of course not. Your problem is you're entitled to everything."

Carol gave him a hard look and said, "Oh my gosh, you aren't just a loser, you're a super nerd too. What have I gotten into? I don't have drugs!"

An hour later, and the kids from detention came back to the classroom and gave their trash bags over to the teacher to check.

Scott slung the bag over his shoulder, glad to be done with it, and glared at Carol who was filing at a fingernail.

Sensing Scott's eyes on her, she looked up innocently and asked quite meanly "What?"

Scott just shook his head and mockingly laughed at her.

Carol lowered an eyebrow and spat out, "Do you think wearing those red shades all the time makes you look cool? Like you're always high or too cool for school or something? Well you don't, you look like an idiot for wearing them all the time, even when it's dark or indoors."

Pretending to be offended, Scott raised a hand to his chest and smirked, "Doth the lady do speak? Such literate and sensible words thy tongue doth utter."

Carol clenched her fists and impatiently said, "Wow, such irony! The burn-out who is secretly actually an educated intellect! How cliché', oh fuck off."

Scott frowned, "Your face is so deceivingly pretty but in truth, there's a man eater under that elaborate visage."

Carol looked insulted and took the sarcastic compliment as an insult.

After their bag was inspected, Carol was immediately out the door and leaving to her car.

Scott was left to take the trash bag to the dumpster.

Carol looked up to unlock her green Jeep Wrangler, and cried out in shock upon seeing piles of trash all over the inside of her car.

A muted laugh caused her to whirl around and she seethed, "You!"

The brown haired boy with red sunglasses jovially laughed, "Me? I just had to witness the look on your face."

Later that day, during the school team tennis practice, Carol angrily thought about the irritating boy from detention, and in her anger, smashed a ball straight at the face of her opponent teammate.

The teammate side stepped quickly, and gawked as the tennis ball landed, and seemed to have gotten stuck in the ground of the court, with such force, that only half of it stuck above the ground and bits of rubble from the court surrounded its small crater.

Carol glared across the court and threw her racquet down, smashing it to splintery pieces.

Her father would have to pay for a new one and he would not be happy that it was the fourth racket he would have to replace in a month.

After excusing herself from practice with a lady problem, she walked on the street and in a fury, picked up a parked car and threw it as hard as she could at a telephone pole that broke in half.

Having released her anger, she wondered why this no-name loser bothered her so much.

Carol only had a hot temper when she was extremely frustrated and yes, she did need anger-management help, but she was good at maintaining appearances, so far.

Turning the corner, after the car mishap, she briskly punched a wall and continued her walk to blow off steam.

Some shady looking Irish men on the street whistled at her in her short tennis skirt, and in her growing irritation, she grabbed a parking meter, broke it off the pavement, and hurled it at the baffled men.

She only felt a little better after walking away and hearing angry shouts and cries of pain, "OW MY CHEST! MY FRICKIN' CHEST! I'VE BEEN IMPALED!"

By late afternoon, when Carol arrived back home, she was pretty hungry, and attained a rather large appetite for such a slender girl.

Her younger sister was still in her junior high school private school uniform, and doing her homework on the kitchen dining table.

Carol did not bother changing out of her tennis uniform either and slumped down on the opposite end from her sister and dug into a fat bowl of cinnamon toast crunch cereal, and chased it down with chocolate chip cookies left over from a batch their mother had made that morning.

The little sister did not look up from her homework and declared, "Some guy called for you today, but you weren't in. Does he know you have a cell phone? Nobody actually uses home phones anymore."

Ungluing her lips from a heavy glass of orange juice, Carol asked casually, "Who was it? Get a name?"

Her little sister paused to erase a blemish on her paper, and then continued, "Uh, like Brian I think."

The older sister rolled her eyes. Brian was cute, but he was shallow and annoying. Worth another hook-up though.

Every morning, Carol woke up exactly at 6:00 AM for week days, prepared for school, leaving her home with effortlessly flawless hair and a chic outfit.

This was routine, and Carol Danvers was a girl of routine.

What was not in her routine was the now suddenly visible punk kid from her detention.

He seemed to suddenly jump out to her from the meaningless blur of faces she usually did not regard at school or even notice.

Danvers was surprised to see him brooding in the back of her homeroom and wondered if he had really always been there.

Throughout the entire class period, Carol's concentration was cut with a growing anxiety that the boy was behind her and staring at her perfectly done hair.

Most surprising though, was when she noticed him in her honors class, where he was rather out of place and hidden in the shadows of the back.

Carol sighed as she wrote down notes about the Civil War and discreetly glared at the boy who grinned maliciously at her.

He seemed to play the invisible man to everyone, everyone but her who now seemed to have an acute sense for him.

During the middle of a class she discovered she shared with him, Carol noticed the boy slip out through the back door of the classroom with his backpack in tow.

Unable to resist a growing curiosity and annoyance at his devious behavior, Carol asked to use the restroom and left her tedious class as well, in hot trail after the boy with the sunglasses.

As Carol walked inconspicuously behind him, she watched his frayed jeans scuffing at the bottom as he walked, how he dug his hands deep into his pockets, and walked with slumped shoulders.

When they reached outside of the school, Carol wondered where the boy would take her.

Instead of walking some stray path to a sketchy drug deal or some other hooligan activity, she watched him just plop down on the grass and sit back against his backpack and just languish in the rather warm sun.

Feeling foolish, Carol decided she should head back to class now but a deep voice called out, "Hey Carol BABE! What are you doing out of class?"

The blonde cringed, hoping that the brown-haired boy did not hear her name.

A boy with spiky black hair and a jersey on approached Carol with a humorous and cocky smile gracing his face.

Carol managed a smile, "Hi Richie what's up?"

The boy chucked his chin up and flexed casually, "Oh, you know, just coming back from lacross practice. Want to ditch this joint and go grab a bite or something?"

Carol shook her head, "No thanks, I have to go back to class, but you have fun!"

The boy smiled easily, "I won't take no for an answer, babe. I'm taking you out right now even if I have to carry you to my car!"

His fellow lacrosse teammates were coming now and Richie exclaimed, "Yo guys, we're taking Carol Danvers out for a spin and she doesn't know she wants to, so we're gonna help her out!"

Without warning, Richie swooped Carol up and humiliatingly bent her over his arm to carry her.

The thing about a lacrosse bro like Richie, was that they were strong, fast, and also supposed to be chivalrous in the most high school way possible. In addition to brute strength, they considered themselves athletic romantics and thus, Richie figured that his treatment of the prettiest girl at school was rather romantic and spontaneous.

She was so taken by surprise but then immediately shouted out, "YOU DOUCHEBAG! LET GO! You're going to regret this Rich!"

Richie laughed, taking this all as flirtations and beckoned for his boys to follow.

The boys whooped and skipped off to the car.

A hand stopped Richie in his tracks and a well-aimed punch to his face caused him to drop Carol.

Rich looked up, stunned to see a boy he did not know standing above him.

Rich slowly got up and scrutinized this kid.

Rich shoved the guy and shouted, "Hey man, what's your problem? Who the fuck are you?"

Richie's fellow bros came over to back up a fellow bro in need.

(^Look, 4 sentences starting with Rich!)

Scott dropped his fist and spoke, "The girl said 'let go', you creep."

Rich grew furious, "Creep? Who are you calling creep?"

Scott held up a hand, "All I'm saying is that girls aren't some piece of meat you can just pick up. Learn your manners, dude."

Richie looked around at his friends, snickering calmly.

Then, without warning, he wound his arm back and slugged Scott off his feet.

Getting used to being in this kind of position, Scott quickly snatched at his bleeding face and used his other arm to block as best as he had learned, whatever beating he was going to inevitably receive from these buff lax boys.

For propriety's sake, he closed his eyes in preparation in that split second it would take for fists to land on his body.

When he opened his eyes in anticipation, he saw that Carol had somehow thrown Richie to the ground and kicked his friends many feet away from her.

Scott stood up uncertainly and looked in awe at Carol who conveyed the beaten-up boys with indifference.

Carol briefly glanced at him with the same superior disdain but did not protest when Scott followed her as she walked away from the scene.

A.N.: Review and review! Thanks