Fic: Rebuilding Burned Bridges (Part 8/9)
Title: Rebuilding Burned Bridges (Part 8/9)
Author: ms_jvh_shuh
Pairing: Bobby/St John
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Years after the events of Alkali Lake and Alcatraz, St John finds that you cannot burn all your bridges without rebuilding some.
Shaking foundations.
Note:This is the longest part. They actually get to leave the flat!
As ever, lots and lots of thank yous to inootz for looking everything over for me.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4,
Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Rebuilding Burned Bridges
*
Hi Jimmy,
how you holdin up, sport? Hope you're not too bothered by the hot shots. Just remember, the raindrops and claws will protect you like crazy, and you know Auntie Em and I will never let anything happen to you.
Wanna come for a visit, take things off your mind a bit? Dwelling on people's mu-sical ignorance gets kinda impossible when squished by Amanda.
Speaking of squish, what's that I hear about Hank turning rogue Mary's blood into an antidote any day now? It'll matter even less, then, what they do.
See ya,
- 24/7 Bob
*
It's around noon on the sixth day that he meets the first members of the 24/7. He is reading through a report on the mutant-related mood on campus that Bobby compiled for Kitty, inserting missing commas with his flashy green pen, and the next thing he knows, he's standing in the middle of an unfamiliar apartment with no recollection of how he got there. Amidst the overturned furniture, there's a couch, much like the one he's slept on for six nights, and he's one second short of burning the place down on pure instinct when he spots the sobbing young woman sitting hunched over on it.
Bobby is kneeling at her feet with another student St John vaguely thinks he's seen before, talking quietly, apparently trying to soothe her. The stranger's fingers hover just above her shoulder, wanting to comfort but not quite daring to touch. Bobby's left hand is iced over, maintaining a firm grip on the woman's arm, and St John remembers this, remembers powers going on overdrive and a cool hand on the back of his neck, helping him focus.
He barely has time to ask what the hell is going on, much less demand an explanation from the college students when the abrupt yet quiet scene before him is interrupted by the insistent ring of a cell phone. The student with the red streak in his blond hair groans and reluctantly gets to his feet to answer. Even from a few feet away and completely ignored by everybody else, St John can hear the scream.
"The hell, Traipsie?"
The young man flinches and scowls into his phone while Bobby obliviously continues to talk to the young woman in hushed tones. "None of your teacups knocked over?" he asks, voice strained. "Stella broke off a four-point-one. Sorry to black-out your day, but we're talking full-on cover mode."
After a beat, the person on the other end sounds a lot calmer when she asks "What happened?"
"Don't know, we're still getting her down. Could've been a lot worse, but the Boss got here."
There's another reply to that which St John cannot make out, the man addressed as 'Traipsie' says "Later, 'Manda," and shuts the phone off. He looks down at the two people by the couch, then sighs and starts to pick up the furniture. He is shuffling together a jumbled stack of papers when he notices St John.
"Oh, damn," he says. "Did I get you full-on?"
"What?" says St John, blinking. The other man drags a hand over his face.
"Shit, I did; I blocked out the Boss and Stels, but not you." He grimaces and holds out a hand toward St John. "You're the soot and ashes. Marcus Traips, or 'Traipsie' if you go by them," he nods at the sniffling woman named Stella and Bobby.
St John is still unsure what is going on, but it's clear that he's standing in the apartment of one of Bobby's mutant friends. Who would've thought. College boy Robert Drake has on-campus mutant friends.
The man frowns at him. "I snapped you good, this is the best I can do," and he flicks a finger against St John's forehead.
St John inadvertedly takes a step back and stumbles at the sudden onslaught of disjointed images. He takes a deep breath and concentrates on the three he gets most clearly; Bobby dropping a book and muttering "Shit", lamps and windows rattling; Bobby sprinting down the hallway with St John at his feet; Bobby skipping to a halt and breaking a door down; and all the while the feeling of the ground shaking under his feet.
Missing minutes - quite possibly less than ten - recovered as well as it's apparently going to get, he shakes his head to refocus on the present. He fixes his gaze on the mind-snapper, Traipsie, who, considering he seems to know who St John is and what he just did, should look a lot more nervous.
And why the hell'd he call Bobby "Boss"?
"Are you the reason no-one's ratted me out yet?" he asks, thinking back to the day he arrived here reeking of smoke under the eyes of several witnesses.
The man shrugs. "The reason for that is the ice cube. I just tweaked them a bit."
Well. Keeping the authorities off Pyro's back certainly counts in the stranger's favor, so maybe he shouldn't get his ass fried for messing with St John's head just yet. "How long's that take," St John says instead of "thanks", indicating Stella and Bobby and frowning at the sight of Stella's arm; it was white before, now it's looking blue-ish.
Traipsie bites his lip. "Not long, I hope," he answers. "Been quite a while since it was this bad."
The room has almost been tidied up completely when Stella finally extracts her arm from Bobby's grip, sighs heavily and leans back. Bobby doesn't move, keeps his eyes on her, but it seems that whatever crisis there was is over. Traipsie walks over to the sink, gets a washcloth to help thaw Stella's alarmingly ugly-blue arm, but this is something St John can do.
A bit wary, because these people don't know him and he doesn't particularly want to have his brain re-snapped, he extends a hand towards the frozen limb and arches an eyebrow in question. Stella looks to Bobby, and when he nods, she swallows hard and lets St John apply the lightest touch with his fingertips.
He hasn't used his powers for almost a week, and the last time he did he had to exert a control so rigid he almost passed out from it. This is similar in many ways, but instead of preventing a fire of the hottest heat he can manage from crossing the boundary he's set for it, he has to be careful to emit no more than the tiniest bit of warmth. From the look of her arm, she and Bobby have done this a lot, and they know what they're doing because he hasn't heard of any earthquakes in the area and Stella hasn't lost a single finger yet, but the procedure has left smaller versions of the scars St John has on his own wrists, left there by Bobby's very special kind of frost.
It's tricky, deliberately using this side-effect that has kept him warm but otherwise never done him much good. It's not as easy as you'd think to judge what body temperature a person should have when your own tends to run that much higher, but St John's had to learn to assess an average difference. It takes about two minutes, two minutes in which there's no sound safe a soft wince as Stella's blood slowly, slowly starts circulating normally again.
Bobby grins brightly at him when he lets go, and Stella cradles her arm and smiles at him, a bit embarrassed and not a little mortified at her loss of control.
It occurs to him later, when he's back safely in the confines of Bobby's room, that this is maybe the fourth time in eleven years total that he's used his powers under the eyes of others and heard a "thank you".
*
Hi Warren,
how's Europe? You as packed with work as me? We're still waiting for postcards. We do actually want more than your money, man. Oh, and you need to call Jimmy.
- 24/7 Bob
Part 9
Author: ms_jvh_shuh
Pairing: Bobby/St John
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Years after the events of Alkali Lake and Alcatraz, St John finds that you cannot burn all your bridges without rebuilding some.
Shaking foundations.
Note:This is the longest part. They actually get to leave the flat!
As ever, lots and lots of thank yous to inootz for looking everything over for me.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4,
Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Rebuilding Burned Bridges
*
Hi Jimmy,
how you holdin up, sport? Hope you're not too bothered by the hot shots. Just remember, the raindrops and claws will protect you like crazy, and you know Auntie Em and I will never let anything happen to you.
Wanna come for a visit, take things off your mind a bit? Dwelling on people's mu-sical ignorance gets kinda impossible when squished by Amanda.
Speaking of squish, what's that I hear about Hank turning rogue Mary's blood into an antidote any day now? It'll matter even less, then, what they do.
See ya,
- 24/7 Bob
*
It's around noon on the sixth day that he meets the first members of the 24/7. He is reading through a report on the mutant-related mood on campus that Bobby compiled for Kitty, inserting missing commas with his flashy green pen, and the next thing he knows, he's standing in the middle of an unfamiliar apartment with no recollection of how he got there. Amidst the overturned furniture, there's a couch, much like the one he's slept on for six nights, and he's one second short of burning the place down on pure instinct when he spots the sobbing young woman sitting hunched over on it.
Bobby is kneeling at her feet with another student St John vaguely thinks he's seen before, talking quietly, apparently trying to soothe her. The stranger's fingers hover just above her shoulder, wanting to comfort but not quite daring to touch. Bobby's left hand is iced over, maintaining a firm grip on the woman's arm, and St John remembers this, remembers powers going on overdrive and a cool hand on the back of his neck, helping him focus.
He barely has time to ask what the hell is going on, much less demand an explanation from the college students when the abrupt yet quiet scene before him is interrupted by the insistent ring of a cell phone. The student with the red streak in his blond hair groans and reluctantly gets to his feet to answer. Even from a few feet away and completely ignored by everybody else, St John can hear the scream.
"The hell, Traipsie?"
The young man flinches and scowls into his phone while Bobby obliviously continues to talk to the young woman in hushed tones. "None of your teacups knocked over?" he asks, voice strained. "Stella broke off a four-point-one. Sorry to black-out your day, but we're talking full-on cover mode."
After a beat, the person on the other end sounds a lot calmer when she asks "What happened?"
"Don't know, we're still getting her down. Could've been a lot worse, but the Boss got here."
There's another reply to that which St John cannot make out, the man addressed as 'Traipsie' says "Later, 'Manda," and shuts the phone off. He looks down at the two people by the couch, then sighs and starts to pick up the furniture. He is shuffling together a jumbled stack of papers when he notices St John.
"Oh, damn," he says. "Did I get you full-on?"
"What?" says St John, blinking. The other man drags a hand over his face.
"Shit, I did; I blocked out the Boss and Stels, but not you." He grimaces and holds out a hand toward St John. "You're the soot and ashes. Marcus Traips, or 'Traipsie' if you go by them," he nods at the sniffling woman named Stella and Bobby.
St John is still unsure what is going on, but it's clear that he's standing in the apartment of one of Bobby's mutant friends. Who would've thought. College boy Robert Drake has on-campus mutant friends.
The man frowns at him. "I snapped you good, this is the best I can do," and he flicks a finger against St John's forehead.
St John inadvertedly takes a step back and stumbles at the sudden onslaught of disjointed images. He takes a deep breath and concentrates on the three he gets most clearly; Bobby dropping a book and muttering "Shit", lamps and windows rattling; Bobby sprinting down the hallway with St John at his feet; Bobby skipping to a halt and breaking a door down; and all the while the feeling of the ground shaking under his feet.
Missing minutes - quite possibly less than ten - recovered as well as it's apparently going to get, he shakes his head to refocus on the present. He fixes his gaze on the mind-snapper, Traipsie, who, considering he seems to know who St John is and what he just did, should look a lot more nervous.
And why the hell'd he call Bobby "Boss"?
"Are you the reason no-one's ratted me out yet?" he asks, thinking back to the day he arrived here reeking of smoke under the eyes of several witnesses.
The man shrugs. "The reason for that is the ice cube. I just tweaked them a bit."
Well. Keeping the authorities off Pyro's back certainly counts in the stranger's favor, so maybe he shouldn't get his ass fried for messing with St John's head just yet. "How long's that take," St John says instead of "thanks", indicating Stella and Bobby and frowning at the sight of Stella's arm; it was white before, now it's looking blue-ish.
Traipsie bites his lip. "Not long, I hope," he answers. "Been quite a while since it was this bad."
The room has almost been tidied up completely when Stella finally extracts her arm from Bobby's grip, sighs heavily and leans back. Bobby doesn't move, keeps his eyes on her, but it seems that whatever crisis there was is over. Traipsie walks over to the sink, gets a washcloth to help thaw Stella's alarmingly ugly-blue arm, but this is something St John can do.
A bit wary, because these people don't know him and he doesn't particularly want to have his brain re-snapped, he extends a hand towards the frozen limb and arches an eyebrow in question. Stella looks to Bobby, and when he nods, she swallows hard and lets St John apply the lightest touch with his fingertips.
He hasn't used his powers for almost a week, and the last time he did he had to exert a control so rigid he almost passed out from it. This is similar in many ways, but instead of preventing a fire of the hottest heat he can manage from crossing the boundary he's set for it, he has to be careful to emit no more than the tiniest bit of warmth. From the look of her arm, she and Bobby have done this a lot, and they know what they're doing because he hasn't heard of any earthquakes in the area and Stella hasn't lost a single finger yet, but the procedure has left smaller versions of the scars St John has on his own wrists, left there by Bobby's very special kind of frost.
It's tricky, deliberately using this side-effect that has kept him warm but otherwise never done him much good. It's not as easy as you'd think to judge what body temperature a person should have when your own tends to run that much higher, but St John's had to learn to assess an average difference. It takes about two minutes, two minutes in which there's no sound safe a soft wince as Stella's blood slowly, slowly starts circulating normally again.
Bobby grins brightly at him when he lets go, and Stella cradles her arm and smiles at him, a bit embarrassed and not a little mortified at her loss of control.
It occurs to him later, when he's back safely in the confines of Bobby's room, that this is maybe the fourth time in eleven years total that he's used his powers under the eyes of others and heard a "thank you".
*
Hi Warren,
how's Europe? You as packed with work as me? We're still waiting for postcards. We do actually want more than your money, man. Oh, and you need to call Jimmy.
- 24/7 Bob
Part 9