Fic: Spark, chapters one and two
Title: Spark
Fandom: X-Men (Movie)- post X3
Pairing: Rogue/Pyro
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: X-Men 3
Disclaimer: I own nothing, excepting the plot.
Beta'd by the very cool Psychosomatic17!
Chapter One
The mansion was ridiculously dark at this time of night, all of the lights turned out and the blinds on each window securely closed. It made it somewhat more difficult to navigate the hallway connecting the male and female dormitories, but Rogue was nonetheless glad for the darkness. The last thing that she needed was to be caught outside of the girls’ dorms at this time of night once again.
She had taken to roaming the hallways at night not long after her arrival at the mansion, and the habit had only intensified over the past few months. The cure had left her with the ability to touch, but it hadn’t done anything for the lingering memories and personalities running loose in her head. With roommates, her options were limited when struggling with insomnia-or, failing that, when she was determined not to sleep because she didn’t know whose nightmares she would be encountering. So, as blaring the television or stereo was out, she had found wandering the halls to be the best option for passing the night. Or at least the most distracting option.
Distraction wasn’t her real goal in being out tonight, though. Not distraction by walking anyway. Her eyes focused on the only real source of light in the vicinity, glowing iridescent against the surrounding darkness.
That, there. There was her target. She licked her lips in anticipation for the one thing she knew was sure to momentarily distract her from her misery. A pleasure she generally denied herself, partly from fear that over-use would dampen its power, and partly for fear of the increase of her waistline.
She approached the snack machines gleefully; one hand gripping her loose change and one holding together a robe that’s belt had long since been lost in the wash. God, that brownie was gonna taste sweet.
She feared that she had come to rely on chocolate entirely too much recently, if the increasing tightness of her jeans was any indication. But, damn it, what did she care?
Her boyfriend sure as hell didn’t seem to. Not lately, anyway.
No. She chose to nip off that thought immediately. She absolutely refused to think about Bobby and his wandering eye anymore tonight. She was having her brownie, and she was going to bed-whether she would actually be able to sleep was questionable, but she was determined to try for once.
She studied the snack machine in front of her, relieved to see that the almond-topped brownies she loved so much were in stock, and began to feed her change into the machine. Before she could put more than one dime in, though, a creaking floorboard off to her left startled her, and the change went flying.
Rogue immediately tensed, stepping back from the light of the machine into the shadows. Her best friend was a stalking, growling wild man with killer instincts. It was impossible for her not to have picked up on some of his more helpful characteristics along the way-particularly as a small piece of him lingered somewhere in her psyche.
She listened, eyes futilely scanning the darkness of her surroundings, for several minutes. When nothing came, she rolled her eyes-still alert, but generally feeling like an overly-paranoid imbecile. She went down on her knees beside the coke machine, rooting around on the ground for her lost quarters and dime. The first two she found easily enough, but the dime eluded her. With nothing to light her way, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Well, that was just great. The stupid machine wouldn’t take dollars, and it had taken her a good twenty minutes to locate the loose change she needed. She exhaled in frustration, fighting the urge to curse as she leaned in for one last search of the floor between the coke machine and the snack machine.
Without warning-without a rustle of clothing, without a creaking floorboard, without a single freaking sign of movement-a lighter flared to life mere inches from her face.
“Need a light?”
Chapter Two
Rogue flinched back, momentarily blinded by the sudden flare of light. It seemed all the more intense due to the darkness of the hallway around her. Her heart was racing, and she knew that her eyes, as always, reflected every emotion she was experiencing. She just hoped that John-John? Pyro? John? What was he even calling himself nowadays? Whoever he was, she just hoped that he was having as much difficulty seeing in the dark as she was.
She had always heard that deprivation of one sense only intensified the others. Maybe that was why hearing his voice for the first time after so long was able to strike such a chord within her, riding along her nerve endings and creating a warm tingle that she felt right down to her toes. And, oh God, her toes… She was suddenly all too aware of her mint green bunny slippers, to say nothing of her sleep-mussed hair.
Her voice, when she spoke, was somewhat faster and more clipped than her accent typically permitted. “What are you doing here?”
His ridiculously full lips curled into a sneer, and then she lost sight of his features as the lighter was abruptly extinguished. Not that she needed it. She might not see him as he let out that sharp, mocking breath of laughter that wasn’t quite laughter, but she heard him, and she saw him in her head; saw the way his eyes crinkled almost distastefully, his head just slightly thrown back.
“Come on, Roguey. Don’t tell me you missed all the excitement.” His voice was cold, derisive. And, beneath that sardonic veneer, filled with such disgust and pain that it made her heart ache for him.
No, she hadn’t missed it. How could she? It was the talk of the mansion, after all. Everyone knew the story, but that wasn’t stopping them from talking about it. In the hallways, in the lunch line, in the classrooms… It was driving her crazy the way that they were talking, gossiping about something they had no right to, about things that they couldn’t understand in a million years; things that only Magneto’s memories buried deep within her mind allowed her to even come close to understanding.
It was the general consensus of the school that Pyro had known what he was getting into when he joined up with the Brotherhood. That he deserved what he got. It was that phrase in particular... whispered guiltily, but sincerely, behind clasped hands and closed doors-behind her own door, no less. It was enough to make her sick.
She had been beyond angry with John after his defection. She still was. But, God, whenever she closed her eyes she could see him locked away in that tiny cell, wounded and bleeding, with nothing to do but wait to die. And no matter how much his betrayal had hurt, no matter how many times she had cursed him in the aftermath of his departure… when she heard those words, it was all she could do not to lay into every one of the loud-mouthed, unfeeling gossips she could get at. Roommates included.
Truth be told, the inane rumors surrounding John had a lot more to do with her increasingly frequent chocolate lust than she was willing to admit to even herself. Bobby was a big part of the problem, yes, but he had become little more than an afterthought since Pyro had returned to the mansion. In the face of everything he’d been through, worrying about Bobby’s possible desire for Kitty seemed beyond childish. And, although she couldn’t quite restrain herself from thinking about them at least fifty times a day, she felt a twinge of guilt every time that she did.
She’d heard about Bobby’s daring confrontation with Pyro at least a hundred times, ninety-nine of which had been from the oh-so-admiring freaking Kitty Pryde. Left for dead by what was left of his precious Brotherhood, he’d been among a handful of other wounded rebel mutants to be picked off the battlefield by human law enforcement and transported to a prison camp. What he’d gone through there… She shuddered, nausea rising within her at the thought of what he must have suffered at the hands of his captors.
The X-Men had come to the rescue, of course. Brotherhood or not, no one deserved to be kept locked up in a cell the size of a dog house, deprived of food until the point of starvation, beaten senseless whenever the guards needed something amusing to occupy their time.
Logan had told her how they’d raided the camp, having to physically carry out the majority of the prisoners. They had been chained up so long-kept from food and water-that they didn’t even have the ability to crawl away once their chains were released. Pyro had been the only captured Brotherhood member to survive internment in the camp.
They were all in a safe house now; one of Professor Xavier’s many properties, as she had goaded Logan into telling her. Besides that, the only thing she knew was that it was at an undisclosed location, somewhere far from Westchester, and Kurt Wagner was in charge of the rehabilitation facility.
They were all there except for Pyro, anyway. The X-Men may have saved him, but, after all, he was still Brotherhood. He was sent directly from the prison to the med bay and then right back to prison-except that his new enclosure happened to be a high-security, but relatively comfortable (or so Logan had assured her) cell in one of the upper level areas of the mansion. She had never it seen before, as it was restricted to students, but she had nagged him into giving her a fairly decent description. As he had said, running a frustrated hand through that messy hair of his, ‘what the hell else were they supposed to do with him? Send him to fucking day care in the nursery?’
Rogue averted her eyes-not that he could actually see them-and fought back the wave of pity rising in her chest. If she knew one thing about Pyro, it was that he did not respond well to that particular emotion. If he detected the slightest sign of it in her, she just knew he would snarl some stupid insult at her, being the hateful bastard he so often was, and take off. And that was the very last thing she wanted. She’d been wanting to see her former friend for so long, and now that she was doing so it felt completely unreal-especially in light of his recent incarceration and the very unusual circumstances surrounding this little reunion. She didn’t want it to end so soon, or she just knew she’d spent the next month wondering if her poor, overcrowded mind had made the whole meeting up.
She realized that she was taking too long to reply to his question, but, really, what was she supposed to say? He knew full well that she hadn’t ‘missed the excitement.’ She scuffed one little green bunny against the cold hardwood floor, finally settling on her standard method of replying for when she was in an awkward situation. Stammering and idiocy, punctuated by a noticeable deepening of her accent. “No, of course not. How could I have missed it?” So smooth. “I mean… when I asked what you were doin’ here, what I meant was-”
“I know what you meant. ‘What the fuck are the geniuses running this place doing, letting Big Bad Mister Brotherhood run around loose while all their precious little charges are sleeping helplessly,’ right?”
She fought the urge to roll her eyes. No one could mix arrogance and insults into casual conversation quite like John. If it weren’t so irritating, she might admire his talent.
“Not the words that I would have chosen, but, yeah, that’s the general idea.”
He shrugged, turning his back on her and walking over to study the coke machine. Rogue squeezed her eyes shut in sheer frustration, trying not to be bothered by his rude behavior, seeing as how he’d just been through hell and all. She didn’t succeed, but at least she tried.
When she opened her eyes, she was in for quite a shock. The image Pyro presented-the glow from the coke machine creating the first semi-decent look she’d gotten of him all night-was so different from the John she had carried around in her mind. She hadn’t seen him face-to-face since that nightmare day on the X-Jet, and his hair took her by complete surprise. While she experienced an intense period of mourning for that chocolate brown hair she had always secretly admired, she couldn’t help but smile at his new hair color. It was such a John thing to do. Changing his hair to match the fire that he was so obsessed with.
Still, it was rather irritating. Back in the old days, when they-Bobby and John and her-had been best buddies, she had gotten a kick out of tangling her gloved fingers into his hair whenever she wanted to tease him. He would flash her that cute bad boy grin, never once flinching away from her deadly skin. Moments like that, there was always something in his eyes that caught her off guard. Softer than what she was used to coming from him, but with something intangible simmering just beneath the surface. And then she would pull back-laughing awkwardly, never quite able to meet his eyes-but only after noticing how incredibly soft his hair had felt, even through her gloves. She wondered vaguely if the bleach had ruined that, leaving it dry and damaged.
The thought annoyed her.
He seemed taller, and perhaps a bit more muscular, but it was impossible to tell very much when the only lighting came from the soft glow of the machine. One thing was for sure; he was much too thin. Unhealthily so, and she wanted nothing more than to track down every single one of the bastards who had left him to starve in that damned dirty cell, and systematically drain them dry.
Not that that was really an option anymore. Nonetheless, Rogue winced, uncomfortable with the direction her thoughts were taking. Any urge to do harm with her powers always left her feeling vaguely guilty, irrationally certain that if she looked behind her back she would see Bobby and the rest of the school staring at her with suspicion and disgust, just as they had done after the stabbing incident with the Wolverine.
Rogue realized that her mind had once again drifted, as it had been doing so much of lately. She lifted her gaze to John’s face, and was startled to find his eyes fixed directly upon her, watching her watching him. Something about the sudden tensity of his pose coupled with that same odd, indefinable look in his eyes made her stomach clench strangely, and brought a slight flush to her cheeks. She averted her eyes, turning slightly and attempting to appear intensely interested in her shadow.
Rogue heard him cross the few steps separating him, and glanced back up, surprised, when he pressed something cold into her hand. She looked at the frosty canister she was now holding, and then her lips curved into a soft, very sweet smile. “Cherry Coke?” She asked, inexplicably touched that he had remembered her favorite beverage.
John winked at her. “What else?”
God, she must have really been out of it if she hadn’t even noticed him operating the coke machine.
John abruptly grasped her empty left hand, and Rogue struggled to keep hold of the drink in her other as she was suddenly pulled in the direction of the boys’ dorms. She resisted. “John, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He tugged at her harder, clearly exasperated. “Look, you wanna know what’s going on with me? Why you’re suddenly running into your favorite bad guy in the hall at two in the morning? That’s fine, but I’m sure as hell not getting into it in the middle of the fucking hallway.”
Rogue hesitated, nervously catching her bottom lip between her teeth. It would be stupid of her, she knew that much without a doubt. More than once she had trusted John, only to regret it later-you’d think she’d have learned her lesson by now, actually. But she did want to keep talking to him, and she was dying to know why he was suddenly out of his cell and buying her Cherry Cokes.
She was conflicted; she knew it was a bad idea. The Wolverine in her head was growling that the whole situation was a damn bad idea. Magneto was curiously silent-which in itself was reason enough to put her on high alert. And, of course, the John in her head was practically shoving her in the direction of the real John.
Come on, what could it hurt? One little scream and the whole mansion will be at your door. And really, Roguey, I’m feeling kind of wounded here. What reason have I ever given you not to trust me? At her scoff of disbelief, Oh, come on, that’s not a good reason…
Rogue sighed, wishing that, just once, she could make a decision without group participation.
John was still gripping her free hand, though he’d finally quit his incessant tugging. He now looked at her with that infernal tilt to his left brow, and, when a wicked smirk settled upon his face, she knew he was about to pull an ace. Slowly, he reached his hand into the pocket of the loose grey hoodie he was wearing with a pair of dark sweatpants. She tensed, as he pulled out…
…Oh God...
“Did I mention that I just bought the last brownie?”
Just like that, the battle was over. Not that she’d ever stood a chance, anyway.
All Comments Welcome!
Fandom: X-Men (Movie)- post X3
Pairing: Rogue/Pyro
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: X-Men 3
Disclaimer: I own nothing, excepting the plot.
Beta'd by the very cool Psychosomatic17!
Chapter One
The mansion was ridiculously dark at this time of night, all of the lights turned out and the blinds on each window securely closed. It made it somewhat more difficult to navigate the hallway connecting the male and female dormitories, but Rogue was nonetheless glad for the darkness. The last thing that she needed was to be caught outside of the girls’ dorms at this time of night once again.
She had taken to roaming the hallways at night not long after her arrival at the mansion, and the habit had only intensified over the past few months. The cure had left her with the ability to touch, but it hadn’t done anything for the lingering memories and personalities running loose in her head. With roommates, her options were limited when struggling with insomnia-or, failing that, when she was determined not to sleep because she didn’t know whose nightmares she would be encountering. So, as blaring the television or stereo was out, she had found wandering the halls to be the best option for passing the night. Or at least the most distracting option.
Distraction wasn’t her real goal in being out tonight, though. Not distraction by walking anyway. Her eyes focused on the only real source of light in the vicinity, glowing iridescent against the surrounding darkness.
That, there. There was her target. She licked her lips in anticipation for the one thing she knew was sure to momentarily distract her from her misery. A pleasure she generally denied herself, partly from fear that over-use would dampen its power, and partly for fear of the increase of her waistline.
She approached the snack machines gleefully; one hand gripping her loose change and one holding together a robe that’s belt had long since been lost in the wash. God, that brownie was gonna taste sweet.
She feared that she had come to rely on chocolate entirely too much recently, if the increasing tightness of her jeans was any indication. But, damn it, what did she care?
Her boyfriend sure as hell didn’t seem to. Not lately, anyway.
No. She chose to nip off that thought immediately. She absolutely refused to think about Bobby and his wandering eye anymore tonight. She was having her brownie, and she was going to bed-whether she would actually be able to sleep was questionable, but she was determined to try for once.
She studied the snack machine in front of her, relieved to see that the almond-topped brownies she loved so much were in stock, and began to feed her change into the machine. Before she could put more than one dime in, though, a creaking floorboard off to her left startled her, and the change went flying.
Rogue immediately tensed, stepping back from the light of the machine into the shadows. Her best friend was a stalking, growling wild man with killer instincts. It was impossible for her not to have picked up on some of his more helpful characteristics along the way-particularly as a small piece of him lingered somewhere in her psyche.
She listened, eyes futilely scanning the darkness of her surroundings, for several minutes. When nothing came, she rolled her eyes-still alert, but generally feeling like an overly-paranoid imbecile. She went down on her knees beside the coke machine, rooting around on the ground for her lost quarters and dime. The first two she found easily enough, but the dime eluded her. With nothing to light her way, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Well, that was just great. The stupid machine wouldn’t take dollars, and it had taken her a good twenty minutes to locate the loose change she needed. She exhaled in frustration, fighting the urge to curse as she leaned in for one last search of the floor between the coke machine and the snack machine.
Without warning-without a rustle of clothing, without a creaking floorboard, without a single freaking sign of movement-a lighter flared to life mere inches from her face.
“Need a light?”
Chapter Two
Rogue flinched back, momentarily blinded by the sudden flare of light. It seemed all the more intense due to the darkness of the hallway around her. Her heart was racing, and she knew that her eyes, as always, reflected every emotion she was experiencing. She just hoped that John-John? Pyro? John? What was he even calling himself nowadays? Whoever he was, she just hoped that he was having as much difficulty seeing in the dark as she was.
She had always heard that deprivation of one sense only intensified the others. Maybe that was why hearing his voice for the first time after so long was able to strike such a chord within her, riding along her nerve endings and creating a warm tingle that she felt right down to her toes. And, oh God, her toes… She was suddenly all too aware of her mint green bunny slippers, to say nothing of her sleep-mussed hair.
Her voice, when she spoke, was somewhat faster and more clipped than her accent typically permitted. “What are you doing here?”
His ridiculously full lips curled into a sneer, and then she lost sight of his features as the lighter was abruptly extinguished. Not that she needed it. She might not see him as he let out that sharp, mocking breath of laughter that wasn’t quite laughter, but she heard him, and she saw him in her head; saw the way his eyes crinkled almost distastefully, his head just slightly thrown back.
“Come on, Roguey. Don’t tell me you missed all the excitement.” His voice was cold, derisive. And, beneath that sardonic veneer, filled with such disgust and pain that it made her heart ache for him.
No, she hadn’t missed it. How could she? It was the talk of the mansion, after all. Everyone knew the story, but that wasn’t stopping them from talking about it. In the hallways, in the lunch line, in the classrooms… It was driving her crazy the way that they were talking, gossiping about something they had no right to, about things that they couldn’t understand in a million years; things that only Magneto’s memories buried deep within her mind allowed her to even come close to understanding.
It was the general consensus of the school that Pyro had known what he was getting into when he joined up with the Brotherhood. That he deserved what he got. It was that phrase in particular... whispered guiltily, but sincerely, behind clasped hands and closed doors-behind her own door, no less. It was enough to make her sick.
She had been beyond angry with John after his defection. She still was. But, God, whenever she closed her eyes she could see him locked away in that tiny cell, wounded and bleeding, with nothing to do but wait to die. And no matter how much his betrayal had hurt, no matter how many times she had cursed him in the aftermath of his departure… when she heard those words, it was all she could do not to lay into every one of the loud-mouthed, unfeeling gossips she could get at. Roommates included.
Truth be told, the inane rumors surrounding John had a lot more to do with her increasingly frequent chocolate lust than she was willing to admit to even herself. Bobby was a big part of the problem, yes, but he had become little more than an afterthought since Pyro had returned to the mansion. In the face of everything he’d been through, worrying about Bobby’s possible desire for Kitty seemed beyond childish. And, although she couldn’t quite restrain herself from thinking about them at least fifty times a day, she felt a twinge of guilt every time that she did.
She’d heard about Bobby’s daring confrontation with Pyro at least a hundred times, ninety-nine of which had been from the oh-so-admiring freaking Kitty Pryde. Left for dead by what was left of his precious Brotherhood, he’d been among a handful of other wounded rebel mutants to be picked off the battlefield by human law enforcement and transported to a prison camp. What he’d gone through there… She shuddered, nausea rising within her at the thought of what he must have suffered at the hands of his captors.
The X-Men had come to the rescue, of course. Brotherhood or not, no one deserved to be kept locked up in a cell the size of a dog house, deprived of food until the point of starvation, beaten senseless whenever the guards needed something amusing to occupy their time.
Logan had told her how they’d raided the camp, having to physically carry out the majority of the prisoners. They had been chained up so long-kept from food and water-that they didn’t even have the ability to crawl away once their chains were released. Pyro had been the only captured Brotherhood member to survive internment in the camp.
They were all in a safe house now; one of Professor Xavier’s many properties, as she had goaded Logan into telling her. Besides that, the only thing she knew was that it was at an undisclosed location, somewhere far from Westchester, and Kurt Wagner was in charge of the rehabilitation facility.
They were all there except for Pyro, anyway. The X-Men may have saved him, but, after all, he was still Brotherhood. He was sent directly from the prison to the med bay and then right back to prison-except that his new enclosure happened to be a high-security, but relatively comfortable (or so Logan had assured her) cell in one of the upper level areas of the mansion. She had never it seen before, as it was restricted to students, but she had nagged him into giving her a fairly decent description. As he had said, running a frustrated hand through that messy hair of his, ‘what the hell else were they supposed to do with him? Send him to fucking day care in the nursery?’
Rogue averted her eyes-not that he could actually see them-and fought back the wave of pity rising in her chest. If she knew one thing about Pyro, it was that he did not respond well to that particular emotion. If he detected the slightest sign of it in her, she just knew he would snarl some stupid insult at her, being the hateful bastard he so often was, and take off. And that was the very last thing she wanted. She’d been wanting to see her former friend for so long, and now that she was doing so it felt completely unreal-especially in light of his recent incarceration and the very unusual circumstances surrounding this little reunion. She didn’t want it to end so soon, or she just knew she’d spent the next month wondering if her poor, overcrowded mind had made the whole meeting up.
She realized that she was taking too long to reply to his question, but, really, what was she supposed to say? He knew full well that she hadn’t ‘missed the excitement.’ She scuffed one little green bunny against the cold hardwood floor, finally settling on her standard method of replying for when she was in an awkward situation. Stammering and idiocy, punctuated by a noticeable deepening of her accent. “No, of course not. How could I have missed it?” So smooth. “I mean… when I asked what you were doin’ here, what I meant was-”
“I know what you meant. ‘What the fuck are the geniuses running this place doing, letting Big Bad Mister Brotherhood run around loose while all their precious little charges are sleeping helplessly,’ right?”
She fought the urge to roll her eyes. No one could mix arrogance and insults into casual conversation quite like John. If it weren’t so irritating, she might admire his talent.
“Not the words that I would have chosen, but, yeah, that’s the general idea.”
He shrugged, turning his back on her and walking over to study the coke machine. Rogue squeezed her eyes shut in sheer frustration, trying not to be bothered by his rude behavior, seeing as how he’d just been through hell and all. She didn’t succeed, but at least she tried.
When she opened her eyes, she was in for quite a shock. The image Pyro presented-the glow from the coke machine creating the first semi-decent look she’d gotten of him all night-was so different from the John she had carried around in her mind. She hadn’t seen him face-to-face since that nightmare day on the X-Jet, and his hair took her by complete surprise. While she experienced an intense period of mourning for that chocolate brown hair she had always secretly admired, she couldn’t help but smile at his new hair color. It was such a John thing to do. Changing his hair to match the fire that he was so obsessed with.
Still, it was rather irritating. Back in the old days, when they-Bobby and John and her-had been best buddies, she had gotten a kick out of tangling her gloved fingers into his hair whenever she wanted to tease him. He would flash her that cute bad boy grin, never once flinching away from her deadly skin. Moments like that, there was always something in his eyes that caught her off guard. Softer than what she was used to coming from him, but with something intangible simmering just beneath the surface. And then she would pull back-laughing awkwardly, never quite able to meet his eyes-but only after noticing how incredibly soft his hair had felt, even through her gloves. She wondered vaguely if the bleach had ruined that, leaving it dry and damaged.
The thought annoyed her.
He seemed taller, and perhaps a bit more muscular, but it was impossible to tell very much when the only lighting came from the soft glow of the machine. One thing was for sure; he was much too thin. Unhealthily so, and she wanted nothing more than to track down every single one of the bastards who had left him to starve in that damned dirty cell, and systematically drain them dry.
Not that that was really an option anymore. Nonetheless, Rogue winced, uncomfortable with the direction her thoughts were taking. Any urge to do harm with her powers always left her feeling vaguely guilty, irrationally certain that if she looked behind her back she would see Bobby and the rest of the school staring at her with suspicion and disgust, just as they had done after the stabbing incident with the Wolverine.
Rogue realized that her mind had once again drifted, as it had been doing so much of lately. She lifted her gaze to John’s face, and was startled to find his eyes fixed directly upon her, watching her watching him. Something about the sudden tensity of his pose coupled with that same odd, indefinable look in his eyes made her stomach clench strangely, and brought a slight flush to her cheeks. She averted her eyes, turning slightly and attempting to appear intensely interested in her shadow.
Rogue heard him cross the few steps separating him, and glanced back up, surprised, when he pressed something cold into her hand. She looked at the frosty canister she was now holding, and then her lips curved into a soft, very sweet smile. “Cherry Coke?” She asked, inexplicably touched that he had remembered her favorite beverage.
John winked at her. “What else?”
God, she must have really been out of it if she hadn’t even noticed him operating the coke machine.
John abruptly grasped her empty left hand, and Rogue struggled to keep hold of the drink in her other as she was suddenly pulled in the direction of the boys’ dorms. She resisted. “John, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He tugged at her harder, clearly exasperated. “Look, you wanna know what’s going on with me? Why you’re suddenly running into your favorite bad guy in the hall at two in the morning? That’s fine, but I’m sure as hell not getting into it in the middle of the fucking hallway.”
Rogue hesitated, nervously catching her bottom lip between her teeth. It would be stupid of her, she knew that much without a doubt. More than once she had trusted John, only to regret it later-you’d think she’d have learned her lesson by now, actually. But she did want to keep talking to him, and she was dying to know why he was suddenly out of his cell and buying her Cherry Cokes.
She was conflicted; she knew it was a bad idea. The Wolverine in her head was growling that the whole situation was a damn bad idea. Magneto was curiously silent-which in itself was reason enough to put her on high alert. And, of course, the John in her head was practically shoving her in the direction of the real John.
Come on, what could it hurt? One little scream and the whole mansion will be at your door. And really, Roguey, I’m feeling kind of wounded here. What reason have I ever given you not to trust me? At her scoff of disbelief, Oh, come on, that’s not a good reason…
Rogue sighed, wishing that, just once, she could make a decision without group participation.
John was still gripping her free hand, though he’d finally quit his incessant tugging. He now looked at her with that infernal tilt to his left brow, and, when a wicked smirk settled upon his face, she knew he was about to pull an ace. Slowly, he reached his hand into the pocket of the loose grey hoodie he was wearing with a pair of dark sweatpants. She tensed, as he pulled out…
…Oh God...
“Did I mention that I just bought the last brownie?”
Just like that, the battle was over. Not that she’d ever stood a chance, anyway.
All Comments Welcome!