Polyamory Big Bang, X-Men Film Trilogy, 'Home' Part 4/4
Title: Home
Fandom: X-Men film trilogy
Genre: Romance/General/AU
Characters/Pairings: Bobby, Rogue, John “Pyro” Allerdyce, Logan; Bobby/Rogue, Bobby/John, John/Bobby/Rogue
Word Count: 10,378
Rating: PG-13 for implications of sexual activity between possibly underage characters.
Spoilers: X2: X-Men United and X3: The Last Stand
Notes: This is my first long X-Men fic, and my first long poly fic. I hope you enjoy!
Beta: A real life friend, Cassi, who has no LJ.
Summary: John doesn’t leave the team at Alkali Lake. How does that change what happens after?
Manhattan is loud and angry. Even with John at his back, Bobby is nervous.
This place is dangerous.
They get closer and closer to the clinic, and there are mutants everywhere - some obvious, some not nearly so. But Bobby can tell; there’s always something in the slant of eyes, or in the nervous skitter of a gait, that makes it visible even for those with invisible mutations.
Soon, they’re on the same block as the clinic. The sidewalks on both sides of the street are full to bursting. On one side is the clinic, and the long line of mutants waiting for the cure. On the other is the mob of protesters and signs that make the line out to be traitors and cowards. Bobby doesn’t know what to do, exactly, or where to stand.
John puts a hand in the small of his back and guides him to the side of the street across from the clinic. They have to walk the block to see if Rogue is already on line, he tells Bobby, whispering softly into his ear. Bobby complies, and John stays close.
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see John’s lighter clenched tight in his hand.
They both look for Rogue, peering over heads and around signs, but they don’t see her anywhere. Bobby feels his heart speed up with every passing minute - what if she’s already inside?
There is a second of utter silence, which catches Bobby off guard, and then an explosion.
It isn’t John’s doing, but John jumps into action, pushing Bobby back toward a building and throwing his hand outward. He wrestles with the flames hurtling toward the clinic, yanking them back. He’s not even looking at the fire, but the ferocity in his eyes makes Bobby afraid. It’s more than he’s ever seen in the Danger Room, and it looks like a forest fire - the kind where people get killed and houses get burned to cinders.
Right now, John looks like he could be a fucking force of nature.
Finally, he turns around, and Bobby watches as the crowd parts to reveal a blonde girl, not much older than them, who has her hands outstretched and is trying to wrest the fire from John’s control.
John spits at her, and begins to shape the fire to his will.
She growls something unintelligible and vicious and tries to unravel John’s designs. The ball of fire shivers but doesn’t unwind. John just tosses his head and closes his hand.
The fire goes out - but only for an instant.
In the next, the young woman goes up in flames, screaming. It takes her a few seconds, precious seconds, to put herself out - or maybe John does that too, with another tilt of his head. She falls to the ground, smoking and red and still screaming.
John turns back, and looks a little scared of himself.
Bobby looks back at him, and, sure, what just happened scares the shit out of him, but there’s something powerfully alluring about it, too. That’s the scariest thing. But it doesn’t matter in the long run, because Bobby gestures with his eyes for them to get the hell out.
They head for the end of the block, and that’s where they see a girl in green at the corner bus stop.
“Rogue?”
X
Rogue steps off the bus as the fire starts.
She watches, and the smell of ash and smoke starts filling up her memory - but John isn’t here, is he?
When the fire stops in midair and begins to twist itself back around, she realizes that he is. That he is, and it has to be him protecting these people.
And if he’s here, then Bobby must be too.
Have they come to try and stop her? She can’t imagine any other reason.
The crowd starts thinning as people head for cover. Even from the end of the block, she can see John, hand outstretched, manipulating flame, and Bobby, leaning against a wall in shock. She thinks that John must have pushed him out of the way there.
She watches the fire form itself into a ball, and the other pyrokinetic try and regain control.
Then she sees the woman burst into flame, and she thinks she might throw up. But she knows why, she thinks, John is capable of this, that he’s willing to do it.
It has to do with Bobby and her, she thinks.
It’s Bobby that starts leading John down the street to try and escape, and she finds she cannot move.
All she can do is stand, and listen, as her name falls, a broken word, from Bobby’s lips.
X
John feels the emotions of the crowd like licks of fire on his skin. The coolness of Bobby ahead of him keeps him tethered to their reasons for being here.
If he weren’t, John would probably be no different than these people. He would probably be raging, fighting this whole idea of a “cure” for mutation with every fiber of his being, trying to stop it. Maybe, even, he’d be worse.
He scans the sidewalk for Rogue, and sends up a manic almost-prayer that she hasn’t already done it, that they’re not too late.
Then, he feels the prickle of fire in the air in a peculiar silence.
He only has an instant to shove Bobby back as the fire explodes outward from someone a little further down the sidewalk. He feels it bone deep as the fire comes, wild and barely-controlled.
He imagines Rogue inside that building, and that makes him grab onto the flames and pull them back.
Power slams into him even as he still looks at Bobby. He feels it filling him up like a magnificence he’s never quite felt before. He can hardly hold on.
This is nothing like the Danger Room, or sparring with Bobby - this is real.
Pyro gets to run loose today, he realizes. He turns to the fire, judging it and finding it wanting. So he yanks it loose of the weak and unskilled hands that try to wield it and shapes it in the image he desires.
The protesters part, and the other appears, her hair wild and her eyes arrogant.
He spits on her. She is nothing. She is lower than ash.
She tries to pull the fire back to her will, but his image barely flickers. He laughs inside, and he lets it disassemble into sparks - before he shows her what fire really does.
He feels an instant of justice, of sick satisfaction, as she burns.
Then John realizes what he is becoming and reels backward into himself, forcing the fire out and locking away the vindication of being a god among insects. He looks back at Bobby, in part to shut out the image of his victim lying, convulsing and shrieking, on the ground.
But mostly, he begs for forgiveness.
He doesn’t quite find it, but Bobby moves his head to the side, and they head down the street, getting away, shoulders bumping together as they move.
He almost misses Rogue before he hears Bobby say her name.
She looks at each of them in turn, standing at that bus stop, and John thinks, wildly, desperately, that they’re not too late, they’ve still maybe got a chance.
She grabs each of them by the hand and drags them down a sidestreet as sirens begin to wail.
They put a dozen blocks between themselves and the clinic before they collapse into a park, rolling behind a set of bushes like one overwrought organism.
Bobby is the first to recover, and he pulls Rogue close, only millimeters between their faces. Rogue’s eyes dart to John, and then she closes the gap. John watches as the kiss goes heated…
And nothing happens to Bobby.
When they finally pull apart, Rogue is shaking, and Bobby’s lips are hardly blue at all.
“What was that?” Rogue asks, almost to the universe.
“You controlling your powers,” John gasps, still recovering from shock and exertion. “You doing exactly what you’ve been trying to do for months.” He finds himself smiling madly.
Bobby has tears in his eyes, but he’s laughing.
Rogue looks at them both like they’re crazy, but it’s the good kind of crazy.
The emotions are running high, and John can feel his heart still thumping wildly against his ribcage as he digs through everything he’s ever done and can’t find anything quite this insane.
“Oh God,” Bobby says, the tears falling. “Oh God, Rogue, please.”
John doesn’t think that he needs to ask.
X
They make it to a cheap, seedy motel on the furthest outskirts of northern Manhattan when they find that they’ve made the evening news.
Or rather, John has. Apparently, some idiot amateur reporter has video of the entire thing, up to and including the burning woman at the end. Bobby and Rogue look at each other and block John from the view of the person at the desk. Rogue pays for the room, her eyes never meeting the attendant’s, who doesn’t ask questions.
Bobby notices the attendant’s little girl peeking around the door, and she’s a pale green with a tongue that flicks out every few seconds.
That explains it.
They pile into the tiny room. As soon as the door is shut behind them, all of the energy and the rush and the fear drains out of them, and they - or rather, at least Bobby - see the day in all of its terrible glory.
“I’m sorry,” Rogue and John say simultaneously, and both recoil.
Bobby feels a hiccup of a laugh tear itself out of his throat. He is leaning against the door, trying to process everything.
It had taken him long enough to figure out and accept how he felt about what Bobby had done with the police in Boston. He can probably forgive this more easily, though, he realizes. And as for Rogue?
There’s nothing to forgive.
“It’s okay,” he tells them both, and pushes off the door to survey the room.
There are two equally tiny, equally uncomfortable-looking beds in the room, with threadbare sheets and curtains, and he thinks, for one wild moment, where everyone will sleep.
He can still feel the hours-old kiss on his lips, and thinks that this could be the best thing that’s ever happened to him - and he has both of them to thank for it. He turns back to them, and they are looking uneasily at him and at each other, as though any wrong move will break one of them, and so break them all.
He looks at Rogue, who he’s been sure he loves for a while now, and at John, who, honestly, he might also be in love with too.
The realization hits him like ice and fire and the pull of Rogue’s mutation.
All of a sudden, he realizes what he needs to do, and it seems like it’s simple and perfect - though there are so many ways it can go wrong, and he could screw everything up in seconds.
Still, he doesn’t let the fear stop him.
He pulls Rogue close and kisses her, soft, on the lips, and then, not letting go, he grabs John by the front of his t-shirt and gives him a kiss as well.
After, he steps back from both of them and waits.
X
The first thing Rogue realizes is that it doesn’t bother her to see Bobby’s lips brush over John’s.
The second is that this might just save everything, might just fix every single one of their problems - hers, Bobby’s, John’s - and all she has to do is let go.
She turns to John, who looks confused and scared, and fifty kinds of beautiful, and kisses his cheek.
“Yeah,” John croaks, his hand trailing from his mouth to his cheek. “Yeah.”
Rogue smiles, and everything seems all right. She can control her power, thanks to John, and she can touch the both of them, and it isn’t a problem, it isn’t a danger.
This is what she needed, what she’d never even thought to look for.
Bobby laughs, bell-like in the quiet, and he kisses each of them again, this time longer, and this time starting with John. It’s enthralling, Rogue decides.
Part of her, she realizes belatedly, has always known that John felt this for Bobby, and that this kind of closeness meant what it means. Why else would he care so much that Bobby was happy? Why else would he be so bent on making sure she didn’t do anything to hurt him?
She meets John’s eyes when he pulls away from Bobby, and hopes she can articulate with her eyes her understanding, her acceptance.
Then Bobby kisses her, and it’s almost like coming home again after long years away, the ice hardly forming between their lips as she keeps the buzz of her abilities deep in her core. It’s easier, now, much easier, and once again thanks John in her head. She’ll have to thank him out loud in a minute, once she’s got her mouth back, but not quite yet.
It’s not too surprising when John wraps his arms around them both, nuzzling each of them with his warmth. But it’s another piece to the homecoming, like finding dinner on the table when you get there.
They stay like that for a while, wrapped in warmth and what Rogue is sure is love.
X
John can feel his guilt slipping away with every kiss, every touch.
There is something comforting in Rogue’s gentle embrace, even as Bobby’s cool touch makes him burn hotter with every kiss.
And watching the two of them is a pleasure in and of itself, to watch her drive him crazy.
He slides one arm back to touch Rogue’s hip as Bobby dips his tongue into his mouth with hesitant but wonderful grace. He loves these people - even though it’s a little different for each of them. He doesn’t have a word for it, but it’s all right, it’s what they need.
He’s loved Bobby for ages, and this feeling for Rogue sort of snuck up on him, and all of it is exactly the way it should be.
“Thank you,” Rogue whispers in his ear as they stumble toward one of the beds.
That first night, she doesn’t undress, though they do, and she watches as they drive each other up the wall, occasionally giving them little kisses to remind them that she’s there, and that this affects her as much as being with one or the other of them does.
When it’s all been finished, and they collapse in a twelve-limbed tangle on the bed, John drifts off to sleep, full of pleasant love and warmth.
X
Life never really returns to normal at the mansion - too much has changed. Too many people have died, and the world is forever changed.
The cure continues to be handed out in clinics, and John expresses disgust whenever they have to protect those clinics, but he does it anyway. Rogue always comforts him afterward, in that mystifying rapport that they’ve built that never quite leads to sex.
Bobby thinks he’s the luckiest person on the face of the planet, to have the both of them - two best friends, two lovers, who are also each others’ best friends.
Maybe some other people at the mansion have figured it out - Logan probably has - but no one has brought it up, and that’s fine.
Presently, Bobby wakes in bed with Rogue and John both wrapped around him. Rogue keeps her powers locked away now, unless she needs them in the Danger Room or in a fight, and Bobby will never be able to thank John enough for that.
As for John, he is as constant as he’s ever been, and he never ceases being so.
Early-morning sunlight filters down through the curtains, and Bobby remembers that this is the first day of a new school year.
He curls his arms around Rogue and John, and welcomes it in.
~end~