XMMF Fic, "Sharpest Things", Rated PG13, Pyro, Rogue (Implied unrequited Pyro/Bobby)
Title: Sharpest Things
Fandom: Xmen Movieverse
Pairing, etc: Pyro, Rogue. Bobby/Rogue, Pyro/Bobby implied, though unrequited. Come to think of it, there might be a slight hint of Rogue/Pyro in here, unrequited, if you look for it.
Prompt: #21 Friends. She wants to know what it feels like, the fire. He forgets what she'll be able to see and lets her, and gets burned.
Word Count: 2481
Rating: PG13
AN: Thanks to Kaz814 for the beta. The title is from a My Chemical Romance song. I was listening to them while writing this so that I could more fully appreciate angsty teenage-boy. *G*
Sharpest Things
Some might say we are made from the sharpest things you say
We are young and we don't care. ---My Chemical Romance
“So what’s it like?”
St. John blinked in surprise, feeling the comforting warmth of the fire slide across his palm as he sprawled across his bed. It tickled, just a little, and he wasn't really supposed to be doing this in the mansion. They didn't think it was safe. “What’s what like?” he asked, voice slightly defensive, but that wasn’t because of Rogue's question.
His voice was always defensive. St. John never trusted that anyone who asked him a question didn’t want something from him. He folded his palm around the fire slowly, letting it burn him a little, because it made him feel less restless. At least for just a little while, and he figured that was about as good as he was going to get.
“The fire.” She was lying on her stomach on Bobby’s bed, chin resting lightly on her gloved hands, hair falling loose around her shoulders. Bobby was in class for another hour, and it sometimes bothered St. John that she’d wait there for him. He’d told Bobby that once, but his roommate hadn’t been very understanding.
“What are you doing that Rogue can’t be in the room?” Bobby had asked, shaking his head with that same grin that sometimes made St. John want to hit him, and other times...not hit him.
He’d not been able to answer, so he’d just shrugged and hadn’t mentioned it again. It wasn't as if Rogue was a problem, or that he didn't like her. He did like her, even if he didn't get why all the other guys thought she was so hot. She was funny and he liked her accent. He was glad she didn't listen to lame country music like Tim McGraw and thought it was funny she could sing along with gangsta rap, Johnny Cash, and swear in Polish.
And, you know. Kill you with her skin.
St. John found that very interesting. Maybe it was because he was kind of convinced that was the reason Bobby wanted to go out with her. Because he couldn't touch her, because she was deadly, and that made her....safe. It made St. John's head hurt to think about it. It was hard not to, though, when she was sprawled on Bobby's bed, and he knew that when Bobby came back, he'd have to go downstairs and play video games or something so they could not make out.
That kind of sucked. For the two of them, really, but St. John was being selfish. He couldn't play Grand Theft Auto if any of the younger kids were downstairs because Mr. Summers said the game was “too violent.” Storm had fried that Toad guy rescuing Rogue, but St. John couldn't incinerate policemen made out of pixels with a flamethrower? That didn't seem fair.
“St. John? You alive?” Rogue drawled, sounding vaguely impatient. Her feet were kicking up behind her, and she looked like a little girl.
“Yeah. It's hot. What do you think fire feels like?” He flicked the lighter open, the metal almost as comforting in his hands as the flame. Sometimes he thought if he ever had to run away, that would be all he would take, because things here were nice but they weren't his.
“Not that, moron,” she snapped, irritated. He forced a grin back as her accent got thicker the more he bothered her. He did it all the time; he was surprised she never noticed.
“What then?” St. John stared past her out of the window, which showed a very nice day outside that held absolutely no interest for him whatsoever. He sucked at sports, which was all anyone seemed to want to do outside, and it was too cold to go swimming.
The only interesting thing to do outside was smoke, and he never did that during the day because it was too risky, and he hated the Professor's lecture about smoking. He'd endured it once and tried pointing out that Logan smoked, but the Professor had reminded him that Logan had a healing factor to keep him from getting cancer. He'd then told him if he caught St. John smoking again, he'd end up in detention in the Danger Room with Logan so he could see how smoking would decrease his athletic ability. None of that sounded very fun.
“I mean, how does it feel when you...” Her voice dropped to a sort of breathless whisper, almost reverent. “When you reach out to hold it...”
He looked at her consideringly. “Same way your power feels, I guess.” He flicked the lighter again, unaccountably nervous and wondering why that was. Rogue didn't usually make him nervous, deadly skin aside. She was just his roommate's girlfriend, and his friend too, he guessed.
She laughed, and it sounded bitter, far more so than it should be possible for people their age to sound. Far more bitter than Bobby's laugh ever was. “I don't think so, Pyro.” She fell silent and he unfolded himself from his sprawl, sitting next to her on Bobby's bed.
She looked up at him, instinctively moving away as he came closer. “St. John, what are you--”
In answer, he held out his hand to her. “You want to know? Go on.” He waited patiently. She stared at him as if he was insane, and maybe he was for offering. They all remembered how long Logan had been in a coma after Liberty Island.
“Pyro, I could hurt you,” she said warningly, but he heard the eagerness in her voice and smiled at her. It was a dangerous sort of smile, the kind that used to land him in detention without him even doing anything.
“Yeah, well. It can't hurt that bad. Just don't drain me up like you did Logan, okay? No healing factor. Can't you just touch me for like, a minute? That can't hurt that bad, can it?” He wasn't sure why he wanted this, wanted her to touch him with her bare skin, borrow his
power. He told himself it was because he couldn't answer her question, and he wanted to, but St. John was rarely that altruistic.
He didn't usually question things he wanted, if he could have them. And he could tell from the look on her face that he could have this, and so that was all that mattered. “I mean, don't you get tired of never getting to use it? Your power? I know I do.”
She looked away, but not before he saw the flash of longing cross her face, telling him he was right; and the longing was mixed with shame, because to use her power someone else had to suffer. “Hey, no worries, Rogue. I'll let you see what it feels like, if you promise not to kill me or anything.”
“Yeah, I promise,” she said, and slowly pulled her glove off. The way the leather slid off her skin was almost erotic, which was weird, because St. John never really had the hots for Rogue.
They both stared at each other as she reached out for him, hand crossing the distance between them with exaggerated slowness, like she was in a swimming pool, and they were separated by water. “My last boyfriend, before Bobby...I put him into a coma,” she said, hand a hairsbreadth away from his skin. He could feel the warmth of her fingers as they inched closer.
“I'm not worried,” he told her bravely, but he kept staring at her fingers, and his heart was racing just a little bit from the promise of imminent danger.
“It kinda hurts--” She began pulling her fingers away, voice doubtful. He realized in a second that she'd pull back, put her glove back on, and he didn't want her to do that.
“Just do it, okay?” he said angrily. “Unless you have no control and are scared, or something,” he goaded her. It would work. He and Rogue were sort of alike, when it came to things like that. They were both way more likely to choose dare, for instance.
“Fine,” she snapped and wrapped her hand around his wrist, just as he knew she would. After a few moments, he felt a pull in his stomach like he was at the very top of a roller coaster, which changed abruptly into a sharp pain as all that fire inside of him seemed to rise up to the surface and burn fast and hot, like flash cotton over his skin.
She pulled her hand away right before he was about to tell her to stop, that she was killing him, that he was becoming cold and empty inside.
Panting, he managed to choke out, “Go on.” He handed her the lighter, shaking a bit, enthralled by her, but realizing it was probably because of the fire. The fire that suddenly seemed to be burning deep in her dark eyes.
It took her a few tries to light it, not being as used to it as he was, and then she reached out for the flame. Her smile was wide and pleased. “Oh, Pyro...” she breathed as she tossed it in the air, and he grinned weakly at her delighted laugh.
“That's what it feels like,” he told her, watching as she stretched the fire thinner and thinner, until they were elegant strings of flame hovering in the air. He felt his powers coming back, filling up the empty place inside of him like warm water, and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
“It's so beautiful,” she said, but he didn't know whether or not she meant the fire or his powers.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at her, and he didn't know if he meant the flames or her, and maybe he sort of understood what all those other guys meant when they said she was pretty.
“You better...” She gestured to the fire, which was now fading. He reached up and caught at it, letting it burn, feeling the pleasurable caress of it as if it was the first time, and after being without his powers-even for a moment-he sort of felt like it was.
“That's really...somethin',” she said in a husky voice. He watched her pull her gloves back on, watched the black leather conform so easily to her hands.
He shrugged, secretly pleased. “I guess. You can be anybody,” he said, momentarily envious. “That's all I can do.”
“For just a little while,” she said, sounding sad. “Then I go back to being me with bits of other people stuck in my head.” Suddenly her eyes widened, and her gloved hand went to her mouth. “Oh,” she said, and blushed.
Pyro stared at her, wondering why she was...suddenly he scowled, then jumped up and pointed to the door. “You better go. I---I think I'm gonna have a nap. Tell Bobby you two can go someplace else this time,” he bit out, unable to look at her.
He'd forgotten, of course, that with his powers came his thoughts, even if only briefly. Now she knew...things. Things he'd never admitted...things she shouldn't know, because...Christ.
She sounded hurt when she spoke, plainly trying to placate his sudden outburst of temper. “St. John, I ain't--”
“Yeah, you ain't gonna do a lot of things,” he said, glaring at her fiercely, wishing he could do something about the fire that seemed to be burning behind his cheeks as he flushed with anger and embarrassment.
She took a step back towards the door, hands twining together nervously. “St. John, he's-”
Whatever she was going to say, he didn't want to hear. Anger choked him so that he thought he might be sick.
“Never going to touch you? Yeah, I know,” he said cruelly, watching her eyes widen at his words, calculated to hurt. Where before she'd had fire in her eyes, now he saw only tears and that made him happy in a mean way.
And then...
It was like watching a movie, like the goddamned Exorcist or something, where someone was possessed and then started to look different, like whatever possessed them was fighting trying to fight its way out. Her face changed from Rogue into....someone else.
A cold, calculated smile curved across her face, and her eyes narrowed as the hurt look was replaced with one of utter malice.
She wasn't being Logan, like she sometimes was when someone pissed her off. He knew that because once he'd made fun of Dr. Grey, and she'd punched him in the stomach. Hard. No, this wasn't Rogue, and he was pretty sure it wasn't him, because she'd not touched him long enough to have him in her head in way except for his thoughts. Which meant she was...
He swallowed, because he couldn't move, and the tears in her eyes had turned to ice. She stood right next to him. She was smaller than he was, but she seemed taller somehow as she leaned up and placed her lips right next to his ear, touching, but only just. “You either,” she said in a purr, and pulled away, smirking at him viciously. She gave him a long, slow once-over, winked, and then turned to leave the room.
St. John reached for his lighter, but she was gone and out the door before his shaking hands managed to get a hold of it. He stood in the center of his room, breathing deeply, trying not to open the lighter and burn his room down. The Professor would know it was him; they'd send him away, and really, St. John liked it here even if sometimes he thought they were all sort of pretentious and annoying.
When Bobby came in, looking for Rogue, St. John refused to speak to him. Bobby said something about him being a bitch, and St. John ignored him as Bobby slammed out of their room, lying on his back in the bed and staring up at ceiling. He didn't go to dinner that night, and when Bobby came back and said his name in a quiet voice, St. John pretended he didn't hear him until he heard Bobby's breathing even out into sleep.
He went outside, because he liked the place at night, and sat smoking right in the center of the basketball court. He clicked his lighter open and shut, thinking about how there had been flames in Rogue's eyes, and he wondered if anyone would ever notice them in his.
Fandom: Xmen Movieverse
Pairing, etc: Pyro, Rogue. Bobby/Rogue, Pyro/Bobby implied, though unrequited. Come to think of it, there might be a slight hint of Rogue/Pyro in here, unrequited, if you look for it.
Prompt: #21 Friends. She wants to know what it feels like, the fire. He forgets what she'll be able to see and lets her, and gets burned.
Word Count: 2481
Rating: PG13
AN: Thanks to Kaz814 for the beta. The title is from a My Chemical Romance song. I was listening to them while writing this so that I could more fully appreciate angsty teenage-boy. *G*
Sharpest Things
Some might say we are made from the sharpest things you say
We are young and we don't care. ---My Chemical Romance
“So what’s it like?”
St. John blinked in surprise, feeling the comforting warmth of the fire slide across his palm as he sprawled across his bed. It tickled, just a little, and he wasn't really supposed to be doing this in the mansion. They didn't think it was safe. “What’s what like?” he asked, voice slightly defensive, but that wasn’t because of Rogue's question.
His voice was always defensive. St. John never trusted that anyone who asked him a question didn’t want something from him. He folded his palm around the fire slowly, letting it burn him a little, because it made him feel less restless. At least for just a little while, and he figured that was about as good as he was going to get.
“The fire.” She was lying on her stomach on Bobby’s bed, chin resting lightly on her gloved hands, hair falling loose around her shoulders. Bobby was in class for another hour, and it sometimes bothered St. John that she’d wait there for him. He’d told Bobby that once, but his roommate hadn’t been very understanding.
“What are you doing that Rogue can’t be in the room?” Bobby had asked, shaking his head with that same grin that sometimes made St. John want to hit him, and other times...not hit him.
He’d not been able to answer, so he’d just shrugged and hadn’t mentioned it again. It wasn't as if Rogue was a problem, or that he didn't like her. He did like her, even if he didn't get why all the other guys thought she was so hot. She was funny and he liked her accent. He was glad she didn't listen to lame country music like Tim McGraw and thought it was funny she could sing along with gangsta rap, Johnny Cash, and swear in Polish.
And, you know. Kill you with her skin.
St. John found that very interesting. Maybe it was because he was kind of convinced that was the reason Bobby wanted to go out with her. Because he couldn't touch her, because she was deadly, and that made her....safe. It made St. John's head hurt to think about it. It was hard not to, though, when she was sprawled on Bobby's bed, and he knew that when Bobby came back, he'd have to go downstairs and play video games or something so they could not make out.
That kind of sucked. For the two of them, really, but St. John was being selfish. He couldn't play Grand Theft Auto if any of the younger kids were downstairs because Mr. Summers said the game was “too violent.” Storm had fried that Toad guy rescuing Rogue, but St. John couldn't incinerate policemen made out of pixels with a flamethrower? That didn't seem fair.
“St. John? You alive?” Rogue drawled, sounding vaguely impatient. Her feet were kicking up behind her, and she looked like a little girl.
“Yeah. It's hot. What do you think fire feels like?” He flicked the lighter open, the metal almost as comforting in his hands as the flame. Sometimes he thought if he ever had to run away, that would be all he would take, because things here were nice but they weren't his.
“Not that, moron,” she snapped, irritated. He forced a grin back as her accent got thicker the more he bothered her. He did it all the time; he was surprised she never noticed.
“What then?” St. John stared past her out of the window, which showed a very nice day outside that held absolutely no interest for him whatsoever. He sucked at sports, which was all anyone seemed to want to do outside, and it was too cold to go swimming.
The only interesting thing to do outside was smoke, and he never did that during the day because it was too risky, and he hated the Professor's lecture about smoking. He'd endured it once and tried pointing out that Logan smoked, but the Professor had reminded him that Logan had a healing factor to keep him from getting cancer. He'd then told him if he caught St. John smoking again, he'd end up in detention in the Danger Room with Logan so he could see how smoking would decrease his athletic ability. None of that sounded very fun.
“I mean, how does it feel when you...” Her voice dropped to a sort of breathless whisper, almost reverent. “When you reach out to hold it...”
He looked at her consideringly. “Same way your power feels, I guess.” He flicked the lighter again, unaccountably nervous and wondering why that was. Rogue didn't usually make him nervous, deadly skin aside. She was just his roommate's girlfriend, and his friend too, he guessed.
She laughed, and it sounded bitter, far more so than it should be possible for people their age to sound. Far more bitter than Bobby's laugh ever was. “I don't think so, Pyro.” She fell silent and he unfolded himself from his sprawl, sitting next to her on Bobby's bed.
She looked up at him, instinctively moving away as he came closer. “St. John, what are you--”
In answer, he held out his hand to her. “You want to know? Go on.” He waited patiently. She stared at him as if he was insane, and maybe he was for offering. They all remembered how long Logan had been in a coma after Liberty Island.
“Pyro, I could hurt you,” she said warningly, but he heard the eagerness in her voice and smiled at her. It was a dangerous sort of smile, the kind that used to land him in detention without him even doing anything.
“Yeah, well. It can't hurt that bad. Just don't drain me up like you did Logan, okay? No healing factor. Can't you just touch me for like, a minute? That can't hurt that bad, can it?” He wasn't sure why he wanted this, wanted her to touch him with her bare skin, borrow his
power. He told himself it was because he couldn't answer her question, and he wanted to, but St. John was rarely that altruistic.
He didn't usually question things he wanted, if he could have them. And he could tell from the look on her face that he could have this, and so that was all that mattered. “I mean, don't you get tired of never getting to use it? Your power? I know I do.”
She looked away, but not before he saw the flash of longing cross her face, telling him he was right; and the longing was mixed with shame, because to use her power someone else had to suffer. “Hey, no worries, Rogue. I'll let you see what it feels like, if you promise not to kill me or anything.”
“Yeah, I promise,” she said, and slowly pulled her glove off. The way the leather slid off her skin was almost erotic, which was weird, because St. John never really had the hots for Rogue.
They both stared at each other as she reached out for him, hand crossing the distance between them with exaggerated slowness, like she was in a swimming pool, and they were separated by water. “My last boyfriend, before Bobby...I put him into a coma,” she said, hand a hairsbreadth away from his skin. He could feel the warmth of her fingers as they inched closer.
“I'm not worried,” he told her bravely, but he kept staring at her fingers, and his heart was racing just a little bit from the promise of imminent danger.
“It kinda hurts--” She began pulling her fingers away, voice doubtful. He realized in a second that she'd pull back, put her glove back on, and he didn't want her to do that.
“Just do it, okay?” he said angrily. “Unless you have no control and are scared, or something,” he goaded her. It would work. He and Rogue were sort of alike, when it came to things like that. They were both way more likely to choose dare, for instance.
“Fine,” she snapped and wrapped her hand around his wrist, just as he knew she would. After a few moments, he felt a pull in his stomach like he was at the very top of a roller coaster, which changed abruptly into a sharp pain as all that fire inside of him seemed to rise up to the surface and burn fast and hot, like flash cotton over his skin.
She pulled her hand away right before he was about to tell her to stop, that she was killing him, that he was becoming cold and empty inside.
Panting, he managed to choke out, “Go on.” He handed her the lighter, shaking a bit, enthralled by her, but realizing it was probably because of the fire. The fire that suddenly seemed to be burning deep in her dark eyes.
It took her a few tries to light it, not being as used to it as he was, and then she reached out for the flame. Her smile was wide and pleased. “Oh, Pyro...” she breathed as she tossed it in the air, and he grinned weakly at her delighted laugh.
“That's what it feels like,” he told her, watching as she stretched the fire thinner and thinner, until they were elegant strings of flame hovering in the air. He felt his powers coming back, filling up the empty place inside of him like warm water, and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
“It's so beautiful,” she said, but he didn't know whether or not she meant the fire or his powers.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at her, and he didn't know if he meant the flames or her, and maybe he sort of understood what all those other guys meant when they said she was pretty.
“You better...” She gestured to the fire, which was now fading. He reached up and caught at it, letting it burn, feeling the pleasurable caress of it as if it was the first time, and after being without his powers-even for a moment-he sort of felt like it was.
“That's really...somethin',” she said in a husky voice. He watched her pull her gloves back on, watched the black leather conform so easily to her hands.
He shrugged, secretly pleased. “I guess. You can be anybody,” he said, momentarily envious. “That's all I can do.”
“For just a little while,” she said, sounding sad. “Then I go back to being me with bits of other people stuck in my head.” Suddenly her eyes widened, and her gloved hand went to her mouth. “Oh,” she said, and blushed.
Pyro stared at her, wondering why she was...suddenly he scowled, then jumped up and pointed to the door. “You better go. I---I think I'm gonna have a nap. Tell Bobby you two can go someplace else this time,” he bit out, unable to look at her.
He'd forgotten, of course, that with his powers came his thoughts, even if only briefly. Now she knew...things. Things he'd never admitted...things she shouldn't know, because...Christ.
She sounded hurt when she spoke, plainly trying to placate his sudden outburst of temper. “St. John, I ain't--”
“Yeah, you ain't gonna do a lot of things,” he said, glaring at her fiercely, wishing he could do something about the fire that seemed to be burning behind his cheeks as he flushed with anger and embarrassment.
She took a step back towards the door, hands twining together nervously. “St. John, he's-”
Whatever she was going to say, he didn't want to hear. Anger choked him so that he thought he might be sick.
“Never going to touch you? Yeah, I know,” he said cruelly, watching her eyes widen at his words, calculated to hurt. Where before she'd had fire in her eyes, now he saw only tears and that made him happy in a mean way.
And then...
It was like watching a movie, like the goddamned Exorcist or something, where someone was possessed and then started to look different, like whatever possessed them was fighting trying to fight its way out. Her face changed from Rogue into....someone else.
A cold, calculated smile curved across her face, and her eyes narrowed as the hurt look was replaced with one of utter malice.
She wasn't being Logan, like she sometimes was when someone pissed her off. He knew that because once he'd made fun of Dr. Grey, and she'd punched him in the stomach. Hard. No, this wasn't Rogue, and he was pretty sure it wasn't him, because she'd not touched him long enough to have him in her head in way except for his thoughts. Which meant she was...
He swallowed, because he couldn't move, and the tears in her eyes had turned to ice. She stood right next to him. She was smaller than he was, but she seemed taller somehow as she leaned up and placed her lips right next to his ear, touching, but only just. “You either,” she said in a purr, and pulled away, smirking at him viciously. She gave him a long, slow once-over, winked, and then turned to leave the room.
St. John reached for his lighter, but she was gone and out the door before his shaking hands managed to get a hold of it. He stood in the center of his room, breathing deeply, trying not to open the lighter and burn his room down. The Professor would know it was him; they'd send him away, and really, St. John liked it here even if sometimes he thought they were all sort of pretentious and annoying.
When Bobby came in, looking for Rogue, St. John refused to speak to him. Bobby said something about him being a bitch, and St. John ignored him as Bobby slammed out of their room, lying on his back in the bed and staring up at ceiling. He didn't go to dinner that night, and when Bobby came back and said his name in a quiet voice, St. John pretended he didn't hear him until he heard Bobby's breathing even out into sleep.
He went outside, because he liked the place at night, and sat smoking right in the center of the basketball court. He clicked his lighter open and shut, thinking about how there had been flames in Rogue's eyes, and he wondered if anyone would ever notice them in his.