Green-Eyed Monster
Rating: PG
Fandom: X-Force
Characters: Rictor/Shatterstar
Summary: Shatterstar can be very intense.
Green-Eyed Monster
It didn’t hit him at first, but Shatterstar had stopped watching the television when he was in the room, and had started watching him. He wasn’t covert about it. Just turned his head and stared at him.
It was unnerving, in the way he’d found having a cat watch him intently was unnerving. Innocent and cynical, all at once, piercing the body and ravaging the soul.
Cannonball’s snickers were what alerted him to this new habit. Julio had just taken for granted that Sam was stupid, anyway, and who cared what he found funny? The fact that said snickers persisted for far too long was unnerving in and of itself.
"What the hell are you laughing at?" Julio snapped.
Sam didn’t reply, simply pointed. Julio looked to his left.
And encountered Shatterstar’s frighteningly intense gaze, green eyes bearing down on him. He leaned away from him and tried to tear his own eyes away.
Sam buried his face in the back of the couch and howled. Tabitha smacked him and stood up.
"I’m going to bed. You boys have fun."
Cannonball watched her leave, still laughing, then followed her out the door, cracking wise about lovebirds.
Leaving Julio alone with his very own scary alien.
He tried to say something, start a conversation, scold him, make a joke, something, anything, but his voicebox had decided to abandon him as well.
Shatterstar blinked, once, slowly, like something off of a bad sci-fi movie, still staring, still leaning toward him.
Julio’s mouth moved soundlessly and he felt stupidly like a fish.
Finally he found his legs and his voice and hurried out of the room, making a half-assed excuse and nearly tripping himself.
"You okay, kid?" Cable asked.
"Uh, yeah."
"Somethin’ wrong?"
"No."
"You came outta there in a hurry for nothing to be wrong."
Julio flet a blush rising and tried to force it back down. Calbe would think him stupid. He felt stupid. It was just Shatterstar.
"It’s nothing."
Cable shrugged. "Do something with your pet alien, then," he said. "He looks starved for attention."
Julio whipped around. Shatterstar was standing against a wall, still watching him.
"Um… I’m gonna go to bed, man."
Shatterstar nodded. Julio set off down the hall as quickly as he could without Cable thinking something was up. Which, nothing was. Nothing was up. Nothing was weird. Nothing was wrong. Shatterstar was just on one of his kicks and it would pass like all the others.
He thought.
Shatterstar’s hand on his arm scared him so bad the house shook a little.
"Listen, Shatterstar, I really need to go to bed." And hide underneath it until the world explodes.
"Yes. You have said this."
Julio swallowed hard and pulled away, stepping into his room. Much to his dismay, though, Shatterstar and his eyes found their way inside, as well, before he could shut the door.
"I have to go to bed!" Julio half-whimpered, feeling more desperate than he wanted to.
"Yes."
"Then why are you still here?"
Shatterstar considered him for a long moment. Julio got the feeling he was missing something important.
"I intend to join you," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I don’t think I want you to," Julio informed him, fishing his balls out of his throat and putting them back in his pants.
Shatterstar contemplated him. "I do not see why you would not."
"Uh, maybe because you’re acting like a creepy alien and ‘creepy alien’ is not the vibe I want between my sheets."
Shatterstar gave him a look that was as close to shock as he had ever seen him come.
"This is truly how you feel?"
"Yeah. Now can I go to bed?"
Shatterstar bowed his head for a moment, then stepped outside. Julio followed him, intending to lock the door, just in case.
The redheaded alien knelt in front of his door, the very picture of remorse for whatever it was he had done. Julio got the feeling he didn’t really understand, though.
That was all it took for him to cave.
"I guess," he began. He cleared his throat and started again. "I guess if you’re going to be like that, you can at least come in."
Shatterstar snapped his head up and turned on the eyes again. Julio shuddered and let him in.