Ficlet: Trespasing on your limits
Still writing mini_nanowrimo. Yesterday, one of the prompts was The only way most people recognize their limits is by trespassing on them. ~ Tom Morris. It made me think of St John, and it gave me this.
Title: Trespassing on your limits (Babysteps onto a Rebuilt Bridge, part 2)
Author: mayachain (ms_jvh_shuh)
Rating: PG
Summary: ...the college students who are fast becoming his friends...
Notes: I'd like to remind you that this is fanfiction of the X-Men Movieverse, where real physics and St John's fire don't quite merge. Unbetaed, so I hope the tenses are not too mixed up - feel free to yell if you spot something. Also, I feel like I'm neglecting Bobby here, although none of what you're about to read would've been possible without him.
Part 1 of Rebuilding Burned Bridges can be found here, all following chapters are linked internally. A list of all chapters, prequels and sequelly bits can be found in the During or after X3: Series section on mayachain's fic list here.
Trespassing on your limits
[Amanda]
He is breathing heavily, gulping breaths so hard his chest feels close to exploding. His shoulders are tight, his back is bent forward, the hairs on the back of his neck are standing up as if electrified, sizzling. Both his fists are clenched white, his clothes are slowly getting soaked by rivers of exhausted sweat.
If he weren't so busy gulping for breath, his throat would give off a series of short, hard, frustrated groans.
A few feet away on the 24/7's gym floor, a young woman is sitting in a taylor's seat looking up at him. Her brown curls are pushed back into a ponytail, still dry, her cheeks are barely flushed, her spine is gracefully rigid and her eyes are searching his face intently. A light breeze that has no place down deep in a cellar upsets the shawl around her shoulders. She looks serene, entirely calm if alert, her stillness a sharp contrast to the huffing stinking mess St John has become.
In another life, he might hate her. In another life, he might fantasize about letting embers rain on her skin.
In this life, though, he thinks he might just love her. No-one but she could have shown him that whoever has written the laws of physics has got it wrong, it is possible to sustain flames inside a vacuum.
[Andrew]
He's been sleeping in Bobby's queen-sized bed for seven weeks, and on Bobby's couch for about three weeks before then. During that entire time, St John hasn't once slept without at least one small light on. That very first night, he would have forced himself to manage somehow, would never have asked Bobby to leave that tiny lamp on. Bobby being Bobby, there had never been any need to voice the question.
Now, he is standing in the middle of a room perched in absolute darkness. His breaths are calm, but they are forced under tight, tight control. If he weren't able to sense exactly where the others are from the difference in body temperature to his own, the total lack of light would be unbearable. The tall presence filling the space directly behind him fails to freak him out only because he can also hear the same soft sounds he's fallen asleep to for sixty-eight nights, the sound of Bobby breathing. If not for that and the slight chill from a little to his left, he knows he would be panicking.
Instead, St John stares hard at an indeterminable spot in front of him, stares all the harder because the blackness doesn't reveal anything. He can feel it, though, can feel the ball of fire burning and hear the air crackle as it hovers in the middle of Stella's living room.
He needs to find a way to hack into the Brotherhood's expense account and buy Reynolds... something.
Black fire. It's the coolest thing he's ever seen.
[Susan]
He's holding his breath, afraid the tiniest puff will break his, will break her concentration. Around them, Traipsie and Reynolds are squinting themselves into a fast headache, their eyes of absolutely no use to them.
Her mint-stained breath touches his face as she leans closer. Her thick glasses are shoved up high on her head, mousy bangs falling down onto her cheeks just shy of obscuring her vision. The intense focus of her gaze might be frightening if he didn't know exactly what she's looking for.
Her voice, when it comes, is satisfied and proud and awed all at once for all that it's barely a whisper. "There."
Her eyes have lit up, and the whole girl is transformed from wall flower to someone beautiful as she watches avidly, fascinated. For a brief moment, St John feels a sting of envy. What he has shown her tonight is something no-one else will ever see.
Still. He feels better than he has for weeks for having done this, for having given her this, for being the one to put that expression on her face. Who could have known that igniting one single atom is more exhilarating than exploding an entire star.
*
The powers of the 24/7 members were first listed in the Bridges missing scene here.
It seems like I'm far from finished with this 'verse. I already have s few scribbles that might become the next chapter, but there is no overall story arc for Babysteps as of yet.