Post by Pyro on Aug 15, 2006 2:44:27 GMT -5
Continued from Part One
Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved (with only a few nicks) and changed, he opened the door of his room. Just the simple act of cleaning himself up had a radical change on how he looked. Gone was the look of madness to be replaced by an intelligent alertness, not dissimilar to the way he had been in Baltimore, right before he'd hared off to that warehouse.
What's that classic line? Be still, my beating heart. Or something. "Ok, I'll see you then." She managed to keep her own smile somewhere between quite happy and bordering on insane, and she wandered down to her own room and tried to keep herself occupied with the internet for a while, but she couldn't keep her mind on the email she was trying to compose. Seriously. Get a grip. She found herself playing with her hair, separating it into three strands and plaiting it without thinking. Glancing at her watch, she realised that the twenty minutes was almost up, and when he opened his door
she was already leaning across the hall waiting for him.
"Feeling better?" She gave him another smile, feeling slightly less awkward this time. Noticing the scattered nicks from shaving, Angie moved closer and touched a fingertip to one, watching them disappear with another smile. Small injuries like that were nothing for her to take care of, and she was actually feeling stronger than she ever had before. She didn't have to worry about her powers here, didn't have to worry about accidentally revealing herself, and even something as simple as that seemed to help immensely. Here, she didn't have to fear for her safety, she could be her whole self without worrying. "So where to, oh fearless leader?"
"Fearless leader?" He looked startled at that, and then he laughed,
bringing his smile up to a dangerous level 7.
"I'm hardly that," he said, as he led the way down the corridor and to one of the outer doors. "I was terrified the whole time I was in that warehouse. I couldn't see those Sentinel things very clearly, but even fuzzy they were damned intimidating."
He randomly wondered if Bobby had come out the other side in one piece, but shook the thought away. He didn't care.
Did he?
"I guess we're gonna need a debrief at some point," he said, as they walked down an overgrown, but clearly defined path that led to the beach. "And what are the news reports like? I know I've only been out of it for a day, but it feels like a lifetime ago."
As she followed him out of the base for the first time, Angie couldn't stop from looking around curiously. She couldn't see everything, since it was dark, but she got a sense of how nice the island was and realised that they were lucky to have the base there. She wondered if it made Gill feel at home, then remembered him saying that he didn't like the water. She'd laughed at that, unable to stop herself. That was irony.
"Yeah, the Sentinels weren't exactly the type you'd want to tickle, if you get my drift." She'd seen them - seen Cain throw a car at one of them with absolutely no effect. She still wondered what would happen if he ran at one, but he hadn't had the chance before that guy had set his head on fire.
She picked her way carefully down the path, not as sure on her feet as Pyro since the whole lot was new to her. "Suppose we will," came the reply about the debrief, but his question about the news made her slightly nervous. It wasn't all good.
"I've got a video on my computer of a news report - remind me to show it to you sometime. Apparently, we blew up the building. Was that part of the plan? And, uhm... There's some new doctor working for NovaTeX that they claim can make more of the cure. Oh, and they showed some of the X-Men, who definately came off worse, let me tell you." They emerged from the trail and onto the beach, a sight that made Angie's face light up with delight.
"Oh, it's beautiful!"
"Yeah," he said, softly, "Genosha is beautiful. And deadly."
Not unlike some women I know.
John pointed out a few things: a distant winking of a lighthouse far out to sea, the far off lights of an ocean-going vessel, probably an oil tanker. He pointed out the direction of the jungle. "The animals rarely venture this far up the coast," he said. "Think the base is enough to keep them at bay."
He sat down on the beach and drew his knees up into his chest.
"My head's been in a bad space," he said, eventually. "Since the Professor died, since Alcatraz, it's been getting steadily worse. Emma's really started to help me, though. I can get through this, can't I?"
It was definitely a question and not a statement.
Standing there next to him, having the sights pointed out to her, Angie was absolutely delighted. She'd always lived in cities, close to the hospitals where her mum worked, where you could hardly see the stars from all the lights and the pollution. The few times that she'd gone on holidays away from civilisation - usually with her Aunty Kerrie, since her mum was always on call - she'd felt a sense of wonderment at the planet they'd lived on, and she'd often asserted that she could be perfectly happy living as a hermit out in the bush somewhere, or in a cave. She wondered what kind of animals lived on the island - but she didn't get a chance to ask.
"Of course you can. And you will." She sank down to the sand next to him, reaching out to touch his arm. The motion was more than a little awkward, and she hoped that it wouldn't be unwelcome, but she'd managed to comfort him in the cell that way and did it in the hope that it would work out here.
"You'll be fine in the end, you just need time. These things don't get
fixed like that." She clicked her fingers. Even with her power, serious physical injuries didn't get fixed immediately - she couldn't imagine how such a serious mental issue would just fix itself overnight. "I'm sure Emma can take care of you." As long as she actually does, I won't say a word against her ever again.
"She's got a lot more to do to make it anywhere near right," said John
tapping lightly at the side of his head. "I never knew how bad I was,
Angie. Never knew. Always figured I was just a moody son of a camel
dealer's daughter, but never that I was as crazy as I am."
He hugged his knees in still tighter to himself.
"I've had all the signs there for all this time, but I've been deluding myself that it was just a phase, that it'd pass over. I gotta pull it together, for the sake of Magneto's dream, for the sake of the people I'm supposed to be leading."
He lapsed into silence and stared out over the sea for a while. The session with Emma had left him emotionally drained and vulnerable, delicate and unsure of his own mental state. She'd left him in a position where questioning his own ability was actually going to be a positive thing, where Xavier had left him carefully cocooned from the horrors he had seen deep in John's mind, left him safe from them until such time as he had felt the boy could work on them.
Emma's approach was more direct, it seemed.
"You've got to take it easy for a little while, John. The people you're supposed to be leading? We need you whole and able to lead us, and you're not going to be able to do that if you stress yourself right into the same position again." She tried to smile lightly, squeezing his shoulder gently.
"Magneto's dream can wait a little while - you need to take enough time to let Emma do her thing and let your head do its thing." She looked out at the ocean, her hand moving from his shoulder to rub his back lightly.
"Besides, how's everyone supposed to cope if you turn out not to be the moody son of a camel dealer's daughter, huh? They won't know how to act." She flashed him a cheeky grin, though she hadn't known him long enough to be able to say whether the joke would be welcome or not. Angie hadn't even known him long enough to be able to say what he was like normally - but she did know what it was like when he was crazy, and she didn't like it. He's a survivor. He'll be fine. Eventually. She had a feeling that eventually wouldn't be soon enough for John.
"If I start analysing how I've been over the past few months, I'm ashamed," he said. Her touch on his back was surprisingly welcome. He'd never been the touchy-feely type, and even earlier, when he'd been sobbing like a baby to Emma, she'd kept a physical distance between them. She had sensed how much he needed someone to take him in their arms and hold him, but knew she was not the one to do it.
It had been an easy enough thing to leave him with the impression that he trusted Angie, that she would be good company for him. In some respects, his mind, whilst complex and difficult, was as easy to manipulate as any other.
"I'm not so good at taking it easy," he said, ruefully.
"Then don't analyse it. You can't change the past, so why worry about it?" Her hand dropped from his back, digging into the sand between them to feel the texture. Angie was a very tactile person - it was only contact with other people that she wasn't so good at. "I'd tell you to take a holiday, but it wouldn't exactly be easy for a known mutant terrorist to just waltz into a hotel." She gave him another grin.
"We're on an island in the sun... Well, moon, now, but you get the point. It's the perfect place to have a holiday, to relax for a while. If you can't take it easy here, I'll get Python to drop us off on a deserted island and I'll force you to." She laughed. "I know the cause is always there, but we won't fail if you take a couple of weeks for yourself, Pyro."
She was drawing patterns in the sand now, unthinkingly, swirls that could have been stylised flames over and over again. "But we will fail if we lose you."
"A holiday." John laughed, a genuine, warm laugh. "I've never actually had a holiday. Not a proper one. Went camping with Bobs one weekend..." He trailed off. "Man, I hope he was OK. I hate him, the stupid bastard, but that Sentinel..."
What was he saying?
He changed the subject.
"Funny, isn't it? I made the conscious decision to come and be with
Magneto. It was my choice, there was never gonna be any way to turn back. But I still miss them, from time to time. Bobs doing something stupid, Pete telling him to grow up, Rogue laughing, Kitty..." He stopped, shook his head.
"You're right. I can't change the past."
He turned his head slightly to study her thoughtfully. "It's a long climb," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "And it scares me, Angie. I didn't know how far I'd sunk until Emma made me face up to it. I'm scared."
There, he'd voiced it.
The hand that was swirling in the sand stopped, and she wiped it on her jeans to get rid of the clinging grains. Shifting around so that she was sitting with her legs crossed, her face to him and her knees almost touching his leg, Angie sighed.
"I've been scared ever since I found out I was a mutant. Scared that someone would find out what I was and lock me up, experiment on me, kill me because they didn't understand. You know what? I'm not scared anymore - I'm in the best place that I've ever been in. I'm surrounded by people who do understand me, who don't think I'm some freak who needs to be cured." She looked down at her hands, lying in her lap. "They're here for me, and they're... we're here for you. Yeah, it's a long climb, but you've got people around you to help."
She reached out and squeezed his shoulder again gently. She couldn't take away his fear, and her words seemed to be so ineffectual, but anyone who looked could tell that she wanted nothing more than to help him.
He was quiet for a while, staring out over the same ocean that only a few short hours previously he had thrown his mobile phone into. That had been one of his links to the past, for sure. All his numbers - now gone. He didn't have a eidetic memory, not like some. He hadn't memorised a single number.
It was time to sever the bonds that kept him bound to the Xavier Institute and start moving forward as a free man. Not a boy, but a man. The experience in the warehouse at Baltimore when he'd realised just how destructive and indiscriminatory his powers could be, as well as tipping him over the edge into insanity had also been one hell of a wake up call. He was dangerous.
"I might sit and write," he said, vaguely. "I used to write stories, you know. Maybe I should try it again."
Another long pause, then, "Did you ever play 'Let's Pretend' as a kid?"
Angie blinked for a moment before saying, "Er, yeah..."
"Let's pretend, just for a minute, that I'm not a highly volatile mutant head case of a terrorist and we're just a couple of friends sitting on a beach talking. Let's pretend that I'm gonna swallow my pride, just for once and ask you for a hug."
While John was looking out at the ocean, Angie was looking at him. When he started with his game of let's pretend, she grinned, almost breaking into laughter. That might not have been particularly well received, though, so she settled on a beaming smile.
"You might be a highly volatile mutant head case terrorist, but we are just a couple of friends sitting on a beach talking." She grinned for a moment before standing up and offering him a hand. "And, you know, since we're playing let's pretend... Let's pretend that I have a much cooler power, something really impressive... And that I'm only going to say yes if you'll hug me back."
He looked up at her, took her gloved hand and stood up. A moment later, he put his arms around her and closing his eyes, hugged her. The contact of another person did him the power of good and just for a few, fleeting seconds he was able to chase away the memory of the warehouse in Baltimore. For a brief moment, he was just John. Just a young man with a friend on a beach talking about life.
It felt good and he didn't let go. Not straight away.
If there was any part of Angie that was undecided about how she felt about John, it disappeared in that moment. Standing there hugging him, feeling his warmth pressed up against her, listening to the sound of the ocean... In that moment she could have wished that they were just normal people, without having to think about powers and police and mental problems. But she knew that they weren't just normal people, in the same place that she knew that even if he did want her, she could never really give him everything that he needed. She tried to push the thought away, tried to just enjoy the feeling
of someone holding her, but she couldn't.
She pressed her face against his neck, squeezing him tighter for a moment, before drawing back. She was staring at his face, his eyes, his lips, and she realised with a jolt what that must look like.
"Mmmm, you're warm." It was a case of Captain Obvious to the rescue, and something that she'd already told him no less. But it took her mind away from his lips, gave her something to say instead of 'I think I'm falling for you.' Friends on a beach. Friends!
"Natural body heat," he said, automatically, feeling a bit confused by how abruptly she had stepped back. Was he so bad?
He pushed the thought carefully into the right box.
"I'm hungry," he said, to turn the silence into something other than
awkward. "How 'bout you? And Python told me that there's been another new arrival...?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Spose we should be heading back soon anyway, Python'll be wondering where you are." Her cheeks coloured - she was actually surprised that the lanky mutant hadn't come charging out onto the beach when they were hugging. Maybe she'd been mistaken about his secondary power being the ability to embarrass her no end, though.
"And yeah, there is a new guy. Dharma. Arrived this morning, set the alarms off and woke everyone up." She was playing with her hair again, fingers brushing through the plait to pull it out. She concentrated on the strands, the way the moonlight shone down and lit up the colour, trying to keep her face blank and her brain full of something other than him. But he was standing there right next to her, and she could see him and smell him and remember the feel of him and she tore through a knot violently to try to get him out of her head.
"Ow." It was an instinctual reaction, and as she pulled her hand free she saw the knuckles that were still red and swollen from her desire to rearrange a wall. She slipped the fingers back inside her mitten quickly.
"Er... Dinner. Yeah. What do you feel like?" She tried to draw his attention away from the fact that she'd just said 'ow' completely randomly.
He grinned.
"How about pancakes?"
Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved (with only a few nicks) and changed, he opened the door of his room. Just the simple act of cleaning himself up had a radical change on how he looked. Gone was the look of madness to be replaced by an intelligent alertness, not dissimilar to the way he had been in Baltimore, right before he'd hared off to that warehouse.
What's that classic line? Be still, my beating heart. Or something. "Ok, I'll see you then." She managed to keep her own smile somewhere between quite happy and bordering on insane, and she wandered down to her own room and tried to keep herself occupied with the internet for a while, but she couldn't keep her mind on the email she was trying to compose. Seriously. Get a grip. She found herself playing with her hair, separating it into three strands and plaiting it without thinking. Glancing at her watch, she realised that the twenty minutes was almost up, and when he opened his door
she was already leaning across the hall waiting for him.
"Feeling better?" She gave him another smile, feeling slightly less awkward this time. Noticing the scattered nicks from shaving, Angie moved closer and touched a fingertip to one, watching them disappear with another smile. Small injuries like that were nothing for her to take care of, and she was actually feeling stronger than she ever had before. She didn't have to worry about her powers here, didn't have to worry about accidentally revealing herself, and even something as simple as that seemed to help immensely. Here, she didn't have to fear for her safety, she could be her whole self without worrying. "So where to, oh fearless leader?"
"Fearless leader?" He looked startled at that, and then he laughed,
bringing his smile up to a dangerous level 7.
"I'm hardly that," he said, as he led the way down the corridor and to one of the outer doors. "I was terrified the whole time I was in that warehouse. I couldn't see those Sentinel things very clearly, but even fuzzy they were damned intimidating."
He randomly wondered if Bobby had come out the other side in one piece, but shook the thought away. He didn't care.
Did he?
"I guess we're gonna need a debrief at some point," he said, as they walked down an overgrown, but clearly defined path that led to the beach. "And what are the news reports like? I know I've only been out of it for a day, but it feels like a lifetime ago."
As she followed him out of the base for the first time, Angie couldn't stop from looking around curiously. She couldn't see everything, since it was dark, but she got a sense of how nice the island was and realised that they were lucky to have the base there. She wondered if it made Gill feel at home, then remembered him saying that he didn't like the water. She'd laughed at that, unable to stop herself. That was irony.
"Yeah, the Sentinels weren't exactly the type you'd want to tickle, if you get my drift." She'd seen them - seen Cain throw a car at one of them with absolutely no effect. She still wondered what would happen if he ran at one, but he hadn't had the chance before that guy had set his head on fire.
She picked her way carefully down the path, not as sure on her feet as Pyro since the whole lot was new to her. "Suppose we will," came the reply about the debrief, but his question about the news made her slightly nervous. It wasn't all good.
"I've got a video on my computer of a news report - remind me to show it to you sometime. Apparently, we blew up the building. Was that part of the plan? And, uhm... There's some new doctor working for NovaTeX that they claim can make more of the cure. Oh, and they showed some of the X-Men, who definately came off worse, let me tell you." They emerged from the trail and onto the beach, a sight that made Angie's face light up with delight.
"Oh, it's beautiful!"
"Yeah," he said, softly, "Genosha is beautiful. And deadly."
Not unlike some women I know.
John pointed out a few things: a distant winking of a lighthouse far out to sea, the far off lights of an ocean-going vessel, probably an oil tanker. He pointed out the direction of the jungle. "The animals rarely venture this far up the coast," he said. "Think the base is enough to keep them at bay."
He sat down on the beach and drew his knees up into his chest.
"My head's been in a bad space," he said, eventually. "Since the Professor died, since Alcatraz, it's been getting steadily worse. Emma's really started to help me, though. I can get through this, can't I?"
It was definitely a question and not a statement.
Standing there next to him, having the sights pointed out to her, Angie was absolutely delighted. She'd always lived in cities, close to the hospitals where her mum worked, where you could hardly see the stars from all the lights and the pollution. The few times that she'd gone on holidays away from civilisation - usually with her Aunty Kerrie, since her mum was always on call - she'd felt a sense of wonderment at the planet they'd lived on, and she'd often asserted that she could be perfectly happy living as a hermit out in the bush somewhere, or in a cave. She wondered what kind of animals lived on the island - but she didn't get a chance to ask.
"Of course you can. And you will." She sank down to the sand next to him, reaching out to touch his arm. The motion was more than a little awkward, and she hoped that it wouldn't be unwelcome, but she'd managed to comfort him in the cell that way and did it in the hope that it would work out here.
"You'll be fine in the end, you just need time. These things don't get
fixed like that." She clicked her fingers. Even with her power, serious physical injuries didn't get fixed immediately - she couldn't imagine how such a serious mental issue would just fix itself overnight. "I'm sure Emma can take care of you." As long as she actually does, I won't say a word against her ever again.
"She's got a lot more to do to make it anywhere near right," said John
tapping lightly at the side of his head. "I never knew how bad I was,
Angie. Never knew. Always figured I was just a moody son of a camel
dealer's daughter, but never that I was as crazy as I am."
He hugged his knees in still tighter to himself.
"I've had all the signs there for all this time, but I've been deluding myself that it was just a phase, that it'd pass over. I gotta pull it together, for the sake of Magneto's dream, for the sake of the people I'm supposed to be leading."
He lapsed into silence and stared out over the sea for a while. The session with Emma had left him emotionally drained and vulnerable, delicate and unsure of his own mental state. She'd left him in a position where questioning his own ability was actually going to be a positive thing, where Xavier had left him carefully cocooned from the horrors he had seen deep in John's mind, left him safe from them until such time as he had felt the boy could work on them.
Emma's approach was more direct, it seemed.
"You've got to take it easy for a little while, John. The people you're supposed to be leading? We need you whole and able to lead us, and you're not going to be able to do that if you stress yourself right into the same position again." She tried to smile lightly, squeezing his shoulder gently.
"Magneto's dream can wait a little while - you need to take enough time to let Emma do her thing and let your head do its thing." She looked out at the ocean, her hand moving from his shoulder to rub his back lightly.
"Besides, how's everyone supposed to cope if you turn out not to be the moody son of a camel dealer's daughter, huh? They won't know how to act." She flashed him a cheeky grin, though she hadn't known him long enough to be able to say whether the joke would be welcome or not. Angie hadn't even known him long enough to be able to say what he was like normally - but she did know what it was like when he was crazy, and she didn't like it. He's a survivor. He'll be fine. Eventually. She had a feeling that eventually wouldn't be soon enough for John.
"If I start analysing how I've been over the past few months, I'm ashamed," he said. Her touch on his back was surprisingly welcome. He'd never been the touchy-feely type, and even earlier, when he'd been sobbing like a baby to Emma, she'd kept a physical distance between them. She had sensed how much he needed someone to take him in their arms and hold him, but knew she was not the one to do it.
It had been an easy enough thing to leave him with the impression that he trusted Angie, that she would be good company for him. In some respects, his mind, whilst complex and difficult, was as easy to manipulate as any other.
"I'm not so good at taking it easy," he said, ruefully.
"Then don't analyse it. You can't change the past, so why worry about it?" Her hand dropped from his back, digging into the sand between them to feel the texture. Angie was a very tactile person - it was only contact with other people that she wasn't so good at. "I'd tell you to take a holiday, but it wouldn't exactly be easy for a known mutant terrorist to just waltz into a hotel." She gave him another grin.
"We're on an island in the sun... Well, moon, now, but you get the point. It's the perfect place to have a holiday, to relax for a while. If you can't take it easy here, I'll get Python to drop us off on a deserted island and I'll force you to." She laughed. "I know the cause is always there, but we won't fail if you take a couple of weeks for yourself, Pyro."
She was drawing patterns in the sand now, unthinkingly, swirls that could have been stylised flames over and over again. "But we will fail if we lose you."
"A holiday." John laughed, a genuine, warm laugh. "I've never actually had a holiday. Not a proper one. Went camping with Bobs one weekend..." He trailed off. "Man, I hope he was OK. I hate him, the stupid bastard, but that Sentinel..."
What was he saying?
He changed the subject.
"Funny, isn't it? I made the conscious decision to come and be with
Magneto. It was my choice, there was never gonna be any way to turn back. But I still miss them, from time to time. Bobs doing something stupid, Pete telling him to grow up, Rogue laughing, Kitty..." He stopped, shook his head.
"You're right. I can't change the past."
He turned his head slightly to study her thoughtfully. "It's a long climb," he said, his voice shaking slightly. "And it scares me, Angie. I didn't know how far I'd sunk until Emma made me face up to it. I'm scared."
There, he'd voiced it.
The hand that was swirling in the sand stopped, and she wiped it on her jeans to get rid of the clinging grains. Shifting around so that she was sitting with her legs crossed, her face to him and her knees almost touching his leg, Angie sighed.
"I've been scared ever since I found out I was a mutant. Scared that someone would find out what I was and lock me up, experiment on me, kill me because they didn't understand. You know what? I'm not scared anymore - I'm in the best place that I've ever been in. I'm surrounded by people who do understand me, who don't think I'm some freak who needs to be cured." She looked down at her hands, lying in her lap. "They're here for me, and they're... we're here for you. Yeah, it's a long climb, but you've got people around you to help."
She reached out and squeezed his shoulder again gently. She couldn't take away his fear, and her words seemed to be so ineffectual, but anyone who looked could tell that she wanted nothing more than to help him.
He was quiet for a while, staring out over the same ocean that only a few short hours previously he had thrown his mobile phone into. That had been one of his links to the past, for sure. All his numbers - now gone. He didn't have a eidetic memory, not like some. He hadn't memorised a single number.
It was time to sever the bonds that kept him bound to the Xavier Institute and start moving forward as a free man. Not a boy, but a man. The experience in the warehouse at Baltimore when he'd realised just how destructive and indiscriminatory his powers could be, as well as tipping him over the edge into insanity had also been one hell of a wake up call. He was dangerous.
"I might sit and write," he said, vaguely. "I used to write stories, you know. Maybe I should try it again."
Another long pause, then, "Did you ever play 'Let's Pretend' as a kid?"
Angie blinked for a moment before saying, "Er, yeah..."
"Let's pretend, just for a minute, that I'm not a highly volatile mutant head case of a terrorist and we're just a couple of friends sitting on a beach talking. Let's pretend that I'm gonna swallow my pride, just for once and ask you for a hug."
While John was looking out at the ocean, Angie was looking at him. When he started with his game of let's pretend, she grinned, almost breaking into laughter. That might not have been particularly well received, though, so she settled on a beaming smile.
"You might be a highly volatile mutant head case terrorist, but we are just a couple of friends sitting on a beach talking." She grinned for a moment before standing up and offering him a hand. "And, you know, since we're playing let's pretend... Let's pretend that I have a much cooler power, something really impressive... And that I'm only going to say yes if you'll hug me back."
He looked up at her, took her gloved hand and stood up. A moment later, he put his arms around her and closing his eyes, hugged her. The contact of another person did him the power of good and just for a few, fleeting seconds he was able to chase away the memory of the warehouse in Baltimore. For a brief moment, he was just John. Just a young man with a friend on a beach talking about life.
It felt good and he didn't let go. Not straight away.
If there was any part of Angie that was undecided about how she felt about John, it disappeared in that moment. Standing there hugging him, feeling his warmth pressed up against her, listening to the sound of the ocean... In that moment she could have wished that they were just normal people, without having to think about powers and police and mental problems. But she knew that they weren't just normal people, in the same place that she knew that even if he did want her, she could never really give him everything that he needed. She tried to push the thought away, tried to just enjoy the feeling
of someone holding her, but she couldn't.
She pressed her face against his neck, squeezing him tighter for a moment, before drawing back. She was staring at his face, his eyes, his lips, and she realised with a jolt what that must look like.
"Mmmm, you're warm." It was a case of Captain Obvious to the rescue, and something that she'd already told him no less. But it took her mind away from his lips, gave her something to say instead of 'I think I'm falling for you.' Friends on a beach. Friends!
"Natural body heat," he said, automatically, feeling a bit confused by how abruptly she had stepped back. Was he so bad?
He pushed the thought carefully into the right box.
"I'm hungry," he said, to turn the silence into something other than
awkward. "How 'bout you? And Python told me that there's been another new arrival...?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Spose we should be heading back soon anyway, Python'll be wondering where you are." Her cheeks coloured - she was actually surprised that the lanky mutant hadn't come charging out onto the beach when they were hugging. Maybe she'd been mistaken about his secondary power being the ability to embarrass her no end, though.
"And yeah, there is a new guy. Dharma. Arrived this morning, set the alarms off and woke everyone up." She was playing with her hair again, fingers brushing through the plait to pull it out. She concentrated on the strands, the way the moonlight shone down and lit up the colour, trying to keep her face blank and her brain full of something other than him. But he was standing there right next to her, and she could see him and smell him and remember the feel of him and she tore through a knot violently to try to get him out of her head.
"Ow." It was an instinctual reaction, and as she pulled her hand free she saw the knuckles that were still red and swollen from her desire to rearrange a wall. She slipped the fingers back inside her mitten quickly.
"Er... Dinner. Yeah. What do you feel like?" She tried to draw his attention away from the fact that she'd just said 'ow' completely randomly.
He grinned.
"How about pancakes?"
