Post by Pyro on Jul 13, 2006 17:16:18 GMT -5
It had been five days since John's rather dramatic return to the Institute and in that time the Professor had been as good as his word. Apart from using the bathroom facilities, John had not been allowed out of his room at all. Food was sent up to him (not that he ate much, that was something that had never changed in him) and apart from being called down to see the Professor occasionally, he never left.
This morning, however, it transpired that the man who had tried to mug John out on the street had dropped charges totally and apart from a severe telling off and official caution from the police, John was once more free to leave his room. He had visited with the Professor that morning and had come out with his Zippo returned to him and a strangely somber expression on his face.
He made his way to the kitchen to get himself a drink.
Bobby was sitting at the island eating a bowl of cereal. He'd accidentally dumped some Cheerios out on the counter and was absent-mindedly making shapes with them as he ate. The radio was sitting near him on the counter, the popular station playing a song by a female artist. Bobby didn't particularly like her music, but she was extremely good-looking.
As John entered, he gave Bobby a small smile. The cuts and bruises on his face were well faded now, as was the bruising on his ribs – which Bobby had been startled to see the first time John’s shirt had come off. “Hey Bobs, I’m off probation now.” He held up his Zippo. “John Allerdyce is back on board.”
Bobby looked up as John came in and smiled when he flashed his lighter. "Welcome back, Sparky." He enjoyed finding new nicknames for him.
“Thanks.” John opened the fridge and got the milk out, pouring himself a glass and sliding into the seat opposite John. “All the charges have been dropped,” he reported. “I have to attend a session with the Prof every morning for a week, ‘cos he reckons he can help with the nightmares and stuff so I got off light.”
He listened to the radio for a few moments and, much to Bobby’s surprise, began singing along. He discovered that John had a surprisingly good voice.
"That's good news," Bobby commented upon hearing that the charges had been dropped, and that the Professor could help John with his nightmares. When John began singing along, Bobby glanced up slyly from the stack of Cheerios he was carefully making, his hands stopping in mid-air as he watched John for a moment. "You know this song?" He asked, unable to keep a slight hint of teasing out of his voice. It was slightly weird that John would start singing along to the radio, at least to a song sung by a girl.
“’Course I know it. I’ve spent all week in my room listening to the radio and it’s on their play list. Gets hammered into my consciousness at least three times an hour. Got a good tune and good lyrics.” He shrugged. “I like music. Didn’t you ever figure that one out?” He grinned suddenly. “’sides. She’s kinda nice to look at, isn’t she?”
Bobby laughed at John's final comment, nodding and raising his eyebrows. "She is hot," he agreed easily with a grin. He flicked at the Cheerio tower and it toppled across the counter. "Wish we had some girls like her around here."
He shrugged, and rephrased what he'd said to clarify that he wasn't insulting his girlfriend. "I mean...Rogue's pretty. Some of them are pretty. It's just: we only have, what, ten girls that are kind of our age?" He looked at John, with him being in the same boat and probably noticing the same thing.
“Yeah,” said John, thoughtfully. “Some of the younger ones will shape up as they get older though, I reckon. And besides. There’s gotta be other girls out there. I’m not the best around them, though, you know that.” This much was true: John had a tendency to go sullen and withdrawn around girls his own age in an effort to hide his shyness.
Bobby smiled and picked up his spoon. He lifted it to his mouth, but gestured to John with it before he took a bite. "Yeah, I've seen you flirt though." So flirting was stretching it a little, but Bobby had heard John make a few suave comments that made him proud. He then took a bite of his cereal and set the spoon down in the bowl.
“I don’t flirt,” John denied vociferously, becoming extremely interested in his glass of milk. “Girls aren’t interested in scrawny street rats like me, anyway.” Bobby had watched John enough to know that when he said ‘girls’, he was referring to one particular young lady at the Institute.
Bobby rolled his eyes and grinned. "'Girls' like street rats plenty," he said, first emphasizing 'girls' to show that he knew perfectly well who John meant by that, and then emphasizing 'street rat'. "Besides--street rat? What are you, Aladdin? But wait--Haven't you ever seen that movie? He got the hot half-naked princess girl."
Bobby swirled the milk around in the bowl with his spoon. "Come on, man--Rogue and I have already talked about this. We both think you two need to just go out already, I mean you both like each other." He spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, which it really wasn't, of course. But there had been hints enough on both sides for Rogue and Bobby to piece together that the two had a thing for each other.
“Man, she’s like, barely fifteen,” said John after a moment composing himself rather than blushing. “And I’m nearly eighteen. She’s way too young for me. And by the time she’s not…well, she’ll have found someone else anyhow.” He drained his milk and pushed the glass to one side. The Zippo came out and he began to flick it on and off. “I dunno, Bobs. Guess I’ll just have to get used to being single. ‘sides, I reckon Big Pete’s soft on her, too.”
Though John had made some good points, there were so many things wrong with what he said--In Bobby's mind, anyway--that he had to protest. "Okay, well, first of all? If you're too old for her...Pete's twenty-two! He's just nice to everyone. But you're not too old for her. I mean, it's a stretch, but I doubt anyone's going to report you." He spoke sarcastically; of course no one would report him.
"Kitty sure wouldn't," he added with a shadow of a smirk on his face.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” said John, a look of embarrassment on his face, “but I do actually have some moral standards. I guess I should wait for now.” Even if it WAS a genuine excuse, it made his life easier. “I sort of had a girl when I was living rough, anyway. Sort of. The receptionist at the hotel where I used to grab showers and stuff. She and I were sort of…y’know. Getting on well.”
Bobby was surprised that John hadn't told him this before. "She a mutant?" he asked curiously. Not that he'd care if she wasn't. In fact, if anything he would think John would have cared. At times he seemed a little...Angry when talking about humans.
“I don’t know,” said John. “I never asked her. She was just…nice to me and took me out to get some decent food a couple of times. No, she probably wasn’t. That’s a good enough reason to presume it would never have worked.”
John's last statement reinforced the feeling Bobby had gotten about John's opinion of humans. He didn't really want to get into the semantics of it with him, besides they were on the same side of the fence when it came to how they viewed humans who didn't like mutants. It was just that John seemed to take that a little farther than Bobby did. "You'll get a girl. Girls love bad guys," Bobby said, scooping up the spilled Cheerios from the counter and dropping them into the bowl, then pushing the bowl aside.
"And when you do, you'll be one-up on me." He said, trying to keep his tone more light than he felt at the thought.
“There’s more to life than getting a girl,” said John, his tone growing a little agitated. It was more than evident he just wanted to drop the topic of conversation before he embarrassed himself. “Look, I admit it. I kinda like Kitty, but I’m not gonna do anything about it, you understand?”
Bobby knew John well enough to know when to pry and when to leave well enough alone. This time he'd gone a little step over the boundary--but with John that boundary was ever-changing and sporadic. "Alright," he said evadingly. After a minute of silence, Bobby changed topics. "So, these sessions with the Professor...Is he going to read your mind or something?"
John shrugged, grateful to his friend for dropping the subject. “He said something about my mind being open to psychic vibrations. Because of the mental control I have over flame, my psychic abilities are a bit more sensitive than other people’s. He said some stuff about creating mental blocks to dampen things down.” John’s nightmares had been just as bad since his return as they had always been, but the boys had reached a mutual agreement some time ago that the Zippo would be kept out of immediate arm’s reach.
Bobby nodded. "Okay," he said, "that should help." It was funny how far John had come; Bobby remembered his comment when he'd first arrived at Xavier's about the Professor's mindpowers freaking him out.
It wasn’t so much about how far John had come, but more about how he had reached the end of his tether where the nightmares were concerned. He was nineteen years old and deeply ashamed of the fact that he constantly woke in the night through his dreams. He’d not had a single decent night’s sleep at the Institute and that had, the Professor had gently suggested, probably contributed to the loss of control that day in the Danger Room.
The Professor hadn’t fully believed that, and neither had John – but neither of them brought up the issue. John was unaware of his deeply rooted psychoses and the Professor thought it unwise to raise them. The cover story of putting psychic blocks in to guard his sleep would serve their purpose for now.
“It’ll be nice to get a full night’s sleep,” John said, sounding faintly wistful.
Bobby stood, lifting his bowl from the counter and walking around the island to the sink. He turned on the faucet and washed it out, then filled it with water and set it in the sink. After turning off the faucet, he spoke what was on his mind. "So did the Professor help you figure out your dreams?" Bobby glanced over his shoulder at John for a moment, saying as he turned back around, "If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine..."
John never wanted to talk about his nightmares. From what Bobby had managed to glean, they were mixed images of whatever he’d endured out on the streets and whatever psychic vibrations he’d been picking up. He stared down at the table and shrugged his shoulders lightly. “He says my mind’s too active, that I need to relax more.”
Bobby turned and leaned against the counter, nodding and crossing his arms comfortably. "So...he doesn't think you knew that woman?" Bobby spoke seriously, and in a low voice. Since John's first time setting the room on fire, he'd had many other nights in which his nightmares had tormented him enough to wake Bobby--and Bobby in turn always woke John, hoping that stopping the dreams would make them go away for the night. But John's vivid description of the dream he'd had the night Bobby had woken to find his room ablaze...It had always stuck in Bobby's mind.
“He was…evasive. I don’t know. I think he has maybe had that dream himself. He described parts of it I KNOW I didn’t tell him. Unless he was rooting around in my head to get the information out…but it was in his eyes.” John’s own eyes took on a haunted look. “Some nights it’s worse than others. When I was away from here again, it dropped off again.”
Bobby's expression grew surprised and confused as John said he thought perhaps the Professor had had the same dream. That was odd. Extremely. Even for the Professor. John's news that the dreams didn't happen outside of Xavier's fell heavily on Bobby. He looked at John closely, studying him in silence. He hoped that the fact didn't make John want to leave school again.
"Is it always that same situation?" he asked curiously.
“Not always.” It was indicative of the fact he’d spent time with the Professor that he was able to talk about it. “But sort of. I…I can’t quite explain what I mean.” He went a little white and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “So much destruction.”
"Well, it's a good thing we've got the Professor here to help with stuff like that," Bobby stated. He whole-heartedly believed that; the Professor was an incredible person. He'd become a role model to Bobby, who saw him as a crusader for mutants. He'd done so much...
“Yeah,” said John, still pale and looking for all the world like he was going to be sick. “Yeah, right. Bobs, do you mind if we don’t talk about it? It’s not that I don’t appreciate you caring…but…”
Bobby nodded quickly, understanding right off the bat. He stood straight from his leaning position against the counter and ran a hand through his hair without thinking about; a habit that often caused his hair to stand up funny. "Hey, I was going to go out back and work out--freeze some stuff, you know--practice," he said, changing the topic--he'd come to be able to do that very smoothly since John had arrived. "There's a big open area near the stables I've been using to work on some stuff. Plenty of room to light some fires without really doing damage. Wanna practice?"
It had the desired effect. John’s face lit up. “You’re on,” he said. As he stood and washed out his glass, he cast a sideways look at Bobby. “Thanks, man.”
Bobby moved out of the way of the sink as John went over to wash out his glass. He made a few steps toward the door. When John thanked him, Bobby looked over at him; just for a moment, then he looked away, but returned his gaze to the counter near John and gave a small smile. "Don't mention it," he said plainly, though the thanks meant a lot to Bobby.
He tapped the edge of the counter he stood by a few times, then headed toward the door again. As he reached the doorway, he said over his shoulder, "Besides, I figure--Who better to train my ass than the eternal opposite of ice?"
This morning, however, it transpired that the man who had tried to mug John out on the street had dropped charges totally and apart from a severe telling off and official caution from the police, John was once more free to leave his room. He had visited with the Professor that morning and had come out with his Zippo returned to him and a strangely somber expression on his face.
He made his way to the kitchen to get himself a drink.
Bobby was sitting at the island eating a bowl of cereal. He'd accidentally dumped some Cheerios out on the counter and was absent-mindedly making shapes with them as he ate. The radio was sitting near him on the counter, the popular station playing a song by a female artist. Bobby didn't particularly like her music, but she was extremely good-looking.
As John entered, he gave Bobby a small smile. The cuts and bruises on his face were well faded now, as was the bruising on his ribs – which Bobby had been startled to see the first time John’s shirt had come off. “Hey Bobs, I’m off probation now.” He held up his Zippo. “John Allerdyce is back on board.”
Bobby looked up as John came in and smiled when he flashed his lighter. "Welcome back, Sparky." He enjoyed finding new nicknames for him.
“Thanks.” John opened the fridge and got the milk out, pouring himself a glass and sliding into the seat opposite John. “All the charges have been dropped,” he reported. “I have to attend a session with the Prof every morning for a week, ‘cos he reckons he can help with the nightmares and stuff so I got off light.”
He listened to the radio for a few moments and, much to Bobby’s surprise, began singing along. He discovered that John had a surprisingly good voice.
"That's good news," Bobby commented upon hearing that the charges had been dropped, and that the Professor could help John with his nightmares. When John began singing along, Bobby glanced up slyly from the stack of Cheerios he was carefully making, his hands stopping in mid-air as he watched John for a moment. "You know this song?" He asked, unable to keep a slight hint of teasing out of his voice. It was slightly weird that John would start singing along to the radio, at least to a song sung by a girl.
“’Course I know it. I’ve spent all week in my room listening to the radio and it’s on their play list. Gets hammered into my consciousness at least three times an hour. Got a good tune and good lyrics.” He shrugged. “I like music. Didn’t you ever figure that one out?” He grinned suddenly. “’sides. She’s kinda nice to look at, isn’t she?”
Bobby laughed at John's final comment, nodding and raising his eyebrows. "She is hot," he agreed easily with a grin. He flicked at the Cheerio tower and it toppled across the counter. "Wish we had some girls like her around here."
He shrugged, and rephrased what he'd said to clarify that he wasn't insulting his girlfriend. "I mean...Rogue's pretty. Some of them are pretty. It's just: we only have, what, ten girls that are kind of our age?" He looked at John, with him being in the same boat and probably noticing the same thing.
“Yeah,” said John, thoughtfully. “Some of the younger ones will shape up as they get older though, I reckon. And besides. There’s gotta be other girls out there. I’m not the best around them, though, you know that.” This much was true: John had a tendency to go sullen and withdrawn around girls his own age in an effort to hide his shyness.
Bobby smiled and picked up his spoon. He lifted it to his mouth, but gestured to John with it before he took a bite. "Yeah, I've seen you flirt though." So flirting was stretching it a little, but Bobby had heard John make a few suave comments that made him proud. He then took a bite of his cereal and set the spoon down in the bowl.
“I don’t flirt,” John denied vociferously, becoming extremely interested in his glass of milk. “Girls aren’t interested in scrawny street rats like me, anyway.” Bobby had watched John enough to know that when he said ‘girls’, he was referring to one particular young lady at the Institute.
Bobby rolled his eyes and grinned. "'Girls' like street rats plenty," he said, first emphasizing 'girls' to show that he knew perfectly well who John meant by that, and then emphasizing 'street rat'. "Besides--street rat? What are you, Aladdin? But wait--Haven't you ever seen that movie? He got the hot half-naked princess girl."
Bobby swirled the milk around in the bowl with his spoon. "Come on, man--Rogue and I have already talked about this. We both think you two need to just go out already, I mean you both like each other." He spoke as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, which it really wasn't, of course. But there had been hints enough on both sides for Rogue and Bobby to piece together that the two had a thing for each other.
“Man, she’s like, barely fifteen,” said John after a moment composing himself rather than blushing. “And I’m nearly eighteen. She’s way too young for me. And by the time she’s not…well, she’ll have found someone else anyhow.” He drained his milk and pushed the glass to one side. The Zippo came out and he began to flick it on and off. “I dunno, Bobs. Guess I’ll just have to get used to being single. ‘sides, I reckon Big Pete’s soft on her, too.”
Though John had made some good points, there were so many things wrong with what he said--In Bobby's mind, anyway--that he had to protest. "Okay, well, first of all? If you're too old for her...Pete's twenty-two! He's just nice to everyone. But you're not too old for her. I mean, it's a stretch, but I doubt anyone's going to report you." He spoke sarcastically; of course no one would report him.
"Kitty sure wouldn't," he added with a shadow of a smirk on his face.
“I know it’s hard to believe,” said John, a look of embarrassment on his face, “but I do actually have some moral standards. I guess I should wait for now.” Even if it WAS a genuine excuse, it made his life easier. “I sort of had a girl when I was living rough, anyway. Sort of. The receptionist at the hotel where I used to grab showers and stuff. She and I were sort of…y’know. Getting on well.”
Bobby was surprised that John hadn't told him this before. "She a mutant?" he asked curiously. Not that he'd care if she wasn't. In fact, if anything he would think John would have cared. At times he seemed a little...Angry when talking about humans.
“I don’t know,” said John. “I never asked her. She was just…nice to me and took me out to get some decent food a couple of times. No, she probably wasn’t. That’s a good enough reason to presume it would never have worked.”
John's last statement reinforced the feeling Bobby had gotten about John's opinion of humans. He didn't really want to get into the semantics of it with him, besides they were on the same side of the fence when it came to how they viewed humans who didn't like mutants. It was just that John seemed to take that a little farther than Bobby did. "You'll get a girl. Girls love bad guys," Bobby said, scooping up the spilled Cheerios from the counter and dropping them into the bowl, then pushing the bowl aside.
"And when you do, you'll be one-up on me." He said, trying to keep his tone more light than he felt at the thought.
“There’s more to life than getting a girl,” said John, his tone growing a little agitated. It was more than evident he just wanted to drop the topic of conversation before he embarrassed himself. “Look, I admit it. I kinda like Kitty, but I’m not gonna do anything about it, you understand?”
Bobby knew John well enough to know when to pry and when to leave well enough alone. This time he'd gone a little step over the boundary--but with John that boundary was ever-changing and sporadic. "Alright," he said evadingly. After a minute of silence, Bobby changed topics. "So, these sessions with the Professor...Is he going to read your mind or something?"
John shrugged, grateful to his friend for dropping the subject. “He said something about my mind being open to psychic vibrations. Because of the mental control I have over flame, my psychic abilities are a bit more sensitive than other people’s. He said some stuff about creating mental blocks to dampen things down.” John’s nightmares had been just as bad since his return as they had always been, but the boys had reached a mutual agreement some time ago that the Zippo would be kept out of immediate arm’s reach.
Bobby nodded. "Okay," he said, "that should help." It was funny how far John had come; Bobby remembered his comment when he'd first arrived at Xavier's about the Professor's mindpowers freaking him out.
It wasn’t so much about how far John had come, but more about how he had reached the end of his tether where the nightmares were concerned. He was nineteen years old and deeply ashamed of the fact that he constantly woke in the night through his dreams. He’d not had a single decent night’s sleep at the Institute and that had, the Professor had gently suggested, probably contributed to the loss of control that day in the Danger Room.
The Professor hadn’t fully believed that, and neither had John – but neither of them brought up the issue. John was unaware of his deeply rooted psychoses and the Professor thought it unwise to raise them. The cover story of putting psychic blocks in to guard his sleep would serve their purpose for now.
“It’ll be nice to get a full night’s sleep,” John said, sounding faintly wistful.
Bobby stood, lifting his bowl from the counter and walking around the island to the sink. He turned on the faucet and washed it out, then filled it with water and set it in the sink. After turning off the faucet, he spoke what was on his mind. "So did the Professor help you figure out your dreams?" Bobby glanced over his shoulder at John for a moment, saying as he turned back around, "If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine..."
John never wanted to talk about his nightmares. From what Bobby had managed to glean, they were mixed images of whatever he’d endured out on the streets and whatever psychic vibrations he’d been picking up. He stared down at the table and shrugged his shoulders lightly. “He says my mind’s too active, that I need to relax more.”
Bobby turned and leaned against the counter, nodding and crossing his arms comfortably. "So...he doesn't think you knew that woman?" Bobby spoke seriously, and in a low voice. Since John's first time setting the room on fire, he'd had many other nights in which his nightmares had tormented him enough to wake Bobby--and Bobby in turn always woke John, hoping that stopping the dreams would make them go away for the night. But John's vivid description of the dream he'd had the night Bobby had woken to find his room ablaze...It had always stuck in Bobby's mind.
“He was…evasive. I don’t know. I think he has maybe had that dream himself. He described parts of it I KNOW I didn’t tell him. Unless he was rooting around in my head to get the information out…but it was in his eyes.” John’s own eyes took on a haunted look. “Some nights it’s worse than others. When I was away from here again, it dropped off again.”
Bobby's expression grew surprised and confused as John said he thought perhaps the Professor had had the same dream. That was odd. Extremely. Even for the Professor. John's news that the dreams didn't happen outside of Xavier's fell heavily on Bobby. He looked at John closely, studying him in silence. He hoped that the fact didn't make John want to leave school again.
"Is it always that same situation?" he asked curiously.
“Not always.” It was indicative of the fact he’d spent time with the Professor that he was able to talk about it. “But sort of. I…I can’t quite explain what I mean.” He went a little white and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “So much destruction.”
"Well, it's a good thing we've got the Professor here to help with stuff like that," Bobby stated. He whole-heartedly believed that; the Professor was an incredible person. He'd become a role model to Bobby, who saw him as a crusader for mutants. He'd done so much...
“Yeah,” said John, still pale and looking for all the world like he was going to be sick. “Yeah, right. Bobs, do you mind if we don’t talk about it? It’s not that I don’t appreciate you caring…but…”
Bobby nodded quickly, understanding right off the bat. He stood straight from his leaning position against the counter and ran a hand through his hair without thinking about; a habit that often caused his hair to stand up funny. "Hey, I was going to go out back and work out--freeze some stuff, you know--practice," he said, changing the topic--he'd come to be able to do that very smoothly since John had arrived. "There's a big open area near the stables I've been using to work on some stuff. Plenty of room to light some fires without really doing damage. Wanna practice?"
It had the desired effect. John’s face lit up. “You’re on,” he said. As he stood and washed out his glass, he cast a sideways look at Bobby. “Thanks, man.”
Bobby moved out of the way of the sink as John went over to wash out his glass. He made a few steps toward the door. When John thanked him, Bobby looked over at him; just for a moment, then he looked away, but returned his gaze to the counter near John and gave a small smile. "Don't mention it," he said plainly, though the thanks meant a lot to Bobby.
He tapped the edge of the counter he stood by a few times, then headed toward the door again. As he reached the doorway, he said over his shoulder, "Besides, I figure--Who better to train my ass than the eternal opposite of ice?"
