Author's note: These snippets are all written pretty hastily and though this one's been hanging around for a while, it hasn't been edited a great deal. Constructive critisism on any of the pieces would be greatly appreciated, as I'm continuously looking for ways to improve my writing. Thanks and I hope you enjoy this one!

090. Stash

Bobby goes cold when he finds John's stash of old school notes and it's nothing to do with the ice at his fingertips.

John had always hated school. He hated the lessons and the rules and the hierarchy that came with it and he's scribbled several sarcastic comments in the margins telling whoever was unfortunate enough to be marking his work exactly that. John was the kind of person who was smart without even trying. He could blag his way through a test without having listened to a word of the lesson before it and still come out with a mark that matched Bobby's, if Bobby was having a good day.

Until now, though, Bobby had never known what it was John had been doing in all those lessons, other than playing at pyrotechnics behind his back. But in the margins of his work, in small, neat handwriting that Bobby can't even recognize as John's, are snippets of poems and songs and prose that were good enough for Bobby to consider that perhaps they were quotes, rather than John's own work.

But then he remembers that John had never been one to copy others.

He leafs through old exercise books and loose sheets of paper until it's dark outside and Rogue comes to find him, asking if he's going to eat anything tonight. He's slow to look up at her and when he finally tears his gaze away from a lyric that seems neither musical nor poetic, he feels a prickling in his chest he's never experienced before.

'Bobby?'

He's been staring blankly at Rogue for longer than he should have and she shifts nervously under his gaze. He smiles in a way that isn't quite forced and shoves his doubt aside, along with the papers he's holding.

'I'll meet you downstairs in a second; I just gotta pack this stuff up.'

Rogue smiles that smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes and leaves him alone again.

Slowly, carefully, Bobby files John's words away into boxes. He had intended to throw the lot out, but for a reason he doesn't try to understand he instead carries the boxes to his new room and stashes them underneath the single bed, leaving his doubt tucked neatly away inside them. He won't look at them again and quite soon he forgets they're there at all.

Sometimes, when he's trying to fall asleep, he thinks of John and isn't sure why.