Title: Rebuilding Burned Bridges (Part 4/9)
Pairing: Bobby/St John
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Years after the events of Alkali Lake and Alcatraz, St John finds that you cannot burn all your bridges without rebuilding some. This part: Getting reaquainted, tentatively
Rebuilding Burned Bridges
The second day, St John reaches for the paper after Bobby has switched his computer on, though he skips the first twenty and the last five pages blathering about mutants, terrorists and calls for new laws and assassination. He doesn't see the tiny notice Bobby has drawn a blue circle around, the first snippet of any journalist to timidly speculate about the nursery incident being a sign of a rift inside the Brotherhood, an act of insubordination, covert and deliberate.
Staring avidly at his screen and seemingly not paying attention to the rustling of paper behind him, Bobby tries to imagine what it must have looked like. Pyro standing at the threshold, or maybe in the nursery doorway. Behind him the inferno, getting hotter and hotter, blazing. A confident smirk, maybe one drop of sweat betraying the exertion. The frightened cries of the children. A wall of flame blocking the view to the unharmed room, steadily building, all but exploding. Magneto watching, satisfied. Nodding. Turning.
St John still hasn't said a word, and while Bobby curses behind his teeth at the lack of progress on an essay he's due to turn in soon, he keeps quiet otherwise because he knows better than to try and force St John into a conversation he's not ready for. That they're not ready for, either of them.
At least several furtive glances over his shoulder confirm that his roommate is not quite as morose today. In the afternoon, he even gets out of his chair, ignores Bobby's fussing around with a dictionary and idly uncovers the few books on Bobby's shelf that are not connected to his study. Half reading, half dozing, he watches Bobby spending an hour or so at the phone again, arguing some point some study-group person is too dense to not keep getting absolutely wrong.
After dinner, they watch the news, and Bobby takes about half an hour talking to a person named Ella or something, but just like yesterday, he doesn't leave the room.
The silence between them is tense, but it's based on some kind of mutual understanding that makes it - not neutral, never neutral, but not uncomfortable, either.
xx
KittenX (02:43 PM) :
I'm running viruses again.
Ice24 (02:43 PM) :
What now?
KittenX (02:43 PM) :
Authorities are pressuring Hank. Again.
KittenX (02:44 PM) :
It's a mass panic panicking.
Ice24 (02:44 PM) :
Tell me they still don't know.
KittenX (02:44 PM) :
They don't. Nobody talks.
KittenX (02:44 PM) :
Doesn't mean they're backing off, though.
Ice24 (02:45 PM) :
Bless you and Traips.
Ice24 (02:45 PM) :
We'd be so dead without you
Ice24 (02:45 PM) :
real sorry mu-sicians
KittenX (02:45 PM) :
Bobby?
Ice24 (02:45 PM) :
Yes?
KittenX (02:45 PM) :
Tell me shielding you's not a mistake
Ice24 (02:45 PM) :
I'm good. It's all good.
xx
By lunchtime the third day, St John has leafed through all the literature Bobby's got lying around that aren't in some way about economics. His brain has lost enough of the previous days' numbness that it's prepared to resume some kind of work, but the things just below the surface of his mind, he isn't ready to expose to close examination. Attempts at writing something would be futile, as any line of thought would inevitably end up on a blocked-out topic.
So, after about an hour of hesitation, he grabs a printed version of Bobby's essay and starts to liberally change the wording with his green-colored, non-lightery pen.
The subject matter soon bores him to tears, but the clumsy style it's written in is almost enough to make him smile. While his former roommate admittedly has improved slightly since he last did this, adding structure and legibility to a text written by Bobby is familiar, it's reassuring, and it's something he's always taken some pride in.
When he sees St John go for the print out of the corner of his eye, Bobby is on chat with Kitty while exasperatedly changing the layout of a certain thrice-cursed handout again. Between emphatically voicing his agreement with Shadowcat - no-one should dare to even consider pressuring Leech to produce more of the "cure" - and looking at his study-group partners' email and wanting to bang his head against the desk until it's bloody, he doesn't object to the interference. In fact, he even smiles at St John once. They work like that for the rest of the afternoon, not speaking but silently communicating, and in between, when one of them pauses to listen very hard, it's almost (almost) as if they're back at Xavier's and the past few years haven't happened.
tbc.
feedback, please?
