After about five minutes of waiting, Roxy slipped herself into Lydia's beat up passenger seat. Her brown eyes widened as she unzipped her coat. "It's like an oven in her, Di, what the hell?"
"Oh. Sorry." The redhead flushed slightly as she changed the subject, "Yeah, so guess who got evicted today?"
"Nate?"
"Nope."
"Oh, well that's great," Roxy said, not really paying attention, "Hey, did you know John's a mutant?"
"What?"
"Wait- did you get evicted?"
"What do you mean John's a mutant?"
"I thought you were here on scholarship!"
Lydia glared at her, "Rox."
"What?" Roxy looked away from her. A bit ashamed for throwing that little tidbit at her with no warning, she relented. "Yeah. He is. I saw him…showing off, at the Tartlettes show."
"You've known that long!" Lydia snapped, grasping the steering wheel in front of her angrily. "How come no one told me?"
"Does it matter?" The woman asked, eying her skeptically. "I mean, I thought you didn't have a problem with mutants."
"I don't, but it would've been nice for him to slip it into the conversation before we…" Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. "Doesn't matter."
"Yes it does," Roxy told her, suspicion in her eyes now. "What's up?"
Lydia cleared her throat. "I try not to date mutants. At least not for the long term."
There was a pause. Roxanna stared at her friend a long time before speaking. "Not all of us are like your dad, Di."
With no response to that, the redhead started the engine.
-Two Hours Later-
Pyro wandered around the campus for over an hour after he had finished class. He wasn't sure why…but Brendan's approval meant a lot more to him now that he knew of his mutation. Not that he knew the details of course, but the sheer fact that at least some, small portion of the mutant community agreed with he and Lydia's relationship comforted him. Maybe it would be okay. The feelings they had for each other. Maybe it would work out.
Biting his lip, John went to pull out his cell phone when a familiar voice stopped him.
"Well, well, well. Look who it is."
The young man froze.
"The ungrateful little fuck himself."
Spinning quickly, John felt himself grinning before he could stop himself. "Dad?"
Wade's eyes widened at the title, his smile following suit. "Yes! It is I! Your daddy!"
"Okay, now you're ruining it." The pyrokentic snapped, shoving his hands deep into his pockets as his father hugged him. "What're you doing here anyway? And just how the hell did you get-"
"Your little girlfriend's phone number? Funny story-"
"She's not my girlfriend!"
"Nate said she was your girlfriend." Wade smirked, crossing his arms like a boastful child as his son's jaw dropped.
Shaking his head, John asked, "When the hell did you start talking to Nate?"
"About…" The man tilted his head back and forth, "two days after you moved to New Jersey." A cheerful grin sprung onto his handsome features, "We're penpals!"
Unsure who to kill first, Pyro just stared at him.
"Wow," Wade chuckled nervously, "You got the glare from your mother, too, I see."
"What did you say to Lydia?" John asked, voice quiet as he shook his hostility away. It was pointless being angry at Wade. The man just did not have the mental capacity to be cynical. Or apologetic. "Did-"
"Did I what?" His light eyes blinked curiously at him before softening. "Did I mention your little stint as a mutant freedom fighting terrorist?"
John winced.
"No. No I did not." Wade's eyes swept over him critically, "She wasn't kidding when she said you still hadn't gotten a haircut I see."
"My hair is fine!"
-Meanwhile With Lydia and Roxy-
"Do…I mean…"
Lydia glanced over at her. "Out with it."
"Do you think of me and Bren that way?"
"What way?"
"Like we're unreliable." Roxy expanded, taking a sip of her milkshake as they sat parked in the McDonalds parking lot.
"Well. Not you. Brendan on the other hand…" Playing it off with a smirk, the younger woman shrugged helplessly when she was given a pointed look. "My dad, well, Rox it's complicated. And yeah, I do worry about you guys taking off."
Roxy shot her a disgusted look. "Lydia."
"Hey, you asked. And dating a mutant, it's hard. I mean, that sounds fucked up, but…my dad had to leave because of me. Humans and mutants," The redhead pursed her lips, "we both have some kind of warped superiority complex when it comes to the other."
"That's not true! You know I don't think of you as…a lesser person." The other argued.
"No, but when we first met you thought of me as a threat, remember?" Lydia sighed. "And yeah, I love you, and Brendan and Mel, I always will." She turned to her friend, "But you look me in the eye right now and tell me that if something happened, something big, you wouldn't take off."
"I'm not going anyway, Di." Roxy said seriously, "none of us are. John's…well, I can see why you'd be worried about him."
"He's shady all right."
"And you love him for it."
Dark blue eyes sharpened at her. "I do not love him."
"Bullshit. You love him, he loves you." Roxy smiled, trying to ease the tension. "He's not going anywhere, Di."
Lydia bit her lip. "What if he doesn't like humans?"
"He does." She assured the driver. "And if he does take off, you'll still have us."
Smiling sheepishly, Lydia nodded. "Okay."
"Okay?" Roxy repeated.
"Yeah, B, okay…but if you leave; you're getting custody of Nate."
"What? No, that's not fair!"
-Half an Hour Later: at the Apartment-
"And you're sure it's cool I stay here?"
Brendan smirked at the redhead, "You're not gonna pull any freaky mind warping experiments on us, are you?"
Lydia blinked at him, "No more than usual."
"Than, yeah, it's fine." Bright Eyes nodded, ignoring her boyfriend's annoyed look.
"She was asking me."
"Shut up, Bren."
He grinned at her, wrapping his arms around her waist. He rested his head on her shoulder. "Yes m'am."
The red head smiled at the pair of them. "You to need to get married."
They rolled their eyes at her and Roxy shove him away. "Get off me, you're givin' the girl ideas." Her dark eyes set back on the younger woman as her boyfriend shuffled away to play Rock Band with Nathanial. He knew his place. With a smirk, she nodded down the hall. "Come on, Nate said you can bunk on his futon."
Lydia blushed, "Thanks, Nate."
"No problem, anything for a redhead." He told her, not looking away from the screen.
Following her friend, said redhead sighed quietly to herself. She felt a bit out of her element, like she was closing in on her friends' space. Sure. She spent most of her time here anyway, slept on the couch every other night…but having all her stuff there, albeit only a box full, seemed rude.
It sure as hell didn't help that she'd be in close quarters with a certain hot headed young man who went by the name of John. Swallowing absent mindedly, Lydia felt her face heat up at the thought of their kiss. They hadn't talked about it, or well, much of anything, since it happened. They closest thing they'd even had to a conversation in the past week had been holding hands. And she still wasn't positive how that even happened.
They had been sitting on opposite sides of the couch, and the next thing she knew –wham! Hand holding…from the opposite sides of the couch.
Yeah, real sexy. Shaking her head she set her box carefully on the futon next to Nate's bed…mattress on the floor, whatever. Thankfully Bright Eyes had done a fairly decent job of easing her anxiety. She still had her doubts though.
"What's in the box, Corvus?"
Lydia glanced over at Roxy with a weak smile. "Just some stuff from home."
"Oh? Can I…?"
The woman nodded, and Roxanna opened the box with care. She'd seen the way her friend favored it tenderly. There must've been something important in there…It was pretty much empty, much to the brunette's disappointment. There were some clothes, t-shirts and jeans mostly, and a children's book at the bottom.
"Aw. The Giving Tree." Roxy grinned, she opened it with care, noting the girl on the futon's sudden tension. "I loved this book." Her brown eyes slipped to a small inscription on the inside, "To Liddybug, love Colin." She glanced over at the redhead, who was now fiddling with the cardboard flap of the box. "Old boyfriend?"
"He was my brother."
Roxy's brows rose. "I didn't know you had a brother." Well. That wasn't entirely true, but this was the first time she mentioned them while sober.
"I had two," She took the book back, running a finger over the front of the worn cover tenderly. "They died though."
"Oh. Di, I'm sorry."
Lydia shrugged, setting the book back between a woolen sweatshirt and a pair of track pants. "It's okay."
Knowing when to stop, the mocha skinned beauty gave her an affectionate punch on the arm. With a smirk now on the redheads lips, she returned to her box.
Roxy's hands stilled as she peered under a pair of worn flannel pajama pants. "Di?"
"Yeah?"
"Why do you have a gun?"
-Meanwhile-
John and Wade were sitting in a small coffee shop just off campus. It wasn't as full as he expected, but the cool November air had brought more than a few stragglers in from the cold.
"So…what brings you to town?"
His father smiled. "A friend from the Island needed some help."
Pyro's brows rose, "Really?"
"Yeah, I guess he's having some trouble locating his family." Wade told him, taking a sip of his coffee. "So I'm looking into some sources. See if I can find anything."
"Have you?"
"His wife's in Michigan. In-laws in California." His father shrugged, "The kids are what's stumping me."
"I thought you were in solitary on the Island." John hated it when they talked like this. Like it was some secret place that no one else could know about…because in a way it was. Humans denied its existence and other mutants didn't want to get involved with it. Wanted to pretend it never existed. After all the work John did to get them out of there, he'd yet to meet one grateful person from the Island. Most of them just brushed him off with a quick thanks before going back to whatever it was they were doing. Most of them wanted to forget it ever existed, too.
"I was. He sought me out. Said he wanted the best." He smirked at his son, "Something along the lines of if you could find me, you can find anyone, I think it was."
John snickered, "Guy sounds like a real prince."
"Hey! He was hard to find. Took St-" His voice lowered as he looked around the shop, "Stryker years to find him."
John tilted his head slightly, glancing out the window. "Why?"
"He can blend." Wade shrugged, "fit in with any surrounding. Makes it almost impossible to find him…he gets in people's heads, changes stuff around."
"What's his codename?"
"Meta." Wade said, scrunching his nose. "Kinda pompous, but I've heard worse. Like Pyro. God, John, couldn't you have picked some thing a little more subtle?"
"What? Like Deadpool?"
"Point taken." He relented. His smirk reappeared as he asked, "Isn't it time to meet your friends?"
Pyro's face sobered instantly. "No."
"I know where you live, St. John, I can do this with or without you." The young man flushed faintly, earning a wicked grin from his father. "It's gonna happen one way or another…"
"Fine!" John snapped, "But we're gonna have to lay down some ground rules."
"What? No! I'm the adult here!" Wade protested. Quite loudly, too, earning the attention of a few other patrons of the coffee house. "Besides, I'm not taking orders from anyone with that damn hair cut!"
"My hair's fine!"
A/N: Probably the last chapter til after Christmas. Also: WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME AARON STANFORD WAS ON NIKITA! WHY DAMN IT! Look for a Birkhoff/OC oneshot soon. Like my character development? I love the idea of John getting more comfortable as Lydia get more antsy. Why? Because I'm sick that's why. Also: I'm still not getting reviews emailed to me for some reason(and it's not like I'm aol or anything). Weird. Merry Christmas, bitches!
