Disclaimer: I own nothing

Disclaimer: I own nothing. And I only wish I could find a way to profit off all this.

And Then There Were Two

Bobby/Iceman

Every time, I swear I will never do this again. And every time, I do it anyways. I am such an idiot sometimes. Now my head hurts, and my mouth tastes like dead subterranean rodent. Stupid John.

"Hey, get up!" And the bastard doesn't even have the decency to get properly hung over. The rest of the time, he's like a slug until after ten in the morning, but when I feel like crap, he's suddenly perversely cheerful. Stupid John.

I grunt at him unintelligibly, and burrow deeper into the blankets, pointedly telling him to leave me and my aching head in peace. But if he did what people told him to, he wouldn't be John, now would he?

"Come on, it'll only get worse if you stay in there." This time the replying grunt may have been more to the tune of "Fuck off".

"Well, I did have coffee, but if you're gonna be that way about it..." I sit up, glaring at him half-heartedly as I do so. He grins at me and hands over the item that is comparable to ambrosia in my weakened state.

"I had forgotten how bad your hangovers are," and I would really like to throw something at him, because that is not the smile of someone sharing sympathy. That is the smile of someone laughing at your misery. "D'you want breakfast or something?" He looks over at the clock, "Well, technically, it's lunch by now, but whatever."

I look at him warily, and then nod. "You can cook?"

"How hard could it be to make toast or an egg?" He catches my look, and laughs. "I'm kidding. Seriously, you don't know how to make food? How do you plan to survive?"

"Fine, lemme see you cook something edible, then."

The kitchen is empty save for a few younger kids who look at John with wide eyes and then flee when he turns to look at them. I sit down and cradle my head in my hands, trying to shield my eyes from the god-awful light.

A few moments pass, and I reluctantly raise my head at the smell of eggs frying. "So you weren't kidding. You can actually cook."

He spares me a condescending look. "Bobby I can control fire. How incompetent would I have to be to burn something, really?" Oh, right.

He finishes, drops some in front of me and starts wolfing down his own food. Instead of eating, I watch him, amused. He catches my look and says defensively, "What? I'm a growing boy!" I snort derisively. "Keep telling yourself that."

I look at the eggs dubiously, not entirely convinced that they're edible.

I guess he must have gotten up, because the next thing I notice is his hand on my shoulder. He's standing behind my chair, way too close for comfort. "I promise I didn't poison them," and I could swear I can feel his breath, and how could I never have noticed how warm he is? My throat locks up, and I swallow painfully before nodding. Thankfully, he backs off, and enough blood reaches my brain to let me think, What the hell was that? I take a bite, and grin in surprise. It's actually really good.

"Okay, so it's not absolutely terrible." He laughs at me and goes off to... do whatever it is John does. Even now, I'm not entirely sure what that is. Whatever it is, I'm grateful because I'm starting to suspect that the reason my head is spinning has more to do with him than with the hangover.

Then, the owner of the beer we consumed in such great quantities, (and thus arguably the cause of all my pain and suffering) walks in and brandishes a bottle vaguely at me by way of greeting. My stomach turns over before I realize that this is in honour of the longstanding tradition, and direct some ice to crawl gracefully up the sides. He shows a grin that wouldn't look out of place on a face sporting horns and cloven hooves, he says, "You could have just asked, you know."

I mutter a hurried response and rush from the room.

"I think my head is actually going to implode," I whine to Kitty as she watches TV beside me and does her level best to ignore me.

"Well then at least you would stop wallowing in self pity."

I look over, and realize that I have received all the sympathy I'm going to get from her. Anyways, it is certifiably dangerous to get between her and her show; I think she would rather maul an innocent bystander than miss a plot development. My head actually stopped hurting a while ago, but I'm avoiding John for as long as I can. I'm a little unsettled around him lately, like the whole room is suddenly too small and too hot and I can't breathe. Christ, he doesn't even have to be here anymore!

I look sidelong at Kitty, then say, "Right, well I'm just going to go jump off of a building and end my misery now." She barely glances at me. "I was actually born a girl," merits a distracted nod, and, "You look like a cross-dressing monkey," gets a dismissing wave, saying clearly 'Yeah, whatever, just shut up and leave me alone.' I go out on a limb and say, "I think I might like John in a not entirely platonic way."

She scoffs, "Well, obviously. Now go away and let me watch this is peace!"

Typical that she would tune in right then. I'm leaving with whatever pride I have left, because any denials would turn into a case of 'the lady doth protest too much.'

It's not even true, anyways. Seriously, it isn't.

"I'm looking for sympathy somewhere else," I declare, and proceed to walk away, the picture of injured dignity.

"Hey, are you okay? You're walking like there's a stick up your-" I turn and glare at Warren, who is snickering behind his hand, and Marie, who can't seem to hide her grin. "I'm fine."

Kitty, of course, chooses this moment to pipe up from the sofa, "And he's just confessed his undying love for John." Now she can talk? This gets a shocked look from Warren and a surprisingly unruffled one from Rogue. "No I didn't! Don't look at me like that, I did not! Aagh, you people are all evil. I'm leaving!"

"To be with-"

"Dammit, no! If you want full use of your hands ever again, do not complete that sentence!" My threats fall on deaf ears as first Marie, then Kitty and Warren succumb to laughter. Cruel, heartless jerks, to be mocking my state of emotional turmoil.

Not that there is any, of course. None at all.

I need to be... somewhere else. Everything here is making me crazy. Maybe there's something in the water...

I'm sitting on the grass outside the mansion staring at the sky and wondering why I bothered to come out here. I guess I needed to pick apart my thoughts, and that's always easier when there's nobody to bother you. Right now, I really do need to think, because I might be having a small crisis here. I don't really have anything against being gay or anything, it's just I don't think that being different in one more way is going to make things any easier with my family. They aren't bigoted, but they like everything around them to be nice and 'normal'. I'm not normal by any stretch of the imagination anymore, if this is really how I feel. I probably do, too, it's just that I shouldn't...

I shouldn't be doubting the way I feel about my friend. Who is, for the record, not a girl.

I mean, I like girls, right? Girls are great, they're soft and nice and mysterious, and beautiful... and they have boobs. Boobs are nice. And John isn't soft, and he isn't always nice, beautiful... isn't the word, and he sure doesn't have boobs. He is mysterious though, and he's nice (when no one else is looking), and there's something about him. It isn't beauty by a long shot, but he has a way of catching your attention. He just... walks into the room and suddenly everything else turns into the background.

I guess it might be that he's so different. I'm slow, plodding, and deliberate, and sometimes I want desperately to be the way he is, so alive and reckless, so full to the brim with burning passion. He has some kind of magnetism, some appeal or temptation, and he's drawing me in as surely as a black hole would.

Damn, I'm worse than wavering; I'm in fully over my head. It should have been obvious, really. I mean, I was practically pining after the jerk (although wild horses couldn't drag that particular admission from me, thank you very much) after he left. And I can't imagine trusting anyone else the way I do him, not if they had done what he's done. I'm just... I'm so relieved that he's here again that I haven't really thought why, or whether there are alternative motives involved.

I bet I'm actually a danger to the school, trusting a traitor so implicitly...

And I don't even want to think about what John would say about my... affection. God, he'd punch me. So I can't say anything to him, and I think Marie already knows (that would explain the weird hints she was dropping a while ago). Maybe she's the one I should be talking to; she's good with emotional shit.

What the fuck I'm going to do now is beyond me. I don't exactly do the whole 'unrequited' thing well. Although I expect that suppressed affection is practically my secondary power by now, the way I've been doing it. I drop my head into my hands and groan in frustration.

I go back to my room, and collapse on my bed. I don't know what it is about emotional upheavals, but they're kind of exhausting. I'm pretty sure I'm asleep, or almost, when he walks in. I guess he agrees with my assessment of my own state (sleeping), because he starts changing. This isn't unusual, we're sharing a rather small space as it is. It's just that this time I notice.

I notice every line of his back, I notice every curve of his shoulders, everything. My face heats up, and my chest seems to constrict. I can barely breathe for a minute, and then I pretend to shift in my sleep so I can turn away and burrow deeper into the blankets. I realize, belatedly, the benefits of being oblivious.

I was swamped by school for a while, my teachers decided that it was a good idea to give three separate tests and a big history project within the same week, sorry about the lack of updates. Anyways, I got a little frustrated with his obtuseness, and made him realize stuff (all the while there was a little in-character Bobby in my head screaming "No way I would think that!"). His thinking is a bit weird, because I see him going off on tangents to avoid the issue at hand. I was wondering who I should write, so if you have a suggestion about who comes next, please tell me what you think.

Thanks,

Colvine