Author's note: I'M SORRY. Here it is. Took me a minute. Next chapter up very soon! I *will* get through this backstory part of the narrative before the next IRL crisis hits.

Chapter 4: Local hazards

I didn't think we'd get away with it forever.

There was just something so appealing about slipping out to the back porch after the professor's unofficial curfew without anyone knowing where I was going. It was the first secret I'd ever had that didn't feel like it could kill me.

What I didn't expect was for Rogue to cover for me.

We were in class a few afternoons later, the drowsiest time of day hitting everyone hard. Storm was conducting an impassioned lecture on weather patterns and climate (her favorite topic—she often found a way to segue into it from virtually anything else and I was beginning to wonder if we were still expected to take state standardized tests).

Thirty minutes in, the class notes I was taking largely to avoid being called on were all nonsense. I'd spent the night before walking the backyard again with John, looking for the outlines in the ground of where the X-Men's jet emerged. John had a voice that felt familiar even if you were meeting him for the first time. It had the same easy cynical quality as the rest of him, smooth as smoke, ready to laugh anything off. He would trade some of his pre-Xavier's life for mine as we wandered the back yard, an unspoken tradition that felt more like a home than anything else about the school since I'd arrived. Both of us were occasionally blurry on the details, but the stories themselves had a ring of truth to them.

He was both better and worse with people than I was. Worse because he couldn't seem to get the benefit of the doubt even if he tried, and appeared to have long given up trying. Better because he had an instinct for noticing people even if no one would believe him and even if he hated it.

I…did not.

But he didn't seem to mind.

Believe it or not, I had somehow fit several coming-of-age milestones into my busy schedule of growing up in a living nightmare (mostly in the times that my father was away, never for very long, or probably in a problematic way I'd need therapy for later), but I'd kept them carefully distanced from the rest of my life. They had been short escapes from who I was, during which I could pretend that I was normal.

I didn't do it with John. Part of me suspected he would have known a pretend person when he saw one. But the other part of me just kept forgetting to pretend. I blamed the weather. That muggy, half-drizzle air made everything feel too immediate, too close. And there was something about John that made me too at ease around him to remember how to pretend.

Like standing in the sun. Or hearing something true said out loud for the first time.

And it was impossible to keep him separate, because he was everywhere, even when he wasn't. He was joking around with Bobby in a hallway or smirking from across the room in a class that went on too long. Where before I'd looked for him like an anchor in a room of new strangers, I now barely had to, aware of his absence like I'd forgotten a hair tie or couldn't find my keys.

It was terrifying. It was my favorite thing.

It made it very difficult to concentrate. So it was lucky he sat behind me in most classes, always slouched in the back corner like he had to keep everyone in his sight.

Even this absolute distrust of anyone, which seemed a big sticking point between John and most of the school's population, made him easy to be around. There was a wariness about it that I recognized. It was comforting in an environment where I couldn't seem to get comfortable, no matter how safe and healthy the school was. I would make it through a meal or two feeling almost steady and then be swept sideways by the blinding panic that there had to be a catch, had to be knives to hide, somewhere to hide, someone to save.

Storm, now talking about condensation cycles despite this having no connection whatsoever to the assigned reading, noticed not at all that none of us were paying attention. Worse, I kept dropping things without meaning to. It was a new symptom that I was sure would somehow get me detention.

I looked at the few legible notes I'd taken, trying to avoid Storm's attention in case she decided to start up a Q&A. There were only a handful of us in the senior classes, and I had written "reverse osmosis screened porch," which…seemed wrong.

Storm turned back to the blackboard as I finished writing "eukaryotic no you're chaotic? Chromosomething - ask RoguelolKitty" and I felt something tap my elbow.

I looked down and retrieved the note, folded in the bizarre multi-sided way only Rogue seemed to manage, that had bounced to the floor. Glancing up at Storm once, I unfolded it carefully.

FYI - Jean came by last night and asked where you were. Tell me what's going on or I will volunteer you for questions for the rest of class.

I swung around, suddenly wide awake. Rogue smiled back at me, her hands clasped in front of her. She bounced her eyebrows at me while I glared. Kitty, to her right, who was in this class by choice, stared wide-eyed at both of us as though the room would burst into flame over a passed note.

Storm was still facing the board, drawing what I was sure had started as a membrane but was equally sure would end up being another rain cycle. Rogue cleared her throat and when I looked back, she had started raising one hand ever-so-slowly into the air.

I shot her a glare, wrote "FINE. deal." on the back of her note, and batted it back at her with a well-placed beam of energy. She gasped when it hit her in the face but hid it smoothly under one arm when Storm turned at the noise.

When I looked back again a few seconds later (avoiding Kitty, who, again, was just the picture of open disappointment), Rogue stared forward with a self-satisfied smile. Bobby was eying both of us warily and kept glancing in John's direction as though in hopes of an explanation. From his corner, John ignored him, his eyes on me as he leaned on the wall, amused. I narrowed my eyes back, hoping it helped school my face into something neutral, turned back around, and concentrated hard on circling the word "sequence," which I had inexplicably written seven times without explanation.

"And that's meiosis!" Storm announced with calm triumph, turning to face us in front of what was in fact a very detailed drawing of a tropical storm.

Later, once Rogue had abruptly dragged us both away from Kitty (whose had tried to corner us after class and seemed to believe we had some treacherous plot underway) in the hall, muttering some excuse about "roommate sanctum", and half-dragged us away from the classroom, it was immediately clear that she'd shown some restraint in waiting so long.

"Cel," she said, beginning with purpose, like this was a sales pitch she'd been practicing. "Ya know you're my favorite roommate, right?"

I blinked at her.

"I'm your only roommate."

She ignored this.

"Much better than Kitty—for one thing, at least you use the door—and anyway, I'd consider us friends," she said. "But if you think you can go missing every night for two weeks without tellin' me what the deal is, you got another think coming."

Relief flooded softly through my gut as I realized she wasn't angry. It seemed like bad form to lose my first real friend as soon as I made them.

"It's not that interesting," I said, even as everything in me pranced with nerves.

She said nothing, lowering her chin expectantly.

"I've just been going on walks," I said, shrugging in a way that might have been casual if my whole body hadn't been so visibly flushed.

"Walks?" she said slowly, still the picture of expectation. "And these walks are with…?"

I bit the inside of my mouth.

"John?"

I didn't mean to say it like a question but part of me had just realized that the opinion of Rogue, my closest friend here (and basically first), might matter. Part of me was anxious it would be bad.

Instead, her eyebrows shot up, expression partly genuine surprise and partly suspicion, as though this was so unlikely she was wondering if I was lying to her.

"You've been going on walks?" Rogue repeated, as though still processing. "With John? The John who hates everyone? The came here instead of juvie, John? Lights-things-on-fire John?"

"He hasn't lit anything on fire," I responded. "Recently."

"That we know of."

She stared at me like I'd announced I was joining a cult.

"I just can't imagine him…going for casual strolls," she continued.

I wasn't sure what to say to this. It was now very easy for me to imagine. I imagined it a lot.

Rogue's expression settled a bit, like she had puzzled something out.

"I knew there was somethin'," she said, still shaking her head. "He was so weird about you that first day."

I snorted.

"You mean when he acted like I'd murdered someone."

It was a poor choice of words when you considered that I'd still not explained much about where I'd come from. Rogue laughed anyway.

"It was weird. Like you'd done something to him personally," she said, shrugging. "Maybe that's just what John looks like when somebody finally gets to him."

I turned that over in my head, picking at the blanket on my bed. Rogue sat down on hers, face still processing.

"I feel like one of us should be pointing out all the things our parents would if we were home, you know?" she said finally.

I smiled a little at the thought of either of my parents having this sort of conversation with me. My mom might have. If I hadn't kept my adolescent milestones as tidy and secretive as could be.

When you were someone like me, you didn't have date nights or significant others or someone waiting by your locker after class. You couldn't have anyone knowing where you lived or showing up on your doorstep. Couldn't have anyone knowing too much about you. And anyway, when you were someone like me, you were too busy staying alive. When I was younger and we'd hit a good streak where my father was away for months at a time, I'd fit in an impressive streak of life—first kisses between classes, a school dance, enough quality time in the backseat of a car to decide I wasn't missing out on anything glamorous out there in 'normal' teenagerhood—but I'd been more exhilarated by the rebelliousness of it, the fact that I could, than anything else.

But when people started asking too many follow-up questions and we inevitably had to move away, the part that made me saddest was how painless it was to do it.

There wasn't much stock footage in my memories of conversations with my mother about boys.

Rogue sighed—but in a way that suggested she was content to be turning over a problem that was guy related, instead of end-of-the-world related or touch-anyone-and-they-die related—and leaned against the footboard to her bed, legs stretched toward me so we faced each other, a tableau of a slumber party girltalk moment I'd never had before.

"My mama would say that that boy is trouble," she said, shaking her head at me.

I tried to smile, feeling slick with guilt.

He probably was. I was, too.

Later that night, I left our shared room to the tune of Rogue's raised eyebrows. She didn't trust John, but she seemed to consider her roommate/friend duty fulfilled in warning me.

I turned this over in my mind on the back deck, where several semi-exploded trash bins had attracted what appeared to be warring families of raccoons. They clawed at each other with their tiny robber hands while I wondered how I'd ended up here.

The weather was still the kind of moody that snuck under your skin. Air muggy and close. It made me restless, like I'd run out of places to hide.

"Rogue didn't drag you off to kill you then?"

It was like I'd both known he would come and been terrified he wouldn't.

"Flesh wounds only," I said without turning. "It's nice of you to keep showing up, Allerdyce."

He frowned but his eyes were warm. "Nice? What—you think I'd miss fight night?" he said, nodding at the raccoons. "You're not secretly responsible for this, are you?"

I shook my head, biting back a smile.

"Jubilee blew up one of the trash cans."

He shook his head. "That girl is chaos walking."

She was a year or two younger than us and another recent arrival. I didn't know much about her apart from the occasional fireworks and our new raccoon problem. I liked her without knowing her, even if exclusively on that basis. I still didn't really know how to make friends. I seemed to have acquired Rogue as one mostly by accident.

We gave a wide berth to the raccoons, who were now scrabbling over a half-empty Doritos bag.

He glanced at me again as we paused at the steps, both silently watching the fight.

"So," He said, as one scampered away deftly after some Pringles. "Why do you say that?"

"I've been reminded that you hate people," I said, wiping my expression to neutral.

He looked somewhere in the distance for a beat, nodded. "Rogue?"

He didn't even look mad, just sort of amused, like he'd figured it was coming.

"That's other people," he said, leaning over the rail next to me, lighter appearing in his hands. "You're not other people."

His hands flicked the lighter open and closed, turning it over in his fingers like a loved one, nimble and crafty.

"What?" I said, distracted.

The leaf I'd been crumbling in my fingers fell over the edge of the balcony. The air was sticky with humidity, and my mind fought to catch up.

One of the raccoons fumbled into a trash can so hard that it fell over and they all jumped back, spooked.

Without answering, John turned toward the backyard.

I followed him down, my new-borrowed shoes soft against the stone steps. He didn't walk too fast for me to catch up, but neither did he slow down to explain himself.

The wind picked up and blew the edges of my shirt off of my shoulders. I felt goosebumps forming on my arms and shivered.

By the time I caught up with him, practically jogging, he was past the fountain. He glanced back at me, distracted.

"You cold, angel?"

I shrugged, shivering moments after. "Didn't wear a jacket," I said.

He snorted.

"Do you ever?" he said drily. He still wasn't quite looking at me. I'd heard what he'd said, even if I wasn't sure I'd heard correctly.

"I don't have any jackets," I said defensively. I'd never gone back to the house for anything. I was sure somehow that the Professor had handled it, maybe had someone relocate my things somewhere, but I hadn't looked for them, hadn't even asked. Jean had shown up at my door one day with some stacks of clothes I assumed were either castoffs from previous students or that the Professor had her pick up somewhere. But it had been largely warmer weather clothes at the time, since it was still hot out the night I'd arrived. Maybe a sweater or two. No jackets. Each time I thought about asking, that old fear crept back that doing so would only draw attention to me. Tip them off that I didn't belong here.

I was afraid it might already be too late.

The Professor had started scheduling weekly sessions for us to discuss my powers, something I was told was normal for all students, though mine took considerably longer. At least some of this was because he'd admitted that he couldn't see into my mind easily without my revealing something to him manually, a revelation that was an immense relief to hear. But I couldn't help but think it was also because he already suspected that I wasn't telling the whole story, wasn't being completely honest about the shape of power in me. It was a hard thing to resent when I was equally scared that there was something wrong with me that wasn't with everyone else.

He said that one of my first steps had to be accepting my power and embracing it. I didn't know how to tell him I'd spent my entire life trying hard to do the opposite. Who was I to tell the headmaster of a school meant for training mutant abilities that I had been hoping to never do so?

He kept telling me that he thought the form that they took—energy blasts (at best glorified sunspots), immunity to psychic interference (apparently), some suspiciously well-practiced healing abilities, and a nonsensical habit of occasionally experiencing someone nearby's dreams—were all related to avoiding the trauma of my father's powers. In other words, that I had shaped myself so thoroughly out of the determination to survive and not to end up like him that my physical abilities had been altered.

Knowing this did not help.

Of course I was afraid. It was a rational fear. I had his blood running through my veins, his scowl and his impatience. What else of his would there turn out to be if I went looking for it? What if I could do what he did, after all? What would it do to me, that power? Would I be just as awful?

For so long, I stared at the trees wondering when someone would kick me out or try to kill me, that I didn't notice John move until the weight dropped around my shoulders.

"Arm," he said, and I lifted one on command.

His arms were bare now. All over again I realized how few times I'd seen him without his jacket. His hands were careful as he guided my arms into each sleeve, silently ignoring that I had been staring into space for some time now.

His hands lingered while adjusting the leather jacket around me, as though fastening me against the wind.

He was so close l could feel his breath at my forehead. His hands lingered at my waist for just a second, a moment when there was nothing to be adjusted and I was keenly aware of how close we were. I swallowed. His eyes seemed to pour into mine.

"Better?" he asked. I'd forgotten how to speak.

Maybe they would never kick me out. Maybe no one would ever know. Ever hate me.

Maybe I could keep this.

"Yes," I said. It came out so quiet it was a gasp.

Is this what nervous felt like? John smirked a little, ran his hands up the zipper of his jacket as though adjusting it, fingers unnecessarily close to me as he did so, pausing for a moment, running across the right side of my jaw. I felt like I was on fire.

"Good," he said, inches from my lips.

And then he let go of me with a smirk and strode off toward the trees, the absence washing over me abruptly.

I followed him into the trees, where we walked in silence for a few minutes, leaves rustling occasionally as a breeze picked up.

"Bobby broke those branches," John said eventually, as I stepped carefully over a more suspect root. He pointed to several branches that Bobby had accidentally frozen earlier that day during one of his tutoring sessions. They now hung broken and limp from the trunks like open mailboxes.

"Wasn't it you who distracted him?" I pointed out, still irritated that he'd stopped touching me.

He turned to me with a smug grin.

"Didn't know you were watching so closely," he said, eyes alight. "Stalker."

"I like to keep an eye on local hazards," I replied coolly, my stomach dancing with nerves.

He tipped his forehead at me.

"That's a little harsh. Bobby hasn't destroyed anything in months."

I rolled my eyes. "I wasn't talking about Bobby," I said, even as a frustrated smile tugged at my lips.

"No?" he said, his own smile as cocky as ever. "So who are you watching so closely, angel?"

He was watching me with dark eyes, having abandoned whatever path he was winding through the yard in favor of advancing slowly on me. A quick slice of nerves burst through me as my face burned. The ghost of a smile appeared on his lips again. I took an involuntary step backward and found myself flush against one of the trees. The smile widened.

I watched John assess me silently as he crept closer but refused to move. The step backward had been an involuntary product of my nerves. It was a kind of nervous that was new to me. I'd never been nervous about something that wasn't life-threatening.

And I still wanted him to touch me.

"You never burn anything big in your sessions," I blurted instead, which was true. "Why is that?"

Most of our private sessions took place outside these days while the weather was nice, where permanent damage was somewhat less likely to affect the building's architectural integrity. My own sessions were quick, pathetic things. Bobby's were usually neat work, with the exception of where John was present to distract him. John's were always small, controlled things. He would light a fire in an outside pit but extinguish it immediately, send a small bird of flame around the backyard but never anything bigger than a football.

But the speed and ease with which he did all of these things didn't make sense. It didn't look like training up a power for him, but an exercise in restraint.

John stopped walking, inches away from me. He dropped his gaze to the distance. For a moment I thought he would walk away without answering again.

"Have you ever wondered what happens to the students who don't join X-Men?" he said instead.

I shook my head, palms sweating.

"You think they wouldn't want you as part of the X-Men?"

He looked at me thoughtfully.

"It's not about want, really," he said. "It's about who fits and who doesn't. I'm not winning any team spirit or student achievement awards."

I tried to smile at this but felt like I was missing several pieces.

"But why pretend you can do less than you can?" I said, trying to ignore how aware I was as his gaze dropped to my neck, where his jacket had loosened around my shoulders.

He reached out and adjusted the collar, his fingers brushing my throat. For a beat, he looked at me in silence like he knew that I knew the answer.

"What do you think an organization with its own goals considers someone powerful who isn't a part of them?" he said softly, eyebrows raised.

I swallowed.

"A threat."

A bitter smile tugged at his lips and I noticed that the jacket was in place but his hands stayed where they were, thumb brushing my chin. I wondered how much of that restraint was in all things and not just fires.

John's eyes darkened again as I stilled against the tree.

"What makes you think I'm capable of more, anyway?" he said, leaning forward.

I couldn't pull my eyes from his mouth if I'd tried.

"I pay attention," I said, so quietly that it could only be audible to him because he was so close, his mouth millimeters from mine.

There was no time to dwell on the smirk that blossomed on his face at this.

"Who's out there?"

Oh come. On.

John smirked at my expression but pulled me toward the ground and further out of sight. We'd made our way almost in a full circle, I noticed. We were close to the building but far enough off of the path that I doubted Storm could see us from where she'd called out, doubted the light reached, wondered again if she could've just waited a few more minutes.

"Whoever's out here, come on in now," Storm called again in her best authoritarian voice.

This time, I remembered a little of my earlier fear. The Professor's curfew was less a meticulously enforced policy and more an unspoken rule, but I'd been being careful to toe the line here since my arrival. No matter how invincible I felt around John, that itchy certainty that I was here as a fluke came rushing back at the sound of Storm's voice. That fear that they'd never let me stay, if they knew. Hate me. Put me back out into the world with the nothing and no one left.

I crept toward the wall, body settling into my own numb auto-pilot.

"It's past curfew," she called.

John's fingers were around my wrist as he moved to put his body between me and the sound of her voice. I felt that twinge of guilt again. Here I was pretending to be something I wasn't, my other hand already fumbling against the stone wall for the passageway I'd committed to memory weeks ago.

Always know the exits, my grandmother had said, the last time I'd seen her. I'd heard her in that permanent way that you latch onto advice when you're a kid who's desperate for it. I'd been following her rules.

Several beats passed of only the sound of our breaths before I found the right false brick that hid an entrance tunnel to the mansion. I pressed it firmly, praying it was as quiet as I remembered.

Part of the wall pulled up, revealing the entrance to a hallway-sized tunnel in its place. I glanced nervously at John for his reaction, but he didn't even raise his eyebrows. He dipped his chin slightly, like some question had been answered.

It was too dark to see his eyes when he looked at me, but he didn't say anything, just looked at me with those dark eyes, so close I could feel the heat of his body.

I tried to swallow the heart dancing in my throat as I ducked into the entrance.

The tunnel was strangely tall, like it was built to evacuate mutants of various sizes. We were able to walk through it as though down a hallway (well, a slightly smelly, slightly dangerous feeling hallway). By the time we reached the other side, a door that I knew opened to the oak paneling of the mansion's hallways, I had no sense of time. And neither, it seemed, did John.

"I don't know how long it's been," he admitted.

The wall was thin enough that we could hear a pacing Storm on the other side, anxious about students out of bed. Though fortunately, it did seem to be anonymous students out of bed.

If it had been Kitty who gave us up, then, which was my definite suspicion, she hadn't done so completely.

"Maybe give her a minute?" I said, with a question mark I hadn't intended, still paranoid that Storm was waiting to kick out the imposter that they'd allowed in their midst.

John nodded and we both stared at the entrance, that abrupt kind of awake that you are when you're alone in something together. Both a little short of breath. The muggy air suddenly crackling with tension.

I could hear myself breathing and wondered if my lungs had always been so loud. Wondered if John's heartbeat had always been so audible.

"Why do you know this is here?" he asked, slowly, and even though I could feel him looking at me, I was sure he didn't expect an answer.

"Are you mad?" I said instead.

Something flickered across his face too fast to catch, and he stepped closer, eyes dipping down.

"You think I'll be mad at you for saving us a lecture?" he said, the amusement in his voice entirely too clear.

I blinked and swallowed down some of the heavier nerves, the part of me that thought maybe I'd given myself away. That I'd revealed too much of the darker truer side that tracked the exits and planned for bad things.

"I know how much you enjoy them," I managed, annoyed at how breathless my voice sounded.

God, how could he stand me.

But he smiled even more broadly at this, backs of his hands brushing mine, his face in the dark only breaths away.

"I'm enjoying this a lot more, angel," he said, smirking.

And I knew it wasn't in the wheelhouse of his mutation, but I swore he must have been able to hear my heartbeat. When he closed that last gap, lips brushing mine, I wondered if he could feel it pounding against my ribcage. When I shifted to kiss him back, he kissed me so hard it was like he was angry, like he was waiting for a second shoe to drop somewhere and wasn't sure yet that it wouldn't be me. His hands gripped my hips and then my waist so tightly to him that I could feel the press of his entire body against mine.

I was sure he could hear the blood surging in my veins. I could feel his hands pressing me to him and wondered if it was possible for them to be everywhere at once because I had never wanted anything more in my life. My hands threaded around his neck and into his hair. My back hit the wall of the passageway with a soft thud, his body molded against mine like it belonged.

I forgot I was wearing his jacket until his hands slid beneath it to pull me closer as though it were even possible. Everything about kissing him felt right. Felt dangerously good. I never wanted him to stop.

"I don't know Scott, it was probably just one of the teenagers."

I jumped high enough that I might have made a sound if I weren't pressed so firmly against the wall. Storm's voice was annoyed on the other side of the panel, but no longer had that edge of irritated authority to it. Like she was resigned to not catching anyone of bed and needing to punish them. I stared in the direction of his voice for a beat, catching my breath.

When I turned back, John's face was so close that his nose brushed mine. My lower half felt like it would crumble beneath me.

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

"Do you want to bet which of us they think it is?" he asked lowly, his lips brushing just next to my mouth. I shivered even as something burned through me. I didn't need to look at him to know he was laughing.

I couldn't think of anything but my heartbeat in my ears and the heat between my legs.

He traced up my side with his fingers. "I bet they won't suspect the new girl," he said, and I had the distinct feeling of prey being toyed with, prey so entranced it won't even budge. "Too clean cut, too grateful to be here. They wouldn't expect anything but nice from a face like that."

In the back of my mind, I knew I should've been insulted by this. Angry, even. Instead I was annoyed he couldn't be more specific about what he meant by 'a face like that.'

His eyes narrowed at his own joke but they were on my lips again. His thumb brushed the tiny sliver of skin exposed at my hip and my breath hitched in my throat.

In a moment of clarity, I understood every dumb decision every girl at every high school I had ever attended made for a boy. I had only been pretending to before.

I watched his mouth like it would leave if I didn't, thought I saw him swallow with something that might have been nerves. For a moment I wasn't a girl with no family and a pile of secrets. The possibility that I make John Allerdyce nervous is everything.

"Nobody ever suspects a nice blonde girl," I said, leaning forward to whisper this practically against his lips.

He wasn't close enough but I wanted him to close the gap. Needed him to. Needed to know it wasn't just me.

I felt him smirk.

For several seconds, neither of us moved. The two of us stood in the dark, pressed against the wall of the mysterious passageway that I still hadn't explained why I knew. His jacket falling off of my shoulder and my hands still tangled in his hair.

I remembered Rogue's reaction only a few hours ago and wondered what he really thought of me. What he thought I wanted from him. I wasn't sure I even knew. I knew I needed him to kiss me again. Preferably for a long time.

Our whole bodies were pressed up against this wall together as though to clear the way for something.

John twitched and for a moment I was terrified he would pull away, but he just readjusted against me, eyes so firmly on my mouth that they looked nearly closed. When he finally spoke, it was like he was talking to himself instead of me.

"Just give me another minute," he said, like someone was calling him away.

This time when he kissed me, the anger was gone. When he threaded his fingers through my hair and slanted his mouth to mine, he pressed us both back into the wall with such force that his jaw scraped along mine. His lips were soft and certain. I pulled at him in a vain attempt to get him closer as though there was any space left between us. The chill of the backyard was a distant memory with his hips pressed into me, one leg sliding between mine, my body alive with the heat of his.

I don't know how long we were there.

By the end, I had the same feeling as that first night in the backyard. That I had somehow found myself on another inner track of John's world, one that included dark hallways out of bed in the middle of night, kissing with the raw, open enjoyment of two normal people with no secrets instead of two mutants with a slew of them.

I know that when he walked me back to my room, it was still dark out. Scott and Storm were long gone when we emerged on the other side, when John watched me with dark eyes that didn't require answers as I slid the panel of the wall back into place. I know that just outside the door to mine and Rogue's room, he pulled us into a shadow one more time until my lips were pleasantly swollen and my back imprinted with the pattern of the molding.

I know that when I told him goodnight and offered his jacket back, he told me to keep it for class in the morning since I was always cold there anyway. It wasn't the last time I'd be thrilled and terrified at how closely he noticed me but it was the last time that we would have this to ourselves, this nighttime thing between us that was still a secret to the rest of the world.

I know that he smirked when I whispered "stalker" and I smiled when he quipped back "angel" before turning away.

I know that when I opened the door, I found Rogue very much awake and waiting for me, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.