Author's Note: I know this is a throwback, but lockdown/this year was a big time for me rewatching movies, and I just fell in love with these characters again. This story is mostly consistent with X2/The Last Stand, with some OC-related additions and a heap of guesswork about the Xavier's student ages. Also, I was always bummed Jubilee didn't get more screen time, so she's treated here as at the age shown in the X2 extra scenes so her antics can have the attention they deserve. If you're trying to track along with the movies, this chapter lines up with the start of X2.

Anywaaaay to anyone still reading this: glad to have you. Hope you're doing ok. Stay safe. 3

Chapter 6: Best laid guesses

"Where do you think we'll be after the next disaster?" I asked, tracing up one of John's arms.

We were on his bed, him on his back and me on my stomach, one of those nights where Iceman and I now ritually switched rooms. It made the mansion almost feel like regular boarding school. You know, except for the telepath headmaster who for some reason never tried to stop us. And also the fact that we'd only started doing this after I'd shown up mid-panic attack at 2am (an incident he had not asked me to explain, even when I woke up hours later and panicked again, trying to remember exactly what I'd said, what I'd admitted to).

When he'd walked me back the next morning, I couldn't think of anything to say except a lame "I warned you I didn't sleep well when the weather's bad", to which he'd just said, "Then don't sleep when the weather's bad."

It would've been fine and playful on its own but was followed by an "It's ok, Cel," just as Rogue opened the door, which felt like it was meant to refer to more than a meltdown.

Still, I couldn't find a way to explain. Talking about it would make it real all over again. Talking about it would test that promise that it was ok. That it ever could be.

So Bobby and I took up switching rooms occasionally, on every night a storm was forecasted and a few others for good measure. Rogue chalked it up to John being a bad influence and didn't exactly complain about the extra time with Bobby. John didn't ask me to explain, though he'd kept an unusually close eye on me ever since, as if something had changed.

I felt his arm shift as he shrugged. When I looked up he was watching me again, eyes thoughtful in the darkness of the room. His hair was getting a little long, to the point where he'd started slicking it back to keep it out of his face. He'd showered after a basketball game with Bobby, so it was splayed free of gel on his pillowcase.

"I don't know," he said, a beat too late, like he'd actually searched for an answer and come up empty. "Where do you think we'll be?"

I realized I'd stopped tracing, hand poised above his wrist, to watch his face. I couldn't place the right answer either. I'd been avoiding it, hoping the disasters would stop coming for a while. I ran a palm up his arm, shifting my weight.

"Somewhere with central air and electricity," I said. We'd been watching horror movies with Rogue and Bobby again and there was a chance I was never camping. "And preferably a low to nonexistent murder rate."

He chuckled, though his eyes were still dark.

My stomach had been tight with nausea all day. Anti-mutant tension was at the front of headlines again, and the mutant high rumor mill, dependable as ever, was now obsessed with predicting "the next Liberty Island." The Professor's response was giving more vague ethics lectures than ever, with varying effects. The air stayed thick with anxiety. The younger kids were more skittish than ever. Grace, the young empath just arrived from Michigan, was subject to random nervous breakdowns from the catapulting spikes of anxiety that bounced among the students. The faculty presented a united front, but there was an ominous wrinkle in Cyclops' brow, an extra weight in Storm's serious face.

Jubilee was reportedly keeping a "disaster free day" count, which Cyclops did not find remotely as funny as I did.

In an effort to keep its students safe from the increased violence against mutants, Xavier's was more locked down than usual.

Rogue was the most at ease with this solution. I'd caught her glaring at her own hair in the mirror and had a feeling that if Magneto ever stepped foot in the mansion again, she'd drain him herself. John resented it the most vividly. We'd turned eighteen months ago and were now legally adults but could barely step foot outside. Plus, he'd rarely caught a break before, and now Jean and the Professor both eyed him like he would be burning the building down any day now. It didn't help that he was already one of the rumor mill's favorite people to guess about.

The world felt darker. The unrest I'd been picking up from John's dreams lately didn't lighten things. Of all the traces of a parent's power to inherit, the ability to see some of my boyfriend's nightmares was wrecking some serious havoc on my state of mind.

I had been barely out of the wreckage when I'd walked in the front door of this school, and now it felt like the months I'd spent recovering from the violence of my own family had been just a brief respite in what might turn out to be a long path of unlucky.

For some reason, this moment felt like the last of something.

These friends and this place were all more than I had ever known how to hope for. I was getting restless again that they were only more people that I wouldn't get to keep.

In the flicker of a moment, John drew his gaze in from where it had been in the distance, in the world of the thoughts he kept to himself, smiled at me.

I pulled myself toward him and brushed the stray hairs from his face. I lowered my lips to his with a smile, wondering again if it were always terrifying to care about another human being this much.

I felt his hands trail up my sides and settle into the small of my back.

"Angel, we should really get to sleep," he murmured against my lips, already laughing.

"Oh?" I said, hands tugging at his shirt.

He smirked and rolled us over, laughing, lips slanted over mine like they belonged there. And we barely slept.

Something terrible is about to happen was an accurate summary of the vibe the day we went to the museum.

After a few minutes of harmless goofing around in the back of Storm's tour group, Jean sent one of her silent warnings our way and quietly suggested we tour away from the younger kids.

John and Bobby posing suggestively with statues was setting a bad example, I guess.

We were politely re-directed toward either the fossils or the food, and wound up at a table with nothing, all of us realizing we'd come without cash.

It was really little wonder John started a fight, sparking a guy on fire with his own cigarette, or that Bobby was a little overzealous in extinguishing it. Though neither had an explanation when everyone in the museum froze in place seconds afterward.

"I didn't do this," said Bobby as we wandered through the stilled museum guests, stunned.

I leaned close to the frozen eyes of the creepy wingman who'd been bothering us moments earlier. His eyes were wide again, like they'd been when he was ogling Rogue, only this time with fear. I couldn't find it in me to feel bad about the replacement.

To be fair, John had been being kind of a dick. But also to be fair, these guys had been whistling and following Rogue and I around since, ironically, the North American Predators wing.

It was hard not to feel a little satisfied. The phrase "those punks deserved it" sprang to mind.

John turned from where he was poking one guy in the face. He smirked as our eyes met as though he could hear me thinking. I barely tried to look guilty.

"No. I did," came the Professor's voice as he wheeled around a corner looking distinctly unpleased.

"Next time you feel like showing off," he continued, voice dangerous. "Don't."

It was the most serious I'd ever seen him. Even John looked unusually bothered, surrounded by the eerie crowd of frozen people.

I tried to shrug off the shame that crept up my own shoulders. We'd been reckless pulling something like that in public the way humans had been reacting. We should have known better. I should have known better. Nearly a year now at Xavier's had made me too careless, too comfortably isolated from the world. The four of us bristled silently under everyone's stares. I felt cold all over and embarrassed. But more than anything, the bottom of my stomach danced with that inexplicable feeling that my time was running out.

In a stroke of some kind of luck, the Professor was interrupted before he could get started by the headline "Mutants Attack President" streaming across a local television, accompanied by breaking news from Washington, DC.

"I think it's time to leave, Professor," said Scott as none of us moved.

At least today couldn't get worse.

Of course, it did.

"Maybe we shouldn't sleep together tonight," John said later, taking off his shoes. And then, head whipping up to see the hurt that I'm sure was splashed across my face: "I just mean—I've been having bad dreams."

"I've already seen them," I said immediately, caught so off guard that I forgot that I never meant to admit it.

In the past, the only dreams I'd seen had been my mother's. Her bedroom was next door to mine at home. Sometimes it was how I knew that he was back, that he was in her mind, and that I needed to wake up. Once or twice when I'd first moved to the mansion, it was Rogue. Lately it was only John, whose dreams had taken as much of a turn as everything else.

Predictably, his jaw tightened, but he mostly looked shocked.

"Cel–"

"You know I can't help it," I said quickly.

It was only partly a lie. I probably could if I'd made any effort to master the skill. But it was the closest, other than that one night, that my power had come to my father's, and it wasn't a line I was ready to look at, much less cross.

I started folding a shirt that happened to be close to me. The floorboards creaked as John moved, and then I felt him behind me.

"I know," he said, sounding apologetic but also a little sad.

I know I'm pathetic. You can just say it.

Instead, out loud, I said, "Do you want to talk about them?"

Fire. Buildings and people on fire, humans crying out in the streets, and one man at the center of it all, hands ablaze.

Do you want to talk about whether you enjoy them?

I glanced over in time to see a shadow cross his face for a moment and then he was as guarded as ever. He stared at me with dark eyes before looking down, and pulling me closer by the waist, my whole body enveloped in the comforting warmth of his.

"Angel," he sighed, forehead against mine, saying it like a reprimand. "What you see in there...I would never do that to you."

It was probably stupid to believe him but I did at once. He had never said so much so directly. I nodded against his forehead, afraid to shatter the moment.

"I know."

I felt rather than saw his smirk.

Daylight made it easy to forget for a while.

The next day featured Rogue and Bobby having a thumb war on the couch opposite us and Piotr and Flea behind them being jerks. I could see the cartoon they'd drawn of Rogue zapping Bobby by the lips from clear across the room. For a beat, I wished I'd trained my powers, after all, wished I'd found some great and terrible violence waiting in my genetic code.

Or at least a book. Throwing a book would've also felt good.

My own arms were tangled up in John's, who was "helping me study" by watching a Discovery Channel documentary with Jones over the textbook open on his lap to the Acknowledgements page.

I took a break from glaring at the two idiots across the room and he caught my eye, smiling slightly. I wondered if I would ever get over the warm something that ran through me when he caught my eye across a room or held my eyes for a beat too long. I was constantly terrified it would end.

John smirked suddenly and I felt my eyes widen, automatically suspicious.

"You look like you wouldn't mind a fire, angel," he said knowingly, his voice the lovely terrible thing it seemed to be every time he seemed to read my mind.

"No fires indoors," I said flatly, trying not to smile.

"Just a small one?," he said, eyes narrowed at me in that way that did something to my stomach. "Some second-degree burns—maybe a little blistering?"

I'd been thinking it a moment earlier and he knew it. I bit the inside of my cheek.

"No burns, John, seriously," I said, shoving him with one shoulder. He caught my arm and pulled me closer, still smirking.

"Ok, no burns," he said, in that tone that feigned innocence. "Just a table, couple of chairs, maybe some of the more hideous wallpaper."

I raised my eyebrows and did my best to force the corners of my mouth down.

His smile widened. "It's called home renovation, angel."

Jones, who had just watched nothing but HGTV for two days because Jubilee sparked up a little too close to the tv, nodded in solemn agreement without looking away from the screen.

I ran a finger along John's jaw, leaning forward. "It's also called arson."

A smile flashed across his face, but then several people nearby who'd overheard, including Colossus and his buddies, laughed and muttered a little more darkly in response. John's face abruptly closed off. I dropped my hand smoothly, remembering how many people were in the room, feeling my face shutter. I kept forgetting that he was a different person to the rest of the school than he was with me, that he still didn't like drawing attention to that.

The moment was broken into all the way when Rogue waved a hand in my face like she'd been trying to get my attention for a while.

"Cel?" she said, eyebrows expectant. She and Bobby were both now standing over us, though the latter didn't appear to know why.

"C'mon—Logan's back. I heard his bike!" she said excitedly.

"What, does it have a bell?" I asked, but she was already gone.

I traded glances with Bobby but he was already a few paces behind her so I jumped up to follow.

"Who is Logan again?" I said, smiling mischievously at the group steadily gathering to welcome the visitor in the front hall.

Rogue was blushing, so I was sure there was a story I wanted to hear, and Jean soon appeared strutting down the stairs. All I saw was cat haircut from my first night at the Academy.

An arm snaked around my waist from behind.

"No one you need to wonder about," said John's voice behind my ear.

I reacted involuntarily to his breath on my neck, nerves fluttering down my sides.

Rogue was greeting cat-hair (sorry, "Logan") with a big hug but it was decidedly hard to care about whatever was happening.

"Oh are you not mad at me anymore?" I said, moving my head to make room for his presence behind my shoulder.

He pressed his nose into my neck, seeming to forget for a second that we were in public. I leaned my head against his.

"I'm never mad at you."

"Because I'm impossible to be mad at," I clarified, still drawn in by the things his face in my neck were doing to me.

"You are impossible," he agreed into my shoulder.

I sighed and settled back into him, his hips behind mine and arms around my waist. My favorite place to be. It is unbelievable how easy he made it to feel happy. It felt dangerous. There must've been rules against being so completely content.

John's chin settled at my throat and I flushed, at once pleased and nervous, trying to remember whether there was a reason I'd woken up today with that creeping suspicion that still that time was running out, that I'd been content too long and the universe would soon straighten me out.

My gut tightened at the thought and with it I audibly breathed in too fast.

"What is it?" John said lowly, stilling immediately.

I swallowed but shook my head. The group in the hall was still welcoming Logan back to the mansion with what looked like an exceptionally awkward conversation that required no one else's attention, so I took a step away into the hallway and took John with me, who resettled automatically with my back to the wall, steadying me.

"I just—" there it was again, that hiccup in my stomach, like something was wrong or almost-wrong, or about to be wrong.

I tried to remind myself that I didn't have precognition. John frowned, his gaze and his thumb both on my bottom lip.

"Do you get the feeling something bad's about to happen?" I asked quietly.

He looked worried for a moment but shook his head. "No," he said pulling me toward him and pressing his lips to my forehead. "Everything's gonna be ok, angel."

But he didn't sound as convinced as I'd have liked, even as I was happy to lean into his thumb on my cheek and enjoy what seemed like a temporary reprieve from his usual borderline agitation with PDA. Again, I was struck by the feeling that something was poised to unravel, my nerves so sharpened by this sense of alarm that I felt every touch with my entire body. As always, I had a long list of possible scenarios for what the latest disaster would be. There had to be one, I'd gone too long without one, been too lucky. I suspected John had a list of his own. John who still wore a jacket and carried his wallet and lighter with him in a place that was supposed to be his home, John who never sat with his back to a room. John who had woken up with a gasp later in the first night we'd really spent together, searched my face in his hands urgently for several seconds, and then laid back down without a word, curling me into his chest, where I listened to his heart hammer wildly for so long that I first wondered what kinds of things haunted him in his sleep.

I wondered what was on John's list of expected disasters.

"Are we swapping tonight?" I asked instead, reaching forward to hold the fabric of his shirt between my fingers.

It made me less dizzy with panic to touch something real. And he was by far my favorite to touch.

He watched my fingers with a soft smile on his face, like he knew it. Probably did.

It had been easy, with the Professor and Jean increasingly away from the mansion on missions, to continue with delightful frequency the small rebellion of Bobby and I swapping places for the night. Part of me wondered if the Professor ever suspected us when he came back, if his eyes on us in the hall were meant to be a warning. No part of me cared enough to stop.

He leaned in to brush his nose against mine and his lips were soft as he kissed me again, gently, knowingly. When he pulled away just a hair, the panic was gone from my body. I was centered. At home.

He sighed, thumb brushing at my mouth again, where his gaze stayed.

"Not tonight," he said regretfully, glancing uneasily back toward the hall, where Bobby was stiffly holding Logan's outstretched hand. "Logan's on 'babysitting duty' and he strikes me as a claw first, ask questions later kind of hall monitor."

I snorted with laughter and was rewarded by the brightest smile for the second before John crashed his mouth to mine again, laughing. When he pulled away, Bobby and Rogue had disappeared and the man with the cat haircut watched us with a curiously bemused smile.