Chapter 21: Procedure

If I'd ever wondered what Xavier's might be like after nearly burning to the ground, I shouldn't have. The answer so far was exactly the same, but with more vacuuming.

As soon we'd been cleared to re-enter the building, Storm had sent everyone forward with tasks: report anything that had been destroyed, carry remaining debris out of the building, vacuum, hand out gloves and masks, cover any blown-out windows, check the roof, vacuum. It was lucky for everyone that the Professor had at some point acquired a small fleet of vacuum cleaners which was produced, miraculously intact, from an upstairs closet.

Everyone now had about as many chores as John and Bobby had split pre-arson. A teen telekinetic helped reconstruct the worst of the rooms, overseen by Logan, who insisted—with the knee-jerk annoyance of someone who had to have worked construction—on rebuilding certain things by hand. Colossus handled debris removal. Jubilee had been given free range to use said debris for target practice on the condition that she oversee Jones' status review of the electronics. This last part seemed alarmingly short-sighted.

The end of a day spent with Rogue clearing the younger kids' bedrooms found the older set of us gathered in the Professor's old office, Storm and Hank standing behind the desk. Rogue and I were far from the only ones covered, head to toe, in a fine layer of sweat and soot.

"You all must be wondering why we're here. We appreciate that it's been a long day," started Storm. Colossus grunted. Rogue leaned hard against a bookcase as though for emphasis. Hank, for some reason, was trying to catch John's eye. "Circumstances being what they are, we thought it would be a good time for a safety brief."

The room turned automatically toward Jubilee, whose face remained stoic. She raised one hand to her heart and one to the ceiling.

"I solemnly swear that I did not know toilets could explode."

Hank, fresh off the train from DC that afternoon, took a heavy seat into the nearest chair.

"No," Storm said slowly, looking perplexed. "Though we will be...revisiting that."

The mild disappointment on Jubilee's face found a strange counterweight in the relief on Hank's. Bobby, possibly the only of us paying much attention (John was still brushing soot out of his hair; Kitty was visibly faltering and keeping herself awake by rearranging some books), crossed his arms.

"This is about the fires."

Storm nodded.

"Hank and I have been talking and we think we should be clear about the procedure for evacuating the building."

Everything stilled a bit as this sunk in.

"You're givin' us a performance review?" Rogue said slowly. "Of a fire?"

I snorted.

"Well," Storm started, on the defensive. "We just want to be clear about procedure. For instance, maybe next time it might be more prudent to split up sections of the mansion before rushing at rooms."

"Oh I'm sorry," I said, not sounding it, "We thought it was slightly better than waiting around to die."

There was a crash at the other side of the room. Kitty had upended the stack of books that no one asked her to reorganize and John and Colossus were cackling quietly behind her.

"What do you mean by 'next time'?" Bobby asked. He seemed worried, which in turn worried me. Something was on his radar that hadn't yet blipped on mine.

Storm held both palms open as though already regretting the sentence as she began it.

"There's been talk about new sects of the Brotherhood up and running again. We have reason to believe the school might be targeted."

She was very, very carefully not looking at John, and for a moment, everyone very, very carefully followed her lead. Except I couldn't not follow those words to their target, whose posture was now frozen, as though tensed against an attack.

"You've got to be kidding," John said in a low voice, devoid of banter. "You think it was me? After all of the—"

"Mr. Allerdyce," Hank said in a warning tone from his chair, looking frustratingly serious. "Not another word."

It was still strange to see the X-Men as just anyone else, as flawed, as peers making mistakes. They didn't quite see us that way yet, somehow. But the guilt written in the twist of Storm's face was another reminder. Even they weren't infallible. Even they didn't always know best.

John watched Hank for one long moment, shoulders tense. He still hadn't changed from clean-up duty. None of us had. There was a tuft of vacuum lint on his leg and soot behind his ear. The beat I expected to be a comeback came and went and he just stared at Hank, some silent conversation taking place in the even, empty glare between them. Then for once in his life, he took an order, and left without another word.

John POV:

John didn't like not knowing who set the fires. It felt personal. Someone, somewhere was taunting him, and he wasn't sure why.

We can get to you, it said, we can get to the things you won't admit would hurt. He didn't like it. It was the kind of game he would expect of a Mystique-informed Magneto, and those were two players who were supposed to be off the board.

Or at least that had been his understanding when he agreed to this stupid deal with Hank. Not that he disliked Hank as much as he'd been prepared to. He'd seen the suit and the government job and pegged him for Storm in another outfit. What he'd discovered during their first meeting was that beneath it, they had one crucial thing in common: they were both deeply, deeply annoyed with the way most people went about things.

But when he'd agreed to Hank's terms, one stipulation was that the rest of the school be kept out of it. Today brought that agreement into messy territory. And like Hank or not, John didn't trust the X-Men with messy.

On top of everything, there was Celia. He had a sinking feeling he was losing her again, and not just the way he had before. "It just felt like a nudge. Nothing else." But he could still see her eyes shift into that middle distance for what felt like hours at a time from afar, watch her move automatically through conversations and meals with her mind clearly fixed where it had slipped away. Without the cover of an emergency, she felt as impossible to touch as he was painfully aware of her at all times.

His mind kept slipping back, playing on repeat in his head until the contrast between the Celia whose eyelashes he could still feel on his neck, whose grip lingered in his hair, bumped up against the one who wouldn't go near the back door at night, who slipped away where he couldn't follow, who stood on the opposite side of every room.

She was the only one who'd looked at him in the safety brief, her eyes making a hard cut his way the moment Storm's words were out of her mouth. His mind kept parsing it for meaning.

It was one thing to note the pause in people's stares as he moved around the mansion, the whispers that rustled around the edge of a room with him in it. The mansion rumor mill (and probably Colossus, who'd softened up since the old days but was no less of a gossip) meant Storm's implication in a "closed safety brief" had made the rounds by dinner an hour later, and it trailed him like a scent.

It was the same old strain of suspicion he would always anticipate, had always expected. There was just a sting to it he hadn't seen coming. He'd become almost comfortable here. Among the Brotherhood, there were no friends. Even among allies, every member of the Brotherhood watched their own back. At the mansion, even enemies got a hot meal and the spare bedroom. The X-Men had somehow done worse than the neglect, abuse, open hostility, hidden traps he'd grown used to. They'd made him forget.

Celia POV:

It took 24 hours for the ache to settle in my bones from hunching over to clean, 48 to plot the demise of every vacuum cleaner in North America. The one I was using to clean out one of the bedrooms stalled, came back to life, stalled again.

"Try turning it off and back on again," Kitty called from down the hallway, where she was somehow again reorganizing a stack of books no one had asked her to.

"You try turning off and back on again," I said with a scowl, kicking the vacuum for good measure, and she gaped at me before turning back to her stack with a sniff.

The impulse to apologize was smothered by the hour of sleep I'd shambled together the night before and the heavy kind of tired in my bones. Instead, I made a big show of turning the vacuum all the way off and unplugging it.

"That was cold," a voice said fondly. John leaned against the wall in my blind spot, shirt covered in stains and what looked like roofing material in one hand.

One of the younger kids working around the corner let out an audible squeak and scampered in the opposite direction. We both watched him disappear down the hallway.

"Kids are so jumpy these days," John said drily.

"Near-death experiences will do that."

He wandered toward the now-unplugged vacuum, gave it another kick.

"Good thing they have Storm's procedures to keep them safe," he said to the machine. "Wouldn't want to be caught alone with the prime suspect."

I exhaled heavily, mind too tired to talk around it.

"What's going on with you and Hank?"

His head shot up, eyes sharp.

"Nothing I'm telling you," he said, a little too fast. Then he dropped his eyes to something down the hallway like he'd remembered who knew his tells. "The blue guy seems happy enough to let things...happen," he said, and his words seemed wrong for the question, like he was angry about something else entirely.

"It's just a dumb rumor," I said, confused.

"Not dumb enough," he said, eyebrows raised. "But at least the stakes are low—if they kick me out, at least you're down your least valuable player."

He smirked like this was when I was supposed to smile but his eyes were all wrong for it.

I was searching him for tells again, because maybe John didn't lie to me but that didn't mean he didn't know how to hide. We both kept secrets. I always knew it. This one just felt especially dangerous for some reason, like he wasn't telling me on purpose, for reasons he'd already decided. I didn't like the uncertainty in his stare or mismatch in his words. Maybe he'd always fought his ghosts on his own, but I'd usually known their general vicinity.

"They're just kids," I said, shaking my head, still watching him.

The corner of his mouth twitched up slightly and when he spoke, it seemed less to me than to himself.

"They'll believe the worst of me," he said, mouth grim. There was a sad cast to his eyes that again seemed all wrong, like it wasn't quite about this. I couldn't see where his mind had gone.

"Of course they do," I snapped, too on edge to respond properly. "It's all they know about you, John. You left, you lit things on fire, you stood with the man on TV who told them that nothing was safe and he would destroy them if they got in the way. Of course they assume the worst."

He let out a breath and looked at me again, and not for the first time, I could see the dark circles under his eyes.

"You know I'm not really talking about the kids."

Of course he wasn't. No version of John would have held some dumb fearful whisper against a kid scared for their life. It was such a huge soft spot in such deceivingly complete-looking armor.

And it wasn't just the kids. Storm's "safety brief" had made that clear, if her eyes lingering a little too long on him when she passed through a room didn't. It was the glances from Kitty, too jumpy to stay in one place these days before disappearing through the nearest solid barrier. It was Rogue sitting decidedly between him and whoever was closest every time he ate a meal in the dining room.

I'm on your side, I should have said, Just so you know. I'm always on your side even when I'm not sure I should be. You're my home team even if you torch the field on a regular basis.

"I wish you would stop acting like nothing you do matters," I said instead, and my throat was so tight against the words that it choked them out. "People are really freaked out."

I'm really freaked out. John had vanished for the rest of the night after that catastrophic meeting and a very real part of me had become convinced that he'd left. I'd spent the night in my nightmares with dear old Damian on one side, gleefully watching me twist the minds of everyone I knew, watch me slice dozens of men into pieces, and John on the other, perpetually walking away.

Already in this hallway he felt entirely too far away, even if he was looking at me again, with an expression I was now fully too panicked to identify.

"You don't think I know that?" he said, voice quiet. Something flickered across his face too fast to catch, part smile part something else. He stepped closer so I could see that his eyes were fixed on mine, lips turned carefully downward. "Haven't been getting enough sleep, have you, angel?"

Amusement made his voice something dangerous and it went straight to parts of me it shouldn't.

"You shouldn't know that," I told mostly his mouth, my eyes dragging down to it even as I tried not to look. The smirk spoke volumes.

He smiled. A real smile, a slow one, one that spread across his face as he took two steps closer. Everything in my body felt like it would combust.

"I pay attention," he said, and it already felt like something else, something that had every nerve ending in me pointed in his direction, every limb angled his way. But his eyes were careful. "Do you want me to leave you alone?"

He'd asked it before. He was so close it felt like we were already touching, every inch of me aware of him, every angle drawn his way like we were magnets. Words were so hard to remember how to use.

"Allerdyce."

It was Logan, looking disgruntled and carrying baskets of bed sheets. "Your friend needs help with the laundry."

"What kind of help?" John asked.

"All of it," said Logan shortly, before squinting at him. "You're not gonna ask which friend?"

John shrugged, his gaze flickering back to me like he was still looking for something. "Only have one."

Logan stared at him for a moment before scoffing.

"Storming again tonight," he said with a grunt, before throwing a pillow at John and walking away.

I wasn't sure when Logan had started keeping such a close eye on the weather, but John's gaze finally dropped from mine to watch him walk away, mouth open in disbelief.

Later found me kneeling in dirt in the backyard. Giselle hadn't employed her 'healing is like gardening' analogy just to be cute. She'd done it for the long-term benefits. I was hoping the sun might bleach the memory of my graceless conversation with John from my brain.

"Of course they do," I'd snapped. "It's all they know about you, John. You left, you lit things on fire, you stood with the man on TV who told them that nothing was safe and he would destroy them if they got in the way. Of course they assume the worst." Later, I would wish I'd said they don't know you like I do. They don't know all of the other things.

I wondered if he was piecing me together, the way I'd once pieced my mother together, wondering who she was in between the world crashing down.

The expression on his face had turned to stone. If I was scared of losing Giselle, I was mortified of losing John again. But I had to know that I could push and he would stay.

"Pay attention to how you're mulching, would you, they need better drainage than this building."

Jubilee hadn't been entirely forthcoming about the damage to the downstairs bathroom and Giselle was still recovering from being among the first to discover it. It was mostly fixed, now, though Jubilee was banned from powers in the building for three weeks while the tiling was re-laid and...part of a wall replaced.

It was a shame that in a mansion with this many distractions, my brain couldn't seem to not get stuck.

"What if it gets worse?"

Giselle sniffed. "I don't know how much worse you think life gets, but I promise you the universe does tend to even out."

"No, what if I get worse."

"At gardening?" she said, eying the row of hydrangeas she'd insisted 'we' plant and in whose soil I was crouched. "Impossible."

I scowled. She scowled (more elegantly) back.

"You know what I mean," I said, tossing some clippings with more force than necessary. "We trained me to be stronger, and it worked. I have control. But what if we went too far? What if I'm too much—?"

I'd meant to say like him but the too much on its own also fit. 'Too much' felt like the right phrase for my life, whenever 'too little' wasn't headlining. I was more edges, more lists, more paranoia than could ever be functional, with too little of the things that made a person good at life—too little of the easy charm Rogue carried, too little of the indomitable energy of Jubilee, too little calm, too little sense.

The faint buzz in the air was the only backdrop to my inner monologue, and this time as I snipped the garden scissors closed, I glanced up to find Giselle considering me. I got the feeling she noticed more than she was willing to let on. I couldn't decide whether it made me feel weak, that yet another person felt the need to handle me with care, or tremendously sad, that at every turn I was proving only capable of reacting to it with the grace of a feral cat.

Grace turned one of the spades over in her hand before answering. "You made yourself sharp. Now decide what to do with it before you hurt someone walking around with all those knives."

I already had. "You didn't tell anyone else about Damian, did you?"

But I couldn't lose her. I'd just found her. I would tell her, eventually. Just not yet, not now. Not when it felt too much like I was still keeled over on all fours staring at my vomit in the grass.

"It just felt like a nudge," he'd said. "I promise."

John POV:

Bobby, it turned out, needed so much help with laundry it was hard to believe he was legally an adult. When John had found him, he'd been googling "is perm press for stripes?" on Rogue's phone. A full day later, they were still in the laundry room, where Bobby had now spent hours displaying nothing short of sincere amazement at the process.

Somehow, above Bobby's tenth story about how wash cycles didn't take as long as he'd always thought they did (Bobby's idea of the timeline for laundry seemed most closely aligned with colonial times and John was beginning to wonder who had lied to him and why), John caught Lydia creeping in. Maybe the cat comment had been a joke, but she really was an eerily quiet mover.

"You gonna talk or meow?" he said, without turning right away.

Her answering scowl was such a near impression of Celia's he almost smiled.

"Storm needs someone to get Flea's shoes from the roof," she said, not bothering to specify who 'someone' meant.

"Gee wonder how they got there," said John, in a deadpan that was joyfully ignored.

Bobby, who was sitting on the drier contributing little to the process but increasingly inane questions and the occasional folded pair of socks, just nodded with an easy smile.

"You got it," he said, John shooting him a glare. "We'll get to it in the next couple of hours."

"And can you stop with the hammers?" John added as she backed out of the room.

Lydia had bounced back from a near-death experience with a sense of humor a little too near Jubilee's. She kept stealing Logan's tools and leaving them in John's room with cryptic Post-It notes about treehouses. She turned to leave with an entirely un-apologetic smile, almost bowling Rogue and Celia over in the process. Both carried brooms and looked unhappy about it, and both took in the scene ahead of them with confusion.

"Admit you're just gonna build it," said Bobby, smirking.

John shot him a glare, pulling another batch of clothes out of a drier.

"I'll burn it down, too," he said. "Never say I'm not thorough."

"You'd hate to disappoint your fans," Bobby said, completely unbothered by the threat, hurling a pair of pants into the washer that landed with a heavy clank.

"For the last time, you have to check—"

With all of the good-natured enthusiasm of someone who had just learned a mundane skill for the first time, Bobby lunged toward the washer.

"Check the pockets first!" he said, diving toward the pants. "Got it."

Rogue was covering her mouth with one hand and audibly trying not to laugh. John barely spared him a glance—this was not the first time. It wasn't even the fifth.

"Keys. Left pocket," he grunted, recognizing the sound.

Bobby blinked at him.

"My left or your left?" asked Bobby.

"Your left," John said, shooting him a glare.

Rogue could barely catch her breath laughing. It occurred to John with some delay that Celia hadn't actually entered the room, was just watching him with an odd look and one hand on the doorframe.

"What's wrong?" He said, noticing her there and freezing, Jones' third identical shirt in his hands.

Something was happening on her face that he couldn't trust himself to identify. Her eyes were just a little too bright, jaw a little too slack. The tiniest bit of a flush crept around her ears.

"What are you doing?"

She said it in a slow way, almost like an accusation, one hand guarding her chest.

"Laundry," he replied, still processing the fact that she was speaking to him. Directly. On purpose. With a look on her face he recognized. "A bunch of shit got destroyed in the fire. Everyone's out of socks. Storm told Bobby to do it but Bobby asked if 'you're supposed to add the grey stuff before or after," he said, waving one hand at the lint trap.

The look on her face didn't change. If anything, it deepened. She made a strangled sort of noise and exited again.

"And I thought you were doing so well," said Bobby, smirking, and Rogue snorted before leaving after her.

Celia POV:

"I pay attention."

It was like this man was custom built to destroy me, laundry and all. Three days now after the fire and I had run out of either the energy or the will to fight it. I needed sleep. I needed John.

"I don't need anything from you." It was a lie.

I found him at the back door, creaked open to the backyard, the chirp of the remaining summer bugs in the background. I don't know why I knew he would be there. He waited the same way he always had, like a strangely handsome statue, half-sunk into the shadows.

"We gonna talk about your laundry kink, angel?"

"I do not have a laundry kink."

I had survived living with a murderer for years, split a man's body into pieces on Alcatraz Island, knocked a third of an army to its knees. It was the smirk on this man that was going to kill me.

"I have an appreciation for practical skills," I told the floor in front of him, scowling.

"Mhmm," he rumbled. "Practical."

As suddenly as I'd found him, we were closer than we should have been. Suddenly, it wasn't just that I could imagine his pulse but that it was right there in his neck inches from face. We were still too far apart for my sanity, but I was too exhausted to keep much of the space between us. His thumb was at my hip somehow and the edge of his shirt was in one of my hands. If I exhaled, he would know.

It was hard to remember the knots left to untie instead of just falling back into the tangle. When I looked at him, I had to swallow against what it did to my stomach. Those eyes were always the same.

"You ran back in," I said, after too many seconds had past, afraid if I let them go too long I'd never say it.

He shook his head, mouth a straight line. The angle of the light coming in from the outside lamp lights his face mostly in shades of dark, his frame outlined against the window. It hadn't been a question but both of us waited for an answer.

"Lydia was still in there." He said. His face turned to the side but his thumb kept tracing an arc above my hipbone. "It turned out fine."

His voice was almost defensive, like he was shutting down. He'd already assumed where this was going was not in his favor. For a few seconds, the only sound was the summer night as I wondered how far he would let me push.

"What if it hadn't?" I said. "You're not invincible. What if the building had collapsed or you inhaled too much smoke or—I don't know—there were at least three separate fires going in a mansion-sized space?"

Again with that prickling cold, that weight at the back of my throat. It was the shake of the head that should've tipped me off. The kind of careless that could only be perfected with time. His frame was still, rimmed in light and unmoving except his hand still at my waist. I wondered if he realized it was still there. It was like one hand for each of us was stuck in a trance. I leaned forward, slowly, like I was approaching a spooked animal, afraid I knew what his eyes would look like if I looked. No one shut down better than John. Not even me.

I watched my hand re-adjust its grip on his shirt like it was someone else's limb.

"I'm not waiting on the sidelines," This time his voice was low and lethal. "Not anymore. I don't play by those rules." You know that, I heard him add silently, the slow chirp of crickets behind him old and familiar, like I was wreathed in several of my old nightmares.

And of course he didn't. John answered to no one and never would. I loved him for it. It broke my heart.

"You could have died," I said to the hand that wasn't mine.

"Do I need permission for that?" he said, voice caustic, a shadow shaking his head at me like I was on the outside again.

Yes. Mine.

"What do you think happens if you don't come out next time?" I said instead, and this time I lifted my chin in his direction, like his eyes dropping immediately to my lips wasn't the most overwhelming feeling I'd had in weeks. "You don't get an overtime round to come back and have the last word. You're just gone."

I was shaking like a 70-degree heat wasn't wafting through the door but John had grown the kind of still only John could get. The habit of someone that knew danger, that knew watching and waiting. That always had to be absolutely sure. Few things felt more distinctly John than his ability to watch and wait.

"Then I'll be gone." His voice was low. Our foreheads were so close together now that he was basically whispering to me. "No one mourns the bad guys."

Few things felt more distinctly John, apart from his ability to put on a mask. It hurt to miss someone so close.

"You are so full of shit." It was out before my brain could catch up. Before anything could be done about how close my lips brushed to his, how dangerously his other hand now grazed my thigh, how either of us was looking at the other. "You don't get to decide that other people can't care about you—that's not how it works. You're stuck with us."

It was quiet a second too long for how fast my blood felt like it was moving. Something registered in John's eyes just as I was already backing away, back through the door, back down the hall, back behind my locks.

Us.

I didn't trust myself to be alone with him, but as luck and a mansion short on adults would have it, it was less than a day before I was hunting him down again. I found him wiping down tables in the dining room, glaring at something beyond the furniture.

Too many things crossed his face as he looked up to find me.

"Don't tell me it's more laundry," he said after a beat.

At the reminder, every fiber of my being regretted not just kissing him last night.

"Grocery run," I said, throat suddenly dry. "Storm insists." He nodded in my direction without comment and I added, "Bobby's restarting all the vacuums."

A small smirk was already starting to emerge at his mouth.

"You're stuck with me then," he said, voice knowing.

"You're stuck with us." I swallowed hard and caught the blur of a small body rounding the corner at that exact moment.

"Artie's coming, too," I said, shooting an arm out gracelessly to stop him as though he'd been meeting us all along. Artie shot me a look that was equal parts confusion and annoyance and I shot one back that I hoped conveyed there would be a payout of some kind.

Predictably, Artie was less than thrilled to discover he'd been wrangled into a chore to chaperone two adults. The longest part had been the drive over, John sprawled behind the wheel with his posture a little too pointed in my direction and me cutting off every one of his sentences with some story I 'urgently' needed to convey to Artie, who in turn sat in the backseat, silent, glaring at both of us.

The store itself was quick, as Artie turned out to be just as exceptionally efficient with a shopping list as he was happy to run down items as an excuse to get away from us. The biggest challenge had been trying to steer the cart along while staying in neutral territory.

"Nothing you'd like to talk about, angel?" and I had very suddenly needed to go to the deli counter for recommendations about lunch meat.

"How full of shit am I exactly?" and I'd needed to ask a store clerk for their opinion on which apples were best.

We'd made it through the store intact, even if Artie was half-sprinting ahead of us with the cart. He disappeared in the direction of where we'd parked and I felt John behind me before I saw him.

"You never explained," he said in my ear, and the shiver that fought its way down my spine was impossible to miss. I didn't have to look to feel his smirk at the nape of my neck. "How does it work?"

I tried to exhale, brain scrambling.

"You never explained," I said, voice light. "What's the deal with you and Hank?"

He didn't back away from me but his body tensed and we took the next few steps in silence, so close together I felt like I'd explode.

"I can't tell you that," he said in a low voice, and when I glanced up at him, his face wore genuine regret. Then confusion, as we pulled to a stop in front of the car, left just as we parked it. No cart nor Artie in sight.

"...Artie?"

John and I looked at each other and without a word agreed to set the argument aside, each of us splitting off in a different direction. Every muscle in my body felt tight, the hairs on the back of my neck raised. There was no reason to panic yet, and yet. I knew I was right to hate parking garages.

Finally, I turned onto a new row of cars and found one of them. Namely John, with three guns to his head, surrounded by men in what appeared to be homemade tactical gear. Artie was slumped unconscious in the back of the van beside him.

One of the men nudged John's forehead with his gun, pointedly.

"Get in the car, princess. Don't even try it."

There was no wiggle room, no margin for error. Afterward I would wonder about the maybes—maybe if Artie hadn't been unconscious, if the guns weren't quite so close to John's head, if time were on my side at all. But it wasn't. So with an eye on the triggers and my heart in my throat, every instinct in my body and John's eyes screaming not to do it, I got in instead.

I hadn't even hesitated.