Disclaimers: I don't own. You don't sue.
Archive: I'm new, so it took me awhile to figure out what this meant. But, yeah. You want, you take. Just let me know.
Feedback: Yes, please. Good for my tentatively growing ego.
Notes: This story was really supposed to be a short piece, but something rammed into my years-old writer's block. Sent me running to the keyboard to add about twenty more pages than I'd originally planned for this piece.
So, here's my version of how the gang spent their last night of the year. It's a week late, I know, but I hope you enjoy anyway.
THIS YEAR'S EVE
"…see the countdown continues. Forty-nine minutes and seventeen seconds left! All you folks out there watching, I hope you have someone in mind to share the midnight hour with. Nothing like a kiss to bid farewell to the old year and welcome to the new."
Scott blinked at Dick Clark's face on the screen, watching the Times Square Ball shining in the distance behind the old man's head. Below the ball were half a million people screaming loud and happy in anticipation of the night that lay ahead of them.
Scott looked away from the screen and glanced around the empty room.
"A kiss to bid farewell to the old…welcome to the new…"
He sighed. Even if the Professor and Hank had stayed up for the countdown, they were neither of them on his list of people to kiss. The one person usually at the top of that list was one state over in Connecticut and, despite mixed signals, more likely to suck face with Dumbass Matthews than with him.
Scott turned the television off. Dick Clark didn't know what he was talking about anyway. No one needed a kissing partner on New Year's Eve. Actually, who really needed New Year's Eve at all? The Professor and Hank, two intelligent and respectable men, didn't need it. They had said their good-nights and gone to their rooms over an hour ago. What any reasonable person would do.
Scott nodded firmly at the black screen before him. As reasonable as he himself was, it was high time for him to go to bed, too.
Well over half of any given population never stayed up for the countdown, he remembered as he climbed the stairs. He'd read the stats somewhere. With those numbers, going to sleep before the ball drop was completely normal, expected even. Nothing at all wrong in doing so. He was just being normal. Not at all being a total friendless, dateless loser without anyone to kiss on New Year's Eve. Nope.
Right.
Slouching at the top of the stairs, he turned in the direction of his room, and then quickly brought his head up to look back at the other end of the hall, down the girls' wing. One of the doors all the way at the end was open. He frowned. Was Rogue still up then? She had gone up even before Hank and the Professor.
Scott had been a bit disappointed she'd disappeared so early. He'd expected her to stay downstairs for the countdown. He thought that's what she'd wanted to do. He thought that had been the plan. But he realized there really hadn't been any plan. It was just that they'd spent so much time together lately that he'd started to feel like a Siamese twin, expecting near every minute of his day to run parallel to hers.
It wasn't a surprise to him, that they'd gotten a lot closer the past few days. On the school steps last week, watching the other students leave to go home to their parents, he'd been relieved to have Rogue beside him. She was his only defense against the threat of butt-numbing boredom. And so far, he thought with a smile, she'd made a pretty good stand. Her idea to go scouting on Christmas Eve for a new recruit had led them to the city, battling in a church alongside an Angel against a power-tripping maniac. Not exactly the kind of Christmas Eve Scott would've expected, but certainly not one he would ever forget.
It also didn't surprise him that he and Rogue got along so well. Since she'd joined the team, he'd noticed she was a little less defensive with him than she was with the others. Evan liked to tease him about it, once calling Rogue (behind her back, of course) Cyke's groupie, and Jean pointed it out every so often with a certain accusing look, irritating Scott to no end. It wasn't like he was bribing Rogue with cookies to get on her good side.
Yeah, Rogue was nicer to him. She related to him better, maybe because they were both foster kids. Or maybe because he had to wear shades to keep from shooting holes into people's heads, a little like how she had to wear clothes to keep from stealing everything inside people's heads. Whichever it was, Scott wasn't going to question her about it. And he sure as hell wasn't going to tell her to be a little meaner to him so that Evan would quit teasing and Jean would stop looking like a slighted puppy.
But Scott did need to talk to Rogue. Since the vacation and up until today, her trademark defensiveness had all but vanished. She just liked the holidays, she'd said when Hank called her Mrs. Klaus the day they baked cookies. Scott wondered if it was that, or if she was just comfortable without the rest of the students hanging around as potential victims of her touch. Either way, maybe both, Rogue had loosened up considerably.
The problem was, in two days the other students would be back. This morning Rogue had come into the kitchen in her green pajamas looking like the Grinch's little cousin. When a chirpy Hank walked in, babbling eagerly about a new simulation he'd just finished planning for the students, her mood had further soured.
Clearly she was getting a head start on retreating into her hostile-girl persona—into the seclusion it fostered.
Scott hated the thought of it. Especially now, when he knew just how much of herself she kept stifled.
Glancing back towards the darkness in the boys' wing, Scott scratched the back of his head. It was New Year's Eve, anyway. Exactly the right time for a friendly late night chat. He nodded and straightened, heading for the dim light spilling out from the open door at the other end of the hall.
