St. John the Divine

- Chibi Lurrel

Notes: This chapter is probably darker than a light romantic romp around BobbyxJohn should be. Alas, there can be no light romantic romping without some angst.

St. John Allerdyce had fervently hoped, with all his might, that he'd be ready the next time he ran into Bobby Drake. He'd gotten a new haircut, some highlights, started working out. Some of his fellow members of the Brotherhood made fun of him, just a little, because he didn't put on a lot of weight when he trained. Magneto never questioned his increased interest in vanity. In fact, Magneto almost never questioned him at all.

Magneto, Pyro, and Mystique had travelled quite a lot in the time following the events at Alkali Lake. They'd been recruiting, raising funds, getting new identities, and posing as a family unit, Pyro playing the sullen teenager. By the time Magneto had built his army, though, the closeness he'd felt in their adventuring was all but gone.

Pyro was still Magneto's third, and then second, in command. But instead of giving him personal lessons, he'd been expected to simply train with the rest of the troops. During training, it was like he was deliberately singled out. After another day of running through the mud in the forest, grappling with people as angry as he was, burning leaves and getting his shoulder dislocated, Magneto had come up behind him and said quietly, 'I don't know where your focus is, St. John. I don't think you've been taking us too seriously.'

Having one's shoulder relocated by some dude who's main mutation appeared to be forgetting to shower does something to one's temper, and Pyro felt himself heat up right under his skin. His lighter was in his hand instantly as the words snarled out of his mouth, 'Why are you so fucking doubtful of me? I'm as strong, no, stronger than half of these recruits put together.' He'd felt like some fourth grader with a note sent home to his mom: 'John's a bright kid with a lot of potential, but lacks focus.'

At that, Erik had laughed, a cruel one without warmth. 'It was never in my nature to be trusting of traitors, St. John.' And shit that hurt, he'd been expecting this test but it still hurt.

His lighter clicked, and there was a cloud of fire around their feet, billowing out. 'I didn't-- I'm not. I didn't betray anyone.' He wasn't looking at Magneto anymore; instead he stared down and began to build a wall around them. A sheen of sweat was apparent under Magneto's helmet but he just stared.

'I didn't betray the Professor. I choose you instead, is all.'

The flames died instantly and Pyro felt stupid, impulsive, clumsy, but Erik was still looking at him appraisingly.

'Shit, okay. I'm sorry, I just. I just lost control there and. Fuck. I'm sorry.'

'Why?'

His head snapped up to look at his mentor.

'Because...the Professor spent so much time talking to me about control, control, control, but never about how to get better. How to be stronger. Just how to keep myself from being powerful. You, you know how to make yourself better, bigger, and, I guess. I guess I thought that's what you could do for me. I mean, it is! I am stronger, but.'

'You want more.' This time there was a smile behind his words. 'I can give you more.'

And he did. Pyro found himself pulled from the regular training sessions with the other members of the Brotherhood and instead found himself Magneto's pet project. The others were resentful, tried to humiliate him, but he didn't care. It felt like a return to old times, and he was finally learning how not to be weak, how to overcome the limitations of having to rely on a lighter for his power. Magneto, Bobby, even Rogue, their powers all lay underneath the skin, inside. He didn't think that resentment would ever leave him, but he used it, channelled it.

Magneto's first task was to get him used to being the fire. He wasn't Iceman, he had protested, he couldn't even make fire so how in hell could he be it? Magneto had added an extra minute onto his training for it, and for the first time in his life, he was told to create fireballs and then...hold them. It wasn't like he had never burned himself, but never on purpose, never like this. He could float the flames over his fingers and he relished the warmth but deep down, he was as terrified as anyone else of being burned alive.

'This is the fucking first step?'

Magneto just stared at him and said, rather threateningly, 'Do you want more time to reflect on this?' And then his expression had changed to something softer. 'We could delay this if you feel that would be necessary, Pyro.'

Pyro just shook his head, his hair falling into his eyes, and he leaned up against a tree, steeling himself. He lifted his arms out, palms up, and heard Magneto click his lighter. With his eyes closed, he still felt the fire in the air near him, and he blew it into a large ball, and brought it near him. He knew where it hovered and split it into two perfectly even spheres, right above his hands, barely licking at his lifelines. He inhaled and closed his hands, cursing his accuracy, and then screamed.

It hurt inconceivably bad, wrapping his fingers around the glowing orbs, and he managed to not scream for about a minute until he couldn't stop, his voice was raw and he was on the ground, burning and crying. Magneto paced around him, counting minutes and lecturing calmly.

'You can't be afraid of what you control, St. John. That fire is yours to command, yours to own. You must know its touch intimately. You have in those scorched palms the power to command the element man coveted most. You are a god now, St. John. Pyro. Act like it.'

He managed to hold out through his assigned three minutes before he lost control, slipping out of consciousness for a second. Magneto did not look impressed or displeased, he simply called in the healer he had recruited and had her work on the ruined masses of flesh that were Pyro's fingers. She wasn't the most powerful girl, but she had been a late bloomer and had been studying for med school when her powers manifested, so his hands were actually down to only second degree burn damage and by the time she had finished he had stopped crying quietly.

The next morning, he found the flamethrower braces on the desk in his room in the cabin he shared. It was funny, he thought, Magneto had almost crippled him to see if he deserved them, and it was even better because he was already crippled by his dependency on them. Okay, maybe not so funny, maybe just depressing. He couldn't survive without something else, something else's fire. He snapped them on after he came out of the shower, ignoring how his hands ached and were blistered.

He thought, after the pain of roasting his own hands, of his own body being beaten over and over again, he'd be ready to fight Bobby. But Bobby Drake, though not a complicated boy, always managed to surprise him. He was surprised to see him outside in the mêlée of the cure clinic protests. The thought of Rogue giving up her gifts made him angry. They'd been close, in another life, close enough that she would talk to him about Bobby.

'I think he loves me in spite of my powers,' she'd told him, and he thought that was the ultimate treason in love. He'd loved Bobby for his whole package: the six pack abs, the kind eyes, the powers that almost-but-not-quite fit together so well with his own. John had never deluded himself with ideas about Bobby loving him back; he was there to be fucked and then ignored. Bobby was his friend but he used him. Magneto wasn't using him, not in the same way at all. To Bobby, John had been a means to an end. Pyro to Magneto was more like a finely tuned knife.

He yelled at Bobby at the protests, but he knew he didn't have much to complain about as a whole. He'd never gotten confused, never called him Rogue, and was never gentle. He'd almost always instigate, which was both troublesome and a relief to John, and he almost always topped. Sometimes it'd be before bed when he'd decide to slide up to John, grabbing his chin and then kissing him.

John wasn't much to look at, really. Bobby really liked the sleek curve of his spine, but he was too bony, too skinny in a way that only malnutrition during the formative years produced. You could count the knobs of his vertebrae, and his hips jutted out enough that Bobby told him that doing it from behind was probably just easier since it was harder to bruise himself that way. Bobby was all-American football in comparison to his hood-rat physique, toned abs and biceps that belonged in an Abercrombie ad. Sometimes, when Bobby fucked him over his desk roughly, he'd wonder how he got so lucky, that he got the world's only bisexual sex god as his own personal roommate. Bobby normally left bruises, and wouldn't suck his cock, but he never seemed repulsed, and loved kissing.

The best sex they had was always right after training in the Danger Room, though, when John would come into the room with his eyes glittering and dark, and Bobby would meet his gaze with those bright blue eyes, stiff and cold. Bobby would push him on the bed, taking off his shirt and teasing him all down bruised ribs with icy fingers, and John would have no recourse, nothing to do but buck and squirm as he was trapped under 200 pounds of blonde ambition, cold tongue and hot mouth. John's burnt, calloused fingers still remember the dip of Bobby's hip, the feel of his cock, even as they failed him again and again by never producing fire.

At the final battle, he'd been surprised not to see Rogue, secretly thrilled that Bobby was there, and absurdly pleased to note that he hadn't been replaced with another boy. Sure, it was painful to note that Rogue had been pushed aside for Kitty; Rogue was a real person, Kitty was just a girl from the suburbs with no story and no personality. Bobby didn't know what he wanted, Pyro decided. Someone with a dark, mysterious past, someone with a tragic secret, or someone with nothing worse than the ability to walk through walls. It didn't make sense.

And he'd thought he was ready. He was, too, prepared to make Bobby feel what Pyro had been feeling for months, the rage, the hot white hot feeling of absolute anger at everything engulfing him, at the Professor for not being able to help him, at Bobby for never giving him what he wanted, at Magneto for being such a bastard and for being so incredibly wantable at the same time.

Bobby goddamn surprised him, after Pyro had already declared himself winner, with a new form that Pyro could never even dream of imitating. If only he hadn't fallen over, if only Bobby hadn't run off with Rogue's replacement so quickly, he would have pulled his Ace out: two hands engulfed in impossible fire. If only, if only, if only he hadn't been weak. And now Magneto was gone, and all he had were some wrist brace flamethrowers and some stupid highlights in his hair. He didn't mind stealing, but he wished he didn't have to steal a new life so goddamned often. He only really hated Bobby for that: for having just the one and living it.