12 May 2003
X-Men movieverse
Spoilers through X2

If he holds still, he can smell it.

Disclaimers: Singer and Marvel and Fox, oh my!




It takes a while to sink in that he's never going to get back to his room.  When he left home, he only took what would fit in his backpack -- a couple of t-shirts, underwear, socks, comics, his walkman and a couple of mix tapes.  His lighter.  But even then, he had something like a chance to plan.  He spent six nights awake, deciding how he'd leave.  Bruises all over his ribcage, smoke on his fingertips.

That time, he didn't take anything that could mark him as a kid.  This time, he didn't take anything but the lighter.  Not even his sneakers.  The clothes he's wearing are old, and they smell like smoke and Bobby.

He's hungry.

He's pretty sure that Magneto takes care of his own, but neither Magneto nor Mystique is seventeen and putting on vertical inches.  They don't remember what it's like to be hungry all the time.

Or, well.  He's heard stories about Magneto.  So he won't complain about it.

When the helicopter came back for him, the first thing Magneto asked was, "Regrets?"

St John said, "No."

"You will have."

Pompous bastard.  It's true, of course, but that's worse.  It's every layer of 'I told you so' ever conceived.  He regrets his Nuke the Whales t-shirt, the one he had to rescue six or eight times from laundry-murder.  He regrets his sneakers -- new last month, exactly the ones he wanted -- that he won't get to wear down to bare rubber and canvas.  He regrets the collection of Preacher trade editions lying in mylar under his bed.

He regrets leaving Professor Monroe and Dr Grey behind, but he's pretty sure they can deal with whatever's coming better than he can.  He regrets, maybe, burning fuck you into the wall of his bedroom the night he left home.  The room he grew up in isn't there anymore, even in his brain, because of that last, furious act.

His other bedroom, at the School, might be just as gone, but in his mind it's still there.  Dark wood, two beds, books and papers and shoes all over the floor.  Two rumpled beds, because Professor Summers wasn't on campus the day before yesterday, and there's no point in making your bed if nobody who cares is checking.

The bed he left, if it still exists, smells like him, but it smells like Bobby, too.  Because Bobby needs, all the time.  He wants and wants and he can't ever touch.  He always says, "We're working on it," meaning him and Rogue, but they aren't, not really.  Rogue is fun and pretty, but she's poison to a touch, and no amount of Bobby wanting is going to change that.  Bobby has to get his skin fix other ways.

They never start out in more than t-shirts and boxers, and usually St John's shirt comes off in the first minutes.  Bobby's mouth goes all over his skin -- down his throat, across his chest, over his belly.  Hands everywhere. He never thought about his skin before, other than checking his face for the usual teenage damage, but Bobby makes him love it.  Like he's slick and sexy and fast, smooth under Bobby's palms.

It's its own education.  He remembers straddling Bobby's waist and just looking for a long time before diving in.  Soft stubble against his tongue, moving down Bobby's cheek to his throat.  Kisses that'll leave marks across his chest.  Flat nipples never really stood up like a girl's, but the noises Bobby makes when St John presses his mouth there are still worth it.

Nails, scratching lightly, all over.

He knows, deep down, that it was never about his skin.  But he has skin, and it's not even slightly poisonous, and sometimes it's enough just to be there and willing.

He reached down first.  Hooked inside Bobby's boxers, stroking his ass, and Bobby's eyes were huge and wide, looking down on him.

"Okay?"

"... okay.  Yeah."

Kissing the boy on top of him.  He slid Bobby's shorts off and the touching thing was something else again.  He learned the shape of Bobby's ass in his hands, the feel of the skin on his thighs.  Soft, soft skin where hip and thigh met. Places he kissed.  Bobby hard and slick and rubbing over St John's chest.

It's been two days since the last time, but he hasn't had a chance to shower, and he can still smell it.  He thinks probably Wolverine could smell it too -- he must have been able to.  Just this occasional look to which St John could offer nothing but his best silent 'fuck off.'

They never really did anything, just touched each other, all over.  Rubbed and tangled and kissed.  He remembers being on his back with a leg hooked around Bobby's, rubbing against him frantically.  Biting his tongue, because it would be so easy to say things when they mess around, and most of those things would result in it never, ever happening again.

So.  Just him and Bobby, wrapped up and kissing.  Bobby holding him down and thrusting against him.  The kind of oh-god-feels-good that still twists inside him.

When St John came, he bit down, hard, on Bobby's shoulder.  He wonders if those marks are still there.

And then Bobby just climbed off him and walked off to shower.

St John remembers curling around himself, naked in the wrecked bed, rubbing his fingers through the various wet layers on his belly.  Letting the smell slide into his skin.  He was going to shower in the morning, or sometime when it was finally enough.

Magneto twists in his seat to look at St John.  Old, grey eyes.  He didn't follow this man for his sympathy.

"Are you hungry?"

"I'm always hungry."

It's probably a good sign when Mystique finds them a town and hikes in with him, looking like nothing so much as a father, and feeds him in a little formica-topped diner.  She doesn't comment when St John orders absolutely nothing with nutritional value, just pays the waitress and drinks her coffee.

Even looking like a dad -- not his dad, which is probably good, since the sight of the guy even at this distance would definitely keep him from eating -- she looks, just a bit, like a woman.  Something about her eyes.

Walking back through the bush towards the helicopter, carrying a take-out bag for Magneto, who wanted to sleep, she says, "Love's a bitch, kid."

St John blinks at her. "What?"

She shrugs and sheds her normal-human-dad-looking skin.  Walks too fast for him to keep up without running, so he doesn't bother.  There aren't that many paths through the bush.  He knows where he's going.


jane
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