Moth to a Snowflake

((Disclaimer: X-men is not mine in any way and I make no money from it. Wish I did, but no. Never read the comics much, so this story is based roughly on the setting in the X-men movies. And this is a fantasy, so please remember out there in the real world to always use protection. Note: "---" is speech. [---] is thought. ))

God I was bored. I hated the danger room training. Not for the training itself. No. For the goddamn waiting. Always waiting. Waiting for the simulations to load, for people getting into uniforms, for newbies to be tested, for tactics to be discussed. After the first few times I simply gave up even trying to pay attention. Instead I settled for spinning my lighter around in my pocket endless times while dreaming of my next cigarette.

When we were finally allowed to begin, I'd just let my fire explode with full force, often damaging the danger room, but just as often defeating the damn simulation in about five minutes. The others would usually be pissed at me, but I seriously couldn't care less. I didn't need all their crap. I didn't need them.

This particular day we had been waiting for ages and ages. I was just about to walk out and let the others grow old waiting, when we were finally allowed in. Turns out this new guy had arrived and he had been tested before we started. I didn't listen to the tactics as usual, so I didn't catch what the guy's power was. Not that I cared much either.

Somehow my eyes drifted to the new guy while Scott droned on about the simulation. He was just a little taller than I was, a good deal more naturally muscular than me and when he looked at me I was shocked to find that his eyes were a piercingly, glowing blue. Even with his mousy hair, neutral features and too-damn-friendly air he had me fascinated. We were finally allowed in but I couldn't care less about the damn simulation. My eyes were glued to the blue eyed hunk.

And then I saw what his power was. In an instant his body glazed over with crisp blue ice the same color as his eyes and the temperature around him dropped immediately to a chill. He looked absolutely other worldly, and considering how many other weird looking mutants I knew, that was saying a lot. He turned back and looked at me with those icy eyes and I was totally gone in the beauty of this person. Completely forgetting that we were supposed to fight, I was knocked out cold in an instant and woke up a few hours later on a table in the infirmary.

Jean looked me over and pronounced me good as new, although I now sported an all to painful bump on my forehead. As soon as I was allowed to go, I slouched back to my room while smoking. My head hurt and at that moment I needed my nicotine enough to not care at all if any of the old farts would come along and catch me smoking in the mansion.

When I reached my room, I stiffened when I saw that my door was ajar. I was already pretty grumpy but the thought that some prick thought he could just barge into my room made me absolutely blazing with anger. I flicked on my lighter and was already rolling a growing orb of fire between my fingers when I heard movement from inside the room.

I kicked open the door and presented the intruder with one of my biggest fire displays, hoping to scare him shit-less with my flaming formations, blossoming out fiends and dragons in the roaring rings of fire swirling around me. Lying in the normally unoccupied bed on the other side of my room was none other than the icy beauty from before. When the door crashed open he sat up from his relaxed state with his arms behind his head, and looked at me with a startled expression in his mesmerising eyes.

I almost forgot why I was putting on the show and felt my grasp on the flames slowly die out. But as surprised as I was to see the hottest ice-cube on earth in my room, I hadn't forgotten my anger at the invasion of my privacy.

"What the hell are you doing in my room?!"

He blinked at my snarling, slowly put his feet on the floor and sat up straight looking at me. His voice was a velvety smooth tenor when he spoke to me.

"Didn't they tell you? I'm your new roommate."

My jaw dropped and I just stared at him in desperate disbelief.

[No. Life couldn't be that cruel...]

After a few moments of shocked silence, my gorgeous roommate stood up and slowly made his way to the door, reaching out his hand towards me.

"Name's Bobby Drake. Nice to meet you."

I didn't take his hand. I didn't trust myself to touch him. Instead I glared at him with as much hostility as I could muster. I could not get close to him. I just couldn't. I knew if I did I'd be doomed.

After a while he let his hand drop and seemed to take the hint that I refused to greet him. He smiled at me in a way that made me seethe with anger again. It was the kind of smile that meant to be understanding and patient. I hated that. Only goodie goodies and naïve, romantic morons give anyone that kind of smile. He flopped down onto the bed, slipped on a pair of headphones and resumed his relaxed position, leaving me still smoldering in the doorway.

When I realized he had decided to ignore me, I kicked the door closed behind me and sent him a last seething look, before heading for my own bed. My general mess from the other side of the room had been dumped unceremoniously on my bed (by Scott no doubt), and I simply shook my bedspread, making all the crap fly out onto the floor again, before roughly dropping down on it without removing my filthy boots.

The whole situation was ridiculous. We spent more than three hours in the room in tense silence, daring each other to break it. I opened and closed my lighter a billion times as I always do when I need to do something with my fingers, but it never seemed to bother him unlike everybody else. I hated him for being so at ease with himself and his surroundings, and as much as I hated that too, he was already under my skin. When the bell rang for dinner, he got up and left, closing the door quietly behind him, leaving me alone at last, cursing myself for my terribly bad luck.

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He was the perfect roommate. Always tidy and unobtrusive. Clean and friendly. God I hated it. In my head I begged for some higher power to make him a prick. To give me a good solid reason to hate him like I did most other people. I did my best to piss him off, going out of my way to annoy him as much as possible, hoping against hope that I could drive him away and make him ask for a new roommate. In the end it just made me hate him even more that he never got upset. If I got in his face, he just gave me his usual patient smile and ignored me. He was driving me nuts!

And most of all, I hated the fact that I was falling hard for him. I fought desperately against it, but I had lost the battle at the first second. I really really liked him. Even though I had never opened my mouth without insulting him, I soon came to consider him my only friend. He was always there. And he never even got angry with me. He accepted me, even when I was several times more annoying than I had to be, he just smiled at me and simply stayed around. God I hated him.

And then something happened that made my hatred peak to new heights. I had a nightmare. One of those hellish nightmares that forces you to relive the worst times of your life in frightening detail, and you're unable to wake up, even though you know what's coming. Just when I was screaming my lungs out in terror at the scenes unfolding before my inner eyes, I was awakened by a cool hand on my forehead. I realized to my horror that I had screamed out loud and that the hand was Bobby's.

[No. No please. Don't let it be true. Don't let him see my fear.]

But it was far too late. His mellow voice mumbled soothing things to me in the darkness, making it all too clear to me that my only weakness was now fully exposed to him. I had unwillingly let my guard down in my sleep and I felt positively naked, letting him see a sliver of my feelings, before I managed to lock them down again. I smacked his hand away and yelled at him.

"Fuck off! Leave me alone!"

To my distress I felt tears on my face and turned away from him angrily. I could feel his eyes on my back as he just stood there in the darkness. It felt like ages before he finally went back to his own bed. How I hated him for seeing me like this. Hated, hated, hated him. The next morning he even dared asking me if I was ok. I shot an enormous fireball at his bed, hoping to force him to loathe me by reducing it to ash. To my complete anguish, he simply froze my fireball with lightning reflexes, making it die out in an instant.

How I hated him. Hated him, hated him, hated him. He made me go completely out of my mind, and though I was already considered something of an ass by most people, my hatred of my roommate made me lash out and break rules more than ever. I completely refused to enter the danger room with him ever again, to avoid the sight of his beautiful icy armor that made my head spin and was very nearly kicked out of the school for it. But Bobby came to my defense and somehow persuaded Scott to let me stay. Why he would even do that for me was completely beyond me and it only served to make me try even harder to piss him off.

Months passed and even for a prick like myself, it was getting exhausting to keep up a constant flow of mayhem and chaos to keep myself at war with a pacifist. So eventually I let it fade out. I wouldn't say I gave up, but I refused to waste all my energy on a lost cause anymore. Instead I ignored Bobby with all my might. But my mind refused to follow suit, and when I wasn't having nightmares, I was having equally disturbing dreams about him. Even when I was awake, I would catch myself daydreaming about him, loathing both him and myself intensely every time.

But worst of all, I let myself get used to him. I woke up every morning to his harmonic humming and watched him do his stomach crunches while I pretended to still be asleep. Every night after dinner he would study while listening to his soppy pop music in his headphones, while I played with my lighter and practised making new figures with the flames. Every night before bedtime he would read and wish me goodnight even though I never answered.

On the weekends he would get up annoyingly early, but always managed to leave the room so quietly I never woke up and had a chance to yell at him for it or anything. And I missed him. I hated both myself and him for it, but as soon as he wasn't there, the room was suddenly a very uncomfortable place.

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And then he just had to go and get himself hurt. In a totally non-mutant kind of way no less. He got appendicitis without realizing it and was overwhelmed by by a lurch of pain, just as he was crossing a road on his way back to the mansion after a Sunday game of basketball with some kids from school. Some crazy guy in his car clipped him by the curb while he was doubled up from pain, and he was hit in the head, causing him to pass out and collaps in the tall grass on the side of the road.

When I accidentally overheard some kids say he hadn't been seen for hours, I went crazy from worry, and stormed out to find him. I asked around and backtracked his movements, until I almost fell over him not half a mile from the mansion. He was breathing, but looked awful and I wouldn't risk leaving him. So I sent up and enormous wreath of flame into the air, and as I expected someone at the mansion spotted it and help arrived soon.

While waiting for help to arrive I sat by him, feeling numb with terror at the thought that he might not wake up again. What would I do then? I felt cold inside at the thought of returning to the room, knowing he wouldn't be there. And if he never came back... I clung to every beat of his heart, as I held his wrist, feeling for it again and again.

My mind kept replaying the same line over and over again. I tried to block it out, but to no avail. I heard it ringing through my soul for hours on end..

[You never even had the balls to kiss him. You never even had the balls to kiss him. You never even had the balls to kiss him...]

When he was taken to the hospital I just stood where I had found him, looking at the spot where he had lain, feeling unable to move. I felt like an idiot. I thought back to all the times I could have touched him. All the times I could have talked to him. Could have been with him. Could have... kissed him. I cursed life for treating me so cruelly, and then cursed myself for letting perfectly good opportunities slip through my fingers. I knew I couldn't change my hatred of the world and everyone in it overnight, but I decided then and there to make a damn good effort. For his sake. And it started right there.

I did it. I finally admitted to myself that all my carefully maintained hatred towards him was a really bad cover-up for the fact that I loved him. Deeply, truly, madly. And like any old, soppy love story, I had to come close to losing him all together, before life kicked me hard enough in the ass to make me realize how dear he was to me.

After a sleepless night, I was allowed to go visit him. Scott was mercifully neutral when I asked permission (unusually politely of me I might add) to go visit Bobby during school hours. No comments about my sudden concern. Just a nod. [Thank God]. At the hospital I was told what had happened to him, that he was awake and alert, but that I was to keep my visit short and quiet. I didn't even argue. I just needed to see him again so badly that I'd do anything.

When I stepped into his room, he looked like he was asleep, and I stood for a few minutes in the doorway just watching him and clinging to the view of his chest moving steadily up and down. There were other beds in the room, but they were empty, so I quietly moved in and sat myself down on the bed next to him. It creaked and his eyes opened slowly, to reveal the startling blue color I loved so much.

"I knew it. I knew you'd come."

His voice cracked and I had no idea how to reply. I just sat there spinning my lighter and looked down at my hands, unable to meet his sleepy gaze. He swallowed and licked his lips.

"God I'm so thirsty. The painkillers they keep pumping into me makes my mouth go dry as cardboard."

I didn't even answer, I just poured him a glass of water from the stand next to his bed, and helped him sip some of it through a straw. As his head fell back onto the pillow, he sighed and his eyes slid closed. I felt numb again and was hit with an overwhelming need to touch him. To convince myself that he was still there and alive. I swallowed a lump the size of a football and finally gathered the courage to just reach out and take his hand laying limply by his side.

His eyes flew open and he looked at me with an expression not unlike the one he'd had when I'd tried to scare him with my fire-display that first day. I was terrified he would laugh or shake me off. But I was absolutely stunned with shock when he simply smiled, squeezed my hand and closed his eyes again with an even deeper sigh.

I stayed by his side, holding his hand for the rest of the visiting hours and I didn't even care that a nurse saw me holding his hand, when she came to ask me to say goodbye. I couldn't speak. I was unable to even say goodbye to him. When I finally forced myself to let go of his hand, he simply looked at me and whispered:

"I'll be home soon."

I felt my throat constrict and just nodded before turning around and leaving him. [Home]. That's what it was. That thing that made our room comfortable when he was there. It was home when he was in it. I had never felt at home anywhere before I knew him. Maybe it's true what they say. You know that stupid old saying: 'home is where the heart is'. I always thought it was a load of crap, but at that moment, some of the truth in it hit me.

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I managed to drag myself through the following day without him, though I avoided our room as much as possible. I just couldn't face the emptiness. I was beside myself with a mixture of worry and joy when I saw him from an upper window entering the mansion grounds through the main gate a while after dinner. I raced back to our room, just in time to see him unlock the door and drag himself inside. Unable to contain my happiness that he was back, I banged open the door, only to realize that he had been leaning against it and was now splayed on the floor, clutching his stitches and groaning with pain.

I was terrified when I saw what I'd done and fell to my knees beside him, gibbering madly with apologies.

"Oh shit! Bobby! Oh no, I'm so sorry! Are you ok? Please tell me you're ok!"

I cradled his face in my hands and stroked his forehead gently until his pained expression faded and he opened his eyes. He didn't speak, just looked at me with a serious gaze that was very unusual for him. I was worried sick.

"Please Bobby, please. Tell me you're ok!"

After a long look and a few deep breaths, he laid his hand on top of mine on his cheek.

"I am now. "

It was like time stopped and we saw each other really for the first time. His eyes shone into mine and I stopped breathing for a while, lost in the exquisite feeling of his cool hand on mine and his loving gaze. How could he look at me like that? After all I'd done to him? I was lost in wonder but my aching heart reached out for him so intensely I could have screamed from it.

I woke up to reality when he shifted ever so slightly. It made me realize he was lying on a cold hard floor, when he should be in a warm bed recovering from his stitches and concussion. I gently helped him up from the floor and onto his bed. I closed the door to our room and pulled the curtains shut, while he undressed. Then I tucked him in and pulled a chair to his bedside. After what I'd just done to him, I wanted to make absolutely sure he was alright.

I sat there with him for a while, flicking on my lighter and shutting the lid over it repeatedly. As usual when I was in our room doing nothing, I started playing with the fire between my fingers. I saw him looking at me and found myself making beautiful patterns and shapes for him. Flaming hearts and ribbons danced around my fingertips. Burning roses and birds blossomed out of my palms. Fiery wolves and horses raced from my one hand to the other. Seeing the dreamy look in his eyes was worth it all and with massive concentration, I conjured a tiny elegant ballet dancer, twirling and swaying from the tip of my lighter, without even touching the fire.

When the ballet dancer slowly formed back into the small natural flame the lighter produced, he looked at me with so much love in his eyes, that I had to look down to stop myself from crying.

"God, that was beautiful John."

I couldn't help but smile at my feet. Somehow my voice abandoned me whenever he spoke to me, so I just settled for looking at him from time to time, while he slowly drifted into sleep. After sitting in the darkness for ages just listening to his steady breathing, I finally drifted over to my own bed. I fell asleep in seconds and for once I didn't dream. I just slept.

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I woke up in the early hours of the morning not quite sure what had awakened me. I listened for Bobby's steady breathing, but instead I heard a soft hiss and a chattering breath. I was by his bedside in a flash. He had hugged the covers tightly around him, but was obviously still cold. I was seriously worried, as he usually never seemed to feel cold. He was Iceman after all. I put my hand on his shoulder and found that he was awake when he glanced up at me from his curled up position. My worry must have shown on my face in the early morning light, because he smiled at me in a soothing kinda way.

"It's ok. I'm just a little worn out. Is it always this cold in here?"