((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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