Author Notes: I just feel slashy today. Dedicated to Nacey for introing the pairing well enough for me to get a feel for the entire concept and partially in response to Shade's challenge to write something that isn't L/R (sorry, Toad doesn't make an appearance). Rogue cameos. I like her. Thanks to Beth and Ann for the quick critique--always enjoyed and appreciated.
Feedback: Smiled over with coffee

*****

St. John was on the unvarnished wood floor outside Rogue's room for the fifth night in a row contemplating the plaster wall opposite him. At least this time, he remembered to bring a blanket, covering his slim body and tucked around his feet. So it wasn't the most comfortable place in the world. So it didn't make the top ten list for places to hang out. He was here, and the plaster was pretty fascinating. Really.

The dorms were more than merely the metaphorical warehouse for superheroes in training to be stored--they were the closest to family most of the kids had anymore. It was no surprise how quickly normal human social structure was adapted for use in the new environment, the cliques that developed, the stormy relationships born more of proximity than compatibility. Kitty and Jubes' close friendship, for one--however the hell they managed to get along was a mystery.

New mutants came in without expectations of anything at all except a vague hope that sleeping wouldn't be a dangerous occupation any longer and regular meals becoming more than a rare luxury. It took time for them to awaken to the simple fact that just because they were mutants didn't exclude them from being adolescents.

When Rogue came, however, a lot of things changed, and not only because she was young and pretty with an attractive number of issues and an unconscious knack for making men fall over themselves to protect her. Not only because her classification was alpha and she was temptingly dangerous in a way that men tended to find more irresistible than repellant, and not only because she slept badly and had boys lining up to comfort her through her nightmares--including St. John's erstwhile roommate Bobby, the whole reason St. John was on the floor right now contemplating his thumbnails. She threw things because she was the one who among them had survived the longest on her own--didn't someone say eight months?--and in her short time among them had survived two near-death experiences and managed to walk away with nary a scratch on perfect porcelain, highly toxic skin.

In short, she was their first living taste of their future career of choice and that just made them all settle down to think a little more than strictly healthy. Excluding her wasn't conscious--if anything, her mutation made her more one of them than many of the other, less genetically-enhanced mutants that wandered around and actually had a pretty good chance of a normal life without having to be paranoid about loosing themselves on the world without warning. Which every alpha knew intimately, normal life was never gonna work for them, no matter how much they wanted it or how they tried.

St. John supposed, as he crouched outside Rogue's door while Bobby comforted her through another nightmare, that resenting someone as nakedly scarred as Rogue was like trying to resent his cells for doing their little genetic polka in the wrong direction. DNA strands were about as impervious to hate as they come--how do you fight yourself? As a rule, St. John liked himself pretty well, fire-starting capabilities notwithstanding, and if he lost his abilities tomorrow, he'd miss it with the same longing he'd attribute to any other sense. So hating the girl was not an option, even if sometimes when he heard Bobby shuffling out of their room after a long day of training, he would have cheerfully covered her head with a pillow and left Jubilee a note to take it off when the girl fell unconscious.

Faintly, he could hear Bobby, talking her down while she tried to switch back into a language they could understand--half the time she had no idea what she was saying and they didn't have a resident interpreter to tell them what the problem was when Rogue woke up with someone else trying to speak through her mouth. Sometimes German, Polish, crossing into British English without effort, and the rare occasions she screamed for help in Japanese that really couldn't be attributed to Magneto, and St. John wondered if someone should maybe inform Wolverine that if he spent a few hours with Rogue, he might find out more about his past than he would at burned out missile silos on the other side of the country.

Maybe if Wolverine was back, someone else could take up babysitting duties for their resident schizophrenic and Bobby would stop following her around like a puppy asking to be kicked. Vicious thoughts, and St. John bit his lip against them and tuned himself back down when he felt the heat begin in the palms of his hands that always signaled a flare-up that would turn on every fire alarm in the place (too fucking sensitive for their own good, damn it) and bring Mr. Summers running with a worried expression and Dr. Grey to hunker down beside him and poke him until she understood what set him off this time.

This time. There wasn't going to *be* a 'this time', that was for certain, and shifting his legs he let himself slide to the floor and braced his forearms on his knees, waiting patiently until Rogue's voice finally stilled and another five minutes for Bobby to walk out.

"Hey," Bobby whispered, once the door was closed, and the close-cropped blonde hair shone a little as he looked down, eyes lost in shadow. "You okay?"

"Just a little insomnia," St. John answered, extending a now-safe hand for Bobby to pull him up, resettling the blanket over one shoulder. "She okay?"

"Think so. Won't talk about it this time--guess it was the Lab again."

The Lab. Didn't need more information than that. The Lab, the Statue, the Concentration Camp, the Big Ones so to speak, the ones that brought the resident telepaths awake until they'd disciplined themselves back to sleep through it. Rogue didn't accept comfort from Dr. Grey, from Professor Xavier, even from her friends--that she took it from Bobby was probably more because of his utter determination to be of use than any particular affection on her part. Vicious thoughts again, and St. John genuinely liked Rogue for the person she was, even if getting to know her was just on this side of impossible. She played with them and worked with them and joked with them, but everyone felt the slight and deliberate distance she kept, the fact that behind her eyes at least four different personalities were in a constant state of flux and no one was ever quite sure which girl would wake up in the morning or go clubbing with them in the evening or wake them up at night.

Bobby seemed tired, no surprise with the fifth night running that Rogue's distress had pulled him out of bed, and St. John absently ran a hand down the younger boy's back--just past his eighteenth birthday and finally beginning to control his mutation well enough not to freeze random items under stress. Early days remembered with affection when St. John woke up to a room with Robert-specific air-conditioning and always knew that anything liquid in their room had a snowball's chance in hell of staying liquid for the night.

A good reason St. John had never been tempted to buy a pet fish and always got up thirty minutes before Bobby to defrost everything so there would be no sign of a bad night apparent when the he finally woke up. Luckily, Bobby subscribed to the late morning way of life, making St. John's personal quest that much easier.

"You're tense," St. John told him, and Bobby grinned a little as they walked in their room. Without much thought, he dropped on St. John's bed, nearest the door, and St. John proceeded kneel behind him to rub the knotted muscles along shoulders and back, absently removing the shirt that covered him and Bobby equally absently tossing it on the floor by the rug.

"Jean said she'd be getting better soon and it ain't happenin'. Shit, that feels good, Johnny. Don't stop."

Normal human skin temperature was somewhere near ninety-eight point six--St. John knew his own fluctuated between ninety-six after a draining use of his mutation and tended to hop upward into the low hundreds during stress or before a fight. Bobby went the opposite--dropped under stress, and the skin beneath his fingers was marvelously cool and smooth. He enjoyed it more than was really necessary, lingering on the line of his spine, over the slim waist, and he didn't even realize how he gave himself away until Bobby half turned on the bed in surprise (shit, St. John you're way more tired than you thought, to slip like that) and his hands moved instinctively over the bare chest before a belated reality check made him snatch his hands down.

They'd been friends for too long to be anything but at ease, even with the sudden shift that he really shouldn't have let happen like that--they'd shared a bed through their own nightmare days and picked up girls at clubs together and shit, they'd been around to watch each other lose their virginity, though Bobby's experience went a little less smoothly than anticipated and had pretty much cured him of bringing girls home who didn't get the reality of waking up with a guy who might accidentally freeze their underwear to the floor or a roommate who spent the morning patiently defrosting the leftover beer before pouring it out.

Hell, there wasn't anything they hadn't done together--except comfort Rogue and this. And this was something that St. John was relatively sure Bobby wasn't within a good mile of being anywhere near ready for.

Bobby's caught his, clear ice blue eyes wide and uncertain--knowing him as well as he did, St. John had expected something a little more along the lines of leaping from the bed in a single embarrassed movement and retreating to his own, and was already resigning himself to a morning of trying to unfreeze the clothes in their closet before Bobby woke up in abject humiliation at his loss of control. But the uncertainty was followed up with the lightest stroke across his cheek, eyes narrowing a little in thought and the lack of experience was obvious, when Bobby didn't know what to do.

As stated, the devirginizing incident hadn't been as successful as hoped, though the sex thing had worked out well enough, that or the girl had been a champion faker.

Experience was something St. John had, though, and in more than theory, and hell, opportunity was opportunity. He leaned into the touch, feeling the fingers, cooler every second, slide down his cheek, over his neck, slowly to the edge of his t-shirt. Keeping focus on the blue eyes, St. John reached down and pulled it up over his head, tossing it aside and turning his head enough to catch an inch of cool flesh between his teeth, feeling the jerk of the body before him more than seeing it. Keeping his gaze on Bobby, he ran a hand along the captured arm, following the line of bone and developing muscle, then leaning forward to brush a careful kiss against cool lips. Measuring the reaction through the tension of the arm under his hand.

Of course, Bobby never did the expected.

Raising himself on his knees, he responded enthusiastically, always a good thing, and St. John was on his back with Bobby's tongue so far down his throat that it was a toss up whether sheer pleasure or his auto gag reflex would win in the end. Pleasure did of course--tilting his head to give better access, burying his hands in short blonde hair, the strong, hairless chest rubbing against him in a welcome coolness as he felt his temperature jump and fought to bring it down. Hands working the edge of his sweatpants and tracing all the skin in reach, Bobby's free hand buried in his hair and he'd never been kissed as if he was about to be eaten alive--and he couldn't say he didn't like it, even with a clumsy brush of teeth that cut his lip and the taste of blood thickening on his tongue.

If he was ten years older or five pounds lighter, if he hadn't trained for three years, he never would have had the strength to roll them on their sides; Bobby's body remarkably heavy. This put them back as equals, stroking the sweep of muscled back--but he didn't want to frighten him, which he had a good idea Bobby would be once the endorphins worked their way out of his system. Licking along the corner of Bobby's mouth, tasting the cool and sensitive skin of his throat, following the trace of the artery pulsing rapidly under the pale flesh.

"Yes, Johnny, that's great," Bobby whispered, the fingers in his hair tightening and he bit sucked lightly just under one ear. "God, you're warm." Curious hands stroking every available inch of exposed skin, cooling him down better than any internal controls could have--there were advantages to touching someone with their own built-in refrigeration. He paused at the hollow of the exposed throat and Bobby was on his back, arching like a cat being stroked in just the right way, and there was nothing to do but grin and enjoy the body stretched beneath his.

Another kiss, lacking the spontaneous strength of the first, a slow exploration of a mouth that tasted cool and almost minty, tracing the edges of teeth and twisting himself in knots just to get closer and see how much taste he could get. It was long and delicious and he'd lowered his entire weight on Bobby, cool hands massaging his back and sliding just under the edges of gray sweatpants and the touch against sensitive skin was enough to make him shiver.

"Johnny?" Traces of nervousness, suddenly being snapped from the endorphin rush, and St. John lifted his mouth, stroking dampening blonde hair back gently and grinned. Without another word, Bobby shifted until he could pull the blankets from under them and John settled down beside his best friend into silence, with Bobby's forehead pressed against his shoulder and a cool hand on his chest.

They didn't say anything, but with the shift of Bobby's body closer and the movement of one leg over his, St. John expected that maybe this could work after all.

If only Rogue would just sleep through the night, damn it.

The End.