#juxtaphase

@juxtaphase​ asked:  “ i had no idea if that was going to work. “

His knuckles still smarts from a punch gone south. Chin surprisingly, mysteriously, untouched despite the fist he KNOWS should have hit him. Sweater feeling looser than it had an hour earlier, as if the imprint of the hand to his shoulder were unraveling the weave. (Why that sticks he doesn’t know; though the fact it had come moments before that swing? It nags and pulls at his mind.) With a grunt he jimmies the sticky door open, shouldering in before glancing back at the face he hadn’t expected to see, well, ever again.

“It ain’t much,” he murmurs, eyes glancing at the sparse walls he calls home. Clean, though minimal. Floors scuffed and couch a weary brown. “Can stay as long as ya need...” A few steps take him to the fridge, bag of peas removed and held to his aching knuckles. He should say something. He knows. But perhaps he’d been tipsier than thought. “Never did get around to sayin’ why you’re here. Not exactly the name anyone looks up while on leave...”

        It never entered her head that she’d be doing this again, that she’d leave the first place she had called home in years, but it needed to happen. In some ways, it was inevitable. Everyone at the school was so welcoming, so willing to support her and offer understanding... but they didn’t understand, how could they?

        And so they became just another chorus of voices she couldn’t escape and there had been days Rogue couldn’t figure out which was worse; the voices in her head or the ones around her.

        It was suffocating.

        So she’d left, packed a bag and hit the road again. Though this time most of her time on the ‘road’ had been spent flying -thanks to Ms. Marvel for that little trick- and when fatigue had reared its ugly head she’d reverted back to her thumb and the kindness of strangers. For the first time in what had been years she wasn’t a mutant, well, she was a mutant but the people around her didn’t know that. She’d landed a job in a greasy spoon waiting tables and provided she could keep the customers and staff from touching her she could stay there for as long as she wanted.

        It was late on a Friday night when she’d finished her shift, the small town she lived in that was so easy for folk to miss on the map was slowly calling it a night and all that was left for her to do was walk back to her small apartment a few blocks away and do the same. 

        Not tonight, however. The fates had something else in store for her that night. Maybe she’d take Destiny up on her offer and get her to check into her future; it was better than any magazine horoscope.

        He was skilled, keeping to the shadows and barely making a sound and if she hadn’t had some training with the X-Men he might have gone completely undetected and part of her wished she hadn’t seen him at all. This guy wasn’t your run of the mill thief because most thieves couldn’t phase through solid walls, most thieves left a mess, some way to track them, at least in small towns like this they did. 

        Jus’ pretend you ain’t seen nothin’, girl. It was a mantra repeated in her mind over and over as her pace began slowing to a crawl and then to a complete stop. It wasn’t her place to get involved, she was supposed to be living a normal life... but if word got out that a mutant was in town paranoia was sure to follow and a witch hunt soon after. Yeah, small towns loved to do that, she knew from personal experience.

        So there she was, her shoulder pressed against a nearby wall as she’d figured he’d take the same way out as he had taken to get in; turns out it was a good judgement call.

@juxtaphase

alskdjfalskdjf HI HAVE I TOLD YOU I LOVE YOU YET? because i do. and you have been such a marvelous person to get to know and talk to. i really am so excited to explore your it verse that you wrote up 100%. like hands down i’m so stoked to write this out with you and really get to dive in there. i think its going to be a goddamn treat. but really thank you so much this all just – it really does mean the world to me. i know i say that a lot but hot damn it really does.