How is a guy with untamed ice powers supposed to wipe his tears? 1500 words. This scene has been in my head forever and I'm obsessed with it. Would draw it if I could draw. It's so soft and sweet you guys, I can't even-
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“Oh, sorry. I forgot you can’t swim with your ice thing.”
The words hit him like a train. You can’t swim. His throat choked on a protest. “It’s alright. M-Maybe next time, when I f-figure out how to control it.”
“You could make us an ice rink!” his friend teased. Robin forced out a laugh. He lifted his hand in an awkward wave and tried not to run on his way back to the dorm. Please, for once, don’t be there, he prayed to Jay. He felt tears prickle in his eyes. Nonono-
Thankfully, Jay had answered his prayers. He was nowhere to be seen. Robin collapsed onto his bed and curled his knees to his chest. His breath came out in thick, shuddering bursts of mist. I can’t swim. I can’t swim. I can’t- No, I’ll get this figured out. I’ll get this under control. I can do this. I can- What am I going to do if I can’t swim? Without swimming, I am nothing. I can’t- I can’t I can’t I can’t-
The cold wasn’t the only reason he trembled now. A thick frost crept its way across the top of his duvet and up the wall behind his back. It surrounded him in a halo of ice. The heat behind his eyes didn’t make it past his eyelashes. Tears were pouring out now and he tried to wipe them away. As soon as his hands drew across his cheeks, icy whiskers formed. He made the mistake of dragging the heel of his palms under his eyes. His eyes froze shut.
“Oh, god-” Robin stumbled off of his bed, slipping on the frost. He landed solidly on his butt and a yelp escaped from his mouth. It shook him, hurting his head more than anything. It had been years since the last time he fell like that. Something about the desperate grasp for stability, the shock that sprang through his whole body- it made him feel like a little kid again. It was humiliating. The only thing keeping a sob from wrenching itself out of his throat was the burning ice on his eyelids. He blindly felt his way to the bathroom. The blow dryer thankfully still sat on the bathroom counter. He turned it on- hopefully to high heat- and pointed it at his face. He would have felt ridiculous if he wasn’t so miserable. Over the noise of the blasting hot air, he didn’t hear the open and close of the dorm room door.
“What are you doing?” Robin nearly jumped out of his skin and turned off the blow dryer. He spun around, blinking away his defrosted tears. The remnants quickly froze again, thankfully further down his cheek. His face would have grown red with shame if it wasn’t already red from the cold. Jay stood in the entryway, as far from Robin as possible. As usual. He was lugging two massive jugs of water and held a look of confusion on his face, alongside barely concealed judgment.
“N-Nothing.” Robin sniffed.
“Are you… crying?” Jay dropped the jugs next to him instead of taking them to their usual spot.
“No,” Robin squeaked out. He felt another wave hit him. “I c-can’t-” His chest heaved and his eyes squeezed shut and he tried so damn hard to hold it in. “I can’t. I can’t t-talk. I can’t swim. I can’t do anything and I can’t even cry about it.” The cursed tears poured forth once again. Despite his better judgment, Robin instinctively set down the hair dryer and reached up to his eyes to wipe away the offending liquid. Again, crystals took hold of his eyelashes and covered his vision in a field of frost. “Ow ow ow-”
“Well, don’t touch them-” He felt Jay’s hands on his, pulling him away from his own face. He felt the heat soak through, the frost on his palms melting away. Jay immediately dropped his hands and lurched away. “Sorry!”
Still blind, Robin reached out for him. “Nonono, come back.”
He felt Jay shuffle away from him. “I’ll burn you!” he protested.
“My eyes are f-frozen shut, you ass. You’re n-n-not going to burn me.” He made contact with Jay, who gasped and flinched. “I’ll give you f-frostbite sooner than you’ll burn me.” Again, the heat soaked through him. He gripped Jay’s arm and felt downward for his hand. Thankfully, Jay did the rest of the work for him and reached up.
Slowly, gently, he caressed the frost around Robin’s eyelids and the tears melted away. Jay's hands turned the icy whiskers into plumes of steam. Robin’s vision returned to him and he found Jay looking utterly pathetic. His brows were scrunched up in desperate pity and it made Robin want to release an angry laugh. He was so useless that his abrasive roommate felt bad for him. Robin stared past Jay and into the hall, though there was nothing on the blank wall to look at. He didn’t want to see his despair reflected so clearly in Jay’s soft brown eyes. Jay continued to wipe Robin’s frozen cheeks until his tears had evaporated and his face was completely dry. Finally, his hands fell back to his side. The cold immediately swept in to replace the warmth he had left on Robin’s cheeks.
“Why were you crying?” He asked.
Robin glared at him and it took everything to swallow down the new wave of tears. “I already told you. It’s… everything.” He gestured vaguely. He wanted more than anything to get out of this cramped bathroom, but Jay was still blocking the exit. Unlike Jay, he had never been shy of touching others. But he didn’t want to chance any more intimacy today. He also didn’t want to know what it would feel like if he reached out and the guy jumped away from him again.
“I can’t cry, either,” Jay said. Robin glared at him in confusion. “It evaporates.” He shrugged and returned to the jugs behind him. “I guess that’s why they put us together.”
“S-so we can help each other cry?” Robin joked half-heartedly.
Jay snickered. “Sure. Though I don’t think it would help me feel better if you poked my eyes.” Robin followed him into the room.
“D-did you cry much?” He asked impulsively, immediately filled with regret. “When you f-found out?” What a stupid thing to ask.
Jay graced him with an answer nonetheless. “I sure tried. Before I came here, my mom thought I had a really bad fever.” He crossed his arms loosely, body wanting to protect itself without trapping in the heat. He averted his eyes to the frost around Robin’s bed without really seeing it. “One day, she touched my forehead and… burned her hand.” His voice petered out, ending in a whisper. Robin swore he saw moisture gloss over his eyes, but it was gone in an instant. “I can’t hug my mom.”
He said it like it was a fact of life. Something to live with and move on from. As if it wasn’t something that could shatter a person. Jay swallowed, cleared his throat, and refocused on the frost. He knelt, touching the crystals that had crept over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. A mist leapt from his fingertips and disappeared into the air. “What is this?”
“A tripping hazard,” Robin grumbled. His voice was a little too revealing. Jay looked up at him with a sly grin, running his hand across the ice.
“I guess we better get some salt.” He continued running his hands across the frost and Robin could see now that he was determined to clean it all up himself. Something like delight seemed to dance behind Jay’s eyes as he swept the floor methodically. The ice vanished quickly and Jay made his way across the bed and up the wall without further comment.
“Thanks,” Robin said, hoping it was enough to cover both the clean-up and the awkward bathroom encounter.
“Sure. Hey, we’re sort of stuck with each other now. So…” Jay climbed back off of the bed and cast him a too-serious glance. “If you need somebody to talk to. Or unstick your eyes for you…” A smile quirked at his lips. Robin tried to hide his own grin with a scrunched up nose.
“S-s-same to you.” He stuck his hand out as if to offer a handshake. He wasn’t sure what he meant by it, but it felt like the right thing to do. They weren’t exactly enemies that needed to call a truce, but he still hadn’t gotten over the rejection that had started these sour feelings in the first place. Jay stared at his hand for far too long. Robin’s fingers trembled with the self-supplied freeze, but he refused to put his hand back in his warmer-toasted pocket.
Finally, Jay took it. They both jumped. The juncture of hot and cold shot through their hands like a jolt of electricity. It quickly faded into an easy warmth. The kind a person was supposed to feel like. Robin stared at their hands, as if there was something there he could see that would make it make sense. But of course it already made sense. What else was supposed to happen when you combined fire and ice?
