Burning White (1/1) [Angelo, Jubilee, Paige]

Disclaimer: Whatever Santa brings me this year, you can bet your boots that it’s not going to be the rights to anyone or anything mentioned in this story.

Rating: Uh, strong 14A, or rather light R, for a few bad words, and implications of... issues.

::pause::

No, not Christmas porn.

Thanks to: Mike Smith, for beta’ing.

Archive: My site (Shameless, shameless, plug) http://cherryice.topcities.com , and anyone else who want it is welcome to it, though I wouldn’t mind it if you let me know.

*

“I thought you were smarter than this. I really did.”

Her eyes are glowing. They’re as good as burning. She’s sitting on the floor, her back against his unmade bed, hugging her legs close to her chest. Her eyes are blazing, but the way she’s sitting gives it all away.

It’s funny how he can only really read people at times like this.

She’s upset, he thinks with wonder. The chiquita is actually upset.

Huh.

“Look, Jubilation, I’ve heard it all before,” he says

“You forgot the part where you say ‘Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’”

Damn.

He told that to his mother, his friends, and then, it was true.

Or, at the very least, he believed it to be true.

“Don’t you have somewhere that you should be?” He asks her. She doesn’t say anything. He continues past her, into the bathroom, his steps sounding hollowly. “Say bed?” He suggests as he flicks the light switch on. Then flicks them off again. The light is blinding. “You wouldn’t want to get in trouble right before Christmas break, now would you?”

He doesn’t know what he’s doing this time. He doesn’t know anything.

And that’s the whole point.

He turns the taps in the sink gingerly, letting the water start to warm. There’s no sound other than the steady splashing of water, the soft tap of snow against the windows.

He hisses as he slides his hands under the tap. He knows, in theory that the water is no more than lukewarm, but it seems to singe him. He can almost see his skin retract from it.

“Serves you right,” she says from where she stands, leaning against the doorframe. Her hair is liquid midnight, her eyes obscured in shadows.

“Let me guess. You wonder what possessed me to take a walk in the snow at this hour,” he says, keeping his voice on an even keel. His reflection in the mirror looks dead.

“Actually, I was wondering what possessed you to come back.”

Ouch.

Ouch. Valid question, but still...

Ouch.

He thinks that he’s beginning to regain the feeling in his toes, but he’s not sure. There might be a burning pain down there, but it’s just so far way.

His eyes in the mirror, they don’t look dead. And that worries him more. They’re dark and shadowed, and he doesn’t like what he sees when he looks too deep.

So he shakes the water off of his hands, gives them a perfunctory wipe on the towel. The fabric screams against his skin.

He pushes past her, and into his room. He picks up a black lump from the floor by the door, strips off his tank top, slides a hoody over his head. If she cares whether or not she sees him without a shirt on, then she shouldn’t be in his room at this hour. It doesn’t, however, mean that he’s going to change his pants, even though they’re soaked through and through. Snow does melt, ice water clinging to your core, but he has some sense of dignity.

It suddenly occurs to him that this is the shirt that he thought it was.

There’s a lot more light in the room than there should be, considering that it’s been snowing from the south for long enough that the windows in his room should be blanketed.

One of the windows only has a splotchy covering, like a blanket that moths have been at too long.

Jubilee’s still standing at the bathroom door. She’s looking dead at him, the tilt of her chin defiant.

Damn.

She didn’t...

He feels a sudden flash of anger, of panic. His emotions have become so mixed lately that it’s hard to tell where any one thing ends and the next begins.

He doesn’t remember running to the window, or opening it. He’s starting to have flashouts, and even he’s going to admit that that’s bad.

On second, he’s standing there, looking at her, and next he’s leaning too far out an open window, and all he can see is white powder on white powder on white powder. There’s nothing in between.

There are hands on his arms, and he can feel their heat even through the fabric of his sweater. They yank him back, and he stumbles over his own feet, overbalancing backwards.

He hits what has to be the only clear place on his floor, the impact sending shockwaves through him. His extremities have chosen this moment to start to regain feeling.

She’s standing, towering overtop of him, outlined in the window. He wants to jump up, shake her, make her pay, but he can’t even move. All he can do is snarl, so he does the best job of it he can.

“You think that scares me? I’ve seen Wolvie do worse, just because he hasn’t had his coffee yet.”

There are a thousand things, a million things that he’d say, that he’d ask, if he could articulate. How dare she? What gave her the right? Why wouldn’t she mind her own damn business?

“You keep this up, Angelo, you’re fucked. You know that.”

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

He thinks that he must manage to say it outloud, because her eyes widen suddenly. She mutters something under her breath that would make a sailor proud, and then her eyes are boring into him again. “Don’t tell me that this is because of her, because of him. Don’t tell me that you’re that stupid.”

For a bit, he wanted to blame it on her, so that maybe he could chase it away, so that there would be someone else to shoulder it aside from him.

The truth is, though, that he already had a problem. He’s flirted before with where he is now. Sometimes it was out of boredom, sometimes it was to fit in, and sometimes, too often, it just filled a void, when all that he could see for the future was the barrio and turf wars. He wanted something more, sometime more.

He was clean when he came here. Frost had been clear on that.

Sometimes, when he’s in a particularly introspective mood, he thinks that maybe it’s just part of the way he was made. Maybe he’ll always be looking for something more, and maybe he’ll never find another way to fill the void.

It doesn’t help matters much.

So, no, it’s not just her, with her shining hair and her bright eyes and her clean smell. So, maybe, it’s *him*, just a bit, with his moods and his near-obsession and that discontent and passion that burns as hot as the fire that’s taken away the rest of what he is.

Or maybe it’s not either, or maybe its a bit of both, or its his cool, unthinking, *unassuming * friendship, or maybe it’s the thought of what could be; but he can’t blame it on Jono. Can’t blame it on Paige. Could never blame it on Paige. Can’t blame it on Everett, who’s a good guy, or Cassidy, who treats him like a son, even when he shouldn’t. He can’t blame it on Monet, because she couldn’t care less. He’d like to blame it on Frost, because sometimes, he’s sure that she knows.

He can’t blame Jubilee, who’s standing there, burning with anger and hurt and betrayal because she doesn’t understand.

“Go back to bed, chiquita,” he says, and even he can hear the fatigue in his voice. He can see the look on her face, and he knows that he’s not going to win this one easily, but he just doesn’t want to get into it now. “Go on. You got it all.”

“And why, exactly, is it that I should believe you on that one?”

Because he kept it all in one place. He’d tell her as much, but he knows that she wouldn’t believe him. “Just go to bed,” he says, finally, managing to pick himself up off the floor. He drops onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling, not even moving to make the mounds of covers and sheets more comfortable on his back, not until she leaves, the door clicking quietly shut behind her, and the only things in the world are his breathing and the tapping of snow against the windows, blunted needles on glass.

He knows she wouldn’t believe that he kept it all in one place.

He doesn’t really believe it.

Maybe he’s been crying for help. Maybe he wanted someone other than Jubilee to do this.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

*

The walls and classes close in around him. He’s grown too big for this place, but he’s still too small for the world

The Christmas tree reaches almost to the vaulted rafters. Cassidy had to fly Leech up to the top to put the star on, and Monet decorated the upper branches.

They decorated the rest of the tree as a group, they didn’t section it off and set to work, but you can clearly see each of their influences on it.

It’s not just that Frost used white, or that Paige hung hand-made wooden ornaments. It’s something in the way they’re hung, the positioning. Jubilee’s are thick, spread all over. Jono’s are hung farther back in the branches, Monet’s perfectly placed to catch and reflect the lights.

To his eyes, his contributions mar the effect. He’d used what was left in the bottom of the box after the others were done, couldn’t seem to get his work to fit in. He’s avoided looking at it since the morning they put it up, but it’s still managed to catch his eye every time he walked by. He doesn’t know why someone else doesn’t fix it. He’d just make it worse if he tried to make it any better.

This is the one night that Frost and Cassidy will let them leave thenlights on until morning, and they illuminate the entire room in gold and red and green and blue and orange and white.

There are stockings, ten of them, on the fireplace. Five are in a neat little row at the top of the mantle, the others hanging easily from the grate. Artie and Leech insisted that everyone leave one out this year.

It’s three-thirty in the morning. Frost and Cassidy have long since filled the stockings, deposited presents in big red boxes with little tags reading ‘From Santa Clause’ under the tree. It looks suspiciously like Frost has replaced whatever was in Cassidy’s stocking with lumps of coal.

He swings his bag around on his shoulder. It’s too light. He knows that it’s too light. That’s not the sum of his possessions on his back. That’s not everything he owns that’s not hardware. There’s a pocket on the front, and he opens it with one hand as he sets the bag on the hearth.

His hands aren’t shaking. Not even a little. There are no tremors running through his body, and he doesn’t want to slide back up to his room, wrap the covers tight around himself, block out the world. He doesn’t want another hit. Except for that yes, there are, and yes, yes, yes, he does.

He takes nine candy canes from his bag, setting them carefully down. Each of them is perfect, unbroken. He’s never before possessed an unbroken candy cane for more than an hour. He’s had these for days.

He slides a fruit punch one, blue and red, into Artie’s stocking. Leech’s is yellow on green, lemon-lime. They’re bright, childish, perfect.

Glaring white, shining out in the row. He suspects it’s almond, but it really doesn’t matter. Frost’s. White mixing with white, all uniform until you caught it out of the corner of your eye. Then it was filled with a wealth and depth of designs that you never would have suspected.

Red, white, blue. He carefully pokes it into Everett’s stocking, being careful not to snap it on the toys inside. He knows Ev better than almost anyone else, and yet he doesn’t really know him at all. The candy cane caught his eye, reminded him of Ev. He hates the thought, but he suspects that it’s because Ev is the omni-present stable one. Solid. Constant. There’s always red, white, and blue, and no one gives it a second thought, wonders.

Monet’s was easy. So was Cassidy’s. Classic for the proper princess. She wouldn’t be content with anything else, and he knows it. Green and white for Cassidy, because the old man *is* green. He’s basic and nurturing and everywhere. So he tucks in Monet's, and sets Cassidy’s atop the lumps inside his stocking.

Jono...

He debated getting Jono a lump of coal. He thinks now that it’s a good thing he didn’t, because Frost having done the same thing would really have taken the edge off of it. He didn’t think that there were actually people who made black candy canes, and he was right. The closest he found was a brown and silver one. The box said brownies and icing. His family never put icing on brownies, and if they had, then he suspects that it wouldn’t have been silver. Icing goes on cake, and it’s always unnerved him. It covers everything, especially when it’s on so thick. The thing of it is, you never know what’s underneath, and if you’re really unlucky, then there might not be anything. Just the icing shell.

Jubilee’s is red and orange, with tiny streaks of yellow, just because the colours reminded him of her sparks, and to him, that’s all tied up in what she is. Her energy, her honesty. She radiates it.

He looks at Paige’s stocking for some time, at the single candy cane left sitting on the hearthstones. Gold and white against the tiles. She has hair like the angel sitting on top of the tree behind him, and the eyes to match.

He picks it up quickly, shoving it into her stocking. He wonders if he’s broken it, but he doesn’t check, can’t check.

His stocking is the last on the bottom line of the grate. It’s stuffed as full as any of the others, but it’s somehow lacking. There’s a bit of soot smudged across it. He rubs at it with his hand, but it’s still there, a shadow staining the toe. He can smell the ashes in the grate, the lingering smoke mixing with the scent of pine drifting through the room. He leans over, touches the ashes, and they’re still warm. His fingers come away streaked with the same shadow, the same darkness, and he wants to punch something. He swipes his arm across, down, wiping the cinders across the top of his stocking where his name is done in bumpy stitches.

His fingers are still obscured, the darkness merely spread. The white stitches seem to have soaked up the ash.

He grabs his back pack from the floor, swings it over his shoulder as he turns on his heel. His booted feet echo loudly.

The candy canes are window dressings. His present to them all is that when they wake, he will be gone so far that they can’t find him. He figures he’ll get lost in a ghetto somewhere, where the press of minds is too thick for Frost or Xavier to find him, even with Cerebro.

The doorknob is cold beneath his fingers. He should be wearing gloves, but he doesn’t have a pair to his name. The door is unlocked, and releases with a click. The snow drifts on the stoop have built up, and he has to clear them with the door. He steps outside, and he can see that off to the side, the path has remained clear, due to the direction of the wind. Cement shows through in places, and he’s glad, because his boots aren’t the tallest, and he wouldn’t want to get snow in them this soon on.

He walks slowly, leaving footprints in the snow in the blue light of the moon. He’s casting a shadow, it’s so bright out. He’s a third of the way down the path when he stops. Something tugs at the edges of his mind, and he’s not even sure if it’s coming from him, but it really doesn’t matter all that much. He stands there, looking at the road before him, his teeth chattering, and he hears the sound of the door opening over top of the snow. He stares up at the moon, the stars, the spaces between, because he *knows* who it is on the stoop, and he can’t face her.

“Angelo?” She asks in a sleepy voice. He’d know that voice anywhere. “Angelo?” She asks again, this time in the tone of one trying not to be overheard, that loud whisper that somehow carries farther than anything else.

He turns around slowly, because he needs to see her face. He takes a few steps back towards the academy, the icy winter air tearing at his lungs with every breath, eating away at that hollow place inside of him.

Paige’s eyes are clouded, filled right up to the top with confusion, and he takes another few steps towards her. She’s wearing a long white nightgown, glowing blue in the moonlight. Her hair is mussed, and she runs her hands through it, one time, as she steps warily down the stairs. He sees her take in his bag, and his winter clothing, and her eyes leap into focus. She lets out her breath in one gasp. He can’t hear it, but he can see it rising in the air.

“Angelo...” She says again.

She’s clearly right out of bed, and he only wonders what woke her for a second. It has to be the same thing that stopped him walking until she got here, that called him back from his ill-equipped wandering the other day.

So Frost did know. He wants to be angry at her, to blame her for not interfering, but she’s letting him make his own mistakes.

He wants to talk to Paige, to explain, to justify himself, but he can’t even look at her. All he can do is stand there, shivering. His hands are shaking, and it’s not only from the cold.

She doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t say anything, and when he finally glances up, he can tell that she’s put some of it together. She’s a smart girl. She knows what withdrawal looks like, and not wanting to see something can only hold it out for so long.

She takes a few cautious steps down the path, then a few more, treading gingerly in the snow until she stands before him. He listens to the soft crunching, because he’s long since dropped his eyes.

“Angelo...” She says again, and he brings his hand up over her mouth, gently, cutting off the words, because he can’t stand it when she says his name like that. Her breath is hot against his skin, and she brings her hands up, takes his in them for a second, then lets go. His arms drop heavily to his sides, and he knows that he’s staring at her now. He can’t help it. She looks like she belongs up on the top of a tree. Her breath floats around her like a halo, ice crystals shining bright.

He notices then that her feet are bare. She’s shivering in the cold, her arms wrapped close to her sides.

“You should go inside,” he says softly, reaching out to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You wouldn’t want to get frostbite, would you?”

She looks at him closely, and comprehension spreads across her face. Her glance betrays wonder, and he knows then that she’s figured out something else. Did he look at her too long? Was there something about the way that he’d spoken? Was there anything that was more obvious than the way he’d been behaving around her for months?

“I’m not going back inside until you do,” she says finally, her back stiffening.

“Then they’re going to find you in a frozen block in the morning.”

She doesn’t know what to say, and for her, that is, if not a first, then a second or third. She looks down at the snow, as intent as if she were trying to count the flakes. She looks up at him again, and her eyes are blazing.

“You’re burning white,” she says. “You’re running so hot you’re cold. You only have so much to spend, and you’re eating through all you are like a skunk through garbage. You’re giving more than you have to give, and you can’t solve this by just keeping ahead of it.” She pauses then, clearly at a loss, needing to say more, needing to know what to say. “You’ve got so much to give, Angelo. You’ve got so much left. We need you,” she says finally, and she holds out her hand, hesitantly, glancing back towards the academy.

“Don’t burn out,” she says, and he takes her hand. Her skin is hot against his, searing, searching, and he thinks that he can feel some of that warmth spread through his body, his nerves, work into the void, just a bit, so that it’s not quite so dark.

“Don’t burn out,” she whispers. “Don’t burn out.”