X2: Fast As You Can
Jun. 30th, 2004 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleThis is for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
xmmficathon (X-Men Movieverse). It's also the first fic I've managed to finish in a month so at this point I don't even care if it's crap, I'm just so relieved to be able to produce anything...
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
doyle_sb4
Title: Fast As You Can
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox's characters, not mine.
Summary: He starts running the day Bobby and his freak friends trash the neighbourhood and disappear.
Written for: L Incandescent
Pairing/scenario requested: Gen - John meets up with Ronnie Drake. It
is revealed that Ronnie is a mutant.
Warnings (if any): British spelling
Author's notes: First time even attempting this fandom. So, eek.
He starts running the day Bobby and his freak friends trash the neighbourhood and disappear. Once the cops are gone, once the flaming wreak of a police car is off of their front lawn, once most of the neighbours have gone back inside and his mom's finally stopped crying, Ronnie takes off out the back door and he runs. The sun's low at his back and he stumbles on cracks in the sidewalks, going too fast to keep his balance. His fists are squeezed so tight that his hands feel cramped, and if he goes fast enough he can forget what his big brother is.
He doesn't slow down until his dad's car pulls up beside him. He lets the sprint turn into a walk, shoving his hands into his pockets and thinking that Bobby never made anybody come looking for him after dark.
"Ronnie, son, what're you doing out here?" Dad leans across to open the door for him. He's trying to sound funny, trying to sound normal, trying to smile and pretend.
Ronnie rolls his eyes and gets in. He doesn't fasten his seatbelt. His dad doesn't tell him to.
"Who gave you a ride?" is all he says.
"Nobody."
Dad frowns. "You know how your mother and I feel about hitch-hiking."
He waits to hear the usual lecture about how Saint Bobby never got into trouble at his age. It doesn't come.
Awake in bed at two am, he realizes he ran almost as far as his high school. Close to six miles, and he wasn't even out of breath.
**
At his new school, in the town that they move to after the second time someone sprays 'die mutants' across his locker, Ronnie runs track. It's fall, and when he finishes the cross country a good ten minutes ahead of the school's former star the coach gives him a strange, suspicious look. After that he hides in the woods till he hears people go by, and he always never places higher than third.
The school's okay. Everyone complains about how cold the rooms are, even when the janitor turns the heating all the way up. Ronnie doesn't feel the cold - not ever, now, he runs to school one morning when there's snow on the ground, and he feels fine - but he bitches about it because everybody else does.
Everybody else signs the petition that goes to the school board, the one calling for action against teachers with pro-mutant sympathies. Ronnie's name is on the front page. Everybody else starts to whisper that Ms. Beecher, the petition's unnamed target, is a mutant herself. Ronnie leads the gang that keys her car, slashes her tires, sneaks inside the school at night to smash the jars and specimens in her Bio lab.
She doesn't come back to teach there. The next week, when Ronnie gets home and there are adults he doesn't know sitting in the living room with his parents, his dad staring at nothing, his mom quietly sobbing, he thinks that Ms. Beecher called the cops.
And then he sees Bobby.
He's wearing one of the fugly shirts mom always gave them both at Christmas. It looks kind of small. He moves a step toward Ronnie and then back, lifts his hand and then lets it drop. "Hi," he says.
Ronnie wants to break his stupid, hopeful face.
The old guy - Ronnie thought he was just sitting, but when he looks he realizes he's in a wheelchair - says, "It's all right. We're here to help you."
Bobby says, "It's gonna be okay, Ronnie." Hesitates: "We know what you are."
"I'm not anything," he says.
He feels the drop in temperature as an adrenaline surge pushing through his muscles. His breath crystallizes in a white, angry cloud.
Mom looks up at him, just once, and then she ducks her head away.
She doesn't look surprised at all, Ronnie thinks, and then he thinks about how there are no pictures anywhere in this new house, like she didn't put any out because she knew someday she'd have to take them all down again.
With his brother and the freaks yelling after him to wait, to stop, Ronnie bolts out of the house and then he just keeps going.
**
Two days and seven hundred miles later, he decides they're not coming for him right away and it's safe to stop. He's not sure what state he's in, but he finds a diner and the money in his pocket buys him coffee and a donut. He stays at the table long after the cup's been drained, picking at the sugar frosting and toying with some little packs of Sweet 'N' Low.
He doesn't really know if he needs to eat and sleep. All the energy he needs he can pull from nowhere, it feels like, or from other people, or from the heat around him. A lot of the time he takes too much, and then he has to try and use it up because it feels like burning, a friction fire underneath his skin.
He read everything his local library had on kinetic energy, thermodynamics. He didn't want to check out any books on mutants.
The guy in the booth across from his is playing with a silver cigarette lighter. Flicks the flame on. Kills it. Does this over and over, but it's not until flame-boy looks up and nearly smiles that Ronnie remembers him.
**
Pyro's the first person to call him a mutant.
It's another day, another diner. Ronnie's not eating because it doesn't taste like anything any more, and Pyro's telling him about Magneto. Magneto says that mutants are superior to ordinary people. Magneto taught Pyro ways to handle his power that Xavier wouldn't've let him learn in a thousand years.
Ronnie snarks that he sounds kind of gay for this Magneto guy, and Pyro half-grins, tosses a flicker of a fireball at him. He holds up his hand, reflex reaction, and when the fire touches him it disappears. He shakes the pins and needles feeling from his fingers.
"Fag," he says.
"Mutant," Pyro says, but he doesn't say it like an insult and Ronnie's not sure which one of them he means.
"Shut the hell up, man," he says, serious now, because anybody could hear them.
Pyro shrugs, stretching back in his chair. "What do you care? You're not like them. You're better than them."
He looks down at the scratched vinyl and the empty coffee cup, and if he's honest then, yeah, sometimes when he was running and he knew he could have been first, could have been All State easy, he felt like he was better and it pissed him off he had to pretend he wasn't.
"What are you gonna do, anyway?" Pyro asks. He holds out his hand, flicks his lighter twice till he has two balls of flame, circling each other across his palm like twin suns. "Just run? Forever?"
Ronnie imagines running all the way across America, through the Midwest and the mountains. Maybe his shoes would wear out halfway across Kansas and he'd have to steal a new pair. He'd swipe some Nikes and after that he wouldn't stop till he got to California. Nothing ahead of him but a thousand miles of ocean, and he has the crazy thought that he was always a good swimmer.
Pyro smiles at him, flicking his thumb down on the lighter, and Ronnie doesn't know why that makes him remember that the sea's full of sharks.
xmmficathon (X-Men Movieverse). It's also the first fic I've managed to finish in a month so at this point I don't even care if it's crap, I'm just so relieved to be able to produce anything...Author:
doyle_sb4 Title: Fast As You Can
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox's characters, not mine.
Summary: He starts running the day Bobby and his freak friends trash the neighbourhood and disappear.
Written for: L Incandescent
Pairing/scenario requested: Gen - John meets up with Ronnie Drake. It
is revealed that Ronnie is a mutant.
Warnings (if any): British spelling
Author's notes: First time even attempting this fandom. So, eek.
He starts running the day Bobby and his freak friends trash the neighbourhood and disappear. Once the cops are gone, once the flaming wreak of a police car is off of their front lawn, once most of the neighbours have gone back inside and his mom's finally stopped crying, Ronnie takes off out the back door and he runs. The sun's low at his back and he stumbles on cracks in the sidewalks, going too fast to keep his balance. His fists are squeezed so tight that his hands feel cramped, and if he goes fast enough he can forget what his big brother is.
He doesn't slow down until his dad's car pulls up beside him. He lets the sprint turn into a walk, shoving his hands into his pockets and thinking that Bobby never made anybody come looking for him after dark.
"Ronnie, son, what're you doing out here?" Dad leans across to open the door for him. He's trying to sound funny, trying to sound normal, trying to smile and pretend.
Ronnie rolls his eyes and gets in. He doesn't fasten his seatbelt. His dad doesn't tell him to.
"Who gave you a ride?" is all he says.
"Nobody."
Dad frowns. "You know how your mother and I feel about hitch-hiking."
He waits to hear the usual lecture about how Saint Bobby never got into trouble at his age. It doesn't come.
Awake in bed at two am, he realizes he ran almost as far as his high school. Close to six miles, and he wasn't even out of breath.
**
At his new school, in the town that they move to after the second time someone sprays 'die mutants' across his locker, Ronnie runs track. It's fall, and when he finishes the cross country a good ten minutes ahead of the school's former star the coach gives him a strange, suspicious look. After that he hides in the woods till he hears people go by, and he always never places higher than third.
The school's okay. Everyone complains about how cold the rooms are, even when the janitor turns the heating all the way up. Ronnie doesn't feel the cold - not ever, now, he runs to school one morning when there's snow on the ground, and he feels fine - but he bitches about it because everybody else does.
Everybody else signs the petition that goes to the school board, the one calling for action against teachers with pro-mutant sympathies. Ronnie's name is on the front page. Everybody else starts to whisper that Ms. Beecher, the petition's unnamed target, is a mutant herself. Ronnie leads the gang that keys her car, slashes her tires, sneaks inside the school at night to smash the jars and specimens in her Bio lab.
She doesn't come back to teach there. The next week, when Ronnie gets home and there are adults he doesn't know sitting in the living room with his parents, his dad staring at nothing, his mom quietly sobbing, he thinks that Ms. Beecher called the cops.
And then he sees Bobby.
He's wearing one of the fugly shirts mom always gave them both at Christmas. It looks kind of small. He moves a step toward Ronnie and then back, lifts his hand and then lets it drop. "Hi," he says.
Ronnie wants to break his stupid, hopeful face.
The old guy - Ronnie thought he was just sitting, but when he looks he realizes he's in a wheelchair - says, "It's all right. We're here to help you."
Bobby says, "It's gonna be okay, Ronnie." Hesitates: "We know what you are."
"I'm not anything," he says.
He feels the drop in temperature as an adrenaline surge pushing through his muscles. His breath crystallizes in a white, angry cloud.
Mom looks up at him, just once, and then she ducks her head away.
She doesn't look surprised at all, Ronnie thinks, and then he thinks about how there are no pictures anywhere in this new house, like she didn't put any out because she knew someday she'd have to take them all down again.
With his brother and the freaks yelling after him to wait, to stop, Ronnie bolts out of the house and then he just keeps going.
**
Two days and seven hundred miles later, he decides they're not coming for him right away and it's safe to stop. He's not sure what state he's in, but he finds a diner and the money in his pocket buys him coffee and a donut. He stays at the table long after the cup's been drained, picking at the sugar frosting and toying with some little packs of Sweet 'N' Low.
He doesn't really know if he needs to eat and sleep. All the energy he needs he can pull from nowhere, it feels like, or from other people, or from the heat around him. A lot of the time he takes too much, and then he has to try and use it up because it feels like burning, a friction fire underneath his skin.
He read everything his local library had on kinetic energy, thermodynamics. He didn't want to check out any books on mutants.
The guy in the booth across from his is playing with a silver cigarette lighter. Flicks the flame on. Kills it. Does this over and over, but it's not until flame-boy looks up and nearly smiles that Ronnie remembers him.
**
Pyro's the first person to call him a mutant.
It's another day, another diner. Ronnie's not eating because it doesn't taste like anything any more, and Pyro's telling him about Magneto. Magneto says that mutants are superior to ordinary people. Magneto taught Pyro ways to handle his power that Xavier wouldn't've let him learn in a thousand years.
Ronnie snarks that he sounds kind of gay for this Magneto guy, and Pyro half-grins, tosses a flicker of a fireball at him. He holds up his hand, reflex reaction, and when the fire touches him it disappears. He shakes the pins and needles feeling from his fingers.
"Fag," he says.
"Mutant," Pyro says, but he doesn't say it like an insult and Ronnie's not sure which one of them he means.
"Shut the hell up, man," he says, serious now, because anybody could hear them.
Pyro shrugs, stretching back in his chair. "What do you care? You're not like them. You're better than them."
He looks down at the scratched vinyl and the empty coffee cup, and if he's honest then, yeah, sometimes when he was running and he knew he could have been first, could have been All State easy, he felt like he was better and it pissed him off he had to pretend he wasn't.
"What are you gonna do, anyway?" Pyro asks. He holds out his hand, flicks his lighter twice till he has two balls of flame, circling each other across his palm like twin suns. "Just run? Forever?"
Ronnie imagines running all the way across America, through the Midwest and the mountains. Maybe his shoes would wear out halfway across Kansas and he'd have to steal a new pair. He'd swipe some Nikes and after that he wouldn't stop till he got to California. Nothing ahead of him but a thousand miles of ocean, and he has the crazy thought that he was always a good swimmer.
Pyro smiles at him, flicking his thumb down on the lighter, and Ronnie doesn't know why that makes him remember that the sea's full of sharks.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2004-06-30 03:09 pm (UTC)That was a nice touch.
I know almost nothing about this fandom (only seen the movies), but I really enjoyed this. Quality work!
OMG
on 2004-06-30 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-06-30 07:06 pm (UTC)I especially loved the end: Ronnie doesn't know why that makes him remember that the sea's full of sharks.
no subject
on 2004-07-01 07:38 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-07-01 10:21 am (UTC)Any other places to read X fic would be appreciated.
I adored it.
Thanks so much.
Sun
no subject
on 2004-07-01 12:34 pm (UTC)