(prologue)
Bobby doesn't talk about it ever, because it was before the Mansion and no one knows except maybe the Professor, and if Bobby never had to talk about it he'd be okay with that, but there was a fairly long-ish period of his life where he didn't touch anyone because he was afraid he'd frost them over. He did it to his cat. His old one, the one his mother still thinks ran away because Ronny could never remember to close the screen door. It's buried in the backyard, in the little copse of trees that separates each cookie-cutter house from the one next to it.

Bobby considers himself lucky it happened right before summer, when it was just him and a few other kids from the neighborhood, just Playstation and sleep and no brushing past people in crowded halls, no b-ball in gym, no school dances where he'd actually have to put his hands on a girl, which was stressful enough without worrying about turning her into a popsicle. It was the loneliest, most intense time of his life, and he wouldn't live it again. Not for the world.

Just think, his brain kicked in helpfully. Marie feels like this all the time.

(beginning)
Bobby feels for all the kids who show up at the Mansion. He's just that kind of person. Empathetic. Not in the mutant way, just the regular way. Still. He knows exactly how to catalogue the kids that come here – which ones hurt other people, which ones hurt themselves. He knows which ones to go over and talk to and which ones he should let make a gesture of their own. He can tell which ones got kicked out, which ones left, which ones lied. He's been wrong of course, but not often, and that's why out of everyone at the Mansion Bobby's the only person who gets along with everyone.

He remembers that when John came to the Mansion Jubes accepted him without question. They showed each other their powers and then Jubilee showed John how to pick the Mansion locks, where the Detention Room was, and just how much he could get away with without getting punished. Kitty was everyone's darling almost immediately, and when Piotr showed up, impossibly huge and shy and polite, everyone fell over themselves to make him comfortable.

When Rogue shows up, Bobby knows what happened to her. He can't help but be drawn to her, couldn't help but see himself reflected in her. He doesn't fit in his skin and Rogue wanted out of hers. In a world of mutants, where things are wacky and weird and bizarre – where when you hear hoof beats you don't think horses or even zebras you think a mutant with hooves – a girl who can't touch anybody without killing them is too off-color for anyone to deal with. Everyone watches themselves around her, the way they used to watch Hank when he first turned blue, or Ororo when it storms outside.

It wasn't fair. Didn't seem it, anyway, to make a freak among freaks. Bobby became her friend – her boyfriend – because he felt more kindred to her than to anybody else. He knew the fear and the want, the intense fucking care you had to put into everything. Like the world was a China shop and you were a bull. How cautious you got, and how resentful, even though it wasn't your fault you had horns anymore than it was the world's fault for being breakable.

He knows what it's like to be alone. To be alone just like that. He couldn't leave her that way anymore than he could go back to it himself.

(middle)
Things change after Alkali Lake. Well, obviously. Maybe just not in the ways people expect. Dr. Grey's gone. Kurt leaves. John leaves. Logan's the responsible one, and Scott spends all his time in his room. Even the Professor is distant. Bobby feels almost as alone as that summer. He could touch someone if he wanted to, but there's no one around but Rogue.

So he spends all his time thinking. Wondering what the hell he's doing. He thinks about all the decisions he's made, the motives for those decisions, the consequences of those decisions. He thinks about them all the time, thinking about all the what-ifs and how-comes and why-nots. He's not regretful so much as completely and totally neurotic. The more unalterable the decision is, the more he wonders what it would take to change it.

He wonders about his relationship with Rogue. Why he became her boyfriend instead of just her friend. Sometimes he finds himself wondering if he even likes her that much. He'll spend his free time with Kitty, if given the chance, or Hank, if he's around. John, when he was around.

He wonders whether he's with her despite the fact that she's untouchable or because of it. There's no pressure with an untouchable girlfriend. Not the usual pressure. He doesn't do anything date-like with her. Just holds her gloved hand, or throws an arm around the thin waist she manages to keep completely covered despite current fashion.

He thinks about her. About touching her. Rogue. Marie. If he could, if they ever found a way. What it would be like. What she would be like. Skittish, maybe, after so long without touch. She jumps every time Bobby goes to hold her hand, even gloved. No one could blame her for being afraid. It's what teenagers are like – eager, but afraid.

But how eager? He wonders about that too. How far would she push? How hungry would she be? He remembers kissing her at his parent's house, the too-toothy grin she flashed for a kiss that cold. He felt something uncurl in his stomach – something like lust, from being that close to her. Grateful that she wasn't freaked out, that she was willing to try again. But also something like fear, something primal and beyond logic raising the hair on the back of his neck. Because he knows how it feels to have frost lining your lungs, and it's not a good feeling. It bothers him, the way she smiled. What's underneath that Southern drawl, the wistful half-smile? He wonders about how easily she plays with her powers, how quickly she took off her glove when Magneto taunted her.

He wonders if Rogue would have left if Magneto had called her a god instead of John, if Magneto had told her that touch was something the weak needed, that her gift was every mutant gift. If he let her imagine the power of stealing souls, of a Rogue who could fly, who could read thoughts, who could never die. A Rogue with a Midas touch – put your hand on upon them, and their gift is your gift. Rogue's boundaries exist only because she puts them there. Bobby doesn't like to think of how powerful she could be without them. If she touched Logan, if she touched the Professor, if she touched Magneto. For a week after Liberty Island she kept levitating things. Metal things. She spent hour after hour in the Danger Room, tossing off droid after droid, cursing like a sailor, smoking like a chimney whenever she took a break. She played chess and drank tea with the Professor in the downtime, full of swift, minimal movements that weren't her own. She didn't wear gloves the whole week. Bobby brought her tea, and John played Red Hands with her.

He wonders about the dynamics of their little triangle, his and Rogue's and John's, him and his girlfriend and his best friend. There's no rule that says your best friend and your girlfriend have to have anything to do with one another. Usually they don't. So why was it always the three of them? Was. Because he's by himself here, stuck making parallels between John and Rogue, finally seeing similarities he never would have imagined before. How she reminds him of John in all the wrong ways, the bad ways – the quick flash of temper, the self-destruction, the "don't touch" vibe. Bobby was the only one allowed to touch either of them, and he's not sure how that suddenly became so important, why that's suddenly so clear and full of meaning.

Did John have a crush on him? He looks back now, and he doesn't know. Crush is a dumb word to use in relation to John, and it makes Bobby sound really conceited, but… maybe. Did he have one on John, is the better question. Did he? He doesn't know why it matters now. It doesn't change anything, doesn't change the memories, just tinges everything a bit off-color. And it's kind of funny, kind of tragic that he never spent this much time thinking about John when he was actually here. That he didn't actually give John any attention until he left like the bitch he sometimes was and the traitor he wasn't.

It's getting pathetic, thinking about it all the time. Bobby's fucking obsessed with his male ex-roommate to the point where it's both creepy and filled with extremely suspicious subtext. And he doesn't even have a clear-cut explanation why. He doesn't know if it was about who liked who, or who betrayed who. Maybe he just hates admitting defeat. Hated the look on the Professor's face when he realized that John wasn't coming.

Mostly he thinks about what would have happened if Jean hadn't died. If she had let Kurt teleport her back into the jet. If Bobby could have helped her hold back the water. He doesn't think it's his fault exactly, because he knows he wasn't strong enough to hold it all back. But he might have been able to help. Maybe all she needed was a little extra help. Could Bobby have given her that?

He doesn't know.

(end)
Bobby knows Rogue's been thinking about getting the cure. At some point everyone in the Mansion imagined themselves as normals, but he's pretty sure Rogue is the only one seriously considering it.

Bobby couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. Ever. Because, yeah, it means never accidentally frosting over his bedroom or freezing up the pipes in the shower. Or freezing someone else. It means that his life stops being part of a war. It means that he's just like everyone else, that he could take his blonde-haired, blue-eyed self back to Boston and be the golden boy of the family again. But it also means giving up. It means forsaking the Professor, and Mr. Summers, and Dr. Grey, and all the things they've done. It means abandoning all the other mutants out there. It means that there's something wrong with being a mutant, with being him. And Bobby has a felt a hell of a lot of things since he became a mutant, but he's never felt wrong. He's never felt any less.

But he's not Rogue. He's not her, and he can't make a decision for her. Only she can.

(aftermath)
People are always asking Bobby why he broke up with her. Asking, or hinting, and he can't tell them without telling more about himself than he ever wanted to. He smiles and shrugs and lets them fill in the details for themselves. A lot of people think it's about Kitty, and while it's true that he likes Kitty more than Marie, he's not sure he even likes Kitty all that much.

And it's not that he doesn't know why Marie took the cure. Of course he knows why. He'd have to be a complete asshole not to understand it. But at the same time he wishes she hadn't done it. He can't help but be disappointed. He's a purist, he guesses. He doesn't think mutants should have to be anyone but themselves.

When Storm tells Marie that she can't stay here anymore, that they need all the space they have for mutants, Bobby is glad to see her go. It probably makes him more than a little bit of an asshole, but he knows she'll be okay. Probably run back to the Bible Belt, to mommy and daddy, live out a normal life with a boyfriend who tries to do more than hold her hand.

Logan says that Magneto doesn't hate the normals or the mutants who get the cure, just considers them something below him, like animals, something you might admire or grow fond of but at the same time run over and make road kill out of just because they're in your way. When Mystique got hit with one of the cure weapons, Magneto left her behind. Forget that she'd been fighting at his side, impersonating God knows how many people, for God knows how long. Not to mention Bobby is pretty sure they'd been sleeping together, just from the way Logan's nose always wrinkled up around them, the way it wrinkled up around Scott and Jean.

It's not that Bobby would leave Marie lying naked on the roadside, because he's pretty sure he's not capable of doing that to anyone. But getting the cure makes her seem… less. Something distinctly not-Marie. Or maybe the real problem is that is made her Marie, and not Rogue. He's been thinking about that too lately. That difference between them. It's everything, really. Being a mutant. He couldn't make the decision for Marie, but he sure as hell can condemn her for it.

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hek-see'i-tee, n (Latin, from haec, this)
The aspect of existence on which individuality depends; the hereness and nowness of reality; that sense one gets of being in the present tense, the pure experience of a single moment in time.

"Red Hands" is a child's game, sometimes known as hot hands or slaps. The rules vary, I guess, but this is how we used to play – the first player hovers their hands over the hands of the second player. The second player tries to slap the hands of the first player, who tries to pull their hands away in time. If the first player pulls away too soon, the first player gets a free slap. This continues until the second player misses three times, at which point the roles reverse.

Playing it with Rogue would probably be akin to playing Russian Roulette. ;;