Despite my best attempts to distract myself from the spirit-crushing thoughts of the possibility that I might one day end the damn world, I couldn't get it out of my head. Even as I sat curled up on my bed with Megan watching a movie, I was absorbing the energy from the glow of the goddamn TV.
What could I not absorb light energy from? I had never stopped to see just how many things there were out there I could power up off of. At this point, it was probably best to run off of the assumption that if it created light, I could siphon from it.
In the middle of traveling down the rabbit hole that was my power and the potential they held, Megan gave me a nudge that got me to look down at the girl leaning against my chest, "Are you okay?" She asked, looking up at me with bright eyes.
"Huh?" I was confused. I hadn't been any kind of grump that evening, "Yeah, I'm good. Why? What's up?"
Megan gestured to the TV where a movie was playing on Netflix, "We're watching Storks," She said, as though it explained everything. It kind of did, "You haven't complained once. You didn't even fuss when I picked it."
"I don't hate this movie," I argued weakly. I had no distaste for animation. A lot of them were pretty good, "Now, if you picked The Emoji Movie or something, I probably would have dumped you on the floor," I tried to add with some joking snark.
"Also, you're not trying to... you know," Megan added, gesturing to where my hands were situated- innocently around her waist... which was the problem apparently, "When you invite me over to watch something... we usually don't do a lot of watching at first."
I paused the movie, because I was in fact watching it. 45 minutes in, Storks was legit decent to me, and I shouldn't have known that. Normally my attention would have been on getting Megan's clothes off by the 30-minute mark and either finishing by the credits or coming back a minimum twenty minutes down the line and trying to figure out the plot from there.
"Crap. You're right," I said, moving my hand down to give her bottom a squeeze, "What kind of predictable jackass am I that you can gauge my mood off of how quickly I try to get your panties off whenever you come over to watch Netflix?"
She didn't pout or laugh, instead keeping her attention on my apparent mood, "What's wrong, Bel? Something has to be. You've been weird for the last two days."
I hadn't told her about the most recent Paladins problem. We'd chosen to keep our troubles closer to the vest this year unless we needed to tell other students. Then again, what was the point of trying to have a girlfriend if you weren't willing to tell her some important stuff?
"I'm not safe, Pix," I told her, "The longer you stay around me, the more likely you get caught in the splash zone."
Megan rolled her eyes and stroked my cheek, "We've been over this already. I really don't care. Duh! I still go to this school, don't I?"
The girl had a great point. At this point, between going to Xavier's, training to be one of the X-Men, and dating me, she was stacking danger multipliers like there was no tomorrow.
I laughed a bit. She was endearing enough where I still smiled, even though we weren't talking about anything particularly pleasant, "This is different. I'm a time bomb," I revealed, "One day I'm gonna go off, and from what someone I talked to recently said, I'll end up taking the whole world with me."
She didn't back up and move away from me. She didn't let go. She didn't even move my hand off of her butt, "Well... are you gonna explode tomorrow?"
"No."
"Next month? Next year?"
"It'll probably take longer than that... by like a decade or two."
Megan nodded and swung herself over to straddle me, hands set on my shoulders, "And even if I wasn't with you, you're still gonna go off, and you're still destroying the world. So, it doesn't matter how close or far away I'll be. I'm on Earth, so..." She trailed off.
The more she said, more I faltered in my resolute belief that I was dangerous, "I guess so. S-Stop making so much fucking sense, Pix!" I glared at her.
Megan giggled at my response. She was about as afraid of me as she would have been of a puppy, "So, you might go 'boom' and take us all with you when you do. Buuuut... you might not," She said, "And even if you do, that's then. This is now."
I touched her chin and pulled her in, "Do you trust me?"
"Yes," She punctuated with a kiss, "You've never lied to me.
"Do you believe in me?" I asked, reaching down to unbutton her jeans. Her freckles shifted on her cheeks as a knowing grin came to her face.
"Yes," Another kiss, and her wings gave a beat as she moved herself to help me get her pants off, "You've never given me a reason not to, silly."
'Do you love me?' I caught myself at the last moment before those words would have thoughtlessly come out of my mouth. No chance I asked that. I hadn't before, and I wouldn't then. I wasn't that goddamn needy.
What the fuck did I know about loving someone anyway? Nothing. So we weren't going there. Not yet. I wasn't touching that with a ten-foot pole unless she brought it up first. But damn it... as close as she was, as warm as she was, the way she looked at me... if Megan only knew, she could have gotten me to say anything she wanted me to in that moment.
We stopped watching the movie at that point, having found something much better to do on my bed in the meantime. I wasn't any closer to solving my problem or getting my hands on Skip before he could take another shot at me, but that was what tomorrow was for.
As an added plus, because I paused the movie earlier, we got to see the rest of Storks when we were finished. So that was neat.