Today was a pretty ordinary day.

Sitting at a wooden table in one of the living room of the school for Gifted Children, you were busy working on some exercises for one of your classes. Jean was sitting next to you, her head craned over her homework; her long red hair making a curtain around her.

Around you, children and teenagers alike were working, playing, watching television or chatting with each other, as if nothing had happened, as if the manor they were in had not been destroyed only a few weeks ago.

As if they had not nearly died because of it.

But mutants were resilient and, only a week after Magneto and your friend Jean had rebuilt the manor, classes resumed as usual, leaving you all to go back to your routine.

You didn't mind it at all. Actually, you were really happy about it.

Because in-between the destruction of the school and the classes starting again, you had felt lonely. You did not have a lot of friends in the school, for the exception of Jean, and when she had disappeared to fight Apocalypse with the new kids, Scott and Kurt, you had felt on the brink of pure panic. But then, she had come back and relief washed over you. But it wasn't the same anymore. It wasn't just Jean and you. There was Scott, Kurt and three newcomers: Peter, Ororo and Warren. And the fear you had felt of losing your closest friend, when she left to risk her life, turned into loneliness.

You had not been able to help it, you had felt excluded. Even though you had been spending a lot of time with them, getting to know them, you had felt lonelier than ever. Because you had not shared the same hardships as them, because you had not been in the battle. And this feeling only increased when the Professor started their training, leaving you to stand a little apart, not being able to take part in the discussions they had about it.

So, probably a little selfishly, when classes resumed and you finally had something in common with them, you felt relieved and happier.

In this one week only, things changed. You felt included and you got acquainted with the new students, especially with Ororo, with whom you shared a bedroom. You learned to appreciate Peter's twisted sense of humor and enjoyed introducing Kurt to new things (and also liked watching him get confused by almost everything Scott would say). The only one you had not been able to talk to alone was Warren.

Instinctively, your eyes crossed the living room to rest on him. He was sitting on the armrest of the couch and talking to Peter, his blue eyes following the wild gestures of his friend with a sort of amused interest.

Warren was a mystery to you. You only knew three things about him: that he had fought alongside Apocalypse with Ororo during the first part of the battle, that he was older than you (by a year, maybe two) and that his mutation was his gigantic wings made of sharp metallic feathers. The first two, you had learned from Jean and the last one, well, was pretty obvious when you looked at him.

It was something you liked about him: those impressive wings. Everyone at the school had incredible abilities, but he was the only one with wings and even though they probably were as deadly as they looked, you loved the way they would move graciously behind him, following and responding to his every move, and you would pay a great deal of money to watch him fly, like an angel, or rather an archangel as you had learned was his nickname.

Otherwise, you knew nothing of him. Mostly because he was not very talkative, at least when the seven of you were together. In fact, he mostly listened to the others, agreeing or chiming in on rare occasion. The rest of the time, he would seem lost in thoughts. You always wondered what hold him back because every time you would see him with Peter or Ororo, he seemed like an entirely different person: laid back with a smile always hovering on his face.

"Stop thinking about him," a voice said next to you, startling you.

You turned your head abruptly toward Jean to see her looking at you with a smile. You couldn't hold back the slight blush that spread over your cheeks.

"I'm not thinking about him..." you argued weakly, knowing lying to Jean was pointless.

She did not bother to respond. She just rolled her eyes with a laugh.

You chewed at your lower lips thoughtfully, lowering your eyes on the table. You were used to Jean reading your thoughts; it was not something you enjoyed but you knew that sometimes, she couldn't help overhearing some of your loud thoughts, as she called them. Most of them were linked to your feelings, the stronger you felt, the louder were your thoughts, and the most chances Jean would hear them.

And ever since you had meet Warren, every single one of your loud thoughts were about him, driving Jean crazy.

You did not understand why you had fallen for him, and even less how it had happened so quickly. You barely knew him but still, every time you would look at him or, more rarely, when he would look at you, you would feel you heart starting to beat faster and your thoughts tangling reality with fantasy.

And yet again, without being able to prevent it, you found yourself gazing in his direction. But this time, Warren met your eyes.

You held back a startled gasp as his gaze, piercing and curious, lingered on you. You felt like someone had punched you in the stomach and you lowered your eyes on your notebook in embarrassment.

"Oh no..." you mumbled, turning toward your friend. "Jean, earlier, when you interrupted me, was I... was I staring at him?"

"Warren?" she asked kindly and you nodded. "Yeah, you were."

You could feel shame creeping up on you from every corner of your being. It was embarrassing enough to stare at your friends or your professors for a long amount of time, which you tended to often do when you were lost in thoughts, but doing it toward someone you had feelings for was way worse.

"For how long?"

"Not long, really," Jean answered. "Maybe five minutes."

"Five minutes?!" You hide your face in your hands in embarrassment, Jean's laugh echoing around you. "It's not funny, Jean!"

"Well, at least it wasn't as long as for the McCoy's incident."

You knew she was trying to cheer you up, in her own way, and it worked a little. The McCoy's incident was something that had happened only a few days ago, when during a particularly boring lecture, you had stared fixedly at Professor McCoy for fifteen minutes straight. Ororo and Jean had been there to witness the whole scene and telling you, after the class, how it had made the professor so uncomfortable that he stumbled quite a few times on his words.

But here, it was different. You liked Warren and you did not want to make him feel uncomfortable in your presence.

"Don't worry, he's not," Jean added, answering your thoughts.

You were going to ask her how she could know you did not make him uncomfortable but thought better of it. You asked instead:

"How did he feel about it?"

"You know I'm not going to tell you."

Yes, you knew. Jean would never repeat to others what she would hear in your head, that was something you loved about her because it meant your secret was safe with her.

"It was worth the try," you murmured.

Fighting against the irresistible urge to look back in Warren's direction, to try to decipher on his face what he could be thinking about you after this, you managed to lower your eyes on your notebook. You had homework to do. And the sooner you started to focus on it, the sooner you would stop ridicule yourself in front of him.