Running for Home - 40. December 27, 2021

December 27 2021

I was in the gym again today after I finally managed to drag my ass out of bed to eat some lunch. Yeah, I slept until almost noon. Well deserved sleep, since Connor and I didn’t arrive back at the School until the sun was beginning to peek over the horizon. My circadian rhythm will probably be fucked for the rest of the week, which sucks, but if any of what I talked about with Connor last night will help him then it was worth it.

Anyway, Bobby waltzed in about a quarter of the way through my gym session. He waved a brief hello but got to his work-out without actually saying anything to me. I was surprised to see him, because I would have thought he’d stay away the whole break. I didn’t expect see him again until the New Year’s party he was hosting at his condo in New York. I was invited and I gave Bobby a tentative yes, but I’m still not sure if it’s a good idea for me to be there. Maybe I’ll ask him about his early return to campus later. Maybe his parents drove him nuts, or he was bored staying by himself at his condo in New York if he’d gone back there after visiting them. Ah, whatever.

I tried not to look at him, but he was wearing this deeply plunging, very tight tank top that showed off the musculature of his arms, chest and upper back. Worse were the shorts he was wearing, though. They clung to him like a second skin and didn’t leave much of anything to the imagination. I chubbed up, I’m not going to lie. More than chubbed, really. Oh, fuck it, I had a massive hard on and I spent basically the entire workout in a state somewhere between thickening, pulsing and straining-for-release. After he came in I spent the rest of my time trying to avoid looking at him and avoid working on machines that were anywhere near him. I made a bad choice in my circuit, though and he ended up almost directly in front of me doing squats with the free weights for my entire last half. Every time he went down, the shorts clung tighter, riding up into the deep crevice of his ass. Suddenly I realized he was wearing a jockstrap underneath the shorts. I could see the ridges of the straps over his glutes. Fuck, that was infinitely distracting. It got worse, too, when I realized that every once in a while he was watching me in the mirror in front of him instead of watching his own form.

I moved on, but he stayed with the free weights. I was having trouble keeping my eyes from wandering back to his figure, back to that deliciously tight ass. Eventually, I’d had enough and said ‘fuck it’ to myself and quit a little early. I needed to get out of there. I’d been fighting the hard-on pretty much the entire time and it was starting to be impossible. I knew I was leaking, and I just knew that it would start to soak through my shorts soon because the compression shorts I had on underneath were already pretty wet. I couldn’t deal with that, with him seeing me with precum staining the front of my shorts just from watching him lift.

I left the gym trying to look nonchalant, but as soon as I was out in the hallway it was all I could do to keep from running to the locker room. I took a quick shower in freezing cold water and then changed to go upstairs in record time. When I got up to my room I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to stay there and address my rapidly returning hard-on or find something to distract me. I decided distraction was better because if I tried to jerk off now I knew I’d be thinking about Bobby and I sure as hell was not going to do that. I thought about doing some marking - those goddamn independent studies from my lit course were still hanging over my head - but I was too keyed up. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. My students’ work deserves my full attention, even when it’s shit. Maybe even more attention when their work is shit than when it’s good, actually. Anyway, I thought I should just do something fun and distracting. Maybe Jubes would have some ideas of things I could do by myself, since she's still in L.A. visiting her aunt. Maybe if she had time we could just chat for a bit. I went to pull out my cell phone to text her and see what she was doing, but the phone wasn’t in my pocket. I swore under my breath. I must have left it in my locker downstairs.

I hurried back down, hoping not to run into Bobby on the way. I was much more in control now, but I knew it wouldn’t take much for me to be back at full mast and straining again. There was no one in the locker room proper, but I could hear one of the showers running. It could be Bobby, or it could be someone who had been in the Danger Room while I was lifting. Yeah, that had to be it. Bobby hadn't looked even close to finished his workout. One way or the other it didn’t really matter, so I steeled myself and went over to my locker. Sure enough, my phone was right there on the shelf where I’d put it before heading to the gym. I sighed, slipping it into my pocket.

I was almost to the door when I heard a slap on tile and then a moan. I frowned. I was about to walk out when there was another moan. It was definitely Bobby’s voice. I’d heard that kind of moan from him before when he got a concussion because we were horsing around on the outdoor basketball court when we were fifteen. I got too aggressive and bowled him over when he wasn’t expecting it. I remember the crack his skull made against the ground. I remember the moans he made in the following semi-conscious state. I remember the blood.

Shit.

Against my better judgement, or rather because of my better judgement, I turned around and quickly headed for the shower room. There was only one stall in use. There came another, louder moan as I got closer. I heard Bobby’s voice saying a quiet, gaspy “oh shit, oh shit”. I reached for the curtain, about to call to him to see if he was okay when I heard it. So utterly quiet and yet so fucking loud.

“Oh fuck, Johnny, feels so goddamn good, oh fuck I’m coming, oh fuck!”

I was frozen, frozen in place. My mind was screaming, but my voice was entirely non-existent. I wasn’t even breathing. Bobby was jerking off in the shower. Not just jerking off in the shower, but coming. He came. He came, and he was fantasizing about me. Me. He was jerking off imagining being with me. In the shower. Here. Right now. Right in front of me. On the other side of this flimsy opaque shower curtain.

Suddenly my brain rebooted and I did my damnedest to tiptoe quietly out of the locker room, and then broke into a run. I smashed into Cecilia when I rounded a corner in the hallway and gave her some half-baked apology about thinking I was late for a meeting with Emma that I forgot to put in my calendar. I don’t know if she believed me or not, I didn’t even look to see her reaction when I rushed on.

When I got up to my room, I slammed the door behind me. My brain was running at lightspeed. What had just happened? What the fuck had I just about walked in on?

Jesus H. Christ! It’s a good thing that I didn’t open that curtain. Who knows what would have happened. How would Bobby have reacted to me watching him get his nut? It would have been horrible, embarrassing for both of us, and probably driven an even deeper wedge into… into what? Our co-worker conflict? Our rivalry? Our reconnecting friendship? Our… fuck, I don’t even know anymore.

But what if Bobby hadn’t reacted badly, if he saw me and…

I shook my head, unwilling to think about that. Unwilling to think about what could have happened if I had been there only minutes earlier, if I’d slipped into the shower naked behind Bobby. If he’d been pressed up against me, my cock riding in Bobby’s crack while I jacked Bobby’s throbbing manhood to completion. I was unwilling to consider what could have happened if I hadn’t got so worked up over Bobby’s sexiness in the gym, if I’d stayed for my full session and then we changed at the same time. Showered at the same time. If Bobby had seen me watching him. If Bobby had seen me hardening, in the gym, in the locker room, on the way to the shower.

I threw myself back on my bed, groaning. What the fuck did this all mean?! What the fuck am I supposed to do? Bobby, it was Bobby. It was Bobby and he was jacking off in the shower, getting off in the shower, gasping out my name while trying to keep quiet. It was Bobby, doing the very thing I’ve been struggling to not do for the past four months – think about him sexually, about how much I still fucking want him even after all these years.

He… he wants me? He’s not… he’s not straight?!?

Fuck, it’s possible to hate someone and still be turned on, right? It’s possible to still want to fuck them, to hate-fuck them, right? And it’s definitely possible to want to fuck someone and have no desire whatsoever for a relationship with them. But do I even believe that he hates me anymore? After our times in the Danger Room, after the work we’ve done together on the Big Gay Talk, after the smiles, the easy conversation, the laughter that has started to return, that Christmas gift and letter… Can I still convince myself of that? Do I even need to convince myself of that? Can I stop believing that he hates me and accept the fact that Jubilee is telling the truth and Bobby and I are actually friends again, that he really feels that way?

If this is real, if he is really my friend and seriously sexually attracted to me, do I need to keep pretending he hates me to protect myself from the heartache of wanting him again? Is there… is there room, maybe, to even hope?

What do I want to do? What should I do? Should I even do anything?

If Bobby is gay, or bisexual, or whatever… well, he’s been in the closet for so long that who knows if he’d even want an out life, right? Especially if he’s bi. He did date Marie for an age, some Opal woman that Jubilee mentioned once and then there was that non-serious thing with Cloud he told me about. But who knows what else he’s been up to since he moved to New York? Other than where his condo is and where he’s been working, his life there had pretty much been a mystery to most people we know. And me? Am I even worth it? Me, the fuck-up, the criminal, the impossible to live with bitchy asshole who is so unbearable he can’t even keep a coat-tail riding motherfucker around for the long haul?

No. I wasn’t me. It was someone else. It’s not like John or Jon or Johnny or Jonny or Jono or Jonathan or… fuck, it’s not a goddamn uncommon name! He could have been thinking about anyone, anyone at all! It could have been Jim Proudstar’s dead older brother John, with all his rippling muscles and that hot Apache look. It could have been Jonothan Starsmore, that goddamn emo punk rocker with the heart of gold. Hell, it could be Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four, goddamn it!

Yes, that’s got to be it! Johnny Storm, the Human-fucking-Torch. A rich, hot as fuck, supposedly straight but goddamn metrosexual-as-hell lady-killer, and one that totally gets the goddamn superhero thing. A fun guy to be around. A good guy. A good guy who has always been a good guy. Another fire for Bobby’s goddamn ice, and someone I know Jubilee told me was among Bobby’s friends. His New York friends. A New York friend since way back during the days I was locked up after the Brotherhood broke down. When I was a criminal. A terrorist. The lowest of the low. The guy is goddamn perfect, and he’s been there with him. For him. Fought the good fight with Bobby. Went to the wall with Bobby. Saved the fucking world with Bobby.

Fuck.

In so many different ways, when it comes to Drake I’ve never stood a chance.