Running for Home - 41. December 31, 2021

December 31 2021

This is going to be a long one, and it’s all so vivid and important to me that I just need to write it all down while I still have it fresh in my memory. I’m writing this now on New Years’ Day because I was too tired at the end of the night and… well, you’ll see. I’m actually going to write dialogue here, that’s how clear and important last night felt. Besides, I’m on a flight to Los Angeles and I don’t have anything better to do for another four hours… Ha, look at me, I’m even breaking the fourth wall in my own journal. I’m such an idiotic weirdo sometimes. Aaaaaaaaand let’s get back on topic, now.

Okay, so maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. Maybe. I don’t know. So I did it. I went to Bobby’s New Year’s Eve party. Even though I was trying my best not to think about it, to pretend it just didn’t fucking happen, I haven’t been able to get Bobby’s shower masturbation scene out of my head. I haven’t jerked off this much since… fuck, I don’t even know. Maybe not since I was a teenager. Worse, though, is how I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what it could mean, and he hasn’t even been around for me to confront. Not that I could fucking do that right now, but… fuck! He just fucking disappeared from campus like a ghost. No one saw him leave. Hell, no one even seemed to know he was there in the first place!

Was that whole thing just some hallucination? Some goddamned hallucination generated by my fucked up, broken mind? I’m still taking those pills, and they were helping. They really were. At least, I thought they were. Maybe it was just another illusion, maybe I was just thinking they were working - some psychosomatic relief of my symptoms. So, in addition to fucking flashbacks now I’m hallucinating about Bobby.

Wait. Was I pranked by one of the goddamn telepaths on campus?

Fucking. Argh.

Do you know what’s worse? With all the spinning of my tires, I have no outlet. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it. That’s mostly because the people I’d want to talk to haven’t been around over the break, but really? I’m not sure… I don’t know if I want anyone to know about this. Not yet. I can’t handle this. Not right now. Fuck, not ever!

Jubilee is in L.A. visiting her Aunt Hope, so she’s been off the table. She’s sticking around for a few extra days to sit in court with me, though. I’m glad she’ll be there for me. I just know there will be fallout from last night and whatever happens with Dominik this week. Piotr and Jean-Paul have been away visiting JP’s twin sister and some other friends in Canada. Pete said he was nervous about the whole thing. Meeting a significant other’s family is stressful at the best of times, but apparently JP’s sister can be pretty crazy – literally. JP told me before Christmas that Jeanne-Marie has some chronic mental health problems, though she’s better overall right now. Apparently, her marriage has helped her to manage things better, but then who doesn’t feel better when they have a regular supply of the Big D coming from someone who loves you? I’d love to be able to claim I’m a good example, but that’s unfortunately not the case. I’m pretty sure now that even with the regular sex my mental health was only made worse by living with Dom after we were pardoned.

Anyway, Pete’s actually met her before, briefly, in some interactions the X-men have had with Alpha Flight, Canada’s national hero squad. JM and JP have the same powers and they actually become pretty uber when the two of them are together. The intense light flashes they each can produce on their own can amp up in strength to incinerating, explosive photonic blasts when they are touching one another. Pretty cool stuff. I hope for Piotr’s sake things go well. He’ll worry a hole in his stomach if they don’t.

Xi’an has been away too, visiting her siblings in San Francisco. Rachel is supposed to be picking her up from the airport before the party on her way back from visiting with the Grey family in New Jersey. It is kind of weird to me that she’s involved herself with Dr. Grey’s parents. That must have been one fucked up introduction - ‘Hi, I’m your dead daughter’s child from an alternate universe. Can I please be welcomed in and be part of the family? I really want to have a grandma and grandpa.’ Jesus Christ of the Awkward Saints, I could never do something like that.

Anyway, I went. I went to Bobby’s goddamn party. Fuck me.

A fair number of the teaching staff were there, but also some of his (former?) coworkers from his old accounting firm. It was a lot of people for that condo, even if it was a two-bedroom plus den. It was a quite generous size for New York, I have to admit. Right from the get-go it really hit home that Bobby had definitely done very well for himself in his work outside of the School if he could afford to live in a place like this. He had it all decorated for the occasion and had a bunch of stations with hors d’oeuvres and punch. He also had put together a fairly extensive bar - spirits, liqueurs, bitters, cordials, beers, ciders - you name it, it was there. It seems that Bobby has jumped onto the craft beer bandwagon along with everyone else these days - not that I blame him or anyone else. I’d rather pay a bit more for some good craft than drink cheap piss. I might be the tortured (not-starving) writer, but I’m not some hipster who is just stoked to get hammered on PBR. Ugh.

So things went pretty much as you’d expect for a while. I just sipped on a beer or three, hanging out with my coworkers and listening to their recounting of their awkward holiday family dramas. When I went to get a refill, though, I was pulled into a conversation with one of Bobby’s accountant friends. She was pretty - long chestnut hair, green eyes, a fashionable pair of glasses and a beautiful laugh. Her name was Amelia Westhart, not that it matters. When I introduced myself in return, there was a flash of recognition and then a big smile broke out on her face. Apparently, she’d read all of my books and absolutely loved them. This was a first for me, dealing with a true fan face to face. We talked for a while about my books, about my journalistic work, and other writing projects I was working on. It started out subtle, but as the conversation went on I started to realize she was hitting on me.

Amelia eventually called over a few more of her accountant friends. One of the women had also read one of my books and liked it, and a couple of them had seen some of my pieces for the New York Times and the Atlantic. Bobby was walking by at that point and Amelia grabbed him and started gushing about me while I was standing right there. He listened to her, smiling widely. The entirety of his attention was focused squarely on me. He told her he agreed completely, that I was an amazing guy and how lucky he was to know me. I blushed, and it must have been pretty bad because he started laughing, and then gave me a wink with a sparkle in his eye. I popped a boner just from that sexy little wink. He gave my shoulder a squeeze that sent a jolt straight to my hardening dick and then told them to go easy on his best friend because he needed to go warm up some more appetizers in the oven. I was floored. He called me his best friend? When had this happened? When had my status been upgraded back to that? I knew he thought of me as a friend again, his note with my Christmas gift had made that abundantly clear, but this? And the shower and… no, fuck no, not thinking about this right now. It didn’t happen. Not what I was thinking it was. It was an illusion. A telepathic prank. Bobby was thinking of someone else, of Johnny fucking Storm. Not me. Get ahold of yourself, Allerdyce!

When I turned back to the group one of the accounting people, a guy named Mike something-or-other was staring at me with this dark expression on his face. He asked me how long I’d known Bobby, so I told him we went to highschool together, and that meant about twenty-four years. I told the group it was a boarding school and we had been roommates. The girls wanted to know what he was like in our high school days, so I talked about Bobby’s vacillation between Boy Scout mode and class clown. I even gave them a highly edited version of some of the pranks we pulled during those years, which got a few laughs. Not from Mike, though. He wanted to know why they’d never heard about me before if we were so close. I didn’t really know how to reply to that. I felt like I was being trapped. Before I could say anything, Amelia jumped in and said that Mike was being ridiculous, since Bobby never really talked much about his past and about people outside of their work in general. That was a relief, but Mike was clearly not happy with her. I told them that I couldn’t speak for Bobby as to why he didn’t talk about his past, but some of our friends told me he’d been pretty dissatisfied and bitter about life for a while and was having trouble finding himself. I didn’t know about any of that period because I had been away for years. We’d lost touch and it was a bit of serendipity that we found ourselves working together at the School this year.

They asked me what I was teaching, and I told them a bit about my senior English Lit and Writer’s Craft courses. Mike complained that English was the most boring and pointless subject in high school, but Amelia stepped in and said it was probably just his former teachers who made it that way. One of their other co-workers, Veronica or Victoria or something like that, she skewered Mike saying that he should have worked harder in English because his writing in the reports he submitted was terrible. She almost always had to do massive edits before they were sent to the higher-ups. He spluttered a bit and there were laughs all around. Veronica said that it was okay because he was an ace at other things she sucked at and she loved him anyway.

Mike shook his head, then fixed me with a challenging look. He asked why Bobby and I lost touch if we’d been so close. I shook my head and said that I’d left things behind because I wasn’t happy with how my life was going. I found myself a cause I thought I could believe in that Bobby didn’t agree with, and even if we’d been best friends up until that point, we had a falling out. Mike looked smug at that and said he wasn’t surprised that Bobby would have a falling out with someone who decided to become a terrorist. Some of the girls gasped at his audacity. My eyes narrowed. I said if he was so informed about my past then he’d also know from my journalistic opinion pieces that the reason I’d found that cause was because I was kidnapped and radicalized by Magneto after our school was attacked by humans with an agenda of mutant genocide. I told them that I’d served my debt to society and although I couldn’t write about it I received a full pardon for the years I spent trying to make up for the mistakes of my idiotic youth in service with the C.I.A. after my shortened jail term ended. I’m now doing my best to effect more change for the better in our country, both with my journalistic work and with my teaching.

I may have sorta-kinda bent the truth about the kidnapped part, but from the perspective of the law, it was true. I was only sixteen and Magneto had removed me from Charles Xavier’s guardianship without his explicit permission, let alone that of the State. Even if I’d gone along willingly because the dam was going to burst and I didn’t want to die, and even though I was the one who chose to stay with him, it was still considered kidnapping under the law. Also, the Freedom Force Project was technically an independent body. There was some degree of oversight and coordination with higher-ups in the C.I.A. since we had collected a lot of sensitive information for them on some of our missions, but the government wanted plausible deniability in case shit hit the fan and our operations became exposed to the public. I could add more but I’m not gonna get into it right now.

Anyway, the girls seemed interested in the C.I.A. part, but I told them that I couldn’t tell them anything about it because most of my work was classified. Mike snorted at that, wondering if I was making that part up. Rachel walked up to the group at that point and handed me a shot of Fireball whisky, insisting I owed her a least one tonight for egging her on at Hallowe’en. We did the shots and Rachel turned to Mike and said that I wasn’t lying about the C.I.A. business. She gave Mike a knowing look and said we all have some skeletons in our closets that we cannot talk about. He made a show of rolling his eyes, but I could see that he was a touch unsettled by her words.

He doesn’t like you because he’s gay and thinks you are stepping on his toes when it comes to Bobby, Rachel’s voice sounded in my head telepathically as she wandered over to the corner where Xi’an, Dani and Sam were talking.

I was starting to have my suspicions about him, too, I thought back at her. He can go fuck himself.

I only stayed with that group for a few more minutes because there was only so much of this Mike asshole that I could put up with. I could see that even his coworkers were starting to get put off by his attempts to skewer me. Normally, this kind of bullshit would just annoy me but for some reason this guy... well, he got to me. Got under my skin. Even if he was just provoking me out of a sadistic sense of fun to make himself feel better about not being closer to Bobby, it was too much. It hit far too close for comfort right now. But I didn’t come here to spend my night justifying who I was and what I’d done to some stupid jerk flatscan who was probably born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I was getting agitated about it and I needed a smoke so I excused myself to do just that. Xi’an and Jubilee have been bitching me out since they found out I was smoking again, but I honestly don’t give a fuck if people see me smoking tonight.

I went to the bar and poured myself a bourbon and coke and then went to the coat closet and grabbed my cigarettes from my coat pocket. I didn’t intend to be outside for long because it was fucking freezing, so I left my coat where it was and walked out onto the balcony. There were a couple people out there already. They were other hacks from Bobby’s accounting days, people I hadn’t met yet, and the air hung heavy with the skunky smell of the weed they were smoking. They gave me a nod but then ignored me and continued their toking and conversation without inviting me in. It was rude but it suited me just fine, to be honest. I’d had enough of Bobby’s former coworkers for the night and besides that, I don’t react well to weed if I’ve been drinking. I learned that the hard way after a few nights of puking my guts out during the latter part of my teenage years. Besides, with the meds I’m taking right now I shouldn’t even be drinking let alone adding THC into the mix.

I pulled out one of my cancer sticks and unceremoniously threw the pack down on the small balcony table. Fuck, that whole encounter with Mike had thrown me so off my game that I’d actually left my lighter in my coat. I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. I stole fire off the joint the others were smoking and lit up. It was only a nanoflame, though. I didn’t feel like dealing with questions about my powers, whatever their reactions may be. I sat down on one of the chairs next to the table and closed my eyes as I inhaled the soothing smoke. The immediate hit of the nicotine started to calm my nerves. I probably should have brought a nice cigar to smoke instead of these shitty cigarettes since it’s New Year’s Eve. I should have been celebrating the fact that my life was turning around, after all. I should be celebrating that I had actual friends, ones that want to see me and want to hang out and invite me to parties. I should be celebrating that I felt like my life was starting to have actual meaning again. A purpose.

Instead, my thoughts were moving towards a pretty dark place. Like I said, that Mike asshole got to me. He just had to remind me of all the bad decisions I’d made. Remind me that I was a criminal. A terrorist. That I’d destroyed things and killed people in the name of mutant liberation, for Magneto’s vision. That I’d gone and done the same for the U.S. government just to survive, to escape the prison system before something horrible happened to me. I guess I got lucky. I was in a maximum security prison for mutants and placed in solitary confinement. I wasn’t allowed out of my cell except to shower every couple days. My shit meals were delivered to me. I was lucky they even allowed me to have one book at a time because, otherwise, I think I would have gone insane. I think I started to, anyway. I’ve wondered sometimes if I’d been out in the more general population if I would have been made someone’s bitch. Probably. I’m sure being a mutant terrorist rendered powerless by the lack of a source would have put a huge target on my back. The bastards would have got off on the fact that they could rape one Magneto’s former top lieutenants and he wouldn’t be able to fight back. I wonder how much worse my PTSD would be if being raped in prison in my early twenties had been added to the list of traumas that started with my parents. It’s not like I didn’t deserve to suffer that humiliation, too.

The pot smokers went back inside, leaving me to my own devices. I took a drink of my bourbon and coke, wishing I’d poured it a bit stronger. At least it tasted good in counterpoint with my cigarette. I was cold but not as cold as I thought I’d feel out there. It was probably a combination of the alcohol and the cigarette. I’d felt many different kinds of cold in my lifetime. The coldest I’d ever felt was when I ran off the jet at Alkali Lake. It wasn’t the bitter wind, the blizzard that was getting to me, though. It was the cold, empty shard of ice that was driving into my heart because Bobby didn’t get off the jet with me. He didn't get off because he cared so much about stupid Marie that he couldn’t see that his best friend was hurting too, that I was just as terrified and angry over what happened at the School, in Boston, and in the jet when we were shot down by the Air Force. I was terrified and full of self-loathing due to the fact that I’d just ruined my life defending us from the cops in Boston. I let my anger at the world get to me while we were standing there on the Drake’s front porch with more than a dozen guns pointed at us. We were going to die anyway so I just let it all out, started to go wild with my powers because I thought that was the only option left after seeing Logan get shot point blank when he was trying to calmly defuse the situation. My life was over. Even if I somehow made it back to Xavier’s when that cluster fuck was finished, I’d have been a fugitive. And Bobby saw none of that. He only saw Marie. Scared little princess Marie.

After Xavier almost killed us all with that global psionic attack, I was bewildered and lost. Magneto told me the dam was going to burst and I’d die if I stayed, so I got in the chopper with him and Mystique. I was a teenager desperate to be somewhere that I felt accepted and where I had a future. Magneto recognized that and took advantage of me. He told me exactly what my stupid teenage mind wanted to hear. Made me feel important. Showed me a path, a cause to believe in and to fight for. He radicalized me. The fact that he basically brainwashed me doesn’t excuse the crimes I committed under his orders, though. I will never be able to escape that, government pardon or not. Some of the things I did with Freedom Force were perhaps just as bad. Worse, maybe. Sure I did some intelligence work, some recon, some demolitions on orders. Mostly, though, my job was to be an assassin. To make a conflagration, a detonation, a building fire. Make it look like it was an unfortunate accident or an IED, with faked evidence that it was a crime perpetrated by some other actors – usually the local rebels fighting a tyrannical government or group of religious fundamentalists wanting to establish a theocracy. The good ol’U.S. of A. has their hands working in pretty much every corrupt regime in the Middle East, and in a lot of Africa as well. ‘Allies’ like those regimes always needed little things to keep them placated and under control or they could be eliminated and replaced with someone more compliant at any time. With the nature of my powers, with the nature of the type of incidents my handlers wanted me to create for the assassination, there were inevitably other casualties. Collateral damage, as they liked to call it. That is probably the thing I feel the most guilt over – the family members, the children, the innocent bystanders that were caught up in the destruction. If I believed in a god, I’m not sure how I could ever find their divine forgiveness and truly atone for my sins.

Rachel and Xi’an came and sat with me for a while. They tried to get me into the conversation, but they realized that my mood was just too introspective so they just stayed with me talking quietly between themselves while I smoked my second cigarette and polished off my drink. The party had started to get a bit louder, and someone came out and told us that it was only a few minutes until midnight and they were going to watch the ball drop in Times Square on Bobby’s massive television. Xi’an and Rachel got up and asked me if I was going to come in. I begged off. Although they offered to stay out with me instead, I insisted that they go in and celebrate with everyone else. I knew they were cold out here and they didn’t need to suffer with me just because I was in a shitty mood now and didn’t have it in me to do much other than some brooding self-flagellation.

After a few minutes, I heard the partygoers doing the countdown. I heard the shouts of Happy New Year, heard them break out singing a terrible rendition of Auld Lang Syne. I hate that song. People don't seem to know that Robert Burns never intended it to be a holiday song, either. Ugh. Still, the happiness inside was a bit infectious even if I wasn’t going to get up and join in. I started thinking about the year ahead of me. I had another five months or so of teaching. Maybe more, if I was still happy at the end of the school year and decided to stay. It seemed increasingly likely that I would be staying on, too. That place was starting to feel like home again. I had friends living right there with me, always there to lend an ear, to shoot the shit, to have a bit of fun. I was starting to feel flashes of inspiration again and maybe I’ll be able to start a new book, one that I can be truly proud of. On the negative side I still have the bullshit with Dom to deal with, but hopefully that will soon be laid to rest.

There was one more thing I was about to start thinking of, one important thing that was occupying so much of my thoughts and dreams lately, but I was interrupted by the sudden appearance of Amelia on the balcony. She seemed a fair bit more inebriated than earlier. She asked if I’d been out here the entire time. I shrugged and offered her a cigarette. She accepted but then got wide-eyed when I sent a thin streamer of flame across from my cigarette to light hers. I chuckled and played around with some small whirls of flames circling my hands and flowing around my fingers. I was a starting to really feel the cold, to be honest, so the heat was welcome. Amelia seemed fascinated and started flirting with me again, but in her drunkenness, she was now beyond obvious about it. I needed to put a stop to it because it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. I told her I was flattered, but that I was gay. She laughed it off, but I could tell she was embarrassed. She was good-natured about it, though, and she stayed and talked with me for a bit while she finished the cigarette. Apparently, she only smokes when she’s drinking and someone offers her one. As if. It’s probably just a tactic as part of her flirty cat-and-mouse to get into a guy’s pants. With her looks and personality, she probably has no problem at all with getting most guys to eat out of the palm of her hand. Not me, though.

I don’t know how long I was out there after Amelia left, but I do know the remaining sounds of the party had died down quite a bit. Even the sounds of the music seemed to have muted down to a more sedate level. Jesus, it made me feel old that the party was dying down and it was likely only just past 1 am. I grabbed another cigarette – hopefully my last for the evening – and got up to lean on the balcony railing. Bobby’s apartment had a decent view, looking out over the river towards Hoboken. I’m glad there wasn’t much wind. After a while, the sliding door opened. Bobby came up beside me and leant on the railing, staring out into the moonless night.

“Those are horrible for you, you know.”

I chuckled and told him I knew that and that I had quit a few years ago when I started at UCLA and was doing my best to be healthy. This lawsuit has pushed my stress levels over the limit, though, so I fell back on this crutch. I wasn’t doing it often, actually, just on days when things were really getting to me. At least I wasn’t drowning myself in the bottle like my parents would have. Bobby frowned at that and asked what reason I had to be stressed about at a party with friends. I told him that there can be as much drama and stress dealing with friends as anyone or anything else, especially during the holidays. But it wasn’t friends that were the problem tonight. Not directly, anyway.

Bobby looked contemplative for a second, but then I could see something dawning on him. He asked if it was about Mike. I guess he saw that I’d continued to be cornered by him and his other old co-workers for longer than he thought I’d stay with them after he left me to them. Apparently, he noticed that I started looking a bit put off at some point. He admitted, though, that since he had been running around refilling the hors d’oeuvres plates, punch bowl, chips, and the rest of his bar spread when that was happening that he wasn’t really paying close attention. He wasn’t trying to ignore me tonight, but he figured there were enough people here that I knew well and got along with that I’d be fine. Regardless of that, he knew I could handle myself even if I was stuck with his old co-workers.

I told him it wasn’t anything particularly horrible, at least not from the other three or four that were there. Mike, though, he had a bead on me. Bobby asked me if it was something he should talk to Mike about, but I said no. I mean, all he was doing was trying to test out the waters, figure out who I was and what Bobby meant to me. And more importantly, I thought to myself, what I really meant to Bobby. He was really bothered by Bobby’s sudden declaration that I was his best friend in front of them. I didn’t press Bobby on that, but I asked him if he knew Mike was gay. Bobby sighed and said he had suspected as much for a few years now but he’d never asked and Mike never told him. I told him that Mike smelled a threat in me and was trying to mark his territory. Bobby snorted, shaking his head. Looking out across the river, he quietly murmured that there was never territory that Mike had any chance of marking.

“Not your type?” I asked, taking a final drag off my cigarette.

A small smile curled his lips, as a quiet chuckle escaped. “No, definitely not my type.”

I nodded, snuffing the cigarette with my powers and casting the remains down towards the street below. The part of me that was very pleased with that answer was winning out over the rather sombre, introspective mood that had taken hold of me earlier. “Yeah, you need someone that challenges you but makes you walk on your own two feet while giving you the support you need so you can fight your own battles, not someone who worships the ground you walk on and then turns into a rabid attack dog when they feel their property is in danger of being stolen away.”

Bobby chuckled. “You know me too well.”

“Do I?”

Bobby was quiet for a moment, biting his lip. The lightness of his mood dropped away, and he blinked as he raised his gaze up to the stars, even though there were none to be seen in these light-polluted skies. “Yeah, Johnny, you really do.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding with a soft shiver. We were silent for a moment. I took a deep but quiet breath, let out almost as a sigh. It was late, and I needed to leave. I needed to go find a hotel to stay for the night until my flight tomorrow afternoon. I turned to Bobby, watching him for a moment before pushing off the railing. As I stepped towards the sliding door, he turned to face me.

“You heading out too?”

“I have that flight to L.A. tomorrow,” I reminded without turning towards him, my hand reaching for the handle.

“I thought you said it wasn’t until the afternoon.”

I stopped for a moment and chuckled softly. “You’re going to be the death of me some day, Drake.” And suddenly, it felt like it was now or never. It was time to stop worrying about what he did or did not want and just show him that the door was open.

I turned to him, put my right hand on his cheek and softly kissed his lips. “Happy New Year, Bobby,” I murmured and then turned and headed inside, shutting the door behind me.

It was quiet inside the condo. Everyone else had left, it seemed. I sighed, satisfied with myself. Even if everything a few days ago was an illusion, a hallucination, it would be okay. Everything would be okay. I had turned away too quickly to see his reaction, but Bobby hadn’t punched me out, screamed at me, recoiled in disgust, anything. That was good enough for me. I was reaching for my coat when I heard the sliding door open.

“You forgot these,” Bobby called after me. He sounded relatively non-plussed. I guess that was a good sign that he’s pretty self-assured about his sexuality for a straight guy.

I shook my head, not turning to look at him. “Keep ‘em. In a couple days, I shouldn’t feel like I need them anymore.”

He crossed the distance of the apartment faster than I expected, stopping next to me as I pulled on my coat. He put a hand on my shoulder, turning me. My breath caught in my throat.

That smile, the glinting in his eyes. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t.

Damn.

He grabbed my right hand with his left and slowly brought it up, gently placing the box of cigarettes into my hand. “You still have a few days left. You have plenty of time to quit again afterwards. I can even bust your ass about it if you want.”

I felt myself flushing, and there was laughter in his eyes.

“So Johnny, before you go, I was wondering if you could help me out with something.”

“Yeah?” I managed, my voice a hoarse almost-whisper.

“I was in the bathroom when the ball dropped, so I didn’t get to give anyone my New Year’s kiss. You wanna help me out with that?” he asked, his face turning a bit more shy and vulnerable.

I swallowed. My mouth was so dry all of a sudden. My heart felt like it was about to beat its way out of my chest. My mind was a screaming empty void. Is this… is this fucking happening?!

“S-sure.”

The feeling of his lips on mine, the soft pressure, it was overwhelming. The cigarettes fell from my hand, a few spilling out across the floor as his right hand slid around the nape of my neck and held me to him, if only for a moment. He pulled his lips back, and our foreheads gently bumped together.

This isn’t real. This definitely isn’t real. I just fell off that balcony, didn’t I?

The sparkle had returned to the warmth of his brown eyes, and his cheeks had flushed. “Happy New Year, Johnny,” he said softly. A pause. “I was wondering if you’d be able to help me out with something else, too. Something I need to talk about.”

“Yeah?”

“It might take a bit, though, so maybe you should stay the night. Besides, it’s going to be hard to get a place to stay at 2 am on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan, and you’ve said absolutely nothing that leads me to believe you actually booked a room ahead of time.”

I felt my head nodding against his, flushing slightly. “You… you got me there.” The truth was that I wasn’t sure how long I would last at the party, and I wasn’t sure what I’d wanted to do in the end. It probably sounds stupid, but I didn’t want to box myself into something and end up wasting more money when I would have a ridiculous amount of legal fees to pay Vange and her people soon. I figured if worst came to worst I could hole up in my car in the airport parking lot and sleep there for a few hours. But I didn’t tell him that, because all I could do was watch his eyes, every so often glancing down at those softly smiling lips that had stolen my ability to form a coherent sentence. “Help… uh, what do you need, I mean want, uh, help with?”

Bobby’s smile widened as he stepped back away from me, then moved behind me to pull my coat off my shoulders. He threw it aside. “I have this crush, you see.”

“Uh huh...”

“And we have a pretty rough history.”

“Uh huh..."

“I thought he hated me. For a long time, I thought I hated him too. Sometimes it’s hard to understand yourself, let alone other people. You have some experience with a situation like this, don’t you?”

I swallowed hard, turning to look at him again. I nodded. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Bobby threw an arm over my shoulders and led me over to the couch, flopping down onto it unceremoniously. When I didn’t follow he grabbed my arm and dragged me down to sit next to him. “Do you still have that problem?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a problem. More like a quandary.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Every time you take a step forward, you question yourself. You question what you are thinking, what you are doing, whether you are reading things right, whether their actions and reactions and their motivations are actually what you think they are. All of that. Sometimes you feel encouraged, sometimes you feel pathetic, sometimes you feel like an asshole, sometimes you wish the earth would just open and swallow you whole. And there are also times where everything feels like it’s coming together, like maybe, just maybe, there is a reason to still hope. But you are never sure what to do, and it’s fucking scary.”

Bobby nodded, turning his gaze towards some of his cheap decorations that had started to peel off of the wall. He took a long breath. “You have any luck dealing with it?”

I sighed, looking down at my feet, a small smile breaking across my face. “You’re asking for advice from a pretty shitty role model. I haven’t dealt with it, to be honest. I`ve tried, oh I’ve fucking tried, but nothing’s worked. Not for the last twenty-two years.”

Bobby jolted, rapidly turning his head to face me once again. His jaw hung.

I sighed softly again and turned to meet his gaze. Honesty. That’s what I needed to give. No more dancing around, worrying, wondering, waiting for something to happen. I’m not sure if it’s what he wanted, but it’s what I gave. “I’ve been in love with you since we were fourteen, Bobby.”

“Th… that long?”

“To one extent or another, yeah, that long.”

Bobby swallowed. I could see the wheels spinning in his head, could see Bobby replaying so many of their interactions. The Bobby who had been so self-controlled mere moments ago was suddenly in the middle of the lake without a life jacket. Bobby turned away, staring down at the coffee table.

“Don’t worry about it, Bobby. Don’t even think about it. Not right now. If you want to talk about it later, that’s fine. We probably should no matter what, but not tonight, okay?”

Bobby nodded, not looking up. Yeah, he’d been completely thrown by that one.

“It's not what’s most important, anyway. What matters is what’s happening right now,” I added, hoping to God I wasn’t making a big mistake staying here tonight. By having this conversation. By kissing him in the first place.

A small smile curled Bobby’s lips, and he turned, sweeping his honey-brown eyes up to meet my gaze. I felt a pulse of something like electricity pass through my body, just from the way he was looking at me. I sighed, shaking my head.

“Fuck, it's entirely unfair how sexy you are, Drake.”

Bobby blushed a little. “Now that’s something I never thought I’d hear come out of your mouth.”

I smirked. “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure there’s at least one thing you’ve thought of putting into my mouth.”

“Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”

“I’ve got a whole list of reasons but one, in particular, stands out. You may want to be a little quieter when you call out someone’s name while you jack off in the locker room showers.”

Bobby’s jaw dropped, his cheeks first paling and then blushing furiously. He brought his right hand up and held it over his eyes, shaking his head. “Oh god, you... oh god.”

I chuckled at his embarrassment. “Believe me, I was pretty thrown by it. I ran the fuck out of there after I heard you. I mean, I wasn’t exactly sure what I should think.”

Bobby groaned. “I… I can’t even…”

“Look, Bobby, you can perv on me all you want, but I’m going to just say right away that I’m not interested in empty sex. Been there, done that, moved on.”

Bobby sat up, frowning sharply. “Did I even say I was even interested in that?”

I sighed, shaking my head. “No, you didn’t. Sorry. I don’t know what you are thinking right now, about me and whatever it is you do or don’t want from me. I’ve been freaking out for the past four days doing my damnedest to convince myself this isn’t something real, that you have no real interest in my outside of our friendship. But I’m asking you to tell me, because I’m tired of overthinking things about my friends and relationships, and tired of getting myself worked up over nothing because I’m too stupid to just take things at face value and go with the flow.”

“I… I don’t know what’s going on, John.”

“Bullshit.”

Bobby turned away from me. “Look, I’m just not… I mean… I’m still new at this, okay?” Bobby said, frustration and embarrassment colouring his voice.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t tell me what you want, Bobby.”

Bobby shook his head, getting up to walk over to his improvised bar. He poured himself a scotch on the rocks, almost filling the glass. He took a very large drink of it, then bit his lip. I hadn’t seen Bobby have a single drink all night. Even if he was in charge of the party, Boy Scout Bobby was just too responsible. But it was clear that this discussion was pretty heavy for Bobby, and completely unplanned. Fuck, I may have opened Pandora’s Box with that kiss on the balcony. I have to hope that what I find in the bottom once everything else has come out is the one thing I’ve been looking for.

He looked up at me with a serious but tired expression on his face. “I’ve deluded myself for a long time, John, trying to bury parts of myself that I don’t like or have been too afraid of to let out. I mean, it's hard enough just being a mutant, but to also be...”

“If you are guilting yourself about being in denial or in the closet, don’t. You are far from the first guy out there to start coming to grips with his sexuality later in life.”

“I know, I know. Damn it, John, I just can’t believe I have been so…” Bobby sighed and took another drink. “I’ve been an asshole to so many people because of my stupid issues.”

“Yeah, you really fucked with Jean-Paul’s head for a while there.”

“God, I know. I know that now. That’s part of why I left the School in the first place. Well, subconsciously. Or something. I was... I was too afraid to act on… I was such a jerk, doing my best to be oblivious to his feelings, to be good friends but not let it go too far.”

“So you ran away from him?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you still have feelings for him?”

“I never said I did in the first place!”

I rolled my eyes at that. “’Cause that’s a convincing statement, Drake.”

Bobby shook his head, taking another drink and then coming back to splay himself out on the other end of the couch. He let his head roll back onto the arm, staring up at the ceiling. “I did have feelings for him, John, but it wasn’t fair to him.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I… I think I was close, so close to giving in, but I had this dream. It was the first time anything like that had… I mean, I’d never, not like… Damn. It started out with just me and him but then…” Bobby swallowed. “It changed, and I started seeing all the people in my life that I’ve ever been attracted to and not really allowed myself to come to grips with. All the guys, anyway. It was so intense, so emotional, and when I woke up I didn’t really know how to handle it. I don’t have dreams that I remember very often but that one has stuck with me so vividly that even now I could probably describe every last detail about it to you. That’s not really important, though. I guess it just bowled me over and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I wasn’t ready to handle that because for the first time in my life I couldn’t deny it anymore. I like men. I’m attracted to men. I want to have sex with men, to fall in love. I couldn’t handle it, admitting it to myself, couldn’t handle what it would mean to deal with it and I… I ran. It wouldn’t have been fair to drag Jean-Paul through that transition with me. That’s something I can say in hindsight, but at the time I was just too afraid. But do I have feelings for Jean-Paul now? Romantic ones? Not… not really. I mean, there is still a lot of attraction there. I won’t deny that.”

I snorted. “I think you’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not be attracted to Jean-Paul. He practically oozes sex.”

Bobby gave a tired half-smile to that. “If you say so, Johnny. But I don’t have feelings for Jean-Paul beyond friendship anymore. I mean, I don’t think so. I guess that ship has sailed, anyway. I wasn’t sure what I was going to be walking into coming back to the School at the end of August. Before I arrived there was a part of me that was wondering if he and I could… If I could rewind things, go back… I was just being an idiot, though. Arriving to find out that he and Piotr were together was a shock. That’s the real reason I was having trouble being around them. It’s not because I have a problem with them being in a relationship. I’m honestly happy for them. They… they work in a way that I would never have with Jean-Paul, and I think that’s a good thing. I just didn’t know how to act because my head was such a mess whenever I was around them, both individually and together. It wasn’t just them, though. There was you to deal with as well.”

“Yeah, but with me, it was more an aversion reaction to dealing with your old nemesis suddenly in your space, right? I wasn’t exactly threatening your–“

The sober look on Bobby’s face cut me off pretty quick. After a moment I got up and poured myself a drink as well. Bourbon, straight up this time. It burned on the way down, but I just knew that I damn well needed it before I confronted whatever it was Bobby was about to tell me. I turned around to see him taking a drink as well before setting his glass back on the coffee table. He sat bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers interlaced.

“Seeing you there at that staff meeting was a shock, too, John. After you were finally arrested when we were twenty, I never thought I’d see you again unless you somehow escaped prison and started blowing shit up once more. Everything about you and I hurt so much that I buried it as deep as I could inside me. Over the years I did everything in my power to convince myself I hated you and to forget all the good because every time I thought about you, it hurt so much that I didn’t know what to do. It all came flooding out in the midst of that meeting. Afterwards, I took it out on you when I had no right to do that. I knew, objectively, that Emma would never have hired you if it was the wrong thing for the School, but in the heat of the moment I just couldn’t get beyond my feelings. I was in overload, so it all just… I got angry, I guess. Typical male bullshit, I know, turning threatening emotions into anger. I couldn’t let that get to me, get in the way of working, though, so I just had to avoid you and avoid any and all of those feelings because they were just too much to process. But as the semester wore on I kept being confronted by the fact that you were there, in my space, and… well, you weren’t the angry, self-absorbed bastard I’d expected you to be.

“You were just you, the you that over the years I wished so hard had never left us, the you that I had grown up with and grieved over when you left. You were fun, principled, sarcastic and so smart. Your students love you for your irreverence, even if you drag them through the mud whenever they give you shit. I watched as most of my friends still on staff were all becoming close to you and here I was, Mr. Social, suddenly finding myself on the outside looking in. And then there was that day in Emma’s office after you were hurt and you stood up to me for being such a dick to Jean-Paul and Piotr and everyone… I couldn’t look the other way anymore. You were in that dream I had years ago too, John. Amongst all the others you were the one that was there, front and centre, through the whole thing.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered. I didn’t want to address the tightness that was forming in my chest, so I slammed back the rest of my bourbon and poured myself another before walking back over to the couch and sitting down next to Bobby. Next to him, but with enough space between us to keep things… I don’t know. To keep things safe, in case either of us had something to say that the other didn’t want to hear. Touching would be too much.

“Maybe it’s because you were the first one, I don’t know.”

“The first what? You weren’t in love with me in high school, Bobby. That much was clear, regardless of anything else.”

“Are you sure about that? I was an oblivious late bloomer, John. I just didn’t feel… No, that’s not coming out right. I did have feelings for you, John. I just didn’t understand what they were. It was so confusing because they… it made me so insane sometimes. I thought I needed to put some space between us sometimes because… well, I just didn’t know what to do.”

I took a deep breath, leaning back against the couch. “So that’s what it was.”

“Huh?”

“Bobby, you confused the fuck out of me with that hot-and-cold investment in our friendship. I didn’t know what was up from down. There were times when it seemed like you wanted nothing more than for us to be uber-best friends and spend all of our time together practically glued together at the hip, and then the opposite when it felt like you just couldn’t stand being anywhere near me if you didn’t have to be. You were never an outright asshole about things except when I was pissing you off but I usually deserved it when that happened. But when you ignored me it confused the hell out of me and it hurt. It didn’t help me a goddamn bit that I was secretly in love with you and afraid of what would happen if you found out.”

“Yeah, and then Rogue came along and I took the level of screwed up that we already were and moved it along to completely fucked up,” Bobby muttered morosely. He picked up his scotch and polished it off.

“But in some ways, we were closer in those last nine months than we ever were before,” I pointed out.

Bobby nodded. “Yeah, we were. I was so stupid. My heart would be racing sometimes when we were together, doing things, whether we were in the Danger Room or sports or whenever we were playing pranks. I thought… I didn’t know how to interpret things, but it was heady and an adrenaline surge and I thought it felt dangerous. I loved that feeling but it scared me too. I thought the reason it felt dangerous to be too close to you was because you weren’t the type of person I was supposed to be friends with, even though I didn’t actually care about your rough edges. I stupidly thought that I needed to be more responsible in some way to make up for it, to be the type of man Scott was trying to get me to be. And when Rogue arrived… I remember on her first day, the two of us showing off for her in class. I dunno. She was so fragile back then that I felt like I could be the one to help her.”

“So because I was showing off for her too, you assumed I was interested in her and other girls by extension. Suddenly it felt safer to let me in once you had Marie wrapped around your finger to act as your beard, didn’t it?”

“I really don’t know. I guess that’s a plausible explanation. It’s not like I was thinking about this stuff consciously, John. And if I did have any moments of actually thinking about things, I’m sure I wasn’t thinking rationally. It’s interesting looking back now, the perspective I’m getting in hindsight. I always thought you were jealous that I was the one with Rogue, but I guess it was her that you wanted out of the picture, not me.”

“Pretty much. I’m not proud of some of those near tantrums I had, but I’ve tried to forgive myself for them. I was a hormonal fourteen- to sixteen-year-old and my first love was dating someone else, a girl that was pretty and vulnerable and soft and everything that I wasn’t.”

Bobby chuckled. “In hindsight, she wasn’t a lot of the things we thought she was, John. Pretty, yeah, but she was stronger than we gave her credit for. If she seemed soft, it’s because I treated her like a spun-glass princess and gave her an excuse to play that part for a while.”

“We all have those times, I guess, when we need someone there for us to let us be something we aren’t, even if just for a little while. Try on other pairs of shoes while we find ourselves. Supposedly that’s a common thing in high school.”

Bobby laughed. “Yeah, it is. The first years of college, too. When my professor mentioned that in the adolescent psychology course I was taking as an elective during my undergrad, it was like a lightbulb turned on in my head.”

“Yeah, you are pretty dim sometimes.”

“Shut up!”

“I’d respond with a ‘make me’, but I’m not going to let myself regress to your level,” I ribbed, smirking.

Bobby rolled his eyes. “Yeah, we are both so grown up now.”

I settled back against the couch, a warm happiness beginning to soften my nerves. I took another pull on my drink, considering. “Do you like grown up us?”

Bobby blinked, then a small unsure smile spread across his face. “I don’t think I can say that I’m particularly happy with grown-up me right now, but I can say that grown-up you…” Bobby trailed off, his cheeks flushing. “The grown-up you that I’ve gotten to know over the past few months is pretty damn awesome, John. I think you might have figured that out tonight when I told my old work friends that you are my best friend. I just hope, now, that you can find some room in your heart to put up with not-so-grown-up me, issues and all.”

My breath left me for a moment. My own heart was in a thousand pieces. Good pieces, wonderful pieces. Pieces that I knew would fit back together, and that I hoped to god that Bobby was the one who could help me stitch this mess back up into something even stronger than it ever has been before. My lips curled into a soft grin as I set my drink down on the coffee table. I let my left hand wander over to sweep along Bobby’s shoulder to the nape of his neck. I pulled him close and looked him in the eyes.

“How many times do you need me to say I love you tonight before you believe me?”

Bobby’s breath caught as if he couldn’t believe it could be true. Trembling, he closed the distance to kiss me. It was sweet and tender at first but started to become needy and passionate as the seconds rolled by. Hands started to wander as the heat and fervour rose between us. Of course, me being me, I had to ruin the moment and pull away. Bobby gave me a very confused look as we gasped to catch our breath. I sighed, shaking my head.

“I need to sleep, Bobby. I want this, I want us to try making a go of things if you want this too, but I need us to take it slow. I don’t want us rushing forward into something and stupidly hurting each other because one or the other of us isn’t ready. I don’t want us getting ahead of ourselves just because we have so much goddamn chemistry that it’s taking all the resistance in me to not drag you into your bedroom, rip off your clothing and have the best fucking sex of our entire lives. Do you understand?”

“I…” Bobby swallowed, closing his eyes and opening them again as he took a deep breath. He held my gaze for a moment and then nodded. “Goddamnit, when did you turn into the one who has any sense in our relationship?” he lamented, a soft smile forming.

I kissed him softly. “I still have no sense, Bobby. Life’s just hurt me too many times now, and I want this one to count. I can’t afford any mistakes, not with you. I want this to work.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bobby echoed. He stood, pulling me to my feet. “Sleep?’”

“Yes, please.”

He started leading me across to the short hallway, pausing in front of the first door, his guest room. He swallowed, looking shy suddenly “Is it too much to ask if you’d like to at least… I mean…”

I raised an eyebrow, guessing where this was going, but wanting to play with him a bit. Just because. “If I’d like to…?”

“Sleep with me in my bed? And I mean just sleep. Maybe cuddle for a bit, first. I… I really want to hold you. Want you to hold me, too.”

“Yeah, Bobby, I’d really like that.”

He led me a few steps further down the hall into his bedroom. We kissed again, slowly removing one another’s clothes until it was all in a pile on the floor around us. And we didn't stop with our underwear, that fell away too.

God his naked body was a fucking masterpiece. And yeah, we were both rock-hard and straining. We had a moment wrapped in one another’s arms when our erections first came together and sent a jolt of electricity through our bodies. I moaned into his mouth, feeling for a moment like I was going to come just from that. We were good, though, and parted to move to his bed and slip between his sheets. We kissed some more, softly, hands stroking one another’s face, hair, neck, upper torso, but it was gentle, sweet, tender. No stray things wandering south, not tonight. I pulled him tight against me, inhaling his achingly familiar Bobby scent, revelling in the warmth of his body.

“Goodnight, Bobby.”

He smiled softly and buried his face in the crook of my neck. “Good night Johnny.”

I was surprised at how quickly sleep began to claim me. I wanted to keep on feeling this, feeling his arms around me, feeling his warmth, his breath on my shoulder, the rise and fall of his chest. And then, an almost inaudible whisper.

“I love you too, Johnny. I’m scared, but I love you too.”