Running for Home - 49. January 30, 2022

January 30 2022

Waking up in Bobby’s arms again today felt like a miracle.

I want…

I…

Can I have this? Can I truly ask for this, to have this for the rest of my life? Do I deserve this after all I’ve done? Do I deserve to have been saved?

I’m having trouble today, trouble with my head. All the damage, the negativity about the reality I’ve lived, the destruction and pain I’ve wrought, it’s all weighing on me right now. No, weighing is the wrong word. It’s more like it’s flaying me alive while boiling oil is poured over my flesh. I haven’t left my room except to grab a quick bite to eat outside of the regular meal times. I just can’t deal with people right now. If I have to, I’ll do something stupid. Get annoyed and snap at them. Stand there and barely pay attention because I’m stuck in my head. Freak out on them. Fuck, any of the above. It’s getting close to supper time and I’m waiting for Bobby to come and want me to eat with him. I want to. I really do, but I don’t think I can handle it. Not even with him, with just him. I’ll be okay later, I swear I will, but for now…

Fuck. I don’t even know.

When Dom left me for so long by myself, I became more and more anxious. I was doing okay at first, once I got my emotions under control from the sexual, emotional, spiritual mess that happened the night before. What I thought was the night before, anyway. But then he didn’t come by with a meal when my body thought it was time for one. And then he missed another. I had a panic attack. After he did that to me, after we did that, after we connected like that… the thought that he’d leave me to starve to death was a horror beyond comprehension for me. He couldn’t bear the weight of what we’d done so instead of facing me, feeding me, he’d be a coward and let me waste away and die a painful death from thirst, dying in my own piss and shit.

I kept doing my best to get back in control, but I fell into panic mode thrice. And then, suddenly, I heard the door open. It was probably as quiet as possible but it echoed in my brain like a clap of thunder because I was so certain I was going to die. And then, suddenly, there was a clattering of footfalls down a set of stairs – they were off to my right, after all.

“Johnny, Johnny! Oh my fucking God!”

Bobby.

It was Bobby.

He reached me, and I cried. I cried like a baby as he wrapped his arms around me in a tight embrace. I wasn’t the only one crying, though his tears were much more controlled.

“We have to get you out of here.”

“No- hic- no shit. Did you get the keys from him?”

Bobby pulled back and gave me this blank look.

"The keys to the goddamn shackles?" I elaborated.

He flushed. “Uh, no.”

“Jesus Christ, only you would forget to grab the keys!” I bemoaned through my tears, even though I didn’t really give a shit because everything would be okay now.

“It’s fine. I’ll just supercool the shackles and they’ll be brittle enough to break off you.”

“Maybe the chains and not the shackles, Bobby, unless you have a thing for giving your lovers frostbite.”

Bobby grinned at me evilly but then got to work on the piece linking my wrist shackles together.

“How’d you find me?”

“I flew out here as soon as I Jubilee called, freaking out. The police were being complete fucking idiots, and were stonewalling us once they decided there was no evidence of any foul play. They supposedly interviewed Dom and didn’t find anything from him, but I didn’t believe that at all. Emma hired X-factor to help us out. She wanted Jubes and I back in New York, but like hell I was going back there! But she insisted that I was too much of a danger of fucking things up with the state I was in, so she made me hand things over to Jaime’s team. They started shadowing Dom, while I tried to just sit back and not die with worry. I don’t like being the one waiting. I wanted to be hands-on, but somehow the rational part of me let Emma convince me. X-factor checked out a lot of the places Dominik frequented, but none of them were giving us any trail to follow. Not here, not his apartment, nothing. Monet found out pretty quick that she couldn’t do more than a telepathic surface scan of him without him being spooked, so that was slow-going. I just wanted her to take him and blow through his head until she found out what happened to you, but Monet would never do anything like that without good evidence. But she started picking up that his emotions when leaving the bar were a bit weird every day and started to think there must have been more to it than just the day-to-day changes in the stress of running the place.”

*SNAP!*

The now-brittle metal between my cuffs broke under a gentle pull by Bobby. He looked satisfied with that and moved on to the chain suspending my left wrist.

“So why aren’t they here?”

“I… I kinda snuck in on my own, John. Jaime wanted to do a sting tonight when the bar was open and busy so Dominik could be easily distracted, but I couldn’t wait on it. I parked myself in the diner across the street and when I saw him leave I broke in here through the back door and had a look around. Once I saw you were underground using my infrared vision, it didn’t take me too long to figure out how to get down here. It might have been a secret entrance, but it wasn’t very well hidden.”

*SNAP!*

My left arm was now free. Bobby started to work on my right wrist. I sighed, bringing my hand up to his face, my fingers reaching behind his ear to gently stroke the hair there. Bobby leaned into my touch for a second, a slight gasp escaping as he closed his eyes. A small smile formed as he reopened them.

*SNAP!*

With both arms free, I pulled Bobby into a hug of my own, embracing him tightly. He melted into me for a moment, but I let go quicker than either of us really wanted. I needed to get free from these bonds, and we were wasting time. Bobby started to work on the chains holding my left foot, biting his lip in concentration to make sure the cold didn’t spread off the links he was freezing. They, too, snapped off under his power.

Bobby stood, looking satisfied with himself. He was about to say something when there was a blur of motion just over his shoulder.

“Bobby, watch out!”

*SMASH!*

The smell of tequila assaulted my nose as Bobby dropped to the floor in front of me, unconscious. Dom stood there over his body, breathing heavily, his face twisted with rage.

“I can’t fucking leave, can I? Not for one goddamn second! I knew it, I just knew these bastards were going to try something!” Dom screamed, and then kicked Bobby hard in the side. He turned back to me, his eyes bloodshot. He was dangerous right now. Deadly dangerous.

“I bet you would have loved it, wouldn’t you have? Leaving me again. I bet you would have fucking waltzed out of here wishing they’d killed me so you could dance on my grave, isn’t that right?! Well no such luck!” he bellowed, then turned and gave Bobby another kick that sent his body rolling across the floor.

He followed and gave Bobby another kick. “Stupid X-fucker. I hate you! I hate all of you! All you’ve ever done is ruin my life!”

“Dom, stop it!”

His head whipped around, looking at me with those crazy eyes. He cocked his head sideways, his face twisting into a contemptuous sneer. “Why should I? Why the fuck should I ever stop when it comes to these losers? These goddamn losers that you ran to!”

He was on me quicker than I could react, my head snapping back from the force of his punch to my face.

“Yeah, that’s right. You ran!” he yelled, punctuating it with a punch to my side. “You ran away from me!” A hit to my ribs. “You ran from me and ran to them!” A knee into my gut. He grabbed me by the neck, pulling me into a choke and lifting me off the ground.

“And you were going to run again, weren’t you?!” Dom screamed, and then spit in my face. “You’re never leaving, never again!”

I was struggling for air, struggling so hard with my hands gripping his, trying to pry them from my throat. Suddenly, his expression changed to one of realization, and he dropped me, stumbling back. He held his head.

“No. No! NO!!!” he yelled, then walked over to Bobby and kicked him again.

“You’re fucking him, aren’t you! You and him, you goddamn faggot slut! You fucking ran home, ran home to him! I should have known, should have fucking known that you’d run to him. Of course to him!”

“Dom, Dom you need to calm down. I didn’t-”

“YOU NEVER LOVED ME!!!” he screamed, kicking Bobby hard off the cardboard box circle and onto the concrete floor. He turned to me, tears streaming down his face. He ran to me, pushing me hard. I fell backwards, the chain wrenching my neck a bit.

“Dom, that’s not tru-”

“It was HIS NAME you cried out in your sleep, not mine! Always his name! Twenty fucking years and you still couldn’t get over your stupid high school crush, you pathetic piece of shit! How could you? How could you do this to me, all this time? You never wanted me in your life, John! I was just convenient, wasn’t I? Fucking convenient. Ready to be thrown away once you got what you wanted, once everything was going your way, huh? Well that’s not happening, no. You aren’t going anywhere this time, and you are going to sit right here and watch me as I fucking kill this bastard right in front of your eyes!”

He whirled around, stalking back over to Bobby. He kicked him in the legs, in the arms, in the sides. Again. Again. And again. And then, suddenly he stopped, and I could see this cruel, deranged smirk form on his face. And he lifted his leg to stomp down on Bobby, to stomp down on Bobby’s head.

Time seemed to slow down. I could feel myself yelling for him to stop, even though I couldn’t hear it. My vision flashed towards him, towards his shirt, towards the weave, the threads, the fibres, the fibrils… the cellulose… the… the… the… And my vision washed over with a brightness indescribable and I could feel it, feel everything and I touched it. I gave it just a push, the tiniest push. And it moved. It moved. Collided. Cascaded. Transmuted. Transmogrified.

And then everything went black.