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prodigalflameThe roommate search wasn't completely awful. There were two possibles John thought he could bear to live with, and two others who were so inoffensively bland as to be offensive.
Emily was a bubbly little thing, all blond tips and cheeky giggle; and Tim was tall, pleasant, with a strong handshake and just the hint of a knowing smirk. Either of them could do, would do; neither had clued into his cheesy 'X marks the spot to your new place' in-joke he'd put on the poster, with a very distinctive X-symbol. And well, that just meant some more hiding, another day spent under the radar and with his head down - and John had never done particularly well at 'low key.'
So he'd fobbed the both of them off for another few days and lo, some 'Drake' had texted him. Hence why John was plumping couch cushions in the middle of the afternoon, with dishes clean and stacked, pizza boxes all in the recycling and his notes and marking neatly organised on the coffee table - people wanted to live with model students, didn't they?
"What else, what else...?" he muttered to himself, looking around the place. Porn was stashed, bathroom cleaned, laundry stuffed in the hamper: everything as tidy as it got with him. Which wasn't half-bad, these days.
Emily was a bubbly little thing, all blond tips and cheeky giggle; and Tim was tall, pleasant, with a strong handshake and just the hint of a knowing smirk. Either of them could do, would do; neither had clued into his cheesy 'X marks the spot to your new place' in-joke he'd put on the poster, with a very distinctive X-symbol. And well, that just meant some more hiding, another day spent under the radar and with his head down - and John had never done particularly well at 'low key.'
So he'd fobbed the both of them off for another few days and lo, some 'Drake' had texted him. Hence why John was plumping couch cushions in the middle of the afternoon, with dishes clean and stacked, pizza boxes all in the recycling and his notes and marking neatly organised on the coffee table - people wanted to live with model students, didn't they?
"What else, what else...?" he muttered to himself, looking around the place. Porn was stashed, bathroom cleaned, laundry stuffed in the hamper: everything as tidy as it got with him. Which wasn't half-bad, these days.
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Date: 2014-11-30 01:18 pm (UTC)The last of that beer was enough to settle warm in his stomach, and enabled him to force the words out. "But yeah, wanted to know you were doing okay," he explained, looking away for a moment, "after I barrelled through and fucked up your life. I swore Kitty and Ms Munroe to secrecy, so obviously no-one tattled." The glint in his eyes became a small, wry smile.
"Still, you can do my taxes, right?"
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Date: 2014-11-30 01:35 pm (UTC)He liked being an accountant. It was safe, it was reliable, and he was actually pretty good with numbers. John could mock that decision all he wanted. It was one of the few Bobby was 100% sure had been the right one.
He wondered if he should go then, get back to his hotel, pack his things and return later, but he wasn't ready to go just yet, so he took a deep breath and came into the kitchen, leaning against the counter next to his beer bottle from before. "You want me to fill in anything they might have left out?" he offered with a crooked half-smile. "I mean, now you can just come right to the source."
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Date: 2014-11-30 01:46 pm (UTC)He looked Bobby over after he noticed the flinch. "Bobby," he said, simple, to get his attention. "I'm not mocking your accountancy thing. Well. Okay. I am. But I'm not being mean about it. I tease my friends, but these days I try not to hurt them. If I ever say something and it hurts you, then you totally have my permission to smack me upside the head. Deal?"
And then Bobby came into the kitchen and was so close that John almost forgot to breathe. "Hmm." John considered the opportunity - if nothing else to buy him some time to put himself back together. "Accountancy. I assume that's because you were math guy at school? And because no one would pay for those god-awful puns of yours," he remarked with a amused grin that faded as he looked at the young man and realised what he wanted to ask. "How are you doing?" he wondered simply. "I mean, new name, new city...nice normal career....seems like a lot of effort."
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Date: 2014-12-01 10:02 am (UTC)The flinch hadn't been remotely about that, but since he really didn't want to explain what it had been about, had been hoping John wouldn't notice it at all, in fact, he was fine with letting that assumption remain uncorrected. "Deal. Can I get it in writing? So that when I smack you later there's no dispute that it wasn't consensual."
"Yeah, basically. I'm good at math, I like it, and...it is normal. That's what I want. That's..." he looked away and shrugged, gripping the edge of the counter tightly. "That's why I left...well, all of it. I just wanted normal. There's nothing wrong with that." The defensive edge that crept into his voice on that last sentence belied the words, though, or the emotion beneath them, at least. He felt guilty for wanting a normal life where he wasn't expected to save the world. Storm had been completely understanding and supportive when he'd left--but that had almost made him feel worse.
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Date: 2014-12-01 10:33 am (UTC)John met those words with a glance that read 'Do you have any idea what you just said?', the beer bottle half way to his mouth. "Consensual smacking," he said, and shook his head before the grin came. "Right." He finished the beer and pointed at Bobby with an index finger uncurling from around the bottle. "You walked into that one, Drake. But I'll write something, sure."
Grabbing a napkin from the holder near the stove, he found a biro lying against the kettle for some reason, and popped the cap off, scrawling 'I, St. John Michael Gordon Allerdyce, do solemnly swear and provide testament that should I be a capricious, mean-hearted douche, Robert Louis Drake had my permission to smack me....' He paused then, staring at the napkin, and with a certain wild abandon, found himself finishing the sentence with 'smack me anywhere he sees fit.' He signed, dated and folded the napkin and then shoved it at Bobby with a slight flush to his cheeks, feeling like he'd probably signed his death warrant.
"Normal's fine. I mean, you're just one college kid speaking to another, right? I didn't go back either when I was asked to," John said with a shrug. And what he thought, but didn't say was: I guess we both ended up running away, Bobby. And that felt surprisingly good, as mean as it was.
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Date: 2014-12-01 10:50 am (UTC)He hadn't actually realized what he'd said until John shot him that look. Then he blushed and looked down with a little groan. "I did. Sorry, totally not what I meant," he murmured, shaking his head at himself. He reached for the napkin and unfolded it, one eyebrow raising as he read the words John had written. "...Thanks," he said with a little smile, folding it again and tucking it into his shirt pocket.
The smile faded with John's next words. "Yeah." He took a deep breath and then realized that painful as he personally may find it, talk of the school was unavoidable. May as well get the exchange of information over with now so it didn't have to keep coming up over and over. "So have they asked you back? Since you got...pardoned and all of that, I mean? For a visit, or a job, or...anything?"
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Date: 2014-12-01 11:12 am (UTC)Still, John let go of the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding when Bobby said thanks, and smiled, and tucked the napkin away.
"Well," he started, crossing to the fridge and throwing Bobby a look over his shoulder as he got out two beers - just in case Bobby finished his first and wanted a second, settling it down on the kitchen counter at an appropriately neutral distance from both of them. He opened his own and chugged some, glad for the time to settle his thoughts. "Back in New York, when I was just grumpy mutant T.A. of the year 2013-2014,-" that meaning, Pyro was absent from the equation, "-the Y in downtown Manhattan asked me to come down and talk to some kids who'd run away or got kicked out when their powers manifested. They weren't exactly the type to end up at Westchester, you know? Didn't trust people enough. But I got four of them to think about it, and three of them to go. One of them, Betsy, told Ms Munroe about this cranky but supportive pyrokinetic named John who helped her out, and I got asked to do a return visit." There was a definite sense of pride - and affection, however cranky - when talking about the kids he took care of back in his Columbia days. And he had been proud of them, the mutant ones and the normals - if the normals could use some smacking upside the head, to use a phrase. "I said no. I mean, I knew you wouldn't be there, but it still felt...wrong."
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Date: 2014-12-01 02:33 pm (UTC)He looked at John with an air of faint surprise as he listened. Outreach with kids wasn't exactly what Bobby had expected to hear about. Although it was mutant kids, which was a little easier to believe. He nodded, sipping his beer again. He wanted to ask why it felt wrong, but at the same time, he didn't want to draw out this particular topic any longer than necessary. "Cool. So you were a T.A., huh? For what?" School. Talking about college was much safer and easier ground. They should talk about that, unless John had questions of his own or steered the conversation back to the other school, the one he both missed and was afraid to ever see again.
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Date: 2014-12-02 02:41 am (UTC)What the hell was Bobby Drake to him, six years later? Just some doofus John had tried to kill once, of course, just some guy who John had dreamed about and put on a pedastal and hated and wanted with a bitter, jealous passion.
"Mutant Studies," he admitted, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "Back when it existed, anyway. Columbia." Because that had been the thing, hadn't it? The thing that had enlarged their world, that turned them (in a way) from freaks to superstars. What with Beast at the U.N. and mutant pride groups formed on a good ten or so campuses, of course mutants had become the new fashionable minority group, picked on and feteted and scruntinised alongside the women and the gays and the who-the-fuck-ever. "I managed to talk some sense into a bunch of normal college kids who didn't quite understand what it meant to be hunted or hated or lynched. It was....gratifying," he reflected. If highly weird at times.
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Date: 2014-12-02 04:42 am (UTC)He wasn't going to judge, though. It sounded as though John had actually done some good in that area. It sure beat trying to kill off anyone that wasn't a mutant--or anyone that protected them, even. Himself included.
"That's cool. So...what are you studying now?" he asked, frowning a little. "I mean...what did it become, when everything changed?"
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Date: 2014-12-02 05:53 am (UTC)"Turned into social history, kind of. Or comparative literature; seems to depend on which professor wants to claim me on a given week. Looking at the monsters of modern popular culture - the aliens, the werewolves, the vampires - and what their depiction says about what we find acceptable and what we don't." He took another swig and managed a wry grin. "Still finding fault with how society treats its freaks, just this time I'm fixing it paper by paper."
Awkward for a moment, John wet his lips with another swallow of beer, and felt all too obvious at just how he was looking at Bobby. "You took a gap year or something?" Better not to remind Bobby how he knew. "And hey, if you want to grab your stuff, we can do chit-chat over takeout or I can cook something. As a welcome thing," he added, hurriedly.
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Date: 2014-12-02 06:58 am (UTC)"Yeah, I took a gap year. Worked for Habitat for Humanity, building houses in Wisconson." He rolled his shoulders and straightened, taking another sip of his beer. "Yeah, I can do that. Check out of the hotel and come right back. But you don't have to go to any trouble for me. Take-out is fine." Though part of him was curious. He could see even now how well set up the kitchen was, and he wondered if there was some new aspect to John he was going to discover. Picturing him hovering over boiling pots, tasting the sauce to check the seasoning, the stuff he'd seen on cooking shows that he'd only half-watched--it was a strangely domestic mental image. "So you cook, huh?"
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Date: 2014-12-02 07:12 am (UTC)At the question, John got quiet, looked at his feet, feeling not just exposed but also a bit embarrassed, that vulnerability coming through in his voice as softness when he spoke. "Yeah," he affirmed, thumb scratching at the hairline above his forehead, subconsciously covering his face with his arm as he scratched. "Mom taught me. I was brought up to be a really good homemaker," he explained, that embarrassment - but also a touch of stunted pride - audible. "There's a guitar in my room if you think I've gotten too soft," he finished, sticking his hands awkwardly in his pockets. "Total rock god back in Manhattan. And trust me - guys and girls love a rebel with a guitar."
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Date: 2014-12-02 07:59 am (UTC)There would be time to ponder that further later, though. "Yeah, sure. If you need anything fixed, I can probably do it, now," he said with a shrug and a faint smile. "Just let me know."
He rolled his eyes at John's ridiculous response to what had been a simple question. "Whatever, rock god. If you want to make us dinner, I'll handle dessert," he suggested with a gentle smile. He started toward the door, bouncing his new keys in his hand, and then turned back to add with a crooked grin, "That is, assuming you still like ice cream."
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Date: 2014-12-02 08:10 am (UTC)"It's been a while since I had good ice cream." John gave a slow nod, meeting Bobby's eyes as he weighed his words - and started thinking about what the hell was defrosted. "And I like good ice cream the way you like Sinatra." Pausing to bend down and slide open one of the cupboard's in the little kitchen island, all ass-up and horribly awkward, John got out one of the better saucepans and a frypan and popped them on the benchtop before feeling like he'd left something unsaid, and jogged towards the front door to catch Bobby.
"Drake!" he called, and then found he'd caught him in time, breathing a bit heavy. "I forgot to say 'Welcome home'," he explained, looking at Bobby with a deliberately guarded expression, all too bland. "I'm glad you answered the ad," he finished, eyes on Bobby for a few seconds before he turned around and went back to the kitchen.
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Date: 2014-12-02 08:24 am (UTC)He laughed at himself and shook his head as he turned again and started on his way. This was going to be...interesting, that was for sure.