Slash and the Election
Nov. 19th, 2004 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseDemocracy Frozen
Author: Talktooloose
Pairing: Bobby/John
Setting: Movieverse, sometime between X1 and X2
Rating: R for coarse language, trashing of fundamentalists and X-plicit mm mutant sex.
Summary: America is divided as it heads to the polls but Bobby is distracted by new experiences and feelings.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns the X-Men and 20th Century Fox owns the movie. No profit is being made through these efforts except the spiritual. The song "What It Is to Burn" is by the band Finch.
Archiving: please contact me first
E-mail: lean_and_hungry at hotmail dot com
Notes: I deviate from Movieverse canon by bringing Logan back to the school before the events of X2. Canadian spellings are used throughout (in his honour?).
Thank yous: The spectacular![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kuriadalmatia for a thorough and loving beta, and MF for encouragement. Also to Terry Austin who, in my dreams, inked this fic.
____________________
November 3, 2004
“Democracy, one could say,” Professor Charles Xavier intoned, “is participatory dreaming. It is the way we realize the future together.” Xavier scanned the class, seeing faces listening, faces looking away, two faces smirking in a private joke, faces uncomprehending. And then there was Bobby Drake.
Bobby usually sat in the front row in the Professor’s course on Society and the Mutant, taking careful notes and asking incisive questions calculated to inspire and involve his fellow students. But today he sat in the back row, wearing an expression of strange, satisfied withdrawal. A smile sometimes spread across his face like an oil slick, as if he had a private joke no one else would understand. Furthermore, for the first time in the Xavier’s memory, the boy hadn’t handed in a paper on time. Today, Bobby the model student was an adolescent mystery.
The Professor watched him without appearing to, sizing up the 16 year-old boy’s unusual preoccupation. Xavier had strict moral codes about when it was appropriate to use his telepathy on an unsuspecting mind and when it was not. And yet, led by curiosity, he allowed himself to slip just deep enough below the surface to taste his favourite student’s mood. It was exhilaration he found there and a wild recklessness whose glorious edges were dusted with panic.
“Mr. Drake,” Xavier said, “Do you have an opinion on the outcome of last night’s election?”
Even Bobby’s physicality seemed altered today. Where he was usually solidly connected to the floor, leaned forward and poised to engage like a tussling hound, today he seemed to move with a languorous feline flow. The boy stretched his arms up and rolled his shoulders before answering, “I’m sorry, Professor, I guess I just haven’t been paying attention to this election.” There were amused stares and mutterings around the class at this very out-of-character response.
“Why should we care, Professor?” Jubilee interjected. “It’s all just a corporate old-boys’ club, passing laws to make the rich richer and making wars for kids to die in.”
“Yeah, all you need is love, Professor X!” said Bobby to general laughter. But as if to prove that this really was Bobby and not a clever impostor, he suddenly seemed embarrassed to have made such a scene and smiled shyly through a blush. “Sorry, sir.”
“Mr. Drake,” the Professor said quietly, “may I speak to you out in the hall? Students, please read the section on the enfranchisement of African Americans on page 62 of your texts.”
Out in the quiet of the oak-lined hallway, Bobby looked a bit sheepish and small even though he towered over the man in the wheelchair. He wasn’t used to being the one in trouble. And yet, even about that, he seemed somehow defiant, secretly pleased with himself. “I’m sorry, Professor, I know I should be following the election…”
But Xavier waved away his apology. “I know, lad, it’s not always easy to engage, especially if you don’t have a vote to cast. You just don’t seem yourself today and I want to make sure you’re feeling all right.” Bobby’s composure faltered for a second and he looked suddenly into Xavier’s eyes. Xavier was startled by a momentary psychic flash—two bodies locked together, sweat and racing heartbeats, a hoarse voice whispering, “harder” and a tiny, intense flame dancing across taut muscle…
He watched Bobby back up a step and look away, blushing hotly, the maddening smile back on his lips. After a lifetime in and out of people’s heads, Xavier was far more skilled than his student at keeping his emotions hidden. He deliberately changed courses. Pointing at the flagpole outside the picture window he said, “Bobby, do you see the American flag there? We raise it as a community every day. In that way, we control its course. But see how the winds chase it around? Democracy is not always easy to control and does not always follow the path we want; but without our participation, there is no nation at all. If we don’t take the initiative…”
“Professor,” Bobby interrupted. He seemed to have something important to say, something he needed to express in all earnestness to the man who had become a father to him. “Professor, I know I should care but there are other things… I mean, there are times when you just can’t…”
Xavier looked up at him. “It’s all right, Bobby, I was young once, believe it or not. It is sometimes a contradiction to ask the young to study the esoteric when their concerns are often more…earthly. Mr. Drake, perhaps you require a morning off of class. You seem to have a lot on your mind.”
“Really? Thank you, Professor X! I promise I’ll have all the chapters read for next week and-and I’ll get the essay in by Friday. Maybe even Thursday!” and, like a dog who hadn’t realized how taut the leash was until it was undone, he turned and ran down the corridor, the rubber soles of his sneakers echoing back from the wood and marble with a “pop, pop, pop”. The Professor sighed and wheeled himself back into the class.
________________________________________
Bobby stepped into the chilly November morning. The clouds roiled and turned overhead and the wind whipped around him full of the threat of rain. It felt wonderful. Everything did, in fact. His body seemed to be so alive that he suspected it had been a dead shell up until this point. Up until last Friday night. He turned slow circles in the driveway, listening to the chittering of the gravel. Friday night. Friday night in the room he shared with John Allerdyce.
John had arrived at the school six months ago and it had taken nearly all that time for Bobby to consider him a friend. Well, maybe “friend” was pushing it. They seemed to have learned to be around each other and even to find some kind of solace in each others’ company. John was a challenge—there was no doubt about it—both for his peers and for the school. Bobby still didn’t feel the time was right to ask him about his past, but he was pretty sure he had spent time on the streets. And what did that mean? Drugs? Crime, prostitution even? Bobby wanted to set an example for the newcomer; an example of clarity, purpose and… and what? Self-restraint? Sacrifice? Bobby wanted to be like the Professor’s first student, Scott Summers who never complained about hard work, who never seemed to ask for anything but the dedication of others.
Scott talked a lot about duty and Bobby thought, Yes, that’s what my life should be about, too. Duty to the school, to my friends, to man and mutant-kind. These thoughts seemed to quiet the panic that would sometimes come to him at the strangest times—in the middle of the night when he thought of his parent’s home which he knew he would never live in again; or out in the woods behind the school with other students whose apathy and cynicism filled him with confusion.
How could they live without something to believe in? And then there was the special panic he sometimes felt around John; in the face of John’s casual misanthropy, John’s casual vulgarity, John’s casual nudity. Why, Bobby wondered, did he have to just stand there, dressed in a t-shirt, socks and nothing else, cutting up about Storm or Piotr and Kitty or bitching about class as if his… his dick hanging out wouldn’t bug Bobby?!
John sometimes called Bobby “the monk” for the way he was always punctual, always polite, always folding his pants and t-shirt before he climbed into his neatly made bed to sleep silently on his side. But John didn’t understand—it was these routines that made the panic subside, that gave Bobby the momentum he needed not to fall into the pit that always threatened to open beneath his feet.
Friday night. He remembered staring at a blank screen on his laptop, trying to type something coherent while John’s stereo blared Finch behind him.
Bobby was usually good at blocking out John’s angry barrages of sound. It was John who insisted on dead silence on the rare occasions when he was actually serious about his studies. And Bobby would always oblige, happy to see his roommate on a course that didn’t seem wilfully self-destructive.
“John,” Bobby called out. “John!” he shouted over the music.
“What?”
“Can you turn that down? I want to ask you something!”
John snapped off the stereo and threw himself down on his bed. “What?” he demanded.
“I’m having trouble with this paper,” Bobby replied.
“What class?”
“The Mutant and Society”
“Oh, I’m not in that one.” John started beating the rhythm of the song on the bed beside him and mumbling the words.
“Yes you are, John, it’s mandatory. You just skip it most of the time.”
“Oh yeah,” said John and stood up on his bed, throwing his hands out wide and singing in a loud, rough voice: “I feel diseased / Is there no sympathy from the sun?”
Bobby liked John’s voice. He liked its passion and its wildness. He liked that it didn’t sound like the choir kids in his church, even the “Christian rockers” who sounded so false, praising Jesus with their lame Bon Jovi stylings. But now he wanted John to stop fooling around, so he went into his serious I’m waiting pose, the same one Scott used when he wanted the class to calm down. John smirked at him, jumped off the bed, landing like a commando in a crouch and then pouncing on Bobby, grabbing him in a headlock, singing, “The sky's still fire / But I am safe in here, from the world outside.”
“Quit it, John! I have to do this homework.” And he pushed John forcefully away.
“Drake, it’s Friday night, quit being such a scholar! What’s the stupid paper on anyway?”
“The election; it’s for Wednesday’s class. I don’t know what to say. Which candidate do you think would be a better president?”
“Magneto,” said John with a smirk.
“I’m serious, John!”
“You always are, Drake.” John pulled his baggy t-shirt off and Bobby took in his torso, lean and hard; no real definition like Bobby was getting from his weight training, but something implacable, something not to be messed with. And then there were the scars…
“Like what you see, Drake?” John winked and began to unbutton his jeans. Bobby turned away, feeling the beginning of a blush burning his neck. Fucking Allerdyce. He stared again at the screen, willing words to form as he heard the sounds of John undressing, tossing his clothes into the growing heap in the corner beside his bed. Why was he having so much trouble focussing? School was second nature to him.
John began to sing again: “Like a bad star, I'm falling faster down to her / She's the only one who knows what it is to burn…”
Bobby heard John’s Zippo light and he caught his breath. He was staring a hole in the screen of his laptop as the flickering of flames began to dance around the room at the edge of his peripheral vision. Why didn’t he say something? Usually, he would have lectured John about breaking the rules in the mansion like this. But he just stared forward with all of his might, while all his attention was on the boy in back of him.
John’s breathing was more erratic as he continued to sing, “Today is fire and she burns / Today is fire and she burns! She burns! She burns! She burns! SHE BURNS!!”
Bobby spun around suddenly in his chair. John stood naked on his bed, fireballs orbited around his head and torso. His eyes were like saucers reflecting the flames, his skin gleaming with sweat. His cock was hard. He suddenly snapped his head around to stare at Bobby. He smiled, “Hi, Drake.”
Bobby stood up as if his chair was electrified. He didn’t push it back far enough as he moved towards the door and it tumbled over loudly. With his hand on the doorknob, Bobby heard John breathe, “Hold it, Bobby. I wanna… talk.” Bobby turned and looked John in the eye. Only in the eye. John looked back intensely, his chest moving with his rapid breath, a smile playing across his face. His fireballs went out with a whoosh. He slumped back against the panelled wall, his hand stroking his belly slowly. “Do you ever find that using your powers… excites you?”
“Excites…?”
“Makes you hard, Drake. Gives you a bone-on.”
Bobby wanted to leave so bad, didn’t want to hear questions like that from the shockingly real and boned boy just across from him in the oh-so small and oh-so warm room. He began to sweat. “I, um, never noticed, John…”
“That’s weird. I always notice when I’m turned on, Drake. I guess it just shows which of us is more… distractible. Hey, I know, let’s do a scientific experiment!” John picked up his lighter from his bedside table. Skritch… fwoosh! Bobby stared as if hypnotized as John picked up the little flame and twirled it into a bright orange ball on his fingertip.
“Fire in the hole, Drake!” shouted John as he sent the fireball sailing into the garbage can full of paper. Bobby reacted without thinking, just as he’d been taught, sending a shower of sleet after the flame, engulfing it, extinguishing it. John hissed.
“Well, Bobby, did it work? Let’s see!” and he charged across the room, pinning Bobby against the wall with his chest, his face just below Bobby’s, his hand grabbing Bobby’s crotch. “Wow, it did! Of course, the experiment isn’t valid… we should have checked before. What do they call that? A control?”
Bobby was stronger than John. He could have knocked him on his ass but as he stood there, pinned by his naked, aroused roommate, hard in his own jeans, all he could do was whimper, “Stop it…” His mind was a riot of thoughts: I don’t even like John; Jean would call this sexual assault; he smells so strong, so good.
John was undoing Bobby’s pants now, pulling his belt apart, making enough slack in his waistband to thrust a hand down and find naked skin. Close to Bobby’s ear, he was whispering, whimpering, “C’mon Drake, let’s do it. I need it.”
Bobby was obliterated; there was no thought of fleeing now. But all the rules were changed. He was somebody new, somebody with a need but no understanding of the need’s dimensions or how he was to satisfy it. There was a body pressed against him that fit no previous category—it wasn’t the comforting hug of a parent or a friend—it wasn’t a sparring partner to subdue. He choked out, “I-I don’t know how to do this, man.”
“Oh, Drake, sure you do. Just follow me.”
And John pulled them across the room and onto his bunk. There was no time for finesse, no pretence of seduction, just two bodies in need. John’s left hand stroked Bobby and his right ran roughly through his hair. Bobby felt lifted out of his body, aware of nothing but pleasure until he felt John take his hand and guide it to his cock. Bobby grasped it, shocked to be doing it, shocked to be wanting it. He stroked this hot foreign object with the same intensity John was doing him; and John moaned a deep rough moan, like the way he had been singing and Bobby marvelled that he could make John Allerdyce do that.
And boys jerked and moaned and thrashed and came and it was the beginning.
________________________________________
Bobby breathed in the crisp air deeply. Reliving the events in his mind had made him hard again but he was also starting to shiver in the cold. He turned suddenly and ran full speed down the long winding driveway lined with trees to keep prying eyes away. He pumped his legs as fast as he could, pushing in full appreciation of his body. His body—he hadn’t even known his body until John introduced him to it this past weekend. Bobby Drake, meet your senses.
Down at the base of the driveway, he leaned against one of the stone pillars of the gate, breathing hard, feeling the sweat cool on his back, and he remembered Saturday. All day he had wanted to be alone with John. He had wanted more. But he had been also scared; in his mind he had imagined John laughing, pushing him away, calling him “fag”. “Damn it, Drake, I was just horny, you fag. I don’t do that every day!” How could someone as cool as John be…? Bobby had to find out.
But he hadn't been able to get John alone! There had been football games to be played in the back field, there had been Kitty and Piotr and Jubilee all wanting to hang out. Jubilee had been looking at him strangely all day, “What’s with you, Bobby? You look like someone slipped something into your Kool-Aid.” And John had joined the joke and laughed. Laughed! As if he had no idea why Bobby was being so weird.
It was the middle of the afternoon and Kitty was reading aloud about the election; half of America seemed ready to vote for Bush just to preserve what they thought of as American values. Jubilee snorted, “Don’t get me started on those fucking Christians! I had enough missionaries trying to save my ass for one lifetime. They’re such goddamn hypocrites. The same ministers who are up in their pulpits saying that mutants and gays are destroying the country were feeling me up in the shelters. I just want to shake everyone in the Bible Belt and scream: ‘the world is changing people, deal with it!’”
“But maybe all this change is… is too much!” Bobby blurted out suddenly, panic flooding his guts. “Maybe the world was better off before.”
“What? Before all those fucking mutants went and got born?!” Jubilee shouted, “Yeah, you should let the love of Jesus into your heart, Bobby! Renounce your sin!” Frightened, Bobby stared at her. She got up in his face and said, “The Devil made you into Iceman, but Jesus will give you a job selling insurance and a house in the suburbs!”
And John—fucking John—collapsed on the floor in helpless laughter. “You spent too many years in Sunday school, monk!” Bobby had to pretend to laugh and go along with the joke but he felt like a puppy who had just pissed on the rug. Kitty and Piotr saved the day by suggesting a Mario Kart tournament.
It was after midnight before John and Bobby could be alone, Bobby shaking and horny in anticipation and fear. He spent almost 15 minutes in the shower before he found the courage to put a towel around his waist and walk back into their room. He entered to find the small cell illuminated by five candles. John lay smirking on his bunk in just a pair of white briefs, already engorged. He looked hungry. The candles didn’t say “romance”; they said “Pyro”. But Bobby was suddenly equal to the challenge. He closed the door and dropped the towel.
On Sunday, they found an hour together in the afternoon. John was running his lips and teeth all over Bobby and Bobby was thrashing like each touch was an electric shock. “John, do you want to suck me?” he gasped.
But John pulled himself up beside Bobby saying, “Nah, I don’t do that.”
“Oh,” Bobby replied, thinking maybe he’d said something wrong.
“But you do, Drake,” John stated matter-of-factly.
“What? No, I never…”
“Oh, I know you never did, monk; but all the same, you do. I can see it in your baby blue eyes. Come here.” And he took Bobby’s head, gently but with conviction, and drew him downwards, downwards, onto himself.
And as Bobby sucked his first cock, John guided him sometimes tenderly, sometimes urgently, swearing and whining. Fireballs danced around the room, sometimes close enough that Bobby could imagine the two of them igniting like a star.
________________________________________
Bobby was trudging back up the driveway, coming around a bend when he saw Logan standing there, arms crossed, challenging.
“So, I’m training in the gym,” said Logan with his tough-guy bark, “when I see Bobby Drake bolting down the driveway when he should be in class.”
“No, it’s okay, Wolverine! Professor Xavier said I could go hang out by myself.” Logan answered with a silent stare. It was one of the techniques of cool intimidation that he was a master of. Bobby tried to meet the stare, but it was only a few seconds before he found himself forced to continue a conversation that he didn’t want to have. “Um, ‘cause I have stuff to think about. Nothing bad, okay? Just… stuff.”
Logan tilted his head to one side and took a long sniff in Bobby’s direction, assessing. Bobby got nervous fast. Could he smell it on me? Smell John? Smell sex? What would a tough guy like Logan do if he thought I was a…
“What are you missing? Ororo’s math class or Charlie’s ‘Us and Them’ lecture? “
Bobby found himself smiling. “I think you mean ‘The Mutant and Society’. Yeah, that. We’re talking about who should be President and why. Can I ask you who you voted for?”
“Nobody. I’m Canadian. I got opinions but not a vote.”
“Well, who do you think should win the election?”
“Too late for ‘should’, they just announced that Kerry conceded. Which means the world is stuck with a dangerous jackass for four more years. I’ll tell you, I’m glad I’m not a soldier in Iraq, or waiting to be shipped there, or to Iran or wherever he’s gonna make his next idiot move. I’ve been in combat, kid, and I’ll tell you that a soldier needs to know he’s not just being thrown into the fire without a real leader behind him. I swear, the world war that we avoided with Reagan could still come true under this guy.”
Bobby felt sobered by this and it seemed to engage a part of his brain that he hadn’t heard from since Friday. “What about all the domestic issues? What do you think of Bush’s social policies?”
“Oh, the anti-mutant stuff makes me all warm and fuzzy, what do you think?” Logan scratched his neck and watched a hawk wheeling high overhead. “And then there’s abortion. I used to think it was wrong, but back then I thought women were just put on earth to show me a good time when I was off-duty. I’m smarter now.”
Bobby responded, “I bet Dr. Grey had something to do with that.”
“Oh, you do, huh? Why don’t you take your speculation and stick it?”
“Sorry. What about gay marriage?” Bobby heard himself ask, instantly cursing his stupid, forgetful brain. Now Logan knows for sure! Look how’s he’s looking at me, Bobby thought.
“The gays want marriage, eh? Don’t ask me why,” Logan snorted. “I think marriage is bullshit. The way I see it, you go along with someone for a while and then your paths separate. It can be really beautiful; it can be a pain in the ass. Why would you want the state all tied up in it?”
“So, you’re against gay marriage, too?”
“I said I’m against marriage, period. But, not to offer gays the right to the same mistake as everyone else is just another kind of hate. And don’t believe that crap about preserving the 'holy institution of marriage'. Nah, it’s about telling gays they aren’t real human beings, that their love is not real love and that they don’t count. It’s the kind of shit makes me want to shish kabob someone, y’know?”
“I guess…” Bobby murmured. To avoid Logan’s probing gaze, he looked away across the lawn at the trees where the last leaves clung futilely against the inexorable coming of winter.
“Don’t guess, Drake, make up your mind. You’re a good kid and you’re gonna do good things in this world. That means taking a stand and deciding what you believe. It means looking inside yourself and accepting what’s there.” Bobby’s eyes turned back to Logan. Logan held his gaze and this time it wasn’t about intimidation. Bobby shivered and suddenly felt like he was going to cry. He bit his lip hard and looked away again.
But Logan didn’t push the conversation further. He pulled out his X-cell and pushed a speed-dial number. “Hey, Summers, I’ve got a friend of yours running around with ants in his pants. Yeah, well weren’t you heading into town before lunch? Better take him along before he gets himself into trouble.” He hung up. “Go get yourself a jacket and meet Scooter in the garage, kid.”
“Thanks, Logan. I…”
“Go! He’s waiting for you.” Bobby turned and ran back to the mansion.
________________________________________
As Scott drove into town, he felt Bobby’s eyes on him. Scott figured he was probably closer to Bobby than anyone on earth, but a lot of the time their relationship was conducted in silence. Since Bobby had come to Xavier’s when he was 13 years old, Scott had always waited patiently until he was ready to say whatever he needed to say. Scott, who had only been 18 when he became the boy’s unofficial big brother, had the sensitivity to know that things couldn't be rushed. Bobby would just watch him, slowly filling the car with unspoken words that had to gather like a storm before they broke.
But when Bobby did finally open his mouth, Scott knew he still wasn’t getting down to whatever was bothering him. “Who did you vote for, Scott?”
“Kerry. This state traditionally votes Democrat. But some of the small towns are more conservative.”
“Did Jean vote for Kerry, too?”
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
Bobby was silent again. This is a tougher nut to crack than usual, Scott mused.
“You love Jean, right?”
“Is that what you want to talk about, Bobby? Love?”
“Sort of…”
“Sex?”
“Maybe.” He shifted in his seat and drummed on the window. Thirty seconds passed before he blurted out, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a book about mutants and sex in the library?”
“We’re not that different from humans, guy.”
“I know, but… Hey, Scott. Um, do you… I mean, do mutants get, uh, excited when they use their powers?” Bobby was doing an unconvincing imitation of someone comfortable to be asking questions about sex.
“That’s pretty normal, Bobby. Especially when you’re younger. Using powers is a natural release for mutants. In fact, it’s a lot like sex; it’s a huge energy inside of us that needs an outlet. Sometimes the two influence each other. You worried about that?”
“Not worried exactly…”
“It’s part of the control you have to learn when you use your powers. Do you want me to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else?”
“Yeah! Um, if you want.” Bobby exclaimed, failing again in his attempt at nonchalance.
“The first time the Professor really had me use my full power was when I was 14. He kept throwing new challenges at me and I had to work harder and harder. I was blasting targets, sometimes just deflecting them, sometimes destroying them and they were coming faster and faster. I could feel this exhilaration growing inside me, like nothing I’d ever known before. It was power and joy and… suddenly at the height of the exercise, I shot off in my pants.”
“What!? You’re kidding! Right in front of the Professor?” Bobby’s jaw was hanging open.
“Uh-huh. I was so rattled I almost took the side off the mansion. I said to Professor X that I had to go to the bathroom really bad and I ran back to my room to change underwear.”
Bobby was laughing now like there was nothing wrong in the world; everything was normal again. “Oh, that’s too funny, Scott! Good thing you didn’t fry the whole forest! Wow, I’ve lost control and iced up the whole room before, but I never…”
“I know, it’s awful. And don’t go telling anybody what I just told you!” Scott warned. He saw Bobby relax and decided he could push a bit. “Is that what’s got you worried, Bobby? Sometimes at your age your body can feel totally out of control. Are you worried about losing control of your powers around a girl?”
Bobby stopped laughing. In fact, he looked like he had been hit. Scott saw tears forming in the corners of his eyes and watched helplessly as Bobby turned away to stare out the window. Scott cursed himself for his clumsiness as they drove on in silence. It was another five minutes before Scott asked him if he was okay.
Bobby turned back to him, his face emotionless, his breathing even. It was a state Scott knew well—feelings reigned in, the blinding, burning pain controlled. “I’m fine, Scott. Thanks for talking to me. It really helped.”
Scott didn’t believe him for a minute, but he knew that this was as far as the discussion would get this time.
***
In town, he asked Bobby to come into the hardware store with him, but Bobby said he needed to see something and promised he’d meet him back at the car in 15 minutes. He walked across the parking lot away from Scott and the hardware store and went around the side of Randy’s Fine Eats, the strip-mall family restaurant where his parents always took him when they came to visit him at school. He sat down on a bench outside the door.
The conversation in the car played and replayed in his head. When Scott had mentioned girls, Bobby had suddenly realized he could never tell Scott about him and John. Scott expected him to grow up a carbon copy of his perfect Cyclops ideal—the Professor’s number one student, the poster boy for responsible mutant kind. Poster boys weren’t fags. FAGGOT! Was that what he was?
He had wanted to say it all to Scott, to ask him if he’d ever done anything with Warren or Henry but still ended up with Jean. But what if Bobby didn’t want to end up with Jubilee or Marie or whatever? What if John was it? What if that was what he wanted?
He didn’t know how he was going to climb back into that car, how he was going to go back to the school, how he was going to live his life at all. In the meagre flowerbed beside him, the last green stragglers were being tossed around by the cold wind that had come up again. Bobby dug his hands into his pockets and hunched lower into his jacket, thinking back to the night before.
Tuesday night. John came into their room to find Bobby still struggling with the democracy paper due the next day.
“Hey, Drake, aren’t you going down to watch the election results with all the good little citizens?”
“No! I have to finish this paper!” Bobby found himself drumming on the keyboard, watching a line of x’s march across the screen in frustration. “Dammit, John, when I was a kid at Boy Scouts and Bible camp…” John snickered but Bobby ignored him, “I was totally into all the rah-rah-America stuff. I believed this was the greatest place in the world, the only place worth living. And the President! Wow, he would be the best dad of all! And now I don’t even care who wins this stupid election!”
“What’s the matter, did I get you all distracted this weekend?” John came up behind him and slid his hand down the front of Bobby’s shirt, tweaking his nipples, rubbing the peach fuzz on his belly. “Fuck, touching you is like licking strawberries and cream, Drake. You’re so fucking wholesome; it makes me hard as Petey in full armour.”
They were on the bed naked maybe ten seconds later. And this time, it was all about Bobby’s ass. John had licked him there on Monday night for the first time, sending thoughts into Bobby’s brain that had never been there before. But tonight it went further, tongue and fingers and fingers and fingers and Bobby was at the edge of the narrow bed with his legs up on John’s shoulders, leaning back on his elbows and John was kneeling on the floor, working Bobby’s ass and cock with intense concentration. Bobby arched his back and heard himself make low moans like a wary cat.
“Tell me you want it, Drake,” he hissed.
“What? What do I want? What do you mean?” mumbled Bobby in ecstasy.
“Tell me, Bobby. Tell me you want it.”
And Bobby said, “Yeah, I do. I want it.”
And Bobby didn’t blink, didn’t retreat as John reached for the condom and the lube, already waiting in the bedside table. And Bobby didn’t say a word as John lifted his legs up until his knees were at his shoulders and entered him slowly. And as they moved together, they groaned their separate pleasures, each feeling things that could not be described in words.
“Kiss me, John.” Bobby breathed.
John half-opened his eyes, a spaced smile drifting across his face as he said, “I don’t do that, Drake.”
But again Bobby didn’t retreat. He was a different person than he had been on Friday. He knew that. He accepted this picture: Bobby Drake, the monk, the good boy, with his legs thrown back, taking another boy into himself with passion and gratitude.
So he looked at John and he knew it with certainty: “Yes, you do, John,” he said gently.
And it was John’s turn to tumble into the unknown as Bobby grabbed his head with a strong hand on his greasy hair and pulled it forward until their lips met.
And John made a noise then, deeper and more aching than his song. Because he was lost. He was found out.
________________________________________
Sitting on the bench outside of the restaurant in the harsh November wind, Bobby felt like he was seeing himself through a fractured kaleidoscope. He was Scott’s little brother, he was the professor’s prize student, he was his parents’ lost little boy, he was John’s… John’s what? He didn’t know yet.
And he was something else: he was his own discovery. He was a Bobby that emerged with as much splendour and surprise as the Bobby who discovered he could make ice out of thin air when he was 13.
The Iceman shivered and stood up. He went into the restaurant. The front cash also functioned as a candy counter and he decided he needed a chocolate bar. The owner, an angry-looking heavyset man in his fifties, watched him with some suspicion as he made his selection. Bobby was just thinking that something about this man reminded him of his father (maybe it was the angry set of his jaw), when his eye suddenly caught the headlines on the stack of newspapers. “Bush Poised to Take Back Presidency,” “America Divided” and then, “10 States Vote To Ban Gay Marriage; 13 To Increase Controls On Mutants.”
He froze. Was it ten seconds? An hour? First he couldn’t breathe, then he was breathing faster and faster. He felt his jaw clench and suddenly he was found himself shouting, “We’re Americans, too, you fucking assholes! We’re not… not aliens!!”
“Hey,” yelled the owner. “We don’t need trouble here.” Bobby looked up, suddenly embarrassed at what he’d done. He started to apologize, but the man was moving towards him. “Maybe you just can’t accept what the majority of Americans believe: that it’s time we had some kind of restitution in this country!”
Bobby felt hot shame moving up his spine, making his face burn, making his stomach contract. He felt eyes on him and he had the crazy sense that if he looked around, he would see his parents standing there, witnessing his humiliation. But he just stared at the man as he moved close enough for Bobby to smell his sweat, his fury.
“We’re not going to take it anymore, being pushed around by terrorists and liberals and anyone else who thinks America has no values. So whoever you are, gay or mutant or abortionist, why don’t you hit the road? We don’t want you here. This is a decent place. I don’t want you in my restaurant!”
What did Bobby have to fear? Even without his powers, he could take out this man with the least of his combat training. But he began backing away as the man approached, mouth hanging open, hands raised to ward off an attack. And then he backed into the wire postcard display and his feet tangled up; he tumbled to the ground along with display, the air suddenly full of faded, cheery pictures of the town taken 40 years earlier.
He looked up to see all the faces in the restaurant—ordinary families, children with toy cars, old men in faded cotton—staring at him in shock. He felt like a monster, like their worst nightmare. He stood, lifting the post-card rack with shaking hands, and turned and ran out the door.
He ran through the parking lot and out along the edge of the main road, pushing his legs as fast as he could go until he found himself in front of a fire station. He bent over and braced himself on his knees, gasping for air and crying as the cars sped past and the wind howled in his ears.
Above him he heard an angry snapping and clattering. Looking up, he saw the American flag over the fire station twisting in the wind, the stars and stripes a blur of colour. This? This was the Professor’s democracy? A bit of cloth pulling at the flagpole like an angry dog, hungry to sink its teeth into anyone who dared invade its territory?
He stood up tall, raising his fists to the flag and everyone it represented who wanted him dead, that wanted him and Scott and Jubilee and John (Oh, John…) to vanish, to never have existed at all. He imagined his parents voting yesterday, early in the morning before work, lining up proudly in the cold to vote against him—casting a vote to exclude him from their tribe, from those they could ever, ever love.
And suddenly he was yelling, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” and letting loose a blast of ice that froze the flag in place, stretched and twisted like gargoyle, a cold crystalline mockery of everything he had believed in as a boy, everything that was flying from his grasp in the cruel winds of November.
________________________________________
It wasn’t really an essay that the bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived Bobby Drake had handed to the Professor early Wednesday morning. It was something more extraordinary—a statement of purpose. Xavier turned the pages with great concentration, filled with a teacher’s thrill at watching his pupil become.
Bobby wrote passionately of betrayal and anger. It was a side of the usually cheerful boy that the Professor had never seen and he wondered about its connection to his unusual behaviour the day before. But then right on the page, he witnessed the transformation, the catharsis as Bobby wrote about rising above pain, moving beyond anger towards understanding and love:
“I cannot give up on my country,” he had written, “even when they vote with hatred, against us. I can only dream of a day when we all stand together—human and mutant, families and friends—and struggle together to fix everything we’ve done to the world in our ignorance.”
The Professor lifted his eyes from the paper slowly, as if emerging from another world. He looked out at his pupils and thought of the profound responsibility he had taken on with the founding of this school. Bobby wasn’t among those present, having returned to bed immediately upon turning in his assignment. The others were bent over their texts, taking notes; all except John Allerdyce who was looking up at him, a question in his eyes—eyes that for once didn’t carry a challenge in them.
“Mr. Allerdyce, may I help you?”
“Professor, can I go see if Bobby’s okay? If he needs anything?”
“Yes, John, that would be kind of you.” And he watched as the boy smiled somewhat shyly, rose hurriedly and slipped from the room.
Xavier looked out the window at the sun shining through the bare trees.
Every day is a beginning, he thought.
Author: Talktooloose
Pairing: Bobby/John
Setting: Movieverse, sometime between X1 and X2
Rating: R for coarse language, trashing of fundamentalists and X-plicit mm mutant sex.
Summary: America is divided as it heads to the polls but Bobby is distracted by new experiences and feelings.
Disclaimer: Marvel owns the X-Men and 20th Century Fox owns the movie. No profit is being made through these efforts except the spiritual. The song "What It Is to Burn" is by the band Finch.
Archiving: please contact me first
E-mail: lean_and_hungry at hotmail dot com
Notes: I deviate from Movieverse canon by bringing Logan back to the school before the events of X2. Canadian spellings are used throughout (in his honour?).
Thank yous: The spectacular
kuriadalmatia for a thorough and loving beta, and MF for encouragement. Also to Terry Austin who, in my dreams, inked this fic.____________________
November 3, 2004
“Democracy, one could say,” Professor Charles Xavier intoned, “is participatory dreaming. It is the way we realize the future together.” Xavier scanned the class, seeing faces listening, faces looking away, two faces smirking in a private joke, faces uncomprehending. And then there was Bobby Drake.
Bobby usually sat in the front row in the Professor’s course on Society and the Mutant, taking careful notes and asking incisive questions calculated to inspire and involve his fellow students. But today he sat in the back row, wearing an expression of strange, satisfied withdrawal. A smile sometimes spread across his face like an oil slick, as if he had a private joke no one else would understand. Furthermore, for the first time in the Xavier’s memory, the boy hadn’t handed in a paper on time. Today, Bobby the model student was an adolescent mystery.
The Professor watched him without appearing to, sizing up the 16 year-old boy’s unusual preoccupation. Xavier had strict moral codes about when it was appropriate to use his telepathy on an unsuspecting mind and when it was not. And yet, led by curiosity, he allowed himself to slip just deep enough below the surface to taste his favourite student’s mood. It was exhilaration he found there and a wild recklessness whose glorious edges were dusted with panic.
“Mr. Drake,” Xavier said, “Do you have an opinion on the outcome of last night’s election?”
Even Bobby’s physicality seemed altered today. Where he was usually solidly connected to the floor, leaned forward and poised to engage like a tussling hound, today he seemed to move with a languorous feline flow. The boy stretched his arms up and rolled his shoulders before answering, “I’m sorry, Professor, I guess I just haven’t been paying attention to this election.” There were amused stares and mutterings around the class at this very out-of-character response.
“Why should we care, Professor?” Jubilee interjected. “It’s all just a corporate old-boys’ club, passing laws to make the rich richer and making wars for kids to die in.”
“Yeah, all you need is love, Professor X!” said Bobby to general laughter. But as if to prove that this really was Bobby and not a clever impostor, he suddenly seemed embarrassed to have made such a scene and smiled shyly through a blush. “Sorry, sir.”
“Mr. Drake,” the Professor said quietly, “may I speak to you out in the hall? Students, please read the section on the enfranchisement of African Americans on page 62 of your texts.”
Out in the quiet of the oak-lined hallway, Bobby looked a bit sheepish and small even though he towered over the man in the wheelchair. He wasn’t used to being the one in trouble. And yet, even about that, he seemed somehow defiant, secretly pleased with himself. “I’m sorry, Professor, I know I should be following the election…”
But Xavier waved away his apology. “I know, lad, it’s not always easy to engage, especially if you don’t have a vote to cast. You just don’t seem yourself today and I want to make sure you’re feeling all right.” Bobby’s composure faltered for a second and he looked suddenly into Xavier’s eyes. Xavier was startled by a momentary psychic flash—two bodies locked together, sweat and racing heartbeats, a hoarse voice whispering, “harder” and a tiny, intense flame dancing across taut muscle…
He watched Bobby back up a step and look away, blushing hotly, the maddening smile back on his lips. After a lifetime in and out of people’s heads, Xavier was far more skilled than his student at keeping his emotions hidden. He deliberately changed courses. Pointing at the flagpole outside the picture window he said, “Bobby, do you see the American flag there? We raise it as a community every day. In that way, we control its course. But see how the winds chase it around? Democracy is not always easy to control and does not always follow the path we want; but without our participation, there is no nation at all. If we don’t take the initiative…”
“Professor,” Bobby interrupted. He seemed to have something important to say, something he needed to express in all earnestness to the man who had become a father to him. “Professor, I know I should care but there are other things… I mean, there are times when you just can’t…”
Xavier looked up at him. “It’s all right, Bobby, I was young once, believe it or not. It is sometimes a contradiction to ask the young to study the esoteric when their concerns are often more…earthly. Mr. Drake, perhaps you require a morning off of class. You seem to have a lot on your mind.”
“Really? Thank you, Professor X! I promise I’ll have all the chapters read for next week and-and I’ll get the essay in by Friday. Maybe even Thursday!” and, like a dog who hadn’t realized how taut the leash was until it was undone, he turned and ran down the corridor, the rubber soles of his sneakers echoing back from the wood and marble with a “pop, pop, pop”. The Professor sighed and wheeled himself back into the class.
________________________________________
Bobby stepped into the chilly November morning. The clouds roiled and turned overhead and the wind whipped around him full of the threat of rain. It felt wonderful. Everything did, in fact. His body seemed to be so alive that he suspected it had been a dead shell up until this point. Up until last Friday night. He turned slow circles in the driveway, listening to the chittering of the gravel. Friday night. Friday night in the room he shared with John Allerdyce.
John had arrived at the school six months ago and it had taken nearly all that time for Bobby to consider him a friend. Well, maybe “friend” was pushing it. They seemed to have learned to be around each other and even to find some kind of solace in each others’ company. John was a challenge—there was no doubt about it—both for his peers and for the school. Bobby still didn’t feel the time was right to ask him about his past, but he was pretty sure he had spent time on the streets. And what did that mean? Drugs? Crime, prostitution even? Bobby wanted to set an example for the newcomer; an example of clarity, purpose and… and what? Self-restraint? Sacrifice? Bobby wanted to be like the Professor’s first student, Scott Summers who never complained about hard work, who never seemed to ask for anything but the dedication of others.
Scott talked a lot about duty and Bobby thought, Yes, that’s what my life should be about, too. Duty to the school, to my friends, to man and mutant-kind. These thoughts seemed to quiet the panic that would sometimes come to him at the strangest times—in the middle of the night when he thought of his parent’s home which he knew he would never live in again; or out in the woods behind the school with other students whose apathy and cynicism filled him with confusion.
How could they live without something to believe in? And then there was the special panic he sometimes felt around John; in the face of John’s casual misanthropy, John’s casual vulgarity, John’s casual nudity. Why, Bobby wondered, did he have to just stand there, dressed in a t-shirt, socks and nothing else, cutting up about Storm or Piotr and Kitty or bitching about class as if his… his dick hanging out wouldn’t bug Bobby?!
John sometimes called Bobby “the monk” for the way he was always punctual, always polite, always folding his pants and t-shirt before he climbed into his neatly made bed to sleep silently on his side. But John didn’t understand—it was these routines that made the panic subside, that gave Bobby the momentum he needed not to fall into the pit that always threatened to open beneath his feet.
Friday night. He remembered staring at a blank screen on his laptop, trying to type something coherent while John’s stereo blared Finch behind him.
Bobby was usually good at blocking out John’s angry barrages of sound. It was John who insisted on dead silence on the rare occasions when he was actually serious about his studies. And Bobby would always oblige, happy to see his roommate on a course that didn’t seem wilfully self-destructive.
“John,” Bobby called out. “John!” he shouted over the music.
“What?”
“Can you turn that down? I want to ask you something!”
John snapped off the stereo and threw himself down on his bed. “What?” he demanded.
“I’m having trouble with this paper,” Bobby replied.
“What class?”
“The Mutant and Society”
“Oh, I’m not in that one.” John started beating the rhythm of the song on the bed beside him and mumbling the words.
“Yes you are, John, it’s mandatory. You just skip it most of the time.”
“Oh yeah,” said John and stood up on his bed, throwing his hands out wide and singing in a loud, rough voice: “I feel diseased / Is there no sympathy from the sun?”
Bobby liked John’s voice. He liked its passion and its wildness. He liked that it didn’t sound like the choir kids in his church, even the “Christian rockers” who sounded so false, praising Jesus with their lame Bon Jovi stylings. But now he wanted John to stop fooling around, so he went into his serious I’m waiting pose, the same one Scott used when he wanted the class to calm down. John smirked at him, jumped off the bed, landing like a commando in a crouch and then pouncing on Bobby, grabbing him in a headlock, singing, “The sky's still fire / But I am safe in here, from the world outside.”
“Quit it, John! I have to do this homework.” And he pushed John forcefully away.
“Drake, it’s Friday night, quit being such a scholar! What’s the stupid paper on anyway?”
“The election; it’s for Wednesday’s class. I don’t know what to say. Which candidate do you think would be a better president?”
“Magneto,” said John with a smirk.
“I’m serious, John!”
“You always are, Drake.” John pulled his baggy t-shirt off and Bobby took in his torso, lean and hard; no real definition like Bobby was getting from his weight training, but something implacable, something not to be messed with. And then there were the scars…
“Like what you see, Drake?” John winked and began to unbutton his jeans. Bobby turned away, feeling the beginning of a blush burning his neck. Fucking Allerdyce. He stared again at the screen, willing words to form as he heard the sounds of John undressing, tossing his clothes into the growing heap in the corner beside his bed. Why was he having so much trouble focussing? School was second nature to him.
John began to sing again: “Like a bad star, I'm falling faster down to her / She's the only one who knows what it is to burn…”
Bobby heard John’s Zippo light and he caught his breath. He was staring a hole in the screen of his laptop as the flickering of flames began to dance around the room at the edge of his peripheral vision. Why didn’t he say something? Usually, he would have lectured John about breaking the rules in the mansion like this. But he just stared forward with all of his might, while all his attention was on the boy in back of him.
John’s breathing was more erratic as he continued to sing, “Today is fire and she burns / Today is fire and she burns! She burns! She burns! She burns! SHE BURNS!!”
Bobby spun around suddenly in his chair. John stood naked on his bed, fireballs orbited around his head and torso. His eyes were like saucers reflecting the flames, his skin gleaming with sweat. His cock was hard. He suddenly snapped his head around to stare at Bobby. He smiled, “Hi, Drake.”
Bobby stood up as if his chair was electrified. He didn’t push it back far enough as he moved towards the door and it tumbled over loudly. With his hand on the doorknob, Bobby heard John breathe, “Hold it, Bobby. I wanna… talk.” Bobby turned and looked John in the eye. Only in the eye. John looked back intensely, his chest moving with his rapid breath, a smile playing across his face. His fireballs went out with a whoosh. He slumped back against the panelled wall, his hand stroking his belly slowly. “Do you ever find that using your powers… excites you?”
“Excites…?”
“Makes you hard, Drake. Gives you a bone-on.”
Bobby wanted to leave so bad, didn’t want to hear questions like that from the shockingly real and boned boy just across from him in the oh-so small and oh-so warm room. He began to sweat. “I, um, never noticed, John…”
“That’s weird. I always notice when I’m turned on, Drake. I guess it just shows which of us is more… distractible. Hey, I know, let’s do a scientific experiment!” John picked up his lighter from his bedside table. Skritch… fwoosh! Bobby stared as if hypnotized as John picked up the little flame and twirled it into a bright orange ball on his fingertip.
“Fire in the hole, Drake!” shouted John as he sent the fireball sailing into the garbage can full of paper. Bobby reacted without thinking, just as he’d been taught, sending a shower of sleet after the flame, engulfing it, extinguishing it. John hissed.
“Well, Bobby, did it work? Let’s see!” and he charged across the room, pinning Bobby against the wall with his chest, his face just below Bobby’s, his hand grabbing Bobby’s crotch. “Wow, it did! Of course, the experiment isn’t valid… we should have checked before. What do they call that? A control?”
Bobby was stronger than John. He could have knocked him on his ass but as he stood there, pinned by his naked, aroused roommate, hard in his own jeans, all he could do was whimper, “Stop it…” His mind was a riot of thoughts: I don’t even like John; Jean would call this sexual assault; he smells so strong, so good.
John was undoing Bobby’s pants now, pulling his belt apart, making enough slack in his waistband to thrust a hand down and find naked skin. Close to Bobby’s ear, he was whispering, whimpering, “C’mon Drake, let’s do it. I need it.”
Bobby was obliterated; there was no thought of fleeing now. But all the rules were changed. He was somebody new, somebody with a need but no understanding of the need’s dimensions or how he was to satisfy it. There was a body pressed against him that fit no previous category—it wasn’t the comforting hug of a parent or a friend—it wasn’t a sparring partner to subdue. He choked out, “I-I don’t know how to do this, man.”
“Oh, Drake, sure you do. Just follow me.”
And John pulled them across the room and onto his bunk. There was no time for finesse, no pretence of seduction, just two bodies in need. John’s left hand stroked Bobby and his right ran roughly through his hair. Bobby felt lifted out of his body, aware of nothing but pleasure until he felt John take his hand and guide it to his cock. Bobby grasped it, shocked to be doing it, shocked to be wanting it. He stroked this hot foreign object with the same intensity John was doing him; and John moaned a deep rough moan, like the way he had been singing and Bobby marvelled that he could make John Allerdyce do that.
And boys jerked and moaned and thrashed and came and it was the beginning.
________________________________________
Bobby breathed in the crisp air deeply. Reliving the events in his mind had made him hard again but he was also starting to shiver in the cold. He turned suddenly and ran full speed down the long winding driveway lined with trees to keep prying eyes away. He pumped his legs as fast as he could, pushing in full appreciation of his body. His body—he hadn’t even known his body until John introduced him to it this past weekend. Bobby Drake, meet your senses.
Down at the base of the driveway, he leaned against one of the stone pillars of the gate, breathing hard, feeling the sweat cool on his back, and he remembered Saturday. All day he had wanted to be alone with John. He had wanted more. But he had been also scared; in his mind he had imagined John laughing, pushing him away, calling him “fag”. “Damn it, Drake, I was just horny, you fag. I don’t do that every day!” How could someone as cool as John be…? Bobby had to find out.
But he hadn't been able to get John alone! There had been football games to be played in the back field, there had been Kitty and Piotr and Jubilee all wanting to hang out. Jubilee had been looking at him strangely all day, “What’s with you, Bobby? You look like someone slipped something into your Kool-Aid.” And John had joined the joke and laughed. Laughed! As if he had no idea why Bobby was being so weird.
It was the middle of the afternoon and Kitty was reading aloud about the election; half of America seemed ready to vote for Bush just to preserve what they thought of as American values. Jubilee snorted, “Don’t get me started on those fucking Christians! I had enough missionaries trying to save my ass for one lifetime. They’re such goddamn hypocrites. The same ministers who are up in their pulpits saying that mutants and gays are destroying the country were feeling me up in the shelters. I just want to shake everyone in the Bible Belt and scream: ‘the world is changing people, deal with it!’”
“But maybe all this change is… is too much!” Bobby blurted out suddenly, panic flooding his guts. “Maybe the world was better off before.”
“What? Before all those fucking mutants went and got born?!” Jubilee shouted, “Yeah, you should let the love of Jesus into your heart, Bobby! Renounce your sin!” Frightened, Bobby stared at her. She got up in his face and said, “The Devil made you into Iceman, but Jesus will give you a job selling insurance and a house in the suburbs!”
And John—fucking John—collapsed on the floor in helpless laughter. “You spent too many years in Sunday school, monk!” Bobby had to pretend to laugh and go along with the joke but he felt like a puppy who had just pissed on the rug. Kitty and Piotr saved the day by suggesting a Mario Kart tournament.
It was after midnight before John and Bobby could be alone, Bobby shaking and horny in anticipation and fear. He spent almost 15 minutes in the shower before he found the courage to put a towel around his waist and walk back into their room. He entered to find the small cell illuminated by five candles. John lay smirking on his bunk in just a pair of white briefs, already engorged. He looked hungry. The candles didn’t say “romance”; they said “Pyro”. But Bobby was suddenly equal to the challenge. He closed the door and dropped the towel.
On Sunday, they found an hour together in the afternoon. John was running his lips and teeth all over Bobby and Bobby was thrashing like each touch was an electric shock. “John, do you want to suck me?” he gasped.
But John pulled himself up beside Bobby saying, “Nah, I don’t do that.”
“Oh,” Bobby replied, thinking maybe he’d said something wrong.
“But you do, Drake,” John stated matter-of-factly.
“What? No, I never…”
“Oh, I know you never did, monk; but all the same, you do. I can see it in your baby blue eyes. Come here.” And he took Bobby’s head, gently but with conviction, and drew him downwards, downwards, onto himself.
And as Bobby sucked his first cock, John guided him sometimes tenderly, sometimes urgently, swearing and whining. Fireballs danced around the room, sometimes close enough that Bobby could imagine the two of them igniting like a star.
________________________________________
Bobby was trudging back up the driveway, coming around a bend when he saw Logan standing there, arms crossed, challenging.
“So, I’m training in the gym,” said Logan with his tough-guy bark, “when I see Bobby Drake bolting down the driveway when he should be in class.”
“No, it’s okay, Wolverine! Professor Xavier said I could go hang out by myself.” Logan answered with a silent stare. It was one of the techniques of cool intimidation that he was a master of. Bobby tried to meet the stare, but it was only a few seconds before he found himself forced to continue a conversation that he didn’t want to have. “Um, ‘cause I have stuff to think about. Nothing bad, okay? Just… stuff.”
Logan tilted his head to one side and took a long sniff in Bobby’s direction, assessing. Bobby got nervous fast. Could he smell it on me? Smell John? Smell sex? What would a tough guy like Logan do if he thought I was a…
“What are you missing? Ororo’s math class or Charlie’s ‘Us and Them’ lecture? “
Bobby found himself smiling. “I think you mean ‘The Mutant and Society’. Yeah, that. We’re talking about who should be President and why. Can I ask you who you voted for?”
“Nobody. I’m Canadian. I got opinions but not a vote.”
“Well, who do you think should win the election?”
“Too late for ‘should’, they just announced that Kerry conceded. Which means the world is stuck with a dangerous jackass for four more years. I’ll tell you, I’m glad I’m not a soldier in Iraq, or waiting to be shipped there, or to Iran or wherever he’s gonna make his next idiot move. I’ve been in combat, kid, and I’ll tell you that a soldier needs to know he’s not just being thrown into the fire without a real leader behind him. I swear, the world war that we avoided with Reagan could still come true under this guy.”
Bobby felt sobered by this and it seemed to engage a part of his brain that he hadn’t heard from since Friday. “What about all the domestic issues? What do you think of Bush’s social policies?”
“Oh, the anti-mutant stuff makes me all warm and fuzzy, what do you think?” Logan scratched his neck and watched a hawk wheeling high overhead. “And then there’s abortion. I used to think it was wrong, but back then I thought women were just put on earth to show me a good time when I was off-duty. I’m smarter now.”
Bobby responded, “I bet Dr. Grey had something to do with that.”
“Oh, you do, huh? Why don’t you take your speculation and stick it?”
“Sorry. What about gay marriage?” Bobby heard himself ask, instantly cursing his stupid, forgetful brain. Now Logan knows for sure! Look how’s he’s looking at me, Bobby thought.
“The gays want marriage, eh? Don’t ask me why,” Logan snorted. “I think marriage is bullshit. The way I see it, you go along with someone for a while and then your paths separate. It can be really beautiful; it can be a pain in the ass. Why would you want the state all tied up in it?”
“So, you’re against gay marriage, too?”
“I said I’m against marriage, period. But, not to offer gays the right to the same mistake as everyone else is just another kind of hate. And don’t believe that crap about preserving the 'holy institution of marriage'. Nah, it’s about telling gays they aren’t real human beings, that their love is not real love and that they don’t count. It’s the kind of shit makes me want to shish kabob someone, y’know?”
“I guess…” Bobby murmured. To avoid Logan’s probing gaze, he looked away across the lawn at the trees where the last leaves clung futilely against the inexorable coming of winter.
“Don’t guess, Drake, make up your mind. You’re a good kid and you’re gonna do good things in this world. That means taking a stand and deciding what you believe. It means looking inside yourself and accepting what’s there.” Bobby’s eyes turned back to Logan. Logan held his gaze and this time it wasn’t about intimidation. Bobby shivered and suddenly felt like he was going to cry. He bit his lip hard and looked away again.
But Logan didn’t push the conversation further. He pulled out his X-cell and pushed a speed-dial number. “Hey, Summers, I’ve got a friend of yours running around with ants in his pants. Yeah, well weren’t you heading into town before lunch? Better take him along before he gets himself into trouble.” He hung up. “Go get yourself a jacket and meet Scooter in the garage, kid.”
“Thanks, Logan. I…”
“Go! He’s waiting for you.” Bobby turned and ran back to the mansion.
________________________________________
As Scott drove into town, he felt Bobby’s eyes on him. Scott figured he was probably closer to Bobby than anyone on earth, but a lot of the time their relationship was conducted in silence. Since Bobby had come to Xavier’s when he was 13 years old, Scott had always waited patiently until he was ready to say whatever he needed to say. Scott, who had only been 18 when he became the boy’s unofficial big brother, had the sensitivity to know that things couldn't be rushed. Bobby would just watch him, slowly filling the car with unspoken words that had to gather like a storm before they broke.
But when Bobby did finally open his mouth, Scott knew he still wasn’t getting down to whatever was bothering him. “Who did you vote for, Scott?”
“Kerry. This state traditionally votes Democrat. But some of the small towns are more conservative.”
“Did Jean vote for Kerry, too?”
“You’ll have to ask her that.”
Bobby was silent again. This is a tougher nut to crack than usual, Scott mused.
“You love Jean, right?”
“Is that what you want to talk about, Bobby? Love?”
“Sort of…”
“Sex?”
“Maybe.” He shifted in his seat and drummed on the window. Thirty seconds passed before he blurted out, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a book about mutants and sex in the library?”
“We’re not that different from humans, guy.”
“I know, but… Hey, Scott. Um, do you… I mean, do mutants get, uh, excited when they use their powers?” Bobby was doing an unconvincing imitation of someone comfortable to be asking questions about sex.
“That’s pretty normal, Bobby. Especially when you’re younger. Using powers is a natural release for mutants. In fact, it’s a lot like sex; it’s a huge energy inside of us that needs an outlet. Sometimes the two influence each other. You worried about that?”
“Not worried exactly…”
“It’s part of the control you have to learn when you use your powers. Do you want me to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else?”
“Yeah! Um, if you want.” Bobby exclaimed, failing again in his attempt at nonchalance.
“The first time the Professor really had me use my full power was when I was 14. He kept throwing new challenges at me and I had to work harder and harder. I was blasting targets, sometimes just deflecting them, sometimes destroying them and they were coming faster and faster. I could feel this exhilaration growing inside me, like nothing I’d ever known before. It was power and joy and… suddenly at the height of the exercise, I shot off in my pants.”
“What!? You’re kidding! Right in front of the Professor?” Bobby’s jaw was hanging open.
“Uh-huh. I was so rattled I almost took the side off the mansion. I said to Professor X that I had to go to the bathroom really bad and I ran back to my room to change underwear.”
Bobby was laughing now like there was nothing wrong in the world; everything was normal again. “Oh, that’s too funny, Scott! Good thing you didn’t fry the whole forest! Wow, I’ve lost control and iced up the whole room before, but I never…”
“I know, it’s awful. And don’t go telling anybody what I just told you!” Scott warned. He saw Bobby relax and decided he could push a bit. “Is that what’s got you worried, Bobby? Sometimes at your age your body can feel totally out of control. Are you worried about losing control of your powers around a girl?”
Bobby stopped laughing. In fact, he looked like he had been hit. Scott saw tears forming in the corners of his eyes and watched helplessly as Bobby turned away to stare out the window. Scott cursed himself for his clumsiness as they drove on in silence. It was another five minutes before Scott asked him if he was okay.
Bobby turned back to him, his face emotionless, his breathing even. It was a state Scott knew well—feelings reigned in, the blinding, burning pain controlled. “I’m fine, Scott. Thanks for talking to me. It really helped.”
Scott didn’t believe him for a minute, but he knew that this was as far as the discussion would get this time.
***
In town, he asked Bobby to come into the hardware store with him, but Bobby said he needed to see something and promised he’d meet him back at the car in 15 minutes. He walked across the parking lot away from Scott and the hardware store and went around the side of Randy’s Fine Eats, the strip-mall family restaurant where his parents always took him when they came to visit him at school. He sat down on a bench outside the door.
The conversation in the car played and replayed in his head. When Scott had mentioned girls, Bobby had suddenly realized he could never tell Scott about him and John. Scott expected him to grow up a carbon copy of his perfect Cyclops ideal—the Professor’s number one student, the poster boy for responsible mutant kind. Poster boys weren’t fags. FAGGOT! Was that what he was?
He had wanted to say it all to Scott, to ask him if he’d ever done anything with Warren or Henry but still ended up with Jean. But what if Bobby didn’t want to end up with Jubilee or Marie or whatever? What if John was it? What if that was what he wanted?
He didn’t know how he was going to climb back into that car, how he was going to go back to the school, how he was going to live his life at all. In the meagre flowerbed beside him, the last green stragglers were being tossed around by the cold wind that had come up again. Bobby dug his hands into his pockets and hunched lower into his jacket, thinking back to the night before.
Tuesday night. John came into their room to find Bobby still struggling with the democracy paper due the next day.
“Hey, Drake, aren’t you going down to watch the election results with all the good little citizens?”
“No! I have to finish this paper!” Bobby found himself drumming on the keyboard, watching a line of x’s march across the screen in frustration. “Dammit, John, when I was a kid at Boy Scouts and Bible camp…” John snickered but Bobby ignored him, “I was totally into all the rah-rah-America stuff. I believed this was the greatest place in the world, the only place worth living. And the President! Wow, he would be the best dad of all! And now I don’t even care who wins this stupid election!”
“What’s the matter, did I get you all distracted this weekend?” John came up behind him and slid his hand down the front of Bobby’s shirt, tweaking his nipples, rubbing the peach fuzz on his belly. “Fuck, touching you is like licking strawberries and cream, Drake. You’re so fucking wholesome; it makes me hard as Petey in full armour.”
They were on the bed naked maybe ten seconds later. And this time, it was all about Bobby’s ass. John had licked him there on Monday night for the first time, sending thoughts into Bobby’s brain that had never been there before. But tonight it went further, tongue and fingers and fingers and fingers and Bobby was at the edge of the narrow bed with his legs up on John’s shoulders, leaning back on his elbows and John was kneeling on the floor, working Bobby’s ass and cock with intense concentration. Bobby arched his back and heard himself make low moans like a wary cat.
“Tell me you want it, Drake,” he hissed.
“What? What do I want? What do you mean?” mumbled Bobby in ecstasy.
“Tell me, Bobby. Tell me you want it.”
And Bobby said, “Yeah, I do. I want it.”
And Bobby didn’t blink, didn’t retreat as John reached for the condom and the lube, already waiting in the bedside table. And Bobby didn’t say a word as John lifted his legs up until his knees were at his shoulders and entered him slowly. And as they moved together, they groaned their separate pleasures, each feeling things that could not be described in words.
“Kiss me, John.” Bobby breathed.
John half-opened his eyes, a spaced smile drifting across his face as he said, “I don’t do that, Drake.”
But again Bobby didn’t retreat. He was a different person than he had been on Friday. He knew that. He accepted this picture: Bobby Drake, the monk, the good boy, with his legs thrown back, taking another boy into himself with passion and gratitude.
So he looked at John and he knew it with certainty: “Yes, you do, John,” he said gently.
And it was John’s turn to tumble into the unknown as Bobby grabbed his head with a strong hand on his greasy hair and pulled it forward until their lips met.
And John made a noise then, deeper and more aching than his song. Because he was lost. He was found out.
________________________________________
Sitting on the bench outside of the restaurant in the harsh November wind, Bobby felt like he was seeing himself through a fractured kaleidoscope. He was Scott’s little brother, he was the professor’s prize student, he was his parents’ lost little boy, he was John’s… John’s what? He didn’t know yet.
And he was something else: he was his own discovery. He was a Bobby that emerged with as much splendour and surprise as the Bobby who discovered he could make ice out of thin air when he was 13.
The Iceman shivered and stood up. He went into the restaurant. The front cash also functioned as a candy counter and he decided he needed a chocolate bar. The owner, an angry-looking heavyset man in his fifties, watched him with some suspicion as he made his selection. Bobby was just thinking that something about this man reminded him of his father (maybe it was the angry set of his jaw), when his eye suddenly caught the headlines on the stack of newspapers. “Bush Poised to Take Back Presidency,” “America Divided” and then, “10 States Vote To Ban Gay Marriage; 13 To Increase Controls On Mutants.”
He froze. Was it ten seconds? An hour? First he couldn’t breathe, then he was breathing faster and faster. He felt his jaw clench and suddenly he was found himself shouting, “We’re Americans, too, you fucking assholes! We’re not… not aliens!!”
“Hey,” yelled the owner. “We don’t need trouble here.” Bobby looked up, suddenly embarrassed at what he’d done. He started to apologize, but the man was moving towards him. “Maybe you just can’t accept what the majority of Americans believe: that it’s time we had some kind of restitution in this country!”
Bobby felt hot shame moving up his spine, making his face burn, making his stomach contract. He felt eyes on him and he had the crazy sense that if he looked around, he would see his parents standing there, witnessing his humiliation. But he just stared at the man as he moved close enough for Bobby to smell his sweat, his fury.
“We’re not going to take it anymore, being pushed around by terrorists and liberals and anyone else who thinks America has no values. So whoever you are, gay or mutant or abortionist, why don’t you hit the road? We don’t want you here. This is a decent place. I don’t want you in my restaurant!”
What did Bobby have to fear? Even without his powers, he could take out this man with the least of his combat training. But he began backing away as the man approached, mouth hanging open, hands raised to ward off an attack. And then he backed into the wire postcard display and his feet tangled up; he tumbled to the ground along with display, the air suddenly full of faded, cheery pictures of the town taken 40 years earlier.
He looked up to see all the faces in the restaurant—ordinary families, children with toy cars, old men in faded cotton—staring at him in shock. He felt like a monster, like their worst nightmare. He stood, lifting the post-card rack with shaking hands, and turned and ran out the door.
He ran through the parking lot and out along the edge of the main road, pushing his legs as fast as he could go until he found himself in front of a fire station. He bent over and braced himself on his knees, gasping for air and crying as the cars sped past and the wind howled in his ears.
Above him he heard an angry snapping and clattering. Looking up, he saw the American flag over the fire station twisting in the wind, the stars and stripes a blur of colour. This? This was the Professor’s democracy? A bit of cloth pulling at the flagpole like an angry dog, hungry to sink its teeth into anyone who dared invade its territory?
He stood up tall, raising his fists to the flag and everyone it represented who wanted him dead, that wanted him and Scott and Jubilee and John (Oh, John…) to vanish, to never have existed at all. He imagined his parents voting yesterday, early in the morning before work, lining up proudly in the cold to vote against him—casting a vote to exclude him from their tribe, from those they could ever, ever love.
And suddenly he was yelling, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” and letting loose a blast of ice that froze the flag in place, stretched and twisted like gargoyle, a cold crystalline mockery of everything he had believed in as a boy, everything that was flying from his grasp in the cruel winds of November.
________________________________________
It wasn’t really an essay that the bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived Bobby Drake had handed to the Professor early Wednesday morning. It was something more extraordinary—a statement of purpose. Xavier turned the pages with great concentration, filled with a teacher’s thrill at watching his pupil become.
Bobby wrote passionately of betrayal and anger. It was a side of the usually cheerful boy that the Professor had never seen and he wondered about its connection to his unusual behaviour the day before. But then right on the page, he witnessed the transformation, the catharsis as Bobby wrote about rising above pain, moving beyond anger towards understanding and love:
“I cannot give up on my country,” he had written, “even when they vote with hatred, against us. I can only dream of a day when we all stand together—human and mutant, families and friends—and struggle together to fix everything we’ve done to the world in our ignorance.”
The Professor lifted his eyes from the paper slowly, as if emerging from another world. He looked out at his pupils and thought of the profound responsibility he had taken on with the founding of this school. Bobby wasn’t among those present, having returned to bed immediately upon turning in his assignment. The others were bent over their texts, taking notes; all except John Allerdyce who was looking up at him, a question in his eyes—eyes that for once didn’t carry a challenge in them.
“Mr. Allerdyce, may I help you?”
“Professor, can I go see if Bobby’s okay? If he needs anything?”
“Yes, John, that would be kind of you.” And he watched as the boy smiled somewhat shyly, rose hurriedly and slipped from the room.
Xavier looked out the window at the sun shining through the bare trees.
Every day is a beginning, he thought.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-12 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 08:13 am (UTC)I got your message via e-mail while on vacation and just checked through every community where I posted the story looking for your comment before finding it back here. But it's all good as I see there are some fics for me read.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. Holy Shit! Composer fic?! I've never heard of that. What an awesome idea. Heh, I should write poet fic between Verlaine and Rimbaud. It's even a real historical relationship
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 04:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 02:47 pm (UTC)