Bri (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brbsoulnomming) wrote2009-02-23 12:57 pm
brbsoulnomming) wrote2009-02-23 12:57 pm
Entry tags:
Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Title: Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Author: Bri
Rating: R
Word count: 6,250
Pairing: John/Bobby, Bobby/Rogue, brief John/Other, hints of Gambit/Kitty and Logan/Rogue
Summary: He figured he would have learned that when he was drunk, he should stay far, far away from anyone who wasn’t Bobby. Actually, Bobby, too. But apparently, just like in a whole mess of other things, John hadn’t learned his lesson.
Notes: This fanfic was inspired by the Placebo song Every Me and Every You, if only because I got the idea while listening to it on the bus. The title is also lifted from the song.
John always knew he’d regret that conversation. He figured he would have learned that when he was drunk, he should stay far, far away from anyone who wasn’t Bobby. Actually, Bobby, too. He should just stay the hell away from anyone who’d remember things in the morning and be able to hold them against him. But apparently, just like in a whole mess of other things, John hadn’t learned his lesson.
It was over a year after Alcatraz, after Bobby’d dragged his ass off the island and taken him back to the Institute, all smug and grinning like everything was going to be just fine. John’d fully intended on proving to the dumbshit that he was, in fact, a dumbshit, and that as soon as John was capable of walking he was going to walk right out of there. But for some reason, he never did. Maybe it was the way Storm looked at him, with something old and tired and sad in her eyes that hadn’t been there before, maybe it was how different things seemed without Xavier and Cyclops and Jean there, maybe it was because with both Magneto and Mystique human, he had no where to go. Maybe it was anything but what it probably actually was, that stupid fucking Bobby just couldn’t leave him alone, wouldn’t get out of his head, refused to believe that they were not fucking friends, no matter what John did to try and prove it to him.
But whatever the reason, he was still there. And even he had to admit that it was less and less likely that he’d be walking out any time soon. That day, he’d somehow found himself offering to help work with one of the new students, who had a very minor fire ability but zero control. And that night, when it hit him that he might as well have just put his name on the fucking leather-in-waiting list, John’d grabbed his jacket and informed Bobby that he was going out. Bobby had asked him if he wanted some company, but John had just glared at him and asked, “Don’t you have a date with Rogue?” then stormed out before Bobby could say, “Oh, right. Never mind.”
In retrospect, he probably should have gotten Bobby to go along with him, because late in the night when he was so wasted he couldn’t even hold onto his drink anymore, he’d found himself outside his favorite bar, staring at the street signs and laughing randomly. Which wasn’t bad or anything, but it would have been so much more fun if Bobby was there, and John could only admit things like that to himself when he was completely drunk. He could’ve gotten Bobby so wasted, just as drunk as he was, and then they could both be out here laughing. Laughing even more, actually, because whenever they were drunk together one of them said something and it made the other one laugh, and then they were both laughing, even though they couldn’t remember what the fuck had been so funny in the first place.
‘Course, that had been before. Well, no, actually it’d been after, too, because it hadn’t been too long before he and Bobby had pretty much been best friends again, and that was so fucking like Bobby, to just suck him back into friendship so easily that three months after Alcatraz it was only natural for them to be sitting out on the dock and drinking beer just like they had done as teenagers.
Fucking Bobby, John thought, and might have said it outloud, because a group of people passing by turned to look at him.
And that was kind of funny, and he spent a few minutes laughing before he decided that Bobby really should be there with him, which sparked off another round of bitching at Bobby in his head. Fucker just couldn’t let them not be friends. In a way, it was almost nice. John’d never had anything consistent in his life, nothing that lasted, except apparently Bobby. Apparently Bobby would always be there to annoy the fuck out of him, no matter what he did, and John had absolutely no idea what the fuck to do with that. No fucking clue, except to know that he was totally and completely screwed, because back when John realized he wanted Bobby, and maybe liked him, a lot, and maybe even fucking loved the dumbshit (another thing he could only admit when he was really drunk), Bobby just went right on being his very straight, very uninterested best friend. And nothing had fucking changed, except maybe John’d given him a few more reasons to be uninterested.
A car pulled up in front of him, which was amusing because it was the same color as Bobby’s car. And then Bobby stepped out of the driver’s seat, and that was even more funny, because hello, John’d just been thinking about how much more fun it would be if Bobby was there, and there he fucking was. John was laughing when Bobby walked up to him, and Bobby grinned a bit and shook his head.
“What’s funny this time?” Bobby asked.
“You,” John informed him between snickers. He was slurring his words a bit, but they were clear enough. The more troubling thing was that he was slipping back into his natural accent. But then, he had a tendency to do that when he was drunk, and it was just Bobby, so it was okay. “Or maybe me. I think I have a new power, Drake. I think about things and they appear.”
Bobby stopped in front of him, and John hadn’t even realized he’d been sitting down until he had to look way up at Bobby. Bobby leaned in and pulled him up, keeping his grip on John when John wobbled a bit.
“That’s great,” Bobby said tolerantly. “Why don’t you think of a nice, big cheeseburger or a million dollars?”
John frowned in concentration as he tried that, but all he could think of was Bobby’s arm around his waist and his too-blue eyes. John snickered again.
“What?” Bobby asked as he started forward, his arm still around John’s waist.
“Your eyes are really, really blue,” John replied. “Where’re we going?”
“To my car,” Bobby said. “I think it’s probably time to go home.”
“I can’t drink anymore,” John agreed. “I dropped my last bottle three times.” He knew because he’d counted. Or maybe he’d dropped his last three bottles one time each, because it didn’t make sense that he could drop the same bottle three times and have it not be broken and still full of beer. Whatever.
Bobby opened the passenger door and John slid inside, then spent a few moments trying to buckle his seatbelt. The fucking thing refused to work properly, though, and it probably didn’t help that John was laughing at stupid Bobby and his car with fucking seatbelts that didn’t work. Bobby fastened it for him and John grinned at him.
“I’m glad I caught you while you were still funny drunk,” Bobby told him.
John started to protest that, but couldn’t because Bobby’d already shut the door. So he waited until Bobby got into the car, too, then said, “I’m always fun drunk.”
“I said funny, not fun,” Bobby said as he started the car.
John frowned. “Whatever.”
“And you usually are. But sometimes you get all cranky and emo at the end,” Bobby said.
“You’re cranky and emo,” John muttered.
Bobby laughed. “Okay. I’m cranky and emo.”
John grinned. “I win. Hey. Where’re we going?”
“Back to the mansion,” Bobby said.
“Oh. Kay. I can’t drink anymore, anyway,” John said.
Bobby nodded. “You dropped your bottle.”
John blinked. “How’d you know that? Get out of my head.”
“You already told me that you dropped it,” Bobby said.
“Oh.” John considered that. “Get out of my head anyway. You’re always in there, you know that?”
“Okay,” Bobby agreed. “I’ll get out of your head.”
“Good,” John said triumphantly, crossing his arms and sinking down low into the seat so he could put his feet up on the dashboard. “No, wait. Come back, it’ll probably be too empty without you in there.”
Bobby laughed. “I’m sure your head’s thick enough to still be full without me in there, Johnny.”
John tried to decide if that was a compliment or an insult and settled for saying, “Fuck you, Bobby.”
“That’d be hard to do while I’m driving,” Bobby replied.
That made John stop, sit up straight, and stare at him. “What?”
“You said ‘fuck you.’ I said that’d be hard to do while I was driving. It’s a joke, Johnny, did you get too drunk to understand them?” Bobby asked, grinning at him.
“Fucker,” John grumbled, settling back down. He’d meant to just think it, but apparently he’d said it, too, because Bobby laughed again. “What were you doing there, anyway?”
“Looking for you,” Bobby said.
“What about your date with the former poison princess?” John asked. “Wasn’t she pissed? Didn’t think you’d ditch her.”
Bobby’s eyes flicked over at him before returning to the road. “I already made that mistake once, remember?”
John remembered. And a month after John’d been back at the Institute, Bobby’d apologized for being a shitty best friend and focusing too much on girls. John hadn’t said anything and Bobby’d just dropped it. John didn’t say anything now, either.
“You’re my best friend, Johnny. You’re always going to come first,” Bobby told him.
John snickered, because if he took him too seriously he’d end up saying something fucking stupid. “Bros before hos, man,” he said solemnly. And that was stupid, too, but at least it was the funny kind of stupid.
Bobby laughed. “Exactly. It was about time for you to be completely wasted, anyway. I figured you weren’t stupid enough to drive home, but you never know.”
“Wasn’t gonna drive,” John muttered, then added, “Don’t remember which bar I parked the car in front of.”
“We’ll find it tomorrow,” Bobby assured him.
John tilted his foot slightly, pushing the sole of his shoe against the windshield and leaving a dirty print on the glass. He laughed at the outline, which made Bobby look over and roll his eyes.
“Thanks, Johnny,” Bobby complained. “Least it’s better than you puking in here.”
“Not gonna puke,” John protested, just as Bobby slammed on the brakes to avoid running a red light. “Well, I might if you keep fucking driving like that.”
“I like not getting tickets,” Bobby said.
“You coulda made it, mate,” John said, then frowned accusingly at Bobby. He didn’t feel quite as annoyed at saying things like that when Bobby was drunk, too, and talking in his own accent. “Why aren’t you drunk? It’s better when you’re drunk, too. You’re more fun.”
“Because if I was drunk, too, we’d be walking home,” Bobby told him.
“Nothing wrong with walking,” John replied, then reconsidered that. “Nuh. If you were drunk, don’t think you could make it all the way back.”
“Nope, probably not,” Bobby agreed easily.
“Hey,” John said, reaching across to push lightly at Bobby’s shoulder. “I don’t think I woulda made it neither. Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Any time,” Bobby said, and gave him a look that said he really meant any time, that he’d just keep being around to carry him off islands or pick him up when he was drunk, always be there when John needed it, except just not the way John really wanted. No, he just meant any time. That was the downside to being drunk, John kept reading things into looks.
Everything would have been fine if the night ended then, but no, an hour after crawling into bed John had to decide he was thirsty. He and Bobby were still sharing a room, although bigger than the one before, and John kind of thought in the beginning they’d had them share because they wanted someone close to him who could take him in a fight, put out his fires if it came to it, and maybe because they weren’t sure how long John would stay and didn’t want to give him his own room. But he hadn’t cared, because he wasn’t staying long anyway. Except obviously, he did stay, so that argument didn’t work anymore, but what the fuck ever. Maybe John was a little bit of a masochist and liked getting to watch Bobby walk around in varying stages of naked-ness even though there was nothing he could do about it.
Anyway, the fucking point was that John was thirsty. And Bobby was asleep and John was still pretty drunk, so he decided it would be a fucking brilliant idea to go into the kitchen to get something to drink. He wasn’t the giggly kind of drunk anymore (and fuck Bobby for being right about his stages of drunken-ness), which was good because if he’d ended up getting caught stumbling through the hallway and giggling, he’d probably have to burn the witnesses.
It was also bad, though, because when John stumbled into the kitchen and saw Rogue standing there, he groaned. Rogue was pretty much the last fucking person he wanted to see right then.
“Great,” John muttered.
“Hello to you, too, John,” Rogue greeted.
“Yeah, hi,” John mumbled, walking over to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Rogue made him uncomfortable. He never really had much against her, except the fact that Bobby only had eyes for her, which would have pissed him off even if he didn’t have a thing for Bobby, but she’d gotten the Cure. That was just all kinds of fucked up. So far he’d managed to avoid making comments about why the hell they still let her stay there, but mainly that was only because he wasn’t sure why the hell they let him stay there, either.
“I guess Bobby found you, then,” Rogue commented.
John rolled his eyes. “No, he left me at the bar and I just randomly developed teleportation powers and got here by myself.” Okay, fridge. Now he just had to open it.
“I see someone’s still drunk,” Rogue said, sounding like she was trying to be amused but was actually a little annoyed.
John ignored her because he’d gotten the fridge open, and he had to concentrate on finding his bottle of water. After a few moments, he located one and pulled it out, grinning triumphantly.
“You want some crackers or something, too?” Rogue asked.
John looked at her, decided she was trying to be helpful, and shook his head. “Nah. I’m good.” He started to leave, and he really should have just fucking left, but something made him turn around. “He’s not yours, you know.”
She just kind of stared at him for a moment before asking, “Excuse me?”
“Bobby,” John said, tone of voice telling her that it should have been obvious who he was talking about. Because it was. “He’s not yours. You’re just kind of, borrowing him from me.”
She stared at him again. “From you.”
He nodded, growing confident. “Yeah. You’re borrowing him from me. He likes you and you’re real fucking pretty and everything, but he’s not yours. He’ll never be yours, no matter what you do to try and make him yours.”
She still looked a little surprised. “Last time I checked, John, Bobby was my boyfriend.”
John waved his hand, probably a lot more vigorously than he meant to. “Like I said, borrowing. I mean, just think about it. You go out and take the Cure so you’ll be able to fuck him, and you and him just get more awkward.” He didn’t know if that was exactly true, because Bobby didn’t talk to him about Rogue much anymore, but from what John’d seen it seemed true, and the way Rogue was suddenly looking a little upset confirmed it. “Me? I almost kill the fucking bastard, and he saves my fucking life, drags my ass back here, and we’re back to being best friends. Guess who he really belongs to?”
Rogue stayed silent for a long moment. Then she said quietly, “You’re drunk, John.”
“Duh,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Doesn’t make me any less right. You just, you know, keep on fucking borrowing him, but he’s always going to be mine.”
“Bobby will always be your best friend, I know that,” Rogue said.
John shook his head, then realized that was a bad idea when the room started spinning a little. “Don’t bet on that,” he informed her, then stumbled out of the kitchen and back up to his and Bobby’s room.
The next morning, through the fortunately mild hang-over, John decided he should’ve had those three other beers, because he still remembered everything that had happened the night before. He kept waiting for it to come back and bite him in the ass, but Rogue never brought it up again, and he pushed it aside.
~*~
It was two years before he even thought of it again. He and Bobby had gotten an apartment in New York City, and Bobby was going to college (studying to be an accountant, the fucker, and was acing all of his classes), and John was writing and taking a few classes of his own, and they both taught once or twice a week at the Institute. John never thought too hard about his current situation, because when he did he realized that this was the kind of shit he and Bobby used to talk about doing back when they were kids, the shit John had sworn was completely ridiculous during his stint with the Brotherhood.
There’d been one time when he nearly left. Rogue’s powers came back, which meant Magneto and Mystique’s must have come back, too, which meant that they were likely out there regrouping the Brotherhood. And people kept giving him looks. In between the pitying looks Rogue got, he got the looks that said “how long’s it going to be before he takes off this time?” He’d been pissed, and half figured that he might as well just leave if they all expected him to, it wasn’t like he fucking wanted to be there anyway, especially when he wasn’t wanted.
But then he realized that Bobby never once looked at him like that. And neither did Kitty, or Pete, or Remy, Sam, or Dani, the new guys who’d started hanging out with them. Rogue did, but maybe that was because he kept giving her “haha, you fucking got what you deserved” looks, and once or twice Jubilee did, but the rest of them? They never treated him any differently. And John mostly thought that was because they took their cues from Bobby, but still.
Besides, honestly, he fucking doubted Magneto and Mystique had teamed up again. Magneto had left Mystique naked in the middle of nowhere, and she wasn’t the kind of person to forget something like that. If anything, they were probably forming their own groups to kick each other’s asses, and John was pretty sure he didn’t want to get caught up in that.
So he stayed, and got an apartment with his best friend, and it didn’t even bother him when Bobby went out on dates with Rogue or (very rarely) stayed at her place. Bobby never brought her over, at least not when John was there, and John managed to stop himself from being a dick and asking what Rogue thought about never being able to go to her boyfriend’s place and why Bobby thought it was a necessity in the first place. Mainly because if he did, he’d have to either admit it bothered him or pretend it didn’t, and then Bobby would probably start bringing her over. So John just shut up and occasionally hung on to the hope that it meant something that Bobby didn’t bring her around, that Bobby spent more time with John or hanging out in a group than he did with Rogue alone.
John was staring at his computer and trying to convince himself to either write the paper he had due that week or work on the ending to the short story he was supposed to turn in to his editor the next week (and only convincing himself that he should take a cigarette break) when Bobby came home, looking nervous.
“What’s up?” John asked, pushing his chair away from his desk.
“I, um. I have a date with Rogue tonight,” Bobby said, shoving shaking hands into his pockets.
“Uh-huh,” John said. “And?”
Bobby pulled one of his hands out to push it through his blond spikes. “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
John had always hated the heart stopping metaphor and it was something he tried never to use in his writing, but right then he had to admit it was pretty fucking accurate. “Huh,” he said, reaching over to grab his lighter. He started playing with it, the feeling of fire so close by comforting him a bit. And still, all he could think was that when someone borrowed something from you, eventually you were supposed to get it back. And yet this so fucking figured, because no one ever borrowed anything from John, they just took shit. Honestly, Bobby’d never been his at all, not the way that Bobby was Rogue’s, and he wasn’t sure if that was worse or if it would’ve hurt even more if John had actually once had him.
“I know you don’t really like her,” Bobby said. “But I’m kind of in love with her and we’ve been dating for a really long time and-”
“Bobby,” John said, cutting him off. “Do whatever the fuck you want. You don’t need my approval to marry her.”
“No,” Bobby agreed. “But I’d like it. You’re my best friend.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” John commented. It came out bitter and angry, and Bobby looked hurt.
“I know. I tell you everything and I should have told you this before, but I just kind of decided it,” Bobby told him.
Of course. Bobby would pick up on John’s emotions and fucking interpret them to mean something different. John was fucking bitter at the statement because it reminded him that he and Bobby would never be anything more than best friends, even if even Bobby admitted they had a weirdly co-dependent relationship and they both liked it that way.
“Look, Johnny,” Bobby said, shifting his weight. “I don’t know why you don’t like Rogue, I mean, I have ideas, but the Cure thing was a long time ago. But you pretty much mean more to me than anyone else, so...”
God damn it, the fucker meant it. John wanted to punch him, for saying things like that and meaning them, except not in the way John thought them but never said them, because if he told Bobby something like that it’d mean “I’m in love with you,” not “you’re my best friend and I love you,” and anyway John didn’t say stupid shit like that. And for being the perfect best friend, for being everything John wanted except for the little thing where John was completely fucking in love with him and Bobby was completely clueless, especially when it came to how things like that affected John. But instead of punching him, John snorted and said, “Don’t get all sappy on me, Frosty. Marry her, we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later.”
Bobby smiled tentatively and shifted his weight again. “I wanted to ask you something. If, um. If she says yes, I’d like you to be my best man.”
Sometimes John was convinced that, like that stupid My Name Is Earl show, karma really did exist and it was out to get him until he finally paid for all the things he’d done. Now was almost one of those times, although really, there was no possible way he’d done something horrible enough to deserve this.
“You don’t have to,” Bobby said hurriedly. “I mean, I really want you to and it won’t feel right if you aren’t, but if you think it’s stupid or don’t want to do it, I’ll ask Kitty or something ‘cause I know-”
“Last I checked, Kitty was a little too lacking in the man department to be anyone’s best man,” John said, because if he didn’t cut him off Bobby would probably babble on forever.
“Yeah, but after you, she’s my closest friend,” Bobby said.
John rolled his eyes. “You can’t have a girl for your best man, Bobby. If Rogue says yes, I’ll do it.”
Bobby smiled, one of his face glowing, eyes lighting up, completely happy smiles and before John knew it, he was being pulled into a hug. John hugged him back, slightly awkward because for just a moment, when that smile was being turned on him, it was all worth it, but now that it was gone John remembered that, once again, he’d gotten fucked in the completely bad way.
“Easy, popsicle, she hasn’t said yes yet,” John reminded him. That was the real question he was supposed to be nervous over, he wasn’t supposed to get so excited over John agreeing to be his best man.
“Right,” Bobby replied, letting him go and looking nervous again. “She’ll say yes, right?”
~*~
Of course she fucking said yes. She said yes, and the next day when they were all hanging out she showed off the ring Bobby’d gotten for her. Jubilee and Kitty and Dani exclaimed over it, and Pete and Sam clapped Bobby on the back and Remy lead a toast in honor of the newly engaged couple, and of course John was the best man, but who was going to be the maid of honor, and there was an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen, especially since Kitty was insisting on being on Bobby’s side because Bobby was “like, her best friend” and she totally would have been the best man if, and then she kind of trailed off and looked over at John and blushed. Which really pissed John off, because Kitty’d never been one of the people who seemed to resent him being there. In fact, she’d always seemed to be pretty in favor of him sticking around, but apparently not when it came to John taking away her position as Bobby’s best man.
Remy was protesting that he wasn’t going to be a bridesmaid, and there was no way he was going to let Kitty walk down the aisle with anyone else, but John wasn’t listening.
“I better go, I have an early class tomorrow,” John said, standing up. He raised his glass to Bobby and Rogue. “Congratulations again, you two.” He downed the rest of his whiskey, then left the restaurant.
He’d gotten maybe three feet out the door when someone tugged on his arm, and he turned around in annoyance. Which grew when he saw Kitty standing there.
“What,” he asked, although it was really more like a statement.
“So, I like, totally upset you and I really didn’t mean to,” Kitty said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Now why the hell would you think any of that would upset me?”
“See? Upset,” she said. “Okay, I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad things and open old issues and make you depressed and stuff.”
John’s annoyance was rapidly fading into confusion. “Uh, Kitty? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You being upset because I almost said that if things had gone the way I thought they would I totally would have ended up being Bobby’s best man when you two got hitched or whatever?” Kitty asked.
John stared at her. Then opened his mouth to say something. Then closed it and stared at her again. “The fuck?” he asked intelligently.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. So apparently you thought I was going to say something else. Um. Never mind. Ignore me! I’m going to apologize again and then go back inside and pretend I never said anything. So, um, yeah. I’ll talk to you later!”
He was still staring at her when she turned and walked back into the restaurant, and probably for a little bit after she’d disappeared from his sight. Because, fuck. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that? That didn’t fucking mean anything to him, except that apparently he’d been more obvious about whatever it was he felt for Bobby than he’d thought. Great. Fucking great. Now he couldn’t just pity himself in peace, now he had fucking Kitty worried about his feelings and shit and if she brought it up again he was going to fucking torch her eyebrows off. Hopefully his surprise had lead her to believe that she’d gotten things all wrong and he and Bobby were nothing more than friends, which was the fucking truth, anyway, and he needed a fucking drink.
John did have an early class tomorrow, that wasn’t a lie, but he’d already decided to skip it when he walked the ten blocks to the gay club he’d been to a few times before. John wasn’t gay, not really, but Bobby wasn’t the first guy he’d been attracted to and he’d discovered a long time ago that sex with guys had just as many good points as sex with girls, maybe even more. And, okay, so maybe he was on the gay side of bi. What fucking ever.
Barely two minutes after John slipped in through the front doors, he caught sight of a fucking hot guy staring at him. Black hair, tall, gorgeous body, and John raised his drink to him in a silent signal and then downed it. The guy (whose name turned out to be Clark) joined him, and two drinks later they were out on the dance floor. There was something about this guy’s smile that reminded him of Bobby, which was a very bad idea, but Clark and Bobby looked completely different, and there was no way John could confuse them. Which was good, because John was drunk enough to admit that this was all about forgetting Bobby.
One arm hooked around Clark’s waist and the other around his neck, hand tangled in black hair and John danced, grinding his hips against the other man’s. Hopefully in time with the music, but they were both drunk enough that it was more about the grinding than the dancing. On impulse John leaned up and kissed him, fierce and demanding, and was pleased when Clark willingly parted his lips to allow John’s seeking tongue entrance. Clark’s hand was sliding under John’s shirt and John pulled away, tugging him back to the bar. One more drink, just enough to completely convince John that this was a good idea, and then they were stumbling out of the club and onto the streets.
John hailed a cab, then gave the address to his apartment. Bobby would be out celebrating with the others late, and then he’d go over to Rogue’s, so John would have the place to himself for the night.
Which turned out to be fortunate, because they didn’t make it to John’s bedroom. They started kissing just inside the door, and then clothes started coming off, and they were lucky to make it to the couch. They mostly fell on it, and John wound up on top, straddling Clark’s hips while John kissed down his neck. Clark writhed beneath him, moaning and thrusting his hips against John’s. When John glanced at Clark’s face, he noticed his eyes were glazed, his focus on something behind John’s head, and John briefly wondered who he was trying to forget.
Then, for a little while, John thought of nothing but friction, heat, skin against skin and the sounds coming from both of their throats. If Clark noticed that John was a bit hotter than normal body temperature, he didn’t say anything, and John quickly got over the feeling that the skin against his should have been cooler than it was. When they were finished (and it had been a really good fuck, maybe because it’d been a pretty long time since John had had one), John fully intended on moving them to his room in case Bobby got home before they woke up. But the sex combined with the alcohol made him tired, and the last thing he felt like doing was moving. He was going to, though, soon, just another minute or two.
And then he heard a key unlocking the door, followed by the door being opened.
“Fuck,” John muttered.
“Huh?” Clark asked.
“My roommate,” John replied, glad that he’d left the lights off. Maybe Bobby would go right to his bedroom and not notice them.
But of course, Bobby turned the light on, and looked right over at the couch. He froze, staring at them with a sort of deer-in-headlights look.
John smirked and stood up. “Hey, Bobby. Thought you’d be at your fiancée’s place tonight.”
“I, um. We decided not to do that anymore until after the wedding,” Bobby stammered, looking down at his shoes. “Sorry. I thought – I thought you’d be sleeping.”
“Yeah. Had better things to do,” John commented, looking around for his boxers. “Fuck. We must’ve thrown them hard. Clark, you see anything I can put on so my roommate’ll stop staring at the floor?”
“Yeah,” Clark said, sitting up and pulling out John’s boxers from beneath him. “I’m, um. I’m actually going to head out.”
Bobby kept looking down while John and Clark got dressed, and then John followed Clark over to the door.
“You want me to call a cab or something?” John asked.
“Nah. Got someone I can call. Hey, uh, thanks,” Clark said quietly, leaning in to kiss him.
John kissed him back, then watched him walk out, pulling out his cellphone and dialing a number as he went. John shut the door, still slightly drunk and content from the sex. But Bobby glaring at him was enough to cut through it a bit, and John glared right back.
“What?” John demanded.
“Thought you had an early class tomorrow,” Bobby said. He had that carefully neutral tone he always got when he didn’t want John to know exactly what he was feeling.
“I do,” John replied. “Decided to skip it.”
“So you left dinner to go have sex with some random guy?” Bobby asked.
John nodded. “Yeah. I left your congratulatory dinner to get laid. Some of us don’t have girlfriends that will do that for us. Oh, wait, sorry, I forgot yours can’t.”
Bobby clenched his fists. “Fuck off, Johnny.”
“Don’t have to. I had Clark for that,” John replied, knowing he was being an ass but not caring. Besides, what the fuck did Bobby care if he had sex with some guy? Bobby’d already been clued into the guy-liking part of Johnny, way back when they were teenagers, and he’d never seemed to have a problem with it. Fucker was only upset because John’d ditched his little “congratulate me and fucking Rogue on our soon to be wedding” session.
“The fuck is your problem? I thought you were okay with me and Rogue getting married,” Bobby said.
“I am,” John replied. “Who the fuck said I wasn’t? You know I think this whole marriage shit is stupid, and I agreed to be your fucking best man anyway. So if you’re going to get pissed off because I cut the announcement party short to do something I actually want to do, then fuck off.”
“Oh,” Bobby said quietly, then just stared at him.
People were doing that a lot tonight. John glared at him. “Fucking what?”
“Nothing,” Bobby said. “I – nothing. You gonna see him again?”
“What do you care?” John asked, raising an eyebrow. He must have been really drunk, because he was hearing something like jealousy in Bobby’s voice.
Bobby shrugged. “You’re my best friend, remember? I’m required to care about stuff like that.”
“Dunno,” John replied. “Probably not. I think he had someone else on his mind.”
“Oh. Sorry,” Bobby offered.
“What for? Maybe I had someone else on my mind, too,” John said. “It was a one night stand, popsicle, not a fucking engagement.” He yawned. “I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.”
But he saw him earlier than that, because that last drink had been one too many and John found himself praying to the porcelain gods before the night was over. Bobby had apparently heard him puking his intestines up, which meant he probably hadn’t been sleeping, but that thought didn’t occur to John until much later, when he wasn’t being sick. Bobby stayed with him the whole night, holding back his hair (that was the annoying thing about having hair John’s length, it was too short to pull back into a ponytail, but long enough that it could get in the way when you were vomiting), and pressing cool fingers against his forehead and the back of his neck.
Sometime in the night, John muttered, “Fucking love you, Frosty.”
There might have been a pause, but maybe not, time was kind of fucked up when John remembered it later, but Bobby replied, “Love you too, Johnny.”
And there was something fucked up in that, even though John’s head was pounding and his stomach felt like it was trying to crawl out of his throat, right then he was pretty fucking happy.
Part Two
Cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dry_ice
Author: Bri
Rating: R
Word count: 6,250
Pairing: John/Bobby, Bobby/Rogue, brief John/Other, hints of Gambit/Kitty and Logan/Rogue
Summary: He figured he would have learned that when he was drunk, he should stay far, far away from anyone who wasn’t Bobby. Actually, Bobby, too. But apparently, just like in a whole mess of other things, John hadn’t learned his lesson.
Notes: This fanfic was inspired by the Placebo song Every Me and Every You, if only because I got the idea while listening to it on the bus. The title is also lifted from the song.
John always knew he’d regret that conversation. He figured he would have learned that when he was drunk, he should stay far, far away from anyone who wasn’t Bobby. Actually, Bobby, too. He should just stay the hell away from anyone who’d remember things in the morning and be able to hold them against him. But apparently, just like in a whole mess of other things, John hadn’t learned his lesson.
It was over a year after Alcatraz, after Bobby’d dragged his ass off the island and taken him back to the Institute, all smug and grinning like everything was going to be just fine. John’d fully intended on proving to the dumbshit that he was, in fact, a dumbshit, and that as soon as John was capable of walking he was going to walk right out of there. But for some reason, he never did. Maybe it was the way Storm looked at him, with something old and tired and sad in her eyes that hadn’t been there before, maybe it was how different things seemed without Xavier and Cyclops and Jean there, maybe it was because with both Magneto and Mystique human, he had no where to go. Maybe it was anything but what it probably actually was, that stupid fucking Bobby just couldn’t leave him alone, wouldn’t get out of his head, refused to believe that they were not fucking friends, no matter what John did to try and prove it to him.
But whatever the reason, he was still there. And even he had to admit that it was less and less likely that he’d be walking out any time soon. That day, he’d somehow found himself offering to help work with one of the new students, who had a very minor fire ability but zero control. And that night, when it hit him that he might as well have just put his name on the fucking leather-in-waiting list, John’d grabbed his jacket and informed Bobby that he was going out. Bobby had asked him if he wanted some company, but John had just glared at him and asked, “Don’t you have a date with Rogue?” then stormed out before Bobby could say, “Oh, right. Never mind.”
In retrospect, he probably should have gotten Bobby to go along with him, because late in the night when he was so wasted he couldn’t even hold onto his drink anymore, he’d found himself outside his favorite bar, staring at the street signs and laughing randomly. Which wasn’t bad or anything, but it would have been so much more fun if Bobby was there, and John could only admit things like that to himself when he was completely drunk. He could’ve gotten Bobby so wasted, just as drunk as he was, and then they could both be out here laughing. Laughing even more, actually, because whenever they were drunk together one of them said something and it made the other one laugh, and then they were both laughing, even though they couldn’t remember what the fuck had been so funny in the first place.
‘Course, that had been before. Well, no, actually it’d been after, too, because it hadn’t been too long before he and Bobby had pretty much been best friends again, and that was so fucking like Bobby, to just suck him back into friendship so easily that three months after Alcatraz it was only natural for them to be sitting out on the dock and drinking beer just like they had done as teenagers.
Fucking Bobby, John thought, and might have said it outloud, because a group of people passing by turned to look at him.
And that was kind of funny, and he spent a few minutes laughing before he decided that Bobby really should be there with him, which sparked off another round of bitching at Bobby in his head. Fucker just couldn’t let them not be friends. In a way, it was almost nice. John’d never had anything consistent in his life, nothing that lasted, except apparently Bobby. Apparently Bobby would always be there to annoy the fuck out of him, no matter what he did, and John had absolutely no idea what the fuck to do with that. No fucking clue, except to know that he was totally and completely screwed, because back when John realized he wanted Bobby, and maybe liked him, a lot, and maybe even fucking loved the dumbshit (another thing he could only admit when he was really drunk), Bobby just went right on being his very straight, very uninterested best friend. And nothing had fucking changed, except maybe John’d given him a few more reasons to be uninterested.
A car pulled up in front of him, which was amusing because it was the same color as Bobby’s car. And then Bobby stepped out of the driver’s seat, and that was even more funny, because hello, John’d just been thinking about how much more fun it would be if Bobby was there, and there he fucking was. John was laughing when Bobby walked up to him, and Bobby grinned a bit and shook his head.
“What’s funny this time?” Bobby asked.
“You,” John informed him between snickers. He was slurring his words a bit, but they were clear enough. The more troubling thing was that he was slipping back into his natural accent. But then, he had a tendency to do that when he was drunk, and it was just Bobby, so it was okay. “Or maybe me. I think I have a new power, Drake. I think about things and they appear.”
Bobby stopped in front of him, and John hadn’t even realized he’d been sitting down until he had to look way up at Bobby. Bobby leaned in and pulled him up, keeping his grip on John when John wobbled a bit.
“That’s great,” Bobby said tolerantly. “Why don’t you think of a nice, big cheeseburger or a million dollars?”
John frowned in concentration as he tried that, but all he could think of was Bobby’s arm around his waist and his too-blue eyes. John snickered again.
“What?” Bobby asked as he started forward, his arm still around John’s waist.
“Your eyes are really, really blue,” John replied. “Where’re we going?”
“To my car,” Bobby said. “I think it’s probably time to go home.”
“I can’t drink anymore,” John agreed. “I dropped my last bottle three times.” He knew because he’d counted. Or maybe he’d dropped his last three bottles one time each, because it didn’t make sense that he could drop the same bottle three times and have it not be broken and still full of beer. Whatever.
Bobby opened the passenger door and John slid inside, then spent a few moments trying to buckle his seatbelt. The fucking thing refused to work properly, though, and it probably didn’t help that John was laughing at stupid Bobby and his car with fucking seatbelts that didn’t work. Bobby fastened it for him and John grinned at him.
“I’m glad I caught you while you were still funny drunk,” Bobby told him.
John started to protest that, but couldn’t because Bobby’d already shut the door. So he waited until Bobby got into the car, too, then said, “I’m always fun drunk.”
“I said funny, not fun,” Bobby said as he started the car.
John frowned. “Whatever.”
“And you usually are. But sometimes you get all cranky and emo at the end,” Bobby said.
“You’re cranky and emo,” John muttered.
Bobby laughed. “Okay. I’m cranky and emo.”
John grinned. “I win. Hey. Where’re we going?”
“Back to the mansion,” Bobby said.
“Oh. Kay. I can’t drink anymore, anyway,” John said.
Bobby nodded. “You dropped your bottle.”
John blinked. “How’d you know that? Get out of my head.”
“You already told me that you dropped it,” Bobby said.
“Oh.” John considered that. “Get out of my head anyway. You’re always in there, you know that?”
“Okay,” Bobby agreed. “I’ll get out of your head.”
“Good,” John said triumphantly, crossing his arms and sinking down low into the seat so he could put his feet up on the dashboard. “No, wait. Come back, it’ll probably be too empty without you in there.”
Bobby laughed. “I’m sure your head’s thick enough to still be full without me in there, Johnny.”
John tried to decide if that was a compliment or an insult and settled for saying, “Fuck you, Bobby.”
“That’d be hard to do while I’m driving,” Bobby replied.
That made John stop, sit up straight, and stare at him. “What?”
“You said ‘fuck you.’ I said that’d be hard to do while I was driving. It’s a joke, Johnny, did you get too drunk to understand them?” Bobby asked, grinning at him.
“Fucker,” John grumbled, settling back down. He’d meant to just think it, but apparently he’d said it, too, because Bobby laughed again. “What were you doing there, anyway?”
“Looking for you,” Bobby said.
“What about your date with the former poison princess?” John asked. “Wasn’t she pissed? Didn’t think you’d ditch her.”
Bobby’s eyes flicked over at him before returning to the road. “I already made that mistake once, remember?”
John remembered. And a month after John’d been back at the Institute, Bobby’d apologized for being a shitty best friend and focusing too much on girls. John hadn’t said anything and Bobby’d just dropped it. John didn’t say anything now, either.
“You’re my best friend, Johnny. You’re always going to come first,” Bobby told him.
John snickered, because if he took him too seriously he’d end up saying something fucking stupid. “Bros before hos, man,” he said solemnly. And that was stupid, too, but at least it was the funny kind of stupid.
Bobby laughed. “Exactly. It was about time for you to be completely wasted, anyway. I figured you weren’t stupid enough to drive home, but you never know.”
“Wasn’t gonna drive,” John muttered, then added, “Don’t remember which bar I parked the car in front of.”
“We’ll find it tomorrow,” Bobby assured him.
John tilted his foot slightly, pushing the sole of his shoe against the windshield and leaving a dirty print on the glass. He laughed at the outline, which made Bobby look over and roll his eyes.
“Thanks, Johnny,” Bobby complained. “Least it’s better than you puking in here.”
“Not gonna puke,” John protested, just as Bobby slammed on the brakes to avoid running a red light. “Well, I might if you keep fucking driving like that.”
“I like not getting tickets,” Bobby said.
“You coulda made it, mate,” John said, then frowned accusingly at Bobby. He didn’t feel quite as annoyed at saying things like that when Bobby was drunk, too, and talking in his own accent. “Why aren’t you drunk? It’s better when you’re drunk, too. You’re more fun.”
“Because if I was drunk, too, we’d be walking home,” Bobby told him.
“Nothing wrong with walking,” John replied, then reconsidered that. “Nuh. If you were drunk, don’t think you could make it all the way back.”
“Nope, probably not,” Bobby agreed easily.
“Hey,” John said, reaching across to push lightly at Bobby’s shoulder. “I don’t think I woulda made it neither. Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Any time,” Bobby said, and gave him a look that said he really meant any time, that he’d just keep being around to carry him off islands or pick him up when he was drunk, always be there when John needed it, except just not the way John really wanted. No, he just meant any time. That was the downside to being drunk, John kept reading things into looks.
Everything would have been fine if the night ended then, but no, an hour after crawling into bed John had to decide he was thirsty. He and Bobby were still sharing a room, although bigger than the one before, and John kind of thought in the beginning they’d had them share because they wanted someone close to him who could take him in a fight, put out his fires if it came to it, and maybe because they weren’t sure how long John would stay and didn’t want to give him his own room. But he hadn’t cared, because he wasn’t staying long anyway. Except obviously, he did stay, so that argument didn’t work anymore, but what the fuck ever. Maybe John was a little bit of a masochist and liked getting to watch Bobby walk around in varying stages of naked-ness even though there was nothing he could do about it.
Anyway, the fucking point was that John was thirsty. And Bobby was asleep and John was still pretty drunk, so he decided it would be a fucking brilliant idea to go into the kitchen to get something to drink. He wasn’t the giggly kind of drunk anymore (and fuck Bobby for being right about his stages of drunken-ness), which was good because if he’d ended up getting caught stumbling through the hallway and giggling, he’d probably have to burn the witnesses.
It was also bad, though, because when John stumbled into the kitchen and saw Rogue standing there, he groaned. Rogue was pretty much the last fucking person he wanted to see right then.
“Great,” John muttered.
“Hello to you, too, John,” Rogue greeted.
“Yeah, hi,” John mumbled, walking over to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Rogue made him uncomfortable. He never really had much against her, except the fact that Bobby only had eyes for her, which would have pissed him off even if he didn’t have a thing for Bobby, but she’d gotten the Cure. That was just all kinds of fucked up. So far he’d managed to avoid making comments about why the hell they still let her stay there, but mainly that was only because he wasn’t sure why the hell they let him stay there, either.
“I guess Bobby found you, then,” Rogue commented.
John rolled his eyes. “No, he left me at the bar and I just randomly developed teleportation powers and got here by myself.” Okay, fridge. Now he just had to open it.
“I see someone’s still drunk,” Rogue said, sounding like she was trying to be amused but was actually a little annoyed.
John ignored her because he’d gotten the fridge open, and he had to concentrate on finding his bottle of water. After a few moments, he located one and pulled it out, grinning triumphantly.
“You want some crackers or something, too?” Rogue asked.
John looked at her, decided she was trying to be helpful, and shook his head. “Nah. I’m good.” He started to leave, and he really should have just fucking left, but something made him turn around. “He’s not yours, you know.”
She just kind of stared at him for a moment before asking, “Excuse me?”
“Bobby,” John said, tone of voice telling her that it should have been obvious who he was talking about. Because it was. “He’s not yours. You’re just kind of, borrowing him from me.”
She stared at him again. “From you.”
He nodded, growing confident. “Yeah. You’re borrowing him from me. He likes you and you’re real fucking pretty and everything, but he’s not yours. He’ll never be yours, no matter what you do to try and make him yours.”
She still looked a little surprised. “Last time I checked, John, Bobby was my boyfriend.”
John waved his hand, probably a lot more vigorously than he meant to. “Like I said, borrowing. I mean, just think about it. You go out and take the Cure so you’ll be able to fuck him, and you and him just get more awkward.” He didn’t know if that was exactly true, because Bobby didn’t talk to him about Rogue much anymore, but from what John’d seen it seemed true, and the way Rogue was suddenly looking a little upset confirmed it. “Me? I almost kill the fucking bastard, and he saves my fucking life, drags my ass back here, and we’re back to being best friends. Guess who he really belongs to?”
Rogue stayed silent for a long moment. Then she said quietly, “You’re drunk, John.”
“Duh,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Doesn’t make me any less right. You just, you know, keep on fucking borrowing him, but he’s always going to be mine.”
“Bobby will always be your best friend, I know that,” Rogue said.
John shook his head, then realized that was a bad idea when the room started spinning a little. “Don’t bet on that,” he informed her, then stumbled out of the kitchen and back up to his and Bobby’s room.
The next morning, through the fortunately mild hang-over, John decided he should’ve had those three other beers, because he still remembered everything that had happened the night before. He kept waiting for it to come back and bite him in the ass, but Rogue never brought it up again, and he pushed it aside.
~*~
It was two years before he even thought of it again. He and Bobby had gotten an apartment in New York City, and Bobby was going to college (studying to be an accountant, the fucker, and was acing all of his classes), and John was writing and taking a few classes of his own, and they both taught once or twice a week at the Institute. John never thought too hard about his current situation, because when he did he realized that this was the kind of shit he and Bobby used to talk about doing back when they were kids, the shit John had sworn was completely ridiculous during his stint with the Brotherhood.
There’d been one time when he nearly left. Rogue’s powers came back, which meant Magneto and Mystique’s must have come back, too, which meant that they were likely out there regrouping the Brotherhood. And people kept giving him looks. In between the pitying looks Rogue got, he got the looks that said “how long’s it going to be before he takes off this time?” He’d been pissed, and half figured that he might as well just leave if they all expected him to, it wasn’t like he fucking wanted to be there anyway, especially when he wasn’t wanted.
But then he realized that Bobby never once looked at him like that. And neither did Kitty, or Pete, or Remy, Sam, or Dani, the new guys who’d started hanging out with them. Rogue did, but maybe that was because he kept giving her “haha, you fucking got what you deserved” looks, and once or twice Jubilee did, but the rest of them? They never treated him any differently. And John mostly thought that was because they took their cues from Bobby, but still.
Besides, honestly, he fucking doubted Magneto and Mystique had teamed up again. Magneto had left Mystique naked in the middle of nowhere, and she wasn’t the kind of person to forget something like that. If anything, they were probably forming their own groups to kick each other’s asses, and John was pretty sure he didn’t want to get caught up in that.
So he stayed, and got an apartment with his best friend, and it didn’t even bother him when Bobby went out on dates with Rogue or (very rarely) stayed at her place. Bobby never brought her over, at least not when John was there, and John managed to stop himself from being a dick and asking what Rogue thought about never being able to go to her boyfriend’s place and why Bobby thought it was a necessity in the first place. Mainly because if he did, he’d have to either admit it bothered him or pretend it didn’t, and then Bobby would probably start bringing her over. So John just shut up and occasionally hung on to the hope that it meant something that Bobby didn’t bring her around, that Bobby spent more time with John or hanging out in a group than he did with Rogue alone.
John was staring at his computer and trying to convince himself to either write the paper he had due that week or work on the ending to the short story he was supposed to turn in to his editor the next week (and only convincing himself that he should take a cigarette break) when Bobby came home, looking nervous.
“What’s up?” John asked, pushing his chair away from his desk.
“I, um. I have a date with Rogue tonight,” Bobby said, shoving shaking hands into his pockets.
“Uh-huh,” John said. “And?”
Bobby pulled one of his hands out to push it through his blond spikes. “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
John had always hated the heart stopping metaphor and it was something he tried never to use in his writing, but right then he had to admit it was pretty fucking accurate. “Huh,” he said, reaching over to grab his lighter. He started playing with it, the feeling of fire so close by comforting him a bit. And still, all he could think was that when someone borrowed something from you, eventually you were supposed to get it back. And yet this so fucking figured, because no one ever borrowed anything from John, they just took shit. Honestly, Bobby’d never been his at all, not the way that Bobby was Rogue’s, and he wasn’t sure if that was worse or if it would’ve hurt even more if John had actually once had him.
“I know you don’t really like her,” Bobby said. “But I’m kind of in love with her and we’ve been dating for a really long time and-”
“Bobby,” John said, cutting him off. “Do whatever the fuck you want. You don’t need my approval to marry her.”
“No,” Bobby agreed. “But I’d like it. You’re my best friend.”
“Thanks for the reminder,” John commented. It came out bitter and angry, and Bobby looked hurt.
“I know. I tell you everything and I should have told you this before, but I just kind of decided it,” Bobby told him.
Of course. Bobby would pick up on John’s emotions and fucking interpret them to mean something different. John was fucking bitter at the statement because it reminded him that he and Bobby would never be anything more than best friends, even if even Bobby admitted they had a weirdly co-dependent relationship and they both liked it that way.
“Look, Johnny,” Bobby said, shifting his weight. “I don’t know why you don’t like Rogue, I mean, I have ideas, but the Cure thing was a long time ago. But you pretty much mean more to me than anyone else, so...”
God damn it, the fucker meant it. John wanted to punch him, for saying things like that and meaning them, except not in the way John thought them but never said them, because if he told Bobby something like that it’d mean “I’m in love with you,” not “you’re my best friend and I love you,” and anyway John didn’t say stupid shit like that. And for being the perfect best friend, for being everything John wanted except for the little thing where John was completely fucking in love with him and Bobby was completely clueless, especially when it came to how things like that affected John. But instead of punching him, John snorted and said, “Don’t get all sappy on me, Frosty. Marry her, we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later.”
Bobby smiled tentatively and shifted his weight again. “I wanted to ask you something. If, um. If she says yes, I’d like you to be my best man.”
Sometimes John was convinced that, like that stupid My Name Is Earl show, karma really did exist and it was out to get him until he finally paid for all the things he’d done. Now was almost one of those times, although really, there was no possible way he’d done something horrible enough to deserve this.
“You don’t have to,” Bobby said hurriedly. “I mean, I really want you to and it won’t feel right if you aren’t, but if you think it’s stupid or don’t want to do it, I’ll ask Kitty or something ‘cause I know-”
“Last I checked, Kitty was a little too lacking in the man department to be anyone’s best man,” John said, because if he didn’t cut him off Bobby would probably babble on forever.
“Yeah, but after you, she’s my closest friend,” Bobby said.
John rolled his eyes. “You can’t have a girl for your best man, Bobby. If Rogue says yes, I’ll do it.”
Bobby smiled, one of his face glowing, eyes lighting up, completely happy smiles and before John knew it, he was being pulled into a hug. John hugged him back, slightly awkward because for just a moment, when that smile was being turned on him, it was all worth it, but now that it was gone John remembered that, once again, he’d gotten fucked in the completely bad way.
“Easy, popsicle, she hasn’t said yes yet,” John reminded him. That was the real question he was supposed to be nervous over, he wasn’t supposed to get so excited over John agreeing to be his best man.
“Right,” Bobby replied, letting him go and looking nervous again. “She’ll say yes, right?”
~*~
Of course she fucking said yes. She said yes, and the next day when they were all hanging out she showed off the ring Bobby’d gotten for her. Jubilee and Kitty and Dani exclaimed over it, and Pete and Sam clapped Bobby on the back and Remy lead a toast in honor of the newly engaged couple, and of course John was the best man, but who was going to be the maid of honor, and there was an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen, especially since Kitty was insisting on being on Bobby’s side because Bobby was “like, her best friend” and she totally would have been the best man if, and then she kind of trailed off and looked over at John and blushed. Which really pissed John off, because Kitty’d never been one of the people who seemed to resent him being there. In fact, she’d always seemed to be pretty in favor of him sticking around, but apparently not when it came to John taking away her position as Bobby’s best man.
Remy was protesting that he wasn’t going to be a bridesmaid, and there was no way he was going to let Kitty walk down the aisle with anyone else, but John wasn’t listening.
“I better go, I have an early class tomorrow,” John said, standing up. He raised his glass to Bobby and Rogue. “Congratulations again, you two.” He downed the rest of his whiskey, then left the restaurant.
He’d gotten maybe three feet out the door when someone tugged on his arm, and he turned around in annoyance. Which grew when he saw Kitty standing there.
“What,” he asked, although it was really more like a statement.
“So, I like, totally upset you and I really didn’t mean to,” Kitty said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Now why the hell would you think any of that would upset me?”
“See? Upset,” she said. “Okay, I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad things and open old issues and make you depressed and stuff.”
John’s annoyance was rapidly fading into confusion. “Uh, Kitty? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You being upset because I almost said that if things had gone the way I thought they would I totally would have ended up being Bobby’s best man when you two got hitched or whatever?” Kitty asked.
John stared at her. Then opened his mouth to say something. Then closed it and stared at her again. “The fuck?” he asked intelligently.
“Oh,” she said. “Okay. So apparently you thought I was going to say something else. Um. Never mind. Ignore me! I’m going to apologize again and then go back inside and pretend I never said anything. So, um, yeah. I’ll talk to you later!”
He was still staring at her when she turned and walked back into the restaurant, and probably for a little bit after she’d disappeared from his sight. Because, fuck. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that? That didn’t fucking mean anything to him, except that apparently he’d been more obvious about whatever it was he felt for Bobby than he’d thought. Great. Fucking great. Now he couldn’t just pity himself in peace, now he had fucking Kitty worried about his feelings and shit and if she brought it up again he was going to fucking torch her eyebrows off. Hopefully his surprise had lead her to believe that she’d gotten things all wrong and he and Bobby were nothing more than friends, which was the fucking truth, anyway, and he needed a fucking drink.
John did have an early class tomorrow, that wasn’t a lie, but he’d already decided to skip it when he walked the ten blocks to the gay club he’d been to a few times before. John wasn’t gay, not really, but Bobby wasn’t the first guy he’d been attracted to and he’d discovered a long time ago that sex with guys had just as many good points as sex with girls, maybe even more. And, okay, so maybe he was on the gay side of bi. What fucking ever.
Barely two minutes after John slipped in through the front doors, he caught sight of a fucking hot guy staring at him. Black hair, tall, gorgeous body, and John raised his drink to him in a silent signal and then downed it. The guy (whose name turned out to be Clark) joined him, and two drinks later they were out on the dance floor. There was something about this guy’s smile that reminded him of Bobby, which was a very bad idea, but Clark and Bobby looked completely different, and there was no way John could confuse them. Which was good, because John was drunk enough to admit that this was all about forgetting Bobby.
One arm hooked around Clark’s waist and the other around his neck, hand tangled in black hair and John danced, grinding his hips against the other man’s. Hopefully in time with the music, but they were both drunk enough that it was more about the grinding than the dancing. On impulse John leaned up and kissed him, fierce and demanding, and was pleased when Clark willingly parted his lips to allow John’s seeking tongue entrance. Clark’s hand was sliding under John’s shirt and John pulled away, tugging him back to the bar. One more drink, just enough to completely convince John that this was a good idea, and then they were stumbling out of the club and onto the streets.
John hailed a cab, then gave the address to his apartment. Bobby would be out celebrating with the others late, and then he’d go over to Rogue’s, so John would have the place to himself for the night.
Which turned out to be fortunate, because they didn’t make it to John’s bedroom. They started kissing just inside the door, and then clothes started coming off, and they were lucky to make it to the couch. They mostly fell on it, and John wound up on top, straddling Clark’s hips while John kissed down his neck. Clark writhed beneath him, moaning and thrusting his hips against John’s. When John glanced at Clark’s face, he noticed his eyes were glazed, his focus on something behind John’s head, and John briefly wondered who he was trying to forget.
Then, for a little while, John thought of nothing but friction, heat, skin against skin and the sounds coming from both of their throats. If Clark noticed that John was a bit hotter than normal body temperature, he didn’t say anything, and John quickly got over the feeling that the skin against his should have been cooler than it was. When they were finished (and it had been a really good fuck, maybe because it’d been a pretty long time since John had had one), John fully intended on moving them to his room in case Bobby got home before they woke up. But the sex combined with the alcohol made him tired, and the last thing he felt like doing was moving. He was going to, though, soon, just another minute or two.
And then he heard a key unlocking the door, followed by the door being opened.
“Fuck,” John muttered.
“Huh?” Clark asked.
“My roommate,” John replied, glad that he’d left the lights off. Maybe Bobby would go right to his bedroom and not notice them.
But of course, Bobby turned the light on, and looked right over at the couch. He froze, staring at them with a sort of deer-in-headlights look.
John smirked and stood up. “Hey, Bobby. Thought you’d be at your fiancée’s place tonight.”
“I, um. We decided not to do that anymore until after the wedding,” Bobby stammered, looking down at his shoes. “Sorry. I thought – I thought you’d be sleeping.”
“Yeah. Had better things to do,” John commented, looking around for his boxers. “Fuck. We must’ve thrown them hard. Clark, you see anything I can put on so my roommate’ll stop staring at the floor?”
“Yeah,” Clark said, sitting up and pulling out John’s boxers from beneath him. “I’m, um. I’m actually going to head out.”
Bobby kept looking down while John and Clark got dressed, and then John followed Clark over to the door.
“You want me to call a cab or something?” John asked.
“Nah. Got someone I can call. Hey, uh, thanks,” Clark said quietly, leaning in to kiss him.
John kissed him back, then watched him walk out, pulling out his cellphone and dialing a number as he went. John shut the door, still slightly drunk and content from the sex. But Bobby glaring at him was enough to cut through it a bit, and John glared right back.
“What?” John demanded.
“Thought you had an early class tomorrow,” Bobby said. He had that carefully neutral tone he always got when he didn’t want John to know exactly what he was feeling.
“I do,” John replied. “Decided to skip it.”
“So you left dinner to go have sex with some random guy?” Bobby asked.
John nodded. “Yeah. I left your congratulatory dinner to get laid. Some of us don’t have girlfriends that will do that for us. Oh, wait, sorry, I forgot yours can’t.”
Bobby clenched his fists. “Fuck off, Johnny.”
“Don’t have to. I had Clark for that,” John replied, knowing he was being an ass but not caring. Besides, what the fuck did Bobby care if he had sex with some guy? Bobby’d already been clued into the guy-liking part of Johnny, way back when they were teenagers, and he’d never seemed to have a problem with it. Fucker was only upset because John’d ditched his little “congratulate me and fucking Rogue on our soon to be wedding” session.
“The fuck is your problem? I thought you were okay with me and Rogue getting married,” Bobby said.
“I am,” John replied. “Who the fuck said I wasn’t? You know I think this whole marriage shit is stupid, and I agreed to be your fucking best man anyway. So if you’re going to get pissed off because I cut the announcement party short to do something I actually want to do, then fuck off.”
“Oh,” Bobby said quietly, then just stared at him.
People were doing that a lot tonight. John glared at him. “Fucking what?”
“Nothing,” Bobby said. “I – nothing. You gonna see him again?”
“What do you care?” John asked, raising an eyebrow. He must have been really drunk, because he was hearing something like jealousy in Bobby’s voice.
Bobby shrugged. “You’re my best friend, remember? I’m required to care about stuff like that.”
“Dunno,” John replied. “Probably not. I think he had someone else on his mind.”
“Oh. Sorry,” Bobby offered.
“What for? Maybe I had someone else on my mind, too,” John said. “It was a one night stand, popsicle, not a fucking engagement.” He yawned. “I’m going to bed. See you in the morning.”
But he saw him earlier than that, because that last drink had been one too many and John found himself praying to the porcelain gods before the night was over. Bobby had apparently heard him puking his intestines up, which meant he probably hadn’t been sleeping, but that thought didn’t occur to John until much later, when he wasn’t being sick. Bobby stayed with him the whole night, holding back his hair (that was the annoying thing about having hair John’s length, it was too short to pull back into a ponytail, but long enough that it could get in the way when you were vomiting), and pressing cool fingers against his forehead and the back of his neck.
Sometime in the night, John muttered, “Fucking love you, Frosty.”
There might have been a pause, but maybe not, time was kind of fucked up when John remembered it later, but Bobby replied, “Love you too, Johnny.”
And there was something fucked up in that, even though John’s head was pounding and his stomach felt like it was trying to crawl out of his throat, right then he was pretty fucking happy.
Part Two
Cross-posted to
dry_ice