Looking upwards I strain my eyes and try/to see the difference between
shooting stars and satellites/
~ 'Passenger Seat'
Death Cab for Cutie
Bobby watched John play with his lighter. He was getting better at manipulating the flame into balls of fire, or maybe Jean had just stopped complaining about the burn marks in his sheets. In the dark room, Bobby couldn't help watching the fireball; fascinated- it was like a comet, or an asteroid entering the atmosphere. The light reflected off the glitter of the glow-in-the-dark stars Marie had stuck on the ceiling. Some nights Bobby woke up, drenched in sweat, icicles on the wall (hearing John shiver in his sleep) convinced the room was a celestial vacuum; a wormhole and he would be sucked into some other galaxy if he opened his eyes. But maybe that wouldn't be so bad- maybe he'd land in some alternate form of this life and he wouldn't be a mutant and could be as normal as his parents thought he was; but then if that was feasible there was also the possibility he'd land in some other universe Thunder Dome, complete with Mel Gibson in assless chaps. Bobby shivered.
"Thought Icemen don't get cold."
"Thought Pyros don't burn themselves."
"It's a common misconception." They lay in the darkness silently, John flicking open his lighter, then closing it. Bobby snapped, even though he knew, knew that was what John wanted him to do.
"That makes it hard to sleep."
"After all the ice cream you ate, I'm surprised you can lie there. Any one else, they'd be running around the Mansion still."
"That's my real mutation- steel stomach. The ice thing is just a cover up." John muttered something then, but Bobby didn't bother asking him to repeat it. John got pissed off if Bobby told him how much he mumbled, and Bobby really didn't feel like the silent treatment for the rest of the weekend. Especially not when he needed to borrow John's notes- it wasn't his fault English was first thing in the morning. He was a growing boy and needed his sleep. Marie already read 'The Catcher in the Rye' and hadn't bothered to take notes, and that pretty much left John, since Remy and Pieter chose to take notes in French and Russian respectively; and Kitty and Jubilee only toke notes in the margins of the letters they passed back in forth and would never let him borrow their notebooks.
"You can't sleep either?"
"No. And don't say anything about the Zebra Cakes, ok?"
"I was actually going to blame the box of Zingers but..." Bobby sat up and leaned against the wall. He could see the light of John's eyes in the dark- like one of those nature shows about hyenas or African lions. "So are we supposed to have a heart to heart now?"
"Depends. Is there a pregnancy or a clown fetish you need to tell me about?" Now John shivered.
"I hate clowns."
"Did someone have a bad experience with Doodles?"
"Fifth birthday. My oldies thought it'd be funny- until my dad and the clown got into a fight. Once you see Binky take out your birthday cake and give your dad a bloody nose...." Bobby didn't say anything and John paused. He sat up, pushing off his covers and went over to the desk and fiddled with the keyboard, then went and sat on Bobby's bed. In the dark, his skin looked blurry-picture-of-UFO white. He slid so his back was pressed against the wall. Bobby felt small little icicles hanging from the inside of his stomach and down into his intestines. Those were only really 25 feet max, and they didn't feel anything actually, not like skin, that was feeling a little pink- the kind of pink you get early in the morning when the moon starts to go down; if you could feel colors that is; but how Bobby could feel icicles was something he didn't really want to ponder.
"You ever smoke before?"
"What?"
"You ever smoke before?"
"You've been keeping cigarettes in the key board? What do you do with your time?"
"It's why you can't type with the number panel. And not durries..."
Bobby thought for a moment. John wouldn't- but then again it was John, so he probably would. "Joints? Shit John-"
"One, keep your voice down. Two, it's a weekend so if we don't leave the room, no one will notice and we've got your supply of deserts so we're ok on food. Three, I only have one- I smoked the other two months ago when you went home for Christmas. We'll go to sleep with the windows open. You won't mind, and I'll grab an extra blanket or something. Maybe I'll light the room on fire."
Bobby chose to ignore the part about setting the room on fire. Maybe that would melt his insides. "No one noticed when you had it over Christmas?"
"It was me, the Professor, Jean and Scott. Everyone else went home- even Logan and Remy disappeared. We just kept to separate wings."
"Oh." Bobby hates it when John says things like this, or when he walks right into a sentence. John doesn't want pity, Bobby knows this but he can't help still feeling stupid. It wasn't his fault that he had parents who were together, or that John never called back to Australia. Maybe that was the root of the weirdness of talking of families- the fact the John didn't care he didn't have any place to go, that he was happy not talking to his father.
John flicks open his lighter and lights the joint. Bobby is still off set every time John actually uses the lighter, he generally just makes shape out of the flame.
He hands it to Bobby who breathes in the sticky smell. Screw it. He sucks in a little. "Hold it for a second. Then breathe out slowly." For a moment, Bobby doesn't feel anything but then his head goes a little light. John pulls the blunt from his hand and takes a hit.
"So how do I know when I'm high?"
"You don't know, you just, you kinda look back and think, 'crap I was high'. There aren't telltale signs or something. Not in the dark. Not when you're high."
"Oh. Did you do this a lot, in Australia? Get high?" Bobby felt John's shoulder shrug against his, musing up the shirt sleeve so John's skin was against Bobby's skin .
"Once or twice I would go out to the rugby pitch and lie on the field, watch the stars. Mainly hit the piss- my dad never really noticed what he drank and what I did. You ever get drunk?"
"Once. With a friend of mine, before I came here- his brother was an alcoholic. He slept over one night and my parents were at a party, my brother at a friend's house. He brought over some wine."
"Why Bobby Drake," John took another gulp, "I do believe you are quite the rebel. Dunn tell me wagged school before too or my image of you will be completely blown." Bobby shoved him and John handed him the weed. Bobby took another breath in.
"I used to throw rocks at windows, one summer, the one before I ran. Middle of the night kind of thing, little pebbles so people woke up, like a dog barking kind of annoyance. I don't know why. One night I threw one too hard and cracked somebody's window. I don't know how but my dad figured out it was me. He was a big guy- built like a brick shit house, you know? Gave me the worst beating of my life- cracked a few ribs and broke a couple of the fingers in my right hand- said, 'how are you going to throw rocks now, huh?' "He wouldn't take me to the doctor, so I ended up taking a train to Melbourne to find a clinic where nobody would know who I was. The doctor had to re-break the fingers so he could set them. Most painful experience of my life. But I could never fight my dad- he was the only thing I had left, only relo, relative you know?, that more or less cared. I thought about burning him up so many times, just torching the house but..."
Bobby wants to say he's sorry, and another part of him wants to kiss John's cheek, kiss the stubble and the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks appeal that John knows he has and milks for all it's worth, that smirk he wears because it makes him feel safer. Bobby can't say he's sorry though, because he's afraid if he does John will throw the joint out the window, or burn the thing up and then the school will catch fire and John will run again. He's afraid if he says he's sorry, John will crawl off his bed and not talk to him for the rest of the weekend, not for a long time and the icicles will only get worse. He's afraid if he says anything like that, he'll end up kissing John and then... Then it might be a good thing if the room turns into a wormhole.
"Would you have run if you didn't light your school on fire?"
"It wasn't the school- I lit the grandstand on fire. But yeah. Probably. I don't know how much longer I could have taken living with my old man. Maybe he would have killed me one day." John punctuated himself by taking another hit. He held his breath for a moment, turning the joint between his fingers like a short white drumstick. Letting out he passed it to Bobby.
"In the seventh grade I liked Lindsey Megan. I used to go over her house every day after school and play 'Oregon Trail' and 'The Sims'. Then one day I realized I wasn't going over the house to see Lindsey, I was doing it cause I had a crush on her brother- Michael. He was 17 and liked all these cool bands; when Lindsey had to go help her mom he'd have me come into his room and listen to music." Bobby took his own deep breath now and prayed to God John wouldn't laugh at him or call him a fag or... Course Bobby didn't think he was a fag but the way he had a habit of staring at John's hands in class might imply the latter. John didn't get off the bed though.
"When I was younger, there was this guy on my block who everyone knew that if you were a guy and you let him grab you through your pillow case on Halloween, he's give you a few bucks. Once anyone turned 11, or looked about it, they would start going to his house. That's when your mom stops taking you around anyway. The first time I went, I went alone; my mates dared me to really. Standing on that step... I think about that a lot. The Halloween after my mom left I went around to the back of the guy's house, knocked. When he opened the door, I just stood there, no bag, nothing, daring him to feel me up and pay me. And he just kept staring back and I started to bloody cry. Cry. He just pulled me inside and I sat on his tile floor and cried and when I was done he paid me 50 quid. Maybe he knew about my mom or my dad or something." Bobby does what feels right and puts his arm around John's shoulders- he could blame the weed or sleepiness or anything but John doesn't protest or say anything. Bobby passes the weed back. He's pretty sure where his finger tips touch John's skin there's frost melting.
"My family used to have this old couch up in our attic-it was my mom's great aunt's and she felt bad about getting rid of it so she never did. I used to go up there and climb into the couch, cause one of the pillows was missing all the stuffing. When I was younger, that's what I wanted to be- some decrepit couch in an attic cause I thought, I don't know. I guess I thought it was safe or something, to know my mom would never get rid of me. Or I wanted to be the fire guy from Captain Planet, cause everyone else was all goody-two shoes and knew right from wrong whereas he at least looked like he was having fun, like he was somewhat real. Or I wanted to be Johnny Quest but..." Bobby shrugs. It looks like John is trying to blow a smoke ring.
"Sounds like an identity crisis."
"Like you never did anything like that, Caulfield." John doesn't protest and Bobby realizes that is who he reminds him of- Holden. Him or a character in a Bret Easton Ellis book.
"When... My mom left when I was twelve. Right in the middle of January. I came home from school... Two weeks after she didn't leave a note, it was kinda apparent she wasn't coming back so my dad spent the weekend getting the wobbly boot on. Sunday night, he woke me up and threw my mom's makeup bag at me. He dragged me into the bathroom and had me put it all on. Said I deserved it, I looked like her. He didn't smell drunk. I put it all on- the lippie, blush, foundation, eyeliner and shadow, like I used to watch her do, when I was little and would sit on the bathroom rug before the sitter came. When I was done he left. I didn't bother to take it off and I fell asleep listening to him cry.
"He kissed me once. Told me to stand up and face him and then he kissed me. Said I tasted like her. I ran that night and didn't go home for a week. I never washed the make up off but it rained that night and most of it stained my shirt." Bobby really doesn't know what to say now, just that John is starting to shake and Bobby doesn't think that's weed.
He doesn't think, he does. He kisses John's cheek. He takes the blunt and ices the ember and they're sitting in the dark, with Bobby's arm touching John's neck and collar bone and his hand touching John's arm still and Bobby isn't sure of what to do with that arm or with the joint or what John is doing with his hands or what John is going to do now. So Bobby does what he's always been good at, what he does when he gets nervous. He talked.
"When I was five my parents had a party and half way through, when I was supposed to be asleep, I remember coming down stairs to the kitchen and sitting in the cupboard with all the pots and pans and watching through the dining room the adults in the living room until I realized my aunt was sitting on the counter crying. So I sat there with all the pots around me and tried not to move so I wouldn't make a sound until she went into the bathroom. Then I ran back into my room and hid under the covers. I was afraid to hear anyone cry like that. I was afraid the world was ending or I was going to be sunk in the earth, like a sand pit or something, that her tears were going to flood us out and I didn't have Noah or an ark or anything."
"Bobby Drake....you... bastard. You... beaut." Bobby is sitting and staring where he thinks John's head is because it's rude not to look at people when you talk to them, even if you are slightly worried that you're in love with this person and that this person might one day set everything on fire and then watch it all burn. John's hand scratched against Bobby's cheek, tracing with the edges of his nails and then John's lips were on Bobby's. Bobby kissed back.
When they were both lying down on his bed, kissing, he began to laugh. "What?" Bobby shook his head and giggled a little more. "Bobby, you're high."
"No, I'm not, I'm... I don't know what I am." Now John was laughing a little. Bobby kissed him again, and bit slightly on John's bottom lip, resting his weight on John's chest.
He distangled his mouth for a moment to say, "If you were to breathe for us, we'd die." Then he kissed John again, and to prove his point, pressed his breath into John's mouth. John breathed back then pulled away.
"Just...cark it and go to sleep." Bobby wrapped his arms around John and kissed his mouth again, feeling John's hands rub against his sides. Turning his head so their lips just barely touched and his cheek rested on top of John's, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Death Cab for Cutie
Bobby watched John play with his lighter. He was getting better at manipulating the flame into balls of fire, or maybe Jean had just stopped complaining about the burn marks in his sheets. In the dark room, Bobby couldn't help watching the fireball; fascinated- it was like a comet, or an asteroid entering the atmosphere. The light reflected off the glitter of the glow-in-the-dark stars Marie had stuck on the ceiling. Some nights Bobby woke up, drenched in sweat, icicles on the wall (hearing John shiver in his sleep) convinced the room was a celestial vacuum; a wormhole and he would be sucked into some other galaxy if he opened his eyes. But maybe that wouldn't be so bad- maybe he'd land in some alternate form of this life and he wouldn't be a mutant and could be as normal as his parents thought he was; but then if that was feasible there was also the possibility he'd land in some other universe Thunder Dome, complete with Mel Gibson in assless chaps. Bobby shivered.
"Thought Icemen don't get cold."
"Thought Pyros don't burn themselves."
"It's a common misconception." They lay in the darkness silently, John flicking open his lighter, then closing it. Bobby snapped, even though he knew, knew that was what John wanted him to do.
"That makes it hard to sleep."
"After all the ice cream you ate, I'm surprised you can lie there. Any one else, they'd be running around the Mansion still."
"That's my real mutation- steel stomach. The ice thing is just a cover up." John muttered something then, but Bobby didn't bother asking him to repeat it. John got pissed off if Bobby told him how much he mumbled, and Bobby really didn't feel like the silent treatment for the rest of the weekend. Especially not when he needed to borrow John's notes- it wasn't his fault English was first thing in the morning. He was a growing boy and needed his sleep. Marie already read 'The Catcher in the Rye' and hadn't bothered to take notes, and that pretty much left John, since Remy and Pieter chose to take notes in French and Russian respectively; and Kitty and Jubilee only toke notes in the margins of the letters they passed back in forth and would never let him borrow their notebooks.
"You can't sleep either?"
"No. And don't say anything about the Zebra Cakes, ok?"
"I was actually going to blame the box of Zingers but..." Bobby sat up and leaned against the wall. He could see the light of John's eyes in the dark- like one of those nature shows about hyenas or African lions. "So are we supposed to have a heart to heart now?"
"Depends. Is there a pregnancy or a clown fetish you need to tell me about?" Now John shivered.
"I hate clowns."
"Did someone have a bad experience with Doodles?"
"Fifth birthday. My oldies thought it'd be funny- until my dad and the clown got into a fight. Once you see Binky take out your birthday cake and give your dad a bloody nose...." Bobby didn't say anything and John paused. He sat up, pushing off his covers and went over to the desk and fiddled with the keyboard, then went and sat on Bobby's bed. In the dark, his skin looked blurry-picture-of-UFO white. He slid so his back was pressed against the wall. Bobby felt small little icicles hanging from the inside of his stomach and down into his intestines. Those were only really 25 feet max, and they didn't feel anything actually, not like skin, that was feeling a little pink- the kind of pink you get early in the morning when the moon starts to go down; if you could feel colors that is; but how Bobby could feel icicles was something he didn't really want to ponder.
"You ever smoke before?"
"What?"
"You ever smoke before?"
"You've been keeping cigarettes in the key board? What do you do with your time?"
"It's why you can't type with the number panel. And not durries..."
Bobby thought for a moment. John wouldn't- but then again it was John, so he probably would. "Joints? Shit John-"
"One, keep your voice down. Two, it's a weekend so if we don't leave the room, no one will notice and we've got your supply of deserts so we're ok on food. Three, I only have one- I smoked the other two months ago when you went home for Christmas. We'll go to sleep with the windows open. You won't mind, and I'll grab an extra blanket or something. Maybe I'll light the room on fire."
Bobby chose to ignore the part about setting the room on fire. Maybe that would melt his insides. "No one noticed when you had it over Christmas?"
"It was me, the Professor, Jean and Scott. Everyone else went home- even Logan and Remy disappeared. We just kept to separate wings."
"Oh." Bobby hates it when John says things like this, or when he walks right into a sentence. John doesn't want pity, Bobby knows this but he can't help still feeling stupid. It wasn't his fault that he had parents who were together, or that John never called back to Australia. Maybe that was the root of the weirdness of talking of families- the fact the John didn't care he didn't have any place to go, that he was happy not talking to his father.
John flicks open his lighter and lights the joint. Bobby is still off set every time John actually uses the lighter, he generally just makes shape out of the flame.
He hands it to Bobby who breathes in the sticky smell. Screw it. He sucks in a little. "Hold it for a second. Then breathe out slowly." For a moment, Bobby doesn't feel anything but then his head goes a little light. John pulls the blunt from his hand and takes a hit.
"So how do I know when I'm high?"
"You don't know, you just, you kinda look back and think, 'crap I was high'. There aren't telltale signs or something. Not in the dark. Not when you're high."
"Oh. Did you do this a lot, in Australia? Get high?" Bobby felt John's shoulder shrug against his, musing up the shirt sleeve so John's skin was against Bobby's skin .
"Once or twice I would go out to the rugby pitch and lie on the field, watch the stars. Mainly hit the piss- my dad never really noticed what he drank and what I did. You ever get drunk?"
"Once. With a friend of mine, before I came here- his brother was an alcoholic. He slept over one night and my parents were at a party, my brother at a friend's house. He brought over some wine."
"Why Bobby Drake," John took another gulp, "I do believe you are quite the rebel. Dunn tell me wagged school before too or my image of you will be completely blown." Bobby shoved him and John handed him the weed. Bobby took another breath in.
"I used to throw rocks at windows, one summer, the one before I ran. Middle of the night kind of thing, little pebbles so people woke up, like a dog barking kind of annoyance. I don't know why. One night I threw one too hard and cracked somebody's window. I don't know how but my dad figured out it was me. He was a big guy- built like a brick shit house, you know? Gave me the worst beating of my life- cracked a few ribs and broke a couple of the fingers in my right hand- said, 'how are you going to throw rocks now, huh?' "He wouldn't take me to the doctor, so I ended up taking a train to Melbourne to find a clinic where nobody would know who I was. The doctor had to re-break the fingers so he could set them. Most painful experience of my life. But I could never fight my dad- he was the only thing I had left, only relo, relative you know?, that more or less cared. I thought about burning him up so many times, just torching the house but..."
Bobby wants to say he's sorry, and another part of him wants to kiss John's cheek, kiss the stubble and the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks appeal that John knows he has and milks for all it's worth, that smirk he wears because it makes him feel safer. Bobby can't say he's sorry though, because he's afraid if he does John will throw the joint out the window, or burn the thing up and then the school will catch fire and John will run again. He's afraid if he says he's sorry, John will crawl off his bed and not talk to him for the rest of the weekend, not for a long time and the icicles will only get worse. He's afraid if he says anything like that, he'll end up kissing John and then... Then it might be a good thing if the room turns into a wormhole.
"Would you have run if you didn't light your school on fire?"
"It wasn't the school- I lit the grandstand on fire. But yeah. Probably. I don't know how much longer I could have taken living with my old man. Maybe he would have killed me one day." John punctuated himself by taking another hit. He held his breath for a moment, turning the joint between his fingers like a short white drumstick. Letting out he passed it to Bobby.
"In the seventh grade I liked Lindsey Megan. I used to go over her house every day after school and play 'Oregon Trail' and 'The Sims'. Then one day I realized I wasn't going over the house to see Lindsey, I was doing it cause I had a crush on her brother- Michael. He was 17 and liked all these cool bands; when Lindsey had to go help her mom he'd have me come into his room and listen to music." Bobby took his own deep breath now and prayed to God John wouldn't laugh at him or call him a fag or... Course Bobby didn't think he was a fag but the way he had a habit of staring at John's hands in class might imply the latter. John didn't get off the bed though.
"When I was younger, there was this guy on my block who everyone knew that if you were a guy and you let him grab you through your pillow case on Halloween, he's give you a few bucks. Once anyone turned 11, or looked about it, they would start going to his house. That's when your mom stops taking you around anyway. The first time I went, I went alone; my mates dared me to really. Standing on that step... I think about that a lot. The Halloween after my mom left I went around to the back of the guy's house, knocked. When he opened the door, I just stood there, no bag, nothing, daring him to feel me up and pay me. And he just kept staring back and I started to bloody cry. Cry. He just pulled me inside and I sat on his tile floor and cried and when I was done he paid me 50 quid. Maybe he knew about my mom or my dad or something." Bobby does what feels right and puts his arm around John's shoulders- he could blame the weed or sleepiness or anything but John doesn't protest or say anything. Bobby passes the weed back. He's pretty sure where his finger tips touch John's skin there's frost melting.
"My family used to have this old couch up in our attic-it was my mom's great aunt's and she felt bad about getting rid of it so she never did. I used to go up there and climb into the couch, cause one of the pillows was missing all the stuffing. When I was younger, that's what I wanted to be- some decrepit couch in an attic cause I thought, I don't know. I guess I thought it was safe or something, to know my mom would never get rid of me. Or I wanted to be the fire guy from Captain Planet, cause everyone else was all goody-two shoes and knew right from wrong whereas he at least looked like he was having fun, like he was somewhat real. Or I wanted to be Johnny Quest but..." Bobby shrugs. It looks like John is trying to blow a smoke ring.
"Sounds like an identity crisis."
"Like you never did anything like that, Caulfield." John doesn't protest and Bobby realizes that is who he reminds him of- Holden. Him or a character in a Bret Easton Ellis book.
"When... My mom left when I was twelve. Right in the middle of January. I came home from school... Two weeks after she didn't leave a note, it was kinda apparent she wasn't coming back so my dad spent the weekend getting the wobbly boot on. Sunday night, he woke me up and threw my mom's makeup bag at me. He dragged me into the bathroom and had me put it all on. Said I deserved it, I looked like her. He didn't smell drunk. I put it all on- the lippie, blush, foundation, eyeliner and shadow, like I used to watch her do, when I was little and would sit on the bathroom rug before the sitter came. When I was done he left. I didn't bother to take it off and I fell asleep listening to him cry.
"He kissed me once. Told me to stand up and face him and then he kissed me. Said I tasted like her. I ran that night and didn't go home for a week. I never washed the make up off but it rained that night and most of it stained my shirt." Bobby really doesn't know what to say now, just that John is starting to shake and Bobby doesn't think that's weed.
He doesn't think, he does. He kisses John's cheek. He takes the blunt and ices the ember and they're sitting in the dark, with Bobby's arm touching John's neck and collar bone and his hand touching John's arm still and Bobby isn't sure of what to do with that arm or with the joint or what John is doing with his hands or what John is going to do now. So Bobby does what he's always been good at, what he does when he gets nervous. He talked.
"When I was five my parents had a party and half way through, when I was supposed to be asleep, I remember coming down stairs to the kitchen and sitting in the cupboard with all the pots and pans and watching through the dining room the adults in the living room until I realized my aunt was sitting on the counter crying. So I sat there with all the pots around me and tried not to move so I wouldn't make a sound until she went into the bathroom. Then I ran back into my room and hid under the covers. I was afraid to hear anyone cry like that. I was afraid the world was ending or I was going to be sunk in the earth, like a sand pit or something, that her tears were going to flood us out and I didn't have Noah or an ark or anything."
"Bobby Drake....you... bastard. You... beaut." Bobby is sitting and staring where he thinks John's head is because it's rude not to look at people when you talk to them, even if you are slightly worried that you're in love with this person and that this person might one day set everything on fire and then watch it all burn. John's hand scratched against Bobby's cheek, tracing with the edges of his nails and then John's lips were on Bobby's. Bobby kissed back.
When they were both lying down on his bed, kissing, he began to laugh. "What?" Bobby shook his head and giggled a little more. "Bobby, you're high."
"No, I'm not, I'm... I don't know what I am." Now John was laughing a little. Bobby kissed him again, and bit slightly on John's bottom lip, resting his weight on John's chest.
He distangled his mouth for a moment to say, "If you were to breathe for us, we'd die." Then he kissed John again, and to prove his point, pressed his breath into John's mouth. John breathed back then pulled away.
"Just...cark it and go to sleep." Bobby wrapped his arms around John and kissed his mouth again, feeling John's hands rub against his sides. Turning his head so their lips just barely touched and his cheek rested on top of John's, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.