Fic: R. Drake(²)

[mayachain]

So I have this backstory for St John where he accidentally kills his step-sister when he's eleven. In the story where this first came up, Bobby being the only one to really know about it eventually sent him back to the Mansion, but what if he hadn't come home? During mini_nanowrimo, I came up with this possibility.


Title: R. Drake(²)
Author: ms_jvh_shuh
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Featuring: R. Drake, R. Drake. Some Pyro if you squint.
Summary: If you haven't been a little brother in years, have you succeeded in becoming an only child or will it always remain an illusion?
Note: A huge thank you to inootz for making time during the holidays to look everything over for me! I hope you approve of the changes I made.




R. Drake(²)

In hindsight, he and his family can consider themselves lucky - their house may have gotten singed, but none of them got hurt. He reads all he can about it in the following months, throws himself onto every newspaper article he can find. When that isn't enough, he walks into a meeting of the Friends of Humanity, and eventually his new connections grant him access to relevant police reports. Particularly, he tries to find out more about the mutant friends Bobby brought into their house. Finding anything about the man proves scarily impossible, but after a bit of work he knows all about Marie D'Amato and St John Allerdyce, what devastation they left behind in places called Meridian and Hagerstown, respectively. He knows the quiet girl sitting starry-eyed on his mother's couch almost killed her first boyfriend, and the pyromaniac's sister's body was unidentifiable safe for her poor father's eye witness report, the body was that charred. It scared him then and it scares him now, what the man he once thought of as his brother and his kind are capable of. He dreams of the house burning down at first, but once he's had time to think, his dreams are filled with ice. (Thankfully, it doesn't snow all that much in Boston anymore.) He has nightmares for years afterwards of all the times Anna Matherson's fate could've been his, of all the times he and Bobby had fought. Of all the summers since Bobby must have changed and concealed it when they went swimming, surfing, always playing with water. The fact that it never did happen doesn't mean anything. Every time Bobby visited he put everyone in danger, both by leaving the rest of the family ignorant and by coming home and being near them at all. For this more than everything else he wants an apology, almost as much as he wants to live in a world where brothers don't turn into pathological liars and monsters. Fire and ice and a person's heartbeat are facts of the world. It goes against everything that is natural that they should be manipulable by someone with a single thought. Ronnie still only accompanies his mother to church when coerced. He has no trouble believing the theory of homo sapiens sapiens' descent, and scoffs at preaching teachers who outright refute the concept of evolution, but he cannot believe that this kind of creature was ever intended by God to walk the earth. * It's four years before he speaks to the mutant again, and when he finally does, Robert looks as surprised to find himself seated opposite Ronald in some café at the outskirts of Boston as Ronald is. Depending on how angry he'd been at any given time, Ronald used to picture their next meeting as taking place during a riot, at a police station, in a court room, or at someone's hospital bed. (Whether the hospitalized part was Ronald himself or Robert or one of their parents remained forever unclear in his mind.) He never imagined that he would one cloudless June morning just receive a message on his blackberry, hemming and hawing in convoluted words but saying, effectively, simply, meet me. He never imagined he would postpone a previous appointment and go. They have managed to grimace through an awkward greeting, sizing each other up uncomfortably, but neither of them says anything until a waitress two or three years younger than them arrives at their table. “One cappuccino, please,” he croaks out over a dry throat, and catches himself briefly obsessing over whether or not it means anything (what exactly that could be, he's not sure) when Robert chimes in “Same for me”. “Can I pay straight up,” he asks the girl and pretends not to notice Robert's eyes close in something, in pain or a prayer for patience or just plain annoyance (Ronald's not equipped to tell anymore). He wants, needs to reserve the right to march out of the café quickly and unindebted to the mutant in case this goes wrong. The girl sounds as confused as Robert is aggravated, or whatever it is that Robert is. “Sir, your orders have been paid in advance.” Ronald shoots a quick look at Robert, but Robert is staring at their waitress and then, strangely, at the calendar next to the counter with an intense frown. “All the more cash for your tip, then,” Ronald says, and the girl perks up, sends him (him, not Bobby, ha! ) a flirtatious smile and scampers away. Ronald lets his eyes follow her with a frown that's an exact mirror to the one on Robert's face. “Did you send me a message to come here?” It's the first thing Robert has really said to him, and Ronald feels suddenly winded. He takes a moment to stuff his wallet back into the back pocket of his jeans, then counters as calmly as he can, “You mean to say someone set us up?” “I thought you might try to set me up,” Robert admits wryly, “but I haven't had any trouble since the latest legislation, so I didn't really believe it. And I'm not getting any vibes off this place, so I don't think we're in danger, here. But yes, it seems someone's behind this little get-together, and apparently it was neither one of us.” Robert doesn't add (but it's fairly obvious they're both thinking it), nor was it Mom or Dad. Ronald doesn't think it was any of their other relatives, and there are only two of his friends who even know Bobby exists. That leaves Robert's friends, and the thought of that makes Ronald... not quite ready to storm out of the café, but definitely itchy. “Maybe we shouldn't stay too long then,” he says. “Just to be safe.” He thinks the mutant man might protest, but Robert just nods. Their cappuccinos arrive, and Ronald is at a loss at what to say. Apart from screaming accusations at each other, which he doesn't really want to do in such a public place, there aren't really that many things for them to talk about, or maybe the problem is that there are too many. He doesn't really want to tell Robert about their mother's ever-boring neighborhood meetings, their father's recent retirement, their uncle's latest fishing accomplishment, their cousin's upcoming wedding. He doesn't particularly care about throwing Robert's exclusion from their family into Bobby's face, but he also really doesn't want to share them. They're not Bobby's anymore, they're Ronnie's. It's petty, he knows, he doesn't really care if it is. He doesn't want to hear about whatever it is that Robert is doing in collaboration with the other mutants, and even trying to breach the subject of his own work for the Friends of Humanity would definitely result in the screaming match he is trying to avoid. Just to have something to do, anything, he picks up the teaspoon and starts stirring some of the foamed milk in. Across the table, Robert reaches for the sugar, adds an amount so small the result must be completely negligible taste-wise, and mirrors him. Ronald stares at the teaspoon going round and round in Robert's cup, steered by a human-looking hand. He half expects small lumps of ice to form alongside the china, for the liquid to become frozen like their mother's tea that terrible morning, but the mutant's hand just stirs, swirling foamed milk round and round, completely normal. It's never been like this before, silence between them thick and pained. Ronnie used to sometimes not talk to Bobby, resentful towards the older boy for being better at fishing, basketball, wrestling, anything, for having been away to school for months, for going back (always, always leaving again), for coming home with a whole lot of stories but never really telling anything. Bobby used to leave him alone for a few hours then, but he would always be back a while later to completely ignore Ronnie's beautifully justified sulk and just start chattering. Whenever Bobby wouldn't talk to Ronnie, a roaring shouting match had always made the reasons abundantly clear beforehand. This, this is different. Ronald hasn't been a little brother in four years. He doesn't quite know if he even is one now, if he remembers how, if he wants to. There's this voice inside his head that's been constantly screaming at him for years, using words much harsher than today's muted 'abomination' for what once was his brother turned out to be, a mutant. There's this other voice that's been silenced for just as long that unexpectedly started a high-pitched wail when he checked his blackberry before breakfast this morning, screeching so loudly that he still can't quite distinguish any meaning except for want it back and mine. He hasn't been a little brother for years. It's never occurred to him before that he couldn't really ever have stopped being one. If he doesn't want to have to drink it cold, he really needs to stop stirring the cappuccino. With an effort, he swaps the teaspoon into the remaining foam and scoops up a spoonful, tasting coffee and milk and what else he doesn't know, almond, maybe. One of them needs to say something, and soon. He has the sudden urge to ask, in an eerie imitation of their mother, 'So... are you still...' to have Robert reply in return 'A mutant? Yeah', but that would be completely stupid. If he'd taken the shots to take care of his freakified genes he surely, maybe, would have come back to them. Ronald wonders if, before its deceptively short-lived capacity was revealed, if Robert ever considered taking the cure. “Is it good,” Robert asks, and it takes Ronald a minute of staring dumbly at him before he figures out he means the cappuccino. “Yeah,” he says, a bit hoarsely. “Yeah, it's okay.” Robert takes what must be his first sip then, nods thoughtfully and then adds, “That's good. Well, good to know. Since neither of us has been in this café before,” and he sounds so rueful and so much like Bobby that Ronnie can't help but huff out a laugh. A tiny splat of cooled foam sprays over his fingers. Robert returns his grin, fully aware of how silly they are being, and takes Ronnie drying his hand on a napkin as a cue to ask “So did you finish school?” It strikes Ronnie that this is something Bobby should know, hell, for all Ronnie can tell, already does know; he's well aware of the smoothly-working spy network the mutants pretend not to have. He likes to believe that his assorted Friends of Humanity activities warrant some enemy scrutiny, and it's not as if his admittedly limited scholarly accomplishments are confidential. It's something he can bring himself to talk about, at least, so what the hell. “Yeah, two years ago. I did okay.” Robert cocks his head and improbably sports a slightly more daring grin. “Even in math?” Every holiday Bobby spent at home, their mother would force them to spend two hours with schoolwork together, to 'let Ronnie catch up'. It's one of the many things about their relationship that Ronnie has never truly admitted to himself, that despite how much he resented these sessions, resented Bobby for being so much better than him in yet another thing, that when they stopped (when everything stopped), his grades missed them. “Even in math,” he allows graciously, then adds, “Senior year, I had this incredibly smart girlfriend.” She didn't know about you, he doesn't say, she'd never have gone out with me if she'd known, too many possibilities for contamination. I always lied when she asked who'd tutored me before. At the time, it had been the furthest thing from his thoughts, but after she broke up with him, it had occurred to him that he might get into a whole lot of trouble the day he decides to have children. “Anyone special now?” Bobby asks, and Ronnie snorts again, because it's in the same half-insincere tone aunt Harriet always used whenever she asked her assorted nieces and nephews that question. He briefly wonders whether Bobby's been in any kind of contact with her, then dismisses it, thinking of the way she'd barely spoken to her sister for a year as punishment for giving birth to a freak. He wonders what Bobby would say if he knew (does he know?) their mother tried to pretend he was the faggot kind of freak because that would have been less shameful than the truth, no matter how abominable it would have been, back before the so-called X-Men had appeared on television and everyone had found out where Robert had gone. “No, not right now,” he says, thinking of the girl he broke up with two weeks ago because she invested too much time into Friends of Humanity even for his liking. “You?” “No, me neither,” Bobby says, and it might be true, but there's something in his voice that Ronnie would have been able to pinpoint as a shirking of truth years ago. He can't be sure, not when it's been so long, but there's something there, something maybe a bit hopeful. Involuntarily, he thinks again that there's someone out there, someone unknown, who must have gone to great length to organize this meeting between them. "Tubby's doing okay," he volunteers before they can fall silent again. He wonders if Bobby doesn't have any questions he wants to ask, if the next sip Ronnie'll take from his cappuccino might even be enough to make him answer them. Both their cups are already half-empty, and he knows neither of them is going to ask the waitress to refill it. "Just this last weekend, he chased two other kitties right out of the neighborhood." "Yeah?" Bobby asks with a surprised smile. Whether the surprise is at the ten-year-old tomcat's prowess or at receiving any cat-related information at all remains unclear. "Yeah." "I miss having a cat," Bobby says. "Sometimes, I feel like half the world is drowning in allergies." And this is Ronnie's cue to say something like same with Mom's friends, it's driving me nuts, but that would entail mentioning Mom. Bobby knows it, too, and he could ask, but he doesn't, which in Ronald's book makes the whole lack of talking about their parents Bobby's fault. If he really wanted to know, he could ask, he thinks, and turns his gaze down and starts munching on his cookie. After a second, little crumbs are falling down on Robert's side of the table, as well. * They've run out of things to say to each other. And he figures none of them has actually said anything, really, but they've been sitting at the same table for almost half an hour and aside from the apparent behind-the-curtain scheming there has been not a single disturbing occurrence. It weirds him out, makes him think of the many times they ate meals together at home and all the while Bobby had been a mutant and he'd had no idea, but at the same time, it's a relief, too. In the end, it's this weird lack of weirdness that makes him not flinch when Bobby asks "Are you around Boston next month?", makes him shake his head "no, not until November". When he hears himself say the words, "We could try the chai tea," he doesn't know which of them is more surprised at the offer. Ronald is fully aware that what's happened this afternoon isn't something he can tell anyone about; when anyone asks, he won't be able to tell any of his friends who he's spent this last half hour with. Yet when they finally set down the empty cups, he feels weirdly at peace. Shrugging into his jacket, he actually forgets himself for a second and asks "Where're you going now?" When Bobby doesn't answer, he turns around and sees Bobby squinting at the counter's calendar again. Ronnie frowns, but it doesn't say anything his blackberry's watch function didn't tell him this morning: June 19th. "Fill up on gas, drive down to Hagerstown and hopefully catch someone at the cemetery before dark," Bobby answers eventually, and if there's a clue in his words, something that should make Ronnie notify the law of Washington county, he doesn't want to hear. He can't quite bring himself to shake Bobby's hand, but he does look him straight in the eyes (and hey, somewhere during the last few years they've grown to the same height), returns his "See you in November" and watches until his brother has disappeared around the corner. - end -

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