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femmedelalune (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} femmedelalune) wrote,@ 2008-02-29 19:39:00 |
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Caffeine and Saccharine part two. X-Men, PG, Bobby/JeanPaul
Title Caffeine and Saccharine
Part 2 / 26
Rating (for this part) PG
Pairing Bobby/Jean Paul
Summary Set some time before M-Day. Bobby struggles to deal with his secondary mutation, and Jean Paul finds that getting what he wants is almost as hard as not getting it. Coffee is drunk.
part two
Jean Paul let Bobby rant, and found that agreed with most of it, just form his own observations.
It wasn’t just that his teammates treated him like a kid, it was that they never took a suggestion seriously. And when he tried to involve himself further he got told he wasn’t serious enough, but when he was serious he was completely ignored. And the Institute was filling up with virtual strangers, and they were treating Bobby like a kid too, because everyone else did. And no one noticed if he was in a bad mood or asked what was wrong if his humour was more cruel than funny. He’d been the second X-man; he’d been what made them the X-men. He’d been doing this longer than most of the people at the institute had known they were mutants. He’d faced enemies they couldn’t imagine, and he hadn’t faltered. He’d found time for a series of relationships and university, and he’d lived with a father who hated him for his mutation. He’d actively fought some of the most anti-mutant legislation and he’d lived through some of the worst times, past, present and future, for mutants.
“And now I teach accountancy and get mostly ignored,” Bobby finished morosely. “Seriously, it takes the kitchen staff to find out I’ve got a secondary mutation.”
“You did hide it,” Jean Paul said softly.
“I was also a complete bastard to everyone, including you,” Bobby pointed out. “It’s generally a good sign that I’m not the happy, perky, funny Bobby Drake people are used to.”
“Are you that person at all?” Jean Paul asked, raising a calm eyebrow.
Bobby laughed. “Yeah, mostly. I like making people laugh and I try and make a point of getting on with everyone. People can use humour as something other than a defence mechanism.”
“True,” Jean Paul smiled. “Would you like some more coffee?”
Bobby glanced down at his cup. “Nah,” he shook his head casually. “Don’t want to be bouncing around all night.”
Jean Paul nodded. “It is getting late,” he observed.
Bobby glanced over at the clock mounted on the wall. For some reason, Jean Paul found the fact he didn’t wear a watch endearing. It would have infuriated Bobby to know it was because it gave him a slightly childlike quality, too spontaneous to bother with keeping track of time. But then, Jean Paul found a lot of aspects of Bobby Drake endearing, both outer child and inner adult.
“Wow,” Bobby murmured. “I’ve been ranting at you for hours. You should have said something!”
“I hardly minded.” Jean Paul leant back in his chair. “I agree with most of your points.”
“I did warn you I’d dump all my problems on you,” Bobby sighed. “Never meant to actually do it though.”
“The X-men would function much better, in my opinion, if people ‘dumped’ their problems on each other more often.” Jean Paul sipped at the last of his luke warm mocha. “Everyone is too self involved.”
He didn’t like that Bobby laughed at that, but he knew he had no ground to stand on. And Bobby was smiling at him, sucking the last of the cream from the bun off of his fingers with a sensuous touch that Jean Paul would have sworn was meant to be deliberately provocative, had it been anyone else doing it. He could feel his heart speeding up, and he smiled back warmly.
“We have to do this again,” he said, standing up.
“I can’t see what you got out of it,” Bobby grinned, “but yeah, this was fun. Or, you know, good. Probably not so much fun for you.”
“No,” Jean Paul said reassuringly, “it was fun. I enjoy getting to know you. I feel... privileged. I do not think you show this side to many people.”
“No, I guess I don’t.” Bobby dropped his head shyly. “Don’t tell Hank and Warren and the others what I said, okay? I made it sound like they were all terrible people, but I know they’re all involved in their own things right now. The world doesn’t revolve round Bobby Drake.”
Mine does, Jean Paul thought, surprising himself. Even the girl at the counter had seen it. It was ridiculous. Bobby was straight. Lonely, but still straight.
“Earlier,” Jean Paul said as they found the car, “you said you dated someone who changed gender, without warning.”
“Yeah,” Bobby looked surprised. “And?”
“I was just wondering,” Jean Paul explained, “Who, and when?”
“Oh, a while ago,” Bobby laughed. “She was called Cloud. It later turned out she wasn’t even human, and her two ‘bodies’ were car crash victims. I freaked out when she switched the first time, badly. I was lucky she even spoke to me after that. It destroyed our relationship but she let me help her find out the truth. She was upset because she didn’t know what gender she actually.” Bobby sighed heavily. “And then we learned it was irrelevant.”
“Did you love her?” Jean Paul asked quietly.
“Not enough to accept her as a him.” Bobby’s voice was sharp. “It doesn’t make me a homophobe, though.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” Jean Paul said dryly, glancing at himself to emphasise his point. Bobby relaxed and smiled. Still, it was disheartening. Jean Paul had for a moment cherished the hope that Bobby might be bisexual, or at least open minded. From the way he told it he wasn’t, or not in the way Jean Paul was hoping.
So he pushed the thoughts away and climbed into the car. Under all the bitterness and drama, he was a practical man. When he found himself pinning so many hopes on an unobtainable crush he knew it was time to extinguish that crush. Hard, but not impossible. It would have helped if he hadn’t just made some kind of friendly commitment to Bobby, allowing himself to become the person Bobby vented to. Still, there was always a chance that this once would be enough, and they’d go back to their only-seeing-each-other-when-Jean-Paul-fe
He watched Bobby join him in the car, broad shoulder and narrow waist and firm buttocks and tousled hair. Bobby caught him watching, and flashed him a grin. He flashed it back, but took a moment longer to peel his eyes away. Not a good start to his new resolution.
As they drove home, they were mostly silent. Bobby clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, searching for something to talk about. He watched Jean Paul, looking him over a few times. Really not a bad looking man, all things considered. Oddly single. Bobby’s eyes trailed along him, pausing in his lap. He frowned. That looked... odd. Seatbelt seemed to have done something funny to Jean Paul’s pants.
Oh. Oh. Bobby looked away sharply, aware that he’d been staring, blushing to the tips of his ears. Thank god Jean Paul was concentrating on driving. Obviously thinking about something else, though. On the other hand, it was a very sexy car. Bobby’s lips curled in an unconscious smile as he caressed the inlay on the door. If he saved he could have something like this. Wouldn’t take long either. Running his tongue over his teeth and his mind over his financial holdings, Bobby could see just what he’d have to sell to buy a beautiful beast.
He could also see something through the window and with a startled gulp he yelped, “Stop the car!”
“Stop the car!”
Jean Paul’s mind froze up. He hadn’t felt such blind panic in a long time. It was stupid, he knew. Just a crush. Just a guy. And if Bobby was so upset he wanted to walk home, so be it.
Bobby repeated his command, and Jean Paul pulled over, mind racing and at the same time wholly blank. When Bobby leapt out of the car Jean Paul followed on instinct. There were no recriminations or hurled abuse. Bobby was sprinting away, ducking between cars and ignoring them as best as he could. Jean Paul heard brakes squealing too close, and he moved.
When the world settled to its normal pace Bobby was cold in his arms and still running, dragging Jean Paul with him back the way they’d come. Finally something clicked in Jean Paul’s mind, and he realised this had nothing to do with him. Bobby, now completely iced up, ducked into an alley perpendicular to the main road. Jean Paul followed.
A girl was pressed against the wall, a gun in her mouth and her panties around her thighs. The man between her legs seemed to be struggling with his fly, which gave Jean Paul all the time he needed to zip along the wall and past him, the girl safe in his arms. The thug just stared, jeans now collapsing towards his ankles, at the empty space in front of him..
The girl struggled in his arms, showing considerably more fight than she had a moment before. Jean Paul winced as teeth cut flesh.
“It is alright,” he hissed. “It is alright, I am not going to hurt you. I am gay,” he blurted finally. She stopped fighting, though Jean Paul wasn’t whether it was because she felt safer or because she was simply surprised. It had been a rather sudden announcement. “I am Northstar,” he went on, keeping his voice level, “and that is my friend Iceman. We are X-men. We came to help you.”
She was limp in his arms. “You’re that man on the book,” she managed eventually. “That gay mutant guy from Canada.”
“Yes,” Jean Paul smiled at her. “Jean Paul Beaubier.”
“Bonjour,” she mispronounced.
“The police are on their way,” Bobby announced from the other end of the alley, his phone in his hand. The thug raised the gun he was still holding, but he made a mistake in choosing Iceman for his target. He did more damage to Bobby’s clothes than to his icy torso; each time a chunk of his abdomen or chest shattered under impact it reformed almost immediately. He laughed slightly.
“Look, mutie,” the guy spat, “you don’t know what’s going on here. You’re messin’ with my conjugal rights.”
“He was trying to rape me!” the girl shrieked, still pressed against Jean Paul’s chest. “Don’t let him tell you otherwise!”
“Don’t worry, miss,” Bobby reassured her. “I saw what was going on.”
“Did you see that wedding ring?” the thug demanded. “Did you see that means I got rights?”
“That doesn’t mean you can rape her,” Bobby said, voice colder than his body. A chill shot through Jean Paul, though. Legally, that made this whole thing a much messier issue.
The thug swung his gun around to Jean Paul and his wife, but it clicked emptily. Jean Paul smirked, knowing exactly how little danger a bullet would have been anyway. The guy dropped the gun, and tried to make a run for it. Jean Paul released the girl and gave her time to stumble away, but Bobby already had it covered.
It was just as well the thug was wearing thick boots, because the amount of ice Bobby coated his lower legs in would have given him frostbite before the police arrived. And they were surprisingly prompt, in Jean Paul’s opinion. Perhaps he’d just been given a distorted view of the American police, being a foreigner. After all, both were in good shape, and there wasn’t a doughnut in sight.
It struck Jean Paul than he’d possibly watched a few too many episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ in his attempt to hang around near Bobby.
He spoke to the policemen, gave his name where relevant, talked about standing as a witness in court and gave the victim a nod he hoped was comforting, and he didn’t think any further about it.
They were back in the car when Bobby asked, softly, “They say anything to you ‘bout being a witness?”
“Oui,” Jean Paul said, concentrating on the speedometer. The police precinct was just off their route back, and currently the officers from earlier were tucked neatly behind them.
It occurred to him that Bobby had fallen silent, and for once it wasn’t because he was hitting on the car. He risked a glance and flinched internally at the sight of Bobby curled up like a young child, feet on the seat and head on his knees, staring out of the window. It wasn’t just that any and all muck from the alley would now be working its way into the leather interior either. The boy looked like someone had explained in great detail, very rationally and logically so that it was hard to argue, that he was the most pathetic thing on the planet. He sniffed.
“Do your parents know you’re a mutant?” Jean Paul said helplessly, aware how unfamiliar this territory was.
“What? Oh, yeah,” Bobby managed a small smile. “’sjust the rest of the world I’m worried about. They’ll probably televise it, with X-men for witnesses.”
“It will be fine,” Jean Paul insisted calmly. “It is not as though anyone is going to accuse you of cheating in an international sporting event.” It earned him a laugh, if a weak one. But then, it was a pretty weak attempt at a joke.
“I know,” Bobby sighed and stretched out again. “It’s just... with everything else, you know? It’s just that. Why now, I guess, why me? You know?”
“Oui.”
“Who knows, maybe we won’t even get called or something. Or they won’t ask about stopping them. And, well, it’s not as though my secondary mutation’s got anything to do with it at all, so at least that won’t come up, and that’s really what I’m worried about. Kinda.”
“It is a big step,” Jean Paul reassured him vaguely. “But when you are on the other side it will look tiny. Like cliffs look taller from the top.”
“You mean when you have to jump? Yeah, they do. And I’ll take your word for it, because you’ve probably got more experience at this than any one else, right?” Bobby looked hopeful.
“Of course,” Jean Paul said with a confidence he didn’t feel.
The rest of the drive past in silence. Maybe it wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the kind of silence you shared with a close friend or lover when there’s nothing to say. It felt like there was all too much to say, but Jean Paul put that down to his own tortured libido-driven conscience. Besides, they weren’t close. Not really. No matter how much Jean Paul might like to think they were. Not yet.
Jean Paul pulled up in front of the mansion to let Bobby out, which seemed to amuse Bobby. The last grin he flashed Jean Paul as he thanked him for the night was the most genuine Jean Paul had seen on him all evening. Sitting there, watching Bobby climb the steps two at a time, the moment wasn’t lost on Jean Paul. A hundred movies with a hundred teenage couples contained this scene, the handsome jock dropping off the pretty cheerleader back at her house, polite and gentlemanly and embedded in the kind of fifties imagery the US seemed to thrive on.
Back when homosexuality was illegal and mutants were only found in comics and freakshows.
Title Caffeine and Saccharine
Part 2 / 26
Rating (for this part) PG
Pairing Bobby/Jean Paul
Summary Set some time before M-Day. Bobby struggles to deal with his secondary mutation, and Jean Paul finds that getting what he wants is almost as hard as not getting it. Coffee is drunk.
part two
Jean Paul let Bobby rant, and found that agreed with most of it, just form his own observations.
It wasn’t just that his teammates treated him like a kid, it was that they never took a suggestion seriously. And when he tried to involve himself further he got told he wasn’t serious enough, but when he was serious he was completely ignored. And the Institute was filling up with virtual strangers, and they were treating Bobby like a kid too, because everyone else did. And no one noticed if he was in a bad mood or asked what was wrong if his humour was more cruel than funny. He’d been the second X-man; he’d been what made them the X-men. He’d been doing this longer than most of the people at the institute had known they were mutants. He’d faced enemies they couldn’t imagine, and he hadn’t faltered. He’d found time for a series of relationships and university, and he’d lived with a father who hated him for his mutation. He’d actively fought some of the most anti-mutant legislation and he’d lived through some of the worst times, past, present and future, for mutants.
“And now I teach accountancy and get mostly ignored,” Bobby finished morosely. “Seriously, it takes the kitchen staff to find out I’ve got a secondary mutation.”
“You did hide it,” Jean Paul said softly.
“I was also a complete bastard to everyone, including you,” Bobby pointed out. “It’s generally a good sign that I’m not the happy, perky, funny Bobby Drake people are used to.”
“Are you that person at all?” Jean Paul asked, raising a calm eyebrow.
Bobby laughed. “Yeah, mostly. I like making people laugh and I try and make a point of getting on with everyone. People can use humour as something other than a defence mechanism.”
“True,” Jean Paul smiled. “Would you like some more coffee?”
Bobby glanced down at his cup. “Nah,” he shook his head casually. “Don’t want to be bouncing around all night.”
Jean Paul nodded. “It is getting late,” he observed.
Bobby glanced over at the clock mounted on the wall. For some reason, Jean Paul found the fact he didn’t wear a watch endearing. It would have infuriated Bobby to know it was because it gave him a slightly childlike quality, too spontaneous to bother with keeping track of time. But then, Jean Paul found a lot of aspects of Bobby Drake endearing, both outer child and inner adult.
“Wow,” Bobby murmured. “I’ve been ranting at you for hours. You should have said something!”
“I hardly minded.” Jean Paul leant back in his chair. “I agree with most of your points.”
“I did warn you I’d dump all my problems on you,” Bobby sighed. “Never meant to actually do it though.”
“The X-men would function much better, in my opinion, if people ‘dumped’ their problems on each other more often.” Jean Paul sipped at the last of his luke warm mocha. “Everyone is too self involved.”
He didn’t like that Bobby laughed at that, but he knew he had no ground to stand on. And Bobby was smiling at him, sucking the last of the cream from the bun off of his fingers with a sensuous touch that Jean Paul would have sworn was meant to be deliberately provocative, had it been anyone else doing it. He could feel his heart speeding up, and he smiled back warmly.
“We have to do this again,” he said, standing up.
“I can’t see what you got out of it,” Bobby grinned, “but yeah, this was fun. Or, you know, good. Probably not so much fun for you.”
“No,” Jean Paul said reassuringly, “it was fun. I enjoy getting to know you. I feel... privileged. I do not think you show this side to many people.”
“No, I guess I don’t.” Bobby dropped his head shyly. “Don’t tell Hank and Warren and the others what I said, okay? I made it sound like they were all terrible people, but I know they’re all involved in their own things right now. The world doesn’t revolve round Bobby Drake.”
Mine does, Jean Paul thought, surprising himself. Even the girl at the counter had seen it. It was ridiculous. Bobby was straight. Lonely, but still straight.
“Earlier,” Jean Paul said as they found the car, “you said you dated someone who changed gender, without warning.”
“Yeah,” Bobby looked surprised. “And?”
“I was just wondering,” Jean Paul explained, “Who, and when?”
“Oh, a while ago,” Bobby laughed. “She was called Cloud. It later turned out she wasn’t even human, and her two ‘bodies’ were car crash victims. I freaked out when she switched the first time, badly. I was lucky she even spoke to me after that. It destroyed our relationship but she let me help her find out the truth. She was upset because she didn’t know what gender she actually.” Bobby sighed heavily. “And then we learned it was irrelevant.”
“Did you love her?” Jean Paul asked quietly.
“Not enough to accept her as a him.” Bobby’s voice was sharp. “It doesn’t make me a homophobe, though.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you were,” Jean Paul said dryly, glancing at himself to emphasise his point. Bobby relaxed and smiled. Still, it was disheartening. Jean Paul had for a moment cherished the hope that Bobby might be bisexual, or at least open minded. From the way he told it he wasn’t, or not in the way Jean Paul was hoping.
So he pushed the thoughts away and climbed into the car. Under all the bitterness and drama, he was a practical man. When he found himself pinning so many hopes on an unobtainable crush he knew it was time to extinguish that crush. Hard, but not impossible. It would have helped if he hadn’t just made some kind of friendly commitment to Bobby, allowing himself to become the person Bobby vented to. Still, there was always a chance that this once would be enough, and they’d go back to their only-seeing-each-other-when-Jean-Paul-fe
He watched Bobby join him in the car, broad shoulder and narrow waist and firm buttocks and tousled hair. Bobby caught him watching, and flashed him a grin. He flashed it back, but took a moment longer to peel his eyes away. Not a good start to his new resolution.
As they drove home, they were mostly silent. Bobby clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, searching for something to talk about. He watched Jean Paul, looking him over a few times. Really not a bad looking man, all things considered. Oddly single. Bobby’s eyes trailed along him, pausing in his lap. He frowned. That looked... odd. Seatbelt seemed to have done something funny to Jean Paul’s pants.
Oh. Oh. Bobby looked away sharply, aware that he’d been staring, blushing to the tips of his ears. Thank god Jean Paul was concentrating on driving. Obviously thinking about something else, though. On the other hand, it was a very sexy car. Bobby’s lips curled in an unconscious smile as he caressed the inlay on the door. If he saved he could have something like this. Wouldn’t take long either. Running his tongue over his teeth and his mind over his financial holdings, Bobby could see just what he’d have to sell to buy a beautiful beast.
He could also see something through the window and with a startled gulp he yelped, “Stop the car!”
“Stop the car!”
Jean Paul’s mind froze up. He hadn’t felt such blind panic in a long time. It was stupid, he knew. Just a crush. Just a guy. And if Bobby was so upset he wanted to walk home, so be it.
Bobby repeated his command, and Jean Paul pulled over, mind racing and at the same time wholly blank. When Bobby leapt out of the car Jean Paul followed on instinct. There were no recriminations or hurled abuse. Bobby was sprinting away, ducking between cars and ignoring them as best as he could. Jean Paul heard brakes squealing too close, and he moved.
When the world settled to its normal pace Bobby was cold in his arms and still running, dragging Jean Paul with him back the way they’d come. Finally something clicked in Jean Paul’s mind, and he realised this had nothing to do with him. Bobby, now completely iced up, ducked into an alley perpendicular to the main road. Jean Paul followed.
A girl was pressed against the wall, a gun in her mouth and her panties around her thighs. The man between her legs seemed to be struggling with his fly, which gave Jean Paul all the time he needed to zip along the wall and past him, the girl safe in his arms. The thug just stared, jeans now collapsing towards his ankles, at the empty space in front of him..
The girl struggled in his arms, showing considerably more fight than she had a moment before. Jean Paul winced as teeth cut flesh.
“It is alright,” he hissed. “It is alright, I am not going to hurt you. I am gay,” he blurted finally. She stopped fighting, though Jean Paul wasn’t whether it was because she felt safer or because she was simply surprised. It had been a rather sudden announcement. “I am Northstar,” he went on, keeping his voice level, “and that is my friend Iceman. We are X-men. We came to help you.”
She was limp in his arms. “You’re that man on the book,” she managed eventually. “That gay mutant guy from Canada.”
“Yes,” Jean Paul smiled at her. “Jean Paul Beaubier.”
“Bonjour,” she mispronounced.
“The police are on their way,” Bobby announced from the other end of the alley, his phone in his hand. The thug raised the gun he was still holding, but he made a mistake in choosing Iceman for his target. He did more damage to Bobby’s clothes than to his icy torso; each time a chunk of his abdomen or chest shattered under impact it reformed almost immediately. He laughed slightly.
“Look, mutie,” the guy spat, “you don’t know what’s going on here. You’re messin’ with my conjugal rights.”
“He was trying to rape me!” the girl shrieked, still pressed against Jean Paul’s chest. “Don’t let him tell you otherwise!”
“Don’t worry, miss,” Bobby reassured her. “I saw what was going on.”
“Did you see that wedding ring?” the thug demanded. “Did you see that means I got rights?”
“That doesn’t mean you can rape her,” Bobby said, voice colder than his body. A chill shot through Jean Paul, though. Legally, that made this whole thing a much messier issue.
The thug swung his gun around to Jean Paul and his wife, but it clicked emptily. Jean Paul smirked, knowing exactly how little danger a bullet would have been anyway. The guy dropped the gun, and tried to make a run for it. Jean Paul released the girl and gave her time to stumble away, but Bobby already had it covered.
It was just as well the thug was wearing thick boots, because the amount of ice Bobby coated his lower legs in would have given him frostbite before the police arrived. And they were surprisingly prompt, in Jean Paul’s opinion. Perhaps he’d just been given a distorted view of the American police, being a foreigner. After all, both were in good shape, and there wasn’t a doughnut in sight.
It struck Jean Paul than he’d possibly watched a few too many episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ in his attempt to hang around near Bobby.
He spoke to the policemen, gave his name where relevant, talked about standing as a witness in court and gave the victim a nod he hoped was comforting, and he didn’t think any further about it.
They were back in the car when Bobby asked, softly, “They say anything to you ‘bout being a witness?”
“Oui,” Jean Paul said, concentrating on the speedometer. The police precinct was just off their route back, and currently the officers from earlier were tucked neatly behind them.
It occurred to him that Bobby had fallen silent, and for once it wasn’t because he was hitting on the car. He risked a glance and flinched internally at the sight of Bobby curled up like a young child, feet on the seat and head on his knees, staring out of the window. It wasn’t just that any and all muck from the alley would now be working its way into the leather interior either. The boy looked like someone had explained in great detail, very rationally and logically so that it was hard to argue, that he was the most pathetic thing on the planet. He sniffed.
“Do your parents know you’re a mutant?” Jean Paul said helplessly, aware how unfamiliar this territory was.
“What? Oh, yeah,” Bobby managed a small smile. “’sjust the rest of the world I’m worried about. They’ll probably televise it, with X-men for witnesses.”
“It will be fine,” Jean Paul insisted calmly. “It is not as though anyone is going to accuse you of cheating in an international sporting event.” It earned him a laugh, if a weak one. But then, it was a pretty weak attempt at a joke.
“I know,” Bobby sighed and stretched out again. “It’s just... with everything else, you know? It’s just that. Why now, I guess, why me? You know?”
“Oui.”
“Who knows, maybe we won’t even get called or something. Or they won’t ask about stopping them. And, well, it’s not as though my secondary mutation’s got anything to do with it at all, so at least that won’t come up, and that’s really what I’m worried about. Kinda.”
“It is a big step,” Jean Paul reassured him vaguely. “But when you are on the other side it will look tiny. Like cliffs look taller from the top.”
“You mean when you have to jump? Yeah, they do. And I’ll take your word for it, because you’ve probably got more experience at this than any one else, right?” Bobby looked hopeful.
“Of course,” Jean Paul said with a confidence he didn’t feel.
The rest of the drive past in silence. Maybe it wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t the kind of silence you shared with a close friend or lover when there’s nothing to say. It felt like there was all too much to say, but Jean Paul put that down to his own tortured libido-driven conscience. Besides, they weren’t close. Not really. No matter how much Jean Paul might like to think they were. Not yet.
Jean Paul pulled up in front of the mansion to let Bobby out, which seemed to amuse Bobby. The last grin he flashed Jean Paul as he thanked him for the night was the most genuine Jean Paul had seen on him all evening. Sitting there, watching Bobby climb the steps two at a time, the moment wasn’t lost on Jean Paul. A hundred movies with a hundred teenage couples contained this scene, the handsome jock dropping off the pretty cheerleader back at her house, polite and gentlemanly and embedded in the kind of fifties imagery the US seemed to thrive on.
Back when homosexuality was illegal and mutants were only found in comics and freakshows.
