Any Kinda Breath: Part 3C

by Kaylee

Bobby's Journal:
            Round two of chemo finished yesterday.  We've got a little recovery time before the last round starts.  He seemed okay for a bit, then I left for five minutes and came back and he was retching over the john again and shaking and sweating, and I can't say for sure because he didn't open his eyes but I think he may have been crying.  I sat down next to him and rubbed his back for a while and he rested his forehead on the toilet rim and didn't say anything.  Neither did I.  There are only so many things you can say in that situation, I guess, and we probably used them all up eight months ago when the LAST batch of chemo ended.
            I just got him back into bed right before I started writing.  He sort of passed out when his head hit the pillow, thank God.  Neither one of us has the energy for more of that right now.
            Time just moves so SLOW.  It's like we'll never get all the way through this.

***

Remy opened his eyes and stared into a mirror, except it wasn't a proper mirror because the image wasn't his, and the eyes looking back at him out of the gaunt, prematurely old face had a quality that his lacked.

Remy's lips moved soundlessly, forming a name: James.  The kid who had cancer.  The kid who beat cancer.

"Call me Jim," the boy said, his voice impossibly strong and deep.  He stepped from the mirror-that-wasn't, reached up to take Remy's face in his hands, tipping it down to see better.  Brown eyes under lashless eyelids critically examined red-and-black, searching.  Remy's heart pounded, fear and hope, as though he faced his salvation or damnation right here in the form of this fourteen-year-old wraith.

The boy's face fell.  "It's not there," he said sorrowfully.  "It's not there yet."  His hands fell away, collapsing to his sides as he backed, backed, became the mirror again.

Remy's heart lurched hard against his chest, its rhythm gone.  "Wait," he said, barely a whisper, but the image was of him, only him, and when he pounded on the glass it shattered into ice shards and cut him to ribbons.

***

Bobby's Journal:
            I think I'm kind of stupid.  Not stupid the way a lot of people are stupid because they just don't bother to think, but stupid in the emotions where you build up all these expectations and watch them fall over and over again.  But thinking that way is kind of selfish as well as stupid, isn't it, considering the amazing stuff that I never could've predicted or dreamed of or hoped for, that happened?
            It's all tied up so tight I can't really file things into neat drawers inside my head anymore.  I thought I could, and I tried to, but it's just not working.  You can't use one of those scales with those little cups to measure happy and nothappy emotions, right?  Like, Remy exists, that goes in the Happy cup, and Remy's really sick, that goes in the NotHappy cup.  It just doesn't work right that way because the Remy exists part weighs a lot more than any of the other stuff, but it's the other stuff that's hurting him so bad, and that definitely tips the scale into NotHappy, so I'm sort of left with a head full of something like double what I think my head was made to hold.
            Does that make any sense?  I just reread it and I don't think it does, but who am I writing this for anyway?  I'm sure as hell not going to let anyone read it.  Not that anyone could.  It's been so long since I've written much of anything longhand that I can barely read my own handwriting.
            Hank gave me this notebook and said he thought I could use it.  He didn't really say why, but I guess it's obvious.  He doesn't have time to listen to me ramble anymore.  Busy with Legacy research and trying to save Dr. MacTaggart and I guess the chemo and checkups and stuff with Remy are all pretty routine for him by now.  Just plug and play, right?  Hook up the chemo and walk away.
            That's bullshit, Bobbster, and you know it.  Hank's got more patience than God, and he's way nicer, too.  Where the hell did that self-pitying crap I just wrote come from?  That's it.  I'm putting myself in the NotHappy cup.
            I think I'm going to put this journal in the NotHappy cup, too.  All I want to write is depressing stuff.  This can't be good for you.
            Maybe I'll take up jousting.  Now THAT has to be cathartic.  A hell of a lot more cathartic than scribbling and eating a pen cap.
            Jousting.  Yeah.  Jousting goes in the Happy cup. 

***

Their room had grown accustomed to the sound of a scribbling pen in recent months.  Remy thought he'd reached the point where this went into the harmless 'white noise' section of his brain; things that he unconsciously catalogued as unthreatening and almost ceased to notice entirely.  He was tired a lot these days -- couldn't really remember when he hadn't been exhausted, actually, though he tried sometimes -- and the comforting scratch of the pen was almost never enough to keep him awake.

Thoughts, however...thoughts were another matter.  Particularly when they couldn't be turned from the man seated at the desk across the room, scrawling line after line, scritch-scritch-scritch, as the hours stretched.

"Gettin' late," Remy observed without bothering to glance at the clock.  The last glimpse had said ten twenty-three.  Once upon a time he'd've been just getting his night really started by now.

Bobby's writing hand paused.  He didn't look over.  "I'm almost done."  Unpaused, and the scritching was back.

It didn't sound much like white noise right now.  Right now it sounded annoying beyond endurance.

"How 'almost'?"

"Almost almost.  Last thought."

Remy sighed as loudly as he was able and turned his gaze to the windowpane, not even trying to look beyond it into the night.  If he tried hard enough, he thought he could convince himself he was going for melodrama and peevishness in an intentionally transparent whine for attention.

But evidently he wasn't trying hard enough, because he wasn't really believing that much at all.

"Long last t'ought."

Bobby sighed much more quietly than Remy had and the pen thumped down on paper.  He sat for a moment, staring at whatever he'd just written, then rolled his shoulders and reached for the switch on the lamp.  Red and black eyes only blinked once as the reflected light in the windowpane went out; then Remy went right back to staring, unnoticed.

For a minute longer Bobby sat, then gave another of those nearly inaudible sighs and pushed the chair back.  In wordlessness that could've been companionable, but wasn't, he hit the half-bath to get ready for the night, water running sibilantly down the drain, toilet growling when he hit the plunger, all the other normal little nightly sounds taking on a certain...irritation.  A certain frustration.

The light in the bathroom went out next.  Remy watched the window.  Bobby stripped off his plain white T-shirt absently and tossed it into the laundry basket, kicking out of his Nikes with a hint of a tired stumble.  Every day now.  Up early in the morning -- much earlier than the old days, the familiar days, the days there had actually been fewer of than the ugly days, but who was counting?  Up early, then an exhaustingly boring day more often than not, then parked at that desk for an hour or two, once or twice for half the night...  Sometimes when Bobby thought him long asleep, he watched.  His eyes were good for any number of things.  Better at deciphering faint images against shiny glass than an ordinary man's eyes.  Better at seeing the droop to tired shoulders and sometimes the way a head would find hands, rest in them, stay there for what seemed a very long time...

Remy swallowed.  His throat was dry, but the bathroom sink was too far away to be worth the journey.  So was Bobby, and what it would take to ask him.

Down to boxers, Bobby nudged his shoes toward the wall with a toe.  He used to bother to change for bed.  Like Bed was an event to be anticipated, prepared for, rather than the place a person went when there was nowhere else to be.  Like maybe when he was pulling on any old shirt and any old shoes in the morning, some part of his mind was racing ahead through the daylight hours and already plotting whether that night would be a Tigger night or a boxers night or a birthday-suit-and-tie night.

"Hey..."

Remy debated pretending sleep.  Cursed himself in annoyance when he noticed what he was considering.  "Heh?"

"You thirsty?"

His chest tightened, and somehow he was angrier for the question.  "Non."

"Sure?"

His response got shorter by a whole clipped letter.  "No."

A pause.  Bobby stared at his back.  Remy stared at Bobby's eyes and wondered that he hadn't yet noticed this unsubtle trick.  Hadn't yet looked closely enough.

"Everything okay?"

He felt edgy.  He wanted a drink.  He wanted to want sex.  "Sure.  Fine."  He wanted...

Bobby kept staring, but not for long.  It must've been tiring, staring.  Tedious.  He closed his eyes on a glare as the other man slipped beneath the covers, sheets shushing against skin, bedsprings sighing and debating a squeak.  Personal Space.  Bobby was in it, inches away.  Too far by fingerlengths and too close by leagues, with no possible happy medium anywhere that Remy could find.

A half-roll of the body beside him, bed shifting underneath, and then a hand on his upturned shoulder and sliding down his chest in something like a hug, careful of the alien presence of the securely taped-down port.  Lips against his neck, just down from his ear, with a perfunctory gesture.  No I-want-you kiss.  Not even an echo of that.  For a while those kisses had at least pretended to remember...

Bobby's hand rubbed down his chest and up again, soothing.  But not.  What time was it now?  He'd have to turn his head to look, and if he turned his head Bobby would meet his eyes, and if Bobby met his eyes Remy would...would...he didn't know.  But he didn't want it.

The window, though, he'd look at.  The ghostly image of himself, lying there, indistinct and wrongly proportioned.  The arm over him, the hand resting now against his sternum.  The muscle on that arm, the health of the skin, the light tan that was actually darker than his own complexion these days.  He was all lines and angles now more than ever before, while Bobby retained that wonderful human bluntness, that lasting solidarity.  Even in the reflection Bobby looked more real than he did.

His throat tightened.  Never wish it...never wish that...  He hadn't.  Quite.  But somewhere close enough to realization was an emotion like envy, and it was directed at that casually laid arm and the strength in it and the man behind it.  He was able to suppress the shiver, but his next breath was too unsteady.

"What is it?"  Only slightly muzzied, the sleepy voice.  "Remy...?"

"'m fine.  Go back t' sleep."

"I wasn't yet."

His chest hurt, burning and squeezing at the same time.  "Get y' arm off."

"What?"

He nudged the offending limb back and off with a sharp elbow.  The instant the weight was gone he wanted it back.  "Go t' sleep."

"I'm not tired.  Remy, what--"

"I'm tired."

Quiet.  The bedsprings sighed and managed a muted complaint as Bobby took that half-roll back and moved that much farther away.  No clock ticked.  Theirs was digital.  He wanted a clock to tick so he could listen to something other than the difference in his breathing and his lover's.

Lover.

How long had it been?

Time, again.  He needed that clock.

He stayed so perfectly motionless that there was really no hope of sleep, though he didn't admit that.  For a while it seemed as if Bobby were doing the same, and in a perverse way Remy was glad of that, pleased to find this accord in discomfort, while a deeper part of him despised himself for the satisfaction.  When Bobby turned over and pulled his pillow to him in what sounded like an honest attempt at sleep, that deeper part got lost.  The accord was broken.  Even though it'd never been made.

Not trying to hide his expression -- why bother? -- he rolled to direct a glare at his sleeping-or-nearly-so companion.

Whose blue eyes were open, glinting ever so faintly, and looking right into his.  Looking and seeing his undisguised anger.

Caught, Remy didn't turn away.  Bobby studied his face candidly, his expression hard, for once, to read.  Pillow to pillow they stared for some interminable time.

Then a quiet question: "What did I do?"

Nothing.  Everything.  Too little.  Too much.  "Nothin'."

"You're mad."

"Non."  When had his poker face gotten so rusty?  "Tired."

"'cause I kept you up?  I'm sorry."

Then why, Remy wanted to ask, did you do it?  "You write a lot."

"Yeah...?"

"What y' write?"

A look down, just to avoid his eyes.  "I told you.  Just...notes and stuff.  Impressions.  What I'm thinking sometimes."

"Yeah, that paper's real fuckin' unnerstandin', ain' it?"

The gaze flew back to his, the brow above it furrowed in confusion.  "I don't get you."

Too easy to take those words literally.  "Get used to it."

He could almost imagine that ticking clock in the long stretch of silence as he glared into startled blue eyes.

Eventually-- "What did you mean by that?"

Remy had no idea.  "What I said."

Bobby's face was carefully still, but his voice-- "What did you mean by that?" --nearly brought a flinch with its rawness.

Nearly, but not quite.  "Ask y' book," he suggested coldly.  "Easier t' share wit' paper, innit?  It don' share back."

"What did you--"

"Y' have the book, getcha'self some skin mags t' jerk off to...then you don't even need me anymore, neh?  Perfect relationship right there in your han--"

Bobby's hand was on his arm then, fast and hard, fingers gripping unconsciously tight.  His face twisted, eyes burning with hot liquid and lips drawing back.  "Remy, what the fuck did you mean?"

He stared, not-quite-human eyes unable to miss even in darkness every line that shouldn't have been there and every slightly deeper shadow marking a face that had aged five years in one.  Tired didn't touch that face.  Exhausted was too measly a word.  So goddamn much was wearing away at Bobby's youth...and every night he told the journal all about it with frantic pen-strokes, then presented calm support and steadfast composure to the source of it all.  A calm, steadfast façade.

There was no...'them.'  Anymore.

He pushed the hand from his shoulder as roughly as he could, trying for dismissive, throat so constricted he had no idea how his words remained steady.  "Nothin'.  Didn' mean nothin'.  Maudi'crist, don' take everyt'ing so damn serious."

"You said--"

"F'get it."

"No."  He sat up, eyes still blazing, then abruptly slipped out of the bed.  Behind him Remy pushed himself up, too, and scooted back to let the headboard help him stay that way.  He wasn't sure what he expected -- some part of him fervently wanted Bobby to shout or hiss or curse or hit the wall, yes, hit the wall again -- but it wasn't for the other man to grab his jeans from the laundry basket, stepping in and jerking them up, buttoning them quickly and forgoing a shirt as he strode for the desk to grab that damned journal and then went directly for the door.

"I need some air."

The door opened, then shut behind him without a slam.  Not even an overly hard 'click.'

"S'go get some," Remy muttered, two beats too late.  His eyes felt hot and dry.  The room was suddenly stifling, the stillness smothering.  Maybe he needed some air, too.  Maybe he needed to go after Bobby and fight with him until they both broke wide open.

That would be easier to do if he could make it all the way down the hall.

He turned back to the windowpane and watched reflections and still didn't try to look through the glass.

***

Bobby's Journal:
            What the FUCK.
            "Get used to it"?
            Where the FUCK does he get off?  Christ, I can't believe he said that.  I can't believe it.  He just looked right at me and said it like it didn't matter at all, just said it like that was it, no question, stupid Bobby for ever thinking things were going to get fucking BETTER.
            What the FUCK.
            And now I'm shaking so hard I won't be able to read this later.  I don't think I want to read this.  I think I'm saying stupid things.  I'm thinking stupid things.  A whole pile.  Heaping gobs of stupid things.  And I can't fucking breathe.
            Jesus Christ.  He hates me.  He should hate me.  I'm not strong enough for this and I can't see what he needs and I'm so damn TIRED all the time when HE'S the one whose body's going nuts on him.  But he's in my head all the time.  ALL the time.  No matter what I'm thinking or doing or saying, he's in there, and it fucking HURTS.  And I need some more damn cusswords.
            What was it exactly?  I've got to get this down before I forget.  "I don't get you."  I think that's what I said.  I meant it like "huh?" but he said that I had to "get used to it."  "I don't get you."  "Get used to it."
            What the fuck?
            I still can't breathe right.
            His eyes were so angry.  He hates me, he fucking hates me, and I don't know why, but he does.  I can't do this, I can't fucking do this, there's just not enough LEFT to do this, I'm going to crack into a million pieces of ice on the floor and he'll hate me because I'm so cold and I can't STOP that, Jesus Christ, I fucking NEED that, you selfish bastard.  I can't breathe otherwise.  Just like now.  I can't breathe.
            Get some skin magazines, you said.  I DID.  I got a gay porn magazine for the first time in my life three weeks ago and I sat there in the bathroom while you were downstairs watching Judge-fucking-Judy with Jean and talking about me.  I looked at the pictures and read the smut and whacked off and I fucking hated it.  I don't know who the hell those men are.  I don't want to imagine fucking them.  I want YOU again.  And I can't tell you that because you've got enough to deal with without adding in a horny boyfriend.
            Pornos and this journal to replace you.  Jesus Christ.  Don't you dare fucking leave me.  Don't.  I can't - I don't know.  I can't.  Don't hate me, Remy.  I'll be stronger.  I'll figure something out.  As soon as I can breathe again.
            I can't believe you said that.  I just can't.  Fuck you, you didn't say that.
            What the FUCK. 

***

Jean...?

::I'm fine, love.  Go back to sleep.::

You're crying.  What...?  ...oh.

::I can't block it out.::

Sure you can.  You've blocked out more than this.

::I can't leave them all alone with this.::

A sigh, understanding.  "C'mere..."  Arms around her; solid, warm, healthy.  Share with me.  Let me help.

::How do you survive something like that?  That monumental separateness?::

I don't know.  But people do it every day, right out there in the ordinary world.

::There should be answers to this kind of pain.::

There should be, yes.  A tighter hug.  Are you going to be able to sleep again?  We've got to get the rest of the supplies transferred out to Muir tomorrow...

::I'm staying up.::

Standing watch?

::Just in case.::

Then I'm staying up, too.  Arms shifted as he got more comfortable, but didn't leave even for a moment.  You don't think either of them would do anything...well...

She leaned back against him in the dark.  ::Logan's up.  He's watching too.::

Then there's actually a danger?

Quiet resolve blanketed the sadness.  ::We'll just...be sure.::

***

In the sparse woods to the east of the mansion, as the sun tapped the rim of the opposite horizon, Logan did this little thing with his hand and sent Drake slamming face-first into the hard-packed dirt.

"Engh," the boy said, rather muffled.

Logan watched him from a few feet away, shoulder to a pine trunk, arms across his chest.  His face was impassive, as it had been for the half hour he'd been kicking the younger X-Man's ass.  He sweated only lightly.  His breath came steady and deep.

Drake drew himself to all fours and shook his head briskly so that dirt and dead leaves flew from his hair.  Spat, three times, then shifted weight and freed a hand to wipe across his lips.  It came away with brown-black dirt and plain red blood smeared across the back.

Logan waited 'til he'd pushed back to sit wearily on folded knees.  "Done?"

"No."

"Then get up."

"Working on it."

Logan straightened, walked across, then shoved, hard, and sent the kid down again.  Sideways this time instead of face.  Drake barely made a noise of protest beyond a startled grunt.

"I said are you done?"

He propped an elbow and got his torso up a bit.  "No."

This time Logan put him down harder, followed through and pinned him, with one of Drake's arms twisted almost backwards between them.  A hiss told him the pain was noticed.  "Either you're done," Logan told him levelly, "or you ain't.  And if you ain't, I ain't.  'Til you are.  Got it?"

"Got it," the kid managed against the dirt, voice strained and smothered.

"Good."  He eased the pressure off the arm marginally.  "So.  Done?"

With incremental movements, small and jerky, Drake got his head turned sideways until his mouth was clear.  He took a shaky breath, which Logan pushed back out of him by leaning heavily against his torso.  "Hhuh!  N-no."

That arm got twisted up, roughly, 'til experience told Logan it would give with any more force.  Drake's face twisted and his teeth bared and a wheezing gasp said that oh yes, the pain was noticed, and still what he said was, "Nnngh, no."

Stolid expression giving way to disgust, the older X-Man released him and stood.  Other than slowly drawing the aching arm down beside him into a more natural position, the boy stayed pretty much still, crumpled and panting on the ground.

"You're done, Drake."

Long seconds of panting, then, "Not until I...call it."

A guttural curse.  "Did it ever occur to you t' ask if I'd mind you doin' this?"

"Doing what?"

"Usin' me to hurt yourself."

Drake panted a bit more, then blinked an eye open and looked at him.  "Honestly?  No."

"I mind," Logan said acidly.  "I mind very fucking much."

The peeking eye closed.  "Sorry."  But the word sorely lacked conviction.

Tight-jawed, Logan strode to his discarded jacket.  Thrust a hand into a pocket, brought it out with a battered pack of unfiltered cigarettes.  An unpredictable wind had been snaking through the trees all afternoon, and it breathed past him as he struck a match, making him cup his hand protectively around the fragile flame.  It lived just long enough for him to light up with a deep, heavy drag on the cig.

When he refocused attention on his expended adversary, Drake's eyes were open and staring at him, though he hadn't so much as pulled his limbs into order.  Logan wanted to use that stare, wear it down, force some sort of concession from the kid.  But there was nothing in those tired eyes for him to work with.

Drake watched him smoke, tracking every motion, not saying a word.  Just lying there in the deepening dusk and blinking from time to time.

After a couple of minutes it got to be too much, and Logan dropped the half-finished cigarette to the loamy dirt, then crushed it underfoot.  "Okay," he growled.  "Shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

"You gonna stay there all night?"

A slow gathering, bracing, pushing, and he sat up, Indian-style.  "I don't think so."

Logan looked away, nostrils flaring as he caught a hint of scent on that fleeting breeze.  "You wanna get whomped in the future, go find a dive and pick a fight.  I can recommend a few."  Nothing worth worrying about, his nose determined.  So he was free to return to glowering.  "But I got better things to do with my time."

A single nod.  No expression.  No apology.

"What the fuck are you thinkin', kid?"

Drake hesitated almost long enough to prompt a more irritated question.  Just before it would've come, he said, "I."  Paused lengthily.  Continued.  "I don't think I am.  Thinking."

Logan waited for more.  Nothing came, so he commented, "That's a good way to get a body killed."

"I guess."

"That'll show Cajun."

Finally something: a flinch, and a glint of moisture in dimly lit eyes.  "Fuck you, Logan."

"Gettin' mighty foul there, boy."

"You don't know anything."

"I know some things," Logan said easily, finding his feet in the conversation at last.  "You told him how riled you are at him?"

"I'm not."

"You're not?"

"No."

"You ain't the least bit angry over how selfish he's being?  Not caring enough about you t' take care of himself?"

"I don't think that way."

"He prolly figured he'd go out fightin' before cancer caught up with him, Drake.  Nothin' to be mad about.  He just didn't plan ahead is all."

The kid looked down, blinking, and the wind kicked up to carry a taste of salt-water tears to Logan's nose.

"Hey.  Lookit me, Ice."  He did.  "Know who I blamed for Mariko's death for the longest time?"

"Yourself," Drake croaked out.

"Well sure, me.  But I blamed M'iko most."

Lips drew back in a helpless, hopeless snarl.  "It's not his fault.  You won't get me to say it's his fault."

"Your head says that.  But this ain't about your head."

"I don't have a right to be mad at him."

Logan assumed his former position, arms crossed, shoulder to tree trunk.  "Oh, I dunno.  He pretty much trashed all your plans without so much as askin'.  Stole more than a year outta your life.  Made you do a lotta shit you never dreamed you'd have to do."  He assessed the state of conflict on the drawn face.  Felt a sting of guilt for pushing, but pushed anyway.  "And he might even go and die on ya.  What the fuck kinda right does he have to do that?"

"Damn you," he muttered.  He scrubbed a palm over his face, then two, shielding his eyes.  "Why are you doing this to me?"

"I'm bein' your fuckin' brick wall.  That's why you came to me, wasn't it?"

Gleaming eyes briefly found him in the faint twilight.  "I wasn't talking," Drake said distinctly, "to you."

The wind kicked through, carrying messages, taking information.  Just passing by.

"Oh," Logan said.

"Would you leave me alone now?"

"Can you get back all right?"

"Please go away."

After donning his jacket and pocketing the abandoned cigarette stub, Logan did as he asked.

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