Bobby 2015
By Jess.
Bobby tossed his keys onto the small table by the door that held unopened mail--mostly bills, and grabbed a bottle of cream soda on his way to the bedroom. He chilled it without thinking and took a sip before setting it on the dresser. His cat Howler jumped off the bed and started twining around his legs, living up to his name with pitiful and loud meows, wanting food and attention right now, please.
"Just a sec, stupid cat," Bobby muttered, tugging his tie loose. He never would have expected to be thirty years old, living with nothing but a cat, but here he was. Alone and lonely. But his mother was happy--he'd finished his accounting degree and was making a good living at it, he was dating 'normal' girls for the most part--he was pretty much pretending to not be a mutant, even if he did stay in touch with some of them.
And he hated it, but he couldn't go back. Being a hero was too much for him, he couldn't stand watching people get hurt, couldn't stand the failures, and couldn't stand having to kill people, even when they were bad guys and there was no other choice. He'd finally burned out and had to walk away. No one ever held a knife to an innocent person's throat with telekinesis at Stuyvesant and Brown, LLP. Not even when a large sum of money got misplaced because a zero was smudged into a two, because Stewart couldn't quite get the hang of do NOT eat over your paperwork.
On the other hand, no one ever thanked him for making a difference in their life, either. You couldn't have everything. So he did a job he hated because he couldn't hack it as an X-Man, and he went through relationship after relationship, because he couldn't commit, or he wouldn't talk to them, or (in John's case), because it was a supremely bad idea from the start, even if they had been happy for a while.
Pulled from his woolgathering by sharp claws through his sock and a particularly plaintive yowl, he rolled his eyes and tossed his tie onto the bed. "FINE. I'll feed you, already." He grinned and padded down the hall, seeing the red light flashing on his machine as he reached for the cat food bag on top of the fridge. Probably his mother, wanting him to come have dinner with some meek, homely girl this weekend. Ugh. He hit the 'play' button and started pouring cat food into Howler's dish.
The cat food overflowed and ran onto the floor as he froze, eyes closing as the light Irish brogue rolled down his spine, bringing back pain, heartache--and a love like he'd never felt, before or since. "Bobby? ...It's Terry. It's been a while, I know, but well...call me back?" He barely dared breathe as he grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen, dropping the cat food onto the floor, much to Howler's delight. He scribbled the number down as Terry's lilting voice read it off, and picked up the phone, dialing with trembling fingers. His voice locked in his throat for a moment as she picked up, and then he remembered how to breathe again and said "Hey. It's me. Bobby. ...What's up?"
