Fic: The Scientist
E-mail: violet147@yahoo.com
Rating: PG.
Warnings: I'm angsty. So angst there be.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Pairings: I'm gonna be snarky and tell you to read it and not tell you who it is.
Summary: "Let's go back to the start."
NOTE: Totally, completely inspired by The Scientist by Coldplay


I.

This was supposed to be the best summer of Bobby’s life. The summer after graduation, the summer before going off to college, the summer of everything and nothing at all. When it got here it was the summer of pain and sadness, of responsibility thrust upon him to replace a silent missing link, of sleepless nights and a million and a half regrets, of a girlfriend who stares at him with accusing eyes and friends who look at him with pity and exasperation. Shut the book, their eyes say. Move on already.

Eventually he does shut his book, one that he’s read a thousand times over, and he goes to the Professor and says he’s taking a vacation. “You want me to tell you where to go, yes?” was all the Professor had said. Of course he knew Bobby was going to say yes. Of course he knew Bobby would leave that night without saying goodbye to anyone. And of course he knew why Bobby needed the vacation, to apologize, to say things that were never said, things that HE had not only wanted to hear, but NEEDED to hear, things that could have saved the both of them.

What the Professor didn’t know was whether or not Bobby would be coming back. He didn’t even know if he was coming back. It doesn’t matter if he does, he realizes as he’s walking in the bus station, one single suitcase in hand, his copy of Watson’s DNA: The Secret of Life in the other. What matters is that he gets there, and what matters is that he listens to all the secrets he had been too naïve to listen to, to answer all the questions he had been too ashamed to answer. He doesn’t want it to stay the way it is, wants to stop running in circles around his mistakes and his heartache. It is time to seek closure, it is time to end all of this for good, for things to return to the way it used to be.


II.

Bobby’s not a stranger to pain. Pain is a constant for people like him; they experience it much sooner than normal people, when their powers manifest themselves and their parents look at them as if they’ve turned into a monster. They experience it when they walk out their front door and people scream at their appearance. They are stained in it every time a new politician comes on the TV, demanding their destruction or worse, their enslavement.

Bobby knows pain. He was draped in it when he realized that his own little brother called the police on him. But he did not know what to do with himself when they returned back to the school, when life went on with the heat turned off and he was the only one who seemed to be freezing from the lack of it.

He knew pain.

Yet he didn’t know what it was like to lose someone, even when he heard stories of it, when others told him love wasn’t a bed of roses.

He knew it was hard. He just didn’t know it would be THIS hard.


III.

He walks down the street, suitcase in one hand, his book in the other. It wasn’t Bobby’s book, originally. He found it sitting on his dresser, well-worn and dog-eared, a highlighter in the book. Bobby could see passages outlined in yellow without having to open it, and he remembers sitting in the dining hall, reading it while he had, memorizing each outlined passage, trying to discern what they meant to the person, the scientist who thought they had been meaningful to mark.

Bobby spots a coffee shop and goes in, a little uneasy about the amount of people sitting around, chatting, laughing, studying and being together. He can’t help but be fascinated as he watches everyone, as they exhibit their humanity and do everything their genetics dictate them to do. He watches the chemical reactions flow between a boy with a soul patch and a red-head in a beret, and he sighs wistfully at his own display of biology, wishing he hadn’t been such a human, wishing he had been able to rise above his DNA and say what he wanted to say.

He leaves the shop with a latte and sips it gingerly, too hot on his tongue. It makes him reminisce of other things that were too hot on tongue, things that his heart screams for now over the constant dissecting of biology in his head. He only started reading about biology and genetics and himself after they got back. He was trying to figure out why he had done the things he did, why he did not say the things he had wanted to say, why he had not only failed himself, but…Bobby can’t bear to say it. It still hurts too much to say he has failed the one who meant everything, who taught him that the key to himself was his DNA.

Everything boils down to science. Bobby owes it to science for their first kiss, for their first time, for the depth of his love, for his silence when that love walked away and left him, for everything wonderful that he screwed up.

He hopes that this will not become one of those instances in which science is to blame. He hopes he’s absorbed enough knowledge, has outlined enough passages of his own, to rise above biology.


IV.

Bobby doesn’t know what he expects as he walks down the tight corridors, address in one hand, the book in his other. It’s a nice complex, thirty stories high, cool Mediterranean deco, and the apartments are probably small slices of paradise inside. Bobby does not want to walk into paradise. He’s not going in. He’s just dropping something off, is all.

When he finds apartment 296, he crouches low and slides the book underneath the door. It gets stuck, though, so it’s jammed half way in. It’s not exactly what Bobby was trying to do, but it will work; the book is there, and that’s all that really matters. He walks away quietly, hands in his coat pocket, chewing on his lip, trying to tell himself he’s not expecting anything from this, he’s not expecting anything at all.

But as he’s walking in the streets again, aimless, he realizes that he’s not just expecting anything; he’s expecting everything. I love you, yes I’ll come home, he’s expecting all of it and things he cannot even say to himself yet. He sighs to himself. He’s ready for it to end, for the final circle to be completed. He’s desperately hoping that it will go back to the way it used to be, but he won’t allow himself to hope that it will be achieved.

He doesn’t know who to blame for that; genetics or himself. Perhaps he should blame both.


V.

Days pass, nothing happens, and Bobby’s ready to go. He doesn’t know where. He knows he can’t go back to the mansion, can’t go back to the whispers and the concerned glances and the girlfriend who knows she’s just a mirage to him. He knows he can’t go back to Boston; he’ll most likely end up in jail if he does. Maybe he could leave the country. He always did want to go to England.

He takes a sip of his latte, and it’s still too hot, but he’s starting to get used to it. After his powers kicked in, heat was the plague to him, something he tried to avoid at all costs. But now he’d do anything, really, just to be burned one more time, by a pair of hands, by a voice, by a pair of bottomless eyes, by a lighter with a shark painted on it, by a flame that will never seep too deeply into skin due to the hand that controls it.

He’s uncomfortable sitting here without anything to hold except his cup. He had gotten so used to carrying the book around with him that he’s antsy, his hands are almost twitching. He knew letting go would be hard. He just didn’t know it would be THIS hard.

He starts reciting passages to himself, tapping his fingers against the cup. He’s on page seventy-two when suddenly there’s a plop on the table, and there’s his book, sitting there, mockingly and dog-eared.

Except it’s not his book, and when he looks up, he thinks his heart’s going to explode. He’s sure there’s a term for it, for the chemical reaction the brain sends to the heart to make it flutter, to the stomach to make it churn, to the eyes to formulate tears. He used to have it all memorized. Both of them did, both of them used to be able to recite the definition word for word.

But as he looks up, and John looks at him, definitions do not matter, regrets do not matter, biology does not matter. What matters is that they’ve stopped running in endless circles. What matters is that John’s here, and Bobby’s here, and while they have not exactly risen above biology yet, it’s okay.

They’re here, and they can try to go back to the start.


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