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Warren’s train back from DC was delayed and he didn’t end up in a cab heading to his apartment until after 11. He would’ve gotten a hotel and the Acela in the morning, except that he had another meeting with his grandfather’s estate lawyers and the family office accountants and his father’s representatives and...he was losing track of everything going on with his grandfather’s will. He just knew he had to be back at the lawyer’s office at 9 AM and he didn’t want to be late. And that his father, who had been attending the same lobbying meet and greets and charity galas as he, had not invited Warren to join him on the private jet to speed his travel time.
He heard noise in the apartment when he got off the elevator, but he was still surprised to see the cause of the ruckus when he opened the door. There were six boys (ok, adult men, but barely) in the living room, none of them Bobby, though some were wearing NYU gear so Iceman had to be nearby.
He paused in the doorway and took in the scene. They had their laptops open, along with cans of some terrible off-brand hard seltzer that Warren certainly did not stock in the fridge, and they were playing vaguely familiar pop music and talking and at least two guys were going to hook up tonight, based on the way they were positioned together on the sofa; unclear if it was an ongoing relationship or a temporary situation.
One of the boys looked up and spotted Warren, his eyes suddenly wide.
“Uh…Bobby?” he called off towards the hallway.
“You must be Bobby’s—” another boy started talking, then caught himself. “You must be Warren. Bobby’s…Warren.” Bobby came out of the bathroom and stopped in surprise.
“Oh, shit. You said your train was delayed.”
“It was, but it’s midnight.”
Someone stopped the music. Another suddenly realized that they were all interlopers in his living room, for God’s sake, and started picking up the cans.
“Yeah, guys, this is Warren. Warren, this is Taylor, Josh, other Josh, Ethan, Mike, and Javi.”
Warren recognized some of the names from various stories and from overhearing Bobby’s facetime calls or whatever it was he did to keep in touch with his friends now that he had moved a whole 70 blocks north of Washington Square Park. Finals were coming up, so it probably was a study group, at least before the bluetooth speaker came out.
They stared at him and he wondered for a split second if feathers were showing. But no, his wings had been packed away since he left DC. Then he realized that he must be an object of discussion among Bobby’s friends, probably long before they ended up in his living room, and turned on the charm to take back control of the situation.
“It’s nice to meet you all. Please, you don’t have to run right this minute, though I do have an early meeting tomorrow so …maybe not too late.” He carried his suitcase into his bedroom and then, making sure nothing was showing beneath his suit jacket, returned to hang his winter coat up in the closet.
“Oh, no. We couldn’t possibly stay,” the boy identified as Other Josh said as he tipped an armload of empty cans into the recycling bin. “We didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Please. It’s fine. Bobby lives here, too.”
But the study-group-turned-party was clearly over and the boys packed up and said their goodnights. One in particular seemed to linger at the door, disappointed that Bobby’s previously unseen roommate was now making himself known.
“They seem nice,” he said to Bobby once they were safely in the elevator. “I’m sorry to be a killjoy but I really do have an early meeting tomorrow.”
“No, it’s all good. I didn’t mean for them to stay so late.” Bobby was pulling the curtains in the living room and Warren, now back in the privacy of his own home, started stripping down so he could free his wings from his harness.
Bobby had rearranged the furniture for his study party, but he helped Warren put things back in their place so he could properly relax. In his undershirt and slacks, he stretched out to do a couple of quick exercises once there was space again.
“How was the thing?” Bobby asked while Warren held a plank on the floor. “The one with the celebrities and lobbyists at the Kennedy Center?”
“Honors? Fine.” He stretched his wings up and down, slowly going through the motions for flight, letting each muscle flex and release. He’d been under wraps for almost 10 hours and it was a relief to let his wings free, even if he wasn’t going to get a proper flight in until tomorrow night.
“Did you meet the President?”
“Sadly my dad represented Worthington Industries at the White House reception. But we did end up with a Commerce Committee member at our table after the show. Senate Commerce Committee, I mean.”
“I’m sure that’s…actually I have no idea. Is that good?”
He stood up again to stretch his neck and back and then shrugged. “Senator Wilkins isn’t in the majority, but she might be in a year or three, so it’s good to build the relationship now. When she was in the House, we had a factory in her district and she is pragmatic about a lot of business policy. Not a bad ally.”
“I mean, is it good for us?”
Right. Mutant stuff.
“Could be worse,” he said, finally. “She wasn’t in office when the registration act passed and while she did vote to reauthorize, she only supported it once they weakened all the tracking mechanisms.”
“That doesn’t seem like a good thing, Warren.” Nor had the comments she made about how the Kennedy Center was taking a big risk in inviting the likes of Lila Cheney to perform in honor of Joan Jett. He tried to put his friend at ease.
“Don’t stress out about that stuff. I’m on it, because what’s the point of having all those family connections if I can’t use them to help mutants? Hank’s on it, because Ben Grimm invited him to some sort of poker game, and he said Avengers show up to that thing. And Scott is smarter than the rest of us combined when it comes to seeing how everything gets put together. Seeing how to fix stuff. That’s why people listen to him.” He had, in his conversation with one of the lobbyists, tried to talk up repeal of the Mutant Registration Act, but nobody wanted to even consider it; Scott was so much better at laying out the stark reality of what the registry meant.
He tried to pivot back to reassurance. “Don’t worry about that stuff. Focus on finals. Have some fun. I think at least one of those boys has a serious thing for you.”
He laughed. “That’s going to be hard while I’m living here. I couldn’t tell them we know each other through mutant stuff so I implied you’re my sugar daddy.”
“Is that why one of your friends called me your boyfriend?”
“He didn’t.” Bobby looked scandalized. “I told them you were very private and didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Not in as many words, but the meaning was clear. And to be fair,” he said with a hint of mischief in his voice, “You live with an older man who doesn’t charge you rent, you eat all my food, and I’ve paid for half the clothes in your wardrobe that aren’t jeans and ratty t-shirts. For better or for worse, I am your sugar daddy.”
“The only things in my wardrobe that aren’t jeans and t-shirts are my X-Men uniform and a suit.”
“Both of which were gifts from me.”
He considered the facts and then broke into a laugh. “Ok, yeah. But I don’t think you’re quite into what I have to offer as repayment, at least in the traditional sugar daddy sense.”
“Well, to be fair, you’re not my type. I tend to go for a more…mature man. Above legal drinking age, at least.”
Bobby’s jaw dropped. This was clearly news. Warren left him to process and continued his stretching routine, letting his wings shake out the stiffness built up from his day of travel.
“Since when?” Bobby asked, finally.
“Jean never told you?”
“Jean knows?”
“Jean’s a telepath, Bobby. She probably knows about your sex life, too,” he said.
“I cannot believe you are gay. I thought you had a thing for Jean. Was it a ruse? Is that why she knows?”
He sighed. “We can agree that bisexuality exists, right?”
“My point still stands. You, Warren Kenneth Worthington, III, are not straight?” Bobby was looking him over, as if there were a key to interpreting this sort of thing. A tell. Warren bristled at the direct question, but there was only one answer to it.
“No, Robert Louis Drake. I am not.”
This, of course, demanded an explanation, but it was nearly one in the morning. He told Bobby he would explain in due time, but please. He needed to sleep.
--
Warren was already gone by the time Bobby woke up the next morning, meaning that Bobby was left alone with his thoughts when it came to the revelations of last night. He had asked Jean, once, if Warren was anything other than purely straight, and she had changed the subject. Now he knew why.
Then again, he had long ago ceased to lust after the man because he was, well, Warren. Not that living together hadn’t reminded Bobby of how attractive he was; his X-Men costume left little to the imagination, but Bobby had also seen him in a towel now and it certainly wasn’t an unpleasant experience. But Bobby knew him too well to fixate on those delts and ignore the rest. Warren was from money so old it considered pop culture in its entirety to be gauche (gauche, by the way, was a word he had learned from Warren, because only Warren would insist on using a fancy French word to call something tacky). The man confessed last week while Bobby was trying to find the Rangers game that the only sport he followed was international tennis. He hated Bobby’s music and had tried to drag Bobby to an opera, telling him it would be relaxing. It was four hours long and in Italian. How is that relaxing?
He poked through the buttons on Warren’s fancy coffee machine until it agreed to produce a normal cup of coffee, and then went out onto the terrace to enjoy it. Steam rose from his mug as he settled into a chair and took in the view of Central Park. He wasn’t wearing a coat, which since it was December might violate Warren’s “no mutant stuff where the neighbors can see it” policy, but it wasn’t that cold, so he had plausible deniability and also, he didn’t care.
Which was the actual difference between him and Warren. Warren was so repressed. Some of it was old-money WASP shit that he would joke about as much as anyone else. No feelings, family was an obligation not a thing you actually liked, that kind of stuff.
But it was mostly the fact that he couldn’t tell anyone he was a mutant. He couldn’t risk pissing off his father because his penthouse apartment, his nice clothes, hell, all the stuff he had bought for Bobby and Hank and Scott and Jean, stemmed from the money his father controlled. And while Bobby had never met Warren Kenneth Worthington, II, he did know the man hated mutants so his son being one of them wasn’t a net positive in father-son relations.
Admittedly, Bobby didn’t have a great relationship with his parents either, and had been chilling right alongside Warren in the mutant closet until two months ago. But that didn’t change the fact that now that he was free of that particular burden, it was kind of hard to imagine himself with a man who controlled his life to such an extreme degree, simply to maintain what mediocre existence he had. That wasn’t, actually, what Bobby wanted. In a boyfriend, or in life.
His mind wandered from the revelation of last night back to the fact that he started finals next week and it was time to get his act together and attempt to pass his classes. He was deep into reviewing for his game theory final when Warren came back.
“I thought you had class?”
“It’s a reading day,” he said. Warren glanced at his notebook, covered in scribbles as he worked through the problem sets he had not yet turned in.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” he said. Warren had spent college learning ancient Greek and art history and stuff, which meant that he did not believe Bobby when he swore this was pretty easy.
And besides, he had more important things to deal with now that Warren was back in the apartment. He put his notebook aside and shut his laptop.
“How was the meeting?”
“Frustrating,” Warren replied. He didn’t volunteer more so Bobby didn’t ask.
“And the other thing we were talking about last night?”
Warren had started making himself a cappuccino and kept his concentration on the timing of his espresso shot.
“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“No, Warren. I am not. I know for a fact that you, Jean, Hank and Scott have all fretted about me as the youngest member of the X-Men, like I was an exotic houseplant with special needs. And now you tell me that you could’ve been a proper queer role model for little teen Bobby Drake? I’m offended that you kept your mouth shut.”
He shrugged, then sighed, trying to play the whole thing off. “I don’t know how much there is to tell. I went to an all boys school, where casual experimentation was about as common as you might imagine. I realized I was attracted to both boys and girls, but then I grew a pair of wings before I turned 16, so it’s not like I had a chance to get beyond heavy petting before Dad stepped up with his extreme lockdown due to my…anatomical differences. But yeah. Bisexual. Or pan. I don’t exactly love strict rules about how I should look or behave, so I’m not inclined to put a limit on others if we get along.”
“No rules except wearing that straightjacket every day, am I right?”
He meant it as a joke, but it landed like a lead balloon. Warren stiffened, then went completely silent while he foamed his milk and assembled his drink. He was still in his harness and he took a moment to take it off, now that he had his coffee in hand. Bobby tried again.
“So. Attracted to everyone. Got it. But have you…” if Warren took all that kind of stuff off the table when he got his wings, Bobby now had some other questions about Warren’s private life.
Warren caught his drift and made a face.
“I have sex. We’ve lived together for two months now. What do you think I’m doing when I stay out late?”
“Brooding?” Bobby said, his voice pitching comically high as he realized he had blurted out an absurd answer. Warren had a job, but it wasn’t, like, a straight 9-5 because it was related to his family’s company, and so he would take a lot of the X-Men stuff at weird hours when the others were busy. He had always assumed Warren was gone from the apartment at late hours because of that. But the look on Warren’s face meant that Bobby had missed the mark. He tried again.
“Flying around, doing your thing? I know the internet wackos who say you operate out of a secret nest in Central Park are full of shit, but I kind of assumed you were…alone? Chilling atop the Chrysler building and keeping watch over the city or something.”
Warren laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. If you land atop the Chrysler building, then you cannot enjoy the architecture of the Chrysler building. That’s one of the best parts of the skyline.” Bobby laughed, too. Warren took advantage of the moment to finish. “But I do go on dates, too. I’m not about to jump on the apps, but I have my ways.”
“I still have logistical questions, but I will leave that to you to explain further as you feel appropriate.”
“Yeah, I suppose that’s understandable.” Warren sipped his coffee, not offering any details, no doubt because he wanted to know if Bobby was going to spill any other stupid ideas out of his mouth. Bobby tried to choose his words carefully, to avoid further embarrassment.
“Is there…anyone? Do you compartmentalize your significant other just like you compartmentalize the X-Men?”
“Not really, no. A couple of years ago I got put in touch with a matchmaker under the guise of being too rich to date just anyone. She didn’t know I was a mutant, but she got that I had some weird sex hangups, and got me started with potential partners who weren’t going to blab. And while none of that converted to a long-term relationship, it did put me in the right circles to find people who want a fun time but know there are boundaries. I am not the only high net worth man in my 20s with an eccentric kink.”
“Ah, yes. When I think of all the billionaires I have dated, that certainly tracks.” Bobby couldn’t help himself. Warren was asking for it when he pulled out the poor little rich boy routine.
Warren just smirked.
“Pretty much all of us from old money were raised in a world that doesn’t compute with the reality of dating today and that makes for some weird preferences, trust me. People who made it big in finance and elite law firms are all assholes and don’t even get me started on whatever is going on with Silicon Valley these days. You’d be surprised at how many people, women in particular, will go for ‘sex in total darkness’ guy when those are their other options.”
Jesus. “Are the straights OK? Wait. Can you even answer that, now?”
Warren snorted, a rare loss of composure from the man who wouldn’t even loosen his tie if others were watching.
“They are not,” he replied. “At least based on the women I have talked to about other guys they have slept with. To be honest, one of the things I like about men is the fact that there does tend to be more…up front negotiation in queer circles. Nothing is taken for granted, so having particular needs or boundaries is less weird.”
That was, actually, something Bobby also liked about guys. About men. You couldn't just default to some ingrained cultural expectation, where everyone had a singular, defined role whether you liked it or not. Which is how he found himself blurting out, before his mental filter could stop himself:
“Well, if you ever want to try doing it with the lights on, just say the word, Angel. Open to discussing what works for you.”
The reality of what had just escaped his lips hit him the second it happened. His mind had short-circuited and the “yes, he’s hot but also he’s Warren” thought had apparently just stopped at “yes, he’s hot,” and now Bobby had to sit there while Warren gave him an appraising, slightly bemused look as he formulated his response.
“Bobby,” he said, finally, “normally one has this conversation with straight guys, but it’s worth remembering, maybe, that just because a man enjoys sex with other men, he doesn’t want to fuck every guy he meets? Like I said last night, you aren’t my type.”
He babbled for a moment, not actually able to come back with a joke. Warren rescued him with yet another finely-tuned retort while he flushed, and then frosted over with embarrassment.
“And I will remind you that when we met, you were seventeen. Even if I liked younger guys, that is a line I would never cross.”
“Well I have news for you now, sir, because I am fully 20 and no longer a legal liability.” He was relieved to have come up with a reply, even if it was, in fact, a terrible response to this statement.
Warren just drained his coffee cup and put it in the dishwasher, resigned and, thankfully, a bit amused at the prospect of listening to Bobby trip over himself for the rest of the conversation.
“You are one of my closest friends. I trust you with my life when we are out doing X-Men stuff. But I don’t think of you that way.”
As much as he had already concluded he wasn’t into Warren (and as ill-conceived as his pick-up lines had been, given the fact that he wasn’t into Warren), there was still a gentle moment of disappointment in that news. He tried to set that feeling aside and keep it light, to at least give Warren the space to be honest.
Because he was right. They were friends. Not friends with benefits or with undeniable sexual chemistry. They were just…friends, and Bobby liked that in his life. His compulsive urge to crack a joke just wouldn’t die down, but he channeled it in a more productive direction.
“Well, now I’m just curious. Who is your type? Is it Hank? He actually likes opera, you know. Or Scott? I bet you like the glasses.”
Warren raised a single eyebrow. “I will leave either of them to you, if they ever swing that way. I like…” he paused, actually considering the question. No longer taking the wry, bemused attitude towards Bobby’s inquiry. “A little older, mature. Discreet, because I like my privacy. But not repressed, because I have enough of that in my own life. Not WASPy, for the same reason.” His face softened as he reminisced and Bobby finally found the strength to stay silent and see where this was going.
“This is probably setting a bad example for a current college student, but my first male relationship, brief though it was, was a TA. Art History of the Eastern Mediterranean. Huge brown eyes, the longest lashes you have ever seen, and six weeks away from moving to Istanbul to start the research portion of his dissertation. He made a pass and then, realizing that I was interested but had no idea what I was doing, was extremely patient while I came out of my shell and didn’t push when I had weird hangups about being seen naked or being touched on my back.”
“That sounds…nice.” He couldn’t imagine that with any of his TAs, but sure. If it worked for Warren.
“Extremely. And to this day I can say that anyone who can talk dirty to me and explain the finer points of Ottoman calligraphy in the same breath is really fucking sexy.”
Bobby couldn’t help but laugh, and then Warren, too. Yeah. If that’s what turned him on then they were 100% for sure not each other’s type.
“He ghosted me once he left town, but it did give me the confidence to realize that I deserved some kind of sex life, even if I was committed to keeping the mutant thing a secret. Helped me pivot from the guy who got hit on, but was too shy to get beyond first base, into what I do now. Which is still a front but it’s more true to myself: Handsome, erudite, and—yes—very, very rich. I’m particular about my boundaries, but if you play your cards right and respect them, I will do everything in my power to show you a good time.”
“Of course ‘handsome and rich’ would feature in your own description of your personality. You are more than that, you know.”
“I’m not talking about me in here,” he spread his wings to make his point. “I’m talking about the Warren who gets to go out and date people. Some day there will be someone who can reconcile the two parts of my life, at least I hope. But until the number of people I trust with the knowledge of my wings breaks into double digits, I’m afraid this is how it is.”
“God, that’s bleak.” Shit. He had stepped in it again. Except that Warren nodded.
“Yeah. But that’s why it pisses off my dad so much that I don’t just give in. Things may be bleak, but I’m holding out for something better. If I can get through whatever mess he’s trying to make at the moment.”
That was Bobby’s cue to go back to homework, because he needed to pass his classes and Warren was, technically speaking, not supposed to talk about the legal fight he was in with his family over his grandfather’s estate. As he gathered up his stuff to go study in the quiet of his bedroom, he tried to wrap things up.
“Well, Warren. If you ever find that special someone of any gender who you want to hear talk dirty to you about calligraphy without your shirt on, please know that I will clear out of the apartment at a moment’s notice to give you the space you need.”
Warren gave him another one of his appraising looks, trying to figure out if this was another joke. It just made Bobby feel all flustered again.
“Don’t look at me that way. I’m actually trying to be sincere. It sucks that you have to hide like that and I already feel bad that I’m eating your food and taking up your space and—”
Warren held out a hand, telling him to stop.
“You are not taking up space. I invited you to stay. But…thank you. I appreciate the offer.” The tone was genuine, not arch for once. Then he cracked a smile before continuing, “And you can tell your friends that even though I am your older, loaded, and impossibly handsome boyfriend, it seems we are not exclusive and I am happy for you to see other men. So you should ask that boy Taylor out. He’s into you.”
“I hate to tell you, but Taylor is straight.”
Warren shrugged. “Bobby, until last night, you thought I was straight.”