Work Text:
He's not Johnny, of course. Nobody will ever be Johnny.
But he's very similar. He has that same nervous tick he used to have where he’d rub the back of his neck. Though his voice isn't the same, the cadence that he laughs at is similar enough. Earlier, he said something that is so strikingly similar to something Johnny once said that he needs to catch his breath.
It's not that he's replacing Johnny. He wouldn't even think of it. It's just sometimes, in the right circumstances, when he closes his eyes, he can imagine someone else is standing there.
Maybe that's why he kisses him. He never kissed Johnny. Always wondered, in the back of his mind, of course he did. A lot of people fantasize about kissing Johnny Storm.
He doesn't have a frame of reference. For kissing Johnny, that is. But when he closes his eyes and he kisses Booster Gold, when he brings his hand up to his blonde hair, he can imagine, then, that someone else is in front of him. Kissing him like this.
He keeps it going. He knows he shouldn't. It's horrible, his mind screams at him. But Booster really is so much like him.
He makes the same kinds of jokes that both Johnny and Peter used to make, the kind that usually earned an elbow to the ribs.
He tells himself it's not just that. He tells himself he's doing this because he likes Booster.
The time they spend together is nice. Pleasant. Distracting from that familiar nagging buzz in the base of his skull. They go on an actual date. He makes Booster laugh, in that same cadence he zeroed in on when they met.
If he focuses he thinks he could feel the rumble of it, and maybe that'd feel familiar.
It's the after that Peter likes most. It's the after that makes his denial of his real motivations meaningless. He hates himself for it.
When he kisses Booster, Peter's hand automatically goes to the light switch. Booster never seems to notice. Maybe he does. He doesn't know which is better or worse.
When Booster's shoulder presses against his own, he closes his eyes, and imagines it's a much, much warmer touch.
And when Booster leaves, he slips Peter a notecard with a phone number. It feels heavy in his hand.
It filled the void, just temporarily. It made him leave it all by the door. The unsaid feelings he never dared to give a name.
"Is that wrong?" He asks nobody in particular.
‘You already know the answer to that,’ he thinks bitterly.
He doesn't call.