Work Text:
John reminds him of his father.
Like him, John is a few inches taller than Bob—a fractional distance, really—but standing on the mountain of his regret, built of the same ghosts that haunted his father, John towers over him. He blocks out the sun, like an eclipse before an apocalypse. Like his father on a sweltering Fourth of July afternoon, drunk and drowning and looking for a fight.
Bob’s memory is paper-thin, but he cannot forget the scorching temperature of his father’s temper. Flaring so hot that Bob spent his childhood showering in his father’s volcanic eruptions, a molten statue forming in and out of stone.
It is the same heat that boils inside of John, screwing his lips into a scowl, darkening his pale gaze.
Sometimes when John looks at him, with all of his synthetic strength wound like concertina wire, Bob hacks up a clot of ash and waits for John to smack the grit from his mouth. But when John touches him, his fist unfurls like a white flag.
John’s palm cautiously cradles Bob’s cheek. His fingers push into Bob’s hair.
John holds him with a tenderness so foreign to his father that Bob imagines his old man wouldn’t recognize the sensation if it burrowed within him like a parasitic plant growing weeds around his bones.
And always, Bob leans into John. And always, John’s hands are a prelude to a kiss. Never a punch, a slap, a scratch, a grab, a twist of a limb so hard Bob feels his younger self howl before he breaks.
And in that way, Bob supposes John is not like his father at all.