Chapter Text
One second, he was dead.
The next, he was gasping for air, his lungs burning as oxygen forced their way into them. His hands tightened to fists, grabbing into something soft, shifting under his weight. The back of his eyelids swirled in flashing patterns. His ribs ached as something pounded down on them. Steady and hard and dangerously close to breaking something, burning hot like he was being hit by a brand.
His eyes flew open, too much light to take anything in. He twisted away from the heat. The ground shifted as he put his weight down. He knew that sensation. Sand.
He threw up on it, frozen chunks of food long ago eaten. Only he didn’t stop there, kept going until his eyes were streaming and his throat was raw and his stomach ached as strings of bile forced their way out of him.
With one last retch, he collapsed back down onto the sand. He looked upwards, a haze over him, blocking the rest of the world from his sight. He panted for a second and his brain, finally convinced he was alive and staying that way, made its first slow and sticky thought, like chocolate syrup. A snail's pace of connections.
He couldn’t remember how he got here.
He couldn’t remember anything.
The heat touched his shoulder, sizzling, and he shot back up. The world spun around him as he lifted up his hands. His brain cursed him. Of course, he wasn’t safe. He was never safe. Even in his disoriented state, he knew he wasn’t winning any fights. But all he had was muscle memory, knocked into him from a lifetime.
“Dude,” a voice said, dragging the syllables painfully slow. It buzzed and crackled like a radio trying to find a signal, echoing in his head.
His brain was warming up, the thoughts beginning to fire at the right speed. But, something was still missing. He felt… empty.
Fingers clicked in front of his face, demanding his attention. That was what touched him before, he realised. Hands, not the heat of a star. He tried to batter them away, too close.
“Focus,” the voice drawled.
He looked up to face it. He should have done it before, but there was still a fear at the edge of his mind. Only he didn’t want to remember why. Not yet. But all he saw was a man. He didn’t recognise him. Some waster doing a good deed. But he hadn’t needed his help.
He could remember a ship, a team of blurry faces, red eyes. He remembered, “Scott.”
The face in front of him frowned, the only clear thing in a grey, swirling background. “I’m not Scott.”
He knew that. He still had eyes, for one. And Scott could follow his thought process, even when it was shaken not stirred.
“Oh, is that your name?” the guy asked. Great, he was an idiot. Trust him to get saved by someone as thick as bricks.
He snorted. “Bobby,” he corrected. It was right, he knew that, even if he hadn’t been aware of it until he spoke it aloud. There was more behind it like he opened the floodgates. He was an X-Man. And Scott was his boyfriend, only nobody could know that. There was too much to lose.
Nobody could know anything about him. Especially some loser on a beach.
Well, he’d managed to fuck that up already.
And now Bobby could remember who he was, he realised he was the one as thick as a brick. He needed to leave before there was too much damage control to rein in. The Prof would kill him if he had to do a mind wipe.
Bobby tried to get his feet under him, pretty sure the first step of leaving was standing up, but that burning hand was on his shoulder again, holding him in place. Everything was too hot.
Bobby suddenly wondered, seeing as he was pretty sure he’d been dead, whether this was actually hell.
He didn’t believe in it but that was where his Nana thought he was going to go. Never said it to his face, because she didn’t know, but she implied it. Unbelievers went to hell. Homosexuals went to hell. Mutants went to hell. Bobby had a one-way express ticket to it if it existed.
Only he was pretty sure this wasn’t hell.
It would be anticlimactic for the devil to be a beach stoner. And it was less the burning coals in a fire and more… thick fog.
“You need to relax,” the guy said, his words still dragging too long.
Bobby shook his head, pleased to find the action no longer made him feel sick. “I need to get home.”
“Where’s that?”
Bobby shouldn’t say. His mouth was already moving. “Westchester.”
“Dude,” the guy said, his eyebrows almost looking comedic as they drew together in confusion. Bobby was getting a bad feeling, the kind that started in his stomach and spread out. “Where?”
“Upstate? New York?”
The guy snorted. “No way, man. Your head must be scrambled. You’re in California.”
“Cali-” Bobby cut off, understanding dawning. “The boat.”
He probably shouldn’t have said that either. In fact, he should probably stop saying anything at all. But now he was remembering the boat, he was remembering the mission. There had been an incident with a mutant and the X-Men had once again raced off to save the world for no thanks.
“Did you fall off a boat?” the guy asked, turning to look to the side. Bobby assumed that was where the sound of crashing waves came from. Like he’d be able to see anything in the weather. Oh, and the boat had been in the middle of the North Pacific anyway. But if Bobby said that to the guy, who, against all looks, must have at least two brain cells somewhere up there, he would wonder how Bobby ended up still alive in California.
Bobby was wondering that too.
He was sure he had been dead. He could remember it. Red eyes and a gunshot that echoed in his head. A burning in his chest and falling down, down, down. A loud splash as he hit the water.
Death.
Only he hadn’t died.
He washed up on the west coast instead.
Bobby laughed. The X-Men always had good luck but this probably took their allotted fill for the rest of the year.
Because Bobby was alive. He could move his hands and wiggle his toes. He could feel himself breathing, he could see and think.
But there was something missing. And he had no idea what.
What he needed was Scott, and home. Then, it would all become clear.
He moved, managing to get his feet under him this time, and pushed upwards. He swayed for a second under his own weight, his bare feet sinking slightly in the damp sand, but his legs took his weight. Carefully, he took his first step forward.
The guy followed him up, looking concerned. “I don’t think you should get up yet.”
“I’m fine,” Bobby dismissed. He would say he’d survived worse, but he really hadn’t. At least he had a plan now. Get back to New York and find Scott. Everything would fall into place, and the thing he was missing would come back.
Easy.
“I think you should go to the ER,” the guy carried on, clearly not getting Bobby didn’t need him. He was a superhero, the X-Men would be looking for him.
“I’m fine.” And he did feel fine. He thought taking a trip across the Pacific would hurt more. But while mentally he was a mess, physically he had never felt better. It was like his body had been reset. He thought he could probably run a marathon, if he put his mind to it. Which meant he was in a better state than before.
He squinted around him, unable to see a city. With he shrug, he set off. He needed to keep moving before it properly hit him that he nearly died. And when that happened, he was going to bug out, so needed to contact the X-Men sooner rather than later.
“The city’s the other way,” the guy said, clearly trying to be helpful.
Bobby glared at him but turned on his heel.
“And you’re only wearing underpants.”
Bobby froze. Not literally, but his feet stopped moving forward and his chest didn’t, nearly causing him to fall over. He looked down, cursing his costume. The stoner guy was unfortunately right. Just his underpants with his little X on them. Hopefully, the guy spent more time on the beach than reading the news. If he was up to date on superhero teams, Bobby’s cover was well and truly blown. Maybe he should just call the whole thing quits and ice-slide his way off the beach.
The thought filled him with dread.
Like he was thirteen again and everything was icing up around him and he was realising there was something wrong with him. He never really stopped feeling like that, but this time it wasn’t about what his powers could do, it was what it would do to him. It felt like he hadn’t completely defrosted yet. Maybe his brain would stop firing again if he iced up again so soon.
He didn’t know what he did. Maybe he’d cryogenically frozen himself like on TV. He’d discussed it with Hank, and they decided it wasn’t very likely to work on a normal human. But Bobby wasn’t a normal human. If someone could survive being flash-frozen and then thawing, it would be him. Maybe he did it subconsciously as he crushed into the water to save his life. Which was pretty cool and would make perfect sense.
Except, he’d been shot in the heart.
He remembered the pain. He was sure he would never forget it. The burning as it ripped through his chest, tearing through muscle and blood vessels, shattering his ribs.
Only, when he looked down to his bare chest, there was no gaping hole he was sure it left. Just smooth skin.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe his brain was misfiring because of all the stress. After all, he’d been through a lot. He couldn’t have been shot. It must have missed him and he fell anyway, and he just thought he’d been shot. He would have still frozen himself if he thought he was going to drown.
Yes, that had to be it.
He couldn’t survive a bullet to the chest. Nobody could survive that.
Anyway, even if he felt like he could ice up, making a slide would find himself in the same situation, just twenty more miles inland. At least the briefs kind of made sense so close to the sea, even if it was the wrong season.
He turned back to the guy and tried to smile warmly. His facial muscles must have still been defrosting too, though, because it felt more like a stiff grimace. “Do you have any clothes spare?”
The guy looked around like a full set might just appear from the fog. “No, man.”
“Great,” Bobby sighed. Looked like he was just going to have to go in his underpants. “Do you have any money? For the payphone?”
The guy laughed. “I saved your life and you’re asking me for money? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“You didn’t save my life.” If anything, he’d made things worse. Bobby was pretty sure he would be feeling a lot better right now if he got to defrost in peace.
The guy snorted. “Your heart wasn’t beating.”
The thought was uncomfortable, even if it couldn’t be right, and Bobby shifted under it. Part of him wanted to place his palm on his chest to make sure it was still doing it. Bobby didn’t believe in ghosts only, right now, he kind of felt like one. He didn’t want to tempt fate by testing. Instead, he shrugged. “Whatever.”
He turned on his heel and stomped up the shore. As he stepped onto the pavement, he tried to be as discreet as possible. Why couldn’t it be in the middle of summer rather than in March? Everyone was on their lunch breaks from their nine-to-fives instead of having that vacation feel Bobby would fit right in with. He stuck out like a sore thumb. Still, there were worse places for this to happen. If he’d washed up in Alaska, going to the ER wouldn’t have been a choice he got. Whoever saved him would think he was about to go out from hypothermia. Or he could have ended up in China, or whatever was on the other side of the Pacific. That would really suck.
It wasn’t so hazy in the city, but it still wasn’t ideal conditions. It took him forever to find a pay phone. It didn’t help that every time he tried to ask for directions, people sped away from him. Clearly, they were used to half-naked crazies and didn’t want to help him out.
Unfair, seeing as he wasn’t actually one.
Though if he saw himself on the street, yeah, he’d be running away too.
He let out a long breath when he found one. Luckily, the mansion’s phone number never changed and they had a policy on picking up collect. Though that might change when the Prof got to see the whooper of the phone bill this call was going to cost. Oh well, the old man could afford it and it was real desperate measures. The real question was why he’d been saved by a random guy. The X-Men didn’t leave people behind like that.
They were probably still hunting for him. The Pacific was big, and his badge walkie-talkie was still floating in it. The Prof would be able to get a message to Ororo to pick him up.
He grew tenser with every ring that wasn’t picked up, his breath caught in his throat. Then, the line clicked and Bobby sunk back into the wall. The relief that flowed through his body was so strong he felt like he might collapse.
“Hello?” Ororo’s voice was a delight to hear, even if there was suspicion laced into it, and shouldn’t she be flying over the ocean looking for him? Maybe it had taken him longer to get to shore than he thought.
“You don’t know how glad I am to hear your voice, ‘Ro,” he said, the grin on his face so wide it hurt the sides. “Like music to my ears. Why are you back at the mansion? Thought we said no man left behind.”
“Who is this?” she asked. He’d been wrong. Ororo’s voice wasn’t suspicious. It was seething with Goddess-filled righteous anger.
Bobby stood up straight, the smile falling off his face as the relief rushed out of his system as quickly as it came. And there was that bad feeling again, growing. Maybe it had been longer than a day. Maybe it had been longer than a week. Because no way would she sound like that otherwise. Like she didn’t believe it was him.
“It’s Bobby,” he said, even though she already knew that. He said it to the operator before she picked up.
“No. My friend Bobby Drake is dead.”
This wasn’t good. “I’m not. Promise.” He winced. That wasn’t very convincing. Only how could he prove it? They were on the same team, but it wasn’t like he knew any super secret information to confirm himself. If he phoned Scott... “Get the Prof to look for me. I’m stuck in California. He’ll confirm.” Hopefully.
“The Professor?” she asked and he could hear the eyebrow raise in her voice, even though the crackling connection.
“Uh-huh. Old bald guy that has a nifty machine that can find any mutant in the world. I’m the mutant he needs to find. New York’s ahead, I know he’s not still in bed.” Then, a horrible thought struck him. A reason why they might have dropped the search. “He’s okay, right?”
“Charles is fine.”
Bobby could never get used to the others calling the Prof by his first name. Even as he got older, it still felt wrong. He wasn’t their friend. “Then, go get him to do his thing.”
“He’s not in.”
“Not in?” Bobby spluttered. “He better not be in Scotland mourning the death of half of his original team. Get him on the line so I can get out of here.”
There was a long pause. Bobby suspected he might have hit the nail on the head with that one. But the good news was, it had to convince Ororo of his identity slightly. No way would anybody else but him but that rude about it.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Ororo finally said.
Bobby let out a whoop, fist pumping the air. “Groovy. Thank you. You will not regret this. And when it all comes back good, do you think you could pick me up as well? I left my wallet in my other underpants.”
A woman walking passed turned as he spoke. She eyed him for a second too long and Bobby yelped, covering his crotch with his free hand. These were way too revealing when he wasn’t in his ice form.
“Actually, can you start the plane now?”
“If you are who you say you are, we will be quick.”
With that, ‘Ro hung up, the dial tone loud in his ears. Bobby blinked at the receiver for a second.
“Goodbye to you too,” he muttered, hanging it back up.
At least he was in a slightly better position. Unfortunately, that position still left him with no money and in his underpants. Even if they set off now, it would take forever for them to get here.
Bobby sighed, looking up and down the street before shrugging. He might as well try and make his way back to the beach.