He came back eventually. He was sure it was too late to return, and maybe it should have been, but that's just not how things worked out. In any case, the last person Ororo Munroe expected to see fidgeting on the back steps that spring night was St. John Allerdyce, formerly known as Pyro. She stood in the doorway for a moment, unsure of whether to hug him or attack him. He noticed her nervousness.
"I just want to see Bobby," he said, and she smiled in sudden comprehension.
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For some reason, he stayed. He wouldn't fight for the X-Men, and they wouldn't have trusted him to if he had wanted to. He very rarely came to lessons, or even left his room for anything other than meals, and often enough not even for those. The only person he would talk to was Bobby Drake, and Bobby wasn't there.
Storm had quietly told him, that night on the doorstep, that Bobby had left the mansion several months earlier, and no one had heard from him since. She had expected John to turn and walk back into the darkness, she had been shocked to hear him say, "He'll be back. Is anyone using his room?"
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When Bobby Drake comes back to the X-mansion, he expects to pick up a few boxes ha hadn't been able to take with him when he left. What he had not expected was to open the door to his room and see John lying on his bed, flicking his lighter on and off as he stares abstractly into space.
It is too much for Bobby to believe, that his former best friend, his first love, his first enemy, the boy who he has missed and hated and envied and pitied and loved and feared so desperately, is just lying on the familiar faded sheets as if nothing has changed. As if they are still thirteen, and just learning how it feels to have a best friend and roommate who is your exact opposite, but you still feel so comfortable around that you say what you're thinking without even considering the listener's reaction.
They've come a long way from those two thirteen year olds. They've laughed and kissed and fought and cried and taken turns breaking each other's hearts.
So many things have changed so much, but they can't be as different as Bobby thought they were, because the instinct of years of friendship takes over, and he finds himself walking over and sitting down at the end of the bed. Forcing a pale immitation of a smile, he asks, "So the brotherhood wasn't really for you, Johnny?"
John puts the lighter down and says seriosly, "I only came back to see you, but you were gone."
It is strange how they still understand each other so well, that so few words are neccesary. "I couldn't stay, " Bobby says, "I want a real life, not just a cause."
John nods.
"Come with me?" Bobby asks, and is rewarded with a tentative smile.
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So many things remain unsaid between them, but they're happy, and they tell themselves the past doesn't matter. They have a fairly ordinary life, with jobs and bills and pointless squables over who's turn it is to do the dishes.
If Bobby sometimes thinks back wistfully on a time when his actions helped to change the attitudes of nations, all he has to do is remember who is beside him now, who he had lost before. And if John sometimes wakes from nightmares filled with screams of agony and the scent of burning flesh, they never speak of it, though Bobby silently offers whatever comfort he can give.
The word love is never spoken, perhaps because it was thrown around too carelessly the first time they were together, but they can both feel that this is something new. They are quietly but certainly becoming as neccesary to each other as air, and a hundred times more precious.