This chapter is a little late as I was on vacation this week, but I hope you like it.
John is quiet after he's done with this story. Clarice holds him until he stop sniffling, and he readily accepts her embrace, but he doesn't say anything. They speak very little for the rest of the morning and during lunch, but even silence is comfortable between them.
Clarice waits until they come back from walking Zingo to voice the concern on her mind. She expresses it as a fairly innocent question, trying to gauge John's state of mind.
"Will you come over sometime this week?"
"I−I don't know," John hesitates, moving away from her enough that Clarice can see he's retreating into himself. "With what happened, it's..."
"I told you I'm not afraid," Clarice says, a bit of annoyance coloring her voice.
"I know but..."
"What's the problem?"
"I don't want it to happen again!" John snaps.
"So your solution is to pull away from me?"
John deflates, and sighs. "I know it's not a good one, but...it's all I have. Maybe if I work harder with my shrink, I can stop having those flashbacks entirely. But until then−"
"Until then I still want to be with you," Clarice says, taking his hand. John tenses a little, but he doesn't push her away.
"It could be never, Clarice. I could have them for the rest of my life."
"And that's exactly why I don't want to wait. You'll never be sure that it's over, but it doesn't matter, John. You are not a danger to me."
"It's bound to happen again. And it could be much worse."
"It didn't happen last time," Clarice opposes.
John looks away too quickly. Clarice opens her mouth and closes it again, startled.
"Did you even sleep at all?"
"I−" John hesitates. "Not a lot."
"You kept yourself from sleeping on purpose because you were afraid of this," Clarice understands.
John sighs and doesn't answer, which is an admission in itself. Clarice looks up, trying to keep in the tears threatening to fall. She feels helpless, incapable of helping him and of getting him to see it from her point of view.
"I'm not afraid of you," she repeats hopelessly. Maybe it will get through this thick brain of his if she says it enough.
"We're just going round on the same arguments, aren't we?" John shakes his head. "How about we agree to disagree for now?"
"Does that mean you'll come over?"
"I don't know, Clarice," John looks down. "There's still the bathroom issue, and the stairs… Maybe it's just too much to deal with for now."
Clarice closes her eyes in dismay and runs a hand through her hair.
"Fine," she gives in. She doesn't want to push him until he agrees to something he doesn't want, even if she thinks he's being unreasonable. "But this isn't over."
John bites his lip. "I'm not...breaking up with you, or anything," he says, looking worried.
"I know, John. I understand. I don't agree, but I understand."
The atmosphere after that is strange. Clarice still hasn't really digested what John told her this morning, and now they've had their first real argument. It would have been easier if it was about who is doing the dishes or what to get for dinner, than this. They both feel guilty while still standing by their positions, and it hurts. It hurts Clarice, it burns inside, the thought that if John doesn't change his mind they may never be fully comfortable together. And that John is going to blame himself for it, for anything that happens to her, whatever she says.
God knows he doesn't need it. He still looks exhausted, even though he's barely moved from the couch all day, beside walking Zingo for maybe fifteen minutes. Clarice can tell he's in pain, and yet his pain meds have stayed on his nightstand in his bedroom, untouched. Is he punishing himself by denying himself relief?
Unable to stand it anymore, Clarice makes a decision and goes to find the pill bottle. She firmly puts it down in front of John on the coffee table, and he looks up at her in surprise.
"What−" he starts, frowning.
"You're hurting," Clarice answers.
"I don't want them. I'd have gone to get them otherwise."
John's tone is curt, careful but annoyed. Clarice sighs internally.
"I just thought you could use them, that's all," she says, turning her back on him.
"They make me fuzzy," John says after a while, in a low voice. Clarice turns back to look at him. He's dropped some kind of pretense, and he's slumped over on the couch, absently massaging his thigh. His face is a mess of emotional and physical pain that Clarice can barely stand to look at.
"I wanted to have this conversation with a clear head," he continues.
"Okay," Clarice nods. "But that's over now. You can take them."
John looks down. "I try not to take too many. Too easy to get addicted."
Clarice frowns, still not understanding. He hasn't taken any, when she saw him pop pills several times a day earlier this week.
"Talking about Gus is...hard," John says when she doesn't answer. "I...it would be easy to use the painkillers or the other meds to...make it feel better. But I don't want to use them like that. I need them for the pain, and the other stuff, but it would be too easy to start taking too much because I'm...hurting in other ways."
"God," Clarice sighs. "I−I didn't think of that. Obviously. I shouldn't have assumed."
John blinks. "Oh," he says. "I thought you were going to tell me I should take them anyway. Or stop taking them altogether. I don't know. But not that."
"I can't−I won't tell you what you should do with your own body."
"Most people seem to have an opinion about it," John rolls his eyes. "I appreciate it."
"Most people have an opinion about whether I should be allowed to have babies, or to choose not to," Clarice says. "And about whether I should be allowed to be a part of society at all. It doesn't mean they're entitled to say it to my face."
"Right," John chuckles. "That's true. Anyway, I think I will take some pills now, because I'm pretty sure I actually need it."
"You don't need to justify yourself to me, either," Clarice says, trying hard to make up for her mistake.
"I know," John half-smiles. "But it's good to be held accountable sometimes."
On Tuesday morning, Clarice walks into the café and goes straight for Lorna. John is at physical therapy, so she has a while before he shows up.
Lorna looks up from the coffee machine she's turning on.
"You're early," she says.
Clarice checks her watch. It's fifteen to eight, so she's only here a few minutes earlier than usual.
"I wanted to talk to you," she says.
"Yes?"
"We need to make my bathroom accessible ASAP."
Lorna raises an eyebrow. "Why the sudden rush? Does it have anything to do with how moody John's been since Sunday?"
"I don't want to go into details, but I stayed the night while you weren't there and−"
"He had a nightmare?" Lorna guesses.
"Yes. Does it happen that often?"
"Not as often as it did at first when he came back."
"Anyway, he's so afraid it will happen again that he won't even consider sharing a bed."
"That's what he's saying? Did he hurt you or something?"
"No!" Clarice shakes her head. "But he seems to think that he will next time, or something. I don't know. I don't mind, I'm not afraid, but he won't hear it."
"And how will modifying your bathroom help with that?"
"Well, at first I thought I'd give him time to come around, but now I think I need to show him I'm really not afraid of him. And as long as he can't use my bathroom, he's going to use that as an excuse."
Lorna considers her for a moment.
"I see," she says. "I could get some metal and come round tomorrow evening, but we really need John to be there. He needs to tell me where to put the bars himself."
"Damn," Clarice mutters. "I'll try to convince him, then. Thank you."
John shows up an hour later, and neither he nor Clarice bring up their argument again. They're careful around each other, awkward in a way that would be cute if the reason was less negative. They settle back as well as possible into the nascent routine that got interrupted by John's flare-up last week, eating lunch together in the back room.
Clarice looks for a way to bring the subject back on the table that won't immediately devolve into an argument, or feed into John's trauma. It's hard. His fear is so deeply linked with the cause of his flashback itself that Clarice is afraid to say the wrong thing, to send him back there without wanting to.
She finally find an angle of approach that seems fairly inoffensive when he comes down to the café the next morning wearing a tank top that shows off his tattoos. The Semper Fi strikes her, after what he told her about how the military treats mutants. Always Faithful. How can he be faithful to a country that wishes he was never born? Clarice has never been able to forgive that.
But John's story the other day wasn't about America. It was about his unit, his friends and his lover who all died in the explosion. His brothers. He said that once, that day when he first explained about his injuries. Semper Fi is not for his country. It's for those who fought at his side.
"In the Marines, did you have a nickname too?" Clarice asks on a whim, when they walk to the park with Zingo after her shift. "You said that you called Gus Pulse because of his power."
"We all had one," John explains, surprised but not closed off. "It started out as a joke in the unit. You know, the X-Men have always had nicknames, so we thought we should have ours."
"What was yours?"
"You're gonna laugh," John says self-deprecatingly. "It was 'Thunderbird'."
"Your tattoo, is that−"
"That's where it comes from, yes. We had some free time on our hands one day and we all went to get tattoos. We all got the same Semper Fi tattoo and one that represented our nickname or our power."
"Thunderbird," Clarice repeats. "I like it."
"It's ridiculous. It's not even an Apache legend, but the others insisted that it fit me well. I guess it grew on me. Now it reminds me of them."
Clarice smiles in sympathy.
"I'd love to hear more about them one day, when you feel like it," she says.
John nods. "The war was...what it was, but there's a lot of good stories too."
"It's a shame you don't get to dream about those."
"I wish," John snorts.
"Have you thought at all about...coming to my place?" Clarice asks quietly.
John sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I haven't thought about much else," he admits. "What happened, I mean."
"Me neither."
"I know you said you're not afraid, but...I am. I'm afraid of hurting you, and I'm maybe even more afraid of you seeing me like this again. I−"
"John," Clarice hesitates. "The first time we really talked was because I had a panic attack before coming to work and Marcos asked you to sit with me. I had another panic attack on our first date. You think I wasn't terrified then that you wouldn't want anything to do with me anymore?"
"Of course I want to be with you," John says immediately. "It doesn't change anything."
"Then why do you keep thinking that it will change things when it's you?"
"Because−" Johns starts. He briefly looks like a fish out of water, grasping for an argument. "Because it feels different?" he settles on with a wince.
Clarice rolls her eyes, but in a friendly way. "I know. Believe me, I know. But that's not rational. I don't think any less of you because of your mental health issues, or your disability, just like you don't think any less of me because of my anxiety or of Lorna because she's bipolar. If anything, I love you even more for it, because you're open about it and you never invalidate what I'm feeling. You know what it's like."
John nods. "Okay, you're right. But I could still hurt you."
"It keeps going back to that, doesn't it?" Clarice sighs. "Alright, listen. I honestly don't believe that you'll hurt me. The other night, I could see that you unconsciously registered my presence, and you reacted to it by getting away from me, not attacking me."
"I don't always dream of the same thing," John says. "Next time I could think you're an enemy or something."
"What if I could portal myself away from you?" Clarice asks on a whim.
"What?"
"What if I could, say, immediately get to another room if you show signs of having a nightmare while we're together?"
"Your portals aren't stable enough for that," John frowns. "You'd need to build them much more quickly."
"I know. But you said I could learn, that I could train."
"You would do that?"
"It's seems as good as reason as any. I don't want to train for combat, but having a way to get myself out of tight situations would be good. Until now it's been...unreliable."
John keeps staring at her with eyes that are starting to shine. Or maybe it's just a trick of the light, Clarice is not sure.
"What?" she asks when it starts getting awkward.
"I'm−I'm amazed that you'd do this just so we can sleep together," John says quietly.
"Of course I would. I want this, John. I want us. And I'm willing to work at it." Clarice pauses and bites her lip, almost afraid to ask. "Are you?"
"I am," John nods vigorously. "I really want this relationship to work for both of us."
"Would you be reassured if I can portal myself away if things get bad?"
"I think so. If you promise not to hesitate or worry about me first."
"Then I'll make you a deal," Clarice says, a little relieved. "I'll train hard to build the portals faster, and you keep working with your shrink on the flashbacks, but without trying to rush it. In the meantime, you stop worrying about hurting me and I promise to get away at the first sign of trouble."
John thinks about it for a moment, long enough that Clarice worries he'll refuse. But he meets her eyes and nods.
"Deal," he says.
"So you'll come over?" Clarice checks.
"Yes."
"And you won't try to stay awake on purpose?"
John rolls his eyes. "I promise I won't," he says. "Listen, I'm still going to worry, at least until you can control the portals fully, and insomnia doesn't work on command, but I promise I won't try to stay awake."
"I'm okay with that," Clarice says. "Thank you."
"No, thank you," John takes her hand. "I love you."
Clarice blinks, and feels a smile spread on her face. "I love you too," she says.
She buries her hand in his hair, and he pulls her closer for a kiss. Clarice deepens it, bringing their bodies together. It's just a kiss, and a fairly chaste one at that, but they haven't felt this close since John came to her place.
With all that has happened since, John's flare-up and then his flashback, Clarice discovering the center, it feels further away than just a week and a half ago. She knows more about him than she did then, and he probably knows more about her. She feels even closer to him, emotionally connected.
"I like this," John smiles when they pull apart. His eyes seem to reflect what Clarice feels.
"Me too," she says. "By the way, Lorna's coming over tonight to set up the shower bars, and she says you need to be there."
John raises his eyebrows in surprise. "Tonight? Does she know that?"
"Yup," Clarice smirks.
"Did you set me up?"
"No, I just hoped really bad that you'd be willing to come."
John nods slowly and smiles. "I'll be there," he says.
I'm really amazed at how this story just comes together on its own. I come up with a hurdle and bam, the characters just make up a solution that works and moves the story forward. It's like I'm just here for the ride.
What do you think about Clarice's idea? Is it going to work?