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Entry tags:
- au,
- constants,
- cs,
- fic,
- fob,
- frank/gerard,
- mcr,
- mikey/brendon,
- p!atd,
- patrick/pete,
- ryan ross,
- ryan/bob,
- tai,
- the cab
PATD/MCR/FOB - Constants 6/8 - PG-13 - Ryan/Bob, Pete/Patrick
Psychics!
Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 & part 5 first.
Summary: Psychics were few and far between. For every one there was at least 150 trained Constants (that wasn’t counting the untrained Constants that could sometimes sneak in and lure a Psychic away).
TITLE: Constants
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Pete/Patrick, Gerard/Frank, Ryan/Bob, Mikey/Brendon
AUTHOR: Melanie
SUMMARY: Psychics were few and far between. For every one there was at least 150 trained Constants (that wasn’t counting the untrained Constants that could sometimes sneak in and lure a Psychic away).
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own any of these boys and I’m pretty sure that this has never happened.
Constants 6/8
Bob tracked Ryan to a set of room in the quarantine area of the Institute.
Bob had never been in this area before, before it had been strictly off limits to him because it was where the psychics that weren’t ready to choose yet were placed for seclusion and quiet.
For peace against all the Constants that would be vying for their attention.
He imagined that in Alex’s mind it was already too quiet and wondered if it was so he would feel like he was a psychic again, with powers and abilities that the rest of them could only imagine.
The door was slightly ajar and he tapped on it once before he looked around the corner.
Alex was curled up in one corner of the couch, Ryan in the other. Pete was sprawled in the space between them talking steadily.
Patrick sat in an armchair off to one side and when he saw Bob he stood and gestured for the door.
He smiled at Ryan and Ryan crooked his lips at him as Patrick latched onto his arm and dragged him out the door behind him. Patrick was stronger then he looked.
Probably from having to wrestle Pete into submission periodically.
“Someone is going to have to stay with him,” Patrick said. No ‘hey,’ no ‘how you doing,’ no ‘what the fuck were you thinking letting Ryan be alone with Jon for half a second’.
“Okay…” Bob said slowly, he couldn’t figure out what this had to do with him. “What’s wrong with this room?”
“He’s already said that he won’t stay here,” Patrick said. “Not alone anyway. And I’m pretty sure that you won’t agree to move here for the duration.”
“I like our place,” Bob said. “And we already have a houseguest that won’t leave.”
Spencer was firmly ensconced in their spare bedroom. The one time that Bob had mentioned that there were rooms that he could move into Spencer had growled at him and bared his teeth.
That was before the attacks, before they were filled to capacity with refugees from other institutes. Now there was really no place for Spencer to go.
“Brian is going to let Spencer use his spare bedroom until we can figure something else out,” Patrick said.
“You and Pete have a spare bedroom,” Bob pointed out. Because he thought it was worth mentioning even though he was pretty sure that this had already been decided before he’d even gotten to the room.
“Yes we do, but Alex has refused it. He feels comfortable with Ryan and by extension you,” Patrick grinned at him, Bob had an almost uncontrollable urge to smack his hat off his head. He didn’t, because he wasn’t suicidal.
“Congratulations, it’s a boy.”
******************************************************************************
It didn’t take long for word that there was a psychic that hadn’t chosen staying with Bob and Ryan.
Alex still had a guard and that guard made sure that anyone who wasn’t Bob or Ryan or one of the other paired teams stayed away.
Which was, of course, why when Bob returned from a session with Patrick and Frank it was to find someone sitting on the other side of the couch from Alex.
It was a Constant, probably from one of the baby Psychics groups. Bob could feel the hum and push of energy from him.
It made him wonder why he hadn’t pinpointed the exact reason that Alex felt wrong before. He knew how Constants felt to him, knew what the non-energy the Normal’s emitted felt like to him.
Alex hadn’t felt like any of those. He’d felt like a blank space where there should have been something.
He sighed; Bob could already hear Brian screaming at him. Because even though there was a respectable distance between them, Bob still felt like a parent that had come home 30 minutes early and found a staged ‘everything’s fine here, nothing to see, move along, move along’ scene waiting for him.
He did a quick one over, everyone’s clothes were in place, hair seemed to be unruffled, Alex still looked a little red and the other kid looked a little flushed.
“Alex,” he said slowly.
“Bob,” Alex said, he bit his lip, glanced over at the kid who was losing his flush and was most definitely not staring at Bob like he was giant who was going to step on and squash him at any second. He looked sort of flabbergasted that he was even there, but he also looked like he thought he belonged there.
Sitting on the couch, too close to Alex for Bob’s comfort.
“This is Cash Colligan,” he continued.
Bob arched a brow, crossed his arms over his chest, stared hard at this Cash Colligan that was sitting in his home like he belonged there.
He’d been told that his stare could make grown men admit to shit that they’d only ever thought about. He didn’t see it and he didn’t need to as long as it got him the results he wanted.
“It’s my real name,” Cash said defensively. “Sir.”
“Hi Alex, hi Cash,” Ryan breezed through the door behind him. He looped an arm through Bob’s and when Bob looked over at him he was looking at Alex and Cash with bright, indulgent eyes.
Bob let himself be tugged into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, peering out every so often at where Alex and Cash had seemed to forget that he and Ryan were still there and were starting to gravitate closer and closer.
“Tell me you didn’t,” Bob said. Wasn’t it someone else’s turn to play matchmaker?
Frank and Gerard were due, weren’t they?
“Nothing’s happened, Alex still has the Dievelin-47 in his bloodstream, but he was in the infirmary this morning and Cash came in with a sprain or something and the minute we saw the two of them…”
Ryan smiled softly into his bottle of water, Bob sighed..
“Does Alex know?”
“He can feel it, not like he would have been able to if the Dievelin-47 wasn’t there, but he knows that Cash is his. He can’t complete it yet, can’t finish the bonding until it’s out of his system… But I think it’s good for him to know that once it’s gone, there’ll be someone waiting for him.”
******************************************************************************
Brian just shook his head, he didn’t even yell. Just shook his head and looked at Bob like Bob was trying his last nerve when Bob hadn’t even been there when this went down.
This was all on Ryan and Pete and Gerard and of all people, Mikey.
Bob didn’t even know what all four of them had been doing in the Infirmary at the same time. He didn’t think he really wanted to know.
******************************************************************************
Cash slept on their couch. It had been Ryan’s idea, to allow the boys the chance to get to know each other.
Bob had put his foot down about Alex and Cash sharing a room. It was one thing to know that the minute that Bob and Ryan left to start their day that they were probably having sex on the kitchen table, it was another thing entirely for the two of them to be sharing a room and knowing, without a doubt that there was sex going on in their spare bedroom when there was none going on in his own.
Plus Alex felt like his kid, he had to be reminded to eat his vegetables at dinner and he had a curfew that Ryan had put into place and Bob made sure that the door to Alex’s room was locked and made Ryan check to make sure that Alex was the only one in the room at periodic points during the night when they were both awake.
Ryan would check and smile and would say ‘everything’s okay’ (which probably meant that Cash was in the room with Alex, but which he tried to hear as ‘Cash is on the couch and not molesting your kid’) then he would kiss Bob on the underside of his jaw, where he had a sensitive patch of skin that if Ryan wanted to exploit at some point, would pretty much guarantee Bob a sure thing.
He’d tell Ryan that, but he figured Ryan already knew.
He did wonder why when Ryan had been the one to adopt the kid; he was the one that felt like the parent.
******************************************************************************
Pete was the one that introduced the baby Psychics to Alex, Bob would have probably hit him if he wasn’t sure that Patrick would retaliate. He appeared bright and early one morning; while the four of them were still sitting at the table eating breakfast.
Bob had finished, Cash had finished, Ryan was still nibbling at his toast and alternating holding his coffee cup to his nose. Bob didn’t think he was drinking it; it looked like he was sniffing it, or absorbing the heat from it Bob couldn’t tell.
Alex had one arm on the table, his head resting on his hand and looked like his eyes were going to close at any second. He’d end up face first in his cereal and Bob thought it might be amusing but he also was pretty sure that Cash would intervene to make sure that it didn’t happen.
When the knock came Bob watched Ryan snap to just that quickly, the dazed sleepiness fading instantly. In his head Ryan was still curled up in his pile of blankets but he looked interested.
His eyes narrowed and Bob waited patiently for Ryan to look back over at him.
“It’s Pete,” he said. He set his toast down and took a sip of his coffee, then another, larger one. He looked surprised, like he’d just realized that the coffee cup held caffeine in it. “And Ian and Alex… Marshall,” he added as an afterthought. Like they might be confused as to which Alex would be standing at the door when there was already an Alex sitting at their kitchen table.
Bob got up slowly, Ian and Alex (Marshall, and that wouldn’t get confusing at all) were the baby Psychics he knew. Pete thought they were adorable and Ryan (before he’d brought home their Alex, who was Bob’s kid now) thought they were adorable and Gerard thought they were adorable, they all three cooed over them like they were baby chicks that they’d raised from infancy.
Bob purposefully didn’t say that Ryan had already brought home a baby chick and that Pete and Gerard were going to have to step up to the plate where those other two were concerned. Bob only had floor space left and he wasn’t giving up his bed.
Pete was grinning at him when he opened the door, behind him two kids hovered. Realistically Bob knew they were both eighteen, but they still looked like kids to him.
“Morning Bob,” Patrick appeared from behind Pete and Bob blinked because he hadn’t even seen him there. Behind Ian and Alex (Marshall) Bob could see bodyguards so at least they weren’t here unaccompanied and another lecture from Brian wasn’t forthcoming.
“Morning,” Bob said slowly. Pete patted him on the stomach and slipped past him into the apartment, Bob watched him make his way to where Ryan was holding his coffee cup up to his face again; Bob thought he might be sniffing it again.
Pete wrapped his arms around Ryan’s neck and smiled indulgently across the table at Cash and Alex. Cash looked like he thought running away would be a great idea; Alex still looked like he was going to fall asleep in his cereal.
Bob turned back to look at Patrick.
“Pete thought a play date would be a good idea, get everyone used to each other,” Patrick held up a bag with a box in it. “I brought donuts and Frank and Gerard and Brendon and Mikey will be here shortly.”
Bob felt like shutting the door in Patrick’s face, but Pete was already inside and Pete would either let him in or Patrick would make a nuisance of himself until Bob did it himself.
“I don’t think we have enough chairs,” Bob said. Patrick smirked at him, like he could see what Bob was thinking.
Bob rolled his eyes and Patrick pushed past him, leading Ian and Alex who both looked apologetically at him as they passed. Bob stared at the guards who just stationed themselves on either side of the door and then closed it.
“You’ve got floor space, that should be sufficient.”
******************************************************************************
After an initial period of shyness Ian and Alex and Alex got along like they’d known each other for years instead of fifteen minutes.
Pete hung off Bob’s shoulder and Bob didn’t shove him away because Patrick could hit like he’d been having to defend himself in fights with people much larger then him for years.
“It’s so hard to watch them grow up,” Pete sniffed into his ear. Bob grunted and looked over to where Cash was sitting next to Ryan. It took a few minutes, but Cash had been living with them for a couple of week and they’d adopted him just as much they’d adopted Alex, for him to place the expression that Cash was wearing like a mask.
To the outside observer, to someone who hadn’t been living in the same space as him, he looked normal, disinterested in the events transpiring in front of him.
To Bob he looked scared, like he feared that he’d just been replaced and had no recourse to fight it if that was indeed what was happening.
It made him wonder what it had to be like for Cash, Alex still drugged to the gills on the Dievelin-47, no way to complete what should have been done already. To know that this was his Psychic, that Alex was his.
But have no bond besides a physical one to prove it.
******************************************************************************
Cash moved out three days later. Bob realized that it had happened when he stared at Alex and Ryan over breakfast and Alex looked confused and Ryan just looked sad and Cash was nowhere to be found.
He didn’t like seeing Ryan sad so the first thing he did when he dropped Alex and Ryan off at Patrick and Pete’s was track down Cash.
Kids were stupid and completely unable to take care of themselves, he decided. He didn’t know how Ryan had managed to saddle him with two without even the promise of sex on the horizon.
Cash had moved back into the dorms, Bob couldn’t figure out why anyone would voluntarily live there, even if they’d only been sleeping on a couch before it was heads above sharing a room and a bathroom with ten other guys.
They could probably track down another bed to put in the spare bedroom, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of that before, but then remembered that he was completely and totally opposed to the two of them sharing a room unless there had been a bonding or a wedding first.
Alex still being drugged up and Cash moving out wasn’t going to facilitate that happening any faster.
Cash looked like he expected Bob to hit him and Bob just shut the door, leaned against the wall and arched an eyebrow at him.
Cash fidgeted. He had on the same mask, the one that spoke of fear and resignation to his place in the universe; it was almost the same one that he’d pasted on when Pete had brought Ian and Alex (Marshall) for their play date with Alex.
Bob sighed.
This wasn’t his gig, he didn’t play the matchmaker. That was all Ryan and Pete. He and Patrick were just along for the ride.
“We’ll put another bed in the spare bedroom,” Bob said.
Cash looked at him, Bob could tell that he’d been surprised, hell Bob was surprised. That was totally not what he’d meant to say.
He was the completely wrong person to be doing this, he was going to fuck this up even more and Cash would take his chances on the outside world that was trying to kill them and Alex would be depressed and lonely.
Ryan smiled shyly at him but still looked sad, which meant this probably wasn’t going to work anyway. He wondered why he was even bothering to try and then he looked at Cash, who was theirs just as much as Alex was.
Cash fidgeted again, then put his hands together in his lap and stared at them. Hard. Like they might vanish or run off with other Psychics if he wasn’t watching them.
“You know you’re going to be the most important thing to him,” Bob said finally.
“Isn’t it the other way around?” Cash asked, he sounded mutinous, defiant. Like he was daring Bob to prove him wrong if he could, like he knew that Bob couldn’t prove it.
But Bob could, he knew how much Ryan needed him, how much Pete needed Patrick and Gerard needed Frank and Mikey needed Brendon.
He knew how devastated William Beckett was from losing his Constant, how close they were to losing William himself because of it.
“No,” Bob said, he moved away from the wall and sat on the bed next to Cash. “There’s going to be other people that are important to him, the other Psychics are going to be important to him. You’re not going to like it anymore then the rest of us do. But they live in each others’ heads, they have to trust each other implicitly, more now then ever before,” especially since they knew now that Psychics were hunting them.
Trying to destroy them.
“Do you know how alone they feel?” Bob asked. “How lonely and scared and isolated they feel from everyone and everything? They spend most of their lives looking for one thing, for one person who makes them feel safe and loved and is theirs unconditionally.”
Cash was looking at him and he looked… hopeful. Like he thought Bob knew what the hell he was talking about. Bob hoped he knew what the hell he was talking about; Bob knew he wasn’t wrong.
“He can’t choose you yet,” Bob said. “There’s going to be another month and half at least before he can finish this, before you know that I’m right. That this is something I know a few things about. Ryan is anything but cruel, he was trying to give Alex hope that there was something waiting for him when the drugs were gone, he was trying to give you hope that there was something here for you even though it wasn’t Ian.”
Cash bit his lip.
“We wouldn’t have put the two of you in the same place; I wouldn’t have let you stay if I thought the two of you were going to end up being wrong for each other.”
Cash nodded, Bob laid his hand on the back of Cash’s head, stroked soft hair before he cleared his throat and let his hand drop. He was glad the door was closed, there were no witnesses, no one to declare him the sap he evidently was, deep down.
“Grab your stuff,” Bob said. His voice sounded gruff even to his own ears, Ryan looked starry-eyed and completely proud of him.
“You’re still not sharing a bed, not for another month and a half, but I might be convinced to move another one into the bedroom.”
******************************************************************************
Read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 & part 5 first.
Summary: Psychics were few and far between. For every one there was at least 150 trained Constants (that wasn’t counting the untrained Constants that could sometimes sneak in and lure a Psychic away).
TITLE: Constants
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Pete/Patrick, Gerard/Frank, Ryan/Bob, Mikey/Brendon
AUTHOR: Melanie
SUMMARY: Psychics were few and far between. For every one there was at least 150 trained Constants (that wasn’t counting the untrained Constants that could sometimes sneak in and lure a Psychic away).
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own any of these boys and I’m pretty sure that this has never happened.
Constants 6/8
Bob tracked Ryan to a set of room in the quarantine area of the Institute.
Bob had never been in this area before, before it had been strictly off limits to him because it was where the psychics that weren’t ready to choose yet were placed for seclusion and quiet.
For peace against all the Constants that would be vying for their attention.
He imagined that in Alex’s mind it was already too quiet and wondered if it was so he would feel like he was a psychic again, with powers and abilities that the rest of them could only imagine.
The door was slightly ajar and he tapped on it once before he looked around the corner.
Alex was curled up in one corner of the couch, Ryan in the other. Pete was sprawled in the space between them talking steadily.
Patrick sat in an armchair off to one side and when he saw Bob he stood and gestured for the door.
He smiled at Ryan and Ryan crooked his lips at him as Patrick latched onto his arm and dragged him out the door behind him. Patrick was stronger then he looked.
Probably from having to wrestle Pete into submission periodically.
“Someone is going to have to stay with him,” Patrick said. No ‘hey,’ no ‘how you doing,’ no ‘what the fuck were you thinking letting Ryan be alone with Jon for half a second’.
“Okay…” Bob said slowly, he couldn’t figure out what this had to do with him. “What’s wrong with this room?”
“He’s already said that he won’t stay here,” Patrick said. “Not alone anyway. And I’m pretty sure that you won’t agree to move here for the duration.”
“I like our place,” Bob said. “And we already have a houseguest that won’t leave.”
Spencer was firmly ensconced in their spare bedroom. The one time that Bob had mentioned that there were rooms that he could move into Spencer had growled at him and bared his teeth.
That was before the attacks, before they were filled to capacity with refugees from other institutes. Now there was really no place for Spencer to go.
“Brian is going to let Spencer use his spare bedroom until we can figure something else out,” Patrick said.
“You and Pete have a spare bedroom,” Bob pointed out. Because he thought it was worth mentioning even though he was pretty sure that this had already been decided before he’d even gotten to the room.
“Yes we do, but Alex has refused it. He feels comfortable with Ryan and by extension you,” Patrick grinned at him, Bob had an almost uncontrollable urge to smack his hat off his head. He didn’t, because he wasn’t suicidal.
“Congratulations, it’s a boy.”
It didn’t take long for word that there was a psychic that hadn’t chosen staying with Bob and Ryan.
Alex still had a guard and that guard made sure that anyone who wasn’t Bob or Ryan or one of the other paired teams stayed away.
Which was, of course, why when Bob returned from a session with Patrick and Frank it was to find someone sitting on the other side of the couch from Alex.
It was a Constant, probably from one of the baby Psychics groups. Bob could feel the hum and push of energy from him.
It made him wonder why he hadn’t pinpointed the exact reason that Alex felt wrong before. He knew how Constants felt to him, knew what the non-energy the Normal’s emitted felt like to him.
Alex hadn’t felt like any of those. He’d felt like a blank space where there should have been something.
He sighed; Bob could already hear Brian screaming at him. Because even though there was a respectable distance between them, Bob still felt like a parent that had come home 30 minutes early and found a staged ‘everything’s fine here, nothing to see, move along, move along’ scene waiting for him.
He did a quick one over, everyone’s clothes were in place, hair seemed to be unruffled, Alex still looked a little red and the other kid looked a little flushed.
“Alex,” he said slowly.
“Bob,” Alex said, he bit his lip, glanced over at the kid who was losing his flush and was most definitely not staring at Bob like he was giant who was going to step on and squash him at any second. He looked sort of flabbergasted that he was even there, but he also looked like he thought he belonged there.
Sitting on the couch, too close to Alex for Bob’s comfort.
“This is Cash Colligan,” he continued.
Bob arched a brow, crossed his arms over his chest, stared hard at this Cash Colligan that was sitting in his home like he belonged there.
He’d been told that his stare could make grown men admit to shit that they’d only ever thought about. He didn’t see it and he didn’t need to as long as it got him the results he wanted.
“It’s my real name,” Cash said defensively. “Sir.”
“Hi Alex, hi Cash,” Ryan breezed through the door behind him. He looped an arm through Bob’s and when Bob looked over at him he was looking at Alex and Cash with bright, indulgent eyes.
Bob let himself be tugged into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, peering out every so often at where Alex and Cash had seemed to forget that he and Ryan were still there and were starting to gravitate closer and closer.
“Tell me you didn’t,” Bob said. Wasn’t it someone else’s turn to play matchmaker?
Frank and Gerard were due, weren’t they?
“Nothing’s happened, Alex still has the Dievelin-47 in his bloodstream, but he was in the infirmary this morning and Cash came in with a sprain or something and the minute we saw the two of them…”
Ryan smiled softly into his bottle of water, Bob sighed..
“Does Alex know?”
“He can feel it, not like he would have been able to if the Dievelin-47 wasn’t there, but he knows that Cash is his. He can’t complete it yet, can’t finish the bonding until it’s out of his system… But I think it’s good for him to know that once it’s gone, there’ll be someone waiting for him.”
Brian just shook his head, he didn’t even yell. Just shook his head and looked at Bob like Bob was trying his last nerve when Bob hadn’t even been there when this went down.
This was all on Ryan and Pete and Gerard and of all people, Mikey.
Bob didn’t even know what all four of them had been doing in the Infirmary at the same time. He didn’t think he really wanted to know.
Cash slept on their couch. It had been Ryan’s idea, to allow the boys the chance to get to know each other.
Bob had put his foot down about Alex and Cash sharing a room. It was one thing to know that the minute that Bob and Ryan left to start their day that they were probably having sex on the kitchen table, it was another thing entirely for the two of them to be sharing a room and knowing, without a doubt that there was sex going on in their spare bedroom when there was none going on in his own.
Plus Alex felt like his kid, he had to be reminded to eat his vegetables at dinner and he had a curfew that Ryan had put into place and Bob made sure that the door to Alex’s room was locked and made Ryan check to make sure that Alex was the only one in the room at periodic points during the night when they were both awake.
Ryan would check and smile and would say ‘everything’s okay’ (which probably meant that Cash was in the room with Alex, but which he tried to hear as ‘Cash is on the couch and not molesting your kid’) then he would kiss Bob on the underside of his jaw, where he had a sensitive patch of skin that if Ryan wanted to exploit at some point, would pretty much guarantee Bob a sure thing.
He’d tell Ryan that, but he figured Ryan already knew.
He did wonder why when Ryan had been the one to adopt the kid; he was the one that felt like the parent.
Pete was the one that introduced the baby Psychics to Alex, Bob would have probably hit him if he wasn’t sure that Patrick would retaliate. He appeared bright and early one morning; while the four of them were still sitting at the table eating breakfast.
Bob had finished, Cash had finished, Ryan was still nibbling at his toast and alternating holding his coffee cup to his nose. Bob didn’t think he was drinking it; it looked like he was sniffing it, or absorbing the heat from it Bob couldn’t tell.
Alex had one arm on the table, his head resting on his hand and looked like his eyes were going to close at any second. He’d end up face first in his cereal and Bob thought it might be amusing but he also was pretty sure that Cash would intervene to make sure that it didn’t happen.
When the knock came Bob watched Ryan snap to just that quickly, the dazed sleepiness fading instantly. In his head Ryan was still curled up in his pile of blankets but he looked interested.
His eyes narrowed and Bob waited patiently for Ryan to look back over at him.
“It’s Pete,” he said. He set his toast down and took a sip of his coffee, then another, larger one. He looked surprised, like he’d just realized that the coffee cup held caffeine in it. “And Ian and Alex… Marshall,” he added as an afterthought. Like they might be confused as to which Alex would be standing at the door when there was already an Alex sitting at their kitchen table.
Bob got up slowly, Ian and Alex (Marshall, and that wouldn’t get confusing at all) were the baby Psychics he knew. Pete thought they were adorable and Ryan (before he’d brought home their Alex, who was Bob’s kid now) thought they were adorable and Gerard thought they were adorable, they all three cooed over them like they were baby chicks that they’d raised from infancy.
Bob purposefully didn’t say that Ryan had already brought home a baby chick and that Pete and Gerard were going to have to step up to the plate where those other two were concerned. Bob only had floor space left and he wasn’t giving up his bed.
Pete was grinning at him when he opened the door, behind him two kids hovered. Realistically Bob knew they were both eighteen, but they still looked like kids to him.
“Morning Bob,” Patrick appeared from behind Pete and Bob blinked because he hadn’t even seen him there. Behind Ian and Alex (Marshall) Bob could see bodyguards so at least they weren’t here unaccompanied and another lecture from Brian wasn’t forthcoming.
“Morning,” Bob said slowly. Pete patted him on the stomach and slipped past him into the apartment, Bob watched him make his way to where Ryan was holding his coffee cup up to his face again; Bob thought he might be sniffing it again.
Pete wrapped his arms around Ryan’s neck and smiled indulgently across the table at Cash and Alex. Cash looked like he thought running away would be a great idea; Alex still looked like he was going to fall asleep in his cereal.
Bob turned back to look at Patrick.
“Pete thought a play date would be a good idea, get everyone used to each other,” Patrick held up a bag with a box in it. “I brought donuts and Frank and Gerard and Brendon and Mikey will be here shortly.”
Bob felt like shutting the door in Patrick’s face, but Pete was already inside and Pete would either let him in or Patrick would make a nuisance of himself until Bob did it himself.
“I don’t think we have enough chairs,” Bob said. Patrick smirked at him, like he could see what Bob was thinking.
Bob rolled his eyes and Patrick pushed past him, leading Ian and Alex who both looked apologetically at him as they passed. Bob stared at the guards who just stationed themselves on either side of the door and then closed it.
“You’ve got floor space, that should be sufficient.”
After an initial period of shyness Ian and Alex and Alex got along like they’d known each other for years instead of fifteen minutes.
Pete hung off Bob’s shoulder and Bob didn’t shove him away because Patrick could hit like he’d been having to defend himself in fights with people much larger then him for years.
“It’s so hard to watch them grow up,” Pete sniffed into his ear. Bob grunted and looked over to where Cash was sitting next to Ryan. It took a few minutes, but Cash had been living with them for a couple of week and they’d adopted him just as much they’d adopted Alex, for him to place the expression that Cash was wearing like a mask.
To the outside observer, to someone who hadn’t been living in the same space as him, he looked normal, disinterested in the events transpiring in front of him.
To Bob he looked scared, like he feared that he’d just been replaced and had no recourse to fight it if that was indeed what was happening.
It made him wonder what it had to be like for Cash, Alex still drugged to the gills on the Dievelin-47, no way to complete what should have been done already. To know that this was his Psychic, that Alex was his.
But have no bond besides a physical one to prove it.
Cash moved out three days later. Bob realized that it had happened when he stared at Alex and Ryan over breakfast and Alex looked confused and Ryan just looked sad and Cash was nowhere to be found.
He didn’t like seeing Ryan sad so the first thing he did when he dropped Alex and Ryan off at Patrick and Pete’s was track down Cash.
Kids were stupid and completely unable to take care of themselves, he decided. He didn’t know how Ryan had managed to saddle him with two without even the promise of sex on the horizon.
Cash had moved back into the dorms, Bob couldn’t figure out why anyone would voluntarily live there, even if they’d only been sleeping on a couch before it was heads above sharing a room and a bathroom with ten other guys.
They could probably track down another bed to put in the spare bedroom, he wondered why he hadn’t thought of that before, but then remembered that he was completely and totally opposed to the two of them sharing a room unless there had been a bonding or a wedding first.
Alex still being drugged up and Cash moving out wasn’t going to facilitate that happening any faster.
Cash looked like he expected Bob to hit him and Bob just shut the door, leaned against the wall and arched an eyebrow at him.
Cash fidgeted. He had on the same mask, the one that spoke of fear and resignation to his place in the universe; it was almost the same one that he’d pasted on when Pete had brought Ian and Alex (Marshall) for their play date with Alex.
Bob sighed.
This wasn’t his gig, he didn’t play the matchmaker. That was all Ryan and Pete. He and Patrick were just along for the ride.
“We’ll put another bed in the spare bedroom,” Bob said.
Cash looked at him, Bob could tell that he’d been surprised, hell Bob was surprised. That was totally not what he’d meant to say.
He was the completely wrong person to be doing this, he was going to fuck this up even more and Cash would take his chances on the outside world that was trying to kill them and Alex would be depressed and lonely.
Ryan smiled shyly at him but still looked sad, which meant this probably wasn’t going to work anyway. He wondered why he was even bothering to try and then he looked at Cash, who was theirs just as much as Alex was.
Cash fidgeted again, then put his hands together in his lap and stared at them. Hard. Like they might vanish or run off with other Psychics if he wasn’t watching them.
“You know you’re going to be the most important thing to him,” Bob said finally.
“Isn’t it the other way around?” Cash asked, he sounded mutinous, defiant. Like he was daring Bob to prove him wrong if he could, like he knew that Bob couldn’t prove it.
But Bob could, he knew how much Ryan needed him, how much Pete needed Patrick and Gerard needed Frank and Mikey needed Brendon.
He knew how devastated William Beckett was from losing his Constant, how close they were to losing William himself because of it.
“No,” Bob said, he moved away from the wall and sat on the bed next to Cash. “There’s going to be other people that are important to him, the other Psychics are going to be important to him. You’re not going to like it anymore then the rest of us do. But they live in each others’ heads, they have to trust each other implicitly, more now then ever before,” especially since they knew now that Psychics were hunting them.
Trying to destroy them.
“Do you know how alone they feel?” Bob asked. “How lonely and scared and isolated they feel from everyone and everything? They spend most of their lives looking for one thing, for one person who makes them feel safe and loved and is theirs unconditionally.”
Cash was looking at him and he looked… hopeful. Like he thought Bob knew what the hell he was talking about. Bob hoped he knew what the hell he was talking about; Bob knew he wasn’t wrong.
“He can’t choose you yet,” Bob said. “There’s going to be another month and half at least before he can finish this, before you know that I’m right. That this is something I know a few things about. Ryan is anything but cruel, he was trying to give Alex hope that there was something waiting for him when the drugs were gone, he was trying to give you hope that there was something here for you even though it wasn’t Ian.”
Cash bit his lip.
“We wouldn’t have put the two of you in the same place; I wouldn’t have let you stay if I thought the two of you were going to end up being wrong for each other.”
Cash nodded, Bob laid his hand on the back of Cash’s head, stroked soft hair before he cleared his throat and let his hand drop. He was glad the door was closed, there were no witnesses, no one to declare him the sap he evidently was, deep down.
“Grab your stuff,” Bob said. His voice sounded gruff even to his own ears, Ryan looked starry-eyed and completely proud of him.
“You’re still not sharing a bed, not for another month and a half, but I might be convinced to move another one into the bedroom.”