A Hard Day for Dreaming - Rictor/Shatterstar - PG-13
Title: A Hard Day for Dreaming
Rating: PG-13
Fandom; Pairing: X-Factor; Rictor/Shatterstar
Word Count: 2,135
Disclaimer: Full disclaimer in my profile. I don't own the story or characters. They belong to Marvel Comics.
Summary: This is a break up fic. Takes place before Rictor and Shatterstar are reunited, so could be a sad prequel to Reunion, but isn't meant to be.
Warnings: Violence. Heartbreak.
They save his family and they do it together. Shatterstar does so much of the hard work and Rictor does most of the talking. But sometimes they trade off. His family likes ‘Star, probably because he was made to be the kind of man they admire-violent, big, emotionally closed off, and white. It’s mostly invention, he knows, and he knows because he whispers a variety of names into Shatterstar’s ear and knows all the secrets about him that ‘Star knows.
“Shatterstar,” sounds very formal, but he loves it. “Gaveedra,” feels exotic on Rictor’s tongue and has a heavy, sex-drenched flavor when whispered at the tale end of a moan into the shell of his lover’s ear. “Ben,” is so normal that it’s almost cute and it matches all the extra freckles that have popped up on Shatterstar’s body under the Mexican sun.
But “Star” is his favorite. Because it captures everything.
He is blissful for a week and a day, at home, with ‘Star and his family. After a week and a day his stepmother realizes that Shatterstar is more than just a good, trustworthy, praiseworthy friend.
She tells him that everything Shatterstar has done for this family is meaningless. She tells him that God hates him, as if he hadn’t already caught on to that little fact.
She tells Omar, who has finally gotten out of prison and come around to Julio’s perspective. Omar liked hanging out with them, even found Shatterstar’s channel surfing to be funny and unique.
“As much as I care,” Omar says, disgust in every feature of his face. “You are not a man.”
He leaves after that, stuffs everything he owns in the compound into his bags until they are bulging.
“Shatterstar,” he says. “Stop asking me questions. Just pack.” His tone is angrier than he wants it to be at the moment.
They fight in the truck on the way out of Guadalajara.
‘Star doesn’t get it and he gets angry at Rictor’s family and angry with Rictor when he defends his family, when he tries to apologize for them.
“You don’t understand!” Julio shouts at him. “You don’t have anyone! There’s no one for you to disappoint!”
“I have you,” Shatterstar says, suddenly terribly calm.
“No,” Julio tells him, hand scrabbling at the door handle. “You don’t.”
And he takes all of his bags and he gets out of the cab of their truck as clumsily as he possibly could, because he’s too upset to be coordinated.
Shatterstar gets out and follows him.
“Please, Rictor, Julio, please don’t do this,” he begs. “I am sorry. Please let me fix this.”
Rictor turns on him. A bag is dropped.
“You can’t fix this!” he shouts.
“I will try,” Shatterstar tells him, terribly plaintive.
“Did you-“ he chokes on the question, but he always wondered and he needs to know the answer. “Were you attracted to me when you were just Gaveedra?”
“Did you want to have sex with me when you were just Shatterstar? Did you care about me?”
He drops the rest of the bags that are weighing him down at the moment.
“Of course I cared about you,” Shatterstar tells him.
“But did you want me?” he demands in Spanish. “Because I wanted you. I wanted you so badly and I hated it so much.”
Shatterstar looks terribly hurt by that admission. He looks down at his hands, reaches back behind him to touch the top of a sword’s grip for comfort.
“No,” he says, very quietly, very softly. His shoulders bow a little.
“I thought so,” Rictor says, picking up his bags. He is still angry, still hurt, still hateful.
“Julio,” Shatterstar begs. “I love you, please don’t go. I need you.”
Those words make Rictor feel like he’s choking.
“I need to be away from you,” Julio tells him. “I’m no good for you, ‘Star, I’m sorry.”
This time when he turns to leave, with all his things piled on him like a pack mule, Shatterstar doesn’t follow.
It’s not until the truck is too far away and his feet hurt and his eyes ache from not crying that he realizes just how badly he’s fucked up.
He stays in Mexico, but not in Guadalajara. Instead, he heads south to Ciudad de México, which is bigger and uglier than Guadalajara by far.
He does the X-Corps thing, but it doesn’t work: too much like it used to be and too different. He goes back to Mexico, to go to school, and that doesn’t work either.
By chance he hears about Providence and on a whim, he applies to go there. He really doesn’t think Cable will welcome him, but he does. He even sends Rictor the money he needs for transportation and moving his things. The schooling there is better than what he’s getting at UACM, by a degree or two of genius. Cable meets all the most interesting people.
He enjoys calling his stepmother to tell her off, except for the moment where she tells him that it makes her happy that Shatterstar is out of his life. That part hurts. Ostensibly, he hasn’t been thinking about that.
“I gathered from your application that you are not here to be a part of X-Force again,” Cable says when he arrives in Providence with all his stuff in a back pack, a duffel, and a big ass trunk.
“No, sorry,” Rictor tells him. “Though I’ve kept up, so you could make me a reserve member or something.”
Well, someone had to do something about all the scum in Mexico City. Right?
Providence is nice, except for the fact that Shatterstar lives there some of the time. It makes Rictor feel like a creep to be ducking out of sight at every flash of white clothes and red hair.
He’s wearing his full Mojoland uniform. He gave that up while he was in Mexico, while he was with him, Rictor realizes. Does that mean he’s decided who he is? Clearly. He’s Gaveedra-7, emotionless, showy warrior. The one who doesn’t have any real feelings for Rictor. That’s… for the best right?
Or not, because he’s gotten over it. Mexico City can be pretty wild at times and he’s adjusted to the fact that he likes men about as much as women. And his family never really forgave him anyway. So Shatterstar doesn’t feel what he felt before, but Rictor still does and he has dealt with it, so he isn’t avoiding him. He’s just staying out of Shatterstar’s way. At this point, years later, the feelings he has for Shatterstar feel almost fake because they are so idyllic and sweet. He thinks bitterly that Shatterstar was not that attractive and the sex was not that amazing. But he can’t think that and see Shatterstar at the same time. Madre de Dios, he can’t see Shatterstar and also talk or breathe at the same time.
Then a day comes that Rictor does not remember, or rather, a whole life in a whole reality that comes on like a bright flash of white and disappears just the same.
But while it lasts he is in Guadalajara. Shatterstar and he stumble in early in the morning to Mamacita making chile rellenos for breakfast. He kisses her on the cheek and as they stagger towards their shared room, ‘Star kisses him on the mouth.
Omar peaks his head out of his room the moment before the kiss breaks.
“Why are you up so early?” he asks, bleary eyed.
Somehow Rictor finds it in himself to peel away from ‘Star for a moment to taunt his cousin about not being a morning person. Not that he is. He wants some breakfast and to sleep forever, snuggled close to Shatterstar’s broad chest.
When he wakes in the afternoon, to Shatterstar doing excruciating looking yoga, they move to the courtyard of the Richter family home and Shatterstar sits under a sparse tree with a blade of grass between his lips. Rictor sits next to him and reads until the sun is too far down to see. They gather up the plates from their early dinner that might be breakfast, depending on how one labels meals, and they go get dressed to patrol.
Tonight, as with every night, they are looking for trouble. But it will probably find them before too long.
They take out the latest envoy sent from a local gang that wants their mutie, hero asses run out on a rail. The adrenaline is throbbing in Rictor’s veins. Under his feet, the ground is quivering with the anticipation of released tensions.
“Julio,” Shatterstar says, clearly thinking the same thing he is thinking.
Then they are kissing and grinding against each other, a wall at ‘Star’s back and under Ric’s hands. It still radiates the day’s heat.
Rictor is on the edge of orgasm with Shatterstar’s moan ringing in his ears with the harsh pounding of his pulse when a flash of white hits him between the eyes.
He is in the library, just as he was the moment before the first flash of white, but nothing is as it was. He is shaking on the edge of arousal and worse. So much worse.
The feeling, the shift and tug, that flirtatious and expectant feeling of the Earth underneath him is just… gone. He feels suddenly, terribly bereft. Not just of the Earth, but something else almost as important. He very quickly passes out at the table.
“Well,” the doctor says. “I think you’re right, Mr. Richter.”
“So, my powers are really… gone?” he asks, numb.
“Yes,” and “I’m sorry.”
“Are they going to come back?”
His hands are clenched in painful fists.
“I don’t honestly know. No one seems to know what’s happened, exactly.”
He clenches his jaw and turns his head. He sniffs sharply through his nose, but he doesn’t cry.
There’s things to think over now, aren’t there? He creeps back to his place in Providence.
Out of the corner of his eyes he sees a flash of orange and white and doesn’t understand the flood of nausea and straight up horniness it brings out of nowhere, like a blow to the back of the head.
He gets to his room, at least, before he throws up.
Afterwards, he’s left kneeling on the bathroom floor with the thick, acrid taste of vomit in his mouth. He cries and he hates himself for doing so. It’s a hard sobbing cry with snot running down his face. It doesn’t help.
Somehow he ends up sitting on the toilet seat with the broken remnants of his razor in his hand. He’s amazed at how good it feels; lets him feel his pulse in the shells of his ears, like sex or earthquakes.
He wakes up in the hospital area of Providence. There are bandages around his wrists and an IV in the sensitive bend of his arm. His eyelids feel stuck together with superglue and his mouth still tastes like vomit. Only now, it tastes like old vomit.
“You’re very lucky,” a petite nurse tells him. She looks Sri Lankan. He doesn’t know why Sri Lankan, but he thinks Sri Lankan in particular.
“If you had cut the other way,” she explains. “Or deeper, you might not have been so lucky.”
Fuck, he even screwed this up. But at least, for now, he doesn’t want to try again.
Cable comes, after a while. He’s still on 24-hour observation.
“I want to get the fuck out of here,” he croaks out.
“Where do you want to go?” Cable asks him, a look of seriousness, but no judgment, no pity. He doesn’t feel anything touching inside his thoughts, but that’s no guarantee. Maybe he wouldn’t feel anything.
“Anywhere,” he says. “Not Mexico.”
After a while he says “The US. Boston.”
“Boston?” Cable asks him. He just nods.
“Can I do that?” he asks.
“Well, you’re an American citizen, I don’t see why not,” Cable says, huge arms crossed over his massive chest.
“What?” Rictor balks. “I’m not a-“
He gets handed a blue leather passport. It has his real name and his real birthdate. It’s his. It’s American. His real passport is in his underwear drawer in his room still. Is it even legal to have two passports? Rictor doesn’t know or care.
As soon as they let him go, he’s stuffing things in a backpack and a duffel back, leaving the trunk and its contents for charity. The first boat out of Providence and he’s gone.
If there’s a flash of red hair snapping in the wind at the dock, Rictor misses it-too distracted by the choppy South Pacific waves that smash together and against the boat like the tectonic plates he cannot feel creaking on the ocean floor.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom; Pairing: X-Factor; Rictor/Shatterstar
Word Count: 2,135
Disclaimer: Full disclaimer in my profile. I don't own the story or characters. They belong to Marvel Comics.
Summary: This is a break up fic. Takes place before Rictor and Shatterstar are reunited, so could be a sad prequel to Reunion, but isn't meant to be.
Warnings: Violence. Heartbreak.
They save his family and they do it together. Shatterstar does so much of the hard work and Rictor does most of the talking. But sometimes they trade off. His family likes ‘Star, probably because he was made to be the kind of man they admire-violent, big, emotionally closed off, and white. It’s mostly invention, he knows, and he knows because he whispers a variety of names into Shatterstar’s ear and knows all the secrets about him that ‘Star knows.
“Shatterstar,” sounds very formal, but he loves it. “Gaveedra,” feels exotic on Rictor’s tongue and has a heavy, sex-drenched flavor when whispered at the tale end of a moan into the shell of his lover’s ear. “Ben,” is so normal that it’s almost cute and it matches all the extra freckles that have popped up on Shatterstar’s body under the Mexican sun.
But “Star” is his favorite. Because it captures everything.
He is blissful for a week and a day, at home, with ‘Star and his family. After a week and a day his stepmother realizes that Shatterstar is more than just a good, trustworthy, praiseworthy friend.
She tells him that everything Shatterstar has done for this family is meaningless. She tells him that God hates him, as if he hadn’t already caught on to that little fact.
She tells Omar, who has finally gotten out of prison and come around to Julio’s perspective. Omar liked hanging out with them, even found Shatterstar’s channel surfing to be funny and unique.
“As much as I care,” Omar says, disgust in every feature of his face. “You are not a man.”
He leaves after that, stuffs everything he owns in the compound into his bags until they are bulging.
“Shatterstar,” he says. “Stop asking me questions. Just pack.” His tone is angrier than he wants it to be at the moment.
They fight in the truck on the way out of Guadalajara.
‘Star doesn’t get it and he gets angry at Rictor’s family and angry with Rictor when he defends his family, when he tries to apologize for them.
“You don’t understand!” Julio shouts at him. “You don’t have anyone! There’s no one for you to disappoint!”
“I have you,” Shatterstar says, suddenly terribly calm.
“No,” Julio tells him, hand scrabbling at the door handle. “You don’t.”
And he takes all of his bags and he gets out of the cab of their truck as clumsily as he possibly could, because he’s too upset to be coordinated.
Shatterstar gets out and follows him.
“Please, Rictor, Julio, please don’t do this,” he begs. “I am sorry. Please let me fix this.”
Rictor turns on him. A bag is dropped.
“You can’t fix this!” he shouts.
“I will try,” Shatterstar tells him, terribly plaintive.
“Did you-“ he chokes on the question, but he always wondered and he needs to know the answer. “Were you attracted to me when you were just Gaveedra?”
“Did you want to have sex with me when you were just Shatterstar? Did you care about me?”
He drops the rest of the bags that are weighing him down at the moment.
“Of course I cared about you,” Shatterstar tells him.
“But did you want me?” he demands in Spanish. “Because I wanted you. I wanted you so badly and I hated it so much.”
Shatterstar looks terribly hurt by that admission. He looks down at his hands, reaches back behind him to touch the top of a sword’s grip for comfort.
“No,” he says, very quietly, very softly. His shoulders bow a little.
“I thought so,” Rictor says, picking up his bags. He is still angry, still hurt, still hateful.
“Julio,” Shatterstar begs. “I love you, please don’t go. I need you.”
Those words make Rictor feel like he’s choking.
“I need to be away from you,” Julio tells him. “I’m no good for you, ‘Star, I’m sorry.”
This time when he turns to leave, with all his things piled on him like a pack mule, Shatterstar doesn’t follow.
It’s not until the truck is too far away and his feet hurt and his eyes ache from not crying that he realizes just how badly he’s fucked up.
He stays in Mexico, but not in Guadalajara. Instead, he heads south to Ciudad de México, which is bigger and uglier than Guadalajara by far.
He does the X-Corps thing, but it doesn’t work: too much like it used to be and too different. He goes back to Mexico, to go to school, and that doesn’t work either.
By chance he hears about Providence and on a whim, he applies to go there. He really doesn’t think Cable will welcome him, but he does. He even sends Rictor the money he needs for transportation and moving his things. The schooling there is better than what he’s getting at UACM, by a degree or two of genius. Cable meets all the most interesting people.
He enjoys calling his stepmother to tell her off, except for the moment where she tells him that it makes her happy that Shatterstar is out of his life. That part hurts. Ostensibly, he hasn’t been thinking about that.
“I gathered from your application that you are not here to be a part of X-Force again,” Cable says when he arrives in Providence with all his stuff in a back pack, a duffel, and a big ass trunk.
“No, sorry,” Rictor tells him. “Though I’ve kept up, so you could make me a reserve member or something.”
Well, someone had to do something about all the scum in Mexico City. Right?
Providence is nice, except for the fact that Shatterstar lives there some of the time. It makes Rictor feel like a creep to be ducking out of sight at every flash of white clothes and red hair.
He’s wearing his full Mojoland uniform. He gave that up while he was in Mexico, while he was with him, Rictor realizes. Does that mean he’s decided who he is? Clearly. He’s Gaveedra-7, emotionless, showy warrior. The one who doesn’t have any real feelings for Rictor. That’s… for the best right?
Or not, because he’s gotten over it. Mexico City can be pretty wild at times and he’s adjusted to the fact that he likes men about as much as women. And his family never really forgave him anyway. So Shatterstar doesn’t feel what he felt before, but Rictor still does and he has dealt with it, so he isn’t avoiding him. He’s just staying out of Shatterstar’s way. At this point, years later, the feelings he has for Shatterstar feel almost fake because they are so idyllic and sweet. He thinks bitterly that Shatterstar was not that attractive and the sex was not that amazing. But he can’t think that and see Shatterstar at the same time. Madre de Dios, he can’t see Shatterstar and also talk or breathe at the same time.
Then a day comes that Rictor does not remember, or rather, a whole life in a whole reality that comes on like a bright flash of white and disappears just the same.
But while it lasts he is in Guadalajara. Shatterstar and he stumble in early in the morning to Mamacita making chile rellenos for breakfast. He kisses her on the cheek and as they stagger towards their shared room, ‘Star kisses him on the mouth.
Omar peaks his head out of his room the moment before the kiss breaks.
“Why are you up so early?” he asks, bleary eyed.
Somehow Rictor finds it in himself to peel away from ‘Star for a moment to taunt his cousin about not being a morning person. Not that he is. He wants some breakfast and to sleep forever, snuggled close to Shatterstar’s broad chest.
When he wakes in the afternoon, to Shatterstar doing excruciating looking yoga, they move to the courtyard of the Richter family home and Shatterstar sits under a sparse tree with a blade of grass between his lips. Rictor sits next to him and reads until the sun is too far down to see. They gather up the plates from their early dinner that might be breakfast, depending on how one labels meals, and they go get dressed to patrol.
Tonight, as with every night, they are looking for trouble. But it will probably find them before too long.
They take out the latest envoy sent from a local gang that wants their mutie, hero asses run out on a rail. The adrenaline is throbbing in Rictor’s veins. Under his feet, the ground is quivering with the anticipation of released tensions.
“Julio,” Shatterstar says, clearly thinking the same thing he is thinking.
Then they are kissing and grinding against each other, a wall at ‘Star’s back and under Ric’s hands. It still radiates the day’s heat.
Rictor is on the edge of orgasm with Shatterstar’s moan ringing in his ears with the harsh pounding of his pulse when a flash of white hits him between the eyes.
He is in the library, just as he was the moment before the first flash of white, but nothing is as it was. He is shaking on the edge of arousal and worse. So much worse.
The feeling, the shift and tug, that flirtatious and expectant feeling of the Earth underneath him is just… gone. He feels suddenly, terribly bereft. Not just of the Earth, but something else almost as important. He very quickly passes out at the table.
“Well,” the doctor says. “I think you’re right, Mr. Richter.”
“So, my powers are really… gone?” he asks, numb.
“Yes,” and “I’m sorry.”
“Are they going to come back?”
His hands are clenched in painful fists.
“I don’t honestly know. No one seems to know what’s happened, exactly.”
He clenches his jaw and turns his head. He sniffs sharply through his nose, but he doesn’t cry.
There’s things to think over now, aren’t there? He creeps back to his place in Providence.
Out of the corner of his eyes he sees a flash of orange and white and doesn’t understand the flood of nausea and straight up horniness it brings out of nowhere, like a blow to the back of the head.
He gets to his room, at least, before he throws up.
Afterwards, he’s left kneeling on the bathroom floor with the thick, acrid taste of vomit in his mouth. He cries and he hates himself for doing so. It’s a hard sobbing cry with snot running down his face. It doesn’t help.
Somehow he ends up sitting on the toilet seat with the broken remnants of his razor in his hand. He’s amazed at how good it feels; lets him feel his pulse in the shells of his ears, like sex or earthquakes.
He wakes up in the hospital area of Providence. There are bandages around his wrists and an IV in the sensitive bend of his arm. His eyelids feel stuck together with superglue and his mouth still tastes like vomit. Only now, it tastes like old vomit.
“You’re very lucky,” a petite nurse tells him. She looks Sri Lankan. He doesn’t know why Sri Lankan, but he thinks Sri Lankan in particular.
“If you had cut the other way,” she explains. “Or deeper, you might not have been so lucky.”
Fuck, he even screwed this up. But at least, for now, he doesn’t want to try again.
Cable comes, after a while. He’s still on 24-hour observation.
“I want to get the fuck out of here,” he croaks out.
“Where do you want to go?” Cable asks him, a look of seriousness, but no judgment, no pity. He doesn’t feel anything touching inside his thoughts, but that’s no guarantee. Maybe he wouldn’t feel anything.
“Anywhere,” he says. “Not Mexico.”
After a while he says “The US. Boston.”
“Boston?” Cable asks him. He just nods.
“Can I do that?” he asks.
“Well, you’re an American citizen, I don’t see why not,” Cable says, huge arms crossed over his massive chest.
“What?” Rictor balks. “I’m not a-“
He gets handed a blue leather passport. It has his real name and his real birthdate. It’s his. It’s American. His real passport is in his underwear drawer in his room still. Is it even legal to have two passports? Rictor doesn’t know or care.
As soon as they let him go, he’s stuffing things in a backpack and a duffel back, leaving the trunk and its contents for charity. The first boat out of Providence and he’s gone.
If there’s a flash of red hair snapping in the wind at the dock, Rictor misses it-too distracted by the choppy South Pacific waves that smash together and against the boat like the tectonic plates he cannot feel creaking on the ocean floor.