Boba✨

Bob told John about how he’d been hearing the ocean since he was thirteen; the sound of waves lapping and seagulls chirping and palm leaves blowing in the breeze. He told John about how he’d been feeling fire ants since his first experience with formication on meth, and how he’d been seeing floor and wallpaper patterns move like optical illusions since he could remember.

So, when Bob woke up early one morning and said, “I hear it storming in Sarasota,” John thought literally nothing of it. He was curled into John’s side, his head on John’s left pec, tip of his tongue tucked between his lips as he chewed on his nail. Bob also rambled to himself a lotwhen he was half asleep. He was probably hallucinating a thunderstorm, and either wasn’t awake enough to acknowledge that it wasn’t real or just felt like telling John about it.

But then he kept going. He mumbled on and on about the crashing waves, the people sliding on the sand, the palm fronds blowing sideways. He talked about a surfboard floating away from its owner, someone screaming at a child to get inside. And then he said, “A pelican got stuck in a tree.” A weird, random little detail that John really didn’t think twice about.

Until Bob fell back asleep and John started scrolling on his phone and came across a video of people rescuing a pelican from a tree in Sarasota.

It had to be a coincidence, right? There was no way Bob heard a pelican in fucking Sarasota. But all the details lined up. There was a massive, freak storm around where Bob grew up and every damn thing he said was either in a video or in an article. The surfboard, the parent shouting, all of it.

He kept scrolling until Bob’s eyes fluttered open again. John set his hand on Bob’s head and gently massaged his hair, tucking a few curls into their place. It would probably be better not to say anything but for some reason, he couldn’t stop himself from indulging his curiosity.

“Hey.” John tilted his head down and kissed the top of Bob’s head, smiling to himself when Bob sniffed and nuzzled into his chest. “Bobby, you remember telling me about the storm, baby?”

“In Sarasota?” Bob nodded against John’s chest, his fingers toying with the fabric of John’s shirt as they woke up. “Mmhm. It was a thunderstorm.”

“I know. I saw it on the news. Did you really hear it?”

A few seconds passed in silence before Bob said, “Sometimes when I’m thinking about a place, I can hear it.”

“Okay.” He could hear a storm twelve hundred miles away. So, that was another weird Sentry power to add to the list. John kissed Bob’s hair again, playing with the curls around the base of his neck. “Can you hear me when I’m gone?”

“No.” Bob twitched and John adjusted his arm to hug around his shoulders. The answer was fast enough that it almost hurt until Bob elaborated. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t work if I don’t know where you are.”

“Oh.” That made sense. “How do you know when it’s real and when you’re hallucinating?”

“I don’t.”

“Does that scare you?”