Running for Home - 33. December 5, 2021

December 05 2021

It’s been four days since I broke down on Bobby in the locker room. Four days of avoiding him, avoiding thinking about it and, fuck, even avoiding my friends. I’ve made myself busy and to be honest, I’ve done a pretty good job of burying it. I don’t know why I am thinking about it now, to be honest. I’m actually proud of myself for not wasting too much energy ruminating and stewing about it. But really? I know I still have an undercurrent of it flowing beneath the surface. Just another drop in the bucket, really, my PTSD flaring up because Bobby had to be a nosy asshole. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing and does it really fucking matter, anyway? I’m over it. I’m sure he is too.

I had a confrontation with Kevin Ford today. He was being a shit in Writing class after I’d handed back an essay assignment. He’d been acting out all week, really, in one way or another. Since I came to the realization that the stress from the palimony lawsuit has been seeping into my classroom behaviour, let alone the shit with Bobby this week, I’ve been working on not letting shit get to me and take it out on the students. Maybe I’ve been going a little too easy on Kevin as a consequence of that. I guess his crap today was the last straw for me. I told him to get the fuck up and go out into the hallway. Cecily Kinkaid, a.k.a. Mercury, was giving him the super-concerned look she always does when Kevin gets into trouble. Quel surprise. But a lot of the others were just smirking. Kevin isn’t very well liked outside of his close group of friends, and even his relations with some of them are pretty strained at times. I told my students we were going to take a pause on the lesson I was teaching about using foreshadowing with different levels of subtlety until later. I asked them to work on the short story that was due on Monday.

I stepped out into the hall to see an absolutely furious Kevin pacing back and forth. He stopped and looked at me with his hands clenched into fists, just shaking his head. It wasn’t a belligerent anger, though. This was something else. I left Sofia in charge of the class. Unlike some of the shits in my lit classes, the students in there were well behaved so it’s not like I really had much to worry about. David, Nori, Cecily, Jay, Dallas, Brian, Nezhno and Paras were good kids and the others in the class just seemed to follow Sofia and that gang’s lead.

I brought a reluctant Kevin to my office and made it clear we were going to have a talk. He stared at me challengingly for a minute with his arms crossed and his jaw set. That kind of look always raises my hackles. I had to step back from the desk, turn away from him and take a quiet deep breath. I opened the window shades to let some of the afternoon light in. I asked him if he knew why we were in my office and not in class with everyone else. He said it was because I clearly didn’t like him and there was nothing he could do to keep me from giving him a shit grade so why even bother with my class. It wasn’t going to make a difference, so maybe he just ought to just drop out of it.

I sat down in my desk chair and gestured for him to sit down across from me. He didn’t, so I commanded him to sit. He rolled his eyes at me did as asked, saying ‘alright, here it comes’ under his breath. I sighed, trying not to let his attitude get to me. I seriously was starting to want to throttle him, but I know enough about this kid’s history that this can’t be just him being a narcissistic asshat in the same vein as Julian. Kevin wasn’t a spoiled brat with an attachment disorder and maybe a personality disorder too. No, he was a kid that had been put through the ringer by life. His body, his very DNA had fucked him over. Killed his father and his dog when he first manifested before he even knew what was happening to him. Massively traumatized. Dani has official guardianship of him now, apparently, because he has no one else. His mother ran took off on him and his father when he was six and wound up getting raped and murdered in downtown Atlanta. I don’t know if he’s fully privy to the details of her death, or if he just knows she ran out on them. Knowing kids these days, though, he’s probably figured that shit out too.

So, back to addressing the angry mess in front of me, I asked him why I thought I was giving him shit grades. He looked at me as if it was completely self-evident, but it wasn’t. He was getting B’s on most of his stuff, except poetry. That was his strong suit and all his work there I was scoring in the A or A+ range. On his stories and creative nonfiction I had given him some A’s at the beginning of the term, but he wasn’t progressing so his marks were reflecting that. I told him as much. I told him he’s got a lot of creativity, a lot of talent, but that doesn’t mean his writing is ready for publication. If he won’t listen to the feedback his peers and I give to him, then he’s doing himself a disservice. My feedback in particular, since I goddamn know what I’m talking about.

He huffed, looking away from me. I asked him to look at me for a second. He grunted but did as I asked. I locked my gaze with his green eyes and told him I knew exactly what it felt like to have my best work go unappreciated, to have it criticized and marked up all in red. I knew what it felt like to have that one thing that I thought I was good at be ignored or told it was never good enough. When I was a student here, my papers always came back utterly slaughtered with criticisms. My stories? Same. My poetry? Well, they didn’t fucking know shit about poetry, so I ended up with middling grades just because my themes were too dark or controversial and they didn’t understand how to approach it.

That one thing, that one simple thing that I felt good at was never good enough, and all I had left to fall back on was my powers. My powers and my bad attitude. I told Kevin that we weren’t the same, didn’t come from the same sort of background, but I could at least understand this part of him. I told him that I knew Dani was his guardian and was supposed to be supporting him, and he was supposed to be getting help from Emma as well. I told him I knew that probably wasn’t enough. And then I offered him the chance to talk to me whenever he needed to because I don’t want to see him fall. I don’t want to see him give in to the deep despair I could see in him through his poetry. I don’t want him to turn to hate in order to deal with life. I don’t want him to follow my footsteps in that regard. He looked like he didn’t know what to say, but I could tell that he was affected.

He bit his lip and asked me if I’d ever been afraid of my powers.

I nodded. It’s a secret, a big secret that I don’t like people knowing. Really, I’m not sure if anyone other than Xavier, Dr. Grey, Mystique and Destiny ever knew about this. I have always been afraid of my powers. I’ve always been afraid of them because they are attached to this part of me that feels a primal urge to burn, to destroy, to consume everything. Damn the consequences, feed the flames and immolate the entire world. And I’ve given in to it, given in to that urge and let it overtake me. I’ve let it take control of me, and all too many times.

Kevin gasped, his eyes widening in recognition. I went on, wondering where this was going, but I could tell I was on to something.

I was just a kid the first time I was overtaken by that urge. If Bobby hadn’t been there to counter me I probably would have burnt down a good chunk of the boys’ dormitory before I regained control of myself. Sometimes I wonder if it was actually me, or if Xavier or Dr. Grey gave me a mental nudge to break out of it. My other times were during various operations for the Brotherhood and for Freedom Force. Mostly for the Brotherhood, though. I was one of the two demolitions experts, after all. Me and Dominik. Destroying everything, reducing them to rubble and ashes. Just like our lives.

Kevin nodded. He admitted that he felt something, a similar urge to use his powers. It was almost like it hungered, like he needed to let it out to consume and destroy things. And it wasn’t just that - it felt good to let it out. So good. It could be bliss sometimes. He felt like he was crazy, like he was going to turn into a psychopath. He was dangerous and everyone knew it. It was so hard, so very hard when everyone was scared of him, when he couldn’t touch anyone. No one would get close enough for him to do it anyway, even with his full-body sheath on from collar to fingertips and toes. It was so hard that the girl he loved - Laurie Collins - was too scared of him to even try to return his feelings, instead attaching herself to Joshua-fucking-Foley.

It was common knowledge that Josh and Kevin were anathemas. Josh had the charismatic personality, the boy-next-door jock attitude, all of it. He was the Big Man on Campus. He had a thing for Laurie too, but it didn’t stop him from pursuing Rahne Sinclair while she was still living here a year and a half ago… and apparently succeeding. Emma told me that Kevin had discovered them and made it public. He’d wanted to remind everyone on campus - and Laurie especially - that Josh wasn’t the altruistic nice guy they thought he was. Actually, Josh had been a young recruit for the Reavers, an anti-mutant militia, before he had his somewhat late manifestation of his healing abilities. In a stroke of bad luck, Laurie had been kidnapped by the very group of Reavers Josh was part of and was gravely injured by them. Josh’s healing abilities manifested for the second time and healed her, but Kevin went into a rage and attacked the leader of the group, almost killing him before Dani was able to stop him with her powers. Kevin said that was the first time he’d felt physical pleasure from his powers. It wasn’t psychological pleasure. All he felt was rage at the time, and deep shame afterwards. But all of this, it all just kept driving Laurie further away from Kevin. Further from Kevin and closer to Josh, despite all his faults.

I asked Kevin if there was anyone he could touch without his powers disintegrating them, knowing full well there were a few on campus. He could touch Piotr and Emma when they were transformed, of course, but there was also Cecily. Cecily, the girl in his class that was always so concerned about him. I asked Kevin why he didn’t spend some gloves-off time with her, and he just shrugged. I guess he doesn’t think there is much point when she’s made of bio-organic metal. It’s not like touching human flesh.

I looked at him for a second. I asked him how many people touch Cecily - how many grasp her shoulder, how many give her hugs, how many hold her hand. He looked at me blankly for a moment and then his gaze fell down to his hands in his lap. He said he didn’t know, but I could tell he very well knew that she was nearly as touch-starved as him. Cecily was strikingly beautiful, and yet she didn’t have any suitors. Many of the students with physical mutations had trouble with the love side of things, but she was one of the ones that had it pretty bad, and I can’t quite figure out why. I asked Kevin if he thought of Cecily as a friend. He said he did. I asked him if he’d think about talking to Cecily about how he felt. Kevin looked at me like I’m crazy.

I sighed. Maybe that was the wrong approach.

I swallowed my pride and, cringing inwardly, asked Kevin if he’d ever had a chance to talk to Marie. He said no. I can’t fucking believe that. I’m going to be talking to Emma about Kevin no matter what, now, and I’m definitely going to ask her why the hell she doesn’t have him talking with Marie. At least Kevin knew who I was talking about, even if he didn’t really know all that much about Rogue.

The class period was coming to an end, so I finished our little talk. I repeated the offer to be an ear if he needed one, and that I completely understood how talking to Dani and Emma probably wouldn’t cut it sometimes, about some things. Guy things. Other things. Whatever he wanted. Kevin nodded and said he’d keep it in mind. I asked him if he was going to give my feedback on his writing a chance from now on. He rolled his eyes and said he might. If he had to. I told him he’d do it, or he’d better stop bitching about his grades.

When he left my office, I at first had thought he’d feel maybe a little bit buoyed by our conversation. We’d exchanged a lot, after all. His body language told a completely different story, though. If anything, he’d just gone from furious to depressed. Had I done that exchange right? Did I do anything at all good? Had I miscalculated?

Sometimes I just don't know what to think.

Speaking of not knowing what to think, later this afternoon Bobby and I had our first official meeting about the Big Gay Talk, as I've decided we're going to refer to it as from now on. Emma was riding my ass a few days ago that we'd made no progress. I mean, it's hard to make progress if you haven't even spoken to one another about the damn thing, let alone made any decisions about what we were doing. She told me she'd decided we're going to give the presentation as part of the school-wide assembly at the beginning of the new term in January. I wish she'd made that decision a little sooner since it was going to be a bit of a mess to get it all coordinated before Christmas. I doubt Bobby will be sticking around the School after the 23rd, and I don't expect he'd return until a day or so after New Years', so we need to finish this before then, save a little polishing. That gives us not quite two weeks to hammer this out.

Bobby actually surprised me. He'd done a lot more reading than I'd expected and had found a number of good resources. There were some shit ones, too, but that's part and parcel for a lot of this kind of work. But maybe even more than that was the fact that he seemed engaged, engrossed, like this was actually turning into something really important for him.

I surprised myself, too. The meeting was a bit awkward at first, especially given what happened between us a few days ago, but once we got things rolling it was like… Fuck, we just fell into this rhythm and way of coming to conclusions together that so reminded me of things back when we were roommates. Minus the teenage bickering, mostly, but it wouldn't be a day in the life of St. John Allerdyce without some snark and bitching. But we were joking around, too. Bobby made me laugh a lot, and I guess I provoked some laughter from him as well. We were smiling. This meeting turned into something I would never have imagined. Looking back, I can't help but feel this deep sense of satisfaction, yet at the same time, it makes me feel anxious and apprehensive. My guard is coming down. I can feel it, feel myself getting drawn in again by those sparkling eyes, that sexy smile. It's scaring the fuck out of me. I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to still be in love with him after all this time, aching for something that I can never have.

I don't know where this is going anymore. It was easier when we were avoiding each other. It was easier when we were being angry and dismissive. But was it? Was it truly easier, or did it just hurt in a way that I am so used to that it seems second nature? Wouldn't it be better to have him as a friend?

Fuck, I don't know. I have at least five meetings about The Big Gay Talk to get through with him before Christmas. I gotta figure this out, figure out how to keep my shit together. He's not mine. Not a friend. Not any enemy. Just a colleague, one I'm working on a project with. Nothing more. If it wasn't for our jobs, for this project, he'd have no reason to be civil with me. No, no reason to fake being civil with me. It has to be fake. I need it to be fake, so it's fake. He hates me. He still does. I know it. I need to know it because that's the only fucking option I have. The smiles, the glint of his eyes, the laughter, it was all just an illusion of necessity. It had to be. It must be. I can't let it be anything else. I can't let him be anything else, and I don't know how the fuck I'm going to do this if things keep going like this. I need to be strong, but I'm not. Not with him, never with him. But I guess I need to fake it too, then, don't I? I need to put on the fake bravado and convince myself things with him aren't developing into what I want them to be. I need to fake it to the point that I believe it. Fake it until you make it, right? Just like I'm doing with my teaching, 'cause we damn well know that I'm no fucking teacher. No matter how much might actually I like it. No matter how much it's starting to mean to me.

Whatever happens, I just hope my heart can take it.