Running for Home - 70. April 1, 2022

April 1, 2022

It’s my birthday today. Yes, I’m a fucking April Fool’s baby. I’ve never been able to figure out who the joke was on, though. My parents? Me?

Whatever.

My horoscope in the paper this morning said that a long-seated problem will come to a resolution this year. Given my life, it’s a crapshoot to think of what problem that could be. Will Dom finally be out of my life? Bobby and I had already patched things up and embarked on a new adventure together, so that wasn’t it. There was the Liam situation, of course, but that wasn’t a problem so much as a new responsibility. I wonder what else it could be?

Ugh, normally I wouldn’t even be ruminating on something as stupid as my horoscope, since they are all just bullshit anyway, but that letter Mystique gave me from Destiny back before the holidays seems to be popping up in my mind a lot lately. She told me I needed to embrace forgiveness. Well, I wasn’t fucking ready to forgive Dom yet, not totally. But who else did I need to forgive?

Well, maybe events later in the day made that clear.

Emma called me into her office just after lunch this afternoon. I was annoyed since it was a Saturday, and we had just gotten back to the School late in the evening yesterday. I asked her right away if this was about Dom and about Magneto’s threats, because it damn well better be something dire and not about work. She immediately dismissed that. The situation hasn’t changed - they were going to hold Dom here for now. He was still recovering from the damage done by the telepathic virus and the therapies they tried to help his brain recover, and Emma was taking into account the fact that I wanted him to face some sort of punishment for what he did to me. Beyond that, Emma honestly didn’t think Magneto would make good on his threat to attack us, anyway. It ran counter to his goals, and Dominik certainly could not be important enough to his plans to risk decimating his own army of Acolytes to attack us. No, this was about something else entirely, and not about work either.

Emma told me that it was her duty as headmistress to know as much as possible about her staff. That she’d done some digging in the summer and early in the fall about my past here when she was trying to get a handle on my personality and how she would need to deal with me as an employee of the school. She told me she didn’t want to do this with all the upheaval I already had in my life, but she’d been waiting on this long enough and it was my birthday. I deserved to know. Emma slid a manila envelope across the desk towards me. I knew that envelope, I remembered seeing it and her being contemplative about it when she met with me just before Christmas. I asked her what was in it.

It was information about my parents. About my parents and how they tried to get me back, or at least get visitation rights while I was at the School. About how Xavier told them they could have what they wanted if they got through rehab and were no longer dependent on alcohol and nicotine. If they cleaned up their act, if they got jobs again. And, most importantly, if I even wanted to have anything to do with them after everything they had put me through. If I consented, then Xavier would let them have a supervised visit with me and see how things went. From there, the possibilities were endless.

Well, they managed to do it. They met all of Xavier’s lofty requirements. They were in the process of scheduling that first visit for Thanksgiving when Stryker attacked the School, when I attacked the police in front of Bobby’s parents’ house, when I went AWOL with Magneto after the Alkali Lake incident went to shit.

They wanted me back. They fucking wanted me back, and I fucking ruined it by leaving and turning into a fucking terrorist.

Emma told me that they sued Xavier and the School for endangering me and losing track of me at Alkali Lake. They settled out of court for $5.5 million. If Xavier hadn’t been so fucking ridiculously rich, it could have broken the School. They would never have been able to get insurance again if they had to go through the regular channels to come up with that money. She told me that my parents’ last known address and contact information was in the envelope if I wanted to get in touch. If it was out of date, she could have her sources dig up the correct information.

I barely held it together.

I took the envelope, thanked Emma and got the fuck out of there. I burst into tears as soon as I made it back to my room, just fucking sobbing. Bobby and Liam weren’t there, but I didn’t want them to see me like this, not right now. I threw the envelope down on my desk and collapsed onto the bed, curling into the ball and losing control. My thoughts started spiralling. I couldn’t help myself. All I could think about was how stupid I was and how if I’d just been a little bit stronger and less angsty and jaded and done what I was supposed to and stayed on the goddamn plane with Bobby and Marie my entire life would have been different. I would have gone back to Xavier's, he would have magically solved the problem with the police with his rich bitch connections or maybe even using some subtle telepathic shit, my parents would have come for me and we would have been a family again, and maybe if I'd stuck with it long enough and stayed best friends with Bobby, he would have come to his realization about himself sooner and we would have gone to college together and lived happily ever after. The fucking end.

No years as a terrorist fugitive, no time in jail, no secret life as a Freedom Force assassin, no getting fucked up and tortured in Iraq and especially no fucking Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis fucking ruining my life. I could have had everything, everything I ever wanted and I was the one who fucking ruined it all!

My thoughts went to some pretty dark places after that. The despair started to overwhelm me, but then I remembered where I was, who I had become over the last ten years, all my friends and what I had with Bobby now. Not just Bobby, with Daniel and now Liam as well. I had a family now, even if it wasn’t the one I was born with.

I took a deep breath and stopped crying. Maybe I didn't have everything the way I had secretly wanted it as a teenager, but I had this, I had it now, and regardless of whether my parents were a part of my life or not, it was enough. More than enough.

I got up off the bed and went over to my desk. I sat down, tentatively touching the envelope. It was stuffed awfully thick. Fuck it, I wanted to know what was inside it, even if I wasn't sure what I wanted to do about it.

I opened it up. The document on top was a summary of the findings and conclusions of Children’s Protective Services after my father beat me and I ran away, getting them locked up in jail for abuse and neglect. I just glanced through that, not really caring what all those talking heads thought. That is until I saw that they knew I was a mutant.

After I had been taken away from my parents, I remember having to see a bunch of doctors and specialists and doing some tests. They told me they wanted to make sure I was healthy, that I didn't have any genetic diseases or there was anything else that had gone wrong with my body since we were living in poverty and I was pretty thin from not eating well. Well, one of the tests they did was a complete genetic analysis. They caught my active X-gene in the reams of data that came from that. They knew I was a mutant, and so did Alfred and Louise Shanley, the foster parents I was placed with.

Everyone knew, but no one told me. I lived with them for two years and I spent at least the last six months of it freaking out about what would happen if they discovered I had powers, but they knew the whole goddamned time and they didn't care. They didn't treat me like shit for it. I thought they were glad to be rid of me when Xavier came a calling, but they fucking told Xavier that if things didn't work out with the School they would be happy to take me back in.

I was such a shit to them, and they still would have taken me back in. I thought they just put up with me because they felt obligated, like it was their duty to take in and provide for fucked up kids like me since they couldn't have kids of their own. I thought that the cheque they were cut by the government to care for me greased the wheels to put up with my shit. But it was never about that, was it? I barely even thanked them for taking care of me for two years when Scott Summers came to pick me up to leave for Xavier's, my new home.

If I became blind to how good I had it at Xavier's, I was blind to how good I had it with these people as well. I wonder what's become of them? Maybe that's something I could ask Emma about. I should probably thank them, truly thank them for taking me in and providing me with a safe place to grow before Xavier's. But would they even want that from me? From a former terrorist? Maybe the emphasis on former part was good enough, but I don't know if I really want to find out otherwise.

I started reading through some of the other documents - Xavier's initial evaluation of me, reports from all my teachers on my progress and behavioural problems, incident reports about all the trouble I got into including that fistfight I had with Bobby when we first became roommates because he decided to clean up my shit on my side of the room as if I needed him to be my fucking mother. But amongst all the disciplinary reports and the concern for my mental health and development, there were the academic evaluations talking about how much fucking potential I had, about how mature and creative my writing was. If only they could figure out a way to consistently apply myself, how bright a fucking future I would have! There was more, about how impressed they were with the depth of my control over my powers even if they wished I wouldn't use them so frequently and frivolously.

I thought they hated me. I thought I was a goddamned thorn in their sides, a bad decision Xavier made because he had such an inflated sense of self-importance and charity in his quest to save all the misfortunate mutant children. But they fucking loved having me as part of this stupid school, all of them. Even Scott fucking Summers, who I thought hated me with an unbridled passion because I was always such a problem, even he thought I would grow up to be influential. They saw my progress as a major fucking success, and I never understood that and I fucking threw it all away and betrayed them to side with Magneto and his merry band of terrorists.

Swallowing, I turned to the next page. It was about my parents. Learning I was a mutant changed nothing for them. They still wanted me back, even after knowing that. Apparently, my father had apprenticed as an electrician while they were waiting to get me back, and my mother had worked at Walgreens. Both had gone through rehab, which apparently Xavier had actually paid for. Xavier didn’t just give them the incentive to get better, he fucking helped them through it! He tried to fix my goddamn family so we could be happy and together again!

The last page had contact information. An address in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. Fuck, that’s a really nice suburb of Detroit on the shore of Lake St. Clair, not the shitty trailer park we used to live in outside Flint. We did have a house in Flint before my father lost his job at the parts factory and they couldn’t afford the mortgage anymore. Guess they had moved up in the world since the rehab and retraining. There was a phone number included in the details.

I stared at it for a second. My hand reached for my cell phone in my pocket. I pulled it out, trembling.

I hesitated.

Could it be this easy?

I shook my head and shoved my phone back into my pocket. It wasn’t that easy. If I was going to confront my parents, it wasn’t going to be over the goddamned phone. I wasn’t going to ruin my fucking birthday by calling them if they don’t want anything to do with me after all the crimes I’d committed while under Magneto’s influence. Instead, I opened up my laptop and opened Google Maps. I searched out the address. Fuck, it was a waterfront property. They must have bought it with the windfall from the lawsuit against Xavier. Even if my father was doing well as an electrician, there’s no way they would have been able to afford a place like that otherwise.

I needed to think this through. I needed to take some time to decide what I wanted to do. If I was going to do this, I needed to do it the right way. If I was just going to show up there, it should be on the beginning of a weekend in case… in case they still wanted me to be their son.

I shut my laptop. I needed to talk to Bobby about this. I really fucking wanted to go down there over Easter, now, but Bobby had promised his parents over the phone yesterday that we would bring Liam to meet them in person that Sunday. Fuck. Well, maybe this could wait. Maybe I should sit on this for some time before I act. What if I go in May? Surprise my mother on Mother’s Day weekend?

That just might work.

I got up and went into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. Fuck, I looked like shit. I splashed some water on my face, hoping it would help get rid of some of the redness around my eyes from all the crying I just did.

I pulled my phone out and messaged Bobby, asking him where he and Liam were. Bobby answered right away. He’d left Liam in the games room with some of the kids his age, and was working in his office. He asked what was up. I told him I was heading to him, and I’d tell him when I got there.

I ran into Jean-Paul walking down the hallway. He wished me a happy birthday and then stopped me, frowning. He asked me what was wrong. Fuck, I was wearing my heart on my sleeve, wasn’t I? I sighed and told him Emma had given me some information about my parents’ whereabouts, and I was trying to decide what to do about it. He put a hand on my shoulder, nodded and said that I must feel a lot of different emotions right now. Then he muttered that he was a little envious that I might have the chance to reconnect with my family. I nodded and then suddenly I had the urge to pull him into a hug and did so. Jean-Paul stiffened, and then relaxed in my arms. Even if my parents rejected me, knowing they were alive and doing better for themselves was infinitely better than knowing they were dead like Jean-Paul’s parents. At least I had known mine, for a decade. Jean-Paul had never known his parents.

Jean-Paul patted me gently on the back and then pulled out of my embrace. He looked caught up in his own emotions now, too. He thanked me and said he should probably let me get back on my way. No doubt I was looking for Bobby. He was right of course, so I continued on my way down to Bobby’s office.

Bobby was waiting for me in front of his desk when I got there, leaning back against it. When he saw the look on my face he immediately pushed off it and came and pulled me into a hug. He asked me what was wrong, of course. I inhaled deeply, his scent calming me, and let out a sigh.

I told him about the envelope. He listened quietly as I told him about my parents, about how they tried to get me back, how they sued Xavier. How it made me feel that I left with Magneto before finding out they wanted me back. That I wasn’t unwanted. That they cared enough about me to turn their lives around, even for just the possibility of visiting with me. And I told him I had their address and phone number. That I almost called them, but I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t risk hearing them reject me for all the terrible things that I did with the Brotherhood, not on my birthday.

I started crying again, but they were silent tears. Bobby hugged me tightly.

After a few minutes, he asked me if I’d forgiven them for the beatings, for the neglect, for getting me put into foster care because they were so out of control and unable to provide for me the way they should. I nodded. I told Bobby I could remember the time before all that, the time when we were a happy, normal family. Shit happened, and they crumbled, and it fucking sucks, but they were only human. Tragically imperfect. It took going to jail and having me taken away from them to have them wake up from the state of despair and helplessness they’d let themselves wallow in, but they tried to change, to change for me, so we could be a family again. After all the stupid shit I did with Magneto because of letting my own feelings control my actions, could I really blame them? Well, I could, I guess, but I could forgive them too.

The only question left was whether or not they could forgive me for the years of being a terrorist after Magneto radicalized me.

Bobby rubbed my back and told me he would be here for me, no matter what happened. That he was my family now, him and Liam. And Daniel, I added. Bobby chuckled, and agreed.

He asked me if I wanted to cancel our plans to meet with his parents over Easter and go see my own parents instead. I pulled back to look at him, look into his eyes. There was no trace of mixed feelings, no hint that he had a preferred answer. I kissed him, and then told him no. It was more important that Liam get to spend some time with his grandparents. Bobby pointed out that if Liam was going to be with us long-term, my parents could be like grandparents to him as well. I shook my head and told Bobby that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves. Joanna might still turn up, even though that would take nothing short of a miracle at this point.

Bobby said he was done with work, so we went back up to the room and laid down on the bed together. I put my head on his chest and tried to just go limp in his embrace, to relax away all of the leftover tension. I could hear his heartbeat. At some point, I fell asleep, just like that. I know I dreamed, but of what I’m uncertain. It wasn’t a nightmare, though. I know that for sure.

Bobby woke me a while later with a sweet kiss on the top of my head. He asked me if I was still feeling up to going out for dinner to celebrate my birthday. He wondered if Emma had ruined the day for me by revealing this stuff. I shook my head. She didn’t ruin it, not at all. It was a lot of complex emotions to deal with and it left me grappling with a lot of mixed feelings and regrets about the path my life has taken, but she was right - I am glad that I know, now. Even if the way forward is uncertain and I don’t know what will happen if I seek out my parents again, just knowing that they changed their lives for me was enough. They loved me, their child. Whether or not they could forgive me for my choices as a teenager and young adult we would find out, but I could make peace with that.

I told Bobby that I’d told Jean-Paul that Emma had given me information about my parents’ whereabouts, but not the details of it, before I found Bobby in his office. I told Bobby I didn’t want him sharing this stuff with our other friends. I wasn’t really feeling up to talking about it with anyone else, not yet. But I wanted to celebrate. To celebrate the fact that I’m a year older, a year wiser, and I had parents who loved me when I was a child, even if they didn’t always make the best decisions.

And then I told Bobby that I was scared that with my parent’s track record and all my other problems, that I wouldn’t be up to the job of helping him co-parent Liam. That I’d fuck it up, badly. Bobby shook his head, hugged me tight, and told him he didn’t feel like he was well equipped by his parents either, between his father’s toxic masculinity and his mother’s pearl-clutching Republican family values and cold-fish way of expressing love. I snorted and told him he was out of his mind - he was a good kid when we met. Most of his misbehaviour at Xavier’s was a result of my prodding and plotting. Bobby disagreed. He said he was too afraid of his father and the consequences of being bad when he was a kid. Hanging out with me and getting into mischief was a welcome relief from that once he arrived at the School. He didn’t want Liam to feel afraid of him, of either of us. He didn’t want fear to be the source of his moral compass. I agreed with Bobby wholeheartedly. How we were going to go about doing that, I wasn’t sure, but we’d figure it out along the way. As Emma said, we had a whole school full of teachers to help us figure out what we needed to do.

I told Bobby we should probably go find Liam. It was getting close to dinner time and we needed to figure out what we were going to do. Back before Liam came on the scene, we had planned on going out to Bailey’s Backyard Farm-to-Table for my birthday meal. But with Liam now, I couldn’t really go where I wanted - we needed someplace kid-friendly. We decided on Salem Pizza and Pasta. Bobby said it was good there. I hadn’t been there yet, anyway, so that was as good an excuse as any.

The whole gang ended up coming with us - Jubilee, Jean-Paul and Piotr, Xi’an and Rachel, Dani and Sam, and Doug too. I asked Daniel and Connor to come as well - Bobby and I would pay for their meals - though it was a bit of a tight fit getting the two of them and Liam in the back of the car. I had a thought wondering if maybe I should consider finally replacing my beat-up Civic with a larger SUV, especially since Bobby’s car was a two-door affair. Liam was a little confused as to who these teenagers were, simultaneously mystified and intrigued by them and a little miffed that he wasn’t getting all of our attention.

Dinner was good, a nice distraction from the complicated emotions earlier in the day. I followed Bobby’s lead a couple weeks ago and asked my friends to forego giving me gifts and instead donate to the homeless and orphaned LGBTQ teens charity that Jean-Paul had founded. Bobby, Liam and I split a pizza with pepperoni, bacon, green olives and sausage, while Daniel and Connor split a barbecued chicken pizza. Daniel and Connor were very gracious, keeping Liam entertained so Bobby and I could spend time socializing with the other adults. By the end of the meal, they had completely won Liam over.

Nearing the end of the meal, I stood up and asked everyone to quiet down. I told them that I had been full of trepidation about coming back to the School, but I did it anyway because I couldn’t see any other way of surviving. Well, life had surprised me with how much more I had gained by tucking my tail between my legs and coming here just a paycheque. Even with all the bumps in the road over the past six months, I wasn’t just surviving anymore. I felt like finally, I found a place where I could thrive, where I could truly make a difference, and most importantly I had found a place where I had a home and had a family, a chosen family. I told them that having all of them here with me today, my chosen family, meant more to me than any birthday gift I could have received. As I thanked them all for letting me be a part of their lives, I got a little choked up. I received a hearty round of applause for my efforts. I sat back down, and Bobby gave me a sweet kiss, right there in public. Connor was a little emboldened by that and took Daniel’s hand on top of the table.

Bobby keeps surprising me with how much he is embracing his coming out. I still worry about when the other shoe is going to drop, but somehow being with me seems to have given him the impetus to finally live his truth. I am so grateful that a Bobby fearful of coming out to his friends and family is not yet another of the issues we have to deal with. Being good role models for Daniel and Connor is really important, too.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening. When we got home, Bobby told me to relax so I got out a book and did a little reading while he helped Liam with his bath and getting ready for bed. I was just finishing a chapter when Bobby returned. I asked him if Liam was asleep, and Bobby said yes. Bobby came and lay down on the bed next to me, smiling at me softly, his eyes sparkling. I could feel the love radiating out of him. I shivered, even though it wasn’t cold in the room, not at all.

Bobby asked me how I felt about making love tonight. We hadn’t had sex once since Liam arrived. We hadn’t wanted to have to lock him out of our room while he was getting settled in with us, but it was starting to wear on me a bit, and I could tell it was frustrating Bobby a bit too. And then Bobby told me he had a talk with Liam before they read a bedtime story together that sometimes our door might be locked, and it wasn’t because we didn’t love him or didn’t want him there, just that sometimes his uncles needed some private time together. If he really needed us, he could just knock and we would answer. Bobby asked him to always knock on the door first, even if it was unlocked. He told Liam that we would do the same for him, so he could have his own privacy too. Bobby told him that the door would be locked for a while tonight, but not all night. Bobby said that Liam seemed to get it. Liam told him that his mommy had always knocked on his door first too, so he was used to it. He wasn’t allowed to sleep in her bed with her like he had with us, either. He told Bobby he was happy that we had let him stay with us, but it didn’t need to be all the time now. Just if he got scared. That was heartening to hear. Liam seemed to be secure enough with things now, so maybe tonight was as good an opportunity to renew our sexual connection as any, after all.

With that, Bobby got up and locked the door. He turned back to me, giving me this heated look, and I hardened immediately under his gaze. He sauntered back over to the bed, casually tossing his sweater aside and undoing his belt. I slid across the bed and put my hands on his hips, kissing his rock-hard abs. I pulled his jeans and boxers off his hips in one smooth motion and took his hardening length into my mouth. I blew him for a while, savouring his taste, but then he pulled me off telling me that it was my birthday and he should be the one treating me like a king. I chuckled and told him that since it was my birthday I should get what I want, and I wanted a little bit of everything tonight. He asked if we could start by letting him give me the best damn blow job he could give. I squeezed his glutes and consented. He sank to his knees and got to work.

Damn, he was getting really good at this. Better than Dom ever was. Bobby seemed to instinctually understand the sounds I made, my smallest reactions, taking them into account. After a while I was getting pretty close, so I pulled him off and asked him if he wanted to flip-fuck tonight. He smiled and said he’d be glad to, if that was what I wanted.

We took turns alternating roles a few times, until finally, gloriously, he brought me to my climax fucking me from behind. He held me in his arms as we came down, stroking my body, softly kissing the nape of my neck and whispering how lucky he was to have me as a partner, how much he loved me. I dozed off like that, safe in his arms.

Sometime later, he gently woke me. We went to the en suite and cleaned up a bit, and then headed back to bed after unlocking the door.

Liam didn’t join us that night, and I didn’t have any nightmares either.