Running for Home - 74. April 12, 2022

April 12, 2022

Today was a weird day, but good. Very good.

Mystique is still around, plotting with Emma and the X-men what the next moves would be against the Purifiers. Magneto has left, however, leaving Exodus to coordinate the Acolytes efforts. Thank God. I feel like the whole campus breathed a sigh of relief when that goddamned limo left the driveway, even if someone as critically dangerous as Exodus is still here.

I had an appointment with Cecilia during my prep period. Just a check-up physical exam, and she wanted to talk about my medications, just to get a handle on what Dr. Sofen was prescribing for me and how I was tolerating them. Nothing special. At least, that’s how Cecilia presented the appointment to me.

There was another woman there when I walked into the medlab, a tall dark-haired beauty. Not that she did anything for me, but even I could see that she would turn heads. They had finally gotten around to hiring a school nurse to help Cecilia out with the medical side of things. Her name was Annie Ghazikanian - it turns out she was Liam’s friend Carter’s mom. Having her son here meant she had a stake in this school being a success, so that boded well. She seemed nice enough. After we had a short bit of conversation talking mostly about Carter, Liam and Sammy, Cecilia sent her off to the dormitory to do some pharyngeal swabs on some sick students - we were having a small outbreak of something flu-like, apparently.

The check-up was nothing special, but as we were finishing up Cecilia told me she had something to ask me that she wasn’t fully sure she should be asking me. I frowned and asked her what was up. She asked me if I’d ever considered having some of the scars on my back removed, or if they held some sort of important meaning for me - particularly the ones in Arabic script.

My breath stopped. I could feel the aura of a flashback creeping up on me. I squeezed my eyes shut, biting my lip and squeezing my hands into tight fists so my nails dug into my palms. I managed to keep a lid on things, thankfully.

Cecilia swore in Spanish, apologizing and placing a soft hand on my still uncovered shoulder. I swallowed, shook my head and opened my eyes and looked at her. I asked her if she was serious, that they could be removed. Cecilia nodded carefully, explaining that she was working with one of the seniors with healing powers, Joshua Foley, on healing complex skin wounds right now and she was wondering if I wanted him to work on my back now that she was confident in his abilities. If things went according to plan, I would be left scar-free.

Did I want to do this?

Did I want to erase the last physical reminders of that part of my life, which had so deeply damaged me physically, mentally and spiritually? Would it be a healing process, removing the last physical reminder of what happened, or would it just be running away from it?

You know what? Fuck that. I’ve spent years working through my trauma with psychiatrists and therapists, years of putting up with lingering PTSD symtoms, and I’m fucking done with having this shitty reminder of those fucking bastards and what they did to me in the name of national security for their shithole dictatorship of a country. It’s time for this shit to be gone.

So I did it. I said yes, please God get this fucking shit off me. Not in those words, mind you, but Cecilia smiled softly and nodded. I asked her when we could start. She asked me if I was okay starting right now, since Josh was in the other lab finishing up with a kid who sprained their ankle pretty badly on the basketball court during gym this morning.

So there I was, lying face down on the examination table, and Cecilia brings Josh into the room. Well, the kid had no fucking bedside manner and just stood their gawking at all the scars on my back for a minute. Cecilia tells him to get started reintegrating the scar tissue into normal, healthy skin. He mumbled something, then stepped up beside me and placed his hands onto my back.

It was the strangest feeling, like my skin was coming alive and moving around, tearing itself apart while remaining in one place. It wasn’t exactly painful, but it also wasn’t pleasant. There was this warmth, on the verge of being too hot, emanating from Josh’s hands into my body. He worked quietly for a while, starting down at the small of my back and slowly, very slowly, working his way up.

Cecilia was watching for a bit, and then gave him her approval to continue while she left to do something else. She wasn’t gone for two minutes and Josh was asking me how I got these scars. I frowned, and told him they were just old battle wounds. He wasn’t satisfied with that answer and asked me if I got them when I was in Iraq. Fuck, of course he had heard about the shit I spouted when Quentin took over my body in my Junior lit class. The whole fucking School must know every little bit I had said then, and what I had confirmed and denied during my stupid sob-story let’s-be-real sessions with my classes in the aftermath.

I sighed, noddling my head subtly, and told him that yes, they were in fact from being tortured in that secret Iraqi prison. As if the Arabic calligraphy shapes didn’t make that obvious enough. I asked him if Cecilia had given him the talk on doctor-patient confidentiality. He startled for a second and stopped healing me. I looked over my shoulder at him. He had turned beet red. He apologized to me, saying it wasn’t his business and shouldn’t be asking me. He wouldn’t tell anyone about this treatment session, or any others if it took more than one.

He got started again and I tried to relax even though the sensation of my skin unknitting and knitting back together was entirely unnerving. I lay there silently as he did his work. It was a bit of an uncomfortable silence. I could tell the kid wanted to say something, but didn’t know how to say it. Eventually, I rolled my eyes and asked him what was on his mind.

Josh stopped healing me again. He ran a hand through his hair. He asked me if I was helping Kevin Ford. Josh knew he was in my writing class and that we talked sometimes. I asked him what was the matter. Apparently, Laurie Collins had a major spat with Kevin last night just before lights out and told him not to hang around her anymore because she thought he was creepy and his powers freaked her out. She wasn’t interested, and never would be, and could he just fucking leave her alone! Josh, despite being Kevin’s nemesis and Laurie’s on-again-off-again love interest, was honestly worried about him. He’d never seen anyone with so much hurt written on their face before. He thought Laurie had gone too far, stepping past the reasonable outcome of breaking Kevin’s heart and into the much less kosher territory of making him feel bad about his powers. Josh hadn’t seen Kevin all day.

I frowned. Now that I thought about it, although I think I saw him at breakfast sitting by himself in the corner, Kevin hadn’t been around at lunch.

I got up off the exam table and moved quickly over to the phone. I dialled up Emma in her office. Thankfully, she answered right away. I asked her where Kevin was. She didn’t answer for a second and then swore. He wasn’t anywhere on campus. She thanked me for clueing her in to his disappearance and then told me she was heading down to Cerebro to find him and make sure he wasn’t in any sort of trouble.

I sighed and hung up, shaking my head. So much for Rogue helping with Kevin’s mental health and powers. Speaking of the bitch, she was still here. Still! But I guess now she was involved in Mystique’s project in one way or another, so maybe I’d get lucky and she’d get herself killed stopping the Purifiers from succeeding with their bioweapon scheme. Not that I actually wanted her to get killed, I just wanted her gone. That or at least if she was going to stick around that she could stop giving me side eye whenever she saw me with Bobby or Liam or both of them and Bobby wasn’t looking. Then again, at least she wasn’t being a bitch right to our faces.

Whatever, I wasn’t going to waste my time thinking about that cunt and her problems with me. She was irrelevant. Just an annoyance. But now I had to figure out how I could contribute to making Kevin see that he didn’t need stupid Laurie fucking Collins. He needed someone who could love him for who he is, warts and all. And he needed to see that he was a valuable kid with a bright future ahead of him, if he could just keep his head on straight.

I wandered back over to the exam table and laid back down. I thanked Josh for giving me the heads up about Kevin. He asked me if Kevin would be in trouble. I shrugged. It mostly depended on whether he was getting into any trouble while off campus. Just going AWOL because he was emotionally overwhelmed wouldn’t result in that huge of a punishment, as long as he didn’t cause any problems for the outside world before we were able to get him back here.

Josh started to work on me again. Silence fell between us again. There wasn’t much left to say, I guess. I started to get lost in my own thoughts, thinking about what I would have done if Bobby had told me he didn’t love me and never would, that he didn’t want to be my friend and that my powers disgusted him when I was Kevin’s age. I wouldn’t have taken it well, not at all. I would have descended into a nihilistic pit of despair. I probably would have twisted that despair into an unadulterated rage against the cruelty of the world and done some pretty fucked up and destructive shit before someone put a stop to me. I could only hope that Emma and whoever she sent after Kevin would get to him before he did anything that he couldn’t take back.

Josh let out a big sigh and stepped back away from me. I turned to look at him just as he stumbled to the side, almost falling over. He was awfully pale all of a sudden. I asked him if he was okay. He nodded, plodding over to a chair at the side of the room and sitting down unceremoniously. I asked him if he overdid it. He shrugged, and I told him he shouldn’t be pushing himself too hard. Josh told me he wanted to finish me up in one go, so I wouldn’t have to see the scars anymore in the mirror. He told me he had a lot of respect for me, for surviving that kind of torture and not breaking and giving in to what my captors were demanding from me.

I shook my head and told him I wasn’t anything special, and I wasn’t that strong. I was on the edge of breaking when I was rescued. Any longer in that jail and I either would have broken or I would have died. Probably both.

Josh told me he disagreed, but he wasn’t going to argue. He told me to go look in the bathroom mirror and let him know if he missed anything. He just needed a minute to rest and then he could fix anything he had missed. I wandered over to the little bathroom and turned around in front of the mirror, looking over my shoulder.

My heart leapt into my throat.

It was gone, all of it. Gone like it had never happened. It was stunning. My back, it was no longer a disgusting mess of scars and filthy words in Arabic. It was beautiful, fucking sexy and built, all muscle and sinew and bone underneath unblemished skin. I had a tough time swallowing for a second. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes, but I wasn’t going to cry. Not right now, not with Josh right there in the other room. I’d revealed enough of myself to that kid for one day.

I tamped down my emotions and went back out into the main room. I thanked Josh and asked him if he thought Cecilia would need me for anything else, because I needed to get back upstairs and get ready for teaching my writing class. Josh shrugged, telling me it was probably fine, though she would probably want to check and make sure he did a good job at some point. I took that as permission to go, and I threw my shirt back on and high-tailed it out of there.

Kevin wasn’t in my writing class, of course, and Cecily looked worried as fuck. No surprise there. Christ, why the fuck wouldn’t Kevin just give the girl a chance? I suppose I could say the same for Laurie when it came to Kevin, but from what I knew she’d made her lack of interest clear several times already and the kid just wasn’t getting it. Maybe this incident would be a push in the right direction, if they could get Kevin back here and calmed down before he did anything stupid.

After class I wandered down the hall, intent on doing some marking before dinner, but I got sidetracked when I passed by Bobby’s office door. The light was on, so I knocked and then entered when he told me to come in. Bobby smiled warmly when he saw it was me, getting up and crossing to me to give me a sweet kiss.

Fuck, that got me rock hard.

Bobby asked me what was up. I told him I had a surprise, and then I started taking my shirt off. Bobby reached around me and locked the door. I walked over to the desk, throwing my shirt aside. I could hear Bobby turn around and he gasped, seeing me. He was immediately upon me, running his hands over my back, over the place where they had sliced words into my flesh that was now perfect, unblemished skin.

I turned around and kissed him, breathless. He asked me what had happened, how it happened, how I felt. I told him about my appointment with Cecilia, about Josh’s healing. I told him I felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders, like maybe, finally, I could move on from that trauma. That it would only be an unpleasant memory now, not something that defined me.

He hugged me tightly, and suddenly I was shedding wordless tears into his shoulder. We stayed like that for a few minutes, until the strength of his arms, his scent started to get to me and my hardon returned. I pulled back and kissed him, asking him to fuck me, right there on his desk. He obliged, with spectacular results. It was deep solace, and I somehow felt just a little more whole, a little more complete.

We went upstairs and showered together after that, and then went looking for Liam before supper. The three of us ate dinner together. About halfway through the meal, Liam asked me what was up because I seemed really happy. This kid just keeps surprising me with how observant he is. I smiled at him and told him I had just received some good news about my health from my doctor today and I was relieved that I was doing well. He seemed to accept that and didn’t ask anything else.

After dinner we watched a Disney flick with Liam, along with his friend Sammy and another kid from his class whose name I am forgetting. Apparently Carter and his mom don’t live on campus, but have a place nearby in Shenorock. Bobby and I will have to talk with Annie about having a sleepover with Carter and Sammy some time, either in Liam’s room or at Annie and Carter’s home if she is willing.

As the movie credits started rolling, Bobby’s cell phone rang. It was his mother. He greeted her cautiously. They hadn’t spoken since our video chat when his parents realized my terrorist past and the ensuing blow up with his father. Bobby got up off the couch and wandered out of the room, while I stayed and hung out with Liam and his friends for a bit. Bobby hadn’t returned after about a half hour and it was getting close to bedtime, so I sent Sammy and the other kid off to the dormitory and took Liam up to our suite. Bobby was there, looking emotionally drained but happy. I didn’t want to bring things up in front of Liam, so we got him ready for bed and read another chapter of his graphic novel together.

Soon enough, we were back in our room. Bobby pulled me into his arms and gave me a sweet kiss. Well, his parents still wanted to do Easter. Not only that, I was also invited. Apparently his mother had done some research and looked up a bunch of my opinion pieces in the L.A. Times, the New York Times, and the Atlantic. She’d forced Bobby’s father to read them, too. They had done a lot of thinking, and they had accepted that I made some bad decisions as a misguided teenager who had a lot of problems and was taken advantage of by Magneto. If my opinions about the place of mutants in society and the way forward for mutant-human relations were truly what I had written, they were willing to give me a chance.

Bobby was infinitely relieved. He was certain that once his parents had the chance to get to know me, they would come to accept our partnership and come to respect me. As for me, I was definitely relieved too but a little nervous. Now I had to be on my best behaviour at Easter and not rock the boat with his parents. I needed to make a good impression and start to earn their trust for Bobby and Liam’s sake. Hopefully they would be smart and not bring up politics or religion or anything remotely controversial that I have strong opinions about - I would bite my tongue, but it would be difficult. Then again, maybe William would respect me more if I respectfully stood my ground?

Meh. I’d have to have a discussion with Bobby before then about how he thought I should behave to get the best response without giving them the impression that I’m someone who I’m not. He knows his parents best, after all.

Before bed, I logged onto my laptop briefly to do a little journaling. I was about finished when I casually checked my personal email, not expecting anything, but there it was. My publisher had accepted my prospectus for the new gay romance novel. They wanted me to work up a draft for the end of summer and would send an advance.

Bobby was absolutely stoked by the news, positively beaming. He had been so sure that my prospectus would be accepted, and he was right. I told him it meant I would be pretty busy all summer, busting my ass to get the draft done, since I doubted I would be able to get much work done on it until school was out. I asked him if Emma had asked him to teach summer school, or if he would be free to manage Liam while I tried to get writing done. Bobby said he was on the docket to do some mutant powers coaching with some of the freshmen who would be staying the summer, but it wouldn’t be every day and it would only be in the mornings on those days. He wondered about us paying Daniel to watch Liam for us while we were both working, and I agreed that it would be a good solution if Daniel was interested. Bobby told me not to worry about it too much, we would find a solution one way or another. He understood my writing career was important to me and he was fully in support.

We made love for a second time that day, bringing each other off with a great sixty-nine. I fell asleep in his arms, sated and filled with a sense of hope and contentment.