Running for Home - 75. April 13, 2022

April 13, 2022

At lunch today, Dani asked me to try and speak with Kevin Ford.

Emma found him using Cerebro pretty quickly yesterday afternoon. I was worried he’d have hitchhiked for a ride and made it to New York or God only knows where else, but he hadn’t strayed too far, just made his way to the Mountain Lakes Park nearby. Dani drove out and picked him up since she was his guardian and supposedly they had some sort of a relationship now that both his parents were dead. It took her a while to find him, and she ended up having to telepathically coordinate with Emma to locate him in that wilderness.

Dani found him naked and curled up in a ball in the middle of a completely devastated area of forest. There was nothing left alive. It was all disintegrated, the victim of his powers let loose. She got him to put his bodysuit and gloves back on and took him back home. He refused to talk to her about it or about the incident with Laurie, just staring out the window blankly for the entire drive.

He wouldn’t talk to Rogue either. Apparently, she had tried to talk with him after dinner last night and had gotten nowhere. Kevin just ignored her, staring out the big bay window in the common living area. He had just parked himself there once he and Dani got back to the School. He didn’t move. He even skipped dinner. He didn’t move until Emma forced him to go to bed, threatening to telepathically control him to get him to move. Fuck, if he was any less responsive Cecilia would be treating him for catatonia.

So yeah, we were all really concerned about his mental state. Dani told me that there were a few animal skeletons amongst the dust and debris from him letting loose with his powers, and she was worried. If he was killing animals, it was a bad sign. I asked her if he did it on purpose, or if it was by accident. He probably wasn’t really in his right mind when he took off. Dani didn’t know, since he hadn’t opened up about anything. I asked her if Kevin’s powers might have evolved beyond him needing to touch living things to disintegrate them. Her eyes widened and she told me she hoped not. He was dangerous enough as it was; if he could accidentally kill things without even touching them now it took the problems of dealing with safety for the School to a whole new level. If his bodysuit and gloves weren’t enough to contain him anymore it would be a big problem, both from a logistics point of view and for dealing with Kevin’s mental health and self-outlook regarding his powers. He’d already been fragile enough since he accidentally killed his own father and dog with his powers before they picked him up to come to the School two years ago.

Unsurprisingly, Kevin was not at lunch. Pretty sure he skipped breakfast too. I wondered as I sat there eating a Croque monsieur with Jubilee, Bobby, Jean-Paul and Piotr whether Kevin was purposefully starving himself or whether he was just so out of it he was past the point of feeling hungry. After I finished eating, I said a perfunctory goodbye to the gang and headed towards the common area. I figured Kevin had probably parked himself in front of that window again. I had my prep period after lunch, so now was as good a time as any to try to get through to the kid.

Well, my prediction was right. He was there, staring out the window with a blank look on his face. He didn’t acknowledge my approach. I said hello and, of course, I didn’t get a response. I sighed and turned and stared out the window into the grey rainy afternoon myself.

I stood there, quiet, contemplating what I was going to say to this kid. I mean, what do you say? That everything will be alright? Bullshit. His heart got ripped out and stomped on, and his self-esteem problems from his powers got trampled as well. He was in a world of hurt right now and telling him everything will be fine, that he just has to live with it, that wouldn’t cut it. Sure, it was true, but he would probably feel like I was minimizing his hurt, like his feelings weren’t valid.

Suddenly I was remembering that time when Bobby was hurting about his dad when we were teenagers and he wouldn’t talk to me or anyone else about it. But I got him to break down and talk to me by getting him angry first. Would that work with Kevin? Get him angry to break him out of this unresponsive state?

I grabbed a pillow off the couch and whacked him across the face as hard as I could.

“What the fuck, Mr. Allerdyce!?” he yelled at me, swatting at the remains of the now disintegrating pillow as I came around for another blow. “What the hell?!”

The pillow broke apart in my hand, turning to dust. I grabbed another, whacking him again.

“Will you fucking stop that!”

I threw the disintegrating remains of the second pillow down and looked him in the eyes. He was confused but angry. There. Much better than blank-faced and unresponsive. I stepped towards him. His eyes widened in confusion and he took a step back, bumping into the furniture. I took another step forward and pulled him into a hug.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

He struggled against me, doing his damnedest to jerk his head back away from to keep his face from touching me. He struggled, but I didn’t let him go.

“Are you fucking crazy? Let me go!”

He looked fucking terrified. He started pounding his fists against me, trying to get me to release him, but I wouldn’t. He could kill me if I touched his bare flesh, but fuck that. He needed to feel this, to feel someone fucking caring enough to touch him. I had to do this.

He started crying, continuing to plead with me to let him go, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t fucking let go, not for a second, and slowly the blows softened and eventually stopped. He was fucking sobbing. I started to rub my hand up and down his back, patting gently once in a while.

I told him I wasn’t going to let him go. That I saw his pain, that I couldn’t fathom how deeply he was hurting, but that I was here. That I cared. That I wouldn’t let him fall.

I looked over his shoulder. Emma was there, looking intrigued. She gave me a slight nod of approval and then walked away quietly without saying a word. I guess she must have sensed I was about to do something potentially very stupid a few minutes ago and came to be my insurance in case something dangerous started happening.

I suppressed an internal shudder. I really shouldn’t be putting myself at risk like this, not with Liam and Daniel and Bobby needing me, but fuck. This kid needed me too, didn’t he? I couldn’t fucking ignore this, but I was being pretty damn impulsive in how I was handling this. Fuck.

I softly released my grip on Kevin, placing a hands on his shoulders. Looking him in the eyes, I asked him to come down to my office with me. He nodded, biting his lip. We walked to my office in silence. When we got to my office, I had him sit down. He obeyed without question, unlike the last time he was in my office. I walked over to the sidebar and turned the kettle on. I was glad I had refilled it this morning before teaching - I usually liked to have some tea while I did my marking and planning during my prep period. I asked Kevin if he wanted any. He shrugged. I asked him if green tea was okay. He nodded. I sighed and scooped some loose sencha leaves into the strainer on top of my teapot.

I turned to him while the kettle came up to a boil. I asked him what felt worse, the fact that the girl he was in love with didn’t love him back or the fact that she thought he was a creep and his powers scared the shit out of her. Kevin bit his lip, looking away from me.

He said he didn’t know. Everything just fucking hurt, and he was so sick of hurting. His powers had taken everything from him - his dad, his dog, his ability to live a normal life - and even here at the School, where they had promised him a brighter future where everything was possible, even here he was an outcast and the person he cared about most wanted nothing to do with him.

I agreed with him that it must be really tough to endure all this and try to stay hopeful for the future. But then I asked him why he had still been trying to win Laurie over, three years after she first told him no. He frowned and looked at me like I was crazy. He loved her. His dad told him that if you love someone, you don’t give up.

I shook my head. I told him that if you loved someone and they don’t love you back, you need to love them enough to let them go find their own happiness somewhere else. Insisting on finding a way to get them to love you is what stalkers do. Kevin’s eyes widened. He asked me if I think he’s a stalker. I sighed, running a hand through my hair. I told him I don’t think he’s a stalker, but he’s come pretty close with Laurie. Why else would Laurie be calling him a creep? Yes, she took things too far, blaming things on his powers and making him feel like shit for having them, but Kevin hadn’t left her alone after three years of saying no.

Kevin swallowed deeply, tears coming to his eyes. I could see it, see the wheels turning in his head. He was considering Laurie’s perspective, perhaps for the first time. I asked him if he was okay. He shook his head. I was about to say something else when the kettle whistled.

I sighed and turned back around, pouring the hot water into the teapot. I grabbed two mugs and the teapot and brought them over and set them on the desk. Kevin asked me if I’d ever made mistakes with people I loved.

I nodded. I told him about how I’d been in love with someone when I was younger, but I kept it a secret because I was afraid of being the gay kid and afraid of being rejected. It ate away at me, thinking that they could never love me back, and when they started a relationship with someone else, it nearly drove me mad. I did a bunch of stupid shit as a result of it - including setting off down the path to become one of Magneto’s lackeys, all because I couldn’t let go of my feelings for someone I couldn’t have.

I told him it’s easy to look to someone who seems like they have all the answers when you hurt as deeply as I had, as deeply as he does right now. I told Kevin how I let Magneto manipulate my frustrations with the world - with my parents for abusing then abandoning me to the system, with the staff at the School for making me feel like my powers were a burden and not something to celebrate, with my feelings of despair at never being able to be loved by the person I loved… Magneto took all my frustrations and gave me a purpose. He gave me a direction.

It was a bad direction, one that I now regret. In the four years I was Magneto’s protege in the Brotherhood, I did more damage to human-mutant relations than I probably ever would be able to fix with all my efforts with my journalism and writing. I told Kevin that we had to figure out a way for him to come to terms with his frustrations, with his despair, and find him a direction that could be positive and beneficial so he didn’t end up caught in a situation like I did.

Kevin asked me if running away with Magneto and finding a cause helped soothe the pain in my heart from not having my love returned. I shook my head. I told him that it never went away, that love. It was something that I always carried with me, no matter how much I tried to bury it. He asked me if I thought that he would ever stop loving Laurie. I said I thought he probably never would, but maybe the context of the feelings would change. I told him that being in love in a way that you feel like you need that person’s love in return in order to survive, in order to breathe, wasn’t healthy. Healthy love was mutual and feels like a bonus added to your life. Healthy love made life better, yes, but it wasn’t the only thing worth living for. Kevin looked me dead in the eyes and told me he didn’t think he had anything else worth living for.

I shook my head. I told him he was wrong. I told him I understood that feeling, though. I told him how I went through a really bad breakup last summer. I told him how my ex-partner cheated on me and then left me. I told him how I was suffering from writer’s block and I was struggling to get work as a journalist. I felt like everything was being taken from me, that everything I’d written in the past was trash and why was I even bothering to go on living? All I was doing was taking up space, eating, sleeping and shitting. The world wouldn’t miss me if I was gone.

I sighed and poured us the tea, now that it was done steeping. I handed him a mug and told him about how coming here had changed that feeling. How I felt like what I was doing was finally making a difference, that my life had more meaning beyond the selfish way I’d been living before. I had friends now, true friends, and I had a partner who loved me. I told Kevin that when I was a teenager I had a hard time imagining ever having something even remotely like what I have now, even though it’s what I wanted so desperately. I told Kevin that he had to keep on living for himself, keep doing his best every single day, to follow his passions into a successful career - whether that was as a writer, like me, or doing something else. For some of us, people like me who need to do things the hard way, growing up and finding ourselves can take an awful lot of time and patience.

I asked Kevin if he was still thinking about becoming a writer. He nodded, saying he didn’t know really if there was anything else that spoke to him the way writing did. I told Kevin it was hard to see the way forward with that while he was stuck at this school. I told him that surviving high school was fucking hard, but the growing pains would start to make more sense in hindsight as he spread his wings and found his stride in college and young adulthood. He would get out of this place and be able to meet new people, make new friends, and maybe even find someone new to love, someone who could appreciate him and love him back.

Kevin sighed, taking a sip of the tea. He asked me how he was supposed to deal with things in the meantime. I told him to not do things the way I had. I told him to open up about his feelings to his friends, to let them into his world and help him stand up. He frowned at me. He said he wasn’t a pussy, he could stand up on his own. His father told him to be a man, he needed to deal with his emotions on his own and not drag other people into it. I asked Kevin how that was working out for him so far. Kevin looked down into his mug and muttered that it was working pretty fucking poorly.

I told him it was good to have memories of his father, of the lessons he tried to teach Kevin about being a good, upright person before the accident that killed him, but Kevin also needed to understand that his father wasn’t perfect and some of the things he’d taught Kevin fell under the umbrella of toxic masculinity. Kevin frowned at that. He asked me what was so toxic about being a man. I sighed, shaking my head. I explained to him that I had learned a lot from psychiatrists I’d seen over the years about the way many people taught their kids about being a man, and the ways a lot of people go about it the wrong way. My father was a shining example of toxic masculinity, what with his lessons of not crying when confronted with strong emotions and that I should clobber my asshole cousins when they made fun of me for being bad at catching and throwing a ball.

I told him that I wasn’t trying to tell him his father had it all wrong, but bottling up your emotions was not a very healthy way of coping with life. We all need our ways of releasing things. I understood how hard it could be to talk to friends about these things. They were so close, so personal and it felt like a huge risk to take that leap. I told him my way of dealing with shit was through my writing. I knew he already did that, sort of, with his poetry, but speaking in allegory isn’t always enough to really process what was happening to you. I told him about the journal I keep, about how it’s as important for the good times as it is for the bad.

Kevin told me he was worried about what would happen if someone were to read a journal he kept. It was bad enough when they read his poetry, especially the stuff he didn’t show anyone. I sighed, taking a sip of my tea. I told him I understood how scary it was, but I told him that if it was someone he trusted, sometimes that could help more than you thought. Kevin, of course, had heard about the mind control incident in Quentin’s class, so he’d heard about my time in the Iraqi secret prison. I told him how my psychiatrist had made me keep a journal of all the thoughts and emotions I was processing and just general things happening during my days in the aftermath of my incarceration and torture. They then read through the journals with me during some of our therapy sessions and talked through my feelings and reactions.

I told Kevin how hard it was at first, but then how valuable it was to be able to discuss things that I had trouble talking about directly, that I had trouble putting to words right in the moment of a therapy session. I learned a lot about myself and how I react to things and how I try to cope with things, and it’s helped me to contextualize and understand my reactions to things since then, including my recent kidnapping.

I asked Kevin what he thought about seeing a psychiatrist or psychologist, or at least a counsellor. He shook his head, saying he never thought about them. He thought they were just for crazy people. I bit back the urge to ask him if running away to a forest and disintegrating it because they are hurting is something that sane people do. Instead, I told him that everyone can benefit from having someone who is somewhat objective and removed from the personal situations one finds themselves in to help you process things. They are professional and keep you at an arms length, so they can help you see things as they are and not the way a friend or family member might want you to see them. They can help give you a reality check.

Kevin asked me if I thought he needed a reality check. I shook my head. I told him that I thought his emotions and his hurt were deeply grounded in the reality of his situation. He just needed to find better ways of processing things so he could face his problems and emotions and move on. Running away and letting loose on a patch of forest wasn’t something he could do every time life dealt him a blow.

Kevin sighed, looking down into his tea. He asked me how I find a way to feel hope for the future after everything that happened to me, after all this time and effort and mutants are still treated like shit by the world. I nodded, taking another sip of mine. I told him that I found out that it had to start with me. That I had to decide to live for myself, that I had to decide to give myself a future. That relying on someone else’s vision for my role and my future, or pining after someone else’s love and acceptance could never cut it. That I had to enjoy all the simple things that I was gifted with and be grateful for them. That I had to be willing to not always get the things that I wanted, as long as I could work towards something positive.

In my case, that started during my hospital stay after Iraq when I decided I wanted to write, when I decided I wanted to tell my story to the world, through fiction and through journalism and make people understand the realities of the struggles of mutants and the benefits we can bring to society if we could just be embraced wholeheartedly. That decision, my decision to change for the better and to work towards something positive, had lead me down the path towards all the good and wonderful things I have today.

I told Kevin it wasn’t easy, that there were still large bumps in the road that I had to overcome. But it was easier to keep perspective now, and to survive the aftermath of any bad things that happened. Working at the School had given me even more purpose, and helped me to reconnect with a community that could support me through my ups and downs. I told Kevin he should try to really connect with that community here while he still had the chance, because things would be different next year after he graduated.

I asked him what he was thinking about for college, if he’d made any decisions yet. Kevin shrugged. Dani had encourage him to apply to a few places for literary arts and creative writing, like Northwestern, Columbia, Emory, Brown and Oberlin, but he was pretty sure he was going to get rejected. He hadn’t heard anything yet, other than they had received his application. Some of his friends were starting to get acceptance letters, but nothing for him yet. I asked him why he chose those schools. Kevin sighed and said it was because they were supposed to have the best writing programs, with successful graduates. It just seemed like too faraway a possibility now, like he could never measure up. He wished he’d applied to some state schools or small liberal arts colleges, places that he’d have a better shot at getting in.

I told him not to worry about it. If he didn’t get in this year, he could take some time to regroup and try again. It would suck, but it would just be a setback, not the end of the world. He would have another year to write more an improve his writing portfolio, and he could take some extra courses at the School to bring his GPA up or retake the SAT if that was the main factor holding him back. I was starting to wonder if I had done him a disservice by only giving him an A in Writing Class last semester. He got an A+ in the lit course, though, but I had no idea what his grades were like in his other classes.

I also thought that him staying here for another year might give him a little more time to get a handle on his powers. Dani had told me that his efforts with Rogue seemed promising, that it seemed like he could slow down the disintegration rate, even just a little bit. Having more time to work on that here before venturing off on his own without the kind of support he had at the school might be better for him than going off to college right away. It would be tough on his ego, though.

My phone alarm went off. I had it set every day to remind me ten minutes before Writing class was supposed to start so I wasn’t late, in case I got distracted working on something. I told Kevin we could talk more later, if he felt up to it, but we both had to get to class now. Well, then I asked him if he felt up to class. I told him I would understand if he needed some more time.

Kevin shook his head. He said he’d missed enough of my class lately. He was glad I was letting him still work on the assignments on his own time and submit them, but he confessed he was a little annoyed that Rogue kept wanting to work with him on his powers in the afternoons during my class. He didn’t feel like he could say no. I felt a flash of anger, but tried to tamp it down. It wouldn’t do any good to get mad about it in front of Kevin. I told him that if he was serious about getting into writing school, he should tell her that he felt like my class was important for his future and he shouldn’t be skipping it. That being there really mattered to him. It’s not like she was teaching other classes here that were taking up her time. I had no idea what she was doing with the rest of her day, but there was no way it was anything important enough that she couldn’t work with Kevin some other time.

Christ, that woman pissed me off. Did she even ask him what classes were important to him when she set up her schedule for working with him, or was it just what she felt like doing?

We left for class. The students seemed surprised to see Kevin back. Cecily was clearly happy to see him when he sat down next to her, though that wasn’t a surprise in my books. Thankfully, the attention on Kevin was just some greetings and nothing over the top. I don’t think Kevin is the type to want to bask in the limelight and be the centre of attention. I was supposed to be teaching a lesson on writing dialogue, but I decided to do something to play to Kevin’s strengths and talked about using metaphor and simile in poetry. After lecturing them for a while and pulling up some examples I could remember off the top of my head, I assigned them free reign to write a poem using the concepts we’d discussed, to be handed in at the end of class.

When I was marking them after class was finished, it was pretty mixed results. I didn’t assign poetry very often, since most of the students had no real interest in it. A couple surprised me with the quality of their work, however. Maybe it’s something I should follow up on a little more before classes end in June. Kevin’s work didn’t surprise me, of course. His poetry was brilliant as usual, but it was also clearly an allegory for his experience sitting alone in the forest with everything around him disintegrated by his powers. I was glad he chose to use the assignment to work out some of his recent feelings, since that had been my secret plan anyway.

The rest of the day went along pretty banally, at least until Emma found Bobby and I watching TV with Liam in the common room before bed. She thanked me for talking to Kevin, but asked me to give her some advance warning in the future before doing something as rash as hugging someone in a precarious mental state who could disintegrate me on contact. Bobby’s eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything, not right away.

After we had put Liam to bed, Bobby confronted me about what Emma revealed. I confessed to him that I had done it impulsively, but the kid had needed it. We were on the verge of losing him, either to an opportunist like Magneto who could find a way to radicalize him, or to a downward spiral into suicide. I wasn't willing to allow either of those to occur. Kevin needed to know that people here cared for him, and it wasn't just because it was our job. It was a necessary risk. Someone had to show that kid they weren't afraid of him.

Bobby nodded, then smiled softly and asked if I was taking yet another student under my wing. I sighed and said yes, though I was worried it was too little too late with Kevin since he was graduating in a couple months. I wish I had tried harder with him when I started to notice his problems in the fall. Bobby shook his head. Sometimes the students weren't ready to accept the help we could give, even if they needed it. If we tried too hard before they were ready, they would find it overbearing and reject our efforts. He said I would just have to make the most out of the time we had left with him.

I said it would be really tough on him transitioning to college and young adult life. As much as Kevin seemed to think he didn't have friends who cared about him, he did, and I was worried he wouldn't see that and wouldn't try to maintain those connections after he was gone. This was his home, the only one he'd had since his father died, and if he didn't feel like the community here had his back, he would be rudderless out in the real world. Bobby said that we would have to work hard with Dani and Rogue and some of the other faculty to make Kevin feel like he had mentors and family to turn to when he was struggling if he didn't feel like he had friends he could rely on. At the mention of Rogue's name, I felt my blood pressure rising.

I told Bobby about how Kevin wanted to be in my class but Rogue had scheduled their time together during it. I told him I suspected she had done that in purpose to get Kevin away from me. Bobby frowned. He didn't think she was that petty. I told him I didn't think she was doing it to spite me, just that she still thought that I was dangerous and unfit to be teaching - especially teaching someone vulnerable like Kevin. Bobby suggested I talk to her about it. I balked at that.

I told Bobby that if I talked with her, it probably wouldn’t be talking and it probably wouldn’t be productive. It was already taking all my resistance to be civil with her in public and not snap at her every time she gave me a look of disdain, especially when that look was directed at me when I was taking care of Liam without Bobby around. She was holding me to some hypocritical standard of moral purity that she clearly didn’t apply to everyone, considering her relationship with Gambit and using Logan as a father figure for so many years.

Bobby asked me if this was how I dealt with my interactions with him before I realized he didn’t hate me at the end of the fall - complete and utter avoidance. I sighed. I told him that I didn’t feel like I had any choice. Bobby brought up feelings that were complex and hard to deal with. It was easier to believe that he hated me and it was best if we just didn’t interact. As it was, I spent the entire month after I broke down on him after that Danger Room session being paranoid and freaking out at the slow realization that he didn’t hate me. I was all too afraid of the feelings I could feel bubbling inside me, and all to afraid of going back down the dark road that my teenage infatuation with him had taken me.

Bobby pointed out that I let myself fall back into a friendship with him anyway, and look where that had gotten us. I told him that this situation is entirely different. He had seen me for who I am now and accepted me. He had taken the initiative to extend more than just civility and professional courtesy to me. Rogue had been here for a month, and all she had shown me was disdain. Besides, I wasn’t in love with her. She may have been a friend, once upon a time, but I could live without her.

Bobby sighed, saying that maybe he was being too much of an optimist, but he had faith that she would come around to see me in a better light too. He blushed a little, saying it wasn’t like he had accepted me immediately either. It took him a good two months to really start letting go of what happened when I joined Magneto and the Brotherhood and to start listening to the things Jubilee, Piotr and the gang were saying about me and the man I’d become.

I told Bobby that if she wanted to accept me, that was on her. Sure, it might make life easier but I wasn’t going to go out of my way to get back in her good graces. I had already proven myself to the people who matter most to me.

Bobby asked me if that meant I was just going to let things continue with Kevin missing my class. I shook my head. I told him that if it continued, I would bring it up with Emma and have her make it clear to Marie that it wasn’t acceptable for a student to be missing any of their classes on a consistent basis, even for training as much needed as what Rogue was working on with Kevin. Bobby nodded, agreeing that maybe that was the best way to approach it without causing a confrontation.

We had both changed out of our clothes and were just laying on the bed on our sides, facing one another. I sighed and shifted over against him, laying my head on his chest. I asked him if he ever thought this is what our lives would look like at thirty-seven back when we were sixteen. Bobby chuckled, running his hands over my torso. He told me he didn’t think for a second that our lives would be like this at all. When we were sixteen, his biggest dream was to become a chartered financial accountant and do big things with money for some big corporation just like his dad wanted him to. Maybe work a bit with mutant charities to help make things better with us on the side. He never would have dreamed he’d end up spending so many years as a vigilante superhero and teaching at this school. Those were things that he just kind of got dragged along into whenever people asked him to contribute. At first, the superhero thing seemed like a given, since he had the powers to contribute and the X-men were desperately needed. The School, too, had been in desperate need of competent staff who both could be relied upon to give a good education to the students and were mutants themselves who could serve as role models. Both things he got swept up into mostly because he felt he was needed.

Until he left here to be on his own and work in New York, Bobby said he’d never really done anything for himself. His dreams as a teenager were to be the kind of man that his father and Scott Summers had lead him to believe he should be. And once he became an X-man and a teacher here, he never really let himself dream of what he wanted for himself, since he was all too caught up in fulfilling the role everyone else laid out for him because he was needed. It took coming out to himself about being gay to knock him for enough of a loop that he left and took time for himself.

Bobby sighed. He admitted that he didn’t really do anything for himself, even then. He just used his connections to get a really posh accounting job like his father had always wanted. Emma supplied him with a killer reference, of course, so even that hadn’t been all that difficult. All he did was retreat into himself and get progressively more and more miserable. He felt like a failure of a human being. His parents barely accepted him because he was a mutant, his brother outright hated him for it, and they didn’t even know he was gay on top of it. He took some hesitant steps to try to come to terms with that side of him, but he had been too afraid to really take the plunge, even living in goddamn Greenwich Village.

When Emma had called him and begged him to come back, he’d almost told her no. She wheedled him down, telling him it would only be for a semester, that she would ensure that it wouldn’t affect his career prospects to take a break from the big firm for a few months. She appealed to his sense of duty, and as usual Boyscout Bobby had stepped up to the plate. Bobby said that, even though he was worried about going back to the School, mostly because of Jean-Paul, he was also relieved. He’d been thinking about quitting his job anyway. It was frightfully dull and he didn’t feel challenged, even though he’d moved up in the firm a few times over the years. He said yes because it would give him time to figure out what his next move would be, whether it was going back to college for some other kind of career or who knows what else.

I smiled softly and told Bobby I could understand that all too well, that I had only taken the job when Emma called because I was running out of money and it would give me time to regroup before I made my next move. The breakup with Dom gave me another good excuse to get the hell out of L.A.

Bobby asked me if I would have taken the job if Dom hadn’t broke up with me and cheated. I sighed, shaking my head. I had no fucking clue. I mean, I couldn’t imagine Emma would ever have wanted both of us to be here. She doubtless wouldn’t have hired me if Dom was part of the package. Dom didn’t have any formal education beyond high school, so beyond helping with powers training he would have been dead weight. And, let’s be real, he was too much of a selfish hedonist to be left in charge of children at a school.

Bobby nodded, then asked me how much of my opinion of Dom was flawed, coloured by his bad behaviour that resulted from the telepathic virus. I shook my head, and told Bobby that Dom was a hedonist long before he could have been infected with it. All it did was amplify the bad traits until they were completely unmanageable.

Bobby asked me what had made me love Dom.

That, that was hard. I didn’t want to talk about this with Bobby. But I did, I told him. I told him how Dom’s confidence could be disarming. I told Bobby how charming he could be, how full of life and joie de vie and spontaneity. Life was always an adventure with Dom, at least, it had been before Iraq. Even after Iraq, there were lots of times when the good things about Dom shone through. I doubt I would have stayed with him as long as I did if they hadn’t.

I found myself sharing some memories with Bobby, of good times Dom and I had together. Of time off in Madripoor during our Freedom Force days in between legs of a mission, of Dom being tender and oh-so-vulnerable with me in the aftermath of Iraq.

But then I told Bobby how, despite everything, there was always a little something missing. I had settled for Dom because I didn’t believe I could do any better. My heart had never let go of my stupid teenage crush on my best friend, even after all that time. I turned in Bobby’s arms and looked him in the eyes. I told him that I didn’t believe in fate, but I thought that the two of us were about as close to fate as you could get.

Bobby kissed me softly, tenderly. He felt the same way. He told me that no one ever seemed to get him the way I did, not Marie who he dated for so long and revealed so much of himself to, and not any of the others he dated either. Maybe that’s because he hadn’t been able to be real about himself with them because they were women, but he’d never been able to connect with Jean-Paul that way either, not while he had the chance of it going somewhere.

I sighed, and asked Bobby to shut off the light and just hold me. It had been a long, emotional day and I was exhausted. But it was a good kind of exhausted. I hoped I had made a difference for Kevin, that maybe he’d be able to start embracing the help he was surrounded with and the community around him that wanted him to be a valuable and loved member.