Dorian Montoir
February 19, 2020 3:32 AM
Hush (tag Professor Xavier) by Dorian Montoir
Dorian stepped off the wagon. The journey had been a challenge. His mother had given him something that morning to calm him, so that he could get through the journey with some semblance of normality, not lose face in front of people… But the trouble was, it didn’t match what he was feeling. She wanted to dull his pain when he already felt numb. He had poured it into one of his potions vials when she hadn’t been looking.
It had been two days of that. Of hush darling, don’t cry – shh, shh, shh. Lots of shh. Of being told to pack up his feelings and put them away, as if the worst part of this might be anyone else seeing. He tried, somewhere, in the back of his cluttered mind, to assume that she meant well. That whilst it was obvious and logical to see tears as evidence of sadness, she had formed the mistaken conclusion that their absence was a sign of recovery. That if she could stop him from crying that was the same as him not feeling like crying any more.
Once he boarded the wagon, he almost regretted his decision to feel his feelings. His mind kept turning over everything that had happened, and more than once he felt emotions welling up to the point where they threatened to overspill. He had kept his eyes closed and for once gave up on perfect posture, drawing his knees up so he could rest his head, hoping that people would assume he either felt sick or was sleeping, and letting his eyes grow damp in peace and privacy. Still, he had to hold back on doing more than that. He could not cry or sob. Apparently, he did still have it in him to care that other people would be looking.
When he got off the wagon, he felt slightly unsure what to do with himself. He watched the students drifting into the school, and part of him wanted to beat a hasty retreat – to just stride off into the labyrinth with the aim of not being part of the flow of other humans. Part of him craved the safe familiarity of the library. But the trouble with both those places was that people could find him there. People would find him, and expect him to talk, and when someone asked the inevitable ‘how was your break?’ or noticed his expression and asked ‘are you okay?’ – he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He honestly wasn’t sure when he next opened his mouth, whether he was going to find there was nothing but a scream willing to come out. You couldn’t scream in the library. You could scream in the middle of the labyrinth, but he didn’t want to scream at anyone. He didn’t want that to be a thing that he did to someone who cared about him. There was already enough hurt.
Thankfully, there was one little bolthole. One person who already knew the answers to ‘Are you alright/Did you have a nice break?’ Someone who probably expected him to be sad and broken and messy right now, and so perhaps wouldn’t be horribly shocked when he was all those things. He made his way to Teppenpaw. At least, if he started with the one person who already knew something, he didn’t have so much explaining to do. At least he could close the doors on everyone else and not leave that space until he’d worked out how to do that. How to explain something he had not yet even put into works. Because there had been a need to shh, shh, shh instead.
He made his way through the corridors, past the step with the chip in, to the external door to Professor Xavier’s office. It made more sense to go in from there than via the Teppenpaw Common Room, and he had never in his life felt less like dancing. He knocked. It seemed to take some time for an answer to come and he stood, tense, hoping that Vlad was not about to round the corner or exit the common room. He entered when invited, and took a seat, again drawing a knee to his chest as if to protect himself. He knew he shouldn’t. But sitting nicely seemed like holding onto a cuff because you still wanted the shirt it had been attached to. It was some scrap of a whole that seemed distant and far away. Manners. They were supposed to have manners… And what did that mean, in a world where he was what he was, and Matthieu had done what he had done, and all the rest of it, and where no one was speaking to anyone else?
“Mama said she was going to talk with you,” he stated, without preamble or introduction or queries about Professor Xavier’s holidays. He stared at the grain of the desk, trying to push back the feeling that he was unravelling at the edges. He held himself a little tighter, just to make sure. “Am I allowed to ask… what did she say?”
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Dorian Montoir
Hush (tag Professor Xavier)
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Nathan Xavier
February 19, 2020 9:18 AM
Do you want a mockingbird? by Nathan Xavier
As a rule, Nathan tried to make himself available when the students first arrived back after midterm. There were any number of things that students might want to bring to their Head of House’s attention after so many days of being away, anything from having forgotten to pack their transfiguration textbook, to realizing that they only had a few months left before major exams and they didn’t know where to start getting ready for that, to something having happened at home. So he generally spent the hours between wagon arrival and returning feast in his office where people would know to look for him.He usually didn’t haunt the common room itself, not wanting to impose an adult presence on the reunions of friends, but today he was sitting on one of the couches, welcoming the students back to Sonora and Teppenpaw personally, but mostly watching for one student in particular. He had left an active ward on the outside door of his office in case anyone came for him that way but, for the most part, he had expected most interest in him to come from his Teppenpaws and he was already out where they could easily find him. So he was surprised when the doorbell sound alerted him to a knock on his office door.
“Excuse me,” he extracted himself from a discussion about one of the students’ Christmas celebration, “that was the ward on my outer office door,” he explained. “Go on up and get settled, I’ll be back down later and you can finish telling me about it then.”
He had set the ward with Cleo in mind, though lately she hadn’t come for casual chats as often as she had when she was younger. He hoped that meant she had more friends her own age now and not that the veela thing had made it too awkward for her to want to talk to him. He opened the door expecting the Crotalus but he realized immediately that this made just as much sense if not more. “Please, come in,” he invited, standing aside and gesturing to the chair meant for visitors. “I‘m glad you came by.” It made things easier for him and less conspicuous for Dorian that The Professor Wants To Talk To You, which was always a little embarrassing and nerve wracking even when nothing was wrong.
They both settled down. He had anticipated spiriting Dorian off to his office, so the chairs were already set so that the desk was not set imposingly between them.
Dorian got right to the point, and Nathan nodded. “Yes, she did, and yes, you may ask. She was, ah, sparse on details, but she explained your brother attacked you. She said your injuries were healed but you were understandably shaken about everything that happened. She wished me to let her know if you are not coping well.”
He paused, giving Dorian time to process that. “How much I share with her will be, at least in part, up to you.” He had checked, between the early morning floo call and the first expected wagon arrival, when exactly Dorian’s birthday was. “You are of age now, so if you don’t want me telling your parents things, I don’t have to. What I do need to report is if I think your safety is in danger. Do you feel your home situation has been satisfactorily resolved, or do you still think you are at risk there from your brother, or from anyone else?”
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Nathan Xavier
Do you want a mockingbird?
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Dorian Montoir
February 20, 2020 3:45 AM
I think Mama might skip that step by Dorian Montoir
She had said Matthieu had attacked him. She had said he was upset about everything. Dorian almost wanted to shake his head at that. Because those weren’t the same thing, and he really doubted she had said that. But it meant she had sent Professor Xavier down that track too. He wasn’t asking Dorian to tell him or explain because he thought he already knew.But he was willing to keep things private. That was interesting. That made Dorian feel just a little bit safer. He could choose what to tell his mother. Except, the problem wasn’t exactly not wanting to tell her things – it was getting her to listen. But… he realised he had a label for the unfamiliar but pleasant sensation that was lapping through his brain. Control. He had some degree of control. He wished it had been gifted in physical form. He would have liked to hold it, clutch it, feel it really was real and solid. He supposed that either way he could fumble it or break it or lose it. Or have it taken away. It wasn’t any safer whether it was in his hands or in his mind. Still, he was pleased to have been given it. And Professor Xavier was an adult he trusted. Even after everything that had gone on over the last few days, his default was to believe in that, although a new and wary part of his brain now found it a much scarier thing to do – to trust someone who appeared nice. To trust someone who claimed to have your best interests at heart. That could go very wrong, and it hurt more. You couldn’t be betrayed by someone you’d never had faith in.
Was he safe?
The question caught him off guard. They had been talking about what had happened, and his mind was still so full of all the things that were hurting him in the present and that he just needed someone to listen to and-
“I-“ he began, cutting himself off before he said ‘I don’t know.’ Because he thought that would be a bad answer. One that damned his Mama. People were supposed to be safe in their homes, and what would Professor Xavier do if he thought Dorian wasn’t? Professor Brooding had talked before about intervening if people were in danger. Would they say more things to Mama? Would they do something to punish Matthieu? Or rather, they couldn’t, they weren’t his school – but would they send in someone who could, and did that mean something serious and legal? He saw unnamed people, black shadows, slipping into the cracks this mess had left, further cementing the divides between his family.
“That’s very far away,” he pointed out, hoping Professor Xavier would be willing to put this discussion off. “I mean, it’s a long time until I would go home,” he clarified. Would they stop him from going home? The awful thing was, he wasn’t sure if that question was ‘can you stop me from going home?’ or ‘can you make it so that I don’t have to go home?’ It wasn’t like he hadn’t, with the small part of his brain that could leap and grasp towards the future, thought that the best way to spend next summer would be somewhere else. Was that running away? He was a legal adult. He could, if he chose, just not go home, couldn’t he? But he didn’t think that the fact he was considering that was a good option to bring up with Professor Xavier right now. Summer really was far away. Things might change… And he wasn’t sure how far adults would agree or support that plan, or what they’d do to his family, or how much he should really talk about it. Except there was this whole thing where the last situation he’d kept to himself, thought he could handle – didn’t need to make a big deal out of… How spectacularly had that logic just blown up in his face?
“Am I… am I in trouble? For not telling anyone about Matthieu before?” he asked, voicing one of the many worries that had been on his mind. They were not the main ones. They were tiny little peripheral stresses, like mosquitoes biting whilst someone cast a twisting jinx on your heart. But that was apparently what they were talking about right now. And his brain was so full of worries that some of them got lost, then resurfaced hours later – it would suddenly flash through his mind again, that that thing was on the list too, and then it would sink out sight. So maybe it was best to deal with things as they came up. He wasn’t sure he had a logical order at the moment. “Professor Brooding always said she was supposed to do something about situations where people were in danger but I never told her. I… I didn’t feel like I was. Not really. It was just a bit… difficult. It just got worse so suddenly. I didn’t mean to be dishonest.”
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Dorian Montoir
I think Mama might skip that step
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Nathan Xavier
February 20, 2020 7:41 AM
I don’t think I want to give Dora one either by Nathan Xavier
The way Dorian did not assert everything was better now, the way he cut off his initial answer and then stopped to think hard with a worried look on his face, and finally just tried to put off dealing with the issue until later . . . that was an answer in itself, as far as Nathan was concerned. Dorian still did not feel completely safe at home.But Nathan had just said he’d need to report it if he wasn’t, and it didn’t take a degree in psychology to know that sounded intimidating and might make someone reluctant to push against the status quo, even if the status quo far from ideal.
Had Dorian been younger, he wouldn’t have a choice. If he suspected abuse, he had to report it. But Dorian was of age now. The rules were not as absolute, and Dorian was allowed his own say. And he was right. There were months before it would become an immediate concern.
Before he could try to convince Dorian that it would be best to get the cogs moving sooner rather than later, the seventh year asked a different question.
Nathan’s eyes widened in surprise and he was shaking his head before Dorian was done explaining.
“No,” he said firmly, as soon as Dorian’s words stopped. “You are not in trouble. Professor Brooding and I, we just want you to be safe.“ He paused, trying to find a way to say they’d wanted to prevent exactly this sort of attack before it happened instead of dealing with the aftermath, without making it sound like Dorian’s fault. “We want to make sure this situation won’t repeat again. We want to help you, Dorian, we want to get out out of trouble not put you in it. Reporting it will give your family resources to use to help resolve these issues, advice from people who have dealt with them before, instead of just having your parents stumble blindly in the dark and hope whatever they did about it fixed the problem.”
Nathan sat back, clasping his hands in front of himself, physically as well as conversationally backing off. “But you’re seventeen now, so if you want to wait, we can wait. You’re right. It’s months away and nothing is urgent right now. I’d like to get things moving at least a couple months before you graduate, if you want to return home, so we know we’re not sending you into a bad situation, but we can discuss those options when everything is not so raw.”
He took a deep breath then changed the subject slightly. “That’s my professional and legal obligations covered. We can put that aside until another day. Dorian, do you want to talk about what happened in your own words? There’s no pressure or obligation. It’s entirely in your court. But I’d be glad to be a sounding board for you if you need to get words out into the world. They don’t even need to make sense. This is completely in confidence.”
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Nathan Xavier
I don’t think I want to give Dora one either
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Dorian Montoir
February 21, 2020 5:30 AM
I more meant she's skipping to the next thing on the list by Dorian Montoir
Resources. Dorian was almost lulled into thinking that sounded alright. The word conjured up an image of the library. But before he had time to wonder whether there really were books on what to do when you’d accidentally reared an angry sociopath, Professor Xavier was talking in terms of ‘people.’ People who could go in and tell Mama what to do, where she had gone wrong and how to fix things – and the black lines, the shadows of invading forces coming to carve parts of his family away from each other were back. He didn’t want that. He would stay away from Matthieu, quite gladly in fact. And if Mama and Émilie wanted to see him, they could… He would sooner do that than humiliate or betray his Mama.Luckily, Professor Xavier backed off that subject. He had time. He could think. Professor Xavier had just been saying it because he had to. Not because he was going to make Dorian do anything right now. So, there was still time. For all of Professor Xavier’s reminders that Dorian was a legal adult, he still wanted to lean on someone else. The real grown ups. Maybe they could fix it. Maybe they could fix it all without anyone getting more hurt. He did not trust the world enough to believe they were at the lowest possible ebb for that, and that the only way was up. He could see nothing but twisting thorns that wanted to writhe between everything and everyone, scratching and tearing. He could foresee more of them growing. But maybe someone else would be able to carve a path through – to push them back instead of letting them choke.
“Yes,” he agreed, so readily that he practically cut Professor Xavier off, when asked if he wanted to talk. He was relieved by the part about not needing to make sense, because he wasn’t sure that he would – not the whole way through anyway – but he was even more relieved by someone inviting him to open and up and share his feelings, so much so that he almost cried. Almost. But he blinked it back. Because the first part was the unimportant bit. The bit that everyone else until now had focused on, and he didn’t want that. He took a moment, sorting through his thoughts, grateful for having the space to do that, knowing that Professor Xavier was waiting. Waiting to hear him. And listen.
“Matthieu cares about two things a lot; family reputation, and being the big tough guy. Boys should play sports, and be strong. So, he’s always had a problem with my tragic lack of masculinity,” Dorian stated, his tone acerbic and giving this evaluation of his worth the scornful roll of the eyes it deserved. He did not need reassurance or validation that Matthieu, or his opinion, were trash. That was the easier part. It was the part he had settled through the stability and love and friendship Sonora had brought him. It had rocked, occasionally, but now his friends knew who he was and they still loved him, and that had cemented his lack of doubt; no one who mattered would ever agree with Matthieu.
“He.. walked in on me kissing… someone. Someone he didn’t- my boyfriend,” he said, making sure to enunciate that clearly enough that there was no ambiguity here. He checked Professor Xavier’s face. Shock or surprise would pass him by – he was looking for signs of horror or revulsion, for signs that that was enough and that his teacher didn’t want to hear about that sort of thing. He didn’t find them. “So,” he shrugged, allowing Professor Xavier to factor in the things he had been told about Matthieu’s priorities, “he tried to put my head through the wall and said he wished I would die.” There was perhaps a slight edge of bitterness to these words, but for the most part they were uttered in a voice so detached that Dorian might have been explaining the all-too-typical weather. And maybe it would come back to him, in a thousand subtle ways as time went on. Maybe he would flinch a little easier if someone raised their voice. Maybe he would cross the street if he thought a stranger had a certain look about him. Maybe he wouldn’t want his future husband to stay out after dark, or would be worried if he ever came home late. But for now, the truth was that none of it registered so sharply as everything else. “At this point… There’s not really a relationship there to lose,” he summarised his own lack of feelings on the story that was making everyone else run in circles and cry their eyes out and pity him. “Not with him…” he muttered, pressing his lips firmly together, inhaling sharply through his nose.
“Jean-Loup – my boyfriend – Matthieu had put a body bind on him. But he managed to… resist it? Undo it?” Powerful emotion could do that, he knew. Even in adults ”He… he pulled Matthieu off me,” he continued, and now his voice was starting to shake, “And he…he hit him,” he continued, his pitch breaking, “He hit him, and he said he wanted to do everything to Matthieu that he ever did to me,” he explained, and this was the point where tears started rolling down his cheeks.
“And Mama caught them fighting. And he told her what Matthieu did, and Mama was furious, but she still threw Jean-Loup out for hitting Matthieu. And she said he had no excuse, Matthieu, could never have any excuse and he tried to tell her – so I did. He wasn’t there any more but I knew he’d tell her, so I tried to tell her first,” and his words were tumbling out now, only pausing for the increasingly sharp breaths he was taking as it became harder to keep his tears silent, “I told- I tried. I tried to tell her but she wouldn’t let me. She said I was just confused, and I shouldn’t say things I’d regret, and I’m sure Matthieu told her too, but she just won’t talk to me about it,” he almost shouted, the last words falling out with a sob. And those were coming faster, becoming more regular, not only punctuating his paragraph but forcefully smashing through it, breaking it apart as he continued.
“And I haven’t seen Jean-Loup since. I don’t know if he’s okay, or if he got in trouble – Émilie knows and she might tell Charlotte, I don't know. Or if he’s mad, or frightened. And he doesn’t know how I am. And now… now I’m here, I can write to him. But what will I say?” He thought again about the face he loved, that he had watched look at him with all the tenderness in the world, and how it been twisted and made unrecognisable with anger. And Dorian had yelled at him again and again to stop, and he hadn’t listened, and then when Mama spoke so softly, Jean-Loup had reacted straight away and Dorian realised he must only have screamed inside his own head. And how he knew it took a strong emotion to break an enchantment, and he that he didn’t know which it had been – love, or this far, far uglier thing. “What would I say? You did something awful? I thought you were good and kind, the whole way through, and you went and behaved in the same way as the person who makes my life miserable. You lowered yourself. You behaved exactly the same as him”
And he sobbed and sobbed onto his curled up knees. Not over the relationship where there had been nothing to left to lose, but over all the other ones that were falling to pieces because of it. Over Jean-Loup turning out not to be who he had thought he was, and over his mother turning out to be the thing he’d always feared she might be.
“I want my boyfriend back,” he cried, “I want him to be- be the person I thought. And I can’t have that ever again. And I want my mother to understand. And I don’t know-“ he was forced to break off. He tried in vain to get a few more words out before giving up and letting it be expressed instead through actions instead. Of pulling his knees in tighter to his chest, burying his head on them and crying so hard he thought he might not be able to breathe.
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Dorian Montoir
I more meant she's skipping to the next thing on the list
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Nathan Xavier
February 22, 2020 5:59 PM
Ah, those can be a choking hazard by Nathan Xavier
Nathan tried not to smile and reveal any amusement as Dorian jumped at the chance to talk about it. Good for him. After living with Isis, it was kind of strange but very refreshing having someone willing to actually talk about their feelings without having it pulled out bit by bit like a dentist going after teeth. He didn't start unloading himself immediately, though, taking a few moments to consider what he was going to say. Sometimes it was hard to know where to start. Nathan waited patiently.Nathan nodded attentively as Dorian began, explaining Mattheiu's values, and feeling mildly concerned by the obvious points of contention between the two brothers given those, but mostly glad that Dorian recognized that Mattheiu's values were not something he had to try to mold himself to. Then there was part about the kissing, and Nathan suddenly understood what the 'not good choices' Mrs. Montoir had probably been alluding to during her conversation with him. Nathan's eyes widened slightly in surprise, but he was not of the opinion that having a boyfriend was in itself a bad choice (he would reserve judgement on whether that would still the case when Dora was seventeen) and even if he did think was a bad choice, it would not be the same reason for which definitely Mattheiu, and possibly Mrs. Montoir, thought it was a bad choice.
Nathan flinched at the way Dorian described how Mattheiu reacted to his discovery of the kissing, as much for Dorian's tonality as for the violence of it. If he'd had any doubt before that this was a long standing problem, it was gone now.
And then the boyfriend fought back, and that was obviously more upsetting to Dorian than the attack on himself had been.
And yes, Mrs. Montoir had a problem with the boyfriend for the sake that he was a boyfriend, and as a result, had shut down communication with Dorian, and worse, between Dorian and the boyfriend, which was, well, not a good choice, in Nathan's experience.
He let Dorian finished expelling the thoughts and feelings that needed to be expelled in words and tears. He put a hand on Dorian's shoulder, as a tactile show of support, and most definitively did not tell him not to cry. He didn't encourage it, either, because that could have the opposite effect, especially on teenagers, so he said nothing, and just left his hand there for as long as it seemed welcome, a human contact to show Dorian wasn't alone in this.
Eventually, the sobs seemed to be slowing down. There had been questions in Dorian's venting, but they were quite probably rhetorical, and by now he may have forgotten he'd asked them even if they weren't, and Nathan did not want to offer unwelcome advice.
So instead of making unsolicited suggestions, he merely asked gently, "Is there anything I can do to help?" Sometimes it helped to have someone outside the family say something as simple as 'listen to what your son is telling you' but sometimes that just made things worse, so he didn't offer it as a possibility. Dorian would know better which way that wind blew, and he'd leave it to the seventh year to bring it up if he thought it would help. Instead, he made a more general offer. "I have a private floo if you need access to one." It wasn't standard to allow students to make floo calls during the school year, but under the circumstances, he thought an exception could be made.
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Nathan Xavier
Ah, those can be a choking hazard
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Dorian Montoir
February 22, 2020 7:36 PM
Maybe we should make our own plan by Dorian Montoir
Dorian felt the hand on his shoulder and jumped slightly, looking up. But Professor Xavier didn’t seem to want him to stop crying, or to do anything further. He was just… there. And Dorian accepted that gratefully. And for a little while, the crying got worse, because now that he had started it all seemed to want to pour out of him at once, and he didn’t think he could stop even if he wanted to. And he was holding onto his own knees, and burying his head against them, but it didn’t even feel like it was enough to hold him together any more, so he gave up being the one to try, and dropped his head instead onto Professor Xavier’s shoulder, and he didn’t even think to ask and wouldn’t have been able to manage the words even he had, but he just needed someone else to take the weight, just for a bit, and to reach out to another human being and not be pushed back.He was scared. Not for the reasons that anyone around him had seemed to think. Not of his brother, not of what had just happened, but what happened next. His mother kept saying she loved him, but he wasn’t sure if that was conditional now. She wanted to fix things, and he wasn’t sure if that meant Matthieu, or him too. And that stung, when Matthieu had been angry and mean and violent, and all Dorian had done was fall in love. How could those possibly be considered equally disappointing? And he didn’t know if she really thought that, but every time she refused to be confronted with the truth, it felt like that was what she was implying. And as for love… That was meant to be forever. They had said they loved each other, and what did that mean if they were mad at each other, and if he couldn’t forgive Jean-Loup? Had he been mistaken about it being love? If he walked away, would he be alone forever? What happened if this was the one good thing that was ever going to happen to him and now it had got broken? And all of these things frightened him and had been churning around in his head for days, and he let them loose. He didn’t think that would be the end of thinking about them. All of those questions still needed answers. But it felt good to get them out, even if it was done with tears instead of words.
He wasn’t sure how long he cried for. He cried until perfect, untainted love had been mourned twice over. He managed to straighten up, managed not to mumble any apologies because he didn’t think he needed to, even if it was still his first instinct, and, although he was still tearful, he could breathe. And his sobs lessened until could manage a whole inhale and exhale without them interrupting the process.
And Professor Xavier asked what he could do to help. For a moment, Dorian stared at him, wide-eyed and frightened, wondering if – because he was an adult – he was going to be expected to figure this out. The problem was he didn’t know. If he’d known how to fix any of it, he would have. He would have done it straight away because he hated everyone fighting. But Professor Xavier followed up with a practical suggestion, and Dorian was just as stunned by that as he had been the open question.
“Which of them do you think I should call?” he asked, “And what to say? And… right now?” he asked, and then his manners caught up to him, “I mean – thank you. It’s kind. But I… I don’t have a plan of what to do. I don’t know how to fix this,” he said shakily.
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Dorian Montoir
Maybe we should make our own plan
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Nathan Xavier
February 25, 2020 5:28 PM
That seems like a good idea by Nathan Xavier
When Dorian shifted over to lean against him, Nathan shifted his own body slightly, so they'd both be more comfortable, and the hand that had been resting on Dorian's shoulder shifted over so he wasn't quite hugging the teenager, but it was close. As the tears subsided and Dorian eventually pulled away, Nathan pulled back too, returning to his previous position from when they had just been talking.In response to his offer, Dorian mostly seemed overwhelmed and without any clear idea on what his next step should be. Calmly, Nathan shook his head and assured him, "No, it doesn't need to be right now. But if ever you decide that's something you could use, I just want you to know that it's available to you. Or if there is any information you'd like me to pass along or find out, I can do that, too."
He took a deeper breath, and continued, "As for your plan, you might want to start by setting small, achievable goals instead of looking at the whole mountain and trying to figure out how to move it, and be aware the some parts might not be fixable. You can certainly try to make things better, but something fairly traumatic happened and the pieces aren't all going to fit back to where they had been and that might not be a bad thing, really. Though the circumstances were certainly far from ideal, it does sound like some information was shared that needed sharing, and that is going to change some things." By which he meant equally the existence of a boyfriend and the longstanding pattern of abuse by Mattheiu, though he suspected Dorian might only read one of those into his words. "That said, what parts seem broken to you now that you most want to have fixed?"
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Nathan Xavier
That seems like a good idea
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Dorian Montoir
February 27, 2020 4:11 AM
Okay... Step one... by Dorian Montoir
Dorian took slow steadying breaths, still trying to return himself back to normal. Not moving a whole mountain at once sounded good, and he started to nod, only for that and his breath to both freeze as Professor Xavier talked about things not going back to how they’d been. But he finished the gesture and the breath, accepting the truth of it as Professor Xavier pointed out that maybe some things had happened that needed to.“Like telling Mama,” he said quietly, “I was always going to. I wanted to be able…” he trailed off, finding he needed to press his lips together to stop them shaking. He had wanted that conversation to be possible. He had half planned out several speeches - ways he thought he could tell in a way that showed how much he loved and respected her, how he still wanted to be what she wanted - but that that was going to look different to how she’d imagined. But that he still had ren and all the rest. “I just didn’t want it to be now or like this, and it… it wasn’t a good way to say any of it but-” he swallowed hard, “But now… Well, we’ll have to have that conversation again. There’s only one first time you tell someone something, but there’s still a second chance to have the conversation and do it right, isn’t there?” he asked.
He considered Professor Xavier’s other question. What was most broken now that he wanted to fix? He pulled back the answer of ‘everything.’ It was not a helpful answer. It was the whole mountain.
“I want Jean-Loup to know that I’m… alright,” he tilted his head to show that it was a given value, “I want to tell him who knows which information, so that he doesn’t get a nasty surprise. My sister is his sister’s best friend,” he explained, pretty sure he’d just thrown the name ‘Charlotte’ in at some point without an explanation. “I want to know the same things for him. I don’t want to yell at him because that’s making more breaks in the world, and if he didn’t figure out that he hurt me, it’s going to be a new hurt for him. There’s too many already. I know we’ll have to talk about it. And I worry that… if I don’t mention it, it’s like lying. I don’t want to make him think that everything will be normal and okay because I can’t promise that,” his lip trembled slightly at this, because he felt like he already had done. There had been a perfect future where they had a lovely life, and he’d convinced Jean-Loup to put his heart and not just his lips and his arms into the relationship. He had done so tentatively. He had needed a hand to hold, someone who said it would be alright. What if Dorian stopped saying that now? It was bad enough to crush someone’s hope at all, but even worse when it was something you’d teased back out of them. “I can write him, now I am here. But…. do you think it exists? The letter that… can say and do all the right things and none of the wrong ones?” he asked, still not sure whether what he wanted was merely difficult or entirely self-contradictory.
“And…” he was not sure if this came under the category of ‘broken things’ but it definitely came under what he wanted to do right now. “Is it allowed that I stay here today? I mean, in your office. You don’t have to look after me the whole time but…” he took a breath, feeling like his reasons were logical but still feeling like it betrayed basic Teppenpaw principles to admit what he was about to, “I’m not ready to see my friends. They will know straight away that something is wrong. And I will have to tell them. And I already told you and… Is that stupid?” he asked, “To feel like you are too tired to say something again. It’s only speaking. But it’s not only speaking,” he added, caught between feeling that it was fair to think that everything about this was a big deal, and the nagging voice that said he was behaving weakly by not knowing how to cope with a conversation with people who loved him. “I didn’t work out what to say to them yet. They know about Jean-Loup,” he added, hastily, “And they’ve all been great. I know that it’s safe to talk to them. They aren’t going to hate me.” Maybe they would be mad at him too. Tatya for him not doing enough or letting her do anything about Matthieu, and Professor Brooding for never telling her. Still, he thought he was pathetic enough right now that they would spare him those feelings, and only feel them in private. They were still cracks he had made in the world, and that was still bad. Normally he would have worried very much about things he couldn’t see, especially if it was possibly invisible hurt. But there were enough big, huge cracks right across the surface right now that he thought he might have to let those ones go. For now.
“Some of them know about Matthieu too,” he admitted, not quite meeting the Professor’s eyes. He thought that, if he was not in trouble for not telling, nor would his friends be, but he had the decided impression that the teachers would wish him to do it differently if he had his time again. But if that wasn’t the problem, then that led them back to ‘I just don’t want to,’ which wasn’t exactly the reason. “I want to tell them. But… in a way where no one ends up angry with anyone else. I… I think they’ll take my side, and that means they’ll maybe be mad at everyone else. Tatya… will maybe say Matthieu deserved it. I don’t want her to agree that it’s a right thing to do to someone. And then, if she knows I’m upset, she’ll be upset with Jean-Loup for doing that to me. And I think… Maybe both her and Professor Brooding, they might be upset with Mama. I… I know she didn’t really say the right things. Yet. But she’s still my Mama.
“I feel like if I talk to Jean-Loup, I might say something that hurts him, and if I talk to my friends there’s just going to be even more anger and sadness in the world because they won’t like that I got hurt. But there’s already too much. And I just… I want everyone that I love to be able to be together, and to like each other and get along- and I know that’s… that’s the whole mountain. But I want it to get smaller, not bigger. Is there… is there something wrong with me? How can it feel like I can’t open my mouth without risking that I’m making people upset with each other?” he sighed. His voice was shaking again, and he was sure the only reason he wasn’t crying was because he had no more tears left. But he didn’t want the world to fall into even more pieces.
13
Dorian Montoir
Okay... Step one...
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