milo doesn’t need to point out that that’s not exactly a comforting statement. other days are hard. for dev, sometimes milo thinks easy days are few and far between. it’s not exactly fair, the way lady luck has divied up their hardships. he smothers the guilt and takes another drag. “ guess it could always be worse. glad it’s not, though. ”
stupid thing to say, but milo’s not good at words. not really. he’s not good at finding the way to say that dev deserves a whole host of easy days, a lifetime without a day that is worse. milo sighs on the exhale, watches the lights from the school as they take on a strange, golden, indescribably hue. “ one day, man. ” one day what ?? milo doesn’t know where that train of thought is going. “ one day you’re gonna agree to be my student teacher, and then you’ll cause some real pain. ”
one day, man.
and dev turns, despite himself, to look at milo in the midst of the silence. one day what? one day things will be easier? one day he’ll have more good days than bad? one day... oh. he chokes on a laugh, and takes a long hit from the blunt before he says anything at all. because milo’s trying to be funny, because milo is being funny, but there’s this little twinge in his chest that pulls at something he didn’t think still worked enough to twinge at all.
“ i keep telling you that i’m no use to you, dude. didn’t give school any attention while i was in it. ”
milo leads the most ordinary life he thinks is possible. truly rough days are few and far between, but he’s never needed an excuse to sit next to dev and smoke for a little while. it’s a habit because they’ve occupied the same space for so long, milo tells himself. “ nah, not really. just long. ” he’s been staring at papers for eight hours straight, and that’s the roughest his days have been in a while. he takes a long drag, hands the joint back to dev before he blows out the thick smoke. “ what about you ?? ”
dev takes the joint, holds it between his fingers and watches for just a few seconds as it burns. he feels milo just a few feet away from him, finds some semblance of calm in the comfort that his presence brings. but it’s not a habit. it’s just him and a pretty boy and a joint. and that’s fine. “ no harder than any other day. ” which, y’know, is a pretty wide margin these days. ptsd is a bitch. he takes a drag, holds it for a second, just a second too long, exhales. “ could be worse and all that. ”
he tries really hard not to make a habit of it--honest to any god that may exist, he does--because pretty boys are trouble and milo is definitely a pretty boy. at least, in the sense that dev likes to look at him out of the corner of his eyes whenever he’s in a room. y’know. because he’s pretty. he tries not to make it a habit, but it’s still becoming one, and he knows it because when he passes milo the freshly rolled joint, the motion feels familiar.
There was a cigarette wedged between her fingertips, the thin haze of smoke coming from the end like a haphazard signal to whoever passed by. Letty’s face was tipped to the sun, she was prone to freckles but the warm light washed them all out. It was the first decent day of the year and she’d be damned if she wasted it. She could sense someone approach, but she didn’t look down, her eyes trained on the bright blue of the unbroken sky. Letty considered putting it out but instead chose to take another drag, the groundskeeper would be pissed when he saw the mess of half crushed cigarette butts at her feet. “I’ll trade you a smoke for a promise not to tell Mal,” she offered, her quiet voice hardly picking up over the light breeze that licked at the campus.
dev had lost his fucking lighter. he had no idea where or how or--particularly when, because he didn’t remember wearing the jacket anywhere other than--oh. shit. okay, he’d worn it into town the night before, and that girl with the red hair... yeah. yep. he’d let her borrow it. and he couldn’t remember getting it back, which probably meant... well, it meant that drunk dev was a fucking idiot. which wasn’t news. but he glanced at letty, shrugged.
“ no idea who mal is, but uh... can i get a light if i say i still won’t tell? ”
once again, i’m thea and this is my trouble maker/asshole dev! info under the cut!
//: SIDHARTH MALHOTRA, 28, cis-male, he/him //: DEVRAJ SODHI is staying at Xavier’s Institute for Higher Learning. the BODY PIERCER has been at the school for NINE MONTHS and has earned a reputation for being FIERCELY LOYAL and TRIGGER HAPPY. what else could you expect from someone with PAIN MANIPULATION? only time will tell if they join the revolution.
--
i. how did your character end up at xavier’s? he’s been avoiding it since he was a child. and when he left home, angry and ready for a fight, at the ripe age of 17, it wasn’t an option. xavier’s was meant to be a safe haven of sorts, and dev didn’t want safety. he wanted blood and sweat and the harsh light of the truth. but war breeds madness and dev wasn’t an exception to that rule--the fighting took a lot out of him, his humanity most of all. eventually, as the wars and the world changed, dev decided to make the effort. safety might be the only thing left to try.
ii. how does your character’s mutation affect their life? their relationships? actively, but that’s probably more a byproduct of people’s previous reactions and his own reaction to that. dev was an angry, misunderstood boy, who grew into an angrier man, who embraced the subversiveness of his identity and thrives on it. pain manipulation doesn’t lend itself to physical proximity, has visceral effects when at high emotional points. dev doesn’t have many close friends--especially not with well-adjusted, happy people. he doesn’t know how.
ABUSE & HOMOPHOBIA TW
iii. tell us about something that impacted your character in a major way. he’s thirteen. thirteen and holding hands with carter nelson. thirteen and getting his ribs kicked in by five seventeen year old boys who saw them kissing just outside the playground. thirteen and thinking about afraid he is. thirteen and screaming. thirteen and angry. until the screaming isn’t his anymore. until it’s theirs, and it’s carter’s, and it’s the squirrel in the nearby trees. trial by fire is the best way to learn about yourself--and to bring mutations to light. he’s thirteen and an outcast.
ANYTHING ELSE?
the extent of pain that dev can push onto (or, in contrast, take away from) someone depends on their proximity to him. the closer they get, the worse their pain can become.
dev is the middle child of five. and while the farthest in age from him, his youngest sister menali is the one he gets along with best. she’s fourteen, and in almost all ways, his complete opposite.
when his parents decided to move the family to a small town in tennessee, dev fought tooth and nail. but he was ten, and his parents were stubborn, and his father had a job lined up in a nearby suburb and dammit, couldn’t he just keep his mouth shut this once?
out of the five children, dev is the only mutant. or at least the only one who has such a visible mutation/will admit to it. his parents are as deeply ashamed of his mutation as society has ensured them they should be.
he became a body piercer for a number of reasons--one, the subculture didn’t care what he looked like, who he had sex with, or if he was an angry little shit. two, as he discovered quickly, a lot of mutants--especially angry ones--were drawn to that life. it fed their internal rage. three, his mutation allowed him to take away some of the pain in the initial action. never enough to be significant, but enough to make it a little easier on his clients. he was known for having “magic needles”.
“You do realize that you’re making a total ass of yourself, right?” Leyton’s brows raised half-cocked across his forehead, head tilting just slightly to the side as he watched the encounter come to a close. The comment was liable to be received poorly, but he didn’t mind much. It was nothing he hadn’t seen worse of when he was back home.
below is the tl;dr version of my lionhearted lost boy’s story (until i can get a full bio up)
tw: substance abuse, ptsd mention
leyton isaac donovan | 18 | son of nemesis
leyton is pretty much the absolute polar opposite of hadlee
he’s spent his whole life in poverty, with seven young brothers and sisters, and a father who spent more time nursing beers than his children.
leyton’s father did start out as a good man, and it’s important to note that. he’s just not... not the same as he was when Nemesis met him. he’s a war vet with severe ptsd and didn’t get proper help or treatment bc lbr that doesn’t happen often.
so anywho. leyton has basically been raising his little siblings for most of his life. he doesn’t mind so much, but it’s put a really heavy weight on him.
he’s been working several part time jobs to help keep money going since he was about 12. it’s not always the best situation, but as his other siblings got older, they started pitching in.
clearly, leyton isn’t fully related to any of his siblings, but most of them aren’t fully related to each other, either. only two of them are (and they’re twins).
he has a real beef with both of his parents over the way he had to grow up. he doesn’t regret raising and helping his siblings, but he is bitter about not having a real childhood.
he found out about being a demigod when he was??? 13 or 14?? but wasn’t able to join the campers (only for the summers, anyway) until he was 16, because he couldn’t leave his siblings alone.
born and raised in atlanta, georgia. this is mildly important re: his attitude and outlook on life. also his family in general. anywho.
