Next of Kin Prequel #1 - Queen Takes Pawn

Queen Takes Pawn

I wasn't going to post this yet, but @bailers7 asked me to post something new so I gave it a quick edit and posted it tonight.  If you're reading this the first week it's up and are happy to see it, you know who to thank.

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This fic is a prequel to the first book in the Next of Kin series. If you haven't read that yet please do not continue. This contains spoliers. If you're read NoK, well, here's the first of several short pieces of some backstory I plan to post. I hope it helps to flesh out some of these characters and fill in some questions for you all. As always, thank you so much for reading and for your lovely comments. This community is lovely. I can't thank you enough for joining me here and keeping me motivated. – D.G.

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It was the summer of 2011, the last day of the school year at MIT. Lena smiled as she walked briskly down the hallway and hurried to her dorm room. In jeans and a maroon t-shirt, block letters spelling out MIT with the school crest and the 'EST. 1861' across the front, she expertly wove her way between other students also eager to back it back to their dorm rooms and then home for the summer. Her dark ponytail bounced with her unusual eagerness due to her morning's destination. She'd only reached the door when a voice stopped her.

"Lena, hey, Lena!"

Turning, Lena's smile grew when she saw her friend jog down the hall toward her. He was all arms and legs; his curly brown hair hung shaggily over his eyes in its usual unkempt way. His button-down shirt half-stuck out of his tan slacks, and his belt end flopped about from his too thin waist. As other kids moved to and fro in an attempt to make it to their rooms, the boy slid awkwardly between them as he seemed always to be fighting against the flow of traffic like a salmon swimming upstream. Still, his eyes were bright as they peeked between the strands, and his smile even brighter as he rather breathlessly reached his friend.

Hand on his center as he bent over and gasped for air, the boy stood and used his other hand to flip back the hair that covered his eyes in a slightly sheepdog fashion. "Hey, didn't you hear me calling you across the quad?"

Slowly raising an eyebrow, Lena replied, "Everett, do you really think I stop every time some boy yells my name across the quad?"

Blushing slightly, Everett said, "You know, it's hard for a guy to think of you as just a friend when you smile like that and do that eyebrow thing."

Reaching up several inches, Lena patted his cheek. "And yet you manage it. Aren't you a strong young man." She shifted the books in her arms to one as she fished the keys out of her pocket.

"Here, let me help you."

"Thanks." Lena handed over her books and unlocked her door, heading inside.

Trailing behind and closing the door behind him, Everett looked around the room. Lena had a single dorm, a rarity, but she could afford it. She'd made few acquaintances even fewer friends during her time at college, her age difference with the other students, financial disparity, and self-imposed desire at privacy making it so. Everett was one of the few who had broken through. They'd been in many of the same math and engineering classes from the beginning, and he was one of a select number who could hope to keep up with her even if still trailing behind a bit though a few years older. In their freshman year, when the then fifteen-year-old Luthor had dubbed Everett 'not wholly annoying like most of the students' Everett had laughed out loud and pulled Lena into an enthusiastic hug. Stiff in his arms, Lena had sputtered like she didn't even know what a hug was as if it was some kind of attack. When he only stepped back, smiling still as she blinked in confusion, it was an icebreaker that was the start of their friendship three years earlier.