Impenetrable Heart | Lams College AU

Beloved of John

     A/N- (Also yes, the chapter title is again a song! John, My Beloved by Sufjan Stevens, go listen if you haven't.) So! In light of this last chapter, I wanted to do something kind of silly, and add a little fact list of everyone! These include a lot of details I originally wanted to add explicitly but didn't make the final cut because of plot direction, etc. Some of these may also show up in the one-shot stories!

-Laf is an amazing mathematician. This was mentioned in the beginning character charts, but he is very good with numbers. But because he was teased in the past, he doesn't like telling people his minor is Mathematics.

-Herc switched his minor to French shortly after meeting Laf but never told him

-John stays up late looking at the sky from the window. Most of the time Alex will catch him awake, and John will tell him about the different constellations and stars. He has a particular fancy toward the star Capella, and the faint red glow the sky sometimes has that he can't figure out.

-If one of the two can't sleep, John and Alex play a game called, "I love you more..." where they list off things they love each other more than. John's personal favorite is when Alex said: "I love you more than I hate Thomas Jefferson." While Alex's is: "I love you more than I tell you."

-Alex struggles with PTSD from the hurricane, and notices symptoms of it in John, but doesn't know how to bring it up.

-Alex is an advocate for awareness of gangs and drug/alcohol abuse in teenagers and college students after seeing the effects of it first-hand.

-Alex more than likely has an anxiety disorder but doesn't want to admit it, no matter how much Laf and Herc prod him.

-Laf has continuous nightmares and anxiety about the night with John and the river.

-Alex has dated more people than he can count, as he was quite the player in high school.

-John had an unofficial relationship with a senior guy his freshman year but never told anyone about it. Looking back, he realized how unhealthy it was.

-Herc is very mentally healthy and feels responsible to take care of everyone in the group, even though he gets stressed or feels guilty.

-After John lost most of his clothes in the fire, the group all donated some of their clothes to him (though he insisted they didn't have to). Laf and Herc's clothes are huge on him, but Alex's fit just right.

-Alex got an A on the psychology paper he wrote about John

     ...

     The next few months for the household were months that John knew he would never forget. There was a sort of stillness about it, yet at the same time, ever-increasing unrest for those days to finally be over. John, who thought he would spend his last nights counting the hours, began to relish in them. Call it wrong, tell him he was being silly- he might agree- but there was a bitter, bittersweetness to leaving behind the life that, at one time, was all he knew. Of course, there were times he cursed the system. Some nights he came home, angry and exhausted, crying in Alex's arms all the while saying, "I hate this, I hate this." Other nights, however, he found himself wandering aimlessly through the darkened city on the nights the deals ended early, taking it all in.

     Sometimes he told Alex, sometimes he didn't.

     It felt wrong to still keep secrets from him, even the small harmless ones that might be better off unsaid. He made sure to never make it a habit again, but as someone once said: old habits die hard.