Chapter 1
They accidentally begin what is eventually branded by the press, to their amusement, the X-Men. Or to the amusement of two of them. "Stupidest fucking name I ever heard-" Michael protests, and Gavin and Jeremy laugh joyfully enough at his frustration that he can't keep a straight face protesting it. The costumes look okay and are completely unnecessarily tight. He thinks that one is on Gavin.
It might be more accurate to say they begin the school, a sanctuary at first, which leads to the whole thing with the jet and the powers and the-
Look, it's a really long story.
The students never seem to get sick of it, though.
*
Sometimes in the facility all the tests hurt and the things they're starting to be able to do are much more than should be possible for people, but they've been told repeatedly they're not really people so maybe that makes sense. It's a lot to deal with when they're just a few months off eleven, and Gavin decides to climb into Jeremy's bed when the lights go out, dragging an unresisting Michael with him.
"There's a storm coming," he says quiet, one night.
"What kind?" Michael asks. All three of them are holding close. Gavin just knows stuff, sometimes.
"I think it might be us," says Gavin.
*
There are a lot of people in white lab coats. They might be doctors, they might be scientists, they might be anyone. Whatever they are they're very interested in Jeremy and all the rest of the kids they bring in.
"You are a mutant, and a risk to others," they tell him, "you're dangerous, but we'll manage it for you so you don't need to worry."
Jeremy nods, to indicate that he understands and will obey the rules. It's not so bad. Mainly because of Geoff, who is the only one in a white coat who ever tells them his name, and also the only one who cuts him a break when he's tired or hurting and lets him rest untouched. Jeremy nods to him when they make brief eye contact, not quite yet with fondness, but definitely with respect.
It starts like that, and ends in a room that is very clean and smells of disinfectant and he knows he won't leave it. There's someone with a clipboard, who seems a little bored with the whole thing.
"A Romeo, Romeo and Juliet story?" the woman in a crisp shirt asks like it's a joke.
Once, they had let them go to lessons together a few hours a day, and his and Gavin's eyes meet across a crowded room just because both of them were looking at Michael. Michael winks at them both like he knows it. They hang out, just kids. Michael can light fire by thinking it, and they find out that if he wants to Gavin knows what everyone's got on their mind. Jeremy hasn't shown much sign of anything, but he doesn't begrudge them it for a second. Dangerous, certainly. Also just kids.
They find each other cautiously in the brief hour they have outside. They hold hands, unpracticed because gestures of affection are something they're still learning second-hand. "We're getting out," Michael says, all of fifteen, utterly fearless if you take him at face value. He cares too much and Jeremy knows immediately he'll be the one that might make things better.
"Yeah," Gavin agrees.
If Jeremy does his job right, both of them will, whatever it costs. "Yeah," he says.
Back in the room, the woman in the very nice shirt smiles, rigidly polite. "You could have even gotten away," she tells Jeremy, "if you hadn't come back."
"If I hadn't come back for the kids," Jeremy says, leaning against the wall and calm about it, "I'd be like you. And honestly? Fuck that."
She gestures and the guard shoots him very deliberately once just to shut him up, then a few more times in the chest presumably because he just wants to. Jeremy bleeds out on the floor reaching to grasp for a nice memory. He goes knowing that before he got to twenty he has more than enough of those to make this easy and he thinks maybe that means he won anyway.
The best one is when they'd run until they'd found somewhere no one else was, far enough from the city and pretty as all hell, out there in the wild. They could make something here.
"I'll fucking build us walls," Michael says, "Gonna do this right," he adds, with Gavin smiling in agreement and sharp-eyed looking for somewhere to start. Jeremy trusts them entirely with the future.
He agrees, but knows he'll leave when they aren't looking. There's a whole lot of kids they learned the alphabet with, learned how to count to ten with, that are still in that place and he won't make it back but that's not anything close to worth leaving them behind.
*
One time, a woman with red hair and an air of kindness comes, shoving a piece of paper at security and insisting, loudly and like she might even mean it, that she has a legal right to entry and to check the mutants are being treated humanely.
They don't let her in, but all of them spread the rumour about it, and they do appreciate the effort. They remember her.
Ryan's different, wears the namecard and the white jacket, and is willing to play at something more cruel and act on it until they discover that they understand each other. He hits hard when in public until they learn that staying down can be an offense all its own, but he also whispers quiet in private that he wants to help.
"Don't chase us too fast?" Jeremy jokes, wryly and with a certain amount of trust.
He's pretty sure Ryan is the one who fucks it up on purpose when they try to leave, pretending like their tracers are broken and just shrugging at superiors. Tech issues happen. He plays it off as a malfunction, and the three of them run hand in hand and just keep running.
They're chased, of course, but Gavin usually knows who is following ahead of time and when he doesn't and they're cornered Jeremy shoves him down and curls around him, protective. They have a game, a password. "Hey Michael," Jeremy says, "Humans. What was the first thing we invented?"
"Fire," Michael says.
He smiles and then a fire flares up that burns up everything and everyone in the room, and also most of the room. Not Gavin and Jeremy, though.
They get away. None of the papers tell the story that way but they do it. Jeremy is pretty young, and he can't throw fire like Michael or know everything like Gavin. But he's sure they'll take care of the future, so now he'll do his bit to contribute.
He goes back alone without telling them, and breaks in the facility and opens every lock he can get his hands on to smash open, causing enough havoc so the kids can run. He whispers about where to go the whole time, and if anyone can protect them it's Gavin and Michael.
He's taken down because he chooses to spend the last few minutes he's got holding up anyone who comes enough they won't follow. He ends up in this room with with someone asking him stupid questions.
"Yeah," Jeremy says, a gun pointed at him and smiling while picking his preferred last words with a certain amount of enjoyment. "I'd be like you, and honestly? Fuck that." It barely hurts.
*
Jeremy never showed any sign of anything even looking like the kinds of gifts the other kids had, but it turns out it takes a bullet to prove otherwise. He wakes from a shot to the head without so much as a mark on him and in the arms of Geoff, who looks suspiciously like he's been crying.
Geoff takes him back to his own house, as risky as it is. He does cry a little bit then, explains he's been complicit too long, and flinches a bit when Jeremy reaches for his hand after dinner.
"Come on," Jeremy says, "we'll go to my friends, they're making somewhere safe."
"Fuck," Geoff says a little weakly, "and you'd let me in?"
Jeremy frowns, and pulls away gentle, making sure he doesn't touch Geoff unpermitted. "We look out for those that look out for us, Geoff. That's your name, right? I remembered. I'll take you there."
Geoff is allowed entry to the place they're building with fond enthusiam by Gavin, who he always favoured, and Michael stalks the boundary in a bit of a temper but it's all for show and he rolls his eyes and permits it. They're more generous than the world they live in. Maybe that's what the future is.
They've got a lot of kids there, with whatever the hell Jeremy pulled off, so the future is on their mind.
After a while Geoff calls the red-haired woman, who he knows and calls by the name of Jack. She's crying on the other end of the line because the people in charge are pretty good at covering shit up by now, so officially Geoff went missing and was never found, and she went to his funeral just days ago. Geoff tells her their story with a few helpful additions from the three of them as they crowd around him on the phone.
When she publishes it, the world goes up in arms, calls it horrifying and the story of the century. Like they didn't know that's what they did with mutants the whole fucking time, their gaze politely averted. It's how the world works. Ryan is the one to drive people to feel ashamed, walking into court and testifying publicly, pleading guilty to anything thrown at him, things he never did. If it wasn't true for me it was true for someone I worked with, he says calmly. You choose what you tolerate for your own comfort. And that's the quote in every single article, from the Guardian to fucking Buzzfeed. Gavin jokes that Ryan is acquitted because everyone on the jury was too much more guilty to even look him in the eye.
*
"I think there's going to be a storm," Gavin says, "and we're it, and they'll talk about it for years."
"Sure, Gav," Michael says fondly, and falls asleep with Jeremy held close, Gavin on the other side.
"So it's really simple, how this all started," Gavin says, years later, to wide-eyed students. "This school and everything, the whole deal. Us, you guys, and a safe place for us here."
"I had a couple of friends. We were young and fucking stupid and really fucking in love," he smirks. "And that's why we scared the hell out of them."