Chapter Text
There are always patients who are different. Patients who every medical, really any generally scientific professional wishes to meet. People will go great lengths to ensure a part in an experience such as discovering this person, and such a patient will become known by every doctor, every professor, and every student as an anomaly. They will become infamous as a mystery to which great lengths must be gone to solve. Nobody wants to be that patient, because even after they are solved, if they are at all, they remain a specimen.
People simply aren’t meant to live that way.
Oftentimes it is a mutation, or a rare form of a condition. A new kind of Cancer or a hairy heart or something like that. Less often it will be something totally unexpected like a new illness altogether, or a myth resurfaced. There is no hope for these people. They will live a lonely life of isolation and research, loved by so many if only for something terrifyingly out of anyone's control. These people are reduced to nothing but an outlet for such professionals to blood and other samples that progress science, but ultimately help nobody, not even the patient.
These people are reduced to nothing, and I am one of them.
It began when I was twelve years old. It was a confusing time to say the least, as it is for every boy who is beginning to discover how rapidly his body is changing, how terrifying and glorious each subtle change will seem. I was at the beginning of my adolescence, and, though I was different from most children of my age in many aspects of my being, the physical changes that had occurred had not been describably different.
I had just wrapped up my work on a particularly time consuming case and was feeling more than a little tired. I suppose my knees were pulled up to my chest, my forehead resting on the valley between the peaks of my folded legs, a position that I still meditate, still solve countless case in. When people ask about it I lie, saying that my intellect relies on it, that if I do not sit in such a position then I will be less smart by at least 40%. It is easy enough to fool most people, and those few who aren’t convinced are never in a position to question me. It is simply a familiarity that, though I’d hate to admit it, does soothe me, and any deviation is unbearably distracting.
The orphanage had been silent, that I remember, silent as the dead. Silent still when I was awoken from my deepening slumber by a sharp ache in my lower back. I was not surprised by this as I would often experience complaints reasonating from my abused spine, always whining to be straighter. It was only the second, more uncomfortable jolt of pain that convinced me to lie down on the bed that I hadn’t used in months. The sheets smelled musty and I was horribly aware of the slight smell of a mold that must have began growing when the humidity had set in. I remember shifting around many times, curling and straightening my back; however, the pain only got worse by the minute. I did consider calling for assistance, but was stopped abruptly by a powerful feeling making its way down my spine. I had never been so aware of anything before in my life. It didn't hurt, not like the pain before, but it was perhaps the most uncomfortable feeling I would ever experience. I'm more used to it now, but the first time I felt the dreadful chills running their ghostly fingers down my back was, to say the least, terrible.
It was the first time I had ever felt anything similar to arousal. It could only be described that way. Feelings like cool hands dancing on my skin, creepily complementing the growing ache that had begun to consume my lower abdomen. It was then that it started.
The smell was faint through my trousers and pants, but it reminded me very slightly of strawberries. I didn't know what was happening at first until I felt how wet I was, and even then I was left guessing blindly in the dark. I guess I would describe my feeling then as confused, completely and utterly perplexed. I was aware of slang at that time, so I knew that being ‘wet’ was a state to be in. But I was not, nor will I ever be, female. I remember being startled and then horrified when the logical explanation came to me, the only place where enough slick to be noticeable could come from. I had never been so worried. I could only have been bleeding.
I suppose I tried to get help at that point, calling out for Whammy at three in the morning.
I remember being attended to by private doctors and being told to follow a tall man without a trace of kindness upon his face into a sterile white room only to be told that I was different. It was nothing new to me, I had always been different, but I was startled by how blunt he was being. Usually the doctor would lower their voice, speak to me in a tone that was gentle and sugar coated, but this man spoke authoritatively to me, or so it seemed. I spoke to Whammy about it in the hours that followed and he was convinced that he had sounded no different.
I remember that same man speaking with me before examining me, poking and prodding me in places I had never thought to venture, and making me incredibly uncomfortable.
It was a long time before it happened again.
The next time I called for Whammy immediately. He brought me to the doctor again and I stayed with him for three days until the feeling stopped, until the wet slime stopped flowing out of me. I remember being terrified, having never wanted to do anything with another human being. Yet there were moments during those few days when I wanted the touches that he offered, leaned into him when I slept, and I nodded when he instructed me to not tell anyone, still half asleep.
After that I took note of whenever it happened, which quickly evened out to once every six months. Being the recluse that I was it was never problem hiding it.
Later, when I was about 18 or so, I read about wolves on a whim. Stuck in the library waiting for Whammy to finish his conference call was boring, so I picked up a book on a subject that I had never considered exploring in my little free time at Whammy’s. I remember sitting there stunned, unresponsive when Quillish finally came for me. Later that night I secretly checked my medical records, expecting to find nothing out of the ordinary, but the records from the beginning of it all were not there. I remember hacking into database after database to find them, and I remember sighing with fear and content when I found that they had reached the same conclusion as me, before erasing all of them. I knew what happened to people who were different. I had experienced it firsthand, but nothing like what I was sure to follow if the government found out about this. I was not illiterate, nor unaware of the studies done on anomalies, and then was the first time that I had ever felt sorrow for them. Because I was a data point away, a theory out of step, from a much larger, much more dangerous side of the science that I had so admired.
Because I, L Lawliet, was, and always will be, an omega.