Sunday passed without incident, although that was probably because they were avoiding each other. But now it was Monday, meaning six hours in the same room. (Since the author's class does nothing in homeroom except hang out, that's gonna be what they do for the first half hour of school).

    Peter and Jack walked into their homeroom class, ignoring the jeers thrown at them by Flash and his cronies, and took their seats (Jack and MJ next to each other, Peter and Need behind them).

    "Jack knows," Peter said quietly.

    MJ continued to read.

    "What are you reading?" Jack asked her.

    "Stephen King's The Stand," she replied. The author's friend is reading this book.

    "Is it good?"

    "I wouldn't be reading it if it wasn't," she replied with a small grin.

    Jack smiled back. The author doesn't ship it, this is just how it seems they'd interact.

    They were all quiet (author's auto-suggest wanted to say "They were all gay") for a moment as conversations went on around them.

    Then MJ spoke up. "Why'd you get so defensive last week?"

    Jack seemed to think for a moment before speaking. (This is where the author reveals some of their ships: Claire x Kaia, Alex x Patience, Jody x Donna.) "I have a half-sister (Claire) who's dating a girl (Kaia), and my half-sister's got an adoptive sister (Alex) who's also dating a girl (Patience), and they were both adopted by a woman (Jody) who's dating a woman (Donna). And another woman (Charlie) who was almost a sister to the brothers who raised me (Sam and Dean) was lesbian and proud. So I was defending my family."

    Peter mentally filed that away into "Things about Jack".

    “Why aren’t you with any of them?” Ned asked.

    Jack looked down at his hands. Quietly, he answered, “I don’t know how to get to them.”

    The rest of the day gave Peter no new answers about Jack’s past. After school, he got a call from Mr. Stark as they walked home.

    “Hey Mr. Stark.”

    “Peter, I have footage of the boy who know lives with you massacring a warehouse full of people.”

Peter stopped walking.

“With a bit of research, the police have come to the understanding that they were rapists and sex traffickers.”

    He spoke quietly when he replied. “That’s what he told me.”

    Tony was startled, but quickly covered it up and continued, “It’s worrying to know that you sleep under the same roof as someone who kills without batting an eye -- especially since the camera footage shows him using what appears to be magic.”

    “Wait… how did you know it was him?”

    A sigh came through the speaker. “The killer had glowing golden eyes. That’s not exactly a common eye color.”

    “Peter felt the urge to defend Jack. “Well it’s not as if he didn’t feel guilty.”

    “Oh?”

    He hesitated, then plowed on. “He tried to kill himself that night.”

    “What?!”

    “He said he was a killer, a monster. I tried to comfort him and get him to stop.”

    “I think I’ll stop by and try to talk to him.”

    “Alright,” Peter replied, dubious, “but I don’t think he’ll tell you much.”