It’s gotta be true love Clark Dill looked human. Some days, the thought even crossed his mind that Dad might be wrong about his origins, and maybe he even was actually human. The long ingrained fear that he wasn’t never let him act on that thought, of course. There was far too much risk to ever try to determine definitively one way or the other, and neither answer was really something he wanted to know for sure.
If he was part-alien, that was dangerous to himself and those he knew, and made terrible implications about how he had come into existence and the world they lived in. If he wasn’t. . . well, that meant Dad had probably kidnapped him as a child and was even more divorced from reality than Clark thought he was, and Clark wasn’t ready to deal with those implications either. So he felt a kinship to Schrodinger’s cat, being neither absolutely alien nor absolutely human, but kind of both and neither at the same time.
What it meant though was that Clark didn’t dare get too close to any girls. He flirted, even dated casually, but he was clear upfront that he wasn’t ready for anything serious. He’d broken off with Lena pretty soon after graduation, not wanting to lead her on, and none of the girls since lasted much longer than a school year.
Most of them figured he was secretly gay, especially if they’d ever met John and Sammy, which most of the longer term ones did sooner or later. Clark didn’t deny it, mostly because it was an easier excuse that “I can’t make a life with you because I’m probably an alien and I’m scared of what you’d say or do if I told you that.”
So by the time he finished his master’s degree, it was pretty common knowledge among his friend group that he had a serious boyfriend in New York. His current girlfriend wasn’t even an actual girlfriend. She was a lesbian who was trying to get her parents off her back by ‘at least trying to date a guy, sweetheart.’ He’d met them a few times. Dishearteningly, they liked to tell their relatives that Aeryn was dating a Quidditch star more than they mentioned that he had a Summa Cum Laude in Geology and Charms, or that he was working on his masters thesis on large scale landscape enchantment.
So they went out together and he bought her dinner and she bought him popcorn and movie tickets, and it was good and easy and her girlfriend liked him a lot, especially after they all met Sammy.
But now his master’s degree was hanging in his room in Maryland, and he was taking a break from school. He‘d found a job not too far from John’s school starting next week where he’d be working for a company that created and restored complex disillusionment enchantments on large wizard holdings that needed to be hidden from muggles. It wasn’t what he intended to do forever, but he thought it would be good practical experience leading into his doctorate.
First though, he was spending one last evening with Aeryn.
The dessert was being cleared away, when the part he hadn’t been looking forward to began. “So, now that you’re both graduated and all, when do you figure you’ll be heading to New York to join Clark, Aeryn? I know you have a few things to finish up here, first, but long distance relationships are tough, even with magic.”
“I’m not going to New York, Daddy.” A beat. Clark braced for it. “We’re breaking up.” They had both understood that was what tonight was for. To say goodbye. And to break it to her parents that she really wasn’t straight. She’d thought that might go better with Clark in the room.
“Wait. What?” her mother protested. “But I thought you liked Clark?”
“I do, Mama,” Aeryn promised. “He’s a great guy. We had a lot of fun this year. But he’s got a boyfriend - in New York, that’s why he picked that job - and I’ve got Gina, and they’re the ones we want to be with now.”
“Gina?” her father repeated, more confused than upset. “Your roommate? That Gina?”
“Yes, Daddy, that Gina. We’ve been dating for two years, living together for one. She asked me to marry her!” She pulled out and showed them the ring Clark had seen shorty before their graduation ceremony. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Both of her parents looked stunned. Her mother looked helplessly at Clark. He shrugged. “I’m not gonna give her one of those. Gina loves her. And she loves Gina. Look, she did what you wanted. She dated me for seven months. We had fun, we enjoyed some movies, she cheered me on during games, I checked over her Advanced Enchantments homework, and we were good together. But I never stood a chance against Gina. They’ve got the real thing.”
Aeryn smiled at him and hugged him. “You were the best boyfriend I ever had.” Clark chuckled at the unspoken joke that he was her only boyfriend. “And don’t sell you and John short,” she added, then turned to her parents. “Clark and John have been together six years already. They’re boarding school sweethearts. It’s so cute. I met John,” she rolled her eyes a little, partly teasing, but partly serious. “It’s gotta be true love if they’re still together.”
“John just takes a little getting used to,” he protested defensively.
“And Sammy, too,” she put in.
Clark shrugged, not really wanting to take on explaining how Sammy fit it into everything with Aeryn’s parents. He’d already tried with Aeryn herself and he was pretty sure she still didn’t get it. “It works for us.” Of course, it helped that there was no ‘us’ - just a long series of misunderstandings, most of which had Sammy at their source.
Eventually, he extracted himself. He was pretty sure Aeryn’s parents thought less of him now than they had before, but that was probably for the best. It made Gina look better by comparison. She might be a girl, but at least her attraction to Aeryn made sense. They’d come around, he hoped. They were a muggleborn and a half-blood so they didn’t have pureblood politics working against them anyway.
Clear of the property, Clark found a deserted area and apparated to his new apartment, now a single guy again.
Unless he counted John. Given that the first thing he did was send his owl over to John’s tent, telling him and Sammy that Aeryn and Gina were engaged and he didn’t have a beard anymore . . . maybe he should.
Even if it was just a long standing joke between them all. John was still the most stable relationship in his life.