Chapter 1: Korsak

The video opened onto a black screen which faded swiftly into an office, something like what one would see on a cop show somewhere on the East Coast of the US: walls with construction and wear indicating that they must be at least a hundred years old, coupled with furniture that might have been impressively sparkly and cool ten years ago or so, when they were bought. In the main foreground of the video was a bear of a man, built beefy, with salt-and-pepper hair mostly turning to salt. He wore a goatee that was scarcely darker than the hair on his head, and a brown suit that looked fairly new, yet not of the current style. His tie was of good quality, but old, probably from the eighties.

"You sure it's on?" asked the man, consulting someone off camera who grunted in the affirmative and reminded him in a vaguely female-sounding, husky voice to look at the camera, not his own ugly mug. He made a face back at the person, then obediently turned towards the camera, serious once more.

The man's voice was a rumbling baritone, as grizzled as his demeanor and visage. "My name's Vince Korsak. I'm a homicide detective in Boston. A couple weeks ago I had to tell five sets of parents that their kids died. Normally that's a good day for me, but the thing is, these kids..." A discreet hand slipped forward, holding a box of tissues. Korsak waved it away, then beckoned it back and took a handful, just in case.

"They were just kids," he said, clearing his throat again. It might be perfectly fine for a man to cry, but he needed to get his message out first. "Teenagers. Good kids. Active in sports, or youth groups, doing stuff with their lives. Doing okay in school. Had friends. Parents loved them. But they were being bullied, catching crap from other kids and from... Never mind, doesn't matter who. An adult they all knew. And those people, those bullies, tore those kids down. Made them feel less than human, like they didn't deserve to walk this earth."

Anger laced through the meaty man's voice, causing his large right hand to clench into a fist, wadding up the tissues held therein. "Some of those boys had friends they could talk to, but one friend isn't enough. They didn't feel safe in school, and they were scared to death - I'm not trying to be funny here, because it's not funny - they were scared as hell to tell their parents what they were going through. Thought their folks wouldn't support them. Maybe they'd get kicked out of their own homes and have to live on the streets, or maybe get shipped off to military school or Bible school or some sort of camp where they'd try to make them be not gay."

The hurt in the man's voice was palpable, and he had to take a moment to blow his nose before continuing. "I'm straight, if that matters to anybody. I've got a kid myself. I have no idea if he's gay, and you know something? I don't give a rat's ass if he is. If my kid said he was gay, I'd tell him, Josh, you're gonna get a lot of crap out there. But not here, never in my house. Never from me. Then I'd apologize for screwing him up. 'Course I do that now anyway. The apologizing. I screwed him up. That's what parents do, though. We screw kids up. We don't mean to, most of us, but we're mostly just a whole bunch of idiots makin' babies. Most people are caused by accidents, like they say, and so you get a lot of parents that just aren't ready for all the stuff you have to deal with as a dad or a mom. But that doesn't mean we won't love you if you come to us and tell us you're gay, or anything else. It just means we don't think big enough to figure out all the ways you might get hurt and come up with all the ways to keep it from happening. We're stupid, see?"

"Jesus, Korsak, you're terrible at this."

"Point is," Korsak replied, sparing a brief glare at the owner of the off-screen voice, "if you talk to a parent and they don't like what you tell 'em, you've got resources. Go look them up at thetrevorproject DOT com. If you tell a friend, or a priest, or a teacher, or anybody else and they don't like it, though, just let that person go. Yeah, it sucks, but there's a dozen more people out there that will help you. A dozen, a hundred, a million. Once you weed out the people in your life that can't figure out how to be a friend to you, you'll be left with the people that do know how. Keep those people around, because they're you're real friends. Like the great man said, Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

The off-screen voice came again. "That was great, Vince. Thanks." Then the screen went blank.

SPECIAL NOTE: This fic was written mostly a way to draw your attention over to ChapstickLez. In a few days, she will be posting all subsequent parts of this series, which we're writing together, and I want all my readers to quickly run over to her profile (.net/~ChapstickLez) and click Author Alert so that you don't miss any of them.