AN: Danny Reyes belongs to Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss. But I wish he were mine.
Becoming Ordinary
When Ivo was with Danny, he wore suits and ties to class. He didn't feel he was at odds with society back then, he had no reason to rebel. To the contrary it was entirely in his interests to conform. Indisputably his sexuality was an issue socially and professionally, but it wasn't at all for him personally. Like most gay men of that era, he had accepted life in the closet and if he was bitter, he never expressed it. Obtaining a tenure-track position in the arcane fields of paleoecology and evolutionary biology was difficult and he was grateful to have landed a good job at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. Becoming ordinary was a small price to pay for a bright future.
Danny however – of a younger generation and a harsher mold – seemed to revel in his identity as an outsider. Stigmatized in the consolidated schools by his poverty, rural roots and queerness, he felt nothing but antipathy towards his fellow man. He banded together with those few individuals who shared his contempt for "polite society" and spent his days in the editorial room of the school newspaper writing disturbing screenplays for shock effect, his nights in the town's abandoned park seeking solace in lonely sexual encounters. College had been a life line, offering him a ticket out of his miserable suffocating existence. He was ambitious, made ruthlessly so by his adverse upbringing. He never looked back to where he had come from, what he had been, focusing instead on making his mark in the future. Being ordinary was the last thing in the world he would ever want.
Until he met Ivo.