all the self-discovery of spring
Seth attended traditional college before circumstances changed in 2011, and it was his third year that he met StormFemaleWolf's OC, Kole. The two strike up a friendship, perhaps after disagreeing with their professor on the same thing; Sethfire taps Kole on the shoulder after a class and says something about it;
โYou worded that rebuttal really well; I cant believe he was saying that there was no evidence for borderline personality disorder having traumagenic origins."
"Oh, thanks. Yeah, I mean...He's clearly a decent enough professor, but he's clinging to some really outdated concepts."
By the spring semester of Seth's fourth year, the final for his BA in Psychology, he and Kole are pretty good friends. They give one another That Look when they both know someone is wrong but Can't Say Anything Aloud; they walk across campus together and sometimes eat lunch together. Eventually, Kole does the above: asks Seth out for coffee. And Seth is like...Oh. Okay. Maybe...maybe that's a thing I could do. With. Another man.
So...he agrees. And they do that a couple times, and Seth's realizing, Huh, that's neat. Data indicates cute guys exist and I might not be entirely straight. Interesting!
Before anything real can come of it, though...Sethfire ends up getting called to his sister's aid; Athena's ED takes priority, and getting her out of their parent's house comes before both traditional college and boyfriends. Seth finishes that year on campus, but then opts to pursue his Masters degree mostly online, so that he can be available to his sister. He and Kole try to stay in contact, but their lives diverge. That fall, Sethfire ends up not only caring for his sister, but Kato as well. By December, Anarchy's on the scene.
In the little comic above, Sethfire's just a college student. A legitimate genius, sure, with nerve damage from his suicide attempt, yeah--but he's just a college student, discovering his sexuality, smiling at a cute guy across the table of a coffee shop.
A year afterwards, he's essentially parenting three teenagers, one of whom is recovering from a heroin addiction. His potential college relationship isn't even a blip on his radar at that point, and his and Kole's lives couldn't have become more different, anyway. But Kole was there, opened that book, let Seth learn something new about himself. And a decade later, there's a different college student with a messy fringe (even if it's black and not ginger) and scholarly fashion-sense (even if Aetos does wear patched-up jeans) sitting across from him, and well...maybe second chances aren't to be mistook.
Big thank you to stock artists!!
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New York Stock 13