It had been a long day already. Kids coming into his office with the usual smattering of problems—grades, parents who either paid too much attention or not enough, boyfriends/girlfriends, no boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. They were important problems, and he tried to be empathetic and listen in a constructive way. There was an art to asking questions to help kids solve problems by themselves without making them feel like they were on their own. But it was something Sean was good at. Prided himself on being good at, actually, and one of the reasons they’d asked him to take over this position even though he didn’t have a degree for it.

It was the same as it ever was, but Sean had found himself biting his tongue more than once because even though the problems were the same, the context wasn’t. Teenage angst felt overblown when there were actual problems in the world. Already marginalized people losing rights, people who had no right being in government being in charge. And how had they gotten there? Because selfish, bigoted people had voted them in. Now words that had been silenced or at least forced into whispers through years of hard work were being shouted from rooftops. Actual fucking Nazis marching around and people saying that “both sides had a point.”

What the fuck?

Sean took a vicious bite of his sandwich and tried not to choke on the prosciutto or mozzarella or arugula or figs. He hoped Isaiah was enjoying his at least, even though he couldn’t. Even if it was that distracted kind of enjoyment of having sustenance while his brain was occupied. Of being nurtured and provided for even when Sean couldn’t be with him. To have the sense that Sean had put not only various foodstuffs together but had done it because he loved Isaiah.

As Sean was about to take another bite of his sandwich, a kid he didn’t see much of was hovering in his doorway. Normally if he was in the middle of lunch, he’d ask if a student could come back, but he never did that when a kid was as close to tears as this one was. He had to search his mind for the boy’s name because he’d seen him around but he was by no means a frequent flyer in Sean’s office.

“Sorry, Mr. Maguire. I—”

Sean shoved his sandwich aside, hoping that Isaiah was managing to eat its twin and not forgetting to like he sometimes did. “No, no. Don’t worry about it. Come on in, Miguel.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to—”

“Dude, I haven’t seen you in my office all year. You’ve got some chips to cash in. Come, take a seat.”

Sean wiped his hands on his pants and took a drag from his coffee. He’d started a campaign a year ago to cut down on caffeine, but after the election, he’d said fuck it because he needed some goddamn pleasure in his life and coffee was a harmless vice as things went.

Miguel’s jaw flexed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, but Sean raised his eyebrows and waved him in, and eventually the kid took a few steps, pulled out a chair and sat.

“So what’s up?”

“Is this, like, confidential?”

Aw, crap. These were the hard conversations to handle. It was a dance to tell the kids the truth so they wouldn’t feel betrayed if Sean did end up having to disclose the information to someone above his paygrade, but also to get them to open up if they needed to. He took a deep breath, hoping Miguel wouldn’t walk out of here feeling worse and more alone than when he walked in.

“The only reason I would tell anyone anything about what we talk about in here is if someone is being hurt. If you or someone else is in danger, then I need to report it. Otherwise, it doesn’t leave this room.”

Miguel nodded, clearly weighing his options.

Talk to me, please. Sean tried to keep his expression and his posture neutral, open. It was better when the kids came to him. He didn’t want Miguel to leave, but he understood why the kid might feel like it was the smartest choice. Sometimes he was tempted to say fuck the rules so he could at least give the kids someone to talk to, but if he did that and someone found out, he’d be out of a job and he’d convinced himself he was of more use there than not.

“Okay.”

Patience, patience. He could wait. He could and he would. Isaiah could tease him all he liked about being eager, but when it came to these kids, he’d be as patient as he needed to be. And at the end of the day, he trusted Isaiah to take those choices away from him, and give him some relief from having to be responsible and unflappable. So he sat.

“My parents…they’re not citizens. They don’t have visas.”

Ah. Right. He knew there were some students who were undocumented, or who had family members who were. It was something the school administration could handle better but that stuff got sticky awfully quickly and the school had apparently decided that ignorance was the best policy. They might’ve been right, but it still didn’t feel like a good choice, just the best of bad choices.

“I was born here, so I’m good. But my brother…he’s in college, and he’s a Dreamer. You know what that is?”

Sean nodded. Yeah, he knew. So Miguel’s older brother wasn’t born here but had come as a child, and he was on the path to legal citizenship. As long as he stayed out of trouble and kept up with his paperwork, they couldn’t deport him.

“So you know they’re trying to take it away, right? That they could end it and then what’s my brother supposed to do? My parents, they moved here as adults and they still talk to people back home, and send money when they can, but my brother’s never been back and I’ve never been. We don’t speak Spanish. I’ve never set foot in Mexico. And great as being a Dreamer is, it means they know my parents are illegal too, and—”

Miguel’s eyes were wild and his breath had started coming hard. Sean’s heart crumpled in his chest. Fucking hell. What was going to happen to this kid’s family? What would happen to Miguel and his brother? If the parents got deported…

“Fuck.”

Miguel looked at him like he had three heads, and who could blame him? Sean did his utmost not to swear in front of his students, but this was too much for a person to bear without at least being able to curse. He never told his students not to swear, just cautioned them they’d probably get in trouble for it once they left his office.

“I’m sorry for swearing, that wasn’t okay. But your situation really sucks. It totally sucks, and I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this. Your family doesn’t deserve this. I can’t imagine how stressful this must be for you and your family. But no one in your family is illegal, okay? They might be undocumented, but no human being is illegal. I’ll do some research and look into if there’s anything I can do or anything the school can do to help. But in the meantime, you can come talk to me anytime, okay? I’m not reporting any of this to the authorities, and if you’re having a hard time in your classes because it’s difficult to concentrate with so much on your mind, let me know. I’ll talk to your teachers and sort it out.”

He talked to Miguel for another twenty minutes until another student showed up at his door, a regular who he had a standing weekly appointment with. Sending Miguel back to class wasn’t what he wanted to do, but Miguel wasn’t the only student he was responsible for. So he repeated that Miguel could come talk to him anytime and scribbled his cell number on a piece of scrap paper to hand over. It wasn’t good enough, but he hoped it was better than nothing.

* * *

Isaiah was close. Really fucking close. It was a feeling he got in his bones, that seemed to suffuse his whole body, this sense that started in his marrow and somehow made its way through his veins. It had always felt this way. Maybe some freakish thing in his own chemical makeup or maybe it was just a thing he’d made up, but it felt goddamn real so he’d go with it. And it was that feeling that was telling him he was achingly, unbearably close. He was going to nail this formula and then they’d start the slow and torturous road to actually getting this drug to market.

If they could shepherd it through all the trials, it could revolutionize treatment of Type I diabetes, maybe even offer a cure. It would be expensive as all get out to produce, but the upfront cost would be less than the decades upon decades of insulin it took to manage the condition otherwise. Of course, maybe by the time they’d gotten through the trials and the reports and the filings and the rest of the bureaucracy they might’ve figured out how to make it cheaper too. Possibly. And if not, well, thank goodness for insurance.

Thank goodness too that the paperwork would be someone else’s problem. He’d have done his job, held up his part of the bargain and could move on—back?—to the part he liked best. The tinkering, the challenge, the rush of this might work, so often followed by the crushing slow your roll, you fucking idiot, you’re gonna kill people with that shit.

He paced in front of the whiteboard in his office, keeping his gaze focused on the numbers and letters and symbols, willing the answer to float up out of the muck because he could feel it gelling. Could sense it coming, and now he had to wait. He hated waiting. Delighted in making Sean wait, but for himself? There was nothing worse. Well, almost nothing. Which was why he was so desperately grateful for the people who dealt with all the bureaucracy for him.

One of whom had just swung into his doorway. Pam was always cheery and delightful which Isaiah appreciated even though he didn’t know how she pulled it off. She reminded him of Sean that way which was probably one of the reasons he liked her so much. She wasn’t looking bubbly and voluble now though.

“Hey Pam-a-rama, what’s good?”

Pam’s mouth tugged to the side and she huffed a breath out her nose.

“Nothing is good. Word came down that you should table this.” She raised her round chin at the notes and formulas and scribbles on his board.

“What? What the hell for?”

Table it? When he was so frigging close? When he’d spent so much time, so much energy? When it would be such a good thing? Do so much good for so many people? Table It? No fucking way.

“Because if healthcare gets fucked, then no one is going to be able to afford this and it won’t make enough money upon release to justify everything we’ve invested in it, and the rest we’d have to in order to get it to market. That’s why.”

A shock wave hit him in the chest because Pam swore never. He’d rarely seen her frustrated or anything but upbeat and busy-bodied. Snippy and foul-mouthed just wasn’t her style. Thank goodness, because that was his wheelhouse. He almost laughed, but then there was a dull thud and Pam doubled over, clutching her hand to her middle.

Isaiah was over in a second, arm around her shoulders and trying to figure out what the hell had happened. “Pam, talk to me. What’s wrong? What happened?”

The woman’s curly brown hair tickled his nose as she leaned into his shoulder and sniffled. “Punching walls really hurts? I shouldn’t have done that. But I’m just so…mad.”

Then she was shaking, her body heaving with tears that she let loose. It was an ugly cry, one of frustration and anger and helplessness, feelings that Isaiah knew all too well because he felt the same way. But like when he was with Sean, he couldn’t give in to his own despair, so he channeled his own anger into puffing himself up into a big man, pretending he could protect the people he cared about with his bulk. It had to be good for something right?

“Oh, sweetie, no.”

Isaiah gave her a big hug, holding her close while she sobbed. It wasn’t the pain in her hand, he knew, although punching walls did hurt, but it was all of it. He could at least give her a warm safe place to melt down in, if nothing else.

After a minute during which several people passed the in the hallway, he herded Pam into his office and shut the door before sitting with her on the couch. There wouldn’t be any reason to be ashamed for finally losing it after having been dashed up against the rocks of unfairness, greed, prejudice, and all the other shit that had been pummeling them for months, but Pam was shy and she’d be embarrassed about having caused a scene. He didn’t want her to be humiliated on top of everything else.

He rubbed her back while she soaked his shirt and made little fists against his chest, held her while she cried. And while he did, he thought about Sean. Who must be feeling as battered and worn as poor Pam, but had been putting on a brave face. How long would it take until Sean was coming home, hollow-eyed and dejected because he couldn’t save the world one person at a time?

It broke his heart to think about it, these fluffy cinnamon roll do-gooder types he had a soft spot for who would have their optimism tarnished and their generous souls crushed. He needed to figure out a way to help his husband. It was simpler with Pam, though. This was a one-off, a discrete occurrence, not the quieter distress Sean presented every day. It would be easier if Sean would rage and weep and spill his anguish all over the place for Isaiah to mop up in one fell swoop. But he wouldn’t. His dogged and stalwart husband would just keep pushing through and dragging an ox-cart’s worth of struggles behind him, and the kind of burden he carried, Isaiah couldn’t bear for him, even with all the strength he had.

Twenty minutes later, he sent Pam on her way with one of the good chocolate bars he kept in his desk drawer—way better than the stuff in the candy jar he kept on his desk—and assurances that it would be okay. He’d hit the pause button on this formulation and take a look at some of the other things they had coming down the pipeline that were less likely to get canceled because they’d be of more use to a greater number of people or the upfront costs wouldn’t be so great, and he’d have something else for her to work her pen-and-paper magic with. He would.

Pam wasn’t back to her old self by the time she was headed out the door but her cheeks were dry and he’d coaxed a few smiles out of her, and had promised to check with Sean about when they could have Pam and her family over for dinner again.

He liked Pam’s husband and their kids, and Sean did too. It would be good for all of them, and it would make Sean happy to have people ooo and ahh over his culinary achievements. That’d be a good thing to do.

When she’d turned the corner to the elevator bank, it hit him. The solution he’d been looking for, the particular formulation that would solve some of the problems he’d been butting his head up against like a particularly stubborn ram. His feelings had been right, and now it would do him and those tens of thousands of people he could’ve helped no fucking good. People would just have to keep using their insulin shots and their pumps and getting into trouble if they weren’t on the ball every single goddamn day of their lives. He couldn’t lift that burden either, thanks to selfish fuckers thinking that healthcare wasn’t a right, but something only the wildly successful should be able to avail themselves of.

Isaiah usually kept his door open unless he was deep in thought, but he closed it now. Rage and impotence overcoming him, he set his hands on the mounds of paper that had accumulated during these past months of work, and shoved all the piles off the side of the desk, sending papers and folders and even some pens that had gotten stuck in the stacks flying through the air and fluttering uselessly to the well-tread carpet.