The short story of St. John Allerdyce is what he told to Magneto, that first day, flying away from Alkali Lake.

'I am a firm believer in man being able to choose his own destiny. No one is simply the sum of his past,' Magneto had intoned, and god, it thrilled him to listen to that. Magneto commanded power and respect and talked like he was a Titan come to earth and Pyro loved it.

'But I feel that perhaps, an auxiliary knowledge of your background might help us assess your skills for later missions.' Magneto steepled his hands and gazed at Pyro, who didn't flinch. He knew it was coming and if he didn't let the Professor make him feel ashamed of himself, there was no reason to feel that here.

'My name is. Well, I was born St. John Allerdyce. My parents were rich, filthy rich, and we lived in a mansion amid a bunch of other mansions with a lot of other unobservant boring people. My mother loved me, I think, but she never stopped my father from getting drunk and beating the hell out of me, and she didn't stop him from throwing me out when I was fourteen and. I blew up my birthday cake.'

He stopped and Magneto didn't push, just looked at him.

'Uhm.' Okay, so he was a little ashamed. Fuck that, he was entitled. 'So I wandered around for a while. I guess I ran out of money real fast and eventually I got in a fight and got beat up pretty bad since these guys took my lighter, and I couldn't really control anything then. I uh. I got picked up by these guys, a few of them were mutants and a couple were just criminals, I guess, and they took me in. Taught me how to steal, how to fight. I'm a pretty great pickpocket. They did this thing, they'd get people documents. I didn't really get it at first, but they'd set up like, whole different lives for mutants who didn't have anything. And they started bringing me along, first as muscle and when I got a little older, I guess I just became part of the deal. Like, a bonus.'

Here Pyro gave a little smile, small and sharptoothed. 'So I guess I'm pretty great at giving blowjobs. I don't know.' He was the first to break eye contact with Magneto.

'Is this where Charles found you?'

Pyro shrugs. 'He has that machine or whatever that helps him find, I guess, wayward mutants or something. I think he paid them off to let me go. Those guys though. They weren't bad to me; cared a lot more than my parents. That was about a year and a half ago, I guess.'

Magneto nods. 'Well, like I said. I believe a man is more than just a sum of his history, his past.' He would never offer any stories about his own life, but Pyro figured it out pretty quickly. He was glad he never had any mementos of his unsavoury youth written out onto his skin.

The long story isn't much different. Sure, his dad wasn't a monster, just an alcoholic, St. John hadn't hated being rich at the time. And he'd fallen in love. Really, less of those years on the streets had involved him hustling and more of the involved being scared, being quiet, and knowing just how to disappear. Magneto didn't care, it seemed, and began to teach him.

St. John Allerdyce wasn't a common name, it wasn't a 'grew up in a two story house in the middle of the suburbs name,' it wasn't a name anyone knew how to pronounce. That's why he'd lost it as fast as he could, as soon as he got himself out of the house.

His life, the before time as he'd named it, hadn't been awful, really. His dad really only beat him a couple times a month, and he'd never hit his mother, who would yell for it to stop and then sooth him in his room, and his dad didn't even use the belt until he turned twelve. A lot of kids had it a lot worse, he'd told Professor Xavier eventually, earnestly. Really. He wasn't some kind of charity case.

The Professor would just shake his head and tell him working through his issues would take time. Magneto told him how to be strong. It didn't take a genius to figure out who was giving him the better deal, at the end of his story.

Author's note:
Yeah dudes, so the title is from a Ted Leo & the Pharmacists song. Uhhh hello ff.n? This fic is actually about half written but I am working through edits and stuff but I figured, why not post it? Aaah summer.