[food, mentions of grief, hate talk, ableist-like behavior/thoughts (but against mutants), terrorism]
Fourth in my Sense series, set a couple of months after the end of season one. I meant for this to be a sweet moment between John and Clarice, but it seems I can't write anything without a side of angst, so it turned out more bittersweet.
Tell me what you think !
Since the relocation to D.C., they've taken to eating together whenever they can, usually while pouring over plans for the new shelters or the next mission. They don't have enough space here to take in refugees, yet more families are being displaced and persecuted every day. The network of smaller refuges in abandoned buildings around town that they've started to set up is both more discrete than having dozens of mutants in one place, but also far more dangerous, as it means someone has to go out into the open regularly to get the new refugees settled.
They don't have Fade to do that anymore. They don't have Sage to monitor the police scanners, Lorna to train the children, Sonya to guarantee their anonymity. They've lost far too much.
Most of the time it's just them, John, Clarice and Marcos, and the cold, empty apartments they now live in. The Struckers, minus Andy, have invested into their own family-sized place a few doors down and tend to stay to themselves, mourning their missing member.
It feels so damn empty, just the three of them, after living at Headquarters for so long. John still wakes up in the middle of the night just because of the quiet. Clarice and John are sharing a bed as well as an apartment, now, though having either a bed or an apartment is a luxury they can barely afford.
The Underground, this thing that John has worked at so hard for the last four years, is gone. They haven't adjusted, yet. They have too many people to mourn, too many things to worry about.
"What are you making?" Clarice asks, coming up behind John. He stops stirring the pot to slide an arm across her back.
"Some kind of goulash," he answers. "There were some beans lying around."
"You never cook," Clarice remarks.
"Marcos is out, and you were gone," John shrugs.
Marcos has been going out more and more lately. John worries he's going to get himself caught, but his friends needs the air, and the time away. He's growing more restless over time, tracking the days until Lorna's due date, or as close as they've managed to guess it.
They have no idea where Lorna is, if she's safe, or how the baby is doing. They haven't had any news since the night she left, taking half their group with her, and John lost her trail as soon as they made it to D.C. The few times he's picked up her scent since then has led them to nothing.
So if Marcos needs time to himself right now, they can't hold it against him.
John resumes stirring the pot before the food burns. Clarice takes out their few mismatched dishes and silverware to put on the makeshift table.
"Should I set a place for him?" she asks.
"I don't know," John shrugs. "He didn't say anything."
"So what do we do, we wait until he turns up?" There's some resentment in her tone, but mostly resignation.
Checking the time, John shakes his head. "It's late already. He can heat this back up when he comes home."
Home. This isn't a home. In these dark and old rooms, with barely enough daylight to see by at the best of time, on rickety chairs and broken furniture, they feel like time has stopped. Their life is going on before their eyes, and they're watching it pass by. Things are going on out there, everyday, mutants in need of help and the Sentinel Services closing in, but there is nothing they can do about it.
Home was the Apache reservation, the little brother John never talks about.
Home was the foster house for young mutants, Carl and Denise and the other kids.
Home was, for a brief time, Headquarters with its hole in the ground and its vault and all of the people there.
This isn't home.
John takes the goulash off the stove with his bare hands and shoves it on the table, angry with himself for even thinking about that.
"John−" Clarice starts, reacting to his sudden change of mood.
"I know," John says. He turns away before their eyes can meet.
He feels the weight of Clarice's hand on his arm, squeezing as hard as she can, and looks up.
"I love you," she murmurs.
John looks at her. It's not the first time she's said it, and she already knows he's not ready to say it back. It's not, exactly, because he's still mourning Sonya, or even Gus. He is−they are−but more than that, John is starting to feel like everything he touches is cursed. Like if he allows himself to fall in love with Clarice, she'll disappear too.
Like a compromise, he gently cups her face and kisses her, never letting himself relax into the moment. He doesn't want to hurt her. He can't control his strength enough, not when he lets his emotions get the better of him.
"Let's eat," he says, taking a step back.
Clarice squeezes his arm once more and nods.
They sit on each side of the small, wobbly table. Clarice grabs a towel to wrap around the saucepan, because unlike John she's not heat-resistant. She shares two-third of the goulash between them, as usual giving John as much as she can get away without him saying anything. Not that he doesn't notice−he always notices. They have to ration their food, never knowing when the money for their next meal will come from, but John needs to eat nearly twice as much as Clarice and Marcos do, to keep his dense body in shape. He's just far too stubborn and self-sacrificing to let them give him some of their portions.
Clarice can't help watching John eat for a bit before she starts on her own plate. He seems to be a force of nature whatever he does, even if it's just wolfing down food.
She takes a bite, and nearly spits it out. Choking, she coughs until she's managed to swallow.
"Clarice? What's wrong?" John asks, concern clear on his face.
"What the hell did you put in this? This is not edible!"
"Er, salt, and some chili pepper? Is it too much?"
"Too much? John, did you put in the entire salt shaker in this?"
John hangs his head and sighs. "No. I'm sorry, okay? I'll, uh...we can make some more."
"How can you even eat it?" Clarice asks, oblivious to his embarrassment.
"I can't really taste it," John answers, too fast and too quietly.
"What?"
"I can't really feel taste," John repeats, finally raising his head, with something like defiance in his eyes. "There's a reason I don't normally cook."
"What do you mean you−oh. Your mutation?"
Honestly, Clarice shouldn't be that surprised. She's known for a while that John's mutation primarily affects his senses, so she should have guessed that he didn't have a typical sense of taste. But given his enhanced sense of smell, she would have thought it would be the other way around, that his taste would be over-developed.
Though it also makes sense, in some way. John never complains about the crappy food they eat. He usually keeps away from any food preparation activity. Even now they have a kitchen, he hasn't once tried to ask for his favorite dishes.
"My tongue−my mouth is just as solid as the rest of my skin," John nods. "I still get all the scents, and that's a big part of how things taste, but I can't really tell if something is salty, or sweet or whatever."
He looks down at his nearly finished plate again. Clarice doesn't understand why he's still so ashamed of his own mutation. He's fine showing his strength−until he misjudges it and breaks something by mistake. He uses his tracking abilities confidently−until he gets overwhelmed and just retreats into himself, determined to hide his weaknesses.
He's a leader in the Mutant Underground, the last line of defense against their own extinction−and he's still afraid to accept who he is.
Or rather, he's still afraid to show who he is and risk rejection.
"I didn't know," Clarice says. She doesn't verbalize the implication, I wish you would tell me these things, she doesn't need to. John is already biting his lip, looking sorry.
"What do we do about this?" he asks, nodding toward Clarice's still full plate.
"Do you really like it? I mean, you can really eat it without feeling the salt?"
"Yeah," John nods, once more averting his eyes. "It smells fine, so it tastes fine to me."
"Then maybe you could eat the rest of it? I can make some pasta or something for me and Marcos. Or would you rather−" Clarice rambles on, worried about saying the wrong thing.
"Clarice, it's fine," John interrupts her. "We can cook something else, I won't feel offended."
"I just don't want to imply that−"
"That I'm a terrible cook? Or that I should eat it anyway because I can't taste it? Both are right."
Clarice lets out a small laugh. "Okay," she says. "I'll start on some pasta, then. Do we have any sauce left?"
"Probably some of the cheese stuff," John answers, finishing his goulash. With only a little hesitation, he takes Clarice's plate and empties it into his own.
Marcos still isn't back when Clarice finishes her pasta, and John the rest of the goulash. Resigned that their friend is probably not going to make it back tonight, or will just crash in his own apartment when he does, they cuddle on the couch.
They've been saving toward a TV and a computer, but so far they don't have many ways to entertain themselves at night. Most of the time they each read their library book−one of the advantages of being officially dead is that John can show his face in the local library without fear of being arrested, though Clarice still has to hide.
This time though, Clarice seems to want to talk. John is reluctant about hashing out his feelings over the whole taste business, so Clarice turns it into a game, playing spot the difference between his senses and hers.
"So you don't like sweets?"
"I used to, as a kid, before I manifested" John answers, playing along. "But most sweets don't really have anything in them beside sugar and disgusting artificial tastes. I can taste sugar if there's a lot, but it's not really worth it."
"What about chocolate?"
"It's not nearly as good without the sweetness, but I'll take a chocolate cake over a sponge cake any day. I can barely feel those in my mouth."
"And other cakes?"
"Well, I do try to keep a healthy diet," John says with a smirk.
"John, you eat nearly twice as much as I do."
"Yes, but only healthy stuff!"
"We've been living off canned food for months! That's not what I call a healthy diet. What I don't understand is why you didn't tell me. Now that we have an actual kitchen, I could make stuff you actually like."
"I don't… I've never really had a choice of food before now. At the Institute, in the Marines, it was always canteen food. And then in Atlanta, I'd just eat whatever we got from supply runs, so I never thought about it."
"Still, I wish you'd told me."
"It's nothing, Clarice. I can still enjoy food, just not exactly in the same way."
"What do you really like?" Clarice asks.
"I don't know, anything that smells good. And if something is spicy enough, I can actually feel that."
"Just how spicy are we talking about?"
"Lorna and I tried this Thai place once. It had an actual Thai cook who was using his family's recipes. I don't think Lorna could taste anything else for days."
Clarice laughs. "I can't imagine Lorna getting fazed by something as mundane as food," she says more thoughtfully. "She always seemed so...I don't know, fierce, I guess."
John bites his lower lip. "Lorna… She can be intense. And, you know, extreme. But before she went to jail, she used to be this really sweet person at times. She would...if we had kids around and they woke up at night, she would sing to them until they went back to sleep. She'll make a great mother, I think. If she makes it that far."
Clarice sighs and takes his hand in hers. "I'm sure she will," she says.
John shakes his head. "The path she's going down… She wants a better world for her child, but I'm worried she's just going to make it worse."
It's the past her birth father went down, he doesn't add. He hasn't shared Lorna's suspicions about the identity of her father with Clarice, he doesn't feel a right to. But he can't help draw the parallels between Lorna's actions is Charlotte, her words when she came for the others in Nashville, with Magneto's early TV speeches. They studied this in class together, back at the Institute, the history of mutant rights activism and the organizations that steered into terrorism. The Brotherhood was one. The Hellfire Club, the one the Frosts are part of, was one of those no one wanted to say were extremists, but John remembers the look of distaste on the Professor's face.
They've come a long way from that classroom. Now Lorna and John are on what feels like opposite sides, in a war they should be fighting together. Marcos and the Struckers may be obsessed with bringing Lorna and Andy home, but John knows that finding them won't make them change their minds. He knows Lorna too well for that.
He sighs, trying to shake the dark thoughts from his mind. Thinking of the future these days, even just of tomorrow, feels like a weight pressing on his chest. The past isn't much better, not after everything they lost, not with the guilt eating at him.
"Can you taste a kiss?" Clarice asks in a small voice, looking up at him. John comes back to the present instantly, leaning down to press his mouth to her.
"What do you think?" he asks when they pull apart.
Clarice leans into their kiss as it turns into making out, slipping her hand under John's shirt.
She's surprised, every time it comes up, at how much they still don't know about each other. They've known each other for four months, and have been more or less dating for two, but neither of them likes talking about their past.
Clarice doesn't push. She's willing to listen, but she knows John isn't ready yet to talk about the things he's only hinted at, his long-standing relationship with Pulse or his time in the Marines. He shares tidbits about life at the X-Mansion, occasionally, especially on the days when Lorna's absence and Marcos's despair become too much to handle. Sometimes he even talks about his family, but only in very broad terms.
Clarice talks about Denise and Carl, when the guilt of their deaths tears at her heart. She doesn't talk about the other foster homes, before, or her life on the streets when she ran away.
But she's still taken aback by the little details she discovers about John that he somehow never mentioned before, all those tiny things that make them so different, like his apparent taste insensitivity. In many ways, mutants are far more diverse than non-mutants, and the things that set them apart can vary widely.
What she never really considered, before meeting John, is all the ways an invisible mutation can affect your daily life. She knows her vision is altered by the shape of her eyes, and the way she can sometimes see energy fields, but it's never been as important to her as the fact that she can't walk in the streets without getting stared at, or worse. But witnessing John's pain, anytime a room is too loud or the sun is in his eyes, seeing Marcos burn through whatever is in his hands at the smallest emotion, hearing about Lorna trashing her room every time she has a nightmare, she's found out another side of things.
Clarice has always more or less categorized mutants according to whether they can pass for human or not, fueled by her own resentment at her appearance, at how others treat her because of it. It's falling right into a trap set for them by their oppressors, in a way. Mutant-haters are the one who made this distinction first. She once thought that people with abilities they can hide have no reason to fight for mutant rights, since they can just live their lives in peace. It's only when she joined the Underground, and witnessed first-hand the purges and the Sentinel Services' obsession, that she understood why they cannot.
"No mutant starts out with full control of their powers," John said to her then, in a discussion about the Strucker children, and why Lauren's successful hiding of her abilities was a rarity. "Abilities manifest because of strong emotions, and that means that most kids will out themselves to their family at least, sometimes to their whole community, without meaning to. After that, there's no going back."
"But at least you can pass in the street, or even get a job," Clarice answered.
"I can go get a pizza without getting mobbed, yes," John said. "I'm not denying how tough it can be for those who can't. But my passing only lasts as long as I don't need to shake someone's hand, or no one runs into me, and my service record has a big Mutant Special Forces stamp on it, so getting a job is pretty much out. And when people find out by mistake, it can get real ugly."
"What do you mean?"
"People hate being surprised. They feel betrayed when this new person they've been talking to turns out to be different. At least you know outright who is going to react badly. But my point is this: playing at who is oppressed the most is never going to get us anywhere. We're already divided enough as it it."
Now, as they relocate from to couch into their bedroom−and close the door firmly, in case Marcos does decide to come after all−Clarice feels John's perfect but stone-like skin under her hand and reflects on the less visible effects of being a mutant.
She just thought it funny, at first, that John makes the most awful pillow ever. It was before she found out that not much makes it through his dense skin, including touch. That he can't really feel what happens to his body, including where his limbs actually are. She thought tracking was a useful gift, but it comes with sensory overload and mind-altering synesthesia. Her own power is pretty dope−but it has its downsides. She's always concentrated mostly on her physical differences, but her ability to see energy means her eyes have a reduced color range detection. She's nearly colorblind. Marcos's blood burns everything it touches and he has trouble controlling his body's temperature. She could think of dozens of examples.
Of course, there's also the good sides, the cool things that they can do. But it seems that few people ever see beauty in mutations. John might repeat to her often that he finds her beautiful−and she's sure he does−Clarice still can't see it in herself. She's always just seen the difference. She once would have given anything just to be normal.
"Would you give it up if you could?" she asks suddenly, midway through John undoing the buttons of her blouse. "Your mutation. To have a normal life?"
John stops moving and looks her in the eye. He rarely does that, so Clarice knows she has his full attention.
"Not anymore," he says.
"But you didn't always think that way."
John shakes his head. "All teenagers just want to be like everyone else, right?"
There's a deeper story here, but Clarice doesn't ask. They all have their stories, of ostracization, of rejection. He's told her enough before that she has a pretty good guess.
"I suppose," she says instead.
"Would you? Give it up," John asks back.
"There have been times when I wanted nothing more," Clarice says.
"And now?"
"I've figured out that they're the ones who are wrong, to treat us like we're somehow bad. Less."
John lets out a small, bitter laugh. "It's a hell of a realization, isn't it?"
"At Headquarters, being with other adult mutants for the first time, that's when I really understood," Clarice says, closing her eyes against the emotions assaulting her. "And meeting you−"
John pulls her closer and hugs her, the same way he did that day at her foster family's home.
"I thought for so long that their rejection was somehow my fault," he murmurs. "For being different."
Clarice lets the tears come out. "I love you so much," she chokes out.
"I love you too," John answers in a whisper.
It's the first time he's ever said it to her.
As she cries silently in his arms, mourning for the wasted years they let the guilt of something they never had any choice in eat them, Clarice finally feels at home. Their future may be bleak and uncertain, but here they have each other. For today, it's enough.