In a world where people with mutant powers were confined to a lower level of society, it was easy to understand why someone would want to hide theirs. Dalton Academy was a sort-of safe haven for such mutants, due to its zero-tolerance harassment policy, but many still chose to hide their abilities, even from their fellow mutants.
Jeff Sterling was one such mutant. It wasn't that interesting, he didn't even have real control over it. It was just… every time he sneezed, his hair changed color. How often do you sneeze anyway? He'd gotten used to avoiding places with a lot of dust, while a strict vitamin and exercise regimen kept him from getting sick.
Most of the time.
He hadn't been thinking at the Warblers Christmas Party when everyone was just sitting around, sharing food and drinks, and now, just after New Year's, Jeff was sick.
He'd freaked out when he felt the first sniffle in his nose, rushed to the store, and began guzzling Cold & Flu medicine immediately. So far, it wasn't helping. Well, he didn't feel that congested, and for that he was thankful, but it wasn't helping the sneezing at all. He considered skipping class, so no one would notice his rapidly changing hair colors as he hacked up a sneezing fit, but it was his senior year, and he knew colleges would be looking at his grades. He was desperately trying to get into a very, very exclusive dance school – one that rarely, if ever, accepted mutants. No, skipping class when he wasn't that sick wasn't going to be an option.
Jeff pulled on a Dalton issue beanie, tucking all of his hair carefully into it (dark brown for the moment, until he had a sneezing fit halfway through putting it on, then it was neon orange), then wrapped a scarf three or four times around his neck. Then, over his blazer, he pulled on his black wool overcoat, and flipped up the hood. Maybe teachers would understand if he huddled into his coat that he was very sick and needed to be kept very warm. That sounded like a reasonable excuse.
His teachers bought it, except for last period, a really nice female teacher in her early 30s, who said if he was that sick, he really should be in bed, and couldn't believe the rest of his teachers hadn't sent him straight back to his dorm. He gladly accepted. There was not a whole lot he could learn about the Spanish-American War at this point. He felt terrible. He'd get notes from Hunter later.
Once back in his dorm room, he unbundled from all his layers, took a warm shower, during which he noted his hair was bright green for the moment. Warm showers are good for clearing out your nasal passages. When he emerged, he bundled up in a few layers, pulling a hoodie on and flipping up the hood, and then he crawled into bed and pulled all of the blankets he could find on top of him, including all of Nick's.
When Nick got back to the room after class, he saw the lump of blankets and clothes that was Jeff on Jeff's bed and laughed to himself. Jeff was so adorable sometimes. Nick sat down to do his homework while he waited for Jeff to wake up.
Jeff did wake up, probably three times before he decided to even move, because he felt like crap again. And then, of course, all the good vibes from the hot shower had gone, and he sneezed. It hurt behind his eyes. Maybe he had a sinus infection. He threw off the blankets because he was boiling hot, and that's when he spotted Nick. Immediately, he was worried that his hair was all in his face, but it must have miraculously turned back blond when he'd sneezed just then, because Nick smiled at him.
"Hey, there, Sleeping Beauty," Nick said. "Hunter gave me your History notes."
"Thanks," Jeff mumbled.
"Feeling better at all?" Nick asked.
"No," Jeff said, walking almost like a zombie into the bathroom. He flipped back his hood and looked in the mirror. Blond again, but there was nothing else he could say for his appearance. He looked like crap. He sighed and walked back into the room, just to lie back down on his bed.
"You okay?" Nick asked.
"No, I'm sick," Jeff said bitterly.
"Everyone gets sick sometimes, Jeffy," Nick said.
"I've never seen you sick," Jeff pointed out.
"Doesn't mean I haven't been sick," Nick replied.
"True enough," Jeff said, sitting back up because he'd just remembered the massive load of homework he had to finish before the next day. After sitting down at his desk, and opening his textbook, he began to frown at the words, because they all appeared to be dancing around the page. He groaned. "I'm too sick for this."
"Don't do it," Nick suggested.
"No, I have to," Jeff said, bravely picking up a pencil and trying to copy down the math problems.
"You can just copy mine," Nick said.
"That's cheating," Jeff said. There was a lapse in conversation for a while as Jeff attempted to do his homework, and Nick continued with his.
"Done!" Nick chimed. "Need any help?"
"No, I'm–" Jeff began, but then before he could do anything to stop it, he'd sneezed. Nick had been looking right at him when it had happened, there was no way he could get out of this. The section falling across his face that he could see was very clearly electric blue. "Shit."
"You… you're a mutant!" Nick exclaimed.
"No, no, no I'm not," Jeff lied, trying to flip his hood up, but it didn't help at all. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"J, your hair is blue," Nick said.
"No it isn't," Jeff insisted.
"Jeff, it's only me, you can tell me," Nick said, getting up to walk nearer to Jeff.
"No, don't come near me," Jeff said, scared.
"I won't tell anyone, it's okay," Nick said, "because… because I'm one too."
"You are?" Jeff asked. Nick nodded. "Prove it."
"It's not something I can easily prove," Nick said. "They say I have mutant level intelligence. I can speed read, write, and type."
"Oh," Jeff said.
"I could have been done with school years ago, but I didn't want to be labeled as a freak," Nick said.
"At least that's a useful ability," Jeff mumbled, tucking his blue hair into his hood.
"I think yours is cooler," Nick said. "I wish I could have something besides this brown flop." He ran his fingers through his hair.
"Yours is easier to hide," Jeff said.
"True enough, but do you know how hard it is to sit in the SATs for four and a half hours and pretend you're still working, when you're done with each section by the time five minutes has passed?" Nick asked.
"Wow, that sucks," Jeff said. "I bet you got a perfect score though."
"I could have had a perfect score," Nick said.
"You bombed the SATs on purpose?" Jeff asked.
"Not bombed," Nick said. "I still did pretty well."
"Wow," Jeff said. "Are you going to Harvard or somewhere for smart people next year?"
"No," Nick said. "Harvard doesn't accept mutants. And since my parents had me tested when I was a kid, it's in my file."
"Oh, no," Jeff said, forgetting he was sick and standing up to hug Nick. "I'm sorry, Nicky."
"It's okay," Nick said. "I wouldn't want to go anywhere that discriminated against any type of people. Not women, not blacks or Hispanics, not lefties, not gays or trans persons, and not mutants. We're all human."
"Some people are saying that we have enough chromosome mutations that we're not actually human," Jeff said.
"I've looked at that research, and there's not enough evidence to suggest that their findings are statistically significant or even that true," Nick said.
"You lost me," Jeff said. Nick smiled.
"I like your blue hair," he said.
"I have a theory that Tyler Oakley has this same power," Jeff said. "Michael Clifford too."
"Interesting theory," Nick said. "Where are you headed next year, Jeffy?"
"I'm trying to get into this dance school in New York, but it's really hard for… people like us … to get in."
"You're amazing, I'm sure you'll be great," Nick said, moving some stuff aside so he could sit on Jeff's desk and not be sitting on Jeff's homework.
"You never said where you're going," Jeff remembered.
"I got accepted at MIT," Nick said.
"Are you going to go?" Jeff asked.
"Yeah," Nick sighed. "I don't know." Jeff tried to laugh but ended up sneezing, and his hair ended up bright pink. "That's really cool."
"Well at least one person thinks so," Jeff said, reaching for the tissues on his desk.
"I do," Nick said. "I actually think it's really interesting, because it starts from the roots and goes to the tips, like it's really beautiful, and I think it's kind of ironic, because it happens really fast, and you close your eyes when you sneeze, so you'd never get to see it happening."
"Beautiful?" Jeff asked. Nick nodded. "You're warped."
"No I'm not," Nick said. "I have a lot of extra room in my brain so I can think about like twenty things at once. Imagine if you could get control of it, change your hair color whenever you wanted to, to whatever color you wanted, maybe you could even extend it to your eye color or skin color, or even your clothes, or other people's hair."
"Good, I could be a hairdresser, that's a great career ambition," Jeff said sarcastically.
"Not as a career, don't be dumb, just for fun," Nick said.
"You're going to invent the cure for cancer or something and I'm going to be here trying not to sneeze," Jeff said bitterly.
"Jeffy," Nick said, frowning at him. "You're going to do something really good and interesting, I know you."
"Yeah?" Jeff asked, looking up at Nick.
"Yeah," Nick confirmed.
"If you say so," Jeff said, looking back down.
"It's kinda weird we were both mutants this whole time and we didn't know," Nick said.
"Are there any more of us?" Jeff asked. "What about Trent?"
"No, Trent's human, but Beats and Wes are both mutants," Nick said. "And Hunter, of course." Jeff snorted at the thought of Hunter. "Sebastian." Jeff rolled his eyes.
"Wes I knew about," Jeff said. "He didn't hide it very well. And neither does Hunter."
"Hunter isn't trying to hide it," Nick said. "He's going for that nextgen mutant military thing." Jeff was quiet. "Wes was the only person I told before you," Nick continued.
"You're the only person who has ever found out," Jeff said. "Besides my parents."
"If I had told you about my ability, would you have told me about yours?" Nick asked.
"Maybe," Jeff said. "Maybe because it's you. I think I'm closer to you than I've ever been to anyone."
"We've been roommates for four years," Nick said.
"And this is the first time we've talked about this," Jeff nodded.
"People are prejudiced, even here," Nick said. "I was kicked around in elementary school for being the nerd."
"I was teased enough for being gay, I really didn't need to add to that at all," Jeff said quietly.
"Oh, yeah," Nick said, getting up off the desk and walking back to his side of the room. "I guess being the boy with the rainbow hair wouldn't have helped with that at all."
"You save your best joke for when you walk away so I can't playfully slap you?" Jeff asked. Nick just laughed. Jeff tried to but soon learned he was too sick to laugh, he coughed six or seven painful times into some tissues.
"I don't want to catch what you have either, it doesn't seem pleasant," Nick said. "Have you been to the doctor?"
"It's just a cold, I'm fine," Jeff said, sniffling, then regretting his decision to do that as he sneezed and his hair turned jet black.
"Black doesn't suit you, it's too dark," Nick said. Jeff blushed, and as his face got redder, his hair got lighter. Just a little bit, until it was very distinctly dark brown, and a much better color for Jeff's complexion. Nick frowned at it. "Did you mean to do that?"
"Do what?" Jeff asked.
"Oh," Nick said. "Interesting."
"What's interesting?"
"Nothing," Nick said. Jeff frowned at him. "I always wished I had a physical ability like yours, though," Nick continued. Jeff blushed a little more and as he did, his hair got lighter again, to a medium brown. "Jeffy, I have a solid confession to make."
"What's that?" Jeff asked, trying to stop blushing and concentrate on his homework.
"You're really freaking cute when you blush," Nick said. That only made Jeff blush more, and as his face got redder, his hair kept getting lighter. It was headed back towards its usual blond. "I mean, you're cute all the time… Well, not all the … yeah, all the time." Now Nick was embarrassed. "Just gonna shut up."
"Thanks…" Jeff said, now frowning at Nick. "I think."
"Sometimes even as fast as my brain works, my mouth still goes faster," Nick said. Jeff nodded, and diligently stared at his homework, trying to make sense of it. "Sure you don't want some help?"
"Yeah, okay," Jeff sighed. Nick walked back over to Jeff, leaning over his shoulder to instruct him on the math problems. It was about 20 minutes later before Jeff finally grasped the concepts enough to do them on his own. "I must seem like the stupidest person in the world to you."
"Nah," Nick said. "I have more patience for you than I have for most people, I think. Maybe it's cuz you're so cute."
"What is this fixation on me being cute?" Jeff asked. "I'm sick, I'm like the farthest thing from cute, I'm disgustingly covered in snot."
"I have another pretty big confession to make," Nick said.
"What's that?" Jeff repeated, looking over his shoulder at Nick.
"I don't think you're cute in a friend way," Nick said.
"Oh," Jeff said. "I didn't think you did really, I just thought we were going to dance around our feelings for a few more years."
"You knew?" Nick asked.
"Of course I did, Wes told me," Jeff said. "Not like it isn't obvious. I mean, it's pretty obvious I like you not in a friend way, but I never wanted things to get complica–"
Nick cut Jeff off by kissing him quickly. Jeff's hair actually turned every color of the rainbow, then back to blond as Nick pulled away. They stared at each other for a moment, then Nick had turned Jeff's chair around so they were facing each other, and was practically climbing into Jeff's lap kissing him.
"Nicky, you're going to get sick," Jeff said, trying to duck his head away from Nick's.
"Who cares?" Nick said, smiling at Jeff. "Besides, there's a girl over at Crawford who can cure colds with one touch."
"Seriously?"
A/N: First of all, hi. Secondly, how are you what's going on how's your summer how's life? And third! What do you think? I want to make more surrounding his concept because I LOVE IT, I want the Huntbastian spinoff and the Trent/Beats spinoff, and the Wes/Thad/David/your mom spinoff. Thoughts? I would love a review.
Samantha.
PS, the next chapters of Even Angels Fall and Fish Out of Water are in progress. I didn't forget about them.