Building Neptune

Chapter 3: "Adjusting to the Aquarium"

"How old are you, really?" Jean leaned back in her chair, somehow looking both sympathetic and incredibly casual. No pressure. Let's just talk. That bullshit.

Cal, on the other hand, sat on the edge of the couch cushions. His leg jittered anxiously. He tried to shift in his seat and grimaced, placing a hand over his bandaged side. He stared at the ground between them.

"Be careful," she chastised. "They won't heal if you keep moving around like that."

"I'm fine." His eye was still heavily bandaged.

"Good. Then how about you answer my question?"

He risked meeting her eye for a moment. "Twenty-one."

"Calin." Her voice was sharp.

"Okay, eighteen."

"Cal…"

He paused, glanced up at her again. "Fine. Seventeen."

"Do you have any family? Parents?"

Cal looked at her warily. "I can't go back there."

"No one is sending you anywhere. I'd just like to know." She offered him a small smile. "We have a lot of students here that have run away or were kicked out. They live here, in the school. We would like you to stay here with us, too, but it's important that you and I can trust one another."

He chewed on his lower lip. "They kicked me out when I was twelve."

"Because you're a mutant?"

Cal finally sat up a bit and looked her in the eye. "No. Because I'm gay."

Jean frowned briefly, but tried to keep her expression neutral. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm sure it hurt that they couldn't accept who you were."

"I wasn't going to tell them. I wasn't ever going to tell them." His gaze slid back to the floor.

"How did they find out?"

He hesitated, looking her over before undoing the top few of buttons on his shirt. He turned his back to her and lowered his shirt over his shoulders, exposing faint white scars just below his neck. Jean leaned forward so she could see properly—three crude letters. "FAG." Calin didn't move, not willing to turn back around. He wouldn't be able to say this if she was looking at his face. "They were eighth graders, they caught me after P.E. They made me lie face down in the showers. They…they said it was so every guy that ever…that ever fucked my faggot ass would have to see it and know what we were."

Behind him, Jean was still leaning, elbows on her knees. She lifted a hand over her mouth, not sure if she was covering up sadness or anger. "You were only twelve…"

He finally pulled his shirt back up but kept his back to her while he buttoned it. "I had a boyfriend. Kind of. A ninth grader. I didn't know how much trouble I'd be in if people found out." He turned around, his expression impressively blank.

"So the kids at school found out about the kind-of boyfriend…and your parents found out about the boys at school. And they didn't care that you'd been hurt?"

"The football coach called them to pick me up from school. When we got home, my dad said, 'Well, are you?' I didn't know what to say. And I guess not saying anything was a good enough answer."

Jean ground her teeth. "I hope you know that what they did is completely unconscionable."

"Un-what?"

She raised an eyebrow. "Wrong. Against the conscience." Jean leaned back in her seat again and looked him over. "Was that the last time you went to school?"

Cal shook his head. "I went for another year. My kind-of boyfriend's parents let me stay with them for a while. They were pretty cool, I guess, but when I got my powers…well, it was way more than they bargained for. It was too much, I could tell. And it was too much for me. I was freaked."

"How did you first manifest—or, show your powers?"

He placed a hand on his ribs to steady himself as he scooted back on the couch. "Some kids were picking on me again, nothing new, really. But then they tried to cram me into this locker—one of the gym lockers, which are a lot smaller, you know? Anyway, I hit my head and kind of panicked, and the next thing I knew, the showers and sinks pretty much exploded. There was just a ton of water and all of the other kids got knocked down. When I got out of the locker, though, it moved away from me like a path or something."

"Did it scare you?" She tried to decode the faraway look in his eyes.

He smiled for a fraction of a second before it disappeared. "No, no it was the first time in a long time that I'd felt…powerful. Like I was in control."

She smiled carefully. His was an unusual reaction: not panic, not confusion, but some sort of relief. "It felt right for you."

Cal nodded and actually smiled at her. "Yeah. It made sense. For that second, anyway." His smile started to unravel. "I mean, after that, I had to go home and I had to deal with being a fag and a freak and I had to decide if I needed to leave the Cooper's house, which I did. And that—all that was confusing. But the powers weren't."

"We've got some nice facilities here, all designed to help students develop their powers. Practice rooms, even a pool. Do you think it would help you if you could work with your powers on a regular basis?"

He shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. "I mean, while I'm here, yeah, I guess I'd want to."

Jean smiled. "While you're here."

Cal had stayed in one of the empty guest rooms when he first got back from the hospital, but now that he was technically considered a student, Scott had placed him with a roommate. The boy had been more than hesitant at first, saying he didn't think it would be a good idea, he didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. Scott insisted that his new roommate was an all-around good guy that got along with everyone. Once Scott had left the room, Jean had given him an enigmatic, "Who knows, you two might understand one another better than you had anticipated."

Scott carried one of his bags up to the room for him. He'd gone back to the apartment earlier that day to pack up some of Cal's things. He knocked on the door. When Bobby answered it, Scott frowned and moved back a step. "It hadn't even occurred to me," he said.

Cal and Bobby looked at one another, then at Scott. Cal was irrationally afraid Scott had just remembered that he was a raging homosexual. Bobby raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Well, look at the two of you." They did so. "You could be brothers."

And it was true. They both had short, blonde hair (Cal's a bit more carefully styled), abnormally blue eyes (Bobby's were a bit lighter), strong jawbones, and broad shoulders. Bobby was stockier and more heavily muscled whereas Cal was thin, bordering on malnutrition, and Cal was an inch or two taller, but the resemblance was uncanny.

Bobby smiled. "Weird. What are your powers?" He recognized the eyes as a mutant trait.

"I control water."

"I control ice. Go figure." He reached out a hand and Cal shook it.

Scott set his bag down. "Well, I'll let you two get acquainted." He gave Bobby a wry look. "Maybe this will be a better match, huh?" He turned, leaving Bobby with a slightly pained look.

He shook it off. "Anyway, come on in." Bobby led him into the room and pointed at the empty bed. "You've got that side. The bathroom's through that door, and we share it with the guys on the other side of it."

Cal put his bags on his bed, rubbing at his ribs gingerly. "What did he mean 'a better match'?"

"I had another roommate before you. It was kind of complicated. I don't really want to talk about it right now." He gave Cal a half-smile. "Sorry, it's just a sore topic."

Cal waved it off. "I totally understand. Trust me."

Bobby sat on the bed opposite his. "Like with what happened to your eye?"

He looked down. "Yeah. Like that."