A Stray No Longer

[Alex Kaine]

"No way... seriously?"

Alex dropped back into his seat with a look of ravenous interest.

"That's friggin' awesome! No, really--" He glanced over at the two girls and began gesturing again. "Think of everything that has to be involved with that. Changing your bone structure, rearranging your internal organs, pretty much restringing all your muscles and nerves and blood vessels... Stephanie Meyer can kiss your butt, right, Julian?"

He cracked open the bag of Doritos and set it on the table, shooting Julian a broad grin of appreciation.

[Aimee Connors]

Aimee shot Jen a glare at the other girl's flippant description of her, picking up the fallen soda and tapping it on the top before popping it open. And then of course Alex was fawning over the next greatest mutation to enter the House.

She studied Julian while his attention was on Alex. He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, and had settled on holding his Coke with both of them, sniffing the carbonation before taking a sip. He looked out of place in the room, like it didn't fit him, or something.

"Hey," she said gently, "Are you okay? Don't mind Alex and Jen, they're overly enthusiastic sometimes." On a hunch she avoided looking directly into his eyes, settling for his chin instead.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian cocked his head to the side while the carbonated, syrupy mix settled in his stomach. He didn’t know who Stephanie Meyer was, or why she could kiss his butt. Neither did he understand nearly any of the other words the boy used, and when he did, the concepts they conveyed went over his head. He still thought about them though. And then Aimee spoke again.

He brought his eyes to her face that final time, noting her facial features and yellow eyes. Her voice sounded like she wanted to comfort him.

His eyes dropped to his can, where he could barely hear thousands of little bubbles popping tinnily within.

“They aren’t bothering me,” he said quietly, looking at the colored cards on the floor beside her leg. “My clothes itch and I can’t really smell anything.”

[Jennifer Cho]

"Turning into a wolf is pretty hard core," Jennifer said, shifting on the couch to sit with her back against the arm and her legs tucked up underneath her. She looked at Julian with new interest over the edge of her soda as she drank.

Noticing where he was looking she added, "Aimee wants to paint our room so she's looking for the perfect color."

"Yeah, and you don't care what it is, either." The other girl pushed her hair out of her eyes, yellow eyes flashing a bit. "So you'll just hafta live with whatever I pick."

"Ugh, as long as it isn't green. Makes me look sickly!" Jen good-naturedly threw a Dorito at her roomie, who batted it away. "Pick something vibrant."

[Aimee Connors]

"How about purple?" Aimee said dryly, holding up a bright violet paint sample as she delicately picked the Dorito from the rug. "You're getting nacho cheese everywhere!"

[Alex Kaine]

"How about blue?" Alex said, and he was speared by a pair of golden yellow eyes. He put up his hands in surrender. "Y'know, a darker blue."

He reached to snag a chip from the bag and leaned back into his easy chair with his attention back on Julian. Now that he thought of it, it wasn't too hard to imagine the kid as a wild animal shyly studying his surroundings.

"Is there anything you want to ask us, Julian?" he said. "We've all lived here a couple months, at least, so we pretty much know how things go around here."

[Julian Davitt]

The conversation turned to another topic, and Julian listened as they spoke. It was a lot different from the way the police man spoke. Even Aidan’s speech wasn’t so quick. Alex, he spoke more like the girls at times, his words spilling from his mouth like water down a fast stream, and then he’d speak more slowly. It was confusing and more than a little disconcerting. Julian knew they were speaking English, but he’d gone so long without saying a word - without the ability to even form words at all - that his speech was slow, and it seemed like they were speaking another language altogether.

They spoke phrases, sentences at a time, ideas and concepts conveyed by knowledge of each other and body language. Julian, when human, spoke a word at a time and knew no idioms or turns of phrase, nor what gestures really meant what. As a wolf, he could hear nuances in their speech, changes in their scents, which could tell him what he needed to know.

“Is there anything you want to ask us, Julian?” Alex asked. “We've all lived here a couple months, at least, so we pretty much know how things go around here.”

Julian’s attention turned from the back and forth between Jen and Aimee to Alex. There were lots of different things he wanted to know.

“Can I change?” he asked after a moment.

[Aimee Connors]

"Um, like... your clothes?" He had said they itched. Aimee looked up at Julian questioningly.

[Julian Davitt]

He fidgeted, and shook his head. “Ah, never mind.”

He remembered that he held a can of Coke in his hands. He took a drink from it, and sighed.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said finally. “I’m pretty sure they won’t let me be a wolf anymore.”

[Alex Kaine]

"Wait, you mean change into a wolf?"

Julian's eyes were as inscrutable as ever, but Alex knew instinctively he'd guessed right. "What do you mean they won't let you anymore? It's your mutation. As long as you're not hurting anybody, you can do what you want with it."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian cocked his head again, curious as to how he’d been misunderstood.

“I m... meant that before, but now I don’t mean change,” he said, looking down into the small mouth of the Coke can once more. His throat was starting to hurt from speaking so much. "I mean be a wolf. They want me to be like this from now on.”

He looked at his hands, and down at the faded lettering on his shirt. He took a mouthful of Coke and swallowed it. He felt self-conscious now, and slightly regretted speaking at all. He'd been a boy, who had become a wolf. Now it seemed like they wanted, or expected, him to be a boy who turned into a wolf.

[Jennifer Cho]

"Like Mowgli!" blurted Jen. "I think I understand what you're saying. Or... Tarzan, maybe."

She grabbed another chip and added, "So, you want to stay a wolf, then?"

[Julian Davitt]

Julian would have shrugged, if he remembered how. He did remember the Jungle Book from his childhood. He felt a sense of bemusement at how different nature actually was from that early idealized cartoon.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. It was hard. I was hungry a lot. I think it’ll be hard to stay a wolf here.”

He’d almost said that he’d stay until he had to go, but he kept it in. Dominic had told him that people wouldn’t be too happy to hear that he didn’t belong with them; it would make them think he didn’t like them.

[Alex Kaine]

This was getting heavy, even by mutant standards - Mowgli? As in, raised by wolves? Could that even happen? Alex decided he couldn't count anything out at this point, and, really, that could even explain a lot of Julian's mannerisms. He took a deep breath to air out his thoughts.

"Well," he said hesitantly, "maybe it will. Hell, it's hard enough just being a mutant. We've all had trouble fitting in, one way or another." His eyes flickered over the girls to include them. "That's why we're here. There wasn't anywhere else we could go."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian looked at the three of them: Jennifer, Aimee, and Alex. They were all in something of the same situation, though the details were different. All of them were, in a sense, homeless. At the very least they had that in common.

“How many more people live here?” He asked, changing the subject, though unaware that it might seem as being evasive.

[Jennifer Cho]

"Well," said Jen, and she began ticking off names on her fingers. "There's Ronnie and Scott, and Jim, who's Alex's roommate, and then Jamie's the youngest here, so that's all the kids living here right now. You already met Aidan, and there's also Tess, who graduated, but she's back this summer, and Anna is like the house mom, and then there's her brother Jake."

She saw the exertion on Julian's face trying to keep up, and she gave a shrug of apology. "You don't need to remember all the names now. But, you know, they're all pretty cool in a crazy, dysfunctional sort of way. We're just one big, happy pack of misfits."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian smiled again, and drank some more Coke. He looked down at the cards by Aimee’s legs, and back around the room.

Turquoise, or so the small text at the bottom of a card read, flashed by his eyes and he saw a small stream, framed by mountains and tall pine trees; he could still smell the thick scent of sap in the air. Turquoise hadn’t been the color of the water though; it had been the color of the sky.

His stomach growled slightly, and Julian’s gaze lifted to the door into the kitchen.

[Aimee Connors]

"Dinner isn't for a few hours," supplied Aimee, tracking his gaze. "But if you don't like chips we can find something else to snack on." Snausages?

She pushed up to her feet, straightening her black yoga pants and curling her bare toes into the thick rug. "C'mon, you're going to have pick out what you want." Aimee beckoned the Julian to follow her, and heard Jennifer coming off the couch as well as they walked the short distance to the kitchen.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian got up and followed the girl into the kitchen, his eyes roving all over the room; the prospect of food was making him even hungrier. The fact that he wouldn’t have to scavenge it or hunt it down was even more appealing.

“When do you have dinner?” he asked.

[Jennifer Cho]

Jennifer made a beeline to the refrigerator. "Usually six, six-thirty," she said. "I think Anna's making a big taco salad. Oh, do you like salad? You might not. Let's see, there's some bologna, there's a bowl of leftover chili, ummm this looks like tuna salad, and oh! There's a couple chicken thighs."

She set an assortment of plastic-wrapped plates and bowls on the counter and disappeared back into the fridge.