Chapter Text
“You’re full of shit,” Victor says right as Laura comes into earshot. She approaches the table with her tray of food and takes a seat. Some of the students greet her with a nod.
“Bet you five bucks,”Cessily insists. She is holding an apple, passing it from one to the other without ever taking a bite.
“You’re on.”
Laura sees a way to enter the conversation, and jumps on it. “What are you betting on?” she asks, taking a bite of her stir-fry. It’s so spicy she almost tears up. Cessily doesn’t take her challenging gaze away from Victor.
“I think Storm is sleeping with Nightcrawler.”
“And I call bullshit on that,” Victor says cheerfully.
“I’m with Victor,” Julian adds. “I don’t think she is.”
“She is,” Laura says around a mouthful of food. All eyes at the table turn to her. She thinks maybe they hadn’t understood her, so she swallows and repeats herself. “She is,” Laura says with a loud, clear voice.
“How do you know?” Noriko demands.
“I can smell them on each other,” Laura says helpfully. “And I heard them one night,” she adds.
“You listened to them having sex?” Julian prompts.
She can sense an uncomfortable edge to the question, the implication she overstepped some line. She’s fairly confident she hadn’t, though, this time. “Yes.” Laura endures some raised eyebrows before clarifying, “Not intentionally. I was just walking to my room.”
The eyebrows settle back into place, and Laura relaxes. Cessily beams at Victor, triumphant. He reaches into his wallet, unzips a pocket, and starts to pull out quarters. Cessily makes a face as they begin to pile up on the table.
“Just transfer it to me,” she says, annoyed. He grins and continues stacking coins.
“Who else is sleeping together?” Noriko asks, curious. Laura thinks about it.
“Cyclops and Emma Frost.”
“Well yeah, we knew that.”
“No one else that I know of,” she says regretfully. Cessily slides the quarters into her palm and pockets them.
“It’s so unfair,” Noriko complains, “we’re not allowed to have sex in the mansion, but the teachers can?”
“I don’t think that’s an official rule,” Victor says.
Julian chimes in, “No, I think it is.”
“I bet they like, break all the rules they give us,” Noriko continues as if she hadn’t heard him. “I bet they like drink and do drugs all the time.”
Cessily grins. “You think the X-men get high?”
“I would if I was them,” Victor says.
“You’ve never done drugs in your life.”
“I didn’t say I had, I said I would if I was an X-man.”
“Cess, would drugs even work on you?” Noriko asks.
Cessily looks down, contemplative, at the apple in her hand. Her skin reflects the light better than its shiny red peel. “I think some do. I know there’s one anaesthetic that kinda does, so some might, I guess? But I don’t know.” She turns to Laura. “What about you, Laura?” she asks, deflecting the conversation away from herself. “You can’t really get drunk, can you get high?”
What Laura likes most about the other young mutants is that their conversations make her think about things she had never even considered on her own. “I don’t know,” Laura admits. “I have never taken recreational drugs.”
“What about anaesthesia? Does it work on you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never been put under?” Nori prods.
“No.”
“What do you mean?” Nori frowns. “Didn’t they put you under when they did your claws?”
Laura falters for a fraction of a second. “No.”
A silence descends on the table. Cessily looks at her with her lips parted in horror. For a while, no one says anything. Laura starts in on her salad.
“Would you be willing to try?” Nori finally breaks the silence. “Not anaesthesia,” she hurriedly corrects. “But, like, weed.”
Laura looks up at her. “Okay.”
***
“I think,” Laura says out of nowhere, “that it is taking effect.”
Cessily grins at her. “Yeah?” Laura looks at her and smiles back, broadly.
“Yes,” she says after a slightly too long pause. She leans back until she is leaning into Sooraya’s legs behind her on the couch, and stays there. Sooraya’s brows shoot up, surprised.
“Comfy?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Noriko giggles. “I feel it too. Cess?”
“I guess weed’s another for the no pile,” Cessily says with a tinge of disappointment. She smiles through it. “Sooraya and I will just watch you all act like idiots.” Sooraya holds out her palm, and Cessily grins, stretches the mass of her arm across the room, and slaps it.
Julian slides down onto the floor and sprawls out on his back. “If we get caught…” he begins, then trails off.
“We won’t get caught,” Victor insists. He is hugging his knees to his chest, leaning against the couch on the floor beside Laura. “We just have to stay in this room until we’re all cool. We should be fine by morning.”
Julian looks at him with glassy eyes. “What if someone attacks?”
Victor considers for a moment. “Then I guess we die.”
In a fit of sudden boldness, Sooraya puts her hand on the top of Laura’s head. Laura shuts her eyes in contentment.
“Vic,” Julian begins, doing his best to sink somehow further into the floor, “Can I ask you something?”
Victor looks at him crookedly. “Okay.”
“Does it ever bug you that your arms don’t match?” He waits half a second for an answer, and continues, “Because, man, that would annoy the crap out of me. I’d cut off the other one to even them out.”
Noriko bursts into laughter. “You’re crazy, Keller!”
“I’m not gonna cut off another arm,” Victor says, scowling. “Don’t touch my arm.” He hugs it protectively to his chest.
“He’s kidding,” Cessily assures him.
“I’m not kidding. I think you should.”
“I don’t think you should cut off your arm,” Laura says disapprovingly. Then she adds, “I like your asymmetry.”
He turns, surprised. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t hesitate to answer. “It is distinctive.”
Noriko bursts into laughter. Julian snorts. “I’d say he’s pretty easy to pick out in a crowd even without it.”
“Shut up, Keller.”
“I’m with Laura,” Cessily says. “Don’t cut off your arm.”
“I agree,” Sooraya adds.
“I wasn’t considering it,” Victor says, exasperated.
Noriko giggles. “I vote yes.”
“We aren’t voting!” Victor’s sclerae are turning a dusky pink. “One amputation was enough for me, thanks.”
“I have had limbs cut off…” Laura pauses. “six times.”
“Oh my God,” Cessily gasps, at the same time that Noriko asks, “Six times each, or six limbs total?”
“Total.”
“Dr. McCoy has a theory,” Sooraya offers, “that if I had a limb amputated, I only need to turn to my sand form before the separation is complete. And then I can reform whole.”
“Wicked,” Julian says. “Like a sneaky healing factor.”
“Yes, exactly!”
Cessily, entirely sober, dutifully stands and passes the bowls of snacks around the room. Everyone takes large handfuls and by the time she has sat back down the bowls are mostly empty. She sets them in the middle of everyone anyways.
“Julian,” Sooraya asks, reconsidering. “will you please pass me that bowl? I would like more.”
“I don’t really think I can get up.”
She blinks at him for a moment, stares as if she can’t determine whether or not he is serious. “If only you had some sort of genetically encoded ability to move objects using only your mind.”
He lolls his head in her direction and flails his arm in a way that was likely meant to be dismissive. The bowl shakes once, twice, then is still. “You didn’t even have any pot,” he protests, giving up. She raises a brow.
“So I’m not entitled to food? I chose to spend my evening babysitting you all.”
“Please,” Cessily snorts, standing up again to bring her the bowl. “You didn’t want to train.” Sooraya lifts her niqab with one hand and sneaks the food under it to her mouth with her other. She grins with her mouth full, and doesn’t contradict her. She returns her hand to the warm crown of Laura’s head, and she sighs softly under her palm.
“I used to like that when I was a kid,” Nori says. Laura looks at her, and she puts her own hand on her head to indicate what she’s referring to.
“Me too,” Laura says.
“My mom used to do it,” Nori continues.
“My sensei,” Laura says fondly.
Cessily exchanges a brief, pointed look with Sooraya. “Like, in the Facility?” she asks hesitantly.
“Yes.” Laura indulges in a flash of memory. “He went against orders. He was kind to me.”
“He went against orders?” Cessily repeats.
“Yes.”
“But they didn’t, like, fire him?”
Laura is silent for a while. “I killed him,” she says, and her voice breaks, just a little at the end. She is maybe the most surprised in the room to hear such clear emotion in her own voice. She hadn’t even noticed herself becoming sad, but now she feels her stomach clenching and her eyes burning with tears. She wills them away. Sooraya’s hand adjusts a little on the top of her head.
“They made you,” Julian says. He doesn’t turn his head to look at her, keep his eyes on the ceiling where they have been. “That’s what you mean.”
She is quiet for long seconds. “Yes,” she says slowly. “They made me.”