ax_main | Caleb and Clint, backdated to 5/8/18

Caleb and Clint talk about the school, their powers, and the facility.

Tail flicking lazily, Frumpkin sat at the threshold of the kitchen, tracking the movements of the tall boy who bustled about. The scent of sweet things hung in the air, nothing to tempt Frumpkin, though, who now enjoyed two meals a day and all the bacon slipped under the table he could eat. His gaze followed the boy a little longer, then he stood and left.

Frumpkin sauntered through the halls, winding his way past two boys talking about talking about a third boy’s upcoming birthday before heading up the stairs. He paused in a doorway, watching a girl style her long, white hair, then continued on, slipping into a sitting room where a girl was tucked into an armchair in the corner of the room. He hopped up onto the back of the chair, sitting just over her shoulder. She was drawing and he stared at her work with a bored interest that only cats seemed to have ever mastered.

From the safety and comfort of his room, Caleb watched all of this through Frumpkin’s eyes. He wasn’t looking for secrets (though he’d stumbled on a few of those); All he wanted was information. Was this place what everyone said it was? Could these people be trusted? Important questions. Ones that, so far, seemed to have an answer that was a resounding ‘yes’.

Clint had been trying to get out of the room when he could - if anything just to give Caleb some privacy and alone-time, but also to find a little for himself, usually somewhere out under the trees, or down by the lake. But, if he was honest with himself, the room felt safe, and familiar (and he hated that he'd gotten used to being shut in by four walls), so he found himself gravitating back to the dorm after a few hours outside.

This time, he'd grabbed a tray filled with pizza slices from the cafeteria, uncaring that they weren't supposed to take them to their rooms. But, when he walked into the room, announcing the arrival of life-giving food, he paused in the doorway, staring at his roommate and the way his eyes had kind of clouded over.

"Hey," he tried, closing the door and setting the tray down on his bed. Caleb looked really fucking out of it. With two steps toward his side, he was shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Harry Potter…"

Caleb was trying to place the faces the girl was drawing when a weight descending on his shoulder. He jerked and reflexively recoiled, his arms going up to protect himself. His wide-eyes peeked over a scrawny bicep at Clint and, flashing an embarrassed, apologetic smile,, he lowered his arms. “Sorry.”

Clint scooted back when Caleb moved, but relaxed a little when he got that smile and apology. "So uh. Should I even ask what that was? You're not possessed by someone's dead aunt are you, because I fucking hate the smell of mothballs. It makes me gag.”

Caleb laughed. Mothballs! That was funny! “No. I sent Frumpkin out to investigate the school and I was watching and listening through his eyes and ears.”

Clint stared at him. "Wait. What?”

A bit of a sly smile shaped Caleb’s lips, and he held his head a little higher, proud almost, and definitely stubborn. “I never told the Right. I didn’t want them using him.”

Clint continued to stare, a little dumbfounded. Sure, he knew that Caleb was talented. He hid his power well, but it was there. He was a diamond in the rough. But he'd never, in a million years realized how much rebellion was in him. He'd always seemed so quiet and meek at the lab. So...subdued. To see that sly look on his face, to hear him talk about defying the Right like that? It was eye-opening. "And you can just... spy on anyone? With your cat? With Frumpkin?”

“Yes,” Caleb confirmed. “You’re one of the only people I’ve told that to.”

"I'll keep quiet," Clint promised, moving to sit on the edge of his bed and pick up a piece of pizza to shove in his mouth.

Seeing there were two plates of pizza, Caleb assumed one was for him and picked up a slice, then moved to sit down next to Clint. He took a bite and quickly followed it with a second. God, he had really missed pizza. “I did not learn anything interesting.”

"Sure you didn't," Clint told him, glancing at his roommate slyly. There was 'important', and then there was important.

“I’d tell you if I had. Look, here, I will show you.” Caleb pulled his feet up onto the bed to sit cross-legged. “One girl was drawing pictures of two other girls. Scott was playing with little, war game toys. Mollymauk was using some tarot cards. Another girl was,” he made a confused face, “writing a story about Nolan Ross and Molly’s roommate? Lots of people tried to pet Frumpkin.”

"I didn't want to tell you this," Clint confided, swallowing a big bite of pizza. "But Frumpkin? He's a cat. You know, furry thing? People like to pet those.”

Caleb quickly swallowed a mouthful of pizza and said, “You shouldn’t pet a strange animal! Everyone knows that!”

"Is this some kind of weird Germanic - it's Germany right? Is this some kind of weird Germanic law I don't know about?" Clint asked, squinting at him. "Because in America, if you see a cute furry thing that doesn't weigh twice your size (and sometimes even if they do,) you pet it."

“It’s not a weird anything. It is common sense. He could be feral, or have fleas! And I’m from New Jersey!” Caleb sputtered, his voice climbing with every statement.

Oh right. Jersey. Clint shrugged and took another bite of pizza. "Look, I'm just saying, cute cat, you pet it. If it's feral, it runs away. If it has fleas, you itch for a week. It's furry!”

Too baffled to form a response, Caleb stuffed his pizza slice into his mouth to take a big bite. He swallowed, then asked, “So, have you learned anything else?”

"More than I really wanted to know," Clint admitted, then glanced over at his roommate, thinking of TJ's visit. "Hey uh, how much do you want me to tell people about you? They're asking, and I don't know what to say. 'My roommate can make gold' seems a little too private, you know?”

A small, grateful smile softened Caleb’s features. “Thank you for asking. Don’t mention the gold. Or what I can do with Frumpkin. The rest is fine.” He paused, reconsidering that. “Maybe leave out the alarm too.”

Caleb picked a pepperoni off his pizza as Frumpkin came back into the room and leaned down to offer it to him. “What should I tell people about you if they ask?”

"Er." Clint looked abashed. "I told TJ - the blue girl that rescued us - about Frumpkin. But I'll make sure she doesn't tell anyone else, okay?”

“No, no,” Caleb reassured as he wiped his greasy fingers on his pant leg. “They can know about Frumpkin. Just not the spying through him.”

"Oh that," Clint shook his head. "No, I didn't say anything about that. I just told her that you can pull him out of thin air. She called him a pocket cat.”

Patting Clint’s shoulder, Caleb said, “That is okay.” He took another big bite of pizza, chewing it and swallowing. “Is there anything that you want me to tell or not tell people if they ask about you?”

Clint shrugged slightly, reaching for another slice. "Not much to know about me, really.”

Caleb gave Clint a flat look. “That is not true.”

“Not really,” Clint told him. “What is there to know about me that’s so important it should be secret?”

“No, I—“ Caleb made a frustrated noise at himself. “I didn’t mean secrets. You said there was not much to know about you. I was disagreeing. There is plenty to know about you.”

"What, like the stunt show? I don't mind if you tell people about that. Just don't mention my foster parents," Clint told him. "I mean, pretty much everyone knows about the archery now. They'll find out sooner or later that I don't have powers anymore.”

Caleb fed Frumpkin another slice of pepperoni. “See? Those are things to know, or not to know.” Really, he’d just been trying to point out that Clint that he was interesting and worth knowing, but that worked too.

"It's not much," Clint took another bite of pizza. "But, you know, whatever. I'm just glad you're getting out of the room and actually talking to people.”

Caleb looked somewhat abashed. “It was a theoretical question.”

"So...you aren't actually talking to people?" Clint asked, looking up at him over a dripping piece of pepperoni.

“I talk to them if they talk to me.” Caleb put his plate with his unfinished slice of pizza down on the nearby desk.

"And..." Clint watched him carefully. "Have they? Talked to you?”

Avoiding meeting Clint’s eyes, Caleb shifted uncomfortably under the stare. “Twice.”

Clint couldn't help grinning, and leaned in to hug his roommate, no matter how much he knew that Caleb hated it. "Look at that, you're making friends!”

Caleb froze, his arms stuck against his sides as he was pulled in against Clint. “Okay.”

He only held the other boy there for a breath before releasing him and leaning back. Clint had never figured out why Caleb had such an aversion to affection, but he knew not to push things too far. "Who are they?”

“Inu-yasha, and Pam.” Caleb wasn’t sure if either counted as making friends, but the conversations had gone…mostly alright. “Inu-yasha came to our room, and Pam stopped me in a classroom. We have health together.”

"Has anyone ever told you that you've got weird taste in friends?" Clint asked, amused. Those two were not the first choices he would have made for Caleb. Maybe some nice, you know, bookworm, or one of those magic people. Not the two most aggressive people he'd met.

Caleb’s best friend was a cat, so, yes, but that was beside the point. He gave Clint a dubious look. “Friends is a strong word. I’ve only talked to them once. Pam only came up to me because she recognized me.”

Clint frowned. "How did she-" but he stopped before his foot was completely in his mouth. The holos. Would they really have put Caleb in the training holos?

This wasn’t how Caleb would have liked for this to come up, but that was his own fault. He nodded, then haltingly admitted, “We were in the same facility for a time. I, ah, I was with the Right for three years.”

Clint stuffed another piece of pizza in his mouth just to give himself time to think, and not react like a complete moron. Which was what he wanted to do. He wanted to say, those fucking assholes, but Caleb was sensitive about that kind of thing sometimes, and he seemed a little uncertain about delivering the news. The truth was, Clint didn't know much about the other rescues at all, or what they'd had to go through. Even Cal still had secrets.

Finally, after a lot of chewing, he gave a nod. "So you were somewhere else, before they brought you to the one we were rescued from.”

Frumpkin jumped up onto the bed, and rubbed himself against Caleb’s arm. A little knot of tension released in Caleb’s chest, and he gave his cat a small, grateful scratch. “Yes. Pam, and Alex were there. There was another girl too. Nott. I do not know what happened to her.”

"We don't uh, have to talk about it if you don't want to," Clint told him, watching Frumpkin's response.

“No, it’s okay. There is not much to tell,” Caleb replied as he scratched Frumpkin behind an ear. “I was not well when I first got there, then I was and it wasn’t any different than the Facility we were in together. I trained with the holograms, and I made them gold.”

Clint nodded thoughtfully. "Why did they transfer you?”

“Nott was being harassed by a guard. No one was doing anything. Not even the other guards. So I stuck up for her.” Caleb smiled wryly. “They did not like that very much.” The punishment that had followed had been enough to discourage him from getting too close to anyone at the new facility. He hadn’t wanted the same thing to happen to anyone else.

Eyebrows lifting to his hairline, Clint gave Caleb a measuring look. "And here I thought you always kept your head down.”

“Not always.” Caleb smiled ruefully. “I even tried to escape once.”

"Shit. Who the fuck are you?" Clint laughed.

Caleb’s expression waffled somewhere between pleased and embarrassed. Shrugging humbly, he said, “It was early on and I did not get far. It’s why they pat me down when I leave the lunch room.”

"Left. When you left the lunch room," Clint corrected him, forcing the past tense with a glint of anger in his eyes. "You aren't there anymore and neither am I. You don't have to worry about those bastards anymore.”

“Left,” Caleb echoed, and nodded some, but moments later his mouth twisted into a frown. “Sometimes I feel like they are here somewhere. Hiding and watching me. Waiting for their chance to take me back.” He shook his head. “I would die before I went back.”

"We all would," Clint sighed, setting his pizza down. "And you're not the only one who feels like they're still here.”

Caleb look at Clint, surprised. “You too?”

"Oh, fuck yeah," Clint snorted. "All the time. I don't trust half the things the teachers say here.”

It was selfish, but Caleb was relieved to not be alone in that. He had felt like he was the only one who wasn’t adjusting to this new life. “You seemed so comfortable here…”

"I'm faking it," Clint admitted quietly, giving a little shudder. "And hiding in the garage when I need to freak out.”

Caleb wanted to offer Clint comfort. He wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, or hug him—Something to show he wasn’t alone. But, unable to, he did the only other thing he knew how to; He gave Frumpkin a mental nudge, and the cat left his lap, slipping between Clint’s arm and side to settled on his lap. “We should have a codeword for when one of us is too overwhelmed, and needs to be taken somewhere we can be alone.”

"Oh yeah?" Clint accepted the cat without complaint, wrapping his arms around the big ball of fluff. "What like, Cattywampus?”

“Yes, or, I don’t know, Frumpkin wants to go outside,” Caleb replied. “Something only we’ll understand.”

"What if Frumpkin actually wanted to go outside," Clint pointed out.

Caleb blinked. “He would just go outside.”

Clint snorted a laugh at that, then buried his face in Frumpkin's fur. "Frumpkin wants to go outside. Code phrase approved."

Caleb smiled, pleased to have made Clint laugh even if he didn’t know what had been so funny. “It is a deal, then.”