fic: hope you survive the experience: William (X-Men AU pt. 2)
Next part of the X-Men AU. Now featuring William Beckett, shapeshifter. He’s like Mystique, only less murderous and more gay. (Yes, more gay.)
Warning: contains use of gender-neutral pronouns.
HYSTE: Will (i am)
by Gale
His entire life, Will knew he was special. He *knew* it, could feel it down to his bones and beyond, running through him like a river. It was like there was something waiting for him to find it, and all he had to do was dig down and reach--
And then one day he woke up, slim and pretty as any girl on the cheerleading squad where before he'd been all knees and elbows and awkward pre-teen boy bits, and he knew.
*
It makes Will sound like something out of a Star Trek novel, using "hir" and "s/he", but that's what s/he *is*. It's not like s/he can change it even if s/he wanted to. Shapeshifters, Dr. McCoy has been careful to explain using lots of charts and diagrams, are like any mutant: they start off with a baseline human template, for the most part -- like Will -- and something in their DNA reaches a saturation point roughly around puberty.
"It's like shedding the hull from a seed," he'd said, furred fingers tapping neatly on his laptop. Will's tried to replicate those fingers a dozen times; s/he thinks s/he's getting better at it, but still not good. S/he mostly sticks to baseline human shapes, like most of the kids around here or people s/he sees on TV. "You were William, completely male; now you're Will. You could be Willa just as easily, if you wanted."
And that's it, really. S/he used to be male; now s/he's male, or female, or sometimes neither. Miss Frost had told hir, once, to spend 36 hours gender neutral and see how it affected his thought patterns. S/he didn't really notice change one way or the other. S/he didn't notice any real difference, except that s/he thought about sex every twenty minutes instead of every twenty seconds and didn't masturbate.
*
"I despise gender neutral pronouns," Miss Frost said the first time she met hir, "but I suppose they're appropriate in your case, aren't they, dear?"
Most of the kids have one of the teachers as their mentor; Will's is Miss Frost. Miss Frost is 5'9" in bare feet, with skin like ice and hair so blonde it's white. She doesn't walk around in the white leather dominatrix outfits she used to wear when she was still with the Hellfire Club, but just barely. She's strict and demanding and eleven kinds of bitch. Will loves her so much it hurts. S/he wants to fuck her and wants to *be* her in equal measure. S/he's told her as much; she just smiles, cat-sly.
It's weird for a telepath to mentor someone who doesn't have psychic powers, but the one time Will asked her about it, Miss Frost looked at hir for a long minute.
"My dear," she said, "it is hard enough around here to find a student who does not hate himself on some small level. Everyone here just wants to fit in. You do not. You know who and what you are, and you want to know exactly what you can do." She'd raised an eyebrow. "You remind me of me, except a bit more butch. And less of a winter."
*
Since s/he's a shapeshifter, Will's required to stay in his default form -- slim, pretty boy -- unless s/he's training. S/he figures they have to know s/he does it other times, too; they're none of them stupid. But the one time s/he tried going out to town and becoming Tyra Banks to pick up a guy from Hudson University, Dr. Grey froze the room, mentally changed hir into Fat Albert, and made hir stay that way for two days straight.
S/he's stopped sneaking out.
That doesn't stop hir from doing it in his room, though. Gabe, hir roommate, was freaked out by it at first, but now he just asks Will to kindly not molest him unless he asks first, please. It usually happens a couple times a month, usually after Gabe's had a long day of absorbing solar energy and using it to fire blasts of energy. Heavy training days always leave him worked up, and if sometimes he wants to fool around with a girl instead of a boy, it doesn't take a lot of energy at all for Will to give himself breasts and wider hips, a rounder ass. And it makes Gabe smile, which is lovely. Gabe has a great smile.
Even better are the times Will goes to change and Gabe stops him and says, "No, that's -- this is okay, this is great". Whether he means it or not, Will has no idea. But it *sounds* like he means it, which is almost as good.
*
It's surprising, how few friends you have when you can be anyone in the world.
Not people s/he's messed around with, because honestly, that would be half the school. But actual friends: Gabe, obviously; Alicia, who has super-strength and can make shockwaves with one punch, and who s/he sort-of dated for six weeks hir freshman year; Pete, who s/he hooked up with for the rest of freshman year before ending spectacularly badly and somehow morphing -- heh -- into one of hir best friends. There are other people, like Bob and Spencer and Ryan, s/he's friendly with in an offhand, good-to-see-you kind of way, but other than that, it's a campus full of vague acquaintances.
It doesn't help that mostly people are freaked out by shapeshifters. Will wouldn't have thought so, because it's not like they all aren't there to learn to control their powers, and s/he really doesn't think someone with wings or fur is in any position to cast aspertions about anyone else. But people keep staring at hir like they think s/he's going to try something, like it's all a big practical joke.
And it probably doesn't help that hir only real role model for shapeshifting is a terrorist who occasionally changes sides. There are probably others, Will knows, but none as visible as Mystique. S/he's heard the same rumors the other kids have -- she's Nightcrawler's mom, she made Rogue attack people to gain their powers, even that she slept with Sabretooth once, which, seriously, not even on a *bet*. Not even to save hir *mom*.
Not that that matters. Will hasn't seen hir mom since s/he came here.
*
Will used to have therapy twice a week; something about shapeshifters makes people bring up phrases like "questioning sexual identity" and "your skin does not define who you are". Dr. Friedlander knocked him down to once a week, before the shooting, and that's the schedule Dr. McCoy's using now. Wait, no, Hank. Some of the kids feel weird calling him that, but not Will. S/he just forgets sometimes.
"Any problems this week, Will?" Hank asks, paging through hir journal. It's a requirement of being there; you have to keep a journal detailing your thoughts and feelings, or barring that, any and all instances where you use your power. Most kids go through maybe one notebook a semester; Will averages three or four. S/he gets chatty.
"Nothing new," Will says, looking at hir hand. S/he thinks, smaller, smoother, delicate nails, and smiles a little when s/he sees the feminine hand resting on the arm of the chair. S/he looks up and sees Hank watching him, one eyebrow raised. Will raises one back at him, but changes hir hand back to baseline-normal: larger, less delicate, blunt nails. A guy's hand.
"Mmn." He flips through the notebook, speed-reading. Some of the kids think Hank's just bullshitting and not really reading, but Will's seen him go through actual books that fast. "Still using the gender neutral pronouns, I see."
"A lot of I-statements," Will agrees. "It's not as if I'm one thing or another, am I?"
Hank sighs. "We're going to have this argument again?"
Will shrugs.
"Will." Hank marks his place with one thick, furry finger and looks at him. "You are one thing or another. You were born male--"
"And if I wanted," Will says, interrupting, "I could concentrate for all of twenty seconds and be female. So assigning myself one gender or another is sort of a moot point, don't you think? I was born male, but I spent 45 minutes this morning working on getting Dr. Grey's eyebrows just right." S/he thinks, smaller, smoother and shakes hir hair out. It's the same length it was a moment ago, but it frames hir face more naturally now, a face made slender and decidedly feminine. No Adam's apple here, sir. "I am vast," s/he says, "I contain multitudes." S/he smiles a little. "Literally."
Hank looks at hir, then sighs. "There are days, Will," he says, "when you are absolutely maddening."
"Sorry," Will says. S/he almost means it. S/he shifts back to male and shifts a little in the chair. "I'm not trying to be."
"It's all right." Hank waves a hand. "Just part of your condition."
"Really?" Will leans forward a little. "So, what, shapeshifters are naturally moody?"
Hank smiles a little. "No, but teenagers are."
Will grins.
*
"Shut up," Alicia says the next morning at breakfast, a little gleefully. "D'you see that?" She gestures with her elbow.
Will looks over. Frankie's sitting on the arm of the sofa, ignoring his juice in favor of spinning some of Gerard's tiny monsters around. The mummy, he thinks, looks really nauseous. It's a nice counterpoint to how Gerard's smiling, shy and a little quiet. That's news enough; Gerard practically never has his head up, let alone smiling. Will can't actually remember the last time s/he saw him with a facial expression.
"Did Mikey say anything?" Gabe asks, through a mouthful of cereal. Alicia makes a face, and he swallows before speaking again. "I mean. Relatively. For Mikey."
"It's his brother." Alicia shrugs. "I don't think he thinks it's any of his business, as long as Gerard's happy." Privately, Will questions the logic of Alicia and Mikey, but they seem happy, so what the hell. Besides, s/he's already got ten bucks in the betting pool that they don't last six months. "And whatever, Frankie's nice. And his temper's a lot better, so he's way less likely to knock out a window if they have a fight."
"When they have a fight," Will corrects her. The one time s/he'd made out with Frankie had been pretty good, but then Frankie had freaked because, you know, shapeshifter. It had just been the once. "He's all temperamental and shit."
Gabe looks around. "Speaking of shitty tempers, where's Pete?"
"He gets to see Hank first thing," Alicia says, "since Dr. McCoy's got that conference thing tonight in Manhattan. He had to reschedule everybody."
"Huh," Gabe says. He looks thoughtful. "I thought he would've been with that guy he's been sniffing around lately -- you know, not tall, red hair, has a force field."
"Patrick," Will says. Nice kid, but really skittish around people. S/he tried going out with him once, but it had been a dismal failure. On the other hand, s/he had only tried as a girl... "What, they're going out now?"
"They're not going out," Alicia says. "Um. Exactly. It's a. Thing." She wiggles her fingers. "You'd have to ask him for specifics. All I know is when you mention Patrick's name around him, he gets the dippy face."
"The dippy face?" Will pouts. "I missed *dippy face*?"
"You broke up, like, last year," Gabe reminds hir. "Remember? You started messing around with me around the same time?"
Will smiles. "Like I'd forget that," s/he teases, and grins when Gabe flushes a little.
"Oh my God," Alicia says. She crosses her arms with just enough force to send a tiny tremor across the table, nudging Gabe's cereal. He yelps and steadies it. "Jesus, just make out already, okay? It'd be less obvious."
Will looks the two of them and smiles a little. S/he thinks, sometimes, that the four of them need to branch out and start dating outside each other, because one girl + two boys + one shapeshifter is never ever going to = a good thing. But now Alicia's all weirdly settled with Mikey, and Pete's mooning over a nice boy with a force field.
Change is scary, s/he thinks, looking at Gabe. But not always bad.
"Hey," s/he says. "I was thinking about sneaking into town tonight and seeing a movie. You want to come with?"
"We're not supposed to sneak out," Gabe reminds hir, but he's smiling. "Remember? 'Heeeeeey, kids, it's Faaaaaaaaat--'"
"I'm not going to try and pick up guys," Will says, rolling hir eyes. "I just want to see a movie." S/he pauses. "With you."
Gabe blinks at hir for a second. "Are you -- is this a date?"
"Yes," Alicia practically yells, and Will hears, in hir head: Duh. S/he glances over at Mikey, who's blinking back at hir innocently.
"A date," Gabe says again. "Where, like, people can see."
"That was the idea," Will says, shifting in hir seat. "But if you don't want to, I mean, that's fi--"
"No, what, are you kidding?" Gabe punches hir in the arm, lightly. "I was waiting for you to do this months ago, moron. I just figured you were more interested in hooking up with me in the safety and privacy of lights out."
Will gapes at him for a second, then bursts out laughing.
"That wasn't supposed to be funny," Gabe says. He sounds mild enough, but his forehead's all furrowed, like he's thinking.
"No, it's..." Will trails off, waving a hand. "I'll tell you later. After the movie, maybe."
Warning: contains use of gender-neutral pronouns.
HYSTE: Will (i am)
by Gale
His entire life, Will knew he was special. He *knew* it, could feel it down to his bones and beyond, running through him like a river. It was like there was something waiting for him to find it, and all he had to do was dig down and reach--
And then one day he woke up, slim and pretty as any girl on the cheerleading squad where before he'd been all knees and elbows and awkward pre-teen boy bits, and he knew.
*
It makes Will sound like something out of a Star Trek novel, using "hir" and "s/he", but that's what s/he *is*. It's not like s/he can change it even if s/he wanted to. Shapeshifters, Dr. McCoy has been careful to explain using lots of charts and diagrams, are like any mutant: they start off with a baseline human template, for the most part -- like Will -- and something in their DNA reaches a saturation point roughly around puberty.
"It's like shedding the hull from a seed," he'd said, furred fingers tapping neatly on his laptop. Will's tried to replicate those fingers a dozen times; s/he thinks s/he's getting better at it, but still not good. S/he mostly sticks to baseline human shapes, like most of the kids around here or people s/he sees on TV. "You were William, completely male; now you're Will. You could be Willa just as easily, if you wanted."
And that's it, really. S/he used to be male; now s/he's male, or female, or sometimes neither. Miss Frost had told hir, once, to spend 36 hours gender neutral and see how it affected his thought patterns. S/he didn't really notice change one way or the other. S/he didn't notice any real difference, except that s/he thought about sex every twenty minutes instead of every twenty seconds and didn't masturbate.
*
"I despise gender neutral pronouns," Miss Frost said the first time she met hir, "but I suppose they're appropriate in your case, aren't they, dear?"
Most of the kids have one of the teachers as their mentor; Will's is Miss Frost. Miss Frost is 5'9" in bare feet, with skin like ice and hair so blonde it's white. She doesn't walk around in the white leather dominatrix outfits she used to wear when she was still with the Hellfire Club, but just barely. She's strict and demanding and eleven kinds of bitch. Will loves her so much it hurts. S/he wants to fuck her and wants to *be* her in equal measure. S/he's told her as much; she just smiles, cat-sly.
It's weird for a telepath to mentor someone who doesn't have psychic powers, but the one time Will asked her about it, Miss Frost looked at hir for a long minute.
"My dear," she said, "it is hard enough around here to find a student who does not hate himself on some small level. Everyone here just wants to fit in. You do not. You know who and what you are, and you want to know exactly what you can do." She'd raised an eyebrow. "You remind me of me, except a bit more butch. And less of a winter."
*
Since s/he's a shapeshifter, Will's required to stay in his default form -- slim, pretty boy -- unless s/he's training. S/he figures they have to know s/he does it other times, too; they're none of them stupid. But the one time s/he tried going out to town and becoming Tyra Banks to pick up a guy from Hudson University, Dr. Grey froze the room, mentally changed hir into Fat Albert, and made hir stay that way for two days straight.
S/he's stopped sneaking out.
That doesn't stop hir from doing it in his room, though. Gabe, hir roommate, was freaked out by it at first, but now he just asks Will to kindly not molest him unless he asks first, please. It usually happens a couple times a month, usually after Gabe's had a long day of absorbing solar energy and using it to fire blasts of energy. Heavy training days always leave him worked up, and if sometimes he wants to fool around with a girl instead of a boy, it doesn't take a lot of energy at all for Will to give himself breasts and wider hips, a rounder ass. And it makes Gabe smile, which is lovely. Gabe has a great smile.
Even better are the times Will goes to change and Gabe stops him and says, "No, that's -- this is okay, this is great". Whether he means it or not, Will has no idea. But it *sounds* like he means it, which is almost as good.
*
It's surprising, how few friends you have when you can be anyone in the world.
Not people s/he's messed around with, because honestly, that would be half the school. But actual friends: Gabe, obviously; Alicia, who has super-strength and can make shockwaves with one punch, and who s/he sort-of dated for six weeks hir freshman year; Pete, who s/he hooked up with for the rest of freshman year before ending spectacularly badly and somehow morphing -- heh -- into one of hir best friends. There are other people, like Bob and Spencer and Ryan, s/he's friendly with in an offhand, good-to-see-you kind of way, but other than that, it's a campus full of vague acquaintances.
It doesn't help that mostly people are freaked out by shapeshifters. Will wouldn't have thought so, because it's not like they all aren't there to learn to control their powers, and s/he really doesn't think someone with wings or fur is in any position to cast aspertions about anyone else. But people keep staring at hir like they think s/he's going to try something, like it's all a big practical joke.
And it probably doesn't help that hir only real role model for shapeshifting is a terrorist who occasionally changes sides. There are probably others, Will knows, but none as visible as Mystique. S/he's heard the same rumors the other kids have -- she's Nightcrawler's mom, she made Rogue attack people to gain their powers, even that she slept with Sabretooth once, which, seriously, not even on a *bet*. Not even to save hir *mom*.
Not that that matters. Will hasn't seen hir mom since s/he came here.
*
Will used to have therapy twice a week; something about shapeshifters makes people bring up phrases like "questioning sexual identity" and "your skin does not define who you are". Dr. Friedlander knocked him down to once a week, before the shooting, and that's the schedule Dr. McCoy's using now. Wait, no, Hank. Some of the kids feel weird calling him that, but not Will. S/he just forgets sometimes.
"Any problems this week, Will?" Hank asks, paging through hir journal. It's a requirement of being there; you have to keep a journal detailing your thoughts and feelings, or barring that, any and all instances where you use your power. Most kids go through maybe one notebook a semester; Will averages three or four. S/he gets chatty.
"Nothing new," Will says, looking at hir hand. S/he thinks, smaller, smoother, delicate nails, and smiles a little when s/he sees the feminine hand resting on the arm of the chair. S/he looks up and sees Hank watching him, one eyebrow raised. Will raises one back at him, but changes hir hand back to baseline-normal: larger, less delicate, blunt nails. A guy's hand.
"Mmn." He flips through the notebook, speed-reading. Some of the kids think Hank's just bullshitting and not really reading, but Will's seen him go through actual books that fast. "Still using the gender neutral pronouns, I see."
"A lot of I-statements," Will agrees. "It's not as if I'm one thing or another, am I?"
Hank sighs. "We're going to have this argument again?"
Will shrugs.
"Will." Hank marks his place with one thick, furry finger and looks at him. "You are one thing or another. You were born male--"
"And if I wanted," Will says, interrupting, "I could concentrate for all of twenty seconds and be female. So assigning myself one gender or another is sort of a moot point, don't you think? I was born male, but I spent 45 minutes this morning working on getting Dr. Grey's eyebrows just right." S/he thinks, smaller, smoother and shakes hir hair out. It's the same length it was a moment ago, but it frames hir face more naturally now, a face made slender and decidedly feminine. No Adam's apple here, sir. "I am vast," s/he says, "I contain multitudes." S/he smiles a little. "Literally."
Hank looks at hir, then sighs. "There are days, Will," he says, "when you are absolutely maddening."
"Sorry," Will says. S/he almost means it. S/he shifts back to male and shifts a little in the chair. "I'm not trying to be."
"It's all right." Hank waves a hand. "Just part of your condition."
"Really?" Will leans forward a little. "So, what, shapeshifters are naturally moody?"
Hank smiles a little. "No, but teenagers are."
Will grins.
*
"Shut up," Alicia says the next morning at breakfast, a little gleefully. "D'you see that?" She gestures with her elbow.
Will looks over. Frankie's sitting on the arm of the sofa, ignoring his juice in favor of spinning some of Gerard's tiny monsters around. The mummy, he thinks, looks really nauseous. It's a nice counterpoint to how Gerard's smiling, shy and a little quiet. That's news enough; Gerard practically never has his head up, let alone smiling. Will can't actually remember the last time s/he saw him with a facial expression.
"Did Mikey say anything?" Gabe asks, through a mouthful of cereal. Alicia makes a face, and he swallows before speaking again. "I mean. Relatively. For Mikey."
"It's his brother." Alicia shrugs. "I don't think he thinks it's any of his business, as long as Gerard's happy." Privately, Will questions the logic of Alicia and Mikey, but they seem happy, so what the hell. Besides, s/he's already got ten bucks in the betting pool that they don't last six months. "And whatever, Frankie's nice. And his temper's a lot better, so he's way less likely to knock out a window if they have a fight."
"When they have a fight," Will corrects her. The one time s/he'd made out with Frankie had been pretty good, but then Frankie had freaked because, you know, shapeshifter. It had just been the once. "He's all temperamental and shit."
Gabe looks around. "Speaking of shitty tempers, where's Pete?"
"He gets to see Hank first thing," Alicia says, "since Dr. McCoy's got that conference thing tonight in Manhattan. He had to reschedule everybody."
"Huh," Gabe says. He looks thoughtful. "I thought he would've been with that guy he's been sniffing around lately -- you know, not tall, red hair, has a force field."
"Patrick," Will says. Nice kid, but really skittish around people. S/he tried going out with him once, but it had been a dismal failure. On the other hand, s/he had only tried as a girl... "What, they're going out now?"
"They're not going out," Alicia says. "Um. Exactly. It's a. Thing." She wiggles her fingers. "You'd have to ask him for specifics. All I know is when you mention Patrick's name around him, he gets the dippy face."
"The dippy face?" Will pouts. "I missed *dippy face*?"
"You broke up, like, last year," Gabe reminds hir. "Remember? You started messing around with me around the same time?"
Will smiles. "Like I'd forget that," s/he teases, and grins when Gabe flushes a little.
"Oh my God," Alicia says. She crosses her arms with just enough force to send a tiny tremor across the table, nudging Gabe's cereal. He yelps and steadies it. "Jesus, just make out already, okay? It'd be less obvious."
Will looks the two of them and smiles a little. S/he thinks, sometimes, that the four of them need to branch out and start dating outside each other, because one girl + two boys + one shapeshifter is never ever going to = a good thing. But now Alicia's all weirdly settled with Mikey, and Pete's mooning over a nice boy with a force field.
Change is scary, s/he thinks, looking at Gabe. But not always bad.
"Hey," s/he says. "I was thinking about sneaking into town tonight and seeing a movie. You want to come with?"
"We're not supposed to sneak out," Gabe reminds hir, but he's smiling. "Remember? 'Heeeeeey, kids, it's Faaaaaaaaat--'"
"I'm not going to try and pick up guys," Will says, rolling hir eyes. "I just want to see a movie." S/he pauses. "With you."
Gabe blinks at hir for a second. "Are you -- is this a date?"
"Yes," Alicia practically yells, and Will hears, in hir head: Duh. S/he glances over at Mikey, who's blinking back at hir innocently.
"A date," Gabe says again. "Where, like, people can see."
"That was the idea," Will says, shifting in hir seat. "But if you don't want to, I mean, that's fi--"
"No, what, are you kidding?" Gabe punches hir in the arm, lightly. "I was waiting for you to do this months ago, moron. I just figured you were more interested in hooking up with me in the safety and privacy of lights out."
Will gapes at him for a second, then bursts out laughing.
"That wasn't supposed to be funny," Gabe says. He sounds mild enough, but his forehead's all furrowed, like he's thinking.
"No, it's..." Will trails off, waving a hand. "I'll tell you later. After the movie, maybe."