ice

{twenty-four, non binary, he/they} || jason ‘jay’ isolde is a mutant with the ability of cryokinesis - the ability to manipulate ice. they’ve been in new york for three years where they spend most of their time as a mortuary assistant. when i think of them, i think of burning your tongue on hot coffee, the bite of a needle making neat sutures, fingers pale and prickling in the cold. they are affiliated with no one ( neutral ).

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‘I really do just want to shut up.’ So Samson gives him that, he goes quiet, closes his eyes and leans into the sensations. 

It’s a pleasant shiver up his spine as Jay’s cool fingers move down to the bottom of his skull, very top of his spine. His breath is cold, making his hair raise with the quiet, barely audible ‘thanks’ brushing across his bare neck. 

They lean in, curl up, and Samson stays quiet. Only a slightly shaky exhale betrays the fact Jay’s sapping all the heat from him. It turns from quiet distraction to a massage without him really noticing. Only when he hits a tight knot of muscle and Samson makes a small, pained noise does he really take in what’s happening. Rarely is Samson the one receiving all the attention.

“It’s fine,” he pre-emptively assures Jay after the sound slipped out,“’s tight, is all.”

“You can talk though.” Jay finished lamely into the near-silence. There hadn’t been something Sam had said yet that he hadn’t enjoyed hearing, maybe it was the scantness in vocabulary so opposed to his own endless stream of verbosity but it was a hook nonetheless. 

There are tremors now and then that he wishes he could warm rather than compound but he tries to soothe with what he has. An almost bibliographical knowledge of pre-evolved anatomy rather than any accredited technique got him here, to be able to see the careful lines of muscle fibre and their curves as a guide for motion had served him well. He’d charged 5 bucks for 5 minutes during finals in college, though back then he’d only been able to manage it while wearing surgical gloves. 

         the young man is certainly worse for wear. analytics observe the changes since the last time they met with the memory of his appearance, and… had it be anyone else, the colony would have assumed a death in the near future. still possible, but less likely. there are many things that humans need to be kept up and running smoothly, and by every appearance it seems that jason is missing… well, most of them, if not all. but mutants are different. more evolved. less needy, under the right circumstances.

         “we aren’t busy at the moment. if you would like to come in, you’re welcome to.” stepping aside so that jason can find some solace from any prying eyes. “inform us of the recent developments that have taken place.” obviously, he’s having trouble with his mutation ( not uncommon ) but the cause and eventual result of that? unclear. it would take many hours to pin down even a possibility, and equipment unable to be kept in an apartment.

         shutting the door behind them, the eyes allow another precursory look. whatever is going on with jay, none of it is in equilibrium with his body. “how quickly has this set in?”

the scan is so clinical it’s almost like there are certain markers to hit on jay’s body, akin to re-calibrating some kind of software. a careful regimen of electric blankets, heat packs, hot water bottles and a calorically dense diet alongside a frankly impressive alaskan expedition wardrobe he’d managed to accumulate meant that survival had been ensured. barely.

“thank you.” whatever they see must be pitiful enough that isaac allows jay inside, the use of ‘we’ has him narrowly stopping himself from peering around looking for the apparent company. he fixes his eye over the left shoulder of his old colleague. jay flexed their fingers, enjoying the more analytical breakdown than the emotion contorted words spat up like pulled teeth he’d use for others. “i have some control over the temperature of moisture in my immediate vicinity, albeit control is simply a word i am using for lack of a better one because it seems to be more instinct and chaos than anything else.” a pause for breath. “this also swiftly reduces my already lowered core temperature.”

There was a clear difference between the two and how they were handling this situation. Jay was more on the nervous side while Daichi found this all amusing. It was rare for him to come across another who was like him, there was Yazmin but she wasn’t the same. But this guy? Just like Daichi. Only steps away from him, Daichi stopped, hands resting in his pockets as he laughed loudly. “You won’t be interrogated,” he said. “Because you’ll be leaving, with me. Let’s go!” 

          for the warning joseph gives, his friend doesn’t appear to be willing to turn tail and run. a good quality, normally… but far from what they want, now. “no, no…” it’s hard to speak through the crunch and twist of bones, through the sharp stitch of feathers bursting through skin. “jay, you can’t—” their spine shifts and writhes beneath tormented flesh, cutting off another warning. when they try again, desperate, the only sound that comes out is a warbled hiss—internally, the changes are becoming more radical by the second.

          but it doesn’t take long for the outside to catch up. his face bursts forward, skull lengthening and thinning to fit the dromaeosaur crawling its way through to the present. his grip falters on the shelf, thumb shrinking back into his wrist and twisting painfully toward the side. the three fingers that remain lengthen and arm themselves with wicked talons, quickly coated in the wing that forms around them. unbalanced, he crumples against the shelf, desperately flapping to keep himself upright—before at long last, a tail ( fanned out ) rips its way out behind him.

          if desperation alone was enough to keep his mind, joseph might have been able to claw his way to victory. as it stands, all he can do is sink to the background, unaware of what will go on when the dineobellator takes charge of the situation.

strange doesn’t begin to cover the next couple of seconds; the silhouette beneath his hands starts to contort impossibly and he makes a sympathetic, pained sound as the bones audibly crunch. the horrified fluttering of his hand away to clasp over his mouth starts as joseph doubles over and there are... grey feathers? his friend can’t finish whatever they were about to say, head morphing to dispense with lips entirely. though he should back up, jay stays close with hands hovering uselessly as though they could draw out the horrible pain he had to be going through. 

the beat of wings has jay slinking backward, raising forearms up in front of his face as the skitter of talons becomes audible against the floor. “woah, woah, okay, we’re okay. we’re okay, right? we’re good, it’s chill.” jay takes to using the low, almost melodic tone he used around new foster kittens. he glances out of the stacks, brain kicking into such high gear that he’s surprised he doesn’t hear some kind of whirring sound. there’s an older gentleman shuffling by but little other activity. they had to get the fuck out of there. 

“you in there dude? fuck you’re awesome look at your plumage, what the fuck. okay. game plan, i shove you into that little spot you got in the back and you don’t claw my face off on the way. even if i really deserve it.” he kept a careful non-threatening posture to accompany the whisper, willing himself not to make any sudden movements. 

“Mm, that’s fair. I guess you are more used to it since I doubt I’m your first late night visitor” Atticus said with a small smile as his eyes tracked the cat who was staying out of the way. “Ah smart, competition can drive success, that’s a saying or something, right?” He asked. Atticus had a competitive streak himself, but it often manifested as just wanting to do better then those around him, whether that have been getting better grades in school, or having the photo that gets printed over his colleagues. He was sure that if had been better at sports, it would have shown up there too. But he knew enough about himself that if he wasn’t good at whatever it was, then he couldn’t get upset about others being better then him.

“Oh yikes, I’m sorry you had to go through that” Atticus said, grimacing at the idea. “Well, did you at least get a few licks in? It’s fair if you didn’t though, I’m just glad you didn’t get super hurt”He added before nodding “Yeah, you ain’t wrong about that. A lot of people here just don’t want to deal with anything out of the ordinary. Which, like, fair. But it means that sometimes things go undetected that really should be detected.” Atticus murmured before glancing at the bag they were pulling things from “I don’t want you to use up stuff that you might need for someone else. If you would feel more comfortable using it, you can. But I can also just bite down on this shirt” He waved the crumbled up shirt up and down. 

“Oh yes, I remember those days” Atticus smiled softly, though it faltered when the other kept talking. “Yeah, I know, I just don’t like boring people” He laughed weakly. “But the energy bars are a good idea, might steal that” He said before using his non-injured arm to do a jazz hand “Yay, glad I pass your health screening” He winked, but he was smiling. At the comment about vigilant alias’s, Atticus felt himself tense up. He forced himself to relax again, but he knew it had been noticeable. Would it be safe to talk to Jay about the Institute? They had been having a fine conversation, Atticus wasn’t really looking to screw that up when the other still had to finish stitching them up. “Haha, yeah, exactly”

.

“Manhattan? All hours.” Jay readily agreed with Atticus’ educated guess. “I just never stand it when anyone tells me I can’t do something, probably not always an excellent quality but y’know, you work with what you’ve got.” They shrugged, exuding a calmness that seemed at odds with the idea they were talking about as they deftly worked on the wound. “What about you? What’s your thing other than actual honest to God healing hands.”

“Me too, I should have been quicker about giving up my shit but I’d just done the graveyard shift and basically had a path to my bed in my brain and nothing else.” They got the medical grade bonding glue he’d managed to snag the second it had hit the market. “Uh. You could say that.” They gulped guiltily around the certainty that the person had left that alleyway with a nasty case of frostbite, possibly enough to warrant amputation. It was an accident but it gnawed at Jay constantly. “I wouldn’t use it on someone else Atticus, I would use it on you right now if you were any other patient. That shirt has been through enough.”

They got a small dose of local anaesthetic ready, hip cocked casually against the counter as they loaded it so that Atticus could see what they were using. “Talking about yourself isn’t boring.” They replied with an offhand shrug, eyes on the spot as they leaned forward. “S’gonna be a small pinch.” Jay smoothly administered the treatment. “Not stealing, freely given, in fact I’ll grab you some out of my stash under the counter. The bodega owners of Jackie’s I told you about? They basically stocked my up for life on those things, there are boxes of them shoved everywhere.” At the jazz hands he laughed, biting down at the wink and pinkening at the back of his neck, his ears. He felt wrong-footed as Atticus’ eyes dipped away from his in discomfort and he drifted around to better look at his back again, feeling hot prickling on his forearms he changed the subject entirely. They put the barest pressure a few centimetres away from the cut with gloved fingertips. “How’s that? S’the pain a little quieter?”

Humanly impossible. As soon as the thought is had, he can’t let it go. Maybe he’s inhuman. Can that even happen? Someone who’s just… Normal suddenly becoming a mutant?

He wants to ask. It’s all he can think to say, now. Even as his mind wanders back to Nadir, the only mutant he’d knowingly met. He was born like that, never looked or felt normal. August has been trusted with some quiet conversation with Nadir, about the struggles growing up, the few friends he had. August could only relate to feeling out of place for a mind that ticked over and got caught, often, on stray thoughts. Habits. Routines. Nadir was good at shifting the mood, calling August a big dumb jock after he’d essentially said he was popular at high school and on the football team.

“Are you…“ he begins, he worries it’ll sound bad. Like he’s judging. August’s mind is drawing a blank, though. He’s latched onto the thought and can’t let it go. Mutant. Nadir. Sand. B— “Maybe you’re a mutant? I don’t know if it can be a later in life thing, but…”

His eyes refocus on Jay, on the cold hospital corridor, the smooth linoleum floor beneath their feet. “I don’t know how else you’d survive.”

Though they had spent lunches together it’s almost like Jay can see something get stuck between August’s brain and mouth. A catch somewhere, turning the thought over and deciding whether the edges would cut. They want to lean into it as they always had with pure curiosity, rather than turning to run; the momentum Jay had been riding through the heart-wrenchingly busy holiday season had petered to a shuffling crawl. So many times he’d been the one to drop truth that no one wanted to hear if only because solutions were better than hurt feelings, that same candour felt less cutting here in Jay’s natural habitat, less damning. 

Not long before they made it out of Winter, a few more weeks and things would pick up, they had to.

He curls his shoulders in, millimetre by millimetre. Am I? It’s so gentle, after all of the worrying, it’s given with palpable worry. Their stomach still swoops down below the basement level to somewhere colder in spite of the kindness, the words are out there and the relief still wars with the dismay.

Jay is no longer skating. Not whipped into a savage little spin by the blades beneath his feet carving graceful lines into the ice of the lake, his jacket fallen off one slight shoulder to hang loose like a broken wing at his side.

As though the sun was snuffed out like a candle, there’s abruptly nothing in every direction. The dark crawls over him like a suffocating blanket.

“I knew there was something wrong with you, I told you but do you ever listen? When I told you I knew what was best for you?”

The bottle of ipecac sits empty on the edge of the sink, as vacant as Jay feels slumped to his knees on the woolly bathmat beside the tub, trembling, trying to regain any strength at all.

“You left me no choice junior, why won’t you understand? This is for your own good.” Fat crocodile tears slip down her beautiful cheek to slap the sticky linoleum floor, catching the shine of the street light outside around a put-upon sigh. “I wish you would just listen to me, I wish you wouldn’t make me do this.”

Jay flinches as Nana hefts the six plastic bags of ice down into the tub with a thud, the roar of cold water making his heart rate double and gasps slip out of him, fists clench until half-moons dug into his palms.

“All you have to do is listen to me.”

He curls up tighter, pressing his forehead to the floor hard enough that static fizzes on the inside of his eyelids. “Please... I already said I’m sorry.” Jay struggles weakly away from the neatly manicured hands; still barely five feet tall and tiny, all bones and angles.

“You’re hurting me when you do this, Jason.” Nana murmured as though saying goodnight rather than lifting him over frozen water, he strained bodily away from the cold like a terrified cat.

The second of silence before being dunked was interrupted only by the sound of ice cubes clinking innocently against the sides of the tub and his horrified gasp. The shock of it, the second he has one foot in sears through his entire skeleton and comes out as a high hiss through clenched teeth. The sucking, shocked punch of breath he inhales as he’s forced below the water hurts his lungs.

By the time he’s folded into the floor his chest is stuttering with rapid, shallow breaths, and it hurts it fucking hurts. One look from her tells him he shouldn’t dare try to escape but the pain has his muscles jerking feebly against his will. The water line is only lapping at his sternum but isn’t that enough? After a few seconds of agony like a net of needles piercing skin, his toes bleed to numb.

“Nana--”

The palm between his shoulder blades that had been rubbing soothingly for a few seconds shoves lower still. It’s the closest he’s been to her all month and perfume fills his nose dizzyingly. The next few seconds are stuttered snapshots like a damaged tape, flickering static in between.

The container of salt on the counter. The empty ice bags hang over the lip of the trashcan. The cross above the door that used to have Jesus attached to remind you that he’s always watching, even while you shit. 

“I don’t want to do this,” he whines.

Nana sprinkles a handful of salt down from above and Jay makes a choked sound as the cold somehow gets impossibly worse. His heart’s about to break out through his diaphragm at the frozen burn. More salt. He wails, finally, tears streaming down his face, hands fly up to grip the edges of the tub but the claw in his shoulder keeps him down. Lower half still fully submerged in the icy water. 

“Do you understand now?”

One more hard shove and his face hits the surface, the ground drops out beneath him and he’s sucked abruptly down into darkness: a sheet of pond ice fractures jaggedly overhead, he sucks in a lungful of water, eyes winking out like dead stars.

Jay wakes to cat breath whuffing over his damp forehead. Jackie is perched nervously on his chest exuding concerned indignance. He slams palms down over his eyes and presses in hard before curling back into a full body stretch, ear scritches and paws on his collarbones slow his heart rate steadily.

The hardest part are the things his mind bombards him with of after, how when Nana had pulled him from the tub Jay had sobbed out ‘thank you’ and meant it with every fibre of his being. She pressed kisses to his forehead and wrapped him in a fluffy guest towel while he had bawled out nonsense intermixed with desperate apologies.

He stretches again, easing back into the reliably carved out welcome of his own meticulously orchestrated loneliness. Someone practices a violin somewhere above him and a broom joins in to thump a complaining bass with muffled yelling for a chorus.

          there’s never a good time for joseph’s mutation to make an appearance, but there are certainly better times⁠—this isn’t one of them. a library in the middle of the day? absolutely terrible. even if it’s not crowded, there’s a huge mess to be made. one they’re going to have to clean up, if they’re not fired first. but soon to be jobless or not, the plan of action at any time like this is to find somewhere safer to finish. somewhere they can wait out the storm and hopefully contain the damage to their own supplies… but the closet is far. too far.

          stumbling as his feet begin to change ( why here? why now? why do the worst parts always change first? ) he grabbed the nearest bookshelf to help right himself⁠—nearly tripping over jay in the process. hey. grimacing, they try not to panic. this is bad. this is really bad. this is really fucking bad. “hey,” he whispers back, voice strained. “jay, um… you need to go. please. right now.” 

.

jay blanches, hurriedly trying to stop crumbs from exploding down inside their hoody. they roll the chip bag up and shove it into their bag that hung on the back of the chair. the sudden movement out of the corner of their eye and the hand against the bookcase made jay start talking before they’d fully turned to their friend. 

“oh, oh sorry. i know i shouldn’t eat—” any thought of attempting to explain how quickly they burned through calories trying to keep warm died in jay’s throat seeing them stagger their weight against the bookshelf. they shot to their feet and darted to joseph’s side. “are you alright? are you gonna pass out? c’mon in here.” they murmur gently, trying to herd their friend the short few feet out of the main thoroughfare of the stacks into the genealogy section where they might get some privacy. 

they reach down with the hand not on joseph’s shoulder to start to dig insistently through their battered and fraying corduroy backpack for a bottle of water, re-hydration sachets and a snack. 

          visitors are almost entirely out of the question. coworkers avoid them even during shifts, unless something specific requires their attention, and outside of the workplace the colony has found no need for human companionship. even in the case neither of those things were true, the time they spend at the apartment they’ve cultivated is relatively minor. bits and pieces of moments, enough to consider personal projects, and then it’s back into the fray of employment—the collective doesn’t require rest as a whole, and therefore is not keen on accepting the same benefits the less-evolved are privy to.

          given all of this, the knock on the door is unexpected. not jarring to organisms that work with the unpredictable, but something of a surprise nonetheless. the legs move, carrying them to the door that stands between them and the unknown visitor, face expressionless ( as usual ) as the door swings open. 

          ah, recognition. 

          “jason,” the voice greets, tone level. “we weren’t expecting you so soon.”

jay’s knees shake, still recovering from his propensity to subway surf half of manhattan even after losing most of his mass in the past three months, nothing aside from the soles of his shoes making contact with any surface if he could help it. 

there’s something different, the years of little contact having left evidence in the way that they carry themselves rather than actually altering their appearance. a still calm to them that is more pronounced than ever, wearing their own frame like a suit of armour. 

Daichi almost stalked over to him until his eyes caught sight of the fractals on the ground. I’m not doing that, he thought to himself, eyebrows furrowed confusion. His ability didn’t run rampant without him knowing, his family made sure to remind him that many years ago. So if it wasn’t him then it was– “Well, well, well! I’m guessing we’re the same,” Daichi said, now stepping closer and closer to the other. “Scared?” 

the record store had found itself busier than usual. be that for the new pearl jam, the new neutral milk hotel, or the new destiny’s child, david wasn’t quite sure – likely a combination of all three. why three big bands ( though god knows fans of neutral milk hotel would never admit to them being well-known ) would release albums within the span of two weeks from each other, david wished he knew ! oh, it had been both a curse ( spending much more time on his feet, but surely thanking god he didn’t have to hear their thoughts ) and a blessing ( oh, the tips ! ).

as he finished ringing up a copy of destiny’s child by the eponymous, he found himself approached by a familiar face. a friendly face. the other was still adorned from head-to-toe in winter gear – he did wish he could help, but… god, he could not say he missed hearing thought so similar to his own. when he ran upon mutants ( who seldom had the chance of not exposing themselves to david – quite lucky that he, too, was a mutant with no nefarious purposes towards mutantkind ), he found that a good fourth of them were struggling just as poorly as he was… jay being no exception.

he shook it from his head. “ man, if you’re trying to find a copy of ‘yield,’ ‘in the aeroplane,’ or ‘destiny’s child’… i’m, like, pretty sure we’re selling out the day we’re getting them. ” ( naturally, he had been far too distracted by the amount of customers to notice the man who decided to cause the slightest bit of chaos ! ) 

david had such an easy-going nature that it wasn’t hard to see how much he thrived in retail. one quirk of that crooked grin and people seemed to soften. somehow lately he’d seemed even more light on his feet than normal, as though some sort of burden had finally lifted. 

“i came to browse not to fight off record store desecrators, i don’t even know what i'm lookin’ for.” the phrase was subjectively about music but extended generally to the state of jay’s life since the new year, david one of the rare people that he’d been seeing regularly all winter. 

   ❛ no but like, hear me out. what if aliens are actually living with us already―― think about it, they’d have some sort of like …. camouflaging device. that’d way they’d look just like us, right. blending in, learning all about us ….. it’s cool, huh.  ❜ chlorine’s napping peacefully beside him on the fire escape, as he rambles off to jay. ❛ makes sense, doesn’t it? i’m like positive, i’ve encountered like three or four. what about you? ❜ / @frostbiite​

“Everyone was probably too drunk to notice” he shrugged, finally throwing the remains of his cigarette to the floor before squishing it with the sole of his shoes. In those galas, everyone was always too concerned with how they looked, probably running to the bathroom just to check on the state of their hair and clothes at every chance they got and that kind of anxiety was always taken care of by having one too many drinks and just engaging in different kinds of conversations and silly dances. 

“No, not really” maybe if it was another person saying it, it might have been a lie that was conjured only to fool themselves, however in all of his life, Riley had never given up on anything, not even when things looked particularly difficult or even impossible, not even when everyone asked him too and especially not when it seemed like the only reasonable decision to make. Maybe he was just stubborn, maybe even a little foolish, but Riley always kept fighting and beating the odds at every chance he got. Besides, medical school seemed like piece of cake, compared to some other things he had experience in life. “I don’t really like to make plans,” the thought of running away had only crossed his mind once, when Levi’s father had died, he had thought that both of their families should just move, a bit too young and scared, an apparently normal child with two mutant parents who he had just realized, could be the targets of some very awful people. 

He had stopped being afraid once he followed Levi and joined The Brotherhood, sometimes it still scared him a bit, but at least he didn’t feel like running away anymore. “Do you have anything you would like to do before you retire and leave me alone in this tiring hospital?” it felt like a deep question, not really suited for a small break from work “get rich? steal from a bank? buy some fast cars?”

.

Jay nodded in agreement, the booze had truly been flowing and by the time things had tried to kick off at the end of the night he’d been pleasantly buzzed to the point that he’d barely worried. 

“Wow, you’re build different, huh?” Jay laughed slightly nervously, the drop out rates for pre-med were ridiculously high and he’d known several friends that for the sake of their health had had to leave the program. Riley continued to impress, able to take seemingly anything in his stride no matter what life threw at him. “Oh man, I stopped actually planning anything years ago ‘cause life just happens how it fuckin’ wants anyway but it’s nice to daydream.” 

“Oh yeah, I’m going hard or going home. Nothing like a little grand theft auto, d’you know I've never owned a car? Got my license but never had one myself. Do go on with the get rich line Riley, you make it sound so simple I’m intrigued.”