Work Text:
At first, despite the other child’s blue skin, Wayne doesn’t even notice him. Even when he does, eyes falling on him in the moments between gold stars and piano songs, his eyes skate right over him. Something in the back of his head catches on the blueblueblue of the child’s skin and the bright solemn green of his eyes and chants minemineminemine and Wayne doesn’t see anything wrong with that. It’s like the blue child is already a part of him the way Mother has been for a while and Father might be one day.
He does notice the way others look at the blue child. He sees how the teacher’s lip curls a little, hidden behind the clipboard in her hand, as the child introduces himself as ‘Syx’ and proceeds to spell it on the board in strange, lightning-shaped letters without prompting. The teacher subtly erases it while the boy’s back is turned, despite Mary and Anthony’s names still being up there, and draws a single number on the board: 6 . Syx flushes indigo when he sees it, but doesn’t say anything, just takes his seat. The other children don’t seem to notice beyond a little light laughter that fizzles quickly, but Wayne watches the teacher with sharp eyes until she turns away shakily and calls the next name.
When she calls Wayne’s name her voice shakes. He hasn’t looked away from her once. When he stands at the front of the room, he says his name and turns to write it on the board. Casually, as though it is nothing out of the ordinary, he turns the teacher’s six into the ‘s’ in ‘Syx’. She gives an aborted move forwards, as though to change it once again, and he snaps his eyes to her, glaring. He can feel the heat building behind his eyes. She gasps and falls back, clutching her clipboard to her chest.
He looks at Syx out of the corner of his eyes. The boy is holding his minion’s ball tightly with both arms, head down but eyes wide at Wayne’s writing. He looks happier.
Minemineminemine .
--
“Mother,” he says on the way home from school, peering out the limo’s window at the slate-grey walls of the prison fence. Mother turns to look at him fully.
“Yes, darling?” She asks. He doesn’t look at her. He thinks, as he stares, that he could see through the walls, could find Syx there with his eyes and watch him all the time, but he doesn’t have time to watch Syx all the time and keep him and Mother safe, he just doesn’t.
“I know what I want for my birthday,” he tells her. He doesn’t look away from the prison wherein Syx resides, wherein Syx is building a tiny robot to pop corn kernels for Minion.
Minemineminemine .
“Lovely, darling,” says Mother, turning to peer at the prison too.
--
He gets his wish much sooner than his December birthday (it’s August now, just the barest stirrings of autumn, the first week of school). Mother first pays a visit to the school with her lawyers, informing the teacher that continued discrimination against a non-human child with human-like sentience will no longer be tolerated. She never specifies which child she is speaking of, really. They will both be her sons soon enough.
She then goes to Metro City Prison. She takes Wayne along so he can see for himself the living conditions of the imprisoned and the precautions taken for their well-being. They get the grand tour; she’s thinking she might donate some money for renovations of the walls and rooms Syx has destroyed for science.
The Warden looks worried.
“If Syx has done anything wrong,” he begins, but Mother cuts him off.
“Clearly it’s not his fault he was raised by convicted felons,” she says over whatever he was going to say. Good. Wayne can feel the heat building in his eyes. He blinks it away, looking around for Syx and Minion. Syx is a few rooms over, wearing a helmet that forms a cage of lasers around him. Minion, in a tiny robot suit, is lobbing small rocks and bits of scrap metal to be flung away by the lasers.
Wayne tugs gently on Mother’s shirt.
“Go on, dear,” she says, and he trots off through the halls, homing in on Syx, flashing his visitor’s pass and Scott smile at any of the guards who try to stop him. It isn’t long until he’s looking at Syx without anything solid in the way.
Syx looks up at him in surprise, mouth gaping a little. The lasers crackle in the silence.
Wayne studies (what appears to be) Syx’s bedroom. It’s small and grey, with a mattress up against one wall and piles of scrap metal against the other. He is standing by the far wall, helmet in place, Minion hiding a pebble behind his back guiltily. There are bits of scrap metal embedded in the walls.
“Wayne?” Says Syx shakily. He almost steps forwards before seeming to remember the laser helmet. He reaches a hand up carefully to press a button on the side, deactivating it, and removes it. Minion drops the pebble discreetly.
“What are you doing?” Asks Wayne. There are bars between him and Syx; he pushes them out of the way with a gentle squeal of metal and steps through. Syx stands helplessly against the far wall still, like a small animal. That voice in the back of Wayne’s head comes back, minemineminemine , and he steps carefully across the debris minefield to reach the blue boy.
He’s within touching range when Mother’s voice says, “Wayne, darling, did you move these bars -” there’s a pause as she glares at the Warden, who motions around himself sheepishly, “on dear Syx’s door?”
He pauses with a hand on Syx’s trembling shoulder. The boy is thin, like a bird. If Wayne squeezed his fist he could break all of the bones in Syx’s shoulder with the same ease and speed as he pushed those bars out of the way. But, as Mother always says, the important thing isn’t that he could, but that he won’t.
“Yes, Mother,” he says quietly. “They were in the way, so I moved them.” The Warden chokes a bit, but Wayne doesn’t care. He’s not important right now.
Wayne keep looking at Syx, studying him. He doesn’t seem injured or even ill, but he’s an alien these humans don’t even begin to understand, much like Wayne himself, and Wayne finds himself loathe to leave the other boy with humans who can’t hope to understand him.
“Is he alright, darling?” Mother sounds concerned. Wayne starts to nod, but realizes he hasn’t actually asked Syx. He looks questioningly at the other boy, but he doesn’t nod back.
“Warden?” He asks, the same way Wayne might say “Mother” if he were confused and needing comfort. Something in his chest shudders territorially. Syx should look to him if he needed comfort, not a human.
“Lady Scott and her son Wayne would like to take you home with them, Syx,” the man says gently. Syx looked shocked.
“You’ll of course still be allowed to visit,” Mother said softly, coaxing like Syx was a small frightened animal. “We understand these people are important to you and we don’t want to take away what makes you feel safe.”
Wayne notices the careful phrasing and Syx’s continued hesitation. He touches the hand not already on Syx’s shoulder to his cheek and raises his face so they can look each other in the eye.
“Syx,” he says, still quiet. “Come home with us. Mother put an aquarium all through the house so Minion can swim with you everywhere, and there’s a lab you can use where it’s okay if things explode, and we can ride to school together in Father’s limo and on weekends we’ll come visit your uncles here,” because he had been paying attention during Syx’s introduction in class and not laughing at the royal blue of his skin.
Syx looks down at Minion for a moment, who peers back contemplatively, and finally nods his head.
--
Father doesn’t seem to notice they’ve acquired another child, or if he does he clearly doesn’t mind Syx’s presence. Mother already informed all the servants, who have a room cleaned and ready to paint any color Syx might desire by the time they return from the prison. Minion’s aquarium is very large and full of small tasty fish for him to eat whenever he feels peckish, though he spends most of his time swimming slow, absorbed laps of Syx’s laboratory and workshop. He doesn’t seem to grasp the ideas and concepts Syx puts forward (only Syx knows for sure), but he does seem very interested.
Wayne keeps a table in the corner full of art supplies. He often sits in with Syx once his homework is done to prevent accidents or fires. He doesn’t usually need to step in (Syx’s first lesson from his science tutors was on using fire extinguishers) but every once in a while Syx manages something spectacularly destructive (see: the Popcorn Fiasco) and Wayne is there in a flash, putting out the fire and moving Syx safely out of harm’s way.
Mostly he colors pages from meditative coloring books Mother finds for him, with small animals or mandalas or flowers. It improves his fine motor control and helps him learn to moderate his strength, which is a concern now what with Syx around all the time.
It was a concern with Mother, too, but Mother and Syx were different: they were fragile in different ways. It sometimes bothered Wayne that his people were so breakable, but it also somehow seemed...expected. Wayne had to protect them from invaders or anyone who might hurt them, and that felt right to Wayne. Having Syx in his home, close by, within arm’s reach should something bad happen (see: Black hole) made something in his chest purr in contentment: mine .
--
There were new rules the household had to grow used to, such as diet (Syx, understandably, refused to eat fish), precautions taken (fire extinguishers in every major hallway rather than every floor, etc), and schedule (Syx was ready very quickly in the morning, but he took hours to coax from his lab if they let him in before breakfast). Overall, the majority of the staff thought Syx’s big eyes and inquisitive personality were adorable and were content to let him experiment as he wished. Minion, once he’d shown he wasn’t interested in biting anyone, was always able to find someone to help him into his aquatic hamster ball should he wish to follow Syx down the hallway rather than through the pipes. There was an incident where a servant slapped Syx’s hand away at dinner. Syx himself had sat frozen (likely no one had ever dared slap him before, due to either the uncles at prison or fear of his blue skin), but Mother had been halfway out of her seat in anger and the man had no time to step away before Wayne was in front of him, shielding Syx and nearly snarling. The other servants were horrified, hands covering their mouths, shuffling to the side so they wouldn’t be seen as supporting him. There was a moment of frozen inaction wherein nobody moved.
Father’s newspaper folded in half with an audible snap .
“I think,” he said calmly, putting his folded paper aside to pick up his silverware, “That you should pack your bags, Mr. Wicker.”
The man was quickly hustled from the room by two other servants, red in the face and blustering on about “it’s not proper ”. Mother wiped her mouth with her napkin elegantly and sat back down. Syx, still frozen in place, flinched against the weight of Wayne’s hand as it landed on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, Syx,” he said, and settled into his own seat to eat, watching Syx unfreeze and return to his own food slowly.
--
School was different also. Mother had smiled the teacher into submission and made it clear Syx was a product of his environment and if Mother wasn’t happy with the environment she’d be sure to move them both somewhere else, and the teacher may not like Syx but she adored Wayne. Seeing Wayne’s attitude towards Syx changed the children’s own attitudes quite a bit. It was odd, they concluded, watching Wayne’s serene expression as he watched Syx put together a paint bomb and occasionally holding parts Syx handed to him absentmindedly, but ultimately if hanging out with Wayne meant letting Wayne’s weird blue brother make cool stuff next to them then that was fine, and clearly Mrs. O’Leary didn’t understand the social order by the way she argued against Syx so vehemently.
“Children,” she’d say, with a voice as sickeningly sweet as chalky candy. “Why don’t you leave...Syx, here, to paint and you go play outside, hmm? Doesn’t the sunshine look so nice today?” They’d all sit, watching her, watching the way Syx’s head perked up and Wayne’s eyes grew more stormy as he gazed across the room at her, hands still full of Legos and Syx’s extra wrench. Sarah, the class’s unofficial leader after Wayne, made a soft questioning noise to Wayne, which quickly negated itself when Wayne turned back to Syx, his back to Mrs. O’Leary dismissively.
“I’m going to play with Legos too,” Sarah said decisively, and as one the class clambered down on their knees next to the industrial bins of Legos and proceeded to ignore Mrs. O’Leary’s increasingly desperate attempts to regain control.
--
As they grow and develop more and more their alien characteristics became clearly evident. Syx was unnaturally thin, with a streamlined musculature and a large round head. His ears and neck were incredibly sensitive to touch by another living thing, though he seemed alright with clothing touching there and almost seemed to prefer the back of his neck remain covered at all times.
Wayne’s hair began growing in with white strands. Mother decided homeschooling would serve them better than public or private schooling, due to Syx’s nearly impossible comprehension of the sciences and Wayne’s charisma (see: The Walk-Out That Lasted Six Days) capable of influencing an entire school. Thus no one saw their newly-emerging physical features but Mother, the servants, the family physician, and the Warden, who still visited often to check on Syx and stay involved in his life. He’s vocally amazed at everything Syx invents: self-popping popcorn, manual labor robots to make construction safer, even the de-gun (though that’s less public than the others). Mother quickly patents everything, setting the money made aside for Syx’s future and, with Syx’s permission, Wayne’s future as well. The Warden agrees with her: Syx looks quite striking in a white lab coat with a black undersuit underneath.
While Syx expands upwards and obtains wiry muscle, Wayne expands in all directions and is positively overflowing with muscle. They make quite the pair when they walk the town, Syx’s long lanky frame loping along beside Wayne’s slower, steadier feet, hands swinging between them, interlocking. Minion clomping behind them in his gorilla-bot suit, stopping to sniff experimentally at flowers and grinning at passing dogs on leashes.
--
“But why?” Asks Wayne, holding coils of wire and preparing for Syx’s latest explosion.
“Science!” Syx exclaims, ready to connect the fuses, his welding mask pulled low. Minion nods from the walls. Wayne winces, still smiling.
--
The children at Syx’s middle school call him ‘Blueberry’ and dunk his things in blue paint when he’s distracted. They trip him in the hallways and jam blue gum into the lock on his lab’s door so he can’t leave for hours.
They stop after Wayne’s first visit.
(Behind his back they call him ‘Hawk’ for the way his eyes focus on you like he’s estimating how quickly he could eat you, and isn’t impressed by what he sees.)
Syx remains blissfully unaware.