Callisto and Fred

[x-nothungry.livejournal.com]

A chance meeting between Fred and Callisto reveals just how small the world is...



All the change that came with living at the Mansion had altered Fred fundamentally. He was in school again, he was trying to figure out his mutation, he was learning how to be sociable. All of this had made Fred a different person; better, in some way.


But he still had his idiosyncrasies. Like his insomnia, for example. Fred had...a lot on his mind, and hadn't been able to sleep.He decided to pass the time till dawn in the garage. Last time he'd wandered into Salem, he'd hit a curb while taking a turn, and his old Dodge pickup hadn't been running quite right since. While is was pushing 2 a.m., it still seemed as good a time as any for him to take out his tools and see what he could do about getting his baby working right again. He'd poured his toolbox out in the bed of the truck, and several photos and knickknacks had spilled out with them. 'Just as well', he thought, 'I needed to clean the back out anyhow.'

Currently Fred had a small cassette radio player next to him under the front of the truck, and hummed along to the meandering old country song as he reached into his motor to try and liberate one of the older serpentine cables that had knocked loose. He could've swore he'd heard someone walking up, but chalked it up to the static of the old beat up radio...

"Are you some kind of redneck?"

Callisto had known, when she and Garrison had towed that Crown Victoria into a quiet corner of the mansion garage, that it was going to take some doing to get it up to scratch. What she didn't realize was quite what a state it was in. Her initial assessment had been right: the fixes were all pretty cheap and but for man hours the car wasn't a write-off, but the various replacements and tunings and timing corrections that were required, on top of her new job teaching the kids self-defense and all her existing (mostly self-inflicted) chores, meant the occasional late night in the garage was necessary.

Usually she liked it - it was peaceful, and her work was uninterrupted. Unless there's some lard-ass listening to country music under his piece-of-shit ride... she thought as she approached the truck and spotted the sizable legs sticking out from underneath it.

Fred spoke up, from under his truck, without missing a beat, "No Ma'am, I'm just a guy who thinks stereotypes are just about as idiotic as the people who go about flinging them around like monkey shit at the zoo." Defending himself from the 'Redneck' label had become almost second nature to Fred since he'd left Texas, and to be honest, it was a bit funny to him at this point. With a soft grunt, Fred hefted the front of his truck up with both hands and got to his feet. He set the truck back down behind him, and turned back to Callisto with a small smile on his face and an outstretched hand to the new woman, "Frederick Dukes. Pleased tah meetcha."

Assuming that Callisto had successfully parsed the near-giant's utterance and registered the implied insult (which was by no means a given as she always got a little confused when people spoke metaphorically), she had obviously decided not to react to it, as she simply took his hand in her own surprisingly firm grip and shook it, her long, slim fingers leaving four greasy black smears behind them. She didn't introduce herself. Her eyes narrowed a little, pout growing subtly poutier.

"You're new."

Fred chuckled and wiped the grease on his large T-shirt that proudly displayed the words 'Old Crow Medicine Show'. "I, uh...I'm really not all that new, ma'am. But I, uh...I do keep to myself a lot..." He grabbed a rag from the hood of his car and handed it to Callisto.

The young woman raised an eyebrow at this, but took the rag all the same, wiping her hands roughly before tossing it back and sticking them in her overall pockets. "Your radio doesn't. Can't hear myself think over there."

Fred chuckled and held up his hands, "Sorry bout that," he walked over and kicked the top of the radio, knocking the button that switched off the radio, "Local Country station has an oldies show that runs from sun up tah sundown and I love that old stuff..." He reached into the pocket of his jacket, that he'd thrown haphazardly to the side, and retrieved an old brass Zippo and a pack of Morley full-flavored 100's, "Smoke?" he said, and pointed the pack at Callisto.

She shook her head. "Not in the garage." This was framed more as an instruction than an explanation, and so Callisto raised an eyebrow as Fred lit up anyway.

"I didn't even know there was a local Country station." Her tone suggested that she wasn't sure what she was going to do with this new information, but it certainly wasn't going to be to re-tune her radio.

Fred dragged off the cigarette, letting the smoke fall out of his nose, "It's pretty high on the dial. I can only really pick it up out here late at night which, heh, works out pretty well I guess..." and scratched the back of his head. He wasn't really the best at meeting new people, but his time at Xavier's had helped...not much though. "So...you here working on your wheels?"

Callisto snorted. "Jesus no. I mean, not mine. A... friend's. Kinda. Someone else's." She tipped her head in the direction of the beaten-up cop car.

Fred looked over at the car in question, "Crown? Sweet. Little bastards have some go to'em," he dragged from his cigarette again and popped his hood as he reached for a nearby oil can, "So, if it ain't yours, why you working on it so late?"

She shrugged. "Gotta have a hobby."

Fred shrugged a little, "Fair enough," he said finally. He popped open the engine and poured the quart of oil into the machine, whistling a little as he did so, "Didn't mean to invade your space or anything, ma'am. Just...couldn't sleep is all."

Ma'am? Those eyebrows raised again. Callisto obviously hadn't noticed that she hadn't introduced herself. "Yeah. Well..." she trailed off, her eyes narrowing as her gaze fell on the now exposed engine.

Fred chucked the now-empty oil can into the back of the truck and closed up the oil reservoir. Fred walked to the back of the truck and pulled a RedBull from the bag that still had tools lying around it, "Wanna drink?" he said, as he cracked open the RedBull and guzzled down a large portion of its contents.

Callisto smiled faintly. "That stuff makes me a little jumpy," she said by way of refusal. "You might wanna take a look at your timing belt," she added offhandedly. "It's kinda worn."

Fred raised an eyebrow as he walked back towards the front of the truck, new belt in hand. He looked from Cal, to the engine, and back, and finally just chuckled a little, "Good eyes you got there, ma'am. That your, uh..." Fred hated saying the word 'power'. It just sounded so cliche. He waited a few awkward moments before he spoke up again, "...that what it is you can do? Pretty neat. Better'n me, I'd say. This..." he patted his sizable midsection, "...this is what I got."

Fred turned back to the engine and went about pulling out the older timing belt, "I really have to replace most of the damn thing, t'be honest. Me and a buddy of mine, Mark Hallett, put this thing together in the back of the Pull Apart he lived near. This belt actually came out of an old Mack, if ya can believe that..." Fred smiled a little, obviously in his own memories for a moment, as he tossed the old piece of rubber aside.

Callisto frowned, ignoring the reference to her enhanced vision in favor of addressing the name she heard. "Mark Hallett?" she repeated, unthinking.

"Yeah. Met him passing through Atlanta once and he and...well, he and Sue looked out for me a lot. Pretty much the only family I had there for a while," Fred placed the cigarette in his mouth and once again began digging through he jacket once more. He produced a small stack of photographs and handed one of them to Callisto. In it, an older black man, with skin that looked like one huge callous, was laughing and hoisting up a beer next to a young woman with multi-colored lights emanating from her bald head that seemed to emulate hair.

Callisto stared at the photograph for a long moment. "Atlanta, huh?" she murmured, her other hand escaping her pocket to run through her wild hair. The first smile Fred had seen from the woman that wasn't a smirk flickered across her face, before being replaced by that same thoughtful frown. She blinked quickly a couple of times and gave the photo another long look before passing it back.

Fred started quizzically at Callisto as he quietly replaced the photo in his jacket. Finally he spoke up, "Uh, yeah...Atlanta. He was a lot like me: didn't like to stay in one place too long, liked to work nights...I traveled with him a lot, mostly Midwest and Southeast....he's, uh, actually the one who suggested I come to Xavier's. You, uh...Do you know Mark, Ma'am? It looked like...well, uh, like you recognized him there..."

"I knew him. He used to live in the city."

Fred shrugged a little as he wrapped the new belt into the engine, "You mean New York? He told me about living there...well, a little. He didn't seem to like to talk about it, which makes sense, given that his accident happened there, and he said he'd lost a lot of friends...in..." Fred turned back as he finished his task, and looked back to Callisto, as if trying to place her in some forgotten corner in his head...

Callisto tipped her head to one side, that dry smirk reappearing. "Accident, huh?" Her tone was bitter. "I guess you could call it that."

Fred lit another cigarette with the remains of his first one, and glanced back up at the woman currently sharing the garage with him, his eyes less jovial than they earlier were "I, uh...I didn't catch your name earlier, ma'am...but I'm pretty sure I can guess...Callisto, right?"

"Right." The brunette stuck her hands back in her pockets, pursing her lips and tipping her head in confirmation. "I guess you get a cookie or something."

Fred looked at her strange, as if there were a sad story she didn't know she was part of, "He talked about you a lot. Most of it good, but, uh...It's none of my business or anything but, uh..." his smile completely left his face, "...he thinks you're dead, ma'am."

Callisto shrugged. "I thought he was. Life's full of these little surprises. I've found."

"Naw, ma'am, you don't get it...he,uh..." Fred scratched the back of his head, wondering how much of this was his to say, "He, uh, it felt like...he kinda blamed himself..."

At this, a short bark emerged from Callisto's throat that was perhaps her version of a laugh. She pulled her hands out of her pockets, her right holding a worn-looking, blackened zippo, which she flipped open and lit in a smooth one-handed trick-shot, and then back off again with a flip of the lid, without even looking at her hand.

"Pretty hard to take responsibility for anything when you're under half a tunnel of rubble," was all she said.

Fred's face contorted in a mixture of mild surprise and commiseration, "Is that what happened? Jesus...He, uh, he didn't talk about it much. Didn't talk about New York much...What the hell happened? Earthquake?"

"Gambit."

Fred furrowed his brows, "I, uh, I don't follow."

Callisto's eyes rolled heavenward. You're not meant to. She sighed, shaking her head in irritation. "Look, if you're that interested you should probably give your friend a call. If he didn't want to talk about it it's not my place." Her shoulders hunched a little as she stuffed her hands back into her pockets. "I have work to do," she said then, turning to go.

"Wait." Fred grabbed Callisto's shoulder and, knowing this was probably not the healthiest move on his part, moved quickly, "I have a better idea," he placed a tattered scrap of paper into her hand, with a number emblazoned upon it in faded magic marker, "Why don't you call him? You two...I know it's not my business, but it seems like you two should talk..."

Callisto jerked her shoulder out of his grip with a force he was not expecting from one so skinny, taking a few paces back, her fingers closing around the piece of paper of their own accord. When she spoke, it was through gritted teeth.

"Don't you ever fucking touch me again." This time when she turned and stalked away apace it was not back to her work she headed, but outside.


To his credit, Fred did not recoil. He merely sighed as he watched Callisto exit, and turned back to his truck, still opened and undone.

Suddenly, he didn't so much feel like working. Fred took another picture from his jacket, this one only of Mark Hallett, whom he apparently didn't know as well as he thought he did, and placed it on the tool box, hopefully for Callisto to find later. He sighed and flipped off the light as he exited the garage.