Victor and Mort, backdated to May 4th

[om_anole]

The green boys meet. It could have gone worse.



Mort hopped down the hall without much real planning as to where he was headed.  Because he could go anywhere he wanted to here, which was awesome!  Way better than before, where it was all planning and jumpers to keep from people noticing his unique complexion.  Here he could just jump around and...be green, baby!

JUST LIKE THAT KID, WHO THE FUCK WAS THAT?  Mort quickly made his way over.  "Hey there, good-looking Mate.  How're you?"

Suddenly pounced on, Victor blinked dazed "Uh...uh, um, hi. Im, uh, good. Uh, have we met?" A green boy, a green boy that wasn't Cal copying him. What?

"We certainly have not," Mort said.  "I'd have remembered you, see.  My name is Mort," he stuck out a toad-y hand.  "Nice to meet another good-looking guy."

'Mort' was hardly what Victor considered a good-looking guy, though Vic knew he could be kinda bitchy about those things. Especially when he wasn't in a good mood.

"Erm, right. I'm Victor." He was still looking at the other boy like he wasn't sure if he was real and accepted the hand very briefly.

"Pleasure to meet you, Victor," said Mort, with a great deal of enthusiasm and a grin.  "First bloke I ever met that was at least as green as I was.  So what's your mutation, then?"

"Lizard stuff." Victor told him with significantly less enthusiasm "You?"

"Toad stuff.  What sorts of lizard stuff?"  Mort just couldn't help himself - there were other green blokes out there!  With mutations like his, even!  He hopped up on to the wall to hang out while Victor answered.

"Well, yeah I can do that." It was sort of weird to see someone else climbing the walls though. "I can camouflage myself and I can do this tongue thing too. What about you?" Now he was over his shock, he was a little curious.

"Well, I do this," Mort agreed.  "Natch I also have a prehensile tongue, which is basically super cool, right?  I can hop better than any other motherfucker out there.  Y'know, the important stuff."  He flicked the aforementioned tongue out to snag a fly.  "We're totally sympatico."

Victor's disgust was obvious "Did you, did you just eat a bug?"

"You've never tried them, bro?  Delish."

"Ugh, no way! Gross."

Mort just shook his head.  It might've bothered him a bit, but he'd heard worse.  "You're missing out."

"I think I'm happy missing out on that." Victor was still pulling a horrified as hell face.

"High protein, low fat, good crunch," Mort recited.

"Yeah, well, I can think of plenty other high protein things I'd rather have in my mouth." Victor snorted, before realising the very x-rated interpretation that sentence could have (despite his very innocent intentions) and falling silent, cheeks burning in that way that only his close friends usually noticed under all the green.

"Er...don't need to know, bro."  Guy looked maybe 14 or so, and was looking all kinds of awk.  Nope!  None of Mort's business!

"I totally wasn't talking about that!" Victor protested immediately before deciding, hey what did he have to prove to some kid who ate bugs? Live bugs. And he wasn't a three year old (the only valid excuse in Victor's book). "Anyway sucking cock is, like, way less gross than eating bugs so even if I had meant that-"

Mort held up hands in front of him.  "None of my business, mate.  Don't need to know."

Great so the other green dude was gross and maybe homophobic (coz really, there was no need  to act that grossed out when he'd just eaten a live fucking bug!).

"Right, well, anyway. I think we're done comparing stats."

"Hey there, hey there," Mort said, hopping down from the wall and attempting to stand up straight like a normal person.  "Not meanin' nothing offensive, you know.  Get it how you live and all that.  Just...not somethin' I need to hear 'bout anyone, no matter who they're into, right?"

"Yeah, well, I wasn't talking about that stuff anyway. Just saying that no way am I gonna eat bugs." Victor folded his arms over his chest. "I prefer using it to, like, steal the last dorito but whatever."

Mort grinned.  "I do that, too."

"Just don't get in the way of mine and we won't have a problem." Because no way did he want his tongue anywhere near this dude's.

"Uh, no.  Won't get in the way."

Victor looked over Mort again. It was weird, vague similarities but really so very, very different. Standing, arms folded, he asked. "How long you been like this?"

"My whole life," Mort said, shrugging his sloped shoulders.  "Something this awesome takes a whole lifetime of training, I s'pose.  You?"

"Since I was 13 so, like, 2 years..." That explained a bit though. Kurt had been born blue and dealt with it way better than Vic with his change. It was all he'd ever known after all.

Mort was kind of stunned.  "Really?"  He couldn't imagine it, growing up regular looking and then one day waking up and being a lizard, or a toad.  Least he'd had a long time to get used to it, lots of practice.  "Just like a surprise or some shite?"

"Yeah. Day after my birthday I wake up like this. Bye bye normal life." Victor nodded, his backstory was pretty much common knowledge now so he didn't feel the need to withhold.

"What was it like?"  Mort had to ask.  He just had to, because it wasn't like he had any experience. "Being normal-looking, I mean."

"Well, I fitted in. Didn't have to hide. I was warm and then, then I wasn't and I had to hide all the time and my mom...well, my parents try their best. I miss being normal." He shrugged more awkwardly that time. He wasn't sure if he liked Mort much but, yeah, he was the only other green person in the world right now. Maybe the original one.

The older teen was quiet, letting that all sink in.  "Never even tried it, myself."

"You're sorta lucky. Never lost anything."

Mort shrugged again.  "Never had nothing to lose."

"True..."

"But!"  And the Toad was grinning again, "now we've got those space-age watches, right?  So we can look like regulars!  I mean, obviously being green is being beautiful, but since some of 'em don't get it...."

Victor automatically ran a hand of his inducer, like he was checking it was still there. "Yeah, yeah for a few hours we can."
"It's more'n zero hours, innit?"

"Yeah but it's not a lot, I mean I'm grateful for them and all but still. It's not a lot. A taster."

"Figure it like this, right?  For a few hours, we can be any bloody person on the planet!"  Mort explained, still grinning.  "They won't ever know us in our real lives - we can invent whole new identities!"

"I'm a little over that." Victor shrugged and it was true. That was how the him and Tommy thing had blown up. Too many lies.
"Tried it out, did you?"

"Pretending to be human isn't fun when people's feelings get hurt."

Little bloke just seemed to be a ray of sunshine, didn't he?  "Ah.  Well, then, perhaps I should listen to you, eh?"

Victor shrugged "If you want to, what you do is your business though really, isn't it?"

Mort shrugged right back.  "Yes, but that don't mean I can't take advice from someone.  There aren't many good-looking green guys around."

Victor nearly said there weren't any from where he was standing but didn't. Among many other reasons, it was unnecessarily mean.

"Spose."

"So there we are, then."  Mort nodded, as though he'd decided something.

Victor just nodded, still looking at the other boy like he didn't know what to make of him.

Mostly because he really, really didn't.