Curious Julian and the Big City

[Julian Davitt]

Julian grimaced slightly as he looked at the sweatpants that Anna held up in front of him. Those would rip even more easily, and an image flashed across his mind of an older woman with brown hair walking into his father's room.

"Jeans," he said. "I wore some while I was... was a wolf. I don't change when I don't want to. I'll just take them off if I have to. If they're really tight, they change with me. But it's kinda uncomfortable."

He shifted, a bit embarrassed, and not sure why.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Okay." Anna whisked the sweatpants back to the shelf. "We probably have enough for you to try on. Several different fits and sizes." She steered them toward the changing rooms, aware of his growing discomfort, and wondering how she could help him better. Usually the problem with kids at the House was that they were too street smart, not naive to the ways of civilization.

Not that Julian was totally lost, either. He was just... it was like every experience was new. Like he was smelling and tasting the world for the first time - and, for him as a human, that was probably a correct assumption.

[Julian Davitt]

She herded him to the changing rooms, where a young attendant smiled widely at them. Julian was still put off by smiles; he knew that they were actually expressions of happiness and greeting, but he would always see taught shoulders, raised hackles, and hear the growling of warnings. He had to remind himself that they weren't threatening him.

"Hey there!" the attendant, a young woman with short brown hair, greeted. "Are you finding everything all right?"

Julian's eyes widened slightly and he looked at Anna before looking back.

"Ah," he breathed.

[Anna Fernandez]

"Si, si, everything is fine," supplied Anna, praying inwardly that it was, and Julian wasn't about to wolf out and run rampant through the store.

"Great! Here, let me show you to a room," and the girl held out her hands for the jeans. Julian hesitantly gave them to her, and then followed her around the corner to the changing stalls. Anna called after him, "Jus' find which ones you like the best and bring them back with you when you're done."

She found a seat by the rack of clothes that the employees were putting back on the sales floor, and sighed. Pregnancy was harder than most women made it look.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian returned a few minutes later, much more at ease, and wearing a new pair of blue jeans. He wasn't smiling, but the looseness of his muscles and relaxed posture he sported, even with the attendant right next to him, was plain to see.

"If you take good care of them, they can last you years. My brother has a pair just like that..." the girl was speaking, her words coming out too fast, like small fish darting down a stream. Julian seemed to be listening, his head slightly bowed and his eyes slightly unfocused. He was focusing more on the sound and cadence of her voice more than anything else. "And the 31s are a pretty nice fit without a belt, if you don't put much in your pockets."

"Thanks," Julian said. The attendant smiled and nodded; the expression was a bit more than just friendliness, it seemed to hold a bit of knowledge in there also, like she had figured something out about the teen she had been helping. Julian stopped a foot from Anna, and held three pairs out to Anna. "These fit the best."

[Anna Fernandez]

"Julian," Anna said, taking the clothes. "You forgot your shirt."

A group of teen girls were huddled by the nearby entrance for the women's changing rooms, sighing noisily over a book. "Team Edward all the way!" proclaimed one adamantly.

[Julian Davitt]

Julian seemingly ignored the girls as he jogged back to get the large faded Metallica shirt from the changing room.

"No way!" another girl said, pulling out a wall poster featuring a very muscled brown boy with short hair. "Team Jacob! Look at him."

All the girls sighed.

"Besides, werewolves are much cooler. I was reading Anne Rice's novels, you know, about Lestat and all them, and those are much cooler than the vampires in this. Think about it. He turns into a giant wolf! And he looks so dangerous. He's so devoted to her. He'd never abandon her."

Julian was now paying attention, listening to them intently.

A boy walked up to them and snorted as he caught the tail end of their conversation.

"All of 'em are gay," he said. The girls rolled their eyes, but the boy's confidence and bearing kept them from ignoring him completely. "Listen. Vampires and Werewolves are monsters. They can be dark, they can be tragic, but they're not supposed to be romantic. They've had their souls ripped away and have become perverted shadows of human beings. They aren't supposed to be. Werewolves get controlled by the monster within. Vampires see humans as meat, like most people look at cows, or even like nearly every one looks at an apple. We're food to them. Not some release, or some reason to live. They survive by killing us, all of them enjoy it at the time, and that doesn't make them anything but monsters."

The girls listened, but they were still lost in their fantasies.

"You can't change a monster like that," the boy continued. "Once it happens, there's no other way but to kill them. They're perversions of people."

Julian frowned slightly, but kept quiet as he turned to Anna.

"I think I've got enough," he said, wiggling his toes on the linoleum and noting how weird it felt to not have dirt beneath his feet.

[Anna Fernandez]

Distracted by the nearby conversation, Anna nodded at Julian and he put the clothes he wanted into the cart. She wondered what, if anything, he knew about werewolves in fiction, and not for the first time felt completely out of her depth with the teen. "Right!" she said a little too brightly. "Let us get going, then."

[Julian Davitt]

Julian remained quiet, looking about the store with eyes unfocused in thought.

"Anna..." he said. "What do I do to, you know, become human?"

They were standing in line, and the couple behind them perked up, curious about the odd conversation the teen was broaching by the cashier, who was ignoring everything except the items in front of him and the female cashier in the next station.

"I don't know how."

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna looked at the teen steadily, and put her hand on his arm. "You are human, Julian." She knew people were staring, but she ignored them.