18 years old tectonic manipulator
citizen of Mexico member of X-Force
permanent same-sex partnership
Julio's currently the youngest member of X-Force. It doesn't show so much in his day-to-day behaviour (he's been independent of his parents since his early teens) as in his occasional wistfulness, and his attachment to the group structure. The kid that Domino swears she isn't going to mother, and does anyway, and who manages not to be a child at all but the most startling moments.His familiarity with the house at Westchester, I gathered, dates from his early teens. He was kidnapped and tortured by the Right (an anti-mutant hate group), and used as a human weapon before X-Factor retrieved him, and he arrived in Westchester in a shocked state of silence from which he emerged only slowly. In the house, he tends to revert to that state, and I found I was only comfortable talking to him elsewhere.
I ran into him in the early morning. Shatterstar appears to be a compulsively early riser, and on the whole not entirely suited to Julio, who tends to drift in a state of half-consciousness for the first hours that he's awake. He took me with him to the gym, though, and I sat with him watching his lover train for close to an hour. During that time, I watched him focus more and more intensely on Shatterstar's movements, at least until he noticed my observation. Then looked at his hands and grinned a little and suggested that if I wasn't comfortable, I could come back and talk to him later.
I didn't leave, but I did leave him alone. I took this photo that afternoon. Julio spent hours after I left in the gym, and I suspect that after I left he joined Shatterstar in combat. I collided with Julio while he was coming out of the showers much later and asked him, while I had him, whether I could take his picture.
This particular bathroom is upstairs, and out of the way of the house's traffic flow, and no one interrupted us. He was more self-conscious alone with me in there than I'd previously seen him, and I made the shoot as quick and painless as possible. When I did, finally, open the door, I found Shatterstar waiting outside, on the floor with his back against the wall. He didn't speak to me, then, but I got the distinct impression that I'd been threatened.
Sinclair: I know you left X-Force a couple of times. Why did you?
Julio: I don't . . . I don't get along all that well with Cable. He'd probably say I have a problem with authority figures, but I think it's more personal than that. And I'm not very comfortable around telepaths. That was reason enough the first time. The second time, I went with Shatty to deal with my family. They were running guns to the rebels in the south, and north across the border into the States, and I decided I couldn't leave them to that.
Sinclair: Shatterstar went with you?
Julio: Yeah. I came back for him, the first time. Because he was in trouble and Cable'd decided to give him a hard time about it. And 'cause I missed him, though I wouldn't have told you that, then. When he came with me the next time I left, I was just so grateful for it.
Sinclair: How old were you then?
Julio: I turned seventeen a couple of weeks after we left.
Sinclair: Did you ever thinking about just trying to be a kid for a while?
Julio: Nope. I came into the US illegally when I was thirteen, and I got separated from my family at the border. I had to take care of myself after that. By the time we went back to Mexico, I didn't think about it much anymore.
Sinclair: And since you came back?
Julio: It's different. We'd agreed that we weren't going to keep our relationship -- Shatty's and mine -- a secret, and that if people didn't deal with it we could take off again. And for a while I thought we were gonna have to. But Cable -- and I don't always like him -- was absolutely cool about it, and so was Dom, and that helped a lot. And after a while it was just normal. Like people stopped wrinkling up their noses about me and Shatty sleeping together and started including us in the morning food fights again. Right now, I think we're OK here.