Author’s Note: All righty then… when we last left our
heroes, there was slashy goodness.
Well, guess what? Here’s more! I promise that I’m moving the plot along;
just be patient. We’re gonna eventually
get to the real reason for this story.
Can’t a girl take the scenic route while she’s at it? ::rolls eyes:: Sheesh. People can be so
impatient. ::grins facetiously:: Aww, you guys know I love ya. Anyway…
Please don’t ask to know what
the actual cards were that Wanda draws in her reading for Pie-Pie. I did the reading at the time, but I left
out what the cards were for artistic flow, and right now, I couldn’t remember
them all if I tried. Just be assured
that I didn’t pull that reading out of thin air and enjoy the story.
This story takes place after
“Day of Reckoning”. It is erotica, and
therefore is not for the eyes of those under 18 or easily offended by sexual
situations, homo- or hetero-.
X-men: Evolution is the property
of the WB, Marvel comics, and several people that I’m probably forgetting. You can’t sue me! I don’t have any money anyway, so it wouldn’t do you any good.
:-P There are also random songfic
elements to this story; the songs used (plus a few others for good measure) are
listed below and belong to their respective artists and recording
companies. If you do not have these
songs or have never heard them, AudioGalaxy is a free peer-to-peer mp3 site
where they can likely be downloaded. I
especially recommend the songs by Anathema, Godgory, Linkin’ Park, Depeche
Mode, Poe and Nickelback as theme music for Wanda.
Comments, questions, and
favorable reviews are encouraged.
Criticisms that are phrased civilly will be taken under advisement. Flames will be fueled with napalm and
returned, causing the offending keyboard to melt internally and be unable to
manufacture any further unchivalrous nonsense.
You have been warned.
Recommended Musical
Accompaniment: Play the Game- Motorhead
It
Doesn’t Even Matter- Linkin’ Park
Angry
Johnny- Poe
Blasphemous
Rumors- Depeche Mode
Dogma-
KMFDM
How
You Remind Me- Nickelback
Torpedoes-
MDFMK
Empty-
Anathema
Conspiracy
of Silence- Godgory
Last
Note of Freedom- David Coverdale
Nothing
Else Matters- Metallica
Can
I Touch You… There- Michael Bolton
To
The Moon and Back- Savage Garden
Kurt woke that morning to the
scent of breakfast and a gorgeous man. Lance
had obviously woken early and gone to the kitchen to prepare a tray for two,
complete with juice, toaster pastries, and oranges. It was a very sweet, intimate thing to do, and Kurt blushed as
Lance gathered him close for a warm kiss.
“Morning.”
“Guten morgen,” Kurt
murmured. “You brought breakfast.”
“I figured you’d be hungry,”
Lance replied, settling Kurt into his lap and the tray into Kurt’s. “You got quite a workout last night.” Kurt’s blush turned brighter, earning a warm
chuckle from Lance. “God, you’re
beautiful when you blush.”
Slowly, Kurt’s gaze turned up to
Lance’s face. There was such… innocence
in that expression that Lance felt a surge of compassion and guilt. No one had ever cuddled him and told him how
lovely he was, how exquisitely soft his fur felt against their skin; the
beautiful German boy had no idea how perfect he really was… and the first
person to tell him so was only doing it because his other lover had pissed him
off.
In that moment, as Kurt’s pale
eyes searched Lance’s darker ones for sincerity, Lance wanted to stay here
forever. To nestle with his fluffy blue
elf and be warm and safe and tell him over and over how cherished and lovely
and worthwhile he truly was. A thousand
images flashed through his mind: moments
of quiet domesticity, of hearth and home, maybe… maybe even adopting another
unwanted child, raising it with more love and tenderness than he’d ever been
shown… Much as it scared the Hell out
of him, a part of Lance desperately wanted that future… wanted it enough to say
‘yes’.
“Yes what?”
Lance started; he’s spoken the
thought aloud. Kurt was looking at him
in confusion. And then he suddenly
realized how crazy it would sound:
professing his sudden, undying love for the adorable elf after one night
of sex. Incredibly passionate,
intoxicatingly satisfying sex, true; but Kurt would never believe it. Swiftly, Lance shoved the tantalizing
fantasies away. “Yes, you are
beautiful, Kurt,” Lance recovered, as if that had been his meaning all
along. Taking up an orange, he peeled
it quickly and held a section to Kurt’s lips.
“But… breakfast should get eaten, before it gets ignored.”
Kurt blushed again, accepting
the morsel from Lance’s fingers.
Allowing himself a playful urge, he snagged one of Lance’s fingers and
suckled gently, swirling his tongue around the tip. Lance groaned, ducking his head to lick to curve of that
delicately pointed ear. Kurt shivered
as Lance swiftly moved the tray before Kurt’s sudden erection could upset
it. Ah-ha…
an elfin hot spot. Lance curled the lobe into his mouth like
plucking a berry from the stem. Kurt
shivered. “What… what about breakfast?”
“Devil breakfast,” Lance
murmured hotly. His tongue traced the
shell of Kurt’s ear, drawing a long, low moan from the elf. “This is more important.”
With a pleasant tremble, Kurt
melted in Lance’s arms in hearty agreement.
Several hours later, Lance was
emerging from the showers when he noticed Summers in the hall by Lance’s
dorm. The redhead was standing there
with his arms crossed, obviously waiting for someone. Taking a deep breath, Lance walked over to his room. “You waitin’ for me?”
“Yeah, I am.” Standing up away from the wall, he reached
up and nudged his glasses down just far enough to blast Lance across the hall. Lance gasped for breath as he hit the
ground, rolling out into Scott’s legs as Scott advanced on him and knocking the
redhead to the floor. All at once,
Scott disregarded his mutant powers and simply attacked, wrestling with the
brunette mutant out of a purely selfish need to release his rage.
Their fight was far from quiet;
they quickly drew the others into the hall, where the younger mutants stared at
them in shock. Wanda and Pietro were
among the last to arrive, Pietro nearly trampling people on his way through the
crowd. But before even the speed demon
could intervene, a thunderclap rolled through the hall as the two elder mutants
were tossed apart by a sudden arc of lightening. Lance cursed in surprise as Scott choked on the stench of ozone, each
dragging himself up the wall in an effort to reorient himself.
Storm strode through the crowd
looking as angry as her name, her hair and fingertips crackling from the
residual static electricity of raising the lightening. For a moment, she simply looked from one boy
to the other, her face a mask of fury.
She then turned her head just slightly to address the others. “Go downstairs, all of you.” When the younger mutants hesitated, startled
by Storm’s rage, she barked an additional:
“Go!”
The others scattered like mice,
leaving their leaders to face Storm’s anger.
When they were gone, Storm rounded on the two boys. “Idiots!
Have you no sense at all? Or are
you determined to knock it from each other’s heads?”
Scott struggled to stand, but
Storm knocked him off-balance with a gust of wind. “Storm-”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Storm
cut in, incensed. “You, of all people,
Scott: the professor would be ashamed
of you. These kinds of petty squabbles
are uncalled for during times of such crisis, and unbecoming of he who would be
a leader of men. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself, putting your personal issues above the lives and safety of
those who follow you.
“And as for you, Lance, you’ve
done absolutely nothing to alleviate this untenable situation. Did you honestly think that seducing Kurt,
no matter what your motives, would have no effect on his compatriots? And don’t look so surprised; there may be
more people living under this roof than there were in the manor where Mystique
housed you and your friends, but it remains just as impossible to keep secrets
for long, especially when absences at the breakfast table are so easily noted.
“Now, as if the two of you
weren’t already aware, we have lives to save:
lives of our friends and companions.
There will be no more squabbling, no more outbursts of temper, no more
pointless spitting contests. The two of
you will find a way to work together, or neither one of you will be in charge
of anything but cleaning out the lavatories for a full year. Is that clearly understood?”
Lance wanted to argue, to snap
that Storm had no authority to either order him around or punish him, but the
weather witch looked a little too intimidating at the moment. The rock tumbler wasn’t fool enough to tempt
her rage just now, and he was sick to death of Summers’ high-and-mighty
attitude anyway. Nodding silently, he
watched as Scott also grudgingly agreed, hauling himself off the floor and
stalking away. Cautiously, Lance also
stood. “I’m not going to apologize for
anything I’ve done,” he told Storm stubbornly.
“Your boy needs to learn to accept that the entire world isn’t going to
live by his supposedly superior moral code.”
Storm turned her pale blue eyes
on Lance, and the rock tumbler fought off the urge to squirm under their steady
gaze. “He will learn, eventually,” she
replied. “And I’d be very disappointed
in you if you did apologize. You’re far
from a cruel young man, Mr. Alvers.
Angry, yes; but not cruel.”
Taking a deep breath, Lance
walked past her into his room, closing the door and locking it against the
world.
In another part of the mansion,
Wanda was curling her brother against her chest, stroking his snowy hair as he
wept against her. He’d stayed just long
enough to find out why Lance and Scott had been fighting, and the reason had
broken his heart. He’d lost Lance. The one person who’d ever taken care of him
the way that his sister had when they were children, and he’d lost him to an
X-jerk. A
furry blue bitch of an X-geek. Oh, God…
God, I wanna die…
It’s all right, Brother, Wanda soothed. You’re
going to be all right. You don’t know
what happened between them; it might have been casual-
Lance doesn’t have casual sex anymore! Not since we… oh, God, Sister… he told me he
loved me… he told me he loved me and I couldn’t say it back and now he’s left
me…
Why didn’t you say it back, Brother? If you love him so, why couldn’t you say it?
Because… I haven’t said it since Father sent you
away…
Though it was a sobering thought,
Wanda couldn’t help smiling just a little at that. Pietro truly had not forgotten what they had meant to one
another. He had simply survived, but
what their father had forced him to sacrifice so that he might had left scars
just as deep as her own. There was
certain symmetry to that. Kissing him
softly on the forehead, Wanda wiped the tears from her brother’s azure
eyes. It
will be all right, Brother. I
promise. Why don’t I read the cards for
you; tell you what they see? Would that
help?
You… you can read the cards?
Agatha taught me; she thought it best, considering
the domain of my powers. Come on; blow
your nose and wipe your eyes while I get my deck.
Pietro complied, his still
watery eyes watching his sister’s every move while she opened her closet and
reached into the pocket of a cloak she found there. Rather than a cape like their father’s, Wanda’s cloak was hooded
and black as night, brushing the floor even from the hook in the closet door. Settling herself onto the floor, Wanda unwrapped
her cards from their cloth and spread the silk out. When Pietro seated himself across from her, she handed her
brother the cards. “Shuffle them three
times in your right hand, three times in your left, and three times in your
right again; but don’t bridge them.
Concentrate on the question you wish answered as you do so, and then
give them back to me.” Pietro complied
with his signature swiftness, handing the cards back to Wanda before the last
card had even settled into its place in the deck. Wanda chuckled to herself, then repeated the procedure, thinking
on the question that she knew he wanted answered: would he and Lance ever be happy again?
Turning over nine cards in quick
succession, Wanda’s mind quickly turned over the meanings as she scanned
them. You
found a new home, a place of refuge, and it was there that you met someone with
a love of romance, a person who is strong of will and wants hearth and
home. They wanted to reach towards a
happy life and inspired you to want the same; they gave you stability. But despite the progress you were making
together, you grew impatient, feeling the weight of those dreams resting too
heavily on your shoulders; in spite of the goal that was nearer than you thought,
you abandoned it and your dreams. Now,
in the aftermath of the upheaval that abandonment caused, you and your lover
will learn to cope with the consequences one day at a time. Things will never be the same between you,
but you will be at a new home and the current trouble will subside. The end of the road will be the happy home
that you both want.
But
what about the furry blue bitch? Pietro asked, startled by how
accurate Wanda’s reading had been.
Wanda collected her cards, then
quickly shuffled them again, dealing out only three this time. A fourth card slipped from her deck,
crossing the final card. For a moment,
Wanda reached out to remove it, but then simply set her deck aside, realizing
its purpose. Though there has been a betrayal, it has forced a
necessary change in the path you and your lover were taking. A poorly made decision will force someone
into a situation of spiritual devastation, leaving them with nowhere to go for
warmth or caring and little confidence or hope after so many misfortunes.
Who?
Wanda picked up her cards again,
shuffling swiftly. She already had a
good idea of whom, but she needed Pietro to believe. Quickly, she dealt one final card. A free spirit, crushed under
the weight of forced convention. A
rebellious, ebullient nonconformist who loves life and living, but whose spark
is ruthlessly smothered.
For a long moment, Pietro gazed
between his sister and the card she had cast down between them. He wanted to believe the card was talking
about him, that the poor decision would be Lance remaining with Mystique’s
misbegotten son. But a little voice in
Pietro’s mind told him that it was Kurt who would be left out in the cold
eventually, abandoned to his feelings of worthlessness and hideousness. Much as he hated the elf just now, Pietro
couldn’t bring himself to wish such a fate on the boy. Not even his father was so callous and
hateful as to want someone resigned to an existence without love or
companionship.
What
should I do? His voice was a tiny whisper in her mind.
That,
I can’t tell you. You have to decide
for yourself, Brother. I will tell you
one thing, though: I wouldn’t try
anything just now. Until Lance comes to
you, it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and talk with him. Once we get the others back, he might settle
down enough for you two to talk.
If you say so, Sister. Abruptly, Pietro
slipped around the silk cloth and tucked himself into her arms, tucking his
head beneath her chin. I do love you, Sister.
I never stopped loving you.
And I love you, my Brother, Wanda assured him softly. Curled up with him like this, Wanda could
almost say she was at peace… almost. I love you, too.
It was past dinner by the time
Kurt returned. Also distressed by the
fight, especially since he considered himself to be the cause, the German boy
had teleported out to the Bay for some time alone. Hungry and depressed, Kurt simply teleported himself into the
kitchen, hoping that he could find something to quell the gnaw in his stomach,
even though nothing seemed instantly appetizing thanks to the hole in his
heart.
The door opened, and Kurt let
himself swing out of the freezer long enough to see Pietro walking
through. For a moment, Kurt and Pietro
just stared at one another, both acutely aware of their rivalry… and that the blue
elf hanging from the lamp had a container of chocolate ice cream in his hands
that would be a chocolate puddle if one of them didn’t move in short
order. Finally, Pietro forced himself
to move. Walking to the cupboard, he
removed two bowls. “Got any toppings
for that stuff?”
“Ja,” Kurt replied, still a bit
hesitant as he arched back and set the ice cream on the counter. “Whipped cream und strawberries und syrup…
und I’m pretty sure we have walnuts.”
Pietro shook his head. “That prof of yours really does spoil you
guys, ya know?”
“We’re lucky,” Kurt replied from
within the refrigerator as he rummaged for the Cool-Whip.
“Yeah. Your mom-”
The Cool-Whip hit Pietro in the
chest as Kurt slammed the refrigerator door and flipped down. Those pale eyes snapped with rage, his tail
swishing furiously as he rounded on Pietro.
“Mystique is not my mother! Anyone who could do this to their child isn’t fit to have
any. My mother lives on a farm outside
Munich.”
Pietro was startled by the venom
in Kurt’s tone. It reminded him of
Wanda’s rage towards their father.
Setting the Cool-Whip on the table, Pietro turned back for the
spoons. “She still gave birth to
you. She’s gotta love you a
little. How could she not love her own
child?”
“I do not know, and I do not
want to,” Kurt replied. “Why you want
to find out the same about Magneto, I’ll never understand.”
“My father does love me,” Pietro
countered.
“But not your sister?”
“He’s fighting a war. He knows what mankind is capable of doing to
those who can’t or won’t fight back, especially children.”
For a moment, Kurt measured
Pietro. His programmed, almost scripted
responses when it came to his father were telling. No wonder Wanda hates Magneto
so very much. “I find it hard to admire a man who loves
his children so much that he puts the uncooperative one in a mental ward and
leaves the cooperative one to live in squalor while he goes off and tries to
start a revolution by attacking those he’s supposedly championing.”
The point hit home. Hard.
Pietro dashed over to the cupboards again, searching for potential
toppings. “The ice cream’s melting.”
Kurt sighed. “Ja; let’s eat. Parents aren’t worth ignoring chocolate ice cream, good or bad.”
Unable to help himself, Pietro
laughed.
The kitchen quickly resembled a
Dairy Queen as Pietro and Kurt set about indulging their wounded spirits. Kurt couldn’t help noticing how femme Pietro
really was; it was easy to understand why Lance would eventually return to the
snowy-haired gypsy’s bed. Why wouldn’t he?
I know he loves Pietro, and how could Pietro not love him? He’s so…
“Thinking about Lance?” Pietro
guessed softly.
“What?” Kurt stumbled, flushed softly, and stared at
Pietro. “Why would you think that?”
“Because I can’t think of any
other subject that could make someone stare at a spoonful of chocolate ice
cream like they don’t see it.” He
smirked knowingly as Kurt blushed and swiftly ate it. He could just imagine the things Lance had done to Kurt; the
brunette was incredibly talented in the bedroom… and on the kitchen table… and the couch… God, I miss him.
Kurt watched Pietro’s smirk fade
and felt a rush of guilt. He knew
perfectly well how Lance felt about Pietro, and it was obvious that Pietro felt
the same. And Pietro was so femme… so
dainty… Kurt felt like a stuffed animal being compared to a porcelain
doll. How could Lance not choose Pietro
over him? “Pietro…”
“Don’t, Kurt,” Pietro
interrupted. “It’s… it’s not your
fault, and it’s not Lance’s. It’s been
coming for a while now; I just figured it would be Kitty. Lance was really infatuated with her for a
while there. He and I’ve been great
physically, and I really do love him, but… he’s so… intense. It spooked me a little.”
“Tell me about it,” Kurt
agreed. Lance had been absolutely
implacable, not that Kurt had wanted him to stop…
Pietro chuckled softly. “Sounds like he’s in one of his insatiable
moods. They’re fun, especially since he
loves to cuddle when he finally gets tired.”
For a moment, Pietro hesitated, almost unable to say when he’d just
decided he needed to say. “Listen,
Kurt… I… it’s gonna work out, okay?
Wanda says everything’s gonna be fine, and I believe her. Just… just take care of him right now for
me? He, um… he really needs somebody to
love him right now.”
Kurt was floored. Pietro couldn’t mean what he’d said. It would kill the boy to see he and Lance
together. But he was obviously sincere. The pain of his own words shone almost as
bright as the love and understanding and compassion. Kurt couldn’t say anything; words seemed vulgar. He simply nodded, looking away as Pietro
attacked his ice cream, then dashed around to make another bowl. He really
is beautiful, Kurt mused
silently. And not nearly as spoiled and selfish as one would think from
how he acts. It would be so easy to
love them both… When Pietro sat back down, Kurt watched him
for a moment. The boy was faster than
the eye could follow; it was the only way he could have escaped Trask’s
underground bunker. And if he knew how
to get out… “Did you help Storm map out
Trask’s bunker yet?”
“Yeah. She and that Forge guy had me describe it to them in the
lab. I got a pretty good look at the
place while I was trying to find the exits.”
“So you could get back in pretty
easily? You know your way around?”
“Definitely.” Pietro suddenly realized that Kurt had a
plan. “What are you thinking?”
“If you can get me inside two
miles from their cells, I can get them out.”
Kurt’s smile was confident.
“Even Rogue?”
“Even if she and I touched skin
to skin, she could use my powers to teleport us out.”
Pietro smirked deviously. “Well then… that sounds like a plan.”
Kurt grinned back, pointing at
Pietro with the spoon curled into his tail.
“Ice cream is brain food; didn’t you know?”
A/N: Coming soon… Kurt and Pietro team up. Are you scared yet? ;-P