One
Sunlight poured into a room that was almost unnatural in its tidiness. Floor free of clutter. Shelves dusted. Books lined up in neat little rows and clothes ironed, folded – or hung – in the appropriate places. Furniture still slick with polish and shining like a new moon.
Pietro glanced around his room for the thousandth time, eyes seeking out anything that might still be out of place, or dirty, or crooked, or just plain wrong. And for the thousandth time, he found everything to be as perfect as it could be – even the horseshoe-shaped crack in his ceiling and the chipped paint around the baseboard had been fixed up.
He sat down on his pristine bed with a frustrated sigh. He’d
spent an entire three minutes -- an eternity, or what passed for it for him – whipping
his personal space into pristine condition, and now it was done, and there was
nothing left for him to do, and it was only a quarter after
Bored. Boredboredboredbored . . .
It was one of those afternoons about which TV weathermen and really bad poets waxed rhapsodically: clear, blue skies, powder-puff clouds and sun for days. A perfectly wonderful mid-April afternoon that carried with it an unspoken promise of fun and sweetness and adventure. . .
Bored. Boredboredboredbored . . .
Restless fingers picked at a loose thread on the bedspread. Yep. It was an abso-fucking-lutely perfect Spring day. Good time to go out and breathe the air and feel the sun on your neck – or something corny like that. Only a pathetic loser would stay in on a day like this. Unless, of course, one was sick or hurt or stuck doing housework. He glared around his spotless room. Or staying inside to frolic with a significant other . . .
Another glare. Then a sigh. Pietro fell back on the bed, aiming his dark stare at the ceiling. For the first time in . . . forever, it seemed like, he would have the whole house to himself. Fred and Todd had gone to the Bayville Galleria, armed with ballpoint pens and determined looks, eager to get a jump on finding summer jobs. Tabby had gone along, too, but it was more likely she’d spend her time planting random energy bombs around the food court, not filling out applications.
Pietro had, for a very brief moment, considered going with his teammates, but decided against it: his talents were too great to waste doing something as mundane as stocking shelves at Foot Locker or joining the “burrito assembly line” at Taco Bell. Besides, half of Bayville High would be working there, and why the hell would he want to spend his fleeting weeks of freedom around people he had to put up with the other 10 months of the year?
He hadn’t told the others that, though. The silver-haired teen had simply ushered his friends out with a too-eager smile and restlessly tapping feet, urging them to stay out until they’d nailed down jobs and not to “worry about him . . . he’d find something productive to do.”
And he had -- for that aforementioned three minutes. The speedster smoothed a hand over his bedsheet, feeling the irrational urge to rumple the sheets into chaotic disarray just so he’d have to make it again. But that would kill, what, a second or two? Wasn’t worth it.
Of course, if he had help making a mess of the bed -- help of a tall, dark and blond kind -- that would be something else again. But no way in hell that was gonna happen, no way. Not today. It was Saturday. Satur-fucking-day. And he was somewhere. The park, maybe. Or maybe he’d taken the train ride into the City to see his parents. Pietro didn’t know and he didn’t care; where Evan wasn’t – namely in his bed -- was what was giving him a conniption fit.
Well that coupled with the knowledge that Lance was not having the same problem. Or, at least, that’s what the intermittent tremors seemed to suggest. Pietro carded a hand through his hair, wondering not for the first time how the damn house managed to stay standing through all of the shaking. Since Lance had started seeing his shaded wonder, there had been a lot more seismic activity in the old Victorian – and the other members of the Brotherhood had been finding other places to be during Scott Summers’, er, visits.
Usually the rocking didn’t bother Pietro. Quite the contrary, he’d found the whole situation hilarious from the very beginning. Lance and Scott Summers. Lance with Scott Summers. The guy had always seemed to carry himself with the air of someone who had a large, blunt object rammed up his ass, so maybe it hadn’t been such a stretch from that to a relationship with Lance. Pietro had been less surprised about the Lance part of the equation – he’d had enough experience with desire-masquerading-as-enmity to have recognized all the signs of infatuation in his dark-haired teammate. In fact, the only thing that surprised him somewhat was that Lance apparently wasn’t bottoming more – at least that was the conclusion he’d drawn after watching Scott walk to his car after several late-night/early-morning visits.
Early morning. That reminded him of the last time Evan stayed over. A dreamy smile commandeered the lower half of the speedster’s face as he remembered just how much fun he and the blond had had with half-a-bottle of Mrs. Buttersworth syrup and two bendy straws –
Argh. Pietro sat bolt upright in his bed, as aftershocks rippled through the upper floor, nearly tossing the speedster on the floor. No way he could stay in the house while the earthshaker was entertaining. But what else was there to do? Going to the movies was out, if he had to go alone. He didn’t much feel like joining his brethren at the mall, and zipping through the Laundromat and pouring extra detergent in the machines lost its appeal after the first seventy times. Damn, had his Saturdays always been so boring?
No, he knew what would assuage his boredom, and he wasn’t anywhere around. And wouldn’t be for the rest of the day, more than likely. Pietro glowered, the dark eyebrows like thunderclouds. Evan’s unavailability on Saturdays had begun a few months before. Evan had never explained, really, what he did on that day, though Pietro knew that it had nothing to do with his X-Men duties – Summers’ presence was testament to that, but the blonde wasn’t telling him what he was doing. Once or twice, Pietro had attempted to trick/goad/tease Evan into divulging his weekend plans, but had come up empty each time.
He didn’t complain about it much, because he always saw the blond on Saturday evenings, fresh from . . . whatever it was he’d been doing all day. But now, faced with the prospect of listening to and, in some respects, feeling, Lance get lucky all day, Pietro’s mind turned to his lover. Evan’s uncharacteristic vagueness and his evasive answer – which grew more and more flinty as the weeks wore on – gave Pietro pause. He was supposed to be the shifty one, the one who routinely took off – at the speed of sound, no less – without notice, without warning! It was a trait the speed demon found endearing in himself, but annoying in everyone else – especially his boyfriend. Pietro wondered if, perhaps, Evan was being purposefully vague, for the blond had to know that his evasiveness was driving him insane. But that could have been by design -- Evan seemed to take as much delight, sometimes, in getting under the speedster’s skin as he did in getting under the speedster’s clothes. It was the same with Pietro, and was part of the give and take between the teens that had been the norm with them for years. But still . . . something about Evan’s attitude – and the fact that Pietro was all alone on a perfectly beautiful Saturday afternoon – raised the speedy one’s antennae, and he found himself burning with curiosity as to his blond love’s whereabouts. It was a curiosity he promised himself he would assuage later when Evan came around. He’d make the spykeboy give up his Saturday-afternoon whereabouts – oh yes. He had ways of making the blond talk. And moan. And scream. And . . .
Reclining back on his bed, he turned a frustrated gaze to the ceiling, pondering his next move. Evan would be by around four, if the pattern held up. So that left him with about three hours to kill . . . he could finish up the history report he’d been putting off for weeks. Or he could zip down to the video store and pick up a movie for the two of them to watch – he was in the mood for something gory and pointless. Maybe one of the newer Steven Segal movies? Or he could try to figure out where to go if the blond suggested going out later. Pietro was tired of the same arcades and shopping centers . . . maybe he could scout around for something different. The problem was, however, that none of those things would take up much time. He had three hours to fill before he saw hide or bleached hair of his boyfriend. Three hours. It was like a thousand years to the fast-talking mutant. What could he do? He had to find something –
Another tremor shook him out of his thoughts, and a moan that trailed off into an oddly girly whine made the hairs on his neck stand on end. Apparently Lance and Scott were settling in for round two. Pietro shot up, his face burning red and his eyes narrowed. That was it. He’d had it. No way was he going to sit idle while the older mutants down the hall got their groove on. Throwing on his shoes, he streaked down the stairs and out the front door just ahead of a second vibration. The white-haired mutant was on a mission -- He was going to solve the mystery of The Missing Spike Shooter. He’d find the blond. If he had to tear the whole freaking town apart, it didn’t matter. He was going to find him.
~*~
Approximately 15 minutes later, Pietro gazed from around a
well-placed tree at a wedding cake of a building – all layers of white stucco with
red-paneled windows stuck here and there like errant cherries – that seemed
extremely out of place in the staid, calm residential neighborhood in which it
was situated. A sign hung above the red-tiled door proclaimed it to be the
Bayville Recreation and
One question remained, though, Pietro inched closer to the building, then zipped behind a nearby bush. Well, actually two questions – first and foremost, what would Evan be doing at a recreation center at all? Pietro had only been to the Xavier Institute once or twice – and he hadn’t really had time to take a tour or anything – but he got the impression that the Institute’s facilities trumped those of any recreation center in the world several times over. He knew there was a sizeable pool and a basketball court and a volleyball court. God only knew what else Xavier had built in there to occupy his “gifted” charges. In any event, there didn’t seem any need for Evan to go traipsing clear to the other side of town if all he wanted to do was shoot a game of hoops.
The second question required a little less thought, but was just as important to the speedster – namely, when the hell would Evan be coming out? Azure eyes watched groups of kids troop in and out of the building, but the dark blond wasn’t among them. Checking his watch, he saw that it was approaching 1 p.m. – and, if his source was correct, Evan had been out of the house since 9 a.m. Four hours? There wasn’t a game in the world that took that long – except maybe chess, which Pietro doubted Evan knew the first thing about. Of course, the blond had been known to spend an inordinate amount of time on his skateboard, but it was doubtful that the boy who went misty-eyed at the sight of a good stretch of sidewalk would be running routines inside. The more Pietro glared at the entrance to the building the more his stomach knotted and his brain pounded, and the more he felt sure that he wouldn’t find Evan anywhere near this place.
It served him right for putting his faith in one of Evan’s idiotic teammates. His eyes narrowed, recalling his “brilliant” idea to get some leads on Evan’s location by calling the mansion from a pay phone and impersonating one of the blond’s skater friends. Kitty Pryde had answered and had been her usual giggly, vapid self, but oh so eager to help. After about a billion “likes” and “you knows,” a few “reallys” and four or five times being put on hold, the girl said that she heard from Kurt, who’d asked Jean, who’d overheard Evan’s aunt talking on the phone to his mother, that the blond was likely at the Bayville Arts and Recreation Center and would not be back until late evening at the earliest, but would he like to leave a message?
Pietro had hung the phone up before Kitty could launch into another round of “likes” and went zipping toward the town’s center before he realized that he had no clue where said center would be. Luckily there wasn’t much ground to cover in Bayville, and on his third pass through, he’d stumbled upon this neighborhood and the building at the end of a cul de sac. And here he’d stayed, keeping a “low” profile, determined to not let the blond think that he’d tailed him. Pietro had been planning a casual encounter . . . “bumping” into his beloved as he exited the building. But now it seemed as if the blond teen wasn’t even there, and Pietro had been holding surveillance on a bunch of scrawny kids. Of course, the blond might have been at the center and left, but that didn’t make much sense either – he would have called Pietro on his cell just as he always did before coming over to the Brotherhood Home, and the device in Pietro’s back pocket had been still all afternoon.
The speedster glanced at his watch again, wondering if Lance and Scott had finished up their morning/afternoon, er, ritual. Pietro was certain that he could get more reliable information from the older teen, if, that is, the Shaded One had breath and braincells enough left to talk. From what Pietro had heard, Lance could be a very exacting boyfriend.
A drift of laughter caught the speed demon’s attention, and
he turned in time to see five or six kids running into the building, the
foremost of them bouncing a basketball with remarkable precision. In spite of
his annoyance, something of a wistful smile ghosted over the white-haired boy’s
lips. Looking at those kids, he was reminded of the City, and the Saturday
afternoons he and the rest of the kids from the foster home were taken to the
Boys & Girls Club in
Checking his watch again, Pietro sighed thoughtfully. This
little excursion, fruitless as it was turning out to be, had killed some time
anyways. And it could kill some more – eyeing the building, Pietro left the
safe cover of the bush and tiptoed around until he was at a line with the front
door. The floodgates of memories past had opened, and now he was feeling a bit
of nostalgia. He thought maybe he’d take a look inside the place, just to
compare it to his old haunt in the City. From the outside, of course, there
were no similarities, but the inside . . . well, it had a basketball court, at
least. That was something. Maybe if
he was lucky, he could talk his way into a pickup game, something he hadn’t
done in quite a while – not since before his P.S. 104 days. Before all that, he
and the blond played playground ball all the time, going as far as
Straightening his sweater, Pietro waited until a wholesome-looking family of four paused in the doorway, ushering two screaming brats inside. As soon as the second kid’s foot was in the door, a sharp breeze swirled round the adults, nearly knocking them on their butts, and leaving them blinking in wonder as to where such a sharp breeze could have come from on such a nice day.
~*~