If, on some quiet, sunlit day, some uninformed, but possibly well-meaning soul had approached Evan Daniels – a boy who, through a twist of genetics and a whole host of dairy products – passed flint-sharp bone shards through his bare skin as easily and as painlessly as a “normal” person manufactured tears, or sweat, or spit – and told him that after having his left earlobe pierced by a needle about a thin as a pencil point, in a process that took about 10 seconds, he would faint dead away on a linoleum floor that tasted and smelt like nail polish, Evan would have laughed himself sick. Then kicked whoever had the effrontery to suggest such a thing in the nads. And then he would have laughed again. He was The Spyke. The Human Pin Cushion. A person who, at any given moment, might look down at himself to see pieces of bone – his bones . . . bones that were sharp enough and strong enough to cut through wires, through glass – jutting out from his skin like so many quills on a cactus. And he wouldn’t flinch, wouldn’t blink. Him faint at a needle’s prick? What was a needle to him?

Flitting in and out of a sort of muddled state of consciousness, the question echoed through the spike-shooter’s mind. He wished he could stand up at least – he was sure he’d be able to figure out why such a simple thing as getting his ear pierced – something people did all the time – people with much less mental and physical fortitude than he had – would send him careening to the floor in a swoon. If only he could stand . . . or sit up a little . . . or at least – at the very least, if only he could open his eyes . . . he was sure he could figure it out.

Voices rose and fell like staccato breaths around him – many of the sounds were like white noise to him – ever-present, but discernable only if you were listening closely – but a few penetrated his conscious – one oddly high-pitched, another deeper one, speaking slowly. And then there was that other voice – moderate, with traces of a tremble. The person spoke in an absurdly low tone, almost as if from the bottom of a coffee cup. Evan heard this subdued, muffled voice the clearest, and the more of it he heard, the more content he was to give himself up to the blackness that was creeping toward him in stealthy strides, thinking, as he faded into full unconsciousness, that none of this would have ever happened if it hadn’t been for that damned smoothie.

~*~

“Just admit that you’re a chickenshit lamer who’s piss-in-his-pants scaaaaaaaareed, and maybe I’ll give you your pants back.”

It was hard, Evan knew, to love Pietro when he was like this – hyper and “up” and bored and smelling blood. Of course, the speedy mutant was one or all of those things at any given time, so it should have been hard to love him at any time at all. That made sense. On the other hand, finding him irresistible, even with that maddening smirk on the thin face, even with that slightly malevolent glint in the blue eyes and even when he was holding his khakis hostage, made no sense at all. But was even more ridiculous was Evan’s determination not to let Pietro win this round. Even if he had to skate home in his boxers, he wasn’t going to let his hyper boyfriend get away with calling him a lamer – and a chickenshit one at that? No way –

A whoosh and a silver haze circled Evan in an instant, making him dizzy and cold at once. And in the next moment, he felt another piece of clothing get snatched off his body, and goose bumps began to rise on his . . .

“Arrrgh! All right, that’s it!” Evan lunged for the grinning teen, who dangled the blond’s boxer shorts triumphantly from his fingertips. Pietro neatly sidestepped the angry teen, waving the underwear like a banner. “I’m not playing!” Another lunge prompted Pietro to zip in a shapeless blur and rematerialize across the room. “Maximoff, you are so going down for this!”

“Talking dirty’s not going to get you your clothes back.” Pietro zoomed around the room, pinching and slapping his boyfriend’s ass as he went, mindless of Evan’s shouts of protest. “Stop being stubborn, Daniels, and just say it. You. Are. Amazingly. Lame.”

“You are amazingly lame, yeah, that’s for damn sure,” Evan muttered, endeavoring to cover his manhood and bare ass by yanking his sweater down. Nothing could be normal when he was in the Brotherhood home, he mused, particularly in the rundown, torn-apart Brotherhood living room. There was no such thing as a quiet night watching the X-Games global special and eating pizza with his speeding love. If it wasn’t one of Pietro’s housemates barging in on them, demanding the channel to be changed, a slice of pizza or that Evan and Pietro stop making out in front of all of them. When Pietro had invited him over to “hang out” that night, slyly mentioning that Lance, Todd, Tabby and Fred were all going to be out of the house, Evan thought they’d finally spend some decent, quality time together away from prying eyes and big mouths. It had worked that way for about fifteen minutes, but no sooner was Nightmare of the Living Alien(s) on than did Pietro, fueled by three slices of double pepperoni and four bottles of JambaJolt, decide that their “quiet” night was going to get a lot livelier.

“I didn’t come here to be insulted, treated like a punk, stripped and slapped on my ass.” Evan glowered at a disbelieving chuckle that rose from the silver streak swirling around him. “All right, all right, so maybe the last two aren’t so bad, but damn, ‘Tro, I thought we’d gone over this – I can’t do it. I know I said I would, but I . . . I changed my mind. I told you about my parents . . . I nearly got sent home – I can’t afford to piss them off again. So why are we even talking about it now?”

“Because.” Pietro got in one last swat before he came to an abrupt halt in front of his half-dressed guest. “I don’t believe you. This isn’t about your folks, and you know it. It’s about you – so why don’t you give it up Daniels and tell me the real deal? Not that I don’t already know –”

Evan’s eyes widened, then went flinty with anger. Now he’d done it. Now the silver-haired teen had crossed the line, and Evan didn’t care if he’d be grounded for years for walking through Bayville bare-assed with his stuff swinging in the breeze for all to see. He didn’t care. He was getting out of that house before he did something extremely regrettable – like force-feed Pietro his teeth.

“Later.” Evan turned on his heel walked determinedly toward the front door, stopping only to collect his skateboard from beneath a chair. Not that he ever expected his relationship with his erstwhile nemesis to be anything short of . . . complicated, but sometimes Pietro could take it too far, and when those times came up, best thing both of them could do was just take a step back and –

“Hey! Wheredoyouthinkyou’regoing?” A hand snagged the back of Evan’s sweatshirt and nearly yanked him off his feet. “You’renaked!”

“Oh, so now you care about that?” Evan shook himself out of Pietro’s grip, and gave the astonished boy a disgusted glare. “You know what man? You can call me a lamer or a fuckwad or whatever – but the minute you call me a liar, I’m out. I don’t need this.” He paused and deepened his glare, aiming his next words like rapier. “Or you. So why don’t we just forget about all of it?”

Pietro took a step back, almost as if the words themselves had smacked him upside the head, and Evan turned abruptly away, forgetting about his pants and underwear, which Pietro still held, and about the sharp beginnings of headache that was beginning to form right behind his eyelids. Evan knew he’d forget the taunts and the smacks and the teasing and the five layers of grease on the pizza – it would all be a distant memory by the next day, most likely. But the shattered look in the speedster’s eyes and the pitiful motion he made when he dropped Evan’s purloined clothes on the floor and supersped to his room, slamming the door behind him, that wasn’t going to be forgotten by the blond for quite awhile. Not by a long shot.

Slowly pulling on his shorts and khakis, Evan’s eyes were locked to the top of the stairs, and it was only when he heard the screech of Death Cab coming from behind Pietro’s closed door did he let himself out and roll slowly back to the mansion.

~*~

“So is it over?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Evan wearily handed Kurt a dripping plate, which the German teen proceeded to dry and stack with the rest of the dinnerware. “I mean, it’s been a day. We haven’t talked or anything.”

Grabbing another plate from beneath the sudsy water, Evan halfheartedly ran a dishrag over it and recalled the abrupt about-face Pietro had done the one time that afternoon they’d come into direct contact. To say he’d calmed down a bit was an understatement, and after tossing and turning for most of the night, Evan had it in his mind to apologize to his white-haired paramour. Ever since the . . . development, he’d been a little touchy about everything, and maybe he’d taken his frustrations out unfairly. Sure, Pietro pushed his buttons. Hard. But that was Pietro. It was what he did, how he was. And fine, he’d intimated that Evan had been lying . . . which, when the blond had more time to think it over, was not exactly the case, but . . . he wasn’t telling Pietro the whole story, either . . .

“What was the fight about?” Kurt sounded more than casually curious, which unnerved Evan a little. Kurt, while more or less “cool” with the idea of Evan dating Pietro had made it pretty clear at the outset that he didn’t want to hear the “dirty” details of their relationship – disagreements included. “I thought everything was going okay with you two.”

“It was, but . . .” Evan unstoppered the sink and watched the dirty water swirl down the drain, the miniature vortex reminding him of Pietro’s whirl-and-tweak move of the past night. “We . . . he . . . well, he . . . kinda wants me to do something I totally don’t think I’m ready for, and he’s not takin’ no for an answer.”

Evan looked over and nearly fell on the floor in shock. Kurt was not wearing his image inducer, but the blue-furred mutant had gone as pale as a sheet. “Um . . . dude, maybe you should be having this talk with Scott. I mean, he has a lot more experience about, uh, this sort of thing than I do.” Kurt’s golden eyes went huge with terror. “Unless . . . oh god, Ev . . . please tell me he didn’t force you!”

“Force me?” Evan frowned, rubbing his chin. “Nah. Not even Maximoff’s that sadis–” He stopped short, his mind suddenly interpreting Kurt’s horrified look. “Ah, man, no! No! It’s not about that.” Evan debated for one insane moment telling Kurt the real details and extent of his and Pietro’s sexual adventures – just as a way of reassuring his friend and teammate – but decided against it, confident that if Kurt heard that, he might start turning orange or something. “No. A couple of months ago, we were talking and we both thought it’d be kind of cool to have something . . . kind of a symbol that we’re together without it being too obvious.” The skater wiped his hands on his cargos. “Something just for us, I guess. We talked about rings, but something like that is way too hardcore and kinda girly.”

“Not to mention noticeable,” Kurt said. “There is no way people wouldn’t ask a whole lot of questions, and it’s not like it’s easy to keep a secret around here.” He pointed to his head and nodded out toward the living room area where Jean and Ororo were talking and laughing.

“Tell me about it.” Evan looked over at his aunt and remembered how closely she’d studied him at dinner, noticing how listless he’d seemed and how little he’d eaten. Afterward, she’d taken him aside and asked if everything was all right and he’d made up something about worrying about a project. He wasn’t sure if she’d bought the excuse, but she had left him alone. He sighed softly – for a place that practically had its own zip code, the mansion sure seemed small. “So anyway, we talked it over and tried to figure out what we could do. We couldn’t do matching clothes or hair or tattoos or whatever. And that’s when he suggested that I . . . um . . .” Evan’s shoulders hunched. It all seemed so petty and pointless now. “Uh . . . he thought it’d be kind of cool if I got my ear pierced. And then we could have the same kind of earring or something in the same ear.”

Kurt said nothing for awhile. “That is sort of romantic in a . . . very weird and frightening way.”

The blond almost smiled. Coming from Kurt, that was high praise. “Yeah, well, I was into it . . . and we were gonna go to the mall and get it done, but . . . a little after we decided on it, the . . . the . . . thing started happening to me.”

The blue mutant looked confused for a minute, then nodded his head in sympathy. “Oh, right. Uh, dude . . . are you sure you shouldn’t tell someone about that? The Professor? Dr. McCoy? What if it’s dangerous?”

“No.” Evan’s tone brooked no argument. “Like I told you, man, it’s probably nothing. Just . . . growing pains. I’m not gonna freak people out over something that’ll probably disappear in another week or two.”

Kurt didn’t look convinced. “Yes, but, you say it’s getting worse . . . I seriously think you should tell someone. I’m worried for you –”

“Save it Wagner, okay? I’m fine.” Evan turned away, rubbing a suddenly itching forearm. “It’s just annoying, that’s all, but it means getting anything pierced is out. Someone punching a hole in my ear. With a needle. And if I’m not expecting it, it could get ugly. Real ugly. . .” He trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought. “Anyway, I told Maximoff I didn’t want to do it because if my parents find out, they’ll freak.”

“Would they?”

Evan shook his head slowly. “They wouldn’t be thrilled, but when I did this,” He waved his hand over his bleached hair, “they were mad for like a day, and then they got used to it and even kinda liked it. I don’t think my dad would be crazy about me having an earring, but he’d deal. My mom, too.” The itching in his forearm intensified and Evan absently scratched harder. “And Pietro knows that . . . so telling him that I didn’t want to do it ‘cause I’d get in trouble with my folks was just stupid to say. And he called me on it. He thinks I’m just afraid of the needle.” Evan made a disgusted noise. “Me afraid of a needle? He should know better”

“So level with him.” Kurt said it as if it were an incredibly obvious solution. “Tell him about how your powers are going nuts and you’re scared that you could hurt somebody. As annoying as he is, I’m sure he’d understand that. Right?”

“Um . . .” Kurt’s voice seemed faraway to Evan as he stared down at his itching arm and watched in horror as two rows of sharp-edged bone spikes of differing sizes popped up along the irritated skin of their own accord. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated on getting the spikes to recede. When after a few seconds they did not, he took another deep breath, this time to halt the trembling of his body as he closed his eyes, furrowed his brow, and strained and sweated in concentration until he swore he could feel his brain leaking through his ears. Cracking open an eye after a few seconds of his all-out effort, he let out the breath he was holding when he saw the spikes had gone away – but not without leaving a series of raised, red welts along his arm. Rubbing the sore spots cautiously, Evan felt a shiver course down his spine. What the hell is happening to me?