It had all started so innocently –

No, wait. Forget that. Evan’s brow creased as he propelled his skateboard down a tree-lined street. Every time he tried to rationalize all that had happened, he began with the whole innocent deal. And whatever this was, it wasn’t that. It was weird. It was disturbing. It was probably illegal. And it was kind of cool in that same weird, disturbing, and somewhat illegal way. But it was not innocent. Nothing involving Pietro Maximoff could ever be described as such.

But then, that was the problem. He knew Pietro -- knew him better than he’d ever known anyone – friend or foe. Knew what made the boy tick, what set him off, what got him off. And he knew that what they were doing was . . . well, not wrong, exactly, though it sure felt that way sometimes. The way they had to hide and pretend and lie and dodge – it seemed like some kind of transgression against the law. Certainly, it could be seen as a transgression against the “natural order of things,” whatever that was. Two boys together, laughing, holding hands, kissing . . . Evan still remembered the look of repulsion on that old lady’s face when Pietro had dipped him near to the ground and given him a good-night kiss that made the movie-star love scenes seem downright Puritan. Evan had seriously thought the old bitch was gonna call the police or turn the hose on them or something, and he’d wanted to just take off. Pietro wasn’t having it, though, and he just laughed in the woman’s face and kissed him again – the second more soul-searing than the first. The old woman was promptly forgotten then, as they did their level best to fuse their tongues together. Evan was still not sure how he got home that night. He had a sneaking suspicion that Pietro had “quicksilvered” him back to the Institute. He certainly couldn’t have done anything quite as complex as walking or boarding after that kiss.

And there had been more, many more, just like them, starting from the moment of that stupid party when Lance had locked them together in the closet. Pietro loved talking about that whole ordeal, but Evan found that he didn’t like thinking about that first encounter very much. Not because he was ashamed of what had happened, but because he was scared spitless of what almost hadn’t happened. If Pietro had kept his mouth shut . . . if the closet had been bigger . . . if the speedster hadn’t taunted him about his lack of experience as regards to the male side of his bisexual nature . . . if he’d just stayed at home like he’d wanted in the first place, would either of them have made a move? Would they have found their way into each other’s arms anyway? Or would they have continued on, hiding behind the façade of “rivalry,” glaring at each other across the ever-present, but invisible, line in the sand?

Evan pondered that as he jumped a curb and rolled along a stretch of asphalt, aware that he couldn’t come up with a suitable answer. Not really. On the one hand, he couldn’t imagine indefinitely hiding his long-repressed feelings about the white-haired boy. But then again, Pietro wasn’t the type of guy you just walked up to and asked out to dinner. And then there was Pietro’s personality to consider: the boy was flighty, flirty, all those ambiguous “F” words. He was the type of guy for which terms like “flavor of the month” were made. Evan just couldn’t shake the feeling that this whole deal was being done for show, that he was part of some elaborate performance run by the eternal ringmaster Pietro Maximoff. The boy thrived on attention and what better way to get it than to suck face in public? And with a guy? That was a double bonus. A black guy? Triple bonus. And a black guy with blonde hair? Quadruple bonus. And a member of the rival team, too? Off the charts.

That’s what was so odd and scary to Evan, really -- the knowledge that Pietro could be setting him up for a huge fall. Maybe he was secretly taping their make-out sessions, or maybe he was planning to “tip off” some of the other X-Men and have them lying in wait for him the next time Pietro asked him on a date. Maybe . . . ah . . . maybe a lot of things. Just thinking about him made his head hurt, which was why he preferred to put such thoughts out of his mind until he had to face up to them . . . or until he was overwhelmed by his worries.

He skidded to a stop at a crosswalk, obeying with reluctance the red, blinking DON’T WALK sign. Fiddling with his helmet, he looked up and down the street. Seeing that the coast was clear, he darted across the roadway, the DON’T WALK sign winking at him accusingly. He bit his lip when he made it safely to the other side. Since he’d started this . . . thing with Maximoff, he’d become slightly reckless. More of a daredevil -- almost as if he were trying to impress upon himself this sense that he was free to do whatever the hell he wanted – skate through a light, ride his board in traffic, fib to his Aunt Ororo about his whereabouts, walk away from this . . . whatever it was he and Pietro were doing if it got too weird.

And he would walk away. The minute he got concrete proof that Pietro was playing him, he was gone. Evan crouched down and pushed off savagely, whizzing down a lonely stretch of road. Yeah . . . the minute Pietro slipped up – and as slick as he was, he always managed to get careless – he’d be out of there, and would try to forget every word the speedster had ever said to him since that night at the party. Every phone conversation would be erased from his mind. Every date. Every kiss. Every touch. Every memory. Everything.

Well, maybe not every memory . . .

~*~ Flashback ~*~

“Stay.”

Evan had been on the verge of opening his eyes when that word, plaintive and wistful, penetrated his consciousness. A gentle hand cupped his chin, long fingers tracing circles along his cheekbones, his temples. The blonde kept his eyes closed as the exploring digits wandered over his lips, down his neck and danced along his collarbone. The cotton coverlet that Pietro swore “felt just like silk” was scratchy on his bare arms and legs, and there was an itch at the small of his back that Evan was dying to scratch, but he didn’t move, couldn’t move, more cowed by the word than by the touch.

Evan shifted a little, the unfamiliar bed creaking with the movement. He wondered idly where Pietro had thrown his pants – he last remembered seeing the cargos flying through the air when the speedster had tackled him the minute they’d stepped through his bedroom door. Wondered what Kurt would say when he saw the assemblage of love bites on his neck. Wondered what the consequences would be for both of them if he obeyed Pietro’s whispered demand.

Stay.

I can’t. His brain screamed it, drowning out the discordant beats of his heart. I can’t. It’s not right.

But he couldn’t say that, because he really didn’t believe it. It sure seemed right. He’d felt that way from the second his lips touched the other boy’s, and probably even before then. There was nothing wrong with it, not really. And dammit, they’d spent enough time playing the roles others had assigned to them. Maybe it was time to draw the curtain on that, even if they could only do so when they were alone together. It was time to be real.

The touch of gentle lips at his temple decided him, and Evan opened his eyes then, the smooth pale column of Pietro’s neck temptingly close to his lips. Feeling lighthearted and stupidly happy, he pressed up and kissed the spot just below the other boy’s Adam’s apple. He’d made the decision to spend the night. If Pietro could get him out in the morning without the other Brotherhood members finding out, Evan would deal with the fallout at the X-Mansion. The blond felt invincible, ready to take on anything –

Pietro reared back at the kiss, looking sharply down into Evan’s face. Evan stared up at him, momentarily confused. The eyes, twin pools of sapphire, were oddly devoid of light. No twinkle there to be seen, and the familiar smirk that Evan had spent years wanting to smack off the pallid face had appeared. Suddenly, he felt very cold, and knew it had nothing to do with the fact that he was wearing only his underwear.

“So you’re awake?” Pietro’s voice was maddeningly teasing, and Evan noticed for the first time that the other boy was fully dressed. But then, that didn’t make him feel too bad. The boy could move at supersonic speeds, after all, so he’d probably thrown his clothes on a second or two before. “It’s nearly curfew time, isn’t it? Shouldn’t you be going?”

Evan could do little more than stare dumbly at the speedster as he whirled around, making the room tidy again. When Pietro held out the missing pants, Evan took them with nerveless fingers. He dressed slowly, Pietro’s impatient tone at his back.

“Daniels, come on. The others are gonna be back soon.” Pietro threw one of Evan’s sneakers at him, and it narrowly missed his head. “The movie can’t have been that long. Hustle, willya?”

Evan decided it was time to make a move. “Um . . . I don’t have to go, you know? It’s a Friday, and I could stick around . . . Kurt would cover for me . . .”

Pietro looked at him in disbelief. “Are you crazy? And just what the hell would I tell the others? ‘Hey, what’s up guys? Lance, you better make some more pancakes. Daniels spent the night. What’s he doing here? Well, we’re screwing around. Pass the syrup.’ Come on! You know better than that. When they get here, you can’t be here.”

“But . . .” He glared at the speed demon, who was not meeting his gaze. There was something off about his voice, something that rang false, Evan could tell, but when Pietro was in full Quicksilver mode, there was no talking to him.

The rest of it was something of a blur - literally. Evan had dressed and Pietro had bundled him out the door, giving him a cryptic goodbye and a quick kiss before shutting the door in his face. Unmindful of the danger, Evan stood outside the Brotherhood home, looking at the door.

Stay.

The word lingered mockingly in his ear. He bit his lip so hard, he tasted blood, and a sudden fury overtook him. He kicked the door savagely, wishing he had the energy to spike it off its hinges.

“Fuck this then,” he growled at the door. “Fuck this. I don’t need it.”

Stay.

He glared up, staring at the window of Pietro’s room. He couldn’t see a thing.

I would have stayed! I would have! Why did you ask if you didn’t want it?!

The sound of an engine backfiring brought him out his rage, though, and he walked slowly back to the mansion, not bothering to ride his board, wondering if he’d just gotten played or if Pietro would be content to voice his feelings only when he thought no one was listening.

~*~End Flashback~*~

The final scenes of that night played out in Evan’s mind as the blonde rolled into the huge parking lot abutting the Bayville Cineplex. With some difficulty, he fought the nervousness that always overtook him whenever he realized just how public a public place could be. It seemed odd to him that he and Pietro had been . . . screwing around . . . for nearly a month now, and in a town as small as Bayville, hadn’t really run into anyone they knew. Sure, they saw some people from school at various burger joints and movies, but they never managed to be seen. Or if they ever had been spotted, no one had ever mentioned anything. So much for the impact of Pietro’s open-air displays.

Flipping his board and securing it under his arm, he walked into the megacomplex, moving toward the fountain at which he and the speedster always met. He was deep in thought as he walked, wondering why Pietro’s behavior that night got him so riled – and riled him it did, because he hadn’t been back to the Brotherhood House since. It wasn’t as if he expected much lovey-dovey sentiment from him, and he wasn’t sure if he really wanted, it really. He didn’t think the speed demon had it in him to be really mushily “romantic.”

What rankled at Evan, so far as he could figure, was the thought that despite his attempts to be careful and watch himself, he might be the latest in what he suspected was a long line of people to have been caught up in Pietro’s snare. Evan felt that he had, like so many others, had been drawn off his guard the minute he thought the speedster was being open with him, sharing things that he didn’t share with others, taking him into his confidence, treating him as if he cared . . .

Evan shook his head in disgust, cutting through the concession court and avoiding what looked to be three zillion preschool kids all clasping Gummi Bears. The blonde frowned, swallowing around the lump in his throat. What he’d forgotten to keep in mind, it seemed, was Pietro’s tendency to run hot and cold, and his perverse pleasure in getting under people’s skin, ferreting out their weaknesses to exploit them later – just because he could. Pietro was all about being better than everyone else, and what better way than to worm his way into a person’s heart, get them trusting him and open, and then, bam! Yank the rug out from under them.

And Evan had known that. Known what Pietro was capable of . . . even suspected it at first. Despite it all, he’d gone along with it anyway, giving into his attraction to the other boy and confident in his ability to sidestep any traps Pietro might set for him. As long as he and Pietro were on the same level – that is, working hard to keep their trysts a secret -- Evan felt secure that he wouldn’t be taken for a ride.

But then he got careless and lazy and emotional. Maybe it was inevitable – he’d had the hots for Pietro for years, and now all of a sudden, they were locking lips on a regular basis. But something about that night he’d spent in Pietro’s bed had made him soft – figuratively, anyway – and he was wide open for the trap. Pietro had played it skillfully; just that one whispered word had gotten him to let his guard down. And Pietro had caught him, and the snare was triggered. It was like on those nature shows when the animal stepped into the trap and was jerked up and upside down, caught.

In effect, that’s what Pietro’s words had done to his heart that night. And it scared the blonde. How could he have been so suckered? And why was he even sweating it anyway? Wasn’t it okay to just have fun? Just get together for the hell of it? Why’d it have to be anything more? He wasn’t sure he wanted a relationship, anyway, and he didn’t think Pietro stayed interested in just one person for very long. But when Pietro had asked him to stay, had touched him like that, so gentle . . . so loving . . . It seemed so unlike Pietro, yet it had fit him, somehow. It seemed right.

But what if it was all a lie?

I should just tell him to fuck himself and stop calling me. Yet Evan felt that to stop seeing the speedster would be to totally concede defeat. Why let him suspect that he had the power to break his heart? (And he would, even if it wasn’t true.) After all, if Pietro could act like this was all a game, why couldn’t he? Two could play at it, right? It wasn’t as if it didn’t have its perks – the kissing, for one. And besides, he did have one saving grace . . . to his knowledge, Pietro hadn’t known that he’d heard him ask to stay, so it seemed as if he were acting on his own impulse. So maybe he wasn’t as hamstrung as he thought. At any rate, it was far from over.

Evan caught sight of the fountain, spurting endlessly in a crystal arc in the middle of the complex. Glancing around, he spotted the familiar white hair, and looked puzzled. Pietro was there, all right, chatting easily with two girls – a blonde and a redhead. Evan looked the girls over; they didn’t look familiar, and oddly enough, they weren’t fawning all over him the way most girls tended to.

He hesitated. The three seemed really engrossed in whatever it was they were talking about, and he felt odd about intruding. He glanced back at the concession stand, wondering if he should get some snacks and come back. He then realized that he couldn’t even remember what movie it was they’d decided to see. With a sigh, he turned back again, and jumped back, startled, to see three pairs of eyes watching him. Evan stood frozen for a moment, but was thawed by Pietro’s quirky smile and the slight incline of his head that beckoned him over.

“Hey,” he muttered as soon as he got close enough. “Uh . . . I was about to go get the tickets. What are we seeing again?”

Pietro just grinned in reply and snaked his arm around his waist, planting a gentle kiss on his neck. Thinking about the onlookers, and not in the mood for one of Pietro’s “shows,” Evan tried to disengage himself from the amorous speedster, looking frantically over at the two girls beside them, who were smiling for all they were worth.

“Um . . . hi.” It was the only thing he could think of to say. Pietro was still assaulting his neck, and he didn’t seem to be willing to let up. “Listen . . . this isn’t –”

“So, this is the boyfriend?” the blonde girl chirped, staring him up and down. “You were right, ‘Tro. He is fine.”

“Yeah,” the redhead giggled. “No wonder we haven’t seen you around lately.”

Evan’s eyes widened about the same time Pietro stopped kissing his neck. Not that he was particularly used to total strangers referring to him as fine, but something else had caught his attention. Boyfriend? Boyfriend?! He glanced at Pietro, standing placidly at his side. Huh?

“Yeah, well, he does keep me busy.” Pietro grinned, drawing Evan closer giving him one last peck. “So, what kept ya? I was expecting you here 10 minutes ago.”

“Er . . .” In truth, he’d had some trouble coming up with a plausible excuse for his Auntie O., but he’d wormed out it somehow, but it had slowed him down. “Traffic. You know. It’s rush hour.”

“You drove here?” This from the blonde. “You’re from New York, too, right? How can you stand the roads here?”

“Evan in a car? Yeah right,” Pietro cut in. “He’s dangerous enough on this thing.” Pietro tapped the skateboard. “Luckily, this is thick enough not to break so easy.” He rubbed the back of the blonde’s head.

Evan glowered at the boy as the other girls started to laugh. Pietro was giving him his patented “I’m innocent” look, but Evan was so not having it.

“Where are my manners?” Pietro said smoothly, cutting Evan off just as he was opening his mouth. “Ev, this is Leah,” he nodded at the blonde, “and Lana. They’re old friends.”

Evan nodded and smiled at the girls, inwardly rolling his eyes. Old friends? Right. So he met them fifteen minutes ago. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Lana said with a smile. “We’ve heard a lot about you – all good things, of course. It’s a shame Pietro never brought you to any of the meetings. Wanting to keep you all to himself I guess.” The girls giggled in tandem.

“Uh . . . meetings?” He looked at the two, then at Pietro again. “What meetings?”

“Leah and Lana go to Parkview,” the white-haired boy replied. “They run the Straight/Gay Alliance there.”

“President and vice president for the second year in a row,” Leah said, putting her hand in Lana’s and giving it a gentle squeeze. “Though it’s not like anybody would vote against us . . . we started the thing after all.”

“Oh. Cool.” Evan was quite familiar with Parkview High, a small school just over the county line. He’d spent enough time in its gymnasium, making mincemeat out of the joke they called a basketball team, but he didn’t think Pietro had ever heard of the place, let alone spent significant time there. But then, there wasn’t an SGA at Bayville, so . . .

“Oh, fuck. Our movie’s about to start.” Lana looked with disdain at a pair of tickets in her hand. “You guys aren’t going to see L’amour en vie by chance, are you?”

Evan and Pietro exchanged a pained look. “Not in this lifetime.”

“Yeah, I know. Boring. And I hate subtitles. But we gotta see it for class. And we hear it’s a good make-out movie, so it shouldn’t be a total loss.” Leah shrugged. “So we’ll catch you guys later? At the carnival . . . we hope.” She lifted an eyebrow at Pietro who shrugged slightly in reply. “Nice meeting you, Evan. Keep him out of trouble.” They laughed and walked off arm in arm toward one of the five escalators that would lead them to the feature of their choice. Evan stared wonderingly after them. Keep him out of trouble? Boyfriend!? Boyfriend! What the hell?

“Cool, aren’t they?” Pietro’s voice near his ear startled him. “I saw ‘em giving out buttons to some kids at Bayville. Closet cases. Losers.” His upper lip curled into a disdaining snarl. “But they gave me the info about the SGA in exchange for me keeping my mouth shut.”

Evan had thought to ask who the “closet cases” were, but he decided against it. He probably didn’t even know the people. Bayville was a big school. “We’re pretty closeted, too, man,” he said pointedly. “It’s not like we’re running around trying to start our own SGA or anything.”

“Yeah, well, we’re different.” Pietro took his arm and led him away from the fountain. “We’re used to keeping secrets. It’s not even weird for us.” He cast a thoughtful look down, fingering a hole in the elbow of Evan’s shirt where a spike had torn through earlier. “Besides, it’s really nobody’s business . . . I just hate people who pretend to be something they’re not, you know?”

Evan nearly laughed out loud. Oh that was rich. Pietro, the master of double-talk, bitching about other people’s duplicity? Nice.

“I used to go to their meetings – only takes me 34 seconds to run from home to Parkview. They never wondered how I got there without a car.” He smirked. “Not so quick on the uptake, some of them. Leah and Lana were the coolest people there. They’ve been together forever. Kinda . . . like us.”

Pietro ducked his head slightly at Evan’s sharp look. “Well, sort of. I guess, like us, but without the jail sentence. And the powers, though I wonder about Leah . . .”

They walked past the concession area where another three zillion kids, carrying Raisinettes this time, screamed and swarmed around them. Pietro, still talking, seemed oblivious, and Evan had to lean in to hear him.

“The SGA is having this carnival. Raising money for . . . something. I have a flyer somewhere.” The speedster sighed as the joined a long line for tickets to see Men in Black 2. “I said we might stop by. You feel like it? It’s next Saturday night. I thought –”

“They called me your boyfriend,” Evan said quickly, not really caring who heard them. With some satisfaction, he noticed Pietro’s eyes widen in surprise. “Boyfriend. Why did they say that?”

“Um . . . because I told them?” Pietro gave Evan a strange look. “Why? They know nobody at Bayville knows about us. They’re not gonna say anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told ‘em that our . . . families would make it pretty tough for us to see each other if they even suspected anything. They bought it.”

“But why did you tell them anything? I coulda just been a friend you were seeing a movie with/” Evan asked softly. The line inched forward a little, and reluctantly, they moved along with it. “Why would you tell them that? That we’re . . . together like that.”

The twin pools of sapphire widened minutely, and for a moment, Evan couldn’t talk. Couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. He saw it. Deep within those expressive eyes, usually so closed off and hooded, he saw it. A glimmer of openness, of vulnerability. A look into a heart that seemed so distant . . . so closed most times. In the swiftest of moments, Evan was transported back to that twilight-darkened room, in Pietro’s bed. He felt the whisper against his skin once more, and he imagined now, his eyes wide open, that Pietro had been looking at him then the same way he was looking at him now. Totally devoid of the subterfuge and the bullshit and the games. Just Pietro. Pure Pietro. Evan’s heart raced . . . and suddenly he felt a bit afraid. Now who had trapped whom?

“Because we are together . . . like that. Right?” Pietro rested his hand on Evan’s shoulder, caressing it. “What do you think the other night was about? I don’t do that kind of thing with just anybody. What do I look like? Besides, there is no way either of them could look at you and think that I wasn’t with you. They know me better than that. ”

“Yeah . . . but you kicked me out the other night.” Evan tried to keep his voice light, but remembering the incident all over again made his voice tremble a little. “What was up with that?”

Pietro looked down, not saying a word for a while. “Oh. That.” Large sigh. “Okay, listen: Lance told us all about your rules and regulations and that shit, and that if you break curfew too many times, there’s hell to pay. He said that people’ll start keeping an eye on you if you started coming in late a lot. Having you watched like a hawk, or worse, your mind probed or something, doesn’t exactly help a relationship. I want you liking this.” Pietro leaned in and kissed his earlobe. “Not hating me.” He looked up, and Evan saw that glimmer again. “It’s not like I wanted you to leave. I . . .”

“Lance knows?” The blonde’s eyes were huge. He thought that Pietro lived in mortal fear of any of the Brotherhood – Lance especially – finding out. “But I thought . . . When? How?”

Pietro chuckled. “You’re kidding, right? He set this up from the beginning. That party? Lance so knew what he was doing when he locked us up together. I asked him about it the other day, and he said we really were that obvious.” He laughed again. “So I guess we’re not that closeted.”

“And he’s okay with it?” Evan looked around, half-expecting the ground to start shaking at any given moment.

“Sure. They all are.” Pietro smiled gently at Evan’s stricken look. “Yeah . . . they all know – Fred and Todd and Tabs. All of ‘em. I didn’t want to tell you, ‘cause I didn’t want to freak you out. But they think it’s cool that I’ve corrupted an X-Geek.” He got in the blonde’s face, placing a sweet kiss on his lips before drawing back to stare into his eyes. “Only, they don’t know that you corrupted me first.”

Evan smiled, his heart beating about a thousand miles a minute and his lips pulsing joyfully. At that moment, he wasn’t sure if he was in love, in lust, in like or just plain insane. And he couldn’t even tell if he cared one way or the other. Maybe this was too strange to work or last, and maybe Pietro was just feeding him another bag of lines and Evan would find himself at some point in the future with a broken heart and a lot of memories and various unexplainable marks on his neck. But it was okay . . . it was all, all right, because he knew that he was an equal player in . . . whatever this was – a relationship, apparently – he and Pietro were building. That he had the potential to hurt the speedster as badly as he felt he’d been hurt. Those impossibly blue eyes had told him that; if eyes were windows to the soul. Pietro’s were freaking sliding doors. And besides that, Evan got the feeling Pietro wanted him to see he was serious. . . that they were together like that. The dates, the kissing outside, the hand-holding. Evan had thought it was part of Pietro’s flair for showmanship, maybe part of plan to get the better of an X-Geek, but he saw, really saw, differently now. And that, above all, was enough to send his heart into the stratosphere.

Pietro hooked an arm around Evan’s shoulders as they moved slowly forward in the much-too-long line. “So the carnival?” Pietro looked at him. “You wanna go? Lance’ll give us a ride. I think the others are gonna come, too, so getting there and back won’t be a problem.”

“Um . . . sure. If it’s okay with them.” Evan said slowly. “I’ll figure out something to tell my aunt and the Prof. Maybe they’ll even let me bend curfew a little.”

“Hm. You think that if you make it a really good story you’d be able to hang out overnight?” Pietro’s brow quirked and he smiled slyly, bending forward to nuzzle the blonde’s neck. “We could watch some movies and just talk . . . and stuff. We don’t have to sleep. We don’t even have to be in a bed. We could even have Todd chaperone and play all his Wu Tang CDs, if you want. It could be perfectly innocent, if that’s what you want.”

Evan did laugh then – loudly -- surprising his boyfriend and the crowd around them. Innocent! Yeah, right. There was no such thing as innocent when it came to Pietro Maximoff, Evan knew.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.

fini