Six


The sound of leaves being crunched underfoot drew Evan out of his meditative state. He looked up quickly, half-expecting, half-hoping to see Pietro and his ever-present smirk before him again with a more concrete clue than the one he'd given - or at least an explanation of the first. Evan frowned a little, feeling slightly disappointed to see Kitty and Lance walking across the courtyard toward him. Lance had a protective arm around the petite girl, as they strode quickly through the grassy area. Light from the blinking lamps overhead bathed the couple in a harsh white light, and Evan could see them clearly as they approached - Kitty was now wearing Lance's vest, and both were carrying paper bags dotted with oil stains.

"Omigod, Evan! I am, like, soooo sorry we took so long," Kitty gasped out as soon as they came near. "We had to wait in this long line, and then they mixed up the orders, and then this poor lady started screaming that somebody stole her dentures. It was a total zoo." She held out the paper bag. "Here -- we got you some Krispy Kremes. They're still warm." Kitty glanced around the vacant square. "You must have been totally bored out of your mind out here. We, like, so owe you."

"It's cool. I kept busy. Just a little cold out here, though." Evan opened the bag, inhaling the yeasty, sugary, sweet smell of glazed doughnuts - his favorite. "So, where'd you guys go?"

"Right around the corner. There's this new arcade over on Atton," Lance answered. "Place is huge - they hand out maps at the door and you gotta take a number just to stand in line for the bathroom."

"You'd love it, Ev," Kitty said. "They've got all these ramps and stuff in the back for skateboards. It was packed, though."

"Cool," Evan said around a mouthful of glaze. "It's about time this town gave some love to skaters. What's this place called?"

"Multilingual. Pretty cool, huh?" Kitty replied. "And it's got this really intricate mini-golf section - 21 holes! Lance and I played, and I kicked his butt!"

"Yeah, well, brag while you can, Kitty-kat, 'cause it ain't happening again," Lance shot back, grinning at his girlfriend. "You were just lucky I didn't unleash my patented Alvers Swing. I didn't want to scare you."

"Alvers Swing? The only scary thing is that you actually spent time to come up with that." She gave him a playful punch. "And speaking of scaring, you didn't seem to worry about frightening that guy who was playing in front of us."

"That was different." A shadow of anger swept across Lance's face. "All right, Daniels, check it: Kitty and I were behind this total jerk and his date on the course. This guy was so busy showing off for her that he was slowing everybody else down. So I ask him if Kitty and me could play through. I asked him nicely."

He looked at Kitty for corroboration, and she nodded. Lance continued, "I was polite, and it was only one fucking hole. But this asshole flips me off, which pissed me off enough, but what set me off - Kitty comes up trying to keep me from smacking the guy, and this dickhead hits her in the foot with his fucking putter!"

"It was an accident," Kitty added quickly. "The guy apologized, but he was really jerky about it, so Lance starts making the ground shake --"

"Uh-oh." The blond swallowed painfully. Having been on the business end of an Avalanche-induced tremor more times than he cared to remember, he could only imagine the terror that it could cause people who weren't expecting one. "Isn't that kinda dangerous with all those people around?"

"It wasn't anything big." Lance said. "Just a little shakin'. Nobody got hurt . . . and this asshole hit Kitty! No way I was lettin' him get away with that!"

"I tried to stop him, but . . ." She shrugged expansively. "It really wasn't a big deal, Ev. Nothing fell or anything - except this jerk's toupee." She trailed off, giggling. "It landed right on his date's shoes. She started screaming, and that poor guy was just standing there totally bald with everybody staring at him and his hair on the seventh hole next to the windmill."

"Hey, she shoulda thanked me," Lance said. "Probably the first time she'd ever felt the earth move when she was with him."

She and Lance fell into each other, laughing. "Evan, you should have seen his face." Kitty giggled. "I almost felt sorry for the guy, he looked so lost. He didn't even pick his hair up. He just stood there looking like someone had just kicked his dog. His date finally just left him there. When we let, we saw her totally flirting with one of the waiters."

"Man, this place sounds wild." Evan munched another doughnut. "I definitely have to check it out."

"It was sooo much fun. I wish we could have stayed longer." Kitty's voice was wistful. "We didn't even get to finish our game. We lost so much time at the beginning just waiting for stuff."

"It's all right, Kitty-kat. We'll go back soon, I promise." The strained, sorrowful tone of Lance's voice was a stark contrast to his self-assured words. "And next time, I'll keep a lid on the tremors. Maybe."

"Oooh, can I, like, get that in writing?" She looked up at him, flashing a brief, dazzling smile. "Nobody'll believe you actually said that unless I, like, have some sort of proof."

Lance beamed down at her, and the two gazed silently at each other for several seconds before the dark-haired boy moved in for a kiss. Evan, feeling extremely out-of-place at that moment, shifted his attention elsewhere. Feigning a sudden interest in a blade of dried-up grass, the blond reflected on the ridiculousness of the situation. Kitty and Lance deserved better than this, than to have to slink around to meet, or to have something so special as a good-night kiss observed by a third party, or to have to cut their time together short because someone might get suspicious. It was silly: the Brotherhood and the X-Men weren't fighting anymore - not really - and it was so obvious to everyone who knew Kitty or Lance that the two were crazy for one another. Yet the two obviously felt there was a need for the charade, so how much had relations changed that much between the two teams since what happened on Asteroid M? Evan hadn't really given it much thought until that night.

I couldn't do what these two are doing. Evan focused his attention on a nearby leaf. Having a relationship is hard enough without bringing in a whole other crop of obstacles. He had a brief, anxious thought about the person who allegedly liked him. It would suck, and suck royally, if it were somebody who was disliked in the X-Mansion. Like most of the cheerleading squad and Tabitha, for example. Sure, the Professor had said the errant girl could rejoin the X-Men whenever she wanted to, but no one really seemed to miss the blonde girl. And since Tabby had joined the Brotherhood, she was openly hostile to many of her former teammates - especially Jean - so there was little hope of any reconciliation. Evan shuddered a little: Boom Boom was cute, and interesting in a combustible way, but for the sake of harmony in the Mansion and his nerves, he hoped that his admirer was a little more self-contained than Tabitha Smith.

He glanced up quickly. Kitty and Lance had stopped kissing, and were standing with their arms wrapped around one another and their foreheads pressed together.

"I guess I gotta let you go." Even as Lance said this, he wrapped his arms tighter around the girl.

"Only for a little while." She smiled sadly, shrugging out of his vest. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Right." Lance managed a small smile, taking a few steps backward. "Tomorrow."

The blond stood apart from the two, a fleeting image of angry blue eyes and Pietro's sneer coming into his thoughts unbid.

Yeah. Evan looked at the bench where and the pale boy when they' d formulated their challenge. Tomorrow.

~*~

Pietro stumbled up the stairs of the Brotherhood home, sweat pouring down his pale face. From the time he'd left Evan to the time he'd arrived at the rundown Victorian, an hour had passed - an hour during which he literally run himself ragged zipping through Bayville. He wasn't sure if he was running to help keep from thinking about the blond or because he really didn't want to go home. It didn't matter anymore in any case - he was walking through the door and Evan was again on his mind.

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. I am fuckedfuckedfuckedfuckedfucked. Pietro pushed open the door, and passed soundlessly through the foyer into the dimly lit living room. The television blared uselessly in one corner, and Pietro could see Tabitha sprawled out on the couch, one leg dangling limply off the edge. He gritted his teeth - the girl was only lying there, but the girl didn't have to do much to get on his last nerves.

"That you, Rocky?" Tabby's drawly, lazy voice set Pietro's teeth on edge. "Better get to those dishes. I think I saw them moving in the sink." Her head popped up from the couch, and she grinned at the sight of the pale youth. "Oh. It's you, Speedy. What have you been up to?"

"Playing in traffic."

His voice was clipped and succinct, and he delivered it while moving toward the kitchen, and without a glance in the girl's direction. The scary thing was that it was true: Whenever he had a surplus of tension to work out, he played a simple game he called "The Dodge." Only his version involved Bayville's main drag at rush hour. The fleet-footed boy delighted in zipping back and forth across the crowded highways, winding around the rushing cars at the speed of light. He was always able to get out of the way in time, always able to spiral around the speeding vehicles with an ease that was almost laughable.

It had been different that night, though. It was well past rush hour and the strip had been less crowded than usual. It was a good, thing, too, because Pietro had been decidedly less sharp, less fast, less into the game. His mind was full of thoughts of Evan - thoughts that distracted him, made him slower. He weaved in and out of the traffic, unseeing, unhearing, senseless to everything except the speed, for an hour or more, stopping only when he'd tripped - something that had never happened in all the times he played Dodge. He recovered in time to lunge to the side of the road and thus avoid being flattened by a lumbering pickup truck. The game lost its appeal then, and Pietro rushed home with little thought about his brush with death. He had more important things with which to occupy his mind.

Pietro walked toward the kitchen, sniffing cautiously. A rather . . .disturbing aroma coming from the small room was derailing his thoughts. Great. They let Todd cook again. Like we don't have enough problems. He reached the threshold of the kitchen and looked in. A dim haze hung in the air. Tired eyes scanned the room and came to rest on the source of the smoke and the odor - a casserole dish sat on the stove, burnt black as charcoal, tendrils of sickly looking smoke still rising from it.

"'Tro! You're back! Um . . . I don't think you want to go in there, yo. We're still letting it air out."

Pietro flinched at the voice, glancing over his shoulder sharply to see Todd standing behind him. The younger boy's spindly arms were trembling under the weight of schoolbooks. "The lasagna got a little burnt, but it wasn't too bad. You hungry?"

"That's lasagna?" Pietro gazed at the blackened pan and was reminded of the time Tabitha decided to energy bomb the dishes instead of washing them. "It looks like its moving."

"It was all right." Todd sat at the kitchen table, spreading his work out in front of him. "Except, we were out of ricotta and mozzarella, so we used cream cheese and cheddar. Um . . . and we put mustard in 'cuz we ran out of tomato sauce." Todd shrugged at Pietro's pained expression. "I know it sounds gross, but it beats starving."

"I'm not so sure about that," the silver-haired boy said dryly. He threw himself into the chair opposite Todd "So. Lance still isn't back."

"Nope," Todd frowned into one of his textbooks. "Where do you think he's going all these nights? I'm startin' to worry about him, yo."

Pietro glanced out the slightly open kitchen window, which framed a portion of the inky night in a neat square. His brow creased slightly. "No idea. I lost him just as I got to the Library. The jeep is outside, though - he can't have gone that far."

"The jeep's outside because we don't have money for gas," Todd said grimly. "And it's not like he took the car when he went running to the X-Freaks, remember?"

Pietro didn't answer for a long moment. He'd never forget Lance's brief defection, and in many aspects, and he didn't think he'd ever entirely forgive him for leaving, but he was more than ready to move past it. "Lance is not going to ditch us for the X-Geeks again." The speedster wished he could sound more confident, but it had been a long night. "Maybe he's taking up jogging. Who knows? There's not as if there's anything interesting to do here. "

"Yeah, but still. It's like he can't bother to be around us or anything. He comes in, stays in his room, or else he goes out for hours and doesn't say anything to us. Like we're diseased or something. Fucking X-Geeks . . . I think they screwed up his mind or something." He looked worried momentarily before turning eager eyes on Pietro. "But whatever. So, how you feeling? How's your head? What happened with Daniels after I left?"

"Nothing good." Pietro rested his chin on the table and was at eye level with one of Todd's books. "Thanks to you. It is only because I am very tired and I don't want to get these pants any dirtier than they already are that I don't kill you right now. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I dunno, man." Todd idly rolled a pencil across the table. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. I only wanted to help. I didn't think you'd faint."

"I didn't faint. I - I tripped." Pietro muttered, raising his head. "And it - it wouldn't matter if I had - don't try to make this about me. I made a simple request for you to please keep quiet about the thing with Evan, and that included keeping your mouth shut around him."

"I know, but it's just . . . I just thought I . . ." Todd squirmed in his seat. "I . . . aw, fuck, man, I don't know. I guess I just hate seeing you all mopey and sad and stuff. We got enough of that in this house."

Pietro began to speak, but shut his mouth quickly. Something in the timbre of Todd's voice halted his words, and the speedster remained silent.

"You know I don't have any love for Daniels - or any of the other X-Geeks, for that matter," Todd went on. "But you do. And if being with him is what's going to make you happy, then, I wanna do what I can to help you do that - and I know enough to know that what you're doing ain't gonna get it, yo. So I gotta push you. That's what friends do, right?" The younger boy looked a little worried. "Um . . . we are still friends, right?"

"Mmmmm." Pietro rubbed his forehead, remembering the fall from the stairs, the aftermath. "Well, considering that I probably would have been wearing my brain on my shirt if it weren't for you, I think it's safe to say that you're on my good side. For now." He grinned at Todd's surprised look. "Evan told me what happened after I, er, tripped. And you say you're not fast. Maybe I'm rubbing off on you after all."

"That's not a bad thing, yo," Todd said quietly, and Pietro smiled for real then. "Look, Quickie: I was just trying to help. If I screwed things totally up with you and Daniels -"

"You didn't screw it up totally, no. But luckily, I was there to finish the job." Pietro's shoulders sagged a little. "I thought you'd told him everything. I heard you say 'Pietro' when he asked you who wrote the letter. When we were on the steps. That much I remember."

"You mighta heard me, but he didn't." Todd said. "That was right at the time you took your little trip, and he wasn't paying much attention to me at that point. I swear I was gonna spill the beans, but when I saw you fall, I just . . . I felt guilty. I knew you weren't ready for him to know yet. So I backpedaled."

"And told him that I knew who it was." Pietro's eyes narrowed in frustration. "Who she is."

"She?" Todd stared, stopping his pencil in mid-roll. "She who?"

"The sweet, lovely little girl who's in love with Daniels, of course." Pietro's voice was bitter. "You know - our mutual friend."

"Speed, I have no idea what you're talking about. You sure your head's feeling okay?"

"It's a long story," The snowy head dipped low. "And thanks to my stupidity, it's about to get longer." Slowly, he filled Todd in on his wager with Evan, growing more and more agitated with every word. Many times, Todd seemed on the verge of speaking, but he always managed to stop himself from interrupting. Pietro was grateful for that - he needed to just . . . talk . . to give voice to his frustrations and let it all out. After the night he'd had, he needed to have a sounding board - and Todd performed that role without complaint.

"So now everything's perfect. Just great," Pietro finished, banging his hand on the table. "Sucked into yet another challenge by Daniels that I have no way of losing. There's no way he'll get it - so he's screwed, but I get no pleasure out of it."

"More than I needed to know, Pietro." Todd rolled his eyes. "But you could have at least told him it wasn't a chick. That would have helped him out some."

"Why? He thinks he's such a hot shot, he won't need me giving him any more help than I'll give him." Pietro's lips thinned with annoyance, and he decided not to tell Todd about the little hint he'd given Evan before leaving the park. "Believe me: He'll get plenty of opportunity to figure it out."

"So you're seriously gonna go ahead with this?" Todd asked, his voice dubiously. "Quickie . . . there's only so many people at Bayville. If you're legitimate with these clues and stuff, he'll figure it out, yo. Nobody's that dumb."

"You don't know Evan like I do," Pietro said with a sardonic smile. "He'll go through these next five days, and he'll be just as lost as when we started."

"And if he's not? If he does find it out somehow?" Todd closed one of his books. "You prepared to deal with that?"

"Of course. I'm a man of my word. If he guesses right, I'll own up to it." Pietro spoke without meeting Todd's gaze. There were no words to describe the terror that would be his world if Evan discovered he was in love with him. He knew - and he suspected Todd knew, too - that there was no way he'd come clean; even if the blond "won" the contest. "But I don't have to prepare for it. I wouldn't have agreed to this if I thought I had any chance of losing, after all."

"Bullshit, yo. The point of taking a challenge is that it's not easy - and there's a chance that you will lose. Otherwise, what's the point? If you're gonna win anyway, why bother?" Todd stared hard at his friend.

Pietro paled, then colored. "Sometimes I like taking it easy. Is that such a crime?" There was an awkward silence. "And I get to be close to him for a few days. It's . . . it's been awhile since Daniels and I have ever spent any time together when we weren't trying to kill each other. It should be fun - or, uh, something. As long as long flights of stairs aren't involved, there at least won't be any physical damage to worry about." He smiled crookedly.

"I'm getting a real bad feeling about this," Todd replied. "Nothing good's happened since you've been trying to hide how you feel - Lance is acting all distant, you nearly busted your head open, and Tabby's still here. I think this is an omen, yo; only bad things will happen if you don't tell him."

"Todd, you've been watching Psychic Friends too much." Pietro's eyes rolled skyward. "There are no such things as bad omens, okay? That's not real. There's just me, and Evan, and a friendly wager." He rested his chin in his hands. "It's the simplest thing in the world. Nothing I haven't done a zillion times before."

Todd looked at the speedster for what seemed an interminable time before shaking his shaggy head slowly. Pietro knew that look - it was one of resignation, of capitulation. Todd had given in. "It's your show, Quickie. If it's okay with you, then . . ." The teen trailed off, shrugging. "So. This whole thing starts tomorrow?"

Pietro stared again out of the kitchen window at the black starless night. It seemed unnaturally dark out - sinister, almost foreboding. Evan's out there, too. Across town - in his big, bad mansion - but if he's looking out his window, he's seeing the exact same nothingness I'm seeing. We're seeing the same thing - almost like we're connected, or something.

The thought comforted Pietro, for some reason, and when he turned back to look at Todd, his face was more relaxed. Serene.

"Yeah." His hand caressed the tabletop. "Tomorrow."

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