Title: Hit the Nail on the Head
Summary: People get to know each other in different ways. Sometimes by talking, sometimes by listening, sometimes by keeping Colossus from going crazy, or by using the Bamfs as drinking buddies. It all really just depends. Bad summary, but I'm not good at that. Mild Kurtty D.
Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure I don't have to put this up anymore, but whatever. I don't make money off of this and own no characters. There.
Dedication: Let's see, Marg Hammerman, Sundowhn and pixienerd. Partially for reading my last fic with the people of the blue fur but mostly because they are still the most awesome when it comes to this pairing.

-:-
I watched the butterflies between his bones.
-Nobody's Daughters.

i. Hop.

It was unsettling to Kurt Darkholme that the little creatures Wolverine called "Bamfs" looked so like him. Or like his counterpart that had died.

Sitting curiously around the cave Wolverine had sequestered them to after an interesting incident (Logan wouldn't explain it at length, but from the scent of burnt marshmallows and pumpkin spice clinging to Logan even after he'd showered for an hour, Kurt could only imagine that it had been, as many of the students liked to phrase it, "Epic") in the gym and the headmaster's office, six Bamfs stared suspiciously at Darkholme as he cleaned one of his swords. His other sword was held in the grip of his tail, touching down on a wall and carving little brush strokes into the cement and stone. The noise was grating and caused the Bamfs to twitch every so often, but it was almost soothing to the mutant that had grown up with many sounds that stood in similar categories.

"Where do they come from?" Kurt asked mostly towards the ceiling, his voice a shock after silence being held up for so long, but not apologetic.

Wolverine looked over from the computer he was working on, looking for traces of things the Avengers and other people had been asking for him to come across for a week or so. His nose was still ridged in distaste at the smells that clung to him and he looked like his namesake in all but the fact that he wasn't breaking things (for the moment) while only clothed in a light blue towel that tucked together to keep it from falling off if one of the students or one of the other teachers came down soon. His eyebrows lifted from the crouch they'd kept on his face for the last hour as he looked at Darkholme; two of the Bamfs skittering under his chair to poke at the wheels that squeaked every time Logan changed position.

"Some kinda alternate reality. Kitty made them when she was still just starting to like our Kurt, so the details are sketchy."

Kurt tilted his head, hair swaying with the motion as it moved in the direction of gravity, "That woman who thought I was from this world made these things?"

One of the Bamfs, playing with an empty whiskey bottle on an arch reaching along the ceiling, looked down on the larger version of itself; it hissed at the way Darkholme said that, as though it could hear the insult that the mutant was keeping toned down.

Logan shrugged, the cigar he'd lit fifteen minutes before still in his teeth, dropping debris of ash from the end so they breezed through the air before settling a little too close to the expensive computer he was working at, "Hank could explain it better, but basically, either the half-pint created them 'cause of some fairy tale she came up with for a bedtime story, or they were always waiting to exist and the creation of that story made them real enough for their own lives. Or somethin' like that. Hank's better with explainin' these things, like I said."

Darkholme holstered the sword he had been working on into the sheath strapped to his back, teleporting with ease to the floor and causing all but one Bamf (slightly taller than the others, Kurt could assume he had been the one to orchestrate the incident upstairs; there was defiance that exuded from him that the others did not have) to scatter and teleport in opposite directions. The sword in his tail moved in a fluid wave, clockwise, before he turned it over to his hand and he holstered that as well; the Bamf still holding his position and looking at Darkholme as if, perhaps, it held some more intelligence than all the others around the room did.

Kurt bent down a little like an elderly man would, hands behind his back and held together with ease, nose pointing close to the Bamf and that tattoo or scar (whatever it was, it had hurt; Wolverine was sure about that) over his eye catching the light and turning almost orange from the syntheticness of the bulds in their electric sockets.

"Are they intelligent?"

"Ya' mean sentient?" Logan emphasized, fingers flying across the keys of the board in front of him, before deleting a word that was misspelled or grammatically incorrect to do it all over again, seeming disinterested with Darkholme's curiosity, "Half-pint seems to think so. In small bursts, they seem to understand when they do somethin' too dangerous and I have to chase 'em around like cats high on catnip before they just kinda surrender. They're sure smart enough to keep finding my booze."

"Whiskey! Whiskey!"

"Shut it, ya' little—"

Logan was interrupted from his threat, rather harshly, by the elevator built into the place came down to their floor and dinging loud and much too chirpy at the room. The doors opened and, speaking of the devil Logan knew (and Darkholme was never likely to have known in the first place, given the way he'd reacted when she'd hugged him and he'd said "I don't know you,") and thought of as one of the more comfortable and important people in his life, Kitty Pryde stepped off and out of the moving tin can, hands holding a tray that, while not pure silver like Hank would like to fantasize, held enough food for at least four people, a smaller Bamf than the ones in the room perched on her shoulder nibbling some beef jerky Logan knew she gave to the blue rats when they made her feel better about something. She looked a little worn out from teaching (the clock on Wolverine's screen read out the hour of half after three, so her lack of makeup and the fact that her hair wasn't in the petite bun he'd seen her in that morning made sense) but didn't flinch at the three Bamfs that chirped (or, as close to something like a chirp in description that there was—Logan couldn't think of what else to call it) at the sight of her and then teleported onto her head and free shoulder with their fellow Bamf.

Darkholme lost his confrontational approach to staring at the tallest Bamf in the room and peered discreetly over at Kitty as she walked easily over to the table sitting by Wolverine where schematics had been flattened out earlier, one of Logan's shoes sitting on the end as a paperweight, but had been taken away by Psylocke before she'd gone off to dinner with Fantomex for something Darkholme had thought was called "The Colonel's" that consisted largely of game bird cooked in fat heated to a little over five-hundred degrees. She eyed the shoe that was still there, but gave it little more than a nudge with her elbow before it was sent to meet up with its twin on the floor, the tray in her hands making little jittery noises from the drinks she brought along with the food that Darkholme could tell was still hot; the steam from a decidedly German meal rising up to moisten and warm her bangs and fingers.

The inside of Nightcrawler's mouth watered at the sight of food he hadn't been able to fantasize about, let alone taste or smell, since he was still young and less jaded, but his face remained cold when her brown eyes glanced over him (they lacked that flicker of hope that shined like a lighthouse in a fog when she'd first seen him, but they weren't as unkind as the looks he got from everyone else; a vast difference he had experienced each time X-Force went out on a mission and Logan had to talk to Beast or Iceman. She was polite, chatted with most of their group—save Kurt and Deadpool—and brought food when she wasn't, herself, exhausted from a day's work) and then she kind of…waved from him—that was different—to the German food and then she turned back to Logan.

Kurt blinked his dark eyes (perhaps not dark, traditionally in color, but dark in soul) at the back of her head, before looking at one of the Bamfs that was still perched on her head, its tail moving to touch the fork in a teasing manner.

Nightcrawler's teleportation didn't even make Kitty flinch when he was right behind her, flicking away the Bamf's tail; stronger hands than the blue creature's picked up the German food (oh, and the smell was so much better than anything he'd even tasted in so long; it didn't all look perfect, but aesthetics hadn't mattered to him since he was maybe four and could still look at butterflies with fascination and wonder instead of fear that someone would ruin their three days of life—his mother had done him no favors in informing him of how quickly something so beautiful could be turned back to earth) like it was the last meal on earth he'd had in a while. His own spaded tail grabbed the long neck of one of the six bottles of beer miss Pryde had set on the rim of the tray—Canadian, German and American—and he gave the bright eyed beast a goading, teeth showing grin, before he stepped towards the other side of the room, near a table that was often used to hold Deadpool's weapons, but was for the moment empty and perfect to use for this meal and watch Logan speak with the brunette that the Bamfs seemed to adore more than everyone else he'd seen them come into contact with.

He didn't want to pry, seem nosy, become involved with people he couldn't become attached to, but just sitting down and happening to listen in on a conversation in such an open environment, could hardly be called eavesdropping…

"…So, we've managed to get most of the burnt marshmallows out of your carpet…"

Oh, when the German sausage touched his tongue, he almost felt too good to be real anymore. Everything else could wait, except for the taste of the food freely given and the sounds of Wolverine talking like he was vaguely happy, weaving in and out of the sounds of the woman's voice that seemed, to Kurt Darkholme, to be trying and hoping to make Logan feel better than the state of sadness and anger he was often in after every mission with X-Force.

When the Bamf he had been staring at teleported onto the table, he didn't even really mind when it took his beer and sipped at it with its tongue, teeth clinking against the glass. Kurt could get another beer, and was content to just eat for the moment, eyes catching the grin on Logan's face as Kitty gave a little squeak with the motion of the Bamf she'd carried in nipping her ear like it was a dog and tugging up the bottom of her (horrible, in Darkholme's opinion) pink shirt with its tail; a corner of the spade at the end of the appendage tickling her bellybutton and the exact cause of the undignified noise that left her throat.

ii. Skip.

Technically he was allowed to wander the school grounds as long as he didn't bring his weapons and as long as he didn't try and instigate a fight with anyone, which was chafing, to say the least, as almost every time he did take the time to see the place that was similar to home in technological advancement, but different in atmosphere and feeling and people, he ran into the pink haired Quentin Quire. Or, as Logan fondly referred to him, "That Little Shit."

("Hey there, scary version of Kurt," the brat grinned at Nightcrawler from where the teen sat perched in a tree, wearing little more than all those earring studs—Kurt didn't like the smell of them, they carried the knowledge that Quire didn't take them off that often so his emotions as pertaining to his body tended to cling and tell Nightcrawler that days before standing near him, the teen had been angry, sad, frightened; all because of the sweat congealed and stagnant on the metal rings and studs—and a pair of pink gym shorts. Kurt couldn't imagine what he was doing dressed like that, but he never asked since bringing it up with Logan and merely getting the answer of, "Hell if I know. Little brat's jus' like that a lot."

"Something you're looking for, or did you just come up to be a creeper today?"

Kurt often found that Quire reminded him of a younger, more sinister version of his world's Iceman, so answering the mutant was often strained and clipped, to the point so he could do what he came up to do.)

But, today, blissfully, he didn't teleport in the immediate area of the mentally gifted young man.

Instead, he managed to end up behind a pillar and land right in the immediate area of a conversation (from what he could tell, very private and sad, too) between the Pryde woman and who Logan had described as her former ("Oh, I doubt they'll get back together after Piotr screwin' up so bad this time. She threatened to phase his heart out of his chest when he tried to level the school to nothing but rubble, so…yeah.") lover of many years.

He settled behind the pillar, interested despite knowledge that, as it stood, this world's Colossus was a force to be reckoned with since he'd been given a fragment (or was it a whole entity? He tended to tune out things when the information came from Deadpool of all people) of the Phoenix and was…temperamental with everyone he deemed a threat. Seeing as that was almost everyone, Kurt stayed hidden, ears twitching up when it was the woman who spoke like she wasn't so very afraid of Colossus.

"…Look, Piotr, it's over and it's never going to happen again. I don't care enough about you anymore to get involved with these ideas you have."

"Katya, surely you do not mean this. Is destiny for us to be together. If Wolverine would only listen—"

"Logan isn't the one telling you to fuck off right now Piotr; this is all me."

Huh… Darkholme had never heard Kitty swear. Most conversation with Logan and her, in the lair underground that served as the X-Force base of operations when she brought down food for the older man (Kurt was starting to notice a pattern; lots of meat piled on a plate big enough to be a tricycle wheel for Logan, with little greens set on the side because in spite of Logan probably being immortal, she insisted on him eating something healthy when she forced it on him. If Betsy and Fantomex or Wade were in, Kitty would bring down an Asian bento assortment and basically a whole menu from fast food places. Darkholme suspected that she had to go to a special shop for the German food she made hot for him, but didn't ever ask—he didn't want to ask and find out the answer) was light, but filled with worry directed from herself towards Logan and Betsy…and sometimes her eyes travelled over Kurt and Deadpool and Fantomex with something similar that she didn't seem to think they knew about.

"But why, Katherine? We are so perfect together."

"We were perfect together…when I was fourteen and you still had morals and weren't as…possessive of people. Things changed between us a long time ago and I don't think we ever had a chance. Not really."

'Fourteen?' Darkholme raised both eyebrows, intrigued despite himself considering the slightly obvious age and SIZE difference between the two speakers. Perhaps he should ask Logan about this later…

"What do you mean?"

Kurt tightened his muscles at the deeper tone Colossus took on. Before, when Kurt had hidden, it was just charmingly naïve and a little pushy; at the moment it was like the Russian was getting worked up enough for his temper to rise. In Kurt's world, from what he remembered of Piotr before he went over the edge, this would be at a point where he would punch a man in the gut and slap a woman for insulting his honor or something.

Nightcrawler might not know this Shadowcat beyond the fact that she'd thought the world of the dead Kurt, took Wolverine's side often and brought X-Force meals and talk and (without fear) eye contact; but he didn't really like men who hit women for speaking what was in their hearts. If he had ever approved of such a thing, back in his world and years ago, his wife never would have agreed to marry him. So he took on a tense posture, ready to teleport and, if not transport the woman away, then spook the Russian enough to make him forget the urge to hit Kitty.

A light sigh escaped the woman and Kurt could imagine her slouching against a pillar of her own, arms crossing in half anger and half…something else; personal and almost like a child but without the visage of a child.

"…I mean all you really need is your sister. You'd die and kill for me, but you've only ever been able to live for Illyana."

Kurt's tail twitched, a knowing in him at her statement skyrocketing with her continuation (Colossus in his world was like that, too. He nearly smothered Magik with brotherly love and affection and it had often cost the X-men the lives of friends and allies and, worse, students that held such promise. He even vaguely recalled a rumor that circulated for a time about Colossus killing a girl because bringing her back with him from a mission would have put Illyana in minimal danger) and stern sadness wafting off of her like a tide along the beach.

The smell coming off of Colossus was suddenly very much like inhaling iron and debris from a crack in a volcano.

"Katya, whether or not you return my affections is not important. I need you to understand that."

"Piotr, let go of me."

Her voice wasn't afraid. But that just meant that she was tightening the reins on her inner emotions so they wouldn't take part in the physical world and make Piotr even more angry than Kurt thought he sounded.

The sound of leather tightening on skin made the choice for Darkholme and he was suddenly three pillars from the one he had been hiding behind, perching on a tree bough that smelled of lilacs that hadn't sprouted yet and looking down on the sight of Kitty leaning into her own pillar, one hand kept steady at her side and the other one being gripped by a Phoenix lit Colossus (lit, with fire and orange light and the awful smell of flames that mixed with magic and other things the universe made and forced onto people that were to either be blessed or cursed) that looked up at the teleporter like a farmer might look upon a fox that wandered into a chicken coup.

"Pardon me, mein freund," Darkholme grinned, toothy and sarcastic, down at the metal encased behemoth, "But would you mind letting me borrow Miss Pryde? Herr Logan wishes to speak to her about something involving the Bamfs."

Colossus looked like he was about to deny the request emphatically, but Kitty phased out of his grip and nodded gratefully at the blue man, the loosed hand being flexed twice to regain feeling that had been cut off in the moments before. She frowned at the ground (seedling tulips were just started to peek out of the dirt and grass; probably early due to Krakoa) before walking back towards the school. She didn't look back and see Colossus glare even more at Kurt before he flew off; the Phoenix in him spreading its wings wide to compliment his rage, the only thing missing was its echoing scream.

He teleported over to Kitty just as Piotr was well out of sight and his smoke curled around her elbows and stomach as she paused for a blink before accidentally walking right through him. It was a new feeling, but not unpleasant.

She stumbled a couple of steps before turning back to him to apologize; finding his hand raised to wave her off like it was nothing and all of his fur wasn't standing on end because (though he wouldn't figure it out until later) when she'd walked through him, their hearts lined up for a split second in equal beats, pumping blood through them with the same pressure and moving the flesh of the muscle it was made from with the same determination all hearts held to keep a body alive.

"Sorry," she said anyway, embarrassed perhaps not entirely for just phasing through Darkholme, "Not just about that, but for you having to walk—teleport in on that scene."

"Think nothing of it," Kurt shrugged, tail tapping the ground twice to feel the grass as he continued, "Though, you don't really have to go and see Wolverine."

"…Eh? Then why-?"

Kurt turned about face and walked with ease back the way towards where he was pretty sure they kept a fountain on school grounds, waving backwards as he answered lowly, not sarcastic but giving the impression of being so, "You looked like you needed someone to bail you out of trouble."

Kitty looked like she was going to rebuke that statement, but when she took a step towards him to say that wasn't the case and so forth, he simply teleported away and she was left standing in the archway of the entrance to the school. Nothing but the rustling underground, only Krakoa could make, for company.

iii. Jump.

"Bamf?"

Kitty squirmed underneath her blankets; the single T-shirt that could be tucked all the way into Logan's trousers and looked like a dress on herself the only thing she was wearing; the heat that had been expanding in her since the day before making her head hurt and her tongue feel like something heavy and dead in her throat when it had once been alive. Her hair was a mess and covering up one of her eyes and the other one opened and found two Bamfs using her jutting hip as a perch like a pair of cats wondering when their master was going to get up and feed them.

The smaller Bamf seemed to cringe at the bloodshot and puffiness of the brown eye looking out from the tent of bedsheets and pillows, tail flickering around like a whip and both of its clawed hands kneading her ribs and belly in an attempt at comfort.

It seemed a lot like they showed up to check on her more often than Lockheed did recently.

She groaned, but only half-heartedly, as she got up slowly from the mess of blankets and moved her hair out of her face with the hand that wasn't swollen. She and both the Bamfs looked at the other hand when her hair was out of the way (flying in one direction like wings attached to her head, but without the flapping that would just be unattractive with both of her eyes red and barely able to pear at the world at large) and she could get a good look. Five perfectly large finger marks were dark and getting bigger against her skin, along with a slight burn pattern she had only noticed when she had to excuse herself the night before to go and vomit in one of the students' lavatories; her hands gripping the perfect white that showed Toad's work and the white making the bruising seem bigger than they were now in the room.

"I hope this doesn't affect me like it did the last time," she mumbled to herself in quite the groggy voice, her throat sore from trying to fight off a fever she was vaguely aware was already taking up residence in her body because she hadn't bothered to clean the burns around her wrist and she probably had a small infection not unlike when a feral alley cat scratches a perfectly healthy person and they don't clean it with peroxide right away, "God knows Logan won't stop fussing if I end up vomiting into his food when he gets back from wherever they went."

"Bamf…"

Kitty blinked at the hesitance of both the little blue gremlins as they seemed to pick up on the last part of her sentence and were looking to her and then to the window or the door. Each time they moved their heads, Kitty could see the markings on their faces a little better; make it easier to mark them and remember them later, seeing as most of the Bamfs carried similar markings, but not on the same bits of skin.

She had wanted to give the ones that seemed most attached to her a name, but held reservations as some of the students had tried that already (Quire had gone for naming them like Vikings—Hutchgobblin, Wormdigit, Hagglepog—and Broo had named some after old, famous people—Alexander, De Cameron, Hodgekins) but none of them answered to anything but Bamf…or Whiskey, but she held the theory that they simply assumed they were getting some of the drink if they reacted, so she certainly didn't try that anymore. So, when she held up her good hand and patted them on their heads, she just grinned and spoke gently.

"Oh, I see, you were coming to tell me they were already here?"

"Bamf!"

She smiled as both of them leaned into her touch, but then gently (it was amazing that they could be so when often they were reckless and broke furniture) poked the skin around the injury of her other arm, questioning without words what exactly she was going to do about that.

Kitty shrugged, lifting herself from the bed to start for her private bathroom—being headmistress had such good perks sometimes—so she could look for that specific type of makeup that, statistically, only movie stars and wives beaten by their husbands tended to keep in supply; taking a shower with the burns and her head dizzy wouldn't be the best idea. She would just put on some deodorant, that makeup around her wrist to hide the bruising and hope that she could explain away the scars when she went down to the kitchen to prepare a meal for X-Force. It wasn't that difficult to lie about burns—plenty of people got them every day on school grounds—but the bruising would be a little more difficult seeing as they were so large and if Logan really wanted to figure out where they came from, all he'd have to do was stick his nose right up to her skin. Or ask the other Nightcrawler why his sulfur cloud scent was in her hair…

After she changed into some easy blue jeans, flip-flops that made obnoxious slapping noises each time they hit the ground, and a simple white shift shirt, she applied the makeup to her face (oh, just a little blush and lipgloss, nothing too major since it was Saturday and classes weren't important) and along his wrist—hissing most of the time when the sponge touched the burnt tissue, but sucking in it because it made the Bamfs looked worried, which she disliked immensely for reasons better left unsaid—before deciding it would be in her best interest to get out her favorite perfume and press hard on the cap to set more to spray on her than was strictly needed for her to smell good. About two sprays applied to her neck, two to her hair to get rid of the smell of sulfur, and two to the one wrist so the burn flesh would be untraceable under the sweetness of the perfume.

As a final look over to be sure, Kitty held her wrist out towards the Bamfs, "What do you think; is it good enough to hide from Logan?"

Only one of them took a deep inhale and then started sneezing almost instantly. He teleported twice around the room before coming back to a stationary position on her bed next to his fellow. The one beside the sneezing blue gremlin gave a sharp, toothy grin and held up his large thumb (or tried to, anyway; since it was aiming for the floor, but she could only expect so much) at her.

She gave a musical chuckle and picked the both of them up and onto her shoulders as she phased through her door and made for the kitchens. It made them happy to settle on her petite shoulders and nestle into her hair; both of their tails circling her neck in a way to both maintain their position and to give comfort.

"I don't suppose I should thank Mr. Darkholme for his assistance yesterday by giving him Das Boot with his breakfast, should I?"

"Bamf."

"And maybe I'll talk Logan into telling me where he's hiding that last bottle of whiskey."

"Bamf!"

"Whiskey! Whiskey!"

"So that's a yes."