A/N: First and foremost I'd like to thank Kizmet for her beautiful piece "Time Marchs On," which inspired my decision to make Lance a firefighter, it fits him, truly it does. I'd also like to mention how much fun it is to write Pietro gay, it works really well for him in this story. Thanks for reading and I hope you like it! Reviews are appreciated, however angry flames are not. Merci Beaucoup!

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"Pleeeeeease Lance?" Pietro whined, giving his roommate his best attempt at a puppy dog face.

"Yeah Lance, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?" Ted added.

Lance Alvers made an irritated noise and sighed, "1: Piet, the puppydog face barely works coming from you, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't teach it to your boyfriends; 2: I definitely don't go to clubs, you know that."

"Butbutbut…" Pietro protested, "what if I…. clean the apartment for a week?"

Lance waited.

"A month?"

He ran an aggravated hand over his face, "Fine. I'll go. Can I go shower now? I'm gonna have to get cleaned up if we're going out tonight."

Pietro positively bounced with excitement, even as Lance began making his way down the hall of the apartment to his bedroom, "ofcourseofcourseofcourse! Go! Hurry! We wanna get there early if you even want a shot with her!"

Lance paused midstep, throwing Piet a look over his shoulder, "Her?" he asked, bewildered, "Her who?"

"Kat, of course." Pietro replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Who the hell is that?" Lance continued towards his room, already mentally exhausted by his best friend and they hadn't even left the house yet. It had been seven years since the fall of Apocalypse, five since Kitty had dumped him when she left for college, and four since he and Pietro had moved to Boulder, and still Pietro (and generally whoever his current boyfriend was) persisted in trying to set him up on a regular basis, though the set-ups rarely lasted more than a night or two, occasionally a few weeks, but the girls could never hold a candle to her.

Pietro interrupted his reverie with an irritated noise, "Kat is the house DJ at Flame, Teddy knows her and thinks she's just your type." He said, leaning against Lance's doorway, even as he began to strip down.

"Again?" Lance groaned, "Jeez Piet, give up will you?"

Pietro rolled his eyes, "I will when you get over her. Or call her and get her back. Either/Or. I really don't care either way."

Lance hurled his shirt at his roommate, "I said I'd go didn't I? Give me a few. Shit."

An hour later Lance reluctantly entered the club with Pietro and Ted, finding it wasn't as bad as he'd half-expected. Actually, it was pretty clean, not so dark he couldn't see and the DJ was mixing house music with whatever the latest R & B hit was, which had the floor full of people, half dressed bodies pressed tightly together with the beat.

Lance made his way over to the bar, surveying the club, especially the DJ Ted seemed to think was so "perfect" for him, at work in the DJ booth, half turned away from him. From what he could see she was slim, her hair was choppy and brown, just brushing her shoulders, her eyes hidden from the flashing lights by violet sunglasses. She was in tight skinny jeans over what he could admire as a great ass, and a tight purple hoodie that left a broad expanse of creamy lower back exposed and he could just make out a tattoo wrapping around her right hip and disappearing up under her shirt. Even at this distance he could tell she was tiny and he could make out one purple-patent-CFM-shod foot tapping to the beat while she held one headphone to her ear, head tilted.

In a word: hot.

"So?" Ted interrupted his thoughts, smirking, "I saw you looking sweetie. Isn't she cute?"

Lance rolled his eyes, "She's definitely hot, I'll give her that."

Ted grinned at him, "AND she has a thing for firefighters, lucky you!"

Lance chuckled, "Yeah, lucky me."

After several hours the boys left for a coffee house around the corner, Teddy had told Kat to meet them there after her set, which had been wrapping up when they left.

Lance and Pietro were ordering drinks for the three of them when she walked up, familiar enough with Ted to hug him as a greeting, Lance started back to the table, leaving Piet with the drinks, filled with this strange urge to See Her Now. He was a few feet away when she laughed at something Ted had said and pulled off the unnecessary sunglasses, glancing at him as he approached.

They both froze in recognition.

Cryastalline blue eyes met chocolate brown.

"Lance?"

"Kitty?"

In an instant she'd hurled herself around the table and was kissing him fiercely. For Lance it was like returning to heaven, she tasted just like he remembered, peppermint and vanilla and just a hint of this spicy-sweet taste that was Kitty alone.

She broke the kiss first, pulling back and staring into his eyes before she slapped him across the face.

He stepped back, shocked, "What the hell was that for?"

She glared, hands on her hips, "it's called a goddamn phone asshole, I know you know how to use one."

He returned her glare, "Excuse me? If you'll recall Kat YOU dumped ME."

"How the hell is 'let's take a break' code for 'I never wanna speak to you again'?" She retorted angrily.

Inside the coffeehouse, Ted shrugged at Piet, "…he called her Kitty, she called him Lance and then they kissed and started arguing…"

Outside Kitty was resisting the urge to grab Lance and strangle him. Similarly, Lance was resisting the urge to grab Kitty and kiss her until she forgot why she was mad.

He frowned at her words, "Since when is going off to school an excuse to end a great thing?"

She made a frustrated noise, "I didn't want to feel like I was keeping you from living your life because you were waiting for me!"

"Waiting for—Kitty! I'm still fucking waiting! I haven't had anything more than a fuck buddy since you left!"

She opened her mouth to retort and froze, "you… What? Why? Why wouldn't you move on? I let you go so you could."

Lance reached out and pulled her to him, "Kitten, NONE of the other girls could hold a candle to you. I've spent four years kicking myself for letting you walk away that day."

I response she stood on tiptoe and kissed him fiercely, wrapping her arms around his neck to pull him close.

Several hours later Lance ran a hand over Kitty's bare hip, mentally replaying the truly fantastic sex they'd just spent several hours on— Clearly she'd learned some things in the last few years and he really wasn't too sure about how to feel about that. He ran a hand over the tail of the dragon that covered most of her back, the head on the back of her left shoulder, wings spread over her back to the tail that wrapped down and over her hip, tracing the tiny script that fit inside the tip of the tail, "Who's Isobel?" he asked, curious.

She pressed her face into his shoulder and he almost didn't hear her answer, "My daughter," she murmured softly.

He froze, "D-do you have to get home to her at some point?" He asked, feeling guilty for hoping the answer was no.

She shook her head against his chest, "Nope." She took a deep breath, "When I was a junior in college, almost three years ago, I was seeing this guy, Peter, and we weren't as… Careful as we should have been. But we were excited. Happy. We were going to be a family, the house in the suburbs, the whole deal. But… I— She was two months early and… Her heart wasn't completely developed and she died at three days old. We'd barely named her and we lost her so soon." She choked, tears rolling down her cheeks. Lance pulled her close, knowing in his heart that this was something she'd never told anyone and letting her continue, "Peter left that day and I haven't seen him since. He acted like it was my fault, told me that without her there was nothing to keep him with me. I moved out here two months later. I couldn't stay there, there were too many ghosts."

He nodded, letting her cry herself out, murmuring softly that it was okay. Eventually she cried herself out and simply cuddled into his chest, both lost in their own thoughts.

"Lance?" Kitty's voice came out of the darkness.

"Yeah?"

"What made you decide to become a firefighter?"

He paused, "I guess it was… After Piet and I moved out here, he was at school and I was working at this garage and also working nights at this bar, and I'd see these firefighters come in after a long night to let off some steam and I never really thought much of it until there was this really bad wave of forest fires outside the city, and these guys saved entire neighborhoods and I remember thinking they were heroes and they didn't need mutant powers to do it either, and that's all I ever wanted to do: help people, so it wasn't even really a decision, more like a natural progression for me. I love it. I love helping people, I love coming home exhausted and feeling like my day was worthwhile.

He felt her smile against his chest, "I've always thought firefighters were kind of hot."

He chuckled, but let it lapse back into silence for several moments.

"Kit?" He said softly, unsure if she was still awake.

"Mmhmm." She sighed, she'd been drifting off.

"I-I'm scared. I'm scared you're going to walk out that door tomorrow morning and disappear and I'll spend another five years trying to convince myself that this night wasn't a dream."

She smiled softly, covering his mouth with her fingers, "Shhhh. I'm not going anywhere. Promise."

Lance smiled and kissed her softly, "Good, cause I'm not letting you go that easily again."