There were a few things Kurt felt uneasy about these days. One was his grades and overall life as a teen. Another was something happening to his parents on account of them raising a 'demon child' in what wasn't the most accepting part of Germany. The last, and most terrifying, was people finding out about mutantkind.
If people found out about mutants, then genocide would certainly start. (or at least, that's what the Professor told them was the worst possible outcome within reason)
Not that he should HAVE to worry. The X-men were good at keeping a lid on their powers. Even his blue fur could be disguised, as long as he didn't touch anyone...
Of course, there WERE people who made it less than easy to keep everything a secret.
One of those people was snapping up flies with a long green tongue, just outside of Bayville high.
So what if the bell had rung, and no one was here to see it? This was still. So. Stupid.
"Toad, Mein Gott, Cut it out!"
Kurt walked up to the Brotherhood boy, his voice a low hiss, as if that would prevent people from coming outside and finding them both, late to class and not quite human.
A blue sky flaunted itself after the night's rain and Toad hated it. Lack of cloud cover meant that the sun was glass-side sharp against his eyes. As if the offense to his eyes wasn't enough, students kept cheep-cheeping in the same shrill, annoying voices. Toad wanted to slime 'em all.
Just then, the warning bell rang and the voices moved on, a single entity in Toad's mind, separate and hateable.
Todd (the Toad) Tolensky was not having a good day. The roof of the Brotherhood house was leaking, again, so he had woken up half-soaked. Even now, his hair was soggy, keeping pale skin damp and chilly. That, combined with the usual lack of breakfast was enough to ruin anyone's bright, shiny day.
The skinny boy stood on the pavement, hands in pockets, pollution-colored eyes fixed on moving dots in the air. With the ease of practice, he snagged them with his tongue and bit down. There was always a satisfying 'squish' and a gasp of flavor as the little creature's innards pooled on his tongue.
Suddenly he caught sight of a figure, one of the few faces he would recognize, even in the student-mob. Alone, he was unmistakable. "Mind yer own business, Night-creep!" Toad spoke with his mouth deliberately open, exposing the mashed fly pieces stuck on his yellowed teeth. "Don't ya have somewhere to be? Like a freakshow?" He waved a hand towards the school. "And by freakshow, I mean in there."
Kurt wrinkled his nose in disgust, the bits and pieces of half chewed fly was enough to make most people lose their lunch. But Kurt had been forced to be around the amphibious mutant enough to learn to at least tolerate some of his disgusting habits.
"Really, the freakshow is in there? Because you're the one flaunting off that disgusting tongue of yours."
Kurt looked over his shoulder, biting his lip as he checked to make sure no one was coming to get them, then turned back to Toad with an angry scowl on his face.
"Is the rest of the Brotherhood this stupid or is it just you? Seriously, man, put that thing away. What happens if someone saw you? I can tell you right now it wouldn't be good."
"Now that's just mean, after all…" Toad lowered his voice in a mockery of Nightcrawler's whispering, then exclaimed loudly "I don't go on about your freaky-ass tail!"
Defiantly, Toad stuck out his tongue and snagged a fly near Nightcrawler's head. "Ya want me ta put it away? Make me, yo." The ghost of a smirk possessed his mouth. Messing with the X-geeks was almost enough to cheer him up… Almost.
As he spoke, a drop of water slid out of the youngest Brotherhood member's hair and down his bumpy backbone. Shivers broke out like a rash on his arms and the amphibian had to force the rest of his lemming-like frame not to follow suit. "Anyway, who cares if someone finds out? 's not gonna make any difference. Fer you maybe, but not me."
Digging into his pocket, Toad fished out a muggy cigarette and his lighter. After two attempts to light it, and several muttered 'damn's, he gave up. It wasn't lack of nicotine that was making him shiver, but another dose wouldn't have hurt. "Hey, I dun suppose a good little X-geek would have a cig by any chance?" With a grin that showed his teeth, he flicked the ruined one at Kurt's face.
Kurt flinched as the cigarette hit his cheek before dropping to the ground, and he couldn't help the snarl that came to his voice, or the way the fur along his spine stood on end.
"Shut up, Tolensky. At least my tail makes SENSE. Where does all that tongue go, back down into your throat?"
Kurt paused a moment, forcing himself not to get too riled up. As much as Toad pushed his buttons, he shouldn't let that cause him to be stupid too.
Rubbing at his slightly dirtied cheek, Kurt kept his voice low and even.
"And of course I don't have one of those cancer sticks. I actually want my lungs to be useful in my old age."
"At least I don't hafta worry about coughing up hairballs." Toad sneered. He opened his mouth to say more, but coughed thickly instead. Unspoken insults stuck like peanut-butter behind the teen's teeth.
Guh. The teen's mind felt thick and blotted. His ears thrummed like the underbeat of a fast rap song. Under the pretense of brushing back greasy hair, Toad ran his webbed hand over his clammy forehead. He was hot. And not in the Duncan Matthews way either. A fever…
Just. Frikken. Great.
As the teen blinked, the sun seemed to get brighter, then dim almost to black. Stumbling back a few steps, he squinted and shook his head. "Look, just get ta class or I swear I'll tie your 'sensible' tail into a damn bow." Toad gritted his teeth and sunk into his usual battle-ready crouch. That's right, he was Toad. Mean, green… and shivering.
Kurt's brow furrowed, a slight worry tugging at his chest, despite the person he was worrying about was one of the few people he listed on his 'hate' list (and the frog boy certainly wasn't helping matters by threatening him) .
He really shouldn't care. He should just glare at the Brotherhood member, attempt to get the last word in, then go to class like a good X-man should.
...Unfortunately, his personality made him be a good -person- instead.
"Err, Tolensky? Are you okay? You're shaking."
Toad winced, as if the concerned words hurt him physically. He recovered quickly though and barked out a laugh. "Ha! 'Are you okay?', you're a regular comedian aint' ya?" God, why did the sun have to be so frikken' bright? "Just go ta class! Jeez, yer making me sound like a teacher." Wires seemed to criss-cross inside his skull, slicing his thoughts to ribbons.
He knew he should have stayed home. If Pietro wasn't sick, and hogging the only bathroom, he would have.
"Lemme alone, fleabag!" Muscles in the teen's legs trembled, but with Nightcrawler looking, he didn't loosen his posture. Instead, the amphibian forced a smirk and flicked his tongue at the other mutant's holo-watch. He felt it connect with an audible 'crack!', but didn't wait to see the damage. Whether it was broken or not, there was no way his enemy was worried about –him- now. Night-creep wouldn't follow unless it was for a fight. With satisfaction curled in his chest, the Brotherhood member powered his legs, heading to his well-worn spot behind the bleachers.
As he landed his last jump Todd felt sharp knees give way. Air gushed from his lungs as he rolled and finally settled on a patch of grass. Oh.. oh damn. So the sickness- fever or whatever, was worse than he'd thought. Out of sight, the skinny boy finally closed his eyes and allowed himself to sink into boiling unconsciousness.
Kurt yelped as he felt his image-inducer get hit (you became sensitive to those things when you knew the slightest nudge on the sensitive thing meant certain doom), and his sharp hearing could just catch the soft whirring noise the watch made when it was about to malfunction.
"Scheiße, not now you stupid thing!"
Kurt gave it a soft pound right on top of it, which sometimes managed to fix it, sometimes not. It was a finicky little thing.
The whirring stopped, but so did the hologram that had disguised him so neatly.
Kurt instantly flattened himself against the wall, keeping to the shadier parts of the cold brick on instinct. Camouflage was his strong suite.
Thoughts of a million safe places he could teleport to zoomed through his head. The institute, the men's bathroom, the school roof, behind the school bleachers- oh, that was where that stupid punk was hopping off to.
…
All the more reason he should go there. Surely even X-men were allowed a little payback now and again, right?
A scowl set deeply on his face, Kurt made himself teleport.
A plume of sulpheric smoke exploded to life behind the bleachers, a very angry looking German demon coming with it.
"Alright you -verdammt- frog, I'm tired of you being such a pain in -"
Kurt words were caught in his throat as he saw the youngest Brotherhood member motionless on the ground.
It took him a second to react, but when he did, Kurt's first aid training was the first thing that came into action. A quick 'port and he was kneeling by Toad, blue furred hand on the boys forehead.
Even through that layer of fur, he could still feel Todd burning up...
Well, at least he seemed to be breathing.
"Todd, can you hear me?"
The miasma between consciousness and unconsciousness was, in Toad's humble opinion, a god-frikken'-awful place to be. Not awake enough to move, but not allowed comfort of sleep either. Suddenly, there was a sensation, something warm and soft, and a heavily-accented voice called his name. His actual name.
"The sandman's German…" He mumbled groggily through cracked lips. "Who knew?" But even in his state, he half-recognized the voice. It was enough to reel his mind back to the foul, feverish, surface. Ungluing his eyes, Toad forcibly shoved his eyelids up.
Blue. There was a lot of blue. "Night-creeper? Uggn-" With visible effort, the amphibian brought his dirty knuckles to his mouth, stifling a groan almost entirely. When it faded, his hand fell back to his side, carcass-limp. "Go away. I dun want…" He trailed off, but didn't sink. Yellow, death-hued eyes remained open. After a blink, he took a shuddering breath. "W-why're you here? As a lucid dream, you ain't my first choice."
Kurt couldn't place what his feelings were right now... Some kind of mix between pity, annoyance, and concern.
"Would you stop it with the insults for one damned second, Toad?"
Kurt had to pause after saying that, surprised with how the words had almost come out...gentle.
"...Look, you're sick, really, really, sick. Even I can see that, and the only one worse at first aid than me is Rogue."
Kurt scooped up the smaller boys limp body and stood, his mouth setting in a deep frown when he realized how light the Brotherhood boy was. That couldn't be healthy...
"I'm taking you to the institute, Ms. Munroe will know what to do..."
Toad's limbs were filled with that lead and the teen mentally shouted at himself for not hiding better. His anger slowly ebbed into curiosity however, as the X-man simply looked at him with those freaky golden eyes. "You're the sick one." Came his hissed reply, threaded out of his throat like a promise. Seriously. Why wasn't the X-man taking advantage of the situation?
Feeling the German's arms slinking under his legs, Toad first gasped, then choked out a laugh. "Really, Night-creep? And you say the Brotherhood are dumb…" But the insult was quiet with bewilderment.
Blunt-nailed fingers pushed at Nightcrawler as he was lifted from the ground. If the rest of the Brotherhood even found out he had been taken, no, -carried- to Xavier's geek-house, he'd be ridiculed forever. Still, his struggles were rather half-hearted and, once he was secure, he pressed his cheek against the other mutant's chest.
The fuzzy x-geek was warm.
It was stupid, with a fever, to crave warmth, almost as stupid as Nightcrawler's picking him up in the first place. Almost.
Kurt grit his teeth, trying very hard to not be emotionally affected by Todd's weak attempts to escape, or the acceptance that followed.
For Kurt, touching someone was such a rare thing, so rare it was almost sacred, even intimate.
Of course, thinking of it like that made it creepy, as Kitty had been quick to tell him when he'd explained it to her (She was, of course, under the vow of secrecy that best friends tend to be ruled by when it came to eachother). Creepy enough, she said, that people might avoid him if they knew. So it would be better to keep it to himself, and best to learn to stop thinking of such normal interaction in that way.
But sometimes...It was just really hard to do that...
"Jah, the Brotherhood is dumb. The X-men wouldn't let one of our own go out if they were as sick as you are."
Kurt held Todd a little closer, his tail flicking behind him nervously.
"I'm going to teleport now, do me a favor and don't vomit on me, alright dude?"
Not waiting for an answer, Kurt 'ported them into the institute's infirmary.
Kurt often wondered what he'd do if the school and the institute weren't in 'porting range of eachother.
"You okay, Toad?"
At the other's request, Toad almost grinned. Telling a delinquent not to do something, and so seriously too, as if he really expected him to comply. The boy's thoughts were ripped apart at the teleport. When they arrived at the infirmary he found he was clutching the front of Kurt's shirt tight enough to see bone through his knuckles. An empty belly pushed dry-heaves up his throat, but the flies were polite enough to stay where they were.
When Nightcrawler spoke, Toad rolled his eyes. As if the rest of the Brotherhood knew…And it looked like he was 'Toad' again.
"Yeah 'm fine... But it looks like yer no lucid dream after all- oh DAMN!" Looking around, Toad seemed to see the place for the first time. "We're… we're in the mansion. Creeper! Night… Night-creeper… hey!" Gasping breath, the skinny teen grasped Kurt's shoulders and pulled himself foreword so he could look the other in the eye. "You can't let anyone else see me, ok? Word'll get out and the guys… they'll kick my ass y'know!"
A rippling of unease trickled down Toad's back, much like the steady chill-drip of before. Here he was, asking his enemy not to do something… cause for a double-negative if he ever saw one. "T-that is…that is…nnng" Toad's head throbbed too much to think. Closing his eyes, Toad let it press foreword against Nightcrawler's furry neck. "Get me somewhere to hide or I'll…" He cracked an eye open for inspiration. "I'll uh… I'll bite yer ears off or something."
Kurt raised an eyebrow at that, and for some reason, the first thing he thought of to answer to that strange threat was something that he'd heard Evan say in response to more than one similar statement.
"Kinky?"
...
Oh wow...that was weird to say, and the bizarre factor doubled because of who he said it to.
Just...Yeesh.
Coughing lightly to hide the embarrassment that little comment had caused him, Kurt laid Todd down on one of the infirmary beds, taking care to not jar around the ill mutant.
"Ah, jah. Anyway... I could, uh, give you something to help the fever. But for all I know you have an infection... I should really call Ororo, she's better at this."
Kurt's tail flicked back and forth, mirroring his thoughts.
To fetch the adult, or not fetch the adult. That was the question. Twas it nobler to honor the wishes of the near dead, or to practice what one has been taught is good and upright?
Okay, English class had officially been teaching too much Shakespeare.
"Do you know what's wrong with you? I mean, are there symptoms besides the fever?"
There was a moment of incomprehension, then Toad felt heat rush to his sallow cheeks. Fever. Of course he was flushed, he was sick. But… had Nightcrawler really just said that! Delirium wasn't out of the question.
"-Nng.." The teen swallowed most of his groan, but couldn't stop small bits from leaking between his teeth. "No.. no. I dun want anybody else." Toad frowned and found he was shivering again on the clean, white bed.
Symptoms. Doctor Fuzz wanted symptoms huh? God, today was bizarre. "Pietro's got it and-" Yellow eyes widened "Wait! That jerk gave this to me…I'm gonna kill him!"
What had he been talking about?
Symptoms. Right. "But Piertro went through it fast." No surprise there. "He only had it a few hours before I left. It was worse at first, puking and stuff, but he seemed to be getting better. Lance got him a hot water bottle. It leaked, but it seemed to… help…"
Toad's gaze lingered on Nightcrawler for a moment. Smog-colored eyes narrowed and suddenly his long tongue snapped out, curling like a slimy bracelet around the mutant's fuzzy wrist. The length of it tugged insistently. "C'mere." Toad muttered with surprisingly clarity around his tongue.
The furry x-man could work as well as a hot water bottle. And as long as he was close, he wouldn't be able to tell anyone else.
Kurt couldn't help the shiver that went up his spine as the slimy appendage snaked around his wrist. There was no doubt that the gooey spit-mucus-slime-whatever that stuff was would lead to some very unpleasant problems with his fur, caking it together are making it too stiff for comfort.
Just...Ew.
But Kurt had been forced to deal with worse grooming problems before (half of which were Toads fault anyway), so he just let Todd's tongue pull him closer, until he was right up against the edge of the cot.
Looking more annoyed than anything else at being dragged there, Kurt's tone went completely flat.
"Vhat do you want, Tolensky? I hope you're not going to give me your last wishes, I don't want to be the one going to tell your mother about all the crap you pulled in your life."
A tangled knot seemed to tighten in Toad's chest, urging memories foreword, now of all times. If he hadn't know better, Toad would have called fuzzy out as a sadist.
When Nightcrawler was in grasping distance, Toad did just that. Webbed, slightly limp fingers twisted around the saliva-slicked wrist and the teen sucked his tongue back with a distinct slurping sound. "Naw. Nothing like that." He started to shake his head, then quickly stopped as pain blossomed behind his eyes. "Nn… I just… dun want you going anywhere."
The boy's thin chest moved visibly under multiple layers with every breath. His tongue tasted musty, and not just from other mutant's fur. He swallowed with some difficulty. "'sides… it's better to have yer enemy where you can see 'em right?" Toad snickered scathingly. "If ya go off to tell someone, who knows what trouble I'll get into."
Kurt quirked an eyebrow upwards.
"I suppose... But vhat kind of trouble could you possibly get into? The only people here are You, me, Ororo and the Professor. So unless you plan to wreck the place like you did the first time you were here..."
Kurt sighed, and sat on the edge of the bed, not bothering to take his wrist back from Todd's easily breakable hold.
Golden eyes looked at the younger boy, the only conveyed emotion was a lack of understanding.
"Vhatever, I'll follow your stupid request. I won't bring anyone else here... Do you need aspirin or something?"
Relief sagged through Toad's shoulders and he let himself sink against the cot's cushioning. "Naw, 'm fine." The phrase was a mantra, hollowed with use.
There was a moment of silence as he stared up at Nightcrawler, knuckles itching for contact. Instincts forged by their countless battles told the skinny teen to strike now, while the enemy's guard was down. Unprepared, weak, and… warm. More snake than amphibian, the boy wriggled closer, then promptly hated himself for it. Skinny legs shifted against the cot as he resisted hugging the warm form like a life-sized plush. "And ya know, the weather-bitch ain't exactly a welcome thought. In case ya forgot, she tried to fry me."
The sides of Toad's vision went cloudy and his hand dropped from Nightcrawler's wrist. "Look dawg, for real, you gotta promise you won't tell anyone about me… like this."
"Storm wasn't actually going to hit you with lightning. That could kill you, or at least...umm... 'jack you up'?"
Kurt's tail twitched slightly at Todd's movement. Sick or not, he wouldn't put it past Todd to try and fight him on the slightest whim.
"And... why should it matter so much? Everyone gets sick or hurt. Do you think we have this infirmary so no one could use it? Hell, Scott would kill one of us if we tried to hide being ill. Especially as ill as you are."
Hearing Nightcrawler use slang was priceless, and not just because of his accent. The X-man's entire demeanor, past fangs and fur, screamed compassion. Stupid. Definitely not found on the streets. "Yer… a real freak, ya know that?"
Black spots swarmed in front of Toad's eyes, so he closed them. It didn't help. The sickness was in his body, the one place he couldn't escape from.
Mind groggy, the teen rolled over and looped an arm around Nightcrawler's warm waist. "You wouldn't understand, yo... Some of us don't get to tell."
Slowly, the boy's muscles relaxed. Greedy exhaustion had sucked him dry. Sight went first, unnoticed behind Toad's closed lids. Other senses blinked out until there was only the soft, unfamiliar warmth. Then, even that vanished.
Every muscle in Kurt's body seemed to tense up. Toad was...hugging him...Sort of...
"Um...Tolensky?"
"..."
"You're not asleep, are you? Seriously, dude, this is weird...Wake up...I...Uh...Verdamnt..."
As much as Kurt felt uncomfortable with what was going on right now, he also knew that he shouldn't wake up the other boy. Meaning he couldn't risk moving around too much.
So...Stuck here...Being hugged by the Toad...
"...This kind of sucks..."
Golden eyes flickered over to the smaller, sleeping boy.
...At least Todd wasn't annoying or mean when he was sleeping...
Actually, it was kind of cute... and the way he was holding his waist didn't feel bad...
Oh. That was probably one of those 'creepy' thoughts.
He really needed to stop thinking those.
[Authors note: Link to art for this chapter on our profile page.]