Featureless pop music blasted out of the auditorium. It sounded tinny through the old speakers that belched out clouds of dust when hit. The school's prized disco lights failed to impress; the colours were too faded, and the mirrorball didn't even spin. Then there was the punch with its weird rubbery aftertaste, which Lance drank only as an excuse not to dance with his date.
He hated school dances. They were so preppy and pathetic. He hated having to wear a tux, particularly this year's one which was a black seventies number complete with white silk shirt. It was the only one he could afford to rent, and, in his opinion, made him look 100% gay. Kitty all but laughed in his face when he picked her up, not that he thought she looked much better. She always tried to be too cute, and her ringlets and baby-pink frock were a step too far. Side by side, they probably looked like John Travolta and the Sugar Plum Fairy.
The romance was well and truly over. It was like the solitary chunk of apple bobbing in the punch bowl, indistinguishable from what it was to begin with. Right now, she was dancing with some adorable jock. He didn't care.
At least Todd and Freddy were having a good time, taking advantage of all the bags that the girls left behind at the tables. So far, they had stolen what Todd called "a hefty profit" as well as six cellphones and three iPods. Who needed romance, anyway? The most Lance would get out of tonight would be a cold meaningless kiss from a girl that he didn't even like anymore.
Ugh. He glanced up through his hair to see Scott 'stick up the ass' Summers kissing Jean 'supposedly perfect but actually a slut' Grey. It pained him to say it, but Summers actually looked good in his navy blue tux. And Grey clearly thought so too, she was gazing up at him with this fairytale look in her eyes that made Lance want to hurl right into the punchbowl. Summers was probably gazing back at her in an equally dopey way, but it was impossible to tell behind those stupid shades.
And then there was Pietro with his menagerie of dates, six girls on his arm all begging for his attention. Pietro being Pietro, he didn't care for any of them as long as they made him look good. It was actually disgusting to see him on the dancefloor strutting around his girls like that, like he was Elvis or something. He, of course, looked flawless in a simple grey suit with clean lines to show off his perfect athlete's physique. And Lance hadn't known this before, but Pietro could dance better than anybody else in the room. Pity he was so damn arrogant.
Yes, everybody in the room was looking at Pietro as he flicked his lithe hips; everybody wanted those blazing blue eyes to fall only on them. Lance could see Evan Daniels surreptitiously staring over his date's shoulder, clearly pining for old Speedy. He hoped people didn't think he was looking at Maximoff, he wasn't, he was looking at the chick to the right of him in a black PVC corset. If Kitty wasn't so apple-pie, he would love her to wear something like that. And he would like her to dance like Pietro.
The song ended, and everybody waited for the next one. Pietro vanished and appeared in an instant by Lance's left shoulder. Years ago, Lance might've had a heart attack. As it was, he had now grown used to Pietro's dramatic entrances.
"Let's get outta here," Pietro hissed in Lance's ear, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.
"Gladly," Lance replied.
They walked through the gym not speaking, hands in pockets, only half-looking at the sea of pastel satins and taffetas. Pushing through the fire exit, they were met immediately by an icy chill which cooled the sweat on their foreheads. Outside, the night was still and the dance seemed a million miles away.
"Got a smoke?" Pietro asked, panting slightly from his dancing. Lance fumbled in his pockets for a shabby packet of cigarettes and a lighter. He pulled out two cigarettes, a strand of moonlight falling upon his tired face.
"Thanks," said Pietro, as Lance handed him a cigarette. Lance lit his own first, taking a deep drag that went drowsily into his lungs. Immediately his tension vanished, he sighed and turned to Pietro with a grin.
"Would madam like a light?"
"That would be charming," Pietro replied in a faux-English accent, playing along. Lance brought the flame up to Pietro's cigarette which dangled between his natural pout. For a second their eyes locked, blue burning into brown. Then they were both smoking, looking up at the moon.
The moon was weirdly big tonight, fat and full in a starless sky. It shone pallid silver over everything casting a surreal glow.
"You don't smoke," Lance said quietly.
A thin trail of smoke snaked from Pietro's lips. "No, but you do."
Lance's laugh was husky and ironic. "You got six women in there and you'd rather talk to me?"
Pietro shrugged his shoulders. In the moonlight, he looked freakishly colourless with his white skin and pale hair. 'Moonboy', Lance thought, shaking his head at the strangeness of his thoughts.
"Whatever, Lancey," Pietro scoffed, bringing Lance out of his reverie. "Your girlfriend is in there and you'd rather stand by the punchbowl like a spare dick at a wedding than dance with her."
"Yeah, yeah..." Lance flicked the ash off the end of his cigarette and caught his hand, making a small burn in the process. "Fuck it!"
He sucked at his hand, Pietro's cruel laugh echoing in his ears. "Why the fuck did I come here?" Lance moaned through his fingers.
"Don't be sad, Lance," Pietro said, his tone softening. He took a last drag on his cigarette and threw it away, only half-finished. "Disgusting habit," he whispered to himself with a wince.
But Lance was even depressing himself. "Go inside and have fun," he mumbled to Pietro.
He didn't want to spoil Maximoff's night, which would inevitably end in some wild orgy. His would end in crying and jerking off, probably at the same time.
"Nuh-uh," Pietro breathed, shaking his head. His sleek hair glimmered for a second. "I'm gonna cheer you up first, you looked lonely as hell over by the punchbowl."
"Cheer me up?" Lance smirked. "Good luck."
Everyone thought Pietro was a vicious, arrogant little prick. All of which were true, but he really cared about the people he was close to. If those people were upset, Pietro would go to any odd lengths make them smile again.
Lance watched Pietro's mouth twitch into an evil grin and he winked, suddenly adopting a classic air-guitar pose. "Her hair reminds me of a warm, safe place where as a child I'd hi-ee-ide -"
Lance clamped his hands over his ears as Pietro screeched the chorus of that Guns 'n' Roses song. Maximoff had been teasing him about his 90s Rock image since they'd known each other and man, were his little renditions getting old. Still, Sweet Child o' Mine was infinitely better than Pietro's complete-with-dancing attempts at Bon Jovi.
"Are you trying to cheer me up or deafen me?" Lance groaned, as Pietro thrashed his snowy head like he was headbanging.
"What's that, Axl Rose?" Pietro asked into an imaginary microphone. "You wanna rock some more?"
"No," Lance said simply. He looked at the new frost sparkling on the grass. "Pete, things are really crap right now..."
"This is about Kitty, right?" Pietro guessed, the corners of his mouth twitching again. Lance knew that he was trying very hard not call her 'Shitty' or 'Titty'.
"Bingo," Lance said with a wry smile. "When she opened the door to me tonight, she took one look at my tux and shook her head."
Pietro mimed crossing something off a list. "Erase Saturday Night Fever jokes from repertoire..."
"Fuck you," Lance said, nudging him lightly. "It's like she's embarrassed to be seen with me. And not just tonight. She's always asking me to cut my hair, wear slacks, stop smoking, get a job... Well, sorry I'm not some preppy ass from Saved by the Bell," he spat bitterly.
Pietro shrugged. "So dump her," he said as if it was the simplest thing in the world to do.
"I know, man, it's just......" Lance trailed off, pushing his long hair out of his face. "If I do that, I've got nothing."
"Oh... Do you love her?"
"Not anymore. Don't even like her now."
Pietro pressed his hands together and attempted holiness. "Alleluia!" he trilled."Oh Lance, you don't know how long we've been waiting for it to dawn on you that she's a whiny, brainless, bitchy Barbie doll. Did I mention annoying? Like, oh my god, how could I forget how like totally annoying she is?" he added in squealing imitation.
In that moment, Pietro looked scarily like Kitty. He had managed to capture her facial expression perfectly – all doe-eyes and fluttering eyelashes and mouth gaping open in a permanent state of 'OMG'.
"You big dork," Lance chuckled, punching Pietro's arm. "Seriously, I don't wanna be with her anymore. But if I lose her, what the hell have I got in my life that isn't broken or screwed-up?"
Something seemed to resonate as a tiny frown ghosted across Pietro's face. In a second it was gone, and Pietro waved his hand in blasé fashion.
"Take one of my girls. Have 'em all." He threw his arms out theatrically and proclaimed, "The world is your oyster!"
Lance raised an eyebrow. It was freezing now, and the noise was dying down inside the auditorium. The dance was nearly over. Good, he thought. I hope Kitty's slow dancing with some pampered prince.
A weird picture came into Lance's head of Pietro slow-dancing with all six of his women at once.
"Don't you care about your dates?" asked Lance. Pietro made a noncommittal noise like "nyah" in response. His blue eyes were glazing over as he stared out at the frosty playing field.
Finally he spoke.
"They're all sluts. Sophia, Marsela, Frankie, something, something-else and I didn't even ask the other's name. Whatever."
"Oh," Lance just said.
Pietro laughed coldly. "I don't want any of them. You pick one, if you want."
"I don't," said Lance quickly, before it had even registered with him.
Blue eyes burned into brown again, a more sustained gaze this time. Something hitched in Lance's chest, and though he was in the still open air, he struggled to breathe.
"Why are you here?" Lance rasped. He felt as though he had been plunged into a bucket of ice; he wanted to run but he couldn't move. All he could feel was the terrible electric sense that something was about to happen.
"Why are you here?" parroted Pietro. He took a step closer to Lance, looking more serious than he had ever been. His fierce blue eyes demanded attention.
Lance could see Pietro's chest rising and falling rapidly beneath his neat blue shirt. Maximoff looked wild, like somebody who had woken up from a nightmare. Everything else had shrunk – the music from the dance played on but Lance didn't hear it, it was just as cold but Lance didn't feel it, the moon shone brighter than ever but Lance didn't see it. Suddenly, it was just them.
"I think you know."
It happened in a blur. Lance's hands grabbed the front of Pietro's jacket, pushing him further into the shadows. Then, his hands found that pale pointed face and clutched it, staring hard into those too-blue eyes for the meaning. Pietro's fists clenched and, for a second, the tension was violent.
"You know why," Lance repeated. Blue eyes closed to a veil of black lashes, and suddenly Lance was kissing him harder than he'd ever kissed anybody in his life. It was like he was sucking the breath out of that smooth white throat, or the blood out of those smirking lips. He was kissing with all of his anger, his agony, his frustration, his soul. And Pietro responded with the same desperation, clutching at Lance's lapels.
"Fuck," Lance said, drawing away. His hands shook against Pietro's cool jaw.
"Fuck," Pietro echoed, eyes fixed upon Lance's. There were no words to describe what just happened. Neither of them understood it, but both of them knew what it meant.
They both looked out at the dark shadows of trees on the horizon, leafless and skeletal. Far away, an owl hooted.
"Creepy," Pietro muttered to himself. Lance seemed to prise his hands away from Pietro's face, as if letting go made none of it real. Certainly, the world opened out to them again and the tinny hum of teenage music filled their ears once more.
People were starting to come out of the auditorium now. Turning his back to them, Lance lit himself another cigarette. Pietro stood with his hands in his pockets, shadowed enough to watch the people without being seen.
"Guess my dates haven't missed me," Pietro said wryly. Out of the corner of his eye, Lance saw three of Pietro's girls each getting busy with a considerably less attractive guy. Marsela, Pietro's 'favourite', was ironically necking with Daniels. Daniels must have been hoping that Marsela smelled or tasted vaguely of his favourite rival.
"Jesus," Lance exhaled. Nobody actually seemed to care about their dates.
"Sluts, all of 'em," Pietro muttered. Then his eyes widened and he jerked his head towards a petite figure that was walking straight at them. As the moon fell upon it, Lance groaned in recognition of the sugar-pink frills on the dress. Why her, why now?
He sucked in his breath and turned guiltily to face her.
"Uh, Kitty, hi," he said in a voice much smoother than his real one. He hoped that Pietro was still behind him, but he had gone to examine the value of Todd's haul nearby.
Kitty fixed him with an icy glare, looking like a spoilt child in her too-girlish dress and silly ringlets.
"I thought you quit," she hissed as he blew out a cloud of smoke. He grimaced; after her persistent whining he had pretended to quit three months ago. Now he would face another barrage of wrinkled noses and cancer lectures and 'like, do you know what that stuff does to your skin?'
"I did," Lance said, not daring to look at her seriously peeved face. "I slipped up. Big deal."
She made a petulant little 'hmph'. "And, like, where were you all night, Lance Alvers? You're supposed to be my boyfriend."
"Boyfriend!" Lance laughed, deliberately blowing smoke at her. "Biggest fucking laugh I've had all night. I didn't even want to come to this dance but I did, for you. I couldn't even afford a decent tux but I got one, for you. And what do you do but laugh in my face and go dance with some jock. Goddamn princess."
Kitty sprang back as if he had hit her. "How dare you," she whispered, her voice shaking.
"What, you don't think I deserve better?" demanded Lance. "Of course you don't," he muttered bitterly, stubbing out his cigarette with the toe of his scuffed black shoes. "I'm just a hood."
"Like... like... like..." Kitty flapped, searching for the right words. 'If she says 'like' again I'll have a heart attack', Lance thought.
Her eyes screwed up into little slits of warning. "This is over. I'm finishing it."
"Okay," Lance shrugged, nonplussed. He gestured widely over the playing field. "See you around."
"I mean it!" she screeched, her large grey eyes brimming with tears. "I'm done! I tried, I really tried."
"No, you didn't," growled Lance under his breath. In the moonlight her wide watery eyes looked like those of a trout staring up from a fishmonger's counter.
With predictably bad timing, a white blur appeared over Kitty's shoulder. Pietro's presence was bad, very bad. If Pietro was feeling particularly vicious, he would like nothing better than to tell Kitty all about their kiss. And by the devilish glint in his eye, it was clear that he meant trouble.
"Nice dress, Pryde," Pietro's cold voice purred, eyeing her like a hungry shark.
"Like, get lost, Maximoff!" Kitty was crying now, self-consciously wiping at her eyes every few seconds. Why she was crying, Lance didn't know. Probably because he wasn't begging her not to dump him and declaring his undying love. She really was a pathetic, nasty little brat who knew absolutely nothing about real pain.
Lance realised that he didn't care if Pietro did tell her the truth. He didn't want to think about the kiss right now, but he knew that he wouldn't care if he never saw Kitty again.
"Why don't you get lost, Pryde?" Lance said, cinnamon eyes narrowing with anger. "It's over. Go."
"You don't get to call the shots! Do you know how what you're losing? Like... like..." she floundered again, her jaw setting in pure frustration. It made her look ugly.
Pietro leaned in close to her like he was going to kiss her as well. His lips practically grazed her earlobe as he spoke, every syllable alight with menace. "You really are dumb, aren't you, Pryde? It's over. You think you're so much better than us, don't you, Pryde? Here's the truth – you are nothing, nothing. Now get lost,and I swear to god if I ever see your face again I will break that pretty little nose of yours beyond repair." He paused for a second, letting his threat sink in. She looked truly terrified, like she might wet herself.
"Goodbye, Pryde." Pietro pushed her lightly in the chest to accentuate his words and she ran away sniffling towards Summers without a second glance.
Lance watched her go, wondering what to feel. Every muscle in Lance's body seemed to stiffen so he sat down on the frosty grass. It was over. It was over.
"Little bitch," Pietro muttered, settling cross-legged next to Lance. "Well, don't worry; she won't bother you any time soon."
But rather than feeling reassured, Lance felt like he had been punched in the gut and all the air had deflated from him as a result. Kitty was right, now he really did have nothing. His links to a brighter and better world were severed, and he was stuck in the never-ending shit-heap of loserdom. But the kiss... he thought, mentally trailing off. So he'd kissed Maximoff. Big deal, so had most of Bayville. But the feelings... What feelings? He was hurt and confused at the time; it didn't have to mean anything.
Lance's inner-turmoil was rudely interrupted by the arrival of Todd and Freddy. Todd's pockets were bulging, and Fred's probably were too but it was impossible to tell when he was already so bulky.
"Got some damn nice goodies, yo," Todd announced, grinning like the six year old with the best bike on the block on Christmas day.
"Three hundred dollars!" smiled Fred, brandishing the paper notes in his fist.
"That's not countin' the profit we're gonna make from the cellphones."
"You guys want anything?" said Fred in hushed tones. "Lance, you look sad. Have fifty bucks on me."
Lance blinked as Fred stuffed the notes into his hand. "Th-thanks." Yes, Freddy was a barbaric freak, but to the Brotherhood, he had a heart of gold.
"Stole some pretty cool stuff off your bitches, Pietro. Look at this, yo," Todd said. In the palm of his greenish, scaly-looking hand was extremely flash internet phone. "Stole it straight outta Sophia's hand. Or was it Frankie's? Mighta been Jane's."
Pietro stared at the phone enviously. It didn't take a telepath to see that he was regretting not having spent more time with that girl, whichever one she was.
"Know how much those things cost?" Pietro asked, attempting to be casual. Despite his misery, Lance laughed at Pietro's transparent greed.
"We're keepin' this, yo," Todd said firmly, shaking his greasy head. " 'bout time we got the internet. Freddy and me get first dibs on it, but I reckon we could share..."
Now Pietro's eyes lit up, and he seized the phone out of Todd's hand. "Least I got something out of that chick," he said drily, fiddling with the buttons. "Man," he whispered in awe as the screen lit up. "You can do everything on one of these phones."
Todd leant in close, his yellow eyes glittering madly. "Think of the porn we could download..."
"You dirty bitch, Tolansky!" Pietro exclaimed with a wink. Lance's attention drifted as Pietro and Todd began reeling off the best porn titles they could think of.
"Star Whores!"
"The Sperminator!"
"Forrest Hump!"
"The... The Sure-Shaft Erection!"
A nudge brought Lance back to his senses. "Come on Lance yo, you rock at porn titles!"
But Lance just shrugged. He didn't want to play. He wasn't in the mood for smut, or fun, or anything.
"Aw, Lance... What's eatin' ya?" Then Todd snickered smuttishly. "Can't see Pryde anywhere... Should that be what's not eatin' ya?" He offered a scaly hand to Fred for a high five to approve his joke." You havin' that, Freddy?"
Todd always turned to Fred when he made a joke, and Freddy rarely laughed. Not until several minutes afterwards, anyway.
Pietro didn't laugh either. The very mention of Pryde evoked a scowl so evil it could've scarred Satan. Lance didn't see why Pietro should be offended; he wasn't the one who'd just ended his crappy relationship with the girl.
"We broke up," Lance said simply with no life in his brown eyes, no emotion in his voice. "I'm going home now. If you want a ride, you come with me and you shut the fuck up for the whole journey."
"But Lance, man -" Todd whined, but his voice was lost in the wind as Lance walked away.
Enough was enough.
...
True to their word, the boys did shut up for the whole journey home. Nobody dared to speak as Lance drove; though his eyes occasionally clashed with the reflection of Pietro's in the rear-view mirror. The night had grown colder than ever, and still the moon glinted eerily like the eye of something dead. The headlights flashed at lovesick teenagers stumbling home from the dance; girls in flowing silk still dancing to music nobody else could hear.
When Lance pulled into the shabby drive of the even shabbier Boarding House, he was actually pleased to be home for once. There was something reassuring about the jungle of weeds around the front door, the peeling woodchip that surrounded the boarded-up windows. Everything else was too perfect.
Todd bolted inside with his 'bag of tricks' to work out what to sell and what to keep. Fred moved just as quickly towards the kitchen, unsatisfied by the 'dumb cupcakes and shit' tonight's buffet had offered.
The front door of the house undulated like Lance was looking at it through a fish tank, and he realised that he had been staring at it for ages. He wasn't really looking at anything, just thinking about how this mouldy Victorian ruin and the family of freaks it housed was suddenly all he had.
The back of his neck prickled and he knew why. That silver shimmer in the corner of his eye was still there, leaning against the wall of the house. He didn't know whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not, but he found himself struggling to breathe with the pressure of that blue-eyed gaze on him.
Why was he afraid? Maybe it was the seriously frightening way in which Pietro spoke to Kitty; Lance really believed in that moment that Pietro was his father's son. He'd never seen such effortless power.
One sidelong glance at that face and he knew why he felt unnerved. It was still there, as intense as it had ever been when he looked at Pietro Maximoff.
"Still here, huh?" Lance finally spoke. A trail of cold mist floated up from his lips.
"Looks like it." Pietro, whose hands were plunged deeply into the pockets of his tight grey trousers, couldn't disguise a shiver. "So, y-you're a free man, Lancey!" He gave a strange, strangled sort of laugh.
"Yeah." No more Kitty, Lance thought, and he could barely believe it. Now he could be a loser without constantly having to feel guilty about it. No more pretending about who he really he was, no more lies.
No more lies.
"We should probably talk about what just happened," said Lance decisively. Despite his tacky rental tux, he knew that Pietro would take him seriously.
Another shiver passed across Pietro's face, making his bottom lip tremble. "Sure, but can we talk i-inside?"
After spending so much of the night outside, that was certainly a tempting prospect. But privacy was not a common thing in the Brotherhood's dwellings; in fact, walking in on each other in undesirable moments was pretty much an everyday occurrence.
"Where?" asked Lance, trying to think of a place where they wouldn't be disturbed.
"Uh..." Pietro bit his lip thoughtfully. "My bedroom door's got a lock on it..."
Even the darkness couldn't disguise the furious blush that spread across Lance's nose.
"No, no, I didn't mean – uh – no, obviously I meant we would go in there to talk. To talk," reiterated Pietro, looking uncharacteristically embarrassed.
"Yeah, to talk, let's go in there to talk!" agreed Lance, with an extremely fake 'I'm fine with this' grin plastered on his face.
"Cool."
Without another word, Pietro turned towards the house and unlocked the door. He stood by the open door for a second, waiting. Then he was going up the stairs and Lance followed him, realising that he had never been in Pietro's room before. He had never kissed Pietro before either.
When they got to the landing, Pietro turned right instead of the left Lance normally took. Lance noticed that the carpet was much cleaner on Pietro's side of the landing - it was actually a checked green in colour and not hairy and brown.
"Well, here we are," said Pietro softly, leaning against the frame of his bedroom door. Lance looked up from the carpet to see a room much neater than anybody else's, and much less personal. There were no posters on the walls, no photographs or objects except for a basketball that looked like it had never been used. Unlike your regular teenage den, Pietro's clothes were all neatly folded in drawers and litter was nonexistent. Really, it looked like nobody lived in this room if it wasn't for the minute crease in the plain black bedspread.
But Lance had no time to be surprised, as in less time than he could register he had been whooshed onto the bed and the door had been locked. Pietro then reappeared in front of him, loosening his tie in front of the mirror.
"Make yourself comfortable," Pietro smirked, draping his jacket over a black desk chair. Out of politeness, Lance sat down on Pietro's bed, trying his best not to think about what might go on in there. Lance watched as Pietro rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and undid the buttons to the waist, wondering why Pietro's normally lightning-quick fingers lingered so long.
He tossed his own hideous retro jacket across the room, partly out of complete disregard for it and partly to mess something up in this ridiculously straight room. He wanted to take the nasty silk shirt off too, but thought that might look a little presumptuous given that he was in the bedroom of a boy he'd just kissed.
A boy he'd just kissed.
Pietro lifted the offending jacket off the floor, looked at the label and cringed. "That belongs on the floor," he said, tossing it back down. He turned to Lance with a grin. "Should've paid you to wear it."
But Lance was clearly preoccupied. He smoothed his long, tangled hair out of his face and looked piercingly at Pietro. "We're not here to talk about my tux, Pete."
"No, we're not." Pietro gave a nervous little laugh that was entirely out of character. In a matter of seconds he sat down on the desk chair, got up again, paced in circles and stopped on the spot.
Lance watched him nervously, wondering how to even start this conversation. He'd kissed him, how could talking about it be worse than actually doing it?
"I dunno where to start," he found himself admitting, shoving a handful of thick chestnut hair out of his face again. "Pietro, I am so sorry..."
Pietro looked strange, stranger than Lance had ever seen him. His blue eyes were downcast and his lips were set in a sulky pout. In seconds, his entire posture had drooped to the point where he had to sit down.
"Let's just be honest," said Pietro flatly. "You were hurt, confused about your relationship and X, Y and Z. You wanted to kiss someone, anyone, and I was there. Or you wanted to confirm that you weren't gay, and now you know. Save it, Lance, I don't need to hear this again."
Seeing Pietro so dejected was weird - Lance had never known him to express anything more painful than a bad hair day before. Why would he think Maximoff was sensitive when the boy acted like nothing ever mattered, like he was emotionally immune?
"What is it with me and best friends?" Pietro murmured, lost in his own thoughts. He was now spinning idly in his desk chair, one foot on the seat.
"Best friends?" asked Lance, a frown forming a crease between his eyebrows.
Pietro stopped spinning and gave Lance an ironic, twisted smile. "Know why Daniels and I hate each other so much?"
Suddenly, images of Daniels at the dance flashed before Lance's eyes. How Daniels' eyes were glued to Pietro all night, but narrowed with suspicion. How he kissed that girl but stared over her shoulder the whole time, hoping Pietro would see him. It all made sense now.
"You kissed," Lance answered weakly.
"Did a little more than that," replied Pietro. "Daniels started it all, thought he might like guys. Thought he might like me. Well, I fell for the whole thing and he fucked it all up," Pietro realised he was shouting and took a deep breath to check himself. "He fucked it all up and told me thanks, but he'd decided he wasn't gay after all."
Ouch, thought Lance. Pietro's desperate desire to castrate Daniels and wear his balls as earrings was now totally justified. He wanted to hurt Daniels himself for upsetting Pietro – and he could tell by the way Pietro's voice cracked that this was more painful than he was letting on. But what could he say to make their best-friends-kissing situation any better?
He let his mouth run away with him.
"This doesn't have to change anything, Pete," he began softly. "We don't have to stop being friends. If you want, we can forget all about it."
Unpredictable as ever, Pietro's head whipped up and blue eyes scorched angrily into his. "I DON'T WANT TO FORGET ABOUT IT!"
And neither do I, Lance caught himself thinking. His head spun with the enormity of it.
"So what do you want to do?"
"I want..." Pietro clutched at his now dishevelled hair, trying to express himself. "I want us to stop pretending that there's nothing between us."
Lance swallowed hard. That was the game they'd always played.
"That's why I kissed you," Lance finally whispered.
The words seemed to hang in the air, hovering in the silence that followed. Pietro's lips moved as if he was practicing a speech – Lance knew from the shapes that his mouth made that he wasn't thinking in English. Although Pietro had been in the country since he was eight, he still struggled to translate himself sometimes as his mind moved so much faster than he had to speak.
And before Lance had even questioned it, he stopped Pietro's mouth with another kiss. He needed to know if it felt right, if it even felt good. The first kiss had confirmed nothing; this was what it had all been leading up to.
The first thing he noticed was that he didn't have to drop his head, as Pietro was almost his height. He was surprised to feel a flat, smooth chest pressing again his own, and when he ran a hand across Pietro's back, he could feel rippling sinew.
A shiver ran down Lance's spine as the kiss began to take effect. The smell of sweat made him dizzy with want. Pietro's white hands clutched at Lance's lower back and pulled him closer. 'God, this is wrong,' Lance thought as he thrust his tongue hungrily into Pietro's mouth.But he didn't care, and even if he did, he couldn't stop himself from enacting the thing that had obsessed him since he first saw Maximoff.
And now Pietro's hands were sliding into his shirt; they were cool and moved quickly over his hot flesh. Pietro's lips moved against Lance's earlobe, sending a fervent shiver down Lance's spine. "Can I take it off?"
Lance wanted to say something smart about how unlike Pietro it was to be polite, but all that came out was a Neanderthal grunt. Pietro clearly understood caveman, and in a second the shirt was on the floor.
It wasn't a new thing to see Lance shirtless, but all the same Pietro's eyes flashed approval. When Pietro rested his hands just above Lance's nipples, Lance's legs nearly buckled with need. He looked into those sharp blue eyes, wondering how far this could go, pleading for more. Pietro stared back unwaveringly. No moment in Lance's life had been this electric. His whole body began to tremble for the feel of skin on skin.
So, manners aside, he fumbled with the last buttons of Pietro's shirt and slid it from the boy's shoulders. He shook even harder when he felt Pietro's smooth, firm body against his own. With his fingers he traced out the elegant V of Pietro's torso.
He heard his own voice as if was disconnected from his body. "Is... is this crazy?"
"Does it feel crazy?" Pietro asked, arching a black eyebrow. "I think it's ill-advised -" he bent his head down to kiss the hollow of Lance's throat, "strange," he kissed along Lance's collarbone, "hot," he sucked on Lance's neck for a second then brought his lips close to Lance's earlobe and spoke deliberately slowly, "and very, very dangerous."
Dangerous... Lance recoiled slowly, frowning at the way Pietro's lips had turned blood red. Dangerous. If anyone else had said that, it would have been very, very sexy. Most people didn't know the meaning of the word danger. Pietro, on the other hand, lived in fear of his life, would kill to please his own father. Getting involved with Maximoff was like getting into a very deep tank with an extremely hungry shark.
Yes, Lance knew the risks that Pietro carried being Magneto's son and yet, he knew so little about the boy in front of him. He wanted to know more. He wanted to kiss him again and again – he'd risk it all for that powerful, deep adrenaline rush.
"I'm not scared," said Lance, with all the defiance of a soldier facing the firing squad. "I'm not scared. I nee – I want this."
He saw his reflection sparkle in Pietro's cobalt eyes. "Famous last words, Alvers," Pietro whispered with a grin.
"I'll take my chances," Lance replied. And Pietro kissed him, crushing his mouth with a claiming kiss.
The rest of the night was a blur; thrilling, deep, intoxicating. The morning frost crackled on the lawn, and they woke up to a bright white day.