disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to myself and Nathalie because otp
notes: AU where Kitty's still a mutant but also a cheerleader, and things happen.
notes2: this is a filthy excuse for fic not even gonna lie
title: trophy eyes
summary: They don't talk about it. — Lance/Kitty; cheerleader!AU.
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They don't talk about it.
It's easier not to, you know? Kitty's still—well, she's still a kid, really, and yes, okay, she gets it. She gets it! Valley girl, princess, ditz. She gets the names, gets the way that people look at her out of the corner of their eyes when she says something that isn't totally normal. She gets that! She figures it's just part of, of high school, of being a little off the beaten track because she's smart even if she's got a pair of pompoms and a short skirt.
She gets that people don't get it when a paper airplane in a perfect arc from the back of the room and lands on top of her chemistry exam, she has to hide a smile. People don't get it because she's Kitty Pride, and she could totally do better than that delinquent Lance Alvers kid with the weird hair.
(Seriously, she might live with the freaks from Xavier's Institute, but she's like how Jean Grey was before she graduated. Everyone liked Jean. Kitty is not different in this respect.)
So they don't talk about it.
"He's looking at you again, Kit," Amanda whispers. She is dark-coloured, Kurt's girlfriend—dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin. Kitty has never had a best friend, but if she had to choose, it would be Amanda. "Look, he's sitting on the bleachers and just, like, staring again!"
It's after the final bell's rung, and the cheer team is stretching before practice. The sun pours down hot along Kitty's hair, thick like liquid tar. She shrugs a shoulder in response. "You're imagining it, 'Manda."
"I'm so not!" Amanda waves her pompom in Kitty's face, red and yellow plastic all over the place. "Seriously, he spends all his time staring at you!"
"Are you sure you're not talking about, like, Kurt? Because if we're talking about staring—!" Kitty sings, shoves her friend and though Amanda shrieks and shoves her back, it changes the subject.
And that was what she'd been aiming for, really. Kitty determinedly does not look towards the bleachers for the rest of practise.
He hasn't left.
She just doesn't want to deal with the fallout.
Not yet, anyway.
The handsprings come easy. Kitty curls and the air twists around her. Her mutation fixes in her mind, slipping down her collar filmy slick like a layer of dew across grass in the morning. Sometimes she thinks of it like an extension of what other people do with air—everyone passes through air, sliding through the molecules easy-smooth—it's just that she takes it a step further and passes through everything else.
Her hair mats with sweat and dirt because she has to hit the ground eventually (just like everyone else; mutants aren't accepted in Bayville, no matter how many fucking times they save the entire freakin' city. If she phases through the dirt, bad things would happen. Kitty doesn't want to think about it).
The head cheerleader—Kelly, her name's Kelly, and she's as blonde as Kurt is blue—claps her hands, voice high and careless as she laughs at them above the din of every one of them falling all over themselves and swearing. "Good job, guys!"
"Can we go home yet?" Amanda groans at Kitty's elbow. "I wanna go home!"
Kelly's grin is shit-eating. Kitty knows that look, because, like, that's the exact same look that Mister Logan gets when he's about to make the students do something that they're going to hate to hate on principle. Rude.
"Get up," Kelly says. "We've still got ten minutes. We're not wasting a second, geddit?"
"But Kelly!" someone whines. Kristy? Kirsty? They're twins, and their mother has a sick sense of humour. Kitty likes it when they talk in tandem because not a lot of people can keep up.
"Try the pyramid again. Kitty, you on top!"
Kelly is a slavedriver. But the pyramid builds itself, girls on top of girls on top of boys. They're steady, all pompoms and bright teeth.
Kitty climbs.
(She's so freakin' careful not to phase through one of her cheermates, she almost slips. Twice.)
The world looks different from up here, she thinks. Top of the world, wind and sun across her face, through her hair.
Her eyes find the bleachers.
He's still sitting there, gaze fixed on exactly where she's standing. God, he's so obvious, it shouldn't be this cute.
But it is.
Whatever.
Kitty smiles, throws her arms out in triumph, and falls.
—
They don't talk about it.
"What are you even doing here, Lance?"
"Waitin' for you, kitten," he laughs out of the corner of his mouth, cigarette slipped in between the words.
"You are so not badass," Kitty says, but the corners of her lips twitch upwards, and she's smiling, tucking flyaway strands of dark hair behind her ear. "I have to go home, Lance, I've got, like, homework. Like, a ton of homework."
It's a lie, ancient dusty on her tongue.
"I'll walk you," he says, but it comes out sounding like a question.
There's no one around, so Kitty goes with it.
"Sure," she says, and when he reaches for her books, she doesn't even hesitate. They're heavy, she knows, Chemistry and Physics and Calculus all wrapped up in paper and ink. But she wants to be an astronaut, because she's smart enough for it and you have to like science and math to be an astronaut, so.
Lance takes them without comment. It looks like they don't bother him at all.
Kitty is delighted.
"Hey," she says, "you, um, you know the dance?"
"Yeah?
"Are you, like, going with anyone?"
Lance flushes all over. The scientist in the back of Kitty's lizard brain catalogues it, thinks technically he should flush all over, do you think he does, we'll have to test that.
"Nah," he says. "I don't even think I'm gonna go."
"Yeah? Kitty teases. She bumps her hip against his just because she can. "Not even if someone asked?"
"There's only one girl I wanna go with, Kit-kat, an' I don't think she knows I exist," he laughs. The cigarette between his lips is an ugly sore of his face. She wants to wipe it away the same way she wants to wipe away the purple-black shadows beneath his eyes.
"You're kinda hard not to notice, Lance," Kitty says softly.
"Yeah?" he asks, and it's just as soft.
"Yeah," she says. She ducks down, pulls her shoulders up around her ears. The gates of the Xavier Institute loom close, metal bars like a cage, but Kitty knows they're meant to keep things out. Which is the only good part, she figures. "Um, this is me."
"I know," he chuckles. It's a low sound, one that sends tight thrills of pleasure up her spine. God, God, she wants.
"Thanks for walking me," Kitty's pretty sure she dimples at him. Ugh. Cliché.
"No problem."
They stand in front of the long driveway up to her home. Kitty's arms hang at her sides. She doesn't know what to do with her hands, she doesn't have pockets and he still has her books—
Right. That.
"Hey, Lance?"
"Shit, yeah. Yeah, of course I will," Lance grins at her all goofy, and Kitty's heart flips in its cavity. Oh, she is so gone on this boy.
Then the words filter into her brain. Kitty blinks. Wait, what. "Lance? My books?"
He freezes. "Oh. Fuck. Yeah, uh. Yeah. Books."
Lance hands them over, but there's something awkward in the movement. Stilted in a way that Kitty doesn't expect from him, because the only way she knows him is like smooth oil over leather, warm and slick and dark. Stilted doesn't suit him at all.
She hugs her books to her chest to protect herself.
(From what, she doesn't know.)
"I should, y'know," she says. "Go. Homework."
"Yeah," he huffs out. His hands have found their way into the pockets of his grimy jeans. Kitty wants to bite him. "Yeah, y'should."
"So. See you later?" Kitty asks.
He nods, fists still stuffed into his jeans.
Kitty phases through the bars—it's old habit, and she knows that Lance thinks this small abuse of her powers is hilarious. She knows because the ground trembles when he loses control, and he always, always loses control when she's doing bad things.
She likes him so much.
Ten feet in, Kitty spins on one foot. Her flats are good for that, and her muscles remember the movement. She was a dancer once, and ballet hasn't left her completely.
"Hey, Lance!" she calls. He looks up, and the hope makes his face bleak. Kitty is so gone. "Want to go to the dance with me?"
"JESUS, KITTEN," he yells back. "YES!"
He loses control again. The vibrations of it follow Kitty all the way inside, happiness literally made tangible, and they don't. They don't talk about it. They just don't. Her heart jumps in her chest so hard she thinks it's going to phase right out of her.
God, he's so dumb.
Kitty phases through three doors and Kurt.
She buries her face in her pillow, and smiles so hard her face nearly splits in two.
(Kurt never forgives her. Kitty can't even bring herself to care.)
—
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fin.