Hey! I looked over all my works previously, and suddenly, I decided, it wasn't good enough. So I deleted them all, and gave myself a few months breathing time. A fresh start, you know? I thought, since Wolverine and the X-men was where I started last time, I might as well start here again. Coincedentally, on the same day I thought of the idea for this, I had a fight with my friend (a guy), and I said some really bad things. So if you think I made Kitty kinda. . . well. . . *mean*, we all act that way at some time or another. I'm just saying. And if you don't like it, oh well. I wrote it and I decided to post it.
Thanks to . . . I know I shouldn't really post names on this. . . so . . . . GirLuver13 for reading this through! Even though I'm sarcastic and cynical and moody you still put up with me and my artistic moments!
It was hard not to cry.
Kitty finally understood the truth of those words, when wet, salty drops slid down her cheeks, tumbling over her fingers, as she desperately, desperately tried to berate herself for the childish behavior. She was twenty, for god's sake. But, if she didn't, the lump in her throat, constricting her, would never go away. Wiping the last of the wetness from her eyelashes, she faced forward again, trying not to let the shock show on her face, despite the fact that no one was in the room with her.
She knew him. She knew a side of him the camera didn't show, the side that was funny and corny and hopelessly sweet. She knew that face on the screen of her television, so well, she had every inch of it memorized so perfectly, that seeing it after so long made her wonder if it was some kind of dream. Some kind of twisted, haunting, beautiful dream. But she wished so badly too be next to him, instead of stuck in this stupid, retarded room, instead of listening to what those idiotic reporters had to say about Bobby, *her* Bobby. What did they know about him? What on earth could they know about him? Nothing, that's what. Nobody could know about Bobby as much as she could.
"Kitty?"
She looked at him, raising her eyebrow. "Yes?"
"What's your favorite vegetable?" He inwardly shrugged at the apparently inane sentence. Bobby was a person who liked to talk, to hear voices. Especially if that voice was Kitty's. Kitty's voice, he decided was perfect. It wasn't to low or to high, not too sing songy, not too rough. Just. . . perfect. Sometimes you didn't need specific adjectives to describe something.
"Psh. What kind of question is that?" She rolled over, her tiny fingers plucking up pieces of grass, letting them flutter slowly to the ground.
"Just answer it," He said, frowning slightly, trying hard to ignore the conspicuous heating of his cheeks.
"Hmmm. . . ," She murmured, lulling the thouht over, furrowing her dark eyebrows seriously. " I'd have to say. . . salsa."
"Salsa?" He repeated, half laughing already. It was so easy to make Bobby laugh, Kitty thought. But that was good. He was a person who was meant to laugh.
"Yes," She declared loudly, already riled up. "What's wrong with salsa? Absolutely nothing, I tell you, nothing! It's way better than spinach and brussel sprouts and aspauragus-"
"Don't forget zucchini," Bobby muttered murderously, obviously remembering Kitty's last attempt at making food.
"Hey! For your information, Logan actually managed to stomach that one!" Her protests went unheard, for Bobby just grinned broadly.
"Yeah, but Logan'll eat anything."
Glaring, she crossed her arms and turned away.
"Come on, Kat." Grabbing the corners of her mouth, he stretched it into a crooked Joker smile. "As cute as you look when you pout, I like your smile much better." He froze when she didn't answer. God, he hated it when he acted on pure will, without thinking about what would happen after.
After one, short pause, she sighed, exasperatedly, and smiled at him again. "I'm fine Bobby." She liked their friendship, the way it flowed effortlessly from one to the other.
"Good." He flopped back onto the grass, relieved.
After several minutes of comfortable silence, she turned toward him. "Bobby?" Then, slowly, deliberately, she played with his short blond hair, wondering if she should ask him or not. She went with yes.
"What do you like about me?"
In short, he choked. Hard. Coughing breathlessly on stuff he didn't know he could choke on, he wiped his eyes. "WHAT?"
Flushing darkly, she stammered, "I mean - I just - I thought you'd be able to, seeing that, well, you know, we're best friends. . ." Trailing off nervously, she rubbed the back of her neck. She normally wasn't that loose, that free with her thoughts or curiosities. Inwardly, she cursed Bobby's comfortableness, as she tried to cover up her mistake. It took her a moment to summon enough air to speak. "Come on, you know I was just kidding. I know we're just fri-"
But it took Bobby even less time. "Everything."
"-ds. What?" She asked, breathlessly, eyes open as wide as humanely possible, a flush beginning to creep up her face as she became defensive. "Bobby, you don't have spare my feelings or anything. People don't say stuff like that in front of their-"
"Why is it so hard for you to believe me?" He snapped, frustrated. "You asked, I answered. Have I every lied to you Kitty? Ever? What makes it so hard to understand? Is it because you can't trust the words of a prankster? The guy no one can take seriously? The guy who'll just take his life and throw it away? Why?"
Silence.
Kitty had always hated it, the way it bore into her eardrums, imprinting the nothingness into her very core. There was just something so frightening about a silent room, immobile lips, unspoken words. She had always detested it when Her parents shouted at eachother. But compared to silence, shouting was much preferred. And sitting with Bobby, the previous carefree mood forgotten, she wished he was
shouting, growling, screaming, anything besides this giant abyss of silence, and with her having no way to cross it. But she still managed it somehow.
"Is that. . . what you think?" she whispered, her voice barely above a whisper as everything seemed so calm around them, the cool breeze that entwined itself in her hair, the soft grass that swayed with it, and the sparkling perfection of the blue sky above them. "Bobby? Is that what you really think of yourself?"
His previously acquired boldness gone, he turned away, just anything, anything to get him away from those piercing, steely eyes of hers! "I - I just - I don't know. Kitty, I don't know. I'm just so sick of everyone treating me like I'm a kid, like I'm not good enough or smart or experienced enough. To the X-Men, I'll always be a kid, a little kid."
"Bobby," she said diplomatically, as calmly as she could in the situation, "that's not true. We're treated exactly the same, and we're about the same age. It's probably only paranoia or fear or something else irrational. You're treated perfectly normally." As much as she felt like Bobby was beating himself up for nothing, she tried her best to handle it as Jean or the Professor would.
Kitty, by nature, always tried to cheer people up. She wasn't sure whether it was her feminine nature or just the fact that she like seeing a happy face, but at the sight of a depressed face, she was almost compelled to comfort that person. Usually, what she said worked, and she considered herself to be well-seasoned in the art of comforting, and expected nothing less from Bobby.
But how he reacted has hardly planned.
"Don't talk like that! Don't talk as if - as if you're. . . " His voice trailed off, cracking, something that hadn't happened in years. "Kitty. Please, please, please don't talk like your more mature than me." To someone like Kitty, who was only trying to be nice because he was her best friend, thought he was being completely, utterly stupid. And, if nothing else, people who acted stupid who really actually quite intelligent were the ones who irritated her the most.
"What? Bobby, I never did anything of the sort! I was just trying to be nice, to keep things under control, but you just decided to get all angry and irrational!" Kitty had a horrible temper, she knew, but she couldn't help the angry that boiled under her skin at Bobby. "You know what? If you think you're so useless, and so misunderstood, maybe it's only because you're so immature and childish. Have you ever thought about that Bobby?"
The man who said actions hurt more, damaged people more than words was dead wrong. Words could stab you right where it hurt the most, spoken by the right person. And for Bobby, that person was Kitty.
"Bobby - Bobby," She stammered far too late, she knew, but she had to try, "I'm so sorry!"
Moments passed, each one moving with imperceptible speed, heartbeats slowing in her chest as her brain was in a desperate flurry to try and fix the feud her anger created. Finally, he turned around. But it wasn't him. It was almost emotionless, the stoic movements of his limbs and the flat, dead look in his eyes.
"You don't have to be sorry."He paused, and in that pause, Kitty felt her heart crack. "I'm glad I know how you feel. At least now. . . I'm sure that you're too mature for me." With one, sad, heartbroken smile, he pushed himself up, with only the grace that someone like Bobby -the energetic, humorous Bobby- could have at a time like this, leaving the frozen, shocked Kitty behind him.
It was amazing how fast never ending friendships broke.
Three years. She hadn't talked to Bobby Drake in three years.
Three mother-fucking years.
But if she knew she was going to face him, right here, right now, like this, she would have gladly exchanged those three years for an eternity. An eternity for her to bury her face in a pillow and try to forget the feelings that were tearing her apart, urging her to run to him and run at the same time. She had never felt something so strong before, so strong that she almost followed her instinct. Things like instinct never helped her before. Why should they start now?
Trying to ignore the searing burning in her chest, where, she noted dully, was near where her heart was, she smiled.
"Bobby."
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. She had imagined their reunions so wistfully over the years, so many times, so many ways. This was not one of them.
He had gotten more handsome, she saw quite clearly. Though he never would have fit the requirements for a traditional- at this thought, Kitty suppressed at snort. As if any of them had ever been normal- fairytale kind of handsome, he was good-looking nonetheless. His face had always been narrow, curving at the edges, smoothing out all the hard lines. Though now his eyes held none of the warm, welcoming warmth they had when she first stepped into the Mansion, they were still the knee-wobbling shade of brown, as flinty as they were when they gazed at her, his hair still the blond color it once was, even if it was longer. And, to her surprise, he was taller than her. Before, the difference was minute, hardly noticeable. But now, he truly towered over her. Yet another fact that while her world stopped, everyone else's seemed to plow full steam ahead.
"How are you?"
She missed him. She missed him so much that she wanted to jump into his tightly clenched arms (he was always so easy to read - he was just was shocked as she) and say sorry until she lost her voice and he became deaf from the repeat of three years worth of wishes and thoughts.
"What's it been like in Institute since I was gone?"
She remembered that he hated how people called it the Institute.
"It makes it sound like we're clinically insane."
If only the past few years could be like the ones before that, before the fight. She missed those times. If only, instead of becoming a coward and hiding in her room until her parents came and picked her up and took her home, she swallowed her damn insecurities and apologized, told him how she really felt.
How she really felt. She felt. . . An overwhelming rush of emotions for Bobby, too complicated and intricate for her words to fully explain, but she could try.
Hope.
Happiness.
Shyness.
Incredulous.
Pride.
Love.
But how would she tell him, after her horrible mistake? After all that she did? How could it be even remotely possible, without feeling like she was asking for too much of Bobby?
A door opened, and then suddenly, a blue tailed mutant appeared to Kitty's relief.
"Kurt," she breathed, turning away from the awkward situation at hand, "It's good to see you."
"Katzhan," he replied, smiling. "I presume the trip wasn't too bearing on your health?"
"No, no it was fine," she rushed, wanting to get out of this room, out of this conversation as easily as she would a pair of jeans. "So, why did you call me here? Is Logan alright?"
Just the day before, Kitty had answered the phone groggily, to hear a familiar German accent, begging her to come back to the Institute. Of course, she was far from being easily persuaded, but the urgency in his voice appealed to her better nature, and she hated feeling guilty.
Though that had been all she felt for the past few years.
"No, everything has been operating, actually, very well during your long absence. But, the Danger Room systems can only work so well without someone to look after them."
No. It took her a minute to tangle her thoughts around the idea. Don't tell her. . . Kurt lured her here?
"And," the blue furred elfin -devil, she thought murderously. There was no way a moral human could do this- "it wouldn't hurt to exercise some unused muscles, right katezhan? Why not train some New Mutants while you're here?"
"Come on," he cut her off, yet again before she could give him a piece of the profanities she was thinking, "I'm sure Jubilee, Logan, Hank, and all the others will be thrilled to see you."
Securing his three fingered hands around her shoulders, he pushed and shoved her unyielding feet toward the kitchen, despite her halfhearted protests, leaving -thankfully- the still stone still Bobby behind. She breathed a sigh, letting her mind function normally without constantly wanting to jump him (not in that way, of course, she thought with a blush). But would be nice to see the rest of the Xmen again. . .
No. Nonononononono. There was no way in hell she was going to do this again. If she even let herself see the friends she had lost, just once, she'd be in too deep.
"Kitty?" A familiar, too familiar for Kitty's taste, grinned upon her arrival. "Ohmigod, I can't believe it's you! I mean, Kurt told us that you were coming and all, but you gotta see it to believe it, you know? And how longs it been?"
Though her head was spinning from the sudden increase in sounds, Kitty smiled back, a little delayed, But she tried her best to put as much cheer into it.
Waving a hand erratically, Julibee (as unasian as a person could get, still), exclaimed, "I just have to get everyone else to see you! We'll throw, like, the biggest party ever! And Bobster's been so moody since you were gone; PMSing much?"
Really. Suddenly Kitty's mind was flooded with ideas.
Maybe. . . He forgives you, a little voice in her head, which coincidentally, she named Hope. Maybe he wants this to be put behind you. Maybe, it slyly whispered, saying the very thing that pierced through all her armor and hit her in her very core.
Maybe he wants to love you.
Blinking her burning eyes and putting a hand over her chest, which felt as if something was eating at it, devouring the shreds of humanity she possessed. Composing herself quickly, she heard the last bits of Jubilee's sentence:
"Wait here - and don't go anywhere - I gotta go get the others, 'Kay?"
It was then when she could feel herself falling into her childhood yet again that Kitty realized that she was too entangled to twist herself out.
To say Bobby Drake was pissed was an understatement. He was down right furious, anger coursing through his bloodstream in a way it never had before.
Actually, it was more of a delayed reaction, more than anything else. Standing with Kitty, in that room - still too close - he couldn't think, without wandering to how pretty she looked, they way her blue eyes sparkled, as if it had tiny facets, capturing light and reflecting it every-which-way, almost ice blue; her straight dark brown hair that he remembered, she hated. She had spent about a year moaning and groaning about it, complaining about how it'd never be as thick or as wavy as she wanted it to be. Typical teenage insecurities. Yet he still remembered every conversation they had together down to every vivid detail. That year, he recalled, was also the glasses and braces year. Though he had always thought she looked cute, even back then (more winsome and earnest), she had adamantly rejected all his compliments, simply insisting that she was the most hideous person to ever venture into the Institute.
But now, since he had *started* thinking about her . . . he couldn't even remember why he was mad at her. It was like three years of holding a tantrum dissolved at one look at her face; the fragile bone structure that hid all the stubbornness and ferocity he knew was underneath.
The Institute. His mouth twisted, by habit. He really did hate that phrase, the way it made everyone sound like there was something wrong with them. The mutants. It was strange. Anything else, everything else, he was perfectly fine with in this life. The words. The words just made him so irritated. Of course, it may have been because of the way his father said it, like he wanted him, his eldest son, to just disappear there and never come back.
He shouldn't be thinking like this. After all, he had defended him against all those anti mutant crusaders, to, he mused, everyone's surprise.
But - he shook his head to get his thoughts less mish mashed than they already were - he had to get his mind on more important things than trying to figure out his father's mind.
Kitty. Maybe, he thought, it was just his imagination. He was well known for it. Maybe he just needed to see her so much that his mind conjured up her image. Maybe - but he really hoped this wasn't true - he'd just wake up and find this all a dream, another paradise slipping just out of reach. But when Kurt walked in and dragged her away from his unmoving body, he knew it was real. As good as he and Kurt were friends, in a fantasy of his, blue furred mutants would never interrupt their reunion, when he'd heroically grab her hand and apologize for being an ass, and they'd ride off into the sunset.
He snorted internally. It sounded as if he was in love with Kitty.
Then it hit him harder than any Sentinel blast could have.
Him. . . Kitty. . . In love?
He swallowed quickly, forcing down a lump of emotions. You'd think after three years that old flames (or lack of them) would fade, but. . . He supposed that there had to be an exception for everything.
Then he had a flash of Kitty's face. So beautiful. So bright, so cheerful, so uplifting.
And as he sat there, grasping a beige water with way too many burn marks and scuffs from previous mutants it was then when he realized: he was in too deep.
Damn.
After a week of skirting around each other, after one week of unbearable silence, she talked to him first.
Pulling her cardigan around her even tighter, Kitty breathed in the rainy air, feeling cool drops, like little lightning shocks, awaking her tired body.
He was sitting alone.
He had never sat alone before. He'd always be sitting with Jean or Scott - who, at the same time, would also be yelling his head off - or Hank. The space next to him now seemed frighteningly empty.
Not knowing exactly how she did it, she took one step forward. And another. And another, until she was standing in front of him.
"Bobby." Oh god. Her voice was shaking. Shaking.
He stayed quiet for a minute, contemplating, Kitty guessed, before he sighed, almost in resignation, saying, "What?"
"Please," was she begging? "Just hear me out."
Bobby looked at her. She remembered those eyes. The same eyes from then.
Her chest rose, then fell. Knees weren't supposed to feel like this, like they'd collapse from lack of air.
"If I could do one thing in my lifetime. If I could do one thing in my lifetime. I'd tell him how I feel. I'd tell him," she said, unconsciously feeling her words speed up, "That I'm sorry, sorrier than I've ever been in my entire life. That I want him to forgive me. That, under that goofy facade, he's the most capable, caring person I've ever met."
He was looking at her now, in a way she'd never been stared at before. She had never had someone just look at her before. Like he was looking for her in that gaze, not just the parts that were nice, everything. It made her feel as if she was being hugged, inside out, warmth enveloping her shivering body.
"I'd say -"
"Kitty." He was leaning close now. Too close. So close she could see the glimmers of hazel in his eyes and smell the fresh, clean smell of his skin. He could have been a spokesperson for detergent, with the ever-present comforting smell that flooded her nostrils. Her stomach wasn't fluttering, butterflies were practically erupting of it, hitting the insides of her stomach everywhere they could touch.
But as distracted he made her, she wasn't going to let him stop her now, not like last time. "I'd say. . ." she took one, last exhilarating breath."I say that I love you. I love you Bobby Drake."
Then adrenaline was pumping through her, faster than it had ever before.
"I love you! I LOVE YOU! And I was such an idiot before, but I was young and blind sighted and never thought anything through!"
"Kitty. . . "He murmured, before Kitty crushed herself into his chest.
"I love you too."
"What?" She muttered, half-dazed. There was too much, too much Bobby for her brain to fully comprehend all at once. After quitting him cold turkey, diving in headfirst made her feel so disoriented.
"I." He kissed her forehead, his cool lips setting skin on fire.
"Love." Her nose was touched lightly next, and she shivered slightly.
"You."
And he kissed her.
I love you.
Well, there goes my ridiculously cheesey love story. Ahhh. . . I really do love this pairing.
Read and Review!