[A/N: I really wasn't expecting this fic to get much (read: any) attention, but I'm so glad people seem to like it! Thank you so much to the people who have favourited this fic and left reviews, it all made me super happy!
Just a warning: This chapter contains vomiting, vague mentions of child abuse, mentions of violence, and my own shameless headcanons as to what living with Pietro's mutation would be like while it's still developing, as well as my own ideas surrounding his childhood in the Evo universe. Also, strong language. You can't tell me Lance doesn't swear in practically every sentence like the edgy grunge teen he is.]
Lance had barely pulled out of the school parking lot in his Jeep when he noticed that Pietro - who had been rambling so quickly that the words seemed to completely blend together from Lance's perspective, ranting about Summers and the X-Geeks and Mystique and everything else that pisses him off - had grown completely silent. He'd glanced over to observe that the tiny bit of colour that ever seemed to exist in Pietro's face had disappeared, and he had quickly come to the pretty obvious conclusion that Pietro was about to throw up.
"Hold on a minute," he'd said, reaching out a hand to gently pat Pietro's thigh in a somewhat clumsy attempt at assurance, and then he'd set about speeding just a little to get as far away from the high school - and the nice neighbourhood it resides in - as possible.
It hadn't taken too long to get vaguely to the edge of the run-down and quiet neighbourhood in which the boarding house is nestled, and Lance had pulled up next to an abandoned and dilapidated building which had perhaps once been a bar or club or something, and watched as Pietro scrambled with little grace out of the car and around the back of the building - apparently desperate enough to not be able to decide between super speed and normal speed, as he kept tripping and stumbling over his own feet when they tried to go too fast.
Before his exit, he'd commanded Lance to stay put - and to not, under any circumstances, come after him - but Lance's intentions to obey that instruction are dwindling with every second he spends in the silent Jeep, thinking about Pietro bent over in pain.
The debate going on in his head, weighing the ideas of Pietro beating his ass later and Pietro being grateful now, seems to take hours, but in reality it's probably only a few minutes, because when he finally throws the car door open with a bold sort of decisiveness, he can hear the distinct, distant sound of someone throwing up.
He shoves the door shut quickly and just barely remembers to lock it before he's running around the back of the building and coming up beside Pietro, who's got one trembling hand and his forehead pressed to the rough brick of the wall in front of him. Lance slows his pace, opening his mouth to say something, but Pietro's doubling over again before he can even take a breath, and then Lance is grimacing as Pietro chokes up some more barely-digested food, panting and whimpering his way through the waves of pain in a rather pitiful display that he must be hating.
"Hey," Lance says somewhat stiffly, approaching slowly just in case Pietro's planning to lash out at him for daring to see him in this state. No aggression comes, though - just another very young-sounding whimper, and Lance feels his stomach clench. "Hey, it's okay."
He stops right beside Pietro and reaches a hand out to carefully pat his head, but he ends up carding his fingers through the soft strands of Pietro's hair when he feels cold sweat beneath his fingertips. Underneath the hair gel, that is.
"'S'okay," he murmurs, "Just focus on me. It'll be over soon."
Half of him wants to be annoyed. Lance had had no idea what Pietro was planning after he'd disappeared from the table at lunch, and Pietro had certainly kept it a secret because he knew it was a bad idea. Not the stealing aspect - the whole Brotherhood is more than used to that - but the aspect of Pietro eating the shitty snack foods that most of the stupid upper-middle-class brats at Bayville get lunch bags full of every day from their parents.
Pietro has a stupidly sensitive stomach. It doesn't really make sense to Lance, though Pietro has explained it several times, but apparently Pietro's mutation basically fucks with his whole body - his metabolism is crazy, tries to burn through everything he consumes at a speed that matches how fast he moves, and because of that certain foods just make his whole system go into meltdown mode, because his mutations are still kind of developing and thus his body can't quite handle itself sometimes. Caffeine and alcohol are the worst, for obvious reasons, though sugar has a similar effect, and there's a whole list of other things that Pietro isn't really supposed to eat.
If Lance had to guess, he would say that Pietro had probably eaten all of them in his manic little binge, which makes Pietro a fucking dumbass, but Lance also knows what desperation feels like.
He'd noticed earlier that Pietro seemed to be off - he was distant and quiet and kept wincing and almost doubling over at random, his hands flying to grip at his shirt over his stomach for a split-second before he got himself under control. Lance grits his jaw when he realises that he should've done something when he'd noticed - stolen some food that he knew Pietro could eat without hurting himself, or even just expressed that he'd noticed that Pietro was hurting.
But he hadn't, and now Pietro is in pain and Summers is going to be on their ass because Summers can never leave anything alone.
"You know, the ground shaking isn't helping."
Lance, as usual, releases his instinctual grip on the ground beneath them both before he's even snapped back to reality, pulled back by Pietro's hoarse but characteristically haughty voice - a sound familiar and soothing enough that he can brush past the subtle pounding that begins at the base of his skull.
"Surprised you can sound so up yourself even while you're doubled over vomiting because you did something stupid," he says, but apparently Pietro's finished emptying his stomach because he finally pulls himself up to almost full height and gives Lance a withering look. He's clean and looking about as put-together as possible, which Lance suspects he's done in approximately the last nanosecond or two, unable to bear looking unkempt or unbecoming even in a context such as this.
Lance thinks for a moment about how this means that Pietro still doesn't trust him entirely, but pushes that thought quickly into the back of his mind.
"Oh, because letting myself faint and get dragged to the nurse would've been a much better option," Pietro drawls. "She notices malnutrition, or fucks off and decides I'm anorexic, and then she's demanding to see a legal guardian. Except the closest thing I have to offer is Mystique - who's gone off to God knows fucking where - and my good old father, who would probably murder me on the spot for daring to embarrass and inconvenience him like this."
With the same instinct that Lance had begun shaking the ground moments ago, he reaches out and cards his fingers through Pietro's hair again, intending to soothe him even while sending the already-disarrayed strands into what Pietro usually bitterly describes as "complete chaos".
His hair is all soft and wavy and perpetually windswept when it's not gelled down. Lance loves it. Pietro usually complains, but he doesn't seem to be in the mood right now, and even relents relatively easily when Lance pulls him closer and navigates them both smoothly away from the vomit on the ground.
"D'you think," Lance asks on the way, "Magneto would take the whole getup off for a parent-teacher conference, or would he not bother?"
The question has the desired effect. It doesn't make Pietro laugh, but it makes his lips curl into one of those little lopsided smiles as he shakes his head in pretend disapproval - a silent "you're so stupid" that Lance knows to be about as close to genuine affection that Pietro is willing to get in most situations, with most people.
"Of course he wouldn't," Pietro says. "It's an intimidation tactic. How can anyone criticise his stellar parenting techniques when he's exuding such effortless dominance?"
And that does succeed in making Lance snort with laughter. It's rare for Pietro to talk any sort of smack about his father - he always seems caught between some warped kind of hero worship and a very genuine kind of fear, beneath all of that "we're just using each other" shit - but Lance likes it when he does. Magneto deserves it, especially from his son, who he's fucked over in countless ways.
"He is pretty ripped for an old dude," Lance contemplates, looking thoughtful. "But Xavier's kind of ripped, too. Maybe they work out together."
Surprisingly, Pietro lets out an actual laugh at that, and Lance notices some of the colour returning to his face, despite his eyes and cheeks still looking somewhat sunken. "They'd make great gym buddies. BFFs in matching workout gear."
And, just like that, it's so easy to forget. To push it all to the back of their minds. They're just two teenagers, two friends, screwing around and hanging out, and Lance can forget for a little while about the state of their home or all the troubles at school or the fact that Pietro still needs something to eat, something proper, because his stomach's going to start hurting again soon and maybe he will pass out and God knows Lance won't know what the fuck to do then.
He shakes his head.
"The real '80s shit," he agrees, giving Pietro a grin. "Headbands and leg warmers."
"Dad's are that tacky burgundy he loves, of course. The Prof's are probably that god-awful yellow all the X-Geeks wear. They'd look great together."
Lance laughs again, and tries and fails not to stare as Pietro pushes a hand through his hair, which he hadn't quite managed to fix despite surely trying countless times in the time since Lance had messed it up. He spends so long doing it every morning with that stupid gel he steals from the drug store, it's ridiculous, and everyone has told him plenty of times that it looks dumb as shit, but Pietro's devoted to his aesthetic and Lance can't really argue with that, especially when he screams every time someone comes near his hair with a pair of scissors.
"Your bruises aren't healing." Lance himself has to pause for a moment to realise that he's spoken out loud. The observation had just fallen out of his mouth as soon as he'd noticed - because the bruises around Pietro's wrist, still held up while he fiddles with his hair, are still there. More developed, admittedly, but it's been maybe half or three quarters of an hour and they're still there.
Bruises usually don't last ten minutes on Pietro, not unless he's been knocked around pretty bad, and Lance can feel a mix of concern and anger swimming heavy in his stomach again. He should've punched Summers, should've given him a bloody nose or, better yet, a broken one, so he could've gone back to the other losers and explained exactly what he'd done—
A breeze hits Lance, and Pietro's moved approximately two inches to the left of where he was standing moments ago. Another major difference is the crumpled twenty dollar bill he's holding.
"What," Lance manages to say, and Pietro quirks an eyebrow in that way that means 'ugh, you're so slow'.
"Pickpocketed some guy uptown. Real estate agent, I think. He looked like a dick, anyway, and his suit was from that overpriced place by the laundromat so he's obviously got some money to spare. There was no picture in his wallet, so no kids, presumably, so at worst we're depriving him of another ugly pair of tan wide leg trousers. God, they were ugly. Let's go."
"Go where?" Lance follows Pietro even before he's managed to get the question out, staring at the boy's sharp, narrow shoulders beneath his thin black t-shirt. It's cold out, he thinks, so Pietro must be cold. He's always cold. Another part of his mutation, apparently, is that his body's bad at maintaining itself at a normal temperature - which Lance supposes makes sense, since it probably has to do some pretty weird shit so that he doesn't overheat and/or freeze while he's running.
Perhaps Lance would offer his jacket if he had one, be chivalrous and romantic and all that, but for now he can only offer the interior of his car.
Well, not really offer. Pietro climbs into the passenger seat of the Jeep long before Lance has caught up with him. He doesn't even glance back, but Lance smiles just a little as he rounds the car and clambers into the driver's side.
"Go where?" he repeats as he pulls the seatbelt across himself, and Pietro scoffs.
"Grocery shopping, obviously. Or were you planning on letting me waste away after all? Not to mention it's only a matter of time before Fred ends up snapping. He's probably eaten Todd already in the time we've been gone, and God knows we can't afford a funeral."
"If Fred ate him, there wouldn't be anything left to bury."
Both of them, in unison, take a moment to grimace at the thought of what Todd would taste like.
"Ugh," Pietro shudders. "It would be like escargot, except picked straight out of the mud."
Beneath them, the car shudders to life as Lance turns the key - third time's the charm, as usual. The stereo crackles for a minute, before Nirvana's Heart-Shaped Box continues from where it had left off last time.
"Is-car-goat?" Lance attempts to echo, glancing at Pietro, and he's surprised to see the boy's face pull into what seems to be an affectionate - albeit still teasing - smile.
"Escargot," he repeats, curling the word in an accent that Lance could never hope to imitate. "Snails. Like people eat in France. They eat frog too, actually, but only the legs. I've never tried that, though."
"But you have eaten snails?" Lance can't help the way his nose wrinkles, thinking of slime and chewy textures. Pietro lets out a soft sort of laugh.
"Once," he says, then hesitates. He taps his finger against his thigh, matching the bassline of the song, and Lance knows that, when Pietro begins speaking again a second or so later, he's spent a much longer time deciding than it felt from Lance's regular-speed perspective.
"When I was young," Pietro explains, "About six or seven maybe, Dad took us to this restaurant while we were visiting Paris. When we were finished with our regular meals, he ordered us a plate of snails to try. At the time, it just seemed like something fun, but...knowing him, it was some sort of bullshit test."
The affection drains from Pietro's voice, leaving behind a hollow sort of bitterness that Lance knows all too well. He removes one hand from the wheel and reaches out towards Pietro.
It takes a second, but Pietro somewhat tensely takes his hand and links their fingers. As ever, Lance's skin is warm and Pietro's is almost ice-cold.
"Did you pass the test?" Lance asks quietly, when the silence stretches just a little too long, and Pietro's grip tightens.
"It went the way it always did. Wanda did it first, ate two with a smile on her face and Dad laughed and called her a good girl. I choked down one, desperate to be good too, and Dad got mad at me when I threw up on the way home."
It's certainly not the worst story from Pietro's childhood that Lance has heard. In fact, it's probably pretty firmly in the category of 'least fucked up', since it doesn't involve vicious manipulation or straight-up torture. It still makes something heavy and angry clench low in Lance's chest, though.
He feels another burst of protectiveness over a child that he did not know - a child who hasn't existed for many more years than the simple process of aging would make it. Pietro killed that child long before he should've died, hardening himself into…
Well, the sort of person who can tell a story like that with the same cadence one may recall a minor annoyance at school. 'My teacher lost my homework so I had to do it again' versus 'My dad's been trying to abuse me into a soldier since the day I was born'. Pietro would probably claim that both situations matter just as little to him.
"I would beat the shit out of your dad if I could."
Not the first time Lance has made that statement. It certainly won't be the last. If Pietro's dad was literally anyone in the world other than fucking Magneto, it would be more than just a statement. It would've been said months ago as a promise.
A promise that Lance would've made good on.
But, given that Pietro's dad does indeed happen to be a violent maniac with fuck-off metal-controlling powers, as well as being the man truly in charge of Lance and the Brotherhood, he doesn't rate his chances of success nor his chances of survival well if he even tried to spit at Magneto's feet.
"Oh, be quiet." Apparently, Pietro agrees. He usually brushes off Lance's attempts to protect him or threaten those who have hurt him, but his voice right now seems heavier - more serious. "Trying to square up with Summers is one thing, moron, but you stay away from my father."
Lance shakes his head and squeezes Pietro's hand, swallows down the urge to express that he's not sure he'd be able to stop himself if he witnessed Magneto hurting Pietro in the moment. Even if he died for it, it would be worth it.
Saying shit like, 'I'd die for you,' isn't really how their relationship goes, though.
"What were you and Summers even doing in the bathroom together?" Lance asks. "Did he really corner you in there?"
He glances to the side, watching the way the afternoon sun catches the angles of Pietro's face. It's a warm light, in contrast to the cold, late winter air, and it washes Pietro's snow white hair a pale, pale blonde.
It makes him look more human, strangely - more tangible.
"He didn't corner me," Pietro says right as Lance looks to the road again, as if he'd been waiting to speak unscrutinised. "He just came in, I don't think he had any idea I'd be in there. But then he started getting pissy when he realised I was stealing people's lunches."
Lance scoffs, apparently still somewhat riding the high of his protective streak. "Fucking X-Geeks have never had to steal."
He expects some sort of cutting agreement - maybe a continuation of Pietro's rant from earlier - but nothing comes. Lance looks over again and Pietro's staring out of the window.
"Which store are we going to?"
If there's one thing that Lance has learnt, both during his time simply living with Pietro and their time being whatever they currently are, it's to respect a blatant subject change.
"Usual," he says, watching the road and the mostly-empty streets, free of anyone except the odd housewife or old person. "Place on the other side of town. They still don't have cameras in there. Plus neither of us are banned yet."
Yet. Most of the Brotherhood except Pietro have been banned from just about every major supermarket or corner store around Bayville. Pietro only hasn't been banned because he can't get caught, but he still gets suspicious glances from just about everyone.
Lance had once said that it's because of his hair - everyone thinks he's a punk or gay and bleaches it. It had been meant entirely as the usual sort of playful jab, but Pietro had looked genuinely insecure when he'd asked late that night if he should just dye it black.
It had taken almost two solid days of Lance insisting that his silver-white hair was too pretty and unique to get rid of for Pietro to finally drop the idea, though Lance suspects it's something that Pietro's been thinking about for many years.
He's a lot more insecure than all of his bravado would imply.
It had taken a long time for Lance to recognise Pietro's douchiness for what it is - an almost instinctive defence mechanism. It still bothers Lance frequently, and he finds himself giving in when Pietro says cruel things and bothers him endlessly until he's shoving Pietro and throwing fists and screaming at him, threatening him, trying to part the earth beneath his feet to send him falling and screaming down an endless chasm until he's drowning in lava.
He's learning, though. He always apologises afterwards nowadays, and he never misses how damn confused and vulnerable Pietro looks when Lance tells him he didn't mean anything he said, he was just angry and it was wrong of him to say that shit because he would never really hurt Pietro.
The expression that Pietro always wears then is the same as the expression he'd been wearing when Lance had walked into the bathroom.
Even though he's silently promised that he'll leave it alone, sworn to it by that look Pietro always gives him when he's stepping on something that Pietro doesn't want to acknowledge, Lance has every intention of finding out what the hell Scott did or said.
And he's definitely gonna break the asshole's nose.