It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it."

-Neil Gaiman


There was something comfortably familiar about the House. Even being full of teenage mutants that seemed to enjoy making mischief on relatively small scales, Steve somehow found he felt at home. There was always a sense of camaraderie when the kids weren't at school. Bali, Hannah, and Remy alternated between watching the House. Nikki, he learned, was almost always working.

He was at the house with Remy the day he really began to feel a part of whatever it was the mutant had. They were peeling off old wallpaper so that they could paint, though that was after Steve had been taught how to play Texas Hold 'Em and lost. Remy, it seemed, had lots of stories on how he had played several people and won anything and everything from a Ferrari to his own personal island.

"But the one you really don't want to play is Nikki," he laughed.

Steve looked up from the pile of wallpaper at his feet, "Really?"

"Girl's got a poker face from Hell," the Louisiana native said with an amused shake of his head. "She can bluff her way through anything. I don't know how or why – and, between you and me, I'm not sure I want to know."

"How long have you known Nikki?"

There was a thoughtful pause before Steve got his answer, "Six years, I think. It seems like decades sometimes. I tried to steal from her, so I guess you could say I owe her. She got me out of a lot of trouble back in the day."

"What happened?"

"Well, I bagged this sweet car – a gorgeous little number in scarlet – from these guys who were bench racing in some old diner," he said with a smirk. "Of course they were mad as hornets when they saw me. Chased me all the way down the street until suddenly it was like somebody had taken control in my head. Next thing I knew, the two guys were at the side of the car, along with some professor in a wheelchair. I thought I was dead for sure. Then Nikki comes running after them, telling 'em off for leaving her in the diner. She starts talking to them, cools them down, and talks me into coming with them. Apparently, they were running a school for young mutants. She and Xavier taught me how to control my powers."

"Xavier?"

"Professor Charles Xavier," Remy clarified. "He and Nikki were pretty close. Never could tell what it was exactly, but there was some kind of deep understanding between them."

There was a sort of faraway look in the man's eyes as he said that, Steve noticed. In a second, it was gone and he returned to stripped wallpaper from the walls.

"So, why did she leave?"

Remy stopped midway in what he was doing. He sighed in resignation, as if it was a topic he didn't want to discuss, and dropped his hands.

"It was a mix of something bad happening and her past starting to catch up with her. A long time ago, Nikki started running from a pretty big mistake she made. She hasn't stopped since. She blamed herself for something that wasn't her fault and, between you and me, I don't think she's ever forgiven herself."

Steve thought over Remy's words as he gathered some of the torn wallpaper to throw it away. He had gotten the feeling that Nikki felt obligated to protect the people in her house, but he had never quite figured out why. By the way Remy told it, it seemed as though she was doing so to make up for something. The thought made the ex-soldier frown. What could have been so terrible that Nikki would run so far?

Deciding he would ask about the specifics after he threw away the scraps in his arms, Steve headed for the large trash can in the kitchen. It was far too large for the relatively cramped room, but he understood why it was. The size was necessary with so many teenagers in the house. He had found that, when the trash can was not used, an abundance of snack wrappers and ruined clothing would litter the floors. It was only due to one of Nikki's rules from the infamous List that the House was kept fairly clean.

The List was a compilation of rules that Nikki had set up when they first bought the House. They were written in sharpie on a little piece of paper stuck to the front of the fridge. There was also a copy in the rec room and living room. Aside from the original nine rules, there were also footnotes and additions scribbled into the margins. A few sentences were underlined. Steve had smiled at the sight of it, particularly the one stating that getting the approval of Bali or Remy on any subject was not valid approval. It had occurred to them that while Nikki and Hannah tended to dote on the teenagers from time to time, Bali and Remy were complete pushovers when it came to the kids.

Steve was thinking about the rules, wishing one of them was that the trash needed to be taken out daily, when there was a loud pop. Blue smoke curled in the air for a second before dissipating to reveal Kurt Wagner. Of course, his usual indigo skin was hidden beneath impressively layered makeup and his three-fingered hands were covered in gloves the same color as his makeup. He even wore colored contacts to hide his yellow irises.

From what Bali had told him, Hannah was the one to teach Kurt how to use cosmetics to make himself look normal. Hannah's gift was intuitive adaption – the ability to understand how to do or mimic something simply by watching it being done once. After watching several episodes of something called "Face Off" and numerous makeup tutorials on a video website called "Youtube," she had spent days experimenting with techniques and showing Kurt how to do each one. Steve had watched her in astonishment one day as Hisako had shown the woman several kung fu movies and asked Hannah to repeat some of the forms – which the brunette had done flawlessly.

Steve stopped abruptly at the appearance, some of the wallpaper strips falling from his hands. Remy didn't seem to have noticed from where he worked in the other room.

"Kurt," the ex-soldier said. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?"

The German boy wrung his wrists, being careful to only touch the gloves and not the makeup, "I am. But there's an emergency."

Steve raised his eyebrows, "What happened? Should we call-?"

"No!" the boy hissed, throwing up his arms as if to stop Steve. "Nikki can't know. She'll kill us if she finds out. Can't it be between us?"

He thought about that for a second. What he needed to do most was gain Nikki's trust, which he was slowly accomplishing. If she found out he was hiding something, particularly if it affected the teenagers who she often referring to as her kids, he would lose all progress he had made. At the same time, he knew he had to win over the kids to. He came to the conclusion that it could remain a secret so long as it wasn't dangerous towards anyone.

"Alright. Tell me what's wrong."

Without answering, Kurt grabbed a hold of Steve's sleeve. The world seemed to spin in a dizzying array of colors and shapes for a few minutes. Steve felt as though he was being stretched out like taffy. When the world finally seemed to right itself, they were no longer in the kitchen. It took a minute for Steve to gather himself enough to look around.

They were in an alley between the exterior walls of two stores. A busy parking lot was visible just past them. The spot where the alley opened up was bathed in flashing lights of red and blue, police car lights. Steve looked to Kurt with a questioning expression. The boy looked up with wide eyes, as if begging silently for Steve not to judge what he was about to be told.

"Pietro got himself into a bit of trouble," he said. "Come on."

Steve allowed the boy to drag him out of the alley and into the store to their right. On one of the benches near the front doors, Pietro sat in handcuffs. The silver-haired kid was looking pointedly at his beat up sneakers, shifting every now and then as if he couldn't wait to get away. Two police officers stood before him. The elder of the two officers had an expression on his face of a man who had seen a movie so many times that the action had grown dull. As Steve and Kurt approached, all three looked up.

The elder officer frowned at Steve, "Can I help you, sir?"

"My name's Steve Callaghan," he answered. "I was wondering if you could tell me what happened here."

"Are you of any relation to Nikki Whitfield?"

Before Steve could respond, Kurt cut him off with, "He's Nikki's boyfriend."

Steve fought the urge to raise his eyebrows at the lie, nodding in agreement to the officer. The man looked just as surprised as Steve felt.

"Didn't know Nikki was the dating type," the officer muttered under his breath. "Is Nikki busy, then?"

"I told you that already, Mitchell," Pietro grumbled.

"Officer Mitchell," the man corrected before turning to Steve. "Security caught him trying to walk out of here with a DVD and a diamond necklace."

That time, Steve did raise his eyebrows, though his gaze was focused on Pietro. The boy looked up with sheepish mottled green eyes and an apologetic smile.

"I can't keep letting him go," Officer Mitchell continued. "If I catch him shoplifting again, he's going to have to go to the Juvenal Detention Center. Nikki's a friend, but I can only do so much for her."

"I understand," Steve said. "Do you think I can take him from here?"

The cop shrugged, pulling a key for the handcuffs from his pocket, "Not really much more I can do besides file a report. Just try to keep him out of trouble."

"I'll do my best, sir."

Pietro gave a friendly smile to Officer Mitchell as the two cops left. However, his smile faded when he looked up to see Steve's disapproving frown. The fifteen-year-old glanced to Kurt as if pleading for help, but he simply shook his head.

"Thanks for helping me out," Pietro said with a nervous laugh.

"Come on," Steve said, his words coming out sharper than he intended.

"Where are we going?"

The ex-soldier pointed in the general direction of the building next door, "We're going to get lunch and you two are going to answer some questions."

The boys didn't protest as they followed Steve out. In fact, there was a grim silence shared between the two of them. The walk from the store to the restaurant was short and the wait for a table only took two minutes. No one spoke until after the waitress had taken their orders. Both Kurt and Pietro looked exceedingly uncomfortable in the booth across from Steve.

"What were you doing skipping school?" Steve finally asked, looking both in the eyes.

Pietro gave a half-hearted smile, "Stealing?"

"There's a rule on the List saying that you're not supposed to be breaking laws."

"Mm-hm, rule ten," Kurt replied. "The exception is emergencies."

"And this was an emergency?"

"Yes!" Pietro snapped, looking agitated and morose at the same time.

Steve blinked in surprise as both boys looked down at the table. Kurt began to fiddle with the corner of his napkin as if he wished he could be anywhere but there. Giving a sigh, Pietro met Steve's gaze again.

"It's Nikki's birthday in four days," he explained. "You don't understand because you haven't been here that long, but I have to buy her a gift. All she does is work from dawn 'til dusk. Every penny she makes goes to paying the bills and, when they don't, they go to making sure we have presents on Christmas and our birthdays. She even makes sure Sam has a gift for every day of Hanukkah.

"Don't get me wrong, Remy, Hannah, and Bali have all done stuff for us, but not like Nikki. She took us in when we had nowhere else to go. She gave us a home, a family! When we had nothing, we had Nikki. And she never stops to have time for herself. She never buys herself anything, never gives herself a break, and never stops thinking about us. She deserves something for once."

Steve was struck silent as Pietro finally finished speaking. He spoke with such a passion that it was as though it was what meant most to him at that moment. He met Steve's shocked gaze with a determined expression, one that clearly stated that he was not going to back down on his opinion for any reason.

It had already occurred to the super soldier that Nikki worked far too much to be healthy. He had often heard the door swing open late at night and shuffling around the kitchen for a good hour before she retreated to her bedroom. She constantly looked tired and at the edge of her rope. And yet, when any of the teenagers that made up the majority of her little patchwork family had something they deemed important to share with her, she seemed to come alive. It was clear that she lived for the teens she saw as her own children.

So to hear Pietro speak the way he did about Nikki only cemented what Steve already had come to realize. It also made sense of one of the many rules of the House and why the silver-haired boy before him was often dubbed a kleptomaniac. Rule three stated that none of the teens were to help out with the bills. Nikki had not only wanted them to pay attention to their studies at school, but also wanted to keep them from stealing for the good of the family. Officer Mitchell's statement of how many times he had caught Pietro doing the same served as proof that the boy only wanted to make things easier on his surrogate mother.

At the thoughts of the good intentions of Pietro, the ex-soldier began to smile. He tapped on the table to get both the boys' attentions.

"What movie were you trying to give her?" he asked, his voice much softer now.

Kurt and Pietro looked taken aback by the change in attitude. It was as if they were unused to anything besides being chastised for such actions, which Steve was sure they were. There was a moment of awed silence before the boys smiled happily.

"The King and I," Kurt answered cheerfully, looking much happier now that they had almost entirely gotten out of trouble.

The title was almost entirely unfamiliar to Steve, but he gave a nod as if he knew what they were talking about.

"It's a really important movie to Nikki," Pietro explained. "She used to watch it with her daughter."

Steve nearly choked on his drink at the boy's words. As far as he had been told, none of the teens in the House were actually biologically related to any of the adults. It took him a minute to regain his composure.

"Nikki has a daughter?"

"Nikki had a daughter," Pietro clarified. "Something happened to her a long time ago and she died, but Nikki won't tell us what happened exactly."

It was as if Steve's heart had sunk to his feet. He remembered the day Hannah had gone through her disassociation spell, how Nikki had said she had lost many people. Losing people was something he had thought himself familiar with. He had lost his parents, his friends, his first love, and the man he considered to be his brother. None of those seemed to hold a candle to losing a child, though. There were many stories he had heard of parents losing children. Watching them mourn, seeing such a deep-cutting grief, had been painful in every sense of the word. It now made sense why Nikki worked so hard to take care of her family.

Guilt began to creep up on him. The family he was currently living with was a down-on-their-luck group of people just struggling to get by. Granted, they all had some form of super-human power that had spontaneously grown from a genetic mutation. That didn't justify the distrust S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to harbor towards them. Maybe they were wrong, maybe HYDRA was interested in the family because of their powers. Perhaps the family was the ones who needed protecting.

Steve thought of the way Nikki, Hannah, Bali, and Remy worked so hard to keep the House in decent condition and provide the kids with what they needed. His mind then wandered to the bank account in his name that had slowly been gathering interest since the forties. A DVD and a diamond necklace wouldn't make much of a dent in his bank account.

"Well then, what do you say we buy those gifts after lunch?"

Pietro gaped at Steve, disbelief clear in his expression. Even Kurt seemed to be taken by surprise by the announcement. Slowly, the younger of the boys smiled pleasantly. It was a gesture that held none of his usual mischief, just an unfathomable happiness at being able to do something nice for the woman who sacrificed so much for him.

"Sounds like a plan to me."


In the end, the three spent hours in numerous stores as they searched for several gifts for Nikki. They had all forgotten about Steve's original intention of getting them back to their school. After their shopping trip, they had gone to dinner. It was dark by the time they got back to the House. Kurt had been too tired to teleport them all back with every bag and so they had walked.

The boys had stumbled up to their rooms with their arms full, most likely to stuff the gifts under their beds before going to sleep. Steve, on the other hand, stopped short at the sight he caught from the doorway of the kitchen. He had almost missed it entirely.

Within the kitchen, at the small table covered in papers, checks, and mail, sat Nikki. However, she was not awake. She was slumped uncomfortably over the edge of the table, her arm extended beneath her as if she had been resting her chin on her hand before she fell asleep. Steve stepped forward with the intention of waking her up. It couldn't have been good for her to sleep in such a way.

His eyes caught on some of the unfolded papers beneath her. They were bills for the electricity and water used in the House. Despite being surrounded by problems, she looked more peaceful than Steve had ever seen her before. Making a split second decision, Steve carefully pulled her up in his arms. She barely moved as he picked her up.

"Erik," she murmured, pressing her face against his chest.

Steve stopped short, staring down at the woman in his arms. There was a strange lilt to the name she spoke that didn't match with her usual accent. Still, she smiled softly as she leaned against him. There was something so vulnerable about the way she looked as she slept that seemed startling in contrast with her usual closed off personality.

A smile crossed his face and he continued up the stairs. Opening her bedroom door without jostling her took a bit of clever maneuvering, but he managed it. He laid her easily on the mattress that dominated her room and pulled the blanket up over her. She hardly moved as he did. Steve gave Nikki one last glance over his shoulder before walking out. Regardless of what S.H.I.E.L.D. thought, he didn't see anyone in the House as particularly dangerous. And though Nikki was reserved and curt, he was sure she was no more dangerous than the rest. He rather thought she could be very friendly if she could find it in herself to trust him.

Another pang of guilt hit him with the thought of what he was doing. They didn't really know who he was. But, then again, he didn't really know who they were. He simply wasn't aware of that fact.