Part Three
Legals: Same
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Todd watched Lance play the imaginary drums off of the coffee can as the rich brown liquid began filling up the pot, sending a gagging aroma around the kitchen. Coffee was a luxury reserved for school days only, or so said Lance. Now the older mutant was preparing it slowly. "How late were you and Rogue out?"
Lance shrugged, "Not late. Not really, I mean...It was just...We went and saw a movie. And then we got lost on the way back to her place."
"How could you miss that house? Did the Storm lady have the fog in or something?"
He shook his head, grabbing the cream and the sugar, "We were talking about...things."
"What kind of things?"
Another shake of the head, "It was just couple stuff..."
"About what?"
"Go away, Todd." He glared at the younger boy until he got the hint, slinking out of the kitchen. Lance thumped his mug of coffee onto the table, then slid into a chair. He'd apologize to Todd later. Right now he just wanted to go to sleep. He'd been up too late last night contemplating the conversation he'd shared with Rogue in the car...what she meant...
"Ya know, if ya try talkin' to him about it, maybe he'll understand..." He didn't think he heard her right. Understand what?
"What do you mean? Who should I talk to...about what?"
She frowned, "Lance, ah saw inside that head a yers. Ah know about Pietro..."
He looked at her, a cold chill coursing down his spine. She had no idea what she was talking about. Pietro? What could she possibly get from his mind about Pietro, other than how fucking annoying he was....or he used to be. The white haired boy had been spending more time locked up in his room than Lance cared to think about, "Pietro? Is something wrong with him?"
The girl sighed, shaking her head, "He might understand how ya feel about him if ya would just try and talk to--"
"How I feel about Pietro? Rogue, what kind of sick joke is that? Pietro is my friend. I don't think of him as anything more than a potentionally annoying little brother who runs around too fast and plays way too many practical jokes! There is nothing there besides that. If there was, would I be going out with you? No. I wouldn't. But here I am. With you, my date. My girlfriend. Stop trying to overanalyze what's in my head." He gripped the steering wheel tightly, staring straight ahead at the road.
Her head hung a little, "Ah still think ya should try an' talk to Pietro... There are things in his head, that I saw after...He needs someone to talk to him."
"Oh? What about?" He glanced at her, "He having problems with Magneto leaving or something?"
Rogue shook her head, "Ah thought ya might understand...but since yer so sure that ya just have 'brotherly' feelings for him, ah guess ah was wrong."
"Damn right you were."
Then it had been easy to write off, but the conversation had still thrown him off and they'd gotten lost in the middle of nowhere. Summers had been at the door when he dropped her off with the Logan guy, both wearing grim and angry faces. He could only imagine what they were thinking. Of course, they must be real perverts if they thought anything had actually happened. Yes. They'd been making out in his back seat. He looked a little too alive for all that skin-to-skin contact with Rogue.
He sipped his coffee a little, trying to sort out what Rogue was hinting at the night before. Was Pietro, dare he say it, gay? Didn't seem likely. The white haired kid was always checking girls out whenever they scraped together enough to go to to McDonald's or something. He was the one who made lewd comments to the girls at school about their skirts.
Then again, he could just be good at hiding it. Some of them were good at that. He remembered a guy who taught at his old school came out right after he retired. The guy was nearing sixty, and no body knew that he wasn't playing for the right team, or how the principal had put it. He shook his head. No. Pietro wasn't gay. That was insane.
He stopped himself...Wait, how had he gotten on that line of thought...Oh, fuck. He sure as hell wasn't gay. So he thought Pietro had a cute ass, and he was kind of sexy in his own odd Pietro way. And he had great eyes. That didn't make him... He just hadn't been drinking enough coffee. Coffee deprivation can do that to people...
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"Hey, Maximoff, phone's for you!" One of the guys was pounding on his door just as he was coming out of his stupor. Figures. They always had a habit of trying to talk to him between injections. Couldn't they just leave him alone?
He stuck his hand out the door, grabbing the cordless phone off of Todd and slamming himself back into the room, "Hello?"
"Hey, it's me." He closed his dazed blue eyes, remembering the night before with the stairs and the rain. "I wanted to talk to you. I saw you there, Pietro. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Really..."
"Shove it, Summers..." The boy snarled, shaking. He'd worked a little too hard at hiding things from Lance and the others for this little prep-tight ass to come in and fuck his life over. "You didn't tell anyone, did you?"
There was a moment of silence, "Pietro, it's cool. I think it's really awesome that you're willing to be seen there. I mean, not many people could sit out on those stairs."
"Look, it's not what you think. I mean, Summers... You didn't tell anyone? Did you. Answer me, asshole." His mind was trying to get back to normal speed, going over all the possibilties that would happen if he did blab something to one of the other X-freaks...Maybe to Evan. Then there was the psycho-bland-bitch Jean...if she saw it in his mind.
Scott sighed, "No. I didn't. I wasn't sure if that was something that you wanted other people to know, or..."
"Look, whatyousawthere..." He cleared his throat. If he talked fast, Scott wouldn't understand him, and then he would tell other people about that whole incident to get some help. "What you saw there...I was waiting for my friend, Blue, to drive me home. She goes to Youth Night counselling there...Her and her girlfriend, Liegh, they're both in this group thing. I hang out there with them sometimes, but on Saturday's, the people who work there throw every straight person out and make them wait."
Scott didn't say anything for a long minute, "Then why did you run away?"
Shit. Why couldn't he have been as stupid and easy to convince as Daniels? Damn him for having a brain, "Because...Because I didn't want anyone thinking that I'm--"
"Gay? Pietro, there's no shame in admitting it. I know that it has to be tough for you, stuck in that house with Lance and the others, who would probably kill you if they knew the truth. I know where you're coming from. I just went through this with Paul, my friend from school. That's why I was there...He's pretty messed up..." Scott's voice got quiet for a minute.
"They're good people, Summers. They'll help him out of whatever trouble he's in..." Pietro lowered his eyes for a minute, staring at his pillow, then pulled his sleeve back to stare at the yellowish bruises on his skin, tiny little enflamed patches of skin where the needle had jabbed into his body. They were good people...They could help humans. Paul was lucky.
"If he needs someone to talk to, will yo--"
"Summers, look, I can help him at the center, get him to the right counsellors, make sure things are cool, but I'm not one of them."
Scott laughed hollowly, "Yeah, I guess. You get too much pleasure out of flipping girls skirts." His voice changed. Some one must have come in, wondering who Scott was talking to. "Look, I gotta go...Talk to you later, all right?"
"Don't call me again. I don't need Lance thinking I'm friendly towards you." Lance's opinion shouldn't matter. It couldn't matter. Lance was just his annoying, self-appointed older brother.
There was a laugh, "Couldn't have that, could we?" There was a tone in his voice that Pietro didn't like as he whispered 'bye' and hung up the phone.
The white haired boy frowned, pulling his pillow case over his lap and unzipping it, taking a plastic bag out and staring at the contents again. Why couldn't he do anything else but turn to this when things went wrong?
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"Pietro...Get down here! We're going out for pizza." Lance stood at the foot of the stairs.
Fred shifted from foot to foot, "Maybe he's not hungry. Or maybe he's asleep again. We should leave him alone."
The dark haired boy shook his head, "No. He has to come." Something was still bothering him about Pietro. A small, insignifigant thing that Rogue had hinted at.
Todd cast him an odd look, wary, "Why, yo? We could just bring him home somethin' like usual. He won't be missin' it if he wants to stay up in his room all night."
Lance turned, putting on his best "wounded and overworked" expression, "No. I hardly see you anymore, and I want Pietro to come, to catch up on things. All right?" Gag. The other two boys didn't object to that, nodding. It was true that he worked too much, but it was cool when he got weekdays. Most people didn't come in Monday through Thursday, and on those days, he worked the game room...Gotta love the game room.
"Pietro!" Todd went half up the stairs, looking at the other two. "Why don't you go get the car started? He's probably listening to his walkman again. See you in a minute, yo."
Lance nodded, "Let's go, Freddie. Hate to disapoint the little guy, eh?"
Fred nodded a little, giving Lance a once over, "Somethin' botherin' you, Alvers?"
He stopped, mind screeching to a halt, "Bothering...me?" Shit. Maybe things were more obvious than he'd thought. Maybe everyone knew about his problem--Wait, no. He was being paranoid. This was Fred. The large mutant wasn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.
"It's cool, Fred. I'm just tired. Kids are bitches." He opened the front door. "I'll tell you all about it in the car."
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He knocked on Pietro's door again. There wasn't an answer still. He could hear the low pulse of the white haired mutant's music, but not Pietro. "Hey, Maximoff...You awake?"
Still no answer. Really weird... Todd frowned for a minute, staring at the door in front of him. The door was open just a crack. Barely a line of light could make its way through there...He pressed against it, trying to see anything. He could make out Pietro sitting on the bed, his right arm extended in front of him...
He jumped up, knocking on the door one last time before pushing it open. Todd looked at Pietro, watching as a needle slid into the older boy's skin, slicing a tiny hole into the bruised skin near the major viens. He watched, not saying anything as the syringe emptied into Pietro's bloodstream and the syringe was put back into a bag, and then into a pillow.
The young mutant jumped back, shaking his head and knocking on the doorjam. He pretended not to be looking in the room, to have no idea what was going on in there. It took him a moment to find his voice, "Hey...Maximoff?"
He looked over, staring at the door for a moment, "Yeah?" The boy came over to Todd, his normal stride slow, almost human, "What is it?" Todd stared at Pietro's face. Deep hollows had formed around his eyes and on his cheeks. Why hadn't anyone noticed the way his delicate bones stuck out all over his face, giving him the look of a living skeleton.
"Lance wants you outside. We're goin' for pizza." He shifted a little, still staring at Pietro, the image of the needle in the boy's bony, bruised arm engrained in his memory. Blue eyes stared back at him. Freakish blue eyes...in the low light, his eyes were almost totally blue, pupils little dots on that sea.
"I'm not hungry." Before Todd could say anything, the door slammed in his face.
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Anyone still like this? ^_^ R/R