~: The Long Walk Home :~
 (X-men: Evolution)
Written by Naoki


Chapter one: Good Night


I huddled the makeshift blanket closer to protect myself from the cold, after-midnight air, faint memories of last night playing in an eternal loop inside my head, disabling my brain from even attempting to get to sleep. The way we met and fought followed by my incessant lash of verbal abuse towards him. It was repetitive, monotonous an mostly just pointless immature bickering that had caused this mess in the first place. I couldn't quite understand why I was being immature. It just seemed like the most natural thing to do when I met him. Him and his state of immaturity. Yeah... The two of us fighting.

And then the two of us falling...

And I knew we were falling fast.

And now this; landing painfully into a place outside contact of the entire world. Being forced to live with a person I would rather have plunged face first into the mud rather than help to survive together. Yeah... Fate seems to be very fond of plot twists.

But I wasn't. I hated plot twists with all my heart.

I shivered slightly, even though the jacket that I had carried with me was thick enough to give me more than adequate heat. I was never really conscious of the concept of cold or heat... I was always too busy thinking of what to do next and what my next objective was to realize such trivial things like temperature. I couldn't do so now, I was forced to slow myself down for the world.

I smile as I stared at the sky from in between the leaves of a tree that we had used as a shelter. It wasn't in me to be the Boy Scout type. I never liked having to be brought out into the open where there was almost always nothing to do; it just simply bored me. I hated the outdoors...

Yet here I am, underneath a naked sky with a moon that seems to float forever evanescently, surrounded by stretching strands of stars that twinkled bright like beautiful Christmas lights... If only it were Christmas... And if only those were actually lights... I hated the outdoors yet...

I sit up and look upwards to the dark blue sky that I knew stretched forever and beyond our dreams. A sky that seemed to be just an empty void that called out to us because we never knew what it truly contained. A sky that seemed to just go on forever, never seeming to reach an end of at least a small semblance of it. Nothing was as far away as the end of the sky...

But I knew something that was as unreachable as the end of the sky.

I sighed, my eyes set now on the grass as I looked at it from between the torn knees of my pants, showing me wounded flesh, just drifting in my thoughts for once. I was lucky to get away with just some bruises and scratches after falling such a distance, not even a broken bone anywhere to be proof of how far I actually dropped. I sat there, just... drifting. Drifting in the sheer silence that enveloped me in a blanket of tranquil solitude.

It was so very quiet... Just the sound of my breathing...

And his.

There he was, sleeping silently beside me. I would have never thought of him as the sound sleeper type, he was too easily provoked by small things for that kind of classification. Yet... I was glad that he was. This short moment of peace brought out a side of him that I never thought I'd ever see in this lifetime.

A side that I only wished that I could have seen sooner.

I listened to him breath in his sleep. Soft, steady breathing; like the breathing of a sleeping baby... He seemed to be so vulnerable now...

...So vulnerable that I could kill him.

I gripped the rock that I've been holding ever since I began thinking about killing him just moments ago, the idea of being able to smash this piece of stone against his forehead while he was dreaming constantly jumping in and out of my head.

I could end the foolish game that we played. I could finally put our bitter rivalry to an end, with me as the lone victor, standing in a puddle of his blood underneath the moon and stars as the light shined on the red liquid below me...

I can kill him...

I will kill him...

But I wouldn't do it now. I don't want to finish things like this.

I threw the stone away, landing on the earth with a dull, heavy thud. I turned my head to look at him again... Except this time, I wasn't looking at him with ideas of raging homicide playing in my head.

I only wanted to imagine if he would press his lips with mine if I asked him to.

God, I love you, you ignorant bastard! I loved you so much that I couldn't take being in the same school as you! Why couldn't you see that, you blind, pig-headed, self-centered clod?! I was in love with you and you never even took notice! Was it so hard for you to notice that I would kill myself for you in a second?

But then again, why should I blame you? It wasn't your fault that I didn't know how to show my feelings for you in a way that your little brain could understand... It's my fault for being too cryptic, too arrogant, too stupid...

Too Pietro.

Did anyone ever tell you that you look so damn beautiful when you sleep? It's like you've changed into a completely different person. You became like a person who never gave a damn about rivalry or anything else. A person who wasn't insecure about their position in life... I person that I couldn't even aspire to become.

I brought my face closer to his chest, taking in the deep boyish smell that he exhumed. I relished in tracing my fingers on the cloth of his shirt. Slowly, delicately, I would slide my index finger down his chest and onto his lean, hard stomach. I stopped, pressing my hand against his abdomen, feeling the grooves of his well-trained athletic physique. His body was warm to my touch, unlike my chilly skin right now. It felt good being this close to him; close enough for me to feel his warmth and energy in my fingertips. I surveyed his entire body, engrossed in just how perfect his body actually was in comparison to everyone I've met. You're so frickin stupid, you know that Evan? You never knew how much I envied your body and how much I would feel a twinge of regret everytime I would see you in the showers, standing like some Adonis that beckoned for everyone to come closer to you and fall in love with every fiber of your gorgeous body. You weren't like me, the prerequisite skinny high school teenager. The one who looked like he hasn't ever done any rigorous training at all, no matter how much I actually have. Were you so dumb that you couldn't even notice it when I would oftentimes just spend my time showering staring at you? I wanted to be like you...

Or in the least, be with you.

It was only then that I realized that it wasn't his physical features that made me want him so much. It was far from the physical that made me yearn for him very moment I would catch sight of him.

It was his smell.

Everyone has his or her own smell but his was different; it wasn't like anyone I've ever known! The boyish musk that made me want to embrace him and press his body against my own, how I wanted that smell! I breathed in deeply, the aroma delicately wafting inside my brain...

I was becoming delusional just by smelling him! Here he is, lying beside me. The same idiot that I've been fantasizing over ever sicne I laid eyes on him, completely available for me to feel. Jesus, the only thing he needed was a huge neon sign pointing to his crotch with the words "All you can eat Buffet for only $2.99!". Yeah, how many times have I actually imagined the taste of your straining flesh inside my mouth, the feel of you skin now wet wth my saliva. How many times have I stayed away late at night thnking about your pounding me hard on my bed while I screamed for you to stop.

God I was sick. I wanted you so bad that I wanted you to hurt me! I wanted you to just dig into me like an animal wthout any care for the pain that it may have caused me. But you never caused me physical pain...

You just caused me so much pain in my head that I think I need therapy. I hate you Evan. I love you Evan. Dammit, I don't know what I want, Evan! Stop doing this to me!

But I can't. I can't touch you. I won't touch you. After all, I'm not that stupid. Your scent. That was all I needed right now.

But was it enough just to sense him beside me?

My god, how I wanted to feel him in my arms! I wanted to go further and to strip him naked of all his clothes and feel how his body felt in my hands! I wanted to witness him in all his glory as he lay there beside me! I didn't want to see him the way he was when we were together in the shower room, I wanted to see him up close... I wanted to see everything. Everything that would be just for me.

What are you thinking, you twit? The guy doesn't even like you, for Christ's sake! I'm not stupid enough to risk our already unstable friendship by hitting on a person that dripped straightness from every pore! I wasn't willing to start feeling him up while he was asleep just to gratify my ever growing libido! And besides...

He could never like me. He could never like another boy. It just wasn't in him to be like that. After all, he was everything I wasn't and I'm guessing that was one thing that he wasn't as well.

I turned my eyes away, probably because of that nagging sense of defeat at the hands of an opponent who didn't even bother to raise a finger. I lay with my back to him in an attempt to change my focus from him to just more trees. I just wanted to sleep... I just wanted to forget I ever thought of him like this tonight. I sighed in depression again, letting my mind float off into nothing as I closed my eyes heavily.

I just wanted to get away from you. And please, don't invade my dreams, the only place where I know I can earn sanctuary from you tormenting you. Please, for my sake and yours, don't make me dream about you.

Good night Evan. We've still got a long day tomorrow...

If we would even be together tomorrow.

To be continued (When I get off my lazy ass.)

Authors notes: I think I may have been a little off with the way the characters are supposed to act (Duck and cover! Incoming OOC reviews!). Just goes to prove what happens when you've been gone from the fanfic writing world for too long. Oh, and by the way, I'm sorry for being away for too long, all those who've been wanting a sequel to my Gundam fics. I'll get to work on that when I get the time. I don't own X-Men, Marvel Inc. does. And neither do I own the "X-Men: Evolution" series because Fox Entertainment owns that. I also don't own any of the characters even though we all wish we could own at least one of them. (Okay, maybe all of them then!)



Preview of Chapter Two: Feeling Cold



"Isn't it about time you stopped being such a prick!?" Evan yelled out loud, the ominous silence of the forest broken by one boy's burst of anger.

"And isn't it about time you rented a brain, you moron!?" Pietro spun around to look at his opponent, retorting with equal ferocity. Their eyes locked in on one another as they stood apart from each other several meters away just beside the lake. Muscles tense, eyes focused and minds thinking of only one thing.

How much they hated each other. And how much they couldn't stomach the sight of each other.

"Why do you always have to be the world's biggest asshole at the worst possible times? Right now, we're locked far off into who knows where and you're still too engrossed on settling some score that doesn't even exist anymore? God Pietro, you think I'm a moron?! What does that make you then?" With every single sentence that Evan spoke, more and more of those wooden spikes were growing on his arms, showing Pietro that if he wanted a fight, this was so not the right time for it.

Evan exhaled strongly, trying his best to calm down before anything that he knew he shouldn't do is done. "The Professor'll find us here. And the rest of the X-men will come to--"

Pietro interrupted, quickly dashing onto Evan's side of the stream, his face dangerously close to the person he had been arguing with ever since they laid eyes on each other. "X-men this, X-men that! Can't you ever do something without the help of anyone else? Can't you ever shine on your own instead of riding on the shoulders of other people? Shit Evan! You couldn't do it when you were a member of our basketball team, and like fucking hell you can't do it now!"

And in the blink of an eye and a powerful angry shout from Evan, they were at each other's throats, cold water splashing everywhere as Evan wrestled with Pietro for his own pride... And as Pietro fought for his life, the spikes inching ever closer to his neck everytime Evan pushed against him, his back screaming with pain everytime he was mved to roughly by the black boy on top of him... Bubbles of precious oxygen floating away from his mouth every second that he remained underwater.


Click for Chapter two