Notes: Urg. . I am not, nor have I been, in writer's mode for awhile. Therefore, this part rather sucks. The problem is that I'm in such a big hurry to get to the ending (C'mon! Hurry up, dammit!) that everything in between just seems like filler (which it's really not, but…). Well, that and the fact that all my good dialogue comes to me right before I go to sleep. Anyway, I have the next six days or so to crank out another few chapters. I know I said three at the beginning… I lied. Try seven or eight now.  

Note to shindo: Thank you for responding…er… again. ^^;; That review page has become our own personal argument! Lucky us! In any case, I do understand where you were coming from. As one of my friends (and a fellow fic writer) pointed out to me, "Well, how would you feel if you saw someone writing a story that was suspiciously like one of mine?" Ah… #^_^# I'm sure I would have reacted similarly. And I'm sorry that my first response was… awfully snotty. It was six-something in the morning and you did a reeeeaaally good job of catching me completely off-guard. In any case, I think any 'friction' or tension is unnecessary (and hopefully not going to pop up unexpectedly or anything). Thank you for the positive comments (good slash is disturbingly hard to find in the Evo universe!) and good luck with the term papers! ^__^

I Am Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired

When I finally drew the courage to go into my room, I found Pietro peacefully doing exactly as he'd been told. He was stretched out on the bed, lying on his side and, with his finger, tracing the patterns on the old quilt with lazy absorption. He didn't look at me when I came in, didn't look when I closed the door, didn't look when I sat next to him on the bed.

Helplessly, I lay next to him and turned on my side so we could look each other in the eyes, if we so chose. But he kept his head dipped into his chest, silent refusal of any of my compassion. "Hey…" Gently, I put my hand on his shoulder, only barely touching him with the pads of my fingers. He didn't shrug me away, but didn't actually acknowledge me either. "Hey…"

I don't know where the words came from.

"I love you."

I said it. Yes. I said it. Aloud. I could barely choke out the phrase because I'd never, in my life, said it. I'd proclaimed my love for god when forced, I'd uttered the occasional 'I love…' such and such band or music or movie. When foster mommy used to ask if I loved her, I'd say 'yes'. When foster daddy hit me, kicked me, kissed me, and asked if I loved him, I'd say 'yes'.

But I'd never said the words to someone else and meant them. Suddenly, there it was… a lifetime of pain and despair, of happiness and laughter, of regret and reminiscence out in the open. Three little words.

Pietro's head snapped up with such force I thought it would cause his brain to rattle in his skull. The nervousness and the sudden realization of the severity of what I'd said almost made me giggle with adrenal glee. I struggled to swallow it, swallow the giggles the same way I'd swallowed the pain and the anger, and force it into my stomach along with searing acids and semi-digested food.

When his eyes met mine, the urge to laugh immediately disappeared. His eyes were almost soulless, light-blue and crystal clear, except for the faint eddies of hurt that pulled the corners down, caused the rings around his irises to deepen in color. "They all said that," he whispered before rolling over and tossing his legs over the edge of the bed. "They all said that." He stood and idly picked up a timeworn baseball that had been keeping time on my nightstand.

"And it's not true!" He screeched the words with the slight hitch that always accompanies tears. In a split-second, in a fit of unprecedented anger, he threw the baseball as hard as he possibly could into the middle of my room's antique dresser. It hit the middle drawer hard, hard enough to cause a permanent baseball-sized dent in the mahogany that I never bothered to fix. The force of the blow caused some of the odds and ends I'd left on the dresser-top to tumble over; I winced as I heard my clock-radio hit the floor with an audible 'crack'.

Pietro sobbed once before covering his face with his hands and turning so his back was to me. I was frozen on the bed, too afraid, too unsure of myself to know what to do. Minutes passed, though it was hard to tell how many with a broken clock. But it felt like an eternity, a vulnerable and desperate eternity.

Finally, I decided that something had to be said, lest we stand at that impasse forever. "I'm not one of them."

"You could be." Came his muffled response.

"But I'm not." I emphasized the point as gently as I could. Then I reached for him, needily imploring that he pay attention to me, acknowledge me and my quaint idea of love. "Please. Please talk to me. I need to understand-"

"You don't!" He cut me off sharply, turning his head to the side and swinging one hand to rest on his hip. "You don't." He continued in a gentler voice. "Because I don't want you to look at me and think what everyone else thinks."

What did everyone else think? His words puzzled me. "I don't know-"

"Exactly!" He turned to face me, eyes flashing. "You don't know, and I don't want you to!"

"Why?"

"Because I'm bad!" He shouted with exasperation. "I'm dirty! I'm disgusting!"

"You're not-"

"I am." He stated firmly. "I am and I don't want you to be part of this. I can take care of myself." He turned to leave, but, with a sudden burst of energy, I grabbed him and pulled his light body onto the bed. We tussled for a few moments, but ultimately I was the stronger. With a final grunt, I pushed him onto his back and lay atop him, stubbornly pinning him to the mattress. We were both panting; it looked and sounded comically like sex.

"Talk to me," I breathed, pushing my face into his face, allowing our noses to brush. "I told god we could handle this… please."

"Oh," he rolled his eyes, retaining the vaguest sense of his own misanthropic suspicion. "And you'll be damned if we let god down, hmm?"

I grinned at the multi-layered pun, happy to be seeing shades of the true Pietro still shining through his tired eyes. "Of course." My grin faded as we stared at each other, silent and sad. "Talk?"

"Ok," he mumbled. I rolled off of him, but immediately wrapped an arm around his shoulders to keep him close to me. He blinked with surprise, but didn't comment on the affection. "What do you want me to talk about?"

"I'm not sure," I said with as much levity as I could, secretly relishing the way his body felt pressed against mine, sharing my heat. "I think that should be up to you."

He sighed. "I need… more direction than that."

"Ok." I ran my idle fingers through his soft, white hair. "Tell me about how it all started."

"How it all started," He repeated hollowly. "It started because… because I got tired."

"Tired of what?" He sighed again and rolled onto his back, way from me. He covered his eyes with his palm; I didn't know whether the sparse light hurt him, or whether he just didn't want me to see him struggle not to cry.

"Tired of being fast," he finally mumbled into his hand as he dragged it across his face. I blinked. Tired of being fast? But being fast was Pietro's life… it was just a part of who he was. It was difficult for me to imagine him staying at the speed of the rest of the world for very long.

But then… wasn't that what he'd been doing lately? I tried to think back, to think and recall whether he'd been up to normal speed the past several months. No… no, at night he was as slow as I was and no provocation could have made him otherwise. And during the days he would speed up, but it seemed like such a struggle.

"Why?" It seemed like it was the only word I had left.

He cracked one eyelid open and gave me a blank stare. "Do you know how hard it is to be so fast all of the time while the rest of the world is so slow?" I shook my head, although the answer was obvious. "It's tiring. You can't imagine how tiring."

"Maybe I can," I whispered, thinking about how exhausted I used to become after using the mutant abilities I'd been given. "Manipulating rock is harder than it looks." He smiled mirthlessly.

"No. No, you can't. At least you can stop using your power anytime you want to. It never stops for me. Never." He gazed at me, face lined with seriousness. "I love being fast, Lance… but what's the point if I have to hide it all the time?"

I opened my mouth to answer, but realized I had no response. What was the point, after all?

Pietro noticed my gaping, speechless mouth and giggled shrilly. "You see? You don't know either!"

I shook my head and tossed him a little smile. "But… heroin…?"

"Depresses the central nervous system." He replied with textbook precision. "Slows you down. Calms you down."

"How did you…?"

"Know that?" He finished my question for me, and I wondered how predictable this conversation was for him. I wondered whether anyone had ever asked him these same questions. "When you've got the attention span of a fucking gnat, you tend to read a lot. Sometimes you read things you shouldn't."

"Oh."

"I never said it was a good thing." He swallowed and I watched, fascinated, as the muscles in his throat clenched and released. Clenched and released. "I decided I wanted to try it. Tried it. Loved it. Tried it again." He closed his eyes, and I saw that his lashes just barely brushed the emaciated peaks of bone and flesh beneath his eye sockets. "Loved it… and it just kept going."

I nodded my understanding. "And you started to need money to pay…" His jaw clenched as I spoke; it was obvious that this aspect was much more painful.

"Yeah. Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah. I only took the drugs in the evenings, partly to spare the rest of you… but mostly for me." His cheeks were slightly pink with shame; I could see that he was trying to avoid opening his eyes. "'Cause after you all went to sleep, I'd go out…"

"When did you sleep, then?" Well, it was a valid question.

For a moment he didn't answer. Then he opened his eyes and turned back on his side to look at me. One slender hand reached out and stroked my cheek. "I didn't. After awhile, I was just too afraid."

"Afraid of what?" He gave me a silent, piercing stare before snuggling himself back into my arms. Fondly, I wrapped my arms around him as I felt his legs tangle in mine.

"I was afraid I'd never wake up."