Hello, hello! Not much of a response for the last chapter, but...how about this one? Hmm?
***
Mr. Bobble was watching his owner pace around the room. His owner often paced, but this time it was different. This time his owner was muttering under his breath. Mr. Bobble just smiled and nodded.
"Okay, Pietro, okay," murmured Mr. Bobble's owner. "So someone finally figured you out. Now what, huh? You didn't think anyone would ever figure you out, let alone Kitty. Okay, so you knew she was smart...very smart," here Mr. Bobble nodded and smiled at Pietro shaking his head distractedly, "but - but she was always such a ditz with Lance!" Pietro paused in his pacing to stare blankly at Mr. Bobble. Mr. Bobble smiled and nodded. "God, did I hate that," Pietro said, frustrated.
The pacing was resumed, but this time at super-speed. Pietro didn't seem to notice. "Why did I even care so much? It wasn't like she had done anything nice for me then. But, geez, then Lance was so mean to her, and--"
There was a pounding from downstairs, and Pietro stumbled in his steps, regaining his balance after swaying forward a bit. "Pietro, cut it out, will ya?!" came Todd's voice from the floor. "It's rainin' plaster down here!" Mr. Bobble smiled and nodded vigorously. Pietro ignored the interruption and went back to his super-speed pacing once more.
"Why'd he have to go and break up with her like that, anyway? She looked so hurt..." He had been muttering again, but now Pietro stopped and stared blankly in Mr. Bobble's direction again. "I would've kicked Lance's ass if I hadn't restrained myself then," he said in realization.
Pietro took up the pacing again, this time at normal speed. Mr. Bobble smiled and nodded at Pietro's brooding, until Pietro stopped. "She's the only one who ever bothered to look closely enough at me to see what's here," the white-haired youth told Mr. Bobble, astonished. "I mean, the only person who even *bothered* to look past this stupid, arrogant front I've put up to keep people out." If Mr. Bobble had been thinking, he would have thought about how very in touch with his emotions his owner seemed to be. But he wasn't thinking, so he just smiled and nodded.
"All right, man, just calm down." Pietro started pacing once again. "Just--don't think like that until you find out more about her, okay? You don't know enough to really judge her like that...so how do you find out more about her?" That was when he stopped and noticed Mr. Bobble smiling and nodding. Under Pietro's gaze, Mr. Bobble slowly stopped his nodding. "I am one sick, twisted person," Pietro muttered to himself, still staring at Mr. Bobble. Mr. Bobble smiled, and nodded as his owner slowly turned back to his thoughts and began cooking up a plan to find out more about Kitty.
***
Author's note: If you can tell me who Mr. Bobble is, you get a cookie. You get an extra cookie if you can tell me his favorite color. ^_^
***
Dinner had been finished for an hour, and she had been up in her room for half an hour. Kitty closed her schoolbooks, packed away her bag neatly, crossed the room, and proceeded to bang her head against the wall. "What," thud, "was," thud, "I," thud, "*thinking*?!" Thud! The connection her head made with the wall sent Kitty stumbling backwards across the cluttered floor, and she gasped at the pain in her ankle as she tripped and tripped again, finally landing heavily on her bed with an "Oomph!" She flomped backwards, reached up, and covered her face with a pillow.
"MMMMMMMMMPHHHHHHH!" She screamed in muffled pain into the light blue cloth. That finished, she scooted back into a proper position on the bed (causing no *small* discomfort to her injured ankle), and knitted her brow, thinking.
_Was I too forward?_ Kitty projected at the ceiling. _Maybe I shouldn't have told him flat out like that. Maybe I should've just...hinted at it. Subtly. Made him guess._ She sighed, frustrated by her thoughts, and let them turn a bit. _Does he like me, too?_ wondered Kitty. _There's always a chance, right? I mean, there was that look he gave me...when I told him what I thought about him. Hmm, or maybe he just thinks that I should be put in a *mental hospital*!_ "Rrrgh!" cried Kitty aloud.
"If you're that mad, maybe I should just come back later." Rogue, who had just entered the room, turned to leave.
"No! No, stay, please?" Kitty looked at her friend with wide, pleading eyes, and Rogue cocked an eyebrow.
"All right. But only since you asked so nicely." She crossed the few feet to her bed and sat down, letting the door click shut behind her. "So," she said, taking the tone of a therapist," are you going to tell me the *real* reason you were distracted in gym class, or are you going to let the 'airplane flying by' excuse stand?"
Kitty shook her head and sighed. "It was Quicksilver."
There was the slightest change in Rogue's posture that would have let anyone watching know that she was interested--*highly* interested. "You tell 'im?"
"Yeah." Kitty bit a fingernail, looking worried. "I don't know, though. Well, see, what happened was, I talked to him on the bleachers, right? But then we were called into the game, and I had already told him, and...well," a faint smile appeared on her face, "I guess Pietro was the one who distracted me..." she drifted off, staring at the wall dreamily.
"Hello, Earth to Kitty..."
"Huh, what?"
"I have a question," Rogue said seriously. She leveled a gaze at the lovesick freshman. "I'm wondering if maybe you shouldn't do this whole Brotherhood thing again? You remember where it got you last time, right?"
Kitty's dreamy look immediately dissipated. "You're right. That whole thing with Lance..." she sighed again. "I'll have to think about it. I guess I shouldn't get tangled up with another guy from the opposite side, but..." A mischievous look came over her face. "...*Pietro.*" She waggled her eyebrows at Rogue, who, to Kitty's surprise, cracked a rare smile.
"Hey, cut that out, you're gonna make me think of Pietro in that way, and I'll never sleep again," Rogue said, still smiling. Kitty giggled, and Rogue let out a chuckle, and before the two of them knew it, they had stayed up all night talking...
It was just before she turned out her light that Kitty realized what a great friend she had in Rogue.
***
Running through her checklist in her mind again, Kitty walked carefully down the crowded hallway, eyelids at half-mast. _Fresh bandage?_ Her eyes flickered downward. _Check...Aspirin?_ She bit a nail, pausing in her thoughts. _Check...French notebook?_ She blinked in realization. _Don't have it. Damn, how am I gonna get to my locker in this crowd?_
Fairly exhausted from the previous night, and injured to boot (no pun intended), Kitty was doing her very best to propel herself through school. Unfortunately, her very best still left her rushing toward her locker with three minutes left before class. In a valiant effort not to be late, she pushed her way through the crowds and made it to her locker..just as the bell rang. Sighing heavily, she shuffled the papers inside her locked around, searching for her missing notebook. _Ugh. This is gonna be a *long* day. When's my next break again?_
***
Pietro winced when he noticed Kitty's limp. His fault. He cursed himself mentally for sdoing such a thing--thought he realized on an intellectual level that the injury wasn't technically his fault, his emotions were making him think otherwise. That is to say, he felt unreasonably guilty for Kitty's pain, and was hoping pretty hard that he'd be able to distract himself from this matter with other things. _Okay,_ he reminded himself, _no acting speedy just to keep her out. Be yourself. Play it cool._ Yeah. Sure. Play it cool when he was a nervous wreck.
Crossing the busy cafeteria, Pietro noticed how strangely tired Kitty was looking--probably his fault, too, his emotions chided him. _Shut up. I'm having enough trouble looking relatively normal as it is._
He caught her in the middle of her painful-looking trek to the X-table. "Uh, hi, Kitty." _Oh, great show, Casanova._ "Uh, listen, I'm sorry about yesterday," he blurted out before she could say anything. She looked at him quizzically while he babble don. "Anyway, um, I figured, since you're sick and everything - well, hurt--um, and since it's basically my fault, you know, well...I made you this!" He stuck out his arm rather awkwardly. "It's chicken noodle soup," he smiled nervously at her, begging her silently to accept it, please take it, I made it for you...
Taking the thermos gingerly from his hand, Kitty arranged it on top of her books carefully, and glanced up again--that was when their eyes caught each other, and before she was aware of it a lopsided grin, just as sloppy as his, was on her face. She was very aware of that peculiar melting sensation starting in her chest...they stayed that way for a full minute, smiling awkwardly and staring into each other's eyes, both too timidly hopeful to break the moment.
"Ahem," Pietro cleared his throat, a blush rising in his cheeks as he shifted to stare fixedly at the floor. The red stood out vividly on his pale complexion. "Uh, listen, Kitty, I was wondering if maybe you, ah..." his voice grew quiet. "Maybe you wanted to go on a date with me?"
He brought his eyes up to hers again, and that was what got her, that was the second when she knew there was not a flying chance in a shooting gallery that she was saying no. She knew she was grinning goofily again...and she was okay with that. "Uh, sure, Pietro," she blushed at his name, "um...what kind of date?" If it was possible, her blush grew even darked.
Too wrung out by nerves to properly answer a question, Pietro stammered: "Uh, w-w - i-it's a surprise. Yeah. Heh," he smiled broadly. "Um, meet me at your locker after school?"
"Sure. Sure. Um...I'll see you then, okay?" The normal sounds of the cafeteria rushed back into the duo's ears, and they waved goodbye quickly, each running off to their respective table.
Rogue had realized long before Kitty reached the table, slowed down as she was with her sprained ankle, the all the other X-Men had been to absorbed in their own conversations to notice the quiet conversation Kitty and Pietro held near the center of the crowded room. Therefore, Rogue was the only one who greeted the foggy-eyed teenager.
It took a few minutes of smiling whimsically into the checkerboard pattern of the thermos Pietro had bestowed upon her to restore her to a more--erm--talkative state.
"OhmyGod, Rogue," Kitty blended the words together. "You would not, like, believe what just happened!"
"I saw the whole thing from right here."
"Yeah, he asked me on a date...oh!" Kitty turned suddenly to Rogue, apparently now aware of her surroundings. "Can you cover for me this afternoon?" She gave her friend a pleading look.
Rogue looked at her stoically for a moment before rolling her eyes, and saying, "Yeah, all right. But don't say I never did anything for you!"
"Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are, like, a *lifesaver*!" A quavering sigh escaped her lips, and at that moment she happened to glance in the direction of the Brotherhood table. Pietro was gazing at her with that dreamy look in his eyes--Rogue saw it, too. They laughed a bit as they watched him start and tuck into his lunch faster than any normal human was capable of doing.
"So, Kitty...how was French today?"
"Ah. Good. Thanks, Rogue, you're the best," Kitty realized that Rogue was just trying to distract. She didn't want her to be nervous for that afternoon, and boy oh boy, was Kitty grateful to her for changing the subject. "French, like, totally sucked, my notebook is M.I.A...."
***
YES! ::dances:: I finished it! I am exceptionally proud--especially of that little awkward scene they have. Pretty cool, right? Right? Well, I need your help yet again, oh readers. A list of things that you might help me with:
1) What did you think of the chapter? Anything I should change? Any suggestions for the future?
2) What should the title be? Remember, ongoing title contest? I still need help on this...
and 3) It's the one you've been waiting for, folks...where do you want them to go on their date? I need them to go somewhere they can talk, but I can't think of anything. I need your assistance! I don't want any of this 'going to the movies' crap. This is *romance,* not a teenage make-out fic. So how 'bout it? Got any ideas for where they can talk?
I LOVE YOU ALL!! ::blows kisses::
***
Mr. Bobble was watching his owner pace around the room. His owner often paced, but this time it was different. This time his owner was muttering under his breath. Mr. Bobble just smiled and nodded.
"Okay, Pietro, okay," murmured Mr. Bobble's owner. "So someone finally figured you out. Now what, huh? You didn't think anyone would ever figure you out, let alone Kitty. Okay, so you knew she was smart...very smart," here Mr. Bobble nodded and smiled at Pietro shaking his head distractedly, "but - but she was always such a ditz with Lance!" Pietro paused in his pacing to stare blankly at Mr. Bobble. Mr. Bobble smiled and nodded. "God, did I hate that," Pietro said, frustrated.
The pacing was resumed, but this time at super-speed. Pietro didn't seem to notice. "Why did I even care so much? It wasn't like she had done anything nice for me then. But, geez, then Lance was so mean to her, and--"
There was a pounding from downstairs, and Pietro stumbled in his steps, regaining his balance after swaying forward a bit. "Pietro, cut it out, will ya?!" came Todd's voice from the floor. "It's rainin' plaster down here!" Mr. Bobble smiled and nodded vigorously. Pietro ignored the interruption and went back to his super-speed pacing once more.
"Why'd he have to go and break up with her like that, anyway? She looked so hurt..." He had been muttering again, but now Pietro stopped and stared blankly in Mr. Bobble's direction again. "I would've kicked Lance's ass if I hadn't restrained myself then," he said in realization.
Pietro took up the pacing again, this time at normal speed. Mr. Bobble smiled and nodded at Pietro's brooding, until Pietro stopped. "She's the only one who ever bothered to look closely enough at me to see what's here," the white-haired youth told Mr. Bobble, astonished. "I mean, the only person who even *bothered* to look past this stupid, arrogant front I've put up to keep people out." If Mr. Bobble had been thinking, he would have thought about how very in touch with his emotions his owner seemed to be. But he wasn't thinking, so he just smiled and nodded.
"All right, man, just calm down." Pietro started pacing once again. "Just--don't think like that until you find out more about her, okay? You don't know enough to really judge her like that...so how do you find out more about her?" That was when he stopped and noticed Mr. Bobble smiling and nodding. Under Pietro's gaze, Mr. Bobble slowly stopped his nodding. "I am one sick, twisted person," Pietro muttered to himself, still staring at Mr. Bobble. Mr. Bobble smiled, and nodded as his owner slowly turned back to his thoughts and began cooking up a plan to find out more about Kitty.
***
Author's note: If you can tell me who Mr. Bobble is, you get a cookie. You get an extra cookie if you can tell me his favorite color. ^_^
***
Dinner had been finished for an hour, and she had been up in her room for half an hour. Kitty closed her schoolbooks, packed away her bag neatly, crossed the room, and proceeded to bang her head against the wall. "What," thud, "was," thud, "I," thud, "*thinking*?!" Thud! The connection her head made with the wall sent Kitty stumbling backwards across the cluttered floor, and she gasped at the pain in her ankle as she tripped and tripped again, finally landing heavily on her bed with an "Oomph!" She flomped backwards, reached up, and covered her face with a pillow.
"MMMMMMMMMPHHHHHHH!" She screamed in muffled pain into the light blue cloth. That finished, she scooted back into a proper position on the bed (causing no *small* discomfort to her injured ankle), and knitted her brow, thinking.
_Was I too forward?_ Kitty projected at the ceiling. _Maybe I shouldn't have told him flat out like that. Maybe I should've just...hinted at it. Subtly. Made him guess._ She sighed, frustrated by her thoughts, and let them turn a bit. _Does he like me, too?_ wondered Kitty. _There's always a chance, right? I mean, there was that look he gave me...when I told him what I thought about him. Hmm, or maybe he just thinks that I should be put in a *mental hospital*!_ "Rrrgh!" cried Kitty aloud.
"If you're that mad, maybe I should just come back later." Rogue, who had just entered the room, turned to leave.
"No! No, stay, please?" Kitty looked at her friend with wide, pleading eyes, and Rogue cocked an eyebrow.
"All right. But only since you asked so nicely." She crossed the few feet to her bed and sat down, letting the door click shut behind her. "So," she said, taking the tone of a therapist," are you going to tell me the *real* reason you were distracted in gym class, or are you going to let the 'airplane flying by' excuse stand?"
Kitty shook her head and sighed. "It was Quicksilver."
There was the slightest change in Rogue's posture that would have let anyone watching know that she was interested--*highly* interested. "You tell 'im?"
"Yeah." Kitty bit a fingernail, looking worried. "I don't know, though. Well, see, what happened was, I talked to him on the bleachers, right? But then we were called into the game, and I had already told him, and...well," a faint smile appeared on her face, "I guess Pietro was the one who distracted me..." she drifted off, staring at the wall dreamily.
"Hello, Earth to Kitty..."
"Huh, what?"
"I have a question," Rogue said seriously. She leveled a gaze at the lovesick freshman. "I'm wondering if maybe you shouldn't do this whole Brotherhood thing again? You remember where it got you last time, right?"
Kitty's dreamy look immediately dissipated. "You're right. That whole thing with Lance..." she sighed again. "I'll have to think about it. I guess I shouldn't get tangled up with another guy from the opposite side, but..." A mischievous look came over her face. "...*Pietro.*" She waggled her eyebrows at Rogue, who, to Kitty's surprise, cracked a rare smile.
"Hey, cut that out, you're gonna make me think of Pietro in that way, and I'll never sleep again," Rogue said, still smiling. Kitty giggled, and Rogue let out a chuckle, and before the two of them knew it, they had stayed up all night talking...
It was just before she turned out her light that Kitty realized what a great friend she had in Rogue.
***
Running through her checklist in her mind again, Kitty walked carefully down the crowded hallway, eyelids at half-mast. _Fresh bandage?_ Her eyes flickered downward. _Check...Aspirin?_ She bit a nail, pausing in her thoughts. _Check...French notebook?_ She blinked in realization. _Don't have it. Damn, how am I gonna get to my locker in this crowd?_
Fairly exhausted from the previous night, and injured to boot (no pun intended), Kitty was doing her very best to propel herself through school. Unfortunately, her very best still left her rushing toward her locker with three minutes left before class. In a valiant effort not to be late, she pushed her way through the crowds and made it to her locker..just as the bell rang. Sighing heavily, she shuffled the papers inside her locked around, searching for her missing notebook. _Ugh. This is gonna be a *long* day. When's my next break again?_
***
Pietro winced when he noticed Kitty's limp. His fault. He cursed himself mentally for sdoing such a thing--thought he realized on an intellectual level that the injury wasn't technically his fault, his emotions were making him think otherwise. That is to say, he felt unreasonably guilty for Kitty's pain, and was hoping pretty hard that he'd be able to distract himself from this matter with other things. _Okay,_ he reminded himself, _no acting speedy just to keep her out. Be yourself. Play it cool._ Yeah. Sure. Play it cool when he was a nervous wreck.
Crossing the busy cafeteria, Pietro noticed how strangely tired Kitty was looking--probably his fault, too, his emotions chided him. _Shut up. I'm having enough trouble looking relatively normal as it is._
He caught her in the middle of her painful-looking trek to the X-table. "Uh, hi, Kitty." _Oh, great show, Casanova._ "Uh, listen, I'm sorry about yesterday," he blurted out before she could say anything. She looked at him quizzically while he babble don. "Anyway, um, I figured, since you're sick and everything - well, hurt--um, and since it's basically my fault, you know, well...I made you this!" He stuck out his arm rather awkwardly. "It's chicken noodle soup," he smiled nervously at her, begging her silently to accept it, please take it, I made it for you...
Taking the thermos gingerly from his hand, Kitty arranged it on top of her books carefully, and glanced up again--that was when their eyes caught each other, and before she was aware of it a lopsided grin, just as sloppy as his, was on her face. She was very aware of that peculiar melting sensation starting in her chest...they stayed that way for a full minute, smiling awkwardly and staring into each other's eyes, both too timidly hopeful to break the moment.
"Ahem," Pietro cleared his throat, a blush rising in his cheeks as he shifted to stare fixedly at the floor. The red stood out vividly on his pale complexion. "Uh, listen, Kitty, I was wondering if maybe you, ah..." his voice grew quiet. "Maybe you wanted to go on a date with me?"
He brought his eyes up to hers again, and that was what got her, that was the second when she knew there was not a flying chance in a shooting gallery that she was saying no. She knew she was grinning goofily again...and she was okay with that. "Uh, sure, Pietro," she blushed at his name, "um...what kind of date?" If it was possible, her blush grew even darked.
Too wrung out by nerves to properly answer a question, Pietro stammered: "Uh, w-w - i-it's a surprise. Yeah. Heh," he smiled broadly. "Um, meet me at your locker after school?"
"Sure. Sure. Um...I'll see you then, okay?" The normal sounds of the cafeteria rushed back into the duo's ears, and they waved goodbye quickly, each running off to their respective table.
Rogue had realized long before Kitty reached the table, slowed down as she was with her sprained ankle, the all the other X-Men had been to absorbed in their own conversations to notice the quiet conversation Kitty and Pietro held near the center of the crowded room. Therefore, Rogue was the only one who greeted the foggy-eyed teenager.
It took a few minutes of smiling whimsically into the checkerboard pattern of the thermos Pietro had bestowed upon her to restore her to a more--erm--talkative state.
"OhmyGod, Rogue," Kitty blended the words together. "You would not, like, believe what just happened!"
"I saw the whole thing from right here."
"Yeah, he asked me on a date...oh!" Kitty turned suddenly to Rogue, apparently now aware of her surroundings. "Can you cover for me this afternoon?" She gave her friend a pleading look.
Rogue looked at her stoically for a moment before rolling her eyes, and saying, "Yeah, all right. But don't say I never did anything for you!"
"Thank you, thank you, thank you! You are, like, a *lifesaver*!" A quavering sigh escaped her lips, and at that moment she happened to glance in the direction of the Brotherhood table. Pietro was gazing at her with that dreamy look in his eyes--Rogue saw it, too. They laughed a bit as they watched him start and tuck into his lunch faster than any normal human was capable of doing.
"So, Kitty...how was French today?"
"Ah. Good. Thanks, Rogue, you're the best," Kitty realized that Rogue was just trying to distract. She didn't want her to be nervous for that afternoon, and boy oh boy, was Kitty grateful to her for changing the subject. "French, like, totally sucked, my notebook is M.I.A...."
***
YES! ::dances:: I finished it! I am exceptionally proud--especially of that little awkward scene they have. Pretty cool, right? Right? Well, I need your help yet again, oh readers. A list of things that you might help me with:
1) What did you think of the chapter? Anything I should change? Any suggestions for the future?
2) What should the title be? Remember, ongoing title contest? I still need help on this...
and 3) It's the one you've been waiting for, folks...where do you want them to go on their date? I need them to go somewhere they can talk, but I can't think of anything. I need your assistance! I don't want any of this 'going to the movies' crap. This is *romance,* not a teenage make-out fic. So how 'bout it? Got any ideas for where they can talk?
I LOVE YOU ALL!! ::blows kisses::