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Chapter Forty-Five: The Benefits of Passive-Aggressive Fruit

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Kurt yawned and stepped into the hallway, grinning lackadaisically at Evan and 'porting ahead of the tank-top-wearing teen on the stairs, startling him. Evan laughed and aimed a punch at Kurt's shoulder, but the older mutant was a tad too quick and got away unscathed.

"Bitte!" He waved a dismissive hand at Evan, rolling his eyes, which gleamed with their customary golden light. His stare seemed to gaze right through the younger boy all the same, his habitual friendliness just slightly wary on the edges. "Got to move a little faster than that to snag a teleporter, mein Freund."

Behind him, Kurt could hear Evan laughing, and the sound was undeniably comforting. Life seemed to be coming back to what might almost pass as normal around the mansion, all things considered. Scott was busy at the professor's bedside, but Hank had arrived home at the same time that the other had been whisked off to the hospital, and his company was much the same: a sane-minded, older male presence that lent a note of security to an otherwise troubled household. Jean, too, had fallen into an unsolicited leadership role, especially now that Moira was occupied with Xavier's medical needs and Logan was off on his motorcycle more often than not, stopping in now and then for a bite to eat and a word with the students.

Rogue exited her bedroom on the other end of the hallway, trying to smooth down her bed-tousled hair and smiling faintly but managing only to screw her face up into an enormous yawn. Kurt snorted a little and grimaced. "I don't know, Rogue. If you're going to stick with that whole 'bitter and solitary' Goth look, you might need to try getting ready again. You look a little too pretty."

Rogue yawned again, hardly glancing at him as they made their way to the dining room. "And you look a little too perky, Elf, so I guess we're even."

Seated at the head of the table, wearing a simple, gauzy blouse and an ankle-length skirt, Storm was conversing with Logan, who was smeared with dirt and smelled mildly of sour beer. A bit of dried blood (without any other trace of a wound, of course) stained his jaw and the collar of his coat, the remnants of a bar fight or maybe a scrap in an alley. When Kurt and Rogue entered the room, with Kitty and Evan close behind, Ororo gave her colleague a spare glance and jerked her head toward the door. "Clean up. We'll talk later."

Kitty's interest was instantly piqued, and her hand paused over the bowl of fruit salad, a spoon and a chunk of cantaloupe hovering over the dish. "Didja find something, Mr. Logan? Have you found Natalie yet?"

Kurt grimaced, and didn't notice the brief glance that passed between Logan and Ororo. Wolverine sniffed loudly and heaved his shoulders, leaving the room on heavy feet. His lingering odor of beer halls and motorcycle grease followed him into the hall.

Blue eyes wide, Kitty leaned forward to Kurt, nudging him with her elbow. "Did you, like, see that?"

Spearing a grape on the prong of his fork, Kurt didn't even look up. A strange sensation was building in his stomach, and the idea that their teachers and mentors were being somehow clandestine was not a comforting one. "Was?"

With a sideways nod, Rogue indicated her approval. "Definitely weird."

On Kurt's other side, Evan bounced in his seat, annoyed with his own inability to pick up on the more subtle nuances of the adults' conversation. "What'd I miss?"

A stern pair of pale eyes was turned in their direction, framed by a lean brown face and a swathe of ivory hair. "Nothing, Evan. All of you, eat your breakfast. I'm not excusing any of you if you're late to your classes again."

Kurt grinned at Evan, who was busy trying to kick the blue-furred mutant off of his seat, but Kurt's heart wasn't really in it. It was a game they played with almost embarrassing frequency, simply kicking each other as discretely as possible under the table until one of them either fell off, yelped in pain, or got yelled at for being annoying. Basically, it was your standard morning at the breakfast table of the Xavier Institute. Anything to make him feel more like normal again.

Kurt grinned and kicked back, grunting as his shin connected sharply with a crossbeam underneath the table, making the plate of muffins jostle loudly. Kitty huffed and Rogue brandished a butter knife threateningly in their direction, but neither of the boys took their female teammates at their word until a small dish of jam sailed across the table and splattered across Kurt's shirt.

Even that, in its own sticky, obnoxious way, was a welcome event, and it gave Kurt a perfect opportunity to send Rogue tumbling to the floor by a well-aimed kick to the underside of her chair.

"Oh, Ah'm gonna kill you guys!"

Evan erupted into hyper laughter, and Kurt just blinked innocently at his fuming teammate, who stood in a battle stance, ready to pounce. He took a bite of a poppy seed muffin and blinked again.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you did that, Kurt," Ororo said, giving him a tight-lipped and admonishing glance across the tabletop, and Kurt smiled.

"Who, me? I vould nev—"

A torpedo-like projectile aimed at his temple stopped him in mid-sentence, bouncing off of him and making him chomp down on his tongue, howling in pain. Rogue smirked, taking her seat calmly. "Right. Same way Ah would never chuck an apple at your head."

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There was a small pain between Nat's eyes that told her on no uncertain terms that she hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. She spied Pietro on the other side of the kitchen, seated at the table and rolling an orange back and forth in front of him. His eyes rested on the pages of an open textbook, but his pupils were still as he supposedly scanned the type. Beside him sat Fred, who was staring, equally blank-faced, at his white-haired teammate at his side.

Nat entered softly on gently falling feet, eying Pietro and spotting Toad and Lance by the refrigerator. She smiled nervously at them all, unsure of what to say during her first morning as a member of the Brotherhood. Todd, on the other hand, seemed fully aware of what role he expected her to take.

"So...what are you makin' us for breakfast?" With a snap of his long tongue, he snatched a fly out of the air and smacked his lips around it. Nat stifled the urge to contort her face in disgust and stared at him, a little confused.

"Why? Did someone tell you that I was planning to cook? I'm still practically a guest here!"

Todd shrugged and sidled up beside her, hopping onto the countertop with an almost bored fillip and gazing down at her from his strange new vantage point. "Guest-shmest. You're a girl, yo. You must've learned somethin' about cooking in home-ec over the years." He grinned and waggled his eyebrows, leaning forward and only keeping himself from falling by catching hold of an open cabinet door. He was left dangling a few feet off of the linoleum with his dirty sneakers planted on the edge of the countertop.

Nat heard Fred give a little snickering laugh and out of the corner of her vision, just beyond peripheral clarity, she saw Lance lean against the refrigerator door, waiting for her to make some sort of response. Her cheeks colored, and a million pathetic comebacks swarmed into her mind, most of them doing little justice to her irritation. "Maybe, but using that argument would indicate that you'd learned something about personal hygiene in health class. And we all know what kind of conclusion you can draw from that." Reaching into the open cupboard, she grabbed the nearest cereal box and shoved it against Todd's chest, knocking him slightly off balance. "Eat up, Froggy. Yum yum."

Toad stared at her, blinking slowly. Lance reached over and took the box out of his hands, grabbing a handful of dry Cheerios and shoving them into his mouth. "Damn. She gave you quite a tongue-lashing there, man."

"Yeah," Todd snorted as he leapt from the counter with surprising grace, winking at Nat, who rolled her eyes and stomped away in annoyance. "'Tongue-lashing', huh? I wish…"

The roaring of Lance's laughter was almost enough to make Nat feel good about the progress of the morning, but her temporary thrill was dampered when she slowly approached the dining room table. She took a seat across from Pietro, who didn't dare move his eyes off the book, but she caught him shifting in his seat uncomfortably.

Fred chewed more slowly, noticing the strangely lingering glance that Nat gave his thin teammate, her eyes narrowed and somewhat cold. Tentatively, Fred handed Nat a slice of untoasted wheat bread, which she picked at noncommittally and seemed to pretty much ignore. She muttered a quiet "thank you", and Fred just nodded, unsure of what else to say. Pietro leisurely turned the page of his psychology book and seemed unfazed by the bizarre amount of attention his reading was getting from their new recruit. Across the kitchen, Lance was still chortling to himself, and Todd was beginning to scowl as he rifled through cabinets in search of something presweetened.

"What time are you leaving?" she asked, her question directed at Pietro, who merely shrugged, and barely even did that. Indignation flared to life in her breast, and she caught a string of swear words before they flew free. Her hands curled into fists, and she barely kept herself from leaping to her feet and leaning over the table to shout angry words into his face. "I'm mad at you, not the other way around," she hissed instead.

Lance's eyes widened as he pulled out a chair, straddling it backward, but he gave her a half-hearted grin around his bowl as he raised it to his lips, slopping a little milk on his shirt and going on unfettered. "Geez, are you always this cheerful in the morning?"

There was a brief silence. Fred cleared his throat. "So…uh, Pietro…whatcha readin'?"

Pietro circled the skin of the orange with a long, white finger, not paying much attention to the others. "Psych. There's a test on Wednesday. I got a good grade on the last one, which means I gotta know this stuff pretty well or the teacher might report me to the counselor for slipping or something. Those guys are a pain in the ass."

"Of course you're good at psychology, Pietro. Doesn't it have a lot to do with mislaid emotions and issues of displacement and stuff?" Nat asked politely, smiling with excessive sugariness. Fred blinked slowly, not positive what that meant but pretty sure that it hadn't been as friendly as it sounded.

Pietro placed his book aside, picking up a pencil and tapping it lightly against the side of his cheek as if he were deep in thought. Two could play at that game. "Actually, right now we're studying denial. You know, when a person convinces themselves that something is happening and it really isn't, or vice versa? They say people get that way a lot when their lovers toss them aside."

A flare of irritation brought her to life and she lurched forward, tearing the orange out of Pietro's outstretched hand. Her voice was lowered, but Fred heard her clearly enough, and Pietro would have to have been stupid to miss her meaning. "I'm not sure that you're the one who should be giving out relationship advice at the moment." She dropped the fruit into his bowl with a splash of cereal and milk, and he scowled up at her, his cheeks coloring slightly when he felt Fred's surprised gaze falling on him.

He glanced at Nat, then at Fred, then at the other two, who were pretty much oblivious but had noticed a strange note of tension in the air and had grown quieter, looking up to gauge the origin of the anxiety. His eyes met Nat's again as he grabbed his book and bag, and said through gritted teeth, "I'm leaving for school. Get your own rides."

With that, he rose quickly and left the room in a blur of white and blue, little more than a ruffle of the curtains signaling his exit.

There was a moment of hesitation before Lance went on, glancing at Nat with a note of confusion in his square features. "What was that all about?"

Nat shrugged, staring down at her hands on the table, busying herself by playing with the edge of a napkin. She blinked hard, her eyes feeling arid and her throat craving a dose of heat and a splash of water. Her skin was parched, and she felt trapped between the two comfort zones of blazing heat and a normal temperature, as if her skin was suddenly too tight. Concentrating on not letting it go too far, she let one hand flare up momentarily, incinerating the napkin into a pile of fine black ash on the tabletop. "He's just a jackass."

"Duh, but why's he so pissy this morning?"

"Why all the questions?" She savagely tore the skin from the orange, taking a large bite. Juice puddled in the joint between her fingers, leaving her hand sticky. "He's got some issues to work out, that's all."

Lance narrowed his eyes. "Right."

"Uh…guys?" Fred began, patting his pockets as if in search of something. "He may have issues," he shrugged his thick arms and looked up apologetically, "but he's also got both sets of car keys."

Groaning loudly, Lance groped around in his own pockets for a moment before coming up short. "Damn. We're gonna have to take the minivan."

Todd's eyes widened in horror. "Aw, hell nah! There's no way in hell I'm going in that thing!"

"Shove it, Frog Boy!" Lance snapped. "It's the only way you're getting to school without taking the bus, and you're outta spare change after you spent it all on condoms in the public bathroom at the 7 Eleven, remember?"

The youngest boy's face brightened, and Nat felt her eyebrows arch toward her hairline. Fred howled with laughter, slapping his fat knees with a fist, great guffaws rolling past his blubbery lips. "Like you're ever gonna need those!"

"Hey!"

Nat glanced back and forth between her new teammates, debating whether she should advise that they start making their way toward school or join in the mean-spirited bantering about Todd's nonexistent sexuality. Lance beat her to it as he looked down at his scuffed wristwatch, and sprang to his feet. "Later than I thought. Get in the van."

"Nooo!" Todd howled, stamping his foot. "There's an 'Honor Student' bumper sticker on the back! It makes me wanna give myself a swirly! I won't do it!"

"I don't care. It's either that or go to work with me at the hotel and clean bathrooms."

Todd paused, a note of interest on his lopsided features. "Any chicks leave underwear in there sometimes?"

"Oh, God, you're disgusting!" Nat shrieked, tossing her "book bag" (which was actually one of Lance's old gym bags and smelled a little like armpits) over her shoulder as she made her way to the door behind Fred.

Todd raised his hands in a weak display of compliance. "Okay, okay, I'll go in the van. But don't let her drive." Her jerked his thumb in Nat's direction. "She'll probably go on the wrong side of the road or somethin'."

"Shove it, Frog-Boy, or your going to get my boot on the wrong side of your jaw."

A confused look passed over Fred's small, deeply set eyes, making him look very stupid, but Nat remembered what she knew about his temper and kept the observation to herself. "Huh? Why would she go on the wrong side of the road?"

As the unlikely quatrain piled into the back of the musty and underused minivan (the back of which was found to contain a forgotten sack lunch from some time past), Todd rolled his eyes. He buckled into a seat in the back, beside Nat, and she squeezed herself into a narrow corner of the seat, pressing her forehead against the cool glass and trying to ignore the others. "Freddy, man: you're a dumbass, yo."

Nat had never seen anyone move so quickly in her life, not even to save their own skin, as Todd did as he scrambled away from the living mountain of flesh that was a very angry Fred Dukes, lunging into the backseat after him in a motion that made the entire van jolt threateningly to one side. With a girlish shriek, Todd leaped away, nearly elbowing Nat across the cheekbone, before Lance managed to coax Freddy back into composure.

Nat sighed.

Going back to school, with all its inevitable conflicts, was starting to look better and better…