Disclaimer: I really, really hope you've figured out that I don't own XME
A/NI: Latest news I've heard is that WB's okayed XME for a fifth season - but Marvel isn't sure. Unfortunatly, I have no idea how to fix this . . . grrr.
A/N II: Okay, so I'm a bit of an Amanda fan. Er - yeah. So this is told from her POV. Get over it - it's still Kurt/Scott! And, yes, alright, it's not as fun as the last one, or the last chapter, but I started writing it and this just sorta happened, so . . . Yeah. I have very little idea where this came from. Flame as you wish, but I warn you, I will follow that blue link back to your name and return in kind. And DON'T flame b/c it's slash! That's clearly stated in the summary!
To see my mild rant on this in response to a previous review of this story, click the little blue 'reviews' link.
Dedicated: To everyone who went and reviewed Lovely Pointed Ears - you made me feel all glowy inside, and reminded me to post this chapter!
Romantic Inclination Quartet II: Outings
Chapter II
Amanda Sefton was desperate. Glancing around, she made sure that her date was occupied with his friends before leaving the gym, which had been decorated for the dance. She thought about going down the hallway to get her shoes, but decided against it - leaving them there would convince her date she had gone to the bathroom or some such, and she could pick them up from the Lost and Found on Monday.
When she was at last free of the restraining atmosphere of the dance, she looked about the overcrowded student lot for the red convertible she knew was Scott Summers' car - the one in which Kurt (and probably other Institute members) had come to the dance in.
Upon finding it Amanda started walking over, beginning to shiver in the cool night air. Her dress was meant for the hot dance, not the sharp, end-of-winter breeze.
It was sound that should have alerted her first, but Amanda was so preoccupied with the cold and the possibility of her date coming outside that she didn't really register what she was hearing until she reached the convertible and saw one of the most arresting things she'd ever seen.
Kurt and Scott were making out in the front seat of the convertible, apparently oblivious to her presence. After a momentary shocked pause, Amanda rolled her eyes. You'd think he'd have better hearing, what with the pointy ears and all.
After several moments, it became apparent that they were not going to notice her standing there.
"Ah-hem," she coughed lightly, and Summers gave a squawk and lurched up, banging his head on Kurt's forehead.
"Ow! Scott! That hurt," Kurt complained, rubbing his head and sitting up. He shook his head for a moment, then looked up. Scott had frozen in abject terror, and Amanda was watching him with a bemused expression on her face, a single eyebrow raised. "Ah! Guten tag, Amanda. So you found another date for the dance?" Kurt inquired. Scott squeaked. Kurt rolled sulfur-golden eyes and hit his boyfriend lightly. "She knows about us, liebe. Calm down. Amanda, this is Scott - Scott, Amanda."
"Oh," Scott squeaked again. "Uhm. Hi."
Amanda smiled at him, hoping her shaky expression didn't give away how jumpy she was. "Hi. Listen, Kurt - or rather, Scott, it is your car - I was wondering if . . . Look, can I get a ride home? The dance's almost over - not that it looked like the two of you were very interested in it in the first place -"
"We were very confused about who should be asking who in the instance of a Sadie Hawkins dance," Kurt mused in a stage whisper. Scott, whom he was still sitting on, pushed him. "I mean, what's a guy to do in a situation like that? Besides, every time we came in, Jean started laughing uncontrollably."
"Not that Duncan noticed," Scott muttered mutinously. Jean was his best friend, and he hated watching her go out with that great bully.
Amanda grinned, figuring out that Jean - who she remembered as a rather violent redhead - must already know about Kurt and Scott. "Anyway, I wasn't -" Interested in screwing Jack . . . "- feeling well, so I was wondering if I could get a ride?"
Scott paused, cocking his head as if he were listening to someone she couldn't hear, then shrugged. "Yeah, sure." He scrambled upright, Kurt still in his lap, and gestured for Amanda to climb into the back seat. Kurt kissed him once before sliding into shotgun and buckling his seatbelt.
Amanda was just wondering what it would be like to kiss someone with fur when Scott started up the car and asked her how to get to her house, drawing her thoughts away from his boyfriend. She told him, her thoughts still lingering on Kurt despite his obvious "taken" status. Just because he has a boyfriend doesn't mean I have to give up on him, she thought, watching the scenery go by. I still like him. And if I wasn't hallucinating that day, being his friend ought to be more than interesting enough!
"Amanda?" she shook herself out of her reverie as she heard Kurt's voice. "Amanda? Are you alright?"
She shrugged. No, she replied mentally, I just found out Jack was gonna jump me after the dance. I am not alright.
It was Scott who seemed more concerned, although Amanda would later figure out that being worried about everyone and everything was one of Scott's specialties. "Hey, if you're not feeling well, maybe we should stick around a while. I mean - if your parents aren't home."
"They're not - my Dad had some big meeting in Chicago yesterday and he and Mom haven't flown back yet. So I guess you guys can come in, if you want." Scott pulled into her driveway, and as Amanda faced her house she was secretly glad that Scott had been the one to suggest it. She really wasn't up to being alone yet - and these two were safe. Neither one was remotely interested in her.
As they went inside, Amanda felt her nervous tension begin to drain. This being so, she realized this was her house and even if they thought she was ill, they had no idea what to do here. "Uhm - d'you guys need to call the Institute, or whatever? You're welcome to stay as long as you like - and feel free to ransack the fridge. I don't feel up to food at the moment," she admitted as she made her way upstairs to change out of the formal dress. When she came downstairs ten minutes later, her hair was down and she was in a shirt three sizes too big and comfy jeans. She felt like being indulgent.
It was to be her third shock of the night when she looked from the top of the stairs and saw a blue, furry Kurt curled up on Scott's lap, trying to snatch a sandwich out of his hands with what had to be a tail.
A full minute passed before Amanda assimilated all this new information into her original short sighting of Kurt. Scott was laughing and pushing Kurt's tail away, and the tail changed tactics and wrapped itself around his arm while Kurt went for the sandwich.
Then she caught what Scott was saying. "Ku-urt! Amanda's gonna come downstairs any minute, and I doubt she's in any kind of state to meet the real you."
That was what made Amanda decide to avoid any kind of difficult, soul-searching "I know about you . . ." conversation and just let them know she'd seen Kurt in a way that was going to amuse her . . .
Amanda walked quietly down the stairs, although it was unlikely Kurt (who was facing her) was going to notice anything at the moment but Scott. Then she walked calmly through the living room into kitchen, past the couch where Scott had just turned the tables on Kurt and pounced on him, and said in passing, "Fuzzy, try not to shed on the couch, I would hate to try to explain blue fur to my parents."
The comment was so out of place it took the mutants a moment or two to register that it had been spoken. It took another few for them to realize who had spoken it and why.
Kurt and Scott froze, then slowly turned toward the kitchen, where Amanda was looking through the fridge for a soda. "Uhm - Amanda?" Kurt called hesitantly.
"Yes?" she asked, looking at them over the fridge door. Kurt had hastily gone back to normal - although she hadn't figured out how he did that - and were staring at her with such strange expressions that Amanda couldn't help but laugh. "If it was the 'fuzzy' thing you were going to comment on, it's a little late, Kurt. I saw you turn blue - and then disappear - about a month ago." She found a Pepsi and closed the fridge before leaving the kitchen and settling into the armchair next to the couch the couple had usurped. "I - really like you, and I wanted to know more about . . . Well, you, I guess, the you that hides," Amanda curled up on the armchair, nursing her Pepsi as she spoke. "That's why I asked you to the dance."
"Amanda I - don't know what to say." Kurt did looked quite confused, and Scott just looked worried and not a little frightened.
She looked up hopefully at him, glad to finally have something else to concentrate on besides her awful night. "Will you show me? The real you?"
Scott pursed his lips, but looked as though he was going to stay out of this one. He had that same expression on his face again, the one that looked as though he was listening to - or talking to - someone she couldn't see.
Kurt bit his lip, then shook his head. "Alright . . . But you won't like what you see."
"Let me be that judge of that."
Scott glanced sharply over at Kurt before fixing his gaze on her. Kurt sighed, and touched something on his watch.
The outer image vanished, and Amanda was faced her first close-up look at a blue furry elf.
She sucked in a breath. The other two times she's glimpsed him he hadn't been this close, and it had been less - all-consuming. But there he was, the friendly guy in her math class who told her he was seeing a guy instead of let her think he just didn't like her. So what if he had fur?
"Did you know that blue is my favorite color?" she asked, a small, wry smile coming to rest on her lips.
Kurt and Scott both breathed a sigh of relief. Scott pulled Kurt over and whispered something in a pointed ear, and Kurt bolted upright. Amanda raised an eyebrow.
"No!" Kurt whispered vehemently. Scott shrugged, shaking his head.
Amanda sat, sipping her Pepsi, out-talked. The air was still charged with tension, tension she didn't know how to dispel if her calm reaction to Kurt hadn't already done it, so she let the boys squirm for a moment and try to make idle conversation.
This turned out to be a mistake.
Scott coughed, reaching. "So, Amanda, why did you leave the dance when there wasn't much left and come beg a ride? Wouldn't your date have taken you home?" He wondered, seizing on this topic as the only thing he could think of to say that didn't involve "Why aren't you calling the police?!"
"And why," Kurt added, "weren't you wearing any shoes?"
It was the long pause in which Amanda declined to answer that alerted the couple to the fact that they might have chosen the wrong topic to pursue.
"Amanda?" Kurt asked hesitantly. He hadn't been more than casual friends with this person for more than twenty-four hours, but dammit, she'd proved herself all she needed to him. He was a bi mutant . . . and she didn't care. "What happened?"
The implication that something besides her becoming ill had pulled her out of the dance made Scott, who had just started to relax, tense up again. He gripped Kurt's shoulder, his arm around his shoulders. Kurt - and therefore him, and the rest of the X-Men - were already in deep with this girl whom he'd never met before tonight. They didn't need trouble of the mundane kind to add to their secrets.
"Nothing - happened," she finally ventured. "But - I heard - the guy I asked, he was talking to some of his buddies when I went to fetch a drink, and they didn't see me come back . . ."
"And?" prompted Scott. Kurt elbowed him in the ribs.
"And he was gonna jump me in his car when he took me home. He knew my parents weren't home, and that no one would miss me until tomorrow at the earliest."
She couldn't look at them.
Shock replaced tension in the air, and Amanda, as before, let it lie.
"So . . ." Kurt ventured at last, "why weren't you wearing shoes?"
Amanda laughed, a little hollowly. "Girls wear heels to dances, and take them off before half the night is over for our aching feet. If Jack decides to look for me, he'll assume I'm at the dance."
"Ah, God," Scott, who normally would never come anywhere that close to swearing, rubbed his face with his hands. Kurt turned to look at his boyfriend. "Uhm. Look, Amanda, as you probably guessed, the fact that Kurt is - not entirely normal -" Kurt snorted. "is a secret the Institute has gone through a great deal of trouble to preserve. Our - well, I guess you could tell him our 'headmaster'-"
Kurt started laughing, although at the moment Amanda couldn't imagine why.
Scott glared at Kurt, who by now couldn't stop laughing. "Look, forget how, but the Professor knows that you know. And one of our more - volatile - teachers also somehow found out. He is, unfortunately, on his way over at the moment."
Kurt abruptly stopped laughing. "Gott! Logan!?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, we are in an incredible amount of trouble!"
Amanda thunked her head down on the armrest. A muffled "I don't need this," worked its way out from under her head. "How on Earth did anyone at the Institute find out within a minute of me telling you two?" she demanded listlessly.
Then something occurred to her.
She looked up, studying the pair with a raised eyebrow. "Kurt is not the only one at the Institute who isn't entirely normal, is he?"
"Ah - that would be a no," Kurt admitted. "Herr Professor is a telepath - someone who can -"
"I know what a telepath is, I read sci-fi/fantasy," interrupted Amanda. "So that would explain Scott's blank look. You were talking to someone else in your head."
Scott nodded, somewhat taken aback that she had realized what he was doing.
"Scott, Logan is not going to take any of this lightly."
"I don't suppose he'd just leave if you wait for him outside?" Amanda asked hopefully.
Kurt shook his head. "Nein. Logan is . . . Tenacious."
"So we have to deal with this."
"Yeah."
"Damn." Amanda rested her head on the armrest again, trying to think. She was frankly too dazed by the night - by still liking a guy who was seeing another guy, by the fact that there was an entire mini-school full of people like Kurt, by her jerk of a date - that she was almost to the point of not really caring what else happened.
Then the doorbell rang.
Obviously, Logan was trying to keep whatever his temper was under control.
"I'll get it," Kurt offered before vanishing in a cloud of brimstone.
Reappearing outside, Logan whirled on him and he found himself at the end of three claw points. "So what's the story, elf - how'd she find out?"
"Ah - Logan - you may not want to charge in there. Amanda has not had a good night."
"Do I look like I care what kind of night this kid's had?" Logan snarled. "How did she find out, and why won't you let Chuck wipe her mind?"
"Because she's not afraid! Because she wasn't scared, because she didn't care, because she doesn't deserve to loose her memory just so I can hide who I really am!" Kurt shouted. Then, quieter, he added, "Because it's nice to know there are some people who don't scream at the sight of me."
Logan sighed. "Look, elf, it don't matter. I need to meet this kid if she's not gonna 'forget' about us. Even one person who knows is one too many."
Kurt took a breath. "Just - remember what I said? Please?" he practically begged as he opened the door.
Logan came in like an annoyed old wolf, one who had been pulled out of a nice comfy den to investigate an intrusion into his pack's territory. The girl sitting in the armchair that Scott was standing behind was not at all what Logan had been expecting. She was a bit of a thing, probably not any taller than Amara, and lost in the large clothes she was wearing. Her long hair was strewn about her face as though she'd been hanging her head, and his nose told him the same thing Kurt had - that she'd had a hell of a night.
Apparently, she still had the energy to be sarcastic. "Hello, welcome to my home. Please, make yourself at home, ignore the fact that I have no idea who you are."
Kurt, who was standing behind Logan, smacked his forehead.
Logan just raised his eyebrows and growled a little.
That was all the cue Amanda needed. She was tired, unhappy, had just discovered that the guy she had a crush on was a mutant and that he lived with a whole mansion full of other mutants.
"I do NOT understand what's going on here! I find out about Kurt and when I don't freak, I get the third degree! I have three people in my house, only two of whom I invited, and only one of whom I really know that well, I picked the wrong guy to go to the dance with, and I find out that mutants exist and then, when I handle it all calmly, another mutant has to come over and inspect me? What is with this? If I didn't care about Kurt and Scott, why the hell should I care about what color Kurt's skin is, or if this 'Professor' person can read my mind? It's not like I'm a stranger to prejudice! Hell, why didn't the damn telepath just scope me out for himself instead of sending in a flunky?"
That was apparently all Amanda had, because she flopped back down into the armchair, not having realized she was up. She threw up her hands. "So someone tell me."
"Girl, you got a lot of guts to talk like that," Logan growled at her. "Especially for someone who was a thought away from forgetting Kurt ever existed."
Amanda sat a moment, absorbing that, before replying. "The telepath."
Logan nodded. "We ain't got a good history with humans. So gimme one reason why I shouldn't tell Chuck to wipe every memory of Kurt and mutants outta your mind."
She glared at him. "Because I have no intention of letting anything I've found out in the last twenty-four hours go past the people who already know about it. Because it doesn't matter to me that Kurt's a mutant, or that he's seeing Scott."
Scott groaned and banged his head against the wall.
"Or that he's what?"
Amanda had a horrified look on her face. She shifted to look at Kurt. "Tell me he knew."
Kurt shook his head, and teleported over to Scott. While Logan stood, dumbfounded, Kurt gave Scott a light kiss, wound his arms and tail about the other boy and turned to Logan with a defiant look on his face. One Scott matched, wrapping his arms around Kurt's waist.
Logan had no idea how to react.
It was Amanda who broke the silence, first with a groan. "Oh, shit, I'm sorry, I just sorta assumed . . . How on Earth did you keep that a secret in that fishbowl Institute? With a telepath in residence?" she demanded.
"With a great deal of difficulty and a little bit of help from another telepath," Scott replied, not taking his eyes off Logan.
***
It seemed to Kurt and Scott as though less than half a minute after they came home in Logan's wake that the entire Institute knew a variation of What Happened, and had arrayed in camps For or Against. It was a good thing half the New Mutants were in bed already, but those still awake - all the X-Men, Rahne, Amara, Bobby and Jubilee - were shocked by the news that first, there was a human who knew about them and second, that Kurt and Scott were dating. Forget that Kurt and Scott both had vanished before the mini-dinos had arrived!
They shut themselves up in Scott's room with Jean, who was apoplectic that they hadn't told her what was going on and that Kurt had refused to let Xavier mindwipe Amanda.
When school came on Monday, Scott and Kurt were more than ready to get out from the constant pressure of their fellow mutants.
". . . shoes at the dance. I thought I should return them. And ask why you left without saying good bye, baby."
"Jack, go away! You are a creep. I cannot believe I asked you to the dance. Just leave me alone!"
"Aww, c'mon, what's it take, babe?"
"Aww, c'mon, what's it take, jerk?" Scott asked from behind Jack. "Get outta here."
"Oh, and who's gonna make me, glasses-boy?"
"We fully intend to get you to leave Amanda alone," Kurt replied, appearing - hologram and all - from behind Scott. "And if that doesn't work, there's more where we came from."
"Aww, c'mon, guys. What's the bint to you freaks, anyway?" he scoffed.
Kurt growled. "Our friend. Now move it!"
Jack, who knew that the Institute kids traveled in packs, decided to hightail it out of there before any more of them arrived. Things got creepy when the Institute kids gathered in groups greater than two.
Amanda leaned against her locker and smiled out at the pair from beneath her hair. "Thanks. I guess that means you don't hate me for accidentally outing you?"
"Nah. It had to come out sometime, I guess," Scott replied.
"Besides, there are more important things that a single slip of the tongue," Kurt pointed out.
"Uh-huh," Amanda grinned mischievously. "Like what?"
Kurt's eyes sparkled, and Amanda caught a glimpse of the tail through the hologram, wrapped around Scott's waist. "Like being accepted for who you are, instead of feared for what you are."