Disclaimer: I don't own X-men Evolution or anything affiliated to that, including the movies and the comic.
Summary: Short ditty: Lance reflects on his relationship with Kitty, and the perception of himself in her eyes. (One-sided Lancitty, set after "Mainstream".)
A/N – Poor Lance. No one gives the guy enough credit: he's totally in love with Kitty, while she seems to want nothing to do with him. Just wondering what's going on in his head after she calls him a "hood", and basically breaks off their relationship. I may be the only one who sees this, but he's pretty much the only person in the series who's always been upfront and sincere: but Kitty seems to think differently. Again: poor, poor Lance. Also: was written while listening to Matchbox 20's "Mad Season", and was inspired mostly by "Bed of Lies" and "Bent". Pay close attention and you can find tweaked lyrics here and there.
Started: December 7, 2003; 8.00P
Finished: December 8, 2003; 3.07P
Honor Among Thieves
Write a chorus of some sappy love song because it's all you'll ever amount to. Yeah, Lance, a hood: and you'll grow your mullet long and wear torn jeans until you're old. Life won't go on. It never does.
Because I'm stuck writing chicken-scratch on leftover pieces of notebook paper: because my chorus to love songs never comes out exactly right. This isn't a love song.
I pluck the E string, sing a little ditty; and I press down on the third fret, G string, but it sounds horribly out of tune: lately, everything does. Shake out your shaggy bangs and start over, rewrite that first verse where "I'm not sure if you know I love you, but…" doesn't quite fit.
I only wish it were that easy: I could erase where I went wrong, change a line or two or everything if it doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense: she knows I love her. But she thinks there's something wrong with a person like me ever loving a person like her. What she doesn't know is we're all different underneath the exterior. She can't look under the surface.
Or maybe she wants someone who will give her a letterman jacket, a class ring, a family and a house and a life. Lord knows none of those tangible things are within grasp of my fingers: because my fingers only caress my damn guitar and don't stretch for the rest. Like that superficiality… I will never have her; and she is my life.
Moreover, she is an out. I tried not to turn to pink sweaters and ponytails, because I was never a fan of Grease; but her voice lulled me, dragged me under to a place where I wrote her songs and thought about buying her eleven-dollar heart-shaped boxes of gourmet chocolate if I had the money. The guys would ask when she and I got serious, what were we gonna do, at what party, and wouldn't she be hot naked… but I only saw the lightening hours in the morning when dawn spilled across us and I would study her face, and listen to her breathe, and just pretend for a moment that she was mine forever and ever. I'll never admit it, but I was a sucker for Leonardo DiCaprio's Romeo and Juliet.
And I promise that I'd paint her picket fence white if she asked. Her happiness versus my unorthodox ways: game over, Lance. But she doesn't trust me with a paintbrush.
Why should she? It's not like I'm anything more than a pissed-off dropout, lying on the couch with a beat-up, secondhand guitar that never seems to be in tune: and I don't let it go, because I am that guitar, supposedly. I scream punk, I guess.
But I've never lied to her, and that should count for something. Should.
Once, I played every song I ever wrote, and Toad listened, and told me I shouldn't condemn glitter and Hollywood and fake exteriors because I'm a walking, singing example. Why does everyone say that? I've never been a pretend person, not to her: from the first time we met, I revealed the side of myself that had been locked away. But she protested, and I pursued, and she kissed me. After being the only one who never hid anything, she kissed the real me… why'd she kiss a hood? If anything, she led me on; but I was blamed, because she has shiny hair and fashion sense and straight A's.
And I have a guitar, and my thoughts. And ripped jeans, so I'm a hood.
If she's so stereotypical, how do I love her? Not why: but how is it that she won't leave my mind, that I'm forever cursed with her laugh and her kiss and her words. She's Hitler and her words burn themselves and scar my skin and label me: failed wannabe rock star, possibly dangerous, do not feed.
My mind is my cage, she is the master, and my songs are what tie me, dog-like in devotion, to her. No one thinks to help me out, because she has to be right. Teenyboppers never lie, and they always have a reason to dump boyfriends – especially if said boyfriends are so uncharacteristically sincere it seems somehow unholy. But there's something spiritual about lying together in my bed, even if I don't have Egyptian-cotton sheets and the door sometimes gets stuck shut. That doesn't make me any less worthy. I love her, and that's all that counts: that's all that should count.
It shouldn't be so complicated. I just wanted her to hold me.
I would cry, but she'd laugh. Ideal men show their emotions, but they don't cry. All the same, I just want to let my release flow, down my cheeks, down my arms and hands and fingers, until I stain my guitar with all that seeping from the inside; and I will play each hollow song as the meaningless notes wash over us, leave us open and pure and true.
But if I saw her truths, I would never sleep: she would be a bed of lies. I wish to maintain her perfection, above all else.
Conclusion: I want her to be perfect; I want to be as she sees me. In essence, I am what her eyes brand me, and I will be content. The chorus will sing around me and she will be Satan disguised as God. And I will quiver under her nonexistent touch. She'll never touch me again.
I am forced to sing how perfectly happy I am that she sees me as evil.
And it is the first time I will ever lie.