Title: Lantern's Light Play Pretend
Author: Yami no Ichigo
Fandom: X-men Evolution
Pairing: ScottxKurt
Rating: Pg-13
Disclaimer: I don't own them; I've never wanted to, my poor brain can't take it.
Summary: Let's play pretend sometime, underneath the lantern's light, let's dance sometime, underneath the laughing stars, let's listen to the burning voice on her radio, drifting up from her window, holding hands, you and me. Let's hope that this isn't real, that there is no you, there is no me. Let's melt, let's hope, and let's smile. Play pretend.
Notes: Church-wrought guilt, changing pov's all in third person, and too much italics.
Chapter One:
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There are times when I want to tell you everything, when I want you to understand, when I think that with your laugh, with your voice, with your smile, and with all the warmth that you touch as all, it seems to me that you seem so very far away. Like it seems that if I touch you, there will be nothing there but smoke, there will be nothing to hold onto, no warmth to feel. But even when I don't tell you, when the fog fills my mind, and clogs my throat and chokes my tongue you hear all the words I say. Clear as crystal, clear as glass.
---
The wind that flew in from the North grew stronger with each passing day, carrying with it the yellows and reds and oranges of confetti leaves that danced in spinning, floating circles above the heads of students as they wandered the quad, moving to the ebb and flow off their own lives, of their bell schedules, huddled together, a sea of coats and flittering sweaters.
Kurt sunk into his jacket, letting the chill of winter ruffle the unseen fur, and brushing his long black hair, styling it with the gentle fingers only the winter could own. The air smelt of pine, of the smell of baking chocolate and vanilla drifting with the wind from the bakery nearby, the cold warm smell of shivering trees that buzzed with the steady wind and the falling leaves that only fall could bring, and slightly, Kurt thought, underneath all that, he could smell home.
Scott sat behind him, leaning forward on the cafeteria table as the black haired boy leaned back, his legs out in front of him, stretching, his elbows on the painful edge of the table, the sharp dulled by the thickness of his coat.
You're quiet today. Scott said, voice like warm, warm honeyed tea pouring into his brain, melting over his bones, sinking into his flesh.
Yeah. Kurt answered, not wanting to say anything else, losing the smell of home that he'd pin-pointed with his nose as the words came out of his mouth. He sighed, the breath carried away by the breeze.
And maybe he thought that that was alright, that the honey warm tea of Scott's voice was just as good as the warm chocolate vanilla pine of home.
And he looked up, watching large cotton candy clouds white and slow moving, as they sailed across the winter sky.
Yeah.
---
Kurt knocked on Rogue's door needlessly, knowing she knew he was coming already, that he told her he wanted to talk, that she said okay, with a quiet face, her white brown hair floating in the autumn wind.
The door was slit open, olive walls, dark carpet, a curtained window, dark and looming and the smell of sage and raspberries leaking out.
Rogue was on the floor, her legs out, her back to the bed, her eyes closed, foot tapping to the drums that thundered deep from out the speakers beside her bed, the guitars glimmering, the bass darker and sweeter than chocolate, synthesizer like a mechanic angel's voice, the mans voice echoing, telling stories underneath the thunder. She smiled at him.
"Hey."
"Hey." He answered and sat down beside her, letting the thunder drums run into his bones, spark his nerves and caress his spine. He listened to the echo of the man's voice, pretending it was him, singing the stories to his bones.
"Kurt?" Rogue asked, in that way that sounded like nothing, her foot tapped, encased in the black and metal, the silver glinting with the light from her lamp, to the glitter guitar and the thunder heart beat drums.
Girls and boys sang with the man, dancing with their voices and all of a sudden Kurt wanted to dance too, to join them, to sing.
"Yeah?"
"What'd you want to talk about?"
He held onto those glove-covered hands, held on tight, closed his eyes, wished he was home and wished he was there, under the fog of the man's voice in the speakers.
"Okay." Rogue said, leaning onto him, their clothed shoulders touching, their fingers digging into the plush of her dark carpet, the music pulsing around them. "You know." She said, not expecting the elfin boy to answer her, "I used to pretend," she waited for His voice "that He was my father. That when I listened to Him, He'd tell me stories, for bedtime, for day time;" her voice lowered, sharing a secret, voice laughing. "I used to pretend I belonged to him and he belonged to me."
And Kurt smiled, nodding to her, feeling her in his bones, where He went, where he lived, where they all sat in dark bedrooms, listening to thunder, holding hands, eating chocolate darker than dark and sweeter than sweet.
Hey now, hey now, now.
"You like him?" Rogue gestured, her hand encased in leather flashing about the room, pointing at the walls, at the ceiling, at the sound. At the him that lived inside his bones.
"A little."
"A little; a lot?" Her voice was teasing underneath the shared pain.
"A little; a lot."
"But?"
"I'm Catholic," He joked, wanting to cry, wanting to laugh until he was nothing, until he fizzed away and evaporated into the air. Rogue laughed for him, resting her head on his shoulder, not touching, not really.
"Yeah."
And she understood.
And Kurt wished he could kiss her.
---
He had asked him if he wanted to go to church, with that small smile hiding behind those long strands of hair, and Scott said yes, confused, unable to say no.
They walked into the towering house of God, through the heavy mahogany doors, into the cold darkness of a building, dim light from artfully made tortures, the gold grape leaves encircling the basin of light. People, men, women, children, moved into the second set of doors next to a table with pamphlets, little books, and flyers. Please donate to Africa. Please Save the Children. Please. Please.
Kurt's fingers dipped into a bowl of holy water held by a porcelain angel with a frozen smile that looked like it hurt. He touched the water to his forehead, and Scott thought he should do that too, but Kurt smiled at him, making him feel alien, unsacred and scarred. He wished he could hold Kurt's hand, he wished that, even though he didn't believe, when they entered the second set of Doors they would be pardoned, everything will be alright.
They sat in the pew near the back, heard the shifting, barking, wailing cry of children, the murmurs of mothers, the gossip that floated here and there. Scott leaned back, wanting to say something, to tell him that he was slightly freaked out, that the thought of that man over there, nailed onto the cross, looking above the altar, wooden, frozen, touched the place inside where it burned with humiliation and shame. But when he turned around to look at Kurt, his eyes were closed, his face was calm, and you could feel it, the light that they talked about. The light that came from the heaven he didn't believe in, the light that came from being truly good.
And inside, that place that burned with shame, burned with the fires of sneaking knowledge, he felt that light shred his heart, and with every movement he made it felt like more slashes were sparking in his chest, cutting and cutting until in the end, he'll be nothing but ribbons, black and red and bloody, on the ground.
I'm sorry. Kurt murmured, eyes closed, head bent, in a whisper that Scott knew wasn't for him.
---
They sat in Scott's car, zipping up the mountains to the Xavier Institute, feeling the open air run through their hair, through their clothes, cold and bitterly sweet, tinted with the smell of frozen ocean.
Kurt joked, something about becoming a priest when he grew up, and Scott answered something he forgot when he looked at Kurt through the corner of his eye. Seeing his hair whip about his face, dancing erratically, it seemed, to the tune of the wind like Rogue's music.
The rest of the trip was quiet, the kind that dug into your mind, the kind that made you want to say something, just to make the quiet go away.
"Kurt?" Scott murmured, not really meaning to say it out loud and he almost wished that the sound of a purring engine and the whipping angry winds would carry the name away.
"Ja?" The boy answered, leaning his head on the seat belt looking at him with slanted almond eyes, dark in the hologram that Scott knew wasn't him. A nipping thought in the corner of his mind told him to snatch the boy's watch away, told him to rip at that illusion, told him to stare at the pools of gold-white. And he almost listened.
He looked back at the road.
"Nothing, I forget."
And Kurt nodded, letting his hair dance around his face.
---
There are times when I want to tell you everything, when I want you to understand, when I think I'm just about to crack and shatter onto the ground like glass, like the beaker you dropped in chemistry class, my insides spilling like too much pink liquid, in such a tiny space. But then even when I don't tell you, you just nod, understanding that the shards of glass in my tongue hurt when I try to say those words, understanding how I feel like I'm evaporating inside, how when you say nothing I feel like the fog around my eyes start to lift; like I'm getting closer, closer to home.
---
End Chapter One
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Notes:
In my head Kurt and Rogue both have an understanding, they both cannot be touched without people finding out what they are, they are both lonely in that place inside their hearts where it shrouded by the fogging thoughts of anger and insanity, they both want, nay, long for something to call their own, for something like a family, for something like a lover. They both want that place inside them to be freed of the fog, of the pain.
In my head they share chocolate like the sweet words of a father, a mother, they share the warmth hidden underneath their skin, not touching, not speaking, in my head, they say all the words they would ever need, by biting into the bitter sweet melodies of the angels with their guitars like erratic heartbeats, and their drums like the screaming of a child, left in the fog of anger and loneliness.
In my head they are lovers, they are friends; without ever touching each other at all.
Random:
If anyone can guess who the band that Rogue and Kurt were listening to are, I swear, I will write a fic for you. Any Pairing.