Pietro's #1 Crush – Chapter 03
(See Chapter 1 for full disclaimer and legend)

First there was nothing but sweet darkness and blissful peace.

He felt a presence behind him. Firm, yet gentle hands running along his shoulders, comforting him. He could not see them, but rather feel the arms snaking around his body from behind. Hands rubbing over his chest, filling him with a sense of peace that he had not felt in a long time. A warm body pressed itself to his back and did its best to wrap itself around him. 'So warm…' he thought to himself. Sighing contentedly he wrapped his own arms around those of his… lover? His mind reminded him that he had no lover, but at that moment in time, he did not care. All that mattered to him was the warmth, and overwhelming love that he could feel emanating from his unseen being. Love was his, at least for this brief moment and he could smell the faint hint of… vanilla? 'Such a warm scent,' he sighed and leaned his head back into the crook of his dream lover's neck, breathing in the intoxicating scent.

"Kitty?" he murmured. No answer. He turned around and face the figure, breaking the embrace in the process, but when he looked, there was nobody there. Whoever it had been was gone. The scent of vanilla fading, like a memory with time. He stared at the darkness. "Who…?" he wondered, but then there was an obnoxious ringing that permeated the dark, shattering the calm, and waking Lance Alvers from his comforting slumber.

Lance propped himself up on one arm, eyes rolling back into his head for a moment, a look of mild concentration on his face. A rumbling could be heard and the offending alarm clock, which was perched on the other side of the room, began to bounce around on its table. It's ringing incessant throughout the whole event before it fell off the table and went silent.

"I'm up, yo! I'm up!" Todd yelled from down the hall. "Don't knock the place down man!"

Lance sighed and flopped back into bed. Teasing his body into thinking that sleep could be re-claimed. After a few moments of this torture the young man crawled out of bed and made his way to the bathroom to begin the process of preparing for school. 'At least it's Friday,' he thought to himself. He passed Pietro's room along the way and paused by the door.

There was still an hour before they had to leave and Pietro would not be up yet. 'He always sleeps until the last possible moment,' Lance's brain thought to itself. 'Lucky bastard,' his body replied. After taking care of business in the bathroom Lance walked into the kitchen where everyone convened for breakfast every morning. Freddy, as usual, was already there; cooking up pancakes and whatever else he could conjure out of the fridge.

Money wasn't as tight as the Brotherhood had once thought. Once Tabitha had blown open Mystique's door, they had found a plentiful supply of money to support even Freddy's eating habits for quite a while. Tabitha of course had claimed their old boss lady's room for herself, and nobody had seemed to want to challenge her claim. She had barged in, taken the last bottle of water and behaved as if she was meant to be there. None of the boys were interested in having her there and they weren't too knocked out with her attitude either, but no one wanted to be the one to tell her to leave. "She is too fake," Freddy had stated at one of their What-do-we-do-about-Tabitha meetings. "She puts up a false front to try to appeal to everyone. Before waiting to see if someone likes her, she behaves as if they have already accepted her. She's afraid of rejection so she doesn't give anyone the chance to tell her that they don't like her." Everyone had stared wide-eyed at him. "What?" he asked innocently. "Why do you think she left the X-Men before they had a chance to kick her out?" Sometimes Freddy could be scary with his observations. He wasn't as dumb as people made him out to be.

Unfortunately these meetings, which were more like sessions where everyone complained about Tabitha, never accomplished much.

Fortunately, Tabitha had decided to visit her mother for a month or so during the summer, and had left a week earlier. Her grades were too low to fix in such a short time before school was over, so she had no problem with missing the rest of the year; much to the joy of the other members of the Brotherhood.

Lance sat down heavily at the table, not yet fully awake. It was only then that he noticed Pietro was already there. The younger boy looked up at him; his tiredness evident in his eyes. "You're up early." Lance stated as he got up to fix a coffee for himself.

"Well, we DID stay up until 3 in the morning watching Star Trek," Pietro answered. He didn't mention how the rest of his night was filled with dreams of Lance, naked in his arms, as he whimpered the older boy's name over and over again in an endless plea for more… he could feel a grin spread across his face. "Huh?" he started, pulling himself out of his reverie. "Did you say something, Lance?"

Lance was grinning at him. "Did you know that you have the dopiest smile on your face?"

Pietro said nothing. He couldn't come up with an excuse for why he was staring at Lance and smiling like a fool. He began to feel his cheeks flush with embarrassment as the images from his dreams returned to him. The awkward silence was broken as Freddy set his latest creation on the table and then took his seat.

Todd made his appearance at this moment in time and joined Lance, Pietro and Freddy in eating breakfast. Sitting down beside Lance and Freddy he pulled out a book and started writing in it as he ate. Frantically he tried to put as many words onto the paper as possible. Freddy slowed down his eating enough to ask Todd what he was writing.

"Homework," he said as he took a drink of juice. "All that Star Trek made me forget about a story I have due in English…" he jotted down a few more words and crammed a fork full of eggs into his mouth. He fumbled once with the fork and dropped the utensil on the floor. Too rushed to retrieve it he started writing again, his tongue shooting out every now and then to pick up random bits of food from his plate.

There was something eerily hypnotic about the way that Todd ate. 'He barely chews!' Pietro thought to himself as he witnessed the youngest boy's agile tongue shoot out and grab a piece of toast off of Freddy's plate. "Hey Todd! I was gonna eat that!" The blonde giant whined.

"C'mon guys!" Lance announced, getting up and heading for the door, keys in hand. "The ride to school is leaving now," he looked back expectantly to see who was following. Pietro momentarily entertained the thought of going to school on foot, but quickly dismissed it when he remembered how hot it was. Freddy and Todd got up and started to head out to the jeep. It would take them a couple of tries to get Freddy in and they needed the head start. Lance looked back to Pietro who was slowly moving to get out of his chair, a look of deep thought on his face. "Geez, 'Tro. If you move any slower, summer vacation will be over and the next year of school will have started up again!"

Pietro started. He didn't think that Lance was still in the kitchen and the older boy's statement had startled him out of his thoughts. He gave a half smile. "I'm moving," he said, trying to sound like his normal self. "Perfection cannot be rushed, unless it so desires to be." The elfin youth gave Lance a typical Pietro smirk and, in a flash, was gone.

x-+-x

Meanwhile, at the Xavier Institute…

"Like, ew! Kurt is picking his nose with his tail!" Kitty Pryde's squeals of disapproval rang throughout the breakfast room at the Xavier Institute for gifted youngsters. Only a few people paid attention, as wrapped up as they were in preparing for exams.

"So vhat if I vas?" Kurt said. "How do you expect me to get zis booger of my nose? It has been bugging me all morning!" At this he ported over to Kitty's side and began showing her the inside of his nose where said booger was lurking.

"EWWWWW!" Kitty squealed. "Get away from me!" She jumped up and ran away from Kurt and his booger, phasing through the table in the process and earning a couple of chuckles from others in the room.

Kurt teleported back to his seat next to Evan and the two boys high-fived each other triumphantly. Ever since the stress of exams had set in the two had taken it upon themselves to relieve the tension by pulling practical jokes and grossing each other out; much to the displeasure of everyone else at the institute. A few people had complained, but the Professor, in his infinite wisdom, had dismissed it saying that people needed a little stress relief during exams. As such, most people had taken to avoiding the duo as they might fall victim to one of their 'harmless stress relieving' pranks.

Rogue sat in her usual corner and watched Evan and Kurt as they goofed around at the other end of the kitchen. They knew well enough not to disturb her. She stared into her barely touched bowl of cereal. Last night had been restless for her, like the past few nights. She couldn't figure it out. She didn't even like Lance, but she kept having the most sensual dreams about him. They often left her waking covered with sweat and in need of a cold shower.

Rogue absentmindedly began playing with her cereal. 'Why th' hell ahm ah havin' these dreams?' She wondered. 'Who th' hell did ah absorb t'get these bloody thaughts?'

She tried to figure it out. Her first candidate would be Kitty, but she hadn't absorbed Kitty's energy for a long time, and even then it was a little tap. Albeit it didn't take a telepath to know that the Kitty still had a little crush on Lance, and Rogue could often hear the other girl talking in her sleep. She grinned to herself glancing down at her watch seeing that it was time to leave for school. She got up to leave her dishes on the counter closest to the sink.

"Hey, Rogue!" Scott said as he poked his head through the door. "You want a ride to school?"

"Okay. Just let me get mah thangs! Ah'll be raght thare!" Rogue gave him a little smile and turned back to get her bag. Suddenly a thought occurred to her. 'Scott…'

End Chapter 3