Sorry this took so long. Hopefully that delay won't occur again.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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My Attitude Problem

Kitty received Pietro's text with the hotel name shortly after she initially texted him. A quick check on Google and she was grabbing her shoes, ready to head out the door. If Lance wasn't willing to talk to her, then she would just have to force him.

"Going somewhere, Catty?" her roommate, Alison, asked. Kitty was too busy being shocked that Alison was off the phone to be irritated about the foolish nickname.

"Actually, yes," Kitty replied. "Some friends are in town. I'm going to visit them at their hotel. I'll be out for a while."

Alison was not especially saddened. "Sucks for you. You'll miss Grey's."

"Oh well, it's a repeat anyways." Kitty's sneakers squeaked against the tiled floor as she stomped towards the door. "See you later."

"I'll tell you all about the eppie when you get back!" Alison called.

The hall was relatively uncluttered for the time of day, and Kitty moved swiftly to the stairwell. She was grateful for the lack of company; she didn't need to hear anyone whispering about her as she walked by their door. If there was one good thing about Alison, it was her attitude towards mutants, or lack thereof. Kitty'd gone through three roommates before Alison, who couldn't care less about mutants or Shadowcat or X-Men. Although that might have been because she didn't understand any of those concepts.

She flew down the stairs and stole away towards the door and outside. The sun was beginning to set, and a cool breeze reminded her that she'd forgotten her jacket inside. It was too late to go back and get it now, so she wrapped her arms around herself and headed for the street. The hotel was only a few blocks away from the edge of campus (and her dorm).

It took her longer than she'd expected to get to the hotel. There were several reasons for this: idiotic drivers (she imagined Scott scoffing at her hypocrisy), broken traffic lights, and in one instance, a pickpocket who'd nearly run right through her while making his getaway. He was foiled by a simple extension of her leg, though, and she left him with his face in the pavement as a police officer hurried over.

She knew the hotel and had seen it before on her occasional romps around the city, but as she approached the building it hit her for the first time just how over-the-top it was. It was five star – easily – and a number of bellboys were lounging about just inside the glass doorways. Kitty waved them away when they came to help her, and she accepted the automatic doors' invitation to come inside.

The inside of the hotel was equally swanky. If there was one drawback, it was that the place was packed: there was even a line at the elevator. She considered taking the stairs, but really she didn't mind waiting for a little while, so she got in line and did just that.

The elevators were also made of glass, and as they went up it was possible to look out over the entrance area and the restaurants and tropical foliage (safely protected from the Chicago weather) within. The ride up took a while, as the boys were on the ninth floor and passengers got off or on at each floor. Eventually the top screen flashed a 9 and Kitty exited the elevator. Now it was just a matter of finding their room.

Not only was the hotel ridiculously nice, she soon discovered – it was also ridiculously large. She spent what seemed like forever walking around the perimeter of the big square formed by the hallway above the lobby. It was ironic, really, that three years after that meeting at town hall (nothing but a hood/never be good enough for you) she'd be the one living in a dumpy one-room dorm and that Lance would be the one staying in the finest hotel money could buy.

Kitty's thoughts were cut off when she nearly ran into someone. Stumbling backwards, she looked up to the person, hoping she hadn't accidentally phased. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry."

"Oh, don't worry," said a very beautiful brunette with an equally beautiful smile. She brushed off her skirt, stared at Kitty. She smiled, almost. "I wasn't paying attention. Sorry."

"It's okay." Kitty stepped aside and allowed the woman to pass her. She didn't bother watching her walk away, as it seemed enough people were already staring at the woman. She instead looked up at the nearest door number, finding that she was only a few digits away from the boys' room.

She took several long strides and stopped in front of the respective room number. She took several breaths, trying to forget how long it had been since she'd had a proper talk with Lance, and knocked her knuckles against the waxed wood of the door.

No one answered. She could hear people talking inside, so she waited a second or two before knocking again.

She wasn't kept idle. This time someone answered.

"Lance," she said, trying to keep her voice even.

"Hello, Kitty," said Lance. She could tell he was surprised, but his off-guard approach didn't stop her from noticing that he looked just the same as he had when they'd last seen each other, although more handsome in a mature kind of way, if at all possible.

"So are you going to invite me in, or…?"

He took an awkward step back and beckoned for her to enter. "Yeah, yeah, come on in. What's mine is yours. All that stuff."

Kitty accepted his invitation before he had a chance to think better of it, and he closed the door behind her. Pietro was sitting down in a chair near the door, and she could see that they'd already thrown their things on their large beds, although it didn't appear that they'd unpacked yet. Typical boys.

"Hey, Pretty Kitty," Pietro greeted her. He frowned and tilted his head towards Lance. A cat, leering at its brother. "Don't worry, I know that's your line."

"It's not –" Lance tried to explain but decided he couldn't and just followed Kitty further into the room. "Uh, you can sit down on my bed if you want. I mean, I don't want you to – I'm saying that there isn't another chair to sit in – not that I want you to be in the bed – oh hell, you know what I mean."

"Yeah. Thanks." Kitty lowered herself onto the bed. It was tall, and her feet dangled a few inches off the ground. "So."

"Yeah." Her Lance, ever the conversationalist.

"Oh, come on," Pietro huffed, foot tapping against the carpet. It was clear he was already getting bored with the pace of things. "You came to talk, right, Kitty? So talk. Talk, talk, talk. Talk!"

"Settle down, I get it," Kitty said. "I'll talk."

"I hate to say this, but you probably shouldn't be here right now," said Lance. When Kitty looked at him he turned his face away from her and tried to cover his eyes by scratching his forehead. "We've got a job to do, and you shouldn't even know that we're here. We need to rest up and concentrate on the task at hand."

Kitty wasn't sure what to say. Luckily for her, Pietro was already on the job. "Shut up, Lance. We just had someone in here two minutes ago, and she just left. You weren't complaining when she was in here."

"Was that the brunette I saw walking down the hall?" asked Kitty. An unwelcome pang of jealousy was rising up in her, and it was not easily quelled.

"The bombshell?" Pietro nodded. "Yeah."

"She's not a bombshell," Lance muttered. He turned red as Kitty turned her gaze to him. "She's pretty and all, but she's not as amazing as you keep making her out to be. You were drooling all over the floor."

The unwelcome feeling faded, albeit not completely. She still didn't like the idea of that woman sitting in the room, alone with the two.

"So, we're agreed. It's time to talk." They said nothing for a while, and Pietro huffed again, stood, and placed his hands on his hips. "Do I have to do everything around here? Talk!"

There was a hitch in Kitty's voice as she spoke to him. "Pietro…"

"What?" he asked in an offended tone.

"Pietro," Lance said. His eyes flitted to the door for a split-second, but Pietro never needed more than a blink of an eye to make a decision.

The speedster placed one of his hands on his neck in an uneasy fashion. "Oh. Um. Yeah. I think I should probably go get a soda from the vending machines. I'm really thirsty all of a sudden. I'll catch you losers later."

An uneasy breath; Pietro was gone. Kitty was surprised: he'd even bothered to close the door behind him.

"Hyperactive lunatic," remarked Lance.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Very."

"I don't know how I'll get a good night's sleep on this trip. He wakes everyone else up when he does. I guess he gets bored or something."

"I bet. He pretty much lives at superspeed, so waiting for even fifteen minutes must seem like a lifetime."

"Probably." He coughed. "Sorry. Dry throat. I should've asked Pietro to get me a drink."

"Me too. I'm totally parched."

Kitty internally groaned. In retrospect, she'd never really had any sort of plan at all. It was just Lance, she'd thought. It'd never been hard to talk to him before, even when they were fighting (especially when they were fighting – they tended to talk a lot during their spats). Why would it be any different now?

Lance stuffed his hands in his pockets and tried to be casual. "Not that I don't love small talk, but I kind of got the idea you didn't come here to talk to me about sodas."

"You're right." She sighed. She hated it when people sighed, including herself. That always meant that something bad was coming. And even when it was a sigh of relief, it meant that something bad could've possibly been coming. "We need to talk."

"I'd gotten that already. I figured that's what you meant by barging in here and just kind of forced Pietro out of the room."

"I didn't force him out of the room! That was you!"

"Fair point," he admitted. "Okay, so maybe that was too harsh. But like you said. Let's talk. What do you want to talk about?"

She placed her hands under her bottom to prevent herself from waving them around too much. During a presentation in one of her classes she'd discovered she had a tendency to do that. "I don't know… I'm just frustrated. I guess we didn't end like we probably could have, and I know you were frustrated – I was frustrated, too – but you didn't have to, like, completely shut me out or anything. You never answer any of my calls or e-mails or texts, and if you do, it's always just a short 'yes' or 'no' or 'maybe.' It's irritating."

"Uh huh," was his reply.

"That's it? 'Uh huh?'"

"I don't know. What do you want from me? An apology?" He snorted. "You know I hate saying I'm sorry, especially if I don't know what I'm saying sorry for. I don't get why it matters if I return your calls. I don't even know why you're making a big deal about this. We're over, done, kapoot. I didn't think you'd mind if I kept in touch with you or not."

"Oh, yeah, I guess just because I decided to go to college means I don't care about you at all and like, totally hate you," she spat. Whenever she got angry she slipped more and more back into her old valley girl accent. "You're right. Let's just not talk any more. I'm sorry for trying."

"It's not because you went to college," Lance said, uncharacteristically quiet. "You know that. After all, you were the one to break it off."

"Because I didn't want to have a relationship with someone a thousand miles away. Yeah, excuse me."

His hair hung low so that she couldn't see his eyes. "I'm not blaming you or whatever. I'm just saying that I'm trying to… get over you. It's hard to do that when I hear your voice every day."

"And you think it's any easier for me?" she challenged.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, words strained as he recognized the figurative gauntlet at his feet. "You were the one who ended it. Of course it's easier for you. You think I wouldn't have drove out here every weekend to see you? I would've even stopped in Northbrook to say hi to your old man if you wanted me to."

"But that's not fair to you!" replied Kitty (nothing's fair anymore, she realized). "It's not worth it to go through that, Lance. Relationships are supposed to be fun."

He grunted. After a few seconds she decided that was all she was going to get from him and she stood. "Maybe I should go."

"Maybe," Lance concurred. "Go if you want to. I'm not stopping you."

"Fine." She pushed past him and to the door, lingering a moment to size him up one last time. "Don't worry. I won't waste my time calling you any more. I know it's such a pain in the ass for you."

He just stood there with that expression she'd seen so many times before. If she hadn't been so angry and worked up, Kitty would've walked up to him and hugged him. But somehow she didn't think that fit in with this situation.

She forced herself to look away from him and to open the door and walk on out. As it shut behind her, her eyes began to sting, and she brushed each one with the back of her hand.

"Kitty Cat," came Pietro's voice from her side. He stopped, drink in hand, when he saw her face. "Uh oh. Not go so good?"

"Has he always been such a jerk?" she asked.

"Yeah, guess you just now noticed. I just thought you liked that about him. Said he had attitude, and that was a good thing."

"I did," she remarked, almost hiccupping for a moment, "but the fights are just… You know what? I don't care. If he wants to be an idiot that's his problem."

A grin spread across Pietro's face. "You tell 'im, Pryde. I'll see what's going on with Lance after he's cooled down." She wanted to tell Pietro to be careful but it would've been no use. "He'll probably be moaning about how he's ruined things and all that."

"I doubt it." Kitty sniffed once. "Thanks anyways, though. I've got to get back to my dorm. Call me later, okay?"

"Okay," he said.

She left him there with his soda bottle and began the walk to the elevator. No matter how she tried, Lance kept pushing himself into her head. If things kept up like this, she'd need Professor Xavier to help her forget about that jerk.

Way to go, X-Man, she thought as the elevator opened before her. You've faced monsters and aliens and lunatics and murderers and you're undone by a cute Cobain wannabe. What'll it be next?

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