"The only thing that matters is intuition."
[xxxxx]
Chapter 15: Intuition
The next morning, Quicksilver awoke to the strong smell of freshly-brewed coffee. He blinked a few times to let his eyes adjust to the light, then sat up and yawned. The chilly November air was a shock; he quickly wrapped himself back up in the blankets and laid down.
"Wake up, sleepyhead." Came Albino's voice, along with the feeling of someone plopping down on the bed beside him.
He opened his eyes and turned over in bed to face her, but still kept the blankets wrapped tightly around him. "Well, someone seems to be happy." He said.
She nodded and sipped the steaming coffee mug that was gripped tightly in her hands. "How can't I be? Last night was wonderful." She smiled and leaned over to give him a quick peck on the lips, careful not to spill her coffee.
"I'll say." He smiled back.
"Would you like some coffee?" She offered perkily. "Hawkeye brought up a tray this morning."
Quicksilver furrowed his brow. "Hawkeye was here? Did he see me?" He asked, concerned. He wasn't sure how his father... how Magneto would react if he found out.
Albino rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't you worry about it. Hawk's so gullible that he believed me when I told him you got drunk and fell asleep here. I don't think anyone will find out, anyhow." She stood up and fetched a mug identical to hers off of the dresser, only a few feet away. "There you are. It might be a bit cold."
Shivering, he sat up in the bed and sipped his coffee. It wasn't very good, but it was still a little warm and felt good down his throat.
"Besides, if anyone did find out, the only person whose opinion matters is Control's, and I don't think she'd mind much." Albino said.
"And Magneto's." Quicksilver added. "I'm not sure if he'd be okay about me having a relationship with another teammate."
"Whoever said we had a relationship?" Albino asked, raising an eyebrow.
He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was messing with him or not. Then he realized that she wasn't, for a moment, his heart sank. "Do you want to have a relationship?" He asked, keeping his cool.
"Do you?"
Was she kidding? "No. I've only been after you for the past week because I wanted to sleep with you and risk my position in the Brotherhood." He said sarcastically.
She shrugged. "It's not inconceivable."
Quicksilver shook his head and sighed. "Shut up and kiss me."
Albino placed both of their coffee cups on the bedside table before crawling across the bed to her lover.
[xxxxx]
"Those foul, nefarious creatures." Panther mumbled, sighing disgustedly. "Those rats."
"Well, actually, they're mice." Hawkeye said.
He, along with Panther, stood in the Warehouse kitchen, staring down into a large jar of honey. Apparently, someone hadn't closed the lid tight enough last night, leaving the mice to a field day. Unfortunately for everyone, their little field day had turned into a massacre and now the Superiors were left with dead mice and a whole lot of contaminated honey.
"There has to be at least four of them in there." Panther said. "Oh, those things... they make me want to vomit."
"There are five, if you're counting the one at the bottom of the jar." Hawkeye said, pointing to the bottom of the jar, where a thin pinkish tail was brushing up against the glass. "Why don't you just eat them, darling?" He joked to his wife. "I mean, cats eat mice, don't they?"
Panther smirked slightly, amused. "I prefer the ones I kill myself, but I think it's the hawks that claim the dead ones." She teased.
He smirked back. "Touché."
"Well, we better get this out to the dumpster before it starts to stink up the house." Panther said, screwing the lid back onto the large honey jar. "You will take it down, won't you, dear?"
"Of course, darling." Hawkeye said, giving his wife a quick peck on the cheek and taking the jar from her.
Just as Hawkeye was leaving, Pyro entered the kitchen, looking like he had just woken up. "Have you guys seen Quicksilver this morning? I didn't hear him come to bed last night, and he wasn't in his bed this morning. He asked, yawning and stretching his arms above his head.
"Oh, he was in Albino's room when I took some coffee up there earlier. She says he crashed in her room." Hawkeye said as he exited the room, not bothering to wait for a reply.
"Oh." Pyro said, yawning again. "Hey, you guys got any jelly in this place?" He asked, looking through the cupboards.
"Sure. It's in the fridge." Panther answered absentmindedly. She was too deep in thought to consciously answer him and truthfully, she didn't care if he found the jelly or not.
Ever since her younger sister was born, Elizabeth had promised herself that she would take care of her until the day of her death. She would hold her when she cried and make sure that she was stayed away from the wrong kinds of people. She made decisions not only in her own best interest, but also in her sister's. Elizabeth cared for Isabelle when she couldn't care for herself. She once even took revenge on an ex-boyfriend that had wronged her. She loved her sister more than anything in the entire world - more than William, more than being a mutant, and more than life itself.
Elizabeth was always watching her sister, for lack of a better term, like a hawk. And in the past few days, she had noticed a change in Isabelle. This change was progressive and not something she had ever seen before in her sister. Where Isabelle was always focused, Elizabeth now found her daydreaming. She used to enjoy solitude, but now Isabelle could be found only in the common rooms of the Warehouse or about Mutant Town. Things that once annoyed her now went unnoticed and her overall demeanor was just... happier.
And that's when Elizabeth had noticed it. Before, she had been searching for an internal explanation for Isabelle's sudden transformation - she had explored illness, as well as recovery from some mental state and many other possibilities. None of them made any sense. Then it clicked.
It happened in the early afternoon just a few days ago, when Elizabeth and her husband were returning from a visit to the market. Camouflage and Scarlet Witch were hidden away in their bedrooms, Magneto and Mystique were off to God-knows-where, Pyro was challenging himself at a 600-piece puzzle and Albino was tucked away into the corner of the living room near the window, reading The Art of War.
Now, Elizabeth knew that there was nothing Isabelle loved more than reading. When she read, she read for hours at a time, only stopping occasionally to eat. She never abandoned a book until finished and considered it a sin to be reading more than one book at a time. More than often it took her less than a few hours to finish a four-hundred page novel.
So when she had seen Isabelle reading at the window that day, Elizabeth did not dare to interrupt her. Instead, she had just unpacked the groceries with William and afterwards decided to help Pyro with his puzzle. But once she was finished with the groceries, she saw something that she did not expect.
Isabelle, who had still been reading in the corner of the room, abandoned her book for something a little more interactive - Quicksilver. Elizabeth recalled that she didn't even use a bookmark!
And that's how she knew. She stared at them, studying the way the two interacted, while pretending to pay attention to Pyro and his puzzle. Meanwhile, the puzzle pieces in her head were finally beginning to fit together.
She knew that in public, Isabelle constantly complained about how annoying Quicksilver was, but she also knew that wasn't the way Isabelle felt about him at all. Elizabeth could practically smell the attraction between the two of them, but she wasn't sure if that was her powers at work or just her distrustful sisterly intuition.
And now Isabelle was sleeping with men she hardly knew. Elizabeth didn't believe her husband when he said that Quicksilver had fallen into a drunken unconsciousness in Albino's bedroom. Well, it wasn't her husband she thought the liar - he would sooner die than lie to his wife - but his source of information.
Not only was Isabelle sleeping with men she hardly knew, but now was also lying about it. She couldn't think of a time that Isabelle had ever done something like this.
An infatuation. Panther thought. Yes, that's it. She's merely infatuated with him. He is quite charming and rather handsome. Yes, just infatuated.
"No orange juice? How do you live?" Pyro's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"What?" She asked reflexively, turning to him. "Oh, we survive. Barely." She mumbled. "Just don't eat the green beans. Those are for dinner tonight."
"Don't kid yourself." Pyro mumbled as she left the room.
The quote is by Albert Einstein.
This chapter was supposed to be elongated by the rest of it served no purpose and I was too lazy to finish it. I hope you enjoy!
Thanks again to martshi3 for tolerating me enough to be my Beta!