Work Text:
Interloper
Lance is wandering around the mansion again, at one in the morning with his socks on. The stairs don’t creak like the ones at the Brotherhood house, which are rotted and misshapen and buckling under Fred’s weight. These ones are carpeted and polished. He swears he can see his face in the banister.
He’s halfway to the kitchen when he hears voices in the rec room. They’re harsh, hissing through the cracked-open door, mindful of the hour, which still feels goddamn strange. In the boarding house, no one ever turns down the TV. Once, Tabby got into a screaming match with some guy at two AM. Peace and quiet are your own responsibility.
Against his better judgment, he tiptoes closer. He’s careful, sneaky, so unlike the rocks he tumbles.
“I told you, I don’t know!” Kitty. She sounds pissed. He doesn’t think he’s ever made her this pissed.
“Your eyelashes beg to differ!” Blue boy. The fuzzy gecko Toad’s always bitching about. Lance hasn’t seen much of him since he’s been at the mansion, save the glares sent over the breakfast table. Summers does the same, he can tell even behind the glasses, his brow knitted over his cornflakes. He finds it easier to look at Summers. Nightcrawler’s glowing yellow eyes, even in daylight, give him the creeps.
“My eyelashes?”
He moves closer, peering through the crack in the door. They’re in day clothes, jeans and t-shirts. Shouldn’t they have been in bed by now?
“They flutter. You make them. At him.”
“I do not!”
“You do! You giggle and smile and…was zur Hölle, Kitty!”
Blue boy’s pacing, running three-fingered hands through his mussed hair. His tail flicks back and forth viciously. Kitty’s face flushes.
“Hey, don’t go getting all…you know, on me. We talked about this. It was practically your idea!”
“Maybe it was a dumb idea.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” Nightcrawler stops spacing, walks over to her, fingertips brushing against her bare elbows. He’s not looking at her face, but she’s looking at his, phasing through flesh and bone and soul with her eyes. She does that to everyone; she certainly did it to Lance when they first met, fists up and a snarl on her lips. “I’m saying I don’t know if I can watch you with anyone else. I don’t…” One of his hands trails up her arm to her shoulder, twining a lock of hair around one finger. Nightcrawler’s eyes follow it. Lance’s fists clench.
“Kurt.” Kitty’s voice is soft, tight, but not angry. Lance knows what her voice sounds like when it’s angry. But he’s never heard her voice like this, tight like a bowstring, waiting waiting waiting to be plucked.
“Liebe—” Nightcrawler kisses her and Lance has to grab onto the doorframe. Nightcrawler’s mouth hardens as it’s pressed against hers and she doesn’t stop him; goddammit, she doesn’t stop him. She grips his t-shirt in one hand, so hard it looks like it might tear, the fingers of the other threading through his hair. He backs her to the wall and their arms move, and her legs part, and it’s all too smooth, like they’ve done this before.
Like it’s not the first time.
She gasps as his mouth is torn from hers, trailing down her neck with his teeth dragging along her tendons, along that one thick vein. She pulls at his shirt, slips her grasping hands under, and suddenly her jeans are flung across the room and there’s a thump. Lance blinks. Her legs are around his waist, one blue hand gripping her thigh. Her mouth’s open, her eyes clenched, head thrown back and hair falling out of its ponytail. They move slowly, so slow Lance can feel the ache in his own belly, the only sound the slide of their bodies against each other, her shirt rubbing against the wall. In the back of his mind, Lance thinks he should leave. He’s being a big perv standing here, watching the girl he wants fuck someone else, but that’s all she is: the girl he wants. He has no prior claim.
They gasp and grunt, choked air bursting from their softening mouths, from faces smoothed of tension. They stay standing, supported, Nightcrawler’s legs trembling and Kitty’s body sagging in his grip. Finally, he puts her down, straightening himself, watching as she pads in pink underwear to her crumpled jeans and slips them on.
“Katzchen,” Nightcrawler starts, but she presses a kiss to his mouth.
“In the morning, Fuzzy. Let’s go to bed.”
Horrifically, they decide to walk, and Lance scrambles back towards the kitchen, ducks inside and waits until they’ve wandered past. When he pokes his head out to see if they’ve gone, he can see them turning a corner towards the main staircase, steps muffled by the plush carpet and hands clasped. He wonders whose room they’re going to, his or hers, before he remembers she shares with Rogue. His, then; he wonders how many times she’s stayed there.
Lance really thought he was getting somewhere. They’ve been talking, and he swears they’ve been flirting, and he thought he had a read on her, but then, it’s not like he really knew her before they both moved to Bayville. And even now, aside from class, the most interaction he’s had with her is across a battlefield. He didn’t know she was a vegetarian until he moved to the mansion. He probably never would have found out she was seeing someone until he asked her out.
When he joined the X-Men, he thought he was hot shit, but nothing is turning out how he thought it would.
Lance doesn’t think he can stay at the mansion anymore.