Then
*
I'm worried about the kid.
I don't want to admit it, don't want to care, but I do. There are a lotta messed up kids floating around this place, but he seems to float down and around and away from scrutiny better than the rest of them. Jono, the poor bugger, tends to make enough puppy-dog faces at people till they remember he's around. Jubilee, my god, she makes enough noise. Ev, Paige and M are strong enough that they're never going to let anyone forget.
But the kid and Penny are something else. They've got a habit of blending into the scenery.
And so I'm worried about him.
Course, he's got a valid reason to. As long as he's underestimated, he doesn't have to put out, and doesn't have any expectations on him. Smart lad has a plan -- be average enough that he doesn't have to do much to earn his place.
I empathize.
But I'm worried about him.
Being underestimated hurts you, down in the core of yourself where you don't ever want to admit it. You can only take it so long before it's second nature to half-believe it.
Believe me. I know.
*
"Whaddaya *want* from me, Lee?"
She stopped on the top of the steps, nearly pollaxed by the sudden force of his anger. Watched him helplessly as he stomped off towards his room, not bothering to wait for an answer.
The only response she knew, the only response she could find, was to fight fire with fire. Even if she had to fake it. "Just to know what's going *on*, Espinosa."
*There's *nothing* going on,* he wanted to say, *NOTHING.* But lying to Jubes always felt vaguely wrong, scheming his favorite fellow schemmer. Like treachery. And, try as he might, he couldn't really make himself believe it was true. Like one of Pete's cigarettes, amber light in a dark room as he drew smoke it, hope glimmered deep inside and refused to die out.
Instead he said, "Why'd you need *me* to tell you anything, that's what I'd like to know. *You* have all those cute little theories all built up. You have everything figured out that can be figured out."
If he were to turn, to look at her, he might have seen light china-doll skin heat up and darken slightly. "I don't have any *theories*! I was just trying to ask you what's going on! You don't even talk to me anymore!"
He opened his bedroom door, still not turning, aiming and firin for a small parting shot. "You sound like my madre talking to my pop. Have we been married for twenty two years without me noticing, Jubes?"
Slam.
"That would require me actually knowing something about your life, Ange," she muttered darkly, as she spun on a heel and set foot to descent the stairs back into the kitchen.
On the other side of a safely, comfortingly solid door, he leaned his forehead against wood and tried not to think. It wasn't true at all that he never talked to her anymore. It wasn't.
He just didn't tell her anything that mattered.
~*~
Now
*
They decided to take a walk, Angelo's hand finding it's way into Pete's easily and without thinking. Pete felt it intensely strange to be walking down a mostly deserted London street, somewhere in the theatre district. He had never really paid any attention to the dirty places he lived in. They weren't what mattered.
His father's house in the suburbs was being rented out; had been for years, and he really should sell it. Each time the lease came up, he put off the real estate shite in favor of just about anything else. It could wait.
They were headed nowhere in particular, though their feet fell in a pattern and cadence that deposited them on the steps of a bar. Not surprising. Like sediment from the riverbank, they found themselves in the most comfortable spot.
Pete ordered pitchers of beer. Angelo stayed quiet.
They drank their first pint in quiet, trying to rekindle that silence that lovers have in common; the absorption rate of emotions from the very air. No stranger to quiet, they lasted it out well enough, before having to lapse into small talk.
The conversation was one of a thousand, and the next day, they would not remember it. Uneventful, the next two pints, because tongues and mouths and minds have yet to be loosened sufficiently to have anything important to say.
Neither of them felt comfortable talking about things in public. Angelo never did, and Pete--
Pete had problems with public confessions. It was something that had been going on a long time.
"Pete, wouldya just use my first name once and a while?" Angelo wasn't demanding, wasn't angry. At least, he was trying not to sound--
He sounded angry. Ange could see it in Pete's face that he was sounding angry, even if he didn't mean to. Ange scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to clear his head and his mind. Hours had gone past in Pete's company, and still he felt just as strange as when he first set foot in his door.
When he first picked the lock, to be accurate.
He tried to sound less angry. The beer was clouding his tongue. "I don't mean-- yes I do. You're acting as if everything's changed."
Pete avoided his eyes. "Hasn't it... Ange?"
Angelo softened his tone, and covered one of Pete's hands with his own. "Hombre, things always change. Last time I slept with you, it was years ago, and you were still in love with someone else."
Pete raised his gaze from the floor, startled. "No, no I wasn't."
"You weren't?"
It was Pete's turn to sigh. "I... no. Still into, maybe, but not in love."
"We weren't in love."
Pete flinched, and stood up. "Let's go home, Ange. I'm tired of being around strangers." He didn't think about how much that had hurt, deep down.
He also didn't think too hard about whether, when they got back to his flat, whether he'd still be in the company of strangers.
~*~
Then
*
When he was a kid, he used to be able to see things about people -- things that he had no right to see. Personal things. Relationship things. Adult things.
People always said he was born old.
As a kid, he took it as a compliment. He liked to know things about the people who had lived so much more life than him and yet, somehow, couldn't hide themselves away from his eyes, his childish, innocent, wiser-than-adult eyes. He always believed them when they said he was born old... never thought to question it. It just seemed to fit.
He knows the day he grew up -- the very day, too. It was when he realized, when all was said and done, he'd rather be a child than know these things anymore.
Those eyes get dried out, they ache, they frown, and they watch countless hours of television, fighting the insomnia... but they don't cry.
He was starting to see the flecks in Angelo that all those parents and teachers had confessed to seeing in him, all those years ago. Angelo, too, was starting to tone down, to see differently... He tried to know, to be, something that the other kids were not --older. In a way, Pete was seeing a bizarre osmosis of personality; Ange, seeing disapproval when none was there, while Pete looked on and couldn't convince him otherwise. Maybe he *did* disapprove. Maybe he was jealous of the innocence that he still saw. Maybe Angelo was just going to have to grow up, and fast.
God, he was worried about him.
Pete looked in the mirror, pretending it was someone else's face, and was struck, quickly, with how depressed he really looked. No wonder Sean had said to take the day off. If he'd seen the same expression on anyone else, he would have sent them to a doctor for medication.
He was used to it in his own face. He didn't ever, EVER want to be used to it in Angelo's.
But he was getting more and more afraid that it was going to happen, and soon. He washed his face in cold water, trying to wash away the age he felt sagging on him. How could one kid make him feel so old, and so young?
The age kept clinging to him. Like they all said, he was born old.
The day's growth of beard he kept; no point in shaving for no reason. The team didn't need him today. Sean had made it quite clear that there would be no help or hinderance from Pete. He was to have a day off. He was to relax.
He was going to have a drink, alone and in his room.
How very relaxing indeed. It had been a while.
His room was the only place he would be safe from Jubilee. The girl looked at him sometimes, and seemed to speak volumes with the look. 'Find someone your own age,' she whispered in his head. 'Don't rob him of the time he's got to be young,' she knew to say to him, if he listened to her clarity of vision. And, most importantly, the simple, elegant, confusing as hell because she wasn't accusing him of anything; he was doing it all on his own--
'What are you doing here?'
What *was* he doing here?
Maybe he'd have more than one drink.
*
Angelo glared at the wooden door, wishing he had some power of persuasion to make it unlock itself on its own. Or a phasing shift thing. Or claws, so he could just say bugger the lock, I'm shredding your door down, hombre, get ready--
The door still sat there. He had the incredibly childish impulse to kick it, and he curbed it by calling up the face that was never far from his thoughts. Pete wouldn't ever kick a door. He'd be suave, and threatening, until the person on the other side gave in and opened it.
But, he wasn't Pete.
And so he sighed, frustrated, and knocked again.
"C'mon, hombre, I know you're in there. [Ange's nick for Sean] said you were in your room last, and no one's seen you come out yet today. What the hell are you doing, anyway? Drinking whiskey all alone?"
As soon as he said it, he regretted it. That probably was what Pete was doing, after all, and now he'd never let him in.
He heard a raspy laugh issue from the other side. So he was actually in there, and hadn't snuck off without anyone seeing. Now, all that remained was to see whether he'd ever, ever let him in.
Why *did* he want Pete to let him in?
"Fine, teach. I'll go find someone else to play locksmith with. Bet Gambit knows some stuff." It was a dirty move, but Angelo was desperate.
Not surprisingly, the door opened. "You can be a real prick, Ange."
Pete looked worse than usual. His face was shaggy, and the perpetual dark circles that haunted his face seemed to have ghosts in residence. The bed was unmade behind him, and the room was close to dark.
Angelo frowned. "You don't look so good."
"So?"
"So. Kitty called. For you."
Pete blinked, and made a gurgle in the back of his throat. It might have been a laugh, except that no one's mouth drooped like that with a chuckle.
He turned around, and stumbled back to the bed, slouching onto it with a quiet 'thump'. Angelo followed him, and shut the door. He sat down rather akwardly beside Pete, and waited.
When it was apparent that Pete was in no mood for conversation, Angelo up and asked it. "Why'd she call?"
Pete was in the process of pouring another drink, and slammed the bottle down harder than he needed to. "So that's what you make of this, kid? My long lost great bloody everlastin' love has tittered, and now I'm in mournin' or somethin'?"
Angelo tried to grin, though he still stared at Pete, concerned. "Nah. I saw Manchester lost. Thought I'd come and comfort you."
Pete stared out the window. He wanted to sleep with Angelo. Right now. In Emma Frost's house. With his teammates just down the hall. And the door unlocked.
Obviously, the whiskey wasn't working today.
"Hey," Angelo said softly. "What's up, Holmes?"
Pete rubbed his temples, and controlled his lust with an iron grip. "Bloody Manchester."
"I know how you Brits like your football."
Pete stared out the window some more, and then held out his glass to Ange. It was mostly empty, but the few swallows did a lot to calm Angelo's nerves. Pete was almost hoping he'd refuse, decide that drinking wasn't for him, that he was too young, in the wrong situation, they shouldn't be drinking alone, in Pete's room--
Angelo swallowed slowly, with a sigh of satisfaction. "Now that's choice stuff."
*Yes, yes it was. And so are you. But what can I do about it? What can I do about it here, in Emma Frost's house? And how can I get past these responsibilites that I'm so loathe to give to you?*
Angelo said, very quietly, "You're never going to make a move on me, are you."
Pete sat bolt upright. He thought he'd just heard that, but it didn't seem possible. He wanted this kid. Hell, why deny it -- he really, *really* wanted this kid. But it was no matter. There were lots of people he wanted, and didn't get. Ange couldn't have said what he thought he did--
Angelo tipped the small glass up to his lips, getting the last few drops out with his tongue. Almost wistfully, he said, "Well, thanks for the drink, anyway. Maybe next time Manchester loses, you can give me a call."
Pete didn't move a muscle until the door was shut behind him.
*
"Since when do you watch soccer, Ange?" Jubilee's tone tried to be unaccusing, but it didn't work very well. She leaned against the doorframe, ankles crossed, and looked for all the world like she was ready to chew him out.
Angelo swallowed, and very carefully didn't look nervous. "Everybody's got habits, Jubecita."
"That was never one of yours."
She didn't mean it to sound so angry, but it did. He put up his guards, instinctively, and tried to change the subject. "Oh, look! Bradford got a goal."
Jubilee sat down beside him, arms crossed. "You know the *teams*?"
He hesitated. "Only a few..."
She rolled her eyes, and chuckled. There was a hint of something nasty, something more frightening than simple teasing in her face, but for now, it was forgotten. She grabbed his Coke, and took a big gulp.
It was halfway through the second half, and even Jubilee, who'd pronounced soccer one of the most boring sports to watch -- second to baseball, maybe --even Jubilee was getting into it. They shouted at the television set, threw their arms up in the air in exasperation, and in general, made a lot of noise.
The ruckus had attracted Pete down from his hole upstairs. Lord, but couldn't he even be slightly drunk in peace?
Jubilee grinned slyly when he stumbled into the room, slouching as usual. "So, Wisdom. At the bottle?"
He all but snarled, "So, Jubilee, at the sugar?"
She leaned back a little, surprised. "Touchy. Hey, what team is your favorite?"
He yawned, and glanced at his watch. It was only nine thirty... too early to send them to bed yet. He mumbled, "Depends."
"On what, amigo?" Angelo was deeply curious to find out what made a good soccer team for Wisdom. They said that in Britain, football was one of the most important things a young man could do.
"Lots of stuff. Who's playing?"
Jubilee piped up, "Manchester and some team with," and she waved a hand at the TV vaguely, "like, dirty jerseys." Her eyes were bright, and they darted from Pete to Angelo and back again several time. She eventually started whistling, and stood up. "I think I'm gonna get a snack or something. Ange, lemme know who wins."
It was wrong to do violence to women, and they knew it, but he smug grin on her face made both Pete and Ange want to hit her.
*
"Sit down," he said, some time after Jubilee escaped. His eyes were firmly glued to the screen.
"Hmm?" distracted, Wisdom looked up from crushing his second cigarette in a nearby plant. "
"Sit *down*," Angelo repeated, with the kind of patience one reserves for moments just before a homicidial fit. "Your pacing's making me dizzy."
As soon as Pete turned to look at him, with those measuring eyes, his frustration drained away. He didn't really want to bitch about the pacing; he just wanted Pete to sit down, and was hiding that desire with a gruff facade.
Apparently, Pete hadn't bought it.
"Fine," he said, in what was strangely a light easy-going way. "Since you asked so nice."
He probably should have moved away a bit, widening the space between the arm of the sofa and his body - a space just wide enough for Jubilee's small body to sit leaning against him, her legs propped on the sofa, her favorite position.
He didn't, and the tiny turn of Pete's lips said that he knew.
"So," the older man said, sitting in that too-small place and looking not at all uncomfortable, "who's winning?"
He would answer, really he would, if only his brain would stop shrieking weird things about a strangefamiliarunknown hip so close to his own, warming his skin, only two layers of cloth between them.
In the only coherent part of his mind, Ange suppressed an urge to mutter, *You. You're nonchalant as hell, and I'm sitting here burning up.* After a pause of three breaths, maybe four, he felt confident enough in his ability to open his mouth without having that urge seize control. "Bradford."
"Huh," was the eloquent reply.
*That's right,* said that same rebellious part of his mind, *Huh. And now we're going to sit here in silence for he next twenty three minutes, right? That's funny, I'm recalling thinking you were the only adult person around here I could actually *talk* to just last week. If not the one person, period. But, go ahead, just sit there and say one-syllible things to me and be you that way so I can't even say anything myself. And I'll bet you'll even be freakin' *surprised* when the game's over and you stand up and discover I've turned into a little pile of ash.*
The silence was suddenly so oppressive he wasn't completely sure he hadn't said that out loud.
He could hear quarters of seconds ticking dizzily past his ear. They were much too slow to be quarters of seconds, though. They must have been hours.
His nerves were already so frayed by the time Pete turned his head a bit in his direction and said, "Look, kid --" that he wasn't really all that surprised to feel himself leaning forward, crossing that short, oh so short space between them and finding lips just where some god had intended them to be.
Pete, though, *was* surprised as hell, if to judge by the low almost-chocked sound he made at the second of contact. And he suddenly flashed back to the dream, the weird dream he was always having in one form or the other, that damnable dream...
He knew the shoving back, the turning away, the disgust -- since this was real life after all, not really a dream, the shock and the disgust -- and they may have spoke about this, in small ways, may have checked and implied, but this was action and not thought, not word, and he could see puzzled sneering face so well, shoving away turning away walking away so much more hurting than dream --
He knew it all so well, by heart, that he was already pulling away himself, already prepearing to run, when the arms came around him and the lips opened under his own.