Author's note: This takes place around the time of The Toad, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Disclaimer: Marvel and Kids WB own the X-Men. The title is that of a song by Savage Garden (I know they're fluffy, but I like'em anyway) that I've always thought fit Lance and Kitty rather nicely. The story used to contain the lyrics themselves until outlawed songfics.

Dedication: For Twinkles and Sandoz

I'm sitting here on the front steps of the school after hours, picking out anonymous chords on my guitar (don't ask me how it's working without an available electrical socket). If I can call anything a prized possession, it's this thing, and why it would ever leave the house isn't important. Neither is what either of us are even doing there. Why I picked the school for this particular daydream is a mystery, but that's not really important, either. Anyway. She's walking alone, and — why not? — wearing the low-cut velvet shirt I always liked. The anonymous chords become something slightly more. She hears the music and stops.

"Lancey-Boy! Is my dinner ready or isn't it!"

He realized that he'd been standing in the middle of the kitchen, eyes closed. If the others had caught him, the jokes would never stop. There was a pot of water boiling on the stove and a box of spaghetti half spilled on the counter-top, and the linoleum — once cream-colored, now somewhere between gray and green — was decorated by what looked like a large patch of dried mucus. Empty chip bags littered the table, and he could see that their last cereal box had overturned in the cabinet above the sink. The others were in the living room, watching TV. He could hear a muffled "Ow!" and then, "Baby-cakes, what'd you do that for? You looked scared, I was tryin' to comfort you!"

And then, "Hey, Lance! Hop to it!"

Lance considered sending a seismic wave through the foundations of the house and into the living room, shaking Pietro right out of his seat. But he realized that they'd gone a full week without Quicksilver tattling to Magneto about something, and kind of wanted to keep it that way. So he settled for a "It's in the works, your Royal Fast-Talking Highness!" Oops, now he's going to go running to Daddy with, "Sir, Avalanche is being disrespectful again!" Like I even care. Like I even care about taking down the X-Men or taking over the world. Like they've noticed. No wonder I spend all my fucking time in daydreams about her. Just look at the alternative.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah. She stops, turns to me, and is like, "What are you even doing here, Lance? I thought you were expelled."

"I was," I say. "Not my fault."

"Oh, yeah? Then who attacked Scott in the parking lot?"

Wait, wait. Rewind, erase, start over. This is my head, she says what I want her to say. Let's try this again.

"You never really told me what happened." There. Better.

"You never really gave me the chance." More truth than poetry to that, whatever that saying means. In real life, just like here, even when she didn't look right through me, someone always pulled her away before either of us could say anything.

"Well, I'm listening now."

So I tell her. How Kelly bribed us into teaming up with Matthews. All past offenses stricken from our records, and a chance to kick some serious X-Geek ass into the bargain? Sounded too good to be true. It was. Kelly had kicked us out for actions that he'd helped encourage. "And, as part of my Beloved Leader Bonus, I lost the only thing that ever mattered to me," I finish. And even I'm was surprised when she doesn't roll her eyes at that.

The water was boiling. He swept the spilled pasta into his hand and dumped all of it into the pot.

His mom had left them; his dad had driven his car off a cliff. The resulting foster home had been someone's sick idea of a joke, and even the thrill of bashing Xavier's geek squad hadn't made life with the Brotherhood much better. But during Mystique's absence, something incredible had happened: he had actually started to like his life. Incredible but true. Although their living arrangements clearly weren't by choice, he and the other boys — and, eventually, Tabitha as well — had forged some kind of alliance, not only against the X-Men, but against anyone who might feel like dissing them for being the supposed scum of the earth. Alliance had become respect, respect had become friendship, friendship had become well, if he didn't know what kind of trouble that word could bring, he could have sworn that friendship had become something like family.

And, best of all, he'd gained Kitty's attention, her trust, and finally her heart. He didn't even have to improvise with the next scenes to flash in front of his eyes: walking to class with his arm around her waist, driving around town and talking, dancing together under the revolving points of light from the disco ball, working together to save the snot-nosed X-Babies from their own abysmal stupidity. The touch of her lips on his cheek as he returned to the place that, despite himself, he belonged.

Then Mystique, and later Magneto, returned, and the whole thing was shot to hell.

How had it gotten like this? How did he go from catching her as she fell from a closed locker, bombarded instantly with her sweet scent and high, clear voice, to standing in a crap-hole kitchen making dinner for an evil mutant dictator's whiny, neurotic kid? How had he gone so quickly from hating his own guts, hating the shame and the worthlessness that he couldn't shake and couldn't make go away, to feeling like he owned the world just because he saw something true and good and beautiful in her blue eyes, and then how had he fallen so far, so fast?

We now return to our regularly scheduled fantasy. "Sit down," I invite, shifting, guitar and all, to make space for her on the step. In my imagination, I always know what to say.

She stares at me. "I can't. I'm mad at you, remember?"

"They let you back into school, didn't they? Now you can pretend to be normal like you always wanted." Okay, correction: in my imagination, I usually know what to say.

"Is there something wrong with wanting to be accepted?"

"Only when you don't get that it's never going to happen."

"Lance, please do not go into your whole we're-mutants-we're-freaks-so-nobody-will-ever-love-us bit."

Rewind-erase? Uh-uh. Maybe I need to hear this. "I'm not going into anything, Kitty. You're back in school, you have another chance. No harm done."

"Says you."

"Then answer me this." I look up into her eyes. "If you're so mad at me, then why are you even stopping to talk to me?"

And I've got her. She sits down, but still keeps her distance from me. Fine, I can deal with that. I waited all those months for her — oh, screw that, I waited seventeen years for her — and I can wait a little longer now if it comes to that. "When you threatened my friends," she starts, "I don't think I've even felt any angrier than that. I thought that you would never change. I mean, like, how could I have thought anything else?"

"Nothing but a hood," I recall.

"Right, and you said that you'd never be good enough for me."

"I never thought I would either. But when I'm with you Kitty, when I'm with you, I feel good enough."

She looks away from me, swallows, and looks back. "When you say things like that, I totally forget to be mad at you. It's not fair."

"Life isn't fair, cat girl." I fiddle with the chords some more. This time, I find myself humming the tune, then singing.

The door opened. Todd poked his head in. "Yo, Pietro wants to tell you that he wants onions in the sauce this time."

Lance blinked. "Sauce? What sauce?"

"The sauce that he wants on the spaghetti, duh." He paused. "You okay, man?"

"I'd be a lot more okay if I didn't have to slave away for Sergeant Speedy."

Todd looked shocked. "Quicksilver ain't no sergeant."

"What?"

"He's one of them spoiled rich kids who throw a hissy fit if their butler don't bring'em their eggs just the way they like. And it sucks."

"You're telling me," Lance grumbled, checking on the spaghetti. "Toad, when did we ask for this? Any of this?"

"Don't know. I was just happy to not have to steal from Matthews no more."

"I keep trying to remember what Mystique used to say to get us psyched to fight the X-Geeks, and I can't." Oh, man, what was he doing, pouring his heart out to his skinny little green housemate? Stop it, he told himself. Stop it now. "I try to remember why we just started taking orders from her once she brought Wanda back here, and I can't make it jibe." He opened the refrigerator. "Do we even have any onions?"

"How should I know?" Todd hopped up onto the table. "Speakin' of my crimson cutie, I think that she's definitely softening up. We were watching Christine, right? And we got to the part when that car went all psycho, and Wanda looked kinda scared. So I put my arm around her, and this time, she just pushed me away! Didn't zap me with a hex-bolt or nothin'! What do you think of that?" He paused. "Lance, you listenin' to me? Turn around, I want to make sure you don't have that look on your face that means you're thinkin' of you-know-who." Lance continued to hunt in the fridge for an onion. "You are, ain't you?"

"You were good to me," Kitty says, sounding ashamed. "You made me happy."

"So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that it'll happen again, and you know it. We'll get back together, we'll have to keep sneaking around, my parents will I don't even want to think about what they'll say. And something will happen to split us up again. Like it always does. And I don't"

I touch her cheek, brace myself for a violent reaction. I get none. "You don't what?"

She turns to me. "I don't think I could stand to have you hurt me again. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's totally true."

"She was no good for you. She made you someone you're not."

"How would you know?" Lance retorted. How would he know, for that matter?

"You didn't make sensible decisions when you were with her. You ditched us once, and we were kinda scared you were gonna go and do it again. You had to try hard to make her happy. You never had to try hard to fight on our side. Look, I know love is hard. Believe me, I know it better than anyone. But you can't let it get in the way of livin' your life."

"Really? Who was supposed to get us stuff from the house and came out with a bag of Wanda's underwear?"

"Okay, fine."

"I don't want this!" Lance stamped his foot. The floor shook slightly. "I don't want to be kicked out of school, and I don't want to help run a mutant empire, and I don't want to have the Wrath of Magneto dangled in my face whenever I don't carve up a radish rose the way Pietro likes! Kitty was allall I've ever wanted," I say. "I'll say it again. You make me feel like I deserve somebody like you. You make me feel like Xavier and Magneto and Summers and the kids at school and my whole shitty past don't matter. I did what I did because I thought you'd stopped caring about me, not because I stopped caring about you. Because you never will"

"never will have another chance," he finished.

"Good goin'," Todd approved. "Now I gotta get back inside. I bet Wanda's missing me." And he hopped back into the next room, closing the door behind him.

Lance sat there glumly while the spaghetti finished boiling. He tried to push the thoughts of Kitty away, but they kept coming, like the spirits that chick had unleashed from that box. Except that instead of demons tormenting them, these were questions: When did it get so wrong? Could it have ever worked out? How canHow can I make it up to you?" I ask her. Short of committing murder or joining up with the X-Losers again, there isn't anything I wouldn't do for this girl.

"You can leave the others alone, for one thing."

"Done. Easily. I've learned my lesson. This has to be about us."

"Is there an 'us'? Can we ever be a normal couple."

"No," I say firmly. "But that doesn't mean we can't be something."

"I'm still angry." She looks away again. "But I think I'm more scared. You have to remember that."

I put one arm around her. She doesn't push me away. "I'll do my best," I tell her.

Lance turned the water off, dumped it into the sink, and went to hunt up a plate. Forget it, he thought. No way is any of that going to happen. He had to pretend that he didn't care about her, and he had to pretend that he didn't remember anything about that story with the box, because then he wouldn't remember that hope was at the bottom.

As he put the finishing touches on Sergeant Speedy's dinner, he tried to imagine how lovely it would be to dump the plate of spaghetti and sauce (he hadn't been able to find any onions) right in Pietro's face. Or down his shirt. Or over his head. He smiled a little at the images, but memories of Kitty overrode them all. Those amazing eyes of hers shone out from the blank screen of his mind, and he stared at them for a while. Then he willed her face away into the darkness.