“Explain this to me. Fast. In small words before I end up on an Interpol list for kicking the shit out of Britain’s mascot.” Todd says as he and Kitty step out into the hallway. The hospital doorhandle feels like ice in his palm. The air stings here, too antiseptic, too full of all the shit needed to avoid cross-contamination or whatever. If he stays here longer than a couple of hours he’ll be in for a helluva migraine, but right now rage rushes under his skin and he couldn’t parse out if his nausea’s from that or the hospital halls if he tried.
Kitty runs her hands through her hair, the short curls of her pixie cut dissolving into a frizzy halo around her head. Her sweats and hoodie are rumpled like she’s slept in them and Todd realizes she probably has, more than once.
“Can we walk and talk?” She asks, “We’ve eaten hospital cafeteria mush for days and I need to taste a flavor again or I’m going to snap.”
Todd’s fingers clench on the door handle, the image of Kurt looking small and bruised, leg held at a high awkward angle in the narrow hospital bed still fresh in his head. But the blue mutant had started nodding out after an hour of talking with Todd, exhausted from his injuries and loopy from pain meds, and had urged them to get out and enjoy fresh air even though he couldn’t. Todd had hopped a bus to the hospital directly from the airport, and the British town’s air was less “fresh” and more “damp” but Todd didn’t think it was a good time to point that out to the blue mutant. After the third time Kurt woke out of a doze to shoo them away, Todd let Kitty tow him from the room by the elbow.
“Rogue and Piotr will be by in a couple of hours,” Kitty says, staring at the room door like she can see through it, “He’ll probably sleep til they show up and wake him. The floor nurse said that was normal.”
Todd’s stomach growls and he blows out a breath. His last meal was over three thousand miles and nine hours ago. A cup of coffee probably brewed in 1970 and a bagel that’s flour he suspects was cut with sawdust.
“Yeah, walk and talk.” He says finally, letting go of the door handle.
“He has a fracture below the knee, that’s the worst injury. Somehow he avoided a concussion, but–”Kitty starts, eyes on the faded linoleum under their feet as they amble towards the elevator.
“I know the injuries.” Todd snaps, jamming his thumb hard on the down button “And I know who gave them to him, I’m asking why.”
Kitty jerks, her jaw flexing as they step into the elevator. Todd catches the brightness in her eyes as she ducks her head to stare a hole in the floor and he curses, remembering Kitty’s the one who got to Kurt first, phasing through the rubble that was the exterior wall of their base’s living room. She starts talking before he can scrape together an apology, her words spiked with hot anger.
“Because our supposed mentor is a self-involved pig who took ‘hey maybe you should notice your girlfriend’ as a ‘Mr. Steal-Your-Girl’ warning.” She snaps, rubbing her eyes furiously. “Fuck, I’m so done with this. You know I have an exam next week? You know Kurt had an essay due yesterday? He spent the entire week mumbling random shit into his recorder. I now know more about dadaist art and politics than I ever wanted to.”
They step out of the elevator and get halfway to the exit before Kitty freezes. Todd lurches, boots leaving a muddy streak as his feet squeak on the floor. A passing orderly shoots him a filthy look. He sticks out his tongue, a quick three-foot snap, before turning back to Kitty. She looks back at him with wide, horrified eyes.
“Kurt was finishing his essay when he took a nap on the couch where Brian found him. The couch that is definitely buried under the rubble that was our fireplace wall.” Kitty says, running her hands over her face, “His laptop is probably trashed. Fuck, my laptop is probably trashed. None of us have had the chance to go back and see how bad everything is. Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Todd really thinks the laptop is the least of Kurt’s worries at the moment, but then again, brains are weird like that. The time the Brotherhood house got raided by a bunch of anti-mutant assholes with a bootleg sentinel, he’d gotten his face smashed and Lance had busted his wrist, but they’d all been so fucking pissed off that the assholes had managed to mangle their oven, even though the damn thing only worked half the time. They'd stomped through the house, looking for random little shit, headphones, paint sets, makeup–celebrating every little piece still intact and mourning the shattered remains of what wasn’t.
Todd thumps the side of his backpack, "No worries, even if all your shit's trashed, I have my laptop. You guys can email your profs. Pretty sure 'my boss destroyed my house and busted my roommate's ass' is grounds for an exam extension."
Kitty blows out a breath, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, “Yeah, yeah I think that counts.”
The fall air outside is damp and cold enough that Todd’s glad he tossed on an extra shirt under his leather jacket. He zips it up to his chin as he follows Kitty around the corner and down the street. He’s quiet for several blocks. Their reflections pass through the windows of apartment buildings and shops with faded awnings from the corner of his eye. He jiggles his keys in his jacket pocket. He won’t need them anytime soon, but they’re comforting to hold, to roll around between his fingers, and remember they lead to home. There’s a keychain with a picture of the statue of David’s junk on it, a gift he’d gotten in the mail from Kurt when he’d asked the blue mutant to get him the tackiest memento he could find during his circus tour a couple years back. He runs his thumb over the scratched plastic, flips it over and over.
“Fuzz complained old union jack could be a pain in the ass but didn’t mention anything like this.” Todd says as Kitty slows down in front of a Chinese place with a flickering “24-hour” sign next to a laminated menu posted in the window. She yanks the door open, waving him inside.
“Because we didn’t realize there was anything like this,” Kitty says, stepping into the dim interior after him.
It’s early for lunch, barely 11 am, but the hostess doesn’t bat an eye as she seats them in one of the small, dimly lit booths that line the far wall of the place. The benches’ vinyl seats are cracking with age which Todd takes as a good omen for their meal. Good food doesn’t need to dress up. The menu is printed out in one long sheet, pressed under the acrylic tabletop for them to read.
“The portions are huge, all their spicy shit is good. The orange chicken is trash though unless you don’t like it super sweet and then I don’t know what’s wrong with you. The eggrolls don’t have pork here and are actually crispy. Dunno if that’s a thing for you.” Kitty says, not looking up from the menu.
Todd snorts, leaning his elbow on his backpack as he looks things over. He wouldn’t call himself practicing, but his mom never made pork the rare times she cooked, and once Freddy learned Wanda and Pietro didn’t eat it he never made it again, so Todd never developed much of a taste for it. “Good to know.”
He ends up ordering the first thing that falls out of his mouth and hopes their Mongolian chicken isn’t trash. He also gets an eggroll, because might as well see how it compares to New York. Kitty orders them both tea, something called spicy sour noodles and gets herself three-cup chicken. She asks them to bring a to-go order of pepper steak and another order of noodles with the bill later.
“Kurt’s favorite from here.” She explains when Todd raises an eyebrow at her.
The waiter delivers their tea, softly telling them to wait two minutes before pouring it. Todd waits about thirty seconds before filling his cup, then Kitty’s when she nudges it towards him, less for something to drink and more to have something warm and solid to hold in his hands.
Kitty picks up her cup, tilting her head forward and resting it against her forehead, “Rachel, Meggan, and I came home and there was a hole in the side of the lighthouse. We couldn’t get through the front door, it was jammed by some fallen bricks, I had to phase us in.”
Todd rolls his cup back and forth in his hands, the water’s barely tinted by the tea. He watches the yellow light of the booth lamp bounce off it, unable to bring himself to look at Kitty.
“Kurt was on Brian’s back. They didn’t see us come in at first. He had his arm around Brian’s neck, trying to get him to go down. Brian couldn’t reach him, was swatting at his head and shoulders, swearing a blue streak.” Kitty huffs a ghost of a laugh, then her face falls, crumpling in on itself, “Then–”
She cuts off, taking a long gulp from her cup, “Then Brian grabbed Kurt by his leg and he screamed.”
Todd spins his cup too fast and it tips, sloshing over his fingers. He curses and Kitty snatches a handful of napkins from the dispenser and presses them over his fingers and the table. He glances up at her. Her blue eyes are red-rimmed, her face puffy beneath them.
“I thought that’s when his leg broke. Kurt told me later it snapped when Brian threw him into the wall the first time.” She says, her nails are short, painted a shimmering lavender. Her calloused fingers rasp lightly against the back of Todd’s hand as she balls up the wet napkin.
“Where is this asshole?” Todd asks, refilling both their cups. The waiter sets what looks like the world’s smallest bowl of ungarnished pho doused in chili oil and soy sauce on their table and Kitty makes a pleased little hum in her throat.
She snaps her chopsticks apart, pausing right before she shoves them directly into the bowl, “Do you give a shit if we eat from the same bowl?”
Todd blinks at her, wiggling his own chopsticks between his fingers, “Figured you’d be less inclined to double dip with me than vice versa, Kit Kat.”
“Maybe when I was sixteen and an asshole.” She says, shrugging, “Now I’m twenty-two, had a shit week, and sharing incidental spit with my best friend’s boyfriend really feels like small potatoes.”
Todd snorts, covering the way his heart still flips at the word “boyfriend” in this context, “Aight, fair. I’m cool if you cool.”
Kitty gives him a look like she knows he’s a sap but dives into the noodles without further hesitation, slurping a massive bite into her mouth before scooping up a spoonful of broth, “Oh, this was such a good choice.”
Todd scoops up his own bite and then another, reaching with his free hand for the spoon before the second bite even gets to his mouth. The noodles are glass clear, more a texture than a flavor, but the broth is a sour, sweet, salty spice, and what he initially took to be peanuts floating in it are something else, crunchy and nutty and amazing.
“Oh fuck. That is good.” He says, mouth full.
Kitty nods, “Kurt’s gonna lose his shit when we bring him this. He doesn’t have internal damage, so the doctor cleared him to eat what he wants earlier this morning.”
The noodles in Todd’s stomach slither, twist themselves into knots. He sucks in a breath, thinks about Kurt joking that this is the only way Todd would visit him here in the cold months when he stepped through the door. Thinks about how the nurse said the blue mutant can go to rehab in a couple of days, be home in a week. His food stops feeling like it’s about to crawl back up his throat.
She slurps up another bite before clearing her throat, “Captain Britain Corps took Brian somewhere. They showed up after he snatched Kurt off his back and flung him across the room. Rachel caught him before he could smash into anything, pulled him out of the way as Meggan got between them. I stayed next to her with my hand on her, in case Brian decided to take a swing at us too.”
Todd sucks his teeth. “Shit, You’re telling me Union Jack’s that kind of asshole?”
Kitty shakes her head, sniffling. Her eyes look wet again and Todd doubts that it’s from the spice. “Brian could be a dick, but never like that. Mostly he complained about Meggan being clingy and bitched us out for questioning his plans or not running drills exactly how he wanted. This was off the wall. Even if he argued with Kurt a lot.”
Todd twirls his noodles around his chopsticks. Kurt mentioned being frustrated with the tall blond on more than one occasion, from the way the older man scolded him for being too touchy-feely in his mentorship of a local mutant group to how the guy complained about his girlfriend wanting to go out on dates every week. But the blue mutant always made him sound like that friend who’s kind of a putz but had his heart in the right enough place to keep hanging with. Kurt still trusted him enough to take orders from him, and that didn’t come easily after he left the X-Geeks.
“So why the fuck did he suddenly bring down the house on blueberry’s head?” Todd asks as the rest of their food arrives. The smell of garlic and green onions and rich sauce hits him in the face and he shoves a bite in his mouth before he finishes the question.
Kitty grunts around her own mouthful, “Possession.”
Todd almost chokes on his food, taking a drink around the lump in his throat, “You’re shitting me? This asshole is trying to claim the fucking devil made him do it.”
Kitty snorts, shaking her head. She pushes her food around on her plate, mirth leaving her quickly, “No, seriously. Something weird is up. Rachel said his thoughts weren’t making sense, but not in a ‘bad mental health way’ in a ‘Brian isn’t alone in his head’ way and one of the Corp members who can do magic stuff said he had some weird energy clinging to him that was feeding off his fears, so…” she shrugs, tapering off.
“So, What set him off on Kurt? You said he was fucking sleeping when the guy jumped him.” Todd asks, taking a bite of his eggroll to banish the image of dark lashes flickering in dreams, of a fist interrupting that slumber. The eggroll is all cabbage and no flavor, but crispy, which buys it a lot of grace. He chews until the lump in his throat disappears. Swallows. He sweeps the rest of the eggroll through the sauce on his plate before popping it in his mouth in one improbably large bite. He catches Kitty staring at him and opens his mouth to show her its mashed remains.
“Oh gross.” She grimaces, before sticking out her own food-covered tongue, face still scrunched up. Todd chokes on his drink, a laugh falling out of him at Lance’s pristine ex-turned-wing-woman showing him her half-chewed lunch. She cracks up right after him, leaning back to slump against the faded vinyl of the booth bench. They fade into quiet after a few minutes, Kitty drops her hands to her lap as she studies the water-stained ceiling tiles, “You know how Kurt talks in his sleep?”
Todd snickers, thinking of all the times he’s woken up in the night thinking that the blue mutant’s talking to him, only to realize he’s saying word salad, dead asleep and oblivious. One night, he’d rolled over when Kurt was quiet and murmured a question into one pointed ear. Kurt answered him, the response as nonsensical as Todd had hoped, and the amphibious mutant had laughed so hard Kurt woke up and asked him what was going on.
“You mean my favorite source of entertainment after my 3 am piss?” Todd asks and Kitty smiles, giggling.
“It’s been eight years, and it’s still a sleepover highlight.” She says, before her smile drops, “He said Meggan’s name in his sleep.”
Kitty doesn’t elaborate any further and Todd stares as the silence stretches between them, “That’s it? Fuzz sleep mumbles her name and what, Imperial Tea here assumes they’re banging?”
Kitty throws her hands up, “No? Yes? I don’t know. Kurt tried explaining, but he was shaken up by that point obviously. He got woken up by Brian yanking him off the couch by his shirt yelling about sly weasels and Teutonic charm and then there was way more punching and smashing than talking after that.”
“Two-tonic what now?” Todd asks, thanking the server as they clear away their plates as a second person slips by to drop off their takeout order and the check.
“Teutonic. Apparently, it’s a weirdass way to say ‘Germanic’ or something, we had to look it up.” Kitty says as she slides the takeout order aside to grab the bill, but Todd hooks it first, “Hey!”
Todd waves her off, dropping a few of the notes he got at the exchange counter at the airport on the bill, “There’s a hole in your fucking house and you look like you’ve been sleeping in that lumpy ass armchair next to Kurt’s bed for the last three days, I can get lunch.”
Kitty twists the ends of the plastic takeout bag between her fingers, “We’ve all been crashing at a friend’s place. Piotr and Rogue are at the lighthouse now meeting with insurance agents. Our work means we’re covered for a lot of shit, but I don’t know if ‘breaking own house in weird crybaby tantrum’ counts, or what we’ll do if it doesn’t.”
“What, Captain Tightass doesn’t have hero liability insurance like the Avengers?” Todd asks.
Kitty bites her lip, “Yeah, I mean, it should probably be fine, it’s just–” she waves her hands through the air.
“A shitshow you weren’t expecting?” Todd drawls, taking his change from the server. He pauses a second before sliding it back in his wallet, brain stuttering over the fact that not tipping doesn’t mean fucking someone out of rent here.
Kitty slumps back in the booth again, rustling the take-out bag in her fingers as she blows out a breath, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s about right.”
They linger a minute, both slouching against the seats, the weight of the last few days hanging heavy across their shoulders. There’s a twinge in Todd’s chest when he realizes he won’t be curling up next to Kurt tonight whining that he’s cold until the furred mutant gives in and allows him to press his clammy toes against Kurt’s velvety calves. The twinge flares into rage when it strikes him that he won’t even get to curl up in the blue mutant’s bed, surrounded by Kurt’s smell thanks to Captain Asshole. A rattling hiss slips from his throat without his permission.
“I feel that,” Kitty says, voice flat. She glances at her phone. “Rogue and Piotr are on their way over to see Kurt. We can head back and feed him before going over to Ilyana’s.” She looks up at Todd, “I know I’m in no position to talk, but you look like you’re fifteen minutes from passing out.”
Todd cracks his neck with a grunt. He’d slept on the plane, but in that half-dreaming, fitful way filled with the sounds of his fellow passengers and the hiss of the recycled air, flickering with nightmares. “I could probably sleep.”
Kitty snorts as they slide out from the table and schlep their way to the door, but doesn’t call him on it. They make it a few blocks down before Kitty hesitates a second, swinging the takeout bag by her side. Todd glances at her from the corner of his eye.
“Kurt did have a crush on Meggan when we first got here,” Kitty confesses, voice small like she’s admitting guilt. “But he never did anything then. Or now.” Todd barks a laugh.
“No shit,” He says, “ I heard for weeks about how her laugh sounds like bells ringing and she reads to local kids and uses her powers to turn into all the characters and do the voices and she helps out at the local farm co-op because her elemental powers help her understand what all the plants need the first time you two came here.”
Kitty elbows him, “Take it that was a rough few weeks?”
Todd shrugs, eyes roaming over the water trickling through the gutters.
Back then he and Kurt had barely solidified what “long-distance” really meant with the blue mutant moving away with Kitty on some kind of full-ride superhero scholarship in Europe. They’d never been exclusive, but the distance made everything more daunting. Made it harder for him to believe he was worth keeping in rotation. Then one morning, Kurt called him on the edge of tears, barely waiting for Todd to pick up the phone before he choked out that he missed him. That he was having a wonderful time and spent every little air bubble of “not busy” time wishing Todd was there and did he miss him too? Todd’s facade of “everything is good” cracked in half and he started crying right alongside him. The distance still sucked, but suddenly he felt less uncertain about it all.
Now, Todd grunts, “I love him to bits and blueberry gets about five crushes a week, seven if he’s going out a lot. I’ve learned not to take it as a deficiency on my end.”
Kitty snorts, “Did he tell you about how cute our delivery driver is? He saw them dancing while dropping off packages one day and gets disappointed now if someone else fills in the route.”
Todd cackles, “Julio, right?”
Kitty laughs, “Yeah, that’s him.”
They lapse into silence, slowing down a bit as the hospital comes into view. Todd draws to a stop, turning to look off into the grey distance up the street.
“Blue told me about his lil thing for Meggan, and also told me when it faded out after like, three months.” Todd says, looking at Kitty, “He had a crush on you too for a bit there when we were kids. Lance never made nothing of it. Even when he was enough of a hothead to shake the stadium if someone looked at him wrong.”
Kitty blows out a breath, running her hands over her face, “I know. I know. I just. I didn’t want you to think there was something there.”
Todd’s lunch rolls in his stomach, bubbling with a thousand festering insecurities about himself, the little voices that hiss to him in the dark on long nights, that whisper in his ear on the days when the sun’s too bright and his hands don’t have enough to keep busy on. He shuts his eyes, shifting his backpack on his shoulders. His thumb rolls over the plastic of his keychain. He tips his head, feels the swing of his earrings. Fire opals shot through with black tourmaline, Kurt had explained when Todd opened them on his birthday a couple of years back, after stumbling over an explanation that he figured the tiny suns weren’t really Todd’s style but they matched his eyes and Kurt couldn’t resist buying them. Todd had cut him off with his mouth, covering that he was fighting tears, unable to say that no one had ever looked at anything so precious and thought of him before. He wore them on special occasions. On days when he needed luck. He’d put them on without thinking about it before heading to the airport.
“I trust that Kurt loves me.” Todd says, looking at Kitty, “That he wouldn’t fuck around like that and not include me.” They’d had enough misunderstandings and out-and-out fights and rebuildings to prove that trust.
Kitty smiles, “He does. You know he sleeps with that ridiculous frog you got him every night?”
Todd snickers, nodding. He’d found the frog online late one night surfing the web in a fog of insomnia. The picture was horrendous, a neon green body that invoked those hockey penalty box suits with traffic cone orange legs and a vacant expression in its red bobble eyes. Todd added it to his cart before he’d even made up his mind, thanking the soulless gods of free shipping. Kurt sent him a photo of the frog peeking out of the box, one leg dangling limply over the edge when it arrived, a series of question marks underneath it. Todd texted back “for when you miss my cold feet at night.” The next time he visited, he saw the frog, Princey, he was informed, nestled on the bed between the pillows as if it had always been there.
Kitty’s smile fades, “Shit. I don’t even know what our rooms are like. Rachel and Meggan peeked through the windows, but we can’t go upstairs in case any of the major support beams are damaged.”
Todd bumps her shoulder with his, “Hey, pretty sure that sweet super insurance money will cover a few stuffed frogs with everything else.”
Kitty nods, shuffling ahead a few steps before freezing again, staring into the alleyway between the hospital and the block of shops beside it. “Meggan?”
There’s a soft, wet sound from the alley, a cut-off sob, as Todd quickly closes the gap between him and Kitty.
Todd bites his cheek to keep from gasping as he looks at the huddled figure leaning against the alley wall in a bright coral trench coat. He’s met the woman before, and seen what Kurt called her “empathic shapeshifting” in action, but never like this. She looks like something out of a late-night horror movie, skin writhing and sunken like a rubber zombie popping up from a grave.
“Meggan, where have you been staying?” Kitty asks, pushing the takeout bag into Todd’s hands without looking back as she lurches into the alley. Todd feels a chill run down his neck. Kurt had asked after Meggan when Todd was visiting him, and Kitty had said she was still really shaken up, but she was safe and the others were checking in with her. He’d assumed she was with everyone else. Apparently, that guess was wrong.
Meggan flinches back from Kitty like she’s a beacon, too bright to look at. The older mutant shakes her head, “I got a hotel room. It’s fine.”
“Rachel’s the only one who’s seen you for days.” Kitty insists, darting forward to grab the other woman’s arm, like she’s afraid she’ll fly away otherwise. Todd realizes that might be a very real possibility all things considered, “We’ve been worried.”
“I didn’t want to cause any more trouble.” Meggan starts, shaking her head, “After everything, I wanted to give you all space, but Rachel asked my help today at the lighthouse. After the insurance agents came today, we could get some things, clothes and such. Your laptop, and that music box your mom gave you, I left it at Ilyana’s. Rachel made sure Rogue had a duffel of Kurt’s things for him today, but I realized–” she pauses, slipping open her coat to reveal a faded tie-dye shirt as she pulls something out. “Well, Kurt always has this on his bed.”
She pushes something into Kitty’s open hand and Todd shuffles closer to get a better look at Kitty’s startled, “oh.”
It’s Princey. Slightly smooshed from his narrow confines, but otherwise unscathed.
“Meggan.” Kitty says voice small.
“I was hoping to catch them before they went up to see him,” Meggan says softly, looking down at the stuffed animal. She hasn’t looked either of them in the face once, her eyes sliding off the grungey bricks and wet pavement. “I know it’s silly, but…he always jokes Princey is good luck.”
Todd’s heart twists, remembering porting to the lighthouse with Kurt for the first time only to be dragged into a hug that smelled like lilacs as a voice as bright as tangerines asked how his flight was. Meggan seemed to remember every little detail Kurt ever said about Todd, based on all the questions she asked him. He’d had to slip off to the bathroom after a while to keep from bursting into tears in front of the entire Excaliber team under the attention, under the proof that Kurt talked about him so easily and often. Kurt had followed him after a few minutes, apologetic, and Todd had pulled him into the bathroom right after him to show him how little he had to be sorry for. Of course this woman who did everything she could to make Todd feel welcome on that trip knows the frog’s name. And here she is, dithering outside the hospital because she wants to make sure Kurt has this stuffed frog even though she’s too scared to give it to him.
Todd plucks Princey from Kitty’s hands and holds it out to Meggan, “He’ll be happy you brought it to him.”
She flinches back from it like Todd’s holding out a hot poker, shaking her head as she dissolves into tears.
“This is all my fault. I can’t make things worse.” She sobs. “I don’t want to upset him.”
“This is not your fucking fault, Meggan,” Kitty says, wrapping herself around the taller woman. Meggan folds in on herself, shrinking before their eyes as she sobs into Kitty’s shoulder, “Brian did this.”
“Lady, fuzz does not blame you for a damn thing.” Todd says, and Meggan’s wide eyes snap to his face, “Shit, I don’t blame you for a damn thing either if that’s what you’re scared of.”
Meggan stares at Todd for a long moment. Todd stares back. He wiggles Princey’s front legs in his outstretched hands. The older woman glances down at the stuffed frog, biting her lip. Todd squeezes Princey’s sides gently so his arms press against his face, tipping the toy’s head down in a way that he knows makes him look particularly pathetic. He wiggles it again. Meggan sighs and the tender way she looks at the toy reminds Todd so much of Kurt, of the way the blue mutant struggles to act like he doesn’t feel sorry for a half-pound of fabric and stuffing when Todd squashes Princey and gives him the whiniest voice he can manage, that he swallows to avoid tearing up.
The older mutant glances up at him. Her skin ripples, stills, and Todd doesn’t miss the way her eyes gleam gold for a moment, how her skin tinges blue. She sighs and takes Princey from his hands.
“I don’t know why he’s done this,” Meggan says running her thumbs under Princey’s eyes like she’s wiping away tears. “There’s no one else I want, it’s always him. Just him.”
She looks at Kitty, “Do you remember the movie night Brian was late to? A month ago?”
Kitty scrunches her nose, looking to the side, “Kinda, I can’t even remember what we watched.”
“Oh it doesn’t matter, I can’t either,” Meggan says, “but I remember the look on Brian’s face when he stepped into the room. The way he looked between me and Kurt before he settled down with us.”
“I remember you got up and went to him.” Kitty adds, nodding, “But we were all in a heap on the couch together. Kurt had his head on Piotr’s chest and Rachel was lying in your lap!”
“It didn’t matter.” Meggan says, and the shine that started to seep back into her blond hair turns to brass again, “All Brian noticed was my head on Kurt’s shoulder and his arm around me.”
“Well, you and I were playing footsie and you were playing with Rachel’s hair.” Kitty says, waving a hand in the air before letting it fall to her hip with a slap, “What, the other bisexual and the lesbian didn’t count?”
Meggan snorts, expression grim, “I guess Kurt is just enough a man in Brian’s eyes to be a challenge.”
“But, what, he’s enough of a sissy that Brian feels the need to say something about how Kurt uses a straw.” Kitty gripes, her face twisting in a scowl and Todd feels his blood heat again. How much did Kurt hide under vague complaints about the other man being “on his ass again?”
“Did he say that kinda shit to Colossus?” Todd asks, and the two women look at him like he’s just appeared from behind a curtain.
Kitty gives him a flat look, “Piotr wouldn’t break a spider’s web if he had a choice, but Brian’s never gonna say shit to him because he’s six and a half feet tall and built like a brick shit house.”
Meggan runs a hand through her hair, grimacing as her fingers catch on a tangle, “Brian said Kurt needed to grow thicker skin if he was going to go around looking the way he was acting like that.” She pitches her voice like she’s mimicking her boyfriend there, dropping into a snide, deep voice on the word that. Todd stares at her, and his expression must be as bitter as the acid he can taste building in his mouth because Meggan frowns, “I know. We fought about that a lot. He always drove Kurt harder than anyone else on the team and Kurt always rose up to push him right back. Brian thought I was too coddling, I thought he was being a brute about things.”
Kitty grunts in the back of her throat, her eyes trained on the ground as she scuffs a crumpled chip back with her toe. Meggan looks at her for a long moment.
“We were not the mentors you needed us to be.” She says softly, cradling Princey close to her chest. “I knew we were coming up short, but I tricked myself into thinking things were better than they were. In a lot of ways.”
Todd’s eyes find the alley wall as Kitty whips her head up. Meggan waves the younger woman off shaking her head. She looks up at the sky, eyes scanning the clouds like she’s skimming them for answers.
Meggan looks up at Todd and Kitty, “Would either of you date a nineteen-year-old.”
Kitty recoils and Todd grimaces, recalling the very abrupt end to a hookup a few months back once he realized his date was more than a couple of months shy of the drinking age that they’d pretended to be at the show they made out at the week before. He’d called up Kurt on the train ride home, feeling like a sleaze. The other mutant had teased him about carding babes in the mosh pit before leaning in for a kiss, ribbing Todd until he admitted that he hadn’t gone out of his way to find someone he saw as barely a step above a kid and that he’d gone with his gut once he’d found out.
“Exactly.” Meggan says, not waiting for a verbal answer, looking at Kitty, “You two were nineteen when you came to the lighthouse. And I was three years older than you are now. It doesn’t matter how long we know each other, in some ways, Kurt will still be that kid who hadn’t quite grown into his ears yet that followed me around all summer. I adore him. He’s a wonderful, loving, ridiculous person. I know why people make up reasons to chat with him when we’re out and why they giggle when he smiles. He’s grown into those ears.” She stops, trailing off and the flush of blue that’s built up in her skin dims a bit, “I love him. But never like that.”
She sniffles, brushing away tears, “I can’t believe he wouldn’t talk to me. All those nights he’s come home late and I’ve never doubted his answer, and he goes waging a war against windmills he never even asked me about.”
Todd catches Kitty’s eye and sees his own lostness reflected back at him. Meggan and the Captain had been together for years, nearly a decade if he remembered right. He tries to imagine that feeling, stretching out his hand in the bed expecting warm fur and getting cold sheets. Letting questions stutter from his lips only for them to plink, hard and hollow on stony silences. Tries to imagine looking into any of the eyes that hold his across tables and labs, that make him feel like the world might actually be made for the sweet things, and find out that they didn’t believe in him. Kitty reaches out and squeezes his bicep, her grip strong through his leather jacket. Todd blinks and shakes himself, looking down at her. The corners of her mouth twitch in a parody of a smile. He wonders whose backs she imagined turning away from her.
Meggan sighs and Todd’s pulled from his mental horrorshow. She looks more herself, her skin no longer a writhing mess that would make a horror effects artist green with envy, nor the soft blue of dusk. She’s still ashen, disheveled in a way that speaks to lost sleep and skipped meals. Meggan wiggles Princey’s front legs, flopping them around in loose jazz hands.
She looks at the frog seriously, holding him up so they’re nose to nose, “Kurt told me once if I kiss you, you’ll grant me a wish. Somehow I don’t think you’re strong enough for this one, little guy.”
“I dunno, maybe if we all hold hands and kiss him together it can be three days and twelve hours ago,” Todd says drily and the two women laugh. He holds up the take-out bag, giving it a little shake as he looks at Meggan, “We bring blueberry lunch, you bring him Princey.”
Meggan sucks in a breath as she looks from Todd to Kitty, squeezing Princey in her hands. Kitty squeezes her arm with a small smile.
“He’ll be so happy to see you.” She says, “Seriously.”
“He cried when I walked in.” Todd adds, “Then asked me at least three times whether he was awake or not.”
“Oh yeah.” Kitty adds, “He did the same thing with Rogue. She had to bargain with him when it was time to leave to get him to let go of her hand.”
“Hey, he didn’t bargain with me.” Todd says.
“Because your stomach was growling and you started crying right around the second time he made you promise you were real,” Kitty says shoving his shoulder. Which is true, but still.
Meggan sighs as they shuffle through the hospital doors, “You two are really selling this.”
“It’s fine. This is Excaliber Team Crybaby.” Kitty says, “Piotr will be here soon and the trifecta will be complete.”
Todd raises an eyebrow as Meggan wacks Kitty in the head with Princey’s little frog hands.
“Rachel nicknamed Kurt, Meggan, and Piotr that after the third movie night where all three of them broke down at the first swell of dramatic emotions music,” Kitty explains.
“The rest of you also cried. We were just ahead of the curve.” Meggan mutters. She hits the up button as they reach the elevator. The doors open and she pauses before stepping in, glancing down at Princey in her arms. “Well you can’t turn back time, but still.” She says, dropping a kiss on the frog's forehead before stepping through the doors and holding him out to Kitty and Todd.
Todd shares a look with Kitty, and she smirks at him. He looks down into Princey’s vacant googly eyes, a smile fighting its way onto his face. The elevator dings as they reach their floor.
They lean down together and kiss the frog.