Steve and Pietro, backdated to March 31

[om_clarius]

After being confronted with sneaking glances at Claudia, Steve has to deal with Pietro.

Steve wasn't watching her exactly. It was lunch. There were a lot of people here who ate, never mind that he usually preferred to make something for himself. The cooks here were good, but he knew how he preferred his food to be made and it wasn't the way someone who prepared stuff for dozens of people cooked it. But still, talking to Jack hadn't actually resolved any of the Claudia-related...or maybe Olivia-related...issues he still had. So he was in the cafeteria, reading yet another book on Buddhism. He kept thinking that there was something about this being zen. He could use something like that in his life. All the ups and downs he kept having.

He didn't notice that, even as he kept glancing up from his book to check on Claudia, there was something else checking on him.

Someone else being Pietro Maximoff. He'd been sitting with Remy having lunch, but opted to hang around after dude left to have a cigarette... because the way New Guy Jack Kissed was staring at Claudia was starting to weird him out pretty bad.

Boyfriend gone, Pietro zipped over to Steve, sending the pages of his book whizzing back a few chapters. "Hey there, new guy. Whatcha lookin' at?" But the glint in his eye said he already knew and was very, very suspicious.

"Just wondering who's here," Steve lied easily. He lifted his book and waved it around a little. "I get lost in this and the next thing I know, half of the people I thought were here are gone."

"Yeah, you know..." Pietro leaned one hip against New Guy's table, crossing his arms over his She-Ra shirt. "Funny thing about superspeed is, you all talk, think, and move in slow-mo to me. So it's hard for me to miss a trick. Especially when you keep staring at the same much younger girl who's not paying any attention at all to you and doesn't seem to want to all through lunch. And that's just today."

Confrontational? Hey, look, there was enough creepy shit that went down around here. The dude seemed nice enough but... that was just not gonna fly on Pietro's watch, okay.

"What is it with everyone's assumption that I want to sleep with her?" Steve muttered. Of course, there'd only been Jack and he couldn't really be counted as 'everyone', but still. "i don't. And I don't want to hurt her, either. I'm just looking out for her." And here he'd thought that Jack had been the only one who'd noticed. He sighed.

Pietro's eyebrows went up. He was clearly unconvinced. "Do you even know her? Because--I mean, she doesn't look like she knows you. Or wants to. Much. So as someone who does know her and look out for her, that strikes me as a liiiiiiiiiiittle bit weird."

"We're part of the insomniac's anonymous club," Steve replied dryly.

"I have been known to require a 3am snack myself," Pietro said, his tone almost businesslike, it was so clipped. "So you know her, but you're not, like, friends enough to sit together at lunch. Just enough to watch her. Constantly."

"I'm reading," Steve reminded the guy. It wasn't an excuse so much as a statement of what he was doing, but some people would have assumed that Steve meant the reason he wasn't sitting with her was because he was busy reading. "And before you continue to accuse me of things, do I at least get your name?"

Pietro rolled his eyes at the, "I'm reading." If by reading he meant reading-and-stalking-Claudia, then yeah, okay. Was Jack even serious about kissing this guy? He'd seemed okay from his journal entries, but what the hell was this even? "Pietro Maximoff. Superspeed, headmaster's kid, twin brother--actually, whatever else you've heard is probably also true.

"And you're Steve Jinks."

Dawning recognition passed over Steve's face and his features hardened a little. Of course he knew the name. Thanks to Harley. And maybe it wasn't any of his business if Jack kissed anyone, kissed the entire damn school, but it still gnawed at him and he couldn't help it. "Seems like you already know everything you need to."

Pietro's eyebrows went straight up. "Oooh, getting sassy. Must've heard something really bad about me."

"And I've heard everything I need to," Steve continued, not bothering to add what 'bad' he'd heard about Pietro. Especially since it honestly wasn't that bad.

Pietro's smirk was getting downright mean, now, though his voice was all delighted. "It must've been really bad if it's bad enough for the stalker to be judging me. What was it, come on? Shady make-out sessions? Sneaking in vodka? Getting high in the boat house? Dating a hot Cajun thief?"

A muscle right near Steve's temple twitched at the first of Pietro's suggestions although his eyes narrowed even further at the expression on Pietro's face. What, exactly, had Jack seen in him? "I'm not a stalker," he said, although he was judging Pietro.

"Better not be," Pietro said brightly. "Wait, no, I know! Wild nights of debauchery on the town with Tony Stark? Was that it?"

Steve pressed his lips together. "Are we done here?"

Pietro pretended to consider this. "You seem pretty done. Alas for you, I'm just getting started."

He suddenly appeared in the seat next to Steve, deciding to try a different tack, since the head on one wasn't working out, and launched directly into one of his (in)famous breathless tirades: "Let's suppose, just suppose for a second that you're not actually a creepy stalker. And let's say you had a friend who was a much younger girl who was being followed and watched by some older dude who claimed he wanted to 'look out for her'--except this 'looking out for her' happened during totally random times when she was in absolutely zero danger of anything larger than maybe a piece of shell in her egg salad. And say when you confronted him about this, he refused to explain himself further, and beyond that, treated you like you had personally pooped in his cereal that morning.

"Tell me, Nice Guy Judgy Steve: what would you think?"

"I would think," Steve said slowly, "that the person didn't go to this school. I've heard some of the stories. People being kidnapped and maybe it wasn't from the school, but can you absolutely say that the people here are safe? And even if they were, school is never a completely safe place." He knew from experience, after all. "And I think that if the person doing the confronting bothered to think before saying whatever came first out of his mouth, he might put two and two together and figure out there's more to this than he seems to think."

And then, just in case he hadn't worked it out, yet, Steve added, "Go back to your sister." His feelings on Claudia were more than just the fact that she looked like his sister. He hadn't even seen it the first time they'd met, or else he'd ignored it, but now he couldn't unsee it. And now, when he looked at her, it reminded him that each new day meant he was that much closer to summer break, when his mother would be expecting him to come home. And it was one more day when he had to deal with the fact that he would never see his sister again.

"One: yes, in this room, right now, everyone is as safe as they're gonna get. You're being weird. Two: I always think about what comes out of my mouth, because I have time to read a book between starting a sentence and finishing it slow enough for you to understand me." Pietro was ticking these things off on his fingers. "And three: I'm guessing the sister thing is the second 'two' I'm supposed to put with the first 'two', so I think it's kinda absurd of you to have expected me to put them together before you said it. Just saying."

Pietro stood, both palms flat on the table. He kinda got it now. At least, as much as he needed to. Steve's (little?) sister wasn't around. Maybe he was looking for a replacement. Still kinda creepy, but less creepy than the alternative, and Claudia could handle it. "Glad you got the picture back though. That was not cool."

"I was expecting to be left alone." Up until that point, Steve had been trying to keep his cool. He knew people were worried about his intentions towards Claudia and he knew he couldn't really blame them for it, but it was still frustrating to hear person after person come up to him and try to protect her. From him. Add to that the fact that he knew about Pietro and Jack and it was one of the reasons he still wasn't sure what to make of the boy and that he was pretty sure Pietro was just being plain snotty and it all lead to Steve's own mouth running away from him. Maybe he shouldn't have called Pietro out on doing the same.

"I'm surprised Jack hasn't mentioned the poor kid whose sister was shot in some kind of robbery gone wrong or that Claudia looks enough like her that it's actually a little creepy, but tell me. How would you act if the one person you knew you could count on was gone?" He might have been acting a little mental, but there was only so much he could deal with. Livvy, finding out about his mother, about his powers, moving here, and now finding someone who looked enough like Livvy that they could have been sisters in another life. There was only so much he could handle without going a little mad.

"I'd be dead," Pietro said, immediately and with absolute seriousness. It was no secret; everyone who knew him knew he wouldn't survive without Wanda--he couldn't even imagine what would happen if she'd been--nope. Couldn't think of it. Could. Not. He had known that Steve's sister 'wasn't around', yes; he hadn't known it had fuck all to do with Claudia, and couldn't understand why he should've. "You're a stronger man than I am, Judgy Steve, and that's a fact. I'm truly sorry you've had to be.

"And Jack did mention you, but he's not really the kind of guy who goes around spilling other peoples family histories."

"Funny, for someone who doesn't do a lot of sharing, he still does a lot of investigating." Steve sighed. He wasn't really mad at Jack, not anymore. He wasn't really mad at anyone. He just wanted the ache in his chest to go away. "And you might be a bit premature about the 'stronger' part." He didn't really feel alive. At least not most of the time. He'd heard the term 'walking wounded' once in one of his History classes and that's just what he felt like.

"Yeah, that's Jack's MO in a nutshell," Pietro said with a little snort of a laugh. "I'm kinda premature about most things--it's a superspeed thing. Wait, no, please don't let your imagination run wild with that. I swear, it's not as bad as it sounds."

Okay, so Pietro couldn't help himself, it was right there.

And Steve knew he shouldn't laugh - it wasn't even that funny - but he did. Just a little. "You were the one who said it like that and if your mind runs half as fast as your mouth does, you'd have been able to pick the words you must have wanted." Maybe he could see how Jack could like Pietro.

"Okay, okay, but I make up for it other ways." Pietro smirked--and only narrowly avoided a little wink. He was totally satisfied with Steve's answer now, though. He got it. Maybe it was slightly odd, but not creepy--at least, not in anything but the most inoffensive of ways. Creepy adorable more than creepy creepy. That, Pietro could get behind.

The problem, Steve found, was that he didn't want to like Pietro. He was one of the three reasons he had for not wanting to be too interested in Jack. The problem really wasn't that he didn't want to like Pietro, the problem was that he found himself liking the guy despite himself now that he couldn't keep the anger up. "Are you going to sit?" he finally said. "Or just stand up there and judge?"

"Oh, look who's talking--I came over here to give you shit and you ended up giving me way more, Judgy Steve!" Pietro was back to chirping, though. A gust of wind, and suddenly he was seated beside Steve--with a juice box, of all things, in hand. "Okay now we're done fencing--seriously what'd you hear? It must've been something bad, seriously. If I pissed someone off they probably deserved it. Unless it was last month. I was just a straight up dick last month. Family stuff. You don't wanna know."

Straight from one awkward topic and right into another. There were days (weeks, months) when Steve felt like he was just plain cursed. "Nothing," he said, flushing. "Just...you coming after me." There were times when Steve could be a good liar and times when he could not and this was one of the latter times. Definitely.

"You're blushing," Pietro said, after a long suck on his juicebox straw. "Did I embarrass you, coming after you? I tried to keep it down; I don't think anyone noticed."

"No," Steve said before he could help himself.

"Oh, good," Pietro said cheerfully. "I just naturally draw attention sometimes and don't realize. It becomes habit."

"I can handle attention. I'm used to newspaper reporters." Okay, so maybe he hadn't had to deal with those for two long, but every time something about the case stirred up media attention, they were back for more.

Pietro's brow furrowed. "You famous or something?" But by the time it was out of his mouth, he'd guessed: "Or, you mean, for the badness? Was it recent?"

Steve shrugged. "Enough. It's not the kind of thing you forget quickly."

"No doubt," Pietro said, eyebrows high. The thought was making him sick to his stomach, so he sipped at his juice box again. "Well, the good news is I generally draw the good kind of attention. Depending on who's in the room. People are pretty tolerant of superspeed bullshit around here."

"What kind of bullshit?" Steve asked, hoping to get right into another subject and it sounded like what Pietro might speak best about was Pietro.

"Attention mongering, neediness, sudden startling appearances, nosiness, self-absorption, detachment from reality, super long soliloquies, absurd libido, eating all the food ever," Came the immediate response.

And Steve's takeaway from that was, "So clearly I'm going to have to make more than I usually do when I know you're coming."

Pietro grinned. "More is generally better, when it comes to me, yes."

Now that they were on topics that weren't either Claudia or Jack, Steve found himself relaxing. "How much more are we talking?"

"It varies." And Pietro went completely sincere, here. "Depends on how much I burn in a given day--but it's always at least ten times what normal kids eat, just speaking from observation. That's if I torture myself and don't do more than a morning run. That--that's kinda non-negotiable or I start bouncing off walls, even if I totally stay away from caffeine or sugar."

"Right," Steve said, unable to keep himself from staring a little. "So if you're going to be eating anything I cook, I need to make enough to feed a small army."

"I can make do with, like, fifteen normal-sized meals throughout the day," Pietro assured him. "And snacks between.

"Are you cooking for me?" he asked brightly.

"If I'm cooking near you," Steve corrected, "I know how much to make. I've cooked for a lot of people."

Pietro's naturally pouty lower lip jutted out. "Ohhhhhh-kay. Well, that's cool. I should probably learn how but it just takes. so. long. Like, I'm pretty sure my own personal hell will involve waiting for water to boil."

"Go off and write the next great American novel," Steve suggested.

"That's my mother's deal," Pietro said with a grin. "Mystery writer extraordinaire."

"See? It runs in the family. You write a novel while you're waiting for the water to boil." It made sense to Steve.

"I feel like it'd come out like one long novel like that totally fucked up first evening in New York in the Great Gatsby. A room full of people partying and screwing each other over. No one wants to read that," Pietro said with a smirk. "But if it happens, you just volunteered as a beta reader."

Steve knew when he'd been defeated by his own nature and he nodded ruefully. "Fair enough. I'm not much of a fiction reader. Just a warning."

"Really?" Pietro asked, mildly surprised. "Just non-fiction, huh? Don't get me wrong, I read a lot of it too, but I read a lot of everything.

"Nothing like a good story, is all I'm saying."

Steve shrugged. "At the moment, real life is strange enough for me." It was like walking straight into a science fiction novel sometimes.

"Oh honey," Pietro said, eyebrows high. "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Steve narrowed his eyes at Pietro, but he couldn't really give a proper retort. After all. It was probably true.