Pyro and Wanda | Backdated 11/1
Nov. 1st, 2019 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ax_mainThe morning after the Genoshan Street Party, Wanda wakes Pyro for a talk. And eggs. And coffee.
Coffee. She needed coffee.
Rationally, Wanda knew that what she needed was water. And possibly ibuprofen. But what her brain told her was the rational thing to do was competing with her hangover insisting that coffee was exactly what she needed this morning.
The hangover, unsurprisingly, was going to win.
With a few grumbles about Eileen's alcohol tolerance, Wanda made her way to the kitchen the Brotherhood had appropriated as theirs. And paused as she headed past one of the lounges and caught sight of Pyro, passed out fully dressed on one of the chairs with a black eye that was visible even at that distance.
Lovely. A good time was had by all. Sighing, she headed into the room and gently (or relatively so, whatever, she was hungover) gave his shoulder a shake. "Hey. Coffee?"
Pyro winced, cracked one eye open, barely, and immediately shifted to his side on the armchair, mumbling something that might have been a leave me alone, if he'd managed to articulate any of those words. He could feel the hint of pain on the edge of his consciousness, and he didn't want to wake up fully. Going back to sleep it was.
Fortunately, after years of dealing with teenage morons who didn't want to wake up, Wanda spoke fluent mumble. "Yeah, no. If I'm up, you can get up. Especially since you never made it to your room."
Pyro hummed, and curled up on the armchair, still hoping to get back to sleep.
Wanda took a step backwards, her eyebrows rising as she watched him. Part of her wanted to just let him sleep; fuck knew he'd been getting too little of it for months. The rest...
Yeah, no. She was up. He could at least get moving long enough to go to bed. Besides, she wanted to know whether or not she had to go hex the shit out of whoever'd given him the black eye.
"Pyro, get your ass out of that chair before I have it dump you on the floor."
This time the tone of his hum held a definite note of fuck no, and he frowned as he stubbornly kept his eyes closed and tried to get back to sleep. Why wouldn't she let him?
With a sigh of disgust, Wanda raised a hand and fired off a hex at the chair, which obligingly collapsed as every piece of wood in it suddenly fractured, dumping its apparently comatose contents on the carpeted floor. "Up. And tell me who gave you the black eye."
"Ow!" Shit. Ugh. Talk about a wake up call. Now every soreness in Pyro's body flared to life, along with nausea and... yep, right on cue, a massive headache. He looked pale and drawn as he slowly pushed up into a sitting position, rubbing sleep crust out of his eyes. "Ow!" Right, black eye. She'd just said. "Uh. Some flatscans." Tentatively, he poked at his ribs, and everywhere else that hurt, assessing damage. Bruises, nothing broken.
Still. Everything was horrible.
"You start it, or did they?" Wanda asked as she held out a hand to help him up. There were laws, after all, that protected mutants from random assaults. On the other hand, she wasn't anxious to test them out if Pyro'd been the instigator. Lance had enough shit to do.
"They were saying shit about us," Pyro replied, and wiped a hand over his face, careful not to rub over his injured eye. Ugh. He looked at the armchair in pieces, then back at Wanda. "What'd you have to go and do that for?"
"You wouldn't get up," she explained simply, then raised her eyebrows. "How many of them are in the hospital this morning?" Because she'd really wanted a lack of people in the hospital this morning. The street party would have been a great PR thing if they could've said there'd been little to no violence.
"What?" Pyro frowned at her, trying to make sense of her question. "Do I look like they're in the hospital?"
"You look like someone got in one lucky shot," Wanda pointed out. She wiggled her fingers, tired of standing there with her hand out to help him up. "I figure if you've got a black eye, they're probably sporting third degree burns."
"I'm not a moron, I'm not gonna start roasting our citizens or whatever." Pyro glared up at her, still not wanting to get up, but he gave in and took her hand, getting up with a wince. It was clear from the way he moved that his eye wasn't the only part of him that hurt, and he instinctively kept a protective hand over his bruised ribs. "Even when they're fucking assholes."
"I appreciate that," she said with no sarcasm whatsoever. Given Pyro's temper, most likely fueled by alcohol, keeping powers out of it had taken a lot of restraint. She made a face as she watched him wince. "Do you need the hospital? Or just some ibuprofen?"
"I need to sleep off this hangover," he replied, still glaring. "...and a lot of ibuprofen."
"Then you need food, so the ibuprofen doesn't eat holes in your stomach to match the one in your head," Wanda pointed out, ignoring his glare and offering a faint, sympathetic smile. "Plus I need someone to work the coffee machine. And then you can go to bed. Preferably in your room this time." She gave his hand a tug towards the door. "Was Hellion with you, at least?"
"Nah, we got - separated at some point, I don't know where he was," Pyro replied. He would have shrugged, but that would have hurt. If he needed to work the coffee machine before she let him sleep, he was going to work the damn coffee machine, and he headed for the kitchen.
Wanda shook her head, regretted it immediately and winced, and followed along. "How many? And just what did they say?"
"I don't know, bullshit," Pyro replied, really not sure why it mattered. But the interrogation wasn't helping his headache along.
"Bullshit doesn't usually end with you moving like you were hit by a car," Wanda observed as they headed into what had been the secondary kitchen of the Prime Minister's mansion. She and Eileen had immediately claimed it for the Brotherhood's personal use, mostly because Eileen didn't need servants in her face when she was on a baking spree, but also because...well, shit like this needed a kitchen. Preferably one that wasn't all stainless steel and sterile looking.
Even better? The stove was gas. For some reason, she shorted those out less easily. "You want eggs?" she asked, dropping the previous topic as she headed for the fridge. Because yeah, she was a little queasy this morning, but it was the kind of queasy that usually got better if she ate.
"I want my bed," Pyro replied, heading straight for the coffee maker to get one going. Fancy fucking espresso machine. "But sure, I'll have eggs in the meantime." Until she decided to stop torturing him. He opened a drawer to grab the painkillers they stashed there and popped a couple of tablets into his mouth, drinking straight from the tap to swallow them. Then he grabbed a pack of peas they kept in the freezer for this express purpose, and gingerly put it against his eye. Fuck, it hurt.
"Kinda surprised you didn't end up in someone else's bed," Wanda observed as she started cracking eggs into a bowl. It wasn't as if she hadn't noticed Pyro's phenomenal ways of dealing with shit since they'd gotten to Genosha. She just couldn't decide if it was better or worse than the fights.
"I would've offered, but I was too busy getting my ass kicked," he retorted, and slumped by the espresso machine. He needed one, too, as soon as this one was done, which meant waiting for the water to heat up first.
"Hope you don't mean you'd have made me an offer," Wanda joked (or tried to) as she went to grab some milk and to see if there were any leftovers she could scramble in with the eggs. "Because that would just be seriously fucked up."
Well now his mind had gone there, and he just stared blankly ahead. "...huh."
"Don't make me hex you," Wanda threatened, her lips twitching with amusement. Because yeah. No.
"Hey, you brought it up," Pyro pointed out, and moved to grab her coffee. "Don't hex me, I'm bringing you coffee."
"And thus you get to live another day." Wanda gave in and smiled at him. "Seriously, though. As coping mechanisms go, it's probably not the worst? But maybe not the best, either."
"It beats getting my ass kicked," Pyro muttered as he handed her her mug. He dropped the peas on the counter so he'd have both hands free to set the machine up for another double espresso.
"Definitely." She took sip of the coffee, then reached over and carefully ruffled his hair before. "You should really avoid that. Why'd you go that route instead of finding some blonde in a skimpy costume to fuck, anyway?" she asked as she started grabbed a piece of leftover ham that had somehow evaded Freddy's notice and took it over to chop up with the eggs.
"It wasn't like there was a cute blonde right there ready to fuck and I went 'nope, sorry, gotta get into it with asshole flatscans'," Pyro retorted, rubbing at his forehead as he finished getting the coffee going. He grabbed the peas back up, pressed them to his eye. "I just ran into them, and they were mouthing off, and one thing led to the next, okay?"
"Really not okay." Wanda said, turning to look at him. She held up one hand to forestall any bursts, and added softly, "Not because you got in a fight, or not just that. Just because I'm worried about you. You've been...off, ever since we took over the country." Or since Magik had taken off, but she didn't want to bring that up. Or at least, not until she had to. "Want to tell me what's wrong?"
"You know what's wrong," Pyro muttered. He should have ignored her and gone straight to bed. Except then she might have destroyed his bed, too, and he liked his best. It was the best bed he'd ever had.
Wanda sighed. So much for that. "Magik," she said aloud, giving him a not-unsympathetic look before going back to chopping up the ham. "Have you heard from her at all?"
"I ran into her last night," he replied, emotions shining hard in his eyes (or the one that wasn't swollen nearly shut, anyway) as he glared at the table. Anger, sure, but also a whole lot of hurt. What if that answer was half about not answering her question? The fact that she'd never bothered to reach out after dumping him back at Asteroid M still hurt in a way he wasn't sure he could word without tears getting involved, and he wasn't proud of never having reached out either. He was such a fuck-up, anyway, or things wouldn't have ended that way. Things wouldn't have ended at all.
He swallowed back the lump in his throat and reached for his coffee.
Which explained the fight. Wanda dumped the ham and eggs into the pan without turning on the stove and walked over to him. "Didn't go well?" Pretty obviously not, or Pyro and Illyana would still be in bed. Probably after having woken her up a half dozen times. Honestly, if she'd thought the girl would have shown up, she wouldn't have been so quick to suggest her father send Xavier's group an invite. She'd have still done it, probably, but she definitely wouldn't have been so quick about it.
Pyro let out a short, unamused laugh. "In what world would it go well?" He cradled his mug in one hand, remaining where he was.
He had a point. Wanda grimaced and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "She's not worth what you're doing to yourself," she pointed out.
Pyro's good eye flashed with anger, and he shifted aside to shrug her hand off. "What am I even doing to myself? I ran into a bunch of assholes last night. Shit happens."
"Shit happens when you go looking for it," Wanda pointed out, dropping her hand to her side. "And you can't tell me you haven't been finding a whole lot of shit lately, because I'm not blind, Pyro. If you want her back that bad, go work shit out. Otherwise, you need to get over it."
"Thanks for the pep talk," Pyro told her wryly, and took a sip from his coffee.
"Arrgggh!" Wanda voiced inarticulately, throwing her hands in the air before walking back to the stove to turn on the heat, pausing just long enough to take a good sized gulp of her coffee. She'd been right - she definitely needed it. "Is it that hard to understand that I'm worried about you?"
Pyro wasn't sure why his anger escaped him now, leaving him with nothing but an inexplicable urge to cry. He was going to blame the hangover. And the beating. Maybe he was concussed. "Sorry. I'mmanna go finish sleeping," he said, his voice a little thick, and pushed away from the counter, intending to take his mug with him.
"You're not. I'm making you eggs," Wanda insisted, then pointed at the table. "Sit." She took a deep breath, exhaled, and took a moment to calm down. "Please," she added, in a much softer, hopeful tone.
Pyro hesitated for a moment, but it was Wanda, and he wanted to stop feeling like he was failing everybody he cared about. He took a seat, leaned an elbow on the table, and kept pressing the peas to his face.
Wanda stayed silent until the eggs were done, then turned off the stove and carried the frypan over to the table. Plates, forks...she held out the spatula to Pyro. "Help yourself. Just leave me some, okay?" And went over to get her coffee. She was definitely going to need it.
Pyro dropped the peas and helped them both to the eggs, dividing them more or less equally, because he didn't want her to think he didn't appreciate it. He still gave himself a little less than her, though, because he didn't really feel hungry. He waited until she came back to the table, then told her, quietly, "Thank you."
"For what, pissing you off?" Wanda waved it aside with a half smile and sat down. She wasn't especially hungry, either, but she knew better than to not eat anything. She'd just end up feeling more nauseous later if she didn't.
Pyro toyed with the eggs with his fork. "For, like, the eggs." And, since she was forcing him to say it, "And giving a shit."
Blinking in surprise (because honestly, she'd never expected him to actually answer the question), she stared at him for a moment before offering a crooked smile and shrugging. "Yeah well, you're the only newbie I've got," she joked, and didn't, all at once. "Something happens to you, they'll make me take on a new one."
"You'll have to take on mine," he pointed out with raised eyebrows. Okay, ouch, raising that one eyebrow hurt.
"Oh fuck, can you see me with Sage? Or Doug? The walking dictionary ca't say hi to me without stuttering." Wanda let out an amused snort, then shook her head. "Sorry, but no. Not accepting hand-me-downs." She leaned her head on her hand and propped her elbow on the table, picking up her fork to toy with her own eggs. "So, you're stuck with me giving a shit. Want to tell me what's going on?"
"You know what's going on," Pyro pointed out, again, and shoveled some eggs into his mouth. Nauseous or not, he rarely passed up food when it was in front of him.
"I can guess." Wanda made a face and forced herself to eat some of her eggs. "You're beating yourself up over Illyana taking off. And when you figure you're not doing a good enough job of it, you find someone else to do it for you." She knew him, after all.
Right, so, swallowing was getting real painful with that lump in his throat, but Pyro forced himself to swallow another forkful of eggs, and shrugged. If he kept staring down at his eggs, hopefully she wouldn't see the tears in his eyes.
She didn't see, but she knew. It felt like someone was gutting her, a sharp pain deep in her stomach that had nothing whatsoever to do with her hangover as she struggled to think of something, anything, that might help. That might make it better. One of the reasons she'd never taken on another newbie; Pietro and Lance were so much better at this shit than she was.
Pietro. And Lance.
"Did I ever tell you about the crush I had on Lance, way back when?" she asked quietly.
That startled Pyro into looking up at her, and he shook his head (slowly), before forcing himself to swallow. He was beginning to suspect everybody had had a crush on Lance at one point or another. It was those abs, and how much he liked showing them off.
Wanda smiled self consciously. "You ever tell anyone this, I will never make you eggs again. Be warned. But yeah, at fifteen?" She shook her head and smiled a little more. "I was just back from Agatha's, pretty much. Pietro and I were still figuring out how to get back to being what we'd been, I'd been gone for so long. And Dad brought home Lance. And fuck, I thought I was in love." Her smile tilted. "Pretty sure he never realized that. Which is a damn good thing, though I didn't think so then."
Okay, that sounded like more than just a crush, Pyro acknowledged, brow darkening. It had to have been tough when Lance and Pietro started hooking up.
She waited, a moment, to see if Pyro was going to say anything, then sighed and pushed her hand back into her hair. "Nothing happened with it - well, yeah. You know that. He and Pietro - I wasn't an idiot, even if they thought they were oh so sneaky. And I was glad for Pietro, but..." She shrugged. "I went out one night and got seriously fucked up. I mean, part of it was to piss off Dad? But that wasn't all of it. I crashed a party, made out with...fuck, probably a half dozen guys by the end of the night. And when I got home, I decided I needed a new look. Just to prove I was over it." She grinned sheepishly. "You've seen the pictures, right? I know there's one floating around from right after Freddy and Mort joined up."
"You looked hot," Pyro stated matter of factly.
"Yeah," she acknowledged with a grin. "I didn't think so the next morning when I was looking in the trash at the hair I'd chopped off, but it turned out not half bad. I lucked out." She shook her head. "Anyway, not the point. The point is - even if I'd gone for it, and Lance had been interested? It wouldn't have been either of our faults that it wouldn't have worked. We're too much alike in some ways, not enough in others, and the first time we'd have fought we'd have brought the base down on our heads. Literally." She shrugged. "Sometimes shit's no one's fault. Sometimes things just don't work out, and you move on."
"I don't even know what I did wrong," Pyro replied, looking back down at his plate now that they were talking about him again. And eating another forkful, because what else was he supposed to do?
"Maybe you didn't do anything wrong. Maybe she just felt like she needed to be somewhere else," Wanda proposed, forking up some of her own eggs before they could get cold. "Still fucked up that she didn't tell you, but that's on her, not you."
"She took a cheap shot at me, dumped me back here, and never fucking came back," Pyro pointed out, meaning a 'here' that was more 'this dimension here' than 'here here', obviously. "I'm pretty fucking sure I did something hugely wrong."
"Did you ask her?" Wanda was guessing not, even if he had run into Illyana the night before.
Pyro shook his head, still glaring down at his plate as he kept on eating. Because he was a fucking idiot, of course. He couldn't figure it out on his own, and he couldn't find it in himself to ask the one person who could've given him the answer. Because he was such an idiot that he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.
Of course he hadn't. That would've made things way too easy. Wanda sighed. "Right. So, here's your choices. You talk to her and figure out whose fault it really was? Or you accept it's not anyone's and move on. Because seriously?" She craned her head, trying to meet his eyes. "You can't keep doing this to yourself. "
Watch me, Pyro would have told pretty much anyone else. But she was Wanda, and she'd stuck with him through it all. No matter how much of an asshole he was. "What if I can't do either," he asked in a mutter.
And yeah, that made the knife in her gut twist, didn't it? Wanda forced what she hoped was something resembling a smile. A trace of one, at least. "Then you come find me, and we'll go down to the training room and I'll kick your ass until you get it out of your system. Or get drunk, or sit around and eat really crappy eggs. Ok?"
Pyro looked at her with a curious, surprised frown. "Did you really just offer to beat me up?"
Wanda rolled her eyes. "I was thinking more along the lines of hand to hand practice, but if you want to think of it as me beating you up, fine." She shrugged. "If you need more of a challenge, Pam or Billy would probably be up for it."
Yeah, that was a lot less surprising. Pyro resumed eating his eggs, then said, "They're not that crappy." Okay, so he didn't exactly have high standards when it came to food. But they were totally fine.
"Which is probably the best compliment I've ever gotten on anything I cooked." Wanda smiled for a moment, then shrugged, her eyes still worried. "Have we got a deal?"
"I'll try," he mumbled, gaze cutting back down to his plate. He couldn't do much better than that. It wasn't like he went and got beaten up all that often, anyway. He'd been drunk and he'd run into Mage. Pretty special circumstances.
It wasn't what she'd have preferred, but honestly, it was better than she'd hoped for. "Thank you," Wanda said quietly, and forked up some more eggs. Which yeah, didn't totally suck. Maybe she was getting better.
As if on cue, the espresso machine Pyro had forgotten to turn off made a weird noise, produced a small shower of sparks, then went silent as smoke escaped from its top. Pyro looked back at Wanda. "At least we got our coffee first."
Coffee. She needed coffee.
Rationally, Wanda knew that what she needed was water. And possibly ibuprofen. But what her brain told her was the rational thing to do was competing with her hangover insisting that coffee was exactly what she needed this morning.
The hangover, unsurprisingly, was going to win.
With a few grumbles about Eileen's alcohol tolerance, Wanda made her way to the kitchen the Brotherhood had appropriated as theirs. And paused as she headed past one of the lounges and caught sight of Pyro, passed out fully dressed on one of the chairs with a black eye that was visible even at that distance.
Lovely. A good time was had by all. Sighing, she headed into the room and gently (or relatively so, whatever, she was hungover) gave his shoulder a shake. "Hey. Coffee?"
Pyro winced, cracked one eye open, barely, and immediately shifted to his side on the armchair, mumbling something that might have been a leave me alone, if he'd managed to articulate any of those words. He could feel the hint of pain on the edge of his consciousness, and he didn't want to wake up fully. Going back to sleep it was.
Fortunately, after years of dealing with teenage morons who didn't want to wake up, Wanda spoke fluent mumble. "Yeah, no. If I'm up, you can get up. Especially since you never made it to your room."
Pyro hummed, and curled up on the armchair, still hoping to get back to sleep.
Wanda took a step backwards, her eyebrows rising as she watched him. Part of her wanted to just let him sleep; fuck knew he'd been getting too little of it for months. The rest...
Yeah, no. She was up. He could at least get moving long enough to go to bed. Besides, she wanted to know whether or not she had to go hex the shit out of whoever'd given him the black eye.
"Pyro, get your ass out of that chair before I have it dump you on the floor."
This time the tone of his hum held a definite note of fuck no, and he frowned as he stubbornly kept his eyes closed and tried to get back to sleep. Why wouldn't she let him?
With a sigh of disgust, Wanda raised a hand and fired off a hex at the chair, which obligingly collapsed as every piece of wood in it suddenly fractured, dumping its apparently comatose contents on the carpeted floor. "Up. And tell me who gave you the black eye."
"Ow!" Shit. Ugh. Talk about a wake up call. Now every soreness in Pyro's body flared to life, along with nausea and... yep, right on cue, a massive headache. He looked pale and drawn as he slowly pushed up into a sitting position, rubbing sleep crust out of his eyes. "Ow!" Right, black eye. She'd just said. "Uh. Some flatscans." Tentatively, he poked at his ribs, and everywhere else that hurt, assessing damage. Bruises, nothing broken.
Still. Everything was horrible.
"You start it, or did they?" Wanda asked as she held out a hand to help him up. There were laws, after all, that protected mutants from random assaults. On the other hand, she wasn't anxious to test them out if Pyro'd been the instigator. Lance had enough shit to do.
"They were saying shit about us," Pyro replied, and wiped a hand over his face, careful not to rub over his injured eye. Ugh. He looked at the armchair in pieces, then back at Wanda. "What'd you have to go and do that for?"
"You wouldn't get up," she explained simply, then raised her eyebrows. "How many of them are in the hospital this morning?" Because she'd really wanted a lack of people in the hospital this morning. The street party would have been a great PR thing if they could've said there'd been little to no violence.
"What?" Pyro frowned at her, trying to make sense of her question. "Do I look like they're in the hospital?"
"You look like someone got in one lucky shot," Wanda pointed out. She wiggled her fingers, tired of standing there with her hand out to help him up. "I figure if you've got a black eye, they're probably sporting third degree burns."
"I'm not a moron, I'm not gonna start roasting our citizens or whatever." Pyro glared up at her, still not wanting to get up, but he gave in and took her hand, getting up with a wince. It was clear from the way he moved that his eye wasn't the only part of him that hurt, and he instinctively kept a protective hand over his bruised ribs. "Even when they're fucking assholes."
"I appreciate that," she said with no sarcasm whatsoever. Given Pyro's temper, most likely fueled by alcohol, keeping powers out of it had taken a lot of restraint. She made a face as she watched him wince. "Do you need the hospital? Or just some ibuprofen?"
"I need to sleep off this hangover," he replied, still glaring. "...and a lot of ibuprofen."
"Then you need food, so the ibuprofen doesn't eat holes in your stomach to match the one in your head," Wanda pointed out, ignoring his glare and offering a faint, sympathetic smile. "Plus I need someone to work the coffee machine. And then you can go to bed. Preferably in your room this time." She gave his hand a tug towards the door. "Was Hellion with you, at least?"
"Nah, we got - separated at some point, I don't know where he was," Pyro replied. He would have shrugged, but that would have hurt. If he needed to work the coffee machine before she let him sleep, he was going to work the damn coffee machine, and he headed for the kitchen.
Wanda shook her head, regretted it immediately and winced, and followed along. "How many? And just what did they say?"
"I don't know, bullshit," Pyro replied, really not sure why it mattered. But the interrogation wasn't helping his headache along.
"Bullshit doesn't usually end with you moving like you were hit by a car," Wanda observed as they headed into what had been the secondary kitchen of the Prime Minister's mansion. She and Eileen had immediately claimed it for the Brotherhood's personal use, mostly because Eileen didn't need servants in her face when she was on a baking spree, but also because...well, shit like this needed a kitchen. Preferably one that wasn't all stainless steel and sterile looking.
Even better? The stove was gas. For some reason, she shorted those out less easily. "You want eggs?" she asked, dropping the previous topic as she headed for the fridge. Because yeah, she was a little queasy this morning, but it was the kind of queasy that usually got better if she ate.
"I want my bed," Pyro replied, heading straight for the coffee maker to get one going. Fancy fucking espresso machine. "But sure, I'll have eggs in the meantime." Until she decided to stop torturing him. He opened a drawer to grab the painkillers they stashed there and popped a couple of tablets into his mouth, drinking straight from the tap to swallow them. Then he grabbed a pack of peas they kept in the freezer for this express purpose, and gingerly put it against his eye. Fuck, it hurt.
"Kinda surprised you didn't end up in someone else's bed," Wanda observed as she started cracking eggs into a bowl. It wasn't as if she hadn't noticed Pyro's phenomenal ways of dealing with shit since they'd gotten to Genosha. She just couldn't decide if it was better or worse than the fights.
"I would've offered, but I was too busy getting my ass kicked," he retorted, and slumped by the espresso machine. He needed one, too, as soon as this one was done, which meant waiting for the water to heat up first.
"Hope you don't mean you'd have made me an offer," Wanda joked (or tried to) as she went to grab some milk and to see if there were any leftovers she could scramble in with the eggs. "Because that would just be seriously fucked up."
Well now his mind had gone there, and he just stared blankly ahead. "...huh."
"Don't make me hex you," Wanda threatened, her lips twitching with amusement. Because yeah. No.
"Hey, you brought it up," Pyro pointed out, and moved to grab her coffee. "Don't hex me, I'm bringing you coffee."
"And thus you get to live another day." Wanda gave in and smiled at him. "Seriously, though. As coping mechanisms go, it's probably not the worst? But maybe not the best, either."
"It beats getting my ass kicked," Pyro muttered as he handed her her mug. He dropped the peas on the counter so he'd have both hands free to set the machine up for another double espresso.
"Definitely." She took sip of the coffee, then reached over and carefully ruffled his hair before. "You should really avoid that. Why'd you go that route instead of finding some blonde in a skimpy costume to fuck, anyway?" she asked as she started grabbed a piece of leftover ham that had somehow evaded Freddy's notice and took it over to chop up with the eggs.
"It wasn't like there was a cute blonde right there ready to fuck and I went 'nope, sorry, gotta get into it with asshole flatscans'," Pyro retorted, rubbing at his forehead as he finished getting the coffee going. He grabbed the peas back up, pressed them to his eye. "I just ran into them, and they were mouthing off, and one thing led to the next, okay?"
"Really not okay." Wanda said, turning to look at him. She held up one hand to forestall any bursts, and added softly, "Not because you got in a fight, or not just that. Just because I'm worried about you. You've been...off, ever since we took over the country." Or since Magik had taken off, but she didn't want to bring that up. Or at least, not until she had to. "Want to tell me what's wrong?"
"You know what's wrong," Pyro muttered. He should have ignored her and gone straight to bed. Except then she might have destroyed his bed, too, and he liked his best. It was the best bed he'd ever had.
Wanda sighed. So much for that. "Magik," she said aloud, giving him a not-unsympathetic look before going back to chopping up the ham. "Have you heard from her at all?"
"I ran into her last night," he replied, emotions shining hard in his eyes (or the one that wasn't swollen nearly shut, anyway) as he glared at the table. Anger, sure, but also a whole lot of hurt. What if that answer was half about not answering her question? The fact that she'd never bothered to reach out after dumping him back at Asteroid M still hurt in a way he wasn't sure he could word without tears getting involved, and he wasn't proud of never having reached out either. He was such a fuck-up, anyway, or things wouldn't have ended that way. Things wouldn't have ended at all.
He swallowed back the lump in his throat and reached for his coffee.
Which explained the fight. Wanda dumped the ham and eggs into the pan without turning on the stove and walked over to him. "Didn't go well?" Pretty obviously not, or Pyro and Illyana would still be in bed. Probably after having woken her up a half dozen times. Honestly, if she'd thought the girl would have shown up, she wouldn't have been so quick to suggest her father send Xavier's group an invite. She'd have still done it, probably, but she definitely wouldn't have been so quick about it.
Pyro let out a short, unamused laugh. "In what world would it go well?" He cradled his mug in one hand, remaining where he was.
He had a point. Wanda grimaced and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "She's not worth what you're doing to yourself," she pointed out.
Pyro's good eye flashed with anger, and he shifted aside to shrug her hand off. "What am I even doing to myself? I ran into a bunch of assholes last night. Shit happens."
"Shit happens when you go looking for it," Wanda pointed out, dropping her hand to her side. "And you can't tell me you haven't been finding a whole lot of shit lately, because I'm not blind, Pyro. If you want her back that bad, go work shit out. Otherwise, you need to get over it."
"Thanks for the pep talk," Pyro told her wryly, and took a sip from his coffee.
"Arrgggh!" Wanda voiced inarticulately, throwing her hands in the air before walking back to the stove to turn on the heat, pausing just long enough to take a good sized gulp of her coffee. She'd been right - she definitely needed it. "Is it that hard to understand that I'm worried about you?"
Pyro wasn't sure why his anger escaped him now, leaving him with nothing but an inexplicable urge to cry. He was going to blame the hangover. And the beating. Maybe he was concussed. "Sorry. I'mmanna go finish sleeping," he said, his voice a little thick, and pushed away from the counter, intending to take his mug with him.
"You're not. I'm making you eggs," Wanda insisted, then pointed at the table. "Sit." She took a deep breath, exhaled, and took a moment to calm down. "Please," she added, in a much softer, hopeful tone.
Pyro hesitated for a moment, but it was Wanda, and he wanted to stop feeling like he was failing everybody he cared about. He took a seat, leaned an elbow on the table, and kept pressing the peas to his face.
Wanda stayed silent until the eggs were done, then turned off the stove and carried the frypan over to the table. Plates, forks...she held out the spatula to Pyro. "Help yourself. Just leave me some, okay?" And went over to get her coffee. She was definitely going to need it.
Pyro dropped the peas and helped them both to the eggs, dividing them more or less equally, because he didn't want her to think he didn't appreciate it. He still gave himself a little less than her, though, because he didn't really feel hungry. He waited until she came back to the table, then told her, quietly, "Thank you."
"For what, pissing you off?" Wanda waved it aside with a half smile and sat down. She wasn't especially hungry, either, but she knew better than to not eat anything. She'd just end up feeling more nauseous later if she didn't.
Pyro toyed with the eggs with his fork. "For, like, the eggs." And, since she was forcing him to say it, "And giving a shit."
Blinking in surprise (because honestly, she'd never expected him to actually answer the question), she stared at him for a moment before offering a crooked smile and shrugging. "Yeah well, you're the only newbie I've got," she joked, and didn't, all at once. "Something happens to you, they'll make me take on a new one."
"You'll have to take on mine," he pointed out with raised eyebrows. Okay, ouch, raising that one eyebrow hurt.
"Oh fuck, can you see me with Sage? Or Doug? The walking dictionary ca't say hi to me without stuttering." Wanda let out an amused snort, then shook her head. "Sorry, but no. Not accepting hand-me-downs." She leaned her head on her hand and propped her elbow on the table, picking up her fork to toy with her own eggs. "So, you're stuck with me giving a shit. Want to tell me what's going on?"
"You know what's going on," Pyro pointed out, again, and shoveled some eggs into his mouth. Nauseous or not, he rarely passed up food when it was in front of him.
"I can guess." Wanda made a face and forced herself to eat some of her eggs. "You're beating yourself up over Illyana taking off. And when you figure you're not doing a good enough job of it, you find someone else to do it for you." She knew him, after all.
Right, so, swallowing was getting real painful with that lump in his throat, but Pyro forced himself to swallow another forkful of eggs, and shrugged. If he kept staring down at his eggs, hopefully she wouldn't see the tears in his eyes.
She didn't see, but she knew. It felt like someone was gutting her, a sharp pain deep in her stomach that had nothing whatsoever to do with her hangover as she struggled to think of something, anything, that might help. That might make it better. One of the reasons she'd never taken on another newbie; Pietro and Lance were so much better at this shit than she was.
Pietro. And Lance.
"Did I ever tell you about the crush I had on Lance, way back when?" she asked quietly.
That startled Pyro into looking up at her, and he shook his head (slowly), before forcing himself to swallow. He was beginning to suspect everybody had had a crush on Lance at one point or another. It was those abs, and how much he liked showing them off.
Wanda smiled self consciously. "You ever tell anyone this, I will never make you eggs again. Be warned. But yeah, at fifteen?" She shook her head and smiled a little more. "I was just back from Agatha's, pretty much. Pietro and I were still figuring out how to get back to being what we'd been, I'd been gone for so long. And Dad brought home Lance. And fuck, I thought I was in love." Her smile tilted. "Pretty sure he never realized that. Which is a damn good thing, though I didn't think so then."
Okay, that sounded like more than just a crush, Pyro acknowledged, brow darkening. It had to have been tough when Lance and Pietro started hooking up.
She waited, a moment, to see if Pyro was going to say anything, then sighed and pushed her hand back into her hair. "Nothing happened with it - well, yeah. You know that. He and Pietro - I wasn't an idiot, even if they thought they were oh so sneaky. And I was glad for Pietro, but..." She shrugged. "I went out one night and got seriously fucked up. I mean, part of it was to piss off Dad? But that wasn't all of it. I crashed a party, made out with...fuck, probably a half dozen guys by the end of the night. And when I got home, I decided I needed a new look. Just to prove I was over it." She grinned sheepishly. "You've seen the pictures, right? I know there's one floating around from right after Freddy and Mort joined up."
"You looked hot," Pyro stated matter of factly.
"Yeah," she acknowledged with a grin. "I didn't think so the next morning when I was looking in the trash at the hair I'd chopped off, but it turned out not half bad. I lucked out." She shook her head. "Anyway, not the point. The point is - even if I'd gone for it, and Lance had been interested? It wouldn't have been either of our faults that it wouldn't have worked. We're too much alike in some ways, not enough in others, and the first time we'd have fought we'd have brought the base down on our heads. Literally." She shrugged. "Sometimes shit's no one's fault. Sometimes things just don't work out, and you move on."
"I don't even know what I did wrong," Pyro replied, looking back down at his plate now that they were talking about him again. And eating another forkful, because what else was he supposed to do?
"Maybe you didn't do anything wrong. Maybe she just felt like she needed to be somewhere else," Wanda proposed, forking up some of her own eggs before they could get cold. "Still fucked up that she didn't tell you, but that's on her, not you."
"She took a cheap shot at me, dumped me back here, and never fucking came back," Pyro pointed out, meaning a 'here' that was more 'this dimension here' than 'here here', obviously. "I'm pretty fucking sure I did something hugely wrong."
"Did you ask her?" Wanda was guessing not, even if he had run into Illyana the night before.
Pyro shook his head, still glaring down at his plate as he kept on eating. Because he was a fucking idiot, of course. He couldn't figure it out on his own, and he couldn't find it in himself to ask the one person who could've given him the answer. Because he was such an idiot that he wasn't sure he wanted the answer.
Of course he hadn't. That would've made things way too easy. Wanda sighed. "Right. So, here's your choices. You talk to her and figure out whose fault it really was? Or you accept it's not anyone's and move on. Because seriously?" She craned her head, trying to meet his eyes. "You can't keep doing this to yourself. "
Watch me, Pyro would have told pretty much anyone else. But she was Wanda, and she'd stuck with him through it all. No matter how much of an asshole he was. "What if I can't do either," he asked in a mutter.
And yeah, that made the knife in her gut twist, didn't it? Wanda forced what she hoped was something resembling a smile. A trace of one, at least. "Then you come find me, and we'll go down to the training room and I'll kick your ass until you get it out of your system. Or get drunk, or sit around and eat really crappy eggs. Ok?"
Pyro looked at her with a curious, surprised frown. "Did you really just offer to beat me up?"
Wanda rolled her eyes. "I was thinking more along the lines of hand to hand practice, but if you want to think of it as me beating you up, fine." She shrugged. "If you need more of a challenge, Pam or Billy would probably be up for it."
Yeah, that was a lot less surprising. Pyro resumed eating his eggs, then said, "They're not that crappy." Okay, so he didn't exactly have high standards when it came to food. But they were totally fine.
"Which is probably the best compliment I've ever gotten on anything I cooked." Wanda smiled for a moment, then shrugged, her eyes still worried. "Have we got a deal?"
"I'll try," he mumbled, gaze cutting back down to his plate. He couldn't do much better than that. It wasn't like he went and got beaten up all that often, anyway. He'd been drunk and he'd run into Mage. Pretty special circumstances.
It wasn't what she'd have preferred, but honestly, it was better than she'd hoped for. "Thank you," Wanda said quietly, and forked up some more eggs. Which yeah, didn't totally suck. Maybe she was getting better.
As if on cue, the espresso machine Pyro had forgotten to turn off made a weird noise, produced a small shower of sparks, then went silent as smoke escaped from its top. Pyro looked back at Wanda. "At least we got our coffee first."
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Date: 2019-11-07 11:50 pm (UTC)Sage: *leaves Ibuprofen outside the door to his room*
Wanda, you are a champ. Even if they now need a new espresso machine.
>.<
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Date: 2019-11-08 02:11 am (UTC)And Wanda gets an A+ in Comforting a Dumbass.
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Date: 2019-11-08 02:27 am (UTC)Me, not Yana. But her too.