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Battery’s room at the X-Mansion is a mess. Or, close enough to a mess. Close enough to where he’d start to consider it a mess, even though it’s a far cry from some of the other rooms in terms of cleanliness.
The floor is almost spotless, save for a couple of clean, balled up socks and his project for biology sitting in the corner, white glue and pink paint drying.
Then Kitty comes in and his entire floor gets covered in pictures and magazines and clothing styles.
“It’s not even prom,” Kurt points out, sitting on Battery’s bed, looking down at Kitty. “Why does it matter why you wear?”
Kitty looks up at him like he’s crazy. “Of course it matters, it’s a party.”
“A party where Lance is going to be,” Battery remarks, laying next to Kurt and looking at one of the printed pictures of clothes from some website.
Kitty throws a magazine at his face. “I’m not going there for him,” she says. “I’m just going there to have a good time with my friends.”
“Then why weren’t we invited?” wonders Kurt, tail wrapped around a photo of a girl in a pink shirt with a star across the middle.
Kitty shrugs, dragging her hair back and out of her face. “The kids at school invited me. I can’t have a plus two.”
Battery flashes a grin and Kurt looks over at him, catching his eye, which only serves in making Battery’s grin brighten like a thousand suns, distant and beaming.
Battery, in all of his willingness, has not had good, honest friends his age until he became a student at Xaiver’s. Try as he might, he feels like he comes off odder—and sometimes feels older—than he wants to be. He knows Kurt, and he knows that Kurt understands, but he still finds himself practicing facial movements in the mirror, watching how his face moves, and trying to copy the faces of other people from memory.
Sometimes he feels like he’s on the outside looking in. Sometimes he feels like he’s scrambling to try and catch up and understand what everything is about.
He’s already years and years behind in school, and being years and years behind socially is not ideal.
“What? What’s with that face?” Kitty wonders, bemused.
“I’d be your plus two?” Battery asks. He thinks parties for high schoolers—or dances, or wherever Kitty is going—don’t make much sense. He’s seen the movies, and they all seem like kids trying to grow up fast, as fast as possible. On the TV, they always look like they’re trying to emulate what they think adults do.
(and Battery, who’s been too close to adults before, who’s watched them die and be torn apart and burned and poisoned and pierced, he knows how adults work, how they act. They aren’t and drinking and dancing and having sex. He isn’t sure why anybody ever think that.)
Kitty shrugs, turning back to the images of the printed Tiktok outfits all spread out on the floor in front of her. “You or Evan,” she says, “Scott and Jean would be too busy making heart eyes each other and Rogue— I don’t know actually. I guess I could have invited her. I would definitely invite you and Kurt though.”
Kitty is late for the after school danger room session the next day. Then the next day, and the next, and then Professor X got sick of it and grounded her for the week.
“Can he even do that?” Rogue asks as they are leaving the danger room.
Battery shrugs. “It’s his house,” he responds.
“I can’t believe he’d do this!” Kitty says, when they’re back in Battery’s room. “The party is tonight!”
Battery attempts to traces the outline of Kurt’s tail as it flicks into his lap. “Where did you even go? Or have been going.”
Kitty shrugs. “Out with some friends from school.”
Battery and Kurt share a look.
“Don’t worry about it. The Professor forgets what it’s like to be a teenager.”
“Yeah,” Battery agrees, “there will be other parties.”
Kitty rubs her face. “It won’t be this party.”
“Your school friends won’t mind,” Kurt assures, even though he doesn’t know who these school friends are. Battery realizes that he doesn’t even know. The only person he can think of that could possibly know is Rogue.
She sighs, then flops down onto her back. “This sucks so much,” she groans. Then, she lifts her head up. “Wait. Can’t you just teleport me there?”
Kurt’s ears tilt down, catlike. “I don’t know.”
She sits up. “C’mon, please? It will just be in and out, you don’t have to stick around. I’ll text you when I’m ready to come back.”
Battery looks at Kurt. Kurt looks at Battery.
“Fine. Okay,” Kurt says, tail lashing. “As long as it’s quick.”
After dinner, Kitty and Kurt sneaks out of their respective rooms and into Battery’s.
“How did you manage to get passed Rogue?” asks Battery, throwing Kitty her chosen outfit he had stashed under his bed. Having one of the cleanest rooms in the X Mansion counts for something, after all. Even if that something is aiding and abetting against the Professor.
(The Professor, just the man who fed and clothed Battery. The man who taught him that his mutation wasn’t a prize to be won, or a curse to be feared. A man who tries his best to make semi-quarterly therapy sessions enjoyable to him, even when Battery tries his best to completely block him out from mind reading.)
Kitty motions for the boys to turn around. When they do, she starts slipping into her outfit. “I didn’t. I told her I’d buy her any CD she wanted next time we’re in the city.”
Kurt says something in German under his breath, arms crossed, eyes shut tight—with one of Battery’s hands over his face for good measure—leaning against the post of Battery’s bed.
“Are you worried?” Battery asks, “about getting in trouble.”
Battery can hear Kurt’s tail against the side of his bed. “No— I just— don’t have a good feeling about this party.”
“It’s not a party, it’s basically a hang out. You two can turn around now,” Kitty says.
When Battery opens his eyes, she’s changed and doing her makeup in a small mirror.
“You seriously need a mirror in here,” she says, focused.
“There’s a myth in my culture about mirrors. It’s a long story about a coyote that I won’t get into, but it basically says that mirror and vainity is bad,” Battery remarks. The room did have a mirror when he had first moved in, all of the bedrooms in the Mansion have them, but Battery had kept his covered up and hidden in the downstairs closet for so long that the Professor had to talk to him about it. (The main reason being: that nobody could get around the large mirror to get the extra linens. Battery didn’t even know what a linen was.)
Kitty closes her mirror and tucks it into the purse she had her clothes wrapped around. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” she says, sincerely.
Battery isn’t sure how to accept a sincere apology, so he just nods and says it’s okay. She didn’t mean anything by it, and Battery is used to any mocking about his culture anyways.
“Are you ready?” asks Kurt, turning the dial on his watch. His holoform flickers to life, like a candle. Battery is almosy mesmorized by it.
Kitty’s nerves bounce off onto Battery’s. He takes a step back. “Yeah,” she answers. “I think so.”
“Just to the school, right? Your friends are picking you up from there?” Kurt restates, grabbing her hand.
She squeezes his hand, nodding. Kurt grabs Battery’s hand.
The teleportation isn’t as loud as Battery always expects it to be. Maybe it’s because Kurt comes in loud. He’s a relatively loud person, why wouldn’t this part of his mutation be just as loud?
When they get to the school, Lance is already waiting for Kitty, leaning against a side wall.
Bayville High really doesn’t care about vandals, Battery thinks curiously as Kitty tries to hide the fact that she’s going to hang out with a member of the Brotherhood.
It’s not as if Battery and Kurt didn’t know. They aren’t stupid. They somehow managed to trip and stumble over each other in a way that signified their attraction to one another. They can read people. They’re basically match-makers.
Or, at least that’s what Battery is saying as he and Kurt tease Kitty for her new boyfriend.
“Guys!” Kitty hisses under her breath. “Quick in and out, remember?”
Kurt grins misheviously at her. “What if we wanted to crash the party?” he teases, throwing his arm around Battery’s shoulder and tugging him into his side.
“Well, you can’t. C’mon, please?” she says.
“Okay! Okay!” Kurt agrees, un-holoformed fangs peaking over his lips. “Just make sure to say hi to your boyfriend for me.”
Kitty’s face turns a shade darker as she pushes Kurt—although, playfully—and goes to speak with Lance.
“Baby’s first sneaking out,” Battery says, arms crossed, trying not to burst into a fit of happy, amused giggles.
Kurt matches his attempt.
Kitty does text Kurt when she wants back. Kurt’s already asleep on Battery’s bed, and groans when he gets woken up.
When Kurt and Kitty teleport back—sans a missing Battery, who fell right back asleep before Kurt even left—she is covered in glitter and has a smile plastered onto her face.