Thinking of You While I'm Dreaming

There it was again.

John Allerdyce sat up in bed, his ears straining to catch every single sound in his apartment. The place was shit and it made all sorts of weird noises, but this one was different. The sound was almost stealthy, purposeful. He frowned and concentrated, and he heard soft footfalls making their way through his wreck of a living room and into the kitchen. Then he heard the unmistakable screech of his refrigerator door as it was opened by inexpert hands. "Son of a bitch!" he cursed. He reached for his lighter and got out of bed. Some asshole was trying to rob him. If the bastard had gone for his TV, he wouldn't have minded. It was a piece of junk anyway. But to steal a man's food, - that was just wrong.

He crept towards the kitchen, wielding a fireball in his right hand. And there was the little shit, rummaging through his cupboards. "Hey!" he called out angrily. He was about to hurl the fireball at the intruder when he recognized who it was. "Jesus Christ! Kitty?!"

"Oh, hi!" she chirped. "Did I wake you?"

He scowled at her. "What the hell are you doing here? And eating my cereal?"

She popped some cornflakes into her mouth and chewed. "Couldn't sleep," she mumbled. He rolled his eyes. The woman had absolutely no manners. "Warren and I broke up."

Oh, shit. It was going to be another one of those nights. He sighed and sat down by the table. She sat down too, still eating the cornflakes. "You know, you don't have a single drop of milk anywhere in this place," she told him. "It's disgusting eating cornflakes without milk."

"Really? Doesn't seem to be stopping you," he remarked wryly.

"They're chocolate strawberry-flavored, my favorite," she said, still busily chewing.

He grimaced at the sight. He absolutely hated the damn cornflakes, but he knew she liked them, so he always kept a box of the stuff in the cupboard for whenever she came around. Which happened too often for his peace of mind. What was the point in moving out of the mansion when the mansion's most annoying resident kept waltzing in and out of his place whenever she felt like it? The rest of the stupid X-Men were just as bad. Bobby and Rogue seemed to have declared the couch as their very own sovereign state. Logan would come by every week for their ongoing "Who can drink more alcohol and still be able to walk the next day?" contest because he just wouldn't accept the fact that John could outdrink him. And Storm, Miss High-and-Mighty herself, would sometimes drop in to actually check if he had any dirty laundry that he was neglecting to wash. It was fucking humiliating.

But, of course, the worst was Kitty Pryde. When he was granted a conditional pardon, he went back to the Institute because, simply, he had nowhere else to go. From the moment he set foot in the school again, she was right in his face, adopting him as some kind of social cause until everyone stopped whispering about him whenever his back was turned and he became, more or less, an accepted member of the team. Along the way, they developed an odd sort of friendship which obviously made her feel that she had the right to invade his privacy at any hour of the day and night. Especially when she just went through the latest one in her alarmingly long line of boyfriends and she needed someone to talk to about the most current drama in her life.

He was a fool, he knew it, but he had to ask. "So, what happened with Warren?"

"He asked me to go away with him, spend a few weeks in an island or something. Then I just started freaking out!" she said. "Why do I always do that? Just when a guy wants to take things to the next level, I go insane! What is wrong with me? Warren's a wonderful guy! Who wouldn't want to go away with him to an island somewhere? He's any woman's dream, for God's sake!"

This rant went on for quite a while. John tuned out the rest of it. He had the script memorized by now. She would moan for about twenty minutes about her unfortunate habit of "letting the good ones go", then thirty minutes would be spent analyzing every aspect of the relationship so she could come up with reasons on "why it wouldn't have worked out anyway", and, lastly, she would despair of ever finding "the one" for perhaps forty minutes, before finally exhausting herself to the point that she would fall asleep with her head on the table and he would have to carry her to his bed while he would spend the rest of the night on the lumpy couch.

It was then that John decided he was thoroughly sick of it all.

"Pryde, shut up," he told her.

"Excuse me?" She was surprised at the sudden interruption.

"Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!" he repeated. "Enough is enough, you crazy commitophobe! I can't take this anymore! Why can't you just let me have a good night's sleep for once? You have been driving me insane for these past two years and it has to stop! I want you to leave! Leave me in peace and let me sleep!"

"John, what is wrong with you?" She was completely baffled by this unexpected outburst.

"Wrong? You wanna know what's wrong?" He suddenly grabbed her and shook her in frustration. "I'm in love with you, you twit!" he shouted right to her face.

She looked stunned. Her eyes became so wide that he thought they were in danger of popping out of their sockets at any second. "Did you – just call me a twit?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"Aargh!" He held his head in pain. "Fucking typical! She only heard the twit part!"

"John, I – I had no idea." She seemed to be hyperventilating.

"Well, of course not!" he snapped. "Of course you don't have a single clue! You're Kitty It's-all-about-me Pryde! What do you know, or care, about other people's feelings?"

"I –"

"Just leave," he said. He was suddenly very calm. "Please leave."

She left. Once she was gone, he took the box of cereal and threw it violently out the window of his little kitchen. He felt a bit better after that. Then he went back to bed. And didn't sleep a wink.

By morning, he was feeling the urge to throw his phone out the window, too. He kept staring at it, wanting desperately to call her and apologize for being a total ass. It wasn't her fault that she was oblivious of his true feelings. He wasn't exactly Mr. Expressive when it came to things like that. But, to hell with it. No way was he going to call her. One humiliation was more than he could take. He spent the day eating pizza and Chinese takeout in front of the TV, trying to convince himself into hating her. When that didn't work, and he couldn't even dislike her at least, he decided to try to get some sleep instead.

A very loud knocking woke him up later. When he checked the time, he saw that it was fourteen past eleven at night. Groggily, he got up to answer the door.

"Who the hell - Kitty?" He gaped at her. "Now you knock?"

"Shut up, Allerdyce," she said before grabbing his head and planting her lips firmly on his.

Okay. She was kissing him. He always knew it would feel like this, like falling, like spinning. Hmm. Very nice. Kittykat. Sweet. Sweet. Oh, he loved this. Woah. Where'd she learn to do that?

He pulled away and took a deep steadying breath. "Am I dreaming this?" he wondered. He sounded dazed.

"No," she shook her head. She kissed him again. "We both just woke up."

The End