This is just basic Lancitty goodness, but I had a lot of fun with this. I'm about halfway through a multi-chapter Lance/Kitty fic, but I'm trying to find inspiration again, so I'm posting this. It seems like that ship is slowly dying, but maybe I'm wrong (I hope I am).

Disclaimer: Not mine.

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The World is a Fried Egg Sandwich
An X-Men: Evolution fanfic by Bowles
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They're sitting against a tree in the park across the street from their favorite ice cream shop. He's got a double scoop waffle cone (one scoop lime and one rocky road), and she's got a book she has to read for her English report (Atlas Shrugged – she needs the extra credit). He's her backrest, and their moments of comfortable silence are only interrupted by generous offers – but she's two weeks into month-long hiatus from ice cream, as Kurt's bet her twenty dollars she can't live without it – and the occasional philosophical musing on life.

"Do you think we're a crumb?" he asks, and she knows him enough to know that he'll clarify. He does, in his own way. 'I think we're a crumb."

"A crumb," she says, but it's not a question.

"A crumb," he says, but it's not an answer.

She tilts her head back against his shoulder so that she's staring straight up at him. He's got a trickle of chocolate running from the corner of his mouth, and she reaches up and wipes it off with her thumb. She licks the liquid off her finger as she contemplates his statement.

"You're not supposed to eat ice cream," he says, more joking than accusatory.

"It's melted," she points out. "It doesn't count."

"I guess. Don't worry, I won't tell Blue."

"I knew you wouldn't." She shifts her gaze back to her book and pretends to read. "And we're a crumb."

"I think so," he agrees. The prospect of skipping out on reading and just checking out the page on Cliff Notes is becoming more attractive by the second. "I was eating a sandwich earlier and –"

"Wait," she interjects. "Was it a good sandwich?"

Lance laughs at her upturned face and her mock seriousness. She shivers a little as each broken chortle vibrates down her spine, but it's definitely not a bad feeling.

"It was a very good sandwich. Freddy made it," he offers for explanation. "But anyway."

"You were eating a sandwich," she reminds him.

"Yep, I was eating a sandwich." He's back in his deep reflective mode now. Kitty loves it when he does that. "And I was thinking to myself, how many crumbs are in a sandwich?"

"Probably like a bajillion. Or some cool theoretical number I can't even pronounce."

"That's what I thought. And then I thought to myself, what are we to the world?"

She closes her book and asks, "What do you mean?"

"Okay, so let's say the world is a sandwich," Lance says, cupping his hands into a sphere and then as if he was holding said sandwich. "If the world is a sandwich, what does that make us? A crumb?"

"I don't know," she replies. "We could be the mustard."

"Yeah, I thought about that, but the mustard is spread all over the sandwich. I dunno if we're spread all over the world."

"Hm. Maybe we're part of the meat?"

He's caught somewhere between a cough and a laugh. "Uh… I don't think so. At least, I hope not."

"Why?" Her eyes narrow as he doesn't answer. "It was a ham sandwich, wasn't it?"

"Maybe."

Her fingers go to the Star of David necklace around her neck and she sighs. "Okay. We're not the meat."

"I thought you were a vegetarian anyways," he teases her.

"You're right," Kitty decides. "The world is totally not a ham sandwich."

"So what is it?" he asks.

She takes a moment to deliberate. "The world is a fried egg sandwich."

"Mmm." He runs his tongue across his lips and pulls her a tad closer to him. "I love fried egg sandwiches. I always knew you had good taste, Pretty Kitty."

"Well, obviously," she says in a half-giggle, running her fingertips across the underside of his throat. He doesn't flinch. "I like you, don't I?"

"Yes," he breathes. "Great taste."

"You forgot," she states, but it's not an accusation. "What are we?"

"The yolk. It's the best part."

"I never liked the yolk. Except for when you, like, poke it all out and then sop it up with a biscuit or a piece of toast. And it always gets on my shirt!"

"That's because you're not careful."

"And you are?"

She traces her thumb across a chocolate stain on his shirt and he admits defeat. "Good point."

"So we're not the yolk," she decides.

"Who said that? The yolk is the best part."

"But we're not careful!"

"But the yolk just is. I wouldn't mind being the yolk. It just seems like it, I dunno, kinda floats along, minds its own business."

"And then you stab a fork in it and it all comes pouring out."

"Hm." He teases her hair with his nose. "Yeah, that's probably some bad metaphor or something. You should do this for your English class. You could go through all the symbolism of the fried egg sandwich."

She lets out another laugh, a wonderful note of happiness that's stuck somewhere between D and E flat that makes Lance appreciate dissonance as he never has before. "I'm sure that'd get me a great grade. Can you see Professor X's face when I tell him I wrote about a fried egg sandwich for my English report?"

"No no no, think about what Grey would look like. She'd levitate every sofa in the house all at once and start going on about how I'm a terrible influence on you."

"She doesn't hate you, Lance," Kitty says, and she means it.

"Whatever. She doesn't like me, at least." He licks his ice cream, making sure that it doesn't drip on her. "What about the seasoning?"

"A lot of people don't use seasoning," she points out.

"What?"

"I said a lot of people don't use seasoning."

"But the seasoning is the best part!"

"I thought," she pauses, amused, "that you said the yolk was the best part."

"I did." This confession does nothing to stop him from rattling off a list of seasonings. "Salt, pepper, garlic salt, sea salt, this really great seasoning at a restaurant a few blocks down, that one with the swanky valet service…"

"I really don't think we're the seasoning. I think we're pretty important –"

He growls (but it's not a threat), "You'd better not say seasoning isn't important!"

"– but some total losers think that seasoning isn't important."

"Well, who cares what they think? They don't matter. I'm used to people saying I don't matter. I like it when people say I don't matter. It gets me all riled up to go out and make 'em look like idiots."

She silently reflects on this. His free hand finds hers as he sets down the remains of the waffle cone, and their fingers lock together. Her hand doesn't fit perfectly in his – his palms are rough and calloused, while hers are soft, and his knuckles overlap hers – but she likes the unevenness, the unevenness that seems to define their relationship. He's not her, and she's not him, and sometimes they're exact opposites, but she never feels better (safer, happier, more whole) than when his hand is locked in hers.

"I think we're the crust," she decides, and he knows it's the answer.

"Not a crumb?"

"Not a crumb. The crust."

"The crust." He etches invisible patterns on the heel of her hand. "Why the crust?"

"Because it keeps everything together. It stabilizes everything."

A chortle. "We are not stable."

"Puh-lease, Lance. We spend our free time saving the world. Our lives are devoted to keeping things stable."

"Huh. Yeah, I can see that. Not big on the whole hero business myself, but I think I get what you're saying."

"And it's underappreciated. Everyone rips it off, but I love the crust. It's filling and crumbly and just there."

"Yeah, the crust is seriously undervalued," he says, smiling. "Like us."

"And it's on the outside," she finishes.

"The outside?"

"It's part of the sandwich, but it's on the outside. It's like us. An outsider. But it's also, like, it's also ready to break off at any second." Her eyes flit dangerously to his. "Ready to go off and do something stupid."

"Mmm," he murmurs in her ear. "I'm good at that."

"Do something incredibly stupid but incredibly brave and incredibly right," she continues, her lips tickling his neck.

"And incredibly dangerous."

"Incredibly fun."

"Incredibly reckless."

"Incredibly selfless."

"Incredibly impulsive."

She thinks of the book lying forgotten at her feet. "Nothing wrong with being impulsive every once in a while, huh?"

"I always knew you were my kinda girl, Pryde."

"Ditto."

He grins. "Even when I brought the ceiling down on your head?"

"Maybe not always. Maybe it was subconscious or something. We had a bunch of stuff about Freud on our exam last week, and he was totally into that subconscious dreamy stuff."

"It doesn't matter," he says. "What matters is now. And now, now, we're here."

"We are."

Their eyes meet, and their lips graze each other for a clandestine second, but they don't need physical affirmation any more. They're at a different level of understanding. They know it's a cliché but they're not just going to take on the world, they're going to take on the world and win, win convincingly, so that no one ever dares to doubt them again.

"We're the crust," he says, but it's not an ultimatum; they're so much more than that.

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