Pete & Daisy

1: The Set Up

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"Marguerite! You're going to be late!"

She rolled over and contemplated being "sick" for the day. Which wasn't too hard to contemplate, considering how she was feeling lately. Between the mood swings, fatigue, nausea and all around suck-itude of life in general, spending the day in bed being "sick" was sounding really fucking good.

Being pregnant sucked ass.

But she had a paper due, a paper that her professor had insisted be handwritten, to discourage the "copy-and-paste" method of writing favored by some of her classmates. So she sighed and sat up.

Her room looked out onto 150th Street, showing a lovely, tree-lined New York City thoroughfare on what appeared to be another gorgeous fall day. The pretty view did nothing to improve her mood.

"Coming, Granny!" she called down the hall.

She shook her head at herself as she glanced in the mirror, and her reflection shook her head back at her. Red hair, curly to the point of springiness, bounced in a halo all over her head. Blue eyes, bleary from lack of sleep, stared back at her. Taken as a whole, she didn't really look like a "Marguerite"; in fact, if there were anyone, anywhere on the planet who looked less like a "Marguerite", she'd like to see her.

"You look like shit," she said to her reflection. She winced as she pulled her bra on; as if it weren't tight enough, her boobs were already getting bigger at an alarming rate. Why? It's not as if there were even a baby yet to nurse from them or whatever.

She turned sideways, but her trim stomach was just as flat as it had been yesterday. By her best calculations, she was barely seven weeks, yet for some reason, her breasts had exploded already. WTAF?

She sighed, considered attempting to tame her unruly hair, decided she probably wasn't going to run into Justin Trudeau on her way to school, and just flapped a hand at her twin in the mirror and headed toward the kitchen.

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"Dude!"

Pietro turned, smiling the easy smile he was known for. He stopped and waited for Evan to catch up to him, watching the compact blond boy who had hailed him approach. Evan was just as glad to see Pietro, and grinned at his much taller friend.

"You look especially dapper today, man, you meeting someone after class?" Evan clapped a hand on Pietro's shoulder as he spoke.

"Dapper? I don't know that word," he confessed, raising his eyebrows and blinking green eyes owlishly. The two walked across the open expanse of Columbia University toward their first class. "I'm just a provincial exchange student from the countryside of Italy, such words are beyond me.

"I do know, though, that we're late, Evan, so move those short legs faster, eh?" He slung an arm around his friend as the two hurried toward their 10:30 class.

"You figure out where you're going to live?" Evan asked.

Pietro knitted his brows together, turning serious. "It's too early in the morning to talk about this," he complained. "I worried about it all night, and I have no idea what to do. I'm losing my apartment at the end of the month, and I'm foreign, so I'm not allowed to work--" he stopped to appreciate two girls who were walking in the opposite direction, admiring them from every angle before turning back to his friend--"so you tell me, Evan, what should I do?" He blinked.

The two girls laughed, knowing they were being watched by the tall guy with the good hair. They turned and waved at the boys before continuing their walk toward some unknown destination on the sprawling Columbia campus.