The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Chapter Twelve (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch, Uberbeta and EMPRESS OF MULTITASKING… packed yet? ;) InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and sparkled for archiving/hosting! ProPhile… okay, okay… longer! Soonish, lol. Morgan: w00t for bravery! Readers/Reviewers: In a week or so, updates MIGHT get spotty in terms of every day or not… BUT they will come! *twirls* Thanks for reading/reviewing! *throws roses *

Amara looked down her nose disdainfully at Lucas, who was turning a brilliant shade of red. “Shouldn’t he be talking by now?” she asked Rogue without once taking her eyes from the squalling child. “Or at least not crying all the time?”
Rogue rolled her eyes, her fingers in her ears. “He’s a baby, Amara. It’s what they do… sometimes.” She remembered younger days, babysitting neighborhood kids and little cousins and how some would cry at the drop of a hat but others would be the most calm, placid things even in the face of danger. “Or not…” She stood on her toes to peer down into the play pen. “Is he hungry?”
“How the Hell should I know?” Amara snapped. Gingerly, she reached down to pick up Lucas, touching him with just the tips of her fingers. “In Nova Roma, we had wet nurses for this!” She closed her eyes tightly as she was forced to actually pick up the baby, due to Rogue’s paranoia and the fact that Lucas was now shrieking his displeasure. “Oh, ew. He squishes!”
Rogue sighed. “He needs to be changed.”
“Into what?”
The taller girl vented a laugh at Amara’s expression. “C’mon, you’re not that dense. You’ve been here long enough to know these things.” She turned her back and walked towards the bedroom where the changing table was kept. After a moment, she heard Amara following her, Lucas’s slowing cries coming closer. “I’ll set the stuff out but you have to change him. I don’t wanna risk it.”
Amara abandoned all pretense of not knowing that babies needed clean diapers and laid Lucas down on the plastic surface. In near silent efficiency, Rogue laid out all the supplies while the Nova Roman wriggled Lucas out of his little outfit that Tabby insisted on dressing him in, even after Wanda pointed out it’s impracticality several times over. Rogue leaned close but not close enough for one of Lucas’s waving limbs to accidentally touch her. After several hissed invectives about sticky tape fastenings and the nature of their task, Lucas was clean and dry, and Amara was disgusted. “I am never having children,” she declared. “I’ll adopt one that already has this,” she made a sweeping gesture towards the changing table, “done with.”
Rogue stopped in her tracks, feeling her breath leave her in a rush. She had thought about it before but for some reason, it just seemed to hit her full force. She would never have her own children, she thought helplessly. She could not even make the choice whether or not to have children, she did not have an option… she could not even adopt, she wailed inwardly, because she couldn’t touch another person’s skin… “Huh?”
Amara frowned. Rogue had stopped in the doorway to the bedroom, staring into space. She almost did not notice her friend’s reticence to return to the den, chattering away and not really expecting an answer for almost a minute before she notice Rogue’s lack of snorting, muttering and general her-ness in the conversation. “I said, are you going to make Todd crawl for forgiveness?”
“Uh…no,” she muttered, shaking herself from her depressing contemplation. “I’m getting a drink. Want a soda?”
“Ice water,” Amara corrected, putting Lucas back in his play pen.1 She trailed Rogue into the tiny kitchen and frowned, blocking the doorway. “What do you mean, no?”
“I just don’t see the point in it. He expressed an honest feeling and never said he’d actually ACT on it…” She handed Amara a bottle of cold water and wandered to the kitchen table, stopping to stare down at the bowl of loose change and hair pins Wanda had gathered from under the sofa and recliner earlier in the day. She shrugged and opened her soda. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Like Hell!” Amara burst. She cringed as Lucas snuffled but his impending wail faded into happy smacking noises as he found his favorite blanket. “Rogue, he disrespected you!”
“He’s human. He’s allowed sex fantasies,” she sighed, turning her soda can around in her hands.
Amara rolled her eyes. “Oh, grow a spine!” She stomped her foot and frowned. “Where’s your usual self? You’re not going to let him tell you he wonders what other women are like in bed TO YOUR FACE then let that go? My gods, Rogue!” Amara strode over and forced Rogue to face her, continuing sternly, “Be a top2, for crying out loud!”
The Southerner looked at her friend for a long moment before bursting into uncontrolled giggles. “ Geez, Amara, for someone who is surprised by the microwave every time it works, you sure know a lot of slang…”
Amara jerked her chin defiantly, not wanting to explain her stash of magazines purloined from Jubilee and lately, Paige and Theresa. “Focus, Rogue. You have to make Todd understand that you aren’t some sex toy…”
“Amara,” Rogue’s gloved hand, the one she did not trust to touch Lucas even through his clothes as well as hers, shot out and grabbed her friend’s chin. “Shut. Up.” Before Amara could try to rally another outburst, the phone rang shrilly, startling Lucas into another fit of wailing. “Fucking hell… you get him, I’ll get this!”
Jean was startled by Rogue’s vehement greeting. “Hello to you, too, Mary Sunshine,” she responded with false brightness.
“What is it, Jean?” Rogue sighed, expecting some emergency or some new complication to their lives.
“When you get home, do you think you could help me move some stuff?”
Rogue paused, listening. It sounded as if Jean was already doing so, the sound of wood furniture scraping in the background and the faintly distracted tone in her voice bespeaking mental exertion. “Uh, okay… what is it?”
“About ten boxes and some small furniture…”
“Where to?”
“The main house… I’m moving back in.”
“Oh… you and Scott are moving back now? Cool.” Rogue smiled faintly. “It’ll be good having you back.”
“Uh, no. Just… me…”

1 Something about Magma drinking ice water just makes me giggle…
2 A top is the dominant one in the relationship