Institutionalized

INSTITUTIONALIZED CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), mille mille grazie for the energy AND betaing. InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink, beware of the hordes of muses I'm sending y'alls' way...they do housework, too! Readers/Reviewers: One of the armadillos has decided it's in love with a Killer Kitty Minion (tm). Oy.




Roberto liked the Institute. Really, he did. That's why, he realized, he had to sever ties with the Hellions and Emma. Fast. Roulette would come looking for him when he did not show for her little meeting in the woods but until then, he had a window of opportunity to make good the break. "Hey, man...where you going?"
"Sam...um...Just...out. Yeah. Out."
Sam Guthrie raised a brow and smirked. "Trollin'?"
"Que?"
"Trollin'...lookin' for girls? I heard Jubilee sayin' there was some new club open in town...might have some luck there."
"Ah...gracias." Roberto smiled and hoped Sam would let it drop.
"Hey, you know what? I'll go with ya...nothin' goin' on here and I'm sick of Paige mopin' about that British guy...Let's go!"
Roberto felt his smile slip a little. "I don't want to keep you from...uh..."
Sam spread his hands wide and laughed. "From what? I'm just sitting here watching Sports Center...Let's go and see what we can find, huh?"
Roberto cringed as Sam stood and patted his pockets, making sure he had his wallet handy. "You know, I was just going to drive around..."
"That's fine, too! I just want to get some fresh air, so to speak...come on, man! It'll be fun!"
Roberto sighed. "If you say..."

Kitty did not sleep much after Warren had found Tarot. Instead, she had eventually been shooed back to bed by Beast and snuck back into Kurt's room soon thereafter. He had welcomed her back sleepily, never really reawakening, even when she tried to tell him what had happened. In the end, she had just tried to sleep but only succeeded in snatching a few minutes here and there, her mind whirling and aching as something tried to bring itself through for her attention. It was nearly dawn when she crept from Kurt's room to her own, changing clothes and then heading towards the gym only to find Baby curled up in the foyer, sleeping deeply. "There you are," she whispered. "Next time leave a note or something..." She padded past so as not to wake the dog and found herself blissfully alone in the massive gym. _Jean has no idea what she's talking about...just because I've slacked off a few days. Weeks. Okay, several. Damn it, that doesn't mean I'm going to be a bench warmer for the X Men. _ She found the heavy bag and set to work, not bothering with the preliminaries as she worked herself into a sweaty frenzy. She was slightly woozy from lack of food, having skipped the kitchen in order to get to the gym early, and she wondered if she should have brought some water with her as the floor seemed to tilt for a moment. _Whoa...slow down, Pryde. _ Kitty backed away from the bag and headed towards the treadmill, fully intending to run a good half hour before having to make an appearance at breakfast. _Wait a sec...the Danger Room is back online...hell, why didn't I think of that sooner? _ Ignoring the cramps in her thighs, she pushed herself out of the gym and down the hall to the elevators, already trying to decide which sim to run and which would be best for Jean's idea of being properly ready for being on Alpha team.
The Danger Room was ready to go, thanks to Logan's vigilant attention to the workings of the thing. All she had to do was choose the program and key it to her voice controls, an easy task, before going into the room itself. Kitty was only slightly out of breath from her work on the heavy bag when she got to the Danger Room proper. "Sim four-point-six, Pryde version, overlay with random audio six three two." She took several deep breaths as the room altered, the walls seeming to grow and change, becoming a rather decent replica of the foyer, rec room and downstairs study at the Institute. The sim swung into action before Kitty was truly ready, holographic attackers and real projectiles combining to throw her quickly off guard, making her phase more than she really wanted to. "Fuck!" she swore to the room in general as she narrowly missed being struck by a flying metal disc, the projectile disappearing into the holograph. The sim picked up in intensity, the objects and false predators coming at faster rates, Kitty trying nearly beyond her capacity to keep from being struck.
Almost without warning, the sim stopped, the temporary reality blinking out of existence and all objects in play falling to the ground, leaving Kitty standing, panting and a little confused. "Katzchen," Kurt's stern tones came over the intercom, "what the Hell are you doing?"
"Running a sim," she said as if he were particularly simple, making herself stand upright and control her breathing.
"Alone? Kitty..." there was a pause and he was in front of her, scowling slightly with his arms crossed over his chest. "That's dangerous!"
She rolled her eyes. "I made it...I know the ins and outs of it!"
"It didn't look that way when I came in."
"What are you doing here, anyway? It's early..."
"You got up. I thought you'd be back and when you were gone for almost an hour..." He shrugged. "You'd come look for me."
"True." She gave up trying to breathe evenly and gave into the urge to pant slightly. "Well, you can go back to bed. I'm fine."
"You haven't eaten and you're tired. Come back upstairs and we'll do this later..." He reached for her arm but was met with resistance. "Katzchen..."
"Don't worry about me not eating...I'm fine. Worry about Erika, instead. Aren't you going to go see her today?"
"I thought that you were coming with me," he replied, almost accusingly.
Kitty was torn. She wanted to use all the free time she had to build up to the "required" level of physicality for the team, but on the other hand, she wanted to be with Kurt and see Erika, as well. Finally, she sighed and said, "I'll come with, but tonight I'm doing two hours down here, like it or not."
Kurt nodded, sure he could convince her otherwise when they returned, and ported them both to her room. Kitty moved about, gathering clean clothes and a towel before heading into the shower. Kurt followed, settling on the counter as she adjusted the hot and cold taps. "Katja's been acting strangely since the accident, Mama says...she didn't say anything to you, did she?"
"Your mother? No...should she have?" Kitty asked, playing dumb as she stripped off her sweaty clothes with an ease around him that she would not have felt a year before. She pulled her ponytail loose and quirked a brow, waiting for his response.
Kurt shook himself slightly, the blood in his brain trying to head southwards as Kitty stood before him naked, the steam from the shower snaking out of the cubicle and around her body as she waited. "Uh, I meant Katja. Did Katja say anything to you? Or Anja?"
"Oh...well then..." She turned her back to him and fiddled again with the taps, hoping that for once she was not ostimstimating her charms and he was reasonably distracted. "Hand me that washcloth, would you?"
Kurt did not take his eyes off of her as he reached in the direction of the towel rack, grabbing the cloth hanging there and handing it to her distractedly. "So..."
"Hmmm?" she asked, stepping into the shower and leaving the door open. "Something else you wanted to tell me?"
Kurt stared as she closed her eyes and tipped her head back to wet her hair, the rivulets of water sluicing from her neck down her breasts made him lose his train of thought for a moment as he followed their paths. "Um...well, I was asking if Katja or Anja had said anything to you..."
"Not recently," she said quickly, not quite lying. "Is my soap out there?"
Kurt broke his gaze from her naked, wet body and looked around the sink and counter for any sign of soap. "No," he said, looking back to see that she held it in her hand.
"Sorry...just couldn't see it with all the steam," she said sheepishly. "Damn it, I can't reach my back..."
Kurt knew she was just saying that--she could reach her own back when he was not there-but he took the bait and hopped from the counter, taking the soap from her a second later. She smiled and turned her back to him, pulling her hair over one shoulder as he began to pass the bar over her wet skin. Acutely aware of their time constraints, Kurt exerd a d a great force of personal will and said, "I've been thinking about Empath lately."
"Just the thing a girl wants to hear her boyfriend say when she's naked and wet...the name of some other guy."
"Funny, Liebes. I've been thinking about how he acts and how people act around him. I think we need to try an experiment."
"Again with the other guy and us in the same sentence..."
"Katzchen, be serious!" He was soaping her lower back, keeping his eyes focused on the back of her neck rather than lower, more voluptuous portions of her anatomy. "I was thinking that we could maybe trick him into showing his hand, as it were."
"Oh, and how do you propose we do that?" she asked, turning to face him, causing his hand to brush across her torso in a very provocative manner. Though, she thought to herself, when one person is naked, soapy and wet, pretty much everything is provocative.
Kurt swallowed hard, his eyes traveling fKittKitty's face to her neck and shoulder then to her breasts, lingeringre fre for a long moment until moving onward to where his hand rested just above her navel. "Kitty, we need to get going."
She sighed a little and nodded. Her original intent had been to keep him from asking questions about what she may or may not know about Katja's current mood, but now she found herself done in by her own hand, so to speak, her heart racing as she saw the expression on his face, at once familiar and exciting. "I guess so...if you think so..."
"Ja, I think so..." He cleared his throat and blushed, shoving the bar of soap into her hand. "I'll wait for you out there."
Kitty emerged from the shower a few minutes later, hair damp and skin nicely pink from both the hot water and the sexual tension still churning in her belly. "Ready?"
Kurt glanced at her, half afraid that she would be naked still. Instead, she was clad in her jeans and a white shirt that seemed to have once belonged to someone much smaller than she, ing ing by how closely it clung to her, the slight dampness of her skin not helping matters any. "God, yes," he muttered, standing. He thought he saw Kitty grin as she moved past him, opening the door on Jean about to knock.
"Hey," Jean said, not bothering with the near-standard ribbing about catching them alone together. "Either of you seen Roberto or Sam?"
"No..." Kitty said, thinking it over. "Not since yesterday. Then again, I wouldn't have since we really haven't got asonason to hang out together!"
Kurt shook his head as well. "I've been so busy with my sister that I haven't noticed..."
Jean sighed. "They left last night to go to some club, Scott said, and no one's seen them since. How about Paige and Jubilee?"
Kitty brightened some at that. "Jubilee thinks she's planning a surprise party for Rogue. They probably went to MartMart for streamers and junk. But I haven't seen the guys..."
Jean looked distinctly irritated. "I swear, if they took off on a joy ride on Logan's motorcycle..."
"Ooooh," Kurt groaned. "They're dead men walking anyway, no matter where they went. It's gone?"
"Yep. Them and it are missing."
Kitty and Kurt exchanged glances. "Quick," she said, "let's out out of here before Logan puts us all on lock..."..."

Mystique smiled genuinely. "I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am that you came to me. Of course I'll help you..." She moved around the desk to stand before her newly acquired supplicant. "Where's the other one who came with you?"
"I sort of...well, I got him drunk and passed out in the hallway."
Mystique laughed aloud. "And you stole Logan's motorcycle...I must say, that's some chutzpah."
"It's Logan's?" Roberto asked, blanching. "I thought it was one of oldeolder guys'..."
"In for a penny, in for a pound," Mystique said more cheerfully than was her wont. "I'll help you with your little problem so long as you do something for me, Roberto..."
"What's that?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"I'll let you know as soon as I think of it."