Persistence of Memory

Persistence of Memory Chapter Three (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse and Hamster Witch, Did Tim-Two ever thaw? Tims with frostbite aren’t very much
fun… InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink
are lovely and delightful for archiving.
J ProPhile is extra lovely for being a
smutmuse and Jubilee gets musecookies for the Orli icons and such. ;)
Readers/Reviewers: It’s a lovely day for ducks… (don’t ask…it’ll get stuck
in your head and you’ll sing it for days on end…*g * ) Thank you
soooooooooooooo much for reading/reviewing!

 

 

 

“Are you
the ones who brought him in?

“What do
you think, bub?”

“Logan,
please,” Storm murmured. “Yes,” she
addressed the charge nurse. “That’s
us.”

“Well,
looks like he’ll be here for a while,” she sighed, looking at the chart in her
hands. Her faintly purple skin marked
her as different even if her distinctly pointed ears did not. St. Dymphna’s was, thanks to Professor
Xavier and a small concern of knowledgeable and community-minded mutants who
could afford to, the only hospital on the eastern seaboard that admitted and
treated known mutants. To non-mutants,
it was simply a private mental hospital that had changed hands several times in
the past few years, but to those who needed it, it was a bastion of safety and
secrecy. It was small, as far as
hospitals went, and operated below the radar of any investigatory agency thanks
to large sums of money, but it was the best for treating the odd ailments that
mutants seemed to crop up with. All the
employees were mutants and assigned to wards where their particular abilities
would be most useful, whenever possible.
As it was, the Professor was in the unit devoted to telepaths and
telekinetics of all sorts, the signs on the walls reading “No Projecting” and
“Please control telepathy if at all possibly for the comfort of the other
patients.”

“What’s
wrong with him?” Logan asked, his voice flat.

“We’re not
sure yet,” the nurse sighed, looking up from the sheet of information in front
of her. “You say he just passed out for no reason?”

Storm
exchanged a worried look with Logan.
“He’s been having headaches for a few weeks now, but he felt they were
not related to his abilities. A CT scan
at Bayville General turned up negative for any…problems…”

“Bayville
General?” the nurse made a
notation. “We’ll need to see about
having that sent here. What might
appear normal to those doctors might send up a red flag with ours.”

“Of
course,” Storm said, sounding strained.
“Can we see him before we go?”

“This
way.” She led them down a long hall
that ended in double silver doors.
Hitting the keypad to her left, she motioned them in. “He’s unconscious
but can most likely hear you. He hasn’t
tried communicating with any of us yet but that doesn’t mean he’s not able to.
He might be confused, unsure and therefore holding back. Familiar voices might
help.”

Logan
nodded and led Storm by the elbow to the room with the placard marked “Xavier,
C.” The Professor lay in the Spartan room beneath a thin white sheet, breathing
evenly but otherwise immobile. “Hey,
Chuck.”

“Charles,”
Storm said, taking the Professor’s hand between both of hers. “It’s Ororo and Logan. We brought you to St. Dymphna’s in the
jet. Beast is back at the Institute
with Banshee and Forge. The orientation
was cancelled…”

Logan
shifted uncomfortably, hating every second of being in a hospital. The smell of antiseptics alone was enough to
make him gag but the sight of all the wires and needles and tubes… He
suppressed a shudder and said, “We’re, uh, we know we’re starting later than
the other schools and all already, but we didn’t want to start without you
there…”

Storm
sighed, remembering what the nurse said.
“But I think we will go ahead with the first classes tomorrow. It’s October already and they haven’t even
started…” She squeezed his hand. “We
can’t stay very long, Charles, and here I am boring you.”

Logan heard
the nurse coming and signaled to Storm.
“Chuck, we’re gonna get back and take care of the kids, okay? We’ll come back and see you again tomorrow.”

The nurse
appeared and smiled kindly. “We’re
going to have to prepare him for some tests so I’m afraid…”

“Yes, we
know,” Storm said almost bitterly.
“We’ll be back tomorrow.”

“It’s okay,
Ro,” Logan murmured, taking her hand in an uncommon show of affection in
public, even though the halls were mostly deserted. “He’s gonna be fine. This
is just a…a glitch.”

“He’s not a
coffee maker, Logan, to have a glitch.”
She sniffled. “How do you know
he’ll be okay? Not even the doctors know.”

“They
didn’t say that,” Logan corrected her, pausing in front of the elevators but
not pushing the “up” button. “Look,” he
sighed, pulling her into an embrace, “Chuck’s not exactly a spring chicken and
he’s been under a lot of stress lately.
He may be one of the strongest telepaths in the world, but even he has
his limits. It’s probably some sort of
psychic backlash or something.”

Storm
looked up at him dubiously. “I hope
you’re right.”

“Me, too,”
he breathed, pushing the button for the elevator. “Let’s get back before the kids realize we’re gone. I told Banshee to make sure they all stayed
upstairs just to keep ‘em from noticing for a while.”

“You left
over three dozen hormonal teenagers and hyper children with powers ranging from
telepathy to teleporting crammed on one floor of a house?” Storm closed her eyes and exhaledowlyowly. “I pray to the Bright Lady that
the place is still standing…”

 



“Are you
sure?”

“Yes…”

“I mean,
really sure?”

“Lance, for
the last time…” Amara pushed him down to her bed and knelt over him. “yes!”

“I was just
worried about…you know…” He gestured vaguely to faint scratches on his left
cheek, a souvenir of the last time he and Amara had tried to be intimate. She had panicked, remembering her attempted
rape, and lashed out before he was able to figure out what was wrong. “I don’t want to do this if you’re
uncomfortable.”

Amara
narrowed her eyes and began unbuttoning her top. “I’ve been seeing that therapist friend of the Professor’s—and if
you ever tell anyone that you’re toast—for weeks now and the girls helped me
with…something…a while back that made me feel a lot better. I’ll never forget what happened and I’m sure
I’ll think of it often, but I’m not going to let those pieces of offal make me
afraid to have sex for the rest of my life.”
She dropped the shirt over the edge of the bed without pausing. She straddled Lance’s hips and leaned
forward to kiss him briefly before adding, “And I’ll try not to hurt you more
than necessary this time.”

He felt his
eyes widen. “How much is necessary?”

“However
much you can handle before you have to say the safe word.”

“I always
mean to ask you where you learned this stuff from but you know, I don’t think I
really want to know…”

She smiled
and slid her hands across his chest, her nails barely scoring his flesh. “You know you’re the only one who’s ever
been with me, Lance,” she pointed out. “Can’t
I just know these things and you be happy for that knowledge?”

“I guess,”
he said, closing his eyes as her tongue traced the pink marks her nails had
left. His eyes snapped open, though, as
he felt her pull his arms over his head.
“Handcuffs this time?”

“If you’d
like. I was just going to use scarves
again so as not to mark the headboard.”

“Whichever…” It occurred to him how oddly normal the
conversation sounded in light of what they were doing. Amara rummaged in the bedside table’s
drawers and produced several strips of fabric.
“Not so tight!”

“You say
that every time,” she murmured. “But
you never listen to me when I say that, so why should I listen to you?”

Lance smiled
faintly and did not complain as she divested him of his jeans and underwear,
then tied his ankles to the posts at the end of the bed. “So this again?”

“Complaints,
complaints, complaints,” she sighed, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “If you keep complaining, I may just leave
you here.”

Lance made
a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a gasp. “You wouldn’t!”

“If you
complain one more time, I will.” Amara
stood and slid her own jeans off, kicking them delicately in a heap under her
desk. With great deliberateness, she
took the brush from her dresser and ran it through her hair, smoothing nonexistent
snarls. Just as deliberately, she
wandered back towards the bed and made a show of looking Lance over, making him
flush under her intense scrutiny.

He could not help butl a l a little
embarrassed, bound as he was an virtually helpless. He knew logically that he could get loose if he had to or wanted
to, that he could overpower her, but this was an exercise in trust for both of
them and he did not want to break that.
Lance hissed through his teeth as she ran one nail down his turgid
length, pain warring with pleasure along his nerve endings. She slowly climbed onto the bed next to him
and knelt again, tracing a path from the obvious evidence of his desire for her
up his stomach then down his side, making him yelp at the ticklish
sensation. She raised a brow and paused,
digging her nail a little harder into his skin. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

She smiled and leaned forward, the
hardened peaks of her nipples brushing against his chest as she kissed him thoroughly. “Show me how quiet you can be.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t make a sound the entire…time…” She kissed him again, pulling away as he
murmured low in his throat. “Lance,”
she said warningly.

“Sorry,” he said again, taking
several deep breaths in an effort to remain silent as she began trailing wet
kisses down his torso to more promising places. He barely managed to stifle a moan as her mouth closed over his length,
drawing on him and making him arch against her ministration. He almost groaned in frustration when she
stopped only to have to bite his lip when she moved over him to take him inside
her, her tight warmth excruciating to contemplate in his lust-addled
state. Her slow rhythm steadily
increased until it was only with great, almost painful effort, he managed to
keep quiet. Amara’s soft cries and
moans were only torture to him, but when he opened his eyes to see her rubbing
her own breasts, touching herself when he couldn’t, Lance made a noise of
frustration that brought the whole event to a crashing halt.

“Did you say something, Lance?” Amara
asked sweetly, though she panted.

“I just…” he took a steadying
breath, keenly aware that he was still within her and she was shaking with the
effort it took not to climax around him.
“I want to touch you, Princess.”

“Are you complaining?” She asked
softly. “I think you’re complaining…” She
slid off him, hiding her own feelings of frustration well.

“Where the Hell do you think you’re
going?” he demanded, still horribly aroused and so close to completion it was
painful.

“I need a drink. Want some juice? Water?” She pulled her
jeans on, sans underwear, and forwent her own blouse for Lance’s t-shirt. “No?”


“Amara, this isn’t funny!”

“I’ll be right back. I think you need a few minutes to calm down…” She strolled from the room as if she had all
the time in the world.

Lance was torn between anger and
anticipation. He knew she would be back
and this was all part of the game they played, but they had never done this
before. The uncertainty, the feeling of
abandonment, was irritating and titillating, the knowledge he was at her mercy,
for whatever whim she chose to follow, made his heart race. All that arousal and titillation came to a
screeching halt, however, when someone knocked on the door. Shit.

“Amara? You in there?”

Fuck me. Kurt.
Go away!!!!

“Amara? It’s
just me… We’re having that meeting
after all. Logan and Storm said it’s
really important and…”

Damn it damn it damn it! Lance had been wriggling against the
restraints the entire time Kurt had been talking and realized belatedly that he
was only tightening the knots, not freeing himself. “Freakshow, shut up a
minute!” he snarled.

“Lance?”

“No, Amara’s had a sex change! Yes it’s me!”

“Is there a problem? You sound…angry.”

“Look, I need you to do me the
biggest favor of your life, okay?”

“Sure…I think…”

“Can you port in here? Don’t open the door!”

Kurt appeared in a blink and nearly
ported out when he saw Lance. “What the
Hell?”

“Don’t ask. Just untie me.”

Kurt cautiously approached the bed
and, trying not to look down, untied Lance’s wrists, letting Lance sit up and
untie his own ankles “Your pants,” he
offered.

“We speak of this to no one, got
it?”

“I don’t even know where I’d begin…”