The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

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

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch, Uberbeta and Honorable Moo… SQUID! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and smooshy for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: *poke * Morgan: Sure, they can dance, but can they shimmy? ;) Readers/Reviewers: *sigh * Email issues aside, *GLOMP *

Jamie dropped the bottle of soda for the third time in ten minutes. He winced as it rolled across the marble floor of the entry way and fetched up against a rather expensive looking pillar where it began making ominous hissing noises. Glancing guiltily at Logan, he hurried forward to rescue his drink before it exploded all over some objet d’art he would never be able to consider affording a replacement for. “Sorry,” he muttered, looking away quickly.
Logan shrugged. “You didn’t do anything,” he replied, looking around as if greatly bored. Sean had vanished into the depths of the mostly unfamiliar house, looking for Emma, and Forge had decided that the garage was the best place for him to be at that moment, ostensibly taking inventory of tools and other supplies. Logan suspected that the other man had brought a stash of beer to alleviate the pain of the car trip with a herd of teenagers, but he had little proof to back up that theory. Jamie twitched visibly as Rahne stomped down the stairs, a cell phone all but glued to her ear. “Kid, she needs some…friendship… right now.”
“Huh?” Jamie looked up, startled.
“I can’t believe I’m gonna do this but you two are the least sickening couple at the damned place so I feel some sort of obligation to keep your soap opera lives down to a minimum.”
Jamie nearly choked. In the past few days, the ‘advice’ he had been getting from his peers had involved chocolate sauce, acts of contortion and criminal offenses in most southern states. He did not think that he could handle Logan doling out such pearls of wisdom. In fact, he was already starting to feel a cold, shaky nausea coming over him at the very idea. “Um no that’s okay I’ll be fine,” he said in a rush, jumbling the words together. “I’m gonna go…er…do some stuff…”
Logan barely raised a brow as he grabbed Jamie by the shoulder and propelled him towards a small conversation nook set into the long hall of the Frost manor home. The space was narrow, close enough to make it known that one of them had garlic for lunch. Wrinkling his nose at the smell, Logan said blandly, “You’re jumpy as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, Jamie.” He could smell the fear and nervousness wafting off the young man and he suppressed a grin at his fidgeting. “Look, Rahne’s going through a hell of a thing right now. Trust me when I say you could not pick a worse time to make a move.”
Jamie clutched the soda bottle convulsively, more intimidated by Logan giving him advice on his love life than by his actual love life. “I wasn’t going to make a move!” he protested.
Logan raised a brow. “Right. Sure. Whatever you do, don’t listen to Lance. Or Todd. Or St John. Or Bobby….” He winced, adding, “And especially not Remy.”
Jamie nodded, sighing with relief when Logan turned away to intercept Sean, who was emerging from the side hall. Rahne was bare yards from him, stuffing the cell phone angrily into her pocket. “Hey,” he said and hoped it sounded friendly.
“I hate men,” she replied, then looked momentarily abashed. “Except you, if that helps any.”
“Um, good to know…” He realized that he was fidgeting and promptly became too still, trying to look cool and calm. “Um… you know, if you need to vent or whatever, I’m here, right?”
“I know,” she sighed. “I just don’t want to drag you into all this. I’d like for something in my life to be… I dunno what the word is,” she looked around vaguely, settling on, “untainted.”
Jamie made a face of confusion. “Untainted?”
Rahne tapped her foot impatiently, the concept she was trying to relay too complex for mere language. “I just don’t want to make you into my sounding board for this mess…” Her eyes watered and she ducked her head, inhaling shakily. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
He looked around quickly, seeing that most of the others milling about, waiting for Emma, were more interested in each other or the décor than them. He took her elbow and led her almost forcibly to the same nook he and Logan had recently occupied. All thoughts of sex were (mostly) gone from his mind as he tipped her chin up to maker her look at him, her eyes red-rimmed and wet from unshed tears. She was tense, her arm tight as an iron band beneath his hand as she stood there, not moving but obviously not wanting to be there. “Rahne, look, I love you and more than that, I’m your friend. I don’t care what it is, you can tell me about it.”
“Anyone ever tell you,” she replied quietly, “that you sound like an after school special?”
“Once in a while, yeah,” he said, smiling faintly. He did not try to kiss her as he suddenly wanted to but merely waited. Rahne finally sighed and leaned against him, pressing her face against his chest.
“I can’t divorce it from me,” she said, her voice thick. “It’s part of me, like being a mutant…” She shrugged with some difficulty, her arms going around his waist. “Kurt… he wouldn’t understand. I thought about talking to him because he’s Catholic too but…” She sighed. “He’s different. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea of being…being…” She broke down then, sobbing and clutching Jamie tightly.
He stood still for a moment, unsure whether to finish the sentence for her. Finally, he hugged her back just as tightly and sighed. “Rahne, they can’t make you stop believing something.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But they can make me stop wanting to.”

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

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch, Uberbeta and Honorable Moo… Bye, Green Car… InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and smooshy for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: *glomp * Morgan: *twirls * Readers/Reviewers: It’s all coming together… ;)


Todd snapped lazily at a dragonfly, missing it on purpose but vaguely enjoying Theresa’s faint “eeeeeeew” of disgust. The lake here was really more of a pond, but, he thought, it would do for a few days. He was rather glad that Emma was MIA. It gave him a chance to sulk. Rahne had vanished to her guest room the moment Firestar pointed it out, thereby removing his one source of support since Lance was getting frisky with Amara on the balcony several hundred yards away. Todd laid back on his elbows and sighed, turning his face up to the pale blue sky and closing his eyes. He did not pay attention to the shuffling of grass under sneaker-shod feet until he caught an unmistakable tinge of sandalwood on the air. His eyes flew open and he found himself staring up at Rogue. “Uh…”
She nodded curtly and dropped to sit beside him, folding her long legs almost awkwardly to avoid touching him, even though she wore layers of clothes over her pale skin. “Hey.”
Todd sat up and eyed her warily, half way expecting another outburst. “So… how you?”
“I’d say fine but you’d know I was lying,” she admitted. “I owe you a big explanation, huh?” She picked at some of the summer-dry grass near her knee and avoided his intense gaze. “A huge one.”
“Well, start with big and we’ll work up from there, ya know?” He leaned over, nudging her with his shoulder, and he felt her tense for the briefest moment. Inwardly, he sighed but outwardly, he kept smiling and sitting close.
“I’m never gonna be normal,” she blurted. “Least ways, not like you are.”
It was so alien to hear someone refer to him as normal that Todd burst out in a bark of laughter. “Normal?” he snickered. “You need glasses, yo!” He leaned back again, this time throwing his head back in laughter, trying to wrap his mind around the idea of being considered a norm. “Damn, baby, I haven’t laughed so hard in forever!”
Rogue glared, her face a mask of annoyance. “Dumb ass. You know what I mean! I can’t touch you whenever I want! I won’t be able to just pick up my baby whenever it cries. Not unless I put on a fucking biohazard suit most days of the month!” She tore at the grass vengefully then, flinging handfuls towards the pond. “You know… I thought about breaking up with you the other day, when you said what you said… I thought Great, here’s my chance. Let him go and let him live normal and you can just be Miss Untouchable like everyone thinks you are and you never have to worry about this sort of thing again…” She slid a glance his way and seemed to wilt. “I couldn’t do that, not for some dumb reason like that.”
He nodded, exhaling a breath he had not even been aware of withholding. “Glad to hear it,” he mumbled, looking somewhere over her left shoulder. He had the disturbing feeling that he was going to cry if he let himself think about the fact she had been ready to break up with him for any reason, and he hated it. “Look, ya know… I don’t understand why you were all… ya know?” He shrugged and joined her in pulling at the grass, sending his flecks of it flying to the slight breeze, scattering mere inches away like confetti.
“Hearing you say that,” she said in a rush, her face coloring slightly, “made me mad. Made me think maybe you liked thinking of normal girls better or something. Like maybe you wanted to sleep with ‘em cause then you wouldn’t have to worry about…stuff.” She huddled over her knees, looking for all the world like a chastised toddler. “It’s dumb, I know.”
Todd glanced at her cautiously. “Um, yeah. Kinda.” He did not want to tell her that yes, he did fantasize about other women occasional but any heterosexual male who said he only fantasized about one woman was probably lying. “Look, I don’t mind how we have to do things, ya know? I mean… better than not at all.”
She snorted. “Guess so.” She glanced at him and added a bit more quietly. “What if I drain my kid one day? What if I have an accident? What if whatever makes me able to touch for a little while goes wonky on me and stops working?”
He inhaled deeply, gathering his scattered thoughts, before replying. “In order, kay? First, if that happens, which it won’t, we deal with it then. If you have an accident, have an alibi. If it goes wonky and we can’t touch skin to skin… we invest in liquid latex.”
She laughed then, almost grudgingly, leaning back on her own elbows then and throwing her head back to look at the sky. “You know what my problem is?” she said finally.
“Yeah… want the list in alphabetical order or order of annoyance?”
“Stuff it.” She toed his ankle with her booted foot. “My problem is that I’m jealous.”
“Of what?” he asked, bordering on amused and amazed. “My right hand?”
“Todd!” She sounded embarrassed and horrified. “I don’t wanna know!”
“Well, you said you were jealous…” He was cut off by a sudden tremor beneath him. At first, he thought that he was having some sort of a fit, that maybe his heart defect had taken a new and disturbing twist, but he soon realized, in a matter of seconds, that it was the world around him which was trembling. Rogue sat up, her hands splayed in front of her for balance as she looked around, wild-eyed. Theresa, by the banks of the pond, was sprawled on her face in the mud, an almost comical picture if the rumbling had not been growing louder and stronger. “Lance,” Todd groaned.
“Can’t be!” Rogue said loudly, over the rumbling. “He’s on the second floor!” As she spoke, a metallic grating sound began, making her fillings hurt and her head ache. “Fucking hell!”
Loudly, Emma’s voice echoed through everyone’s head. _Sublevel one, now! _
“Does this sort of shit seem to follow us or is it just me?” Todd asked, staggering to his feet.
“If it’s you, then I *am* breaking up with you.”
He hoped she was kidding.