Carne Vale

CARNE VALE CHAPTER FORTY FOUR (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, Billy and Joaquin came high tailing it back...Tim scared them with the growling. Is he feeling okay? InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are sparkleberries for archiving. :) Readers/Reviewers: The Killer Kitties (tm) and their Killer Minions (tm) have been watching The Godfather... I woke up with a duck head in bed with me this morning. Not as dramatic as a horse head but still....ew. At least they didn't off me at a toll booth. Poor Fredo.




Kurt hated the Boardinghouse and not just because of what it represented. It literally made his skin crawl; he had the distinct feeling that he would need a delousing when he returned home. Even when he had been dating Tabby, he remembered, he preferred taking her back to the Institute to coming to the Boardinghouse. He had been through nearly every room from top to bottom and there was no sign of life, which was just a little surprising. _Wow. Pietro either went to school or...ugh. I don't think I want to think about where else he could be if he's not here. _ Kurt paused at the top of the stairs, eyeing with some trepidation the one room he had not been in yet. Mystique's room, the door scorched and scarred but firmly closed, was at the end of the hallway, not grand but, in comparison to the other rooms, palatial in it's decoration. Kurt felt foolish scratching at the door, but he would rather have someone fling the door open from the inside than port in and find himself staring Mystique in the face, or worse. When no sound came from within, he turned the knob and found the room to be accessibly by conventional means, a bit surprising considering Mystique's deeply held privacy. "Wow..." The room itself was as near to clean as it could be, considering. The wallpaper hung in ribbons, revealing layers of older paper and paint giving way to sheetrock and mold. The carpet was torn up, the pad left over wood planks riddled with rot and termite damage. The bed was made, oddly enough, and the sheets seemed clean if the faint odor of fabric softener was anything to go by. The bed itself was old, the wood as rotten as flo floor, and the thing that disturbed Kurt the most-the nylon wrist restraints-were digging into the soft wood as if they had been pulled against. A brief, flitting image of his birth mother in the throes of passion effectively put Kurt off sex for at least the rest of the day but he knew that the restraints were far too new for Mystique to have used since she had last been seen. Kurt edged closer, reaching out to touch the black strip but drew back quickly as he realized it was wet, leaving a spreading red stain where it lay against the ostensibly clean sheets. Panic warred with anger as he realized who, most likely, had been restrained there. _Pietro does not really need speed to torture Wanda. She could bind him all she wanted and nothing much would happen if she was already incapacitated. _ Kurt prowled around the bed on all fours, peering for any sign of what had happened, moving to perch on the footboard to get a better view of the bed. He noticed that it seemed to have hospital corners1, the white sheets with the still-wet bloodstains shocking in the crumbling room. _Whatever happened occurred recently...the blood isn't browning yet and it smells coppery, not fishy.2 _ Kurt looked around the room and saw a silver compact on the dusty dresser top, the shining metal clearly not a normal fixture of the room. Carefully, Kurt took a large step from the bed to the dresser and picked up the compact. It was smudged with fingerprints and a little blood. Deigning ton itn it, all he saw inside was a fractured mirror and a cake of white powder, obviously makeup, and what looked like a school picture of Tabby, dusted with the powder and marked with little x's on the back, characteristic of the blonde girl. Kurt knew that for a fact...he had a picture of her just like that somewhere in his desk drawer that he had been meaning to throw out before Kitty found it. He tucked the compact into the top of his uniform and hoped it stayed put when he ported. A slight creaking noise drew his attention to the door and he stiffened. Pietro was backing into the room, dragging something. Kurt ported to the corner, braced against the ceiling like a spider as Pietro dragged a large duffle bag into the room. A horrible picture of Kitty's cousin and how she died came to mind but Kurt shook it away, trying to see any sign of movement from within the bag, an indication the blond teenager had someone rather than something inside.
"Damn it," Pietro muttered, struggling to get the bag onto the bed. He did not see his watcher, so close above his head. In fact, if he had done so much as stretch, he would have brushed against Kurt. As it was, he finally got the bag onto the bed and unzipped it, busying himself with unpacking the contents and arranging them into neat stacks.
They were packages, it looked like, wrapped in white tissue paper. Kurt could not tell what the packets contained but he could tell they were heavy from the way Pietro was lifting them. Kurt stretched forward as far as he could but still could not make out the contents. The bag was empty after a few minutes, the bed covered in the square packages. Pietro folded the bag and shoved it under the bed, looking entirely too self-satisfied. He rocked back on his heels and grinned, humming under his breath as he looked around the room once more, freezing in place when his eyes lit on the dresser. Pietro staggered to the piece of furniture and stared at the spot where Kurt had found the compact, his jaw hanging open. Kurt winced, realizing he had made a potential error. "WANDA!" Pietro bellowed, shaking. "I don't know how yid iid it, you sick fuck, but you're gonna pay for getting out!" He med med from the room, Kurt dropping to the floor unnoticed behind him.
His heart racing, the realization that this was actually his first solo mission sinking in belatedly, Kurt followed Pietro, sticking to the walls and shadows when he could. He really did not have to, as Pietro was so intent on his goal that he would have missed a stampeding herd of cattle at that point. He came to rest in the den, crouched behind the sofa as Pietro addressed the wall. "You fucking bitch!" he swore, unaware he was being watched. "How the fuck did you get out?" He kicked the wall and a responding thud sounded a moment later. He continued on ranting in Russian as Kurt eased into the foyer, porting into the front yard. The Jeep was parked several blocks away to remain unnoticed. He ported again, appearing in the car, his hands shaking as he tried to start the engine. _Okay, Wans als alive. Somewhat at least. Pietro is crackers, Mystique isn't in residence and Wanda is in a wall. Yeah, this is normal... _

Kitty was a little happy. She had wheedled Jean into taking her shopping after school and now she laid her purchases out on the bed. For once, she noticed, clothes were not part of the equation. She had a boxed set of hoary old movier Kur Kurt, all staring Errol Flynn, a shade of lipstick called "Blood Red" that Rogue had once promised her an an aphrodisiac in a tube, perfume that smelled a little of strawberries but mostly of honey and musk that she had a strong feeling Kurt might like, if only because the name of the substance was "Nothing," and several small prisms to hang in her window, an odd, last minute purchase but one that seemed to make her mood lighten just considering putting them in their assigned places to catch the light. She felt silly, something so simple making her feel better, but she could not help the grin that spread across her face as the stars and moons suspended from fishing line twirled in the slight breeze of the air conditioner as she hung the prisms. _I don't care that someone wrote "slut" on my locker, I don't care that someone said I was chubby, I don't care that Logan sent Kurt off on some dangerous mission thing that he won't tell me about and I'm going to need to hack into the school computers to fix the absence report for...oh, Hell. I care about the last one a little bit. A lot. _ She gave one of the stars a push with her finger and watched as it swung back and forth in the setting sunlight. She had a niggling feeling that Logan was hiding something else from her after she had forced (well, whined until he told her, she amended) him to reveal where Kurt was that day. Try as she might, though, Kitty could only get her foster father to tell her that Kurt would be fine, that he would be home when she returned from school if all went well, and she would need to "fiddle with the school's records or whatever it is that gets you in trouble with the Professor when you get caught."
_I haven't seen Kurt, but that doesn't mean anything is wrong. I did come home later than usual, after all. He's probably doing make up work from today and I'll see him at dinner. Tomorrow's our date night so things have to be fine. So long as I don't give in and pounce on him... _ Kitty sighed, her breath pushing a low-hanging moon into a slow, swinging rhythm, nearly hypnotic to her tired mind. It had been a tough day at school, not because of the academics but because of the words. Duncan had not been there for whatever reason, but his friends had. All day, Kitty had heard the whispers of slut and whore, tramp, easy..._You'd think they'd come up with some new words for it by now... _ Brian had been almost a comfort, stepping up to defend her from the worst of it since, in his words, "Kurt isn't here to do it..." He had blushed when he said it and Kitty felt almost bad for him then, having an unrequited crush on her boyfriend but still helping her. Brian had not been obvious in his defense of her. Rather, when one of the other Institute students was not present, he had simply lingered in the background, looming forward when people got too vocal, putting his arm around her shoulders once when a group of the junior varsity football players tried to crowd her in the hall. "I'm used to rumors...you're not," he said at one point after chasing off a particularly catty group of girls with a well placed glare.
Kitty smiled to herself a bit sadly. _I've got to find some nice guy to set him up with...If Duncan wasn't such a dick, that'd be almost funny... _ Laying back on her bed, Kitty exhaled in relief as her back popped, sagging into the mattress. _Maybe sleeping with Kurt wouldn't be so bad after all...Life's too short. _ She could hear footsteps heading towards her room and she felt like phasing to the floor below to avoid whoever it was, but knew in the end it would be unavoidable. _Probably Jamie and St John wanting cheat codes for Soul Reaver or something... _ Kurt porting into her room was an unexpected surprise.
"Liebes," he said without preamble, "we need to talk..."
"What's wrong, babe?" she asked, sitting up suddenly, all traces of fatigue being replaced by worry. "Did something happen to you today?"
"Not me, really...Wanda."
"Wanda? Where's Tabby?" Kitty was on her feet and heading for the door, only to be pulled back by Kurt's hand on her wrist. "Kurt!"
"You knew about those two?"
"Er...kinda saw 'em kissing, actually..." Kitty ducked her head. "Wait, that isn't what this is about, is it? I mean, yeah, it's kinda weird, but..."
"Nein, Schatz...listen, I need you to come to the Boardinghouse tonight." He related quickly what he had seen there as Kitty's eyes widened.
"You need me to phase into the wall and get her?"
"Ja...I don't know what's in there so I can't port in...and I figure any damage done to wiring won't matter at this point." Kurt looked harried as he ran his hands through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes.
Kitty nodded, heading to her closet. "I'll change and we can go!" She discarded the idea of her uniform and instead grabbed a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt from her dresser drawers. "You going to watch or something?" she asked, half-kidding, as she noticed Kurt sitting on her bed and staring off into space.
"I've seen it before, Liebes."
"Way to make me feel sexy," she joked as she changed from her school clothes to the jeans. She could not help but feel pleased as she noticed Kurt shifting his gaze from her momentarily nude body as she dressed and felt some measure of confidence that he still desired her strongly. "Okay. Let's go."
"Wait just a minute..." he said, stopping her again at the door. Kitty turned to him with an inquisitive expression in her eyes. He really had no idea what he wanted to say when he had stopped her, but instead kissed her. She melted against him for a brief, shining moment as his hands tightened against her back and his teeth nipped her lip. "For luck," he said when he broke for breath. "We've done something like this without a good luck kiss first and I didn't want to jinx us..."
Kitty grinned, feeling a rush of excitement at the forthcoming clandestine recon, and said, "Remind me to tell you about my congratulatory groping for a job well done."

A/N Next chapter, Smut returns! Kurt and Kitty are all superhero-y, Wanda and a nice twisty surprise bit... * g *
1 Really tight, squared corners. Bounce a quarter off it sort of thing.
2 Dried blood smells fishy, and I know where some of y'alls' minds are going...stop it. ;)