Persistence of Memory

Paradigm Shift Chapter Five (NC-17)




Persistence of Memory (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Ubermuse, I think I need to
smite some local idiots…got any ideas?
*eg * InterNutter, TC and
Maxwell Pink are superwonderful for archiving.
J ProPhile is a lovely smutmuse but I’m
beginning to think I might be deprived…or is it depraved? Either way, LOL… Readers/Reviewers: *blush
* Thanks!

 

 

 

“Still up?”
“No, I’m sound asleep in bed
but, having recently mastered astral projection, I sent my ether downstairs for
a cup of tea.”

“Sarcasm
doesn’t suit you, Ro.”

“Sorry, Logan,”
she sighed, looking up from her contemplation of tea dregs. “I just can’t sleep.”

He sat down
across from her and took her hand. “I
didn’t mean that about the sarcasm…if it helps, go on ahead.”

She quirked
a brow and smiled faintly. “It’s not often
you feel contrite. What’s the matter?”

“What makes
you think…Ah, Hell. Okay. I’m just worried about Chuck. Worried about him, the schRo, Ro, what’re we
supposed to do with all these kids? We
don’t even know what all their powers are!
He had those files on his computer!”

“Calm down,
Logan,” she soothed, standing and coming around the table to sit next to
him. “If we can’t get into the files
ourselves, we’ll ask Kitty to do it.”

“Half Pint
really is too good at that computer crap, isn’t she?”

“I’m sure
she’d be charmed to have it put that way,” Storm replied dryly. “As for the
school and the students…well, we teach them.[1] We already have the plans for the first
semester set up at least in skeletal form, and you really don’t have that much
to worry about. You’re running the
physical training sections. You can
just…wing it.”
“Wing it?” he asked, a growl
tingeing his voice. “Wing it?”
Without asking, he pulled her onto his lap and started a diatribe. “There’s planning involved, you know. Hours—days pla planning! Which sim to start with, which one is gonna
break under the pressure, let them use powers or not? What kind of games can I set up that’ll make ‘em realize we’re
not fuckin’ around here…”

“Breathe,”
Storm said firmly, poking him in the chest. “You’re getting flustered.”

“I never
get flustered.”

“Oh?” she
asked innocently. With nary a warning,
she kissed him.

Logan
closed his eyes and let the sensations and sensory input wash over him for
several glorious moments before he let a niggling thought break through his
reverie. “Ro,” he said softly, pushing
her away just enough to talk. “Why
now? You’ve been…off this…since we went
to Chicago. I thought you were still
pissed at me, since you never told me why in the first place…”

Storm
frowned and shifted carefully to face him and retain balance. “I was mad at you because of this.”

“Because of
kissing?”

“Because
you treat me like I’m fragile.” When he
would protest, she silenced him with a glare.
“You treat me with kid gloves most of the time and when you don’t, I can
see the realization come over you and suddenly, you’re treating me like that
again!”

“Ro, I’m
only trying to show you respect…”

“Respect is
one thing. This,” she gestured vaguely,
“is another. For years, I was on a
pedestal, worshipped and adored. I
hated it. I was untouchable. You, Logan, are the only one who ever took
me off that pedestal. You saw me as a woman and not a goddess. I was mad because you’ve been acting like
I’m a goddess again. I was mad because
you could be free and easy with Astrid, but not me.”

Logan
blinked in confusion. “I never…Did I?”

“You tell
me.”

He fell
silent for almost a full minute. “You,”
he said finally, “arsanesane. You know
that?” Unceremoniously, he stood and
took her with him, carrying her towards the rec room.

“Logan, I
can walk, you know.”

“So?”

“You aren’t
going to put me down, are you?” she sighed as they gained the stairs.

“Not for
another minute or so, no.”

“And just
how to you propose to open the door?”

“Um…” He looked from her to the doorknob and back
again. “A little help?”

“Will you
put me down?”

“Will you
open the door?”

“Will you
put me down?”

“Will you
open the door?”

“Will you…”

“Damn it!” he
grumbled, jostling her so that he held her over one shoulder, Storm going
silent with surprise and not a little annoyance, and opened the door
himself. “You don’t want to be treated
like a goddess? Fine. I can do
that.” He shut the door behind them and
summarily dumped her onto the bed. Storm merely glared. “It’d be nice,” he said, returning her
glare, “if you told me these things instead of running hot and cold on me!”

“It’d be
nice if I didn’t have to!”

“Insane!”
Logan reiterated, kneeling beside her. Storm set her mouth mutinously and he
laughed at her expression, one of righteous indignation, before he bent to kiss
her. She relented and softened under
his attentions, but turned her face away when he sought entry to the warm
confines of her mouth. Logan narrowed
his eyes and, forgoing deepening the kiss, tilted her chin to gain access to
her neck. Storm gasped and clutched at
his shoulders furtively as his teeth scraped a particularly sensitive spot
beneath her ear, her body arching to press against his as his hands scarcely
fumbled, pushing up the hem of her caftan to reveal an expanse of smooth, dark
skin. With a sound of profound
satisfaction, Logan shifted lower and pressed several searing kisses to her
collarbone and the swell of her breasts as his fingers found her center. Storm moaned softly, opening for him. Logan hid a grin against her neck as he
moved atop her, freeing himself from necessary clothing and entering her nearly
roughly, tempering the urgency with tenderness. Storm hissed through her teeth in pleasured surprise, her eyes
whitening briefly in reaction. She
pulled urgently at his shirt, raking her nails down his skin only to have even
the reddest marks disappear in seconds.
Storm forgot any sense of propriety and privacy, her sighs and cries of
pleasure growing increasingly louderil Lil Logan clamped a hand over her
mouth. She glared at him fiercely and
bit the flesh of his palm, making him jerk it away, unable to hide the smile of
odd excitement that crossed his features. Storm’s release was violent and
sudden, her legs locking around his waist as she thrust agt hit him, her throat
arched in silent cries of ecstatic pleasure.
Logan usually prided himself on his stamina and how often he could make
his partners reach their peak before him, but this time he really did not
care. A few thrusts more and he joined
Storm, filling her and protesting his love for her until she pushed him away
breathlessly, the sensations overwhelming.


A long time later, she rolled onto
her side and poked him in the ribs. “I
may be insane, but you got flustered.”

 

Kitty stared at her ceiling for
what seemed like hours. Probably
only been…Crap. It’s two a.m.? Okay, it
has been hours. She was tired but
not sleepy as she slid from bed, pulling her robe over her pajamas in a
concession to the new residents in the mansion. Her friends may have seen her bare legs before, but she didn’t
need some strange twelve year old staring at her if they should get up in the
middle of the night. It did not occur
to her that she did not have a true plan until she was in the foyer, shivering
on the cold marble floor and wishing she had remembered to put on her
slippers. What am I even looking
for? Maybe Kurt’s right and I’m
overreacting. Not that I ever do that. Nope, not me…Damn it. Wonder if I should
wake him up? She quickly discarded
that idea when she realized that he would probably talk her out of any sort of
snooping, at least until they knew more about what was going on, and, she added
to herself, they most likely would end up back in one of their bedrooms. Not that there’s anything wrong with
that…[2] Kitty nodded to herself decisively and
plunged down the dark hallway leading off the foyer to the bank of
elevators. They brought him from
here…but was he coming from upstairs or the basements? Upstairs, he could have been in his study or
even his room. Doairsairs, he could
have been in the medlab, the hangar, any of the sublevels doing who knows
what. Okay. Make this easy. Start at
the top and work my way down. With
a guilty look down the hallway, she pressed the “up” button and wondered
belatedly if there was some sort of sensor somewhere that alerted people the
elevator was being used or if Logan would hear it when it dinged to a
stop. Pleasepleasepleaseplease… She breathed a sigh of relief when the doors
slid open silently, revealing a brightly lit square of space, silver walls and
white floor almost glaringly shiny.
Hurriedly, she stepped in and pressed the button for the third floor,
the space the adults had been relegated in the refurbishing of the mansion to
turn it into a school. All except
Logan, she thought with some relief. He
insisted on a room near “the kids,” ostensibly because it put him closer to the
alarm systems and any intruders but Kitty had a sneaking suspicion it was
because he had a mother hen complex he had yet to admit to. The doors snicked open, the dark of the
third floor hallway oppressive. Kitty
swallowed hard and stepped out into the unlit hallway and paused, listening for
sounds of life as the doors slid shut behind her. Satisfied they were all asleep, she took a silent step towards
the Professor’s suite only to swallow a yelp of terror as something grabbed the
back of her robe and held her fast.
Phasing to free herself, she spun around to find…nothing. Blindly and cautiously, she felt the spot
where she had been standing, her
fingers brushing the elevator doors and feeling her robe caught between the
sliding pieces of metal. Stupid Kitty.
You’re too nervous. That’s what’s going to screw you up. Now, deep breath and go!

 

The
Professor’s upstairs study was more a reflection of the man than the sober
example downstairs. While this one had
similar dark wood walls and inlaid floors, it also sported an assortment of
photographs of the residents of the Institute in various posed and candid
situations, some pictures Kitty knew were taken before she was even thought of
much less born, knick knacks that defied explanation and, she was amused to
note, a DVD collection to rival Kurt’s.
Here goes nothing… She
was briefly chagrined to realize there was no desk chair but brushed that aside
and simple stood, hunched over the low keyboard as she tried ous ous and sundry
ways to get through the security system.
This can’t be that hard. I’ve
gotten into just about every computer in this place before, including the
damned security one downstairs. It’s
got to be something the Professor wouldn’t have to spend too much time on,
something that was secure but simple… She redoubled her efforts, scarcely
noticing the slowly brightening sky.
With a soft “a-ha!”, she smiled when the system opened itself to her,st ast a little over two and a half hours since she entered the room. It was almost five in the morning and she
was still not rested, but Kitty knew it would be in her best interests to get
to her room before Logan made his morning rounds and found her here. Quickly, she grabbed a piece of paper from
pad on the corner of the Professor’s desk and scribbled down the method she
used to break into the computer. Tonight,
she promised herself. Tonight I’ll find out what really happened. She hastily phased through the door, not
even noticing the most unusual item in the room. A simple photograph, one taken just after the last world war, of
two young men with their arms looped around each other’s shoulders, grinning
like idiots. The taller of the two
seemed to be trying to pull the shorter one off his feet. Eric and Charles was scrawled across
the bottom in faded ink. The glass, the
frame itself, cracked as if someone had thrown it across the room.



[
[1] As if you
already weren’t doing this, a little suspension of disef mef moment. Let’s just pretend the “teachers” there all
got their emergency certification (which usually takes about a year) in a
remarkably short period of time.

[2] Line from
Seinfeld about something entirely different, lol.