Carne Vale

CARNE VALE CHAPTER FIFTY SIX (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, Billy and Joaquin are staring...a lot. There's talk of whips... InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are sparkled lots for archiving. :) Readers/Reviewers: I've started using the platypi as decoys, send them into rooms ahead of me and let them bear the brunt of the duck-attacks...I figure they can fight it out with their beaks or bills or whatever... And yeah, I know Bippity Boppity Boo is from Cinderella, but Tabby didn't...she'll selfcorrect in a bit. * g * And I'd give you all big, wet, sloppy kisses for reading and reviewing, but...well, that'd just be weird, wouldn't it?


Jean switched the ring from her right hand to her left as she entered the room, a little ritual she had started soon after Scott's proposal. When she was alone or just with him, she would wear the engagement ring on the correct finger, but out in public or even around their closest friends...it was just a promise ring. Scott was already waiting, studying his physics notes for the next day's test, but anticipating her nonetheless. "Hey," he grinned, shoving the books aside and standing, taking her hands in his as she came within reach. "Nice move canceling student council today."
"Headache," she said tightly. She was very happy to be home, on one hand, but felt guilty for calling off the meeting on account of, according to the notice, illness. She had a hideous headache brewing all thanks to men mental tension around the school, all stemming from Duncan Matthew's little pranks.
"Sit down," Scott commanded almost imperiously, all but pushing her down on his bed. Kneeling behind her, he shoved her thick hair to one side and began rubbing her neck. As she sighed, he said, "You really take too much on yourself...you can't do everything you want to. No one is going to think less of you if you aren't in all the student organizations; you're going to get into a good college even without trying, you know."
Jean found it possible to glare mentally. "I have a headache because I've been blocking people all day, more than usual. Between Kitty being near screaming all day-you would not believe some of the words that girl knows-and Kurt demanding that I scan Duncan to see why he's doing this..." she sighed again and leaned back against Scott's chest. "That's just the tip of the iceberg. It's almost finals time."
"Oh, yeah...poor Jean," he sighed absently. He remembered the previous year's finals, which left Jean in bed for two days afterwards with the mother of all migraines from trying to block out all the panic and stress of her fellow students.
"Yeah, poor Jean," she agreed. She pushed away from him slightly and laid herself out on the bed, closing her eyes against the glare of the desk lamp. Scott reached over and turned it off and laid down next to her, oddly not touching as they both lay, straight as corpses in a box. "I think," she said finally after several minutes of silence, "Tabby is going to kill Wanda when she finds out about Pietro."
"How is she going to find out?" Scott asked quietly, mindful of her headache. "We're the only two of the students who know here...Even Remy doesn't know and he's been lurking around the Boardinghouse all day, hasn't he?"
Jean nodded distractedly. "Logan and Wanda, of all people, are downstairs in the secondary hangar with Pietro, Remy is at the Boardinghouse, and the Professor is irritated." She turned on her side, eyes still closed and pressed close to him as if trying to absorb some of his life force, trying to rid herself of her headache through physical contact.
"What do you think Remy is going to find there?" Scott asked, rubbing Jean's arm where it was bare beneath her shirt sleeve. "That Incubus guy?"
"Even he doesn't think he'll find anything, deep down," she said with great tiredness in her voice. "I think he just wants to prove himself to us on some level, show that he's broken all ties...Though, that's probably more for Jubilee's benefit than ours."
"That's ridiculous," Scott snorted, moving even close and sliding one of his legs between hers, effectively making them a tangle of humanity. "He's got nothing to prove."
"Can we change the subject?" she said wearily, squeezing her eyes even more tightly shut. "This isn't helping the pain go away."
Scott sighed and began smoothing her hair where it fell in red strands on his pillow and sheets, escaping from her braid. He could not think of much else to talk about just then, aside from school or the Brotherhood situation, so he just remained silent. He could feel Jean's breathing slow and felt her body begin to relax as she edged towards sleep. "You really need to relax more," he said very quietly. "You're going to give yourself an aneurysm from stress."
"No I'm not," she mumbled, snuffling slightly as she pressed her face into the crook of his neck. "Haven't yet."
"I'd rather not be a widower before I'm thirty," he said dryly.
"I'd rather you not as well," she said opening one eye to look up at him. "Do you ever think it's weird? Being engaged so young?"
"No...I love you and I know there will never be anyone else for me than you, so why should that be weird?"
"Because we're seventeen..." she said, though she did not sound very convincing. "I'm just playing devil's advocate here,"1 she added when Scott sighed deeply.
"I know. I wish you wouldn't, though."
"Why?"
"Because it means you're in a funk and if you're in a funk, that means," he paused for effect, waiting until Jean opened both eyes and looked at him attentively, "tickle torture!"
Jean's startled shriek rang through most of the mansion when Scott literally pounced on her. She fought him off valiantly for a moment before giving in, making a show of her purposefully weak struggle. "Well," she panted, "you've got me! Now what are you going to do with me?"
The door rattled as if the air pressure in the mansion changed, a sound like the rustle of fabric hissing through the room for a moment, then the sound of at least two sets of footsteps pounding down the hall. A crash of breaking glass and a harsh curse identified at least one of the noisy runners as Logan. "Fucking hell!"
"Son of a bitch!" a second voice cried.
"Storm?" Scott and Jean mouthed to each other. They righted their clothes and adjourned in the hall to find Logan in the process of going out the window and Wanda standing, rubbing an ugly knot on the back of her head, glaring after the older man. "What happened?" Jean asked. "And where's Storm?"
"Took off after Pietro. Dumb fuck hit me again. Didn't see it comin'..." she failed to add that she had momentarily forgotten about her newfound "hexing" ability until she felt the blow connect, too late really to do anything about it but she would have liked to change the heavy tray to feathers or cotton or something as it hit her.
"What happened?" Scott demanded.
"The little shit played dead. Laid there all limp and not breathing and still...Logan went to check on him and next thing you know, he's clockin' me over the head and running hell bent for leather. Chased him up here and he went out the window. Thought he'd killed himself...hoped, actually," she corrected herself.
Jean ran to the window and looked out, unable to see any of the mentioned parties. "Where could he be going?"
"Boardinghouse," Scott suggested.
"School," Wanda said firmly. "He was babbling on about Mystique and Miss Blau...Logan said that was the new principal. He's going to the school."
"Well then," Scott said grimly, "so are we."

"Regenbogen," Kurt said patiently, for the third time, pointing to the dots of fractured light dancing across the grass.
Kitty mouthed it silently. "That really means rainbow? I mean, you're not just feeling silly and making things up?"
"Regenbogen!" he said again, with more emphasis.
He was not going to let her out of it, she realized. "Regenbogen," she repeated.
"There! That didn't hurt, did it?" he said, taking the prism from between her fingers. "Prisma."
"Prisma2," she sighed, reaching for it.
Kurt, sitting nearly knee-to-knee with her on the small swath of grass behind the boathouse, held the prism on the end of a piece of cord out of Kitty's reach. "We're not done," he said primly, making her smirk despite her bad mood. "Come on, Katzchen," he cajoled. "You were fine until the cheerleader uniforms spontaneously combusted!"
"Amara wouldn't have set them on fire if someone hadn't written on the back of her uniform like they had mine!" Kitty said with ire. All of the Institute girls had found their uniforms marked with the slanderous term that had been on the back of Kitty's uniform tay bay before, but they each had numbers underneath them, as if it were a team.
Kurt bit back the urge to use a very cruel and, according to his father's mother, powerful Romany curse at that moment, instead taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly to control his rising temper. "Funkeln," he said, twisting the cord between his fingers and making the prism shimmer. "It sparkles."
"Funkeln," Kitty repeated dismally. "When I was very little," she said quietly, "Yaya convinced me and Ruth that faeries lived in anything that sparkled like that."
"Elfen. Faeries are elfen," Kurt said, scooting closer. Kitty barely whispered the word as she stared at some memory unknown to Kurt. She nearly jumped when he said "Sonnenschien."
"What?"
"Sonnenschien," he said again, holding out his hand and tipping his face up towards the sun, low in the sky and quite yellow with springtime.
"Sonnenshien. Sunshine."
"Very good!" he said, overpraising her, hoping to bring her smile back if even for a moment. Reaching out tentatively, setting the prism to one side as he did so, Kurt touched her face, running his fingers lightly across her cheeks and nose. "Sommersprossen."
"Was?" she said, glad she could remember one word.
"Sommersprossen. Freckles."
"Oh." The pink tinge creeping up from her neck only made her d frd freckles stand out more. "I wish they'd go away."
"I like them," he said seriously. He was so close that he could almost taste her, the salty sweetness of her skin, warmed by the late afternoon sun and the light sheen of sweat standing out on her throat from the unseasonable warmth in the air. He could smell the scent of her, not just the artificial one that she put on in the morning or that she bathed with in the evening, but the scent of her, of everything that she was. Kitty had gone very still, staring at him with round eyes. "Where are your glasses?" he asked, a little startled to see her without them, having gotten used to them rather quickly.
"I finally got the stupid contacts in," she breathed, not quite willing to break whatever spell was falling over them. "They itch," she added.
Kurt smiled a little. "I think you're beautiful even with the glasses."
"Klappe," she said, proud to remember another word. "You're embarrassing me."
"It shouldn't. Hearing that shouldn't embarrass you," he said, brushing his lips across hers, barely touching her.
"Please don't say it," she said almost fearfully, still not moving. "I'd feel much better if you didn't."
Kurt sighed, chagrined. "If that's what you want..."
"It is."
"Alright then." He kissed her again, harder this time but not crushing, not as desperately as he could have.
Kitty closed her eyes and found herself gripping his wrists, the soft fur on his arms sliding beneath her fingers as she began making strange patterns. She kissed him back, not letting the contact wane as she sought more, her need for him, despite their forays into the physical, greater than she would have liked to admit. She tasted his lips and the slight sweetness of the peach he had eaten earlier, then the mix of toothpaste and fruit in his mouth as she laved his tongue with hers. Kurt made a muffled noise, not surprise but nearly so, and removed his wrists from her grasp only to clutch at her back, holding her tightly, both of them awkwardly bent over their legs rather than moving to a more accommodating position.
"Ich hab's ernst gemeint, weißt du..."3 Kitty shook her head mutely, eyes cast downward. "Stur," he grumbled.
"I'm not so stubborn," she protested. "It's just..."
"Just what?" he sighed. "You still want to wait? I swear, Kitty, sometimes I think you're holding Lent against me!"
"No," she said, glaring a little. "It's just..." He made an impatient noise when she paused but she knew he was not pressing for sex then, just for her reasons so they could get out out in the open. "I'm kind of...on my period."
Kurt closed his eyes and did the mental math. "Damn it. It's that time and I didn't notice."
"You noticed before?" she asked, her color heightening.
"Well, ja...Not how you think!" he said hastily as she looked mortified. "I just notice that all of you girls seem to need late night runs to the drug store around the same time, and you're on those pills so I know it's going to be the same week every month..."
"Still. Oy."
Kurt opened his mouth to say something but paused, frowning. "Did you hear that? Sounded like glass..."
A grey blur shot past them and a shadow passed over them. Logan appeared as if from nowhere, startling them so that they did not let go of each otherandsands as they stared up at him from the ground. "For the love of..." he growled. "Pietro's runnin' and you two are playin' kissy face! Get your asses up!" He was gone as quickly as he had come, Kurt and Kitty exchanging surprised expressions.
"Pietro?" Kurt asked.
"Here?"
"Not anymore," Kurt said. "Come on...Let's get Jean and Scott. Maybe they know what's going on..."
1 Interesting story, actually...in the Vatican, there is a complex system of courts and "colleges" or groups that deal with the Catholic Church's workings on all levels from mundane to mystical. A Devil's Advocate works for the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, which hears the cases of saints (really the people who are trying to have someone declared a saint) and verifies miracles. A Devil's Advocate has to point out holes in theories, flaws in the most sainted people...basically try and shoot down everything that comes the way of the Congregation. So...there's your Church History for the day. Go on about your business.
2 Prism
3 I was serious, you know... (and thanks to Foxy for translating! :) )