Games we play

DISCLAIMER: Alas...they're not mine. I don't own them.

Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to go through life half-blind, half-deaf and almost totally without proper scent or taste. Like living life through a pane of glass, one step away from everything that was true. Life was true. The smell of it, the stink of the world and all the living and unliving things in it. The way they faded into each other.

A man could stand still in one place for five minutes, and he could follow the trail for a few weeks. The sheer insanity of the multitude of trails and the way they layered on top of each other, intermingled, went back and forth and some just stood still and some spread their scent wider even when they were standing still... Couldn’t be described, not in words, not to someone who didn’t know what it was like. It was an entirely different world, a very detailed one that made up its own rules. Maybe they lived in the world he did, but they didn’t see it the same way.

Didn’t see all the shades that colored it.

Tracking a prey that could teleport just made things interesting. More of a challenge. He could track any of the students as easy as pie, and most of the teachers. Except when Ro took to the skies, that kinda fucked things up on the tracking end. At least by scent. He needed to hunt something. At least every once in a while. It made it easier to shut up the part of him that drooled happily over the thought of biting into some hot flesh, any type, two legged or not. Hunting Thumper out in the forested area was fine, but he really didn’t want any of the kids to see that.

And especially not the ones he actually liked.

Not many of them, but he did have a few whose babble didn’t make him want to leave in a spray of dirt and gravel from under the wheels of Summers’s motorbike. Which was now his, apparently. He could deal with that, but he’d rather liked nicking it when he wanted a ride. Especially if he returned it with an empty tank. The facial twitches made it all worth it. For a man of very few expressions, the ones Slim made when annoyed were very entertaining. Maybe it was because most of the time he showed as much feeling as a plank of wood.

Just how had Jeannie been able to stand him? Maybe love really was blind.

Ran his tongue along his back teeth, feeling the bumpy ridges and sharp edges, and grinning a little to himself as he walked down the corridor. The scent almost danced in front of him, going from side to side and almost to the ceiling. The prey must have been dodging a class going to another room or something similar. He wasn’t interested in the students – not now. Not as much fun to track. Their scents were so broad, and strong. Dizzy scent of pheremones, everywhere in this fucking school. Like permanent heat, radiating out from under their skins. Humans. So fixated on sex, and they didn’t even realize it.

It left a taint, a musk on the air. Hard to get rid of, easy to get up. Especially in teenagers. Their biology was all about reproducing, even if the world around them was telling them to wait. Time bombs on two legs. He was surprised that there hadn’t been more trouble on that front then there had been. Guess that was the advantage of having a telepath for headmaster. Anything like that would get firmly nipped in the bud, just by a firm thought. Or even the possibility of that thought ever coming...and wondering, if it didn’t, why.

Great, now he’d managed to disgust himself and get distracted.

Shaking his head, he breathed out sharply and lifted his head again to get a better fix on the scent. Male, sharp and rotten scent of sulfur, musk...incense. The smell of prayer. Ritual. Brought to mind solemn faces, quiet songs and robes. Velvet. Silk. Richness around, and hints of luxury. Memories of places he’d walked through, people he’d brushed past filtered in and automatic filing classified and sorted, putting what he smelt now against his experiences. Couldn’t explain just how he did it, how he could read the scent down to the last floating fragment of smell. Just did it. Like most of what he did. Just did it, and didn’t know how. Just knew. Like it was ingrained into his bones, along with the adamantium. Mind might forget, but the body remembered. The deep down and dark places of the mind, that didn’t really think, they remembered too. It made him wonder, what else could be in there.

Bits and pieces, fragments and shreds. That’s all he had. The rest was a blank. Xavier’s inscrutable smile was more and more aggravating every time, so he’d given up on asking the telepath to help him find out what else could be lurking in the shattered thing he called his head. Things’d come back, or they wouldn’t. He was sick of head butting a brick wall that he couldn’t even really touch. Give him something that was there, that he could touch. He could fight that. Hell, he was damn good at it.

He turned into a room as the scent led him on, trail easy to track now. No disorientating bamfs that meant he was circling around for ages on end, trying to pick up the new trail. Not that the prey ever went that far in one jump, but it messed up his nose something awful. Stink of sulfur, like something burning. Smoke and hellfire, brimstone. The left overs matched with the physical. Just where the hell did he go when he jumped from one point in reality to another? Hell, maybe. Except he didn’t really believe hell existed at all...there was just here, and what people did with it. Anyone who pretended otherwise was selling something. Usually salvation in a bottle.

Here.

Coming up behind him on silent feet, Logan curled one arm around Kurt’s waist, nuzzling at the junction between neck and shoulder. Bit down, leaving behind the mark of sharp teeth as he pulled the German in against him. Smelt like something close to home...even with the sulfur. Which was ingrained, he was pretty sure. Pity. It stung his nose a little, but everything else about Kurt was just fine.

“Tag.”

Tail wrapping around his leg as Kurt turned a little in the grip of his arm, corners of his mouth turning up in a smile. Something rarer to see then he liked to think about. Waited a beat of a moment as it began to fade into something sort of indulgent, and then kissed him stupid.

Game, set, match.

Even if Kurt hadn’t known he’d been playing.