Beautiful

Explicit Novel (Word count 34,081)

Part 1- Warren


About halfway through an already unpleasant briefing came the news that dropped my heart through the pit of my stomach. For a moment or two I thought I might actually vomit, something I try to avoid at all costs. Cyclops was delivering the latest awful stories from the war against the Friends of Humanity: mutants mysteriously disappearing, hate mail, petrol bombs, the proliferation of containment camps, oh and Chamber’s been captured and is being held at the first of said camps. All of it delivered in that clipped, newsreader’s voice of his, like it didn’t really matter. Only the tight clench of his jaw belied the fact that it did, a lot.

Chamber, Jonothon Starsmore, the latest recruit to the team; I don’t count myself. I am an old-time Xman, one who has left and returned to the habit more times than an alcoholic, desperately trying to fulfil a need to be valuable in a world that has no use for me beyond looking pretty and fronting an enormous conglomerate that runs itself anyway. Jonothon Starsmore, the very reason I returned this time. Only to look, not brave enough to run the gauntlet of his working class hatred of the moneyed, but entranced by him. Captivated by his ability to say ‘fuck you’ just in the way he sits, the way he lets everyone know that, as far as he’s concerned, the world owes him an apology. I suppose it does. Most of all I think that it’s the fact that he clearly has no idea just how jaw-droppingly beautiful he is that draws me.

This is the point where I should say something like ‘imagine how striking he must have been before his accident’ but I am not sure that part of his appeal isn’t the fact that those big, expressive eyes of his are really all there is to look at, the rest of his face hidden by the bandages he hates so much you can taste it and so don’t dare let your line of sight drop at all. Yes, I have thought about this far too much. It is one of my many character faults, this tendency to fixate on something or someone and obsess. When I was younger I would have kidded myself that it was unrequited love, but it is not. Love is so much harder than this furtive observation. All it is really is my well-bred enjoyment of beautiful things. I am happy to admire a Rembrandt or a Picasso, but want nothing to do with the hard labour of restoring and maintaining one. That is how love has always been for me; more work than it has been worth in the end. So, rather than risk the pain of rejection and eventual loss I have just watched from afar. It sounds somewhat seedy now I come to think of it, but no matter. I am not hurting, or at least not as much as I might have been. I think he would understand if he knew. Since the woman he loved became the poster girl for the mutants-are-dangerous-front he knows the pain of loving and having that love torn from you and poisoned with betrayal.

By the time we were all suited and booted and in the Blackbird my stomach had settled, the fluttering nausea forced into submission by the Zen like state of being ‘on a mission’. I had done this so many times before, trained with the rest of the team and trusted them to do their job that, as long as I didn’t let my mind stray to Candy, or the Morlock thing, or any of the other disasters, as long as I could focus on the missions with positive outcomes, I was fine. I had my instructions, and as usual they were fly in, don’t get killed, fly out, preferably with a safely rescued Jono. The others, those with more battle-useful mutations, would hold off the FoH. Oh, and I was not, under any circumstances, to allow Chamber to become involved in the fighting. We had no idea what they might have done to him, and this was going to be spun against mutant rights in the media anyway, the last thing we needed was a massacre.

Scott had given me this last directive personally, keeping me behind in the locker room and fixing me with that enigmatic red gaze of his. The eyes that see everything and give nothing back, and I knew then why I had been chosen to swoop in and pluck Mr Starsmore from danger. I was not, after all, the only mutant at the Institute who was capable of flight. Scott knew, had seen what I had tried so hard to keep secret, even from myself, and trusted me to want Jono out of harm’s way more than anyone else.

As it turned out we need not have concerned ourselves that Jono would be in a murderous rage. The rescue went smoothly: decoy, main strike force and my own part all running exactly as they had been detailed in Cyclops’ customarily meticulous plan. The intelligence had been good, and our fears were grounded. The last high-profile mutant to be taken by the FoH had been executed and videotapes of the proceedings had sold with sickening speed on the black market. Clearly the sequel had been intended to be even more popular, and, as is often the way with sequels, even more spectacular. I found Chamber on his knees, hands tied behind his back, tied to a block. I’ll repeat that, because it sounds so unbelievable, so barbaric and medieval, a block, the sort of thing Anne Boleyn had been intimately acquainted with briefly. They hadn’t been stupid enough to remove his bandages, but had cut a rectangle from the back to ease the blade’s path. I will remember that pale, vulnerable patch of skin standing out from the black for as long as I live; it seemed so sickeningly exposed, the delicate curve of his graceful neck bent and waiting for the axe that lay propped casually against his shoulder.

When I first reached him I thought perhaps we were too late, and that he was already dead. It is difficult to tell sometimes, since he doesn’t breathe and has no pulse but what really frightened me was the absence of life in his eyes. I cut the ropes that held him down and freed his hands, but he stayed where he was, staring, unseeing, at the patch of ground before him. It was really only as I began to lift him, to carry his body back because I was damned if I would allow the FoH to deny him at least a little dignity in death, that I realised he was still with us. He cooperated with me, but that was all, I got no response to my words, not even a flicker of recognition or acknowledgement that I had spoken. I slid my arms around him carefully, deciding to hold him as I would were he unconscious, rather than relying on him to hold on at all. I tightened my embrace in preparation for take off, whispering to Chamber as I did that he was safe now, terrified that he would suddenly snap out of the trance he was in and start to fight against being held. I have nightmares about dropping someone I’m flying with, and I did not want them to come true. I think I probably said more to him on the short flight back to the Blackbird than I had in the entire time I had known him before, all of it soothing nonsense. He said nothing.

He was no more animated when we got back to the Blackbird, letting me strap him into a seat, but still staring blankly ahead, no life in his dark eyes. When I moved past him, to find out how the rest of the team were faring, he reached out one long-fingered hand and grabbed my wrist. I would later discover that he had raised five perfect bruises but his eyes never left the back of the seat in front of him.

When we got back to base, no casualties to report, Jono let me lead him to the medlab, still gripping my arm like it was the only thing keeping him alive. Or sane. Hank couldn’t pry his fingers off me, reluctantly allowing me to stay and to my eternal shame I felt a flush, brief and disgraceful, of pride. I was, if not exactly needed, wanted at least.

"I need to examine you, Mr Starsmore," Hank said, in his kind but brooking no discussion voice.

Jono shook his head and spoke his first words since the camp; even projected directly into my mind, they were barely audible.

*I’m all right. They didn’t hurt me.*

"Nevertheless…"

Another, more emphatic, shake of the partially bandaged head, and those dark eyes locked gaze with mine.

*Don’t you trust me?*

That question directed at me and I remembered, with a twist of cowardice deep in my gut, why it was that I had avoided this, this mingling of lives with someone else. Nice to be wanted, yes, but did I really want responsibility for this shell of a man? My weakness ran even deeper than I had realised, and I could not refuse the plea in those deep dark windows to his soul. I couldn’t abide the possibility that they would glaze over again, go back to being as empty as they had been on the Blackbird.

I turned to Hank and promised to bring Jono back to the lab if I was at all concerned. My friend, one of the few in my life who has no interest in my money and is therefore free to speak the truth, however much I do not wish to hear it, merely nodded.

"You realise this is probably a reaction to the fact that it was you who got him out of that place?" he said. I heard what he didn’t say too, not in words, only with those bright intelligent eyes that bore into mine. ‘Don’t fuck him, Warren, please, he’s in no mental condition to consent to that.’

I didn’t respond to the unspoken warning, not certain I could promise him what he wanted, knowing my own weakness. I wouldn’t proposition Jono, of course not, not even I am that much of a monster, but if he asked I did not think I could refuse him. I had often salved my own close shaves with death in the arms of a willing partner, and I was prepared to be that for Chamber if he needed me to. I suspected he did. I knew my reputation as a good lay with no strings attached and I thought it a likely explanation for Jono’s sudden refusal to leave my side.

Sure enough he led me past his own room to mine. I have no idea when I ceased to be leader and became the led. As soon as the door was closed he pressed me back against it, using the entire sinewy length of his body to hold me there. Once he seemed content that I was not going to move he let go of my wrist. I felt his elegant fingers flutter over my face as though he was trying to learn its contours and he nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck, muttering ‘please, please’ over and over into my mind as he did.

I tried to follow Hanks’ advice, I really did, but my arms seemed to have lost their strength and could do nothing other than wrap themselves around his narrow shoulders and hold him to me.

"Please what?" I whispered, not trying to be facetious, just wanting to be sure. I had a feeling I was never going to forgive myself for what was about to happen anyway, but especially not if I had misread signals purely because they seemed to have been lifted directly from my fantasies.

I got a gentle telepathic chuckle in response and my heart leapt in my chest because it was the first time Jono had actually seemed remotely like himself since we had rescued him.

*Please don’t tell me you’re straight, at least not completely.*

There was that quick humour that so captivated me, perhaps he would be all right after all. It had to be a joke because the evidence that I was far from completely straight was pushing insistently against him and I could tell from the counter pressure he was applying that he knew it was there. I shook my head though, smiling as I did but wanting this to be transparently negotiated.

"I’m not," I explained. "I’m too greedy to limit myself to a single gender."

*Make me forget.* All trace of amusement gone suddenly. *Even if only for a little while.*

That I could do. Later we would discuss what it was that he needed so badly to forget, at least that’s what I told myself as I sought to assuage my conscience. I nodded, bending to press my lips to his forehead, realising sadly that even had his face been whole, that would have been where I would have placed this kiss anyway. This wasn’t love, or even affection. There was no place for the kind of hot open-mouthed kisses I craved here.

I turned him gently, reversing our positions so that he was braced against the door and dropped to my knees before him. I could make this about him, I reasoned; ignore the insistent throbbing ache between my own legs and make this only about his pleasure and then it wouldn’t be quite so dreadful a thing to have done. The fact that I had fantasised, even dreamed about this was not the point. He had asked me, and I would not refuse him over something as trivial as feeling guilty tomorrow.

His musician’s hands entwined themselves in my hair as I dropped his jeans to his ankles, exposing him to my gaze, my hands and mouth. I thought he might push me onto him, but he didn’t, just ran his hands through my hair, trusting me to do as I had tacitly promised.

I buried my face in the crease of his groin, memorising the scent of him, feeling him slick a trail of moisture onto my cheek as his moans filled my mind. Then I began, hands and mouth everywhere at once. I know I am good at this. I knew I could make it good enough to let him forget the rest of today ever happened. Then all thoughts left my mind; there was no self-recrimination, no second-guessing now. There was only Jono, and the taste and feel of him in my mouth, the sound of him in my head, his fingers twisting in my hair urging me on. So on I went. My tongue painted delicate patterns of pleasure over the head of his cock, my hands roaming over and behind his balls, slippery with my saliva and his precum, searching for the tight entrance to his body and pushing against it. He was so incredibly sexy then, unsure whether to push up into the heat of my mouth or down onto my slick, invading finger. Any other time I might have teased him for longer, but not this time.

I lowered my head, feeling how perfectly he filled my mouth, how easily he slid into the tight confines of my throat, knowing that this was as much about me as about him. Then I opened his body with my finger, searching for that secret place in the darkness that would end this and revelling in the telepathic gasp that told me I had found it. His hands tightened on my head then, holding me steady while he used my mouth and I didn’t mind, not this time, because he needed this and I could give it to him. I felt him swell in my throat and pulled back, wanting to taste his release, not waste it. Not deluded enough to think this would ever happen again and wanting to imprint it all in my memory.

I caught him as he slid, bonelessly, down the door and lifted him from the pool of clothing at his feet. He put his arms around my neck, fingers playing in the short hair at the base of my skull as I crossed the room and lay him in my bed, in my bed where I have wanted him since the first day I saw him, but not like this, not under these circumstances. One hand drifted languorously out from the bed to ghost across my crotch and against all my wishes my hips bucked involuntarily, trying to increase the contact. I was still painfully hard, I could feel the coolness of a sizeable damp spot on my pants and I hoped that he wouldn’t offer to take care of it for me. I was not at all sure I had enough willpower to resist and I was still half-kidding myself that this had been about Jono and what he needed.

*Warren,* he murmured, and oh God, his clever fingers were cupping me, tracing my outline, slipping in the wet patch and teasing me. *You didn’t…* his voice was slurred with the need to sleep, with satiated want and I was torn.

"Shhh," I said, stepping back out of his reach and hardly believing my ears. "I’m all right."

It turned out that I cared about him just that little bit more than myself at that moment in time and that fact pleased me as much as it shocked me.

*Stay,* he asked, almost asleep now and against my better judgement I agreed. I realised then that this was why he had chosen my room. Not, as I had thought, because he wanted to be able to run, but so that I had nowhere to go. I cursed myself as a fresh wave of guilt coursed through me. Most likely this is what he wanted, to be held in sleep, to not be alone, to know he was safe but what he got was sucked off. Sex so often the easiest way to ask for company, I of all people am well aware of that, and I hated myself for not listening to Hank, who must also have known.

*Stay,* he repeated, rolling onto his side and flipping the bedclothes back to invite me into the space against his back. I accepted, sliding my fully clothed body to spoon behind his, wrapping one arm and wing protectively around him and trying to resist the urge to grind my erection against him until I achieved release. This will be my penance, I had thought to myself, to lie here hard and frustrated while he sleeps, while I finally give him what he actually needs.

Part 2


JONO


When I woke, I was alone. For a brief moment I had that awful disoriented feeling where you don’t know where you are, but I didn’t think I was back in the containment camp. I couldn’t be, because I was lying in the most comfortable bed in the entire world. It felt and smelt expensive, as stupid as that sounds. Even more expensive than my bed at the Institute, the sheets of which had a thread count higher than all the other sheets I had ever slept on put together. It was the smell though, that brought me back to where I was and what I had done. A subtle, understatedly expensive smell. One that said not, I’ve got very expensive aftershave but my soap costs more than most people’s shoes. Only one person here was this well off, even Xavier himself wasn’t quite in this income bracket and I felt a hot wave of mortification and pride run through me. I had seduced Warren Worthington the third. Fuck. The man everyone had warned me against when I came here, especially Angelo, knowing as he did my embarrassing predilection for men who would be gone before I woke up. Worthington was renowned as a playboy, a lover of men and women, but rarely for more than a night, maybe a weekend if you were really good. I was pretty sure I had not been really good, in fact I seemed to recall falling asleep on him almost immediately after he had given me the most earth-shattering, bone-melting orgasm of my entire life. Maybe he’d give me a second chance; I had had a really fucking bad day yesterday but I wasn’t going to hold my breath, the man could have anyone he wanted, why would he want me?

Then he was back, standing in the doorway that I now know leads to his office, leaning against the jamb, dressed in only a low-slung towel, damp hair and damp wings and before I realised he had probably showered to get the smell of me, common little oik that I am, off his skin, he was like something out of a wet dream.

"Oh," he said, "you’re awake." Not ‘oh shit’ or ‘oh good’ just ‘oh’. Then he stood there, water dripping onto the floor from those perfect white angel’s wings, looking at me. Just looking, not staring, not gazing in disbelief at the horror story he had let into his room in a haze of lust. It was most disconcerting.

"Business call," he explained, lifting one hand to show me the phone he held. "Didn’t mean to wake you."

*D’you always shower before you phone anyone?* I asked, partly because I wanted him to stop looking at me and partly because I wanted to see my suspicion confirmed by the look on his face.

He just smiled, unfazed by my question because, yes, he did. He shrugged his shoulders, wings lifting slightly with them.

"I hadn’t cleaned up since the mission, and I do hate trying to do business when I feel dirty. Did you want to use the shower?" he asked, something I couldn’t decipher crossing his face as he spoke.

Well, I did and I didn’t. I did, now I came to think of it, feel pretty rank but I was extremely comfortable and I think I knew that as soon as I got out of this bed, that was it, I would not be returning.

"Up to you," he said, shrugging again. "It’s only about two am so there’s time to get some more sleep after. I’m just going to get myself a cup of tea and write a quick email about that phone call while it’s fresh in my mind."

*Don’t you have butlers and secretaries to do that sort of stuff for you?* I asked, sounding a lot more hostile than I meant to but having to say something to fill the silence that pervaded the room while he continued to stand there, utterly breathtaking as water pooled at his perfect feet. I guess it can’t be easy to dry wings with a towel.

He just laughed, oblivious to the rudeness in my question, or amused by it, and crossed the bedroom to his walk-in closet. It was bigger than my bedroom had been in London.

"I can make a cup of tea," he said, still smiling as he dropped the towel from around his waist, giving me a flash of the most stunning arse I have ever seen, ever. My mouth went dry, and I knew there was no way on God’s earth I could possibly get out of bed now; it hadn’t been that kind of flash and I didn’t want to come across as too desperate, even if I was. It had been more of a comfortable in my own body thing, something I had never had, even when my body was less monstrous. Perhaps I was kidding myself but it did make me rethink my belief that he was going to make himself a drink to give me time to slip out of his room.

He slipped on some obscenely short shorts and left the room and I wavered for a moment or two, still cradled in that glorious bed and not really wanting to leave. What I really wanted was for him to come back and spoon up behind me again or better still invite me to run my hands over his body. I let my thoughts wander happily along that avenue for a little while before I realised that a man who showered at one in the morning probably wouldn’t be inviting me to do anything of the sort at the moment. There was no two ways about it, I stank to high heaven; twenty-four hours worth of emotional sweat and dirt from the filthy hut I had been kept in did not make me an especially attractive bedfellow. In hindsight that was the first real evidence I had as to just how well brought-up, how well mannered Warren really was. Anyone else would have just told me to get in the shower for God’s sake. OK, so shower it was. If I was quick I could make it back into bed before he’d written his email, and thereby avoid the awkward moment when we were both out of bed and it would be too easy to say ‘oh well, see you around’ and leave.

So, reluctantly, I forced my weary self out of the bed and into the shower. The bathroom door had no lock, and why would it? Warren was clearly not a man with terribly overdeveloped boundaries so I had to just trust that he wouldn’t come in if he returned before I was finished. I hated myself a little bit for being so anxious about it; it was hardly as though he had never seen what lay under my bandages and he had, after all, had my cock in his mouth only hours ago, but I really didn’t want him to see me completely naked.

I kept my bandages on initially. I didn’t have any spares with me and they were as dirty as the rest of me, and like the fat kid at the swimming pool clinging to his towel right up to the water’s edge I felt less exposed with them on. It took a long and heated conversation with myself before I could force my fingers to unwind them, listening over the hiss of the shower for Warren’s return. As sod’s bloody law would have it, as soon as I had dropped them onto the floor outside the shower, my psi-fire lighting the bathroom like the Northern Lights, he opened the door. I froze. He wouldn’t be the first of my lovers to surprise me at my ablutions only to beat a hasty retreat with that look on their face that I hate more than any other, more even than the outright blank hatred the FoH seem to have down to a fine art. I mean the car-crash look. You know it’s awful and you want to look away but you can’t. Morbid fascination. I guess I have my own car-crash response to the look too. I knew it was coming, but I couldn’t stop myself from turning to face the door, just to make sure I caught his facial expression.

I think that was the moment I really fell for Warren; when I stopped just lusting after his beautiful body and began to realise how unfair his reputation as flighty and self-interested really was. Watching his fingers, so strikingly blue against the paintwork of the door, as they held it ajar enough that his voice would carry to me over the spray of the shower but not enough that he could see in, my heart joined the rest of my body in adoring him.

"I’m not coming in," he said, and I was unable to hear, even with my highly developed sense of grievance, anything other than compassion and understanding in his voice. Not a hint of ‘I really don’t want to see you’ just ‘I’ll wait to be invited’. Then his other hand snaked through the tiny gap, into the bathroom and I recognised immediately what it held. "I picked you up some more bandages while I was downstairs," he continued, with such blatant disregard for the ongoing lightshow in his bathroom that I wondered if he had his eyes closed. "I think the ones you have on…might be damaged."

He dropped them on the floor, just inside the door and retreated, leaving me to think about my damaged bandages. I knew they were damaged alright, I could still feel the cold steel of the scissors that had cut that patch away and the cool air against a bit of my body that hadn’t been exposed in years. Against my wishes all the thoughts and memories I had been fighting came back to me in an overwhelming rush and I dropped to my knees wishing I still had a stomach to empty because I wanted to puke.

I am not sure how long I knelt in the spray of the shower, rocking gently as I relived the feel of rough hands in the hair at the nape of my neck, and the rasp of one blade against another as my neck was exposed for the axe. I finally let myself feel the ache in my shoulders and the burn on my wrists where my hands had been so tightly bound behind me. I have always been of a morbid turn of mind, and had thought about my own death many times, even planned it once or twice after my mutation made a normal life unachievable, but I suppose this was the first time it had really been presented to me as a real, inescapable possibility. Obviously there had been times in the heat of battle but that was just what it was like, hot, fiery fighting, not cool waiting, feeling the handle of that bastard axe on my shoulder as I waited meek as a sacrificial lamb to meet my maker. Stupid things came back to me: feeling so bloody furious that, after all my suicidal thoughts, all the plans I had made, the decision would be taken from me by the sodding Friends of Humanity. So yeah, I remembered feeling white hot fury, and that sounds all right, kind of cool really, very superheroesque. But I also remembered the blinding, claustrophobic panic. I remembered crying like a little girl and wishing, praying even, to a God I’m not sure I ever really believed in, that I could speak so that I could beg for my life. Not quite so worthy of the Xmen that, somehow.

The water was cold now, I could tell because the tears were hot on my cheeks before they were boiled into nothing by my fabulous power, so I must have been there a while. I had exhausted myself utterly that was certain, cried myself out like I hadn’t since my accident and I wanted to be held in strong arms and told that everything was going to be alright. I knew too, that I could have that. All I had to do was call out to Warren, I didn’t doubt for a moment that he’d be with me in a heartbeat. Which was weird really. I hardly knew him, and what I did know of him suggested a man who would hightail it out of any situation requiring anything more emotionally demanding than money or sex. Not that it mattered. I couldn’t call him anyway, at least not until I was wrapped up again, and I knew that by then I would have my wayward mood swings just as tightly controlled.

When I left the bathroom, towel round my waist, bandages round my torso and face, I found Warren sitting on the edge of the bed. He had his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped between them, wings trailing and head bowed, looking for all the world like a fallen angel. I knew then how to make the hollow scared feeling in the centre of what remained of my chest go away. The same thing that had made it go last night.

Only trouble was I had no idea how to ask for it. Pre-catastrophe I would have had no trouble; the fact that Warren was loaded and gorgeous would only have made him more of a challenge. I’d had all the morals of an alley cat then, no one was safe. Of course I’d also had a reasonably attractive face and about a million times more confidence than I had now. It had taken a brush with death to take me out of myself enough to forget my self-consciousness yesterday and make a move on him; not an especially subtle one, I confess, and when I had time to think about it I had a feeling I was going to be absolutely bloody mortified with myself. I wouldn’t get away with such a sledgehammer approach now, even if I could bring myself to behave like that again and I felt a slice of fear go through me that he had only acquiesced because I was so clearly mentally disturbed at the time that he thought it safest.

"You should go and talk to Hank," his words cut into my introspection, stopping any further seduction plans I might have had cold. His tone of voice was low and unreadable but the look on his face gave a clear message of regret. I knew that look, although I was usually on Warren’s side of it. ‘What the hell have I done?’ is what it said and I had felt it weld itself to my face when I woke up next to some dog of a one night stand or, once, the band’s manager’s son. It was only now that I realised how much it hurt to be the cause and recipient of it.

*Yeah,* I agreed, suddenly wanting to be out of there, before it hit me just what a monumental pity fuck I had been. *I should. You don’t think he’ll mind me waking him?*

Warren just shook his head, as desperate for me to go as I was to leave, I suppose.

"He’s going to kill me," he whispered, almost to himself, lifting his gaze to meet mine. There was such self-recrimination in his blue eyes that I wondered for a moment if he and the good doctor had some kind of thing going on between them. The mental picture that threw up was just ridiculous so I discounted it; it was almost as unlikely as this god among men having some sort of a thing with me.

*I won’t tell him,* I promised but Warren just laughed, a sharp, humourless exhalation of breath coupled with a look that told me Hank was just going to know. It never even occurred to me to wonder what Hank was going to kill him for and I felt the beginning of the return of my temper. *I am a grown-up, Warren.*

Another snort of unamused laughter and I was beginning to get really pissed off.

"Doesn’t matter," he said. "I took advantage of you when you were in a vulnerable place." The last delivered in a really quite good approximation of a stern Doctor McCoy but seasoned with a dose of self-disgust.

*No you didn’t,* I answered, which wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t have any regrets about what had happened and I couldn’t see why he should be beating himself up like this. I definitely couldn’t see any reason for Beast to give him a hard time about it, he was probably just jealous anyway. *You gave me what I asked for, what I needed. Only person in the whole fucking place who would have done.*

Only person in the whole place I really wanted to, I thought but didn’t add.

He smiled at me then, a brief, shy, grateful smile that I had never seen, and would never have imagined, on the face of Warren Worthington III. I wondered briefly if I had accidentally projected that last thought after all but my control is pretty good and I was fairly sure that I hadn’t. Perhaps he was just appreciative of the fact that I had not taken the opportunity he offered to blame him for what had happened between us. I wasn’t sure what to make of that smile, but it dissolved my anger like a sugar cube in the rain and I wanted to see it again. It felt, stupid and sappy as this sounds, like it was my smile, a side of him he didn’t show to other people.

Then he waved me imperiously out of the door, which was probably just as well since I was about to throw myself at his feet and embarrass myself beyond belief. I shook my head as I walked down to the medlab. Special smile indeed. For a hard-nosed English commoner I can be ridiculously romantic, must be my creative temperament. Well, that and the fact that I haven’t exactly been overwhelmed by offers of late, but still, get a blowjob and think I’m in love. Pretty tragic really.

Hank greeted me at the door, showing absolutely no sign of the fact that it was 3am, behaving like he had nothing better to do than talk to me and as though I had not rudely declined his help only hours before. He checked me over; nothing wrong with me physically, or at least no more than there was before the FoH got their hands on me. Then he just sort of looked at me, that fierce intelligence blazing in his blue eyes and said ‘anything else?’ and I knew that Warren had been right and he knew. That was the moment my temper decided to return in full.

*I don’t really see what business it is of yours, Dr McCoy,* I all but snarled. *If I want to forget my brush with death for a moment or two. It’s none of your fucking business how I choose to do so, or who I choose to do it with. And don’t you dare go laying into Warren for indulging me in my maladaptive coping mechanisms.* I got that one from Emma, she was always accusing me of dealing with my mutation in a maladaptive way. *Sometimes,* I continued, my fury feeding itself in the face of his calm professionalism. *Sometimes you don’t need to talk endlessly about how you feel about something. Sometimes you just need a damn good fuck.*

As soon as I’d said it, I realised, and my rage abated as quickly as it had come.

*You weren’t trying to protect me from Warren were you?*

He shook his big shaggy head slowly, face serious, brows beetled as he waited to see if I had really worked it out.

*You were protecting Warren from me.*

"No, no, Mr Starsmore," he replied reasonably. "From himself. I am quite sure that mindless sex is a somewhat maladaptive coping strategy, but it is also a common one, and it strikes me that the other common coping mechanisms, such as comfort eating and falling down blind drunkenness are denied you. I have no doubt that, so long as it does not remain your only way of working through your experiences it may well not be at all harmful to you."

*But Warren?*

"Is my friend, and does not always think of his own needs as much as might be supposed from his upbringing and demeanour. He has a tendency to consider requests in terms of whether or not he can provide what is being asked, rather than whether it is a good idea for him to do so."

*So you’re saying… shit Hank, what are you saying?*

"I’m just asking you to think carefully about what you want from him, and try to make your request as explicit as possible."

Stupid one-track mind that I have, I thought he meant something entirely different here, and found it a little odd to say the least. By the time I had realised that he was not advising me to think of the absolutely filthiest act two men could get up to together and ask for it, my expression must have given my thoughts away. I could have sworn Hank was blushing underneath all that fur and I wondered briefly if I had projected any of the options that had run through my head.

"Bear in mind that he is sometimes just a little self-serving though I feel bad for saying such a thing about a friend," he continued, clearly having no intention of commenting on my suggestions if I had projected them. "And if you do ever wish to offload anything about what has happened to you, you know I am always available to listen."

I sighed in my head. Bless Hank for trying, but I’m British, and we really don’t go in for all that group hug shit. I tried to think of a nice way to say so; it was a genuine offer, kindly made, but I couldn’t really see myself ever sitting down to have a good old chinwag about the tragedy of my life.

I shrugged instead and gestured at my bandages.

*Hank, I’ve never even talked to anyone about this.*

"I know," he answered; his blue eyes filled with such intense compassion that I felt my own fill with the tears I had never shed for my shattered future in response. "Anything you wish to discuss, Jonothon, at any time, I will be here for you."

I nodded, not trusting even my mental voice at that moment in time and turned to leave the lab. Maybe I would take him up on his offer, one of these days, but right now I had something more pressing to consider. What did I want from Warren? And was I brave enough to ask for it?



Part 3 Jono

As I walked back from the medlab I thought about what Hank had said. I didn’t know what I wanted from Warren and would never have been able to ask for it explicitly if I had. My modus operandi in relationships has always been to just plough straight in and wait and see where we get derailed, not terribly efficient, probably more painful but certainly less embarrassing that way. I did know that I didn’t want to hurt him. I am not as selfish as that, and the good doctor had certainly implied that I might hurt him unthinkingly. So, I returned to my own room, not at all sure that it was the right thing to do but needing some time to think. It seemed faintly ridiculous somehow, that I could possibly hurt the playboy of the mutant world but if I had learnt nothing else, I had learnt that Warren was a man who hid behind his reputation as effectively as I hid behind my bandages. Hank’s words had also sparked in me just the tiniest hope that there might actually be some sort of future for me with his friend; surely he wouldn’t have bothered to warn a meaningless shag to think hard before going back for more? I couldn’t exactly see them chatting about me over a couple of beers but I had to concede that Hank’s powers of observation extended far beyond medical requirements.

I sat in my room with the best of intentions; later, at a more reasonable hour of the day, I would find Warren and talk to him about what had happened between us and try and glean whether it had been more to him than just sexual healing. I hoped so but I can’t say I had high hopes; it was hardly as though I had ever noticed him checking me out but maybe, just maybe, I had not noticed because it was just so incredibly unlikely. I couldn’t quite get rid of the nagging suspicion I had that I was going to lay my cards on the table only to have Warren politely suggest that I was clearly mad, had I actually looked in a mirror recently?

So, yeah, the positive, we can work it out vibes lasted all of ten minutes before the rational, practical, utterly unromantic bit of my brain kicked in. Let’s just think about this for a minute, it said, we’re talking about Warren here. Blond, muscular, rich, handsome, perfect Warren. Warren whose photo, along with his arm candy du jour, makes the first page of a society magazine every time he steps out of his house. You’re deluded, Jono, it said, in my father’s voice, although my dad wouldn’t use deluded, something more like ‘fucking kidding yourself, you tosser’. And every objection I tried, feebly, to raise against this line of thought was met with casual dismissal. Hank? Misled about his friend’s morals. Warren’s considerate behaviour toward me? Civility, nothing more.

I am so practised at making myself miserable and keeping myself that way that it was almost a relief to stop feeling so optimistic. At least I knew where I was with self-hatred, with knowing with certainty that I was a monster, unlovable and unloved. If I had already been rejected in my mind, then there was nothing to fear in being rejected by Warren, it was inevitable.

Once I had got myself feeling good and wretched I lay down on the bed, which had formerly been the most comfortable I had ever slept in but was now relegated to second place. I stared at the ceiling, my eyes tracing the same patterns over it as they had sleepless night after sleepless night, and continued my downward spiral into despondency. It was then only a matter of time before my thoughts turned to the FoH and my brush with death. Why hadn’t I been grateful for the chance they were offering? What kind of life was this anyway; where the best I could hope for was an occasional mercy fuck? I knew I wasn’t brave enough to top myself, even if I could think of a way to do it. I had thought about it a lot, and the only possibility I could come up with was driving into something, or off a cliff but there was always the chance that it would cause another explosive venting of my power. Let’s face it, if I could blow the edge off of a building with a kiss, who knew what would happen at the moment of impact? I’d left enough innocent bystanders in my wake; I didn’t want to risk any more. I hadn’t been grateful though, and not only because I objected to my fifteen minutes of fame being posthumous and making the FoH a whole heap of money. Some little bit of me had wanted to live, even if my life sucked and right now I wasn’t sure why.

It was a short mental hop to thinking about that hut, the axe, the overheard conversations that mirrored my own discussions with myself. Soon I had worked myself up into that horrible state that accompanies hyperventilation in those who still ventilate. I felt sick to the stomach I no longer had and my long-vaporised heart was pounding in my ears. I found it irritating and obscene that my mind would play such cruel tricks on me, torturing me with the unpleasant sensations of a body I no longer possessed. Why should nausea and anxiety be left when the simple pleasure of taste was denied me? I would have happily endured whatever bodily discomfort my remaining shell could dream up for me for the chance to smile again, to kiss.

That was when I recalled Hank’s words. When I did something that I am really not proud of, even now, even knowing how it all turned out in the end. I might not think there was any kind of future in the concept of me and Warren, I might not think he would have even the slightest interest in such a future, but I did know that he wouldn’t refuse me. Not if I was asking for something he could give me. Hank had, indirectly, assured me of that when he had asked me to think first, fuck later. It would only be this once more, I reasoned with myself. Tomorrow I would swallow my pride and my nationality and talk to Hank but tonight, what remained of tonight, I needed just one more passport to oblivion, one more chance to interrupt the thoughts that were circling in my head like a flock of vultures. That’s what I would ask for.

He opened the door straight after my first knock, almost as though he had been expecting me. He looked a little surprised, but not horrified and he invited me in, which I took to be a good thing even though he was no doubt just being polite. Possibly he didn’t want anyone to happen by and see me outside his room.

Once inside I felt all my awkwardness return in a rush. He was just so impossibly beautiful, still in his shorts, wings dry now and rustling softly as they fidgeted behind his perfect shoulders. He smiled gently at me, but his eyes were wary and I wondered briefly if it was possible for me to hurt him after all.

*You’ve changed the sheets,* I said, mostly for something to say and regretting it instantly. I sounded to my own ears like I was accusing him of destroying all evidence that I had been here before. I’d be boiling his pets before I knew it.

"Got my chambermaid to do it," he replied, a sly smile creeping over his face that I was unable to resist returning. "You got a clean bill of health from Hank, I take it?"

I nodded mutely, as is my wont, and he continued to look at me, probably trying to work out if I had lost the plot again.

*He wants me to talk to him.*

"You should. He’s a good listener."

*I’m not a good talker.*

He laughed and I relaxed a bit. I’d forgotten how easily he got my humour, a rarity among Americans, usually I would have got the blank look and a reply of something like ‘well, you should try, it’d be good for you to work through some of your issues’.

"What are you doing here, Jono?" he asked me then, his voice so gentle that it softened the confrontation in his words, his concern for me so real that I felt like I could almost reach out and touch it.

That was why I was here, because every so often I could actually believe that he cared, that I might be worthy of someone’s effort. I felt a rush of thoughts, words and emotions welling up from the back of my mind where I had pushed them so I wouldn’t have to think about them. I knew, however scornful I might be of Oprah Winfrey and her ilk, that it would actually feel good to share just a fraction of how shitty I felt, how scared and how horribly lonely. If I’d had a mouth I would have opened it to speak, then shut it as my mental barriers slammed into place. ‘Never show weakness’ had been drummed into me from an early age and what could possibly be weaker than begging someone to love you, even if they could only do it for a couple of hours?

I was ready to leave, I think I even started to turn, before his hand brushed across my shoulder. Not an intimate touch particularly, although I was not one for any physical display of affection, but enough to crumble almost every wall in my head. However dreadful it would be to beg Warren for his help, it couldn’t possibly be worse than to go back to the quiet of my room and start listening to the vicious, hurtful thoughts in my head. I swallowed what little remaining pride I had and turned back to him, still unable to articulate my needs, unable to break through that last vestige of reticent self-preservation, still just marginally more afraid of making a fool of myself than of being alone.

The hand on my shoulder tightened a little and he played his trump card, doing the one thing no one else could have done; not Hank with all his compassion and intelligence, not the professor with his qualifications and telepathy, no one else, only my angel. He folded his wings around me, enveloping me in their perfect, unsullied whiteness, shielding me from the world that had hurt me and giving me a pure untarnished place to let go of all of my pain. I still couldn’t. I couldn’t find the final bit of strength I needed to break through the years of walls I had built around my emotions.

"If you want to," he said, finally, nuzzling his face into my hair in an unthinking caress. "You can always talk to me. I’m not as great a listener as Hank, but I do know what it feels like to have secrets, to have thoughts in your head that won’t leave you alone. As clichéd as it sounds it does help to talk."

I could hear his wings rustling around me as they shifted slightly. I knew about Warren’s brush with Apocalypse, Emma had taken what had seemed to me a perverse pleasure in talking it over with us all at the Academy. I remembered wondering if she had been rebuffed by the winged playboy in the past. So, he did certainly know what he was talking about, but I didn’t want him to know my deepest thoughts. I wanted him to think me strong and brave and heroic and capable, not weak and tormented.

So, what did I do? Feeling like shit, overwhelmed by the kind offers of help I had received from one likely and one unexpected source. If I had had the sense I was born with, I would have either talked to Warren right there and then, or promised to talk to Hank and meant it. I didn’t. Instead I reached out a hand and stroked it gently down one of those beautiful wings, taking in the softness of the feathers and the concealed strength beneath them.

*These must take a lot of looking after,* I said, retreating into the banal to avoid the painful. *Is that what you were doing before I got here?*

I was unprepared for his reaction. He drew both wings away from me, sharply, as though my touch had burned him, then nodded curtly.

"They do," he replied, his voice as stiff as his bearing. "About an hour a day, longer if I’ve had to keep them harnessed or been in battle."

*Want some help?* I asked, wanting to feel their unique texture again, knowing that what I asked was intimate, maybe even more so than if I had asked only for sex.

"Want some help wrapping your bandages?"

His response cut me, his tone sharp and his eyes cold. It took me a moment to realise what he meant, it seemed so ridiculous to me in my egocentric self-pity.

*It’s hardly the same.*

A quirk of a perfect golden eyebrow met that and I knew I would have to lay at least a few of my cards on the table.

*Warren, you’re beautiful.*

He snorted at that, a sharp exhalation of breath that spoke volumes and, I was beginning to recognise, signalled that he was really quite pissed off.

"Is that why I have to harness them, or wear an image inducer when I go out? Why people stare at me the way they do and whisper behind my back? Why I never felt able to tell my parents? Somehow I don’t feel so very beautiful."

Shit.

*I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…didn’t think…* I lifted a hand to the edge of my bandages, fingers searching for the end I knew was tucked in somewhere, holding his gaze, afraid if I lost it I would never get it back. *I’ll show you, if you want.*

Long, cool fingers closed over mine and Warren shook his head.

"It’s me who should be sorry," he said, with a flick of his wings. "How petulant of me. I just get a bit fed up of the way everyone behaves as though blue skin and these are somehow less freakish than Scott’s eyes or your bandages."

He extended one wing, holding it close enough to me that I could smell the exotic, utterly-Warren scent of the feathers.

"You can touch them if you want," he offered, with a sadness in his eyes that suggested people often wanted to touch them and ignore the rest of him, or vice versa.

*I want to touch you.* I lifted my hand to his face, tracing the line of his jaw with tentative fingertips and realising that the time had come for honesty. *I want to lose myself in you.*



Part 4 Warren

I leaned into the touch that was raking so gently across my face, giving my permission for it to continue as wordlessly as it was asked. His other hand was trapped beneath mine, against his face. I laced my fingers through his, caressing the line of the bandage where it met his fine cheekbone. I felt him flinch beneath the contact but continued, just stroking gently, wanting to reassure him both that I would not ask him to remove his wrappings and that I did not find them as abhorrent as he did. Eventually he acquiesced to my fingers, sliding his own hand away and rubbing his face against my hand like a cat. When a sad little sigh entered my mind I wondered how long it had been since anyone had touched his face like this.

Then he stepped back, his hooded eyes grazing hungrily over my body with an intensity so strong that it felt like a caress. My cock, hard since I had opened the door and invited him in, twitched as his gaze settled wantonly on my crotch.

*Off,* he commanded, and I was powerless to resist, clawing at the fabric of my shorts with hands made useless by lust and eventually freeing myself of the unwanted garment.

I stepped out of them, quite at ease with the disparity in our clothing and basked in his appreciative stare. Vanity may be another of my shortcomings but false modesty is not. I spread my wings, stretching them out, enjoying the gasp in my mind as I reached one behind his back and urged him back into my arms with a gentle feathered shove.

Jono bent his face into the crook of my neck, rubbing his long nose and the unique texture of his bandages against the sensitive skin over my pulse as his hand came up to cup my cheek. I wished he could kiss me, if only so that I would know if he would, and wondered whether he would mind me returning it. I buried my face in his hair, inhaling the unique, slightly metallic scent of him and planted a surreptitious kiss on the silky locks that tickled my lips.

I have always loved the feeling of my naked body against a fully clothed lover, something to do with vulnerability no doubt, and I pressed myself against Jonothon, bringing my arms up behind his back to let my fingers explore the ridges of his bandages beneath the thin t-shirt he wore. I lifted its hem to steal one hand onto the smooth curve of his lower back, unable to suppress an embarrassingly eager moan from escaping my lips at the feel of his skin, hot and soft beneath my fingertips.

That seemed to be the signal he was waiting for, because suddenly his hands were moving over me, igniting nerve endings wherever they touched. My body responded, as much to his husky, whispered murmurings in my brain as the expert caresses, tightening, hardening, tensing until I was one big panting mass of mindless need. I have been around the block once or twice, I have slept with some of the world’s most desirable men and women and some of the world’s most talented consorts but I had never been touched like this. It was as though he was stroking my mind as much as my body, pouring his own lust into and feeding mine. I pushed myself shamelessly into the perfect grip he had on my rigid cock, rocking on my heels, head thrown back, moaning incoherently as his other hand stroked my spine, more to hold me steady than anything else.

I was gearing up for the most incredible orgasm of my life when Jono’s hand slipped a little higher up my back, brushing the base of one wing. I felt the oil gland there leak over his fingers and it killed my arousal like a bucket of cold water. The oil ran down my back as bile rose to my mouth and Jono gasped in my head. Nauseated and close to tears I shut my eyes, unable to bear the look of disgust I knew would be evident in his.

*For your feathers?* he asked, redundantly and then let what I can only describe as a dirty laugh escape into my head. *Handy.*

I opened my eyes at that, it was such an unexpected response to my avian physiology, and sure enough his eyes were crinkling in a grin. He held my gaze as he lifted his hand to his face, rubbing the glistening fingers together like a tailor testing fine fabric. My face flushed as he sniffed at his fingertips, sending me an appreciative sigh as he did.

*Turn around,* he instructed and his mental voice was filled with such obscene promise that I was powerless to resist.

My nausea returned a little and I shuddered as his hand scraped along my back, collecting the oil that had dribbled there. Then one hand gripped the base of each wing, milking the glands and I moaned, my knees buckling so that I had to put my hands out and brace myself against the wall.

*I’m not hurting you.* A statement rather than a question, but he was right. It was pleasure, not pain that was causing my incoherence. Physical pleasure that I had never imagined I could get from my wings, never having had them touched like this, and emotional pleasure at the unmitigated acceptance that flowed directly from Jono’s hands and mind. Acceptance I would have denied needing not half an hour ago but now knew I had craved from all of my lovers.

When his hands slid around me again, they slipped easily over my skin, slicking oily moisture between my legs and over my chest before Jono pulled away from me briefly. He pressed himself against my back, and I knew his t-shirt had gone by the feeling of his wrappings against my skin. I rubbed against him, feeling the feathers at the base of my wings chafe deliciously against the bandages. Then his hands were on me again and all conscious intent left my actions. I was only reflexes and sensations, loosely bundled into my overheated, oversensitive skin.

Jono ignored my renewed erection for the time being, rolling my balls within their slippery sac as his other hand stole slowly up over my abdomen. The calloused tips of his fingers skimmed over my pectoralis muscles, which are well developed from flying, another blessing of the x gene. I felt the caress in my wings as much as my chest and they shivered against my tormentor. He let his thumb glide over the tight nub of my nipple as his other hand finally encircled my aching cock.

Each stroke was an agony of pleasure, eased along by the lubrication afforded by my mutation, which somehow made it all the more exciting. It felt perverse, like fucking in your parents’ bed, to be using what the Xfactor had given me for such lewd purposes. Which didn’t stop me thrusting into Jono’s wonderfully slick grasp, barely noticing when his other hand left my chest and insinuated itself between our bodies.

The familiar rattle of a belt buckle pulled me back a little from my ecstasy and my brain started to work again in earnest when I heard and felt Jono’s jeans fall to the floor around his feet.

I felt his fingers pinch the base of my wing again before sliding down to the base of my spine, between the twin curves of muscle to glide across the tight entrance to my body. I was so close to coming by this time I don’t think I could have stopped him even if I had wanted to. The press and rub of his fingers over that sensitive ring of muscle was going to send me over, even if it was something I didn’t particularly welcome, he had me so tightly wound up.

Then he pressed a little more, opening me to his finger and it was good, so good, but in the back of my mind a tiny voice reminded me that he was naked and that one thing would certainly lead to another. I didn’t know how I felt about that, the thought of getting fucked. I had promised myself I wouldn’t go through it again, having not really enjoyed it in the past but just now I wasn’t sure I wanted to distract Jono from the wonderful things he was doing to my cock. It hardly seemed fair, anyway. He was giving me such incredible pleasure, could I really deny him? I might even like it this time.

Jono nuzzled my neck then, pushing his face into the sweat-soaked hair at the base of my skull, his hands ceasing their movements. The finger in me withdrew gently, sitting in the cleft of my buttocks and circling the muscle it had just invaded. He added a second finger to it, still just caressing lazily while his other hand gripped my erection, not stroking just holding, while he waited to get my attention.

*Warren,* he sighed, pressing lightly against my hole with the pair of digits to make sense of his next question. *Can I carry on?*

Fuck. I had resigned myself to just being swept along by his momentum but if he was going to ask me, I really had no idea what my answer would be. I think I meant to say yes; I couldn’t countenance refusing him, he’d been through enough these last few days, and it was hardly as though I had hated it, it just hadn’t done much for me.

*Ok,* he said, correctly reading my silence but showing not a hint of disappointment in his mental voice.

He started a slow stroke on my still rock-hard erection and pressed himself against my back, withdrawing the hand between my buttocks and replacing it with his cock. I could feel his precum mixing with the oil that already had slicked my skin. He started a gentle rhythm, thrusting against me, rocking me with his bodyweight into the grip of his hand, his thumb slipping over the weeping head of my dick as I fell back against him.

*Just like this, OK?* he murmured. *This OK?*

I could only nod my agreement, increasing the tempo of my movements to find the release I needed so desperately. I clenched my muscles around him as best I could, wanting to make this as good for him as possible and I was rewarded with a long ragged psionic moan.

*Fuck, Warren…so close…so good.*

He got more vocal as he got closer to the end, and I could feel his impending orgasm tickling my brain and inciting my own. We were moving together perfectly, minds and bodies in unison, in a way I had never experienced before. Each movement, each sensation building on the last, better and better, closer and closer. Jono came first, the hot wet pulsing of his come against my back pushing me over the edge I had been skirting for so long.

When I came back to my senses I found Jonothon was holding me up, my body felt boneless, and he was nuzzling my neck in what I now realised was a kiss. I tried to ignore the way my heart leapt in my chest at that thought, rationalising with myself that he had just had a fairly pleasant orgasm, and a lot of people got affectionate after sex. It didn’t mean anything.

We helped each other back to the bed, both still floating a little but slowly coming back to earth. Jono wrapped himself around me as I reclined against the headboard and I stroked his hair idly, trying not to analyse my feelings of contentment.

"I’m sorry," I said after a while, unable to just let myself enjoy a few peaceful moments. Jono tilted his face up to mine, brown eyes hooded with sleep but questioning and I barely resisted the urge to bend down and kiss him. "I’m sorry I couldn’t let you…do what you wanted."

His brow creased in confusion and then further in consternation as he realised my meaning.

*Don’t want you to ever ‘let me’ do anything, Warren,* he said. *What we did really wasn’t that awful for me, you know.*

I did bend my head and kiss him at that, pressing my lips to the bridge of his elegant nose, overwhelmed with stupid gratitude. Rationally I knew I’d had every right to refuse him, but it was still a great relief to know no harm had come of it.

He sat up a little, meeting my gaze with eyes no longer clouded by anything but concern.

*Have you ever?* he asked. *Ever let me do anything you didn’t want?*

"No."

*So…is that something you’re not into at all, or just not into being on the receiving end of?*

"I’m enough of a hypocrite to want to do it to…" I hesitated, wanting to say him, but scared it would break us out of the make-believe future-free world we were currently playing in.

*That’s all right,* he said reasonably, settling back into my arms with a sigh. *I’m well into being on the receiving end.*

He tensed in my embrace then, apparently coming to the same realisation as I had, and as uncertain as I was as to whether or not there would ever be a next time for us.

"I might have to take you up on that," I said, pulling him tighter to me and wrapping my wings around us. "You realise I will never be able to preen again without thinking about this?"

A sleepy chuckle met that, and Jono settled himself more comfortably on my shoulder.

*Hopefully make it less of a chore for you. My offer to help still stands you know.*

"I’m not sure I’d ever get my wings straightened out if I let you help."

I buried my face in his hair and wished this little slice of happiness might last just a little longer before something screwed it all up.



Part 5 Jono


I was woken from my light doze by Warren shifting to look at his watch and then nuzzling his face into my hair.

"Well, we can’t avoid it any longer," he said. "We’re going to have to go face Cyclops and give our reports."

I groaned, mostly because I felt it was expected of me. I didn’t especially want to go and get grilled by our fearless leader but it had to be done; it was like going to the dentist, putting it off only made it loom ever larger, not that I had to worry about dentists anymore, but you get the idea. That said, I was pretty happy where I was right now, and if I could have just stayed here forever, that would have been just fine with me, but pretty happy is not a place I get to stay for long.

Warren showered again and I didn’t. He didn’t invite me to join him, and I didn’t offer. I wasn’t ready for that, for him to see me naked, with or without my bandages, and I wasn’t sure if his ducking into the shower alone was done out of deference to my obvious insecurities or if he wasn’t ready for it either. I kind of wished I had joined him, when he wandered back out of the bathroom, buck naked, towelling his hair dry while his wings trailed water behind him. I was dressed by then and had to content myself with watching him instead. Once he was suitably attired we walked down to the briefing room together in what might have been companionable silence if I hadn’t been racking my brain to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound desperate.

*You want to hook up tonight?* I settled for in the end, cursing myself as I did and wondering what the hell had happened to the Starsmore panache. *Do something?*

How anyone can raise an eyebrow so filthily is beyond me, but if I could have, I would have blushed.

*Apart from that.*

"Tonight?" he said then, shaking his blond head. "Tonight’s not good."

Right. It was fine when we were going to be fucking, but if there’s going to be being seen in public then suddenly he remembers a prior engagement.

We’d reached the briefing room by then, and Scott was standing in the doorway all but tapping his foot in irritation at our being late, so I really wasn’t expecting Warren to lay a hand on my shoulder and stop me.

"It’s my company’s AGM. Tomorrow?" he offered and I felt a lurch in what was once my heart as I nodded stupidly and tried not to let my tumultuous emotions escape my psionic control.

"Shall we get started?" Cyclops suggested pointedly and Warren shrugged, motioning me into the room with a nonchalance that Scott would only have tolerated from one of his oldest friends.

The debriefing was no worse than I’d expected; I didn’t disgrace my manly reputation by losing it when the time came for me to describe the FoH setting up their recording equipment and discussing, in earshot, the details of how they were going to kill me. They went through many of the same arguments I had had with myself over the years: no point shooting me, like they had the last guy, I couldn’t be gassed or poisoned and they weren’t prepared to take the risk of my psifire feeding off electricity. Turned out one of them was a fan of the Highlander movies, and they decided that there could be only one way of executing me. Beheading. Hence the somewhat undignified position Angel had found me in. I wasn’t much help otherwise, I don’t think. As soon as they’d made their plans I had gone inside my head as far as I could, terrified of what was going to happen to me. Probably slightly more terrified that I would survive it, and end up with an even less identifiable corporeal form than I had at the moment. There was also the possibility of taking out a few bystanders and I didn’t want that, even if they were closed-minded bigots. It would only prove their point that mutants were dangerous. I already knew I was dangerous; I didn’t want to make everyone else’s life any more difficult than it already was.

OK, I did come close to embarrassing myself. It was bloody difficult to talk about all this stuff, especially for me, the token reticent Englishman in the room. I probably would have been fine if Scott hadn’t brought up the possibility that the FoH would come after me to finish what they had started, rather than lose face. Well, that frightened me, I’m big enough and ugly enough to admit that, but what frightened me more was the fact that I knew, just knew, they wouldn’t.

*They were terrified of me, Cyke,* I explained, shaking my head. *Once they realised who I was they barely touched me.* They had tortured the last guy, to the point that he was probably glad when they finally shot him. *Gayle’s their poster girl, her story is well publicised in their propaganda,* I continued calmly, like it didn’t physically hurt to dredge up all this old old suffering.

That was when I noticed, for the first time, the solid, reassuring pressure of Warren’s wing against my back. I don’t know when he had moved it there, and he was sitting next to me like nothing out of the ordinary was happening, but I felt the support in that tiny gesture, and that was when the tears threatened to force their way out of my eyes. I think maybe Hank noticed because he stood abruptly, signalling an end to the meeting, somewhat to Scott’s surprise.

"So," Warren said, as soon as the other two had left the room. "Tomorrow. What do you want to do?"

My turn to raise an eyebrow, needing to get back my equilibrium and choosing to do so by pretending I had never lost it, that the last hour had never happened. He laughed.

"Apart from that."

I shrugged, pretty sure that Warren’s idea of a good night out and mine were not similar, probably not even compatible and suddenly wishing I hadn’t suggested it. Maybe it would be better to keep what had happened between us a happy memory, rather than let it all get fucked up.

*There’s a big gig at the Garden tomorrow.*

"OK, we can go to that."

I couldn’t help but laugh at that, and he raised that perfect eyebrow at me again; but for the fact that it made me want to screw his brains out, I could see that it might have been a slightly irritating habit of his.

*Don’t think so, mate. Tickets sold out within an hour of them going on sale.*

"Oh," he said, reasonably. "You didn’t get tickets then?"

*Not good with phones, Warren. They’re televising it. I was going to watch it, that’s all.* Watch it and make myself good and miserable with what might have been, I didn’t add.

He shrugged, wings and all.

"OK, we’ll leave here at about six."

Well, I assumed he meant we would go to his place in the city to watch it, just the two of us, on his fabled tv. Bobby had regaled us all with tales of Warren’s toy-studded loft overlooking Central Park. It was a bit hard to tell with Bobby, he did know how to tell a tall tale, but the things he detailed weren’t entirely out of the realms of possibility either. I took a stupidly long time to get ready, considering I wound up wearing my signature all black. Wore my best fuck-me boots though. Warren wore chinos and a shirt, the most casual I had ever seen him, and exuded ‘you wish I would fuck you’.

"Do you want to drive?" he asked, holding out his car keys on the end of one long finger.

It was a pretty stupid, or possibly rhetorical, question. I snatched the keys from him with the barest hint of decorum before he could change his mind. No one was allowed to even breathe on any of his cars normally. Well, to be fair, that had come from Bobby too, and I’m not sure I would let the Iceman anywhere near my car if it was a Boxster, or a TVR or any of the other wet dreams on wheels that constitute Warren’s personal fleet, but I recognised the privilege I was being afforded nonetheless.

*What if I scratch her?* I asked, trying not to sound quite as breathlessly overawed as I felt.

"I’ll buy a new one," Warren laughed, folding himself into the passenger seat with obscene grace.

He directed me into the city and I was enjoying the journey so much that it was a while before I realised we were not heading for Central Park but until we got closer to the throngs of people surrounding Madison Square Garden I hadn’t really twigged.

*Warren?* I questioned, when the traffic had forced us to a slow crawl.

"I got tickets."

*How?*

"It’s a charity gig, I made a donation."

*How big a donation?* I asked, feeling a bit uncomfortable. He just laughed, sharp white teeth glinting in the streetlights.

"Big enough."

I was torn. I really did want to go to this gig, it was going to be huge and however flippant he was being, it couldn’t have been that easy to get the tickets, and it wasn’t the sort of thing I really saw as being Warren’s idea of a good time anyway, gods of guitar rock as it was. I’d never been the kept man before though, and it made me feel grubby somehow.

"We don’t have to go," Warren said, his tone deceptively easy, face falling into his businessman’s inscrutable mask. "I’m sorry, I should have thought."

I wasn’t sure quite what he should have thought. Maybe that I was an over-principled ingrate. I shook my head, touching my hand to his knee unthinkingly.

*Just not used to having that much money spent on me,* I explained.

"Nothing to do with money," he said, looking genuinely surprised that I might have thought it was. "I’m not trying to impress you out of your pants, Jono. You wanted to go and I…"

Tend to consider requests in terms of whether or not you can provide what is asked for rather than whether it’s a good idea or not, Hank’s voice finished in the back of my mind. I’m not entirely convinced that Warren is quite the misunderstood altruist that Hank thinks, but neither is he the selfish bastard the rest of the world seems determined to make him. I was also pretty sure that he was, in fact, trying to impress me and I liked that he was. If he’d offered only furtive, secretive sex, I would have accepted, don’t get me wrong, but this made it all seem so much less of a charitable thing. Organising this might have been easier for Warren than for most people, but it was still more effort than just taking me back to his flat and shagging me senseless.

The concert was fantastic, we were right at the front, and Warren even managed not to look bored out of his brain. I think there was just the slightest hint of showing off in how well placed our seats were, like I wouldn’t have been impressed to be right at the back behind a pillar, but I was grateful for the obvious reason and also because it meant there was no one in front of us to keep turning around and looking at me, trying to be unobtrusive about it and failing.

I think by the end, Warren was a little weary of guitar rock, and his wings must have been irritating him, after all that time in harness, because he started to fidget a little. He eventually decided to distract himself by feeling me up, continuing to watch the stage closely, apparently completely engrossed. It’s been one hell of a long time since anyone laid claim to me in public like that, and I liked it, it made me feel almost normal again and soon I wasn’t really paying attention to the music either, but to the tantalising play of his long fingers over my leather-clad thigh. Just a little higher, a little closer with each pass from my knee; nothing actually indecent but not far off and filled with the promise of indecency to come. When I was on the verge of begging him to just take me home, no never mind home, back to the car, or the car park at least and screw my brains out, he stopped.

His hand retreated then to the small of my back, gently caressing through my t-shirt at first, then slowly working the hem out of my trousers to worm beneath the thin cotton and onto the skin of my back. The touch was soothing, possessive and erotic all at once, and all thoughts of the concert were driven inexorably from my mind. I stole my arm up over Warren’s shoulder, dipping my fingers inside the collar of his shirt to stroke gently along the edge of a bound wing, delighting in the shiver my brief touch elicited.

Warren laughed softly, face still turned with apparent rapt attention to the stage, when I was unable to prevent myself moaning as his fingers worked their way beneath my waistband to tickle at the base of my spine. I cursed my stupidity in wearing such tight trousers, tighter now than when I had put them on, because he couldn’t get any further into them. I moaned again as his hand withdrew, his fingertips running lightly along the edge of my bandage now, a similar caress to yesterday’s unspoken acceptance of the bandages covering my face and I felt, beneath my arousal, a kind of pathetic gratitude. I was almost grateful that I didn’t speak out loud; the sighs and moans I couldn’t keep in were so numerous now. Then his fingers tucked themselves under the edge of the bandage and for one brief nauseating second the world stood still.

*Don’t fucking do that,* I hissed, terrified and Warren turned to look at me with an expression of utter amazement on his face.

"What?" he asked, all innocence.

*Don’t fucking touch me,*

He looked really shocked at that, and not without reason, I can concede now. He had, after all been touching me for the past half an hour or more, and far from objecting I had lapped it up like a spoilt housecat.

*I could have killed you,* I explained further, lashing out in my fear and self-hatred. *Last time someone surprised me like that, I blew up a building, you stupid tosser.*

"I really don’t think it should have been a surprise," Warren said, reasonably, in a calm and slightly superior voice. I felt my temper flare at his tone, but the next words he uttered took the sting away. "We are lovers, and we are on a date, and frankly, I can’t keep my hands off you."

I rolled the first clause of that sentence in my head for a while, trying it for size, taken aback by the complete certainty in his voice and the unhesitant promise of a future. I wouldn’t have known how to describe our relationship at that point, but I would never have dared hope for lovers. I guess that’s Warren though, always sure; sometimes wrong, but always definite.

*You did that on purpose.*

A raise of that bloody eyebrow.

"Of course I did it on purpose. Did you think my hand just slipped, pulled your shirt out of your trousers and molested you all by accident?" His mouth quirked and I wished again that I had a mouth so that I could have kissed that stupid smirk off his face. "I didn’t do it to see if you’d blow the audience to pieces, if that’s what you mean."

*But I could have done, Warren. You fuckwit, you should have thought.*

"You sound like Scott," he dismissed.

*Maybe you should think a bit more like Scott,* I countered, really angry now. *I could have killed you.*

"But you didn’t."

*You can’t have known that, Warren. Were you thinking at all, you stupid bastard?*

"I run a multibillion dollar, international business empire, just how stupid do you think I am?"

This was beginning to get nasty now, Warren’s blue eyes were like ice chips in his deceptively placid face, but I was still scared and furious with him for exposing me to the risk of hurting people all over again.

"I trusted you," he said then and I really lost it.

*Paige trusted me, so did Gayle, and a fat lot of fucking good it did them. This is not a fucking game, Warren. I have to live with what happened to Gayle, with what I did to her and with the ‘what if’ of what might have happened to Paige if she hadn’t husked. Don’t play with me.*

I couldn’t look at him any more, didn’t want to be anywhere near him suddenly, not sure whether I was more afraid I would punch him or more afraid I would forgive him. So I left, fighting my way past the few people to make the end of the row and pushing out past the security guards, through the emergency exit, because this sudden need to be alone was urgent. Better to be alone; it still hurt, but it was a dull ache instead of the sharp pain of betrayal, the bitter agony of shattered hope.



Part 6 Warren


I just sat there for a while, anger and misery circling in my mind as I stared at the door he had left through, trying to will him back through it. I debated whether or not I should go after him, more than a little afraid of his temper. At the back of my irritation with Jono was that horrible sick feeling you get when you know that you were wrong, and that all the arguments you can come up with are just rationalisation. Still, I wasn’t sure he would want to listen to my apology, even if I could force myself to make one and I resolved that, if he was childish enough to storm out like that, so be it, I wasn’t going to go running after him.

It was about then that I realised the roadie who had been staring at me, on and off, all evening was no longer doing so. I am used to being gawped at in public, it has happened all my life, as long as I can remember and probably before. Just one of the joys of being the Worthington heir, so I had taken no conscious notice to speak of, but now I was beginning to wonder whether he hadn’t, in fact, been staring at Jono. That thought scared me a bit, and set all my training in action. Hank might eventually forgive me for foisting myself on the young man when he was vulnerable, but not for getting him recaptured or killed. I wondered a little at that train of thought, usually Scott was worst-case-scenario-man and Chamber was, as he himself had pointed out to me, a grown up. So why were my wings fighting against their harness, my pulse suddenly racing, and my skin clammy?

I spotted the security guard again out of the corner of my eye, talking to one of his colleagues and gesturing toward the door Jono had exited through and felt the blood in my veins run cold. Just visible, under the t-shirt sleeve of the second man was a tattoo. I could only see maybe the bottom inch of it, but I knew with cold certainty that it would, on lifting that sleeve, turn out to be the FoH insignia.

I got to my feet, apologising to those around me and made my way, as unobtrusively as possible, to the door. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself if it could be avoided but the urge to tear the restraints from my wings and fly the hell out of there was incredibly strong. A million thoughts a minute seemed to course through my brain: the thought of having to tell Cyclops that a team-mate had been captured because I’d had a stupid petty argument with him, another of the handful of people I have allowed close to me hurt or killed, never seeing him again, never hearing that husky mind-voice of his. Overarching all of it, in true ghastly soap opera style, was the horrible thought that the last words we had shared had been spoken in anger.

When I reached the outside world, I tried to calm my thoughts, knowing from long experience that the way to do this was to treat it as just another search and rescue mission. I decided to try the car first, after all Jono still had the keys, and as far as I knew he had no other way of getting home. He had money on him no doubt, but probably not the pen and paper that constituted his mode of communication with the non-mutant world. If the car was gone, I could probably relax a little and call the mansion to make sure he had made it home.

The car was still there. I could see it glinting under the light we had parked under, and worse, I could see a group of at least five FoH thugs standing around it. Still, if they were idling like that, presumably they didn’t have Jono, that was one good thing. I ducked behind an SUV parked a few rows away from the Boxster to plan my next move and nearly jumped out of my skin when a hand tapped me on the shoulder. Only my years of training stopped me from emitting the accompanying squeal of surprise.

*Warren,* Jono whispered into my mind, and I wanted to kiss him just for being alive. The hand on my shoulder was trembling slightly, which I noted but didn’t comment on. *What do you think we should do?*

"We could call Scott and get the team down here," I suggested in as quiet a whisper as I could. "Or we could just leave. Are they…are they the ones who had you before?"

I felt a rush of cold anger at that thought, a flashback to the feelings that had been my entire world when I had been the Angel of Death, and a sudden urge for vengeance.

*No,* Jono answered. He sounded exhausted. *Warren, I want to get out of here. I can’t see that there’d be anything to gain by getting the team down here. The Friends are huge, fighting these five isn’t going to make any difference, even if Cyke would get everyone out for it.*

I nodded my agreement. It would have been a pointless victory, although I also thought that Jono and I alone could probably have bested the pitiful example of humanity before us. Chamber was probably not on the top of his game, to be fair and, as before, what I really wanted was to see him safe.

I led him through the car park to the taxi rank outside the main doors, the concert was still ongoing, so we hadn’t long to wait for a cab.

"Where do you want to go?" I asked once we were seated inside and I had insisted the driver lock the doors. Jono just shrugged and I decided to take the initiative. There was nothing to stop me from taking him home later, I rationalised as I gave the cabbie my Central Park address.

The silence in the cab was oppressive on the short ride across town and I was worried that Jono had retreated into himself again. I called my PA, and asked her to arrange for my car to be picked up in the morning and then sat back in my seat. I knew I would have to apologise for my earlier behaviour but did not wish to do so in the cab, a paranoia built on long years of media coverage. I was also not sure it was a good idea to draw attention to the fact that we were mutants; I had my image inducer on, and Jono usually passed for a victim of some kind of horrible accident, but a one-sided conversation would quickly have marked me out as psychotic or mutant. Neither of which were especially favoured fares among New York’s cab drivers.

I glanced at Jono as we rode the elevator up to the apartment, relieved to see that he did not look as vacant as he had when we had rescued him from the FoH camp but wondering why he hadn’t spoken since asking me to take him away from the car park. I cursed my selfishness; I should really have taken him back to the Institute, talked to Scott about what had happened and let Hank take a look at Jono but I hadn't wanted to, hadn’t wanted to run the gauntlet of questions about this disastrous evening. Selfish or not, I was grateful to be in my own home. Granted it was sometimes lonely here but it was also nice to just escape from the constant scrutiny of Xavier’s. I would still have to ask Jono what he wanted to do, and if he wanted to go home, I would take him.

I turned to ask him, once I had let us both in, silenced the alarm system and switched the lights on, but as I opened my mouth to speak he laid one long finger over it, silencing me. In a bizarre replay of that first night with him, he pressed his bodyweight against me, tucking his face into its now familiar position against my neck. He was a little more forthright this time, and his hands, rather than caressing my face went straight to my shirtfront, pulling at the row of buttons in a desperate attempt to get me out of my clothes.

Normally I would have been quite happy to comply. An attractive man forcibly seducing me is not something to be sneezed at, especially after a shitty night out and a brush with the FoH but I felt uncomfortable about this. Not that I hadn’t let myself be used before but I think I knew that, if I let this happen again now, this would be all we would ever have, Jono and I. I didn’t want that, but I tried not to analyse that thought for now, having promised myself after Bets that I would not go down the relationship route again. Instead I pretended to myself, once again, that this was about Jono, self-deluding bastard that I am.

I closed my hands over his, stopping their movement by holding them tight against me and tried my hardest to ignore the treacherous voice at the back of my mind that insisted it would be best to just let him get it out of his system.

"Whoa," I said. "Slow down."

Jonothon looked like I had kicked him and was likely to do so again.

"I just think we need to talk, that’s all."

*Sure,* he said, glancing up at me with huge brown eyes and looking away as quickly. *Stupid of me.*

Fuck it, this wasn’t going right at all. I slid my hand over his cheek, feeling the contrast between the rough bandages and the soft skin over his cheekbone, and tipped his face gently so that I could see his eyes again.

"I’m sorry," I said, meaning it as I rarely have before. "For the way I behaved earlier. You were right, I should have thought, it was selfish of me. I just wanted to touch you so much."

Sorry. Not a word I use much. ‘I regret’ more useful in business, because there is no acceptance of blame there and while I did regret, bitterly, what had happened, I was also sorry. I could only hope Jono knew how sincere I was.

*I’m sorry too,* he said finally, dark eyes searching mine for something I could only hope was there to find. *For overreacting. I’m just…* he shrugged.

I stroked my thumb over the seam of bandage and face, not wanting to speak, frightened that doing so would break the fragile spell that was letting this usually so private man, open up.

*…so scared. So scared of myself. Scared of hurting people, scared of hurting myself even more than I already have.*

He blinked a few times, his brown eyes huge above the bandages.

*Don’t want to go there, Warren,* he said, shaking his head ruefully. *Really don’t want to, not now. I had a really good time tonight, until it all got fucked up, and I am sick of being miserable, you know.*

"OK, what do you say we watch a bit of TV, talk a bit maybe and see where things go?"

*Take things slow?* he laughed and I nodded, not fooled by his bravado, hadn’t he said it was stupid of him to think I would want him touching me?

"I really did mean slow down, not stop, OK?" Jono’s turn to nod. "Now I’m just going to get my wings out of this bastard harness."

I turned to leave the room, intending to go to the bathroom to struggle out of my restraints, hating the hideous ungainliness of the contraption and the ugly disarray of my wings once they were out of it. Jono stopped me with a hand on my arm.

*Let me,* he said, almost pleading. *Let me help.*


Part 7 Jono


Yeah, great one, Starsmore, you dickhead, I thought to myself. Ask him for the only thing he won’t give you. I knew why I had done it too, apart from the overpowering urge I had to touch him. Push him away before he pushes you. It had worked with Paige.

Blue eyes searched mine. I hadn’t realised just how blue they were before now. I don’t know what he was expecting to see there but he nodded seriously after a while.

"OK," he said, in a distant, resigned tone and I regretted asking this liberty. It was too much, too soon, and I realised that I did not want to push him away at all.

*Doesn’t matter…* I started, shaking my head but he held up one elegant hand in a wordless command for silence.

"I said OK." Not resigned this time, determined, and I could do nothing but watch, mesmerised, as his fingers began unbuttoning his shirt. "Put some music on."

Well, I was expecting a mind-blowing stereo; the entire apartment was a museum of boy’s toys, but not the enormous and eclectic selection of cd’s. I was relieved to note at least a few, fairly mainstream, bands of the kind we had seen that night, but settled on excerpts from Lakme. It just seemed more apt somehow, soaringly beautiful music to caress an angel to.

"Now this is music," Warren laughed.

*You’re an old, old man, Warren." I countered, tearing myself from the technological wonder of his stereo to find him naked from the waist up, and studying me nervously.

"Too old for you?" he asked, only half-joking, but I couldn’t answer because at that point he turned to go back to the living room part of the flat and any ability I had for thought left me.

Sick, sick puppy that I am, and I would never mention this to Warren, the sight of his wings all bound up in leather and buckles nearly floored me. I have never seen anything quite so startlingly erotic.

*That looks…uncomfortable,* I managed to choke out, and it did, but only in the way that bondage does tend to, and isn’t that partly the point?

"It is. Do you think you can work out how to get me out of it?"

I assured him that I could, buckles being my thing, and sat down behind him, still quietly astonished that he would do this for me. I knew that he really wasn’t comfortable with this exposure, this nakedness, above and beyond mere sex. I guess he must have felt as vulnerable as I do without my bandages and the sheer trust he was putting in me was frightening. It was brave of him; brave in a way I could never have been if he hadn’t risked himself first.

It was a complicated arrangement, and I couldn’t for the life of me fathom how on earth he managed to get in and out of it on his own. I ran my finger along the edge of one strap, imagining how it would have felt to do the same with my tongue, when I had one. I immersed myself in vivid reveries for a moment or two; my overactive imagination can be both a curse and a blessing at times, but I could easily feel the false memory of the taste and smell of leather and feathers in the ghost-mouth of my mind.

"Jonothon?"

One word, but so many questions within it, and a hesitance in Warren’s voice that I had never heard before.

*Sorry,* I said, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop him as he started to rise to his feet again and setting to unbuckling the restraints. *How did your AGM go?*

He turned a little, glancing over his shoulder at me, the one eyebrow I could see characteristically raised as he tried to work out if I was taking the piss, I suppose. I wasn’t; I was genuinely interested, which was a bit of a shock even to me, and I guess should have served as a warning that I was falling quite heavily for him. I also wanted to try and take his mind off what I was doing to his wings, try and make it unremarkable, normal even, for him to let me run my fingers over them, straightening the flight feathers and removing any loose down from beneath them. I knew I wanted to do this again; in fact, I was pretty sure I could never get bored of it.

"It went as expected," Warren answered finally with a shrug. "There were a few rumblings of no confidence in me, but there’s nothing unusual in that."

*I thought the business was doing well.*

I could imagine the eyebrow going up again, no need for him to turn for me to see it this time. I might not seem the kind of bloke who would follow the world’s financial markets but I was a teacher’s assistant, and one of the lessons I assisted in was Bobby’s accountancy class. He always had the kids follow Warren’s empire as a model of investment so I had to keep up to date. That’s what I had told myself anyway, when I found myself turning to the business section of the paper straight after the Sports and the Arts sections for the first time in my life.

"It is, but there’s always a subgroup of shareholders who don’t think I should be the CEO."

*Bit of a cheek when it’s your family’s business, isn’t it?*

"Well yes, but you see I’m a mutant."

*You are?* I laughed. *I wish you’d told me before I let you blow me.*

I was sure I heard him mutter ‘let me’ under his breath then, and I felt a frisson of anxiety. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to. I had been a bit forceful I suppose, not to mention quite clearly not in my right mind.

"Now that you know," he said. "Is there any chance of you ‘letting me’ do it again?"

*I might,* I said, more nonchalantly than I felt. *What would you do if they did vote you out?*

"That won’t happen. I own too much of the stock personally, and Remy and Charles own a fair bit too."

*But if it did happen?* I persevered, not at all sure why it mattered.

"I guess part of me would be almost grateful," he replied after a time. "I would never walk away from the company, but if I was pushed I’d be able to try something else, I suppose. Financially, I don’t need to work. Maybe I’d sell some of my assets and go on a year-long holiday."

He turned then, to kneel between my thighs and gaze at me with steely blue eyes that somewhat belied the amusement in his voice when he next spoke.

"Of course, most of me would be absolutely outraged that they would dare to oust me and I would probably make myself a bitter, twisted old man with plotting to bring them all down."

*Hmm, OK. What about after your holiday?* I said, choosing to ignore the murderous glint in his eye. *When you get back, what then?*

He shrugged.

*Well, what did you want to be when you were little?*

"This was always what I was going to be. It’s what I was born to do, what I was conceived to do."

*But you must have…*

"Nope," he replied firmly. "What would be the point? And that is more than enough of the deep and meaningful."

*Hey, you’re the one that wanted to talk. I was more than happy just to fuck.*

A tiny grimace crossed his face at that and I wished I could take the word back. Not fuck. Just. Because I didn’t ‘just’ want sex. I had enjoyed talking to him, getting to know him a bit better, realising just how little I did know, how effectively he hid behind his snide opinions on everyone else’s business so that no one ever asked about his. Institute gossip had it that his heart had been broken when his former best mate had tortured and murdered his girlfriend. I could see how that might make him a little wary about leaping into serious relationships in the future.

He was still staring at me, sitting at my feet but somehow intimidating, wings towering over us both now, and so much stronger than me. It took impressive upper body musculature just to carry those wings around, let alone fly with them and I knew he could easily restrain me. I had felt the strength beneath the feathers when he had moved his wings beneath my touch that evening, and I was pretty sure he could hold me down with just a wing, leaving his hands free for more interesting activity. Just how slow did he want to take this? As much as I wanted to give Warren the time he needed my body was still stuck in ‘take whatever you can get and quickly, before it’s taken away again’ mode and was insistently urging me to take every advantage of him I could - before he came to his senses.

"I never said I wanted to talk, especially not about…" he shrugged, "all this stuff. I just wanted to get in the front door before you molested me, that’s all."

That put the brakes on my plans pretty effectively, and I guess it must have shown on my face. Warren lifted his hands to cup my cheeks, running a thumb along the edge of my bandages as he gazed into my eyes.

"No," he whispered. "That’s not what I meant at all. I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s just that it’s all been a bit one-sided so far." He leaned in, holding his face against mine, rubbing his cheek against my covered one in a devastating caress. "I want to touch you, Jonothon. I haven’t really, that first time doesn’t count, and I feel like I might go mad if I don’t."

He sat back again, searching my face with eyes that were clouded with need, silently asking my permission. Permission I could hardly have refused him even had I wanted to. I would let him touch me, as much of me as was safe, at least.

*Can we take this through to the bedroom?* I asked, holding Warren’s gaze but nervous, partly because of what I was planning and partly because it had just been so long since I had suggested something like this.

He smiled and nodded, rising to his feet gracefully. He extended a hand to help me up, always the gentleman.

*Go and, I don’t know, brush your teeth or something,* I commanded, regretting instantly how rude I sounded. *Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…*

Warren laughed, his smile widening.

"Don’t worry about it," he said reasonably, laying a brief kiss on the top of my head.

I watched his retreat into his bedroom and presumably, the bathroom beyond and debated with myself. Could I go through with this? I was pretty sure he was too polite to show any disgust he might have felt but that wasn’t strictly the point. The point was I was about to lay myself bare, literally and figuratively, for the first time since my powers had manifest. I was testing him but I was also testing myself, and I was scared. Scared enough that I was only half-hard, in spite of the fact that all my wet dreams of the past year were about to come true.

I had this weirdly portentous feeling hanging over my head. Like if I didn’t do this now, I would never have another chance. Crazy really. Warren may look like an angel, but I knew he was just a man, yet I still couldn’t shake the idea that he was my chance at salvation. I trusted him, trusted him to be strong enough for both of us. He had come through the death of his parents, all that business with Apocalypse, betrayal by Cameron Hodge and the death of the love of his life. Surely he would be able to handle his current lover having a slight physical deformity. I laughed to myself, both at the understatement and at the ease with which I had called myself his lover. Then I picked up my coat, screwed my courage to the sticking post and went through to the bedroom.

Warren was still in the bathroom; I could hear him brushing his teeth through the closed door and I felt a stab of longing for the simple domesticity of the sound. I banked a few pillows up at the end of the bed, watching my reflection in the huge picture window, and laid my coat on top, the treated lining uppermost. I unbuckled my boots and toed them off, stripping my t-shirt and placing them all near the door, in case a quick getaway was needed.

The sound of brushing stopped, and water ran in the bathroom as I studied my shaking hands for a moment. As I unwound my bandages, I kicked my trousers off, making sure they landed close to my other clothes. I loosely rolled the long black strip of material with practiced hands, knowing from long experience that it was a lot easier to get wrapped back up into a rolled bandage than a tangled one.

More naked and more nervous than I had been in anyone’s presence for years, I laid face down on my coat and waited. I hated feeling like this. I could only pray that I was correct in thinking this was the right thing to do. Warren had seemed very accepting of my bandages, neither avoiding them nor making a big deal out of pretending they weren’t there, but it remained to be seen if he would be quite as accepting of me without them.

I was contemplating wrapping up again when he knocked on the door between bathroom and bedroom, which struck me as funny as well as heartbreakingly considerate. Taking a metaphorical deep breath, I invited my lover into his bedroom and awaited his reaction.


Part 8 Warren

I had brushed my teeth to the point that I was fairly sure I was scraping off the enamel, stopping from time to time to listen at the door. When there was silence in the bedroom, I chanced a knock, half expecting Jono to have run away. I felt nervous, nervous and as horny as hell, and the thought crossed my mind that this must have been what one’s wedding night felt like, back in the days when premarital sex was a rarity. I even had time to consider whether I really believed such days had really existed before an equally anxious-sounding Jono invited me to leave the bathroom.

The sight that greeted me when I opened the door took my breath away. I am not sure what I had been expecting; maybe that he would let me run my fingers under the edge of his bandages again, but not this. He looked like a work of art; stretched out, lithe and perfect, bathed in the moonlight streaming through the windows. I could recognise the bravery in the simple fact of his nakedness too, and it made me feel awed and unworthy, like the first time a girl had let me put my hand between her legs.

*Warren?* he said, lifting his face enough to let his eyes meet mine in the reflection in the window.

"Shhh," I soothed, walking out of the bathroom to stand beside the bed. "I’m just enjoying the view."

I let my hand ghost along the curve of his naked back feeling oddly as though I was touching something I shouldn’t, like a museum exhibit.

"You’re beautiful," I whispered, not surprised by his beauty so much as the fact that he was allowing me to be party to it.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my weight denting the mattress and tipping his body slightly so that his hip rested against mine, and spread my hands across the small of his back. I fanned my fingers out to touch as much of him as I could, enthralled by the contrast of my blue skin against the alabaster pallor of Jono’s. My fingertips skimmed over his back, revelling in this chance to explore what was normally off limits, feeling the play of long sinewy muscles as he squirmed beneath my touch.

Soon my fingers weren’t enough and I shifted to straddle him, one knee on each side of his narrow hips. He moaned as I let my weight settle on him and the tips of my wings caressed the backs of his knees. Any nervousness I had felt had long since passed and it was a struggle not to just cut to the chase and fuck him to within an inch of his life. I leant forward and kissed the nape of his neck, my panting breaths stirring the auburn curls there. My wings were now fanned out above my head, holding his wrists to the bed, more for the illusion of submission he seemed to get off on than anything. I never thought for a moment that he would move, not when his psifire was unfettered. Then I kissed a path down his spine, sucking, biting kisses that I soothed immediately with my tongue as he sighed and begged incoherently in my mind.

When I could reach no further from my current position I slid down his legs. Then I continued, down to the base of his spine then back up in a long stroke of my tongue to the curve of his neck. I settled myself against him, pressing him into the mattress with my bodyweight, pushing aside the slightly disturbing thought that he would never have to tell me to get off because he couldn’t breathe. He shifted his hips beneath me, rocking them gently to let my rigid cock ride the separation between the tight curves of his arse. I licked and kissed the side of his throat as I ground myself against him and knew I wouldn’t last much longer if we kept this up. I wanted to take him, wanted to push myself into the heat of his body and claim his beauty as mine, so I sat back, ignoring the howl of protest in my head as I broke contact.

My heart was racing in my chest and I paused for a moment, still sitting on Jono’s knees, considering my next move. I wanted this to be the best he had ever had. Not the best since his manifestation as a mutant; I had a feeling that wasn’t much of a challenge, but the absolute best. Not purely through my own selfish arrogance either but because I wanted him to associate being naked with pleasure again. Strictly speaking, I wanted him to associate being naked with me with pleasure.

*Warren,* he pleaded. *Are you going to fuck me?*

"Not yet," I answered, nudging his knees apart with my own and sitting between them. I ran my hands up his legs, my thumbs resting in the creases at the top of his thighs. "Unless you really want me to."

I bent forward and ran my tongue along the curve of one pale buttock, smiling as his begging me to just get on with it became more uncertain as he realised my intention.

*Not yet,* he moaned, *that’s not ‘no’ is it?*

"Definitely not."

*OK.* he whimpered as I parted the twin globes of muscle and blew a gentle stream of air across the entrance to his body.

I flattened my tongue and laved as much of the area between his legs as I could reach with long, hard strokes, still holding him open as he writhed beneath me. My own need became almost unimportant as I gloried in my ability to pleasure Jono, trying my damnedest to drive him wild. I licked him like a man possessed, delighting in the feeling of his body opening and the desperate sighs in my mind, and then speared my tongue into a point. I pushed into him, tasting the intense, unique, indescribable essence of him and he arched his back to impale himself on the questing muscle that was opening him.

He began begging then, barely coherent, his language the most colourfully obscene I have ever heard. He was grinding himself against the bed, pushing back against my tongue, his hands twisting the sheets into knots and, God, I wanted to fuck him so badly I don’t think I could have stopped myself. Laying myself over him again I licked the curve of his ear to get his attention, ignoring the insistent ache of my erection.

"You all right like this?" I asked, breathlessly.

There was a brief pause, and then his body froze beneath mine.

*You want me to put my bandages back on?* he asked, and I could hear the quiet desperation in his voice. I think I could have asked him to do anything in that moment and he would have agreed and I cursed my stupidity.

"No, no I don’t," I murmured, grinding myself against him to try and reassure him just how badly I wanted him. "But you’re kind of trapped, and I want you to enjoy this as much as I do."

He relaxed a little.

"Want you so badly, Jonothon," I continued. "Need to fuck you."

*Then do it,* he sighed. *Please. Make me yours, make me whole, Warren, please.*

I shifted my weight, leaning up to the bedside table to try and fumble the drawer open but he caught my wrist.

*No need,* he said simply. *No blood. No blood borne disease. Want you in me, Warren, just you.*

Fuck. I hadn’t gone bareback since Candy.

*Please.*

I couldn’t deny him. If he’d been just a casual fuck, maybe, but he wasn’t and I didn’t need a barrier, didn’t want one if it wasn’t necessary and I trusted that he wouldn’t lie to me. I reached behind me, milking the gland at the base of one wing and coating my cock with the oil and the liberal precum that had seeped from me.

I lay myself over him, supporting my weight on one elbow and one wing while I positioned the head of my erection against his hole.

"Sure?" I asked and he bucked back against me by way of an answer.

I took that to mean ‘yes’, or knowing Jonothon, ‘fucking get on with it, you bastard’. So I did, gently easing myself into the incredible heat of his welcoming body. I waited, as patiently as I could while every nerve in my body screamed at me to start pounding into him, until he started to make little hitching movements of his hips. He started begging again, his pleas liberally peppered with curses, as I picked up his rhythm and before long I was ploughing into him, flying on the muttered obscenities in my brain as we both edged closer to release.

He tightened around me, calling my name in time with my thrusts into him and I had time to wonder if I should insinuate a hand under him and whether it would be safe to do so. I wasn’t going to last long and I wanted to take him with me but I feared a reaction like the one I had got at the concert if I surprised him. I need not have worried.

*Fuck, Warren…gonna come…fuck…harder…more…please.*

He arched his back, lifting his face from the bank of pillows and contracted around my buried cock as he came. I was only moments behind him and as I came back to earth after my release I contemplated what I had seen reflected back at me in the window. For just that split second before his climax, that brief moment that feels like throwing yourself off a mountainside and waiting for gravity to catch you, his face had been whole. No flare of psifire, no gaping hole, just a full mouth and a strong jaw.



Part 9 Warren


*Warren.*

His voice roused me a little from my pleasant stupor and I nuzzled my face into the space between his shoulder blades, pressing my lips to the place that was fast becoming one of my favourite bits of him. Don’t they say that you always want what you can’t have? He called my name again, louder this time and with a gentle but insistent shift of his body beneath mine.

*I’m going to have to put them back on mate,* he said, apologetically and it took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about.

"Shame, " I said, planting another kiss. "You have the most beautiful back."

*How can anyone have a beautiful back?*

I didn’t answer; the question seemed to have been borne more out of shy reluctance to accept the compliment than genuine enquiry.

"Do you want me to turn away?" I asked, pretty sure I knew what the answer would be, but wanting him to know that if I did look away it was because that was what he wanted, not because I was repulsed by him.

*I know it’s stupid,* he said, ruefully. *Especially given what we’ve just done, but…*

"It’s not stupid. Some things are just private, and that’s fine."

I rolled away to the far side of the bed, my back turned toward him, a hand over my eyes and a wing folded over my face. I really didn’t know if I could trust myself not to peek, but I did know that if I did and he caught me, the fragile trust we had built would be blown away like a house of straw in a force nine gale.

I felt his slight bodyweight shift on the mattress and heard him rewrapping his bandages and wondered if I could ever bring up what I had seen. In truth, I was already slightly unsure if I had really seen it. The memory of his face reflected in the window was distorted by the haze of lust I had been in at the time, and this was not something I would mention until I was absolutely certain I was not mistaken.

Far more quickly than I would have thought possible, he was done. He touched a hand to my shoulder and I turned back to him. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with wide eyes. I tucked my face into the crook of his neck, one arm over his chest and one leg drawn up over his legs. I wanted to mould myself around him, to touch every bit of him I could reach, a little bit angry with myself for wanting this so much. I have always suffered from this dichotomy of need; I suppose it is the curse of the only child. I long to have people around me but yearn for solitude once I have been in company for a while. I had yet to meet anyone who could understand this paradox in my nature. I was beginning to hope that Jonothon might; he seemed as private a man as I am, and as lonely. I could only hope that when I withdrew from him he would realise that it was only through a need to be alone for a time, and not a rejection of him. Bets had never been able to accept that, not that I had ever really found a way to isolate myself from her telepathy.

"What does it feel like?" I asked, stroking my fingertips over the wrappings at the side of his neck. "When someone touches you through your bandages?"

*Like someone touching me through bandages,* he replied, hostile and sad and warning me not to push it.

Then he laced his thumb under my fingers, lifting my hand from his neck and for a brief moment I feared he would leave. An apology formed on my lips and died as he pressed my palm against the centre of his chest.

*You mean here?* he asked and I could only nod dumbly, awed by the liberty he was granting me.

I could feel the energy of his psifire, pulsing beneath the wrappings, pushing at my hand. It was a similar feeling to that of putting your arm out of a train window when it is moving at speed. Force with no definite form, and the underlying fear of losing your hand.

*It feels like a bloody big reminder of the fact that I am not normal.*

I removed my hand at that, placing it back on neutral territory and he sighed, but whether at himself or me, I was not sure.

"I’m not exactly normal myself, you know." I murmured, nervous of inciting his temper but a little tired of his petulant self-absorption.

*I know, I know…the wings.*

"Not just the wings. The money, the upbringing, all sorts of stuff." Jono stroked a hand down the edge of my wing as I laid it over his lean body and I shivered against him. He didn’t seem angry, just sad, so I decided to press my luck a little. "Normal’s just a statistical word for average anyway, and I don’t sleep with average people."

*You’re such a snob, Warren,* he replied, unable to hide the amusement in his voice.

"Yeah, I guess I am. I was brought up to believe that some people were worthy of my notice and some were not. I still believe that, there are just different people in each group."

We fell into a gentle silence, the trials and excitement of what had been a long day dragging me toward sleep even though I wanted to savour as much of this peaceful time in Jono’s arms as I could. He was so accepting, of all my idiosyncrasies, and that was a precious and rare thing to me. So often I had had to stay awake after my partner to keep my wings out of their way, or make sure they weren’t taking photos of my apartment to accompany a kiss-and-tell exposé. It was bliss to just let sleep take me, feeling kind fingers caressing my feathers.

When I woke, he was gone. The sunlight pouring in through the window had woken me and a glance at the clock told me it was still early, at least an hour to go before my alarm went off. The bed felt empty and I felt my heart sink with disappointment. I really hadn’t expected this. It was far from the first time I had woken to find I had been left in the night, but I was usually prepared for it, in fact I was usually hoping for it. I glanced over at the door and felt my heart leap in my chest. The pile of clothes had gone, but his boots were still there, in all their pointed, buckled glory. He was still here then, somewhere; he loved those boots, he would never have left them behind.

I practically threw myself out of bed, running a hand through my hair to straighten it a little and embarrassed to realise that a huge grin had plastered itself to my face. I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and wandered, as nonchalantly as I could force myself to appear, through to the kitchen.

*Morning,* Jono greeted me, his eyes crinkling in an almost shy smile. *I made you coffee.*

"You didn’t have to do that," I said, walking over to him and folding my arms around his lean waist, ignoring for the moment the mug he held out of harm’s way as he returned my embrace.

*I know,* he replied, pulling back a little to look me in the eye. *I wanted to.*

I couldn’t read his expression, but something in it told me not to make a big deal of this. Besides, the coffee did smell wonderful, as did whatever he was cooking and my stomach growled its appreciation.

"How attractive," I laughed, apologetically.

*Did you eat last night, Warren?* Jono asked, brown eyes stern above his bandages and I shook my head.

"I meant to grab something before I picked you up, but I was late leaving work."

*I don’t want you to go without just to be polite, OK? I’m not saying I want to be taken to restaurants or anything, but if you’re hungry, you eat.*

I nodded, feeling oddly as though I was being told off. It was hardly unusual for me to be so busy that I forgot to eat but only my PA, and my mother when she was alive, chastised me for it like this.

"OK, but you don’t have to cook for me, or sit with me while I eat or anything, if you don’t want to."

He shrugged but I couldn’t tell if he was feigning indifference or if it was genuine.

*I like cooking,* he said. *I used to be quite good in the kitchen. Nothing fancy, but I could put together a roast or a curry. Not much point in my cooking for myself though.*

He waved me through to the dining table and set a plate in front of me. My stomach growled again, and my mouth watered. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been so hungry but I felt uncomfortable, eating when Jono couldn’t.

*Something wrong with it?*

"No, no. It’s just…don’t you miss it?"

*Eating? No not really, not in itself. I don’t get hungry.* He handed me my fork, staring at me pointedly and I began to eat. *I miss the stuff that goes with it. Going out for dinner, meeting your mates for a drink, birthday cake, wetting the baby’s head, toasting the bride and groom. All that stuff.* He shrugged his thin shoulders and crinkled his eyes at me. *Food seems to be very important to you normal types.*

I pushed my plate away and hooked a wing around him, pulling him onto my lap with a growl of displeasure.

"What have I told you about using the N-word?" I asked, playful but serious as I wrapped my arms around his narrow waist, under his t-shirt.

He shrugged again, dark eyes glinting mischievously.

*I dunno; something about only shagging weirdos like me.*

"Is that what you want?" I asked, breakfast suddenly forgotten as a new hunger took hold of me. "Want me to fuck you?"

He just nodded, looking coquettishly at me through long eyelashes with eyes that burned with lust. His hands fanned across my bare chest. My senses were so acute that I could feel every callus as his fingertips travelled the contours of my shoulders, dipping behind my back to sweep along the upper curve of my wings. He held me by the joint of one wing, his other hand sweeping into the hair at the nape of my neck and pulled me to him, pressing my face against his, his eyes fluttering closed before mine. It only lasted a split second, just long enough for the taste and feel of his bandages against my lips to sear themselves into my memory before he pulled back again, searching my face with his sad, angry eyes.

*Wish I could kiss you, Warren.*

I couldn’t answer him, not with words, because I wished it too, but to say so would have been cruel. I stood, holding his slight frame to me and flexing the wing he held, bringing it around us both to sweep the table clear before laying him on it and bending over him. I kissed his cheekbones, his nose, his forehead, bucking against him as he wrapped his legs around my waist and ground his pelvis against mine. My tongue traced the curve of one ear as I muttered sweet obscenities into it and my hand pushed into the heat between our bodies, cupping him hard, enjoying the groan in my head as he writhed against my touch. My mouth moved to the join of his neck and his shoulder, nipping him gently through his bandages as one fingertip traced the straining outline of his cock through the leather of his trousers and his moans became more demanding. He pleaded deliciously for me to quit teasing him, reminding me we had to get back to the mansion in time for training and I stepped back, breaking all contact with a malicious grin.

"OK," I said, panting hard, licking my bruised lips. "You’re right, we don’t want to be late."

He wasn’t fooled and I watched, entranced, as his right hand spidered its way over his body, stroking down towards the taut fly of his pants achingly slowly, his other arm flung above his head to make him a knowing picture of debauchery. He eased the buttons open, with one-handed dexterity that promised great things and I felt my mouth go dry, light-headed with lust as his hand moved beneath the tight leather.

"One day I’m going to watch you finish that," I breathed, as I peeled the black hide from his long legs. "but today I want you too badly."

I fisted his cock, starting a firm, fast rhythm that soon had him gasping and writhing beneath me. I could feel his orgasm approaching in my brain and the thought crossed my mind just how easy it would be to torture him, bringing him to the edge over and over. Not today though, no time today.

*Shit, Warren. Thought you were going to fuck me,* he moaned, pushing his hips up from the table to meet each stroke of my hand.

"I am." I replied, smiling at him as his eyes widened in understanding and then closed as he came with a hoarse psionic cry of acquiescence. I waited for them to open again, wanting to be sure, needing a little time to compose myself, so close to coming just from watching him that I didn’t dare touch myself yet.

I gathered his release in one hand, dropping my sweatpants to my ankles with the other and coated my rigid erection. I was tempted to just stroke myself off, excited by the smell of him on me, the wet sounds my hand made and the sight of him, boneless and satiated before me.

*Thought you wanted me,* Jono said, a smile in his mental voice. *Here I am, ready and waiting for you.*

He lifted his legs onto my shoulders and I stroked my slippery hand across the entrance to his body before aligning myself and pushing. He was tight, unprepared but relaxed and I could feel him opening for me. We moaned together as I slid deeper until I was hilted in him and had to stop, my breathing harsh and rapid as I teetered on the edge of my climax. I bent forward, touching my forehead to his, marvelling at the incredible heat of him, his legs around my waist now, holding me deep inside him as he stroked my hair and my face. Affectionate caresses, not lustful ones and even as tightly wound as I was that fact was not lost on me.

I could feel him beginning to get hard again and I started to move, tiny gentle thrusts to begin with, until he clasped his muscles around me in a wordless command for more. As my pushes into him lengthened, he arched his back, letting me graze his prostate with each stroke and before long I felt the now familiar tickling of his impending orgasm in my brain. I felt his long fingers grasp my hand, lifting it from the table and presumed he would direct it to his cock but instead he placed it on his chest, where he had last night, and I felt a confused surge of affection and pride mix with the animal lust I was inhabiting. I stroked my fingers against the rough material of the bandages, pressing the tips into that odd pressure beneath them, in time with my violent thrusts into the clutch of his body.

He was calling my name, head thrown back, eyes closed and I felt the change beneath my fingers as he came again, pulsing around my cock, dragging me into my own glorious orgasm. The pulsing force beneath the bandages was gone, replaced by the solidity of flesh for a few all too brief moments. I collapsed against him, pressing my mouth fleetingly to where his had been as my body was wracked with aftershocks and I softened and pulled out of him. His fingers were in my hair again, soothing and caressing and I never wanted to move again but the sudden shrill ringing of my alarm clock from the bedroom dragged me from that daydream. Jonothon laughed beneath me.

*Nothing like a damn good shag to put me in the mood for a Danger Room session,* he said, accepting my help to get up off the table. *Don’t suppose you could lend me some trousers to go home in?*


Part 10 Warren


After a full day of struggling with my conscience, I decided to discuss it with Hank. The man is one of my oldest friends, and a doctor; I would plead confidentiality. I still couldn’t quite escape the feeling that I was betraying Jono but the implications of what had happened were so huge that I didn’t think I would forgive myself if I failed to follow it up.

To my amazement, Hank just laughed at me.

"So," he said when he’d stopped chuckling long enough to speak and was trying his hardest to be serious again. "The healing power of a damn good rogering?"

"No, Hank." I returned his smile, because put like that it was ridiculous. "That’s not what I meant. I suspect it happens at other times too, but when do we ever see him without his bandages? Only in battle. I think this happens when he’s not paying attention, to his looks or his powers."

Hank’s countenance became genuinely serious then.

"You had sex with him without his bandages? He could have killed you, Warren."

"We were careful." This was beginning to feel surreal even though Hank had always looked out for my sexual health, especially when I didn’t care enough to do so myself. "Anyway, he wouldn’t have done it if it was dangerous. Jono has enough of a guilty conscience without adding me to it."

"Have you talked to him about it?"

I shook my head at that. Hank, bless him, like many of the inordinately clever people I know, can be a little clueless at times. Why on earth would I have been talking to him, if I could have been talking to Jono?

"I can’t find a way to do it that doesn’t make it sound like it matters to me."

"Doesn’t it?"

"Not in the way I’m worried he’ll think it matters."

A blue eyebrow rose in question, inviting me to continue.

"If I had to choose between a whole, happy Jonothon and Jonothon as he is now; obviously there is no question. I fear he would assume I would prefer a whole, happy anyone else, but that isn’t the case." As I said the words I realised I meant them. "I want him."

"You’re in love with him."

"It’s much too early to say things like that."

"That’s not no, Warren." Hank said, his voice filled with concern tinged with just a little amusement.

"I know, I know, I fall too quickly and too hard. Something to do with my relationship with my mother before the age of three, wasn’t it?"

"I can’t believe you are still going on about that."

"I’m not sure who was more grateful when you grew out of your Freudian phase, me or Scott."

"Well, whilst we are psychoanalysing you. Let me tell you something else I find interesting."

I raised an eyebrow; clearly he had not grown quite as far out of that phase as I had thought.

"Jean, Betsy and now Jonothon. All telepaths."

He smiled at me in that infuriating yet somehow endearing way he has when he thinks he has given some great insight and hasn’t realised that those of us with average brains still have no clue what he is talking about.

"So, you think my childhood has something to do with it?" I asked tentatively and he beamed in response.

"Your family were not terribly expressive of their emotions. Perhaps subconsciously you feel it is easier to have a lover who can reach into your mind and help themselves to your feelings."

I shook my head slowly, frowning a little as I digested the idea. I have always hated the thought that my actions are controlled by primitive urges that I have no conscious access to, whereas Hank has, characteristically, always found the concept fascinating.

"Jean never looked," I started slowly. "She didn’t want to know what was there. Bets always used what she found as fodder for our disagreements, and Jono…"

I had never felt him in my head, not digging around like Betsy used to anyway.

"I don’t think so, Hank." I said, worried that I didn’t know for sure and wondering if that was exactly why my friend had brought it up. "If he’d been in my head, he wouldn’t need to be so, so skittish around me. Unless he can read my mind, and he’s nervous that I am about to announce my undying affection, or something."

I rolled that thought around my head for a moment, feeling the disappointment of imagined rejection.

"But surely Paige wouldn’t have been such a surprise in that case. Jean was always complaining that I broadcast when I was drunk, and when I was horny, come to that."

I looked at my friend, trying to read from his expression whether he agreed with my hypothesising or not. He was wearing his inscrutable ‘what you’re saying is very interesting, and I am eager to know where you are going with this’ mask and I could glean nothing from it. I changed tack.

"I thought you said it was the lack of communication between Bets and I that did for the relationship, anyway?"

"I was not advocating allowing telepathy to be your only means of expression, Warren, it was merely an observation."

And a warning, I thought. Not to let this go the way that had. We sat in silence for a while, drinking our coffee, at ease in the quietude borne of long friendship and I realised that I had never felt this comfortable with Betsy, because we had never been friends.

"What if he looks like that, because that’s what he thinks he looks like?" I said finally, I had come here to get Hank’s expert opinion, and I was damned if I would leave without it. "Or deserves to look like," I added softly, almost hoping he didn’t hear that bit.

"Now who’s being Freudian?" he asked

"I know. Think about it though. The first time he manifests, he gets a big hole in his chest, but that business with Paige, still the same hole. And how many times has he used his power in battle now?"

"So you think there is something deep and subconscious going on?" Hank asked, leaning forward with the glint in his eye that he gets when his brain is working at the speed of light. "Interesting. Very possible too. I am not sure that his self-image was really all that strong even before his manifestation."

I didn’t get that. My understanding of pre-X gene Jono was that he had been a musician on the cusp of great things and I had assumed that it was having those dreams ripped from him that had made him so unhappy and uncertain. I also knew, from long experience, that Hank was not likely to tell me any more, and would in fact berate himself mercilessly for that small slip of confidence.

"So," I said, resolving to make more of an effort to ask Jono about himself, and aware suddenly that we had talked about me a lot, but hardly at all about him. "You don’t think I’m totally crazy?"

"No, no, I don’t. He is, although this is only a theory because he won’t let me examine him in any detail, a purely psychic being."

"I try not to think about that," I replied, feeling my face heat a little in a faint blush. "It’s just too weird; he feels so…so real."

"Yes," Hank nodded earnestly, his blue eyes glittering with excitement behind his glasses. "Fascinating, isn’t it? I really would love to study him in more depth. We might even find a way to help him change his body. If he learnt enough control there is even a possibility that he might have metamorphic abilities."

I felt a bright surge of protectiveness at that; something for which I have no doubt Jonothon would have been far from grateful had he known.

"You’ll be careful, won’t you?" I asked my friend. "When you bring it up. I think it has taken him a lot more effort than he lets on to gain the level of control he has, and his belief in himself is fragile at best."

Hank seemed to find my concern highly amusing; he let out a loud bark of laughter and eventually had to remove his glasses to wipe tears of hilarity from the fur of his cheeks.

"Oh Warren," he said finally, still winded from his fit of mirth. "Forgive me, I just never thought I would see the day that you would have to lecture me on tact. I shall be careful. In fact, I shan’t mention it at all. You are quite right, of course, I am letting my imagination run away with me again. I daresay Mr Starsmore has enough on his plate without concerning himself with learning to shapeshift as well."

The buzzer on the intercom interrupted the brief silence that followed, informing us of the arrival of the first walking wounded from the morning’s Danger Room training. Hank stood, turning as he reached the doorway to look back at me and smile.

"I was wrong before," he said. "When I advised you not to get involved with him. It’s good to see you happy again, my friend."

It’s funny how important acceptance from one’s friends is at the start of a relationship, even if you tell yourself it doesn’t matter. I am not sure I had even realised just how much I feared his disapproval until he had given his unasked for endorsement, but it lifted a weight I had not known was there from my heart.


Part 11 Jono


I was sitting on my bed with my guitar, marking out chords with my fingers, not actually playing, because I didn’t want anyone else to know I still did. Quite some vice, eh? Illicit silent guitar playing, but I couldn’t bear the thought of being asked to perform like some kind of circus chimp, worse still listen to other people singing when I couldn’t. Warren had asked me if I missed eating, and I had been able to truthfully reply that I didn’t, but God did I miss singing. So I heard him when he knocked on the door and felt a brief flurry of embarrassed panic to be caught indulging my secret hobby. I was in such a hurry to get the instrument safely stowed out of sight under the bed before I opened the door that I didn’t wonder until much later quite how I had known, which I had with absolute certainty, that it was Warren outside the door. I did have time to assume, since he was early, that he was coming to tell me the weekend was off, that he had to work, or some other excuse. I’ve been told that it’s my least attractive character fault, this tendency to always assume the worst and it is an exhausting way to live, but it’s a habit I can’t seem to break. A habit I’m too scared to break, if truth be told, easier to live this way than to risk unexpected disappointment.

*You’re early,* I said, accusation ringing through my words so baldly that I was a little bit ashamed of myself, but Warren just smiled. He seems to find my tetchy bad temper endlessly amusing, I suspect mainly because he doesn’t think I mean what I say and puts it down to my eccentric English sense of humour.

"I know," he said, looping a wing round my back and pulling me into his arms with it. "I couldn’t wait."

*Warren,* I wished I sounded a little bit less like a scandalised maiden aunt. *Someone might see us.*

"So?"

His lips brushed the curve of my ear, his arms still wrapped tightly around me moulding my body to his. At times like this I could almost believe that he didn’t care about my face, my bandages and all the baggage that went with my mutation. He made it seem like he always intended to kiss my ear, my neck, the top of my head, wherever his mouth caressed. There was never that awkward moment of realisation I had had with other lovers, when they went to kiss my mouth and realised too late that there was none to kiss. Just part of his make-up, I guess, the same thing that leads him to hold doors open, and stand when anyone enters a room. Old fashioned good manners, as my Gran would have called it but honed into a devastating weapon of seduction.

"Are you ashamed to be seen with me?" he asked, mostly joking. I shook my head.

*I’m just not sure I want us to be the latest bit of Institute gossip.*

"Too late for that," he said but he lifted me off my feet and carried me into my room, flicking the door shut behind us with the tip of a wing. I should have wondered about that comment, but by then I was too busy enjoying the demanding caress of his hands. Odd how much I appreciate his insistent touch now, when I had always hated pushy lovers in the past. It’s difficult for me to convince myself he probably doesn’t want to be here when he’s all over me like this and it’s such a deviation from his usual finesse in all things that I have to think that’s why he does it. Which is heartbreakingly thoughtful.

*What did you want Warren?* I asked as he deposited me on my bed and lifted my t-shirt to expose my bandages. Then he kissed me, his mouth hot on the skin of my abdomen, his tongue curling under the edge of the wrapping and I wished I hadn’t asked in case I’d distracted him.

"What did I want that made me come here, or what do I want now that I am?" Warren asked, lifting his blond head to grin lasciviously at me.

*What?* Oh God please don’t let this be a Dear John fuck, and if it is let me have enough pride to turn it down.

His hands were on my fly now, teasing the top button open and kissing the skin he’d uncovered and I knew I didn’t have enough pride, not by a long way. Then he stopped.

"You think too much, you know," Warren said, lying himself alongside me, propped up on one elbow and running his fingertips over my arm. "I just wanted to see you, that’s all, no great conspiracy."

He frowned then, perfect brows drawn together in displeasure and it hurt to know I was the cause.

"What did you think?" he said. "That I’d come to blow you off for the weekend and just couldn’t resist blowing you first?"

OK, so maybe he doesn’t think my automatic negativity is merely a strange sense of humour. I just shrugged, staring at the ceiling; I didn’t want to see his expression, I could hear the disappointment in his tone and I knew I owed him some sort of explanation. When he put it like that it made it seem as though I thought he was shallow or cruel.

I shrugged, angry suddenly, at myself for doing this again, at him for knowing I was doing it and, of course, at life in general. He just waited, as he does, in a way that is somehow simultaneously charming and infuriating, for me to collect my thoughts and decide whether or not I was prepared to share them with him.

*It’s just…* I began, which was crazy because whatever it was, it wasn’t just anything. *It just all seems too good to be true. I keep waiting for the bubble to burst.*

"You’re going to burst the bubble yourself if you keep pushing at it."

*I know. It’s just, well, you could have anyone, Warren,* I said, after a long pause. I left the other half unsaid, the bit that sounded pathetic even to my long-accustomed ears.

"That’s not true and even if it was, it’s not the point. Sure I could go to a bar or a club and pick someone up to tell me I’m wonderful and take me to bed; I’ve done the sex without meaning thing, and it’s better than no sex at all, but it doesn’t come close to what we have. So OK, I could have anyone? I choose you."

We lay in silence for a moment or two, while I digested that. It felt oddly anticlimactic, as well as a huge relief, like when you have convinced yourself there’s a monster under your bed, or a burglar in your home only to find nothing when you finally switch the light on.

*Warren,* I said finally, a bit nervous because he really had sounded quite ticked off. *What did you want?*

He laughed softly at that, pulling me into a tighter embrace and kissing the top of my head.

"I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, and I figured if I asked them now, you’d have time to stop being cross with me by this evening and the weekend wouldn’t be spoiled."

*So these questions are likely to make me cross?* Frankly I felt too tired to be angry about anything right then.

Another laugh and another kiss.

"I don’t know, I haven’t quite got a handle on what pisses you off yet, so I’m playing safe by assuming everything does."

*Go on then.*

"OK, well the first one seems a bit redundant now, after that little misunderstanding, but what the hell. Can you read my mind?"

*Can I? Yes. Do I? No.*

"Why not? You wouldn’t have to worry that I was going to run off with the first bit of skirt to happen by if you did."

*Because it’s none of my business, the stuff in your head and because…* oh shit, here we go again. *because if you look like this, you don’t really want to know what people are thinking.*

"I don’t mind you looking in my head. I’d advise you not to look too hard, because there’s some pretty nasty stuff in there, but I guess Emma has told you all about that."

*My control isn’t that good. I don’t think I could block everyone else and just get you.*

Actually I thought my control probably was good enough, but I was nervous about going down that route. It was all very well while things were hunky-dory but I knew I didn’t want to be inside his head the first time we had a proper argument. The suggestion was almost enough on its own though. He couldn’t have been lying about choosing me if he could offer up his thoughts for scrutiny so easily, could he?

*So what was the other question?*

I don’t know what I was expecting. Something unpleasant, given the length of the silence before he spoke.

"Do you still want to fuck me?"

I resisted the urge to just give a mental whoop of delight and throw myself at him, because somewhere beneath the fog of lust that had suddenly clouded my brain, I knew this was important. I hadn’t needed to be a telepath to register his reluctance the last time this came up and I couldn’t see what had changed, apart from the fact that he had cottoned on to my overwhelming insecurity.

"I’ve been thinking about it a lot," he continued, sounding as uncertain, as uneasy as I had ever heard him. "And I think I want you to."

I wasn’t too keen on that ‘think’ in there.

*Why?* I asked, trying to sound open and interested instead of suspicious, and failing miserably.

He shrugged and didn’t answer, and I feared my assumption had been correct, that this had been one more way to prove that he was serious about me, about us. I turned in his arms to look him in the eye, needing to see his face and confirm my suspicions. I was surprised to find him blushing.

"You seem to enjoy it," he muttered. "It was never like that for me, like it is for you, I mean, and I just sort of thought maybe I should give it another go."

I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I wished I had sneaked a glance into his head the last time, so that I might have had some idea just what had made him reluctant, but it seemed we would have to do this the old-fashioned way instead and actually talk to each other.

*Maybe it’s just not for you, Warren.*

"Yeah. Or maybe it’s like wine and olives and stuff, you know, you don’t like it when you’re young but your tastes change as you get older." He lowered his gaze. "Maybe it depends who you do it with."

There was a pause then, while an epic battle took place between my conscience, which wanted me to be a responsible lover and the rest of my brain, which kept throwing up projections of just how good it would feel to be inside Warren’s perfect body. All self-esteem problems aside, I’m pretty good in bed, I think, but I know from personal experience the kind of demons memory can conjure.

"If you don’t want to, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to get all melodramatic on you."

*It’s not that I don’t want to, I do. I really really do. I just don’t want to wish we hadn’t afterwards, that’s all.*

"Why would you regret it?" he asked, apparently genuinely puzzled.

*I dunno, don’t want to dredge up past traumas for you, I guess.*

I can’t say I was expecting him to laugh.

"It wasn’t traumatic. It was just…nothing special, I guess. We were young and I think probably he just wasn’t very good. He made me feel like who I was didn’t really matter." Another short burst of laughter. "Not in a ‘don’t you know who I am’ way. Just, you know, like I could have been anyone, which I guess I could have been."

He sighed again, pulling me in for a quick hug, and I felt a surge of pride run through me. I had just had my first proper, grown-up discussion about sex with someone. The kind of talk you’re always encouraged to have in sex ed classes but always seems a lot tougher than just blundering in and hoping for the best.

"I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this," Warren said ruefully, pulling himself to a standing position beside the bed. "It’s just something for you to think about."

I was quite sure I would think about little else for the remainder of the day, and resolved to stay well away from any telepaths, in fact I thought I would probably stay right where I was and think about it long and hard.

*Enjoy your meeting,* I said, standing up myself and catching him by one arm as he left my room. My mood swings give me vertigo at times, I dread to think what it must be like for Warren, but I suddenly felt stupidly happy. I pulled him into an embrace, pressing my body against his, running my hands over his back, up to his wings, down to the tight muscular curves of his buttocks. *Are you sure you have to go?*

He just laughed, gently and a bit regretfully.

"Yeah. This place doesn’t fund itself you know."

I let him go, happy for the time being that he would be back.


Part 12 Jono


"Wait, wait."

Long blue fingers closed over mine, pulling them from the belt buckle they were trying to unfasten. I sighed, hoping I didn’t project it but still more than a little exasperated, and slumped back onto the sofa.

*Warren," I said, as gently as I could.

"I know, I know, I’m sorry," he breathed, leaning his forehead against mine.

*Don’t be sorry. Just don’t make yourself do something you don’t want to, OK? We don’t have to do this, not now and not at all.*

"I know that too, but I do want to."

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows at that. We were both still fully clothed, had only been in the flat for about half an hour and he had already stopped me five times before insisting he wanted to continue. I could understand he was nervous; this was obviously a big deal to him, a lot more than it had ever been to me, even when I was at my most virginal, but I was almost wishing he’d just suggest we forget all about it. Of course, he couldn’t do that, because his pride was at stake, and there was no way for me to say ‘actually, you know what, I’ve changed my mind’ without it being insulting.

"I’m just finding it hard to relinquish control, I guess."

*Control’s got nothing to do with it, Warren. You can still be in charge.*

"But that’s the point, I don’t want that. I want to trust you to take care of me."

Funny how much that second ‘want’ hurt. I’d thought he did trust me; I thought that was the reason he’d asked me in the first place. I wasn’t at all sure that his wanting to trust me was worth the risk.

"I do trust you," he continued, suddenly looking terribly young. "It’s just so hard to make myself let go." He laughed softly, mostly to himself. "It goes against all of my training."

*Maybe we should get Scott down here; you don’t seem to have problems doing as he tells you.*

We both laughed at that, for far longer than it really warranted, but at least some of the tension went out of the atmosphere. In the silence that followed, I thought about what he had said; I didn’t think he meant his Xmen training. Hadn’t he told me he was conceived so that he could someday head the Worthington Empire? What kind of childhood must he have had, with that hanging over him all the time, quite apart from the hangers on and gold diggers that his money attracted? I felt kind of sorry for the boy Warren had been because it struck me that he’d never really been allowed to be just a boy, but always the Worthington heir. I’m not trying to suggest his childhood was the worst of the Institute’s sob stories, not by a long chalk, but I wasn’t sure I would have swapped the impoverished freedom of my upbringing for all the wealth and status of his.

He sighed then, tilting his head to rest it on my shoulder and I realised he was every bit as annoyed with himself as I was with him, probably more so.

*You really want to do this?* I asked, not waiting for the answer. *And you really trust me?*

"I really do."

I was tempted to read his thoughts and check.

*Right then,* I pushed myself up from the sofa and walked towards the kitchen area. *I’ll help you let go.*

I could feel the nervous curiosity rolling off him as I hunted through the knife drawer.

"With a knife?" he asked, anxiously, although his eyes were sparkling with cautious desire as they met mine, which reassured me a little that I was doing the right thing.

I just shrugged; the less he knew the less he had to worry about, and I was beginning to think I was not the only person in this room who thought too much.

*Bedroom,* I said, enjoying the hitch in his breathing. *Now. And take your clothes off unless you mind them getting damaged.*

The sight that met me when I joined him would have stopped my heart if I’d still had one and I was hit by the fact that he really did trust me; he thought I had a knife, and he was still naked and waiting for me. He was beautiful, all sleek lines, soft skin, and a halo of blond hair that completed the angelic imagery and made me want to throw myself at his feet and worship him. I wanted him to feel adored, because that was how I felt, when he laid himself over me and in me and forced every bad self-hating thought out of my head.

*You all right on your back?* I asked, searching for the end of my bandage where it was tucked close to my waist. *Not too uncomfortable for your wings, I mean.*

He shook his head, blue eyes wide, as he watched me cut three lengths of bandage from the excess I always wore just in case, with the scissors I had brought through from the kitchen.

"As long as you’re not going to leave me there until Monday."

*Nah. If you end up being the only one of us who gets fucked this weekend, I am going to be a very disappointed boy.*

"Well, we don’t want that."

*Quit stalling,* I said gently, softening my words with the closest thing to a smile I could manage and pointing to the bed.

He settled himself on it, and I gave him time to get his wings as comfortable as possible before securing one of his wrists to each bedpost and straddling his waist, careful to avoid catching his feathers with my boots. I cradled his head in my hands for a moment, leaning down to stroke my face against his, elated to feel his mouth open against my skin in a hot, wet kiss.

*You’re so beautiful,* I breathed, tying the last strip of black over his eyes and sitting back to admire my creation.

"Don’t I need a safeword or something?"

*I’m not going to hurt you Warren. I don’t think I could, even if you wanted me to, but sure. How about Gabriel?*

"Gabriel?"

*As in the angel.* I shifted off the bed, unable to drag my eyes away from the sight of him, but suddenly painfully aware that I wearing far too many clothes. *Do you have any idea how hot you look?*

Warren turned his head a little, presumably to where he could hear me struggling out of my jeans.

"Jonothon, if I use it would you, well, would you read my mind, check that I really want you to stop, before you do?"

*You’re not going to use it, Warren. You’re just going to lie there and let me look after you, let me make you feel good, OK?*

"But still…"

*No. You use the safeword and it’s over. That’s what it’s for.*

Not strictly true, but I wasn’t sure how much more of his wavering I could handle. Oddly enough the certainty seemed to settle him and I watched him relax against the pillows again, waiting for me to return and make good on my promise. He was so trusting, and I knew how difficult that was for him, that it made me ache in my chest, where my heart had been.

I sat on the bed next to him, letting my hands trace gentle patterns onto his skin and stirring his feathers, murmuring softly into his mind. Soon he was arching up into my touch, trying to strengthen the contact, moaning and begging with words as well as gestures until I laid one finger over his mouth to quiet him. I wanted to take this slowly, to catalogue every reaction of his body to my touch, because now I came to think about it, he was always in charge, always the one moving things on. Not that I minded ordinarily, but I was still going to savour this opportunity.

He opened his mouth then, and I slid my finger into wet heat, feeling his tongue writhing against my skin as he sucked, excited by the wet noises his mouth made and taken back to what I had so stupidly stopped him from doing that afternoon. He moaned as I withdrew the digit again, trying to follow my retreating hand as far as his bound arms would allow and my body surged with lust as he ran his tongue over his lips, pink against blue. I had to have his mouth, even though I knew this was the one thing I shouldn’t ask for, because I couldn’t return it, however much I wanted to.

Mindful of his wings, I knelt beside his head, one knee on either side of his arm. It was an awkward position for both of us but the sight of him pulling against the restraints to get his mouth close to me was a memory I would treasure for the rest of my days. I moved to help him, laying just the weeping head of my cock at his lips, watching his face carefully, even through my desire, for any suggestion of displeasure.

When he started to mouth and lick at those bits of me he could reach, I was grateful for the clumsiness of our positioning because I knew I would never have had the willpower to refrain from pushing myself into his throat had I been able to. With the hungry whimpers and greedy sucking sounds he was making as his tongue lapped at me, it was all I could do to hold my climax back as it was and I lifted myself back a little to ease the contact.

I heard the sound of his wing moving before I registered what it was. There were feathers on the small of my back and I was pushed, fairly forcefully, back down onto his mouth, the full length of my erection sliding across the softness of his lips and tongue. I let him kiss the sensitive skin where my dick met my balls, hot, wet, sucking kisses, just because it felt so good, and then pushed myself back hard, gracelessly breaking the connection between my oversensitive skin and his talented mouth.

*Fucker,* I laughed, standing beside the bed and watching that damn tongue snake out across his wet, swollen lips, tasting me, I knew. He was panting hard and smiling, relaxed in his bondage. He was devastatingly beautiful.

"Do it now," he pleaded. "Please, Jono, want you so much."

His head turned to follow the sound of my movements and he shuddered as his bedside drawer opened, then he drew his feet up the bed, knees bent and open. Willing, wanting, hard. I knelt between his legs, rubbing my face against the inside of his thigh, as I warmed a generous amount of lube in my hands. I slicked myself first, trying not to think about what I was doing for fear of it being too much for my fragile self-control and then turned my attention back to Warren.

I felt him flinch and then relax at the first touch of my slippery fingers in a firm stroke over his perineum. I traced my fingertips gently over his already tightly drawn up balls, avoiding his cock altogether because I really didn’t want this to be over before it had begun. He had leaked a puddle of slippery precum onto his stomach and I wished I could taste it, but settled for letting the fingers of one hand slide in it as the other hand stroked across the entrance to his body. I concentrated on the feeling of the muscle relaxing, allowing one finger in, letting my own need recede a little as I focussed on Warren. He stayed steel-hard as I rested a second finger against him, but the flinch came again, before he could stop it and I cheated. I took just the tiniest glimpse into his mind as I pushed the two digits slowly, gently into him and was relieved beyond measure to find only a hint of nervous anticipation underlying desire and trust in his mind.

Unable to wait any longer I positioned myself over and against him, nuzzling my cheek into the sweat-soaked hair at his temple and feeling the oddly familiar texture of my bandages on his face. His breath was coming in harsh staccato pants that paused as I pushed into him. It was like sliding into heaven; hot, tight, slick and under it all the pulsing current of the fact that this was mine, given to me almost exclusively.

"Jonothon?" he breathed as I paused, sheathed as far as I could go.

Fuck, Warren, not now, please not now. The thought crossed my mind that he was testing me and I could only pray that I was strong enough to pass. I think I managed some kind of wordless indication that I was listening.

"Want to see you, please, that’s all. Just let me see you."

That I could certainly do. I removed his blindfold and the look he gave me shot a pulse of electricity through me straight to my buried cock. Hunger, gratitude and affection gleamed in his ice blue eyes and I had to stay still for another moment to compose myself.

*You going to behave if I take the others off too?* I asked and he nodded, so I did, pulling at the ends so that my responsible fast-release knots fell open.

His hands were on me immediately, stroking over my bandages and further, down to the small of my back, cupping the curves of my arse. He writhed beneath me, just a small movement, suggesting he would like me to start moving, not taking over, but I couldn’t deny him.

We moved together, in a gentle, tender rhythm; the kind of sex that is always called love-making in the books to distinguish it from sheer animal fucking as though there is no emotional connection possible in fast hard mutual pleasure. Soon Warren was calling for harder, faster, more and I was glad to oblige, wrapping my hand around him because I knew I wouldn’t last long as I ploughed into him. His wings thrashed against the floor as his body tightened rhythmically around me, his eyes tight shut and his mouth open in a silent cry of pleasure as he came hard into my fist. My world went bright as I joined him, pouring my release deep into him with each convulsive thrust of my hips.

I lost track of reality for a few moments and when I recovered I felt gentle hands in my hair, fluttering through the sweaty tangles and stroking my scalp. He kissed my cheek and I could feel the smiling curve of his lips against my skin before he held me tight against his chest and shifted onto his side to let his wings free from their imprisonment beneath us.

"I could get used to you being in charge," Warren murmured in my ear as I turned in his arms so that he was spooned behind me. He had his arms around me and one wing around us both and I had never felt so secure and cocooned.

*Not all the time,* I grumbled happily. *Do we need a rota?*

He laughed, breath warm against my skin, and shook his head.

"No, just every once in a while, OK?"

I was drifting off to sleep then, happy and comfortable, lulled into repose by the steady rhythm of Warren’s breathing in my ear, the gentle rise and fall of his chest against my back.

"I thought you weren’t going to read my mind," he whispered and I tensed even though he didn’t seem upset.

*I’m sorry…* I began but he hushed me.

"Doesn’t matter. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Sleep now."




Part 13 Jono


When I woke the bed was empty, Warren was gone. I could hear him moving around the kitchen like a man trying to be silent and it cut me. I lay there for a moment or two, wallowing in hurt and realising that I hadn’t had time to make myself feel bad last night. It had been a much-needed rest from my own thoughts and I wished I had savoured it a bit more. Clearly that respite was over now. I didn’t need to wonder what it was that I had done to drive Warren away, he had made that clear last night. After I had assured him I didn’t snoop in people’s minds uninvited too. I could hardly blame him for being angry with me; I knew how annoyed I got with Emma when she did the same to me, and she had never promised me she wouldn’t. I felt a bit sad that he didn’t even want to talk to me though, he had said he would, but now it seemed that I wouldn’t even get a chance to apologise, let alone beg and grovel and plead.

Then my temper woke up and reminded me that he had invited me to read his thoughts and that my intentions had been good and where the hell did he think he got off sneaking out like I was some cheap one night stand anyway?

I was in the kitchen before I’d really even realised I was going to get out of bed. Warren was drinking coffee at the table, dressed in a beautifully cut charcoal grey suit, clean shaven, damp hair, wings nowhere to be seen and I watched his face carefully, sure he was going to be ticked off that he had come so close to escaping without waking me, only to fall at the last hurdle.

"Morning," he said, so casually I wanted to punch him. "Big fuck up at the office, so I’m going to have to go in for an hour or two. I was hoping to be back before you woke up."

Sure you did. Hoping I’d get pissed off and leave before you got back you mean. I just shrugged.

*OK.*

"I’m really sorry, Jono. I know this was supposed to be an uninterrupted weekend, just us, but…"

*Conglomerates don’t run themselves, Warren, I know that. It’s fine* I said in a voice that made it clear that it was anything but.

"I’ll be back by lunchtime."

*Sure.*

His shoulders sagged a little and had I not been so mired in my own misery, I might even have felt sorry for him.

"If you want to go back to the mansion you can help yourself to any of the cars. I can pick it up on Monday."

*Thanks.* Like I was going to make it that easy for him.

He finished his breakfast and put the dishes in the sink. Once or twice he looked as though he might say something, and I felt my spirits rise for a moment, then plummet as he changed his mind and I hated him even more for that.

"See you later then," he said cautiously, pausing at the front door to the apartment.

*Have a good day at work, dear,* I replied, my tone dripping with such sarcasm that it made me feel ashamed and sick but I couldn’t find the good grace to take it back, and then he was gone.

I spent the next couple of hours listening to miserable music on Warren’s kick-ass stereo while my thoughts chased each other in circles. I was angry with myself for reading his mind when I had said I wouldn’t, ashamed of using my telepathy at all, having promised myself years ago that I would only project. I also conceded that I had always had doubts at the back of my mind about this relationship, or whatever it was, but then I always had doubts about any relationship. It boiled down essentially to the same thing. Why on earth would a man as rich, attractive and successful as Warren be interested in me?

I couldn’t find an answer to that one. Not even for as long as he had seemed interested, certainly not for any longer, and yet, I couldn’t make myself leave. Part of the problem was that I was furious and I didn’t see why I should make things easy for Warren, if he was going to be a bastard, and just be conveniently gone when he did get back. It wasn’t as though he could starve me out of his apartment. Mostly though, I still had the painful hope that I was just being a dickhead and that he would come back and everything would work out.

By three in the afternoon that hope was in its death throes.

Just as I figured I had had enough and would leave, the phone rang. I waited for the answer phone to pick it up, just in case it was Warren calling to apologise for being so late. It was Professor Xavier, which I really wasn’t expecting. He was in Scotland, as far as I knew, and his relationship with his wealthiest student was not so friendly that he would have been phoning for a nice chat.

"Warren," came his cultured tones, distorted a little even by the top of the range electronics of Warren’s machine. "It’s Charles. I’m just checking you’re all right. I know you hate me keeping a mental eye on you but I felt something earlier and I just, well, just wanted to be sure. I imagine you’re busy, but I would be grateful if you would let me know things are OK. I’m at Muir. Thank you."

Odd, but now I knew why the relationship between Warren and his erstwhile mentor was strained and it wasn’t a comfort to know I was not the first person he had fallen out with over unwanted telepathic interference. I added guilt for listening to his telephone messages to all the other bad feelings hovering about me like a cloud.

I really was ready to leave, I had packed my bag and everything, when pain ripped through my back, high up where my shoulder blades are and I contorted in an effort to put my hand where it hurt as I fell to my knees. My back felt normal beneath my bandages but the pain was incapacitating and my body heaved in the long forgotten dance of retching.

When it passed I became aware of the phone ringing again and I struggled shakily to my feet in time to hear Cyclops’s voice echo across the kitchen.

"Warren, It’s Scott. Jean’s worried about you and you know what she’s like when she gets an idea in her head, so she made me phone and check you’re all right. Do us all a favour and phone in when Jonothon lets you out of bed. Thanks."

Two worried telepaths in half an hour. I needed to get back to the mansion, talk to Scott and Jean and to Hank about what had just happened to me. I cursed my inability to use a phone, reluctantly acknowledging that, had I spent less time sulking in the basement in Massachusetts, if I had ever let Emma teach me, I could probably have used my telepathy to contact the mansion. Now I would have to waste half an hour, traffic willing, to get back before I could reassure myself that I was panicking over nothing.

As I sprinted out of the flat the phone rang again. I paused just long enough to hear Warren’s PA asking him where the hell he was, she had the conference call all set up, before I left.

I drove to Westchester on autopilot, and if I had run someone over I wouldn’t even have noticed. My back still hurt, although it had settled to a less distracting pain, and I rubbed it against the seat back as I drove, in a fruitless search for some relief. It was a sick agony, almost like the phantom toothache I had endured for a month after my manifestation, and I suspect, had I not been out of my mind with worry about Warren, quite excruciating in its severity.

Jean’s voice was in my head before I reached the gates of the mansion, telling me that everyone was waiting for me in the war room. I didn’t know what to think about that. On the one hand, I wouldn’t have to go searching for people and trying to convince them that my concern was reasonable, but on the other, if Scott and Jean and all the other X-veterans were worried enough to have congregated, they probably were not going to tell me I was panicking about nothing. I was hoping by that point that Warren had just dumped me, because the alternatives my mind was throwing up were much worse.

The mood in the war room was sombre, funereal even, and a wave of nausea coursed through me as I took my seat. I wondered if there had been a similar meeting when I was captured by the Friends of Humanity, but discounted it as unlikely. Warren was, after all, one of the first Xmen, a brother in the strange little family Xavier had founded.

Cyclops was detailing the current state of intelligence when I entered the room, which as it turned out was little more than I knew: Warren seemed to have vanished and was, presumably, unconscious or a long way away because none of the telepaths could get a hold on him. I edged unobtrusively into the empty seat next to Hank, having never been especially comfortable at these briefings, and was surprised when all eyes in the room turned to me.

"What happened?" Cyclops asked, breaking from his address to stare at me.

I shrugged, having no more idea what had happened to Warren than they had.

"To your face," Hank clarified gently, confusing me further. "The bruises."

*I don’t bruise, Hank.*

A mirror was found from somewhere, presumably one of the girls, and given to me to study my decidedly bruised face.

*I don’t bruise,* I repeated, stupidly.

Hank nodded at me, in that special, doctorly way he has that encourages you to keep talking and I found myself telling him about my back pain and as I did I realised what it was.

*It’s not pain in my back, is it? It’s pain in my wings.*

"Is it still there now?" Jean asked and I nodded. "I can’t get him at all, but presumably you have some sort of psiconnection with him. It’s easier for me to feel Scott than anyone else, the same must be true for you with Warren."

"So you think we might be able to find him?" Scott interjected and Jean gave a tight but hopeful smile and nodded.

"You’ll have to search for him," she said to me, and I felt sick.

*I don’t know how.*

Because I would rather sit in a basement and feel sorry for myself than learn how, I thought.

"It’s hard to explain, but you just have to kind of reach out for him. It’s a bit like blind man’s bluff, you reach out, touch whoever you find and see if they feel like Warren."

I nodded, terrified and nauseated and sure I couldn’t do this.

"It might help if you have a memory in your mind as you do. Something the two of you have done, that no one else knows about," she continued and she was blushing slightly, her fair redhead’s complexion allowing no hiding place.

Ordinarily I would have baulked at the thought of vividly recalling the intimate details of my sex life in the presence of another telepath, having been burnt once or twice at the Academy, but what was a little mortification if it got Warren found? I couldn’t think of another memory that no one else would have been party to anyway, so I thought about last night.

Jean blushed harder.

"Perhaps it would be best if the rest of us left," Scott suggested and I realised bashfully that he could presumably get the gist of my thoughts via his link with Jean. She nodded curtly, barely turning her attention from me and as the rest of the team filed out, we began searching in earnest.



Part 14 Jono


As we flew to the FoH containment camp, my mind was whirling with the things I had seen in Warren’s mind. He was hurt, and lapsing in and out of consciousness, all kinds of disconnected thoughts running through his head. I wondered if he would have felt my telepathic touch. I had tried to reassure him that we were on our way, hoping, selfishly, that it might give him a little more strength to hold on until we got there. I felt shamefully proud of myself for having found him, and utterly disgusted with myself for never having learnt how to use my telepathy properly. I offered up a bargain to whoever might be listening that I would really apply myself to my studies, even ask Charles for help, if Warren was all right.

The camp was set up in a similar lay out to the one I had been held in, which was of no use to me, but handy for the rest of the team. Not that I needed to know the geography of the camp. The closer we got to him, the stronger my sense of Warren was, and the stronger my fear that we would be too late, that he was seriously hurt, grew. My sympathy pains were worse too, but they were kept unimportant by the growing fury I felt aimed toward whoever had dared to hurt the only person who had ever been able to keep my demons at bay.

In what I would later learn was an almost exact replica of my own rescue, save for the flying bit, we broke into the camp in two groups: attack and decoy. I set off immediately for where I knew Warren to be; it was getting easier to use my telepathy the more I tried, and I was already far less reluctant to trust it. In truth I was beginning to feel a little stupid for not learning how to use it. Emma had told me once that it was ridiculous of me, which of course had only made me more stubbornly determined, that it was as though I had decided never to use one of my legs. I could see now that it was as much a part of me as anything else and I could not shift the guilty feeling that, had I been better acquainted with my power, I might have realised Warren was in trouble earlier. Another reason to pray he would be all right, I would never forgive myself if we were too late.

I found him easily enough, and the guards he had were easily overwhelmed with simple hand-to-hand combat, which was worrying. Granted his mutation was not destructive, but he was an Xman, trained in martial arts, and the fact that they weren’t expecting any fight out of him chilled me. It was easy enough to see why, when I found him. He had been beaten, my bruising a pale reflection of his, severe enough to show through the blue of his skin. The torrent of rage that coursed through me, the need to hurt those who had hurt him, was sudden and strong and I wondered how Scott and Jean could work together. How did they handle the ongoing sense of impotence that came from knowing this might happen and being powerless to stop it?

He was motionless on the ground and for a brief, terrible second, I thought he was dead. I knew then that I had not lost my heart in my manifestation, because it felt as though it had been ripped out of my chest. Then he moved, drawing a long deep breath that was clearly painful, even through his semiconsciousness and the pain in my own chest eased a little just to know that he was alive. He sat up, bracing himself on shaky arms and turned his head to look at me.

"Jonothon," he whispered. He sounded young and scared and almost as though he couldn’t believe I was really there. I remembered my own captivity; I had initially thought every loud noise outside was the team coming to take me home, but that hope soon died, too painful to keep believing in.

*Yeah, it’s me.* I said, stroking a lock of his hair, which was matted with blood, out of his eyes with hands that were a million times more gentle than I felt. He winced as I started to help him to his feet, going deathly pale beneath blue and bruises and I cursed my stupidity. His left wing was obviously broken, and I removed my bandages to make a splint for it, kneeling down in the dirt beside him to tie it.

"Oh," Warren sighed, visibly wilting. "You’re not real."

*Of course I’m real, Warren.*

"No, you’re not " he shook his head slightly and then lifted it, raising his voice to some imaginary audience. "You think you can torture me this way? Showing me what I want most? You’ve got it wrong. This isn’t what I want," he gestured at me.

*Warren?* Surely even if he didn’t want to carry on seeing me, he couldn’t want to stay here, could he?

"Idiots," he said, a crooked smile on his face that was quite out of keeping with the injuries he had sustained. "To think this would matter to me."

He lifted a hand to my face, cupping my chin and stroking his thumb over my lips.

My heart leapt at his touch, and I realised in amazement that I could hear my pulse in my ears. I could also feel my psifire pulsing beneath the surface of my body, itching to be free from its confinement.

I kissed his palm, holding his hand against my face for a moment.

*It won’t last.*

"Maybe you are really you," he laughed, the sound incongruous in the shabby hut. "I don’t think there’s anyone else quite that pessimistic."

*I mean it, Warren,* I continued. *Don’t get used to it.*

"And I mean it; it doesn’t matter to me. I know that’s selfish, and arrogant, to think that that’s what’s important, but that’s me."

I shook my head vigorously.

*No it isn’t. It’s just what you let people think about you. I know better. Now let’s get you out of here.*

"See," he said, resisting my efforts to shift him. He wasn’t heavy, honeycomb bones and all that, but he was stubborn, and I didn’t want to hurt him. "You’re not real. My Jono wouldn’t be taking this so calmly."

*Taking what so calmly? I’m so out of my mind with worry and so furious with the people who did this to you, that I am actually starting to feel sympathy for Logan when he goes feral. I’m not calm.*

"I didn’t mean that. I mean you’ve got your face back, so you can have your life back."

*I promise to have a breakdown about it later, now please, help me get you back to the Blackbird.*

I got him to his feet, unsteady as he was and realised that I could not carry him, without further damaging his wing, and that we would have to just take it very slowly. He leant his weight on my shoulder, teeth gritted against the pain as his bad wing trailed uselessly on the ground behind him.

"If it looks like they might capture us, I want you to just leave, OK?" Warren hissed.

*No chance.*

"I’m serious. I am slowing you down."

*I’m not defenceless, Warren,* I said, gesturing at myself with my free hand. *The fuckers will be sorry if they try and hurt you any more.*

"Don’t," he said, obviously realising that I fully intended to use my psifire if we got cornered. "You shouldn’t have to go through that again."

*Don’t be daft.* If it came down to my face or Warren, there was no question. *I thought it didn’t matter to you, anyway.*

"It doesn’t, except in that it matters to you. I think you’re beautiful."

*I know.* And I did. When Jean and I had searched for his mind, I had seen what he thought of me and it had blown me away.

I was glad when we made it to the Blackbird without incident though, because I could feel my power growing, struggling to free itself from the fragile shell of my body and I knew it would not be long before I couldn’t hold it in. I dared to have just a tiny flicker of hope that in time, I might learn to control it a little better, so that I could look normal at least from time to time. I think I could allow myself that dream because it really didn’t matter. I had Warren, either way, and if the most beautiful man in the world thinks you’re beautiful, what does it really matter what anyone else thinks?

*Warren,* I said, feeling shy all of a sudden as I approached the little cot in the back of the jet. *Is your face hurting?*

A look of surprise crossed his face, mingling with the slightly, and adorably, dopey expression Hank’s painkillers had given him.

"Not too badly. Whatever Hank’s given me is good stuff. I feel like I could fly," he said, and giggled.

*This won’t last,* I said, pointing to my face. *I can feel that it won’t, and I wondered if I could…If you’d mind…*

"Come here," he said, reaching out his good wing and nudging me forward to where he could reach me with his arms.

He pulled me into their embrace, lifting himself on one elbow and kissed me and it was everything I had imagined. I would treasure the taste and feel of his mouth on mine for the rest of my life and I knew then that I could work as hard as I had to in order to gain enough control over my power to do this again.

END

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