In case you didn't know, FeeferJ's interview is now up at the
Wolverine and Rogue Fanfiction Archive
(http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/fic/authiv/index.php) for your
reading pleasure. So, swing by and give a read if you haven't already!

Diane

Hey I am looking for someone to do a fan fic with me because I love
writing. The charaters are please choose a charter if it is not already
taken,

Wolverine
Rogue Me
Jean
Scott
Proffesser X
Storm
Iceman
Pyro
Magento
Mystique
Castillto
Juggernaut

Thanks

Title: Days of Becoming, Chapter 7 - "In Hiding"
Author: Talktooloose
'Verse: X-Men movieverse
Warnings: Swearing. No sex this time around, though some sexual
imaginings. (Is this the tamest slash fic around? Not for long).
Summary: Bobby deals with a broken heart as his 16th birthday comes
around. Things take a turn for the better when a new student arrives
at the mansion but then bad news strikes for the mutants of America.
Betas: kuriadalmatia and lux_apollo. I tend to bounce, hop and act
foolish like Bobby. My brilliant betas keep me focused.
Disclaimers: Marvel and 20th Century own this stuff but they need us
to make sense of it.

The Chapter can be found at:
http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/chapter07.html

Earlier chapters are at the DOB homepage: http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/

A comments link can be found at the end of the chapter. Your feedback
is appreciated.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The XMMFF archive is kicking off the new year by moving to an eFiction
format.  What this means for you guys is you are now able to upload,
edit and delete your stories all on your own, rather than waiting for
us to get to them.

While we were setting up the new archive, we created accounts for many
of the authors already in the old archive, and started moving stories.


If you wish to have control over your own account at the new XMMFF,
please go over and sign up. You will be responsible for adding,
deleting or editing any stories in the new XMMFF from this point
forward. If I did already create an account for you and you wish to
have control over it, email me at devildollmail at yahoo dot com for a
password.

XMMFF administrators will not be updating the eFiction archive with new
stories.  If you want your new stories in the archive, you must add
them yourself.

Please make sure you read the Terms of Service and Submission
Guidelines before you begin.  Registering for an account at XMMFF means
you acknowledge you've read them and will abide by them.

http://www.xmmff.com/stories/submission.php

http://www.xmmff.com/stories/tos.php

Obviously, we are now dropping the "no works in progress" rule.  If you
want to archive one chapter and then disappear and never be heard from
again, please feel free!

The eFiction program is a little more limited than the old archive in
what it considers an acceptable username, mostly notably in terms of
not allowing hyphens, underscores, or apostrophes.  Some of you may
have to work around this limitation.

What does this mean for this list?  Well, not much will be different.
You guys are still free to use it to post story announcements and
feedback. If you would like to add a story or a new chapter to the new
archive and then post a link to it here, that's perfectly fine. Since
we will no longer be archiving your stories, there is no need to post
them here in their entirety, but you are certainly free to if you think
it will make people more likely to read them.

What I do ask, though, is that you continue to follow the subject line
format we've long used, in which you identify the title, rating and
chapter of your story. This will make it easier for everyone to follow
stories as they are updated.

URL for the new archive:

http://www.xmmff.com/stories/

I'm sure there are other issues that will come up as we go along and
all get used to this new format.  I will be announcing any changes or
edits to the TOS and the Submission Guidelines both here and in the
"New" area on the front page of the archive.

Have fun, and Happy New Year!

DD

Hi everybody,

I'm back from vacation and have finally had a chance to get MoJo's
author interview, as well as a new MoJo story, posted at the new
Wolverine and Rogue Fanfiction Archive
(http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/categories.php?catid=9).  So,
swing by and take a look--I think it was worth the wait!

Diane

Series Title: Past and to Come


Author: Mo

Characters and Pairings: Various characters appear in this series, both canon
and original. The main pairings are Scott/Logan and Jean-Paul/Adam Greenfield
(an original character).

Summary: Alex joins the X-Men and it’s a bumpy ride. Jean-Paul and Adam adjust
to changes in their relationship; Scott and Logan adjust to Scott’s new
responsibilities; everyone is trying to adjust to the loss of Charles Xavier.

Rating: This series is intended for an adult readership. It contains graphic
descriptions of sexual activity and deals with adult relationships and concerns.

Format: A story series of 10 stories. Total length is about 25,000 words.

Scenario/Sequel/Series: X1 Movieverse, although much has happened since the
movie. This series was written well after X2, but does not attempt to include
the events portrayed in that film. I attempt only to be consistent with the
first movie and my previous fiction.

Past and to Come begins several months after the events depicted in What's Past
is Prologue. In my timeline, the “not so distant future” of the movie (released
in 2000) is the year 2006. This series takes place during 2013.

Brief biographies of the main characters, both canon and original, are
available, to make it easier for those coming in well into the story. They can
be found in the biographies section of the home page of the Mofic web site.

The characters, situations and events in Past and to Come are consistent with
those portrayed in my previous stories and series:
Anything Can Happen
I Know What You Are
We’re Not What You Think
Canadian Nights
What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
Night and Day
Foreign Correspondence
Adult Education
Continuing Education
Safe House
Different from All Other Nights
Commencement
Chips Cashed In
Taking Chances
Trials
Unexpected Occurrences
Reminiscences
A Time for Every Purpose
What's Past is Prologue
All of these are available, with illustrations, on my website at
http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/

Note on Character Origins: As covered in some of my previous fiction, my version
of Cyclops has neither the origin story of the comic books nor that of the movie
novelization. His back story is one of my own devising. It is covered
extensively in Canadian Nights, Commencement and Chips Cashed In, and is
revisited and expanded upon in What’s Past is Prologue and here. It preserves
the comics convention of the Summers brothers having a complicated and difficult
relationship, but the reasons for both the complexity and the difficulty are
specific to this story and are not an attempt to reproduce their comic book
history.

Disclaimer: The X-Men and Alpha Flight belong to Marvel. The movie belongs to
Fox. Adam, Miriam, and Ezra, and assorted other characters are the products of
my fevered imagination. Scott and Logan feel a little bit like they're mine,
too, since I've been borrowing them for so long.
Feedback: Oh, yes! I love feedback. Please comment on the chapters as published
in my livejournal, review the stories on my website, or send me email at
mogbrg@...

Archiving: Sure, just ask. Alternative file formats available upon request.

Additional Information: Most of my characters — as Magneto points out in the
movie — live in a school. My version of Cyclops is an English teacher and tends
to think in literary terms about events around him. Consequently, my fiction
includes a lot of literary quotes and allusions. It has been my practice to
publish a literature guide providing supplemental information on literature
quoted in each series, along with URLs for the complete works, if available. The
guide for Past and to Come will be posted after the stories themselves. It
contains spoilers so should be read after the series. As is my occasional
practice, the file contains information not only on literature referenced but
also on some issues raised in the series.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my very helpful and insightful betas —
Kestrelsparhawk, Ann Marie, and Vision — for sticking with me on this one and
offering many suggestions for improvement. Their assistance was invaluable.
Mistakes are mine alone.

Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

“Damn you, Charles Xavier.  Why’d you have to die and leave me to deal with all
of this alone?”

Scott found himself saying that at least once a day. Some days it was his first
thought on waking and his last before – mind racing with all he hadn’t
accomplished that day – he fell into an uneasy sleep.  It had almost become his
mantra.  Sometimes he even said it aloud.  Not this time, but it was
reverberating in his brain throughout the X-Men team meeting.  He tried to keep
focused on the business at hand, but his mind kept wandering to the distressing
surprise he’d found in his – formerly Charles’s – office  earlier that day.  
And he tried to keep his musings behind mental shields, not wanting to distract
Jean from the meeting by broadcasting his concern.  He wasn’t sure he was all
that successful.  She kept looking at him intently, even when what he was
telling the team about was not particularly interesting.

He turned from Jean to Warren.  With Hank and Charles both dead, the three of
them were the only survivors of the original team.  Clearly the two remaining
original X-Men were the ones to consult about this new development.  Scott
decided to push his dilemma to the back of his mind for the duration of the
meeting.  Dwelling on it now would accomplish nothing and would likely worry
Jean unnecessarily.  He’d focus on the business at hand and then ask Jean and
Warren to stay after the meeting and tell them about it then.

************************************************************************
Sasha Cherevko found his attention wandering as the X-Men team meeting went into
its second hour.  He stole a glance at his wife, sitting next to him, but Jean’s
listening expression and the lack of her presence in his brain suggested that
she was still fully engaged in the meeting.  She always was when Cyclops was
speaking, he reflected with a twinge of jealousy.

He tried to suppress the twinge, patting his wife’s growing belly, reminding
himself that both the baby in that belly and the ring on her finger were his. 
She took his hand and squeezed it a bit, but her attention still seemed totally
focused on what Scott was saying.

It wasn’t as if what he was talking about was all that interesting, either.  The
mission post-mortems, planned missions, and training plan portions of the
meeting were over, and they had moved on to housekeeping and administrative
details.  Sasha always listened attentively and asked plenty of questions when
missions were discussed, as did they all.  It was one of the first things he’d
learned when he’d unexpectedly found himself a member of a paramilitary
organization:  what you can learn in a meeting could keep you and your teammates
alive during combat.  Everyone profited from mission post-mortems and everyone
was profoundly interested.
On the other hand, details about changes in duty rosters, uniform cleaning
procedures and updated rules about recreational use of mutant powers en route to
and from a mission were profoundly boring to most of the team, judging by the
reactions around him.

Even Alexander Summers, the newest X-Man and Scott’s brother, seemed bored. 
Sasha thought that fact significant since unlike the rest of them, this was all
new to Alex.  A couple of the others were even nodding off.  But as long as it
was Scott speaking, Jean acted as if it were something fascinating being said.

He knew what she’d say to him if he’d mentioned feeling jealousy, or if she’d
caught it in his brain.  “I love *you*” would be part of it, for sure, but so
would “You knew the deal.”
And she would be right to say it.  He’d known the deal from the beginning.  The
deal about being in love with an X-Man, the deal about being an X-Man. He’d
married Jean – married into the team – with his eyes wide open.

A big part of the deal was complicated relationships.  Nobody was ever just one
thing to anyone else.  Jean was his wife, but she was his teammate, too.  And
his colleague on the faculty at Xavier’s Academy.  The times he’d been injured
in combat she had been his doctor, as well.  Such multifaceted and entangled
relationships were the stuff the X-Men were made of, and Sasha had known that
long before he’d been recruited, known it as soon as he’d recovered enough from
the trauma and deprivation to pay attention to the people around him.

Mostly he liked that complexity, the feeling of community and belonging that
comes when your friends are your colleagues are the people you live with.  But
sometimes it made him a little bit uncomfortable.  Sometimes the relationships
seemed a little too complex, almost inbred.

Jean’s relationship with Scott was about as complex as they come.  He was her
boss, both as Field Leader and – since Charles Xavier’s death – as headmaster of
the Academy.  She was his doctor, and the head of the science department at the
school.  She was a member of the combat team Scott led and had been since she
was 16 years old, although she was functioning in a support role for the
duration of her pregnancy.  She and Scott had fought in untold numbers of combat
missions, side by side.

Jean and Scott were old friends, too. The first two students at the school,
before it had even been a school, they’d been close since their teens.  All that
was easy to assimilate, easy to accept.  If that’s all they’d been to each
other, Sasha wouldn’t be getting this knot in his stomach watching Jean watch
Scott as he stood up and went over to his desk to get a document he’d forgotten.
Others in the meeting used the brief break as an opportunity for side
conversations, but her eyes tracked Cyclops the whole way.

It was at times like this that Sasha was reminded that Scott Summers was not
just his wife’s boss, and patient, and colleague, and friend, but also the man
she’d wanted to marry.  Her first serious boyfriend, her first lover, the man
she’d lived with for years.  The man she’d been engaged to.  The ring she’d worn
when she and Scott were together was still in her jewelry box, on the dresser in
the room she shared with her husband.  And it wasn’t Jean who had broken off the
engagement, but Scott.  She’d been devastated when he left her, Sasha knew. 
She’d considered leaving the X-Men, starting over elsewhere.  But those
complicated ties are of the kind that are hard to sever, try as we might.   A
little more than kin, a little less than kind. So, Jean had stayed and mourned
the relationship and bit by bit recovered from the breakup.

All of this added up to occasional worry over Jean’s continued attachment to
Scott.  Sasha felt silly to worry like that.  She’d married him, after all, and
had done so with joy and conviction.  Scott Summers had never seemed anything
but thrilled that Jean had found new love with Sasha.  He’d even been their best
man.  So, as Scott turned the meeting over to Warren Worthington to give an
update on the X-Men’s financial picture, Sasha resolved to quash any feelings of
jealousy, preferably before Jean picked them up telepathically.

He didn’t quite make it.  Warren was explaining that although the Xavier
Foundation’s financial picture was improving, they were still suffering
significant after effects of the War on Mutants, including reduced cash flow. 
Warren was giving the bad news, but Sasha was not entirely attentive.

“I’m afraid we won’t be able to resume X-Men salaries just yet,” he was saying. 
“Those who have specific needs, though, should speak privately to Cyclops or me
and we will work something out to provide for you.”  Jean’s brain reached out to
Sasha’s as Angel spoke.  Sasha quickly clamped down on the reason for his
concern, but a whiff of worry must have remained.

“Are you upset about the money, love?” she asked telepathically.

He shrugged mentally, knowing she’d pick it up.  “I had nothing when I came to
this country,” his brain said to hers.  “I got used to that – even the clothes
on my back were not really mine, just due to the kindness of relief
organizations, and later of Charles Xavier.  But then it felt good to know I was
working for a living again, pulling my weight.  Now?  Not so much.”

“You are pulling your weight!” Her voice in his head was insistent.  “We’re
earning the money and we’ll get it eventually.  It’s just that the Foundation is
under temporary financial constraints right now. It’s nothing to do with our
work.”

His mind acknowledged the truth of what she said. “Still, with the baby coming,”
he added, “Perhaps we will need money.  Do you think we should talk to Warren,
as he said?”

“I can discuss it with Scott, if you want, but I don’t think we really need the
money.  I have savings, and there’s not that much we need for the baby.  We’ll
get gifts; there are plenty of hand-me-downs and baby equipment around here.”

“Yes, you’re probably right.”

“Don’t let a paycheck be the measure of your self-worth, darling,” she added,
and they both directed their attention back to Warren’s presentation.

Jean wasn’t the only one watching Cyclops carefully.  Logan’s eyes never left
Scott, and the scowl on his face during Warren’s presentation suggested he
didn’t like what was going on.   A lot of the X-Men had similar scowls, but they
were concerned with the content of the presentation.  Cheerful acceptance of the
austerity measures undertaken six months ago had eroded over time, and
disgruntlement had set in.  What had felt like a necessary short term measure,
due to the recently concluded War, was now starting to feel like a way of life,
long after peace had been declared.  A lot of the X-Men didn’t like it.

They weren’t mercenaries, of course.  They believed in their mission, in the
vision of Charles Xavier.  They felt a loyalty to one another, and to the team
as a whole, that motivated their every action.  They were all willing to work
crazy hours, risk their lives, run into danger while others ran away.  They just
thought they ought to get paid a salary, even a small one, for doing so.  And
the scowls on their faces as they looked at Warren, telling them that the
austerity measures - including working for room and board – would have to
continue for a while were evidence of their dissatisfaction.

*****************************************

Logan’s dissatisfaction was of a different character.  He didn’t care about the
money.  Logan had lived hand-to-mouth a lot of years.  Life at Xavier’s – even
without any income – was more secure than he’d been accustomed to for much of
his life.  Sometimes more secure than he liked.  Still, food whenever he was
hungry and a warm place to sleep were just fine with him, and combat missions
satisfied his cravings for danger most of the time.    Sometimes Xavier’s felt
too crowded, clashed with his solitary nature.  When that happened, he up and
left.  Always came back, though, which said something.

Yeah, being an X-Man was pretty much just fine with him, and nobody had to pay
him to fight.  He’d be doing it anyway.  A few years of cage fighting made him
appreciate being part of a mutant combat team.  At least as a member of the team
he could use his powers openly and the combat had some sort of point beyond
amusing onlookers and enriching some cheesy promoter.  No, Logan wasn’t scowling
because of what Worthington was saying.  Logan’s frown was entirely due to Scott
Summers, who was not only his Field Leader, but also his lover.  And Scott was
clearly hanging on every word spoken by the X-Man known as Angel.

Logan was the only one, he knew, who could tell what Scott was looking at. 
Partly that was due to his heightened senses, and partly due to paying close
attention for a long time.  Logan alone had learned how to “see” behind the dark
glasses Cyclops wore.  He’d taught himself to track the faint glow behind the
ruby quartz lenses.  Watching slight variations in intensity told him what
Scott’s eyes were focused on.  And he was none too pleased to see how focused
they were on Warren Worthington.

None of what Angel was saying was news to Scott, that was for fucking sure, he
thought to himself.  In fact, Scott had turned Logan down when he’d wanted to
have sex before the meeting, saying he didn’t have time because he was meeting
Warren in his office.  Scott had *said* they were meeting because he’d wanted
Warren to practice his presentation one more time with him.  He knew the damn
presentation by heart by now.  He didn’t need to listen to it, didn’t need to
watch Worthington deliver it.  Scott should have been – usually would have been
– looking around the room, seeing how the other X-Men were taking the bad
financial news.  So, why were his eyes entirely focused on Angel?  And what had
they really been doing in this office before the meeting?

Logan continued to scowl as Warren finished speaking and Cyclops regained the
floor.  Scott was wrapping up the meeting now.  Logan’s frown deepened as he
decided to pull Scott aside afterwards and ask him some pointed questions.  Only
he didn’t get a chance to. As the meeting ended, and the X-Men started to leave,
Cyclops stopped Angel by the door.  “Warren, can you stay for a few minutes? 
There’s something I need to talk to you about.”  A low growl escaped from
Logan’s throat, startling Northstar, who was standing next to him.  “Jean?”
Scott continued.  “You, too.  It will just take a few minutes.”  The rest of the
X-Men walked out, leaving the three of them alone.



Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Logan was the first to leave the meeting.  He walked quickly out the French
doors in what he still thought of as Xavier’s office, and strode up the hill. 
He realized someone was walking right behind him, knew who it was from his
scent, but he didn’t acknowledge his presence until the other man spoke.

“How long has that been going on?” Alex Summers asked.

Logan continued to walk.  “What?”

“This shit about not getting paid for the work.”

“Six months.  Didn’t Cyclops tell you about it when you signed up?”

“Yeah, he told me.  I thought it would be over by now, that’s all.”

“They pay you much at your last place?”  Logan had stopped and turned to face
Alex, ironic smirk on his face.

“You wouldn’t sneer about it if you knew what it’s like being inside.”

“Guess what?  I do know, and I still sneer.”

Neither of them said anything for a minute.  “What’s with this codename shit? 
I’m supposed to choose one?”

Logan shrugged.  “You don’t have to.  Most do.  Up to you.”

“The whole thing’s so cheesy.  Iceman, Northstar, Storm, Shadowcat.  Where do
they get this shit?  How’d you ever come up with Wolverine?”

“I don’t know.  I had it a long time.  Before the X-Men.”

“What animal do you think I should be?”  Logan didn’t answer.  He turned and
started to walk further up the hill, but stopped when Alex called after him. 
“Hey, I hear you’re my brother’s bitch.”

It happened so fast Alex didn’t get a chance to defend himself.  Logan had
pushed him up against a tree, Alex’s body immobilized by the weight and the
force of the adamantium in him, unable to move enough to use his powers.  Claws
sprang out of Logan’s hand and pierced Alex’s right shoulder, extending into the
tree.  He gasped with the pain.

“Stop your yowling.  It’s just a flesh wound.”  Logan’s face was right up
against his.  “I could kill you right here, you know.   I’m not gonna – not this
time.  Not unless you use your powers on me when I let you go.”

“Let me go now!  Or at least take those fucking claws out.  It hurts like hell.”

“A little pain is good for you.  Focuses the mind.” He glared at him.  “Focus
your mind on this, boy.  What goes on between your brother and me ain’t none of
your business.  Don’t like it?  Don’t think about it.  Don’t talk about it.  But
if you do think about it – if you do talk about it – it’s gonna be with respect.
You got that?”

Alex didn’t answer at first.  Logan twisted his left hand a little, intensifying
the shooting pains in Alex’s shoulder.  Alex nodded.

Logan continued, ignoring Alex’s expression of pain.  “Cyclops thinks you’ve got
potential.  Me, I’m not impressed.   I guess we’ll see over time who’s right. 
But if you’re here to cause trouble, pack your bags and leave now.  I told Scott
when he said he wanted to offer you a spot on the team that you could wreak
havoc with the X-Men.  I’m not gonna let you do that.”

Logan stepped back and released his hold on Alex, watching to see if he’d try to
attack.   They looked at each other warily, but nothing happened. He pulled the
claws out of Alex’s shoulder but left them extended, blood dripping from them,
brandishing them in front of the younger man’s face.  Alex clutched his wounded
shoulder, saying nothing.  They looked at each other for a minute, then Logan
turned and strode back to the mansion.  He could feel Alex watching him the
whole way.

********************************************************************
When Jean-Paul “Northstar” Beaubier left the team meeting he headed in the
opposite direction, toward the living quarters he shared with his lover and son.
A two-room suite overlooking the east garden, it was much better accommodations
than Northstar had ever had during the years he worked for Alpha Flight, when he
often visited Xavier’s or was seconded to the X-Men.  It was also a much better
living situation than the room he’d first had when he signed on as a full time
member of the X-Men.  That had been a single room, quarters for Jean-Paul full
time and for little Ezra half-time, when Jean-Paul and Adam had been separated. 
They’d reconciled a few months ago and Adam had moved to Xavier’s.  Jean-Paul
had asked Rogue if he could upgrade his room assignment when Adam moved in, and
he was very happy that she’d obliged and found them this suite.  Two big rooms,
a private bath, and a kitchenette made it somewhere between a suite and an
apartment of their own.  It had ample room for the three of them and
considerably more privacy than was the norm at Xavier’s.  It had made the
adjustment to communal living a little easier for Adam than it would have been
otherwise, and the adjustment to living together again easier for them both.

As Jean-Paul walked to their suite, he thought gratefully of Rogue’s find. 
They’d needed the privacy, and the space.  Months of separation had intensified
hurt feelings on both their sides, but never really severed the connection
between them.  Jean-Paul had wanted desperately to be back with Adam, and often
cursed how much he thought about him.  A succession of meaningless sexual
encounters with men he met in bars hadn’t eased his longing for the man he’d
loved, but Jean-Paul’s hopes for a renewal of their relationship diminished as
Adam seemed resolved to make the separation permanent.  Even after Adam had
stopped seeing Jake Patterson, he appeared to want only to be Jean-Paul’s
coparent and friend.  Jean-Paul had reconciled himself to the *fact* of the end
of the relationship, but hadn’t been able to turn off the feelings of love. 
Night after sleepless night, he turned over and over in his mind the events that
had led to their breakup, keeping his drooping eyelids open wide as he struggled
to accept the breakup.

Then things changed, although Jean-Paul wasn’t quite sure how or why.  The drama
with that reporter from the Washington Times had been part of it, and part of it
just seemed to be Adam’s renewed wish to try again, a wish that had never left
Jean-Paul as much as he’d tried to root it out.  So they’d agreed to move in
together, for both their sakes and for Ezra’s. Adam had given up his job in DC
and found one in New York, so they could live together in Westchester.  They’d
both pledged not to have sex with other partners and Adam had said that he would
disclose any contact he had with the man he’d been seeing during their
separation.  They’d reaffirmed their love for each other, reaffirmed their
desire to repair the damage to their relationship and accepted that they were
both responsible for what had happened.  There was plenty of good will and
plenty of resolve on both parts.  Jean-Paul was careful not to be overtaken by
jealousy and suspicion; Adam was extremely specific about all his activities and
whereabouts lest it appear that he was hiding something.

Yet resolve and careful dealings with each other were not all they needed.  In
fact, the very deliberate way they treated each other was cause for concern, at
least in Jean-Paul’s mind.  They had been so careful with each other, so
tentative, in the early days of their reconciliation, that he’d wondered if the
rapprochement would stick.  Their relationship seemed to have lost the playful
quality that they’d both enjoyed, those first few weeks they were back together.
When Adam joked that Jean-Paul had only gotten reconciled with him to upgrade
his living quarters, Jean-Paul felt that they were really on the mend.  That bit
of kidding around had been one step in reclaiming the easy comfort they’d once
had with each other, before Jake Patterson had come into their lives.

As Jean-Paul approached his suite, he was surprised to see the door slightly
ajar.  He walked in and found his lover sitting on the couch, talking on the
phone.  Adam was just finishing his conversation – which sounded like it was
with his editor.  He smiled at Jean-Paul and motioned to him to sit with him.

“What are you doing here?” Jean-Paul asked, sitting beside Adam now, as soon as
Adam got off the phone.  “I thought we were meeting at Miriam’s place. 
Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Adam pushed Jean-Paul into the couch, kissing him hard before he answered.  “I
got as much done as I need to today,” he said, straddling Jean-Paul.  “I was
feeling horny.”  He kissed him again.  “And since we’re spending the night in
Brooklyn…”

“You’re not your mother’s little boy anymore, Adam.  When are you going to get
over this block against having sex in her apartment?”

“Love me, love my neuroses. Portnoy had nothing on me.”  Jean-Paul laughed and
Adam continued.  “I’m sorry, but I can’t quite see sucking your cock under my
framed high school graduation picture and with my mother in the next room. 
Besides, it’s kind of a moot point, isn’t it?  We’re not going to be spending
any more nights in Brooklyn after tonight.  That’s the whole point of this
expedition, isn’t it?  To figure out what we want to keep of my old stuff and
clear it out of there.”

“Do you think it’s unreasonable of Miriam?  You are 32 years old.  You can’t
expect her to keep your old room as some sort of shrine.”

“Well, maybe not a shrine.  Just a semi-sacred place.”  Jean-Paul laughed again.
“I think it’s the least she can do in return for me not having sex there.”  He
kissed his lover again.  “Can we stop talking about my mother?  She’s kind of an
anaphrodisiac topic of conversation.”  Stroking now, and then unzipping
Jean-Paul, Adam got off of him and down on the floor.  “I really want to suck
your cock.  What do you say?”

“Oui.”

*********************************

“What’s up?” Warren asked as soon as the last of the X-Men had left and he,
Jean, and Scott were alone in the large office suite that had for so long been
Charles Xavier’s.

“I found something,” Cyclops replied, “and I don’t know what to do about it.” 
He looked at his friends and went on.  “Something of Charles’s.  A wall safe.”

Jean and Warren both looked across the room, at a framed photograph of the four
original X-Men in the uniforms they wore in their teens.  “Found it?” Jean
asked.  “You knew it was there – we all did. Us three and Hank.  Charles made
sure we all knew the combination.  I was with you when you opened it after his
death.”

Scott shook his head.  “Not that one.”  He gestured to the wall near his desk,
where a formal portrait of Charles Xavier’s father, financier Edmund Xavier,
hung.  “I’ve always hated that picture,” he said – walking over to it.  “I
basically didn’t touch anything in this office when I moved in – except to put a
chair behind the desk and in that spot by the couch.”  He took the painting off
the wall.  “But then I thought about it and it’s my office now – why should I
look at a painting I can’t stand?  So I took it off, thinking I’d put something
else up here, and found this.”  Without the painting there, a safe with a
combination lock was revealed.

“Is it the same combo as the other one?” Warren asked.

Scott shook his head.  “No, I tried that.  And a few others he used sometimes. 
Didn’t work.  First I was focused on the problem of getting it unlocked, but
then I thought about it some more and wasn’t sure whether or not I should even
be trying to open it.”

“You’re his heir,” Warren contributed.  “It’s yours as much as the rest of the
house.  Anything that wasn’t specifically left to someone is yours.”

“I don’t know if he meant for me to have it, though.  I don’t know if he meant
for me to see what was inside.”

“Don’t you think he would have done something with whatever’s in there if he
didn’t want you to have it?”  Jean asked. “He never said anything about it?”

Scott shook his head.  “Maybe he forgot about it.  I was sort of hoping he’d
told one of you, and you had some idea what to do.”  They both shook their
heads.  “I could blast it open, but that didn’t seem right somehow.”

“We could get a locksmith.”

“Not necessary, Jean.  I found the combination in his address book.  Under ‘c’.”

“For combination?” Warren laughed.

“No, it said CSS and then the numbers.  I’d seen it before but didn’t realize
what it meant.”  Scott was turning the dial as he spoke.

“Your initials?” Jean asked.  He nodded.  “Then he meant for you to open it,
don’t you think?”

“I did think that.  Until I saw what was in it.”   He opened the safe so they
could see, too.




Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Scott was back in the big arm chair by the fireplace by the time Logan showed
up. It was just after dinner and Scott was attempting to grade essays from his
Shakespeare seminar, but kept getting distracted by the contents of the safe by
his desk. Warren’s words (“Go ahead, they’re yours”) and Jean’s (“He had plenty
of time. If he hadn’t wanted you to find them, he would have destroyed them”)
kept coming back to him. He really didn’t know what he was going to do.  He
didn’t even know what he wanted to do. Had he spoken to them to get permission?
He wasn’t sure. He contemplated retiring to his bedroom so as not to have to
look at that picture any more.

The sound of the French doors sliding open made Scott look up from an essay on
conflict in Richard III that sounded suspiciously similar to one a student had
submitted last year. He was pleased to see Logan standing there, both for the
chance to avoid thinking about potential plagiarism for a little while and for
the possibility of discussing his indecision about his find with someone who
often knew what he wanted better than he himself did.

One look at Logan, though, made him realize it was not a good time to discuss
newly found belongings of Charles Xavier. Logan was a mess.
  That in itself not an unusual circumstance. Mud on his boots and pant legs,
leaves and twigs in his hair, rips in his clothing – these were all pretty
common. But there was a kind of wild look in his eyes that Scott knew only came
with rage – incipient or recent. The claws on his left hand were extended.
“Blood will have blood,” Scott thought to himself, looking at the red stains on
Logan’s hand and clothes. He could see no visible wounds, but then there
wouldn’t be.

Logan stood just inside the French doors and they looked at each other silently
for a minute. “Whose is it?” Scott asked, finally.

“Whose is what?”

“The blood on your hand. Is it yours?”

Logan looked down at his hand, with an almost puzzled expression. He retracted
the claws and shook his head.

“Whose then?” Scott asked again.

Logan didn’t answer, didn’t move. He appeared to be considering something for a
moment. “Stand up,” he said, finally.

Wondering where this was going, Scott put his papers aside and stood up.

“Take off your clothes.”

“Okay.” Scott closed his eyes tight and pulled off his glasses, placing them on
the end table next to him. He pulled his shirt over his head and reached for the
glasses again.

“No, not yet.” Scott was surprised to hear Logan’s voice right in his ear, not
having heard him walk across the room. “Leave them off.” Logan pushed the
armchair away, and stood right behind Scott. Scott could feel Logan’s breath on
the back of his neck, his hand undoing Scott’s belt. “Take these off, too.”
Scott pulled his pants down. Logan pressed up against him, hand reaching around.
“Hard already,” he said. “Good. You been thinking about it?”

Scott shook his head. “It’s you telling me what to do. It does that to me.”

“Good,” Logan said again, as Scott kicked off his shoes and pulled the pants
off. His fully clothed body pressed hard against Scott’s naked one, Logan licked
him on the back of the neck, hands stroking chest and belly.

“Get down on your knees,” he said after a minute. “Lean over the table.”

Scott knelt, bending over the coffee table in front of him. “There’s lube in the
left drawer of the desk.” Scott waited, trembling a bit, perhaps from cold,
perhaps anticipation. He listened to Logan walking over to the desk, opening
drawers, walking back.

“Spread your legs a little.” Scott obeyed and Logan knelt between them. Without
warning, a hand slapped him on the ass, hard. Once, twice, three times. Then he
was gentle, caressing, spreading his cheeks, lubed fingers probing. The sting of
his flesh receded and was replaced by fingers filling him, stroking exquisitely
inside. Scott couldn’t help but move with them. He heard a sort of happy grunt
from Logan, and then the sound of a fly unzipping. “You ready?”

“Oh yes.”

And then Logan was in him, pushing in slowly until he was balls deep. Then
moving in and out, slow strokes matched by those of his hand round Scott’s cock.

“Faster.” Scott said it breathlessly, a feeling of urgency overtaking him.

Logan leaned down, clothed torso heavy upon Scott’s naked back. He spoke in
Scott’s ear, still moving slowly, almost lazily. “Not yet,” he said. “You’ll get
it fast. You’ll get it hard. I’ll give you what you need. Right now I’m taking
my time.” Long, hot breaths in Scott’s ear. “Slow yourself down, Scott. Relax
your whole body. You can take it like this. This is how we’re doing it. That’s
it. I love your tight hole. I’m gonna push into it nice and slow. So good being
inside. Riding you nice and slow. That’s right, you got it.”

Scott just let go, let himself be ridden, stroked, talked to. “Yeah,” he said.
“Okay. It’s good like this.”

“Just do what I tell you to. That’s right, move with me. You’re so good. You’re
my – . You’re mine, aren’t you?” Scott nodded. “Okay, we’re going a little
faster now. Move with me.” And Logan fucked him, pushing harder, a little
faster, rubbing with fingers and thumb, humming something tuneless all the
while.

Scott was breathing harder, aching with excitement. Logan pushed deep inside and
stopped moving, cock still, filling Scott up. Logan’s hand stroked faster,
tugging and squeezing until Scott came hard beneath him. Then Logan resumed
fucking him, lying full on his back, moving fast and hard this time. No talking
now, biting the back of Scott’s neck a bit, hands stretched way out, claws
extending as he came. He stayed inside him afterwards, their heavy breathing and
the snikt of Logan’s claws retracting the only sound in the big office.

After a minute, Logan got off of him, pressing Scott’s glasses into his hand.
They were back on in time to see Logan zipping his pants up, then lying down on
his back on the couch, broad smile as he looked up at the ceiling. “Fuck, that
was good. Thanks for the ride.”

Scott pulled the armchair back where it had been and sat down. He stretched a
bit, then rested his feet on the end table, reaching over to the couch to stroke
Logan’s hair briefly. “I needed that.”

“Makes a change from grading papers, eh?”

“Yeah.” He looked from the clothed man lying on the couch down to his own naked
body. “Maybe next time you’ll even take off your clothes. Or at least your
boots.”

Logan chuckled. “It was kind of hot like that.”

Scott nodded his agreement. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” No
answer. “Come on. Whose blood is it, at least?”

“Your brother’s.”

“Is he alive?”

Logan laughed. “Yeah, he’ll be okay. What, you think I’d kill your brother and
then just come here and fuck you, without even telling you about it?”

“You might figure it’s your last opportunity.” Logan laughed again. “Near in
blood the nearer bloody,” he quoted. Then he asked again, “What happened?” Still
no answer. “Are you sure he’s okay?”

“He’ll be out of commission for a while. I fucked up his shoulder. He’ll heal.”

“Dammit Logan!”

Logan shrugged. “He pissed me off.”

“You know I’m short-staffed, with Jean hors de combat and Kitty back at college.
Could you manage to desist from maiming any X-Men for a while?”
“If they can manage to not piss me off.”

Scott shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you.”

“You put up with me because I’m the best fighter you’ve got.” He turned on his
side to face Scott. “I’ll pick up the slack until he’s back on active duty. You
know it.” Scott didn’t say anything. “And you put up with me because I give you
a good time. Nobody else can make you hard just by telling you what to do.
Nobody else can fuck you like I do. I do you like no one else can and you know
it. Worth putting up with some stuff.”

“All that and modest, too.”

“I know what I can do, know what I’m good at, what I do best. No point
pretending otherwise.” He stretched, his hand coming to rest on Scott’s knee.
Scott exhaled loudly, placing his hand over Logan’s.

“You know what I really need for the team?”

“Me cloned. But unfortunately, I’m one of a kind.”

Scott snorted. “I need a psionic. Between Charles and Jean, we could pretty much
always count on telepathic support on combat missions. I’m really feeling the
lack.”

“What about Billy Halverson? I keep telling you you should recruit him.”

“I don’t know.”

“I tell you, Cyclops. He’s got promise.”

“He’s got school, too. He’s doing really well at Columbia.”

“So what? He can go to college and be an X-Man, too. You run this school; most
of us teach. Even Worthington does something, right? I’m not sure what – counts
money all day or some shit. We’ve all got more than one job. Same with Billy. If
a mission comes up he can miss a class or two.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s the other stuff. We plan
our schedules here to include team business. Columbia doesn’t plan around the
X-Men. Billy would have to miss a lot of team meetings, trainings – they’d
conflict with classes.”

“So what? He’s living here. Plenty of time to train in between classes. He can
miss some meetings. And if he can’t make it to all the group trainings I’ll take
him on, give him some extra Danger Room practice.” Scott didn’t answer. “What –
you worried about me and him being alone? You and me weren’t even together,
Scott, when I picked him up that time.”

“I’m not worried about that. I just – well, his college education got derailed
twice. Once when his father died, the second time during the war. Now that he’s
back on track, I want him to finish.”

“He can finish college and be an X-Man, too.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The phone next to Scott rang, the pattern of the ringing signaling an intercom
call from elsewhere in the mansion. “Cyclops,” he said into the phone. And then,
“Yeah, I heard. Logan’s being a little more forthcoming. No, he won’t say what
happened, either, but he’s not pretending it’s an accident. He’ll be okay?” He
listened some more. “Yeah? So what is it?” Then a short laugh. “I guess it
fits.” He hung up the phone.

“Jeannie tell you he’ll heal?”

“Yes.”

“What I’d tell you. And I didn’t even go to med school.” He thought a minute.
“Not so far as I know, anyway.”

“She said it will be at least six weeks until he’s back on active duty, after
what you did to his tendons. She said to tell you to save your claws – and your
temper – for the bad guys. He’s claiming he fell on a rake, by the way.”

“Ha!”

“Oh and she also told me Alex has decided on a code name. Havok. With a k at the
end.”

“That’s not how you spell it?”

“Logan, can I ask you about something?”

“He pissed me off. I got nothing more to say. There *is* nothing more to say.”

“Not about Alex. Something else.”

“Go ahead.”

“I found something. Something that belonged to Charles.”

“Just now?”

“Yeah. Well, yesterday.”

“Where was it?”

“In a safe. I didn’t know it – they – were there. Didn’t know they existed.”

“What are they?”

“Journals. Diaries. From a long time ago. Five of them – one for each year,
starting in 1994.”

“When you first came here?”

Scott nodded. “I don’t know if he’d want me to read them or not. Jean and Warren
think he wanted me to, that he’d have destroyed them if not. But I don’t know.
He might have forgotten about them. He had so much he was trying to finish
before he died. Maybe he hadn’t looked at them in a long time. Maybe he didn’t
mean for me to find them. I wish I could *ask* him.”

“You’re asking the wrong question, Scott. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter what he
wants anymore. The real question isn’t one he can answer, it’s one you’ve got to
answer – do you want to know what’s in them?”


Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com

Mo inscribed, with her customary talent:

"“You’re asking the wrong question, Scott. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter
what he wants anymore. The real question isn’t one he can answer, it’s
one you’ve got to answer – do you want to know what’s in them?”

I dunno if Scott does but I do! I do! I do!

Mo, you are fantastic. Never change. Having you in my inbox makes my
month . . .


Whitewater

What a sweet thing to say!  Hey, it wouldn't be much of a story if Scott didn't
read the journals.

"And Scott decided that it's better to leave some things unknown and they all
lived ignorantly ever after."

Today's chapter checks in on Jean-Paul and Adam, but we start finding out what's
in the journals tomorrow.

Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic


----- Original Message ----
From: Wolf Whitewater <white_water_rapids@...>
To: xmenmoviefanfic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 6:14:00 AM
Subject: [xmmff] Re:Decisions and Revisions (Past and to Come 3/10)


Mo inscribed, with her customary talent:

"“You’re asking the wrong question, Scott. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter
what he wants anymore. The real question isn’t one he can answer, it’s
one you’ve got to answer – do you want to know what’s in them?”

I dunno if Scott does but I do! I do! I do!

Mo, you are fantastic. Never change. Having you in my inbox makes my
month . . .


Whitewater



"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously
or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries."
Yahoo! Groups Links



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

Note to readers:  All of these stories are available, with illustrations, on my
website and on my livejournal (details in sig).  Today's chapter includes
references to objects which are likely unfamiliar to many of my readers, so the
illustrations may be particularly...illustrative.

As He Loved His Own Soul (Past and to Come 4/10)

They’d been going at it for close to three hours. Jean-Paul lay back on the bed,
breathing hard. “No more!” he said.

“Wimp!” his lover replied. “We’re just getting started.” Jean-Paul groaned.
“Come on, when are we going to get another chance like this? Mom’s got Ezra, no
interruptions.”  Adam leaned over, stroking Jean-Paul’s cheek and kissing him on
the mouth. “Please. Just a little more?”

“When you ask like that...” Jean-Paul sighed and said, “D’accord.”  He got off
of the bed and joined Adam, sitting on the floor of his old bedroom in his
mother’s apartment in Brooklyn. There were two stacks of cardboard boxes by the
wall. The “Throw Out” stack dwarfed the “Keep” one. “What’s left?” he asked.

“We did the whole closet, the dresser, the trunk.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. I was here for every excruciating minute. How
did you manage to collect all that shit?”

“Comes from living in the same place from birth through college. But look at how
good I am at getting rid of it all!” he said, gesturing to the larger stack of
boxes. “I think we’re down to this,” he added, pulling a large rolling storage
box out from under the bed.

“Bien. That doesn’t look too daunting.” Adam opened the box up and they started
sorting through the contents. “I have an idea. Why don’t we finish this one and
then you let me fuck you on your old bed? A whole new experience, hein?”

Adam shook his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

“High school graduation picture isn’t up anymore. It’s in that box, n’est-ce
pas?” he added, pointing to the “Keep” pile. “And Miriam isn’t here.”

“What if she comes back unexpectedly?”

“She and Ezra are at the Bronx Zoo, mon coeur. Last I looked, it was in the
Bronx.” Adam snorted. “Well, it may be a short drive there from Xavier’s, but
it’s damn close to two hours on the subway from here. And you know Ezra’s not
going to let her leave until he’s seen the okapis and the gorillas and the
giraffes and the elephants and climbed up the big spider web.”

“And played in the climbing tree for an hour. I know. Okay, look. I realize this
isn’t rational, but I’ve always been terrified of having sex here. I never even
kept condoms in my room, lest my mother find them when she cleaned up. I always
stored them in my book bag or had them in pockets.”

“And now you don’t even need them anymore. Fringe benefit of monogamy. Well, it
is if you’re lucky enough to be negative.”

“Is that a dig?”

“No, not at all.” He leaned over and kissed Adam deeply, then looked into his
eyes. “*We’re* lucky,” he said. “That’s all I meant. We’re lucky to be negative,
lucky to be together again. We’re lucky to have a second chance, when so many
people never get one. I want to make the most of that luck, bien sur.” He
smiled. “In all ways. Not just by fucking your brains out on your old bed.
Still, that would be a nice start.”

Adam laughed. “Let’s finish this box and then think about it.”

Jean-Paul dived in and came up with a black velvet zipper bag. He whistled when
he pulled out its contents. “Whoa! This looks like fun,” he said, looking at the
black leather straps around a small cube of matching leather.

“They’re not what you think.”

“Right. You wouldn’t keep condoms in your room lest Miriam find them, but you
kept these? Tabernac! What would she have said if she found them?” He pulled out
another just like the first. Holding the leather cube he added, “Where does this
go?”

Adam shook his head. “I’m telling you, you’ve got it wrong. My mother knew all
about them, didn’t like that I had them *at all* and they’re nothing to do with
bondage. Or any kind of sex. They’re tefillin.”

“Tuh-quoi?”

Adam laughed. “Tefillin.” He repeated it slowly, pronouncing each syllable
separately, “Tuh fill in. They’re religious articles. From my brief religious
period in my teens.”

“Vraiment? This is some sort of religious thing?” Jean-Paul was unwrapping the
straps from the cube and then experimentally wrapping them around his wrist.

“Hey that’s pretty close,” Adam laughed, looking at the tefillin on his lover’s
arm. “And yes, it’s religious.” He tapped the leather box the straps were
attached to. “There’s a scroll with torah verses in it. You know what mezuzot
are, right?”

“The things on the door, hein?”

“Yeah, well this is sort of similar, only you wear them when praying.” He picked
up one. “This one goes on your head, and the other on your arm.”

“And you wore these?” Jean-Paul sounded so skeptical that Adam laughed.

“So, we’re a strange tribe. We cut foreskins off of baby boys and wrap leather
around our arms and heads.” He laughed again. “I only did it for about a year.
My mother was appalled. She was worried that I was going too far with adolescent
rebellion – rejecting her comfortable atheistic secular form of Judaism. I told
myself it was about finding a spiritual path. But we were both wrong. It really
was all about sex.”

“I knew it.”

“Well, I didn’t. Not at first, at least. I didn’t want to know. The whole raison
d’etre for my ‘religious awakening’ was Yossi.”

“Yossi?”

“Yossi Grazalsky. I was madly in love – or at least in lust – with him.”

“And he was Orthodox?”

“Yup.”

“How did you know him?”

“We were in high school together. He was a senior when I was a sophomore. I sat
down at the same table as him in the library one afternoon. I was just going to
study, but my God! I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Dark curly hair, full
mouth. Long lean body. Sort of a geeky nerdy Semitic version of a Greek god.”
Jean-Paul laughed. “I struck up a conversation with him. We hit it off. Before I
knew it, he was inviting me home for shabbos, then for whole weekends. Study
groups at his shul, all sorts of stuff. Like I said, my mother was beside
herself. Little did she know I was getting religion as an excuse to get into
Yossi’s pants. Hey, I barely knew it myself.”

“Was he gay?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t know there *were* Orthodox gay guys. He
practically told me, but it didn’t register.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh he talked about how his parents had been against him going to Stuy. They
wanted him in a yeshiva – a Jewish high school,” he added, in acknowledgement of
Jean-Paul’s puzzled expression.

“They were afraid of secular influences, he told me. Scantily clad adolescent
girls in particular. ‘Not a problem’ he’d said when he told me that. I just
thought he meant he was too spiritual to be tempted.” Jean-Paul laughed again.
“I guess it is comical,” Adam continued. “I was young and dumb. I had no gay-dar
yet, didn’t know he was trying to tell me something.”

“What did his parents think of your friendship?”

“They thought it was great. Here he was bringing me into the fold, you know?
They felt sorry for me – poor fatherless boy. I think they figured if my father
had been around I’d have been a ‘torah Jew’. Little did they know – he was a
bigger socialist than Mom. Really, if he’d been alive I don’t think I’d have had
a religious education at all. Mom sent me to Hebrew School because she thought I
should know what I was rejecting, but she had no doubts I’d reject it. And then
Yossi came into the picture and suddenly she started thinking that maybe she’d
made a mistake.

"Anyway, Yossi’s family was great to me. And it was fun – big family, big house,
lots happening. A real contrast with this place,” looking around now, “with just
Mom and me. Yaakov – the brother Yossi shared a room with – would move out when
I was there and bunk with the little boys. Yossi and I would sleep side by side
on their twin beds. I’d look at him, just aching to touch him. Torture, but
sweet torture.”

Jean-Paul nodded in sympathy. “Did you ever tell him how you felt?”

Adam grinned. “He told me first.” He picked up the tefillin. “And actually, it
happened because of these. Yossi was teaching me how to lay tefillin.”

“Lay tefiilin?”

“Yeah that’s what it’s called – how to put them on for prayer. You wrap this one
– it’s called tefillin shel yad – around your arm, like this.” He demonstrated
as he spoke. “I wasn’t getting it right. He tried showing me by putting his on,
but I got confused. So he stood right behind me, reaching to help me wrap them.”

“Sounds... intimate, hein?”

“Indeed. He was hard as a rock, pressed against me. His arms around me. So I
realized he wanted me, too.”

“So did Yossi and Adam ‘lay tefillin’ or did Yossi lay Adam?”

Adam laughed. “I turned around and I kissed him. I didn’t know what he’d do, but
he kissed me back.”

“Was that... okay in his religion?”

“Not really, but he was great at rationalizing. He told me kissing was fine. Not
that other people would understand – we certainly didn’t let on to his family or
friends. But David and Jonathan kissed, so
Yossi figured it was okay for us.”

“Who were they? Friends of his?”

Adam chuckled. “No! David and Jonathan in the bible. Do you really not know who
they were?”

“Not a clue.”

“It’s in your bible, too.”

“I don’t have a bible.”

“How did you manage to go through all those years of Catholic school and never
learn any bible stories?”

“Mostly by not listening.”

Adam chuckled again. “Well, you might like their story. Most modern scholars
think they were lovers. Jonathan risked his life to save David, they’re seen
kissing, and it says they loved each other and their love was greater than their
love for women. Also Jonathan is so taken with David that he takes off all his
clothes right in front of him and gives them to him, and Jonathan’s father
complains that he’s making a fool of himself over David.”

“Sounds pretty conclusive to me.”

“Yeah, well the Orthodox think they were just friends. Most of them, anyway. So
do fundie Christians. It’s amazing what people will talk themselves into
believing! Yossi had other ideas.”

“Did you do more than kiss?”

“Oh yeah. Hand jobs, blow jobs.”

“David and Jonathan do that, too?”

“Who knows? I wasn’t asking questions. Or complaining, believe me. We did
everything but fucking.”

“Why not fucking?”

“That’s ‘toevah’ – abomination. According to the Talmud that’s the great sin
between men that’s punishable by death – anal sex. It didn’t bother me – I
didn’t want to do it anyway.”

“That’s kind of hard to imagine!”

“I know,” he said, leaning over to kiss Jean-Paul. “One of my favorite pastimes
now, but I’d never done it then and didn’t want to.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen. Had you been fucked by then?”

“Been fucked, fucked other guys. Yeah, I don’t think there’s anything I hadn’t
done by fifteen.” He shrugged. “I was an early bloomer. I think what you did was
pretty common – other kinds of sex but not fucking. Why didn’t you want to?”

“I thought it would hurt, mostly. And I don’t know – I liked what we were doing.
I didn’t want to do something that Yossi was so sure was wrong. *I* didn’t think
it was wrong – well, I don’t know what I thought. I was a confused teenager. I
was pretty closeted and pretty mixed up about the whole gay thing anyway. So
maybe not doing that gave me an out or something? I mean, just because I was
sucking my boyfriend’s cock every chance I got, that didn’t mean I was gay,
right?”

They both laughed. “So who was the first guy who fucked you?”

“Yossi.”

“Oui?”

“Yeah, he was obsessed with it. We couldn’t do it; we had to do it. It’s wrong;
he needed it. He was driving me batty. I was perfectly happy with our sex life
as it was. I didn’t need to commit a ‘capital crime’ to get off. But he couldn’t
stop talking about it. So finally I just said, let’s do it. Kind of get it over
with, see if we liked it. If we didn’t get struck by lightning or anything –
well, maybe David and Jonathan liked to fuck, too.” Jean-Paul laughed. “So the
next weekend I was spending at his house I brought condoms and lube. See? I was
obsessively HIV-phobic way back then, too. First time anal sex for both of us
and I insisted he wear a condom to fuck me.”

“So? Did you like it?”

Adam shook his head. “No. It did hurt. We didn’t know what we were doing. Not
enough lube maybe, or he just got into me too fast. It didn’t feel good at all.
And I thought the condom was gross – plus we didn’t know how to dispose of it
without his mother finding out.” He sighed. “Such drama and misery at that age.
You couldn’t pay me to be fifteen again.”

Jean-Paul leaned in and they kissed a long time. “I love fucking you,” he said
to Adam after a while.

“I love being fucked by you. I love fucking you, too. I’m not fifteen any more.”

“Did it get better with Yossi?”

Adam shook his head again. “Never got a chance. He was completely freaked out by
it. Toevah – abomination – and we’d done it. I told him we could just go back to
what we’d been doing.”

“Did you?”

“No. That was the end. I stayed the rest of the weekend but that was it. He
never invited me over, never called me again, wouldn’t take my calls. He’d walk
the other way if he saw me at school. He graduated that year, and I never saw
him again.”

“Why? Why wouldn’t he just go back to your old David-and-Jonathan kissing and
blow jobs religious life?”

“That’s the problem. He didn’t think he could. I didn’t like fucking, but he
loved it. And he hated that he loved it. He felt like if we stayed together we’d
keep doing it, because he couldn’t help himself. He said all he wanted to do was
push his cock up my ass, that he was sorry he knew what it felt like because it
felt too good to give up.” Adam shrugged again. “So since it felt so good he
gave it up, and gave me up altogether. How fucked up is that?”

“I’ve told you before, Adam. That’s what religion does to people – makes them
crazy.”

“Yeah, you and my mother. Opiate of the masses. It doesn’t have to be like
that.”

Jean-Paul didn’t answer. He kissed Adam again, tongue stroking Adam’s, fingers
in his hair. “All this sex talk is making me horny,” he said after a minute. “I
want to push my cock up your ass, and I won’t tell you it’s a sin or not want to
see you again afterwards. Come on,” he added, patting the bed. “Last chance to
get fucked here. Live a little.”

“What would we use for lube?”

“I anticipated the need,” Jean-Paul replied, pulling a small tube from his
pocket.


Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com

"I think I’ve found him.

I have hopes that this is the one I’ve been looking for since Hal left. I’ve
been watching him for a few months, and will need to do so for a while longer, I
think, before I take any action. I’m not putting all my hopes in him; I’m still
investigating other possibilities. Still, I have a strong feeling he’s the one.

He’s quite young – not yet sixteen and just came into his powers a few months
ago. He has huge promise. A very powerful alpha class mutant – Cerebro lights up
the whole room when I’m watching him. His is a mutation I haven’t seen before, a
kind of forceful beam that comes out of his eyes. I’ve decided to call it “optic
blasts.” Excellent combat potential. And he has an amazing level of
self-control. He can’t control his powers yet and he’s managed to keep his eyes
closed for months now, since first manifesting. The original manifestation
resulted in the death of his father, which is certainly a powerful motivator,
but there are very few with that kind of resolve and physical control,
regardless of motivation. I think he’ll be able to withstand the training much
better than the others could.

Another crucial difference is that this one seems to have no ties to anyone or
anywhere. He lost his family and his home when he inadvertently killed his
father. He’s living on the streets, surviving through prostitution. Of course
that means there’s a risk of HIV, which would certainly rule him out, but he
seems to engage mostly in low risk behaviors, and I have hopes that he’s
uninfected.

He’s very much alone, which is a good sign, for my purposes. He seems to have no
friends, no procurer. There was a man who kept him for a while and provided some
protection, but that ended quite suddenly. Now he has nowhere to go, no one to
turn to. That’s exactly what’s needed. The demands I make are, I know, onerous.
Those I’ve tried to train before left before their training was completed. I’ve
wasted a lot of time and effort on them and gotten no return. After Hal, I
resolved to find someone who not only had the potential to lead a mutant combat
team but also was desperate enough to see my offer as saving him, as a way out
of his misery. I think if I wait a little longer, that Christopher Scott
Summers, Jr., late of Goodland, Indiana, might be just the person I’m looking
for.

*******************************************************
It was the first entry and it felt like a physical blow reading it, like he’d
been punched in the stomach. Scott remembered Logan asking him if he wanted to
know what was in the journals. He had thought he did. Now he was reeling and
couldn’t bring himself to turn the page and read more. He stared at the journal,
trying to make sense of it. Could it be something other than what it seemed?
Hardly. It was Charles’s handwriting, in Charles’s safe in Charles’s office.

Charles? Charles who’d loved him, who’d nurtured him, who’d been his friend, his
mentor, eventually his father. Charles, who’d picked sixteen-year-old Scott up
off the streets and taught him everything in life worth knowing. Who’d made him
Field Leader of the X-Men. Charles, who’d apologized to Scott before he died,
told him how sorry he was he hadn’t been able to find him earlier.

Charles had sounded completely sincere, finally talking about the topic they’d
never discussed, his illness making them both want no unfinished business
between them. They’d finally spoken of Scott’s year as a hustler, living
hand-to-mouth on the streets of New York City, a subsistence living of money and
food for sex. Charles had told Scott he wished he could have found him earlier,
wished he could have saved him that year of misery, deprivation and constant
fear. Scott could hear his voice, in this office, lowered with emotion and
illness, saying “I always wanted to tell you, but I’ve never known how to say it
– I feel like I failed you then.” Scott had reassured him, told him he had
nothing to apologize for.

Charles had known where he was all along? Had been waiting for him to be
desperate enough? And he’d known what happened to Scott’s father. Did that mean
he also knew what happened to Alex? That he let Alex grow up in a prison for
juvenile offenders, incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit? And left Scott
with the guilt of his brother having been there, let him believe it was his
fault it had happened?

It all seemed preposterous, impossible to reconcile with what he knew of the
founder of the X-Men, a man he’d loved intensely for close to twenty years and
mourned constantly in these months since his death. If Scott had not found them
himself, he would have been sure these journals were forgeries, that the Charles
Xavier he had known would never have written those words. But somehow he was
going to have to face the fact that he had.

*************************************************************
This was looking like it might be a very strange training session, Storm
thought. Wolverine and Alex – “Havok” he corrected her, which was the first that
she heard that he’d chosen a code name – were in the Danger Room when she
arrived, half an hour before the session was scheduled to begin. Wolverine never
arrived to training early and she wasn’t expecting Havok at all, since his name
was clearly on the Disabled List. Officially Alex had had an accident, but it
was an open secret that the wounds in his shoulder were left by Logan’s claws,
making it even more surprising to find them alone here together.

“Why are you here?” she asked Havok. “Do you wish to observe?”

“I’m not much for spectator sports,” Alex replied. “I’m here to train. I hear I
have a lot to learn,” he added, with a sideways glance at Logan.

“Jean tells me you are hors de combat due to your accident,” Storm said, looking
at his arm, slung to immobilize his wounded shoulder.

“That’s right,” Havok replied, eyes still on Logan. “I’m not fully capable of
fighting at this point, and I wouldn’t want to endanger the team by going on a
combat mission. But I can train.”

“Well, if Jean says it’s okay...” her voice trailed off as she noticed the two
men glaring at each other. “You’re both early,” she added.

“That’s okay,” Logan jumped in. “We can just spar for a while, until the others
get here.”

“Good idea.” Alex grinned as Wolverine’s claws extended. They circled each other
a minute. “So, Wolverine,” he added, “tell me something. I know your wounds heal
real quick, but before they do – can you feel pain?”

“Yeah. As much as any normal person.”

Alex smiled. “That’s what I was hoping to hear.”

The other X-Men arrived one by one, expecting to train but then stopping to
observe the pair sparring in the center of the room. Jean-Paul was the first.
Wearing t-shirt and jeans, he walked into the Danger Room with a huge grin on
his face, his mind clearly still elsewhere, and began to walk across to the
changing room, but was arrested by the sight of Havok and Wolverine in a two-man
practice session that looked more like a genuine fight.

It was something to see. To the untrained eye they seemed pretty evenly matched,
but Northstar thought he knew otherwise. Numerous missions fighting on the same
side left him with the impression that Logan was holding back, whether from
concern over doing permanent damage or just out of deference to Alex’s injury,
he wasn’t sure. Wolverine managed to dodge a number of Havok’s plasma blasts,
but some hit home. When they did they knocked him flat, eliciting low grunts of
pain. Still, Logan was on his feet and back in the fray within seconds after
each blow. His clothes showed continued evidence of wounds that didn’t last
long, but Jean-Paul felt sure would easily have killed another man.

Wolverine’s claws were out some of the time, but he seemed to be connecting more
when they weren’t. Alex’s left eye was bloody and closed from a fist in it, and
he was staggering a bit, with pain or confusion. His plasma blasts were still
strong, but his aim was not as good as it should have been. A few shots missed
their mark by inches. Others seemed to release too soon, before Alex meant to
shoot.

Other X-Men walked in and stood by the wall with Northstar, watching silently.
Angel, already in uniform, came in quietly, wings spreading and flexing but eyes
on the pair in the center of the room. Rogue and Iceman entered together,
chatting about something, but stopping in mid-sentence. Then Pyro, Sasha – newly
code-named Scope, for his microscopic visual capabilities – and Colossus. All
watched, and although none spoke, facial expressions and the occasional raised
fist led Storm to believe the whole team was rooting for Wolverine.

Last to arrive was Cyclops. Like Northstar he was in civilian clothes, but his
outfit was a suit and tie, suggesting he had had a business meeting prior to the
session. Scott had turned over the leading of training sessions to Storm, as
part of his attempts at delegating some of his former responsibilities in order
to allow himself time for the new duties he’d taken on in the wake of Xavier’s
death. Still, he attended as many training sessions as he could find time for,
believing that training with the team was key to leading them effectively.
Seeing Wolverine and Havok in the center of the Danger Room, Scott looked
questioningly at Storm. Her calm demeanor and I-can-handle-it glance eased his
worries.

The two men were moving as they fought, traveling farther from the observers by
the door, heading to the other side of the large room. Alex looked not so steady
on his feet and more than once had to wipe the blood away from his eyes to see
clearly. Still, he was managing to back Logan into the east wall of the Danger
Room. Wolverine was dodging the blasts as he went, backing up warily, eyes
darting every which way, looking like he wanted a way out and couldn’t find one.
Finally, back to the wall, his options to dodge severely limited, Logan was hit
square in the chest from close range, a blast coming out of Alex’s good hand,
the one not immobilized in a sling. Logan slumped down to the floor, blood
pouring through his ripped uniform, as Havok walked closer, looking like he was
moving in for the kill.

But then, suddenly, their positions were reversed. It happened so quickly that
the observers on the other side of the room weren’t sure how Wolverine had
managed it. All they knew was that now Havok’s good arm was pinned to his side
by Logan’s powerful body. The adamantium claws were out again, and Logan
appeared to be using them in earnest now. The two outer claws were on either
side of Alex’s neck, spearing the wall. The middle one was only partially
extended, tip just barely touching Alex. Extending it all the way was clearly
going to kill him.

“That will be enough,” Storm said in a voice that managed to be both serene and
commanding at the same time. “A fine workout, but it’s time now to start the
team session. Havok, Wolverine – go clean yourselves up and put on fresh
uniforms. Everyone else who’s not dressed to train – change immediately, as
well. Be back here in five minutes, ready to work.”

*******************************************************

Scott pulled Warren aside at the end of the training session, as the others went
to change. “I’ve got to talk to you,” he said.

“I think he might work out after all,” Warren replied.

“Who?” Scott’s manner was distracted.

Warren laughed. “Your brother. Who else would I be talking about? We’ve got one
new X-Man, one team member who came here directly from being released from
federal prison, one guy I told you that you were crazy to recruit. Who else
would it be?”

“Oh, him. Yeah, I guess he did okay. It’s good he wanted to train, in spite of
the injury. Shows a certain level of commitment.”

“He sure held his own against Logan.”

Scott shook his head. “Logan wasn’t even trying. Not until the end there.” He
looked around.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”

“What’s up?”

“I started reading them. Charles’s journals. I just... I don’t know...
They’re... We’ve got to talk. You’ve got to help me make sense of this.”

“Are you okay, Scott?” Warren’s look was fond, concerned.

“I don’t know.”

Warren clapped an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “Tell me about it.”

“Not here. After dinner? My office?”

“Sure.” Another look at Scott’s tortured expression led him to throw his arms
around him, giving his friend a bear hug. Scott hugged him back, saying “Thanks.
I really do need to talk to you.” They held each other for a minute. It was at
that moment that Logan returned to the Danger Room.



Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peak at the forecast
with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather

“Dammit, Logan!  There’s nothing going on, and I’m sick of trying to convince
you of that.”  Scott got up off of the bed, walked over to the other side of the
room, and sat down in the armchair there.  Legs drawn up against his body, arms
round his knees, he was glaring at Logan, the red glow behind his glasses bright
in the dark room.

Logan glared back, sitting on Scott’s bed.  “I saw you two in the Danger Room. 
He was all over you.”

“He was *hugging* me.  He was worried about me.  We’re friends.  We’ve been
friends since high school.”

“You were fuck buddies not that long ago.”

“Not that long ago?  Okay, maybe from where you stand at 160 years old or
whatever, it’s not that long ago.  For those of us who live a normal life span –
which would include both Warren and me – it was a long time ago. Years ago, and
it barely lasted two minutes. It was after you and I had broken up, if you
remember.  At the same time you were spending your nights fucking truckers and
you wouldn’t even take my calls.”

“Now we’re gonna fight about that?”

“You bring up ancient history and I’m the one fighting about it?”

“You haven’t been walking in on me and any truckers, have you?  I even told you
I wouldn’t train Billy if it bothers you that I did him that time.”  He shook
his head in disgust.  “And I don’t know why the fuck we’re talking about this
anyway, and not about you and Worthington practically jerking each other off in
the Danger Room this afternoon.”

“We weren’t doing anything!  Warren’s *straight*, for Chrissakes!”

“Yeah?  How does that work?  Like all those ‘straight’ guys who used to pay you
for blowjobs?”

Scott made a visible effort to calm down, and continued.   “He’d never been with
a man; he’s secure enough not to be completely freaked out by the idea of trying
it. He wanted to see what it was like, I wanted to get off.  We did it a few
times and we stopped.  That’s it.”

“Right.”

“He’s been with a succession of women since – you can’t have missed that,
there’s a different one around every few weeks.  He’s never shown any interest
in sex with me – or any other man – since he’s come back to the team.  I have no
interest in doing it with him. Okay, so Warren and I fucked a few times.  Why is
that such a big deal to you that you can’t stop bugging me about it five years
later?”

“You were alone with him all evening, Scott.  I’ve been waiting for you here. 
You show up hours after you’re ‘meeting with Warren’ in your office.  What am I
supposed to think you were doing all that time?”

“Talking.”

“Yeah right.”

“You’re the mutant with the heightened senses.  Do I smell like I’ve been having
sex?”

There was a long pause before he answered.  “No.”

Figuring that was as close to an apology that he was likely to receive, Scott
came back to bed and put his arms around Logan.  “I haven’t had sex with anybody
but you for a long time,” he said.  “I haven’t even wanted to.  I’m hot for
*you*.   I think we’re damned lucky we’re still hot for each other after all
these years.  I don’t want to do it with anyone else.  If I did do it, I’d tell
you.  I told you that time with Simon, didn’t I?” Logan nodded.  “Why are you so
fucking possessive that you can’t believe me?  I don’t lie to you, Logan.”

“I know.  I just... I don’t know what it is.  I feel like you’re mine and he’s
trying to move in.  You’re mine, Scott.”

Scott shook his head.  “You don’t own me.  It’s a sex game.  A really hot one. 
I don’t even know why.  I was never into that kind of stuff before you, but it
goes straight to my cock when you talk like that.  But it’s still pretend.”

“I know that.”

“I don’t do it with anyone else because I choose not to.  I choose us.  I don’t
think it would be good for us if I were having sex elsewhere.  I feel like we’d
lose something.  But I’d tell you the truth, no matter what.”

“I know.”  Logan leaned back against the headboard and Scott laid his head on
his lover’s belly.  Logan absentmindedly stroked his hair and continued to
speak.  “I don’t want to do it with anybody else, either.  Well, it’s not that I
don’t *want* to – sometimes I do.  Mostly women.  But I don’t do it.”

“Is that hard for you?  I know you’re not like me.  I know you miss sex with
women.”

“Not that much.  I like women, I won’t deny it.  But it’s different with you,
better.  And I think it’s partly because it’s only you I’m doing.  I feel like
it would fuck everything up, like we’d lose something, like you said, if I
fucked somebody else – man or woman.  So even when I want to I don’t do anything
with anybody else.  The nightmares, the memories – sometimes it’s too much for
me to take.  Nobody can help me like you do, nobody ever could.”  He took
Scott’s hand, spoke softly.  “You’re the one I want, Scott. When I’m in a bad
way, well nothing makes it better like sticking my cock in your mouth or up your
ass.”

Scott laughed.  “You’re so romantically eloquent; you should write sonnets or
something.”

Logan snorted.  “I mean it, though.”

“I know.  I’m not mocking the sentiment.  It just sounded funny the way it came
out.”  Scott sat up and thought a little more.  “I love you, Logan.  I want to
help you any way I can.  If sex helps, well great – the best kind of therapy. 
Fun for both of us.”  They smiled at each other. “You’ve got to get over this,
though.  Last year you were sure I was doing it with Jean-Paul.  Now you’re back
to being jealous of Warren.  I’m not fucking anybody but you.  If that changes,
I’ll tell you.  I don’t think it will.  Can’t you just trust me?  I trust you
with my life, you know, lots of times.  You can trust me.”

“That’s different.  I even trust Worthington in combat.  But yeah, I believe
you.  I’ll try and remember how much I trust you next time I come in and he’s
got his hands all over you.”

“What do you have against him, anyway?”

“He’s an arrogant bastard.  He thinks he owns the world.”  He thought a little
more.  “He’s a good fighter, though.”

“He is.  And you thought I was an arrogant bastard who thinks he owns the world
when you first met me, didn’t you?”  Logan didn’t say anything.  “I thought you
were an undisciplined self-centered prick.  People are more than what they seem
at first glance.”  Logan just grunted.  “I didn’t have sex with him.  All we did
was talk.”  He bent his head back down to Logan’s belly, tongue flicking at
Logan’s navel briefly.

“You made your point, Cyclops.  I believe you.”

“That’s not my point,” Scott replied, moving his head lower.  “We’ve established
I don’t smell like I’ve been having sex.  Do I smell like I want it?”

“You smell as horny as a tomcat.”

“Glad to hear that heightened sense of smell still works.”  And then he stopped
talking, because his mouth was full.

************************************************************************
Jean caught up with Scott the next day, during his poetry class. She sat in the
back of the room for the last fifteen minutes, listening and smiling.

“You’re so good at that,” she said after the students had all left.  “I could
listen to you talk about poetry all day.”  Then, voice changing from fondly
appreciative to businesslike, “But I need to talk physician temps instead.”

“I’m sorry.  I know I was supposed to get back to you on that.  I haven’t even
reviewed their resumes yet.”  He looked sheepish.  “But really, I don’t need to
interview them.  What do I know about medicine?”

“I thought you’d want to talk to them, just to get a sense of who would fit in
here.  They’re all three very qualified.  They’re all interested in filling in
while I’m on leave, and perhaps working here part-time afterwards.”

“Good.  We could use another doctor.”

“I agree.  Really, Scott – any of them would be fine.  And I’ll be here.  I can
certainly supervise, do some work.”

“Poor you.  Not much of a maternity leave when you don’t even get to leave.”

She laughed.  “Nah, I like it that way.  I want to keep my hand in.  So, should
I just choose?”

“If you don’t mind.  Are any of them mutants?”  She shook her head.  “Well, then
which ever one you think would be best.”

“I’ll go with Abramov, then.  She’s very personable, has good credentials, and
seems really interested in mutant medicine.”

“Settled, then.  Thanks.  I should meet her, I suppose.”

“I’ll bring her in next week and talk details.  I’ll make sure to introduce her
to you.”  She looked at him closely.  “Scott, are you okay?  Warren tells me you
found some upsetting entries in Charles’s journals.”

"God knows,” he said, “I was always aware that Charles had a kind of
cold-blooded streak.  How else could he have put together a combat team of kids
like us?”

She nodded her agreement.  “Sometimes he was so focused on his vision, so
concerned for our people as a whole, he had trouble seeing individual people.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It’s you who got him over that, Scott.  You tempered his drive with compassion
and concern for the kids.  If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t have this school. 
We’d still be sending kids off to mortal combat instead of helping them to think
about and discuss Sylvia Plath’s thrill at cutting her thumb instead of an
onion.”

Scott shrugged.  “He talks about me like I’m a *thing* - a tool.  A better model
than the others, who ran away without completing their training.   If there was
one thing I’ve been sure of all of this time, it’s that Charles Xavier loved me.
I was willing to do anything for him, anything to deserve that love.  Now, well
I think it was all a sham.  I was just a means to an end.”

She shook her head.  “That’s not true.  Look, Scott, I *know* he loved you.  I’m
a telepath.  I knew before I even met you, when Charles first came to recruit
me.  He radiated it – affection, pride, devotion.” She put her hand on his arm. 
“When Charles came to my house, he bowled my mother over.  Well, you know how he
was – compelling, charismatic, utterly persuasive.  She was ready to sign me up
that day.  I was drawn to Charles’s vision, his plan, at least enough to visit
this place and see if I could live here.  But mostly I agreed to come here
because of you.  Who was this boy who could inspire such love in someone like
Charles Xavier?  I had to know.”

***************************************************
I’m more and more convinced I’ve made the right choice.  His adjustment is bound
to be difficult, but he’s much more motivated than the others.   He began
training immediately, with a determination I’ve never seen before, and
extraordinary physical stamina, as well.  No matter how grueling the regimen, he
never complains.

I got off to an awkward start with him.  He assumed I was bringing him here for
sexual purposes!  I didn’t anticipate that, although I ought to have.  In the
past year no one has sought him for anything else.  I was quite flustered at the
time, but I made clear that that was not my intent.  We’ve said no more about
his year of prostitution.  I think he’ll likely forget about it over time, if
his mind and body are kept occupied.  I am doing my best to do both.
As well adapted as he is to being without vision, it has to be a challenge to be
in a completely new environment.  Yet he met the challenge resolutely.  Within
days he had carefully mapped out the whole property in his head.  He learned
Braille faster than anyone I’ve ever taught and he’s quickly catching up
academically, along with acquiring combat skills.

He’s had a complete physical from a mutant friendly doctor.  He was
undernourished but otherwise generally healthy, and he’s thriving on regular
meals and regular exercise.  Luckily he’s HIV- and I certainly expect he won’t
be engaging in any activities that could change that status.  There’s some minor
brain damage that registers on the EEG, and he reports an accident as a child,
with a blow to the head and severe concussion, so perhaps that was the cause. 
It’s hard to know what effects there are.  He scores extremely well on IQ and
other aptitude tests, as well as motor skills and hand/eye coordination, so
there’s no obvious sequelae.  I wonder, though, if his inability to control the
optic blasts is related to the brain damage.  He manifested over a year ago, yet
has absolutely no control yet.  This is atypical, in my experience.

It’s key that I find a way for him to control his powers.  I hope to be able to
do so with telepathic means, but I’m not sure I’ll succeed, particularly if the
damage to his brain is in the mutation control area, as I fear.  I’m trying a
different approach now, looking for some transparent or translucent substance
that can absorb or block the energy of the optic blasts.  If so, I’ll make
glasses from it.

For now, it’s important that he open his eyes from time to time so the muscles
in his eyelids don’t atrophy.  I’ve been taking him to remote locations to do
so.  If he looks up and nothing is above us, the blasts just dissipate.

He was terrified to try the first time.  We were at the house in Vermont, and I
took him outside and told him to look up and open his eyes.  As eager as he is
to please me, he could not bring himself to do it.  His lids just clenched
tight, almost against his will.  It was affecting to see.  He wants so much to
hurt no one.  Eventually, with some slight mind control persuasion, he relaxed
enough to open his eyes.

He was profoundly grateful, could not stop thanking me.  It was almost as if I’d
given him the gift of sight.  I intend to take him to the ocean next.  Off
season, I can find somewhere where there will be few people and we can go to a
remote stretch of beach.  What joy he’ll feel to look at the ocean!  It will be
good for his training, too.

Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited

Ororo was half-way through the lesson on Appomattox when the door opened and
Havok walked in. He was showing the effects of the previous day’s training
session, she noticed. Or, more specifically, the results of the “sparring” he
and Logan had done before the training. His left eye was swollen shut, the
purple lid surrounded by a darker ring. Other wounds on his face and neck were
bandaged, but inexpertly. Storm reflected that it was unlikely that Jean had
tended to him — he appeared to have done his own wound care. That must be very
painful, she thought, looking at his ravaged face.

Havok’s movements were suggestive of pain as well. He was not exactly limping,
but was walking slowly and gingerly into the classroom. He stood at the back of
the room for a minute, than pulled a chair towards himself and very slowly
lowered his body into it. Storm noticed him grimace slightly, but mostly he
seemed attentive to the lesson. The students, accustomed to visiting X-Men in
their classes, continued the discussion without a break.
When class was over and the students had all filed out, Alex moved to stand up.
“No, don’t,” Ororo said. “Stay there.” She walked over towards him, sitting down
on a desk nearby, her long legs swinging a bit. “Thanks for coming to see me,”
she said. “Was my note unclear? I didn’t expect you until the end of the class.”

“Now you’ll be thinking I show up at everything early. I actually was later than
I meant to be. I was going to be here for the beginning of class, but I’m not so
quick getting ready with this,” he said, gesturing to the sling.

“And why would you want to attend a high school history lesson?”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” She laughed at that. “I’m bored
out of my mind on the DL. I just thought I’d see what the class was like. I’ve
always been interested in the Civil War, ever since Shelby Foote got me hooked
on it.” Looking at her he added, smiling, “Don’t look so surprised. I got a
taste for history in prison — the first time, when I was a kid — and it never
left me. There’s a lot of time doing nothing. Reading helps the time go by. I’d
rather read history than most things. And besides,” he added, “romance novels
are kind of frowned upon inside.”

She laughed at that, then turned serious. “How are you feeling? I don’t like how
you’re moving. Those injuries are clearly causing you pain.”

“I’m okay.”

“Have you been to the infirmary?”

“Yeah.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“If you knew, why did you ask?”

“I just wondered if you would tell me the truth, or lie. Just as you lied to me
yesterday when you said that Jean had given you permission to participate in the
training session.”

Alex smiled at her again, this time a little sheepishly. “I didn’t specifically
say she’d given me permission.”

“You implied it and did not correct me when I said that I understood that she
had.”

“You got me there.” He raised his hands in a gesture of resignation. “But I need
to train. I’ll be no use to the team — and likely to get myself killed, as well
— if I don’t keep up with my training.”

“I understand that, and agree. You are not the first X-Man to spend time hors de
combat. We have methods to continue training. I would be happy to work out a
training plan with you, considering your injuries and working around them. You
should not be in the group exercises as of now. Will you work with me
individually?”

“I’d like that.”

His tone was enthusiastic, but it occurred to Storm that she would have
preferred to have him look her in the eye when he spoke to her. It was hard not
to feel that his words were addressed to her breasts. She chose to ignore that
and continued. “I will devise a plan for you. I will work with you in individual
sessions, and also assign others to do so. Some of the physical training will
have to wait on your recovery, but I don’t anticipate that being a problem. What
I think you need practice with most is using your powers, your plasma blasts.
Your aim was erratic yesterday."

“I know. This fucking shoulder throws off my balance. And then, when I was
practicing with Logan — I don’t know. He’s fast; more of his punches landed than
I thought would. I think I got a little punch drunk. I couldn’t see clearly,
couldn’t think clearly. But yeah, I wasn’t getting the blasts to go where I
wanted them to. It was frustrating.”

“That is definitely something I can work on with you.  We can immobilize
different parts of your body, impede your vision, induce temporary impairments
of balance and so forth and give you target practice, so that you can improve
the placement of the blasts under a variety of semi-debilitating conditions. We
can do all of that with the facilities of the Danger Room, while you are
healing, without inducing further injuries.”

“Oh good. I think I like your methods better than Logan’s.”

She laughed. “I also want you to learn to fight while injured. It’s something we
all need to know how to do. You are on the disabled list now, due to your...
accident, but there will be other times when you are injured in combat and will
need to continue to fight. So we can see this as an opportunity for you to learn
how to fight with an injury, and learn under carefully controlled conditions.
It’s an essential skill — essential to the team and potentially essential to
your survival.”

“Thank you. I do want to get better at this,” he said, looking at his hands.
“Everyone else on the team seems to have much more control.”

“Everyone else on the team has been in training for years. I’m impressed by how
much control you do have, given that you did not have our advantages. We’ll
ensure that you get more control.”

“Great! When do we start?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve scheduled the Danger Room for you at 2:00. You’ll be working
with Northstar.”

“Oh. I was hoping to work with you.”

“You will, but this session is with Jean-Paul.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, that’s what we’ve been talking about, is it not? One-on-one training?”

“Yes, but — well could it be someone else?”

“No. You will work with whomever I assign to work with you. Have you had some
sort of difficulty with Northstar?”

“No, it’s just — I’m not comfortable being alone with — ”

“I think it would be a good idea if you do not finish that sentence.” She
changed the subject abruptly. “How old were you when you came into your powers,
Alex?”

“Sixteen.”

“What opportunities did you have to learn to use them?”

“Not much. I was incarcerated until I was 18 — you know that, right?”

She nodded. “Your privacy has not been violated. We only know what we need to
know.”

He shrugged. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just not clear on who knows what
here.
Anyway, I came into my powers in prison. It was all I could do to not use them.
I was terrified of getting caught.”

“Most mutants find it very hard to control their powers during the first few
months after manifestation. I’m impressed that you were able to keep your mutant
status a secret.”

“It wasn’t easy. I did have one advantage — I knew what was happening, since I’d
already figured out what had gone on with Scott.” He shook his head. “Still, I
wish I’d had the opportunity to train before this advanced age. I did what I
could when I could, but I was on my own. I never met any other mutants, never
got the chance to really learn how to use my blasts to fight. I wish I had.”

“We all wish that. It’s unfortunate — but understandable — that Professor Xavier
and Cyclops did not know what happened to you.” She paused, and went on. “I need
to speak to Cyclops and tell him that you did not have medical clearance to
participate in the training session yesterday.”

“You’re going to tell on me?” Alex’s smile was teasing, but perhaps with a layer
of hostility underneath. Storm wasn’t sure. “You’ve been teaching high school
too long,” he added.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps I’ve just been on a mutant combat team a long time.
Discipline is essential to success, even to survival. The Field Leader needs
accurate information about team members to maintain discipline.” She looked
straight at him. “I wanted to speak to you first. I hoped to be able to tell him
that you admitted to the deception, told me the truth now, and have agreed to an
appropriate personalized training plan. Now I can do that.”

“Thanks.”

“There is one other thing I need to speak to you about, and this I would rather
not share with anyone else.” He said nothing and she continued. “One of my
students came to me very upset. She said that you had been making advances
towards her.”

“Which one?” Alex belatedly realized that the question was an admission. “Okay,
so I asked some girls here out. I don’t know what the problem is. I know how to
take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“I’m quite sure you do know what the problem is. The students are not potential
dates for you, or any other adult here.”

“Hey, some of these girls are 17, 18. What’s the age of consent in this state?”

“That’s immaterial. They are under our protection. Romantic or sexual
relationships with the students are not permitted.”

“Relationship? Nothing went so far as a relationship! I asked a couple of girls
out.”

“I want your word that that will not happen again. No advances, no flirtation.
If I can’t get a promise from you I will have to discuss it with Scott. He’s
Headmaster of the Academy.”

“Oooh! Don’t tell the principal on me,” he replied, mock horrified. Then turned
serious, “Okay. I’m sorry. And I do appreciate you giving me another chance.
I’ll keep my hands off of the students, I promise. Scout’s honor.”

“Thank you. I do need to say that if I ever hear that you have broken that
promise, I will have to talk to the Headmaster.”

“I’ll look elsewhere for dates.” Eyes twinkling, he added “Do you ever get an
evening off? I’d be happy to take you out on the town, or what passes for ‘the
town’ around here.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve found a potential addition to our little household here, by the name of
Jean Grey. Close in age to Scott, she is also an Alpha Level mutant. Her gifts
are psionic — telekinesis and telepathy. She lives fairly close to here. Her
parents are divorced and she lives alone with her mother, who is having a hard
time dealing with a psionic daughter. In addition, Jean herself is going through
a very difficult period of learning to control and deal with her powers.
Telepathy is an extraordinarily difficult gift for an adolescent, particularly
an emotionally fragile teenage girl. It may be necessary to suppress her
telepathic gift for some time, in order to give her time to assimilate
understanding of her mutant status. I could begin by training her on the use of
telekinesis.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. First I must visit the Grey household and
see if I can convince Mrs. Grey to entrust her daughter to my care. I hope she
will agree. Jean and Scott could well be the nucleus of the combat unit I wish
to develop.

Scott’s training continues to proceed on an extremely rapid trajectory. I have
him on a program where he engages in very realistic simulated battles using the
equipment in my simulation lab, which he has dubbed “The Danger Room.” The ruby
quartz glasses have made an enormous difference in his capabilities. He was
formidable in combat even without vision, but is much more so now that he can
see.

Scott had an excellent idea the other day. If we could develop some sort of head
gear with a ruby quartz front piece and an opening that can be manipulated, he
wouldn’t have the awkwardness of taking the glasses off any time he needs to use
his optic blasts. If the headgear could be made to open partially, it might also
give him more control. I’m going to give some thought to design and manufacture.

I have great hopes for him, and remain extremely impressed with his progress. I
do have some concerns, though. Now that he can see again, he’s more mobile and
leaves the property often. I don’t wish to restrict him too much — I certainly
don’t want him to rebel and leave. Yet, I’m concerned about what activities he
is engaging in when he leaves, and what dangers he may expose himself to. I had
hoped that his time living off of sex work was only due to expediency and not
indicative of homosexual tendencies. It seems I was wrong. I worry about
exposure to disease and also about unsavory influences. I wonder if I should say
something to him, but hardly know how to bring up a subject likely to be
embarrassing to us both. Perhaps this is only a phase and if left alone he will
outgrow it. After all, he has not had much chance for feminine companionship as
yet.

I’m also concerned about the possibility that he could be taken away from me. It
is possible that what’s left of his family could seek him, or that he could be
arrested in connection with the death of his father. I need to eliminate that
risk and regularize and formalize his residence here.

Scott’s previous demimondaine existence did not require any kind of official
documentation. Now, I wish him to live here legally, to obtain a driver’s
license, and a pilot’s license eventually, as well, as he is learning to fly.
He’s very bright and very determined and, although I love teaching him, I know
that he can benefit from the broader knowledge and exposure that a college
education will bring him. In order to be ready for him to go to college in a
couple of years, I will need some sort of official documentation.

My first step is to find out what happened after Scott’s father’s death. Does
his mother know that her son is a mutant and accidentally killed her husband?
Would she be willing to sign over guardianship to me? I believe a trip to
Goodland, Indiana is in order. As Scott himself has told me nothing about his
father’s death, saying only that he ran away from home, it’s probably best that
I not let him know my plans until I have the information I need to make
decisions about his future.


Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check.
Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta.
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html

When Alex arrived, Jean-Paul was already in the Danger Room, in uniform. 
“You’re late,” he said, eyes on the clock on the wall.

“I thought you’d wait for me.”  Alex’s smirk seemed undiminished by his
teammate’s obvious annoyance.

“What’s that supposed to mean?  I did wait for you. Go put a uniform on and
we’ll get started.”

“I meant I thought you’d wait to get changed.  You know, so you can sneak a peak
at my ass in the changing room.”

Jean-Paul shook his head in evident distaste.  “I’m not interested in your ass,
except for teaching you how to avoid getting it kicked by the bad guys. 
Straight men don’t appeal to me.”

“No?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“On the whole, I find your kind crude, boorish, and sexually unsophisticated. 
Quite willing to ‘experiment’, bien sur, when they’re drunk enough.  But I
learned early that heterosexual men are... boring.   Even when a man is very
physically attractive,” and here he looked at Alex intently, “just knowing he’s
straight makes him unappealing.”

“Is that right?”

He shrugged his shoulders and added, “Interestingly enough, it seems that
knowing a man is gay makes him *more* appealing to straight women.  It can make
things awkward sometimes.  Still, it’s understandable.  I imagine women don’t
like crude, boorish and sexually unsophisticated, either.”

“Well, I think – ”

But Jean-Paul cut Alex off before he could say what he thought.  “Go put on a
uniform.  We have a lot of drills to get through and I told Storm we’d finish
them today.”  Alex turned to go.  Jean-Paul called after him, “And leave the
sling in the changing room.”

“Why?  I’m supposed to wear it for another two weeks, at least.  It keeps my
shoulder immobile.”

“I’m supposed to teach you how to fight if you’re injured during combat.  You
wouldn’t have a sling to immobilize a battle injury.  I could give you *another*
wound, if you prefer, but I thought it would be more efficient if we just go
with the one you’ve already got.”

They worked hard for the next three hours, managing to “kill” the robotic
adversaries in four of the simulations and nearly defeating them in the other
two.  “Bien,” Jean-Paul said.  “Enough for today.  You did well.”

“Well enough to overlook the comment about you checking out my ass?”

“Lay off the homophobic bullshit and we’ll do fine.”

“So what are you?  A heterophobe? You really think we’re all – what was it?” 
Alex’s grin suggested this was at least semi-friendly banter.

“Boorish, crude, and sexually unsophisticated.  No, not all.  Some of my best
friends are heterosexual,” he added, with an ironic smile.  “Not to mention our
mutual benefactor, Charles Xavier.”

“What do you mean by that?”  Alex’s tone became hostile again.

“Well, I don’t really know.  I always assumed that he was.”  He looked at Alex. 
“Oh is that not what you mean?”

“I’m just wondering what that ‘mutual benefactor’ crack was supposed to mean.”

“It’s not a ‘crack’ at all.  We live in his home.  Well, it belongs to Cyclops
now, but he is Professor X’s heir, and we are all living here due to the
Professor’s generosity.  You didn’t know him but you’re as much the recipient of
that generosity as the rest of us.  Plus, you and I have spent the last few
hours benefiting from one of his great inventions – the Danger Room simulator. 
It’s in large part thanks to this device that the X-Men are as effective as we
are.  We used it to train in Alpha Flight, too.  I’d be dead several times over
if not for this place,” he added, looking around.  He waited to see if Alex
would tell him what was bothering him, but he remained silent.  Jean-Paul
continued, “You worked hard today and it paid off.  These were not easy
simulations.  They’ve stumped far more experienced operatives than yourself.” 
Powering down the simulator, he repeated, “You did well.”

“Thanks.”

“You could be good for the team.  And the team could be good for you.  It’s an
opportunity to learn to fully use your powers, to be part of something
worthwhile.  It’s also a chance to continue your education, if you so choose.”

Alex laughed.  “I’m a little old for that.”

“I think you and I are about the same age and I just started college,
part-time.”  He shrugged.  “Very part time, but I find I’m enjoying it a great
deal.  I never thought I would go.  Bien sur, I never finished high school.  But
living in a school – I find it makes one aware of possibilities.  And the
generosity of Charles Xavier – even after his death – makes some of them...
possible.”

“It would be nice if his posthumous generosity extended to paying our salaries.”

“It will.  Soon, I believe.  I think Angel had underestimated how distressing
the continuing financial constraints would be to the team.  Now he understands
better.  I’m confident he’ll look for a way.”

“That would make all this a little more palatable.”

“I’ve gained a great deal through my association with Alpha Flight and the
X-Men.  It took some time, though, to really benefit.  I had a large chip on my
shoulder that was impeding my progress and preventing close friendships with my
teammates.  I think you’re suffering from a similar liability.  Get rid of it
and you’ll find a lot of opportunities open up for you.”

“Sorry.  The tendons are healing but the chip stays.”

“The angry young man demeanor has a certain cachet in one’s teens and early
twenties.  But at our age it starts to seem a little pathetic.”

“Hey, that’s me.  Boorish, crude, sexually unsophisticated and pathetic.”  He
smiled, but Jean-Paul didn’t smile back. “Thanks for the advice,” Alex
continued.

“I’ll give you a little more.  The ‘fag’ talk doesn’t go over well here, not
just with me.  You’re getting a reputation for inappropriate speech and it won’t
help you.  Homophobic talk is out of place here, as are deprecating remarks
about non-mutants.  My partner’s not a mutant – I won’t have him or our son
hearing that kind of talk.”

“How chivalrous of you.”

“I’m quite serious.”

“I don’t doubt it.  You certainly have always seemed completely humorless to
me.”  Jean-Paul didn’t answer.  Alex thought about what he’d said.  “Son?  You
and your... boyfriend have a child?”

“Yes.  Ezra.  He’s two and a half.”

“How did you do that?”

“It’s part of my mutation.  I can fly, travel at super speed, and also get
pregnant and give birth.”

“Really?”

Jean-Paul laughed.  “No.  I was joking.  Trying to prove I’m not completely
humorless.”  Alex smiled and Jean-Paul continued.  “There are many strange
mutations, but men do not give birth, even among our kind.  Adam and I adopted
Ezra.”

“Is that hard to do?  For someone like you?”

“Someone gay or someone who’s a mutant?”

“Well, both I guess, but I was focusing on the gay part.”

“Oui, or you would have said ‘someone like us,’ I imagine.  It’s certainly
easier for a married heterosexual homo sapiens couple, but there are ways.  And
both of Ezra’s birth parents were mutants, so that was less of a barrier.  Ezra
himself is a mutant and has manifested very early.”

“At two and a half? Really?”

“Yes, it’s extraordinarily early.  Still, he is in the first generation of
children with mutant parents – birth parents in his case.  They seem to come
into their powers earlier.  In any event, this is a great place for him to grow
up – I feel lucky to be here.  As to adopting as a gay couple, we cannot be
legally married in this benighted country, so Adam had to adopt him singly at
first.  We’re still working to acquire all legal rights for me as his father, as
well.”

“Even though you’re the mutant?”

“It’s just how it worked out.”  He shrugged and continued.  “I meant what I
said, Alex. As a gay couple and a mixed subspecies one, we deal with all manner
of prejudice, but we don’t deal with it here, and I won’t put up with that
homophobic crap or the mutants-as-homo-superior bit in front of Adam or Ezra.  
I will also warn you that there is a lot of concern about how one speaks to the
students here.”

“Yes, I’ve gotten that impression from Storm.”

“Well, then it must be true if you’re hearing it from both of us.  I’m telling
you, if you talk like you have to me in front of the Academy students you may
well find yourself out on your boorish, crude, sexually unsophisticated, yet
very nicely shaped ass.”

Alex’s grin came back.  “Ah, so you have been looking.” He held up his hands.
“Okay, okay.  I’ll stop.”

**************************************************************
I really should be sleeping.  I need to get up in just a few hours to catch my
flight back to New York.  Still, I want to write down everything that happened
here now, while it’s fresh in my mind.  And it’s only within the past hour that
I’ve been able to stop shaking with anger enough to pick up a pen.

I expected that Scott’s mother would have profoundly mixed feelings about him,
particularly if she realized that her husband’s death had happened because of
his mutation.  Accidental as it was, it’s still necessarily a very difficult
thing to accept.  I thought it likely her mother love would be at war with her
grief for the loss of her husband. I believed her relief to hear that Scott is
well and being cared for would be tempered by the knowledge that he is suffering
greatly with guilt over his father’s death.  I knew that she’d be confused and
unsure of where to turn.  At least I thought I knew that.  I had planned to
offer to continue to care for Scott, to ask her to let me become his legal
guardian.  I expected her to accept the offer with gratitude and perhaps a
little guilt at her inability to care for him herself.

What I found was someone so lacking in sympathy for her son – for both of her
sons, as it turns out – that she hardly seems deserving of the name “mother.” 
She has no idea that Scott killed his father with his optic blasts, does not
even know that he’s a mutant.  Yet she wants nothing to do with him, and solely
because she believes him to be a homosexual.  He’d written love letters to
another boy and his father’s discovery of them – and the very public humiliation
of Scott by reading them aloud in front of neighbors, Scott’s brother Alex, and
the object of Scott’s affection – is what led to the great emotional turmoil
that resulted in Scott’s manifestation and his father’s death.  Alex, the
younger brother, confessed to the killing, saying he’d hit his father with a
heavy paving stone to make him stop hurting his brother.  Katherine Summers
believes that’s what happened.  She has no idea that she has one mutant son and
another who has confessed to a crime he didn’t commit to protect his brother. 
And she’s ready to write them both off – one for being a homosexual, and the
other for killing his father in defense of his brother.

Of course she told me none of this.  As soon as I told her that Scott was with
me she cut me off and said as far as she is concerned her sons are dead.  I read
her mind to find the rest.  And nowhere in her consciousness could I find any
sympathy, any kindness towards these boys who have been through so much.

She is unaware of much that Scott has endured, completely  ignorant of the
strength and grace and simple dignity he managed to maintain in an
extraordinarily difficult and degrading situation.   She doesn’t have the
knowledge of his perseverance in the face of adversity that I do, so she can’t
feel the admiration I feel for him.  Still, it is her distaste at the idea that
he would love another boy that prevents her from finding out what he’d been
through, from learning how he has maintained his sense of self and even his
sense of joy “under the terrible burden of destiny.”  She has no idea what she’s
missing in giving up this extraordinary young man.  Nor does she care to find
out.  I shook my head in disgusted amazement at the vitriol in her brain.

And the younger boy?  Imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, out of pure
loyalty to his brother.  I cannot let that injustice stand.  I will find where
he’s held and see what I can do to assist him, now and in the future.

I’m glad I did not tell Scott where I was going.  He is not ready for this news.
I will find some other way to regularize his position with me, now that I know
how averse his mother is to even knowing about his life.  Asking her to sign
guardianship papers is out of the question.
Perhaps it would be best to give Scott a new birth certificate and new
parentage.  I will give some thought to how to best accomplish that.  And I
won’t tell him about his brother’s incarceration, which would likely leave him
feeling both guilty and powerless.  There is plenty of time for him to find out
what happened after he ran away.  I will reveal it to him when I have
implemented a plan to assist Alexander Summers.

I worked all of this out right away, after speaking to Katherine Summers.  But
then I came back to the hotel and thought some more.  I find myself troubled by
my own behavior and attitudes, perhaps more so than by those of this woman I
don’t know at all.  Am I better than her?  I read my entries earlier on in this
diary and wonder if I am.  I see comments about hoping Scott’s homosexual
behavior was just from expedience and not indicative of something integral to
his personality.  I see references to “unsavory” actions and worry that I’ve
been as guilty of unreasonable hostility as this woman and her late husband,
condemning their own son simply for falling in love.  It’s true that I didn’t
know about his love for that boy, and only knew of his degrading experiences
afterwards.  Still, it was not merely the necessity of prostitution that I found
revolting, but also the possibility – now, as I know, the actuality – that this
young man I admire so greatly is homosexually inclined.  This prejudice in
myself may be more subtle than that expressed by Scott’s parents, but it’s no
less vile.  I must root it out.

Yes, this episode is leading me to recognize failings of my own.  Perhaps some
of them are not reparable.  One thing is for certain, though. My admiration and
affection for that boy have grown strong over the months he has been with me,
but it was seeing his mother’s callousness that has made me realize just how
strong.  I am a peace-loving man, but I truly wanted to kill her for her cruelty
towards him.  This I know, now and for the future:   Scott Summers will never
lack for parental love, not so long as I live.


Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Don't pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html

Scott was asleep when Logan showed up in his room.  It was late and Logan hadn’t
expected to find him awake.  On the other hand, he hadn’t expected to find Scott
sprawled across the bed fully clothed, either.  He stood still, looking at him
for a minute.  The room was dark, but Logan’s heightened senses picked up enough
light from the hallway and the digital clock by the bed to see perfectly well. 
There were tears drying on Scott’s cheeks. Ruby quartz glasses and a leather
bound journal were on the bed close to hand. But Scott’s face looked peaceful,
serene.  Logan picked up both the diary and the glasses and put them on the
night stand by the bed.  Sitting down next to Scott, he ran his hand through his
lover’s hair saying, “Hey Sleeping Beauty.  You want to take off your clothes
and get into bed?”

Scott startled awake.  Eyes closed tighter, he felt around with his hand.  Logan
smoothed the clenched eyelids saying, “They’re closed enough.  It’s okay. Relax.
I’ve got your glasses.  You don’t need them now, do you?  Nobody’s here but me.”

“What time is it?”  Sitting up, rubbing his closed eyelids now.

“1:30.”

“Did you just finish rounds?”

“Yeah.”  Stroking the side of Scott’s face now.

“Everything okay?”

“Uh huh. Kids all where they’re supposed to be.  Perimeter’s secure.” Tugging on
Scott’s t-shirt he added, “At least take this off.  I’ll rub your back.”

Scott pulled off his shirt and lay prone on the bed again.  Logan kicked off his
shoes, and climbed on top of him, straddling, rubbing his shoulders and back. 
“Everything okay with you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.  Better than I’ve been for a while.”

“You ready to tell me what’s going on?”  Strong strokes up and down Scott’s back
as he asked.

“Charles’s journals.  You were right – I should have considered more whether I
really wanted to know what’s in them.  I found out some things that shook me up.
But I’ve kept reading.  I think I’m better off the more I know.”

“I think you are, too.”

“You don’t know what I found out.”

“I know.  I’ll listen if you want to tell me.  If you don’t that’s okay.  I just
think you’re right – better to know more.  I’ve found out some bad shit about my
past.  I know it’s not the same thing as finding out about somebody else, but
still.  Knowing’s better than not knowing.  But you really got to want to know
it, to be ready to find out.  You’re ready now, Scott.  That’s why you’re
reading them.  It took me a long time to be ready to find out about me.”

“I *think* I’m ready.  I wasn’t so sure when I started reading them.”  Scott
sighed, focusing on Logan’s hands rubbing him.  “That feels so good.  You’ve got
the best hands.”

Logan pulled Scott’s pants and boxers off of him, tossing them out of the way. 
He looked at him stretched out there for a minute, then pulled his own clothes
off and got back on top of his lover.  Straddling him farther down, sitting on
Scott’s legs, rubbing his cheeks and bending down to lick him right where the
crack began, eliciting a moan that made his cock twitch.  “That what you been
talking to Worthington about?” he asked, refocusing – with some effort – on what
they’d been discussing. “What you found in the diaries?”

“Yeah.  Warren and Jean.  They knew him then.  With Hank dead, they’re the only
ones left who did.”

“Not ‘Ro?”

“Not right in the beginning.  She came along a little later. It was just me at
first, then Jean.  Then Warren and Hank, together.”

“Like that picture in your office – the four of you.”

“Yeah.  We *were* the X-Men then.  Not much of a team – four kids learning how
to be superheroes and just plain dumb luck none of us died trying.”  He sighed
again, Logan’s fingers and mouth on his cheeks and thighs.  “There’s lube in the
nightstand drawer.”

“I don’t need it.  Not yet.  We’re not gonna fuck, not right now.”

“Whatever you say.”  Scott thought for a minute.  “You believe me, don’t you? 
That I’ve been talking to Warren about Charles?  Not doing anything else with
him?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t mind, do you?”

“Nah.  I may be too possessive like you said, but I’m not asking for all your
time, for all of you.”  He slapped Scott lightly on the ass.  “As long as this
is mine.”  Then lying down on top of him, reaching under to grab onto his hard
cock, rubbing up and down the shaft, “And this.  Mine, eh?”

“Oh yes.”

Logan climbed off of Scott, lying on his side on the bed next to him. “Turn over
on your back.  I want to suck on it.”

Scott did as he was told.  Logan leaned down and licked the underside of Scott’s
cock, slowly, balls to head and then back down, taking time to savor the taste
and the feelings.  Scott’s fingers were in his hair, twisting and pulling, his
moans full of longing.  Logan lifted his head, looking at Scott’s face, eyes
closed and mouth open.

“I love the sounds you make when I do you, Scott.  I’m gonna suck the cum out of
you, see what kinds of sounds I get then.”  Leaning his head back down, he took
the cock head in his mouth, swirling his tongue around it.  And then sucking
hard and deep, taking the whole shaft in and pulling all the way to the top, and
back again.  In and out, deep and strong, rubbing with his tongue and throat the
whole time.  One hand on Scott’s thigh, the other under him, finger teasing the
opening, then pushing in.  He held it inside there as he sucked and licked and
tugged with his lips.

Scott was pulling on Logan’s hair now, whimpering and crying and breathing hard.
Logan couldn’t see his face, but he knew his eyes were closed tightly, tears
squeezing out of them.   “Oh God!” he was saying, and “Oh Logan!” and “Oh yes!”
and then just a loud “Oh!” as the cum spurted, filling Logan’s mouth and sliding
down his throat.

They kissed afterwards.  “That was so good,” Scott whispered in his ear.  “You
always know what I need.”

“Lie face down again.”  Slicking his cock, then spreading Scott’s cheeks and
pushing it in.

“You’re so easy to get into right after you cum.  Good and tight, but relaxed,
easy. Yeah, move with me.  You got it.”  Fucking him slow and strong, legs
intertwined, hands on top of Scott’s, fingers interlaced holding him down. 
“Yes.  Fuck.  Good.”  And then no more talk, just movement and heavy breathing
and his cock shooting deep in his lover’s hole.
Logan rolled off of him afterwards.  Lying on his back, he patted Scott on the
ass.  ”Mine?” he asked.

“Yours.”  After a pause, “Can I reclaim my glasses now?”

“Sure.”  Logan reached to get them, hand brushing the journal.  “You were right,
you know.”

“What about?”

“We’re damned lucky we’re still hot for each other.  Just looking at you gets me
going.  It’s never been like that for me, not lasting like this.  It’s got to
mean something.”

“We’re a good match.”

“So, do you want to tell me what you’re finding out?  I know I wasn’t around to
know what he was like then, but I can still listen.  And I might be able to
offer something.”

“Of course you can, Logan.  You’ve got a lot to offer.”

“Besides a good time?”

“In addition to a good time.”  Logan chuckled at that.  “You’ve told me lots
about your past as it came back to you.  We’ve puzzled it out together.  Maybe
you can do the same for me.”  He hesitated.  ‘I just – well, some of the stuff
in the early entries was kind of shaking my faith in Charles.”  He threw an arm
over Logan’s chest.  “He talks about me – in the beginning – like I’m just some
tool, some new device he’s found, or even one that he’s inventing.  It was hard
to talk about with you.”

“You mean ‘cause Jeannie and Worthington told you how wonderful he was, anyway,
and you figured I wouldn’t’ve?”

“Yeah, something like that.  Charles cared about the whole human race, mutant
and non-.  He had a vision.  He had charisma.  But sometimes he didn’t have the
individual involvement, caring about specific people, you know?  I knew that
about him, I always knew it.  But it was hard to see that applied to me.”  He
kissed Logan on the shoulder.  “You’re the opposite.  You don’t give a shit
about the human race.  You’d never kill or die for an idea.  But the people you
care about – that’s who you’ll risk your life for.  Charles learned to care
about individuals, over time.”

“Hey, give me long enough and maybe I’ll learn to care about ideas.”  They both
laughed.  Logan added, “So did he know what happened to your father?”

“Yeah.  How did you know?”

“I just don’t think you could have hid it from him all those years.  He knew
your brain too well.  He was a real fucking powerful telepath.  Jeannie didn’t
know you were gay, and she was doing it with you for years, but the Professor
knew you were into men.  How could he not know this?  I know you tried not to
think about it, but it was still there.”

“True.  It turns out he knew a lot I didn’t realize he knew. He didn’t tell me
what he knew, what he was doing.”

“That’s him all over.”

“Yeah, I know.”  He paused.  “Do you want to hear about it?  This part I haven’t
told anyone else.”

“Not even Worthington?”

“Nope. I don’t want him to know, just you.”

“Yeah, I wanna hear it.”

“Charles went to Indiana.  It was about a year after I got here.  Right after
Jean had joined us.  He saw my mother.  He never told me.”

“I gather she was just as friendly to him as she was when Adam found her last
year.”

“Exactly.  What did you say about her and Oliver’s mother?  That they could get
together and start a cold, heartless bitch club?  You were dead right.  It was a
kindness, really, that he didn’t tell me.  Or at least he meant it to be.”

“He didn’t want you to know she didn’t want you back?”  He felt Scott nodding
against his shoulder.  “I tell you – knowing’s better than not knowing.  It took
me a long time to realize that.”

“I know.  I don’t blame Charles for not realizing.  And, like *you* said –
you’ve got to be ready.  There was no way I was ready for that information then
and Charles knew it.  He knew I needed to feel secure in his love, not the
rejection of my mother.  I feel like – whatever his intent at the beginning,
whatever his limitations – by that point he truly loved me.  What he did he did
out of love.”

“So, that’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“But there’s something else?  Something that wasn’t so good?”

“How do you know?”

“I know you.  Something’s bugging you still.”

“Yeah, and it’s something I don’t want anyone else on the team to know about,
only you.”

“I can keep my mouth shut.”

“I know it.”

“What is it?”

“He found out about Alex.  He knew he was in that juvenile detention center. I
haven’t read the next volume yet, but I think Charles went to see him.   That’s
what it says at the end of this one, that he’s going to go find him. And try to
help him, bring him here when he’d finished his sentence.”

“Then why didn’t the Professor bring him here when he got out?  Why didn’t he
tell you about him?  And why didn’t Alex tell you he knew him?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe Alex doesn’t know it was Charles.  Maybe Charles went
there under an assumed name.”

“Even if he did, Alex has got to know now.  I mean, how many bald mutant
telepaths in wheelchairs are there?  He’d have to realize who it was.”

“Maybe Charles used his mind control to wipe his memory.  I don’t know.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“I know.  And I have such a bad feeling about this, like I might find something
out I really don’t want to know.  But you’re right - knowing is better than not
knowing.  I’ll read some more tomorrow.  I’ll tell you about it.  You’ll help me
with this?  Listen to me? Help me understand it?”

“Sure.  We can talk about it some more tomorrow, after you’ve read more.”  He
leaned in and kissed Scott, tongue stroking his. “Right now, I want to fuck you
again.  What do you say, Cyclops?”

“Yeah.”


Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#news

I need to make contact with Alexander Summers very soon.  I’ve been watching him
on Cerebro and it appears that he is on the verge of coming into his powers.  I
don’t know yet what his gift is, but if it’s anything related to his brother’s
it could be disastrous for it to emerge in that facility.

Seeing him will not be simple, though.  The policy of the detention center is
that only parents or those they designate may visit.  The result is that he has
not had a single visitor during the time he has been there.  It’s highly
unlikely that his mother will provide me with the letter of reference I’d need
to gain entry as a visitor.  I could produce a letter purportedly from her, or
even use mind control to get her to sign one.  However, my concern is that if
they check with her, my deception will be revealed.

I think I’m better off to come up with a different pretext.  Perhaps I can pose
as a psychologist doing research on incarcerated youth and interview him as one
of a number of subjects.  I can certainly come up with some realistic-appearing
documents and provide some mind control convincing in addition, if necessary. 
Of course, I still run the risk that after the visit my stratagem will be
uncovered and they will find out that the documents are fraudulent, and maybe
even that I’m a mutant.  However, if that does happen, they won’t know that I
had a special interest in one of their inmates, so his mutant status will not be
revealed.  It’s important that whatever I do I do not endanger this young man
through my actions.

Another question I’m mulling over is what to say to him when I meet him.  I do
think I should reveal my true purpose in coming there, and let him know that I
am aware of his mutant status.  I will also offer him assistance in concealing
and controlling his powers.  But how much to tell him about my future plans? It
seems unlikely that I can arrange for an early release for him.  He still has
another two and a half years until he turns 18 and is no longer subject to a
sentence for a juvenile offense.  Will it be helpful to him to know that when
the time comes he will have somewhere to go, a safe environment for mutants?  Or
would the promise of a home so far off in time and place just underscore the
length of his imprisonment?  Perhaps I’m better off to suggest to him that I
might be able to secure his release before then.  Sometimes false hope is better
than none.

One thing I’ve decided not to tell him – that his brother is with me.  Nor will
I tell Scott that I’ve found his younger brother.  Scott has no idea that
Alexander was convicted of his father’s death.  I fear that that would be news
he would not handle well.  He might even want to go to Indiana and turn himself
in, telling the authorities that he, not his brother, was responsible for their
father’s death.  After all the work I’ve put into his training, where would that
leave me?

*******************************************************

Logan looked up from the page and shook his head, ruefully.  “Ain’t that a kick
in the pants.”

“Yeah.  After all that stuff before about making sure I never lacked for
parental love, I get to this.  You know how I told you I felt like he thought of
me as some sort of machine or tool before?  Well, reading this I felt like I was
a valuable racehorse or something – lots of money and effort put into it, can’t
let anything upset it.”  He smiled wryly.  “Sort of makes you wonder if the
‘parental love’ was just another part of the care and feeding.”

“Do you mean that?”

“I sort of do.  I mean, I don’t doubt that he had genuine concern for me, real
affection.  I lived with him for years, from when I was sixteen until his death.
I saw him in all sorts of situations, including really stressful ones.  We’ve
had serious disagreements, even major fights, and he always treated me with
affection and kindness, even when he made clear he had strong objections to the
choices I made.  There had to be something real behind that.

“But for Chrissakes!  The way he writes what he’s thinking when there’s nobody
to see it but him.  What he says about me.  And about Alex!  Lying to him for
expediency’s sake –‘false hope better than none,’ my ass.  In some sense this
has to be the more genuine Charles Xavier than the face he prepared to meet the
faces that he met, if you know what I mean. I wish I’d known this while he was
still alive.  I’d at least like to accuse him of being totally without human
feeling – see if that got a rise out of him.” He shook his head.  “You know it
really sucks being furious with dead people.  You can’t yell at them.”

Logan chuckled.  “I know the feeling, although I usually don’t want to yell,
just kill them.  Slowly.”  He clapped an arm round Scott’s shoulder.  “I’d kill
him for you, if he was alive.  If I thought that’s what you really wanted.  But
you don’t.”

“No.  I want him back, and not to kill him.  To yell at him, but not just that. 
To make him explain himself, to at least have him say he regrets some of this.”

“Like the song says – you can’t always get what you want.”

Scott sighed.  “But sometimes you get what you need. And, truth be told, I got
some of both, along with the answer to my riddle about whether he meant for me
to see these.  Look at this.”  He pulled the notebook out of the bottom of the
pile and opened it from the back, exposing the last entry.

**************************************************************
When I read over these journals I’m shocked by the emotions expressed in them. 
Or, often, by the lack of emotion.  Was I really so focused on my goal that I
lost sight of the people in front of me?  Lost sight of the children in my care?
I have given years of energy and effort into creating the X-Men, and I’ve given
my love and my care to these young people who comprise the team.  I ache with
fear for them whenever I send them into combat.  I don’t know if I could bear it
if they didn’t all come back.  I care for them so deeply I hardly know how to
express it.  And above all for Scott – my Field Leader, my shining son, my hero
who brings them back again and again.  May he never see what I wrote about him
in the earliest of these journals.  May he never know that there was a time when
I didn’t feel for him what I do now, lest the bond be cracked ‘twixt son and
father.
********************************************************************
“So he never meant for you to read them.”

“No.  I guess he forgot all about them.”

“How could he forget?”

Scott shrugged.  “I don’t know.   They were sitting there a long time.  Maybe he
put them there, put them aside, and thought he’d deal with them later.  But it
was fourteen years from that last entry until he died.  It looks like he didn’t
use that safe for anything else.  Maybe he totally forgot it existed.  If I
hadn’t been so anal about reading in order, I could have started at the end and
known he didn’t want me to read them before I made a decision.”  Ironic smile on
his face, he added, “But this way I got to hear some regret, at least.”

“Would you still have read them? If you’d known he didn’t want you to?”

“I don’t know.  I might have felt bound by his wishes, but I might have found
the curiosity outweighed that.  I’m kind of glad I didn’t have that decision to
make, that I read them in good faith, sort of, not realizing he didn’t want me
to.”

“Are you glad you read them?”

“Yeah.  I found out some hard stuff, but I also think it’s stuff I ought to
know.  Like you said, knowing’s better than not knowing.”  He sighed.  “It
doesn’t always feel like it, though.  Particularly the stuff about Alex.”

“So he did see him?”

“Yeah.  A few times.” He shuffled the journals, pulling out an earlier one. 
“You want to read it?”

“I think I’ve read enough.  Can you give me the Cliff Notes version?”

“Yeah, sure.”  Scott flipped pages as he spoke.  “Well, he did it like he said
he would – came up with a pretext of being a researcher studying juvenile
delinquents.  But he told Alex the truth – or some of it, anyway.   He told Alex
that he, Charles, was a mutant and that Alex was, too, and was beginning to
manifest.  He offered to help Alex suppress his powers until he could control
them.”

“He could do that? Suppress mutant powers?”

“Yeah, through mind control.  He did that with Jean’s telepathy until she was
ready to handle it.”

“And your brother took him up on his offer?”

“No, but Charles did it anyway.”

“How come?”

“How come Alex didn’t want him to suppress his gift or how come he did it
anyway?”

“Both.”

“Well, Alex didn’t want him to because he didn’t trust him.  And I can’t say I
blame him.  As far as Alex was concerned, Charles was just this strange guy who
shows up and starts talking about mutants as the next step of evolution and
offering him a place and a life’s mission when he got out of that prison.  Alex
couldn’t relate to any of it.  I doubt he was even convinced yet that he *was* a
mutant. As Charles tells it, he was completely dubious.  He was fifteen years
old and in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed, spending his time with kids
who were a whole hell of a lot older and tougher than he was.  He was scared for
his life a lot of the time.”  He patted the journal.  “It’s all in here.  Alex
wasn’t buying what Charles was selling.  He didn’t want a vision for a mutant
future – he wanted practical help right then and there.  Charles suggested he
might get him out early like he said.  Well, false hope wasn’t better than none
– it just convinced Alex that Charles has grand plans but doesn’t deliver.  And
he was still hoping,” and here his voice got soft, “that I’d show up and rescue
him.”  Scott sighed again.  “I think if he’d told Alex I was with him, if he’d
told me about Alex – it might all have come out differently.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“He didn’t tell me because he worried it would upset me.  A few more of those
‘high strung race horse’ passages around that whole issue.  He worried I’d want
to spring him, that I wouldn’t wait for his sentence to be over.  And he’s
right.  We could have done it, too.  No one knew who the X-Men were then.  We
could have gotten him out.  I would have done it, with Charles’s blessing or
without.  Jean, Hank, Warren – they would have done what I told them to.  They
wouldn’t have let Alex just rot there, no matter what Charles said, not if I
told them what happened.  And I would have – as ashamed as I was of what
happened to my father, I could have put that aside if I’d known there was a
chance to save Alex, if I’d known he’d taken the rap for me.  It all would have
been different.”

“Why didn’t he tell Alex you were with him?”

“He’s less clear on that.  He thought he could win him over without it.  He
worried, I think, that Alex would want to talk to me and then we get back to
objection number one:  don’t upset the Field Leader with trivialities like the
knowledge that his brother confessed to murder on his behalf and took his place
in prison.” Scott shook his head.  “You know, I just about hate him when I think
of that.  I’ve forgiven him for a lot, including letting Sabretooth and Toad out
and all that led to.  And since one thing it led to was me being kidnapped and
almost killed, it felt personal. It was a hard thing to forgive, but I did.  I
got over it.  I don’t know if I’ll get over this one.  I’ve got a feeling that
forgiving dead people is harder than forgiving the living.”  He shrugged. 
“Well, I’ll see, since I’ve likely got to do both.”

“Who else you mad at?”

Scott didn’t answer directly.  “I *hate* being lied to.  That he made bad
decisions – or at least decisions I view as bad ones – that I can accept.  But
that he knew about Alex all that time and never told me, that’s harder.  As hard
as reading that stuff about how he made me *wait* to be desperate enough. 
Charles was lying to me every day, for years.  He was lying implicitly most of
the time and explicitly when he talked about how sorry he was that he hadn’t
found me earlier.  You should have heard him – right after he got sick – telling
me how he felt he failed me.  Shit!  It was all lies.”

“You think so?”

“Not exactly.  I’ve been wondering why he said that stuff.  It was kind of out
of the blue.  I think maybe it was his way of apologizing for a lot of it, for
things he felt I might not forgive, things he was too scared to disclose. 
Particularly then – he was so sick and vulnerable and dependent on me.  He
wasn’t going to tell me right then how he’d lied, he wouldn’t want to risk my
anger and my rejection.  And later – well, he didn’t really have a later.”

“He had enough time to tell you where your brother was before he died.”

“Yeah, he did.  And that’s going to be the hardest to forgive him for.”  Scott
slammed the book.  “Damn you, Charles Xavier!” he said to it, softly.

“So, who else are you mad at?  Me?”  Scott shook his head.  “Alex?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened with him?”

“Well, Charles visited him from time to time, trying to win him over.  And then
right before his release, trying to get him to come here, join the team.”

“He wouldn’t?  Why not?  Where’d he have to go?”

“That was Charles’s hope – that he’d come since he didn’t have anywhere to go.
He’d released the control on Alex’s powers by then. He offered to bring him back
with him.  .  Alex said he needed to go home first.  Charles gave him $500 to
tide him over and for transportation, and told him to meet him in Westchester in
a couple of weeks.”

“And your mother gave him a chilly reception?”

“She undoubtedly would have, if he’d gone to her, but he didn’t.  He never went
back to Goodland. He and Charles’s money disappeared.  I’d say without a trace,
except he’s easy to trace.  From petty crimes to less petty ones to major
felonies within five years.  And then in and out of prison until last year, when
Adam found him for me.”

“And you sold your soul and the X-Men to get him out.”

“Yeah.”

“And he acted like he knew nothing of the Professor except what he’d read in the
papers.  He made you feel as guilty as he could for what happened to him.”

“Exactly.”

Logan didn’t say anything for a long time.  “Let me know if you want him dead,”
was all he finally said.

“Thanks, but I can handle him.”

*****************************************************************
Scott found Alex in the Danger Room that evening, practicing solo.  “You lied to
me,” he said, without preamble.

“What about?”

Scott laughed, short and hollow.  “Too many lies to know?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Charles had offered you a place on the team, offered to
help you years ago?”

“Oh that.”

“Yeah that.”

He sighed.  “Look, I could make up some story, but you probably wouldn’t believe
it.  I might as well tell you the truth.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

“I thought you wouldn’t help me if you knew.  I thought you’d figure I had my
chance and I blew it – blew the money he gave me for transportation and the
chance at a new life.  I thought you’d leave me there.”  He looked at Scott
sidelong.  “Was I right?”

“Yes.  No.  I don’t know.  It wasn’t easy getting you out of there.  I might
have told you to wait it out.  I might have been more wary of taking you on.  I
don’t know.”

“Scott, I don’t know if you can believe this, but I didn’t know about you.  He
never told me you were with him.  It’s hard to believe, I’m sure, but he
didn’t.”

“I believe you.  Not because you’re so convincing, but because I know it’s true.
I found old diaries of Charles’s.  That’s how I know about any of this. I hate
him for not telling me he’d found you, for not telling you he’d found me.  For
keeping us apart.”

“If I’d known, I would have come with him in a heartbeat.  I would have gone
anywhere to join you then.  But to be with some weird old guy who wanted to put
together some kind of mutant army?  It just seemed crazy.  I figured I’d make my
own way.”

“Through armed robbery, among other things.”  Alex didn’t answer.  “So why are
you joining a mutant army now?  I’m as crazy as he was, you know, if that’s the
measure of crazy.  I’m trying to fulfill his legacy.  Why come with me?”

“It was a way to get out.”

“And you could have disappeared again once I got you out.  You still can. 
You’re not locked in here.”

“Are you telling me to go?”

“No, I’m asking why you’re staying.  Why you’ve stayed all these months.”

“Because you’re my brother.  You and I are all the family we’ve got, Scott.
There’s a connection between us, something important.”

“Blood is thicker than water?”

“Nah, not judging by our parents, anyway.  But there’s something, something real
between you and me.  What about this?”  Plasma force emerged from Alex’s hand,
shimmering in the air as it moved towards Scott, leaving a tingling sensation in
his chest where it landed.  “You’re the only person that does no damage to.  I’m
the only one that can see your eyes.  Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“It does.  I don’t know what.  When we met – in that prison – and you told me to
take off my glasses, it did something to me.  I hadn’t seen a human being up
close and in color in almost twenty years.  You’re the only person in the world
I can look in the eye.  It’s something, something... transcendent. Transcends
the time we were apart, anyway.  But it’s not everything.  I can’t stand to be
lied to.”

“I’m telling you the truth now.”  Neither said anything for a moment.  “I’ve got
nowhere to go.  I’m not saying I’m comfortable here.  I’m not saying I’m some
sort of model mutant like you.  But I’m staying.  And I’m trying.”

“Yeah, Storm says you’re making good progress lately.”

“Does that count for something?”

“I don’t know how much.  You’re a pain in the ass most of the time, Alex.  Half
the team has complained about you to me.  And the other half probably wants to
and thinks they shouldn’t because you’re my brother.”

“Do you want me to leave?”  Alex looked more serious, more sincere, than Scott
remembered seeing him since he’d joined up.

“No,” he replied after a pause.  “I want you to stay.  I want you stop lying to
me and I want you to stop being a pain in the ass.  Do you think you can manage
that?”

Alex grinned at him.  “Time will tell.”

“Time will say nothing but I told you so.”

“Is that from Shakespeare or something?”

“Wrong century.  Auden.”

“You know I don’t know that high brow shit.”

“What did I expect from someone who spells ‘havoc’ with a ‘k’?”

The serious look came back to Alex’s face.  “I am sorry I lied.  I’d do it again
if it meant getting out, I won’t tell you otherwise.  I’m just sorry it was you
I had to do it to.  And I am trying.”

“You’re very trying – at least that’s what half the team tells me.”

“Ha ha.”

“Okay.  We’ll try, too – try to make an X-Man out of you.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t let me catch you lying to me again.” He paused and added, “I get why you
did.  It’s certainly more Charles’s fault than yours.  He should have told you. 
He should have told me about you.  I’m furious with him that he didn’t.”

“But I’m easier to yell at.”

“Indeed.  Maybe easier to forgive, too.  We’ll see.  I want to let go of this. 
I’m willing to try.  ‘What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief.’ I
believe that; I want to live by it.”

“Auden again?”

“Shakespeare, this time.”

“I give up.”

“Good idea.”

Scott took off his glasses, looked straight into his brother’s eyes, and smiled.



Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited

In my stories, as in the X-Men movie, Scott Summers is a mutant superhero who
also teaches high school.  The movie doesn't specify what he teaches, but I've
made him an English teacher.  Xavier's Academy is a small school with a large
variety of classes to choose from.  Consequently each of the teachers takes on
several different classes.  Scott is seen in my stories teaching courses ranging
from Shakespeare to Creative Writing to a poetry survey course, when he's not
off on a mission.  As Scott tells Logan in Canadian Nights, it's kind of a
strange job. "Sometimes I teach English, sometimes I save the human race," he
explains.

With Scott a major figure in most of my fiction, the stories tend to contain a
lot of literary quotes, most of them guided by Scott's tastes in literature
(which, strangely, mirror my own). It has been my practice to publish a
literature guide providing references for the quotes in each series, along with
URLs, where available, for those wishing to read the works quoted.

This series, in addition to literary content, raises some issues that might be
of interest to some readers in the Northstar subplot.  After the literary
descriptions there is some further information on homosexuality in Judaism, and
on the legal status of same-sex parents.

Poems

W.H. Auden.  "Villanelle"
A villanelle is a fairly uncommon form of poetry, the best known example of
which is Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”  Auden’s
villanelle deals with a familiar theme – man’s inability to conquer time.  The
words are sparse and the images evocative.  Read the poem and some interesting
commentary on it, and on villanelles in general, at
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/677.html

T.S. Eliot. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
This poem is one of Scott’s favorites and shows up in most of my series. 
Although Cyclops is commanding and decisive in his work life (essential
characteristics for a Field Leader of a combat team) my Scott has difficulty
making decisions in his personal life, and relates to Prufrock for that reason. 
The title of the third story, “Decisions and Revisions,” in which Scott is
trying to decide whether or not to read the diaries, comes from Prufrock.  He
also quotes the poem with reference to Charles, saying that what’s revealed in
the diaries must be more the true Charles than when he “prepares a face to meet
the faces that he meets.”  Is he right?  I’m not sure.  I don’t think Scott’s
private self is more him than his public Cyclops persona or his English teacher
persona.  I don’t even think the private power dynamics between him and Logan
are just games, or he wouldn’t find them so compelling.  I believe that
Prufrock’s view is only one way of looking at self, and that people really are
all the different facets of their personality at the same time, not a real self
that’s private and a false one that’s shown.  Read the poem at
http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html and decide who is the real Prufock.

Sylvia Plath. "Cut"
One of the premier poets of the twentieth century, Plath’s short and troubled
life is chronicled in her poetry.  Scott is teaching Plath during the poetry
lesson that Jean sits in on.  The poem they’re discussing begins “What a thrill
– my thumb instead of an onion.”  The imagery is astonishingly vivid in the
poem.  Read it at http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cut/.

Carl Sandburg.  "Chicago"
Probably Sandburg’s best known poem, it was featured in my X2 fiction, where
Scott quotes it to Logan and the way it resonates with the Chicago Logan
remembers makes them realize he’s a lot older than they think.  In this series
it’s Charles who quotes from Chicago, saying that Scott was “under the terrible
burden of destiny.”  The poem can be found many places, including
http://www.bartleby.com/165/1.html.

William Shakespeare.  Sonnet 23
The Shakespearean sonnets figure largely in my stories.  Scott teaches
Shakespeare and is fond of several of the sonnets, in particular those addressed
to the Fair Youth, Will’s lover.  This is one of Scott’s favorites and it gives
the title to the sixth story.  It’s also one of the most accessible sonnets, as
the language seems almost modern.  Read it at
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/23.html.

Sonnet 27
This sonnet is about long distance relationships, before there was such a term. 
It provides the title for the second story, featuring Jean-Paul and Adam (who
spent the early years of their relationship in different countries).  You can
find it at http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/27.html.

Sonnet 30
This sonnet, about melancholy and a tendency to self-pity, is one with pretty
universal appeal.  Will tells of how sad memories can kind of overpower someone,
resulting in tears and grief.  It ends on a much happier note, though, as he
thinks of his lover (the "Fair Youth", whose identity is subject of much
debate), saying:
"But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end."
Adam references the poem when he says that "remembrance of things past" is
rushing in without summoning, when he begins to recall his night with Jake.  The
phrase "remembrance of things past" is also the title of the English translation
of Proust's novel, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, which was featured in Safe
House.  The English title clearly comes from this sonnet, though, since it is
not a translation of the original French title.

Plays

William Shakespeare.  Hamlet.
This is my favorite play of all, and it shows up a fair amount in my fiction,
including Scott teaching a lesson about it in Commencement.  In this series, he
quotes Prince Hamlet’s first line in the play, “a little more than kin and a
little less than kind.”  It also gives the title to the ninth story.  Probably
Shakespeare's best known play, Hamlet has something for everyone:  love, death,
intrigue, theatricality, ghosts.  Read it at
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamletscenes.asp.

King Lear.
One of the most emotionally affecting of the tragedies, Lear is a story of
parent/child betrayal – in both directions.  Charles quotes from the play in his
diary when he says that he wants Scott never to see what is written there lest
the bond be cracked ‘twixt son and father.  Read the play at
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/learscenes.html.

Macbeth.
Scott quotes from Macbeth a few times in the course of the series.  Macbeth is
widely believed to be an unlucky play.  Superstitious actors often won't even
say the play's title except when necessary, referring to it instead as "the
Scottish play."  Read it if you dare at
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/macbethscenes.asp

Oscar Wilde.  A Woman of No Importance.
Wilde’s epigrams and witty repartee make him eminently quotable.   Scott likes
him as a poet, too, and includes some of his poetry in the curriculum.  In this
series, the line “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that
every saint has a past and every sinner has a future” gives the title to the
eighth story.  The Project Gutenberg version of the play can be found at
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/854.


Novels

Philip Roth.  Portnoy’s Complaint
Breathtakingly original when it came out, Roth’s story of a neurotic American
Jew has been much copied, but never matched.  It’s brilliant in its
characterizations, screamingly funny, astute in observations of human foibles. 
It also exhibits the unthinking misogyny that mars Roth’s novels.  In
particular, this one gave us the stereotype of the smothering and
neuroses-inducing Jewish mother.  Adam identifies with Portnoy and mentions that
when he tells Jean-Paul “Love me, love my neuroses.”  Portnoy is not available
free online, but can be found in any public library or bookstore.


Miscellaneous Works and Some Speculations on Biblical Sex

Tanakh.  Two books of the Tanakh (Jewish bible) are referenced in Adam’s story
about his relationship with Yossi.  As Adam points out to Jean-Paul, the books
are also included in the Christian bible (although he mistakenly says “your
bible” to Jean-Paul and is corrected). The book of Leviticus, Chapter 18, is
referenced in the prescription against anal sex as “toevah” – abomination.  See
notes below on homosexuality in Judaism for more on that.

The story of David and Jonathan and their love for each other is told in Samuel,
Book 1, particularly in chapters 18 and 20.  When their relationship is first
introduced the narrative says that David loved Jonathan “as he loved his own
soul.” That line gives the title to the story in which Adam and Jean-Paul talk
about this.  In chapter 20 of Samuel, Book 1, David and Jonathan are seen
kissing and it says “they kissed each other and they cried with each other until
David got big.”  What does that mean?  We really can’t know, and different
people have different interpretations.

It’s always difficult to try to interpret something from a different time and
place and in a different language (what I gave above is a literal translation –
some translations have it as “David wept more” or “David exerted himself” or
“David exceeded”).  We need to be careful not to impose our cultural assumptions
on a different culture.  It’s pretty easy to jump to the conclusion that they
were lovers in a sexual sense just because they kiss and love each other and
Jonathan strips in front of David and gives him all his clothing and David “gets
big” when he kisses him.  Hmm.  It kind of sounds pretty sexual to modern ears.

On the other hand we also need to be careful not to impose our cultural taboos
on a different culture – in this case our internalized homophobia - and assume
that they could not be lovers because David is a hero.  But what about those
verses in Leviticus?  Is it likely that someone portrayed as hero would violate
them?

I think that’s a complicated question.  For one thing it’s unclear exactly what
is meant by “Mishkevay Isha” – the acts forbidden between men that men engage in
with women.  Still, for argument’s sake, let’s say that all sexual activity
between men is forbidden in Leviticus and deemed “toevah” - abomination.  The
simple fact is that many things are forbidden in one part of the Tanakh yet
shown engaged in by highly admirable people in other parts.  Sex with one’s
half-sister is similarly marked “toevah” – yet Abraham and Sarah are
half-siblings and their marriage is admired.  Similarly, sex with a woman and
then with her sister is forbidden as an abomination in Leviticus, but our
patriarch Jacob married Leah and then her sister Rachel.  So, it’s not at all
unusual to see these seeming contradictions, leading some to believe that
“toevah” is not a general category, but particular to time and place.

In addition, David is not an unambiguously heroic figure.  He is shown to have
some very human failings and is criticized in the text for them.  In particular,
his sexual irregularities are condemned (e.g. the whole episode with Bathsheva).
But his love for Jonathan is not presented as anything but wholly wonderful,
except in the eyes of Saul, who is suffering from severe mental illness.  So, we
would have to conclude either that their relationship was sexual and approved of
by the author of the book, or that it was not sexual at all and approved of. 
Different people come to different conclusions.

Read the story yourself and see what you think.  It’s easily available in both
Jewish and Christian bibles (but only the Jewish ones will give you the original
text as well as a translation).  Taken in its entirety, I think it takes a huge
effort of denial to not see David and Jonathan as in love and their love
expressed physically.  But there are still some people who think Will and the
Fair Youth weren’t lovers, either.

Shelby Foote. The Civil War: a narrative.  Considered by many to be the premiere
historian of the American Civil War, Shelby Foote was not trained as an
historian and, in fact, never completed a college degree.  His history reads
like a novel, yet is known for its attention to detail and its accuracy.  Havok
tells Storm that he was hooked on the Civil War from when he first read Shelby
Foote.

Tangential Issues

A couple of issues come up in the Jean-Paul and Adam subplot of the series that
I’d like to provide a little more information on.  Adam tells Jean-Paul a story
from his youth, of having been in love with a high school classmate, an Orthodox
Jew. Jean-Paul tells Alex that he and Adam are still working on getting legal
parental rights to Ezra (also alluded to in What’s Past is Prologue).   Some
further information and further reading/viewing opportunities on both of these
issues.

Homosexuality in Judaism
The different branches of Judaism approach most things differently and
homosexual behavior is not an exception.  Traditionally, Judaism has not been
accepting of any kind of sexual contact between two men or two women, and has
not acknowledged gay or lesbian relationships.  The more progressive branches of
Judaism – Reconstructionist and Reform Judaism – have long been at least
somewhat accepting of gay and lesbian couples, and have ordained out gay and
lesbian rabbis for some time.
It can, on the other hand, be very difficult to be a gay Orthodox Jew, and
Yossi’s accommodation to his homosexuality through hiding it and eschewing a
particular sex act, is a common one.  There are few, if any, Orthodox synagogues
where openly gay members are fully accepted.  Much more common is a strong
opprobrium attached to anyone thought to be gay.

The Conservative movement attempts to be the bridge between the more traditional
Orthodoxy and more progressive Reform movement.  It tries – as its name suggests
– to conserve what is of value in long held Jewish tradition while updating
practice as needed for a modern Jewish community.  As a movement, Conservative
Judaism is currently struggling with gay issues, and particular Conservative
shuls have a variety of approaches, from full acceptance to active
discrimination.  The official position of the movement includes approval of
acceptance of gay men and lesbians, but not acceptance of same sex kiddushin
(holy marriage) and also maintains the requirement that Yossi found so hard to
comply with, that men not engage in anal sex.

A couple of good resources on lesbians and gay men in Orthodoxy are widely
available.  The documentary film “Trembling Before G-d” offers a window into the
hidden lives of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews.  Rabbi Steven Greenberg, an
openly gay Orthodox rabbi, has written a very accessible and fascinating book on
homosexuality and Judaism, called  Wrestling with G-d and Men: homosexuality in
the Jewish Tradition.

For a summary of the Conservative movement’s current struggle with
homosexuality, see my entry at http://mofic.livejournal.com/43675.html.
Extensive discussion of the issue can be found on the website of the Jewish
Theological Seminary at http://www.jtsa.edu/cjls/index.shtml.

Legal Status of Same-Sex Parents

As Jean-Paul says to Alex, he and Adam were unable to adopt together.  He
expresses this kind of simplistically, saying that because they could not be
legally married in “this benighted country” they could not jointly adopt.

The issue is somewhat more complicated than he mentions in a brief conversation
during training, but it’s quite true that marriage affords an enormous
assortment of rights and privileges in the United States, all of which are
denied to same-sex couples (and frequently taken for granted by opposite-sex
ones).  Adam adopted Ezra as if he were single, using a gay-friendly social
worker to do the home study and a gay- and mutant-friendly adoption agency.  Now
they are adopting again – going through another home study and another legal
procedure.  In New York State, where they live, it will likely take two years to
complete the second parent adoption, and it would be a good thing if the X-Men
start getting paid again, because it will cost them.   For more information on
the achieving legal rights for same-sex parents – mutant or otherwise – see my
Gay Parenting 101 series, particularly http://mofic.livejournal.com/38183.html 
What is the Legal Status of Same-Sex Parents?,
http://mofic.livejournal.com/38183.html Tools to Protect Gay and Lesbian
Families, Part 1, Second Parent Adoption, and
http://mofic.livejournal.com/39607.html   Tools to Protect Gay and Lesbian
Families, Part 2, Civil Union, etc.


Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate
in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367

Title: Days of Becoming, Chapter 8 - "Measured Response"
Author: Talktooloose
'Verse: X-Men movieverse
Pairing: Pyro/Iceman primarily and eventually but others as well, het and hom
Warnings: Swearing, I think. It means nothing to me, so I don't
really take note. Bubbling sexuality. Implied use of hand lotion as a
sexual aid. Bad puns.
Series Summary: This novel focuses mainly on the paths Iceman and
Pyro take on their way to adulthood and how they discover and deal
with their love for each other. It is a novel about what Joni
Mitchell calls "the dream's malfunction" and how we can learn to make
our own dreams when our heroes fail us. Other X characters and OC's
play prominent roles and the action begins before X1, continues
through the events of X2 and X3 and concludes in the aftermath of
that movie.
Chapter Summary: The characters react to the shooting in Pasadena. At
the mansion, they plan action; in Boston, a disillusioned Mike meets
an interesting girl; at the mutant youth meeting in New York, Bobby
makes a bold (or is it foolish) move. Bobby and Kitty wonder what's
up with all the spandex.
Betas: kuriadalmatia and lux_apollo. My betas' feedback really pushed
me to clarify both the action and the character intentions here.
Humble thanks.
Disclaimers: Marvel and 20th Century own this stuff but they need us
to make sense of it.


The Chapter can be found at:
<http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/chapter08.html>http://toothdemon.net/ttl/f\
anfic/dob/chapter08.html

Earlier chapters are at the DOB homepage: http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/

A comments link can be found at the end of the chapter. Your feedback
is appreciated.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Life Lessons
by ridesandruns
Characters: Scott, Jean, Warren, Darwin the Beagle
Rating: T for profanity
Genre: Humor
Summary: Scott has a crisis of confidence

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3364673/1/

Enjoy!

February's interview will be with Gersemi, author of such stories
as "Feelin' You," "Kiss Me, I'm Irish," "Domestic Life" and
the "Facades" series among others. You can read her stories at the new
WRFA site (http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/index.php) People can
suggest questions through February 9th. Send them to me at the address
below.

Thanks for your interest and enjoy the new movie!

Diane
deh@...

I've added a few essays to my website at http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/

Although it is primarily an archive for my fiction, I occasionally publish
non-fiction there on slash-related topics, in a section called "Musings."  The
essays I've recently added are a collection of writings on lesbian and gay
parenting that I'm collectively calling "Gay Parenting 101."  I thought they
might be useful to slash writers who want to include some real life gay
parenting information in their stories, and might be of general interest to some
readers.

Topics in this series so far are:

How Do Gay Men and Lesbians Have Children?
What is the Legal Status of Same-Sex Parents?
Death and Divorce
Tools to Protect Gay and Lesbian Families
Coming Out Isn't Talking Dirty
Choosing a School Which Supports Gay Families


Drop by if you get a chance.  I'd also love to hear if anyone can suggest other
topics that I should include.

Mo
Mofic Website: http://mo.fandomnation.com/fic/
www.livejournal.com/users/mofic



________________________________________________________________________________\
____
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com

Title: Days of Becoming, Chapter 9: "Like a Wave"
Author: Talktooloose

Warnings: Explicit sexual contact (het, yet!), swearing, avowals of
innocence.

Series Summary: This novel focusses mainly on the paths Iceman and Pyro take
on their way to adulthood and how they discover and deal with their love for
each other. It is a novel about what Joni Mitchell calls "the dream's
malfunction" and how we can learn to make our own dreams when our heroes
fail us. Other X characters and OC's play prominent roles and the action
begins before X1, continues through the events of X2 and X3 and concludes in
the aftermath of that movie.

Chapter Summary: A short chapter about kissing. Three days before school
starts, Jean and Scott console themselves, Mike and Jubilee meet again and
sparks fly, Bobby and Kitty circle round the issue, Raheem and Andi get
heated, a homeless boy works to stay alive.

Betas: lux_apollo, mofic and kuriadalmatia. Thanks as always.

Disclaimers: Marvel and 20th Century own this stuff but they need us to make
sense of it.

The chapter can be found at:
http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/chapter09.html

For earlier chapters, visit the DOB homepage:
http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/

Hi everybody,

I wanted to let you know that Gersemi's author interview is
now up at the Wolverine and Rogue Fanfiction Archive
(http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/categories.php?catid=9) for your
reading pleasure. So, swing by, take a look and enjoy!

Diane

Title: Days of Becoming, Chapter 10: "Shivering with Anticipation"

Author: Talktooloose

'Verse: X-Men movieverse

Warnings: Kitty says a naughty word, but that's about it.

Series Summary: This novel focusses mainly on the paths Iceman and
Pyro take on their way to adulthood and how they discover and deal
with their love for each other. It is a novel about what Joni
Mitchell calls "the dream's malfunction" and how we can learn to make
our own dreams when our heroes fail us. Other X characters and OC's
play prominent roles and the action begins before X1, continues
through the events of X2 and X3 and concludes in the aftermath of
that movie.

Chapter Summary: The first day of school in Westchester! Exhilaration
and chaos! More mutants than you can shake a stick at! Lust.
Meanwhile in Boston, Mike meets the faces of fear. St. John, where
are you?

Betas: mofic and kuriadalmatia. Thanks as always.

Disclaimers: Marvel and 20th Century own this stuff but they need us
to make sense of it.

The Chapter can be found at:
http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob/chapter10.html

For earlier chapters, visit the DOB homepage:
http://toothdemon.net/ttl/fanfic/dob

April's interview will be with Deep_Salt_Water, author of such stories
as "Adrenaline," "Succor, "Ensnare," and "Instinct" among others. You
can read her stories at the new WRFA site
(http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/index.php) and/or her LJ (
http://deep-salt-water.livejournal.com/).  People can suggest
questions through April 6th. Send them to me at the address below.

Thanks for your interest and enjoy the new movie!

Diane
deh@...

Title: Sweet Home Alabama

http://rachel-martin64.livejournal.com/9829.html#cutid1

Author: Rachel Martin

Verse: Movieverse. Starts at the beginning of X3 and immediately goes AU.

Summary: Scott saves a life along the interstate and learns that no good
deed goes unpunished.

Rating: PG-13 for language. A mention of abortion that may offend some
readers.

Word Count: 7,437 (Complete)

Characters: Scott, Charles, Bobby, Ororo, Logan.

Disclaimer: The X-Men universe is the property of Marvel Comics and 20th
Century Fox. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.

Thanks to ridesandruns for the inspiration!

Notes: This story was written as part of the Summer(s) Fling challenge, at:
http://community.livejournal.com/summers_fling/profile   Authors who have
posted so far: glastea, harmonyangel, lilacsigil, minisinoo, nagi_schwarz,
resolute, ridesandruns, roguewords, sionnain, st_aurafina, stubbleglitter,
tanya_ltp, xenokattz, zoe_chan

_________________________________________________________________
Watch free concerts with Pink, Rod Stewart, Oasis and more. Visit MSN
Presents today.
http://music.msn.com/presents?icid=ncmsnpresentstagline&ocid=T002MSN03A07001

Rachel--
I have not yet had the chance to read your story-- well, it just got posted,
after all-- but I wanted to write and let you know that as soon as I saw your
name, my heart did a little skip!!  I just love your work in general, and I have
really been missing Scott lately: there's been a dearth of fic; neither Whedon's
X-Men nor Ultimate really get Scott as far as I'm concerned, X-3 was the only
possible retelling that could make me miss X-2.....
thank you so much for letting us know about the "SUmmers Fling" .... I can't
wait to find some time, pour some wine, and spend an evening with Scott. : )

Tarrenn




-----Original Message-----
From: xmenmoviefanfic@yahoogroups.com
To: xmenmoviefanfic@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 4:09 AM
Subject: [xmmff] Digest Number 1467





X-Men Movie Fanfiction
Messages In This Digest (1 Message)
1. New Fic: Sweet Home Alabama From: Rachel Martin
View All Topics | Create New Topic Message
1. New Fic: Sweet Home Alabama
Posted by: "Rachel Martin" rachel_martin64@...   rachel_martin64
Sun Apr 1, 2007 7:10 pm (PST)

Title: Sweet Home Alabama

http://rachel-martin64.livejournal.com/9829.html#cutid1

Author: Rachel Martin

Verse: Movieverse. Starts at the beginning of X3 and immediately goes AU.

Summary: Scott saves a life along the interstate and learns that no good
deed goes unpunished.

Rating: PG-13 for language. A mention of abortion that may offend some
readers.

Word Count: 7,437 (Complete)

Characters: Scott, Charles, Bobby, Ororo, Logan.

Disclaimer: The X-Men universe is the property of Marvel Comics and 20th
Century Fox. No money is being made and no infringement is intended.

Thanks to ridesandruns for the inspiration!

Notes: This story was written as part of the Summer(s) Fling challenge, at:
http://community.livejournal.com/summers_fling/profile Authors who have
posted so far: glastea, harmonyangel, lilacsigil, minisinoo, nagi_schwarz,
resolute, ridesandruns, roguewords, sionnain, st_aurafina, stubbleglitter,
tanya_ltp, xenokattz, zoe_chan

__________________________________________________________
Watch free concerts with Pink, Rod Stewart, Oasis and more. Visit MSN
Presents today.
http://music.msn.com/presents?icid=ncmsnpresentstagline&ocid=T002MSN03A07001


Back to top Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post
Messages in this topic (1) Recent Activity
  1 New Files
Visit Your Group
SPONSORED LINKS
X-men
Uncanny x-men
X-men evolution
Apprentice LA
Who will be next?
Play the Bix.com
faceoff to see!
Yahoo! Search
Find it now
Everything you
need in one place.
Yahoo! Movies
What's Hot Now
Check out the top
rated movies.
Need to Reply?
Click one of the "Reply" links to respond to a specific message in the Daily
Digest.Create New Topic | Visit Your Group on the Web
Messages | Files | Photos | Links | Database | Polls | Calendar
"A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously
or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries."

Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Individual | Switch format to
Traditional
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe

________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL
at AOL.com.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi everybody,

I wanted to let you know that Deep_Salt_Water's author interview is
now up at the Wolverine and Rogue Fanfiction Archive
(http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/wrfa/categories.php?catid=9) for your
reading pleasure. So, swing by, take a look and enjoy!

Diane