Lycanthropy 3

[nike_ravus]

Title: Lycanthropy (Part 3)

Author: Alsike

Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds x-over

Pairing: Emma Frost/Peter Parker, Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss

Rating: NC-17

AN/Disclaimer: Not my girls.

Word Count: 3174

Prompt: 034. Animalistic

Apologies: Too hot tonight, will splash it around later, but I told myself I'd post a chapter every day, and apparently breaking promises to myself is too horrifying to contemplate.
 

 

Kissing the counselor in the bathroom was probably not the best idea Emma had ever had.  But she was sick of this, of the heat that bubbled up inside her like a cauldron on full boil.  She had never managed to leave an encounter with the woman without desperately needing some release of tension.  If she had been a martial artist she would have probably beaten someone up.  Instead she fucked her boyfriend until he couldn’t walk, and that wasn’t going to work today.

So she had defused the bomb instead.

It wasn’t as if the woman was unattractive, even while red in the face and calling her a slut, and then when Emma kept a firm grip on her sanity and not engaged, she had looked up at her, smiled, as if she were seeing a person rather than a body, looked hopeful.  And she had had peanut butter in her hair.  You couldn’t feel offended by someone who had peanut butter in her hair.

Technically it was the wrong thing to do.  She was engaged, and she wasn't about to risk that, but it was just a kiss.  She hadn’t expected it to work.  And in truth she had just wanted to try touching her, increase the contact, and see if that would reduce the burn and sparking.  But Emily had tilted her head up, silently begging to be kissed, and it was pretty obvious she was desperate.  She might as well do her a favor.

But it had worked.  Emma just really hadn’t expected the conversation that came next.

“Have you heard of Sinclair’s?”

Emma blinked.  “Is that a restaurant?”

The counselor let out a short bark of laughter.  “It’s… a disease.  There was a case in the papers a while back, about the man who-“

Emma frowned and cut her off.  “Who murdered the boyfriend of that woman he hardly knew and got off on a medical excuse?  I remember that.  One of my students wrote a current events paper on it.”

“He didn’t get off.  He was sent to a mental clinic.”

That sounded like getting off to her.  “What does this have to do with anything?”  Uncomfortably she thought of the paper.  The man had said it was destiny, and he could not bear betrayal.  “We’re not insane, for one.”

Emily just looked at her.  “It doesn’t feel that way to you?”

“But it’s…” Emma needed to find a way to fight this.  “The doctors called it sex pheromones or something.  This isn’t-“

“Isn’t sex?  What do you think you did to me to make it stop?”

Emma gave her a wry look.  “I hate to break it to you, darling, but kissing is not sex.”

Emily snorted with laughter, her mouth wide and pleased, and it was like a knife in the gut.  Emma knew what that mouth felt like now, and she wanted it, all over her.  It was a terrible thing to realize so late, but of course it was sex.  All the tension was sexual tension.  It had to be.  There was no other reason that her fiancé was walking bowlegged.

“Do you have something you need to tell me?”

Emily breathed in shakily.  She looked like she needed a hand to steady her, but Emma couldn’t give it.  She knew what she was going to say, and the fear was subtle but overwhelming.

“I have it.  I’m positive for Sinclair’s Disease.  And I’m so afraid I’ll hurt you.  I’m scared I can’t control this.”

“Then stay away from me.”  Emma didn’t know anything about this.  She didn’t know why she was afraid, but it was obvious that there was a real reason to be.  “Stay out of my way and far far away from my fiancé.  Do you understand?”

Emily looked at her wide-eyed, but she nodded.  That almost made it worse.  She desperately wanted the counselor to tell her that it wasn’t that dangerous, that she was strong enough to make it work.  But clearly this was not the case.  Emily hurriedly rummaged through her pockets and pulled out what looked like a pen.

“Here, take this.  If you need to…” she gave a small weak smile.  “Just stick me with it.  It should knock me out in a few minutes.”

Emma stared at it.  “Tranquilizers?”

“Something like that.”  Emily turned to go.  “I’m sorry,” she said.  “For making so much trouble for you.”

Emma didn’t respond and in a moment the door was swinging shut behind her.

*            *            *

It had been the worst day ever and all Emily wanted to do was lock herself in her office and cry.  She couldn’t, as there was a staff meeting, so she sat in the corner and felt nauseated instead.  There had been one moment, just one single perfect moment, where everything had been better than she could imagine, where she felt happy instead of miserable, and hopeful instead of afraid.  It hadn’t lasted.  It never did for her.

*            *            *

“What are you reading?”  Peter peeked over her shoulder as he came in and Emma moved to close the file, but then she stopped.  “Sinclair’s disease?  Huh.  One of the guys in my lab was working on that for a while.  He said half of the garbage out there’s myth.  It’s a simple hormone imbalance, too much adrenaline or something.  All of the mates and the transformations, they just are Hollywood additions to an anger management problem.”

Emma frowned and looked at him.  “Do you think he’s right?”

“Well, he lost his grant after blowing most of it on Jaeger, so I wouldn’t really call him an authority.”

“The mating part… I’d never heard of that.”

Peter blinked and took off his glasses.  “It’s been in the news a lot lately.  Some people with Sinclair’s claim that they have a weird reaction when they meet someone, an adrenaline rush, my colleague was trying to prove, and they interpret that as a sign of predestined love.”  He laughed lightly.  “It’s not my area, but Oxytocin can be dangerous.”  He smiled at her and gave her the look that meant he wanted to kiss her.  Emma ignored it.

“What about the person that they meet, the one without the disease.  Would they have a reaction?”

Peter frowned slightly.  “I really don’t know.  But it's lycanthropy; it’s absurd.  Wolves mate for life,” he said in a funny voice.

“It’s not a joke!”  Emma jerked the Epipen out of her pocket and thrust it in Peter’s face.  “My friend gave me this today, so that I can stop her from savaging me.”

“She has Sinclair’s?”

Emma pressed her fingers to her forehead to try and keep down her headache.  “She said she was positive.”

“And active Sinclair’s too?  That’s pretty rare.  Most people are carriers, asymptomatic.”

“She has symptoms all right.”

“Is she registered?  But,” he looked at the pen.  “I’d suppose she’d have to be to get a prescription for this.  Does she work at your school?  Sinclair’s patients aren’t supposed to work around children.”

Emma looked at him sharply.  “Why not?”

Peter gave an odd smile.  “You don’t know?  Most parents aren’t too happy having a werewolf looking after their kids.”

*            *            *

"Your face is hot," said Peter, touching her.  "Are you feeling all right?  Those kids didn't get you sick, did they?"

Emma batted his hand away.  "I never get sick."

But she didn't want him to touch her that night.  She sent him home, but was still restless.  She threw off the sheets, her body slick with sweat, and then suddenly she was shivering and ice cold.  Still shaking she staggered to the bathroom and threw up.  It was just a twenty-four hour stomach flu she told herself.  But the next morning, still hot shaky and miserable, she called in sick.

She slept for six hours that day, irregularly, waking sweaty from dreams of running, running through fields and forests, chasing and being chased.  When she woke up the last time she had forgotten that she had been dreaming of running on four legs.

*            *            *

For the first two days, Emily had almost thought that it was working.  But on the third day she stepped into the entryway of the school and froze.  She could smell her.  Amongst all the other scents, the hordes of stinky young teenagers, she could find that one soft thread of perfection.  She staggered weakly into her office and Miss Hartley raised an eyebrow.

“It’s worse today.”

“She’s in,” Miss Hartley responded as if she had explained everything.  “I had to find a substitute for her yesterday.”

Emily threw herself into her work.  She was going to manage this.  It wouldn’t be easy, but she could pull it off.  That was what she told herself at least.  She managed to believe it until sixth period, running a note to a teacher, she found herself in the hall outside Ms Frost’s AP European History classroom, eyes closed, just breathing in the nearness of her.  She found herself pulling up her schedule and staring at it pathetically.  And sometimes she could catch herself walking, apparently aimlessly, and stopping to hover in a certain place.  There was no pattern to it, no conscious knowledge, she just knew that if she didn’t leave at the very moment she noticed her odd behavior, Emma was going to come out of that door, and she would have no excuses.

She was actually rather proud of herself to manage such unintentional following without running smack into her.  At least she was proud of herself until Emma burst into her office at the end of classes and locked the door behind her.

“All right!  This stalking thing has got to stop!”

Emily blinked, stunned.  “What?”

“I said that you should leave me alone, not dog me around the corridors until I can’t breathe for knowing you’re there.” 

Emily felt shocked and rather horrified at her own actions.  She struggled to contain the adrenaline rush.  Guilt helped.  “I didn’t mean-“

“Like hell you didn’t!  I’ve been late to class more times in this past week, waiting behind doors until you finally make up your stupid mind and move along, than any week ever.”

There was only so long she could keep a rein on it, with Emma in her office, her territory, and shouting at her.  Emily rose up out of her desk chair.  “I miss it!  I feel sick all the time now.  I miss feeling angry, the thrill of it.  Even the burn is better than this!”

“We can’t feed it!  The more contact we have, the harder it is to go back.”

She didn’t pull away though.  She didn’t step back, and Emily felt the torques of heat building, arcing like electricity released from a tesla coil.  Her face was hot, fingers aching.  “I want you.”

Emma’s eyes grew cold and angry.  “You have no right-”

“You came here!  You confronted me!  You know what that does!”

“I can’t stand you following me anymore!  I can feel you waiting, watching me.  I have to teach, and if I let my frustrations out on my students one more time, there is going to be an uprising!  You ought to be mature enough to consider how difficult this is for me!”

“For you?”  Emily paced closer to her.  “I can’t stop thinking about you.  You’re in my head all the time, your face, your mouth, your hair falling around your face as you fuck that man, and I want to rip his throat out and take you, grab you by the throat and force you up against the wall, and-”

Emma smacked her across the face, putting her fingernails into it, leaving bloody scratches across Emily’s face.  Emily lunged for her, furious.  Emma grabbed her arms, and used the weight of her body to shove her against the door.  Her fingers tangled into Emily’s hair, jerking her head back, and she ground their mouths together, her teeth leaving a bloody wound in Emily’s lower lip.

“You think you would be the one to take me?” Emma hissed.  Emily gasped, forcing her eyes shut, and pushing up into her, their lips barely brushing, she opened, letting her in.  Her hands slid down her back, groping roughly at her ass.  Emma mouthed her neck, lips and tongue bringing the blood to the surface, her hand pressing into Emily’s breast, circling her palm, and making it burn.  Emily’s teeth ached, her mouth wet.  A low growl came out of her throat, and she could smell her, too close and too vulnerable.  She was poised to bite, her lips curled back, a hiss of breath announcing it to the room.

Emma’s eyes widened, but she didn’t pull away or try to keep Emily off.  Instead she hesitantly tilted her head so that her hair fell away and bared her neck.  Emily’s eyes changed and she lunged, but only lips pressed against Emma’s neck.

“Oh my god,” she mumbled into her skin.  “I can’t believe- I…”  She shoved Emma away from her.  “Go!  Go!  I’m not safe!”

“What?  Are you joking?  You think you could hurt me?”

“Get out!”  There was something wrong with her mouth, like her teeth didn’t quite fit, and made her voice muffled and a little savage.

“All right,” Emma said weakly, stepping away from her and letting her flee towards her desk.  “Later.  I’ll call you later.”

Emily nodded, unable to meet her eyes, and at the sound of the door closing, she slumped into her desk, utterly ashamed.

*            *            *

Emma paced around the house for a half an hour, but she did call, eventually.  They met at a small coffee shop on the edge of town, near the fields.  Emily said that she had a lot to tell her, but she sat stirring the foamed milk into her coffee for a few solid minutes before starting to speak.

“It happened when I ran away to Indonesia after flunking out of law school.”

Emma blinked.  “I feel like I’m coming in half way through a very interesting story.”

Emily laughed weakly.  “Just a life crisis.  I’m due a couple more, if I live that long.”

Emma arched an eyebrow.  “Still.”

“I should never have gone to law school.  My mother made the choice for me, and all the other students freaked me out.  I did poorly first semester, but halfway through second semester I just could not care less, bought an airplane ticket and left the country.”  She grinned weakly to herself.  “I liked to think I was on the run, which I was.  But it’s a little less impressive if you’re on the run from your mother.”

Emma snorted.  “Yes, this is true.”

“But I was in Indonesia, Jakarta, and, uh, slumming and getting hammered with a group of rent boys.”

Emma blinked.

“They were good kids!  They just worked for a living.”  Emily glanced down.  “There was this one boy, Anjing, they called him, unsubtly, who hung out with us.  And there was an altercation with a white man, a buyer, over payment for a packet of shabu, and I got involved.  I was surprised when nobody else had, and I stepped in a little too close, and Anjing bit me accidentally.”

“Bit you?”  It was expected and yet absurd at the same time.

Emily shrugged.  “It was more of a tooth scrape, but it was enough.  I got sick.  It wasn’t the most responsible time of my life, but everything else cleared up with penicillin.  I was having hallucinations and fever and puking up everything I ate.  I passed out from the dehydration, and the police picked me up and took me to the hospital.”

“Not your rent boy boyfriends?”

Emily glared at her.  Emma grinned back.  She liked this part of her prudish counselor.  She wasn’t quite as innocent as she’d have people believe.  “No, they left after I got bitten.  They didn’t want the wrath of the west on them.  Which was sensible, since my mother found me when I was in the hospital.  If you survive the first week, Sinclair’s doesn’t kill outright.  A lot of people are carriers, no overt symptoms, but I’m not one of them.  My mother dragged me to every specialist she could find, but there aren’t a lot of pretty answers.  When we finally found someone who didn’t want to try full body blood replacement, or experimental brain surgery, he told me ‘stop dating, start meditation, and don’t work with children.’”  Emily glanced down.  “The last one’s the one I didn’t follow.  It’s pretty rare, but there has been at least one case of someone with Sinclair’s eating a child.  I take anti-depressants and drink a lot of St John’s Wort.”

“Not dating is supposed to be part of your therapy?”  Emma knew she sounded incredulous, but it seemed absurd.

“Being alone is more stable.”  Emily shrugged.  “Not that dating is something I’m good at in general.  As long as I score okay on the psych tests they don’t have to institutionalize me.”

“Is that an option?”  This woman was just starting out.  Would they really end her life like that?

“It’s kind of inevitable.  If you’re lucky you can live with it for a while, but eventually you encounter a trigger, and something snaps.  Then you can’t function in society anymore, and they take you away.”

“A trigger?  What sort of things are triggers?”

“A traumatic experience, meeting someone you see as an enemy,” Emily looked away.  “Meeting someone you want to be your mate.”

Emma’s stomach sank.  She wasn’t going to be able to save this girl.  Her feelings must have shown on her face, because Emily glanced down, guilt written in her eyes.

“I think you’re my trigger.”

Emma just watched her, hunched and hurting in front of her, facing the end of her normal life, a life she had barely begun.  “What can I do?”

The idiot looked up at her, clearly confused.  “What?”

Emma shrugged stiffly, hating being called on her generosity.  “You make a pretty martyr, but I don’t like people who give up without a fight.  I may be your trigger, and I’m sure the stalking is a bad sign, but I’d rather be able to say that I did everything I could to keep you from going off the deep end.”

Emily looked utterly stunned and unbearably grateful.  “I guess I could take you with me to see the doctor.”

Emma kept the grimace off her face.  She hated doctors.  Instead she nodded coldly.  “Sounds like a thrilling afternoon.  Give me your phone.”  She programmed her number into it and tossed it back.  “I’ll be there when you need me to be.”

“Thank you.”  Emily still looked bewildered and a little shocked.  “But why?  I was such a bitch to you.”

“You were.  But I don’t necessarily think that you need to spend the rest of your life imprisoned for it.  I’m not that cruel.”

Part 4

*          *            *