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Side One.

Late at night, he asks me what the scars mean. I tell him sometimes between shuddering breaths, as a slim, icy cold finger traces over my ribs, along my arm and down my stomach. Who is this boy child? So young in his face, and so old in his eyes. We both have seen things that should not be seen; he, people maimed and burnt by one he calls friend, and I myself have my own demons. Our demons whisper and cajole from beyond the shadows, calling us to acknowledge them. It is easier to ignore them when we are together, two lonely souls longing for others beyond the cool whiteness of the sheets twined about us like ice.

He says I am warm, like a banked fire. That my eyes reflect my inner flames, yellow bright like candle flame while my skin is a cool serene blue. He likes to trace the scars with his tongue, this ice child. He says he likes the way they taste, like bittersweet sin carved on the tanginess of my flesh. The way they curve, and entwine like snakes across my skin. Deception through words curves near my mouth and he kisses the corner of it, but never fully on it. Betrayal runs down one arm, the hand that I use everyday is lined with anger, rage, and other such sins. Across my stomach, lust crawls in serpentine patterns, alongside jealousy.

We’re jealous of each other. And we’re jealous of the world around us. The woman he loves, he cannot touch and she in turn truly loves another. And I love the one she loves. It is a tangled web of desire. But by comforting each other, I know the one I long for smells the ice boy’s scent lying across my skin. We ignore each other during the day, because what we do isn’t meant to exist in sunlight where others can see it. But I watch the eyes of my Beloved and I know he knows.

According to the church, my love is a sin. But the Christ called us to love, and told us that all that had gone before had passed away. Merely to love each other as we love ourself, and to honour God. This, I do. So I do not think that He will judge me too harshly, for sins committed in the name of love, and the longing to be loved, and the bewildered grasping for love. I thought, for a while, that the white haired Goddess of the storms and winds would be the one. But she is too ethereal for me to touch with any chance of it not ending broken and in shatters. Too fine, for my clumsy three-fingered hands to touch with any degree of safety. She is strong on the outside, but there is a certain brittleness about her, Fraulien Monroe. Like tempered glass – it will break if hit hard enough and precisely enough.

And then, he came to me while I was communing in the outside, sun on my face and eyes closed as I lifted my head to feel it fully. I heard him coming, felt him coming through that sense that lets me move from one spot to another without crossing the space in between. I am not quite sure how it works. It merely does. That explains many of the talents here. God is wonderful in His diversity. Glory be to God Almighty.

“What are you doing with the Popsicle and is it gonna hurt Marie?”

Better that he ask himself does he hurt the white haired one, this Vielfrass who has stolen my heart. I open my eyes to look at him, then decide to speak.

Side Two.

I love to touch his scars, trace my fingers over them and follow my hand with my tongue. His chest always rises and falls so rapidly, heart beating beneath his ribcage like a trapped bird, fluttering its wings madly to escape. I know he likes it. I can hear it on his breath how much he does. He prays, you know. All the time, this constant murmuring in German. God, it’s sexy. I never thought of prayer as sexy before, but on him it just works. Just like the tail and the blue skin and the yellow eyes…

People call him a demon. I saw how some of the first to see him at the school reacted; it was horrible. We’re all mutants, but we all look…normal. We can pass on the outside. Except Artie, but he can as well, if he keeps that tongue in his mouth. Kid’s a brat. And I should know, I was one as well. Despair of my parents, and I still am. Have I tried not being a mutant…of course I fucking have! But I guess that asking God to stop being a mutant is as useless as asking him to stop me admiring guys’s asses when they walk past me. I’ve always known I was bi, and no, that is not an excuse to have everyone jump in and out of my bed. I like girls for different reasons then I like guys.

I think John knew. That I liked him. And I think he liked me back. But then Marie came, sweet and cute and vulnerable with this look in her eyes…and I just wanted to make her feel at home and safe. And then I got in a little deeper, and I woke up one morning to hear John snoring in the next bed and realised that I loved her. And very shortly after Logan came home again, I realised she was never going to love me because all her love she could afford to give was handed over to a loner who would probably never die. She had him in her head, and she still adored him. She never wanted to risk even touching briefly to try a kiss; I wonder what she thought she would find in my mind that was so much worse then what’s in Logan’s.

People don’t realise how warm he is to touch. I think sometimes it’s his heart trying to spread all the comfort it can. Here’s this guy, who more then any of us, has incredibly compelling reasons to hate everyone else and try and hurt them like they hurt him everyday, but he doesn’t. And he can draw everyone out, just by being there. At least, once they get past his appearance. I never knew Kitty was Jewish, but he helped her get a Menorah and everything for Hanukkah. And he kind of guilted everyone into giving her presents for it as well. Just by being the kind, gentle person that he is. Not by intention, don’t get me wrong. He makes you want to be a better person around him. He’s good for the mansion, he really is. Especially after Professor Grey died.

I almost sound like I’m in love with the guy. But I’m not. I love Marie, and I’ll probably always love her while she loves Logan and Kurt loves Logan but the two of us pretending that maybe it doesn’t hurt so much if you can at least reach out and touch someone else once in a while. I love curling up around him just after we’ve had sex, because he’s just so warm. That, more then anything else, is what I envy Kurt and Logan. Even if Logan doesn’t love Kurt, and probably never will, they have the possibility of touch.

Logan came and cornered me today. He knows; I knew he knew about me and Kurt. I just told him that I loved Marie, and always would. She knows about Kurt and me, hell, she suggested something similar with John because the idea of me with a guy doesn’t bother her. In fact, she said it turned her on a little. I also told Logan that Marie was always going to love him, and furthermore, that Kurt was in love with someone else that wasn’t me. So really, I’m the only loser in this. Because I’m not loved by anyone in this strange tangle.

But at least I get some nights with Kurt where I can pretend that someone loves me. He’s very good at making someone feel needed.

Side 3.

Some people would wonder why I let my boyfriend have sex with someone else. But it’s complicated, it always is. Besides, Kurt’s not a danger to me. He never could be. Bobby loves me, this I know...because we kissed once, twice, and the ice melted on our lips letting skin touch. Never let me touch you skin to skin. I’ll drain you dry and take you inside myself, all your fears and joys and memories and life and stop it stop it stop it! Logan’s prowling around inside my thoughts at the moment. I can always tell Logan’s presence in my head. He’s very forceful. Magneto is as well; the two of them snipe and prowl around each other like two old dogs, both aching for a fight but not quite settled to it yet.

The professor hasn’t been able to ‘exorcise’ my ghosts. Everyone I absorb hangs around in my head, their memories bleeding into mine and making me think I could be them. Logan’s memories are so confused, except for the last fifteen years or so. There’s a woman named Heather Hudson and her husband, Mac. They were there to help him become human again. I think they found me -him- in the woods. Running around naked. There’s another thing. I’ve never had sex. But I have Logan’s, and Eric’s, and Cody’s memories in my head...and they had sex. I remember having it, being male and *fucking* women. The sounds and smell of it. With Logan, the smell of it is always very *there*. It’s kinda musky sweet and wild, different according to person but in the end it’s also all the same. I’ve some women as well, like Professor Grey. I have all theses memories of people underneath me and around me and inside me and I can’t even touch my own goddamned boyfriend.

I don’t usually swear that much. I very rarely swear at all. But I tend to do it more after I took in John and Logan. I wish that John hadn’t gone with Eric, I know better then anyone else what type of guy Eric is. And I know it won’t take much for the master of

magnetism to seduce the brightly burning Pyro into things that he wouldn’t believe were possible. He liked Bobby, I know that now. Maybe that’s why we never got on; too busy seeing each other as competition. And I won. I wonder why I’m not more glad about that then I am.

Oh. I know already. Logan. He’s just so much in my head, sometimes it seems he belongs there more then me. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell where I leave off and all the others begin. They talk all the time, it makes it hard to concentrate sometimes but I’m getting better at tuning them down a little. Like background music. And they do come in handy. Like with the jet. I mean, if I hadn’t had those memories I would have really crashed the thing and we could have *all* died. Eric talks about tactics and strategy all the time – I play the professor at chess sometimes and he looks at me with his knowing eyes when I use one of Eric’s moves. Cody’s nearly faded out now, not that he ever really knew what to say. I know I loved him once, but on my panic-stricken bolt for Canada it was kinda hard to remember why while he moaned and whimpered in my head. He was just a kid, really. Logan isn’t. Truth to tell, Bobby isn’t either.

If I didn’t already love Logan, I could love Bobby. And he knows that, I think, but he also knows that I can’t bear to love someone who’s going to die on me. I’ve already seen what it’s done to Mr Summers, and I don’t want that to happen to me. God, I feel so selfish. But I just *can’t* take the chance that I’ll splinter even more. I just can’t.

I turn my head to smile at Bobby, and curl my gloved fingers around his bare ones before leaning my head against his shoulder. His arm settles around my waist, and we’re the picture perfect couple for all that anyone can see.

And inside we’re breaking apart like the sides of a square mirror.

Side 4.

I swear to God, the supposedly normal people in this house are more chronically fucked up then I am. Slim has completely lost it now that Jeannie’s dead, Chuck’s trying to keep rein over a houseful of stir crazy teens, Ro’s helping him with that, while also trying to keep herself together, and the kids are all just as crazy as bedbugs. Everyone’s grieving and no one can say when it’ll be over. Not that it ever really will be, Jean was...special. I loved her, but she didn’t love me back. She loved Scottie, the picture perfect preppie mutant cover boy for Xavier’s Great White Dream. Yeah, I know. It’s a good thing, he’s a good man, but for all that, it’s still just a dream. An’ I don’t think it’ll ever happen either. Nice dream, but we’re more likely to have moved out onto the moon and out into the stars before the straight humans accept mutants like us.

Course, they may all be dead by then. Magneto doesn’t fight fair, and he’s out there somewhere...waiting, watching and preparing. And he took one of ours with him the last time we came together. Pyro. Little Aussie fire bug with a chip on his shoulder and an attitude that made me ache to slap him down to size. The softly, softly approach Xavier utilises with these kids doesn’t always work. A kid like that, all he understands is physical force. He doesn’t see the strength in Xavier’s words, but he does see the strength in what I can do. Words. They’re such a human thing, words. Terribly fragile but they say the pen is mightier then the sword. I’m not sure that’s always the case, but the sword is hung up on a wall much sooner then the words vanish from a book. God help us all, that this times words prove enough and we don’t have to pick up the sword again.

I remember more now, then I used to. There’s fragments, oddly drifting in my head. Marie has seen some of it, and she helped me put more of it into perspective. Meeting Stryker...people would be surprised to know I read a little. And I’ve read Faust. He was my...Mephistopheles. My temptation. I could have, so easily, taken up his offer, and maybe I shouldn’t have left him to die the way I did but if I had, I would have betrayed who I am now. And I’m not sure that I like the person that he thought I was – I’m barely better then that now. Looking at Sabretooth, I can see where if things went just a little wrong in my head, where I could be. He’s not that different from me, not really. I wonder...if I did go that way, if the beast inside me got out and wouldn’t be put back in, would the X-Men hunt me down and kill me? I would hope, that for the sake of the man I was, that they would. But I don’t think they would. They don’t like to shed blood, even when it’s needful. Or Xavier would have let us kill Magneto that first time. I’m convinced that Toad and Sabretooth are still alive – I was damn sure I killed Mystique, but the unholy Smurfette came back. Useful in her own way at Alkali Lake, but wholly Magneto’s creature. Pyro’ll be the same soon enough.

Wonder how that’ll hurt the kids, when we fight the Brotherhood next. One of their own, turned against them. I wonder if they’ll be able to take the shot, if Cyke will, if Ro will. If they won’t, I will. It’ll hit Ice and Marie the hardest, I think. The three of them were...close. But now it’s Bobby, Marie and *Kurt*. I don’t understand. The two of them had to know I knew after the first fucking night – sex has a thick scent that lingers, musk and pheromones and it *clings* to skin like nothing else. Not even blood clings to people like sex does. Running into the elf at the breakfast table the next morning, it took most of my selfcontrol not to pop my claws and threaten him right there and then. The fact that Bobby was cuddled up with Marie, even if it was as always warily, made me pause. That, and the look Chuck gave me when I let the tips of one set of claws pierce the skin. A very subtle nod ‘no’ and I growled under my breath and sat down to eat. Scott looked like he was somewhere else, like he always does these days. Smells like it too. Like he’s dead but he hasn’t quite woken up to the fact yet and is still walking around. I wouldn’t say it to his face, but he’s a good man. Had to be, if Jeannie loved him.

And Marie just...doesn’t act any different to either of them. Still treats the elf with the same amused forbearance and Bobby with cute puppy love. And she still treats me the same. I wish she wouldn’t. I’m not good for her, and if it wasn’t for me, she’d settle down with a boy like Bobby and be happy. I’m not good for her and I never will be. I remember...two women now, who I loved. Mariko Yashida and Silver Fox. They both died. I remember Creed, as we fought and swore and killed in Weapon X’s service side by side, before in Berlin we parted ways. I remember Maverick. All these little bits and pieces, most of them drenched in blood. And she wonders why I can’t love her. Why I can’t ever. She’s been in my mind, she’s *been* me and somehow she still loves me. I don’t understand women at all.

It’s just...how can she sit there and smile while her boyfriend, the boy that’s meant to give her a normal life, fucks another guy on the side? I put down my drink and stalk out of the kitchen, unable to watch the flirting between Marie and Bobby any longer. Got to find the elf and demand an explanation. I already got one from Icicle, but I don’t know what to make of what he told me. Marie knows, and she doesn’t care. Bobby *loves* Marie, but is quite happy to knock boots with the elf. I need to hear from the other person in this tangle.

He’s praying. Meditating, something in the garden. ‘Ro loves her gardens. She talks to the plants, I’ve watched her. It’s not really a wonder that here is where the misfit comes to pray, it’s nice and peaceful like out here.

And I break this beautiful scene with my harsh words.

“What are you doing with the Popsicle and is it gonna hurt Marie?”

He turns to look at me, yellow eyes gleaming between the scars as thin blue lips open to reveal the incongruously candy pink tongue and shining white fangs.

Centre.

Kurt meets Logan’s eyes carefully.

“Is it really any business of yours, Herr Logan?”

Logan snarled. “Damn right it’s my business. Marie’s like a daughter ta me-“

“But she doesn’t think of you like a father, does she?”

Logan’s snarl got a little more feral at Kurt’s cool words, hearing them as mocking. Sarcastic. Kurt flinched back a little, tail curling around his feet. “No.” The word came grudgingly.

“Bobby and I seek relief in each other because the people we love do not love us. It is nothing more then human, is it not? To seek comfort?” Kurt looked beseechingly at Logan, thick fingers twisted in the beads of a rosary. “Rogue, she encourages Bobby. You do not think I would do such a thing if she…” His accent thickened in his distress, making Logan maybe, start to believe a little.

“No.” And strangely enough, Logan believed him. The elf had something against hurting people. In anyway. The fact that he had been used as a weapon in the hand of a madman calculating to bring human/mutant hostilities to a head had scarred him deep in his soul. Logan could see the scars from that as plain as everyone could see the scars traced over dark blue skin, these angelic symbols that no one really understood why he’d had them put on. Sometimes, Logan knew, you needed a reminder. But his body didn’t carry memory, every scar healing and fading away, and his mind didn’t carry many memories either. He was like a blank, but he was still human. That had to count for something, right? “Bobby loves Marie. I can...get that. She...”

“It is a trial for you and it grates against your sense of honour, richtig?” Kurt’s head tilted to the side and his yellow eyes held sympathy. Perhaps even in empathy.

“Yeah...” A grudging murmur. Logan looked away, but not before he saw a flicker of some *other* emotion pass across the elf’s eyes. “So, who is it for you, Misfit? Don’t have to tell me, I won’t pry.”

“Er küsse mich mit Küssen seines Mundes, denn deine Liebe ist köstlicher als Wein,” Kurt murmured almost throatily, the German syllables softened in his mouth from their usual fricative harshness. German wasn’t really a language for loving in, but fighting. Swearing. Things like that.

Logan tilted his head. “Is that an offer?”

Kurt blinked. He hadn’t know Logan knew German. His smile turned shy. “Perhaps.” He darted a glance at Logan from under his lashes, before studiously returning his attention to the rosary in his hand.

“I might take you up on it. When things get a little bit more sorted out.” Logan leaned in closer, slowly letting one claw slide out with the soft sickening sound of metal parting flesh. He could scent the fear spike, but there was a deeper scent underneath it that didn’t speak of fear at all. “But if I do, I don’t share. Understand me?”

“Jawohl, rudelfuhrer.” Kurt put the rosary away in the pocket of his jacket. “Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Logan. I promised to help Fraeulein Monroe with the baking.” And he bamfed away, feeling a soaring sense of hope for the first time rather then the poignant longing for what he could never have. It felt...good. Logan chuckled and let the claw slide back into its sheathe, before turning to walk back up to the mansion.

Bobby turned away from the window and watched his hand cover itself in ice. Colder. It all felt a little bit colder now. He almost smiled at Marie, then got up from his seat.

“’Scuse me.”

“Hurry on back, Bobby,” Rogue drawled.

“I will, Marie. I will.” Bobby smiled at her and the ice melted without a trace. God, how he loved her. He just wished she felt the same. And now it looked like Kurt and Logan were patching things up so there went that source of heat. He was going to freeze and shatter one day. But as long as Marie needed him, he’d hold out. Love was worth waiting for.

No matter how long it took.

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