Disclaimers: If they belonged to us, there'd probably be casualties.

Spoilers: None, really. X-Men/Alpha Flight crossover.

Ratings Note: Call it a hard R. May include content disturbing
to some readers.

Summary: Moment to moment.

Pairing: Marrow/Aurora

Authors' Note: Another installment in the Marrowthon. We're starting
to run out of volunteers.

Acknowledgments: To the concept of Muses, because Te so dearly loves
believing Marrow's in the corner, scritching Peasie's belly with a
half-blunted extra femur.

Feedback means never having to say you're sorry.
janestclair15@hotmail.com and teland793@sbcglobal.net

*
 

There are moments when Aurora wants so badly she can taste it where
her teeth and throat meet.  Hard to resist.  And with this girl in
front of her, she isn't at all sure that she needs to.  All the
screaming voices are unified in this wanting.

But when she reaches out who will show up?  The vamp or the hellbitch
or the schoolmistress or the *goddamned* eternal penitent?  And what
will Marrow make of the change, from the playful, danger-edged
creature she met into something so completely alien?

Aurora laughs and pounces. Fucking raw. Fucking right. There.

All over Marrow now, rubbing up against her, ignoring the bone, and
the scent of her own blood is fucking *awful*. Fucking *right*, m'dieu
*yes*.

Loves the hiss of it in her mind, bone on silk, just like this,
skirting around the spike ruining the shape of Marrow's mouth for a
kiss that makes the girl growl.

*Loves* it.  Dangerous and wonderful and a little bloody.  Every
hollow of the girl's mouth that she can reach has echoes of someone
who's been beaten for a long time.  Rendered bruised and fierce and
*brave* by it.

Pulls back and rips her shredded blouse open, stands there translucent
and bleeding and heavy-breasted, waiting to see if the girl will
follow her back.

Glittering eyes confused eyes shift shift shift *no* but when she
shakes herself free she understands. Understands everything looking
up at the scarred, *beautiful* face, the face that *knows*.

Jeanne-Marie falls to her knees then, as gracefully as she can.

Bows her head.

Waits for command.

Long breaths while she waits, until one bone-carved hand sinks into
her hair and tilts her head to one side and the other.

"You're pretty."

"Yes."  Softly.  Known but not terribly important.  Secondary right
now to the rapture in her at this girl's body.

She rises when the hand pulls her, brings her own hands up enough to
peel back the girl's own shirt and the soft cotton underneath it.
Instant in which they stand breast to breast, watching each other,
before the girl pushes her sharply back and hisses.  And a new
bone emerges out of the floating ribs, curves upward and slits the
thin skin on the underside of her breast.  Bloody, and blood on
Jeanne-Marie's hands and under her nails when she lifts the flesh
out of harm's way.

Keeps her head lowered, chuff of breath moving her hair when the girl
-- her mistress -- laughs.

"Can't hold 'em for me all day, can you? Bet you'd like to try . . ."

Can't repress the need to swallow, and it's loud in her dry throat.
Caught out caught bad *caught* and Mistress laughs again.

"You're one fucked up little chick, aren't you?"

Jeanne-Marie nods, solemnly. Dares to look up into eyes glittering
with something like amused bemusement, complexity of the emotion
calling to her, older sister to younger. Yes, Mistress understands.

"May I speak?"

"I don't know, girly. You might have to be punished for that."
Laughter everywhere about Mistress, even with the knowing she has, and
yes, the best jokes are serious as death.

"I know, Mistress."

"Well, alright, then. Talk."

"May . . . May I serve you?"

Long, measuring stare back, and for a moment Jeanne-Marie thinks that
what she said was entirely wrong.  Ready for whatever humiliation
Mistress intends to hurl at her.  Something horrified, moment of
*wrongness*, something she didn't understand.

But she only says, "Sure."  Takes her own breast back and lets
Jeanne-Marie's hand slide down to her bone-scored torso.  Looks down
and nods to the cutting bone.  Bloody and jagged over its whiteness.
Her palm slices open when she wraps her hand around it, but she
doesn't let go.  Grips harder instead and *twists* sharply over and
down, and the bloody thing comes away in her hand.  And then she can
drop it.

Lean in and kiss the wound on the underside of the girl's breast,
pressing her own aching palm against the odd, scarred texture of her
abdomen.

Keeps kissing even when Mistress twists away from her, just follows
and staggers and closes her free hand on one solid hip.  Bent forward
now, one step away from kneeling but still determined to raise some
pleasured reaction out of the body in her mouth.  Slides her mouth
down from the wound, finding the worst scars and mouthing along them.
Little shivers at that, and an undemanding hand settles on the back of
her neck, holding her there --

Until she licks at her Mistress' navel and tries to go lower, ease the
waist of her pants down, and finds herself knocked away.  Faint sense
of white scars where she almost touched.  Brutal in the shallow pan of
Mistress' body below her belly's swell, where no one should suffer.

Jeanne-Marie kneels, holding her bruised cheek, and looks up into the
suddenly angry face.  And reaches out a hand to stroke her again,
uncareful of the protruding bones.  Line of a single finger along the
insweep of her waist, slow and deliberately worshipful, and this time
when she moves to pull the pants away, Mistress lets her.

Jeanne-Marie should snarl, too, but can't against the sight of scarred
and torn flesh. A martyr before her, a saint unrecognized by all but
her. It's all right. They'll know when it's time. For now, her
Mistress is her own, and there are none to dispute, even when,
greatly daring, she lays a kiss on the round of a hip.

Shifts to slide her cheek over and over it, scarcely aware of her own
moan.

Looks up to find Mistress frowning down at her.

"You really want this, don't you?"

"Yes, *please* . . ."

Slow nod, troubled but understanding, and the sudden knowledge that
Mistress doesn't want *her* to be hurt, that even in her pain
Jeanne-Marie is special to her, something to be cherished . . .

Blinking back tears, she brings her free and shaking hand to the
waistband of the pants and starts to pull them down farther.  Catches
herself and moves to the scuffed and dusty boots, instead.  Kisses
each on the toe and unlaces them quickly. Lifts one foot against her
chest to pull it off, then the other, head bowed as is fitting.

Mistress wears no socks and Jeanne-Marie caresses the flesh there, as
well.

"Do you wish me to bathe them, Mistress?"

Unidentifiable sound, then, "no. No. Ah . . . not now."

Jeanne-Marie can smell Mistress' sex, and knows her urgency like her
own.  Slips the pants down finally and noses at the hair there, at the
livid bare patch where some other bone had done her harm.  Licks and
kisses, nuzzles and purrs, somewhere down deep.

The groan her Mistress gives when Jeanne-Marie presses her open mouth
to that flesh is gratifying.  Little shivers run down into her mouth,
answering gift to Jeanne-Marie's tongue.  Stroking the lovely,
delicate inner lips, flower-soft and sweet, some buried innocence she
can reach towards, as attractive as her Mistress' suffering.

The bud of flesh that brushes against her tongue is not quite as
distracting as the slightly ridged scar just above it.  She massages
both, soaking them and sucking gently, teasing at the softness she's
abandoned with her fingers.  Her Mistress staggers slightly when
Jeanne-Marie slides one small finger up her, forcing her head back.
Looking up along the scarred, white planes of that body, now, and she
finds it's not uncomfortable, really, only a stretch of her worship.

She can balance, can stroke the solid legs and kiss at the same time.
Tease the backs of knees and long calf muscles.

Something terribly *appropriate* about her Mistress' scars.
Almost-holy almost-virgin, without the terrible vanity that holds
Jeanne-Marie back.  On some level, this is what she should have been,
hard and fierce and dedicated as a sister, barely-contained anger
*focused* toward some greater achievement.

She crouches lower to angle her head and *pushes* her tongue inside.
The liquid sharpness across her tongue startling and *right*, tempting
on a particular level. Strong muscles work back against her, and her
Mistress is holding her head now, pushing her whole face in.  Quite
perfectly what she wants.

Still relishing the gasps when they change tenor, so that it takes
her a moment to understand that the last, tearing moan had less to do
with her than with the emergent bone now curving out from Mistress'
wrist to brush the rim of Jeanne-Marie's face.  Moment of that threat
in which she stills and waits, accepting.  Only returns to her soft-
mouthed worship when the bone-knife slides out of her peripheral
vision and touches again on her back.

Tear of her blouse and it's entirely wrong of her to flinch from this.
She should be exposed if it's what her Mistress desires.  But the
white lines of her own old punishments have no place in this, and to
bring them out now would contaminate this thing she's found.

She shakes loose of the hand and looks up again, catches Mistress'
eyes and tries to make it plain. Jeanne-Marie is to serve. Not
punishment, but penance, and surely she understands *that*.  Mistress
has to, it's the way of things, the march of rites old and noble, but
when Jeanne-Marie dips again into Mistress' sex the touch comes again.

Fingertips softly abrasive on the skin just above. Just where. *On*
her, on her scars, naming them and touching them and *no*.  Lashing
little snakebite on the girl's thigh, once and again until all that
terrible bone and strength is against her. Barefoot kick to the
muscle of Jeanne-Marie's thigh and she doubles over.

Snarling words above her and she snarls right back, coming up for
another attack that ends when Marrow simply *throws* her.
Jeanne-Marie's back hits the foot of the bed, snapping her head
back and there's something wrong with her vision, something bloody
fucking wrong with *her* it's always her, her fault not mine her fault
her fault --

"What the *fuck*?"

Shuddering back in on herself with an angry cry and there's one way,
*her* way. Short nails digging into her own neck scraping down and
down, flesh tearing and blood and evil spilling out all over her awful
white skin and yes. This way. This is the only way.

No truth. No penance. No *redemption* mutie evil freak and Marrow
flashes in and out of her vision, mostly nude and reaching for her at
the convent, walking through nuns like ghosts and reaching and just
for a moment she *clings* and yes, pierced more than scratched,
bleeding and bleeding and.

Laughing.

"You crazy *bitch*! What the fuck is *wrong* with you?"

And laughing.
 

End

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