Project X [18+] [Fanfiction]

Chapter XXII: The Declaration

I woke up before Shifter that morning, not realizing that it was going to be one of the most important days of my life. Important, eventful, and altogether staggering in the sheer weight of it. I had woken up earlier thanks to an errant noise from outside the mansion's grounds; a bird or an animal that made a noise just similar enough to a threat for my senses to draw me awake. It happened a lot after nights in which my body was pushed harder than normal, when I went to sleep with my adrenaline still flaring and expecting something exciting to happen.

I had jerked awake with surprise but quickly kept myself in check, making sure not to wake Shifter where he slept underneath me.

With a satisfied sigh I looked around the room; a small smile growing on my lips. It was only a few days after our recent explosion of violent passion, and his room was still getting repaired. He was staying in mine until the job was finished, but as the days went on I was beginning to question how long mine would hold up. Wobbly chairs and scuffed walls, and a few loose tiles in the shower were already things we had to hide from the Headmistress, either by figuring out a way one of Shifter's borrowed mutant powers could fix it, or doing it the old fashioned way.

How many X-Men does it take to replace the blades of a ceiling fan? More than two, if they've never done it before and keep constantly getting distracted with each other. As it was we had only replaced one of the ones we had broken during a particularly rough bout, and in the calm of the morning our fan spun on its lowest setting with only three blades forming an uneven sway.

I laid naked against Shifter in bed, watching the fan spin above me for some time while my body continued to wake. Despite the Headmistress' less than thrilled reaction to the state of his room, things had been going well for us. The evening in which Shifter borrowed my power, the celebration of our anniversary, had left a lasting impact on us both. It had shown us just how far we could go when pushed, just what our bodies were capable of when there was no fear of damage or breaking. With my mutant abilities, he was able to endure far longer than before, and it had the side effect of fueling his most primal desires.

When his DNA retuned to normal, so too did the most base of animal instincts, and the next morning we had managed a slow session in which we held close to each other, kissed, and compensated for the intense roughness of the previous night with something far closer to tenderness.

It was good he could lose those darker urges seemingly on command; it was something I had struggled with as well. Thankfully, between the two of us, we seemed able to ration our intensity and never lose sight of what was truly important. Each other.

Slowly I lifted myself from the sheets, allowing them to slip down my shoulders to reveal my bare chest. Well...mostly bare. I was still wearing my bra but it had been pulled down to fold underneath my bust; a place where it had remained throughout the entire evening. I had never found the motivation to completely strip it away, even as I slumbered and kept feeling it dig against my flesh. I was simply too tired, too physically drained to remove it. With a grunt I slipped my arms away from it for the moment, and tossed it aside to a growing pile of discarded clothes we had been working on since the day he moved in. Pretty soon one of us would need to do the laundry, which I realized as I sat there was a very "relationship" thing to observe. We shared laundry. We shared a bed. We were sharing more and more as time went on, and in a staggering surprise to my own senses, I realized it did not terrify me.

It should have. Or at least, it would have, long ago. Six months prior the notion of me waking up beside a man I had willingly spent a night helpless beside would have elicited from me laughter, or perhaps even rage. I trusted slowly and jealously guarded my feelings, and any level of romance seemed like something that was fit for women like Jubilee and Pixie, and surely not myself. I did not feel that I was better than them; in fact, quite the opposite.