X-Men: White Light/White Heat

Disclaimer: Characters portrayed in the following are not mine and I did not create them.

*

White Light/White Heat:

Neal:

One o'clock in the morning; we had gone to bed after the grand tradition of Christmas carols around Moira's old Steinway. My second Christmas with the X-Men. This was something the group did: in remembrance, in respect, in the joy of the season and the break from hostilities. Like the football armistice of No-Man's Land 1914.

I sit at my typewriter trying to type. In the past it had come so easily. Now I feel like I have a mental block; perhaps a fear of failure, or failing that because it seems too flaccid an argument, a fear that what comes out will simply be crap. Whether I would necessarily call what I write "work", hmmm. It stems from a need inside. A yearning, maybe, for Kolkata. A room next to a firehouse, a balcony with many splendorous plants and flowers. The alleyway hissing of muted Shehnai wafting in over the scents of spice and coal. But what comes out is not usually related to these things, though it has that sort of reverent energy I feel -- a nostalgia -- permeating it, like the creepers that interweave in the burnt out shacks on the frosted steppes of the Himalayas. It reminds me when I re-read it that in my thoughts I can still see the red dust in the streets that tastes of heat and religion, the sun setting the sky ablaze, the million tiny lights blanketing the city.

I enjoy writing. It gives me a chance to express myself when I can't get the words out. That old joke -- *clink* *clink* "...If I could just say a few words, I'd be a better public speaker". From the Simpsons. But yes, there is a block sometimes. And sometimes it's as if I have neural constipation. The will is there, the desire, but no flow. No effort willing to come. Laziness? Perhaps. Something that can be cured? Perhaps not.

'You still up, love?'

'Yes.'

'Can't get anything out?'

'No.'

I curl over the typewriter, concealing the blank page, and stare out the window at a blustery wind. Of course I'm not ashamed of not having done anything this evening, but it would be nice just to end the day on a high. A personal high. Especially since I was up at the crack of dawn for my yoga.

'Don't push yourself too hard, Neal, you're supposed to be relaxing. Days off don't come often.' She lays her head on my shoulder. 'I know you're devoted to that thing, but maybe give it a rest?'

The thing is I haven't done anything since we left the party at eleven thirty. We were drinking cognac, but I'm rather good with my alcohol, so I know that hasn't had an affect. Plenty of the others were going to stay later than us and get drunker than us, but I think the real root of the problem is that I haven't done any writing for a long time. Nothing successful, anyway. It snowballs, you see? Writing begets writing. Creativity is a-sexual.

I don't resent any time spent with Betsy or the team, heaven's no. She is a beautiful. I have fallen for her. She takes my troubles away, reassures me of my place among the team, amongst the world where we can make a difference that is so sorely needed. But at the same time, this connectivity to one severs ties to home. Sounds ungrateful, doesn't it? Even pathetic. Follow your heart is the old cliché, but mine is divided. India and America. Why can't the two of them be next door to one another? Why can't the team operate out of Delhi, set up shop there? Then I could be in the place I wanted to be with the woman I wanted to be in that place with. Oh, and of course, the team would be there too. Yes, the team, in all it's self-assured majesty.

'Don't torture yourself.' She calls.

Why is it so easy for her? Why is it so easy to abandon ties to the family, to bury your history in foreign soil, to abandon one's past on the wayside? Things that meant something to me once still have the same weight in my mind. I feel responsible for Karima, terrible, about having lost her. Not as if I'm still in love with her, I'm not, but she is one more reason I never wish to cast off my past. Do I have her blood on my hands, or that of my brother? Don't see it like that. Would be the same as me reasoning I have dear old Moira's blood on my hands simply because of my call that fateful day. But what a man does affects everything in his life, emotionally as well as karmically. It could be argued that whatever he does, pieces get left behind, others produced inadvertently, then either resolved and affected in their own way or unresolved and left in the air to affect someone else. These things that happened in sequence -- Karima's turning, Moira's death -- people changed and altered -- were they avoidable? If I hadn't have called and come away from home then maybe, but I've no way of knowing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. The reasons for my inability to write fluidly are twofold. I don't know where I come from anymore and I don't know where I'm going. And I don't know if I have done well in my life or whether the bad things that have happened would have happened regardless. Where am I going and what will I do? Will I know if it starts to go wrong again? Will I be prepared?

'Neal. Honey. Come on.'

I turn from the typewriter. In the half-light of the crescent moon she stands, one hand holding her hair against her neck and the other lazy by her side. She tilts her head.

She can sense this pain inside me. But what can she do, really? What can you ever do, but be there and be there and be there until it goes away or consumes you both.

A smile. Eyes that settle softly on me. Getting tenser by the minute.

Eyes that say settle down softly with me.

For now, it has to go on the back-burner.

I wonder if she knows what is going through my head back here. Those parts about foreign soil and the laying down of roots. Whatever the tug-of-war feels like, I am certain I have another contender ready to stake her claim. A lot of the time, I feel selfish in my self-aggrandising. Although my wishes primarily concern me, there is a part that always echoes back to Betsy; what she would want me to do. What she would want herself. How she feels about me. About us.

'Betsy, do you ever wonder about the future?'

She knows what's coming. 'Sometimes. But then I realise you have to take it a day at a time. No good having your head in the clouds, you miss what's been at your feet the whole time.'

We hold hands.

'Come back down to earth,' she says 'just for tonight.'

Tossing back the sheets I lie down. Feels cool against my skin, I even shiver. The weight of the bed shifts as she perches, sipping from a tall glass. Too much alcohol. Not loads, just any is too much really.

A hand rests on my chest, her chin in my collar. Silk of her nightdress sliding up my left leg as she gets comfortable. Putting her weight into me, a moulding of body and spirit, sapping my tension, my worries, leeching the venom from the pore. I hear the quiet rumble in her chest as it lifts and falls, the sticky sugar of brandy insulating her insides, a tiny puff when she exhales and the warm moistness of the condensation on the side of my neck. Just underneath the jaw, where the two day old hairs tingle right down to their each and every womb.

Betsy:

Nice but sudden peck on my scalp. His plush Indian lips. Beestung.

Still in the hold I let out a few words.

'I look at the future on the job. Letting the others decide that. Being a player is enough. But I look at our future when we're alone. Know that it's not definite, but I'll work just as hard to make it true. I see a million possibilities.'

'Tell me.'

'A happy ending. Something about aging gracefully, and spending time watching you sun yourself with little but a smile. How's that?'

'Sounds nice.'

'It'll work out, just you wait.' Patting his chest. 'Just you wait.'

But he's still tense. I know why. He's confused. A woman always knows. But what can I do but be there for him. Be there for us.

'Kiss me again.'

'No,' I continue 'kiss me proper.'

And he angles down and we catch each other's lips. Tasting still of cognac. Still of spice and dust. His shining black hair, so crisp and beautiful. Such a beautiful man.

Rising hand off his bare brown chest I place it to his face, stroking the cheek, stoking the coals in him. Drawing the courage from out its pit in his belly. Responding, I feel my hair part away from my ear, digits dragging through as if it were a lake under blue sky. Always the fascination with my hair. It must be the colour, bringing something out because it's such an unusual dye. Never mind, it's nice to feel him appreciate the finer qualities...

Hands have travelled further south while I get felt up top. He's the same height as me, which I've not done before really. It's good. We fit together like Lego bricks.

His hair is wiry down there. Rough and jagged, not like his too-fine stubble and subtle wave of black that absorbs the light like a solar battery. Half-mast. I encourage him.

Got a moan, good. But he's undone something or other and I feel the primal pawing rake over bumps and dunes, carving a reddened path with his craving. Lips flushed -- both sets I think -- and finding it hard to gasp when he snatches it in his kisses. Needy and full of want. Smelling of sunshine glazed flesh, the honey of summer Earth. Words with no meaning that outline my skin, my neck, those thin hairs at the bottom of your scalp standing on end while the lines in my forehead crinkle with raised involuntary eyebrow movements. Drawing a sigh or three.

Enough of this, take charge. This is your gig.

Tightening in the mesh of his depths, underneath the crumpled sheets and somehow bypassing my silk, his hand weaving around my heated moist flesh as I stimulate his one vital muscle. Getting the gasps, getting the groans, not really registering when it's me making the fuss. Like a delicatessen counter. The shavings of that red red meat, flimsy and damp, bypassing that layered skin and pressing in where the shaking always starts from.

I know it's been a while, honey, I know, don't worry, don't fight it, don't fight. And watching his face grimace while I take his muscle past my lips, wetting him, feeding from him, drawing strength and tension out the tip like crushed ice through a straw. His face, his voice, strained, leg bending at the knee while fingers entwine with my hair, letting it flop over his belly and drag away. Pool and drag, pool and drag, the taste of him and his essence. All the while his replacement within me, up inside me, tickling and motioning left right and centre, a habit I have always kept up with. Maybe he enjoys watching it. I certainly enjoy feeling it. Using the other hand to stroke my loose spit in a small circle over his balls. Swallowing with one half of my brain and inhaling any air I can get with the other half concentrating on myself. But it takes its toll on him, my jet black dear, and as I rise to eye level, we kiss -- my hands wet and his gripping my wrists -- and searching, our gaze is pleading, loving intensity. Mouthing some words, a blanket silence in my ears while I hear instinct whisper sweetly. A hundred thousand years of human evolution hasn't made it easy to concentrate when making love.

Hitting the dunes of my chest again, I strip, mounting him and almost in in one easy motion, but within me, a tease, and a hovering as we touch electric before I settle down on top, and feeling the length invade me, remembering to swallow and close my mouth as the folds are shoved inwards, igniting synapses and nerves not felt like this in weeks and then the sudden suspension of disbelief as it's there, in me -- in me -- I close my eyes, seeing this swirling ball bounce about like a maniac squash court. Feeling a judder. Feeling a nudge as he makes himself comfortable, popping out incoherent syllables amid random name-checks followed by blasphemy. My darling, my darling heart, my lover you, come here, come to me, come within me. Make me yours, make me feel like a woman, like a lover should, like lovers do. Move within me, hold back nothing, not your foresight, not your affection, not your reason or intelligence or your lack of understanding, not your love of the universe and never your healing touch on my bare breast. Give everything to me.

Breathe in. Prepare yourself.

Snapping back I try not to overload. Dangerous when I'm the one in charge, but you see he can be sooooo good when he wants to. Thinking where did that hand come from, and what are you hoping to achieve by doing that? Aaaahh yess, yes baby, I know, its okay. Don't stop. You've got carte blanche. And as I ride him, sliding in and out and feeling the little beads of sweat form on our thighs and smothering each other blindly with kisses that are chaotic and unfocussed I reach behind me to feel him plunging in. To know what he's doing even if I can't see, and to gauge his resolve. To know how he'll react. Watching him being so beautiful beneath me, watching his jaw clench and eyes tighten as he nears his end, trying so hard to get me off at the same time, but out of sync I think, erratic behaviour, knowing that he is so tight down there, balls held close to his body, pulsing in preparation while I motion desperately up and down, going over the same spot again and again, the repeater making the coil tighter and compressing it, smaller, waiting for it to shatter but thinking that it won't, hoping that it stays tighter and tighter and somehow gets stronger by doing that because if it breaks, I might just wet myself and soak him in the process. Keep moving in me, don't stop, don't slow, don't come, not just yet, just a little longer, then you can spew into me as much as you want, your hot come spraying my insides like a firehose in a mousehole, rivulets running down my thighs, the veins so hot inside you, threatening to coat me, making my body quiver and seeing double as my eyes close, racing, racing away, my mind flying into the storm, setting fire to the sky with it all ablaze and you coming to catch me, to hold me -- my jaw slack, my lungs filled with promising words and gasps I can't vocalise and then 'Betsy!' and a crackshot and the greyhound beating away at the track, his legs trembling against mine, so desperate to get me off, and it working Neal, it's working! Spearing me, holding firm, legs beating, sack so tight, the contractions firing up into his sphincter, belly tensing as I feel my own rumble and shake, rattling blindly away, my eyes clenched and mouth crying out with his face to one side, eyes close, spraying me inside and I feel it hot and molten, my body wavering, wavering, drowning in shivers as my senses crosswire spectacularly, the greyhound loose and away, my hair flailing down, his grip freeing and my breast numb from fingerprints.

As he withdraws, I groan. I lay back with my head fuzzy and get caught in his arms. A free hand fingers our joining running into my deep groove and I pull it away for a taste. As I bliss out, he goes to work on me down there. Before I pass out, he's claimed my senses twice and my body once more. His voice becomes ragged and his neck strains. His final release waits until sunup to be cleaned. I love him.