For disclaimers, please see Chapter 1.
Brennan blinked his eyes a few times, attempting to get them to focus. Images swam before him, recent memories fighting with reality. He rubbed a hand over his face, fingers massaging his eyes. "What the fuck just happened?" His voice sounded gravelly, like someone else's, even to his own ears.
He pulled his hand away to see Jesse's face above him, beaming. "Hey, welcome back."
With those simple words, the past few minutes crashed down on Brennan, a tide of moments beating upon his mind. He saw the shower, remembered the feel of Jesse pressed up against him.
He felt Jesse's cock, hard and throbbing against his ass.
He felt Jesse's hand slip down in the last few moments, right before the electrical release, gripping Brennan's cock and stroking him to climax.
"What the fuck! What did you do to me?" Brennan shouted.
Jesse saw Brennan's face contort in pain, and reached out to touch him, thinking the pain had already returned.
"What the fuck! What did you do to me?" he heard Brennan shout. Brennan knocked his hand away.
"Don't touch me! Don't ever fucking touch me again!"
Jesse shrank back, his heart caving in on him. "Brennan, please," he begged. "It'll be okay."
Brennan rose shakily to his feet, holding tightly to the wall to steady himself. "This never happened. Do you hear me? This never happened. And don't come anywhere near me. You disgust me."
"Brennan, no – it'll be okay," Jesse repeated, and then he remembered that Brennan needed him, needed his touch. "We'll work through this, and you need me to help you to control the electricity."
Brennan looked at his hand, and flexed his fingers. Electricity crackled between them. He snapped his hand closed and the electricity dissipated instantly. "Not any more. Like I said, stay away from me and get the hell out of my room."
Jesse stared at him for a moment, but couldn't think of anything to say that would change things. He walked to the door, glancing at his clothes heaped on the floor, which vanished and reappeared on his body. He paused in the doorway, not looking back. "I'm sorry."
"Get the fuck out."
Jesse left.
"I have to get back in there. The risks are too high!"
"You will not leave this house, Adam. You need to give that boy some space."
Adam turned and walked across the kitchen to a window, looking out at the small, well-tended garden outside. "But I need to be there," he said, unconsciously clenching the curtain.
Cynthia gazed at him, concentrating lightly. Adam froze, and his fingers fell open, letting the curtain fall from his grasp. "The best thing for everyone right now is to get some rest and to give it some time. Things will work themselves out. They always do," Cynthia intoned.
Cynthia let her gaze drop, and reached out to her coffee mug, raising it to take a sip. "You were saying, Adam?"
The slight shiver Adam exhibited showed he had returned to conscious awareness. "Huh? Oh, I was just saying that I think the best thing for everyone right now is to get some rest and to give it some time. Things will work themselves out. They always do."
"You know best, Adam. I trust your judgment," Cynthia said, a smile curving the wrinkles in her face.
Adam turned to her, also smiling. "I think I'm going to take my own advice and go catch up on my sleep."
"Alright, dear. Sleep well."
Shalimar groaned, adjusting her position again. "This sucks."
"And it sucked two minutes ago when you last said it," Emma replied, not looking up from her pad.
Shal stretched slow and deep, letting her feline instincts surface. "Sorry, but it's not my fault. I was built for action, not research."
Emma looked up from her pad. "I know. And this is driving me crazy, too. It's been two days and we haven't found squat."
"Why can't Jesse just have the computer search the files for us?" Shal complained, and not for the first time.
"We've been over this. Jesse already filtered the files as best he could. These are just the files where our names appear. He can't search for personal information because we have no idea what that information might be, and it's probably not labeled personal or anything."
Shalimar sighed and returned to her reading.
"That bastard!" she cried out a few minutes later.
"What?"
"Adam knew this was going to happen to me. Well, technically it says "strongly suspect", but he knew."
"What did you find?"
"The bastard expected more feline traits to emerge physically. It says that he thought I would likely go into heat at some point and produce a litter." Shalimar's eyes flashed. "That's not going to happen. I'd get myself fixed first!"
Emma laughed.
"What's so funny?" Shalimar growled.
"It was just funny to hear you talking about getting 'fixed'. Most women would say something about getting their tubes tied or something like that. It sounds like you are starting to think of yourself as an actual cat."
"That's not funny."
"So if I went into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna, you wouldn't come running?"
"Oh, you're gonna pay for that." Shalimar jumped from her chair and pinned Emma to the couch, tickling her. Emma squirmed beneath the feral, gasping for air.
Jesse walked into the room, munching a piece of pizza. "Wow, I've had dreams that start out a lot like this."
Both women threw pillows at him.
Jesse settled back into the reclining chair at the computer station, closing his eyes for a minute. After his pillow pummeling at the hands of his female teammates, he'd made his escape when they had started shooting questions at him, which was far worse.
"Why aren't you and Brennan speaking?"
"How did Brennan get his powers under control?"
"Is Brennan okay?"
"Are you okay?"
He could do little more than shrug and escape to his computer. He wouldn't have told them the details about what happened anyway, but if he had wanted to, he couldn't risk upsetting Brennan even more. The elemental had been moody and reclusive since the incident, refusing to speak to him at all, and barely even to the girls.
"How could I have been so stupid?" he asked aloud.
He shook his head again regretting those few minutes of letting his hormones get the best of him.
He pressed a few keys on the keyboard and returned to his reading, and in doing so, stumbled upon a key to the mystery.
Jesse's fingers raced across the keyboard, redefining the search criteria and realized he had hit the motherlode.
"Hey Bren."
Brennan barely nodded in response to Shalimar and kept walking to the dojo.
Shalimar rolled her eyes at Emma. "What a grouch."
"He probably just needs time to process."
"Process what? His powers went wacky, Jesse saved him. Is this his whole Jesse competition thing again?"
"I think we'll find out soon enough, they can't keep this up forever."
"With as much as he's been in the dojo lately, he better not be beating up any more holographic Jesses."
"I think he learned his lesson on that one."
"It wouldn't hurt to double check," Shal said, standing up and stretching. "Besides, I need a break."
Jesse sat back from the computer, stunned.
He'd only read a handful a files and already his life had changed. Memories leaked out of his mental closet faster and faster.
He had a grandmother, a woman he had met, even fought, and not known.
He wasn't a molecular. He terrified Adam.
Shalimar approached the dojo cautiously, keeping out of sight. If Brennan had slipped back to bad habits, she didn't want him to have any warning.
She slid along a wall and slowly turned her head around the corner, taking in the view of the dojo.
Brennan jabbed and ducked, releasing terrifyingly large electrical currents on holographic opponents, obliterating them on contact.
Shalimar noted that none of the opponents looked like Jesse, and she turned to leave when she heard Brennan cry out in pain. She turned back to see streams of electricity arcing out from him, just like in the warehouse.
"Jesse!" she shouted into her comm-ring. "Come to the dojo! Brennan is overloading!"
Moments later, a blurry Jesse came running out of a wall in the dojo. He stayed insubstantial so that the electrical currents couldn't hit him. At the last moment, he materialized and tackled Brennan, taking the taller man down to the floor. Jesse grabbed onto him and started draining power as quickly as he could.
"Get off me!" Brennan yelled.
"What's going on?" Emma said, running up behind Shalimar.
"Brennan – we don't have a choice! You'll take out all of Sanctuary!"
Brennan fought within Jesse's arms, and Jesse wanted to turn solid and lock him in his embrace, but he worried that he couldn't do that and drain Brennan's power at the same time.
"I'm sorry, Brennan. I don't have a choice." Jesse concentrated for just a moment, and their clothing phased into nothingness, leaving both men naked.
Brennan gasped at the additional contact with Jesse's skin, and felt his emotions shift, going from rage to arousal. He moaned.
"I don't want this," he yelled at Jesse, but grabbed onto the younger man, pulling his naked body closer against him. "I'm not gay!" He twisted in Jesse's arms to face him. "Why can't I stop this?" he asked as he ground his rising cock against Jesse's. Both men moaned, ending when Brennan claimed Jesse's mouth.
Across the room, Shalimar hooted in delight.
Jesse tore his mouth from Brennan's and looked at Shalimar, who looked like a kid on Christmas morning. "Sorry, Shal," he mouthed, and walls appeared from nowhere, closing off the dojo from Emma and Shalimar, blocking their view.
Jesse could hear Shal pounding against the wall, but as Brennan began bucking against him, sliding their hard cocks back and forth against each other, he lost all other thought.
Electricity coursed between them, flickering and dancing as it exploded from Brennan and dove into Jesse. Jesse grabbed Brennan tighter and kissed the older man, their tongues dancing frantically.
"Going to cum soon," Brennan rumbled.
"Me, too." Jesse groaned. "Brennan, I love you."
Brennan's eyes flashed in confusion, but nothing could stop the pull towards release. Brennan cried out, spilling onto Jesse's stomach, and Jesse followed not a moment later.
Brennan slumped, his eyes drifting closed, the electricity within him at peace once again.
Jesse kissed him gently on the lips. "Sleep now and we'll talk when you wake up," he whispered. "About so many things…like how we really met, and how you kissed me on our first mission together."
Author's Note:
Thanks for all the feedback. One person in particular is responsible for this chapter – she harassed me until I wrote it. ;-)