Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Spoilers: A Breed Apart

Mary Elizabeth Braddock, feral and elemental, was now at this moment trying to conquer one of her most basic fears: that of fire. She had taken Emma's advice to heart. Knowing Gabriel, he wouldn't anticipate her overcoming that fear to use the fire against him. They had an advantage, or at least they would if she could do this.

 She was working on the Sanctuary computer, looking up new and interesting ways to treat blunt-force trauma injuries. Altogether, it wasn't something that she wouldn't do normally, however, the presence of one lit taper, balanced delicately in a lovely brass and glass candlestick, made all the difference. Every once and a while she'd stop her work and just stare at it, watching the fire slowly melt away the wax. The reds and orangey gold's cast a circle of brightness around the silent lab. In the very heart of the intensity the wick burned white-silver and blue, the colors of the fire that she could throw out of her mouth.

She rubbed a small blister on the palm of her hand; she'd burnt herself with Emma that afternoon. To her surprise, it hadn't sent her screaming in the other direction. She'd hid behind Emma's back, away from the flame, and whimpered like a puppy, but she hadn't run away. Luckily Emma was an understanding soul; she'd held Liz in her arms until the fears had subsided. With anyone else it would have been a very awkward moment, but Emma was a telempath, she knew exactly how it felt and simply accepted Liz's fears.

Another glob of wax crumbled from the heat of the flame. It dribbled down the smoky glass stem of the candlestick and solidified again in little crater-like droplets on the brass base. Liz caught one droplet on her fingertip; it solidified on her index finger, creating an exact mold of the ridges of her fingerprint. It was an awesome fascination that fed her impressions of fire. Now, after this afternoon, she could look at it without shuddering. She could stand back and admire the terrible, terrible beauty and destructiveness of the flames. She was afraid, any person in their right mind would fear that potential, but it was now tempered with the knowledge that she could control the power, the intensity.

Absorbed in her musings she almost missed the sounds of one lone gentleman tiptoeing around the corner and approaching the lab. Almost was the operative word in that thought, she could still hear a fly on the wall from twenty meters away, genetic re-sequencing or no. Flicking her black, super-sensitive tongue in and out of her mouth rapidly she pulled the pheromones roughly over the Jacobson's organ on the roof of her mouth. The scent was of her dear friend Adam, trying unsuccessfully to sneak up on her in the privacy of the lab. This reeked of a set-up encounter; after all it wasn't natural for Adam to be up and walking around at midnight on a Saturday.

"Ye know that ye canna sneak up me" she said conversationally to the computer screen standing in front of her, still typing up her latest notes and observations.

"Humor me, will ya?" his voice echoed in the dark, nearly empty lab.

"If ye insist" she continued typing, not breaking her rhythm for the conversation.  

"I do" he said softly.

He kept sneaking, quietly, into the lab. If she'd been anyone else, in all likelihood, she wouldn't have heard anything. He stepped up, and gently, as if she was porcelain and would shatter at a careless touch, he wrapped his arms around her waist and tucked his chin onto her shoulder.

"Well now, this is nice." Liz leaned away from her work, into his arms. "Are we trying to lull me into tranquility?"

"Is it working?" he whispered into her neck.

"Aye," she grinned, "'Tis indeed working, well I'd say"

"I talked with Brennan this afternoon"

"Brennan?" she swiveled on her barstool to look him squarely in the eyes, "What does he have to do with anything?"

"Well Brennan talks to Shalimar, seeing as they're…"

"Together" she said delicately.

"Yes, together. And Shalimar talks to you, seeing as you're friends. So from that I managed to deduce that when you told Shalimar why you were angry, she told Brennan, and Brennan, being the kind man that he is, told me."

"Did he now?" she murmured, more than halfway entranced in the feeling of his fingers moving against her back.

"Mmmm, yup. Most definitely, I owed him a night out on the town." He ginned.

"Which just happens to be why no one but you and I are awake in Sanctuary tonight?"

"Maybe" She pulled herself away slightly, taking his hands into her own, and gave him a more serious, sober look.

"I hope ye dinna plan t' just pick me up and drag me off t' ye bed Adam, dearest. I might have made that invitation half-pissed as I was, but I still dinna just jump around t' a man's room." She smiled warmly "Not like an overeager twenty-something that canna wait to rip up the sheets."

"Like a couple of twenty-something's that are currently out painting the town red tonight?"

"Well now" she slid off the barstool and pulled his hands, still caught up in hers, around her waist. "Nothing wrong with that, just not my style, that's all."

"Not my style either." He snuggled her closer, "Hey, nice candlestick."

"Thanks, its Emma's"

"I know I gave it to her."

"So she said. I think ye're right about that fear thing, dearest, all it took was a few hours this afternoon an' I can handle it like I was never afraid of it."

"Did she tell you what my idea was about Gabriel and the fire?"

"Not really, but I kinda get that drift. We surprise him with me not being as afraid of th' fire as I usually am."

"That and I was also thinking about trying to surprise him at his own little game."

"Meaning…what?" he voice was muffled in his shoulder, as he walked her backwards over to the sofa, near the eating area, upstairs.

"Meaning, remember how you got out of the Genomex complex?"

"Yes, ye want me t' go back in through the ventilation shaft."

"Yeah, I think that next time Mr. Ashlock tries to assert the superiority of mutant-kind over humanity we should be waiting in the wings with a little assertion of superiority of our own." He sat and pulled her onto his lap, laying her out over the sofa and tucking her head into the crook of his neck.

"Like a fireball up his ass?" she squirmed, trying to find a comfortable spot on his chest. She flicked her tongue out, over his chin, and deliberately left it out to tickle him before bringing it back in.

"Something like that" he let her squirm until she found her niche, and rubbed the spot on his chin that she'd tickled. "You know I've had some interesting ideas about that tongue of yours."

"Oh have ye, now?" she said archly, flicking the aforementioned organ in and out rapidly and tickling his chin again.

"Yes. I had a horrible crush on you, did you know that?" He couldn't believe he was saying this, he'd come across as a half-witted, obsessive and incredibly teenage.

"Did ye now?" she turned around in his arms, looking impossibly pleased with herself. "Well, I feel a bit better, then. Ye know ye pricked me pride in telling me off like ye did. I wouldn't a been quite so ticked if ye hadn't a pricked me pride." She said it lightly, but he could feel the tension in her back and neck as she spoke.

"If it makes you feel any better, I was thinking that there was no way you would have done what you did if you hadn't been um, intoxicated."

"What, ye think ye're not a man to drag off inna bed?" at his more than slightly embarrassed look, she stroked his chest in a comforting fashion, "Adam, ye're a perfectly wonderful man t' drag off t' bed, believe me, have a little confidence in ye'self."

"I guess I'll have to, won't I?" He stroked her neck, sending little shivers down her back and making her purr with pleasure. "I think that there are more interesting things to do with our time than talk about Gabriel, don't you?"

"Hmmm? Oh yes, very much so, very much so."

 Sometime near one in the morning Brennan and Shalimar arrived back in Sanctuary. They were giggling, half-dizzy with cheap beer and the flush of new love. Trying to quietly enter the main atrium, not waking anyone, they climbed the stairs and stopped shortly at the sight of Adam, fearless leader of Mutant X, and Liz, impudent trauma medic, tangled around each other on the sofa. Liz's head lifted, she was on top of their fearless leader, as he snored the evening away.

Shalimar let her eyes glow feral yellow, her iris iridescent in the low light. Predictably Liz let her eyes glow back, greenish gold, her posture curiously possessive of the man sleeping softly underneath her. Brennan let the girls communicate silently, it was almost creepy, the two women glowing at each other.

Whatever message they wanted to send each other was sent, Shalimar tugged him back to their room, rather it was her room, but the room that they'd shared for the past few days.

"What was that all about?" he asked, half-creeped from the exchange.

"What… Liz? Oh, she and Adam resolved their little issues. I think that we're going to have a very happy Adam."

"And you got all that from staring at each other?"

"Yeah, why? Got a problem with that?"

"Women," he grumbled.