Warning: very mild bloodplay (Victor likes to bite and scratch, after all).

While Rook was in the shower I went across the street to the pathetic excuse for a dive bar, looking for food. I was hungry enough I could eat a whole herd of cows but I'd have to settle for six rare burgers.

As I ate back in the motel room I tried to ignore the little voice in my head telling me just to make good on my contract and move on. It was the surest bet, the easiest thing I could do, but then I'd gone and asked her about other ferals who'd been tested on.

I knew both of them. The one like me had to be Kyle Gibney, Wild Child. We'd worked together in the past, got along fairly well. Not enough, though, for me to give much of a shit, he was just as much of an asshole as I am.

The other feral couldn't be anyone other than my baby brother. Even though he'd walked out of my life and I knew he hated me, the thought of anyone hurting him triggered some long lost protective streak. It'd been just him and me against the world for so long, he'd been all I had.

I had no clue where he was now, if he was even still breathing. Still, getting rid of a piece of tech that could hurt him and me both made me agree to help Rook.

Maybe it made me a hypocrite, that I didn't care if other mutants were being tortured and killed until my brother was one of them. I've never been accused of compassion towards my kind.

A sound of frustration and pain drew my attention to the closed bathroom door. I could hear Rook moving around, done with her shower and probably getting dressed. I ignored it until it happened again and my curiosity got the better of me.

I crossed the small space and knocked on the door. "Problem?"

She sighed and opened the door only enough for me to see her face, the rest of her hidden behind the barrier. "Would it be too much to ask for help wrapping my ribs? You did break them, after all."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Can't do it behind a door." She glared at me, then opened the door further and turned her back to me. She was wearing only a pair of underwear, probably why she'd hesitated to ask for help, and she'd pulled her hair into a messy bun that left her bare from her neck to her waist.

All that pale, unblemished skin caused a visceral reaction in me. I wanted to leave marks all over her, with my claws and my teeth, and the fact that she could heal faster than normal just made the urge stronger.

Rook looked over her shoulder at me. "Problem?" she asked, echoing my earlier question.

I breathed in and caught her scent, found that like the night before she was aroused. Otherwise she hid it well but scent never lies. Normally that wouldn't happen with a woman I'd nearly raped not 24 hours before, though I didn't exactly have precedence to go on; other women were either long gone or dead after I was finished with them.

The longer I was silent the more she got agitated, nervousness beginning to trickle in, but her arousal got stronger, too. That was familiar, at least.

"Never mind, I can do it myself," she said, anger tinting her voice. She turned enough I could see where I'd hurt her shoulder, four puncture wounds along the curve, bright red against pale flesh. The sight made me painfully hard.

I stepped forward, my hand closing over the marks, and I felt her tense up, her hands rising to cover her breasts. She was tall for a woman, putting her ass at the right height for me to press my groin against her. It seemed involuntary when her hips pressed back.

"I didn't ask for help so you could fuck me," she said, her voice gone hoarse. "Let me go."

My grip tightened when she tried to pull away. I kept my hand on her injured shoulder and let the other rest on her belly, pressing closer. "Hard to take you seriously when I can smell how wet ya are. Been smelling it since last night." I let my claws dig in on her belly, making her deliberately push back against me to get away.

Finally I took that hand away and reached for the bandages on the counter. I heard her take a breath, wondering why I'd let her go.

"Gonna have to lift your arms some," I told her, running my fingers down one of them. "Trust me, frail, don't matter if I can see your tits or not."

"Why the fuck do you call me 'frail'?" she said, in her anger apparently forgetting as she turned and dropped her arms. "I think I have proven I am not weak."

I raised an eyebrow, grinning at her reaction. "It's just a word. Most women fit the bill." I held up the bandages.

Rook looked at me for a long moment and then lifted her arms again. Her eyes told me not to stare so I did anyway. She wasn't well-endowed, her breasts were small and high, pale as the rest of her. Like I said, her body reacted to me, and when I touched her right below her breasts I watched as her nipples went hard. My hand stayed there a moment to hold the cloth in place and then I deliberately brushed my fingers over her while I wrapped her torso.

She took a safety pin from the counter to secure the bandaging and then turned to grab a tanktop.

I stopped her, reaching out to hook the back of her neck with my hand.

"Don't," she said, though there was no fear in her, only anger.

"Why not?"

"Because I have to work with you."

"Not good enough." I cupped her breast with my other hand, engulfing the small orb and feeling the tip hard as a pebble against my palm. "You want it."

She was clenching her teeth, obviously trying to ignore her own reaction to me. "Want it, maybe, but I do not need it."

My fingers wrapped almost all the way around her neck and I squeezed, watched her eyes widen. "Then stop me."

I expected her to push me away, to tell me to get bent. I wanted her to fight.

Instead she grabbed two handfuls of my shirt and jerked me closer, tilting her head up to kiss me.

I took control of it immediately, backing her up against the counter. She dropped one hand to pull up my shirt and then dragged her nails down my back, not quite hard enough to draw blood but I growled against her mouth anyway, wishing she'd break skin. I could feel her pulse against my thumb on her neck, fast and fluttery.

Hauling her up onto the counter, I let her neck go only to give her a series of bites there, leaving a trail of bloody fang marks from just under her ear down to the curve of her shoulder by the marks from my claws. She whimpered with each one, encouraging me by digging her fingers in on my arms, her legs wrapping around my hips to bring me closer and let her grind herself against my cock.

It's true that I like raping women, but I get my rocks off just the same when they're willing, and I haven't met but one or two who get off on pain like I do. Rook didn't beg me to stop or cry about the wounds I inflicted; the only pained sounds she made were when I got too rough with her torso. And she gave as good as she got, bloodying my lower lip, scratching my arms and then my chest when she got my shirt off. There are other ferals who hate letting anyone hurt them, even during sex, but I crave it. Ain't like I can't take it.

As she was undoing my jeans I cut her underwear off, her scent suddenly stronger, almost overwhelming with no barrier. I reached down and touched her, let my claws out just a bit and felt her shudder, her hand wrapping around my cock and squeezing in response. I pulled my claws all the way in and then slipped two fingers inside of her, stretching and stroking her until she begged for more. With three I had her coming and I shoved inside of her while she was still spasming.

Her nails left gouges down my shoulder blades, over and over. I could see her entire back in the mirror and watched myself leave shallow cuts there while I fucked her. My other hand was on her hip holding her in place, my claws embedded there. She was so tight around my cock and she got tighter the closer she got to coming again, strong enough that I came with a growl, hips jerking as I emptied into her.

The sound of her shallow breathing brought me back and when I opened my eyes I saw pain in the furrow of her brow. All over her body was the evidence of our coupling, cuts and bruises and trickles of pale blood. I leaned into her and licked at her neck, the normal copper tang tinted with something foreign I couldn't identify.

Rook let me clean her, her hands on my shoulders and then my waist to steady herself when I set her on her feet. "Should have waited to take a shower," she said, mildly amused. "And now you've destroyed all my underwear."

I shrugged. "You want an apology?" I asked, grabbing my shirt off the floor.

"As if you would give one even if I was mad about it. I can go without."

"One less thing to take off, anyway." I let her go and watched her get dressed, saw the inherent gracefulness she moved with even with broken ribs.

She chose black cargo pants and pulled on a dark green hoodie over her tanktop, then moved past me back into the room, sitting on the bed to put on socks and boots. "There are a few places the synthesizer could be," she began, "but I think we can narrow it down." She reached back into her bag and pulled out a scrap of fabric with a patch sewn on it. "I took this off the one you killed."

The patch was in the shape of a stylized bird, probably an eagle, bisected with red on top and blue below. Usually that symbol had the letters FOH across it in bold white, but they were absent here, and the colors were muted, like they were meant to blend in rather than stand out.

"Friends of Humanity?" My lip curled back. "What the fuck do they want?"

"You are a mutant and they are anti-mutant. Doesn't take Poirot to figure that out."

"They coulda been after you, y'know."

She shook her head. "I am not a mutant. Not every powered individual is, and anyway, I can blend." She gestured at me. "You cannot, at least not without difficulty."

That was true. I'm big, which stands out enough, but I can't hide the rest unless I keep my mouth shut and don't show my hands. Shitty way to live. "How'd they find me, then?"

Rook shrugged. "Hell if I know. Are you well-known to their kind?"

I smirked. "You could say that. I'm just the kind of asshole they hate, the whole point of why they exist. But what's that got to do with the synthesizer?"

"That is where it gets a bit twisted. The only people who know about it are those who have used it and those who have been subjected to it. Not long before I escaped I saw this symbol worn by some people in the complex where I was stationed, talking to some of the higher-ups. It meant nothing to me at the time but now I am thinking that it cannot be a coincidence."

It was a long shot. "So, what? The FOH borrows the synthesizer so they can take me down?"

She shrugged again. "I said it was twisted. The fact that you were contracted to find me in the first place does not make sense, either – they like to keep things in house, fewer questions asked. And carbonadium only affects mutants with healing factors, it is otherwise inert. There is no other use for it."

"The loose end is the FOH, then. I don't buy them gunning for me just because I'm a mutant."

"Well." She spread her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "There is a facility in the next province. I can get us in and, if you help me get the inhibitor off, I can find out why you are a target." She lifted her eyes to mine and I saw the challenge there. "Unless of course you are not curious."

I growled at her but she just smirked.

Even with food and sleep I still wasn't up to full strength, and somehow Rook knew it. She still had my keys and just rolled her eyes when I tried to get them back, telling me I should rest by sleeping in the truck.

My body betrayed me. I was asleep in minutes.

I woke up to the sound of tires on asphalt, the radio on low and Rook's soft voice singing along with Pink Floyd. I stretched as much as I could in the small confines of the cab.

She jerked a thumb at a paper bag sitting between us. "Burgers again. Sorry. I stopped for them a couple hours back."

"You don't eat?" I asked, digging in. I hate fast food but beggars can't be choosers. "Or sleep?"

"Don't need to. Lucky for you." She switched the radio off. "Listen, I will not going to be much help if we run into trouble."

I snorted. "Seems you did fine before."

"I am being serious. The longer I go with this thing on, the more I have to try to survive, the weaker I am getting." She was angry and her scent told me she hated admitting this. I couldn't blame her. "I used a lot of energy in getting out and then trying to evade you. It will not kill me but it slows me down."

"We'll be fine." I wasn't really trying to reassure her, and it wasn't false bravado on my part. I just don't see the point in worrying. "If it works, it works. If not, I'll take as many of the fuckers down with me as I can."

"Heh." She smiled, shook her head slightly in amusement.

"What?"

"You just remind me of a man I used to know. Terribly pragmatic with a bit of a temper. Same penchant for outdated facial hair."

When she'd mentioned him before, I'd assumed she only knew of him in passing. Now, I sat up straight and tried not to stare at her, tried not to act like I was too interested.

"Did he call himself Logan?"

The truck jerked and she swore. After a few moments she pulled over to the shoulder and put the truck in park. "You knew him?" she asked, looking at me. There was something in her eyes I couldn't read.

"A long time ago, yeah." I felt like being vague and her stare was making me wary. "We were in the military together."

Her fingers flexed on the steering wheel. "You must be Victor. He mentioned you." Her voice went soft and she looked away. Her scent was all over the place, angry and sad, affectionate and thoughtful. "When the pain from the testing was very bad he talked about his big brother, about how Victor took care of him and kept him alive." She looked up with a faint smile. "You are not what I expected."

Well, so much for vague. I went from wary to uncomfortable, thinking about my brother always did this to me. He came the closest to ever making me feel anything like affectionate, to love, something I'd never felt with anyone else.

It bugged the hell out of me that anyone knew about it, it felt like I'd revealed a weakness. I hated the way she was looking at me, like she was trying to reconcile all the information she had, trying to figure out if I was worth it.

"He's why you agreed to help me," she said suddenly, like it had just occurred to her.

I moved in a blur of motion, one hand around her neck as I pushed her against the door. "Don't matter why, frail. Just remember I can renege any time I feel like it."

The words were hollow, I knew it and I could tell she knew it, too. I felt like I'd lost something, some kind of edge in letting her know just how invested I was in helping her. Something in her eyes told me she wouldn't use it against me. Somehow that bothered me more than her knowing in the first place.

Rook didn't say anything when I let her go, she just put the truck back in gear. She pulled back onto the road and switched the radio on again.

I fell asleep again to Bad Company.