John and Laura's date, a reprieve from their less than rosy realities. This chapter is a mix of plotty flash back and smutty date. Enjoy!

Chapter 3: Start a Fire (Ryan Star)

"I remember drinking as the stars were falling
I remember dancing on the hotel's unmade bed
So wake up, wake up dreaming
And lie here with me
Wake up, wake up dreaming
And lie here with me
Here we go
Just lose control and let your body give in
To the beat
Of your heart as my hand touches your skin
Is this love
Or
Just sexual desire
We're gonna start a fire!"

The pair didn't say much as they stood in line to order, but it wasn't awkward. Which was weird for Laura. Usually people were silent around her because she scared them, but, judging from his scent, John was intrigued, not scared. Outside of being with her family, Laura had never experienced a 'pleasant' silence.

They settled at a picnic table, and John nodded towards her burger, "That's uh…rare."

Laura knew her face flushed instantly, and she looked down at the burger that was exactly what she had asked for. "I've always eaten them this way. I know it's weird. Never made me sick though."

John didn't need to know that her ability to eat raw meat without puking or dying was directly from her father. Logan was always pleased to recall when he'd once cooked a piece of raw meat on an electrified door to feed her young mother. He saw it as proof of his ability to provide for his mate even though her needs were different than his. Laura had to tamp down a surge of possessive fire in her gut when John took a French fry from his plate, and resisted the urge to give him some of hers.

John gave her a lopsided smile, "At least you didn't put a fried egg on it."

Laura laughed shortly, eyeing his tray of food, and again resisted the urge to put half her fries on it, "You put mustard on yours, gross."

"Guess we'll agree to disagree."

She studied his face as he took a bite. He wasn't sleeping enough, that was obvious in the sunken bags beneath his dark eyes. He needed rest. "You look tired."

John sighed, "I am. Been…moving." She didn't ask him to elaborate, but after a moment he continued anyway, "I live with a group of other people, and we had to move unexpectedly. We've all been scrambling."

Something in his words, his tone, struck Laura harder than a fist, and she found herself remembering the day it all fell apart with sudden vivid clarity:

"Laura, could you give me a hand? I'm late to the conference, and I can't find my glasses." Her mother had puttered around their hotel room, her pin neat black pantsuit threatening to crease every time she stooped to look under a piece of furniture.

Laura had the glasses in her hands in a moment, noting that the new black frames matched the suit, "You look real fancy."

Maia had smiled tightly, "Jean insisted I join her today, and I want to make a good impression."

"They'll love you." Laura assured her mother, though the latter usually wore loose sundresses or athletic wear and was obviously uncomfortable. The suit had been a structured and rather hard look for a woman who was usually all about comfort and light flowing fabrics. Laura had kept the thoughts to herself, even though they'd burned at the tip of her tongue. Over the years she'd mostly learned to keep those thoughts, the ones that might offend people, in her head. Objectively, Maia looked nice, and there was no way anyone could dislike her. Her mother knew that. She'd understand, even if she read it in Laura's mind.

Maia tugged Laura in for a hug, and flitted out the door to join her older sister. Laura had opened the door leading to the adjoining room to collect her younger brother.

Jamie had been a teenager, tall like their mother's family, with a swimmer's lean build and an easy smile that always had people staring. He'd been so sweet then. So much like their mother.

"Mama leave already?" He asked around a lollipop. Laura had just nodded, and settled herself on the platform above the air conditioning unit so she could look out the window.

Jean Gray-Summers had waved at her, a fond smile on her face as she kept Maia from tripping on the gravel outside their waiting car. A mental farewell brushed against Laura's mind,"See you this afternoon, kiddo. I hope you and Jamie have fun. Love you."

Jamie had finished his candy, pulled on his sunglasses, and picked up their first aid kits when the first tremor of unease had snaked down Laura's spine. He'd been so aware of her, of every mood and subtle reaction that he'd frowned, "What's wrong, Laurie?"

She'd said nothing. She just took her first aid kit from him and shouldered it, leading the way out the door and towards the rally they'd volunteered to support. It had been the perfect idea. They got to take a trip with their mother and aunt, and while they were at their conference, Jamie and Laura could help out with the accompanying rally down the street. The problem was, the closer they got, the more the animal in her head had roused. On alert and on edge, she had stuck close to Jamie's side as he managed minor scuffs and the occasional heatstroke with the quiet gentle patience he got from the best parts of their father.

After a couple of drama free hours, Laura had almost passed the unease off as a side effect of her usual out of whack hormones. She had almost forgotten she wasn't human. She had almost forgotten that animals were known to flee before humans even knew natural disasters were coming.

Jamie saw them first: Maia Kinney, running down the street in bare feet to keep up with her half-sister as Jean floated several feet of the ground.

He ticked his head towards her as he whispered her name in unease, "Laura?"

Laura took a deep breath and had known something was wrong with their aunt. She'd known they were all in danger when her mother's voice had rung out in her head with one solid word,"Run!"

Laura echoed the word to Jamie, "You need to go. Now. Get out of here." He'd protested, stubborn as a mule. Just like her, just like both of their parents. Stubborn to the point of stupidity.

Of course he didn't want to leave. He was a helper. He'd caught the bug young from their mother, and had never learned when to leave well enough alone. Laura was her father's daughter. Family above all else. Laura and Logan would burn the entire world to keep their family safe. Jamie and Maia would die trying to save the world.

Even Jamie heard when their mother screamed inside their heads, panic bringing down every wall she'd ever constructed between them, leaving her words echoing in their minds,"Jean, no, stop! Jean! Jean! I know you can hear me! Please!"

Laura had had only seconds to throw herself at him when the wall of power had ripped through everything and everyone. The chaos after that had been the worst Laura had ever seen. So many lives…gone. And that had only been the beginning of the longest day of her life.

Laura came back to her present self with a jolt. John had gotten up and walked around the table to sit next to her at some point, and his hand was on her shoulder. "Laura?" He said in a tone that hinted that it wasn't the first time he'd tried to get her attention.

She stared at him, too caught up in the memory to feel embarrassed about having had the flashback in the first place. They had all tried to forget the day had ever happened. "Hey."

"You okay?" He asked, but frowned when he saw the dog tags hanging from her neck, "PTSD?"

She almost laughed. She almost made a quip about having had PTSD from birth. Instead, she just nodded, struggling to find words. "Tags were my brother's."

"Lost my brother in the war too." John said quietly, settling more fully onto the bench beside her.

"I'm sorry." She said automatically, but then Laura shook her head, "My brother came back, but…we aren't the same."

How could they be? He had seen horrible things that day and then he'd gone to war. All the things they'd tried to protect him from had crashed down around him at once, and she hadn't seen him genuinely smile since. The sweet boy they loved had died that day.

"You're different than I thought you'd be."

Laura blinked at the statement, frustration rising when his scent didn't help her decipher the words. Which meant she had to use her own. "What?"

John's thigh pressed against hers: knee to hip, hip to knee. "I wasn't sure what to make of you after the night we met, but…I like you."

Laura figured out what his careful words meant, "Oh, you mean you thought I was a slut?" The guilty grimace that glanced across his face was worth the harsh words, but she didn't let him struggle to find words to fix it, that kind of human interaction wasted time and caused confusion, "I can come on too strong. I just don't like being patient when I see something I like."

John gave her a lopsided smile, "So you like me too?"

More than like. Her brain supplied, but Laura managed to keep the words in. Instead, she let her body do the talking, cupping his chin in one hand and pulling him in for a deep kiss. He let her lead. Most men fought her, couldn't stand a woman being more assertive, but John just settled his hands on her hips and followed her every unspoken direction.

It was his idea to head back to his truck. The heat between them cooled as they walked, but the minutes they spent sitting in his truck were pleasant. They talked about a lot and nothing at the same time. An hour passed, some of it spent in comfortable silence. Wild.

Laura needed to move though, her muscles were itching to move, to get out of the confines of his truck, but she didn't want to leave John. "There's a park about ten minutes from here. We still have a few more hours of day light."

John smiled at her, "Is that your way of asking if I want to go?"

She grimaced, but nodded. "I can drive if you want. It's a little out of the way."

His hesitation was oddly endearing, but he eventually nodded, "Sure."

He headed towards her truck, and she smiled as she watched him walk across the lot. He may not be talking about how they were mutants, but he obviously had some heightened senses. John had arrived after her, so there was no human way for him to know the red truck belonged to her unless he'd smelled her in it.

They talked about onion rings as Laura drove them, taking the road to the back side of Twin Lakes. The access point was a bit sketchy, but it was away from the subdivision on the opposite side of the lakes that meant people might be around. When her travels brought her through the area, the out of the way pond was her favorite place to stop and enjoy a bite to eat. The road was about a football field away from the shore, but they walked through the trees and made it there in a few minutes.

The beach was made of pebbles rather than sand, and the water was surrounded by trees and brush. There were a few gentle ripples from the slow breeze, but otherwise, the surface was calm and beautifully reflected the clear blue sky above. Frogs gently croaked all around them, joining the droning of insects and the low chirping of birds to make a symphony. The weather was still scorching, but the shade of the trees and the wind allowed the air to feel several degrees cooler.

"How'd you find this place?" John asked, taking it all in as they sat beside the water.

Laura shrugged, but remembered to use her words, "Being around people is hard for me. It's quiet here. I usually stop here and take a break on long hauls."

He smiled at her, looking at her like he had been looking at the lake. Like she was something breathtaking. It made Laura suddenly uncomfortable. It was one thing to know that others found her physically attractive, but it was another to see it so plainly on his face. She wanted to chastise him for being so blatant with his expression. Didn't he know feelings could be used against him? Didn't he know they were at war? Feelings were more dangerous than a missile. The deep dark part of her where she tried to tuck the first ten years of her life reminded her that she'd learned that lesson more than once before. Her aunt had been the first. Laura had made known her affection for her aunt, Sarah had shown her affection for Laura, and they had made Laura kill her. Other caretakers had followed. Until Laura had forced herself to stop caring. Or at least try to. She never could quite follow through. That didn't stop her from being torn.

Laura sucked in a huge gulp of air and ran her fingers through her hair, tugging a bit in an attempt to stall her racing thoughts. The animal in her mind was suddenly wide awake, overriding every bit of human she'd learned in the last quarter century. He seemed like a liability suddenly.

He slid a hand into her hair, keeping one of her hands fixed there, forcing her to look back at him. His voice was soft but uncompromising as he said, "Come here."

"I don't take orders well." She told him, resisting his words and touch. She didn't take orders well. She was even worse than her father. There was a reason she'd never been on the main X-Men string. She often ended up being more liability than asset.

John smiled, looking more delicious than he had any right to, "I'll make it worth your while."

The animal in her wanted so badly to rebel, but it also sensed that, based on his scent, he would most certainly make it worth her while. The human in her wanted to melt into him, to feel his touch on more of her skin. In the end, a few more breaths were all it took for the dichotomy to merge, and she closed the gap between them.

He had her settled in his lap moments later. The position had her head higher than his, forcing her to look down on him. He smiled up at her, "There you go."

Laura settled her hands against his chest, loving the way they fit together. She took a few moments before starting on the first button on his shirt, going one by one until the piece of fabric fell from his shoulders. John shrugged out of the thing, laying it down behind him. Laura occupied herself with tracing the tattoo on his shoulder with her fingers, only stopping when John pulled her own shirt over her head.

Together they made quick work of his belt and pulled their pants down just far enough to let her move enough to settle down on him. She hid her initial grimace in his shoulder, kissing the tan skin there until she was sure the spike of pain had settled out of her body.

He held her tenderly after they were both done, tracking his own patterns across the unmarred skin of her back. Sometimes she wished she could get tattoos, but they would require more maintenance than they would for a human and it seemed vain given the current circumstances. The errant thought of his name on her skin passed too quickly for her to read more into it. "You okay?"

Laura blinked at him, almost drowsy, and spent a couple seconds staring into his face, "Good." That didn't seem like enough, "Wonderful."

"Sure? You seem so far away." John told her.

"Not far away." She told him, attempting to put words to how she felt, "Too close. I feel too close… to you."

He frowned, leaning back as far down as he could and removing his hands from her body. It was sweet, but, if she'd meant physically, the fact that he was still inside of her kind of defeated his purpose. So Laura rolled her hips to remind him, grinning impishly, "Not like that."

The frown dissolved from his handsome face, and he brought his hands up to cup hers. "Okay, I feel better about that."

"Lots of thoughts. I don't want to think." Laura punctuated her words by kissing him soundly and scratching her nails down his chest.

A few more minutes of teasing him, and he was hard again. They went rougher this time, fighting for dominance as much as they could with him underneath her, valiantly protecting her from the harsh terrain. She could have taken it, wouldn't have minded the rocks digging into her back, the wounds healing before tearing open again. He didn't know that though. So she made sure his shirt stayed under him when he laid back. John shouldn't be hurt, not even by a few little cuts. Did she love looking down at his bruised, well-kissed lips while he sucked in deep breaths? Absolutely. Did she love pushing him back, arching her spine, and taking her pleasure from him? Absolutely. Judging from his scent and face, he didn't mind at all.

Had she felt like this since Angel?

No. She hadn't. For a moment she considered the man below her. He was dark where Angel had been pale. Her skin had always contrasted starkly against Angel's, she had frequently thought he looked ill in the few photos they'd taken together. John's skin seemed to glow against hers, and her own looked fairer than she'd ever seen it. Of course she would never have her mother's porcelain skin, too many years of all day in the sun and her father's genetics had seen to that.

Angel and John weren't the same. Different, and the years between them meant she was different too. Neither was better than the other, but being held by John made her realize how long it had been since she'd felt content. Life seemed less insurmountable in his grip.

Laura sensed the animal in her soften towards him, and their third beach side round was the softest, with Laura flattening her chest as close to his as she could get, rocking her body over his while they kissed each other gently and deeply. Occasionally John would break away from her lips to suck and nip at the skin of her collar bone before doing the same to her breasts, his warm hands never leaving her body.

They ended their tryst laying side by side on his shirt, their pants half pulled up and using her shirt and jacket as pillows so they could just look at each other. His expression didn't make her skin crawl or her chest tighten in anxiety anymore. What a wonder for only a few hours.

Laura played with his hair, something she hadn't indulged in for a long time. It should have concerned her, but she just wanted to feel the soft strands between her fingers and to smell the scent of the shampoo he'd used at some point prior to their meeting. The clean smell was nice, but it had tried to cover up his true scent. At least for their first round. John smelled like John again. Well, almost. He smelled like her now too. The animal in her liked that a lot. She wanted them to smell like each other.

"I need to get back." Laura said softly.

John nodded, kissing her forehead so tenderly it almost hurt her, "Me too, but…I'd like to see you again."

Laura almost smiled, warmth spreading through her at his words. She sat up, putting distance between them, just enough to keep from instigating round four. After she pulled her wrinkled shirt back on, she responded quietly, "I'd like that too."

He held her jacket out to her, "I'll text you. Maybe we try another food truck?"

"I'm game." She agreed easily, sliding her arms into the leather sleeves. John let his fingers trail along her skin and ended up holding her hand as they returned to her truck.

She drove them back to John's truck, and she got out, standing behind his truck with him so they could kiss like teenagers for a few more minutes. Night was falling though, so she needed to check in before her parents…her mother really… got worried. "Bye, John."

He smiled at her, "See you soon, Laura."

Laura walked away from him, feeling the dread of returning home seep in the further she was from him. Nothing would have made her happier than being back with him on that beach and staying forever. Because going home meant Friday was a day closer, that she was closer to saying goodbye to one of the greatest men she'd ever known.

What a wonderful distraction John was. If only he'd been able to distract her forever.

Next chapter catches up to the Human Epilogue 2 before devolving into something...new.

-Jenn

Note: I love reviews, but please don't ask to draw or illustrate my story. I've gotten a ton of those in the last few days, and they really seem like AI bots. If you love Laura and John, please let me know!