Family Ties

CHAPTER NINE




CHAPTER NINE

Disclaimers
Apply

 

 

A/N Goddess
Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, and Prophetic
Muse, check your luggage for glittery
Scotsman…one’s missing… InterNutter, TC
and Maxwell Pink get musecookies for archiving. J
ProPhile, Jubilee, Ramsey and Tex get sparkled ducks just because. ;)
Readers/Reviewers: The platypi
are massing…. Never good. Those suckers are organized!

 

 

 

Todd was happy as he could be, all
things considered. Lance and Amara were
still fighting, if the edgy silence between them could indeed be called
fighting, Rogue was nursing a migraine and Warren was in charge of the radio,
which meant they were being treated to the Sex Pistols Greatest Hits ad
nauseum. The good thing, he thought to
himself, is that they were out of the mansion for the weekend and they had an
apparently lenient chaperone to boot.
“How about we stop in Atlantic City and blow our money on cheap booze
and cheaper women?” Todd said as they passed a sign advertising a casino.

 

Rogue rolled her eyes. “Baby, don’t talk. It’s bad enough Sid Vicious is
singing…screeching…whatever….” She
sighed and mad apo apologetic gesture.

 

Todd sighed in return and slid his
arm around her waist, resting his head on her shoulder as they rode in silence
for several more miles. “Want a neck
rub?” he asked to break the monotony.

 

“Ask me tonight,” she murmured. “Iouldould be…safe…then.”

 

“Oh. OH…” Todd’s mood
brightened considerably.

 

Amara snorted. “Can’t you two control yourselves?”

 

Warren turned up “Anarchy in the UK”
as Lance said sharply, “Don’t bitch just because you’re not getting’ laid.”

 

Amara’s hiss of Nova Roman did not
need a translation. Lance merely raised
one eyebrow and said, apropos to nothing, “Hey, Todd, I tell you that Margot
Jennings called last night?”

 

“Huh?” Todd had been a bit distracted, imagining the first thing he
wanted to do to Rogue, or, he decided, better yet…what he wanted her to do to
him.

 

“Yep….Margot Jennings. That blonde with the big,” he glanced at
Warren, who was somewhere between smirking and disapproving, “personality.” [1]

 

“Did she?” Rogue asked in a dull
murmur, knowing that someone had to otherwise Lance would rattle on about
Margot’s attributes, real or imagined.

 

Lance smiled. He had filed Remy’s
advice, to let Amara think he was glad she came, away just in case this ploy
did not work. He was actually very happy
she was with them but he would have been happier, he admitted to himself, if
she weren’t being such a bitch. “Margot
wanted to know if I was free this weekend.
Her parents have some house on the shore and they’re out of town…” he
trailed off meaningfully, looking at Amara surreptitiously to see if she was at
all jealous.

 

Amara yawned. “Margot is a lesbian.”

 

“What?” Todd said, surprised and
amused at once.

 

“No she isn’t!” Lance protested
hotly.

 

“Oh, yes she is,” Rogue
seconded. “She hit on me last December
before the Winter Dance.”

 

“And she’s trying to start a gay
student organization at school,” Amara added.
She smirked faintly. “Maybe she
thought you’d like a position in the leadership…after all, you do have some
rather effeminate hair.”

 

Lance’s mouth snapped closed with a
clicking noise and he sank down in his seat.
“Shut upe mue mumbled.

 

“If it makes you feel better,”
Warren said when he could be sure he would not laugh out loud, “that whole
David Cassidy style is kind of making a comeback.”

 

“Ten hours to Mississippi,” Rogue
said suddenly, sounding at sct scared.
“Ten hours.”

 

“You okay?” Todd could feel her shaking against him like
a leaf in a high gale. “You don’t look
so good…”


“Stop the car!” cri cried, reaching
past Todd for the lock. “Stop!” Warren swerved onto the shoulder of the
freeway and slammed on the brakes at the same time, laying rubber on the
concrete. Rogue crawled over Todd and
out the door before the Jeep had stopped moving completely. She bent double between the door and the
concrete barricade separating inbound and outbound traffic and retched
profoundly, heaving for several minutes before staggering back towards the
car.

 

“Here,” Warren hastily handed her a
bottle of water. “Rinse your mouth
out.” Rogue complied soundlessly before
getting back into the car.

 

“Is it the migraine?” Todd asked
worriedly, scooting over so she could sit by the window.

 

“Do we need to stop somewhere so you
can lay down?” Warren added.

 

“No,” Rogue li“car“carsick is all.”

 

Amara raised a brow and gave her a
sideways glance. “Only ten hours until
Mississippi?” she asked innocently.

 

Rogue looked distinctly green and
threw open the door again, not even making it out of the car before she had to
bend double and dry heave. Todd stroked
her back, deep lines of worry etching between his brows. “We need to go to a drugstore or something,
get her some Emetrol.” [2]

 

“No,” Rogue said weakly as Warren
agreed with Todd.

 

“I’m the adult here,” the winged man
said, looking momentarily disturbed by the comment leaving his , “a, “and I say
you need something to settle your stomach.
I’m getting off at the next exit and finding a drug store.”

 

Rogue made a faint noise of protest
as the Jeep swung back into traffic.
Lance looked over his shoulder at Rogue’s greenish countenance. “You match now now.”

 

“Better him than you,” she managed.

 

Amara gave her another considering
glance. In a low voice, pitched so that
only the Sout gir girl could hear her, she said, “Mississippi.”

 

Rogue looked panicked for a flashing
moment but, her stomach being absolutely empty and unable to even dry heave
anymore, she settled for saying as calmly as possible, “What was that you were
telling me the other day about Lance being the best kisser you’ve ever met?”

 

“Really?” Lance purred. “I’m not surprised.

 

“Man whore,” Amara said
shortly. “Remind me to kick your ass
later Rogue.”

 

“Roger Wilco,” she sighed, leaning
against Todd again. Belatedly, she
realized her breath was probably not the best in the world and tried to pull
away.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, not
letting her move. “I’d rather have your
puke breath than anyone else’s…”

“Todd,” she said on a soft sigh,
“you are the weirdest person I’ve ever met.”

 

“Love you too.”

 

 

 

Tabby turned the stereo as loud as
she could but still the squalling baby was audible. She closed all the doors between her and Lucas and still she
could hear him. She was at the end of
her rope and that end was fraying rapidly.
“I’ve fed you and changed you and fed you again and rattled things at
you and…and… fuck!” she howled, flinging herself face down on the sofa. “Shut up!
Shut up!” Still Lucas
howled. The crying made her teeth ache
and her skin crawl. She felt awful,
torn between wanting to comfort him and wanting to just run away, get away from
the crying and demands and responsibility.
There was a gasping, choking noise and she sat up abruptly, only to
cringe as the crying began anew.
“Please stop!” she begged, pushing herself to her feet and throwing up
the doors as she walked, the howling growing ever louder. She tripped over Wanda’s second-best set of
boots, abandoned in the hall at some point during the night, and Tabby
snapped. She shouted wordlessly in
rage, throwing the boots as hard as she couldo tho the bathroom as she passed
the open door. Lucas was crying in his
crib, very nearly purple-faced, when she got to him. She scooped him up and held him at arm’s length, scarcely
noticing that his crying ebbed some as he felt his mother’s touch. “Why do you hate me so much?” she
sobbed. Her breasts were painful and
leaking, but she did not pay them any mind as he tucked Lucas into his carrier
and started shoving items haphazardly into a diaper bag. Tabby raked her fingers through her short
hair and sobbed again, Lucas’s howls freshening in a demand for his mother’s
attention. “Shhh,” she hissed brokenly. “It’ll all be better soon…”

 

 

 

Kurt yawned and stretched, ceding
control of the gym to Jubilee. She
looked angry, he decided, as she threw herself into a series of handsprings
that ended in a complicated twist and a near-perfect landing. He knew by the wince that flickered across
her face that she was mentally berating herself for the babble. I do the same thing, he sympathized
mentally. He had been working since
Kitty left, refreshing himself on the old trapeze routines as best he could,
and already he had detected a timing slip in his catch and release sequences
that was preying on his mind to the point of distraction. He had reluctantly given over to Jubilee
when he saw her waiting impatiently, Lily a few feet be her her, silent as a
ghost and watching.

 

“She should be on the Olympic team,”
he said conversationally as he drew even with the Chinese girl.

 

“She should be on the Chinese team,”
she corrected. “She is Chinese.”

 

“She was born in California…she’s
American.”

 

“Hmmm.” Lily’s eyes shifted from Jubilee’s renewed efforts at sticking
her landing to Kurt beside her. “If she
had not behaved as she did, she would have been recruited, I’m sure…” With a critical glance back at her cousin,
she added cattily, “She seems to run to stocky.”

 

“She’s a gymnast,” Kurt said
frostily, “she’s muscular.”

 

“Hmmm.” Lily refocused her attention on Jubilee for another few moments
before asking, “This Remy… is he her… fiancé?”

 

“Nein…” Kurt frowned. „I think
you should ask Jubilee yourself if you want to know about her life rather than
quizzing her friends.“

 

“Her name,” Lily said flatly, “is
Jubilation. Not Jubilee. And that isn’t even a proper name,
Jubilation.”


“Proper enough.” The sound of the springboard was loud in the
expansive gym, punctuating the stilted conversation.

 

“You are a gymnast?”

 

“Nein…an acrobat. There’s a difference.”

 

“We have acrobats in China,” she
said, distracted.

 

Kurt followed the direction of her
gaze and frowned deeply. Lily was
staring hard at Remy, standing just inside the doorway across the gym, watching
Jubilee with a look of abject longing on his features. “Lily…”

 

She switched her gaze back to
Kurt. “You are leaving this place,
correct?”

 

“For a few days…why?”

 

“Who will remain here?”

 

“Why?” he asked against, crossing
his arms over his chest, aware that Remy had seen them and was watching them in
turn.

 

 

 

“Will he remain?” Kurt was silent a beat too long, it
seemed. Lily smiled slowly. “Good.”


 

Kurt was saved from answering by the
Professor’s voice in his head. Kurt,
your child care experience is needed upstairs… He blinked in surprise
and confusion, but abandoned Lily silently, hoping to God that Remy could read
his look of warning.

 



[1] I think that line has been in almost
every movie that had a character with large breasts.

[2]
Basically, Coke syrup under a different brand name. It settles nausea. So
does flat Coke or Sprite, if you’re interested.