Summary:Illyana came home to this… She doesn't own a cat. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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It's about three in the morning. After getting measured, poked prodded, and generally gone over by the white coats at the Triskelion, Doug was finally allowed to go home.
Since right now he can see in the dark, he hasn't bothered to turn on the light. He's sitting on the couch in a pair of blue jeans that are now ruined since he had to rip the seam at the back to admit that tufted lion's tail, and he's sitting, clawed feet on the couch with his arms hugging his knees, staring at a hypo-injection gun on the coffee table. His tail flicks behind him, as he watches it.
But it's the glow of the light in feline blue eyes that might give him away first.
There are Wards all over Doug's building now, but most especially in the apartment he shares with Illyana. Most people can't see them, or don't notice them. They make sure that people can't just teleport into the apartment. Unless they're Illyana. Because she wouldn't lock herself out like that. There is the familiar flare of one of her Stepping Disks, bright in the darkness as the blonde woman steps through, blinking in the darkness. Because she *doesn't* see in the dark. She didn't even realize it *was* dark, because Illyana and Time, they're not always on speaking terms.
Illyana raises a hand, a word conjuring a ball of light which glints off those feline eyes, drawing Illyana's attention. And then her startled reaction. It's only because mutants often come in animal flavors, and that the lion-man is sitting so quietly that Illyana doesn't lead off with a pre-emptive attack. Doug can thank her years at Xaviers for that. She does keep her hand raised towards Doug though, manner threatening, if restrained. "You have thirty seconds to convince me not to toss you out on your ear."
Doug looks up, and then says, in an only slightly distorted voice, "Lights on."
The light in the living room turns on, and Doug gives Illyana a slow blink. He's shirtless, with tan-brown fur tending to cream on his chest and belly, and his hair has turned into a thick main (it still has his eponymous flip-swoop) with rounded lion's ears peeking out of it.
His tail flicks behind him, and his fingers twitch. "Being thrown out of my own apartmenr would be the capper on the past couple of weeks."
Illyana Rasputina's eyes narrow, and her head cants over to the side a bit. As the lights come on, she lets the light spell fade. Her fingers sketch something in the air, leaving glowing light trails as she speaks a couple of words to a sort of See the Soul spell. The results has her blinking in surprise, her arm falling to her side as the spell fades. "Doug? What in Hades happened to you? If that's a secondary mutation it's really come out of left field." She says, moving closer to him.
"Oh, some chump named Anton Sevarius shot me in the ass with a dart full of mutagen." Doug says. "So I have a degenerating felid mutation. I'm turning into a lion man." He taps his clawed fingers against his knee, before he looks to the hypo-gun with its canister of pearlescent liquid. "That's the antigen, right there." But he's hesitating to use it.
His tail goes flick, flick, flick. It is, in fact Doug. His toes, black-clawed, curl. "Go ahead…" He says, "Lay it on me."
"Well, why'd you let him do that?" Illyana asks, reaching out to feel his hair. And then tickle his ear. Her other hand comes up, taking hold of some of that long mane and making it dance a bit before she's interrupted by Doug's 'request'. Illyana gives him a look like he's odd, and then picks up the antigen and sets it on his head. "OK, but what's that going to do? I'm pretty sure if you want to use it you have to stick yourself with the pointy part."
Doug's mane is thick. His ear goes flickflickflick when Illyana tickles it, and then he reaches up and takes the gun. He looks at it, and then sets it back down on the table.
"Ha ha ha ha. You're *hilarious*. I'm just thinking about it. I… kind of enjoy this. I'm stronger, I'm faster. There's more colors, more scents. Even understanding my own instincts has been… kinda illuminating." He looks over at Illyana, and gives her a slow feline blink. He still has Doug's face, despite the fur. "Would you do me a favor?"
He turns, slightly, showing his broad back. "I have this — spot — right between my shoulderblades, where I can't reach, and the fur there has a cowlick in it—" It does — "And it *itches* like all get out. Would you please scratch right *there*?"
"Hey, you asked me to lay it on you and that was the last thing you talked about." Illyana says defensively. OK, she didn't figure that's what he actually meant, but she was a bit confused by the request.
Setting a knee down on couch so she can lean in, Illyana reaches with both hands to dig into the fur like one might scritch, well, a dog. "Guess you didn't get a feline's flexibility huh?"
"So, part of you is going 'maybe I'll just stay this way'?" Illyana asks, leaning over to the side a bit so she can see his face as she asks the question.
"Not quite no." Doug says — then Illyana starts itching that *spot* and one eye widens and the other goes half-lidded.
"…Wha."
He makes this… noise. Lions don't purr. It's kind of a rumbly, satisfied growly moan.
"…Hmmmmmmmmmmmm." His shoulders slump. That would be a 'yes', but he can't quite muster a cogent answer to that question right now.
"I meant, go ahead and tease me. I'm a cat-man."
Illyana Rasputina doesn't stop scratching, but she does broaden the scope to include more of his back. "And I have a reputation of mocking people for what they look like?" Illyana asks in that dry manner she has. Her fingers curl through the short fur and then run up his spine where his mane continues down from the nape of his neck. "Now if I catch you licking your balls, that I'll tease." She assures him.
"Do you know for certain if it's trying to turn you into a lion-man? Or if it'll keep going until you're just a lion?" Illyana asks.
Doug enjoys his quiet moment of nirvana. "No, but you do have a habit of teasing me. They say the degeneration will be mental." His tail twitches, slowly, and then he inhales. "…Who says I couldn't do that before." His eyes are half-lidded and serene, but he gives a little twitch.
"…Wouldn't that be interesting at the class reunion. The New Mutants, now including the member who is now an actual cat." Then he breathes, "That feels stupid good."
Illyana Rasputina's scratching pauses as Doug says the degeneration will be mental. "So you'll end up with the mind of cat?" She'd been leaning to the side to see him and now her touch drops away so she can move around and Look at him. Her hands come to rest on her hips. "And the better/stronger/faster is temping enough you'd give up being *you* for it?" She almost sounds… annoyed?
Doug flattens his ears. "Hey, now—" He says, about to try to defend himself. His hands come up. "That's not *fair*-"
Illyana Rasputina doesn't reach out to hit him, she just arches both her brows upwards. "The question isn't fair? Spit and Hades, Doug, if you want power that badly you could at least do it in a way that didn't loose me my friend." See, it's all about her. That's it. Really.
Doug's ears droop. And then he says, "…You're afraid for me." He looks up at her, and meets her eyes, before his lips part to show astonishingly sharp teeth. "You're *worried* about me." Then he looks down at himself. He looks down, and then he says, "Well I guess that settles that, then." He puts the gun against the side of his arm, and depresses the trigger. With a hiss, the liquid is injected into his body through his skin.
Then he sets the now-empty hypo down. "…It doesn't happen instantaneously." He says. "So I've got a few hours left to enjoy this. You should've seen me at the Triskelion, I had to stand there bare-ass naked while the labcoats went over me with a fine-tooth comb. Literally, at one point!" Then Doug pauses… and he leans forward, to roughly butt his head against Illyana and rub against her shoulder and neck without seeming to think about it. He makes that noise again.
Illyana Rasputina's breath leaves her in a sigh. "I've… seen it before. A person, twisted into an animal." Shadows lurk in the pale blue eyes. It's not much that *disturbs* Illyana, but those memories do. It doesn't help that that too was a person she cared about. That too, was someone turned into a feline. "It's a slow sort of death." She says in a quiet murmur.
Doug, of anyone, can see the tension ease out of her as he takes the antidote. There might have been a good chance that she'd have made the decision for him, eventually, if he hadn't. Her arms come up around his broad head as he headbutts her. "If you just wanted to be a furry, that's totally in my wheelhouse." Now she's mocking him. Though she's serious. Transformations were something she learned as a pre-teen. But like most of her magic, it does come with a price.
Doug is quiet, for a long time. And then he says, "…I'm a *therianthrope*. I still have a human face." Doug licks a sharp tooth. "Mostly." But then he opens one eye. "I um. Hm." He says.
"I was thinking about what you were talking about before. You don't need to feel emotions the same way Kitty or Piotr do. You're not them. Your emotions are yours. They're just as valid as anybody's."
Then his ears tend downward again. "I had a couple of weeks to think about it, on that island. I'm not… Mutant Master of Language my eye, I'm bad at this. I am… interested. If and *only if* you are. But I am *not* looking for some sort of emotional trainwreck like Kitty and Piotr have. I don't know. Friends with benefits? Mutual satisfaction? Maybe it's just the testosterone from being jacked up with lion hormones. Just ignore me."
Illyana Rasputina rolls her eyes a bit as Doug corrects her. "Not all of us have a vocabulary you need a library to hold." And she's only perephially aware of the details of 'Furry'.
The mane *is* distracting, and Illyana's hand pushes into it again, fingertips digging towards his scalp. He *is* rather petable. "If you'd stayed like this, I'd have to figure out what collar to put on you. Probably something bright and sparkly." She's joking. Right? Maybe.
He can tell that she's listening to him, even if her attention seems to be on his fur, so when she turns a puzzled frown down on him he knows it's not because she wasn't paying attention. Apparently, he lost her in the topic-jump. This has nothing to do with being a furry!
When Illyana finally catches up, she gives a slow blink of surprise. "Don't make me find a way to borrow your power to figure out what you're saying." She warns him.
Doug looks downright cross. Which is offset by the way his ears dip, which makes him look silly. "Rrrrrr." Then he reaches up and puts the pad of a clawed fingertip on the end of Illyana's nose.
"I am *attracted* to you. If you'd like a breakdown of why, for the nakedly physical reason, you're beautiful - we're comfortable around each other - and because when you're around I'm never, *ever* bored and I think I *might* be a little bit of an excitement junkie."
Illyana Rasputinablinks once as he taps her nose, wiggling it a bit as he does so. As he explains, her head tilts a little to the left. And then a bit more to the right. Finally her hands come down from playing with his mane to rest on his shoulders and push until his spine hits the back of the couch. She sets one knee on the couch beside his hip and then brings the other knee up on his opposite side, effectively putting her in his lap.
"I thought we already talked about this." In the gym, back at Xavier's. Illyana's manner is quietly serious. Her hands slide from his shoulders to the nape of his neck, fingers curling in his mane to drag his head back a bit and keeping it there.
"And then I wound up having to take an incredibly cold shower." Doug growls. He brings his hands up, to rest on Illyana's shoulders.
"And now you're straddling my lap and have your fingers in my mane. That's what we mutants with language powers like to call 'Mixed signals'." He gives another slow blink. "The way Kitty feels about Piotr is not an emotional blueprint for how *you* are supposed to feel about other people. Emotions are like fingerprints, unique to the person who has them."
Illyana Rasputina can't help the slow smirk that curves her lips as he growls his displeasure. "Well. That wasn't my intent, then." It might be, now.
"I know that people feel things differently, but 'normal' people do tend to feel *similarly*." Illyana points out. "And I don't… feel what they do. I'm fine with it." She pauses, thoughtfully. "Most of the time, I suppose." She exhales in another soft, slow, sigh.
The smirk she gives him this time is less teasing. "But you can read through them, can't you? So for *you*, they're not mixed." The slow grin that pulls her lips back to flash teeth is predatory enough to match his form at the moment as she leans in close enough that her lips brush one of those round ears. "You remember I enjoy your suffering, right?" Because frustrating him a bit doesn't make him bleed, or shatter his mind.
Doug sinks a sharp tooth into his bottom lip. "Yeah." Doug says. "I am aware. Something about me is demon-bait. Maybe it's because I was raised as a Mormon."r
"I like you. I like you the way you are. Horns, demons, shadows, secrets, and all." Doug says, with an exhale. His ear *perks* when she tickles it with her breath. "…I'm *horny*, Illyana. Is that the plain language you wanted to hear? I'm *randy*, *fired up*, *up for it*." He's blushing, under that fur.
Illyana Rasputina's laughter is as much felt as heard, the heat of it washing against the sensitive lining of the cat's ear. When she sits back and he can see her face again, it feels cold by comparison. "Mmmm, it's a sense of pureness to you. Innocence that just cries out to be corrupted. That giving nature and sweet heart." Illyana says, poking the center of his chest with one finger.
Her amusement fades as he lists off the things he likes her in spite of. "Becuase you have faith that I won't ever really hurt you." Which she loves, while at the same time wants to shake some sense into him. The plain language gets a short chuckle. "Well, yes. I gathered that." And instigated it a bit, she'll admit. Her head does that tilt over to the side, watching his face. Pale eyes holding his. "Are you telling me, or was there a question? Because if it's the latter, I thought I already answered that. Unless your position has changed."
Doug's eyes go half-lidded. "Well right now my position's *interesting* to be sure." Then he reaches up, and puts his hands on either side of Illyana's head. "That's the funny part. My egh… innocence appeals to you — but your *will* is the part of you I admire most. Like I said, nothing masters you, not even your inner darkness, and I don't believe it ever will, because — I don't know, because it'd be undignified. Because it'd be proving Belasco right."
"…Maybe I'm just saying what *I* want." He says. "I'm just a good guy who likes bad girls? Sue me."
Illyana Rasputina leans forward, resting her forehead against his as he puts either of his quasi-pawed hands on either side of her head. "Blind, dumb, faith." She's trying to mock it, but she doesn't quite have the heart for it. "It's gonna get you hurt one day." That's more somber.
The chuckle is a bit forced. "Well, I definitely fall in *that* column." Illyana shifts position then, leaning to one side so she can tuck her head in against the side of his neck, curling in a bit closer to him. "Big dumb kitty." She chides him gently.
"Lion-hearted, I've been called." Doug says. His fur IS soft, especially on his chest. He wraps his arm around her waist. "That's my choice." He says, before he tilts his head, and then lets his hand rest against her hip. "I don't expect you to *pine* for me. That's just not how you're wired. I get it." Doug admits, looking up at the ceiling. "…I just wonder if maybe we could have… a fulfilling time - a fun time - together. I bet Kitty would *flip out*."
"This isn't fulfilling or fun?" Illyana asks, letting her eyes close as she leans against his shoulders. She's teasing him a bit, of course, but the question still stands.
"I'm certainly not going to do anything *just* to make Kitty flip out." The blonde chuckles at the idea. "And while Kitty might flip out, Piotr might decide that you need some… adjusting."
No, Illyana isn't likely to pine for him. She didn't even ask him where he'd been the past few weeks. But her cuddling is honest. Her appreciation of him is real.
"I can handle Piotr." Doug says, before he looks down, and lets out a pleasant little sigh. It's nice to be appreciated. "It's really just that first thirty seconds, if I live through that I'm pretty sure I can talk him down. Really making Kitty pull a silly mug would be a perk—"
"…I guess I'm just a guy." Doug admits. "Much as I try to rise above the reptile brain's urges, there they are. So, Demon Queen, what do I do?"
"I think you'd need at *least* ninety seconds." Illyana opines. She recalls Piotr when he gets worked up. It's *hard*, but when he builds up a head of steam…
As to what Doug should do? Illyana hmmmms a bit, thoughtful, the sound vibrating against his shoulder. "Whelp, unless you're going to try to beg for a favor or something, you're going to suffer for my amusement. And be glad that I'm settling for this sort of passive suffering and not taking an active hand in it."
Doug thinks about that. He bites his bottom lip, and then he moves to tilt Illyana's chin up, before he puts a clawed finger under it. He telegraphs his intent. She *can* stop him. It is a chaste kiss by any yardstick. Just the briefest touch of his lips to hers.
Either way, he smirks, ever so slightly, and then he says, "…Then I guess I suffer, don't I?"
Illyana Rasputina lets Doug tilt her head up, pale blue eyes watching him. There's a chilly amusement there, a look that most shy away from. Few find Illyana's company to be something they want to keep, even when she's not outright trying to make them uncomfortable. She accepts the light kiss, nose wrinkling and the soft bubble of laughter as his whiskers and fur tickles her skin before she straightens up. Grabbing one of his arms, she pulls on it to turn him on the couch enough that she can push his shoulders back and lay him down on the couch, leaving her leaning over him. Her grin has a lot of teeth. "Now that's the spirit, Dougie."
Doug always was fearless to the point of foolhardiness. Illyana is dangerous, with razor edges, and spikes. But he's bled for things that are worth it before. He studies her, as he's pushed backward, and while there's a nervous energy exuded in his mien, he keeps it under control. "Well while, if we were Planeteers I'd be the one with Heart as my power - I'm not a saint." He puts one hand behind his head, his fingers tangled in his mane. "What can I say? I'm just full of spirit."
Illyana Rasputina sits back, still sitting on Doug, so she can look down at the lion-Doug and lets her fingernails scrape down over his chest to enjoy the texture. "I'd be tempted to keep you like this, all petable and cuddly if I wasn't pretty damned positive that it'd do something terrible to you over time." She gives a sigh that's only partially feigned. Because part of her would very much enjoy keeping him as a pet. That's not too terrible a thing, right? Doug would surely let her…
The Language Lad can 'see' the temptation as she looks down at him. The way desire tries to edge out that part of her that holds fast against the things she knows that usually, the definition of 'good' is the opposite of what she wants.
"You know," Doug says, "There's more than one way to skin a cat." He says, before he arches his back, and then he reaches up to put his hands around her arms. He pulls her down, and says "…Let me teach you a new language." He says, before he's kissing her once more, and this time it is *not* chaste. Not at *all*.
All demons really teach a person to do is use, the intimate moment to them is just *taking*. Doug speaks a different language, in the quiet touch of a hand and quiet murmurings, kisses and the soft exchange of breath — the intimacy w that's giving, and in so doing gaining, the kind with no losers. …But he lets her choose whether to escalate it or not.
One brow quirks up. "I'm pretty sure that skinning you gets into levels of hurt I'm supposed to avoid." Illyana says dryly. Because by default, she mocks. She jokes. She tries to keep things light, to avoid deeper topics that so often make people uncomfortable.
When Doug pulls her down, she lets him. She is, in her own way, incredibly trusting given what she is. What she's been through. For those that she's let in, at least. It may be a language that Doug is fluent in, but Illyana is not. She lets him show her, another thing an actual demon likely wouldn't sit still for. Because it exposes a weakness. A lack of knowledge, of skill.
Eventually though, Illyana pulls back away. There's a slight furrow to her brow and confusion in the slight jerkiness of her movements. She moves to push off of Doug, to let him up and get to her own feet. It's not an emotional landscape she's familiar with, which makes her uneasy and her default way of dealing with that is to get some distance between herself and those emotions. Which in this case, mean Doug.
Doug lies back, worry and concern in his eyes. He lets her go. "It's okay." He says, studying her. "…Sometimes emotions are raw." He was intent on her, so *focused*, creating that feedback loop where he found what she wanted and then gave it to her — it takes him a moment to come out of it.
"…Only when you're ready." He says. He stands up, and walks to Illyana, before he takes her hands, and kisses her — on the forehead. Then he turns to walk away, his tail swaying behind him. He gives his head a small shake, though. "This is fast getting to the place on the map that says 'Here Be Dragons'," He says, to himself.