Fic: Blah, Blah, Meow, Meow: Part Six
The next couple of days all followed the same pattern; Logan went to sleep with Alec sleeping as far away as transgenically possible from him and awoke to find Alec wrapped around him and purring. Alec was mortified. Logan was reassuring. Logan went about his day. Alec went back to sleep. Occasionally, throughout the day, Alec got up and prowled around the house, scent marking the furniture and the doorways and demanding either food or attention. Sometimes both. He cleared the basement of mice and couldn’t seem to shake the habit of bringing their little bodies to Logan, his eyes shining with pride.
Kitty Alec was in turns standoffish, prickly and easily affronted (much like his more human counterpart) and overwhelmingly affectionate. Logan didn’t mind the affection as much as Alec thought he should. The mornings, when he awoke to find Alec wrapped around him, had quickly become Logan’s favorite part of the day and he really liked the moments when Alec would come and spontaneously rub his face against Logan’s. Alec was always horribly embarrassed when he realized what he’d just done, no matter how many times Logan told him it was alright. He’d always been peripherally aware that Alec was attractive; since he’d admitted to Max that he wasn’t entirely unaffected by the male form it was as if a hitherto locked door had opened and Logan had started to see Alec in a new light. Which was unfortunate. Because Alec was straight.
Logan pushed away from the desk and got to his feet. “Hey Alec,” he called out as he made his way to the kitchen. “You hungry?”
“I could eat, I guess,” Alec replied a beat later, his voice sounding strangely raspy.
Logan paused. “You alright?”
“Ah, you know me, Logan,” Alec murmured, his voice strained, “I’m always alright.”
Logan didn’t believe him for a second and instead of heading to the kitchen he turned and headed for the bedroom.
Alec was laying spreadeagled on top of the quilt, wearing nothing but his shorts. He lifted his head when Logan entered the room. “Is it just me,” he said, “or is it really, really hot in here?”
Logan rubbed at his chin. “No, it’s just you,” he said.
“Oh,” Alec put his head back down and stared up at the ceiling. “So…I’m sick? This is being sick?”
Logan went and sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on Alec’s forehead. He was burning up.
“Yeah,” he said. “This is being sick.”
Alec turned to look at him. “I’ve never been sick before. Injured, sure, but even then, we heal fast. Sick kinda sucks, huh, Logan?”
Logan smiled. “Yeah it does. You seem to have a fever. Do you have any other symptoms? Pain? Dizziness? Anything at all that’s unusual?”
“I don’t know,” Alec frowned. “I’m really hot. And I feel…weird.”
Weird. That was helpful. “Weird how?”
Alec bit at his bottom lip. “Uh…sort of…achy, I guess. And, um, sensitive.”
“Okay,” Logan ran a hand across Alec’s brow and Alec leaned into the touch. “I’m gonna call Sam. We were supposed to hear back from him today anyway, and he did say to call if something didn’t seem right.”
“Okay,” Alec looked up at him with pathetically sad eyes. “I’m just gonna lie here and be sick.”
Sam answered the phone enthusiastically. “Logan! I was just about to call you. I’ve just gotten back from a meeting with a geneticist. I didn’t tell her what was going on, obviously, just sort of skirted around the truth and-”
“Sam!” Logan finally got a word in edgeways. “Alec’s sick.”
“Oh. What are his symptoms?”
Logan told him.
“Does he have a sore throat? A headache? A runny nose?”
“He’s not sniffily and he didn’t mention a sore throat. I’ll double check.”
Logan went back into the bedroom and put the question to Alec, who shook his head.
“No sore throat or headache,” Logan reported to Sam.
“Hmm. Is it his skin that’s sensitive or are his eyes sensitive to light?"
“My skin,” Alec said, his enhanced hearing picking up Sam’s side of the conversation just fine.
Logan put Sam on speaker phone.
“It could be the ‘flu,” Sam said. “Only Alec shouldn’t be able to get the ‘flu.”
“Could it be a side effect of whatever she did to, uh, turn up his cat DNA?” Logan asked.
“It’s possible, I guess. From what the geneticist told me, I believe that Dr Rossi used an epigenetic drug to unlock the genes she wanted to activate, administered some sort of accelerating agent, and then used another epigenetic drug to lock the genes up again when they’d mutated as much as she wanted them to. That’s cutting edge stuff. Who knows what the side effects might be?”
Logan glanced down at Alec. “Did the geneticist you spoke to think we could reverse the changes?”
“In theory? Yes. In practice? We’re talking cutting edge science, as I said. Somebody may be able to do it, but not me. Rossi’s notes were sufficiently vague on certain precise details. Finding just the right parts of the epigenomes to treat would be like trying to find a bunch of needles in a haystack; way beyond my pay grade, I’m afraid. And even if I could figure it out, the epigenetic drugs available to a regular doctor like me aren't all that specific. I might succeed in blocking or unblocking the genes I wanted to treat, but I might also affect other genes, resulting in potentially dangerous side effects. My recommendation is surgery to remove the tail, plastic surgery on the ears; I have a friend I would trust to do that and keep quiet about it. And in the meantime, you look for another ex-Manticore geneticist to reverse the process.”
Logan looked down at Alec to see how he was taking the news, but his face was impassive. Logan cleared his throat. “So do you think we should treat Alec as if he had ‘flu?”
“That would be my recommendation. I’ll stop by later if you like and take a look at him; maybe take some more blood.”
In the absence of any better ideas, Logan agreed.
Logan made his mother’s-okay, his mother’s housekeeper’s-cure-all chicken soup and served it to Alec on a tray, along with a large glass of orange juice.
“I would’ve brought you some NyQuil, but I’m guessing pain killers work on you about as well as alcohol does?”
Alec’s smile was sarcastic. “You said it.”
“How are you feeling?” Logan asked.
Alec scowled. “Like crap. Stop asking me.”
Logan held his hands up in a gesture of submission. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
Logan gave it twenty minutes and then went back in to collect the tray.
“Sorry,” Alec said as soon as Logan entered the room. “I’m just…I feel like I’m gonna come out of my skin.”
“Any new symptoms?” Logan asked. “Headache? Sore throat?”
Alec’s pupils dilated. “No,” he said.
“Okay. I’ll let you get some rest,” Logan reached down for the tray and Alec yelped and grabbed hold of it before Logan could take it.
“No, it’s okay, I’ll just…keep that.”
Logan frowned. “Is everything okay, Alec?”
Alec’s nostrils flared and his face seemed to get just a little pinker.
“You remember when Isaac was on the loose,” he said, after a moment, “and you called me to come and help you search the sewers with you? And I told you we were only doing it for Max because she was hot?”
Logan nodded.
“Max is like a sister to me,” Alec said. “It wasn’t Max who I thought was hot.”
Logan stared at him. “Right. You had a thing for Asha. I knew that.”
Alec blinked. “Wow. For a smart guy, you’re really dumb sometimes.”
Alec looked up at him from beneath his eyelashes and flashed a flirty smile. It was a move Logan had seen him pull with countless women, all of whom had promptly fallen into his arms and, if Alec were to be believed, into his bed.
Oh. Logan gaped. “But you’re straight.”
Alec rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Nope,” he said. “All of the x-series were created bi-sexual. Manticore wanted us to be as flexible as possible. Lydecker used to tell us ‘you can often get more information out of a subject with honey than you can with vinegar. In situations where punching or threatening won’t or hasn’t worked, seducing might’.”
Bile rose in Logan’s throat.
“Oh come on, Logan,” Alec said softly. “You knew they had us killing for them by the time we were sixteen. You really think they didn’t have us fucking for them too?”
Logan sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. A short moment later he felt Alec’s hand settle on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” Alec said.
Logan straightened up and turned to look at him. “It’s really not,” he looked searchingly into Alec’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re bi? They didn’t just tell you that you were to get you to do certain things? I mean, I’ve never seen either you or Max go after someone of them same sex.”
Alec rubbed his cheek against Logan’s and began to purr.
“Uh, Alec?”
Alec pulled back a little. “Out here,” he said, “the real world…we were taught that it was enemy territory. And every single one of you,” he ran a hand across Logan’s chest, “was a potential enemy soldier. When you’re in enemy territory, it’s important to blend in. And human society is still very heteronormative. Being the hot guy with the boyfriend would’ve drawn too much attention to me. It would’ve been a tactical error.”
Logan cleared his throat. “But, uh, you’re still in enemy territory, right?” Alec was so very close. Concentrating was hard.
Alec chuckled. “Now I have cat ears and a tail. Blending in isn’t really possible anymore,” he leaned forward, his lips mere inches from Logan’s. “I know you want me too,” he whispered, his tone sultry. “I can smell it. And Logan? I am so horny, right now. I want you so bad… I want you to put me on my belly and fuck me good and hard.”
Oh God. Logan tried to scoot back, tried to put some space between himself and Alec, but Alec followed him, intent on kissing him, and the tray crashed to the floor, sending cutlery and crockery flying.
Logan jumped to his feet. “What am I thinking? You’re sick. You’re feverish. You’re obviously…not in your right mind. You…Alec?”
Alec was kneeling on the bed with a panicked expression on his face. He looked briefly at Logan and Logan tried really hard not to notice the impressive bulge in his shorts. Then Alec leapt from the bed and dashed at X-5 speed to the bathroom, locking himself inside.
Logan picked up the tray and the contents that had spilled from it and cleared them away before going and knocking on the bathroom door. “Are you okay, Alec?”
“Get me my cell phone,” Alec’s muffled voice replied from beyond the door.
Logan complied. When he knocked on the door and said that he had it, Alec opened the door just enough to stick a hand out and take the phone.
“You’re welcome,” Logan grumbled, before going in search of his own phone and calling Sam.
“New symptom,” he said, when Sam picked up. “Alec’s really horny. And also apparently bi-sexual, which I didn’t know, and when a hot guy who you’re attracted to begs you to fuck him, it’s really hard to say no! What the hell is going on, Sam?”
There was a loud exhale on the other end of the line. “Um, okay,” Sam said. “Are there, uh, any female cats around? Maybe there’s one in the neighborhood that’s in heat and, because of his altered DNA, Alec’s responding to that and going into a rut?”
“Oh,” said Logan. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. On the one hand, this could explain Alec’s symptoms, meaning he wasn’t actually sick. On the other hand, it also meant that Alec wasn’t really attracted to him. He frowned. “But…he wanted me to…to, um, top.”
Sam sighed. “This situation wasn’t exactly covered in med school, you know. Alec’s DNA may have been messed with, but he isn’t actually a cat. He still has all his human cognitive abilities. If he asked you to top, maybe it’s because that’s his personal preference?”
Logan finished up the call and went and waited for Alec outside the bathroom. He slid to the floor with his back to the wall and sat with his arms resting over his bent knees, his cell phone held loosely in his hand. Beyond the closed bathroom door, he could hear the rise and fall of Alec’s voice, talking urgently, in low tones, to whoever was on the other end of the line.
When the door finally swung open, Alec was flushed and sweaty and his pupils were huge. He looked down at Logan and then sank to the floor opposite and sat mirroring him.
“I spoke to Sam,” said Logan, at the exact same time that Alec said, “I spoke to Max.”
“What did she say?” Logan said, just as Alec said, “What did he say?”
“Sam thinks you’ve gone into a rut,” Logan said, at the same time as Alec said, “Max thinks I’ve gone into heat.”
“What?” they said in unison.
“But you’re male,” Logan said.
Alec chuckled humorlessly. “You’re talking about people who can splice together DNA from multiple different species and come up with walking, talking geniuses with super-human capabilities. You really think mixing features from different sexes would be difficult for them?”
“I guess not,” Logan conceded.
“And think about it,” Alec added. “Rossi was in the process of making me into a live action sex toy. A heat makes so much more sense than a rut. I want to be fucked so badly, right now, Logan. Something like that would be a major selling point. And what are the odds that she also had some kind of drug she was going to administer to keep me in a permanent heat cycle?”
Logan looked at Alec, alarmed. “Do you think you can you get pregnant?”
Alec licked at his lips. “Not if you wear a condom.”
Logan pushed at his glasses. “Alec…we can’t have sex.”
Alec pouted. “Why not?”
“Because your consent would be dubious, at best. Max told me that she hated what going into heat did to her, hated what it made her do. I can’t do that to you, Alec. I can’t be something that you end up regretting.”
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