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“I know. Nightcrawler, but a girl, right?”
TJ Wagner—Nocturne—has a way of introducing herself. She’s Kurt Wagner’s grown-up kid from an alternate Earth—hasn’t been to Earth-616 in a while, and she thinks she’s never met Kate Pryde. She has, however, Kate thinks, met Illyana, and apparently they’ve hit it off: so much so that when Kate gets back to Illyana’s bedroom at the Akademos Habit, TJ and Ilya are seated together, cross-legged, apparently happy (if still moody—that’s Illyana for you) on that plush, hard-to-clean, burgundy patterned carpet Illyana got.
The pattern’s fascinating in itself: you could lose yourself staring at it, on a day when you needed meditative distraction, which both Kitty and Illyana have. Plus it doubles as a container spell for malign magic: anything eldritch that comes to Earth within, or on, the rug has to ask Ilya’s permission before it leaves.
Kate’s staring at the pattern because she doesn’t want to violate anyone’s privacy, least of all her most important lover, her half-the-time nesting partner, her Magik, and Magik seems, well, busy. Before Kate walked in Illyana clearly had both eyes on TJ. And one hand, Illyana’s pale, strong fingers running down the blue furred slope of TJ’s chest, right to TJ’s bra strap. And one… tail? Ilya’s red tail waves like something on an oscillope, then flops out of TJ’s lap, where TJ’s blue tail—just like Kurt’s, to be honest—remains.
Kate’s surprised, then intrigued, then turned on (she can feel her heartbeat change, the parts of her body that change when she’s excited getting ready), then briefly entranced, then snaps out of it. “You’re TJ Wagner. I know who you are.”
“I know who you are, too. I didn’t wanna assume. I know we’ve met but it’s been a minute. I’ve been traveling,” TJ says.
Kate’s tired: she’s been working out, and catching up on semiconductor research. Briefly, both at once (stationary bike). She just thought she’d be happy to get back to the Habitat and just flop down on the bed, ideally with Illyana right next to her. She showered after her workout (in case Illyana was, in fact, right next to her) but she’s definitely disheveled: curly hair flopping out of her blue headband, red zip-up hoodie over a pink striped sports bra, blue-on-blue-on-blue dragon-pattern sweat pants.
There will be no flopping this evening, at least not yet. Instead Kate lets herself scrutinize the blue young woman who seems to be Illyana’s new lover and finds herself noticing all the ways that TJ resembles her dad: short hair, but with another haircut, a kind of butch New Wave affair with a couple of locs to one side. Big eyes, strong chin, lithe build. Delighted by the world, but ready to spring.
“You two… are… I’m sorry, I’ve been in space? And a billion years ago in time?”
Now it’s Illyana’s turn to smile. And grin, and raise her eyebrows. She knows what to do, Kate thinks. She always knows what to do. “I’ve been on… interdimensional patrol, looking for mutants who don’t want to stay where they are, and I encountered this beauty, who recognized me right away, and we just started hanging out and—”
TJ puts one hand on Illyana’s. How many fingers does TJ have? Three on each hand. That’s why she’s a singer, not just a guitarist. Also that voice: contralto, with dynamic range. When TJ lived at the mansion with Kate, years and years ago, Kate used to hear her practice… that voice…
“I couldn’t just quit my storytelling job on that Earth where I was Scheherazade, not right away, but I could train a replacement and take a vacation. This place seems neat. I could stay here for a while. As long as nobody thinks I’m my dad.”
“Nobody here will think you’re your dad,” Kate says. “We have three Wolverines, and nobody thinks one Wolverine is another, even though two of them sort of are. You’re—you’re yourself.”
TJ raises both eyebrows, then one, then looks at Illyana. “You got it right,” Illyana says. “Almost nobody does.”
Kate has never been able to get that eyebrow raise right herself. Not even after watching the Star Trek: TOS marathon, and asking Illyana how to do it, and staring into her first girlfriend’s eyes on their bed while Illyana tried and tried to teach her. That, too, was a while ago.
Illyana’s tail oscillates again. “So you two are…. traveling together?” Kate says. She drops to one knee before Ilya and TJ and props her laptop against the wall: unsure if it’s right to sit down, she’s figured out at least that the new lovers want her to stay long enough to have a conversation.
“Maybe a little,” Nocturne says. Is that an English accent, or just a British phrase? Kate has trouble with accents—has ever since her time in space. In that bullet. Glad that’s over. Ground yourself, Kate. You’re here, with Ilya, now, and she has a new friend and that’s fine and—
“We’ve been talking,” Illyana says. There’s that eyebrow.
“About?”
Kate drops to both knees, resting her hips on her calves, since she doesn’t want to keep standing or take a chair—she wants to be at eye level—but sitting criss cross applesauce on the carpet with these two might be an intrusion. Or disrupt a spell. "About you," Magik says.
“About dimensional portals and how they tend to make us hungry,” Nocturne says.
“And thirsty.”
“Come on.”
“Want a bean burger?”
Kate looks at Nocturne. “I didn’t know you were vegan.”
TJ looks back. “Never been to Vega.”
“Alright, I’m leaving.” Illyana pretends to begin to stand up.
“You can’t leave,” TJ says. “We haven’t settled our bet.” And TJ’s blue tail wags.
Kate settles in on what, were she a cat, would be her haunches. “You two made a bet? What about?”
“About…” Kate’s seen Kurt Wagner blush: his cheeks turn magenta. TJ’s blush is a different affair: a kind of shimmering lavender. Honestly: cute. More than cute. When Kate and Kurt lived together in the Excalibur lighthouse Kate never literally wanted to kiss Kurt—age difference, and Rachel was right there, and nope—but she, like every other woman and half the men she knew, saw him as super-cute. That smile. That fur…
What if Kurt were a girl, and into both Kate and Illyana, and Kate’s own age, and Illyana wanted to share? What if? Surely that would be far too good to be true.
“We really have been talking,” Illyana says, grinning, “about you.”
“This version of you,” TJ adds. “I knew another version who dressed like you—”
“Badly?”
“Not badly! Just—nerdily. Dressing yourself your own way,” TJ says. “Anyway that Kate, called Cat, decided to merge with the Crystal Palace to keep track of all the interdimensional shenanigans there ever are or were or will be, and sometimes I like to think she’s watching me and having fun vicariously.” TJ pronounces the word to rhyme with “liquor, thusly,” and Kate wonders whether that’s the usual way to say it in TJ’s home dimension. What else was different there?
“Do you like that feeling?” Kate says.
“I like being watched. Speaking of which,” TJ adds. “Illyana and I haven’t yet explained our bet.” Illyana runs her pale, strong fingers along TJ’s shoulders, below her braided hair. “We have a bet about you.”
Kate gives up and sits down, criss cross applesauce, just like her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s new girlfriend. “What... did you… bet?”
Nocturne pops open an L&P soda. Fizz and SweetTarts. Tasty. “You get to say.”
Illyana says something in Russian, then switches to American English, her accent stronger than usual, which means she’s excited. “We bet who could get you to phase first.”
At which point TJ just starts talking. “Illyana told me you phased without trying when you got very embarrassed, or very excited, or even very tickled. So I’ve been thinking about how it would feel to get into a tickle fight with you. And to lose. In the dark, and then turn the lights on.” Illyana’s nodding at her new blue friend, as if to say: keep talking. Kate keeps listening. “I’ve been thinking about what would happen if, let’s say, we were near the end of the party, one of those casual bashes the New Mutants throw in the teacher’s lounge.” TJ pronounces “lounge” as “laung”: another interdimensional language note! Kate likes her voice.
“I thought maybe I could just come up to you and hand you a drink and rub my cheek and wrist against you and start tickling, and you’d have to sit down, and I’d tickle some more until the lights went out for some reason, and then I’d get to your midriff”—pronounced “mood-ruff”—“and keep scritch-scratching and tickling till I got to your waistband, and then below your waistband so you’d feel the soft fuzzy fur on the back of my hand…”
Kate’s feeling woozy, in a good way: she’s taking part in the charge between Illyana and TJ, just by listening in. She could go on listening. But she’s not phasing.
Illyana sighs. “Too many words.” She looks like she’s going to stand up, but instead she leans forward, still cross-legged on the carpet, reaches behind her, and pulls out some sort of… inflatable life vest? Parachute pack? The top half’s like the life vests from the Marauder, except black with delicate white floral tracings. There’s also a bottom half, thick like the life jacket, shaped like panties, also black with floral patterns, hooked to the top with thin rings. “Put this on,” Ilya says to her first-ever girlfriend, and then, to her new gf, “Watch this.”
And Kate, of course, shrugs out of her exercise wear, which lands in a heap on the floor, by the carpet fringe. “Should this one come off?” she asks, with a thumb in the strap of her sports bra.
“This one should get off first,” Illyana says, smirking. “But yes, it should.” And it does, flipping neatly over Kate’s shoulder into the laundry hamper by the door.
Kate puts on, and fastens around her, first the panties—are they panties? They’re big and puffy for panties-- and then the vest. And the vest and… whatever it is (suit-bottom? monokini? panties?) fills up, and vibrates as it does. For a moment Kate wonders if she’ll become lighter than air, a feeling she dislikes unless she controls it, and then she can feel the relief of the internal panels, soft like linen, and wet, and getting wetter and warmer still, until she’s comfortable, like a warm bath, a hot bath, immersion, totally soaked between her thighs and around her midriff, her soft small breasts caressed by the warmth while her nipples, because she’s excited, get hard under the soft and by no means water-resistant fabric, soaking through like when she swam in the Mediterranean once, on a summer day, in the sun….
Is she feeling dreamy? Or feeling real? She kneels, and opens her mouth in a lowercase o, and looks at Illyana and then remembers that TJ’s still watching. What do they want her to do? Kate’s always been likely, all too likely, to do what other people want her to do, but in this case it’s OK, it’s her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s new girlfriend, watching Kate squirm happily as the panties get bigger, fluffier, wet beneath her, and the vest lets her curves stand out…
“Oooh,” says TJ. “You’re turning her on. Like a light switch.”
“Light, but not a switch,” Illyana manages to say. Kate nods, and agrees. And then TJ reaches out two fingers towards a rapturous, vibrating Kate, meeting Kate’s half-closed eyes, and TJ brushes her blue, furry finger, one of three on her flexible hands, down Kate’s nose, towards her lips and chin and into her clavicle right where her breasts almost start.
“Light and sweet and hot,” TJ agrees. “But solid.”
“You want to do something about it?” Illyana challenges TJ. “I would, but I’m busy.”
“Busy how?” Kate manages, desperate to be kissed by either woman, or by both. The vest, she notes with the part of her mind that’s not too turned out for consecutive thoughts, has become a restraint: she couldn’t move very far or very fast if she wanted to move, unless she were to phase through the vest… unless…
But if Kate manages to stay solid, the competition will continue. And that’s definitely what she wants, right now. Ceding all that control. Not being a switch.
“Busy making my girlfriend wet herself,” Illyana says. “These fabric inscriptions won’t activate themselves.” Those white floral patterns? They’re glowing. They’re hot: literally hot. It’s better than Shi’ar tech, Kate thinks distractedly, whatever this spellcraft has made. But she’s not going to phase yet, she’s not going to phase…
“Try this,” TJ says, and just kisses Kate on the mouth. How would Kurt’s tongue feel? Kate will never know, but Nocturne must come close, and she’s delicious: raspy like a cat’s, and not quite forked, but not quite oval like most regular human-shaped people’s tongues. It’s like someone’s literally lapping Kate up. It’s delicious. Kate literally vibrates as Talia Wagner tastes her lips. Cloves, girl sweat, cinnamon…
But she stays solid. TJ looks back at Illyana and shakes her locs and shrugs. Kate wonders whether she’s topping from the bottom, which Ilya once told her was one of her no-nos, or maybe her on-the-noses?
Where did TJ’s other hand go? Oh. OH. That tickles again. That more than… oh. There’s wetness under the wetness, the parts of Kate rubbing together against other parts in ways that pitch her forward towards Illyana, lips open, almost begging—
But she’s still solid.
The Russian mutant grins again and beckons to TJ. “Come here.” And TJ backs off from the kiss, still holding Kate’s hand, running one of her fingers down Kate’s wrist, as if to draw Kate’s attention to what else? Her tail. Nocturne’s tail, peeking out of Nocturne’s panties, blue on blue, undulating triangle-end in the air, pointing up, then sideways, then vectoring down—Talia’s seated again—to where Illyana, who hasn’t moved much, still sits on the magic carpet (a Magik carpet?) facing Kate. And Illyana’s own tail rises out of the back of her black slacks, makes an S, then a Z, then a 3, then the Greek lowercase letter xi—“It’s a xi!” Kate wants to say, but she can’t, because she’s too fascinated by the red tail and the blue one, the red undulation and the blue swerves, the red and the blue, getting longer, supple in the middle, harder and bigger at the ends—each one ends in a kind of swelling arrowhead, like a—like a—
Illyana and Talia intertwine those two tails, rubbing their tips against each other, so that Kate sees them both get bigger and harder and point upwards in their own braid, and Kate looks at their faces and they’re both holding Kate and holding each other in their souls, led by their tails, the beautiful, hard, wet, intertwined, lengthening ends of their tails, that rise in parallel and rub together and Kate wants to touch them, she wants to touch them both, she reaches out, maybe she wants to put her lips on the girlfriends’ tails as they touch each other or maybe she just wants to touch herself between her own thighs as she watches, but she can’t reach into her own secret place, can’t touch her own clit, because of the thick wet strapped-in panties with the magic flowery lines that got her so wet before, so she leans farther forward and can’t stop the wetness from flowing out of her, into her, as she contemplates those two tails, the tails that touch each other and rise until—
“I win,” Illyana says, looking down at her Shadowcat, whose eyes are near the level of the floor: Kate has phased almost all the way through said floor, so that she has to come back into the room-- while coming and coming into her puffed-out life-jacket and stuffed panties—slowly and deliberately by climbing on air molecules until there’s nothing solid penetrating her. Nothing that’s not supposed to be there at least.
“Maybe I win,” Kate says.
“We all won,” Talia says, and her sweet other-Earth German-American accent makes it sound like “We all one.”