Jesse knew Adam meant it when the Mutant X leader tried to reassure him what happened to Brennan wasn't his fault. But Adam hadn't been there. Jesse had. Adam hadn't been in the fight, hadn't been the target, hadn't been helpless to stop Brennan from getting shot by the strange electrical pulse from the bizarre rifle. Now Brennan was fighting for his life, as his DNA twisted and his internal organs disintegrated. And it was all Jesse's fault.

But he'd make it right. He'd do whatever he had to in order to save Brennan's life. He hadn't known the other new mutant all that long, but what he'd seen, he liked. Brennan was remarkably well adapted to life as a 'freak,' with an ease about himself and his abilities that Jesse still didn't have, even after months of work under Adam's tutelage. Brennan saw life as a challenge, a game, and he enjoyed beating the odds.

He wouldn't beat these odds, not without a miracle. It was up to Jesse to give him that miracle.

Adam set up a way for Jesse to infiltrate the enemy's camp, posing as Daniel, the traitor. They'd been betrayed by one of their own, the trusted child of a long-time Underground operative. Brennan was paying the price for that betrayal. Jesse was going to make sure Brennan survived, no matter what he had to do to get it done.

"You can count on me," he told Adam, trying to convey his heart-deep need to fix things. Adam looked through him with dark eyes too full of understanding, and told him not to waste time with useless guilt and self-recrimination. But standing in the quiet of the medical bay at the Sanctuary, staring at the unconscious, feverish man he'd one day like to call friend, Jesse couldn't help but feel at fault.

Moving to stand at the side of the bed, he reached out and gently brushed the sweat-soaked hair away from Brennan's forehead. Pain-glazed eyes opened briefly, unfocused gaze flitting past him, swinging back and settling on him for a second before heavy lids closed again. Jesse swallowed painfully.

He leaned over and whispered, "I'm sorry, Brennan. I'll make it up to you. You're not going to die. I promise. Just hold on, okay? You can count on me." The same thing he'd told Adam, only said with more fierce determination, because he'd already let Brennan down once, and that one time could end up killing him.

Jesse wasn't going to let that happen.

He stared down into the relaxed features, wondered fleetingly what Emma had done to Brennan to take the pain away, and fought the insane urge to place a kiss on the slightly parted lips. He took a deep breath, and the scent of Brennan's body filled his head, making him a little dizzy. Shaking himself sharply, snapping himself out of his preoccupation, he reached out one final time to stroke the soft dark hair. He'd been in tight spots before, but none so dangerous as this, and regardless of Adam's instructions, he wasn't going to bail out if it got too risky. He had no choice. He had to get the Pushka gun back if he was going to save Brennan's life.

And he had to save Brennan's life.

He checked instinctively to see if there was anyone in the vicinity. Noting that the lab was empty, Jesse gave into temptation and leaned over. Brennan's mouth was as soft under his own as it looked. Even in deep sleep, wracked with pain, Brennan responded to the familiar touch of a kiss, albeit from an unfamiliar source. His lips curved up to meet Jesse's, and Jesse lost himself in the sweetness of their contact. Only a moment, that was all he could or would allow himself, but it was enough. It gave him the courage to do what he had to do.

His first face-to-face meeting with the Russian scientist Sophie, who held the weapon, was unnerving. She'd looked at him as if she wanted to take off his clothes and lick him all over, then called him a rat and almost ordered her subordinate to shoot him.

It went downhill from there.

He had to dump his comlink ring when they searched him for bugs, and heading into the unknown with no back-up scared the life out of him. But he thought of Brennan, alone in the lab, slowly dying, and got on with the job.

By playing the dumb greedy American he tricked the lunkhead working with Sophie into telling him how to reverse the effects of the neutralizing ray. So all he had to do was steal the gun, escape, get back to the Sanctuary without getting caught by the GSA or the Russians, zap Brennan with the reverse ray from the gun, and save his life. Jesse had a plan.

It didn't work.

He managed to get word to Adam and the group, so at least he had backup and they knew when the Russians planned to attack Daniel's family. But then the big guy aimed the gun at him, it emitted a weird noise, and he was caught. They knew he was a new mutant, and his life was forfeit. Jesse thought fast to keep them from using the gun on him then and there. He rashly promised to lead them to a whole bunch of new mutants, and they fell for his lie. Instead of shooting him, they tagged him with a subdermal governor.

It hurt like a bitch going in, the pain stabbing from the point of insertion at the base of his neck all the way down his spine. He managed not to cry out, or pass out, but it was a near thing. With his powers effectively neutered, he could do nothing but pray that Adam and the group would come through for him.

When they did, he almost blew it. "Dad?" he asked Adam incredulously, as the Mutant X leader did his best impression of Daniel's pipe-smoking father. "Mom?" Shalimar could have been a mother-bot right out of a 1950's television comedy, hilarious if the circumstances weren't so grim. Emma playing his foster sister was icing on the cake. The fight that followed was fast, furious and dirty. When it was over, Adam had the gun, and the code to reverse the effects to Brennan's DNA from the previous shot, and Jesse had a little more work to do.

The final round-up at the Russians' lab was almost anticlimactic. Adam had deactivated the governor in the aftermath of the battle, so Jesse could use his mutant gift. He manipulated his body density down to zero for a moment and escaped the handcuffs the Russians put on him. Before the rest of the Mutant X group could arrive, however, Daniel made a surprise appearance.

Jesse held his breath, certain it would get really ugly really fast. To his shock, Daniel telekinetically lifted Sophie's laptop computer and shattered it on the floor. It appeared that sometime between Jesse going undercover and the big battle, Daniel changed sides. Again.

The Russian enforcer raised his handgun to fire at Daniel and Jesse flung himself between the boy and the bullets, solidifying his body mass so the bullets flattened and fell, harmlessly, to the floor. Then the Mutant X group stalked in the door. Shalimar pounced on Sophie and hissed at her, scaring her into running away. Jesse looked over at Brennan, standing tall and healthy beside Adam, and finally felt the knot of tension he'd carried in his stomach since the initial disastrous fight dissolve.

Looked like the miracle had been worth the risk.

Brennan had some trouble getting his power to work, and Jesse wondered for a moment if the Pushka gun had done permanent damage. But he should've known nothing would get Brennan down for long. With a quirk of his eyebrow and a smirk on his lips, Brennan buckled down and gathered a fireball of electricity between his hands. He let it fly at the computer equipment Sophie had been using to modify the gun, and in seconds, all record of the mutant-detecting, DNA-destroying weapon was fried to cinders.

They climbed into their black SUV and headed back for the Sanctuary. Jesse sat in the back and watched Emma talking to Brennan, their dark heads leaning close together. There was a definite connection between the two, and for some unaccountable reason it saddened Jesse. A nudge to his ribs brought his attention around to Shalimar, who grinned madly at him.

"What?" he asked quietly.

"You have nothing to worry about," she hissed teasingly at him. He had no idea what she was talking about, and told her so. She rolled her eyes at him. "Such a sheltered life you've led. I mean Brennan and Emma."

"Why would I worry about them?" He was sincerely confused. At another eye-roll, he got a little irritated. "I have no interest in Emma," he informed her.

"Damn good thing," she shot back in an unmistakably proprietary voice. He felt his own eyes widen. "Neither does Brennan. Not the kind of interest you're worried about, anyway," she added, sotto voce.

Jesse's mouth went dry. Satisfied at the results of her little bombshell, Shalimar leaned back against the leather seat and purred softly under her breath, staring out the window, ignoring him all the way back to the Sanctuary.

He watched the lights of the city play across her face and wondered which, of the thousand questions he had, to ask first. Then he glanced up to the front of the SUV, past Emma still chattering quietly at Brennan, and met Adam's dark eyes in the rearview mirror. For some reason, the calm regard steadied him.

Whatever Shalimar meant, whatever Emma was up to and with whom, whatever Brennan meant to do or not, and whatever Jesse wanted, if he could just figure it out, could wait. It had been a long day, and he was exhausted. When they got home, he mumbled his goodnights and escaped to his room, noticing peripherally the questioning look Brennan sent him. Not having the energy to deal with either Brennan's confusion or his own right then, Jesse did his best to put it all out of his mind.

Stripping down, he rinsed off in the shower, toweled himself dry quickly and padded barefoot to his bed. Not bothering with his usual sweatpants, he dropped the towel on the floor, tossed the blankets back and started to climb in. A tiny sound, a gasp or stifled word, froze him in place.

He scanned the room quickly for possible threat, freezing when he made out the shadowy figure leaning against the wall next to the door. An instant later his mind supplied identification : Brennan. He relaxed automatically and the sudden release of tension in his muscles caused him to overbalance, falling ungracefully the rest of the way into bed. Sighing, he unburied his face from the pillow and turned over, fully intending to ask Brennan what the heck he was doing in Jesse's bedroom.

Before he got the words out, a hand wove into his hair, holding his head in place, and a warm, urgent mouth fastened over his. The sensation of a tensile tongue moving over his, outlining his teeth, stealing his breath, made his eyes close. Lack of oxygen combined with shock and arousal to make him light-headed almost immediately. His hands came up, waving in the air uselessly before landing on firm shoulders, then holding on for dear life as Brennan got serious.

Jesse's nerves sang and his toes curled, his fingers kneading Brennan's muscles like a cat digging in with its claws. It felt like there was a tiny electrical current running between his lips and Brennan's. He could practically feel each minuscule jolt as it sparked between their flesh. His back arched up all on its own, because his brain certainly had no input into the matter, and he pushed his groin up to meet the solid mass of a thigh shifting between his own.

Then Brennan moved, further onto the bed, further onto Jesse, and for a second Jesse was certain he was going to pass out. Or wake up, because it couldn't be real. Except he'd never had dreams this specific, or this explicit, at least about Brennan.

Most of the time when he dreamed about Brennan, he woke himself up coming before they got much past kissing. And where they were right at that moment was a long way past kissing. He hadn't come yet. Although it was a near thing.

Realization dawned that he was completely naked and Brennan was completely dressed, and that was an unacceptable situation. Before he could protest, Brennan's mouth left his and fastened on the side of his throat. Then long fingers wrapped around his erection, and rectifying the clothing situation was moot, because he was coming all over Brennan's expensive black silk sweater. He could swear he saw blue and white sparks crackling all along his cock, but that might've been fireworks going off behind his eyelids.

He tried to apologize, or explain, or form a coherent word of any kind, but there was no need. Brennan stripped off his clothing faster than Jesse had ever seen anyone get undressed. Then they were skin on skin, and those little electric fingers danced everywhere they touched. He was hard again, and moaning loudly, and he probably should have felt silly but he was too busy feeling like his head was exploding to worry about it.

This was going farther faster than anything he'd ever done, but Jesse felt weirdly safe. True, he didn't know what he was doing, but Brennan obviously did, and he was willing to leave it in Brennan's capable hands. He already had once that night. So when Brennan shifted again, and those strong hands hooked under his knees and spread his legs, Jesse relaxed as much as he could given that he was strung tighter than a bowstring and waited to see what would happen next.

Next, as it turned out, was Nirvana. Fingers spread his ass, and electricity danced from his balls to the base of his spine, and he couldn't stop squirming. He'd never felt so intensely alive as he did at the moment Brennan pushed into him. A jolt of pain flashed out, and he gave a startled yelp, muffled against Brennan's shoulder, but it didn't stop either of them. Brennan slowed down, but not by much, and Jesse wouldn't have let him go if he'd tried to pull away.

Then Brennan moved back and forth, and little bolts of electricity snapped through Jesse with every thrust. His erection, which had he thought about it should have been wilting from the adjustment, had a mind of its own, and was harder than it had ever been. Since his brain had given up the unequal battle for control over his body and let his instincts get on with it, Jesse did what any guy would do in a sensory overload situation, and let his dick do the thinking for him.

Prying open eyes he hadn't consciously shut, Jesse stared up at Brennan's face. It glowed with sweat, as it had the previous day when he'd been lying on the medical lab table, but that was the only similarity. His skin was flushed, his eyes gleamed, and his mouth was slightly open as he panted for breath. Jesse glanced to the side to see the incongruity of his own knees pushed up against Brennan's shoulders, an odd moment of lucidity in the midst of a fevered dream. They looked out of place there, and he forced his legs to extend, sliding his feet under Brennan's arms, around his ribs, locking his ankles in the small of Brennan's back.

Then his head flew back as Brennan thrust deep and lit a fire inside him. The electricity that had been bleeding from Brennan to Jesse the entire time took up residence in the small of his back, and radiated from there down his arms to his fingertips, down his legs to his toes, through his chest to the back of his skull, which felt like it was going to blow off. Brennan's hand landed unerringly at the crown of Jesse's head, and for a second he wondered if Brennan could sense the impending explosion. Then he shoved Jesse's face against the damp skin at the side of his neck, and Jesse realized he'd been yelling pretty loudly. So he closed his lips, then his teeth, around the closest bit of Brennan he could reach, and muffled his scream there.

The bite seemed to trigger Brennan's climax, and Jesse groaned as Brennan slammed into him, hands tightening on his hips until it felt like there were permanent fingerprints on his skin. Then Brennan relaxed, suddenly, as all the strength rushed out of him. Jesse mouthed Brennan's neck and wriggled the best he could, pushing his raging erection into Brennan's belly, tightening his legs and arms as much as possible. There was enough contact, enough pressure, enough friction, to make him come for the second time that night.

Better than the best damned wet dream he'd ever had.

A strange noise against the side of his head, buried in his hair, brought his attention back from the stratosphere where his climax had sent it. It took a moment for him to realize it was Brennan. Laughing.

Jesse felt his skin chill, his eyes close, and he wanted to curl up in a ball and die. Brennan's breath caught, and the laughter stopped as he scattered kisses over the side of Jesse's face, along his jaw, pecking at his lips and the tip of his nose and the center of his forehead. Jesse swallowed hard and forced himself to listen.

"You're the best, Jesse. Thank you for putting yourself on the line for me. You said I could count on you and I could. You did it. You saved my life." The warm whisper felt good against his face, thawing the ice before it could enclose him.

"So, this was what? Payment?" The words came out harsher than he intended. Jesse forced himself to open his eyes and stare a mute apology up at Brennan. He didn't know what he was doing, was totally off-balance, and it showed. Bright eyes stared back at him, accepting and forgiving without a word being exchanged.

"Friendship, I hope," Brennan told him softly.

"You treat all your buddies like this?" Jesse nearly bit his tongue. Brennan laughed again, but this time Jesse heard the affection in the sound.

"Only the ones I really like. Think of it as friendship with fringe benefits." He touched the center of Jesse's bottom lip with a fingertip, and Jesse jumped as he felt a tiny current of electricity shoot through him.

"Not a one-off?" God, he hoped not.

Brennan followed the finger-touch with a butterfly kiss, breaking it only to say "Count on it" before diving in for a deeper taste. It wasn't anything like what Jesse'd expected when he'd hoped to become Brennan's friend.

It was so much better.

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Created on ... April 28, 2003