Weekend At Xavier's (Part One)

So, I slept with Laura.

...

...

I suppose you want more than that? Fine, you nosy bastards.

It was fucking awesome. I mean, I loved my time with Megan, including in bed, but to be frank, having sex with her wasn't as fulfilling as it was with Laura. This is all with the benefit of hindsight, of course.

For starters, Laura had an engine that didn't quit. So, as long as I didn't finish, she could keep going as long as it took, and at a really high level! The stuff she could do, it was insane! And the girl didn't slack off, which tested my longevity. However, it's not like I wasn't up for the challenge. But Laura was just... good lord. She was gracious enough to let me take the lead for starters, but when I let her be on top and set the pace...

Okay, let me put it this way-

If sex were like a fighting game, sleeping with Megan was like playing on normal mode. It was the mode that got me used to the game, let me have fun while learning all of the basic controls, and gave me a bit of a challenge back when I had little to no idea what I was doing.

Sleeping with Laura was like playing ranked online. It was more fun, but it was a goddamn challenge. Your mistakes meant something, your triumphs meant more, and your A-game was necessary, because you were for sure getting hers, and if you weren't on it, you were going to be swept out of the room. Plus, there were lots of little nuances that the game wouldn't teach you on its own that you had to pick up to succeed.

Also... you found yourself cursing at Laura a lot, because she was so damn good.

In the end, once it was all said and done, I wound up laying down with her, curled up in my chest, sans clothes. I peeked out of the corner of my eye and saw little strains of the sun coming up through my curtain.

Until the break of dawn. Hell yeah.

I looked over at Laura. She seemed so peaceful with her eyes closed like that. Just looking at her, one would have never figured she had a body count higher than a town hall meeting. I ran my fingers through her hair, and my poisonous brain quickly got to work again.

'You and Hisako talked about this,' I thought to myself, 'Banging a teammate is a bad idea. She's gonna give herself an aneurysm calling you an idiot later.'

The other part of my mind was completely fine with that, 'Meh, I can take getting bitched out for fifteen minutes. Hisako will get it out of her system, and that'll be that.'

The negative side quickly piped back up, 'Things were getting less awkward with Megan. Consider that dead now.'

''I'm not dating Megan,' My mellow, sex-addled mind shot back, 'Megan broke up with me, and it's been more than a month since then.'

Bleak Bellamy just wouldn't let me be happy though, 'Logan's gonna cut your dangly bits off when he finds out what happened.'

'There's an easy solution to that,' The other side of my mind replied, 'I just have to do a good enough job that Laura will cut his off if he tries anything on mine.'

Man, I needed to ponder more of the great conundrums of my life after I got laid, because I seemed to have all of the answers. At least answers good enough to get me to relax... for all of thirty seconds.

'You're not what she needs,' I thought to myself as I kept looking down at Laura, 'You're not good at being someone's boyfriend.'

Maybe that was true. But I didn't care. The previous night had been great. I wanted this. And probably more importantly, Laura did too, 'I'm what she wants, and that's good enough. Laura made this choice herself,' Speaking of whom-, "Laura, you don't have to stay awake just because I'm still up. Get some sleep, woman."

From what previously looked like a deep slumber, Laura quickly cracked open one pretty green eye before gracing me with the sight of both, "But men like it when they think sex with them exhausts their partners."

Wow, what an unflattering assumption of my gender. I somehow kept myself from laughing, "What lame-ass dudes have you been with?" I asked, a big grin on my face.

Laura took a moment to prop herself up on my chest to address me properly, "By what you're apparently using as criteria, I worked in prostitution for several months about 2 years before we met," She replied.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," I muttered, just remembering that little portion of Ruthie's psychic crash-course of Laura's life, "Anyway, I know you're playing possum. There's no way you're that tired. It took me like 25 minutes to make you cum the first time. Then it kept taking longer the next two times. You never slowed down."

"Why do you know how long it took?" Laura asked.

Because I had to focus on something that wasn't you until I hit my stride, otherwise I'd have blown my wad five minutes in. Thus, I chose the clock on the nightstand.

There was no way I was going to say that though, "...Don't worry about it."

To be fair, I didn't really change my pace either. I would have tried for longer than we went, but... you know. The spirit was willing, the body was able, but the flesh was spongy and bruised. Ironically, going to sleep would have immediately fixed that problem. Goddamn insomnia, keeping me from healing so I could have killer wake-up sex.

I was prevented from cursing my own biological makeup when I noticed Laura staring at me, "Huh? What's wrong?"

Something about her tone seemed insecure, "You... aren't upset? Angry?"

I just stared back at her, cognizant of the time dragging on as I tried and failed to work out what I would have had a problem with, "About what? Do you mean, like, right now, or in general? Because I'm always kinda pissed off."

Laura seemed put out that I wasn't getting what she was after, "About my having been a prostitute."

"Oh," I said, willing to leave it at that. From how Laura continued to stare, it was clear that this would not suffice, "...What about it?"

The WRONG fucking response, dumbass.

Word to the wise with, again, with the benefit of hindsight; if someone brings up something they're dwelling on, don't treat it as a minor deal, because it's not. Even if it doesn't bother you, even if it doesn't make you look at them any differently, it's not about you. It's about them. Idiot.

Despite Laura always doing her best to keep a straight poker face, when something got to her, it really showed.

I went into damage control as quickly as I could, pulling her back down to my chest tight, "Laura... what I mean is, I don't think you're a bad person, or that you're gross or anything. It's sex. And you did what you had to do to get by at the time. I don't think any less of you."

It wasn't like I thought I was in any danger from any kind of STD either. Not from her. With people's files on the team, I got the results their latest checkups. Laura had a completely clean bill of health. Also, I wasn't dumb enough to avoid using protection.

Laura's hands balled into fists as she pressed herself closer to me, "We have never really discussed it before."

From what I remembered, it had only come up once in passing, and I was pretty sure I squared it away and otherwise didn't think of it, "I figured that told you all you needed to know about what I thought about it, which was nothing," I gave her a bit of a squeeze for support, "Do you want to talk about how you feel about it? Did you hate it? Like it?"

I half expected her to turn me down. That was what usually happened whenever I tried to bring up something that was hard to talk about. It had happened during our date. Maybe sex-addled Laura had more clarity of self as well? Because contrary to convention, she opened up a bit.

Laura frowned, "I 'nothing-ed' it, Bellamy. It is like you said, it was what I felt I had to do to survive," She said, "Even so, people look down on sex workers. Whenever it comes up, there is always a measure of shame in how people respond."

I knew where she was going with the rest of that, "-Which makes you think you should feel ashamed," I said. Yeah, things normally went like that with prostitution – stripping and porn too, to a lesser extent, for whatever reason.

Laura nodded, "It was... like The Facility, in a way," She said quietly. She closed her eyes as I started running my thumb up and down her cheek, "I had no real options on my own. Prostitution is and always will be an industry that is easy to take part in," True enough. People would always want to get laid, "So, I was taken in, put to work, and punished when I performed poorly."

Punished? Performed poorly? My ass.

"That sounds awful," I said, giving her a kiss on top of her head.

"It was... familiar," Laura said, sighing comfortably. At least I could provide her that much, "It was easy to do, letting someone control me, doing what I was told, because it was what I had been taught all of my life. I let myself be used because it was familiar to me."

She had been raised to be a tool. For most of her life up to this point, it had been all that she'd known. Just because she'd been freed didn't mean that she would automatically know what to do with it. Of course she would struggle with it. She was probably still struggling with it, even then. And that thought made me sad. It also frightened me.

With The Facility, they beat it into her that 'no' was never an option. When she had been a prostitute, saying 'no' had probably never been an option. In fact, had she ever really said 'no' when I or someone else in a position of authority at school told her to do something?

Oh, hell...

Laura quickly picked up on the subtle change in my scent that went with my change in demeanor, "You are afraid," She accused.

"No, I'm not," I scoffed, "Laura, if I was going to be afraid of you, it was going to be before I had my tongue in your-."

"-I did not say that you were afraid of me. Just that you were afraid," Laura specified, interrupting me, "It wasn't until just a moment ago. What changed?"

The jig was up. This was one thing eating at me that I wouldn't be able to keep to myself, and honestly, I didn't want to. She needed to hear this, and I would be okay repeating this as many times as I felt I needed to, until the day that I didn't.

"Don't..." I hesitated at first, thinking of how to put my thoughts into words, "...Don't ever think you have to do things like this - with me or anyone else, okay?" I said, gesturing to our current state of intimacy, "In fact, don't ever think you have to do anything. Everyone reserves the right to tell the rest of the world to fuck off, get me?" She popped her head up to look at me in confusion, "...I just don't want to hurt you."

I told Logan that I wouldn't. Even if I hadn't, I still would have felt the same way. I didn't want anything I did to affect her negatively. I didn't want to see anyone else hurt her either.

Big, beautiful green eyes looked at me as though she still didn't quite understand and wanted me to go into deeper detail. God, I would read the fucking phone book to her if she looked at me like that while I was doing it.

"If I ever ask you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, for fuck's sake, tell me," I more or less begged her, "In the field, in the bedroom, hell, if I'm making you breakfast and you see me making hash browns, and you decide you don't want any of that. I don't care. Speak up. I don't want to hurt you."

Laura chuckled, as though I had said something amusing to her, "You won't hurt me," She said, either out of belief in her own proven healing factor, or in me. Whatever it was, I needed her to understand where I was coming from.

"Doesn't matter," I insisted, "You're so used to people telling you what to do... I'm just afraid you'll let someone do something they shouldn't, because you think you can't say no."

If I found out that I did anything during sex that Laura wasn't actually into, but she just let me do because she didn't know how to turn me down, or didn't think to, I would have felt sick.

Laura was quick to place me into my own hypothetical scenario, pushing herself up to sit on her knees by my side, "By someone, you mean you."

"Or anyone, really," I tried to deflect, not really lying. I was a big proponent of free choice, "But... in this case specifically, yes. Remember, I basically first told you that when you joined the Paladins? It goes double now."

"Why?"

I fought the urge to say something snarky like, 'because I've been inside of you'. This was a serious moment. Serious moments required sincere, not-a-dick Bellamy.

I just decided to be straightforward. That always seemed to work best with her, "Because we're dating, Laura... if you want to do this again, that is," Laura's eyes went wide. Her only response was to slowly nod. Good, "I want you to be happy."

I wanted to try and make her happy, whatever that meant to her. Because it seemed I could only ever be satisfied when people I cared about were happy.

Laura's mouth hung open, stunned at what I was telling her for some reason. I reached up to close her mouth, and found her right back on top of me in an instant, kissing me hard.

Alright then. I could work with that-.

*KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!*

-Later. I could work with that later, clearly, because of the forceful knock that came to my door at that moment. I checked the clock and sighed, getting up and putting on a pair of pants to preserve some semblance of dignity.

"It's early. It's Saturday morning," I said upon reaching the door, undoing the locks, "Couldn't this wait until-?" I stopped talking when I cracked it open and saw Logan waiting on the other side, glaring at me, "...Uh, hey. What's up?"

"Funny thing, Glowstick," Logan started, a sarcastic, brightness in his gruff voice, "I talked to Blindfold a little while ago. Apparently, Laura never came back to the room last night. Go figure."

I sighed and ran a hand down my face, "Bet Ruthie loved that wake-up call..." I muttered. I sincerely hoped she just went back to sleep afterwards, "Dude, it's 6:45 in the morning? Could you wait until later to shake me down?"

Logan chuckled darkly, "What, and not catch you while Laura's still with you? Not a chance."

As though, she were being summoned, Laura walked over right beside me, thankfully decent (wearing one of my goddamn shirts, yes).

I opened the door a bit wider so Logan could see her too, "I was kind of hoping you'd slip out the window and not give him the satisfaction," I said to her.

"He would still know that I had been here with you," Laura replied before nodding to her DNA original, "Logan."

"Darlin'," Logan replied in greeting. He eyed her up and down, looking for who knew what for several seconds, "...D'ya have a good time?"

Of all the things Logan could have said, I didn't expect him to ask Laura about her night, knowing that he was definitely smelling the fact that we'd banged.

The extent of Laura's own surprise showed in the quick, specific blink of her eyes before her response, "Yes."

Logan let out a grunt of acceptance, "Glowstick treat you right?"

Laura looked over at me and smiled before addressing her 'relative', "Bellamy did nothing I was dissatisfied with."

I personally would have gone with, 'Bellamy was fucking awesome,' but then again, I was biased.

Logan seemed to mull things over before coming to some sort of decision on my fate, "Good enough for me," He gestured with his head for Laura to leave. She went back into my room and gathered her things.

It was kind of sad to see her go, even though this had been far from the first time she'd vacated my premises. I guess the difference this time around was that all I could think about was what it felt like to know the girl biblically.

I caught Laura by the hand as she went past me, "Ah-ah-ah. Can I call you later?"

"I would be upset if you didn't," Laura said, still smiling contently.

Deciding to take a chance, I leaned in and gave her a kiss on the lips. She let me do it, encouraging it even, when she kissed me back. Plus, Logan didn't carve out my insides like a pumpkin for kissing her right in front of him, so that was a bonus.

Pulling back, I stroked her cheek with my thumb, "I wouldn't want you mad at me, buzzsaw," I whispered.

Laura closed her eyes and sighed as she leaned into my hand. She savored the contact for a few seconds before huffing, probably as grumpy as I was that she had to leave. It was okay though. I would be calling her later. I would definitely be seeing her later.

My gaze lingered on Laura until she left my sight, turning down another hallway. There was a problem though. Logan was still there.

I raised an eyebrow at the man, "And you're still here because? Are you gonna kill me after all?"

Logan scowled and crossed his arms over his chest, "Get your ass cleaned up and dressed, Glowstick. You've got a head-shrinking, then it's visiting day."