AUTHOR: Lilith
EMAIL: fairiesbite@yahoo.com
FANDOM: Runaways
CHARACTER/PAIRING: Karolina/Nico

SUMMARY: Set after the end of the first "season," before the kids got set up under the tar pits, but after the showdown with The Pride.  I was going to try for plot, or serious angst, but . . . this is a total PWP.  Written for Yuletide 2004.

RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: All characters and concepts belong to Marvel Comics, not me.  This is intended for entertainment purposes only.
DISTRIBUTION: Yuletide, my site.  Possibly Silverlake.  If anyone else wants it, ask.

NOTES: Of course, I completely made up the part where turning blue makes Karolina's skin(?) turn cold.  They haven't exactly filled out the properties of her alien race much, so I just did that for myself.

*****

Natural

The red numbers on the clock across the room read 2:15.  Karolina lay there quietly, listening as hard as she could, but all she heard was far-off: a squabbling couple, a thumping bed, cars out on the city street.  Nico’s breathing had evened out an hour ago: she had to be fast asleep.

She climbed out of her bed, walked to the window, and gently tugged the shade all the way down.  With the door shut, the motel room was pitch-dark.  She unclasped her bracelet and slipped it off.

Light bloomed where she stood, weird and pulsing like some strange deep-sea fish on exhibit in an aquarium: now yellow, now bluish green.  Aquatic shadows shifted through reflected light on the bare walls of her borrowed room.  She held her luminous hands up in front of her face: her skin was translucent, and underneath she could see what looked like tiny galaxies dancing through her fingertips.

Topher had said that her blood burned like sunlight, but she wasn’t sure she had blood.  Who knew what she was made out of?  She could feel a sick sense of desperation rising inside her again, this feeling of being lost within her own body.  She looked like some drugged-out rocker’s bad trip: hence the name.

Lucy in the Sky (with diamonds).  Maybe her home planet had tangerine trees and marmalade skies, too.

She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t be this pathetic anymore, but it hadn’t helped.  Much as she’d feared her parents, feared and hated them for being different people than the ones she thought she knew . . . they were the only ones who could have told her anything about herself, about who and what she was.  And they were gone.

Something was tight inside her chest, something angry and scared.  Her therapist, during her short time with the foster parents, kept telling her that she had anger management problems: that she had to let her feelings out, talk to somebody.  It wasn’t exactly like that, though.  It seemed . . . physical. 

She thought about Nico, and wondered how she was dealing with things.  They hadn’t really talked about anything special, the last few days . . . just about how to get money and food, and where to hide the frog machine.  They’d held hands a lot, and they always shared a motel room, but they didn’t say much.

She probably missed Alex.  Heck, even Karolina missed Alex, in a way.  Alex had made the world make the closest thing to sense, for awhile, before she found out that he’d been lying to her.  Much like her parents, really.

She was going to have some major trust issues after all this.  She climbed back into bed and pulled the sheets up to her ears, muffling her own light a little.

Nico made the world make no kind of sense at all.  At least that wasn’t a lie.

She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and fumbled to fasten her bracelet again.  She didn’t want to push her luck, wake Nico up . . .

Nico rolled over and put a hand on her wrist, knocking the bracelet onto the pillow.  Karolina opened her eyes wide to stare at her.

“I . . . I’m sorry I woke you up.”  She looked at Nico’s hand, the light from her own shining up through and outlining it in red.  Like shielding a light bulb, or a candle flame.

“It’s okay,” Nico smiled, her eyes not sleepy at all.  “I timed myself to wake up once you were starting to sulk.  You do this every night, K.”

“I didn’t know you knew.”

Nico rolled her eyes.  “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.  Of course I knew, but I don’t get it.  I thought you were over this alien angst thing.”

“It isn’t that easy.”  She closed her eyes, sighing.

“Could you be any more melodramatic?  Seriously, Karolina.  I think you’re just scared to admit that you love being an alien.  You can fly, you glow in the dark . . . hell, you’re literally that little ray of sunshine that everyone always said you were, now.”

Karolina turned away, strands of her shimmering hair flying out to brush Nico’s face.  “Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.  I love being a freak.  I love not knowing where I’m even from.”

It was Nico’s turn to sigh.  “Oh, god, don’t be like this.  I’m sorry, okay?  I’m sorry.  We’ve all had just a bit more growing pain than most kids ever dream of, but that doesn’t mean we totally understand each other, either.”

Karolina made a noncommittal sound.  Nico grabbed her arm and tugged, shifting her slightly back in her direction, but she just rolled back away again.  Grumbling, Nico pushed herself up on her hands and knees, and climbed right on top of the sulking alien, straddling her with all four limbs.  Karolina’s eyes opened, and widened.

“You.  Are being.  An ass.”  Nico hissed down at her.  “I don’t know why I bother.”  Then she dropped her head to kiss Karolina right on the little ‘o’ that her mouth was forming.

Karolina gasped and pushed her away.  Nico’s brow furrowed with confusion.  “I thought . . .”

“I don’t want you to kiss me because you feel bad for me, okay?”  Karolina glared.  “I don’t know how you feel about me, not really, and I don’t know what you want.  We’ve been . . . circling each other, the past week, and I don’t want to just mess around, so you’d better be sure.  Are you sure?”

Nico stared for a second.  Tendrils of light were meandering up from around Karolina’s head like a halo, reaching for her.  Her alien eyes were literally flashing.  Nico had always had a thing for monsters.

“I’m sure.”

“Good.”  And like snakes, or like a net, the tendrils reached up and pulled her down.

Karolina’s tongue was warmer and smoother than a normal human’s—at least, as far as Nico knew from Alex.  The kiss was extremely tentative at first, lip-brushing, tongue-flicking . . . but it quickly became urgent, hot; Karolina plundering her mouth while she just took it, gasping, barely able to breathe once they pulled away.  She rolled over onto her side, taking Karolina with her.

There was a shining hand below her collarbone, now.  She could feel the heat of it through the thin black cotton of her t-shirt.  It slipped, gently, between her breasts, trailing leisurely down her stomach, resting there.  Her breath was already coming fast, her vision obscured by tendrils of glimmering yellow hair that had fallen into her eyes.  That warm tongue ran over the delicate curl of her ear, deftly flicking her piercings, and she forgot to breathe at all.  Then Karolina bit down, and she cried out, softly, her head rolling up and away.

Little nips down the side of her neck.  The hand, now, was toying with the edge of the fabric of her shirt, slipping underneath.  Hot against the flesh of her side, tracing where her ribs must be, up and up again . . .

A blue flush came over Karolina’s sparkling form, and Nico gasped as the fingers became cool just as they ghosted over her nipple.  Karolina bit her lip and grinned at her, a little shy, but mostly . . .

“Evil!”  Nico gasped out, her head rolling, hair splaying wild and starkly black against the white pillow beneath her.

Karolina made a sound—was that a growl?—and took hold of both of Nico's breasts firmly, one through the shirt, one hand beneath.  She kneaded, her tongue tracing over Nico’s parted lips, slipping inside and darting like a snake’s, teasing.  She tasted and smelled strange and intoxicating; like sandalwood, and cinnamon maybe, with a hint of vanilla.

Nico retaliated, sucking that tongue in and capturing it, stroking it, running her tongue over both of their lips.  Karolina murmured against her mouth, “Always wanted you.  It was the only thing . . . the only thing that felt right.  The only thing that felt natural.”  Her cool fingers stroked down Nico’s sides, making her shiver violently, twisting from side to side.  They found the edges of her underwear and dipped underneath.

When a single finger slipped straight down the center of the cloth, in between, Nico choked, her hips rising involuntarily to meet it.  Karolina slipped away suddenly, slippery, leaving an afterglow haloing Nico’s upper body as she brought her face down to the level of her hand.  She crooned wordlessly, her fingers stroking over the maroon fabric.  She pressed her face into it, the vibrations from her unintelligible words causing Nico to jerk slightly.  Then she mouthed her once, gently, through the panties.

“Karolina . . . please!”  The grin that was flashed up at her was predatory, the twin stars in Karolina’s eyes shining brilliantly.

“All you had to do was ask.”  Reaching behind, she cupped the small cheeks of Nico’s ass for a second before grasping the edges of her underwear and pulling, slipping them gently off her pale legs and tossing them away into a corner.  Nico instinctively clenched her thighs together, but Karolina pried them apart, gently, and regarded her sex.

She ran her fingernails through the dark thatch of hair, her fingers circling cruelly around at the junction of her thighs.  Nico whimpered, and Karolina had mercy on her.

“Open your eyes,” she demanded softly.  Nico did, and watched with large eyes as one shining finger disappeared inside her.  She moaned.  It was so cold!

“Oh, you’re so wet,” Karolina whispered throatily.  “You’re so wet for me, Nico.  I knew you would be.”  A second finger slid in, pumping gently, stroking inside her.  The light, the living, physical light from Karolina’s body reaching, seeming to caress everywhere inside, where fingers couldn’t reach.  They were warming now, as though reacting to the heat that Nico’s own body was emitting.

Nico became very quiet, her breath shallow, just feeling Karolina moving within her.  The other girl gave her a ridiculous smirk—it was funny that someone whose form looked kind of, well, ethereal could look so evil—and kissed her, right on her clitoris.  Nico cried out, loudly, and arched.

“Steady, hot stuff, I have you,” Karolina murmured, her tongue flicking out.  It was as though every vein in Nico’s body was filled with fire.  She felt something inside her rising. 

Karolina’s strokes were even, now, her tongue matching the pace of her fingers.  There was a primal rhythm throbbing in Nico’s blood, an irresistible gravitational pull drawing her towards climax.

She couldn’t fight it, she couldn’t hold back.  Throwing back her head, she saw stars.

Karolina gave one final kiss and clambered up to hold her as she shook, gently bringing her through the come-down.  Nico opened her eyes and smiled, weakly.

“I feel as though my bones’re Jell-O,” she slurred, laughed softly.  “I don’t know what you are, K, but whatever it is . . . I like it!”

Karolina’s smile was still a little sad.  “Ohhh, stop that.”  Nico gestured down, to where the light from her friend’s body had cocooned her, seemingly in starlight.  “It’s like being made love to by a . . . a fucking celestial goddess or something!”  She reached out, burying her hands in Karolina’s wild mane and pulling her close, kissing her almost chastely on the lips.  “You’re just . . . amazing, really.”

“Says the seductive Dark Sorceress,” Karolina teased, really smiling now.

“You’d better believe I’m seductive,” Nico informed her seriously.  “And as soon as my arms will actually move again, I’m going to give back as good as I got, you watch me.”

And oh, she did.