Chapter 17: Morning After

Chapter 17: Morning After

A/N: Here's the new Chapter! Which also means the next four chapters are up on my Patreon for early access as well as the chance to vote on the direction of the story!

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Thaddeus and Laura have a heart to heart followed by an awkward interaction in the common room~

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With Laura looming over him, her hand splayed across his chest, Thaddeus inhales and then exhales slowly, before looking her right in the eye.

“I want to be yours, Laura. And I damn sure wouldn’t mind you being mine. But I can’t promise monogamy. I’m not really a one-woman type of guy. There are going to be other girls in my bed... likely LOTS of other girls in my bed. And if that doesn’t sound appealing to you...”

He trails off, not really wanting to finish the sentence. He can’t help but feel a little guilty. He’d fucked Laura all night long for obvious reasons... because they were VERY physically compatible, but also because he got a lot of benefits from it. But then, she must have as well. He could feel it every time he came, how the boost in ability had gone both ways.

So it wasn’t like he’d just used her and was now discarding her. They’d both come out ahead from last night. Still, women could be... unpredictable at times. And Thaddeus had no idea how someone like Laura would react. Would she get angry with him? Violently so, even?

For a long moment, the undercover X-Men is quiet on top of him. She keeps her hand on his chest, her fingers spread outwards in every direction as she considers his words. Finally, she slowly nods.

“It’s your mutation. It’s messing with your mind.”

Thaddeus blinks at that. Wait... was it? His first instinct was to say ‘no’. That she was wrong. His mutation had never felt like it was pushing him further down this path of seeking out sex in all of its glorious forms. Rather, he was just your average horny guy who got Sex Powers, wasn’t he? There didn’t need to be a mental element, not when sex felt as good as it did AND he got powers from it.

In a way, he HAD sort of been conditioned by his mutation to seek out sex. Boosts felt good, whether they were small boosts to his overall health from normal girls, or whether they were bigger boosts to his powers from mutants and other empowered women. But even if he hadn’t developed this mutation, Thaddeus doesn’t think his sex life would have been all that different.

Chad Cummings would have still been the jock-y, pigheaded athlete he’d always been, and girls might have still flocked to him for a chance to get with a football star. His mutation had merely... amplified all of that. And let him break away from his old self entirely, of course. Chad Cummings was no more and Thaddeus was happy about that.

But... no, it wasn’t his mutation that made it impossible for him to be a one-woman kind of guy. Maybe if his other circumstances were different but the truth was...

“It’s not that. Not really. It feels good to grow stronger, don’t get me wrong... but even if it didn’t, I would still NEED to get stronger. Because I’ve made choices that have set me on a collision course with a lot of dangerous entities. I’m in too deep to back out now, Laura. I know you and Kitty are here to keep an eye on me, but you both are just the tip of the iceberg. This entire dorm is filled with women who all want a piece of me... and I think my only way of getting through this will be to take a piece of them right back.”

Laura mulls this over for a moment before frowning at him.Geett the latest novels at novelhall.com

“Hellfire Club won’t let you go easily.”

Smiling a wan smile, Thaddeus offers his partner for the night a helpless shrug.

“Truth be told, I don’t want them to let me go, Laura. I chose Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club. I knew everything wasn’t on the up and up. But so far, they’ve been nothing but good to me. And I intend to ride that gravy train all the way to the station if possible.”

Thaddeus wasn’t an idiot, or at least he liked to think he wasn’t these days. He knew full well that, continuing the train metaphor, he might have to jump off at some point while it was still moving. One way or another though, he fully intended to only leave the Hellfire Club on HIS terms. Otherwise... he’d stick it out and see just how far he could get.

Selfish? Maybe. But the world was a selfish place built by selfish people. Was it really so wrong for Thaddeus to want to get his, so long as he wasn’t going out of his way to hurt other people? He didn’t personally think so, but his opinion wasn’t the one that mattered right now. He lays there as Laura frowns at his words and waits for her final verdict.

“... Dangerous. I’ll help you.”

That gets a blink, truth be told.

“Hello, ladies. I met some of you yesterday, but it looks like a lot more of you have settled in now. My name is Thaddeus, though you can call me Thad, and it’s a pleasure to make all of your acquaintances. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up with Housing, it seems that I’ve been housed in an all-female dormitory by mistake. Until they see fit to move me, I promise to be as much of a gentleman as possible.”

There. That was a pretty good first impression, wasn’t it?

“Yeah, stud? A perfect gentleman, is that it?”

When Mystique, disguised as Risty, suddenly speaks up with a mocking and altogether amused tone, Thaddeus can’t help but bristle a little. He hadn’t said perfect gentleman anyways, but before he can correct her, ‘Risty’ grins all the more widely.

“I could use a ‘perfect gentleman’ sometimes, if last night was any indication of what you consider a ‘gentleman’ to be.”

Her eyes trail over to Laura at that, and Thaddeus blushes as he finally understands what she’s getting at... and comes to the stark realization that he came into this like an idiot. First Impression? This wasn’t his first impression with any of the girls in this common room. No, his first impression was fucking Laura like an animal all night long, hard and fast enough to break his bedframe in the process. And if they were able to do that... then they were probably more than loud enough to be heard by the entire building, weren’t they?

“That girl who rushed out of here is your next door neighbor, by the by. Her name’s Felicia, from what I gathered.”

Mystique sounds so horribly amused that Thaddeus almost wants to reveal he knows who she is right there on the spot. Ancient-ass shapeshifter masquerading as a college student... does she really have any sort of high ground over him at the moment?

But... no. Exposing her like this would not only be petty as fuck, it would probably also be detrimental to his own cause for absolutely no reason. Risty’s true identity was something to be kept in his back pocket for now.

Still, as he looks around the room, Thaddeus sees all sorts of expressions. A good number of the girls look interested. That’s not at all surprising though, he’s used to that. A few look annoyed though, and Thaddeus feels bad if he kept them up... he’d certainly kept up poor Felicia from the look of things. And a scant few are hiding their emotions completely.

Once again, Thaddeus is reminded that he has no idea just how many of the women in this room are after him. Suddenly, he realizes that whatever her reasons for speaking up in the first place were, ‘Risty’ has given him the perfect excuse to retreat. And retreat sounds really, really good right now.

“Right... I’ll leave you all to it then.”

With that, Thaddeus heads out the door. He’ll get breakfast elsewhere, he figures.

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Before he knows it, Thaddeus’ first week of college has come and gone. He’s done all the important stuff of course, like getting in touch with his new Football Coach and starting practice with ESU’s football team. He’d done his best to downplay his prowess, but of course even his weakest had let him run circles around the other players. Still, with the lessons in hiding his strength that Emma had made sure he’d gotten over the summer, Thaddeus was able to make himself look like god’s gift to football as far as the Head Coach was concerned, rather than obviously superhuman.

Sleep, meanwhile, was proving less and less necessary. Which was amusing because a quick text to Emma and he’d gotten a new bedframe made of reinforced materials for his dorm room. He still needed a few hours here and there every few days, but more often than not he’d find himself just lying in bed if he didn’t actually do something.

... Sometimes that ‘something’ was a someone and that someone was Laura. Thaddeus tried to be considerate, mind you. He tried not to be as loud as that first night if anything. But Laura could be a handful and a half. And he couldn’t really bring himself to deny her. Still, he kept things to a two-pizza a night rule, which at least kept them from fucking all night long, or so it seemed.

Regardless, with the end of that first week, Thaddeus was just considering what to do with his weekend. It was funny that he’d told Laura he wasn’t a one-woman kind of guy, and then had spent the past week fucking only her and nobody else. Perhaps it was time to change that.

... Or perhaps it was time to get in touch with Emma and see if she’d found a solution to his psychic problem. The longer he went without any defenses against telepaths, the more anxious Thaddeus felt. But was a week really long enough for Emma to come up with an answer for him? More importantly, did he want to push her on this too fast when their relationship was perfectly cordial for the moment?

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The Patreon Vote:

[ ] Contact Emma about her promise regarding Psychic Resistance - 41%

[ ] Spend the weekend with Laura, perhaps outside the dorm to spare the others - 10%

[X] Spend the weekend pursuing one of the other girls on his floor (my choice, though you can offer suggestions) - 49%

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