Jamie slammed the door behind Lorna. Jamie sat on the edge of the bed, clutching a pillow and softly crying. Jamie ruthlessly kicked Jamie off the bed and stretched out comfortably, rubbing at the crotch of his jeans.

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine lil' woman, there," he drawled lazily in his best hick-ese, "Ain't so lil' where it counts, neither, no sir."

"Don't be so sexist and mean! Lorna is trying to be our friend, and all you do is stare down her shirt. No wonder she doesn't like us." Jamie was still sniffling into his pillow, now affronted as well as miserable.

"Well, I like her just fine, and so does my lil' buddy here." He kept stroking himself through his jeans. "In fact-"

"Shut up." Jamie moved from the door to the window. "Now she's flown off. We must have really upset her that time. Good one, guys."

"Ah, she's just up there because it's as far away from food as she can get. Otherwise she'd be down in the kitchen scoffing Rahne's Pal. And our cold pizza. Fat bitch. Hope she doesn't run into any planes, or she'll be ripping off the door and gobbling up those airline dinners."

Jamie dropped his pillow in outrage, but Jamie abandoned the argument, grabbed a towel and went for a shower, leaving the other two to smirk or sob as it pleased them.

He'd nearly told Lorna, right then, what had happened to him. His disease. He was going to die. But first he had a little bonus: his duplication power was in overdrive. The force of the shower, which, when he kept it this low, was usually insufficient to set him off, had filled the room with naked, blank-faced Jamies, like a mannequin factory. Like these dupes, most of the others he made weren't behaving as they should. This was quite alarming to Jamie, whose power had always been happily predictable. Two duplicates in particular - since when were dupes particular! - could hardly be called "dupes" any more, since they seemed to be not only independent of Jamie's control, but had their own personalities and habits. Nor could the original Jamie reabsorb them. He felt more like a triplet - the regular, non-mutant sort - than the handy-dandy, Multiple Man, Swiss Army Knife of X-Factor.

As he turned off the water, pushing a zombie dupe out of the way to do so, he concentrated on reabsorbing the bathroom full of slack-jawed Jamies. He felt a horrible, wet, crawling sensation in his mind as he reached for them, and slid to the damp tiles, dazed. When he awoke, shivering, the new dupes were thankfully all gone, although he could hear the other two sniping away in the bedroom. How sick was he getting? How long did he have now? For a man who had always been able to make his own friends, Jamie Madrox was terribly alone. He reached up to grab his towel from the rail, but a despair flatter than three-days-open lemonade overwhelmed him and, instead of drying himself, he curled on the floor and cried.

"Yoo hoo...what are you doing in that bathroom, my man? Don't tell me that the luscious Lorna inspired you, too?" Jamie opened the door to peer in at Jamie crying helplessly. "Oh, I'm so sorry! Looks like I've stumbled on a tender moment here. So what's wro-ong with Ja-mie?"

"Go away, go away." Jamie flapped a hand at the intruder.

"Wow, that's serious. Don't you want a little cuddle? Like the good old days?"

"No, no, no, no, fuck off. Leave me alone."

Jamie stalked around the teary man on the floor, his face contemptuous.

"So it's all right for you to make us up for your fun, but when it comes down to it, you only want to be alone? I don't think so, Jamie. I think you want pretty Lorna to hold you in her arms. Should I go and get her? Should I go and nestle against her fine, proud bosom myself? Or even send Droopy Dupe out there, the other weepy one, to arouse her sympathy? Arousing Lorna...there's a fine thought-"

"What do you want, anyway?" Jamie sat up, shaking off the weariness.

"Oh, it's time to recognize that I want, is it? I want, Jamie. I want. Not what you want. What I want. Me, me, me."

"You come from me."

"And if I have my way, I'll cum in you."

Jamie suddenly pulled the towel over his body. He'd never felt embarrassed in front of a dupe before: how could he? It was him! Now, though, watched by a greedy gaze that he could vaguely sense, but not control, he was shivering.

"Oh, what's the problem? Scared of being used for someone else's pleasure? It feels kind of familiar to a dupe like me."

"Leave him alone!" Jamie ran in, and tried to tug Jamie away from Jamie, who was looking around for an escape route.

"Shut up, you sissy. You like being used. You've got the soft part of him, and I've got... the hard." With that, he pulled his arm free of Jamie's grasp and punched him in the face. All three men gasped in pain, but only one fell over. Jamie turned back to Jamie, who was now standing, wrapped in his dripping wet towel, having failed to discover the secret passage out of the bathroom. "Now, you. We were talking dirty."

Jamie pulled away and tried to push past him, to get out of the still-steamy bathroom and back into a place where he had some hope of understanding what was happening.

"Oh, geez, I'm sorry, Jamie. I'm so sorry." Jamie let him past, then followed him, stepping over the moaning man on the floor. "I don't want to scare you. I am you, remember? Remember all those good times we've had together, just you and you and you and you? Us? Those sweaty teenage years...those nights without dates...those nights with dates...c'mon, Jamie, we're closer than anyone."

Jamie stopped walking and turned to face Jamie, who stood with his hands held out, palms up, in repentance.

"Yeah, I know."

"And aren't you lonely? Like the man says, so lonely you could die, da da dum?"

"This isn't a hotel. Although Guido does a mean Elvis. He says its all in the ips. Hips and lips and potato chips."

"Hey, Jamie, that's my man. Good to hear you laugh. But it doesn't help ease the pain, does it? Who would have thought? Multiple Man, lonely?" He put a hand on Jamie's bare bicep, gently. Jamie looked at it for a moment.

"...yeah. But I can't let anyone near me. What if I infect them? Huh? Nobody knows how Legacy is transmitted. I can't do that to my friends, just for a bit of comfort."

"Jamie, Jamie, Jamie! Mul-ti-ple Man! Think for a moment! You can't infect me. I am you, okay? So, you just come here." He held out his arms. With only momentary hesitation, Jamie stepped into them, and, letting the towel fall, Jamie tipped the two of them down onto the bed. "There, isn't that nice?"

Jamie was almost crying again in relief. He felt so strange, to be held by one of his dupes like this. Sure, they'd all had sex together, many times, but it had always been all him. All his own sensations, just drawn in from two - or more - bodies. He couldn't work out whether this dupe was simply expressing the part of him that needed so much to be held, or whether he really was acting independently. Either way, he relaxed into the full-body embrace without any further qualms. It was so good to be held, to be cared for, without the terrible fear of what he might be doing to his partner.

Jamie smiled over the top of Jamie's damp head where he wouldn't be seen. He had every advantage, here, with silly Jamie assuming that, because he was the original, he was in control. Surely he should know better by now, especially with Jamie lying on the floor over there, holding his bloody nose. He rocked the relieved Jamie in his arms, assuming more and more control over their movements until he had Jamie sprawled pretty much face down on the bed. Then he grabbed Jamie's arm and twisted it up his back in one brutal movement.

"Now, fucker. Let's see who's here for who."

Jamie gasped in pain and shock.

"What? No, what are you doing?"

"Oh, you're so stupid." He balled up his fist and slammed it into the side of Jamie's head. Both cried out, then Jamie continued to whimper, lying prone on the bed with Jamie kneeling over him and unzipping his jeans.

"No, no, no, no...why are you doing this?"

"Dupe. You dupe, Jamie." He spat on his hand, and rubbed his ready dick with the saliva. Satisfied that he had Jamie pinned, he lubricated himself a little better with the vaseline from the side drawer, kept for similar occasions with a slightly different purpose, though there hadn't been any of those in a while.

"No! Please, please...I'm not yours, I'm not a dupe!"

"Oh yeah?" He pushed and pulled Jamie into a workable posture, knees spread, hitting him again when he tried to wriggle out of it. He shoved Jamie's head down. "Tell me, Jamie, who's the dupe..." He positioned himself carefully, then thrust as hard as he could into Jamie's ass, uncaring of the pain he caused himself, too. "Now! Who's the dupe? Who?"

Jamie screamed, muffled by the pillow, screamed in pain, anger and betrayal.

Jamie thrust in and out, enjoying his panicked victim's irregular movements and squeezings, regretting only that he had perhaps used too much lubrication to cause as much pain as he wanted Jamie to feel. He finished, quickly, and contemptuously punched the stunned Jamie in the back.

"Nice to work with you. Dupe." With that, Jamie sauntered off to the shower.

Jamie lay on the mattress, his gasps for breath mingling with the hiss of the shower, Jamie's off-key caroling under it, and the rustle of Jamie guiltily putting tissues to his injured nose. He wasn't so angry, really, despite the tears on the pillow, despite his clenched fists. After all, it was just a dupe. And a dupe was just his own desire made flesh. He must have wanted it. That's all. It isn't possible to rape yourself. He rolled over, dirty with disease and semen, to stare at the ceiling while he waited to be held again. Multiple Man is never alone.

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