Thirty minutes over the border into Canada, Rogue sleeps with Logan for the first time.

She used to think that she would be ready for it if she ever got her chance. But trust Logan to run counter to every possibility she's ever contemplated; there are no tender confessions of love or long conversations that end in an intimate encounter.

Instead, there are five states, four days of driving, three fights, two days without a shower, and one defining moment when she actually thinks he might hit her, but he winds up kissing her instead.

In retrospect, she can't imagine it happening any other way.

---

Her brakes start making suspicious noises just before midnight on a Saturday, in the Middle of Fucking Nowhere, Oklahoma. An hour later she arrives in Oklahoma City and stops for the night, cursing used car salesmen and cheap mechanics alike. She shells out for a tiny motel room and pores over the yellow pages, and tries not think of how much repairs are going to cost on a Sunday morning.

There's no point; pretty much any amount will be too much. She sleeps on top of the tacky polyester bedspread with the TV on and muted in the background, and takes a long shower in the morning to scrub days-worth of accumulated travel grime from her body. Four cups of coffee and a detailed set of directions from the motel clerk later, she goes in search of the first place she'd found with an ad for 7-day service.

She wonders, on the way, if the entire city is ugly or if she just stopped in a bad part of town.

Two hours, they tell her, and two hundred and fifty dollars. All to replace brake pads she had checked before she left New York, and was assured were fine. She agrees to the price through gritted teeth, and carefully enters the total on the scrap of paper she's using as a makeshift balance sheet.

Her funds are getting low, she admits to herself. She can only hope she's somewhere moderately tolerable when they finally run out.

She sits down to wait, flipping through car magazines to pass the time, and she doesn't look up whenever a tinkling bell announces someone's entry into the store. Not even the fourth time, when heavy footsteps approach and a body drops into the chair next to her, and she takes a deep breath and recognizes that scent. "What the hell are you doing here?" she asks quietly, her fingers tightening on the magazine and crumpling the edges.

Logan stretches his legs out, slumping low in his seat. "What do you think?"

When she finally looks at him, it's exactly as she would have figured. A churn of emotions washes over her thoughts: resentment and bitterness and regret, and longing and affection and relief. She doesn't want any of the latter, though, and she tries hard to ignore it. "I'm not kidding around," she snaps, noting the casual sprawl of his body, the tilt of his head, the mild way he's watching her. "Why are you here?"

"Been awhile. Thought I'd say hi."

"Did Xavier -- has he been *tracking* me?"

"Checking in on you," Logan corrects her. "To make sure you were okay. When he saw you were going to be delayed here...he let me know. I wasn't far."

"Great. Hi. Go away."

"Marie."

"*Logan*. Look, you came, you saw, I'm fine. Everything's peachy and I'm trying to live my *life* here, and it's a little hard to do with half the mutant population breathing down by goddamn neck."

"Xavier's concerned. He says you've got a lot of anger and it's making you act out."

"So what if I've got anger? So do you, and nobody bats a lash when you take off for places untold."

"You're not me."

"Hell if I'm not," she bites out. His expression makes her even angrier -- not a hint of emotion, and she knows he can see the rising flush under her skin, hear the quickening of her breath, track every physical sign of her frustration. It's always been like that with him, always, and she's sick of wearing her emotions on her sleeve while he sits back and refuses to reciprocate. She was sick of it a long time ago. "You think I was always like this?"

"I think it's a cheap shot to blame it on me," he replies tersely, and she feels some satisfaction at finally getting a reaction out of him. "Don't try to pull the poor little put-upon mutant girl act on me, Marie. You've had three fucking years to deal with me, and I'm not buying it anymore."

"That's rich, Logan. You've had nearly twenty years and you're still a pathetic mess up top. You don't even have a few homicidal types making it harder. What's *your* excuse?"

Logan glares, and she flashes a fake smile in return. "When did you turn into such a bitch?"

"When have you actually given a damn?"

She's saved by the danger of all potential answers to the question by the arrival of the mechanic, who announces that she's all good to go. She might laugh at the irony of that, if it were at all funny. Instead she sets her magazine down and stands up, but Logan is faster. He somehow seems slow and casual about it, but by the time she gets to the scruffy, greasy guy, Logan has exchanged her keys for three hundred dollar bills, and is heading outside with a "Sign the receipt and come on," tossed over his shoulder.

Outside, he's standing next to her car, on the driver's side. "Gimme my keys, Logan." She squints against the sun, and doesn't mind knowing that it must make her look furious.

"I got a ride here," he says with his unique kind of smirking charm. "You can't strand me."

"Where, exactly, am I supposed to take you?"

And Logan actually winks at her as he opens the door and tosses his satchel into the backseat. "Wherever it is you're planning on going, Marie. But I'm driving."

"Sonofabitch," she breathes, but she gets into the car.

She figures she can wait until later to decide why.

---

For all that she's known him for three years, she's only actually *known* him for one. He stayed after Alkali Lake, stayed and settled down and once actually described the mansion as home. He was there for a good eight months, a solid block of time in which she got to know him the honest way and started to feel less guilty about having taken a shortcut through his walls, however accidentally.

But she saw his departure coming from a mile, or several months, away. Xavier was hardly negligent about gathering forces, and she could tell that every competent adult they welcomed into the fold was making it that much easier for Logan to ease away.

Then one day he left, with a quick good-bye and a promise to be back and a sense of déjà vu stripping her of all the confidence and independence she'd gained since they met. She wanted to ask him to stay, but she found she couldn't utter the words.

She couldn't admit, to him or to herself, that she no longer knew who to be when he wasn't around. She couldn't take the risk of trying to make *him* admit what she thought had grown between them.

And every time he came back, quick visits to confer with Xavier or just crash for a few days, she found herself less and less eager to see him. At some point longing turned to dread, and whereas every carefully platonic day they'd spent in each other's company had been a comfort, every stilted, awkward, *nothing* reunion made her sick with the knowledge that things were never going to change.

He was never going to show up and give her what she wanted, what she thought he might also want. Realizing that, she wondered if growing up always felt like dying a little inside.

---

"North," she tells him shortly when he asks where he should go, and they don't say much for the rest of the day. She catches him looking at her hands once, while she fiddles with the radio, but he doesn't say anything about the lack of gloves and she figures Xavier must have told him.

Because surely it's the sort of thing he would comment on, if he's been caught off-guard? She leans into the corner of space formed by her seat and the door, and she props one foot on the dashboard and watches him drive.

He looks the same as he always has. That pisses her off, more than anything else; it isn't fair that he has the luxury of passing through the world unscathed. Not when everyone else has to deal with whatever comes their way.

They drive and they drive, and she learns that Logan is hardly an efficient traveler. He likes to pull over for hastily eaten meals and then linger over coffee, and he likes to stop early and relax with a few beers. He glares dangerously at the one bartender who dares ask for her ID, the first night, and he pays for everything.

She knows that should be a relief, a lucky break, but something in her mourns at having him take care of her, as if she still can't handle life without him. Something in her cries each time she walks into a motel room furnished with two single beds.

Something in her hates him, for refusing to walk away this time. It makes it harder to remember why she ever bothered trying to get over him.

He never lets her drive. They keep heading north, through Kansas and Nebraska and into South Dakota. They argue somewhere along the way, because he wants to know why she left and she won't tell him, and he knows what she doesn't say, that she blames a lot of it on him.

But what she also doesn't say is that it isn't entirely his fault. She's been a runner from day one; it's just easier to pretend that her life is what other people make it.

And somewhere near Pierre, on Tuesday, she rests her forehead wearily against her window and watches the road passing by beneath them, and eventually she closes her eyes and whispers, "I missed you."

She hears a soft sigh in response, a muttered "me, too," and neither of them speak again until they stop for the night. He gets a six-pack from a convenience store, and she drinks one bottle and falls asleep with the odd sensation of his curious gaze on her back.

---

As it turned out, controlling her skin was like flipping a switch. Granted, the switch was buried in a niche in an alcove in a recess in the cavern of her mind, but once she *found* the damn thing, it was as simple as turning out the lights.

The funny thing was, it didn't make a huge difference in her life. There were no more accidents and she liked being able to wear whatever she wanted, and it was nice to stop worrying, especially around the younger children. But as monumental achievements went, hers was sort of anticlimactic.

Touch, she realized with a certain amount of bitterness, wasn't all that special unless you had someone to share it with. And worst of all, it was really starting to seem like she was destined to always want what she couldn't have.

She tried, for awhile, to make the best of things. She played with the children at the school and she contemplated college, and she went on missions and smiled and nodded at Xavier's optimistic rhetoric. She went through her days doing exactly what was expected of her, and she tried not to acknowledge the way her dissatisfaction was turning to depression, and then to anger.

But others noticed. Scott and Ororo tried to talk to her, tried to get her to open up, but she would look at them and see happy people. She would see people who woke up every day with plans and beliefs, and who didn't seem to get discouraged at how nothing ever changed.

Nothing ever did, and that was the problem. Time went by and she felt herself getting older, and she was still alone and most people still feared mutants. She finally decided she was sick of fighting the good fight, when all she could see happening was a tenuous maintenance of the status quo.

So she bought a cheap car and she packed her things and she left. Wherever she wound up, she thought, had to be better than where she was.

---

At the border, she stares coolly at the officer who examines their passports and scrutinizes each of their faces in turn. She tries to figure out what must be going through the man's mind, what he must be assuming about a woman of her age and a man of Logan's.

She finally decides that she just doesn't know. She can't imagine what picture they present, what story they tell, crossing into Manitoba on a rainy Wednesday evening. At the very least, she suspects it's actually far more ordinary than the truth.

She guesses Logan will stop before long, and she's right. They get a decent distance from the border and then he stops at the first motel they see. He waits until they're checked in and heading for their room before tugging on her ponytail. "Want to tell me what we're doing in Canada?"

"I like Canada," she says. They're just barely off the road and she can hear traffic passing, tires going high-speed through water, and her hair and shirt get drenched during the short walk. By the time Logan unlocks their door, she's shivering. "You're pretty nosy for someone who wasn't even invited on this little trip."

Logan goes to the bathroom and comes back with a towel, which he throws at her head. "Consider it payback for the last time we were here together."

"Touche," she mutters. She lets her hair down and starts scrubbing it dry, and then rifles through her bag for clean clothes. "It's hardly a fair comparison, though. You only had to put up with me for an hour."

Logan snorts at that. "You really want to tell me that the consequences of your little stowaway act didn't earn me the right to impose on you for awhile?"

Kicking her shoes off, she glares at him. "God, Logan. If you think I owe you something, just say so. I didn't realize you had such a tit-for-tat view of our relationship."

"Give it a rest, would you?" He scowls in her direction as he shrugs out of his jacket. "And get off your high horse. You're being a pain in the ass, and I haven't done anything to warrant it."

They haven't turned the lights on, and she watches him carefully in the dim glow filtering through the window from the bright parking lot. She can sense sharks in the water between them, circling, just waiting to see if she'll start the blood flowing.

They've got good timing; her quicksilver moods have put her on the offensive yet again. Every time she looks at Logan it's something different: a steady sense of security and at least some relief that she still matters enough for him to be so persistent, or waves of irritation, exasperation that he won't just let her go so that she can finally try to cut the ties she once believed bound them.

"Nobody's forcing you to put up with me," she mutters, narrowing her eyes. Logan glances at her, then takes a few steps closer, watching and waiting. "You can go, okay? We've come full circle, after all -- maybe it's time to part ways. So go. Go back to your old life. Go break a few ribs and fuck a few waitresses. It's all you've ever been good at, anyway."

What frightens her isn't that there's anything unfamiliar about Logan's expression; she's seen it before, countless times, and she's felt the emotions that fuel it coursing through her own body, giving her an old, mostly-faded ability to read his moods but not his thoughts. So it's not the fact of his fury that makes her suddenly wonder if she's gone too far.

It's that he's never once directed it at her. When he moves it's like lightning and she stumbles backwards, genuinely scared, but she's not fast enough. One hand shoots out and catches her by her damp hair, tangling his fingers through it close to her scalp and forcing her head back so that she'll look at him. He crowds her until she slams into the cheap desk, and her gasp of pain does nothing to stop him. As she scrabbles for leverage against the scarred wood and actually contemplates hitting him with the old rotary phone that her fingers brush, he leans against her heavily and speaks quietly next to her ear. "Why are you trying to make me hate you?"

She sucks in a wet, gasping breath. His hold on her hair hurts but it's a good pain, a deep ache that radiates out from under his hand, and his body is hard and warm against hers and he smells good, like sweat and rain and the last traces of cheap motel soap. She closes her eyes and tells the truth for the first time in ages. "Because I couldn't make you love me," she whispers. "This is the next best thing."

An eternity goes by in the space of ten breaths that gust, slow and hot, across her jaw. When he speaks again his lips actually brush her ear, and she shivers. "You never had to make me do anything," he says softly, and draws her earlobe into his mouth and sucks gently.

Her reaction is immediate and startles even herself. She arches against him and her head falls back, relieving some of the pressure on her hair, and she lifts a hand to mimic his grip and urge him to continue. As he moves across her neck, passing his tongue roughly across her skin, her breath speeds up and keeps catching in her throat. She clutches his shoulder with her free hand, and digs her nails in at the first clumsy brush of his mouth across hers. They fumble through a few sloppy, hurried kisses, until he catches her cheeks between his palms and holds her still.

And she thinks she might go crazy to feel the slide of his tongue across hers. To taste him, heavy and rich and bitter like twice-brewed coffee, and to hear the low growl that rumbles out of him and into her. He presses against her, lazy nudges of his hips making the desk knock against the wall until he lifts her enough to sit on top of it and steps between her parted knees. With firm, steady hands at her waist, he holds her still and situates himself in the juncture between her thighs, grinding against her and causing the seam of her jeans to rub her in a way that makes her writhe impatiently.

She whimpers in protest when he suddenly releases her mouth, but cuts it short as he raises her arms over her head and then pulls her wet shirt off in a swift motion. It shocks her to see that his hands seem to be shaking, as they move to struggle with the clasp of her bra; when he can't get it undone fast enough to suit, he just pushes the straps off her shoulders and shoves the entire thing out of the way, folding the cups down over her stomach. Before she can even get her arms free he dips his head down, licks hungrily below one breast and then closes his lips over her nipple, suckling hard.

She never knew she could feel such pleasure and panic at the same time. Because this is *Logan* and every detail is right -- the slide of fingers across her back, the scratch of hair on sensitive skin, the smell, the sounds. It's everything she could have imagined.

And far more than she ever actually has. She feels painfully unsure of herself, clumsy in her motions as she tugs, mostly ineffectually, on the buttons of his shirt. But if he notices, he shows no sign of it. One of his hands presses against the small of her back and the other easily pops the button of her jeans, wrestles the zipper down and slips inside. At the first brush of his fingers against her she moans and clutches fistfuls of his shirt.

"Please," she hears, and takes a second to realize that she's mumbling thoughtless pleas. Logan bites down gently on her neck, kisses the small hurt away, and pulls her to her feet. Catching her mouth once again, he takes her hands and guides them to her hips, pushes until she gets the picture and takes over shoving her jeans down and shimmying out of them. While she's occupied with that, and getting out of the twisted mess of her bra, he quickly divests himself of his clothes.

And then he hauls her against him, and pushes and shoves her towards one of the beds, and lowers her onto it slowly. She crawls backwards, half-nervously, half-eager, and knocks her open duffel bag onto the floor when she finds it in her way. Logan keeps pressing rough kisses against her mouth until her head hits the pillow, then starts making his way down her body, pausing each time he hits a sensitive spot and she shivers in response.

When his hands smooth over her thighs, and press gently to urge her legs apart, she resists for a moment. It's going too fast, she thinks, too fast for her to handle such a sudden shift between them. But Logan looks up at her, and something in his expression is calming and patient, and she relaxes. He nuzzles once, softly, against her stomach, and then he dips his head lower and she gasps.

She makes no effort to stifle her cries. Logan works her expertly with quick strokes of his tongue, and passes his palms over her thighs and hips and stomach, and she stares at the ceiling and lets herself feel, and moan, and plead. Her gasping mewls sound pathetic to her own ears but she just doesn't *care*, not when her attention is focused on all the details of everything Logan is doing to her.

She feels like she's going to implode or explode or both at once, and the anticipation of it is driving her mad. And then as if he knows she just can't take anymore, Logan slips two fingers into her and curls *up* and she chokes on her scream, straining against the gentling touch of his free hand on her stomach.

He brings her back down slowly, with soothing caresses and soft kisses across the jut of her hipbone, and then rests his cheek on her belly and lets his head rise and fall with the gradually slowing rhythm of her breath. As the tremors in her muscles fade to a deep, lazy relaxation, she reaches and smoothes her hand across his face, rubs her thumb across the bridge of his nose. "My god," she whispers. "Come on up here, would you?"

He moves slowly up her body, pausing once to nuzzle at her breasts and then again to dip his tongue into the hollow of her throat, and then he props himself up on his forearms and stares down at her. She runs her fingers through his already messy hair, and she thinks that if she hadn't done it a long time ago, she could fall in love with him here and now. The look in his eyes makes her breath catch in her throat; there's a sharp glint of desire, but beneath that she can see the softness of affection and a measure of contentment to be looking at her like this.

She's finally done something right in her life, she realizes, and damned if she knows what it was.

As she puzzles it over her lips curl in a slow smile, and his do as well. He nudges at her mouth in a series of short, shallow kisses that let her taste herself on him, and it's a subtle shift from earlier but it's *there*.

And it's something countless women have done before her, but it feels amazing just the same. She sighs happily and shifts beneath him, raising her hips against his, and murmurs, "Come on," against his lips as she curls one leg around the back of his.

He doesn't need any more invitation than that. He's in her with one quick thrust, and it hurts but she's so relaxed that it's hardly anything at all, and it fades away fast. Then he takes his time about things, settles into a steady pattern of long, even strokes. And she's glad for that, so incredibly glad, because she needs a minute to deal with the overwhelming newness of this.

A quirk of statistical probabilities, maybe, that she's never once touched a woman and learned what to expect. She could figure the rest out, cobble together what she was supposed to do from faint memory traces of other women, here and there, but nothing in the head of any man could have prepared her for this. For the feel of Logan inside her, and the weight of him on top of her, and the rushes of sensation every time he moves. For the crippling burst of emotion that makes her feel dangerously vulnerable, and the way it eases as Logan catches her mouth for a long kiss, and the way life feels suddenly and absurdly perfect.

For the way her body starts to revive, shifting from the quiet tranquility of her afterglow back to the curling tension of arousal. Logan seems to know exactly when it happens; he groans into her mouth and his pace speeds just a little, and he reaches to move her legs higher, towards his waist, and she gasps at the difference that makes. Her hands curl into fists behind his back and she turns her face away to breathe unevenly, and it all gets even more intense as he bites gently on her earlobe.

She closes her eyes and loses herself for a moment in the rocking of her body beneath his. Then she opens them, and says, "Logan, look at me." And when he complies, and fixes that open, caring, *wanting* gaze on her again, she licks her lips and runs her hands across his back and says, "Harder. I want...oh god. Just...more, okay? Let go."

He nods slowly. Shifting, he slides one arm under her and gathers her tightly against him. The other hand he braces on the mattress next to her, and he gives her one fast kiss and then he looks at her again and --

-- and starts fucking her in earnest. There is nothing gentle about it anymore; even his expression hardens, his eyes narrowing and his mouth tightening as he slams into her with quick snaps of his hips. He speaks for the first time since he started it all, muttering, "Christ, Marie, you're so good, baby, so fucking good," and then falling silent again except for the sounds of his quickening breath.

For her part she keeps her eyes trained on his face, captivated. He doesn't look harsh so much as intensely focused, and she can't stop watching him. For as well as she knows him, for as much time as she's ever spent watching him either openly or in secret, she's never seen him like this. She's never seen how his face betrays him: a tremor near his temple here, a clench of his jaw there. She's never seen his brow furrow in quite the same way, and she's never seen his eyes slide completely closed and then snap open as he thrusts into her one last time and stills.

They stare at each other for a long time. Logan starts to slide a hand between them, but she shakes her head slowly. "It's okay," she tells him softly. "This is...this is good. I like just how I feel, right now."

"You're okay?"

"Yeah." She bites her lip for a moment, and then nods. "Yeah, I am. Just, uh..."

"Tell me," he urges quietly, and gives her a brief kiss. With a grimace, he shifts and moves off of her, but draws her into his arms when he's settled on his back. "What is it?"

"Nothing." She drags the pad of her thumb idly down his sternum, then lets her hand rest on his stomach. "Just, you know. That sense of 'wow, this is new.'"

Logan laughs at that. "Look, Marie...I've got something I should tell you, but I'd rather you not get ticked off again. Promise you'll count to ten before you fly off the handle?"

Slowly, she sits up and twists to stare warily at him. "What is it?"

He watches her for a brief moment, and then shrugs slightly. "It took three days."

"*What* took three days?"

"To catch up to you," he says calmly, "after Xavier told me you'd finally left for good."

She blinks at him; she's not quite sure what else to do. After a long silence she moves around and sits cross-legged, facing him. She feels suddenly exposed and shy, so she yanks at the bedspread to cover herself as best she can. "Is that what this is?" she asks shakily. "Some -- some *plan*, to get me to go back?"

"Hey." Logan finally sits up as well, but doesn't seem at all bothered by his own nudity. He pushes a tangled lock of hair away from her face and brushes a finger down her cheek before letting his hand fall back down. "The only plan was to find you, with or without Xavier's help."

"Why?"

He answers a different question, or maybe the same one in a way she doesn't expect. "I was never going to be able to stay there long-term. I thought you would."

She lets that sink in, and then nods slowly. "But I left."

"On your own," he confirms.

"And that means..."

He shrugs. "That's up to you. I still do some stuff for Xavier, when he needs me to, and you could help with that if you wanted, but I'm mostly back to wandering around."

"Logan," she says, and she's terrified that she's not really hearing what she thinks she's hearing. "Are you...are you asking me to wander around with you?"

She's always thought his best smiles have nothing to do with his mouth, and everything to do with an amused narrowing of his eyes. It's what he does now, and she bites her lip to keep from grinning stupidly. "Yeah," he replies, pulling one her hands between his and rubbing it gently. "What do you say? Want to see the world with me?"

She can't hold her smile in any more; she ducks her head to hide it, embarrassed, and Logan chuckles. "One condition," she finally says, watching him through her lashes.

He starts pulling her closer, drawing her back to him like a gravity well. "Name it."

And she grins, and pushes him down and falls comfortably on top of him. "You're gonna have to let me drive sometimes."

Logan slides a hand along the back of her head, an echo of earlier but so much gentler. Angling her head, he steals several long kisses before he answers. "I'll let you try to make me let you. How's that?"

She drops her face against his neck and giggles. "Good enough," she mumbles. "Good enough."

**end**