“Pencils down. Time’s up.”

Groans echoed throughout the classroom as the majority of students shuffled lazily, picking up their tests and slowly maneuvering towards the front of the classroom. Marie stood, head ducked, as she slung her pack over her shoulder. Reaching down, she snagged her half-zipped pencil pouch and her test, and made her way to Mr. Hathorne’s large desk. She quietly deposited the thick packet of paper on the smooth wood, and didn’t raise her eyes to him.

“Thank you, Miss D’Ancanto.”

Her eyes barely flicked to her teacher as she nodded, and, readjusting the pack on her shoulders, began to leave the classroom. Suddenly, she collided with someone, hard. Her pencil pouch and notebook flew out of her hands and hit the ground, spilling pens and markers and papers every which way. She lifted her head, looking out from beneath platinum bangs. Max Stallworth stood before her, smug grin on his face. “Oops,” he said, and kicked the case. Deliberately bumping into her again as he passed, he whispered, “See you later, freak.”

Tears burned at the back of her eyeballs, but the past few years of taunting had given her the ability to hide them. She knelt to the floor, knapsack slipping to the ground, and began the process of picking up her scattered posessions.

A hand interrupted her direct line of vision, and she looked up. Mr. Hathorne was kneeling in front of her, four colored markers held in his extended hand as he regarded her with intense hazel eyes. “You alright there?” he murmured, and she averted her eyes quickly.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, taking the offered pens from his grasp and shoving them back into the case. “Thanks.”

He nodded, and continued to silently help her pick up her things. When she was all packed up, he helped her stand, and placed his hands on her shoulders. “Miss D’Ancanto,” he began, and he felt her tense underneath his palms. “Don’t let Stallworth get to you. The boy’s got his head in the damn clouds most of the time in class.” He smiled a little at seeing her eyes widen at his cursing. “Probably just mad because you’re passing and he…” Mr. Hathorne paused, considering. “Well. I can’t actually tell you how he’s doing, but I think you get the idea.”

She nodded again, lush mouth tightening briefly before she put her pack on her back. She exited the history classroom quietly, leaving the room nearly as quiet as it had been with just the two of them.

She never noticed concerned eyes following her as she left.

* * *

Logan didn’t know what to do about his student. She was bright, exceptionally so, but seemed to have the attitude of a mouse when talked to. Her participation grade, had he kept track of one, would certainly be low. He’d gotten more words out of her in the past five minutes than he had in the past five days.

She spent most of his class period seemingly in another world, hidden beneath her startling brown and white hair. Within the few weeks leading up to his first test, he had been concerned about her abilities in the class, but was swiftly proven wrong when she managed to score a ninety-three.

She was his best student, and he’d be damned if he didn’t have a soft spot for the girl. And watching her be bullied by the “popular” kids caused him to feel a tightening in his chest, and a protective feeling wash over him.

He wished he could help the soft-spoken young girl, but her continual distance from him was making it too damned difficult.

Sitting down in his desk chair, Logan pressed a closed fist to his forehead, before gathering his messenger bag and exiting the classroom.

The Winter Parent-Teacher night was that evening, and he had a shit load of relaxing to do if he wished to retain his teacher-like composure for any amount of time.

* * *

Logan leaned against his desk later that night, legs crossed in front of him and hands resting on the edge of the wood as he spoke with his student’s parents. The classroom had been divided into two sections, and strangely enough, the parents were intermingling with groups startlingly similar to their children’s.

And that included Marie and her guardian.

Professer Charles Xavier was a renowned, ridiculously rich man. Few people knew what his true nature of business was, and Logan was one of them.

What he did know, was that Marie’s parents had died in a car crash when she was a young girl, and she had spent a few years of her childhood floating from foster home to foster home, until Xavier had gotten a hold of her. He was known for taking in children who were underprivelaged or orphaned, and it was known that those who he took under his wing spoke only good things of Charles Xavier.

But whether or not Marie knew her “father” was fighting for the unity between mutants and humans…well. Logan hadn’t bothered to ask her, and probably never would.

The old man certainly was warm enough towards the young girl, and for the first time since he had begun teaching her, Logan saw a smile light up Marie’s face. His throat tightened, and he approached them as he tried to ignore the sensation.

“Chuck,” he greeted pleasantly, extending a hand to the man. “Good to see you again.”

“Logan,” Charles greeted in return, shaking the hand offered to him. “Likewise, my boy. How are you enjoying the bustle and noise of this evening?”

Logan grimaced, and Marie’s gaze darted back and forth between her teacher and her guardian, suspecting (and not for the first time) a pre-existing connection between the two that she didn’t know about.

Mr. Hathorne turned his gaze towards her, and she fought the blush that threatened to crawl up her neck. “How are you?” he asked, and she was slightly surprised to hear that he sounded sincere.

“Fine,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear nervously. “Kinda wanna go home.”

“You aren’t alone, dear,” Xavier said kindly, patting her on the arm lovingly. “We’ll be on our way soon, don’t worry.” He glanced at Logan for confirmation.

“Yeah, just a few more minutes of unneccessary mingling and we should be all set,” Logan smirked, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “While ya both are here, I wanted to discuss the possibility of Marie-“ (the girl in question’s head shot up at the sound of her name falling from her teacher’s lips for the first time) “-being interested in taking an extra Advanced Placement History class next semester. It’d be like…tutoring, but with more new stuff.” He shot a glance at Marie’s surprised face. “And I know that her college apps are due pretty damn soon, so we could start before Winter Break so that it would qualify for her applications.”

Xavier looked up at his young charge, and said gently, “What do you think, Marie? Do you want to take Logan up on his offer?”

She looked down at her father, and worried her full bottom lip with her teeth. Releasing it after a few seconds of chewing on it, she looked up at her teacher with wide brown eyes.

“Yes,” she said in her quiet Southern accent. “I’d like that. Thank you very much, Mr. Hathorne.”

He blinked at her, and then said, “You can call me Logan.”

Chapter Two

They met every fifth period til five thirty pm of her even days. The school functioned on a ten day cycle, and Marie had three seventy minute academic classes and one free period per day. On her odd days, she took English, German IV, and History. Even days, she took Art and Design II, Biology, and Calculus.

She and Mr. Hathorne were making progress in her studies, she thought to herself as she unpacked her things. They had just begun discussing the Civil War, and it was amusing to hear his uncensored take on the whole ordeal. Outside of the classroom, he seemed to relax and speak freely, and she was getting used to his frequent cursing, and the endearments that slipped naturally from his lips.

A shadow fell over her, and she stiffened unconsciously. She raised her head, and felt everything inside her sink as Stallworth smirked down at her.

“Hey sweetheart,” he cooed mockingly, bending down to her level. “Why you sitting here, all by your lonesome?” He leaned down closer, and she shivered in disgust as his lips brushed against her ear. “Oh, I forgot,” he breathed, puffing hot air against her cheek. “Nobody cares about you.” His left hand rose, and grabbed her breast tightly, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she tried not to cry. “Maybe someday,” he whispered, “I’ll feel sorry enough to fuck you.” He squeezed her breast tightly and she opened her mouth in a silent gasp as a tear escaped her eye. “Doubt it though. Nobody wants to fu-”

“Mr. Stallworth,” barked a voice from behind him, and the boy in question quickly released Marie and turned to face the speaker. Logan stood behind him, a deadly intent in his eyes as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Would you mind explaining what you were doing to Miss D’Ancanto?”

Stallworth looked down and shuffled his feet, before looking up at his teacher. “Just…making conversation,” he mumbled.

Logan snorted, reaching out and grabbing the young man by the scruff of his neck tightly, leading him away from Marie. “More like making sexual harassment.”His grip tightened painfully on his student’s neck, and he led him away from the area. As he opened the door for Stallworth, Logan leaned in and whispered in the boy’s ear, “If you are ever seen doing anything like that to Miss D’Ancanto again, I will personally make your life a living hell.” Stallworth opened his mouth in a pained gasp as the grip on him became even firmer, if possible. “Do you understand me?”

He nodded yes, and Logan all but threw him from the room. Clenching his jaw in anger, he shut his eyes as he tried to regain a modicum of control. When he had entered the classroom to meet Marie and saw how harshly Stallworth was handling her, and heard the words he was speaking to her, he had barely been able to keep his claws from sliding out. They had, the merest fraction of an inch of adamantium sliding from between his knuckles before he fought down the urge.

Turning, he straightened his posture and made his way to the table where Marie sat. Another tear slid down her face as her eyes remained close, her lips trembling with the effort to not cry. “Hey,” he said gruffly, and swallowing, repeated himself more gently. “Hey.”

She opened her eyes and took him in. “Hi,” she whispered, and brushed away the tear tracks on her face.

“You okay?”

She nodded, and opened her book. “Let’s just…can we start?” Her cheeks were flaming in embarassment at having been caught in such a predicament by her teacher.

He gazed down at her, concern shining down from his hazel eyes. She wasn’t okay, he knew that, but if she didn’t want to talk about it, then he wouldn’t push the issue. “Okay. Let’s start.”

* * *

They were in the midst of discussing the Wilmot Proviso when the tinny tones of AC-DC interrupted their conversation. Marie blushed as she fished through her purse, pulling out a silver and black cell phone. “Sorry,” she mumbled, just before she flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Rogue?”

Logan looked up at the sound of the voice on the other end of the line. Rogue? he thought to himself.

“Scott, hey, what’s up…no, I don’t know what time it is…” Her eyes widened as she glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oh, crap…No, I know, I was supposed to call if I was going to be late…Okay. Okay, I got it. I’ll leave now. Will that make you happy, sugar?” Logan cocked an eyebrow at the endearment. Who was she talking to? Maybe a boyfriend? Feelings that felt somewhat like jealously rose within him, and he squashed them easily, knowing he couldn’t possibly feel that way towards his own student.

“Okay…okay! I’ll see you in half an hour…Alright, bye.” She shut the phone with a snap, and glanced up at him sheepishly. “Sorry about that, Mr. Hathorne. That was Scott. He’s my…brother, I guess.” She smiled a little. “It’s kinda hard to say what he is exactly just ‘cos I dunno what I am to the Professor, really.”

An unwelcomed feeling of relief swept over him, and he busied himself by looking at the clock. He swore upon seeing that it was half past six—their session had blown nearly an hour past the time it was supposed to end. “Christ, Marie,” he said, and began helping her gather her things. “I didn’t realize how late it was getting.” He cast a glance to the windows, and noted with a wry smile how dark it was. “Guess I should’ve known.”

She waved him off with unconcern, and said, “Scott just gets worried about me.” Zipping up her bag, she shook her hair out of her eyes. “I’ll see you on Monday, Mr. Hathorne.”

He gave her a small grin. “For the millionth time, Marie. You can call me Logan when we’re here.” He slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. “You heading towards the parking lot?” At her nod, he said, “I’ll come with you. Can’t have you walking all by yourself in the dark, now can we?

* * *

They were a mere fifteen yards away from her car when it happened.

Out of nearly nowhere, a bedraggled man appeared in front of them, brandishing a knife as he eyed them wildly. “Gimme your money,” he demanded, taking uneasy steps towards them.

Logan, on his part, wasn’t afraid in the slightest. Having a skeleton grafted with an indestructible alloy and a mutation with enhanced healing abilities allowed him to face the would-be mugger without pause. However, he was painfully aware of Marie shielded behind him, and knew that if she were on the receiving end of that blade, she would not be as lucky.

“Hey bub,” he tried. “I’m just trying to get the lady to her car. We don’t have any money to give you, so why don’t you just leave us alone?”

The man seemed to falter, before snarling “Bullshit” at them. “I know you gotta have some money, big guy.” He took a step closer to the two, and Logan pushed Marie further back behind him as the knife was brandished nearer to them.

“Hey, buddy,” Logan tried again. “How about you just vamoose and leave me and the girl alone?”

Frustration at his clearly failed mission filled the mugger’s eyes, and he gripped his knife tighter. “How about no,” he managed, before lunging for Logan.

Logan twisted his body away from the knife, and as the mugger pulled his hand away, grabbed his wrist. Squeezing tightly, he felt satisfaction as the mugger gasped in pain. Shoving him away, hard, he turned to get Marie when the infuriated man swung again, this time cutting Logan shallowly on his cheek. Fury thundered through his veins, and with a single punch, Logan knocked the man out cold.

Running his tongue along the inside of his mouth, he turned to Marie. She had a dazed look in her eye, and she was staring at his face. He felt the cut stitch itself back together, and saw her eyes widen as she realized what was happening. She looked into his eyes, and her face was paler than he’d ever seen. “You’re a mutant,” she whispered. She raised a hand to his face, and he saw her wince in pain.

It was then that he noticed her other hand clutching at her side. She withdrew her shaking hand, and looked down in fascinated horror at the blood blossoming against her blue shirt. Cursing violently inside his head, Logan knew what had happened. When he’d sidestepped the first blow, he had forgotten that Marie had been standing directly behind him. The stab he missed was the one she took, and her hand was crimson with her spillt blood.

“Logan,” she whispered, taking a step forward.

He barely caught her when she collapsed.

Chapter Three

Logan felt panic thunder through his veins as Marie fell into his arms. He could feel the warm seeping of her blood onto his shirt, and watched her eyes fill up with pain. Her fingers clutched weakly at his oxford, leaving bloody smears on the collar when she sunk further into him.

“Marie,” he said urgently, tilting her head back and brushing the platinum hair out of her eyes. “Stay with me, Marie.”

Her eyelids slowly drifted shut, then jarred open suddenly as she struggled to stay awake. She was losing blood, a lot of blood, and fast. “Logan,” she murmured, and went completely limp.

“Shit,” he growled, lowering her to the asphalt. He swiftly unbuttoned his bloody oxford, and pressed it into the cut so he could stop the bleeding, even if a little bit. His efforts seemed to get him nowhere, and he swore again. , lifting her carefully into his arms. As quickly as he could without hurting her, he hurried to the spot where his truck was parked, mercifully close by. He slowly deposited her into the passenger seat, making sure to buckle her up in a way that wouldn’t press too much on her wound.

He shoved the gear shift into drive just as rain started to patter against his windshield, and took off faster than he could ever remember.

He hadn’t been to the Xavier mansion in at least seven years, and he could only hope desperately that he still knew the way there. It may have been his desperation that fueled him, or maybe the overwhelming and growing scent of blood that was flooded every crevice of his car, but he made it to the gates in less than twenty minutes. Screeching to a halt at the front steps, he threw open his car door, barely registering as he shut it again, and barreled around to the other side. He opened her door, unbuckled her, and slowly lifted her back into his embrace.

He kicked the car door shut, and made his way up to the door as fast as he could. He shifted her in his arms, feeling her body temperature decrease both from the blood loss and the cold rain that was pelting down on them. Chuck, he thought desperately, calling upon a part of his mind he hadn’t used in ages. Chuck, open your god damned door. Marie’s hurt.

Less than a minute after sending the frantic message with his mind, the massive front doors were flung open, and a young man wearing khaki pants, a blue polo, and strange red glasses stood in the doorway. “Give her to me,” he demanded, and Logan brushed past him with a glare.

“Not on your damn life,” he growled, and made his way into the entrance hall. The mysterious young man blocked his pathway, essentially cutting him off from making any further progress into the home. Logan rolled his eyes in pure frustration, painfully aware that Marie was bleeding even more in his arms.

“You don’t even know where the medical bay is,” the stranger protested. “I’ll take you.” His gaze seemed to lower to Marie, and he visibly swallowed. “She needs to be okay,” he whispered, breath hitching in his throat. He turned abruptly and motioned for Logan to follow him.

* * *

Ten minutes later, he found himself standing in the med lab, watching as the largest and…well, bluest man he’d ever encountered fretted over the unconscious form of Marie. Upon entering through the automatic doors, the massive man had quickly extracted the blood soaked Marie from Logan’s arms and deposited her onto one of the beds, and hooked her up to an IV that replaced the blood she had lost. He had made quick work of assessing Marie’s injury, and had managed to determine that the wound had gone through one section of her side and exited three inches away from where it entered. The amount of torn skin, combined with the two cuts instead of one, was the explanation for the amount of blood that had been lost. All in all, the wound was quite superficial, bleeding more than was strictly necessary for the damage she had suffered.

Hank, as the large blue mutant had introduced himself, was in the midst of stitching up the first wound when Xavier finally made it to the lab. “What happened,” he demanded softly, his gaze landing on Logan.

Logan relayed the story of what had happened in the parking lot, how he had been walking her to her car when the mugger jumped out at them, how Logan had forgotten about Marie and dodged the first attack, leaving her vulnerable to stabbing.

Charles’s jaw clenched, worried eyes skimming over Marie. “We can only be thankful that she is now in good hands. Hank is a friend of hers—he will make sure she is okay.”

Logan shot a quick glance at the telepath, nostrils flaring briefly. “She knows?”

“Knows what?” the man in the glasses interrupted.

Xavier sighed. “Logan. Scott. Will the both of you join me in my study?”

* * *

As the door to his study shut, Scott projected a message out to Professor Xavier. Charles, I don’t know if I trust this guy.

Relax, Scott, was the answer he received. Logan is Marie’s History teacher and a fellow mutant. He seems to be unaware of the deadly nature of her skin, and I believe that while he is a trustworthy man, that information should be kept from him for now.

Okay.

“Logan,” Xavier said, turning to face the teacher. “Please, have a seat.”

Logan sat down next to Scott grudgingly. He didn’t like the little punk’s attitude, and sitting immediately next to him wasn’t something he really wanted to do. He glanced down at himself, and was reminded that his clothes were splashed with dark patches of blood. Uncomfortable, he looked back up at the Professor. “So. She knows?”

Xavier nodded, understanding what the other man meant by his question. “Of course. I was honest with her from the very beginning. There has not been any moment during her stay at the mansion where she was unaware of my true business. She has several close friends who attend the school here, all of whom have their own…unique abilities. Marie has assimilated herself quite nicely into the environment here.”

“Is that why the Boy Scout over here,” he gestured to Scott, “Called her ‘Rogue’ when he was on the phone with her?”

Scott shot him a look. “How do you know that.”

“It’s part of his mutation, Scott,” the Professor answered quietly. “Logan possesses amazing healing abilities, along with enhance sight, smell, and hearing. As well as other capabilities.”

“What do you mean?” Scott demanded, hands tightening on the armrests of the chair he was in. “What can he do?”

Logan raised a fist in front of his face, and with a quiet ‘zing’, three metal claws shot from between his knuckles, ending dangerously close to Scott’s face. “This,” he growled, and retracted his claws. “Fucking adamantium bonded to my skeleton, courtesy of one William Stryker.”

Scott’s already straight back stiffened a great deal more, and his face lost it’s coloring quickly. “S-Stryker?” His eyes shot towards Charles. “Professor…is that the same-“

“Yes, Scott,” Charles interrupted, silencing the younger man. “He is. That, however, is a topic for another time.”

Logan felt the beginnings of a growl start to rumble through his chest. These two men were keeping something from him, something that had to do with the man who’d stolen an unknown amount of years from him, who had been the cause of every nightmare he had had over the past ten years.

“Logan.”

He was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of Charles’s voice, and, when he noticed Scott looking down at his hands, horrified, that his hands were squeezing the armrests so hard that the wood had begun to crack. Loosening his grip, he sighed. “She knows about me.”

“How?” Scott blurted out.

Logan sent him a withering look, and said, “Bastard managed to get me on the cheek, remember? I knocked him out, turned to Marie…and she saw the cut heal.” He rubbed his skin where the cut had been, running from his cheekbone and disappearing into his sideburns.

“Oh dear,” Xavier murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It appears we have found ourselves in quite the predicament.”

And the only thing Logan could think to say was, “Damn right.”

Two weeks had passed since the attack in the parking lot.

Logan shuffled the papers on his desk, paying no heed to the paper cut that stung briefly in the slight webbing between his index finger and thumb as it closed seconds after before being put there. He was absentmindedly patting the papers, aligning them and stacking them neatly. He had just collected the last paper before the holidays, and most of his students had turned in their papers minutes ago.

With the exception of one.

Marie was still holed up in her room at the mansion, healing from her encounter with the knife. Hank had told him during his last visit that she was getting along quite nicely, and no sign of infection was evident within the through and through cut. It was all very good news, and Logan knew that he should be happy for her.

But he wasn’t. And he was scared of the reason why. There was a selfish side of him that wanted Marie in his classroom again, every day, so he could see her, smell her, be near her. He was developing a preoccupation with his student that was inappropriate, and if he hadn’t spent so long developing himself into the teacher he was, he would have said to hell with it and taken her on his desk.

He wasn’t a fool. He knew that Marie was attracted to him. Underneath the scent of her soap and her nerves, there was the faintest touch of arousal that only permeated his senses when she had become aware of his presence.

However mutual their attraction, it didn’t change the fact that she was his student. His seventeen year old student.

He swore to himself he would stay away from her in that way for as long as he could.

Unfortunately, he had no idea that his time for that was dwindling faster with every passing moment.

000

Knocking on the front door of the Xavier home, Logan adjusted the reading material in his arms. The door creaked open, and Scott’s scowling face greeted him on the other side. “Scooter,” Logan smirked, brushing past the younger man and heading towards the stairs.

Scott scrambled after him, taking the stairs two at a time in order to catch up with Logan’s pace. “Where do you think you’re going?” he blustered.

Logan paused on a step, turning his head over his shoulder and raising a single eyebrow. “To teach Miss D’Ancanto. That’s what I’ve been here to do for the past week.”

“But…But her room?” Scott sputtered indignantly. “It…it’s not proper.”

The only response he got was a bark of laughter and the echoing sound of Logan’s footsteps as they faded away.

Logan shook his head, refraining from rolling his eyes. That boy was so damn protective of Marie, and while Logan didn’t necessarily have a problem with someone looking out for her well being, it did raise his hackles a little to have someone believe that she needed protecting from him.

Coming to a stop in front of Marie’s bedroom, he knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said quietly, and he pushed the door open. His breath nearly caught in his throat at the sight of her.

She was wearing a Manchester United jersey that was clearly too big for her, slipping off one of her shoulders. There was an expanse of naked skin bared to him, interrupted only by the thin strap of her bra. She had on forest green sweatpants, with TULANE stamped down the leg. “Mr. Hathorne,” she greeted, smiling. “Logan,” she corrected herself, turning to face him as much as she could without jarring her wound.

“Marie.” He set his supplies down on the table Xavier had put in the room for them. “Tulane, huh?”

She looked down at the faded letters, plucking at the fabric. “I lived in New Orleans for a while. Had a foster sister who went there and bought me these pants. We still keep in touch.” Her cheeks flushed a little. “Sorry, you probably don’t care about that.”

“Nah, it’s okay, darlin’,” he said, waving off her apology. School books forgotten, he came forward and sat down on the edge of her bed. “It’s nice hearing about what you did before Xavier’s.” He let his eyes sweep up and down her figure briefly. “Why don’t you tell me more?”

And so, taking a deep breath, she did just that. She told him about how she used to live in Meridan, Mississippi, before her parents had gone out one night to see a movie and never came home. They had both been only children, leaving her with no relatives to be sent to. Her father’s parents were estranged from him, and she had never had any contact, while her mother’s were “rediscovering” themselves somewhere off in Budapest and couldn’t be burdened with raising their newly orphaned granddaughter. So, she was schlepped for six years from orphanage to foster home, never settling down and never truly feeling at home. That was until, one day, a young man of about sixteen had shown up at her orphanage. She was just barely fourteen and still ungodly shy but the kind smile that radiated out from underneath his red glasses had made her feel at ease. His name was Scott, he told her, and he was here with a Professor Charles Xavier, who was interested in adopting her.

Permanently.

Marie had heard of him, how could she not? The man was a famous billionaire, and when she first met him, he made her feel more comfortable than any other family had before. He allowed her to pick out her own room in the mansion, and promised that she would fulfill her high school years at the local public school. He was very straightforward with her about his work with mutants, and she knew firsthand the struggle for unification between the two. She knew about the Brotherhood, and she knew about the military base camps where vicious and ungodly labs were set up for the sole purpose of testing on mutants.

She knew it all.

Logan sat in contemplative silence as she finished her story. It was fascinating, heartbreaking, and more than a little unnerving. Hearing her talk about how she knew of the labs, how she knew of the type of place where he had been holed up for God knows how long, made the hair on the back of his neck raise and his claws itch to unsheathe.

He opened his mouth to say something, when one of her shelves on the other side of the room suddenly collapsed, spilling trinkets and books onto the floor with a loud crash. He jumped, and the shock from the sound was badly timed. His claws shot out from his knuckles, nine inches of sharp adamantium glaring in the fading sunlight.

Breathing heavily through his nose, he shook his head and turned to face her again. He felt a sinking feeling in his chest when he noticed that her gaze was riveted to his hand. He began to retract the metal, when her soft voice pleaded, “No.”

He stared at her, sitting slowly back down onto her comforter, and let his claws slide all the way out once more. She reached slowly for his left hand, picking it up by the palm and turning it over in her own small hands. Her fingers trailed across the creases in his hand, smoothing over the clenched knuckles, until she came to the sharpened edges of a claw. “Careful,” he said gruffly.

She seemed to pay him no heed, and trailed a finger along the underside. She seemed unfazed when the skin split, and blood trickled from the wound and curved down her finger. Pulling her hand away, she withdrew a tissue from a nearby box of Kleenex, and wiped the path away, leaving a light brown discoloration where the blood had been. She watched as he retracted his weapons, and sucked on her finger where the cut was.

His eyes zeroed in on her lips as they wrapped around the tip of her finger, and he desperately looked away as quickly as he could. He couldn’t think of her that way. He wasn’t allowed. Thankfully, she pulled her finger out of her mouth and wrapped a tissue around it, and sat, gazing at him.

“Does it hurt?” she asked quietly. “When they come out, does it hurt?”

He flexed his hands, staring at them. “Every time,” he said hoarsely.

Her small hand reached for his again, taking the larger limb in her own and squeezing it. “I’m sorry.”

He gave her a small, lopsided smile. “Don’t be. Nothin’ you can do about it.”

She nodded, but didn’t let go of his hand. “Where…those aren’t natural. I’ve seen a lot of crazy mutations but…that ain’t natural.”

He clenched his jaw, spine stiffening as images accosted him and pain crackled through him from his hand and spreading through his system. Waking up in that god awful tank of water, lines drawn on his body and pain searing through his system. Slicing, killing, being blood spattered as he ran, naked, out of the lab. Wandering through the wilderness for days on end, struggling to regain humanity.

He shook his head, and the images and pain stopped. Marie was sitting awfully close to him, staring at him with wide brown eyes. “The labs,” she whispered, and he was stunned to see tears pooling in her lids. “Are…are they really that bad?”

“Worse,” he said, letting out a bitter laugh. “Worse than anything you can ever imagine.”

“Oh,” she murmured, fingers still stroking the back of his hand absently. “I can imagine.”

000

She hadn’t meant to do it. Really, she hadn’t. But one second he was sitting there just looking tormented, and the next, images were pouring into her brain as she opened up her connection just the slightest bit. Ghastly memories, ones she didn’t even want to revisit, filled with blood and pain and horror.

His eyes were slightly unfocused, and she closed the connection quickly, watching him shake his head. “The labs,” she said softly, trying not to cry. “Are…are they really that bad?”

“Worse. Worse than anything you can ever imagine.”

She let her fingers trail lazy patterns on the smooth skin of his hand. “Oh, I can imagine.”

He was staring at her, gazing with those annoyingly gorgeous hazel eyes, and she had to remind herself that he was her teacher. He was older than her by fifteen or sixteen years, he was Mr. Hathorne, her history teacher, and if he kept on looking at her like that, then she would say to hell with it and just-

His right hand, seemingly of it’s own inhibition, raised to brush the white hair out of her face, before cupping her cheek. “Marie,” he murmured, getting closer to her.

And when his mouth was just the barest of millimeters from her own, she found the good sense to shut her eyes.

His lips had barely brushed hers for the merest of seconds, when a pounding at her door startled them away from each other. “Rogue? You in there? I need to talk to you about Kitty.”

Marie, cheeks flushed high with embarassment and adrenaline, bit her bottom lip as Logan stiffly pulled away from her. “One second, Bobby.” She cast a glance at Logan from beneath her eyelashes, opened her mouth as if to say something, but then thought better of it and crossed to her door. She had pulled it open just the barest inch when Bobby barrelled into her room.

“I don’t know what to do anymore, Rogue,” he ranted, blue eyes wild as he paced in her room. “One minute she’s telling me I’m all she’ll ever need, and looks up at me all cute and innocent, and the next minute she’s off flirting with Gambit.” He threw his hands up in the air and looked at her pleadingly. “What do I do?”

“Comin’ back another time would be good,” Logan inserted gruffly, startling Bobby. The boy had apparently not even noticed the older man’s presence in the room, and jumped when he heard the low, rumbling tones.

The fair haired boy shot a glance between Rogue and Logan, raising an eyebrow. “Uh, Rogue…”

She shook herself out of her reverie, the flush fading from her cheeks and, extending her hand, she waved it between the two of them as she said, “Logan, this is Bobby. Bobby, this is Logan. Logan’s my History teacher, he’s helping to tutor me while I’m recovering. Logan, this is Bobby, my best friend.”

The teenager swelled with pride as he gazed down at the beautiful girl, and stood to his full height when he noticed Logan’s glowering. He stuck out a hand and said, as smoothly as he possibly could, “They call me Iceman.”

Logan stared at the hand for a few moments, before making the decision to stand up himself. He drew himself to full height, around 6’2”, towering four and a half inches above Bobby. He gripped the chilly hand in his own, and soon felt his claws rattle painfully in his forearms as Bobby’s mutation, accompanied by the boy’s determined look, kicked in and frosted Logan’s arm.

“Bobby.”

Both men were broken out of the staring contest they had unknowingly engaged in at the sound of Marie’s warning tone. “Can we talk about this another time?”

Bobby nodded, and with one last glance at Logan, he left her rooms.

Marie shot a look at her teacher, and mumbled an apology as she went to sit on her bed again.

Logan suppressed a sigh and the urge to run a hand over his face, and simply pulled up a chair and extracted some notecards from his pocket. “Now, what can you tell me about Sumner’s Caning?”

000

It happened like this:

Logan had been piling notecard after notecard in a precarious pile on Marie’s bedside table as she flew through the terms, the stack mounting dangerously until it tipped over and spilled 107 pieces of paper across the floor. Cursing, Logan slid off his chair to pick them up, and Marie did likewise. At first he didn’t realize that she was helping him, but when their hands touched as they reached for the same card, he lifted his head to meet her gaze.

“Marie, what do you think you’re doin’?” he demanded, tossing the cards onto his chair. “You know you shouldn’t be movin’ around like this. Get back into bed before you pull a stitch or something like that.”

She rolled her eyes, and continued to pick up the fallen cards. “Logan, I’m fine. It barely hurts anymore, and-“

“Barely hurts?” he interrupted in disbelief. “Marie, you just got put back together like Humpty fuckin’ Dumpty hardly two weeks ago.” He grasped the hem of her jersey in both hands, lifting it slowly. “Let me have a look at it. I ain’t a doctor, but-” His sentence broke off as he looked down at her side, the one he’d sworn was hurt.

The skin was, save for a few freckles, flawless.

His brow furrowed in confusion, and he lifted her jersey even farther despite her attempts to lower it again. Her whispered, “Logan, no” was basically ignored as he turned her to inspect her other side. The skin was completely intact, without any sort of blemish.

His large hands traced over her sides, and he stared up at her, a sinking feeling settling into his stomach. “What the hell?”

She pulled her shirt from out of his grasp and tugged it over her sweatpants once more. Crossing her arms over her chest, she backed away from him and sat down on her bed. They shared a few moments of silent staring before she darted her eyes towards her comforter. Picking at the stray feathers, she whispered, “If I allow myself to touch people for too long…they die.”

“What?” he croaked out hoarsely. She could not be saying what he thought she was.

“With mutants, though,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I don’t kill them…initially. I just…borrow their powers for a while. I absorb their memories, their thoughts at that moment, their dreams…” She shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms. “I’m deadly.”

Logan thought back to less than an hour ago, when pain had radiated through his body, and dissipated as quickly as it had come. So that’s what it had been. She had opened up her mutation and absorbed his healing abilities, and had absorbed his—

“My memories?” he said quietly, his tone bordering on dangerous as he stood and looked down at her. “You knowingly took my memories?” At her meek nod, anger flooded his system and he kicked the chair he had been sitting in, and sent the notecards flying all over the room once more. “Damn it, Marie!”

She shrank back from him at his palpable rage, not understanding why it was so devastating to him that she had knowingly absorbed a few of his memories. His nostrils were flaring with the effort of calming himself down. He seemed to be losing that battle quickly, and, before he could do any real damage to her, grabbed his jacket and strode out of the room, shutting the door with a loud bang.

Marie stared at the door for a minute or two, before she dissolved into tears.

000

Logan thundered down the hallway, strides long and fast paced as he hastened to get the hell out of there. She was a mutant, a mutant, someone like him, and nobody had fucking bothered to tell him one damn thing about it all.

“Where are you going?”

Logan paused, drawing back his shoulders and turning to see Scott standing a few feet down the hall from where he was. “What’s it to you?”

“Your session with Rogue isn’t over for another half an hour. You’re certainly leaving in a hurry, and I demand to be informed as to where you’re going.”

Logan’s losing battle with his rage was growing weaker with every second he was talking to the one-eyed wonder, and against his better judgment, he spat out, “She’s a mutant.”

The look of hatred that Scott sent his way was impressive, and Logan could see the boy’s hand itching to reach for the safety visor perched on his face, tempted to lift the screen that shielded the world from the optic blasts he produced. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Logan raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Excuse me, Eagle Scout?”

“I said, get the fuck out of here.” Cyclops was seething, face flushed in anger and resentment towards the haggard man who had come in and so easily swept the outcast of the mansion off her feet. “You, a mutant yourself, had no problem with that girl before you found out she was one of us, too, and now you can’t be bothered with her?” He was getting more and more in Logan’s face with every heated step that he took, a fact that Logan was not enjoying whatsoever. “That poor girl has been through more unnecessary shit in the past two years, than you have in however long you’ve been alive. She is a special young woman, not just some…” he sputtered, searching for the right term. “Mutant trash that you can discard at any moment!”

Within the blink of an eye, Logan had him pinned against a wall, claws positioned threateningly against his throat. “Don’t you ever,” he said quietly, “speak that way about her again. You hear me?”

Scott swallowed, but still managed to retain some of his bravado. “You know,” he choked out. “You aren’t the only mutant here who’s been tortured by Stryker.”

Logan’s grip on him grew even tighter. “What the fuck do you mean?”

“Why don’t you ask Rogue?”

If there was one thing Scott now knew for certain, it was that you don’t tease Logan when it comes to the topic of Stryker. Especially not if the topic of Stryker also inconveniently brought up his involvement with the dark haired southern beauty wallowing in her room upstairs. That much was clear if the way Logan’s eyes darkened with rage and the grip on Scott’s throat became unbearably tight. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” he snarled out.

Scott choked on his words, unable to force out sounds through the tight hold Logan had on him. The fingers loosened mercifully, but those deadly claws were still threateningly close to his face, and he had to swallow his fear. “You…” he rasped out, licking his lips. “You should talk to the Professor.” He curled his own hand around Logan’s, desperately trying to free himself from the choking grip.

“I don’t think so.” Lowering Scott to his feet, he let go of his throat only to grab him by the scruff of his neck. “At least, not alone.”

0

The loud, noisome banging at his office door startled Charles out of his concentration on the paperwork in front of him. He could feel Logan’s fury radiating even through the heavy barrier between the man and his office, and the mental block Logan had put up against his telepathic powers. Waving his hand tiredly, he opened the door just as Logan stalked towards it, Scott in tow.

The larger man threw Scott into one of the chairs, sending it skidding backwards a few feet, and stalked towards Xavier’s desk and slammed his hands down on the top, hard enough to leave dents. “Talk. Now.”

Charles sent a questioning look towards Scott, who croaked out “Stryker” as he rubbed his throat.

He heaved a great sigh at this, tenting his fingers together and examining the infuriated man before him. His muscles were rigid with tension, the back of his hands bulging grotesquely as his claws threatened to expose themselves. His jaw was ticking as he clenched his teeth too tightly together, and his eyes were wild with rage and some other undistinguishable emotion.

“Sit down.”

Logan grudgingly backed away and plunked his body down into one of the lush chairs. “Better get to some explainin’, Chuck.”

“Very well.” He paused, wondering where to begin this story.

“Marie came to us when she was fourteen years old, a freshman in high school. Her powers were unstable and harmful, and more volatile than any of us could remember seeing before. She was a very soft-spoken girl, orphaned at a young age, and a known mutant. She called herself Rogue because of her long history of moving from home to home, so you must excuse me if I alternate between the names. I adopted her when I found out about her dilemma, and no sooner had she introduced herself to me for the first time, when I thought of her as my own daughter. However…she nearly killed her friend, Robert Drake, the second week she was here. She had been exiting the bathroom and pulling her gloves back on when some money fell out of her pocket. She didn’t notice, and when Bobby grabbed her hand to give it back to her, she absorbed his powers at a dangerous rate. He would have died if Scott hadn’t been able to pull them apart.

“Marie was tormented over the whole experience. She locked herself in her room for days, and when she finally emerged, her mind was tortured even further. Erik Lensherr, also known as Magneto, the leader of the Brotherhood, has a follower named Mystique, who has the unique ability to transform herself into any person at any given time. She takes on their mannerisms, their voice, their scent, but the words she says are her own, leave no doubt about that. The only way to truly tell if it is her is if that person is acting differently than normal, and the slight discoloration of her eyes; every now and again, they’ll flash gold.

“Mystique approached Marie during the next day’s afternoon, disguised as Remy LeBeau, our resident French teacher. She taunted Rogue, under the guise of giving her advice, and eventually persuaded her into running away. There was nobody here to go after her, no one to stop her, and on the train, Magneto captured her. He had been working with William Stryker on a technology which, Stryker had told him, would utilize Marie’s extreme powers and bring out the latent gene in humans which would cause them to become mutants. The transformation would kill the body, because it would not have time to adapt to the sudden genetic change. Stryker was, of course, lying to Erik. The machine would instead attack mutants, sending out waves and waves of sonic pulses, ones that only mutants can pick up on, and would eventually kill all of those he deemed unworthy.”

Xavier paused, taking a look at Logan for the first time since he had begun his story. The feral man had gone nearly deathly pale, and his hands were shaking with barely suppressed rage as the animal within him snarled and demanded to get revenge on those who had hurt the girl he cared about. Scott was gazing at his hands, shimmering tear tracks on his cheeks as he remembered those few painful hours where she had gone missing.

Heaving a sigh, he continued. “Unfortunately…this machine would require all of Rogue’s powers. She would die before all the other mutants of the world had.”

Logan stood abruptly at this, knocking over the chair he had been sitting in. He began pacing through the office with long strides, and waved Charles on to continue.

“Luckily, we found out soon enough where Magneto and Stryker were holding her. We made our way to Liberty Island as soon as we could, without a moment to spare. Her captors had apparently been arguing over the true intent of their deadly machine when one of Stryker’s guards tranquilized Erik with an extremely strong sedative. He took him to the Statue of Liberty, where Rogue was bound and chained to the mechanism. He…forced Marie to absorb almost all of Erik’s power, overwhelming her system but giving her what was needed in order to start up the machine.

“By the time we reached the statue, we had feared it was too late. Luckily, Ororo Munroe, a weather goddess affectionately known as Storm around the mansion, was able to lift herself and Scott up to where the three were. Scott used his power to take out Stryker, who was still holding onto Erik. Both men fell away from Rogue, lowering the shield that had formed around them. Scott got rid of the chains easily, and he and Storm were able to bring Marie back to safety.”

“No, we didn’t,” Scott interrupted, voice hoarse from emotion and Logan’s earlier attack. “Storm did. We didn’t. She’s the one who let Rogue absorb some of her goddess powers in order to heal, while I stood around helplessly. I didn’t do a damn thing. I just stood there and let Rogue suck Ororo into unconsciousness.”

“Scott, if not for you, Rogue would not be alive today.” Xavier sighed, rubbing his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Logan, I’m going to assume you have wondered about the white streaks in Rogue’s hair?”

Logan snorted, still pacing restlessly. “Once or twice, yeah.”

“Have you ever heard the idea that, once you have experienced something so traumatic, your hair turns white? The stress on Marie’s mind and body caused her hair to turn white in the front, and Scott was able to disengage the machine just in time to keep it from spreading to all of her hair. Unfortunately, the aftermath of that night was not easy for Rogue in any way. She has the memories from Erik, years of violence and death and the separation between him and his parents at Auschwitz. She had memories from Ororo, of the death and destruction she had seen in her time. Memories from Bobby, of his family’s decision to disown him. And now…she has yours.”

Logan fell suddenly to his knees, body heaving with emotion. His claws unsheathed with the smooth sound of sliding metal, and blood trickled from between his knuckles. Tears were fighting from behind his eyelids, the information overwhelming him. He knew that his initial reaction to her revelation was uncalled for, but he had no idea how inappropriate it was. All she had been trying to do was see what he had really been thinking at that moment; she had no idea what horrors lurked inside his mind, the memories of pain and scalding hot metal being grafted onto his bones, the nightmares-

“Prof,” he whispered, raising shining eyes to Xavier as he stood. “She’s…she’s gonna have some nightmares. Bad ones. Mine. Nightmares of Stryker’s lab, of…” he glanced down at the weapons that protruded from between his fingers. “Of how I got these.”

“Fuck.”

Logan and Xavier turned their attention to Scott as his fist collided with the wall and came away bloody. “Hasn’t she had enough?” he shouted hoarsely, to no one in particular. “Hasn’t she been through God damn enough?”

“Scott, calm down,” Xavier said, wheeling himself from behind his desk and over to the two men. “Marie has been through extremely traumatic experiences, yes, but as long as she has the support of those around her, it’s all we can do to make it easier on her.” He settled his piercing gaze on the both of them individually. “Do we have an understanding?”

“Yeah,” Scott whispered, dropping his head into his hands.

All he got from Logan was a gruff nod before he strode out of the office, claws slowly retracting back into his skin.

0

Marie was huddled on her bed underneath a blanket, eyes watery and red and note cards still haphazardly scattered on the floor as she stared blankly at Jubilee’s poster of Johnny Depp. Every now and then, a shuddering sob would wrack her system, but fade as quickly as it had come.

Sighing, she slowly unwrapped herself and stood on shaky legs, determined to go to the bathroom and wash her face of all signs of crying. She was about to do just that when her door burst open once again, and Logan stood there, staring at her with such an unexplained intensity that it momentarily took her breath away.

“Mr. Hathorne?” she questioned quietly, running worried eyes over his aggressive stance.

“Call me Logan,” he demanded gruffly, taking a step forward. His eyes were startling and expressive, and she was losing herself in them at an alarming rate.

“Logan,” she whispered, the name falling with surprising ease from her lips.

It took him barely any time at all to close the space of five feet between them and crush his lips to hers.

Marie inhaled sharply through her nose as Logan’s strong arms pulled her to his body, his mouth slanting over hers. Her eyes fluttered shut and her arms wiggled out of his grip just enough to allow her hands to wind through his hair and pull him closer to her. One large hand wrapped itself around the nape of her neck, fingers skimming the sensitive spot behind her ear, and she gasped.

Growling, Logan took the opportunity to slip his tongue into her mouth. She tentatively met it with her own, and soon, without realizing it, he was backing her up to her bed. The back of her knees hit the edge of her bed and she fell backwards onto it, wrapping her legs around his hips as she shifted into place. He groaned against her mouth, involuntarily thrusting his growing erection against her hip. Pulling himself away from her mouth, he muttered, “One second, darlin’.”

Standing up, he adjusted himself in his pants when he turned his back and walked to the door. He had just placed his hand on the knob when he heard her quietly whisper, “Logan?” He turned to her, and couldn’t hold back a smile at the image of her lying on her bed, looking thoroughly kissed. “Where…Are you leavin’?”

In answer to her question, he pushed the door shut and made sure to lock it, before turning back around and making his way to her bed. She moved so that she was lying completely on the mattress, and he crawled onto it until he was hovering over her. He took in the sight of her, lips swollen and red and wide brown eyes looking up at him with fear and adoration intermingling.

Shoving any and all thoughts of how he really shouldn’t be doing this aside, he let out a small growl and swooped down to kiss her once more.

0

When he finally looked at a clock, it wasn’t on purpose. Marie was busy kissing a particularly erogenous area behind his ear, and he had strained his neck backwards and to the side, and had come face to face with Marie’s iHome, the clock shining brightly into his eyes. Groaning, he put his hands on her bare waist in an attempt to push her away. It was difficult for him to even try: his arms didn’t seem to be working, and the feel of her bare stomach against his was making it hard to have any real, coherent thoughts.

It was making something else hard, too. Very, very hard.

He tucked his hands under her armpits and hauled her up for one last kiss. Her hands found their way to his head, pulling him even further, and he drifted one of his own down her spine and to her ass. When he found himself thrusting against her thigh, he knew it was really time to leave. Dragging his lips away from her, he said, “Marie…I should go.”

Her hands left the back of his head to plant themselves on either side of his face as she raised her upper body to look at him. “Why?”

“Baby, it isn’t that I want to. It’s just…I’ve overstayed my tutoring time by about half an hour, and I think somebody’s gonna come lookin’ for me if I don’t leave soon.”

She pouted sadly, lowering her eyes to his chest. One of her hands left their place by his head to trail unknown designs through the hair, and she leaned down to press one last kiss against his jugular, and then against his mouth. His strong hands wrapped around her waist, and he flipped them over, resting his heavy body on top of hers.

“Christ, Marie,” he groaned as he stood, needing to fix himself in his pants for what seemed like the hundredth time that night. He stared at her as he pulled his shirts back on, drinking in the sight of her, half naked and looking completely ravaged. “You’re gonna be the death of me, girl.”

She gave him a shy smile, grabbing her jersey and holding it to her chest so that she wasn’t as exposed as she had been before. She looked completely adorable to him, and he felt warmth spread through his chest at the look of her.

He placed his hand on the doorknob and, with a small wink, said, “I’ll see you next week.”

After he had shut the door behind him, Marie threw her jersey on the floor and rolled over, muffling her excited laughter in her pillow. Her skin still tingled from where he had touched her, and her lips were nearly numb from the amount and force with which they had been kissing. She couldn’t remember ever being as happy as she was in that moment, the man she found herself growing more and more attracted to having finally taken the initiative and kissed the living daylights out of her.

Shivering slightly, she dove under her covers and wrapped herself up in warmth, and slowly fell asleep with a small smile on her face. The last thought she had before she dozed off was that she couldn’t wait for next week.

0

On the first Monday she was off of school for Holiday Break, she was taken out of her concentration on her book by someone knocking at her door. “Come in,” she called, shutting the book and turning to face the door from her desk. Bobby opened the door, smiling shyly at her. When she had first come to the mansion, she knew that he had had a bit of a crush on her, and though their relationship had never progressed past friendship, and the fact that he had been dating Kitty for over a year, she knew he still held onto that crush a little bit. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Um…you know your teacher? The big, scary guy who kicked me out of here on Friday?” She smiled at him, laughing a little, and nodded. “The Professor sent me down here to tell you that he’s here again. Something about you being able to catch up faster because you have time off now, or whatever.”

She felt excitement tingle up and down her spine, and had to stop her hands from shaking as she nodded. “Okay. Um…can you tell Charles to send him down? I’ll be ready in just a minute.”

“No need, darlin’,” she heard, and the door opened further to reveal Logan standing on the other side, messenger bag slung neatly over his shoulder and a slight smirk on his face. “Thanks, Popsicle,” he said as he made his way into the room.

“It’s Ice-” Bobby started to say, Logan shutting the door in his face before he could finish. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned around, mouth open to say something, and suddenly he had an armful of Marie. Her mouth latched onto him, her tongue twining quickly around his as her legs wrapped around his waist. He inhaled quickly, hands moving to hold her butt in order to support her against him.

She broke away from him, lips brushing against his ear. “I missed you,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck and squeezing. One of his hands left her ass and glided up her spine, before tangling itself in her smooth hair. “I missed you, too.”

She started planting kisses along his neck, and he had to stop himself from throwing her onto her bed and having his way with her. Gently pushing her away from him, he smiled at her pout. “Baby as much as I love kissin’ you, we do actually have to do some work. You have three more classes to make up, and a paper to write.”

She groaned, unwrapped her legs from around him and slid down his body. She didn’t move away immediately, though, and pressed herself against him, burying her nose in his chest and inhaling his scent. She looked up at him through hooded eyes, unable to stop herself from pressing against him more at the sight of his eyes, darkened with arousal. She let out a small gasp at the feel of his erection pressing against her stomach, and felt a blush creep up her neck but found herself unable to look away from him.

He couldn’t help but chuckle at the look of embarrassment on her face as she pressed against him. “Sorry, darlin’,” he muttered, brushing the white streaks out of her eyes. “Can’t help myself when I’m with you.”

She looked down, but he saw the grin that lit up her face, and pressed a kiss against her hair. “Now, you ready to finish talkin’ about the damn Civil War?”

0

Somehow, someway, they had managed to last over an hour and a half without completely losing themselves. They hadn’t strayed from the topic of the Civil War, and soon they found themselves out of note cards and finished with that particular topic. Logan was honest when he sheepishly admitted to her that he hadn’t thought that she would be so quick with terms and facts, and he had gotten a light swat upside the head for it.

So, naturally, now that they had finished with studying, there was only one thing left that they could think of to do.

Which was the reason they found themselves heatedly making out on top of Marie’s bed. His outer flannel shirt had long since been discarded, and he was clad in only his white wife beater and jeans that were unbuckled. Her shirt had been tossed off and lay forgotten on the floor, his right hand clasped onto her breast as he kneaded the soft skin gently. He swiped a thumb over her nipple through the lace of her bra, and relished in the way she arched away and tore her mouth away from his in a gasp.

Groaning as she shifted against his hardness, he buried his face against the base of her throat and nipped her there, once. “God damn it, Marie,” he ground out. “So damn beautiful.” He trailed a hand down the soft skin of her stomach, before swiftly slipping his hand into her sweatpants. His fingers trailed across the edge of her panties, before dipping in and tangling in the coarse curls that covered her. Those fingers traveled further, slowly, until they found the little button of sensitive nerves that they had been seeking.

His index finger brushed against her clit, and he felt her chest hitch with breath underneath his head. Smiling against her breast, he let his hand travel further down and slide his middle finger across her wet slit. Unable to stop himself from doing so, he pushed it in, loving the way she moaned his name when he did. Slowly, he began to pump his middle finger in and out, circling her clit with his thumb as he kissed his way across her throat.

Soon enough, he added a second finger, knowing that he had enough lubrication from her to do so. After he did, he looked up to see her face, and almost lost all control when he did. Her cheeks were flushed and rosy, her teeth clamped firmly over her bottom lip as he pleasured her. She seemed to sense his gaze and opened her eyes to look at his. The usually chocolate brown hue of her irises had darkened to near black. She opened her mouth to try and say something, but seemed unable to when his thumb pressed down onto her clit even more.

“What is it baby?” he growled, and for the first time ever was aware of how close Wolverine was to rising to the surface. The beast was clawing to the surface, desperate to claim what it now viewed as his: the girl writhing in Logan’s arms.

One of her hands lifted from where it had been limply lying next to her head, and stroked one of the sideburns on his face. “Kiss me,” she whimpered.

And, watching as his ministrations on her caused her to fall over the edge of ecstasy, he did just that.

Their affair continue this way for two weeks, with Logan dropping by every few days for actual educational tutoring, and then half hour or more kissing sessions that he stopped before they could go anywhere she wasn’t ready for. Usually, the Wolverine inside of him would see what he wanted and take it, but with Marie it was being uncharacteristically subdued, allowing Logan to take the lead.

Marie, on her part, had been notably happier in those past two weeks than she had been for the past two years. Every time Logan knocked on her bedroom door, with his flannel shirt and easy grin and kissed her hello, her heart pounded in her chest and she couldn’t stop herself from beaming at him. At the end of every session, they would usually wind up with their hands all over each other, flushed and breathing heavily, satisfied flushes on both of their faces.

She wanted him. She knew she did, and she looked forward to every single time he showed up outside her door. She was excited for every kiss, for every touch, for every time he breathed her name against her neck, and every time he said, “See you next time, darlin’.”

But most of all, she was worried she was falling in love with him.

All of it was almost enough for her to forget he was her History teacher.

Almost.

0

The day that school started up again, Marie and Logan both found themselves nervous for their class together. Logan shuffled the students’ papers on his desk, nervously fiddling with them for the umpteenth time in the past ten or so minutes. Glancing at the clock, he let out a shaky breath when he noticed that there was less than two minutes left before she was due in his class. Composing himself, he managed to maintain a straight face as his students began to file into the room. When Marie came in, he winced when he fumbled with the papers, accidentally giving himself a paper cut that welled up with a bead of blood. He was sucking on his thumb when he made eye contact with her.

To his surprise, she didn’t make any indications that his presence affected her too much, other than a slight blush around her cheeks, and a small smile in his direction. She sat next to Danielle Scott, one of the few friends she had outside of Xavier’s. Organizing her binder, she glanced up at him briefly, made eye contact, and looked back down with a small, secretive smile.

Logan held back a grin of his own, and stood up from behind his desk, passing out papers to his students. “Okay, you all know the drill. No sharing grades with one another, keep the groaning to a minimum.” There was a small tittering of amusement at this remark, and he smiled a little. “Actually, you all did very well. The average was around 84. I guess all my relentless information hammered itself into your brain, eh?”

He handed Danielle her paper, and said, “89, good job.” She smiled up at him shyly, a coy glint shining in her eyes. He ignored it, and moved on. “Miss D’Ancanto, 93, very nice.” As he handed her the paper, their fingers brushed against one another, and he felt the usual electricity spark at their touch. She didn’t smile the way he thought she would, though. Instead, a small frown tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she nodded once in thanks.

Trying not to let his confusion show, he continued to hand out the papers, and then made his way to the front of the class. “So, who’s ready to learn about World War One?”

0

After class was dismissed seventy minutes later, Marie hung around after. Danielle turned around at the doorway, noticing that Marie wasn’t following. “You coming?”

She shook her head, waving her paper in explanation. “I gotta talk to Mr. Hathorne really fast about my paper. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” Danielle nodded, shutting the classroom door behind her as she left.

Logan stood, making his way behind her and locking his classroom door and lowered the blinds. He took her by the hand when he made his way to the back of the room, and sat down on one of the desks and pulled her between his legs, attached his hands to her hips. Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss against the hollow of her throat. “I missed you.”

She placed her hands on his shoulders, paper scraping against his cheek, and pushed him away. He looked at her, curious as to why she was making him get away from her. She unfolded her paper and held it up so that the 93 was eye level. “What is this?” she asked softly.

“It’s an A-, baby.”

“No, I…I know that,” she said, closing her eyes, and when she opened them again, he was startled to see her eyes glistening with the beginning of tears. “What I mean is…is this payment? Or did I actually earn this?”

Sadness and hurt welled up within him as he understood what she meant. She thought that everything she had been doing for him needed retribution of some kind, and he was merely giving her a good grade in exchange for her welcoming embrace. He snagged the papers from out of her hands, and flipped through it. “Marie, this is one of the best papers I’ve graded in a long time. It’s not a grade I’m giving you for the time I’ve spent with you; it’s a grade you earned.”

Her face lit up with a smile and she took the paper back from him. “I’m sorry, Logan. I was just worried, you know?”

He let her lean down to kiss him, cupping her cheek as she wrapped her arms around his neck briefly. Her tongue tangled with his for a moment, before she drew back. “I have to go,” she said quietly. He squeezed her waist affectionately, and she brushed a kiss against his cheek.

“See you tomorrow afternoon, yeah?” he said, letting go of her. She smiled and nodded, and made her way towards the door. When she had put her hand on her knob and was about to open the door, he said, “Hey.” She paused and turned to him, waiting for him to continue. “You still my girl?”

Her full lips parted in a smile, making him want to forget everything and take her against the classroom door. “Yeah,” she said, her Southern accent drawling in the way that drove him crazy. “I’m still your girl.”

0

The next day, during her fifth period, marked the first time that they didn’t accomplish any work whatsoever. He had been tortured with thoughts of her ever since she had left his classroom the day before, and if the way Marie greeted him was any indication, she had been thinking of him, too.

His classroom door was locked, blinds down, and he had her pressed against the wall, shirt and bra shoved above her chest as he sucked on her breast. Her fingers were twisted in his hair, holding him close to her. His hands fumbled with the button and zip of her jeans, and when he finally got them undone, he groaned against her chest and shoved them down past her hips, exposing her underwear.

Lifting his head, he kissed her deeply, tongue desperately stroking hers. He thrust against her, denim encased erection digging into her stomach. He muttered an apology against her lips, and tried to compose himself.

“Logan?”

He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. She bit her lip, and her hands went to his buckle, slowly undoing it. He watched her ministrations, breath coming deeper with every second she took. She slid the button through the hole, and grasped the zipper tab between her index finger and her thumb, and lowered it. Her delicate hand took hold of him through his boxers, and he groaned, eyes falling shut.

“Oh, God, Marie,” he moaned.

She pressed her forehead against the straining tendons in his neck, and whispered, “Logan…make love to me.”

He stiffened, drawing back to look at her properly. Her hair was mussed, lips swollen and red and looking vaguely bruised, a hickey forming at the juncture between her neck and shoulder. She looked nervous, but he couldn’t find a trace of fear in her steady gaze. Still, he felt compelled to ask, “You sure about this baby?”

The only answer she could think to give him was to kiss him sweetly. He broke away after a moment, leaning his forehead against hers. “What about-”

“I’m on the pill,” she interrupted. He let out a low growl, thinking that she meant she had needed it for previous sexual experiences. She must have caught his train of thought, because she blushed, and said, “No, not…I get really bad cramps, and my monthly’s a little…off. Storm took me to a clinic when I was sixteen to fix it, and I’ve just taken it ever since.” She gave him a little shrug. “I’m all set.”

She was so adorable in that moment, that Logan couldn’t do anything except but kiss her, all the emotions he was feeling in that moment propelling him forward. He cupped her ass in both his hands, and she wrapped her legs around his hips in a position they were now familiar with. Slowly, he walked the two of them over to the large desk, and in one swift motion, swept all the stuff on the surface to the floor.

He set her down on the edge of his desk, and made quick work of pulling her jeans even further down her legs. He hooked his fingers into the sides of her panties, and slowly dragged them down. He pulled her shirt completely over her head, and reached behind her to unsnap her bra and take that off, too. Her hands slid down his chest, slowly unbuttoning the oxford he’d been forced to don for his job. She slid it off of his shoulders, kissing her away across his chest. She un-tucked the white undershirt and lifted it up and over his head, and drank in the sight of his sculpted upper body.

He noticed her perusal with a smirk. “Like what you see, baby?”

She met his amused gaze with her own, and surprised him by saying, “Oh sugar, I definitely like what I see.”

He was leaning down to kiss her when the bell ran, signaling the end of the school day. Suddenly, awareness of their surroundings hit them like a ton of bricks, and they hastened to redress themselves. “Darlin’?” Logan said as he pulled on his shirts. “What do you say we continue this somewhere else?”

She smiled at him, lifting her hair out from the neck of her t-shirt. “You mean that?” she asked, picking up her sweatshirt off the ground.

He snorted, shrugging on the blue oxford once more. “What do you think?”

She crossed to him, tugging the shirt together and buttoning it up for him, fingers trailing up and down his torso as she did. When she was done with that, she slid her hand over his still hard erection, squeezing it playfully. She tucked him carefully back into his jeans and zipped up his pants, making sure to button and buckle it when she was done.

He slid a hand behind her head, tilting her face up to kiss her. “Let’s get goin’ then.”

They piled into Logan’s truck, Marie talking quietly on the phone with her adoptive father. “Charles? It’s Marie…Mr. Hathorne and I had to leave the school because of security tests, and Jubilee is using our room for her Irish Lit project with Kitty and Markus, and I know you have that senator visiting today. So I just wanted to let you know that Mr. Hathorne and I are going to continue our lessons at his house. Is that okay?” She paused, casting a glance at Logan before reaching her left hand over and laying it lightly on his thigh. “Thank you. I’ll be home before seven. Okay, see you later.”

She shut her phone with a click and looked over at Logan, who had a bemused smile on his face. “That was some mighty quick thinking there.”

She gave a small nod, and muttered a thanks. He frowned, taking his eyes off the road to look at her. “What’s wrong, baby?”

She fidgeted, fingers twining and knotting around one another. “I have to tell you something.”

He felt a foreboding sinking in his stomach, afraid that she was going to tell him that she wanted out of whatever their relationship was and what it was leading to. Logan wouldn’t have too violent a reaction if this was the case; it would hurt, but he’d eventually move on. The Wolverine, however, would fight it tooth and nail and do everything in it’s power to keep her with them. “What is it?”

“I…” She swallowed, nervous tears filling up her eyes. “I know I told you I didn’t get the pill for…sex…but I’m…I’m not a virgin.”

His hands tightened on his steering wheel, the leather creaking slightly under his hands. Jealousy raged through him at the thought of anyone else touching his girl. “Oh,” he muttered gruffly.

“When…When I was…younger. I lived with a family in Frederick. My foster mom and older brother were so sweet, and they did everything for me. The dad, though…” She broke off, staring out the dusty window to her right, watching the sun settle over the hills. “He wasn’t so nice. He hit my mom and brother a lot, and threatened to do the same to me if I didn’t act as his little slave. Whenever child services came around, he would be Mr. Perfect, who never laid a hand on us. But…one night he came home, drunk, and he…” She broke off, clapping a hand over her mouth as a sob ripped through her throat.

Logan’s vision was blurring with anger, claws itching to make themselves known and attack something as he listened to what she was saying. He didn’t know what twisted game The Powers That Be were playing, but this girl they had chosen to torment had done nothing in her life to deserve the punishment she was receiving. “He raped you,” he croaked out, finishing the sentence for her.

She nodded, wiping the tears off of her cheeks. “He was careful, though,” she said bitterly. “Used a condom, made sure not to touch my skin. Tried to smother me with my pillow when I screamed and caught my mother’s attention. She came running in and hit him over the head with a lamp or a vase, I don’t remember. It was too late though. He passed out on top of me, and his cheek was against my neck and I…absorbed him. Almost killed him, but my mom pulled him off of me. She grabbed my brother and me and left for the police station. Last I heard, they were still in Witness Protection, and I was forced to another foster home. The ones after that were all so nice and kind to me, but it didn’t change the fact that he’s in my head. Every now and then he’ll talk to me, tell me how much of a freak I am, how nobody will ever want me.”

Swearing, Logan quickly pulled his truck to the side of the road and unbuckled his seat belt. Reaching across the car, he drew her to him, pressing a desperate kiss against her hairline as she cried against his chest. “I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispered, stroking a hand up and down he rback in a soothing gesture. “I’m so sorry.”

She sniffed against him, before drawing back and wiping her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I just wanted to let you know. There’s nothing that can be done about it now.”

Growling, he turned to the front of his truck, shoving it into gear and thundering down the road towards his apartment. “Yeah there is. Just depends on what happened to the bastard.”

“I put him in a coma. He was on top of me for too long and he’s just been lying in a hospital bed for nine years.”

He raised an eyebrow in her direction, noting her defiant and somewhat proud expression that stood out from underneath the tear tracks and her red nose. He smirked, pleased with what she’d done. “That’ll do, then.”

0

The pulled into the driveway of a stone house, one that looked much larger than she thought he would have owned. “Jesus,” she muttered, gazing at the large home. “You can afford this on a teacher’s salary?”

He laughed, slamming the car door shut and shouldering his messenger bag and grabbing her backpack out of her hands. “Fuck no, I can’t afford this on a teacher’s salary. Before I became a teacher, I spent a couple years making my way through a whole lot of Canada’s fight bars, earning thousands of dollars and the odd trinket. It’s how I won my first car. Though,” he added, taking her by the hand and walking her up the pathway, “it was a piece of shit. One day, I fought this guy who was going through the middle of a nasty divorce, and, to spite his soon-to-be ex-wife, bet the deed to their house and purposefully lost the match. Not that he stood a chance, anyway. So I came down here to check it out and figured, might as well settle down for once.”

He smirked at her as he unlocked the front door and led her into the front hall. “What do you think?”

She was silent for a few seconds, examining the foyer and craning her neck to see into the rooms on either side. When she appeared to be finished with looking around, he almost laughed when she asked, “Where’s the bedroom?”

He walked up behind her and placed his hands on her waist, brushing the hair off her neck and placing a kiss on the nape. “Why don’t you let me show you?”

0

He led her up the curving staircase, holding her hand in his as they traipsed slowly to his bedroom. She was admiring the photographs lined on the walls, black and white prints of landscapes and seemingly insignificant trinkets discarded on streets. Her fingers trailed over one that depicted a bedraggled stuffed animal laying forgotten on sand. Trash was littered around it, broken bottles and cigarette butts.

Logan felt her pause on the steps, and turned back to look at her. Following her gaze, he asked, “You into photography?”

She nodded, still gazing at the stuffed animal. “I took Photo II sophomore year, and fell in love with it. Not as like, a career. More of a hobby than anything.”

He stepped down from his position on the steps, coming to stand behind her. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he hooked his chin over her shoulder and mumbled, “What do you wanna do?”

She shrugged, meeting his gaze in the reflection of the frame’s glass. “Promise you won’t make fun of me?”

“Promise.”

She sighed, leaning back against him. “I wanna be a chef.”

There was a moment of silence as he absorbed this information, trying to suppress the surprise he felt at this revelation. She raised an eyebrow at his dumbfounded reflection. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” he muttered, kissing the back of her neck. “Just…was not expecting that answer from you. Thought maybe you’d make a career with the X-Men or somethin’ to do with English or History.”

She turned in his arms, lacing her arms around his neck and looking up at him with those big brown eyes. “I enjoy those things, don’t get me wrong. I love learning and all, and it’s actually how I discovered how much I loved baking. It was midterms three years ago and I couldn’t think of anyway to unwind. I went down to the kitchens, and met up with Markus Bilford. We call him Earthquake, cos…well it’s pretty self explanatory. Anyway, Markus’s dad is a chef, and he had taught Markus some recipes. He taught them to me, and they managed to calm me down. I started baking more cos I really enjoyed it, and it’s just…stuck.”

“What can you make?”

“Oh, lots of stuff. Chicken pot pie, quesadillas, breaded lemon chicken with herb rice, lasagna, crème brulee, chocolate torte, pies…” She leaned up, lips skimming against the shell of his ear. “Whipped cream…” She scraped her teeth over the sensitive cartilage, tongue flicking out slightly to wet the skin. “I could make you some next time I come over…”

Growling, with images of licking sweet whipped cream off of Marie’s naked body, he swept her up into his arms and completed their journey to his bedroom.

0

Thirty minutes later, Logan sat on the bed, shirtless and jeans unzipped and haphazardly unbuckled as Marie straddled him. She was kissing him sweetly, with all the enthusiasm and passion a girl her age could possess. She was clad only in her matching undergarments: a soft, green cotton bra with “boy shorts” panties. Her hair was swept up in a ponytail that was slowly coming undone, a few tendrils curling around her cheeks and tickling his eyelids.

She pulled away from him, cheeks flushed with arousal and eyes glazed over. She lifted herself to kneel on her knees, tucking her fingers into the belt loops of his jeans and slowly, ever so slowly, pulled them down and off his thighs. Once the pants were known past his knees, he lifted one leg out of the jeans and then used his free foot to push them off completely.

He gathered her close to him again, kissing her as he rolled her over onto the dark navy down comforter. Pushing her further into the soft mattress, he ground his erection into her core, gaining a heady moan form her. He moved his hand slowly up her body, digging it into her hair and pulling the heavy tresses free from the ponytail. His hand traveled down the back of her neck to trail a little down her spine, before his fingers twined around the double clasp of her bra. In a swift move, he got it undone, and slide his hand under the wide cup in the front. She gasped, tearing her mouth away from his as his fingers tweaked her sensitive nipple, then brushed over the wrinkled skin around it. The way she bit her bottom lip drove him crazy, and, as he latched his mouth to her neck and made his mark there, he slid the straps of her bra down and all but threw it across the room. His mouth left her neck and crashed into hers, strong arms pulling her bare chest against his and relishing in the feel of skin on skin.

She shoved him away lightly, casting shy eyes down and away from him as she grasped her panties and pulled them down and off her legs, and then dove under the comforter, holding the fabric to her chest as she looked at him through hooded eyes. He rolled off the bed, standing next to her and slowly pulling down his boxers. He couldn’t help but be amused when her eyes widened at the sight of his erection.

“Oh, mah Lord,” she muttered, Southern drawl thickening with her anxiety. “Is…is that even gonna fit?” she questioned, looking up at him, all curiosity and fear and lust.

He chuckled, lifting the covers and crawling under them. “Oh, darlin’,” he murmured, planting a firm kiss on her lips. “I’ll make it fit. Don’t you worry.”

He fell easily into her soft embrace, kissing her with all the excitement a teenaged boy without control over his hormones would possess. They made out for a while, rolling around and enjoying the feel of intimate skin contact, the pleasure building to a point where they couldn’t take it any longer.

Slipping his tongue into her mouth and tangling it around hers, he held the base of his erection with his hand, aligning it with her entrance. Breaking his mouth away from hers, he ghosted his lips across her cheek and whispered, “Baby…I know you aren’t technically a virgin, but this still might hurt, okay?”

She nodded, bracing her hands against his shoulders and lifting her head up for a kiss. Slowly, he slid the head of his penis into her, and lowered his arm to brace his upper body against hers. He pushed her head into the mattress with his mouth, and thrust in with one swift movement. He felt her body stiffen, unsure of how to cope with the invasion of her body. She wasn’t crying, however, and he took that as a good sign.

No sooner had Logan thought that, then a tear slipped down her face, leaving a damp streak in its path. Every muscle in his body was taut as he struggled not to move, and he managed to grind out, “You doin’ okay, baby?”

She nodded, the bruising grip her fingers had on his shoulders lessening. “Just…strange.”

“I’ll make it real good for you, baby.” He pulled out and thrust back in experimentally, and her back arched, mouth falling open in pleasure. He smothered a grin against Marie’s chest as he pulled out and slid back in, finding a rhythm and pacing his thrusts. Soon enough, her body began to rock against his.

She moaned in his ear, hands grasping at his hair and nails scratching at his scalp. He was hitting spots inside her that he had never imagined existed, sending jolts of pleasure rocketing up her body and spreading through her fingers and toes. Her legs pulled back, wrapping around his waist until her heels dug into his upper thighs, just below his ass cheeks. She met him thrust for thrust, panting and moaning against his skin as he worshipped her body.

Suddenly, one of his arms looped under her knee, dragging her leg up and over until it rested on his shoulder, and angled his hips so that each thrust touched her in new places. He was grunting, sweating against her skin and dog tags that had been hidden underneath his shirts skimming across her breasts. His left arm shot out and grabbed for the headboard, pulling at it in order to gain leverage for his thrusting.

“God,” he heard her moan, and felt her nails raking down his back, leaving scratches that closed almost immediately. “Logan…f-feel so good, ungh…” Her body lifted into his, taking him deeper than she had been. Growling, he momentarily lost control and began to thrust into her willing body with abandon, a touch of Wolverine coming to the surface as he slid into her over and over again. A sobbing moan was ripped through her throat as pleasure shot through her system, overwhelming her mind and senses as Logan made love to her.

She had never thought she would be able to feel this, so afraid to let boys close to her after the terror she had suffered by the hands of her brutal foster father, the only one to treat her in such a manner. He had betrayed the trust that had been placed in his hands, and she had thought that his betrayal would scar her for life…

Until now…until Logan.

She cried out as the man in question thrust hard, dragging her out of her somewhat dismal thoughts. He was grunting out her name, beads of sweat rolling off of him and onto her as he took her in the most intimate of ways.

She felt something build within her, a pressure in her lower abdomen that demanded to be released, and was growing with an agonizing sweetness. Small, red hot tremors were pulsing within her, promising to lead to something bigger, and her hands slid to his ass and pulled him into her harder. “Please,” she whispered hoarsely, eyes fluttering shut. “Logan, please…”

She wasn’t quite sure what she was asking for, but he seemed to know. He was so close to coming, and if her moans and pleading were any indication, she was reaching that precipice as well and at a rapid speed. Leaning down, he kissed her hard, pulling back only to whisper assurances that he would give her what she needed.

One of his hands snaked between them, fingers trailing down to her clit before pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. She gasped raggedly, thrusting her hips against his as he rubbed the small button of nerves. She moaned into his ear, and he pulled back as he pounded and rubbed her, needing to see her reaction, face to face, as he did this.

“Open your eyes,” he demanded gruffly. Her heavy lids lifted, and she gazed up at him with chocolate eyes glazed over in lust. He pinched her clit firmly once more, and her eyes shot open wide as she cried out, inner walls clenching and fluttering around him as she came.

It was like nothing she had ever experienced. Her eyesight was fading in slowly from the corners, pleasurable tremors racing through her body as she finally found completion. “Oh, Logan,” she gasped as she hit the peak of it, before slowly starting to come down.

His hand left her clit, slamming back into the mattress as he thrust into her three more times, the combination of her tightness and the residual shaking of her orgasm making it hard for him to hold back any longer.

With a loud cry that resembled a roar, he came, filling her with his seed and murmuring nonsense words that to him, translated into declarations of love. To Marie, however, it sounded like broken sweet nothings, ones that she couldn’t really understand but treasured all the same.

And when he collapsed, sated, into her arms, she wrapped herself around him and let him settle into her warm embrace.

She was so. Screwed.

That was the only thing that she could think of to describe the situation she found herself currently in. It was hopeless, agitating, and completely overwhelming her system.

Marie sighed, threading her fingers through her hair and pushing it out of her face. A Trigonometric equation stared up at her, taunting her with its unfathomable answer. “One over sine minus 1, plus one over sine plus 1 equals negative 2 secant squared y.” She threw down her pencil in frustration, feeling a sense of satisfaction in the way it cracked against the wood of her desk. “I hate Trig,” she pouted, slouching in her chair.

Jubes smacked her gum in response, flipping through the pages of the latest US Weekly. “Uh, duh. That’s why I’m not doing it.” She arched an eyebrow over the picture of a pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears. “That’s why I never do it.”

“Jubes,” Marie laughed, spinning in her chair. “That’s why you’re failing.”

“A 72 is not failing,” she shot back, tossing the magazine at Marie’s head. She squealed and ducked, listening to the noises the projectile reading material made as it whizzed past her head and slapped against her Trig homework. Hoisting herself out of her chair, she threw herself onto her bed with a moan. “God save me from school.”

“Um,” Jubilee said, raising an eyebrow and rolling over onto her stomach. “Shut up. You have the hottest history teacher I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And he tutors you. Man, if I were you, I’d so get on that.”

Marie flushed, grumbling out her roommates name in embarrassment. “Shuddup.”

“Oh, please,” her best friend snorted indelicately. “Like you haven’t thought about it. You’re sweatin like a whore in church just thinking about it. You’d bang him in a second if you had the chance.”

“Who?”

Marie groaned, burying her face in her hands at the amused timber of Logan’s voice. Jubilee grinned, hopping up and skipping to the door. Logan raised an eyebrow at her, and then cast an amused glance at Marie. While his back was turned, Jubilee motioned frantically towards the hulking History teacher and mouthed unknown, but clearly obscene instructions to Marie. Logan turned around, sensing the inane motions she was making, and Jubilee merely grinned at him, and with a waggle of her fingers, flounced off.

Marie, flushed, stepped by him and shut her door. Turning around, she leaned against it, moaning, “I’m so sorry. She’s ridiculous, but I love her.”

Logan chuckled, lowering his messenger bag to the ground and leaning over her to give her a kiss. “Ready to talk about the Vietnam War?”

000

Logan smiled down at Marie as she snored softly, face smushed against a crumpled page of her history text book. She had fallen asleep sometime between page 365 and 367, a small puddle of drool developing under her lush mouth. Kissing her on the head, he brushed hair out of her face and smiled.

Never before had a girl, let alone one so young, affected him in this way. Marie took hold of his heartstrings and tugged, pulling him along until he tumbled head over heels for her. He wasn’t a fool though…he knew that her age would prove to be a hurdle in their relationship that they would either jump over smoothly, or stumble and crash into. She was seventeen years old, a high school student, his student. He didn’t even know how old he was, and he was her teacher.

There were too many obstacles for their relationship to work, he thought sadly. But he’d be damned if he let it end without fighting for it.

000

Marie woke up three hours later with a crick in her neck and imprints of a textbook page wedged into her cheek. “Fuck,” she muttered, scrubbing at her eyes with her hand. “What time is it?”

“Like, eleven or something.”

She blinked blearily at Jubilee, who grinned happily at her over a blank sheet of vocabulary for her English class. “I passed the Hunk on his way out. Said you fell asleep in the middle of talking about some war.”

Marie groaned, burying her face in her comforter. “Oh, God,” she whimpered. “That’s so embarrassing. I can’t believe I missed most of tutoring just because I was tired. Logan must be so-”

“Whoa there, chica,” Jubes said, scooting herself towards the edge of her bed. “Logan? First name basis? Girl, you’re so digging him!” She squealed, jumping to Marie’s bed and bouncing the other girl out of place. “How effing GORGEOUS is he? You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed it,” she said gleefully off of Marie’s sour look. “Did you too touch hands or something? Were there…” she sent out sparks of energy through her finger tips and laid her hand carefully on the back of Marie’s knee. “Sparks?”

Marie swatted at her, losing her balance in her struggle to get away from the shocking power of Jubilee’s fingers. She landed on the ground with a muffled thump, and stood, rubbing her butt as she winced. “Shut up, Jubes.”

“Oh, come on! You can’t tell me you don’t want to fu-”

Marie spun around, fixing her best friend with a glare. “Jubilation Lee. Stop it right now.”

Jubilee looked stunned, eyes wide and dark hair falling in her face. She seemed to be inspecting Marie for something, but for what, the other girl didn’t know. Finally, after a few minutes of scrutinization, Jubilee breathed out a small, “Oh.” She stood, and immediately enveloped her room mate in a tight hug. “Oh sweetie. I had no idea…”

Marie stiffened, wondering what she meant. “What?”

Jubes squeezed her tighter and whispered, “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Marie didn’t even need to respond. The tear the Jubilee felt soak the shoulder of her t shirt was answer enough.

000

The next day, Marie felt relief settle into her as she settled into her English bump class. A few days out of every ten day school cycle, she would have a short forty five minute class during her fourth period. Today was English, and she was forced to sit in front of Max Stallworth and his goons.

“Hey freak,” he said, shoving the books off of her desk as he walked by.

She glared at him, and bent down to get her copy of The Great Gatsby. “Mature,” she said, brushing the white hair out of her eyes.

“Alright class,” called Mr. Jonas, their english teacher. “Open your books to chapter nine, and let’s talk.”

Forty minutes later, when Mr. Jonas had deemed their discussion over, he stopped them as they began to pack up their knapsacks. “So, who remembers last week when I told you that there would be a project coming up?” Groans from the students were his only answer. “I see you do! Good. I’m going to assign each of you two partners, and the three of you will be assigned a character from Gatsby to analyze and trace their character developments throughout the book. Okay…Kennedy, Zaharris, and Jones? You three have Daisy. Dosey, Thomas, and Brown, you all have Tom. Bradley, Peters, and Chapin, you three will have Gatsby.”

Marie felt unease settle into her stomach as the list of possible partners grew shorter and shorter. Even all of Stallworth’s mook friends had been paired up at this point, and she didn’t know what she would do with herself if she was stuck with the spawn of Satan.

“Miller, Scholz, Wheeler, you three will have…Jordan. She’ll be a little harder to trace but I think you’ll have a good time working on her character,” Mr. Jonas continued. “Jackson, Ruby, and Robinson, you will be assigned George and Myrtle Wilson. And, finally….D’Ancanto and Stallworth. I saved the best for last. You two will be looking at Nick, and tracing the developments in his character. You two both have exceptional grades in this class, and I know it’s going to be a bit difficult to get his exact pathway of change because he’s the narrator, but I think you two can do it.”

His smile was a stark contrast to the sinking feeling in Marie’s gut, and she turned around to see a similar expression of shock and disgust on Stallworth’s face. “Shit,” she muttered, and dropped her head into her hands.

000

“So how do you want to do this.”

“I don’t care.”

“How can you not care? It’s a huge project.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Max sneered at her. “I just don’t want to be seen working with a freak like you.

Marie felt rage boil through her veins, arms crackling with energy as she briefly lost control of both her temper and her powers. “Watch it,” she warned. He sent her a sharp glare, but didn’t argue any further. Sighing, she tousled her hair and let it fall in a thick curtain down her back. “Listen, I know you and I don’t like each other, but we need to get a good grade on this assignment. In order to do that, we need to-”

“Do you smell that?” he interrupted suddenly, sniffing the air. Marie looked around the small room they sat in at Stallworth’s house. They had agreed to meet there since it was so close to the school, and an easy car ride back to the Mansion for her. “It smells like something’s burning.”

She sniffed, scrunching her nose, and the fumes of smoke burned the nostrils suddenly. She covered her mouth and nose with her hand, gagging on the awful scent. “What the hell is that,” she said, looking around. Suddenly, one of the heavy curtains that had accidentally draped over a small space heater burst into flame, shocking both the teens into scrambling away from the fire.

The licking flames quickly spread up the thick fabric, and Marie swore. “Get back behind me!” Stallworth ordered, shoving her none too gently behind him. “Stay there, Marie!”

“What the hell are you doing?!” she shrieked, grabbing his bicep. “Max-”

“Step back,” he yelled, and thrust out his arms, palms facing the fire. Water spewed from his palms, soaking the curtains and the carpet beneath it, effectively putting an end to the small fire. He lowered his arms, breathing hard, and when he turned to face her, his usually green eyes were a startling and unnatural shade of bright blue, pupils contracted vertically, like a cat’s.

She swallowed, nerves overwhelming her as she sank weakly into a chair. His eyes slowly swirled back to normal, and for the first time ever, he looked at her, ashamed.

Her breath hitched in her chest, and she tightened her grip on the armrest.

“You’re a mutant?”

“I’m sorry,” Stallworth whispered, shoulders slouching. He cast his gaze away from her, and she could see the tremble in his hands as he clenched his fingers into fists.

“You’re a mutant?” she repeated weakly, her hand going slack on the armrest she had previously been holding on to. “Why…why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, right,” he snorted, anger seeping into his voice. “Because that’s completely fucking do-able. Just waltz up to you and tell you how big of a freak of nature I am and hope you don’t call the cops on me. Yeah fuckin’ right.” He glared at her, green eyes sparkling with rage and unshed tears. “I know what you’re thinking. Big freak, right? I can shoot water out of my hands, and you-”

“I,” she interrupted, shooting to her feet, “am just like you.” She tugged on her white hair, wrapping strands around her fingers. “See this? I was strapped to a machine on the top of the Statue of Liberty, was almost killed just so some sicko could use that machine to kill all mutants, and did die for a few seconds. My body was so stressed by the experience my hair turned white.” She held up her hands to his eyes, turning them over. “I could flip my power on right now and just suck all your memories and power right out of you. And you’d die.”

Max gulped, his glance alternating between her hands and her eyes. The silence stretched for a moment, and she eventually lowered her hands and tucked them into her pockets. Eventually, Stallworth cleared his throat and asked her a question she never thought she’d hear.

“Do…do you like pizza?”

000

“My uncles are mutants,” Max informed her, his voice muffled slightly by the pizza shoved into his mouth.

“Care to repeat that?” Marie asked him, amused. He rolled his eyes and swallowed, and tried again.

“My uncles are mutants. My mom told me once, when I was thirteen. The oldest one, is real name is Edward Stallworth, but he goes by Quake. He can control the taxatronic plates of the earth, or whatever.”

“Tectonic?”

“Yeah, that one. Anyway, my second oldest uncle, Jim, calls himself Gale Force or something stupid like that. He can control wind, you know? Make twisters and bend the air. That sort of shit. And then Bill, he can make fire with his hands. Just like, clap them together and a spark appears. I think he calls himself Flamethrower.”

“I know a boy who can do the same thing,” Marie said, wiping her mouth. “’Cept he can’t make it. He can only manipulate it. He calls himself Pyro.”

Max groaned. “See, that’s way cooler than fuckin’ ‘Flamethrower.’ But anyways, my dad was the only one out of four boys that wasn’t a mutant. Which, you know, really ticked him off. And you know how they discovered a couple years ago that the fathers are the ones who carry the latent genes for mutation? Well, my old man was so pissed off about that, that he spent the next years of my life telling me how worthless and how stupid mutants were. Even before they found all that stuff out, he was telling me how much of a freak I was. My mom says it’s because he’s jealous that all of his brothers got the mutation, and he only got the carrier gene. That they got so much attention from his parents, and he only got the feeling they were disappointed in him for not being like them. For not having my mutation…water bending…and being able to complete The Elements.”

“The Elements?” she asked. “What’s that?”

“My Opa and Oma had this whole…idea. It was the fifties, you know? Comics were huge and my grandparents were into this idea of a superhero team that nobody had seen before. Each of my uncles had a different elemental power, but because my dad didn’t have any kind of power it didn’t happen. I guess my grandfather resented him for it. It must have been hard, you know? To be the only one without that ability.”

“Fire…water…earth…wind…” Marie whispered to herself. “They could have been the greatest X-Men.”

Max’s head shot up from where he was gazing at the countertop. “X-Men?” He stood, shoving his chair across the linoleum. “You know about the X-Men?”

“Of course,” she said, raising an eyebrow in confusion. “I’m training to be a full member of the team. Why?”

“Nothin’,” Max muttered, throwing himself into his chair again. “Just didn’t think Uncle Charles would let somebody so young into the team.”

Marie choked on her pizza crust, pounding on her chest to try and dislodge the ragged piece of bread. “Sorry?” she said hoarsely. “What did you just say?”

“Oh…” Max muttered, wincing. “Did…I not mention that my mom’s uncle, my great-uncle, is the Professor?”

“No,” Marie said, incredulous. “Are you shitting me?” She stumbled to her feet. “This whole time…this whole damn time you’ve been giving me shit for living with Charles, for…for being an orphan, and you’ve known about everything he does?”

“Well, yeah…but I didn’t know that you knew!” he said, holding his palms out in a gesture meant to be placating. “Plus, once I made fun of you the first time…it just kinda seemed as if I had to do it. Like it was something people expected out of me.”

Angry, Marie chucked a slice of pizza at him, satisfied with the wet slop it made when it hit his shirt. “Asshole,” she hissed, grabbing her jacket and slinging her bag over her shoulder. Ignoring his protests and his cries of her name, she only paused at the door to hiss, “You’re just as bad as I thought you were.”

“Marie!”

But she was already gone.

000

Marie slammed the door to her room and pulled her bag off from around her shoulders. Still seething, she threw it almost violently into the corner, and was startled by the muffled, “Oomph,” that came in response. Starting, she turned to find the source of the noise.

Logan sat on Jubes’s bed, clutching her messenger bag in his lap. “Jesus Christ, kid,” he winced, shifting the offending object onto Jubilee’s mattress. “I know I’m damn near indestructable and all, but that still hurts.”

She offered him a meek smile and sank down onto her own comforter, shoulders drooping with exhaustion. “Sorry,” she mumbled, shrugging out of her jacket. “Just a little stressed out right now.”

Logan frowned and moved across the room, sitting next to Marie and massaging her shoulders lightly. “I heard you got assigned a partner project with Max Stallworth. Is that why you missed our meeting today?”

Her eyes widened and she groaned, burying her face into his soft leather jacket. He pressed a kiss to her head and sunk a hand into her dark hair, concern coursing through him. It wasn’t like Marie to forget their tutoring sessions, and if Stallworth had anything to do with her lapse in memory and her apparent exhaustion, then he really needed to get to the bottom of this. “What happened?” he asked quietly.

Sighing again, she pushed away from him only to nestle back into his embrace, her back to his front. “We have this stupid English project where we have to analyze the progression of characters in The Great Gatsby, and I got stuck with Max. So I go over to his house and there was this whole thing with a fire-”

“A fire?” Logan repeated, tightening his grip in alarm.

“-and Max just like, throws out his hands and water comes pouring, and I mean like gushing out of his palms. Turns out,” she bit out angrily, “he’s a mutant just like you and me. Not only that, but I find out that his mom’s uncle is Charles. This whole time he’s been giving me crap for…for living with Charles and being an outcast, he’s known exactly what I’ve been dealing with and he’s just…just…” She sighed, collapsing against him. “A jerk.”

Logan pressed a soft kiss to the skin of her neck, running his hands down her shoulders and arms, squeezing comfortingly. “I’m sorry baby.”

She turned to face him, brushing her lips against his own. “It’s okay,” she whispered, nuzzling her nose against his throat. His eyelids fluttered shut and a soft growl rumbled through his chest. “Wanna calm me down?”

With an answering growl, he flipped her onto her bed and attacked her mouth, relishing in the sound of her delighted squeal.

000

The next day, Marie dutifully avoided any contact with Max. It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part. Whenever his lackies weren’t hovering around him, he was trying to talk to Marie, and whispering low pleas for her to please just please listen to what he had to say.

Her opportunities for avoidance, however, ran out when she found her arm in a firm grasp, and herself being pulled into the janitor’s closet. “What the f-“

A large hand settled over her mouth, muffling the end of her statement. She bit down on one of the fingers over her lips and smirked at the curse that followed. “What do you want,” she hissed.

Max glared at her, cradling his hand to his chest. “I want you to listen,” he whispered back. “I want you to hear me out so I can fucking apologize and stop feeling so damn guilty about this whole thing.”

Marie looked down at her feet, shuffling the flats along the ground. “I’m listening.”

He ran a hand through his hair, sighing. “It’s just…I was scared, okay? My whole life I’ve been raised with a man who hates everything about mutants. He hates his own family, and if word ever got out about my mom’s connection to the Prof, or about my mutation, then I’d be totally screwed. My dad’s a powerful man, and he could totally screw up my chances at getting a scholarship for college.” He placed his big hands on her shoulders, easily cupping the appendages. “Marie…I don’t know what to do with myself. And I’m sorry for giving you shit all these years, I don’t even really know why I did it. And I know you can’t forgive me for what I’ve said or done to you in the past, but right now, under these circumstances, I need somebody on my side.”

She eyed him warily, curiosity sending her eyebrow to a peak. “What do you mean, ‘under these circumstances’?”

“Didn’t anybody tell you?” he whispered, leaning closer. “Marie…there’s a war coming.”