Every year at the X-Mansion, the night before Halloween the Professor put on a marathon of horror films, both classic and modern. Logan found the movies both unrealistic and boring, but Marie liked having him there so she could curl into him. She liked having someone beside her whose hand she could grab or whose chest she could bury her face in, as the scene warranted. That part of the night, Logan had no problems with.

It was on just such an All Hallow's Eve eve that Marie and Logan were waiting for the second movie to be put in and the lights turned back off. Logan was comfortable. He was leaning back in his corner of the sofa with Marie curled into his side. Then she turned her “innocent” face in his direction. He immediately tensed. That face was rarely ever a sign of a good thing to come, unless, of course, it was when they didn't have an audience.

"Logan, Jean was wondering if you'd be willing to stay at the mansion and hand out candy again. She let the kids pick which teachers they wanted to go out trick or treating with them, and you and Storm didn't get picked, but Storm is going to some charity event with Xavier."

One eyebrow scrunched down while the other swooped upward. He was about to growl when he realized that Jean wasn't anywhere near that stupid.

"Marie," he drew her name out in a warning. "You never told her what happened the last two times, didya?"

The innocent look disappeared and Marie bit her bottom lip. "Um, no."

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Two Years Ago

"Logan, what is this? If you didn't want to give out candy, you should have just said so."

Marie had just stormed into the front foyer after walking through the mansion from the side entrance, having just parked one of the vans that had carried the students who had trick-or-treated all night. In her hands was a note she had found on the front gate. She paused when she saw that Logan was sitting in a chair he had brought from another room, staring at the door with a bowl full of candy on his lap.

Seeing the note in her hand, Logan took it and read it out loud. "Parents, do not take your children to the door. A dangerous man will threaten your children. Sincerely, a concerned parent."

Logan snarled and crumpled the paper, shoving the candy bowl into Marie's hands before stomping upstairs. Putting away the bowl and candy and throwing the note in the recycling bin, Marie followed him at a more sedate pace.

"You want to tell me what happened?" she asked when she reached his room.

"There was only one kid the whole night. I should have known that something wasn't right." Logan ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up a little more than usual. "The boy was about ten, old enough to enjoy being scared, I thought. He kept bouncing around and asking what kind of mutant I was, whether I could blow things up or fly or shit like that. So, I showed him my claws. He left before I could even give him a piece of candy."

Marie wrapped her arms around Logan and bit the inside of her lip hard to keep from laughing.

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Last Year

Rogue led Jaime, one of the younger mutants, back into the mansion. The poor boy had eaten too much candy too quickly and had asked to go home only twenty minutes into the trick-or-treating trek. The porch light was off, and there was no sign of Logan anywhere near the door, where he was supposed to be handing out candy again.

They'd had a long discussion about not popping claws in front of the kids and scaring them away, so Logan had agreed to give handing out candy another try, mostly because she had begged very convincingly. Had he just been humoring her?

After she had tucked Jaime in, Rogue stalked off in search of Logan. She eventually found him in the kitchen, sitting down with the empty candy bowl in his lap. That brought her up short. Had there been a crush of kids already? Then she noticed the forlorn expression on Logan's face.

"What happened?" she asked softly.

"I didn't let my claws out," Logan immediately defended. He sighed and told her, "The first kid was fine, little girl dressed as a ballerina, cute little thing. But the next kid," Logan shuddered. "It was a boy, a bit older than the girl. He started singing this song about smelly feet and underwear."

"And…" Marie promoted when he stopped.

In a very small voice, Logan confessed, "I told him I could already smell his feet a mile away. He freaked out so I gave him all the candy in the bowl so he'd shut up and his parents wouldn't react like last year. I didn't know it was 'all' the candy."

Marie's mouth fell open. The bowl in question was the biggest bowl the mansion had, large enough to hold salad for every mutant Xavier knew. How had the kid even been able to carry all that candy? Marie sighed and gave Logan a comforting hug.

"At least I didn't tell him I wasn't wearing any underwear for him to pull down," he defended sulkily.

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Now

"I'm not going through that again," Logan said firmly.

A few minutes passed in relative silence, considering there were over twenty other people in the room.

"I've got an idea," Marie said only loud enough that he would hear since the lights were off again and the second movie was finally starting.

He gave her hand a gentle squeeze to let her know he was listening. She didn't have his hearing anymore, so if he did say anything it would have to be loud enough for others to hear him as well.

"We could hook one of the laptops up to the surveillance system and you could put out just enough goodies for the number of kids coming up from the gate. You could leave them in a bowl on the lap of that skeleton Scott put on the porch swing. Heck, you could even sit in the common room with the laptop and watch TV and only get up when you have to."

"I could do that," he agreed softly, whispering directly into her ear.

"And then when I get back, I'll give you a nice treat."

The Wolverine grinned at the suggestive promise in Marie's voice. Maybe Halloween wasn't so bad, after all.

The End.