Rogue's eyes trailed down the glossy page. She was past concentrating on the uniform type and flicked restlessly, only stopping when a picture trapped her mind. The exact pronunciation of 'Joaquin' was what she was dwelling on when her door was flung open.
"Rogue!" Jubilee announced.
Marie skewed an eyebrow and nodded drily. Who else was meant to be found in her room??
"It's soo..." her hazel eyes darted around the room, "... good that ...." Still with eyes searching, Jubilee cracked into a smile, "... you're... here."
"Hey Roguey," Kitty drawled, sliding past Jubilee as the perky teenager continued to look highly suspicious.
"Kits," Rogue rolled along her bed, giving her friend ample room.
"What's up with Jubes?"
Kitty waved her hand dismissively and chose to examine Rogue's magazine instead.
"Premiere," Kitty murmured appreciatively. Jubilee huffed away from the door, letting it slam behind her and leapt to the base of the bed.
"She hasn't been eating PEZ again has she?" Rogue whispered with concern. Kitty muttered something and withdrew into the magazine before Jubilee's lithe hands locked onto it and wrenched.
"Premiere, Rogue? Shouldn't you be reading some of the educational material I brought you?" Jubilee groaned. Of course, she referred to the foot high stack by Rogue's bed; of Cosmo's, Elle's and B's. Rogue had been alternately using it as a doorstop and a bedside table.
"I've read them all," she replied unflinchingly.
"Excellent! So what creature of the night are you most compatible with?" Jubilee asked excitedly.
Rogue assumed she was referring to one of the patronizing, presumptuous and irksome quizzes that populated those magazines and stabbed wildly in the dark.
"Werewolves."
"No way! Vampires are so totally sexy! Fangs and immortality and all those dark, penetrating looks." Jubilee sighed wistfully.
Kitty snickered, "Too little body hair."
Jubilee snorted in laughter while Marie had the presence of mind to look indignant.
"Just because I don't happen to find the notion of some guy embedding his teeth in my flesh and sucking of my virginal blood for his eternal enjoyment attractive, gives you no right to insinuate that-"
Rogue looked to Kitty's and Jubilee's faces and bit off her statement. Sometimes there really was no point.
"No. Just no."
Their eyes locked on each other again and something passed between them, hidden to Rogue. She crinkled her eyebrows but concluded she probably didn't want to know anyway.
"Don't you two have homework or something?"
"It's a Friday night, Ro!" Jubes whined, just as Kitty said, "We've already done it."
Marie turned to her friend stretched out on the bed, "The lit essay? I've been wanting some help with that."
Kitty shook her head slowly and shot another look to Jubilee, who was now shaking her head fiercely and mouthing 'NO'.
"Subtle, Jubes," Marie drawled. Jubilee rolled her eyes and crawled away, towards her stack of magazines.
"We've been working on our household skills," Kitty stated. Marie beckoned for her to continue.
"Umm," Kitty killed a smile, "Plumbing actually, you could call it."
"Plumbing? Is that something Scott's teaching?" The last Marie had heard, all classes involving heavy machinery, high water pressures and large blunt objects had been canceled by Cyclops.
"Nope," Kitty smiled sweetly, "Logan."
Marie feigned indifference, murmured something like 'that's nice' or 'have fun', and completely disappointed Kitty and Jubilee who'd been hoping for a slightly more obvious reaction.
Jubilee turned away disgruntled, redoing a quiz on her self-esteem but Kitty caught the latent sign. Stroking one hand down the centre of her chest, Rogue turned her head and sighed. Despite the seemingly autoerotic nature of the movement, Kitty knew of the tag beneath her sweater. She grinned slyly, knowing then she'd made the right decision to listen to and - god forbid - help Jubilee with her latest cunning plan.
Jubilee had been tapping her foot for the last fourteen and a half minutes and it was starting to get on Marie's nerves. Hell, it was irritating as... well, hell. Not that she'd ever been but she imagined eternity broiling in brimstone would be approximately as unnerving as the repeated thump, thump, thump... With the occasional nonrhythmic thamp to really mess her up. The furtive looks Jubilee kept giving the clock and the door were only emphasizing the veiled tension. And Marie was ready to snap.
She inhaled deeply, frustrated and opening her mouth...
Just as the door swung open again.
Three pairs of eyes leapt to the appearance of Logan. Tight jeans, chest glowing with exercise and sweat, and carrying a bundle under his arm he successfully stopped her mouth in an open pout.
"Marie..." he eyed the other two occupants of the room warily but continued, "Can I borrow your shower?"
"Uhh," hasty cough and swallow, "Something wrong with yours, Logan?"
He cocked an eyebrow, looking irresistibly perturbed and grumbled, "Plumbing's fucked."
The way he said the last word, husky and half-growled, caught in the mind of each girl there. Left to dark imaginings, silence settled over the room, leaving Logan to interpret it as disapproval.
"Sorry," he looked away apologetically, "Broken."
"S'cool Logan," Marie smiled and he felt a responsive twitch at the corners of his mouth. "Go ahead, there's shampoo and conditioner if you need it."
Logan nodded thankfully and shuffled into the compact en suite. The last sight they caught before the door closed was of Logan standing staunchly up, his neck tilted up so the bob in his neck jutted out, and nostrils flaring as he hungrily inhaled.
The smug look Jubilee gave to Kitty was undeniable, but deny it, Rogue did.
~~ Maybe she doesn't know anything.
** She has to know!
~~ No, she would have said something!
** She does have a brain stem...
Jubilee and Kitty broke off the exchange that had been passing between eyes and facial contortions as Rogue interrupted.
"I don't want to know."
And that was all she said.
The shower started up and whorls of steam escaped the door frame, leaving the three girls to occupy their silence contentedly. Rogue flicked open a history book and began scanning the assigned pages.
She tried not to visualize Logan in her shower. She tried not to think that there was a mere panel of wood and one ducky shower curtain separating her eyes and his bare physique. Or the way water rolled off his body, tracing arcs of muscle once it pummeled into the dark skin and darker hair. She tried not to think of the way coarse fingertips passed over that skin with her soap, leaving her mark across his skin, like he'd seared his mark into so much.
She tried damn hard.
Logan pushed the door open to see two faces turn up slowly. He didn't pay attention to the way both Jubilee and Kitty surveyed his body from the ground up. While Kitty had the decency not to look in his eyes and turned pinkly back to her magazine, Jubilee beamed at Logan's face. He still hadn't noticed, focused instead on the slender girl rugged up on her bed.
"Thanks Marie," he chanced a smile. The object of his attention looked up for a moment. She was stretched along the bed, stomach down and arching her face to meet his. Curls of brown and white framed her full features, eyes glassed and a muted pink 'o' of her mouth, as though her concentration had been broken. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip hastily, wetting her mouth to speak and Logan turned his gaze to the door to stop it venturing lower, into the open angle of her sweater.
Marie bit her lip as she heard, and felt, the bathroom door swing open. She cursed the heavy falterings of her breath and the warm, salty thoughts coursing her mind. Her head low, her hair wisping into a barrier, she praised her peripheral vision. The portrait of Logan, standing at the door, naked except for a thin blue towel slung low over his hips clicked sharply into focus as he addressed her. Marie's eyes shot up to his face before she could control herself. He obviously hadn't dried himself well, still shaggy with water and the faintest haze of steam lifting from his skin into the cool room. She swallowed drily and tried to wet her mouth.
"No problem," and the huskiness in the voice surprised both her and Logan. She might just be getting over a flu, he assured himself, but the tone grated through his skin and abraded in his stomach.
Realizing the limitations of short, scraggly blue towels; throaty accents and three witnesses, Logan glared at Jubilee and Kitty for good measure and departed the room carefully. The door swung shut after his hand pulled at it gently and two sighs filled the room.
Rogue was staring intently at the page in front of her again. Jubilee and Kitty frowned to each other and looked longingly at the door. Logan's room was two floors away...
"Well, it's been great--"
"Look at the time--"
"-see you soon."
"-stay out of trouble, girlfriend."
Rogue stared at the doorway with her eyebrow cocked as Jubilee and Kitty shot out the way Logan had just been. When the door slammed shut, leaving only her and the steady tap of water on bathroom tiles, she flicked her hair back and turned her mind to other things. Less growling, steaming, scantily clad... things.
"Joe - ah - quinn? Waa-kin?
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Author's Chapter Notes:
It's bitsy, it's broken and it's foofesque. (oh, and i like the quizzes in trashy mags ;)