The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
If you don't need fluffy happy endings to feel complete reading this isn't nesseccary. If you do then enjoy. :)
She loved driving, she really did. She loved the little short bursts of vacations Scott let her and no one else have to do nothing but see a little bit of the world. She dug a small place for herself in the world at the mansion, even managed to find a family. Her full time job now was to raid mutant labs like the ones that held her. It was easier to break people out from the outside, she found.
As impressed as she was that her life somehow found a way to turn out pretty alright she didn’t want it to be completely wrapped up in being a mutant and mutant affairs. She wanted to experience things she never had a chance to experience before. See what was out in the world.
So by no means did she hate the long drives seeing the world required. What she hated was being cooped up inside that damn box of a car for hours on end. Okay, maybe she’d developed a slightly bad case of claustrophobe but so what. Dingy hole in the wall bars in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly her idea of a relaxing break either but here she was. The smoke was too thick and the people were too loud but it wasn’t a car and it was the only thing for miles in any direction so it would have to do.
She settled onto the bar just as the crowded roared to life again. There must have been cock fights or dog fights or something in the middle of that crowd to get them going so much. Whatever it was she sure as hell didn’t want to see it. Sick bastards.
“Bourbon, please,” she order when the bartender lifted his chin at her. He smirked, at her manners she supposed. But a not so clean glass of amber was deposited immediately in front of her so she let his facial gestures slide.
It didn’t burn going down. It never did. She never understood how some people couldn’t even take a shot of it. Jubilee told her if she tried tequila she wouldn’t be so smug. It was probably true and that might have something to do with why she never drank tequila. She wasn’t openly searching dangerous thrills in her life anymore; she learned that lesson at sixteen.
She was, however, enjoying how it chased out the cold the damn Canadian winter forced into her bones with its own smooth warmth. The cold never did sit well with her. Three years she lived in New York and every winter she had to burry herself under layers. If it wasn’t for the chance to walk around with her mutation on she’d have insisted the professor move the school to below the Mason Dixon line. But she forgot the tingling feel her mutation left on her skin when it was on for a prolonged period of time and the winter let her enjoy if for a little bit.
She smirked as she started to warm and looked down to the liquor in her hand. Really, the dirty glass only added to the effect. A fever from any infection she caught would warm her up even more.
And then she dropped it.
“That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. The winner takes on returning champion! I give to you: Wolverine! King of the Cage!”
She was off the bar stool and to her feet before the announcers could even break out his bucked tooth smile. The crowd roared again, louder this time. She still couldn’t see anything but people.
Moving through a crowd of totally plastered Canadians was not easy, especially not with her slight limp dictating what steps she could take through the rowdy, constantly moving maze. But she got close enough to see the gleaming metal of the cage. And then black hair swooped up into two points. Her heart sank into her stomach for a few fleeting seconds and then she smiled.
She gave up any attempt to move closer into the crowd. They were getting even more rambunctious as they watched what she could only guess was a great fight. She’d seen Wolverine fight a time or two before and she could understand the excitement. Kind of. At the time she saw it first hand she was too scared shit-less to enjoy the beauty of it and tonight she was too short. Go figure.
There was a heavy thud that she could even hear over the crowd. Then they got louder. She lost sight of Wolverine’s tale-tell hair.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” The announcer’s voice was back. “Still your undisputed King of the Cage! Wolverine!”
Crowd cheered collectively. She tried a polite clamp but the guy shoved up beside her offer his hand up. So with a shrug she high-fived him. Three others around her wanted high-fives after that. One guy completely missed her hand. What she quickly wanted was to get away from them. Thankfully the crowd began clearing out a little bit; off to get more booze was her best guess. With the declaration of the King of the Cage the fights must have been officially over, so it was easier for her to push through the people and get to the cage.
It was definitely him. Ignoring the hair for a minute she knew that wide, muscular back by heart. It was forever imprinted in her memory when it walked away from her through a hanger door. It wasn’t that she moved on and lived her life, not thinking about him. He was mentally a part of her and something even more than that. But never had she purposely set out to find him, not in the three years since he left and she stayed. Still, it would have been a lie to say that a small part of the reason for her travels was to see if he might pop up somewhere. She’d given up on that a while ago, though. And yet here he was.
She smirked and wrapped her fingers through the wire mess of the cage leaning her body against it. “Wolverine!” She called out.
Clear blue eyes set in a fierce glare wiped around to her. One thick black eyebrow cocked up.
“We gotta stop meetin’ like this, sugah,” she said with a smirk as she rattled the wall of the cage a little bit.
He stalked forward, a grim frown on his face, and his big boulder of shoulders swaying as he walked. But then he suddenly pulled to a stop a few feet away from her. Both eyes narrowed at her and she relished in the feel of him taking her all in. It’d been a long time since anyone watched her with so much intensity like he did. She missed the shot to her nervous system it caused.
“Rogue,” he said, his voice laced with uncertainty. His voice. It knocked the knowing smile right off her face. No longer was it hoarse and rough. It was still bass drum deep but now smooth like the bourbon she’d just split all over the floor of the bar.
“Marie,” she corrected him with a shrug, her own voice seemingly taking up his former scratchiness.
He closed the rest of the distance and she was momentarily distracted by the way the light above the cage bounced off the sweat coating his chest. Until the lowered to his knees bringing himself eye level with her and it was all baby blues in her line of vision. She prided herself at somehow managing to stay stock still when he reached two fingers through the mess of the cage and pressed them to the metal tag hanging around her neck.
She smiled at him and gently closed her hand around his fingers. “Need mah help gettin’ outta there, Wolverine?”
He smirked at her. A slow, wolfish smirk that even long ago in the dark she knew he had in him. “No, darlin’, I think I can handle it this time. And it’s Logan now. Usually.”
“Logan,” she tried the name and instantly like how it flowed off her tongue. She smile returned to her face as she released his trapped fingers. “Ah like it.”
The two fingers didn’t return to their owner. Instead they rubbed the edge of her sweater just beside the chain. The caress was mostly through the thick material but his unnaturally hot fingers occasionally got skin and sent her skin flaring even with her mutation off. “Is that cashmere?”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“I like it.”
She couldn’t help it, she busted out laughing. “Ah’ll be at tha bar, big guy. Try not ta take forever.”