I went away for a whole lot of days
And stripped the soul right outta me
Led away in a crimson haze
The red was rain over me
(W.A.S.P. – No Way Out Of Here)
_____________________________________________________________
Six months had passed since death had claimed too many of the X-Men, since Jean had turned into their worst nightmare, and since many students had left the school for the cure. Many of them returned, plainly because even as ordinary humans, they had no other place to go, and Xavier’s took them in all the same.
And the more time passed, the more did Logan find that he believed in Jean’s words.
“Look at you, Logan... He tamed you!”
Because the longer he stayed at the school, the more restless did he become. After every class, the urge to run, to leave all this behind, grew stronger. He couldn’t remember ever having stayed in one place this long, and his unease was like an itch between the shoulder blades, out of reach and driving him insane.
He took to going out every night, staying out well until sunrise, visiting strip and fight bars, getting as drunk as he could and getting laid as often as possible. He stopped minding the disapproving looks some of the other teachers sent his way, ignored the lecture Storm gave and felt a little sting of pride when one of the kids tried to ransack his beer stack two days in a row.
His relationship with Rogue had been almost non-existent for a long time now, long before she took the cure in fact. Maybe it had been part of Xaviers’ manipulation, maybe it had just been life that got in the way. In any case, they hadn’t spoken much since her return, both having their own problems to keep them busy. Rogue and Bobby Drake had split for good about two weeks after her return, and he had since hooked up with Kitty Pryde. Rogue had become more silent than before, and whenever Logan asked how she was, he only got a “Fine” and a wan smile in return. When he heard that she had a new job and asked her what it was, he got a vague answer about it being at a bar, but never the name of the bar or what exactly she was doing there.
But then, his social skills had never been that well established. Still, he regretted that they had drifted apart like this, but she wouldn’t let him talk to her. One day, after he had tried talking to her about her physics exam at lunch and she had just sat there, eating in silence, Logan found himself closer to leaving than he ever had before. Keeping a tight reign on his anger, he drove into town that evening, intent on getting royally pissed and laid, blowing off some steam.
He drove around for a while, unwilling to go to one of his ‘regular’ joints that night. He wasn’t in the mood for the inevitable ‘conversations’ with the regulars who knew him, and so he pulled into the parking lot of a particularly seedy looking strip bar called ‘The Titty Twister’. Bad movie associations aside, this place looked to be exactly what he was looking for.
The air inside hit him like a sledgehammer, hot, smoky and stagnant. Heavy with unfulfilled desire. In the centre of the room was a stage where the girls danced, surrounded by a bar so you could be up close. It looked like a quiet night, not many people milling around the establishment. Logan didn’t feel like keeping up with his ‘mysterious stranger’ gig, and instead simply got himself a beer and sat at the stage.
The girl that was ‘performing’ looked too young to be anywhere in the vicinity of a strip bar, let alone be the star of the show. Long, blond locks that framed her face, a body that looked like it was just about to bloom. But when Logan caught her eyes, even through her faked lascivious expression, he knew that she was much older, and if she continued in this profession, she would continue ageing faster than her body did.
The last piece of her outfit fell to the ground, and Logan had to look away, suddenly disgusted. He had done all sorts of dumb shit, but this was a new low for him. At least it felt that way.
The stage was suddenly plunged into darkness, and he could hear heels clicking on the ground as the next girl got into position. A spotlight was turned on, and she sat on a chair in the middle of the stage. She was petite, muscles in all the right places. A hat was perched on top of her head, covering her hair, a mask concealing her face. The music started, and she slid into performing easily.
As Logan watched, he couldn’t fight the feeling that he knew her. The way she moved seemed familiar, and somehow he knew what she’d smell and taste and sound like. Knew how those endless legs would feel wrapped around his waist, how her nails would feel on his back. He scoffed into his beer. Probably one of his long lost memories, one he didn’t particularly miss.
She took off her hat and threw it away, and as it went sailing past him, he caught a whiff of her scent, and at the same time recognised the platinum streaks that now framed her face. He was dimly aware of glass shattering somewhere, and he realised it was his beer bottle when cold beer dripped into his lap and glass shards pierced his skin.
“Fuck.” He dropped the remains of the bottle and wiped his bloody hand on his jeans. As he looked back up at her, their eyes met, and he could feel the shame come off of her in waves. Her movements had become less co-ordinated and she looked ready to bolt.
He saw her reach for the drawstring of her top, her hands shaking, and in the blink of an eye he had grabbed her, flung her off the stage, knocked out a bouncer who tried to stop him and threw her into a booth in a corner of the room. Marie stared up at him, the breath having been knocked out of her, the mask slipping off her face. Her face revealed nothing but annoyance with his behaviour, and she slapped the mask on the table in front of her as he sat down on the other side of it.
“You done with that caveman bullshit now?”
He grabbed the mask, crumpling it in his fist, then dropped it back on the table. “What the hell d’you think you’re doin’ here?”
She sneered. “What did it look like?”
He waved in the general direction of the stage. “This is your great new job? You got to be fuckin’ kidding me.”
She scoffed and leaned back, crossing her arms in front of her chest, and Logan had to look away or he’d think too much about the way her breasts moved under the poor excuse of a top when she did that. “What’s it to you?”
He sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Look, I know things were a little strained between Bobby and you before, but...”
She laughed harshly, and at the confused look on his face smiled benevolently, like you’d smile at a child who is trying to convince you that two plus two equals five. “You still don’t get it, do you? You never did. This,” she motioned at herself, then at the bar. “This isn’t about Bobby. Nothing ever was. Not really.”
She looked down at her hands, bare and pale in the dim light. Nail polish had chipped off her right index finger, and she started picking at it. “Bobby was... He was safe. Convenient. He reminded me of home, of a time when nothing was more important than getting in with the in-crowd in school, or which colour to wear the next day. When I was just Marie, when I was ordinary and brunette and 14 and didn’t have a care in the world. That’s what Bobby was for me.” She looked up at him, her eyes looking much older than they should. “But I outgrew that a long time ago. If I’m honest, I had outgrown it long before I even came to the school.”
Staring at the stage, she started toying with her hair absentmindedly, and the lightest breeze carried her scent over to him, making him dizzy. She smelled like smoke and alcohol and lust, but beneath that was her scent. Just her, pure and sweet and Marie. Again, he had to look away because, for the first time since Jean’s death, he actually felt something beside anger or raw lust, and it scared him shitless. Because this wasn’t some bar chick, even though she tried her best to look like one, no, this was his little Marie, the girl that needed him to save and protect her.
He almost laughed out lout at the thought. Bang-up job had he done of protecting her. And she sure didn’t seem to need him anywhere near her. But when she looked at him, with tears filling her eyes and pain and fear staining her scent, he just moved over and opened his arms for her.
“Logan, I’m so scared...” She collapsed against him and sobbed into his side, and for the first time since that night on Lady Liberty, he touched her, gently, carefully. He pushed away her hair and stroked her cheek, and as her sobs died down, a warmth spread inside him that he didn’t want to explore, because it meant going to places he didn’t think he was ready for.
“What are ya scared of?”
She leaned against him, wiping at her eyes and sniffling a little. When she said, “Of myself,” his breath caught, and she seemed to notice, for suddenly her hand was on his leg and softly squeezing his thigh. “I was so stupid, Logan. I thought... I thought being normal would make everything okay. That maybe then, Bobby would want me, and he’d turn into what I want. But it didn’t change anything. I’m still a freak, and still no one touches me, and Bobby still doesn’t want me.” She sighed deeply. “I can’t go back to Meridian, and the fancy X Institute education is worth jack shit because if I hand over my diploma, the whole world knows that I was a mutant, and no one likes a traitor.”
He gently turned her to face him. “You’re not a traitor, Marie.”
“Oh please. Of course I am.” He wiped away a left-over tear that was drying on her cheek, and she shivered. “God, Logan...”
He tried to ignore that now she smelled of arousal, the heat that suddenly pulsed through him, the vivid images of her writhing beneath him that appeared behind his eyelids. Tried to ignore how her fingers were dancing over his jeans-clad thighs, trembling. Tried to remember that she was only 22, a mere child compared to him, that she was vulnerable and trusted him, that she was probably desperate for any kind of contact and that it most likely had nothing to do with him.
~ Yeah, right. ~
He looked at her, and he knew what this - all of this, everything that had happened ever since she laid eyes on him in the bar in Laughlin City – was all about. It was about him, always had been, always would be. She herself probably didn’t even know why.
But sometimes, he thought, you just have to go with what your dealt.
“Marie...,” he breathed as she inched closer, her eyes closed, her lips parted.
“Yeah?” It was barely above a whisper, and her voice was raspy with lust.
His hand hovered near her ear, not daring to touch her. He tried to speak but no words came out, only on his second try. “What do you want?” There. He’d said it. He knew it was unfair as now the ball was in her court, but he couldn’t make the decision. If he did, it would be meaningless.
She looked at him with dark eyes, a small smile tugging at her lips. “What I always wanted, Logan.” Softly stroking his hair, avoiding his skin out of habit, and still smiling at him. “You.” She rose and pulled him with her. “I’ll go get my stuff.”
With that she disappeared, and left Logan behind with his thoughts. He didn’t know what to make of this. If he was honest, he’d have to admit that he had known all along that she didn’t just think of him as a friend. That her interest in him wasn’t merely platonic, had never been. But up to this point, pursuing any kind of relationship with her that went beyond that had been completely out of the question. He had of course noticed how she had matured into a woman, that certain roll of her hips when she walked past him, her smile. He was a man, after all.
He placed the blame with Professor X, as he did so often these days. If the man could suppress Jean’s dark side, he could surely just as easily keep Marie off Logan’s radar. And Logan had to admit that maybe that was for the best. The only reason he hadn’t nailed her in his trailer back in Canada had been Sabretooth’s attack, otherwise it would have happened sooner or later, of that he was sure.
She came back then, wearing her old green coat that looked just a little too obscene over her hot-pants and neckholder top, and he had the urge to get her out of there before anyone else could see her this way. She smiled at him, and he pushed himself off the table, following her to the bar.
“Lou, I quit.” She put a key on the bar, probably her key to the dressing room.
Lou grabbed the key, pointing a finger at her. “Because of him?” He jerked his head in Logan’s direction, and Marie laughed at the growl that earned Lou.
“In part.” She took the envelope Lou handed her and stuffed it into her bag. “You tell the others, okay?”
He nodded. “Will do.” He turned to Logan, narrowing his eyes at him. “You be good to her. Don’t come across a lady like this too often.” Logan simply nodded, and then Marie took his hand and pulled him outside with her.
Once outside, she stretched, and he couldn’t help but notice the way her pants were pulled tightly across her crotch as she did so. She spotted his bike and headed straight for it, and when she sat astride it, he nearly came in his pants. Lighting a cigarette, she looked at him, that small ‘I love fucking with your head this way’-smile tugging at her mouth.
“So, where are ya headed, stranger?”
Two could play this game, and so he sat behind her, pulling her flush against him, his hand hot on her naked stomach. “Wherever you wanna go.” His fingers grazed the underside of one breast, and she gasped. “But if I got my way, I’d take you right here, right now.”
Her hand came up next to his head. “Keys. Now.” He smiled, handing her the keys, and as she started the bike, he let his hand drop between her legs, softly pressing a finger against her clitoris and drawing a moan from her. She batted at his hand. “Stop that, or we’ll end up in a ditch somewhere.”
She headed in the general direction of the school, but after a while she pulled into the parking lot of a motel. His grip on her tightened, and when she stopped the bike he leaned forwards and said into her ear, “I won’t... have sex with you in some stinkin’ motel, darlin’.” He’d caught himself just in time – he had been about to say ‘make love to you’, and he was astounded at himself that such thoughts ran through his head.
She leaned back against him, her hands coming up to link behind his head. “Where then?”
He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, then said, “Home.”
She nodded almost imperceptibly, and restarted the engine. They rode in silence, each lost in thought, and they didn’t speak until the door to her room closed behind them.
“Marie, are you sure?” Leaning back against the wall with his arms crossed in front of his chest, he watched how she dropped her coat on a chair and kicked off her shoes. No one else had been in her room for a while, he noted, and that made it all the better. Nothing except her scent filled his senses, and heat crept through his veins.
She came over to him, laying her small hands on his hips, forcing him to uncross his arms and put them on her. “I’ve never been so sure of anything.” Smiling lightly, she pushed his jacket off his shoulders and started to unbutton his shirt, burying her face in his chest and letting her nails rake down his sides when she was done.
Her touch was scorching him, and he craved more, so he shrugged off his shirt and led her to the bed, laying her down on it. She looked heavenly, her hair spread out over the pillow, her face flushed, and he just looked at her for a while until she reached up and pulled him down to kiss him. She tasted like cigarettes and something sugary, and her lips were just as soft as he had imagined.
“Turn around, darlin’.” She rolled to her stomach, and he undid the drawstrings of her top, letting his hands wander over her back. Her skin was still ghostly white after years of being covered day in, day out, and he let his fingers slide over the place on her shoulder where his claws had pierced her. No trace was left of the fatal wound, his healing abilities had eliminated it completely.
Reaching down, his fingers slid into her pants, pushing them down, and he had to bend down and kiss her butt when she raised her hips to allow him to undress her. She sighed deeply, and her scent made him dizzy. When he had thrown the pants over his shoulder, she turned around again, and looking at her took his breath away.
“You’re so beautiful.” He kissed her belly, her breast, her collarbone. Let his fingers slide up her thigh, raising goose-bumps.
“You’re just saying that.” Her small hands fumbled with his belt buckle, and he rolled to his back, watching how she opened his pants and pulled them down.
“No, I mean it.” He pulled her against him, and she gasped as his hardness poked against her belly.
She reached up and pulled him down for a kiss, and then guided his hand between her legs. She gasped against his cheek as one of his fingers carefully entered her, and her nails bit into his skin. “God, Logan, I want you so much...” She whimpered, and he gently rolled her on her back, sucking one of her nipples into his mouth. Her hands flew to his head, holding onto him as he continued fondling her, and her needy whimpers drove him insane with lust.
He released her breast after a while, kissing her belly, her hip, then reached for his jacket to get the condom he carried in his wallet, but she stopped him. “It’s okay, I’m on the pill.” He raised an eyebrow but she just pulled him up against her, sticking her tongue into his ear and whispering, “Please, I need to feel you.” He groaned at that, humping against her, and she smiled. “Now, Logan... please...”
He held her eyes as he slowly entered her, but when she hooked her legs behind him and pulled all of him into her, he buried his face in her hair, his fingers digging into her hip. “God, Marie...” Her lips were at his ear, her hands running up and down his back, and he realised she must’ve done it before, but he didn’t want to think about what that implied. Not now.
She rose up to meet him, lacing her fingers through his hair, clutching his shoulders. Her breathy cries were all he heard, her spicy scent all he smelt. The world ceased to exist, and when she shuddered around him, gasping his name as orgasm swept her away, nothing mattered anymore. Nothing beyond this bed, this room, mattered.
He had been ready to explode the second he had taken off her top but he wanted to make this good for her, and as he wasn’t sure what she expected he decided to go slow, let her recover from her first orgasm, but then her nails dug into his flesh and her heels into the small of his back, and then she whispered “Harder, Logan... please fuck me harder,” and he lost every inkling of control he’d had left.
Flipping her around and pulling her up to her knees, he slid back into her, and now she got really loud. Her whimpers blocked everything else out, and when he reached between her legs and rubbed her, she started babbling, “Yes, God, yes, Logan, please, harder, Logan, need you, God, Logan...”, and it didn’t take long until he leaned down and breathed into her ear, “Ready, baby?”
Replacing his hand with hers, he took her hips, and each of his thrusts made the bed bang against the wall, but neither of them cared. The scent of sex filled the room, and her continued pleas spurred him on, and then she went rigid under him and tightened around him and she threw back her head, her hands digging into the mattress, “God, yes, Logan, YES!” He lost control a second later and spilled into her with a growl, and he realised he hadn’t gone bareback with a woman in a very long time, but the thought of having a condom separate them seemed blasphemous at best and torturous at worst.
They stayed like that, his hands on her hips, her butt in the air and her face buried in the mattress, until she came up gasping for air, and he slid out of her, already yearning to be back inside. He laid down next to her, smiling at her flushed face and at her debauched pose, and gently pushed the hair from her face.
Her eyes were closed, a wide grin on her face. “Hmm. That was...,” she plopped down on the bed, wincing a little. “Inspiring.”
He chuckled as he pulled her close, continuing to stroke her hair. She was right. It had been extraordinary. He inhaled her scent, memorising the way she looked now, flushed and sweaty and happy, then breathed into her ear, “Do you... do you want me to stay?”
Her arm around his waist was like a vice, and her fingers dug into his skin. She would have left bruises, had it not been for his enhanced healing. “Yes.” Her voice was breathy and she sounded scared, and he knew that she feared he’d run, that maybe this didn’t mean anything to him, and so he pulled her closer, kissing her until the tension in her limbs evaporated and she melted into his touch.
They slept wrapped around each other, no dreams of rain and mud and the stench of burning bodies or champagne and needles and water tanks torturing them, and then spent the next morning alternately talking and making love. Marie told him about the first time she’d slept with a man, that it had been only slightly less awful than her first kiss – at least no one ended up in a coma this time. And when she told him that touching people had always felt a little like sex and that touching him was what she regretted least, he grabbed her and fucked her till she screamed and then he kissed and licked and touched her till she cried, and afterwards she whispered, “This is exactly what touching you felt like.”
He told her about what had happened in the labs beneath Alkali Lake, about his fight with Deathstrike and what Stryker had offered him, and she pulled his hands to her mouth and kissed his knuckles and asked him to unsheathe the claws, and when he did she kissed and caressed them while making love to him just like she did any other part of his body, and he almost wept.
At noon, their rumbling stomachs drove them out of bed, but when she bent down to pick up her shoes, Logan grabbed her around the waist and pushed her against the wall, and she had to wrap herself in a scarf to cover the bite mark he’d left on the side of her neck. Down in the hall they were ambushed by Marie’s friend Jubilee, and Logan excused himself, making a run for the kitchen. He did, however, catch their conversation.
“Where you been, chica? Storm is mighty pissed because neither of you showed up for her prep talk this morning.”
Marie coughed to buy some time, then said, “I, uh, I wasn’t feeling so well and overslept.”
“Uhuh. Sure.” Jubilee grinned. “I figured as much from the ‘God, Logan, yes, right there’ I heard when I came to pick you up for breakfast.”
Marie blushed every colour under the sky, and Logan entered the kitchen with a wide grin on his face. He’d just poured himself the biggest cup of coffee the mansion had ever seen when Storm entered, looking angry, and he was sure he could hear thunder in the distance.
“Where were you and Rogue this morning? You had classes.”
He sipped his coffee, watching the clouds outside darken. “We overslept.”
Storm looked ready to swallow her tongue. “You overslept? What kind of a teacher are you?”
Marie entered behind her, still a little red in the face, but she came to a halt at the door in the face of Ororo’s anger. Logan nodded at her to come over, and when she slid past Storm and took Logan’s coffee, he was sure the temperature sank several degrees.
“I’m no teacher, ‘Ro. I’m just showin’ the kids some moves,” Marie snorted into the cup and Storm’s eyebrows rose to her hairline, “and don’t act like that never happens to you.”
Her eyes narrowed, and the temperature dropped again. Marie shivered, wrapping her hands around the hot cup, and Logan pulled her closer to him. Lightning struck outside, and thunder made the glasses in the cupboards rattle. “Fine. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” With that she breezed off, and rain started to batter the windows.
Marie raised an eyebrow. “What got into her?”
Logan took back the cup and grinned before drinking. “Nothing, I guess.”
Marie laughed. “You can be so mean.”
“Yeah, well.”
That night, Marie took him to her secret spot, a small clearing in the woods a good distance from the mansion, and they spread a blanket on the ground and looked at the stars. He wrapped his arm around her and she again stroked the spaces between his knuckles, and after a while her fingertips were replaced with her nails, and the claws itched beneath his skin so he turned his hand and laced his fingers through hers.
She buried her face in the soft leather of his jacket and sighed deeply, her grip on his hand tightening. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo, pressing a kiss to her head. “Somethin’ wrong?”
She shook her head, sighing again. “I just... It’s like... For the first time in months, it’s like I’m a human being again. I’m me.” Her free hand painted a pattern on his arm and she was chewing on her lower lip, and when she spoke her voice trembled with unshed tears . “When I took the cure, it was... like a part of me had been cut off. Like a missing limb – it’s gone but you still feel it. My... My soul had been ripped apart.”
He held her closer, anger welling up. Anger at those who had tricked a wonderful young woman into denying her nature and anger at himself for not stopping her. Squeezing her hand, he kissed her again. “And now?”
She moved closer to him, as though she wanted to climb into him, her grip on his hand and his arm tightening even more. “Now... I can accept who I have become. Because now I have you. And somehow... you fill the void in me.”
He growled, because what she said made so much sense and because he felt the same way but would never find the words to tell her. He was no man of words, and she knew, so she pulled him on top of her, and they kissed and made love with peace finally filling their hearts, and they knew that, somehow, things would be okay. They would be okay.
The END
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
I haven’t written smut in a long time, but reading weird books (Emily Maguire’s ‘Taming the Beast’ – go read it, it’s worth every cent) and having weird dreams (is it okay for a married woman to lust after the mailman?) will deliver unexpected inspiration. I’m also completely ignoring the end of X3, meaning the cure doesn’t wear off and is permanent. The working title of this was ‘Striptease’ because I intended to stop after they left the bar, but for some reason this cute little knight-in-shining-armour-bunny developed into a huge, genetically enhanced hot-sex-and-feelings-bunny, and I guess the kiddos just wanted to get it on again. Who can blame them.