She thinks it’s a bad sign when she walks into the bar and they’re playing country music. She’s never understood how that sound made it as far past the city limits of Nashville, Tennessee as it did, and somehow it’s just wrong to have a roaring Canadian winter outside and all the sounds of the Grand Ole Opry inside. Maybe she’s being a little uncharitable, but it satisfies some part of her to think she’s the only person in the bar who really has a right to like the slide of the steel guitar and the deep drawl of the singer’s voice sighing words of heartbreak.
After all, she’d place money on none of the rest of these losers being from Mississippi, and there was something special about being a loser from Lauderdale county. That’s what she’s been telling herself for the last three hundred miles, anyway. It sounds better than letting herself believe she’s a nobody from nowhere with no special dispensation for being as fucked-up as she is.
She’s been on the road for two days now, and she still hasn’t made up her mind as to whether leaving was her idea or whether she got kicked out. She suspects the concept of the latter is too much for her to handle, because what kind of monster do you have to be for the highest-profile mutant philanthropist to ask you to leave?
She thinks her leaving was a pre-emptive strike, because she couldn’t bear the thought of Xavier’s sad, sympathetic gaze as he gave her all the sugar-coated reasons of why they couldn’t shelter her any longer, especially after she’d heard the real ones.
”She’s become a danger to herself and everyone around her.”
She settles in at the bar and orders a bourbon and Coke and re-evaluates her initial assessment of the country-music-in-a-Canadian-bar dichotomy. Maybe it’s a good sign after all; maybe things can eventually become part of their surroundings even if they don’t really fit there.
She turns up her glass and catches a mouthful of ice, realizing with a start that she’s finished her drink in two long swallows. Irritated, she sets the tumbler back down on the counter and signals for another.
The bartender has it to her quicker than she would have given him credit for, and she’s suddenly aware that she has company.
“Might wanna slow down a little, darlin’,” a rough voice says from beside her, and she glances at the source from the corner of her eye. Her immediate thought is that he fits his voice -- rough and dark and slightly dirty, but attractive on a strangely visceral level.
“I’m fine,” she answers shortly, but she does sip her new drink a little slower than the last. She hasn’t eaten in several hours -- if she’s honest, days -- and getting drunk and sloppy with a stranger is just the kind of complication she doesn’t need.
He doesn’t respond to that, but he isn’t ignoring her, either. His eyes sweep her several times, lingering on her face, her shoulders, her hands, her legs. The heat of his gaze reminds her of a hundred other intense stares from men who are exactly the same as he is and nothing like him at all. Her teammates, her enemies, more strangers in more bars than she cares to count.
They’ve all ended up in different places. Some of them were quick fucks in dirty bathrooms that made her forget as long as she could keep her mind carefully blank. Their bodies in hers gave her something to focus on to keep her distracted, but that was all. Others were long nights of flirting and teasing with no real intention of a follow-through. Those were the times that she needed to feel powerful. If she felt guilty for manipulating men through their weaknesses for a pretty woman with a soft voice and a dirty smile, she ignored it as carefully as she did many other things in her life.
Like the ones that hadn’t been casual or manipulated or used. The ones that meant something to her. The ones that broke her heart. The mutual destruction haunts her long after the dust settles and the jagged pieces are smoothed by the passage of time, but she’s gotten good at ignoring the ghosts in the halls.
He is still watching her, and she dares to look at him straight on, feels herself begin evaluating him, to see where he falls in the line-up. Manipulation or straight fuck? She can feel her insides grasping at the thought of drawing him in, much like her skin used to do in the first second-and-a-third before the person she was touching got sucked into her vacuum. That was before the backwash, before Remy went blind and before she knew what it was to kill something besides a human being -- what it was to kill a man. To watch him shrivel up and die until nothing was left but a bitter shell with sightless eyes that still managed to be accusing.
She can touch now -- an empty, ironic consolation. The dry, hollow bone the gods tossed her after everything that had happened. So she touches now and she still steals. She steals the innocence of naive boys and noble-at-heart men who look at her and see a pretty girl. She touches them and shows them what she really is -- ugly from the inside out. Dirty, through and through. A cold, heartless bitch that left the word “remorse” behind just two steps down the road from where she’d dropped “hope.”
She lets her fuck-me smirk slide onto her lips, but before it’s settled good, before it has a chance to get fastened down at the corners, he speaks.
“What’re you runnin’ from?”
And her games are gone like that, and he’s found the button that changes her invitation into something more dangerous, something that moves a lot like an ambush. Any thought she had of letting him pretend she’s a good girl who just can’t resist him is gone and she finds a certain freedom in the thought she won’t think about too closely that she is going to be more honest with him than she’s been with anyone, ever. She’s about to admit to him the fullness of what she is... and the emptiness of what she isn’t.
“Ghosts.” A hollow smile curves her mouth. “Memory.” She takes a sip of her drink, sucks a piece of ice into her mouth and rolls it on her tongue before crunching it between her teeth. “What about you?”
“Ghosts that I can’t remember,” he answers immediately. His eyes are dark on hers and there’s a sharp thrill in her chest at the realization that he doesn’t have any innocence left for her to steal. He won’t drop guilt into her luggage on his way out the door like a goddamn ticking time bomb she’s got to figure out how to defuse.
She’s suddenly ready to get past the games and the negotiation and to the part where he shoves his hips between her thighs and finds the place where she is split and thrusts into her, rough and raw and without apology or chagrin. Her thighs shift impatiently against each other and there’s a strange buzzing sensation as it stretches the fabric of her pants tightly against her flesh.
His nostrils flare sharply and she sees when the knowledge of what she wants from him enters his eyes. It’s an overwhelming look of acceptance. Of resignation. Of settling, and she knows that this is what he’s used to. He is the same as her, in that way.
She wonders how many of his ghosts he really has forgotten, and which ones he just ignores exceptionally well.
She isn’t used to someone who is more experienced than she is, someone more jaded, and she really isn’t sure of whether she should initiate or wait for a cue to follow. Fortunately, he knows what they’re doing and nods toward the bar as he digs in his back pocket, presumably for his wallet.
“Pay for your drinks,” he tells her. “Outside. My truck.”
She loves that he didn’t pay for her alcohol; she loves that he put her on equal footing with that one simple move. He hasn’t bought her body, not for two cheap bourbon-and-Cokes. She’s giving it free of obligation, and their only agreement is that he’s going to fuck her into the middle of next week.
She can live with that, she thinks, as he tosses only enough money on the counter to cover his beer and stalks out of the bar without looking to see if she’ll follow. She does follow, feeling like she is rushing even though her movements are slow and very deliberate. The storm is still howling outside and she barely catches sight of his dark form moving through the blowing snow. If it weren’t for the background of almost pure white, he’d be lost in the winter night.
But she catches up to him, pushing against the wind, and climbs into the cab of his truck where he is waiting. The engine isn’t running and there’s no heat, just the stale cold that feels warm without the sharp bite of the wind. She thinks this might be the first time she’s had sex fully clothed since her skin shorted out and wonders if it will feel nostalgic or just plain cumbersome.
But he has other plans, and she is aware of her skin pimpling at the cold when he moves her to straddle his hips, his hands pushing her fleece-lined pants down her legs so quickly it sends chills of shock up her spine. His hands are cold, but the air in the truck is colder and she gasps when he thrusts two fingers unceremoniously inside her, testing her. He grins at the sound and curls his fingers forward once, twice before he withdraws them completely.
She frowns at little when she realizes it’s going to be a minute before he gets back to her -- he’s got his jeans to open and a condom to put on -- and decisively slides her own hand down between her legs. His eyes darken and a rumble of approval works its way out of his throat as he watches her fuck herself roughly, shoving her fingers inside, twisting them around her clit.
It isn’t all that long until he takes her hand away, holding her wrist so firmly she imagines blissfully that she can feel bruises forming. His other hand goes to her hip, gripping tightly as he yanks her forward and down, and he bumps against her, hard and shockingly hot in the chill. Her free hand reaches down to guide him into her, and then it’s all happening so fast she just lets her head fall back and feels as she works with him, cooperating wholeheartedly as he fucks her as hard as he can in their position.
Her knees slip on the vinyl of the seat and her head bangs into the dashboard, and she’s forced to sit upright, bracing her hands on the back of the seat on either side of his head and adjusting her weight as she hears the rustle of her pants in the relative silence of the truck. She can see the snow blowing outside through the quickly-fogging windows, and somehow the muffled noises of slick, sliding skin on skin and puffing breaths only serves to emphasize the sharp whistling of the wind.
It’s a strange moment, poignant, if she’ll let the word cross her mind. She looks down and finds him watching her, his eyes impossibly dark, and feels a sudden impulse to kiss him. She hasn’t kissed anyone since... well, since. He stills her hips and she feels panic spike through her at the thought that he’s going to make this more complicated than it is -- that he’s going to bring feelings into it, and tenderness. She feels claustrophobic at the thought and wonders how the hell she can get out of the truck and away from him before he ruins everything.
But he isn’t about to do any such thing, it appears, as he disengages from her, flips her onto her back on the seat so roughly she bounces a little -- Good springs, she thinks disjointedly -- and thrusts into her again. And this time he’s got more leverage and it’s even harder than before and she thinks gratefully that he’s the best she’s ever had. It’s never been this easy to let go and unfocus -- for once she isn’t having to remind herself not to think.
It’s a nice change, and that’s the last thought she has as her body begins screaming that he’s going to split her in two, like a ripe watermelon, like a dry log when the axe finds that perfect grain. She hopes he does.
And then she loses all track of everything except the splintering white light that seems to radiate from every shattering cell that makes up her muscle and sinew, flesh and bone. She isn’t aware of precisely when he shouts hoarsely and thrusts up so deeply inside her that it genuinely hurts and she feels the pressure all the way in the bridge of her nose, and holds himself there as spasms run down his spine and make his hips jerk erratically.
And all she can think when it begins to fade and he falls onto her, sweat freezing on his skin and her damp hair beginning to frost in the sub-zero temperatures is that it shouldn’t fucking be over yet. He’s wrung every last drop out of her body and she doesn’t want to give it time to reassemble. She likes being this shattered.
But once is a fuck. Twice is sex, and sex starts getting messy. And then if it hits three times, it will all go to hell. For a moment, she considers letting it if it means she can let him crack her open like this on a regular basis. But that would mean she needs him and that won’t work. Ever.
So they are both silent as they pull apart and dress, and he looks at her carefully when she reaches for the handle on the door.
“You know,” he says, and she pauses. “You’re gonna hafta learn to trust somebody sometime.”
She frowns, but his statement doesn’t feel invasive, any more than a scalpel lancing open an infected wound. It actually feels good to tell somebody the thought that has been haunting her ever since she realized she’d fucked everything up and closed the doors to the only place that had ever voluntarily been her home.
“Lookin’ for somebody to trust is a long wait for a train don’t come,” she says, and though it isn’t a whisper, it’s a damn sight too quiet to be considered a statement.
“Some trains are just slower than others,” he disagrees. “But they all pull into the station eventually.”
She hesitates, knowing what he is offering, but shakes her head and smiles a little sadly. “Sometimes ‘eventually’ is too late,” she says, and this time it is a whisper, and she leans over to kiss his cheek before she slips from the truck and closes the door behind her. She lets herself get a little lost in the snowstorm as she heads toward her own car -- the bar holds no more potential for her now; she might as well hit the road -- and she fights hard to relegate the dark stranger to her hallway of ghosts, knowing that if their paths ever cross again she might just have to admit she never got around to throwing away that train ticket she keeps in a forgotten pocket called hope.
The End
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
For Artemis, who gave me the prompt to start this, and Molly who held my hand through the last stages. This is an AU that takes place ten years after X1 would have, only Logan and Rogue never met... until now, in that same rundown bar in Laughlin City. Older and jaded, and with a history behind her that sounds a lot like comic-Rogue, Marie finally meets Logan, and this is the story of what happens then. You like happy endings? Your train don't unload at this station. :-) This is a one-shot. Anyone who asks for a sequel will be unceremoniously duct-taped and dumped into the hold for a month. Read: Go pester Molly. She's authorized to follow this baby up with either a remix or a sequel.