It was a dirty little secret, and Rogue was glad that Wolverine was the other half of it. That way, she didn't have to worry about him finding out. Thanks to her jumbled brain, she could hide anything from the 'paths in the house; it was Logan and his damned nose and ears and eyes that knew everything she didn't want anyone to know. In fact, that was what had gotten them into this situation in the first place.
They'd been relaxing at the picnic table, the whole softball team, chatting about this and that, playfully bantering as they always did. She'd been sitting sideways, draped over Remy, her long-time boyfriend, murmuring in his ear about his thieving ways, when she'd felt it -- the accidental brush over the sensitive spot on her lower back that nobody knew about, not even Gambit. She'd automatically stiffened, arching ever so slightly before she brought her body back under control. Except *he'd* felt it, and moments later, the weight of his forearm was back on that spot, resting deliberately, and she'd bit back a low moan, casting a furtive glance over her shoulder at the man lounging behind her.
Wolverine.
Remy continued his light-hearted defense of himself, tossing her a rakish grin that quickly turned suggestive at the sight of her dilated pupils, the heat evident in her expression. His hand lingered possessively on her thigh, brushing higher, and her lips had parted, desire rushing through her. It wasn't Remy's hand on her leg that did it, though; it was Wolverine's arm, first pressing against her back, then moving slowly, rubbing her through her shirt, sparking heat along the surface of her skin, the contact seeming casual, even negligent, to anyone paying attention. Which they weren't.
Gambit had smoothly excused himself and Rogue, standing and moving away from the table, his eyes on hers, inviting. She had to lean back to let him by, a motion that pressed her more firmly into the arm against her lower back, and this time she couldn't stifle her soft gasp. Remy smirked just a little, and everyone at the table smiled knowingly and politely ignored them as Rogue stood on shaky legs and took Gambit's hand as they walked toward the mansion. She couldn't help her reflexive glance over her shoulder in Wolverine's direction, and she bit her lip as she saw him watching her with hooded eyes, the hint of a leer on his face as he pulled out a cigar and lit it, sucking deeply. He nodded, once, subtly, and she shivered, turning away from him and leaning into Remy.
Later, between heated breaths, Remy whispered that he'd never seen her so passionate; it had never been this *hot* before. She ignored him (it was understandable in her current state of ecstasy), closing her eyes and feeling the rush of adrenaline when the image of a dark, feral gaze replaced the memory of red-on-black eyes above her and she climaxed powerfully, her mind turning her lover's muffled exclamation into a snarl and adding an edge of roughness to his voice when he arched over her, panting with the force of his release. Remy fell asleep almost immediately after he had discarded the condom, but Rogue lay awake, trembling, staring at the ceiling as guilt washed over her in the aftershocks of her mind-numbing orgasm.
Remy was right -- it had never been that good between them before, and part of her cringed in shame, because she knew why. Another part, however, some fierce place in the baser part of her psyche, burned hotter with the thought that it could be that good *all* the time... with someone else.
The thought struck no small amount of fear in her heart, fear that she was on the verge of throwing away a darn good relationship for a fantasy -- a fantasy that was the result of nothing more than an accidental touch from a very good friend. Would she risk two relationships because of one touch? She rolled out of bed quickly, pulling the clothes she'd hastily discarded earlier on over her bodysuit, and left the room, desperately trying to escape the turmoil in her mind. She knew she should at least pause to brush her wildly tangled hair, but the wind would just gnarl it again anyhow, and she didn't have the time -- or sanity -- to deal with it.
She ducked outside through the back door after checking to make sure no one was around and slipped into the woods, waiting until she was out of sight of the mansion before she lifted into the air and flew quickly toward the small bar two hours north, knowing she was breaking the "no flying close to home" rule and not caring much. The geometric order of a game of pool usually helped her line her thoughts up and sort them out, and she was counting on that to help her with this situation.
What she wasn't counting on was the fact that she'd inherited a large portion of her pool talent from the memories and the tutelage of a certain super-healing mutant who had touched her more than once to save her life on missions, and that he might already be racking up by the time she arrived.
She turned on her heel and exited the bar as soon as she caught sight of him, but it was too late; he'd caught her scent, and he followed her out. "Go away, Wolverine," she told him petulantly, all too aware that he could hear her heart-rate jacking at his nearness.
"I don't think you really want me to do that," he told her in a rough voice, and she shivered involuntarily, standing still in the parking lot, her back to him. He stepped up close behind her, one of his hands resting on her hip, the other pushing her long hair away from her neck. "Whose name did you scream?" he whispered at her ear, and if it hadn't been for the hand on her hip sliding over to put just the right amount of pressure on her lower back, she would've whirled around and slugged him with all the super-human strength she possessed.
As it was, she swayed into him lightly and breathily told him the truth. "N-nobody's." She'd been too incapacitated to form words at the time, and she knew he could smell the return of her arousal as she remembered that moment.
"Whose were you thinking?" he persisted, pressing his thumb against her spine, low, between her kidneys, at the place where the muscle began to swell outward, rubbing slow, concentric circles.
She couldn't tell him that, couldn't answer him, and she whimpered pitifully, "Logan... why are you doing this?"
The hand on her back paused uncertainly, the pressure lifting, and suddenly she could think clearly again. Turning to face him, she backed away a couple of steps and held his eyes, hers pleading with him.
He was silent for a few moments, then crossed his arms and asked gruffly, "Are you gonna answer me?"
"Are you gonna answer *me*?" she returned softly, almost gently. He looked down at his feet and shook his head slowly, not seeing when her face fell and she took a deep, fortifying breath. "G'night, Logan," she whispered, turning to leave.
"Wait," he called, and she nearly sighed with relief when she recognized his tone -- his normal Logan-tone, not this strange sexually-charged voice he'd been using. "You need a ride home."
"No, I'm --" she cut herself off when he raised his eyebrows at her, and she shrugged sheepishly. "I can fly," she smiled, and he returned it.
"Yeah, but you'll get busted for it again, and then I'll hafta listen to ya whine about it for weeks," he teased. She felt her body sag with gratefulness that he was treating her normally, and she easily fell into step with him as they walked toward his truck.
It was a quiet ride for the first forty-five minutes, until Logan took the cigar out of his mouth and told her quietly, "I want you." She looked at him sharply, wondering if the spike of anxiety in her scent burned his nostrils. He shrugged. "That's my reason."
Knowing she shouldn't say it, knowing it would only cause more problems, but realizing that their relationship had always been based on telling each other the truth, she twisted her hands together and answered in a strained whisper, "Yours. It was your name."
His gaze snapped over to her, and she bit her lip, closing her eyes and feeling a tangle of panic, desire, and anticipation roll through her. "Rogue--"
"Logan," she interrupted, still refusing to look at him. "Tell me why I should risk losing my boyfriend and my best friend for this."
There was silence for a long time, and when he finally broke it, the words weren't anything close to what she'd expected to hear. "You wouldn't have to lose anything at all. No one would ever have to know."
Her eyes opened quickly then, meeting his across the cab of the truck, and the electric hunger crackled between them. Without a word, he pulled the truck onto a deserted side road and threw it into park, killing the engine. Her breath was beginning to come in short gasps now and she turned to face him. He moved like a predator, crawling toward her, crouching over her, and as he came closer, she breathed against his face, "I still smell like him."
She didn't know why she said it, if she was warning him... or challenging him. He growled softly as he reached for her waist, his fingers spreading to slide under her shirt and the waistband of her jeans at the same time, rasping against the thin mesh of the bodysuit underneath.
"Not for long," he assured her, and she caught her breath as the hand on her waist slid up to cup her breast and his other hand cupped her face, protected by her hair. "Pretty soon you're gonna smell like me."
Those heated words, whispered at her ear, sparked a frenzy of movement and in little time they were both stripped, a condom snagged from his wallet was applied appropriately, and his mouth was busy marking her breast through the mesh of her suit as he thrust powerfully into her, her head hitting against the glass of the truck window and her legs scrambling higher up on his hips.
"Wolverine," she breathed, gasping for air as one of his hands snaked around and gripped her buttocks, his fingers pressing into the spot on her back. "Oh, *Logan*..."
Her voice and breath got caught in her throat as she arched against him, her body feeling as if it were short-circuiting from the overpowering sensations, and she had the dim realization that her fantasy hadn't even come *close* to this. The first time was over pretty quickly, both of them being on the edge even before they began, but before she'd even had time to catch her breath, he was reaching for another condom, and she opened her eyes.
"I wanna be on top," she whispered hoarsely, and he sent her a feral grin as he shifted them so that he lay beneath her, his hands flexing on her hips.
"So be on top," he rumbled, punctuating it with a sharp thrust.
This time when she came, the vinyl on the back of the seat showed five deep gouges from her indestructible fingernails and the dashboard had a complementing set of three parallel grooves from his metal claws.
After it was all over and they had both carefully redressed and had retreated to their respective sides of the truck, she realized that he'd never even kissed her.
Three weeks later, Rogue had almost managed to forget her late night affair with Wolverine, and he hadn't brought it up either. She began to relax, thinking it had been a one-time thing; he'd wanted her, he'd gotten her, and now they would both go on with their lives as if nothing had changed.
Only everything had changed.
She was no longer able to make love with her boyfriend without feeling the door of Logan's truck at the small of her back or the sticky vinyl of the seat under her knees or -- God help her -- Wolverine's sharp, even teeth nipping at the underside of her breast as he slammed his hips into her. Every time she opened her eyes and saw those strange red eyes instead of a thin hazel rim around widely-dilated pupils, she felt a queasy knot in the pit of her stomach. It was wreaking havoc on her relationship, to say the least.
The one night, it happened: Remy touched her in just *that* spot and she snarled, biting her lip to keep from screaming "Wolverine!" The irrational territorialism she had to fight down scared her: when had she come to think of the small of her back as belonging to Wolverine? When had that particular pleasure zone become exclusively his?
Remy was cautious with her that night, guarded, and she felt horrible. One mistake, thirty minutes of pure sensation, had cost her thirty months of hard work. Two and a half years she and Remy had held it together, and now because of one touch, one fantasy, one moment of weakness, she was losing him and he didn't even know it.
It only took thirty more days for him to find out.
There was a mission, one particularly suited for the talents of a pair of pick-pockets, so it was only natural that Gambit and Storm would be the core of the team that was chosen. The assignment was in Dallas, Georgia, and the Braves were playing the Cardinals in nearby Atlanta, so Cyclops went along to "secure the area." Phoenix went with her husband. The Professor was attending a political summit in Christchurch, New Zealand, and several of the second-team members had gone along with him.
Everyone else was conveniently on vacation or otherwise called away from home, so when the Blackbird lit out for the Peach State early that morning, Rogue and Wolverine were the only two team members left guarding the mansion. Everyone figured they could very well take care of themselves, the invincible girl and the super-healer. What no one anticipated was how well they would take care of each other.
It had been nearly two months since their heated coupling in the cab of Wolverine's truck, and neither of them had spoken of it. The only indication they had that the other even remembered was the brief moments of awkwardness that would sometimes spring up between them if their eyes met unexpectedly across the dining table or their feet accidentally bumped beneath it, and once there was a fleeting spark of electricity when he put his hand at the small of her back to guide her up the on-ramp of the Blackbird after they'd completed a mission. They both chose to ignore the fact that he'd started carrying a thin white handkerchief with him at all times.
But being left alone together was more than either of them could handle, and when the team arrived back at the mansion thirty hours earlier than expected, Scott's disappointment at missing the Braves-Cardinals game was suddenly overshadowed by the shock on Remy's face at the sight of his naked girlfriend straddling Wolverine's lap as the other man sat, fully clothed except for his open jeans, in a straight-backed kitchen chair, her waist-length hair surrounding them both like a flimsy peep-show curtain, and Wolverine's gloved hand pressing her down onto his erection as he lapped quickly at the sweat that ran down between her breasts.
She screamed his name at the rafters, and when everyone left the room quietly, only Storm noticed that Wolverine opened his dark eyes and watched their retreat over Rogue's bare shoulder. She arched one finely formed eyebrow at him and placed a delicate hand on Gambit's back as they walked away, and Wolverine nodded, just barely, in acknowledgement... and approval.
"Rogue," he said roughly as she climbed awkwardly from his lap, noticing the indentations and angry red scratches on her inner thighs from his zipper, "I just want you to know somethin', darlin'."
She tried to say "Go ahead," but her vocal cords weren't working any better than her legs at the moment, and he reached out to steady her as she wobbled. She nodded for him to continue, and he hooked his foot under the rung of another chair and pulled it close enough that she could sit in it. The shock of the cool wood against her bare bottom was almost enough to make her jump back up, but her muscles really weren't cooperating.
"No matter what happens, darlin', I wantcha to know that you got me, okay?" This was said deliberately as he refastened his jeans, and she knew it was significant somehow, but she didn't quite know what he was trying to tell her.
She tilted her head and swallowed, trying to coax her voice into working. "What d'ya mean, Logan?"
"Just that -- y'know how ya asked me if it was worth riskin' losin' me an' Gambit over?" She nodded cautiously, and he continued. "I just wanted ya to know you won't lose me."
Her breath caught, and she felt her face and neck flush with confusion and a little bit of embarrassment. They hadn't talked about anything they'd done until now. There had been no discussion of this last encounter, no preliminaries, no "Do you wanna?", just the heated crush of his lips on hers, the thin handkerchief he'd produced from his back pocket protecting them, and then the convenient location of the sturdy wooden chair and the fire that flared between them.
"What do you know that I don't know, Wolverine?" she demanded warily, beginning to cast an eye about for her scattered clothing now that her body was feeling a bit more cooperative.
His unyielding gaze held her silently for several long moments, and in the space of thirty heartbeats, she finally understood what he was trying to tell her. "Oh God," she gasped, rising on unsteady feet, her hand against her mouth as her stomach tightened uncomfortably. "Oh my God..." Tears sprang to her eyes and her glance darted to the kitchen door as if she could see what had happened there.
She moved as if she would go after him, but stopped when she realized her state of undress and crumpled to the floor, her hands coming up to cover her face as sobs and dry retches began to wrack her frame. She did not resist when Wolverine grimly knelt beside her, his arms around her shoulders, nor did she put up a fight when he hauled her into his lap, this time so much differently than the last, and held her tightly to himself. She buried her head in his shirt-covered shoulder and clung to him, and when he shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her, telling her in a low, rough whisper he'd take care of her, she raised swollen, blood-shot eyes to his and hiccupped, "Do you promise?"
He nodded, and she laid her head back down as he leaned back against the cabinets and stroked her hair comfortingly. Long minutes later, as the feverish sobs subsided and she began to be able to think clearly again, she reflected that what she felt the worst about was the fact that she didn't feel very guilty at all. She raised her head to look into Wolverine's eyes and brushed her hair back away from her face. She searched his _expression for long moments, and he let her, until she finally nodded.
She gently pushed herself up, and he looked up at her silently as she stood over him, his leather jacket gaping open over her body, until she held out her hand to pull him up. He held her gaze, his own intensely questioning, until she began to gather up her scattered clothing. She dressed casually, handing him back his jacket, and he still didn't move, waiting to see what she would do.
Biting her lip and thinking this was perhaps the worst way possible to start a relationship, she nonetheless gathered her tangled hair into a low ponytail and took a deep breath. She opened her mouth to say something, but he beat her to it, his low tones playing sensually across her ears.
"You just let me know what you decide to do," he said seriously. "I meant what I said."
She blinked, and nodded slowly. He turned to leave, but paused when she called out in a shaky voice, "Logan?" He looked back over his shoulder at her, and she tried to hide the nervousness in her voice when she said, "I decided. I'd like to take you up on that offer."
He nodded and held out his hand, but she didn't take it, saying quietly, "Just let me talk to Remy first. He deserves that much."
"All right, darlin'," he conceded. "But don't be surprised if he ain't alone."
She was shocked at first, but a sad smile made its way across her lips and she tilted her head. "No," she murmured, "I really don't have a right to be surprised about that. But thanks."
As she walked away, ponytail swaying lightly, he watched her go and lightly fingered the handkerchief that had fallen to the kitchen floor. Holding it up to his nose, he breathed deeply and tried to feel something other than satisfied...and failed.
"Love is not a victory march...
It's not somebody who's seen the light:
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."
--"Hallelujah"
The End
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Dedicated to Devil Doll, who brought this on with her comic scans (in case you're wondering, DD, it was that one of Logan leaning back against the picnic table that sparked this), and to tinhutlady, who is probably frowning at me now that she realizes that this is NOT the story I had originally planned to name "Kitchen Chair" and who saucily reminded me, "If you can throw a '30' in there somewhere, maybe a kind of running theme, you could post this as part of the challenge..." Well, a day late and a dollar short, but I threw the thirty in anyway. Also, thanks to Taryn for looking it over and telling me it was worth posting, even if I had to sit up half the night talking it over with my guy before I was ready to admit I even wrote it, much less send it out. (Thanks to my guy, by the way!! Nothin' in the world like bein' in love with you, baby.) This is me taking a *whole* new angle (for me) on the Wolverine/Rogue 'ship that I'm so fond of. It's kinda scaring me, actually; I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with it. The title and summary come from a song called "Hallelujah," which has probably been way overused in fics of every fandom, but I like it. http://www.jeffbuckley.us/jeff_buckley.htm