Two weeks had passed since the attack in the parking lot.
Logan shuffled the papers on his desk, paying no heed to the paper cut that stung briefly in the slight webbing between his index finger and thumb as it closed seconds after before being put there. He was absentmindedly patting the papers, aligning them and stacking them neatly. He had just collected the last paper before the holidays, and most of his students had turned in their papers minutes ago.
With the exception of one.
Marie was still holed up in her room at the mansion, healing from her encounter with the knife. Hank had told him during his last visit that she was getting along quite nicely, and no sign of infection was evident within the through and through cut. It was all very good news, and Logan knew that he should be happy for her.
But he wasn’t. And he was scared of the reason why. There was a selfish side of him that wanted Marie in his classroom again, every day, so he could see her, smell her, be near her. He was developing a preoccupation with his student that was inappropriate, and if he hadn’t spent so long developing himself into the teacher he was, he would have said to hell with it and taken her on his desk.
He wasn’t a fool. He knew that Marie was attracted to him. Underneath the scent of her soap and her nerves, there was the faintest touch of arousal that only permeated his senses when she had become aware of his presence.
However mutual their attraction, it didn’t change the fact that she was his student. His seventeen year old student.
He swore to himself he would stay away from her in that way for as long as he could.
Unfortunately, he had no idea that his time for that was dwindling faster with every passing moment.
000
Knocking on the front door of the Xavier home, Logan adjusted the reading material in his arms. The door creaked open, and Scott’s scowling face greeted him on the other side. “Scooter,” Logan smirked, brushing past the younger man and heading towards the stairs.
Scott scrambled after him, taking the stairs two at a time in order to catch up with Logan’s pace. “Where do you think you’re going?” he blustered.
Logan paused on a step, turning his head over his shoulder and raising a single eyebrow. “To teach Miss D’Ancanto. That’s what I’ve been here to do for the past week.”
“But…But her room?” Scott sputtered indignantly. “It…it’s not proper.”
The only response he got was a bark of laughter and the echoing sound of Logan’s footsteps as they faded away.
Logan shook his head, refraining from rolling his eyes. That boy was so damn protective of Marie, and while Logan didn’t necessarily have a problem with someone looking out for her well being, it did raise his hackles a little to have someone believe that she needed protecting from him.
Coming to a stop in front of Marie’s bedroom, he knocked on the door. “Come in,” she said quietly, and he pushed the door open. His breath nearly caught in his throat at the sight of her.
She was wearing a Manchester United jersey that was clearly too big for her, slipping off one of her shoulders. There was an expanse of naked skin bared to him, interrupted only by the thin strap of her bra. She had on forest green sweatpants, with TULANE stamped down the leg. “Mr. Hathorne,” she greeted, smiling. “Logan,” she corrected herself, turning to face him as much as she could without jarring her wound.
“Marie.” He set his supplies down on the table Xavier had put in the room for them. “Tulane, huh?”
She looked down at the faded letters, plucking at the fabric. “I lived in New Orleans for a while. Had a foster sister who went there and bought me these pants. We still keep in touch.” Her cheeks flushed a little. “Sorry, you probably don’t care about that.”
“Nah, it’s okay, darlin’,” he said, waving off her apology. School books forgotten, he came forward and sat down on the edge of her bed. “It’s nice hearing about what you did before Xavier’s.” He let his eyes sweep up and down her figure briefly. “Why don’t you tell me more?”
And so, taking a deep breath, she did just that. She told him about how she used to live in Meridan, Mississippi, before her parents had gone out one night to see a movie and never came home. They had both been only children, leaving her with no relatives to be sent to. Her father’s parents were estranged from him, and she had never had any contact, while her mother’s were “rediscovering” themselves somewhere off in Budapest and couldn’t be burdened with raising their newly orphaned granddaughter. So, she was schlepped for six years from orphanage to foster home, never settling down and never truly feeling at home. That was until, one day, a young man of about sixteen had shown up at her orphanage. She was just barely fourteen and still ungodly shy but the kind smile that radiated out from underneath his red glasses had made her feel at ease. His name was Scott, he told her, and he was here with a Professor Charles Xavier, who was interested in adopting her.
Permanently.
Marie had heard of him, how could she not? The man was a famous billionaire, and when she first met him, he made her feel more comfortable than any other family had before. He allowed her to pick out her own room in the mansion, and promised that she would fulfill her high school years at the local public school. He was very straightforward with her about his work with mutants, and she knew firsthand the struggle for unification between the two. She knew about the Brotherhood, and she knew about the military base camps where vicious and ungodly labs were set up for the sole purpose of testing on mutants.
She knew it all.
Logan sat in contemplative silence as she finished her story. It was fascinating, heartbreaking, and more than a little unnerving. Hearing her talk about how she knew of the labs, how she knew of the type of place where he had been holed up for God knows how long, made the hair on the back of his neck raise and his claws itch to unsheathe.
He opened his mouth to say something, when one of her shelves on the other side of the room suddenly collapsed, spilling trinkets and books onto the floor with a loud crash. He jumped, and the shock from the sound was badly timed. His claws shot out from his knuckles, nine inches of sharp adamantium glaring in the fading sunlight.
Breathing heavily through his nose, he shook his head and turned to face her again. He felt a sinking feeling in his chest when he noticed that her gaze was riveted to his hand. He began to retract the metal, when her soft voice pleaded, “No.”
He stared at her, sitting slowly back down onto her comforter, and let his claws slide all the way out once more. She reached slowly for his left hand, picking it up by the palm and turning it over in her own small hands. Her fingers trailed across the creases in his hand, smoothing over the clenched knuckles, until she came to the sharpened edges of a claw. “Careful,” he said gruffly.
She seemed to pay him no heed, and trailed a finger along the underside. She seemed unfazed when the skin split, and blood trickled from the wound and curved down her finger. Pulling her hand away, she withdrew a tissue from a nearby box of Kleenex, and wiped the path away, leaving a light brown discoloration where the blood had been. She watched as he retracted his weapons, and sucked on her finger where the cut was.
His eyes zeroed in on her lips as they wrapped around the tip of her finger, and he desperately looked away as quickly as he could. He couldn’t think of her that way. He wasn’t allowed. Thankfully, she pulled her finger out of her mouth and wrapped a tissue around it, and sat, gazing at him.
“Does it hurt?” she asked quietly. “When they come out, does it hurt?”
He flexed his hands, staring at them. “Every time,” he said hoarsely.
Her small hand reached for his again, taking the larger limb in her own and squeezing it. “I’m sorry.”
He gave her a small, lopsided smile. “Don’t be. Nothin’ you can do about it.”
She nodded, but didn’t let go of his hand. “Where…those aren’t natural. I’ve seen a lot of crazy mutations but…that ain’t natural.”
He clenched his jaw, spine stiffening as images accosted him and pain crackled through him from his hand and spreading through his system. Waking up in that god awful tank of water, lines drawn on his body and pain searing through his system. Slicing, killing, being blood spattered as he ran, naked, out of the lab. Wandering through the wilderness for days on end, struggling to regain humanity.
He shook his head, and the images and pain stopped. Marie was sitting awfully close to him, staring at him with wide brown eyes. “The labs,” she whispered, and he was stunned to see tears pooling in her lids. “Are…are they really that bad?”
“Worse,” he said, letting out a bitter laugh. “Worse than anything you can ever imagine.”
“Oh,” she murmured, fingers still stroking the back of his hand absently. “I can imagine.”
000
She hadn’t meant to do it. Really, she hadn’t. But one second he was sitting there just looking tormented, and the next, images were pouring into her brain as she opened up her connection just the slightest bit. Ghastly memories, ones she didn’t even want to revisit, filled with blood and pain and horror.
His eyes were slightly unfocused, and she closed the connection quickly, watching him shake his head. “The labs,” she said softly, trying not to cry. “Are…are they really that bad?”
“Worse. Worse than anything you can ever imagine.”
She let her fingers trail lazy patterns on the smooth skin of his hand. “Oh, I can imagine.”
He was staring at her, gazing with those annoyingly gorgeous hazel eyes, and she had to remind herself that he was her teacher. He was older than her by fifteen or sixteen years, he was Mr. Hathorne, her history teacher, and if he kept on looking at her like that, then she would say to hell with it and just-
His right hand, seemingly of it’s own inhibition, raised to brush the white hair out of her face, before cupping her cheek. “Marie,” he murmured, getting closer to her.
And when his mouth was just the barest of millimeters from her own, she found the good sense to shut her eyes.