His smell, surrounding her. His taste, still in her mouth. His leg, thrown across her waist to pin her to the bed. The pins and needles were all hers.
“Logan.”
She hadn’t bothered to whisper. This was a man who awoke at the sound of a door closing anywhere in the mansion.
“Marie.”
“Morning sugar.” She pressed her tear-stained cheek into the curve of the hand that lay beside her on the pillow. Had he known why she was crying? He hadn’t asked, simply held her – chest pressed to her back, knees bent into the crook of her own, one arm curved over her head and the other wrapped around her waist. She had slept, eventually, and so too had her guardian.
She jiggled her foot a little to force some sensation into it.
“Jesus, Marie, I’m crushing you!” He moved away as if stung. She followed him as quickly as a dead leg would allow, and pinned him with a steady stare.
“Yes, you were. And I loved it. Apart from the not being able to move part. And I loved the way you held me when I cried. But do you know why I was crying?”
His face closed, unwilling to broach the subject. Marie pushed on regardless.
“Tell me, Logan!”
“It’s 0600 hours, Marie. Far too early for this type of conversation. I’m hitting the showers.” Brusque, depersonalised. His back was ramrod straight when he rose naked from the bed: he was the drill sergeant that appeared when the team screwed up a mission, or some kid defaulted on an assigned punishment.
The drill sergeant had a secret, though.
“Does this mean you’re going to finally get around to fucking me in the shower, Sergeant Logan?”
“Because it the was the only thing I could think about after all those workouts at the mansion. You would pretend I wasn’t there, and I would tiptoe into the showers after you … and watch. You were always so hard, weren’t you Logan? Hard for me?”
“And you would soap up and I’d listen to you groan. You would touch yourself, and I wanted to be that hand, Logan. I wanted it to be my hand. I wanted to feel how hard you were and how hot it was and what it felt like when you came. All over yourself and the shower cubicle.”
She had risen from the bed as he fled into the shower, and now stood in front of him, naked, on the other side of the clear glass door. As she spoke, she leaned forward and pressed her body against the cool glass. And began to sway, in a dance that had no rhythm except the brush of her nipples on the cold glass, the lines and patterns they drew, and the sharp buds that rose to the sensation.
His face was still thunderous, but Logan’s hands rose to join the dance, tracing the twin patterns left by her nipples. When she lingered, his hands stilled too, as if they could transmit their heat through the glass. Locked eyes, locked frames, they stared at each other.
He left the water on as he opened the door, yanked her inside and bent her over in one smooth motion. She was aroused, but not yet slippery as the thrust of his hips buried his cock inside her. It hurt.
Logan froze at her gasp. “We don’t have to …”
“Fuck off, Logan. We do have to. We have to do this each day, every day, five times a day for the rest of my life as far as I’m concerned. Are you scared yet?”
He threw back his head and laughed as her mock-fierce growl was combined with an enticing wiggle that nearly unseated him. He pulled back a little, then slid forwards. Back again, forwards once more. Marie could feel herself opening, slickening, drawing him in as the burn transformed itself into friction of the most delicious kind.
She endured a moment more – the slow slide that left her empty and aching, the even slower filling – before bracing herself on the tiles in order to propel herself backwards onto him, fully onto him, deeper than he had ever been inside her. Deeper than she had known it was possible to go.
This time, when the tears welled, it was from the beauty of it. Of feeling him inside her, stretching her, filling every gap within her with his power. It was like looking down a hall of mirrors, her dazed brain suggested. Logan, Marie, Logan, Marie, Logan … he surrounded her, covering her with his body, inside her body, inside her mind, in her every waking thought.
She fancied she could see them, there. A man and a woman, bent double in the ancient act that had defined their species. Around them, chrome and porcelain and glass – not to mention hot water – but inside them, wild souls that paid no heed to civilisation, scrabbling madly to touch, to feel. To mate.
Logan’s fingers tangled in her hair, pulling her head back as he sank his teeth into her shoulder. It was still raw from the night before, but something within her knew he needed that, needed the connection of blood and flesh and teeth. The control it gave him.
She submitted. And as he surrendered control with a hoarse shout, Marie also began to shake. Pleasure spiralled through her body, starting in her loins but exploding out until she could feel the blood hammering at her temples, fingertips vibrating, toes curling. Glory, glory … everything obliterated except the need to writhe and shatter.
They stood there, shaking, under the stream of water. Too exhausted to even turn around, Marie could feel aftershocks coursing through her with every tiny shudder. When he moved as if to withdraw, she protested, throwing an arm backwards to clasp him to her.
He chuckled noiselessly and dropped an array of kisses in her hair. His mood seemed lighter now – Marie wondered if it was just the sex, but then dismissed the idea. Logan had never gone without.
“You know I love you, don’t you Logan?”
It wasn’t a question, really. It was an assumption – surely he knew.
Silence.
“Logan – I love you. This isn’t about sex. Or you keeping me safe, or some silly crush. This is about me choosing you.”
He had frozen, refusing to acknowledge her words or even breathe. But the wave of yearning that washed over her was so strong, Marie wondered if she was developing a secondary mutation.
“Me choosing you, choosing our life together. Choosing to bear your children, and love your children and love whatever life brings us.”
He took a breath, then, a ragged gulp that swallowed all the pain that was about to spill forth.
She had more to say.
“You think you’re a monster. Perhaps you are, love. Frankenstein’s monster. What they made you do, what they did to your body … those were monstrous things.”
“But they’re not you. They couldn’t take away the parts that made you a good person, an honourable person.”
His hoarse laugh erupted into the charged space.
“They didn’t have to, Marie. Because that guy, he’s not in charge. He’s just a fuckin’ passenger. Sometimes I let him drive, but the man you love,” his lips twisted into a sneer, “there’s nothing good about him. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about ‘good’ or ‘honourable’.
Logan paused, his eyes looking through her as if he was seeing someone else, far away. His claws slid out, and he stared at them, his face twisted with what might have been revulsion as he slowly rotated his hands.
“So beautiful, these. Always sharp, always ready.”
He slashed one set upwards, opening his arm from palm to elbow. Marie could see the wicked adamantium architecture intertwined with human nerves and muscle, fibres already beginning to knit and reform around the wound.
“Stupid, dumb body. Won’t quit. Won’t die. Won’t be told what to do.”
He watched the blood flow lessen as muscle and skin grew over the gaping hole. His arm was whole, shiny new skin marking the incision, before the blood had cleared from the floor of the shower.
Marie surfaced from her shock to grab his hand and scatter tiny kisses along the line of new skin.
“Why, Logan? I know that hurts, even your claws coming out hurts you! Why would you do that?” Brown eyes huge, she pleaded to understand.
“Hurts like fuck, sweetheart. But – I can feel it. I’m feelin’. When …” he stopped, unable to go any further. Marie bowed her head to kiss his arm once more. She would not pressure him into telling her more than he was ready to.
A huge breath reverberated through his chest, and she felt the words spill from him even before she heard them.
“There’s nothing there. When I fight. Just … a blank. No pain, no emotion. No pity. Just this body, doing what it was designed to do.”
He swung his gaze to her, and they burned so fiercely, she nearly took a step back.
“What the fuck was nature thinking when it created me, Marie? What place is there in the world for something that can’t be killed, can’t be stopped?”
She opened her mouth to answer him – God knows what she was going to say – when he spoke again.
“It feels good! Feels like fuckin’ bliss. To be in that place. So fuckin’ powerful that nothin’ can stop me. And not to care. About any goddamn thing.”
She had seen his joy at the kill, the exultation in mindlessness. She had seen, but not quite believed. Instead, she had clung to an ideal – that night in the mansion’s hallway, he had chosen honour, chosen to protect his friends rather than lose himself in the battle.
A chill swept over her as the self-deception crumbled.
He hadn’t cared. The kill had been impossible. The battle had moved elsewhere.
The machine needed to move on.
She wondered, now, when he had returned to her. In the car? At Bobby’s house?
“It was your nightgown.” He gave a bitter chuckle as she started, surprised. “You were breathing so fucking hard you were just about falling out of it. Sweet little tits, hard little nipples … not much can bring me back from there, but apparently the urge to fuck a little girl senseless does it.” He spat the words like poison.
“Wanting to fuck you kinda led to wanting to keep you alive, and my brain was working again by then. Figured we might as well keep everyone else alive, too.”
He shrugged, as if those lives were of no import. He had saved 12 children that night. Had it all been on a whim? For lust?
Marie could feel the disappointment welling in her chest, fighting with the need to understand this man. He was still spewing venomous words, intent on lancing the boil of his herohood.
So much rage. Stryker, the government, his haunted past, to be sure. But Professor Xavier? Scott? Herself?
“You looked at me and saw something worth lovin’, Marie. You looked inside my fuckin’ head and felt what I felt and STILL you didn’t see me. You saw some hero you needed me to be. And I am fuckin’ sick of being that man. Livin’ up to that man.
“Cause I’m me, Marie. Not even a man. Just an animal that can walk and talk. Sometimes. And sometimes I choose to be something else altogether, and whatever it is that I am … I like it. I need that. But you and Chuck and fuckin Ororo – there’s no room in this life for that man. He’s no fuckin’ X-man, no fuckin’ teacher.”
She had heard variations on this theme before: they all had. Logan’s bellyaching. Grumpy old Wolverine. They would smile, and redo the rosters, or up the settings in the Danger Room for a while.
They had been killing him, she realised. While she was busy falling in love with her hero, the real man - the raw, hurting man inside - had been dying. Not even the most magnificent weapon ever created could slash its way free of the bonds of obligation, desire and the need for redemption.
Marie would have to do it for the both of them.
*
They left at dawn.
Ororo stood on the steps, unable to ignore a last opportunity to point out how stupid this was. How immature.
“At least she ain’t still talking about “inappropriate”,” Logan drawled as he slid into the driver’s seat of the second-hand Ford they had bought a week earlier.
Marie laughed. Once the decision had been made, they had enjoyed scandalising the entire school. They hadn’t planned on getting caught in the gym like that, but … it would add to their legend.
Wolverine and Rogue. Figments of their past, now. Logan and Marie were heading north: Alaska, maybe Canada. Somewhere vast and lonely. Where no one would see a man running naked through the snow, or a girl whose skin was starting to prickle and jump with human contact.
And nature would be allowed to take its course.
*
Marie tried to relax as her body attempted to turn itself inside out. She was panting, and humming, and even took a moment to admire the bell-like tone in her “Ommmmm” when, suddenly, everything changed. The pain was gone, replaced by a tremendous compulsion to push, and a burning sensation she didn’t want to think about.
Not that there was any thinking to be done. Mother Nature had grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and demanded she get on with it. Their baby was coming.
She looked around frantically for Logan, finally finding him at the foot of the bed, between her legs. He had tears in his eyes. He opened his mouth to say something, but a choked sob was all that came out. He tried again.
“You’re crowning,” he told her, awe in his voice.
“He’s crowning,” Asha corrected gently. “Marie, would you like to turn your powers on now? It should relieve your pain and ease his way into the world.”
Decision time. The midwife had been carefully selected for her knowledge of psi mutations, as well as her natural birthing experience, but even after weeks of discussion, it had been the one gap in their birth plan. Every other preference had recorded for Logan to guard throughout her labour. But to activate her mutation while her son slid from the birth canal into the world, to nestle against her deadly skin … the prospect was terrifying.
And right. Something inside told her it was right, even necessary. This was her child, hers and Logan’s, and she needed to welcome it in her natural state. She had denied it for so many years, taken her choice away with the so-called Cure, and then suffered as it returned slowly, in bits. Tingles where there had once been lightning; mild discomfort for her “victim” instead of near-instant death; it had been humiliating, but instructive. Controllable.
Had her journey been leading her to this? Even through the pain and the horror of loss and the tumult of teaching Logan to live? This moment, this knowledge: he needed her as she was.
They needed her just as she was.
Marie relaxed into her receptive state and felt sensation flood her skin. The slick surface of the plastic sheet underneath her. The death grip Logan was exerting on one ankle. The feel of her son, pushing his way towards light and air and consciousness.
She relaxed further, and joined him in his journey.
Pressure. Darkness. Pressure. Brightness. Pressure – relieved! Noise! Brightness! Her skin, speaking of safety and love. Her voice. Strange, distorted, but her voice. Her. Her. Her. Milk. Milk now!
Marie’s mouth hung open as her son scrabbled his way up her body and clamped on to the nipple she was still struggling to expose. Butted her a few times – hard! – then settled to suck. Little mewling sounds. He reminded her of the newborn puppies she had once seen, or a piglet, fat and pink and new.
“A little animal,” she murmured, glancing at Logan. He had cut the baby’s umbilical cord, placed the child on her belly, and then collapsed beside her in the double bed, overcome. He simply stared, unable to tear his eyes from the child’s frantic suckling.
“Hungry little bugger.”
Marie could barely answer, the hormones flooding through her lulling her into a sleepy daze.
“Your son. And mine. Hungry AND fierce. And happy.”
She pulled his hand to cover their tiny son’s wrinkled backside.
“He can feel us both. Mostly, he’s just hungry and wants the milk, but he’s happy, too. Happy to be here. Happy to be out in the world with his Mommy and Daddy who love him so much.”
Marie relaxed the psychic bond with her son in order to kiss her husband, and then closed her eyes.
Sleep now. Life later.
Fin
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Finished at last - sorry about the wait. Buckets of TimTams to Skybluerae for her beta throughout.