Of Imagination All Compact
It had always been simple before. It was the difference between reality and make-believe.
It hurt, always wanting what she was never going to have, and it never hurt more than it did when he was there. But the equation came out even; there hadn't ever been any question about the solution. She was the child, forever trapped on the outside of the real grown-up world, and he was the indulgent adult she was allowed to admire from afar. He'd taken her nearly-silent adulation in stride; she was sure he was used to it. She'd taken the knowledge that she had that was more than a seventeen-year-old should and locked it away, deep inside; it might have been real for others, but it was only let's-pretend for her. That was the way it had to be; anything else just hurt too fucking much.
And she threw herself into that role, the eternal child; she knew what she was expected to do. She finished high school, hung out with friends and played video games she knew were stupid, and she even played at having a boyfriend, because as long as she was a kid, there were still sensible good-girl reasons why she shouldn't go too far, reasons that had nothing to do with what she had become. Reasons her mother had told her primly in her upstairs bedroom, playing her own role of the proper mother with the teenage daughter. That was before reality had come crashing down on that little domestic comedy and turned it into melodrama.
But she was a grown woman now, and it had been a long time now that the enforced fumbling of flesh under clothing had ceased to be a giddy thrill. It was never going to be enough, never going to be what she wanted and needed, and it was easy to give that let's-pretend of her sheltered life up. She didn't want to feel like a teenager after a movie date, letting some half-man/half-boy excite himself with the feel of her breasts under her shirt. The time for that was past, and there was nothing to replace it. All her friends had moved on from that stage to the next easily; she felt like she might as well still be in high school, for all she knew about real life. She knew she couldn't have what she really wanted.
So she did the next best thing. She invented it. She invented an imaginary life in which she could have anything she wanted, however she wanted. A life in which her skin didn't suck people dry, or one in which the other main character was somehow unaffected by it. A life she could replay in her mind over and over, savoring every scene, altering details until each fantasy was perfect in its own way, until she knew exactly what would happen and what they both would say and do and it always ended the same way. More or less.
But this time Rogue hadn't been ready for what she felt when Logan came back to the School, having spent yet another year away, who knew where. It was a shock she hadn't counted on, and she didn't know what to make of it.
She wouldn't have thought there was anything new that she could add to her imaginary life. There were things she knew for real. She'd seen him shirtless, seen the way the muscles played under his skin when he moved, seen the way his eyes darkened with anger or amusement or lust, and she'd used all those memories to fire the games she played with herself, games she played alone. Of all the people she'd ever met, no one had ever seemed more real than Logan, and yet she sometimes thought everything she knew about him was only what she'd made up. And always, before, she'd stopped playing those games of make-believe with herself when he came back.
This time, it wasn't that simple.
Rogue splashed some cold water on her face and blotted it dry before meeting her own gaze in the mirror. I have to stop, she thought. I have to stop thinking about him.
But even as she mentally admonished herself, her thoughts raced with more scenes that would never be, and in all of them she imagined Logan, turning that hooded gaze on her. He could be standing there, behind her, in the doorway, watching her, already shirtless, and he wouldn't turn away as she slipped out of her robe, wouldn't look away as she came towards him. In her mind, she could shed her poison skin and press herself against him, and he would make her feel even more of him, take her hand and bring it down over his cock, already straining for release.
It was only here, alone, that she let the banked-up desires fan themselves into flame.
She'd never imagined him naked before he came back this last time. Even in her fantasies, she hadn't gone beyond the way he'd looked in the bar, but now she imagined that, too-the way it might have been if she'd been older, and more experienced, able to flirt with him through the steel bars until he finished fighting. It was her oldest fantasy, and her favorite. Before, she'd always ended the daydream with him slamming out of the cage, claiming her lips with a kiss at the bar, everyone's eyes on them.
Not again. I can stop. Not tonight.
Rogue let her robe drop to the floor and got into the shower; it had been running long enough that the bathroom was filling with steam. She leaned back against the cool tiles and let the water run over her already-overheated flesh. She tried, one last time, to stop herself from doing this, but she already knew she would, and that it wouldn't be the last time.
He'd kiss her. Hard. His mouth would be warm on hers and he'd make her open her lips to him, to let him taste the liquor she'd been drinking while she watched. She'd be dizzy with his demands, and his hands would come up to close over her breasts, but not in that fumbling high-school way she hated. This would be a claim of ownership, a sign of what he intended to take.
He might let her finish her drink before he took her arm and led her outside. It would be cold, snowy, the way it had been that night she'd slipped out after him, but this time he'd know she was there. He'd have his arm around her, keeping her warm against his side. She didn't imagine herself in a coat, certainly not in that long hooded thing she'd only chosen to cover herself as much as possible. It wouldn't matter-they wouldn't have far to go. Just across the parking lot to his camper, and he'd pause only to shuck off his leather jacket before pressing her up against the wall, or he'd roughly clear one of the tiny counters of its messy jumble of dirty dishes and clothes before lifting her onto it. She liked that version.
Rogue let her hand slip between her legs for the first time, teasing herself just a bit. He might make her play with herself for him, make her get herself even more wet and ready, and his eyes would darken with passion as he watched. But he wouldn't give her long.
God, it wasn't enough. She wanted to know what it would feel like when he took her, half-clothed but not for protection, but just because he wouldn't wait long enough to undress her completely. He would tear her underwear off, and then he'd push her legs apart-no, he'd order her to wrap them around his waist. She could imagine that. She wanted that. She wanted Logan, frantic to be inside her, driving into her hard enough to leave her breathless.
And suddenly the fantasy changed, completely of its own volition, and she imagined he was there, right there with her in the shower, naked and slick in her arms. But the look he was giving her wasn't unadulterated lust, it was warm and passionate and knowing and he wanted her. He wanted her.
Rogue moaned as she came, her fingers pressed roughly against her own sex in a pale imitation of the ones she really wanted. She felt tears burning behind her eyes as she blindly reached for a facecloth and pressed it against her burning cheeks. God, even in her own imagination she managed to find the images that stabbed her to the heart.
It was one thing to imagine herself as a stranger Logan wanted to fuck. It was another thing altogether to imagine it was really herself.
She turned off the shower and dried herself, trying to make her own touch clinical and impersonal now, trying to distance herself from the needs and the desires. She slipped back into her robe before she left the bathroom, not wanting to see her own body, flushed with the heat of the shower and the half-satisfying orgasm. She dressed herself in pajama pants and a soft shirt, and when she looked at herself at last she might as well have been a teenager on her way to a slumber party. She forced herself to acknowledge that.
It would be so much easier if she could have stayed that way forever, not turned into this woman who wanted more than she could ever have. Rogue got into bed and buried her face in a pillow.
It didn't even matter. She couldn't fool herself, outside of her own imagination; she wasn't the kind of woman Logan wanted anyway. He liked her, she supposed he even loved her in his way-certainly she knew well enough what he'd done to save her life. But that was all a long time ago, half-forgotten; there had been no dramatic rescues or adventures for her since the strange night the Professor had taken them all to the White House. They hadn't been there, really, of course; they had only been in Cerebro, but what was real and what your mind only thought was real were hard to tell apart.
It was the same for her secret imaginary life. When he was gone, it didn't matter that he never looked at her with more than amused interest or casual fondness; in her mind, he could be whatever she wanted. When he was here, every time he did look at her was a cold hard reminder that 'reality' wasn't the one in her head.
Rogue fell asleep, at last, but when she woke she knew her sleep hadn't been untroubled. She'd dreamed too much, gone to sleep too agitated, and she felt like she hadn't rested for even a minute.
She didn't remember what she'd dreamed, but she felt hot and sticky between her legs, and she was sure he'd been part of it.
It was impossible to totally avoid seeing Logan during the day, and for some reason that day he seemed to be around every corner, but she was good at pretending, and she didn't let herself notice. Since he'd been back, she'd perfected the skill of distancing herself in public, to mortgage her nights to buy herself the capability of functioning during the day. It was a deal with the devil; every night she swore she wouldn't give in, tried to keep herself busy enough for long enough that she'd be too tired to do anything except sleep, but it never worked. It was working less and less well, if she was honest with herself.
She had a class at a local college in the evening, something she'd signed up for just to get herself out of the Mansion. She wished she'd chosen a course other than Classic English Novelists in the Women's Studies department, because reading early versions of romance novels really didn't do much to help her state of mind, and there was nothing some continuing-education class was going to teach her about Jane Eyre or Persuasion that she didn't already know. She hated the way gathering her notebook and texts up from her desk made her feel childish all over again. But it was somewhere to go, and she really needed that, so she didn't make excuses to herself and cut the class.
Tonight was going to suck, though, because tonight they were starting in on Wuthering Heights, and wasn't that just the sort of thing she needed. She slammed the gearshift down and stepped on the accelerator a little harder than necessary as she pulled out of the garage, wishing she were driving something with a little more kick to it, something more like the heavy-metal clunkers the boys she'd known back home liked to fix up and drive hard. She'd learned to drive stick shift on one of those cars, guided by an older boy who'd lived down the block from her. It had been fun. Life was simpler then.
Somehow, the class wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be. There was something about those chairs with their built-in desks that let her slip into her student role more easily, and she had always loved Brontė. She got absorbed in the discussion, and if Heathcliff was more definitively characterized in her head than in anyone else's in the class, it wasn't a major distraction. It wasn't until she was driving home that her wayward imagination reminded her that she hadn't yet mulled over the day's new glimpses, hadn't stored them away as future fuel for the fires. But then her brief respite was over and she remembered them; the quick half-smile Logan had given her when she came downstairs for breakfast, the way he'd caught her arm when she almost ran into him as she was rushing to her tutoring session, the fact that he'd turned his head as she walked across the grounds toward the garage, past where he was standing with Scott. He'd still been standing there when she drove away, she realized now. He always did seem to know when she left and when she came back; she supposed it was automatic for him after all this time. Making sure she made it home safe.
She imagined more, now, as she drove back toward Salem Center, something new, imagined that he was maybe watching from a window to see her arrive, that he would be waiting for her when she got back to her room. She wouldn't look up, but she wouldn't have to. She'd pretend she had no idea he was waiting, and she'd take her time gathering her things and getting out of the car. She might even stop by the common room, chat casually with whoever was watching television or working or reading. She'd pretend that she didn't know he was even there, and he'd know the game well enough to really surprise her somewhere along her route as she wandered back to her room. To their room.
Damn. She'd almost missed the turnoff to the School. No, he wouldn't even let her get back to the room. She wouldn't even see it coming, but suddenly he'd have her, yanking her into whatever room was closest and pinning her arms behind her as he groped her body. And she'd pretend to struggle, and he'd tell her she was asking for it and if she didn't shut up and behave he'd put her over his knee first.
Rogue guided the car up the long driveway, thankful that she could do that on autopilot. She didn't know when those elements had begun creeping into her fantasy life, but they were pretty constant these days. He'd threaten that, and it wouldn't be scary but exciting, and she'd tell him she'd do anything he wanted. And what he'd want would be for her to get on her knees in front of him, to undo his belt and unzip his jeans and take him in her mouth, right there. And she'd know exactly how he liked it, and what to do to make him groan with pleasure and seize her hair in his hands, pulling her closer to him--
She imagined it, and it was so real in her head that when she got out of the car it was an almost surreal jolt to see him, half in shadow across the garage next to his motorcycle, leaning against it, arms crossed over his chest. Rogue's heart almost stopped.
He's supposed to be upstairs.
“Hey,” she managed, and then smiled. “You startled me.”
Logan didn't answer. For one dizzying second Rogue thought her imagination had finally slipped the reins and taken over her brain, because he stood up and crossed the garage to her so quickly it didn't seem possible. She was holding her books in front of her, still standing next to the car she'd driven into town, and suddenly she was pressed back against the door, his hands against the car at either side of her, trapping her there.
“Last night.” The words left her breathless, but when she looked up with a startled gasp his eyes were what made her completely speechless. “What were you dreaming?”
She opened her mouth, but she couldn't answer him to save her life. And then he leaned closer, and she shut her own eyes because she could feel his breath against her ear, and no matter how many times she'd longed for that, her imagination had never been good enough to make her feel that exact thrill.
“Tell me.”
“I don't know,” she said, and it was only because he'd ordered her to that she could make words at all. She kept her eyes closed. “I don't remember.” All she could feel was the heat of his body next to her. And then she cried out a little and the only reason she didn't drop her books was that he was too close to her, because one of his hands had come up to tangle in her hair, a little rough but not hurtful, as he made her tip her head back.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded. “Look at me.”
She did, and she was breathless all over again at the expression on his face. He kept his eyes locked on hers, and his hand gentled a bit, so his fingers were stroking the back of her head lightly. “Be careful--”
“Shh.” She fell silent, losing herself in that simple touch, and she thought that if she died right then, it wouldn't matter. “Before that, then. What were you thinking about?”
Rogue felt the flush start deep in her chest, and by the time she felt the burning in her cheeks she knew he already had the answer he wanted. But she couldn't reply, even though she wanted to, anything to make this moment continue; she couldn't find any words at all. He held her gaze another long moment before he dipped his head again, releasing her from that connection, and she gasped again when he brushed his lips across her neck, too quick and light for anything to happen. “Logan--”
“Tell me, darlin'. I want to hear you say it.” He knew, he already knew, and she knew he'd turned his head away because it would have been too much for her to answer while he was looking at her. She closed her eyes again; using all her senses was too much, but that just made her more aware of the brush of his beard against her cheek.
“You,” she whispered in desperate surrender. “I always think about you.”
Then his lips were on hers, not in that fierce demanding kiss she'd pictured in her barroom fantasy, but in an almost-chaste brief caress that still made her heart race with the promise of it. “That's good,” he murmured. “Now tell me what you think about.”
“I--” I can't, she'd been about to say, but then his other hand moved, knocked the books from her arms and took away that last defense she'd had between them, before locking around her waist and pulling her against him. Her hands were trapped between them now with nothing to hold, and her gloved fingers closed over the sides of his shirt. “Different things,” she said helplessly, and he laughed softly.
“Tell me one,” he suggested, and the hand holding her waist moved in slow circles at the small of her back. Oh, Holy Mary Mother of GOD. This couldn't be happening, not really.
So what did it matter? “I imagine we're back at the bar in Laughlin,” she started, and this time it was Logan who sucked in a breath, and it gave her the courage to continue. “But I'm not a kid, and you see me and come get me after the fights, and--”
“Christ.” Logan moved suddenly, knocking her legs apart and forcing one of his own between them, and the fact that they were still fully clothed didn't seem sophomoric at all with his thigh pressing against her sex. She moaned and arched against him, and Logan held her even more firmly as his lips moved back to her ear. “Put your arms around my neck,” he ordered, and when she did he yanked her up and against him even more, her feet barely touching the ground now, increasing the pressure between her legs, her back against the car door. Rogue tried to duck her head against his chest, but he still had his hand wound in her hair and he wouldn't let her hide her face, wouldn't let her hide anything. “Keep going,” he demanded tersely.
“God, Logan--” She was pretty sure he wouldn't stop, but she was still afraid he might if she didn't obey. “You bring me out to your trailer, and it's like this, we can't even wait to get undressed, you just put me up against the wall and tell me to put my legs around your waist, and...” She paused for one gulp of air. Thank god for her imagination filling in the details so thoroughly, with so much practice, because if she'd had to think about this... “And I want you to--Oh!” He'd darted his tongue into her ear just as he'd lurched against her one more time, and that and the pressure of his leg between her thighs and the arousal she'd already been feeling sent her flying. It was beyond intense, beyond anything she'd ever felt or fantasized, and the fact that it was Logan who was holding her safe and steady against him as she shuddered and moaned again in ecstasy made it that much more fantastical and dreamlike. He'd let go of her hair at last and her head fell forward; she almost didn't realize what was happening any more as he lifted her up, setting her down on the hood of the car and then wrapping his arms around her, holding her there.
Rogue let her arms slip free of his neck, but he didn't let her go. He didn't make her look up again, either; he just held her, and although it still felt warm and safe it made her cry a little, because it was over now, and from now on it would only be in her imagination again and that would never be good enough, not after this. She rested her hands against his chest, too overwrought to do more than soak up every last bit of him she could.
“Hey.” She felt his lips against the top of her head, and that made two more tears form and trickle down her cheeks, because that was just the same as always, and she didn't know how she was ever going to look at him again now that he knew. “Hey, baby. Don't cry. I'm sorry.”
She jerked her head up and her hands away from him at that, and dragged one gloved hand across her face. “You're sorry?”
He looked surprised, then a little amused. Just like always. “You're crying. Aren't I supposed to apologize?” She tried to move away from him, to slide off the car, but he wouldn't let her. “Marie.”
“Don't. Don't look at me,” she whispered, and hid her tear-streaked face in her hands. But he wouldn't let her do that either; his hands slid easily up her arms and pulled hers away. Then he raised them up, and she still couldn't look, but she felt his lips against her fingers, through that damned Lycra again. As usual.
“I want to look at you.” And there was something in his voice that was different, that made her risk everything on one glance up, and then she couldn't look away. “Didn't mean I was sorry about--look, you want to pick up your books and go back to imagining, or you want to know what I think about?”
Christ almighty. Rogue had lost track of how many times she'd changed her mind about whether this was real. At this point, if she'd gone crazy, she didn't care. “Uh-huh,” she managed.
“Which one?” The amusement was gone now, and the way he was looking at her was familiar and foreign at once, because she only knew it from her dreams. She slid one hand free of his and brought it to his face, brushing against the roughness of his beard that she could feel even through the fabric, then taking a firmer hold of his collar.
“Tell me what you think about.” His mouth twisted up a little, whether in amusement again or in satisfaction she wasn't sure, and she tugged him closer. “Logan…tell me.”
“What I think about what?” he returned, and now she knew he was teasing her, trying to bring her beyond her self-imposed limits. Rogue remembered the flirtatious smile she always gave him in her fantasies and felt it moving across her lips in reality.
“What you think about…when you think about me,” she breathed. Something went over his face then, almost a flicker of pain. Then he took a step closer to her.
“It's not like yours.”
She wouldn't have thought it would be. God, what Logan must imagine…”You can tell me,” she murmured. Her mind reeled with the possibilities.
“I don't have to keep you safe any more,” Logan said, and for a second she didn't realize he was answering, not making a statement. “I come back here, maybe just driving up, and I know from the way you look at me for the first time that something's changed with you. You know what you want from me.”
Rogue didn't know how she dared, but she let go of his collar at that and let her hand slip lower, down to the heavy buckle of his belt, and she took hold of it. “Keep going,” she commanded. There had to be more.
Logan let go of her other hand and she didn't mind that, somehow, not with the way he was looking down at her. “It's different,” he muttered. “You're not looking at me like I'm your big brother or your goddamn father…I'm not your father,” he said fiercely, and Rogue stopped her fumbling with the buckle for a moment and pressed her hand down, hard, over the bulge she felt below it, and the groan he let out was everything she could have dreamed of.
“I know that,” she whispered. “I never thought you were.”
“You know what I am and what I want, and that doesn't scare you,” he gritted out. “I--jesus christ, Marie.” She'd gotten the buckle free at last and he reached down to take one wrist in an iron grip. “Wait a minute.”
“No,” she insisted. “I was never scared of you. I just never thought you'd want me.” She tried to free her hand, but it was no use; she looked up at him in frustration. “What do you want me to say, Logan? That it's okay if this is all there is? Okay. But let me have this.”
“No,” he answered, with equal force, and for an instant she was sure he was going to walk away from her. But instead he held her hand there, where she could feel the heat of his body. “I want you,” he said simply, and Rogue thought she might pass out from the intensity of hearing those words alone. “But not if it's just for tonight. Not if this is just some fantasy you've got to get through. I thought I'd know if--I always used to know what was going on with you.” His hand moved up her back again, as though he just couldn't help that. “I'm sorry I started in like this, out here, but after last night--” Rogue felt that blush begin to betray her again. “And it seems like you're not around much any more, so I waited for you, and then when you got here...” His hips moved, almost unconsciously, against her hand again. “Admit it. You were thinking about this. About us.”
“Yes,” she confessed immediately. If that was all it took, she'd put her soul on a platter and serve it to him, but it couldn't be that simple. “Just...the way you smiled at me this morning.”
“That's all, huh?” He let her hand go, finally, but he kept his eyes on hers, and this time when he gave her that lazy smile she didn't even consider that he was only amused by her. She didn't think he believed her, exactly, but in its way that was true. Christ, if he made her tell him that one… “Always used to think I knew you, anyway,” he said, and she felt his hand sliding into her hair again. “Kinda caught me by surprise. This time.”
Rogue shifted nervously; his hand on her worried her, but she loved the way he was cupping her head possessively and didn't want it to stop. He seemed to understand, and his other hand soothed her shoulders reassuringly. “What about my skin?”
“Pretty,” he told her, and shook his head when she started to object. “Doesn't matter.”
Rogue swallowed back her automatic response to that. Even if it wasn't true, even if he changed his mind tomorrow, she didn't want to bring reason or logic into this moment. She would just try to make sure not to do anything too dangerous, and if it happened, or when he got over the novelty or the challenge or whatever it was and he didn't want her any more, she would just deal with it then. But Logan raised her face to make her look at him again and all her good intentions failed her. She couldn't have this and then lose it. She just couldn't.
“You don't believe me,” Logan told her, and she shook her head, because she couldn't lie to him either. And then he leaned closer. “You will.” His mouth closed over hers again, and this time it was the kiss from her fantasy, hard and demanding, his tongue slick between her teeth as he forced her lips apart and his hand at the back of her head not letting her pull away. Then she felt it, the draw of her mutation starting to flicker into life, and she pulled away with a startled gasp.
Logan looked slightly dazed, but he just shook his head once as if to clear it. Rogue's head was swimming with what she'd absorbed in that moment, and she reached out blindly and caught at his arms, pulling him closer, wrapping one leg around one of his. “Oh, god,” she moaned. Logan laughed, and the sound sent shivers through her.
“I've touched you before,” he said, and his arms went around her, holding her close against his chest.
“Not like that.” It was too much, everything he'd been feeling when--“I want you too.” She reached down toward his belt again and he caught her hand.
“Wait.”
“I don't want to wait.” She threw her head back and all but bared her teeth at him. Logan twisted his head in an odd gesture she'd seen before and then pressed her back against the windshield of the car, one hand coming up to cup her breast, and even though it was over her shirt there was nothing adolescent about it. Rogue tightened her leg even more firmly around his, raising her hips against him, aching for more contact. More touch.
“You want me to do it right here? Right now?”
“Yes,” she whispered desperately. “Now. Please.” She had no idea how that could happen, but she could feel his breath against her neck, making her nerves tingle, and then he bit down, just hard enough to make her gasp with the sensation. He suckled hard at her for an instant and worried at that bit of skin just long enough for her to catch one more frisson of his emotions before he let go, and her head fell back against the windshield in a haze of pure desire.
“Maybe next time,” Logan raised his head far enough that he could nuzzle at her ear again. “Right now I'm thinking about somewhere a little more private.” He stayed there for another moment before he stepped back, but he kept her hand in his, and at his unspoken command she slid down off the car and onto her slightly shaky legs. Logan knelt down and gathered up the two or three books she'd let fall about a lifetime ago. It still seemed surreal. How practical of him.
“You gonna carry my books for me?” The image amused her.
“Yeah.” He gave her a quizzical look, but he locked his fingers through hers and kept her close as they left the garage. Rogue didn't even remember walking through the hallways, never did have any memory of anyone they'd passed or anything she'd seen, and it wasn't until Logan had thrown the books down on his dresser and had her up against the door he'd closed and locked behind them that he said anything else.
“Let me tell you a secret,” he told her. “Most guys are pretty simple to figure out. I don't know what you've been making up in your head, but you're probably a lot more creative than me.” His hands were at her waist, and she could feel his fingers running along her body, tracing the ridge of her ribs. “I want to hear what you've been thinking, but...” His mouth closed over hers for a moment, and then his lips moved along her cheek, her neck, with the lightest of butterfly kisses, and she was practically crawling out of her skin with the teasing insistence of it. Finally he rested his head against the door, just at her ear. “I know what that stuff's about,” he admitted quietly. “There's something about the dangerous guy.”
He didn't say anything else, but after a second he lowered his head even more, and Rogue brought her arms up to hold him there, against her shoulder. She wanted to tell him that she understood, but she couldn't find the words. That gesture of near-surrender, so uncharacteristically unguarded, told her so much about what he wanted to be for her, what he really was. “You're not dangerous,” she whispered finally. “I know that. Really.”
His hands tightened at her waist at that, and then he lifted her up, locking his arms around her and burying his face against her neck behind the curtain of her hair. Rogue closed her arms around his neck and held on until he let her go, let her slide slowly down the length of his body until her feet touched the ground again.
Rogue was still all but overwhelmed at the sudden onslaught to her senses. It wasn't only the brief moment of her mutation at work, it had just been so long that she'd had to be careful, so long since she'd taken even the simplest touch for granted, and now she had to learn that all over again. She took in everything about him during that long embrace, and it was the little details that her imagination had never bothered with that she noticed the most. It wasn't just the feel of his arms around her, it was the way the cotton shirt he wore slid against hers, the sensation of her own weight against him, the way his muscles shifted as he began to let her down. She'd imagined his lips on her a thousand times, but she'd never thought about the damp warmth of his breath and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest against hers. She hadn't remembered his scent, but now she thought she could stay in this moment forever, just drinking it in.
And never had she even considered what he would feel, but she could tell by the way his hands and mouth moved over her that he too was exploring new sensations, new because he was discovering her. She wondered what he was thinking, what made him want to nuzzle her neck in that exact place, why he ran his hand down over her waist to rest on her hip. She'd forgotten more than just what it was like to touch other people, she'd forgotten what it was like to be touched.
There was so much more to it than she'd remembered.
Rogue could feel a change in the tension of Logan's shoulders as he let her down, but she knew already that it would take her a while to relearn the interpretation of this strange and wonderful language of the body. For now, it was his expression, when she could finally look up and meet his eyes, that really told her that in the last few minutes something had changed for him as well. He looked different, somehow. If it hadn't been Logan, she might almost have said--peaceful.
“You're not disappointed it's not all about that made-up tough-guy stuff, are you?” He raised one hand to brush her hair back from her face, lingering a little over the silver strands she'd still never gotten rid of. “Because I can do that.” His mouth twisted up a little on one side. “It's just sort of tiring, doing it all the time.”
Disappointed? She knew he was teasing again, and a lot of things went through her head that she wanted to retort, including exactly how made-up were her fantasies, considering that he'd rescued her from certain death twice and she'd seen him fighting evil and standing between her and a crazy half-wolf mutant, to say nothing of the only man on Earth who could have twisted his unbreakable bones into pretzels, and besides, she'd fallen in love with him when she was a teenage runaway and he was beating up drunks in a cage, but that brought her mental tirade to a sudden halt, because that wasn't quite right.
She'd fallen in love with him sometime when she wasn't paying attention, in between or after all the heroics and the drama, not because of them. Because he was always there--well, he wasn't always there, but because he always came back. That wasn't her imagination. He'd promised he'd look out for her and he always, always did that. That was what was solid, and real.
“This is real,” she said aloud, almost just to prove it to herself, and saw Logan's eyes soften even more with that new expression. She never wanted to look away.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Not quite what you imagined?”
“Better than I imagined.” She ran her fingers along his shoulders, up to take his face between her hands. “I don't need any of that.” Rogue smiled and was rewarded by a signature raised eyebrow. “Not that I'd mind if you still came to my rescue once in a while. You know, if I ever needed it.”
“Any time, darlin'.” He scooped her up suddenly, striding across the room to deposit her on his bed. He leaned over her, not quite with his full weight, but letting her feel his body pressing her down against the mattress. “Just let me know.”
“You'll know.” She reached up for another kiss, savoring it, lingering as long as she dared. “What about you? There's really nothing…special you think about?”
“Told you, pretty simple equation. How about you, naked, as soon as possible? And not arguing with me about how you can't?”
Rogue felt a rush that equaled anything she'd ever experienced even in the throes of the most vivid fantasy, and her tongue came out and slicked along her lower lip. “I could do that.”
“Good.” Logan stayed where he was for another long moment before he shifted back to let her sit up. He watched as she fumbled with the hem of her shirt, awkward at her first time baring herself in front of a lover, and for a second she wished she knew how to do this seductively, more like someone he might dream about. Then she looked up.
It didn't matter, because she knew instantly that he didn't want her to do it any differently at all. She tugged at the button at the waist of her jeans, and then realized why her fingers were so clumsy, she was doing this all in the wrong order--
Logan put a hand out to stop her. “Thought of one thing I might like.”
“What?”
“Leave the gloves,” he said. “I've always kinda had a thing for the gloves.”
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Author's Chapter Notes:
This is for every writer whose fanon elements I've cheerfully mixed, matched and incorporated, including the new line I predict will launch a thousand fics. Thank you. Rogue appreciates the fodder for her imagination. And for a certain very special someone, I would like to point out that although Logan does many things in the following pages, he Does. Not. Chuckle.