“Okay, class, I’d like you to welcome our new student, Pepe.” The newest arrival was only about a foot and a half high, with resplendent black and white fur and a stench that immediately filled the room.
Rogue prettily wrinkled her nose, as did the rest of the class. Storm’s eyes watered and she eyed the windows at the far edge of the room. “Pepe comes to us from… where are you from, Pepe?”
“I am from Toontown, lov-ee.”
“You may call me Ms. Munroe.” she said, irritation in her voice, and she finally gave in, walked to the wall, and hoisted up several windows. “Pepe, have a seat anywhere.”
Pepe slinked gracefully down the row of seats, his tail elegantly wafting after him, bigger than he was. He blinked at Rogue and took the seat next to her. She smiled stiffly at him.
Behind Rogue, Kitty started coughing and couldn’t stop.
“So who can tell me where the great pyramids are?”
“Egypt,” Remy said.
“Where in Egypt?” Storm asked, fighting the urge to say “duh!”
“Um, Remy tink it’s the place dem pyramids are.” The class laughed.
“Well, duh.” Storm said, and the class laughed again. She felt a bit better, except for the horrible stench.
“Ms. Munroe, may I be excused?” Bobby asked timidly, hand up.
If I can’t, you can’t, Storm thought and wiped her watering eyes. “No. Does anyone with a clue have an idea where the pyramids are?”
Rogue raised a gloved hand, the other holding the neck of her sweater up over her nose.
“Rogue?”
“Giza.”
“Correct.”
She felt eyes on her and darted a glance at Pepe from the corner of her eye. Yep, he was staring at her. As intrigued as she was by his bushy tail and minky-looking fur, she refused to give him the satisfaction of a direct look back.
Storm turned to the blackboard and started to write. Pepe slipped from his seat and just as Rogue was sensing motion out of the corner of her eye she felt a small soft paw on her silk-covered hand. “Oh, cherie, you are my lov-ee.” Rogue’s eyes widened as Pepe proceeded to kiss her hand.
Kitty, who had Pepe on one side and Remy on the other, muttered “Jesus Christ, there are two of them.”
“Hey, I resent dat, cherie.” Remy whispered to Kitty. Pepe kept pressing kisses to Rogue’s arm, making a swarthy “mwah” noise every time.
“Stop it!” Rogue hissed and recoiled, leaving Pepe holding the black satin glove. He blinked and cocked his head sideways at this new development. Before he could do anything else she snatched the glove out of his paw and hurriedly slipped it back on.
Storm turnedaround and suddenly Pepe was sitting primly in his seat, little feetbarely reaching the edge of his seat, paws folded primly and his twitching tail waving in the face of Colossus, who sat behind him.
Storm merely raised an eyebrow at the center of the room, a look few people ever dared challenge, and went back to writing on the board.
Suddenly Pepe was clinging to the side of Rogue’s neck, his tail rising like a giant plume above her head, oddly similar to her striped hair. “Oh, cher-ee, you are my love.” he whispered, his quivering black nose dangerously close to Rogue’s cheek.
“Get offa me!” Rogue hissed, pushing him away with a hand on his furry chest. “I’m not into bestiality!”
“Coulda fooled me,” John muttered over his shoulder, thinking of the way Rogue looked at Wolverine.
“Oh, lov-ee, you are le skoonk like me. Mwah-” The class tittered as he tried to press his skunky face to hers. The little furry bastard was surprisingly tenacious, and it took a bit of her strength to put him off.
“Stop it!” she shouted. Ms. Munroe turned around, staring at Rogue. But Pepe was sitting again at his desk, tail twitching over the nose of sleeping Colossus, causing him to jolt upright with a sneeze.
“Rogue. Is there a problem?”
“Yes!”
“And that would be...”
Just then, the bell rang and the class flooded out of the room.
Later, Rogue, Kitty, Jubilee and John were in the lunch room at a table. Rogue finished her burger and then carefully removed her gloves to peel her orange.
Logan came in and sat down at the table with the kids. This was taboo for a teacher, but he wasn’t a teacher, nor was he a person who cared about taboos. He reached for Rogue’s cake and she smacked his hand, causing him to waver and his eyes to flutter. “Bad Logan!” she grinned. “Get your own damn cake.”
The other kids watched silently. Rogue was the only one who wasn’t afraid of Logan, and vice versa.
“Here comes Remy Junior,” Kitty wryly mumbled, looking over Rogue’s shoulder.
“Oh, Jeez.” Rogue mumbled, and slid her gloves back on. Logan grabbed the half-naked orange from her tray but she didn’t notice. The little skunk was standing beside the bench, looking up at her, cutely blinking, tail twitching.
“What?” Rogue said. The stench made her lunch roll over in her stomach and she was suddenly bristling with annoyance.
“Rogue has a boyfriend,” John sang under his breath. Jubilee elbowed him in the ribs.
“Oh, bay-bee, you are my love.” Pepe said in a voice too big for such a small creature, batting his eyelashes. And suddenly he was clinging to her arm like a fetid mink stole.
I swear to god, Rogue thought, if he starts humping I’ll drain the bastard.
“Dude, you stink.” Jubilee said.
“Look!” Rogue spat at the wide-eyed skunk. “You need to stop. Get off my arm!”
With a “boing” sound that seemed to come out of nowhere, Pepe jumped up onto her head. He clung there amorously, his tail twitching like an extension of Rogue’s own hair. John was laughing so hard he was in tears. Logan was starting to laugh too, a sound they rarely heard, a low chuckle that escalated into all-out laughter. Rogue glared at him and he stopped for just a second, and then began to laugh harder.
“Get off of me!” Rogue said. With another unearthly “boing” Pepe was sitting on the bench next to her, looking up at her with wide blinking eyes.
“Aww, he’s kinda cute.” Kitty said.
“Pepe, go sit on her head,” Rogue said.
“Non, cher-ee, you are my love.” Still sitting next to her, he wrapped his arms around her, pressing his face to her side. “You are my bonbon.”
Everyone at the table, except Rogue, was wailing with laughter. Rogue’s face was turning red and they realized that they had never seen her angry before.
“Okay, I dunno what sexual harassment laws are like in Toontown, but around here they’re a little more strict.”
More blinking. He was a cute little fucker, but the smell was starting to make her eyeballs hurt. “Get off of me.” She clarified. He moved over a fraction of an inch.
“Look. We may both be mutants, but I am a human. You are a skunk. It will never work. Somewhere out there there’s a pretty girl skunk that will make you very happy.”
John keeled over onto the floor from laughing so hard. Rogue kicked him, but he kept laughing anyway.
Pepe just blinked at her with those big amorous eyes.
She looked at Logan. “Little help here?” He merely leaned back and clutched his stomach, laughing even harder.
“Hey Bub. Why don’t you go pick Rogue some flowers?”
“Oh Jesus. Don’t encourage him.”
“Bien sur, Bub.” He said “Bub” with an accent made him hit the B hard. Then Pepe bowed with a flourish, which caused his skunk ass to rise up in the air, tail bobbing above. The kids at the table next to theirs cleared out quickly. Then Pepe was gone.
Rogue looked down at John on the floor and kicked him again in his ribs. Not too hard, but enough to make him go “oof.”
“Rogue has a boyfriend...” he wheezed, and this time she kicked harder.
The next day Rogue got to Storm’s class early and sat with a can of white spray in her hand. It was the stuff that people wore for Halloween, that washed out after a couple of shampoos. She had made a special trip to the mall just to procure it.
John sauntered into the room. He took one look at Rogue and started laughing. “Fuck you, Firebug,” she muttered, grinning dangerously, tucking her hair up under a baseball cap. Other kids began filing into the room. Storm came in and started looking for something in her briefcase.
Rogue winked at Kitty and very quietly and deliberately sprayed two stripes down the back of John’s head. Kitty tittered and John turned around, but Rogue was sitting with the can in her purse and her eyes staring out the window. She had beaten everyone, including Logan, at poker.
John snickered again and turned around. Every student who sat further back than John started to snicker. Storm looked up and re-shuffled her papers. Pepe sauntered into the room in much the same way as John had, carrying an enormous bouquet of wildflowers. Rogue’s lips twitched.
Pepe hopped cutely into his seat and stared at Rogue. He blinked several times, confused. None of her hair was visible.
She pointed at John’s back and Pepe looked at him. His cartoonish eyes got wider and red hearts began to rise from his head as he blinked stupidly...
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Story Notes:
I guess Karen liked the Ladybug bit I did for Taryn's birthday, so she oh-so-subtly hinted that her birthday was in April, and that she's mad about Pepe. This is the result.