The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Story Notes:
Written for January's Pulp Novel challenge, using the title 'One Of The Girls'
Disclaimer: All Marvel characters are property of Marvel, which is why they're called Marvel characters. As I am clearly not a multi-million-dollar corporation you can safely assume I'm just doing this for my own perverse entertainment.
Disclaimer: All Marvel characters are property of Marvel, which is why they're called Marvel characters. As I am clearly not a multi-million-dollar corporation you can safely assume I'm just doing this for my own perverse entertainment.
Marie sighed. Loudly. For probably the forty-fifth time that evening. She was sitting on Logan's bed as he shuffled interminable reports around on the desk - and really, the Wolverine doing things in triplicate? Cyke had a lot to answer for - her gloves stripped off and discarded in a crumpled heap on the corner of the nightstand. She kept opening her mouth as if to say something, pausing for a second then closing it again. And sighing. For the forty-sixth time.
"Would you just spit it out already?" Logan growled at last. "You're huffing like a flamin' steam train back there."
There was silence behind him for a moment. Marie opened her mouth, closed it, frowned, opened it again and Logan was just about to tell her to just get the hell on with it and put them both out of their misery when she suddenly blurted-
"Would you have sex with me?"
Logan's head whipped around, pinning Marie with a gaze that was almost entirely confused and yet, in part, just a little bit panicked.
"Huh?" he managed.
"I want to know if I'm..." She waved her bare hand around vaguely. "I dunno. Desirable?" She sighed. "Would you... you know... have sex with me?"
Logan swallowed and rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably. "Is that a hypothetical question or are you actually asking?"
She shrugged and looked away, fingers idly picking at a loose thread on his quilt. "Does it make a difference?"
He thought about that for a moment. Kind of wished he hadn't asked about it in the first place.
"Guess not."
He pushed away from the desk and carefully sat down on the opposite side of the bed, his expression pensive.
"I do think you're a desirable woman," he said, cautiously. "But I'm not-" He paused and huffed uncomfortably. "I'm not willing to have sex with you."
"Oh."
She sounded disappointed and Logan fidgeted a little, searching for the elusive explanation that would convey what he actually meant rather than just what she was probably assuming.
"It's not that I don't think you're attractive," he said. "It's just... It would be casual sex, and that would be bad."
"Oh," she said again, quieter this time and he winced a little at how incredibly wrong that had come out sounding, even to him.
"Not that I think the sex itself would be bad," he added, hastily. "I mean, the sex would be fucking phenomenal, but it wouldn't be, you know... uh... special. Or whatever."
Nice girls were supposed to want it to be special or meaningful or something, weren't they? He chanced a look at her out of the corner of his eye.
She was frowning.
"I'm not quite sure what to make of that," she said at last.
Logan scratched his head. "Look," he said, uncomfortable with the way this conversation was going. "I like you. You're a good kid and probably one of the least annoying people I've ever met. But I know you. It might be different if we were strangers but we're not. And because I know you there's no way I'm just going to have random sex with you."
"Ah," she said again, even less happy this time and Logan allowed himself a mild grumble of despair that this explanation was probably never going to come out right.
"Kid," he sighed, temporarily abandoning the whole sticky mess entirely, "You're too nice to be wanting an old goat like me anyway, what's all this about?"
She shrugged. "I dunno, I was just thinking, I guess."
"Thinking what, exactly?" he asked guardedly, and Rogue huffed in frustration.
"Stuff," she said, noncommittally. "Men. That kind of stuff. I know my mutation's a lot to deal with and I was just wondering if- I dunno. Maybe someone would be willing to make the effort if I was sexier or something. I guess I ain't much of a catch really when you stop and think about it."
"What little brat put that in your head?" Logan asked. "I don't care how long ago they all graduated, they're still fucking brats."
Marie snorted. "You don't have to rush to defend my honour, I've been coming to the conclusion all by myself. I'm just one of the girls, Logan. I'm nothing special, not really, and I'm a whole lot of extra work in return for that nothing-special-ness."
She flopped backwards against the headboard, slumping inelegantly as she crossed her arms over her chest.
Logan blinked. "So, what? You think you're not worth the effort at all?" Incredulity was seeping into his voice and Marie shrugged, looking away.
"I guess I just started feeling like maybe time's catching up with me. Everyone I know seems to have partners and houses and children and dogs already." She drummed her bare fingers against her upper arm, a nervous gesture Logan had long ago come to associate with her version of uncomfortable truth. "It just kind of dawned on me that I'm racing to thirty and if I don't have sex at some point soon I'm starting to doubt that I ever will. It wasn't exactly in my life plan to be an eternal virgin or anything but I'm kind of running out of alternatives."
"Seriously?" Logan asked. "You're running out of alternatives in your twenties? Cause I've heard some dumb things in my time but that's pretty impressive. Even for you."
If the harshness in his voice surprised her she didn't show it, she merely raised an eyebrow and went back to poking more viciously at the loose thread on the quilt.
"It's not a joke, Logan. Not even horny twenty-somethings ever looked at me twice and by the time I get into my thirties you think anyone's going to be interested in the dried-up middle-age first-timer? Or my forties? God, I'm going to turn into Steve Carell." She groaned and dropped her head back to stare at the ceiling for a second. "I may as well buy a cardigan and a cat and pretend I'm dead below the waist already."
Logan had shifted more comfortably onto his side of the bed and was watching her with utter bemusement.
"You want to start again from the beginning?" he asked. "Cause you lost me right before you hypothetically propositioned me and this conversation has been getting weirder ever since."
Marie let out a low whine of frustration before climbing off the bed and walking over to the window to stare out at the mansion grounds below.
"Just face it, Logan. I'm liked the most un-sexable person on the face of the planet. There are psychopaths on death row getting more sex than me." She paused. "I guess I just... well... you've slept with hundreds of women without even knowing them. But you do know me and I figured that might, perhaps, count for something in place of the complete lack of sex appeal. I'm just not sure how to take the news that my personality is even more off-putting than the rest of me. I'd kind of been hoping it was the other way around. The rest of me's easier to fix."
Logan's scowl darkened. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it."
Marie shrugged. "Maybe," she admitted at last. "But it still wasn't really the answer I wanted."
"Try asking better questions," Logan said. "Because so far you haven't asked even one that makes any rational kind of sense."
Marie seemed to deflate at little, lips pressed together in a thin line as if battling with the words trying to escape.
"You want to know what's going on? Really?" She snapped. "I don't bother to shave my legs anymore because I can't even pretend that anyone's ever going to see them. And that... it frightens me. It scares the crap out of me because that's when I realise I've given up even trying." She swallowed hard, suppressing the waver that threatened at the edge of her voice. "So I guess I'm asking you, Logan- I'll get down on my knees and beg if I have to- but would you please just... sleep with me? Just once? Let me get it over with so when I'm old and alone and surrounded by cats I can look back and remember that even if it was only this one single time, at least I got to know what it felt like."
The dark silence that followed her statement was interminable, agonising seconds that felt like hours as she waited for his reply, and when it came his voice was stern.
"Why me?"
She took a breath, still resolutely staring out the window, anywhere but at him. "You seemed the most likely candidate. And there's a good chance you'd know what you were doing." She tapped her temple with her forefinger, meaningfully.
He at least had the good grace to look uncomfortable, or perhaps just slightly affronted, it was hard to tell in the rippled reflection in the window. "I ain't a gigolo, kid."
"Then because you're my friend," she pleaded. "Because I hoped I could trust you not to make fun of me for this."
Logan frowned. "Why the hell would anyone make fun of you?"
The snort she let out was less than ladylike. "Because I'm a nearly middle-age virgin trying to make a sex deal with her best friend so she doesn't have to get old and die without ever sleeping with anybody? It's pretty fucking pathetic. Even I'd make fun of me."
"Marie..." he sounded pained and she shut her eyes.
"If you're going to say no, please... don't. Just leave or something. Just go. Give me a couple of minutes and we'll pretend it never happened-"
"Marie," he repeated and he was closer this time, his hand warm and solid against her arm, making her shudder with the contact. "Look at me?"
He nudged her chin, too swift for her skin to react, and she grudgingly glanced up at his face. His expression was contemplative and she quickly looked away again.
"You don't want a quick tumble in the hay," he murmured gently, "And it ain't gonna' be like what you're hoping for even if you get it. You should want something more than a cursory fumble borne outta' desperation, and I don't want to be an emergency fall-back for you, just because you don't think you can find something better. It's insulting to both of us and I meant what I said, kid. I won't just have idle sex with you."
He softened his tone, grazing his thumb against the edge of her bottom lip as it began to tremble. "I like you, and I respect you, and I care about what would happen in the morning. All those women you remember, I never cared about. They were easy to forget and they would have forgotten about me just as fast. That's what made them different. They weren't better than you, I just didn't know them well enough to care if there were consequences."
"But you don't want anything more than what they offer either," she insisted and Logan sighed.
"You don't listen, do you?" he said. "I never said that. I said I wouldn't just randomly have sex with you. Because it couldn't just be casual, and you shouldn't be willing to accept any less."
"Noble sentiments don't do me a lot of good when no one wants what I have to offer, though," she snapped and Logan's grip tightened a fraction around her arm, giving her a tiny shake.
"If I was going to sleep with you, it would be because it was part of something real, not just because you think no one else will have you and you've lowered your expectations. It couldn't be just a one night stand that I let go in the morning, and you're asking me to do something I can't do to you."
She blinked up at him, disbelief clear in her expression. "You- So you won't have sex with me because you want a relationship with me instead?"
Logan paused, blinking for a moment as if he'd only just realised that himself. "To be honest," he admitted, "I hadn't really thought about it before."
He 'oomphed' as she whacked him in the stomach in annoyance and he hauled her to him with a growl, wrapping his arms around her until her head was pressed to his shoulder and she had no choice but to submit to his encompassing grip and relax against his body. He smiled as her arms slowly made their way around his waist to grudgingly cling on.
"Given how many times you've insulted me so far this afternoon, and that I still have no idea what the fuck any of this conversation was about, I think... I think maybe, yeah. I kinda do 'want a relationship'," She could hear the air-quotes in the distaste that dripped from his voice on that particular phrase, "If I'm going to fuck you. But hell knows why you'd be wanting that from me, of all people, given as apparently I'm just your emergency last-ditch booty-call."
He dipped his head, a puzzled smile tilting his lips as he felt her begin to laugh against this chest.
"Wow," she said, voice muffled against warm flannel and hard body. "We both have serious issues."
Logan snorted, nodding his head a fraction. "We're pretty fucked up. But mostly it's you. I'm fine, really, but you're insane."
"Hey!" she pouted, tilting her head up so she could glare at him and he gave her something that passed for a grin in reply.
"So... do you really want to do this? Like, actually, really, for real?" Rogue asked uncertainly and Logan raised one eyebrow as he squeezed her a little tighter. "But you still don't want to have sex with me?" She clarified.
Logan really did grin then, something dirty and amused and darkly promising in his expression.
"Tomorrow," he growled, "We're getting your hearing tested. Because that's definitely not what I said."