Logan popped his claws and sliced right through the second ring. The two halves made dull thunks as they dropped to the area rug in his room.
Rogue rolled her eyes and handed him the last ring, this one a bit thinner than the others. Logan obligingly retracted his claws and slipped it on. A split second and a snikt later, and the destroyed ring joined the other two on the floor.
Logan grimaced and murmured, “Sorry, darlin’.”
Shaking her head as she picked up the bits of metal, Rogue replied, “You’ve got nothin’ to apologize for, Logan. And this doesn’t mean you can’t wear a ring – you just can’t wear any this thick.”
Logan arched an eyebrow. “We ran out of rings, kid. Don’t have anythin’ else to test out.”
Rogue bounced upright, a smile on her face. She winked and said, “Got an idea, sugar.”
Logan’s other eyebrow rose to join its twin. As he rolled the unexpected endearment around in his head, he decided he liked it.
With a little smirk of contentment, Logan crossed his arms as he replied. “I’m yours to command, kid.”
And he was. He followed her out of the room, down the hall, downstairs to the kitchen, all without question. But when she pulled a roll of aluminum foil from one of the drawers and started fashioning rings of varying thickness, Logan had to admit that he was a little worried about potential witnesses. After all, to anybody walking into the room, it would look like the Wolverine was playing dress-up.
“Uh, Marie? Can we maybe go back to my room to do this?”
Without bothering to look up from the little bit of foil in her hand, Rogue shook her head. “Why bother? We’re either gonna run out of foil and have to grab another roll, or we won’t use it all and we’ll have to bring the rest back here. That’s one thing I’ve always hated about this place, you know. Takes forever to get anywhere.”
Logan grunted, not bothering to argue as Rogue reached for his hand and slipped the first of her creations onto his finger. Waiting only long enough for Rogue to pull back a safe distance, Logan flexed the muscles in his forearm and the claws shot out, slicing cleanly through the makeshift ring. As he lowered his arm, ready to retract the claws, Rogue reached out to stop him.
“Wait. Doesn’t it make more sense for me to fit a ring on you while your claws are out? That way we’ll know exactly how thin it needs to be.”
“No way,” Logan said, and shook her hand off his arm so he could pull the claws back in safely.
“Logan,” she chided. “I know it hurts when they come out, so why won’t you let me try? I don’t want you to be in pain when we can avoid it.”
He shook his head. “I said no.”
Rogue looked surprised and then angry at essentially being told what to do. “Well why the hell not?”
“Marie,” he explained quietly, “they’re too sharp for you to be workin’ around ‘em like that. You could slice your damn fingers off before either of us even noticed a thing.”
Remembering her first glimpse of the claws in action, when Logan had sliced through that gun in Laughlin City, Rogue found herself swallowing convulsively.
“Uh, yeah,” she murmured, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Yeah,” Logan echoed dryly.
Rogue made no reply, feeling strangely ashamed that she had been angry with him when he was only trying to protect her. She just bent her head and reached for another foil ring.
Logan said nothing as she slipped it on, and they went silently through the process of him popping the claws, the ring falling off, retracting the claws, her grabbing another ring several times. When they were on the fourth to last ring, the claws only sliced partially through the ring. Logan and Rogue exchanged a quick look and she nearly lunged for the next ring on the table, Logan already extending his hand so she could slip it on.
He popped the claws and the ring stayed in place. They exchanged excited smiles and Logan retracted and popped the claws a few more times in rapid succession. The ring remained unscathed.
“You know,” Rogue said in a musing tone, “it just occurred to me that there might have been an easier way of figuring this out.”
“How’s that, kid?” Logan asked, still staring at his hand.
“You can make them come out slowly, right? So we could have just watched carefully to see where along the claw the ring was actually being cut.”
Logan looked at her and blinked twice before laughing abruptly. “We’re a couple o’ geniuses, aren’t we?”
“I’m sorry I didn’t think of it sooner, Logan,” Rogue said earnestly.
He just shook the apology off with a wave of his hand. “Here, take the ring, kid. We’ll head over to see Estelle tomorrow morning and order the wedding bands.”
Rogue got a mischievous look on her face. “Can we go at 8 am?”
For a moment, Logan didn’t understand. But when he did, an identical smile tugged at his lips. “Sure. Wanna take one of the cars this time?”
Rogue’s smile turned just the slightest bit wicked as she replied, “The Bentley?”
His smile changed too, stretching enough to show teeth. “Darlin’, you read my mind.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Just a short chapter for now. Enjoy!