He's been gone over two months this time, eight weeks of freedom, or something like it, anyway.
The place looks about the same; stately, quiet, and above all, *rich*. He's never sure how it happened that he ended up going from living in a trailer hitched to the back of his truck to living in a mansion, but the scent here is familiar, and though he hates to admit it he figures it's because it smells like *home*.
He returns Cyclops' motorcycle, although he thinks maybe it's more his than Scott's now. However, if he tells himself it's not then he has a reason to come back, because he really wouldn't want that laser-eyed bastard hunting him down in a jet and blowing his ass into a million pieces for nothing but a bike, would he?
It's quiet when he walks into the mansion, the heavy silence that presses down on his ears and feels like a blanket, and it is actually sort of comforting. No one is around; it's late, too late for kids to be awake and the staff is always so worn out dealing with the ever-growing number of students that they're all probably in bed, too. He's glad no one's there, because he doesn't want it to be a big deal when he comes back. Logan likes to just wake up in the morning and join everyone for breakfast like he was there yesterday, like he hasn't been wandering around aimlessly for eight weeks.
He's not, really, but there isn't the same driving *purpose* to his forays into the frozen North as there used to be before Stryker. Sometimes he'll be in some hotel room, mindlessly trying to watch television, and realize he's leaving the Institute more than he's searching for his past. No doubt the Professor would say something like, "You're afraid to think of this place as home for fear you will lose it," or some other psycho-babble bullshit—was the Professor a damned psychologist? Hell, maybe he'd be right. Maybe that's why he goes. Maybe it's not. Whatever the reason, he can't help but notice that the more he thinks of this place as *home*, the longer he stays away.
Logan walks down the quiet hallway and stops in the kitchen, looking in the refrigerator for a beer that is never there and never will be. He settles for a Coke, which is too sweet and syrupy. *Sort of like this place*. A smile cuts across his face at the thought.
"Logan. You're back." The quietly pleased voice is as much a part of the place as the lack of beer in the fridge.
He's not surprised she's awake. She's attuned to him, has been for the last few years, and she still knows when he's coming back. In fact, she's usually the first person he sees when he sneaks in at night (*no, you're not sneaking, you're just returning!*).
She also knows when he's leaving, so she's usually the last. He always leaves in the morning, because somehow it seems more appropriate that way.
"Yeah. It's late, kid. Why aren't you in bed?"
She smiles at him, rolling her eyes, but she plays the game. "I knew you were comin' home, sugar. Why else?" She's wearing pajama pants with snowflakes on them despite the fact it's May, and a blue tank top with her usual gloves covering her arms up to her elbows. Her hair is pulled back from her face, and there are dark circles underneath her eyes that he doesn't like.
"What's the matter?" She can't fool him, Rogue, has never been able to. There's a bond between them that even *he* can feel, as if she's his kid sister or something.
Except that he thinks he wouldn't stare at his kid sister's chest and notice she isn't wearing a bra, but hey. Maybe he would. He's sort of a bastard, isn't he? Logan tips the soda bottle back and drinks more of the sweet soda, wishing it was beer. Or whiskey. Hell, even tequila would be better than this crap.
She shrugs, walks into the kitchen and hops up onto the counter. "Everyone's getting' ready to go off to college," she tells him, kicking her heels lightly against the wood. He has an impulse to tell her to stop it, but that makes him feel like he's a professor or something so he doesn't say anything.
"You ain't goin', then?" He leans against the counter and passes her the bottle of Coke. She takes it from him and drinks, but he doesn't think she likes it, either.
"Nah. Can you imagine me in a dorm? Though maybe we could see if that urban legend is true, if your roommate dies you get a 4.0? Bet I'd have a perfect four years," she muttered, the bottle held in her gloves, running her finger over the top of the opening.
He finds he can't stop staring at the play of her fingers around the glass edge of the bottle, and forces himself to look up at her. There's a knowing look in her eyes he doesn't like. "You know, you don't do the 'feel-sorry-for-me' act very well," he tells her bluntly. She throws her head back and laughs. "That's why I miss you, Logan. Everyone else panders to poor little Rogue, who can't be a normal girl, and you tell me to suck it up." There's the slightest hint of reproof along with the traces of the South in her voice, but she's smiling.
He shrugs, a grin tugging at his mouth. "Yeah, well, I'm good for something."
"Yeah?" She drops her chin and looks at him playfully; he doesn't like that she can do that now. She's eighteen, and damned if he doesn't know it, and he refuses to see all the signals she's been giving him since long before she reached the age when it would have been okay to notice.
"Yeah." He doesn't move, and there's a tension between them, nothing new but something he's not all that comfortable with, and he wonders if this is why he stays away from this place so much. Or why he always leaves, before he does something he shouldn't.
She brings the bottle up to her lips and sips at the soda again and he watches the muscles in her throat work rhythmically as she swallows. He finds he's growling a little so he looks away from her and thinks about something, anything, other than her with that bottle in her mouth, head tipped back, swallowing...
"Logan, I ain't a kid anymore," she begins, earnestly, and this is the conversation he's been trying to avoid by leaving all the time.
"I know," he tells her, hands up as if he's trying to stop her, which he is. "I noticed." His eyes travel down unwillingly to her breasts, and apparently it's cold in the kitchen, but you couldn't prove it to him because he's feeling much too warm.
"Rogue," he begins, dragging his eyes back up to hers, and there he falters. She's watching him intently, and he has no idea what to say to her.
She sighs, hops off the counter, and shakes her head at him.
"Honestly, do I have to be as old as you before you get it?"
He knows what she's doing; pushing his buttons, being a brat, things he finds he can't help but react to when it's her. "Listen, Rogue" he snaps, and he's crowding her back against the fridge. "I get it, okay? But I ain't gonna do a damn thing about it."
She narrows her eyes challengingly at him, and he tries very hard not to breathe because she smells so good, and he can tell she's aroused, and this isn't...*supposed to ever happen,* he forces himself to think, when really it's *a good place to let this happen* that is insistently repeating over and over in his head.
"Why?"
It's a simple question, and he doesn't blame her for asking. They're entirely too close to each other for comfort, even though they're not touching. She has a flush on her face and there's an excited glitter in her eyes that he doesn't like, because he shouldn't be the one to put that look on her face.
"I'll only hurt you, when I leave," he tells her gruffly.
She laughs a little, gloved hand rising between them, but she stops just short of touching him. "You already do," she tells him simply.
"Can't let me do this to you. Fall in love with Bobby Drake or someone else," he protests, a little wildly, because he's caught her hand up in his and is pulling her slowly against him, wondering if this is going to be his shortest trip home yet. If he does this, he'll be back on that bike in the morning, possibly for good this time.
*But I'll at least get to spend the rest of the night with her....*
"Don't want anyone else." Her voice is so soft that he might not have heard it if it weren't for his heightened senses, but he does, and it reverberates around in his brain like she's yelled it directly in his ear.
"You should." He won't close the distance between them but he wants to. He's pretty sure she's figured that out by now, too, because he's looking at her as if she's a steak and he's starving. He *is* starving...
"I know. So should you," she says bluntly. At his look of disbelief, she laughs. "I'm serious, Logan. You think you're dangerous, and I ain't disagreein' with you. I am, too, though, and everyone seems to forget it." Her voice slides downward into a dark whisper, shades of something frightening underlying her words.
"We all know--" he began, but she gave him a fierce look and shook her head, violently, strands of white hair escaping her ponytail and whipping in her eyes.
"It ain't the touch thing. You want to know the real reason I can't go to college?" She's not looking at him, and the playful seductress has vanished. He hears the anguish in her voice and pulls her close for a hug, his chin resting on the top of her head. He doesn't say a word because he's sure she'll tell him, because ever since that day on the train, she always has.
"I took the tests, because the Professor said they'd get me a private room or else I could live at home, and I was all excited thinkin' I'd be just like everyone else. But I went in and...I aced all the math and science tests, Logan. I knew stuff I'd never even *heard* of. They asked me what I wanted to major in and I said *engineering* before I could even stop and think about it." She shakes her head and it makes her hair tickle his nose. "I ain't an engineer, Logan," she informs him unnecessarily, very still in his arms.
"So you won't go to college cause you're afraid you'll end up an engineer?" He's teasing her, sort of, because he doesn't like what he thinks she's trying to tell him. If she has to have someone living in her head along with her, he wants it be him and only him. He can sort of understand what she means by dangerous, and how it has nothing to do with her skin and everything to do with her mind, and who she shares it with.
"It's too much of a temptation for him, Logan. I can't fight him so good when it comes to all that, because it's...tempting. He tells me that maybe...maybe he can fix me, if I just let him..." her body starts shaking, and he realizes she's sobbing, and he wishes he had Magneto there so he could shove his claws in the other man's neck and let her watch. "I'm afraid one day I'll wake up and I won't be able to push him back anymore because he'll have taken me over. I can't sleep because I dream about what they did to him, and there are times when I understand why he does what he does, and that's dangerous, because..." she's babbling now, and he strokes a hand over her hair to soothe her.
"Magneto ain't ever got anyone's best interest in mind but his own," Logan growls, ignoring that it feels really, really good to hold her. This incarnation of Rogue, the one that wants to be comforted, he's okay with. It's the one who gazes at him with heavy lidded eyes and a *fuck me* look on her face that makes him so nervous. "But you're strong, kid. You can shut him up, you've been doing it all this time..."
"I know that. But he's....persuasive, Logan. And the Professor thinks that putting me all alone, with no one but him for company..." she trails off, and he doesn't need her to finish the sentence.
"He doesn't trust you," he says flatly.
She pulls back to look up at him with an earnest face. "Oh, it's not that simple. He doesn't trust Magneto, of course, and...well, yeah. I guess it's more he wouldn't blame me, but...I suppose maybe he doesn't trust me." She laughs bitterly. "I guess maybe I don't blame him," she says, stepping away and wrapping her arms around herself, and now he knows why she has those shadows on her face. "I guess I don't trust myself, either."
When Rogue looks up at him he sees the same lost girl from Laughlin City staring out of the face of a woman he finally realizes he wants, and that the problem is he's never been able to reconcile the two.
"So see, I'm dangerous, too." Her voice sounds very sad and resigned, and suddenly, he realizes it doesn't matter anymore; her age, her powers, any of it.
"I could turn into the Professor's arch nemesis and then what? Why would anyone want me around then? Can't even touch me, cause I can kill with my skin. Can't be with me, because my mind shares space with a megalomanic would-be liberator." She winced. "Terrorist. *Terrorist*! See? I..."
Logan catches her arms and pulls her towards him, back into his embrace, because he's finally figured out that it isn't wrong, what he wants, it isn't wrong at all. She's wrong, too, because he doesn't care about any of that—the skin, Magneto in her head, it doesn't make difference to him.
She makes a little sound as he pulls her closer. "Logan, what-"
"Shhh," he tells her, and he kisses her. It's quick, because it has to be, but it's enough to get the taste of her that he wants, and when he pulls back she's staring at him with wide, unfocused eyes. His body is pressed so tightly to hers that there can be no more mystery as to whether or not he wants her.
"I sorta like dangerous, kid," he tells her, and she smiles, slow and pleased. "None of that matters to me," he says gruffly, and wraps her smaller hand in his own, leading her towards his bedroom.
In the morning he's dressing quietly as she stirs awake, watching him from the twisted sheets of his bed. Her hair is a mess. There are slight red scratches on her body, because as careful as he was, his claws are sharp no matter how lightly he tries to use them. He finds himself smiling slowly at the sight of her there, all tousled and marked with his scent as she is.
"You leavin' again?" She stretches that beautiful body of hers out, and he almost claws his jeans off and jumps back into bed with her. They'd managed a way around the skin thing about three times last night and this morning; he doesn't think once more would be a problem.
"Yup." He buttons up his jeans and tosses her his shirt, because her pajamas are lying on the floor in tattered shreds of torn cloth. Her idea, that, and who was he to say no when she'd asked him so prettily to cut her clothes off?
She shrugs into his shirt, which only makes him want to fuck her again, and swings her legs over the bed. She winces when she stands up, and that makes it even *worse*. "You tryin' to drive me crazy?" he growls, stalking towards her.
She grins fiercely at him. "Nope. Just want you to know what you'll be missin'," she tells him huskily, arching a brow at him playfully. He can clearly see she's waiting for something before she allows herself to become upset, as if she suspects what he intends. Which sort of irritates him, being predictable, but it's her.
"Ain't gonna be missin' nothing," he says, shrugging, unable to stop himself from smiling a little at her. "Seein' as how you're comin' with me."
She stares at him for a moment and he finds it hard to breathe. It's never occurred to him that she'll say *no*, but maybe she will. She's not going off to college in the fall, but maybe that doesn't mean she wants to run off with him? She might be dangerous, sure, but what about *him*? He's older than dirt, probably, with a bad attitude and a motorcycle, and that ain't the kind of life she...
She laughs suddenly, a wide grin on her face, and throws her arms around him. She hugs him tightly until he feels the small tingle that means she's about to start pulling at his powers, and then she lets him go.
"Maybe by the end of the summer, you'll have that psycho out of your head enough to go to college," he mumbles, slightly embarrassed because he's never thought someone could look that happy because of *him*.
"Ain't gonna worry about now." Rogue kisses him, lightening-quick, then dashes out of the room wearing nothing but his shirt. He finishes dressing and picks up the torn bits of her pajamas—unsure what possesses him, he shoves them into his dresser drawer and grins.
When he's packed and ready he goes downstairs to wait for her. Charles is there in the foyer, smiling a little sadly. "Your shortest trip home yet," he says in his usual smooth voice.
Logan stares at him, looking for any hint that he disapproves of what he's done, seducing Rogue (though that could be arguable, who seduced whom) and taking her away with him to Alaska.
"She's always wanted to go," Charles says, and Logan realizes how loudly his thoughts must be projecting. "Take care of her, Logan." He just nods, because he doesn't know what else to say. When Rogue comes down the stairs, she's dressed and he sees with something like amused horror that she's got that same duffel he remembers her having when he picked her up the first time.
"What, no green jacket?" The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.
She rolls her eyes. "Don't fit anymore," she says cheerfully, then leans down and hugs Charles. "I'll be back, Professor, in the fall." She pulls back to look at him, and Logan sees something flicker across her face, something like sorrow. He watches as she reaches a gloved hand out and lays it gently across the Professor's cheek, and he feels like he should turn away. "Good bye, Charles," she says, and the voice doesn't sound like her own.
There is something on the Professor's face that looks like regret, and something else that might be pain, but it's gone and he catches Rogue's hand in his own. "Goodbye, Rogue," he says, a bit of an emphasis on her name. "We'll see *you* when you get back."
She pulls her hand back and blinks, and she's herself again. "I must insist you take a car, for Rogue's safety," Charles continues, as if that strange interlude had never happened. Logan can tell there's no arguing with him, and he supposes it makes sense, a car, especially since they'll be going where it's cold and they have two bags, and what if they get in an accident?
It's not until they're on the highway heading out of town that he wonders if Charles hoodwinked him, used some of his mental powers to convince Logan it'd be a good idea to have a car instead of the bike. He sort of misses the roar of the wind in his face as he drives, the freedom of being on the bike.
He looks over at Rogue, her face serene, gloved hand pressed against the window as she watches the scenery flash by them, and he can't find it in himself to mind.
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Story Notes:
Thanks to Jazzypom for the beta! I borrowed Engineer!Magneto quite shamelessly from Ion_Bond, and it's meant to be flattery, the imitation, I swear! *G*