"Well, shit. It's you."
Stretched out on her bed and lying on her stomach, Jubilee jumped at the unexpected sound of his voice. Looking up from the magazine she'd been reading, she glanced toward the doorway of the room she shared with her best friend.
"Yeah," she answered mildly, snapping her gum. "Right back atcha, buddy."
An uncomfortable pause, and then: "Uh, sorry. I just - I thought I caught her scent heading this way. I’m not usually wrong, which is why I didn’t knock just then."
She holds his gaze for just a moment and lets him stew before taking pity on him. "Your sniffer's not broken, dude, no worries. I borrowed this top from her, and that was me coming back from a snack raid."
"Oh."
Jubilee went back to the latest issue of Cosmo and began reading where she'd left off after being so rudely interrupted. Until she realized that he wasn't leaving. With a sigh, she looked back up at him. "What can I do for you, Wolvie?"
"Could ya tell me when she's comin' back?"
"Well, sure." Tilting her head to the side, she smiled innocently. "But, like, where's the fun in that?"
She watched as he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw, clearly counting in his head. "Look, kid. You've been driving me up the friggin' wall since I got back, constantly on my ass with your goddamn schemin', pokin' around in shit you don't got no business bein' in. Here I am, tryin' to spend time with her, and you're givin' me an attitude."
At that, Jubilee closed her Cosmo and sat right up. Thems were fightin' words. "Sit down," she told him as she reached over for a pair of gloves resting on the nightstand. When he continued to stand there, dumbfounded that she had the balls to tell him to do anything at all, she repeated herself while she tugged on the gloves.
"Just tell me when she's comin' back."
"She'll be back when she gets back," Jubilee snapped, which triggered one hell of an angry scowl in response. And even she recognized what a bad idea that was, and so she made an apologetic face that seemed to do the trick. "Look, why don't you just sit down over there on her bed and wait? She went to wash the dye out of her hair."
That seemed to alarm him, she noted. Well, good, she thought. He should be alarmed.
He took a seat on the room’s other bed and sort of glared at her across the clothing-strewn floor. "She dyed her hair?"
"Yeah," she replied, working hard to keep her tone even and non-confrontational. "It was temporary dye so she could see how it would look."
"Fuck." Logan scrubbed a hand over his face and looked for all the world like he'd just been kicked in the stomach. "It turned out like shit, right?"
"Ding ding ding! Give the man a prize, folks," Jubilee said, and clapped rather sarcastically. "Don't you wanna guess what color she tried?"
He shot her a dark look. He didn't have to guess. "Tell me this wasn't somethin' you suggested. Tell me this isn't part of your goddamn Operation Fuck Logan or whatever you're callin' it these days. Did she dye her hair red because you told her that I'd like her better that way or somethin`?"
Jubilee's cheeks heated immediately and she had to clamp down hard on the urge to sparkle his ass with a burst of energy. Her palms literally itched. "She woke up with a mission this morning, dude. Said she was going to change her hair because maybe then you'd touch it like you touched Dr. Grey's hair last night, running your fingers all through it until she finally came to her senses and snapped at you to stop it."
Just when Jubilee thought he couldn't look any angrier, his scowl deepened. "Fuck. Hair color won't change my mind. Hair color don't change the fact that she's my student. She's seventeen. She's a kid. She don’t know what she wants."
"In that case, sir, I'd kindly like to remind you that I'm your student, too, just seventeen and therefore still a kid. Maybe you'd like to pick a word other than `fuck' to repeat over and over?" Pinning him with narrowed eyes, she added, "Because I'm just so young and impressionable, you know? Completely incapable of making up my own mind because I’m not quite eighteen yet. Teenagers these days, man, we're just all stupid. You should see me try to pick out my own clothes in the morning. Hilarious!"
"It's not like that. I don't think she's stupid. You? Sure. Not Marie."
Jubilee snorted and folded her arms across her chest. "Then what the fucking hell is your problem, dude? Either you trust her to make her own decisions or you don't. Either you think of her as a kid or you don't. You can't have it both ways."
Logan huffed in frustration. "I don't know you from a hole in the ground, and you sure as hell don't know me. What gives you the right to tell me what I can or can't do? My fuckin' life is just that - mine. Stay out of it and for God’s sake, if you honestly care about her, stop trying to force something that just might not be there."
"Of course `it’s there`, you blind asshole!"
"What did you call me?"
"Blind."
"You listen to me -"
"No, you listen to me now," Jubilee interrupted, pointing a yellow-gloved finger straight at him. "What do you think would have happened if she had turned up at dinner tonight with gorgeous red hair? She would have been humiliated. Because it would be obvious who she's trying to twist herself into, and just as obvious why. And people would have laughed at her behind her back. God only knows what you would have tactfully said to her. No, Logan, embarrassing her to death was never part of my plans to get you two together."
He continues to scowl, but she could see the anger behind it redirect itself inward. Quite a sight. He muttered something she couldn't quite catch.
"I don't have super hearing, dude."
Logan reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a half-smoked cigar, then continued searching for his lighter. "I said, you fucked it up on purpose. Her hair. You screwed up the dye job."
Jubilee leaned over and opened the drawer to the nightstand she shared with Rogue. Lifting out a matchbook, she tossed it quickly at his face and felt kind of let-down when he snatched it from the air before contact. "Hey, you don't miss a trick, huh? Of course I fucked it up. I know hair, and deep red would have looked fantastic against her pale skin and big dark eyes."
He took a fortifying drag off his lit cigar, then blew a cloud of smoke in her direction. Probably because I just tried to get him in the eye with a matchbook, she thought. She chose to stop breathing until it dissipated rather than let him watch her wave it away.
She wouldn't back down and she could tell it irritated him. And not in a cute way, either. If she weren't so damn mad, she'd quake with fear or something.
Finally he said, "What's with the gloves?"
Jubilee blinked in surprise. "What?" She had begun to think that the thick silence between them was only going to be broken by the sound of his broad hand across her ass. He'd threatened it before, and again, not in a cute way. It was an experience she really, really hoped to never have.
Enunciating clearly, as if to a child, he repeated himself. "The gloves. This ain't the first time you've put them on around me, waiting for her to show up."
It was Jubilee's turn to scowl. "No reason. It's got nothing to do with you or The Plan or anything like that."
"It's got something to do with Rogue, though. Are you afraid of her skin?"
There was a hard edge to his voice that told her he wasn't going to leave without the truth. And she knew first hand how well his built-in lie detector worked; she'd lied to him twice before, only to have him take a whiff and promptly call her on it.
She thought about waiting him out again, but she knew her lungs wouldn't appreciate the stench of his cigar much longer.
"Yes," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "I'd be insane to live with her in close quarters and not be scared shitless of her skin. But I'm not about to let it keep me away from my best friend, you know? Leave it alone, will you?"
"Sure, kid." Logan nodded and took another drag, this time sending the smoke away from her. "Just as soon as you knock off the whole matchmaker-from-hell thing. Deal?"
Jubilee examined her gloved hands for a moment as she worked out what she had to say. She hated that he was all but forcing it out of her.
"Fine. Fine. See, I have this . . . friend. And she's a diabetic. The no-sugar-for-you type of diabetes," she began as she picked imaginary lint off her jeans. "But chica's cool, you know? She totally copes. Sweet N' Low and Diet Coke, it's all good."
"Uh huh."
"It's just that she has this really fierce cookie jones. And of course there's this one kind of cookie in particular that just makes her mouth water. This is a cookie that haunts the girl's dreams. She wants it bad and would do just about anything to get at it, you know?" A quick glance up told her that he was at least paying attention, if not completely following her mangled metaphor. "Even though I for one think there's really nothing all that special about said cookie."
Well, that last part surely clued him in, judging by the way his brows knit together in a whole new scowl. "Got a point?"
" . . . yes."
"Then I suggest ya get to it."
Exasperated, Jubilee rolled her eyes. "I just . . . if she can't have her damn cookies, I'm not about to eat one right in front of her. Okay? Do you get it? Need me to use smaller words? Stick-figure diagrams?"
"Nah, I managed to crack your complicated code all on my own, kid." His expression didn't change a bit, but his tone sure had warmed, if only slightly. "And I shouldn't have said what I did about you not caring about her. It’s obvious that you do."
"Yeah, that was particularly shitty of you, I agree." Scrunching up her nose like it hurt to force the words out, she added, "And I shouldn't have called you an asshole. I know that was way too far out of line. You're an X-Man and a teacher here and you deserve to be treated with respect."
He nodded his acceptance as he stood up and raked a hand through his hair. "We gotta learn how to get along, kid."
"Why's that? Cause the way I see it, we're going to be just peachy as soon as you get on board with Operati-"
"I'm serious here," Logan said, cutting her off but not unkindly. "We bug the shit out of each other but unfortunately, we've got someone in common. And I have this god-awful feeling that you and I are going to have to deal with being in each other's lives for a long, long time to come."
"I know," she agreed, her smile turning mischievous. Which in Logan’s experience was never a good thing. "I'll scale back on my war plans, okay? As soon as you leave, I'll get online and cancel that order of body stockings and nylon gloves I had coming."
"And I won't make you run quite so many laps in training tomorrow," he told her as he headed for the door. "Just thirty or so. You can handle that, easy. Right?"
Jubilee gulped. Nearly swallowed her gum in the process, too. "Uh, sure, Logan."
"That's what I thought." A smile touched his mouth briefly at her groan of despair. "I'm gonna head out for awhile, but I'll be back later on. Could you tell her I was lookin' for her?
He moved to open the door and she said, "You're not waiting for Rogue?"
She couldn't quite decipher the look in his eyes while he debated on what to say. "Nah," he finally told her. "I don't think she'd be all that thrilled if I knew about the hair thing."
Jubilee smiled as she stretched back out on her stomach, magazine in hand. "You know, you're not such a tough cookie after all."
He bit back a grin, but not before she saw it.
"Rest up, kid." Hand on the doorknob, he added, "You got about fifty laps to run tomorrow."
She couldn't judge how serious he was being, and so she said the first thing that came to mind.
"Well, shit."
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Story Notes:
First attempt at X-Men fanfic. Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to my beta readers. :)