Rogue was unsure exactly when it had started: her little breakdown. She had kissed Logan, which had reminded her of distant dreams and rude awakenings. Then she had stripped out of the uniform Stryker had given her, and tossed it into her room’s trash can and tied the bag shut so that she could no longer smell the traces of the lab embedded in the leather. Then she had stepped under the gloriously hot shower, and washed away all traces of the lab except the metal around her neck and the scars in her own mind. At some point those scars had begun to ache, and throb, and Rogue’s muscles had felt even weaker.
She found herself curled up on the floor of her shower, shaking, and smelling of tears and futile anger, and pain. Her breathing was rough, choked and harsh, and her stomach ached from heaving up some of the more volatile toxins in her system: her healing factor having sent it to her stomach for disposal. She could smell traces of it still being washed down the drain as she got to her feet and began scrubbing her skin until it was red and raw, and smelled only of unscented soap and her own natural scent. Then she washed her hair, stepped out of the shower, and found that the whole episode was suddenly over.
Most people don’t recover this fast, Rogue thought to herself, but found that it didn’t bother her. I’ve never been ‘most people’ no matter who I was.
She dried off and curled up on the bed that still smelled faintly of her first night in the mansion. She covered her pillow with a towel, slid under the covers, and passed out cold: dreamless for now, but, she knew, once her bone-deep exhaustion had worn off, it would not remain so, and for years to come most of her nights would remind her that her healing factor did not extend to cover psychological damage.
Hank woke her the next morning, asking that she come down to the med lab for a check-up. “I know that you probably are uncomfortable with the environment, but I merely want to be sure that all of Stryker’s drugs are out of your system.”
Rogue had agreed, and promised to be with him in ten minutes. After hunting down her clothes––not in her duffle bag, as she had expected, but folded in her room’s set of drawers and smelling faintly of unscented detergent and Logan (he had not rummaged through anything else in her bag, which she appreciated)––she dressed, and made her way down to the med lab.
The smells of the place made her nervous, but the fact that it was well-lit and not made mostly of dark concrete was very reassuring. Hank told her a few things that she already knew: that she was underweight, that her system had taken care of almost all of the lingering toxins, and that she could expect a full recovery. He also gave her a small injection of serum which eliminated what little remained, and that he said would prevent further after-effects.
“Have ya had time to look at the collar?” Rogue asked.
“Yes. I’ve already begun work on a prototype. It could be so much smaller, with the drug-applying sections removed. It’s a surprisingly simple concept involving the electromagnetic-”
“Thank you, Hank,” Rogue said, interrupting him with a hint of dry amusement, but also very sincere gratitude.
He smiled at her and gave a gracious bow. “‘Tis my pleasure, m’lady.”
Rogue gave a snort of further amusement at that.
“And I shall see if I cannot get you a bracelet or ring by the end of the week.”
Rogue’s eyes widened and she felt utterly stunned. “I...really?” Her voice sounded small, uncertain, and oddly human for once.
“Yes, indeed. Now I would suggest you go have breakfast so that you can return all the more quickly to full health.” He gave her a warm, toothy smile. Under all that blue fur, he really was an adorable little genius.
Rogue took one of his hands in her gloved one and gave it a grateful squeeze, smiling at him. He was the only person she had offered non-violent touch, other than Logan, and she could tell he was surprised. She thanked him again, softly, and went back upstairs.
Logan found her when she was on her third helping of bacon and her fourth biscuit. She was also, once more, drinking his beer. He quirked a brow at her, eyeing her breakfast choices with evident amusement. “Bacon, biscuits, and beer. Breakfast of champions?” he mocked.
Rogue raised an eyebrow at him. “Just because you prefer toast and sausage along with it,” she countered. “And no biscuit. I suppose that’s less alliterative, but is that really the point?”
Logan raised both eyebrows this time, giving her a questioning look, wondering how she knew what he preferred for breakfast.
Understanding clearly, Rogue tapped two fingers to the side of her head. “I’ve got a bit of you rattlin’ around up here, now.”
“Mm.” Logan nodded vaguely. “I’d forgotten about that. I’m not givin’ you any trouble, up there, am I?”
Shaking her head a little, Rogue smirked. “Nah. We get along fine. It’s kinda nice havin’ someone up here crazy the same way I am.” A thoughtful look crossed her face, as though she was sure there was something she was meant to have remembered. Then she added, “And thank you for doing my laundry.”
Logan smiled crookedly, turned to grab a beer of his own from the fridge, and sat down across from her, pilfering a slice of bacon. “Didn’t figure most of the others would be quite as inclined to trust you enough not to do a full search.”
She glared at him, but not altogether seriously.
“Everything check out with the Doc? He said he wanted to see you this morning.”
Rogue nodded. “Yeah. Told me a lotta what I coulda told him.” She shrugged.
Logan smirked a little. “That’s usually the case with me, too.”
Rogue took a swig of beer. “He also said...that he’d have a prototype ring or bracelet for me within a week or so.” She smiled a little, but seemed almost hesitant about it, glancing at where she had set aside her gloves so as not to get bacon grease on them.
Trying not to think quite the way he had been thinking last night––after he had felt the velvet brush of her lips, when it had occurred to him that he could do quite a lot with just a scrap of thin silk––Logan raised his eyebrows in surprised and tapped his beer bottle against hers in a softly celebratory gesture. “Good news for you, then.”
Rogue nodded slightly, meeting his gaze for a moment before looking down again. “Yeah...I’m just not sure if I can handle it again.” She shrugged, looking slightly nervous. “I don’t like letting people close. Marie used to be terrified of her skin, and Yuriko was just paranoid about being found out.” Rogue tapped her fingertips across the table. “The idea of anyone, other than you, not keeping their distance––it’s unnerving.” She took another swig of beer.
Logan looked at her thoughtfully. “I think you can handle ‘em. I’ve found that growling can do wonders,” he mused.
Rogue laughed, just a little, trying unsuccessfully to hide it behind one hand. It was utterly adorable. “I’ll keep that in mind, Sugar.” She stopped hiding her smile, then, and held his gaze.
Logan was amused, but sounded more serious when he asked her, “Why me?”
Rogue looked down at her plate again, breaking off a piece of biscuit and popping it into her mouth. “I––just trust you. It’s in the way ya move, and the way ya look at me, the expressions on your face.” She met his stare, giving him an almost curious look, as if reading something written in his eyes, and she smiled almost tentatively when she appeared to find what she had been seeking out there. Then she shrugged, becoming again more confident, more sage, and explained, “You’re crazy in the same ways I am, for the most part. And you’re not afraid of me.” She looked down again, smirking a little, this time with a distinctly wicked edge as she picked up another bite of food. “And you’re sexy as Hell, too, which helps.”
Logan’s eyes widened, but then he smiled a just a little bit darkly. He scolded himself for thinking that Rogue would be innocent. If he’d met her when she was Marie, she might have been, but when the woman across from him now looked back up at him, there was a mature and knowing heat in her stare that Logan could feel as though it caressed him. And, oh, the places it caressed, and with such mixed curiosity and knowing hunger.
“What about you, Logan? I thought redheads were more your type.” She smiled playfully, and Logan knew that she had sensed the change in the air between himself and Jean.
“Yeah, well––she can’t see what we see––and what she can see of it, she distorts,” he murmured. There was something intense in his look: curiosity when he was watching her. “And you interest me.” He looked down at her bare hands. “And when he took you, after you’d kept me from gettin’ drugged––I guess it’s like you said, and I’ve never met somebody as crazy as I am before.” He met her gaze again as he took a swig of beer.
Rogue nodded, smiling a little. “Yeah. I like this kinda crazy, though.” She ate her last bite of bacon.
“I’m thinkin’ that I do, too,” Logan rumbled.
Rogue finished the last few bites of her biscuit, drained her beer, and stood up, walking over to the counter to put her plate in the sink and her bottle in the recycling bin. The jeans she wore were just snug enough to tantalize, and Logan considered the possibilities for touching her through the denim. He watched her put her gloves back on and lean against the table, standing close to him. She cupped the side of his face in one hand, only a thin layer of silk between her flesh and his.
“I’m new at this, at the same time that I’m really not; and either way––I like the idea of bein’ around you, Logan.” Her fingers traced the line of his cheekbone and jaw, and trailed a little through his facial hair.
“I can’t promise anything,” Logan said firmly, still holding her gaze. He was marveling at how good she smelled, and how much her simple touch made him so much more eager to feel her pressed against him. She could match him, he knew; more than anyone he might have taken to bed before, she had the most potential to make an addict out of him. He could promise that she’d probably never get sex better than with him, but there was little else he could give. He didn’t do anniversaries, flowers, love poems, or romance.
Rogue leaned towards him, bending at the waist so that her face was very close to his and so that when her lovely, deadly lips parted as she spoke, he could feel the warmth of her breath. “I’m a runner, too, Logan. You can trust me in a fight, and I can swear on my honor that I’ll be worth that trust, but I can’t promise ya anything off the battlefield.” She smiled. “Aside from the obvious opportunity.” Her thumb brushed his lower lip, smiling at the way his pupils dilated. “And that my behavior in any fight won’t be effected negatively by anything between us outside it. I’m more professional than that, Logan.”
Logan smirked, suddenly curious. “Who the Hell was Yuriko, anyway?” Because it sure as Hell wasn’t any untouched runaway named Marie who talked like that––like a woman and a warrior and like she had tasted blood.
Rogue shrugged, reluctantly lifting her fingers from Logan’s skin as she leaned back against the counter. “Mercenary. Specialty was assassinations. And she was a looker, too, believe me. She had a tendency to attach too much moral significance to who she chose to go after. Her meeting with Marie’s mind changed that––made reality a little more stark, and made her all the more self-destructive.” Rogue appeared thoughtful. “I don’t think things would have worked out the way they have for me, if she hadn’t so badly wanted to die. I might still be Marie, with crazy Yuriko in her head, stronger than all of the other ghosts combined.” She shrugged, seeming to prefer the way things had worked out; with Rogue.
Logan tried to imagine what it must be like, waking up with all the memories of two different lives, all of the emotions, and what personality might have emerged from the tangled chaos of sobering realizations about the world, and about what really mattered––what was right and what made life worth living. “Did you have a choice with what you kept from both of them?”
Rogue smiled, seeing that he understood, at least a large part of it. “Yes. And I had the distance to be very practical about all of it––especially with more than a week wandering the frozen middle-of-fuckin’ nowhere before I started to see any signs of other people, aside from empty stretches of highway with the occasional truck I might conceal myself from.”
Logan nodded. Isolation, and time to think––she had been damned lucky, and he told her as much.
She nodded solemnly. “Trust me. I know.” The look in her dark eyes said it all.
“You got any questions for me?” he asked.
Rogue tilted her head a little. “How much did you find in the files?”
Logan took a deep breath. “A lot. I’ve already read the history as far as World War I.” He took a pull of beer.
Rogue raised her eyebrows in surprise at first, but then nodded solemnly, understanding written across her features.
“How old are your memories?” Logan asked.
Rogue looked away out the kitchen window, her eyes moving back and forth as if scanning a distant horizon. “Old, but not quite that old,” she said softly. “I was born shortly after World War I––at least, half of me was.” She shrugged. “Counting Marie’s lifetime, I’m just over a hundred. If you count the few years I’ve kept from the each of the several or so ghosts I’ve picked up over time, it’s more like a century and a quarter.” A thoughtful look crossed her face, creasing her brow. “I’ve––never told anyone else about that.”
Logan nodded. “I’m over one-fifty. Almost two hundred.” He drained his beer.
Rogue could read in his expression something like grief. “You’ve gotten some memories back, I take it.”
He exhaled through his teeth. “They don’t even feel like they’re mine, though,” he growled, running a hand through his hair as if clawing at it.
Rogue reached out and put her hand across the back of his, stopping it before he pulled it out of his hair. Her fingers slid between his, stroking the hollows between his knuckles where the claws came out. She did not press or squeeze, but almost caressed, and rested there solidly. “I know exactly how that feels,” she said firmly, quietly.
Logan turned his head to look at her again, and saw something dark behind her eyes, like war and pain and loss. He could recognize in the solemnity of her expression the habit of someone who is used to holding their emotion behind an iron curtain of reserve, and someone who had had that curtain ripped away before––shredded, in fact––and had painstakingly reconstructed it. After regaining memories of life in Japan, it felt familiar. When she tugged lightly on his hand, his arm relaxed and obeyed her.
Rogue held his hand out, exploring it with her gloved ones, paying special attention to the hollows between his knuckles, and to his fingertips. With her eyes downcast, and her mask of reserve still in place, Logan could almost believe her name was really Yuriko. “Do you believe me?” she asked softly.
He considered for a moment, still watching her face, although his gaze sometimes darted to their hands. “Yeah.”
A faint smile touched her features, visible more around her eyes than in the line of her mouth. “I’m glad I hid in your trailer.”
Logan chuckled a little at that, smirking faintly when she met his gaze. He ran two fingertips along the length of her palm. “It’s a good thing I didn’t leave your ass behind, huh?”
Rogue shrugged. “It’d be your loss as much as mine, Sugar.”
Arching a brow, Logan admitted, “I suppose.”
Rogue gave a somewhat less than ladylike snort in response, her mask of serenity disturbed as her inner southern spitfire rose near the surface. “Asshole. Admit it: you’re glad ya let me in your truck.”
Logan briefly considered telling her that he’d considered that to be a good decision from the moment she’d let him touch her the first time, allowed him to hold her wrist and examine her claws––and that he’d known it was one of the best damned decisions he’d ever made when she’d stood calmly in the hallway, ready to face Stryker’s men, and he’d seen that look on her face...
Briefly, Logan might have wished he were more verbose by nature; but outwardly he only gave Rogue a brilliantly predatory grin and teased, “Maybe.”
She growled at him playfully. “I will bite you, if I have to.”
He arched an eyebrow suggestively. “I’ll bite back and make you like it.”
Returning the gesture in kind, she countered, “What makes you think I’ll need to be persuaded?”
Logan gave a low rumble that bordered on a purr instead of an actual growl. “And you said you were new at this.”
Rogue smirked brazenly. “Sugar, what do ya think Yuriko did for almost a hundred years, especially once it was clear aging had stopped?” She leaned in and spoke low in his ear. “I inherited a lot of knowledge, and a lot of memories, Logan. I know as much about the game as you do––maybe more.”
“Maybe,” he murmured, pulling his hand away from hers and running it up her spine from just above her ass to where her bra-line should have been, feeling the way her muscles tensed under the lazy stroke. “But you haven’t had the chance to experience it yourself.”
The hitch in her breathing told him he had gotten the low, rumbling pitch of his voice just right. Rogue marveled a little at her own hypersensitivity––it was something about Marie’s body that she had not previously had the chance to discover. Thinking about how much potential this gave her made heat pool in her stomach. A low purr reverberated up from her chest, and she heard Logan’s pulse quicken as he felt it under his hand. She pulled back enough to meet his gaze; her pupils dilated and her lips a little redder than before. “Think you can handle me, old man?” she challenged quietly.
Logan felt his blood rush south. He’d known, early on, that something seriously dark and heavy and hot had lurked behind that mask of hers, but looking at her now he still had to marvel at it: the curiosity of an innocent, without the innocence, and instead possessing wicked knowledge and a tantalizing amount of power. While he’d once hoped to see a side like this from Jean, as he’d thought he’d seen the potential for it, Logan had to admit that he quite preferred the woman in front of him. And God, her scent was intoxicating as her arousal began to spike.
She had a silk scarf around her neck––light-as-air soft fabric that seemed, at that moment, truly full of possibilities, and Logan was about to reach for it...
Until they both heard a couple of younger students heading for the kitchen.
Rogue glared at the doorway and cursed creatively under her breath.
Logan, who knew a little more than a smattering of French, was a little impressed, but he gave an empathetic noise as he reluctantly removed his arm from around her waist.
Rogue leaned back against the counter, putting her mask in place, although there was something moody and borderline threatening about the way she sharply tugged on and adjusted the edges of her gloves when the two young girls––Kitty and Siryn––finally sauntered into the room. Kitty appeared nervous and hid behind the refrigerator door as she searched for a snack, while Siryn only raised her eyebrows a little and appeared almost amused, but mostly curious.
“Hey, Wolvie. Hey, Rogue.”
Logan winced at the nickname.
Rogue smirked a little and looked at him, clearly entertained. “So it’s ‘Wolvie’ is it?”
With a groan, Logan explained that Jubilee––or as he called her, the ‘yellow-jacketed sparkler’––was responsible.
Both Siryn and Kitty looked a bit disturbed when Rogue laughed.
“Oh, God, she’s adopted you, hasn’t she?” Rogue sniggered.
Logan growled.
Once she had finally gotten her snacks and closed the fridge, Kitty finally got up the courage to ask something that had been weighing on her mind. “Uhm...Rogue? Are you going to become a teacher, here, or a student?”
Rogue blinked a couple of times. It had not even remotely occurred to her to become a student, but neither had she thought about herself in a teacher role. “Uhm. Not a student.”
“But you can’t be more than––I dunno. Nineteen, tops,” Siryn interjected.
Rogue bristled a little. “Yes. I can,” she said firmly, but not loudly, her voice perfectly even.
Kitty elbowed her friend and hissed, “Healing factor,” not quite quietly enough.
Siryn’s eyebrows raised. “Oh. So you’re really old?”
Rogue smirked a little. “Ancient.”
Kitty was by now trying to push Siryn out the door, but before she managed to succeed fully, Siryn added, “Lucky for you, Wolvie!”
Then Kitty sank them both through the floor, with an audible: “GONNAgetusallkilled!”
Rogue sniggered at the way Logan glared after them. “Oh God, I keep forgetting that people keep thinking I’m jailbait!” Her laughing abruptly stopped when Logan stood up and tugged away her scarf, leaving her throat suddenly bare. She had just enough time to look up at him in surprised before he pinned her against the table and kissed her hard, only the scarf between them.
Logan smiled a bit against her lips when she gave a low moan and pressed up against him, her mouth opening to him. He could taste her through the wet silk, and it was as good as the way she smelled. And she met him eagerly, her tongue sliding past his, exploring him and teasing him. He pressed against her hips, leaning her back over the table when her gloved hands untangled from his hair and slid down the back of his neck. Logan only broke the kiss when she curled a leg around his, and he reluctantly recalled all too clearly that they were in the middle of the goddamned kitchen; it followed shortly that he realized how bad an idea it would be when they got caught mid-coitus by goddamned teenagers, but that that would be exactly what would happen if she ran her leg up his like that again.
Rogue got a grip on herself quickly, and restrained her urge to writhe her hips against his and growl in order to get him to continue––because Holy Hell was she aroused. In none of her memories had it been so easy to get so worked up so fast. And it wasn’t just Logan’s skill––although she would easily admit that the man was really, superlatively good––but something about her body, and the way Logan’s scent was going to her head more than anyone else’s in her memory, was making it far too easy to get lost in the sensations and let them overwhelm her. And God, was that good. “Holy Hell, Logan, you smell fantastic,” she said breathlessly, before she could stop herself.
Logan chuckled darkly, leaning forward and shifting her scarf to cover her neck again, albeit only partially, and fixed his mouth there.
Rogue gasped sharply, her hands clutching at his shirt as his mouth and the feel of his body against her––his hardness pressing against her hip and the heat and closeness of him––making her head spin and her clit throb. She tilted her head to allow him further access and this time couldn’t restrain the urgent grind of her hips.
Logan stiffened, in more ways than one, at the feel of that grind, and how it brought his attention to the increasingly powerful scent of her. God, she was already dripping, and there was nothing but denim between him and that wet heat. He groaned audibly and bit her neck a little harder, along the tender, sensitive skin of her throat.
Real life totally trumps hallucination, Rogue thought distantly, and pulled him closer. The thought that they might get caught crossed her mind briefly, but it only added a hint of desperation––because if he stopped now, she might lose her mind. She rolled her hips again and whispered, “Logan, please...”
He shuddered at that, and his fingers automatically found themselves tugging open the front of her jeans and sliding in to rub her through the thin fabric of her panties. He could smell nothing else save her heat, and the way her muscles squeezed at him and fluttered under her skin, made him painfully hard, his erection straining against his own jeans. And he was shocked at how little it took for her to come, shuddering as she clutched at him and his fingers rubbed firm little circles over her clit, and she gave a low, rumbling purr-sound as well as a low moan as she peaked, trembling against him and breathing hard. Logan imagined what reactions he could get, just from tasting her, and almost came himself.
He didn’t stop until she grabbed his wrist and pulled him away, her occasional moans as she rode out the aftershocks turning abruptly into discomfort as her pleasure mixed with the pain of being over-stimulated and hyper-sensitive. Then she leaned her forehead against his shoulder and caught her breath; although she did rest her hand over his erection, squeezing firmly and earning a low groan.
“Damn, Darlin’!” he hissed warningly, but couldn’t help the way his hips arched into her touch, and his groan of relief, when she released his erection from its denim confines was hardly discouraging. And then––Oh, the feel of those silk gloves as she stroked him, exploring the shape and the length of him.
Rogue wanted to taste him, craving the heady rush it would give her, from having so much power over his body, but did not dare tempt fate, with her skin still such a risk––and the way he was responding to just her hand was certainly encouraging. She smirked. “You’re real excited for me, Sugar. I’m flattered.” She slid her thumb across the weeping head of his cock.
Logan gave a low rumble, sliding a hand up her side to cup a breast. She wasn’t wearing a bra, thank God. “I could say the same for your little display,” he countered.
She gave an amused, low hum, and began stroking him faster. Her fingers were knowledgeable, and she was doing all the right things, making him breathe as hard as she had. “Yeah. I didn’t actually know I was quite that easily stimulated; thanks for the lesson.” She lowered her head to fix her mouth over his nipple through his shirt.
Logan’s hips jerked and knew he was close. “Goddammit, Rogue,” he groaned.
He felt her smirk this time, as her tongue swirled over his nipple as her teeth pressed into his flesh a little, and her hands did something truly amazing. Logan leaned in and bit her shoulder as he came with a loud, low growl, jerking his hips. He shivered when she lifted her head just enough to run her tongue along the side of his adams’ apple, just quick enough that she didn’t drain him. After he’d caught his breath, he muttered, “You are evil.”
“Are you complaining?” she purred.
“Fuck. No,” he hissed. “But we’re about to be interrupted.”
Rogue cursed in two different dialects of Chinese as Logan zipped up first her jeans, and then his own. She picked up a few napkins from nearby and wiped up as Logan pulled away. Rogue sniggered and pointed out the wet spot on his shirt. Logan snorted, and removed his shirt. He then smirked at Rogue when she ogled him openly.
By the time Scott came in, half a minute later, Rogue was cleaning her breakfast dishes and Logan was sitting at the table drinking beer without a shirt on: nothing unusual, really. Rogue’s healing factor had even prevented her getting hickeys. Scott raised an eyebrow so that it was visible over the edge of his shades, but simply fetched what he needed from the pantry, shot them a suspicious look, and left again.
“Okay, so kitchen isn’t the best idea,” Rogue admitted.
Logan chuckled. She shivered in surprise at how quickly he got close to her again; she could feel his breath on the back of her neck. “Where next, then, Darlin’?”
After glancing at the clock and almost pouting visibly at what it told her, Rogue turned around to face him, picking up her soiled gloves from where she’d tossed them down next to the sink. She admired his chest openly, and smirked a little when she looked into his eyes. “Next, today, I’ve gotta meet with Xavier. He wanted to talk to me about the house rules and my stickin’ around. I should probably clean up a bit first, though.” She brushed past him as she headed for the door, her breasts sliding across his chest for a moment so that he could feel her still-hard nipples through her shirt. “Later, Sugar.”
Logan watched the subtle sway of her hips as she left, and found himself grinning.
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