The needle bites, and Rogue breathes in the pain. Makes it hers. Maybe this time the lesson will stick. Maybe this time, she'll stay away.
It's her twelfth tattoo. She's already thinking how she'll explain this one, what could possibly be credible after she's told him so many times that she'll never get another, but her mind is blank to anything except the ugly truth.
She lies. She cheats. She fucks another man, and marks her skin to remember.
Twelve times, and still the Wolverine's whore.
*
He had been five hours gone when she met Gambit. The pyre she'd made was still smouldering on the edge of the woods, curling photographs and flannel shirts and pairs of ancient jeans he'd never wear again crumbling into ash. The tall, redheaded man had simply nudged the mess with his foot, and stamped down the last of the embers, ignoring the tear-soaked woman nearby.
“Be a crime to set this place on fire for some asshole who didn't deserve you,” he'd told the trees, before meandering back towards the house. How could you possibly know what I deserve, Rogue had fumed, but she had watched him go anyway. And two weeks later, Remy Le Beau asked her out for the first time.
She didn't say yes until the spring, a full month after the thaw would have freed the mountain passes for travel. Logan wasn't coming home, and even if he did, her teenage crush had died in those flames, she reassured herself. If she still shivered at the sound of his name, it was because he had taught her about lust, and sex, and carnality. Remy would be the one to teach her about love.
Her wedding dress had been maidenly at the front, but cut low in the back to show off her newly-touchable skin. Logan had hugged the bride quickly, clapped the groom on the back, but kept his distance until late in the night. One dance, he'd asked, and it was just a dance, until his hand slid lower and lower before settling itself over the spot where her back dipped inward before flaring into the swell of her ass. Suddenly the tips of his claws were scratching at her skin, and shudders of pure want had rippled down her spine, leaving her liquified and throbbing. Rogue forced her way out of his arms and fled to her husband – honourably, she told herself. Faithfully.
But two years later, that's where she puts her first tattoo. Betrayal, witnessed in ink.
He hadn't even smiled around the stogie, that afternoon. Unshaven, stinking of a fight bar and too many nights on the road. Her stomach clenched anyway, and his eyes filled with hot satisfaction.
“Gambit's not here,” she said rudely, trying to shut the door in his face. “If you're on official business, come back later.”
“Need a shower, and ta wash some clothes. Sleep, too. Ain't this one of Xavier's houses?”
She couldn't turn him away, not after that, and when he wandered out of the shower wearing a towel, she had screwed her eyes shut, refusing to look.
He knew, though. He'd always known, and sometimes he let her escape. That day, he had stalked her down the stairs and into the kitchen, where she was blindly spooning salt into a cup of coffee. Trapped her up against the counter, breath hot on her neck, and slid his hands into her cut-offs.
“Want me to stop?” he growled, and she did, she did …
But she wanted him to fuck her more.
*
A sword for power, and danger, she had told Remy. Repentance, she reminds herself, whenever his fingers drift over that first tattoo. But she miscalculated, when she had it put on her back. It's hidden, there, easy to forget … so the next time she falls, she has a series of jewelled tears etched on her wrists. Evidence of her weakness, confronting her every day. Sorrow, she tells herself. Regret.
Her memory, though, insists on replaying the moment she watched her own tears fall to the floor, tiny diamonds of frustration mocking her as he bent her over and teased her, fingers plunging deep as his thumb pressed relentlessly on her clit. He won't let her come, the bastard, pushing her to the edge over and over, before he backs off to whisper in her ear. “It's not much,” he purrs. “Just my name. Say my name.” So she does, screams “Logan” and “Wolverine” and “fuck, please,” and he slams into her and more tears shake loose from her face, sparkling on the floor below.
Shame isn't enough, she finds. Regret doesn't stop her. She's too thoroughly his creature to deny herself the pleasure, and too fond of denial to let it haunt her. Just one more night, she promises herself.
One more night, and one more night, and one more night.
*
Gambit's team had been called up for an operation somewhere in California, and Rogue had agreed to stay at the Mansion to keep an eye on the kids. Logan was somewhere up North, Storm had said casually. Alberta, or maybe Alaska. No idea when he'd be back.
She was curled up in the library with a book and a cup of cocoa when she heard the low rumble. Softtail, she thought. Logan's favourite Harley. It can't be him, though. Fate wouldn't be so cruel.
“Rogue,” he said, and she knew what it meant when his eyes shone gold like that. He was trying not to touch her - they wouldn't do this anymore, they'd agreed. Wasn't good for either of them. But his body pulled her in like gravity and her fingers slid up his arms and then they fell in a frantic tangle on the loveseat, his hands already stroking under her pajamas and while hers fumbled blindly at his belt.
They were asleep, Rogue curled on top of Wolverine's chest, when the team flew in. She woke with a jerk to find her lover easing them upright, as her husband hovered in the doorway. Remy's mouth was working, as if trying to find words that could possibly fit the situation, and heartbreak dulled his red eyes.
The yelling didn't start until the following day.
It wasn't about sex, he screamed. It was the emotional betrayal, the sickening knowledge that she'd never quite grown up. Poor tragic Rogue, he taunted, forever clinging to her hero, her father figure, her first lover. Unwilling to allow another man to take his place.
Truth, she acknowledged. She had the Wolverine in her head, and he wouldn't let her romanticise him, but she had managed it nonetheless. Not the problem, though.
The problem was the heft of his cock as he slammed into her, and the scrape of blunt fingernails over sore, abused breasts, and the blood welling to bruises and bitemarks and once, a black eye. The problem was riding him towards oblivion in the heat of the day, then being turned over the end of the sofa for the second time that night. The problem was craving his rough hands, becoming accustomed to his unflagging stamina, and being so pathetically aroused she would do anything – anything! - to come.
Her first would always be her best, and the certainty of it ate her soul.
*
Remy takes her back, but the conditions are non-negotiable. They move to the west coast, to set up an Institute backed by shiny new Hollywood money. They don't spend their nights apart. She doesn't contact Logan again, ever.
An old friend recommends a tattoo artist working in a little town three hours south of LA. Neptune is the grimiest place she's ever seen, but the shop is clean, and the Latino man has enough ink of his own to make her confident.
She explains her idea, and he's sketching before she finishes.
It's perfect. The dying lamb, it's blood spilling red over white fleece. She remembers the same image terrifying her as a child, but when the sun had fallen on the stained glass during mass last week, she had known it had to be this.
“You got it exactly right,” she says with surprise, and then kicks herself. Latino. Catholic.
“The loss of innocence, right?”
She takes a deep breath but can't quite answer, only able to nod. His eyes flick up to her, warm with understanding.
“Lot of us need our sins close, chica. Confession's for letting go, but ink? Ink's forever,” he says, the blacks and blues and reds inscribed on his arms glowing under the lamp.
“You ready for this?”
She nods, and the needle buzzes, and the pinpricks start. It's not pain, not yet, but she knows it will be, soon. Use it, she tells herself. Remember. Penance and prohibition alike.
This is her twelth tattoo. Her last, she vows.
(Dying roses, she thinks, for number thirteen.)
fin
Disclaimer: This fanfiction was written for personal enjoyment rather than profit. No infringement on the rights of the intellectual property owners is intended.
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Story Notes:
Written for the Rogan Prompt Challenge at fuckyeahrogueandwolverine on tumblr. Prompt: One More Night by Maroon 5.