By the time the Aesir priestesses get handsy and start opening his belt buckle, Logan’s pretty certain that he fuckin’ hates Asgard.

Don’t get him wrong, he likes some Asgardians. He has a lot of time fer Thor and even more fer Lady Sif, (mainly because she’s the first woman he’s ever met who could drink him under the table.) He likes the Warriors Three and he’d have a mead with Heimdall. He even gets along with Odin and Frigga, at least as much as a guy like him can get along with intergalactic royalty.

But it’s one thing to get along with some of the people on a planet, it’s quite another to like it.

And when a group o’ weird women are manhandling you, having ushered the other member of your team (that’d be Rogue) out of the room without so much as a by-your-leave, (and possibly fer the purposes of turning her into their very own human sacrifice), well then Logan feels a man is justified in taking a turn against a place.

No matter how fuckin’ shiny it is.

One particularly dextrous priestess manages to get her hands into his jeans then, opening the top button and pushing at the belt and in that moment Logan decides that all bets are officially off. “Okay, that’s it,” he snaps, popping his claws and snarling. “The grab a piece o’ Logan party is officially over. Scram.”

And he gestures threateningly with the claws, a universal movement which means go away or bad things will happen. The priestesses move back, not looking particularly perturbed but apparently getting the message anyway: He’s not sure whether adamantium will cut through Asgardian flesh (and he sure as shit don’t wanna start practicing on a group o’ fragile little priestesses) but the hands-in-new-places-riff is gonna stop now. He is not a piece of meat.

And besides, he muses, somewhat wistfully, what happened to the days when you’d at least buy a guy a drink first?

You’d think with all that courtly shit Thor goes on with, that Asgardian priestesses would be a little more polite before they start undressing a man.

“You makin’ friends out here, shuggs?” he hears Marie’s voice sound then, and despite himself he heaves a tiny sigh of relief. When Thor had asked him and Rogue to go undercover in the Temple of Eternal Spring, the Thunder God had made a point of saying that Marie would be in no danger. Just as he’d made a point of stating that the X-Men would receive an excellent reward for their help. The priestesses ushering Marie out Logan had made Logan doubt Thor’s word on that. After all, if these goddess-worshipping types were so harmless then why were they trying to split him’n Marie up? But now that she’s back- and it is her, he’d know her scent anywhere- he can relax a little. Get back to the assigned task of working out whether this is where Loki took Jubilee when he kidnapped her, try to figure out where in the building the trickster might be holed up. Logan smiles in relief, turning around to look at Rogue, relieved that the handsy little priestesses hadn’t gotten much farther than getting his shirt off-

And as soon as he turns he stops and stares, aware on some level that his mouth might be hanging open.

Because the Marie who’s looking at him from the other side of the room doesn’t look a thing like the Marie who dons the uniform and fights fer mutant rights beside him every day.

No, she doesn’t look like his Marie at all.

This Marie looks like a princess from some sort of fairytale. Her long, dark hair hanging around her shoulders (dry now), her bare toes pressing nervously into the heavy carpet beneath her feet. She pads into the room, staring at him through lowered lashes: She’s wearing a gauzy, floaty, damn-near see-through green dress with a long skirt and a plunging back, a near-replica of the gowns worn by each of the priestesses around him. Shiny little rings twinkle on her toes and anklets tinkle on her feet as she walks. The firelight limns her form, turning her skin golden. She looks, Logan has to admit, like she just wandered out of one of his haziest, darkest fantasies, a luscious dream come to life-

But she’s his girl, his Rogue, and he’s known her forever, he tells himself.

He really shouldn’t be thinking of her like that.

At seeing his expression she stops for a moment, grinning shyly as a blush steals up her chest towards her cheekbones and the tips of her ears. Two years she’s been able to control her power and she still gets bashful whenever someone seems to be paying attention to her, the demure, untouchable girl she once was still a very basic element of who she has become. And his staring at her like she’s a slice of chocolate cake on the last day of Lent probably isn’t gonna help her nerves any, Logan thinks. Not considering some of the less-than-professional daydreams you indulge in when she’s around. With a noticeable effort, he forces himself to close his mouth, nod his head to her in a vaguely friendly fashion. Look away from that gorgeous, sinful-looking dress she’s wearing and focus on her face. His body- well, certain parts anyway- aren’t too happy with him for this endeavour.

But given who she is and what she means to him, his body is just gonna have to fuckin’ deal.

“Well, you look different,” he manages to croak out, his eyes on the fireplace.

Every single one of the priestesses titters behind their hands.

“O’ course Ah look different,” Marie retorts, nervousness sharpening her voice. “Ah ain’t dressed like a drowned skunk anymore.”

And she marches over to the enormous fire-pit which dominates the room, holding her hands out as if to warm them. The memory of how wet and cold she was when they finally got here from Valhalla shivering through her frame. Whatever confidence she had when she entered has apparently evaporated, more’n likely because of the other women’s laughter and his own jackass response. Despite himself, Logan feels a flare of annoyance at her fer being so easily rattled. Don’t she know how good she looks? He thinks. Don’t she understand that those girls’re probably just laughing because they’re jealous?

But just as quickly he forces that reaction away. They’re not here to act like hormonal teenagers, he reminds himself sternly. They’re here to look fer Jubes. And Loki. And possibly stop both the firecracker and the Mullet of Doom doing something stupid and harebrained and matrimonial, but that’s just his personal theory about why Jubes got herself kidnapped by the lovesick trickster who’s been pining for her the very same week she dumped her boyfriend fer playing around on her with another girl. As if reading his mind, Marie straightens up now, looks back up at him. There’s something in her body language that seems off now though, a tightness in her shoulders and eyes that sets itself gnawing on Logan’s last nerve.

“Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “Ah know you were just giving me a compliment.”

Logan shrugs. If that’s what she wants to believe then he’s okay with it. “No big deal,” he says quietly. “And you do look different. Different and…” He forces himself to say it, because if he don’t she won’t realise how good she looks.

“Different and pretty,” he finishes.

God, that sounds lame, even to him.

She gives a wry snort at that and he looks up at her in question. At seeing his raised eyebrows she gestures with her hands. “Ah know you’re trying to be sweet about this, shuggs, but you gotta admit, this is a pretty fucked up situation-”

He frowns. “What’s so fucked up about it?”

Marie looks at him like he’s nuts. It is not, sadly enough, the first time she’s done so.

“Have you not talked with the priestesses?” she asks suspiciously.

“No. They didn’t seem real interested in talkin’.” The group of women titter again, looking at him coyly. The handsy one makes a move towards his belt-buckle and he flashes a claw at her until she moves back.

“What were the priestesses supposed to be telling me, darlin’?” he asks her carefully.

He’s having what Pete Parker would term a spidey-sense moment, and though he may not like to admit it, it’s giving him the heebie-jeebies.

Marie gestures to her oh-so-pretty, oh-so-revealing dress and the sense of impending doom intensifies.

“Didn’t they tell you what we have to do in order to spend the night here, shuggs?” she asks him quietly. He shakes his head, that sense that something is wrong is getting stronger and stronger with every word she says. It’s really quite alarming, and referring to it as a spidey anything isn’t making it any cuter. “We have to… We have to…” Marie takes in a deep breath, pushes it out through her lips, so hard in blows her bangs off her face. The blush is back and this time it’s furious, reaching all the way up from her chest to the very roots of her hair. “The temple’s sacred to the Disir goddess of love, Logan,” she explains nervously, worrying her lip. “That’s probably why Loki came here, because him’n Jubes were planning to-”

Logan holds up a silencing hand. “Fer the sake o’ my mental health, don’t finish that sentence, Rogue.”

She shrugs. “Ok,” she says in a small voice. “If you say so. But… But, in order to spend the night here, they want us to… I mean, we’d have to…”

Again the deeply-taken, martyred breath. Again the red face.

“Of for Christ’s sake,” Logan bursts out, “spit it out already!”

Marie shoots him a glare he’s pretty certain could cut through adamantium.

“They want us to have sex, Logan,” she snaps. “They want us to have sex to stay here, and if we don’t, then they’re going to throw us out into the storm outside, ok?”

For a moment Logan’s pretty convinced that his heart has stopped beating. That the world has stopped spinning. And then-

He can’t help the laugh which escapes him. “That’s nuts.”

Marie throws him a death glare. Just fer a split second he could swear there’s a whiff o’ hurt stealing though her scent and he tries his hardest not to conjecture why. “Oh, Ah’m well aware you think that, shuggah,” she snaps. “But that’s the price o’ staying here. Why you think they put me in this get-up? Why you think Ah let them?”

Logan can’t believe what he’s hearing. “You agreed to this?”

Marie crosses her arms angrily over her chest. “You sayin’ you wouldn’t? You sayin’ you’d rather abandon Jubes to the Little Psychopath Who Could and get drenched again for good measure than take one for the team and do the deed with me?”

They are not having this conversation. “Marie, I’d never take advantage of you like that,” he says. “I’d- Okay, any other member of the team maybe, but not you.”

The scent of hurt intensifies. “Why not me?” she demands angrily. “Ah know Ah’m not sophisticated like Storm, or gorgeous like Betsy, or even clever like Kit, but surely there’s something about me you find attractive-”

How the Hell did this become about whether he finds her attractive? Cuz that’s one argument a man can never win. “Of course you’re attractive, Rogue,” he snarls at her. The gaggle of priestesses titter again and he shoots them a murderous look. “You’re gorgeous. Gorgeous and young and Jesus, that rack…” He trails off even as his mind screams at him to shut the fuck up Right. Now. “But, but, you’re my friend,” he continues. “My best friend. And best friends do not have sex with one another-”

Rogue marches across the room to him, plants his face in hers.

“Well if you wanna help Jubes and survive the night, these best friends are gonna have to.”

And with that she reaches up and wraps her arms around his neck and plants a kiss on him, right there in front of the priestesses, as if she did it every day.

Now, some part of Logan knows that if he had an honourable bone in his body then he would not react to being kissed by a woman he’s known since she was seventeen the way a drowning man reacts to the mere suggestion of air. But that’s exactly what he does: As soon as her lips touch his, instinct takes over. And in his case, instinct is pretty Goddamn R-Rated. Marie managed to build up some momentum as she stomped over to him and he uses that now, allowing it to throw him backwards. Her soft, warm body landing on top of his even as her lips open and her tongue slides against his teeth, her hands scrambling against whatever they’ve landed on- he certainly hopes it’s a bed- to hold her weight up. It takes Logan a moment to realise that Marie’s thighs have landed on either side of his hips, pinning him. It’s the weight of her torso, pressing tightly down against his thighs that does it. That and the rush of blood from his head to his cock as his hands make their own way down to squeeze and knead possessively at her ass. She lets out a tiny, breathy little moan, designed specifically, it seems, to drive him demented, and as she does so whatever part of Logan’s psyche wasn’t onboard with the whole screwing Marie senseless plan gives way. In fact, it up and leaves the planet.

Because if this is what sex with Marie feels like after only one kiss, then sweet Jesus knew what sort of pleasure they’d find once they get rid off all these pesky clothes and priestesses and morals and get down to business.

But though his body might be up fer this, Logan isn’t completely lost to what he’s doing. There’s still some annoying little voice, yammering inside his cranium about how this is a bad idea. About how, every time he thought o’ this (and that was way more times than he’d ever admit) him’n Rogue had talked it through, decided to take this step together. Realised that what they were wasn’t just friends but lovers, that that this was the only way they truly wanted to be. Logan wants to ignore the little voice, wants to shut it up and silence it. Marie’s tongue has found its way into his mouth and it’s sliding coaxingly, maddeningly against his own, the weight of her breasts pressed hotly against his chest as she pushes her hips tightly into his. Her fingers curl into his hair to pull at it, scratching his scalp, the little hiss of pain inside the pleasure more than he thinks he can stand. He feels her nails dig into his skin and that’s it, he loses control. Flips them so that now he’s got her underneath him. Both of her hands in one of his as he stretches them above her head. Marie blinks up at him, brown eyes glassy with pleasure, her pretty, sweet mouth opening in another, softer moan-

And that’s when he pulls away, stops himself. Pulls back.

He knows if he kisses her again he’ll go through with it and fuck her.

And of the many things he’s wanted to do to Marie over the years, fucking her isn’t on the list.

Slowly, creakingly, he lets go of her wrists then, pulls his body away from hers. He hears the priestesses give a collective, rueful moue of disappointment and suddenly he remembers their presence. Without a thought he snarls at them, slashing with the claws until they scatter like a flock of birds. Leaving him alone with Marie and what they did together. Leaving him alone with the fact that she cares so little for him that she’d screw him just to have a place for the night. The thought smarts: He’s wanted to sleep with her, have sex with her, even make love to her. He’s wanted to deck her boyfriends and check on her when she’s sick and make sure that she’s okay after every mission she’s ever been on. He’s cared about her. And if he cares about her then he knows he can’t do this. Marie frowns at him, surprised, and as he watches the glassiness in her eyes turns wetter. She blinks and suddenly tears are tracking her way down her cheeks, shining in the firelight like tracks of gold. Logan reaches out to touch them and his hand looks big- ungainly-crushing- there against her cheek. He can’t help it.

“Don’t cry, darlin’,” he says, even though he knows the words are completely inadequate. “It’ll be- I’m sorry.” He shakes his head in frustration. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“Ah know.” And she looks away from him, biting her lip, fer once looking every inch the girl he met in Laughlin. So many years between that night and this, and right now he can’t feel a single one of ’em. “Ah thought… If you had a good enough reason, maybe you’d want to,” she murmurs.

He tilts her head up to look at him, frowning. “You think I need a good reason to have sex with you?”

She meets his gaze, her eyes serious and honest. “Ah think if Ah don’t find a reason, you’ll never do it,” she says quietly. She shakes her head, her expression mournful. “Ah just thought, if we had an excuse then you’d see how good we could be together. You’d see it wouldn’t be so bad, even though Ah’ve so little experience and Ah’m so different from the women you normally chase.” She looks up at him through lowered lashes. It’s the most damning image, innocence and arousal warming their depths. “You say Ah’m the last person you’d have sex with like this,” she murmurs softly. “Well, you’re the only person Ah’d have sex with like this, shuggs, and that’s the God’s honest truth.”

And she reaches up, pressing her lips very softly to his.

This time he leans into it, more gentle than the last time. More himself now that he’s heard precisely what Marie needs. What she wants. That it’s not just a means to an end, that it’s about them. The kiss deepens, sweetens, they way he’d always known it would. Her body soft and warm and molten beneath him, her breath slowly becoming ragged as she drags one hand through his nape to slide down his back, one leg hooking around his hip until her foot traces a warm, snaking path across his thigh. Logan reaches down and caresses the bare flesh of her leg, smiling when she moans again, just a little. She’s had so little touch in her life, he thinks, even after she got control of her mutation, that he can’t be blamed fer touching her as much as he possible can. So he pulls back, hands tracing all over her body. Taking the hem of that silky, see-through gown in his hands and pulling it off to toss into a ball beside her head. He looks down at his best friend, milky white and lovely and bare in the firelight, and just fer a moment she’s so beautiful he thinks he can’t breathe. There’s no way he got this lucky. There’s no way they’re really here.

But then she reaches up for him, running her hand along his jaw. Smiling in that ways that’s just hers even as her hand snakes down to open the last few buttons on his jeans. The grin turns wicked as she does it, sweet and gentle and devilish and perfect-

The priestesses don’t come back for the rest of the night, but they don’t have to.

Because judging by the sounds coming from that chamber, the two Midgard supplicants are definitely giving their goddess her due-

All night long…

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

“Best wedding present ever,” Jubes says, grinning up at her new husband as the priestess who’d brought news of Logan and Marie’s actions leaves them. “Way better than a linen cupboard, or a new set of pans.”

Loki, once Odinsson, now Laufeysson, grins slyly down at his new bride. He’s surprised she doubted he’d follow through with his plan, but then he has their whole lives to show Jubilee how foolish a notion that is. “I told you, sweet,” he says softly, “this temple is special. There’s no way a heart could stay cold here, not when it’s already beginning to burn…” And he trails off, kissing his new wife, his new Goddess of Mischief. The young X-Man grins, a trail of paffs popping like fireworks around her, as she pulls him close and presses him back until she’s on top of him, their bodies pressed skin to skin.

“Well, all’s I’m saying is, you did a good job, hubbie,” she tells him. “Be sure to point that out to Logan when he finds us. Y’know, before he makes with the gutting…”

And with that Jubes decided she’d given up quite enough of her wedding night, and proceeds to take her pleasure with her new, silver-tongued husband and let her friends be.