Chapter 17: Then
“Holy FUCK!” He stumbled back a bit against the desk, struggling to remain standing, hands scrambling behind him, gripping anything he could find.
She took all of him, fucking all of him, in that hot red wet mouth, licking and sucking, and he was on the verge of something he wasn’t sure he could come back from. He was murmuring a stream of raspy swears as she brought him to the edge of oblivion, that naked body before him, on her knees, long hair falling over those goddamn glorious breasts.
“Oh, God. Fuck, Marie! Fuck,” he swore as she pulled him in harder, somehow deeper, taking more, while her hand squeezed the base of him, and he saw stars.
And then, she was off of him, drawing him out, and staring up at him with an evil, mischievous grin.
“That feel good, baby?” she smirked, all eyes. The sudden cool air on his cock sent a shiver down his spine as she waited…one second, two seconds, three seconds. She was going to fucking end him.
“Hell, woman!” he shouted exasperatedly.
“What? You want me to keep going? You like seeing me on my knees?”
He could only offer a low growl in response.
“Better hold onto something, baby,” she warned, and then she was assaulting him all over again, pulling him in even deeper into that hot, wet mouth, drinking him, and he could feel himself hit the back of her throat.
“Ah god. Fuck!” Her hands gripped the back of his thighs, but it wasn’t enough to steady him as he was losing himself in her, and he threw out his claws behind them and rammed through the wood of the desk, holding on like hell.
“Baby, I’m gonna…holy fuck! Marie!” His mind seethed, thoughts dizzy, pulsing in rage or lust or pain or nothing. She sucked and swallowed, and he began shuddering hard, helpless, and he felt himself pulsing in her throat, pushing down, coming in spasms of white, hot light.
By the time he came to, she was already gently lapping up the rest, and the animal purred inside of him, even as he pulled his claws out of the table, sliding them back in with a painful tinge, still partially leaning on the desk for support. She was standing then, leaning into him, placing gentle kisses onto his neck as he snaked an arm around her waist, breathing hard still, both of their skin glowing with the telltale sheen of well-earned sweat.
“Morning,” she finally said, breathing into his ear.
“You’re gonna pay for that one,” he muttered through closed eyes, exhaling once more before looking at her with a smirk.
“I’m not sure what you mean, sugar,” she teased, voice as sweet as honey, but eyes ablaze with mischief.
“C’mere,” he growled, grabbing her by the waist and easily picking her up as she lightly laughed, legs straddling his torso, and he reveled in the feeling of the slick wetness between her thighs, still dripping from when he spent himself inside her last night and earlier this morning, mixing now with her new arousal from what they both had just experienced. He plopped them down on the tangle of sheets on his bed, his body partially eclipsing hers as they lay on their sides in the full light of mid-morning.
“You’re gonna be the death of me,” he finally murmured into the nape of her neck.
“Hopefully not,” she playfully whispered back.
“You’re a fucking natural at that,” he said, and he could feel her smile before she turned around a bit more to face him.
“It’s easy with you,” she said simply.
“Easy?” he asked, through his own grin.
“Oh, you know what I mean. You just… you know yourself. You fit in your skin. I like that. You know what you want.”
“Damn straight I do,” he said devilishly, before he reached down to squeeze that tight, glorious ass. She grinned back at him, before she leaned her forehead into his chest.
“Also…” she said, before trailing off a bit, a hot flush in her cheeks.
“What?” he urged, bringing a hand up under her chin and tilting her head up slightly to look at him.
“I like how it feels to take you in like that, and the taste of you when you come. It’s good. Sweet. Earthy.” Logan’s eyebrows raised as she said this, a little stunned and already more than half-hard again by her candor.
“Fuck, baby. You start talkin’ like that, you’re gonna hafta deal with the consequences,” he said as he tightened his grip around her.
“You just don’t stop, do you?” she asked friskily.
“Healing factor, darlin’,” he said through a smug smile.
“You know that’s insane, right?”
“Fucking handy, is what it is,” he said, and she smiled again before turning around and he pulled her closer to him. He nuzzled into her neck, letting his instincts have their natural way with her for a few moments, growling indiscriminately in contentment as he held her body close.
They had spent the last few weeks like this: fucking, and doing little else. What had happened that first night, those strange moments in the kitchen before and after they were together, they hadn’t spoken of again. Logan considered it only a matter of time, but there was nothing in him right now that didn’t savor this physical connection, this raw and visceral inundation of his senses, particularly after several cold, hard years without anyone much for company. Besides, Marie was a work of art in bed, experienced but sophisticated, curious and passionate but also poised, and he couldn’t get enough of her. The rest, what it meant, what it might be doing to them both, he had set aside, unwilling and unable to take it all apart to see how the pieces might fit together yet to make a greater picture.
He settled into her closer then, but he stiffened a bit as he laid keener eyes on the marks on her neck and shoulders, the tiny scratches, the small bruises, hell, the fucking teeth marks. The base, most-inner part of him loved them on her, his mark on the woman he considered his, but another part of him grew increasingly more concerned as he took in the physical result of their time together over the past few weeks. The bites and marks were still the result of him keeping an extremely tight hold on the Wolverine, and, not for the first time, he questioned the extent of his own humanity.
“Hell baby, I’ve marked you up good,” he finally murmured, bringing his mouth gently to the worst of the offenses, apologizing silently through a brush of his lips on her skin.
“Hmmm,” was all she said, snuggling a bit closer to him. Logan doubted she knew the full extent of what it all meant. Just by glancing at her, any other feral would understand the bites were his signature on her. Without even making much of a conscious effort, his body had tried desperately, dutifully, to mark her, to claim her. But…that certainly wasn’t something they had outwardly discussed. Even now, it felt like dangerous ground.
“Bobby’s gonna have a fit over these new ones,” he found himself saying, still pressing his lips to her skin, before taking his teeth and gently lining them up with the latest round of marks.
“I’m not his to worry about,” she murmured. Logan withdrew his mouth and raised a brow from behind her.
“Tell him that,” Logan muttered. Bobby had been gone for the last several weeks, and hadn’t actually been home since Logan and Rogue had gotten around to fucking.
“Honestly, I’m more worried about walking around today without wincing,” he realized she was saying. Logan frowned a bit more deeply at this, turning her slightly to better face him once more.
“Hell, baby, if I’ve been too rough—” he started.
“It’s okay, sugar,” she reassured him through a whisper, and suddenly a hand was in his mussed hair, and the feel of her nimble fingers on his greying temple was almost too much.
“You can always just turn on that skin and take a drink of some healin’,” he murmured through closed eyes as she massaged his temple, running a hand down behind his ear and to the side of his neck. The fact that Marie could most likely turn her skin off and on was knowledge he didn’t quite have for certain, but something he was curious about nevertheless. He didn’t know the full extent or context of how Marie could control her power, and it was something he was determined to eventually learn about her, something to get to the root of.
“No,” she said, and he felt himself frowning again. “No way. Besides, I like it. It feels good. A good kind of sore, you know?”
“Can’t say that I do,” he said through a small smirk, running a hand through her hair now, and she offered him a slightly apologetic look back. They lay like that for a while, before Marie seemed to sense some shift of the light in the air, and turned back around to the clock on his bedside table.
“Shit,” she said.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m gonna be late,” she muttered, moving to sit up. He instantly pawed at her, drawing her once more into a supine position close to him. No way in hell he was letting her go just yet.
“Five more minutes,” he grumbled. “Shower here to save time.”
“Baby, I only had about five more minutes before you made those gouges in that desk over there,” she said, before they both quickly shot a glance at what was left of the cedar piece of furniture in front of his window. Logan silently hoped he wouldn’t have to explain himself too much, and that Charles would just write it off as an occupational hazard of employing the Wolverine.
“Don’t leave yet. Fuck those kids,” Logan snarled, grabbing her ass once more.
“You’re terrible,” she said through a playful smile.
“And you fuckin’ love it,” he countered smugly.
“And how would you know?” she asked.
Logan just tapped his nose for a moment, all the while smiling self-assuredly. She grinned as she playfully tried swatting at him, but before she could really do anything he grabbed her bare wrist, and she slowed, staring up at him. They shared a look, a moment too slow to be real and too quick to be frozen, hazel eyes on brown, before he moved in toward her, kissing her slightly, just barely nipping her bottom lip. He could still taste himself on her mouth, and he thought of the bite marks again. His.
“Shower awaits,” she finally whispered through his smile, and before he could reach for her again she quickly moved up out of the bed toward the hallway, completely and gloriously naked. Whatever initial, irrational reservations she had that first night had quickly dropped away, and Logan was grateful, because about all he was interested in doing was seeing Marie naked as often and as completely as possible.
“You need company?” he shouted after her, instinctively sitting up himself at the promising thought.
She turned her head back to him, hair flowing out from behind her, as she fiddled with the doorframe to the bathroom a bit, all the while smiling widely.
“Well, come on, then,” she finally said, with a wink and a little tilt of her head.
--
Logan rolled himself out from beneath the engine of the truck, sitting up on the rollerboard, wiping the sweat away from his forehead. It had been a long, seemingly endless morning without Marie. With three classes in a row to teach, she was ultimately off limits to him for a block of several hours, and Logan found this stretch of time in the morning the most unbearable. Additionally, he had a particularly long and grueling session with Charles in his office this morning, as the professor searched for and stirred up memories from some of Logan’s darkest and longest days in the war, after things had really gone to shit. Spending close to two hours in Charles’ office, Logan had afterward found himself making his way to the garage, which was becoming more and more of a sanctuary of sorts, part of his morning ritual as anything else. Logan had recently bought a truck with some money he had been squirreling away, an old Ford F-150 that had good bones, but was in need of several major repairs. Mentally spent and often disturbed from handing over his past to Charles, working with the engine of the truck had become something of an antidote, and Logan found the more he fiddled with the beastly contraption, the more at peace he felt. What had Marie called it? A good kind of sore. Maybe this kind of work was something like that.
He had set up in the fifth and final garage bay, and had opened up the garage door to the brisk fall wind. It was early November now, and the weather had turned what Marie had called “down right cold” over the past few days, although Logan didn’t particularly mind and found Marie’s distaste of the chill in the air amusing. This was another reason Marie’s absence felt less here. There was no need to make sure she was comfortable, and now he welcomed the outdoor air and the open space the open garage afforded him. Especially as of late, Logan had found himself avoiding spaces he felt were too-enclosed, especially since after the jump, and Logan was beginning to increasingly suspect that this other version of himself might have spent a greater period of time locked up in a cage or at a lab, maybe even under Stryker’s supervision, than his experience the first time around.
A growl from his stomach suggested it was nearing lunchtime finally, and he realized he had been under the truck workin’ on the damn thing quite some time. Rogue had lunch off, often a full, round two-hour break that had been dutifully taken advantage of in either of their bedrooms most days, satiating an altogether different sort of hunger. He stood up then, wiping the oil off his hands with a towel, thinking a second shower and some late breakfast might do him some good, when Logan found Bobby in the open doorway to the last bay of the garage, staring at him.
Shit.
Logan cleared his throat, throwing the hand towel down on the work bench and crossing his arms as he stood before the younger man, offering him a slight nod of his head.
“Hey, kid,” he grumbled. Bobby was leaning on the doorframe, but there was nothing about his stance that was casual or relaxed.
“You wanna take a wild stab at why I’m here?” Bobby finally said, straightening a little.
Logan sighed. “Well, I ain’t seen ya work on an engine a day in your life, so I’m guessin’ this is about Rogue.”
“The whole school knows,” he muttered coldly, walking into the garage then to face Logan head on. He was only a couple of paces away now, the two men standing there in the cool November wind, the open hood of the Ford just beyond them. Honestly, he had to hand it to the kid. Bobby obviously knew that Logan was practically twice his size and over triple his age, adorned with an adamantium skeleton and who could heal instantly to boot. To face him on was to challenge him, and even while he felt the tension building and would be quick and ruthless in defending Marie if he had to, Logan realized he also felt the slightest twinge of something that seemed a lot like guilt. Bobby had been seeing Rogue before Logan was thrown into this new timeline, and, if the roles were reversed, and Bobby had started suddenly fucking his girl, Logan would have gutted Bobby without much of a second thought.
“So? What do ya want from me, bub?”
“I want to beat the shit out of you,” he grumbled, voice terse and on-edge. Logan uncrossed his arms then, standing up to his full stature. Bobby didn’t have to be feral to understand that men had been killing each other over women since the dawn of time, and there was no mistaking Logan’s subtle threat in drawing himself up to his full height.
“You don’t even know her,” Bobby added, voice thin and volatile. Fuck. Marie had always played it off like Bobby and she were fuck-buddies, nothing more, but now Logan was getting strong vibes of something else entirely. Even if Marie had been telling the truth, it was obvious Bobby had procured a different sense of what their relationship had meant.
“And how do you know that I don’t?” Logan cautiously asked, playing his cards carefully. Bobby was an asset to the school, even if he did have a tendency to be kind of a stuck-up asshole, and Logan wasn’t really intent on fucking him up too bad, if only because of Charles’ potential disappointment with juvenile in-fighting. But, hell, if Bobby wanted it to come to blows, Logan was more than happy to oblige him.
“How long have you even been here, a month, two at most? You think that’s how long it takes to get to know someone? Rogue’s fragile, intricate. It took me years to convince her I might be worth her time. And then you waltz in here and days later she’s sleeping with you?”
“I’m not sure we agree on the state of Rogue’s fragility, bub. She seems pretty sturdy to me,” Logan remarked.
“You don’t know her like I do,” Bobby retorted. At this, Logan growled. He had seen every glorious inch of her this morning, she had had him in her mouth only a few hours ago. He begged to differ. But, even as Logan’s eyes narrowed at the younger mutant’s threats, he knew Bobby partially had a point, even if Logan wasn’t keen on listening to him. The fact of the matter was that it bothered Logan to no end that there were secrets that Marie didn’t quite seem ready to give up to him yet, and as far as Logan could tell both versions of her had always been that way. Bobby snidely remarking on this fact to Logan’s face, however, was not helping.
“Trust me, I know her,” he grumbled, now holding one fist with his other hand, subtly massaging his knuckles in an obvious sign of warning.
“You know a different version,” Bobby kept going. “Rogue’s been through a lot, Logan, and most of what she’s been through didn’t involve you.”
“Hey, she makes her own choices, right?” he retorted.
“Does she?” he spat back, and Logan found himself stepping closer to Bobby, towering over him, now inches from the other man. Immediately, Logan felt the temperature around him drop as he stared into the bastard’s white-blue, dead-looking eyes.
“Look, bub, I know this didn’t go your way, but it’s what it is now,” he growled in anger. “And you better watch your fucking insinuations. I didn’t force her to do jack shit. She’s a grown woman for Christ’s sake. She didn’t do anything with me that she didn’t want to already do,” he snapped back.
Just drop it, baby.
And there it was again, as clear as fucking day. The voice. Logan looked up a bit at it, sniffing the air, and then the tension broke between the two men, and Logan sighed, standing down intuitively, knowing this was a fight that he didn’t quite have in him. At least, not today.
“Let it go, Bobby,” he said, tiredly. Bobby’s eyes widened a bit as Logan’s sudden change in mood, before sneering once more as he stalked off without another word, and the temperature warmed a bit, despite the cool November wind.
Logan breathed out harshly, murmuring a “fuck” under his breath for good measure.
---
He found her drenched in the sunlight of the classroom, packing up the last of her things from teaching. He had made his way back upstairs, had showered once more, intent on turning the day back around, even stopping in the dining room to snag a Honeycrisp apple on his way to her classroom, which students were now filing out of. As Logan let them pass, however, he toyed with the apple a bit apprehensively in one hand, the conflicting thoughts and confusing emotions from the morning threatening to bubble over. Of course, she was fucking beautiful as ever, adorned in a silky hunter green dress, nude stockings and black oxfords, and for a moment Logan was besieged with the image of making love to her up against a blackboard, throwing up her skirt and taking her hard against the monochrome surface, despite the fact that Xavier’s school had switched to hologram projections years ago and there were no blackboards in the classroom to speak of. As he finally made his way into the now-empty room though, the tension spiked inside him again, as he finally noticed that she was also wearing a sheer black scarf. He had missed it on his first view of her, as camouflaged as it was with her hair she was wearing down today. Logan’s frown deepened a bit as he casually walked over to her, quietly setting the apple down on the desk in front of her as he did so.
She saw the apple first and looked up to him, every line on her face turned up into a genuine smile. It would have been a beautiful thing to witness, but the sight of the scarf had turned the initial relief from seeing her again into a murky sort of confusion. For one thing, she looked an awful lot, an awful lot, like the old Marie. For another, it was looking more and more like an attempt to cover the worst of the bites he had left on her, and, from her response to his questioning her about it this morning, that didn’t add up.
“Do you even know how school goes anymore?” she was asking through a small smile, picking up the apple carefully and running her thumb over the speckled skin. He stood back a bit, once more taking in the sight of her like this, thoughts flitting from their conversation from earlier this morning back to the confrontation he had had with Bobby less than an hour ago.
“So… how much work does it take?” he found himself asking her, still maintaining a foot or two of distance between them.
“What?” she asked.
“You said it came back on if you were tired or stressed,” he replied, a bit too gruffly. “So how much work does it take to keep those powers off?”
The question in her features turned a bit sharp as she began detecting the tension in his voice, even as she still held the apple in her hand. She frowned a little, finally setting it down gently on the desk once more, before returning to putting the rest of the books in her satchel.
“A fair amount,” she finally muttered, before closing the bag and clutching the strap close to her. Something in him went a bit dark, as he thought of the way she had touched him this morning, running a lazy hand down his neck. A fair amount. What the fuck did that mean?
“Like, you constantly have to think about it?” he asked. Meanwhile, neither of them yet had turned to leave like they usually did, quickly heading to his room or her room, typically wanting to get the most out of each other as they possibly could.
“Well, sort of,” she said evenly, obviously uncomfortable now. “More like…you know when you have a song stuck in your head you can’t quite get rid of and you do all you can to stop singing along?”
“Yeah?” Logan asked tersely, not liking where this answer was going.
“Instead of trying to purge it from your mind, try keeping it there. Try playing it constantly, to the sound of skin please stay turned off, because if you start to forget the tune, people die,” she finished a little bitterly.
He only grumbled a bit in response, and then, after another curious thought hit him, not caring if he was offending her anymore, he added, “Do you let go, turn it on, when I’m not around? When you’re by yourself?” he asked. Marie shrugged her shoulders a bit moodily before responding.
“I guess I do. I let the song fall out of my head. I stop concentrating so hard, if that’s what you mean,” she said flatly.
“So…while we’ve been together, you’ve meanwhile been doing a whole hell lot of “concentrating” the last few weeks?” he asked.
She looked at him a bit strangely for a moment, before she began to take his meaning.
He was torn between guilt and lust and confusion, and, on top of everything else, an inexplicable burgeoning anger, not so much at Marie, but at the truth of it all. Something about being able to touch Marie, as fucking amazing as it had been, was now beginning to feel wrong somehow. He was once again stricken with thoughts of the old Marie, the young Marie, walking into Charles’ office, desperately searching for confirmation that the cure was real from the news story she had witnessed on television. The fact that she could kill someone with a simple touch made her lethal, made her seem strong to the Wolverine. Did turning all that off, denying who she was in some small way, being able to control it, make her stronger or weaker in that regard? What was he asking of her really, then, to touch her so languidly in the morning sun? To have her suck on him good and long and hard, with that fucking song always in the background? Suddenly, the comments from Bobby earlier floated back across his mind. What had he said? Rogue is fragile, intricate.
Logan stepped closer to her, trying to pick up her scent, trying to guess what she was thinking, and he felt her stiffen a little at his enclosing proximity.
“Scott’s teaching in here in less than ten minutes,” she managed to say, glancing over to the door that was still wide open.
“So?” he said, moving to run his hands over the silk of the green dress.
“So I’d like to keep my job,” she said, voice now on the edge of frustration. “Someone’s got to take what they do in this place seriously.” He blatantly ignored her dig, instead moving to pick at the sheer black fabric of the scarf between a thumb and forefinger.
“Why this today?” he finally asked, knowing that she was uncomfortable, partly, because he was guessing she knew she had been caught. There was a flush on her cheeks, anyhow, but even still he took a little pleasure in toying with her guilt. Even while one part of him questioned why the hell he was fucking with a good thing, another part already knew the answer. Because the Wolverine is sick of being held back so tightly, and he’s vying for control in any way he can. Fuck Bobby for trying to make a claim over his mate. Fuck Marie for trying to hide his mark. Fuck the universe for making Marie feel like she couldn’t be completely and totally herself, alive and vibrant on this spinning piece of rock in space.
“What we do… is our business,” she was saying, and raw instinct once more flared inside of him. Thinking of Bobby again, Logan suddenly regretted ever doubting putting his mark on her this morning. More people needed to see it, know it for what it was. She was his.
“You know, I put those there for a reason,” he grumbled, mouth now just barely lingering over the worst of the marks, through the sheer lining of the scarf.
“That so?” she asked, sensing perhaps, in part, what he was up to, what was happening to him, and still daring him to keep going. Fucking tease.
“Yeah,” he muttered, a hand lazily traveling up to linger over the fabric of one breast.
“And what reason is that?” she asked, voice breathy and restless. Because you’re mine, he thought, but stopped himself from saying.
“Because some people need a louder reminder than others,” he griped, pulling back from her a bit, gathering the scarf in one hand.
“Reminder of what?” she pressed. Of the fact you’ll never be anyone else’s but mine.
“Of how the world’s working right now,” he said, brow furrowing, before he slowly pulled the scarf off her neck, unfolding it, and laying it out flat over the inner part of her wrist, and then he was nipping at the pale skin through the fabric indolently, toying with her.
“You know, darlin’, you don’t always need that kind of…concentration,” he muttered through the fabric. “If you need a moment to…breathe. Stop all that pretending.”
“Excuse me?” Marie muttered, voice harsh with budding lust but also a blooming anger.
“There are a lotta ways,” he continued, unable to shut up now, scarf still over his hand as he traveled up her arm with it and back to her neck, other hand now sneaking between her thighs, just lingering between her legs before pressing hard, applying pressure and force to that warmth through the silk lining of her stockings. He could feel her squirm under him. She didn’t want this, but he was going to give it to her anyway.
“Logan,” she said angrily.
“You could just let go, Marie. Turn it off, take a fucking risk,” he muttered, pressing her up against the teacher’s desk, she helpless to his strength, as he pushed his hand upward, feeling the beginning of a fresh wetness between her legs. He smirked, loving that he was turning her on even though she was pissed at him, even if she wanted free. He added pressure, moving slightly against the fabric of a lining too thin, and she only muttered something incoherent in response.
“That feel good darlin’?” he growled, mimicking her tone and words from earlier when she had taken him out of her mouth, taunting his need to fill her.
Logan held the scarf up to her bare neck then, and purposefully and sharply bit her once more through it, abstaining from anything close to gentle as his saliva dampened the fabric, while his fingers continued to play with the wetness between her. She moaned a little against him, but as soon as she did so he stopped, removing his hand from where it had been quickly, and the scarf puddled to the floor between them. She whimpered a bit, before exhaling frustratingly.
“That’s for this morning,” he whispered sharply into her ear, stepping back. “And…for trying to cover these up,” he added, quickly running a thumb along the side of her neck, and Marie was unable to stop from wincing in pain from where his teeth had agitated and broken her skin from the new bite.
Just as they broke apart, Scott was walking into the classroom, looking at them both strangely, even through his glasses. Logan knew Scott was quickly realizing he had just missed something deeply private but still apparently on public display via the open door.
“And just what the fuck are you staring at, Cyclops?” Logan grumbled, before he turned back to Marie to see her glowering at him, her cheeks still flushed from arousal and frustration
“I think I’ll eat on my own today,” she murmured, before she quickly turned on her heel and stalked off, brushing past both men without another word.
---
Logan had spent the afternoon brooding while Rogue taught more classes, sifting through the tumultuous influx of thoughts, some of them indulgent and self-loathing—Why was he so fucked up? Why couldn’t he act like a fucking normal human being? Why the fuck had he been born this way? —but most of them centered on Marie. He realized he had acted rashly, based on nothing more than a hunch, and he had unfairly judged her. But his anger had not so much lessened as it had simply morphed into something more generic and vague. The fact of the matter was, he wanted Marie closer to him. She had graciously offered up her body, but it wasn’t near enough. He wanted to know every single fucking detail about her, and right now, this instant. He had been haunted by what Bobby had said, about it taking years for her to warm up to Bobby, and Logan was starting to worry it wasn’t because the man could freeze himself at the drop of a hat.
He hadn’t been able to find her after she had finished teaching, although Logan realized that there had only been a few minutes between the last class and a last minute faculty meeting that had been called. Still though, he despondently strode in twenty minutes late, loudly closing the door behind him, before leaning against the back wall.
“Nice of you to join us, Logan. Finally,” Scott said, but then continued on with what he was saying. The conversation about enrollment had begun to present itself as priority number one at most meetings. The fact of the matter was that there was simply less students around, and, apparently, everyone at Westchester was starting to realize this wasn’t a public relations problem. It seemed, on whole, the number of mutants, particularly those younger than about fifteen or sixteen was rapidly dwindling at the school. Logan listened half-heartedly as they batted ideas around as to why, but Logan found himself still caring little, as wrapped up as he was in his own problems. She was across the room, trying now not to look at him, still in that fucking dress, the little green number that-
Logan, please pay better attention, Charles mentally commanded of him, and Logan growled a little under his breath.
Stay outta my head, Charles, he thought.
That is extremely difficult, my friend, when you’re projecting your personal frustrations all over the room so very loudly, he mentally stated calmly, and as Logan looked over to the professor, Charles raised his eyebrows to make a point, before addressing the group once more as a whole.
“Scott, why don’t we send Storm and Jean out to collect numbers, interview parents? I think we may need to work with other leaders across the country to further understand just what we’re dealing with here,” Charles stated.
Scott turned to Charles oddly, and only at the other mutant’s reaction did Logan pay better attention.
“Charles… I just suggested that,” Scott murmured. There was a pause for a moment, as Charles frowned slightly. “Ah. Please forgive me, Scott. It’s been a very long day,” he paused, looking over to Logan once more and Logan couldn’t help but find himself cringing a bit under the professor’s stare. “Scott, I think it’s time to call it a night, don’t you?” Charles finally asked.
---
Logan caught up with Marie in the hallway and followed her as she trod back to her room, keeping in time with the brisk pace of her stride, intent on making things right.
“Logan,” she addressed him a bit moodily, as she fiddled with the her key.
“You look tired, darlin,” he muttered.
“Yeah, well, it’s been a long day,” she said back, as she opened the door. She hesitated a moment, looking up at him from where he lingered by her side, and then stared blankly into her room, before sighing.
“Well, come on in, then,” she murmured, and he followed her inside her room, dutifully shutting the door behind them. He loved coming in here, and secretly delighted in Marie’s little place, because he was now considering it one of the few spaces that seemed to offer up never-ending hints about the woman he was struggling to get to know. It was tidy enough, but there were books everywhere. A Bosch painting hung on the far wall, a record player sat in the corner, albums from good bands, bands he liked, scattered around it, having been recently played. There was a warm, cozy maroon quilt on her bed, the one he now knew her grandmother had done for her, and all around the place, carefully positioned everywhere, were tiny cranes carefully crafted of origami paper. The first time she had welcomed him inside, he had gently picked one up, it no bigger than the size of his finger, eyebrows raising in a small question.
“I like to do things with my hands,” was all she had said through a blush, and he had flashed her a knowing smile.
Now, he gently fiddled with one of the paper cranes on the desk, wishing today had been more like that day, before setting it back down. Marie, meanwhile, had shed the scarf from earlier, but was now kicking off her shoes, massaging her neck a bit as she did so before going to a half-empty bottle of Shiraz, pouring a generous glass for herself, and Logan noted that she hadn’t offered him any.
“That meeting ended strangely,” he finally muttered.
“Were you even paying attention to what was going on in there?” she asked, before taking a seat on the edge of her bed while he slumped into her office desk chair, knowing full well it was important to give her a little space.
“Yeah. Well, sort of,” he admitted.
“Then why aren’t you more upset by the news?” she asked, fingers cradling the glass of wine as she took a long sip.
“What news?” Logan asked, a little frustrated now that they were still talking about something wholly unimportant to the reason he had wanted to speak to her in the first place.
“That we’re disappearing?” she said, before another drink of wine.
“Oh come on, darlin’. That’s a little dramatic, ain’t it?” he said.
“Is it?” she shot back. Logan sighed, wearily running a hand through his hair.
“So, there are less of us nowadays. S’mother nature, baby. It’s probably not the first time there’s been a drought. I’m sure at other times the numbers surge. And besides, what’s the use in worrying about something we absolutely have no control over?” Marie bit her lip at this, toying with the glass in her hand as she stared at him oddly.
“What?” he asked, suspicion in his voice growing.
“It’s just...” she said, tapering off.
“What?” he pressed.
“This is real, Logan. This is all really happening. To you, to me, to all of us,” she finished. He blinked at her for a moment, before he realized what she was getting at.
“I know that, Marie,” he said through a gruff whisper.
“Do you?” she pressed.
“Hell, baby! I’m trying,” he protested.
“I know it’s not all death and destruction and sentinels, but what’s happening here… it matters,” she finished.
“What are you saying, Marie?” he asked quietly.
“Exactly what I’m telling you,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I got it, but you’re saying somethin’ else too. Or did you forget?” he asked, tapping his nose again like he had this morning, even if that did feel like fucking forever ago. She paused for a beat, before continuing on.
“You were horrible today,” she murmured into her glass of wine, before taking another long sip. Logan couldn’t help but to roll his eyes a little.
“Oh hell baby, that was nothing. Just a little light teasin’,” he began, before she cut him off.
“Not that,” she said quietly.
“What then?” Logan asked, unable to help the growing irritation in his voice.
“… that I am ‘pretending’?” she said, jogging his memory. Shit. Had he said that? In his little jealous outburst this afternoon, he had completely forgotten what he had actually accused her of when he was talking about keeping her skin turned off. He had honestly just been tryin’ to rile her up, get her all hot and bothered…but then, as he thought about it, he wondered, too, why the fuck he had put it like that.
“Hell darlin’,” he started, sighing from his seat near the desk. “That was just… I don’t know why I said that. It must be fucking left over, still from the past. There was this cure, you see, and you took it, and you always just wanted to be fucking normal and you had every god damn right to feel that way-”
“Please be quiet,” she whispered.
“What? Why?” he asked.
“I need you to shut up about your past,” she said a bit venomously.
“Baby, I-” he began.
“Why do you want so much for me to be like her?” she whispered so quietly a person with normal hearing would likely not have heard her.
“What?” Logan said, now completely on edge.
“Skin on?” she quietly murmured. “That’s the old Marie. Your Marie.”
“So this is where it’s all going? You really wanna start in on all that? Because I don’t think I need to ask you about who the hell you were talking to that first night, just after I got done fucking you long and good and hard on the goddamn marble floor?”
She blushed the shade of her wine, before Logan let out a sigh.
“I just want you to be your fucking self, Marie. Whoever the hell you are,” he added grumpily.
“What’s that’s supposed to mean?” she asked again.
“Nothing, it’s just…maybe you could try sharing a bit more, you know? That’s what I was gettin’ at, I think, with your skin. Because you’re walkin’ around with all those fucking walls up…”
“Well maybe if you tried listening better, I’d say more,” she retorted.
“I’m trying Marie,” Logan once again found himself saying.
“No, you’re fucking me,” Rogue snapped, setting down her empty glass in one fell swoop, a new sort of anger flaring in her voice. “There’s a difference.”
“That ain’t fair, darlin’,” he growled, and he was standing again, despite himself.
“No. You know what’s not fair?” she asked, the beginning of tears in her eyes, and she was now standing too. “Having to live with the knowledge every day that you are this close to killing someone. One slip, one slip, Logan, and I end your sorry, miserably long life. But I do it for you, I do it for everyone, because touch matters to me. Because I need it. And I know you need it. And for you to walk into my life and make light of something that you don’t understand? Fucking classic.”
“You don’t know me all that well then, either. You forget I can take it, Marie. I can handle you. You can’t kill me,” he said through a raspy whisper, knowing he was partially lying as his eyes grew dark as they lingered on her body.
“You don’t understand,” she murmured sadly, and he saw the longing in her eyes and then he knew what she wanted to do to him, and he knew he wanted it too, because, now, he determinedly strode over to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and kissing her long and hard and deep. She ran her hands down his back, and then he broke the kiss just long enough to find himself whispering, “Make me understand. Just let go for a second. Fucking turn it on, Marie,” and then the kiss began to heat, that telltale earthquake rising up between them both as he began to feel the pull, that fucking power, and he was leaving himself, giving himself in yet another way to her, but he still didn’t let her go, determined to let her choose when to end it. This was only meant to be a light pull, he knew it even as it was happening, not near as long as when he had given life back to her at the Statue of Liberty or that night early on at Xavier’s or even after South Africa. But now, maybe due to the wine or the anger or maybe just not wanting to quite let go, she was timing it wrong, and he felt too many of his senses and memories leaving him, and then it was taking everything in him just to keep standing anyway, gripping the desk for support.
“Holy fuck,” she said, stealing his words, as she finally ripped away from him, looking up to Logan wildly, full of vitality and vindication and force, even as he still swayed on the spot she had left him in. “I’d forgotten,” she murmured, staring at him, and then he saw her eyes darken.
Uh oh.
“Satisfied?!” she practically snarled, beginning to quietly pace her side of the room. Her mannerisms had changed on a dime, suddenly oddly reminiscent of his own, but there was also no doubt in Logan’s still-pounding head that she wasn’t still somehow her entire self, the part she never showed, the part she kept locked away with all the rest. And she was still angry as hell.
“Marie…” he said half-heartedly, still a bit woozy from the jolt, trying to bolster his strength.
“Just shut up. You needta look at it, right? This is you, lover, or at least a part of you, in me. You like seeing that?” He just stared at her, becoming more and more disturbed, as he watched his bite marks from earlier today obediently disappear from the side of her neck.
“Listen to me, James…” she said, before she stopped for a moment, a sudden clarity in her eyes, even as new tears sprung from them before continuing, “James Howlett. James…that’s the name, the fucking name your mother gave you, isn’t it?”
Fuck, fuck, FUCK. They had been idiots, playing with fucking fire.
“Baby—” his voice broke as he tried to reign her in, calm her down.
“No. Listen to me. I control my mutation because I choose to. Because I am strong enough. So you better muster up some fucking faith in me real fast, cowboy. And don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare insinuate for one second that I’m somehow pretending to be something I’m not because I choose to keep it turned off to protect those I love. And if you pull anything like that over on me again let me remind you that I can drop you to the fucking floor anytime I goddamn please. So unless it’s for some kind of fucked-up crazy sexual kink you want to satisfy, you fucking masochist, I keep the skin off. Understand, sugar?”
That last remark did it to him. He felt the animal in him shake off the rest of the jolt, as his own anger rolled up to greet him. That, in point of fact, was one of his twisted fantasies, and to have that knowledge suddenly flung about like it meant nothing had him seeing red. Fucking masochist my fucking ass.
“You’ve got a filthy little mouth on ya all the sudden darlin’, you know that?” he snarled.
“And whose fucking fault is that?!” she shouted, scowling.
“Get the hell over here,” he barked, and, when she dug in her heels and crossed her arms petulantly, he was on her in a second, pushing her roughly backward a couple of steps as he kissed her hard, now holding her firmly against the wall even as she writhed under him. As he fought for control, he realized she was stronger than she usually was, and he felt a level of responsiveness that hadn’t been there before as his instincts took center stage inside her. They were savage with each other, rougher than they ever had been, and he was biting her earlobe and she was pulling at his hair and his hands were ripping at her dress, desperate to get her out of the fucking thing. She pulled back for a moment, head leaning against the wall, a smoldering look in her eyes.
“Just man up and use the fucking claws already,” she taunted him. He snarled at her before finally sliding a single claw partially out of his left hand, and, easily and with absolute precision, he shredded the beautiful green dress, stockings and panties all before easily picking her up and throwing her pseudo feral ass harshly down on the bed and savagely assaulting her again. He ran his hands roughly down her body, pinching a nipple hard before taking the other in his mouth, but then she was rearing up under him, ripping off his wifebeater and clawing at his torso, before she took the skin of his right shoulder in her mouth, and fucking bit down on him as hard as she possibly could. He snarled in pain and frustration, holding her down more tightly in the bed, fighting to still keep control over the Wolverine as the animal sneered at her attempted dominance, wanting her silent, submissive. “Just...stop it, woman,” he couldn’t stop from growling, and she only threw him an evil smirk back that shook him a bit, and then she was over him, straddling his hips in the moonlight, her body so goddamn gorgeous he could hardly stand it. They existed like this for a moment, before she cocked her head slightly, an odd look on her face in the light from the window. Something about her, all wild hair and longing and desperation, broke the savage need for control within him, and he felt himself coming back from wherever he had been so close to going to.
“What? You don’t like it this way sugar?” she asked, a bit too viciously.
“I like you any way you wanna be, baby,” he muttered tiredly, hand still firmly on her thigh. Something in his voice broke the spell for her too though, as she stared down at him for a moment, swaying a bit from where her legs cradled his waist. She blinked once more, and then looked around blindly, as if she was just realizing where she was at, what she was doing.
“Oh, god. Oh, fuck, Logan,” she said, still blinking back tears, her hand flying to her mouth, and he realized a little of his blood from her bite from earlier was still smeared on her bottom lip.
“Baby,” he heard himself say, sitting up quickly and throwing an arm out to steady her just in time.
“You’re in my mind. I can’t get you out,” she said alarmingly, openly crying now.
“Marie,” Logan said a bit helplessly.
“She gave it all up for you. She was there, she…she…” Marie said through sobs, and that sent alarm bells ringing through Logan’s mind. Fuck. So she had seen more than he thought. Enough to get them both into some real fucking trouble. They were both guilty. Too goddamn prideful and stubborn to comprehend what they were really doing, how they were hurting each other in an effort to understand.
“Marie,” he said again, trying to get through to her, holding the back of her head gently to him. “Just breathe, baby. Throw those walls up. You know how. Just do it.” She was breathing heavily for a moment, and then a moment more, and then something in it all regulated, and he heard her heartbeat slow down, now keeping a normal, steady rhythm as she stopped seething. For a while they sat there like that, in the middle of her bed, as he felt her come back to herself. Finally, after what seemed like hours but could have only been a few minutes, she sat back at bit, looking at him through wide, apologetic eyes.
“Well, that was a fucking mistake,” she finally breathed.
--
They had found each other several times in the night, desperately trying to apologize through the act of sex. Most of it had been slow and careful, and this feeling had stretched itself into the early hours of the morning. Marie had finally gotten up after falling into a light sleep after he had held onto her, gently and quietly spending himself inside her in the morning light, all the while murmuring in her ear. She now had moved to the small kitchenette, and Logan could hear her fiddle with the coffee pot for a while, even though he was still in bed, eyes closed, taking in the scent of sex and left over Shiraz and freshly ground coffee beans. He hadn’t admitted it to her, but ever since the jolt last night his head had still been pounding, the feeling of lingering pain foreign and disconcerting. Logan thanked the world for small favors that it was a Saturday, at least. At some point, he opened his eyes and more closely watched Marie make the coffee. She wore a beautiful silk Kimono-inspired robe with intricate black and red patterns that Logan deeply appreciated, even if he did like seeing her naked best. Logan kept his eyes intently on her as she finished with the task of making coffee and came back with two steaming mugs of the stuff, nursing one and setting the other on her desk beside her as she sat in the chair, now facing him. Smelling the fresh coffee, Logan sat up a bit at the lingering promises in its aroma.
“I think one of the problems is this place,” she finally said, looking at him. Despite what they had said with their bodies last night, they hadn’t spoken of the jolt or their relationship since it had happened.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“All of this history here. Yours and mine. I can’t parse out my memories of you and him in here, and, now of me and her...” she finished quietly. Logan inwardly winced. He wasn’t ready, not at all, to talk about the memories Marie had most likely witnessed last night.
“Well, why don’t we get outta here for a while, then?” he found himself asking.
“What…leave?”
“Yeah, just for a while,” he said. Marie set down her coffee on the desk and looked over to him once more.
“How about classes?” she asked. Logan smiled a bit, taking a moment to appreciate Marie’s ever-dutiful loyalty to her responsibilities, all her causes.
“Kitty can cover ‘em until Christmas,” he said.
“Christmas? And what about fight club?”
“Peter can handle it,” he said. He could tell the wheels were churning in her head as she thought about what he was saying, and he knew from the lightness in her eyes she was now seriously considering it.
“Well, I haven’t had a break in I don’t know how long,” she muttered. “How would we do it?”
“I think my truck’s finally workin’, so maybe a drive?” he asked.
“Where?” she said, although now she was outrightly smiling at the prospect of getting the hell away from this place and what had happened last night, and Logan realized he was too.
“Hell darlin’, wherever you want,” he said, and she smiled a bit more, an idea blossoming on her features.
“How about someplace warmer?” she asked. “Some place with a little more...southern flair?”
“Hmmm,” he murmured, finally padding out of bed, completely naked and coming over to her. “Sounds real nice,” he leaned down and whispered into her ear before nipping it gently and then kissing the top of her head.
“Now hand over that fucking coffee, darlin’, because you’ve managed to give me the worst hangover I’ve ever had, at least in this century,” he murmured, and she looked up to him apologetically before handing him the spare, steaming mug.
--
They took their time, stopping where they wanted, when they wanted. Logan was grateful now he had been working on the old F-150 so dutifully, because what would have been an easy, one to two-day drive took them six, and he was glad to see that the truck didn’t complain once. It was a good pace for them both, he realized though, and, on the open road, they quickly learned several new, important things about each other. While navigating, Logan liked using a road atlas and taking shortcuts that he sorta just winged; Marie dutifully owed her allegiance to her phone and Google maps. Marie loved Elvis; Logan hated him. Marie sent a quiet little prayer up to whoever might be listening before meals, even though Logan knew she only believed in God in the vaguest sense anymore. An old southern Baptist habit, she had muttered when he had caught her doing it. Logan admitted to being agnostic verging on atheistic one morning, and Marie had just nodded her head gently in knowing acceptance. Logan had a secret thing for marshmallows; Marie loved yogurt covered raisins, much to Logan’s horror. If they had to get fast food, they both liked Wendy’s and hated McDonalds, but they liked roadside diners best. Marie felt nauseous if she read too long in the car, much to her frustration. My whole damn life. What kind of person who likes to read would be cursed with something so horrible as that? she had complained and Logan had simply grinned in response, but Logan also hated not being the one to drive, especially since he had discovered Marie was much more prone to road rage than he was. Marie had also caught Logan quietly murmuring along sometimes to a song if he liked it while he drove, and this essential fact, now paired with Marie’s realization that Logan could carry a decent tune if he felt so rarely inclined, was something she tormented him endlessly for.
Mostly, however, they talked, Logan’s left hand always steadily on the wheel, Marie’s feet usually up on the dashboard, lazily looking out across the changing landscape through sunglasses, despite the November weather. Upon witnessing an autotruck try to move into his lane for the first time, Logan cursing its bulky frame and driverless exterior as it did so, they discussed automation and its impact on jobs in America. Logan hated technology, but Marie was receptive. They both found ethics and philosophy interesting, but they also discussed history and science and even a little politics, although neither one of them religiously stood behind either political party.
And, as they finally drove deeper into the south, about when they crossed the state line into Alabama, Marie, stiltedly and with some lingering inhibition, started talking about where she had come from. She had grown up in Meridian, Mississippi in the deep south of Lauderdale county. A large naval base lay outside of town, she had explained, and her father had served in the navy for over twenty years, while her mom had stayed at home. She had been an only child too, something Logan wasn’t so surprised to hear about her. Rogue had fallen out with her parents long ago, and neither of them were planning to drop by for a visit, but Logan knew the town Marie had left behind had meant something to her, and she hadn’t been back to see it for a very, very long time.
The weather warmed the further south they drove. And as the weather changed, so did the culture, and Logan noticed Marie started delighting in the old reminders and telltale signs they weren’t up north any longer. The accents changed for one, and Logan took pleasure in the fact that Marie’s accent was more apt to make an appearance when she was around other people who had one too. He saw Marie let go bit by bit, letting some of that responsible, somber exterior that her years had given her fall away to show a bit of the sassy, southern spitfire underneath it all. In particular, little reminders of her life from over twenty years ago that excited and enthralled her, brought it out in her especially, and Logan was often helpless in entertaining her random whims and urges. They were just outside of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, when Marie grabbed Logan’s leather jacket by the arm as he was driving, ushering him to pull off at the next stop.
“Oh, oh Logan, stop!! Let’s stop! It’s a Piccadilly!” she had exclaimed, after seeing the telltale blue road sign advertising what was on the next exit.
“What the fuck is a Piccadilly?” he asked, shooting her an incredulous look even as he merged into the right lane to pull off at the next stop. Marie’s childlike excitement was fucking adorable, and he wasn’t about to let it go to waste. Marie blushed a little, and then continued on.
“Uhh…you umm, it’s a place to eat. My favorite, when I was a kid. You pick out the food you want, like a cafeteria, but it’s all southern cooking. They only have ‘em in the south,” she said, biting her lip.
“Sounds real good. ‘Bout dinner time anyway,” he said, giving her an encouraging smile, and she grinned back as they made their way off of the interstate.
“Your eyes are bigger than your stomach. That’s what mama would always say. I’d pick out too many things to eat, and could never eat it all. Except for the pie.”
“Pie, eh?” Logan smirked, and she bashfully grinned at him once more.
“Sweet Potato Pie. My mama would tell me it was Pumpkin, just so I’d eat it, but it was definitely sweet potatoes, through and through. It’s good,” she said.
“I bet it is,” Logan smiled again, and then she blushed more, a quirky look on her face as they pulled up to the restaurant in front of them.
About an hour later they found themselves tucked away in a deep booth, practically finished with the meal, as Logan watched Marie longingly staring down at a fluffy, warm buttered roll, one of the last things left on her plate, even though she made no move to pick it up and take a bite.
“I can’t do it,” she said, looking down sadly at it.
“Eyes bigger than your stomach?” he joked, as he snatched the warm roll off her plate.
“Hey!” she protested.
“Were you really gonna eat it?” he asked, through a bite. “You’re missing out,” he added, just for good measure. She looked down a bit gloomily still. “I’m already gonna have to jog for a couple of hours on a treadmill somewhere to work this meal off,” she said. Logan just rolled his eyes at her. He didn’t usually see Marie get excited much around food, but he had secretly loved that this meal had done a one eighty on her.
“So, you wanna stay in town here tonight?” Logan asked, already having polished off the roll before taking another sip of his Coke. This was a family place, and Logan had noticed that as they had eaten their meal it had grown more crowded, more children and mothers and fathers than anything, the families incrementally taking up most of the booths and tables around them now. Although Logan had enjoyed the food, because of the family atmosphere, there had been no alcohol in the joint to speak of, and he was already mentally planning on making a stop at the liquor store before checking into a motel. They had fallen into the habit of drinking good whiskey most nights to the sound of sweet conversation before sex, and it was a tradition Logan had a mind to continue.
“Yeah, why not?” Marie murmured, fiddling with her fork. Around them, the noise was increasing, the place picking up.
“Getting a bit busy in here anyway,” Logan murmured. He knew neither of them liked crowds much, and, just as he was going to suggest they leave, having already paid for their meal at the counter, a voice interrupted them.
“Excuse me?” Logan and Marie looked up to see a blond woman, maybe slightly younger than Rogue by a handful of years. She held the arm of a little girl with blonde curls, no more than six, and in the other hand she held a baby carrier. An older boy was bouncing around in the background as well, and the woman looked put together, but tired.
“Yeah?” Logan asked, and he could feel himself moving out of the booth, already anticipating the woman’s question.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but we were wonderin’ if y’all were finishin’ up. This place is packed, and I’m just lookin’ to set my stuff down before we get in line,” she said wearily. Marie still was silent as she stared at the young woman, and then the little girl, who was now staring intently back at Marie, blinking at her through large, blue eyes.
“Yes, ma’am, we were just about finished,” Logan was saying, standing awkwardly now around the children, but Marie hadn’t moved.
“Rogue,” Logan said, offering his hand to get her to take it. Marie finally looked to Logan then, shaking her head just slightly, and then finally moved to leave the booth
“Sorry,” was all she muttered to the woman as she got up and brushed past.
“Much obliged,” the woman said kindly, huffing in effort a bit as she sat down the baby carrier on the table where Logan and Marie had just been picking at the leftovers of Sweet Potato Pie.
--
Marie was quiet on the trip to the liquor store, choosing to stay in the truck while he had gone inside. After returning, spotting a motel and intent on driving over toward it, he heard Marie mutter a “turn left instead” in the fading light.
Just like that, she gave him directions and he listened, and as the sun finished setting, a cool blue settled over the landscape. They were out of town now, and the next direction she gave them put them on a gravel road, before turning onto an open, darkened field. He finally parked, killing the Ford’s engine, and both of them sat back and stared at a dilapidated structure in front of them. Logan at first assumed it was a forgotten billboard, until he realized it was too large. And then, it clicked.
“You used to come here?” he asked, turning toward her.
“We’d make our way up to Tuscaloosa for football games. And also, the drive-in theatre,” she said, gesturing to the screen in the distance. She laughed a little, staring at the weeds in the field and the old wooden posts that dotted the landscape from where Logan supposed the speakers had once been hooked up. “It was old back then. I took you out this way on a hunch. I can’t believe anything is still here,” she said. Logan noticed that she folded her legs up closer to her. It was a childlike move, one he remembered a younger Rogue doing a hundred times, and something about it made him feel odd as the light died around them.
“You ok?” he finally muttered across the truck’s cabin.
“Yeah,” she said, sighing a bit before she turned to look at him. “You gonna open up that bottle of whiskey or just make eyes at it all night?” Logan smirked a little, looking at the whiskey between them. He tossed the bag aside and screwed the cap off easily enough, before handing the bottle to her for the first sip. She gratefully accepted the offer from him, taking a long pull from the bottle before handing it back his way.
“Was this still a good idea, coming down south?” he finally asked, before indulging in the liquor too.
“Yes. At least, I think so. It was gonna happen sometime, and…I wanted to show you…” she drifted off. Her eyes looked far away, lost somewhere beyond the field in front of them, and Logan again remembered the little girl at the restaurant who wouldn’t stop staring at Marie.
“So you gonna tell me what dinner was all about?” he said after some silence.
“Hmm?” she said.
“Back in the restaurant?” he asked.
“Oh,” she murmured, before dropping off again. She was quiet for a long time, now pressing her boots to the dash in front of her, but he didn’t push her for an answer. He knew she would respond; she just needed to do it in her own time.
“It’s… nothing much. I just…seeing that woman. With those kids,” she finally said. Logan raised his eyebrows at her, before taking another drink of the whiskey.
“Sometimes…it just hits me, and I get a bit…I don’t know…” she trailed off.
“You…wanted kids?” he asked carefully. He knew what they were doing here, in this car, was important, because this was way more than Marie had ever shared with him, in this timeline or the last. He wasn’t about to fuck it up by saying the wrong thing.
“I mean, I didn’t ever actively try, you know, but Hank broke the news to me a few years ago, when I was a bit…younger,” she said quietly.
“Hell,” he offered. “Is it because…?” he tapered off, unsure of how to put it, but she had already taken his meaning.
“Probably. I remember him saying something about an ‘epithelial threat,’ so I’m assuming so. I’m older anyway now, so…not likely gonna happen.” Something in her voice had Logan feeling disturbed, a taught, heavy feeling in his chest weighing him down.
“You thought, at one point, you wanted them though?” he asked, still careful, but still intent on trying to figure out how she really felt.
“I dunno,” Marie said, through a shrug of her shoulders, taking another swig and wiping her mouth on her hand before setting the bottle down between them. “I mean, I like kids. I teach older ones all day. So…maybe. In a different life, perhaps? One that wasn’t so…”
“Complicated?” Logan suggested.
“Yeah…” she said, trailing off, then resignedly shrugged her shoulders once more. He then knew what she was going to ask before she did; it wasn’t that hard to anticipate, really, from the way she bit her bottom lip and looked up at him cautiously, but the words were still strange and provocative on her lips. “How ‘bout you? Did you ever want kids?”
Logan swallowed hard, before grabbing the bottle between them. Marie was probably not aware of it, but it was the first time anyone had seriously asked him a question like that, and even though an answer had already begun to form in his mind, the words were harder to summon.
“Uhh, well. You know… part of me had an idea of it for a while…probably because of some of the feral shit… a woman ripe with child and all that…” he said haltingly. He looked back over to her, her wide chocolate eyes almost indiscernible in the dark, and he wondered when he had started baring his goddamn soul for this woman, even if it did feel right. He felt Rogue’s surprise hit the air between them as he gave his answer; what he had said was obviously not the answer she had expected.
“But…” Logan added, putting down the bottle, hands now grabbing the steering wheel of the parked car for no other reason than to give his hands something to do. “If they turned out like me…”
“You wouldn’t want to pass you mutation to your child?” she interrupted, her tone even and careful, like his had just been when the focus was on her.
“Well, kinda. I mean, there’s no denying that having any sorta mutation would be a hard life for ‘em, even in this rosy future, but, with my… particular sort… hell. No matter what, it’d be lose-lose you know?”
“How do you mean?” Marie barely whispered.
“Uh, well, if they turned out like me, they might be doomed to live forever, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But if they didn’t turn out like me, then…”
“You might outlive them,” she murmured, and the eerie, ugly truth of it all settled between them. He had never said that out loud before. To anyone.
“But, that’s not quite true, is it?” she said, turning to face him more directly from her side of the truck, stealing a glance at his greying temples as she did so, deep in thought.
“What?” he muttered.
“Don’t you think, one day, you’ll die?” she asked. Logan looked at her evenly as she spoke the truth he had always somehow known deep inside of him, despite his fears.
“Hell, baby, probably. I’ve come close a couple of times, and I get this sense…you know? I ain’t… some kind of god; I’m just good at patching myself back together. So, yeah, I know, eventually one day I’ll probably meet my maker.” Something dark passed over Rogue’s face as he said this and she sat back in her seat once more.
“I don’t like thinking about that,” she finally muttered.
“It’s the fucking truth though. At least, I hope it is,” he grumbled, once more reaching for the half-empty bottle, taking a swallow and settling his gaze on the faded, partially torn screen in front of them both.
“What’s it been like, to live that long?” she finally heard her whisper, and he looked over to her once more.
“I don’t… really know. I don’t remember. I mean, I got memories now…but, it’s still in two parts.”
“You mean this timeline and the last?” she asked.
“Ahh, no. Although I guess there is that. I mean, uh, now and before… Stryker.”
“…and that was James?” she said delicately.
“I guess so. Hell if I really know, though,” he muttered. She moved in a little closer to him now, finally moving to run her fingers down his arm gently.
“And when did you stop being Marie?” he asked, tilting the focus back her way. She considered this for a moment before answering.
“Well, I guess after my parents threw me out. For a while, I couldn’t face it. The name, I mean. The name they had given me. It felt wrong, after what happened, but she’s still in my head, along with all the rest of them. That girl,” she said, and then through a small, sad laugh she added, “She scares the shit out of me sometimes.”
Logan quietly laughed a little at this. “How’s a sassy gal from the south all that scary?”
“It’s easy to be tough, Logan. That doesn’t take much effort.” Logan looked up to her a bit strangely, trying to understand what she had meant.
“I don’t know if most people would agree with you, darlin’,” he said to her.
“Really? I still think so. Shutting parts of yourself off? Easy,” she said, with a flip of her hand. “But… digging deep, throwing open the hood and inspecting each little part, trying to understand what’s broken in order to figure out how to get it to work again? That’s harder.”
Logan considered the cold truth of what she was saying, and then muttered, “Hard to work on things when you got whole parts of yourself chained up real tight or completely walled off so you can just pass as normal,” he muttered into the bottle.
“Hell yes,” Marie said, finally taking her legs off the dash and turning to him once more.
“You ever let him have control?” she asked carefully, eyes as dark as the night now around them. Logan was a little taken aback by her candor, and it was with this look that he realized, yet again, Marie knew far more about him then he was likely to ever really comprehend.
“Not often,” he finally grumbled, and he realized the whiskey had made his words smooth and easy, and there was no way he would have been this open without the alcohol now coursing through his system. “Cage fightin’, maybe. And, before, right after Stryker.” He dropped off then, unwilling to share any more. He hoped and prayed Marie didn’t know the full extent from what she had took in of him. He had been practically, literally living like an animal right after Stryker, all senses and little else. Logan couldn’t imagine the tests they had done on him, the suffering he must have endured, because it had cost him years of bitter survival, biding his time for the man to make his way back to him, his humanity slowly returning, and, even though it had been a shitty little trailer and a rusty bike, he had fought like hell for even creating that little semblance of normality for himself. Ultimately, Logan knew, deep down, that had it not been for the Wolverine, he would have likely not made it, healing factor be damned. “But usually, I don’t let him anywhere near the wheel,” he finished.
“A lot of effort,” Marie finally murmured, “Keeping that chain wrapped around your wrist so tightly all these years.”
“Trust me, baby, you don’t wanna see what happens if I don’t,” he grumbled. Her eyebrows raised a bit in suspicion at this.
“You think he’s all that bad? You think… he’d hurt me?” she asked cautiously, although he realized she had already made up her mind regarding that answer, and Logan, despite his occasional distrust of the Wolverine’s nature, knew the animal was in silent agreement with her too.
“No…” he finally said carefully. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so, but… he doesn’t really…think, Marie. It’s all senses, instinct, need. Empathy ain’t much a thing he’s concerned with.”
Marie sighed a little, resting her head on the back of the chair, before glancing down at the dwindling bottle between them.
“We’re both pretty fucked up, you know that? I mean, we’re alright, but we’re really fucked up,” she finally said. Logan couldn’t help but softly laugh a little at that.
“You’ve been drinking, darlin’, but if we were talkin’ about who’s more fucked up, I think I’d win the bet,” he said, finally moving to run a hand down her hair.
“Not so sure,” she murmured, before closing her eyes carefully, savoring the feel of his hand on her. She sighed a moment through closed lids, before she looked back up at him. “I’m sorry about the other night, sugar,” she added.
“Wasn’t all your fault, darlin’” he muttered, now wiping the pad of his thumb just over her lips. “We just held on a little too long. Next time, it’ll be different.”
“Next time?” she asked, stirring a bit more at his comment, but he was already shushing her.
“That’s enough talkin, don’t you think?” he said a bit coyly, before reaching for her.
“But-” she started again, and he was already interrupting her.
“Get your ass over here,” he muttered, and she complied, now straddling him in the driver’s seat of the Ford as Logan snaked one hand toward the side to lean the driver’s seat back a bit to accommodate them more comfortably. It was a position they’d fit into a hundred times over the course of the last few weeks, but each time he ran his hands up her waist it felt oddly new because for years and years and years it had only been a part of a silent longing, a fantasy. His hands made his way up her flannel shirt, cupping a breast as he did so, before he realized she had come up to hold his wrist, and he frowned a little as she brought it out between them in the moonlight.
He knew what she wanted. Fuck. He sure as hell knew what she wanted, and he felt the rest of the inhibition fell away with the metallic hiss between them as he unsheathed them for the third real time since they’d been together in the pale moonlight floating through the cabin.
Their eyes met, before she cautiously reached out a hand. She looked back up to him, a question in her eyes, and he gave her the slightest of nods, before she pressed the pad of one finger to the dull side of the middle blade of his hand, gently running up the length of it, and a shiver shot down his spine.
“They’re warm…” she murmured. Gently, she moved a finger to the base of one blade to wipe away the blood from where it had pooled at the seam of where adamantium met skin.
“I hate that it hurts you,” she said softly.
“I’m used to it,” he muttered. She closed her eyes for a moment, before she was moving her hands once more around the base of his knuckles, now etching a path between them.
“Careful,” he murmured, but his eyes were now closed, taking in the feeling as it quickly was turning into something frighteningly pleasurable. She ran two fingers up one now, and he shuddered hard. At this, she looked up to him sharply.
“Can you feel that?” she asked, her voice breaking a bit with the question.
“Uhh, yeah. Fuck. Yes,” he hissed, surprised as she was by the answer. “Keep doing it,” was all that he could add, the dopamine now flooding every neural impulse in his brain. The sensitivity was so fucking complex, all the hate and hope and longing there, the power and strength wound tightly in his hand. He had wondered for a long time, far too long, what it would be like for a women’s touch to linger there. Now, he knew.
“What’s it like?” she asked softly.
“It’s…ah, it’s… fuck,” he said, attempting to tell her and failing with the rising flood inside him. It was intimate in a way he couldn’t quite believe or accept, in a way he couldn’t come back from. In a way that showed him that she had opened up to him, and he to her, and she was here, in front of him, loving the part of himself that he couldn’t face.
“You’re beautiful, sugar, you know that?” she said, now leaning forward, whispering into his ear.
“Marie,” he breathed.
“No. I’m telling you now,” she said, fingers still lingering on the blades. “Every single part of you. You hear me, baby?” He could only growl in response.
“I wanna do more with these, eventually,” she whispered. “Maybe not now, but…soon.”
“Like what?” he couldn’t stop himself from breathily asking.
“Grind up on them until I come. I wanna see myself on them, like you like seeing your come on me, on my skin,” she whispered again, toying with his ear.
“Fuck, Marie.”
“You know how many times, how many goddamn nights, I’ve thought about that?” she kept talking. “I know what you think, who you are, sugar.” And then she went for his belt buckle where he was already hard underneath her.
“And don’t, for a second, doubt the good inside of yourself, baby. You hear me?”
He was muttering inhuman words now, because she hadn’t withdrawn her hand from his claws. With the adamantium still out, there was little he could do to touch her and they both knew it. He was at her goddamn mercy to do whatever she pleased in this position, but, unlike the night before, it had little to do with control and everything to do with trust. He didn’t know how she managed it, but she taken him out, taken off her jeans, and she was now hovering over him quietly, lingering above his length, ready and wet. She took him in one with one smooth glide then, and the cabin of the car around them fell away. This was something she was giving to him, letting him have for once in his fucking life. Being tough, being dominant was easy, but to let yourself be a victim, to remain vulnerable enough to let another person in, to see, that was the hardest part. She had been fucking right.
--
The next few weeks passed by lazily. They had made their way to Meridian, but hadn’t stayed long. They had snuck into her high school after dark one night and had looked around, but mostly they hopped from motel to motel, eating where they pleased, fucking where they wanted. The air, meanwhile, had finally turned cold as November fell away and December arrived, even though they were far south now. The past few days particularly Logan offered Marie his leather coat, realizing she hadn’t packed anything heavier than a jean jacket when they had left Westchester a few weeks ago, as excited as she was at the time to be some place warmer. The days kept passing, and they hadn’t talked about going back, mainly because it wasn’t Christmas yet, and also because Logan knew to go back would be to face it all: the world, the future, both of them in a space that wasn’t entirely their own.
Logan understood, somewhere deep down, something about the nature of his relationship with her was changing. His Marie, this Marie, was real and vibrant and alive, and he couldn’t get enough of her. Slowly, the memories of the past, of that other time, began to fade even more so from his mind as he discovered more about this woman, and at some point he had left the comparisons he had kept making between them behind on the Mississippi roadside.
After an exceptional bout of lovemaking in a random hotel they had splurged on just north of Jackson, however, Marie had grown restless, unable to get comfortable. The little vixen had demanded several intense rounds of fucking after a long day on the road, and he found himself unable to keep his eyes open every few seconds, even falling into a light doze here and there. She, however, was tracing patterns onto Logan’s back, but it was not something she was idly doing. She wanted him awake, and, after a bit of time, realizing he wasn’t bound to sleep peacefully until he satiated whatever need she still had, he turned to her.
“I think now’s a good time,” she muttered.
“For what?” he asked tiredly.
“For you to tell me about her,” she said. His eyes widened in the dark as he realized what she was exactly saying.
“Marie,” he murmured a little frustratingly. Any other moment in the last few weeks would have done just fine, but a part of him also realized what she meant. Logan doubted he would have shared before that night in Tuscaloosa, let alone before this trip had begun. Mid-December was quickly turning into late December: it was time.
“Listen. I have…” she closed her eyes for a moment focused inwardly on something he couldn’t see, “Only glimpses, and that’s all. And it’s not fair. It’s bothering me, now. I want to know.” Logan sighed again, before running a thumb along her collar bone, one of the endless spots on Marie that he so very much adored.
“She was …strong,” he finally murmured.
“Strong?”
“Yeah, uhh, and I’m not talkin’ about emotions. She could throw me across the room if she wanted to. She picked it up from somewhere… absorbed somebody’s power.”
“Hell,” Marie muttered.
“Yeah,” he said flatly. “And, I didn’t know it for most of the time, but she was working as a double agent.”
“What?” she asked, and it was obvious what he was telling her was starting to sound more like something out of a crime novel than from his real fucking life.
“She, uh, got mixed up in some bad shit, apparently, after the cure,” he said.
“The cure? You mean, what you were talking about that night before we left…”
“Uh, yeah, but before things got really bad, they had invented this serum, you see, that could… stop powers. And she couldn’t control it like you could, so she took it. Got a lot of shit for it from a lot of people too,” he grumbled, thinking specifically back to Bobby’s reaction. One of the few reasons he found himself not taking kindly to the fucker.
“But, it came back?” she was asking.
“Yeah. Yeah, it did. And she got mixed up with the wrong people after that. Although I never knew that part. The how.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I was gone.”
“Where were you?”
“Canada, mostly. Japan. Not there,” he said, now a little too bitterly. He thought of Marie’s stoic face in the underground bunker in Mexico after the night with too much tequila, where she had accused him of that very thing. There was silence as this fact settled between them, before Marie propped her head up on one hand, eyes intent and focused.
“How bad?” she finally murmured.
“What?” Logan asked.
“How bad did the world get?” she whispered quietly. Logan hesitated for a moment, as some of the worst of the memories, the last few years, came back to him. How much to tell this beautiful woman, who had only really known the world to idolize mutants, at least in some way or another? How to convince her of what he had seen, knowing now that it had never really taken place? Another image of Marie, the old Marie, covering her mouth in the darkened snow as she, Logan and Blink watched countless people be shot at point blank flickered across his thoughts, and it took a moment for him to shake off the chill. Honesty, then. It was what those people, those children, deserved.
“They fucking branded us baby. Branded us. Concentration camps. Inhibitor collars attached to the back of our fucking necks that cut off what we could do,” he stopped, his words now lost in a distant memory.
“I saw that. That day,” she said, quietly.
“Yeah?” he managed.
“Yes,” she said, through a sigh. He said nothing as he looked at her intently.
“And… she died then?” Marie asked gently. Fuck. Logan could barely take this.
“She was as good as dead,” was all he could say. There it was: the bitter fucking truth. She was silent for a bit, before she lay back down staring up at the ceiling fan above them, watching it turn circles about the room. The same motions. Everything repeating.
“You loved her,” she finally said to the dark. It wasn’t a question. Logan sighed, as he moved a hand across her bare stomach, from where the world had stolen her ability to create life, a right she should have dutifully owned as a woman, further up then, to heavy breasts, then tracing her full red lips. Finally, he spoke.
“There are some things in this world, Marie, that words don’t do a very good job explainin’,” was all he said. She turned then, taking him in intently.
“And now?” she softly asked.
“It doesn’t matter, baby. She ain’t here. You are.”
She kept staring at him though, and then he realized what she was really asking him.
“Logan,” she began before he stopped her.
“Hell, baby. You know...this thing… it ain’t just physical for me, darlin’. And it has nothing to do with her.”
“Sugar,” she managed, eyes wide as she took in what he was saying.
“You don’t have to say anything you don’t wanna, but all I need to know it is, you in this thing for real?” he finally asked.
“Yeah. Yes, you idiot. Of course,” she said, he realized she was blinking back tears.
“For good?” he asked cautiously.
“For as long as I’m alive, sugar,” she murmured quietly.
“Good,” he growled, and then he was on her, summoning up an energy he didn’t know he could possibly still have. He was kissing her roughly, body straining against her as she melded into him. And something about her submissiveness, the subtle curves of her form around him and what she had just admitted had him quivering, and he could feel something in him slipping, his hands run raw from holding that chain so tight. And now, her commitment to him, her need to be his for good…. the Wolverine was relentless.
He said nothing, but stopped for a moment, breathing out frustratingly, and he knew he was losing not only his ability to describe what was happening inside of him, but also losing his access to words themselves.
“It’s okay sugar,” she said, staring up at him with that intense and deep ache, and he knew and she knew.
“Marie,” he finally choked, now breathless.
“I’ll be fine. Just...let go,” she whispered. And he could already feel his control slipping, the tightness coming undone as the man, and all the fear and anxiety and rational thought that he stood for, started falling away, all voluntary control crumbling around his essence. He was there and he wasn’t, a furious yearning rising as the animal was him and he was the animal, as he turned her over and he was rough and gentle and everything in between as he bottomed out inside of her in one quick push, her walls surrounding him, flooding his senses, and she was moaning in pleasure, and rode the waves of confusion and lust and black. He sensed everything and nothing, bodies close, all friction, growling, snarling to her, everything he held back, all that he tried not to be. He rode her hard, rutted into her, mumbling incoherently, the Wolverine incapable of any real language, but still they spoke. She intuitively responded to him, meeting his thrusts, growled back in his ear. She moaned in pleasure, scratching down his back, almost too quickly for his skin to stitch itself up, and his teeth drew blood from her neck to get her to understand, to get her to stop, so she would know her place, so she would know that she was his and his alone. Mate. Mine. Logan was lost somewhere just beyond knowledge, beyond reach, as he felt the pleasure rise up inside of him, and the animal had a hand up to her neck, and they were both screaming as he poured himself into her, wild spasms, and even after it was through the Wolverine stayed firmly in control, moving to clean her, to wipe away the sweat and the tears and the cum and the blood and he was gone and she was gone and there was nothing else in the dark, quiet of night.
--
In the morning, Logan woke to Marie’s phone ringing. He listened to the sound of its incessant annoyance, before he heard her groan a little, reaching for it blindly to shut it off. As his mind rose out of sleep he opened his eyes lazily. He instinctively moved to snake an arm around her, but before he could move to hold her tighter, he remembered what had happened, at least, up to a point. What had he done to her? Was she ok? Were they ok? But before he could turn to face her, to make sure she was really in one piece, now he realized the hotel telephone on the bedside was ringing.
“What the hell?” he murmured under his breath, finally rising out of bed partially to answer. It had to be, what, no later than six, seven in the morning? Fuck.
“H’lo?” he said lazily. He was greeted with Scott’s terse voice on the other end, and it took a second for Logan to even register that it was Cyclops he was talking to.
“Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“Logan…we need you both back here.” Logan was about to complain, until he sensed a strange note in the other mutant’s voice. Logan could feel Marie, now truly awake, holding his arm tightly as she listened in, sensing something was off, too.
“What is it, Scott?” Logan asked as his muscles tightened even under Marie’s soft, gentle grasp.
“It’s… Charles. We...we think something might be wrong.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
AN: Umm, this gets pretty sexually intense, in mildly non-traditional ways, particularly towards the end. It’s nothing so completely wild that I haven’t seen it in fic between this ship before (haven’t ALL the options been explored?), but still obviously heavy on the citrus. My intent, at least in this story, is to progress the characters’ relationship, but…you know, it’s there. I’m starting to get the impression that all you beautiful Rogan shippers are ok with that, but, uh, you’ve been warned.
This chapter is also super long. Sorry about that. It sorta got away from me. :P But there are lots of places to stop if you need a breather.
This chapter is also super long. Sorry about that. It sorta got away from me. :P But there are lots of places to stop if you need a breather.
Chapter End Notes:
And with that, I leave you for a couple of days, as tonight I am forced to drive to Des Moines, Iowa with my family to see Paw Patrol LIVE tomorrow. I love my child, but please dear god someone shoot me. If you start to think your weekend is going bad, just imagine me doing that. You should feel better about yourself pretty damn quick. :P I’ve got a draft of the next chapter already but after I return home from that torture I will make it pretty and then post it.
Thanks again for all the support, friends. Writing this story brings me so much joy, in ways that words, as much as I love ‘em, cannot express.
Thanks again for all the support, friends. Writing this story brings me so much joy, in ways that words, as much as I love ‘em, cannot express.