Logan woke up to a pounding in the other room. Rolling out of bed, he pulled on his jeans and shuffled to the door. Six o’clock on a Sunday morning, didn’t these people ever sleep in? He knew before he answered it was Summers. The knock carried an air of tight-assed authority.
Jerking open the door, he stared down the younger man. Logan knew Summers wanted to say something about him answering the door half-dressed, but held his tongue. Logan growled at Summers, and then realized the man wasn’t paying attention to him.
It was interesting how much Summers could give away with his eyes, even behind the red glasses. He was glaring past Logan toward the kitchen. Logan thought of what had been left out last night, bottles of liquor and Marie’s clothes.
Summers’ demeanor changed from annoyed to angry. He set his jaw, going stiff all over, and narrowing his eyes at Logan. “If you-“
Logan cut him off with a second growl. “What do you need Summers?”
Logan had thought about telling the younger man off. After all, Marie was twenty-one and a responsible adult. Though the maintenance man straight out admitting he was sleeping with one of the staff probably wouldn’t go over well. Not to mention that most of them treated Marie like a little sister.
“Water to the boy’s bathroom needs shut off before it floods.” None of the tension had left Summers’ voice, but he seemed willing to move on.
Logan threw on a shirt and met Summers at the first floor boy’s bathroom. After shutting off the water and setting up a fan, he informed Summers he might want to have a talk with the prankster on the third floor. Logan finally made his way back to his apartment and Marie.
It was already six; he should get ready for the day. However, Marie made the option of getting back in bed tempting. She stirred and wiped the sleep from her eyes. When she sat up the blankets fell away exposing her breasts. Getting in bed was looking better and better.
“What ya’ doin’, Sugar?” Her accent was thicker, almost honey toned.
“Swapping barbs with Mr. Jean Grey.”
She giggled at the name. “Aw, don’t be too hard on him. He’s a good guy.”
Logan stood at the edge of the bed. Rogue crawled over and began unbuttoning his work shirt.
“And what exactly has he done to be a good guy?” he asked, wrapping the white strands of hair around his finger.
Pushing his shirt back on his shoulders, she kissed his chest. “Saved my life.”
Logan raised her chin so their eyes met. “Mind telling me the story?” Her eyes fell away from his face. “Or is this one of those secrets I’m not supposed to know? Like how there is a cavernous echo underneath the basketball court or the elevator that goes down at least two more sub-levels if you have the right code.”
Slumping back, she sat on her feet and hung her head. “I don’t like the big secrets, but I don’t want to lie to you either.”
He drew her back up, holding her close. “My guess is, that it wasn’t your decision to keep those things from me.” He felt her nod her head in agreement. “We all have to take orders from higher up sometimes. Even if it hurts to follow them.”
“Maybe someday we can trade secrets,” she said, as she peered up at him and kissed between the knuckles of one of his hands.
“I’d like that.” That secret would be the easiest to share because he didn’t know exactly how his claws came to be covered in metal. It was all the other secrets he was keeping from her that worried him. He kissed her on the forehead, they would have to wait.
“And speaking of secrets. Summers knew you were here.” At her raised eyebrows he added, “We left a trail of evidence.”
Rogue smiled at the memory. “Does it bother you that he knows?”
“No, but I don’t like him thinking you’d been taken advantage of.” In the past, he wouldn’t have cared who thought what about his sex life. Here, though, he didn’t want anyone thinking so little of Marie. Think what they wanted of him, but he’d take on anyone that said something bad about her.
“Well then, we better get busy,” she stated, unzipping his jeans. “Cause I plan on telling him the truth. I ate your cupcakes, drank your alcohol, and took advantage of you several times.”
Logan looked up from where he kneeled by the urinal to where Rogue stood in the doorway with the culprit.
“Logan, this is Danny,” Rogue said, tilting her head toward a scrawny teenager with hands and feet he hadn’t yet grown into. His red hair poked up at odd angles from being recently asleep. Logan had to give Scooter points for taking this seriously.
“Our trickster?” Logan asked for confirmation. He already knew the boy to be the one by smell, but there was no need to let others know that.
“Ye...yes, sir,” Danny muttered, trying to avoid looking at Logan directly.
“After you help me fix this, we’ll clean up the rest of the standing water.” It was best the kid learned that, even in the simplest of ways, all actions have consequences. Jokes didn’t always go as intended and revenge never did.
Rogue watched from the doorway as Logan and Danny set about fixing the broken pipe and cleaning up. Whatever Logan’s past he certainly had a way with kids, or maybe just this kid. He let Danny know when he was doing a good job or patiently showed him how to do it better.
She trailed after them to the boiler room and found Logan to be full of surprises. When she was about to mention escorting Danny back to his room, Logan acted as if he could read her mind. More accurately, it was probably her body language he read.
Logan shook his head at her to let her know they weren’t finished, then turned to Danny as he put the mop bucket back in place. “Who’s the bully?”
Danny whipped around so fast he almost fell over. “There’s no bully,” he squeaked.
“So you just like to cause problems?” Logan probed. This time the teenager stared at the floor and wouldn’t answer. Figures Logan thought, no matter where you go there are always the bullies and the bullied. That would never change, but maybe he could help this one kid.
After a couple minutes of silence, Logan continued, “Got to respect a man that wants to handle his own problems.” The boy’s head jerked up in surprise. “Come on, you got a few things to learn if you’re going this route.”
Logan led the way with Danny and Rogue in tow to one of the side grassy areas. Rogue was completely mystified at what Logan might have planned for the youngster. She knew most of the kids fought shy of Logan or ran off at the first hint of a growl. But Danny currently seemed intrigued by Logan now that they had repaired and cleaned the bathroom together.
“First, no pulling pranks that cause work for others. Second, no picking fights.” Logan paused judging the boy’s unspoken response. “Can you do those two things?”
“Yes,” Danny answered, but failed to meet Logan’s gaze.
Logan stifled a growl, there was going to be more to this than teaching the boy some self-dense moves. “Danny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you’re shouldering the responsibility of a man, you better stand up straight like one and look people in the eye.” Logan could read this kid like an open book, they’d need to work on that too. Danny didn’t need to be hard and callous, but a good poker face wouldn’t hurt.
They worked on some basics first. Logan was positive whoever the bully was, he was too smart to outright throw a punch. Danny’s best line of defense was to be observant enough to see things coming, like an ‘accidental’ elbow to the gut and how to block it or avoid it all together.
After running through a couple of scenarios, Logan let Danny be on his way for the day. “Remember your best weapon is your brain.”
The teen started to walk off then turned back, “Can we do this again?”
“Same time next week,” Logan answered with a bit of satisfaction. It was good to see the kid wanting to learn a different way of handling problems.
Rogue caught the smile on Logan’s face as Danny trotted off. “You’re a big softy,” she teased.
“Yeah, underdog and all that. Just don’t let the word get around or I’ll have to remind you about my tough side.”
“You promise?’ she said, wagging her eyebrows at him.
Over the next couple of weeks, Rogue watched as Logan’s lessons went from one on one to a small group of Danny’s friends. They went over all the basics she remembered from when she first started, but Logan seemed to have streamlined the skills for these younger kids.
She was impressed with his expertise, he’d trained at some point in his life. Maybe whoever gave him metal claws might have thrown in some training. Though when she helped demonstrate a move, she felt him pulling his punches.
During her time as an X-Man, she’d taken many a kick and punch, in training and on missions. She also knew every single muscle on Logan’s body, intimately, a person didn’t build muscle like that from fixing things around the mansion. There were also those memories of him liking to fight.
After the kids left, she and Logan sparred a little more and she was positive he wasn’t putting his all into it. Was he afraid of hurting her? She couldn’t say, but she was sure of one thing, he could probably hold his own against any of the X-Men.
She thought about asking but decided not to call him on it. They both had their secrets, he’d tell her when he was ready. Hopefully, none of these secrets would amount to anything they couldn’t handle.
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