Breathe. That's all I have to do. Just breathe. Focus on not focusing. Concentrate on not concentrating. Turn my eyes away from the sight in front of me. If I can't see it, it's not there. It never happened.
My hands shake, my arms tensing with the effort of stopping them. I want to hide it. I don't want anyone to see. All these people. All of them lurking around me. They're like shadows, fleeting images I catch when my head turns, brief flashes of color, expression. They're all watching.
I feel sick. Like I've been kicked in the stomach. My chest hurts.
The music around me swims in my head, taunting me, and I stumble. Feeling drunk though I'm sober. I don't want people to notice me, but they part, move out of my way as I stagger through and I wonder how long they've all known.
My boyfriend. With her.
I hate them for their sympathetic glances, their knowing comments. Well it was going to happen sooner or later. Who could blame him? She's dangerous. She can't touch. *Can't touch*. CAN'T FUCKING TOUCH.
And their pity? I *despise* them for it. On this night, of all nights. This was my night. I had worked hard for this. To graduate. To succeed in something. Hell, I'd even organized this ball. Although it's the last thing on my mind now.
He promised me that I was enough. And that's what hurts the most. Not the betrayal. Not the lies. Not the humiliation. But the broken promise. The words that kept me sane when the voices in my head screamed for release. That my skin didn't matter.
With nothing to hold me back, I do the one thing I know. I run.
"Hey kid." *He* catches up with me in the hall. I can't face him. Can't even look at him. I have to swallow the painful lump in my throat as I stare out the door. It's raining outside, soft heavy drips that soak into the summer starved ground, yet inside its warm and the door has been propped open. Tempting me. Inviting me to leave. Just like that. I could walk out. Then I'd never have to face them.
"Did you know?" I ask. My voice sounds weak and I hate it.
Nothing.
He doesn't respond and that's all the answer I need. I feel stupid. Like the only one left out of party, like the only one that didn't get the joke. Or maybe I am the joke. Was he laughing at me with everyone else?
"You runnin'?"
He's not moved any closer. He's keeping his distance I can tell. Like my screw up of a life is contagious. "Would you?" I say to the doorway.
"Probably," he admits, and I can almost see him in my mind. Leaning casually against the wall, arms folded, studying me. Testing the scent on the air. Waiting to see if I'm gonna bolt like a frightened animal.
"But you're not me," he feels the need to add. "You're stronger than that."
Strong? I want to SCREAM at him. I want to shout at him, "NO I'M NOT!" until he finally hears it, until everyone hears it and they lock me away in a dark room with padded walls for comfort and the loss of contact is complete. Give me a reason. Give me an excuse. I'm damaged, the girl with the broken skin.
I close my eyes for a moment. Forget that he's there. Then it's actually surprisingly easy to step over the edge, propel myself out of the doorway, into the earthy dampness of the fresh night air and up the slick gravel drive way.
My heals crunch and dig into the ground, hurting my feet, so I take them off and pad along barefoot. The stones are painful, but I relish it. At least I am capable of feeling something.
I hear him come up behind me, but I don't stop. He grabs my arm. It's bare, but he's wearing gloves. I absently wonder if he ran off to get them, or if he had them on him the whole time. It's these things, the little details, these are the things I can cope with. The way one star slowly blinks in the sky; the soft scent of wet pine; the faint echo of music behind me. I force myself to focus on them, because if I look at the bigger picture, then the cracks that are holding me together will...
He forces me to stop. Gently. Turns me around so that I have to look anywhere but his face. He's wearing an old shirt. It looks soft, darkening from rain. His customary belt buckle is gone. The only concession he made for dressing up smart. His jeans have seen better days too, but they're so familiar that I feel myself braking.
Don't let him be nice to me, please don't let him be nice. I can't handle it if he's nice. I need him to be gruff and arrogant.
But he's not. And I can't help myself.
I feel my chest rise and fall with the effort not to cry, but it escapes me. The air comes into my lungs in great noisy sobs. The tears trickle pathetically down my cheeks, mingling with the rain and cooling quickly, dripping off my chin. I'm so ashamed of them, but he doesn't wipe them away. He just raises my head until I am forced to look at him.
He doesn't say anything. Doesn't do anything. Just waits for who knows how long...seconds...minutes. Days. And I'm shaking and choking until I've nothing left to give. He holds me until I stop. And then, only then, when I have control again, does he speak.
"Some things are best over."
As far as advice goes, that sucks. I want to fling it back in his face and make him hurt like I am hurting.
"Who could blame him," I say bitterly, trying to make him flinch with my words. "He can't touch me. Do you have any idea what that's like? Being trapped by your own skin? Seeing people avoid you? Seeing that fear in their faces every time you reach out? Pretending not to notice when people step away from you? He deserves a normal life. I can't give him that."
I try to look away again, but he makes me face him. "Don't you *dare* think your skin is the reason that little dick is fuckin' around." He almost growls it at me. Like I made him angry. And I think...*good*. I want to make him angry. See how he likes it. Because then it gives me an excuse to be angry back.
"There is nothing wrong with your skin. Marie."
I draw back at the deliberate use of my name. It feels wrong. Awkward. It doesn't feel like it really belongs to me anymore. Like an old picture that's fallen out of its frame, like clothes that no longer fit. It isn't mine.
"What do you want?"
"I want you to see what you are."
"What I AM? What AM I Logan? I'm no one. NOBODY! The girl who CAN'T. BE. TOUCHED!" I haul the words at him. "I can't fight. I can't teach. I am a danger to myself and others around me, and-"
He doesn't let me finish. "Don't say that. Don't you EVER say that." He's gripping my wrist hard. Really hard. It hurts, but he doesn't let go.
"Really," I scoff, trying to goad him. "Who's gonna touch *me*. The pretty girl with the poison skin," I mimic. "Not Bobby certainly. He made that very clear tonight. Scott? The Professor?" I glare at him. "You?"
"It's not about touch."
"Yes it is." I snap back. I want to make him see that there's almost nothing left. That I'm numb. "Everything's about touch. Denying it is like telling a beggar on the street that the world's not all about money. And I want it. I want it so bad. What you all take it for granted. Just to be able to feel."
He stares at me. Fury and something else battling in his dark eyes, and it scares me a little. But I don't back down. I'm shouting and I don't care. "Do you know what I would *give* just to be able to FEEL again?"
I see him flinch, he takes the words like a bullet to the chest and I'm pleased. He steps back a few paces, expression closed, and turns towards the mansion.
Go on, I think. Go. Leave me alone like everyone else. But he doesn't. He stops. I see his shoulders tense, and then he's coming back towards me, and whatever it was he just decided, he's refusing to meet my gaze.
When he reaches me, he turns me, his hand warm on my lower back, roughly propelling me forwards, off the gravel, across the grass, stumbling, shoes still in my hands, to the small boathouse that sits by the lake.
This is his. This is where he goes. The Professor let him have it when he came back from Alkali Lake. Most people avoid it. He hasn't been the most friendly of companions since then. People think Scott handled Jean's death badly, but at least he grieved for her. Logan just shut
himself away.
He swings open the front door, and pushes me through. I haven't been here for a while, like everyone else I've stayed out of his way. He's been... antisocial. I look around. It's just one big room really. Thebathroom is separate, and there's a small kitchen unit, but everything he owns is in this one space. And it's not much. He never was one for collecting things.
The wooden floor is icy cold against my feet and I shiver, the rain making my dress cling heavily around my ankles, but he doesn't notice. He just takes my hand and pulls me to the ancient full length mirror that adorned the wall long before he got here. The paper around it has faded and dried with age, and he wipes away a layer of dust and grime with his hand. Guess he's not one for housework either.
"Look at yourself," he orders, standing behind me and forcing my chin up so there is nothing else I can do. I think about closing my eyes. But that would seem petty. "LOOK."
It's not pretty. My makeup has run, dark circles are smudged under bloodshot eyes. My lips are swollen and puffy from crying. Even my hair, which I spent ages coaxing into a sophisticated wrap, has half fallen out, straggly strands framing my face like dark string.
"What?" I ask him. What does he expect me to see? Is he trying to shock me into gathering myself together?
"You're beautiful the way you are."
I freeze at his words, then I nearly laugh. The sort of desperate laugh you hear when all someone really wants to do is cry and scream. Does he not get it? Does he not get *any* of it? But he's not laughing. He's deadly serious.
He takes off one glove, puts it down on the dresser beside him, and with a thumb wipes away the worst of the smears under my eyes. He doesn't touch long enough for the pull to start. It helps, but only a little. I still look awful.
"You trying to heal me again?" I sniff, wishing my voice wasn't so heavy and throaty from crying. "Y'know, there are some things that your touch can't heal."
But he doesn't answer. He undoes my hair, what's left of it, and lets it fall about my shoulders. It's thick and heavy and feels warm after the chill of the night, and it's almost comforting somehow. The tension that knotted the back of my head eases a little.
He sweeps it back from my shoulder, his shadowed eyes meeting mine in the mirror. There's not much light to see by, the moon smoulders feebly through the open window, a half drowned, half hearted effort. There are security lights in the garden beyond, but here it is shaded. Private. I can just about make out his shuttered expression.
He hovers close behind me. "I want to show you," he says. "Just once." There's a subtle shift in his tone, a new edge, one I've never heard before. For some reason it makes my heart skip in my chest.
I am suddenly aware of the heat radiating from him.
"Show me what?"
"That you can touch." He says it simply. Like it's not a big thing. But then he runs his fingers along my bare collarbone, slowly, so that they slide over the strap of my dress, moving them from my skin only when he starts to feel it draw him in.
"See," he says. "I'm still here. You're still here." He moves his head closer, breathing in the scent of my hair. I find myself hoping that it smells of shampoo, coconut and sweet, but instead I think it must smell of hairspray and cigarettes. It doesn't seem to worry him though.
His hand barely skims my shoulder, before sliding down my side, fingers scrunching the soft velvet of my deep green dress, feeling their way over the contours of my skin through the rich fabric. I don't understand.
"What... what are you doing?"
His hand begins to circle. Slowly. Stirring up all sorts of strange sensations. The other hand, still gloved, reaches up to trace the curve of my hip. Through the mirror his eyes are still locked on mine and his body feels warm at my back.
Then his hand moves lower, to my thigh, and suddenly I realize. It prickles the hairs on my neck in awareness, a tingling sensation that edges all the way down my spine, creeping softly, like his touch. "You're gonna sleep with me? Just to prove a point?"
"If that's what it takes."
"I..."
"Shh," he says, putting his fingers to my lips. Feeling my skin feed on the contact eagerly, like a living beast, before pulling away. He's breathing a little harder this time, but he doesn't stop. "Just once," he says quietly. "You need this."
And I want to fight him. I really do. I want to shout that I'm not some cheap whore he can do what he wants with, but I know that's not why he's doing this. Not really. He's always looked out for me. Protected me. Picked up the pieces when I screwed things up. Which I do regularly. That's all he's doing now. Trying to fix me. The only way he knows how.
Yet I can't tell him to stop.
I can feel his breath warm my ear. He dips his head, his lips briefly brush the skin of my neck, and a tremor rocks through me. His eyes glint at my reaction. A hand reaches up and touches where his mouth had been, then barely close enough to tickle, moves to slide the thin dress strap down my arm.
I watch it fall. Like the last brick tumbling from my wall of self restraint.
This time when his hand slides across my stomach I can't help the way my breath catches, and I know he hears it. I stare in voyeuristic fascination as he moves higher. I can't decide what's more surreal, the feel of his hands on me, or the sight of them. A shudder that has nothing to do with the horrors of before chases through me as his thumb brushes the underside of my breast. It's at that moment I know. This is going to happen.
He chuckles softly at the sound I make when his fingers find my nipple. But it's a predatory chuckle, it sends shivers to my toes, and I don't quite know what to do with myself. This is all too new. His still-gloved hand slides through the slitted side of my dress to cup me under the fabric, the leather warm and alien against my skin. I feel my eyelids drift close, but he growls.
"No. Keep them open."
And what else could I do? I look at him and he's gazing at me intently, drinking me in with his hungry dark eyes, and what I see in there makes my heart race and my blood pound in my veins and I know he can sense it. He can taste the sudden heat in the room, the scent of arousal, and I know he's pleased.
Part of me can't understand why this is happening. I wonder if I've fallen and hit my head, that this is all a strange dream that doesn't quite make sense. But as I sink back against his firm shoulder, the smell of him filling my nose, his skillful fingers are still moving. And he's gentle. In all my thoughts about him, all my daydreams during my stupid crush, I never once dreamt that he'd be gentle.
My teeth catch my bottom lip as his hand sinks lower, and he rumbles his approval. His un-gloved fingers seem pale against the dark of my dress, and I watch in disbelief as they suddenly dip between my legs, without invitation, and rub me through the velvet material. First I'm shocked at this invasion of privacy. My stomach jolts, and a mouthful of air rushes out as my lips part in shock. But he doesn't stop, and then I can't help it. I arch back into him, and he holds me.
I feel naked, even though I'm fully clothed. The dress bunches up between my thighs as his hand moves more firmly, but I no longer care. Sensations are beginning to flood through me, filling my mind like a drug, and I welcome it, sink into it, losing myself to the oblivion it brings. My skin sings to his touch. I can hear my breathing quicken, it's a distant echo; like it belongs to someone else.
His arm is around me, he doesn't stop, just whispers words I can't understand as I feel the heat rush over me and for a moment, a few pure seconds, I'm free.
Drifting.
Complete.
Then when it fades, I'm left with languid warmth, feeling heavy and contented.
I catch him, grinning over my shoulder with a smug look upon his face like he just invented the wheel. My face flames with color as the realization of what just happened hits me. I'm so embarrassed. Mortified. He just saw me come for Chrissake. *Made* me come. And I don't know how to handle that right now. I shouldn't even be here.
I mumble something, I hope it resembles an apology, and I try to leave, but he catches me and pulls me back into the heat of his body. "Not yet," he breathes, and he moves against me. It's slight, almost unintentional, but I can feel...everything.
He turns me to face him and I don't resist, no longer wanting to see myself in the mirror, and he's looking down at me with those unfathomable dark eyes, the flecks of hazel glinting intensely. He looks calm, but his shoulders are rising and falling like he just stepped out of that cage, and his hands shake slightly as he pulls me to him.
He presses against me and I can't stop myself from moving with him. My body demands it, craves the feelings he can bring me. He takes my hands that are still hanging uselessly at my side, and moves one to his chest, letting me hold it there. I can feel the thud of his heart beneath the warm material of his shirt. Fast, and powerful. Safe. My fingers slide lower, almost of their own accord, and he catches them.
"Be sure."
I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. But I need this so badly.
I find myself nodding slowly, and that's all the consent he wants. He growls and pushes my palm lower, so that I can feel all of him, and the fire inside me begins to grow again. It makes me feel alive. Right now, right at this moment, I understand his chain of one-night-stands. It's about connection, that physical touch that sparks life when there is only void. It's about losing yourself in someone else. And that's what he's letting me do. It's his way. I understand that now.
He grabs hold of me, lifting me on to the dresser, hands hitching up my dress, crushing the green velvet around my hips, spreading my legs wide enough to accommodate him. The cold, damp denim rubs against my skin and it feels strange and uncomfortable. I don't see where he gets the condom from, but I can't help but stare as he unzips his fly. And then it's all so quick. None of the first-time fumbling I was expecting from Bobby. Instead he pulls me roughly towards him, puts my hands on his shoulders, and then he's there, hot, hard, and different. Invasive. Pressing into me. I can feel him.
It doesn't hurt, not like I thought it would. He's holding himself back, hand sliding into my hair, tilting my head up to look at him, jaw clenching as he begins to thrust. I know my breathing quickens, but so does his. His nostrils flare as snarl crosses his face, not pain, but something close. Pleasure. I can feel his shoulders tense, the muscles bunched and powerful, and my fingers curl into them. With his gloved hand he wraps one leg round his hip, then takes me deeper, and when I cry out, he growls his approval.
I stop thinking. I give myself over to him. Trust him completely. Letting him take me and take me until he brings me back over that shattered edge, to the point where nothing else exists except him...and me.
He breathes hard through his nose and grunts when he comes, his face clenching tightly for a moment, body shuddering with release under my hands, the aftershocks rippling through him, before his eyes close and he relaxes against me.
Then we stay like we are for a moment. He rests his forehead against my hair. I'm still wrapped around him. Neither of us wants to move. Not just yet.
But reality dictates we can't stay like this all night. My legs are sore, muscles screaming in protest and I know I will have to stand up soon. So I begin to unwind myself from him, and he nods, accepting, stepping back to remove the condom and zip himself back up.
He doesn't look at me. Now that it's done, it all feels so unemotional. Detached.
I stand up, straighten my underwear, and let my dress fall back down to my ankles, feeling the newness of the raw ache between my legs. I am unsure of what to say. I feel like I should thank him or something, but I can't. It would cheapen it. So instead I just hover there, awkward.
He's the one that reaches for me. He pulls me towards him and wraps his arms around me, drawing me close. He feels so safe, so warm, and it's strangely personal after what we have just done. When I step back, I hope he can read my thoughts because I can never say it. Never tell him what that meant to me.
And I don't know if he can, but he looks closely at me and drops a single light kiss at the corner of my mouth, lingering only for a moment, before he pulls away.
I know in the morning he'll be gone. This was too big a thing for him. He'll run from it. And I know that this was as he said. Once. But he's given me something. I can touch. I have touched. I can be strong enough to face whatever comes next.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Sorry, this one's not funny guys. My humour bunny mentioned something about a union and overworked, underpaid working conditions then packed up to go on holiday for the week. This is the first in a kind of mini series, it was supposed to be a stand alone, but it kicked up a fuss about being finished. It's Rogue's POV, and a *massive* thank you to Wolveriness for the beta - she's a star *grins*