"Jean, have you seen my belt buckle?"
"Everyone has, Logan. It's kind of hard to miss," the redhead, bent over a microscope in med lab, answered absently without looking at him.
Jean was on laundry duty for the week, so Logan knew if he had forgotten to slip his belt out of a pair of dirty jeans, she would know about it. With a sound between a huff and a growl, Logan stalked off in the direction of the security office of the X-mansion.
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Two hours earlier
Marie ducked as a belt went flying past her head. She glanced behind her to watch it land half-on Logan's bed, dangling over the edge precariously. Three more belts were thrown from the closet in a haphazard manner. She frowned when she noticed that all four were the same dark brown leather.
"Can't you just pick one?" she asked the closet. "They're all the same."
Logan poked his head out from behind a sweater hanging on the inside of the door. His hair was sticking up even more than usual; something Marie hadn't thought possible. He was still wearing standard issue X-Men sweats and a t-shirt - the outfit he always wore when working out in the Danger Room - even though his session had ended half an hour ago. Marie couldn't help but admire the way the still slightly damp fabric clung to him. She lifted her gaze to his face and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
Logan was scowling at her. "I'm not looking for a damn belt, Marie. I'm looking for my buckle."
Marie nodded slowly in a way that conveyed ‘oh, now I get it’. She glanced around the room, taking in the empty drawers and piles of stuff on the floor, the over-turned hamper, which, judging by the pile next to it, had only been a quarter full. Even the few papers on his desk had been rifled through, and from the odd way the mattress was sitting, Marie had a sneaking suspicion that Logan might have lifted the bed to check underneath for the missing belt buckle.
"Do you lose things often, sugar?" Marie asked with a little smirk. "Is that why the camper was such a mess before it blew up?"
Logan growled, and ‘snikt’ out popped his middle claw, the one he usually reserved for Scott. This time Marie did laugh. Logan narrowed his eyes at her before resuming his ransacking of the closet. When Logan moved on to the dresser he had only half-emptied after another seven minutes in the closet, Marie sighed.
"So should I just go out to dinner without you then?"
"Fine," he snarled, physically pulling a drawer all the way out and peering into the resulting hole. "I'm not going anywhere til I find my buckle!"
Marie sighed again and left.
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Now
Logan stalked into the security office to find Professor Xavier waiting for him. The older man raised his eyebrows, somehow managing to look questioning and amused at the same time, but Logan simply moved past Xavier's wheelchair to the section of the room used to review surveillance footage.
In the two and a half hours since he had realized his belt buckle was missing, Logan had searched everywhere he could think of: the Danger Room, the gym, the locker room, his bedroom, even the garage and the kitchen. When all the places he had been in the last twenty-four hours failed to produce results, he had taken to hunting down the X-Men one by one and alternately threatening and cajoling potential witnesses. No one had seen his belt buckle since the last time they had seen it on him. He had even tried asking the little girl who could walk through walls if she had for some reason swiped it. No luck.
Logan located and began rewinding the tape with footage of the hall outside his room.
"Don't you think this is a bit of overkill, Logan?"
He glared at Xavier, knowing the other man wouldn't take it personally.
"No," he answered firmly.
He began playing the tape forward at high speed. Five minutes later, he was growling again.
"Where is she, Chuck?" he asked.
Xavier closed his eyes for a moment before replying, "In the rec room."
Logan didn't notice Xavier's small smile as he left the room to track down his thief.
In the rec room, Scott sat at one end of the couch watching an old Western. At the other end was the woman who Logan was about to slice into little tiny pieces if he didn't get some answers. She was studying something in her lap.
"Marie, where the hell is my belt buckle?"
Both Scott and Marie jumped at the sudden hostility, but after seeing the argument had nothing to do with him, Scott went back to his movie.
"How did you know it was me?" Marie asked in a small voice.
"I watched the surveillance. You were the only one who went in my room this morning when I wasn't there."
Marie's mouth twisted in a wry grimace, and she sighed, "You caught me, sugar. Here you go."
She tossed him his belt buckle and waited.
Logan had owned the belt buckle almost as long as his current memories. He had bought it from the winnings of his very first cage fight. Over the years, it had lost a little of its shine, and the first fight with Sabretooth had bent one point and scratched off some of the white enamel from a feather on the Indian's headdress. But the buckle now looked as good as it had when he had first purchased it.
She'd had it repaired for him.
"Well, I'll be a suck-egg mule," someone on the TV screen drawled.
Logan had to admit the odd phrase fit the moment. Marie got up from the couch and came around it to stand in front of him, looking up into his eyes.
"Thanks, darlin," he mumbled sheepishly.
"You can make it up to me," Marie purred, her grin taking on a mischievous slant.
"How?" Logan asked suspiciously.
"Model it for me, but take off those sweats."
"What should I put on instead?" he asked, resigned to putting on a fashion show for her.
"Just a belt... and the buckle, of course."
Logan's growl this time was full of the promise of pleasure instead of pain.
The End.
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