It was mid-afternoon, and no one was around.
Logan and Rogue were not in their bedroom. That in and of itself was a miracle, so Jubilee could not believe her extreme good fortune extended to Kitty being absent as well.
It was a perfect time for a little personal maintenance, she thought. With that in mind, she took a box of hair dye out of the cabinet and stripped out of her clothes. "It's time for purple streaks, I think," she said to no one in particular. "Purple goes with yellow, kind of like an Easter egg." She hummed to herself as she began the lengthy process of coloring her hair.
Much later, she was ready to rinse the dye out and deep condition her newly plum tinted (she hoped) hair.
She stepped into the shower and leaned forward to turn on the water. However, as she moved, her foot slid in something on the tub floor and she found herself airborne for a second before she hit the ground with a very loud thud. Her head made an unfortunate ripe melon sound upon impact with the ceramic tile.
Jubilee laid there for a moment, the shower spinning fuzzily around her. Once she felt that her brain was no longer ready to eject itself from her body, she tried to sit up. It was then that she realized she was sitting in a puddle of something, the same substance that had caused her to try to defy gravity.
It was also all over her back. She wiped some off her hip. It was slippery yet kind of tacky, she noted, rubbing it between her fingers. It was almost like...
She looked at her hand as if it had become something poisonous. "Oh, GROSS!" she shrieked, the sound of her own voice sending agonizing spikes of pain through her skull.
Her total disgust fueled her and gave her the strength to clamber out of the tub. "ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGUE!!!!!!!!!!!" she screamed, ignoring the pain, leaning against the sink to hold her body up.
Kitty, having arrived in time to hear the tail end of the commotion, stuck her head in the door. Well, through the door. "What's up, Jubes?"
The other woman was holding on to the edges of the vanity, taking deep breaths. Her hair was sticking up at all angles (reminscent of Logan), and she was naked. And was that blood?
Kitty rushed in. "Oh my god, Jubes, you're bleeding!"
"It's not blood, it's hair dye," she gritted out.
"Oh." Kitty paused. "Are you okay?"
"No. No, I'm not okay. I may never be okay again."
"What hap--what is that stuff on your back?"
Jubilee's teeth clenched even more tightly together. "That's what I stepped in. It made me fall in the shower. I fell into a pool of IT in the shower."
Kitty reached out a finger and swiped some of it off Jubilee's back. She looked at it, then sniffed it. Her nose wrinkled. "Huh. This kind of looks like--"
"--Don't say it. If you don't say it, it won't be true."
Eyes wide, Kitty peered into the shower. "Oh my GOD, Jubes, tell me that's not--"
"--I SAID DON'T SAY IT!!!!"
Kitty couldn't help herself. "You almost drowned in a pool of Logan's *come*?"
Jubilee began to hyperventilate. "I think I'm gonna pass out," she gasped, knees beginning to buckle.
[OH MY GOD, JEAN!!!!!!] Kitty screeched mentally.
Ten seconds later, Scott, undoubtedly summoned by his wife, burst into the room. "What happened? What's going on?"
Jubilee let out another shriek and tried to cover herself, not taking into consideration the fact that her hands were the only thing keeping her upright. Her legs were unable to support her, and she slid sideways, wedging herself between the tub and the toilet.
"Oh God," Kitty moaned, grabbing a towel to throw over her friend. "Jubes, can you hear me?"
"Scott?" Her voice was weak, coming from behind the toilet.
"Yes, Jubes?"
"Can you blast me and put me out of my misery? Right now? It would be a kindness on your part."
"Uh, no," he said. "I really can't. Now how the hell are we going to get her out of there? Kitty, can you slide her out of there?"
Kitty tried to pull Jubilee by the legs. "Nope, not enough room."
It was then that Jean arrived, red-faced and panting. "Jesus, what happened in here?"
Kitty looked up at her. "Uh, Jubes was getting into the shower and she, uh, fell. And then Scott startled her when he busted in here, and she fell again."
"Scott, I told you to help, not make it worse!"
"How was *I* supposed to know she was naked?"
"Good point. Is she bleeding?" Jean asked, noticing the dark smears all over the place.
"It's dye," Jubilee whimpered.
"Jubilee, can you tell me what day it is?" Jean asked in her most professional 'doctor' voice.
"It's the most goddamn humiliating day of my life, that's what day it is!"
"Okay, her cognitive function is unimpaired."
Kitty stared at Jean. "Couldn't you have just said she didn't have brain damage?"
Scott waved his hands. "Could we focus on getting the naked girl out from behind the toilet?"
"Leave me here to die," Jubilee moaned.
"Wait," Kitty said. "I have an idea." She crawled forward, covering Jubilee as best she could.
"Smothering me to death is your idea? I liked the blasting idea better."
"No, watch." With that, Kitty phased herself and Jubilee up through the porcelain and drywall.
"Good proactive use of your mutation," Scott announced, sounding just like he did when they were back in high school.
"Uh, thanks?"
It was then that Rogue and Logan arrived home.
"Oh, sugar, what happened?" Rogue exclaimed, rushing into the already crowded room.
"I fell," Jubilee said, teeth gritted against the headache blooming behind her eyes.
"But how?"
"That's a good question. How *did* you fall? The first time, I mean," Jean said.
"I slid in something in the shower. A puddle of something. You should probably ask Logan about the source." Jubilee drew the towel up around her face, trying to wipe off some of the dye.
Everyone turned to face Logan.
"Did you drop some shampoo or somethin' this mornin', sugar?"
"Uh. No."
Scott peered at Logan. "Are you blushing?"
"Oh, how the fuck would you know, everythin' is red to you!"
"No," Jean said. "He's right! You *are* blushing!"
"Sugar, what *happened*?"
"You were gone when I woke up."
"Right... I had a meeting with the Professor and some of the school's supporters, remember?"
"But I was...alone. All by myself. Without you."
Rogue was just not getting it.
"I had to take care of myself!"
Suddenly, it all became clear to her. "You...took care of yourself ...in the shower?"
"Exactly!"
"Which you didn't bother to clean after you, uh, finished?"
He shrugged a little.
"You're telling me that my best friend almost had her brain bashed in because you were HORNY?!?!?"
"You weren't around, so I had to take matters into my own hands."
Scott groaned, covering his ears with his hands. "I think I just developed hysterical deafness."
Jubilee staggered to her feet, clutching the towel to her chest. "You think that you're the wounded party here, don't you?"
"Well, yeah. I thought this whole commitment thing meant an end to masturbation on my part, y'know?"
"I don't even know how to respond to that statement," Jean said, appalled.
Logan noticed that everyone was staring at him. "What? A man has needs, damn it!"
Rogue closed her eyes for a minute, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Everyone out," she said, beginning to push everyone except Jubes and Kitty out of the bathroom. "First things first Jubes, that dye has to come out of your hair before it all falls out."
"Oh please, she has Asian Hair. It's indestructible," Kitty pointed out.
"Don't start," Jubilee said as she wobbled towards the shower.
Rogue grabbed the handheld sprayer and quickly removed the evidence of Logan's feel-good session, then stood back as Kitty helped Jubilee into the shower.
***
Later, after Jubilee was cleaned off, iced, and medicated, the three women sat on her bed.
"Rogie, chica, we have to talk about Logan. Remember what you said when he moved in? 'You won't even notice he's here', you said. 'He doesn't have a lot of stuff so he won't take up space', you said."
Rogue nodded, a little nervously.
"I don't think those are Kitty's Playboys over there. Oh, and unless one of us started smoking, I don't think that ashtray belongs to any of us."
Rogue winced. "Oh, y'all, I'm so sorry. I guess I've just been so, you know, excited that he came back, and for ME that I just kind of..."
"...Took advantage of his interest to spend some quality time with that chest of his?" Kitty suggested.
For a second, all three women's eyes glazed over.
Jubilee grudgingly agreed. "Y'know, him walking around nearly naked all the time isn't exactly a hardship. It's the smoking and the drinking and the jerking off that has to stop."
"Y'all, do you want us to move out? I don't want to impose any more than we already have."
"Move out? Hell no! We're like the three musketeers!" Jubilee exclaimed.
"Well," Kitty amended, "the three musketeers and their fuzzy pet wolverine."
Again, the eye-glazing thing happened.
"I promise he'll stop icking up our bathroom. He has to realize that he's living in our home now, and not in some scummy motel."
"Yeah! Hookers get paid to put up with his shit, we don't," Kitty said, then clapped her hands over her mouth. "Not that I think, uh, that he, uh, has hookers, because, well that would be totally wrong and bad."
Rogue and Jubilee stared at her.
"This is Logan," Jubilee pointed out. "Remember Logan? Cage fighting, beer swilling, stripper loving Logan?"
Rogue snickered. "Kit, the hookers are a thing of the past, believe me. Also, the strippers."
"Is that why Logan put that pole thing up in your room?" Kitty asked.
"Which pole thing? There's a lot of things rising up in there lately," Jubilee said with a wicked grin.
Laughing, Rogue smacked her with a towel. "That's for me to know and y'all never to find out."
***
Jubilee was resting comfortably on her bed, surrounded by pillows, when Logan crept into the room.
"Uh, Jubilee?" Logan said quietly.
She jerked a pillow off her head. "What's up, Wolvie?"
He really must be guilty, she mused, if he didn't even make a token protest at her use of his hated nickname.
He did flinch when he saw her face. She was pretty bruised from her fight with the bathroom, and it showed all over her body.
"I'msorryyoufell," he blurted out in a rush. "I, uh, wasn't thinkin' when I, uh..."
"I know."
"I just wanted to say thank you for not kickin' Mar-Rogue out. I know your friendship means a lot to her, and I wouldn't want to stand in the way of that. I also wanted to say that I'll make sure to keep all my, uh, guy stuff, out of the bathroom. It's been so long that I've actually lived in one place that I kinda forgot how it's done."
Her heart went out to him. He'd probably never had any kind of family that he could remember. "It's okay, Logan. I accept your apology. You just have to get used to living with family. I mean, we're loud and annoying, but we're all yours." She finished that statement with a beaming grin.
To her surprise and delight, he smiled back at her, a wide, open smile that she was certain no one but Rogue had ever seen before.
That smile suddenly turned flirty. "Does that mean we can share baths now? I'm sure the four of us could fit in that big tub in there..."
Jubilee yanked the pillow back over her face. "Don't push your luck, dude."
THE END!
END NOTE: I confess that Jubes' dilemmas mirror my own real life experience. Several years ago, before they bought their own house, my sister and future brother-in-law moved in with me.
My family is very close, sometimes oppressively close, so I can clearly envision what living in the x-mansion must be like. I have several other stories (which weren't so funny then but definitely are now) that I might inflict on our favorite mutants.
And before you ask, yes. Yes, there was a shower, and yes, there was a puddle of IT, and yes, I did end up falling in it. I don't think I need to say any more. You can all imagine the rest. :->
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Author's Chapter Notes:
DISCLAIMER: All X-Men characters, concepts, etc. are copyright Stan Lee, Marvel Entertainment, and 20th Century Fox. This work is not-for-profit fanfiction, and no infringement is intended.
LOGISTICAL NOTE: For reference, I'm imagining that Rogue and Jubilee/Kitty share bedrooms that share a bathroom. Logan just moved right on in.
LOGISTICAL NOTE: For reference, I'm imagining that Rogue and Jubilee/Kitty share bedrooms that share a bathroom. Logan just moved right on in.