Rogue woke up at 9:17 a.m. She rolled onto her stomach and buried her face into her pillow, wishing that the sun would just quit shining on her face, dammit! After a few minutes of not being able to get back to sleep, she lifted her head up and squinted around the room with bleary eyes. It looked like Jubilee was still in bed, although Kitty appeared to be long gone.
Rogue got up as quietly as she could. She threw a glance at the bathroom that was connected to their room, but at the moment she wanted more sleep! There had to be something that she could do to fall back into oblivion. It didn't take time for her foggy mind to come up with the perfect solution.
The hallway was quiet as she left her room, closing the door oh-so-gently behind her for Jubilee's sake. Rogue padded down the ten or so feet until she stopped in front of a familiar wooden door. She pushed it open and shuffled across the room. Crawling into bed had never felt so good, she was sure. Neither had snuggling up to the warm body at her back. She shut her eyes and let her mind start to drift back to the welcome darkness of dreams.
"Marie?"
Damn him, couldn't he just be quiet?
"Marie, baby, what're you doin' here? And pink pajamas with blue clouds on them?" He had the audacity to sound amused by her favorite pair of pajamas.
"Ah'm tired, Logan. Ah want sleep. The damn sun was in my room. Your room faces west. You're warm, and Ah like to be next to you. Yes, dammit, pink with blue clouds. You got a problem with that, sugah?" Rogue felt proud that in her half-dead state she was still able to produce seven relatively coherent sentences. Even if her voice was slurred and that damn accent was showing up in it again.
"Of course not, darlin'," he responded, and she noted with sleepy approval that his strong arms were wrapped around her waist now, pulling her closer.
"Didn't think so."
Logan lay there with her in his arms for more than an hour. He enjoyed just watching her as she slept, looking down on the side of her face that wasn't pressed against the pillow. Marie was so beautiful, and it amazed him that she was his. He also found it pretty funny how she'd come into his room and gotten into bed with him like it was the most natural thing in the world. There weren't many people who trusted him like that.
Something that worried him was that, except for her face, her entire body was covered by her pajamas. She even wore long silk opera-length gloves. Logan didn't like to think that Marie suffered in any way from her mutation, and he knew it must be hard for her to not even be able to sleep like other people, even other mutants. He preferred to sleep nude himself, and he wondered how Marie was going to take that. He guessed the fact probably hadn't registered with her in the mostly-asleep state she'd been in. He disentangled himself from her just long enough to put on the gloves he'd worn the night before.
He was laying there just thinking through all of the changes in his life over the last year when Marie truly woke up at 10:22. He could tell from the frown on her face when she opened her eyes that she didn't remember coming in here. That worried him a little, until she smiled slightly and cuddled against him again.
"Logan? Are you awake?" she asked, poking his arm lying over her waist then twining her fingers with his.
"I have been for more than an hour, Marie," Logan replied, squeezing her briefly. "Welcome back to the land of the living, darlin'."
"The land of the...Logan, what am I doing in here, sugar?" Marie asked, turning in his arms to face him.
His hazel eyes were lit with amusement. "You stumbled in here at about 9:20 and crawled into bed with me. I wasn't just gonna throw you out, sweetheart, so I decided to wait and let you wake up on your own," he told her.
Marie groaned and shook her head. "I can't believe I did that. I don't remember coming in here, which is pretty sad," she said. He could tell when she noted that he wasn't wearing a shirt. Her eyes widened and she slid one hand down to his hip.
"Logan, are you wearing anything?" she asked, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth.
"Not a thing, darlin'. You know me." It was a statement of fact because, yes, she did. His hand found the silk scarf that had somehow managed to get under his pillow during his sleep. He pulled it out and placed it over Marie's face. Then he kissed her until they were breathless and pressed together so tightly he was sure that he'd die if they moved in any way. He pulled back and took the scarf away so that he could see her face unobstructed again. She was blushing a pink bright enough to match her pajamas.
Marie's happy, desire-filled expression melted away as soon as he was a few inches away from her. He wondered at that until she said, "What if I'd accidentally touched you in my sleep? My face wasn't covered, sugar, you could have—" she started to say.
"Don't worry about it, Marie. I mean it. I was awake, and that's all that matters. We'll just have to be very careful, darlin'. Not really a big deal," Logan said. Obviously he'd let go of her for at least a minute at one point, because he was wearing gloves. Which meant she didn't have to flinch when he ran a finger down her cheek.
Rogue closed her eyes for a second, trying to will the growing panic into submission. "But what if we're not, Logan? What if I touched you, or vice versa, and you...gods, Logan, you could get hurt so bad...I don't want...Damn, how are we gonna do this?" She turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling with despairing eyes.
"One day at a time, Marie. And even if you did touch me, we'd both feel it in time. Even if we were asleep. I'm not exactly a heavy sleeper," he said dryly.
Rogue shook her head. "But I am! If I couldn't feel the pull, couldn't know...and not just sleeping, Logan. It's not right, you not being able to touch me whenever you want. Me not being able to touch you. Can we survive that?" she asked quietly, turning to stare into his eyes, pleading with him to answer her honestly.
Logan shrugged and pulled her into a hug while making sure that her hair was between her cheek and his bare chest. "If we try hard enough, darlin'. If we both want it bad enough. You—you do, don't you?" he asked, suddenly uncertain.
Rogue looked up at him and smiled shyly. "Of course I do. I'll always want you bad enough," she said, suddenly getting mischievous enough to run her gloved hand over his chest, lightly playing with the nipple that was closest.
"Marie..." he growled out warningly.
"Yes, Logan?" she asked with that grin of hers that always made him wary. Only now the wariness was mixed with arousal.
"Darlin', remember what I said last night?" Logan asked her, his voice strained as her gloved hand explored the rippled muscles of his abdomen.
"Hmmm...something about slow. But, sugar, I really don't want slow," Marie purred out.
Damn her for that smile. And damn him for finally getting some ethics. "Marie, c'mon, darlin', just give us a while. Please?" he asked, hoping that the woman in his arms wouldn't be immune to his version of the puppy-dog look.
Marie pouted, but her hand did settle in a relatively safe zone. Although he was pretty sure it was almost as bad to have the silk covering her palm and fingers resting at his waist as it was to have them roaming over him. Still, he at least was able to think again.
"I'm hungry," Logan told her abruptly as his stomach growled.
Marie giggled. "I can tell. Why don't we go get some breakfast, then?"
"Lunch," Logan corrected, sitting up in bed and pulling her up too.
"Whatever." Marie grinned. "Actually, I've got an even better idea. We'll get ready for the day, have lunch, then go somewhere on the bike," she suggested. The look she gave him through her lashes told him that she had some idea what she'd like to do in when they got to that vague "somewhere."
It sounded like a good plan to him, so he said, "Sure, darlin'. You go back to your room. Try not to take too long. I'll meet you downstairs in half an hour."
Logan playfully shoved Marie out of bed and she laughed until she saw that the blankets had come with her and the man she loved was now sitting nude in front of her. He wasn't embarrassed to admit that he was very evidently happy to see her, too.
"Well, Logan...ummm...I...I should go get ready," Marie said. He could see that she couldn't take her eyes off of the part of him that apparently she found fascinating, and it was making it harder for him to remember why exactly he'd said they should go slowly. He reached over and pulled a pillow into his lap.
"Yeah." That was all he could force out, and it was so much more a growl than an actual word.
Marie stood up quickly, and that's when he was sure that she was going insane because she just started laughing. He raised an eyebrow at her and she just pointed to herself, to him, to the blankets on the floor and then waved around at the room in general. Suddenly he could see the humor in their situation. Yes, she was standing in the middle of his room, his blankets piled around her ankles while he sat naked on his bed shielded only by a pillow.
"Go get showered and dressed, Marie," Logan said with a smirk.
Marie did leave, laughing to herself all the way out the door. She paused in the doorway to wink at him and blow a kiss, and then she was gone down the hall. Damn it, she hadn't closed the door either.
Logan sat there for a few minutes and just let himself drift. He liked that he could do that after being around her. Didn't mean she'd tamed him, either, just that she'd given the human part of him a little more space for a while.
Finally he got up, discarding the pillow as he went, and shut the door. Then he picked his blankets up off the floor and headed for the shower. Definitely would need a cold one this morning. Not that it'd help him much later.
That thought just made him grin.