Disclaimer: X-Men does not belong to me. I make no profit from this. X-Men originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Author's Note: I saw Apocalypse. Jubilee deserved better. And a story was born.
Logan is just there one day. Everyone frowns at him planting his thick boots on the coffee table and promptly going to sleep. His snores fill the living room and everybody hates it and it's really loud, but he's just there and no one cares to do or say anything about it.
(A few of the students do go to the professor with concerns but he shoos them away with vaguely comforting platitudes and hidden bags of Pop Rocks from his drawer.)
Kurt avoids that area of the mansion entirely, having already been scared by Logan's presence and immediately teleporting back to his room.
Jean...Jean leaves him be. She's not afraid, necessarily, but she feels like he probably needs to be alone anyway.
Jubilee doesn't really care. Jubilee needs to see what this EcaterinaSzabo/Mary Lou Retton nonsense is about but the professor wouldn't let her watch earlier (you still have an essay to give me, Jubilee, focus on your studies), so she sneaks down to the living room, ignoring the 300-hundred pound beast of a man snoring away on the couch.
Jubilee rifles through the tapes piled next to television stand, letting out a muted "ah ha" when she finds the one she wants.
She takes care to be quiet as she places the tape in the VCR; from what Jean told her, she doesn't want to be on the wrong end of those claws.
Logan shifts once or twice, groaning in his sleep, but his sleep doesn't seem disturbed.
Until Jubilee starts shouting at the television.
It doesn't actually begin as a shout. It starts quietly, a soft murmur about Zhou Ping's iffy landing and crescendos into a yell about Julianne McNamara's near-fall off the beam.
Logan jerks awake immediately, heart thumping as he searches for the source of the shriek. His eyes narrow in confusion upon finding Jubilee gesturing wildly at the television.
Grouchy from having his sleep interrupted (especially without anyone to stab), Logan debates releasing his claws to scare the girl.
Of course, that would be a surefire way to get kicked out.
But, he's still annoyed and really not that polite a person, so he growls, rolling to his other side with a final grumble. Jubilee jumps and turns around quickly...
...Nearly setting Logan's head on fire in the process.
"Logan, if you're going to scare my students, could you perhaps wait until Halloween, hmm? In spite of what you may think, it's not actually that easy to just go repairing houses-"
"Professor, this spot of the wall here still looks burnt, what do I-"
"Just paint over it, Jean, I'm sure it's fine. Now, Logan, as I was saying, please refrain from doing something like that again. Jubilee's just a girl who certainly doesn't deserve to be frightened like that in her own home-"
"Not much better than waking someone up in the middle of the night."
"Oh, yes, forgive me, the owner of this house, for prioritizing the comfort of a lovely child who's lived here ten years over that of an unshaven, loud, and smelly drifter who's been raking his muddy boots all over my carpet for a week, Kurt, please, come out from there, Logan's not going to stab you. Do you see what you've done to my students, I should never have let you stay here."
Professor Xavier spends the next week giving Logan dirty looks every time he passes him in the hallway. The students themselves tread lightly around their teacher, not usually knowing him to hold this kind of grunge.
One day, Logan manages to be in the same room as Kurt for longer than five seconds. Kurt freezes in fear, forgetting to teleport out of the kitchen. He does, however, drop the pale pink can in his hand. Logan lunges to catch it, not wanting to hear the professor find something else to complain about. (Logan, look at this mess, now the floor's all sticky.)
"Um, uh, um..."
"Hey, kid, I'm not gonna hurt ya."
"Uh, c-can I have my drink back...Jean says it's sugar free, I...I've been having too much sugar lately," Kurt babbles, a distant tone in his voice.
"Yeah, sure. That girl who, uh, shot fire at the wall..." Logan scratches the back of his neck uneasily.
"Jubilee."
"Yeah, her. Um, should I...apologize to her or somethin'?"
"Probably."
"Huh. Oh, here, you can have your drink back."
"T-thank you."
Logan stalks off in his usual way and Kurt wonders if perhaps coming to America was a bad idea.
Logan doesn't know where Jubilee's room is and even if he did, he feels like he would set off some kind of alarm that would get him thrown out of the mansion for good if he actually went past the first floor.
Luckily for him, he finds Jubilee in front of the television one morning, in his spot, watching the same tape that was on during their previous encounter.
Logan looks at her, this girl that almost burned him to a crisp and, well...she really is just a girl.
She's fashionable, by today's standards, her hair big and curled and keeping up a million different styles at once. Her outfit is a neon rainbow that hurts Logan's eyes if he looks at it too long. Her face is round and youthful and Logan can't say that he would have feared her had they met under different circumstances.
Namely, had she not shot fire bolts at him.
(Well, the professor explained that they weren't fire bolts, per se, but Logan wasn't really keen on figuring out the details.)
He clears his throat, making her aware of his presence. She either doesn't notice or doesn't care, keeping her attention on the tumbling gymnast on screen.
He steps closer, and closer, until he's almost completely blocking her view of the television.
"Uh, kid-"
"Get out of the way, get out of the way!" Jubilee starts waving her hands at him violently and Logan gets pushed to her right. And, okay, yes, the couch is right there. It's much closer than the hallway where he came in, and Logan thinks if he gets in her way again, she's actually going to kill him this time.
He sits as far as he can from Jubilee, leaning heavily into the couch arm.
Beyond occasionally shushing him over his "loud breathing," Jubilee makes no further indication that she's bothered him, eyes following every cartwheel, pike, and handstand until the tape runs out and the room is silent.
"So," Logan begins, fidgeting uncomfortably, "you...like that, uh, tumbling stuff?"
"...Did you want something, mister?"
"Your professor looks like he's going to murder me every time I see him, I'm trying to get back into his good graces."
"Uh-huh."
"I'm apologizing here, you gonna accept it or not?"
"Not."
"That is very immature."
Jubilee sticks her bottom lip out comically, looking as if she's in deep thought.
"Consider your apology accepted, but I still don't like you."
Jubilee gets up and bounces out of the room, and Logan swears, he swears, he sees her hands light up.
Author's Note: I don't know...this turned out quite differently than I expected. I've been doing a lot of research on Jubilee and thought I was going to end up with short fluff, but now I think I might have to write another part. Eh.