Title: A Work of Heart
Author: lachlanrose
Disclaimer: I own nothing (crap) and no art supplies were harmed in the writing of this story.
Feedback: Yes, please! With a sable filbert brush on top? The good. The bad. The ugly. Bring it on.
Summary: Logan comes back from Japan to find a very different Marie than he remembers. Chalk. Ink. Gouache. Watercolor. A young artist reveals a man's heart, one colorful stroke at a time. W/R (Marie POV)
Author's notes: I am crazy excited to share this one. It combines two of my favorite things (fine art and fanfic). A meeting of the Muses, you might say. [Also, it's hard to go wrong with a naked Wolverine + paint. Just sayin'.] For those of you who don't like flying blind, this fic has natural breaks that make fitting things neatly into one chapter somewhat difficult. Some sections are quite short and some are long, so at times I will be posting two shorter sections at once to make it the equivalent of a full length chapter. It has seven chapters total, but chapters 2&3 and then chapters 4&5 will be posted together. It's pure Rogan and definitely on the more sensual side of things. It will (of course) be slapped with my usual smutastic warning. It's adult in both theme and content, folks. You have been warned. A shout out to Mr. B for the borrowed lyrics and to my awesome beta, doctorg, who's once again been willing to expose herself to the horror of my raw fic. Thanks, lady!

A Work of Heart

Moonlight on canvas, midnight and wine
Two shadows starting to softly combine
The picture they're painting is one of the heart
And to those who have seen it, it's a true work of art

I have struggled to tell this story for a long time and still haven't been able to truly find the words to do it justice. Was it the man? The moment? Me? Upon reflection, I think maybe it's that I tend to think in pictures rather than words; never more so than on this particular occasion.

I reconnected with Logan six months ago. After the Professor's funeral, he disappeared for four years. Let that old life of wandering swallow him up again. None of us heard a word from him in all that time. He was simply gone. Healing, I hope. He'd recently returned from Japan and he'd lost someone important there, someone who'd left a will expressing her desire for him to have his portrait painted. It named me specifically. I'm still not sure what to make of that. What had he told her about me that she knew to send him to me after he'd put himself back together?

I could tell he wasn't all that into the idea, but I also knew that he was a man who took duty and honor very seriously. He intended to go through with it as a gift to the woman who once held his great soft heart in her gentle hands.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure he knew what he was asking... either of me or of himself. There is an old saying about artists. That to paint a picture, we must first dip our brush into our own soul. Only then can you bring the image you see in your mind to life.

More to the point, to paint a proper portrait, as I wished to do for him, he must reveal a portion of his true heart for me to capture his essence. If he cannot, it will simply be a likeness rendered in pigment and paper rather than an image that tells you anything about the man inside. It is an incredibly intimate thing to share... and to see, I think. At least, I've always thought so.

I had known him like that once, long ago, but he was different now. More open in some ways. More guarded in others. Letting someone in that deeply was a lot to ask of anyone, much less a man as private and stoic as the Wolverine.

We met on a random Tuesday at the small gallery in the city where I show my work. He seemed surprised to find an adult rather than the child he remembered, but then time moves differently for the rest of us than it does for him. My life since the Cure had been a whirlwind. Things with Bobby spiraled painfully into an epic crash. The Cure wore off soon after. As my power re-emerged, it did so by slow degrees. With Hank's help, I was able to learn to control it. I still slip sometimes when I'm excited or emotional, but I get better at it every day.

That newfound control allowed me to attend the New England Institute of Art in Boston. I make a pretty good living selling my paintings now, though from time to time, I still moonlight in the black leather alongside Storm, Jubes, Bobby, Kitty and Hank. I've always liked to kick a little ass and there's a part of me that could never quite give up the idea that the Wolverine might come back one day, though painting has become the quiet heart of my life.

Logan was surprised by that as much as by the bare arms that opened to give him a hug, just like old times. The sparks were there too, just like always. It was our history now, not my age, that made him a little jumpy. I just smiled. I was a woman now, and a woman always knew when she's just met someone she's going to wind up in bed with.

It was only a matter of time.

We set a date three months out for the portrait. We both needed time to get used to the idea. Both of us felt the sparks and whatever happened there, I don't think either of us wanted that to play out in front of the others at the school, so we made plans for him to come stay at my house in Vermont for a week. I live in a small refurbished fishing cabin on the shore of Shadow Lake. It was quiet and remote and I knew he'd be more comfortable in my rustic home surrounded by trees than in the Professor's opulent school. Neither of us had ever really fit in there.

It was his turn to surprise me when he turned to go and touched the streak in my hair like he'd done once so long ago. Wear it up for me sometime, darlin'. It had been part question, part order, as if he couldn't quite figure out where on that spectrum he wanted to be. The low, husky words still make me shiver every time I think of them. I suppose that's fair. Neither of us had quite found our footing. Something was there… but what it was… well, that was anyone's guess.

In the following months, we met for coffee a few times and grabbed a beer every now and again. Traded more than a few phone calls, too. Over the weeks, our conversations grew more intimate but neither of us was in a hurry to define whatever it was happening between us.

For as much as I knew our coming visit would probably include physical intimacy, revealing a piece of his soul for me to paint was intimacy of another sort, and there is more to sharing it than simply removing one's clothes and sitting before the artist. I knew if I simply approached it bluntly, as he is wont to do, the results would be... less than stellar, shall we say.

It makes me smile now to think of it. He's not used to such open scrutiny. He would be stiff. Scowling. Irascible. Body language that is closed and wooden. A man of granite. It would show is his intractability but none of the tenderness underneath.

How does one show the heart of a mountain?

I came back to that question again and again in the weeks preceding his visit. There had to be some way of easing into it... if I could only figure out how. Looking back now, it seems silly to have worried. It happened in the way all great things have come to pass.

They start small and build.

~ooOoo~

CHALK

Chalk. Waiting for him to arrive at my small house, that's what the pictures in my mind looked like. Hazy. Soft. Blurred a bit at the edges and so fragile a puff of air could have scattered them into nothingness. I felt that way too. Hazy and soft, full of uncertainty and tentative excitement. We were friends but not lovers.

Not yet... but soon.

Chalk. I had the sense of it again as he greeted me for the first time. A tentative, heartfelt embrace and a soft kiss that warmed me from the inside out. He curled a lock of my hair around his thick finger as his hand dropped from where it had been resting on the nape of my neck. There was a question in his eyes but he said nothing. I'd said I would wear my hair up for him on this visit... but I didn't say when.

I hadn't worn it down to tease him, though. Never for that. I wouldn't play games like that with him and I could see in his eyes that he approved of the fact I hadn't used the intimate things we'd talked about wanting to share with each other to gussy myself up for his arrival. I would never cheapen those things that way.

Such moments have their place, and I would reserve them for when it would mean more to each of us than a bare neck and scraps of green silk that would have been little better than pretty window dressing on a cheap staged fuck. Not that such games couldn't or wouldn't be a part of what we might find together... eventually. But this was our first time alone together and I wanted no false fronts.

He gave me a small nod of approval but he was also a man. There was a latent power flowing in him and a fiery promise in his eyes as his fingertips stroked my throat before they fell away. It made me think of a tickle of chalk dust, and it had just as much potential to be crafted into something exquisite with time and skill. For as good as I might be with a brush, I had the sense that the talent in Logan's hands far outstripped mine.

Just the thought made me swallow hard. Like that elusive medium, this was a man to get all over you. A man who would leave his mark on you after he was gone, much the way the vibrant colors of a stick of artist's chalk stain your fingers long after you have set it down.

Red.

His touch. His face. The quiet aura of strength around him. One look at him and I knew the first time I sketched him it would be in red. The thought brought a secret smile to my lips and I saw him watching me out of the corner of his eye as we walked, hand in hand, inside. Red. The color of rage. Of blood. Of passion. Could there be any other color for this man of bold moves and doggedly unflinching determination?

I think not.

Though I realize it's been my habit for years to journal about the intimate details of my life, I will not write about the first time we slept together. To be honest, while it was a moment that fostered intimacy between the two of us, it is not directly related to the story at hand; to the painting he wished from me. To capture the mountain's heart and put it on paper... that required an intimacy of a different sort, and it is that journey I wish to share in these pages.

Up next - two chapters: Ink and Colored Pencil. Stark contrast. Cut and dry. If there was ever a man for black and white, it's Logan. Marie plays a game. Logan approves.