Whiskey Nights

by Gimpy1

"For half an hour the complicating mess of the struggle vanished and we weren't man and woman, hero and betrayer, just two faceless, nameless people having their moment of bliss."

My only warning is this : It's been a while since I've written anything and this is only my second attempt a smut!

Title: Whiskey Nights
Author: Gimpy a.k.a. Dani
Rating: M
Summary: "For half an hour the complicating mess of the struggle vanished and we weren't man and woman, hero and betrayer, just two faceless, nameless people having their moment of bliss."
Date Written: July 2006
Author notes: Much love to Sherry and Fransico for doing the major beta-ing. Hugs and kisses to Valeria for reading it over and a sneak attack hug to Ed for the pimping he did for this baby.

It's a fic based after the third movie with minor spoilers but honestly no real plot give aways for it. Hell there isn't much plot in this at all. Just some lead ins and lead outs wrapped around the smut-fest. ^_^

Read and enjoy!

---

Whiskey Nights

By Dani

Life is struggle. That's the legacy of being alive. Mutant or human, there's no bias or preference. It goes with the territory of having a heartbeat. I'm not alone in that struggle. I know that much because there isn't a single person living at the mansion that isn't struggling through something. Some hide it better than others and some let it consume them.

I pity the latter.

Time does not heal all wounds. You don't have the luxury of sitting around and waiting for three puncture holes in your chest to fix on their own. You have to take action, even if that action goes against the beliefs the X-men so righteously hold dear. Per the old adage, you have to take it all with a spoonful of sugar, which for me just so happens to be half a two-six of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey.

I'm taking action.

So what if it's getting shit-faced behind the boat house a good two kilometers away from the mansion with no one to keep me from falling into the lake. It's a nice lake, long and wide, shallow around its edges but damagingly deep at its center. The kind of lake you could lose yourself in. The kind of lake you could find yourself in.

At this time of night, with a sky littered with clouds, it's a murky depth, a flat surface of barely reflecting glass that can't hold your weight let alone the weight of your burdens. That's what Jack and Daniel are for. 'God bless the southern state of Tennessee,' I think to myself as I lift the sloshing bottle of amber liquid to the sullen sky.

Tilting my head back, I loosely wrap my lips around its smooth top, giving the liquor no resistance as it trickles into my mouth and down my throat. It's cool at first, a lustrous deception before the spice burns a trail longer than that left by my skin. It's a fight to keep the shudder from ringing throughout my body when the true power of the whiskey hits my belly, but I manage to keep it to a bare quiver that runs the length of my spine. I've done this enough times but it still shocks me, that curdling heat that swells in my stomach and up my back.

My grip on the bottle loosens as my arm drops listlessly to the ground at my side. The bottle's rimmed bottom hitting the grass reminds me that it's still in my hand and I mindlessly clutch at it as I swipe a thin line of liquid from the corner of my mouth. My lips are tickling with a numbness I love all too dearly. This is the pinnacle of my night. The bare moment between sobriety and the drunken stupor that I seek.

'I'm handling things fine,' is my excuse, and it is an excuse, because if I were handling anything right, there'd be no bottle, no sleepless night wasted away hidden behind a rotting wooden castle for dinky little canoes and barely used fishing gear. I pity myself but I'm handling it.

I don't care how I look, drunk and alone, because no one knows I'm here. No one's once cared to look for me. I can't even take offence to that because they know me; know I would never run away. I always come back like a loyal mutt and I never get far. I may come home stumbling drunk, banging around like a lush, knocking over priceless urns from the so-and-so century, but I always come home. They may have to watch over me to assure themselves that I don't swallow my own tongue as I lay carelessly on the bathroom floor, but at least I'm there, at least I haven't tried to see if that glass topped lake can take my weight.

So maybe I'm not handling things as well as I would like to think but in my dazed mind this is just a night out for relaxation and meditation.

It's so easy to lie to yourself.

"I!" The cry slips past my lips without warning. Suddenly I'm lurching forward, trying to cry out this admission to the world. The bottle slides from my grasp as I slur, "I am the master of self-delusion!"

My voice is scratchy and hitches on the syllables, and I can't help but laugh at myself. The words are echoing around the trees and I slap a numbed hand over my lips to mask it, stupidly fearing that I might wake the children or some rampant creature lying in wait for an easy meal.

Now that thought is conjuring an interesting image in my mind. It's an improbable one but I let myself delve into it anyway because I'm almost addicted to the fantasy of being hunted down, the scent of my arousal luring a voracious beast-like man my way. Just the image of that man chasing me down, pinning my belly to the dew soaked grass is tantalizing. I'm so lost to the alcohol that I lose myself to the dream, so much so that I can almost feel his thick fingered hand viciously gripping my hips and forcing them up. I shudder at the idea of being ass up in the grass with his dark, greedy eyes drinking me just like I've been the whiskey.

Closing my eyes, I settle in on the fantasy, picturing those burly fingers tearing my pants down before he's conquering me from behind in a primal, animalistic dance that stems from the age of senselessness, the age of barbarians and Neanderthals.

I have to shift my position, my thighs rubbing together in a drunken act to satiate the pulsing wanton need. It only serves to remind me of my virginal status, a status I've had no real say in. Sexual frustration and whiskey don't mesh well and before I can really concentrate past the waking wet-dream, my hand has taken on a mind of its own. I'm almost relieved that I'm wearing tight jeans because I'm three steps behind my body and by the time I catch up I only just manage to prevent my fingers from unbuttoning the unruly metal at the apex of the dark denim. The crisis goes averted but my body sings for something to take the edge off.

Blindly, I seek out the box-shaped bottle that's telltale of Jack. To my horror I find it tipped onto its side, neck pointed downhill, leaking its last vestiges into the muddy ground bellow.

"Fucking great," I manage to glaringly spit between sorrow-swollen lips. It's a fight but I somehow get my drunken ass onto my hands and knees. Peering at the traitorous bottle as it gives away every last drop of my amber liquid; I remove one hand from its precarious job of keeping me up, and try to grasp the bottle. My vision is doubling, the position I'm in all too reminiscent of one taken to empty the bowels of my stomach like I tend to do at the end of nights like this.

Groaning, I reach towards the pulsating image of two, then three bottles resting before me, my index finger connecting and knocking the actual one bottle further down the slump of the teeny hill I'm on.

"Stupid… lil' bas-astard," my voice squeaks, though I don't recognize it as my own.

Following the bottle's descent, I make it to the edge of the grassy slope where water's edge meets earth. Logically I know there isn't a drop of alcohol left but it's become the principle of the matter now. Slapping at it with a loosely held grip, I only serve to shove it that last inch into the murky, seaweed infested shoreline. Now I'm really mad because my last twenty went into buying that liquor and I'd only had half.

Before I can dive in after it, before I can dirty my body to mimic my soul by sloshing around in the muddy waters like a true and viable drunk, I'm snatched away. Two arms I know all too well encircle my waist. Even in my drunken state I know them and with the logic born from liquor I flail, not caring where my feet land as I squirm and thrash about like a wild, unruly fish caught in the grizzly bear's claws.

"Put me down yah big, dumb, ol' ape!" I curse, doing my best to break free. It's all futile, everything is futile, and all I earn for my troubles is a tainted, masculine chuckle that reverberates along the shell of my right ear. Drunk or not, I feel that sound down to the very tips of my fingers. It's a sound that threatens to shake my brain from the drunken stupor I've forced on it.

I fight, kick and claw, my strength lessening by the moment as I'm easily carted away from the vast lake and the betrayers that Jack and Daniel have become. The world around me swirls in a giant blur, g-force times a hundred hitting me as I'm spun in a whirlwind of incongruity. Vaguely there's a realization that my feet are on the ground but it's barely a rippling of thought. My knees give out as hard, prickly wood meets my back, one warm arm staying around my waist. It's a combination of boathouse and brick-housed man that keeps me standing and, being the moron that I am, I protest the 'could be' sexual position with a vicious jerk.

"Get offa me!" I huff out, trying to make the form in front of me slip back into a single shadow instead of four.

Suddenly the wall of body heat disappears, the arm leaving my back. I register the cold nipping air where that warmth once was seconds before I'm slumping towards the ground, a muffled curse following me. My cruel savior returns in time to keep me from fully meeting the harsh, unyielding ground.

"Smart ass," I slur out, clinging to him with violent intent, my fingers trying desperately to bruise him for that low and dirty trick, fingernails turning white with the force.

"Your idea, darlin'," is his cocky reply.

"Blah!" I bark back, my heavy tongue denting the sound into something unladylike. The mass of muscle vibrates with a chastising laugh at my expense. His hands are moving along my waist, adjusting to keep my weight up against the stain-chipped wood behind me and I seek out his dark eyes with questions.

"Whafta-" My attempt at speech dies almost immediately and it's not because I've lost the ability to the alcohol. His leg has slipped between my own, obviously intended to keep me upright but damn if it's not utterly tormenting and sensuous. I don't know if I do it because I'm angry at him or because I'm just that desperate, but either way I fleetingly know I'm going to regret it. I shift, press down with just enough force and arch back at just the right angle, my shoulder blades scrapping against the wood behind me as I strive to ease the still pulsing desire from my mental foray into the land of sex and day dreams.

Faintly his husky throat releases a gasp of surprise, my thigh grazing along the front of his pants without my intention. For a moment all I feel is bliss, my eyes closing to blank out the dizzying haze so I can concentrate on shifting my hips on his thigh. Reality returns too swiftly and my actions earn me a rapid and nearly bruising shove back into the wooden wall behind me, my name dripping from his lips in a venomous curse.

"Well fuck! Don't put your damned leg there," I curse back indignantly, my arms folding across my chest and a pout forming on my lips. I can't make out his face in the dark stillness of the night but I still glare in its general direction because I know he can see me.

He's laughing at me again and damn if I'm not utterly tempted to ram my own knee between his legs.

"You shouldn't be here," I suddenly have the mind to say because he shouldn't. No one comes out this way. No one interrupts my nights. Not even him. That's the unwritten rule. Pretend during the day and let those do what they will at night to cope. Narrowing my gaze, I try to get past the darkness to see his face. Leaning forward until my nose is almost pressed to his, I fumble out, "Why are you here?"

I can't be certain if it's just my imagination that sees the hesitating shift in his gaze. The foggy idea that he only showed himself before I took that dip into the lake reaches my last brain cells' capability of logical thinking. Has he been watching me this entire time? As if sensing where my mind is going, he shifts me again, a single arm wrapping around my waist while he pulls my own over his shoulders.

"Come on, kid. Let's get you inside."

He was. That thought shocks me long enough to let him escort me all of two feet from the boathouse. My entire body stops and the sudden halt makes him falter long enough for me to slip from his grip, tumble back and land unceremoniously on the damp grass with a vocal whooshing of air. Instead of a fluttery, butterfly effect, I only feel anger.

"You don't have the right!" I scream, slapping his hand away as he reaches to try and help me back up.

"Marie," he tensely drones out.

"Don't – don't yah dare… Ugh," I grunt as I roll onto my hands and knees and start to crawl away. Swears I don't recognize spew from my lips as I stumble and stagger on all fours. I know I'm being stupid, probably childish too, but at the moment I don't care because he's not supposed to watch over me. Not anymore. I'm not his ward, his charge, I haven't been for months. Who does he think he is checking up on me like he thinks I can't take care of myself? Well fuck him, because I can and I have for far longer than he tried to. He gave up, he walked away. I've been on my own since the war that never was, and I hate him for it, however selfish that makes me.

My body isn't cooperating. For a second or two I was going in a straight line, now I'm swaying and it's jerking my vision as well as my stomach in awful ways. The position of ass up, when mixed with whiskery, is no longer appealing. The thought is still damning though and I know he can smell that from a hundred feet away.

"Oh god," I mutter, coming to a shaky stop and spinning around to fall on my ass. If he's been watching me… I can't bring myself to finish that thought because my cheeks are turning vibrant red and I'm wondering what he was thinking when he watched me nearly taking off my own pants to fuck myself right then and there. Would he have stopped me? Would he have turned away? Would he have watched…

He's hunched in front of me, his face a mere foot from my own and I can only picture what I must have looked like toying with the buttons of my jeans, what he must have smelt as I fantasized about him taking me from behind. Peering hotly into his hazel eyes I swear his eyes are taking on a darker hue. Suddenly two and two fit together and I slam my legs shut – my own futile attempt at keeping my arousal to myself.

"Damn you," I mutter drunkenly, squeezing them even tighter together as I try to squirm away. "Damn you, damn your heightened senses." It doesn't quite hit that I've practically let him know that yes, I'm getting hot and bothered, and yes, it's because of him. His stupid, smug laugh makes that a reality though and mortification doesn't even come close to how I feel right now.

"Ugh," I whine, turning away from his wholly proud, feral features. The tree line is so close, if I could just get there.

His hand is on my ankle, his strong grip tugging me back to him and I lack the fight to kick him away. I just want to curl up in a ball and sink away into nothingness; but he refuses to let me, pulling my listless body back towards him. The alcohol's effect is slowly lifting and I cling to it, knowing that without it I won't be able to excuse any of what's to come. Lying on my side, face in my hands, I feel him move to hover over me.

His breath washes over my barren neck, soft inhales sounding in my ear as he sniffs at my desire's heavy smell. It's too personal for me to handle and I turn sharply onto my back, the lines of my face and body, rigid and stern. I don't give him time to really react because I'm angry, drunk and so sexually deprived that nuns should be building shrines in my honor. It's his fault not mine. He's the one pushing this moment. I wanted to run away, he forced me back. The elegance and skill in my actions are his fault too because he is my teacher and I am a diligent student.

I don't care that I'm making a fool of myself, that I'm taking a big risk. All I care about is what I am doing at this moment—wrapping my legs around his hips, my thighs jerking him down, making him rub against me as I arch upwards.

The look of surprise in his hazel eyes almost makes me giggle but I'm too lost to the white heat of friction. Sexual frustration and whiskey do not mix.

Elation overtakes me as he closes his eyes to the sensation of my hips dragging against his, elation because he loses himself in the sensation long enough to wrap his broad hand around the dip of my belly and my protruding hip bone to shove me back onto the ground. His pelvis follows and my neck stretches beyond distinction as I toss my head back. The friction is tantamount to the most pleasurable thing I have and probably will ever know.

Even tipsy from Tennessee whiskey, I manage the rational fear that he will break free of the beast in him that seeks release, that the human mind will return to tear his ungodly heat from me. Until then, I relish in his weight atop me, his sex pressing into my own.

Do I want this? Do I want him to take me like this, drunk and stupid? Do I want my first time to mean nothing? With him, it will mean just that, nothing. All I am to him is a friend and even then we've grown so far apart.

I can't stop myself from grinding along him, clawing his back with my nails, knowing that the pain will only incense the Wolverine and keep Logan dormant for longer. I do it because no one else will ever lose themselves with me like he is right now. No one else will ever be so fearless as to press their face into my shoulder to bite down along the soft flesh there, even if my cotton top bars him from real contact.

Tomorrow I will lack the courage to look him in the eye and tomorrow he will lack the audacity to let go of the control he so desperately seeks to maintain.

I give in to the moment, my lips parting to pant inaudible sounds that only his ears can discern as I writhe against his long, hard body. He reciprocates, a long, thick-fingered hand traveling the length of my side to dip down and mold to the curve of my ass. I don't care that maybe he's not thinking about me as he pushes more fully against me, his straining erection eliciting sounds from my throat that I didn't know I could make.

All I want is him, inside me, around me, a little higher so he can touch that golden pearl of sensation he has yet to hit with his forceful gyrating. I want him to possess me so that I can't tell who or where I am. I want him to do what Jack and Daniel could never really do—make me forget that I'm the untouchable disease who, like a coward, gave up her "gift" for a moment like this. It's almost suiting that this will be meaningless, that as his hand swallows my bare back whole, fingers kneading and massaging the flesh, it's just about the release, not the man or the woman.

I'm not handling it but I don't want to think, I just want to feel and I know that he wants the same. It's always been a part of him. He's heat and fire. He's a broken hearted man who lost the woman he loved before he could show her. I lift as he prompts me, my torso leaving the dirty, cold ground to let him pull my shirt from my body, my arms gliding along the grass until they stretch above my head. I keep myself submissive, plying to his every whim.

When his lush lips finally seek out my own, I let him lead. His tongue is the first to plunge, to swirl around mine, command it into his own so he can suckle on the soft appendage. The moan that I release is stunted, muted, though deeply appreciative. I want to lose control like he is, I want to demand from him as he does me, wildly, vocally show my gratification as he molds his hands to my breasts.

I keep my hands above my head because touching him would drive me crazy and he approves, his non-committal free hand hugging my wrists together and holding them there. All that keeps the bulk of his weight off me is his ungodly strong and muscular legs, muscles I can feel straining as he pushes me deeper and deeper into the merciless ground beneath me. The pain is more than welcome because it only adds to the pleasure.

I don't care anymore that I'm about to lose my virginity in the mud and grass, it doesn't matter that it's going to be nearly violent and emotionless. I don't want emotion anymore. I don't want love to factor in. I just want desire—mindless, heedless desire and two viral and consenting adults using each other to make at least a moment of their dismal lives enjoyable.

That's why I don't flinch when he slips the single button at the top of my jeans out of its hole. I don't jerk or flutter when that hand rams between my quivering belly and my satin underwear, the force tearing the zipper apart so he can reach deeper in. I do surge when his sinfully long, large finger invades my slick wet folds, my entire body arching off the ground and pinning his hand between us.

It's foreign to me, having someone other than myself between my legs and damn if I'm not close to losing the façade of being like her. I don't know how long I can keep pretending I don't want to roll him over, tear his clothing away and suckle every last drop of honey tinted skin.

"Lo-Logan…" is all I can muster and it earns me the exact opposite of my desires. Using his elbow, he pushes my bridging body back down and invades my senses with another tormenting finger. My vision blurs and this time it has nothing to do with a southern state and two now nameless guys, this time it is all him. The intruders curl and stroke and I'm lost, pressing down hard, riding his hand as my mouth seeks to devour his.

Faintly I'm aware that I've broken my role, vaguely I realize that I was doomed from the moment he saw me almost doing to myself what his hand is vigorously doing now. Prying my wrists from his hand, I claw and tear at the grass, clumps forming in my hands as the blades give in to my force. He draws on me, plays me like an instrument until I swear I'm on the verge of singing for him. I can't imagine sex being any other way, never want to do it slow and sensual. I want fight and fury, push and pull desperation and Logan senses it, tearing his fingers from me and slipping them into my parted lips before I can sound my protest.

Instinctively I suckle my own taste, the tinge of salt unusually uncommon but damned sexy. Eyes wide open, I keep his gaze, the hazel and dark chocolate brown laden with his need and want. I beg him to take me hard and fast with my tongue on his fingers and my own expressive eyes. He groans hoarsely, dipping to bite at my neck, hard.

The bruise that will show from that act will be hell to hide come morning and my mind takes a detour as I try to find ways to cover it up. The suddenness of cold, harsh air and wet grass on my barren legs give way to those thoughts and I'm suddenly aware that I'm tearing his belt open, one hand dipping inside his pants to grasp his long, hard erection as the other makes quick work of his fly. I can't wait, don't want to wait and he seems to share my need because he only tears one leg from my jeans before slicing away my underwear.

I mimic that desperation, pushing his pants down just far enough to release him completely before I'm guiding his thick member to me. I try to vocally tell him to take me but nothing falls past my fumbling lips except guttural moans and whispers. The impending pain is tantalizing in thought and our months crash together as our hips rise at the same time. The pain. God the pain is just too much and I'm screaming into his mouth, his tongue wildly trying to lap the sound up and away.

We're too far into this and he's too drunk on the blood rushing from his face that only a second passes before he's rearing back. Poised above me, eyes unyieldingly hot and blazing, I realize that he knows exactly who it is he's fucking.

I can't breath, can't think, can only lock my legs around his hips and beg him with pressure to do it, to forget everything but this. He doesn't need more than that, his mouth drinking mine like nectar and I couldn't be more grateful because the next thrust is almost more than I can bear.

I feel like my insides are burning, like this beast-like man is trying to tear me apart from the inside out and it's the most blissful thing I've felt in months. I relish this pain, surging awkwardly with him, unable to find his rhythm through the searing between my legs. I don't want him to let up, to be any gentler and I convey this with my nails digging into his shirt-covered back. He continues to grind into me, pulling back as far as my legs will allow before pummeling back into me. My scream is finally ebbing against his tongue as he tries to guide me into a rocking that should be as instinctual as the need itself.

No matter how I try, I can't keep myself from clinging to him and I'm lost as to what to do, growing frustrated with my own ineptness. I can't figure it out and tears of embarrassment sting my cheeks. I don't want him to taste the salt of those tears and rip my lips from his to burrow in the curve of his neck.

His lips are moving against my ear, words of encouragement curling around my ear as he tries to coach me into the basic instincts of sex. His voice is so raw, so heavily laced with unbridled need that it thrusts a tidal wave through my body. A hand on my hip and he's coercing me, luring my hips to rise against his, the fight of it giving way until suddenly he's riding me, my body rising and falling in such a way that I can't describe. Thought leaves me because his pelvis is finally crushing against my sweet spot and the pleasure isn't heady with pain but with real pleasure.

We writhe and surge in the dew soaked grass still almost fully dressed, vocally striving for release under the clouded sky as sweat seeps onto our flesh. The orgasm burrowing in the pit of my stomach is nothing like anything I've given myself, my own hands suddenly nothing compared to Logan's adept, rolling hips. Teeth dig into my shoulder, the muscles of his arm straining as he reaches above our heads to find some sort of leverage. Why, I don't know, until suddenly he's thrusting with more force, his metal-laced body violently ramming me into the grass, staining my porcelain flesh in green. My legs hike higher, wrapping around the middle of his back and the budding pressure takes me over.

Vibrant, blinding heat coils in me and I'm clawing at him, desperate for him to ride me longer, harder, to pound out the orgasm as it hits until it's all I feel, that bliss consuming me until I'm one with the earth beneath me and the beast above me. I praise Jack Daniel's, pay homage to Tennessee, and give ode to my drunken need to chase an empty bottle into the depths of a distilled glass waterbed and I smother my screams of pleasure by violently sinking my teeth into his shoulder.

Logan doesn't stop pounding, hands guiding my almost energy-less body against his like a doll because I have barely anything left to give him. I let him use my body, clenching my inner walls around him with every thrust. Jerky, hot breaths torment me as they drip from his curling lips, unintelligible words soaking the sounds. His brows twist and contort, his spine stiffening, chest scrapping against my own. It's the most glorious sight I've ever witnessed. I'm enthralled by his face, watching as his masculine features shatter against a force that I can physically feel rupture between our bodies, between my legs, in the depth of my belly.

The orgasm is sudden and brutal, viciously lured from me a second time as this man before me tears away at our consciousness, our humanity, plundering it into a nameless, senseless oblivion.

Barely, I realize I'm gasping high-pitched sobs of acclamation to a God I can't bring myself to believe in. Vaguely I recognize that every nerve I possess is twitching and tears are tainting the hairs that border my temples. My heart is threatening to shatter in my chest and my lungs are refusing to fill entirely before they expel it all in hitching gasps.

He collapses atop me, forehead pressing into my shoulder, his own torso shaking with the excursion of it.

"What the hell was that?" he huffs into the flesh of my collar bone.

I'm giggling despite myself, the act grazing my nipples along the plaid fabric of his shirt. "That," I breathe with a wisp, "was sex."

A nip on my collar bone is his retaliation for my cockiness, his tongue laving the sting away as he grunts out, "Trust me darlin', I know what sex is."

It's odd. I can feel him softening in me, all tension leaving his body as he relaxes atop me, never fully divulging all his weight. It's a fight to loosen my legs from around his torso, my calves slipping to wrap along his thighs lethargically. Curling my lips around his ear I murmured, "Trust me sugar, I know you do."

The purr of my words make him groan, an arm slipping under my head to support himself as he peels back to eye me. I don't know what it is he's looking for but I hold the gaze courageously. We're adults, I reason, we have needs, we fulfilled them. That's all this was.

Nibbling my bottom lip, I wait for him to tell me what we both need to hear. That this was a one time thing, that it was the heat of the moment, hormones, that we were using each other. I wait for the words, be they truth or lie. What I'm given is the sight of his dark eyes encased in slivers of moonlight searching for what I really believe.

"Well ya ain't drunk," he reasons with a sniff along my neck and I'm not, not anymore.

"Nope," I whisper, wishing I was. "Not a virgin anymore either."

His spine goes rigid and I don't feel even slightly guilty for it. We both know the kind of animal he can be, both know what he's capable of. He's made strides since the 'war that wasn't' to keep control, to be the leader we needed him to be and in the span of less than half an hour I destroyed it all, broke him down. I won't feel guilty for that. I simply grin up at him sadly, clenching the walls of my core around him as a way of physical display. His jaw clenches, tightening hard around that little reality.

Shifting, I push along the grass, letting him slip from my center. Gently and with more poise than I ever thought possible, I pull his pants up and tenderly close the zipper. Slipping the button into place, I tug the ends of his belt back together. Pausing to look up at him, I take in the confusion riddling his features with a somber smile. Lifting from the grass, I place a kiss along the corner of his mouth, one hand curving around the thick of his neck as I do so.

"Thank you," I whisper against the scruff of his cheeks. I needed this more than I thought I did. Needed to just let go and lose myself. His features soften before me and I know that it's the same for him.

"Anytime," he murmurs back, a smugness taking him over as he rears back onto his knees.

"You wish," I retort, glad that if anything, this has fermented our friendship.

Kneeling between my legs he does for me what I did for him, tenderly placing my one leg back into my jeans, pausing to tear the rest of what's left of my underwear from my body. I watch the cloth get placed purposefully in his shirt pocket, raising a brow at the act. He challenges me to say something with his own brow.

"I liked that pair," I wistfully appeal, letting him peel my back from the sweat soaked grass. He grunts back that he'll buy me a new pair as he adeptly pulls my shirt over my head. Logan stands, taking me with him to deposit me on my feet. Holding onto his biceps for support, I unabashedly hold his gaze.

"How long?" I ask him and he knows what I mean without prompting.

His thick fingers, fingers that were just inside me not too long ago, brush at a strand of my hair, luring it behind my ear and away from my face. He doesn't answer me but then again I already know the answer. His protection may have stopped being overt and blatant but he never once stopped watching over me. Someone knew where I was. Someone had come out to find me, even if only to watch and make sure I didn't test the glass topped waters to see if they really couldn't take my burdens.

I'm not handling it. Neither is he. But for less than half an hour none of that mattered. For half an hour the complicating mess of the struggle vanished and we weren't man and woman, hero and betrayer, just two faceless, nameless people having their moment of bliss. Tomorrow I'll be able to look him in the eye. Tomorrow he'll still have his control. It won't ever be mentioned, won't ever be thought of, until another day comes when the struggle becomes too much and reality gets swallowed in the abyss of sex and violence.

God bless Jack and Daniel.

The End.