"Where's Logan?"
Jubilee was concentrating so hard on what she was doing, she didn't realize Hank had been speaking to her.
"Jubilee!"
"What?!" she asked, annoyed. "Goddamnit! Now you've messed up my diaper!" She held up her baby doll right up to Hank's face, her practice diaper dangling half-on, half-off of it.
"What happened to Logan? Didn't he come to class with you?"
"I don't know what happened to him. Last time I saw him, he was being dragged kicking and screaming by Dr Grey…figuratively speaking, of course…because he wasn't exactly kicking...or screaming, come to think of it… Dr Grey probably used that freaky mind thing she does… You know…that thing…with the stuff…" She trailed off, concentrating again on putting another diaper on her doll. She was concentrating so hard, she didn't realize the tip of her tongue was sticking out from the corner of her mouth.
Hank looked over to where Rogue and John had their heads together. Rogue looked like she was trying to swaddle her doll as John was just staring at what she was doing uncertainly. If that doll had been a real baby, Hank thought, it would have turned blue by now.
"Rogue, you're swaddling…not strangling…" Hank gently pointed out.
Rogue's eyes widened in surprise then looked down at her doll as she realized what she had been doing. "Oh…right…"
"There! The perfect diaper!" Jubilee said proudly, waving her doll around by one of its legs.
"Jubilee! That's suppose to represent a real baby! Stop swinging it around!" Hank exclaimed.
But Jubilee didn't hear him as she spiked the doll like a football and did a little dance around it. "Take that, Huggies!"
"Jubilee!"
"What? The diaper stayed on, didn't it?" Jubilee said, innocently.
Hank sighed heavily, rubbing a hand over his face. "Never mind. Where's your partner?"
"I told you. He went with Dr Grey like two night ago. I think he was getting fitted or something for his suit." Realization finally dawned on Jubilee. "Oh my fucking God! He's getting fitted!" She clapped her hands together gleefully. "Oh, I cannot wait to see him!"
"Two nights ago? You haven't seen him for that long?" Hank asked, incredulously. "Rogue? John? Have you seen Logan?"
"What?" they both asked at the same time.
"Logan…have you seen him?" Hank asked again, his patience wearing thin.
"I think I saw him in the kitchen a couple of nights ago," John said, unwrapping Rogue's baby doll again and swaddling it himself.
"Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen him since Wednesday…" Rogue said, watching John. "How the hell did you do that?"
"Too much time on my hands…" John shrugged.
"You've been practicing? On what?"
"That stupid pillow you insist on keeping."
"You used my Hello Kitty pillow to practice swaddling?"
"Pietro wanted to see how to do it… I don't think she minded, you know. The pillow, I mean…"
"Can we focus for a moment, please?" Hank said, massaging his temples with his fingertips. The pounding in his head seemed to be getting stronger by the minute. "Nobody's seen Logan for at least two days now."
"I wouldn't say 'nobody.' I mean, come on, you've only asked the three of us here… I wouldn't draw my conclusions on that," Jubilee said, picking up her doll from the floor and flinging it onto the changing table again. "Aren't you suppose to be like the big science guy around here? What kind of scientist makes conclusions based on just three observations? Don't you need at least like five people or something to make a conclusion?"
"All right! All right! Let's clean up and find out what's going on with Logan."
It turned out that, indeed, no one had seen Logan for at least two days.
Hank, Jubilee, John, and Rogue sat around the island in the kitchen, drinking milk and mindlessly eating the cookies that had been left on the counter. Each of them was lost in their own thoughts, each trying to figure out where Logan might be.
"Maybe he took off again?" Jubilee said, accidentally spitting out crumbs of cookies as she spoke.
"No, his truck is still here… And besides that, the Professor wouldn't let him off the hook so easily," Hank said, tapping a finger against his chin.
"I can't think of any other places he might go…" Rogue said, stuffing another cookie into her mouth. "These are really good. I think baby likes chocolate."
John snorted into his milk at her last comment. "I think we've established a long time ago that baby likes chocolate, Rogue." Rogue scrunched her face at him and then nudged him rather violently that he found himself almost sliding off the stool he had been sitting on.
"So we've looked in the usual places…how about the unusual places?" Hank asked.
"Wouldn't that be like…everywhere else?" Jubilee said, arching a brow.
"Hmm…" Hank said with a thoughtful expression on his face. "We haven't checked any of the empty bedrooms yet…"
"I guess we can start looking now… All the cookies are gone…" Rogue said, mournfully.
"Well, there are only two more rooms left to check." Jubilee plopped herself down on the floor in the hallway, taking her shoes off and rubbing her feet between her hands. "And I must say, these shoes weren't made for searching missing Wolverines."
"That's what happens when you insist you're a size 8 when you're really a 9, Jubilee," Rogue said, sitting next to her friend.
"Hey, I suffer for my fashion!"
"Ladies…why don't you take a small break while John and I look at the last two rooms, all right?" The two girls nodded eagerly in agreement. "John, you'll take the room on the left and I'll check the one over there on the right?"
"Okay…" The closer John got to the door, he could tell someone was in that room. He could hear faint sounds coming from inside – a television was on. He knocked softly, calling out, "Logan? You in there?"
The moment he started knocking, the television noises stopped and everything became deathly quiet.
"Anything?" Hank asked, walking over to where John had his ear pressed against the door.
"There's definitely somebody in there." John knocked again, harder and more insistent. "Logan!"
"What's he doing in there?" Rogue asked, coming up behind John. "Logan! It's Rogue! Why are you in there?"
Jubilee got to her feet and came over to the door also. "Wolve-y! Why are you hiding?" Jubilee said in her sing-songy voice. She turned to Rogue and John. "Ironic, isn't it? Instead of the innocent children hiding from the big bad wolf, it's the other way around."
"Innocent, my ass!" Logan yelled from the other side of the door.
"A-ha! Confirmation!" Jubilee pumped her fist in the air.
Rogue rolled her eyes, ignoring Jubilee, and turned her attention back to the closed door. "What are you doing in there, Logan?"
"What the hell do you think I'm doing in here? I'm hiding out!"
"From what?" Rogue asked.
"From what she asks… From Jubilee! From the Professor! From everybody! Did ya really think I was going to let people see me like this? I look like I swallowed an entire freaking sofa set! I can't even take the damn thing off without the Professor knowing about it…"
Jubilee started laughing hysterically.
"Jubilee! Not helping!" Rogue said sternly. Jubilee didn't stop laughing but covered her mouth with both of hands to keep from making too much noise. "Logan, you can't stay in there forever. You're gonna have to come out to…uh…eat! Yeah, to eat!"
The four people in the hallway could hear Logan snort loudly from inside the room. "Don't worry about me. I'm all stocked up."
"So that's why he was in the kitchen…" John whispered to no one in particular. "And why there wasn't anything in the fridge or the cabinets the next morning…"
"He took everything from the kitchen?" Hank whispered back.
"Even took the baking soda for some reason…"
"Never mind about that!" Rogue said, exasperated. "Logan! How long do you think you can last in there?"
"I got food, I got plenty to drink, I got television – I think I'm all set."
"Do you think we can cut his power?" Rogue whispered to Hank.
"I'm pretty sure that would mean no power for some part of the mansion…all those wires are connected to something or another."
"Damn…" Rogue turned to John. "Think of something, John!"
"Um…well, let's see…he's got his basic necessities… Hmm…"
"Don't think too hard there, Johnny-boy, I can see steam coming out from your head," Jubilee snickered.
He ignored her smart-aleck comment, thinking carefully. "I got it!" John banged on the door. "Hey, Logan! How many rolls of toilet paper you got in there?"
The silence seemed to stretch on forever and then they could hear the squeaking of another door being opened from inside the room. They heard Logan opening cabinets, rustling things aside. "Shit!"
"Yeah, literally!" Jubilee yelled through the door, laughing loudly.
It was still another two days before Logan finally did come out of that room.
Of course, he made sure it was the middle of the night and almost everyone was asleep when he came out. He avoided the TV room where he knew Jones would be watching one infomercial after another and the med lab where he knew Hank would be up late working out another formula or carrying out another experimentation and, most definitely, he avoided going anywhere near Scott's bedroom or any other room Scott might frequent during the night.
Logan slinked his way through the corridors, pausing now and then to make sure they were empty. But as he was rounding a corner, he collided with another person who spilt the hot chocolate he had been carrying all over Logan. Cookies went flying through the air.
"What the hell…" John started then his attention turned to the now empty mug and plate. "Goddamnit! It took me twenty minutes to make this damn hot chocolate just the way she likes it! What's your prob…" He stopped mid-sentence as he realized just who he had collided with.
Logan's healing abilities were already mending his scalded skin and he thought he could have made a fast exit without John actually seeing anything but fate was not on his side this night. Logan took a step back to make his getaway and stepped right onto a fallen cookie, losing his footing and falling backwards, flailing arms and all. If it wasn't for John's surprised reaction to seeing Logan at this time of night and in that 'condition,' he would have laughed at Logan's comedic pratfall.
"Uh…are you all right?" John finally said, hovering over Logan as he continued to lie on his back.
"What's going on? I heard a crash and…" Rogue skidded to a stop, avoiding tripping over the fallen Wolverine. "Logan?"
"Yeah, it's me."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm lying in a puddle of a now lukewarm chocolate drink with broken cookies digging into the backs of my legs and arms, wondering where my dignity ran off to. Oh yeah, now I remember, my dignity left a long time ago on a one-way trip to Humiliation-ville with a stop at Mortification Town."
Rogue bit her lip to keep herself from laughing at Logan's sorrowful tone of voice. "It's…it's not that bad, Logan. You look…you just look like you put on some weight."
She was going to say more but she then heard footsteps approaching. "I told you… There was some sort of noise…"
"And you just had to wake me up because…"
"Hey, you're bigger and stronger than me, Peter. You really want it on your conscience if some wack-job came here and did bodily harm to your favorite person in the whole wide world?"
"Jubilee, what the hell makes you think…"
"Oh my fucking God!! Wolvie? That you?" Jubilee exclaimed, her eyes as big as saucers.
"If you even make one crack, Jubilee, I swear to God, I'll shred all of those precious designer clothes you have stuffed in your closet."
Jubilee held up her hands in a gesture of mock surrender. "Hey…I didn't say anything. No need to threaten my babies…uh…no pun intended…"
There was an uncomfortable silence – Logan still lying on his back and the four teenagers just standing over him, trying not to openly stare at Logan's bulging belly.
"You look like you swallowed a sofa set!" Peter blurted out.
And with that, no one could contain their laughter any longer as Logan blushed deeply.
A/N: I think there's going to be only three more chapters to this story and I'm still undecided on whether they should have a boy or a girl so let me know what you guys think! Little baby boy Ryro or little baby girl Ryro?
