A/N: Warning in advance: There's quite a bit of swearing in this update, just as a heads up. Sorry if it bothers anyone, but for some reason my muse was adamantly dirty-mouthed for this chapter.

Also, I own none of the X-Men characters, I'm merely borrowing them from Stan Lee, Marvel and 20th Century Fox!

Chapter 9 Recap:

I told her that from now on, I'd look out for her and take care of her. Make sure nothing else bad happened. When she wrote out Promise? in shaky writing and looked at me with those big brown eyes, I wanted to kiss her so goddamn bad. Instead I just said "Promise, Marie" and hugged her real tight to me. When I pulled back after a minute, her face was so close to mine. She looked so damn beautiful, even with the flushed skin and the red puffy eyes and sniffley nose. Again, I got that real strong, almost instinctual urge to kiss her, but I knew now wasn't the right time. So I held back the Wolverine and reached forward to brush some of the tears off her cheeks instead.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Stupid.

Chapter 10

6/10 & 4 One-on-Ones

I don't know what the hell I was thinking, touching her face with my bare hand like that. I guess the best explanation is that I wasn't. At first I told myself it was a reflex, but that quiet voice in the back of my head said that was bullshit. A reflex meant I'd of done the same for anybody else and that sure as hell isn't true. Mostly, a crying female is the best way to clear me out of the room. I get uncomfortable, irritated and frustrated with them pretty quick. But when Marie was crying, I just felt sad and mad. Sad – because she doesn't deserve anymore pain in her life and mad, well, because she's sad. That shit pissed me off and made The Wolverine snarl like his namesake.

So me brushing Rogue's tears away wasn't a reflex. Best way I can describe it would to call it instinct. Something inside of me pushed me to touch her, to comfort her, to make it better. If I didn't have such a good handle on my feral side, I probably would have fucking licked her tears away – I could feel The Wolverine's desire to taste them, to taste her as well as her pain and sorrow. Obviously though, I didn't have enough control to stop myself from touching her bare skin altogether. I guess I just can't equate the idea of 'poisonous' or 'dangerous' with my girl.

Now, the mind is a funny thing. As soon as my fingers swept across her cheek – but before the pain set in – I realized what I'd done. I mean, how fucking stupid am I? I know using her mutation hurts her and that it probably scares her more than she wants to admit. And what do I do? Touch her. That was when someone in my brain said 'Oh, yeah, this is supposed to hurt,' and then belatedly flipped on the 'Pain' switch.

It was weird. I've gone through all different kinds of suffering. Stretching the gauntlet from burning agony to insufferable torture to wretched misery. Marie's mutation was different from them all. It hurt, fuck did it hurt, but it wasn't much more than say a six on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 being what I went through during an average cage fight, and 10, the pain I feel when I have the nightmares where men cut me open and poured molten metal on my bones. What was different with Rogue though, was this feeling of...suction. Like the exact spots where my fingertips were touching her skin had suddenly turned into straws and she was pulling me in. Like I was flowing out of myself and into her. It was drainingmore than painful.

I didn't touch her for long, it was over real quick. My girl's got good reflexes. My fingers only brushed along her skin just long enough for me to feel the wetness on her cheeks. Then Marie jumped up faster than a cat on a hot tin roof. Hopped out of my lap with this horror stricken look on her face, like she half expected me to keel over dead right then and there. I did kind of slump down in the chair (thank God it had a tall back and armrests), panting a little for a few minutes. I was a little light headed, felt exhausted and sore and achy all over but there was no pain anymore. She stared at me the whole time, paler than usual and smelling equal parts worried and freaked out. As soon as I could find the energy to, I asked her if she was OK, how her head was doing. Rogue looked at me like I'd just announced it was my life's ambition to be on Broadway.

She recovered pretty quick and nodded her head a couple times all wide-eyed, before jutting her chin at me with her eyebrows furrowed. She was too damn cute sometimes. I told her I was fine, a little tired was all. I got the 'are you crazy?' look again. Even though I hate apologizing, I had no problems with saying sorry this time 'cause I really was. Actually, I pretty much felt like an asshole. She broke out our notebook and quickly wrote out not to say sorry. That she was the one who should be apologizing, not me. While I read that, I caught a hint of guilt and shame in her scent. I told her real quick to sit her ass down next to mine because she needed to understand something. I grabbed a hold of her hands and wouldn't let go when she automatically flinched and tried to pull away (that flinch gutted me, it showed how far I'd just set us back). I told my girl that it wasn't her fault, it was a stupid accident with me behind the driving wheel. Besides, it was no big deal, took me less than five minutes to recover and I felt perfectly fine now. Which was true, too.

After a while I finally convinced her. That's when she proceeded to berate me via our notebook for taking such a dangerous risk and for treating it so lightly. Didn't I know she could have seriously hurt me? That I could have gone into a coma or worse? She was kind of panicky actually, and I realized then, that to my girl, touching was a Big Fucking Deal. I made sure to take an asterisked mental note on that little detail.

After I got her calmed down some, I asked her if she was really alright, if I was up in her head now or if she had any of my memories. Her answer had me thinking long into the night.

It turned out, the contact was so brief Rogue didn't get much more than a shadow of me in her head. Kind of like an impression of me, she said, or an echo, instead of a copy like with the other psyches, her ' mental room mates.' Those people had held on much longer. But she did feel a little better, the headache she'd gotten while crying was gone now and she said she felt more aware somehow too. So she figured, maybe she got a temporary little boost of my healing power, maybe a little of my enhanced senses, too.

We stayed sitting on our bench in the garden talking for awhile. I didn't want her to go back to her room until I knew for sure that things between us were really OK. We decided to start her self defense training the next day after dinner and to keep it on the down low for a while. We both knew that Chuck would probably figure it out, but I think each of us trusted him enough to stay out of it. Luckily, me and my girl were both on the same page. I didn't want to have to share an opportunity for time alone with Marie with anyone (especially if said opportunity involved me touching her, even if it was over layers of clothing and while wearing gloves), and Marie didn't want anyone watching over her shoulder while we worked out. She's a pretty shy girl, after all, real private too. I know she hates being the center of attention, like when people used to outright stare at her and talk about her when she came into the cafeteria. That hasn't happened in a while, I mean people still look at her from the corner of their eyes and they still whisper about The Rogue, but it's not half as bad as it used to be. Less hate and fear, now it's more like uncertainty and caution. I know I have a large part to do with it. Since I started hanging out with her, people realize things are different. She's got The Wolverine for a protector now. And everybody just seeing someone act normally around her, treating her like any other mutant, helped relax all of them, I think. Plus the whole, me-not-dropping-dead-from-just-sitting-next-to-her revelation, went a long way with the kids. They still pity her, though. She's still different. Separate. Rogue.

I spent most of that night lying in bed thinking. Going over what had happened when I touched her, my own physical reaction and the resulting impact on my girl. How the animal inside of me reacted and responded to the gloved girl. My girl. My mate.

By dawn I let myself drift into a light sleep, satisfied with the beginnings of a plan.

oOo

The next two weeks passed by real quick and I spent even more time with Marie than before. We had all our meals together, I walked her to and from Hank's office and the two of us trained every night after dinner in the Danger Room for a couple hours. I was surprised to see how well she did even from the beginning. But she was a quick learner and I could tell she was naturally athletic. It helped too that my girl had absorbed a former Marine turned bouncer while she was out on the road. Turned out, during a huge bar fight, the guy's hand accidentally touched her face when he was pushed from behind and fell down onto her. She was lucky three times over, because one, no one noticed the guy stayed down because of her and two, she got some useful-ass information from him. Third time lucky 'cause they didn't touch long enough for her to get anything else from him besides what he was thinking and remembering right then. Like a few military developed choke holds and take down techniques. A couple different methods of disarmament. And one a hell of a gift for knife throwing. Marie got better and better with each lesson and I was looking forward to implementing the first stage of my master plan. I should have known it couldn't be that easy.

Neither of us had told anyone about our little secret, but we both were approached by the two halves of the mansion's golden couple at various points in our new routine.

Scooter went to my girl first. She was late for breakfast one morning about two weeks after we started her lessons, so I went looking for her thinking she probably had overslept and was hurrying her cute ass down now. Instead I saw One-Eye lecturing Marie in the hallway outside her room. Fucker had caught her when he knew she'd be alone. Thanks to my feral hearing, I picked up a few choice tidbits from my spot peeking around the corner:

Logan's unpredictable with a lot of messy baggage.

He'll drag anybody down who gets too close to him with his issues.

How much do you really know about this guy, anyway? He's been here less than six months.

Logan will never stick around, he isn't the 'type' for commitment.

He's only paying attention to you because Jean's turned him down over and over again. (I nearly choked at that, his so called perfect fiance never once told me to knock it off back when I was – as in past tense – flirting with her. Hell, if anything, she encouraged me. I mean, in how many ways can a guy interpret a pinch on the ass?)

You're young, you'll find someone else. Someone better and more suitable.

In summary, The Wolverine is dangerous, unworthy and unstable. No good for a sweet and innocent girl like The Rogue. And besides, he can't be truly interested anyway.

Surprisingly, before I could step forward and tell Cyclops to fuck off, that he had no idea what the hell he was talking about, my girl took care of it. She smiled sadly up at him and nodded her head once, sort of like thanking him for his concern. Then she slowly (so he had time to move out of the way – to his credit he didn't) reached up and put her gloved hand on his shoulder. She squeezed once then turned and started walking away, leaving a slack-jawed, one-eyed jackass staring after her. She met me at my hiding spot around the corner at the head of the stairs and smiled up at me. She looked so damn beautiful, so mine, right that second that I felt like my chest was gonna burst with everything I was feeling.

I ended up keeping my trap shut. Didn't say a word 'cause I didn't really need to. I could taste her disappointment in Scott in her scent and read her stubborn determination in those big brown eyes: she would go her own way. I held her little gloved hand the whole way back to the cafeteria.

A couple days later (and with no change in Rogue's and my routine) the Fearless Leader found me after my afternoon class with the X-Men wannabes. He gave my very own lecture about how I was spending too much time with Rogue, that I was practically stalking her and it was unhealthy. That he saw how I looked at her even if Charles didn't, and it was wrong. She deserved better than me and all my shit. What about her skin? She was too young, I was too old – probably way too old considering my healing factor. Didn't I care that I was going to break Rogue's heart when I finally did take off like I was sure to? (I noticed he didn't say nothing to me about how I was just using Marie to make Jean jealous. Or that I couldn't possibly be really attracted to her, like he had the fucking gall to say to my girl. Asshole knew he couldn't say that without me calling him on being in the same damn boat as me on that one.)

I let him get it all out of his system then took a page from my girl's book. Just slapped him hard (real hard) on the back once and walked away without a word. The only two things that kept me calm were remembering how Marie had handled him earlier and (shockingly) The Wolverine himself. Inside of me, he was on the verge of laughing at Scott for thinking any of that crap would matter to him. Didn't this asshole know a feral would never leave his mate behind? That nothing mattered beyond the mate-bond? Fuck the age difference. Fuck her mutation. Fuck The Man's baggage. The Animal was worthy of his female and would always keep her safe and protected. He was determined to spend the rest of his life proving it and keeping The Man in line.

I told the hairy asshole living in my head to go fuck himself. Or myself I guess.

And then that annoying little voice in the back of my head wondered out loud how exactly much of the pretty boy's lecture was also meant to remind himself of a few things. Hadn't I smelled the jealousy when he talked about Rogue spending too much time with me? The guilt when he talked about her being too young and my attraction to her being wrong? Or what about the scent of something like resignation when he spoke about Jean? The voiced conveniently faded out after that.

Jeannie went to bat next and pounced on Marie a week later while she was working alone in Hank's office. I only found out about the visit 'cause my girl's a straight shooter and told me about it right after. Red waited until the Big Guy was out for a meeting and then under the guise of an older, more experienced sister's concern, proceeded to list off a good dozen reasons Why Spending Time With Logan Was A Bad Idea For Rogue. One through six were pretty much all different variations of the same concept: I couldn't truly be truly interested in Rogue because I was hung up on a certain someone else. According to Red, I'm either using Marie to get the her attention, make her jealous or I'm trying to substitute her with my gloved girl, (gag me with my own fucking claws). Reasons seven through 12 weren't any better and I had a hard time getting them out of Rogue. I had a hard time not going after that meddling telepath too, when I read what Jean said. That me spending time with Marie didn't mean necessarily I was romantically or *scoff* sexually interested in her. That my girl should be 'careful not to mistake my attention for something more than it was.' How the Doc implied Rogue could never satisfy me, not some inexperienced teenage girl and not with her skin like it is.

I told Marie it was all bullshit, that every single thing that bitch had said was wrong and not to trust a word of it. I think she believed me, but I knew Red must of said a lot more to my girl and that some of the sting came from how the words were delivered. Knowing Jean, probably in some superior, know-it-all slash it's-for-your-own-good tone of voice. I could just see her standing there, pretending to be concerned, acting like some kind of wise woman cluing in a silly little girl.

That wasn't true. She wasn't right about any of that. And I hated that she was playing mind games with what was mine. But my gloved girl made me promise not to talk to that redheaded snake or go to Wheels about it. Said people just had to get used to us "being together" (she got real and pink she she let me read that) and not let them get to us. Besides, she didn't want to cause any more trouble she already had since coming here to the mansion and it wouldn't be worth it anyway. I tried to convince her otherwise, I told her she wasn't causing any trouble and even if she did, she's worth any kind of trouble, a whole fucking aircraft carrier's worth, not just a boat load. Shit I nearly begged her to reconsider, but Marie refused. She did write that I could talk to Chuck if Jean spoke to her about me again, so I felt a little better. The dirty looks I sent Scooter and Red's way for a few days helped my mood, too.

Of course, Jean waited until after I stopped glaring at her and her boy toy before she took her shot at me. The sneaky thing knocked on my door bright and early at 7 AM and asked to have a chat. Now, it took me probably three minutes for my brain to wake up so I missed her opening pitch, but the middle and end were memorable enough. She paced back and forth my floorboards, acting all noble and high and mighty, using that I-know-what's-best tone.

What on Earth was I doing leading that poor girl on? Didn't I care about how cruel it was? Especially considering once I got tired of Rogue and dropped her like an old hat, she would be the laughingstock of the entire mansion. People were already talking about us like we were a couple (Oh, the horror!) now. How could I stoop so low to use a pathetic teenager to try and make another woman jealous? (I couldn't help the snarl that slipped out when she called my mate pathetic, but the Doc barely noticed, she was on a roll.) Didn't I care about the consequences of my behavior? Or did I just enjoy the "fawning attentions" of a silly, naïve child, so what if Rogue made a fool out of herself?

Blah, blah, blah.

It was funny, I never noticed before how selfish and just, ugly Jeannie could be sometimes. I mean, she actually thought she had something to do with what was between my girl and me. By the time she ran out of steam I was so pissed I was nearly shaking. But at the same time, my mind felt perfectly clear, like it was made sharper by my rage. I kept myself calm and under control the whole time, but I know Red realized she'd fucked up massively. She got real pale and nervous looking even before I opened my mouth. I told her in a nice, rational voice that she didn't know what the fuck she was talking about. That I wasn't leading Rogue anywhere I wasn't gonna be too and that that girl was nobody's fool. What was going on between Rogue and me, involved only Rogue and me. She had no part in it and she was a selfish bitch to think that she did just 'cause I flirted with her for a couple weeks back when I first got to the mansion, five months ago. Rogue was no pathetic teenager and the so-called adult standing in front of me was a world class idiot if she really believed what she'd said about her former student. I was growling more than talking by the end of my speech, but I think Jeannie got my point.

I finished up by telling Red that from now on, she'd better follow that old adage around my Rogue: if she didn't have anything nice to say, she should shut the fuck up.

oOo

A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed, put this story on their favorites list or on their alerts, you are awesome! Sorry there are no individual shout-outs, but it's almost 3 AM and I've got work tomorrow. I'll come back in the next day or so and post them, as well as do another edit when I'm not so tired. Forgive any mistakes, I wanted to get this out for you guys ASAP! [[RE-EDITED 3/7/11, SHOUT-OUTS ARE POSTER IN THE NEXT CHAPTER.]]

P.S. My good buddy dawn444 said I should ask any readers if they'd be interested in doing story art for "The Girl With Gloves." I thought it was a great idea, so I'm asking! If anyone is artistic, please feel free to create story art, I'd love to see it and with your permission, post it on my LiveJournal account where I have my own Rogue images. (Link is on my profile!)

As always, PLEASE REVIEW!

The old adage Logan was referring to:

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

- Thumper's mother in 'Bambi'

(Or a bastardized version of a quote from Jacqui Rivait)