A pair of unique eyes—black corneas, crimson irises—flutter open to stare at an overly cleaned room. Even the ceiling is excruciatingly spotless. ::We are definitely not in the bayou anymore, homme::, Remy thinks to himself as he pulls himself up into a sitting position and quietly surveys the darkened medical room. ::I think I've spent enough time on my back in this room to last a lifetime::, Remy thinks with a smirk as he slides silently off the table. ::Let's see what else is here to play with.::
Quietly making his way down the hall, he hears a colorful stream of words spoken with a lilting Southern tongue. Following her words around the corner into a large circular room, he stops at the door, leaning on the frame. There in the cavernous room fighting men in masks is the only girl to land him on his back more than once.
He watches her land punch after punch and kick after kick with wicked accuracy. He looks around the room and sees ledges and perches around the room. Rogue dodges a spinning metal disk and uses her legs to sweep her masked opponent off its feet. Remy quickly jumps and climbs on to the nearest perch to avoid the disk. There he has a better view of the entire room, and decides to climb up to the next highest block. There he can see every move, every kick, every jump, every dodge, every optic blast.
He watches her move and stretch, and is a little amazed at the fact that she is still barefoot, with the exception of white gauze on her feet. He watches her misjudge a punch thrown from her right side, and can hear the sound of metal slamming into flesh and bone, knocking to her knees and down to the floor. He winces at the sickening sound.
Remy's whole body tenses, ready to leap down to the floor below, when the resilient girl hops up to her feet and kicks the robot square in the chest plate, knocking it backwards onto the floor.
Pyro training complete. Mission a success, says the room.
Panting slightly, still rattled from the punch, Rogue leans down to rest her palms on the tops of her knees. Looking up at the clock, she realizes that it has been nearly six hours since she nearly absorbed Logan. She is not healing as well as she would like, this time. This landed punch is going to leave a mark. ::Damn,:: she thought, spitting a mouthful of blood on to the floor.
The sound of one person clapping brings her out of her head.
"You look beautiful when you're all sweaty, chere," Remy drawls from his perch.
"I ain't in the mood, swamp rat," Rogue calls over her shoulder as she walks over to her bottle of water, taking a long gulp.
"You wound me, chere," Remy says with false pain before resting his chin on his knee with a grin.
"Don't give me that crap. I have you in my head. I know how you think," Rogue answers while stretching her body, causing her tank top to inch up her rib cage.
"There's more to me than meets the eye," Remy retorts confidently.
"Now that I believe to be true," Rogue flirts, looking into the crimson and black eyes of the Cajun. "You might want to think about moving, darlin'. I would hate for you to get hurt."
Remy laughs a little at that. "I can take care of myself, chere. But I love your concern for my well being."
"Suit yourself. Just be prepared to play if you're fixing to stick around. It's Scott's program."
Remy blows her a kiss as an answer. Rogue just smirks as she cracks her neck and starts the program.
She giggles at Remy's shocked expression as his high metal perch quickly slides back into the smooth wall. That giggle quickly turns to awe as she watches the nimble man twist and turn his frame in the air before landing on his feet, almost tucked in a ball. He looks up with a rakish grin.
"Duck, chere," he says lightly.
Rogue looks at Remy with a confused expression. Remy's eyes grow wide for a moment. There is no way that he can charge and toss a card fast enough to keep the block to hitting Rogue's head. He looks into her eyes and sees a playful expression. She blows him a kiss before tucking her body into a ball, springing up, vaulting herself off the moving block, and twisting her body to land on the top of one of the mechanical arms protruding from the wall.
"Are you here to play or are you here to watch, Gumbo?" she taunts from her height advantage.
"How would you want me to answer that?" Remy calls up to her.
"How do you want to answer it?" she retorts, waiting with cold anticipation until the arms move closer to each other. As they do, she leaps easily from one to another, making her way around the room before jumping easily to the floor, opening a smooth door and disappearing into it.
"You will have to ask me nicely," Remy, calls calmly walking toward the still open trap door.
The girl reemerges with a large staff and gets a silent shiver at the look in Remy's eyes. The Remy in her head is extremely animated. ::This is a game,:: Rogue thinks to herself. ::A gambit he cannot resist. The prize is yet to be determined.:: She smiles. ::Those are the best kind::, she thinks.
She twirls the staff in her hand before tossing it to the man towering above her.
"Play with me, Cajun," she says, daring him.
"With pleasure," he answers.
Two hours later the room makes another announcement: Cyclops training complete. Mission a success.
Both students walk over to the water bottle sitting by the door. "You ain't half bad, Remy," Rouge says, dropping her body onto the floor. "Where did you learn to jump like that?"
Remy smiles. "I got a lot of practice hoping rooftops to get away from the police." The girl laughs beside him, and he studies her for a time before asking, "What is your name, chere?"
She draws her knees protectively into her chest. "Rogue," she answers.
"What is your name, Rogue?" Remy asks patiently.
She pauses while her heart beats hard in her chest. "Why should I answer that?" she asks quietly.
"You don't have to. I just figure that since you tell me that you have me in your head, that probably means that you know a lot about me. I figured that it was only fair that I should know your name."
"Marie," she answers after a time.
"I like it."
"Thank you," she replies softly.
Remy reaches out to brush the hair out of her face. She flinches.
"Please don't touch me," she whispers hoarsely.
"I'm sorry," Remy says, concern marking his features. "You're hurt."
"I'll be fine," she replies.
"It's swollen and purple."
"It doesn't hurt."
"Is that so?" Remy asks, exasperated. He takes Rouge's gloved hand and gently presses it to her own skin. A sharp intake of air is her response.
"Maybe it's a little sore," she concedes.
"You need ice," Remy declares, pulling himself to his feet and offering his hand as assistance to Marie. "There has to be some in the kitchen. I'm hungry anyway."
Marie smiles. "Then you should get something to eat." She takes his offered hand and he lifts her to him, pulling her body close to his. Even through his long trench coat, he can feel every curve and contour of her body caressing his. He looks down at her. Watching her breath catch behind her breasts, he feels a warmth spread below his belly.
"Are you offering?" Remy says with a sly grin.
Rogue drags a supple leather gloved hand across his face as his hand rests against her back, closing whatever fraction of a gap there was. ::God, I wish,:: she thinks.
"Not tonight," she answers, regret evident in two words.
"Then I shall be patient," Remy says, releasing her and stepping back. "Sweet dreams, chere," he says before turning and walking out the door.
"Only if you're in them," she whispers.
She makes her way to a darkened room down the hall. Silently she enters and lays down on the floor. Within moments, she is asleep.
The morning sunlight coaxes Ororo's eyes open. Taking a deep breath, she feels her lover's tail twitch against her inner thigh. She can only smile.
Her long fingers trace the intricate patterns along the flat spade of his tail. She laughs lightly as she feels the tail shiver, and hears a certain blue-skinned German moan in his sleep. The sound makes her flush all over.
Kurt's tail unwinds itself from around her leg as she levitates herself lightly from the bed. It is the most strenuous thing she has ever done with her powers, as it takes the most control. Storm cannot fly; she can only make the atmosphere do as she willed, and ride the currents of the winds she summons.
She drops easily on the floor in the middle of her attic and walks over to her closet. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, she sighs as she puts her hair into a ponytail.
::Goddess, it is hot already,:: she thinks, wiping a fine sheen of sweat from her throat.
She quietly makes her way to her still-sleeping lover and kisses the very point of one blue ear lovingly, and smiles at the barely audible sigh from his lips. Ororo walks across the room to the French doors, opening them onto her balcony. She summons a wind to easily drop her onto the lush green lawn below, to begin her short, early morning walk to her greenhouse. As she opens the door, the small structure instantly fills with fog and clouds.
As a mist of rain begins to gently soak the inside of the structure, Ororo pulls her white locks from the confines of her ponytail, shaking her hair gently into a billowing cascade down her back. Slowly she rubs her palm against the skin of her stomach, inching her gray t-shirt higher, allowing her mind to wander back to the warm body still occupying her bed. Checking to be sure that the inside of the greenhouse was sufficiently obstructed from an outside view, her arms form an X across her chest as both hands tug at the hem of her shirt. Slowly she lifts her shirt higher and higher up her body when a heavy hand clamps down hard on her ankle.
"You may not want to do that, darlin'," a husky voice says from below her. Ororo screams. Logan rolls to his right a split second before a bolt of lightning explodes on the ground right where the center of his chest had just laid.
"Logan! What in the blessed name of the Goddess are you doing here?" Ororo pants, her opal-colored eyes clearing, revealing their true cerulean color.
"Couldn't sleep." Logan replies. "Nightmare. Well, to me at least."
"Was it an actual Marie dream?"
The man nods as she laughs. "Logan, how bad could it have been?"
"I know what it's like to have the Popsicle's tongue in my mouth. Shit like that would keep you up at night, too," Logan says, sitting up on the ground. Ororo rests in a crouch so reminiscent of Kurt's that it almost makes him laugh.
"You should have come and awoken me. I would have sat up with you." Ororo offers her hand to him and he accepts it, both standing at the same time.
"Nah. I figured the elf was with you. I didn't want to make any more trouble for you." Logan grins knowingly. "I was right."
"Do you not think that is a bit presumptuous, Wolverine?" Ororo says, turning to busy herself with a flat of seedlings.
Logan walks right up behind her. "Not at all, Goddess. His scent is all over you, and that little display of hormones from earlier kinda gave it away. Unless you were thinking of yours truly."
Storm laughs, turning to look at Logan. "Why are you here?" She asks exasperated. "Are you not afraid you are going to rust?"
"Very funny, darlin'."
"Here," Ororo says tossing a bag that hits him square in the chest. "Make yourself useful. Plant these in that dirt over there." She says pointing to the far end of the greenhouse. Logan takes the bag and walks over to the dirt.
SNIKT. Logan plunges his claws into the earth repeatedly, in neat rows. Carefully, he inserts a seed into each hole before meticulously recovering the holes.
"Clever," Ororo comments.
Logan looks at her with a wicked grin. "I wouldn't want to get dirt under my fingernails."
Ororo laughs. "Why are you here?"
"Has anyone told you that you can sound like a damn broken record?" Logan says, avoiding the question.
"I only repeat the important questions." Ororo replies.
"I just didn't want to be inside."
"You were inside."
"It's not the same, darlin'. Usually, I can work it out by kicking some ass in the Danger Room."
"Why did you choose not to?" Ororo asks, moving her hand in a gentle sweep, causing the rain to land harder, while still listening intently.
"Well, there was already a girl in it. The room was locked down and it sounded like Marie was tearing the room apart. She was running my program."
"Makes sense to me," Ororo answers.
"Then I just wanted to be outside. I thought about hunting, but I can't hear trouble from out in the woods, and with One-Eye out of commission, I figured it was better if I stayed around for a bit."
"You are not thinking of leaving us again, are you?" She questions
"Nah, not for a while yet. I ain't makin' promises, mind you."
"Fair enough." Ororo concedes.
"I came out here and was thinking about what you were saying about Marie earlier in the kitchen. It's just wrong that this girl, a little wisp of a thing has to go through all of this shit. I just kinda fell asleep until you started dripping on me."
Ororo is quiet for a moment. "Do you not realize that you contradicted yourself in that whole pity party of yours?" she says, meeting Logan's eyes with a cool stare. Logan looks at her confused.
"In one breath, you tell me that she is tearing up your training program, locked down in the Danger Room, and in the next you imply that she is helpless. She is not some fragile girl, Logan. If she was, she would not have been in the bar in Laughlin City for you to find. Step back and look at her. You may find a fierce woman where you once saw a girl who needed your protection."
"Are you trying to tell me that my Marie doesn't need me anymore?"
Ororo smiles. "She will always need you, Logan, but maybe not in the same way she once did."
Logan says nothing. Ororo looks up at the sky through her greenhouse window. "It's getting late. I have a class to teach." Ororo makes her way to the door.
"Thanks, Storm." Logan says as she exits through the door.
"Anytime."
