"I'm stayin' here," repeated Rogue, whom Wolverine would never be able to think of as Marie, regardless of what she was saying.
"No you're not." It hadn't been an objection, but a complete disbelief of her words.
Rogue crossed her arms, obviously mistaking the way that he had meant his words. "What happened to you being my friend and not my father?"
The four of them were standing around the rental car across the street from Rogue's parents' home. Wolverine had noticed her parents peeking out from between their blinds; she must have requested that they wait inside for her. "In case you've forgotten, they are not comfortable with you being a mutant."
She shook her head. "I wasn't comfortable and that turned out to be more important." She uncrossed her arms and took a step towards him; her large doe eyes attempting to find some understanding in his own heavily browed ones. "They're my folks Logan and I love them."
Bobby and Hank were averting their eyes. It was a private moment. No one was as close to Rogue, except maybe Gambit, but he was not being included in the decision that she was making.
"Kinda thought maybe you'd come to think of us as family," he whispered down to her. The lowered voice didn't stop the others from hearing.
The sadness that Hank heard in his friend's voice broke his heart. He had his own feelings on the matter, but he had a completely different outlook than Logan who didn't even remember his parents. Hank was quite aware of how it felt to parents that were unsupportive of his mutation and he had also forgiven them, had to, because of how much he needed his parents' love.
Logan touched Rogue's hair, about the only thing that wouldn't zap him. "Whatever kiddo, you've gotta find your own way."
Rogue smiled. She wasn't oblivious to the pain she was causing him, but he was right: she did need to find her own way. Right now, that meant staying with her parents and trying to fix that hole in her life that only they could fill. She was a grown adult and there was nothing anyone could do to stop her from doing what she wanted. "Logan, if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have the balls to be doin' this."
He released her multicolored tresses. He was losing her and it was killing him. "You gonna stay long?"
She shook her head. "Don't know. You gonna miss me while I'm gone?"
He rolled his eyes, his body swaying from side to side. "You're a hand full; do they know that?"
She reached out to him then and they embraced. He towered over her petite figure. Hank bit his lip. Again he could feel exactly what Logan must be going through and it hurt him.
"You need anything... and I mean anything, you give me a call."
Rogue smiled. "I know." As Logan backed away, she beckoned to Hank and Bobby and hugged them as well, though not with nearly the same heart-breaking emotion. "All right, you three had better head out. I got a years to catch up on."
With that, Rogue shooed her friend, surrogate father, and potential suitor away. She watched them all pile into the car with no dispute over who went behind the wheel; Hank and Bobby would have had to have been suicidal to argue with Logan in his current mood. Hank watched her figure disappear behind them, a lone girl on a lone street in the south. She was lovely and the tears that sparkled on her face were too, in their own way. She did care for them, did consider them her family as Logan had said. He hoped that Logan saw the sad face that was attempting to look strong from the rearview mirror.
Two months had passed since Hank's trip to Mississippi and Ororo Munroe was suspicious. Being a former lover of the blue intellectual, she was more attuned to his moods and more observant of his actions than most of the others in the mansion, the one exception, of course, being the man that was contributing to her suspicion. There was something going on between Logan and Hank and whatever that something happened to be was becoming more overt with each passing day.
At first Logan had been understandably grouchy at being abandoned by his unofficially adopted daughter. Even then, she had noticed that the only person that seemed safe from his ire was Hank. Then she had observed increased back slaps and tussling, which were starting to fall out of the realm of acceptable heterosexual behavior. She'd seen the two getting back from late nights, no doubt spent at the Barracuda, the bar that Hank had never offered to take her to. Now there was this, seeing Logan, the lone-wolf badass, coming from Hank's bedroom with a great yawn at ten in the morning on a Saturday.
Ororo was jealous, which was unfitting of a proper lady and even less so of a woman in a monogamous relationship with a man who was not the object of her jealousy. She scowled at Logan, whose jaws were just now shutting from his drowsy yawn. "Good morning Logan."
He nodded to her. "Morning Stormy."
She felt justified by the way his eyelids did not quite open all the way in asking him, "Not enough sleep?"
"You know I ain't a mornin' person," he grumbled without any overt malice. Then he passed her by in the hallway and made his way downstairs.
She huffed and looked around the hall, as if looking for someone to back up her shock and disapproval. How dare he be so casual about the situation? She turned on her heel and made her way back to the room she shared with Kurt.
The light coming in from the window may not have been the brightest, but it might as well have been for how buoyant Hank's heart felt this morning. When he had opened his eyes this morning, it had been with the vision of Logan curled up beside him. His body was warm at all the places that they were connected, which were many since they were not small-framed men. Funny how his queen-sized mattress had seemed so horribly large when it had just been him in it.
Hank purred a bit, totally content, the smell of Logan still in the air. Last night they had come in with quite a bit of clamor. Hank had drank too much while trying to match Logan's beer intake, a very stupid scheme that he would avoid in the future, and Logan had been very gentlemanly in making sure he made it into bed safely.
"Oh, don't be silly! I am perfectly.." He punctuated the word by kicking his pillow that had fallen to the floor. It sailed gratifyingly towards the window. "Perfectly capable of seeing myself to bed."
"Yeah, I'm just worried about who you're gonna be ending up with once there."
Logan retrieved the kicked pillow and tossed it to the bed one second before Hank did the same thing to himself. The large blue man lay on the spinning bed and smiled. He pushed at his glasses; they seemed to dig in twice as much when he was drunk. "Why, I'd end up with you of course. There isn't anyone else here!"
Logan walked with amusement to the side of the bed over which Hank's legs were still hanging. He grabbed the heavy furry limbs and with a swing, got them facing the bed's 6 o'clock. He then climbed atop his friend and leaned his strong nose until it touched Hank's. "Don't tell me I'm your last choice."
Hank smiled, more from his happiness to have Logan so close than any of the words floating about nonsensically. He licked Logan's top lip gratefully. This encouraged Logan to kiss him, which was always a welcome thing, even if it happened less frequently than he liked. His friend's mouth no longer felt strange or overly masculine. This was what kissing felt like to him now, since this was the only person he'd been kissing. Then a random belch ruined a perfectly wonderful moment. He turned his head in time to let out the gas, luckily avoiding burping right into Logan's mouth. "Sorry," he whispered with embarrassment.
"You fucking should be. I could smell that." Logan coughed and waved a hand in front of his nose. "It smelled better when it was in the bottle."
Hank laughed, finding the concept of his being a beer vessel insanely funny, no doubt due to the frothy alcohol itself.
Logan sat up, so that he was straddling Hank's waist. "Okay fuzzy, I think it's time that you get to sleep."
"Aw, don't go," whined Hank, shutting his eyes. "I won't try and talk about neuroscience if you do."
He didn't properly pass out, but he did become so tired that he didn't move even when he felt Logan shift off him. When it turned out that instead of leaving, Logan was only taking off his pants and shirt before joining him in the bed, Hank could not stop from smiling. If he'd been more awake, he would have had to restrain himself from doing cartwheels. As it was, he just fell asleep, with the corners of his mouth upturned into a moronic looking smile.
Things weren't too different this morning really, because Hank was still smiling, slight headache or no. It felt like the perfect day because he had woken up to an occupied bed. Now Logan had set off without a word back to his own room, not even sparing a small smooch before leaving. Hank was okay with that too. The way that they handled each other was without the kid gloves that two people in similar situations (his brain kept avoiding the word 'couple") might. Just because they occasionally kissed, sometimes necks and earlobes, it didn't mean that their relationship had to change. Hank was totally okay with Logan's silent exit. He didn't need it explained to him; it was time for Logan to start his day.
He reached out a hand to the now empty space on the bed.
If only he didn't have the full bladder of a night's worth of drinking, he would have just continued grasping at the warm spot where Logan had slept. Instead, he made his way to the bathroom that was unofficially his. He didn't even have to get dressed, since he hadn't bothered to disrobe before losing consciousness the previous night.
In the hall he could hear the bustling of noisy children from downstairs. He picked out a few familiar voices. Children were so irreverently loud. It was probably the only part of life at the mansion with which he felt himself unable to acclimate. He loved quiet, best for reading or researching. His lab was practically a tomb it was so silent and that was just how he liked it. When he came upstairs to where the children played and learned, it felt like walking from the center of the tornado into the debris.
"Good morning," greeted a voice before he managed to slip back into his room.
He smiled at Piotr. "Good morning. Are you heading down for breakfast?"
Piotr nodded. There wasn't a meal that the Colossus skipped. It was strange for him to be running late, for anything, not just food, but Hank didn't even notice that it was late morning, having been up so late at the Barracuda with Logan. "You?"
Hank shook his head. "I think a little more sleep is part of my immediate itinerary." He opened the door to his room. "Enjoy your breakfast."
Piotr waved a hand to him and then walked to the stairway, ready to descend upon food. Hank watched the large man as he left and wondered if anyone had been walking around up here when Logan was leaving. He couldn't imagine that Wolverine would be sneaking around stealthily to avoid getting caught doing something so obviously incriminating. No, the Logan he knew would just walk out, not caring who saw him. If anyone asked, he might just tell them that he had spent the night fucking Beast until he couldn't walk straight. Hank could imagine that only too well. He wasn't nearly as comfortable with people knowing about their bouts of intimacy, because though it felt right when they were alone, it seemed that it would feel quite deviant if he told others. Also, they hadn't done any fucking and he disliked the idea of being viewed that way. He hadn't even been comfortable with others seeing him as a sexual active participant in his relationship with Ororo. Then he had assumed that he was just ill at ease with everyone knowing how Ororo could do better, but he didn't feel inferior to Logan. So now he had enough input to deduce that it was neither his own self-esteem issues nor any shame over his choice in partner.
His blankets were just as Logan-scented as when he had left and he happily climbed back under them. The sheets were covered in blue fur on the side of the bed that he normally slept on. His grooming habits, two showers a day with extensive brushing, kept his shedding down, but fur still tended to get everywhere. He grabbed a sip of semi-stagnant water from a glass that had been sitting on his nightstand for far too long. He was dehydrated; as a doctor he knew better, but he would rectify that once he woke up. For now, he just wanted to drift off and think of how things could have gone last night if he had not fallen asleep.
Logan was feeling much relieved about the Rogue situation. He had expected them to kick her out again, shattering that spunky spirit of hers. It had been two months, however, and the three of them had made peace. She was looking for a job, a hard thing to come by in Caldecott, so that she wouldn't have to burden them. Though the thought of the Rogue with a paper hat on her head asking if someone wanted fries made his blood boil, his brain told him that work was good for the spirit. Before he'd come to the mansion, he'd done lots of jobs just to put food in his belly, but they had also made him stronger by giving him practice with things and by keeping him active. Well, she was smart enough that if she did get a burger flippin' job, it wouldn't be for long.
He was chewing on a piece of toast that one of the kids had left uneaten on a plate by the sink in the kitchen. It was smeared with boysenberry jelly. Normally he could not tolerate food, especially sweets, in the morning, but it had looked so appealing. It looked all abandoned on the plate, sentenced to execution by trash can. It was almost heroic for him to eat it.
Most of the morning crowd was cleared out of the large dining hall already. The sounds of the children, now packed full of calories, echoed in from the other rooms on the first floor of the mansion. He took a seat by the window, as he was usually accustomed, and sipped the coffee he had poured. Unfortunately the caffeine's jarring wake-up effect lasted only as long as he was drinking. So, he just drank it for the taste, one he had grown accustomed to at trucker diners.
The room was for the folks who had been up late last night once the ten o'clock hour rolled in. He had seen the time on the large grandfather clock by the stairs that led to the foyer. When he'd left ole Fuzzy's room, he hadn't bothered to check the time, wasn't even sure how Hank could read the blasted analog clock with its tiny identical mechanical arms and dots instead of numbers. The really amazing thing was his ability to see what time it was in the near dark. It was never entirely dark in Hank's room because one of the security lights of the school was on the vertical ledge outside and slightly to the right of his window. Logan was a pitch black sleeper and the light had kept him awake last night. Still, he hadn't left to the double blanketed window in his room. He had preferred to just stay up, entertained by his own thoughts and the incredible cacophony coming from Hank. The man was pretty drunk when he'd gone to bed, so he suspected that under normal circumstances, Hank didn't sleep so much like a freight train about to derail. He further suspected that he would find out soon enough.
"Good morning," said a thunderous voice at the table next to him.
Logan nodded over at Piotr. From the slight glaze of the hair behind Piotr's ear, Logan knew that he'd either just worked out or just bathed. He grunted as his way of conveying good morning. The toast was long since finished and his stomach was still growling. Maybe today would be one of the days that he cooked up his six-alarm eggs. If he did that, he'd probably have to run to the store for the ingredients. In a house full of kids, there weren't often a good deal of spices or peppers.
'What the hell,' he thought. It would be worth the trip. Maybe he could convince Hank to have some once he got up. The combination of the spicy with the hangover that he no doubt had would make for some humorous times for all involved but Hank. Logan grinned at the thought, the love of gastro-intestinal humor there despite his age.
He stood up quickly with determination, the grin still on his face. Piotr watched him curiously. "Store," he told the Russian strong man. Not that he needed to tell anyone his comings and goings, but Piotr was a pretty standup guy who kept to himself. He was more the listening type.
The wind from the motorcycle's speed woke him up. There was something about just hopping on his bike, the freedom of it he supposed, that just made him feel alive, even if all he was doing was fetching peppers for breakfast.
When he returned to the mansion, the kitchen and its adjoining dining hall were blissfully empty. He set the skillet atop the stove and began to heat it as he diced up the chilies. When cooking, his mind entered a trance of sorts, automatically setting to the task of concocting a meal. It was due to this complete ease that he thought he must have been a chef at some point. Since most of the stuff he knew how to cook was spicy, he figured that it must've been some kind of southern cooking. It wasn't like he could see himself working at some hoity-toity New York restaurant, so that kind of cemented the Southern chef thing.
"This wouldn't happen to be Wolverine's infamous six-alarm omelet would it?" asked a smooth, deep voice right next to his ear.
Logan hadn't heard Hank come in, but he didn't react in surprise either, because he had felt the presence just before he'd heard the words. He could still smell the alcohol on Hank's breath as it tickled his ear. God alone knew why the man had such a tempting manner, but Logan knew it worked.
His hand stayed firmly on the spatula he was using. "Yes indeed." He looked at Hank daringly. "You up for the challenge?"
Hank loved it when Logan cooked. The ease with which he maneuvered himself around the food was sexy, though he'd appreciated it before that deviant little S-word had ever crossed his mind. At the moment though, ingesting any of the offered pungent fare sounded like it would be the end to his intestinal lining. He laughed softly. "I am going to have to decline this time my friend."
Logan leaned in close to him. "Don't think it'll mix well with all that alcohol still sloshing around?"
The brown bristles on Logan's chin were nearly touching his and despite the bog-like state of his mind, he wanted to close the distance between them, reach out with his mouth and kiss Logan like he had last night, a confrontation of lips, teeth, and tongues. "I..." he started to say something defensive but stopped. His libido was talking to him, telling him that the scent of coffee on Logan's breath would taste heavenly and that the kitchen wasn't an indiscrete place for such dalliances.
Logan could see how he flustered his friend with just his closeness. Damn, Hank was so good for his ego. He wanted to reward that behavior with a kiss, but they hadn't yet been so forward in public, not even the Barracuda though he knew that many of the barflies there already suspected the two of inappropriate behavior. He threw a glance behind Hank's head to the doorway where he'd entered, just to check if the coast was clear. His heart lurched a bit when he saw there were indeed people there. Damn, there went that plan.
He pulled his face back from Hank's, but slowly so as not to appear guilty. Once he was facing the skillet again, he called out, "Hey there Chuck."
Hank spun as though caught in some terrible act of treachery. Professor Charles Xavier, co-founder of the School for the Gifted, and Ororo, his former beloved, were in the doorway to the kitchen looking at the two of them standing side by side at the stove.
He quickly backed away from Logan and greeted them. "Good day Ororo, Charles." He was totally flummoxed.
He was so preoccupied with their intrusion that he didn't notice that Logan had begun to laugh. 'Such a tight ass,' he thought to himself as he stirred the frying peppers and Hank walked over to Storm and Chuck. There was no doubt that Stormy would be able to figure out what was going on just from how over the top Hank was acting, trying to be cool. He turned a bit and called out to them. "Either of you brave enough?"
Professor Xavier rolled closer to the stove and Logan pulled the nearly ready eggs off the stove, tilting the pan a bit for easier viewing from his wheelchair. Xavier raised an eyebrow. "Six-alarm eggs?"
Logan smiled. "A-yup. Whaddya say?"
Ororo had not stopped staring at Hank. Something in her brain had snapped. It was true then. Just before they had come in, Hank and Logan had been about to kiss, there in the kitchen. Yes she had seen the flirting all along, but she had never actually thought that they... that her Hank could be...
A stick hit the window on the wall opposite the kitchen's entrance. The clack caught their attention and the three men observed the fierce winds that had started blowing outside. Ororo was too busy trying to calm her insides. She knew the tumultuous thoughts circling her brain had stirred up the wind outside. She was too old, too accomplished to be at the whim of her feelings like that. She reminded herself of these things until the wind died down and she had pushed her extreme displeasure to the back of her mind.
Once she had gathered her cool again, she noticed with dismay that the men were looking at her. She feigned a smile and raised a hand to rub her forehead. "Sorry, headache." It was true in that she did have a headache, but it hadn't caused the weather aberration and they all probably knew it. She was too proud to admit how upset this situation made her.
It was Logan's look that pushed her to take her leave. Charles and Hank were gentlemanly enough to overlook the fabrication. Logan who didn't know the meaning of the word gentleman, wore on his face a visual expression of "Yeah, fucking right." She could almost hear the words being said in the little smirk of his lips. So, she placed a hand on Charles' shoulder and said calmly, "I think I might just lay down for a bit."
"You do that Ororo. A bit of rest does wonders for the body."
She smiled at him and Hank, not bothering to do the same with Logan, and then left the room.
Logan didn't want to drag out the moment, already feeling that it had gone on too long. "So Chuck, you gonna give it a try? Fuzzy here is too much of a small girl to try it."
Professor Xavier smiled. He wasn't big on the spicy food. There had been many a time that he was talked into trying something with more zest than he could handle by Erik, commonly known to the mansion occupants as Magneto. But then, that man had a talent for getting him to do things he wouldn't normally. He raised a hand at the offer. "I'm afraid that my old stomach wouldn't handle it well. Perhaps someday though Logan. As you'll recall, I did sample some of your jambalaya over the summer."
Logan nodded. He had been impressed by the way Charles ate a few bites and then resisted reaching for his water glass, though the bead of sweat on the bald forehead had told Logan all the needed to know about the meal's spiciness. It had been a manly contest, much like his pool game with the Beast. "And you said that you hadn't tasted better," he reminded.
Charles nodded. "Indeed. Now, I came in for a cup of tea, so if you wouldn't mind..."
"I'll get the kettle on for you," offered Hank who suddenly snapped out of his shocked staring, as if he could still see the form of Ororo in the doorway. He passed by Logan's body, allowing quite a good deal more distance than he usually did, and fetched the tea kettle.
"That is very kind of you," said Charles. He rolled to the window behind the end of one of the two large dining tables. It was a bit nippy for the window to be open, but the curtains were open and he looked at the grounds while the kettle warmed the water.
Back at the stove, Hank set about pulling the Professor's Earl Grey from the cupboard. "That was quite... shocking," he whispered to Logan.
Logan looked at his large blue friend. The way he saw it, Hank had four sides. One was the side that he couldn't stand. The boring Hank liked to talk about medicine and science. He was overly nitpicky, well-read, and well, dull. Then there was the Hank at the Barracuda, which Logan felt was the truest to the man's true nature. At the bar, he was interchangeably moody and boisterous. He bragged a lot about his game and made the others laugh with his humor which could run so high brow that it soared over everyone's heads or low enough that only the really immature would laugh. There was the side of Hank that he was just beginning to explore, the sensual and affection side. That particular part not only intrigued Logan, but made him feel as he only ever had with a woman. When Hank felt like cuddling, it warmed him and when he bit Logan's lip or scratched down his shoulders, it made him go crazy.
The side of Hank that was bothering the shit out of him right now was this Hank, the submissive, groveling one that felt that he was just lucky to have dated that "goddess" as he had called Ororo. Logan certainly didn't see Stormy that way and he hated the way she affected his friend. In his opinion, it had been Storm that had been lucky to have Hank and not the other way around. For some reason, just seeing Hank practically a gibbering idiot that he might have upset Ororo made him want to claw something.
"Chuck never wants my omelets."
Hank shook his head. "Not that."
Of course it hadn't been that and in any other state of mind, Hank would have seen through Logan's words, but he was too busy thinking about Stormy.
"The way that Ororo just reacted. I think she thought that she saw..." He didn't finish, couldn't verbalize in a room that had Professor Xavier in it what it was that Ororo had thought she saw. She would have been right anyway. Hank could tell that Logan was going to kiss him, was growing accustomed to when those sweet moments would happen. What must be going through her head just then to have caused a wind storm? She was normally so in control of her powers.
Logan tried his best to ignore the confused stream of consciousness coming from Hank. He slathered his now cooked omelet with Tabasco sauce and grabbed a fork. With a look to see if Hank was noticing his disinterest (he wasn't), Logan took a seat at the table near where Charles was sitting.
Hank rolled the tea cup around and around in his head as he contemplated. The kettle's lusty squeal captured his attention and he put the little tea ball into the tea pot and then poured the boiling water. He grabbed the tea cup, which now had a few stray indigo hairs, and the pot and took it over to Professor Xavier.
Charles was already turned around so that he could chat with Logan. "Thank you very much Hank." He dipped the tea ball several times as he continued the conversation. "So with the holidays swiftly approaching, I felt that it would be a good time for me to take a little... break as well."
Logan's ensuing nod was strictly out of politeness. He was too busy watching as Hank took a seat next to Chuck and then proceeded to mentally check out. If it irked him anymore, he was worried his claws might come out.
Well, that's Chapter 3. The story will finally earn an M rating next chapter. 20k words just to get to the sex scene. *laughs* Well, I wanted the pair to be as in character as possible. Have I been doing okay? Personal opinion: Logan is fucking straight. I mean, that's why I picked him and even with as hard as I've worked, *I* still don't believe that he'd hook up with Beast. Whatever.