Author's note: Sorry for the late posting again. My interwebs have been down. There was some kind of accident that involved a major fiber line being severed nearby and it's caused all sorts of problems. Local business were losing their minds that they had no way of running credit cards a week before Christmas. lol My thoughts: Screw putting a venti latte on your Visa. I have fic to post! :)
Logan finally let Marie find him on the dock, two nights later. She was not silent in her approach through the trees. He could have melted away into the darkness if he'd chosen to do so, but he wanted the secrets she owed him more than he wanted to avoid a difficult conversation by seeking the solitary solace of the woods.
She took her sweet time and he didn't blame her. No moon tonight. It was pitch black, the bright celestial bodies above shrouded by thick clouds. It was late. The low chorus of frogs and crickets had faded. He had a bottle of cheap bourbon between his knees and a cigar in his teeth, neither of which did a damn thing to take the edge off, but they were old, familiar vices. There was a little comfort in that, at least.
The warm night wind brought Marie's scent to him clearly. She smelled of smoke and booze and he wondered if she'd been out at a bar tonight or if she'd just needed a shot or two and a cigarette to steady her nerves before coming to talk to him. She'd never needed to do that before. Then again, she'd never watched him fuck a woman at his invitation before, either.
"Hey," she greeted softly, sitting beside him on the dock.
"Hey," he returned, sliding the bottle over her way until it bumped her leg. Marie shook her head and he reclaimed the bottle, taking a long pull before settling it back between his thighs. "Suit yourself."
The darkness fit his mood. He could see her quite clearly with his enhanced senses, but he knew he'd be little more than a shadow to her, even at this distance. Knowing he could read her while remaining virtually invisible to her felt good. He was struggling with how much of his private self he'd revealed to her the other night, and he welcomed the chance to keep his cards close to the chest tonight. Now it was her turn to pay up. Her turn to be vulnerable.
She owed him.
"You okay, kid?"
He heard her snort softly. "Sure. Why wouldn't I be?"
The tip of his cigar glowed red as he inhaled. It wasn't in him to tiptoe around anything. "Maybe 'cause you ran like a scalded dog the other night? Ain't seen ya in two days."
"Pffff." She shrugged. "I've been around."
Fair point. He'd been the one making himself scarce. He still wasn't ready for this conversation. He wanted answers, but he wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep from pushing for more than she was ready to give. He wanted things to change, but he knew it needed to come from her. She had to be the one to initiate a more intimate sexual connection and her reluctance to do so — or to even bring it up directly was a huge red flag.
That she couldn't even discuss exploring those boundaries made him acutely uncomfortable. He knew addressing it directly would send her running. He could just imagine how well that would go over. Hey, kid. You wanna ditch the third wheel next time and just see what happens? He knew exactly what she'd do. Hit him. Hard. And if she ever talked to him again, things would never be the same. It wouldn't work unless she was ready. He clenched his teeth.
"Mmph."
"You're right," she said, suddenly. "I bailed at the end." She sounded almost… wistful. He was glad she hadn't stayed. Not only were those moments directly after orgasm the most difficult for him to let her see, he hadn't wanted her there for round two.
"Yeah." He mentally berated himself for not being able to be what she needed.
"It— it got a little intense there at the end."
"Sorry." Another long pull from the bottle. Another puff from the cigar before he could get the words out. "I tried."
"Tried?"
"Tender." He all but spat the word. "I tried. Even for you, I couldn't—" He stopped then, thankful for the blackness shrouding him, hiding the heat in his face. And the regret.
"It was fine," she talked over him.
"Right." Even he knew that when a woman said fine, she most definitely meant something else. Like when a man said right.
Something in his tone amused her and she huffed a little in a warm sort of way. "What do you want me to say, sugar? You lookin' for me to hold up a scorecard with marks out of ten?"
That drew a chuckle out of him. While it had definitely been an intimate and revealing experience, it hadn't even been close to what she had asked for. "Nah." He wasn't sure how to articulate what he wanted from her. He wasn't sure he knew himself. He struggled for a while and finally gave up. "Sorry it wasn't what you wanted."
She flinched beside him. "What makes you think that? That's not really your call to make, you know?"
"You left," he said pointedly.
"So?"
"So, if it was whatcha wanted, you woulda—"
"I would have what? Shouted encouragement? Touched myself? Stuck around for the 'pillow talk'? Shared an afterglow beer with y'all at the bar?" She rolled her eyes. "High-fiving each other and doing shots while we ran a post-game analysis?"
Logan's lips thinned into a line at her acerbic response, his mood souring even further. He'd dropped his guard and let her see far more than he was comfortable revealing and she was still defensive. And still not keeping her end of the deal. There was no way he was going to let that go. He'd known from the beginning that he was going to have issues with pushing too hard. "So what did you do after?"
"Went home and took out my knitting," she snapped. "Come on, Logan. What do you think I did?"
"Mmph," he grunted, because fuck her. They had a deal. It didn't quite seem fair that she'd watched him have an orgasm and was still refusing to even talk to him about herself. That just wasn't right.
He could tell she knew it, too and so he tamped down hard on his growing ire. Instead of pressing for more, he waited impatiently for her to fill the silence. He knew she would, eventually. She was too proud not to pay her debts. He was less interested in what she'd done than in what she thought and felt about what she'd seen — and what that might mean for the future, but he knew she needed to go at her own pace.
The night flowed around them.
"Tender," she finally said.
"Huh?"
"I shouldn't have asked for that. Sorry."
"S'fine," he returned, grimacing. When men said fine, they clearly meant something else, too. "Nothin' like your first time, huh?"
Her silvery laughter was more introspective than self-deprecating. "Definitely not even in the ballpark." Logan wondered if she'd been trying to relive something or rewrite it. Both of those things were easier than the idea that she might have been trying to imagine how it might have been between the two of them.
"Wilder?" he ventured, feeling pretty shitty about not being able to give her what she'd asked for.
She shook her head. "Longer," she teased, her face warm and open. Not a bad memory then, thank Christ, though her tone seem to imply she wished her first time had lasted longer than it did. "I don't think we even made it to the five minute mark."
"Heh. Anyone I know?"
"Yes."
She didn't elaborate. He didn't ask. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. Not really. Picturing her with some fumbling teenage dumbass made him feel uncomfortable, like some dirty old man. Her first time. Jesus. He tried to be objective. He knew it was a normal part of growing up and he'd wanted that milestone for her, but he wasn't really interested in the details. As long as it had been okay for her and there wasn't some asshole out there who needed a beating, he was good.
"Hmph." Because really, what could he say to that? His mind couldn't help wondering though. Had she given it up to the iceprick before he dumped her? Who else could it have been? Pyro? She wouldn't be the first girl to get back at a guy by fucking his best friend. Pete? He hoped not. A wholly selfish thought. He genuinely liked the big, quiet Russian, but the thought of someone built like that tearing into Marie's petite little body made him want to hit something. Hard. The tin man had a heart like a nine pound hammer, and logic dictated the rest of him was built to match.
"Gawd. I can just about hear that hamster wheel spinnin' in your head from here, sugar." He said nothing, but he took a long pull from the bottle between his legs. "Relax, cowboy. I didn't want it to suck so I picked someone older."
Logan thought his head might explode. That didn't leave very many options. Kurt, maybe, before he lit out? They had been pretty tight after Alkali Lake. Chuck? He supposed it was a possibility that with as much of Mags as she had in her head that she might look at the Professor and see something much different than the rest of them did, but he didn't think Charles could unbend enough to ever— Logan suddenly frowned as another thought occurred to him. An equally unpleasant one followed on its heels. Hank? Scott? No fucking way. Surely it had to have been someone else. A guest, maybe. They had lots of visitors. His mind came back to Pete. He was a few years older than she was…
"Fuck."
Marie smiled, clearly pleased with herself. "Yeah."
"Now you're just fuckin' with me."
She just shrugged noncommittally.
"Fuck," he muttered again. The tip of his cigar glowed brightly in the darkness, illuminating his face for a brief moment. "If he knew what he was doin', then it shoulda lasted longer than five damn minutes."
"First, who says it was a man?"
Logan grunted in surprise.
"Second, it was pretty intense. I didn't think it would be like that. So much inside and outside." He understood she meant more than just the physical. "I couldn't help it. I came really fast. Seeing that, feeling that — made him come too."
That he could understand all too well.
"So it was a man."
It was the safer ground by far. He couldn't even bring himself to comment on the rest of what she'd revealed. Just having her in the room was enough to blow his mind and trash his control. The thought of feeling her lose it like that made his hands shake and he was glad the darkness hid that response from her.
"Maybe." Maybe, hell. It was a man. He could tell by how she'd described it more than the pronoun she'd used. Even if she hadn't been very graphic, he could easily imagine what had happened. She'd picked someone older, maybe someone who was a friend, and when that man had seen and felt her uninhibited carnal response, the decision about when and how to come had been taken right out of his hands. "Does it matter?"
"No." Instead of that prurient imagine making him hot, it just made him feel sad. How the hell had she gone from someone open enough to so candidly enjoy herself and her partner during sex to someone who was utterly terrified of any physical contact at all? There was certainly more to that story than the glimpse he'd gotten tonight. It made him want to shake her. He was not a patient man.
She was silent a while, eyebrows drawn together, thinking. "Do you remember your first time?"
"Nah." He'd lost that along with everything else.
"I don't mean your first time, first time. I mean after…" She raised her fist in a gesture he read to mean post-Stryker.
"Yeah," He succeeded in keeping the bitterness from his voice, but not without considerable effort. "That wasn't tender either." He tried to lighten the mood.
"Sorry. That wasn't really fair of me." She sighed. "I wasn't thinkin'. You don't go to a steakhouse and order Chinese, you know?"
He looked over her sharply.
"It's not that I don't think you could be that way with someone if— if you wanted." She tripped over her words. "Just that it wasn't the right venue."
Or the right partner. She didn't say it but it was clearly implied.
Logan absorbed that revelation and responded before he could censor himself. "Why that, then? Of everythin' you coulda asked me for, why that?"
She held her hand out for the bottle and he passed it over wordlessly, but she just wrapped her fingers around the neck without taking a drink. An anchor, he realized. He was pushing into places she didn't want him to go. Well, too bad. He'd been plenty uncomfortable, too. Now it was her turn.
"Like a first time— it just seemed like a good place to begin, sugar."
It didn't smell like a lie. It was a reasonable answer. It might have even been the truth, but it sure as hell wasn't the whole truth. It was also a clear indication of her desire to repeat the experience. A beginning implied other encounters would follow. A hot spike of carnal anticipation sang in his blood at that realization. It was less than he'd hoped for, but far better than nothing.
"Fair enough." He understood why she'd wanted the bottle. He felt less settled without something in his hands. He wrapped them over the edge of the dock instead, staring out at the water. "Was it whatcha thought it'd be?"
"More," she breathed.
Her thumb circled the lip of the bottle and he didn't miss how her gaze had come to rest on his hands. Her thighs clenched together. She was thinking about what she'd seen. Maybe even thinking about touching him. Her thumb was rubbing the bottle the same way and with the same rhythm that he'd touched himself.
If she'd been any other woman, he would have pulled her close. Put his mouth on her neck and his hands on her ass. She'd have been straddling his lap and panting against his skin; a hot sweaty ride right there on the dock.
But Marie wasn't just any woman. He knew how to piss her off. How to make her laugh. How to make her blush… but he didn't know jackshit about what to do or say with her now. He knew Marie was the one who needed to drive this train, although he wasn't above feeding the engine. He had a naturally dominant personality. Letting someone else lead was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. For as much as it was necessary, it chafed. He couldn't change that, even for her.
Logan took the bottle back, savoring another sip as he tried to order his chaotic thoughts. Marie was a passionate, sensual creature who was desperately afraid of being touched. And yet, she trusted him. Without the pressure of making it all about her, he — mistakenly, arrogantly — thought he could provide a sexual experience that wasn't physical, or at least one that didn't require her to touch and be touched. He'd thought he could give her a sexual outlet where she felt safe.
Fat lot of good that had done.
Instead, he'd fucked it all up and sent her running into the night. He hated failing at anything, and especially hated failing with her.
And now that she was sitting next to him, he could admit to himself that he'd been hoping to use his ability to give her that outlet to forge an intimate relationship with her that didn't actually center on touch; a deepening of the strange bond they shared.
Which meant a few things: One— an acknowledgement that they had a connection he cared about maintaining. Two— that connection, while important, wasn't adequately meeting either of their needs anymore. Three— he wanted things to change enough to include a sexual element beyond innuendo and whatever dirty echoes of him might still be lingering in her head. And four— he was obviously willing to risk fucking things up permanently for a shot at number three.
More to the point, he realized that it was much harder for him to do than he thought it would be, and clearly, she was having an equally difficult time giving up even the smallest pieces of herself in return. But as awkward and painful as it was, it was equally clear they both wanted to try again.
What the hell did that even mean?
Would they even get to a place where they could talk openly?
Were they just gluttons for punishment? Or was it something else?
Logan knew what he was getting out of it, but he wasn't really sure what was driving Marie. Was it just that she felt safe enough with him there to meet some kind of unaddressed sexual need? Or was she interested in watching him specifically? Were those two things even mutually exclusive? He just didn't know.
He liked that she'd wanted to be there. He liked the secrets she'd given up to him tonight, too. For now, that was enough.
Logan took a deep drink, breathing through the burn. It wasn't good bourbon. It didn't go down smoothly and if you swallowed a big enough slug it produced a mule-kick reaction — a slight shudder he couldn't quite suppress.
"Gimme."
He passed the bottle back without comment.
This time, she took a healthy swallow and then she set the bottle between them on the dock. Whatever she'd been about to say was subverted by a wet cough.
"Damn," she sputtered. "That's bad. Old Crow?" she guessed.
He shook his head even though he knew she couldn't see him. She wasn't wrong. It was like drinking sweetened kerosene. It got the job done, though. "Nah. Rebel Yell. S'the battery acid finish that gives it away."
"That name's a travesty, sugar. Besides, if you want a rebel yell that really leaves you feeling like hammered shit in the morning, there's easier ways to get that job done." Her eyes sparkled.
Logan chuckled in spite of his mood. He'd always perversely enjoyed the sharper side of her tongue. She was the most fun when she was prickly as all hell.
"Yeah, well, this kind I'll heal from."
Goddamn her if she didn't smile — smile— at that. Bloodthirsty little thing. She liked getting under his skin. A point of pride with her, obviously.
Christ, she had no idea.
The silence fell again between them. He didn't fill it and didn't expect she would either. For a while he'd thought maybe she'd been bracing herself to say something to him — she'd seemed to be gathering herself, but then she'd chosen levity over whatever it was she'd needed a shot of liquid courage to say.
She shifted, chin raised defiantly.
"It was my car."
"Huh?"
"My car," she repeated, like she was waiting for him to make some intuitive leap. It was one of her more annoying traits. Her mind was unique. She had a collective, plural memory. It gave her an edge and often the upper hand, tactically speaking, but she was not a linear thinker. He wasn't either. He tended to just go with his gut. The difference was that sometimes, especially if she'd been drinking, she expected him to just follow her lateral cognitive jumps and she had a tendency to be annoyed when something that was obvious to her was not immediately obvious to him.
"What about it, darlin'?"
"It's where I went, when I ran the other night."
"I figured." She seemed surprised by his response. "You seemed pretty eager to get goin'. I figured ya just lit outta there like your hair was on fire." Wanting to be as far away from him as she could get. He wasn't going to apologize again, dammit.
"That's not what I did."
It was her tone and not her words that caught his attention.
"Yeah?"
"Yep," Her lips smacked on the 'p'. "Sugar, you think I could watch that and just ride around after like nothing happened? I ran to my car and locked the doors so I could shove my hand down my pants."
His mouth hung open.
"One hand yanking open my zipper and the other in my teeth. I was fixin' to bite off my glove but then I felt the leather on my tongue. Rough," she added needlessly. "That's what I wanted. Needed." Her quick, breathless words conveyed the immediacy of her need with a clarity that made him rock hard in seconds.
"Goddamn," he muttered.
The Rogue didn't look at him as she pushed herself to her feet. "I left the gloves on and just went for it. Thank fuck for tinted windows. It was a new personal record for me. Three times in under five minutes. I soaked the leather and it still left me raw."
He couldn't stop the growl snarling out of his throat.
She seemed to enjoy his visceral reaction to her intimate confession.
He wanted to order her to wear those same gloves next time, but he couldn't make the words rise to the surface. The animal was too close. The images she'd painted were too vivid; that little hand in her pants and the rough rasp of wet leather sliding between her legs. The knowledge that her reaction to what she'd seen was so powerful that it overrode caution and reason just about ended him. She hadn't wanted the smooth slick glide of skin on skin, she'd needed more. Something intense to buck and grind against and—
"Do you remember the torch?"
Her question barely registered. He grunted in response. Even if he'd been capable of speaking at that moment, his memories of that night were a complex tangle of emotions that defied explanation.
"You touched my face." Her expression said she was back in the past, reliving that moment. "For a little bit, before I was all the way back, that's all I felt. It was gentle." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "And your skin felt kinda rough on my face. Strong. Solid and good. It was so tender."
The revelation rocked him back. She carried on, seemingly unaware.
"Sometimes I think that's what made me want to come back from that other place."
She didn't wait for his reaction or a reply. Maybe she felt like he had the other night— that all of a sudden, it was too much too fast. She melted away into the shadows, leaving him reeling.
She'd chosen to leave her gloves on because she'd been imagining him touching her directly.
More shocking still, was the idea that she'd chosen to come back because of him. Not because of his gift, but because something in him called to something in her, something so strong she could feel it even in that other place.
Tender.
He understood, now.
It also explained why what happened had scared the shit out of them both.
And why it was infinitely easier for them both to be alone in the dark.
Up next: Blister. The Wolverine wants more answers. He's aware there will be a steep price to pay, but what he doesn't expect is for the Rogue to change the game...