Chapter 5

"This is nothing like babysitting my sister, by the way."

"You're welcome to quit and start takin' my class seriously."

"What, and do what she's doing?"

"If I go by how often I see you working out, I don't think you could do that to save your life."

Sunny and Logan both looked towards the corner of the gym, past the students who were taking advantage of a finger lock drill to spend ten times longer to get up than they did taking each other down. Near the window, Marie was pummeling the heavy bag with a determination that happened to look a lot like anger.

She was looking nowhere near them, but just the fact of her presence felt like a book teetering on top of Logan's head. He still couldn't believe she'd showed up. But something had shifted after last night. In the morning, he'd noticed her scanning the cafeteria as soon as he walked in, a small smile budding when she found his face. When Ro said something about grilling for dinner while it was still warm, Marie leaned in to listen, clearly hoping he'd agree. He did. And then she turned up with Harry in tow just as his class started, looking around like she wasn't quite sure this was the right place.

Now she looked like she owned the joint, bare feet hitting the bag like a metronome. The loose-flowing shirt she'd been wearing was tossed aside nearby, and all that was left was the tight hug of her sports bra and a pair of yoga pants that made him seriously consider taking up yoga.

Sunny grimaced. "Ew. I'm tired just watching her. Why does this school need a class like this anyway? Doesn't everyone here have powers?"

"Not everybody's got powers that help with fighting. Marcus don't," he said, motioning to the mat where Marcus, now only half green, was currently in the process of taking Jimmy to his knees. "If anything, it just makes him a target."

"I guess. Not my case, though."

His ears perked up, but Logan let it go. Sunny held her cards pretty close to the vest when it came to her powers. Pointing out that she'd slipped would only make her more vigilant.

She squinted towards the weight machines Harry had disappeared behind. "I'm pretty sure this deal you came up with violates some kind of child labor law, by the way."

"Are you a child?"

"You know who's definitely not a child?" she quipped, turning to Logan. "The hamster you have me looking after."

He chuckled. "I told ya, you gotta tell him not to turn."

"Oh! Really? Why didn't I think of that?" She rolled her eyes. "You ever try telling Harry not to do something? He blinks at you with those big eyes and nods, all business, and you think, this is great, he totally gets it, this is all gonna work out. Then thirty seconds later, bam!" She snapped her fingers. "Rhino alert in the east wing hallway."

Logan rolled his eyes. "Well, kid turns into a rhino, you know where to find me. If it's just a hamster, though, you can stay out of my gym. Both of you."

"Um, hello? Did you miss the part where he doesn't listen to what I say?"

"Who said he needs to listen?" Logan asked, unconcerned. "Kid's four feet tall, how hard can it be to get him out of here?"

She cocked her head. "Why do I feel like you've never taken care of a child before?"

He cocked his. "Taking care of one right now."

Sunny rolled her eyes and shook her head. "No wonder she's always mad at you."

They both looked to see Marie's brown hair, which for a while now had been threatening to come undone from its bun, tumble down to dance between her shoulders. She twisted it back and kept going, never breaking stride.

Sunny leaned against the wall, clearly under the impression that this conversation wasn't over. "So is this your big move now? You start training her so you can spend time together? Like some bad rom com ruse?"

"Alright, first of all, I ain't training her," he said, counting one on a finger and stabbing it in her general direction. "Second of all…"

He had no intention to be honest, but there was no second of all. It was a ruse, wasn't it? He might not be training her, but that didn't mean he wasn't hoping to. Offering his services to Warren, inviting Marie to join him on the field — what the fuck was the point of that, if not to get her to look at him the way she used to? Logan had never much liked his own reflection, except for when he saw it in her eyes.

The bag swayed out of tempo, catching his eye. Marie was finally stepping back for a break. He pushed off the wall, turning away from Sunny. "Second of all, keep your rhino out of my goddamn gym."

"Hey," she called behind him, "this is probably not what you want to hear right now, but real talk? I have no idea where Harry went."

All the way across the room, Marie looked up at them.

"Fuck me," he mumbled under his breath, rubbing his face.

True to form, she didn't miss a beat. "If you ask nicely, I kind of think she might?"

Logan ignored her with a huff, and set out to meander across the mat. He told this student to get up off his lazy ass and that one to sit down unless the green hue on her face was a secondary mutation. Marie was looking at him when he came near her, carefully brushing the sweat-damp hair off her neck to redo her bun. Tiny rivulets of sweat changed course when she raised her arms, racing down from her elbows to her shoulders, clinging to the curves of her collarbone to finally pool between her breasts.

He really ought to stop looking there.

"Did I hear something about not knowing where Harry is?"

"He's fine." The boy might have been a rhino, but the two were not mutually exclusive. "Sunny's got him."

Marie squinted, forehead creasing. "Are you sure she has experience babysitting?"

The itch to point out the obvious usually got him into trouble, but Logan never could resist it. "Look, I'm not trying to be a dick, but did you?"

She set her hands on her hips, the ropes of muscle under her shoulders popping into relief as all those tiny rivulets turned around again. "It's different. I'm not seventeen."

"Pretty sure she's eighteen."

"Hah." Eyebrow up. "I remember when that seemed to matter."

Logan's heart rattled in his chest. That connection between them, stretched so taut that it had almost snapped, was finally slack enough that he could feel his way around, tasting the different flavors of her annoyance and finding some room to move. That didn't mean he was about to move into a minefield.

"Look, even if she's seventeen, the kid is six. She'd be old enough if she was seven. 'Sides, this is good for her."

Marie gave an amused smile. "Performing free labor is good for her?"

"Being responsible for something is good for her."

"Mm. And have you figured out what her deal is?"

"Her powers? Not yet. But she wanted the cure, so I'm guessing nothing good."

She crossed her arms. "Sounds like a job for the patron saint of runaway teenage girls…"

So he avoided the landmines, and here she was tossing grenades. It figured.

Logan's forehead got heavy over his eyes. "Am I supposed to be flattered?"

Her posture softened, but she tightened the grip on her arms. "I just meant, you get protective. You'll take care of her."

"If you think I offer that to just anybody," he said, angling slightly away from her to look at the weight section, where Sunny was looking behind and under the heavy machines, "then you understand even less than I thought."

Marie's lips parted, but made no sound. She turned to see where he was looking, arms going down to her sides.

Truth was, Sunny and Marie had less in common than they seemed to. Everyone else thought Marie's parents had kicked her out when she manifested. Everyone else hadn't asked. He knew since their first day in the mansion, when he checked in with her between classes, that it had been her decision to leave. She got a friend to drive her to the Greyhound stop in Jackson, with bills from daddy's emergency stash folded up in her shoes and in the pockets of her little green riding hood. Logan was the one to squeeze her shoulder and put his phone in her hand to call them for the first time in the four weeks she'd been gone. There were sounds in this world only a mother could make, and he'd heard one of them that day, even over the shitty connection and Marie's sobs. Trust for her had still been a reflex. For him, it'd been the only currency that could buy Logan's best self.

"'Sides," he added, "if I offered to take care of that one, she'd laugh in my face."

"She seems… guarded."

"She's a pain in the ass, is what she is," he said lightly, pushing a hand through his hair. "But I got a feeling she can take care of herself. What I want her to learn is that she's got something to give to another person, too. Something she can offer."

Marie smiled. "Hence the babysitting?"

He shrugged. "It does something to you, taking care of someone."

Sunny continued to mill about, looking behind and under the exercise machines. Logan's students had given up on waiting for his command and had started to get down on the mat for stretches, or drift to the edge of the mat for big gulps of water from their water bottles.

"It's funny," Marie said next to him. "I didn't even realize that was what I was looking for. When I came here, I mean."

"Looking for what?" He spun towards her. "A job?"

"Oh, I had a job. What I didn't have was—"

"Miss Rogue!"

A sunrise of a smile dawned on her face, changing the whole landscape. Even back when it was him that she was known to beam at, it was different. That was always a light somewhere outside of her. Now she seemed to glow from within.

Harry crashed into her, reaching around her thighs for a hug. "Sunny has a sister! Can we please have ice cream?"

"Whoa, careful there, buddy. Got a lot of exposed skin right now." She worked to gently disentangle him and patted his head. "Maybe for dessert, sugar." Turning her back, she bent down for her discarded shirt. "So what's her sister's name?"

But Harry didn't answer. He was staring at the bare skin of her back with the slack-jawed look of a kid who finds the cookie jar unguarded.

Busy turning her shirt inside out, Marie paid him no mind. "Your mom's taking you to din— Harry!"

She snapped up like a jack-in-the-box and he tumbled back in a fit of giggles. Marie pulled the shirt over her head and turned to him with lightning in her eyes.

"Harry, we have talked about this!"

The boy grinned. "It didn't hurt! Let's do it again!"

The angry flush on her face drained to nothing. There he was with his heart all wrapped with a bow for her, and she had to mark it Return to Sender. Marie sighed. "Harry…"

So Logan made up his mind to step in. In a flash he crouched down and swung an arm around the kid's waist, hoisting him onto his shoulder and wringing out a squeal of joy in the process.

"Let me ask you somethin', buddy," he asked, dodging the little arms that snaked around his torso while Marie laughed at them both. "Didn't the lady tell you not to touch her skin?"

"But it didn't hurt me! She said I could get hurt!"

"Don't matter none," he said. "You think it's right to touch a person who doesn't want to be touched?"

Marie's face was tilted down, but under thick eyelashes she peered at him.

"I know, but it didn't hurt!"

"But Ms. Rogue's got her reasons. So you gotta check with her, you understand? Gotta let her decide too, it can't just be you." When Harry nodded, Logan ruffled his hair. "Alright, then. Now if I let you down, you gonna try to touch Ms. Rogue again without her saying you can?"

Brown curls swayed side to side, hanging loose.

"Alright. Down you go, then." He slipped the child off his shoulder and wrapped one hand around both his ankles, hanging him upside down. The lower he got, the harder Harry laughed, and by the time his short hair began to barely graze the floor, the kid wriggled like live bait. "There," Logan said. "You're down."

"Mr. Logan! I'm upside down!"

"You are?" Logan scrunched his nose and cocked his head. "You sure?"

More laughter. "Yes!"

"Huh," Logan huffed. "I don't know, kid. Looks right to me."

"No! My feet go on the ground!"

Marie's laughter rang around them, spring thaw to his heart's long winter.

"How about this: I put your feet on the ground and then you run over to Sunny and tell her you want to hang out with her again tomorrow. Sound good?"

It did. Harry squirmed his way down, sprinting off as soon as his feet touched the ground with arms flapping in the air like a tube man.

Next to Logan, Marie chuckled. "Thank you."

They both looked on. Sunny was turning around now from the other side of the room, a grin on her face as Harry ran to her singing, "Black cherry ice cream! Black cherry ice cream!"

"Anytime, kid."

"For everything." She squared her hips to his. Her eyes were wide with sincerity. "This was really helpful. I hadn't really managed more than five minutes without any interruption in a while." A smirk. "Well… not counting that one time when Harry almost burned the kitchen down. But that wasn't exactly a rousing success."

"Remind me to ask you what happened there some time."

She cocked her head. "I'm not sure I'd know the answer?"

Their eyes locked when they laughed, buoying the jagged pieces of their past so that they shifted closer to fitting together. They were still looking at each other when the tide of laughter washed away, leaving bare the rocky terrain underneath. He tried to think of what to say next, or how to keep her eyes on him. But Marie looked towards Harry, who was now tangling himself in Sunny's red hair as he burrowed into a hug.

"They're getting along," she said, voice small.

"She's a nice kid."

Sunny was crouched down in front of Harry now, muttering something that made him giggle while she carefully swept his curls off his face.

"I'm sure." Her lips were pressed into a hollow smile. "And touchable."

He wanted to reach for her hand and show her that she was, too. He didn't. "Is it back yet?"

"Not like it used to be. But in my last test, Hank said there was some initial sign of activity. It's kind of… dialed down? It would take a lot of touching to absorb someone right now, but… it could happen."

"Don't sound like it'd hurt anyone."

"Probably not…" Her voice wavered, but it was just a moment until she shook her head. Her hand went up to tuck her hair behind her ear, and when she found it already tucked into a ponytail she reached back for it, smoothing the length of her hair and then her shirt. "But if I let him get used to that, then what do I do when it does come back? Break his heart?"

Marie walked away with a sigh, still glowing from sweat and youth and love. Logan watched the sway of her hips, thinking to himself sometimes a broken heart was worth it.

Logan slid a cheese-covered burger patty, fresh off the grill, on top of her sliced bun, where it glistened appetizingly.

"Here you go, darlin'."

"Thanks, honey," she said, turning away.

"Wait—" Logan slid another patty onto her plate and mumbled, "Take this one for the kid, will ya?"

She eyed him curiously, but he turned right back to the grill.

That afternoon had been thick and warm, but it was late enough now that a fall evening's coolness was beginning to drift in from the woods. In honor of what might be the last warm-enough night of the season, she had suggested a faculty dinner in the outdoor picnic on the back side of the mansion, about a hundred feet or so from the main building and just one sweeping stretch of grass away from the lake. They had held graduation parties each year on the day before the ceremony — school-sanctioned ones, as opposed to the ones the faculty pretended not to know about on the following night. For the entire day there was grilling and music and the screams of children as they ran across the lawn back and forth between the food and the dock, drops of lake water leaping from their bodies, bright as shooting stars.

As she walked back from the grill to the covered pavilion, Hank's voice grew louder.

"...flagship product now is the cure gas, but even before that, it was sentinels," he was saying. "Their business has always centered on antimutant warfare." His burger, ready first because it was cooked rare, sat in front of him, politely untouched.

"Sentinels?" Rogue asked. "You mean like the ones in the Danger Room?" She was standing with one knee on the bench, frowning at a red onion from which she was cutting an admirably thin slice.

Hank turned to Ororo with a smile, reaching for a handful of chips. "Rogue was asking me why Trask is so invested in blocking the discriminatory weapons bill."

"Hank, you know we didn't mean for you to wait," she scolded, bobbing her head towards his plate. Ororo sat next to Rogue at the long picnic table, comically oversized for their party of four, and slid the burger Logan had sent in front of her. "Here, honey, this is supposed to be yours."

"Mine?" She looked at it curiously. In the light of the pavilion, Ororo could see that Rogue's burger was actually two thin patties stacked together, with cheese in the middle. She reached for it with a small smile, using the knife as a spatula. "I guess that does look like mine. Thanks." She raised her eyes to Hank. "So what's this sentinel business again?"

"An ambitious project from the 1970s," he explained, reaching for the ketchup. "Trask's founder himself spearheaded it, a rather odious man called Bolivar Trask. They produced a prototype during the Nixon administration, on which the Danger Room simulations are based. It was his Icarus moment, and he was murdered soon thereafter. By Mystique, in fact."

The knife clattered on the table. "Mystique?"

He nodded somberly. "She discovered the… less palatable aspects of Trask's research, and chose to take matters into her own hands. Tragically, what resulted was a breath of life into the project's development."

Rogue took a shaky breath. "But they didn't get made, right? We've never seen one for real."

"The eruption of Watergate delayed approvals, because Nixon himself was so closely involved. Under Ford, the contract fell apart."

"That's nuts." She took the ketchup from Hank and began dressing her burger, a pensive expression on her face. "But do you think Trask still cares about it? The company, I mean."

"A few years ago, they obtained a Department of Defense contract to work on sentinel development. Again it failed to go to production, but nobody knows exactly why." Hank finally took a bite of his burger. "Oh, my stars and garters! This is remarkable. Perfectly seasoned!"

"Scott used to be the grillmaster," Rogue said, wrapping her hands around the burger she'd just assembled. "Until we all figured out Logan was way better."

"The man can cook, no doubt about it," Ororo said agreeably. "Between his food and your baking, Rogue, the school could have a culinary subsidiary."

Her reaction to that was subtle but distinctly favorable, with Ororo noticed with pleasure. At breakfast that morning, the energy between Logan and Rogue had been noticeably less hostile than usual, prompting her to suggest this dinner. So far, she had not regretted it.

Hank was laughing. "Logan seems rather unhappy with the concept of Meatless Mondays, so he might look favorably on the proposition."

"Well, if he doesn't want to teach history, maybe he can stay on as head chef?" Rogue joked, through a chuckle. "Although, hopefully he just stays as an X-Man."

Ororo felt a bolt of surprise, and thought of windless, clear skies to keep her face and voice neutral. "Is that what Logan said?"

From the distance came the squeak of the grill's old hinges as Logan closed it.

"No, no, just… I—" Rogue fumbled. "He didn't say that. I'm joking." The sound of Logan's boots chewing gravel drew a furtive look from her, and she smoothed her hair back. "How is the investigation, by the way? The license plate, I mean."

Hank's eyebrows went up almost imperceptibly. Despite years of committed mindfulness practice, Ororo could not reliably prevent her scent from changing. She reached for the bowl of chips, which gave her both time and a reason to avert her eyes.

"Warren must have talked to you about it, didn't he?" she said carefully, self-conscious under Hank's gaze.

"We haven't talked much since yesterday," Rogue replied, oblivious. "I thought he was coming to dinner, but he said he had to duck out early and go back to the city."

Just then Logan reached them, casting an assessing glance around the table as he fished a beer from the cooler. She worried that he, too, would catch the change in her scent, but Logan had bigger problems to worry about. When he took the empty seat across from Rogue, Ororo didn't miss the small glance he darted to her burger, as if checking that she was eating it.

"How'd they turn out?"

Rogue must have caught his look, because she rushed to finish chewing an ambitious bite and mumbled, "Amazing."

"Indeed, my friend," Hank echoed. "I never knew your secondary mutation was a talent for grilling!"

"Makes a mean steak on the cast iron, too," Rogue added. "You didn't have to make me two patties. I know it's more work."

"Ain't nothing to it, kid," he said simply. "You like it thin, I made it thin."

Hank gave Ororo a knowing look. "Fair weather today."

She looked at him just in time to catch the wink that Rogue missed. The good weather was hardly noteworthy after a string of pleasantly sunny days; it was the mood between Logan and Rogue that he was referring too. She smiled, relieved by the change of subject. "Seasons might finally be changing."

"I'm excited for fall," Rogue said. "We've had such a long summer this year. It's not bad up here, but in the city it's hell."

"I have always treasured fall among the seasons," Hank agreed. "And a New England fall is peerless."

Logan nodded, already chewing a bite of his burger. As usual, it consisted of a thick patty, a spiral of ketchup, and nothing else. "Partial to spring, myself," he volunteered. "Not so much in these parts. Comes too easy down here. But in the territories, it was somethin'. How it swept the snow off the ground until the green began to show through."

Rogue smiled. "I remember that."

He looked at her, his eyes dark. "You weren't even that far north. But that year the winter was brutal. I couldn't wait for the seasons to change."

For the first time since Rogue's return, they looked at each other the way Ororo remembered it: with the kind of unwavering focus that blurred the world into a distant background.

Rogue ducked her head, not quite hiding her smile, and muttered, "And change they did."

Logan smirked. "Like I said, I like spring."

Hank's eyes went rapidly between Rogue and Logan, trying to read what had just passed between. His lips were subtly curved, primed for as soon as he was in on the joke. "And what year was that?"

"That was before they came here," Ororo explained. To Logan and Rogue, she added, "I don't think Hank knows the story."

"You two met before she was a student?"

They exchanged a glance.

"Been a while since I've told that one," Rogue said.

Logan shrugged. "You want me to tell it?"

"You don't tell it right," she said, a skeptical angle to her eyebrow.

"You mean I don't tell it how you like it."

"You tend to skip the parts where you sound like a grump."

"Well, you sure like to skip the ones where you sound like a brat."

They stared at each other, in a mock stand-off. Rogue's arms were crossed, but her pout was half smile; Logan smirked and sipped his beer.

"Alright, you two," Ororo cut in, "quit yapping and somebody tell the story."

Rogue took a deep breath and a look of Logan before starting, under his watchful eye. "After I got my..." She trailed off and showed her hands by way of explanation. Hank nodded understandingly, but Logan didn't let it go.

"Powers."

"Mutation," she corrected, "I had to leave home." She rolled her eyes and circled her wrist twice in a gesture of "long story," and Ororo wondered how much of this was going to be pantomimed.

"Kid hopped on the road," Logan clarified.

"Now who's telling this story?"

"So far it's more gesticulatin' than tellin'."

"As I was saying, I left home. And I had always wanted to go to Alaska, so I set my sights there. So I got on the road and went up all the way to Alberta—"

"—she means hitchhiked —"

"—safe and sound —"

"Depends who you ask."

"He's asking me, I'm pretty sure." Across the table, Logan grunted at this. Hank smiled at Ororo, and she smiled in response. Rogue continued, oblivious to her audience. "So, I went all the way to Alberta and somehow ended up in this shithole of a town called Laughlin City, where I walked into the first place that served free water and met a gentleman cage fighter by the name of Wolverine."

"Cage fighter?"

"Means I fought in a cage," Logan intervened again. His expression suggested he thought that had been helpful.

"And by met, I mean I helped."

"And by helped, she means she yelled out and freaked out while I took care of some business."

Hank looked at Ororo, quizzically. She sighed.

"You are both terrible at telling this story. Hank, Logan used to drive from town to town looking for bars hosting organized fighting. Underground, obviously. A man at one bar tried to attack him after suspecting he was a mutant. Rogue saw it and cried out in warning, but of course Logan didn't need warning," she translated.

"Ah!"

"Well, I didn't know that then," Rogue explained, "so I warned him."

"Kid sure tried," Logan admitted before taking another sip of beer.

"Anyway, so then he pins this guy, and then the owner gets a gun out, it's this whole thing..." More gestures and eye rolling. "Then Logan gets up and leaves, all sulky—"

"Hate crimes do sour my mood a tad."

"Not that it often needs souring," Rogue jabbed, turning to Logan for effect and then back to Hank, "So when I needed a ride out, I figured—"

"Why not follow the sulky guy who just cut a rifle in half with metal fucking claws and hide in his trailer? What a great idea." Logan's tone hinted quite strongly that he did not think that had been a great idea.

Hank was fascinated. "She hid in your trailer?"

He nodded.

"He heard me, though, knocking about in there, so he pulled over to kick me out."

"Oh, so now I kicked you out?" Logan quipped, pointing his beer at her.

"Of course you kicked me out."

"You kicked her out?"

He was laughing by now. "This river rat snuck into my trailer!"

"I needed a ride!"

Ororo was snickering by now. "Logan made her get out of the trailer and left her there," she explained, clearly the official interpreter for this performance, "but only for a minute."

Hank laughed heartily. "Is that the part Logan tends to skip?"

Rogue snorted. "Yeah, he likes to forget that ever since we met he's been trying to leave me."

"I don't forget that I tried," Logan said softly, looking down at his beer, and the shift in his tone pulled the night down around them. "I just remember I couldn't."

They all went quiet as Logan pulled on his drink. Next to Ororo, Rogue's head tilted slightly in response; the expression on her face wasn't visible from this vantage point, but whatever it was, it seemed to cause something around his eyes to soften when he looked up at her, noticeably even if only for a moment.

"Darn," said a new voice on the edge of their silence. "That's a heck of a meet-cute."

Rogue jumped in her seat, grinning. "Karen!"

It said something about how absorbed they had all been in the story that none of them had noticed Harry's mother until she was near the edge of the pavilion, likely just stepping out from the mansion. Cheerful greetings were passed back and forth as Rogue stepped up to hug her; Logan and Hank both snapped up, shuffling to offer a seat. Ororo tried to pass her a plate, but Karen declined, explaining she'd just taken Harry for pizza. Logan pulled a beer from the cooler, but she shook her head at that, too.

"Thank you so much, but I need to drive, and I better get going. I don't suppose there'd be any news for me?"

Hank looked at her immediately. Ororo bit her lip, biding her time, but luckily, Rogue took it upon herself to answer. "I don't think so, unfortunately. But tomorrow, there might be?" she added, a little too eagerly. "I'm going to look into… some new information. Well, me and Logan."

"You and Logan?" Karen's glance at them was not without malice, which Ororo noted appreciatively. The low simmer between them had clearly not passed unnoticed. "That's great! You know, I feel stupid in retrospect, but I never realized you two were—"

"Coworkers," Rogue spat through gritted teeth, her face awkwardly stretched into a smile. "That we're coworkers? That's funny. You should have known that, Karen."

Karen widened her eyes in a pantomime of surprise. "Right! Of course! I never realized that you two were coworkers."

Logan had a smirk on his face when he reached again for the cooler. "You sure you don't want a beer, darlin'?"

"Didn't she say she was driving?" Rogue said quickly, lightly touching Karen's back and mumbling, "Let me walk you out in case you hallucinate anything else…."

Karen had little chance to say goodbye as she was practically dragged away, and Logan was still chuckling at the scene as he set out in the opposite direction, excusing himself to brush the grill clean.

Unsurprisingly, Ororo found Hank's eyes on her as soon as they were alone, a look of distant amusement on his face.

"I don't think she actually thought they were together," she joked. "I think she just wanted to see the look on Rogue's face."

"I fully agree," he said mildly, reaching for her plate to clear it. "Interesting night."

She offered a calculated smile. "I'm sure you have questions. You might as well ask."

In a life that was a parade of clueless teenagers, disreputable lobbyists, intelligence workers and — frankly — emotionally stunted coworkers, Ororo rarely had the privilege of hearing people say what they meant. One of the reasons why she never got tired of Hank was that he absolutely refused to play games. He did not sip his drink, crack a joke, or pretend not to know what she was talking about. He simply looked her in the eye, wearing his smile comfortably, and went directly to the point.

"Why are you hiding what Warren found?"

Bright though it may have been, the waning moon struck her as an omen. Marie slipped through the front door to find Logan exactly where she'd expected: standing in the darkness, smoke twined around him in a dense, slow-moving weather system. It was the first time she came out here to join him since her return. He betrayed no surprise, pulling out his matchbook to meet the Marlboro tucked between her fingers as if he did so every night. She leaned into his cupped hand, wondering how she always ended up taking something from him.

"That shit kills, you know," he muttered.

She gave him a look of exasperation and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut in first.

"Don't even start. You don't inhale cigars," he said, pulling on his. After a moment of thought, he added, "Plus, healing factor and shit."

"I smoke one or two a day."

"That's one or two too many."

All day she'd been thinking of telling him how she had come to smoke cigarettes. Now it seemed too soon, or maybe too late. Marie took a slow drag. "That was a good burger."

Logan's nod was deliberate and thoughtful, as if the depth of her comment invited silent reflection. The possibility of the conversation stalling so soon made her suddenly anxious. Their banter at dinner felt just as much like muscle memory, a pattern her body remembered no matter how hard her heart tried to forget. She liked that better than silence.

"Harry would have loved it," she added.

"Then we'll have to make it again soon."

"I'm not the only one who can't say no to him, right?"

Storm had cautioned against favoritism, but Marie had already learned to bake his favorite cherry-chocolate chip cookies, developed a passable impression of Squidward Tentacles, and taught herself enough about dinosaurs to keep up with his obsession. It was scary, how he'd burrowed in her heart so quickly.

"With that grin of his, the kid could have his own line of toothpaste."

"Right?!" she yelped. "Every time, I just can't."

"He's a good kid."

"He really likes you."

"Misses his dad, I'm guessing," Logan mumbled. "Storm said he died, right?"

"The whole story is heartbreaking." Her shoulders slumped. "Dad died, mom had to send him away..."

"It's fucked up."

"You can tell seeing 'em together that it was the two of them against the world."

"Well, they got you in their corner now."

"Yeah…" Marie clicked her tongue. "I'm not sure it's doing any good."

"'Course it is," he countered, giving her a serious look. "I've seen the way that little boy looks at you. That doesn't just happen."

"Hey, thank you for talking to him this afternoon." The memory of Logan talking to the boy — and Harry's excited eyes, drinking in every word — flashed in her mind. She put it aside, afraid of what it would do to her voice.

"Yeah. Sure thing."

Harry was a tactile, affectionate child who still assumed the whole world was as safe as his home. Since the cure's failure, the boundaries between them were continually contested and renegotiated; he leaned in for hugs and kisses and she made sure they happened through clothes or hair. When she talked about not touching her, he always put on a solemn look, watching attentively from behind his blue glasses with a very straight spine, which he must have intuited made him look taller and older. But then the next day he would want to kiss her again and Marie had to find a way to let him.

"It feels… overwhelming, sometimes. Like I couldn't possibly live up to it, and at the same time I want nothing more than to die trying."

Smoke briefly veiled his expression. "It's like I said earlier. It does something to you, feeling responsible for someone."

"I didn't even realize what I was really looking for, coming here," she continued, not meaning to. Her sincerity was meant to be controlled, a small token of appreciation. The words themselves had different ideas; once free, they invited other words behind them. "But now I feel like it was… I mean, Harry looks at me sometimes the way he looks at Karen, you know? With this trust. This faith. And I have to… I just…"

Down between her feet, there was no clear path to be found. He'd been so easy to talk to, in the old days. Meaning seemed to have more reliable means of travel than language, and she hadn't cared much about choosing words. Now she saw all their imperfections, all the nicks and cracks where misunderstandings could be wedged. For so long, she had trusted him to polish those away.

Marie raised her head and offered the only explanation she had. "I have to."

He pondered that for long enough that she had time to feel foolish. But then he pulled on his cigar and said, "You want to be the person he believes in. The person he deserves."

"Yes," she said, relieved to be understood. "That's exactly how it feels."

"And do you know who that person is?"

On any other night she would have changed the subject, or even snapped at him for broaching it. But she had considered that question herself so many times, dead-ending over and over. The fight they'd had on the night that Harry first came — a lifetime ago, it seemed — still echoed in her mind. Logan was right: she'd left the school. She'd left mutanthood itself. Now that she came knocking back, what did she have to offer?

There was no conscious decision on what to tell him. The truth simply erupted. "You asked me when I started smoking."

His posture shifted. Logan's attention did not come in half-measures; when he was listening, he missed nothing. "You said it was when your grandmother stopped."

Marie looked behind him, towards the woods. All over the house there were lights on, chasing away the darkness. But every night the darkness waited, lurking in the heart of the forest, and from there it called to them both.

"You know, Meemaw used to think I was some kind of psychic." Her words left smoky footprints in the air. "It started a little before I turned thirteen. All these weird things were happening that year. Little things. Like, I knew what the person was thinking. I could finish their sentences. Or I knew what they wanted to eat. You know? Little flashes."

He watched her, impassive.

"I didn't connect the dots at first. I didn't realize it was touch. When it started getting stronger, I thought I was..." She shrugged. "I don't know. Hearing voices. Going crazy. But Meemaw thought I was special," she said, her voice so controlled that it was hollow. "It was always love, from her. And after it got bad, after that boy I kissed, she—" Marie inhaled deeply, willing the knot in her throat to loosen. "She still never believed I could hurt her."

As Logan already knew, that was what made her leave in the end: not her family's fear of her, but their stubborn, reckless and unconditionally loving lack of it.

He looked at her, wary. "You never brought this up before."

"I thought about it." Logan was the only person she had ever wanted to tell, and more than once, she almost had. "But I always wondered… I don't know. I wonder what went wrong, you know? I wonder what I did wrong, to lose control like that. I guess I didn't want you wondering that, too."

"I wouldn't have."

She bided time with a drag, unsure whether to believe him, or if it made any difference. "When I was cured, it was… well, it was slow again. It was like when it first came on. Weaker, somehow. I told Meemaw about it, when I started to feel it. And when she was dying, when she was really dying, she asked me to hold her hand. What was I gonna say?"

Understanding flashed in his eyes. "You got it from her," Logan whispered. "The smoking."

"It hasn't faded. Hank thinks it doesn't have to. That I should be able to keep anything I absorb, if I learn how." They were standing too close to each other for two people trying to pass for strangers, but there was no stepping back now, not with the momentum she'd built. "Powers, too."

In his eyes she saw the questions gathering like clouds, forming the storm that would come when he heard what she wanted. But she felt that old certainty — that he'd polish her words and know what she meant. Logan was willing to give his life for her, and she knew that because he once had. No matter what storms came, that was always the eye of the hurricane.

"I told Storm I want to join the team," she said.

His voice was rough. "And why would you want to do a thing like that?"

"Why does anyone? Why did you?"

Logan shook his head. "Look, kid, I know you think it's a big fucking deal, being an X-Man. That ain't what it is."

"What is it, then?"

"A fucking mess is what it is. Dangerous and unpredictable like you ain't ever seen nothing like it." His features twisted. Other people might have thought he was angry, but Marie saw that his gaze was soft, sweeping large swaths of the night without ever finding what it sought. "You try to help and it backfires. You save one person and you lose another. You try to make shit better, and everything gets fucking ten times worse cause of somethin' you didn't see coming." A long pull, and she wondered what he was thinking, what he was remembering. "It ain't an easy path."

"I'm not looking for easy."

"Maybe you should be." He found his focus again and aimed it at her. "Ever thought of that? Not making everything so fucking hard for yourself? You could teach here. Or get a job anywhere."

"I've had a job anywhere, Logan," she griped. "I didn't come here looking for a job. I came here looking for a purpose."

"But there's barely a team anymore," he pointed out. "With the cure gas now and the—"

"I know," she said, rushing to interrupt him before she lost her nerve. "That's what I'm telling you. I'm cured now, sort of, but…" She shrugged, having already grieved the inevitable. "Hank says it'll be a month or two at most, but probably less than that. And it'll come back weaker, slower, just like it was when I held Meemaw's hand." She breathed deeply. "It'll be the perfect time to try again."

His silence made the night seem loud. She knew it was a shadow of what he must be hearing, in the way that sometimes music leaked from a person's headphones and became faintly audible to someone next to them. They lived in different worlds, it occurred to her — and she was knocking on the door to his.

"You want the healing."

He sounded dejected, and to her own surprise that made her sad.

"Maybe. But don't answer now," she said hurriedly. "I know it's a lot. Just please think about it, okay?" She stubbed out her cigarette against a pillar. "I need a chance. And the team needs a healer."

"Listen, Marie—"

"I know it's a lot to ask—"

"It's nothing to ask," he snapped. "You're not gonna hurt me, and even if you did, fuck if I care." He hid his nervousness by tuning away, fists curled in frustration. "But if it works, if you take my healin' and it works," he continued, underscoring the word with a glance, "then you can never take the cure again. Which means your skin…" Logan lowered his eyes to her hands, and she knew that in a distant time of their lives he would have reached for them. His touch had always healed her, powers or not. But now he just gave her a pleading look, his voice down to a soft rumble. "And that's fine, if that's what you want. But you said it yourself that you took the cure three times. You sure you're ready to give up?"

Marie closed her eyes and tuned into the night's song. Of course she was not sure. She had left home at seventeen with the intention to cut the ties that her parents had refused to loosen, only to get entangled in ties Logan had refused to tighten. She'd cut them all in the end, drifting so far away that there was no turning back. The first destination she had in years was that new continent Hank had described.

"You of all people can understand, right?" He was no stranger to drifting. All those years ago, Logan had stayed at the school under the pretense of looking for his past, but she knew he'd been looking for a future. The things she wanted now were the things he'd found then: a life. A role. A reason. "Isn't that why you stayed here? Because you wanted to help? Didn't the school make you want to be better? Why shouldn't that happen to me?"

"Trust me, kid, if you were half the fuck-up I was back then, I'd be all over this fucking plan."

He turned away again, and her fingers twitched as if she could physically grab his attention. Inside the mansion, one of the lights from the east wing bedrooms clicked off. Time was running out, as it was wont to do.

"You told me once," she said hoarsely, fighting her frantic heart for control of her breath, "that people called your healing a gift and you hadn't ever figured out why. Well, maybe a gift is something you give, Logan. Maybe it's a gift you give to me."

He looked at her like she was seventeen. She looked at him like she wasn't.

"I want you to think about this long and hard," he said, putting out his cigar and angling himself towards the front door. "About the person you want to be. About the life you want to have."

"I have, and—"

"Well, think more. And then we talk." He hesitated for a moment, and then added, "You got one thing wrong there, too."

"What?"

"Wasn't the school that made me want to be better, Marie."

There they were again, in the eye of the hurricane. He hadn't moved, but the closeness was suddenly unbearable, and she felt her cheeks burn. When her eyes met his, she knew that it was hopeless; in due time the dam would crack, the walls would crumble, the rules would be broken.

She said goodnight and turned away, hoping his spell wouldn't follow.

He eyed his distance from the curb and questioned his decision to park here. Again.

Any day of the week there were a lot of things Logan missed about living in the territories. Some were exactly what you would have guessed: you couldn't see your neighbors, the summers were mild, and sunrises looked like those ads for big-ass cars named after that part of his life — Denali, Yukon, Tundra. But there were little things too. Shit that didn't seem important till it came up, like never having to parallel park.

"Beep! Beep! Beep!"

Logan raised an eyebrow in the general direction of the passenger seat, where Marie was doing a terrible job of holding back laughter.

"You got somethin' you wanna say?"

"Well, I see your truck doesn't have any modern safety features, like a proximity sensor—"

"Ah, right. Advice on auto safety again."

"—so I thought I'd let you know that you're about to bump into that car back there."

"It's called a fucking bumper because it bumps sometimes," he grunted, craning his neck to see out the back. "'Sides, I want to see you park without that backup camera shit."

"Need I remind you," she said, nose high up in the air, "that I have parked this very truck? In fact, numerous times? Which, by the way, is how I know your angle is all wrong." She pointed through the windshield. "You started way too far from that car."

All day she'd been like this — chatty and teasing, like she'd found her old self in the pocket of her jeans. For weeks now he'd watched her perform her reverse mating dance: leaving the rooms he entered, snickering at things he said, going out of her way to make it clear he was in her way. Logan wondered sometimes how much she had to think about him in order to always be exactly where he wasn't. But the steps were changing. Yesterday she'd come to his class, bantered at dinner, found him outside to smoke together.

Yesterday she'd asked him to ruin her.

He'd had the sense not to yell no, which was sure as hell what he wanted to do. The healing was a life sentence, and it wasn't even clear that death could end it. For her it was even worse — it would lock her out of the cure she'd wanted so badly, and all for what? So she could saddle herself with the responsibility of being the team's human shield, of taking on others' pain so they didn't get hurt? And he didn't even want to wonder what else she'd get with it, what awful parts of him were spelled out in his genes for her body to learn to copy.

No, she already had healing. She had it in him, any time she wanted it. If he looked back and asked himself when he'd best known who he was, it was every time he'd kept her safe, kept her whole, kept her close. Every time she'd looked at him expecting something good. His whole life had made sense on that torch. If she wanted the healing, all she had to do was stick around.

But for him to dissuade her, he needed firmer ground to stand on. He needed spring to blossom between them and thaw away that wall she'd been hiding behind.

Logan sighed out and pulled forward again. She was right. His angle was shit.

"You know, a good set up push-ups has a way of curing a smart mouth."

"Push-ups?" Marie snickered. "Didn't you give me an extra set of pull-ups once literally over a flavor of ice cream?"

"Wrong." They'd been arguing about this one for years. "That was cause you think soft serve is the same as ice cream, and I can see you still do."

"It's like a type of ice cream!" she whined. "And you know pull-ups are my nemesis."

"Cause you don't practice enough."

"No..." She stretched the vowel, petulant as hell. "Because my shoulder-to-hip ratio is different from yours."

His eyes flicked down to her hips. "That ain't a bad thing."

She wavered, and Logan cursed himself for not keeping his mouth shut. Ogling the woman sure wasn't gonna be the way to firmer ground. Hell, ogling her was how he'd turned it all to a swamp in the first place.

But she grinned. "It's an advantage for some stuff. Hip throws, for one thing. And possibly parallel parking?" She cocked her head. "Someone should study that."

Back to driving him nuts, then. Lucky for him, he knew just how to get her back. "For the record, I taught you to drive."

That always got her fuming. "A stick. You taught me to drive a stick. My dad taught me to parallel park." She leaned to look in the passenger mirror, clearly not impressed with his distance from the curb. "From the looks of it, no one ever taught you."

"I ain't spent much time living in fucking cities," he grunted, fighting the truck's old, moody shifter, "to have to pull this bullshit all the time."

"I could have driven, I told you that."

"I know sometimes you have to risk your life for a mission, but usually not trying to get to it."

Her eyes narrowed. "I thought you taught me to drive?"

"One thing's what I taught, another's what you learned."

"You know it's not gonna fit like this," she said skeptically, looking in her mirror again.

"That's what she said."

Marie rolled her eyes. "Is it? Well, for her sake I hope you maneuvered your junk more competently than you're maneuvering this car."

Logan smirked and looked out the back again. Better to let her have this round. Any response he made to that would have to be an escalation, and the thing about him and Marie was that shit had a way of getting out of hand.

It took a little more maneuvering and a lot more insufferable commentary to get the car parked. The front door to the community center was extra-large and painted a friendly red. They climbed up the porch steps and looked at each other.

"We're pretty early," she said, glancing at the time.

Logan shrugged. He'd insisted on that, to beat the traffic down to Jersey. "Door's open," he noted, testing the knob. "Wanna look around until it's time?"

The place had the air of a converted residence. The front was a waiting area, with a small desk facing the entrance, plus an old couch that smelled like someone had spilled a bottle of talcum powder years ago. There was also a coffee table, too, littered with some outdated magazines and a stack of pink sheets of paper that looked neat in comparison. The whole place had that feeling of a patched-up pair of jeans that was too comfortable to throw away.

In the back, at the end of a long hallway that had probably once led to bedrooms, a man's voice was audible. He must have heard them open the door, because soon enough a smiling face poked out to greet them.

"I'll be right with you," the man said, an accent almost as thick as his ink-black mustache coating the words. "Go ahead and fill out a pink form while you wait."

Logan gave what he hoped was a friendly nod and took a form off the coffee table. The questions were mostly harmless: name, address, phone number, emergency contact. One section asked about demographics and another about hobbies and interests. Only the last question gave away the nature of this operation.

Reading over his shoulder, Marie gasped. "It asks about powers? Are people really stupid enough to answer that?"

He looked over the question: Describe, succinctly but in detail, the nature of your mutation. "If there's one thing you won't ever hear me question," Logan mumbled, "it's how stupid people are."

Marie opened her mouth, but closed it and frowned when her phone buzzed in her purse. "Shit, I missed a call from Warren earlier. Let me see what he wants."

She brushed past him and out the door, leaving him to the currents of his own curiosity. On a large cork board, layers and layers of old flyers looked to be in the process of turning to sedimentary rock. Next to it, an almost life-sized photograph showed the same beaming face he'd just seen, minus a few years or maybe a lot of worries. Tucked under his arm was a girl with that same black hair, and a distinctive mole right between her eyebrows. A rumpled, homemade-looking sign underneath it read A place for family.

Footsteps came before the voice. "I'm sorry about the wait." The man emerged belly-first into the room, a fleshy smile on his face and his hand out. "Hello, I'm the director of the community center. People call me Kumar."

"Well, Mr. Kumar, people call me Logan." The handshake was firm and practiced, a beat longer than it needed to be. "I'm here to…"

Logan blinked. In all his fretting about this day, he'd focused so much on what to say to Marie that he hadn't thought much at all about what to say to this man. In his mind he recapped Warren's briefing: there was no camera footage, no witnesses. Kumar hadn't known yet if anything was taken.

"We're here to look for classes, right, babe?" Marie suddenly said behind him, miraculously appearing through the door.

Not in all the years they'd known each other had she ever, even once, called him babe, but Logan was still pretty sure she didn't mean Kumar. He looked over his shoulder, buying himself a moment to get his act together, or at least find out what act that was supposed to be. Marie's eyes were wide above her fake smile, telegraphing that she desperately wanted to tell him something but giving no clue whatsoever on what that might be. Logan swiveled back smoothly and gave Kumar a smirk.

"That's right. Figured we'd get to know this place a little, since—"

The sentence caught in his throat. He was doing a pretty good job of rolling with the punches here, but nothing — absolutely fucking nothing — could have prepared him for Marie's hand snaking up his back as she draped herself over his side.

"We just moved here," she said cheerily, setting her hand between his shoulder blades like they did this everyday. "What a great neighborhood, right, babe?"

"Right," he managed to choke out. The soft weight of her breasts was pressed against his upper arm.

Alright, so whatever Warren had told her, they were pretending to be a couple now. That was fine, he told himself, circling an arm around her waist. His hand nestled in the dip between her hips and her ribs. It wasn't the first time he'd played a role on the field, but it was a weird thing when the role you played felt more true than your actual life.

"Lookin' for people like us," he said, and then hesitated only for a second before adding, "We don't know too many."

"That's excellent, very excellent," the man said. "I'm Akshay Kumar, I'm the director of the center. And the founder! You'll see me here very often, myself and my daughter. Had a different career before, medical research, you see, but this work," he rambled on, slapping the desk, "this is my passion. It always has been. Over twenty years I've been in this country, and I have always wanted to do this." The man throbbed with excitement. "I am so happy that I am able to do this work, that I can help people like you and your husband who clearly…"

Logan knew he should be listening, but when the man said husband Marie's hips bumped his thighs and she pressed herself just a little closer, wicking away every last drop of his attention.

"...have classes, so many classes. There's English for second language speakers, although I can see you don't need that…"

There was a grin frozen on her face, but in the rest of her body he could sense the low hum of her anxiety: her voice was a little too loud, her speech a little too frantic, and her fingers kept tapping his back in a strange pattern, and he—

Logan's head snapped up as he realized it. The taps were not strange, now that he paid attention. In fact, they were completely regular. Deliberate.

She was tapping Morse code.

Fuck. He caught a few letters — F, F, I, L — but he'd missed too much already. He used his thumb against the stripe of skin above her jeans to tap a question mark, so that she'd know he didn't get it. She stopped and just stroked his back for a second, with no obvious intention other than practicing her snake-charming skills. He kneaded the side of her waist in retaliation and tried again to listen. She certainly seemed to have no trouble smiling at Kumar and speaking coherently.

"...always did want to learn knitting, so maybe this time…"

Her hand moved away and took all the room's warmth with it. But then she decided that the solution to their predicament was to slide her hand under his leather jacket instead of over it. He took a deep breath and thought of Bill Clinton's face.

She started again. D, O, R, O, T…

So far, so good. The hardest part was keeping his face neutral.

P, E, U, E, A, L…

Logan threw her a side glance and tapped another question mark. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?

Another long pause, and then she tried again. He concentrated.

D, O, N, O, T…

So the R had been an N?

P, E, U, E …

That didn't make sense either, and he wondered what other mistakes she was making. At this rate even Kumar's endless tirade might be finished before they got through a single word.

The man was talking with the indifference to oxygen of a world-class free diver, but through a hairline crack between words Logan wedged in, "You don't happen to have a class in Morse code, do you? Cause she's been interested in that, but she ain't learned it too good."

Marie pinched the back of his arm, the wench.

Kumar looked at Logan like he'd just asked for directions to the moon. "We do not— I don't believe there's been too many—"

Not content with physical violence, she set about putting him in his place. "What about driving? Do you offer driving lessons, by any chance? My husband could definitely use one. Maybe focusing on parallel parking?" When Logan rolled his eyes, she aimed at him. "What? I've offered to teach you, but you always say no."

Kumar couldn't hold back a little bud of a smile, but he was careful not to let it bloom.

Logan squared his hips to hers and laced his hands around her waist, reeling her in. At close range, her face seemed just as much a foreign country as her mind. The landscape was familiar, all the threats he'd worked to make himself immune to — brown eyes deep enough to drown in, that cupid's bow that shot lust-dipped arrows — but up close she was as endless as the night sky, all flecks and freckles, spots and speckles, constellations of tiny details that for all he knew might well have spelled his own fate.

She was searching for something on his face, too. Her pupils were wide, drinking him in. Her teeth scraped her bottom lip lightly. Their bodies had always gotten along well, even when they didn't.

Logan smirked. "I ain't ever said 'no' to you in my life."

Taking that as his cue, Kumar broke into a wide grin. "Ah, young love! Well, you're both very—"

The phone rang in the back. He babbled an excuse and rushed off to answer, too caught up in his own relief to notice theirs. Logan waited to hear his greeting on the line and raised an eyebrow at her.

"We gotta work on your Morse code."

"There's a lot of things we gotta work on."

Her gaze turned to where they still hadn't peeled off each other, and she pulled away with a short breath. He let his hands down from her hips, trying to remember what he usually did with them.

"Warren said that Kumar called and asked to cancel at the last minute, which is… kind of weird? He said the person who would have the most to tell us isn't here. So Warren thought we should try and look around, scope the place out without him knowing who we are." Nothing in that story explained why they had to be a couple, but it would have taken a bigger fool than Logan to point that out. "I was trying to say 'do not reveal affiliation.''" Before he could start down the list of mistakes she'd made, she added "Did you tell him anything?"

Logan paused, considering that. "First name. That's all."

"Let's take a look then."

Logan tilted his head, listening for the voice in the back. "He's on the phone," he said, moving closer to the hallway and pointing at the front desk. "Check that out. I'll listen."

She moved where he'd suggested, glancing furtively around herself as she trailed her finger along the wooden surface and inspected the documents scattered on it.

Logan turned his head towards the door in the back. It was closed now, even though it had been open for Kumar's previous phone call. Over the sparse sounds of traffic and a car door closing outside, he could still make out the words clearly. "No, they didn't. I called and asked them not to come. Not without you here."

Marie was pulling on a drawer, and the anticipation of the noise made Logan wince. But it came open, miraculously silent. She reached inside it, flipping through papers with a frown.

"Weird…" she mumbled, reaching for her phone in her pocket.

Kumar was on the phone, still. "Yes, of course your studies are important. Do not worry about that."

But there were steps coming up the porch now, and Logan lunged to pull her away from the desk, hip-checking the drawer and wrapping her in a hug just in time. A short man opened the front door and took a seat on the talcum-smelling couch, throwing them an awkward glance. Logan smiled and pressed her against his chest for a second, less to actually hide her and more so he could bury his nose in her hair and fill his lungs.

"'Afternoon," he mumbled.

The man smiled back, and a puff of blue smoke came from his lips when he did.

Marie pulled away and offered her own smile, but they couldn't really stay now. She sought his hand and he laced their fingers together, tugging her to the door. Somewhere in the back, he could still hear Kumar's voice.

"Perhaps it would be better to go to them," he was saying. "If we're there, we can use your powers better."

What the fuck did that mean?

It confounded her, looking up, that the office was already so dark. The night had laid siege to the small light of her task lamp, which set over the massive desk was like a twin sheet on a queen bed. The clock said she had missed dinner, too.

Taking meals in the cafeteria made her approachable to students, so she usually did. The problem recently was that the piles of papers on her desk were tall enough to wall her in. Tonight she was looking over job applications for the position of history teacher, which Rogue had selected for her review. Most applicants were more accomplished, more experienced, and more educated than Logan had ever been. She could have tossed the resumes in the air and chosen the first one to land on her desk, and ended up with a better history teacher. The problem, of course, was that being a history teacher was only part of the job. In fact, the job itself was only part of the position.

Ororo breathed out her worries and felt the wind take them away. She would finish looking at the applications and then eat something. In fact, maybe when Hank came home from D.C. they could eat together. The trips were more frequent now, and he came back on ever-later trains, so tired that he could barely muster a grateful smile when he found her waiting up late. It had become routine to trade strategy notes on the couch over scotch. She would ask Rogue to move his morning classes, so that he could stay in D.C. overnight when needed. But not tonight. Tonight they would sit together by the fire, drink scotch, and tell each other the things that no one else really understood.

"Hiding in here?" came the voice.

"Logan." He was far from the light, and she had to squint at first. "Got caught up in work. How was the community center?"

"Weird," he said. "Just got back and had dinner."

"What kind of weird?"

"Rogue saw something that seemed a little off. But that's not what I'm here for right now."

The tone of his voice was the first sign, but when she knew what to look for, there were others: his fingers were twitchy by his sides, and his hair was mussed from repeated raking. She put the application down, choosing the reject pile on instinct, and sat up straighter.

"I'm all ears."

He stood in front of her desk, hands on the polished wood. He had beautiful hands, tanned and long-fingered. When she had felt them on her body, so long ago now, they'd been as skilled and efficient as she had always assumed they would be.

"I know you got that address," he said slowly, "and I want it."

His voice had the humming charge of the air before a storm. She had assumed this conversation would happen, but with Rogue, not Logan. Rogue was young and fiery, but she saw Ororo as her boss; if a good enough impression of infallibility was offered, the girl tended to begrudgingly accept it. Logan was different. Logan knew she was fallible because he had seen her fail.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, perfunctorily.

"We really gonna play this game?"

"I don't have to justify myself to you, Logan."

"I'm not asking you to justify shit. I'm asking you to give me the fucking address I know you're hiding."

"And then what?"

He held her gaze for a moment and stepped back into the darkness, giving no answer.

Ororo stood up, annoyed, and reached for the closest light switch. The overheads flooded the room, as unflattering as the truth. An excess of clarity was exactly why their occasional tangling together had been physical but never romantic. They'd been alone and trauma-bonded; acknowledged mutual attraction had hung over them like mistletoe. Sex had been a logical conclusion, not a new beginning. They'd known each other too well for any light to be flattering.

Coming around the desk, she stood with her hips against it, arms crossed over her chest. "I do have an address," she said, attempting to sound as calm as she wanted to feel. "The situation is fickle right now. Trask's lobby is looking for any little hint of trouble to turn public opinion. You can imagine what would happen if they found something from us. Warren is trying signal intelligence first."

"You say first like there's a second."

"I say first," she hissed, "like I actually spent some time thinking about this and developing a strategy, instead of randomly bursting into Warren's office and bullying him into giving me something to do because I'm trying to impress a girl!"

It wasn't until the last words echoed that she realized she'd actually shouted. So much for sounding calm, but at least it didn't seem to be raining. Logan turned away to pace, one hand on his hair. He sought the door and then turned back, then did it again before coming back to the desk.

"What's that?" he asked, meaning the papers.

"Applications," she sighed out. "Trying to find a history teacher."

He gave them a cursory look, frowning deeper with each one, and set them down with a groan. "Listen, what if you don't need to?"

In a way, Ororo had seen this coming. She had even hoped for it, when Rogue first called and asked if her old job was still available. As always, the things we wanted were rarely the things we needed.

"You've been asking to leave for years."

"Well, now I'm asking to stay."

Exhaustion ambushed her. She wanted to crawl to the couch with her drink, she wanted to tell Hank about this conversation, she wanted to tell Hank everything. She wanted things to be easy, just once.

"You're not just talking about teaching," she said quietly.

He stepped back and looked her in the eye. "No. I'm talking about coming back to the team."

A.N.: Hope you enjoyed this! The second scene is an edited version of Meet-Cute, which some people may have previously read in one-shot form. It's pretty different, though, reflecting a bunch of editing that I did since I first drafted this story. More soon. :)