A.N.: There's some explicit content in this chapter. Hope you enjoy the extra long update!
Chapter 7
"What the fuck were you thinkin'," he hissed in her ear, "coming out here by yourself?"
Her back was flush to his front, the soft weight of her body pressing on all the right places. Logan looked over his shoulder towards the open door, keeping one hand clamped over her mouth. They couldn't afford to be heard right now. The two men in the hallway were slumped unconscious, all taken care of. But there might be others, and he had yet to figure out his next move.
Marie, on the other hand, decided hers was to unceremoniously elbow him in the ribs.
"Fuck!" His grip faltered and she ducked to escape as he let her go to nurse what might become a bone bruise.
"Logan!"
"You disappointed?" he huffed, catching his breath. "You're lucky it wasn't Dumb and Dumber out there. Now you wanna tell me what the fuck you're doing here?"
"What does it look like I'm doing here? And what are you doing? You followed me here? What do you think gives you the right—"
Logan wanted to pursue that line of inquiry about as much as he wanted to pursue a career in interior design, so he touched two fingers to her lips. "We need to be quiet, Marie. Those guys heard you in here, you know that? You're lucky I got to them before they got to you."
"I was fine," she snapped, but she was minding her volume now.
"Really? You were fine, alone in this room with no weapons while two men got ready to break in here with guns?"
She had no answer to that. The men he'd run into so far were armed with a zealousness that made him think they were overcompensating for something. Whether that was lack of training or just your usual Freudian bullshit remained to be seen.
"I took those two out, but there's two more outside, and they're coming in any minute now. We oughta leave separate, too. Harder for them to follow, if they try."
"Oh, we're definitely leaving separate, because you seem to be in a hurry, and I'm staying until I get what I need."
"This isn't the fucking time to be stubborn, Marie."
"When exactly is the time to be stubborn? Maybe when I happen to agree with you?" she snickered, turning away from him to close the door. The room was some kind of management office. Papers and binders were scattered on the floor, and she moved towards them, kneeling next to a huge box of documents. "Besides, they switched at the top of the hour."
"You watched them?"
"Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a complete idiot."
"There's a game on," Logan said. "Front desk has a TV, which is what these two outside were up to when they heard you. Decent chance they'll switch at half-time, and that's coming up any minute." Marie ignored him, quickly flipping through the papers. "What the hell are you doing?"
She didn't bother looking up. "Um, my work here?"
"Did you hear a word I just said?"
"Unfortunately, I did."
"This ain't the time to play ice queen, kid."
This time she did look at him, with the put-upon patience of a third-grade teacher. "I realize you don't take me or this mission seriously, but that doesn't mean I don't. I came here to find out who hired this stupid company to break into Harry's house, and I will leave here when I have."
He stepped closer, raising an eyebrow. "You're a pain in the ass, you know that?"
"Since I was eight," she muttered, heads-down already. "Courtesy of my oldest cousin."
She was flipping quickly through the papers in the box, not trying to read them all but maybe looking for something. They were all forms of one kind or another. There was a particular shade of pink he recognized. "Those forms look like Kumar's."
"That's because they are."
"Is that what they were after?" he said. "Forms that people filled out?"
"It seems like it. But I can't fathom why…"
"Kumar's asked about powers."
"Fuck. You're right." She stopped and looked around. "I want to take this whole box if I can figure out how. We need to see what they took, and if there's anything from Karen's house."
"Kid, there's no way we can lug this thing out of here."
"There's a backdoor—"
"There's two unconscious men outside who are gonna wake up any minute, Marie," he said pointedly, dropping down to one knee to level with her. "We can't risk it. We need to leave while we can, then come back later and get it."
"They're not gonna leave this stuff here after they figure out we broke in! I told you, I'm staying here."
"No, you're not."
"What are you gonna do, carry me out?"
It seemed like a great idea for a minute. He was at exactly the right angle to throw her over his shoulder. No way he could get her through the window without cooperation, but he might be just fast enough to make the back door—
"Oh God, you're actually considering it!"
Who was he kidding? She'd go right for the balls.
"Alright. How about we push the box out the window, then?" It was a little high, but there was a desk right under it.
She looked up assessingly and nodded. "We could grab it on the way out. I like it."
From the other side of the building came the sound of the front door opening. Logan could hear their voices: they were laughing, still clueless.
"The guys just came in," he whispered. "The good news is, no one's out there right now. Let's move."
Marie crammed the papers she'd taken out back in the box, then climbed on the desk to open the window. The men were moving closer, prattling on about the quarterback. Her arms sagged when he handed her the box — that shit was heavy — but she managed to push it out. They heard the thud on the other side.
"You hear that?" came the voice from the hallway.
"I think so. Something outside?"
"I thought it was an office in the back?"
"Alright, time's up," Logan barked. "We need to get out of here."
But Marie had come down from the desk to manically pull binders off the shelf.
"What the fuck are you doing? You need to leave."
"I don't have the contract yet."
"That sucks." He reached out, waving her towards the window. "Now let's go."
"I told you, I'm not going until I know who did this," she said, walking past him to make sure the door was locked.
"That lock ain't gonna stop them anymore than it stopped you."
"No," she admitted, marching towards a file cabinet in the corner of the room. "But this," she gritted through her teeth, straining to push it towards the door, "might help a little more."
Logan ran to help, bracing himself to push it across the carpet. As soon as he had it moving, Marie bounced to her next idea: placing a chair under the door handle.
"They'll manage," he said. But he had to admit she was improvising well.
"All I need is time," she mumbled, already back by the bookshelf, picking through binders like fruit at the market. "The whole point of coming here was finding this contract."
"Luke, over here! What the fuck, man— Luke?"
"They found the men," Logan whispered. The footsteps were right outside the door now. "Leave this shit to me, Marie, and just run!"
"You're free to go," she said, bending over a binder and flipping madly through the pages. "I'm not done."
"Are they alive?"
"You're nuts if you think I'm leaving here without you."
"I started this on my own. I'm happy to finish it on my own."
Outside the men were whispering, which was a bad sign. He could still hear them: there was talk of looking for a pulse, and then talk of finding one. The men's relief at that was Logan's own. No one was supposed to die tonight, not by his hand.
"You're crazier than I thought, you know that?" he said, turning her to face him by the shoulder. He pointed at the window. "These fuckers have guns and I can't heal you. Get out. Now."
Right on cue, the door handle moved, ramming the chair. He expected to hear a kick next, but instead there was a silence that turned into a hiss. He saw a gas passing through the gap, slowly filling the room. Logan caught a faint smell of rubber and felt the fever of his healing kick in, even though he wasn't hurt or in pain. They were using the cure gas. It would be maybe ten seconds before they put a strategy together and stormed in. Five, if they were any good at their jobs.
"Get in your fucking vehicle and get the fuck out of here. You smell that? They got the cure gas, Marie."
"So what?" She just tried to move past him, reaching for the shelves again. "I'm already cured."
He hooked an arm around her waist. "They're gonna shoot. You need to leave."
"I didn't ask you to follow me here and chaperone me, Logan."
"We're giving you until the count of ten to come out with your hands in the air."
"I didn't follow you here. I came on my own, same as you did."
"But…" she said breathlessly, eyes wide.
"You'll be treated as hostile if you don't. Ten!"
Didn't seem like they were too worried about the count, because the men rammed the door right then. The file cabinet shook, but it held.
"Why didn't you say something?"
"Nine!"
"You wouldn't have listened!"
"Eight!"
True to form, she moved, trying to squirm away from his grasp. "Then help me find it!"
"Seven!"
He pushed her up against the bookshelf, pinned under his body. She was safe that way, at least.
"Did you really think I was gonna let anything happen to Harry?" he barked.
"Six!"
She looked at him — stunned, yeah, but not only that. Logan suddenly felt an overwhelming need to nuzzle her hair.
"Five!"
His lips found her ear, so close they grazed the skin. "You think I'm gonna let anything happen to you?"
"Four!"
She said nothing, but her body responded by fitting against him more closely, inching towards that vortex that always swirled between them, threatening to suck them both in.
"I'll stay," he said, his arms braced around her head, lips still tickling her ear. "I'll find it."
"Three!"
Her voice was broken, tentative. "You promise?"
Logan pulled back to see her: wide eyes and flushed cheeks and that space between her lips that seemed to hold all the world's secrets, or at least the ones he cared about learning. He sank one hand into her hair.
"Two!"
The cabinet was sliding now, far enough out of the way that the next hit would have some real momentum.
"Baby, I promise."
For the first time in forever he was proud to be seen — through the past, through the lies, through all his mistakes. Those seconds pushed against each other stretched into years, the years they'd been apart collapsed down to seconds. Her head tilted to the side and her lips parted slightly, so slowly that he never would have noticed if the space between their faces hadn't shrunk down to a chink, a crack between two broken pieces still whole enough to mend together. Her eyes fluttered closed and he took in the scent of her, remembering the taste of her kiss, the feel of her mouth. One thing was certain, she didn't need her skin to pull him in. Logan could lose himself in her all on his own.
"One!"
The door gave, and they pulled apart. He didn't think, he didn't blink. He pushed Marie towards safety and dove headfirst into the fray.
Ororo looked away from the light, noticing that the throbbing pain above her right eyebrow relented when she did. These headaches were really starting to become a problem.
"You're sure about this?"
Rogue was standing in front of her desk, clearly favoring her right leg.
"Why else would they keep it?" The thrum of her nervous energy made the room seem small. Her face was tilted pensively towards the floor, as if looking at anything more complicated than the thick rug would detract from her ability to focus on the problem at hand. "A giant pile of documents, pretty cumbersome stuff to move around. They had to take that out of each break-in. Clearly it had value to them. And then there's what Logan said, how all the forms had some kind of description of people's powers."
"Makes sense," Warren mused. "But without knowing who was asking for it…"
"I know," she said, ruefully. "I wanted to look more, but—"
"You got caught," Ororo pointed out. "Let's not forget that."
He got up from the couch and went to stand next to Rogue in solidarity. "Hey, boss, can we take it easy on her? Rogue here did a good thing, even if it—"
"Compromises our entire operation in Washington?" Ororo said, titrating her anger to a therapeutic dose. "Even if she did stumble on some intelligence—"
"I wouldn't call it stumbling—" he tried.
"—even if she did," Ororo continued, her voice firm but not raised, "sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits, and that's why we think before we act."
"She's right, Warren," Rogue said quietly. "I thought it was gonna be simple, I wasn't even planning to go inside and I…" A sigh. "Obviously I should never have gotten caught."
Ororo bit her lip, wondering if the girl's own regret was corrosive enough without being catalyzed by her addition of blame. They were monitoring the news already; there was no report of the break-in and no association with mutants. It was possible — unlikely but possible — that they might be able to find a way out of this mess. But it was too soon to let her off the hook. Let her stew in it and learn her lesson. Ororo sometimes visualized Hank's political strategy as a high-stacked house of cards, and herself as the overworked nanny trying to keep the house's children away from it.
"You shouldn't have been there in the first place, Rogue. And you," she added, turning to Warren, "do not get to act like the defense here. Let's also not forget you're the one who gave her the address."
"She got it out of me!"
Ororo glowered. "I'll take that to mean she tortured you." She turned to Rogue. "Which I generally frown upon."
Warren rolled his eyes.
"Now the good news, to the extent we can call it that, is that there's little indication of Harry being in any danger," Ororo added. "If the objective of the break-ins was to obtain this information, and there was nothing from the Cooks' home in there—"
"That I could find, at least," Rogue said breathlessly. "I had to—"
"Get out because you got caught, yes," Ororo said, pointedly, pausing for long enough that Rogue lowered her eyes before she added, "If their intention was to procure these documents, perhaps the Cook's home was simply an error. They may have mistaken it for another target."
"Oh come on! Are you serious now?"
Warren gently touched Rogue's elbow, in a signal to stand down. "Doesn't sound like it, boss, but I can trace a radius and—"
"It's a house!" Rogue yelled, ignoring him. "It's a house with house things in a neighborhood full of houses! What kind of bumbling band of idiots would go into a house thinking it's a clinic, or a community center, or—"
"It's merely a hypothesis," Ororo said clinically, her voice purposefully low in an educator's calculated tone, conveying that shouting was neither acceptable nor particularly useful. "Warren, perhaps you could find out if there were other plausible targets?"
"There's a chance there was something from the house," he pointed out. "She couldn't have gotten everything."
"Well, if we'd gone to Argo in a well-planned, well-executed operation, perhaps we would be more confident. Unfortunately, with this sort of thing, we usually get one shot. I hope you learned something."
Rogue's voice was a candle in the wind. "We weren't going to Argo. I never would have interfered if there was any kind of plan being made."
Ororo rubbed the bridge of her nose and looked at Warren, then at Rogue. "That's because one distinct possibility is that someone might be baiting us. Orchestrating these break-ins to provoke a response, to catch mutants red-handed trying to investigate or… avenge something. Of course, if that's what's happening, you played right into their hand."
"I don't think that's what is happening," she gritted through her teeth. "Why would that have bothered with the papers, in that case? And we know Kumar was keeping a list—"
"Ah, yes, Kumar! Are you going to break in there, too? Get caught again and have Logan bail you out?"
The sharp questions deflated her. Rogue collapsed on the couch, elbows propped on spread knees, and looked intently at the floor for several beats before speaking.
Finally, she whispered, "No." And then, twisting her long brown hair into a knot at the nape of her neck, Rogue sighed. "I can't believe I didn't find the contract. I'm an idiot."
"You acted like one tonight," Ororo said. "What would have happened if Logan hadn't showed up?"
She shook her head, too interested in her own shoes to catch the look of resigned agreement Warren threw at Ororo. Rogue's attachment to Harry put her too close to the issue, and he knew it. In his own way, he was too close as well. There was no excuse for sharing information about Argo with her when he had known perfectly well why it was being withheld. Ororo would not make that same mistake again.
Sitting down next to her, he gently touched her shoulder. "Rogue, you need some rest. How's the leg?"
She seemed to consider the question, stretching the leg in front of her and eyeing it critically. "It'll be fine. Ankle sprain, I think. I had to jump out the window." She rubbed her thigh. "I should have stayed with Logan. I heard shooting when I left."
"Nope," Warren said firmly. "He can handle himself around guns. You can't."
Ororo nodded. "Warren's right, Rogue. Logan would never have forgiven himself if you had been shot trying to help him."
She looked at her knees, despondent. "Well, what if he got shot trying to help me?"
"Difference is I heal."
Three heads swiveled in unison. Something struck her about the way Logan walked into the room: he was down to jeans and an undershirt, and if not for the blood stains looked as he would have on any other night. But his steps resonated through the room, heavier than usual, as if he was carrying something she couldn't see. It took her a minute to recognize it as his long-lost swagger.
Rogue jumped up to meet him, forgetting herself until she winced with the pain of landing on her ankle. Both Warren and Logan reached out, supporting her from either side. Caught between them, she missed the twin glares of disapproval they exchanged over her head, but Ororo was perfectly positioned to appreciate them. It was towards Logan that she turned towards, lips parted in surprise and a look on her face that had been missing for about as long as the arrogance on his.
He gave Rogue an appraising look. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," she said dismissively. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"I'm alright, kid."
"I heard gunshots."
"I'm alright."
There were holes on his shirt with charred edges that told a story, but Rogue's eyes were fixed on his features, searching for unguarded reactions, unconscious microexpressions that might contradict his words. There were none; he met her gaze, inscrutable. She reached for him, requiring physical evidence. Her fingers wrapped around his forearm, mindless of bare skin. He showed no concern.
Warren harrumphed in the background. "You, uh— Glad you're okay, Logan, that's awesome, but did you happen to get anything else?"
Logan made no response. He and Rogue both went still, her hand still on his arm, their eyes locked. He didn't nod or move at all, but something passed between them nonetheless, and Ororo saw the minuscule, perhaps involuntary squeeze of Rogue's hand when her questioning look softened.
Warren opened his mouth to repeat the question, but Logan answered it by marching towards Ororo's desk and set down a sheet of paper. "I got the contract."
Rogue and Warren both stepped forward to look at the document. It didn't escape Ororo that it was lightly sprayed with blood.
"Who was it?" Rogue asked. "Who hired them?"
Ororo glanced down for the answer and felt her stomach sink. "It was Trask."
"Mr. Logan checks the tops of the beds, too."
"Mr. Logan is taller, sugar."
"But if you climb the ladder, you'll be tall!"
"Aye, aye, captain," she chanted, snapping into a salute. "I shall climb the ladder."
Harry's smile was half hidden by the covers. He was tucked into bed already, his favorite blanket pulled up to clever eyes, and Bailey's pink head peeking out beside him. A full perimeter check always made him feel safer.
The monsters he had to worry about were nowhere near here, she knew. Storm had brushed off the threat, insisting that Trask's involvement was, in its own way, good news. The company would be stopped when the bill against discriminatory weapons passed, and in any case she thought their pursuit was general mayhem, not Harry and his mother in particular.
But Marie was less sure. If Trask could not block the bill entirely, their plan was to defang it beyond recognition. The company's version would forbid the development of new discriminatory weapons, but not the sale of existing ones — solidifying their lead in a market they already dominated comfortably. That meant any ongoing research work could still be profitable if it was rushed to production, which incentivized desperate moves.
Stepping on the bunk ladder, Marie cranked her neck back and forth theatrically. "Nothing up here, sir!"
He giggled, satisfied. She braced herself to spare the injured ankle and limped to the edge of the bed, touching his cheek with a gloved hand. Her thumb arced over his face, silk on skin.
"Nothing to worry about," she said, and meant it. Logan's voice thundered in her mind. Did you really think I was gonna let anything happen to Harry? A shiver crept over her skin. "You ready for lights off?"
He blinked sleepily, clutching his toy to his chest. "May I have some water?"
"Sure thing, kiddo. I'll be right back, okay?"
She walked out with brisk steps, poised for the next emergency. But the hallway was empty, its quiet darkness a welcome contrast to the sirens wailing in her mind. Soft giggles and slivers of light leaked under one door or another; on Harry's door was his favorite art from that week, a surprisingly dinosaur-free drawing of the lake, framed by trees and birds. The crisis was over. She was home.
Marie made a deliberate effort to slow down her steps, hoping her racing mind would catch her drift. She pulled off the gloves and took in every sensation: the weight of her body on her feet, the urge to fidget at the tips of her fingers, the cool air that teased the peach fuzz on her cheeks. Pain gradually moved to the foreground. The soreness of her muscles was a lesson in anatomy, and she had to step at exactly the right angle to protect her ankle. The vague cloud of sensation that was her middle back stung whenever she moved her arms, probably from rolling over scraps of metal and glass after she jumped out the window — there was a reason the X-Men uniforms were made of leather. There were reasons for many things.
Her life had been in danger, there was no doubt. The men at Argo were trained and armed, just like she'd been warned they would be, and the cure gas was clearly the least of her concerns. The biggest villain of the night had been her own stupidity, and she was lucky that her rescuer had known exactly how to subdue it.
Logan. It was embarrassing, even in the privacy of her own mind, that just as vivid as the flashes of danger was the memory of his body pressed against hers. Men with guns had counted down to her demise, and yet pinned under Logan's weight she'd felt more safe than she did at times in her own bed, overtaken by a primal, almost bodily drive to tuck herself under his shelter as threats hailed around them. There were people in her life she could have played trust fall with, but Marie would have jumped off a cliff if Logan was at the bottom, and the endless depth of that faith gave her vertigo.
Back in the present, the foyer materialized around her. The sight of the staircase made her ankle throb. It seemed to have spawned extra steps.
"You better not be planning to go up those stairs."
Just the force of his voice was enough to push her back against the Argo office wall. Logan was standing under the passage to the west wing, likely coming from Storm's office. His shirt was brown with bloodstains, and his skin had the matte finish of dried sweat.
"I guess I said I'm not afraid of pain, right?" she managed lightly, an eyebrow up.
He darted a look of concern at her leg, coming closer. "How's that?"
"Sprained I think." She angled her foot this way and that, cautiously mapping the pain. "Not too bad."
"Let me help you up." He offered his elbow the old-fashioned way — with no hint of irony, as if he did it everyday. Maybe at one time, he had. "I'd rather carry ya," Logan noted, not looking at her. "But I got a feeling you'd say no to that."
She gave a resigned smile. "I know I got rescued once today, but I still have a little dignity left."
"You worried about dignity? That took guts, what you did."
"Not sure I deserve much credit. I just… underestimated the risk."
"Not a problem cowards have," he mumbled, nudging her gently with his elbow. "Up?"
"Actually I'm still tucking Harry in." She shifted on her feet, sensing in his offer that spellbinding magnetism that made a person avoid the edge of a cliff — much more dangerous than the chance of slipping was the savage urge to jump. "And then I was gonna talk to Storm. She's still in the office, right?"
Logan nodded. "I was just talkin' to her."
"Anything new?"
"Just going over things."
"Do you buy her theory? That Trask did all this just so we'd retaliate and get bad press?"
He exhaled slowly, his eyes cast up the stairs. "Seems like too much trouble, putting those documents together if they just wanted to raise hell. And they coulda targeted other kinds of places, too."
"That's the same thing I was thinking. There are a couple of mutant bars in the city that have been vandalized a bunch of times. Why not go after those? Something's not adding up for me."
His gaze fell on her, assessing. "That why you're tucking the kid in? You worried?"
"Trask is… powerful, that's all."
"Any sonuvabitch who comes into this house looking for trouble is sure to find it, Marie. I guarantee you that."
"I know. I know." She'd seen it once, after all. "It's just…" She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "...reassuring to know he's safe in bed."
"Yeah."
The small talk sagged, as it usually did. This was the moment to turn away, say good night, make up a reason to be anywhere else.
Instead she spoke. "You surprised me tonight, coming there."
"You never should have gone alone."
"I wasn't planning to." Marie felt less annoyed than she sounded. "I told you I wanted to go because I thought you might want to come with me."
"I didn't want you anywhere near that fucking place. Now you know why."
"You could have told me you were planning to go."
"And you wouldn't have gone after me?" he asked harshly. "Go ahead and fume at me if it keeps you safe at home. I don't care if you like me, I care if you need me."
Some spark off his words ignited her temper, and she didn't bother pondering which. "Well, your big plan didn't work. And you were the one who got put in danger." She glanced at his chest again, where the shirt was streaked with rusty brown. It wasn't just the deep staining, she realized. "God, Logan, you were shot?"
He looked away. "What did you think they were gonna do, give me a wedgie?"
She reached for the trail of holes in the fabric, each fringed with the char of a bullet. A treasure map to his heart. "Logan…"
"It's fine, kid," he said dismissively, moving to gently brush her hand off his chest.
"It's not fine." Her fingers lingered, insistent. "Why didn't you leave?"
The obvious answer went unsaid: she'd asked him not to.
She squeezed her eyes shut. "I shouldn't have asked you for that contract. And you shouldn't have said yes."
"I healed, didn't I?"
"I thought you weren't even fighting anymore."
"If you really thought that, why try to get me to come?"
A tingle of restless energy skittered down her limbs, dead ending in twitchy fingers and toes. Why had she asked him? What had she hoped for? Was it just for lack of imagination that she couldn't fathom being one of the X-Men unless it was next to him?
"Storm said you're leaving the school," she said. "I've seen the job applications, I've helped her screen the candidates."
"You like any of 'em?"
"That's not the point."
"What is the point then? Cause I guarantee you wouldn't get from any of those people what you need from me."
There it was, the word that sparked her ire. Need. Need was what had kept her waiting for him after Storm came back alone from Montana, after he stopped responding, after what had been a trickle of doubt turned into stalactites of suspicion. It was what she'd trained herself not to feel for three years.
Her anger hurtled past her, dragging words with it. "Trust me, Logan, no one's relying on you, least of all me."
His eyes softened with visible hurt, and her regret settled between like a physical present, made worse by his small smile.
"I didn't—" she tried.
"S'alright, kid. I deserved that."
Their feet were inches apart on the floor. There was blood on his boots, too.
"No, you didn't. You saved my life. I shouldn't be…" She sighed. "Shit. I'm sorry."
He came closer, his hand hovering over the side of her waist without touching it, the way he used to do on the mat. Their whole history fit perfectly in that ever-narrowing gap between them, too slight to measure except in if-onlys and almosts.
"Listen, kid, I don't want to fight. All I'm sayin' is, if you want me here, then I'm not going anywhere." His voice thickened as he continued. "But if you want me to go, that's fine too." He paused there, as if waiting for her to choose, as if the choice was remotely possible.
She was supposed to have made it years ago, and in New York she thought she had. There were perfect Sundays when she shimmied out of bed just after six to run by the river until the cold in the air lost ground to the heat in her blood. There were times Jubilee made her laugh until her sides were sore, in the Cuban place that served a free sangria with any brunch entree. There were days when she took the N home after work and everyone else seemed so busy, so preoccupied, so absorbed in their own story that she could only conclude her own must have finally started, too. She hadn't needed him then.
But no one had needed her, either.
When she said nothing, he added, "You think I gave you that dog tag to keep you tied to me, but it wasn't. It was to keep me tied to you. I've got you, kid. Always. That doesn't change."
Marie closed her eyes and swallowed painfully. "I don't think that's true, Logan. I think everything changed."
He let out a slow, soft breath that wasn't quite a sigh, and she looked down at her own shoes, turning her eyes to control her tears. Logan's hand went to the white in her hair and time slowed, stretched into a ribbon and spiraled around them, nudging them closer together.
"Not the important stuff. That didn't change at all."
"If that was true, it would have worked between us."
"You really think it's that simple?"
"I think it should be that simple."
His fingers brushed her neck to curl around the nape and now the world was her fingertips, her nostrils, the roots of her hair conspiring to register the way his presence took up all her senses.
"I wish it was, Marie."
Her voice caught, splintered to a whisper, and she closed her eyes. "Well, why can't it be?"
There were times when the person she'd become felt like an itchy costume she couldn't wait to take off. There were times when she wondered whether jumping down the cliff was really her only chance to fly.
When she opened her eyes, he was looking at her lips. That restless, dangerous energy that had been seeking release all night bent towards him.
"How come Mr. Logan can touch your skin?"
Marie gasped for air. They pulled apart clumsily as Harry watched, his head cocked in suspicion that the rules so carefully laid out for him were being scandalously skirted.
"He shouldn't be," she said breathlessly, dizzy with the competing demands of her mind and her body. "No one can touch my skin, sugar. Not you and not Mr. Logan. It's not safe."
Harry's light brown eyebrows burrowed under the blue frames of his glasses. "But he touched you, and he's not hurt!"
Her tongue clicked in frustration. When they talked about her skin, Harry gave every appearance of listening to her explanations, only to question them again just hours later. Marie touched him as often as possible through gloves, yet he longed — and she did too — for the touch she had known in her childhood: the light graze of eyelashes on her face; the cold tip of a nose against her neck; the short-range burn of a beloved scent in her nostrils.
"Sugar," she started, patting his head in an attempt at damage control, "Mr. Logan is different—"
But the man himself cut her short, dropping to one knee in front of Harry. "You ain't wrong, buddy."
Faster than anyone could say pout, Logan had scooped the boy up on his hip.
"Tell me something, kid, you like Ms. Rogue, don't ya?" Harry's head bobbed happily. "Tell you what, she does, too. Ms. Rogue loves you. From the bottom of her heart. You know that?"
He nodded again, concentration narrowing his eyes the way it did when she worked dinosaurs into his arithmetic problems.
"Now, when you love someone like that, buddy, when you love someone a lot," he said softly, shifting Harry in his arms so he was more comfortably settled, "you don't want to hurt them. And it ain't fair, but sometimes that means you can't get as close to them as you want to." He was looking at Marie now. "You have to stay back from where you want to be, you can't get as close as you want, because you know they can get hurt if you do."
She saw her mother's unconscious body in her own childhood bedroom, after a good night kiss gone wrong. She saw herself, rocking back and forth on the floor as her father ran into the room, the promise echoing with every sob: If she wakes up, I'll leave.
"But that," he added, setting the boy down and turning to him seriously, "that's hard to do, buddy. And if someone does that for you, if someone holds back that love they have because they want to protect you… You can be sure of one thing." Logan patted Harry on the head, but it was Marie's eyes he looked into. "You can be sure that's the real deal."
Harry followed him back to bed, too pleased to remember his water or notice that Marie was looking down, tears dotting the polished hardwood.
She stayed behind, thinking of home. Her mother's slippers dragging on the floorboards, bringing rainbow-sprinkled cake for breakfast on her birthday. The red hairs in her father's beard shining like tinfoil when they sat on the porch licking homemade popsicles. The faint smell of baby powder that surrounded Meemaw like an aura and had once seemed like the scent of love. Home and all the things she'd left behind.
The truth came with the force of a landslide. Everything in its path — the city she'd built from her anger, the plans sown on too-shallow soil — crumbled to rubble in sheets, uncovering the bedrock she'd tried so hard to forget.
This thing between them, it was the real deal.
The smoke drifted, floating up towards the Milky Way. No moon, just the stars scattered across the night, the breadcrumb trail of a god who meant to come back but never did.
Logan had come back. Didn't really want to. After Montana he had questioned if there was a home to go to. When she left for LA, he knew there wasn't. Out west at least the world didn't conspire to remind him of her, as if he had to be reminded. Even so, there were days when she was all he thought about. How bad he hoped she would show up. How bad he needed to be saved.
It was Ro who saved him instead, well after the point where he thought himself worth saving. Staying away made more sense by then, and he would have done so if she'd let him. She made it out to seem like the school needed him, like the only way they'd keep it open was if he went back to help. Like without him, she was drowning.
Logan knew he had been the one drowning. He'd been drowning when he and Marie washed up on this place, flotsam bobbing all around him from a past he was afraid to remember. It was all so clear, looking back: Charles had been a buoy to him. Jean had been a lighthouse, or at least had looked like one. And Ro — Ro showed up with a raft when he went overboard again.
The storm never really passed, though. Yeah, on the face of it, he was probably better off here, in this cushy job and this fancy house where the sheets showed up changed and pressed every Tuesday and year-round the lawn was Benjamin-Franklin-green. But that was the surface of things, polished to a shine to show a reflection of what you wanted, not what lay underneath.
Underneath, he still felt like a dog dreaming he was a man.
The last drag of his cigar tasted sweet and peppery, like an ending. He walked back to the house slowly, wondering where she'd be. Better not to look for her, maybe not for a few days. It was true, what he'd said to Harry. Sometimes the measure of your love was how many steps back you took.
But Logan forgot it all as soon as he opened the door. There she was, standing by the staircase, like she hadn't moved. Like she'd been waiting for him the way he swore he wouldn't let her. When she turned, thick hair sweeping her waist, he saw a question in her manner, one he couldn't read. He didn't bother trying. There was a feeling coming over him, one stronger than curiosity. He'd felt it earlier, too, finding her in the Argo office: that feeling of knowing all his marks. What to do and who to be.
No words as he marched towards her. She held his gaze without flinching, and if she was confused when he set an arm around her waist, she hid it well. Logan laced the other arm behind her knees and picked her up, close to his heart. It was easy, too easy, and not just because she was small. It was easy like cornering on rails, like careening downhill. Like fate.
Her breathing slowed with relief. Her arms and her scent wrapped around him and they slow-danced up the stairs, a little sway with each step. At the landing he could have stopped and set her down, but he didn't. He kept going, past his bedroom and then past Hank's, to her door and then through it.
The room was dark. He walked in with short, deliberate steps that felt solemn in the carpet-muffled quiet. Her hands stayed around his neck when he kicked the door behind him, shutting out their old rules. Brown hair spilled over the pillow when he set her down.
Marie turned on a bedside lamp and locked eyes with him, but she said nothing. She didn't thank him, or curse him, or ask him what he was doing when he kneeled on the floor next to her and started unlacing her boots, steadying the bad ankle with one hand. For a while there was no sound between them but her soft breathing and the rustle of leather and fabric as he wiggled the shoes loose, one and then the other. She just watched.
Her feet were pale like her hands, a little large for her figure. He moved his hands on impulse, tracing thin bones, brushing over the toes. On the first night she came back he'd been struck by how soft her hands were, always protected in their gloves. Maybe if he carried her everywhere they could keep her feet that soft, too.
The injured ankle was warm and visibly swollen, but not too bad. Logan raised an eyebrow and turned to watch her face while he ran a hand over it lightly.
"That hurt?" His voice sounded too loud.
"No."
"We could try and heal it," he pondered, wrapping his hand around her foot more tightly.
But Marie was shaking her head. "I'm too tired right now to think about control, and I don't have a good handle on how my skin works these days."
He nodded and took her other foot, mostly because he wanted to, and rubbed it just light enough that he didn't have to admit to doing it. "This one is alright?"
"That one's fine." A beat. "Maybe you shouldn't be touching me."
Ah, fuck. That was what she accused him of doing, wasn't it? Getting too close, just to step back again, and here he was, doing exactly that after his big speech about staying away. Logan dropped her foot instantly. "Sorry, kid, I—"
Her eyes went wide. "No, my skin! No, sorry, I meant so you don't get hurt."
"Oh." Logan wasn't sure what to think of that. He'd healed her enough times over the years to know exactly what it felt like, and this wasn't that. He reached for her foot again, more tentative this time. "Is it on?"
She frowned. "I don't exactly have an off switch."
"You know what I mean. Is it— Do you feel it?"
"Barely," she whispered. "But when Hank tested it in the lab, he said it was back."
Logan focused on the sensation of her skin was pressed against his. There was a spark there, but it had nothing to do with her powers. "I don't feel it at all. Harry might be onto something, kid. Maybe if it doesn't hurt me, then I might as well."
"So we're taking advice from a six-year-old?"
Logan laughed. "Is the problem the six-year-old or the part about taking advice?"
Marie gave a bashful little smirk. "Touchée."
He smiled, but went back to task quickly. "You hurt anywhere else? I smell blood, but I don't see it."
"I think I rolled over something sharp when I jumped out."
She sat up, shifting her legs out of his reach, and reached behind her back. She looked up at the ceiling in concentration, scrunching her nose and biting the tip of her tongue while her hand probed. Logan felt a surge of affection. It'd been a while since he'd seen her unselfconscious like this.
"Ouch! Definitely… something…"
"Let's get some ice on your ankle, and then I'll take a look."
He stood up without waiting for agreement. This right here, he thought, letting himself out of the room, this was the best thing they were. Forget being friends, lovers, enemies. He could take care of her. He always had, and it had often been the most human thing about him.
They were too close to the edge.
The sensation was familiar: an ease between them, deceptively inviting like the smooth and waveless surface that hides a riptide. Even from outside the room she could feel the powerful undercurrent of his spell — pulling away from her plans, straining the dam she'd built.
Things were easier around him. They were easier at Argo, with the weight of his presence evening her keel in a way her vanity made hard to admit. Then later with Harry he made them easier again, swooping in unprompted to put words to a feeling she'd lived with for years and barely knew how to describe. And then once more, when he swept her off her feet without a second thought, as if her pain and exhaustion were his to carry as much as they were hers. When he was near there was always a gentle current buoying her up, and that might be why she always drifted further than intended.
The real deal. She had no question those words had been for her, and refracted through them the past looked different — less like the scandalous betrayal she'd recited to herself on the way to Los Angeles, and more like a complicated, adult version of the daydream her teenage self used to indulge in. The questions were obvious and almost irresistible, but she knew the answers would only pull her in further.
She reached around her torso again, trying to feel for the back injury and finding nothing more informative than a stab of pain. The window at Argo faced a dirty alley, probably littered with shards from broken bottles and any number of unsavory sharp items that might now be embedded in her back, out of her reach.
He walked inside without knocking on the door, and barely spared her a glance before kneeling and tightly swaddling her ankle in an ice-cold velcro contraption. All the school's freezers were always stocked with cold compresses.
"You'll want to keep that high," he mumbled, nudging her foot until she set the injured leg on the bed. "How about the back now?" He fished a pair of gloves out of his back pocket and waved them at her.
At her nod, the mattress shifted behind her. He was close, one knee just barely grazing her thigh. His hand brushed against the hem of her shirt, stirring up an image of being undressed by him, but he went no further. She understood the courtesy and took the reins, hands trembling only slightly as she fisted the fabric and hiked her shirt up to her waist.
Their soundless, unhurried movements gave her a feeling of being underwater. A long time passed until she felt his broad hand dragging across her back, sensually sweeping her hair. She tilted her neck slightly, pretending to herself that it was not a suggestion.
"I see somethin'," he mumbled, and then for the first time his gloved hand brushed the sensitive skin of her lower back, triggering a full-body shiver. He paused. "You alright?"
"Sorry." Marie breathed in deeply, sensing the call of the abyss. "I'm fine."
He said nothing more, and the small sounds got bigger: the murmur of his gloves on her skin, the bed frame's groans, a rustle of fabric each time he touched her shirt.
In the soft light, the room presented its relics. A photo of her parents in their youth, the glass cracked in a small West Hollywood earthquake. The shallow blue bowl that had always held Meemaw's keys and since the funeral came to hold hers. The floral duvet that Jubilee had brought as a housewarming gift when she moved back from LA. All were artifacts of an era in which Logan had no place.
Yet here he was, inconspicuous among the fragments of her life, as if the current she'd been drifting on had all along been carrying her to him. In theory she'd traveled West towards the bull's eye of academic excellence in her chosen field, and then East for tree-lined streets that were not hostile to pedestrians. But perhaps her cardinal directions had always been Away or Towards. Days earlier, even hours, she would have hated that thought. She would have hated the looming inevitably that hung forever in their shared horizon, cursing it as her fate. Now she wondered if it might be her destiny.
Suddenly his hand spanned most of her lower back, warm and strong. "A little blood down here," he said, rubbing a finger near her spine. "Looks like there's more under your shirt. You'll want to make sure you clean that pretty good." He said it in a tone of finality, as if he expected the examination to stop there. "I'll get a bath running," he added, making a move to get up. "Leave the ice on while the tub fills up, then relax a little. It'll help you sleep."
The right things to say were thank you and good night. She could make do in the shower, perhaps get help from Storm if absolutely necessary. By tomorrow, the current would have changed. By tomorrow the pull would be gone.
But how many times had she vowed to herself to stay away from him? How many of those vows had she kept?
When she made no response, he asked, "You think you can get there by yourself? I can come back."
In a flash of imagination she was lying back on the bed, holding painfully still as those large hands peeled off her bra, then brushed the sensitive sides of her breasts to sensually skate over her waist and pull off her leggings. He'd pick her up again, naked in his arms, and then with any luck he'd forget the bath entirely.
Turning away abruptly, she felt that sharp crack of pain from her back. There was, at least, a legitimate reason to accept his help. She didn't bother admitting to herself that she didn't need one at all.
"Should you clean it maybe? I don't think I can."
Standing near the bed, Logan stopped in his tracks. That was a bad idea. But then again, most of his ideas around her were bad ones. Self-control wasn't exactly his strength, which in more ways than one was exactly why he should stay away. Instead, he sat back down.
Tentatively, Logan set one hand over her shirt. To do anything useful, he'd have to look under it. "You mind if I push this up?"
Through the clothes, he felt her heart race. "That's fine."
He set his hands on either side of her waist and slid them up, slow with the friction of leather on skin, until his thumbs hit the strap of her bra. He thought he heard her breath change, but maybe it was just his own.
"Nothing too bad," he muttered, trying not to notice that said bra was black and lacy, and failing miserably. "Mostly small stuff." There was a cluster of small nicks and scrapes, and a few smudges of dried blood around a larger one. Tentatively, he ran a fingertip around it. "How does that feel?"
She breathed in sharply. "Stings a little."
As she moved, something caught the light and winked at him. "I think I see a shard of glass. Let me get this washed up for you."
The bathroom was a refuge at least. Logan rummaged in the cabinet and found a stack of washcloths. Then he turned on the hot water, which gave him a good excuse to wait and take a few deep breaths. This ought to be simple, really: pick out the shards, clean the cuts, run a bath. Say good night. No lingering, no extending. The best thing he could do for her tonight was hold himself back.
The water heated up before he'd really cooled down, but he soaked two washcloths, one with a drop of soap and one without, and told himself he could do this.
Then he walked back into the room and got sucker punched by reality.
Marie was right where he'd left her. Her shirt, on the other hand, was not. She turned when she heard him open the door, and fuck. That innocent look on her face didn't match the heavy set of breasts overflowing from her black bra. The cups were lacy and small, hugging her curves the way his hands would, right before he teased one nipple and sucked it into his mouth. His cock stirred in his jeans.
Quickly, but a beat too late, he looked away just as she covered herself.
"I know you're trying to be proper," she said, trying to smile, "but just thought I'd make it easier, right?"
Logan could think of one thing she was making much, much harder, but he just grunted and sat down behind her. He focused on the task at hand: the wet cloth, her scraped skin. The trail of dampness and gooseflesh each movement left behind, and the way the water beaded and rolled down — just like it would roll to that perfect strip of cleavage between her tits, or down to her hard nipples and dangle there for him to—
Ah, fuck. Marie said nothing, breathing steadily as he began.
"This ok?"
A nod.
Under slow strokes of his washcloth, the dried blood began to clear. Needing a little more pressure, he set one hand on her shoulder to steady her. The strap of her bra felt tense under his fingers, tight with the weight of temptation.
Logan kept working. "I gotta lift this," he said, sliding a finger under the band that was stretched across her back, "to clean underneath."
"Just unhook it for a second," she said. "I would but it kinda hurts to reach back there."
Logan bit back a groan. Did he look like a fucking eunuch? He took the two sides of the strap, shaking a little like some school boy with a sock for a girlfriend. How many bras had he unhooked in his life? What the fuck was so special about this one? Then the straps fell loose, and he held his breath.
It was nothing, it was the beat-up back of a beautiful woman, flaring between the nip of her waist and the curve of her neck. But his body went into overdrive. He wanted to push those straps off her shoulders, pull her to his lap and work her neck with his mouth and her breasts with his hands. He wanted to spend all night showing her every way he knew to pleasure them, and then see if he could learn a few more.
Logan shifted in his seat, his cock uncomfortably hard. Back to the washcloth. He cleaned where the strap had been and moved out in circles, wiping away the soapy water. He could see the glass now, small but sharp, clinging to her.
"Gonna try to pick out this shard."
She agreed wordlessly and he shifted, gently nudging her to lean forward. In the process his hand bumped the bra, still hanging loose off her frame, and made it sway a little.
The air sweetened between them with an unmistakable smell. He wasn't the only one holding back here, not tonight. She was hankering for touch so bad that even the fabric set her off. Logan didn't even want to imagine how much sweeter she'd smell if it had been his hand.
But of course he did.
He held her firmly in place, a small taste of his strength, and arousal rushed between her legs again. It'd be so easy to pull that hand down, replacing the fabric of her bra with the warm, firm cup of his touch. Again that dull, pleasurable ache in her center throbbed as her body readied itself.
His next movement set off a sharp pain in contrast. Marie bit her lips, feeling ridiculous. This was first aid, not foreplay; the plan was still to say thank you and good night.
Another stab. This time, she gasped.
"Shit. Sorry. That hurt?"
She shook her head. "It's nothing. Go on."
He huffed in frustration. "It's the glove. I gotta take it off if I'm ever gonna pick this thing out."
He didn't wait for an answer. Soon the gloves were discarded on the bed beside them, and the next thing she felt was the forbidden contact of his skin. Against her cold, damp back, his touch felt like fire.
This time the shard came off easily, with no more protest than a gentle prick.
"There," he said, a satisfied note in his tone.
But she felt profoundly unsatisfied. Her body was tightly strung from the nervous energy she'd struggled with all night, and the slightest provocation resonated endlessly. Her nipples were hard under her loose bra, sensitive even to the light friction of the fabric. His errant, grazing touches were torture, each one drawing another gush of readiness from her core and then immediately breaking its promise. It was a mess of dissonant notes when she hungered for music.
The full span of his hand covered her back, and her mind clouded with relief.
"This feel okay?"
It felt far better than okay, but she made an effort to sound composed. "Yeah, that's fine."
"Doesn't seem like your skin is hurting me or anything."
"I guess not."
"Wish I could heal you."
"I know. I appreciate that."
He continued in silence, his thumbs pressing easy, precise arcs into the ring of tension around her neck. She closed her eyes and leaned back, making no effort to hide her enjoyment. There was no point, if her double-crossing body was just going to broadcast it. Every time his hands knocked her loose bra it set off a pang of pleasure-pain between her legs, and she knew he could smell how wet she was. To her surprise, in place of embarrassment she felt only a dark, lustful pride.
"You're tense up here." His voice was low and strained, as if she wasn't the only one close to bursting. "This helping at all?"
How easy it would be to tell him no, that she needed rest instead, a long night of sleep alone in her bed. Marie sighed, exhaling her exhaustion and filling up with desire as she sat in her unclasped bra and leaned into the touch of the man who taught her to want.
"Yeah. Yeah, it is."
The brakes were failing and there she was, hurtling towards the cliff — unafraid of the abyss, addicted to falling. His hands moved, warm and rough just the way she'd imagined them, covering wide swaths of her back in coordinated strokes that made her bite back a moan. His touch fanned out, caressing the grain of her ribs and spanning her back easily, the heels of his palms dragging and the tips of his fingers grazing, insinuating themselves so far that they found the space between her arms and torso and came temptingly close to the sensitive sides of her breasts. A melody, at last.
Another strangled moan died in her throat, low and creaky.
But before they could find a crescendo, his hands came to rest heavily on her shoulders. "I need to get going."
Marie smiled to herself. Was this not what always happened? She jumped off the cliff thinking this time she'd finally fly, but the cold hard ground was always waiting, no matter how long it took her to reach it.
"Of course you do," she quipped, leaning away from him.
He didn't miss the sharp edge. "You need more help? I can—"
"No, I don't think you can help from here." On second thought, she added, "Thank you."
It sounded insincere, even though it wasn't. Logan took his hands off her shoulders and stood up in a flash. "You got this all wrong if you think that's what I want."
She reached back and clasped her bra in annoyance, fumbling for her shirt before turning to him. But when she did, her lips went dry.
He was visibly, obscenely hard. The bulge in his jeans was so tight that she could make out the sinful girth of his erection.
They looked at each other for a beat, opponents in the ring. The instincts she'd honed — to shelter the flame of her anger, to feed it any kindle she could find — swelled and then dwindled.
Her voice had no edge this time. "What are we doing here, Logan?"
He simply stared. There was a tense quality to his stillness, a trance that might break if either one of them moved. His eyes were dark with a hunger deep enough to consume her anger, her doubt, her very self.
"More than we oughta," he said.
She thought back to his words about staying away. "What you said to Harry… That was for me, wasn't it? It was… something about why you didn't come back."
He looked away first, running a hand through his hair and conferring with his feet. Then he tilted his head and looked at her.
"I thought you didn't want to know why I didn't come back."
"And I thought you wanted to tell me."
"It's gonna hurt us both, if I do."
Marie dropped the shirt and all her shame. She didn't cover herself this time. Nor did he look away. She squared her shoulders, staring straight at him. His gaze lowered automatically and she reveled in it, noticing the galloping pulse at the base of his throat and the pornographic twitch in his crotch. Then he looked her in the eye again.
"We're both already hurt," she said.
Fucking tiny little bedroom. He started to pace, all the things he knew he owed her caging him in as good as bars. It'd sure be a hell of a lot easier to bolt, chase a hard fight with an easy fuck, drunk enough a set of blonde highlights would look white in the dark if he squinted. Anywhere would be better than here right now: on the road, in the woods, at least in a cage somewhere. Anywhere he could move. Where the outside of him could match the inside and he didn't need to work so damn hard to seem human.
Logan dug his heels in. Fuck his tingling fingers, the dryness in his mouth, the thing around his ribs that felt so much like fear. Fuck his cock telling him that if he lay her back in bed and buried his face between her thighs, she'd forget all her questions. There'd been pieces of him all over the floor for years and she kept picking them up, asking where they went. If anyone was ever gonna puzzle it all out, it was her.
"I was drinkin'," he said. Even in his own head, his voice sounded thin. "When you left for LA, I was drinkin'."
Logan saw the way she paused. The silence throbbed between them. But the only thing she asked was, "Where?"
He opened his mouth but had to close it. All the things he wanted her to know bunched up in his chest where the air was meant to go. That sure didn't help with talking.
He'd coasted east down the Montana mountains, because in theory it was the way home. Ro flew back first, wanting to get ahead of the press and back to the students. Logan made up an excuse to drive back alone, knowing it didn't need to be a good one. She was probably as relieved as he was, and he didn't blame her. He didn't want to be around himself, either.
Logan did wonder sometimes what might have been different if she hadn't gone ahead. If she'd been there to keep count of his drinks after he lost it. But someone had to tackle the future while he wrestled with the past. It didn't take long until the past was winning. On the road he kept tabs on the snow capped mountains in his rearview mirror, like they might be talking about him behind his back.
He should have been drawing a line on the map, but it tangled into a knot and tied him where he was. Ro and Marie both called and texted, but he only answered when he was sober, which pretty soon was hardly ever. The less he said, the more they asked. The more they asked, the worse he felt. He only really knew one way to feel better.
Sleeping was often in the truck, sometimes while driving it. Food came from rest stops or not at all. He didn't remember talking to much anybody, at least not about anything other than money. But he wasn't alone. He never went to bed with women but he always woke up with her, sitting in the corner of the room, smiling.
Jean understood. She was the only person in his life who did, and she reminded him of that every chance she got. She partook in the mountains' gossip and egged him on when he drank. When whiskey stopped being enough, she had suggestions. And every time the phone rang, she second-guessed everything he meant to say.
The day Marie went to LA was the day he doubled back west, chasing highs the way better men chased dreams. The things he did around that time should have killed him, and when they didn't he understood why a bastard like himself had ended up with the healing. It wasn't a gift. It was a life sentence.
Marie was looking at him, waiting. The last thing he wanted to do was explain, but she made him want to try. She always had.
"It started in Montana, after that school thing. I needed…" He paused there, choosing his words like footholds on a rock wall. "Time, after all the shit that went down. Hard to be in a school, around a bunch of kids, after…" He shook his head, more at himself than at her. Not tonight. Probably not ever, but definitely not tonight. "After what happened. And then I bummed around the Rockies for a while. A little fightin'. A lotta drinkin'."
He waited for a beat, hoping for a question, a distraction, anything to let him off the hook so he didn't have to tell her what he really meant. But she said nothing, watching him quietly.
"Or drinkin' was how it started," he continued. "Then it was…" Logan sighed. "More." She didn't need to know what he bought in back alleys and cooked in motel rooms. "Turns out there's parts of this country where it's real easy to upgrade."
It wasn't news that he'd experimented here and there. They had talked about that in the old days and she listened without judgment. It helped that most of those stories were about terrible bars and even worse decisions, ending in a light-hearted punchline rather than the hard jolt of rock bottom. This was different, and from the look in her eyes, she knew it.
Her voice was dry. "So the reason you weren't here, the reason we never—"
"Plan was always to come back," he added weakly. "At least when I still thought I could."
"You never told me any of this."
"Didn't seem right. Knowing you, you'd get it in your head to try and help."
Her eyes narrowed, like she wasn't buying it. "And that would have been bad how?"
She didn't know the half of it. The way to rescue a drowning person was to make sure you didn't get too close. Ro understood that. Marie didn't. He'd saved her by leaving just as much as he'd saved her on that torch.
"I just wanted you safe, kid."
Marie looked down at her hands, and in a flash of terror he worried she might never look him in the eye again.
"I…" She tucked her hair behind her ears, the way she did when she was nervous. Her face was still turned down, away from him. "I mean, I honestly thought— I don't know, I thought it was about me, about my skin coming back, about—"
He took a step towards her. "Kid, I'm real sorry I made you think that."
Her temper flared, head snapping up. "Why didn't you tell me then?"
"What the fuck was I gonna say?" He paced, both to avoid her anger and to burn off his own. "Sorry I missed your call, I was drunk in a ditch somewhere?"
"I don't know!" She stood up. "How about tell me I wasn't supposed to be mad at you? That you'd gone through something? That you were the one who should have been mad at me?"
"Mad at you? Why the fuck would I be mad at you?"
"You said it yourself, Logan. Storm hunted you down. I didn't."
Logan came another step closer. Her shoulders softened, lush hair raining down her collaborne to frame her cleavage. That little bra was pure sin.
"That wasn't your job to do that."
"And it was hers?"
"It's different."
"Why? Why should it be different? If anything it should have been—"
"I was trying to protect you."
She threw up her hands, indignant. "Don't I ever get to protect you?"
It stunned him as good as any punch. Logan looked at her for a moment, his heart overflowing. She hadn't just come to his life in spring. She was spring, and maybe the parts of him he'd left for dead had only been wintering. Maybe being a man wasn't a dream after all. Maybe it was a memory.
"Kid, c'mere," he said mutedly, pulling her into his arms, one hand on the back of her head. "Just c'mere." For once she didn't resist him, all soft against his hardness. She fit there perfectly, tucked into him and sheltered. "I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair. "Alright? I'm so fucking sorry."
"I could have helped you," she mumbled. "I could have been there."
"You couldn't have saved me, kid."
"Why not?" She looked at him. "You saved me."
"That's different."
"Why?"
There was a strand of hair lightly stuck to her lip, and when he pushed it off her face he was left looking at her mouth. The world's edges grew sharper. He heard the night breathing outside, the murmurs of the old house, Marie's strong heart. The scene at Argo came to him in flashes — blood and gunshots and danger, and then the smell of her neck when he whispered in her ear. The way she'd relaxed in his arms. The way she always relaxed in his arms.
Logan's hands went to her waist. He leaned his forehead against hers and her scent hit him like it was blow, like it was pussy, like it was fucking air and he'd been holding his breath ever since she'd shown up in this house with skin he could touch. Then he told her how he'd always felt.
"Cause you're mine to save."
The kiss was bottomless. Like falling. Like dying. She couldn't have said who started it: it was neither him nor her, it was time itself, the Earth spinning on its axis, the unseen hand of the universe ushering rivers down to the sea. It was music, finally, and she danced without hesitation: leading and following, pushing and pulling, soft lips and sharp teeth, smooth skin and rough beard, all competing, conversing, combining, harmonies and countermelodies that made her wonder if she'd ever truly had a body because this — this was nothing she'd felt before.
"I don't hate you," she whispered, even though he hadn't asked. "I have never, ever hated you."
Down her jawline he whispered a trail of kisses. "I wanted you safe." His voice rumbled against her as Logan moved, nipping at her neck, and she tilted her head back and let him work her. "Didn't you want you getting it in your head to stay here for me, to give up your dream for my nightmare."
She clung to him fiercely, fingers curled into his hair, her thigh finding its way up his leg and into the strong grasp of his hand.
"You should have let me try."
He pulled her into another kiss, his free hand roaming her naked back to cup her ass over her leggings, setting her into place against him, thick and hard in his jeans. Logan kneaded her thigh encouragingly and she undulated lasciviously, pushing her breasts into his chest and her hips into his erection, furious at the fact that there were ways to be closer to him and she wasn't.
He pulled back without warning, his hands suddenly chaste on her waist, and gave her a serious look. "I meant what I said, Marie. I stayed away cause I didn't want to hurt you. And I don't know if I can promise that I won't."
He stood still, but all the power in his body was pulsing just under the skin. She took the measure of him: flared nostrils, curled fists, raised veins. On his clothes there was still the lingering smell of gunpowder, blood, and all the terrible things he'd face for her. Lust crackled in his eyes every time they shifted from her eyes to her lips to her breasts, as if he couldn't decide which part of her he wanted to devour first. She'd stepped into the lion's cage.
Doubt was a thing of the mind, and hers had surrendered the moment his hands began moving over her skin. The body knew. She belonged in his arms, with her breasts in his hands and her throat in his teeth. With his come between her legs. The body wanted to be seen, to be touched. To be pleasured. She reached behind her back and flicked her bra open, shedding it with an easy shrug.
When the light in his eyes brightened, she realized they were reflecting her.
Marie stepped close, her naked chest pressed against his as she leaned in to whisper in his ear. "I already said I'm not afraid of pain."
Everything shattered.
The shame, the reasons, the walls fell to pieces and behind them was her, all curves and invitations, legs pulling on his waist, hands pushing off his shirt. He drank her kiss like it was water. They fumbled for the bed, Marie filling his mouth with moans each time he bucked his hips between her thighs. Then he lay her down and, for the first time in three years he looked his fill.
She was a feast of long legs and perfect tits, with cherry-dark nipples that looked like they needed the heat of a man's mouth. He didn't bother teasing; he took one between his lips and the other under his thumb.
"Logan!"
His tongue worked the bud steadily, sucking and flicking until she arched off the bed with greedy fingers in his hair. Then he switched.
"I wanted you like this for so long," he said breathlessly, a hard suck of her tit by way of punctuation. "Naked on your bed, all wet and willin'."
She laughed through a moan, fingernails dragging down his back. "I've been naked, wet and willing a million times. You just weren't there."
He reached down into her leggings. "Baby, I'm there now."
Marie gasped when he clamped his hand over her soaking wet pussy. His fingers slid easily and he couldn't resist shoving in two, rougher than he should have been. But she opened for him, spreading wide to take more.
"That," she panted, "is exactly what I did those nights."
The thought of that drove him crazy. Logan buried his face in her, trying to make up for a thousand lost nights. He pumped his fingers into her tight heat, sucking and biting frantically, desperate to show he could give her more than she could give herself.
He moved, savoring everything. The ripple of her ribs and the dip of her belly button. The light fuzz of hair that showed him the path. He followed it, kissing and biting, fingers sliding out so his hands could cup her ass possessively and find the waistband of her leggings. He pulled them off.
There she was, the way he'd tried not to imagine her. Spread long on the mattress, nipples red and abused, his bite mark all over her stomach, a gloss of welcome on her thighs and that patch of brown hair that he'd dreamed a thousand times.
"Darlin', trust me," he said, voice rough with hunger, "I bet I was hard as a rock in my bed, thinking about you like this."
She propped herself up on her elbows and he loved the way her tits swayed, the way her smirk stretched her heart-shaped mouth.
"Then let me see," she teased, nodding towards his crotch.
He kept her eyes on her, dark and narrowed, as he unbuttoned his jeans. She watched, waiting. He looked larger from this angle, all lean muscle and dark hair. All animal. The hard buds of her breasts ached to be back in his mouth. Logan undid his zipper.
There was no underwear under his jeans. When he lowered them she saw everything: the coarse hair that thickened under his waistline, the ropey veins traversing his lower abs, the tops of his powerful thighs.
Then the jeans fell off and he was standing up for her. Thick and hard, just like she'd known. She touched herself without thinking and found her entrance soft and warm, ready to open. The head of his cock was broad and she imagined it sliding inside her, spreading the lips of her sex. It was so much thicker than her fingers but it would glide easily, touching her deep inside. Making him part of her.
She spread her legs, calling him home.
It was hard to see clear through the haze of her want and his, but he knew she was ready, and god knew he was, too. But there was one more thing he wanted to do, first.
"You said you fingered yourself when I wasn't around," he said, laying a kiss on her bent knee. "I figure I oughta do something you couldn't."
The heady smell was easy to follow. He took his time licking the glaze off her thighs, sweet and sticky, then steadied her mindless writhing with his hands so he could dip his tongue into the source of all that sweet honey.
"Fuck, Logan…"
She was ripe fruit in his mouth. He tasted her first, using broad strokes, then reached in far, reminding her what it felt like to be filled. She pulled madly on his hair and he shoved in and out, fucking her wet slit with his tongue.
"Logan, baby," she whined, "baby, I want—"
He swirled his tongue between her lips and she cut herself off with a moan, pushing herself into his mouth. He moved up, tasting arousal when his mouth closed around her clit with a slow, languorous suck.
"Oh, fuck, yes, that…"
He flicked and sipped, her hands crazed on his hair and her thighs pushing on his shoulders, fighting for control. Logan pushed her knees apart, sensing that she wanted him to fight back. Bull's eye: she arced like a bow, lifting her exposed pussy right up for him to lap from. When he did, he could barely make out the words through her moans.
"Inside," she panted. "Let me come with you inside."
Logan couldn't help but smirk.
He laid a soothing kiss between her legs and shifted, carefully covering her body and bracing himself on a forearm. When her eyes closed, he brushed one hand across her cheek. What a sight to behold she was — so open, so warm. All his, all his, all his. For so long he'd been lost, for so long he'd been drowning. Not now. Marie had always felt like land.
He felt it keenly, that door between them. It would open and then vanish behind them; there'd be no way back.
She nuzzled the palm of his hand and beamed a dizzy joy that waved all over her face and crinkled around her half-closed eyes. Happy. Giddy. Like they had a secret. He smiled too. Maybe they did. Maybe the secret wasn't all the things he hadn't told her, all the things he was still running from. Maybe the secret was that she didn't need to know. Maybe the secret was that he got to try again.
"You're mine to save," he whispered.
And then he was inside her, finally on shore.
She'd never been so open, so full. It was his physical size, yes — just as she imagined he had to stretch his way in, deep into that place where pleasure sprung — but it was more than that, too. It was the way he overwhelmed her. He had her pinned under his gaze, between muscular arms towering up to that warrior body that could defeat anything, even time. Everywhere she turned, another facet of his power.
Another thrust spread her further, and she closed her eyes from pure joy. He kissed her throat, sucking on the hollow spot, and brought lightning on her clit with a flick of his thumb. She moved, arching her body to take more of his length, pulling his head down to her breasts. He took the offer gladly, bracketing them between large hands and working kisses, bites, promises while his cock pistoned into her.
"The claws," Marie mumbled brokenly as pleasure racked her, turning words into moans into sobs. "I want to see your claws."
It should have been impossible, but deep between her legs, he got harder.
He touched her face wordlessly, planting a kiss on her forehead that would have been chaste if she wasn't completely filled by him. With a long, sinuous movement he sat back on his haunches, leaving her aching even though he stayed inside her, giving her short, shallow strokes that teased more than they satisfied. Then he held out his hands and slowly, deliberately let out his claws.
He stood still for a moment while she traced them with her eyes. A sense of peril blew across her body like a breeze, spreading goosebumps, and she cupped her breasts in her hands. The lion's cage, the cliff's edge. What was it about dangerous things that made them so bewitching? Was it just that danger, tamed, was much the same as power?
"That turn you on?" he asked hoarsely.
It did, but arousal was not the point, exactly. Over the years they'd seen each other behind veils and masks, bound by rules and expectations. It was time for more. Marie cast about for words.
"I want everything that you are."
He dove down, the claws anchoring on the mattress, and gave her every last inch of his cock.
Marie came in shudders, her whole body tensing to clutch him in tightly and keep him close. He thrust without flagging, through her climax and then his, until she began to relax the soft warmth of his come spilled from the seam between them. Her body overflowing, just like her heart.
Logan sagged in her arms, mindful of his weight, and they lay tangled in the silence, her hand on his head. He curled in, half on top of her, face hidden in her chest so his lips could brush her skin.
She stayed awake as he slept, fingers barely stirring in his hair, and thought of her pink childhood bedroom, where she'd always burrowed under her favorite chunky knit blanket, soothing even when it was far too warm. It was the weight that soothed her — that weight of safety and surrender and belonging that she had sought under one heavy blanket or another every night since the last day of her childhood, not ever realizing she was looking for this, for him.
A.N.: Hope you're as happy that they got together as I am! (And that you'll let me know, lol!)