The next person who reminded him this was a non-smoking bar was going to die. Slowly. A cigar through the heart could be effective, Logan mused. Even if he had to waste a good Cuban to do it, the symmetry was pleasing. His Zen self loved the idea.

The things he did for Marie. “Sugar, I want to go to a new bar. Can we try that place in the city I read about last week?”

He knew his answer should have been “No.” Or perhaps – just this once - Cyclops would end his crusade against the f-word to countenance “no fucking way”, because Marie wasn’t 21 yet. Hell, she was barely 18. But she was woman enough to get her way when she wanted something, and he had been taking her to dingy, no account bars for months. Just not bars like this.

No smoking bars. He had been truly amazed to find there was such a thing. In New York, no less. Home of Lady Liberty and all. He growled and shook his head. It was heresy. Or maybe even apostasy.

Logan took a deep breath, dragging in forbearance and martyrdom with every minute expansion of his lungs. He could see it, smell it, and even taste it, his beloved Cuban. But he was sitting under a sign that said he couldn’t light up. The things he did for Marie.

And she was dancing. Dancing! In a whirl of delicious colour and swirling silk, shimmying and shaking her heart-shaped ass at every Tom, Dick and Harry who dared to venture on the dance floor. The Wolverine, of course, didn’t dance. Logan was thankful, under the circumstances. It was much safer to ogle her ass from afar.

The music – some dance crap that thought you could replace a guitar with a fuckin’ synthesiser – was jangling his nerve endings and making him jumpy. He suspected his hands had made his hair look even more ridiculous than usual, and in this joint, that was probably an evictable offence. The smarmy couple on the door had looked him up, then down, and then up again – both man and woman lingering a little too long on his pecs, and he’d been forced to take the hint. Goodbye flannel shirt, hello Mr Muscles, why don’t you come in to our overpriced gin joint. Overpriced, NON-SMOKING gin joint. Not that they warn you about THAT outside.

So he’d stripped down, endured the twin leers, and stomped inside. Marie had followed in his wake, all indignant and spitting at the “doorpersons” taking liberties. “Ah mean, ah know yah hot, Logan, but they really shouldn’t …” she trailed off, magnolia skin flared with red. Logan could tell the precise moment she realised she’d just confessed her feelings – a topic they avoided like the plague. Rescue was required.

“It’s OK, kid. People do it all the time. If some faghag and her boytoy want to look me over, I’ll put up with it. For you, Marie. The things I do for you.” He ended with that fond smile that was starting to ache on his face, the paternal hand on her waist that he had to force not to slip lower.

She was still spluttering when they got to the bar, and he ordered for them. Rye whiskey. Coke. Two beers. He would drink the whiskey straight, she would mix hers with Coke, and they’d drink a beer each, for old times sake. Their salute to days on the road, when he hadn’t yet been appropriately civilised to know you weren’t meant to offer a 16-year-old girl beer. It’s not like he wanted to get her drunk, or anything. He thought she might be thirsty, fer Chrissakes.

Cyclops and Jeannie hadn’t liked that little habit at all. Marie had been drinking like a fish and swearing like a sailor by the time they arrived at the school. The X-men, of course, put it down to the absorbtion, but Logan knew his company had more to do with it. She learned to throw them back after five nights in five different fight bars, and her sweet southern manners had vanished on Day Two of their acquaintance.

So he tried to tone his behaviour down, and be all reproving and “Marie!” with her. Don’t swear, Marie. Don’t steal my beer, Marie. Don’t swish your hair under my nose and try to drive me crazy with your scent, Marie. They’d turned him into a fuckin’ monk. Or a teacher, he shuddered. The things he did …

So here he was, sitting in a non-smoking bar with people that looked like they’d stepped out a Vogue, and he was watched her dance. Red silk scarf embracing her neck, another scarf at her waist, ends twisting and snapping about her hips as she twitched and dipped and slid and shimmied. Little vest thingy that revealed long, beautiful arms that were bare. Hands twirling in little circles at the ends of her wrists – even her fingers were dancing, he noted. And they were bare too. Cleavage, deep and sinful and God … he shouldn’t go there. Bare. And underneath the crotch-skimming hem of a skirt too small to justify the name, long, long legs that curved their way down to bare ankles he wanted to bite, and bare feet he needed to lick. Slowly.

He briefly thanked every deity he knew that his lower half was hidden by the table they’d chosen, and stuck the cigar in his mouth. Even if he couldn’t smoke it. Because the taste of it was enough, for now. Stopped him fantasising about the taste of her. The things he did for Marie. Smokin’ hot, sweet, touchable Marie.

He concentrated on the waft of cedar, loam, the sweetness of spice, and holding it all together, the tang of tobacco. His tongue played with the end and wrapped around it, tasting, touching. He understood, for the first time, why they called it an oral fixation. Vicarious pleasure. Distraction.

It failed, and his mind – and disobedient body – returned their focus to the one topic he was desperate to avoid.

The things he wanted to do to Marie.

FIN