Marie’s light knock on his door roused Logan. Naked, he padded to the door to let her in, asking, “Anybody see you?”
“Yeah, Bobby was in the kitchen scarfing ice cream as usual, but he pretty much ignored me after I blew him off. He was starting with the whole ‘sorry about Kitty’ thing and I told him it was the best thing he ever did for me. That shut him up.”
“You two really didn’t come out of it as friends then, eh?”
“Nah. No loss. I can work with him if I have to, y’know, with team stuff, but that’s it. I don’t want to talk about Bobby now. He’s history, and I’m hungry. I want to feed my lover,” she dangled a slice of ham in her fingers and he snatched it from her, wolfing it down.
“Mmmm, what else ya got? Wanna take your clothes off again?”
“Chips and more cold cuts and cheese and grapes and...” she grinned and reached into the bottom of the bag she’d confiscated, “one cold beer. I know where your beer stash is hidden in the walk-in cooler, and isn’t that handy?”
“You’re fantastic, baby.”
Both naked again, they ate in silence for a while, until Rogue caught Logan’s eyes and asked,
“You got any?” Suddenly serious, she raised her eyebrows at him, awaiting a reply.
“Any what?”
“Regrets. Tell me the truth.”
“None.”
“So, we’re good, even after taking the sex plunge?”
“We’re good. I’m happy, you’re happy and fucking hot, and I’m in love with you.”
Logan’s sudden confession over a mouthful of ham brought her up in shock, her eyes widening. “What did you just say? You’re really serious about that?”
He swallowed the ham down with a swig of beer, then, “You didn’t know that? I told you once; I’m in love with you.”
*
In her office, Ororo looked at the clock again and rubbed the back of her neck. She was tired, and tomorrow was another day - another busy day. Closing the file she’d stared glassy-eyed at for the past ten minutes, she stacked it tidily with the others and turned off her desk lamp. As she walked the corridors of the first floor, routinely checking things out of habit, she heard a distant knocking sound. Following the noise, it led her to the formal front doors of the mansion. Nearly midnight, and someone was knocking on the front door?
Scanning the windows as she approached the door, she noted nothing out of the ordinary, but made use of the peephole before reaching to disarm the electronic lock. In the yellow glow of the security light, slightly distorted through the fish-eye lens, she saw a dark-haired woman standing, waiting, smiling, and alone.
Throwing the lock, Ororo opened the door to the night and the woman, first noting that she was too old to be a potential student, and not an obvious mutant, but she was stunning: dark-haired but fair-skinned, pale icy eyes, tall, elegant as a cat, and somehow familiar.
“May I help you?”
The woman gave a subtle smirk, then in a smug, confident voice asked, “I know it’s very late, Storm, and we may live in the wrong century for me to ask this, but can you give me sanctuary?”
Taken aback at the woman knowing her mutant name, Ororo studied the stranger’s face for a few heartbeats, then gasped. That face, her face... she had seen the black-haired woman on the news footage when Eric’s Brotherhood had amassed an army. Holy Mother Goddess, the woman standing before her was Mystique in human form! Storm was momentarily speechless.
Mystique took the opportunity and continued, “I’ve been injected with the cure vaccine, involuntarily. It happened during a fight. It was purely an accident, and yet Eric abandoned me on the spot. For that reason alone, I no longer feel any hint of loyalty to him. In fact, I have a strong desire for revenge, but those things come when they come.” Her unreadable eyes drifted down for a moment, before meeting Ororo’s eyes once again, “I have no place to go, Storm; no family, no team, no job, no home, nothing. Turning evidence against Eric made me a pariah to the Brotherhood as a whole, and being ‘cured’ made me a misfit in mutant society in general. I’m not fully human, so I don’t fit there either. I am a woman ‘without a country,’ so to speak. However, I have something to offer you and your team. I know everything, ‘everything’ about the Brotherhood’s hierarchy: Eric’s generals, his ‘brothers’, his key players, his plans up to the point where I was taken into custody. You know that I’m skilled as well, if you were paying attention back at Alkali Lake. If you take me in, give me a chance, give me some way to prove myself, give me a purpose: I’ll tell you everything I know about them.”
Storm hesitated for a while, her brain humming with the heady combination of suspicion and possibilities, strategy and distrust, and then from the threshold of the school’s front door, she stepped aside, offering, “Come in. I’ll make us a pot of tea. We have a lot to talk over.”
*
Rogue raised her head from the pillow, shoved her disheveled hair from her eyes and surveyed the bed. The candle on the side table was guttering out. Between alternating rounds of food and sex, they’d wrecked the bed. Beside her, Logan lay asleep on his back, purring softly, hair scrambled in nine directions, a bunch of grapes laying in his open hand. She gently slipped the fruit out of his relaxed grasp so he didn’t squeeze them in his sleep and add grape juice to what had already soaked the sheets.
Turning her back to him, she wiggled her hips against his thigh, snuggled under the covers, and quickly brushed potato chip crumbs out from under her pillow before falling asleep against his warmth. She roused once again in the night to find his arm thrown over her waist, tucking her up against himself, but again she drifted away in delicious, exhausted sleep.
*
“If Magneto has excluded you, how can you get current information on his activities? That would be of far greater importance,” Storm eyed the graying skies of pre-dawn beyond her window. She had talked to Mystique all through the night, and both women were worn out.
Mystique drained the last dregs of her cold tea, “I cannot promise anything relating to the current events within the Brotherhood at this time, but I think I might still have a friend or two inside. I’ll need time to make a few contacts and see if anyone’s still willing to talk to me on the sly.” Her eyes met Ororo’s, “I know how to be discreet. It’s a trait I had to develop once I lost my mutation.”
Storm leveled her gaze at the woman, and stated, “I’ll give you this warning and this opportunity, Mystique: you can stay here for a few days and we’ll see how things work out. I won’t trust you with anything here, so you should be prepared to feel ‘left out’ of everything. Don’t expect the others here to accept you or even treat you decently at first. We all have too much history together to expect anything else; and if memory serves, you have some bad history with Logan, especially,” Ororo noted the woman’s hand graze lightly across her belly.
“I’m no fool, Storm. I know things will be rough here for me; that I anticipated. But, can you keep your chrome-plated pit bull from trying to kill me in my sleep?”
Storm contemplated the potentially-explosive Logan/Mystique dynamic if both were living in the mansion, but decided there was too much potential to waste. She would have to use a combination of logic and manipulation to keep Logan from coming apart at the seams when he learned Mystique was in residence. “I can handle my team. Come with me and I’ll show you to a room, and I’d suggest you lock the door and stay quiet until I come with an update for you. Have you eaten lately?”
“Not for an entire day.”
They made a pass through the kitchen before ascending to the third floor to an empty room as far from Logan’s as possible. Once inside the room, Mystique turned to Storm and asked, “How many people here know this face as Mystique?” She regarded herself in a mirror over Storm’s shoulder.
“The team, definitely, and maybe a handful of students who saw you on the news a few months ago. Why?”
“I’m wondering just how safe my identity would be here, and what chances I’d have of infiltrating the Brotherhood if people here know who I am? It would be better if everyone here kept my presence and identity a secret. That would give me much greater security to act as your double-agent. People do talk, you see....” her voice trailed off knowingly, and Storm knew there was good reason to keep Mystique’s identity a closely-guarded secret.
“Pick a name for yourself, and I’ll brief the team and staff on our reasons for this subterfuge.”
“Hmm... call me Rebecca Lee, or Becca, and I’m one of your new teachers, perhaps a substitute in training. Does that sound reasonable?”
“Very reasonable. Sleep well, and I’ll brief you again in a few hours, when we’ve both had some rest.” Reaching for the doorknob, Storm added one comment before closing the door behind her, “I suggest you lock this door, and do not roam the halls until I come for you around noon. Between now and then, I’ll handle things with the team.”
*
The bedside phone rang, jarring Logan out of a deep sleep. Focusing for a few seconds, he noted Rogue stirring beside him, then threw one arm over to grab the receiver.
“What?” he groused, voice husky and gritted with sleep.
“Good morning to you, too, Logan,” Storm’s voice was calm and neutral. “We have a full team briefing in my office in fifteen minutes. I need you there.”
“We goin’ out on a mission?” He was snapping awake at the thought of it. Rogue sat up in bed, clutching the sheets to her breasts, waiting for the worst.
“No mission - but this is vitally important. I can’t find Rogue. She’s not answering her phone. Do you know where she is?”
Casting a smug glance at the sleepy female beside him, he gave Rogue a sly grin, “Yeah, I can find her. We’ll be there.” He clicked the phone off and immediately rolled on top of Rogue, nuzzling her neck and letting his wandering hands grope every part of her he could reach under the sheets. “Morning, darlin’. Up and at ‘em, we got a meeting in fifteen minutes.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just to Storm’s office - everybody. She wants us all there,” he bit her playfully on the side of the neck before bounding out of the bed and disappearing into the shower.
“Ungh, morning people...” she grunted, fumbling for her scattered clothes. “Thought you were the nocturnal one on the team.” Doubtless he was intrigued by the prospect of some physical action, since he’d been going stir crazy waiting to heal up from the injuries. Something in the pit of her stomach knotted, knowing he wasn’t ready to return to full duty as an X-Man, and neither was she.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Someone comes knocking on the mansion’s door, while Rogue and Logan work up an appetite. “Becca Lee” is a tribute to two of my favorite authors: Becca (DutchXfan) and Stan Lee.