"I think she should jump him," Jubilee said. "Seriously. Just strip naked and hop into bed with him."
"Ju-bi-leeeee," Kitty giggled. "They just met!"
Logan quirked an eyebrow at Jean, who sat reading the paper at the other end of the couch. The high back of the couch hid them from sight in the library, and the girls obviously hadn't checked to make sure the room was empty before beginning their discussion.
Logan, despite himself, was a little curious. Who were they talking about? It had better not be Marie, he thought. She might be 19, but she was way too young to be "jumping" anybody. Maybe when she was 40.
The object of his speculation spoke up next.
"Not everything is about sex, Jubes," Rogue sighed.
"Sure it is," Jubilee said. "From birth we are bombarded with images of sex in advertising and in the media; we hear sex talk even on the playgrounds at school. It's no wonder we're all warped."
"Speak for yourself," Rogue said. "Can we get back to the point?"
"I'd jump him," Kitty said.
Logan looked at Jean again. She had a hand clamped over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. Who were these girls talking about?
"You would not jump him," Jubes said. "You've been hot for Bobby for two years, but what have you done about it?"
"Nothing," Rogue said. "She's got a point, Kit-Kat."
"Oh, look who's talking, Rogue," Kitty snapped. "You've been panting after Logan for just about as long. Why don't you go for it already?"
Logan flushed. He could feel Jean looking at him now, but he avoided her eyes. Maybe eavesdropping wasn't such a great idea, after all.
"Oh, gee, I don't know. ... Maybe the fact that it would kill him?" Rogue said.
Is that all that's stopping her? Logan wondered. He winced and reminded himself that Marie was just a kid.
"Is that all that's stopping you? Babe, there are ways around that no-touching thing," Jubes said wisely. "I mean, you could --"
"Don't. Do not finish that thought," Rogue growled. "We're not talkin' about me, anyway. We're talkin' about Elena."
"And Brock," Kitty said dreamily. "He is a god among men."
Who the hell are they talking about? Logan exchanged another look with Jean. She shrugged.
"Yeah," Rogue sighed. "Thick black hair, deep blue, penetrating eyes ..."
"Sarcastic wit," Kitty added. "Mysterious past. The air of danger."
"And a bod that won't quit," Jubilee said. "That's why I'm saying Elena needs to take matters into her own hands ... so to speak."
"Jubes!" Rogue said, sounding frustrated. "I'm just sayin' ... maybe she should, I don't know, have a conversation with him before they get horizontal?"
"Conversation is way overrated."
"Guys," Kitty said. "If we're going to continue this discussion, I think we need some Double Chocolate Brownie Explosion ice cream."
"Agreed."
They exited the library, and silence returned. After a moment, Jean snickered. "I think they've been watching soap operas again."
Logan grunted.
"You know," Jean said, smirking in a very un-Jeanlike way, "As a doctor, I can tell you there really are ways around that no-touching thing."
"Shut up, Jean."
The giggling got his attention. God knows, there were plenty of kids running around Xavier's giggling like loons all the time, but none of them sounded quite like Marie. She and her friends had been acting real strange lately, and he wanted to know what was going on.
He strode around the corner, completely unprepared for the sight that met his eyes. Jubilee had Rogue pinned up against the wall, hands holding her friend's gloved wrists against the wood. With a fierce look on her face, Jubilee leaned closer to Rogue, almost like she was going to kiss her.
What the hell?
Kitty leaned against the opposite wall, clutching her stomach and laughing. Rogue was making odd faces at Jubilee and giggling.
"That is so ... Oh! Logan!" Rogue flushed as she saw him. "Um, hi."
"What the hell is going on?"
Jubilee let go of Rogue, and all three girls exchanged looks. Finally Kitty squeaked, "We're practicing self-defense!"
Rogue rolled her eyes. Jubilee sighed.
"Cut the crap," he said. "Marie could break that ... hold, or whatever that was, in a second. What's really going on with you three?"
"You're right," Jubilee said. "Actually, we could use your help."
"Jubilee!" Rogue gasped, flushing. Kitty started laughing again.
"Seriously," Jubes said. "We have this ... bet going on. Rogue says a man would never be able to pin a woman in this, erm, position. I say he could."
Whoa, Logan thought. Bad idea. This was a bad idea in so many ways. Not the least of which was his recent difficulty remembering that Marie was just a kid. It sounded more ridiculous every time he reminded himself. And they were obviously hiding something. He just couldn't figure out what.
Jubilee noticed his reluctance. "Oh, never mind, Logan. Actually, I'm thinking we should probably get Remy to help us with this."
That did it. He knew he was being played, but there was no way that Cajun Casanova was getting his hands on his Marie.
"I'm here now, might as well help," he said.
Jubilee smirked and stepped back. He glared at her for a moment to let her know she wasn't putting anything past him, then moved toward Rogue. She stared at him with wide eyes as he stood in front of her. "OK, what are we doin' here?" he asked.
"Hypothetically," Jubilee said. "You meet this woman and are immediately, wildly attracted to her."
Rogue shot Jubilee a look of death. Logan swallowed a laugh. If he were Jubilee, he'd be watching his back from now on.
"OK, I'm attracted to her," he said, staring at Rogue until she flushed again. That concept wasn't terribly hard to grasp. "Now what?"
"You have a huge argument, because she's keeping secrets from you about... um, certain things in her past," Jubilee said. "So you grab her and push her back against the wall."
Logan took a deep breath and stepped closer to Rogue. He could hear her heart rate speed up and reminded himself for the millionth time that she was just a kid. A child. Practically an infant. A babe in the woods. Well, a babe, definitely. And there was a certain appeal to the idea of getting her naked out in the woods. Au naturel, so to speak ... shit. Kid, he told himself. Kidkidkidkidkid.
"Grab her wrists," Jubilee ordered.
He reached out and gently took Rogue's gloved wrists in his hands.
"No, no, no!" Jubilee yelped.
Logan sighed. "What is it?"
"You're supposed to be angry and aroused."
Logan felt himself flushing. If she only knew. He wasn't feeling too angry at the moment, but Marie's reaction to his proximity was definitely turning him on. Damn pervert! he scolded himself. Marie. Is. Just. A. Kid.
"Logan, are you listening to me?" Jubilee asked.
"Yeah, yeah. Angry, and um ..." he cleared his throat and ignored Kitty and Jubilee starting their damn giggling again.
"Logan," Rogue said softly. "This is stupid."
He forced a grin. "Hey, darlin'. Don't worry about it. I'd say you win the bet, anyway."
"Bet?"
"Yeah. The bet?" Jubilee and Kitty stopped laughing. "Jubilee just said..."
"Oh! Yeah!" Rogue shot another glare at her friends. "Bet. Yes. The bet. Um ..."
Something was going on with these three, but Logan knew he needed to get away from Marie soon, or he was likely to do something crazy like toss her over his shoulder and take her to bed. No! No bed! he told himself harshly.
"I'd say you're right, Marie," he said quickly. "If I wanted to ... um, pin a woman ... erm ..." he cleared his throat. "I wouldn't use that weak-ass hold Jubilee had going on. I'd be more likely to --"
Logan prayed for control and made his move. In a second he had Rogue up against the wall. One hand held both her wrists above her head, and his body pressed against hers to hold her slightly off the ground.
His brain reminded him what a bad, bad idea this whole thing was, but his body seemed to think it was the best idea he'd had in his life.
"Excellent!" Jubilee clapped. "You're right! That's a much better idea! Then you still have one hand free to--"
"A much better idea for what?" Logan stepped back, letting Rogue slide to the ground. She leaned against the wall, staring at him with those wide eyes of hers. He grunted and turned to Jubilee.
She and Kitty exchanged a look. "Um ..." Jubilee began.
"Logan! You're late!" Scott came down the hall. "Your martial arts class started five minutes ago. Unless you want me to take over for you."
"Forget it, Summers," Logan growled. "I'm on my way." He turned back, but the three girls were long gone.
"Hey, Cyke," he said thoughtfully. "Have you noticed anything strange going on with Rogue, Jubilee and Kitty?"
"You mean more than usual?" Scott shook his head. "No. Why?"
"Never mind," Logan sighed. "I"m sure it's nothing."
The worst part wasn't that he was wasting his free time following three giggly teen-age girls around. No, the worst part was that he was having an embarrassingly difficult time keeping track of them.
The first day they managed to avoid him altogether. He had only the vaguest idea of keeping an eye on them at that point, but once he realized he hadn't seen them all day, his suspicions were aroused. So to speak.
The second day, they tried something different. They hung around the rec room until he showed up, waited a minute or two and left. They split up, and he followed Rogue, leaving Jubilee and Kitty to wreak what havoc they could alone. That was his first mistake.
Rogue entered the library. Not wanting to be too obvious, he waited a couple of minutes before following her inside. His second mistake.
A quick glance told him Marie wasn't in the library, but he could still smell her scent. Confused, he searched the room. Two things caught his attention. One, a window along the back wasn't latched all the way; and two, she had left her Marie-smelling jacket sitting on a shelf by the window. She had left it there to throw him off, and the fact that she'd probably learned that from him didn't make him feel much better.
By the time he tracked her scent to the garage, one of the cars was missing, and he was pissed. It had started out as curiosity, but now it was war.
The third day, they were holed up in their room. Logan knew because he had spent several long hours staking out the room from a spot down the hall.
Finally, around noon, Rogue left the room. She closed the door behind her and sent him a grin and a little wave before heading the opposite way. She was mocking him, the little vixen. She obviously wanted to be followed, so he stayed right where he was. She wasn't going to fool him a second time.
After a few more minutes, his patience ran out. He checked the hall to make sure nobody was around and crept up to the door. With his superior hearing, the voices on the other side of the door were audible, though muffled. He pressed his ear to the door and listened.
"Why are you doing this?" Kitty wailed.
"Doing what?" Jubilee asked.
"Ignoring what's between us. Or, worse, cheapening it."
"There is nothing between us."
"What about last night?" Kitty gasped. "Was that nothing to you?"
"You tell me," Jubliee said. "What did it mean to you?"
"It was the most amazing night of my life," Kitty replied. "When you touched me, I thought I'd --"
"Logan, what are you doing?" Ororo spoke behind him.
Startled, Logan popped his claws on one hand, the metal imbedding in the girls' door. Shit.
Ororo came around in front of him and looked at him curiously. He was scrambling for an explanation when Jubilee yanked the door open, sending him tumbling to his knees, claws still in the door. At the same time, he spied Marie at the end of the hall, laughing her ass off.
Growling, he decided explanations were for sissies, retracted his claws and stalked down the hall, glaring at Marie as he passed her.
She would pay. They would all pay, but he was planning something special for Marie. Since the only payback he could think of at the moment involved her being naked and whimpering his name, he decided the matter needed a little more thought.
Later that night, lying in bed, Logan tried to figure out what was going on. He felt like he was trying to work a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing.
The conversation he'd overheard earlier suggested that Kitty and Jubilee were ... involved. If that was true, how did that affect Marie? He shook his head. It didn't fit with what he knew. Kitty and Jubilee were two of the most boy crazed females he knew. And that conversation had really not sounded like them. For one thing, Jubilee hadn't said "babe" or "dude" once.
So something else was going on. He considered his options. He could ignore it and let them get into God knows what kind of trouble. He could continue to follow them around, and possibly be arrested for stalking. Or he could just end this right now.
He glanced at the clock. 1:02 a.m. No time like the present. He slipped on some shoes but didn't bother with a shirt. In his experience, females tended to get a little distracted when he went around half-naked. A distraction would help him get the truth out of them sooner.
As he moved silently down the hall, he planned his interrogation. He would focus on Marie. He hated to do it, but he might have to play dirty. If he had to take advantage of her feelings for him, so be it. Of course, he would get no personal enjoyment out of it.
Now, if she weren't such a kid, he could maybe get a little turned on by the way her heartbeat sped up, her breath hitched and her eyes got kind of glazed over. If she weren't such a kid, he could really have some fun getting the information he wanted from her. Among other things.
He was so busy thinking about those "other things" that he was several doors down from their room before he realized he'd passed it. Cursing under his breath, he marched back to their door and threw it open, banking on the element of surprise.
Nothing.
No squeals, no gasps, not even a damn giggle. Frowning, he stepped into the room and glanced around. They were gone. Logan sighed. There was no telling what those three were up to at 1 in the morning.
He wandered through their room, sniffing the air. Unless he was mistaken, they had actually gone out the window. There was a rather large tree out there, and he'd seen the girls using it as a makeshift ladder before.
Thump
Opening the latch, he leaned out and stood still, listening. Aside from the usual night noises, it was quiet for a moment.
Thump
"Ow! Damn it, Kitty, why don't you just shove me off the damn roof and get it over with?" Jubilee's harsh whisper came from somewhere above him and to the right.
"Don't tempt me, Jubilation Lee."
"You guys, hush. Are we doing this or not?"
Thump
"DAMN it! Be careful, you guys!"
Logan leaned farther out, but he couldn't see anything. He climbed out the window and scrambled down the tree as quietly as possible.
He followed the sound of whispered curses and scraping until he could make out three shadowed figures on the roof. Most people wouldn't have been able to hear anything or see them on the roof. Most people didn't have his ears and eyes.
"I don't know about this," Rogue said.
"Geez, Rogue, don't wimp out on us now," Jubilee said. "Let's try it again."
"What if we drop you?"
"Don't."
Logan watched in horror as one of the figures dropped off the side of the roof. Before he could even make a move in that direction, the figure -- Jubilee, he assumed -- stopped, hanging motionless. Squinting, he finally saw a black rope of some kind holding her up. She squirmed around a little and began rappelling down the wall.
Logan shook his head and moved closer to the side of the building. This was crazy. "What the hell are you three doing?" he asked, his voice ringing out through the night.
All three girls gasped in sync, and Rogue and Kitty lost their grip on the rope. Jubilee let out a blood-curdling scream and fell right into Logan's arms. At least, he assumed it was Jubilee. She, like the other two staring down at them, was dressed entirely in black, her head covered with a stocking cap, and her face covered in black greasepaint.
"I wanna know what's going on," he growled.
Since the entire mansion was lighting up and several people were staring out of windows and coming out the front door, he figured he wasn't the only one who wanted to know.
Logan paced impatiently outside the professor's office. Before he could get any answers from the girls, they were ushered into Xavier's office for a chat. They'd been in there 45 minutes. Everyone else had gone to bed, but Logan wanted answers, and he wasn't waiting until tomorrow for them.
Finally, the door opened, and out came Jubilee and Kitty, their faces mostly scrubbed. They stared at him for a moment, then stumbled off. Jubilee mumbled an insincere-sounding "thanks" as they passed him. He ignored them both and stared at the door.
Marie peeked around the door and winced. "I knew you were out here," she mumbled. "I could hear you pacing."
"My room. Now," he ordered, and for once didn't even have a single X-rated thought on saying those words. OK, maybe one. Or two.
In his room, he settled her on the bed and dropped beside her. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wouldn't meet his eyes. "Marie."
She squirmed.
"What have you three been doing?"
She sighed. "Logan, I don't want to tell you."
"Tough," he growled, then forced himself to calm down. "You can tell me anything, Marie." He gently brushed hair out of her face and braced himself.
"Jubilee, Kitty and I ... we're ..."
What was it? Some teen sex club? Drugs? God, maybe they were spying for the Brotherhood. Maybe Magneto was in Marie's head, making her do things...
"Say it quickly," he told her. "Just get it out."
"Jubilee, Kitty and I are ... writin'aromancenovel," she said, biting her lip and blushing.
Surely she didn't just say ...
"You're ..." He couldn't even repeat it. "A ... novel?"
"Yeah."
Logan thought about it for a moment. "OK," he said finally. "I understand the sex conversation and the stuff in the hallway. I get the conversation I overheard between Kitty and Jubilee. ... But what does your little foray into B&E have to do with a romance novel?"
"Don't laugh."
The idea of anyone ordering him not to laugh was actually pretty laughable. Most people probably couldn't imagine the Wolverine laughing. Only Marie would think of it. He nodded.
"Well," she said, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. "Um, Elena, that's our heroine? She's sort of a former ... cat burglar."
He chuckled, trying to disguise it as a cough. She looked at him suspiciously. He cleared his throat. "Go on."
"Well, her brother has been kidnapped by the evil Mr. DeVane, and he's makin' her pull a job for him."
"Pull a ..." Logan swallowed another laugh and tried to keep a straight face. "... job. And you were, er--"
"Testin' it out," she said, burying her face in her knees. "I know, I know, it's stupid. But Jubilee says you gotta write what you know, and since none of us had ever burgled anything before ..."
"Burgled." Logan made a strangling noise. Rogue lifted her eyes to his and giggled. They both laughed until Logan's sides hurt and Rogue was in tears. Logan couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed like that. He was pretty sure he never had. And as an added bonus, somewhere along the way, Rogue had ended up nearly in his lap.
She sighed and leaned into his chest.
He put his arm around her and smiled. "You OK, Marie?"
"Yeah," she said sleepily, snuggling closer, much to his delight. "Just tired. This writin' stuff is hard work."
The End
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