Rogue watched as the other remaining teachers walked into the house including Logan, who eyed her from the other end of the front yard. Rogue didn’t follow them though; she had no intention of starting off her free time cooped up in the house. Instead she opted to walk around in the garden for a little bit. She walked the steady length of the property, marveling like she always did at the vast amount of it. She finally found her way into the backyard, which could hardly be called a backyard because it was grander than any back area she had ever seen. The tree’s were thick and sturdy and seemed to reach up 1,000 miles into the sky and the flowers were lush and in bloom scenting the area for a good 5 minutes in any direction. Rogue sat down on the soft dewy grass, she leaned back on her shoulders and let the sun kiss her face as she closed her eyes. She didn’t hear anything, no noise, no screaming, no recreational activities as various mutants ran around the property. The grounds were quite and a peaceful silence drifted heavily over Rogue just blissful silence.
Of Course not everyone was gone, only the majority of her graduating class. However Xavier’s was segregated in way. For instance the normal area for the kids who were still minors was attached to the back of the building. In the back of the building were the children’s dorms, lavatories, children’s library and a courtyard for kids to play with.
The area reserved for the adults was attached to the side of the building, adult meaning over 18 years of age. That was where Rogue was staying now; her new room was in the teacher’s wing, the west wing. Down the hall were Scott and Jean’s old room and next to that was Storm’s room. Next to her room was Logan’s room and directly across the hall from Rogue’s room was the room where Scott was currently staying because he refused to sleep in the same room where he and Jean had last been together. Next to that room was Kurt’s room and next to that room was Hank’s. Although Hank spent an absurd amount of time down in the laboratory located under the school, he almost never was in his room unless it was to shower and sleep some.
The East wing was the office oriented area of the building it had lecture rooms and board rooms and it was basically the touristic part of the school where Xavier would entertain parents and people who wanted to see where their children were going. Sometimes the parents knew that their child was in fact a mutant and attending a mutant school and sometimes they did not know. Mutants regularly acted up during classes so it was a good idea to have a front on hand that could be easily accessed and viewed without risk of exposure. Just like Bobbie’s parents for example, when they had first heard that Bobby was accepted to the school they had come to see it. They hadn’t been shown the actual classrooms, because Xavier had scheduled them to come on a Saturday, wisely. They’d been taken to the East Wing and shown the offices and sat down and talked, they’d been shown an empty classroom and took a tour of the grounds, avoiding the children’s court yard but being informed that there was indeed a play area of such activities. Rogue understood why it was necessary for some people, after what had happened when Bobby, Rogue, Johnny and Logan had visited…well Bobby was only now starting to talk to his parents again and Rogue didn’t see him and his brother becoming good friends anytime soon.
Rogue was just starting to adjust to how empty the mansion would be for the next few months. Many of the younger children who were under eighteen had gone home for the summer to their families. It was only those children who had nowhere else to go, or who had run away to begin with who were still staying and there were only a handful of them. Maybe ten-fifteen at best and of course they all slept in the dorms behind the school so Rogue would only see them at meal times. The rest of her graduating class was away in sunny Tampa and Rogue was secretly thrilled at living three doors down from Logan. Now that was the recipe for a good summer! Speaking of things which were good about Logan, Logan tossed her head back a little and started thinking about their steamy encounter last year. She wondered if he ever thought it about it too…
She was on top of him and spent from her orgasm, licking the taste of him off of her mouth. He was breathing heavy and he hadn’t even come yet. Rogue wanted to make him feel the same way he made her feel, but she needed to breathe, she just needed to remind her lungs how the process worked. Air in, exhale, air in, exhale, she thought she was getting the hang of it. They were still in the Rec room and the darkness seemed heavy, almost weighing them down. Rogue figured that was probably just the exhaustion of lust fulfilled. Her legs were still on either side of Logan, he was sitting on the couch, his breathing was getting steadier. Rogue was aware that his hands were still inside her shorts, still touching her but no longer inside her. Her hands were on his shoulders and she was resting her chin on his shoulder, she wasn’t ready to look at him. Rogue hadn’t been a virgin for a long time…well for a couple of months. Still this was making her head spin, did that just happen. She felt Logan start to nuzzle her neck with his mouth and she couldn’t help the lazy laugh that escaped her mouth. Her voice sounded husky, like the noise came from somewhere deep in her throat, was that her?
“Darlin’, you said you didn’t want to fuck me on the couch, I think we better go upstairs if that’s the case.”
“Logan, we need to talk about this-“
“Oh, bad idea,” and as if to punctuate his point Logan gave the side of her neck a kiss and kept kissing all the way down to her collar bone, planting kisses up and down her clavicle, skimming the top of her breasts and darting his tongue out briefly just to tease her nipples. Not again….
“Ugh, Logan.” Rogue couldn’t help moaning a little and bucking against him, she was feeling all of these pleasurable sensations and she wanted more.
There was no doubt that she wanted this, no question to her need, but she couldn’t do it here. They would have to go to Logan’s room, because she still shared a room with Kitty and Jubes but what happened when they got to Logan’s room? Well, heh she knew what* was going to happen what she meant was, what then? Would they just be back to smiles and nods in the morning? Would they go from there? Rogue knew Logan better than anyone here, sometimes better she thought than he knew himself. He couldn’t actually realize how hurt he was, but Rogue knew and she knew he wasn’t going to stick around and have his nose stuck in it. Sure he might stay for a while, a few months until things settle but then what? He’d be out on the open road again, more for his sanity than any other reason, and Rogue would be stuck here until she graduated. Did she really want to do this? Much to the disappointment of her well lathed nipple Rogue climbed off of Logan. Sitting down next to him on the couch.
Logan was confused, his favorite play toy had just been torn away from him while he was just starting to enjoy it, what the hell? He looked at Rogue confused and went to cover her body with his own, but firm hand on his chest and a,
“Wow, down bubba,” Coming out of Rogue’s mouth stopped him.
Rogue took a minute to take him in. He was more savage looking then Rogue had ever seen Logan, he was breathing heavy and his hair was sticking up from where she’d grabbed it. His eyes were lust crusted, it was the only way to describe them. She could see them from the light in the window, they were heavy with lust and half lidden, he was a little primal in this moment, she could tell. He was relying more on his senses then his human attributes. Rogue looked down to his crotch, his erection was still there, straining against the outline of his pants.
“Something wrong?”
“Logan…your mah friend sugar, and I know your hurtin’ right now but I can’t…-”
A low and menacing growl ripped outta Logan’s throat and Rogue realized this may have been the wrong approach.
“I wasn’t doin any of this cause I was hurtin, I was doin it because it felt good,” he gripped her knee for emphasis as he said those words and Rogue had to remind herself what the problem was.
She picked his hand off of her knee and took it in her own, interlocking their fingers. It was a little more intimate than she intended when she was revving up to give a friendship/grief speech but it seemed to calm Logan down enough to get him paying attention.
“IT does feel good, but I like havin you as a friend Logan and I like you bein here, I don’t wanna make this weird between us.”
“Ha, the only thing weird right now darlin is this talk interrupting the middle of the party.”
“Logan, you’re drunk and you’re hurtin, I wanna help you feel betta but I don’t wanna be another drunken roll in the hay in your long an distinguished career, sugar.”
Rogue added the endearment as a way of softening what she was telling him, Logan had never known that Rogue had memories of his sexual escapades, she had never told him. He knew Rogue had gotten his nightmares, he didn’t know she’d gotten…well everything else.
“Every man should have a trade darlin’.”
There was a smirk on Logan’s face and a glint of humor in his eye. This was the Logan Rogue knew and adored. She hadn’t seen this Logan since…well since before Jean had died. She hoped her next words wouldn’t kill the moment. She gave his hand a little squeeze for emphasis before beginning,
“Sugah, that’s just it, I don’t wanna be another one of your random jobs.”
She noted the way her accent thickened with her apprehension levels and realized it wasn’t the first time it had done so.
Logan sat regarding her for a moment, he admired that she would stop something he knew she wanted, something he could smell she needed so bad just to ask if he was Okay. She had stopped because she cared about him, cared about what she meant to him and what he meant to her. She wanted to preserve their friendship and he realized that she was saying no to him because he was afraid if they proceeded then he “wouldn’t” be around, he felt needed and he knew she was right in her assumptions about his grief. He didn’t know how to deal with Jean’s death and he didn’t want to, but he knew about lust. He knew about desire and sex and he knew that the woman in front of him was being closely associated with both those ideas in his mind. He wanted her, he knew that and he knew it wasn’t the whiskey or the dead telepath he had murdered out of mercy…out of love.
He brought a hand up to her face, encasing it in his palm and stroking a thick chubby thumb over her cheek, thinking about how long he had wanted this for, how much she really meant to him.
Rogue started at him as he did this, wondering what his thoughts where. She saw the craved look crawl into his eyes as they darkened in arousal and she wished fugitively for the power to read minds. His voice broke her trance.
“It could never be random with you, Marie.”
His thumb brushed over her upper lip and Rogue shuddered visibly at the sensation, she couldn’t help the way her head turned trying to prolong the feeling. She knew without a doubt in that moment as his thumb moved away, that not sleeping with Logan for the sake of their friendship was going to be one of the hardest things she ever had to do.
She turned her face away looking down and taking a breath trying to collect her thoughts. Her tongue darted out of her mouth to lick dry lips before she parted them and began to speak, hoping to make Logan understand, she was his friend and by the Gods she would have loved to be more, but not now, not on a night like tonight when they were both hurting.
“Ah can’t make it hurt any less Logan, Ah can’t be something I’m not for you…Ah can’t be Jean.”
Logan took his hand out her’s almost immediately and she heard the growl inside of him before she thought he had even given it permission to be heard.
“You think I wanted Jean like this? You think I wanted any of this?”
“I know you lusted after her Logan, I know you Loved her but-
She was cut off by the sound of Logan laughing, chuckling at her, darkly. There was no humor to the sound at all.
“Sorry Kid,” Logan spat the words at her and there was a distinctive weight to the word ‘kid’ as he spoke it, “but I don’t think you really know anything at all.”
That hurt her, how dare he. Didn’t he realize what it had been like for her at the mansion walking around with him rattling around her brain? Did he know she used to look at Jean every day to see what color panties she was wearing, hoping the material of her skirt or pants were thin enough to see? Did he know that she had spent two hours one time daydreaming about the weight, shape, taste, nipple color and feel of Jean’s breasts between her gloved palms? Did he know that she was probably the only girl walking around in the mansion who knew what the mighty Wolverine sounded like when he was in the throes of making love? That she knew every sound he made when he was pleased because she had every memory of him having a good time?
No, he didn’t know any of that and maybe if he’d ever stuck around longer than a month or two she would have had the opportunity to tell him.
That was when it occurred to Rogue that on a whole Logan hadn’t actually given a lot of his time, normal time not preoccupied by life saving and heroics, to Rogue. He hadn’t sat down with her once like the way they were now trying to talk things out or trying to better understand each other. Maybe he didn’t need to better understand her but she could say, with some damn certainty, that a little one on one time with him might have saved her a lot of trouble trying to figure a few things out, like why she had memories of someone slicing open her skin and pouring molten hot liquid steel over her bones, jut for example.
All this she remembered and Logan called her the ‘kid’ who didn’t know anything, ha, yeah right! In that moment, Rogue only wanted to hurt him. She sat up indignant and leaned in close letting her words spill pout of her in a subdued whisper that was crawling with her anger.
“Sorry Sugah,” She repeated his words back to him apologizing to him the way he apologized to her only moments ago, “maybe Ah don’t know a lot of things and maybe Ah don’t understand half of what ah do know, but ah know, Logan, without a god damned doubt, that when the going gets tough the tough get going, and sugah your about as tough as they come,” for emphasis Rogue gently smacked Logan on the shoulder, “you’re so tough that you have your ass out the door at the first thought of trouble and I’m not gonna be the one to fuck up the only good thing keeping you here.”
She meant herself. The one good thing keeping Logan here, she hoped, was her. She knew he had plenty of reasons to pick up and leave but she hoped that she was at least one of the reasons he could stay. She hadn’t counted on him disagreeing with that.
She knew she had crossed over into dangerous territory as soon as she heard that dark, humorless chuckle of his breaking through her anger addled brain and she was at a complete loss. All the sass in her face and voice just seemed to deflate and fall flat like a balloon that had had the air taken out of it.
Logan was still chuckling when he began speaking.
“You think you’re what’s keeping me here?” A
dubious tone lurked in his voice accompanied by the skeptic look on his face, “As in the only reason I’m not gone right now is because of you? Right darlin I forgot what a big part to play you had in all this.”
She didn’t know if it was her already broken heart over Scott, Jean and the professor or the fact that she had been ready to close the deal with Logan just a few minutes ago but something in her snapped just then. She didn’t have it in her to be laughed at by the man she loved… that little realization- the realization of what the Wolverine meant to Rogue- had taken its sweet time rearing its ugly head.
She’d spent nearly two years nursing a crush, that turned into an admiration, flirtation hybrid that in turn mutated-pardon the pun-into a deep caring and respect, which evolved into a … real love. Now that same man, one who she had almost been ready to go to bed with had turned around and laughed in her face? Rogue saw a new side of bad in that moment and she decided to make a point even if it meant not being in the clear at the end of the argument.
“Ha! Please Wolverine!” Rogue threw his code name at him like a slap in the face, she didn’t even want to pretend that he was close to her at this moment, “Mah damn point is, that you never stick around after sex,! Remember the twins in Ontario! You still had three days worth of work left up there and you high tailed it outta there because they knew where you were staying and came looking for ya.”
There, Log-Wolverine could shove that in his pipe and smoke it. Bet he hadn’t realized that Rogue knew about those pretty little twins and about a whole lot of other girls he had been with on top of it.
Rogue took one look at his pain laced face and thought fleetingly that perhaps, during this time of mourning, when they were both feeling a sort of heart ahce, that it wasn’t a good time to spring it on poor old Wolverine that Rogue knew what she knew. He seemed to look almost betrayed and the smirk that had been on her face slid smoothly to floor and evaporated as if it had never exisited. Rogue could see something stirring on the contents of his visage, something that she didn’t understand. Betrayal mixed with surprise and before Rogue knew what was happening she was starring into the face of one pissed off looking Wolverine.
“Xcuse me?”
It was a dark whisper and Rogue strained to hear it, she could see Logan was bracing himself for a fight…was he preparing to fight her? She gulped.
“Don’t get mad…”
It came out in a meek whisper, she thought her voice sounded much bigger than she felt.
“Well what the hell is that supposed to mean Marie?”
The deadly calm before the storm, which Logan had been emulating was ripped away and she could tell he was breathing erratically for a whole new reason now, he was angry! Really, concrete, no doubt about it angry. At her! …For what?!
“It ain’t my fault, I neva asked ya to touch me ya know!”
“Yea but I did and it saved your skinny hide, so why don’t you tell me what you’ve been walkin around with up there.”
He pointed to his head and rogue was standing now, he could go take a flying leap, he had no right to be mad at her. She never asked for his memories, never asked for his fucking love of cheap beer and stale cigar scented air, half the time she was bored she had the urge to smoke anything just to calm herself. That was there for life. She got to her feet and started walking away. She didn’t expect to get far, and he made sure he didn’t. Rogue was already heart broken over Jean, and the professor’s death. Scott's absence (she had to keep hope alive that he wasn't dead). Now Logan was giving her guff too? She couldn’t argue with him, not in the same room they had just …not where they had almost… just a minute ago, she felt sick now.
She felt him grab her arm, felt him turn her around like she was a rag doll, damn him, and then he spoke those five little words.
“Tell me what you know.”
This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, he was suppose to say he loved her and he wanted to be with her not just for lust but because he cared about her and then they were suppose to go upstairs and ‘bump pelvises’ as Jubes had told her until Rogue couldn’t see straight and until Logan didn’t want anybody else. He wasn’t suppose to get mad at her for caring and he sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be too pre-occupied with what she did or didn’t know about him to realize he was fucking up their entire friendship, wasn’t he suppose to be the adult? She couldn’t help the angry voice that bubbled out spewing forth insults and hidden secrets that she vowed never to tell her precious Logan she knew.
“I know everything Logan! I know about the time with those two girls, where you just watched as they touched each other and you jerked off. Then when they were done you were so turned on you took turns fucking them, because they couldn’t handle how fast you got hard again! I know about the time you fucked that girl from behind cause you didn’t want to look her in the eyes, you shoved her face down into the pillow. I know about the stripper in Red Deer and the hooker in North Bay..."
Rogue was crying now and she was vaguely aware of her voice getting louder, but she didn’t care. Shoot she could wake up the whole mansion now, she didn’t care.
Logan was looking at her like he’d never seen her before and he relinquished his hold on Rogue’s arms and she couldn’t help the twisted little sob that shimmied its way out of her throat, god she was humiliated!
Logan for his part had never felt so betrayed in all his life, he felt like a deviant, like he was infecting this girl with his mere presence. She had only been sixteen when he’d first touched her reviving her on the statue of Liberty, and she remembered all that? She had retained all of those encounters and she never told him? She still managed to walk around idolizing him? Well he had to leave, that was it he couldn’t stay now.
“Kid you never said-
Through tears and with a great rasping to her voice as she tried to muster up the strength,she screamed at him.
“Don’t! Don’t call me a fucking kid Logan!”
Rogue turned to run away from him and Logan heard a high pitched, breathy “don’t you dare,” as she continued running up the stairs. Rogue’s feet moved faster than she thought possible, she stumbled twice and almost fell but she caught her balance and pushed herself forward. She just couldn’t look at him, god why had she said those things? She couldn’t go back to her room, she was a mess. Her hair was tangled and splattered across a tear soaked face, light perspiration was gathering on her forehead and her clothes were disheveled from her previous activities.
It made her sick to think that this was the same man who just turned on her in half a second, who had his fingers playing with some of her most sensitive area’s only moments before. She felt bile rise in her throat and thought she was going to be sick. She went to the only place she could think of, to the spare guest bedroom. She wasn’t eager to enter it because Logan’s room was looming threateningly only six or five doors down but what options did she have? All the Staff bedrooms had bathrooms inside and she needed to wash her face and relieve the rising bile in her throat. If Kitty or Jubilation woke up right now she wouldn’t be able to face them.
Logan could scarcely move, his breathing was erratic as he sat there listening to the still night sounds of the mansion. How long had she know? How long had she really walked around knowing about some of this inner most sexual fantasies and desires. He cringed at her last words before he released her, *the stripper in Red Deer, a women he’d met in a strip club he’d been bouncing for to earn extra money. A place he’d had to stop working at because after the night they’d spent together he didn’t want to see her again.
*The hooker in North Bay was worse, it was someone Logan had picked up and practically raped, it was consensual in the beginning both having met at a bar lounge, both going back to her hotel room and he was damned if he didn’t fuck the shit out of that woman. He’d almost torn her to shreds and his only way of compensating for it in the end had been to leave a crumpled up $50 sitting on the bed side table as she cried and hollered for him to get out.
Some of those events had happened right after he’d woken up though, he only remembered 15 years of his presumably long life but some in those first few years, and especially in those first few weeks Logan had been a monster. A savage beast that ate pissed shit and slept wherever it could. It took Logan almost a full six months to start dressing and eating like a real human again, and in those days he’d dream every night. Visions of medical labs with laughing doctors, always laughing celebrating their success, the clinking of champagne glasses and the sounds of bubbling water, his screams silenced in his watery prison.
The women he bedded in those days were just common whores, the kind of women you’d see sprawled across the page of a JUGS magazine, he’d never told anyone about the first few months after he’d woken up and he never got his memories back from his past, he’d spent 15 years looking for his previous life and he just never found it. He knew he was a man though, on the first few nights he spent running naked through the Canadian wilderness he didn’t know how to talk, or use his hands and he spent those days living like any animal would. Sleeping naked in the bush, hunting for food, drinking out a stream; he didn’t even start talking until the second or third day. How was he ever suppose to explain that Rogue? Maybe she already knew?
Shame wasn’t an emotion Wolverine was readily familiar with but he got the distinct impression that this urge to run and hide was actually a shade of embarrassment. He just didn’t know what to do.