When he returned to the cabin Rogue didn’t appear to have moved, except to grab a second whiskey bottle and do some damage to it…and with it. Wolverine vaulted over the door of the jeep and wrenched her gloved hand back when he saw she was slicing her arm with the jagged neck of the bottle.
“What fuck are you doing?” he snarled into her face.
Slitting her eyes at him, she snarled right back, “Nothing, it heals right up, see!” And shoved her bicep under his arm so he could that she’d torn through her uniform at least a half a dozen times and only red welts remained of what had surely been bloody gashes minutes ago.
“I know for a fact it still hurts! What is wrong with you?” he gritted through clenched teeth, twisting her wrist to make her drop the bottle neck.
“What’s wrong with you?” she slurred slightly and he could tell her version of his mutation wasn’t as effective at eliminating intoxication quickly. “Something’s in my head and I want to hurt, make something hurt, bleed. God, it’s like a hunger,” Rogue groaned. “What did you do to me?!” She shoved him hard against the porch railing, which unbalanced him, and he toppled over it. His quick reflexes brought him to his feet without injury.
“Rogue, this is what I tried to talk to you about earlier. The animal inside…it’s not pretty.” He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at her. “I know more about him than you do. He’s got a mind of his own and what’s on his mind is not good most of the time. Xavier’s helped me control him, but it takes work.” He ran a hand over his jaw and sighed. “I can help you…let me.” He held out his hand, beckoning to her.
“How?” She clenched her hands in her hair and shook her head. “How? It’s like I want to break something, everything.” She groaned, folding over in her rocking chair and grinding her face into her knees. She looked like she was being torn apart from the inside.
He stayed where he was knowing all too well the battle raging inside her and that she had to fight it herself, but not all by herself like he’d done. “Rogue, he lives for the hunt, the fight. Domination. And he can’t be caged forever or he’ll go insane, and so will you fighting him nonstop. Why do you think I leave the mansion every few months and always wind up on the cage circuit? I have to let him out.”
“What?” she looked at him through the hair in disarray over her face, her hands slowly unwinding from her temples.
“Fight me. I can take it. I’m the only one who can.” He grimaced, flashing a glint of canines.
She had a strained look on her face, the leaned back and sighed. “Alright sugah, if you think you can handle it. But lemme put on my extra uniform first, don’t wanna hurt you with my own powers.” She gestured to her shredded sleeve.
“Yeh, think I might need to change for this dance too,” and he strode into the cabin, yanked his uniform and gloves boots out of his duffle bag and wrestled them on in the bathroom while Rogue changed upstairs.
Fighting’s like damn foreplay a growly voice in the back of his head whispered, and he mentally slapped himself. Damn it, Rogue needed this and he shouldn’t be thinking about ways to turn a grapple into a grope.
Out on the lawn they sparred, wrestled, punched, kicked, and snapped teeth at each other for over an hour, and managed to put an unfortunate dent in of the jeep’s doors when Rogue caught Wolverine with a left jab that nailed him right in the eye and rocked him into the car. He took his revenge by kicking her into the log splitting stump, which she bounced off of with a howl of anger and dove at him, nailing him in the solar plexus with an incredibly well timed knee, knocking the wind out of him.
It was no longer sparring but a down and dirty fight and fuck all if she didn’t look like she was enjoying it. Rogue tried to take advantage of his momentary shock at her knee strike and dove at his midsection, determined to tackle him. Wolverine saw it coming a mile away and sidestepped, wrapping an arm around her waist and dragging her roughly to his chest and head butting her then flung her back. She raised her hands to her face, blinded by tears of pain, and he drove her to ground, pinning her under him, grinding her into the gravel of the path to the cabin. She struggled futilely under him, and he laughed right in her face. Not getting away this time darlin.Rogue flew into a rage at his laughter, spitting and lashing like a wildcat. Suddenly, she leaned up and sunk her teeth into his cheek hard, snarling. “Shit!” he scrambled off of her, his hand to his face.
She just fucking bit me! Deep too from the way it felt, even as it began to heal.
She spring up, hissing, and unleashed bone claws through the tops of her gloves, advancing furiously on him.
“Rogue,” he warned her, stepping back, still holding his face. He was NOT going to fight her like THAT, way too dangerous. Her healing factor wasn’t as fast as his, so it was entirely possible she could bleed out if he used his claws in this fight. “Rogue!” he yelled, leaping back when she took a viscous swipe at his midsection and came damn close to spilling his entrails on the grass. “Rogue!!!” He skipped away again as she slashed repeatedly at him, spinning and ducking from her deadly hands, flipping out of her reach.
He focused on her claws to the exclusion of all else as she lunged at him again and in his distraction tripped over one of the stones lining the walkway to the cabin and fell backwards. In a heartbeat, Rogue was on top of him, pinning his arms with her knees. She bared her teeth at him, panting, and put her fist under his chin, retracting the middle claw so his face was framed by the other two and the third tickled the flesh where his neck met his jaw.
He was breathing hard and so was she, eyes locked. He wasn’t scared for himself but worried how she would feel when she snapped out of it and realized she’d skewered him through the brainpan. Even though it was past dark and well into night he could still see the gleam of gold in her brown eyes and the darkness that lurked in them.
He was intensely familiar with that look; it was the one most of his enemies saw right before he ended them, the last thing they ever saw: the eyes of a predator bent on the kill.
Shit.
Suddenly the feral grimace Rogue had been bearing flashed into a wicked grin and she winked. “Sugah, you didn’t think I was really gonna hurt you, did you? Awwwwww.” She sprang to her feet lightly, and held out a hand to help him up.
Wolverine batted it away, annoyed she’d fooled him like that. Normally Rogue could never deceive him. He could always smell a lie or even an omission on her b/c she was a terrible liar and an innately honest person. This was something new, this trickiness, this darkly deceptive side that had emerged. To be honest, he wasn’t sure what to think of it, but the animal in his head growled approvingly, seeing it as an interesting twist in the hunt.
“Aw Wolverine, you’re not a sore loser, are you?” Rogue teased and offered her hand again. This time he took it, allowing her to pull him up.
“Nah darlin. Gotta admit, you surprised me though.” She retracted her claws and smacked the dust from her uniform and, still grinning, leaned in to give him a swift kiss on his now healed cheek, too fast for her mutation to notice. Then she strolled away, taking off her gloves as she reached down to grab another beer from the cooler on the porch.
Damn, did she always swing her hips like that when she walked?
“Looks like I’m full of surprises these days,” she drawled as she downed the beer in two long swallows that made the pale column of her throat pulse and arch invitingly. Wolverine bit down on the inside of his cheek as he watched a stray drop spill from the corner of her mouth and slide down her chin, then her neck before disappearing into the high collar of her uniform. She drained the bottle with a contented sighed and grinned at him again. Her mouth was smeared with the blood from his cheek. She chucked the empty bottle into the recycling bin at the end of the porch and sauntered into the house, and a minute later Wolverine heard the shower turn on.
“Fuck,” Wolverine muttered to himself, then went to start on a new bottle of whiskey and light a much needed cigar.
His blood on her mouth.
I must be a truly depraved shit to be hard as a rock right now.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Every gift comes with a price.
Chapter End Notes:
The night is still young.