He was beyond fed up with his class this afternoon. The older teens were supposed to be practicing grappling and he’d had to practically claw the boys off the girls when he barked at them to partner up, having to frog march Scott over to Kurt and away from Jean. Now they were supposed to be doing judo on each other during a self-defense drill and Rogue was goofing off, not even trying. She kept running her mouth to her partner Kitty, then pretended to accidentally on purpose back into Scott while he was trying to wrestle with a the more agile Kurt, knocking both boys off balance and onto the mat, where she smirked down at them, then turned back to keep yammering with the other girl. When Jean neatly flipped Bobby over her hip, Rogue helped the boy up, then shoved him hard into Jean’s turned back knocking them both into a punching bag
“Rogue!” Wolverine barked and she cut her eyes at him, then turned back to Kitty and made a half-hearted attempt to block the smaller girl’s arm lock, let her arm be forced up into an awkward position behind her head, then simply stamped down on Kitty’s foot. The girl squealed and hopped away on one boot while Rogue flopped down on the mat and lazily laced her hands behind her head.
He stomped over to her prone form, the rest of the class stilling in their exercises to watch the Rogue and Wolverine face off.
“Get up!” he snarled, looming over her
She rolled her eyes and said, “Why? This is bullshit.” A collective gasp went through the room at her brazenness.
“I said UP!” and he reached down and grabbed her by the shoulder of her uniform, bunching it in his fist, and hauled her up roughly.
She snarled back at him and tried to twist out of his grip. “Let me go, you Neanderthal!”
“You’re going to pay attention and you’re going to do the damn exercise,” he hissed at her. “You need to learn to defend yourself if you’re going to join our team.” He shook her roughly by the uniform again.
“This is stupid. IF I wanted to joined your stupid team and IF I wanted to defend myself all I have to do is-" and she stripped off one glove. Before she could move further, Wolverine grabbed both her wrists in one of his leather gloved hands and hauled her arms roughly over her head, yanking so hard her feet temporarily left the floor.
She yipped in surprise and he bared his teeth in a mocking smile. “Uh-huh, and what are you going to do if you can’t free your hands?” he snorted. The rest of the class backed up; Wolverine in a mood like this was nothing to stand too close to. Rogue struggled impotently for a moment before she went a bit limp and dropped her head in defeat. Satisfied he’d made his point, Wolverine leaned forward and growled, “That’s what I tho-“
WHAM! Rogue snapped her head up, sharply cracking him on the chin which slammed his teeth together and into his tongue. Before he could react she smiled coldly then snapped her head forward and crashed her forehead into his nose. Her mutation lashed out like an electric whip and Wolverine went down like a bag of cement, knocked out in the tiny moment her bare face made contact with his skin.
For a moment she gaped down at her teacher’s prone form at her feet, and then she looked up and saw a dozen pairs of wide eyes starting at her. “What’re you looking at!?” she shouted and took off running to the door, the other students parting in front of her quickly.
“Mr. Logan? Mr. Logan?” Something was slapping his face. He growled and lurched up, causing Jean to levitate back suddenly. He shook his head and looked around at a gaggle of teenage mutant goggling down at him…plunked on his ass on the exercise mat where that little bitch had flattened him…in front of his class! He snarled, “Class dismissed!” and jumped up. The kids scattered before him as he stomped out of the gym, following the scent of the Rogue through the mansion, up the stairs and through the main foyer.
He started counting off the reasons in his head he could use to justify to Chuck why he stuffed a student in the garbage disposal.
One…she dicked around in my class one time too many.
Two…she sassed me in front of the students.
Three…she used her power on me. ME! He grunted as he burst through the front doors oh the mansion, scanning for her scent, trying to follow the trail that probably lead to the woods again. But her scent didn’t head straight across the grounds to the forest but instead hung a sharp turn towards the back of the house. The garage.
Wolverine was running now. There was no way in hell, but he knew because he smelled it even before he rounded the last corner to the garage and saw the door open and an empty spot where the most precious thing in the world to him was supposed to me. The roar that echoed across the ground sent distant birds to flight and the students to cringe and scurry for the safety of their dormitories.
She’d taken his bike. Once he finished yelling, Wolverine pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation then again harder as he had to re-break and reset it after it had apparently healed crooked for the 17th time while he was out cold.
He sat in the garage for hours, smoking one cigar after another, contemplating various punishments, well really more like tortures. Lock her in the sub zero walk-in for a few hours, tie her upside down to a tree and throw a hornet’s nest at her, put sulfuric acid in her water bottle, take away her eyeliner, replace all her clothes with neon yellow, on and on he amused himself with more ridiculous ideas of how to make her suffer. But in the end he knew he was going to have to just try to ground her stupid ass and make her wash the X-jet or some other ridiculous shit that wouldn’t stick. None of his usual intimidation and threatening that sent other students cowering into corners even fazed her, like nothing he or anyone else did made a dent in her diamond hard facade.
The sun set long ago and it was deeply dark out, the new moon hidden. He finally heard a grumble of his bike from far away and he slunk back into the shadow of the modified Hummer, leaning against the side panel as he watched the pinpoint of the headlight turned up the driveway. He'd wait till she parked his beloved bike securely before he tried, most likely unsuccessfully, to scare the shit out of her. She didn’t event try to be quiet at all, seemingly too cocksure to even bother trying to sneak back onto campus with her stolen wheels. She screeched the bike to halt scant inches from Scott’s pinstriped Alfa Romeo and revved the engine loudly announcing the Rogue was back and didn't care who knew it. She was still wearing her uniform and a full face helmet, which she ripped off her head and shook her head hard, chin length deep brown and platinum lock falling into her face and away again. She kicked one leg over the bike as she shut it off and snagged a rag from the work bench next to her.
Wolverine was surprised as he watched her start to wipe down the bike, scuffing away road grime that had dulled the usually brilliant shine of the engine casing. She nodded her head absently and that was when he noticed the white cord peeking under her hair and snaking down to the stamp sized Shuffle she’d clipped to her waist.
This is the first day of my last days
I built it up now I take it apart
Rogue grimaced bitterly as she worked at a particularly stubborn piece of dirt wedged to the underside of the gas tank. She hadn’t meant to touch Wolverine like that, she’d just watched to make him let the fuck go of her, she’d hadn’t even been thinking.
Climbed up real high
Now fall down real far
And to look around and see everyone staring at her like she was some sort of monster, goddamnit. She was a freak among freaks. An outcast even among those society shunned like the plague. She buffed the back fender hard, looking away from her reflection as she did so.
No need for me to stay
The last thing left I just threw it away
She’d thought she was doing better. Yeh, she was still breaking rules at every chance because they were fucking stupid and what was youth for but to waste on crazy ideas and bad choices. But she’d thought they were starting to warm up to her, even if she did bite their damn heads off all the time. She got another rag and swiped at the dirt that dulled the head and tail lights.
I put my faith in god and my trust in you
Now there's nothing more fucked up I could do
Then she had to go and drop a teacher, the Wolverine of all people, with an unplanned touch at a moment of pure recklessness. Knock his ass to the ground in front of everyone and she knew it looked like she’d meant to. Looking like she had no compunction about using her skin against them if anyone so much as looked at her cross-ways. She threw a leg across the saddle of the bike once more and started wiping down the gas tank and handlebars.
Wish there was something real wish there was something true
Wish there was something real in this world full of you
And Wolverine, shit. He’d actually tried quite a few times to be nice to her in that snarly asshole way of his. He didn’t look at her with pity or shy away if she moved to sudden or too close. She gripped the rag tight in her hands, wringing it as she though about how he’d dropped at her feet like she’d struck him fucking dead.
I'm the one without a soul
I'm the one with this big fucking hole
That brief flash of his thoughts in her head when she’d head-butted him. He was so angry at her. She was acting like a fucking brat, challenging him in front of everyone, showing off how much she didn’t give a shit, they way she wanted them to see her. She was so fucking annoying, he was going to teach her lesson. She leaned down and rested her forehead on the gas tank.
No new tale to tell
Twenty-six years on my way to hell
Gotta listen to your big time
Hard line bad luck fist fuck
Don't think you're having all the fun
You know me I hate everyone
It was like everything she was was made to hurt other people. She was being punished for something, she knew it. Probably for being born. Goddamn, this sucked. She hated her mutation. She hated everything around her, she was so angry. She hated herself sometimes. Other times she just felt really fucking sorry for herself, she was such a loser. She couldn’t even go one day without fucking stuff up. Her breath hitched and she pushed her cheek against the metal, squeezed her eyes tight shut.
Wish there was something real wish there was something true
Wish there was something real in this world full of you
Wolverine was going to kill her ass. She’d panicked when she ran out of the gym. She had to get away from all those stares, those fearful eyes, so she ran to the garage and the bike was just right there, screaming for her to take it. Take one more thing from him. That was what she did, she took what didn’t belong to her, not because she wanted to but because that’s what she was apparently made to do. She banged her head hard on the gas tank and growled.
A hard hand clamped down on her shoulder. She jerked up and death was standing right there, looking 6 kinds of pissed off. She jumped off the bike, ripping the ear buds out, and her hackles rose automatically at the glare Wolverine was giving her.
“I didn’t mean to!” she snarled and backed away, fists raised. Ready to strike, that’s what she did; strike first before someone else could. He stiffened at her posture then dropped one hand down to the gas tank possessively.
She bit her lip guiltily and said, “Ok, I meant to take the bike, but I didn’t mean to drop you like that.”
“You’re weren’t thinking, kid.” His words were clipped but calm. He didn’t seem to have any immediate plans to knock her brains out of her head. She relaxed her stance a bit.
“I know I wasn’t….I just…” Her voice was quieter, a hint of sadness under her frustration.
“Instinct, kid. Know all about it.” His lips twisted in something resembling a smile but it was kinda creepy. His eyes were black and flat and he seemed to be looking past her or maybe through her. “Fight or flight. You did both.”
She nodded hestitantly. It was all she could think of. Strike then run like hell. It's what she always did.
“Tomorrow, 6am, Danger Room. You’re going to start learning to think when cornered instead of fight or flight. I’m gonna teach ya.”
Surprised, she straightened up entirely. He wasn’t going to kill her?
“Yer not getting off easy. This will be one-on-one training with me. And I won’t be taking it easy on you. You’ll be begging for jet detail.” She nodded again, swallowing and wondering if it would have been better to just keep riding and not come back.
He inclined his head, indicating she could go. She skirted around him, never turning her back, still paranoid that any moment she might feel three claws through her kidney. As she slid through the door to the kitchen, “Kid.”
She looked up at him, her back braced against the frame. “Don’t ever let me catch you taking my bike again or there'll be hell to pay. Got it?” He growled menacingly at her.
The Rogue came out again, pushing her luck as always, and she flipped her middle finger at him then ran for her room.
Logan grunted to himself at her never-ending supply of piss-and-vinegar and turned to inspect his bike carefully.
He hadn’t had the heart to rip her a new one after he saw the way her face twisted in regret as she tried to clean the bike. The smell of frustration and fear that scrolled out from her in sickly waves as she sat on it, grinding her face into the machine as that that black music he could clearly hear with his enhanced senses poured into her head and rubbed salt in the emotional rips. It made his gut churn.
And he thought he had demons.
Nothing he could do would’ve made her feel worse. She was beating herself up from inside out for a whole laundry lists of reasons that had only a little to do with what happened today. Her punishment was just existing with the worst mutation he could think of.
He wanted to be mad at her, but he couldn’t. She had enough anger for the two of them.
I want to but I can't turn back
But I want to
He ran his hand over his bike, inspecting it then stilling when he felt the residual warmth of her body on the saddle. He lit another cigar and smoked it while rubbing his hand slowly over the leather.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
Rogue lashes out. Wolverine sees why.
Chapter End Notes:
Next chapter we get some more obvious UST.
Song: Wish by NIN
Song: Wish by NIN