SURPRISES ALWAYS HELP



And then, then, then—they receive news that Hank’s home in D.C. has been burned down.

Luckily, Hank hadn’t been home at the time. Storm tells Logan that it was most likely the work of an anti-mutant organization associated with the Republican Party that has in recent months been waging a vigorous campaign for something called SB10700, a bill even more repressive and discriminatory than the Mutant Registration Act, bolstered by the news surrounding the cure and its effectiveness (or lack thereof), and the popular fears that have been revitalized by that news.

He vaguely remembers seeing Hank on the news, talking about the cure; and then he remembers a conversation between Piotr and Gambit at the poker table, during which the Russian had been trying to explain why the cure’s effect had worn off almost exclusively for a certain type of mutation.

“The cure is immunosuppressive. So hyper-immunity mutations would fight it,” Piotr had explained, and Logan remembers having rolled his eyes at how American the accent of this young Russian had become, so quickly.

“So,” Piotr continued, “Defensive mutations. Like Rogue’s.”

And Logan’s ears had twitched at the name. He had glanced over at the two of them.

And Gambit had already been looking at him, over his cards.

“Or Logan’s,” Piotr said, turning to look at him, too.

And Gambit and Logan had stared at directly at each other, for what was perhaps the first time, and he had almost thought the Cajun was going to say something.

“So, what about people like you and me,” Bobby asked Piotr, interrupting the moment, and Logan had shifted his attention back to his cards.

Piotr shrugged. “That’s more difficult. Are organic states a form of hyper-immunity? Hard to tell.”

“This is starting to get boring,” Warren interrupted, and they had resumed the game.

Storm says that Hank is currently in an “undisclosed location,” where he now has more than enough security watching over him, though she has offered to send a few more—uniquely advanced—bodyguards whenever he needs them, for particularly vulnerable situations.

“I wish he’d never taken that damn job,” she says, then covers her mouth. “Sorry. Ah. Shit. I don’t know.”

He looks at her. “No,” he says slowly. “I kinda wished he hadn’t taken it, either.”

“No. I meant the original job, years ago,” she says, rubbing the bridge of her nose. “As Secretary of Mutant Affairs.”

He looks at her, questioningly.

She sighs. “I wish he had stayed here. A scientist.” She frowns. “Where he was safe.”

He lowers his eyes. He hadn’t known either of them back then.

Though he had always suspected that there might have been something between the two of them—there was often something left unsaid in their conversations, during which he sometimes felt like a third wheel, an uninvited guest; like he was interrupting something that hadn’t been resolved, or even touched upon, for years.

But maybe, he thinks, it was a nothing kind of something, like his relationship with the kid.

Or was it a something kind of nothing—the way Storm imagines his relationship with the kid.

“Anyway,” Storm continues, sounding tired. “I hope you’ll also be available for bodyguard duties here and there.”

“Do you even have to ask,” he says, pulling out a cigar.

She looks at him, a little startled; then she smiles, and he has never had someone smile at him like that before. Like she is proud to have been proven right. Then he thinks, he is wrong; Jean smiled at him like that, just before he—but he stops that thought.

“Nope,” she replies, still smiling. “And you better not smoke that thing in here.”


*


The first mission he is sent on with Gambit and Kurt, to guard Hank at a UN Summit on Climate Change. He isn’t comfortable with the idea of going with the Cajun, but Storm says they need offensive-mutation members for this one, so he doesn’t voice a single word of complaint.

And just before he leaves, Rogue comes into his room and they fuck on his bed, wordlessly and almost without a single insult or incidence of bodily harm, and he wonders if she is worried about him.

And waiting in the cockpit, he suddenly realizes that she must have chosen to sleep with him, not Gambit, before the mission. And the thought makes his entire body rigid with fear and shock and—

Then the Cajun finally hurries into the smaller jet, ten minutes late, smelling like poker night.


*


The mission is entirely uneventful, although he understands Storm’s caution, since the event location is somewhat wide-open to a variety of attacks, none of which he would like to imagine, let alone experience.

Thinking, without knowing why, of Storm’s words, about something else entirely: You must not have a very good imagination, then.

Back at the hotel, Kurt sleeps in Hank’s room, to be in the position to teleport him away at the first sign of danger, while—to the delight of precisely no one—Logan and Gambit share a room.

They barely speak to each other. “Are you gonna take a shower,” Logan bites out finally, after an hour of rummaging through suitcases, documents, and silence.

Gambit raises an eyebrow. “Be my guest, mon ami.”

I’m not your ami, Logan wants to retort.

But Gambit is already looking like he regrets that little addition; he has only said it out of habit, not out of provocation, Logan realizes; he may as well have called him chèr, for all he meant to say it. The tense, guarded look on Gambit’s face lets him know immediately that the Cajun knows full well that they are not amis, and has no interest in even joking about the idea.

And when he is in the shower, he thinks to himself: No mind games, at least.

He is a little surprised; he has heard the young man’s lazy and free-associative debates with Piotr during poker games; he has seen the way he murmurs incessantly into Rogue’s ear in the hallway, or outside of her room; and he has a reputation as something of a ladies’ man with some of the other women in the mansion—

(Which Storm confirms later: “Yeah, he’s an amazing lay.” Thankfully, she doesn’t compare the two of them; though he is not sure whose feelings she is sparing.)

—so Logan had been expecting more of a talker, a charmer; but around him, the Cajun is nearly mute. Yet always watching, waiting, assessing. With those bizarre eyes, which discomfit Logan more than he would ever admit aloud.

How can she stand to look into his eyes while they fuck, he thinks before he can stop himself. Then shakes his head quickly.

When he comes back out, the Cajun is lying on his bed, on top of the blanket, in his boxers and a t-shirt.

“Good night,” Gambit says politely, then folds his hands over his chest, and closes his eyes.

Logan looks down at his own bed and he decides, petulantly, hair still wet on his metal skull, that he can fucking well sleep on top of his blanket, too.

During the night, he thinks he hides the shivering well.


*


Back at the mansion, the kid is careful to be somewhere else when the jet arrives, so she will not have to choose whom to greet first. When she comes to his room later that evening, she is freshly showered, so he doesn’t know if he is the first or the second.


*


Then, he is sent on a mission with Rogue and Warren. This time it is to accompany Hank during some kind of gala, which is happening on the rooftop of some sort of fancy hotel in the city. Which is why they need mutants with flying abilities, yeah, yeah, yeah. He is beginning to think Storm is having a little bit of fun with her assignments, despite her seriousness.

At the ball, one young man approaches Rogue and says, “Oh, are you Rogue?”

She stiffens and says, “Who’s asking?”

“I was Dr. McCoy’s first assistant, a long time ago, back when he was still in the Cabinet. He’s told me about you. I heard you had a close encounter with Magneto.”

Her gaze flickers over at Logan. “Pretty close.”

Then Logan is called away, to follow Hank to the other side of the room, but he can see Rogue and the young man still talking. She is laughing, shaking her head, telling him something; but he does not seem to be fazed, and then he lifts his hand to show it to her—and the hand turns metallic and golden.

Logan sees her eyes widen, and then she starts grinning. The young man slips something into her hand, which she puts in the pocket of her leather jumpsuit.


*


Later, back in the room Logan and Hank are sharing, the blue-furred man undoes his necktie and says, “I’m terribly sorry for all this, you know. Ororo is overcautious.”

“She’s just cautious enough. We’re all worried,” Logan replies. Then, deliberately, he adds: “Storm most of all.”

“Yes, well,” Hank says, and looks down.

Logan thinks of the something kind of nothing, or the nothing kind of something.

Hank clears his throat. “Still. I apologize for the—circus—that this whole thing has caused. I certainly don’t wish to be babysat at a diplomatic ball.”

“No apologies necessary,” Logan says. “You’re one of us.”

Hank smiles. “Yes,” he says, and it sounds the way Storm sounded before; when she had sounded proud of being proven right. That Logan would say something like “one of us,” so easily, now.

Then his brow furrows. “Speaking of one of us—Rogue is a bit different, isn’t she?”

Why is everyone saying it like that, Logan wonders.

“Yeah,” he says only.

“And no one knows yet how she obtained those powers?”

“Nope,” Logan replies.

Hank sits down on his bed. “Joshua seemed to like her,” he remarks. Joshua must be the name of the golden guy, Logan thinks.

“Seemed like it,” he says only.

Hank studies him. “Yes,” he says blandly. “Well, Joshua is a very nice young man.”

Logan nods; he would like to get out of this conversation, and quickly. He asks, “You gonna take a shower?”

Hank pauses, then smiles. “Yes, I think I will. Thank you.”


*


And in bed, Logan tries to sleep. Not listening for noise in the hall. Not hearing the opening of a door, the closing of a door. Not listening for a man’s voice. Not hearing one say, “Rogue, over here.” Not hearing the kid’s giggle. Not thinking of a man with a metallic golden hand. Not thinking of creative inspirations.


*


And on the jet, Rogue doesn’t say anything, but she is wearing her scarf tight around her neck and Warren is looking a little sick. From the cockpit, Logan asks, “Everything all right over there, Richie Rich?” Warren only nods his head.


*


But at the cafeteria during dinner that evening, Warren can be heard speaking loudly to a group of students—

“She’ll put out for anyone who comes along, I swear—”

“Warren, that’s enough,” Bobby tries to interject.

“I’m serious, man; she spent the whole night flirting with this guy when we were all supposed to be guarding Dr. McCoy. And then, at night, when we were still supposed to be on watch, she snuck out in the middle of the night and disappeared. And believe me, she came back looking well-fucked; she even had to take a shower afterwards—”

Logan can see Gambit standing from his table, making his way straight for Warren.

“Come on, you guys know it’s true—Jubilee, you know it’s true—she’s the mansion slut, that’s old news—I bet you that’s how she got those crazy powers, too—probably accidentally sucked them out of some guy she was fucking—”

And Logan can see Gambit’s hand coming out of his pocket, and he is suddenly aware of himself moving forward, too, his knuckles shivering.

And he thinks, Have I been moving this whole time, too?

But before either of them can reach Warren, the young man is suddenly flying across the entire cafeteria, straight into the food stations.

And Rogue is standing there—and where the hell did she come from, Logan thinks—with her arms crossed. And from where he is, he can see the two hickeys on her neck, defiantly uncovered.

She calls out, “Still bitter that not even this slut will touch your microscopic dick more than once, Worthington?”

And Logan sees Gambit, on the other side of the room, drop his hand in surprise.

Then the Cajun starts laughing—loudly and raucously and joyously—bending over and grabbing his stomach to catch his breath, then rearing backwards and roaring out laughs again—and it is the first time he has ever seen the man laugh.

But when Gambit finally stops laughing long enough to gaze at the back of the kid’s head, Logan can feel his knuckles start to shiver again. He far prefers the laughing to the look.


*


And Warren doesn’t come to the poker games anymore.