Logan tightened his grip on the briefcase as the car slowed to a stop. The car door opened, and he automatically scented the air that rushed in. A humid roil, smelling of saltwater and rotting fish. The gentle lapping of waves and the creak of old wood. The docks. He got out of the car, following the driver up the stairs of the rickety old building, his hackles raising at the feeling of the other man following too close at his back.
“Marco’s Bait Shop” the weathered sign read, barely discernible in the fading twilight. The rattle of an air conditioner overlay the sounds of more men inside. Three more by their scents -- Logan numbered them automatically as he approached the door. Cigarette smoke and insomnia, body odor and vodka, peppermint gum and the coppery smell of blood, and...another scent -- fainter, more elusive. A girl. Sweat and terror, with a soft, enticing scent underneath.
The three others were sitting around a table but they shifted to their feet as Logan and the other two entered. Logan didn’t have to look behind him to know that the two thugs who had escorted him here were hanging back by the door, blocking his exit, hands hovering edgily over the grips of their guns. They had been leeching nervousness from their pores since they picked him up, and understandably so. Logan knew better than to try to look nonthreatening, the most he could hope for was to look reasonably calm. From the reactions of the thugs, he must not be succeeding so well.
One of the three men stepped forward. Sleek dark hair streaked with grey, and a sedate blue suit that likely cost more than the whole building. Greed spiked the air as his cold blue eyes flicked to the briefcase and then back up to Logan’s face. “You have the deposit?”
Logan put the briefcase on the table, snapping open the latches. He opened the top and stepped back. “Not many people deal in cash these days,” Logan commented casually.
The suit -- Marco, Logan ironically called him in his head -- gravitated toward the open briefcase like a magnet to true north. Logan sensed the increase in his heart rate, the heated pump of his blood at the sight of the money, but the man’s face betrayed nothing as he picked up a stack of bills and flicked through it. The air thickened with his scent -- now blood, peppermint gum, and greed.
“We’ll accept the rest by wire, but I’ve always found cash transactions to be...uniquely satisfying,” the man said.
Logan focused on keeping his expression blank, his body relaxed, as he looked toward the back room. “She back there?”
A nod from Marco and one of the thugs flicked on a small t.v. sitting on a cabinet nearby. A tube t.v., and black and white to boot. Old school. The screen flickered on to show a girl. Logan took in the picture in flashes as his claws burned in his forearms. Blindfolded and gagged, dark hair with a strange white streak in a tumble around a pale face. Her arms were wrenched uncomfortably behind her -- probably tied to something -- and she intermittently strained against the unseen bonds. No sound, but Logan could see the rapid, panicked heaving of her chest.
She wore a white button-down shirt and a short, girlish skirt, and she was barefoot in ragged tights. One pale toe peeked out of a hole in the foot of her tights, the oddly vulnerable sight twisting something tighter in Logan’s chest as he bit back the angry growl that threatened to leave his throat.
He drew in a slow breath through his nostrils, counting to focus himself before he trusted his voice to remain dispassionate. “How do I know she can do what you say?”
Another nod from Marco and Audiovisual Thug popped a tape into the box under the t.v. which Logan now realized was a VCR and not a DVD player as he had assumed. Seriously, had these guys even heard of the twenty-first fucking century? This one had been taken in a different room, and had sound. Logan found himself wishing it hadn’t as the girl’s clear voice, thick with tears, begged some unseen person to stop, please stop. She didn’t want to, she pleaded. Don’t make her.
It sounded like a rape, and Logan supposed in some ways it was as another voice joined hers. This one was a man, his voice panicked and wheedling. “Please boss, please...I’ll give the money back...it was just a loan, just a little off the top, I was gonna put it back, please...”
They came into camera-view now, the panicked man and cigarette-and-insomnia thug. The awkward arch of the panicked man’s back hinted at the gun Logan knew must be pressed to his spine. His words choked off suddenly as his hand was wrenched forward, pressed against the girl’s cheek by the thug’s firm grip on his wrist.
The girl flinched back as far as her bonds allowed, but it was no use. The man’s hand was pushed inexorably forward, hard against her skin, smashing her cheek. She had stopped protesting now but even with the scratchy audio Logan’s keen ears heard her panicked gasp under the men’s panting breaths as she closed her eyes, tears leaking from under the lids.
Logan’s body was wound tight with tension, with the urge to spring his claws and stop this -- even knowing it had already happened.
The rest happened suddenly, as the man screamed in anguish, his hand locking in what must have been a bone-crushing grip on her cheek as thick dark veins popped out over the surface of his hand and forearm. A few moments of silence broken only by the choked whine of the man and the girl’s gasping breaths, and then the pained rigidity of the man’s body turned to a boneless slump, forcing the thug to bring his gun hand up around his waist to bolster him.
The thug held him, arms straining under the deadweight, until finally Marco’s voice gave the permission to end the contact. “It’s done.”
The thug drew the body back, dropping it to the floor in relief. The girl’s head fell forward, her streaked hair tumbling down to hide her face as the tape abruptly turned to static.
Audiovisual Thug carefully popped the tape out of the VCR as Marco looked expectantly at Logan, his scent flushed with even more excitement. Fuckin’ sadist. He would die last, and slow.
Logan drew in another slow, careful breath. “Fair enough,” he said, neutrally. “Lemme see the merchandise.”
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000
Author's Chapter Notes:
These first few chapters are going to be a little more brutal and bloody than my usual. Skipping straight to NC-17 for that alone.
Chapter End Notes:
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