Fic: A Shift in the Air
Title: A Shift in the Air
Fandom: X-Men (movieverse)
Pairing: Rogue/Logan (yes, het)
Rating: kinda R, I guess
Warning: Contains sexualised not!knife/claw-play, which may be a trigger for cutting.
Word Count: 3200
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit made. I just play with the pretty toys.
Author’s Notes: My thanks to the lovely fyrethief for the beta. Set sometime around or after the first movie. Remember, comments/feedback make my day! (Cross-posted to loganandmarie, xfiction and xmmff.)
Summary: There is an arm-length of stony space around Rogue. She touches no one. Sometimes she forgets the cavity is of her own making.
For a placed filled with people, the mansion can be big and empty. Rogue feels the space of it, the wide corridors, the vacant nooks, the bare rooms. She is used to sitting at windows, leaning on walls, walking along the sides of corridors. She clings to the edge of it.
She sees the others who live there, can’t help but hear them around her, does everything to interact with them, and willingly too. But she feels like she has the place to herself. She doesn’t share it with them. There is an arm-length of stony space around her and she touches no one. Sometimes she forgets the cavity is of her own making.
Logan can smell her. He’s smoking a cigar, looking out from a window over the lush green garden. The sky’s a flat white nothingness that he knows Storm is not responsible for. He can hear the TV on behind him, some of the kids arguing over what to watch, some others playing table football. And he knows the moment Rogue stands in the doorway; her hair wet - she’s freshly showered - but it doesn’t disguise the scent of her.
Sometimes he dreams of his van and his life before. Those are better nights, preferable dreams. There’s a logic to it: he goes where the fights are. Fights equal money, money equals beer, cigars and food (in that order). There’s a simplicity to it he never realised at the time. In his dreams, he’s on the road again, as though the road is home. The smell of his van, a detail he thought he’d forgotten, and in it, sometimes, the smell of Rogue. He never sees her there, just smells her. He wakes up chasing something, he doesn’t know what.
He wakes up to a life of grey. For fifteen years, he’s been fighting himself. Now he has to think about conflicts and causes and outcomes and responsibilities. He has to make decisions. He doesn’t enjoy any of that. He knows he’s not a thinker. He acts on impulse and instinct. If it feels right, he goes for it. Deals with whatever shit comes down later. He doesn’t have room in his life for thoughts. He wants to do what he’s always done: fight and drink and swear and smoke and fuck, then collapse into exhausted dreamless sleep, and get up the next day to do it all again. He wants that death-like empty sleep, the body drop, and never more than a few hours of it. He’s too well-rested here. It gives his mind the energy to dream, and he doesn’t want to dream.
He turns from the window, draws on the cigar and looks at Rogue. Her eyes flick quickly away from him. He watches as someone walks through the door past her and she flinches away, drawing into herself. She creeps into the corner of the room and meets his eyes with a steely gaze. He has to look away. When he glances back, she’s gone.
“How old are you, anyway?” Rogue says. She is sitting up on the top of the backrest of a chair, her feet on the seat of it and her back leaning against the corner of Logan’s room, by the window. Logan is lying on the bed, sipping a beer. He shrugs.
“Why won’t you tell me?” She is playful. She doesn’t seem to care too much about the answer.
“I don’t remember,” he says lightly.
She considers this. Her mouth makes a funny shape.
“How old do you feel?” she says.
He gropes back into his past - what of it he can remember. Even the bits he’s sure about are something of a drunken blur.
“Twenty-five,” he says.
She laughs. He raises an eyebrow at her.
They lapse into silence for a moment. Rogue looks out the window into the night.
They speak at the same time:
“Do you want to-”
“What can you-”
They share a breathy laugh and Logan holds his beer out to her. “D’you want a drink?” he says. She shakes her head. Her thoughts glide over what her saliva could do to another person. She doesn’t know and she’s not sure she wants to try it out on Logan.
“What can you smell?” she asks him.
He smirks for a moment and looks at her.
“You,” he says. She snorts.
“The beer,” he says. “That chocolate wrapper in the bin.” He inhales slowly and thinks. “Your soap - not lavender but there’s lavender in there somewhere.”
She nods. “My sock drawer,” she says quietly. “My mum always said-” then she stops talking.
“Your shampoo, but you didn’t wash your hair today.” She nods again. “There’s a kid,” he says. “Who walked passed the door ten minutes ago. Don’t know his name. The one who can walk on water.”
“Oh yeah - Jesus,” she says.
He laughs, then continues. “The hand-wash in the bathroom,” he says. “Someone took a piss. Storm’s asleep across the hall, she’s sweating slightly. The person who vacuums the hall likes curry. There’s a cat hiding under the sideboard at the top of the stairs.”
“You can smell all that?” she says.
“If you opened the window, I could smell more.”
“Do you want me to?”
He shakes his head and takes a sip of beer. He looks at her hands. She’s not wearing any gloves. One hand is resting on the windowsill, the other in her lap. She sees where he’s looking and moves her hands together, self-consciously.
“I can put them on, if you’d-” She points to her pocket.
“No,” he says. “It’s fine.”
She climbs off the chair, still looking at him. Her eyes are level, clear and determined. He can feel a shift in the air.
“I’d like you to-” she says in a low voice.
“Yes?” he says, too quickly.
“Oh,” she says. She moves towards the bed, then stops, hesitating. “Nothing.”
Logan swings his legs off the bed and stands up in front of her. They look at each other, face to face. “Rogue?” he says.
“Nothing,” she says again. She pauses, then adds, “I should go to bed.”
Logan moves his hand out slowly, holding it above her arm. She watches his hand. She has a dark look on her face, her brows lowered, her mouth set. He touches her sleeve with his fingertips, lightly and deliberately running his fingers down the length of her covered arm. He pauses where the sleeve stops, looking at the delicate skin of her wrist, her small hand and his own hand so close to it. He lifts his hand off.
“Goodnight then, kid,” he says.
She steps back, her eyes on his face for a moment. Later, he wonders if he imagined her quick nod, the brief current of understanding running between the two of them, just in that moment. She slips out the door.
He flops back onto the bed, finishes his beer and keeps his eyes open as long as possible and his mind blank. Her scent is still with him when he wakes up.
She has a catalogue in her head of things she misses. Her mother’s cooking. Her favourite dish, corn fritters with relish. The map on her wall. The places she was going to go. The sound of mother’s piano practice. Her father’s laugh. The accidentally brush of skin as someone walks past you too close. Holding hands. Patting animals. Holding animals. Holding people. Being held. Hugs. The first boy she kissed. The idea that she might one day have sex.
It’s a list she’s constantly adding to. It’s not that she isn’t happy at the academy - she is. She doesn’t miss those eight months she was by herself, on the road.
She feels an acute contradiction inside herself. That her life should be defined by hurt, by pain, and yet she lives in a bubble. She’s cotton-wooled herself against it. She has the power to cause it, but rarely feels it. Pure physical pain. She rarely feels anything even close to it. That night with Logan stands out in amongst a sea of nondescript days. And with it, the night on Liberty Island. The rest is blank.
She never considered herself a particularly physical person. She was always a person who lived more through her mind than her body. Until she couldn’t live through her body - at least, not in any normal way. She found the relationship between her body and the physical world changing. She felt betrayed. She could cut herself but could never have someone else apply a plaster to her skin; not without gloves, not without thinking first, not without her recoiling in fear that one touch of her skin might kill them. She could never have anyone kiss it better. She added these things to the list. She was trying to learn to be independent, but she was unwilling.
She can feel Wolverine inside her head. A part of her that snarls and longs to lash out, and she knows it isn’t her. She feels the pull between the control she knows is necessary and the instinct that is inside her. The desire. The recklessness. She can’t tell what is her own genuine yearning and something of him.
Logan finds her in his room, seated in his chair by the window. Her head is down, face hidden by her hair. Her hair is glossy brown in the sunlight.
“Rogue?” Logan rushes to her, concerned. He pauses in front of her, wondering what to do with his hands.
She looks up at him. Her face is serious. “I want,” she says.
The words hang in the air between them. Logan sits down on the bed, realising that there’s nothing more to her statement. He looks at her. She’s looking at his hands, the red marks on his knuckles where the claws come out, the marks that never quite go away before they are made again.
“Are you sure?” he says eventually, his voice low and dark.
“Yes,” she says, simply. They sit for a moment, doing nothing.
“Tonight,” she says. “No, wait. I have a school thing. Film screening. Tomorrow night then. Is that alright with you?”
He thinks she sounds like a girl making a coffee date, not this. He nods once. “Yes,” he says gruffly. “But you can always, you know? If you want to get out of it. You can say something. A word.” A safe-word, he thinks.
She laughs. “You won’t be able to handle me,” she says lightly. “You might be the one who needs a word!” She thinks for a second. “Lavender,” she says. “That’s the word.”
“Lavender?” he says, skeptical.
“Yes,” she laughs. “Tomorrow night then.” She stands up.
“Alright, kid,” he says.
She looks at him quizzically for a moment. Her mouth curls up in one corner. He watches as she puts one hand on her opposite shoulder and unconsciously runs it down the length of her arm. Then she turns and leaves, closing the door carefully behind herself.
The following night, he thinks she’s backed out of it. He drinks a couple of beers with dinner, then, back in his room, smokes a cigar by the window. He lies on the bed with his eyes closed, waiting and feeling time slip past. He doesn’t quite give up on her, but he dozes accidentally. He’s alert enough to hear the door open and her soft footsteps walk across the room. When he opens her eyes, she’s curled in his chair, her bare legs folded under her, her bare arms wrapped around her body.
“Hi,” she says in a dusky voice. She’s wearing a singlet-top and underwear, both in some dark, indistinct colour. The only light is from a lamp on the other side of the room.
“Hi,” he replies with a cough. He rubs his face with his hands.
“Sleeping?” she asks.
“No,” he says.
Rogue smiles and lowers her gaze. When she looks up at him again it’s through her lashes and her eyes are intense and dark. She unfolds herself from the chair, showing long limbs of gleaming white skin. Walking slowly towards him, she runs her eyes over his body, pursing her lips. Logan is wearing a white singlet and the jeans he wore during the day. They’re not exactly clean. Rogue looks at his hands and makes a flick with her head, a kind of upward nod. Her eyes skate back to his face.
He looks at her, his face a question. But he’s never seen her so sure of herself. She gives a tiny nod and blinks, her eyes back on his hands.
He unsheathes one claw on one hand and catches a faint smile on her face. Rogue holds out her arm. He reaches the claw towards her, then hesitates. She moves her arm to close the distance. They make contact and she gasps, the claw shallowly slicing her skin before Logan draws it away. She looks at the cut, neat and red with blood. Sitting slowly on the edge of the bed, she holds the cut arm with her other hand.
She looks back at Logan and says, “Again.”
He makes a small cut on her upper arm and this time she doesn’t gasp. “I can’t really feel it,” she says.
Logan sits up and leans towards her. He holds his other hand above her body, making a cupping shape and moving it over her shoulder, collarbone, breast and arm. Careful not to touch her but close enough to feel the warmth from her body. Rogue watches him. He leans in close and smells the skin of her neck. She feels his hair tickle her naked shoulder. Logan moves back again and with one hand held towards her as though to soothe her, he makes a cut with his claw across her front, somewhere above her heart. He looks at her face. Her mouth is open. Drops of blood form along the cut.
Then she looks at him and her breathing quickens. She reaches with her hand and holds her fingertips near the side of his face. Logan meets her gaze. She touches her fingertips lightly to his temple and they both gasp involuntarily. She feels her cuts heal over and part of Wolverine inside her, suddenly, more than ever. She draws her hand away.
Logan is panting for breath, but suddenly the three claws are out on his hand and he slashes her across the front. The pain is unexpected. She makes a grab for him and finds her fingers on his lips. She pushes her thumb inside his mouth and feels him gasp around her, hot and wet. The pain quickly fades and she pulls her hand back.
“Logan?” she whispers. She puts her hands on his legs, careful to only touch his jeans and not any of his skin. She fights the desire to touch his arms, to kiss his skin. There is a growing recklessness in her.
Logan is breathing heavily, his hands drawn away from her.
“Are you…?” she says.
He gives a single nod. Then he cuts her again, on the upper arm, and the pain is intense. She enjoys it most when she’s touching him, when the pain from her cuts still burns but ebbs, when she can feel him moving inside her, when he’s gasping. She enjoys the feel of him under her hand, warm and firm, damp with sweat, moving and alive. She wants to go on touching him, but reluctantly draws her hand back each time, giving him time to recover. At one point, he touches her, cuts her stomach while he cups her face with the other hand. It was a strange thing, him inside her, healing her from the inside, while he cuts her from the outside. She touches him for a little longer each time and watches as his breathing increases and his body strains. She sees him grope his own groin at one point, though his jeans, and decides she should be the one to do that. She wishes for him to touch her throbbing clit and almost draws his hand there, the impulse is so strong.
They are breathing into each other’s mouth, their temples pressed together, shielded by their hair. Logan stabs her at the same moment Rogue kisses him. Crying out into his mouth, she feels his claws withdraw. Logan stiffens and comes in his pants. Rogue wants to keep kissing him, to not stop until he’s dead and all inside her, a growl of animal, and fight, and terrifying abandon. Feeling him weaken, she suddenly knows he can no longer push away from her. There is a flutter of fear and panic, and she jumps apart from him. He falls back on the bed, convulses for a moment, then breathes heavily, the colour slowly returning to his face.
Rogue retreats to crouch at the end of the bed. Eventually, Logan runs a tired hand over his face and then looks at her.
“I almost had to use the word there,” he says in a husky, weak voice. “What was it? Petunia?”
She smiles. “Are you alright?” she says, still out of breath.
“Never better,” he says, though he doesn’t sound it. He tries to calm his breathing. “There’s a dressing gown,” he says and points to the cupboard. She gets up and finds it, holding it out to him carefully.
“For you,” he says.
She smiles again and wraps it around her body. It is far too large for her. She almost tucks her hand inside to touch herself.
“Wait,” Logan says. “Are you alright? The cuts…?”
Rogue pulls up the sleeves and examines her arms. There is some blood on them, but her skin is undamaged. She opens the gown and looks at her body. Where the deepest stab had been there is only a slightly pink mark, but apart from that, nothing. Her singlet-top is completely torn up though, which makes her almost laugh. She looks at him and nods.
“Good,” he says and takes an unsteady breath.
She realises he probably wants to go to sleep. She stands up and awkwardly says, “Shall I?” Her hand makes a fluttering motion towards the door.
“Oh,” he says. “Only if you want to. You can stay if you want.” The words tumble out roughly. He puts his hand on the bed. “We could. Get a blanket or something. Your gloves. And then. Maybe?”
She smiles at him. “It might be simpler if I sleep in my bed,” she says with difficulty. “You might not be able to call out names of flowers in your sleep, after all.”
He smiles at that one.
“That is,” she adds, “Presuming you don’t do that already?”
He throws a pillow at her.
“OK,” she says. “Good night.”
“Good night, Marie,” he replies.
The next morning, Logan wakes from a dreamless sleep to find his dressing gown folded neatly on the chair. There is a small sachet of dried lavender sitting on top of it. But it still smells of Rogue.
Fandom: X-Men (movieverse)
Pairing: Rogue/Logan (yes, het)
Rating: kinda R, I guess
Warning: Contains sexualised not!knife/claw-play, which may be a trigger for cutting.
Word Count: 3200
Disclaimer: Not mine. No profit made. I just play with the pretty toys.
Author’s Notes: My thanks to the lovely fyrethief for the beta. Set sometime around or after the first movie. Remember, comments/feedback make my day! (Cross-posted to loganandmarie, xfiction and xmmff.)
Summary: There is an arm-length of stony space around Rogue. She touches no one. Sometimes she forgets the cavity is of her own making.
For a placed filled with people, the mansion can be big and empty. Rogue feels the space of it, the wide corridors, the vacant nooks, the bare rooms. She is used to sitting at windows, leaning on walls, walking along the sides of corridors. She clings to the edge of it.
She sees the others who live there, can’t help but hear them around her, does everything to interact with them, and willingly too. But she feels like she has the place to herself. She doesn’t share it with them. There is an arm-length of stony space around her and she touches no one. Sometimes she forgets the cavity is of her own making.
Logan can smell her. He’s smoking a cigar, looking out from a window over the lush green garden. The sky’s a flat white nothingness that he knows Storm is not responsible for. He can hear the TV on behind him, some of the kids arguing over what to watch, some others playing table football. And he knows the moment Rogue stands in the doorway; her hair wet - she’s freshly showered - but it doesn’t disguise the scent of her.
Sometimes he dreams of his van and his life before. Those are better nights, preferable dreams. There’s a logic to it: he goes where the fights are. Fights equal money, money equals beer, cigars and food (in that order). There’s a simplicity to it he never realised at the time. In his dreams, he’s on the road again, as though the road is home. The smell of his van, a detail he thought he’d forgotten, and in it, sometimes, the smell of Rogue. He never sees her there, just smells her. He wakes up chasing something, he doesn’t know what.
He wakes up to a life of grey. For fifteen years, he’s been fighting himself. Now he has to think about conflicts and causes and outcomes and responsibilities. He has to make decisions. He doesn’t enjoy any of that. He knows he’s not a thinker. He acts on impulse and instinct. If it feels right, he goes for it. Deals with whatever shit comes down later. He doesn’t have room in his life for thoughts. He wants to do what he’s always done: fight and drink and swear and smoke and fuck, then collapse into exhausted dreamless sleep, and get up the next day to do it all again. He wants that death-like empty sleep, the body drop, and never more than a few hours of it. He’s too well-rested here. It gives his mind the energy to dream, and he doesn’t want to dream.
He turns from the window, draws on the cigar and looks at Rogue. Her eyes flick quickly away from him. He watches as someone walks through the door past her and she flinches away, drawing into herself. She creeps into the corner of the room and meets his eyes with a steely gaze. He has to look away. When he glances back, she’s gone.
“How old are you, anyway?” Rogue says. She is sitting up on the top of the backrest of a chair, her feet on the seat of it and her back leaning against the corner of Logan’s room, by the window. Logan is lying on the bed, sipping a beer. He shrugs.
“Why won’t you tell me?” She is playful. She doesn’t seem to care too much about the answer.
“I don’t remember,” he says lightly.
She considers this. Her mouth makes a funny shape.
“How old do you feel?” she says.
He gropes back into his past - what of it he can remember. Even the bits he’s sure about are something of a drunken blur.
“Twenty-five,” he says.
She laughs. He raises an eyebrow at her.
They lapse into silence for a moment. Rogue looks out the window into the night.
They speak at the same time:
“Do you want to-”
“What can you-”
They share a breathy laugh and Logan holds his beer out to her. “D’you want a drink?” he says. She shakes her head. Her thoughts glide over what her saliva could do to another person. She doesn’t know and she’s not sure she wants to try it out on Logan.
“What can you smell?” she asks him.
He smirks for a moment and looks at her.
“You,” he says. She snorts.
“The beer,” he says. “That chocolate wrapper in the bin.” He inhales slowly and thinks. “Your soap - not lavender but there’s lavender in there somewhere.”
She nods. “My sock drawer,” she says quietly. “My mum always said-” then she stops talking.
“Your shampoo, but you didn’t wash your hair today.” She nods again. “There’s a kid,” he says. “Who walked passed the door ten minutes ago. Don’t know his name. The one who can walk on water.”
“Oh yeah - Jesus,” she says.
He laughs, then continues. “The hand-wash in the bathroom,” he says. “Someone took a piss. Storm’s asleep across the hall, she’s sweating slightly. The person who vacuums the hall likes curry. There’s a cat hiding under the sideboard at the top of the stairs.”
“You can smell all that?” she says.
“If you opened the window, I could smell more.”
“Do you want me to?”
He shakes his head and takes a sip of beer. He looks at her hands. She’s not wearing any gloves. One hand is resting on the windowsill, the other in her lap. She sees where he’s looking and moves her hands together, self-consciously.
“I can put them on, if you’d-” She points to her pocket.
“No,” he says. “It’s fine.”
She climbs off the chair, still looking at him. Her eyes are level, clear and determined. He can feel a shift in the air.
“I’d like you to-” she says in a low voice.
“Yes?” he says, too quickly.
“Oh,” she says. She moves towards the bed, then stops, hesitating. “Nothing.”
Logan swings his legs off the bed and stands up in front of her. They look at each other, face to face. “Rogue?” he says.
“Nothing,” she says again. She pauses, then adds, “I should go to bed.”
Logan moves his hand out slowly, holding it above her arm. She watches his hand. She has a dark look on her face, her brows lowered, her mouth set. He touches her sleeve with his fingertips, lightly and deliberately running his fingers down the length of her covered arm. He pauses where the sleeve stops, looking at the delicate skin of her wrist, her small hand and his own hand so close to it. He lifts his hand off.
“Goodnight then, kid,” he says.
She steps back, her eyes on his face for a moment. Later, he wonders if he imagined her quick nod, the brief current of understanding running between the two of them, just in that moment. She slips out the door.
He flops back onto the bed, finishes his beer and keeps his eyes open as long as possible and his mind blank. Her scent is still with him when he wakes up.
She has a catalogue in her head of things she misses. Her mother’s cooking. Her favourite dish, corn fritters with relish. The map on her wall. The places she was going to go. The sound of mother’s piano practice. Her father’s laugh. The accidentally brush of skin as someone walks past you too close. Holding hands. Patting animals. Holding animals. Holding people. Being held. Hugs. The first boy she kissed. The idea that she might one day have sex.
It’s a list she’s constantly adding to. It’s not that she isn’t happy at the academy - she is. She doesn’t miss those eight months she was by herself, on the road.
She feels an acute contradiction inside herself. That her life should be defined by hurt, by pain, and yet she lives in a bubble. She’s cotton-wooled herself against it. She has the power to cause it, but rarely feels it. Pure physical pain. She rarely feels anything even close to it. That night with Logan stands out in amongst a sea of nondescript days. And with it, the night on Liberty Island. The rest is blank.
She never considered herself a particularly physical person. She was always a person who lived more through her mind than her body. Until she couldn’t live through her body - at least, not in any normal way. She found the relationship between her body and the physical world changing. She felt betrayed. She could cut herself but could never have someone else apply a plaster to her skin; not without gloves, not without thinking first, not without her recoiling in fear that one touch of her skin might kill them. She could never have anyone kiss it better. She added these things to the list. She was trying to learn to be independent, but she was unwilling.
She can feel Wolverine inside her head. A part of her that snarls and longs to lash out, and she knows it isn’t her. She feels the pull between the control she knows is necessary and the instinct that is inside her. The desire. The recklessness. She can’t tell what is her own genuine yearning and something of him.
Logan finds her in his room, seated in his chair by the window. Her head is down, face hidden by her hair. Her hair is glossy brown in the sunlight.
“Rogue?” Logan rushes to her, concerned. He pauses in front of her, wondering what to do with his hands.
She looks up at him. Her face is serious. “I want,” she says.
The words hang in the air between them. Logan sits down on the bed, realising that there’s nothing more to her statement. He looks at her. She’s looking at his hands, the red marks on his knuckles where the claws come out, the marks that never quite go away before they are made again.
“Are you sure?” he says eventually, his voice low and dark.
“Yes,” she says, simply. They sit for a moment, doing nothing.
“Tonight,” she says. “No, wait. I have a school thing. Film screening. Tomorrow night then. Is that alright with you?”
He thinks she sounds like a girl making a coffee date, not this. He nods once. “Yes,” he says gruffly. “But you can always, you know? If you want to get out of it. You can say something. A word.” A safe-word, he thinks.
She laughs. “You won’t be able to handle me,” she says lightly. “You might be the one who needs a word!” She thinks for a second. “Lavender,” she says. “That’s the word.”
“Lavender?” he says, skeptical.
“Yes,” she laughs. “Tomorrow night then.” She stands up.
“Alright, kid,” he says.
She looks at him quizzically for a moment. Her mouth curls up in one corner. He watches as she puts one hand on her opposite shoulder and unconsciously runs it down the length of her arm. Then she turns and leaves, closing the door carefully behind herself.
The following night, he thinks she’s backed out of it. He drinks a couple of beers with dinner, then, back in his room, smokes a cigar by the window. He lies on the bed with his eyes closed, waiting and feeling time slip past. He doesn’t quite give up on her, but he dozes accidentally. He’s alert enough to hear the door open and her soft footsteps walk across the room. When he opens her eyes, she’s curled in his chair, her bare legs folded under her, her bare arms wrapped around her body.
“Hi,” she says in a dusky voice. She’s wearing a singlet-top and underwear, both in some dark, indistinct colour. The only light is from a lamp on the other side of the room.
“Hi,” he replies with a cough. He rubs his face with his hands.
“Sleeping?” she asks.
“No,” he says.
Rogue smiles and lowers her gaze. When she looks up at him again it’s through her lashes and her eyes are intense and dark. She unfolds herself from the chair, showing long limbs of gleaming white skin. Walking slowly towards him, she runs her eyes over his body, pursing her lips. Logan is wearing a white singlet and the jeans he wore during the day. They’re not exactly clean. Rogue looks at his hands and makes a flick with her head, a kind of upward nod. Her eyes skate back to his face.
He looks at her, his face a question. But he’s never seen her so sure of herself. She gives a tiny nod and blinks, her eyes back on his hands.
He unsheathes one claw on one hand and catches a faint smile on her face. Rogue holds out her arm. He reaches the claw towards her, then hesitates. She moves her arm to close the distance. They make contact and she gasps, the claw shallowly slicing her skin before Logan draws it away. She looks at the cut, neat and red with blood. Sitting slowly on the edge of the bed, she holds the cut arm with her other hand.
She looks back at Logan and says, “Again.”
He makes a small cut on her upper arm and this time she doesn’t gasp. “I can’t really feel it,” she says.
Logan sits up and leans towards her. He holds his other hand above her body, making a cupping shape and moving it over her shoulder, collarbone, breast and arm. Careful not to touch her but close enough to feel the warmth from her body. Rogue watches him. He leans in close and smells the skin of her neck. She feels his hair tickle her naked shoulder. Logan moves back again and with one hand held towards her as though to soothe her, he makes a cut with his claw across her front, somewhere above her heart. He looks at her face. Her mouth is open. Drops of blood form along the cut.
Then she looks at him and her breathing quickens. She reaches with her hand and holds her fingertips near the side of his face. Logan meets her gaze. She touches her fingertips lightly to his temple and they both gasp involuntarily. She feels her cuts heal over and part of Wolverine inside her, suddenly, more than ever. She draws her hand away.
Logan is panting for breath, but suddenly the three claws are out on his hand and he slashes her across the front. The pain is unexpected. She makes a grab for him and finds her fingers on his lips. She pushes her thumb inside his mouth and feels him gasp around her, hot and wet. The pain quickly fades and she pulls her hand back.
“Logan?” she whispers. She puts her hands on his legs, careful to only touch his jeans and not any of his skin. She fights the desire to touch his arms, to kiss his skin. There is a growing recklessness in her.
Logan is breathing heavily, his hands drawn away from her.
“Are you…?” she says.
He gives a single nod. Then he cuts her again, on the upper arm, and the pain is intense. She enjoys it most when she’s touching him, when the pain from her cuts still burns but ebbs, when she can feel him moving inside her, when he’s gasping. She enjoys the feel of him under her hand, warm and firm, damp with sweat, moving and alive. She wants to go on touching him, but reluctantly draws her hand back each time, giving him time to recover. At one point, he touches her, cuts her stomach while he cups her face with the other hand. It was a strange thing, him inside her, healing her from the inside, while he cuts her from the outside. She touches him for a little longer each time and watches as his breathing increases and his body strains. She sees him grope his own groin at one point, though his jeans, and decides she should be the one to do that. She wishes for him to touch her throbbing clit and almost draws his hand there, the impulse is so strong.
They are breathing into each other’s mouth, their temples pressed together, shielded by their hair. Logan stabs her at the same moment Rogue kisses him. Crying out into his mouth, she feels his claws withdraw. Logan stiffens and comes in his pants. Rogue wants to keep kissing him, to not stop until he’s dead and all inside her, a growl of animal, and fight, and terrifying abandon. Feeling him weaken, she suddenly knows he can no longer push away from her. There is a flutter of fear and panic, and she jumps apart from him. He falls back on the bed, convulses for a moment, then breathes heavily, the colour slowly returning to his face.
Rogue retreats to crouch at the end of the bed. Eventually, Logan runs a tired hand over his face and then looks at her.
“I almost had to use the word there,” he says in a husky, weak voice. “What was it? Petunia?”
She smiles. “Are you alright?” she says, still out of breath.
“Never better,” he says, though he doesn’t sound it. He tries to calm his breathing. “There’s a dressing gown,” he says and points to the cupboard. She gets up and finds it, holding it out to him carefully.
“For you,” he says.
She smiles again and wraps it around her body. It is far too large for her. She almost tucks her hand inside to touch herself.
“Wait,” Logan says. “Are you alright? The cuts…?”
Rogue pulls up the sleeves and examines her arms. There is some blood on them, but her skin is undamaged. She opens the gown and looks at her body. Where the deepest stab had been there is only a slightly pink mark, but apart from that, nothing. Her singlet-top is completely torn up though, which makes her almost laugh. She looks at him and nods.
“Good,” he says and takes an unsteady breath.
She realises he probably wants to go to sleep. She stands up and awkwardly says, “Shall I?” Her hand makes a fluttering motion towards the door.
“Oh,” he says. “Only if you want to. You can stay if you want.” The words tumble out roughly. He puts his hand on the bed. “We could. Get a blanket or something. Your gloves. And then. Maybe?”
She smiles at him. “It might be simpler if I sleep in my bed,” she says with difficulty. “You might not be able to call out names of flowers in your sleep, after all.”
He smiles at that one.
“That is,” she adds, “Presuming you don’t do that already?”
He throws a pillow at her.
“OK,” she says. “Good night.”
“Good night, Marie,” he replies.
The next morning, Logan wakes from a dreamless sleep to find his dressing gown folded neatly on the chair. There is a small sachet of dried lavender sitting on top of it. But it still smells of Rogue.