Terri's Peep Hut ~~ Fiction Archive

Comments: This was inspired by a very long-toothed, super-speedy Lateo plot bunny that asked - "What would happen if a Logan with total amnesia came to Mutant High? Wouldn't Logan find it all a bit scary and cling to Marie, and if the bad teenagers had a guy living there who knew nothing, wouldn't they play some tricks on him or tell him lies, confusing him?" That one made a bee-line for my butt, viciously flinging and clawing away all other bunnies with a tooth or two in there and demanding to be written. This was also inspired in part by the great questions sent to me for the WRFA interview-you guys are a bunch of deep thinkers! Those got my brain going a little and some of the things I started thinking about ended up in here. Also, this contains elements of Victoria's wedding challenge, but probably doesn't really count since the story isn't actually *about* the wedding in question. Sorry :(

Rogue was on her way from the kitchen back to her room when she caught sight of Wolverine sitting in the TV room. He'd come to the mansion about a week ago, after Scott and Jean had found him wandering around naked in the snow just short of the arctic circle, somewhere up in Canada. He didn't remember anything about his life before that, or so he said, but he had some formidable powers and the Professor had been trying to recruit him to the team. His mutation held lethal offensive components - the metal knives that sprang from his hands - and amazing regenerative powers. He'd been a loner, though, since he'd arrived, and Rogue thought she might as well make an effort at being friendly since he was right here.

She knew he didn't talk much and generally avoided the mansion inhabitants. His room was right next to hers, and she hadn't seen or heard much of him in the week he'd been living there. Most of the other residents were either wary or derogatory in their dealings with him - the younger kids on the second team, Rogue's peers, made plenty of jokes about the new mutant in residence and even played some not-so-nice tricks on him.

She shrugged, a little nervous under his intense scrutiny. "Just making conversation." She tried to smile as she said it. He only grunted and turned back to the TV. "Uh, sorry to disturb you, then." She walked off, leaving him to the game.

The next time she ran into him was two days later. She'd awakened early, and had decided on a stroll around the grounds. She was happily contemplating life, whether she should date Remy and/or Bobby, and her new outfit, purchased with Jubes' help, when the Wolverine tackled her out of nowhere. He barreled into her from the side, knocking her to the dirt path and pinning her beneath him. His metal claws were out, and she felt one graze her side as she went down.

Her training kicked in almost immediately, though, and before she even processed who her attacker was, she'd dealt him a harsh knee to the groin and a strong inside punch to the ribs. He howled in pain, but didn't budge. Her brain finally caught her up on the fact that the huge attacker pinning her was Wolverine, and she stopped squirming in his grasp.

"What - what are you doing?" She noticed that his clothes were shredded for the most part, but his body showed no signs of injury. "Wolverine?" He snarled at her and she caught his eyes, finding something not-all-human there. He still wasn't moving, so she tried again, in a soft, calming voice. "Wolverine? What's going on?" The thought that Jubes' mocking assessment of him - freaky and mental, and not even a normal mutant - might very well be correct flashed through her head. "Wolverine?"

He bent down more closely to her and sniffed at her thoroughly. His weight was beginning to make itself felt, and her side felt wet with blood as well. She thought that perhaps she should send out a telepathic distress call to Jean or the Professor, but she held off a moment longer. The sniffing seemed to be calming him a little. Slowly, he completed his olfactory survey of her, and, still pinning her to the ground, looked in her face. Something seemed to click into place then, and his eyes got wide with shock before he leapt off her. He stood and backed up a few steps, making low half-growl, half-whimper noises in the back of his throat.

"Who's out here?" Rogue looked around, but saw nothing. Maybe Scott was right - maybe Wolverine was paranoid and delusional, hopelessly messed up from being experimented on, a charity case, not team material. More Conspiracy-Theory-Mel Gibson, less Braveheart-Mel-Gibson was the way Jean had put it.

"Um..OK. Where - where did you - " She cut herself off as he sprang toward her. For a split-second, she thought he meant to run her through with the claws, and she ducked him. She wouldn't have been fast enough, but he hadn't been aiming for her - he launched himself at a spot just over her shoulder and behind her. She whirled as soon as she figured out that he'd missed her, and saw him grappling with a man dressed in head-to-toe black. She sent out that telepathic call for help now, and moved to help Wolverine herself.

The man was wearing some kind of body armor that was blunting the impact of Wolverine's claws. That in and of itself was impressive - they were made of adamantium, Jean had said, the strongest metal known to man. Wolverine finally got a claw between the armor plates, though, effectively severing the man's neck. Rogue stopped steps short of them, having been a little too late to offer any real help. There was complete silence between them for a moment as Rogue watched the man's red blood ooze out of him at an alarming rate. Then, just to her left, in the woods, Rogue heard a noise. They both turned to see another black-clad man, this time running away instead of attacking.

They both set off after him, but he turned and fired at them as he ran. Rogue hit the ground as soon as she saw the gun, but Wolverine kept after him. Seconds later, just as she was about to risk sticking her head up to take a look, she heard a loud growl then sounds of a scuffle. She heard a different growl as she picked herself up off the ground and set off after Wolverine - this growl was clearly one out of pain. She picked up the pace, running hard and clutching at her side in a vain attempt to ameliorate the pain.

When she reached them, the man was on top, and reaching inside his vest for something. Rogue caught sight of a large needle sticking out of Wolverine's chest and she caught his panicked, almost mad with rage, eyes. Just as the man withdrew another needle, Rogue struck the exposed back of his neck, hard, knocking him down and out. She grabbed the needle from his hand, and plucked out the one in Wolverine's chest as well. The man moaned on the ground and Wolverine got unsteadily to his knees. It had all happened so fast - no more than ninety seconds had passed since he first jumped her - and Rogue took a moment to regain her equilibrium.

"I remember that one's smell." He snarled it out savagely, and Rogue gasped. She was rocked by the hatred in his voice. She'd never heard that much hatred from anyone - not even Magneto when he tried to use her and his machine to forcibly mutate humans. She swallowed hard. Just as she was about to say something, they heard a noise off in the distance. Wolverine's head snapped around in that direction, but Rogue, without thinking, put herself between him and the source of the noise.

"Get outta the way," he growled, tossing her aside with a swipe of one strong arm. He tore down the path in the direction of the noise, and Rogue followed. She removed one glove - she'd felt his strength and seen his anger, and she knew she couldn't stop him any other way.

When she rounded the hill, finally catching up with him, she didn't see any X-men. In fact, Wolverine was fighting three more of the black-clad men. Rogue didn't pause even a moment at that surprise, though, she kept her pace and ran to help him. Tackling one of the men from behind and putting him on the ground, she thought she heard another one of those pained growls coming from Wolverine. Ignoring it for the moment, she head-butted the prone man, but he only flinched a little at that, then promptly flipped her over so that he was now atop her. Feeling a surge of panic unlike any she'd ever known in battle before, she reached up with her bare hand and squirmed a finger inside the eye-hole of his ski mask. She felt the pull begin, and got a rush of thoughts from the man. Dropping him after only a few seconds and leaving him twitching on the ground, she turned her attention to Wolverine.

He was being dragged off by the other two men by his feet, and she saw four of the large needles sticking out of his chest. He was conscious, she could tell, but paralyzed. Wondering where the hell the X-Men were and vowing to ream Scott out for failing his own perfectionistic standards for response time, she gave chase. The men saw her coming, of course, but they didn't stop their slow march. One was reaching inside his vest for something, and Rogue felt that stab of panic again. She no longer felt the pain from her side, just an adrenaline rush, and she kept coming. As the man slowly turned, she saw him produce a gun - it looked like a dart gun, her mind observed as it came into full view. She kept running right up until the moment he turned and fixed his aim on her. She was about twenty feet away, and she could see his finger tense on the trigger. At that second, not a moment before, she dove for the ground, rolling to maintain some forward progress, then springing to her feet and catching sight of the men again.

The man who'd shot at her exchanged glances at the other man. Maybe that was his last dart, Rogue thought, maybe I got lucky. She ran at them hard, tackling the man dragging Wolverine's left foot, the one that had shot at her. The other man didn't stop to assist his comrade, he only kept dragging Wolverine onward. Rogue didn't waste time fighting this one - she used her skin immediately and got another flood of memory and images. She pushed him away, then turned to the remaining man.

He caught sight of her and redoubled his efforts to drag Wolverine along. He'd only made a lead of about thirty feet in the time it had taken her to put down the other man, though, and Rogue caught up to him easily. He let go of Wolverine's foot at the last second, reaching for a knife strapped to his boot. Rogue was faster, however, this time grabbing at his head and thrusting her finger in the mask's eye-hole so forcefully that she felt her finger sink into the soft flesh of his eyeball. She let go almost immediately, and didn't get any discernable memories from the man, but he lay twitching on the floor nonetheless.

Rogue quickly knelt at Wolverine's side, and plucked out the needles. After a few seconds, he took a deep breath, then another, and then he woozily sat up. "Come on," Rogue urged, careful of her bare hand as she slung one of his arms around her shoulder and pulled him to his feet. "Let's go."

The men wouldn't stay out forever from her skin, especially that last one, and all she could think of was that they had to get back to the mansion, back to safety. Wolverine lurched against her, feet fumbling but moving, as she hurriedly walked them both out of there. "Where the hell is Scott?" she muttered under her breath as they finally reached the main path again. Wolverine was walking a little better now, but still leaning against her.

As they struggled to the top of a small hill, Rogue stopped suddenly. Wolverine turned his head to look at her, but said nothing. This was where he'd decapitated the second man - but his body was gone - totally and completely gone. There was a pool of blood in the dirt, and blood-splattered plants, so Rogue knew she was in the correct spot, but the body had vanished. "Where'd he go?" she wondered aloud.

"Let's just keep going," Rogue said solemnly and resumed her trek. After a few more steps, Wolverine removed his arm from around her shoulders and walked under his own power - with wobbly steps, but under his own power. After a few more steps, he pushed her a little in front of him and kept one hand on her back. Finally, they came within sight of the mansion, just in time to see Scott, Jean and 'Ro coming out the back entrance. Rogue huffed in frustration, but continued on without further comment.

"Unfriendlies on the grounds. At least five," Rogue called back as she closed the distance. Just get to the mansion, just get to the mansion, her brain repeated. "Armed with some kind of tranquilizers. Powerful tranquilizers."

"A little, but I can take care of it myself. Wolverine?" He gave a grunt that she interpreted as 'I'll be fine.' "Go forth and hunt the bad guys." Scott gave a curt nod, then set out. Jean followed him on foot and Storm took to the air. They'll handle it a lot better than one mutant with questionable mental health and one junior team member, Rogue thought.

She turned to Wolverine, who still seemed a little edgy. "Come on, let's go in. I need - I need to get to the medlab and bandage this up." She crossed to the entrance, and he followed just as he had before, keeping one hand on her back. She led him through the mansion and to the lower levels, noticing that he tensed appreciably when they entered the medlab. Guessing at the cause of his uneasiness, she grabbed some gauze, some bandages, and some antiseptic, and led him back out.

"I'm just going to take care of this upstairs. No need to stay down here." She managed a little smile at him. He looked back with an expression she couldn't quite pin down. "Let's take the elevators, though, okay?" Wolverine seemed more than a little hyper in the elevator, but he made it through, following her toward the end of the hall where both their rooms were. When they passed his door and arrived at hers, she turned to him. "I'm, uh, going to just patch myself up. I'll be fine. Are you - are you OK?" He nodded, once. "Well, OK then, let's just, uh, do that. You - you can go to your room and get some rest and I'll patch myself up. In my room. By myself." He finally caught on, casting his eyes downward and turning away. Rogue felt sorry for him then, and almost said something to him, but stopped herself. She went into her room, and closed the door behind her, and Wolverine returned to his room. He sat against the wall dividing their living spaces, breathing deeply until he could no longer smell fresh blood and until Rogue's heart rate evened out.

The debrief had gone well, Rogue thought. The X-men found no sign of the black-clad men who'd attacked her and Wolverine, but they did find signs of the battle. She got the distinct feeling that, had it been only Wolverine who'd encountered them, the X-men wouldn't have believed his story. She was grateful she could help in that way, even if the whole incident did creep her out more than a little.

Scott had made some refinements to the security system and was working on more. The Professor hypothesized that they had not been telepathically detected at that early hour because both he and Jean had been asleep. If the attackers had even the most elementary capacity to block telepathy, they could have moved in undetected. Rogue told them every detail she could recall, hoping to help. Every detail except one, that is - that Wolverine had clawed her. She deftly left it out of her debrief and had repaired the wound herself. Jean was always skittish around her because of her skin - Rogue was fairly sure the red-headed doctor wouldn't have any interest in looking at it as it healed. Wolverine didn't say anything about it either, but he did give Rogue an intense look when he caught her eye at the end of the debrief.

She was tired after it was over, and she slunk back to her room. Wolverine followed, but said nothing to her, only watching as she entered her room and closed the door behind her. He paused a moment before entering his, and again he settled next to the wall dividing their rooms, listening to her. After a few minutes, he heard someone approaching in the hall, but relaxed when he smelled that it was one of the people he recognized, one of the kids at the mansion.

"Oooh - what was it like to fight alongside psycho?" Wolverine flinched a little at that. He was well aware of what the general opinion of him was, and he didn't even disagree that much. But something about the girl saying that in front of Rogue bothered him.

"It *is* love!" Jubilee teased, ignoring the sharp tone Rogue's last statement had carried. "You risked your life to save that of a raging weirdo, how romantic." Jubes followed up that last sarcastic proclamation with a snort.

"Stop it," Rogue said, in what was a downright angry and hostile tone. "It's not funny and I don't want to talk about it." Wolverine winced at that, thinking that the sight of him decapitating those men probably affected Rogue more than she'd let on during the debriefing.

"Fine, fine. Sheesh. Just trying to carry on a little conversation." Wolverine heard the bed squeak as Jubilee rose, then the door slam as she departed. Rogue let out a long sigh, then moved around in the bed a little before falling asleep. Wolverine listened to her breathe for several long moments before crawling over to his makeshift bed in the corner of the room.

The third time Rogue saw Wolverine was in the middle of the night. She could hear him growling through the wall, and it sounded almost like the growling noises he'd made in the fight. Fearing that the black-clad men had somehow infiltrated the mansion, yet not wanting to needlessly alarm everyone, she decided upon going over to see what was the matter. She tried his door, and, finding it locked, she knocked loudly. No one else lived on their wing, so there was no need to worry about waking anyone other than the person intended.

After several knocks, he answered the door. He looked quite disheveled - wild hair and eyes, panting breaths, tense body language. He said nothing, and Rogue glanced behind him a little, into the room, looking around to make sure there were no bad guys hiding in there with him. She spotted the pile of blankets on the floor that served as his bed, and saw what looked like vomit on top of and beside it. She took a tentative sniff of the air and concluded that her assessment had been correct. She turned back to the still-on-edge Wolverine.

"Yeah," he admitted, running a hand through his hair. Suddenly, his torso convulsed and he pressed his lips together, then ran for the bathroom. This time, he threw up in the sink, retching until nothing else came up. Rogue frowned and entered the room to stand beside the bathroom door. She'd put her gloves on, and as he leaned over the sink, trying to stop heaving, she put a hand on his arm.

He just about jumped out of his skin at that, literally leaping up into the air and backing as far away from her as the small bathroom would permit. "Sorry!" she apologized. "Sorry! I - I forgot that you might be a little freaked out by my skin. I've got gloves on, but I - I understand. Sorry. I didn't mean to make it worse."

Wolverine took the proffered cup, and she backed out of the bathroom. He moved over to the sink, still keeping one eye on her. He rinsed his mouth out, then drank another cup, then rinsed the sink out. Rogue looked around his room a little as he did. He'd pushed the bed over to one side, and the desk as well. His makeshift bed was in the corner farthest from the door, and his window was open, despite the crisp October air. For some reason, the arrangement made her deeply sad - it was almost as though he'd been so far gone that he'd forgotten, or perhaps never known, what it was like to live in a normal house. She knitted her brows together, thinking about what she could do to help him, and when he exited the bathroom to look at her warily, an idea came to her.

"OK. OK. We'll go wash them then and I'll give them right back. How's that?" Wolverine nodded his head slowly. "Great. Let me just - I'll just grab them." She moved slowly, letting him watch her every step, and gathered the soiled blankets up into a ball. Giving him an encouraging smile, she headed for the door.

He followed a step behind her, keeping her in his sights, until they reached the laundry room. She put the blankets in a washer, explaining to him how to work it and how much detergent to add in case he ever needed to wash anything. He crinkled his nose up at the detergent smell, and Rogue made a mental note not to use fabric softener in the dryer. She suggested that they go back upstairs to wait for the wash cycle to finish, and when he simply followed her into her room, she just smiled and shut the door behind him. She was a little apprehensive, but she thought he could probably use some company after such a horrible nightmare. She'd gotten a little from the attackers about the kinds of things they did with mutants like Wolverine, and that little was enough to give her some nightmares of her own. She didn't want to imagine how bad his must be.

"I'm sorry you had the nightmare." She didn't guess that he wanted to talk about that particular subject but it was the first thing that came to mind. She wasn't surprised when he failed to supply even a one-word answer. "Can I ask you something?"

She smiled broadly this time. "I like football. I understand the game, and the football's big enough for us mutants without super vision to see." Her teasing tone made him wonder for a moment if it was him she was making fun of, but her kind eyes convinced him that wasn't the case. "I tend to follow the Vikings. Randy Moss - he's so talented it makes me wonder if he isn't a mutant." She smiled again.

"Oh - do you want the window open a little in here? I noticed your window was open." She guessed that he wanted the benefit of catching a hint of the scent of anyone who might be approaching outside, and since the high-tech security system had failed to catch the last batch of attackers, she was more than willing to accommodate Wolverine's low-tech approach.

"How about if you just get under the covers too when you get cold? That'll be better, don't you think?" She actually had a second down comforter in the closet - she threw it on the bed when it got *really* cold, she was a Mississippi girl, after all - and she could use it if Wolverine climbed in bed.

His eyes shifted back and forth a little. "OK." He gingerly lifted an edge of the duvet and slowly put his bare legs beneath it. Rogue smiled encouragement. Seeing that she'd meant it, that she was willing to share her covers with him, he relaxed a little.

"To tell the truth, I like ice cream in the summer best. Ice cream in the summer and some nice, hot chicken soup in the winter." Chicken soup - he remembered that one. "Hey - you know what? I bet the washer's done. We can go put your blankets in the dryer." Wolverine nodded and began to remove the duvet, but she gestured for him to stop. "I'll run down. It won't take a second, and you look pretty comfy right there." He rested back into the bed, following her instructions.

He watched her go, then, after she shut the door, he scooted down beneath the covers a little more. Her bed *was* soft, which he didn't usually like, but it smelled so good - like her and with traces of her shampoo, her soap, her light perfume. He found himself breathing in and out deeply, taking the scent in, and before he knew it, he was sleeping soundly, covered to his chest in the duvet.

When Rogue returned to find him sleeping soundly and snoring a little, she just smiled and tucked the blankets up around him a little more. She fidgeted around the room - picking up a little and sorting through mail on her desk, but finally sat on top of the duvet with her second comforter wrapped around her to wait out the rest of the dryer cycle. Without meaning to, she too fell into sleep, and the two bodies sharing the bed eventually gravitated toward one another. Long after the dryer cycle had finished, Rogue lay asleep on her side in the middle of the bed, with Wolverine curled around her back, face buried in her hair.

Wolverine woke first. Strangely enough, he wasn't disoriented by waking in strange surroundings and with another person in the bed. He smelled Rogue's by-now-familiar scent as he emerged into consciousness, and some instinctual part of him recognized that as a cause for comfort, not alarm. As he came fully awake, he clutched her more tightly to him, as tightly as the bulk of two comforters would allow. He breathed her scent in deep, listened to the distinctive pattern of her heartbeat - he wondered if she knew she had a small heart murmur - and felt her chest expand and contract with each breath. Leaving the window open had made the room cold, and Wolverine found the combination of the thick comforters, flannel, and body heat from Rogue far preferable to his pile of blankets in the frigid early morning hours. He nestled a little further into the bed.

He wasn't quite sure what exactly was going on with Rogue. She'd been nice to him, had helped him subdue the attackers - even risking her own life in the process - and she didn't tease him or pity him for what he'd been through like all the others at the mansion did. She treated him just like he was normal, like he wasn't the psycho everyone thought he was or the animal he thought he was. And he liked that, to be certain, but he wasn't at all sure why that was or how he should respond.

He also wasn't sure why she'd shown allegiance to him over the X-men in the debriefing. That's how he saw her omission of the fact that he'd attacked and clawed her, and was in too much of a frenzy to tell friend from foe. He saw her silence as fealty to him over people she'd known and lived with for, presumably, most of her life. He vaguely remembered how that worked in animal terms - your pack or your mate would defend you above all else - but he knew she wasn't an animal. She was a human, and maybe the only real one he'd ever met.

He'd never considered the men at the lab human. They were animals, just like him, but almost sophisticated or more complex or advanced than he was. They'd learned cruelty, not just violence, and they'd learned it well. Vicious and unrelenting, they showed their lack of humanity at every turn. Even though Wolverine had told the X-men he recalled nothing of his time in the lab, a few of their more memorable savageries remained with him. Those were the ones that tore through him in nightmares like the one he'd had last night.

Most of the people that he'd met here-well, they weren't animals, but they weren't quite human either. They didn't know what to do around him, so they feared him, teased him, or just avoided him altogether. As for the Professor and the X-men, he could guess at what they thought of him. To them, he was a tool-a weapon that they could use to further their own agenda. To them, it didn't matter if he *was* part psycho, part animal, or even part killer. If he served their needs, they would continue to feed and clothe him, to provide him with a place at the mansion. Wolverine had no delusions about that, and, even though he didn't know exactly what words to use to describe it, something about that kind of utilitarian approach made him think they were not fully human.

Somehow, though, Rogue was. She saw all of him, he thought, or at least a lot more than anyone else had. She'd helped him when the men and the nightmares had come for him. She did it, Wolverine thought, because of how she is, because of who she is. And even better, she'd somehow known how to make the horrible dreams stop. Usually, when he had one, he had more, but not last night. Somehow she'd known he needed a warm, soft place, with clean cold air flowing over him. Somehow she'd known he needed her next to him in that warm place, trusting him despite how he'd hurt her before.

Maybe she was like the archtypical heroine in one of the stories he dimly remembered from his past, the stories he had learned or read when he was still human. The best stories always had a beauty, smart and brave and kind. The beauty was worth fighting for, worth anything, because she was clean, so pure, almost transcendent. Maybe somebody just gave her the wrong name, he thought. Maybe they didn't realize that she was the beauty and not the rogue.

There were days when he thought clearly - more and more of them now, as the countless years of drugs and pain slowly crept out of his system. Today, he told himself, he'd have to think clearly. He'd have to figure out what it all meant, and he'd have to pay close attention to the beauty next to him. He was thinking almost clearly enough to know this was no fairy tale, that she wasn't playing a part in some imagined fantasy of his. He'd have to pay attention, he thought, if he was going to figure out what was really going on here.

Rogue shifted in his arms, showing signs of wakefulness. He held her close, suddenly fearful. What if she hadn't meant to wake with him, what if this was all some whim or accident? What if it wasn't her way of trying to bond with him? What if it wasn't her way of saying that she knew there was more to him than the animal? She shifted again and rolled to face him a little. She had a small smile on her face, and that eased his anxiety a little. Finally, her eyes opened and found his.

"Yeah." He reached for her, gently brushing her hair from her face. Her eyes suddenly flew open and he thought for a terrifying moment that he'd been right - it was a whim, or a mistake, and she did *not* want him anywhere near her. But she calmed in a moment, and didn't move from his grasp.

"My skin. I didn't get you with my skin at all, did I?" Wolverine shook his head. "Oh, thank God. Thank God. I'm so glad I didn't hurt you." He felt her relax into his body, and he marveled at that - she was concerned about hurting him. It was plainly obvious she'd never even considered that he might've hurt her. She wasn't afraid of the animal. She did see more than that in him. Her eyes softened suddenly, and Wolverine almost growled in appreciation. "It's been a long time since I've been this close to someone. You know, with my skin and all. I - thanks. Thanks for that."

Her expression turned gently questioning for a moment, then thoughtful. "I've always slept better with someone else in the bed, too. Ever since I was a little girl, I always liked having someone close, you know, snuggled up with me under the covers. When my mutation hit - well, most people keep out of my reach."

She 'hmphed' and gave his questions some serious consideration. "Actually, some are both. I mean, some people just don't get that my skin, it doesn't work through gloves or clothes. They won't come near me even when I'm wrapped up like a mummy. But I think most people - most people just don't want get hurt. They're worried about their own safety, and I don't blame them, not really."

That brought a smile to her lips. "It would to me too." They gazed at each other for several long moments, and eventually, he felt her small, gloved hand snake through the covers separating them to stroke his arm, gently. "We should probably get up."

She smiled shyly at that, and blushed. "But I have to go to the bathroom. I can - I can come right back." She gently disengaged herself from him, and he watched as she swiftly padded through the cold room and shut the bathroom door behind her. True to her word, when she emerged, she practically dove for the bed. "Brrr," she commented as he reached for her. "Cold."

That night became the first of many that Wolverine spent in her bed. After seven nights, without asking or offering an explanation, he moved all of his things into her room. There wasn't much-a few clothes and some blankets, a comb and a toothbrush-but Rogue seemed to understand the significance of it. She made space in her closet for his clothes, added some of the blankets to what was now their bed, and she always kept the window open a crack to accommodate him.

They hadn't really talked much over the past few days. Rogue knew that he was still healing, still working through what had happened to him. He sometimes stirred in his sleep, waking her, but she always managed to calm him before the nightmares woke him. She knew that their arrangement was a little odd-then again, what here wasn't? - but she also knew that on some level, they needed each other, and that they both liked living together better than living alone. She didn't probe or analyze it any further than that, and she doubted that Wolverine did either.

Her fellow mansion residents, though, made their arrangement the subject of incessant speculation and gossip. Every one of the X-men - Scott, Jean, Storm, and the Professor - had taken her aside and privately warned her against living in such close quarters with the Wolverine. Jean even questioned Rogue's own mental health. Rogue simply thanked them for their concern and told them it was a private matter. She'd never been the kind of person who sought or heeded the counsel of others when it came to personal decisions, and she wasn't about to start that practice now.

Jubes, Kitty, Bobby, and Remy also each talked to her in turn. She gave the same response, and in addition requested that they be considerate of her and stop making fun of him behind his back. To a person, their refrain was, 'Oh, it's only for fun. We don't mean any harm. It's just joking.' Rogue politely told them she didn't find mocking someone amusing and reasserted her request. Again, she was greeted with a uniform response-rolled eyes and a not-very-convincing 'oh, all right.'

When she returned from her talk with Bobby, the last of that group, she heard voices coming from inside her room - Scott and Wolverine, she determined after listening in for a moment. She paused in the hall, to let Scott finish his point before interrupting him with her entrance.

"..and so you have to understand that we all love Rogue very much. We wouldn't want any harm to come to her, and, even though you may not mean to hurt her, the simple truth is that you - well, there are elements of your psyche that are not completely within your control, aren't there?"

"Telling him what about it?" Rogue didn't like the look on her new roommate's face, and she knew that Scott, while typically scrupulously honest, would be tempted to bend the facts a little if he thought he were acting in Rogue's best interest. He'd always looked after her like a little sister.

"I didn't say any of those things." She directed her comments to Wolverine. "Scott said them, and I listened to them before telling him that it was a private matter." She turned to face Scott now. "I don't appreciate you doing this, Scott."

"I don't appreciate you ignoring my wishes and trying to undermine my intentions." There was an icy tone in her voice that Scott had only heard a few times before. Once was when she'd spoken with her mother for the last time, telling her that she no longer was a part of that family and would prefer to never be bothered by them again. Scott knew that tone didn't bode well. "How would you like it if I meddled in your relationship with Jean?" Rogue happened to know quite a bit more about Jean's extracurricular activities than Scott even suspected. She'd always felt that it was none of anybody's business, and she left it up to Jean and Remy to decide whether a one-night fling was something Scott needed to be told. She was sorely tempted to change her mind on that just now.

"No, *you're* talking about me and Wolverine. He and I aren't discussing it with you because it is a private matter. Now, please, Scott, if you don't mind, I'd like you to leave." Before I say something I might regret, she added silently.

"Bye, Scott." She gave him a small push through the doorway and closed the door practically in his face. She didn't doubt that either he'd stay and eavesdrop a little or he'd have Jean do it telepathically. Sometimes she hated living in a house full of mutants. "Hey." Wolverine didn't return her greeting, and he looked definitively tense and unsettled. "Can you and I talk a second?" Again, no response, but he warily lifted his head to meet her gaze, and that was encouragement enough for her. She crossed the room to sit in the bed beside him. "Scott - he's a world-class meddler. He's the classic example of someone who plunges themselves into work, into other people's lives, into whatever he can find to keep him busy enough so that he doesn't have to examine his own life. Whatever he said about you living here - well, you have to ignore it because he's just saying those things to meddle."

"I know," Rogue agreed with a smile, "That's the sneaky part. Look, there's a risk here, for both of us, that is true. But there's a risk in everything, isn't there? And I like it this way, I like having you here."

"Well, so am I. Our broken parts fit together, I think. They fit together OK." That earned her a guardedly hopeful look from him. "I'm not worried." She caressed his hand for a while, watching him huff and grunt a little, trying to pull together how he wanted to respond. Finally, he eyeballed her and spoke.

Rogue let out a long sigh, and spoke softly. That wouldn't help if Jean were listening in, but she knew Scott had far from perfect hearing. "It wasn't pertinent to what happened. It wouldn't have given them any useful information, and it wouldn't hurt them not to know. It was just an accident, and they'd only - they'd only -" She searched for a nice way to say that they'd only hold it against him and use it to reinforce their judgment that he was dangerous and unstable. She was coming up pretty empty. "They wouldn't understand why it happened. They weren't out there, fighting, and they hadn't come from your background, been through what you have. They wouldn't have understood, so I left it out. If I'd have been in your shoes - if I'd have accidentally touched you with my skin - I know I'd feel bad about it and I wouldn't necessarily want everyone to know about it if it didn't really have any bearing on anything. I guess that's why - that's why I didn't tell them."

"It ain't that I ain't in control." He leaned toward her a little and matched her soft tone. "It's just that it's been a lotta years. They had me for a long time, and I don't remember what's - what's proper. That's the word, right?" She gave an encouraging nod. "I don't remember what's proper to do or how to act, so I go with my instincts, which ain't - which ain't exactly human," he finished ruefully.

"It was a fight - everybody's adrenaline pushes them to act aggressively in a fight. That's normal, that's human." He simply shook his head at that, indicating that he didn't think she understood. "Wolverine, why would you think that -"

Rogue crinkled her nose and drew her eyebrows together, thinking of how to articulate her response. Wolverine waited, by now accustomed to it. "There are parts of you that are animal, but they're *human* animal. We're all still just animals, even though we live differently and have a bigger brain than all the other animals. You can't get rid of that no matter how much you try. We all have an animal side because we all *are* animals. If you have a little more of that surfacing, it doesn't mean you're not human." He still looked unconvinced, so she tried a different tack. "And I like - I like that you're a good fighter. You saved my life out there because of it. I like that you're who you are. There's nothing I know about you so far that I don't like."

She nodded again, smiling. "It's obvious. It's plain as day. Of course I can see that." Wolverine seemed to relax at that. "So, let's just - let's just hang out up here today, what do you say? We'll grab some snacks a little later on, we can watch TV if you like, or you can watch hockey and I'll paint."

He caught on to the fact that she was teasing and he reflected that she did it so differently from everyone else. When she did it, he kind of liked it. "OK." He sank back into the bed, convinced that she was right, that it would be OK for him to stay here.

"Do you need me to stop?" The question was by now a familiar one for Rogue. They'd gotten quite close in the past two months, physically and emotionally. But they still hadn't made love, and, in fact, tonight was one of the first few nights that she'd even touched him at all below the waist. The first time she tried it, she hadn't anticipated a bad reaction, but as soon as her gloved hands met his flesh, he jerked out of her grasp and flung himself from the bed. He never talked about it, but Rogue knew from the memories of the men she'd absorbed during the fight that sexual abuse of the mutants they captured was commonplace for both men and women. Wolverine apologized over and over to her, and they agreed that they'd go a lot slower, and that he'd let her know when he needed her to stop.

She was glad he felt comfortable enough with her to let her touch him like this at all-she couldn't imagine what her reaction might be if she'd been hurt that way. And she was even more thankful that he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed by what he'd been put through. Reflecting on it, she thought it was a lot like that first nightmare she'd helped him through - he wasn't embarrassed at having thrown up, it was just there, just a fact. It *wasn't* anything he needed to be ashamed of, she thought, and neither was this. His lack of acquaintance with social mores and peer judgments had some benefits.

"Sorry," he apologized. He always said he was sorry and when they talked about it, she tried to reassure him it was OK with her if he needed to go slow. He wanted so badly to do what she wanted, to make her happy, and he felt bad that he couldn't. She tried to reassure him on that count as well.

"It's fine," she smiled, still caressing him where it was comfortable. She knew he'd been close - he hadn't let himself come yet, and that seemed to be a sticking point, no pun intended. He felt very apprehensive about it, she could tell. She wondered how to allay whatever fears might be behind that. "I could tell you were close. It's OK, you know. It's OK."

"Hey," she purred as she leaned closer to him, and moved her hand to rest over his heart. "You're safe now. You're with me, and I only want to make you happy, to make you feel good. Whatever you want to do is OK with me." She held his eyes for a moment, then leaned back and resumed drawing slow circles on his chest and stomach. After a few moments, she felt his hand come to rest on top of hers and guide it lower. She gently wrapped her gloved hand around him, stroking lightly and slowly but purposefully. In a few moments, he was close yet again.

She could tell he was fighting the urge to ask her to stop. She raised her free hand to his face, caressing it, and encouraged, "It's OK. It's only going to feel good, nothing bad. It's OK." She heard growling rumbles seep out from his chest and took that as a good sign. She pressed her body closer to him and increased her pace a little.

"Oh!" He began to let go, to buck his hips in time with her movements. "Unnh!" He frantically turned his head to one side, to look at her. She met his desperately questioning gaze with a smile and a soft, loving look. "Unnnnnh!!" He was finally there, finally coming. He growled and rumbled and moaned as his body thrashed and shook next to hers. She was far from an expert at these kind of things, but she thought that, judging by the release of tension in his muscles and the amount of bodily fluid that had come out of him, that this was an especially good one. She was pleased with that, pleased she could give him that.

His breathing calmed a little and he looked at her again. "That was beautiful," she said, gently caressing and cupping him as he regained his composure. He was looking at her intently, and she hoped he was seeing in her what he needed to. "I'm so glad we did that." Wolverine drew her to him, careful of her exposed face, but nestling her in close to him. She felt sticky, warm wetness against her pajamas at her stomach, but she didn't mind.