Title: Practice Makes Perfect
AuthorFyrDrakken
EMAIL: Fyrdrakken@juno.com
Rating: Eventually R/NC17 for sex. Probably PG or PG13 starting out, barring occasional rough language.
Archive: WR list archive, all others ask first. (The answer will no doubt be yes — I'm easy! — but I like to know who's got my stuff!)
Classification: Character development leading to eventual smut. I'm sure angst and foof will appear at appropriate points — I tend to waver indecisively at times.
Series: Following "Drunken Musings" and "Settling In."
Disclaimer: Lots of corporations like Fox and Marvel, and people like Bryan Singer and Hugh Jackman, hold more rights in the characters and settings I'm playing with than I do. But I'm even more broke than Marvel, so I'm not worth the time and trouble of suing... The only "profit" I'm getting out of this is getting the demons out of my head without resorting to my family's traditional alcohol abuse, serial marriages and/or self-mutilation...
Feedback: Questions, comments and snide remarks will get *much* faster responses if sent to <FyrDrakken@juno.com>, me being "No mail" and as behind on the archive as I am! ;-)
Thanks: To all those whose feedback on my three prior stories (and repeated requests and demands for sequels!) have given the incentive to continue to lose sleep slaving over an overheating laptop! And again to jenn for her betaing, too...
Soundtrack and quotations: I've tried to find a quote to kick off each chapter that reasonably matches the mood or subject matter, some taken from song lyrics and others not. All songs quoted were chosen for lyrics first and foremost, and should *not* be taken as "soundtrack" indications. (Any attempts to create a soundtrack for this series based on songs quoted would be slightly misguided and in several cases disturbingly inappropriate. Anyone who actually listened to Tool's "jimmy" while reading "Drunken Musings" probably knows exactly what I mean! ;-D ) With that being said, A Perfect Circle's _Mer de Noms_ album remains *the* music of choice for my fic writing needs (and a kickass album all round)...
*****
"I think it, I say it. That's my way." — Cordelia, _Angel,_ "The Bachelor Party"
*****
It had been a fairly nondescript afternoon when Logan decided to ask a fairly interesting question.
"Hey, kid, mind if I ask you something?"
"Hmm?" Rogue glanced up from her text of _Julius Caesar_ before returning to the complexities of Elizabethan dialogue.
"This is kind of personal, but since it's *me* asking..." *That* earned him her full attention, and at her inquiring look he went on. "You told me — way back when — that you put that first boy you kissed in a coma for three weeks." Her face grew shuttered, and he continued before she had time to brood on the touchy memories. "Then you touched me that first time, and I was up in a few hours — which is me we're talking about, so a normal person might have been out for a week or two — but then came Mags, and he was not only still on his feet after touching you, but able to use his powers a little bit within a few minutes..."
*This* was unexpected territory, and he was relieved to see the closed look leave her face, although she still looked wary. "Yeah, that's right..."
"So — was Maggie just *real* resistant, or did he not touch you for as long — or were you somehow trying to keep from absorbing anything from him?"
"*Yeah*, I *was* — trying to keep from getting his power, I mean."
"So — if you were able to hold back like that with him after — *how* many times had you touched someone before him? Me, and that kid — anyone else?"
"A few brushes, real quick touches, but after what happened with David I was real careful not to let it happen again."
"So, if you got some *practice*, you could maybe learn not to do that little draining trick whenever you touch someone?"
"Maybe, but who's suicidal enough to let me practice on them?" The half-conscious bitterness underlying the wry question was sharp enough to taste, and Logan replied without even having to think about it..
"Me."
She gave him a startled look, and he tried to read the emotions flashing through those doe-like eyes — fear and worry, then hope, and perhaps a wicked gleam of mischief flickering beneath. Whether that buried delight might have been at the prospect of getting a bit more of him in her head, at the thought of getting to borrow his abilities again for a bit, or just a bit of earthy pleasure at the thought of actual skin-on-skin contact, he couldn't say. But then, regrettably, her conscience kicked in. Using her gift was Wrong, since it stole from others in the best of cases and risked their lives if things went badly. "Logan, I couldn't ask you to..."
"You ain't asking, I'm volunteering."
"...Or let you do that. It's dangerous — "
Having made the leap by offering, Logan wasn't about to let her dither her way out of it now. Without giving her a chance to pull away or fend him off, he reached over and clapped a hand to her cheek.
She shouldn't have been quite so surprised. She *knew* him, including his tendency towards instant action, and after all it was the subject of their current discussion. Still, she wasn't expecting it, and for a moment she felt the dark nearly-pleasurable surge of Loganness inundating her mind and body.
But coming with the inrush of energy were Logan's current thoughts, and right at the top of the surge was the reminder of the point of this whole exercise. Remembering the incident with Magneto, she forced herself to resist the influx, and struggled to prevent the intake of energy.
Logan had a moment to revel in the feel of Marie's satiny skin under his palm — a touch he had expected never to feel without intervening layers, barring another attempt to preserve her life after deathly injury — before the pull began. A hot quasi-electrical current seemed to reach from the hand touching her skin down his arm and through his entire frame, and he could feel himself weakening under the hold. Paralyzed by the tug of Rogue's uncontrolled ability, he could do nothing to pull away from her, unless and until she released him — but after a moment, he actually felt the pull ease and the pain lessen. It was still unpleasant, and he wouldn't recommend the contact for anyone not possessed of a mutant healing factor, but he thought he could take it for a fair bit of time before it would kill him.
But it wasn't very much more than a few seconds before she reached up with a gloved hand and pulled his own hand away. "No more," she said softly.
Logan exhaled shakily and let his hand stay in hers for a moment before reclaiming it. Healing factor or not, he felt more than a bit rundown — yet also triumphant. He had no idea how long the contact had lasted — it had seemed to last hours, days even — but he was fairly sure it was at least a bit longer than their first touch had been, and he was still conscious. Definite progress.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, sure..." Deep breath. "Give me another minute or two, and we'll try it again."
"*Logan*..." Alarm warred with that half-hidden pleasure in her expression. "I think it's really great that you want to help me, but I don't want to land you in the Medlab."
"S'okay. I know when I've had enough."
"Liar."
A huffing chuckle and a half-grin were her only responses.
After a minute or two in which Wolverine made no move to resume contact, Marie cautiously tried to return to her English assignment, only to be startled back out of the play by Logan's brusque, "Ready?" Before she could reply, he reached forward again and put his palm to the side of her neck, thumb along her cheek and fingers plunging into the hair at the nape of her neck.
She tensed, and again concentrated on resisting the flood of thought and sensation. The stronger taste of Logan in her head gave her both a taste of exactly how determined he was to stick this out for her, and the added stubbornness to fight her power for as long as the pair could take it. She got less energy from him this time — perhaps a bit because she had gotten a slightly better sense of how to hold back her gift, or maybe it was the tiny bit of forewarning that made her able to resist this absorption from the beginning — but stopped it after a minute or so when she saw Logan getting paler and paler. "Enough," she murmured, pulling his hand away from her skin.
"No more," she warned softly. "Not tonight."
The implicit statement being that there *would* be more attempts made on other nights, Logan chose to be heartened by this statement. "Later, then," and he was pleased that she didn't disagree.
He let his fingers comb though her hair as he pulled his hand back, as though by accident, but the fresh thoughts of his lurking in the back of her head suddenly told Marie that the caress had been less than accidental.
Attempting to return her attention to the works of the Bard had been hard enough after the first touch, but right now Marie no longer gave a damn what Cassius' deal was or how Brutus felt about the matter. The first contact had been mainly shocking and his uppermost thoughts had been about the sincere desire to help her gain control, but the caress accompanying the second had brought a whole new batch of his thoughts to her conscious realization. The flickering suggestions of ways he'd like to eventually be able to touch her were both unexpected and somewhat motivational.
Right now, she wanted — needed — a bit of time to sift through the new memories absorbed and reassess what she had thought she knew about his feelings for her. She had managed to settle herself into the role of adolescent gal-pal to the guy she was nursing a wholly-unrequited lust for. Learning that he had been having some decidedly unplatonic thoughts about her was oddly frightening, since it suggested some exciting new paths their relationship could head down, with unforeseeable results.
But she needed to get out of here — in his bedroom, for Chrissakes, and sitting on his *bed*, with the man himself within arm's-reach — before she did something flaky and schoolgirlish, like turning into a giggling idiot, or else climbing into his lap and suggesting that they start trying out some of the 101 Ways to Get Each Other Off Without Direct Skin Contact that he had been thinking up over the past year or so... "I... I think I should go now."
He gave her a worried look — because he had an inkling of which thoughts of his were currently bouncing around in her skull, or because he genuinely didn't want her to leave? "All right... See ya tomorrow, kid... Marie...." She could hear a gentle tone underlying the casual statement that she wouldn't have known to look for before then, especially when he dropped the nickname to use her own given name.
It was wonderful, it was unexpected, it was terrifying. She grabbed her text and fled to the safety of her own dorm room...
*****