#thoughts mare rambles

✧ Logan, who had made peace with God and had accepted the idea of a shallow grave when you, a sweet little thing, slipped into his life purely by accident. you'd hitched a ride in his limo with an itty-bitty bachelorette party, the three of you a little worse for ware and arguing in the backseat after too many screwdrivers and vodka cranberries. he hadn't been able to stop staring at your curvy little thighs in that little black dress, how your makeup was worn like flickering Vegas neon. how you smelled like your favorite scent he keeps multiples of, Cherry Smoke.

✧ Logan, who asks to see you again after you tip him generously and practically undress him with your pretty eyes in the rearview of that shitty Chrysler he hates so much. Logan, who can't breathe right when you say sure, and pop your number into his phone with a little kiss emoji and a wiggle of your fingers goodbye.

✧ Logan, who had to up his phone plan for unlimited texts because you are young, and so pretty even in words that he can't not text you back, even if it takes an hour and he doesn't know how to use emojis, whatever the hell those are. who much prefers getting voice texts from you because you ramble a little, have the best way of talking about your day.

✧Logan, who pretty much starts dreaming about you the first night he buys you your girlie drink, which you are not too big to order in front of a man who drinks whiskey like it is some kind of oxygen. who can't feel his pulse anymore when you smile and look so good in tight jeans and high heels. who has been imagining your taste since the first night you leave lipstick on his collar after a little kiss on his cheek and stumbling against him in the parking lot, all giggles and bright eyes.

✧ Logan, who courts you like a man ought to, but faster than a man should. he lasts six months before he can't live without you, before the days start having purpose again. before he starts missing your texts and wishing you'd call, missing the way you laugh in the front seat of his car or hold his hand under the stars. who can't remember the last time he inventoried the ache in his chest or the pull of his bones.

✧ Logan, who marries you after a six-week engagement in a little Vegas church because it feels so right, and the idea of finally fulfilling God's divine purpose for a man hasn't ever felt more perfect to a man designed to bleed.

✧ Logan, who's first time with you feels like the first time that's ever mattered, that rushes life back into his veins like a river. who swears there's never been anything that tastes so good or feels so beautiful. who can't imagine ever not being inside you forever, who can't think straight when you whisper his name like an intimate prayer only you know the language of. whose entire language becomes you and how you make him feel, the power you give, and take, from him.

✧ Logan, who moves you into the compound even though you deserve the world. who works long nights to give you everything you want to make this space a home for a man who's never known one, to make it less, and somehow more, him.

✧ Logan, who promises to take you to the sex doctor to put you on birth hormonal birth control, because traditional methods absolutely will not work for him, never have. who forgets your appointment in favor of staying home all day with you looking so pretty in that sundress you bought in town, just for him.

✧ Logan, who can't imagine the idea of a child even while having sex three times a week. who believes that ship is so beyond sailed, it's at the bottom of the sun. who hasn't, in his almost two hundred years of life, paused long enough to imagine being a father. who has feared the responsibility of caring for another life that belongs to him, beyond yours.

✧ Logan, who should absolutely not be surprised when you wind up pregnant less than a year after moving in, but is shellshocked by the idea just long enough to realize that this is the epiphany of living, the antithesis of dying. this is all he's ever wanted, a chance to be Logan, a man. less a weapon, more a soul. who, after the initial surprise, quietly tucks away the good feeling in his bones to save for the days it will not be easy, the days that will demand more of him than he thinks to give.

✧ Logan, who doesn't know how to act around the woman he loves carrying his baby. who starts by doing everything, but quickly learns a woman's independence is just something she needs during the hills and valleys. who takes you to the sex doctor late, now, for a whole new kind of pill that will change everything about his life forever.

✧ Logan, who discovers that this is the best kind of sex, and he's never not going to want this.

✧ Logan, who makes the compound the safest place a not-exactly-a-home could ever be. babyproofs everything, buys three kinds of car seats because none of them look the safest in the back of the little SUV he buys for you, in cash. who invests in locks, who retitles the drain tile in the "kitchen." Logan who installs a claw foot tub for you, because baths are the only thing that keep you sane through the first trimester of carrying his seed, his future.

✧ Logan, who fights with you about the color of the nursery but finally caves to that soft yellow that reminds you of him, and the soft sun.

✧ Logan, who insists on assembling all the baby furniture himself, without directions, until the diagram becomes necessary because "Nothing is as simple as it was a hundred years ago, baby."

✧ Logan, who secretly confesses every fear he has about fatherhood before God each morning the sun rises over the mesa, because this is not something he desires to survive, but to hold.

✧ Logan, who has lived lifetimes and hasn't seen anything prettier than you all fat and full of his baby. who thinks you are the sexiest thing to ever walk into his life in leggings and a too-big T-shirt you got from the thrift store because it felt right in your hands. who comes up behind you softly and lifts the weight of your belly in his big hands, because he knows it's heavy, and wants to feel all over you and the entirety of the life you make for him in your womb.

✧ Logan, who wants you to have the baby in a hospital, with doctors and nurses and all the medicine you can stand because God forbid you have pain, but agrees to a home birth with a midwife because that's your dream.

✧ Logan, who nearly rips open the world when Braxton Hicks hit at 30 weeks, and you can't breathe the first night they arrive. who holds you against his chest through every contraction, kisses away every tear and "I can't do this, Lo," from your lips.

✧ Logan, who is entirely all too obsessed with your tits when they get big and full, who thinks it is sinful God doesn't allow this without the mercy of a baby inside you.

✧ Logan, who is totally fine with a boy or girl, but in his heart desires a son to hold. who wants to pass his bloodline into the future, leave a legacy in something he could never be.

✧ Logan, who keens with a pride he can't describe when you go into town and everyone knows you belong to him and are carrying his baby.

✧ Logan, who holds you every night of your pregnancy, big hand protective over your belly as you sleep against his chest. who whispers sweet everythings to the life that thrums inside you, making promises he doesn't even know can come true, given the life he has lived. who dreams bigger than the whole damn sky because he is akin to purpose.

✧ Logan, who cries when your child is born. who doesn't even feel you gripping his hand like the earth belongs to him, and he can change it. who agonizes with you through two days of labor, borderline anxious for your life. who can't even stitch together common words when the small life, the universe of you and him, is passed into his arms, all soft and innocent.

✧ Logan, who, for the first time, understands what purity is when he gazes into the face of his son. the deeply perfect, soulful mix of everything beautiful in his life, of everything he'd been chasing under the sun the last half century of his living days. who kisses the soft crown of your son, whispering his name like it is a prayer language, "hi, sweetheart, I'm your dad."

✧ Logan, who can't imagine anything outside of this life, and can't even feel his breath when you snuggle against his chest and sigh, exhausted and pure in every living thing as you stare at what he has given you. who can't even feel his own blood anymore when you whisper, "I want another, Lo."

✧ Logan, who gives you another baby eight months later, because you beg for it every time he makes love to you. who tries to remind you that you just had a baby but instead moans into your ear that he'll give you as many as you want because you feel so good and are such a good mama.

✧ Logan, who is beside himself when you turn up pregnant.

"You didn't have to do all this, y'know."

There's a lot of truth to the statement, sure. You didn't have to drag him out to the middle of nowhere after midnight, when the sky is full of light, distant universes calling like something out of Shakespeare.

Didn't have to hold his hand like it might break, like he doesn't even exist in any wild imagination or dream state.

Certainly didn't have to tell him when his eyes are heavy, his heart is full. Not really the kind of news you tell someone out in the middle of December in Westchester, when the air moves with a cold better reserved for Frigidaire's and the Arctic Circle.

"Logan, you're going to be a Daddy."

It still snaps between you like a frayed wire.

A current submerged in gasoline and fire, maybe, threatening to burn hot and eternal between your ribs like it's something you can actually fathom, and not some wistful idea trapped between the pages of storybooks and this-is-what-I've-always-dreamed-of.

He's still motionless, like someone has grabbed that Adamantium spine of his with an iron fist and has welded him to the floor. Even from the darkness between the two of you, you can feel his pulse, steady. Alive. Full.

Boots unlaced, jeans rumpled from falling asleep half-clothed and dirty from the Institute's cavernous garage, elbow-greasing on that damn bike he hasn't stopped obsessing over since Bobby brought it home from Thanksgiving.

"Gotta be right, otherwise the kid'll kill himself,"

"Think he knows that, Lo. You aren't his father, you know."

He'd looked at you with an expression full enough to capture the moon.

"'Mebbe not, but someobody's gotta care if the kid lives or dies."

Logan was already a father in so many ways. Difficult to think about, really — like time spinning backwards in a spiral, trying to reset the universe. Everything about this big, burly man you got to call yours screamed the exact antithesis of fatherhood, of domesticity.

Logan was one to break the rules before bending them, to uninvent them when they needed inventing. He encouraged reckless behavior, scoffed at basic logic.

Nothing about him was parental.

Thinking back, he was exactly everything you'd never imagined in being the father of your child. A chess match of the ages, really, putting in check everything you once thought about yourself—a woman who wanted stability, security. Tenderness. Constancy. None of which Logan Howlett has irreverently been known for, all of which are foreign languages to every little thing that makes him so, irrevocably, him.

More of the type to say walk it off, kid, than offer feel-better kisses, Logan had been carved from a life buried in the grave long before you'd even been a thought in the universe. Your paths had crossed by the chanciest of happenstances, the margin of error that was ignored because it was so minute—it shouldn't have happened.

He should've been long gone by the time you arrived at Xavier's front door, all wrapped up in your shiny new doctorate and opportunity, flowers in your hair and a sundress that rivaled the sun.

"You must be new."

"Well, you could say that," you could still remember the first sight of him, how it had blossomed in your chest like something delicious, something terrible. A bad idea wrapped up in good ones, all the things a girl like you should've kissed off for Lent. Shoved into the unmentionable place that God forgives.

"I believe Charles is expecting me."

"Professor doesn't see students during class hours," Unimpressed. Logan's forefront MO.

You'd grinned at him, brow popped.

"How about doctors of botany and microbiology?"

And the rest, as they say, was history. Or water under the bridge. Whichever suited.

His breath comes in visible small clouds, stable in the cold air between the two of you. Unrocked, like this hasn't just shattered the Wolverine's world in literal halves.

You wiggle your toes inside your shoes, pulling your heavy coat around your shoulders. Snow creeps in around your ankle, cold and sharp. You smile at him thinly, trying to ignore the numb in your feet, that painful burn of too-cold fingers.

Coat open to a bare chest, he blinks once. Twice. All at once he releases a heavy sigh, one that rattles his frame. A big hand comes to rub along the back of his neck, and you can see the visible line of his jaw flick with tension as he considers your words, heavy between the two of you.

Something dips a little in your belly, a light feeling that curls your toes. You'd just started feeling it this week—Hank had thought you were a little over ten weeks. Too early, usually, to feel anything.

Mutations, though, were fickle—complicated the hell out of everything.

Your smile is soft, head tipping just a little to gauge a reaction.

"You can say something, Logan."

His eyes snap to yours. Indecision, something akin to fear, crosses his face. Even in the dark, even when something so beautiful has graced the space between the two of you.

It's expected, you knew he'd react something like this. You'd only been sleeping together for a few months—a progression neither of you had expected, but a natural occurrence to closeness and chemistry that neither of you could put a finger to.

You'd fallen into his bed after breaking up with your boyfriend of three years, mostly for comfort. For something solid, that felt right. Energy had already been snapping between the two of you for weeks, he'd been unusually close, in the way that Logan never was unless he wanted something.

A natural, willing shoulder to cry on. Too natural, too right.

Like magnets tethered inexplicably together, bound to make contact, things had just.... grown. Developed, snowballed into something so raw, so right that rebound hadn't even entered your vocabulary.

One of those I fall, you fall harder situations.

He'd fallen first; well before the night you'd gone to bed with him and had your world cracked open like a sieve.

You'd fallen harder, as inseparable as breath.

You couldn't live without him. He couldn't let you go. Two orbits, locked forever in the gravity of something neither of you had thought to name. Well beyond dating, in a sense—more fated, if one paused to think beyond it.

It was like he'd always been there, rooted in your chest—an unexplained part of you that hadn't manifested until the lights had been flipped.

You watch him swallow. A breath, words—it's impossible to say, honestly. He's more closed than a tomb. More ancient than stars, in many ways. Unreadable as hieroglyphics lost to the space time continuum.

He huffs out a gruff laugh. It's thin, bleeding almost.

"You're sure."

It hangs there, full in the darkness. Like a moon pulling tides to itself, it demands a response without ever even sounding like a question to begin with, just sitting there. Waiting, between each of his breaths.

His fingers subconsciously twitch a little, like they itch for a fight, or something to hold. How he isn't cold you'll never fully understand, mutation aside—it's below zero, at least. And he's standing in jeans and a leather jacket with nothing on, like this is a movie and not real life.

You nod, once. "I'm sure," you take a step closer, not hesitant but aware. "Hank's definitely sure," your eyes widen a little and you chuckle, as if it's supposed to be funny. "Sure fire deal, Logan. I'm having your baby."

His jaw sets, and he blinks. Once.

For long heartbeats he doesn't say anything, just considers you standing a little closer, before his hand reaches for yours. He slips his fingers through yours softly, tugging you a little closer, until the air between you is warm, full of your shared breaths.

His gaze follows the line of your jaw, as if taking the time to memorize your skin, and how it looks in the night, under the weight of confession. You watch him swallow his next thought, before his tongue skates his bottom lip, maybe searching for words—which would be a first. Logan never hesitates to say what he wants to; it isn't his style.

"You want me to be happy," again, it isn't a question—it's a thought. Throw out into the universe with all the locomotive impact his less-than-graceful personality allows. "But you ain't upset that I'm not."

You consider the statement, before looking to your joined hands. "I'm not," you answer, after a minute. "Not expecting you to be happy, Logan. Not like we talked about this."

"Haven't. At all," he inserts, quickly. With a strength that snaps his eyes to yours, firmly. "Not exactly topping my list of life priorities right now, sweetheart."

That makes you snort, pulling back a little at his tone. "Oh, right, because getting knocked up definitely was on my six-month post grad life plan?" He tugs you a little closer, an arm softly sliding into place around your waist. "I didn't know how to tell you."

He snorts. "So, you drag me outside when it's cold as fuck?" he shakes his head, leaning his head against yours softly, drawing you to his chest, his eyes skirting around the garden. "Makes sense. Garden's your place, anyway." He doesn't add anything, just a low hum in his chest.

Tears pull at the corner of your eyes after he doesn't say anything else, and you gently lean your head back to look up at him. "You regret anything?"

His eyes find yours, immediately. "I supposed to?"

You blink, a little surprised. "It's just a question," you hesitate, just enough to make your heart skip once against your ribs. "If you do, I'd get it." You blow out a breath. "Not exactly the way to start off whatever the hell this thing is between us." You chuckle, brokenly. "Guess friends with benefits is off the table now, huh?"

He chuckles, amused at the idea. "Haven't been just friends for a bit, have we, baby?" He tips your chin up with a finger, pointedly. "Haven't exactly pinned it down, but you've been my girl pretty hot and heavy for the couple of weeks, at least." The corner of his mouth ticks up, in a crooked grin. "And I know you've been pinin' over me since we met." His grin is almost dark, nearly wicked.

You roll your eyes, shoving at his shoulder. "Wishful thinking!" You try to back up, playful offense snapping up your brow. "I was still with my ex when we met!"

"Yeah, that wasn't long for nothin'," he smiles, grabs your wrist and pulls you close, a deep chuckle rumbling up from between his ribs as his hand smooths over your hip, content to keep you there in the snow. "Always was gonna be you, though. Just didn't know how to say it."

That snaps your brow up, impressed. "You come up with that by yourself?" She smile, affectionate, fingers curling into the line of his jacket. "I don't regret it, Logan," you look down between the two of you, to the small life that's beginning to catch, "Not for a second."

He hums, nodding. Tipping your chin up a bit, you see him try to fight a smile—can't quite get there, though. There's a lightness in his eyes he'd probably deny until death, but it's there, at the corners. Wistful, maybe. Promising. Soft.

That flimsy, won't-stop-hell chain on the door sings when it slams back into place, hard.

The floor, likewise, rattles a little when heavy feet take it in three strides. Accepts the bag you drop on the floor at the kitchen table, the air far too still for a Saturday night as you practically wrangle out of your coat. Tossing it to the back of the chair beneath your hands, your knuckles white as your new manicure curls into the rough wood.

Your heart hammers a little too hard when Logan slips through the door, following you at a respected distance. Mouth drawn in a thin line that fights an amused quirk, he gently kicks the door back into place with a thick boot, bike exhaust clinging to him like a lover. Spins the key on a thick finger, before it vanishes into its usual spot — his jacket pocket.

Taking a beat, his gaze falls over you once. Twice. Before his brows lift, investigative.

"You done?"

You know exactly what it means.

But it alludes you all the same, watching him shrug out of his jacket. Skin burning with a flaming heat unable to be described even in ancient prose, you focus your hands on the back of the chair. Try working the anger into IKEA woodwork that would sooner snap beneath your hands than offer emotional support.

His boots scuff the floor as he begins rolling up the sleeves of his flannel, leather jacket draped over a thick arm. Arms that, an hour ago, held you against his chest when you swayed to Johnny Cash in the grimy bar on the corner, the one you loved, the one you knew he didn't, but he has allowed for the last year since you invaded his life.

The same one that damn strawberry blonde has been staking out for the past three weeks, eyeballing Logan as if he's the posterboy for Penthouse and a wet dream.

"I'm Cheyenne," she'd looked like something out of Vogue, perched on the barstool next to him as you'd come up beside him from checking your makeup in the bathroom. "I've seen you here before." Her eyes hadn't moved from him.

"Oh? Funny. I don't remember seeing you here. Ever."

She'd eyed you with the vehement surprise of a startled bull snake.

Logan hadn't even so much as attempted to make it known he wasn't available. Whether blissfully ignorant and stupid, you hadn't decided—just painfully vetoed.

Your chin lifts a little as you turn to face him, eyes catching at the thick of his arms so on display now that his sleeves are rolled. Feels like a deliberate counterstrike on your senses, how thin his smile is as he considers you. Standing there, in a thrift store dress and boots. Trying to look pretty without even trying at all.

Your jaw works, the breath in the back of your throat not as brave as you'd hoped as words rattle up from your chest. "Am I done what?"

Something—light, maybe a little wickedness—catches in the corner of his eye. Definitely amusement, but it's unclear if it's genuine or at your expense. As are most things with Logan—unclear, undefined, unresolved.

His MO. Put a name to it and it's real, ignore it and it goes away. Unless it's you, determined as all get out to be close as a heartbeat, to live in his ribs. You'd flown into his life like some Molotov cocktail, all on and fire and alive, but hardly destructive—rattled the cage that kept the Wolverine unlovable, unseen, wholly grave like.

He hadn't been able to push you away for a year, and that was on purpose.

He approaches the table. Drapes his coat over the chair next to yours. Rests a hand on the back of it, leaning his weight before a hand rests at his hip. Sharp eyes consider the floor, and the breath he takes is more of a long sigh than it is actual breathing. A beat flickers between the two of you, short and hot, before his eyes cast to you yours. Firmly, determinedly.

"You've been poutin' since appetizers," his brow shifts up, considering. "Too quiet. Somethin's got you in your head, just haven't figured what, yet." His foot taps the floor, pointedly. Once in that, you ready to fess up yet? way. "Spill, sweetheart. Don't wanna spoil your birthday by bein' pissy, do you?"

"I have not." Too sharp, too fast—someone with Logan's life experience will clock it as ingenuine. It is. While he likes to brag that communication isn't his thing, Logan is a keyed-up communicator. He reads things others don't.

"You absolutely have," it's short, a little jagged around the edges.

"I don't wanna talk about it, Logan." I don't want you to see this side of me, not today, not ever.

Stepping by him, you rush your fingers through your hair, pointed in the direction of the hallway—the safety of four walls, a closet of sweatsuits and comfort clothes, and a 4k television with Kate & Leopold that would never do so much as blink wrong in your direction.

You don't make it five steps before his arm hooks yours, pulling you back a step. With the graceful ease of a man who has been doing this for a century, he about-faces you so smoothly that you just naturally end up against his chest—like it is planned. Like being caged in his arms was the grand scheme of the entire night enduring burned appetizers, stale beer, and Johnny Cash reruns on a half-dead stereo.

"Not wantin' to talk about somethin' is the best time to talk about it, sweetheart," his hands gently hover at either side of your face, fingers graciously playing the hair away from your eyes, cheeks. Fierce eyes hold yours in place, and you can nearly feel him rooting around your soul—as if turning up stones, looking for histories you'll share with him. "'Sides. I think I already know what's buggin' you, but I want to hear it from you."

Well if that doesn't pop your brow. "What do you think is bothering me?"

"Asked first," he fails spectacularly at containing his smile, "You can tell me anythin', you know." His head dips forward a little, resting his forehead against yours, softly. Tenderly. Almost unlike anything you'd think him capable of, had you known better. "Wan' you to tell me anythin', sweetheart. Be honest with old Logan, yeah?"

That punches low in the cradle of you, a dirty shot that he knows will unravel you like a slow ribbon on the fast train to hell. Your stomach flares with a nervous sour that tastes more like steel than it does courage, spine tingling with a slow honey that seems to gnaw at at least three discs and every vertebra you have left.

Releasing a shaky breath, you let her name slip. Once.

"Cheyenne?" His face drops into a wrinkle that is so intense, you worry for the structural integrity of his collagen level. "As in the fucking capital of Wyoming, Cheyenne?" He looks stunned, "What does the fucking capital of Wyoming have to do with anything?"

There's such a boyishness to it that it makes you laugh a little brokenly, shoving at his shoulder, "No, you overgrown weasel, Cheyenne-Cheyenne. As in, pretty red hair, stepped-off-the-cover-of-Sports-Illustrated, I want to fuck you Cheyenne from the bar?" Breaking from his arms, you step back, in the direction of the master suite.

"Wait—what? Wait a fucking second," he steps after you, boots going silent as the floor shifts to carpet in the hallway, "You mean that chick from the bar? That girl who asked me about the bike?"

"She was about as interested in your bike as you are of the price of tea in China," it's a hiss as you slip into your room, slapping at the lights that flip on automatically. All the outfits you'd tried on for the night lay in a rumpled heap in the dead center of your mattress, and you kick off your boots a little aggressively, "She was flirting with you, Logan. The woman almost had a damn heart attack when I came back from the bathroom. I thought both of her braincells would short circuit when I kissed your cheek!"

He stops in the doorway, clocks you lifting the hem of your dress, and out of habit, turns to face the opposite direction. "That's what you're pissed about. A girl makin' eyes at me that I don't even notice."

As if he hasn't already mapped every inch of you, knows every scar, he doesn't turn around. His sigh is deep, even across the room, as you reach for your favorite sweatset and wrangle into it, a little harshly. Balling your dress in your hands, you lob it at him, and it lands against his shoulder, hitting the ground with a ruffled shift of fabric.

That turns him around.

"You didn't tell her we were together. Hell, you didn't even say anything! It took me kissing you to run her off," slipping to the edge of the bed, you run your fingers through your hair, "I swear to God, Logan, sometimes you don't even act like we're anything but two people who sometimes make out and sleep next to each other," you huff out an exaggerated, sharp laugh, "does this even mean anything to you? Because it does. It means something, and I fucking want you to act like it does."

It hangs there, arctic and hot all at the same damn time.

A heartbeat, maybe, and Logan bridges the air between the two of you like its mission operandi. Standing in front of you, he considers you looking up at him, all hard looks and deep breaths, before his hands plant low on his hips and the corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk.

"Jealous," he goads, nodding once. "You're jealous—of some damn strawberry blonde who I can't even remember. And you got no fuckin' reason to be." He leans in, hands planted on the mattress at either side of you, nearly eye-level now as his eyes skate the landscape of your face, memorizing the air between you that has thinned into a hot layer of something you can't name.

You swallow once, thickly. "Yes." Hesitating, your eyes drop to your lap, where your hands rest, nails fiddling with the hem of your sweatshirt that suddenly feels like the weight of the universe on your frame.

"She was beautiful," and it's small.

So, so small you hate that sounds so asystole and broken as if Logan hasn't worshipped for year, told you things a priest couldn't even forgive.

He groans, trying to laugh. "You're the prettiest g'damn thing I've ever seen, and your worried about a blonde tart in a bar who thinks I'm something I ain't," he shakes his head once, rests his forehead against yours with a gentility unheard of in men designed to bleed, "Stop worryin' so much, darlin'. You're my girl—I ain't lookin' to trade. Can't you see I'm so ass over teakettle for you sometimes I can't breathe?"

The squeak you release. Borderline condemnation. "Logan—"

He shushes you with a broken laugh, "Nah, don't," two fingers gently tip your gaze back to his, before gently guiding you back against the mattress, following to hover in your intimate space like the big, burly presence he's become in your everyday, "Don't pretend we ain't what we are, honey. Sick of bein' everyone else's whatever they want when I just wanna be what I am, with you."

It's so ridiculously delicious, how it lands in your chest. Against your heart. Stitches places together you didn't even know were apart but hemorrhaged all the same. Leave it to a man with Adamantium marrow and a three-digit age attached to his name to break open every little thing you've been trying to hold together for the entirety of your life.

Your finger gently traces the line of his jaw, fingers buzzing with the heat of him so close you can taste it in places only God could see, your voice suddenly small, but enchanted all the same.

"And what are you, Logan?"

He doesn't hesitate, not even a breath.

"Yours, pretty thing," he kisses you, slowly. Deeply, like the earth itself would break if he didn't.

There’s a lot of things about this fucking limo that Logan hates. 

For one, you couldn’t ask for a shittier lease agreement, and if such a hellish thing dared to exist, Satan holds the pink slip. Two years ago it had seemed like a good fucking idea, leasing some long black experimental piece of Chrysler shit that was heavy off the line and a low fatass—hot as fuck though, with chrome plated lugs. Midnight metal flake showed every piece of God’s earth, the color of sin.

Washed the fucker every other day. Couldn’t make green with a dirty rig, and he was an anal retentive sonuvabitch like that to begin with. And the interior, fuck that , it would tell secrets it showed every damn piece of filth that fell into it. Paid or otherwise. 

This shitpiece had a tendency to run hot and burn crude, but, she got the groceries—brought home bacon, if that was even still a thing in this century. Toss up between this and the Navigator the color of bad ideas, he’d flipped for the Chrysler. Industry standard, turned heads, attracted the upper echelon.

No intention of hauling around fucktards into the suburbs—black paint looked good under Vegas neon on the strip. 

But the biggest fucking thing he hated about this rig— fucking privacy partition . Busted worse than a fat lip and had been since the jump. Any serious driver, that would’ve been the first thing to check.

Separate him from the sin—hot piece of ass that slid into the backseat looking at him like he’s dinner, a couple too deep in on the red to think straight, the fucker on business hiding his wedding ring in his dick pocket as he picks up an STD. 

The first God-awful time he’d went to use it, the damn thing had all but stood up and shrieked in his ear. Grinding gears, the knock of a seized electric motor—scared the shit out of the handsy blonde who’d been trying to get his dick wet since the moment she’d dropped into the back of the Chrysler, tits all but popping from what looked like at least a size too small black— thing. 

Hadn’t been a dress, he’d seen plenty of them slide in and out—she’d made a spectacle of showing off the little lace number squirreled away for the right price. And it wasn’t that he’d been preening for a look, wasn’t his style—but when it’s right there . Plain as the nose on anyone’s face, and he’s been chaste as a priest for fucking years . It taking up all the glass of his rearview, looking like a felony—the devil had all but welded his attention between her legs . 

”Looks like you’re stuck with me, hm?”  

Fucking partition. A business-only kiss landed two hundred green ones between his abs and the elastic of his Calvins. A handful of hours of rack and many shotglasses later had put him on the scent to hell, the damn dealership.

Four hours from the border, four hours from any kind of work— he’d all but flown the thing into the service bay. Demanded a new partition. And, Logan had been laughed out of a lot of places the last two centuries he’d been sucking air—laughed, jeered, driven out with pitchforks. Circumstances aside, it all ended the same. Vamoose, pissed off his rocker.  

An astronomical estimate later, with the fucked-in-the-rear-end isn’t covered by warranty— his fist had collided with the service writer’s nose faster than his patience had evaporated for the blonde. All but jammed the prick’s deviated septum up into his brainspace—Logan had felt it between his knuckles.

Only thing keeping his patience held together, keeping the claws in, the man’s crunching cartilage had given him a high not much removed from amphetamine—it had felt good. Feel some asshat’s blood on his hands, staining his skin. See it hit  the floor in fat, thick drops. Feel the warmth of it fade as he brushed it away, coppery scent an idea beneath his nose so familiar it may as well pay rent. 

Didn’t get his partition, though. Just a bad taste of customer service and the satisfaction of seeing a grown man cry. 

Logan isn’t a man to complain—never did change the cards dealt you at the gametable of living. Better to shut up and play, make due with what you’ve got than wish away opportunities. Sure, an almost-lemon of a leased Chrysler with a busted partition wasn’t great, but, it wasn’t that long ago that he’d have given his right nut for the chance to work, much less actual green. 

Put up and shut up had been the mantra since he’d all but popped out of his mother, and it had, for all intents and purposes, kept him this side of the dirt. Sucking air and feeling, if nothing more—and what was surviving, if not sucking air and feeling? 

Doesn’t know. Doesn’t care . 

Music that’s been muffled most of the ride tonight suddenly isn’t, the back door of the rig flinging open, a wide arch, revealing the world beyond. Neon bleeds across the black leather of his interior.

A smack of humidity rushes in, almost immediately fogs the passenger windows— he keeps it ass-in-winter cold, A/C all but screaming full bore. Likes it that way, keeps him awake. Keeps them awake, he isn’t hauling anyone’s ass anywhere because they fell asleep in his seats. 

And while he isn’t startled—there isn’t fucking anything that could scare him, he doesn’t think—Logan’s spine pulls into a straight line against his seat at the sliver of night outside the door. Alarm bells sound off in the back of his head, eyes narrowed on the rearview—hand all but lava, hovering over the gearshift. He’s been here before, on the jump.

Ready to rock and roll, ready to kill—should killing need be. He’s lived two centuries on this edge, this cliff. Walking the line between reflex and ready. It’s almost carved into his skin, alarm—comes as naturally as the crest and fall of his chest. 

Logan relaxes a little when a peek of skin slips hurriedly into the back seat, familiar stiletto heels. Air in the limo immediately snaps to an all-soldier attention, flustering—like a disturbed hen rustling her chicks. Something isn’t right, isn’t stable—nuclear, almost. Dangerous.

The car shifts a little with incoming weight as one of the night’s passengers whisks into the back. Curl and makeup and the familiar whiff of peaches escorts her in as she pulls the door closed, all too quickly for this to be a normal, unbothered arrival. 

Her.

Muscle in his jaw ticks off, it takes willpower not to wriggle in the front seat, shift his weight a little.

Usually, it helped shake off the hot weight of sex rolling around the base of his gut, desire. Carnal things he’d learned to live without, suppress. Animalistic and snapping at his spine like frothing wolves. Most times, it was easy to not notice—girls, women, came and went in their short dresses and makeup.

Pretty to see, but venomous little things.

Maneaters, trouble on stilts. None of them were pretty–pretty in the way that mattered, pretty souls. Ugliness shot behind their eyes like bullets, low and cold. Dimes and dozens, nameless and unnoteworthy as they slipped him tips, batted their lashes, kissed him like he was their plaything because who’s he to fight a pair of tits? Forgettable is understating it. 

But her? 

He hasn’t been able to unglue her piercing eyes from his brain matter. And, he’s tried—like it or not, he’s tried bailing water out of this canoe, a canoe that’s been hallowed and empty for God knew how long. But it’s like emptying water back into the ocean—it only comes back, heavier and heavier.  

No dice. Close, but no cigar– unlucky bastard. 

She’d slipped into the limo before the night had even been an idea, one of three who’d decided to split fare for a sober ride. Pharmacy, first, for little more than IVs of electrolytes and fluids—never had seen girls guzzle so fast, but, whatever.

Mile-a-minute chatter he hadn’t even bothered to pace had kept them busy most of the ride into the metroplex, and Logan should’ve prayed they’d ignored him. Kept his fat trap shut and just let them guide him, but God, no. He’d asked— asked for directions. Where they were going. 

Had asked , and fuck him, that had sent things off with a bang. As if they hadn’t realized he’d been there, all three of them had locked eyes with him in the rearview, surprised thrown over the air like a stifling blanket. Heartbeats later, awkward and thick, one of them had leaned forward. Arms over the seat, showing off everything God had given her as she’d all but pumped her bedazzled phone in his face as if it were a shotgun. 

He’d clocked her noticing he wasn’t wearing a ring. Was jacked as fuck under an two-undone button shirt and jacket that fit him like sin. Deliberate choice, but–she’d all but started drooling right there on his lap, hungry like a starving man at banquet. 

Asking God for some shred of mercy had done little—the look on her face. He’d never forget it, had seen enemies look at him with more mirth and pity. Shit. Hungry , in the eyes .

Desperate, like a dying woman choking on her own libido. After rattling off the address, it would've been faster if he’d just hit the brakes and sent her flying forward through the window. Skulking back into her seat as if it were an X-rated shot, she’d eye fucked him hard until she’d been dragged back into hushed, schoolgirl conversation. Gross. 

And that was it, the beginning of the end. Eyes glued to the back of his head like some kind of anchor—Logan could’ve tasted them from here. Was hell trying not to make eye contact in the rearview, feeling their gaze hunting him like wild banshees. Spiking adrenaline, heady plumes of pheromones. Arousal, unlike anything he’d ever wanted to scent—stunk up the air like God knew. Half-starved vixens, all low and bedroom eyes, begging for trouble in all the right little ways that leave men slobbering fools. Had they been parked and out of the Chrysler, the two of them would’ve been on their knees, if not on his cock. 

He’d blasted the air again, because the air in the damn car was so thick he would’ve cut it in halves. 

Low lashes, smoky eyes. Lips the color of cherries. Tight black dresses and heels higher than heaven, they’d been dressed to kill—maybe a little less. Lobotomize, maybe. Cut out hearts, certainly—blue ball, absolutely. 

Pity the bastard who gets the taste of these tarts, pity, and probably mercy. 

Bachelorettes, he’d guessed off the gun. Correctly, too—not two blocks from CVS and out came cheap accessories. 

FUCK ME may as well have been written in lipstick on Stuck-In-the-Middle’s forehead, he assumed she was the future betrothed. By the look of her, much less the smell , she’d been aching for tonight. Primed and desperate, like an oil-starved pistol. Clawing for it, walking the heat of the desert for change . Something else, something new, something dangerous—cock. Dick.

Be it Tom, Harry, or some other poor fool—Logan could clock it from anywhere. She’d been sitting on this for a hot minute. Maybe since she’d been born. 

And Logan’s uncertain who to pity more—her or the mediocre cock she’s about prowling for—the lopsided tiara, tacky dimestore BRIDE sash out of a CVS bag were just warning signs.

Red flags, if you were smart about it. Darkness in her eyes would make any man second guess the two carats on her finger, if men weren’t animals. And they were, every one of them—and she’s far too drop-dead to not demand attention, to not homewreck and ruin some poor, unsuspecting fool’s evening. 

Watching her slip those two carats into her handbag, he’d just shook his head. 

Silence to stir the dead had followed after they’d eye fucked him into celibacy. Blissful, sweet as the Nile quiet. 

A creak of movement, the slip of skin on leather— her. Short brunette curls with highlights, icy blues.  Defined collarbones in a hardly-strapped dress, big earrings. Sparkles, everywhere, blended into makeup that’s been on awhile but still looks good. And she, she isn’t like the rest—not by a mile. How she moves, the way her lashes flutter. Doe-eyed and sweet. Doesn’t smell like sin, the kiss of color on her cheeks isn’t blush, either. 

Peaches, this one smells like fucking peaches . Something floral. 

She’s sweet. Saccharine, sugary. Like everything Logan’s forgotten. Pretty, in that girl-next-door kinda way—the way he’s always noticed, the way nobody else ever does . And what a pretty thing like her is doing in the back of his sinwagon, riding with Jezebels, hunting for trouble—he’ll never know. 

Hours before this, she’d leaned forward, pretty hands on the back of his seat. Done up nails that looked fake, but not cheap. This close, he could see her contact lenses replacing nine-to-five frames, the permanent little indentations on her nose were unmissable. Ocean eyes smiled at him through the glass of his rearview, as if it were a game. Good at it, she won—he blinked first. 

Offered him a little half smile, that dust of color on her nose darkening to an almost strawberry. When his eyes hit hers again from the road, icy blues ramped up like pulsing neon, unlike any he’d ever seen in two fucking centuries. Difficult to think, he’d had to realize he was holding his breath in the pocket of his cheek, hot against his molars.

She’d reached across the back of the seat to gently nudge him with her elbow— hey. It should’ve sounded like something you gave to horses, but it was—considerate. 

Nearly fucking polite.

You got the address okay, sir? If his tongue hadn’t swollen to the size of his balls he’d have dared to laugh at her. Sir. If he thinks hard, Logan can’t remember the last time he’d been seriously called sir, from a place of consideration, behind the ribs. He’s been alive for hundreds of years, seen a lot of shit and blood, but has been called a professional and crisp sir all but five times in his existence on God’s planet. 

Shaking himself out of it, he tells himself she isn’t the first pretty skirt to grace the leathers of his Chrysler. To look pretty and smell good, to stir up his cold blood. Wouldn’t be the last, by far.

Part of his marketing was that he was safe. Stuck around, even when the witching hour faded into bleeding colors of morning. Fair & There, as if he were a fucking marketing guru. 

She’d slipped out of the limo with her friends even though he’d wanted her to stay. Wanted to smell her and look at her all night, mull over all the things in his life he’d abandoned. Think about how, maybe, in some other world, bend of time, something that sweet could belong to him. 

But, she’d thanked him. Obviously the designated sober of the night, she’d arranged to text fifteen minutes before they wanted to leave in case he wanted to get a drink or took another gig. 

I’ll be here all night , and that wasn’t a lie. The flask burning a hole against his heart had enough whiskey to last him until morning, another bottle tucked under the seat for safekeeping. He was safe, he was there, and too damn tired to even try to think about driving around the city on a time schedule. 

It’d been two hours, parked under the neon at the curb. Not even midnight. Normal clients would just be breaking stride, setting paces. At the gate, snorting like stallions in heat.

Rutting like animals, working the game. Nothing he didn’t know all too well, he’d lived his wild years a lifetime ago—he knew what sex and booze, a good time smelled like. Could clock it every time, wasn’t daft. Had witnessed his fair share of back-alley fucks, the straightening of a hemline. Crooked buttons and tented-out slacks. 

Tonight wouldn’t be different, he assumed—well. Had assumed. Which, as the saying went, made him an ass. 

Her heartbeat from the frontseat is almost tangible, hard and fast. Jackrabbit—as if she’d dropped it in his hands, bleeding and raw all over his fingers. Logan’s eyes fall away from the rearview for a beat, ticks back to her when she slides across the seat. Straightening the end of her dress, which hits below the knee–or would, if she were upright, but now pulls at her thighs.

And the way she fiddles with it suggests it’s shorter than it was earlier in the evening, when sin was exciting and didn’t slap like a bitch. 

Tucked in against the opposite door, looking out tinted glass like it’s a skyline worth seeing, not just a lot of nothing. And something’s off, he can feel it in the little pulses of electricity of the air, the heat in her blood. Anger. The tick tick tick of frustrated fingernails on the edge of the window. Upset.

It buzzes in her blood, which he can feel thumping against her bones from here . Slick scent of sweat between her thighs, swirls of alcohol and pyrotechnic smoke mixed with fairy dusting drugs. It’s enough to make him shift, crack the window. 

Long gone are the peaches and florals, now she just bleeds with heat and virility enough to stir the gods. Fucking perfect. 

How long’s it been, old boy? 

Dull pangs in his cock make him shift up in his seat, stir some blood into his feet. Eyerolls, gaze hitting the pavement out his window, sick fuck. Just a girl, just like the rest. Reaches inside his breast pocket for a cigar and a light. 

And as much as he wishes it isn’t true, Logan can’t quite shake that she ain’t just a girl—not by a shot, long or short. He’s seen a thousand of them, sure—seen and tasted and fucked senseless. Yeah. But—none like this. None that make him burn at the drop of a hat and a smile.

None that twist his guts like a corkscrew, rip him open like he’s a fresh kill. He didn’t even know her name, anything about her. He swore to God he wasn’t this type of man, couldn’t be bought with some pretty eyes and cherry lipstick. Happened to wet-behind-the-ears boys only ever hoping their balls dropped into manhood, not guys like him. Not men that had seen a thing or two, not men who had sampled the female sex from every fucking era the last two hundred years had presented. 

Not men with demons, not men with metal bones and rust spinning through his cells like Satan’s blood. Not him. 

But it doesn’t seem to matter, because her presence in the limo upsets his sensibilities like an earthquake. Seemed to fillet him like a fat bass, pull his ribs back to watch his heart beat.

Everything he didn’t know, everything she could be—choked the life out of him, those wicked blues heavy as steel. If he weren’t careful, she’d see through him, like—like memories. And she, like everyone else, wouldn’t like what she saw lurking in his bones, in the organ behind his ribs. 

All his life hiding who he is, years hiding from everything the world wanted to label him, only to—

Fuck. Yeah . Something’s off—is his leg bouncing? The fuck is that about? Fuck, fuck. His fingers card through his hair, cough aching in his bronchial tubes. Shit.  

Another glance in the glass reveals she isn’t even looking at him, thoughts out the window in the shifting low lights of the limo’s interior. Maybe a million miles from here, but nonetheless—she’s everywhere, every damn where in the space of the Chrysler, this sinwagon that’s messing with his head. Everything about her.

Her scent, her pheromones playing him like a fucking game , the heat along her spine. Blood in her veins, ripping through her heart, the pull and push of arteries and cardiovascular muscle. Mesh of her lungs, rising and falling. He’s tuned into it like it’s the fucking evening news. 

And everything about this is wrong, his guts swim with it. 

Fingering the cigar between two swollen knuckles, Logan ignores pain that zings. Rips through the adamantium in his arm like it’s starving, hunting for air. And Logan is maybe considering that he’s lost his mind, that it’s somehow taken up residence in his dick, when—-a sniffle .

Good fuck. Is she crying? Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

It’s magic, the little breathy thing girls do when they’ve been crying, but don’t want you to flag it. Witchraft, maybe. Men will never understand how they do it, cry without tears, but—it’s a thing.

Definitely, confirmed by science somewhere, some egghead in a lab taking notes on female specimens and how they manage such emotion while still looking like she does. Vaguely his memories spin with all the girls he’s known throughout his life, and how every single one of them have this ability hardwired into their core being, mutations aside. 

Biting the cigar between his teeth in the corner of his mouth, he flicks the lighter between his thumb and index finger, holding it up in line of sight. His head angles to look up at the rearview, a rough cough rattling the mesh of his lungs enough to trigger her attention.

And sure enough, she has been crying—her knuckle gently brushes at the trails of tears all but neon on her face beneath the limo’s lights, eyes flicking to the rearview to meet his. 

Coughing, he eases his back against the seat. Hot muscle burns a little as tension bleeds away, “You care if I smoke?” 

And why he asks, Logan isn’t sure—he’s never asked before. Then again, he’s never had to ask, because it’s a standing policy to not smoke on a gig.

Tonight, though, he needs something to do with his hands, to calm the magma rushing through his blood, the cold sweat bubbling up on the back of his neck. Staining his white fucking shirt. 

Even a blush from the grave and exhausted, slowly dying away from whatever is inside of him, he isn’t an idle man. If he doesn’t do something, he won’t be able to help himself—he can barely fight back the urge to not lose whatever sanities buried alive and get himself off, right here and now.  

Anything to masquerade the scent of whatever’s slick between her legs. You are a sick, perverted fuck, Logan. True, probably. But it’s been years, a lot of years. And he hasn’t wanted a lot of women, hasn’t clocked many that he’d actually enjoy rousting up a fantasy over. And she smells like a good time, something he may not actually regret. That would be a first. 

Tucking a little tighter against the door, her eyes close as she gently shakes her head. Curls flick around her features as she does, and she cracks her window before reaching forward to slip off both shoes. Logan had noticed them—yellow, bright highlighter yellow so jovial they may as well have smacked him upside his head. So out of place, but they were sexy as hell—he’d always appreciated a well-dressed woman, and as impractical as they were, high heels did add a punch of something that made him a little hard in the dick. 

“I do, but go ahead,” it’s a little sigh, one he’s all but five-star VIP familiar. “One of us should enjoy ourselves, anyway.” 

In zero to none he flicks the lighter to life, burns the edge of the cigar until it’s hot. Thick, it rides his throat perfectly—chases that gut-twisting urge that’s coiled around the base of his spine like a viper.

Through his blood it goes, ramping up the rust and poison and years that kill, and he heaves a sigh—falls back a little rougher against the seat. That ache in his cock twitches, but she retreats. 

His eyes fall closed, heart settling down behind his bones. “You wouldn’t happen to sell those little bottles of booze in this rig, would you?” Makes him start a little, and Logan blinks.

A little surprised, he angles to look over his shoulder at her, arm lifting to drape over the bench seat. Brow raised, she elaborates, obviously reading his expression. “You know, the luxury part of ‘luxury accommodations’?” 

“Not a part of the deal, honey.” 

“Ah, you don’t like money, then,” the corner of her mouth ticks up with a smirk when he shifts a little more in his seat to study her. He catches what she lays down, without thinking. “And I ain’t anyone’s ‘honey’, so don’t be an ass and assume. Please.” Blinking, Logan can’t remember the last time he felt his stomach actually lift with amusement—the little way she says her ‘o ’s’ is dangerous, suggests the north–either Canada. Minnesota, Wisconsin. North Dakota maybe?

Anywhere but this far on the border, the edge of the world. Interesting.

Fucking Calliban. 

Knew he’d regret the hard copy that albino had suggested, but, it was too little too late. Surprised, he manages a little growl of complaint before he leans forward, hand fumbling against the floorboard carpet of the passenger’s side.

Knuckles nudge the bottle of Jack Daniels, and he grabs the neck of it before allowing it to dangle between his fingers. Amber liquid dances like a tornado through the bottle, sloshing against the glass like a dream. 

Unstopping it, he pulls back a sharp drink of it. “Have at it,” it’s rough, raw. Irritation peeks through the teeth of it, but it’s more resigned than anything. 

Leaning forward, her eyes hold his and she hesitates to snatch the bottle away, hand hanging in the air. She’s got lithe fingers, bigger hands—hands that look strong. His attention cocks slightly when he notices the callouses, the scars on her knuckles. They aren’t polished; nine-to-five office hands like ninety percent of the girls who pass through his service. Briefly he wonders what her fake nails would feel like curled against skin but dismisses it when she plucks the bottle from between his fingers. 

“Thanks ,” her chuckle comes from her gut, almost a growl of relief that says finally! as she puts the cool class to her lips.

Guzzles back a full shot. Rights, her cherry lips part into a small smile as she hands the bottle back, passing her thumb over left behind lipstick.

“Good God that burns,” managing a little cough, Logan replaces the stop and pops it between his thighs. “But it’s good. Takes the edge off.” 

I bet it does. He manages a growling mhm, settling back into his seat. Thinking that’s the last of it. Content to look out the window and smoke his cigar, not think about the heat ricocheting off the adamantium in his pelvis. How it stirs up his blood, how her voice is that perfect lilt of low and just high enough. 

Head swimming with the mental picture of her beneath him, breathless and hot , he bristles to attention when her arms drape over the front seat. Very suddenly all Logan can smell is the heady smell of woman and sweat rolling off of her like a locomotive. 

She mutters under her breath something Logan can’t quite track, bit the way she picks at a nail with her teeth, gaze anywhere but inside the low limo’s lighting, would imply negatives.

And she could’ve started reciting the phone book, he wouldn’t have noticed—far too busy noticing cleavage and the valley of her collarbones to be able to think straight. 

But his stare gets heavy, she notices the thick air that’s smothering the limo like a wet dream–her eyes find his, a little smile at the corner of her mouth when his flick away. 

Oh, good fuck. Her eyes bore into him through the rearview. Uncapping the Jack, he takes another sharp pull of it. It chases the warmth in the back of his throat, blooming in his chest like he didn’t know what. 

More pregnant silence. She shifts against the leather, hot skin sticky against it. Reaching to put the car in accessory, Logan fiddles with the A/C. He clocks her swiping her heels from the floor, wrangling them back on her feet—hadn’t she just taken the damn things off? 

“I should go get them before either of them do something they’ll regret,” her eyes cast to the clock on the dash, which isn’t terribly far from his ID information, which is offensively just there. “It’s late.”

It isn’t, not really. Logan thinks this has to be the most conservative hen party in the history of such things, but his jaw clamps shut. 

If he can bail them out of his car early, he may be able to catch a few hours of sleep before the early-hour rush. That hour when last call sends boozers into the streets, looking for rides. That’s where the money was, after all—and God knew he could use the dough. 

Her hand floating over the handle of the door, as if she’s waiting for his consent. “Paid by the hour, darlin’,” and Logan does not miss the way darlin’ hits her—sharp eyes flick down to his mouth for a fraction of a heartbeat, a little plume of color lifting to the apples of her cheeks that definitely isn’t rouge.

Blush, they called it now. She has plenty of it on her face, but it darkens something pretty in a way that, usually, would amuse him. 

Instead, now, he just lifts a hand to slot through the openings on the Chrsyler’s steering wheel, ignoring the ache between his knuckles. 

He can’t have arthritis , can he? Popping the latch, he twists out of the limo. Crosses around the front through the headlights to her side. A flick of his fingers and he pulls open the door, highlighter yellow heels spilling out to the pavement in that Hollywood way. 

He doesn’t do this— he makes a habit not to touch customers. Usually his hand finds his pocket, as a rule.

But for some reason, her eyes skating through the dark, panning around the street and the front of the club, lights the mesh of his lungs on fire. Offering her his hand, its appearance before her drops a rod through her spine—she straightens, blinking at it once before her fluttery lashes look up at him. 

He wonders if the little flick of muscle in her jaw actually takes muscle memory. Looking at him with a look that’s uncertain, that’s you sure? heartbeats pass and make the moment uncomfortable.

Shuffling his weight on his feet, his hand falls from the door and to his pocket, palming the lighter against his thigh. Phlegm and whatever else God created in the human body rattles around the poison in his chest, a low cough echoing off his bones. 

It takes her a second to collect, looking between him and his hand. “By the hour. Right,” her eyes skate down his chest, over all of him, as if she’s making sure. Her hand slips into his too lightly to matter, as if she’s making an effort to limit contact—and that’s a good thing, because Logan is fairly sure the world had stopped spinning, the electrical pulses of his body kicking to overdrive at just how alive her skin feels. Senses heightened to infinity.

He could count stars, maybe, with the way her nails deliciously press into his palm, rough and hard. Warm, the scent of peaches all but punches his lights out—he can’t even taste his cigar, body enamored with the way she smells, how her hand all but boils in his. 

The fuck, Logan. 

Stepping out, sharp eyes navigate the front of the club, and a blackhole of the universe suddenly opens between them when her hand falls away. Heels tick against the concrete as she turns to face him batting the door closed. Hands in pockets, he kicks back against the Chrysler. Waiting. 

“Thanks,” her smile is small, eyes casting down to the filth of midnight on the concrete, “It shouldn’t be long.” 

He shrugs, “‘S your money, honey,” is followed by a grunt as she nods, turns on her heel. Sashays back into the front of the club before flashing a wristband to the bouncer. Between the help eyeballing her in that dress and Logan unable to stop ogling just how it clings, highlights every curve of her, it’s a miracle either of them are still standing. 

Reappearing fifteen minutes later with girlfriends in tow, Logan folds them into the limo politely, without incident. Giggling, traces of the night have painted both of her companions—long gone is the bride sash and dimestore plastic tiara. Replaced by smudged-and-attempted-to-be-fixed makeup.

Teased hair, ruffled clothes. Nobody could miss that hickey for anything, it would take stock-market shattering amounts of base to cover it up—Mars would have a better time trying to see needles in haystacks.

No amount of cigar smoke clinging to his clothes, sweat hanging out as an idea under his nose could cut through that unmistakably sweet musk of sex, sweat. 

Before Logan can ask where to point the Chrysler, the other girl pops off an address from her phone to what is most definitely not their hotel, or anywhere remotely in the neighborhood of partylife.

Brow raised, Logan peeks the rearview to see his companion whirl so quickly in her seat, he wonders how her head is still attached. Look on her face says everything words don’t, but she asks anyway—” Where the hell is that?” 

Trying not to overhear, but it’s impossible, he fiddles with the temperature controls again when the one lifts the hair from the back of her neck. “It’s a hotel,” no shit , it’s the most expensive district in the area.

Highbrows stay there—he’d picked them up on the opposite side of the metro, in the middle-class accommodations. Sour bile splashes up the back of his throat, jaw setting–he knows what’s about to happen. 

“No, really? And here I thought it was the frickin’ monastery,” lunging over her friend stuck in the middle, she plucks the phone from her friend’s hand—laughing hysterically, face flushed with alcohol and tipsy giggles, her jaw opens fully on its hinge. Rapt attention almost has his heart exploding; he nearly misses the stop sign—pops the brake a little hard. 

She studies herself against the door, eyes flicking to him for half a second. Phone flipping screen first to her friend, she nods to it. “Who the hell is Mike?” 

Lowering the phone to her lap, her eyes skate between the two friends, hard. Heavy. Fast. 

“Oh my god. Don’t tell me—” 

“It’s just a fling,” her name rolls off her friend’s tongue sourly, like cold venom. If Logan weren’t so invested in the outcome of this conversation he’d think it was almost melodic, a unique name.

Fine and perfect for the sweet little thing currently erupting in his backseat. Too busy pacing traffic, his tongue skates along over his back molars, “don’t get your panties in a twist, honey. It’ll just for a few hours, to have some fun.” 

“A few hours?” The actual squeak in her tone was laughable, “You’re joking—you’re actually kidding me. You can’t just go fuck some random guy you met in a bar, you’re getting married. ”

Offensive hangs in the words like a hot iron, branding itself into the atmosphere with weighty judgment enough to make her chest rise and fall with rapid, uneven breaths. “I won’t let you—”

Eyeroll extreme, Logan could’ve flinched with how much it snaps like a whip. “Oh my god, would you just chill out?” Looking to the other friend, who’s phone is still held captive on her lap, Logan bites the inside of his cheek.

Like black cobras their chests fan out, both of them turning to cast frigid judgment to their third, who is pressed against the door to create distance from the very idea of the two of them. For fuck’s sake, “It’s just oral, honey—” 

He snorted. 

All their eyes trip to him, but Logan is nothing if not suave covering with a cough, he bites back a smile into his lower lip, looking down to his lap. Holy shit, they were actually having this conversation. In the back of his limo. If he weren’t so amused, it could be hot. Smokin’. 

But the look on his companion’s face is too horrified, too innocent for him to take any enjoyment out of the topic of conversation flitting beneath the lights of the limo. It’s scandalous, really. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, but it just—it didn’t fit. Without knowing anything about much, he knows this isn’t her.

Neon Heels, brunette curls.

Lipstick barely upset, smelling like peaches of sweat. He could feel it in the very adamantium slowly flogging life out of his body. 

Color drains out of her face, milkwhite like a ghost. He’s fairly certain she’d rather cut out her tongue and serve it to him on a silver platter than actually go through with such things. Logan knows a thing or two about life, he’s studied humanity for a lot of fucking years—he knew the good ones when he saw them. Pure, untouched. 

Or, at the very least, good . 

“Just oral?” 

“Would you just stop, ok? Nobody is asking you to come up. Don’t need to be all, all pissy just because nobody noticed you at the bar,” and it’s hot, like acid.

Cutting to bone.

Logan watches the words cut like knives through the mesh of her chest, and if his collar wasn’t absolutely on fire, he’d have the audacity to smack some decency into whatever the fuck this chick’s problem was.

“It’s not your thing. That’s fine. It’ll be just fine,” leaning forward, the bride informs him that once he’d dropped them at the hotel, he can take her back to their hotel. We’ll just Uber back in the morning. 

“Fine by me.” 

And it makes more sense, the longer he thinks about it. Explained the tears, the fluster in the atmosphere.

Pushing the Chrysler through traffic, the tension in the atmosphere snaps like a rubber band—she doesn’t even flinch. In fact, her jaw clenches. Muscles ticks off bone, and she hands back her friend’s phone before falling back into the seat, eyes cast out the window like they’ve been welded to the darkness.

Wind out of her sails, her elbow props on the windows ledge, subconsciously her hand covers half of her face.

Quiet as death, unmoving as a sarcophagus. 

Logan had never seen someone’s soul die while they were still alive, but he figures this was close. 

Silence enough to make the dead uncomfortable follows for a few seconds. He focuses his attention on driving the limo rather than looking in the rearview, because noticing the look on her face, actually caring, is so far out of his pay grade that it’s laughable.

To her credit, he doesn’t think she’s actually crying—hell would sooner freeze over, he reckons—but her brow is set in such a hard line, that he can almost read the regret on her face in red letter clarity. 

Ensuing conversation about how the bride’s tits look in her hardly-there dress has him almost disinterested.

Guiding the Chrysler up to the curb of the hotel, he almost misses "Hey driver!" that's more giggle than it is anything else.

Eyes tracking to the rearview, Logan isn’t nearly as surprised as he thought he would be when she rips down the front of what was once, probably, an investment dress—tits, yeah. Nice ones, too bought and paid for by the looks of it.

Tits that size don’t just sit up at attention without a calculated surgeon’s hand. 

“Like what you see?” 

Puffing out a little nervous chuckle, his brow trips up. He shakes his head, amused.

Erupting into a fit of snickers and snorts, their cheeks darken with heat. Falling against themselves, the two of them think they’re fucking hilarious as they begin to discuss the course of their adventure. 

May as well be full-fledged pornography in the back of his rig, the things that fly—it sparks up his blood, empties his mouth of any moisture Jack Daniels may have rousted. 

God couldn’t have brought up the hotel’s curb any faster, he thinks. Dropping the Chrysler into park, he angles to pop the latch on his door.

Misses completely the moan of leather, the little rock of moving bodies shifting around the backseat. 

Logan all but jumps when two hands come around him from behind. “Maybe you should come upstairs, driver—bet you could show a young bride a thing or two, huh?” 

Fuck, fuck fuck— hands that palm down his chest, snake under the buttons of his white shirt are hot. Hot, practiced.

Soft and deliberate, one of their nails flicks against his nipple, beneath his undershirt—he grunts back a sharp breath, head all but braced against the Chrysler’s hard headrest. 

Adamantium kisses the flesh of his knuckles, and it takes effort not to let loose—more brainpower than he wants to admit, fighting back the reflex.

Hand shaking on his knee, he inhales an uneasy breath and presses the heel of either hand onto his knees, biting the corner of his chapped lip. Hand drifting lower, almost to his abs, he snatches her wrist with a speed he doesn’t remember.

Couldn’t, hadn’t, for as long as he can think back. 

“Somethin’ tells me you know plen’y, honey,” his eyes narrow in the rearview. “Plus, I don’t do free fucks.” 

She chuckles, pleased. “Who said anything about free?”

Lifting her hand away from inside his shirt, he throws her off—cackling like the little witch she is, she folds out of the limo with her friend, “Very professional of you, driver,” he couldn’t miss the darkness in her tone if he’d tried as she winks at him from his window, “drive safe. Precious cargo, back there.” 

Could’ve fooled him. 

A wiggle of her fingers goodbye to her friend in the backseat, the hotel’s thick doors swallow both of them whole. Vanishing in a twirl of hair and makeup, Logan turns in his seat to consider his last passenger.

She hasn’t moved, merely has kicked off her heels—but she has allowed herself to cry. Fresh tears fall down the length of her cheeks, but she doesn’t sniffle. They’re silent, powerful.

Say everything words don’t need to—it’s a deep knife, one that bleeds. Logan can see the film reel running through her brain, on repeat. As if it has subtitles. A black and white horror show of just exactly what had happened, how she’d ended up here. 

Curling a leg up under herself, Logan watches her shrink into as small of herself as she can, forehead resting against the cool glass of the limo’s window.

And it’s tragic, really—someone who looks like that, reduced to a teary, smoldering shell of a person by mere words. 

Logan knew people were cruel, he’d seen the worst of humanity up close and personal. His own life was hell trapped in bones and flesh, his own history more horrific than anything Hollywood could dream up. 

He drives. That’s what he does, that’s who Logan is now. A driver.  

It’s another 20 minutes across town. And the ride is ominous, a mummified tomb that’s suffocating no matter how much air whisks into the limo from open windows.

Trapped between wanting to say something and unsure of how to react, he relaxes a little when she finally slips earphones in—mindlessly scrolling a cell phone. Swiping at tears that ruin makeup she no longer cares about.

Alone in her own little world of music and heartache, he watches the night fall away from her—her hair goes back into clips, away from her face.

Earrings come off. Out come the contacts, replaced instead with glasses from the purse she’d left on the floorboards. Gum, more scrolling on her phone. Heels set on the seat beside her–finally her eyes close as she rests against the cool glass. 

Gently rolling the Chrysler to a stop at the curb, she sits up. Breathlessly, she stretches a little, lashes fluttering behind frames that accentuate the shape of her face. And Logan doesn’t remember thinking anyone has ever looked good in glasses, but she topples such ideology when she beats him to the punch—she pops the latch on the door and steps out, barefoot.

Heels tucked under her arm, purse hanging off her shoulder, she meets him at his door when he slips out of the front seat. 

Handling cash had never felt so cold, bitter. She doesn’t look at him as she counts it into his hand, more than they’d agreed. Slipping the remainder of it back into her bag, she steps back, smiling at him softly. Resigned. Apologetic. 

Light from the overhang of the hotel sets off whatever shine is on her face, tear stains all but left behind—replaced instead with pink cheeks and sad, swollen eyes. 

“Should be square,” she nods to the cash in his hand, “you can count it again if you want, I won’t be offended.”

Briefly Logan thinks to care if her friends had managed their parts of the fare, but he dismisses it when she bites the inside of her cheek, tongue skating over her bottom lips as she shifts awkwardly on her feet.

“Thank you so much for tonight—you have a beautiful limousine. The whiskey was great, thank you.” 

Nodding once, he shrugs a shoulder. She’s buying time in that awkward little way people do when they’re not sure what to say but think they have to say something.

She doesn’t, wouldn’t ever—but he wants her to, strangely. Logan could stand here and listen to her come up with things to say the rest of the night, if he knew it wouldn’t deepen the color on her face, drive a little deeper the knife that’s still gutting her in the ribs. 

Sucking in a sharp breath, her eyes track up to his from her feet standing on the warm concrete.

“Listen, Logan—” she remembered his name, “I’m sorry about my friend. She’s really wasted, and it totally wasn’t alright for her to proposition you like that. It was actually gross—but that’s not who she is, not really. I’m sorry. She’s just—” 

“—didn’t even notice her, honey.”

He lies.

What else is there to do but lie to this pretty little thing, bloodletting her own pride out at his feet? For a long set of years, Logan has believed there’s very little good left in the human species—very few people who are worth giving two fucks about.

But she’s so gallant, defending some slut’s non-existent honor, drowning in her own humiliation and everything he can only imagine happened during a hen party gone sideways. 

“Oh, uh, well —” oh. 

How she says it, the little curve of her mouth. That accented “o”.

It’s enough to make him insane, honestly.

He’s been with her two hours and can hardly think past the twitch of his cock, the little ache that niggles in the back of his head. Behind his eyes. It gets a little hard to fight, the snapping air between the two of them—for a man who knows what it feels like, it’s difficult. 

She couldn’t be more nonplussed. Which says more than it needs too, makes it all the sweeter.

“Sorry, oh my gosh. I’m just a little—I don’t do things like this.”

And that is honorable, even if there’s very little honor left among the thieves of humanity. She is honorable. So saccharine and pretty it physically hurts him, drying out the back of his throat and knocking at his ribs like a damn jackhammer.

Her eyes holding his, searching for anything else, are so deep and alive, bright in the way only Polaris could ever challenge—he suddenly forgets where he is, what century it is. How he got here, what he’s doing, reaching for the thin strap of her dress. 

The back of his knuckle gently skips over her skin, the strap of the dress. And before Logan can even manage a breath, his hand moves under her chin, tips it up a little.

Unmoving, her eyes widen like two bright moons, light catching them and opening them up like oceans fully unpassable to the known universe.

From here he can feel her pulse flying through her blood and couldn't miss the butterflies in her stomach if he’d been on a different planet.

And maybe she’s never been appreciated like this—maybe she’s never felt seen. 

Fuck, the things he could do to her.

“Quit apologizin’ for bein’ sweet,” he manages a low rasp, the corner of his mouth ticking up with a little grin, “very few pretty things left in the world that’re sweet,” tipping her chin up a little further, his lips hover over hers.

“And I bet you taste as good as you look, honey.”

Tucking some hair behind her ear, he rubs one of her curls between the calluses on his fingers. 

He gets back in his car, and Logan drives.

Because that's what he does.

Waiting for him is worse than any torture.

It isn't just the absence — maybe in some twist of the universe she could handle being alone. Once, she had been alone, in the days where Logan's name didn't appear next to hers on paper, in theory, or in wanted notices. Once she'd been able to cope, alone in the world, just another person.

But now, she is less a person. At least to the naked eye. She is a thing. Nouns are made up of people, places, and things, her early-life grammar lessons recall — people. Places. Things.

Once, she'd been one of those definitions. Weapon X made her another.

But isn't that what weapons are — nouns. Objects. Things.

It's never buried so far beneath her skin than it has since coming to Burns. Alaska is a harsh and unforgiving hell of a place, but it is quiet. Alone. The skies dance with painted colors of the Aurora one night, while days are brutally short with no sun and even less hope. Safety is an illusion. Survival— that's not so commonplace.

Being a woman? Well. That's another thing entirely. Not only are women scarce blood around here — they're less an individual person, more a concept. A desire. A possession of which to acquire. More divine than money, and as illusive, women are the currency of Burns in a way that nobody talks about, that doesn't appear in travel catalogues or tax returns.

Women here either arrive married or they get that way, real quick. Usually with their bellies swollen and their hopes dashed. Burns has that affect — it's a crude backwater, like most fishing communes are this far north.

Marry, fuck, work the bar, fuck, pop out a few kids that the state will either encourage away or the water will claim, fuck, feed a man, fuck, work whatever semblance of a homestead a family can stand to maintain in the frosted wastelands of Satan's personal Eden, fuck, kill a few animals to survive, fuck, eventually die if your mental health doesn't take you first.

And that's why they stare. They stare because women are less a person, more a concept. A prayer.

A thing.

Freezing chill trojans into the supply store behind a bold arc of sunlight as the heavy door kicks open, arctic skies faraway in a sense that feels storybook, ethereal. Like this almost isn't real — in some ways, it doesn't feel like it.

Thick shadow takes up the full of the doorway like God, door braced open with an arm no smaller than trees growing in the sleeping forest beyond city lines.

“Logan,” there’s a relief she can’t fingerprint, but it hammers against her bones all the same.

Turning, she abandons her selections faster than the speed of light, they drop with a solid song at her feet, enough to shake the world— or at least her place in it.

“You’re here,” it’s like breathing sweet air. His full scent takes up the space of the four walls, making parts of her tremble she hasn’t felt in weeks. Parts of her that spin and swirl with new life, with purpose.

“Missed you somethin’ bad, baby.”

Breathe deep of him, honey—don’t ever let him leave. Never again—never leave me, Logan.

Slipping between shelves and stacked wares like whisks of death, her feet are light. Airier than they should be, carrying around steel bones, the seed of a man older than new stars. The weight of universes was less than the life knitting in the depth of her womb, but she was designed for this—built.

A weapon. A thing.

Mere sight of him, scent of him stirs her blood like a swirling, hot little thing she didn’t know—his child in her womb all but leapfrogs into her chest cavity. He’s strong, she knows it—and it is a boy. Her bones know it.

Nothing short of Logan’s son could brave the adamantium of bones like this child kicks around her womb.

Meeting his shadow in the door is just short of staring God in the face, stepping into the embrace of his extended arm is a providence she could rejoice for. Nearly forbidden, how sinfully good it is.

A fortress to which she can stake hope, serenity. A future.

The smile knifing at his lips is genuine, more of Logan than many will ever know in this life. Steady heartbeat up against her breast as she rests against him, his arm falls around her shoulders perfectly. Fortressing her away from the press of Burns, the dark eyes staring at them from the counter, the aisles, the world.

Thumb gently kneading against her shoulder, his low rumble of approval lights her soul on fire, his other hand lifting to brush knuckles along her cheek.

“‘Course I’m here, darlin’,” he angles his head enough for his lips to skip over the line of her jaw, “couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”

Smelling of ocean salt, fish, sweat, he invades her senses like an assault.

Capitulating quickly, her pulse kicks to life in a way that sends her spine almost numb. Lips chapped from frigid air as they skip across her skin, it's like tasting starlight as he kisses her, softly. Tenderly, so unlike everything he, actually, is.

A large hand palms graciously over the swell of her belly, protectively. Possessive, like she's made of the finest things buried in faraway, wild mountains. Reserved for him, to defend. Fight for. Kill for. Skin to skin that never ceases to drive her within an inch of sanity.

“Look at you,” his finger dips beneath her chin, voice low. He lifts her gaze a little to consider her eyes.

Satisfied she's rapt under his attention, right where he wants her, Logan's big hands find either side of her belly, feeling. Seeking, yearning in fascinated little ways he's been since she started showing early in her fertility. And he lifts the weight of their unborn child, what she knows in her soul is their son, the hot tension of weight falling off her spine like a prayer.

It's orgasmic. Better than sex, almost, if she were brave. Her gasp is audible, nearly pornographic as her head falls back, her hands steadying his in place on either side of belly. A silent petition to not let go, never let go.

Logan leans close, nuzzles his nose against the soft spot behind her ear. His muttons graze her skin in a slow poison that takes her apart, second by second, kicking her pulse up a notch to the point she can't even think clearly anymore.

His lips skate along her jaw, chapped lips kissing her cheek, slow and hard. He nudges his nose along the shell of her ear, a low growl rattling around the base of his ribs, which nearly ring with the weight of his husk.

He chuckles in her ear, and it levels her places she can't even remember.

“Mm — you look good. All fat ‘n full’a me, darlin’.”

Oh, he was wicked.

Strength, composure evaporates. Takes with it all the air from her lungs as she manages, somehow, a low growl of approval. Knees buckle.

Swear to God. If she weren’t already so full of his baby—she would’ve been. In shorter order than she probably could realize.

He kisses her hard, fully. Hot. "Let's go home, yeah?"

She nods into his mouth, tongue chasing his. Unable to speak beyond a breathless moan, he takes her hand. Abandons anything they may have needed in town, and guides her to the truck she'd driven in off the ridgeline.

To him, she's not a currency. Not a thing, not a weapon, not an object. She's not even what Weapon X pumped her full of years ago when they'd thought it a good idea to genetically copy the Wolverine they barely had contained.

To Logan, it's simply. She's her. A person. The thing God had created her to be all those years ago when she came out of her mother's womb, ready to influence the world toward a better future with mutant and human symbiosis. But mostly, to Logan? She's his person.

She is something that belongs to him. And she can live with that. Has. It's burned into her like a second skin she can't shake, a hunger that won't die.

"....and that's a wrap, everybody. Nice work. Class dismissed."

Almost immediately, the simulation cuts away, holographic images slipping away in a blur of crystalline shimmer. A breath of, what had been for the last hour, a downtown hellscape of fire, brimstone and the end of the world, they slip into nothingness, the Danger Room sentineling back into its cold, sterile environment of a self.

Heavy doors kick open with a metallic bang, hydraulics snapping as air from the corridor jumps into the room. Harsh fluorescent light cuts through the opening, exposing the pristine stainless exterior of the corridor, which is wrought with such a silence it's enough to challenge the dead.

The class begins to funnel out of the room, muttering and chattering about the simulation. The overall tone is pleased with the exercise—they always are. Logan's classes are favorites among the Institute; highly rated, always attended.

Guys say he's an easy A. The girls think he's a heartthrob and an easy fuck.

Or so churn the rumors in the dark, when the lights of the mansion are low and Chuck isn't pressing his luck with reading the room. It's a small wonder the place is still standing, the grounds still viable —all considered.

Murmurs from the class descend down the hall, disbanding into whispers as the elevator chimes. Drops heavy at the foundation floor. Even from her place at the entrance of the simulation room, she can hear the students shuffle on. The press of a button, the whine of metal, and the car rallies up.

A low stitch of pain burns at her side, humming as her hand presses to the wound. Injuries weren't uncommon in the danger room, especially running offensive exercises and hand to hand—and she had been clumsy, foot catching on atmospheric brick. She'd hesitated enough that Logan had seen the opening, took a swipe at her with an arc that, oddly enough, she could still taste on her tongue.

Face twisting up in a grimace, she considers her hand. Palm slick with the warm blood that seeps from the wound, she's mildly grateful it's just a knick. Logan is capable of severing bone with the twitch of his small finger, walking off a demo with a small scratch is nothing. Had been nothing, a hundred times before.

He checks his shoulder for her, pointed toward the exit.

"You comin', darlin'?"

Even back to her, she can hear his fingers rustling through the front pocket of his leather jacket for a cigar, the Zippo he keeps against his heart like it's another chamber of it.

The scent of the thing explodes beneath her nose, even fifteen feet away—enhanced senses make it more pronounced than it actually is. Barely she can remember a time when scent was an idea, or an inkling; now each one is deep, intruding, aggressive. Hammers at her olfactory system like a knife, gouging away at logic and processing power.

Sweet smoke camps in the front of her brain, takes up the moisture of her mouth before it falls away beneath the sharp scent of him. His sweat, testosterone. Whatever cologne he'd decided to wear a week ago, the sharp zing of the detergent that hangs out in the stich of his jeans. The brush of bike exhaust that seems carved in every line of his flesh.

There's so much of him all the time, it's hard to breathe.

When she doesn't respond, he turns around. Pauses the drag he'd been primed to take on the cigar when he immediately registers the injury, her hand pressed to her side. Fat drops of blood on the floor at her feet. How her smile is soft, almost light, as she considers him standing there in jeans and a leather jacket, nonplussed that they'd just endured a Level III training episode.

"The hell happened here?" Cigar sagging in the corner of his mouth, he crosses to her in a series of hard, long strides, batting her hand away from her abdomen.

"This ain't from me," he dismisses the idea like it's fantasy, "that ain't me, right?"

She shrugs a shoulder, eyes rolling with a tease as she brushes by him. "It's fine," a flapping hand backs off as she makes for the exit, working the zipper off her training jacket as she rounds the corner, "give me a few minutes, won't even be able to tell."

He knows that better than anyone.

Weapon X had made sure of it when they'd pumped her biology full of whatever of him they could spare, flat out on a table like some carcass ready to carve, to mold. There are days she can still feel the precision cuts, all the way through her cells, of mutation slipping into her genome. Rattles her alleles. Changing the function of her existence, the genetic code by which the world demands of her.

Logan's fist hits the outside access panel, and the heavy doors to the room close with a bang and a release of compressed air. The scent of whatever blood she's left on the floor vanishes and will be forgotten when the sterilization process wipes the room clean of any of their presences — as if they were never there.

She navigates the armory with a familiarity that will haunt her the rest of her life, commandeering one of the benches to drop her boots.

Slowly she can feel her cells mobilizing to the wound—it's not really tangible, but the psycho-somatic bond she shares with Logan's own biology kicks up, tells her that even now, her abdominal wall is regenerating tissue. Kicking out inflammation, sterilizing, consuming bacteria.

She can feel the moment her flesh trembles, stitching back together.

Her healing process is slower than Logan's. Not by much, but enough that her legs are uneasy as she stands again, her head light as a barrage of blood exits the wound. Forced out by meat, by flesh, by new skin.

Lifting away the Institute cooling shirt, she balls it up and chucks it to the corner, beside all the laundry that's overdue.

Retrieving fresh clothes, Logan is at her side in less than heartbeats, crowding her against the armoire. One hand steady at her hip, big and warm against the skin that peeks out from her compression layer, leggings and a training bra.

The other hooks two fingers at the waist of her leggings, tugs to consider the affected lower quadrant. His head angles down and back for a better look, cigar hanging limp between chapped lips.

Intaking a sharp breath, she brushes back against the armor, the callous of his finger more than stimulating against the soft of her skin. Her jaw sets like stone, and any second she swears to God she'll taste the copper zing of blood on her teeth from where she's biting the pocket of her cheek.

Brow popped with amusement; she can't miss his effort not to smile. He doesn't, not really, but the catch of light in his eyes is enough to hint at amusement. She's known him long enough.

He thinks this this funny.

"You okay, sweetheart?"

Tone deliberately low, it drags like rough gravel across her skin, lighting up every hormonal marker her enhanced body possesses. He chuckles; it's a low rumble in the base of his throat.

"Don't remember you bein' so sensitive."

Snorting, she bats his hand away and steps beyond his reach. "Traditionally speaking, you have to be familiar with something to remember it," over her shoulder, she lifts a foot to the bench, pulling on a fresh sock, "and of course I'm sensitive, you just basically cut me in half."

He snorts, actually amused. "It's a flesh wound, sweetheart," taking a long pull on the cigar, he watches her slip on the other sock, eyes lingering at the cut of her hip on full display in leggings and a barely-there training tank. "I think you'll live."

Turning to face him, she smiles teasingly. "You're sweet," brushing by him again, she reaches for the bag she'd brought down with her, shoulders it roughly. "Don't cry for me or anything, Logan, someone may think you actually care."

It's a tease. Meant to bounce between them flirtatiously and be forgotten—it's their thing. They joke, flirt. Have long talks over beer and whiskey that doesn't do anything for souls that repair at every heartbeat. She'd spent a summer following him on the cage circuit, living out of a pickup and a backpack and learning everything there was to know about the little he actually remembered in his life.

He'd kissed her one time, on the corner of her mouth. She thinks. It may have been a dream, a hallucination before Weapon X had racked her full of whatever it was in her body, now, that took up space in her bone marrow and blood cells. That was when whiskey actually mattered and left an impression—he'd driven her back to the hotel after slow dancing to Clay Walker and listening to her be a giggling mess of a drunk.

Logan grabs her arm as she brushes by him, firmly. His knuckles kiss with a milkwhite that implies effort but is more resolute than anything. He doesn't look at her fully. Just considers her from the corner of his eye, like she's unpredictable or may cut him in half like a practice abattoir.

She considers his hand on her arm with a flick of her eyes. Instantly the air between them changes—replaced with a thick heat that kisses low against her womb, the places she's been ignoring since that first night he'd driven her back to a flat tire she'd left on Highway 9 somewhere up in the Canadian Yukon.

Moisture jumps down her throat, making a swift exist from her mouth, and her tongue suddenly feels like the weight of the sun in the back of her throat as her breathing deepens, just enough to make the crest of her chest rise and fall visibly.

There's little control, but enough to tremble in her muscle. The low hum of yes laps at her spine, niggling in the base of it like it has in women for six thousand years, or more. Unmoving, she doesn't dare do more than breathe lest she break whatever seance this is, whatever delicious limbo they've fallen into.

"I care." It's low, maybe even a little heady. "Have been carin' since Laughlin City."

Oh.

It hits like a jackhammer, spinning her out. Her gaze trips up to his eyes, brow slightly wrinkled with a confused furrow. With one heavy step, he walks her back against the armoire. She hits hard, the wood of the thing rattling as he steps into very personal space—sex space, space enough that she can taste the cigar on his breath, feel the rush of blood in his veins.

Somehow the backpack slips off her shoulder to her feet. She rises up on her toes, and for what reason she doesn't know—it feels right. Like trying to slip away but also beckoning him closer, an oxymoron of a thing that clenches down on her spine, that gummy spot in the low of her that burns every time he smiles at her, calls her name. Hangs his coat beside hers, sits beside her at Charles' long table that's been bringing them together for over a year now.

"You never said anything," her eyes flick to his mouth, and then back to his own, which look down at her with a rough tenderness that is more disarming from him than anything she knows to think.

Swallowing back a thick breath of dry air that smacks of him and his heat, she tries to exhale slowly, but it's breathless. Shaky. Like mountains toppling at the feet of Christ.

"Didn't have'ta. You've been fuckin' me with your eyes since New Orleans—figured it wouldn't be right, takin' advantage of you that wouldn't know what to do with a thing like me."

Her hand reaches for his, which has smoothed along her hip in a slow, tight arc that burns with a pain that she will not be able to live beyond, that grounds her to reality and the floor.

Taking his hand, she presses it against the site of the injury, which has long stitched back together with the weight of his attention. His biology that races through her like a freight train of bad ideas, and fate.

In a slow, languid touch, his finger drags along the slight curve of her stomach, the softness of it. It sends a bolt of electricity down her spine that's so clear, so white-hot, that it skips her vision.

Suddenly more alive and aware of her cellular structure than she ever had been beneath the knife that had ended her life, she bites back a low hiss as her toes curl against the floor.

Her hand smooths along his jaw, before her finger tips his chin just enough to look her in the eye.

"We aren't things, Logan," she edges forward enough to gently brush her lips against his, "I'm still me. You're still you. We're just...." the tether between them hums with a warmth she can't articulate—like honey, but less sweet than it is ferocious. A deep fury to have, to want. "We're just this."

Her hand guides his back to the once-injury, the other finding his chest. Logan leans forward, considers her mouth like it is something perhaps to claim than touch, and angles his head enough to brush his mouth over hers first, tasting. Probing. Wanting.

A heartbeat, maybe, and the world explodes into a lifeline of color that knocks her back on her instinctual heels, rattles the cages of her that have existed since she first realized what Stryker had taken from her, done to her. Logan's tongue is heavy, thick, forceful along her lower lip to the point where she considers just consuming it entirely into the warmth of her mouth.

She can't breathe, but it cuts out of her sharply all the same as she fists her hand in the front of his shirt, starving. Starving for air, for him, for closeness—it's one thing to share his biology, his mutation. The gift of God that had made him so deliciously Logan—but it's another thing entire to share him, share this, right now in this heartbeat.

She releases a sharp sigh that's more of a whimper, and that does him in. She feels the bolt of heat snap through him like a second skin, and he groans so deeply down her throat that it rattles her ribs a little, stutters against her lung tissue.

The need to breathe disappears as he backs her up, hard, against the armoire, sinking low to lift her beneath her thighs.

Her spine presses hard against the furniture, but she doesn't care.

A flick of strength, maybe, and her legs wrap around his middle, hands carding through his hair like it is the first time she has ever felt someone else's skin beneath her hands. Logan breaks first, dragging in air, forehead pressing to hers with an urgency that belies what little self-control the primal pulse of him may possess.

His eyes hold a gentleness that startles her, that she doesn't think she's ever seen in Logan before. He kisses her again, lazy suckles that taste sweet, that consider her taste as one of his hands come to press along the soft of her stomach, which now is all but trembling with the effort to control her breathing.

"Mm," he releases a low breath that makes her burn, "you're so fuckin' soft, darlin'. I forgot how soft you were," another kiss, this one harder, and her heart trips up with the psycho-somatic pull of him that tells her to feel everything, to notice him. "I don't remember the last time I got to have anythin' quite like you."

Her laugh is breathless, a hand wrapping around the back of his neck to encourage him closer, if possible, as her legs rut him forward. Tighter, nearer. Barely able to process past the idea of what this means, what all of him is capable of doing to all of her, she teasingly bites at the plush of her bottom lip.

Don't ever let me go, Logan. It cloys at her like a needy thing that won't let go, I won't let you.

"I'm right here, Logan," her lips brush along the line of his jaw, before he angles to find her again in a hard, slow kiss. It pulls a soft moan out of her that simmers low in the base of her ribcage, "I've been here all along, since Laughlin, since New Orleans, since whenever it was you started wanting more than you think you deserve."

His intake of air is sharp, like it hurt to admit, but in the right way.

"I don't deserve you," in a breath he turns them, the armoire falling away into dreamscape, and he lays her out on the bench, crowding over her like he's reading laylines. Establishing territory, knowing her. "I'll never deserve all of you." It doesn't stop him from smoothing back the curls from her face, holding her gaze like it is resurrecting him out of ancient gravestone.

Taking his face in her hands, she smiles a litttle crookedly.

"You don't have to deserve me, Logan. You never needed to."

"Daddyyyy!"

It bellows out the patched-together-with-hope windows, from the door that hangs a little a crooked. Skips across the mesa with the falling sun and golden hues of a passing day, colors of late summer something straight from God's own backyard.

Dust hasn't even settled over the compound before laughter erupts across the dirt, daring the desert to echo back to him like some kind of dream. It's a hundred degrees even with the sun dropping out of the sky, but it's the best kind of day — the earth is still, the air is clean. There's a light breeze that rattles a loose piece of tin on the compound's main building, the heart of his castle. His fortress.

The place he comes home to, every time the day gets long.

"Well look here," he tries not to smile too brightly, but he can't help it — the ache in his chest is bright, pulsing against his ribs like some kind of glorious little thing, "Best thing I've seen all day, sugarpie."

Logan kicks the door of the limo into place with a foot, ignoring the migraine that rattles against the Adamantium of his skull—drops quickly to take a knee. She's in his arms in seconds, all sapphire eyes and bouncing girls with a smile that, he is sure, will outlast the sun.

She's four and the only thing that matters, honestly—Logan, in all his almost-two centuries of life, didn't think there was room in chest bones for another heart. Was skeptical he could feel anything other than mad at the world—until her.

He'd heard that first wail of life pitch through the dark of a midnight winter sky, a soul breathing air for the first time in God's playground of living, dying. Violent, savage, but beautiful. A kind of holy that the world didn't understand, that he didn't understand until she was there. In his arms, tiny and wondrous.

A kind of beautiful he thinks there isn't enough of in the world.

Her small fingers curl into his beard, giggling at the feel of such sin brushing against everything innocent and pure in the world—his world.

Evangeline, "bringer of good news." She'd been the only sweet thing to grace their lives running under the sun—almost a century of chasing phantom hopes, outliving memories had left him little to cherish, to purpose for.

He'd chosen the name because it mattered. Heard it in a song what felt like a lifetime ago, chasing after the one woman who had managed to challenge everything that hadn't mattered from his life.

Logan had barely been breathing when she came into their life, so unexpected and sudden. It shouldn't have been the unexpected it was—he was no stranger to making love, to the sex conversation. It was inevitable, really, his biology mixed with hers. A cocktail of opportunity and fate, of chance and God's amusement.

Why not give a child to the only two people in the world that hell hadn't killed? It was divine humor, he thinks—divine humor, maybe mercy. Wrapped up in dark curls and eyes sharp enough to cut through the bones of him that hadn't seen daylight since he didn't know when.

"Daddy's home," she makes a point to drive home the word, like she's staking it between his bones, "I missed you! It’s so hot! You said we’d go swimming!"

She's so alive it almost hurts to think beyond her weight in the crook of his arm, the way her hand curls into the collar of his shirt. Logan drapes the suit coat over his arm, bouncing her a little in his arm, before pointing them in the direction of the door.

"I promised that?" He did, weeks ago. Before summer had arrived on the mesa, when all she'd been dreaming of is the frogs down by the crick a mile or so down the valley. "You sure I promised to take you swimming?" It's teasing. He's never felt lighter.

Produces that smile, though. The one that robs him of his soul every time she beams at him.

"Yes! You promised to take me, Mommy and Eliii swimming when it was hot, 'cause she says her feet hurt and get big because of the baby in her belly! You said you'd fix it!"

She drags the name of her little brother just enough to produce a chuckle from him—she had been, since he'd been born. The concept of Elias somehow had shortened to "Eliii!" three days after he'd been born. It was better than dragging the long "Eliasss!", which made her sound like some kind of snake camped out on the living room floor.

Ah. Perceptive little thing.

"I s'pose I did," he hums, amused as her head tips a little to play with one of the buttons at his collar, "Speakin' of your mama—she around somewhere, sweetheart?"

Curls bounce furiously around the steady nod she gives him; her little hand pointed toward the compound. "She was doing stuff with Eli in the baby room," her nose scrunches, annoyed but still bright, "I was helping, but I heard you come home in your big car!" Her chin lifts, a little proud, "I helped Mommy with the crib. She said I was big and strong, like you!"

Logan can feel his bones melting out of his chest. "That right?"

Nodding again, she wriggles in him, reaching down to be released. "Uh-huh! She said the baby is going to come soon, and that I have to be big to help with Eli and the new baby. Daddy," he sets her down only for her to slip her hand into his, tugging him towards the door with an urgency that is nearly unbelievable for a child her age, "when is the baby coming? Will you be home when it comes? Mommy says you need to be here to help when the baby comes."

A little breathless, he huffs a laugh as she drags him through the front door, the sun suddenly dismissed for the dark cool of their makeshift, once-another-thing-entirely space.

At the time, it had been the perfect place for two nobody's to lay low and escape the world, outrun the sky—now, he wondered daily. Rusty nails and concrete floors weren't exactly the place to raise a brood, Wolverine blood or not. Three of them, no less. I

He'd lived in less, and more. They both had. It didn't curb his concern about young life though, what memories the next generation of him would carry into the world. It was nightmare enough to think they'd be harrowed with the realization their parents were survived mutant experiments—weapons with souls and social security, little more else.

It sucked the life out of him, most nights. Worrying about the future, nightmares that weren't theirs. If he could keep them all he would, stave off the wolves that threatened to tear any good thing of his world apart. Eventually, they'd come to terms.

Eventually, he'd be responsible for the morality of bringing children into the world, knowing what he is.

Hi, my name is Evangeline, and my dad lived two hundred and fifty years with a metal skeleton and a drinking problem. Mom was a mutant breeder gone wrong and somehow they both ended up unkillable, surprise!

Yeah, he could see the Christmas cards.

"Lo? You in here?"

His gaze snaps up from the kitchen counter, the half-cut vegetables for dinner abandoned in favor of other motherly responsibilities. No knife — big surprise. Why use cutlery when it literally comes home every night in a big limousine, comes out of your own skin.

"Yeah, darlin'."

It rings across the house, upsets the sheetmetal walls.

Heartbeats, and she's breezing into the common room like something out of a dream he doesn't remember earning. Oversized t-shirt, hair pulled back, barefeet and all flushed skin smiles back at him as she crosses the floor, eyes alive with the same flame of light he's been orbiting for the last four decades.

She's all the best parts of his mutation, his survival. Weapon X had intended to create something that would divine humanity and mutants forever—a biological weapon. While Stryker had meant to make him indestructible, he'd meant to make her untouchable—the missing link to an army that hell itself had envisioned.

She did for him now the very thing she'd been intended to do for hell itself—give life. She had solved Weapon X's mutagenic reproduction problem, a lifetime ago. Her God-given genetic code, mixed with his, had unlocked the world of opportunity for a vision to change the world, and rid it, of natural mutation repopulation.

A living master mold for the future of mutant depopulation, only to become little more than a mutant herself. It was blissfully sweet irony, and had been, since the day he'd cut the cord keeping her tethered to whatever reality Stryker had planted in her psyche.

And now, she's his. Fully and unguarded—his. In soul and body, in purpose and divinity. His. Logan's. For the first time, he possessed something that stayed—something that lived. And she'd given him the one thing he'd never been able to grab hold to himself, in two hundred years of life.

Hope. Wrapped up in baby clothes, sticky fingers, and all the sweet things life is meant to give men who actually try.

He can't even think about it with forgetting how to breathe.

"Hey," her voice is bright, but soft, "you're home." The back of her hand brushes along his cheek. "Long day? You look tired."

Coming up beside him, she shifts Elias to his awaiting arms and brushes her mouth against the line of his jaw, landing a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Her hand lingers on his chest, the other reaching to adjust the pacifier in Elias' mouth as Logan holds him against his chest, like a nuclear warhead. A prayer.

"'M home, darlin'," he tips his forehead to hers, trying not to smile. "You look pretty as the sky," he manages a pleased groan, "never too tired comin' home to you, pretty thing."

His hand lifts to gently tuck a finger beneath her chin, thumb gently stroking the soft of her skin. Managing a small smile, he angles his head just enough to kiss her fully, deeply, softly. The kind of kiss he could give her here to eternity, without thinking.

The kind of kiss he craves every time he hears her name.

She smiles against his mouth, offers him a small smile before she rocks up on her toes to run her fingers through his beard. She's so soft, so careful with every aching part of him—sometimes Logan wonders if she's a dream, or even real.

Or if this is a nightmare he'll only remember in the war parts of him meant to bleed, to destroy.

His hand gently curves over the swell of her belly, feeling for the little life that thrums in the parts of her he forgets to breathe for. It's there, threaded along her heartbeat—alive and wild, so much like her.

They're all like her, all her best parts—all the parts that make him better, that have stitched together everything the world has worked apart.

Her hand folds over his, sighing between light kisses that light up his spine like something only NASA could see from the ground. His gut twists with a white-hot knife, drops low into the parts of him that matter more now than they ever had a lifetime ago. Elias raspberries against his shoulder, squeaking like babies do.

"Think you can handle little man while I finish dinner?"

His brow lifts at the suggestion, "You mean we actually get to eat today?" A last kiss before she moves around him, locked onto vegetables, "Wow. Makin' progress, are we?"

It's a good-natured jibe—the last three days, dinner has been waylaid in favor of solving tantrums and dealing with teething meltdowns, both of which have swept through the house like plague. She'd been up half the night trying to nurse, pregnant, and running on hopes and dreams while coddling Elias' hot gums—he'd spent the other half making sure Evangeline had stayed asleep.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't start with me, Lo," he doesn't see the claws pop as much as he hears the squelch of split flesh, taste the scent of coppery blood—catches the two thin blades from the back of her hand out of the corner of his eye. Still amazing, still absolutely soul shattering.

"Little man still hasn't popped that tooth, and he's been on the edge of testy all day," she nods into the common room, where Evangeline has sprawled out notebook pages and markers, a clutch of crayons across the floor, "And that young lady of yours is one temper tantrum away from needing to be dealt with when you get home."

Logan adjusts Elias in the crook of his arm, the boy busy playing with the pocket of his shirt. "Of mine?" He chuckles, kicking back against the baker's table with a raised brow, "If I remember right, that personality of hers comes more from your side than it does mine."

She stops mid-cut, claw sinking against the cutting board as her attention deflects.

"Same damn mutation, Logan," she looks up at him through her lashes, "Don't act like she isn't like you. That child has more Logan Howlett in her than Weapon X would even like to think about," she sighs, making short work of splay of vegetables beneath her hand, "I pray she has more self-control than either of us."

His smile is thin, practiced. "She'll be fine," it's soft as he stares down at Elias, offers the boy his finger for attention.

Immediately, Elias drags it to his mouth, smiling big as the moon up at his father before Logan's attention moves back to her, now working the end of her t-shirt over her blade.

"Worryin' ain't good for you, or the kid," he nods to the swell of her, before rounding the baker's table to intercept her at the stove, "I do enough of that for the lot of you." The back of his hand skips along her jaw, and he angles to press a soft kiss to the spot behind her ear.

"You just worry about makin' me a strong baby, hm?"

"Do you worry," her head turns enough to consider him over her shoulder, "about them? About the world that wants them? There's three of them, Logan," her voice gets small, and she turns to rest a hand over the back of Elias' head, softer than he's ever seen her, "I didn't ever think we'd have one, much less three."

There's a soft fear that bites at the back of the words, paints shadows across her face that Logan doesn't know how to fight. He carries the same fear in the length of whatever bone marrow Weapon X had taken from him—fear for her, for them. Never for himself, but for the rest of him that the world would try to take away.

It's a responsibility he'd sworn off, from the first time he'd killed a man with his own hand—by his own claws. He'd sworn he'd never bring life into the world he'd been forced to war against, to burn. A vow to God that no innocence would pass through his fingers, as long as he continued to feel this sinful.

And then she'd arrived. They'd arrived.

Now all he can pray is for innocence, for mercy.

"I worry all the time, sweetheart," his arm wraps around her chest, pulls her against him enough to press a soft kiss to the top of her head. Her nails bite into his arm with enough grit that, any other time, he would feel.

But his gaze casts to Evangeline, humming loudly by the couch. Painting pictures of a world she doesn't know, dreaming dreams he didn't even think were possible for little girls anymore. She giggles softly, changes the color of her crayon, and sits back on her legs with the pride of an artist the world would never understand.

"Can't spent their whole lives worryin', sweetheart," his arms firms up around her, pressing her close, "they deserve all the pure things we had before the world did what it does. Our job's t’ make sure they're ready for when that day comes—'cause it'll come."

"I know," breathless, she guides his hand to the little life thrumming within her, she sighs hard back against his chest. "I know. I just—they're so small, Logan."

"Mhm," he kisses her hair again, Elias fussing in the crook of his arm enough that she turns, takes him into her arms. Logan doesn't move, only rests his hands over her shoulders, thumbs rubbing small circles into the heat of muscle that almost vibrates. "They're gonna be fine, darlin'. We're right here. They don't have to be anywhere but right here, with you an' me."

She nods, slowly. Even from here, he can see the sheen of tears in her ears. They almost ring off the metal of them, he can almost feel his mutation crawling through her chest like some kind of guilty sentence, a penitence he can never repay.