Fic: Bulletproof Soul - Part 2
Okay so the muse is still stabbing me for this one so hope you guys don't mind me sharing. I don't usually post as I go (I try and finish a fic before posting) but this is just taking me along so I'm going with it... hope it doesn't leave me high and dry before we get out happy ending.
Thanks for comments on the last chapter too, hope you enjoy this. I think there's one or two more to come and the rating is creeping higher and higher...
Fic: Bulletproof Soul
Rating: PG for swears
Genre: Shipperfic
Post X3/Movieverse
Words for this part: 2,486
Disclaimer as before, it aint mine but it's broke so I'm fixing it *wink*
Part ONE...Here
You’ve avoided her for days now, and worse - you’re sure she knows.
The ride back to the mansion had been pure torture. You’d hurried through your food to the point where she’d commented on it - asking if there was somewhere you needed to be.
You should have realised that rushing the food meant a quicker return to the bike.
You clenched your jaw as she swung her leg over the seat, smacking solidly up against your back, making you close your eyes for a second. And no part of you could understand how it could be that much more uncomfortable than the trip there but something had shifted inside of you.
It was like a light had switched on. Illuminating something new and consuming and far too potent for your liking. In that one moment, watching her put on her damn make up, you had seen something in her that may or may not have been there before.
But whatever it was, you knew you could hold it at bay, keep it in check. Even if inside, it felt suddenly like you were losing your grasp on ...something.
The heat of her body wrapping yours had made you gun that bike, really testing it out now, bent low as if racing. If she had been scared, she hadn’t made any complaint - had just held on tighter than the ride there. Her arms circled you low on your waist and across your lap and you didn’t know whether to ease off the speed to bring you both more upright or to keep going like a bat out of hell so you can get the fuck off this thing.
When you’d brought the bike into its parking spot and killed the engine it had taken all you had not to throw her off and jump ten feet away as soon as the thing was stable. But you held still, waiting for her to get off first.
And she didn’t. She sat there, just resting against you, the silence seeming to ring in your ears as you realised you could feel her breathe in and slowly out.
You tightened your grip on the handlebars, focusing on your breath until she finally released you and sat back. Her small hands pressed into your back as she swung deftly to the ground and then she was at your side, smiling up through that shock of white hair that falls in her eyes.
“Thanks, Logan.”
You said nothing - only registered a bitter amusement at the two automatic answers that played in your head - the first being ‘Anytime’ and the second a harsh and resounding ‘Yeah, well, never again’. You broke eye contact, pushed off the bike and strode away towards the mansion, not caring that you could feel her adding skips into her step to keep up, not caring that you could feel her watching you with questions in her eyes.
Then you reached the hallway which had both your rooms in it (and it had never occurred to you to be unhappy about that before, but the thought hit you now that you were, VERY unhappy all of a sudden that her door was only two down from your own) and you strode to yours without a second glance.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
You turned around in your doorway. You cast just one look back, and it wasn’t a good one. You caught her figure as she disappeared through the doorway, in a swish of thick dark hair and bare shoulder, in a stride of long black clad legs that seemed much longer now than you ever recall them being.
And so you avoid her. In every way, subtle or otherwise - sometimes leaving the room in mid- conversation when she enters. You don’t know for sure if she’s figured it out, you don’t allow enough eye contact to be certain but you’ve assumed she has because if there’s one thing you think will never change, it’s that she knows you. Marie knows you, better than anyone.
But others notice. Not exactly what’s wrong - but just things like the fact that you’ve returned to being the cantankerous prick that somehow went missing for a while there after Alcatraz. Especially to Ice Boy, even though you don’t know what’s going on with him and Marie now and wouldn’t admit that has anything to do with it even if you did, but more because the kid’s face just irritates you. You catch him glaring at you at times which suits you just fine, but apparently you’re enjoying your sessions in the Danger Room a little too much, according to Ororo anyway.
Storm, she thinks she has you pegged with all her amateur psychology - that you’re grieving over Jean and ‘still trying to work through it’ but you kind of wonder what she’d really think if she knew that for the first time since he died, you’re glad Charles isn’t around - to read the thoughts running through your head.
And you’ve stopped with the fixing things. Your projects lie abandoned now because you can’t hold still that long. Besides, you think you’ve given it away because you’re pretty certain that something about you is very broken - and irreparable. There, put that in your psychology pipe and smoke it, Storm.
But it’s getting ridiculous. You can’t go on like this.
You find yourself up at one in the morning, eating as you stand in the cool shelter of the fridge door, picking food directly out and into your mouth. You’d like to tell yourself it wasn’t because you wanted to avoid her at dinner but the only light you’ve turned on is the one that’s falling on you from the fridge so you know the lie has to be pretty lame if even you aren’t buying it.
“Fuck it.”
You mutter the words under your breath as you grab a beer, busting a claw out to flip the top off. You hear where it rolls as you take a long swallow - under the fridge - and sigh, knowing you’re going to have to get that later.
Look, you reason. So you’ve noticed she’s... she’s a woman now. As cheesy as that sounds. But - Christ - this is not a big deal. It’s just what was always bound to happen - and no reason to start behaving like a fumbling teenage idiot who’s just had his first wet dream. It’s still Marie. It’s just Marie.
“Logan.”
Her voice thrums through you in ripples as if she’s just spoken over a loud speaker instead of the almost whisper she’d really given, from the other side of the fridge door.
You almost spit out your mouthful but you manage to steady yourself, gripping the edge of the door before leaning back to look at her.
She’s standing by the light switch and she flicks it, on; the click especially loud as well for some reason. You can feel the deer-in-the-headlights expression on your face and you fight hard to rearrange it, pulling the beer up for another swig to help that along.
She doesn’t say anything else but moves towards you, looking like she’s floating a bit because she still wears those ridiculous long nightdresses she always has, the ones that cover all her skin and her arms even if she doesn’t have to anymore. You’d be almost grateful for that if her new curves didn’t fill it out so much more, making it obvious that she’s had that nightdress for far too long. Since back when she was a girl. A strangely ordinary thought crosses your mind that maybe she doesn’t have much cash to buy new clothes and maybe you should’ve taken her shopping by now. The ‘old you’ probably would have. The ‘new you’ - the one who’s thoughts he can’t control - can only think about how he would have to figure out how to take her shopping without having to go with her. Watching her try things on wouldn’t be...helpful.
She’s close now, right in front of you, and for probably the first time in your life, you bother to regret the fact that you’re not wearing a shirt.
“What are you doing?”
You take another swig, so you don’t have to look at her.
“Hungry. Why are you up?”
“Why didn’t you come to dinner?”
Why do you always answer questions with questions, you think. You look off and up to the right and give another one word answer.
“Busy. How you been, kid?”
The last bit you tack on the end and you have to agree with her when she screws her face up at it.
And again she doesn’t answer you, just walks around and behind you, close enough that you think you might have felt the fabric of her dress brush your back when she passes.
She reaches into the fridge and you try not to raise your eyebrows when she pulls out a beer. Because she’s of legal age now, you reason, ignoring the cold twist that idea brews in your stomach. She can do what the hell she likes.
She turns around to you, holding the bottle between her two hands and looking up expectantly into your eyes.
You frown, arch an eyebrow at her, then realise she’s asking you to open it. Every fibre of your being wants to say no but you clench your fist by your side and unsheathe a claw, close to your thigh. When you bring it up between the two of you she doesn’t flinch back or recoil, as everyone else does. That in itself makes your guilt burn even hotter; the guilt that you’ve been ignoring her. And the other guilt - for your thoughts.
“Thanks.” She catches the bottle cap and tosses it over to the bench where it spins and twirls for a bit before stopping and leaving the room in silence again.
Uncomfortable silence.
Because she’s there right in front of you, and you can feel the heat coming off her body. You have a sudden and manic urge to laugh - wanting to ask yourself how you actually managed to miss this for so long, that she’s, well...beautiful.
“So, I know you’re avoiding me.”
You go to move quickly away when she catches your arm. Her fingers are cold and they grip tightly into your bicep, freezing you in your tracks.
“Logan, wait...”
“Listen, kid...”
“Don’t call me that.” She says it through clenched teeth and you stop and look at her, glaring up at you with fire in her eyes, her breath coming in angry gasps.
It’s then that you realise that she’s not wearing a bra. Not that you’ve ever even thought about her wearing one before but...her lips are a startling red and still moist from the beer and your brain is hazy and having trouble focusing.
“I know it must be... I know it’s that you’re disappointed in me.”
You blink, trying to concentrate on her words.
“I’m...what?”
“Disappointed in me for taking ...the cure.” She flinches as she says the last two words and for the first time you wonder if she regrets it herself. But you shake your head.
“No, Marie, you’re way off, it’s not that...”
You trail off because you see her next question forming as soon as your words are out and it’s too late to take back what you let slip.
“Then what is it?” Her eyes are wide and starting to fill with water. For the first time in a while you feel that need to run; your mind goes to the bike in the garage.
Maybe in the morning. First thing.
You try and focus your thoughts back to the conversation.
“Logan?”
She shifts slightly forward and her other hand comes up to hover an inch from your chest. It’s foreign, to both of you, that she’d touch your skin that boldly and you can feel an intense kind of fascination capturing you both in that moment, as if you’re detached observers, wondering what’s going to happen.
She hesitates a moment longer, almost waiting for approval but you’re concentrating on remaining as still as possible and you can’t help her. Your gaze drops from her eyes to some indistinct middle distance and you wait, knowing she stares at you a bit longer before looking down at her own hand.
Then her fingers move forward and touch; her palm flattens against you and you release a breath that until then you weren’t aware you were holding.
You change your mind about her hands being cold. They’re warm, very warm. As her palm slides painfully slow down your chest, gently over the rise of the muscle to settle on your ribs you decide the heat of it feels like it burns into your skin.
She takes a shaky breath and your nostrils flare, your resolve to step away weakening with the very scent of her. Her hair, her skin - the same as always but somehow new, like you’re relearning all the varied notes of it.
Her hand stays there on your body, and she sways into you ever so slightly. She tilts her face up by the barest fraction, and you can actually feel her waging some kind of a war inside of her although you don’t know exactly what it’s about.
Then as if by undeniable force - through sheer instinct, your chin dips lower and tilts faintly to one side, bringing your faces closer. She is so much shorter, smaller than Jean. Vulnerable, you think, and you feel a sudden wave of the habitual urge to protect her - only different this time in that the source of the threat is ...you.
She licks her lips nervously, making you wish instantly that you hadn’t seen that, and tilts her face slowly up to yours too.
Then you feel it - the pain.
It starts in your gut, crawls up your chest and climbs your neck, choking the air from you and blurring your vision. You gasp instinctively, trying to drag air into your lungs at the same time as you see her eyes, wide and frightened through the haziness before everything goes black and you feel yourself tip backwards.
The next thing you’re aware of is a scream, high pitched and tortured - her scream.
You try and fight the blackness swamping you, turning on to your stomach and trying to bring yourself up on all fours. There are muffled shouts and footsteps and then Ororo’s there, kneeling at your side.
“Wha...”
“Logan, can you hear me?”
“Marie?” Your voice is hoarse and weak; you try to push up again.
“Stay down, just take it easy...”
“Marie!!”
“Logan, she’s gone. She...” You force yourself to focus on Storm’s eyes, noting the sadness in them. “She came and got me and now she’s gone. Out into the grounds. I think they’ve come back.”
You must frown because she elaborates.
“Her powers. I think they’ve come back.”
*
Part 3
Thanks for comments on the last chapter too, hope you enjoy this. I think there's one or two more to come and the rating is creeping higher and higher...
Fic: Bulletproof Soul
Rating: PG for swears
Genre: Shipperfic
Post X3/Movieverse
Words for this part: 2,486
Disclaimer as before, it aint mine but it's broke so I'm fixing it *wink*
Part ONE...Here
You’ve avoided her for days now, and worse - you’re sure she knows.
The ride back to the mansion had been pure torture. You’d hurried through your food to the point where she’d commented on it - asking if there was somewhere you needed to be.
You should have realised that rushing the food meant a quicker return to the bike.
You clenched your jaw as she swung her leg over the seat, smacking solidly up against your back, making you close your eyes for a second. And no part of you could understand how it could be that much more uncomfortable than the trip there but something had shifted inside of you.
It was like a light had switched on. Illuminating something new and consuming and far too potent for your liking. In that one moment, watching her put on her damn make up, you had seen something in her that may or may not have been there before.
But whatever it was, you knew you could hold it at bay, keep it in check. Even if inside, it felt suddenly like you were losing your grasp on ...something.
The heat of her body wrapping yours had made you gun that bike, really testing it out now, bent low as if racing. If she had been scared, she hadn’t made any complaint - had just held on tighter than the ride there. Her arms circled you low on your waist and across your lap and you didn’t know whether to ease off the speed to bring you both more upright or to keep going like a bat out of hell so you can get the fuck off this thing.
When you’d brought the bike into its parking spot and killed the engine it had taken all you had not to throw her off and jump ten feet away as soon as the thing was stable. But you held still, waiting for her to get off first.
And she didn’t. She sat there, just resting against you, the silence seeming to ring in your ears as you realised you could feel her breathe in and slowly out.
You tightened your grip on the handlebars, focusing on your breath until she finally released you and sat back. Her small hands pressed into your back as she swung deftly to the ground and then she was at your side, smiling up through that shock of white hair that falls in her eyes.
“Thanks, Logan.”
You said nothing - only registered a bitter amusement at the two automatic answers that played in your head - the first being ‘Anytime’ and the second a harsh and resounding ‘Yeah, well, never again’. You broke eye contact, pushed off the bike and strode away towards the mansion, not caring that you could feel her adding skips into her step to keep up, not caring that you could feel her watching you with questions in her eyes.
Then you reached the hallway which had both your rooms in it (and it had never occurred to you to be unhappy about that before, but the thought hit you now that you were, VERY unhappy all of a sudden that her door was only two down from your own) and you strode to yours without a second glance.
Well, that’s not entirely true.
You turned around in your doorway. You cast just one look back, and it wasn’t a good one. You caught her figure as she disappeared through the doorway, in a swish of thick dark hair and bare shoulder, in a stride of long black clad legs that seemed much longer now than you ever recall them being.
And so you avoid her. In every way, subtle or otherwise - sometimes leaving the room in mid- conversation when she enters. You don’t know for sure if she’s figured it out, you don’t allow enough eye contact to be certain but you’ve assumed she has because if there’s one thing you think will never change, it’s that she knows you. Marie knows you, better than anyone.
But others notice. Not exactly what’s wrong - but just things like the fact that you’ve returned to being the cantankerous prick that somehow went missing for a while there after Alcatraz. Especially to Ice Boy, even though you don’t know what’s going on with him and Marie now and wouldn’t admit that has anything to do with it even if you did, but more because the kid’s face just irritates you. You catch him glaring at you at times which suits you just fine, but apparently you’re enjoying your sessions in the Danger Room a little too much, according to Ororo anyway.
Storm, she thinks she has you pegged with all her amateur psychology - that you’re grieving over Jean and ‘still trying to work through it’ but you kind of wonder what she’d really think if she knew that for the first time since he died, you’re glad Charles isn’t around - to read the thoughts running through your head.
And you’ve stopped with the fixing things. Your projects lie abandoned now because you can’t hold still that long. Besides, you think you’ve given it away because you’re pretty certain that something about you is very broken - and irreparable. There, put that in your psychology pipe and smoke it, Storm.
But it’s getting ridiculous. You can’t go on like this.
You find yourself up at one in the morning, eating as you stand in the cool shelter of the fridge door, picking food directly out and into your mouth. You’d like to tell yourself it wasn’t because you wanted to avoid her at dinner but the only light you’ve turned on is the one that’s falling on you from the fridge so you know the lie has to be pretty lame if even you aren’t buying it.
“Fuck it.”
You mutter the words under your breath as you grab a beer, busting a claw out to flip the top off. You hear where it rolls as you take a long swallow - under the fridge - and sigh, knowing you’re going to have to get that later.
Look, you reason. So you’ve noticed she’s... she’s a woman now. As cheesy as that sounds. But - Christ - this is not a big deal. It’s just what was always bound to happen - and no reason to start behaving like a fumbling teenage idiot who’s just had his first wet dream. It’s still Marie. It’s just Marie.
“Logan.”
Her voice thrums through you in ripples as if she’s just spoken over a loud speaker instead of the almost whisper she’d really given, from the other side of the fridge door.
You almost spit out your mouthful but you manage to steady yourself, gripping the edge of the door before leaning back to look at her.
She’s standing by the light switch and she flicks it, on; the click especially loud as well for some reason. You can feel the deer-in-the-headlights expression on your face and you fight hard to rearrange it, pulling the beer up for another swig to help that along.
She doesn’t say anything else but moves towards you, looking like she’s floating a bit because she still wears those ridiculous long nightdresses she always has, the ones that cover all her skin and her arms even if she doesn’t have to anymore. You’d be almost grateful for that if her new curves didn’t fill it out so much more, making it obvious that she’s had that nightdress for far too long. Since back when she was a girl. A strangely ordinary thought crosses your mind that maybe she doesn’t have much cash to buy new clothes and maybe you should’ve taken her shopping by now. The ‘old you’ probably would have. The ‘new you’ - the one who’s thoughts he can’t control - can only think about how he would have to figure out how to take her shopping without having to go with her. Watching her try things on wouldn’t be...helpful.
She’s close now, right in front of you, and for probably the first time in your life, you bother to regret the fact that you’re not wearing a shirt.
“What are you doing?”
You take another swig, so you don’t have to look at her.
“Hungry. Why are you up?”
“Why didn’t you come to dinner?”
Why do you always answer questions with questions, you think. You look off and up to the right and give another one word answer.
“Busy. How you been, kid?”
The last bit you tack on the end and you have to agree with her when she screws her face up at it.
And again she doesn’t answer you, just walks around and behind you, close enough that you think you might have felt the fabric of her dress brush your back when she passes.
She reaches into the fridge and you try not to raise your eyebrows when she pulls out a beer. Because she’s of legal age now, you reason, ignoring the cold twist that idea brews in your stomach. She can do what the hell she likes.
She turns around to you, holding the bottle between her two hands and looking up expectantly into your eyes.
You frown, arch an eyebrow at her, then realise she’s asking you to open it. Every fibre of your being wants to say no but you clench your fist by your side and unsheathe a claw, close to your thigh. When you bring it up between the two of you she doesn’t flinch back or recoil, as everyone else does. That in itself makes your guilt burn even hotter; the guilt that you’ve been ignoring her. And the other guilt - for your thoughts.
“Thanks.” She catches the bottle cap and tosses it over to the bench where it spins and twirls for a bit before stopping and leaving the room in silence again.
Uncomfortable silence.
Because she’s there right in front of you, and you can feel the heat coming off her body. You have a sudden and manic urge to laugh - wanting to ask yourself how you actually managed to miss this for so long, that she’s, well...beautiful.
“So, I know you’re avoiding me.”
You go to move quickly away when she catches your arm. Her fingers are cold and they grip tightly into your bicep, freezing you in your tracks.
“Logan, wait...”
“Listen, kid...”
“Don’t call me that.” She says it through clenched teeth and you stop and look at her, glaring up at you with fire in her eyes, her breath coming in angry gasps.
It’s then that you realise that she’s not wearing a bra. Not that you’ve ever even thought about her wearing one before but...her lips are a startling red and still moist from the beer and your brain is hazy and having trouble focusing.
“I know it must be... I know it’s that you’re disappointed in me.”
You blink, trying to concentrate on her words.
“I’m...what?”
“Disappointed in me for taking ...the cure.” She flinches as she says the last two words and for the first time you wonder if she regrets it herself. But you shake your head.
“No, Marie, you’re way off, it’s not that...”
You trail off because you see her next question forming as soon as your words are out and it’s too late to take back what you let slip.
“Then what is it?” Her eyes are wide and starting to fill with water. For the first time in a while you feel that need to run; your mind goes to the bike in the garage.
Maybe in the morning. First thing.
You try and focus your thoughts back to the conversation.
“Logan?”
She shifts slightly forward and her other hand comes up to hover an inch from your chest. It’s foreign, to both of you, that she’d touch your skin that boldly and you can feel an intense kind of fascination capturing you both in that moment, as if you’re detached observers, wondering what’s going to happen.
She hesitates a moment longer, almost waiting for approval but you’re concentrating on remaining as still as possible and you can’t help her. Your gaze drops from her eyes to some indistinct middle distance and you wait, knowing she stares at you a bit longer before looking down at her own hand.
Then her fingers move forward and touch; her palm flattens against you and you release a breath that until then you weren’t aware you were holding.
You change your mind about her hands being cold. They’re warm, very warm. As her palm slides painfully slow down your chest, gently over the rise of the muscle to settle on your ribs you decide the heat of it feels like it burns into your skin.
She takes a shaky breath and your nostrils flare, your resolve to step away weakening with the very scent of her. Her hair, her skin - the same as always but somehow new, like you’re relearning all the varied notes of it.
Her hand stays there on your body, and she sways into you ever so slightly. She tilts her face up by the barest fraction, and you can actually feel her waging some kind of a war inside of her although you don’t know exactly what it’s about.
Then as if by undeniable force - through sheer instinct, your chin dips lower and tilts faintly to one side, bringing your faces closer. She is so much shorter, smaller than Jean. Vulnerable, you think, and you feel a sudden wave of the habitual urge to protect her - only different this time in that the source of the threat is ...you.
She licks her lips nervously, making you wish instantly that you hadn’t seen that, and tilts her face slowly up to yours too.
Then you feel it - the pain.
It starts in your gut, crawls up your chest and climbs your neck, choking the air from you and blurring your vision. You gasp instinctively, trying to drag air into your lungs at the same time as you see her eyes, wide and frightened through the haziness before everything goes black and you feel yourself tip backwards.
The next thing you’re aware of is a scream, high pitched and tortured - her scream.
You try and fight the blackness swamping you, turning on to your stomach and trying to bring yourself up on all fours. There are muffled shouts and footsteps and then Ororo’s there, kneeling at your side.
“Wha...”
“Logan, can you hear me?”
“Marie?” Your voice is hoarse and weak; you try to push up again.
“Stay down, just take it easy...”
“Marie!!”
“Logan, she’s gone. She...” You force yourself to focus on Storm’s eyes, noting the sadness in them. “She came and got me and now she’s gone. Out into the grounds. I think they’ve come back.”
You must frown because she elaborates.
“Her powers. I think they’ve come back.”
*
Part 3