Title: Reflected
Author: lachlanrose
Disclaimer: Not mine, but nobody owns the Wolverine, bub.
Feedback: Yes, please! The good. The bad. The ugly, welcome….
Summary: Logan turns up unexpectedly at Marie's apartment one cold December night. Marie makes a confession. Logan makes a move. W/R
Author's notes: After finishing Run, I was in the mood for something a little bit lighter. Or, you know, at least a little shorter! This one's got a bit of an edgier Marie than we're used to seeing. She's not perfect. She's got flaws and insecurities and she's made some questionable choices. I thought it would be fun to write a Marie that sailed a little closer to the wind than usual, and to see what Logan might make of a girl who wasn't quite as innocent as he first imagined…. A huge thank you to doctorg for the beta. You're every kind of awesome! Oh, and one last word of thanks to Ms. Fox for the line of borrowed lyrics. This one is seriously adult, folks. (Duh, it's me! Heh.) You have been warned.

Reflected

Here's a real truth for you. My name is Marie, and I am the original copycat. Nothing so pathetic as words or ideas. Oh no. I am talking about the real McCoy. Art. Forgery. Now I work restoring old paintings when I'm not zipping myself into the leather and saving the world. But that wasn't always the case. You see, I have this... gift. No, not that kind of gift, though I have that kind, too.

The other one is sort of like how some autistic children can hear a song and reproduce it note for note on a piano without ever so much as taking a single music lesson. Quite by accident, I discovered I can do the same thing with paint and paintings. Sadly (and somewhat unfairly, I've gotta say) I have absolutely zero original creative talent whatsoever. Give me a blank canvas with instructions to paint a flower from my imagination and what will result will no doubt resemble a deformed hamburger... but put a Picasso or a Monet in front of me... and a very different thing happens.

It was a joke at first. I went to college to study language, of all things. (That's another story in itself. Let's just say I tend to pick them up in an unusual way and leave it at that.) To make ends meet, I took a job working slave labor for this gorgeous jerk of an Art History professor. Quite by accident, he discovered my artistic gift (okay, he got drunk at a gallery opening and I took him home to my apartment to sleep it off. He saw a copy I'd done of a van Gogh hanging over my grungy sofa when he stumbled out the next morning).

The following afternoon he asked about it. He didn't believe for one minute that it was my work... so like the cocky young idiot that I was, I told him to pick one; to pick any painting at the Museum of Modern Art... He chose Degas' Ballet Rehearsal that was there on exhibit.

He picked one but didn't know what I had up my sleeve, and I didn't enlighten him (he really was an ass!). I think he thought I'd stolen it when I waltzed in his office a few weeks later with the copy I'd done under my arm. To make a long story short... that was the last time I had to carry his coffee or pick up his suits from the cleaners. From then on, he just paid me for various works... two or three hundred or so for the smaller ones... up to five or six for the bigger ones.

What did I care? It paid the rent and gave me a nice enough chunk of change to go out drinking with my friends from time to time. And all the while, he taught me about art. Well, specifically how to get every last detail so perfect it could fool anyone. What canvas to use. What method of preparation. What paint to use. What tools. Even how to cut the canvas with a blade rather than scissors.

I never thought anything of it. He spun me some story about how he was just trying to fool his colleagues. I think I sort of knew at the end there that something wasn't quite above board about it all... but nothing really solid until the scandal broke, of course. He'd been selling them to auction houses around the world for thousands of dollars a crack. Fucking cheapskate! He only ever gave me a pittance. I nearly died when all the details came out. One sold for nearly twenty thousand dollars to a private collector. At auction it brought almost double that amount. I was partly thrilled and partly horrified. And then I was only horrified and terrified when they brought me in for questioning, assuming I was in on his scam.

Which is all just a roundabout way to explain why I am stateside and why almost everyone else on the team is with Charles in Switzerland right now for the first worldwide symposium on mutant relations. They all decided to stay on for an early winter holiday skiing trip. I stayed home. I was never formally charged. My teacher had nearly every penny he'd made squirreled away in a hidden offshore account, proving my desperate claims that I had never once benefited from his illegal sales.

I was never so thankful to be broke in my life. But I did have to sign formal documents saying I would never again sell a forged painting and I had to surrender my passport for an indefinite period of time. I think they thought I'd just go somewhere where nobody had ever heard of me and make a killing selling forgeries. Sadly, they weren't half wrong. The thought had crossed my mind, but without a passport... Well, you get the idea.

My case comes up for review every few years. And with this latest fiasco with Munch's Scream being stolen... well, let's just say negative attention to the art world doesn't exactly do me any favors, you know? Denied again. Never mind living a grand life somewhere. I can't even manage a Christmas holiday with friends.

So that is how I found myself wallowing in a bit of self pity that December evening. And to be honest, I really could have used a trip to Zermatt. Hello? Girl who hitched to Alaska? I like the snow. And it would have taken my mind off a certain someone, you know? Instead, I was rambling around my apartment talking to my cat and indulging in my other guilty pleasure. No, not chocolate. Horrifically cheesy 80's music. Rock me, Amadeus!

Just in case that isn't painting the right picture in your minds, let me just indulge you. If the image of a curvy brunette with a gap in her teeth and features too big for her face singing Manic Monday to her cat isn't bad enough, picture her wearing socks, skimpy panties and a man's heavy winter shirt. Serviceable blue flannel... that smells of him.

You know who I mean.

He left it one night at the bar we sometimes go to after missions. I stole it on my way home. So there. Confession, huh? I hear it's good for the soul. While I'm getting that off my chest, I might as well confess the rest. I took the Lord's name in vain (several times) this week when I found a red sock had turned my whites pink. I stuck my tongue out at a little boy on the subway who made an ugly face at me when his mama wasn't looking. At Wal-Mart I slung my finger at the clerk's back when the old dinosaur gave me the fisheye for buying batteries on a Friday night. They were for the damned remote! Everyone's a critic these days.

Oh, yes! And my worst sin (other than stealing Logan's shirt)... while digging through my junk drawer looking for some batteries for the remote, I found one of those little chocolate Easter eggs covered in foil. It's December so you can work out for yourself how old that was. Didn't matter to me. In an effort to be more kickass and less curvy and squishy, I haven't tasted chocolate in months. Like it was long for the world? I won't admit I searched the back of the drawer hoping for another.

No luck.

Picture it. Mr. Mister wailing away in the background. Me in Logan's shirt and those stupid pink socks savoring a bit of stale chocolate. Take these broken wings... Okay, I'll spare you singing... but clearly you can appreciate the patheticness of my evening. Melancholy. Hungry. Sexually frustrated. Shaking it Marie-style and singing into the remote. I told you it wasn't pretty. I was about half a glass of wine away from attempting to dye the streaks in my hair when there was a knock at my door.

Thinking it was Bobby and John coming over on another of their Friday night 'Save Marie From Herself' crusades, I barely gave the peephole in the door a glance before I jerked it open. I can't tell you who was more shocked, me or Logan. I think I just blinked and stared. Maybe it was all the blood rushing from my brain to my face that made me stand there like a goalie who's taken one too many slapshots to the head. Like if I knew it was Logan on the other side of the door I'd have opened it wearing—

And then it hit me exactly what I was wearing. I think it's pretty safe to say my face went from red to please-kill-me-now in less time than it took for his eyes to flick down and then back up. Hey, just because I'm not used to having men look in my direction doesn't mean I don't recognize it when I see it. How many times have I seen that look of his aimed at some hot little barfly? The way he looked at me wasn't rude. Just the casual flick of a man's eyes...

Eyes that were seeing me dressed in his shirt. I was surprised the embarrassment didn't kill me. Death was sounding like a pretty good option just then. Except for one little detail. If I keeled over, I'd never get to know why he was standing there outside my door on this cold winter night.

The embarrassed silence stretched out endlessly. It was my cat who broke the stalemate. He's one of those mentally unhinged cats that lives in the back of closets or under the furniture and you hardly ever see him unless he's attempting escape. I shrieked. Houdini ran. Logan made a valiant attempt and caught up the little furball by the scruff and then all hell broke loose as Houdini wriggled free and went completely mental, viciously attacking the back of Logan's hand with a ungodly yowl.

Total time elapsed? About half a second. The door of my apartment was closed. Houdini was back under the couch. And Logan was staring at me as he put his mouth on the back of his hand and licked at the stinging scratches that were bleeding profusely. I felt my knees quiver.

In the background I heard Samantha Fox moan out: This is the night... touch me... touch me... I want to feeeeel your body... your heartbeat next to mine... touch me... touch meeee... now... When she moaned again his eyes flicked from me back toward the stereo and I jumped to snap it off. Great. So now I'm a perv as well as the owner of a demented feline.

Just. Freaking. Perfect.

"I'm so sorry!" His eyes darted back to mine. I started babbling. "Houdini. That's his name. I can't remember if I ever told you that. He's a stray I took in. They were going to put him down cos nobody wanted him. I couldn't bear it." Logan's eyebrows went up. "One of God's creatures, you know?" I finished lamely.

He took his mouth off his hand and there was a playful smirk on his lips. "You sure he's one of God's creatures?"

I laughed and thought about making another excuse for Houdini but then this demonic hissing growl came from under the sofa. I looked back at Logan and that's when I realized there was a significant trickle of blood running down his hand.

"Your poor hand!" He caught the drip in his other palm before it could ruin the cream carpet and gave a little shrug. He'd healed by now, of course, but there was still a lot of blood. I was certain he'd never forget his first trip to my apartment. God.

"S'nothin'." He looked from the red droplet splattered in his hand to my face and then he ducked his head. He seemed a little embarrassed to have been bleeding like a stuck pig from such a small scratch.

I was mortified and insisted he come to the kitchen so I could clean him up. He reacted the way pretty much every man I know would have. Told me not to bother even while settling himself at my small kitchen table and giving over his hand. I adore the way men like to be fussed over like a child on their mama's knee. There's just something endearing about it. And it's been my experience the harder the man is, the more he appreciates that touch of softness.

Logan was no different.

Only it was impossible to think of him as a boy. I was very aware of his presence. Or maybe we were aware of each other. His eyes, on the few occasions they left the floor, kept going to my bare legs. Easing off his leather jacket and his denim one too, I wet a cloth and slowly began wiping at the blood. It was the first time I'd touched his skin since I got control of my powers. And it was electric. His palm was weathered and rough against mine. I could smell him; a warm musky scent under the crisp smell of the night that clung to his hair and clothes. I could feel the heat radiating from his big body. His long legs were stretched out lazily. The silence stretched out again too, awkward and heavy.

I tried to keep my breathing even so it wasn't so obvious I was half way to orgasm just from touching his beautiful hands as I busied myself wiping at the blood. Even after my enthusiastic wiping, he had bit left on his wrist and a smear in his palm. There was a small smear on his bottom lip as well. I froze, my hand half extended to his mouth. What I really wanted to do was lick it away. To taste it. To taste him. The metallic flavor of his virility. The smoky tang of the bourbon on his breath. The heady taste of Logan on his tongue. I shuddered.

"You- You have... on your lip..." God. Why did it have to be his mouth? His tongue came out to flick at it and I felt a dizzying rush of heat that left me lightheaded. My mouth watered. So did my body, a wet rush between my legs. He jerked visibly in the chair. I jumped away and busied myself in the kitchen before I did something really stupid. Like throw myself at him.

The clack of the kettle on the stove sounded like a gunshot in the thick silence. I jumped. He didn't. "So... er..." Brilliant, Marie. Just brilliant. Really witty conversation, there. He just looked up. Slowly. I swallowed hard. "Do you... uh... need anything, sugar?"

"No." His cheeks colored slightly. "M'fine." He flexed his fingers. "All healed." He was rubbing the cloth between his long fingers in a way that was making it hard to think. I could have kicked myself. I hadn't meant his hand. As embarrassing as that was, I knew he was fine physically. I'd meant his presence in my apartment tonight.

Why else would he be here?

All I could think of was that maybe he needed to call someone in Zermatt and was hoping one of them had left the hotel number with me in case there was an emergency. Actually, Jubes had. But she'd also posted the hotel number on the bulletin board in the rec-room at the school. With a note that said: If the place burns down, don't bother calling. Save my shoes!

I attempted to cover my nervousness by getting out two mugs and box of teabags. It didn't help that I could still feel myself tingling where his skin had touched mine. "I'm sorry Houdini scratched you, but I meant-" I gestured helplessly at the door. "Was there something you wanted tonight, sugar?"

His head came straight up. My cheeks flamed. Oh, God! Why do I always find a way to put my foot in my mouth? Very smooth, girl. Logan shifted uneasily in the chair. Embarrassment? Guilt? I couldn't tell. I don't suppose it matters much. Not now, anyway. He never did answer me. The shrill whistle of the kettle interrupted another awkward silence. Not quite saved by the bell, but close enough for me. I rushed to snatch it off the stove before the sharp sound inflicted even more damage to a man with sensitive hearing. We exchanged a few more words. Tea? Milk? Sugar? Cookies?

And then we were back to staring at each other, this time over steaming mugs of fragrant spicy tea that neither of us actually touched.

"Why didn't ya go with the others, kid?" His soft voice startled me. So did his question.

"Why didn't you?" Answering a question with a question. My mama would have clucked her tongue at me. Only Logan didn't say anything. That's where a guilty conscience will get you every time. It's those who feel that uncomfortable weight pressing on them that are always first to fill the silent void with words.

So I told him. Hey, if you can't trust your savior with your secrets... Only I wasn't thinking of him as my hero just then. Or maybe I was. I'm honest enough with myself to admit that was part of the attraction. I think part of it was also some sense of kindred spirits... only I wasn't really thinking of that until after I stopped talking and he just sat there, looking at me with those clear unwavering eyes.

"So they took your passport. The end?" I nodded. He smiled. More silence. And damn him if I didn't start talking again. Admitting quite a bit more to him than I did to earlier. Admitted that I knew I was dabbling. That I liked the excitement of it. The thrill. His eyes flickered when I said something about nobody ever suspecting a girl who looked like me but then I was off, talking about the rush of being a wild girl. Doing something I knew I shouldn't.

"When was this?"

"My sophomore year of college." He'd been gone for seven months when the shit hit the fan. Sixteen months later when he finally returned, it had all blown over. Charles had hushed most of it up. It pays to have friends in high places, though he didn't help me at all when it came to my punishment and my passport issues. He did not approve of the choices I'd made. Fair enough. I didn't like some of his, either.

Logan pushed a hand through his hair and cocked his head. Watching me. Working it out. "How long was it before ya did it again?"

My heart was beating very fast. For a moment, I'd forgotten who I was talking to. This man had a past. A dark one. And of them all, none of them knew more about the powerful, addictive rush of doing something bad. I didn't even hesitate. "Fourteen months. Sold a Matisse overseas. Made a killing. I sent the money to Mama so she could finally get out from under Daddy's thumb. She told everyone she got an inheritance from a distant relative." I grinned. "It's not like I could use it with them watching my accounts. Besides, I don't really need it, you know? Everything I want is right here."

Again with the foot in mouth. God, what was wrong with me tonight?

There was a glimmer of something I couldn't quite work out in his eyes. "That right?"

I could only nod, not trusting what the hell I might say next.

Silence had filled the kitchen again. For a brief moment we'd connected intimately - feeling the kinship of shared illicit behavior, the shunning of authority that seemed to come naturally to us both.

When the glow faded, I felt more like myself than ever. A stupid silly girl who was forever reaching for the stars and wanting something she would never have. Too bad I'd never figured out how to paste a smile on my face and pretend everything was sunshine and roses when it wasn't. Maybe I just needed to accept the fact that there was no star for me.

I won't lie. It was a bit hard to do with Logan sitting in my kitchen close enough for me to smell his skin, and all the while that damned song tripped over and over in my head.

This is the night...This is the night. This is the time we've got to get it right. Touch me. Touch me...

Up next: Touch Me. Things heat up in the kitchen and then all hell breaks loose…