Terri's Peep Hut ~~ Fiction Archive

Comments: This is in response to Marrie's third (yes, third!) request for a hockey story - she's been watching all that Olympic coverage ;) I hope it turned out reasonably to her liking because she did a kick-ass graphic for Perspectives that I can't wait to post at the next website update. Also - warning! - this fic contains actual hockey knowledge ;)

Logan was surprised to see her. Ostensibly, it was against the rules. In fact, it was against *the* rule - never be seen together in a compromising position in public. Her coming to him in the middle of the night in the very public den wearing only a flimsy gauze nightgown certainly smashed that particular rule all to hell. And Marie had never been the one to try to break the rules before.

She made a small, apologetic frown and as she neared him and lowered herself beside him on the sofa, he could see that her eyes were puffy and red from crying. 'Nightmare' was his first thought, followed shortly by 'bad one'. Wordlessly, she scooted over until she was pressed against his side and lay her head on his shoulder. He put an arm around her, and flung the blanket that always lay on the sofa-back over them both, snuggling her in tighter.

There was a reason for the rule they were currently breaking, and the many others that governed his interaction with Marie, and that reason had a name - Chuck, as Logan liked to call the mansion patriarch; Professor, as Marie's submissive dulcet tones usually hailed him. He was legally Marie's guardian for another forty-six days, and he had quite firm opinions on the propriety of Logan's undisguised interest in his young charge. Until Marie turned eighteen, he was legally responsible for her, and he'd made it expressly clear that he expected Logan to treat her like any other child at the mansion, adding that if he was found to be a child molester, he would be treated as such and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

That wasn't enough to make Logan follow the rules - he'd wanted to ditch Xavier's instead - but it was enough to give Marie pause. If the Professor followed through on his threat, Logan could be arrested, and Logan in the hands of the government had proven to be a Very Bad Thing. Even if the Professor wouldn't go that far, she knew from Magneto that he was a formidable adversary, and not so morally upright as one might think. Marie couldn't be sure that the Professor wouldn't try to find them and punish them somehow, even if they did get away. She'd begged Logan to be patient and to follow the rules, and that was the one thing that ever had any shot at assuring his compliance. Sometimes Logan wondered if maybe the Professor knew that all along.

Logan didn't immediately process the words, letting himself get caught up in the smell and feel of her close, but she waited, displaying some of the patience she'd urged him to. "Yeah. West coast game. Kings and Sharks." He tried to make his body relax, to evict both the tension and the arousal that this moment brought. "Wanna watch?"

Marie didn't answer, but she burrowed into him a little more closely. She was trembly and breathing irregularly, sure signs that Logan's guess at a bad nightmare had been correct. He never knew what to say to her when they came. She never said whether they were his, but he had his suspicions. Trying to apologize for them had only made her cry more; cursing Magneto only made her become very quiet and withdrawn. "I still don't really understand the game, you know," she commented shakily. "I get the three periods and the scoring and stuff, but the rest of it is pretty much a mystery."

"I can explain it to you," he soothed, beginning to rub her back. That usually worked when words deserted him. "The blue lines mark off each team's zone. The red line is the center of the ice. The line by each net is the goal line. Each team has five players and a goalie. Three on offense - a center, two wings - and two on defense, but everybody kinda plays both." He felt her relax a little, melt into him just a bit. He kept rubbing. "Right now, the Sharks have the puck and they're tryin' to move it out of their zone and toward center ice."

"No. Well - usually, no. If it passes more than one line without bein' touched by a player, then it's offsides, and you hafta have a face-off. Offsides is also when you cross the other guy's blue line before the puck does. But it's just a violation of a rule, not really a penalty." His mind drifted to what the appropriate penalty for his rule-breaking of the moment might be. Threats? Long talks with an angry Chuck? They seemed hardly more formidable than two minutes in the penalty box and he wondered again why he didn't just take Marie and leave. "If you try passin' the puck from your side of center ice, all the way down, and it crosses the goal line, that's icin' unless your team gets to the puck first. Shorthanded teams - teams that got one or more guys sittin' in the penalty box - can't be called for icin'."

"Dunno. That's just the rule." Almost of its own volition, Logan's hand wandered from the relative safety of her back to the curve of her waist and swell of her hip, settling there and rubbing in a way more designed for sensuality than comfort. More rules were definitely being broken now.

"So if you break the rules, it's a face-off from somewhere - but what lands someone in the penalty box?" Her voice was breathy, distracted. Logan relaxed his palm to cover more of the surface of her hip with each caress.

"Fightin'. Hookin'. Slashin'. Roughin'. Cross-checkin'. Spearin'. Chargin'. Boardin'. Basically, if you're takin' a whack at somebody who don't have the puck or swingin' your stick off the ice, it's probably a penalty. They come in minor and major - mosta the time if you draw blood or injure the other guy, it's a major. That's why you'll sometimes see the players on the bench chantin' 'bleed, bleed' 'cause it gets another three minutes tacked on to the two-minute minor if ya actually get hurt." By the end of his discourse, he was kneading her buttocks and roaming for an occasional exploration of her inner thigh. He wasn't wearing gloves, and she wasn't wearing much underneath that nightgown, so it was dangerous on more than just a rule-breaking level. Judging by her scent, though, she wasn't afraid of any of the possible consequences at the moment. Her legs acquiesced to one of those roaming caresses, parting in a lazy, accommodating way for him, and then he was sure. The rules were about to go right out the window, Chuck be damned.

He met her words with a throaty growl, using the filmy cotton of her nightgown to protect his hand as he wedged it between her legs and began exploring with thick but gentle fingers. Somehow, she'd begun to twist and was now lying almost on top of him. He lay back, turning her the final few degrees to make that positioning complete. His other hand settled on her breast, cupping and caressing there as she began to writhe a bit. She'd always known that Logan was exceptionally agile and dexterous; the way he was touching her beneath the battered old den blanket was causing her to revise that estimate from exceptional to spectacular. The rough words that soon followed a sure caress of her damp center made her think that she knew no words that did him justice. "I wanna make you come, Marie. Now."

She didn't protest, as he might've expected. She lolled back in his embrace, giving herself over to him completely. The blanket was sliding off - anyone passing by at this hour would be treated to a scene belonging more on the set of a porn film than in an upstanding school for poor, unfortunate, wayward mutants. Low whimpers and moans tore from her body despite her efforts to stay quiet. Logan answered in grunts and thrusts against her backside that came with increasing urgency and speed. Just as she thought she could take no more, he gave her a firm, insistent stroke and she flew apart in his arms. He followed, not caring that his favorite jeans would bear an interesting stain in the morning. In fact, he quite liked the idea. It would be a mark left by her.

As she came back to herself, panting, she thought that this moment was like nothing that she'd imagined it would be. Her limited experiences certainly hadn't given her the vocabulary for the sensations and emotions surging through her. Not even her quite more expansive imagination had served her well. It was wholly uncharted territory for her, not in a bad way, but simply in a way she never could've conceived of.

"We can't do this any more, Marie," Logan's ragged whisper wasn't what she'd imagined his reaction to be either. At least it wasn't what she'd imagined in her more optimistic moments. But the next phrase put some of her rising trepidation to rest. "I gotta have you like that."

She was about to say 'we can't' and cite all of her various and sundry logical and fearful reasons for why that was. She was about to tell him it was for his own good, for both of their protection in the long run. She was about to tell him to remember the rules, that this had to be just a one time thing. All those intentions died on her lips as she squirmed around to face him. Hazel eyes positively glowed with fulfillment and possession. His body was slack, sweaty, satisfied. He looked awe-strikingly beautiful at that moment, and more content than she'd ever seen him. She found that she couldn't help but agree with his sentiments, gazing down upon that view. "Then we can't stay here. We have - we have maybe five hours before he wakes up. I'll get my things."

And just like that, every rule changed. The rules, still unspoken, had become of their own making. Rule number one was that they'd stay together and shortly behind it (not even so far behind as to be rule number two - possibly rule number 1.1 or 1.01 or something like that) was that they'd protect each other. Logan expressed his obedience to both rules by loading up every weapon that would fit in his truck and Marie expressed it by readying her Magneto-instilled shields against the Professor's telepathy and trying to think through a way to cover both of them with her mind. Fifteen minutes after she'd come, panting and moaning atop him on the couch, she was standing beside Logan in the garage, watching as he disabled the security system, wondering if they could stretch a five-hour head start into forty-six days.

"Hey, somebody left the TV on down here." Bobby's voice called out to his mentor and big-brother figure (and, not coincidentally, the mansion's only other early riser). "It's on ESPN2. Must've been Logan again. Sheesh. I wish he'd learn to turn off the TV after his late night hockey fests."

"Yeah, well, my money would be on 'later.'" Bobby answered with snorting laughter. "Besides - hockey? Now there's a game I just don't get. It's just a bunch of guys chasing a little rubber puck around on the ice and one big guy blocking the goal. It's soccer with skates."

"Not really," Scott argued as both men headed for the kitchen. He'd loved hockey growing up in Alaska; it was quite possibly the only thing he'd admit to having in common with Logan. "It has different rules. It's a different game entirely." Bobby shrugged his indifference, and Scott decided that seven a.m. on a Saturday was not the time to instill an appreciation of the finer points of hockey in his young friend. "I'll put the coffee on." He made for the cabinet housing the nectar of the gods (or at least the nectar of the sleepy-brained) and went about his day.

"You're a day late and a dollar short there, Chuck." Literally, Logan was right - it was day forty- seven, and no claims of guardianship applied to Marie now. They'd managed to grow time exponentially - their five hours had stretched into the needed number of days, and one more for good measure. Xavier's arrival was too late. Logan smirked at that. It was almost like beating God, or the Devil. They'd outrun someone who, by rights, should've been privy to their every move, even before they made it. It had cost Marie, Logan knew, cost her in headaches, pain, and even a little blood. That was day forty-four, and Logan told her that Chuck could do his worst before he'd let her hurt herself anymore. The sight of sticky red blood running out of her ears was already worse than anything Logan could realistically imagine suffering now or later at Chuck's hands. No small amount of anger pulsed beneath Logan's smug satisfaction. If he was a betting man, he'd take odds that you wouldn't have to be a telepath to know that.

"I could still have you arrested, you know." Xavier's clipped tone had lost none of its edge. However, one little fact that Logan had inadvertently uncovered the night before made any intended menace impotent.

"Liar." Marie's voice, cold and sharp, voicing her disdain at what Logan had found. Seventeen, not eighteen, they now knew. Seventeen was the age at which Logan became a lover, rather than an abuser, in the eyes of the law of the state of New York. Age of consent, the website had said. That was the rule - seventeen. Neither of them had any doubt that Xavier knew that all along. Weakened from her constant shielding of them both, Marie physically wavered a bit with her declaration, but her voice came back strong and sure. "Get out of our hotel room."

"If we could just talk - " The Professor's well-bred, polite voice was interrupted by the unruly *snikt* of Logan's claws. His eyes gleamed with barely-restrained blood lust. Blood for blood, that was one of his rules, and he'd want a river for every drop of Marie's. He didn't bother to hide his mayhem- anticipatory grin.

Whatever better nature or good sense the Professor had at long last kicked in. With a parting nod of his head, he wheeled himself out of the room. Logan slammed the door shut behind him, with a snarl serving as his parting statement. He turned back to an obviously relieved Marie. "Don't worry, darlin'. It's all gonna be OK."

Marie smiled in relief. She believed him. Logan never lied to her, never. That was one thing she counted on, one thing she believed so deeply that to question it seemed antithetical to her very nature. "OK," she agreed, letting herself drop to the bed, letting him enfold her in his arms, letting all concern about the smaller rules of life pass them by for the moment.