Chapter Five: Closer
I will follow you down
Wherever you will go
I am bound to you and you alone
Closer, pull me in tight
I wanna be yours
-Shakira
Westchester, New York
May 15th, 2000
“Come on, Jeanie. It’s been a rough week. Let’s head down to the lake, pop open a bottle of wine, watch the sunset.”
“Oh?” Jean laughed as she collected the books from her students’ desks. “And you think Scott wouldn’t mind this at all?”
His answering grin was positively ferocious. Winding Cyclops up happened to be the favorite pastime. If he wasn’t actively trying to hurt the other man in the training room, it was by trying to steal his fiancée from under his nose.
Logan’s attraction to her was well known, he didn’t exactly bother trying to hide it. Though he had refrained from ever crossing a physical line, it still distressed Scott. Of course it did. Who would be comfortable with someone openly pursuing their wife-to-be in such a situation?
Still, Jean had to admit it was flattering. How many women could say they had a wonderful, loving fiancé and a ferocious mutant drifter panting after her? She knew better than to entertain thoughts of the Wolverine, no matter how appealing he was in that tight white t-shirt and low slung jeans.
Damn it.
“I know you like stressing Scott out, but I am definitely not going to help you.” Jean countered as she finished collecting the biology workbooks. She stacked them neatly on her desk at the front of the class, then went to wiping the white board of notes for her ninth-graders.
Logan stood in the doorway of her classroom, leaning against the doorjamb as was his custom. There was, as usual, a cigar pinched between his teeth. A lone, sensual swirl of smoke drifted up from the lit tip. Wolverine, Jean admitted, was the perfect specimen of a ‘man’s man’, all rough and tumble with a more than subtle hint of the wild.
Truthfully, he couldn’t be more against her type if he’d outright tried.
“Aw, Jeanie. You wound me, darlin’.”
Jean smirked to herself, setting the white-board eraser into the holder before lifting a black marker. “Oh, I’ll do more than that if you don’t stop messing with Scott, Logan.”
She didn’t even have to turn to see the slightly exaggerated gasp of shock as she copied her lesson plan for the seniors onto her board with precise strokes of a dry erase marker.
“You’re gettin’ mean, woman.”
Jean shoved him a little with a well-placed punch of telekinetic force. Logan chuckled as he stumbled back, seemingly enjoying the idea of her fighting back. Honestly, Jean wondered if he’d been touched in the head at some point, the nut.
Jean! Get out here!
Scott’s sudden call to her in the recesses of the mind made Jean jump in her skin. She dropped the marker onto the floor as Logan turned away, drawn by a sudden commotion in the foyer. A quick scan of the vicinity brought her the familiar, expected psyches of the people with whom she shared her life. Logan, Scott, children, the Professor. But another, more intense, scan told her why the commotion.
“’Roro.”
Jean practically squealed her friend’s name, abandoning her classroom and almost plowing Logan over in her haste to reach the front door. He was hot on her heels, probably drawn by curiosity more than anything else.
She was back. After almost two years away, locked in the mysterious African kingdom of Wakanda, her best friend had finally returned. Jean could hardly keep hold of herself as she rounded the corner of one corridor in time to nearly bowl over a group of inquisitive teens gathering near the mansion’s main doors.
“Out of the way!” Jean called out, weaving through the throngs of young mutants with the ease of someone constantly surrounded by children.
Feeling Logan close to her back, Jean spared him not a thought. She could see Scott stood in the foyer, his arms around a very familiar female figure. White hair twisted into long braids glowed in the afternoon light, the gentle breeze flowing in from the still-open door brought the familiar, tinkling sound of laughter.
Jean blinked away the tears threatening to spill from her eyes, stepping up behind Scott so that she could yank Ororo into her arms.
“Oh! There you are!” The mutant known as Storm said happily. She smelled of spices and incense and that vanilla hand cream she preferred. They were the scents that Jean would always associate with the woman who had been her friend and confidante since they were young girls. “I’ve missed you so much!”
“I’m so happy you’re home! I wish you had called so I could pick you up!” Jean replied, squeezing her friend tightly.
“I wanted to surprise you all, a difficult feat among telepaths,” the other woman chuckled in return.
Ororo’s hug was strong, affectionate, and something that Jean had so missed over the last eighteen months. How had she managed to survive without the woman that was her sister in every way that mattered?
As they pulled back from the hug, Jean cupped her friend’s dark cheeks with her hands, grinning as luminous dark eyes met hers. Ororo looked refreshed, happy to be home and utterly gorgeous. It wasn’t a surprise, not really. Jean had always thought that Ororo Munroe was the most beautiful woman on the planet.
“Who’s this?”
Startled by Logan’s voice, Jean buzzed Ororo’s cheeks with kisses familiarly. As she stepped back, she found herself bumping into Scott, whom was staring overtly at Logan.
Logan, for his part, stared at the newcomer with something akin to awe on his face. Jean’s brow found themselves in her hairline as she watched Logan watch Ororo. The dark skinned mutant moved toward their feral houseguest cautiously, testing the air between them. Jean had never seen Ororo so focused on someone she did not know and Logan…Jean was sure she had never seen him look so confused.
It was there on his face, and when Jean opened her mind, she could feel what was churning inside of his mind. Curiosity, pleasure, lust, attraction, confusion, obsession. Jean funneled the feelings to her fiancé with a startled look. Scott didn’t seem to have any more answers than she did, preferring to stare at the pair as they exchanged greetings. Jean reached up and gently closed Scott’s mouth for him with a fingertip.
“Hello.” Storm said lightly, holding out a hand. “You must be Logan. Jean’s told me quite a bit about you. I’m Ororo.”
Logan nodded, pinching his cigar between his teeth once more. “Yeah? I’ve heard the name. Storm, right? Welcome home.”
His blue eyes bored into Ororo, but the intensity of his stare did not seem to put her off in the least. Ororo merely smiled, shaking his hand deftly.
“Don’t believe anything Scott says about me.” Ororo teased, making Jean cover a chuckle with a cough as she ignored Scott’s sharp look.
“Same goes.” Logan replied with a feral grin. He nodded toward the two suitcases standing in the doorway. “Those yours? How bout I carry them up for you and you can tell me all of Scooter’s little secrets?”
Ororo rolled her eyes, grabbing her duffel to sling it over a shoulder before she took the handle of her suitcase in one hand. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own bags, and if you call him Scooter, I will definitely not tell you about the time he got completely drunk and decided to streak through the grounds.”
Logan’s mouth dropped open. He turned to Scott, obviously alerted by the younger mutant’s flushed face that Storm spoke truth. At this, he inclined his head and followed Ororo promptly.
“I think I’m gonna like you, darlin’.”
~**~
San Francisco, California
2023
“A little cover, please, Storm?”
At the soft request from the towering Russian beside her, Ororo offered a small smile. Piotr had always been one of her favorites. The tall, soft-spoken young man had powers beyond imagining, but he was still the sweet farm boy at heart.
Perhaps that was why he had chosen to fall for the brash-but-sweet Kitty Pryde. All of that sass needed a softening point, and Piotr needed someone to bring him out of his shell. They were, in her opinion, adorable.
Still, they were on a mission. Ororo lifted her hands, palms skyward, as she allowed a light sting to turn her eyes to their signature glowing white. The outward sign of her power mirrored the thick, reflective fog she rolled over the dusky Californian skyline, cloaking the city in darkness.
Since it was San Francisco, a sudden fog wouldn’t be tooout of place along the rolling hills and distant lights. Storm stepped down from the jet’s ramp, with Wolverine at her side. He crouched low, his familiar body tensing as he checked the surrounding area for familiar scents.
“She’s here.” Logan’s gruff voice announced quietly. “Close.”
“Good,” said Jean acidly. “Maybe this time I’ll be able to put her over my knee.”
“Down, girl.” Logan replied as Ororo rolled her eyes. “Plan, Storm?”
His voice, still so familiar and yet, so changed, siphoned the steel from her spine. How she wanted him to look at her and see. It broke her heart as the days passed, as Logan tried to settle back into the life that had been theirs.
He could remember none of it, nothing of what made he and Storm ‘The Howletts’.
“You ok, darlin’?”
Ororo barely spared her husband a glance, trying to soothe herself as the team began to file out of the jet. It seemed to shock Logan when she referred to her team as ‘Gold’, which led him to reveal that the X-Men had not been broken into teens in his time. It was left unsaid that too many of them were killed long before they had so many members.
Storm did not have the heart to ask…
“Yes,” Storm responded softly, motioning for Colossus, Jean, and Iceman could take the point positions. Angel took to the air with one mighty beat of his pristine wings, taking him deep into the rolling fog above. “Stay with me.”
Logan nodded once, as though this arrangement was acceptable. He’d pulled his X-Men leathers on in their bedroom, stepping in as though remembering a part of his life. Ororo had not asked why he reverently touched the embossed “X” on the material. What kind of life had he lived in the midst of war that even a simple symbol of why they fought touched him so?
Ororo felt a swell of pride in her chest as she realized that Logan had changed that. Whatever hell had possessed him to take a trip back in time to change the world must have been dire indeed. He told her only a little, as they lay together in the bed they shared for over a decade. Logan revealed their final goodbye only the previous evening, telling her the simple ‘I got this’ that meant so much more than those three words should.
Because she knew him, Ororo understood. He’d wanted to tell her I love you, I need you, I’m doing this for you but the words had failed him. Ororo knew that her alter ego understood that as well. She sent him to face an impossible battle knowing that he loved her.
It was war, it was sex, it was something to get us through the night.
That mentality had followed Logan because of the precarious lives they led. Ororo knew, deep down, he hadn’t meant a blessed word of it.
“Hey.” Logan nudged her with an elbow as Angel called out in their comm. lines that a group of teens were just ahead. They seemed to be up to no good. “Focus, woman.”
Unable to help herself, Ororo grinned. She caught her lip between her teeth, shaking her head.
“Jean, see if you can scatter her playmates away. Bobby, make sure the southern exit to the alley is closed off, Piotr, the north.”
“Yes, Storm.” The choral sound of three voices replied as Storm lifted her arms. She brought a swift, sweet wind to collect both herself and Logan, depositing them on the nearby rooftop of a squat auto garage in desperate need of repair.
Below, Jubilee was difficult to miss. She had that coal black hair cut short, gelled to stand up at the back and lay flat at the front. A pair of pink-tinted glasses was pushed onto her crown, more of a fashion statement than to shield her eyes. The pink high-tops and yellow trench were another statement for the beautiful Chinese girl, though Storm wasn’t very certain about what statement she wanted to make. Beneath the coat, she wore the same cut-off shirts and too-low tank that were her uniform. Jubilee was all rebellion all the time and it proved to be exhausting on more than one occasion.
Ororo wasn’t sure she would survive the day her twins turned 16…
“So, this happens a lot?” Logan asked as Jean used her powerful mind to chase away the gaggle of delinquents huddled together in the dark alley. “The kid taking off?”
“Jubilation is troubled,” Storm replied, leaning over the railing of the roof to peer into the alley. “Her parents were unraveled by the thought of having a mutant child, so she ran away. I fear she was alone too long. Whenever she gets too comfortable, she automatically assumes we’re going to disappoint her.”
“I know something about that,” Logan replied as he lit his cigar with the Zippo lighter the twins bought him last year for his birthday. “She usually run this far?”
“No,” Storm frowned. Piotr had returned to his fleshy form as Iceman blocked her exit route with a wall of ice. “We have been distracted this week.”
“Yeah,” Logan responded lightly. “Sorry about that.”
Ororo merely smiled, sighing when the mutant affectionately called Jubilee shot multicolored sparks at the younger X-Men. “She always leads with that. I have taught her better.”
Storm jumped from the short rooftop, landing lightly as the wind gently deposited her. Jubilee, having set off at a run after blinding Colossus, pulled up short so swiftly she almost took a face-first tumble. Ororo arched a brow, shaking her head as Jean and Logan soon joined her.
“I’m not going back to that hell hole!” Jubilee shouted, stamping one little high-topped foot in dismay. “You can’t make me!”
“The hell I can’t.” Jean shot back, reaching out to take the girl’s arm. “I’m your guardian, Jubilation. You can’t just run away because you don’t want to go to class.”
“I’m an adult!” Jubilee squealed. The tone must have hurt Logan’s sensitive ears, for he clapped both hands over the offended appendages and swore violently.
“Oh, no you’re not.” Storm shot back, shaking her head. “Get on the jet, young lady, or so help me…”
“You’ll what?” Jubilee dared her.
Storm shot Colossus “ whom had now recovered his sight and sheathed himself in metal “ a glance. He immediately stepped forward, pinned the girl’s arms to her sides and lifted her as though she weighed no more than a wriggling puppy.
“Now, we’re going home.” Storm said flatly. “And if you say another word, I’ll let Jean suppress your speech function. Do you understand?”
Jubilation opened her mouth as though to reply, thought the better of it, and snapped her mouth closed tightly.
~**~
“So, you often take a team of professionals to capture one little girl?”
Logan watched as Storm unzipped her uniform, coming up the stairs behind her with only the faintest feeling of intrusion. It wasn’t his space, not really. He hadn’t picked out the bedspread or helped paint the walls, but he didn’t feel as though he were violating something anymore.
Storm threw him a baleful look over her shoulder, the pulled down zip of her uniform showcasing one long, lean line of dark flesh before she stepped into the bathroom.
He exhaled explosively, trying to get a handle on his own emotions. He knew her, this woman, in two lifetimes. And in both lifetimes, his heart had forsaken Jean in favor of Ororo. There was something to that, wasn’t there? It had to mean something.
Logan pulled the zip of his own inform, shrugging out of the heavy leather material as he searched the drawers she indicated were his. Logan found a pair of old sweats and a white tank top with little trouble. It seemed he liked his drawers the way he liked them, in any time line.
“The first few times she wan off, she wasn’t expecting us to follow. Once she realized we would, she started booby-trapping everything in sight. She almost killed Iceman once with one badly-aimed cherry bomb. Huge drama.”
He chuckled at her voice, the easy cadence of it. Since night had fallen hours ago, he’d checked on the sleeping twins before following Ororo toward the bedroom they shared. Since his session with Jean “ where she revealed her memory of the moment he met Storm “ was interrupted by their call to retrieve a wayward ward, he hadn’t had time to process it.
Lucky for him, Jean had funneled his feelings through her own memory, leaving him with a slight impression of what he felt for Ororo in that moment. The awe, the shock, the instant attraction…it was something he’d not felt for her in the war timeline. This was something new, something like a reward for what he had done.
It shocked him, thinking that in one moment his obsession with Jean Grey ended. Logan could see it in his own eyes, watching himself in the mental session with Jean. He had wanted her, wanted Ororo from the moment he clapped eyes on her. How was that possible?
The woman in question came out of the bathroom they shared a moment later, her short hair dancing around her face. She’d pulled on a little shorts and t-shirt combo in butter-soft yellow. The hint of her upper thigh displayed as she moved made Logan’s mouth go dry.
“Logan?”
He wasn’t aware that he’d been staring until Ororo called his name. She removed the lightning bolt earrings from her lobes, frowning at her husband. The worry furrowed her brow, creasing it just above her nose the same way it had in the time he could remember. He liked to kiss that little crease as she drifted to sleep in his arms, their bodies worn out from rounds of heated passion that left him breathless.
Had he loved her there? Had he known in that war-torn world what she meant to him and was too fucking stupid to understand it?
Did it matter?
“Logan?” She crossed the room to him, her dark eyes boring into his.
Without any control over the urge, Logan’s hands lashed out. He took her by that slender waist, hauled her close to him. Storm gave in willingly, going boneless in his arms as though she’d done it a thousand times. Logan took her weight easily, his mouth finding hers for the first time since he’d awoken to find his entire world changed.
Ororo gasped against his lips, her hands finding their way into his hair. Her mouth opened as he swept his tongue across the surface of her plump bottom lip. She took him in easily, pressing her long, lithe body against his. Logan groaned in his throat, the sound reverberating as a growl somewhere deep in his chest.
She tasted exactly as he remembered. Ororo’s kisses were fervent and drugging, an addiction he never wanted to shake. The flavor of her coated his tongue: smoky and dark, like good red wine mixed with the deepest chocolate. Logan let his hands slide to her backside, squeezing so she was forced to fit more fully against his chest.
She felt the same, tasted the same, it was as though no time had passed. Logan realized, for the first time, that this was his wife. The change in time lines, the decisions he had made as another man, none of it really mattered.
Ororo was meant to be his.
When oxygen finally demanded they part, Logan relinquished her only far enough to provide lungs with air. Ororo stared up at him, those cocoa eyes glazed with passion. He knew that look; he had seen it a thousand times before. It was how she told him she wanted him, that she needed him against her, over her, inside of her. This part, this facet of who they were could not be changed.
Logan loved Ororo.
“Take me to bed.” Storm whispered, reaching up to nip at his lips. Logan’s hands reflexively tightened on her backside, holding her in place as though she might vanish in they relinquished their prize.
The thought of holding her again, loving her, baring himself in that way he only could with Ororo was too tempting to resist. He needed that connection, especially now that he could see the similarities in the woman he had known with the goddess before him now. He could not resist her during war, he would not do so now.
He nodded once.
“Yeah.”
