Nil Desperandum

4

I was surprised to find that Professor Xavier’s office door was still intact (i.e., hadn’t actually been ripped off its hinges) come half past eight. Wolverine was already inside, I could feel his shape, outlined in phosphorescent blood and muscle against the cool night air. I twisted the handle and the door swung open on oiled hinges. He was out on the balcony, perched on the balustrade, his legs hanging down over what I knew was a solid forty foot drop, and he was halfway through a longneck. I hopped up beside him, snagging a beer out of the box on the ground. Without looking at me, he extended a single claw a couple of inches and levered off the cap. ‘Sorry ‘bout that scene in the mess hall, but I’m sure ya figured out a way to convince your buddies I ain’t luring you up here to seduce you.’

I snickered. I should be so lucky. ‘Yeah. Between my incredible intellect and your terror of green vegetables, I think I convinced them.’ I took a long swallow of Red Hook. It’s good beer, and it’d been a while since I’d had any.

‘Terror of—’ he began, an eyebrow raised, but he stopped himself. ‘Never mind. I don’t wanna know. But in case you were wondering, I like asparagus. Good for…good for the blood.’

‘And you need all the help you can get after last night, huh?’ he nodded gloomily. ‘So what happened, anyhow? You’ve been away for a couple of months, sure, that’s standard. You do it all the time. Drives Scooter up the wall. I think he wants you to commit to a long-term relationship instead of just sleeping with him.’ He snorted. ‘Really, though. When you show back up, you’re usually strong as a horse. You show up and you flash money around, help us prod some buttocks, and then you clear out again. I’ve never seen you that beaten up, and I’ve never seen that kind of tech. I thought we had all the best gadgets, but—anyhow. What’s the dealio? Where were you?’

He was watching me steadily. It was still unnerving. There was nothing like it, really. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I could clearly feel the way his metal-bonded skeleton was outlined hard against his body. It retained much more heat than bone. ‘You’re awful observant.’ He said quietly. ‘Noticing how often I come here, how long I stay, what I do.’ There was more than a shade of suspicion in his voice.

‘Yeah. It’s hard not to. I have to listen to Rogue bitching about it when you leave.’

Something flickered behind his eyes. Relief? Guilt? ‘Right.’ He looked away, chuckled. ‘She’s your roommate, isn’t she?’ he scratched his chin thoughtfully.

‘Yep.’

‘I think I must’ve met you before.’ He looked at me again, just a glance. I nodded.

‘Uh huh.’ I gave him a second. ‘Oh, wait. I forgot. You must be getting senile in your old age, grandpappy.’

‘You make another crack about Ensure, kid, you can go get some chocolate milk.’ He replied sharply, but with a feral grin that I couldn’t help but respond to. We drank in companionable silence for a moment, then he seemed to think of something. ‘Rogue bitches?’

I laughed. ‘You bet your ass. Not that I would accept it as a legit bet, but yeah.’

‘Huh. She ain’t never said anything about it to me.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Dude. I know you like to think that you’re close and all, but I’m a girl, and I’ve spent more than a week at a time with her, no offence, so I think I know her a bit better than you do, at least when it comes to knowing stuff like, say, that she goes into a month-long sulk ever time you leave. I mean, it’s not like she’s not into her boyfriend. It makes me a little sick the mooky way they go to puddles of fluffy-bunny luuurve every time they’re together, but you’re…also special to her. There’s still a little bit of you rattling around in her head. She growls in the mornings, and every now and again, she starts craving steak, even though she’s a vegetarian. I mean, she even defies Scott every chance she gets because she has some weird sense of solidarity or something.’ I paused, wondering whether I should carry on. Ah, well. It was a nice life while it lasted. I might as well go whole hog for my buddy. ‘I found her once, crying at Jean’s grave. She wasn’t crying like a girl, either.’ I didn’t bother looking at him. I could feel his heart rate increasing, blood heating.

‘And just what am I supposed to do about that? She’s not a kid anymore. It ain’t my fault. Life hands everyone hard knocks and I try to spend time with her when I can.’

‘Well, you could try talking to her instead of throwing cash at her. Just a thought, ya know. Might make her feel like a friend instead of a responsibility.’ I paused, tipped the bottle up-end to catch the last inch of cool, frothy brew, and leant back to snag another two, one for each of us. He popped them open. ‘I know you’re a good guy.’ He snorted. ‘Not a nice guy. Except when it comes to offering cute Asian co-eds drinks they can’t buy themselves.’ I parroted Remy. ‘But you care about Rogue, and I know you wanna be part of her life. That’s cool. She cares about you, too. And like you said, she’s not a kid anymore. She’s a woman with her own life, and sooner or later, the whole hero slash damsel in distress chemistry isn’t gonna work anymore.’ I realised I was preaching, but hey, he was listening. ‘You’re never gonna figure out how you fit into each other’s lives if you don’t talk.’

He was quiet for a while, smoking, with even, steady breaths. ‘Ya sure have a lot to say for someone who just met me.’

‘Nah. I was one of the kids that got nabbed during the Stryker mission. I was at Alkali Lake when Jean died.’ I didn’t know whether I was proud or ashamed of myself for speaking without a single stammer and sounding like I didn’t give a damn. Another stare. Damned if he didn’t see right through me, and knew that I knew. ‘Anyhow. I was useless. They drugged us up. Did you know?’

‘Bet you would’ve saved us all if you hadn’t been.’ He drawled.

‘Your sarcasm is duly noted.’ I sniffed. ‘But probably not. I’m no leader. One of nature’s privates, me.’ His raised eyebrow said it all. ‘Oh, shaddup. Anyhow, we ran a Danger Room sim together, in case you don’t recall.’ He squinted his eyes up, and I repressed a giggle. He was doing such a good job of looking big, dumb, and only nominally sober. Trouble was, I knew he was none of those things. Well, okay, so he’s built like a brick wall, but one out of three is the guy who gets beaten up.

‘I think I might.’ He muttered. ‘We finished the sim and some kid came sniffin’ around like he was afraid I was gonna throw you over my shoulder and haul you off to my cave or something.’

‘Oh God.’ I hid my face in my hands. ‘That was Everett. He’s not here anymore. Goes to school in Boston. Thinks he’s going to be a criminal prosecutor.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘Ex, thank God.’

‘He seemed like a nice kid. Decent. Bit whiny, and no man should treat a woman like property, but he’ll learn.’ I could feel him making an immense effort to be interested in me, could almost hear the tumblers in his brain thudding into place. ‘Why’d you split?’

‘Cause he treated me like property. And he was a bit of a douche, too.’

‘Ah, every woman says that.’

‘I’m not every woman. I’m very tolerant. I was. Until he started putting the moves on my roommate.’

‘Whoa. Wait.’ He looked startled. ‘Rogue?’

‘Nah. There are three girls to a university dorm. Monet St. Croix, resident Monacan aristocrat.’

‘Oh. Good luck with that.’ He sent me a humourless, one-sided grin. I shrugged.

‘She’s not bad. Keeps out of my way nowadays, but she helped me with trig, back in high school.’

‘You have faults? Amazing.’

‘I’m dyscalculic, ya smartass.’

‘Huh. That was awful nice of her, anyhow. Puttin’ up with your attitude and your learning disabilities.’

‘Disability singular, buttface.’ Oh, yeah, Lee. Ma-ture. ‘Anyhow.’ I nudged his booted toes with mine. ‘What happened to you? Where’d that bug thingie come from?’

‘Why’re you so damned interested?’

‘Because.’ I braced myself, then faced him head on. ‘You’ve come back here, and anything hardcore enough to use that kind of tech will figure out where you’ve gone. Have you talked to Scott about this?’

He nodded. ‘It’s got something to do with him, I think. It’s complicated.’

‘Oh, yeah? Like, how?’ he gave me a blank stare. ‘Like, are we talking Matrix sequels complicated or Scarlett O’Hara complicated?’

He cracked another grin. ‘Ain’t sure. Maybe a bit of both.’

‘Well, shit.’ I finished my beer. ‘Well, you sure as hell aren’t Neo, so I guess the only question is, are you Rhett or Ashley?’

‘My dear,’ he said, around a mouthful of cigar, ‘I don’t give a damn.’

‘A’course. Why not?’ I chuckled. ‘Okay. So does this have anything to do with this mysterious past I hear you’re lugging around like a bad case of herpes?’

‘Kind of. I think. There’s a woman.’

‘There’s always a woman.’ He helped me uncap another bottle. I was feeling dizzy enough to need to stand on something solid, so I slid back up onto the balcony, and leant my elbows on the balustrade beside him. ‘Cherchez la femme, and all that.’

‘I don’t think it’s like that. She…I remember a bit. I remember when she was a kid.’ He hesitated. ‘I think she was…I think she was mine.’

‘Daughter?’ I ventured. Jubilation Lee, super sleuth.

‘Nah. Smells wrong. I think I took care of her, though. I recognised her, right off the bat, and she recognised me, too. Called me…’ he hesitated. ‘Called me Patch. Said something about Madripoor. Mentioned a bar. I told her I don’t remember anything much, and she was about to fill in the details when some kinda…cyborg-lookin’ thing came through the wall and started taking shots at me. She jumped in and fought him, but he hit me, and the tracker assembled itself from tech inside the bullets. Don’t know how I know, but I…I remember seein’ something similar once upon a time. I knew it would swim around in my innards for about six hours gathering energy before it could start transmitting a location. So I headed up here.’

‘That is…fucking crazy.’ I conceded, and toasted him jokingly. ‘Sounds like an episode of Star Trek. Course, this whole thing,’ I waved the beer to encompass the grounds, ‘is like an episode of Star Trek, so I can’t really judge.’

He laughed quietly, shrugging. ‘That ain’t the least of it.’

‘Oh? This gets weirder?’

‘Yep.’ He paused. ‘You’re gonna think I’m crazy.’

‘I already do. No worries.’

‘I smelled something—some one—familiar. On her, on her clothes and skin.’

‘Dude,’ I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow, ‘quit with the suspense. My patience is so limited.’

He shook his head. ‘You aren’t gonna believe me. But I swear to God that I smelled Summers on her. Or someone related to him. Closely related.’

I blinked. ‘Wow. That is…’ I paused for a chug of Red Hook. ‘…fuckin’ Twilight Zone shit.’

‘Yeah. S’the only reason the cyborg bastard got a shot in. That and Neena.’ He sighed. ‘The skirt. That’s her name.’

‘The “skirt,” huh? What is this, 1940?’ I teased. I wobbled. ‘Damn it. I need to slow down. I haven’t had anything to drink in a while.’ He had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

‘You aren’t gonna rat me out to Summers, are you?’

I stared at him. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.’ He grinned. ‘Could get some steep jail time for that here in the States, couldn’t I?’

‘Yeah. Cause being a mutant vigilante isn’t bad enough, right? Please. Scott’s probably just happy I’m not in the rec-room shooting pool and vodka with Remy. He’s learnt to expect a little hell-raising from the both of us, I think.’ I didn’t specify whether I meant Remy and I, or Logan and I.

‘Remy…’ he said. ‘He’s the kid with the eyes.’

‘Yes.’ I hesitated. ‘He’s a good sort. Tried to go out with Rogue for a while, actually, but she wasn’t having it.’

‘Don’t blame her. He ain’t a good sort, kid.’

‘Thanks, Wolvie.’ I laughed. ‘The warning is much needed. You’re all heart.’ After a pause, I added, ‘And it’s Jubilee.’

‘Then you can quit calling me your little pet name, too.’

‘Awh. But you look like a Wolvie. Fuzzy and snarly.’ Oh, no. First sign of overdrinking, I start getting cutesy, and I’m reduced to using words ending in –y in my descriptions of anything from crazy clawed wild men to, well, me.

‘But if you want to keep all your vital organs in the same places they are now, you’re gonna start calling me Logan.’ He insisted, but in a playful tone that convinced me that he was probably totally joking. Probably.

‘You got it.’ I swigged in silence for a moment.

‘So,’ he said, sliding down from the railing and turning to face me, leaning sideways, ‘you reckon I should talk to her more? Rogue, I mean?’ there were enough sparking, raw nerves in his voice to hotwire a monster truck.

‘Don’t you want to?’ he shrugged, began peeling the label off his bottle, tossed it over the balcony onto the lawn. ‘You know, Ororo will have you cut up into little bitty pieces for that.’

‘Nah. She likes me too much. Anyhow, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to talk to her about. I don’t really wanna know about her boyfriend, and fashion isn’t really my thing.’

‘Well, what did you used to talk about with her?’

‘I don’t know.’ He patted his pockets, producing a pack of cigarettes, and tapping one free. ‘He offered me the carton. ‘You smoke?’

‘Nope. Thanks for offering to pollute my lungs as well as my liver, though.’ He shrugged, put one between his lips, and began the routine smoker’s search for matches or a lighter. I paffed the horrid thing to life.

‘Thanks, darlin’.’ He exhaled, smoke issuing in a blue stream from between his lips. ‘Pass me another beer.’ I did. He waved the cigarette vaguely as he started in on me again. ‘Look, the thing about me an’ Rogue is that back when I first met her, I was…I was just…wasn’t much more’n an animal. And anyhow, she was scared and alone, and not much interested in talking. Suited me fine. I’m not much of a talker.’

‘You’re doing fine now.’ I pointed out. ‘But I see what you’re getting at. Rogue’s not a scared little girl anymore, and you’re not sure where you fit. So? I’m pretty sure you have a lot in common. What kind of music do you like?’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Classic rock. Some country, maybe some jazz.’

‘Classics man. Well, I happen to know that Rogue is a huge fan of the Doors, with a real soft spot for Stephane Grappelli. Granted, the latter was inherited from Monet, but still. Girl’s got taste. And you’re both stubborn, I’ll bet, and ballsy. Well, you have balls, and she’s a brave girl. And you’re both nice enough, once you get past all the loner bullshit. Which really is bullshit on her part. And you’re both generous people.’

He snickered. ‘Generous, eh?’

‘You’re sharing your booze, ain’tchya? And she lends me shoes and makeup when I need them. Only difference between the two of you, so far as I can see, is that I can wipe the floor with her in the Danger Room, or anywhere else for that matter, powers or no, and you…well, I’m not sure about you. You might take longer.’

He grunted. ‘Big talk for a little girl.’

‘Yeah, well. I’m a fast little girl with a big punch.’

He grinned. ‘For some reason, I’m inclined not to doubt that.’ I found myself smiling back. He really did have a nice smile, sharp white teeth gleaming in the dark. ‘Ya know, you ain’t half bad for one of these spandex-brigade do gooders.’

I laughed. ‘Thanks. You aren’t half bad for someone who was probably on the planning committee for dirt.’

He looked momentarily horrified, but recovered. ‘What did I tell you about calling me old, ya little brat?’

‘I think you said you were gonna buy me chocolate milk. You charmer, you.’ I summoned up the ancient weapon of batting big anime eyes at him, a well used secret tactic of women the globe over.

‘Oh, you’re on.’ He said, knocking his beer back. ‘You’n’me. Tomorrow’s Saturday. What time’s good for you?’

‘Whoa. Wait. You seem a bit eager. Don’tchya know you’re supposed to wait three days after the first date to call again?’

‘I don’t mean that, darlin’.’ Something in the way he growled the word made it sound like exactly the opposite of an endearment. Either that, or I was gonna need a safe word, and fast.

‘Well what is Saturday supposed to be good for?’

‘To see just how squeaky clean I can make the floor with one Jubilation Lee. We won’t need the Danger Room. We can meet out in the little Japanese rock garden. The sand’ll be nice and soft, so your tailbone doesn’t break when you fall on your ass. Interesting footwork to compensate for the shifting ground, too.’ He murmured, almost distractedly. ‘You seem like the kind to sleep late. Three in the pm sound good to you?’

‘Do I score another couple beers if I show?’

‘Sure, why not?’ he raised his head, and I looked round. There were still three lonely looking bottles in the box. ‘I’ll have to pick up another case. Do you think…’ he hesitated. ‘Does Rogue drink at all?’

It was cute, watching him squirm in abject embarrassment, kind of like watching a non-custodial father trying to reach out to a teenaged daughter in a bad movie. Except this was, well, it was almost completely different. Logan was different. For one thing, he was hoping she’d come drink with him. ‘Yeah. Every now and again. Monet’s dad sent her some bottles of champagne for her birthday a few months ago, and we had a girl’s night in with Kitty and Kurt.’

‘Kurt?’ his eyes sharpened marginally.

‘Yeah. He’s really good at doing hair and makeup. And he’s handy for running down to the pantry for, like, chocolate and stuff.’

‘And he’s another “good sort,” right?’ there was an edge in his voice.

‘Chill, Wolvie. Kurt’s a hardcore Catholic. He’s probably not even allowed to think naughty thoughts without doing like, a bajillion hail Marys or something. Although I’ve always thought that he could probably do some wicked things with his tail.’

‘Whoa. That’s enough. Catholic. I get it. Right.’ He paused. ‘Didn’t I read somewhere that all mutants had been excommunicated or something?’

‘Nah. The Vatican’s very progressive. There was a diocese somewhere in Spain that threatened to excommunicate its mutant parishioners, but someone mysteriously found some very incriminating pictures of him in a compromising position with a call girl. Several compromising positions, actually.’ The internet is a wonderful thing. ‘It was quite the scandal.’

‘No way.’ He smiled. ‘Not a little choir boy this time?’

‘That’s not fair.’ I protested. ‘Just think about being celibate your whole life.’

‘You ain’t defending paedophiles.’ He snarled.

‘Nope. Not on your life. But I believe we were talking about hookers, dude. I mean, come on. Sure the guy was a bigoted anti-mutant asshole when it comes to the question of genetics, but, like, I’m a chick and I’m already climbing the walls after a two-month dry spell. Apparently it’s worse for dudes. I wouldn’t know.’

‘That how long ago you split with your boyfriend?’

‘Nah, that happened like, ages ago. Three, four months.’

He turned his head and gave me what might be called an old-fashioned look. This one had single-celled organisms swimming around in it, wondering whether evolution was really worth all the trouble. ‘Ages ago, huh?’

‘Oh, shaddup.’ I elbowed him again. ‘Anyhow, I probably wouldn’t still be single, only Kitty and Rogue freaking will not mind their own business. They keep trying to hook me up with the biggest d-bags out there. Or, rather, in here.’

‘D-bags.’ He repeated slowly, an amused smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

‘Yep. You would be totally sympathetic if you had Angelo Espinosa shoved at you. I mean, he’s cool to hang out with and everything, but as a boyfriend? He’s a freaking chain-smoking gang member. No offence.’ I waved a hand toward him and his Mr. Tough-Guy image, complete with Accessory Cigarette.

‘None taken. So they tried hooking you up with this guy, and you aren’t all that into him.’

‘Dude, I have not even gotten started. That was numero uno, hotshot. Kitty’s been trying to shove me into Warren Worthington’s pants for the past two weeks, and he’s a schmuck whose daddy owns everything. Before him, it was, I kid-you-not, Sam Guthrie, who’s like, totally hot in a blue-collar, farm-boy way, and oh, my freaking God my knees turned into jelly when he was mowing the lawn without a shirt on, with a pushmower, no less, but he can’t exactly carry a decent conversation to save his life. And he’s a very… good boy. I think he might be like, saving himself for marriage or something, which is kind of creepy. Even Kurt only thinks people have to be in lurve in order to do the nasty.’

The look on Logan’s face was as close to priceless as makes no difference. He looked like he’d been holding his breath for about half a minute too long, and his eyes were almost crossed. ‘Lemme get this straight,’ he choked, punctuating his opening phrase by crushing his cigarette out on the balustrade between us, ‘Too poor, too rich, too normal. That about the size of it?’ he grinned and did a suggestive eyebrow-lifting-thing. ‘You’re into the elf, aren’t you?’

‘What? Bollocks.’ I felt my cheeks heating up. Damn it. ‘No! he’s a buddy. We’re not like that. Besides, I kicked his fuzzy blue rear in the Danger Room today. It’s very important for a man to be able to physically coerce a woman into doing important things. Like the dishes.’

Logan’s grin turned even more leering. ‘You like him. I can tell. You got all bothered when you mentioned him.’

‘Bothered? As in…oh. Ew.’ I felt my blush going incandescent as he tapped his nose meaningfully. ‘No way. You can tell when I’m turned on?’

‘Yep.’

‘Wow. That’s like, totally humiliating. Okay, pre-emptive strike. If we’re throwing down tomorrow and I get…you know…bothered, it’s only because I like big sweaty muscles and being held down. Nothing to do with you at all.’

‘Guess I’ll just have to try harder.’ He stared into the neck of his beer like it was gonna bring peace to the Middle East.

‘Oh, please don’t. You’re already annoyingly sexy.’ To my credit, he actually looked shocked. Damn it, I was shocked, too. Bloody alcohol was making me way too chatty.

‘Never been called annoying before.’

‘Psch. Bet loads of people called you annoying, and then you cut them up into little pieces, so they didn’t tell their buddies.’

‘Could be. There’s a whole lotta stuff that I don’t remember, darlin’.’ It was weird. I mean, I’ve hung out with some totally bi-polar guys before. Ev’s a champion mood-swinger. Puts menopausal women to shame, but this…this was different. Even Everett never went from flirting to angsting in nought point two. Logan just had. Weird.

‘Well, you keep drinking and tonight’s shaping up to go the same way.’

‘Nah.’ He brightened a little, but only marginally. ‘I’d have to drink a whole helluva lot more’n this to put a dent in my healing factor. A bottle of whiskey, chugged straight, on an empty stomach, usually gets me feelin’ okay.’

‘That seems a bit inconvenient and expensive.’

‘Can be.’ He leaned closer, as though sharing a state secret. ‘But I’m loaded, so it’s okay.’

I looked him up and down, at the worn grey wife-beater and ragged plaid flannel, jeans with threadbare knees, and the battered motorcycle boots. All right, those were probably worth a couple hundred new, but they looked twenty years old. ‘Right.’ I glanced at the bottle in his hand. ‘Not a dent, huh, chief?’

‘Nothing wrong with being comfortable.’

‘Touché.’ Then my brain nudged me, and I chuckled. ‘You know what, I think I’m loaded too, only it’s all tied up in red tape and property. When I turned eighteen, I got a letter saying a bank account with half a million was now available to me, along with a package of information as long as the Bible telling me all about my assets.’

‘I thought…’ he appeared to think hard for a send. I could almost see the blood struggling get to his brain against the pull of all those pretty muscles. ‘Ororo said you’re an orphan. That they picked you up off the street.’

‘Yeah. Well, was going through a bit of a defiant stage. Like I said, apparently it was all tied up till I turned eighteen, and even then the one bank account was only released because I was enrolled in college. If I don’t graduate with the right GPA, I think I lose a bunch of property and bonds. My mum and dad were very hardcore about education.’

‘That’s a good incentive, I guess. So,’ he extended his bottle, ‘to hidden wealth?’

‘Pots of it.’ I agreed, clinked, and chugged. After the standard companionable-silence moment had elapsed, I muttered, ‘Hey, it’s been awesome hanging out, but it’s getting late, and I promised Remy I’d hand him his ass over a game of pool, so I’d better get going. You should go give Rogue the heads up about tomorrow, find out if she wants to hang out with you. Oh, if there’s a hat on the doorknob, I wouldn’t bother.’ I glanced round at the empties lined up against the wall. ‘I’d help you clean up, but…’

‘Don’t worry about it. Maybe it’ll do my rep good, if I dump a whole case in the bin without any ostensible drinking buddies.’

‘Ooh. “Ostensible,” huh? Pullin’ out the ten-dollar words on me. She’s impressed, Wolvie. Really, she is.’

‘You start talkin’ about yourself in the third person, and I will take you over my knee, young lady.’

Oh my God. My libido did not need the mental picture. ‘You been asking round about my fetishes?’ I demanded, hands planted on hips.

‘Nah, darlin’, just a lucky guess.’

I giggled (rather drunkenly, in retrospect) as I headed down the corridor to the dorm wing, and managed to remain upright as I banged into the room Remy shared with Piotr and Warren. ‘Benedictite, mes fils!’ I hollered, striking a (questionably) heroic pose. ‘And how are we hanging tonight?’

Remy glanced up from the magazine he had been flipping through. Something about rappelling. Huh. He exchanged a look with Warren, who was on his laptop with his shirt off. Probably posing for whoever was on the other end of his webcam. ‘Right. Maybe y’ shouldn’t be in de rec-room wit’ dat…I mean…till y’ feel better.’

‘I feel great.’

‘I meant sober.’

‘Oh, fuck off, Gumbo, I’m fine.’ I insisted, elbowing him over so that I could flop down beside him. ‘I was so much worse on St. Patrick’s Day.’

‘Kurt had to tie your hands together with his tail to stop you from grabbing Mr. Summers’ ass.’ Warren muttered, sounding disgusted.

‘Maybe I just wanted Kurt to tie me up.’ I stuck my tongue out in his direction. ‘Anyhow, Remy, m’love, m’heart, some billiards, please?’ I flashed my baby blues and conjured up the most Disney Princess look I could manage. He narrowed his glowing red on black eyes.

‘You ain’t tryin’ t’ manipulate me, are you, petite?’

‘Tsch. Not on your life. I’m just being nice. Anyhow, you were wangsting over getting jilted. Come on, it’s like, not even ten o’clock yet.’

He leaned back against the pillow, and tucked me up against him. ‘Don’t know, petite, Remy’s awful comfortable jest lyin’ here wit’ dis très belle femme dat’s got such blue eyes. What he want t’ play pool for?’

‘Ugh. Keep referring to yourself in the third person, and I’ll…I’ll have Logan take you over his knee.’

He laughed, a good hearty belly laugh. ‘Wouldn’t y’ jest love dat?’ he elbowed me in the ribs, then launched himself to his feet, taking me with him. ‘Come on, den. Professor Summers jus’ bought a new PlayStation 3, and I have a game I want t’ kick y’r cute little rear at.’

‘You’re on!’ I waved to Warren. ‘I call player one!’

‘Merde. Y’know I hate dat.’ Remy pouted as we trailed down the stairs, nearly bowling a group of high school freshmen over.

‘Tough cookies, swamp rat. You gonna brood on the roof about that, too?’

‘Nah, I’ll jus’ whup y’r ass at Halo.’

‘Hah. You wish. Dweeb.’ As we raced down to the rec-room, I found myself purposely not looking round for Kurt. We really were just buddies, damn it. And not like, super close, either. I mean, we didn’t squirrel into each other’s pants or anything. We just got along. I hung out with Remy way more than I did with Kurt. Really.

As I waited for Remy to boot the pair of mouthbreathers off the new game console, I wondered vaguely just how much of a third wheel I was going to feel with Logan and right the next day. Ah, whatev. Different problem for a different day. I flopped down on the couch and snatched the controller, waiting for the boot screen to load. For now, I would settle for watching Rikimaru get his butt handed to him by Ayame for once.