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hyper-fixates · 6 months ago

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Time After Time

Logan Howlett/Wolverine x AFAB!reader (no pronouns/gendered language).

Explicit content (18+)

Word count: 15.2k never let me near him again

Tags/warnings: age-gap due to logan’s mutation (reader’s age not specified), mutant!reader, unprotected sex, teasing, friends to lovers, explicit language, dry humping, storm cameos, fluff, domesticity, the claws come out when he’s close (👁️👁️), detailed descriptions & scenes of nightmares/trauma/PTSD/panic attacks, one (1) ass smack, alcohol consumption, vomiting, biting/marking, angst, soft!logan, creampie, groping/touching, use of “baby” once, aftercare, yearning (kindly let me know if anything was missed!).

Summary: 4 times you end up in Logan’s bed, and the 1 time he does something about it.

Notes: this falls somewhere in between “which could mean nothing” and “we can fix each other” 🫡 (written with a mix of X1 & X2 logan!)

Your heart, despite always being alive and beating, sometimes wakes up before you.

You can feel it before your eyes even have a chance to open. It jolts your sleep-ridden body and collapses your lungs without giving your brain a chance to fight against it. Muscles and limbs feel lifeless and detached from your body, shaking from the sleep that your heart knows wasn’t completely dreamless.

You kick the blankets off of yourself and sit up in a panic, trying to regain some control of your sudden erratic breaths while bringing a lethargic hand to your heaving chest in hopes to ground yourself. It never works.

Maybe your ribs are shrinking and squeezing your lungs, making you delirious from the lack of oxygen, but you know that’s not the case. Your heart feels like it’s being squeezed and broken into a million tiny pieces.

No part of your body feels real, yet you keep your hand on your chest as firmly as you can, trying to focus on controlling the pounding of your heart that’s working so hard with each beat that it hurts.

“Fuck. Fuck,” you choke out, feeling the tears finally breach and roll down your cheeks as your nervous system catches up to what’s happening.

Panic. It’s all panic.

You can’t do anything but sit there and let the tears hit the freshly-washed fitted sheet on your bed. So you let it happen. Nothing can stop it.

Trauma is such a fickle thing. One moment you’re fine, and then the next, your heart is screaming at you and forcing your body to process something at 4 a.m. on a random Friday when all you wanted was some goddamn sleep.

There is no choice. Your mind doesn’t give you one.

The tremors subside slowly after a few minutes, giving you the feeling back to your arms and legs, albeit minimal.

You slide to sit at the edge of your bed, resting an elbow on your thigh and setting your chin into your palm with a defeated, yet shaky, huff.

You look to your window and see that the sun hasn’t even started to rise yet. You’ll be up for the rest of the foreseeable morning, but there’s not much to do so early besides wander aimlessly and think…then think some more.

You’re confident the professor isn’t even awake at this hour, which says enough about your state. You would typically go visit Storm for some comfort, but she’s been gone fuck-knows-where with Hank and Scott until Sunday at the latest. Thanks, Charles.

A questionable, and probably manic, decision comes to mind. One that’s only two doors down, one over from Storm.

Your impulsive feet make up your mind for you. The cold hardwood floor shocking you further into consciousness as if your heart didn’t do a good enough job.

You tiptoe a couple steps down the hall, forcing yourself to turn and face the large wooden door when you reach it. You just stand there staring at it, unknocking, analyzing the wood grains, suddenly very interested in what type of wood it is and what stain was used to—

“Uh. Are you okay?”

You refocus your eyes onto the man now standing in front of you in the doorway, adorning a barely-zipped school hoodie and black sweats.

“Huh?” You blink a few times, disoriented.

Logan quirks a brow, looking you up and down cautiously. “Are you okay?” He asks again, offering a look of concern—or maybe confusion—that you haven’t seen often. A look that’s never needed to be directed towards you.

You come back to yourself. “But—I…didn’t knock,” you respond, looking equally as confused as him as you point to the door.

He leans against the edge of the door, face softening. “I could smell you before you passed Storm’s room,” he clarifies, a hint of reluctance in his tone. Oh.

You feel like a child who has just gained awareness, all too conscious of your situation.

“You’re…awake?” Is all you manage despite probably needing to say much more than that to explain just why exactly you’re standing outside Logan’s room at 4 a.m.

“So are you,” he counters with a curious look. “So let me ask again. Are you okay?” He locks his eyes on yours, probably in hopes to understand why the fuck you’re outside his room at 4 a.m.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” you say, and it’s the truth.

You should probably be embarrassed. You show up at Logan’s door unannounced, dressed in a flimsy shirt and matching sweats—thanks, Charles—that can’t fully hide the remaining quivers throughout your body.

Logan pulls his lips together at your admission. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head trying to figure you out.

“Can’t sleep?” He questions, but he knows he’s right.

“Yeah.” You don’t know why you’re making it Logan’s problem, though. Sure, he happens to be awake, but maybe this is all too personal to push on the guy who’s seemingly all pride and no solicitude most of the time.

It’s not that he’s not a good, nice guy, but you don’t know how you would define your relationship, or lack of.

You know each other well enough from existing in the same space over the past couple months, being part of the same “team”, but it’s nothing to call a close friendship like you and Storm. He’s a bit of a rare species in the mansion, not really lingering around.

He cocks his head in a half shrug, the soft points in his hair broken by sleep shake gently with the movement.

“I don’t think I can help you,” he says wearily. “I’m no better. Clearly.” He gestures between you, drawing attention to the fact that you’re both awake. The helpless cannot help the helpless.

“Oh—no, I’m not looking for help. I think I’m beyond that at this point,” you laugh but stop yourself short when Logan doesn’t follow. Tough crowd.

“I, uh, don’t actually know what I’m looking for,” you offer.

You knit your brows together in thought, still wondering why the fuck you’re here. Comfort? Entertainment? Some other unknown third thing?

“I’m not really used to Storm being gone for so long,” you admit. “I just feel…all over the place, I guess.”

Logan considers your vulnerability for a beat, eyes flicking to yours. “I can hear you sometimes,” he says, a knowing—almost sympathetic—look on his face. “We have the same problem.”

You go cold, any expression you had on your face sliding away. You wish the floor could swallow you right now. You know things have been getting worse recently, but you didn’t think anyone could hear that fact. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise from someone who could smell you from down the hallway.

He steps back, pulling his door open further. An invitation.

You don’t move right away. Could this be a false awakening? You’re not sure what you expected when you came to his door, but you also didn’t expect him to open it without you knocking, so you have to suspend disbelief for now. You figured he’d offer a few words of advice and dismiss you, or maybe even tell you to fuck off, but he opened his door wider for you. But you didn’t exactly think any of it through in the first place anyway.

You force your feet to carry you into Logan’s room. It’s not much different from yours; scarce belongings, minimal decor, a small work desk, brown curtains that are drawn back, and a bed.

“Were you, uh…sleeping before I came?” You sit on the unmade bed, nothing noticeably different from it compared to yours.

He shuts the door quietly, moving to the small desk across the room and filing some scattered papers together neatly.

“Trying to,” he says, keeping his gaze on the desk.

Fucking duh. “Sorry if I disturbed you,” you wince to yourself.

You see him briefly shake his head at your unnecessary apology. “I had to get up anyway.” His voice is still gravelly from sleep.

It feels like you’re invading his space. But he invited you in. How many others have had the opportunity to be in here? Probably too many. There’s nothing to make this special.

“I’m fucking exhausted,” you sigh, flopping back on his bed defeated. Simply overwhelmed with the uncontrollable repercussions of your mutation.

“Try to sleep. If you want,” he offers, moving to the edge of the bed. “It’s easier said than done, but I have to meet with Charles in an hour.” It’s gruff, but he’s sincere.

Maybe the professor is awake after all.

You roll your head to the side to look at him. Was he really offering for you to stay in his bed?

“Oh, wow…uh, sure.” It comes off as more of a question, but he quirks his brows in acknowledgment, turning back to the desk and collecting a handful of other miscellaneous papers.

“I have to head downstairs and take care of some things. Stay as long as you need,” he says, zipping his sweater the rest of the way up. Thank God in heaven.

A shy “thanks” is all you manage as you situate yourself on the bed.

Is this fucking weird? You could name a handful of others in the mansion right this second that would kill without hesitation to be where you are. They’d probably kill you specifically to get it. It’s not much of a secret that Logan is the subject of almost all students’ desires. He knows it, too.

“See you later,” he adds, his lips forming the slightest hint of a caring smile as he sees himself out. You throw one back before the door clicks shut.

Should you be offended that he didn’t stay? That he left so quickly? No, no, he can’t. He couldn’t. Charles is expecting him. The timing is just horrid. But now you’re just…alone…in Logan’s room, expected to sleep because of a random act of kindness in his heart.

Lying in his bed instead of yours is an odd sensation. The sheets and mattress are exactly the same, the pillows are just as fluffy, yet it feels unalike.

You flop your head on his pillow, tugging the blankets up to your chin. Your fingers graze something by your hip as you settle in, making you push the blanket back down. Leaning over, you see three puncture marks in the mattress, fraying the bedsheet material into feather-soft strands around the deep holes.

Your eyes widen, remembering his words before he invited you in: “We have the same problem.”

Part of your heart fractures for the second time today. Your eyes cross over to the other side of you, seeing a matching set of holes just below the pillow. It’s suddenly easy to understand why no one besides him has been seen coming and going from this room in a while. One day, things just seemed to change.

Maybe his act of kindness was an act of mercy. Trauma will always find you, and it will make sure you feel it until you either destroy it or it destroys you.

Even the Wolverine isn’t an exception.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

The gold liquid is gone from the glass as quickly as it was poured.

Your throat clenches and protests the swallow as you try to suppress the urge to gag. You gently set the shot glass back on the counter, watching Storm chase with a piece of lime that does nothing to help the puckered face she makes from the tequila.

“No more, no more. I can’t.” Your arms anchor you to the counter to stop yourself from swaying too much.

Storm nods, still fighting off the sourness with furrowed brows and a scrunched nose. You giggle at her when she quickly screws the cap back on the bottle, sliding it out of reach.

“You’re a bad influence,” she scolds as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“No—I’m under the influence,” you counter, a playful smile on your lips. “There’s a difference. You still have your own free will.”

Storm rolls her eyes so hard you only see the whites of them. “We have training tomorrow,” she slurs. “Charles will not be happy if we show up half-conscious.” She rounds the counter to you, grabbing your shoulders for stability, and you do the same.

“He’ll be lucky if we show up at all,” you mumble.

The dim kitchen lighting embraces the two of you, the rest of the mansion blanketed in darkness with everyone fast asleep—like you both should be.

You close your eyes with a roll of your neck, more giggles falling through your lips as you clumsily grab onto Storm and rock and sway together for a moment, the alcohol quickly catching up to your motor skills. It feels like you’re spinning through time and space, and you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel fucking euphoric. At this rate, neither of you will be able to make it back to your rooms.

“Am I interrupting something?”

You lose a bit of your balance as you try to find the resonant voice, eyes shooting open. Storm unintentionally startles and stumbles away from you, white hair also jumping from the excitement.

You grab onto the counter again, sucking in a deep breath. “Fuck, don’t do that,” you growl through your teeth, a hand on your chest as you try to calm yourself.

“Don’t do what? Come to the shared kitchen to grab a drink?” Logan huffs a laugh, an amused smile creeps to his lips as he takes in your drunk and shaken state from the entryway.

“Doesn’t anyone sleep in this place?” He mumbles to himself.

“And with that, I’m done for the night,” Storm chuckles, fixing her hair. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Her eyes lock intensely on yours, index finger firmly poking the middle of your chest to make her point for you to show up to training very clear.

“See you, Logan,” she dismisses, stumbling as she passes him.

Logan shakes his head, still smiling. He steps to the fridge, opening the double doors and plucking a bottle of soda from the bottom shelf. No alcohol is readily available in the communal fridge because, after all, you’re all in a school full of kids, so Storm had to get creative; Scott will be missing a rather large bottle from the now not-so-secret stash in his room.

As the alcohol continues to settle in you, you feel more and more lightheaded as it brings you to a new level of euphoria again. You only know this because watching Logan pop the cap of his drink with mindless ease feels a little more exciting than it would be if you were sober. But you’re not sober, and that’s the problem.

“Not gonna follow Storm?” He asks, taking a generous sip from the bottle as he casually places his free hand on the counter to lean on across from you.

A tight smile forms, mostly to yourself. “I don’t think I can make it down the hall,” you laugh in embarrassment. Maybe that last shot was one too many, and it’s not even fully done working its magic yet.

Logan raises a brow. “Want some help?” There’s no judgement in his tone like you expect. Then again, you don’t know what the fuck to expect from him.

Your already half-closed eyes, blurry and unfocused, meet his hazel ones in interest. Another favour?

It’s been two weeks since he let you sleep off the nightmares in his bed. Two weeks since you learned he’s burdened with them, too. You traced the holes in the mattress over and over before you eventually fell asleep, wondering what—or who—could have hurt him so badly. He plays it off cool; you wouldn’t suspect anything from talking to him. The same could probably be said about you.

“I didn’t know wolverine’s were chivalrous,” you tease.

The yellow hue of the lights dance over the quaffed points in his hair, making them appear sharper than usual. You would never admit it, especially to him, but you adore them. They give him an absurd amount of character that you’d expect a guy like him to not care about.

You’re not exactly complaining about the fitting grey tank-top he has on either.

“Not overly,” he plays along, taking another mouthful of the fizzy drink. “I like to think I’m special,” he says quieter.

“Maybe you are,” you say as you try and straighten yourself to see if you can stand unassisted.

The world tilts as you stand to your full height, eyes rolling into your head from the wave of dizziness. “Wow, okay,” you say to yourself, squeezing your eyes shut to stop the spinning. How many shots did you have again?

A warm hand presses between your shoulders. “Woah, nice and easy. Nice and easy.” Logan appears by your side to steady you, other hand grabbing your elbow to pull you straight. You wobble in his grip, letting him guide your useless, alcohol-ridden body.

His hand on your back rubs a few small, comforting circles as you work to regain your bearings. He watches your expressions intently, looking for the right moment to get you moving back to your room safe and sound.

Your arm crosses over your body out of instinct to grab the hand he has on your elbow for extra support.

“Are you okay?” He asks. He seems to ask you that a lot.

You lean into him, your shoulder to his chest, and you can feel the blackout creeping up on you like humidity from a thunderstorm—it’s usually too late to do anything once you notice it.

“I drank a lot,” you laugh deeply, rolling your head onto his shoulder to look up at him.

He looks so much more delicate under the ambient lights—his usual defined features have shifted and melted him into someone that doesn’t look like they should be a feared animal out in the world.

Logan all but cradles you, that same look of concern crossing his features from the night you went to his door. The only difference is that you’ve had a generous amount of tequila��and are currently being kept alert by the hot touch of his hands. That’s new.

“Can you walk?” He holds your squinty eye contact, probably searching for any signs of a coherent thought behind the blissful expression on your face. “Or will I have to carry you?” He muses, a hint of a smile crosses his lips as his hand moves up to gently rub over your shoulders.

Drunk you likes the sound of anything relating to Logan keeping his hands on you right now. You wonder what sober you would think.

“I’m not gonna tell you no, but it feels like I’m floating in a bubble that won’t stop spinning,” you hum as you let the sensation consume your senses. “I might fly away.” You dip your head back off of his shoulder in amusement as you laugh again.

“Yeah, you’re fucked up,” he mumbles lovingly. Just like anyone else who’s concerned for your well-being would.

“Hey, kitty cat—I’m perfectly buzzed,” you emphasize the teasing nickname, narrowing your eyes at him sternly as you bring your gaze back to his in defence.

“‘Kitty cat’? Really?” He snorts. “I think you’re past your bedtime by three drinks,” he remarks back with equal levity.

“Then take me to bed if you’re so concerned,” you sigh dramatically, going limp in his arms to make your point.

Truthfully, you’re probably past your bedtime by five shots. But he doesn’t need to know that. You just know that you can’t control your limbs like you were able to ten minutes ago.

“Maybe I will.” You don’t see it, but he does his quick little eye roll that you’ve seen pointed towards Scott too many times.

He slides the hand on your elbow down to the backs of your knees, pulling you up off the floor and into his chest as you fall into the arm that was rubbing your back.

Oh, so it’s gonna be like that.

An excited—or maybe shocked—noise escapes your mouth as he adjusts you in his arms. You extend your right arm up and over his shoulder to hug his neck and keep yourself stable.

The trip to your room isn’t one that should take long, but each sway from Logan’s steps goes straight to your stomach in waves of queasiness. It feels like forever before you feel him bend awkwardly to turn your doorknob.

You’re fighting to keep yourself conscious the entire time, not wanting to regret missing the feeling of being in his arms.

The room is only lit by the silver moonlight creeping through the window. It’s hard to distinguish anything through your bleary eyes besides Logan’s look of determination to get you in your bed.

He leans down, shuffling you out of his arms and onto the mattress as swiftly as possible. The care of it all pokes at your heart.

He silently goes around each corner of the bed adjusting the blankets. It may be dark, but the moonlight highlights the peaks of his shoulders as he moves. Your eyes might be involuntarily half-shut, but that doesn’t stop you from staring.

You’re now probably no better than every other mutant in this school.

“Logan,” you start before you can fully process the foolish thing you’re about to say next.

He rounds the bed back to the side you’re huddled on, looking down on you. “Yeah?” The subtle jingle of his dog tag pierces the quiet that’s lingering in the room.

You part your lips to speak but the words die in your throat. They’re replaced by a flood of saliva that has you sitting up at a speed that shouldn’t be possible for someone as intoxicated as you. You cover your mouth with your hand, feeling your stomach churning and finally rejecting the tequila.

You suddenly feel very awake.

“Hey, hey.” Logan squats down in front of you with his already permanently-furrowed brows pinched closer together than you’ve ever seen before, a hand coming to your shoulder in concern. “What—”

“Bathroom,” you mumble through your palm, eyes rolling shut at the nausea.

He doesn’t say another word. He pulls you to your feet by your arms, walking behind you fiercely with his hands gripping your shoulders to guide you to the small bathroom across the room.

You push the door open, falling to your knees in the darkness over the toilet as the mistakes from the night expel themselves from your body through rounds of coughing and gagging. He lingers in the doorway, keeping an eye on you but still giving you privacy.

“Fuck,” you cough, resting your warm forehead on your hand as you slump against the toilet. That definitely sobered you up fast.

Exhaustion hits you like a truck. “Logan…” you croak from your crumpled position on the tile floor.

He steps in, bending down again to reach your height. You can barely make out the shadow of him in the fading moonlight.

“Just…help me back to bed,” you groan, reaching for his arm as you use the toilet seat to push yourself the rest of the way up. You stumble against him as you try to make it back through the doorway.

He guides you to the bed the same way he did to the bathroom—steering you from behind.

“I’m gonna get you some water,” he says as you settle back into bed, head hitting the pillow with a quiet thud. “Even though you did this to yourself.”

“Fuck off,” you groan.

You close your eyes, hearing his footsteps fade back toward the bathroom. You hear the tap run for a couple seconds before he’s next to you again, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Drink. All of it,” he says firmly, holding the cup out to you.

You sit back up slowly, no doubt lethargic, an unimpressed look on your face that earns you a raised brow that tells you there’s no room to object.

You finish the cup in four mouthfuls, handing it back to him. “Thanks.”

You fall back onto the pillow, no longer feeling like you’re travelling through space and time.

The clothes you’re in are close enough to pyjamas. There’s no sense in undressing in front of Logan, especially with what you were about to say to him before you were rudely interrupted by the consequences of your own actions.

He returns the cup to the bathroom and you pull the blanket over your waist as you hopefully settle in for the rest of the night. You owe him big time for this. The thought of just how exactly you’ll manage that fills you with anxiety.

You turn on your side, fingers sliding over the mattress with the movement. They graze familiar strands of feather-soft fabric by the pillow.

This is Logan’s room. Are you just that drunk that you couldn’t tell the difference when he brought you in? Or are your rooms just that similar to each other?

You dip a finger in one of the three holes, hearing the bathroom door click shut as Logan makes his way back.

“Why am I in your bed?” You see him rustling through some drawers of clothing by the small desk, but he stops when you finish your question.

“You can’t take care of yourself tonight,” he says. “You’re too drunk.” He pulls the grey tank-top off, stuffing it in one of the drawers and shutting it.

You sit up at that, head still foggy and tipsy, watching him move to the foot of the bed across from you. You try to focus your eyes on anything but his bare chest and the dark hair that adorns it and trails down past the waistband of his sweats. His hair is somehow even more wild from mindlessly pulling the tank-top over his head.

“Ah. I was gonna ask you to stay anyway,” you reveal, almost whispering the bold confession.

You were planning to ask before the tequila decided to make another appearance, but maybe doing it this way isn’t so bad either. He did all the heavy-lifting.

A modest, tight-lipped smile graces his lips. “I think you still have some tequila to sleep off.”

Whether or not you still have some shots in your system, what you feel and want right now is real. It’s not influenced by anything besides some mild andronitis created by the fact that you share a common struggle.

“Is it…safe? To share a bed?” The most coherent thought you’ve had all night makes him stiffen from your sudden nervous tone. Your body could easily replace the mattress and become a new home for the deep punctures.

Your eyelids have been fighting against being pulled shut by alcohol-induced drowsiness, yet your eyes are wider than they’ve been all night in this moment.

You’re sat right in the middle of the bed and Logan comes around to the right, sitting on the edge of the mattress to come down to your level.

“You’re just gonna have to trust me.” His eyes are imploring and apologetic all at once. He understands the prospect of even having you here in the first place.

You nod, sliding over to the left to give him more room.

Logan wouldn’t put you in harms way, you reason with yourself. He wouldn’t risk potentially killing someone, especially a fellow mutant, if he wasn’t absolutely sure of his mental state. But you also don’t really know his demons.

You roll onto your right side, tugging the blanket up to your chin in comfort. “Why haven’t you been given a new mattress?” You ask as he turns to face you in the same position, his half of the blanket resting at his hip.

The bed dips significantly on his side, almost encouraging you to roll over against him.

“Forgot to ask,” he says quietly, running his right hand through his hair to push the shorter strands off his forehead.

From his tone you can decipher that he actually means “can’t be bothered.” It’s a devastating thing to imagine just how many he goes through, anyway. He probably doesn’t see the point in replacing something that will inevitably have the same fate as the others.

There has to be less than an arms length between you two. It’s a surreal situation to be in considering what you thought you knew about him. A recluse. Standoffish. Maybe it’s all a fluke and the alcohol is severely fucking with your perception of what’s actually happening.

“Thanks for everything,” you whisper as if someone else will overhear.

“Get some sleep,” he insists, rolling onto his back. You do the same.

You stare at the blank ceiling for a while, noticing the exact moment Logan falls asleep; his breathing grows slow and his body runs even hotter than before.

You think about how he could wake at any moment, claws accidentally sliding right through your stomach from a nightmare or two. You imagine all the others that have been in your position—if they felt scared, if they even knew.

He asked you to trust him, and that should be enough.

There is a body full of secrets and hurt sleeping undisturbed next to you with the ability to withstand and regenerate from any physical injury, yet there’s something that hasn’t allowed the same to be done for his mind.

━━━━

The bright amber sun hits your closed eyes through the window, making you roll your head away onto the other side of the cool pillow.

You want more sleep. Your head feels like a bag of bricks and your body feels like it got beat with them.

You stretch a leg out, gently grazing something solid with your foot. Your eyes shoot open, the night coming back to you as you drift into consciousness. Logan.

You shoot up, bouncing a little from the momentum.

Logan startles next to you, clearly interrupted from a deep sleep. “What the fuck…” he groans, rubbing a hand over his face, not seeming interested in making a move to sit up with you.

“What time is it?” Your eyes bounce around the room looking for a clock.

He grunts, reaching for a watch on the nightstand. “Seven-forty.”

You needed to be in the Danger Room for 7 o’clock.

“Fuck!” You rip the blanket off, almost tripping as you run to the bathroom.

Logan also wants to roll back over and go back to sleep, but he knows he won’t be able to. He doesn’t work like that. So he just lays there, listening to you swear and make a mess of his bathroom as the clattering of fuck-knows-what fills the room.

The surprise of how well he slept makes him feel uneasy. Although it definitely wasn’t eight hours, it was uninterrupted. He doesn’t want to credit that to you, though. He wants to believe that he’s getting better overall, and maybe he is, so he can’t offer you any flattery in his mind.

Another distant “fuck” escapes the bathroom, pulling him out of his thoughts. You exit a few minutes later, as refreshed and presentable as you could get yourself, and the sight of Logan still in bed makes something in you ache for another moment of feeling him care and tend to you. Maybe that’s your hangover talking.

“Thanks again. I’ll see you around,” you say hurriedly, offering an apologetic smile as you turn the doorknob to leave.

“Good luck with Charles.” It’s a genuine advisory. Fuck. You’ll be so incredibly lucky if he doesn’t give you more than a stern lecture in front of everyone.

You take a deep breath in and slip out of Logan’s room. There’s not a single cut, mark, or scratch on you, just like he promised.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

“I was told it’ll take a day to fix,” Storm explains with a shrug. “You’ll have to find somewhere or someone to room with until tomorrow. Jean already offered to have me stay with her.” A contrite look passes over her face.

You stand outside your rooms, staring in at the remnants of the mess caused by two terrakinetic kids fucking around in the courtyard when they weren’t supposed to be. They somehow managed to throw, or launch, sizeable tree branches right through each of your windows. Of course it wasn’t on purpose, but the Danger Room exists for a reason—to avoid mishaps like this.

Shards of glass and fragments of wood splatter your floors. The branches are hanging half-way out both of your windows, caught on the window sills and bobbing in the evening summer wind. The kids are extremely fortunate that neither of you were in your rooms when it happened.

“It’s fine. It’s just one night,” you sigh, rubbing your eyes in frustration. You don’t love how quickly your mind picks out who to go to. It’s already nearing 11 p.m., so you have to work fast.

Storm squeezes your shoulder in comfort. “The living room is always free,” she suggests with a remorseful smile.

But you don’t want the living room. Stiff couches mixed with students clamouring and passing by at the crack of dawn isn’t exactly a recipe for a good nights rest. As if you usually get one, anyway.

“Not a fucking chance,” you laugh. “I’ll be fine,” you say again, dismissing her worries. You wish her goodnight when she steps by you to head towards Jean’s room at the very end of the hall.

You glare at the mess in your room, not daring to step in. The amount of shattered glass everywhere makes the floor look like a body of water from the reflections of the pale moonlight bouncing and refracting off of the jagged shards.

“Fuck,” you spit through your teeth, solely to yourself.

Not even a full week after Logan saw you at your worst, you’re going to go back and ask for the left side of his bed. Shameless.

You don’t have much of a choice; you’re not comfortable having it be anyone else. It’s only because Logan saw you at your worst that you feel he’s the most logical choice. Already having shared a bed with him this week may also have some weight in your decision.

You take the few self-assured steps to his room, once again standing in front of his door. This time you feel more confident in approaching the Wolverine in his den.

You knock three times, the piercing sound echoing through the hall.

“You start to miss me or what?” A bare chest enters your view. You note the dog tag hanging from his neck again before you find his unyielding gaze full of ambiguity, wondering why you’re here. Again.

You blink at him slowly in hilarity. “Ha, funny. Can I stay with you tonight?” You ask flatly, not thrilled with the situation, but not completely displeased with being here now. “My window—”

“I know what happened,” he interrupts. “Figured you’d go for the couch in the living room.” He looks at you more pointedly with teasing suspicion.

“I think you know no one would ever willingly choose to sleep out there,” you reason, running a hand over your face in both shame and defeat.

He makes a face that tells you “touché” and you smirk in satisfaction. “If you don’t mind giving up half of your bed again, I would really appreciate it. I promise I’m not trying to make this a habit,” you sigh. Spending the night in Logan’s bed three times in the past month has to be a record for anyone recently.

“I don’t think it would be a bad habit,” he argues. Oh. “C’mon.” He gives a jerk of his head to allow you in, his tufts of his hair bristling with the quick movement.

“Thanks,” you squeak. He wants you here?

He shuts the door behind you, following you to the bed that’s clearly already had him in it. The blanket rests in waves on the mattress that remind you of just how human Logan is despite his reputation and image.

“Do you have an early morning?” You ask, slipping under the blanket.

“No. Charles was feeling nice for once,” he raises his tone sarcastically to rag on Charles’ judgement, which has clearly been a much needed one before now.

“Not an early bird?” You roll onto your right side like last time, facing him as he settles on his back with a deep breath. The bed sinks in again where he lays, your body wanting to give in to the laws of gravity and fall into him.

“Fuck no,” he laughs lightly, eyes crinkling around the corners. It’s self-deprecating, but it’s still a genuine laugh. The condescension from it lingers in the air, all directed at himself in a way that tells you he’s thinking about how inconceivably fucked up he is.

The last time he had a decent sleep was when you were drunk in his bed a few days ago.

“People like us don’t usually get the pleasure of a full eight hours,” he notes, sliding his gaze to yours for a fraction of a second.

He props an arm behind his head, the other resting on his chest and idly twisting the dog tag between his fingers. You watch the thin piece of steel slide and flip easily, the chain tinkling with every movement.

People like us.

“You mean mutants,” you state. You see his jaw tense in what little light there is from the half-moon tonight.

You see his brows pull together. “Yeah.” He has a point.

You think about the mutants you know, how they all have some horrific story about their gifts or family, or both. How they either were shamed by society or experimented on like rats.

The scenarios are endless. If you can think of it, some mutant has probably lived it.

Your heart sinks to the bottom of your stomach. You and Logan are not isolated or special cases, but you’ve already shared a moment of vulnerability with him when you came to his door all those weeks ago seeking solace for the same thing he fights with: the inescapable ability of remembering.

You pull the blanket tighter against you. “I don’t think you’ll hurt me.”

He turns his head to you, confusion written on his face. “What?” He stops toying with the dog tag.

“Your claws. I trust you.” You didn’t feel like you were in immediate danger that first night, but you want to reassure him anyway. Or maybe you’re reassuring yourself.

He hasn’t had to say a single word for you to know his nightmares trigger something instinctive and combative that’s been hardwired into his DNA. In this case, it’s his claws needing to find a home in his mattresses, where another body could potentially lay one night. Like yours is right now.

You noticed the lack of holes in this mattress when you first got to the bed. Maybe you mentioning them last time was enough for him to finally request a new one.

Logan knows he shouldn’t make promises he doesn’t know he’ll be able to keep, but he wants to keep you here tonight, so he improvises. He abandons the dog tag between his fingers completely, turning onto his side and reaching to find your hand under the blanket. You meet him halfway, sliding your fingers between his as your palms lay flat on the bed.

A smile tugs at your lips for a moment. He watches your interlinked fingers, observing the size difference, wondering if he really just did that—and why.

You assume it’s his way of saying ��thank you” for your trust when you probably shouldn’t be putting that much into him.

“Does it hurt?” You whisper, pulling your fingers out from his just enough to caress the divets between his knuckles that conceal the claws.

He knows what you’re asking. “Every time.” He softly pushes his fingers back into yours, squeezing a little.

There’s a deadly stillness in the room despite his window being cracked. You both know you’re one in the same in a way, and that’s a connection that Logan hasn’t let himself experience. Not everyone likes looking in a mirror.

To be truly seen by someone, wholly, without judgement or fear, is what he deserves.

“What are you?” He asks, rubbing his index finger back and forth along the top of your hand. “Telekinetic? Psychic?” His curious voice grows quiet, hazel eyes fascinated with you and your lack of a physical mutation, at least nothing that he can see.

It never occurred to you that he didn’t know your mutation, or that you’ve never told him. It was never needed, but it seems unfair that you know about his when he wasn’t the one who told you.

“Ha, close.” Your eyes twinkle as you notice how intently he’s listening. “Psychometric,” you correct, watching his forehead crease.

“Sounds like math,” he quips, readjusting his head on the pillow. He’s close enough that you can feel the heat he’s putting off.

You laugh quietly. “No, it’s extrasensory perception. It lets me see the history of any object or person I touch, but only if I accept the energy,” you explain.

You watch his eyes narrow and you know what he’s thinking, so you quickly interject as he begins to pull his hand out from yours. “I need to touch a pulse point to be able to see anything,” you reassure, feeling his fingers slide back against yours. “The heart remembers everything,” you clarify.

The catch? The person’s memories and past stay with you after you see them. It’s become hard to distinguish what memories are yours or someone else’s. They all become intertwined. Good or bad, violent or gentle. You see it all, and then it’s part of you. Forever.

“I haven’t looked. I promise.”

“Good. You don’t need to see that shit,” he huffs, eyes wandering over your face. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but he’s a little startled for the first time in a while.

“I’m sure I’ve seen it all,” you state. It’s probably not far off from the truth. Your gift came when you were all too young, and plenty of time has passed since then for you to rack up this amount of damage from near-strangers and their lives.

“No, you haven’t.” A sure expression passes over him, shaking his head as best as he can against the pillow.

“Then I’ll count myself lucky,” you say softly. You have no idea what Logan has experienced, but his demeanor makes you want to stay curious. Not everything needs to be known, and you’re definitely not entitled to it.

A faint smile appears on his lips, then it’s gone just as quick. “Get some sleep,” he rasps. He turns onto his back and his hand abandons yours.

It’s a complete repeat of last time.

Something twinges in your heart, and you don’t like it. What exactly had you expected from Logan? He’s just doing you a courtesy by letting you stay here for the night. Nothing more. And that’s what you should expect: nothing.

The hum of crickets outside eventually lulls you into a dead sleep. It’s heavy and deep, not a single muscle twitching in your body. Logan breathes steadily next to you, a hand on his chest as the occasional snore fills the air.

From above you two might look like you’re transient, only here in this moment for a short time. And, realistically, you are.

━━━━

Logan was no where to be seen by the time you woke up, and you made quick work to get out of his room. It always feel wrong to be in someone’s space when they aren’t there.

Just like Storm said, the windows in your rooms were fixed the next day. It looks as though nothing even happened.

“Thank fuck,” you mumble to yourself as you step back into your room.

If you ever have to spend another night in Logan’s bed, you might as well wear a shirt that says “yes, we’re fucking!”, even if it isn’t true. You could deny it all you want, but it won’t stop what students would say. Nothing gets past them, even if it’s behind a closed door.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

“Are you fucking Logan?”

You almost swallow your tongue. “Sorry?” Your brows shoot up in surprise, eyes round in disbelief.

“Are you guys sleeping together?” Storm casually asks as she flicks through the T.V. channels, glancing over to you from her spot on the couch.

You’re sat comfortably in an arm chair, suddenly no longer caring what channel she decides on. “Why would you think that?” Technically you were sleeping together, but not like that. It may never happen again, no matter how badly you want it to.

“Things travel fast around here,” she deflects with a cheeky smile. “And, you know, Logan is…Logan.” She shrugs.

You don’t even know what to say to that. Is there a right or wrong answer?

“It wasn’t like that,” you grumble. “He was doing me a favour. As a friend.” It hasn’t even been a full day since he let you stay with him while pieces of your window laid on your floor, and people are already convinced you’re fucking.

You haven’t even managed a chaste kiss, despite how much as you want to, never mind his dick being balls deep in you.

“Right.” She emphasizes the word, not convinced. Or just pushing your buttons because she can.

You roll your eyes. “If anything was happening, you’d be the first to know,” you point out.

She looks back over to you. “I know,” she says with another, more sincere, smile. “You two would be cute, though.”

You give her some side-eye, not quite sure if you disagree entirely with that statement. Whatever happens, happens. Logan is not something you can control or influence. He does what—and who—he wants, when he wants.

━━━━

A bolt of lightening strikes you. You gasp, then release a choked cry, eyes flying open as you claw at your chest in terror.

Your throat tightens and you break out in a cold sweat as you sit up. The soft blanket around you feels constricting. Sporadic and short breaths make you heave as your body registers the horrors in your subconscious.

There was never any lighting. That’s just what the pain feels like.

The muscles in your shoulders and neck tense from your panicked state as your heart struggles to keep a normal rhythm. You yank the blanket off, feeling weak from fear and the onset of tremors. Your whole body gives up on itself as you sob through broken exhales. Your legs have gone cold, lungs shrinking inch by inch with every passing minute.

You crawl to the edge of your bed, wanting to just get out and leave—the blanket. The bed. The room. Most of all, you want to escape your own mind.

You sink onto the floor when a foot touches the ground, and you realize walking isn’t in the cards right now. You’re shaking too badly to be able to physically move. All your strength is gone, robbed by your memories.

Balmy tears paint your face in determination, making sure no part of you is left untouched by this spell.

You screw your eyes shut, tears still slipping out with ease anyway. Leaning your back against the bed-frame, you curl into yourself and wrap your arms around your knees on the chilled hardwood.

You try to focus on your breathing to at least slow your heart down to a pace that doesn’t hurt.

Wounded cries rip their way out of you, interrupting the breaths you try to steady. A hand touches your arm and you yelp like an injured dog, flailing at the contact as your arms swing out from around your knees in shock.

“Hey, hey, it’s me. It’s me.” Strong hands quickly wrap around each of your wrists to stop your arms from thrashing.

You try to focus your eyes, blurred and stinging from tears, on the person kneeling closely in front of you.

“L-Logan…” you whisper, balling your fists to try and expel the shakes.

He looks like someone who shouldn’t be able to be concerned about another person, yet the look on his face scares you. Brows pinched together in worry, eyes frantic, lips parted from heavy breaths. All because of you.

“It’s just me,” he hushes your cries. His thumbs stroke the undersides of your wrists tenderly, no doubt feeling your racing pulse.

You feel disoriented. “Wh…how…”

“I heard you,” he explains, watching you process everything. He drops your wrists when some recognition passes over your face.

“What do you need?” He follows your gaze as it wanders around the room, trying to keep you from spiralling further.

You look at him for a moment. He’s got his white tank-top on, the black sweats, and an intense need to help you written all over him. Fresh tears burn your cheeks as you come back into reality.

“I want it to fucking stop,” you weep, head falling into your hands in shame.

You don’t want him to see you like this, even though it’s a commonality between you two. It’s too intimate. You’d take him seeing you blackout drunk everyday of the year over this.

Then you do remember that it has stopped. Each time in Logan’s bed. There was silence. Peace. For the whole night. For both of you.

“Tell me what you need,” he says firmly, angling his head down to keep your eyes on him, desperately wanting an answer.

“You.” You suck in an agonizing breath to try and collect yourself.

He doesn’t flinch like you expect him to. If anything, his eyes become more pensive, clearly considering something. Then he shakes his head in wariness.

“C’mon. Let’s get you out of here,” he breathes, voice barely above a whisper. The only sound echoing in the room is your wobbly breathes, your body jerking with each one as you enter the aftermath and begin to go slack.

An arm slides behind your back, his hand grabbing ahold of your side while he pulls your legs over his other arm, picking you up off the floor.

He cradles you against him just like he did when you were drunk, carrying you out of your room.

He left your door open when he came in, and you hope no students heard or saw anything. He tilts to grab the doorknob, shutting it without a sound.

You wipe and rub at your eyes as Logan takes a few steps down the hall, quickly getting to where he needs to go when you feel him lean for his doorknob.

You’re sure a few rogue, leftover tears fall onto his shirt before he manages to sit on his bed lightly, you still curled tightly in his arms.

His hand pushes on your back for you to sit upright on his lap. “Face me,” he encourages, holding onto your sides as you twist around, bending your legs to slide over his thighs and straddle him loosely.

You look down at him, he looks up at you, feeling the quivers in your body dissipate as you melt further into his lap. A fondness crosses over both of your tired faces. He rests his arms over your thighs, warm hands linking behind your back as you do the same around his neck.

It’s nothing provocative or seductive. All you can feel is the care and concern rolling off of him in suffocating waves. He wants you to feel safe, and if that means overrunning your senses with his presence, then that’s what he’ll do.

“Got anything to say?” He murmurs, the fallen strands of hair around the edges of his forehead bristle with each move of his head. The rest of his hair fails to fully resemble the cat-like ears he had earlier in the day.

What does he want to hear?

You let your head hang a little, your nose almost brushing his. “I have nothing to say,” you assert, fidgeting with the chain of his dog tag at the nape of his neck.

You don’t necessarily feel embarrassed about him seeing you in such a helpless state, but you don’t want to simply unload your shit on him. So, in turn, you have nothing to say.

“Bullshit.” He almost rolls his eyes. There’s no real threat of him forcing you to say anything behind it. He won’t pry, but he doesn’t believe you.

An offended look overcomes your face, and you almost pull away. You don’t want to feel the humiliation of elaborating on just why exactly you said you needed him in this moment out of everything else.

“I just…” You roll your lips together in thought, measuring the words you could say but won’t. “Want to sleep. Here,” you sigh. “I don’t wanna go back.” You deflate in his arms, voice wobbly.

It’s already who-knows what time, and you need to pacify your wired nervous system; Logan simply holding you has already helped with that more than you want to admit.

His mouth quirks up briefly at that. “What happened to not wanting to make that a habit?” His eyes soften as his arms retract from around your sides, letting you slip easily onto his bed from his lap in a moment of calm, or relief.

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.

“Special circumstances,” you reason, already pulling the blanket over you while he keeps his place at the edge of the bed, observing you with amusement.

“Seems like you get into those a lot,” he notes, pushing himself off the mattress.

He steps around to the other side—his designated spot—and slips the tank-top off, letting it drop to the floor. You’re not trying to be a freak, but you watch the whole thing.

The flex of his arms and shoulders are out of your mind as fast as they entered as you watch him hook his thumbs in the waistband of his sweats and pull them downright in front of you, not even turning around or to the side to try and conceal himself.

Your eyes widen, then you reel in your thoughts before they get lost at sea. No one who is sane fucking sleeps in sweatpants. Duh.

But didn’t he the last two times? It’s hard for you to remember, but you’d certainly recall if you were face-to-face with the outline of his di—

“It’s rude to stare, y’know.” Logan pulls his lips together, interrupting your thoughts. You try to not eyeball the bulge too hard, but it basically looked at you first.

The snug briefs do little to hide anything. They hide nothing, actually.

You almost scoff, but the playfulness in his tone tells you he couldn’t give a shit. He probably likes it anyway. From what you know, he definitely does.

“Oh, yeah, like you’ve ever cared about modesty,” you throw back, averting your gaze to the ceiling anyway.

It’s not that he runs around the mansion naked, but he definitely isn’t shy about what he looks like or against showing some skin. You’ve seen and heard enough over the past few months.

You hear a stifled chuckle as he joins you under the blanket without a retort. He knows you’re right. He’s just glad you’re a little lively and alert.

“Will you be okay for the rest of the night?” He brings both hands behind his head on the pillow, propping himself up a little.

“I should be fine,” you say confidently. “The challenge will be getting back to sleep.” You laugh in exasperation.

It’s always hard to calm down and get back to a place of tranquility after everything has settled with your mind. You’re pumped full of adrenaline and there’s not much that can curb something that persistent flowing through your body.

You haven’t found anything to help with it. Yet.

“There’s not many people that’ll understand what you go through,” he starts, voice rough with fatigue. “But I do.”

You look to him, sliding an arm under your pillow as you turn on your side. “How do you…help it.” You’re not sure if you phrased that right. It feels crude to reduce something so complex to the likes of a common cold that has an array of over-the-counter solutions.

“You don’t. It just has to run its course.” He looks to you, wanting to see your reaction.

It wasn’t meant to be hurtful or insensitive, but he’s not going to lie to you and say that things can only get better and that the worst is over. Especially for mutants, that’s not always true.

Although you don’t know what Logan lives with every day and sleeps with every night, you do know that his capacity for empathy is still intact. Here you are in his bed after all, seeing and indulging in a side of him that many never will.

You sigh lightly. “We’re quite the pair.”

A comfortable half-smirk slips over his lips. “I think we’re just fucked up insomniacs,” he suggests with a breathy exhale that’s close enough to a laugh.

You wish you could slide a thumb over the pulse in his wrist and see what’s haunting him, just to understand what happened to the Wolverine, but you’ve learned that doing so usually isn’t worth the price you’ll pay after. If what’s in his head is horrific enough to cause him to go through a couple mattresses a month, then it won’t do you any good either.

“I sleep pretty good with you,” you offer, seeing how he raises a brow in doubt almost instantly.

He sleeps well with you, too. It kind of rattled him when he noticed a pattern of uninterrupted nights and you being by his side. Not a single mattress ruined on those nights.

“Try not to knee me in the stomach tonight,” he deflects with ease. He takes his hands out from behind his head, sliding his left arm under the pillow as he turns over onto his side and closes his eyes. Facing you.

You mentally smack yourself. Multiple times. You didn’t think you drifted that much when you slept.

“No promises,” you mutter. You catch a small shake of his head before you let yourself join him in unconsciousness as you mirror each others lonely bodies.

━━━━

Your eyes ache—to open, to move, to touch. Enough crying will do that to you.Your eyelids are heavy, but there’s something else weighing down on you.

A tired groan crawls from your throat as you try to place yourself for a moment. The morning sun is just beginning to shine too brightly for your liking, and you squish your face deeper into the pillow.

You’re still tipsy with sleep, lying flat on your stomach, but there’s something dense and hot resting over your back.

You prop yourself up on your forearms, giving yourself a minute to wake up. You twist your hips around to sit yourself up, feeling the thing on your back slide down to your waist.

The blanket pools around your hips, and you feel a hand reflexively squeeze over the meat of your hip in disapproval of your moving. Something in you clenches at the sensation of something invading the area with ease. A spot reserved for intimacy.

Your head quirks to your right, seeing Logan on his stomach with his right arm thrown over your midsection.

You blink in surprise, staring at his sleeping body. His hair is sticking up every which way, his head half-off the pillow, his side of the blanket not even covering the curve of his ass anymore. It’s endearing to see the Wolverine in such a normal, human state.

But if someone were to walk in, it would look like you two spent the whole night fucking. A lot. That wakes you up a little more.

You peek over at the nightstand behind him and see the time blinking on his watch. It’s already 8 a.m.

You rest a hand over his shoulder to gently guide his arm off of you, but you stop yourself. Instead, you lightly trace your fingers down his shoulders and upper back a couple times, occasionally scratching softly over the ridges of muscle.

A shiver quickly rolls through his upper body, but your touch doesn’t fully wake him. He knows it’s just you.

It’s the least you can do for him as a thanks for recovering your broken body from the floor of your room and bringing you here when he didn’t necessarily have to.

It almost feels like instinct to offer comforting gestures to him. There’s something inside you that just pulls to him. You want to be the one that can give him comfort and help him put himself back together.

You want to be the only one.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

There’s a shadow that’s been following you around the mansion.

As soon as you stepped out of Logan’s room that morning a few days ago, it started.

This shadow likes to be nosy about what you’re doing. This shadow likes to be in your space. This shadow wants to be in your space. And he is.

No one has seen Logan out around the mansion this much, including you, and that’s how you noticed he’s basically been attached to your hip ever since he decided your back was a comfortable armrest.

He’s always just there, like a stray cat begging for food or affection. There to entertain you, banter with you, indulge you, in any way he can, including now as you trail back inside the mansion well behind Storm from an evening walkabout in the garden.

“No smoking in the courtyard,” you sing as you pass him carelessly, not even offering a glance to him in interest.

You like playing this game. Whatever it is. Constantly poking and prodding at each other to see what you can do to get the other to break in some way, no matter how slight.

Your heart flutters and flips every time; maybe from the thrill of it all, maybe from the arousal you get from the tension. You hope he feels everything, too.

He turns his head to watch you cross into the entryway. “Blow me,” he throws back playfully through a thick puff of smoke, leaning against the brick wall with a cigar pinched between two fingers.

You suppress a chuckle, keeping your unwavering pace. “Yeah, you wish!” You yell over your shoulder. You know he hears you. He wouldn’t let himself miss it.

Logan smirks and shakes his head in amusement, always impressed with your quick rebuttals that occasionally tent his jeans. He takes one last drag out of spite before following your footsteps inside.

You have become, by definition, friends…in a way. Even if you sorely cross the line into other territory more often than not. Sexual innuendos and friendly flirting can only go on for so long before the underlying intentions and meaning reflects real desires.

It’s evolved into more than just borrowing his bed a couple times or helping each other out. It’s surpassed the fear of whatever habit you were afraid of forming from doing so. It’s become a dependency to get that adrenaline high from simply riling each other up.

You have an assumption that if you were to end up in Logan’s bed again, somehow, there will be a point of no return that you’ll be faced with. There aren’t many more excuses that can be used for explaining to yourselves why you’re together in bed before you have to recognize the truth.

That platonic line is being stretched too thin, and you’re not sure how much farther it can go.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

“How’ve you been sleeping?”

“Fine. You?”

“Could be better.” Logan hides his smirk, but you can hear it in his voice.

You narrow your eyes skeptically as he fishes around in the fruit bowl sitting in the middle of the kitchen island.

“How so?” You ask. Your legs swing leisurely as you sit upon the chilled countertop on his left, idly waiting for Storm to show up and go with you to training.

A smug, tight-lipped grin flashes across his face, a green apple rolling around in his palms before he puts it back. “You could be there,” he provokes, his eyes bright.

It’s your turn to raise a brow at him, but you can’t stop your smile. “Oh?”

He turns to you, tenderly grabbing the tops of your thighs and parting them slightly to stand between your legs.

This isn’t the first time he��s done this, and he knows it rouses you in all the right ways. But, neither of you will do anything about it. Not even a brief kiss.

“Come on,” he goads, planting his hands down next to your hips, bringing himself in closer as he bears his weight on his arms. “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” He sways his head side to side to emphasize his point.

Fuck. That’s good.

That may be exactly what you did for him, but it’s now a figure of speech for something else entirely. It’s almost impossible to argue against either way, as if you want to. This is what you’ve been patiently waiting for.

You put your hands over his as you lean back a little to put some distance between you. “How sweet,” you hum.

His eyes flick from yours to your lips one too many times before you continue. “You start to miss me?” You tease as you lean forward again, echoing what he said to you the night your window got smashed in.

“Smart-ass,” he mutters as you laugh quietly. The tips of your noses barely graze each other as he steps in closer again. You’re almost at the same height like this.

“Save me the left side,” you advise, bringing your hands to his shoulders as you fondle his white t-shirt between your fingers. You’re so close, and he’s already so warm against you just like this.

“Always do.”

━━━━

You want to rip your heart out of your chest from how hard it’s pounding against your ribs. It’s almost throwing you forward with each heavy beat.

Three resounding knocks fill the hallway as you shuffle on your feet, waiting for Logan to open the door.

It feels like you’re doing something bad. Something parents would warn their kids against. Something greatly envied.

Everything inside you feels on fire. Your thoughts, desires, anxiety, all jumbling together into one distorted state of mind and body.

“Ah, welcome back.” His sarcastic tone makes your face go hot. A satisfied smirk crosses his lips as he runs a hand through his shaggy, unstyled hair.

You shake your head, pursing your lips. “Knock it off.” You gently shove at his bare chest. Misbehaviour already. But are you really surprised?

Logan grabs your wrist, delicately guiding you into his room. “You enjoy it,” he says lowly, quickly shutting the door as soon as you’re in.

“Maybe,” you hum in response, pulling away from his grasp and seeking out your side of the bed. Logan follows closely behind, giving your ass a light smack in encouragement before he cuts away to his side while you jolt in shock, a stunned look on your face as you whip your head around to him across the bed.

“Oh, really?” You scoff. He’s biting back a smile, not moving until he knows what you’ll do next. He’s never gone that far before.

“I’m sorry, that was rude—how can I make it up to you?” He almost chokes on a laugh, pulling his dog tag back and forth along the chain while he considers you.

This Logan is very different from the one you were met with the first night he let you in his space. This one is attentive and exuberant, yet he hasn’t given you much up until this point right now. You’ve gotten way too comfortable with him without even doing anything to you.

In this moment, he isn’t the brooding, animalistic Wolverine many see him as. He’s just Logan—for you.

You watch him carefully, easing yourself onto the bed. “Get in the fucking bed,” you slap his side of the mattress with a thump of your palm. “And do what you promised earlier,” you stare pointedly at him.

He owes you that “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” favour he decided to pull out to get you here.

“Mm, alright, alright,” he surrenders, a look of amusement still on his face as he kneels onto the bed. “I thought of a pretty good idea for it,” he says softly, crawling to sit next to you on top of the blanket as the bed-frame creaks with the added weight.

Your shoulders almost brush against each other. You shift, turning your body fully toward him. “Oh? Wh—woah!”

You squeal when his strong hands latch onto your sides, lifting you just enough to pull you over his legs to plant you on his lap. He leans back against the headboard, pulling on your thighs so you straddle him tightly.

He looks devilish when you catch his gaze again, and you know what’s coming. What’s been coming. Your hands find their places on his shoulders, warm and taut, as his hands hold your hips.

The bond between you will culminate tonight. It will be wrapped in a blanket and trapped between two alike souls that lie heart-to-heart in the dead of night. It will be perpetual.

The heat of him between your legs makes you restless. It’s just you, him, and the darkness in the quiet room you’ve become too familiar with.

“Logan…” you trail off bashfully when you feel something firm through his sweats poke against your cunt. It clearly doesn’t take much to excite him.

“Hm?” He takes you in for a split second, hands running from your hips up to your chest leisurely with a sharp inhale, not yet completely bothered by the fact that you have a shirt on.

You suck in a shaky breath when your hips accidentally shift over his bulge from his hands pushing and pulling over you.

“What’s the idea?” Your voice wavers.

You know what it is. He knows that. You just want to hear him say it and fill the silence.

“Something I’ve wanted for a while,” he murmurs, eyes hyper-focused on you.

Your fingers dance their way to the sides of his neck, brushing along the supple skin while you feel muscles and tendons flex with every slight movement. You subtly press the pad of your index finger against the pulse point right under his jaw, just to ground yourself and truly feel that Logan is there in front of you.

His pulse is steady but hard, much like yours, and the prickle of energy festering against the finger almost makes it go numb from not accepting it into your body.

“Show me, then.” You smile sweetly, leaning in closer while you tilt his head up with the hand under his jaw, your finger slipping from his pulse and caressing over the dense, coarse hair along his cheek.

Your noses bump while your lips part in anticipation. His eyes flutter as he falls into you and frantically claims your mouth in an unbreakable kiss.

The first kiss. Nothing could tear him from you in this moment.

Your hands cradle his cheeks, keeping him from pulling off too far. His hands scratch and paw at your back, trying to find a way to somehow get you closer against him.

It’s all a little messy, your lips mostly just mashing together without any rhyme or reason, but neither of you care. You only care about how electrifying it feels to finally have Logan and feel how perfectly connected you are together after all these nights. You go together like a key and its lock.

“Logan,” you pant when his mouth releases yours for a fraction of a breath. The seconds between kisses dwindle the more you take from each other.

Your thighs tense as he pulls half an inch away just to reconnect more crazed as his lips lock over your bottom one aimlessly. Something deep inside you trembles and aches.

He grunts, accidentally sucking the tip of your tongue briefly before slotting his lips back over yours in an apology. “Hold on,” he mumbles in a rush against your parted lips. He knows what you’re asking—or trying to ask. He snakes an arm up along your spine and wraps the other around your waist.

Then the world is tilting.

He drops you on your back on the bed from his lap, hovering over you as he distracts you with harsh but pleasing kisses and wet bites along your neck, settling his hips heavily between your thighs. You squirm and feel how bolts of arousal are making your cunt pulse involuntarily.

Logan groans. “Fuck—I can smell it. I smell you.” He slowly grinds his hips into yours almost reflexively. He squeezes his eyes shut, and you tip your chin up to press a chaste kiss to his slick lips.

“Taste…if you want to,” you propose, lightly scratching up and down his shoulders and arms, only enough to leave faint red lines for a couple seconds.

Logan’s eyes almost roll into the back of his head before he gives it a small shake, a conflicted look overtaking his face. “Of course I fucking want to, but—fuck—next time. I promise.” He swallows whatever you were going to say with a deep kiss that has you nearly shaking when he sucks on your bottom lip.

“Let’s just take things easy,” he says roughly, bearing his weight on his left arm while he tries to get your sleep shorts and underwear off.

A promise of a next time makes your brain go fuzzy like static.

“I’ll hold you to it, then,” you resolve, lifting your hips as much as you can for him to lean back and pull away to wrestle your clothes the rest of the way down your legs, discarding them just as quickly.

“I hope you will,” he breathes through a small laugh as he shuffles on his knees. He doesn’t want to completely overwhelm you and scare you off, he just wants to enjoy you in a simple way that won’t entirely ruin you for tomorrow.

He doesn’t know what you can or cannot handle, but he’s going to find out.

The fresh air in the room brushes cooly against your wet cunt. It’s a nice contrast to how fiery your whole body feels, but Logan feels even warmer than you somehow. Maybe wolverine’s just run hot.

His sweats have ridden down his hips from his desperate grinding against you, and the dangerous cut of his v-line grows more and more narrow as the waistband teases the reveal of what’s underneath.

You watch him—palming his dick once as your knees sway side-to-side in waiting. His thumbs hook under the stretchy fabric, working what remains of his clothes down his sturdy thighs.

“It’s rude to stare.” He pops a brow, a smug, arrogant grin quirking his lips.

You push yourself to sit up, considerably shorter than him in this position as he stands on his knees, and walk two fingers up his toned stomach to his chest, avoiding the hard cock between you.

He looks at you with curiosity until your hand grabs his dog tag in a fist, pulling it towards you. “Then stop showing me your dick,” you say as he leans in to your pulling a little to not have the chain break away.

You knew the night Logan dropped his pants in front of you and let you eye-up his bulge would come back to haunt you. But it’s alluring. Big. Curves a little to the left, barely noticeable. A respectable amount of hair decorates the space between his bellybutton and the base of his cock.

He gives in to the tension on the chain, falling back to the mattress with you and trapping you between his arms as his cock rests heavy on your clit.

“How about I find somewhere to put it?” His smile pushes a whole new wave of arousal from you.

“It would be a damn shame if you didn’t,” you say against his mouth, giving your hips a roll just to tease him before hugging his waist tightly with your knees.

“Good.” He gives you a strong kiss with a small grunt, running his hands over your sides under your shirt. The movement pushes it up, up, up, until you have no choice but to stretch your arms out above you and let him slide it off between more thoughtless kisses, leaving you entirely bare.

He lets you breathe for a moment, dipping his head to bite and suck marks along your collarbones messily. You squeeze around his hips harder, trying to get him to give you something other than his scratchy cheeks rubbing against your skin and the chilled steel of the dog tag dragging over your chest.

The tip of his cock falls and catches over your clit when he moves lower, licking and sucking over your chest like a starved animal finding food for the first time in a week. You gasp from the mixed sensations.

“C’mon, kitty cat, you can do all this while inside m-me,” you say breathily, fingers digging into his shoulders to stop yourself from trembling too much.

Logan bites over a nipple before pulling himself back up to look at you. “Is that a promise?” He says lowly, that stupid smirk gracing his face again.

“Try it and find out,” you demand, enjoying the sting of the deeper bites blooming on your torso.

He purses his lips, shifting his weight back onto his knees to grab ahold of his cock to angle and guide it in.

“Hm, guess no lube is needed,” he muses when he gets a look at your cunt, sparing you a glance through his lashes.

You roll your eyes shut when your whole body lights up red-hot. “Jesus fucking Christ, Logan,” you slap a hand over your eyes as you grimace. You don’t want to be that aware of your naked self right now.

He suppresses whatever expression was about to cross his face when his cock notches itself between your soaked folds, teasing your hole with the blunt tip. His brows pinch together and you forget the embarrassment from his crude remark.

But he leaves his cock like that, on the precipice of sliding the rest of the way in with a snap of his hips. Instead, he carefully uncurls his upper body to crawl his way back up to you while holding his hips deathly still.

“Alright, stay with me,” he whispers against your neck when you moan, pressing a tender kiss to your rabid pulse in reassurance.

“O-okay,” you sigh, running a hand through his hair and tugging at the roots while the other squeezes around his arm as best as it can. You’re not even really sure what he’s saying.

He kisses up your cheek and over to your lips again. You try to keep up with his quick mouth, licking and sucking whatever part you can get ahold of, but you’ve become lost in the feeling of him all over you.

He’s in your mouth, on your chest, against your stomach, nudging your cunt. Everywhere.

He slips his tongue over yours, securing your lips together at the same time he pushes his cock in halfway. Now you understand what he was saying.

The lightheadedness from being filled, even just a bit, almost makes you lose yourself. The stretch makes your stomach drop, your legs shake, and your mouth fall open with a whine.

“A-ah—fuck. Fuck, Logan,” you whimper, fisting his hair with both hands to stop yourself from falling apart.

He groans, either at the grip you have on his hair or how good your cunt feels already, and runs a hand up your left thigh in comfort as you squeeze around his hips tighter to draw him in.

“Just a bit more,” he soothes, trying to resist the urge to slide into you in one fell swoop. It would be so easy to just let his hips fall into yours and fill your cunt.

Another heated kiss, another few inches. He works his cock into you the rest of the way with ease. You guess the lube thing wasn’t really a joke. His hungry, needy kisses may have also helped with that.

You choke on your gasps, not wanting to get too loud, and Logan does the same. He tries to muffle both of your moans with his mouth, attempting to form complete kisses, but it just turns into you panting against each other as he finally bottoms out, hitting his end.

Your legs relax around his waist as he deftly rocks his hips in small thrusts to get you familiar with his size, his small grunts filling the air each time you swallow him whole.

You let out a deep breath, dropping your hands back to his tense shoulders. He lines your jaw with soft kisses, fisting the blanket in his hands beside your head.

“Fuck. Already feels too good,” he moans, pressing into you harder and unintentionally rubbing himself over your tender clit.

You smile, squirming while he works down your neck again. “Best of luck,” you huff, amused at the fact that he might not last as long as he wants to.

He brings his face back to yours, a completely blissful expression controlling his features, but there’s still some mischief in his hazel eyes. “Oh? Yeah?”

You hold each other’s gaze, both equally dazed and overwhelmed, and he draws his hips back and pushes into your wet cunt with a complete, strong thrust. The sound of his pelvis hitting against the backs of your thighs makes him laugh in pleasure and satisfaction when you instantly roll your eyes and head back.

Your cunt quivers, gripping him tight, and then it’s Logan’s turn to lose composure. He drops his head to your chest, managing a few deep breaths as he slowly pulls out halfway just to push right back into you, over and over.

It’s a pace that isn’t quite pure, mindless fucking, but it’s also not somewhere near earnest love-making. It’s something that feels specifically curated for you. Something that feels measured and sincere.

The strength of his thighs hitting against yours pushes you up the mattress a few inches, and you don’t know whether to gasp or moan. He reaches somewhere deep inside you, and you know he can feel that, too.

A helpless groan slips through Logan’s lips. “Where have you fucking been, huh?” He muses through shaky breaths, the determined plunge of his cock hitting something that makes your muscles tense throughout your body.

Your fingers tangle in the hair at the base of his neck, keeping him close. “Two doors down,” you giggle, understanding that’s not quite what he was asking.

“Fucking smart-ass,” he grumbles, silencing any further rebuttals with a wet kiss. You don’t think you could manage much more of a conversation even if you wanted to.

The silence is quickly filled with obscene sounds that only seem to leave you wetter and Logan throbbing. You can hear your bodies connecting through your gasping for air and his choked moans, and you can feel the mess you’re making all over him. It’s smeared along the inside of your thighs from how deep he’s been hitting. The squelching only seems to make him fuck into you harder.

Something inside you starts to grow tight and wind up in your core, making you repeatedly clench around him while his cock strokes all the right spots inside you as he makes sure he’s fucking himself in to the base. He doesn’t deprive you of anything.

He drops his head to your neck, wedging his face in to latch onto the spot right where your neck starts to slope into your shoulder. The dense muscle there gives him something to basically chew on, sinking his teeth in as deep as he can without drawing blood.

“H-hah, Logan,” you whine, tilting your head into the side of his and squirming from the pleasant sting.

You feel his arm move beside you, then you hear the sound of tearing fabric as he gives a particularly brutal snap of his hips, followed by a deep groan against your skin.

You can barely form any thoughts, but you can guess what just happened. If he pulled his hand back, three long, slim holes would probably be where his knuckles are right now.

“Fu-uck, Logan, you just got t-this mattress,” you laugh a little, your words choppy from how hard he’s driving into you now.

He draws back from your neck, seeing your half-lidded eyes trying to focus on him. “Can’t always control it,” he reasons, giving you two short, fleeting kisses as you hear his claws retract from the innocent mattress.

You see the double-edged sword. You can guess that that’s the same explanation he would probably use for the nightmares. It can go either way, and now you’ve seen both sides.

“It’s okay,” you say in a hushed tone. You cradle his face, and he rests his forehead against yours. “Keep going…keep going,” you coax, face scrunching from your nearing orgasm.

You can feel it in your toes, your stomach, your shoulders—you’re tightening up everywhere, and he can undoubtedly feel it in your cunt as you pulse around him. It grips him just right for a couple seconds before relaxing completely and leaving him to chase for more.

“Keep squeezing me like that and you’ll get whatever you want,” he offers, fighting to maintain his steady pace for both your sakes.

You almost whine, knowing whatever your body does is beyond your control at this point.

“Just—inside.” You can’t even string together a full sentence anymore, but the urgency and stress on the last word makes Logan’s ears perk up.

He presses a soft kiss to your clammy forehead in acknowledgment, the muscles in his arms straining and flexing as he grabs ahold of his own orgasm after a particularly inviting flutter of your walls.

You’re both walking the line, teetering on the edge of utter euphoria, and you know nothing will be the same after. You don’t want it to be. You hope it isn’t.

He reaches an arm back, sliding his hand up your thigh again and slotting it behind the bend in your knee. He pushes forward—only slightly—bringing your leg closer to your stomach to stretch you open for him.

His cock brushes over something new. Something that makes you bite your tongue. The angle lets him fit perfectly against you, not hindered by the flesh of your thigh stopping his hips.

You want to cry from how good it all feels. You want to be suspended in this feeling forever. You want Logan to—

“Focus, baby. Focus on me,” he coos, bringing you back to reality. He holds the side of your head with his other hand affectionately. “Come on…come on, I know you’re almost there,” he encourages with a quick kiss that goes straight to your stomach.

The burn in your thigh from the stretch can’t overpower the sparks of your orgasm, and Logan just fanned the flames with a few little words.

You come with a broken sob, convulsing around his cock while he fucks you through it, submitting to his own orgasm only seconds after with deep, shaky breaths as he empties himself inside your cunt.

He doesn’t pull out or pull away. He relaxes on top of you, sweaty and sticky with cum, and he places the barest whisper of a kiss on your chin, your parted lips, your nose, and then your forehead.

Your ears ring from your orgasm, eyes still slightly out of focus. Your body trembles from your muscles finally releasing the tension they’ve been caught up in.

You desperately suck in air, trying to calm your pounding heart, and you just lie there and let Logan walk your body through a cool-down. Soft kisses. Soft touches. Soft looks. Between sweat, cum, and whatever else.

He rocks a little on his knees, weak from his release, and carefully pulls out of you with a huff as he caresses your stomach and thighs appreciatively to wind you down. You get a good look at him. Not a scratch. His hair tells a story, though—one where he’s completely possessed by bliss.

You probably look like you survived an animal attack.

“Are we even?” Logan says through a kiss against your stomach.

A mindless laugh crawls from your throat, caught up in the feeling of his hands rubbing circles over your hips. “I think I still owe you,” you argue, resting your hands over his as they travel smoothly up your side.

You’ll find a way to make everything up to him. Including the sex. The scale is now tipping to his side too much. All the nights spent in his bed, what he’s done for you, what you’ve done for each other, may just be immeasurable, but that won’t stop you from finding a way to get him back for it all.

“We’ll figure it out,” he mumbles, snaking back up your body and pressing himself against you. Face-to-face. Chest-to-chest.

You mindfully run your hands over the sides of his head, trying to tame his hair and style it back to how it was earlier in the night. It doesn’t work. He enjoys it anyway.

“Do I have the pleasure of staying here tonight?” You ask rhetorically, enjoying the warmth of him on top of you against the brisk air creeping in from the cracked window.

Logan blinks. “You can stay every night.”

A loving smile springs over your face. This may be the beginning of the end to your troubles and worries.

You—maybe foolishly—trust him. You trust that he won’t accidentally bury his claws in your side during the night, but you’ve had impressive luck with that up until this point. The only thing you can do now is continue to push that luck.

Healing isn’t linear, and you can’t expect someone to fix you, but everyone finds their thing at some point.

You slither your hand down to his neck, index finger grazing over his pulse again. You feel the energy biting against you.

Your lips graze over his, tempting him to give you a slow, deep kiss. “Can I have the left side?” Rhetorical, again.

Logan chuckles against your mouth. “Always.”

#did my best to appease readers from the criticism i’ve seen about logan fics so. lol #logan howlett x you #logan howlett x reader #wolverine x reader #wolverine x you #logan howlett smut #wolverine smut #xmen x reader #xmen x you #xmen smut #hugh jackman x reader #hugh jackman x you #marvel smut #the wolverine x reader #x men x reader #logan howlett fluff #wolverine fanfiction

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strang3lov3 · 5 months ago

Text

Bedridden

If you had cough syrup, you’d use that to put his ass to sleep. But you don’t, so you decide to utilize a different technique, one that always successfully incapacitates a man. 🍆💦❤️‍🔥

Joel is sick and refuses to rest, so you knock him out the best way you know how. (5.4k)

Tags - smut, lotsa sexual tension, blow jobs, pussy pronouns, teasing, fingering, unprotected piv, riding the sick old man’s cock, creampie, non-graphic descriptions of being sick. JOEL DOES THE DAD SNEEZE. coughing, fevers. That’s all. Joel is stubborn and grumpy while you take care of his old as fuck ass. Arguing with the old man, forcing the old man to bathe, forcing the old man to eat and drink, forcing a thermometer in the old man’s mouth. Joel bitching you out the whole time. Joel is kind of exactly like Dennis in IASIP when the gang gets quarantined. Fic Help - My usuals! @beefrobeefcal, your unhinged comments on the doc were the best part. and @endlessthxxghts thank you for your help <3 A/N - Heyyyyyyy. I promised this fic yesterday and then didn’t deliver. Sorry. It just needed to marinate in the doc a little longer or something. It’s been a bullshit ass few days and I’m,,,,handling it. Anyway, I’ve been sick as balls so that’s how this fic came about. Everybody wash your hands 🧼

There’s a fine point late in the year, right after summer turns to fall. You can fall asleep with the window over your bed cracked open just an inch to let the crisp, cool air blow over your face as you cocoon yourself in blankets. In the mornings you wake to that same breeze and the birds chirping, though less and less as they fly south for the upcoming winter.

Not this morning, though. This morning, you’re awoken by a chesty, hacking cough coming from outside your window. You sigh as you get out of bed and push the curtains away from the window to get a better look at what the hell is going on out there.

And it’s just your neighbor, Joel. You should have guessed it’d be him, you heard his earth shattering, deafening sneeze the other day when you waved to him as you walked by his house. Joel waved back at you with the same hand he sneezed into. Ew.

Everyone’s getting sick lately, it goes around quickly in Jackson. Always does - it starts with the kids and works its way through the community, and a good four to six weeks are filled with endless sneezing and coughing and mucus.

Joel’s coughing up his lungs as he rakes up the leaves in your yard, a job he’s seemingly assigned himself, because you sure as shit didn’t ask him to do this. He has a habit of taking on your chores and home maintenance out of his own frustration.

You pull a robe over your pajamas and slide on a pair of slippers, then leave out of the front door to greet Joel. “Good morning, Joel.”

Joel clears his throat. “S’actually noon, lazy ass. ‘Bout time ya woke up.”

“Wanna tell me what you’re doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like.” He sniffles and wipes his nose on his sleeve. Gross. “M’workin’.”

“Yeah, I see that. But you sound sick.”

Joel ignores the accusation, “Your yard looks like shit, by the way,” he says. “Wouldn’t kill ya to rake once in a while. ‘Stead of makin’ me do it.”

“You choose to do this. I don’t make you do anything,” you argue, rolling your eyes. It’s funny, though. Joel’s turning into the caricature of the old man angrily shaking his fist at kids playing on his lawn. All crotchety and pissed off about nothing. You step closer to him and wrap your hand around the handle of the rake, pulling it towards yourself. “Besides, Mother Nature put those leaves there for a reason,” you add.

“Sure, smartass. For you to ignore and for me to clean up. Now, give it,” Joel tugs the rake back. Whatever. You let him. Joel rakes more of your leaves into the pile he’s created, then doubles over in another coughing fit. You rub your palm on his back, patting him gently. He’s sweating through his flannel. “Oh, Christ. Fuck me.”

“Joel, you look awful.”

You help him stand up, “You’re a terrible flirt, darlin’,” Joel replies dryly. But he knows you’re not wrong. He saw in the mirror how pale he looked this morning, the dark circles around his eyes.

“Oh, shut up.” You press the back of your hand against Joel’s forehead, all sweaty and warm. “You’re burning up, Joel. You’re sick.”

“I am not sick,” Joel protests through another cough. “I’m fine. How ‘bout you worry ‘bout yourself ‘stead of fussin’ over me.”

“You’re hacking up a lung in my yard. I’ll worry about you all I want, thank you.”

In response, Joel grumbles something you can’t quite make out. You roll your eyes and take the rake from him, dropping it on the grass. “My rake,” Joel murmurs, annoyed and defeated. With your work clearly cut out for you, you take his hand and lead him into your house. “Aw, hell. What’re you doin’ to me.”

“Taking care of you,” you reply.

“Didn’t sign up for this bullshit,” Joel complains. “I don’t need takin’ care of.”

Oh, he’s a peach. Most men, when sick, are total babies - pathetically crying about their headaches and stomachaches to women who deal with the same symptoms on a monthly basis. It’s charming, truly. But not Joel, though. In his stubbornness, Joel refuses to ever admit when he’s sick, like he’s got something to prove. Can never let himself be taken care of, because that’s his job - to take care of others. Always has been.

Once inside, you have Joel take off his boots, then usher him to the bathroom with a hand on his back, his flannel damp with sweat. “Sit.” You reach for Joel’s shoulders and push him down, forcing him onto the lidded toilet. You crouch down at the bathtub and plug the drain with the stopper, then turn the water on - not too hot, not too cold. “Yeah, this is good. This’ll make you feel so much better.”

“Oh, c’mon. Turn off the damn water. I’m not takin’ a bath.”

“You are, too.”

“Am not.”

“Joel,” you bite. Joel parrots your name back in the same threatening tone.

“We’re breaking that fever one way or another, Joel. So you bathe yourself, or I’ll do it.”

Joel cocks an eyebrow. “Oh, will ya, now?”

You go quiet, no retort to his comment. Heat rises to your cheeks and you focus on the bathtub filling with water to avoid Joel’s taunting gaze. After a long enough silence passes, Joel changes the subject. “I don’t have any clean clothes, y’know.”

“Then I’ll grab you some from your house,” you mumble.

“Mm,” Joel grunts. “Got an answer for everything, don’tcha?”

You glare. Joel glares too. You fold your arms across your chest and raise your eyebrows at him. You are not losing this battle.

Joel sighs in defeat. “Alright, go on an’ get, then. I’ll take the fuckin’ bath if it’ll get me fifteen minutes away from you obsessin’ over me. There. Happy?”

“Happy.”

You leave Joel in the bathroom to bathe himself, closing the door behind you. Still wearing nothing but pajamas and a robe, you change quickly into a hoodie and jeans, then leave through your front door for the second time.

Joel’s house is right next to yours, so it’s not a long walk. Mentally, you’re kicking yourself for your stupid threat to bathe Joel. The way he responded to it, ‘Oh, will ya?’ and how bashful that made you, the embarrassment written all over your face in big, black, permanent marker. Your crush on the older man is obvious, and Joel, never the gentleman, will jump at any opportunity to make you squirm. Like when he catches your eyes lingering on him for a little too long, he’ll tease you for it. “S’rude to stare, y’know,” he’ll taunt, always with that stupid fucking grin on his face. Smile lines framing his cheeks, crows feet handsomely peeking at the corners of his eyes. You really need to stop setting yourself up for these things.

Once in Joel’s house, you head upstairs for his bedroom and rifle through his dresser drawers for some comfy clothes. You pick out a pair of plaid boxers, some gray sweatpants, and a navy waffle-knit henley. You bunch up his clothes and inhale, Joel’s natural smell still lingering in the clothes, even washed.

In his kitchen, you notice some vegetables sitting out on his countertops. Carrots, potatoes, onions. You grab those too, then check the fridge for leftover chicken or turkey or something. He usually has some, and usually brings it to you after he’s had his fill. “This is for you, trouble. Cause y’don’t eat enough,” he’ll gruff. “Would you like me to heat it up for ya?” And whether you say yes or no, he always does. It seems to make him happy or fulfill him somehow, so you let him take care of you like that. If only he’d let you return the favor.

Bingo. There’s chicken in old Tupperware right on the top shelf, and yesterday’s date written in Joel’s terrible handwriting from an old, dried up Sharpie. You take that too, then go back home.

You leave Joel’s food you stole on the kitchen table and stop at your linen closet for a fresh towel. You knock on the bathroom door, “Joel?”

“Yeah, darlin’.”

“I have your clothes. And a towel.”

“Good. I need those,” Joel says. “C’mon in, then.”

You open the door, averting your eyes from Joel’s naked body in the bathtub. “Relax. M’not gonna let you see somethin’ you ain’t ‘sposed to.” He’s got his hands covering his manhood, the rest of himself on display - toned biceps, veined forearms. His belly is pillowy and hairy and his legs look so long, all bare like this. His toes peeking out of the soapy bathwater. You set the towel and his clothes down on the toilet, stealing an even longer look at him when you think he doesn’t notice. “I see ya snoopin’, trouble. Wanna take a picture?”

You roll your eyes and ignore the offer, turning your attention to Joel but keeping your eyes focused on his face. His hair is slicked back, and his grays pop out against the rest of his dark hair, little ringlet curls at his neck. The asshole is criminally handsome.

“Are you feeling better?”

“I feel fine. Like I’ve felt all day,” Joel lies. His body betrays him instantly when another cough wracks through him.

“Right. Well, you smell better, at least.”

Joel rolls his eyes, “Nice one, sweetheart. Thanks. Now scram, so I can get dressed.”

You leave the bathroom, shutting the door behind yourself again. You can hear the sound of the bathtub draining and Joel getting out of the tub as you stop at the linen closet again, this time grabbing some queen sized sheets and pillowcases.

In your living room, you pull some cushions off of your sofa and pull out the built-in bed, then dress it with the sheets and an old floral quilt. You cover your own pillows in the pillowcases, then fluff them nicely and set them up for Joel, who’s leaving the bathroom now, combing his hair back.

“Stole your comb,” he says, tossing it for you to catch. He stops in the living room and looks at the pull-out bed that you made up, the corners of the sheets tucked in and everything. “The hell’s all this?”

“Exactly what it looks like,” You mock his words from earlier. “Your bed.”

“You’re bein’ ridiculous. I ain’t even sick.”

You ignore Joel and point to the bed. “Get in.”

Joel rolls his eyes but gets in the bed anyway, springs squeaking under his weight. “M’not gettin’ in this bed ‘cause I’m sick or ‘cause you’re makin’ me. Just feel like sittin’.”

“Sure, Joel,” you sigh. “How much water have you had today?”

“Plenty.”

“How much is plenty?”

“It’s enough,” he snaps impatiently. You leave him just for a second to fill a glass with some water, then bring it to him. Joel pushes the glass away, “I said I’ve had enough.”

“I’ll decide what’s enough, now here–” you put the glass into his hand, “Drink.”

Joel drinks the entirety of the glass, glaring at you the entire time. Good god, if looks could fucking kill. The cool water soothes his scratchy, sore throat, but Joel won’t tell you that. “You’re a tyrant, sweetheart,” he tells you, voice raspy and low. What he doesn’t tell you, however, is that if the shoe were on the other foot and you were the sick one right now, he'd be just as overbearing over your health. Probably worse.

You pout mockingly at Joel as you take his glass. “Stay here. Don’t get up.”

You get up from the bed to go into the kitchen and begin preparing a soup for Joel to soothe his aching throat. You start by dicing onions, then chopping some carrots. You toss them in a large pot with some butter, letting the vegetables soften. You’ve even got some leftover bread you made yesterday, so you turn on your oven to heat it up. You can hear Joel getting restless, tossing and turning in the less than comfortable bed. Probably should have turned on a movie for him, left him a book or something to occupy his restless mind. “You okay?”

“M’fine. Mind your business.”

You open Joel’s Tupperware and chop up his chicken into little bits. When you look up, Joel’s out of bed. You scoff. He’s forcing open your window, grunting as it squeaks. “Joel, what did I tell you? Get your ass back in that bed.”

“Relax, would ya? M’tryin’ to get some air in here.” Joel successfully forces the window open, and cool air blows into your tediously warmed home. “House is a fuckin’ oven.”

“Yeah, well, that’s probably your fever talking, dumbass. Put my window down.”

“I really outta fix this window for ya. Ain’t good to leave it like this. I’ll get my tools an’ I–”

You march across the kitchen and into the living room, knife in hand and using it to point to the bed. “Joel.”

“You scare me,” Joel mumbles, raising his arms in surrender. He closes the sticky window for you, then you march him back to the pullout. Before Joel lays down, he glances in the kitchen at what you’ve been cooking. He heard the sounds of you chopping, but with his nose all congested he can’t smell enough to hazard a guess as to what you’ve been making. Joel narrows his eyes at the stolen Tupperware on your table, the carrots and onion peels to the side, and recognizes it all as his. “Is that my…?”

“Just lay down, Joel.”

“Did you take that from my fridge?”

“I did.”

You’re completely shameless about this, there’s not even a half-assed attempt at lying your way out, and Joel’s beside himself. “You stole from me, you little–” You urge Joel into bed, fluffing the pillows behind him as you ignore his tantrum. “You are unbelievable. I could throttle you, you know that?”

“Go ahead, Joel,” you challenge. A slight breeze could knock this sick old man down to his knees. You tuck Joel into the sheets, then adjust the quilt over him again. And this time before leaving him, you grab an old book of word searches in a basket under an end table. “Here.” You toss it to him along with a dull pencil. That should keep him busy.

Back in the kitchen, you’re still working on Joel’s soup. It’s bubbling away on the stove, and you’ve just finished making egg noodles to make the dish a little heartier. Something to stick to his ribs. It hits you then, that you don’t hear sniffling or coughing. Joel’s gone quiet, suspiciously so.

And lo and be-fucking-hold, Joel’s up again. This time, with tools. Tools that you don’t have, tools that he must have snuck out and grabbed from his home at some point. “Joel!”

“There,” Joel says, moving your window up and down seamlessly. “Window’s fixed.”

“How many times do I have to say it?”

“How about you try a ‘thank you’, huh?” Joel shoots back.

You shoo him back to bed. You slice a bit of warm bread, then ladle some soup into a bowl and bring it to him with a spoon. “Eat,” you tell him.

Joel eats a spoonful, and it’s written all over his face how much he enjoys it, the warm broth relieving his sore throat. “So what’d you poison it with, huh?”

“Oh, you’re such a dick.”

Joel smiles, only teasing. “M’sorry. S’just that you shouldn’t be doin’ all this for me, s’all.” Joel squeezes your knee comfortingly. “Thank you. I mean it, darlin’.” He’ll let you feed him, but no more than that. You’re too sweet for your own good. “S’good soup.”

“I’m glad you like it, you asshole.” You smile too, and push some of Joel’s hair out of his face. He finishes his bowl of soup, even has a second one. You take his bowl away and wash it at the sink.

“Should let me do that,” Joel says, following you into the kitchen. “Ain’t that how it works? One cooks, the other cleans.” Joel bumps you to the side and takes the soapy dish from your hands.

“Maybe another time,” you offer, attempting to take back the bowl. “Don’t want your germs on my dinnerware.” But Joel holds on tight, so you let him wash the dish. Since he wants to die on this hill. So you dry your hands, then feel his forehead once again. You frown, displeased that the bath didn’t work at curbing his fever at all. He’s still burning up. “I’ll be right back.”

You go to your bathroom and open the cabinet vanity, where you have an old Walgreens thermometer, the paint all smudged off. You wash it with soap and water in the sink, then return to Joel. Amazingly, you find him in the bed doing his word search puzzle, and you didn’t even have to tell him to go lay down this time.

The bed creaks under you as you sit down next to him. You put his book down, “Open,” you tell him, thermometer in hand.

“Oh, c’mon now,” Joel complains. “Get that thermometer outta my face.”

You shake your head no, and tug on Joel's chin so that he opens his mouth. You place the thermometer under his tongue and he closes his lips around it, staring daggers at you the entire time thermometer reads his temperature.

He’s so handsome. Big, sparkling brown eyes underneath brows knit together in irritation. Pouting lips. Age looks good on him, perfectly both softens and enhances his rougher edges.

The thermometer beeps. You read the temperature, 102.3°F. Why Joel’s even upright with a fever like this is a mystery, but that’s men for you. Fucking idiots. “That’s a hell of a fever you’re running, Joel.”

“You’re full’a shit. Gimme that.” Joel sniffles and snatches the thermometer from you to read the number for himself. He shrugs. “S’old. Probably faulty. Can’t trust it.” Joel covers his mouth with his elbow and coughs loudly.

“You’re old and faulty too, Joel. Look at you.” You offer him a handkerchief to wipe his nose. “You’re falling apart.”

Joel scowls at you before blowing his nose. You leave him once more, this time to bring him a cool, damp rag. You press it against his forehead, and Joel closes his eyes. “Does that feel nice?”

“No. Quit that.”

But Joel’s body betrays him. He’s sighing in relief, and his tensed muscles loosen. His breathing, while still shallow, has slowed as much as it can, soft belly rising and falling with steady breaths.

“Are you falling asleep?”

“No, I’m not. M’not tired,” Joel argues. He tries adjusting the now lukewarm rag, warmed by his body heat.

“You should sleep.”

“Nah.”

You take the damp rag off of Joel’s forehead and flip it so that the cooler side soothes his hot, feverish skin. “You know, Joel, I think this is why god made women. To take care of stupid, sick men like you.”

“Hm. Could be so. But I think he sent you to me as a punishment of sorts.”

“Is that so? A punishment?”

“S’right. An’ some day, you’ll fool some poor man into marryin’ you and he’ll have to put up with this same shit the rest of his life. I don’t envy that sorry bastard one bit.”

“Oh, I know,” you coo, wiping away a droplet of water that rolls down his temple. “You tell me all about it, Joel. Tell me how terrible it is.”

“Oh, I intend to.” Joel continues his tirade, bitching and moaning about how you're doing too much, that none of this is necessary. ‘Quit fussin’ over me’ and so on.

You know that after this, Joel will try to leave you, go home and fiddle with things in his home that aren’t broken - or worse yet, he’ll tinker with the things in yours that he deems in need of fixing. Squeaky door, creaky floor panels. You listen to his slight wheezing, his sniffling, his voice all raspy and broken. He really does need to rest, the poor man.

If you had cough syrup, you’d use that to put his ass to sleep. But you don’t, so you decide to utilize a different technique, one that always successfully incapacitates a man.

You remove the damp rag from Joel’s head and set it on the coffee table behind you. Joel’s eyes are shut as he takes shallow breaths, and you trace lazy patterns on his stomach, inching your way down, down, until you’re rubbing his warm bulge, feeling him stiffen beneath your touch. “Goddamnit, what the hell are you doin’ t’me, now?” Joel groans. He takes your wrist and squeezes it gently in his grip.

“Nothing, Joel,” you answer innocently.

“Bullshit, it’s - you’re - oh, fuck.” Joel bucks into your palm. You slide your hand beneath his sweatpants to touch his bare cock, amused at how Joel decided against wearing boxers today. “You’re killin’ me, sweetheart. You gotta, you can’t–”

“Shhh,” you hush him. You drag your nails through his patch of coarse hair, playing with those long and wiry hairs. You palm his cock again, half hard and growing harder by the second. Before this goes further, you tug his sweatpants down his thighs. “Lift up for me, Joel.”

Joel lifts his hips and you tug his sweats down the rest of the way, then continue touching him. You spit into your hand and pump him from top to bottom, taking special care to gently massage his balls when you reach the base of his cock. “Ohh, darlin’. Oh lord.”

Joel’s stiffened to full length now. You kiss the tip of his cock, all the way down his shaft before licking your way back up, one long, fat stripe. You swirl your tongue around the head and dip your head, teasing him with it as you bob your head up and down, taking more and more of him down your throat with each pass.

Joel moans, his sick voice breaking a little. He keeps a heavy hand on your bobbing hand and wonders what the hell he did to deserve this from you. He should have stopped fighting his sickness long ago if this is what was in the cards for him.

Realization dawns on Joel. It all makes sense, why you’re sucking him off at this particular moment. You’re trying to put him to bed, you goddamn deviant. “You’re trouble,” he accuses. “I know exactly what you’re doin’.”

“Hmm?” You turn your head to Joel, his cock still in your mouth. You bounce it against your inner cheek, and Joel groans at the lewd image of his cockhead bulging in your mouth.

“Yeah,” Joel says. “And let me - oh, fuck-” You drop your head low, taking all of him into your mouth. So deep that your nose is buried in his pubic hair. “Let me tell ya, darlin’, what you’re doin - it ain’t gonna work on me.”

You pull off of his cock with a pop. “It won’t?”

Joel shakes his head. “Mm-mm. You’re wastin’ your time.”

“Oh. Well, I should stop, then.”

You begin to pull off of his cock, but Joel forces you back down. “Nah, you don’t have t - you gotta give it your best shot, right?”

You smile with Joel’s cock in your mouth. What a fucking guy. You pull off of him only momentarily, garnering a protesting groan spilling from his lips. You take off your shirt and unbutton your pants. “Lemme help you with that, c’mere, darlin’,” Joel says, pulling your pants and panties down your legs. He unclasps your bra next, then sheds his own clothing.

You take him right back into your mouth, hollowing your cheeks as you suck his length. This time, though, you play with your pussy. As you move up and down Joel’s shaft, you slip through your folds, dipping down to your wet hole to gather your arousal on your fingertips. You circle your clit a couple of times, then push your fingers in and out of your pussy.

“You fuckin’ yourself on your fingers, sweetheart?”

“Mm-hm,” you hum, mouth stuffed full of Joel’s cock.

Joel pulls your hand away and replaces your fingers with his own, much thicker and longer ones. “Let me,” he says. “S’my job. Shouldn’t have t’do that to yourself, ‘less you wanna. Or if I say so.”

Joel spreads your thighs wider. He moves his pointer and middle fingers up and down, exploring your slick, velvety pussy. He sucks those two fingers and then his thumb and rubs tight circles around the sensitive nub, all swollen and wet with your arousal. You moan at the action, the vibration of your voice traveling right down his shaft and to his balls. He bucks himself into your mouth.

Joel inserts his middle and ring fingers into your pussy, pumping in and out slowly before curling them upward, stroking right where you need him to. “Got a nice fuckin’ pussy,” he purrs with his hoarse, gravelly voice. You pulse around his fingers, and Joel admires the way your tight hole hugs him as he moves in and out of you. “She’s makin’ such a mess, drippin’ all over me.”

You twist your fist up and down Joel’s shaft as you suck him, working him closer and closer to the edge. Joel’s content with this, the prospect of coming down your throat and fucking you with his fingers. But you have a different idea, and when his balls are tightening and his shaft is twitching, his breathing quickening, you pull off of him.

Joel groans in frustration, but his anger is quickly eased when you straddle his hips. You reach between your legs for his cock and stroke it, dragging the tip through your folds, up and down, up and down, dipping it in and out of yourself to tease him. “You’re fightin’ dirty.”

Joel’s exercised enough self control today and doesn’t let you tease him for long. He puts both of his large, weathered, and masculine hands on your waist and pulls you right down on his cock, the initial penetration causing a stretch so intense you see stars for a second. “Oh god, Joel,” you moan, clutching his shoulders.

“I know, I know,” Joel whispers, rubbing your back. “You good, sweetheart? You need a minute?”

“Just - just a second.”

“Take your time. Know it’s a lot, you’ll get used to it.”

Joel gives you a second, then inches you up and down on his cock to get you adjusted to the sensation of being so full of him. Soon enough, the ache dissipates and is replaced with pleasure, nothing but pure pleasure. You rest against his hot body, rocking your hips to grind against his pubic bone.

You know that by the way he bucked his hips into your mouth, how he pulled you down on his cock, how even now he moves you, that he’ll tire himself out. Your plan was simply to make him come to knock him out, but this - this works too. Exhaust his body, get yourself off in the process. Killing two birds with one stone.

Joel fucks you harder now, hands on your ass to move you up and down on his cock. He bends his legs at the knee for more leverage, bouncing you on his lap. “That’s it, sweetheart,” he grunts. He moves you so that your chest is right above his face, and one at a time, sucks your nipples into his mouth, teeth lightly grazing them.

You hold onto Joel’s broad shoulders to steady yourself, looking down at him as he fucks himself into you. He’s so handsome, cheeks and chest all flushed red, a sheen of sweat glittering at his hairline, his graying curls damp. Joel’s eyebrows are knit together as he fucks you, tracing your curves with his gaze. He pulls you against his chest as he ruts against you, his scruff scratching your skin so deliciously. “Takin’ me so good. Look so pretty on my cock like this.”

You move at his will. Joel’s underneath you, rocking himself in and out of your dripping, tight pussy. His thrusts are getting sloppy, hips stuttering in a non-rhythm as he pushes himself inside you over and over. He must be getting close now.

“Up, sweetheart. Lean back f’me.”

You peel yourself off of Joel’s middle, all slick with his sweat. Joel spits into his hand and presses the calloused pads of his fingertips against your clit. You roll your hips against him, savoring that much-needed friction against your clit.

“Like that, darlin’. Jus’ like that. Fuck yourself on my cock,” Joel says, rubbing your sensitive bud with tight circles. “Gonna watch you come all over me.”

“Yeah,” you moan, “Wanna come for you.”

Joel loves you like this. Your face contorted in pleasure, mouth agape, body quivering and twitching on top of him. He steadily massages your wet, swollen clit and wears a crooked smile when he feels your cunt start to pulse around him. And you think you’re pulling one over on him, but look at you, all fucked out and delirious. You’ll probably crash after this, and Joel will go right back to fixing up your house. There’s a door hinge that’s been squeaking…

“Oh my - Joel, I’m - I’m gonna -”

“Know you are, sweetheart. Let me have it,” he groans, voice all broken and hoarse. “Come all over my cock, darlin’. Let go f’me.”

That hot, sticky pleasure in your gut begins to intensify rapidly. You go quiet just before it happens, then let out a long, whimpering moan when your orgasm takes over your body. You shudder and jerk as Joel fucks you through your release, and once you’ve ridden it out, Joel pulls you tight against his chest.

While you come down from your high, Joel frantically fucks you, slamming his hips against yours as he chases his own climax, balls tightening and his belly filling with warmth. “Oh, goddamn. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Joel pants as he comes, painting your insides with his hot seed, the warmth of his release and the pulsing of his cock so satisfying.

Coming down from his orgasm, a wave of exhaustion hits Joel. He finds himself unable to move, unable to open his heavy eyelids. He might’ve been wrong, because napping away the rest of the afternoon doesn’t sound quite so bad, now.

You pull your body off of Joel’s and he lets out a sighing grunt when his softening cock slides out of your body, the mess he created with you spilling all over his lap. You grab that washrag you held against his forehead and clean him up and then yourself, then get up to dispose of it.

Joel grabs you by the arm, his grip weak. “Don’t you go anywhere, trouble,” he grumbles.

“But I’ve gotta take care of this, Joel,” you protest.

“Deal with it later. Just -” Joel yawns and pulls you down and holds you tight against his chest, as tight as he can, anyway. “Jus’ stay with me a minute.”

Joel’s eyes are still shut, and his breathing becomes slow and rhythmic. It’s laughable how quickly sleep is taking over his sick, exhausted body, having used what little life he had in himself to fuck you stupid. Like that last burst of energy from a dying star. “I thought you weren’t tired,” you tease.

Joel sniffles. “M’not.”

“Mhm. Sure.”

“Just checkin’ my eyelids for holes.”

You push some curls out of Joel’s face and hold your palm against his cheek, still hot with his fever. He’s so peaceful looking like this, plump lips pouting as he breathes through his mouth. You bring your face close to his and close the gap by pressing a little kiss against his lips.

“What’re you kissin’ me for, hm?”

“I want to,” you reply, kissing him again.

“Gonna get yourself sick,” Joel murmurs groggily, eyes still closed. “Which means in a couple days, I get to do all this right back to you. S'payback, darlin’.”

You chuckle. And in just a few short seconds, Joel’s snoring lightly, dead to the world.

If you enjoyed, please please please reblog with thoughts or comment or hop in my inbox! Your kind words go farther than you know in keeping me motivated to write 💕

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