Never Said Goodbye: Look Before You Drink
by
Sare Liz



Archive: If you have Donna Bevan's, you can have mine. Do tell me, though.

Disclaimers: em, not mine?

Author's Notes: Huge thanks to Donna who kindly let me write a sequel to her beautifully angsting fic, "Never Said Goodbye", which if you ignore my romantic heart, was a gorgeous work that needed no addition. But then, you consider the fact that I *am* a romantic... I'm an angsty romantic, but I'm still a romantic. So I cried and whined and begged, and she said okay. So I wrote. Thank you.

::sigh:: I just love logan/rogue. Of course, I'd settle for logan/jubilee, but I'm just a sucker for relationships that haven't a snowball's chance in hell.




And damn if I couldn't smell her now.

I wasn't gonna look. The last four bars I looked and there was nothing there and it damn near broke my heart, so I'm not gonna look, and if my mind wants to fuck with me, fine. It can fuck with me. Damned if it hasn't been fucked with enough.

I downed the whiskey and turned as the next gangly redhead entered the cage. Gloves, just like the last one. Red eyes are all I see. Each time they get a few good ones in before unconsciousness sets in. If I was capable of pity for the strangers I was mauling, I might be able to feel it, but they were my little rage outlet and stupid enough to challenge me, so no pity. The fact that I could smell her, imagine that she was watching me pummel yet another stand-in for her little boyfriend made me feel good.

Not a very sane thought. Not a very happy thought. Not even a thought to calm you down. But it was mine and I liked it. More and more as the night got older.

In between fights the long drag on the stogie waiting for me was like a little bit of heaven - it momentarily drowned my senses till I couldn't smell her anymore. Just the sweet smell of burnt tobacco, and ah. . . a fresh whiskey. This bar was alright.

"From the lady," one of the barmaids yelled over the roar of the crowd, the ones cheering me on mixed in with the ones who wanted me to be the guy on the ground.

From the lady. Whatever. If she's still around when I'm done tonight, maybe we'll talk. Right now I'm not in the mood to fuck. Right now I really wanna kill something, and brutally. Several somethings, actually. Not that I'll do either one tonight, but here's to hoping.

The redheads come and get dragged off, but I never look up into the crowd. The scent's still there and I won't. I can't. If I look, I care. And I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care because I don't love her.

I don't lo-

But I can't even think that yet, not more than once. I'm not that far in my internal brainwashing. I may not care, but I still love her. Of course, it'll still be another couple of months before I can say even the beginning of that sentence out loud with any kind of conviction, but I'm getting there. I said I would, and I am. Just takes time, and damn if I haven't got plenty of that.

"From the lady," I hear screamed again at me, a moment after I'd taken my cigar and leaned away from the ledge. Persistent, isn't she?

I roll my eyes and grab the glass without really looking at it, I mean, why bother? It's a rhythm I like. Drink, fight, drink, fight, drink, fight. . . If you can manage it quick enough, you can keep the buzz going for an hour or two. Course, instead of savoring that mind numbing rhythm like I should be, I find myself choking on the liquid as I stare vacantly at the bottom of the glass.

I'm sure a lot of things would have liked the chance to be running through my brain at that point, but it was completely and utterly blank from shock.

I got pummeled before I got a chance to jump start my brain, but once I was back in the room again so to speak, the fight was over, fast. I got myself back to that whiskey glass right quick, though. Downing it in one swallow, I caught my dogtag between my teeth as it came with the alcohol.

Damn.

How the hell was I supposed to look up now?

* * *


//Nutin' good can come 'o dis fo' Remy. . . //

Remy heard Scott's bike roaring up the front drive like it hadn't been in quite a while. If that bike weren't the closest thing to Scott since Jean, the engine would have found itself donated to the nearest junk yard a long time ago. It wasn't that the Cajun didn't like motorcycles, far from it. It was his girlfriend's reaction to them that put him on edge.

She got that far off look in her eye and everything seemed to pause. After the first couple of times, when they'd still been 'just friends', he'd asked around and figured out more than he probably wanted to know about Rogue and the man who came to the mansion with her.

Remy had to admit, though - since they'd started dating, the effect of an approaching motorcycle still off in the distance seemed to bother his petit less and less. Until just recently. In the past week Scott had been taking it out quite a bit and it seemed to bother her just as much now as when Remy first knew her.

Well, it was just a few days before their six month anniversary and this Cajun would be damned if the Ghost of Christmas Past was gonna come ahaunting.

Using every ounce of flirting capacity in his body, Remy made her laugh, made her smile. He held her around her waist as she instinctively rounded the tree to make sure it really was Scott on that bike, and by the time she was in a position to see just who was talking to Xavier, Rogue was far too busy laughing and enjoying being touched to care.

Eventually, hand in hand they came from the woods to greet the Professor. Gambit couldn't help but to watch Rogue - she was so happy now, so different from how she could be sometimes. She'd started talking to the Professor long before they actually neared man in the wheel chair so when she got there, Remy was perplexed to see her face go ashen white.

Barely breathing enough to speak the words, Rogue frantically whispered, "Where is he?" and Remy's heart sunk. Should he have let her see the man that had to be the man? Should the Cajun have let his Mississippi Beauty talk to the long lost love? Would it have been better than finding out like this, now that he was gone, again?

But in the end, none of his inner turmoil mattered at all. Gambit had done what he'd done and now it wasn't his turn anymore. It was Rogue's turn, and when the Professor started to deny that the man had been there, her temper came out to play.

"Don't lie to me, Professor. Ah can smell him. Where is he? Where's Logan?"

It was quite a lengthy pause before Xavier spoke again, Remy noticed. "He is gone. It was his wish that you would no longer think of him."

Remy breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, closure. No more playing second string.

"What?" she screamed. A hysterical pissed off Rogue was not one Remy had witnessed before, and one he had no wish to witness again. And really, what business did she have being hysterical over a man who had now left her twice?

So he tried. He tried to calm her, make her see reason. "Ma petit, perhaps it is for the best, no?"

Rogue rounded on him. "No Remy, it's not." Her answer was short, true, but it was like putting a muzzle on the Cajun, and he said no more.

Her attention back to the Professor, she was terse and demanding. "Why?"

"He saw something he did not want to see. Instead of letting the situation get. . . out of control, he left. It was a wise and difficult decision for him."

"Difficult? Difficult??" For a moment she was silent, her fists clenched at her sides. Before Remy knew what was really going on, he saw the tears gather in her eyes and begin their slow journey down her face.

Remy tried to reach out and comfort her, but she flinched away. Very softly she whispered through her tears, "He left me again, and he didn't even say goodbye." Pressing her eyes shut as tightly as she could, she repeated that thought as it must have tumbled through her mind. "He didn't even say goodbye."

"Rogue, you must understand-" the Professor began before he was cut of again.

"Ah don't want that kinda understanding! Ah don't!" The tears were flowing freely now, cascading down her face. With one swift movement she reached up to her neck and tore something off.

Those damn tags she never takes off. Well, they were off now. Off, and flung on the ground.

"Ah don't care," Rogue wailed, sobbing her heart out. "Ah hate him." And then she ran.

The Professor wouldn't let him follow, even going so far as barring Remy with his mind. Passively, Xavier looked up at the angry young man.

"Rogue's mind is in a great deal of turmoil right now. I'm sure you've realized that the emotions she had for Wolverine run very deep. For now, leave her be. She will seek you out when she is ready to talk."

Remy just clenched his jaw even harder.

"Is that understood, Gambit?"

"Yes," he ground out, not wanting to keep his word, but somehow knowing it would be kept for him.

* * *


I'd begun to think that Charles had sent me on a wild goose chase at first, and at first it didn't make no sense. After all, he was the one, he and Ororo, who brought me dinner that first night when I didn't show up to eat at all that day. He was the one that made me see the sensibility in being calm and rational, trying to understand the situation from all the angles involved - mine, Remy's, . . . Logan's. Charles was the one who make me realize that I had to find him, if only to talk.

The Professor supported my decision entirely and was practically gung-ho about me wandering around the more snow-drifty parts of the North American continent with nothing but a backpack, a jeep, a cellphone and a wallet full of plastic. And beyond all that, wasn't it his bank account that was financing my little expedition into the wilds of Canada? His money that was putting gas in the Jeep he'd loaned me? The hotels, the clothes, the trips to the ATM so I could order food only to stare at it for twenty minutes. . . Wasn't he paying for everything?

It was after a week of traipsing around Alberta, following leads suggested by Ororo and our daily conversations via the chiclet sized cellphone that Charles also provided, that I think I'd figured it out. I mean, I'd only taken off two days after Logan - you'd think he'd pause in one place long enough for me to catch my breath and find him. But that's not the point.

I'd taken off only two days after Logan. Was I thinking straight? Did I know my own mind? Was my mind really made up or was I fooling myself? Sometimes, you have to admit, I can fool myself real good. Two days ain't a whole lot of time to think when you're being ripped two different ways.

However, there is no better place for thinking than while driving. And, the professor knows what he's doing.

A few days ago I think I finally found my mind, if you know what I mean. Not that I'd lost it perse, but we weren't exactly on speaking terms for a while there.

I loved Remy, I did. He's the first boy I've made love to and my first real boyfriend in the way where he knew a part of me that no one else did. But why did I love Remy?

Well, he's cute of course. And charming. And a little mysterious. And he made me happy, most of the time. The sex was good and he didn't seem to mind the fact that he had to be creative to touch me. . . And for me, that's a lot. That's a hell of a lot. But for everyone else, that'd be just another boyfriend in a line of them.

It's not that Remy particularly understood me, he was just braver than Bobby, or at least he was in the beginning. When I left with my new winter wardrobe and a road atlas of Canada, he didn't understand. Bobby did, Jubes did, and Kitty tried, but Remy didn't get it. Maybe he was too far into the forest to see the trees, but he didn't understand how I could have him and want more. And that was the clincher for me. I don't know if that was the moment I fell out of love with him or not, but I'm certainly there now.

Made it a hell of a lot easier on my conscience to be in love with Logan, let me tell you.

Ah. . . Logan. I was so scared once Charles put me on the right track. I was scared I'd find him and lose my nerve. I was scared that the Professor was wrong somehow, and Logan doesn't really love me. I was scared that seeing me with Remy hurt him so bad nothing I say could ever count for anything. I'm scared that I'm too damn late. And every bar I stop in I get a little closer to him, more and more people say they've seen him, a week ago, days ago, yesterday.

And now in this town. Even when I first got here, when I still didn't know for sure, I still thought he was here. I went from motel to motel, trying to find the one Ororo had described, the one who knew him.

I did finally find it, and really, it's not pretty. Still, the fear in me was began to subside completely, leaving only excitement in its place. Go figure.

"Pardon me," I drawl, as sexy as Remy has ever thought I could be. It feels strange, flirting like this with a complete stranger to get information, but I'd seen Jean do it plenty of times. I managed to tear the attention of the guy behind the counter away from whatever porno mag he was looking at, only then have to wait a moment so he could stare. "I'm lookin' for a man," I said, emphasizing that last word, laughing inside as the guy behind the counter sat up a little straighter. "Not too tall, but powerful. Scruffy looking, black hair, bad attitude." I smiled and add, "And he probably growled at you when he came in."

The guy behind the counter groaned. Life was looking up, from that point on. "Yea, I remember him."

My smile got sweeter and I leaned in a little closer, really turning it on. "Did he say where he was goin', sugah?"

"Wanted to know where The Rebel was."

"The Rebel?"

"Yea. Local fight bar."

Bingo, Jackpot, Eureka. "Well, sugah, why don't you get me a room for the night and tell me where The Rebel is, too?"

And now, still on that high of finding him, my greatest apprehensions came from knowing I was gonna see him and not knowing what I was gonna wear.

Three hours later it was dark outside the grimy window of my room, but I was finally dressed and showered. I debated wearing the long green coat - it would be warmer and he might recognize me in it better - but instead I ducked out in the cold to get my much shorter bomber jacket from the car. I gotta be me.

The hair was good. Down, full body, smelling a little like peaches with one streak on each side of my face.

Makeup was light, but good. Accentuated the eyes, softer on the lips.

A tiny bit of perfume on all the places he could only kiss in my dreams.

The dress wasn't tight, but it left no room for the imagination. A dark heather grey it had a slight v-neck with a hood and then went straight down to my ankles, with a three-quarters sleeve. I'd previously tried it on with short black gloves and long light grey ones. I tried it on with and without any sort of underwear on. Twice.

I did liked the feel of the short gloves and no bra or panties - it was more daring than I'd ever been in my life. But would I have the nerve?

All the fear I'd been feeling the past three weeks ate at me now and I panicked. What was I gonna do? Throw myself at him, smile, and say 'Be creative, sugar?' The thought had definite merit. And if I was a little drunk, who knows? Would it be so damn terrible? Would Logan actually think me worse for it?

I closed my eyes and groaned. When had I turned into a slut?

Fine, Logan, you wanna play that way? Let's play that way.

I turned to the bartender and motioned for another whiskey for the cage fighter. "But lemme see it first," I said, ignoring his look. From inside the neck of my dress I snapped off his dogtag and freed it from it's metal string. I plunked that piece of metal in the drink and handed it back to the amused bartender. "Lets see if that gets his attention." There might have been a mischievous glint in my eye when I said that, but I'm not sure. If there wasn't, there shoulda been.

It was almost comic when he found it. One minute he's leaning against the cage looking all sexy, smoking his cigar. The next he chokes on his drink and I have to laugh. I groaned when the other guy started wailing into him, though, kicking him once he fell. But I giggled all over again when Logan rolled into the kicking, grabbed an armful of legs and pulled the guy down. Still laying down Logan delivered a powerful kick to the back of his head, and that was the end of that.

He nearly ran back to the drink after that. He said something to the one in charge of the ring, and then just stepped out of the cage. In the back of my head I think I followed the announcer saying something about a well deserved break, but my heart was pounding too loud to think when he rounded the corner and saw me, for the first time.

His eyes narrowed a little, but that was it. I don't know what I was expecting, but. . .

"What the hell are you doin' here?"

I let my eyes travel real slow down and back up his frame, deliberately taking my time. No, I didn't know what I was doing. No, I hadn't had that much to drink. But yes, I had been staring at his body, so why not go for honesty? It would be a first, after all. And if it didn't totally backfire and make me look like an idiot, the outcome could be at the least, fun. At the most, wonderful.

When I was finally looking into his eyes again I smiled like I was sharing a secret. "Watchin' you, all sweaty and shirtless."

That made him pause, alright. And a damn long pause it was, too. Then the most amazing smile broke across his face when he laughed. He took my beer off the bar and took a long swig. I think he might have been surprised I said something like that. It had been a hell of a long time since he'd been in my head, but I wasn't stupid. I remembered. . . things. Like what interested him, what turned him on. Granted, the version of him I'd had in my head hadn't included me on those lists. I was on the other one. The 'Look After' list. But, I guess that was the point - somewhere along the line I switched lists and no one told me. So, really, all I had to do was be myself.

Be myself. Right. I didn't even know who I was anymore. In the end, I just did whatever the hell came, figuring I was doing it, so it had to be natural. Charles could - and would - psychoanalyze me later, and that would be the time for worry. Now was the time for me to prove to Logan that I wasn't a little girl anymore. And if he already had those suspicions, then maybe I had to prove it to myself.

Looking back at me just half a second later, holding the bottle down on the bar's surface, Logan raised an eyebrow and cocked his head a little. "You flirtin' with me, Marie?"

Marie. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a while. Marie. I savored it for a moment, the way he said it, gruff, but somehow lilting. It made me think for just the tiniest space of time that if I didn't know exactly who I was, then maybe when the time came for me to figure it out, maybe I could put a little bit of her into the mix. After all, the way he said that name, Marie must have been someone worth knowing.

And then the time of space was up, and whoever I was, I was here. He was here. We were in the same place and the two of us both knew it, and that hadn't happened in the last two years. And I was flirting with him. And he was nearly smiling. And he was definitely flirting back. Damn - if I'm dreaming, please God don't let it be Remy who wakes me up.

I had to smile at his question. Flirting? Was I flirting? Why yes, do believe I was, brazen hussy that I seemed to be. "Maybe. There a law against that?"

He looked away suddenly and my heart sank. Had I hit a nerve?

"Is if you got a boyfriend." He sat on the stool next to me and ordered his own beer, but at least his body still faced me, even if he looked away.

You know what they say about desperate times and desperate measures? Well, Logan looking away from me like that was about as damn desperate as I ever want to remember myself being. I ignored for a moment the fact that he flirted shamelessly with Jean when her fiancee was in the same room and slid off my stool and shed the jacket. It was only a step and a half to that perfect space, cradled to his body by his body. As I came towards him I ran my hands up his parted thighs and oh my did I have his attention then. "And what if I don't, not anymore?" I whispered, thinking about Remy and how I'd just sorta left him hanging after our fight. How Ororo made me talk to him during one of our otherwise pleasant conversations. How confused the 'discussion' had left me, how hurt, and yet even more focused. The more I talked to Gambit, the less I wanted to be with him. The more I wanted to be near Logan. So I smiled, and continued teasing him. "Can I flirt with you then, Logan?"

I think his groan meant yes.

Beer abandoned, his hands were on my hips, rubbing up and down my waist. I wondered when it would dawn on him that I wasn't wearing anything underneath. After a few moments his head fell to my shoulder and I could feel his lips through the material. The skin his lips could almost touch heated up and I couldn't help but to shift against him, trying to grind myself into the denim he caged himself in. I moaned a little then, just so he could hear. I think it made him pull me closer and that just made me moan again, but this time it was his name.

I'd just like to say that I really enjoyed moaning his name and I hope I'm gonna be doing it a lot more often from now on. But back to me and Logan making out in the fight bar.

I looked at his ear, so close to me now, and it was all I could do not to nibble on the edges. For half a heartbeat, his ear looked absolutely irresistible. I shook off temptation before it got too strong and instead of nibbling on it I found myself whispering in it.

"Didja miss me, Logan?"

"Yea," he sighed, leaning back and letting his hands rove up some, not quite to my breasts but almost.

"You been taking care of yourself?" I couldn't help it. I did worry, dammit. I don't care if I sound like Ororo.

He shrugged and raised an eyebrow as if to ask me if I really wanted him to answer that. Instead, he threw the question back at me. I responded the same way, not that I wasn't gonna tell him eventually, but a simple 'I'm fine' doesn't seem to cut it. Besides, he doesn't need to know all that right now.

He sighed again and took a hand away from me to take a shock of white between his fingers. He sat there with me in his arms for a minute just like that, looking at my hair, rubbing it in his fingers, and he wasn't happy when we were interrupted. He growled at the bartender when the latter insinuated that he was wanted back in the ring, and I laughed. I seemed to be laughing a lot around him. Who knew?

"Be nice, Logan," I said, taking a gloved hand from his thigh and framing the side of his face with it. "The man's only doing his job."

"I don't care." Oh, damn I loved him. He was grumpy and disagreeable and cagey and I could imagine quite bestial. And wonderful and strong and brave and entirely too attractive.

I decided to change the subject just as he took the end of that lock of shocked hair and traced my lips with it, staring at me like he was starved.

"What're ya' doin' later on?"

He stared into my eyes and for the first time in my life I know what Jubes meant when she said 'and I thought I was gonna melt'. By the time he said anything, I was already molten and would have done pretty much anything he asked.

"Havin' dinner with you."

I smiled and touched his lips with my finger softly, so softly, savoring the fact that he closed his eyes and sighed. I leaned into him, into his hard chest and felt his arms wrap around me and hold me like letting go was an option he feared. A shroud of my hair separated the sides of our faces, but it was nice.

"Then you'd better finish up fighting, cause I think I finally got my appetite back." I couldn't help it. I was near his ear, and it was just so convenient to whisper things into it.

When the crowd started chanting his name - not actually his name, but close enough - I pulled back and smiled.

"Marie," he started, "I. . . I . . ."

I knew what he wanted to say, even if it wouldn't come. And I loved him too. So I smiled and ran my fingers through his hair.

"Wolverine," I said softly, mocking the crowd's shouts. "Iffn you don't get your ass up there, we're gonna have a riot."

Logan growled and took his hands from my body and turned his attention to the disassembled whiskey smelling dogtag. He put it back together and held it out for me. I took a step back and turned around and once he held the chain in front of me I lifted my hair up for him.

It was almost a relief to feel the chain's weight around my neck again, but it was even better to feel him hold me from behind, hear him breathing in *my* ear. And if I'm not very much mistaken, Logan was happy to see me. For a not so brief moment I wished we were anywhere but the middle of a fight bar with every patron in the house staring at us, chanting for him to start fighting again. But we would be, soon.

He held me like that for an all too short and blissful time, all the while the crowd got louder. After a while I don't know what they wanted to see more - Wolverine beat the crap out of more of their buddies or Wolverine do a groupie right there at the bar - but I think it started to piss him off. He growled. It started way down low in his chest and by the time it got to his lips I think I was shivering. Damn, I could get used to that. He growled and I felt an incredible emptiness inside that I really wanted him to fill. It died away into a whisper when he spoke, "I'll be right back."

There was a falter in the crowd's noise level when still behind me Logan grabbed up one of my gloved hands and pulled it to his mouth. The kiss he pressed into the palm of my hand was one of the most beautiful and sensual things I've ever known. He closed my fingers up into a fist and rubbed his lips over my knuckles too, softly back and forth.

When he was gone I had to grab the bar for support. Suddenly very cold, I put my jacket back on and hopped back up on my bar stool. I took a good long drink and wondered just how sensual Logan could be before I finally looked to the cage.

Logan was staring at me again.

I laughed when I realized it, and I do believe he cracked a smile, right there in the cage. My heart grew a little bit, to see that. I couldn't wait till dinner, but in the meantime I most assuredly was allowed to ogle his body, now wasn't I?



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