No More Than You



Author: NA25
Fandom: X-Men movieverse
Pairing(s): Magneto/Rogue
Warnings: Mature. In some chapters extremely mature torture, Piercing
Spoilers: X-Men: The Last Stand
Summary: It seems like Rogue is finally going to have a normal life. When her dream is dashed, she is devastated and disappears from her former life... until Magneto accidentally finds her.

Nominated Category:

Most Intense Scene: Acted TV & Movies - Other

Best Extreme BDSM: TV & Movies - Other


  1. Chapter 1: A Self-Imposed Exile
  2. Chapter 2: Fool Me Twice
  3. Chapter 3: A Stroll Through Greenwich Village
  4. Chapter 4: Against the Wall
  5. Chapter 5: A Visit From Logan
  6. Chapter 6: An Eleven O'Clock Flight
  7. Chapter 7: Appointment with a Seamstress
  8. Chapter 8: A Lesson in Manners
  9. Chapter 9: Primping
  10. Chapter 10: We Have Reservations
  11. Chapter 11: Small Consolation
  12. Chapter 12: Ideology Over Breakfast Crepes
  13. Chapter 13: What About New York
  14. Chapter 14: Transitions
  15. Chapter 15: Another Modification
  16. Chapter 16: Found Out


Chapter 1: A Self-Imposed Exile

It had taken months for the cure to fail. By then, Rogue had already enrolled and begun her studies at NYU. So she started her college education as she had always dreamed and yet never believed that she could... ungloved, without a scarf, wearing adorable strappy tank tops during the few days of Indian summer that occurred late that September, just like all the other giggling freshmen girls. If Rogue was a little more grave than her peers were, if her eyes were a little more serious, no one noticed overly much. But she was able to flirt, to flounce just a little in the way that every eighteen year old girl ought to have the chance to flounce, and when her good-looking boyfriend Bobby came to visit her on the weekends from somewhere in New England, her roommate and her new friends from class just teased her good-naturedly.

It lasted through January.

In a way, when the cure finally did fail, she was even more devastated than she had been when her mutation originally manifested.

At least it was just the cat who was hurt, Rogue told herself vaguely, but really it had been terrible. Rogue and her roommate had gotten themselves a kitten named Molly, a smoke grey puff of fur who liked to leap on their heads when they came in the door. If Molly leaping on her head had been the first contact she'd had after her mutation began to reassert itself, the kitten probably would have just been knocked unconscious, and she might have survived. But that wasn't what happened. Rogue had been taking a nap, and Molly had curled up under her arm and fallen asleep beside her.

Rogue started awake suddenly, feeling strange, feeling panicked, with no idea why. Her skin was crawling. She felt strangely overwhelmed by scent -- last night's dinner, the cilantro growing on the sill, her own sweat. She felt strangely sensitive to sound -- angry honking on the street below, rustling of fabric as she stirred, something skittering behind the wall. She felt twitchy and impulsive the way that she had after Logan had saved her life on the Statue of Liberty.

Logan. Feral. Animal instincts. Her mutation. Rogue bolted upright. And noticed Molly's cold little body, still curled up for sleep.

No.

The despair was crushing. It was the first time that she had actually killed a living thing with her mutation. Rogue couldn't leave the apartment. Couldn't go to class. Couldn't face her roommate. Couldn't call and tell Bobby. Days passed, Rogue locked in her room, ignoring the knocks on her bedroom door, ignoring the phone, ignoring her body's demands for food. It seemed to take forever for Molly's impulses to fade. And she'd been such a tiny thing.

Finally, numb, she pulled a pair of gloves from the back of her underwear drawer. She dressed carefully, the old familiar routines, the routines she had rejoiced at discarding when she thought that she was cured.

She packed her duffle bag -- the same old one that she'd once thrown into the back of Logan's dilapidated trailer, a million years ago, in another life. She slipped out of the apartment when her roommate was gone, withdrew all the money that she could from her bank account, and disappeared.

The studio that she found was ridiculously small and not at all clean. She stayed there for two months and her money ran out. By then, she was at least able to get out of bed most days. She took a job as a waitress in a grimy diner. She managed to pay her rent, buy groceries. Once in a while, she went to a movie. She told people that her name was Marie Davis. She had no ID, but she didn't do anything that required one. Her employer didn't care.

Six months passed. Bobby had not found her. Logan had not found her. Her life was a monotonous hell, but as long as there was no one in it who she wanted to touch, she could almost forget what had happened.

Evidently the cure hadn't even really "cured" her mutation temporarily, merely suppressed it, because with the return of her mutation had come the return of the congregation in her head. Logan, the strongest presence, because she had almost drained him twice. Then Erik, who had held onto her until she had most of his power. They were both constant companions through virtually every day. Bobby and John and David were like fleeting whispers in the back that she rarely heard from, but they were there. Everyone she'd ever touched, in her head once again.

Neither Logan nor Erik approved of the fact that she'd gone to ground, and neither of them liked being in agreement with the other much either. Logan urged her to return to the mansion, of course. Rogue didn't know what Erik thought she ought to do, but his contempt for the cowardice of her current choices was clear. In her isolation from other people, they had become stronger, and there were days now when it almost seemed that they were sparring directly with each other in her mind. Her inner Logan seemed sensitive to the effect that his presence and Magneto's had on her and tried to control both himself and the others in order to grant Rogue as much peace of mind as possible. Erik whispered seductively to her, trying to influence her thoughts, her feelings. It enraged Logan in turn, and then his rage overwhelmed her. She wondered if she was going mad.

Erik was the only one of them who had spent any significant amount of time in New York City in his life. Sometimes she recognized landmarks, certain corners, statues that she'd never seen before. Every time that happened, it was Erik. Some days it made Rogue smile, made her feel a little less alone in this city. Which made Logan uneasy.

That was how she found the cafe. She passed it one day, not far from her dingy apartment, and thought, how remarkable, that's still there? It must be forty years now. It wasn't her own thought.

She went in and ordered a cup of strong tea. Rogue herself preferred coffee.

It really was a lovely place. There was a small veranda. It had actually changed quite a bit inside, but it was indeed the same establishment. Rogue developed a liking for it that was quite independent of Erik's nostalgia, though the sense of familiarity did remain part of the appeal. She began stopping by regularly.

Logan didn't like it much, but then he was so worried about Rogue that even he reluctantly came to accept it, if just for the reason that it was virtually the only time that she was around other people other than her unpleasant hours at work.

She bought herself a second-hand laptop, and she began to journal sometimes, sitting in Erik's cafe. It wasn't much, as far as attempts to return to the land of the living went. But it was a start.

Sometimes now she thought about calling the mansion.

Do it, kid, thought Logan. Oh yes, imagine the pity on their faces when they see you again. Doesn't that sound appealing, thought Erik.

She journalled, confused.

She looked up to find him watching her thoughtfully.

He was wearing a dark v-neck sweater and black slacks. His autumn jacket was draped carefully over the empty chair beside him. His grey hair was neatly combed, his frigid blue eyes as sharp as they had always been. He was holding a book that had obviously drifted down toward the table when he had looked up and seen her there.

Her breath was caught in her throat. She wasn't sure if she would ever be able to breathe again. Her eyes were locked with his and she couldn't look away.

After a long moment, he tilted his head and a small smirk appeared on his lined face. He gestured for her to come join him at his table.

She suddenly found herself able to exhale again. With slow, awkward movements, she closed the laptop, tucked it into her battered backpack, picked up her backpack and her coat. Logan was telling her to get the hell out of there.

With slow, self-conscious steps, she found herself crossing the cafe and sitting down across from him, putting her backpack on the floor, and dropping her coat over top of it.

"Hello, Rogue," he greeted her, and someone overhearing him might have thought that he sounded perfectly cordial, not sinister at all.

"Hello, Erik," she responded, and her voice sounded to her like it was coming from a million miles away.

His eyes widened minutely at the way that she addressed him, and one corner of his mouth lifted further. "Why, you've still got a bit of me up there, haven't you, my dear? How unexpectedly charming."

She didn't know quite what to say to that, so she didn't say anything. Slowly she was becoming aware that her heart was racing in her chest and that the acrid taste of fear was filling her mouth.

Magneto carefully marked his place in his book (with a metal bookmark, of course; he was predictable in ways) and set it down on the table. He looked for all the world like a perfect gentleman, except for the calculating gleam in his eyes as they travelled over her, lingering at the streak of white in her hair, then moving downward and noting her threadbare, slightly stained gloves.

"It must have been quite a disappointment for you to have to put those back on."

She had no idea how he knew that she'd taken the cure, and she couldn't tell if the fleeting note in his voice was compassion or mockery. The Erik in her head scoffed at her. "It was. I ran away," she responded hollowly, hoping that at some point her pulse was going to slow down.

He nodded slowly. "I see. So the remaining X-Men don't know where you are, then?" The question sounded casual, but Rogue's inner Logan growled a warning.

"No," she told him recklessly. "I couldn't face them again. I'm on my own now. I'm alone."

His sharp gaze was moving intently over her face, studying her. "And are you lonely?" he asked, as if he had every right in the world to ask her intimate questions about her feelings.

"Very," she replied, leaning forward slightly.

"I see," he said again. There was a long pause as they continued to look at each other, which seemed not to bother him at all, as he sat through it quite still. She began to fidget, but she didn't feel like she could bear to stand up and walk away from him. The Logan in her head was railing at her to leave, but she ignored him.

Magneto lifted his tea cup and took a long sip, watching her over the rim, then tilted his head again.

"So what do you think that you'll do with yourself, now that you've left them behind?" he asked conversationally, replacing the cup on its saucer.

Rogue shrugged slightly, and her odd feeling of dissociation was finally beginning to fade, and she was fully realizing that she was sitting in an anonymous cafe in New York conversing with one of the most dangerous mutants in the world, a man who'd tried to murder her when she was barely sixteen.

Oddly, she still found herself wanting to stay. She felt somehow... captivated. By him. By something about him. Something about those frosty blue eyes.

"I don't know," she answered him slowly. "Maybe I should try to go back to school or something. Learn about something. Since I'm not going to be an X-Man."

"Education is never wasted," he agreed gamely. "And what do you think you might like to learn about?"

"Political science, maybe," she said thoughtfully, though she didn't think the answer was her own. It was his, she realized quickly, and from the look on the face of the real Magneto, she wondered if he knew it.

He smiled at her again. "You still have more than a bit of me up there, haven't you, my dear?" She shuddered visibly at the dangerous tone in his voice.

"For some reason, living alone, not talking to anyone, you've gotten stronger," she told him, knowing full well how foolish the disclosure was. "Both you and Logan have. You're the reason that I've been coming here all this time."

For some reason the voice of her inner Logan was becoming somehow more distant, and she wondered if it was because she was here with Magneto. Maybe being in his presence strengthened him in her head, and her inner Erik was somehow able to hold Wolverine at bay.

She didn't understand how her own head worked. But the man across from her was still gazing at her with a look that turned her guts to ice.

He glanced down at the watch on his wrist and frowned, looking back at her. "Rogue, I'm afraid that I have another appointment that I simply can't miss. But I must confess that I don't wish to cut our unexpected reunion short."

She shrugged a little again. "Do you have to go?" she asked, and part of her wondered why there was such a plaintive note in her voice at the prospect of parting from a madman who terrified her completely.

The calculating look was back on his face, and he actually paused for a long moment before he responded. "Well," he finally said, "we shall have to continue this tomorrow, then. Here, at two o'clock." His tone was rather business-like, as if it was a given that she would agree.

"Okay," she heard herself say, and Magneto stood and collected his things as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Rogue sat still, watching him. He donned his jacket and pulled a pair of lightweight gloves out of the pocket, snugging them onto his hands, gazing down at her. Something about the action affected her deeply, and Rogue was astonished to find herself holding back a whimper of fear.

He paused, looking minutely surprised for a moment. She had to look away from him, she couldn't help it.

He finished arranging himself and brushed past her on his way to the door. "Until tomorrow, my dear," he nearly whispered, his gloved hand falling briefly on her shoulder as he passed.




Chapter 2: Fool Me Twice

Rogue knew that she had no excuse for going back the next day. She could feebly try to explain her actions of the previous day to herself in terms of shock, but now she'd had plenty of time to collect herself, she knew full well that it was foolish to return, and yet she was doing so.

Logan spent the morning ranting at her for it, but she ignored him. Her inner Erik was mostly silent, confident that she was going to do exactly what he wanted her to. She found herself dressing carefully, pulling on her neatest pair of jeans, a flattering cinnamon-colored shirt, her long brown satin gloves, brushing out her hair until it lay over her shoulders in a thick sheaf.

There was no reason that it should matter what she wore. The Logan in her head was horrified. Truth be told, so was she, but not horrified enough to change her mind.

She got there first and ordered coffee -- ordering for herself today; her nerves demanded it. Erik entered the cafe exactly at two, which was exactly what she expected, and he didn't look the slightest bit surprised to see her as he joined her at the table and ordered a cup of tea.

"Good afternoon, Rogue."

"Hello, Erik." Her hands were shaking slightly as she put her coffee back on the table. She hated the way that he seemed to notice everything.

Magneto smiled at her arrogantly. "I truly terrify you, don't I? And yet here you are."

She looked down in shame, folding her hands tightly in her lap, biting her lower lip. It was a girlish habit and she reprimanded herself for it.

He chuckled softly. "I'm not going to try to kill you again, you know."

She glanced up at him from behind her hair. "Are you saying that I shouldn't be afraid of you?"

"No, Rogue, that's not what I'm saying at all. I think you're quite right to be afraid of me," he told her casually.

Rogue shook her head, as if to try to clear it. Nothing about any of this made any sense at all. Why was she here? What was she doing?

"You have no idea why you came back, do you?" he asked her then, as if he could read her mind, and she looked up, startled. His expression was not at all calming.

"I shouldn't have come," she said, but made no move to get up.

Magneto scoffed. "Of course you should have. You need something a little bit civilized in your life, my dear. It may as well be me."

"In my life?" she echoed weakly. "I hardly think that meeting twice for tea makes you a part of my life." She plucked nervously at the seam of her gloves.

"Ah, yes. Well, that is why we're going to have to make this a regular occurrence, you see." Erik sipped his tea and crossed his legs. "Charles' school is clearly no longer the place for you, and yet I feel that, even considering his differences with me, he would be glad to know that you have some kind of meaningful contact in your life."

Rogue tried hard not to react to mention of Xavier. "The Professor is dead," she reminded him flatly, thankful her voice didn't shake.

His eyes flashed at her and she cringed just a bit, inwardly. "Do you think I have forgotten that, child? I was there when the Phoenix killed him."

She shook her head and looked away, and a long silence passed, during which Rogue mostly studied her gloves. Finally Magneto cleared his throat. "So, Rogue, let us consider how you might actually make something worthwhile out of this pathetic little life that you've made for yourself." She glared at him, but he merely smiled in cold amusement. "While I am entertained that you would consider studying political science because of my influence, I don't think that's really quite the right choice for you. What would you like to study?"

Rogue shrugged with one shoulder and he frowned at the adolescent gesture. "I dunno."

He waved a hand idly, and her spoon, which had been lying by her coffee cup, rapped her sharply on the knuckles. She squeaked and jerked her hand away, looking at him angrily, then looking around to see if anyone had noticed.

"That's not an answer. Don't tell me you don't know. Think about it and say something intelligent."

A flare of indignation actually overcame her fear of him for a moment, and she opened her mouth to protest his chastisement. Magneto merely lifted a brow and tilted his head at her warningly, and Rogue's words died in her throat.

"Well, I don't know what I want to do," she said sulkily, eying him warily and pulling her hands off the table, away from any tableware. "I like to paint, and music. And I like to travel. Not that I've gotten to do much of that."

"Do you read?" he inquired, and she noticed his eyes traveling over the streaks in her hair again.

"Uh, sometimes." She looked at her coffee cup, pretty sure that he would not be impressed by her consumption of spy novels and medical thrillers. "It's mostly just trashy stuff, though, to pass the time. I can't afford cable. Once in a while I read something, y'know, classical or whatever. I read some Oscar Wilde, some Mark Twain." She looked up at him now. "That's you. But I kinda liked A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was funny." He nodded, perhaps approvingly, and she felt a strange flush.

"I read some Thoreau and stuff too. That's Logan," she added suddenly, for some reason discomfited by him thinking that he was the only voice in her head.

"And do you play chess, Rogue?" His voice was entirely conversational, but his eyes were focused intensely on her. "Did you play chess with Charles, back at the school?"

Why would he ask that? Why would he assume that that was how the Professor would take in interest in the manifestation of his old friend in his student's head? "Only twice," she muttered in a tight voice. "I think it bothered him, the way that I played."

He smiled at her slowly again, and she shuddered. How could he be so creepy without raising a hand?

Because you know what he could do if he did raise a hand.

"Did it bother you? The way that you played?"

"Kinda," she admitted reluctantly, caught up in his gaze again.

"Take off your gloves," he told her suddenly, staring hard at her.

Slowly Rogue shook her head, though she couldn't break her eye contact with him. Her heart was pounding again. "No," she somehow found the will to croak.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. "Take them off, Rogue. I won't let anyone come near us."

She felt a strange thrill at the power implied by his words, knowing that no one could come near them if he didn't allow it. "I shouldn't," she whispered hoarsely.

Magneto leaned forward, still holding her gaze with his own, and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, drawing her right hand from her lap. His grip was warm, even through the material. She held her breath as he gathered the fabric between his fingers and tugged, slowly drawing the glove from her hand.

She felt as if he were stripping her naked, right there in the middle of the cafe, and she could not stop him.

He repeated the procedure with her other glove, and she saw him noting her responses, her dilated pupils, her tight breathing. The Wolverine in her head had mostly been quiet throughout their exchange, a similar effect to what had happened the day before, but this provocation was too great and he was snarling loudly in the back of her head at what was occurring.

Magneto folded her gloves neatly and placed them by his coat on the chair beside him, out of her reach. Her eyes followed his movements intently.

"Put your hand on the table," he commanded next.

Rogue could feel the blood draining from her face. "You want to touch me," she whispered in frightened tones.

He tilted his head at her and smirked. "Yes," he drawled slowly. "Of course I do. And you want to be touched."

She tried to shake her head -- she didn't want to be touched, she definitely didn't -- but she found herself putting her shaking hand on the table, where he could reach it. Wolverine was railing angrily as Magneto reached toward her. Rogue ignored it.

His fingers brushed lightly across the back of her hand, too fast for her power. She gasped and he smiled in approval of her reactivity. There was something absolutely obscene about what was happening between them there in that cafe, and Rogue could not deny it.

She couldn't hide it, either. Her nipples were hard beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. His fingers lingered on the back of her hand, long enough to just feel the beginning of the pull, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head back just a bit as his gaze raked downward over her body.

"Ask me for more," he prompted her in a silky voice. She savored the trickle of his arrogance as it flowed through her veins. She had gotten no distinct thoughts from the contact, but she knew that he was deeply fascinated by what was happening between them.

She peeked at him from beneath her eyelashes. He was still composed, but his eyes were intense on her face.

Don't you dare do it, Logan growled at her.

"Please..." she whispered. "More."

Magneto's hand settled lightly over hers and rested there. It took about a second for the pull to start, and though it had never happened that way before, Rogue felt the electricity of it between her legs as well as in the back of her hand where he was touching her. The fingers of her other hand curled around the edge of her chair, and she watched the familiar, horrible tightening of his features as she pulled at him.

He pulled away after only a second or two, breathing just a little bit hard, his blue eyes glittering brightly. She saw an image of herself from his head, and she knew that she looked flushed and lovely to him.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked him hoarsely, swallowing hard.

"Because you need to use your power in order to stay healthy," he replied smoothly, his voice showing little effect of the strain.

She narrowed her eyes just a bit, still flush with arousal. "That's not the only reason," she made herself say.

He chuckled at her and brushed his fingers over her hand again and she stifled a moan at the fraction of a second of pull. Some vague part of her remembered that there were humans around them and wondered how much of a scene they were making, but she also somehow knew that Erik would still being paying attention to that.

"True," he admitted. "But you don't need to know the other reasons yet. The first reason is enough to ensure that you'll come back."

One last time he let his touch linger, and she saw him brace himself against the effect. This one was longer than the first, and his fingers actually tightened around her hand for a second from the strain. His bared his teeth at her briefly in a snarl, and she bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from groaning out loud as he pulled away. She felt his fascination run into her again -- I can push her further, if I want -- and she shied away from noticing some of the other effects it was having on him.

He took a moment to collect himself. "Intense, isn't it?" he murmured softly, a strange look on his face.

She nodded and sat back in her chair, nearly panting. She looked around suddenly through the curtain of her hair, and while she noticed one girl across the cafe glancing at her strangely, she was surprised to find that everyone in the place wasn't staring at them.

"You did fine," he told her in a pleased voice, noting her concern. "No one noticed anything pointed enough to cause a stir."

She looked back at him, amazed at how composed he looked. He was smirking at her again. He did that a lot.

"You liked that," she said quietly, eyes shifting away from him and then back, and he chuckled at her accusatory tone.

"No more than you did," he rejoined, sitting back again and crossing his arms as he gazed at her.

She chewed on her lip, annoyed that every interaction that she ever had with him was entirely on his terms. He was a terrifying man, but wasn't she plenty dangerous in her own right? Did he have to seem so wholly sanguine about toying with her and her power when she could kill him?

"This is sick," she said suddenly, standing up and pulling on her jacket. "I don't know what you're playing at, but this ain't good for me. I'm not coming back."

"Tuesday," he told her calmly, watching her notice that her gloves were still on the other side of him, that she'd have to reach across him to retrieve him. He made no move to return them.

"I need my gloves." Her voice was tight.

He smiled. "No, you don't."

She made a frustrated noise, shoving her hands in her pockets and turning to stalk away.

"I'll see you Tuesday, my dear," he called after her.

Rogue squared her shoulders. "No you won't."




Chapter 3: A Stroll Through Greenwich Village

When Tuesday came, Rogue got dressed carefully again. Just to go out to get some groceries, of course.

Logan was pissed at her for it.

Usually she went to the store around the corner for her groceries, but she had decided that she wanted to splurge on fresh salmon for dinner, and the seafood market was in the other direction. Which just so happened to be past the cafe where she sometimes journalled.

She wasn't going to stop and see if he was there, though. She could prove to herself that this wasn't a ploy to see him, because it was after two by the time that she left her apartment, and he wasn't a patient man, so she was sure he wouldn't still be there by the time that she walked past at a quarter past two.

Logan could just cool off, as far as she was concerned, because his suspicions were totally off-base.

Of course she glanced in the windows as she walked past, but that was idle curiosity and nothing more. She was walking on the other side of the street, so she knew that she wasn't hoping to see him so that she could change her mind and go in at the last moment. She wouldn't have walked on the other side of the street if she'd wanted to do that.

She saw no sign of him. Her pace slowed as her eyes searched the cafe. See, just as I predicted, she thought fiercely for the benefit of her inner Logan. She tried not to notice that the thought was disappointed.

"You're not looking for me, are you?" Magneto asked in an entertained voice from over her shoulder.

She spun to face him. "No," she blurted, knowing how thoroughly ridiculous her denial was.

It was the first time that she'd stood face to face with him, and she was struck by the reminder that he was really quite a bit taller than she was. The lines on his face and his grey hair belied his age, but he had none of the air of frailty of the men his age that Rogue had known before. Was it part of his mutation that he still seemed physically formidable, or was it just his astonishing will and ambition that made him so? Rogue was staring at him, remembering all too well her time as his captive, fearing for her life.

"Why bother to play at resisting me, my dear?" he asked her pleasantly, crossing his arms as he peered down at her. "It's not as if I'm trying to make you do anything against your will. You are hungry for company and I am willing to provide it. Shall we be done with the games now then? You can just show up on time from now on, as I don't like to be kept waiting."

She half-heartedly shook her head in denial, and he reached down and took her gloved hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. She noticed that he was wearing gloves himself, even though the weather wasn't cool enough today to call for it. That heartened her slightly as he began to lead her down the street. He didn't completely dismiss her as harmless.

"Shouldn't we go into the cafe?" she asked, then cursed herself for phrasing it as a question.

He glanced down at her. "I thought that we could enjoy a walk together today. Within a month, it'll be too chilly to enjoy the streets very much."

If anything, strolling through New York on Magneto's arm was even more surreal than sitting in a cafe drinking tea with him. She tried to tug away from him, but he closed his other hand around hers and held it in place.

"I can walk on my own," she said petulantly.

"Of course you can," he agreed easily. "But I prefer you like this." He paused and turned and looked down at her. "There's really no need to make an issue of it, is there?" he asked reasonably, and yet his eyes touched on a metal bench nearby as he asked it, and she understood his threat implicitly.

Her stomach clenched into a knot. "You just said that you're not trying to get me to do anything against my will," she forced herself to point out, and he smiled.

"Indeed I did. But I am, after all, who I am. We must make some allowances." He resumed his easy stroll, and she nearly stumbled for a moment before she fell in beside him.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, eyes darting around at passersby and storefronts that they passed, trying to guess where he was leading her.

"Why, Rogue, considering that it was nothing more than happenstance that we met in that cafe on Saturday, I don't see why you should suspect me of having some dastardly plan. Or do you think that I set that up after all?"

She chewed on the inside of her lip and had to concede that she did believe that it'd been a coincidence. One facilitated by his presence in her mind, of course, but not planned by the actual man. "No, I don't think you set it up, but you're not interested in anyone unless they serve some purpose of yours," she finally replied.

He patted her hand where it rested on his arm. "Fair enough. And at present, that purpose is nothing more than my own amusement."

It actually surprised her a bit that he just answered her charge instead of meeting it with some sort of parry, and she glanced up at him. She didn't know if she believed his answer, but it was at least straightforward, not some kind of riddle that she was supposed to figure out. "I don't see what's so amusing about toying with a teenaged girl and making her suck out your powers in a way that hurts us both."

He quirked an eyebrow at her as he led her across a busy street. "No young woman who looks at a man like me the way that you do," he said slowly, as if explaining it to a child, "should act too oblivious to the pleasures of certain painful things."

She froze for a moment until he tugged her along, repeating what he'd said in her head, her face becoming hot. "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded angrily, trying to pull away from him again.

His hand closed over her wrist in a painful grip as he turned and looked at her. No, there was no frailty in him, and he compressed the small bones of her wrist together in a way that made her gasp. Her heart was racing again and she stared up at him with her lips slightly parted as fear surged anew.

"That look, Rogue, the one that you're giving me right now," he murmured in a cold, amused voice. "You may be too foolish to realize what you're feeling right now, but I'm certainly not."

His implication terrified her. That couldn't be true. He was trying to confuse her. "Pissed off is what I'm feeling," she snapped in spite of her fear.

Magneto took a step closer in to her. "Yes. But that's not all." His voice was low and intimate, and he leaned in and brushed his lips against her temple slowly enough for the pull to start, and though she tried to jerk away it wasn't in time.

Rogue nearly choked as she wrenched herself away from him, and this time he let her go. She was shocked by the feelings of amused arousal that he was experiencing as he hurt her. Her hand flew to her mouth as she stared at him, appalled.

"You're sick," she whispered, and he merely laughed as he took her hand and began to pull her along again.

"As I pointed out when last we met, no more than you are. I just don't have to sulk around pretending that I'm not going to show up because I don't understand my own reasons for coming."

They turned a corner and a harried-looking woman with a bag of groceries and a toddler on one hip almost ran into them, but Magneto deftly maneuvered them out of her way. "Sorry," the woman blurted, half-turning, and he responded by touching the edge of his hat briefly and smiling at her with a polite, "Don't mention it, madam."

Rogue shook her head as if to clear it, confused by the difficulty of reconciling the sadistic terrorist who enjoyed hurting teenaged girls with the mannered, distinguished gentleman who still tipped his hat at harried mothers in the street. Rogue didn't consider herself the most analytical of girls, but it made no sense.

Magneto seemed content to let her stew in silence for a while. He paused briefly at a boutique window with a display of evening dresses in it and gestured at a dark green gown in a shimmery fabric that was cut with sweeping lines. "You would look lovely in that," he observed before resuming their stroll. "With a corset, though," he added.

"No one wears corsets anymore," she replied shortly, though her mind was still on the exchange they'd just had. "I bet you can't even buy them."

He said nothing, leading her across another street.

"You're probably old enough to be my grandfather," she blurted suddenly.

He glanced down at her again, and she almost regretted her words as she saw that he was actually looking a bit irritated now. "Is this supposed to be an argument about why you couldn't possibly be attracted to me, Rogue?"

When he simply called her on it like that, Rogue felt embarrassed, her cheeks reddening. She glanced away. "I'm just saying."

"I confess that I'm not sure what you're saying, my dear. The only reason that I can see for us to discuss the difference in our ages would be if we were contemplating something that is usually frowned upon between older men and younger women."

"That wasn't what I meant," she said sullenly.

He smiled. "Ah. Wasn't it." It wasn't a question.

After another few moments, Magneto put his other hand over hers in the crook of his arm again. "Well, the afternoon is getting on, Rogue," he observed. "I'll walk you back to your apartment before I go."

She stopped dead then, and he didn't try to pull her along. "You know where I live?" she asked hoarsely.

"Well, no, I haven't bothered to find out," he replied, studying her again. "You shall have to lead the way."

"No."

Magneto turned to face her. "Pardon me?"

Rogue's mouth went dry at the look that he was giving her, but she steeled herself. Her inner Logan was rallying at her display of defiance. "All of this is bad enough," she said, praying that her voice would stay steady. "But I ain't telling you where I live."

"Rogue," he drawled slowly, as if striving for patience. "I could find out for myself quite simply."

"Well, I guess you could try." She crossed her arms. "But that doesn't mean I'm gonna tell you."

Magneto closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "I had forgotten how tiresome teenagers could be," he said irritably. "Perhaps I should just use the same methods of discipline with you that I do with the Brotherhood. Defying me is not a good idea, my dear."

Rogue glanced around. There were plenty of people around, and while Magneto was certainly not afraid to draw attention to himself, she hoped that he wouldn't find this strange little thing between them to be worth revealing himself. "I ain't part of your Brotherhood, Magneto. Maybe you could 'discipline' me and maybe you couldn't, but if you make me hate you then I got no reason to hang around." Her heart was pounding as she spoke the words, but she did it nonetheless.

One corner of his mouth quirked upward for a moment. "Is that an admission that you like me?"

"No."

Suddenly he didn't look amused. "Stop being a brat, Rogue. You'll let me escort you home or you simply won't see me again."

Some part of her froze with horror at the idea... some part of her knew that, for some reason, she would regret that very much. But evidently it wasn't the part in charge of her mouth at the moment, because she said, "Well, that'd be great!" She felt Logan's approval.

His mouth thinned into a line, and he turned and walked away from her.

She watched him for a second before the panic started to kick in. "Look," she called, "I don't mean to be rude. I just don't think I should tell you that."

He kept walking. Rogue chewed her lip as she watched him go. His stride didn't hesitate. She considered running after him long after she watched him turn a corner and pass out of her sight.

What the fuck are you doing, Rogue? she asked herself.

She found that she had no answer.




Chapter 4: Against the Wall

The days seemed to pass even more slowly than they had before Magneto had strolled into her life. Her shifts at work were interminable, and movies didn't seem to hold her interest. She still thought about calling the mansion, but she had no phone and she never found herself stopping at a pay phone. One afternoon about a week after he'd left her standing in the street, she stopped by a small community college and gathered up some brochures on their various programs.

She'd have to either use her legal name or actually go to the trouble of trying to create a fake identity if she wanted to enroll. If she did the former, she was fairly certain that an X-Man would be showing up on her doorstep within days.

She didn't know if she wanted that to happen or not. Who would come? Logan? Bobby? Maybe Storm, sent because Rogue didn't have some kind of history with her? Before she'd been stilled by tormented thoughts of the pity she would see in their eyes. Now she envisioned being confronted over her encounters with Magneto. If she'd been feeling more level-headed about the whole thing, she probably would have realized that no one would have truly blown their lid over two cups of tea in a public place and a mid-afternoon walk through Greenwich Village. They wouldn't have known how she thought about him all the time, how she in a way relished the feel of him in her head now, how she found herself distracted by things like silverware and fences.

How she fantasized about running into him again in the cafe. The one where she went every afternoon that she wasn't working, now.

They wouldn't have known the things that happened between her and Magneto in her fantasies.

It was nearly a month later, and she had decided to go ahead and enroll under her legal name. She'd been jittery since then, glancing around when she walked down the street, tensing slightly whenever she heard footsteps pass by her door in the hallway. It was a Wednesday afternoon when the knock finally came.

She'd been living there for over six months, and it was the first time that anyone had ever knocked on the door.

Rogue stared at the door silently for a moment, heart pounding, before she got up off the bed and crossed the room. She tugged on her gloves, bracing herself mentally as she prepared to turn the knob. Was she hoping for Bobby? For Logan? For a neighbor, asking for a cup of sugar? She didn't know.

It was funny, that while she'd envisioned many scenarios about Magneto appearing again -- at the cafe, on the street, even him walking in and sitting down next to her in one of her movies -- none of them had involved him just knocking on her front door.

She blinked up at him. He was wearing a wine-colored shirt with a crisp collar in a rich fabric, the sleeves rolled up at the forearm, and no gloves. His silver hair looked even more striking against the color than against the grey that he so often wore. He looked entirely out of place in her dingy, narrow hallway. Predictably, her inner Wolverine was already snarling.

"Are you going to invite me in, Rogue?"

"What?" she responded foolishly. "I mean yeah. Come in. I wasn't expecting it to be you." She stood aside awkwardly, still staring at him, and he brushed past her into her cramped, barely furnished studio. She closed the door and turned.

His eyes swept around the room assessingly, and Rogue found herself embarrassed. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and nodded toward the small, discolored table with two folding chairs tucked against the wall near her kitchenette. "Uh, do you want to sit down? I can make some tea."

He didn't sneer at the suggestion as she'd expected him to. Instead he walked over to the table as one of the chairs moved itself out and turned so that he could sit in it and look at her.

The unabashed reminder of his power was unsettling. He'd barely used it when they'd been together in public.

"No need to bother with the tea," he told her. "You American-borns have no idea how to make it."

"I make it exactly the way that you do," she replied, just a little bit challengingly.

At that, he smiled. "Ah, of course... Nonetheless, don't bother. I'm not here for the amenities." He paused, and she tried to think of something to say, something other than asking what he was there for and thus opening the Pandora's box that had disturbed her so badly the last time they'd spoken. "Who were you expecting, then? Did I manage to drive you back into the arms of the X-Men, or have you actually left your apartment and made some friends since last I saw you?" He paused, as if startled by a thought. "You don't have a boyfriend, do you, Rogue?" His smile became unpleasant.

Rogue sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, well away from him and his touch. "I enrolled at a college last week. I had to use my real name. I figure someone'll show up soon."

Magneto studied her thoughtfully. "And are you looking forward to that?"

Rogue shrugged. "I dunno."

Magneto raised an eyebrow, and Rogue turned as she heard a noise to her right, on top of her bureau. A brush lifted itself and moved quickly toward her, and when she reflexively held up a hand to fend it off, it pulled up and rapped her on the knuckles, then returned itself to the bureau. She cursed herself for owning anything that had metal in it as she rubbed her hand and glared at him peevishly.

"Are you looking forward to that?" he repeated evenly.

"You know, friendly acquaintances don't smack each other on the knuckles for not answering questions the way they'd like," she pointed out.

Magneto's smile was sinister. "Is that what you'd like to pretend that we are this week? Friendly acquaintances?"

Oh no. This was feeling like dangerous territory again. She never should have made any allusion to characterizing their relationship. She turned her head and looked at him from behind her hair, her cheeks coloring. She hated how easily he made that happen.

"I think it's time to dispense with the games once and for all, my dear," he told her, rising from his chair. "If you've done something to attract the attention of the X-Men again, then it's time for me to take a little greater control of the situation."

Rogue stood also, not wanting him towering over her. "There's no situation to control," she told him, and this time her voice was trembling slightly no matter how much she wished it weren't. It was impossible to keep it steady with him advancing on her like this.

He's not wearing gloves, she reminded herself desperately. He can't touch me.

That didn't seem to deter him as he moved into her personal space, and Rogue had no choice other than to back away from him, toward the wall. "Are you persisting with that nonsense?" he asked casually. She yanked her right glove off and dropped it as swiftly as she could as he backed her squarely into the wall, which merely made him smirk.

"I'm not afraid of your touch," he reminded her wryly. "As you well know." His sharp blue gaze traveled over her face, and with his proximity it made her feel a little breathless.

"If I hold on, you'll go down," she rasped. "Even you can't stop that."

"Then try it." Why did he look so unalarmed?

After a long beat passed in silence, he raised one hand and lifted a white strand of her hair from beside her face. "No?" His finger trailed down her cheek then, lightly, just long enough for the pull to start, and just a little bit of his arousal surged straight into her. She whimpered.

"What are you doing?" she whispered fearfully. "You can't touch me. Not for real."

"Can't I?" He looked amused. "Take off your shirt, Rogue."

Rogue's eyes widened. "What? Are you insane?"

"I believe that I am, according to several official reports from the UN," he mocked. "But that's quite beside the point. I'm entirely serious about you removing that sweater."

She swallowed. "Why?" It sounded stupid, but it was all she could think of to say.

He tilted his head, and it was clear how absurd he found her question. "Because I wish to see your breasts, my dear. Now do as I say, or I'll do it for you."

Her gaze flickered past him, noting the metal bedframe, the metal chairs in her dining room, a metal reading lamp attached to a side table, more metal implements in her kitchen than she had ever realized that she possessed. He noted her reaction and, smiling threateningly, rattled the bed where it sat just a bit. There was no doubt that he could make good on his threat to strip her if she wasn't willing to reach out and grab him for long enough to take him down.

She slowly raised her arms and pulled her sweater over her head. She dropped it to the floor beside them and tried to press back further into the wall, as if she could put more space between their bodies. She was wearing a grey cotton bra, and was mortified by the knowledge that her nipples were quite visibly tightened beneath it.

"Your undergarment, also," he instructed, and some small part of her almost scoffed at the fact that he didn't say bra, but her throat was far too tight to do that.

She complied. It seemed somehow a bit easier, now that she'd already done it once, except that now she was actually baring her breasts to him. His intentions were clear enough, and she wouldn't have obeyed the first command if there wasn't some part of her that wanted to do it. Her face had never been so flushed in her life.

He looked pleased, which elicited a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. His eyes moved over her torso assessingly, the way they had moved over her apartment when he first walked in. Then he reached up to finger her white lock again, and she felt as if she were frozen in place.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked him breathlessly.

"Do you think I came unprepared for this?" He pulled his lightweight leather gloves from his back pocket and tugged them on.

She watched this, fully enthralled. If there was one thing that Rogue knew in detail, it was gloves, and his were exquisitely expensive and butter soft, molded snugly to his hands and with flawless seams. They stopped at the wrist, leaving several inches of his forearm unprotected beneath the rolled cuffs of his shirt.

He reached up and ran a finger over her lower lip and she groaned aloud at the impossibly soft, cool texture. "You hate having to wear them, but you like watching a man put them on with the obvious intention of touching you," he murmured tauntingly.

Her eyelids fluttered closed. "I've never watched a man do that before," she responded vaguely.

"Really?" There was an amused note to his voice. "I saw that reaction that very first day, when I put them on to leave the cafe." His hand was traveling slowly over her cheek, down the side of her throat, over her collarbone. "It was what first made me realize how I affect you."

"That was--that was different," she managed to say. "I was just scared, because of what you did to me before. I didn't--it wasn't because of this."

He leaned forward, so close that she could feel his breath on the side of his face. "Yes it was. You simply hadn't noticed yet."

His fingers were ghosting over her skin lightly, over the upper swell of her breasts. She heard herself make a sound that she had never made with Bobby.

"It's clear to me how strongly you respond to my dominance, dear girl." His feather-light touch traced the outside curve of her breast. "I wonder if you will find my sadism as compelling."

Her knees literally felt weak. "I'm not--I don't like that," she protested weakly.

"Don't you? Let's find out." He finally dragged his fingers across her nipple, and Rogue moaned. She'd turned her face far to the side so that she didn't have to look at him.

He tugged a bit on her nipple, pulling the little bud tight. "How does that feel?"

Rogue chewed her lip, not wanting to admit it. His touch disappeared and she felt bereft.

"Answer me."

"It felt good," she choked out, and he caressed her again, rolling her nipple lightly between his fingers. This was similar to how Bobby had touched her, and she had loved it from him, had become intensely aroused, but she had never felt this overwhelmed by it.

"So you like this. Most women like this," he observed. "What about this?" He tugged much harder on her nipple then, and his other hand came up to wrap around her throat. His fingers and thumb pressed in under her jaw, turning her face back toward him. What he was doing didn't exactly hurt, but it felt... intense.

Rogue actually arched toward him, squeezing her eyes shut as he turned her face. His lower hand ran across her collar bone and squeezed her other breast firmly, then began to pinch the nipple on that side. Rogue's own hands scrabbled against the wall... she refused to reach out toward him, no matter how badly she wanted to grasp at his arms.

"How does this feel, Rogue?" he asked, brushing his mouth against her temple until her powers flared and they both gasped a bit.

Once again she refused to respond and he pulled his hand away from her breasts and she whimpered. "Are we going to have to do this every time I want an answer from you?" he asked her, and she scrunched her eyes even tighter.

"It felt good, god dammit," she ground out, and could almost feel him smile despite her refusal to look.

"Good," he said. "Now open your eyes for me."

She tried to turn her head away again, and his thumb dug in cruelly under her jawbone to prevent it. "Rogue, you want to do what I say. It'll be easier for you if you do."

"I can't," she pleaded. "I can't just do whatever you tell me to." She was shaking hard against the wall, but he didn't press his body into hers like she wished he would. One hand at her breast and the other at her throat was still her only stimulation.

"Why ever not?" he asked her as if she were being ridiculous. His hand was grasping her breast roughly now, his fingers digging into her flesh.

"You tried to kill me!" she cried, trying now to turn her head to the other side, which he also prevented.

He chuckled, a low, dangerous sound. "Do you think that I'm trying to kill you right now?" he asked in amusement.

She only moaned, pushing away from the wall, toward him.

"Open your eyes," he suddenly snapped in a hard voice, and for some reason her eyes flew open and locked on his face. He was so close to her--so close, his piercing gaze had her pinned to the wall as effectively as his hand on her throat, and the slightly silky fabric of his shirt brushed against her chest.

He pinched down on her nipple, hard, staring into her eyes, and she moaned loudly and writhed but could not look away. Her hands finally flew up to grasp at his upper arms, twisting at the material of his shirt.

"Does that hurt?" he asked, and his voice was no longer so casual.

"Yess.." she hissed, trying to pull away, but with nowhere to go.

His fingers were relentless on her flesh. "And yet you like it," he sneered, and this was not a question. She cried out, trying to press her body against his, anything for relief from the pain that he was inflicting.

He eased up, finally, and Rogue exhaled loudly and nearly slumped. Her eyes were glassy as she continued to stare up at him, as he'd not given her leave to look away.

"Rogue?" he murmured quietly, and his gaze almost looked kind now, which made her wish wildly that he could kiss her.

"Mmm?" His hand was still stroking her breasts, tweaking their now-aching peaks.

"Did I tell you that you could touch me?"

She blinked, his warning tone in contrast to the expression on his face, and slowly lifted her hands away from his arms. She hadn't even really realized what she'd been doing. She stifled an irrational impulse to apologize, trying to remind herself that he was the freak here, not her.

Nonetheless, her transgression made her nervous, and he smiled at her nervousness.

"Now, turn around, my dear," he instructed gently. Some vague part of her reminded her that she shouldn't simply obey him, and yet she did, slowly, turning so that she faced the wall, her head turned to see what she could over her shoulder.

He grasped her wrists -- one of hers gloved, the other bare -- and lifted them up by her head, pressing them into the wall. "Do you need a reminder to keep them there?" he asked, and she visualized what such a "reminder" might be.

"No," she breathed, and he snorted.

Now, now he pressed the length of his body against the back of her, and his hands slid over her hips and deftly unbuttoned the fly of her jeans, pushing them down onto her hipbones.

A sound escaped her as his hand slid into her panties, parted her flesh, dipped downward to draw some of her moisture up through her cleft, and then immediately pressed against the nub of her aroused clit.

"You'll ruin your gloves," she blurted in a strangled whisper.

His left hand came up to cover hers on the wall, and he leaned forward against her as he rubbed her. "I couldn't possibly care any less."

It had taken a great deal of experimenting with Bobby to figure out how she liked to be touched, but Magneto unerringly found a motion that worked almost right away, pressing his fingers just to the side of her clit instead of directly on top and applying a rhythmic, indirect pressure that provided the right amount of stimulation. Her eyes fluttered closed as she wondered heatedly just how many women he'd gotten off with their faces pressed up against a wall.

"It's always taken me a long time to get there." Her voice was strained, and she was panting hard, pressing back into his body.

"I hardly have all day," he replied, matching his rhythm to her gasps. "I suggest that you work for it."

She found herself mewling, shocked by how quickly she was feeling the delicious pressure build low in her groin. "Tell me before you get there," he demanded, and she found herself almost rocking against his hand, urging him to the direction and rhythm that her body was responding to.

It didn't take nearly as long as she was used to. "I'm almost--" she gasped, torn between pushing forward against his hand and pushing backward against his body, her fingers pressing into the wall near her head.

The hand that was covering hers on the wall slid down her arm, across her shoulder, and wrapped around her neck again. Rogue's vision swam as he squeezed her throat tight, pressing painfully on the sides.

"Ask me for permission," he said, and for just an instant he slowed his rhythm and she felt her orgasm begin to recede.

It was a heartless tactic... at any other moment she would have refused, but now she was on the brink and all she wanted in the world was to tip over that glorious edge, and so she didn't even have time to rally in defiance before she found herself gasping, "Oh god, please let me come, please let me come!" She could barely get the words out past the strangling pressure of his hand on her throat, but she forced herself to.

"You may come," he breathed, his fingers quickly giving her what she needed and the hand at her throat squeezing so hard that she actually wondered wildly if she was about to pass out and found that she didn't care at all as long as she got to...

Rogue disintegrated into orgasm, a nearly full-voiced shriek escaping her as she pushed back against his body as hard as she could. He actually stumbled slightly and shifted his stance, but somehow prevented it from interrupting his stimulation of her as she continued to climax violently.

Her hands flew back to grasp at him of their own volition, finding purchase on his hips. "Get your hands off me," he hissed and through a white-dark haze of pleasure she slammed her hands against the wall again.

"Oh god oh god oh god oh god," was all she could say, the words slurred, and her knees finally literally begin to give out as her the peak of her orgasm passed and began to wane.

The hand buried in her panties came up and wrapped around her torso and pulled her backward. There was nothing left in her that could possibly resist as he turned and pushed her onto the foot of the bed and stood over her, looking down at her limp form and smirking.

She cupped one of her hands over her mons, almost protectively. "Is it over?" she asked stupidly.

He laughed. "For now."

He waited for a moment while her brain tried to reassemble itself into some kind of order. He put one foot up on the bed beside her and leaned on his knee and passed a gloved hand over his forehead, and she smiled just a little to note the light sheen of sweat on his lined face.

"What the fuck?" was all she could think of to say, and he shook his head in mild consternation at her vulgarity.

"I won't be in New York again for a while," he told her conversationally, pulling his gloves from his hands -- she saw the right one still glistening -- and tucking them into his back pocket again as he stood over her. "I was simply passing through today. But I'm concerned about you attracting the attention of your old friends."

Rogue blinked up at him. Now he wanted to chat in a straightforward manner? "I'm not going back there," she said, and she hadn't realized until she said it that that much, at least, was true. Her life might be lonely and isolated, but it was here and it was her own, and that was what she needed right now.

"Not even for the Wolverine?" he asked, raising a brow at her. "For that's who they'll send, if they're smart. He'll probably have to pull rank on that boyfriend of yours, which will cause some tension on the team. But the X-Men know your weaknesses as well as I do, so they'll send Wolverine."

She didn't like hearing him speak of Logan, didn't like the look on his face when he did, didn't like hearing Logan described in terms of a weakness, didn't like Magneto's allusion to knowing her weaknesses himself. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said rudely, rebuttoning her jeans and sitting up.

He moved without warning, and suddenly his bare hand was tangled in a fistful of her hair at the nape of her neck and he was tilting her head back to look up at him. It was a painful reminder that she should not be feeling safe with him in the room. "They can't have you back," he told her forcefully, and she found herself caught squarely between anger and fear and desire.

"I don't belong to you," she managed to respond, trying to pull away unsuccessfully.

His stare was cold and hard, and he looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he released her and strode over to the door.

"What are you going to study?"

The shift in his tone and demeanor was almost enough to leave her dizzy. "Uh. Art."

He nodded and turned by the door to look at her. "And when do you start?"

"I'm starting in the spring semester. In about six weeks."

"I'll be back in a month," he said. "I'll need to spend a few days in San Francisco. I'll take you with me."

"What?" She shook her head as if to clear it. "You want to take me on a vacation?"

He smiled at her confusion. "Something like that. You need some new clothes. Your fashion sense is regrettable."

Rogue looked around, as if there might be some explanation for what he was saying elsewhere in the room. "You're taking me on a shopping vacation in San Francisco?"

Magneto gazed at her for a long moment, and his expression became serious. "Remember, my dear, the Wolverine may be an animal, but he has too many illusions of nobility to be willing or able to give you what I can." The door opened, and Magneto slipped out before she could think of anything to say or do other than watch him go.




Chapter 5: A Visit From Logan

Magneto had been right. It was Logan who came.

He walked into the diner where she was waitressing, got himself seated, and ordered a cup of coffee.

It was not so much shocking as just plain strange to come out of the back with a tray laden with enough chicken fingers for a family of four, and see him already there, sitting in a booth just like any other customer. Except he wasn't any other customer. He was Logan. It was kind of like trying to insert a peg from an old, very chaotic life right into a bland slot in a new life. It looked funny there.

He glanced up at her and cocked an eyebrow, and Rogue just paused a moment, then smiled a little nervously, then went and gave her family their dinners. She passed by Logan on her way back to the kitchen.

"I get off at four," she told him, and he nodded.

He ate a piece of pie -- Jerry was his waiter, not Rogue -- and he left.

Rogue managed to get off the floor at five minutes before the hour, and she slipped into the bathroom. She was wearing a lightweight sweatshirt, so there wasn't much to do about that, but she washed her face and ran a brush through her hair and dabbed on a little lip gloss. She was no fashion plate -- she flashed back to Magneto's comment about her regrettable fashion sense -- but she would do.

She slung her backpack over her shoulder and stepped out into the temperate night air. Logan was leaning against a wall, smoking. Absolutely nothing about him looked even minutely different from the last time she'd seen him. She felt a familiar ache in her chest.

"Hey Logan."

"Hey kid."

Rogue glanced around.

"C'mon, I'll walk you home." She ducked her head and started off toward her place, and Logan fell in beside her, his hands shoved into his pockets. "So how ya been?"

Rogue shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Better now than before."

He made a sound of acknowledgment. "Well, all the geeks say hi. Everyone really misses ya."

Rogue kicked a bit at the pavement as she walked. There was a long pause while she tried to decide what to say to that. "Yeah. I miss everyone, too."

"Popsicle misses you a lot, still." There was a strange tone to his voice, but Rogue couldn't place it. Was it reproach? Curiosity? Did he actually sound hurt himself?

"I miss him too," Rogue said slowly.

A couple of minutes passed, and Rogue led them around the corner onto her street. "He really wanted to be the one to come, you know. But I thought maybe you'd rather it was me."

Is that why you were chosen? For my comfort? Rogue was surprised by the wave of cynicism that washed over her, her mouth narrowing, knowing its source.

I shouldn't have let him touch me ever again after the Statue of Liberty, she thought self-reproachfully, then tried to keep from blushing as memories rose up that she didn't want in her head with Logan here beside her.

"So who tried to choke you to death?" he asked suddenly, and though his voice sounded casual, Rogue could just detect the undercurrent of anger.

So much for banishing those memories.

Her hand flew to her neck, which of course immediately gave her away. "Shit," she mumbled aloud, her face flaming red in the lamplight, and Logan looked at her sideways.

"Huh. So it was like that. Wouldn't have pegged ya for that, kid."

Rogue vaguely thought that she might die. Everything that she could think of to say just seemed like it would make things worse. How much redder could she possibly get?

After another minute, Logan actually stopped and turned toward her. Rogue paused, but didn't turn. She lowered her head, biting her lip.

"Rogue?"

She wrapped her arms more tightly around her torso, and he grabbed her upper arm and gently pulled her to face him.

"What the -- what's going on here Rogue? If you like it a little rough that's your business, but those are some serious bruises and this is a really weird reaction you're having."

"They're not serious," she mumbled. "No one at work even noticed."

"Yeah, well, no one at Lucky's Diner there has seen enough bruises to be able to tell what those looked like four days ago. You were wearing a scarf to work until yesterday, weren't ya?"

"Leave it alone, Logan," she said peevishly, unable to meet his gaze. She sounded vaguely rebellious, but inside she was terrified that he was going to press this. She'd already mucked it up horribly.

Logan pinned her with a look that was half-puzzled, half-annoyed. "You know, I thought I was gonna come here and act like your friend instead of like your fucking father, which is what Bobby would have tried to do. I've never treated you like a kid, even when I wanted to; I've always told you to trust your instincts instead of telling you what to do. But now you've managed to get me worried, you know that?"

Rogue glanced up at him, saw his hazel eyes regarding her narrowly. "You've always called me 'kid'," was all she could think of to say.

Logan snorted. "Yeah. But I never treated you like one."

She said nothing, just shifted from one foot to the other, and after a moment he exhaled in exasperation.

"Well, c'mon. Are we almost there?" He resumed walking in the direction they had been going.

Rogue led him the rest of the way to her studio. It was only as she was turning the key in the lock that she had a sudden chilling thought.

Would Logan still be able to smell Magneto in there?

It had been three days. Surely that was long enough for his scent to fade.

Jesus Christ.

"Kid?"

Rogue flailed mentally for an excuse not to go inside. Logan was staring at her strangely again and the key was shaking in her hand. If she didn't do something, she was just going to make it much, much worse.

She couldn't think of anything. She just had to pray that he couldn't smell it. Rogue tried to exhale slowly and compose herself as she reluctantly turned the key in the lock. There was nothing for it other than to take her chances.

She swung open the door and led the way inside.

Logan glanced around, but with little of the judgment that she'd seen in Magneto when he'd done the same thing. To Logan, one place to sleep was pretty much like any other place to sleep. He probably didn't even notice that her furniture was mismatched.

Rogue tried to act casual as she threw her jacket over a chair and headed toward the fridge. "You want a glass of water, Logan? I don't have anything stronger." Her shoulders were painfully tense as she waited for his snarl of outrage.

Logan sat on the edge of the bed. His frame was so heavy that the bed squeaked in protest. He didn't seem to be reacting to anything in the environment.

"Tell me what the hell is going on, Rogue."

She glanced at him, and his eyes softened a bit. "Marie," he corrected himself, and she felt herself melt, just like she had as a kid when he was still playing her hero.

She finished pouring herself some water, and grabbed one of the folding chairs and put it by the bed. She sat down and propped her feet up next to him and looked at her glass.

She smiled ruefully. "You know about the kitten? The one that me and my roommate got?"

"Yeah. Storm talked to her. She told her the story." Logan's voice sounded slightly less angry now that it looked like she was gonna talk.

"I know a kitten probably doesn't seem like much, but it was a really fucking awful way for my mutation to come back." She shrugged uncomfortably. "Not to whine. I mean, I guess it wasn't that bad next to being cut up and experimented on. But it sucked."

Logan just nodded, watching her. He wasn't the world's most articulate guy, but if there was one thing that he could do when he wanted to, it was listen.

Well, that and kill people really well.

She looked up at him now, her mind off of her fears that her bizarre tryst with Magneto would be discovered, just relishing the fact that she was finally getting to talk, really talk, to someone who really cared about her.

"I just couldn't take it, Logan. I know it was cowardly, but I couldn't face you all. I couldn't face the reassurances and the things that people would say and, and all the fucking pity."

"I wouldn't have pitied you," Logan said simply.

Rogue made a frustrated gesture. "Maybe not you. But everyone else would have."

He didn't argue that point, and Rogue took a slow sip of her water. His brow was furrowed with concern.

"Anyway, there's not much story to it. I left college, I found this place, I got a job. That's what I've been doing. I finally have enough energy that I'm gonna go back to school and study art for a while. I'm gonna work with my hands, Logan. I want to sculpt."

He frowned at her and ran a hand through his hair. "You're not even thinkin' about coming back, are ya?"

Rogue looked at him, and for a moment she entertained the old fantasy that he wanted her. Then her eyes were drawn to the wall that Magneto had pressed her against as she came, screaming, and the fantasy of Logan seemed awfully remote, even with him sitting there in front of her.

She still wanted him, she did. But... there was nothing solid about it. Nothing to hold onto.

He has too many illusions of nobility to be willing or able to give you what I can.

And Bobby? She remembered that she'd felt intense things for him, but she didn't seem to be able to remember what they were anymore.

"I think I'd like to come back someday, Logan. It wouldn't be like before, you know, but I think I could come back and be a part of the school somehow, someday, maybe. But not right now."

Logan's mouth tightened as he glanced around the room. "I guess I should tell Popsicle that you ain't waitin' around for him, huh?"

Rogue blinked. "He didn't wait around for me, did he?" She'd been certain all this time that Bobby and Kitty would have gotten together after she disappeared. The thought was difficult for her, but not exactly bad.

"He hasn't been a monk," he admitted. "But if you did decide to come back..."

Rogue shook her head. "No. He's better off with Kitty."

She expected him to argue that, but instead he was staring at the dingy wall behind her with a distinctly uncomfortable look. "Maybe he wasn't the only one who wasn't waiting around, but who would take notice if you did decide to come back."

Rogue stared at Logan, turning over what he'd said. Surely she misunderstood him. Illusions of nobility, my dear. He won't follow through.

"Do you mean...?" She couldn't bring herself to say anything more. Her throat felt suddenly dry, but she couldn't seem to take another drink of her water.

Logan made a frustrated sound in his throat, and finally looked at her. "I don't know what I mean," he growled. "Who put the bruises on your throat?"

This time Rogue didn't look away from him. "It was just a one time thing, Logan," she lied, surprised by how believable she sounded. "I let him get a little carried away, which is why I'm not gonna see him again. But he didn't actually hurt me."

A long moment passed while they looked at each other. "You got other bruises?" His voice sounded strangely hoarse, and Rogue wondered what exactly was happening here. If it wasn't Logan, she would have thought that things were becoming... charged. That it was the thought of where else she might have bruises that was getting him wound up.

There was a time when she would have given a limb just to have his attention the way that she seemed to now, even if it went no further. Now, she felt some of the same old confused longing, but she was distracted by Magneto whispering in her ear.

"No, no other bruises," she lied again.

His gaze wandered over her, but his expression was conflicted, and Rogue exhaled. "Logan?"

"What?"

She licked her lips and made herself speak calmly. "You know that you're not really willing to do this. So knock it off." She could hardly believe the words coming out of her mouth. She would have thought they were Erik's, but he wouldn't have phrased it the way that she had.

That took him aback, and for a moment he just stared at her. Then he raked a hand through his hair and snorted.

"Well, that's not the same Marie who told me she didn't want me to go to Alkali Lake with those big eyes and broke my heart so bad that I had to leave a piece of myself behind with her."

Rogue actually laughed, and if it wasn't entirely good-natured, it wasn't entirely bitter either. "It is the same Marie, Logan, she just got a little older. And she doesn't like tormenting herself with things that she can't really have any more."

Logan shifted on the bed. "Maybe--"

"No. Not unless you mean it. And you don't."

He sighed in exasperation. "I could mean it."

Rogue shook her head, stood up, and sat herself down on his lap, straddling him. Logan made a choked noise, and Rogue grabbed one of his hands and lifted it straight to her breast. He jerked away as if burned, his expression alarmed, and she gave him a rueful smile.

The heat of his body was amazing, and Rogue could not deny her arousal, but she'd known what would happen. "See?" she said pointedly.

He stared at her a moment, then narrowed his eyes and angled his mouth over hers, kissing her roughly.

No! snapped her inner Erik, completely enraged. The pull started quickly and Rogue jerked away from him, backing off his lap and away from him, her hand over her mouth.

"Why'd you do that?" she asked, stunned, feeling the primal rush of him rattle through her brain for a moment.

"Fuck if I know!" he snarled, slamming his hand into the bed. "I don't want someone else grabbing you by the throat!"

Rogue took a deep breath. "Logan, you need to go."

"What?"

She composed herself and moved behind the chair, putting her gloved hands on its back. "I'm serious. Look, I'm not gonna disappear again. I'll call. But I can't do this right now. Please. Just go."

He threw up his hands. "I thought you had this big crush on me," he said with frustration.

"Look, I did, and maybe in a way I still do. But you're not gonna give me what I really want from you, so I don't want to do this. I'm not gonna watch you go back and forth over how this ain't right, or whatever this thing you're doing in your head is. I don't even know what it is. I just want you to get out." The words came out in a rush, and Rogue didn't even know if she believed them all.

But she knew that Logan was scared to touch her breast, while Magneto had stripped her half-naked and made her come pressed against a wall.

Slowly Logan stood and crossed to the door. He looked back at her, but she was looking away and didn't meet his gaze.

"You... be careful. Until we talk again. Soon," he told her awkwardly, and then she heard the door close behind him.




Chapter 6: An Eleven O'Clock Flight

Rogue didn't know exactly when Magneto would be showing up for her, but it wasn't like she had much to pack, and she could always call off from work sick for a few days since she hadn't taken any time off in the months she'd worked there.

She was actually getting ready to go in for a shift when the knock came. She looked down at her hooded sweatshirt and faded jeans, and thought that Magneto's opinion of her ability to dress herself was not about to improve.

He looked quite handsome, in a formal kind of way, when she answered the door... usually she'd seen him in his vaguely military-style grey sweaters, or in his uniform. Today he wore a black suit with a crisp white shirt, tie, trenchcoat, and hat. His wingtip shoes were flawlessly polished. She gazed at him, thinking that maybe it was the severity of the colors and the expensive, unrumpled cut that made him look intimidating and distinguished instead of grandfatherly.

Or maybe it was just him, the way he wore it.

He smiled down at her. "Good morning, Rogue. Are your things gathered?"

"I didn't know when you'd be coming," she said, moving aside for him to enter, then closing the door and grabbing her backpack and disappearing into the bathroom. He opted to stand and wait, arms crossed.

"This wasn't here when last I was here," he commented, and she peeked out to see him looking at a framed picture of her and Bobby and Kitty that was sitting by the bed. He seemed to be in a mild mood this morning, and Rogue found it strange to be in his presence without feeling threatened or manipulated.

Enjoy it while it lasts, she thought to herself, sticking her toothbrush into a plastic case and shoving it into a pocket on her bag.

"You were right, they sent Logan," she called out to him. "It was no big deal, but it did get me thinking about my old friends."

"I see," he murmured, as Rogue came out of the bathroom and opened the small closet. She pulled out any clothes she had that weren't entirely casual... a few decent tops and long skirts and one dress that she rather liked.

"How cold will it be there in November?" she wondered aloud.

"Warmer than here, but quite chilly in the evenings," he responded. "You do have a coat, don't you?"

She flashed him a smile as she pulled her hooded green coat out of the back of the closet. She had always loved it and thought it quite stylish, and thought that if she had one thing that would escape his scoffing it was probably this.

"Our flight is at eleven," he said.

"I'm done," Rogue said, turning and zipping her backpack. One shirt still lay on the bed -- she thought that she'd change out of her frumpy work clothes before they left -- and suddenly she was seized by curiosity over whether she could provoke him.

She turned and met his eyes and slowly pulled her sweatshirt over her head.

Magneto smirked, his eyes moving over her. She was blushing but feeling uncharacteristically bold as she pulled her sports bra off and picked up something a little prettier. The air was cool on her breasts, causing her nipples to pebble almost immediately.

"Our flight is at eleven," he repeated in a bored voice.

Pouting slightly, Rogue pulled on her underwire bra and a long-sleeved green shirt in a clingy, soft material, then pulled on some mid-length gloves.

"Come along, temptress," he said, picking up her bag and opening the door, and Rogue followed him out into the crisp air, ready to accompany him across the continent and not sure why.

Rogue received her first real shock of the day when he led her to a dark car parked at the curb and opened the back door for her. Confused, she climbed in and he followed her; she saw that there was a dark window that separated them from the driver, who pulled away from the curb without any further instructions from Magneto. She'd rather assumed they'd take a cab. Or something. She didn't know how he got around, other than helicopters. And flying through the air.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she said softly, acutely conscious of his body beside hers in the seat.

"I presume you've never been to San Francisco," he responded, tapping his fingers on the door. The whole interior seemed to be leather.

"No," she said. "We're just gonna get on an airplane? Like, it's not a private plane or something?"

"Yes, we are, though we'll be in First Class, of course. Under no circumstances do I fly coach."

Rogue had never traveled in First Class. "Isn't it a problem for you?" she said carefully. "I mean, being--"

"An internationally wanted terrorist?" he supplied scornfully, and she glanced over at him, wondering if she shouldn't have said it. She wasn't sure if the driver could hear them, or if they could speak freely if he could.

"I guess."

Magneto looked over at her then, and his face was cast into sharp planes in the tinted dimness of the car. Her breath caught in her throat as she suddenly found herself wondering just how many people he had killed in the name of his... cause.

"It won't be a problem. I won't have you passing through the normal security procedures, either. Too much potential for trouble."

She was with a man who could just arrange to bypass standard airport security. A terrorist.

He was probably the most wanted terrorist in the world, after Alcatraz, wasn't he?

Oh shit. Had she really not thought about who he was all this time, just because he made her feel -- the way he did.

"Are you rethinking our trip, Rogue?" he asked gently, and something about his tone struck a warning bell in her, and she clasped her hands in her lap.

"I dunno," she said, looking away, looking out the window as they crossed the bridge into Brooklyn.

"I find it hard to believe that you've never questioned Charles' ideals."

This was not a conversation that Rogue wanted to have. She sat silent, unresponsive.

"You are a practical girl, Rogue, not a theorizer or an idealist. You were driven from your home by the hostility of your own family and friends. Do you truly still hold the belief that humans and mutants can live together peacefully, or did you just try not to think about it too hard because you had finally found a place to fit in at Charles' school?"

"How do you know about my past?" she asked angrily.

At that, Magneto turned a bit, reached out a hand, and ran a bare finger alone the white streak in her hair, reminding her how she'd come by it. "I knew from the beginning."

She gazed at him, mouth dry, and for the first time since he'd resurfaced in her life, she let herself fully remember that terrifying time as his captive, on top of the statue with him advancing on her, face with a trace of sadness, yes, but utter conviction and determination, reaching for her... I am sorry, my dear, he had said...

Being in this car with him... it was the first time she'd been in an enclosed space with him, and suddenly she was with the aloof and inscrutable captor who had lectured her, terrorized her, and done his level best to actually murder her in that small metal chamber high above this very city. She had survived him only thanks to Logan. Logan, whose kiss she had shied away from because it didn't compare to the way that this lunatic touched her...

He was watching her eyes as if he could see it all play out. His expression was unworried, patient, but intent.

"I did not do it to harm you, Rogue, but to save mutantkind," he told her in a low voice. "I do not regret my choice, I will not apologize for it, and I promise you that I would do it again if the same things hung in the balance."

It was terrifying to have a seemingly rational man with the power to rip a bridge from its moorings with his mind look you in the eye and tell you that he was willing to kill you. Rogue simply could not believe that she'd let this same man slip his hand between her legs and make her writhe against him.

"I have made many terrible choices and done many terrible things and I regret none of them, my dear girl. You ought never to fool yourself about who I am, because I will kill more people before this foolish struggle is concluded."

She swallowed hard. "I may have questioned the Professor's ideals, but that doesn't mean that I will ever approve of yours." She didn't know if he would kill her simply for saying that -- right now she knew only that she had no idea what he was willing to do under any circumstances -- but in this moment, fearful as she was, she would rather fight for her life than sit there silently while he spoke of murdering innocent people.

His smile was amused. "And I do not seek your approval. It is something quite different that I want from you." His hand skimmed lightly down her body and came to rest on her knee, and somehow, impossibly, she found herself shuddering with desire under his touch, instead of revolted by it. She turned her head away and he chuckled.

"But I see the doubt in your eyes when I speak, Rogue, and while you may not be willing to go to the extremes that I am to see this business finished, I know that you're well aware that Charles' way will get us nowhere. And you, my dear, you do not really want to hide in a cramped apartment and work a menial job for the rest of your life, always fearful of the humans around you discovering your true nature, and never again feeling the pleasure of bare skin against your own." He slid his hand up to her waist and under the hem of her shirt, skirting her side, and Rogue should have pushed it away but she didn't, and instead she felt the terrible/wonderful sensation of her skin pulling hungrily at his.

"Stop," she gasped, and he did, but he had held on long enough to make himself dizzy this time, and even he had to take a moment to compose himself after that. He'd accomplished his goal, though, for she felt the intoxicating rush of his complete certainly flow into her along with the lust.

Suddenly, with no reason that she understood, she turned to him and grasped at his jacket. "Make me come again, like last time," she begged desperately, gazing up at him with terrible need in her eyes.

He laughed at her and raised his bare hand tauntingly. "Make yourself come."

She whined and shifted, discomfited by the intensity of her desire. "I can't," she protested. "You have gloves."

"Indeed I do." He pulled them from the pocket of his trenchcoat and tugged them on, watching Rogue watch this with wild eyes. He grabbed her upper arms and twisted her away from him on the seat, then sat back and pulled her backward across his lap, so that she was half-arched with her legs splayed across the seat away from him.

He unbuttoned her jeans with his power instead of his hands, thrusting one hand between her legs and into her panties and pushing the other beneath her shirt to find her pert little breasts. Rogue lifted her hands above her head, grasping at his shoulders behind her.

"No," he said warningly, and she whimpered and lowered her hands to grasp at the seat beneath her.

He cupped his hand around the lovely curve of her mons and squeezed hard and she squealed. Then his fingers pressed in toward the heat of her passage, sliding easily through her slickness, and then simultaneously squeezed and pulled at the flesh of her labia on either side.

She twisted on his lap. "Fuck, that hurts," she breathed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

"I know," he told her with a smile. "That's why I'm doing it."

She pounded her hand on the seat and tried to choke back her protests. After a moment he slid his two middle fingers across the hottest part of her again and pressed inward with only a little pressure, and her eyes flew open and fixed on his.

"Do you want it, Rogue?" he asked mockingly.

"Yess.." One hand pressed over his through her jeans and he chuckled.

"Ask me for it. Convince me."

Her face was flushed as she opened her mouth twice but could not bring forth any words. Finally she just said, "Please..." and trailed off.

"Please what, my dear? I'm afraid I don't know what you're asking for." He punctuated his words by pressing his fingers in a small circle that made her feel spread open for him.

"Please put your fingers inside me." Her voice was barely audible, her eyes bright.

His smile was pleased. "No."

He drew his fingers upward and began to firmly rub her clit instead. Rogue's whimper of outrage segued immediately into a moan of pleasure, and she bucked beneath his hand.

She did not come as quickly as she had that first time in her apartment, but she was still surprised by how fast her orgasm came upon her. This time she managed to keep from grasping for him by tucking her hands beneath her as she arched up, tossing her head to one side and burying her face against his chest.

"I hope you're not wearing any makeup," he said, pulling his hand out of her panties and turning her face away from his white shirt.

"I'm not," she mumbled, embarrassed. She lay there with her head on his lap for several long moments, waiting for her breathing to return to normal, not sure what she was supposed to say or do. Last time he'd taken charge of the conversation and then left within minutes of finishing with her.

She couldn't believe she had begged for that. And on the heels of a conversation about what a monster he was. There was clearly something seriously wrong with her.

Her shirt was halfway rucked up and his still-gloved hand rested lightly on her tummy, stroking just slightly. He was still wearing his wool coat, which protected his forearm from the incidental contact that came from touching her, unlike the last time, when his sleeves had been rolled at the cuff.

Unlike last time.

Still fuzzy-headed from her orgasm, Rogue stared at his hand in puzzlement. She could envision them that last time -- her pressed against the wall, him behind her, arm wrapped around her, hand thrust between her legs.

She'd been shirtless. His sleeves had been rolled up when he pulled his gloves on; she remembered that brilliantly. At no point had he rolled them down.

How could he have done that without the skin of his inner forearm pressing against her lower abdomen?

Rogue blinked. Even close to orgasm, she would have noticed if she'd been drawing from him. It had taken her several long minutes to build up to it, far too long for him to remain on his feet if they'd been in skin-to-skin contact.

It just didn't make sense.

"Um," she said inelegantly. She wanted to say his name, but in this moment was no longer sure whether to address him as Erik or Magneto. Funny, that she was going to San Francisco with a man, and she didn't know how to address him.

"Erik?" she finally ventured, thinking she'd feel less silly saying that than the other.

"Yes?" His tone was far away, and she looked up to see him gazing out the window.

"How did you..." She trailed off, not sure how to ask what she wanted to. "How did you do that the first time without any contact between your arm and my stomach? Your sleeves were rolled up."

He didn't bother to look down at her. "I was careful," he responded easily.

Rogue squinted at the ceiling of the car. "I guess so." She still couldn't see how he could have done it without touching her at all, but he had, so it must have happened.

Magneto pushed her off his lap. "Put yourself back together, Rogue. We're almost at the airport."

Frowning, Rogue straightened out her clothing. She was still stewing as he pulled her from the car and led her into the airport.




Chapter 7: Appointment with a Seamstress

Rogue was surprised when, once they were seated, Magneto pulled a leather folder from the satchel that he'd carried on and spent the time perusing various documents. There was a part of her that was curious about what they were, but a larger part that distinctly thought that she might be happier not knowing.

He hadn't brought incriminatory evidence with him on an airplane flight, had he?

She was surprised when he ordered two glasses of red wine from the flight attendant and handed one to her. He pulled his wallet out of an interior pocket of his coat, and she noticed that it had a silver M on one of the inside corners.

"You've had that a long time, but you take care of it," she commented with interest.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're right."

"The leather is worn around the edges, but it's still supple," she pointed out. "My mom got my dad a monogrammed wallet when I was a baby and he treated it with something a few times a year so that it would stay nice." Rogue tried a sip of the wine, hoping she didn't look too ridiculously unsophisticated.

Magneto smiled at her enigmatically. "Mine was a gift from Raven." For a moment she was puzzled, until her inner Erik pointed out to her snidely that he meant Mystique. He wasn't going to refer to Mystique by name in such a crowded space.

The idea of Mystique buying him such a thoughtful and personal gift -- the idea of her buying a gift at all, or him receiving one, or either of them having a relationship that involved intimate gift-giving -- was a little strange. She had a strong sense from his memories that Magneto and Mystique were or had been lovers, but the thought made her uncomfortable and she tried to turn her attention away from it.

She wondered if Mystique knew who Magneto was taking with him to San Francisco this weekend. She wondered if she cared.

"You've known her a long time," Rogue finally said.

"Watch the movie, Rogue," he told her, returning to his papers.

It was mid-afternoon when they arrived, as they'd gained a couple of hours flying west. Their luggage was the first to show up at the claim area, and they emerged blinking into a warm, breezy, sunny West Coast day.

Rogue looked around. Her first impression was of a hilly, dense suburb with a lot of highways. "We'll take a taxi to the city," he commented, and led her to the front of a line of cabs and arranged for exactly that.

"When we get there I should call the diner and tell `em I have the flu," Rogue said as she watched the character of the landscape change as the cab got closer to the city itself. She saw water off to the right of the highway sparkling in the midday glare of the sun. Though she wasn't sure of the city's geography, she could see land on the far side, so she guessed it had to be the bay, not the ocean. "How long are we gonna be here?"

"Three days," he answered, turning his sleek silver mobile phone back on and checking his voicemail. Once again Rogue was discomfited by the reminder of his "work." She'd always thought of Magneto's activities in terms of him attacking targets and holding clandestine meetings. She'd never thought of the phone calls or emails or paperwork that went into planning them.

She didn't really want to, either.

After a moment he put the phone away. "What are we gonna do while we're here?" she finally asked. They were coming around a corner between two hills, and Rogue's face lit up as the cityscape appeared before her.

"I have errands tomorrow and Friday, though I would encourage you to get out and see the city on your own. We're going to do some shopping this evening and we have reservations for Friday night, and Saturday I thought we'd do a bit of sightseeing together before we left."

It all sounded so genteel, and normal. Rogue bit her lip and peered out the windows as the cab maneuvered off of the highways and onto the surface streets of San Francisco. "We have reservations," he'd said. It sounded like a date.

Rogue admired the pretty, elaborate, pastel rowhouses lining the broad, open boulevard. The car turned into a somewhat more residential neighborhood and pulled up to the curb in front of a large rambling Victorian on a corner lot. Magneto paid the driver and supervised the transfer of their luggage from the cab's trunk to the hotel porter.

He checked them in under a false name, Rogue trailing along behind him, then led the way from a baroque front parlor up a wide staircase to a hallway lined with rooms. Rogue glanced up and whistled at the open gallery up to the top floor and the exquisite stained glass window at the top.

"It used to be a school for wayward girls," he told her with a very pointed look before he paused in front of a door, which swung open without his use of the key that he'd pocketed upon checking in. Rogue glanced up the hallway in alarm, but no one was around.

His suitcase and her backpack both lifted themselves from the hallway and floated into the room. Rogue shook her head and followed him inside, looking immediately for the answer to one of her most looming anxieties about this whole insane venture.

One bed. She licked her lips, which felt dry, and glanced at him. He was watching her in amusement.

"We can't sleep together," she made herself say, then blushed horridly. "I mean, like, in a bed." Christ, trying to make that distinction only made it worse. "That's too dangerous."

"No one said we were," he replied, leaning against the wall as the curtains spread themselves and let in the sun, and his suitcase unzipped itself on the bed.

Rogue spun in place, unnerved by all the activity in the room that seemed to be happening on its own. She watched as the closet opened and his garment bag hung itself inside, and his neatly folded clothes floated into drawers that opened and closed themselves. The closet and the bureau had obvious metal fixtures that allowed him to manipulate them, but she didn't know how he managed to move his sweaters and socks using his power, unless all his clothes had metal sewn into them.

A laptop set itself on the desk, and a small bag that she assumed was full of toiletries floated from his suitcase into the bathroom. Finally his suitcase zipped itself and tucked itself away on a shelf in the closet, which closed. Her own backpack still sat forlornly on the bed.

Magneto laughed at Rogue's slightly overwhelmed look. "Did you bring tights to wear under the skirts that I saw you pack?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"Good, put them on, with a skirt."

Rogue suddenly balked. "Why?" she asked in a defiant tone.

He closed his eyes briefly in annoyance, then opened them and made a small gesture with his hand. She felt a violent jerk backward on her jeans and suddenly found herself sprawled on the bed with him standing over her, arms crossed, frowning.

He had his gloves in his hand and Rogue's breath caught in her throat. "This morning you were terrified to remember how many people I've killed and, indeed, how close I've come to killing you, and now you are taking this attitude over a simple request to change your clothes?" His expression was grim.

This was foolish why did I think this was a good idea can't I just go home? Rogue thought in alarm. He moved forward, putting one knee on the bed, and leaned down to grab a fistful of her hair. He used the grip to tilt her face toward him as he gazed down at her. One of her hands was on his arm and the other pushing at his chest.

"Touch me, girl. My face," he told her forcefully.

She tried to shake her head but could not. "I don't want to," she whispered hoarsely.

"But you do, my dear. If you don't, I shall touch you, and I promise you that you won't like the way that I go about it." He still had a hand free, and it settled lightly on her solar plexus as he said it, over her pounding heart.

He said nothing more, merely staring hard at her. After a long moment, she swallowed and slowly moved her hand from his arm, toward his face.

He nodded at her, and she brushed her fingertips lightly over his cheek, and then his mouth.

He hissed as the pull started and she jerked her hand away. "More," he insisted, and she lay her hand against his lined cheek, her thumb on his bottom lip.

Again, the pleasure and pain of him poured into her, just a little. Both gasped.

She pulled away again, feeling the aching throb between her legs. Her eyes were bright on his, and he smiled slowly as he caught his breath. "Now, Rogue, tell me something."

"Yeah?" she breathed heavily.

"Are you wet?"

She closed her eyes in embarrassment and said nothing.

"Of course you are. And what's more, you're going to be again, by the end of the day. You realize this, don't you? I'm not under any illusion that you allowed me to bring you here with so little fuss because of your devotion to my ideology."

Magneto's hand tightened in her hair and she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, but could not argue with his words. His other hand found her breast and closed in a bruising grip and she jerked.

He rubbed a thumb over her nipple. "Are you going to do as I've directed now, you foolish girl?"

She still didn't look at him. "I guess that depends," she said shakily. "Are you going to actually fuck me at some point before you take me back to New York?"

His hand stilled. After a few seconds of silence, she slitted her eyes and peeked up at him. He was gazing at her with a strange expression on his face, and once again she was struck by how intensely blue and piercing his eyes were.

She opened her eyes the rest of the way, then wetted her lips in nervousness, regretting her words.

Finally he responded, speaking slowly. "Yes, my dear, I do believe that I am."

She swallowed. "Then I guess I'll put on the tights." For some reason, her tone didn't sound smart-assed at all.

Magneto released her and backed away from the bed, looking thoughtful. Rogue got up slowly and pulled off her jeans, avoiding his gaze, then fished a pair of tights and one of her long skirts from her backpack and pulled them on.

Finally she slipped back into her shoes, low-heeled mary janes that she'd worn precisely because they worked with either jeans or skirts, and Magneto simply raised an eyebrow at her as he offered her his arm and led her from the room.

He was quiet as he called another cab and provided the driver with an address. Rogue played their earlier encounters from the day over in her head, once in a while looking at his still profile out of the corner of her eye.

The taxi dropped them off in front of one of the rowhouses that she'd been admiring earlier. Rogue noticed that this one was less pristine than the prettiest of them and the paint was peeling in places, but the facade was cared for and the little plot of greenery out front was kempt. Magneto led her up the stairs and rang the bell.

This wasn't really what she'd imagined by "shopping." Was he running one of his mysterious errands first?

The girl who opened the door couldn't have been more than a few years older than Rogue. She was dressed in piecemeal vintage clothing that she'd assembled into a trendy urban reinterpretation of Victorian fashion. Her pale face was strikingly pretty but her dyed black hair was something of a rat's nest, held back from her face with a couple of silver hairsticks.

"Mr. Kessler, so nice to meet you, please come right in," she said immediately, moving aside and gesturing Magneto and Rogue to come into her foyer. "And you must be Rogue." She flashed each of them a warm smile as she shook their hands and started to lead them up the stairs. She didn't react at all to Rogue wearing gloves.

"Miss Lintner, it's a pleasure. You come very highly recommended," Magneto said charmingly.

"Please, call me Catherine." She led them up the stairs and into her front room. Everywhere Rogue looked, there were seamstress's mannequins tucked into corners, each of them with a corset laced onto it, some of them with elaborate or elegant dresses underneath. Corsets hung on pretty fabric hangers all around the perimeter of the lushly-appointed living room, and were snugged onto velvet pillows that lined the stairs they had come up. The couch and coffee table were arranged to one side of the living room, giving plenty of floor space in front of an oversized full-length mirror. Rogue trailed behind Catherine and Magneto silently.

"I understand that you've commissioned a great deal of work from Greta Mueller in New York. She's made me aware of some of your unique requirements, and I think that I'm going to be able to satisfy you quite well."

"Excellent," Magneto responded, taking a seat in the armchair in response to Catherine's gestured invitation. "And there won't be any problem finishing before Friday evening?"

Catherine had pulled Rogue in front of the mirror, and took both her gloved hands and raised them outward between them to chest level so that she could eye Rogue's figure critically. Rogue felt nervous with this complete stranger touching her, but her skin was pretty well covered. "Well, a rush of that magnitude is quite expensive, but if you're willing to pay the fee, then yes, I can do it."

So this was how Magneto did his shopping? Rogue remembered her crack about probably not being able to buy corsets anymore in this day and age. He hadn't even bothered to correct her.

Catherine picked up a measuring tape and proceeded to efficiently take Rogue's measurements. Rogue didn't quite know what to make of it all, and so mostly stayed silent, raised her arms when she was told, and answered questions about her shoe and glove sizes and about her preferences in colors and fabrics. Every time she caught Magneto's eye he just smirked at her, and Catherine was all bustling focus.

When she was done, Catherine turned to Magneto and started to speak.

"Pardon me, Miss Lintner, I'm going to send Rogue on an errand while I finalize my order," he said smoothly, which made Rogue blink. Catherine evidently thought little of it, for she responded with a simple "of course" as if it were the most natural thing in the world to order expensive garments for people without them present. Indeed, with them specifically excluded.

Magneto stood and pulled out a bill to press into Rogue's hand. "Go next door and get us both lattes, my dear," he told her smoothly, guiding her to the top of the stairs. "Then wait there."

For once, Rogue obeyed without arguing. Her head was spinning slightly and she felt out of her element, so it was a bit of a relief to get outside and go about the familiar business of procuring coffee.

Magneto joined her after about twenty minutes, then hailed a cab to return to the hotel where they were staying. It was late evening by then, and he took her to a small Indian restaurant around the corner. She tried to ask him about Friday night's dinner, but he waved her off.

He spent the meal asking her about her plans for studying art. Rogue found herself warming up to the topic, and he turned out to be an excellent conversationalist when he wasn't trying to fuck with her head. Well, not trying in any way that she was noticing, anyway. She had her doubts about whether he bothered to participate in any conversation that didn't have the goal of fucking with somebody's head.

After that, they returned to the hotel, and Rogue found herself dragging her feet as they approached the door to their room. There were butterflies in her stomach.

Magneto wrapped a hand around her upper arm and pulled her along. "You're going to learn to trust me, Rogue," he murmured in her ear.

"You told me before that I was right to be afraid of you," she responded as he opened the door and escorted her into the room.

"Yes, that's right. You should be afraid of me, and you should trust me."

Rogue opened her mouth, and Magneto pushed her into the middle of the room and raised a hand. "Don't," he said irritably, and she closed her mouth in surprise and looked at him.

He fixed her with a steely gaze. "I will tolerate no more of your attitude and no more of your rebellion this evening, Rogue. You are going to do what I tell you to do, or I am going to discipline you, which will be both unpleasant and painful. You can threaten to walk out on me for it tomorrow, as I feel quite certain that you have nowhere to go tonight. Now take off your clothes. All of them."

There was nothing for it, no matter how angry or scared or nervous she felt. Rogue slowly stepped out of her shoes, then removed her shirt, her skirt, her tights and her bra and panties and gloves, until she stood before him entirely bare, all of her deadly skin on display. Oddly enough, even when the supposed cure had been effectively suppressing her mutation, she had never stood fully nude in front of a man, and she found herself shaking now as she did it for the first time, and that man was Magneto.

"You are lovely," he told her in an appreciative voice, studying her openly in a way that made heat coil low in her stomach.

"Thank you," she whispered, eyes fixed on the wall beside his shoulder.

He walked to the closet and gestured it open. His back was to her and she could hear his suitcase unzip but couldn't see what he was taking out of it.

"These are for you," he said, and Rogue felt the sweat come up on her palms. He turned, one hand raised, and a metal box floated onto the desk beside Rogue and opened itself.

She peered into it. The box itself was lined with dark red suede, and inside nestled four pairs of silver cuffs of varying sizes. Each cuff was about two inches wide and had a lovely matte finish that almost made them look like jewelry, except that there was no visible seam. The inside of each was lined with a soft-looking black fabric.

He was watching her reaction closely. She turned to him with a fearful expression.

"If I put these on, I would be entirely at your mercy. You could control me completely."

"That's correct, my dear." Magneto pulled off his coat and hung it in the closet behind him, retrieving his gloves from the pocket as he did so. He turned back to watch her as he tugged them on, and her gaze was again drawn to his hands as he did so, her lips slightly parted.

"After the day that I seduced you in your apartment, you knew perfectly well why I was bringing you to San Francisco with me," he said, taking the two steps forward that put him within arm's distance of her. She was standing completely still. "You knew what I wanted from you, and I was equally clear on what you wanted from me even before you did me the favor of asking for it outright earlier today." Magneto reached out and ran his gloved fingers down her throat and across her breast, then flicked her nipple lightly.

"I will make you come at my hands again, Rogue. I will inflict both pleasures and pains on you, and when I am ready, I will indeed fuck you as you so nicely asked me to do. But you are dangerous, my dear -- hadn't you stopped to wonder why a man like me would be attracted to a girl like you? It's because you are a genuine danger, even to me -- and so I will do none of those things until you are completely at my mercy."

He put his first two fingers over her mouth, and the feel of expensive leather was exquisite. She couldn't help but part her wet lips slightly, and he pressed inward, his fingers sliding past her teeth and over her soft tongue. She moaned around them and he took another half step forward so that his body was almost, but not quite, pressed against hers.

"And besides all that," he added in quiet voice, tilting his head as he stared at her, "there is the little fact that you want to be completely at my mercy."

She whimpered then, glassy eyes fixed on his, and he raised his other hand and gestured the cuffs out of the box. Rogue made no move to evade what came next.

The smallest pair of cuffs unlinked themselves and closed around her wrists, the next pair around her ankles. The two larger pairs closed snugly around her upper arms and her mid thighs. The fabric lining them was silky against her skin.

He could essentially treat her as a marionette if he wanted. She was so wet that she could feel the slickness on her inner thighs. He smiled slowly.

"And now, my dear girl, it is time for us to get some sleep."

Rogue stared at him in dismay. Surely he was joking? Her body was thrumming with desire.

He lifted his hand again and gestured, and she felt her legs come out from under her as she was lifted onto the bed. The sensation was unsettling and she briefly tried to struggle against it, but with four sets of cuffs he had excellent control of her motion.

"Erik," she said in a low, despondent voice, and he chuckled.

"Frustrated, Rogue?" he asked her cruelly.

He settled her on the far side of the bed, holding her a couple of inches above the mattress while he pulled all of the blankets except the top sheet from beneath her. The sheet he pulled free from his side of the bed and folded his side of it over top of her, creating a barrier between her and his side of the bed. Then he tugged the blanket and comforter back into place over top of her.

Then he turned off the light and went into the bathroom.

Rogue lay in the dark, every muscle tense, listening to him ready himself for bed. It seemed like an eternity before she heard the door open, and he was standing beside the bed, silhouette barely visible in the dark room. She couldn't even tell what state of dress or undress he was in as he lay down beside her.

"This sheet isn't enough protection," she said in a low voice. "I could push it off and roll over and touch you in my sleep."

"No you can't," he responded, turning on his side away from her. "I told you to trust me."

"Erik--"

"Go to sleep, Rogue."

Annoyed, Rogue rolled over and raised a hand toward the back of his neck to make her point. He chuckled when she came up short, unable to move her hand closer to him than a certain point due to resistance from the cuff she wore.

She sniffed and pulled her arm back to her side. "You can't be absolutely certain to maintain that in your sleep," she pointed out.

"Rogue, if you don't go to sleep I'll gag you."

"And you might roll over and put a hand on me. On my stomach or something. There's no metal there for you to sense."

"Sleep, Rogue. Now." His voice was no longer amused.

Rogue rolled back over and spent a long time staring at the wall before she drifted into a fitful slumber.




Chapter 8: A Lesson in Manners

Rogue finally fell asleep a few hours before dawn, then woke again in the weak early light of morning.

She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling for several long moments and reflecting on the fact that she was lying beside Erik Lensherr. She could hear his soft, even breathing, and though there was a foot of space and a cotton sheet between them,