Marvel own the X-men, no profit is to be made from this work.

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"Holy shit! You guys got a hammock?! Oh, you so have to help me set it up!"

Busy as he was setting up a few other things, like the camp in general, Logan had a gander back over to a certain crazy dame who was a might bit busy herself, that being with some rummaging through the big ol' rucksack of camping gear Vic had accumulated over the years.

"Darlin', you wanna give me a hand here?"

Perking up like a thoughtful looking puppy, Jubilee had the hammock slung over her shoulder like some trophy. And just like any mutt with a bone he'd ever run into, he was sure she wasn't gonna go letting go of it without a fight.

"Darling?" Questioned Jubilee, looking herself pretty perplexed.

"Ya got a problem with Darlin'?" He had to call her something, and Jubilee was a mouthful he didn't have time for.

"Huh, I dunno? Say it one more time."

"Darlin'," Logan growled, his patience running plenty thin.

"Nope, that's actually pretty hot the way you say it. Please continue."

"Great. Now that we got that all settled, you wanna c'mon over here and lend a hand?"

Pursing her lips with a faux wide eyed innocence, Jubilee tilted her head to the side as to have a closer look at the mess of weather-proofed polyester that wasn't yet looking to be anything so much as a tent.

"Okay, can we just take a moment to address the elephant in the room..." Jubilee began.

"We're outside." Logan noted, earning himself one annoyed huff from his Darlin'.

"Duly noted. Alright, so let me level with you here. The only thing I know about pitching tents is what the slutty girls at my prep school taught me, know what I'm saying?" Suffering her smarmy smirk, this dame could be a damn flirt when she wanted to be.

"So what yer saying is I'm better off asking ya to go and get me a beer, than I am asking ya for help?"

"See, I knew you weren't just a pretty face! I'll be back in two shakes. Oh, and FYI, like, just in case you don't know, but that's legit Southern speak for I'll be back quick." Looking right proud of herself, Jubilee scampered off with a sassy little shake of her behind.

Shaking his head as he watched her run off, Logan knew trouble when he saw it, and that girl was trouble. To bad for him, so far she was proving to be worth a bit of trouble.

"Welp, back to work..."

Because the tent sure wasn't gonna go pitch itself.

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"So, ya mind tellin' me what you and pipsqueak are doin' this far up in the arse end of Alberta?"

There was no point in pussyfooting around, not with Rogue already having proven herself a gal who put her money where her mouth was, literally. She'd walked into his life as a challenger gunning for his title, that of the King of the Cage, and Victor sure didn't think that was a fight yet over, fuck no. They'd just gone back to their corners to catch their breath before the next round.

And sure enough, she sure as heck had been waiting for him to ask about it, or so her throaty growl hinted, sounding herself plenty pissed. Leaving her to stew, he got back to getting a fire going. There was a whole cooler full of purloined perishables that needed cooking up, compliments the pipsqueak, Jujubes, or something stupid sounding like that.

"Fuck! Fine...," growled Rogue, "Some fella I just sometimes happen to work for paid me to vet you and your kid brother. And shit if I didn't know he was paying me way too much to do that, but I sure as heck couldn't turn down the money!"

Minding his own as he nursed the flickering flames of that campfire he was tending, it wasn't like he didn't know there had been a hustle going on. But now it was sounding like they'd both been played.

"Just what the fuck kind o' interest would this fella o' yours have in me and Jimmy boy?"

Rubbing her eyes with an angry hiss, Rogue went and helped herself to a belt of the Crown Royal they'd been none too slowly polishing off. To hear the satisfaction in her sigh was gasoline thrown across his own smoldering desires, those that had been denied ever since their fight had first been interrupted. But for Jimmy boy, though, he clenched down hard and rid out the want of those base urges that dared spur him on.

"Okay, so Chuck, this fella of mine, he runs a school for mutants. It's a place he made so folks like us can figure our shit out."

"Yer fella's named Chuck?" Snorting with laughter, by the pale fire in Rogue's emerald eyes he knew he was gonna pay for that.

"Charles, his name is Charles. Heck, he's some kind of Professor, for fuck sake. But I just call him Chuck."

"Alright, so how the hell does this Chuck fella even know about me and Jimmy?"

It'd been a long time since either the names Creed or Howlett had made news, and no small feat was that, so it begged the question. That, it seemed, was a question to be considered carefully as Rogue mulled over her answer. That alone earned her some points, because trust was something ya earned.

"I can't say, what with him being a man who likes to live a low profile kind of life, so lets just say that ya wouldn't wanna go playing poker with him, got me?"

Card he knew, having hustled many a game, the truth of a hand told in a multitude of ways that the best poker face couldn't keep secret. By the depths of darkened pupils, the stink of fresh sweat, or the hammering of ones heart, these were all the tells that Victor bet against, trusting the beast within to know the truth. Hell, it'd take a genuine mind reader to pull one over on him, and as his eyes rose to meet those of Rogue he saw that she'd been reading him this whole time, borrowing his beast for a hustle of her own.

"Got it in one, huh?" Cocky little minx, Rogue was herself a woman looking satisfied and smug.

"You sayin' he's the real deal, a genuine telepath?" Catching her looking a little impressed that he knew a word like that, it wasn't like they didn't get cable.

"I ain't saying nothing about that particular matter, no sir." Rogue teased, sticking to her guns about not revealing this Professor Chuck's trick.

Finally finished kindling and coaxing his fire, Victor rose with a rumbling growl rolling from his chest. Playing at being coy, she ignored him as he easily ate up the distance that stood between them, until his frame stood as a looming shadow against the flames that danced in the distance.

With whiskey heavy on her breath, she dangled the bottle, clutched as it was by the neck with her seemingly all too delicate fingers, fingers he knew all too well the sharp sting of. And yet it hadn't been her nails that had raked his flesh raw, no, instead had it been by the bite of her borrowed claws.

"So, why don't you tell me what I'm thinkin' right now?"

Hers was an answer given with the bottle pressed to his lips, still tasting heavily of hers as he drank down the last swallow of whiskey that was left. And in that moment he fell gladly into the trap that was the depths of her eyes, helpless and hungry. So, with freshly inflamed desire he stole her lips in his, fearless against the faltering of his strength at his every heartbeat.

Of all the truths they had yet so shared since they'd met, there was only one that mattered, and it was this. That she was only a feral for as long as she stayed in knife fighting range, or so she had first confessed in the ring. So if blood was the price to be paid to meet his equal, then blood he would bleed as he suffered the bite of her clenched teeth upon his lower lip, relentless in their torture as he shivered with want.

And yet, at last, her grip on his tender flesh finally became loose, shuddering as she sucked down a needy breath that bespoke of her need.

"Round two...?" Victor asked, his voice the bass rumble of thunder after a lightning strike.

To see her smile was enough, with everything else something simply to be left unsaid, and ultimately forgotten from after the point at which he stole her up in his arms.

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"You think they're gonna fuck?"

Giving a voice to the question that had been on her mind ever since she'd inadvertently walked in on Rogue and Vic dude most heavily making out, Jubilee peeked over at Logan, which was actually pretty easy to do, what with him chilling with her on the very hammock he'd so thoughtfully set up. Honestly, he was proving to be pretty fucking awesome in her books, so she was seriously glad to have snagged him a full on six pack of beers, instead of just one.

"Probably," Punctuating this blunt statement with the crack and hiss of another can of beer opened, Logan stared off into the darkness that laid beyond the warm light of their campfire.

"Umm, just to clarify, you mean, you know...proper fucking?"

As that would be a big step up for her girl who'd been forced to be celibate due to circumstances beyond her control. Like, the French didn't even a cute euphemism for it, nothing along the lines of 'La Petite Mort', because it sure wasn't gonna be no little death for the dude who tried to go all the way with Rogue. Which sucked, seriously.

"He's got the stamina." Or so Logan went stating the obvious.

Rolling her eyes, it wasn't like she hadn't been there herself. Hell, she broke them up back at the bar when shit got real! Pursing her lips in an irritated grimace, this was too much for her to think about sober, and so she took a sip of the vodka cooler she'd snagged for herself. Roguey wouldn't mind, not if it was just one. At the very least Rogue would have absolutely zero fuck to give if a certain under-aged someone woke up hungover the next morning, or so the rules clearly stated.

"Oh...well, I'm just saying that if it was me, that I wouldn't want my first time to be in the back of some truck."

"Just speaking hypothetical like," Logan began, sounding suddenly intrigued, "But if it were your first time, how would you want it?"

Oh, and look who just joined the conversation!

Alright, so, what with her lips having gone suddenly dry, Jubilee sipped at her cooler with a bit more abandon than usual. Because c'mon, that question of Logan's was about as subtle as a brick thrown through a window as far as messages went. Feeling warm in places she couldn't blame on the booze, Jubilee rocked back and forth in the hammock, set up as it was pretty low to the ground, low enough that her and Logan could kick back in it like it was come kinda sofa or something.

"Uh, for starters, I gotta say I sure wouldn't want it to be somewhere anyone could go interrupting me and whoever the fuck the lucky dude was..." Not like, say, in the back of some truck that she'd pretty much been calling home as of late.

Sipping her cooler while waiting to see if Logan had anything to add, a sidelong look his way saw him just sitting there staring off out at the woods. Practically puckering her lips with a disappointed moue, Jubilee kicked up some dirt as she gave the hammock a good and hard rock to and fro. If it hadn't been for the honky-tonk playing loudly from the bronco, then it would have been way too quiet for her liking.

"So yer sayin' something like a motel?"

Startled by the sheer suddenness of Logan's inquiry after him being all quiet like, apparently he'd been giving it some real thought.

"Uh, ew?" Okay, so, straight to spelling out her disgust with a capital G for gross, Jubilee glared at Logan as if trying to figure out what was wrong with the dude, "How about no to a motel? It's gotta at least be a real deal hotel, you know, with room service? A view would also be nice..."

"A view?" With laughter tugging at his lips, Logan looked on her with the flames of the campfire alight in his gun metal grey eyes.

Somehow, and without even noticing it, he'd rolled to his side, the comfortable space between them now goodly long and gone. Caught in his gaze, Jubilee felt her heart racing even as she struggled to find her breath. Sucking in the cool evening air with a nervous hiccup, this wasn't how she acted around boys, hell no! Except, the annoying thought came, that Logan was way more, well, for lack of a better word, Alphathan the usual punks who chatted her up looking for her digits.

"A view?" Jubilee parroted, even as her mind reeled to catch up.

Asked again with a curious quirk of his eyebrow, that was wholly and totally sexy, all her fantasies came crashing down upon her in that moment.

"It's dark, except for the candles, like, a lot of candles. The blinds are open, and the view? It's the city at night, sparkling and out of reach, and no one can see us..." Whoever the fuck the lucky dude was, so came the echo of her own voice from before.

Breathless to say anymore, having so betrayed herself, what with how easy it was to envision Logan laying next to her on the king sized bed of some seriously slick suite, it was a hitched breath she found at his touch, suffering with shivers the torture of his rough thumb trailing down her cheek. The warmth of his breath upon her neck begged her his leave to do as he pleased, even as his nose nuzzled her so very ticklish ear.

Parting her lips at last with a gasp, from her limp fingers fell that cooler of hers, only half enjoyed. Made to feel every bit as petite as a certain Cajun fella she knew used to tease her about, Jubilee surrendered at last. Without a doubt there would be no one to interrupt her and Logan this time around, and how nice was that, what with the hammock being plenty more comfortable than the back seat of some truck she'd been calling home...

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