Master list for my fic! Adding to it as I write more. Those containing smut are marked with a 🔥
Old Man Logan and Nurse Reader (completed), Worst Logan and Reader (completed), Exile - Trilogy Logan and Reader (completed), Old Man Logan and Single Mother Reader (completed) , X-24 and Reader (completed), DOFP Logan and Reader (completed), Robin Hood and Reader (completed)
Then a bunch of bits and bobs, including a few RP Hugh and reader fics
Masterlist Part 2
AO3 link for anyone who wants it
X-24 x Reader (complete)
Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four 🔥
Part five
DOFP Logan x Reader (complete)
Secrets 🔥
Lies 🔥
Truth🔥
The End
Extra chapter - Jack
New story, same universe
Continuum
Continuum II 🔥
Continuum III
Continuum IV 🔥
Continuum V 🔥
Worst Logan x Reader - I don't like you like that (I do)
25. Pussy Slapping // Non Con - Dub Con // Titty Fucking (X24 x reader. dark, be warned)
You have been pushed into a corner with one dull realisation: you have no time.
One of you is going to die and it can’t be Logan. It can’t. You know he’s goddamn self sacrificing to a fault but Laura is a factor here too, and she has a better chance with him than with you.
You tell Logan to give you his suit jacket and, though he doesn’t know why, he obeys unerringly. The shotgun is next, a bunch of shells deposited into your pocket.
“Go,” you say, loading them into the barrel, “I’ll hold him off.”
“But…” you don’t remember the last time he looked so torn, age and fallibility painted over his face as if with brushstrokes. You hold his cheek in your hand, memorising the feel of his beard.
“Go.” There is no arguing with you. Laura begins to lose it, her voice rising with panicked Spanish as she realises you’re going to be left behind, but Logan hauls her over a shoulder and starts to run. She screams and reaches for you, tears streaming down her cheeks, and you can’t bear to face it for too long or your heart will break.
Buy them time to get to the car. That’s all you need to do. Then they’ll be safe.
“Come on,” you mutter, waiting for the beast to arrive. The wind picks up and you hope the scent of Logan is carried from his jacket, enough bait for the creature to take.
The treeline moves, and then there it is, stalking out towards you. Fierce, furious eyes. Nostrils flaring, scenting the air as it moves. Targeting you.
You fire a round into its belly.
“Let’s go, you fucker,” you hiss.
It howls in pain as skin fixes itself immediately, teeth bared to as if it is about to show you what it will rip you to pieces with.
You have its attention. You start to run.
It lets out a roar and starts to chase you, feet beating loudly on the dry grass. You shoulder your way through the trees, thin and vicious as they whip you, drawing blood with every slap. You can hear it coming after you, moving far quicker than you can, hunting you down, oh god, you’re going to face the end of your life–
It tackles you hard to the ground as you swing your gun around to aim at it. It knocks the weapon from your grasp and you watch with horror as it slides far away.
X-24 stares down at you, the weight of its body pinning you to the ground. You grit your jaw so hard you fear that your teeth might shatter. If you’re going to die, you’ll do it without looking away.
“Do it,” you hiss, defiantly.
But it doesn’t.
X-24 holds your gaze. An agonising moment passes as you wait for him to sheathe it claws inside of your soft belly, finish you off… so imagine your surprise when it buries its face into your neck.
“Oh… oh!” you whisper, feeling how it nuzzles into where your pulse beats, how its tongue flits against your pulse. Its hips dip down to notch into the space it’s forced your legs open to create and starts to grind down into you, simulating fucking with none of the relief.
Your eyes go wide.
“Wait… wait…” you grab it – no, him, surely – and hold him back. He whines like a dog and his hips don’t stop their movement, but they do still a little. He’s hard as rock against your clothed cunt, incessant with his little thrusts. “You want to…?”
You’re not sure if he has the capacity to speak back, at least not at the moment, but he understands enough to realise you’ve cottoned on. He must see this as consent, as his hands drop to your jeans with a snik you recognise from Logan, begins to slice them off of you. Panic floods you. He’s the enemy, isn’t he? This isn’t… you don’t…
“Ah–no…” you mutter but, for some reason, you can’t muster much force behind it. This thing… this man… it's just a feral version of Logan, no? The same as the man you love? Is it that affection for you is so hard-wired into his DNA that it comes through with every single iteration of him, even something as wild as this?
Perhaps it would not be such a bad thing. Perhaps what this creature needs is someone to show it softness.
“Whoa, okay. Slow…” you whisper, reaching to cup his jaw. X-24 whines at the touch, nuzzling into you as he removes the scraps of your jeans from your waist. You move his face to look up at you, make eye contact to try and assert your dominance, even now. Treat him like a needy puppy.
“We can, okay? We can. But go slow, baby.”
Your words sink in and when he goes to tear off your underwear, he is gentler. The shock of cold air still makes you shiver when it touches your surprisingly wet cunt but you are warmed when he buries his face against your folds, scenting and licking you desperately. You gasp at the suddenness of it all, go to bury your hands in his hair like you would with Logan… only to be disappointed when you realise it’s been buzzed to his skull. You drop your grip to the grass instead, pulling up tufts as you try to hang on.
There is no skill in what he is doing, he just desires to be as close to you as he can, totally drown himself in your musk. The feeling of his beard on your clit keeps strumming pleasure through you, though, and the way he attacks you with lips and teeth soon has you coming all over his tongue. He lets out a ragged groan, dragged deep from the cavern of his chest, and then he’s over you again: hips jerking down ineffectively against yours.
“It’s okay, shh, wait…” you mutter, hands going for his fly and freeing his hard cock as quick as you can. There is no surprise: you are faced with Logan’s length and girth, thick and hard and oozing with desire for you. X-24 growls a little and then wastes no time in finding your entrance, sliding himself up to the hilt in one motion which has you gasping and writhing.
Logan would let you adjust, tease you. This creature, this man, does not have the facility to understand that. He ruts wildly, dragging himself out to the tip and then slamming back home, obsessed with the way your needy cunt soaks his entire cock, entranced by the idea of more of you. His hands wrap around your thighs and pull you even closer to him, as if he fears that if he doesn’t pin you down that you’ll disappear. You clutch onto his shirt and try to ground yourself.
“I’m not going anywhere… It’s okay…”
He growls and whines as his pace picks up, hips slapping loudly and lewdly against yours in the quiet of the woodland around you, and then with a snarl he’s releasing himself into your body; filling you full of cum and, as far as he is concerned, claiming you.
He at least has the acumen not to collapse on you, crush you with his skeleton. Instead he nuzzles his face into your stomach as if trying to guard the womb he’s just flooded with himself. As the world settles again you stroke your fingers against the prickle of his hair, not entirely disliking the way he holds you in a vice-grip.
He whines at the softness of your touch, and you can almost make out a word.
As I mentioned earlier the winner of my fic poll was for a Weapon X/X-24/Animalistic Logan fic. Since there is a dearth of fic for X-24, I chose him (I know there isn't much Weapon X fic either but we shall get to him eventually!) This is really going to be a bit of a What If...? What if X-24 was given even the tiniest bit of kindness? Even though he's been created to be nothing more than a killing machine, will he be able to learn to be anything else? We shall see...
This would sit pre-Logan, I guess? Doctor Rice is in it (boo).
Warnings: masturbation (m), bodily fluids (pee, poo), Rice being an unfeeling dick. Also, get me doing actual research into what the drugs that lower the libidio are called (I googled it...)
****
You rarely went near the labs at the facility you worked at. Strictly IT and admin. Looking at figures on a spreadsheet all day, a little coding sometimes, nothing else. So, when you found yourself being sent on an errand into the laboratories, it felt a little unnerving. There were levels of clearance needed for some areas that you would never earn in a hundred lifetimes and if any of the rumours you heard were true then you were happy to never enter them. You had often had to square where you worked and some of the work that happened there with your conscience and your need for a steady paycheck. A moral standpoint was all very well but it didn’t pay the rent.
Your boss had given you a package to take to one of the laboratories. You didn’t know what was in the package and you didn’t want to know. Your task was to find the lab, find one particular guy, give him the box and get the hell out of Dodge. Waiting at reception, you were handed a pass and buzzed through. Mission accomplished, you started to make your way out and back to your office. Just as you were about to reach the doors, you found yourself being pulled back. You looked around to find a security guard holding onto your arm. You tried to shake yourself free but he held on tighter.
‘One moment please, miss,’ he said.
You both stood and watched while a cage was rolled past. Two security guards walked in front and two behind, the cage being pulled along on what appeared to be a flat trolley by a man in a lab coat. No one was getting near the it. Inside the cage was, to your alarm, a man.
He was standing up, holding onto the bars of the cage. He was tall, very muscular, thick mutton chops bracketing what you had to admit was a very handsome face, his hair buzzed down to only a few millimetres of fuzz. He had on a black t-shirt and jeans but also appeared to be wearing a collar. For a horrible moment, as if the whole scenario wasn’t horrible enough, it looked like it was a shock collar. As the cage moved away, you saw that it indeed was, a large battery pack and receiver sitting at the back of the man’s neck. As the man, who turned in his cage to keep his eyes on you, and his entourage, disappeared behind a set of doors, the guard let go of your arm and you ran out of there as fast as you could.
***
Oh.
This was new.
A new smell.
They’d taken him along here before, but this time....
He’d turned to look at the woman – it was a woman, he knew that much – as they rolled him past. He caught her scent. She didn’t smell like anyone else he spent time with. It was...he didn’t have words to describe it but he knew that he liked it and it made him feel...
Hmmm.
He rubbed his hand against his crotch. It was hard again. In his cell, he turned away from the camera that was always trained on him and pushed his hand into his pants. He knew that if anyone spotted him - and they would spot him - they would stop him, shock him probably. But he didn’t care. He liked the way it felt when he did this and why shouldn’t he do it? As he stroked himself, the feeling of warmth spreading through him as he came close to making the mess that signified the end of the feeling, an image floated through his mind. Her. The woman he’d seen. Her smell. Oh. Oh this was nice. He pulled on himself a little harder, grunting louder now, knowing he would be heard and having no compulsion to stop. The least they could do was leave him be to let him finish. His hand started to move faster and he let out a low moan as he spilled over his hand. His breathing felt a little ragged as he recovered from what he’d done. It felt good, as it always did, but thinking of the woman made it feel even better. He would think about her again.
***
‘Sir, he’s masturbating again,’ a laboratory assistant said, as Doctor Zander Rice walked into the observation suite.
The doctor sighed. As much as he would have liked to have bred such behaviour out of him, X-24 was, in many ways, as human as the rest of them and as liable to succumb to such things as any other man.
‘What prompted this?’ he asked.
‘Not sure. One of the docs said he saw a woman in the lab when he was being transported earlier. Maybe it was that. A reaction to new stimulus?’
The doctor sighed again. Of course. No matter how much he demanded care and discretion from his staff, they always seemed to fuck it up. God knew who this woman was or why she was in his labs, but she had certainly stirred X-24 up. He glanced at the monitors and looked away again in disgust. He was now lying on his cot, openly masturbating, seemingly without having a care in the world. Which in many ways he didn’t.
‘Should we try administering an anti-androgen?’ the assistant asked.
Rice pondered this for a moment. He wanted to say yes, but he also needed X-24 to have that testosterone fuelled anger raging through him. He wanted the ultimate Alpha male and lowering his libido seemed counterintuitive. On the other hand, he and his staff did not need to see him jacking off constantly, at least until he forgot about the woman and could be distracted by something less...stimulating.
‘No. Just send him a shock. Might stop him for a while.’
He looked at the screens and after a few minutes he watched as the man writhed in agony. The level of volts they needed to administer to have any sort of affect was phenomenally high. X-24 was now stood, semi naked, in the middle of his cell, clawing at the collar and snarling. He’d calm down eventually but fighting with the collar would give everyone a few hours of respite from his other activities. He turned to head back to his office.
‘Um, Doctor Rice?’
‘Yes?’
‘He’s pissing into the hallway.’
Rice looked at the monitor again and indeed X-24 was stood at the barred door to his cell, pissing into the hallway. A small sign of defiance at being stopped from playing with himself. Rice sighed again, a noise he was getting sick of making.
‘Sedate him for a few hours. Get someone to clean that up. And for God’s sake don’t let anymore strange women into the labs!’
***
As he sat at his desk, however, Doctor Rice was intrigued about the woman. He had females on his team, X-24 had encountered them, but he had never displayed this sort of reaction though. His behaviour was interesting. Was his mind evolving, was he starting to recognise the notion of male and female, feelings of attraction? Not an usual concept in the animal kingdom at all so why should this animal be any different? Not that he wanted his creation to be having lovey dovey feelings for anyone but it did pose a few interesting questions. His mind didn’t drift too far from the woman for the rest of the day.
***
About a week later, you arrived at work and were just starting to get logged into your computer, when your boss walked over to your desk, accompanied by a man you’d never seen before.
‘Can I have a word, before you get started?’ your boss asked.
‘Um...sure...’
You followed him and the other man to his office.
‘Take a seat,’ your boss said, ‘this is Doctor Zander Rice. He runs some of the more....’ the man seemed not to be able to think of a suitable word.
‘My work is slightly more esoteric than that of others here,’ he said smiling and taking the chair next to yours. He was a tall, thin, very proper, British man. How the hell he had ended up here you couldn’t guess, ‘I understand you visited my labs the other day?’
You shot your boss a worried look but he just nodded at you.
‘Yes, just running an errand,’ you replied.
‘And, I believe you may have caught sight of something a little, er, unusual?’
‘I didn’t see anything,’ you said quickly.
The man laughed.
‘My dear, I know exactly what you saw. There’s not a thing that happens in my laboratories that I am not aware of. Now...your presence seems to have caused a little bit of a, let’s say, commotion in the individual you saw.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. In fact, I would say that since he saw you, he’s been almost unmanageable.’
Rice would never have thought that the briefest of sightings – he'd seen the camera footage and it lasted seconds – could have caused such an uproar. Normally he, if no one else, could get X-24 to comply with whatever he needed. For the past week, no one had been able to get him to do a goddamn thing. He’d stripped himself naked and shredded his clothes. If he wasn’t masturbating, he was flinging his own shit at anyone who tried to take him from his cell for his daily exercise or lab time, throwing food at the walls, not letting a single person get near him to administer any sort of sedation. Shocking him at the moment only seemed to make him angrier and more defiant. They’d had to turn a hose on him to clean him up. None of this was as it should be.
You listened to Doctor Rice telling you all of this, eyes wide, wondering how the heck any of this was your fault. As if he could read your mind, the doctor smiled,
‘It’s not your fault. If anything it’s the fault of those transporting him back to his cell that day. They know that he shouldn’t be exposed to anything or anyone new and I’m afraid an attractive young woman like yourself isn’t the sort of thing he sees often.’
Part of you preened a little at being deemed attractive but you were also kind of pissed for the women who worked with this asshole.
‘I don’t understand what I can do?’ you said, ‘I’m sorry if I have upset your...um...but it certainly wasn’t my intention.’
‘Of course not!’ he said, ‘I don’t think that at all. And what you can do to help is to come and meet him.’
‘Meet him?’
The doctor nodded.
‘Indeed. My theory is that, at the moment, you are a fantasy figure for him and if he can meet you and see you as a flesh and blood human, the...novelty...will wear off.’
You felt a little sick. There was so much about the way he was talking that simply unsettled you. Also, you weren’t sure you even wanted to meet that poor creature. You had a thought that this doctor was completely wrong and that meeting you would only make things worse. But you weren’t the posh scientist so what did you know? You glanced at your boss. You knew he would never have your back and so it was likely a case of do it or be fired. You sighed.
‘Sure. If you think it will help,’ you said.
‘Excellent!’ Rice said, ‘we can start now.’
He stood up and headed to the door. You looked at your boss who simply gestured to the doctor and urged you to follow. Great, you thought, thanks for fighting my corner.
You followed the doctor through the hallways till you reached the labs. He took you in via a different entrance to the one you’d used the other day. You followed him through more hallways until you finally reached your destination. This hallway was windowless on one side, with only one door on the other. The doctor nodded to the guard standing next to it, and he pulled open the thick steel door to thick steel bars. You glanced nervously into the room. The man was in there. Dressed now you saw, but staring up at the security camera in the corner of the room. Rice coughed once and the man immediately turned his head. His eyes locked onto you and he froze. You weren’t sure what you were supposed to do so raised your hand and waved.
‘Hi,’ you said in a tiny voice you didn’t recognise.
‘While he understands English, he does not speak,’ Rice said to you quietly.
‘Oh okay,’ you looked at the man, ‘does he have a name?’
‘No,’ came the stark and simple reply.
You looked at him through the barred door. A name seemed to be the bare minimum, but it wasn’t your place to push these things. You didn’t even really want to be there. You glanced at the doctor. He looked impassive, bored even. You weren’t sure how long he expected you to stand here so you just sighed and turned back to the man in the room.
‘I saw you the other day,‘ you said with a smile.
The speed with which he reached the door from the other side of the was startling. You gasped and took a step back. You could feel your heart racing. His face was pressed right up against the bars, his strong hands gripping them. You noticed his nostrils flaring a little, like he was taking in your scent. You swallowed and stepped a little closer to the door. As you did so, a hand shot out from between the bars and grabbed your arm. You shrieked and tried to move back but the hold he had on you was too strong. You looked frantically around but the doctor was stood at the other end of the hallway, talking to someone on the phone.
‘Oh fuck oh fuck,’ you muttered under your breath.
You heard a grunt and turned back to the man. He was looking at you curiously, head moving from side to side, like a dog checking something out. If he didn’t have your arm in his grip you might have found it funny. His hand moved and you felt him brush his fingers against your hair. A small smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. He did it again, taking a gentle handful and letting your locks drift through his fingers.
‘Do you like that?’ you asked.
The way his fingers continued to comb through your hair, you assumed that he did. He was being surprisingly gentle, given everything else that you’d be told about him. As he played with your hair, you glanced around the room. Aside from a cot, there was a small table with a chair, a toilet in the corner. Nothing else. No books, nothing to stimulate him. You assumed that if he couldn’t speak then he likely couldn’t read either. You looked at him again.
‘You poor thing,’ you said quietly. Before you really knew what you were doing, you’d reached your hand through the bars and you had placed your palm against his cheek. The beard there prickled, but his skin felt soft. You watched as he closed his eyes and seemed to lean into your touch. Good God, you thought, no one has ever touched him like this. You watched as his hand reached up to cover yours, his skin feeling rough and callused. You let him take your hand and shifted as he seemed to examine it, sniffing it, even putting out the tip of his tongue to touch it to the palm of your hand. This tickled and it made you laugh a little. He looked at you sharply then his gaze softened as you nodded and said -
‘It’s okay.’
You weren’t sure how much time had passed but you heard Doctor Rice coming back along the hallway. You smiled at the man and gently pulled your hand away. He looked forlorn, but you supposed that the doctor would not be pleased with the way you had been acting.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘that should be sufficient exposure. Thank you very much for your help.’
‘Um, my pleasure,’ you said.
‘If you’ll come this way,’ Rice gestured along the hallway, and you started to walk away. An arm shot out from the bars again but this time, a guard was there to push it back in, to push the outer steel door across the bars. As you headed toward the exit all you could hear were snarls and screams and the sound of someone running repeatedly into solid metal.
***
He had no concept of ownership, but he knew, somehow, that you were his. His stomach flipped and he wanted to break down the door to see you, to smell you, to hear you talking. The softness of your hair, your skin, the touch of your hand against his cheek. What was this feeling? What was this and why were they taking you away from him? He didn’t like this. Not at all.
Here's where things get a bit interesting. My lovely friend @ultimatewolverine made a comment about how this story feels connected to my Old Man Logan x Nurse Reader story and that got me thinking......so this contains a wee bit of a spoiler for the next chapter of that story.
Warnings: unprotected p in v, oral sex (f receiving, m implied receiving), breast sucking, killing of Rice (yay!)
****
When X-24 said your name, you cried. You’d unlocked the door to his cell and were sat on the edge of his cot next to him, holding the whiteboard on your lap. You’d been writing a few words for him to try, including ‘apple’. You tapped the pen against your lip, trying to think of other simple words when you felt his hand on yours. You looked at him and saw his brow furrow.
‘What’s wrong?’ you asked.
He shook his head. Okay, so nothing wrong. You sat patiently, knowing that in time he would communicate, in his own way, what he wanted. You watched his mouth open and close a few times, then heard the sound. Halting, quiet, nervous, but unmistakable.
‘That’s my name!’ you gasped.
He smiled and nodded. Then said it again. The whiteboard slipped to the floor and you put your arms around him. He tentatively enfolded you in a hug too and when you parted, he looked worried, touching your cheek.
‘Oh no, these are happy tears,’ you smiled. He still looked concerned, ‘people can cry when they are sad but they can cry when they’re happy too. Happy tears.’
X-24 considered this. You had said that humans were complicated and you were not wrong on that. You said you were happy and you never lied to him so he believed you.
‘H...happy,’ he said quietly, and you nodded.
‘Yes. Very happy.’
***
He was not sure what love was. You had spoken to him of emotions, happy, sad, angry. You’d spoken about love. You’d spoken about hate.
Hate, now that he understood.
But love...that was a different matter.
When you tried to describe love to him, you’d struggled. He didn’t know about poetry and songs and art and everything that had ever been created due to love. Even describing the feeling. Complicated. That word again.
Did he love you? He certainly didn’t hate you, not in the way he hated Rice. He didn’t want to hurt you, only protect you. Kill for you, die for you – were he able. When you were not there he missed you, pined for you. When you were there it made his stomach flutter. You were his waking thought and his last before he went to sleep. He wanted to hold you softly, but he also wanted to do more. He wanted, on a primal level, to sink himself into you. An urge he was finding was growing stronger and stronger. He wasn’t sure how to ask you about it, wasn’t sure he knew enough words to. Despite that, you always seemed to understand him. Maybe that meant you loved him too? He held a hope that you did, like a fragile thing, in his heart.
***
You knew eventually you’d do something to piss Rice off and he’d decide that enough was enough. You left a book in X-24's cell. A mistake. You’d taken it with you and had been reading it to him, put it down and forgotten to pick it up again. Rice had come along to the cell later to find X-24 sitting cross legged on his cot, flicking through it.
‘This was not what he was designed for!’ he said angrily, slamming the book down on the table in front of you.
‘It’s just a book!’
He picked it up and waved it in your face.
‘This is not just a book,’ he snarled.
‘It’s just a book,’ you repeated.
The book, you knew, wasn’t just a book. It was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. A world where there was no mother or father anymore, where children were decanted, created to be drones, to obey, to serve. Where men played God, much like Rice. Where John the Savage was savage simply because he was born. Where he said dangerous things like -
‘I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin’
It was clear to Rice that you were showing X-24 that there was more to the world outside of this facility and it was starting to have an effect. And you were. You knew it, Rice knew it. He had created a creature he could control and command to do his bidding then you’d come along.
‘This is over,’ he said simply, ‘you will not return to this laboratory.’
You stared at him.
‘You can’t do this.’
‘Do NOT tell me what I can’t do!’ he bellowed, ‘this is over! You’ve had your fun but now you’re in danger of compromising everything. You will be escorted from the premises. And no, you cannot go and tell your....,’ he struggled to find an appropriate word, ‘you cannot tell him you won’t be back.’
‘Do you really think he even understands what I'm reading him?’ you scoffed. You both knew that he did, that he was learning more and more each time you sat with him.
‘Whether he understands or not, this is over. I will not repeat myself again.’
You wanted to scream at him but you knew that it would get you nowhere.
****
Later that day, Rice took a walk down to X-24's cell. He had the book in his hand. He stood by the door and flicked through it.
‘She won’t be back,’ he said.
X-24 turned sharply to glare at him.
‘Oh, she’s fine, alive and well. I promise,’ he sneered, ‘but no more. You will go back to being what you were created for.’
He flung the book through the bars of the door. It landed with a smack by X-24's feet. He bent and picked it up.
‘Whatever she’s filled that metal head of yours with, forget it,’ Rice said, ‘that’s not the world you will ever live in. Sooner you get used to that the better.’
He walked away. X-24 held the book and stared at the space where the man had stood. He cocked his head to the side, the scent of you still on the book, filling his nostrils. A small smile played on his lips.
Rice didn’t know how big of a mistake he had made.
***
A rattling and banging pulled you from your sleep. You looked at the clock on your bedside table, 2am. What the hell? You sat up, trying to work out where the noise was coming from. It dawned on you that the pummelling was happening on the other side of your door. You ran from your bedroom and nervously looked through the peephole. When you saw who it was, you scrambled to unlock and open the door.
‘What...how?’
X-24 barrelled through the door. You slammed it shut after him, locking it again. You turned to him. He was bloody, a few wounds were still healing but you knew they would be gone soon.
‘Um...’ you weren’t sure what you should do. How was he here?
‘Did you escape?’ you asked him. He nodded.
You stared him, looked down at his hands. his knuckles were stained red.
‘Did...did you kill Rice?’ you asked, looking back up at his face.
He stared at you for a long time.
‘Yes,’ he said.
***
It had been a few weeks since you’d last been at the lab. You tried to go back to your old position, but your boss had clearly been intimidated into letting you go so you’d been sat at home, sulking and stewing and utterly pissed off. You had no friends at the facility who would be able to find anything out for you, and even if you did, you weren’t sure they would risk it. You knew nothing until X-24 showed up at your door.
***
He’d bided his time. Let Rice think that he was back to his being his little murder toy again. Let him think that his infatuation with you was done, out of sight out of mind. Except not. You were never far from his mind. His every thought was of you now and of destroying the man who was keeping you from him. He had nothing but time. To think and to plan.
Rice had ordered that he be taken to the exercise yard again. He wasn’t sure what lie the doctor would use now that you were no longer around, if he wanted him to attack like before. When his cage was pushed outside, the yard was empty. X-24 looked around, confused.
‘Just exercise time,’ Rice said, smiling a little.
X-24 narrowed his eyes, it was never that simple. He scanned the yard, the walls, the fact that there were no guards. There had to be something here, some reason he was being brought out here other than simply letting him walk around. But he’d play along. He stepped out into the yard from his cage and slowly started to walk around the perimeter of the yard, following the wall, keeping one hand on it, feeling for anything unusual. He made sure to keep an eye on Rice. Rice who was simply standing near the door to the yard, arms crossed.
‘She’s made you paranoid,’ he said after a while.
X-24 stopped and turned to look straight at him.
‘Filling your head with nonsense. Made you suspicious,’ Rice sneered, ‘no longer my guileless boy, happy to do whatever I asked of him.’
X-24 continued to move.
‘You speak to her. Why don’t you speak to me?’
He was jealous. X-24 smirked. Rice was jealous by how much progress you had made with him when his methods garnered nothing. He’d almost traversed the entire yard before Rice spoke again.
‘I suppose if I’d let it go on any longer, you’d have ended up fucking her,’ he gave a bitter laugh, ‘not sure how I’d explain that away to the board.’
Rice had worried about that. What would happen if you lost your mind and actually slept with the beast. God forbid a child result. As fascinating as it might be to study, he knew it would be a step too far and he was already walking a very thin line.
By the time X-24 had done several laps of the yard, tuning out Rice and his mutterings, he knew exactly where he should climb and get out. He had your book stuffed down his pants, it still smelled of you, of your home, he could use it to track you. He just had to tie up a few loose ends first. He realised that Rice really didn’t have any ulterior motive, he simply wanted X-24 to have some exercise. He was also arrogant enough to assume that he didn’t need to be protected.
***
When the guards found Rice, he was dead. Very dead. The six stab wounds to the chest were bad enough but his face... How the doctor had allowed the creature to get that close, why the hell he had told the guards not to stay in the yard, where the hell the damn thing was now, just a few of far too many questions to which there were very few answers.
***
You didn’t know how long you had. They had to have sent out a search party and it would be foolish of them to not come straight to your apartment. You ran to the window and looked up and down the street. Nothing out there to indicate that anyone was after X-24. You turned back to the room. X-24 was still just standing in your lounge.
‘Are you hungry?’ you asked.
He thought and nodded. You took him by the arm and led him to the kitchen. You sat him at your small table and set about making him a sandwich. He ate it in three bites, barely any time for you to think about what you should do next. Should you call someone? Who would you call? If Rice was dead, who was in charge of X-24 now? You had no idea what you should do. X-24 was just sitting at your kitchen table, looking at you.
‘How did you find my apartment?’ you asked him.
He pulled the book out of from his pants and put it on the table. You looked at it confused. He picked the book up and made a show of sniffing it.
‘You tracked me down through scent?’ you asked. He nodded. You let out a breath. You knew that his senses were exceptional but this was beyond anything you’d ever imagined. You looked at X-24. He seemed so incongruous, sitting in your apartment, eating a sandwich. He seemed smaller, less an animal and more just a man. A man looking for the one person in his life who had ever shown him even the smallest hint of kindness. You reached out a hand and placed it over one of his.
‘You’ll be safe here for tonight. I think. But we will have to think about what to do tomorrow...well, today I guess...’ you yawned, ‘sorry.’
You felt X-24's hand move, his fingers locking with yours.
‘Sleep?’ he asked.
You nodded.
‘Yes. Come with me.’
***
You took him by the hand and led him into your bedroom. You pulled back the covers and got in, patting the bed beside you. X-24 shifted nervously, then slid into the bed beside you.
‘Sleep and then we can work out what to do in the morning. Alright?’
He nodded. You settled down and was astonished by how warm he felt, lying near you like he was. You moved a little closer. Soon you were asleep and he lay there watching you, feeling your softness against him. A small smile played on his lips. You snuggled against him a little more and he found your head resting on his shoulder. He touched his gently to yours and feel asleep soon after.
***
When X-24 woke, you had gone. He sat up and scanned the room. Then he heard the noise coming from the other room. Running water. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited. When you reappeared, you were wrapped in a towel and nothing else, your hair tied up in a messy bun on the top of your head. You smiled at him and moved to the dresser to take out some clothes. As you stood there, you felt X-24's presence at your back. You stopped moving when you felt his hands on your waist. He wasn’t grabbing at you, he wasn’t being rough, he was just resting his hands but it was as if everything you’d wanted for so long was finally happening. Then you felt the heat of his breath on your neck and the very brief brush of his lips against your skin. You knew that you should stop this. That this was the worst idea you could ever possibly have but you couldn’t stop yourself from turning and facing him, grabbing the front of his shirt, pulling him to you and kissing him.
Softly at first, then deeper. You felt his hand move, circling your neck, his hand under your chin, slightly lifting you to reach his mouth. His lips were soft, his tongue probing into your mouth, sliding against yours. You sighed and melted against him. You could feel him, so hard, against you. He was starting to rub himself against you, his hands moving to your backside to pull you harder against him.
‘I want to see you,’ you whispered. You started to pull at his shirt and he caught on, pulling it off over his head, then unzipping his jeans and pushing them down. He was solid, broad, muscular. Hair spread across his chest, down his stomach, a thick bush of public hair nestled around his heavy cock. You’d seen it before, but here, like this, was a different matter. As he stood naked before you, you untucked the towel and let it drop to the floor. His eyes went wide as he took you in. It struck you that he likely had never seen a naked woman before.
‘You can touch me,’ you said softly. He reached out a tentative hand and placed it on one of your breasts. He squeezed softly. His other hand trailed down your stomach to the hair between your legs. You felt his hand move between them and you shivered. You knew that if he probed any further he would feel how wet you were. With the slight flaring of his nostrils you knew he could smell it as well.
‘Can I touch you?’ You asked him.
He looked at you, then took hold of your wrist and brought your hand to his cock. You brushed your fingers along it and he let out a shuddering breath.
He started to move you towards the bed, pushing you back down on it. This was instinct, animal and primal. He needed no direction. You lay back and looked up at him as he loomed over you. You simply opened your legs and pulled him to you. A few misses before you took hold of him and guided him towards you. Then he was there, sheathed inside you. There was no finesse, no gentleness, just his cock in you, hard and big. He started to piston his hips, rutting into you, his grunts mixing with your soft sighs. You assumed this wouldn’t last long and you were right. You felt him thrust hard, so hard, and bellow, his come spilling into you, still thrusting. After collapsing on top of you, you moved him so that he rested on his elbows. He was still inside you, softening now but something told you that he would be ready to go again quicker than most other men.
***
He wanted to stay here forever. Inside you. Inside your warmth and softness and wetness. Made even wetter by him now. However good it had felt when he did that with his hand, the intensity of it now made his head spin. When he came he felt dizzy and as if a thousand explosions were going off behind his eyes. He could still feel himself inside you, hard again now. He wondered if he could do it again. He looked down at you and you were smiling. Smiling was good so he started to move. Hard and fast, just with the sheer impulse to fill you with him.
Something changed. As he was moving, he heard himself making noises but you were too. More than before. High and sweet. You were grabbing at him, his arms and back and your legs had come around his waist. You were speaking -
‘Yes yes yes!’
Yes was good. He continued to thrust himself inside you, his eyes going wide as he felt you clenching around his cock, your eyes closing and your head thrown back against the pillow. You stopped making noises, your mouth open in a silent o, then more noise, pants and sighs. He’d never heard anything better. He felt your body go taunt beneath him then relax as he felt you loosen the grip on him. He smiled and continued until he came again. You pulled his head down and kissed him, hungry for him, your hands still roaming across his body.
‘That was amazing,’ you breathed and smiled again. He could feel the rapidity of your heart beating, hear how it had sped up, now slowing. Whatever happened was a good thing and he wanted you to do it again. But when he started to try you stopped him.
‘No,’ you said, pushing him away so that he slipped from you, ‘I need to rest. We can’t all regenerate like you.’ You smiled and kissed him again, pushing him onto his back and resting your head on his chest. You felt warm and soft against him, your breasts pressed against him. Okay. Rest was good. You were happy and you were cuddled up against him. He wrapped his arms around you and found himself drifting off to sleep again.
When you woke a few hours later, you were confused by the warm, hairy mass in bed with you. Then you remembered. You raised your head and looked down into X-24's sleeping face. You placed a hand on his cheek and his head moved to lean into it. His eyes fluttered open and focused onto you.
‘Hi,’ you said.
‘Hi,’ he said back, quietly.
He moved and kissed you. Your hand was resting on his belly and you knew without looking that he was hard again. As much as you had enjoyed it, he was going to have to learn some restraint. Well. Eventually he would. You swung your leg over and straddled him. Restraint could wait for the time being.
You could feel his cock against your ass, his hands on your waist. You took both of them and moved them to your breasts.
‘Touch me,’ you smiled, moving one hand so that his fingers brushed over your nipple, hardening almost immediately. His thumb rubbed over the little nub and you saw his head cock to the side. You took his hand and placed his thumb in your mouth, moving it back to the nipple and watching as he stroked the wetness over it. Wrapping one hand around your waist, he sat up. Poking out his tongue a little, he licked the very tip and you sighed, your hands immediately pulling his head closer. He sucked your nipple into his mouth and you felt his lips and tongue working at it. Arousal shot right down to your core and you let out a small moan. You felt him smile against you.
Bracing your hands on his shoulders you rose up on your knees and then sank down onto him. He continued to suck on your breast as you moved your hips, up and down, making him slick with your arousal. You felt his own hips start to move a little underneath you. You pushed him back and his mouth left your breast with a small pop. You lay him back down and continued to move yourself on him, hands on his chest, his hands still squeezing and caressing at your breasts.
***
He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone more beautiful. As you moved above him, head thrown back, making all those beautiful noises he knew now he would never be able to live without, he just watched you. The softness of your skin under his hands, cupping your breasts, licking and sucking on them. When he did that you bounced a little more, a little quicker. So. He did it more.
After, you lay on top of him, his hands resting lazily on your waist, one drifting down to cup and squeeze at your backside. Your nipples still felt pebbled against his chest. He moved a hand into your hair and lifted your head a little. He raised his own head and kissed you. God, he loved kissing you. This was what you were going to do back at the lab, all those weeks ago. He wished you had.
***
You needed to see if the world outside was aware of what was happening. Leaving the bedroom was easier said than done. Whatever had awakened in you both was not easy to put back to sleep. Eventually you distracted X-24 with the television. As he knelt in front of it, moving rapidly up and down the channels you went online and began to search for any information, any news that might have leaked out from the lab. You found very little. Nothing about Rice, nothing about what was essentially a dangerous mutant on the loose. You couldn’t work out if this was good or bad. You glanced over at X-24, laughing his odd laugh at something on the television. At some point you would need to leave the apartment. You still needed to find a job. You had some savings but they wouldn’t last forever. And what would X-24 for do? It wasn’t like he could find a job. Could he? He could learn, you knew that. Something simple, warehouse work, lugging boxes around. But maybe being around that many people would overwhelm him and who knew what would happen then. You sighed and sat back, idly scrolling through more news sites but finding nothing.
Your daydream was broken by X-24 grunting. You looked up and he was pointing at the TV, the channel he’d come to being the news. You went over and looked. A breaking news story about a huge fire at a research facility. Your research facility.
‘That’s the lab,’ you said, sitting down on the floor next to X-24. You both watched as the footage of the fire department attempting to contain the fire played, while the news reader’s voice told everyone how a fire had broken out, killing eminent scientist Doctor Zander Rice.
‘So that’s how they’re going to explain it all away? Just set fire to it all?’
X-24 grunted, then growled as a picture of Rice was displayed on the screen. You continued to watch but nothing was said about any escaped mutant clones. You assumed that as far as anyone was concerned, both Rice and any of his experiments perished in the fire. Searching for X-24 would legitimise the work Rice was doing or would at least mean they would have to admit to it, and you suspected everyone wanted to pretend it never happened. Never mind that a potential timebomb was wandering around. You glanced over at X-24, this grenade with the pin taken out. You knew, deep down, you should be scared of him, but you’d just fucked him three times and were likely going to take him straight back to the bedroom and fuck him again.
‘If you had wanted to kill me,’ you said, looking at him, ‘would you have done it weeks ago?’
X-24 looked at you and nodded.
‘No kill,’ he said, taking your hand, ‘Good. No kill.’
***
He thought that if he could die, he would very much like to die right here, between your thighs. Sucking on you, licking you, worming his tongue and fingers inside of you. All of his senses were overloaded and it was wonderful. As your legs clamped around his head, he continued to lick a long stripe along your pussy – that's what you called it and he liked the word – the taste of you, the scent of you, the sounds you were making. He was so hard and had already come just by being so utterly overwhelmed. He felt your hand on his head, keeping him there, as if he ever wanted to leave. Before this, you’d taken his cock into your mouth and he thought he might die then too. All of his existence he had been programmed for pain, to feel it, to give it. The world you had introduced him to, in such a short space of time, giving and receiving pleasure, softness, kindness, sensual and intoxicating...he hated Rice even more.
When he finally lifted his head, you felt utterly boneless. X-24 crawled up the bed beside you and snuggled against you, his beard tickling your bare shoulder. You hummed a little.
‘We can’t stay in bed all day long,’ you said.
X-24 snuffled against your neck and kissed it. Clearly he had decided you could. You squirmed a little, feeling ticklish, and let out a small laugh. This prompted more snuffling and more kisses, leading to a small tussle which ended in another round of fucking.
When you went to the bathroom to take another shower, X-24 followed you and he had you against the shower wall, the water beating down on you both. It was while in the bathroom that he saw himself for the first time.
He stood in front of the mirror over the sink, just staring. You stood behind him, a hand resting on his shoulder.
‘That’s you,’ you said.
He touched his face, the facial hair, the buzz cut. He pulled his lips back and looked at his teeth, poked his nose and his ears.
‘They say you look like him. The man they made you from. The Wolverine.’
He just continued to stare.
‘You’re very handsome,’ you said quietly, your smiling reflection looking back at him.
He glanced at you.
‘Good?’
‘Good,’ you nodded, ‘but looks aren’t all that’s important. Being good inside, doing good things, that’s important too.’
You weren’t sure he understood the concept but he smiled and went back to looking at himself.
Eventually you had to go out and get some groceries. You told X-24 you wouldn’t be long and to stay in the apartment until you got back. There was a small store a few blocks away and you didn’t need much.
As you left the store, you accidentally bumped into a man coming the other way.
‘Sorry,’ you muttered and continued walking.
‘Miss!’ you heard him call, ‘you dropped this.’
Your turned to see them man holding out a brown folder.
‘That’s not mine,’ you said.
‘I think you’ll find it is.’
You couldn’t see his face properly, a hat shielding his eyes. His arm was still outstretched, the folder firmly held in his hand.
‘Whatever,’ you said and took it, planning to dump it in the nearest garbage bin. As soon as he was divested of the folder the man turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowds. You tried to look after him but could no longer see him. You sighed and looked at the folder. You suddenly felt sick. Written in a neat hand across the folder were the words ‘X-24 Project’.
***
When you arrived back at the apartment, you found X-24 in the kitchen making a sandwich. He was picking things up more quickly now. You supposed that away from the oppressive environment of the lab and Rice it was easier to learn and adapt. As impressed as you might have been you needed to speak to him. Sitting down at the table you told him about the man and placed the folder in front of him.
‘That’s you,’ you said, pointing to the words on the cover.
You opened the folder and found a plethora of scientific information that you didn’t understand. Amongst it all was a sheet that detailed X-24 and his creation. Under donor DNA it said ‘James Howlett’. The infamous Wolverine. There were pictures of him, detailed descriptions of what he went through during the Weapon X program. Someone had been collecting this information together for a while. Who, you didn’t know. You tried to explain to X-24 about the man on the street who had given it to you, but you didn’t understand it yourself. You continued to flick through the folder, eventually finding a photograph of what looked like a large country home, and an address, with a description. X-24 cocked his head and looked at you curiously as you read.
‘This place is in Canada,’ you said showing him the photograph, ‘it’s owned by James Howlett. It’s his family home. He and his wife run a sanctuary there for mutants. It says they help them to find work and homes or just give them somewhere to feel safe.’
X-24 picked up the photograph. You wondered if he had any memories of the place, held onto by the DNA coursing through him. He looked at it for a long time, the placed the photo down on the table and jabbed a finger at it.
I'm really enjoying writing this. My original idea was going to be just shameless smut but then I started it and, well, the smut will be there and it will be shameless...might take a while is all...
Warnings: X-24 kills someone but he totally deserves it, attempted blackmail, masturbation (X-24...again!), angst.
****
Whatever it was Rice had thought to achieve by you meeting X-24, was not the result he got. He was big enough to admit the idea had been an abject failure and 24 was more unmanageable than ever after your meeting.
‘How do we counteract this?’ One of his colleagues asked, watching the monitors. X-24 was wailing like an injured beast and had been for hours, his voice – such as it was – hoarse now.
Rice rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to bring you back in. It wouldn’t help, would just inflame things and they’d be in an even worse position. The rationalist in him said that the best course of action would be to just cut his losses. Scrap the project. Permanently. Get one of the adamantium bullets. Stop this, go back to square one.
To the cost of millions and millions of dollars of course.
‘Let me think,’ he said and walked off.
***
He didn’t understand what this ache was. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t see you. He didn’t understand where you were, why you weren’t coming back. All he knew was that when he did see you, something inside of him felt calm. Like the boiling rage that the doctor loved so much went away. He wanted to touch you again. Your hair had been soft and it smelled like…what was that thing they’d given him? Apples. It smelled like apples. He didn’t know people could smell like apples. No one else did. He didn’t. He smelled like shit and blood and piss, metallic and sharp.
He put his hand against his cheek. The memory of your hand lingered. His felt wrong, rough and hard. If he could he’d cut it off. Maybe he would. But it would just grow again. That much he knew.
He didn’t know how long he’d been curled up on his cot. Whoever watched him probably did. He just wanted to see you again.
***
‘Is it possible,’ one of Rice’s colleagues began, ‘that she was someone known to the donor? That seeing her has unlocked some deeply dormant memory?’
Rice openly scoffed.
‘DNA doesn’t possess memories! Certainly not of lost loves!’
‘Apologies, Doctor Rice, I’m just trying to find some sort of rationale for this.’
‘There isn’t one!’ he snapped, ‘X-24 is entirely compromised.’
The room fell silent. They all knew what that meant. The review meeting after disposing of him would be interesting to say the least. Cause of issue? He saw a woman. It was hardly a compelling argument for flushing so much money down the toilet.
‘Are we sure that we can’t work with this?’ someone else asked, ‘If we get this woman to come and see him, say once a week, he may become compliant again.’
Rice looked at him.
‘For God’s sake...’ he muttered, ‘he’s supposed to be an unstoppable killing machine. I am NOT treating him like a lovelorn teenager!’
‘Then we are at a stalemate,’ the man said, ‘and it’s just up to you now to decide what we do with all this wasted time, money and effort.’
***
You’d thought about X-24 a few times since you’d met him. You’d managed to piece together how he was created from snippets of info gleaned from here and there. It made you feel sick on many levels. That they would clone someone for a start. That they would then breed the humanity out of him. A humanity that you were sure was still there. You’d not been able to speak to anyone about the experience, which made it even harder to deal with. You sighed. You needed to try and forget about it all. About him. It wasn’t as if you were going to be seeing him again.
You couldn’t have been more wrong.
***
‘I’m being reassigned?’ you asked.
‘Seconded. Not for long,’ your boss said, ‘just while Doctor Rice can finish his work with the, um, you know.’
‘What do they want me to do?’
He shrugged.
‘Way, way above my pay grade,’ he nodded at the pass in your hand, ‘just go to the lab and see what they want.’
You let out a breath. Okay just send me like a lamb to the slaughter then, you thought.
The next day, you showed up at the reception to the labs and were greeted by Rice himself.
‘I’m sorry this is necessary,’ he said as he led you to X-24's room again, ‘but needs must I’m afraid.’
‘How long do I have to visit with him?’
‘Daily to begin with. Then we can reduce that time.’
Daily? You had a very bad feeling about this.
‘24!’ You jumped at the harsh sound of Rice’s voice. X-24 turned quickly and ran to the bars of his cell, grunting. Happily, you supposed.
‘Hello again,’ you said.
He immediately reached out his hand. You looked at the doctor but he seemed unperturbed by this.
‘Go ahead. Whatever gets him compliant.’
You did not like that but he was so pleased to see you, almost bouncing on the spot. You moved closer and felt his hand touch gently against the side of your head. The change in X-24 was almost immediate and did not go unnoticed by Rice. You put your hand through the bars and touched his cheek again. You could have sworn that he purred.
‘It’s nice to see you again,’ you began, trying to think of the script that Rice had suggested, ‘The doctor said you’ve been unhappy.’
Did he even know what unhappiness was? Judging by the look he gave the doctor, he knew what hatred was and he felt it for this man. You shivered. If these bars weren’t there you were terrified about what he might do to the man. You’d been shown footage of the metal claws that he had, desperately hoping that he didn’t feel the need to show them to you in person.
‘I’m...I’m going to come and visit you. But you must behave and do what the doctor asks. Do you understand?’
***
Understand. That was a word he’d heard before and he knew what it meant. He knew what all of this meant. They brought you to him to make him behave. Well....
He would. For now. As long as he could keep you.
Oh that smell again. Apple. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Hmm. Something else.
It made him feel...
‘Oh my god....’
You moved back from the door. X-24 was rubbing himself, his erection very clearly visible. Rice tutted.
‘I was afraid this would happen,’ he sighed, ‘are you menstruating?’
Your eyes went wide at the question.
‘Um no.... not yet anyway.’
Rice nodded.
‘Ovulating perhaps. Fascinating.’
‘Is it?’
‘Hmm? Oh yes. His olfactory senses are supreme, it’s likely this is a result of being able to smell you ovulating.’
You weren’t sure how to respond to that so you simply did not.
‘It may be useful for you let my assistants know your cycle, so that we can mitigate this sort of thing happening.’
You glanced at the barred door, but X-24 had taken himself away from it. You could see him lying on his cot, still going at it, his cock huge and red in his fist. You blinked and looked away, feeling the heat from the blush rising in your cheeks. You heard a soft grunt and a groan and looking up again, you saw that he had finished.
‘Does he do that a lot?’ you asked.
‘Unfortunately. More so since he encountered you.’
‘Oh.’
‘I think that’s enough for today. Tell him you’ll be back tomorrow.’
You cleared your throat and went to call to him but stopped.
‘What do I call him?’
‘24 will suffice.’
You didn’t like that but since there were no other options -
‘24,’ you called softly. He sat up on his cot and looked at you, almost shyly.
‘I have to go now,’ he ran to the door again, but you held up your hand, ‘but I’ll be back again tomorrow. Okay? I’ll go now, but I’ll come and speak to you again tomorrow.’
His face was pressed up against the bars. You noticed for the first time that his eyes were yellow. Where was the man behind them? Was there one? Yes, you thought, somewhere there was. The doctor was starting to get impatient, but you wanted X-24 to truly understand that you would be back. You got closer to the door.
‘I will come back tomorrow. I promise,’ you said.
You could feel the heat of his breath on your face, the slightly off, rank smell of it.
‘I promise. Do you understand?’
It might have been your imagination, but you could have sworn he nodded.
‘Okay then,’ you smiled and began to walk away, ‘you...be good?’
You felt silly saying that, like he was a dog or a naughty child. As you made your way down the hallway to the main door, you let out a breath.
***
Promise.
That was a new word.
He tumbled it about in his mind for a while.
Promise.
It felt like it was a good thing. This...promise. You, he had decided, were good and if you were saying it then it must, therefore, be good. All things associated with you were good.
He liked the way you smelled today. The apple and the other thing. The other thing made him feel squirmy inside. It made him feel like he wanted to...he didn’t know the word for it. He knew how it felt. Like when he touched himself but more...good. He lay on his cot, trying to make any sense of the explosion of sensations that were happening inside him. You were at the centre of it all and that was all that mattered.
***
A few days later, after Doctor Rice had grown weary of what he called X-24's ‘moon calf behaviour’, he had decided that your visits could continue without him. They would still be monitored, but his time was better spent elsewhere.
You were sat cross legged in the hallway, X-24 on the other side of the door, copying you. You were quietly and methodically teaching him to count. He still did not speak but when you asked him to hold up four fingers, he would hold up four fingers. When he got it right you smiled and clapped a little. When he got it wrong, you didn’t shout, just encouraged him to try again.
‘Can you hold up six fingers?’ you asked.
He stared at his hands for a long time.
‘Do you want me to help?’
He grunted and shook his head, still looking at his hands. You waited and finally he raised one hand, all fingers splayed out, and one finger of his other hand. You smiled and clapped and gave a little cheer. A large grin broke out on 24’s face and he clapped as well, just once.
‘Good Christ, it’s like watching a monkey learning how to use tools,’ said one of the lab assistants watching all this on the monitors said.
‘I hope the doc knows what he’s doing,’ said another, ‘cos that thing is looking less and less like a killing machine by the day.’
They continued to watch, bored and clearly wishing they could be somewhere else.
‘Oh shit!’ said one, suddenly.
‘What now?’
‘She almost just kissed it...him. She almost just kissed him.’
‘What the fuck?’
***
You stood up, getting ready to leave. 24 stood up on his side of the door and pressed his face to the bars, as was his way.
‘You did really well today. I’m so proud of you,’ you smiled. He liked it when you smiled.
He grunted and gave his own approximation of a smile back.
‘We can see if we can go higher tomorrow,’ you said.
You looked at him, staring at you from between the bars and before you quite knew what you were doing, you had nearly pressed your lips against his, you moved your face close to his, your noses almost touching. The impulse lasted a second before you stepped back.
‘Oh god I’m so sorry!’ You breathed. He was looking at you quizzically. You looked at him, ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
He watched as you walked away, confused at the sudden change in you. He’d noticed the spike in your heart rate when you’d come close to him. And something else. A change in the way you smelled. He liked it. There wasn’t much about you he didn’t like.
***
You were about to leave when one of the Rice’s assistants caught up with you.
‘The doc’s going to burst a blood vessel if he sees what you just did!’
‘I didn’t do anything!’
‘No but you wanted to,’ he sneered, ‘I can wipe the footage and he’ll never know.’
You breathed out and smiled.
‘Thank yo…’
‘If you make it worth my while.’
‘What?’
‘If you make it worth my while,’ he repeated, ‘I think you know what I mean.’
You took a step back.
‘I’m not sleeping with you!’
He sneered.
‘You’ll kiss that thing but won’t fuck an actual man? What the fuck is wrong with you?’
You turned and walked away as quickly as you could.
This continued for a few days. The assistant holding the footage of you nearly kissing 24 over your head. When he pinned you against the wall as you were trying to leave one day, you pushed him away, no longer caring if he showed Rice the footage or not. You’d tell him yourself. You were not going to threatened by this asshole.
***
24 sat against his door and stared at you. He didn’t like it. You weren’t smiling. You’d been doing counting with him and that was good but now you looked…he knew the word because you’d used it before. Sad. He didn’t like sad. Reaching through the bars, he took hold of your hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. He’d learned ‘gentle’ a few days ago when he’d nearly broken your fingers. Now he touched you as he thought you might break and only held you harder after you said it was alright.
‘Thank you,’ you said quietly. He shifted and looked at you. Before you realised it, he’d reached out a finger and was touching your cheek. You didn’t realise you’d started crying. You felt his rough thumb swipe across your cheek. No no he did not like this at all.
You hadn’t meant to dump it all on him and you knew he didn’t really understand but you spilled everything about Rice’s assistant. 24 held your hand the whole time and while you knew he could do nothing about it, it felt good to tell someone.
The next day you weren’t allowed to see him.
‘Why not?’ You asked.
‘Because he killed someone,’ came the reply.
You felt the blood in your veins go cold.
‘Who?’
***
Which one? He could tell. He could smell him. He’d been close to you. Closer than you wanted him to be. When he came along he’d know. And he’d pay for making you cry. You were his but he would not hurt you. He’d not make you cry and be sad. Someone else did and he did not like that. He was pacing his room. Waiting. Thinking. If he didn’t come along that day then it would be the next or the next but he would get him.
Ah.
The thing was, a lot of them had started to get quite lax in the way they behaved around him, especially if Doctor Rice wasn’t around. Just because he thought you were good and he liked you. You were the only person he thought was good and who he liked. Everyone else…well… They also didn’t think he had realised that they were stopping with some of their safety procedures. He’d noticed.
He stood, like a good boy, in the centre of his cell. The guard opened the barred door and the man walked in. Oh yeah. He could smell him now.
‘Just need to…urk…’
Before he’d even had a chance to finish the sentence, three blades shot into his gut. X-24 slowly twisted his hand, churning up whatever was in there, making a mess that they could never fix. Not that he planned on giving them a chance too. He stared at the man, hoping that he knew why this was happening to him. Even if he didn’t, 24 didn’t care. You’d said that he was a bad person and that was enough. Just as he was about to swipe his claws up, possibly slicing this fucker in half, he felt the bullet hit his shoulder. Pushed back by the force of it, his claws slipped from the man’s gut and he watched as he flopped to the floor. This was good. He was still squirming though. Before the guard could fire off another shot, he plunged his claws through the man’s head. He stopped squirming.
***
Doctor Rice asked if you wanted to see the footage in the same manner as he may have asked if you wanted to go and watch a movie.
‘No no I don’t want to see it!’ you sat quietly for a moment, ‘Is he going to be punished?’
‘24? Oh not at all.’
‘Well, that’s good, I guess.’
‘It’s perfect!’ the doctor seemed positively giddy, ‘even with all your influence, the animal I created is still there. Let him calm down and your visits can continue.’
You felt sick. Rice’s glee at what happened was worse than clinical coldness. Had you ever realised that 24 would have done that you’d never have told him a single thing. You weren’t even sure if you wanted to go back and see him. You stood on shaky legs and walked out of the laboratory. A man was dead because of you. No. No, you thought, a man was dead because an arrogant doctor decided he was going to cosplay Victor Frankenstein and create his own monster. You were trying to make that monster a better person. Show him some kindness.
For all the good that was doing.
***
It was several days later when you returned. X-24 stood at the bars, grinning his odd little grin. You stood looking at him for a while before approaching the door.
‘You shouldn’t have killed that man,’ you said, still trying to get your head around the fact that the hands that had touched you so tenderly had plunged a foot of razor-sharp metal into someone’s head.
He furrowed his brow. You could see that he was struggling with what you were saying.
‘Don’t kill anyone else. Not for me,’ you continued, then stepped closer still and said quietly, ‘but thank you.’
You put your fingers to your lips and kissed them. Then put them to his lips.
Next part! I am so thrilled that people are enjoying this.
You and X-24 make progress, Rice steps over a line
Warnings: implied violent deaths, X-24 being lied to about Reader dying
Thanks to @almostcleversong for the idea of Rice etc lying to X-24. I tweaked it slightly to what you originally said but I hope you like it!
****
His lips still buzzed from where you had touched them. He remembered you talked about a kiss. How you were sorry you almost kissed him. If a kiss made him tingle like your fingers had he wanted you to kiss him more. He was confused. A kiss felt like a good thing but you’d given him a kiss after he’d done a bad thing, a thing you said he must never do again. He lay on his cot trying to figure it all out. Human beings were complicated. That was the word you’d used once. He turned to look at the wall. Everything was too hard. Too...complicated.
***
Your visits continued. You thought at some point Rice was bound to put a stop to them but he seemed eager for them to continue. You didn’t mind. You liked spending time with X-24 and you liked teaching him things. You felt a certain smugness that you were rather deliberately breaking Rice’s little toy. You took a risk and asked if you could have a small whiteboard or some paper. Rice looked at you for a while, trying to work out what it was you were planning. Eventually he just shrugged and told an assistant to go and get one. You noted how everyone in the labs was keeping you at an arm's length. You assumed that they knew what had happened with 24 and the man he had killed and they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them.
Sitting down in the hallway, you showed the board and the pens to X-24. He looked at them, head cocked to the side, the way he did when he was taking in new information.
‘These are for writing,’ you said, demonstrating on the board, ‘that’s how you spell my name.’ You pointed at where you had written it, ‘these,’ you said, pointing at the letters that made up your name, ‘are letters and they are part of the alphabet.’
24 hadn’t ever spoken to you, aside from the grunts he made and the occasional rough laugh. You wondered what his voice would sound like. Maybe you would hear it one day.
You spent the next few hours writing the alphabet down, then handing him a pen and positioning the board so he could try himself. 24 grasped the pen in his fist, trying to hold it like you had been but not managing it.
‘That’s alright,’ you smiled, ‘you’ll get there.’
Every time you smiled at him, it shot like electricity down his spine. No one else smiled, not at him and not as much. It seemed to him that smiling was something that everyone should do. He tried to do it. He had never seen what he looked like – no mirrors or glass were permitted in his cell – so he didn’t know if he was doing it right. When he smiled at you, you smiled back so he guessed that he was.
He gripped the pen and tried to remember the shape you made. He moved awkwardly, jerking and with little confidence. The scribble he made looked nothing like the letter you’d written but you smiled and congratulated him anyway. He remembered, a long time ago, the doctor had started to try and teach him things, but when he got it wrong, he would get shocked. You had asked Rice to remove the shock collar some time ago, and it had taken him a while to get used to not wearing the weight of it. Everything you did was kind. He knew that not all humans were, because even if he wasn’t smart he certainly wasn’t dumb. He didn’t like them. Humans. Not at all.
***
You were a little confused when Rice told you not to come to the lab for a few days. Then your confusion turned to resignation. Of course, he’d grown weary of what you were doing and didn’t want you messing with his creation anymore.
‘No no it’s not that at all!’ he insisted, ‘we just have some work we need to do with X-24 that will put him out of commission for a few days. A week at most. Then your little lessons can recommence.’
You weren’t sure you cared for the patronising tone but fine. He at least allowed you to tell 24 that he wouldn’t see you for a few days, but that you’d be back and you’d bring him a surprise. You weren’t sure he knew what a surprise was but he seemed happy enough with what you told him. A few days away wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
***
Rice was fully aware that very little of his work could be deemed ethical. He wasn’t especially bothered by that. What he worked on could change the world one day and so what did it matter if it skirted the line of what was morally right. Today, well, even he was a little squirrelly that maybe he’d gone too far. On the one hand, no one would miss these men, the vilest prisoners that he could extricate from the nearby prison. On the other, he’d not exactly been honest with them about what was going to happen. But they would find out soon enough.
X-24 had been brought outside to an exercise yard. He stood in his cage, looking around, sharp eyes focusing eventually on the group of men. He’d never seen them before and they unsettled him. They looked at him and then carried on their conversations with each other.
‘You see them?’ Rice said quietly, getting as close to the cage as he dared.
X-24 grunted.
Rice said your name. 24’s head whipped around and he fixed him with a stare.
‘They,’ Rice said, pointing at the group of men, ‘hurt her.’
He watched as the words hit home. He dared a step closer.
‘They hurt her...and they killed her.’
The effect was immediate. X-24 started to bash his entire body against the bars of the cage, a snarling spitting animal, intent on only one thing - to tear those who had hurt you limb from limb. No. Not just hurt. Killed. He knew what that meant. He knew what it meant because that was what he did. And they had done that to you. The noise that came from him, a deep howl of grief and pain and rage, echoed through the yard. The group of men, all casually chattering, stopped and looked over at him. He was trying to reach for them, his claws fully extended, stabbing and slashing at the air. Rice noted the shift in their demeanours. They were terrified but also believed that the cage could hold this thing and they’d be fine.
They were wrong.
***
The guards and assistants who took X-24 back to his cell did so in silence. Rice walked behind, the biggest smile on his face. 24 had to be shot, repeatedly, to bring him down to allow the guards to shove him back in his cage. None of them wanted to think about what was left in the yard. It was slaughter. The blood... X-24's hands and wrists were so red it looked like he was wearing gloves. How the doctor could be so calm and happy about what he had just witnessed none of them knew. One of the assistants stopped and ran to the side of the hallway to be sick. They would never get the stench of the blood and viscera out of their noses.
Rice was not surprised by the three resignations that had occurred by the end of the day. He could not have been more delighted by the results of his test. He watched X-24 on the monitors. He was back in his cell, out of his cage, curled into a ball on the floor. Rice was bemused. He knew that 24 was infatuated with you, in so much as he could experience and express such a feeling, but the reaction to your death was fascinating. He was actually grieving, with little comprehension of what that meant. He’d wanted to push things further after 24 had killed the lab assistant, see how brutal he could truly be. Well, now he knew. Inadvertently, you had loaded the gun. He had then just to aim and pull the trigger
***
Coming back after your break felt refreshing. You didn’t notice the shift in tone about the place at first. It wasn’t until you were approaching X-24's hallway you started to feel uncomfortable.
‘What’s happened?’ you asked one of the guards. He said nothing but just opened the door to the hallway. You looked at him then shook your head then made your way to X-24's cell.
‘Hi!’ you said brightly.
X-24 was standing in the middle of the floor, facing away from the doorway. He stiffened but otherwise didn’t move.
‘I’m back!’
He was at the door quicker than you could blink, his arms through the bars, pulling and grabbing at you. You fought out of his grip and took a step back. You watched in horror as he fell to his knees, wailing.
‘What the hell?’
You dropped your bag and sunk to the floor yourself, reaching your own hands through the bars and trying to give him a hug, to comfort him.
‘What’s wrong? What happened?’
X-24 couldn’t tell you, of course, but something devastating must have occurred and it seemed that it was to do with you. You reached a gentle hand under his chin and lifted his face. Tears were streaming down his face and just as he had done to you weeks before, you carefully wiped them away with your thumb.
‘Hey...hey it’s alright,’ you soothed. You wanted nothing more to open the gate and to take him in your arms. In fact...
‘Guard! GUARD!’
‘Yes miss?’
‘Open this!’
‘No fucking way am I opening that!’
‘Then give me the key and I'll open it.’
The guard looked at you as if you’d gone completely insane.
‘I’ll take full responsibility. Give me the key.’
You unlocked the door and stepped into X-24's world. You sat down beside him on the floor and put your arms around him. It was awkward at first, but you finally settled down, his head resting against your shoulder. You ran a hand over his hair, soothing him, holding him. The only sounds he made now were small whimpers. You sat like that for some time, the cold of the stone floor making you ache, but you didn’t care. He’d finally calmed. You shifted again and sat with him lying down, his head in your lap, still stroking his hair and the thick mutton chops that bracketed his face. You looked down at him, his eyes red rimmed and puffy from the tears. You smiled and he tried to smile back.
‘I don’t know what happened, but I'm here now and everything is going to be okay.’
You stroked his cheek and he made a quiet sound, a little purr. He stared up at you. Then his hand reached up and he started to play with your hair again. His brow furrowed a little.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Uh...’ he said, then tried again, ‘Ah...’
‘Ah...’ you repeated.
‘P...Pull,’ he said, sitting up and facing you, your hair still in his fingers. You couldn’t quite believe what was happening.
‘Ah pull,’ he said.
You almost cried.
‘Apple?’ you said and he smiled his crooked smile and nodded.
‘Ah pull,’ he said again, stroking your hair.
Your shampoo, it smelled of apple. Well, in the bottle it did. You couldn’t smell anything now, but he clearly could.
‘Yes, apple,’ you smiled. Now you were crying. Crying and reaching forward and hugging him. He buried his face in your neck and you heard him say quietly
‘Ah pull.’
***
You were on cloud nine when you left the lab that day, only for Rice to bring you back down to earth with a bone shattering crunch.
‘You told him I’d died!!?’ you yelled.
‘There was a hypothesis that I needed to test,’ he said, unapologetic.
‘By traumatising him?’
The doctor laughed.
‘Traumatising him? Miss, you forget what he is. You may have made him into your little pet and I’ll admit that keeping him docile does help immensely, but ultimately he belongs to me,’ he poked himself in the chest, ‘I am the one who decides what he does and who he does it too. He was designed to kill and that is exactly what he did. He’s no more traumatised than if he’d stubbed his toe.’
Rice was wrong. He wasn’t there, he hadn’t heard the pain in X-24 when he saw you and saw you were alive.
‘You lied to him!’
Rice scoffed again.
‘He has no concept of truth or lies,’ he spat, ‘besides, he’s seen you now. He knows you’re alright. He will have forgotten about it by tomorrow.’
***
X-24 sat on his cot, knees pulled up to his chest. He was practising your name in his head. Practising the shape of the word in his mouth, the sounds the letters made. When you came again, he would try and say your name and that would make you smile. He knew that. His voice had surprised him. The way he actually sounded. It was rough and low, but he thought that if he just practised, that was the word you used, then he would sound better.
A noise outside his cell made him pause. He didn’t move. He could smell who was out there. A low growl rumbled from him.
‘Don’t forget who you belong to. Don’t forget what you are,’ said Rice, quietly.
X-24 lay back on his cot. He would not react. That was exactly what Rice wanted him to do, lunge at the door with his claws out. But he wouldn’t. He would be quiet and still and wait. You told him that he had been lied to. Being lied to was bad. That they lied to him to make him do what they wanted. He was growing tired of doing what they wanted him to do. You were showing him the softness and kindness in life and he wanted that more. In the faint light filtering through from the hallway, his hands still seemed stained. His hands would never be clean, never be free from the blood on them. They made him do this. They made him to do this. You showed him that he didn’t have to.
He listened as Rice’s footsteps moved away back along the hallway and then were gone. The hatred he held inside for Rice felt ancient. It came from his bones. He knew why. He’d heard Rice talking about the man who they had used to create him, how Rice’s father had used him in his turn, hurt him. How the man had killed Rice’s father. X-24 was glad. He hoped that the man had made him pay for what Rice’s father did. Like he would. The sins of the father would most definitely be visited on, and by, the son.
They all spoke so freely around him, believing him to be nothing but a dumb beast. They were wrong. And they would soon see how wrong they were.
Sorry this has been a while coming, got a bit distracted by other stuff.
follow on from here and also here
I have enjoyed the challenge of writing X-24, given we have about 20 minutes of screen time with him and he isn't exactly a nice character, but maybe this is an ending he deserved a bit more.
Warnings: none beyond vague discussions of child birth and pregnancy, implied violence.
****
It was quite the drive back to your cabin but worth it. The scenery never failed to take your breath away, even after so many years. As you approached the house, you could see X standing outside. He was watching the children running around, one girl and one boy, not too far apart in ages, the spitting image of their father. Their father who rarely ventured into town. Whose behaviour, speech (or lack of, depending on how he was feeling) you simply explained with the words ‘there was an accident’. People rarely chose to pry any further. If they did you had a few stock answers, but most people chose to mind their business. Unusual for a small town but you appreciated it.
You pulled up and got out of the truck. Only you drove. You thought for a minute about trying to teach X to drive but he was reluctant to get into a vehicle at the best of times, let alone be in control of one. He preferred to walk, or run, into town, arranging to meet you at a particular place. You’d take his hand and give him the grounding he needed to be around so many people. He didn’t have a job but he worked and contributed to the household in other ways. He took care of the vegetable garden, a garden that was growing bigger and bigger each year. And looked after a few animals you kept, effortlessly slaughtering those you wanted to keep for food, tenderly collecting the eggs your brood of chickens gave you. It all helped.
When he did feel the need, the urge, when the instincts he was created to have got too much, he would disappear into the forest. Sometimes he’d come back in a few hours, other times he might stay away for a few days. Sometimes he’d return with a deer, knowing that the meat would help even while also knowing he had perhaps done a terrible thing. He cried the first time and you weren’t sure how to help him. As time went on, it got easier, the deer fewer. It had been almost two years now since he had gone into the forest. You were proud of him.
Your job at the local law firm was where your money came from. You took what had been a rather ramshackle organisation and transformed it into a tightly run, and more importantly, profitable ship. The children attended the local school. It was a quiet life, a simple life. A safe life.
X walked over to you and started to pull the grocery bags out of the truck. He smiled, his still crooked smile, and bent his head to kiss you.
‘Everyone alright?’ You asked.
He nodded. He didn’t always speak and that was fine. You communicated in a way that suited you both, and the children. Others may not understand but you did and that was all that mattered. You called to the children, who ran over to you.
‘How was your morning?’ you asked them.
‘We collected firewood!’ your son said, ‘Daddy chopped it all up!’
And he pointed to the neatly stacked piles in the wood store.
‘Excellent work team!’ you said and ushered them inside to clean up for lunch.
X had put the grocery bags on the kitchen table and was carefully pulling the items out, inspecting them and putting them away in the cupboards. He worked methodically, slowly, reading the labels of each item. His reading of physical things, books and such, had improved a lot but he still found it hard. However, since discovering audiobooks, his world was transformed and he had become an avid fan. Your evenings were often spent quietly, X settled on the couch, headphones in, you settled beside him, reading the same book he was listening to.
As you passed by him, you put a gentle hand on his back. His eyes followed you as you moved around the kitchen. You looked at him and smiled. He looked up as the children ran back in, clearing the last of the groceries off the table. He pointed at the stove.
‘Made soup,’ he said.
You looked at the pan. Inside was a thick, hearty vegetable soup.
‘That looks really good,’ you smiled, ‘do you want me to warm it up or do you want to do it?’
He stood for a moment pondering then pointed at you. While you stirred, he collected three bowls and a large mug and placed them next to the stove. You carefully poured soup into each of them. X sliced some bread and placed it on the table, collecting three spoons from the drawer. While he had learned how to use cutlery, sometimes he just preferred not to, so while he placed the bowls and spoons on the table for you and the children, he took his mug and held it with both hands.
You’d realised early on that there was only so much that you could cram into X’s brain. Some days he was more receptive to things than others. You hated to see him become frustrated when he continually failed at a task and so you decided that there were some battles that simply weren’t worth fighting. Besides, at what point did he stop being the man you loved and just became an experiment again? You wanted him to have a life, to live a life, and so you let him be to discover things in his own time. Which he did, you helping him when he asked for it. You were his lover, his partner, his wife in all but the legal sense of things, not a scientist observing him. That was the past and you were both happy for it to stay that way.
After lunch, you washed the dishes while X set about building up the fire. Winter was on its way and you needed to be prepared. Once the snow came you might be stuck here for a few days, until someone ploughed the road. It would be your seventh winter since moving here, old hands at it now. The children did not mind that they didn’t have to go to school and were always disappointed when they walked to the road with their father and found it clear. He would laugh his odd laugh and chase them back to the house, their laughs and screams echoing around the snow and trees.
***
You’d stayed with the Howletts for nearly two years, leaving for a new home with a baby in your arms and another in your belly. X and Logan’s relationship never really moved beyond cautious respect. You couldn’t blame either of them for that. You couldn’t imagine how confronting it must have been for Logan to see a clone of himself every day. Not only that but a clone created by the son of a man who helped to make Logan who he was. They were joined in blood, in more ways than one, but that didn’t mean they had to become best of friends. You were grateful for all the help they gave you, navigating a world that would very likely never understand what it was between you and X and certainly would never understand him. It was hard enough for mutants like Logan or Caliban, but for one like X, one who had been created in a lab, that was the stuff of fairy tales and nightmares.
It was your decision to leave, both you and X. You were given help with finding a place to live, but they let you know that this sanctuary was always there if you needed it, either of you. You still wrote to the Howletts, let them know how things were going and they had visited you a few times. They sent gifts for the children. You missed their girls and would have loved for all the children to have grown up together. A small fancy and one of the few regrets you had.
You’d remained at the house to have your first child. Logan had noticed X had started to become agitated the further along in your pregnancy you got. Logan had always remained vigilant around X, noticing things that others may have missed, and this was something that he had picked up on long before anyone else. It soon became obvious to everyone that this was a change that was having a profound effect on him. You too of course, but for you it was unlikely to end up in a potentially murderous rampage.
You and Mrs Howlett had shown X some videos of births to try and prepare him for what was going to happen. He had no concept of it and so you both knew that it could possibly be terrifying for him. Even so, as things progressed and Logan became more concerned, he decided to take X out one day, on the pretence of chopping wood, and talked to him, trying to get him to explain, as best he could, what his fears were. You were shocked when they came back hours later, bloody, though whole. They had fought, you found out, but not through anger, simply Logan offering himself as a way for X to vent some of the agitation and frustrations he couldn’t rid himself of in any other way. To say Mrs Howlett was mad at Logan for this would be an understatement. You didn’t think there was anyone in the house that day that didn’t hear her yelling at him about it.
It was decided that it would be better if you had the child away from the hospital. Mrs Howlett made the arrangements with the doctor and a midwife, both sympathetic to mutants and what the Howletts were doing. Also, being at the house, Logan could be on standby to deal with anything that might happen with X. By that time Mrs Howlett did at least understand why Logan had done what he did with X, even if she had not quite forgiven him for it.
As it was, things went smoother than anyone had anticipated. You lay in bed, exhausted but happier than you had ever been, watching X holding your child. His child. A man created only to kill, to destroy, holding the tiniest, most precious life in his hands. Logan had told you how he had felt when Laura was born and it seemed like they both had similar feelings. To everyone’s absolute surprise, X took to the role of fatherhood like a duck to water. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for the child, leaving you feeling a little left out at times. But you realised how unique your situation was and how things could have so easily turned out a very different way. You supposed that there were some instincts that were just always there. To protect, to nurture.
***
As night fell, you settled the children in bed and walked downstairs to the lounge. X was crouched by the fire, feeding some more logs onto it. He turned his head as you walked in, giving you a smile. You sat on the couch and picked up some sewing. X stood and came over to sit beside you, peering at the work in your hands. You were just patching some jeans, but he always seemed fascinated by intricate work like that. He told you once that his hands were clumsy. You didn’t agree, but he was insistent. You held them, kissed them and told him that his hands were beautiful, that they did careful and gentle things, like hold their babies, hold you, touch you. He used those very hands to brush your hair away from your face and cup your cheek.
‘See?’ you said, ‘gentle and kind hands.’
He smiled.
‘Gentle,’ he repeated.
Gentle. It was never a word that he would have thought would apply to him. He remembered his time in the labs, under Rice’s power, where he was not supposed to be gentle or kind or happy. Just a thing of rage. Even after all these years he did not regret killing Rice. Logan had told him about the way the scientists had put the metal into him. The pain it had caused and the way it made him forget himself for a long time. X wanted to know why these men thought that they had the right to play God. It was not something Logan had an answer for.
‘Who told you about God?’ he asked.
X had pointed at you. Logan nodded.
‘Man is supposed to be made in God’s image,’ he mused, ‘I don’t know if we are. I think we might be God’s mistake.’
X wasn’t always sure he understood what Logan was talking about. He thought that sometimes Logan wanted to die, that he had lived too long. But he also could see that he looked at his wife and children and they gave him the reason he needed to live and to be a better man. When X looked at you and the children he felt the same way. You gave him a reason to be more than what he was made to be.
***
Later, in bed, X fast asleep beside you. The quiet of the mountains blanketing the house. His arms wrapped around you and you felt the broad expanse of his chest against your back. You ran your hand along the length of his arm, along to his hands and threaded your fingers between his. You didn’t fear what was held beneath that thin layer of skin and tissue. You felt the warmth of the man you loved, who loved you, who loved the children he had given you. The man who, despite every effort to the contrary, had become the human being his creators never thought he could be. There was still the disquieting thought that one day someone would show up to try and reclaim X and it would all be over. He was too expensive and too unique to simply be let go. And yet so far, years had gone by and nothing. Still you couldn’t quite relax.
You felt X stir against you. He slept so soundly. This life had exorcised whatever demons Rice and his cronies had possessed him with. You felt a hand slipping under the hem of your nightdress. You turned your head but he was still asleep, even while his hand was now nestled between your thighs. You smiled and snuggled against him.
The next morning you walked downstairs to find X already had the children up and ready for their days. You were all early risers but he often let you sleep later.
‘You work,’ was all he said.
You sat at the table and put your hands around the cup of coffee X placed in front of you. He bent and kissed you.
‘Good morning,’ you said.
‘Morning,’ he smiled back.
You glanced out of the window.
‘No snow yet,’ you said.
‘Ugh. I suppose that means we have to go to school,’ your daughter said.
‘Afraid so,’ you smiled.
It was your day off, and after you had dropped the children at school, you had no other plans. At least, no plans that didn’t involve taking X back to bed for a few hours. As he stood by the sink, you wrapped your arms around his waist. You felt him relax against you.
‘I won’t be out long,’ you said, your voice low.
‘Good,’ he said quietly.
You’d go out then come back. Then slip back upstairs and let him undress you. You’d spend the morning making love. It was a luxury you knew that many didn’t have and it was one that you could never have imagined for yourself. As X stood at the door and waved you all off, you watched him until you couldn’t see him, the road curving away. Your man would have gone back inside, washed the dishes, chopped some more wood and then sat outside, watching the world that was never meant for him. You knew that there would be a smile on his lips, still a little odd, still a little crooked, but a true smile. One of contentment, because even if he didn’t understand the word, he understood the feeling. He would not give a thought to the past. Logan had told him that the past was useless, that there was nothing there but pain and shadows. The now and the future and you and the children were all that mattered. He had never really dreamt, when he was back in the lab, because he didn’t know what dreams were. He did now. Now his dreams were of you, of the children, of sunlight and the smell of the rain, the susurration of the snow falling, the tracks of animals when they ventured through the yard, of chickens letting him collect their eggs and rows of carrots he grew. Of the way his children had screamed their displeasure when they came into the world, wriggling and bloody. Of the way they smelled, of the way they hugged him, of the way they did not fear him. He dreamt of you. Of the way you loved him. And of the way he loved you.
