Archive of Our Own

There's no rule forbidding her to go. She drives up to Poughkeepsie three days a week, goes to classes and sometimes the library at Vassar, and drives back. She avoids her classmates, the fierce girls with their shaven heads and the lovely boys with their long hair. Her own is unmistakably touched with gray now, and she feels older than the other students, though it doesn't make the coursework any easier. She's lived twenty years, only four of them as a mutant, but she feels she has lived a long, long time.

She usually doesn't go anywhere but school and the occasional ice cream or DVD run, but tonight she waits until Kitty and Jubilee are gone, then leaves a perhaps overly concise note ("Went out, back later"), throws her things into a messenger bag and the bag into the Prius, and takes off for the Metro-North station in Purdy's, one town over, the closest to North Salem and the mansion. The train ride is just over an hour long, and she watches the lights get brighter as she gets closer to the city.

She gets off the commuter train at Grand Central and pulls her hands into the long sleeves of her shirt. It's hip right now to wear two layers--a small, tight T-shirt over a smaller, tighter long-sleeved one--but the crowds and the jostling make her nervous despite them. Her gloves go up to her elbows underneath the wrist-length sleeves, but even that doesn't seem like caution enough with so many people, so many careless people, around.

She makes her way through the terminal to the 6 train. It's ten o'clock on a Tuesday night, and the train is about half full. She takes a seat on the end of a row, with no one next to her. She reads "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," labeled "Poetry in Motion"; an ad for a homely man with great skin who claims to be New York's number one dermatologist; and examines her fellow passengers from behind the curtain of her hair. They appear tired.

At 33rd Street, people enter and exit, and one of them enters to sit down next to Marie. She moves over when she realizes it, but she's not quick enough, and his thigh brushes hers. She's wearing jeans, heavy solid blue fabric, and the man pulls out a volume of Stephen King without ever knowing that the brown-haired girl with downcast eyes could kill him as easily as she breathes. He gets off at Union Square no wiser for his risk. No one else sits next to Marie, and she gets off two stops later, at Bleecker.

The place she's looking for is at Rivington and Essex, east of here. She walks along bright, noisy Houston Street, watching the laughing NYU students and happy drunken bridge-and-tunnelers--of which, of course, she is one. Just not happy, and not drunk. At least not drunk yet. She's hoping to remedy that very soon.

She passes a store, located mostly outside, that appears to sell old road signs. Subway signs, too, she notices, staring at the intricate Chinese letters of a decommissioned Canal Street station sign. At least the writing looks intricate to her, but it probably isn't, no more than the blocky sans-serif English lettering. But Marie still thinks it looks cooler. She thinks of all the white people with Asian-language tattoos and wonders if any of them secretly say "Canal Street."

There's a stop sign for sale. She'll have to come back sometime when the store's open and see how much it is. She'd like it for her door.

She keeps walking--past Bowery, through the madness of the Second Avenue intersection. She crosses to the south side of the street, past a darkened park and a movie theater, crosses First Avenue and then Essex Street, which is Avenue A on its north side. There's a lesbian bar here that Kitty keeps trying to convince Marie to go to--not because Kitty wants to pick up a woman, Marie suspects, but because she's never seen a lesbian before and wants to commence an anthropological investigation.

But those aren't Marie's aims tonight, anthropology or lechery. She turns right on Essex and walks past old tenements that now have bars and tapas restaurants spilling out of their ground floors. Two blocks later comes Rivington.

She's looking for a place called Abyssus Abyssum Invocat, which is, in Marie's opinion, a pretty fancy name for what Jubilee described as a "freak bar." (She added that most people just call it Abyssus.) Google Maps placed it on the southwest corner, and, in fact, there it is. There's a small sign with simple black lettering outlined in orange flame.

"A freak bar?" Marie had asked. "As in mutants?"

"I just heard Logan call it a freak bar, but I feel like if he goes there, probably they don't have a problem with us."

Marie could have asked him about it, of course, but that would reveal her plans to go unaccompanied into the city and try to drink underage, and even though she suspects--knows--that he's done far worse, Logan is held to somewhat different standards from everyone else. And Marie can't help but think--petulantly, she knows, but it's there--that she's held to a separate set entirely, and she'd have to deal with that Look from the professor if she said she was going anywhere.

Really, it was easier just to leave the note and drive off.

Underneath the sign, the bar's door is heavy--feels like iron, and possibly is--but Marie opens it easily and walks into the darkness.

Her eyes have enough of Logan's in them to adjust quickly. For this time on a Tuesday, the bar has a fair number of people in it. The bartender's back is to her. She sits down on an empty stool at the near end of the bar and waits, but only for a few seconds; the bartender turns to her--but instead of ordering smoothly as she'd planned on the train, she's caught short by the patch on his left eye.

"Um," Marie says, "I'd like a beer. Please," and wants to kick herself for sounding so obviously as though she doesn't know what she's talking about. Which she doesn't, not really, but because of Logan, she does know one brand of beer from another, and which ones are good and which ones, in Logan's words, taste like goat piss.

The bartender nods at her and reaches for a glass, though it looks much too small for beer. But he has said nothing about her age, and Marie tries not to stare incredulously as he turns his back to her again and starts to assemble a drink in the glass. It doesn't look like a beer--is there a mixed drink whose name sounds like "beer"?--and this is confirmed when the bartender reaches for a tray of condiments. He takes a red plastic sword and spears it through a cherry, then another, then a third, and then two more. Dropping them into the glass, he smiles at Marie in a way that's made no less attractive by the eye patch and says, "You're an old soul, darlin', but not old enough to have a beer in my bar."

"What the hell is this?" Marie demands, the cherries flashing her back to Mississippi, to brunches with her parents at the country club where her father knew to ask for five cherries in his daughter's Shirley Temple.

"Shirley Temple," says the bartender, depositing a swizzle stick into the concoction. "Extra cherries." And Marie is left staring at the drink.

She takes a sip, and it tastes like every brunch she ever had with her parents--like fruit so ripe it bursts on your tongue, like the giddy fizzy sweetness of the sips she was allowed to take from her mother's mimosas, and even like the crystal notes of the pianist playing in the background and the warm diffuse sun playing on her shoulders when they would sit outside. She feels tears spring to her eyes, and fumbles in her pocket for a few bills to throw on the counter.

"On the house, darlin'," the bartender says, pushing back the money--could be three dollars, could be thirty, could be three hundred for all Marie knows, though she doesn't think she's carrying that much.

She sits and stares--into space, at the drink--and it could be that people are coming and going, or it could be that she's the only person in the bar. She stirs the drink with the red plastic stick and watches the cherries leave pink trails in the clear liquid.

"Oh, my luscious little lemondrop," a voice murmurs behind her, and heavy male hands drop onto her shoulders. She jerks--a motion that would throw off any man except maybe Logan--but the hands stay steadily in place. You idiot, Marie thinks at him, you stupid idiot.

"What is it, my little lemondrop, that makes you smell so delectable?" The voice, a low East London purr, continues, and this time the speaker's lips are right next to her ear, close enough to make the hairs on her neck stand on end.

"Spike," says the bartender in a voice that is offhand but no less firm for that, "stop harassing the customers."

This person--this Spike--drops onto the stool beside her. He looks like he sounds, with his platinum hair, sharp cheekbones, and long leather jacket that settles around him like a pet. "I'll have whatever the lemondrop is having," he tells the bartender.

"One Shirley Temple with extra cherries coming up."

"Stop shitting me, Harris." He leans over to look at Marie's drink. "Oh, hell, you're serious! Fine, then, I'll have a Bloody Mary, the way it's supposed to be made."

"No Bloody Mary for you, Spike," the bartender replies in that same mild voice. "Haven't got the fixings on hand."

"Oh, but they're so simple," the blond sneers elegantly. "I'm sure anyone in this room would have the ingredients readily available."

"Maybe," says the bartender, "but not for you," and hands Spike a pint of something so dark one might stand up a spoon in it.

"Can't win if you don't try," the blond says, and drinks. Then he puts the pint down and turns back to Marie. "So, lemondrop"--he waggles his eyebrows--"extra cherries?"

Marie ignores him, or pretends to.

"Now let's address that matter of your luscious scent. So luscious, in fact, that it might make a man lewd and lascivious. Whatever could it be?"

She gives up and turns to look at him. "Clinique. Happy."

"Ah," the blond says. "And does it, in fact, make one happy?"

"Not as far as I can tell. But I like how it smells."

"False advertising, then. You should change scents. Joy, perhaps. Or Beautiful, though it would be quite redundant."

Marie ducks her head. "Thanks."

"Statement of fact, love. Just don't take up Obsession. Seems like a bad idea all around."

"What about Be?" Marie says.

The blond sniffs. "No challenge. We all are. What manner of adventure is that? 'Be.' 'Thanks, mate, but I already am.' Obsession, though ill advised, is at least interesting."

"Pleasures," Marie says, remembering a bottle she once saw on Jean's dresser, and her eyes widen when she realizes what she's just said.

One of the blond's eyebrows arches at her. "Now that"--he raises his glass in salute--"is a name I can wholeheartedly support. In both noun and verb form."

"How about as an adjective?"

"Worthy, certainly. But one might prefer the adverbial, describing, as it does, an action." He drinks again, and his eyes don't leave her. "Or a series of actions."

Marie blushes.

"Spike, I thought I told you not to molest the guests," the bartender says without turning around.

"No molestation, captain, just an innocent discussion of perfume. Tell me, Harris, what does your lady friend wear?"

"Kenneth Cole. Black."

"A solid choice for a woman both fearsome and classy. I approve."

"I'll let her know," the bartender says, and Marie hears the smile in his voice.

"How do you know so much about perfume?" Marie asks the blond.

His smile is unreadable, and Marie wishes she'd gotten some telepathy in her strange cocktail of other people's powers. "I've what you might call an elevated sense of smell, ducks. And permit me to add that the twenty-first century is, in that department, a vast improvement over previous eras. People bathe daily; it's marvelous. And along with such innovations as hot running water, mankind has seen fit to bring forth all sorts of inventions for women and even men to scent themselves with. I can't avoid them, so I thought I'd learn something about them." He leans in close, and Marie starts to dart back, but his hand is cupping her shoulder. His grip isn't tight, but it's strong in the same effortless way that Logan can kick down a locked door without even taking a deep breath.

She steadies her own breathing--his hands on her shoulders are over two layers of shirt, and she'll just wiggle out of it.

"So what's your favorite?" she asks him.

"To be honest, I like how a woman smells without chemical intervention. Crisp, flowery, whatever Mother Nature and her own biology saw fit to give her." He's got a strand of Marie's hair wound around his finger before she even realizes it's there. "What about you, pet?"

She pulls back a little, her hair drawing through his fingers. She thinks of the men she knows: Bobby, who always smells as though he's straight out of the shower. Logan, who smells a little bit clean and a little bit spicy except when he's covered in axle grease. Scott, who always smells of lemon and basil, which Marie thinks must be some sort of soap or aftershave that Jean buys for him.

"Clean," she says. "Not cologne or anything. Just clean. And I don't like things that make you smell like food--raspberry, vanilla, coconut, that kind of stuff. It makes me feel like a walking grocery store."

"Fair number of ambulatory snack bars in this world," the blond agrees. "I don't mind the raspberry and vanilla--both fine flavorings for a woman--but I concur that humans smelling like coconuts is a sign of the decline of Western civilization."

"I always thought that was reality TV."

"Oh, no. A regression, perhaps, but a fine tradition in the family of gladiatorial combat and public executions. Illegal--and socially a bit awkward--to show that on television nowadays, so we have Survivor and Fear Factor instead. Which, mind you, I watch purely as sociological observation."

"Do you also read Playboy for the articles?"

"Touché. Not to my taste, really, but if I were inclined towards the airbrushed--and that is a sign of the imminent fall of mankind--I assure you that I would entirely ignore the articles. But," he continues, and his fingers are somehow in her hair again, "I have been around long enough to know that I prefer natural colors"--he passes the strands of gray between thumb and forefinger--"and flavors."

And he kisses her.

On reflex, Marie jumps back, recoiling hard enough that she lands on her feet on the floor. She's ready to scream to the bartender to call 911--

--but the blond is still sitting on his bar stool, looking mildly embarrassed but otherwise none the worse for having kissed someone with fatally toxic skin.

"You're not dead," is the first thing that pops out of Marie's mouth.

The blond man snorts. "Well, that's certainly up for debate."

"You're OK. You're not, like, sick. Or in a coma."

"Admittedly, I feel a little foolish, but no, right as rain otherwise."

"I've almost killed everyone I've touched since I was sixteen years old," Marie blurts out.

With that same inhuman speed--and the same even expression--the blond leans forward and sets his hand, gently but firmly, on the back of her neck, on the bare skin underneath her hair. It's one of the few parts of her body besides her face that she doesn't cover--with her long hair, it's pretty well shielded on its own.

Until now.

The seconds slow as Marie stares into his cobalt eyes. Nothing happens. She can feel the coolness of his fingers, the slight pressure of her heartbeat against them, and it seems as though the bar has gone silent as she stands there with another person's skin against her own for the first time in four years.

"What are you?" she whispers when she has her breath back.

"Apparently I could ask the same of you. Demon of some kind--one who smells remarkably better than the vast majority of her brethren?"

The blond's eyes are still even with hers. Marie doesn't break his gaze. "Mutant," she says.

Gently, the blond pulls her back toward him and arranges her on her bar stool. "One's biological and the other supernatural, but not much difference as far as I can tell." His hand is on her knee, but it seems as much steadying as suggestive. "Though Harris is really more the expert on that topic."

"Up yours, Spike," the bartender calls without rancor, and without turning around.

"Tempting, but I'll save myself the resulting death match with your girlfriend."

"What kind of mutant are you?" Marie asks. She's never heard of anything like this. Even the most powerful of them--Magneto, the professor--are still vulnerable to her touch. If there exists a mutant who isn't, could that mean...

"Long, unpleasant story," Spike answers, and Marie knows to drop the subject. She thinks of Marrow: There are some mutations, some stories, that you let be. "Anyway," Spike continues, "apologies for molesting you unwantedly. I hope there was no harm done."

Marie takes a breath. "It--it wasn't unwanted," she says in a rush. "I just don't like killing people."

"I assure you that you would not have that issue with me. Though"--and the wicked gleam is back--"a man might find it a fine thing to die a little death in your arms."

Marie blushes. Again.

The blond's hand slides up Marie's thigh to cup the curve of her hip. There's technically no difference between this pseudotouch and others: Logan's hand on her clothed shoulder, Bobby's fingers interlaced with the gloved covering on her own. But the intent is quite, quite different, and for the first time in several years, Marie feels her spine loosen and lean her in the direction of another person.

"You're sure I won't hurt you?" she says.

The blond kisses her by way of answer.

He tastes like beer, but the taste reminds her of how Logan sometimes smells, and Marie finds that she doesn't mind it. She thinks of a conversation overheard between two of the younger girls at school: "Eew, and he, like, tried to jam his tongue down my throat, and I know it looks all sexy in the movies, but it was like he just stuck his finger up my nose!"

Yes, it's unexpected, the cool smooth touch of this man's tongue against hers, but there's nothing gross about it, not at all. She feels his fingers tangle into her hair, and she remembers that this is what people do. She calls upon movies, books, even the shocking sight of Scott and Jean in the kitchen late one night (Scott's mouth on her graceful neck, Jean's hands in his back pockets, and some very slow, very disturbing back-and-forth rocking)--things Marie had considered as foreign as an anthropological survey of a South Pacific Island. Well, now it's as though she's been airdropped onto that island, the natives are speaking to her, and--incredibly--she is speaking back.

She lets her hands slide up his back. The muscles beneath the cotton are hard, compact, corded in a way that she has seen (Logan working on his truck, Scott playing basketball, Warren holding court by the pool) but never, of course, dared touch. Her fingers drift to the collar of his shirt, and she thinks the curve of the nape of his neck is the most perfect thing she has ever almost-touched.

"Lemondrop," the blond growls and she shudders as his lips trail their way down her neck, "let's get these gloves off you."

"Not--oh," she gasps as his teeth graze lightly at a place just under her jaw that she never knew was sensitive like that. If she's dizzy like this just from three kisses, what might the rest of it be like?

That thought is even more dizzying.

"Not in public," she manages. "It's too dangerous."

"What I have in mind is certainly not fit to be done in public." His lips are brushing a point where her shoulders meet her neck.

"Oh my God," Marie breathes.

"No," he says, "just Spike. And what is your name, my delicious little confection?"

"Marie." She gasps as his tongue touches the rim of her ear. Ears? Who knew?

"Ah, Marie, who wanted her subjects to eat nothing but cake. One imagines that you are a hundred times as sweet." He pushes himself off his stool and looks directly and wickedly at her. "Let's go find out, shall we?"

He takes her hand, and this is something she's watched a hundred thousand times but hasn't experienced for herself since she was fifteen years old. His fingers are cool, firm, and dry. It feels less weird than she'd thought it would.

The blond--Spike--leaves money for the bartender, who promptly wads it up and throws it at him. They're about to pass the jukebox on their way out when it rattles itself into motion, proclaims, "Can't touch this!" and proceeds to barrel through the opening to the song.

The door flies open and a woman glossy dark hair bursts in. She looks as though she's about to say something to Spike, but then she turns to glare at the jukebox. "Oh, for fuck's sake," she says, and kicks it with a combat-booted foot.

The jukebox launches into "Soul Man."

Spike sighs long-sufferingly. "That apparently never grows old."

"And neither do you, blondie." The woman looks at Marie for a moment that's a touch longer than normal. Marie looks right back. This woman is tough and intimidating, but Marie has squared off with Magneto--hell, she deals with Logan on a daily basis--and she's a lot more inured to tough and intimidating than she used to be.

"Marie," Spike says, almost carefully, "meet Faith. Faith, this is Marie."

Faith puts out her hand slowly, as though she's not sure of the risk--which is ridiculous, because there's no way she could know, and in any case Marie's wearing gloves. "It's nice to meet you, Marie," Faith says, but with an odd expression on her face, as though she's trying to work out where she's seen Marie before. But then she turns back and looks at Spike. "Leaving so soon?"

"Miles to go before I sleep," he replies.

"But no promises to keep," Faith says.

"Some of those, too, ducks," he answers her.

"I bet." The woman's eyes are smiling, if not her mouth. "Stay out of trouble," she adds, looking at Marie as she says it.

This time, when they leave, the jukebox is playing something that sounds almost like bluegrass, a man's voice in harmony with a woman's, and Marie hears the lines, "Come on, baby, kill me with a kiss; come on, make me die of happiness."

Marie thinks of the MC Hammer and snorts. "The jukebox in here has a sick sense of humor."

"You have no idea." Spike pauses. "You must have given it an especial inspiration. I don't think I've ever heard this one before."

The jukebox sings, "Tell the doctor he ain't got no cure. I'm a goner, baby, that's for sure," and they walk outside.

"So," Spike says once they're on the sidewalk, "your candy castle or mine?"

Marie thinks for a moment of the hue and cry that would break out if she brought someone back to the school. (Logan does it all the time, but, again, that's different for a number of reasons.) And then there are the logistics of her roommates to be reckoned with.

"My candy castle has a lot of other people in it," Marie says. "Plus it's far."

"Mine is gloriously unoccupied and close by." Spike hails a taxi. "Shall we?"

Spike gives the driver an address, but Marie barely hears it because he's pulling her into his lap. "What are you doing?" she squeaks.

"Introducing you to a time-honored New York tradition," Spike replies, draws her face down, and kisses her.

It takes a few moments for Marie to pull herself away--to ignore the hand that has settled on the small of her back, underneath her shirt, surprisingly cool on her skin--and ask, "What tradition is that?"

The other hand is still safely above her clothing, but Spike begins to explore her breast through the cloth, and even through three layers of cotton, she knows when his fingers find her nipple. Her hips arch forward seemingly of their own volition, and something warm begins to loosen below her belly button, in the cradle of her hips.

"A tradition observed by generations of New Yorkers," Spike murmurs.

"Making--oh--making out in cabs?"

Spike arranges her legs so that she's straddling him. There's a point of warmth and pressure that doesn't seem anatomically logical--Marie's eyes widen as she realizes what it is. She knows how sex works, certainly. She just never quite applied it to herself, and what it might feel like pressed against an answering part of herself. Marie shifts, and then her eyes widen even more when she hears Spike draw a sharp breath, and his answering shift puts that point of warmth and pressure--his cock, Marie thinks, and feels herself blush in the dark--just at the place on her body where it would go in. Where--and her hips and thighs move before she has even thought about it, move to center her over that point and push against it--where she wants it, its precise size and shape and hardness, inside.

"Ah," Spike breathes, looking very pleased with himself, "you do learn quickly."

"Good teacher," Marie answers, laughing a little breathlessly.

Marie's not sure whether Spike's house is very close by, or whether this sort of thing just makes a car ride pass uncommonly fast. In any case, it seems sudden when they come to a stop on a quiet street, and Spike is paying the driver, and before Marie knows it, she's out on the sidewalk again, only now instead of boutiques and bars and old tenements, stately brick townhouses face her.

She would expect someone of Spike's description to live in a neighborhood more like the one they've just left. But Spike pulls out a set of keys from his coat pocket and leads Marie up a set of wrought iron–lined steps to a blue door with an ornate brass knocker. And it's not the hallway of an apartment house they step into, but rather the foyer of a Gilded Age mansion. Spike sets his keys on a small table made of glossy dark wood, and turns to Marie. "Take your coat, ducks?"

She hands it to him and continues staring. "This is your house?"

"I bought it before the real estate boom. Something to drink? I'll give you the five-cent tour."

He fixes a gin and tonic for her and a Scotch, neat, for himself, then shows her around. He must have family money, Marie thinks--even fifteen years ago a townhouse in Chelsea would have cost well over a million; now it would be at least ten times that. The living room has a real fireplace, and there's a library with a stained-glass window and a sliding ladder so that you can reach the top shelves. The kitchen is all smooth walnut cabinets, gleaming stainless-steel appliances, and polished wood floors; the dining room has a verandah and columns. Columns.

"Did you win the lottery?" Marie asks. "Or just sell your soul?"

Spike lets out a bark of laughter that's almost harsh. "Bit of both. Show you the upstairs?"

"Is that where your etchings are hung?"

"Among other things." He holds out his hand, Marie takes it, and they ascend the staircase, which is the same buttery wood as the cabinets, and carpeted in the middle with plush cream-colored piles.

There are several doors at the top of the landing. One is partway open and obviously leads to a bathroom; another gives a glimpse of what might be an office or another library. The other three are closed, and there's another staircase, leading to a third floor.

"Guest room," Spike says, gesturing to one of the closed doors. "Office"--to one of the partly opened ones. "Harris's boudoir."

"Harris?"

"Bartender, one-eyed bandit, and the only man on earth with the balls to regularly bed Faith Lehane."

"The bartender's your roommate?" Marie says, perplexed.

"Big place for just one person. Plus, you never know when you'll need a psychic bartender around. Knows when you need a hot toddy, and eliminates the need for caller ID."

"He's psychic?" Marie says, wanting to kick herself for how stupid she sounds, but suddenly that scene in the bar is making a whole lot more sense.

"Let me guess: He gave you a drink you didn't even know you wanted."

"Shirley Temple," Marie says, only realizing a moment later that it was out loud. "Extra cherries."

Spike opens another door and stands aside to let Marie pass through it. "And finally, lemondrop, my own candy castle. And let's continue that discussion about cherries."

"What?" Marie says at what seems like a non sequitur; her brain is busy taking in the four-poster bed, mahogany furniture, and what look suspiciously like original Picassos (plural) on the walls.

Spike closes the door, take her drink and sets it on a coaster, and arranges her gently so that she's sitting on the bed. "Cherries, ducks. Specifically, the one I'm guessing you possess."

Marie blushes and looks down at the crisp dove-grey duvet. "Yes," she says. "Still."

"Nothing to be ashamed of, love. I'm also guessing that your unique condition has limited your opportunities." Spike sets his hand on her knee and pulls her closer, and Marie goes willingly. He draws his hands through her hair, spreading it around her shoulders, wrapping it around his fingers. It feels good--like being petted, she thinks--and she closes her eyes and lets him. He murmurs to her, so softly that she can't make out the individual words--which is probably the point. It's just that husky, rich voice and his hands gentle in her hair, and then on her face and on her back as he kisses her neck and her ears, runs a hand up her arm to find where her glove ends above the elbow, and begins to roll the fabric down, baring her skin.

She starts. "But--"

His hand pauses, though the other is still tracing random patterns on the back of her neck, underneath her hair. "Just you and me, pet," he says. "Whatever you do to humans, it's nothing to worry about here." He pushes the glove down to her wrist, and her hand is exposed--to air, to touch. It's the first time in years that she's dared uncover a hand when someone else is around, for fear of brushing skin when handing over a pencil or a Coke, and killing them. In her room with Kitty and Jubilee, she sleeps in long-sleeved shirts, long pajama pants, gloves on, in case something happens and someone awakens her at night. In case, in case. She's lived the past four years under one big "in case."

Spike sets her bare hand on his (clothed) knee and sets to work on her other glove, and then there are Marie's hands, their skin nearly as pale as his own from being covered so much of the time. He takes both of them in his, and she closes her eyes. She remembers her hand in Cody's, in her father's, in her mother's. The memories are almost too much, too intense, and she breaks the contact and reaches, hesitantly, to touch his hair. He takes her other hand and sets it on the nape of his neck, where the skin is impossibly soft.

Spike settles his hands on her back and kisses her again, and before she knows what she's doing, her fingers are in his hair and she's pulling him closer, arranging herself in his lap, where he's hard again (or still hard?), kissing him fiercely because she can. He slides his hands under her shirt, discovers her undershirt, and divests both from the waistband of her jeans. Her arms rise as if by instinct, and now she's wearing her jeans, Logan's dog tags, and a bra she never thought anyone else would ever see. She reaches behind herself, unhooks the bra, and shrugs it off. And then she does something perhaps even more unexpected than everything else that's happened over the past hour: She lifts the chain from around her neck and drops the tags into a stainless-steel puddle on the nightstand.

Spike addresses himself to what's in front of him. Her nipples are hard, and she gasps happily when he takes one between his fingers--then moans outright when it's his mouth. The cool slickness is unlike anything she's ever felt, and it ignites a fuel line down the length of her body.

The texture of his tight black shirt is soft and slinky, silk maybe. Her fingertips find their way underneath it. The hair on his chest is a ticklish coarseness. He pauses in his explorations and reaches down and then up, and then the shirt is gone, revealing pale, perfect skin and an abdomen that superbly rivals any of the others she's seen. She runs her fingers over the tight muscles and brushes his tiny male nipples--then pauses, feeling suddenly stupid. She ducks her head and says, "I--I don't really know. Does that feel good to men, too?"

His hand has wandered wickedly low on her body, she realizes. "It depends entirely on the man, sweet, but for myself, oh yes."

She's blushing again, she can tell. "Um--like with hands? Mouth?"

"Either is good, both are better. And you don't have to be overly gentle. I don't mind if it hurts a little." She looks up in surprise. (But why? She saw those bondage sites that Kitty pulled up once, and that she and Kitty and Jubilee stared at, giggling, until Bobby and John came to get them for dinner, and Kitty hurriedly closed the browser.) Spike is smiling a smile that begs to be kissed away and have dirty things done with it besides. "Pleasure and pain sometimes go together magnificently," he says. He kisses her temple. "But no pain for you. Just pleasure tonight. As much as I can provide."

"You're sure of yourself," she says, letting her fingers twist lightly around his nipples.

He gasps. "Ah, lemondrop, you've got the right of it--in both your observation and the things you're doing with your hands. Yes," he adds on a breath when she puts her mouth where her fingers have been, and uses a little bit of teeth.

He's not too distracted, though, to continue with his own trajectory, which is to unbutton the top of her jeans. Some part of her that never quite left Mississippi panics, remembering what she's been told all boys want and what happens after they get it. And then she almost laughs. She wants this just as much as the "boy" in question does, maybe even more because she's never done it before and he clearly has. And it's not like she's trying to get him--or anyone--to put a ring on her finger. She rises a little, onto her knees, and undoes the rest of the buttons, then takes Spike's hands and puts them on the exposed skin.

"Mmm," Spike says. "If that's the case, why don't we take these off altogether?"

She scoots back and puts her legs over the edge of the bed, ready to stand and shed the rest of her clothes--but under his eyes another sort of shyness takes over. He's done this before, obviously--a lot. And with his looks--those cheekbones, those eyes, my God those abs--he's probably seen some female bodies that make Marie's own into an unmemorable pale blob by comparison.

He takes off shoes, socks, then stands with predatory feline grace. Four quick flicks of his fingers, and his own jeans fall to the floor. There's nothing beneath them, and Marie realizes that she's seeing a naked man for the first time.

He's magnificent, more of that creamy skin and then a trail of dark hair (the blond on his head, obviously, is not natural) that guides a path from his navel down to where his cock arches unashamedly from between his thighs. Her only bases of comparison are the David (tiny) and dirty Web sites (Kitty and Jubilee again--and cartoonishly enormous), and she's relieved to see that Spike falls happily in the middle of these extremes. He's looking at her once again with that arch expression of frank invitation. "To teach thee," he says, "I am naked first. Why, then, what needst thou have more covering than a man?"

He's quoting something, obviously, but she doesn't recognize it. "What's that from?"

He shakes his head. "The things they omit in university these days. John Donne, undressing his mistress." Spike holds out a hand to Marie. "Come, my America, my Newfoundland, let me see you as God and nature intended." He runs his hands up her sides, across her breasts, down her back, but it's almost more reassuring than seductive.

Then he slides his hands underneath the waistband of her black panties (boring but, thank God, not actively ugly) and pushes the remainder of her clothing steadily down. She takes two steps and she's naked in front of a man for the first time. In front of anyone for the first time, at least since she's been old enough to remember it.

He cards his fingers through her hair, arranging it so that it falls around her shoulders. "Like Lady Godiva," he says, "covered only by the silk of her hair." His hands are exploring again, and she stops thinking, closers her eyes, pays attention only to the patterns being laid out on her skin. She sits back down on the bed and pulls him with her. He settles them both back against the pillows and stretches out alongside her.

She's arching up against his touch, but even so, she gasps (almost comes right then) when his sure fingers find her clit for the first time. He's stroking her lightly, teasing her while his mouth goes back to her nipples. The sensations are shocking and intense, almost too much for her to take in all at once, and her mind seems to short out, giving up conscious thought in order to take in the overdose of pleasure.

His lips leave her breasts, and Marie opens her eyes to protest--except then they relocate to somewhere she never dreamed a man's mouth would touch. (When she was younger, she thought it dirty; when she was older, impossible.) His lips are impossibly soft, gentle, but insistent, coaxing her until she's helpless, she can't help it, she comes with one hand in the bleached satin of his hair, the other clenching the covers into a tortured ball, and then she does it again, harder, shuddering, too lost to be embarrassed by the sounds she makes.

She's aware enough to let go of his hair, but she lies sprawled for several minutes, eyes closed, as her pulse slows to something like normal. When she finally opens her eyes again, it's to see Spike still lying beside her, his hand on her stomach.

"Sorry," she manages.

Spike turns them both so that she's facing him, and arranges her leg over his hip. He is, if it's possible, harder, even though she hasn't done anything to him.

"Don't be," he says. "There are few sights more beautiful to a man than that."

She runs a hand down his arm, over his shoulders, settles it on the back of his neck, and tries something that sounds vaguely repulsive at first but that she's read about (and anyway it seems only fair): kisses him, tasting the essence of herself on his mouth and tongue. It's not gross at all, she thinks after a moment. Salty and a bit--surprisingly--metallic, but not gross. Which somehow makes sense. A lot of men (and a fair number of women) enjoy doing this, if her reading is anything to go by, and why would so many people enjoy it if it were gross?

"You looked a million miles away there," Spike says. "What's firing in that brain of yours?"

"Nothing," she answers, tracing the curve of his neck. "Just that sometimes what people tell you versus what's actually true when you do something for yourself are often very different."

Spike cocks an eyebrow at her, but she doesn't explain, just smiles. The saltwater taste of herself on Spike's lips, the feeling of his tongue on her most private places--things impossible to describe.

"Experience," Spike says, and kisses her. "That's the only true reporter."

Marie turns them both again so that she's lying stretched on top of Spike. For the first time she can feel not just the pressure but the warmth and texture of his hardness between her legs; and she feels a sudden pulse and heat of her own as her mind and body decide, simultaneously and unanimously, that she wants that inside her and now, please. She wriggles, and smiles when she feels Spike move to answer her and his hands fall to her hips.

"Mmm, lemondrop, shall I presume that you want the same thing I do?"

"That depends. Do you want world domination? A pony?"

"Something far, far simpler," and suddenly he's on top again.

"Then yes," Marie answers, "I think we're agreed."

Spike pushes himself up on one arm and--in perhaps the first ungraceful motion Marie has seen all night--reaches over her head to open a drawer on the nightstand and remove something from it. "Forgive the presumption," he says, "but I assume you're not carrying."

Marie sees a small square packet in his finger. Right, she thinks. You're supposed to use those when you're sleeping with somebody. In particular if you're sleeping with somebody you don't know. There've been what seem like thousands of sex talks at the mansion since she's lived there--with that many teenagers in one small place, the adults try to the point of overkill to get the point across about safe sex and how the results of two mutants having a kid can be unpredictable at the very least--but she tuned most of them out. What good, after all, did the information do her? It was only out of embarrassment that she hadn't asked to be excused from those endless assemblies and girls-in-one-room-and-boys-in-the-other classes.

She's seen more condoms on bananas than she'll ever be able to count, but she still can't help think it looks funny, this little piece of latex as it clothes Spike's cock when the rest of him is so gloriously naked. She skims her hand over it, feeling the ridges under this strange, smooth sheath. Spike rises on his elbows. He brushes some stray strands of hair back from Marie's forehead, then bends to kiss her. He's not inside her, but he's moving slightly, subtly, unmistakably, in a rhythm that matches what Marie finds to be her body's own. She's moving with him, her hands wandering the expanse of his back, the bridge of his shoulders, then down to the hard curves of his ass.

She urges him and he goes willingly.

She can't help but gasp at the not unexpected pain, this foreign object, this unaccustomed shape that doesn't quite fit. He stops, holding himself perfectly still. "Too much?" he asks gently.

She pauses, thinks, listens to parts of her body that are speaking for the first time. The pain is dissipating, her body arranging itself around the newness. "No," Marie says, and finds that she's smiling. "No. Just go slow."

Oh, it's slow, slow and deliberate, and she shudders as the pain washes away completely, replaced by a pleasure she could (no matter how much Anaïs Nin she reads, no matter how much--though she'll die before admitting it--Emma Holly and Jacqueline Carey) never have imagined. It's not the building orgasm; of course she can do that on her own. It's the sensation of stretching to allow the fit of another person; the hardness and depth and exquisite control; the touch of Spike's hand cradling the side of her face. All of it, all at once, almost too much to take in.

He isn't even sweating--the bastard--and though Marie's breath is coming quick and sharp, his voice is utterly steady as he purrs, "Idea, pet," and drops down to roll them back onto their sides. It wouldn't be fair to call his movements thrusts now; they're too smooth, too subtle. And his hands are free, and he uses that to his advantage to move one to her breast, outlining the areola with his fingers, then teasing her nipple so very gently--but enough that she feels it between her thighs, where Spike is still slow but insistent inside her.

He could be a little more insistent, Marie thinks. She would like that. She uses her leg, again over his hip, to draw him deeper inside, and his hand moves down to find her clit again, and oh God it feels good. She tries to go faster, but in this position there's only so much she can do. A scene from one of the Kushiel books flashes through her head, and Marie pushes Spike onto his back, rolling with him and then balancing herself with her hands on his shoulders.

"Lemondrop," Spike breathes, settling one hand on her thigh and the other on the small of her back, "I wholeheartedly approve."

Now it's faster, deeper, and Spike's fingers are back where they were just a few minutes ago. He's arching up, she meets him halfway, she moves her hands from his shoulders to his nipples, and he shudders when she finds her target, shudders and gasps, but his fingers don't lose their surety. If anything, they gain a little, as though this is a game, and he won't be beaten--but Marie's body doesn't care who the winner is. All she's aware of, now, are his strong, slick fingers against her clit; his cock inside her; the intense sensation of all of this. She spreads her own fingers on his chest, because if she braces herself, she can go faster and harder, and she does, crying out with the pleasure of it, listening to his gasps in time with hers.

And she's coming again, so powerfully that her world goes black for a second, immersed in the heat and intensity of it. She feels her back arch, her head fall back, and she doesn't see him follow her, but feels and hears it: the rigidity that overtakes his entire body, the clenching of his hand on her thigh, his hoarse shout of pleasure that mingles with her own sounds.

She doesn't lie down so much as collapse onto his chest. Maybe if she'd paid attention in those interminable health classes, she'd remember that the condom needs to be disposed of, but she didn't and she doesn't, and she grumbles when he gets out of bed. He returns in a moment and settles her against him, and she tucks her head under his chin.

It's been a long day, she realizes. She had a nine o'clock class, which meant that she had to leave around seven thirty. (Even as way-the-hell-out as the mansion is, there's still weekday rush-hour traffic.) So she's been up since six thirty, and she's been busy going to class and studying in the library and taking the train into the city and trying to order a beer and meeting a psychic bartender with an eyepatch and losing her virginity. She thinks maybe she should say something to Spike, but she's far too tired to come up with anything clever, and what pops out is, "That was fun. No wonder the human race survived."

She hears him laugh and also feels it as his chest moves under her head, which is strange but pleasant. His hands make gentle pathways in her hair. "You say the nicest things."

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm too tired for anything more suave. But it was...I enjoyed it." What she thinks is: And thank you for showing me, even if you didn't mean to, that it's possible.

"The pleasure is all mine. Well. Not all mine, I hope."

She laughs, too, and feels herself start to fall asleep. Etiquette may dictate that she's supposed to get up and put her clothes on and leave. She has no idea. But she's tired and warm and Spike isn't protesting, and she feels entirely like a normal girl as her eyes close and she falls into sleep.

Before Marie became a mutant, she could sleep as late as she wanted. But she's been living at the school for too many years now, and between her roommates and the little kids running around early in the morning, she's lost the ability to sleep past eight o'clock. It sucks.

When she wakes up, the room is so dark that she thinks it must still be the middle of the night, and she goes back to sleep. When she wakes again, it has to be much later--she feels as though she's slept for a while--but the room is still pitch-black. She can't hear much from outside, but then this block seems pretty quiet anyway. So maybe her time sense is just off.

She rolls over onto her back and stretches. She's a little bit sore, but it's not bad--just a reminder of what she's been doing, really, more than actual pain. Spike slings an arm across her belly, and Marie lies there for a few moments smiling nonsensically.

"Sleep well?" he asks.

"Yes, actually. You?"

"The sleep of the innocent. Luckily, it's not restricted to the innocent."

"I was exhausted." She feels herself smile. "Thanks to you."

She wasn't planning on this, but they do it again. She tries going down on a man for the first time, and finds that though it's somewhat ungainly (and it does tend to make one's jaw hurt after a while), it's really not the exercise in obscenity and nastiness that some of the girls at school seem to think. She likes the power of it: holding someone captive with so little exertion on her part, using her hands and mouth and listening to the rich sounds of pleasure Spike makes in response.

Experience, she thinks, remembering his earlier words. The only true reporter.

"What time is it?" she thinks to ask afterward, yawning. It must still be pretty early. She bets she could totally fall back asleep now.

Spike turns on the bedside lamp, Marie groans and covers her eyes, and he turns it back off again. "Bit after noon. Somewhere you need to be?"

"No. I don't have class today." It's a lie, but after three years without a single one missed, Marie thinks, she's entitled to take a day in honor of the miraculous occurrence of finally getting laid. "Are you sure the clock's right? It's still so dark."

"The clock's right. I have shutters that block out the light."

"How come?" Marie asks. "I would find that depressing, not waking up to sunlight."

Spike's laugh, once again, is a bit harsh. "Don't think that hasn't crossed my mind. But there's no other way."

"Do you have--" She tries to remember the name of the disease, but blanks on it--but she remembers from a biology project several years ago that there's a rare disease where people are basically allergic to ultraviolet light. "Ugh, I can't remember the name now, but the disease where people can't go out in sunlight at all."

"Metaphorically speaking, I suppose," Spike says. "But, no, in reality it's far simpler than that. You're a mutant girl; I'm sure you can guess what the answer is."

Of all the mutations to get, Marie thinks, that one bites maybe even worse than hers. At least she can go out during the day.

"Oh," she says. "Wow. That's a crappy mutation. If you don't mind my asking, what are your powers?"

"Does immortality count?"

"I don't see why not. I've never heard of that before. How did they even test for it? God, tell me they didn't just try to kill you with a bunch of things."

Spike turns on the lamp on the nightstand again. His expression is unreadable. "Little mutant, do you really not know what I'm getting at?"

Marie looks back at him steadily. "I guess not," she says, "if you're asking."

He sighs. "It's nothing so unique as mutation." And then his face changes, its perfect lines becoming blurred and ridged, his teeth growing harsh and yellow--and unmistakable. Cool skin. No sunlight. Immortal life. Weird teeth.

She didn't even know vampires existed, but apparently she's just fucked one. Twice.

Marie jumps out of bed. She's on the wrong side of the room, closer to the (shuttered) windows than to the door. Before this, she's never worried about assault, because anyone who touches her? Dies. But Spike? Doesn't die. She forces herself to breathe evenly, and doesn't break his gaze. Magneto and Wolverine, she tells herself. Magneto and Wolverine. I've got Logan's strength and Magneto's powers--just watered down a bit--and Logan's ability to heal. I've gone up against worse than a vampire.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Spike says quietly. His face goes back to normal: the sharp cheekbones, the fine arches of his brows. "You were asleep next to me for the better part of eight hours. Had nefariousness been my plan, I'd have carried it out then."

"But you drank beer," Marie blurts out.

She can't help but think that Spike's holding back a smile. "Yes. I also enjoy whiskey, Weetabix, and the occasional blooming onion."

"Blooming onion?" comes out, in disbelief, before Marie can stop herself.

"They're quite tasty. I'd make you one, but that would imply that I know how to do such a thing, and then I would in fact have to kill you in order to keep that knowledge from getting out."

Marie feels her muscles loosen a bit, but she doesn't sit back down yet. "Were you born a vampire?"

"No. That's impossible. Well, more or less. Anyway, I was turned into one when I was in my twenties. Did Professor Xavier really never tell you about the creepies and crawlies?"

Marie is suddenly on her guard again, as though every muscle in her body has tightened again simultaneously. "How do you know the professor?"

"Every supernatural creature worth its salt knows about the professor. I've never had the pleasure of meeting him, but I certainly know him by reputation. And I take it he left out the creepies and crawlies."

"Yes," Marie says softly. "Apparently so. Are there others I should know about?"

What follows is a brief introduction to vampires, demons, and a certain class of human called Slayers. "Let me tell you something, pet," Spike says, his tone and expression oddly serious. "Should you ever run into a demon, you'll likely be able to differentiate it from a mutant by the smell. Most demons, unfortunately for them but fortunately for everyone else, are not odiferously gifted. Should you ever encounter one, run. It's hard to know what abilities they have, and they may be impervious to your touch. I should add that while it's rare for them to be able to take human form, it does happen, and in that case, they're indistinguishable. And if you ever encounter another vampire, run even faster."

"And yet I shouldn't be running from you?" Marie asks archly.

"I have a soul. That's exceptionally rare among vampires--to say the very least--and it makes me disinclined to commit mayhem. Other vampires do not have this impediment. They can be killed in all the old ways you've read about--stakes, fire, sunlight, beheading."

"Do their faces all do that...thing that yours did?"

"Yes. If you see that, you grab the nearest sharp pointy object and run as fast as you can."

"Right," Marie says. She meets Spike's eyes for a moment, then, finally, sits back down on the bed. "Well, this has been an educational day. I lost my virginity, I found out about the existence of a huge supernatural world."

"How about breakfast, then?" Spike suggests. "All that learning might make you hungry."

"I would love some breakfast. But if I find out that you know how to make French toast, will you have to kill me?"

"No. Though really I make a much better omelet than I do French toast."

"Oh," Marie says. "Well, then. Omelets it is."

They dress (Marie has an internal debate regarding her underwear, and finally puts them on inside-out), and she fetches the dog tags from the nightstand and drops them back around her neck.

"And who is this Logan?" Spike says neutrally from the doorway, nodding at the silvery chain.

"A"--Marie hates herself for pausing, but can't help it--"friend. Logan's a friend."

"Such a good friend that you wear his identification disks?"

"He gave them to me," Marie says quietly. "If you're so curious about them, perhaps you could reciprocate by telling me why you were so interested in the fact that I wear Clinique perfume."

There's a short staredown; then Spike says, "I"--and here he pauses, and Marie feels a bit vindicated--"I once knew someone who wore that. No perfume is the same on any two women, but it did smell oddly similar on you."

"So that explains why you liked it."

Spike shakes his head. "To the contrary, I've always hated it."

Marie lets out a bark of surprised laughter. "Then why did you pick me up, if you hate it so much?"

"I picked you up, as you phrase it, because you are a beautiful, desirable woman, and I wanted to know what your magnificent breasts would taste like in my mouth." Marie feels her eyes widen, and Spike shrugs. "Well, you did ask. And in case you were wondering, they were every bit as sweet as I'd hoped."

She feels herself blushing--yet again--and drops her gaze to the floor. "Um. Thank you." After a moment, she looks back up. "This woman, was she a friend?"

"That's not precisely the right word," Spike says.

Marie decides not to dig any deeper, and says instead, "Did you ever tell her that you hated her perfume?"

"I have not lived one hundred and fifty-four years without learning the crucial lesson that one never criticizes a woman's taste in perfume or shoes. And it wasn't the scent itself I disliked; it's inoffensive enough. I disliked it because it was so vastly inappropriate for the woman who wore it: She was a young woman whose life had forced upon her the wisdom of someone much older--as it has for you, I think--and her insistence on wearing this adolescent scent seemed like a deliberate denial of that wisdom. As if, by wearing a trapping of adolescence, she could deny her own knowledge and experience."

"I just bought it because I thought it was fun."

Spike crosses the room in two strides and kisses her temple. "I perhaps put my un-life at risk by saying so, but it doesn't suit you. There's too much behind those sweet brown eyes. Now: breakfast?"

"Yes," Marie says, feeling as if she's just been through some sort of battle, but she's not sure precisely what type this might have been. "Yes, I would love some breakfast."

*************

Spike's omelets are as good as promised. Spike's got Dave Brubeck on the stereo, whose quality would impress even that hardened electronics snob Scott Summers. Conversation is considerably lighter as they eat. It seems criminal not to be able to sit in the sun while they do, but there's the whole part where Spike needs to not catch on fire. It's nice just to eat and talk and enjoy the company of someone who hasn't known her since she was sixteen and/or who hasn't seen her almost die and/or whom she won't kill if she puts her hand on his arm during an argument over whether or not The X-Files jumped the shark when Mulder and Scully hooked up, or when the show moved from Vancouver to LA, or when the Lone Gunmen died, or when Mulder left, or whether a show that contains aliens as part of its integral plot can fit into a traditional construct of shark-jumping.

They conclude that it was when Mulder left.

*************

By the time they've finished eating, and drunk several cups of tea, and washed the dishes, it's getting into midafternoon. "I should get home," Marie says. "I have homework, and everyone's going to start wondering where I went."

Spike looks vaguely horrified for a moment. "Tell me that you're not in high school."

"No. College. Don't worry, I'm perfectly of age to have sex, even if your friend the bartender won't let me drink. But it's still homework."

"Good. I feel absolutely no guilt having debauched and deflowered you as long as you are university-aged."

He offers to put her in a cab, but she declines after peeking out a window. "It's nice out. It'll be good to walk."

She gathers her things, kisses him and traces the back of his perfect neck one last time, and then steps out into a glowing afternoon in September.

*************

It's a couple miles' walk to Grand Central from Spike's townhouse on what turns out to be a bucolic part of Twenty-second Street. It's a long enough walk, and she's unhurried enough, that she winds up on the 4:50 train, which means that she won't get to Purdy's until just after six o'clock. She left the car in the lot by the station, so at least she won't have to call anyone to come get her.

Settling into her seat on the train, Marie rummages through her bag for her book--and discovers a small, neatly wrapped package that wasn't there before. There's a note, in oddly old-fashioned handwriting with almost indistinguishable F's and S's, attached to the top:

Marie, lemondrop--

I do hope that the enclosed is to your taste. It seemed more appropriate for a woman of the world--but for a young woman who retains hope for that world.

If I may be so bold, I think I know several people whom you would like a great deal. Phone me at [number], or just come into the city and drop by Abyssus some evening, and you'll meet some if not all of them.

It's signed with an incomprehensible scrawl that she takes to be "Spike."

She opens the package. Inside is a squarish yellow bottle. Marie lifts it out to discover that it's perfume: Essence, by Marc Jacobs. She spritzes a tiny bit onto the back of her hand. It's floral without being obnoxious--it smells like gardenia and...sandalwood, maybe? Jasmine? Something nice, anyway. She'll have to ask Jubilee, who always knows more about this stuff than she does.

And Spike's right, she realizes after a moment. There's something a little older about this scent, more knowledgeable, more experienced. Certainly more appropriate for a woman who's no longer a virgin, and who could not possibly be any happier about that fact. It's weird how you can get that across with gardenia and sandalwood (or jasmine?), but apparently you can.

She wonders how he got it--it's not the kind of thing you just keep on hand--but recalls that she was asleep for a number of hours, and really, you can get anything delivered in New York City. If you can get marijuana and Christmas trees, why not a bottle of perfume?

She spritzes a bit more of it onto her opposite wrist, then packs the bottle carefully back into its box and the box back into her bag. She debates reading, and instead stares out the window and remembers Spike's hands on her body.

*************

The sun is starting to go down when the train pulls into Purdy's. The Prius is where she left it. She starts the car, and the Poe CD in the changer blares to life.

"I've got a proposition for you," she sings, making her voice as sultry as she can, rolling down the windows and resting her arm on the door. Another day and I could've gone mad, the song goes. Yes, Marie thinks, I know what that's like, and then she pushes thought to the side and just sings along.

It's only a few minutes from the station to the mansion, and she's singing along to "Lemon Meringue"--and, she realizes, driving way too fast--when she roars up the driveway and parks in the front circle. "You know I've been a good girl but I hit a limit...." she sings as she turns off the ignition. She would run the battery for a few minutes and finish the song, but she realizes that the front walkways and lawns are bizarrely well-populated, and almost everyone on them is watching her--or carefully pretending not to. She picks out Jean, Scott, Ororo, Logan, Bobby, Pyro, Kitty, Jubilee--even the professor is sitting just outside the front door, holding a token book. The boys have a football game going, but they're paying more attention to the car than to the ball. And Jubilee's...gardening?

Marie shoulders her bag and gets out of the car. She should repark somewhere less central, but she feels like she has to get out and see what's going on.

"You're back!" Kitty says brightly as Marie shuts the car door.

"I went into the city," Marie says.

"Did you have fun?"

Marie has a sudden and extremely tactile memory of Spike's head between her legs, his tongue on her clit, her fingers in his hair--and she sees Jean, who's standing next to Professor Xavier, literally rock back as though her knees have given out. Jean braces herself on a column and stares at Marie, and Marie realizes what she just broadcasted to anyone with even a modicum of telepathic ability. Horrified, she looks at the professor's face for a reaction, but there is none, and she tells herself that he had his barriers up and she'll never think about this again.

"Yes," Marie tells Kitty.

Bobby's watching her out of the corner of his eye, but carrying on a perfunctory argument with Pyro over a call. She detours in their direction on her way to the door. "Hi, boys." She pauses and smiles. "Hi, Bobby." And then she does something else she has never done before: She reaches out and runs one gloved fingertip across Bobby's back, from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, and he tenses.

Arousal and fear.

She's just proven something, but she doesn't exactly know what.

"What's everybody doing outside?" she asks Jean and the professor once she gets up to the doorway.

"Nothing," says Jean. Her face is flushed.

"Just enjoying the evening," says Professor Xavier, as though it's completely normal for half the school's population to randomly hang out on the front lawn at six o'clock on a somewhat chilly Wednesday evening. "Did you stay over at Vassar?"

"No. I went into the city." She adds, feeling obliquely guilty, "I left a note for Kitty and Jubilee."

"Yes, but saying only that you'd be gone for the evening, not where you were going or whether you'd be staying overnight."

"I'm sorry," Marie says. "I hadn't planned on staying." She looks at Jean and says, "It was kind of a last-minute thing," and Jean starts to smile.

Marie goes inside and heads upstairs, looking forward to a shower more than she can possibly express. She's only just gotten into the room and put her things down when there's a knock on the door.

"What?" she says, wanting to bathe and then possibly nap with no interruptions.

It's Logan who opens the door. "Where were you?" he asks, and it's almost a snarl.

"In the city."

"Anybody get hurt?" His expression is almost accusatory. She's not clear on why her being gone equals someone being hurt—she goes to college with humans—but then puts it together and wants to die. She's had sex, and she hasn't showered, and Logan has what's apparently a vampire's sense of smell.

It's nothing to be ashamed of, Marie tells herself defiantly. And God knows Logan's not a virgin. "No," she says. "Most definitely not." And maybe it makes her a bad person, but she doesn't stop the smirk that takes over her lips.

Logan, to her utter astonishment, blushes.

"Please don't think I'm crazy for asking this," Marie says, changing the subject before things can get any weirder than they already are, "but did you know that vampires exist? And demons?"

He's staring now. "What kind of a night did you have?"

"A fabulous one. Answer the question."

Logan lets out a breath. "Yeah. What the hell has that got to do with anything?"

"I can touch vampires without killing them."

"What the fuck"--and now his voice is definitely a snarl--"did you sleep with?"

"Not that any of this is your business, but a vampire. And stop snarling. He had a soul."

Logan doesn't stop snarling. "I'm going to kill goddamn Angel."

"His name wasn't Angel. And don't kill him. I'd be very displeased with you."

She has never seen Logan's eyes widen. Turns out they can. "Spike?!"

"East London accent that's probably fake? Blond hair that's definitely fake? Blue eyes? Cheekbones you could sharpen a knife on?"

"Oh Jesus fuck," says Logan, and leans hard against the doorway.

"You know him?" Marie says.

"We've played poker. Which he cheats at. And we fought a couple of cage matches a while back. You live as long as I have, you meet a lot of people. Oh, Jesus fuck."

"That's incredibly bizarre that you know him." She pauses. "Does Professor Xavier know that there are vampires and demons?"

Logan's looking at her oddly, with slightly narrowed eyes. "Yeah."

"No one ever thought to tell the rest of us?"

"I thought it was common knowledge," Logan says slowly. "Sorry I didn't bring it up--I figured it was something they taught you guys in class."

Marie shakes her head. "Nope. Never knew about them until last night. Well, early this morning, if you want to be technical about it."

Logan winces, and she decides to stop tormenting him.

There's an entire supernatural world that she didn't know about. There's at least one type of being she can sleep with without killing it. She is, at twenty, no longer a virgin. It's later than she expected at one time, but far, far earlier than she expected at another.

She reaches underneath her layers of shirts and pulls off Logan's dog tags for the second time in twenty-four hours. She reaches for his hand, opens it, piles the chain and plates inside, and then closes his fingers over them.

"What're you doing?" he asks, his voice quiet--wary, maybe even a little confused.

"These don't belong to me," she says gently. "I think we both know who they truly belong to. Now please excuse me, Logan. I really need to take a shower."

"Right," he says, and lowers his hand. "Do that." He turns, then halfway through the door, turns back. "Glad you're home."

"Thanks," Marie says, and meets his eyes.

The door closes, and the room is still and quiet. It's a day of mysteries, she thinks: some revealed, some still veiled. There are answers she's going to want--why no one has ever told them about this whole vampire/demon bit, for one. But right now she just wants a shower. She locks the door, strips off her layers of clothing, and lets the light of sunset paint her skin with gold.