Title: Logan Returns: Box of Twenty
Author: Sare Liz
Email: TeknoVamp@yahoo.com

It was weird being here. Jean, Ororo, Scott - they all knew why, and when September rolled around it was sort of understood that I´d be teaching too. I don´t know if that´s Xavier´s idea of cover - ‘No Marie, I didn´t come back just for you, I came back for me too. See? I´m, uh… teaching here.´ - or if he was just doing his damnedest to integrate me into his little world.

Either way, I got my theories.

But that wasn´t the weirdest thing. There was other stuff and plenty of it.

Bobby - that little friend of Marie´s - marshalling up all his nerve one day to come up and ask me for advice about women. When I looked at him for the daft child he was, he pointed out that I´d nabbed Rogue who was the hardest catch of all, so I must know something, and wouldn´t I share? Because he was her friend and not annoying her with unwanted affection, I stomped on the part of me that was about to tell him to wait a couple of years until he´d grown a pair and then try again. I settled with a shrug and a grunt which must have been enough for him, cause he was gone by the time I´d finished spearing an out of reach banana and two strawberries on a claw.

Marie, deciding that one day she was going to speak only Japanese to me, just because she could. I thought she was completely insane until I realized I understood what she was saying. She just grinned at me and kept babbling. She wouldn´t respond to things I said unless I said them in Japanese. It was the craziest morning of my remembered existence. After a few stumbling attempts though, I have to admit it was nice. It´s amazing how many laser-brained insults you can come up with when you have a whole other language to use. Her friends thought it was ‘so cute´, though. That could ruin the image.

And I should have realized with all the stupid names around this place, I mean, come on - Cyclops? I should have not even thought about ‘The Danger Room´. I mean, who would call a room of illusions The Danger Room? Then Xavier kicked it up a notch, and I got the hint. But still, that´d be like calling Cerebro ‘The Big Brain Room´. I can hear it now. “Professor, Professor, we can´t find Scott! We think he might be shaving - he could be in great danger! You´ve got to find him - quick, to The Big Brain Room!” Just doesn´t have the same effect.

But even with all that, there was one thing that beat all. The box of twenty.

I´m wandering around my room the second day back, putting my meager stash of clothes away in various drawers when I hit a few that are full already. Three hooded sweatshirts, matching sweatpants. Half a dozen pairs of white socks, running shoes. My size. Four pairs of jeans in the next drawer, my size, with a handful of undershirts under four flannels.

I shut the drawer with a snap cause it had all began to wig me, fierce. I mean, I knew Xavier called me back, and for a reason, but this bespoke at least a little bit of foresight.

Or maybe he just knew I was coming back eventually. But this also reeked of permanence. Not that I wasn´t now thinking in the long term, it just bothered me that Xavier knew about it before I did, psychic or not.

All the same, I couldn´t help but wonder if there was anything else. All this free shit - it was like Christmas, and it had been a very long time since I´d had a Christmas, I was sure.

The next drawer was empty, save a laundry schedule taped to the bottom, and I emptied the rest of my pack into it, then thought better and folded everything.

Starting back at the top on the other side there were three t-shirts with the school logo on them, just like the sweatshirts, matching sweat shorts, and underwear still in the package. Out of the next drawer I picked a pair of impossibly soft, thin, black leather gloves. They seemed familiar somehow and when I slipped them on, I knew. I´d dreamed them. I dreamed of touching Marie with something other than my thick riding gloves, something thinner, more like her opera gloves, but with the soft feel of leather. But I didn´t have any and I´d never seen a pair. Until now.

Part of me really didn´t want to think of what Xavier had seen. Most of me wanted to know what else was in the drawer.

A box of latex gloves, like the kind Jean uses downstairs in the lab.

A scarf, transparent, dark green, and perfect for touching her skin through. A black long-sleeved shirt, obviously for her… Not a shirt. Damn, Xavier didn´t miss anything.

A body suit. Two, actually. One black and opaque, one white and as transparent as the scarf. And underneath everything was more of that smooth gauzy material, gads of it, just waiting to separate us as we sleep.

The last drawer was empty.

I laughed, folding everything up nice and neat and putting it back in the fun drawer. Xavier hadn´t said it in so many words at breakfast, but this… One-Eye´d shit a brick dog house fully formed for me to inhabit. Xavier had provided everything but the condoms.

That´s when I thought to check the night table drawer.

Bingo. Box of twenty.

Yea, it´s weird here, but I could get used to it.