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Lock-Down: Chapter Seven

Mac O'Roni




     Logan must have drifted off at some point, because he suddenly found himself waking up to the sound of an exasperated groan from his cellmate’s bunk.
     “Do Gambit a big favor, mon ami, and get laid,” he groused. “Find yo’self some cute little shower-buddy or a knothole or somet’in.”
     At first Logan had no clue what the Cajun was blathering about, and then he realized that he was sporting a pretty impressive nighttime erection. Gambit’s empathy must have picked up on his dreaming emotions. God knew, he was pretty damned horny all the time these days, though he kept it under control most times simply because there was next to nothing to do about it.
     “I can’t help it, Gumbo,” he growled.
     “I know dat, but could you please do somet’in ‘bout it? I know you don’t like jerkin’ off but Jesus Christ, man, it’s bad enough I got t’be tuned in to every horny asshole in dis place. It get a lot worse when I’m hit wit’ it at close range. Got m’own problems on dat front, don’t need everyone else’s, too.”
     “Jesus, sorry,” Logan said, rolling his eyes. Then he actually started to feel bad about it. He looked over to where the Cajun lay and, although his night vision was probably not nearly as good as Remy’s was, with those weird glowing eyes of his, it was more than sufficient for him to see how tired and pale the younger man’s face was.
     It struck him suddenly that, no matter how haggard Gambit looked now, with his shields down and his unchecked empathy taxing his emotions, the man didn’t look very different from how he’d looked the first day he’d ever clapped eyes on him, over forty-six years ago. He hadn’t known just exactly how old the kid was back then, and he didn’t know just exactly how old the “kid” was now, but he was over sixty. Had to be. Probably even over seventy. But his hair was still the color of cinnamon and ginger and honey all mixed up together, not a trace of gray in it anywhere, and the corners of his eyes and mouth remained unlined. The intensity of his eyes and his personality remained undimmed, and he was every bit as capable physically as he had always been.
     Magneto was still alive because he had been rejuvenated by another mutant’s powers. Logan and Sabretooth both survived the passage of time relatively unchanged because of their healing and anti-aging factor. But Charles Xavier, how was it that he was still alive and healthy? And the rest of the X-Men—some of them had changed. Jubilee had grown from a gawky teen to a lovely young woman. And then just stopped. Beast had transformed from what was basically a very hairy blue man with claws and fangs into a bipedal lion, but got no older. How could it be that all of them were cheating the natural decay of age this way? Mutants, alpha mutants at least, tended to live a bit longer than the average human but nothing like this.
     Logan’s thoughts thus turned to more serious subjects, his needs subsided, Gambit was able to close his eyes and return to sleep. Never a very comfortable sleep in this place, with a thousand ragged emotions ranging from despair to lust crowding in on his mind, but sleep nonetheless.

On to Chapter Eight!




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