The Girl: Chapter Eighteen
The blood scared her.
Water prints, smudged scarlet roses on her thigh's most inner skin. The horrifying stain she'd wake up to, or go to the bathroom to find (What happened? What happened? What happened?). A humiliating conversation with Mrs. Grey, and afterward thick pads she had to wear for a week.
It never used to happen this often. In the city, months would pass before it appeared, weak and so thready she usually assumed she'd cut herself. This frequency scared her.
The blood scared her.
Logan was always especially kind to the girl on those days. Or it felt that way, because he couldn't possibly know, could he? Even she was not so fanciful to think he was able to tell. But Logan got her out of class, brought her chocolate muffins and fresh oranges, let her pick what they watched on T.V. (between hockey and football--to Logan, there were no other channels), spoke to her in only the softest of tones.
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The man on the screen was yelling, his zebra-stripped shirt clingy from the sweat of the hot day and, presumably, the stress his job required. He blew his whistle furiously, made indeterminable hand gestures toward the men on the field.
Logan said the referee was being a dick, that the player who'd been hit had only been unconscious for a minute or two and could still walk afterward, so it shouldn't have counted as a foul. He said he didn't know why he continued to watch the sport--the men turned into bigger sissies every day.
The girl nodded her head, told him, "Yeah." Not sure if she completely agreed but then, Logan had been watching football for much longer than she, and so probably knew what he was talking about.
The flickering lights of the T.V. danced on their faces like the glow of a blueish fire. She studied the interesting patterns the shadows made on their laps, her hands.
Logan turned his head. She wasn't sure when this position became the norm, when his arm around her shoulder became too natural for her to fear. He was so close that she felt rather than saw the action, felt the press of his forehead above her ear. Not a kiss. Logan pushed his nose into her hair and inhaled once, twice. Breath tickling her scalp, the body beside her loosening.
He never gave her an explanation, always turned back to whatever had previously held his attention.
The girl didn't flinch anymore.
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A million fire ants were chewing through his muscles, nothing but fire left in their wake. They were under his skin, invisible but there as surely as his claws, he'd swear on it. Logan tossed from his side to his back, kicked the covers all the way off but that only seemed to fan the flames.
His body was too stiff, too heavy, too present. Wound, overheated, a moment away from killing someone or dying himself and Logan couldn't anticipate which. All the things that meant it had been too long.
Handling matters himself only kept him balancing on the crumbling edge of sanity, while cold showers only pissed him off. Nights were bad, the worst. Nobody around to act normal for, few reasons that Logan could remember to stay calm and leash himself against the most base of his instincts. No distractions from the images that should not be in his head, a soft mouth and knees and a hidden, secret place in between, the owner of which he shouldn't, couldn't think of in that context. He couldn't...He couldn't...He wanted to...He needed.....needed...
He needed a distraction.
Now.
Logan was up before the decision fully was processed, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. Simple movements made difficult by the painful tension of certain body parts.
He stuffed his limbs into clothes that were nearest in not the cleanest, left as he was still cramming the tail of his belt into the last loop. Then he was down the hall, down the stairs. Thinking with every step, of distractions. Of a bar, whichever was closest, and a pair of legs--likewise. A fuck, the quicker the better, enough to take his mind off of...off of what it was on.
Logan made it down one floor, already tasting the beer and another's tongue. At the landing, his feet twisted rather than remain straight, and the rest of his body followed. Legs pumping past vases and those Kinkade paintings, and he imagined what it will be like to find release after impersonating a monk for so long. Past bulletin boards--not too young, he decided, old enough to know what she's doing and strong enough that he won't have to worry about hurting her. Blond or redhead, anything but brunette. Doors with their posters and juvenile "Keep Out" signs, and still Logan would have sworn that he was on his way down to the second floor, to the first, out of here with his thumb pinned to the red button on the bike.
A fever had overtaken him, made his movements urgent but robotic. It was with honest shock that Logan, as he awoke to some off-brand of reason, found the door to the girl's room and not the garage before him. He stared as if transfixed by the grains in the wood, the chamber behind which fairly pulsed with the scent of bubblegum and cheap perfume and peaches and warm, female bodies.
And just like that...just like that, his plans changed. The shifting, mad whims of the ill.
Logan slid to the ground, back against the wall, the plaster cool with night air. His eyes never wavered from the room ahead, and if he blinked it was too swift for even a nanosecond of blindness. He told himself he'd only stay for a little while, just to...just until...
His hands were shaking.
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Time without unhappiness--large or small--to separate days into before and after, without goals beyond the most banal, moves quickly. Hours are only a compilation of ten minute increments, a measure too fleeting for him to register. Three meals and in between, time spent with the girl or time not (less common, and oddly longer than the former) making up a day, a string of seven, thirty, ninety and an endless more of these unraveling like a spool of Christmas lights. Friday's fish dinners, for the Catholic residents. Weather warm enough for sandals, and then trees wrapped in the flames of red and orange leaves, little holidays. Cold, scarfs and snow boots dug out of their closets, soup and cough syrup and arguments and promises that certain questionable shirts were warm enough.
The girl's body filled out pleasingly; her skin cleared; she even grew another inch He saw her smiling shyly at others beside him. Volunteering to pass out some graded essays before the bell rang, as he waited and watched through the glass wall that separated the class and the hall, him. Helping a younger student in the art room wipe up spilled glue and glitter.
The Xmen congratulated themselves, smiled and nodded in the way of parents when she is brought up and then they stop, except for Jean because it is the only subject Logan is interested in discussing with her anymore. More students coming in every week and she is put on the shelf. Nothing but one of the group, treasured but only as one of the many shiny items in an impressive collection.
Sometimes Logan felt like he was trapped in an air pocket of a volcano, the only escape through an explosion. Other times, he would swear he'd only met the girl ten minutes ago.
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No, he said, when The Professor asked him to fetch a budding mutant from Arizona.
No, he said to the request that he break into an FOH safe-house
No, Logan said, when he was asked to track the moves of a government official preparing to soon propose some anti-mutant legislature.
No, was his reply when Xavier offered to increase his normal pay by a half-grand.
No, when the number rose to two.
Three, four. No. No.
No, he said, to any task beyond the physical training of the advance junior team. No, to anything that would take Logan outside the mansion.
Fuck you, he said, when the old man noted--rather acidly-- that he had never said no before.
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She thought it was a strange form of small talk, when Mrs. Grey asked if she preferred chocolate or vanilla. A random question, a conversation starter, like the daily prompts found on her English class' chalkboard.
The girl blushed, shrugged. She asked, "What's yours?" in an awkward attempt at courtesy that earned only a smile and a half-laugh from the other woman.
She gave no more thought to the incident until the afternoon that Jubilee found her in the hall. Her roommate, with all the manner of a teen roped unwillingly into the role of messenger, spoke in a tone that suggested memorization. She told the girl she was wanted in the entertainment room and to go now, quickly, because "they don't have forever to wait around on you." (Jubilee's own addition, presumably.)
She picked her way back down the stairs apprehensively, wondering who 'they' were, a clarification her roommate had not made in her haste to depart once her news had been delivered.
Pink and white ribbons, a handful of balloons and a banner that would be taken down in an hour and put back in some drawer, some box, until the next birthday. A round cake on the table, white icing and her name among the curling, edible letters. Plastic forks and paper plates, a knife to cut through the sugared bread. The teachers and those students who's desire for sweets was worth the claim of friendship with it's owner. Logan in the corner, looking reassuringly out of place in the group, trapped here by accident. Like her.
Mrs. Grey smiled and apologized from the moment she walks in. Sunnily, no expectation of complaint on the girl's part. "We're sorry we didn't do this last year, but you'd just arrived and your forms hadn't been processed yet and nobody knew--"
The realization comes slowly, that they must have found the date on the papers she'd filled out upon arriving. It's never been more than a day to her, and the girl is stunned and a little horrified. Her eyes blurred and stung, a reflex to any surprise. She was led to stand over the cake, the pale expanse of frosting and the wax shaped into the numbers one and six.
The girl's body moved at the excited urging of the others. She blew out the tear-shaped flames that sat on the candles, opened the envelopes handed to her (gift cards, five of them, for various Westchester stores), looked dazedly into the flash as someone snapped a picture.
Logan helped her escape, just as the flushing of her cheeks was becoming an actual burn. Perhaps she had an allergy to kindness and fuss, she mused, an intolerance she had not been aware of because she'd been introduced to it so late in life. He put his hand on her back, in the dip between her shoulder blades. The girl let her eyes close, pretended she was invisible. Her teachers, Mr. Summers and Mrs. Grey, glared as they made their way out of the entertainment room--but at him, not her. The rest were busy, and did not require her presence to celebrate the minor break in monotony, the addition of crumbs to the seat cushions. The rest, aside from Mr. Lensherr, who stopped her at the door and offered her his congratulations for the fact that her world had circled the sun another time. "I see great things in your future, my dear."
The girl thought she'd return to her room, reread Hearts In Atlantis before she returned it to the library. Or, if Jubilee was elsewhere, take another shower. But Logan pulled her toward the garage, said, "Come on, let's get out of here for awhile." She followed with an abruptly light feeling in her chest. This is certainly preferable to the party, maybe even the shower.
:::
They drove around and then out of Westchester, further than usual but she didn't mind. The seat behind her was warm, safe like a soft wall, it's contours, fabric, and stains from hasty meals were all familiar to her. Everything smelled like Logan.
Every now and then the girl would turn her head from the scenery rolling past her window, find her companion's hands wrapped too tightly around the wheel, his jaw too stiff and his eyes squinted as if in agony. But before she could wonder, internally or out loud, Logan's face smoothed. He gave her a glance and a grin, returned his eyes to the white lines being swallowed by the pickup, nothing but relaxed.
He pulled into a parking slot of a store she'd never seen before. Wide windows flanking the ornate door like wing-men, a collection of ancient maps in one, globes in the other. Little plaque telling the hours a customer might seek service within, hanging off the brass knob of the door.
The girl looked at Logan, and then to the sign labeling the building a book emporium. Him, to the sign, him, to the sign, as he urged her feet of the floorboards and onto the smooth asphalt. Back and forth until they were inside, and then she had eyes for nothing but the shelves, row upon row. The hardwood floor, the little tables crammed with knickknacks and discount items, the surprisingly young woman behind the desk. The books, hundreds wrapped in their hard or soft covers, offering their own invitation and making the girl's heart patter.
Logan stood by the door, smiling. Better suited to this background of thick rugs and old wood and lamplight than he would have claimed. He made her choose ten of the titles from their cases, and would not allow them to leave until she had.
"Happy Birthday, Kid."
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Author's Chapter Notes:
I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally be typing these words into this beautiful little 'Chapter Notes' box. This week has been boiling rancid hell, and I never thought I'd get this done on time.
This chapter is shorter than I would have liked, and though spell checked it has not been checked by my otherwise-engaged beta. Typos, even more than usual, are almost guaranteed. But on the bright side, my list of scenes until the end has grown very short. I've said it before, but only one chapter (and maybe an epilouge) left to this fic.
That being said, I've got my fingers, toes, and every other crossable body part crossed in the hope that you will enjoy what follows.
This chapter is shorter than I would have liked, and though spell checked it has not been checked by my otherwise-engaged beta. Typos, even more than usual, are almost guaranteed. But on the bright side, my list of scenes until the end has grown very short. I've said it before, but only one chapter (and maybe an epilouge) left to this fic.
That being said, I've got my fingers, toes, and every other crossable body part crossed in the hope that you will enjoy what follows.
Chapter End Notes:
I've got a Christmas present for those who have been clicking on this fic's title again and again. A recipe, because I cannot give you the real thing. I make a body scrub (mentioned briefly in another story)that is as simple/cheap and as it is awesome, makes your skin smell and feel better than anything store bought.
There are only two ingredients you *must* have, sugar and vegetable oil. Of the rest, you may choose as many or as few as you like:
Sugar (can use salt, but too rough)
Vegetable oil (can use baby oil)
Aloa Vera
Honey
Vanilla Extract
Lotion
Lemon juice (only a drop)
Fragrance oils (for skin, not candles! Comes in a variety of scents, usually no more than 3 dollars).
Very strange, I know. And if you're...ah...wondering, the absolute best, most perfect gift you could give me would be to click that review button. Please? Pretty please? I'd ask Santa, but he's been ignoring me since I started sending him all those lists begging for Hugh Jackman.
Thank you, and Merry Christmas!
There are only two ingredients you *must* have, sugar and vegetable oil. Of the rest, you may choose as many or as few as you like:
Sugar (can use salt, but too rough)
Vegetable oil (can use baby oil)
Aloa Vera
Honey
Vanilla Extract
Lotion
Lemon juice (only a drop)
Fragrance oils (for skin, not candles! Comes in a variety of scents, usually no more than 3 dollars).
Very strange, I know. And if you're...ah...wondering, the absolute best, most perfect gift you could give me would be to click that review button. Please? Pretty please? I'd ask Santa, but he's been ignoring me since I started sending him all those lists begging for Hugh Jackman.
Thank you, and Merry Christmas!