The Girl: Chapter Nineteen
He should have been paying better attention. That was Logan's thought, his terror. That afternoon and later, when it mattered most.
Screaming, squealing students in the overcrowded hall--Jean said they weren't even close to full capacity but Logan didn't believe her. Overexcited by the promised trip to the movie theater. A boy who had apparently eaten too much at lunch and puked in the corridor, acrid burning Logan's nose and encouraging him to keep his mouth firmly shut. The increasingly appealing notion of the mansion, and it's relative emptiness tonight.
But he should have been paying attention, should have been listening, shouldn't have been surprised to spot Lensherr standing with the girl, at the end of the next hall.
"--active is of course the most useful."
His gray hair was inclined her way, and a growl was already shaking it's way up Logan's throat. And it did not matter that the old man was a friend of Xavier's, didn't matter that they may have simply bumped into each other, or that their conversation might be small talk based solely on the requirements of courtesy. It didn't matter, because suddenly the fact that the girl was comfortable standing close to others was no longer a good thing.
"C'mon, Kid," he beckoned, when he was close enough to the pair. His voice was a rough command that she didn't deserve, but he was pleased when she flitted to his side without hesitation, touched his arm in a brief greeting. The other man viewed this with mild speculation. Logan narrowed his eyes at Lensherr, searching for some proof of what his instincts were screaming. He'd grown a few more wrinkles since his last visit, had lost weight. However, his back was straight, his dry lips smiling bemusedly but not sharing their harmlessness with his eyes.
"Wolverine," he said, drawing out the word with a false camaraderie. "Always a pleasure to see such a finely constructed piece of metal as yourself." Then, to her, to their retreating backs as she was led away. "I'll see you later, my dear. Best of luck with your studies."
Later, when asked, the girl said, "He wanted to know how my control was coming." And then she shrugged, puzzled at a tone in the questions Logan couldn't quite mask.
It was the last time Lensherr was seen at the mansion.
He should have been paying better attention.
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The teachers were worried. She read it on their faces, the silent, anxious glances they shared with one another, the fierce way they each focused on the television, as if committing every word to memory. She'd never seen them as anything but the picture of calm. For that illusion of solidity to be broken, for their mouths to be pinched and their brows wrinkled with apprehension seemed like a small sin, a quiet betrayal on their part.
None of the other students appeared to notice. They played Foosball at the corner table, a card game on the floor, spoke in loud and louder voices, compared nail polish. Logan expected her to meet him at the front entrance but she hovered in the doorway, watching Mr. Summers hold his fiance's hand and Ms Munroe shake off a little child's request for braided hair. She listened to the newscaster, a tan woman who in a moment would be beaming as she spoke of an dog trained to escort patrons to their tables at a local restaurant, a hair brush once used by a member of the Beatles and now valued at 200,000 dollars.... Now, however, her voice possessed a calculated flatness; she frowned just enough to acknowledge the seriousness of the story without revealing that she might have an opinion on the subject herself, as she told of the conference being called to discuss the Mutant Registration Act.
"Ready, Darlin?" Logan's hand at her elbow. His gaze darted over her head, landed for the briefest of moments on the T.V. The feminine trill of the anchorwoman, "Senator Kelly will be heading the committee in favor of the new bill, which require--"
The Professor turned from his chair beside the couch, aimed at Logan a glare full of some significance she didn't understand and wasn't meant to see. The girl looked up, saw Logan's jaw go tight. She thought of hastily changed channels, overheard conversations and Ms Grey's reminder before every outing or field trip to not flaunt their gifts in public. The girl wondered if Logan would tell her the truth, if asked if she should be as afraid as well.
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"-us borrow one of the cars, and stay out. Being an Xmen is friggin' awesome."
"When is John getting back?"
"Don't know. Like, eight or nine, I guess. He just said, 'tonight'. Didn't want me to guess where he was by how long it takes them to drive."
"How come?"
"He--no, not those jeans. I wore them last week, remember? He's trying to be all mysterious. Acting important just 'cuz Scott picked him to go on the mission--can you believe that?"
"Over-dramatic much?"
"Bet they're just at the movies or something--how about these, Jubes?"
"No, doesn't go with the blouse. And tighter. What, you trying to make my ass look like it's made outa elephant skin?....I'll find out where they really went tonight. Pro'ly coulda cracked him already if I could have talked to him a bit longer, but Logan made me hang up."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah--hey, Kitty. See those dark pants with the gold flowers going down the side? Those. Yeah he, like, threatened to the phone up my ass if I pulled it out in class again."
"You're shitting me."
"I shit you not. That's, like, assault and sexual assault, you know? And he, like, cussed in front of a student. I'm telling you, Rogue's little boyfriend is pissing me off."
At the title, some inside joke that had not been explained to the girl nor did she wish it to be, Jubilee's friend threw a knowing glare from the bathroom doorway. Kitty, digging through the closet, did so as well, but her's held a touch of apology when the others weren't watching.
"And I swear to god, if he calls me 'yellow' one more time I'm going to, like, file a complaint. Cuz that's, like, totally racist, you know? I'm an X-woman too now. I don't hafta put up with that."
The girl pretended to focus on her book, pretended her cheeks weren't burning, pretended that her whole being hadn't perked up to listen the moment Logan's name was mentioned. Jubilee, a disembodied voice in the bathroom as she applied her make up, must have known, must have sensed it with that special power of teenage cruelty. Otherwise she wouldn't have allowed, two hours from her date with John, the conversation to stray even slightly from herself.
"He gets worse every day. You hear what he did to Bobby? That cast won't come off for five months at least." Jubilee's other friend, a Hispanic girl with the kind of hair she envied, so dark it seemed to absorb all light, take it to a secret place and polish it.
"What a jerk. Hope he leaves soon," Kitty threw in, eager to remain in the conversation lest the others forget her. Her attempt was weak enough to earn her a long look of disgust. She flushed, folded the jeans Jubilee had wanted over her arm. The girl watched her cross the room to join the others, slip through the wall when no room was made for her in the doorway.
There was relative silence for a while, long enough for the girl to expect other, less prickly subjects to arise. Surprisingly audible pops of lips that said her roommate was combining her gels into the stickiest, brightest possible mix, the sound of plastic containers snapping open and shut, a "What about this one?"
Then her roommate's voice, slow and musing. "Bet he will soon. Maybe he'll decide he can't take it anymore--cuz' this is, like, what? The longest time he's ever stayed?"
The Hispanic girl laughed. "Scott's all pissed. The advanced class was only s'pposed to be Logan's for a week or two."
"He'll go eventually . There's nothing to keep him here." Jubilee's words were spoken too loudly to be meant for only those in the bathroom.
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The girl was asleep when they came in. And after, other nights, this fact would make sleep unattainable. Every sundown of her childhood had trained her to be vigilant, a light sleeper, ready to open her eyes again any time they closed. That she hadn't heard the door, hadn't heard them tripping over intoxicated feet and the debris left by an exceptionally messy teenager, cleaved through the girl's marrow and whatever idea of a defense she'd thought she had.
It was Jubilee's sharp stage whisper, as loud as anyone's normal speaking voice, that snapped her into consciousness. Giggles and thuds and "Sshhh's" that sliced through the natural silence of night.
The dark pillowcase stretched out from beneath her cheek like a well-tended landscape of dips and hills and smooth expanses. Covers draped over her in uneven bunches. The bottom sheet had come loose; she could feel it knotted up beneath her stomach, the thicker weave of the mattress under her palms. Once she'd barely disturbed any surface she lay upon, left little more of a dent in the sheets of this bed that could be smoothed out the next morning, the covers pulled up only a little. Now the bed was evidence of a restlessness that held it's tongue during the day. She tensed, froze. Let the smells and sensations and familiar darkness tell her where she was and where she wasn't. The edge of the cover stopped above her ear, and the girl did not push it down--the universal instinct that not being able to see was the same as being hidden.
She listened to more shushing, the squeak of a mattress spring, the tenor of a male voice lowered. Her heart drummed with all the force of irate waves battering the sand. Like a rabbit coming shaking off the snakes hypnotic gaze, she flipped onto her back--and to her credit, the action was silent. The girl sat up, freed her legs from the tangled sheets with panicked efficiency, perhaps surprised to find they were the only things holding her to the bed. She could have been no more prepared for flight if her shoulder blades were to sprout the wings of a bird.
Strange, deformed shapes beneath the covers of her roommate's bed. A monster made of bedsheets, cotton mountains shifting, shrinking and grown gas if by the work of some unusually rapid tectonic plates.
"I can't--ouch!--see...."
"Sshh, sshh,sshh."
"Where's that hook thingy?"
"Be quiet--you want me to get it?"
It took her a moment, but when the girl understood, embarassment took the place of whatever alarm had diminished. She scrambled to get her feet on the carpet, lurched toward the door. She stepped on something that had the bite of plastic, cylintrical, perhaps the discarded cap to a bottle of body spray (the girl considered herself an expert in the identification of stepped-on objects). In the dark, everything had a purple tint.
More, louder laughter and against her will and better judgment the girl's head half-turned.
A pair of boys jeans lay in a kicked-off pile beside on the floor. Shoes and a piece of rectangular metal she knew would be painted with a shark's mouth, because she'd seen its owner flick it open enough times. The forms under the sheets were moving in a different way now, their clumsy fumbling having finally brought them to the right position. The distraction this brought must have made privacy sink even lower on their list of concerns because the rim of the fabric covering them slid down, exposing a smooth shoulder that curved like a backwards L into a neck and beneath, her roommate's taunting smile, her mirth-filled eyes aimed straight into the girl's.
She jerked her gaze away, cheeks lit with a violent flame. Slipped out of the room in her socks and cotton pajamas, trying to make as little noise as possible. The halls were cold and empty, the tables and vases artifacts left from a populated world entirely unimaginable to this one, props from a movie set when all the actors had gone home. The girl shuffled past them timidly, without purpose or destination. She fought memories of hands pressed over her ears, not tightly enough to block the sounds, eyes squeezed. shut. Nights when He was feeling angry or frisky or drunk enough to seek out her mother's body.
The girl blinked rapidly, tried to push her mind in a new direction. Where should she go? The kitchen? The entertainment room? Where would be the best place to wait out the night, dressed as vulnerably as she was? It had been a long time since she'd been forced from a place she was supposed to reside; she was out of practice with hiding.
But in the end there was only one choice, and it wasn't a choice at all. One place that months of dinners and all that had followed had taught was the most reliable of escapes. A thousand times better than a cranny in a boiler's closet.
Nine doors stood evenly spaced along the hall Logan had said was his. She stared at them, very aware and growing increasingly more so that this was her first time to seek him here, and that he'd never said where on the fourth floor his room lay.
The girl stood, wavering beside a small table and a calender that had been custom made for the school, gold lettering and enough swirling cursive to obscure even the word "May". She bit her lip and pondered the consequences, the least of which was humiliation, of knocking on one of the doors. Even if she happened to pick the number that held the prize, what would she say? What did she expect him to do? What did she want him to do? What did she say?
But like always, like a reply to an unasked question or unspoken call, she didn't have to. Didn't have to know, didn't have to ask, didn't have to worry, didn't have to do anything but be there for him to be as well. Before her mind could offer other suggestions--the library, the laundry room, that supply closet for Housekeeping--before her body could turn even a fraction away, before the girl's crippling shyness could send her fleeing for the tightest corner to fold herself into, a knob turned, a latch clicked, and Logan stepped into the hall. His was a door near the end, and later she would learn that the rooms on either side of his were only occupied in the most desperate of circumstances for Logan's sanity and the resident's safety.
"Kid?"
Her first thought was that he was exhausted. Not heavy lidded and muddled, as he might have been at this hour she couldn't name, but the pained weariness of one who has long needed rest but hasn't found it. Her hand twitched at her side, and for a second she saw herself reaching out for him, touching his chest, the stressed V between his eyebrows, other things she couldn't possible be brave enough to try.
For a moment the intensity of his expression seemed tinted with fever, with something too alert to be craving only sleep. He'd never looked at her in such a way before, so hungry. And then suddenly, among her confused blinks, it wasn't. His face held only gentle worry.
"Baby, what's wrong?" He walked towards her, bare feet and bare chest. The long corridor seemed to take Logan only a few strides to cross. She couldn't speak, her voice arrested in embarrassment's tight grip. He touched her cheek, her chin when she lowered it, the girl's shoulder when she wouldn't stop anxiously shifting from foot to foot. He peered into her face, his nostrils shrinking and flaring.
It took some time and cajoling, but amidst fierce blushes and indistinguishable mumbling, the words 'Jubilee' and 'date' and enough connecting the two became audible. Logan stared at some indeterminable point above her head for a long time, threatening with his eyes an invisible enemy. His hand, which had been so warm, wasn't touching her anymore. It lay at his side, the long fingers curled inward, so stiff the elbow might have been incapable of bending, and there was a peculiar heaviness in the girl's chest, the weight of a sopping towel. A muscle ticked in Logan's jaw; his Adam's Apple jumped in a swallow.
She knew he was angry, annoyed, was surely wondering what to do with her now as any adult when a child's problems are thrust awkwardly onto them. She was wrong to have come here, wrong to make assumptions or trust in something she didn't even have a name for, wrong to put him in this position. "I'm sorry," she heard herself say. "I didn't mean to--I didn't know..."
His eyes dropped back to her's, impassive now, only vaguely puzzled as to why she was babbling. The helpless aggravation she'd seen had either been imaginary or pushed past visibility to spare her. He looked at the girl until she was silent, her string of apologies cut off in the way of the most awkward of speakers.
"It'll be alright, Kid." Logan exhaled slowly through his mouth, jerked his head just a little. "Come here."
The girl had followed Logan a thousand times. She found only relief in doing so now.
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Dying.
He was dying.
The metal, that had been heated to it's sick fluidity and drilled into each and every one of his bones wasn't , couldn't possibly have been as bad as this. He was being crushed, ripped apart, sliced with the mastery of a Deli owner, burned. And she...she...
She was just laying there, as if nothing was wrong. As if, after all this time and fear, she didn't know what danger she was in with Logan. As if she trusted him. As if she shouldn't be running.
He was an idiot.
He was crazy.
He was a masochist without limits, inviting the girl into his bed with the unspoken promise not to hurt her. That he'd managed to convince one of them was a miracle he was in no position now to marvel at.
At first, they'd both lain on their backs. Foot of platonic space between them like a sitcom from the 1950's He held onto the reigns of his need like a pet owner who knows at any moment he will be dragged through the grass by his Marmaduke-size dog. Thick scents in the air, his own arousal and beer and aromatic evidence of many, many attempts to take the edge off his want. And she kept shooting him these little sideways glances, soft and curious, as if expecting him to have as much control as he did when watching football together, put his arm around her as if he'd be capable of releasing her afterward. And what else could he do?
...Now it didn't matter that he'd tugged a shirt on before laying down. Logan could feel the heat of her skin through the material, the bump of her cheekbone, her eyebrow, the pulse in her neck--he would swear even the tickle of her long lashes. Did she need to lay her head on his chest? Yes, Logan had drawn her against him, but she--she could have pulled away. His grip wasn't that tight. He would have--he would have let her. She didn't have to relax.
The scent of her--of female hair, sweat and shampoo, of flesh , of peaches and vanilla and a few other things that must have been his imagination but were no less tormenting, was breaking him. His mind, his restraint, and surely his healing factor because Logan could feel himself falling apart. Seams shaking loose and what remained of his body was weak, burning pulp and one or two muscles already enthusiastically entering rigor mortis. He tried to keep his lower body twisted away from her, the sheets pushed down, bunched over his waist so that any uneven surface might not be immediately apparent.
The girl inhaled deeply, and with the exhale any lingering nervousness on her part seemed to be expelled, a ghost of a smell. The action nudged her breast against his side, a soft mound with a firmer tip that Logan refused to think about. He wasn't looking at her, but knew the moment she closed her eyes.
He couldn't move, not even to decrease the pressure of his uncomfortable position. Any turn of his head would be followed by the rest of his body, a future so possible he could see it, feel it as if it were actually happening. Clothes and limbs and flesh pushed aside for the sake of a special heat. Rolling onto and into her and driving deep enough that this unraveling of himself would be a good thing. He wanted to climb up inside her, curl up and live in a place she couldn't shake him loose from. Forget the Wolverine, the ancient creature unending chomping at his bit. Too long had destroyed all barriers between the two.
Logan stared at the ceiling. He didn't blink.
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He'd brushed away her suggestion that the floor would be fine, that she didn't mind at all, with a short refusal and a few mildly affronted looks, a raised eyebrow when she swore she wasn't even tired. His coaxing had turned to silence when she'd finally lain down, perhaps to encourage sleep. He became so still that the girl assumed he'd already found it. She looked at the walls, the glass bowl above that contained the tear-shaped light bulb, thought of the last time she'd lain beside him like this and of the mattress that had not been half as comfortable as this one. Like then, she never imagined that she would actually sleep. She expected to lay awake until it was time to leave and pretend she had never come. It didn't matter how late, or how early, it was, how much her eyelids seemed to weigh or how reassuring was the Logan-scent that encircled her like a promise.
Strange bubble in her chest as she lay there, one that had the shape of waiting and the solidity of a place that was New. The girl glanced at Logan, at the shadows that seemed to clot above his nose and made his eyes invisible, a Masquerade ball mask. At his chest, the slight but purposeful movements of breathing. At the thick green sweatshirt she'd watched him dig for in his dresser before coming to bed himself, the cotton sliding over blades of muscle and the curling, dark hair like a secret. Later she would picture that, what lay beneath the heavy material, of the bumpy muscle she could see now in his arm and side and stomach, think of them and feel her cheeks turn hot.
It was on her fourth peek at her companion that Logan moved. His arm lifted, a long, brown shadow in the non-light, went over her head and then was shoved beneath it. His other hand reached over, found her waist and yanked it toward him. Actions fast enough to sidestep a struggle, but not her sharp inhale.
"Sshhh," he said, absently. Her cheek was pushed against his chest so firmly the fuzz of his sweatshirt tickled her nose. The arm around her was iron, but the other had returned to his left side, and Logan was still again. She waited for her flight instinct to kick in at such abrupt treatment, for her hands to clench and push and scratch, for heart to race...and felt almost betrayed by the organ when it gave only a few token thuds before settling into a more lethargic rhythm . Her body wriggled briefly--his arm gave a warning tighten, but the squirms weren't against the limb but closer into the nook it created.
Although Logan did not speak to her again, the girl could hear the unceasing noises from the realm beneath his skin. His stomach, various internal organs going about their jobs without rest or need for supervision from their owner, a strong, even pulsing beneath her ear and a continuous, barely audible rumble that she could not identify but followed her into her dreams.
She was asleep before she could realize that the bubble in her chest had burst.
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The girl's eyes opened when the light in the room was the tan and orange of morning--dim, because the curtains of Logan's window were drawn shut. The sunlight outlined the frame like a halo-tinted wreath. Dusty room with a warm smell and few possessions.
He didn't appear to have moved, not an inch, from her memory of his position last night. His eyes were open, and his stillness remained until she broke her own. She raised her head sleepily, shifted in the circle of his arm before it disappeared.
Logan was out of bed before she'd even registered that he was no longer laying down--cracking his neck with his back to her, scratching his stomach and then adjusting the waistband of his sweats. His body seemed to thrum with energy; he must have been awake for awhile. With the same speed, but in reverse, he sat back down on the mattress, the edge, as if he'd changed his mind or caught a case of vertigo. He took a fistful of the covers, drug them over his lap. She waited for him to swing his legs back up, stretch back out, but he didn't.
Her shoulder ached from being crushed against his side for so long, and the hand that she'd half-lain on was regaining blood flow with a vengeful prickling....but at the time, she thought the pain was from being separated from him.
"What time is it?" A soft inquiry.
"Don't have a clock," he said, without turning to look at her. Then, perhaps reconsidering the brusqueness of his tone, "Breakfast."
She felt a brushstroke of relief run over her nerves. Almost everyone would be downstairs, swarming over platters of eggs and french toast. She could slip back to her room without attracting any special attention.
"Will I...see you down there?" So strange, how he wouldn't face her. Had his anger returned? The sense of well-being she'd awoken with, never one to stay for long, wavered and began to slink away.
"Of course. Just gotta take a quick shower, Baby. You...you go get dressed an' I'll meet you. Okay?" Logan raised his head, offered her a grin she was too grateful to consider forced.
"Thank you," she told him. The words stumbled with their multiple meanings.
"No problem," he said, and gave her the same smile.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
The typing, and editing of this chapter reminds me of a particularly long childbirth (bear with me, devoted mothers--it's a metaphor; it's late at night; I'm tired and well aware that I have no idea what I'm talking about). So excited at when I first thought I was reaching the end of this long process, until joy dissolved into painful contractions, much pacing and clenching of teeth, biting my pen, snapping at friends and two days of cursing at scenes I could have sworn were alright when I wrote them. By the end this fic-mother was screaming, "Get out! Just get out!" to the words in her head. A few more pushes, and here it is. I hope you will like this chapter, despite it's misshapen head and amount of goop still clinging to it's body.
That being said, this screaming bundle is dedicated to the wildly talented authoresses Moviemom, Sahara, Doctorg, and Litlen, who provide inspiration, encouragement, and generally reasons to make me bounce in my chair on almost a daily basis. Incredible women parallel to no other in their kindness and ability to stop a Writer's Block Tantrum of Frustration right in it's tracks. Thank you.
That being said, this screaming bundle is dedicated to the wildly talented authoresses Moviemom, Sahara, Doctorg, and Litlen, who provide inspiration, encouragement, and generally reasons to make me bounce in my chair on almost a daily basis. Incredible women parallel to no other in their kindness and ability to stop a Writer's Block Tantrum of Frustration right in it's tracks. Thank you.
Chapter End Notes:
Clenching my teeth as I type these words, but this will *not* be the last chapter, unfortunately, due to length of scenes and the Time, which I'm convinced has been skipping ahead a few days each week when I'm not looking, just to f#@% with me. One more to go, not counting the epilogue. For those who have stuck with this story this long, I am very much in your dept. Thank you very, very much. For the *reviewers* who have stuck with this story this long, the dept is too much for me to ever pay in more than Monopoly money but I'm still grateful. You are the most wonderful of wonderful people, and the words you type into that review box mean the world to me.