Chimney falls as lovers blaze – Thought that I was young
Now I've freezin' hands and bloodless veins, as numb as I've become
Neko Case
Fall 2010
The clock above the TV reads five-thirty-three. The clock on her phone reads five-forty-eight. Logan has to have reached the city limits by now. She clicks off Fox News. Its repeat coverage of the Alcatraz memorial service is not helping her mood any.
She crawls across the long length of the bed to reach her glass of tap water on the night stand. The lady at the front desk didn’t give her the key to the mini-fridge, probably because her crumpled bills and out-of-date Mississippi driver’s license looked pretty suspect. Beady eyes darted between sixteen-year-old Marie’s beauty pageant perm and eighteen year-old Rogue’s punk rock streaks in disapproval. Quaintly narrow-minded given the bed and breakfast’s proximity to DC’s mutant-hippie Mecca. Marie drains her water, longing for something stronger. Anticipation has her by the skin and it’s pulling up goose bumps.
A motorcycle buzz sends Marie to the door, no gloves to blame for how she fumbles with the locks. Outside, she leans over the top of the stairs to watch Logan get off his bike. Anyone would credit the long drive for the stiffness of his legs, but Marie knows better. She backs into the room as he comes upstairs to meet her. His palm is on the rail. His spine is dipped.
In the doorway, Logan’s bloodshot eyes take in Marie from the top of her bare foot to the curve of her naked shoulder. Her fingers grip the door she’s half-hidden herself behind.
“Did it work?”
Her voice, like Logan’s, is pitched barely above a whisper. “I’m still getting used to it.” She steps back with the door, eyes on beige carpeting as she invites him in.
Logan takes off his leather jacket, his elbow brushing the TV on one side and his knee the mattress on the other. Marie, redoing the locks, is suddenly very aware that the room is hardly bigger than its furniture and that her spandex tank top has ridden up her back. She presses her shoulder blades into the door, turning toward Logan.
He’s laying his jacket a little too carefully across the chair she threw her clothes on. “Thought you said you were stayin’ at a hostel.”
“I was, but it was crowded.” Marie runs her hands down her side and curls her fingers around the bottom of her cotton shorts. “No…privacy.” She watches his face for his nervous tell. She isn’t disappointed. He even shifts his weight to his back leg.
Biting down on a derisive smirk, she locks her eyes on the carpet again. He did. He put ‘the kid’ together with ‘hotel’ and came up with the wrong idea. And, yes, it’s galling that he obviously wouldn’t go for it, but it’s gratifying that his mind went there at all.
Logan’s thoughts, downright at home in the gutter, as a rule are sweepingly lofty in regard to Marie. Of course, as another rule, Logan doesn’t give a damn about rules. How is she supposed to come to terms with mixed signals? Frankly, it had been easier to accept her mutation. No doctor ever vowed her case was hopeless, then turned around and left her with his dog tag, a promise, and really sensational suggestions to get herself off.
And people wonder how Marie could have confused what Logan is supposed to be to her.
Still. The only reason she got the room is because him being tired, let alone admitting it, is no small thing. She rubs her toes together, explaining, “I thought you could use some rest. Plus, I kind like the name of this place. Meridian Hill. It’s what the park used to be called.” She swallows. “I could go back there now. To Meridian. I’d be welcome.”
Off her bitter tone, Logan responds, “Ain’t worth the price of gas, kid.”
Marie pushes away from the door to drop down on the mattress, heart in her lap. “How mad is everybody?”
Logan’s boots come into her line of sight as he says, “You gotta keep in mind, they fought at Alcatraz for a lot of reasons. One of ‘em was so mutants could go on havin’ a choice.”
Logan reaches out to stroke back her hair, like he’s done dozens of times before. Marie draws in a breath. She slides her fingers over the skin between his knuckles, pulling his palm down to cradle her face. Her eyelashes close against his ring finger as his pinky brushes her bottom lip. It could almost be an accident, except he does it again. Back and forth. When her mouth curves up, he drops his palm so they’re holding hands against her neck.
He hunkers down in front of her. The burnout remoteness is gone from his face, erased by sharp tenderness. “Don’t let anyone take this away from you, Marie. Not if it’s what you wanted.”
God, it aches, how much she wishes he was talking about his touch. About them. What he means is the cure.
For Logan, Marie finds the will to blind her regret with a smile. She touches the answering crinkles beside his eyes, echoing, “I won’t let anyone take this.”
Like Momma always used to say, sometimes the only way to make it is to fake it.
Simple advice to follow with Logan at her back. In the bustling entranceway of the Mansion, Marie meets Storm’s eye and holds out her hand. Storm looks at Logan first, like she’s just remembered he’s a good man, then pulls Marie into a hug that’s too much like forgiveness. “Nobody here will judge you.”
Kind words that couldn’t be more wrong. The school’s official reopen means the halls are packed with students just getting in on the gossip. Whispers of, “Rogue’s cured,” beat her to the second floor. A cluster of junior high kids huddle at the far end, near her door. Artie, whose blue forked tongue makes it hard for him to speak, gestures something to his buddies. Streak adjusts his glasses solemnly. “That’s what the government wants you to think.” Flea shakes his spiky blond head. “Cautionary tale, dude. Making out with Syryn is so not worth your life. Rogue – ” Logan scatters the gossips with a barked, “Move it.”
Even Kitty, her torso sticking out of a wall, pulls back her hesitant wave. Marie stares, expressionless, until Kitty slides away.
“What’re you gonna do about that?” Logan asks, depositing Marie’s duffle on her bed. She scratches absently at the edge of her desk. Shrugs, because it depends on how Bobby makes her feel. Logan joins her in the doorway. “Maybe go easy on him. He’s young.”
“He’s five months older than me.”
“Wouldn’t know it,” he tells her, pressing her forehead against his mouth and leaving her chafing at the yearning rushing to her skin.
She thinks about Logan as she waits for Bobby on the edge of his bed. Their reunion is a mastery of emotional maturity. She doesn’t even flinch when he tells her, “This isn’t what I wanted.” Just states, “It’s what I wanted,” in such a steady way she’s starting to believe it. Bobby’s hand is cooler against her skin than it felt against her glove. His pale eyes are lighter now that she’s not pushing him away.
They owe each other a kiss that doesn’t hurt. When they break apart, their roles are reversed. She’s breathless and he’s guilty. It’s not her mutation between them anymore, it’s his doubt. It’s Kitty and the fact that Marie didn’t call. It’s Logan, but Marie never lets Bobby get far enough to bring him into it.
Starting over is Bobby’s suggestion. He makes an ice rose bloom on her palm. “I’m Bobby.”
“Rogue,” she replies, knowing it will freeze the smile on his face.
It stays frozen while he falls back into loving her out of obligation, as a penance. Her punishment for that is so passive it looks like virtue. Overhearing Pete giving Bobby shit for still not getting any feels like justice. Kitty, suffering with him in silence, keeps her distance. Marie tells herself she was better friends with Jubilee anyway.
A week passes. The whispers don’t die. Every day she’s reminded of what she isn’t. Not a mutant. Not an X-Men. Not Rogue. Not Marie. Not even “kid” feels right, but she bears it like a cross because it lightens Logan’s load.
She’s living for his closeness. Their arms stacked on a pool cue to line up a trick shot. His hands around her ankles, widening her defensive stance. Her lips on his bicep as she nods off during a movie.
But there’s distance, too. There’s Logan locking his doors at night so she can’t wake him from his nightmares. There’s Logan snapping, “Save it,” when she tries to bring up Jean Grey. There’s Logan and Storm exiting the med lab, back to doing up each other’s buttons.
Marie almost has sex with Bobby, but it’s not enough that she can make him want her a little more than someone else.
Well-adjusted is simple to fake to Logan’s face. It’s when he’s not looking that she can’t quite make it.
Where the hell is her liquor? Marie kicks at the brown, crinkly leaves that have fallen into her hidey-hole. John was too busy playing evil minion to have come back for his half. Marie searches the base of the oaks lining the small clearing, lighted cell phone in one hand and a recently emptied fifth of Jameson in the other.
The sound of liquid splashing inside glass alerts her to Logan’s presence. So he’s the one who found her stash. Makes her wonder what he thought of the precautions for safe sex. Or if he even registered that they were for her.
Logan lets out a satisfied, “Ah.” The night is clear and bright enough that she can make out the smirk he’s giving her over the lip of the Wild Turkey bottle.
“You could tell me when you’re tailing me.” She drops the fifth to hold out her hand. “And you could share.”
“Can’t do that, kid.” Logan takes another swig as he clears himself a spot on the ground. “You’re underage.”
Marie stands over him, hands on her hips. “It’s mine.”
“You stole it.”
“I had to. I’m underage.” She plucks the bottle out of his hand and starts downing it.
He cocks an eyebrow at her. He knows she’s inherited his taste for alcohol, but this is the first time he’s actually seen her drink. “What’s the problem, Marie? I thought you were doin’ good.” She shrugs, not minding as much as she should that the jig is up. At her non-response, he tugs her down next to him and tosses away the bottle before she drains it.
Marie drops to her back. Her frown turns into a deep glare as she stares at the full moon. When she started out on her own all those months ago, traveling by moonlight had lent romance to her adventure. Truth is, the more picturesque the moon, the more horribly it treated her. The night she was cornered by Gordon Neville – a pathetically warped excuse for a man who wouldn’t have let her skin stop him had she not reclaimed consciousness – the moon was this same blood-gold.
Logan lays back, head propped on his hands. “This about the boyfriend? Where is he?”
“Passed out with a hard-on.” She snickers at the distaste that response merits. That’s right, she’s got a mouth on her. Deal with it. While she’s being honest, she might as well tell him, “Before Bobby was ‘the boyfriend,’ I used to come out here to get high and fool around with John. Don’t worry. I didn’t let him screw me, either.” Logan doesn’t react to that. Fuck. She should have said fuck.
Or, better yet, nothing at all. Embarrassed, she turns into his side, breathing in his flannel shirt. She’s just so damn tired of pretending for him. For her pride.
Logan surprises her with an honest question. “Why not?”
Why hasn’t she had sex yet? Even with her face hidden, Marie can’t answer that. She evades by saying, “I was almost seventeen when I had my first kiss. I was always scared I’d end up like my mother.” She rolls onto her elbow, eyes skyward. “Pricilla Leigh. She dropped out of high school for some circus cowboy who never wanted her. Or me. She died when I was three. Got mixed up in drugs or something. Her sister raised me. Momma said that’s where I get my itch to ‘chase the moon.’” Marie leans her derisive smile into her shoulder. “If you can imagine a thing like that.”
Logan closes his eyes. “Take it from me, kid. The moon only makes you think you want it. It’s a trickster – ”
Marie, head soaked in liquor, chooses that moment to kiss the curve of Logan’s mouth. She keeps her lips pressed firmly against his, unwilling to start the drunken apologies until he pushes her away. Only he doesn’t.
She tilts a little forward, and his lips part. For the most exhilarating seconds of her life, Marie is kissing Logan and he’s kissing her back.
Then, just as suddenly, he’s not. His hands are locked behind his head, his body flat on the ground. His mouth stays open for her, but it’s obvious. Nothing’s different between them. He stuck around to play bodyguard to her delicate feelings. This is more of the same.
Wobbling to her feet, she shakes off Logan’s grasp. “Marie – ” She walks away, her posture very straight, steps very deliberate. He helps her patch up her dignity by not trying to stop her.
What a friend.
She wants to bolt. She wants to crumple in a heap. She wants, for once, to start over and have it actually mean something. She wants to be the one controlling the tides of her life. She wants to run so far and so long that she stops chasing the moon and starts becoming it.
A defiant, thoughtless wish that has mocked her since she was young.