A series by November

Chapter Chapter 35: When the Brave are Coming Out III

"When the brave are coming out,
the dry fight and the dusty shout...
--Duran Duran

After the post-mission incident where Rogue comforted Logan, they had danced a strange dance around each other: respectful, skittish, afraid, intrigued. He caught her looking at him in the dining hall. She caught him staring at all hours as he passed her office door. They would look away at these times, or, increasingly more often, smile. The smiles were generally small and embarrassed, though she was sure Logan would never admit it.

One day he surprised her yet again. He was in the gym lifting free weights when she saw him.

He saw her looking and made a face like a little kid, sticking his tongue out and crossing his eyes. He looked like a five year old despite the stubble. She laughed loudly and everyone stared from her to Logan to see what she was laughing out. But his expression had turned all scowly and he did his growling-eyebrow combo for everyone who was looking at him.

He had these sides to him that she didn’t think he showed to many other people and it made her feel as if there were a surprise around every corner. The fact that he could surprise her with little things excited her.

The next day she was on the phone with a social worker from Provo, Utah when he walked into the office. "Hi," she mouthed.

He smiled a smile that made her dizzy. "Uh huh. Right. Exactly. Okay, well, give me your address and I’ll send you some brochures. Okay. Okay. If you have any more questions you can email or call. PR@Xnet.edu. My pleasure. Thanks."

She hung up the phone and looked at him. Still dizzy. "Howdy stranger."

"Marie. You eat yet?"

"Nope."

"You wanna?"

"Eventually." She teased.

He rolled his eyes, leaned to one side in his tight jeans, and looked very cute.

"Now? With me?"

"Sure." She couldn’t bear to bust his balls for too long.

They walked companionably to the garage. She hadn’t seen much of him lately and she asked him what he’d been up to.

"A project."

"Very cryptic. What’s her name?"

"It’s not a her, you silly brat."

"It’s this secret project of yours, I see. I’m totally curious."

"Maybe I’ll show it to you." he smiled.

"Tease."

His mind was reeling. Marie was flirting with him. Yes!

"I am not a tease, Marie!"

Hrmph. If only he knew the wet teen girl fantasies he’d inspired. "Whatever."

They reached the garage and he opened the door to a big black quad truck.

"Nice," Rogue said.

"Thanks. I got it in Wisconsin, after Scooter’s bike bit it." He neglected to tell her that Scooter’s bike had become scrap metal and that a normal person wouldn’t have lived through the crash.

"Where d’you wanna go?" He asked. Without being invited to she picked up his CD case and flipped through it. More surprises. George Winston, Dave Matthews, 311. Hendrix and the Beatles.

"I dunno. What are you in the mood for?"

"Anything."

"Okay. You like Mexican?"

"I did when I was there."

"Okay. Mexican it is. Turn right up here."

A brown-skinned woman named Soledad greeted them warmly and seated them in the sunny upstairs part of the restaurant. While they waited for their food Rogue sipped a margarita and pondered the vivid difference between this Logan and the one she remembered. He seemed less one-dimensional, more complex, and though no less burdened he seemed to have aspects other than anger and pain. Humor, for example.

Lunch was strange. It was like a dream she’d had while he was gone, where the colors were a bit too bright and the dialogue was outlandish and the Technicolor Logan in the dream wasn‘t really like the one she remembered. Yet it was real.

"So tell me some of your traveling stories."

"Traveling stories, let me see." He sipped his margarita and thought. "Ok. I learned I can speak French."

"Get out."

"Yeah. I was on this bus in Tunisia and this man got on. This bus - it was a hundred degrees in the shade and this thing had no air conditioning and the windows didn’t open. So this man got on and went up to this woman and started screamin' at her. I couldn’t understand the actual words, but... I knew what he was saying. She had been trying to run away from him. He tried to drag her off the bus, and no one was stopping him. Then I got up and I told him to get off. But it wasn’t English coming out of my mouth. I told him, in French, that if he didn’t get off the bus and stay behind that I would slice off his testicles and feed them to him."

She put her hand over her mouth and tried to keep her margarita from coming out of her nose.

"You know the French word for testicles?"

"Yeah. Well, I was the most shocked person there. I was like, what the hell just happened?"

"So then what?"

"So, he scurried his sorry ass off the bus and that woman thanked me. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. It was sad."

"So say somethin’ in French."

"Je suis un pamplemousse."

"What's that?"

"I said I'm a grapefruit."

She laughed and the fact that he was making her laugh made him feel high.

He went on to tell her some other stories. She wondered if he still had nightmares. She wondered if she could sleep next to him without being skewered.

She was used to shielding her thoughts from telepaths and quickly censored that thought.

But she didn’t need to, she reasoned, unless the project he had mentioned was nursing a budding telepathic talent. Which she doubted. So she allowed herself that train of thought while looking away from his face and imagining his hands on her...

There was yellow paint on his thumbnail. She turned her head to the side and he realized that she was no longer listening.

"It was you!" she said.

"Huh?" He had a sinking feeling about where this was heading.

"You’re painting! You did the painting in Xavier’s office!" He saw her excitement and wondered how she had guessed. It wasn’t exactly a Logan-ish thing to be doing but if anyone knew him better than his stereotype it would be Marie.

He was quiet, face expressionless. She suddenly felt stupid, clumsy.

"I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. That was yours to tell me if and when you felt like and I’ve gone trampling all over it. But it just clicked, you talking about art and your drawing of the guy from the dream and that painting reminded me of you when I saw it-"

His face still hadn’t changed. "I’m sorry," she repeated, and fingered the rim of her glass, pushing wet salt around in circles.

"Marie - it’s okay." In fact he was touched that she had guessed. It gave him hope that maybe she could understand him after all. He looked at her and realized he’d made her feel stupid.

He briefly put his large hand over hers. "It’s okay." She looked up at him and her eyes were so big and brown and wide and open and giving that he was blindsided for a second. This was what he had remembered about her. Those eyes. That purity.

Then, she grinned, and he lifted his hand, and all the tension was gone.

"I am so psyched, Logan. I can’t wait to see your work. I mean, if you’d let me. If you want. If that one is any indication I bet they’re amazing."

"Chuck liked them."

"Well he’s a good judge of art."

"Good to know." He was ready to show it to her, parts of it anyway, and he just had to make sure those were the parts that were visible. And that the naked painting of her was hidden well. Very well. "Well, one of these days I’ll show you my studio."

"You have a studio? At home?"

"Naw, I rent a studio in town."

"Oh. Cool. Well, whenever." He could tell that she didn’t believe that he would show her and this troubled him.

"How about Saturday?"