A series by November
A series by November
Chapter 36: A Scarlet Heart Bursts
"A scarlet heart bursts,
She picked her cutest sundress for this non-date, green with white flowers, and sandals. Pathetic, she knew, but it was technically casual enough for a weekend. And it was hot out. She put her hair up into a floppy knot with a clip, white and brown bits hanging loose. Just a tiny bit of pink lipstick. No perfume, but the sweet smell of her shampoo was enough.
She found Maggie eating cereal in front of the TV. "Hey love. Ready to go hang out with Logan?"
She nodded, never moving her eyes from the cartoons.
Marie was suddenly overwhelmed with panic. He would hurt her, leave without a word again, and that was one thing, but what if he broke Maggie’s heart? Rogue could not bear it. She willed herself to breathe. He had said that he was staying permanently. She would have to trust him.
She sat down behind Maggie and picked up the brush from the end table. She started brushing her soft blue hair. It gleamed in the bright sunlight. She hadn’t cut it in all the time Maggie had been with her. It was a deep periwinkle at the roots and sun had highlighted it so the ends were lighter. It was down to the middle of her back.
"You wanna get a haircut, Mags?"
"No. I wanna grow it."
"Okay. It’s really gorgeous. Pretty little blue angel." She bend down to kiss her on the head.
"Ok, Boo, go get dressed. We’ve gotta be at the garage in ten minutes."
Maggie picked out a halter top and shorts. She had pretty good taste for a five year old.
"Honey, if you’re gonna wear that I need to put some sunblock on you."
"No."
"Well, then, put another shirt on."
"No."
"Do you want to get a sunburn?"
"No."
Rogue just sat there and stared at Maggie. She hated power struggles. They weren’t her style.
Maggie got the sunblock and brought it over to Rogue, turning around dutifully.
"Good girl."
Logan and Scott were in the garage, working on Scott’s new bike. To Scott’s astonishment Logan had returned without his bike, but gave him the business card of a man in Rochester. He told Scott that there was a bike waiting there for him, and though it wasn’t tricked out as the old one had been, he would help him work on it.
He smelled her before she was visible. Then she came into view and he almost dropped his wrench.
He was stupefied by the way the sun looked on her skin. The way her legs were thin and strong under that girly wisp of a dress. The way he could smell her. All of her.
"Mornin’." she called out to them. "This the new bike?" Logan’s eyes on hers felt warm. And soothing. And exhilarating, all at once. Suddenly she was having palpitations.
"Yeah, we went up and got it this morning." Scott said. Marie didn’t hear him. None of what he said registered.
Maggie walked over to Logan. "Hi Logan!"
"Hi kid."
"Whatcha doin?"
"I’m fixing this motorcycle."
"Did you break it?"
Rogue laughed and leaned against a car.
"No, just making it better." He pretended to adjust something on the bike while he waited for his hard-on to go down.
Maggie prattled on, oblivious to his conundrum. He tried to avoid looking at Rogue.
He thought of Sabretooth. Of the smell of charred bone. Of road kill. Okay. That worked.
Maggie was grabbing at Logan‘s hand and shaking it. "Logan, will you give me a piggyback ride?"
"Sure, kid." He put down the greasy rag down and lifted her up. He ran toward the back of the mansion, Maggie’s delighted shrieks in his ears.
"Don’t tell me you aren’t hung over?" she asked Scott. She, Scott and Jubilee had gone out the night before and wound up playing quarters until Lou’s closed.
"I was attended by my own personal physician."
Rogue chuckled. "I bet the hell you were."
Scott looked at her, grinning. "So what’s going on?" He nodded to where Logan had run.
"I dunno. I was determined to not trust him. He’s wearing me down, though."
"Is he treating you well, Rogue?"
"So well- Jesus, Scott, I need to talk to you later. You’re the only other one who will understand what it’s like to be a blithering idiot."
He looked at her.
"Oh, shit, I didn’t mean it that way."
"I know what you mean." Scott smiled. "And I don’t think you’re the only one who’s feeling like that." He gestured toward the other side of the mansion where the shrieking was getting closer.
"Really?" She said.
"He‘s been pining over you ever since he came back."
"Oh really?"
Scott snorted. "Jean says all his projections give her a headache."
"I’m just... so damn afraid he’s gonna break my heart."
Scott wiped his hands and fixed her with his mysterious red gaze. "For what it’s worth I think he’s gonna stick around."
"You as Logan’s advocate. Shit, the temperature must have dropped in hell."
Maggie’s giggling grew closer and Logan made a loud airplane noise and deposited Maggie on the ground.
"Is that it?" she said petulantly, looking up at him with eyes blue as her hair.
"Maggie, Logan isn’t your personal jungle gym."
Scott snorted. "Hey, he’s got the metal infrastructure."
"That’s true, I do. Don’t mind her, she’s just jealous."
"Am not."
"You’re welcome to climb on me any time." Logan knelt down and Maggie climbed up on to his back. Then he took off again around the mansion.
"Allright, but when she steps on your balls, it’s on you!" Rogue yelled after them.
Scott laughed so hard he fell back from his squatting position onto his ass.
"Ah, whooda thunkit? Logan good with kids." He wiped his greasy hands on a rag and remained sitting.
"I can’t believe you guys are like best buds or something. What is up with that?"
"Scary, isn’t it? I guess he’s mellowed, I’ve mellowed..."
"You are aware that he only ever flirted with her to piss you off."
"Of course I’m aware of it. I’m embarrassed that it worked so well."
.
"Where are we going?" Maggie said.
"We’re gonna look at some paintings and then have lunch."
Logan drove them into the university part of town and circled for parking. There were a few college kids around but as it was summer, they only had to circle twice.
Logan opened the door to his studio with a sideways thrust of his hip which Rogue admired with widened eyes.
Marie looked around. This place smelled like Logan, and paint and cigars. She instantly liked it. He had hung up some of his paintings. The one of her naked, of course, was in a locked cabinet. He let her see all of the Alkali ones. He let her see his portrait of Xavier, but not his portrait of her in the red dress. All his still lives he let her see, the painting of a three legged dog he’d painted from memory, the impressionistic one of the drab Eskimo woman surrounded by the rainbows of her handiwork.
Rogue glimpsed the portrait of Xavier and gasped.
His heart quickened and he wished people would stop doing that.
His eyes were closed, shoulders naked, the usual impeccable suit gone. He looked as if he were laying down on a table but he didn’t look dead. The light clung to his skin. A burst of light hung over his head, just a bit to the right. It was at once calm and intense. It was Xavier. His essence.
She lifted the painting gingerly and looked it over again. It was at once surreal and very real. She had thought that Logan couldn’t surprise her anymore. She realized how wrong she was.
He heard her heart pounding faster and he wasn’t sure why. He shifted his weight uncomfortably over the creaky floorboards and watched her watch the painting. Maggie was running around the room, bouncing from canvas to canvas. Rogue was oblivious to both of them.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. "Marie?"
She tore her eyes away from the painting and looked at him. "Oh my GOD." she said.
"What!" He couldn’t stand the tension.
"You’re fucking brilliant." Maggie, who rarely heard her swear, looked up for a second. "You’re like - the Dutch masters or Michelangelo... my god. You have no clue just how great these are?"
He had no idea who the Dutch masters were but he had thought it involved cigars. He didn’t get any clarification either because she was already moving to the next painting.
The second painting was of a research facility. Its contents were very vague, geometric. A holding cell, a tank of chartreuse fluid. It was much much darker, but the intense quality of the light was similar.
She recognized the place intimately from her dreams. It came back to her, the pain, the taste of metal. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. He thought for a second that she might cry, but she just went to the next canvas.
She looked at him in wonderment. "How long have you known you could do this?"
"I didn’t, I just - the idea came to me when I was sketching up at Alkali. I had no idea but it just seemed... I don’t know. Maybe I was a painter before."
"How long have you been painting?"
"Coupla months." He stared at his boots.
"Logan, do you have any idea of the magnitude of talent you’re showing here?"
He met her eyes. "Really? Or do you just have to say it, to spare my feelings?" He was smiling, but she could tell his fear was genuine.
"No. I don’t. I wouldn’t. You don’t get it, do you? These are amazing."
He wanted to ask her why, to ask for reassurance, but she was already moving around the room.
When she was done, she sat down on his stool, quiet. It unnerved him. He tried to imagine that he really was as great as she said. He had her word, and Xavier’s, so he knew they must be good, but he saw no reason for her to sit down as if exhausted, somewhat dazed.
Maggie was poking and prodding in his box of paints. "Can I paint with you, Logan?"
"Any time, kid."
"Cool." She held up a tube of Thallo green. "I like this color."
"Me too."
Rogue stood up and circled the room again. She felt as if she had to look again, if to make sure they were real. She stared at Logan for a second, in a way that made his skin crawl.
She was quiet throughout lunch. They went to an old diner made of an actual diner car, where there were vinyl records on the wall and everything was in primary colors. Sheaths of paper were freshly laid out on each table and there were crayons there to use. Maggie liked this.
While Rogue perused the menu Maggie picked up a crayon and said "draw me a picture, Logan."
He shut his menu. "Ok. A picture of what?" Rogue glanced up and noticed how his head was bowed down to her, giving her all his attention. She wanted to nibble on the exposed flesh of his neck.
"Ummmm…. A picture of me."
"Okay. Go sit on that side with your mom."
"Okay." Maggie did.
"Now look up at me a bit. Okay. Hold still."
Marie still held her menu but watched over it while Logan deftly drew. He looked up at her with intensity that Rogue suddenly envied and she had a sudden vision of herself posing for him.
She looked back at the menu and then realized that none of the words were sticking in her brain. She decided to have a burger and leave it at that.
She watched his hands as they smudged (as much as crayon would smudge, anyway) and drew. She couldn’t take her eyes off his hands, even while the waitress came back with their drinks.
When he was done Maggie and Rogue switched places with him so they could look. The drawing was a little rough because of the inferior medium of crayon. But he had captured something about Maggie. It was at this time that the waitress came and passed them their plates.
Marie completely lost her reserve. "Oh my god, Logan, that’s great. I wanna take that home with us."
"Geez, Marie, I’ll draw you a real one, that’s horrible."
"I like it," Maggie said.
Logan took a big bite of his burger and said "I’ll draw you another one, Maggie."
Marie suddenly felt as if the world was spinning around her. It was 2004, she was a mother, Logan was creating fine art and, it seemed, courting her.
"Will you draw me another one now?" Maggie asked.
"Let the man eat, Mags. Why don’t you eat your sandwich and then you can draw Logan a picture of him?"
"Okay."
Maggie’s rendition of Logan was pretty funny. She drew a stick man with round hands with eight silver spikes protruding in every direction, and hair that stuck up wildly.
"What are those, Maggie?" Marie asked.
"Those are the knives." Logan glanced down at the drawing and laughed.
"How did you know about the knives?"
"I dunno."
Marie met Logan’s eyes. They both seemed confused. "Maybe you heard Storm or Scott telling stories about them."
Maggie shrugged.
"Sometimes I think she’s gonna be a telepath."
"Has Chuck tested her?"
"A bit. Says she’s a beta, possibly an alpha, it’s too early to tell."
He nodded. She folded her straw wrapper over once, twice.
"So are you thinking about showing in a gallery somewhere?"
"Nope. Not now. Down the line."
"Your work’ll do really well."
"I don’t care about that, right at this moment."
She nodded and sipped her ice tea. "You should get an agent, and let them deal with it."
"That was my thought. Right now I just wanna figure out what I’m doing."
"Good plan." Marie picked up a purple crayon and doodled. She drew curlicues that went nowhere and thought about the man across from her. About the paintings and nightmares and gruff exterior that covered a bleeding, wounded, hopeful soul. Tears were in her eyes and she couldn’t quite say why.
She glanced up at him through a wisp of white hair. The sun was hitting his eyes just so, bringing out the green in them. She looked up and his eyes met hers briefly, and the diner and rattle of plates fell away and Maggie’s prattling fell away and he suddenly felt so naked, as if all of himwas visible and to know him all she had to do was look.
But she held his gaze, and it lasted for about three seconds until the waitress came with their check.
Throw some blue painting...
It's action painting...
--Pizzicato Five>
Saturday dawned exceedingly bright and warm. She woke knowing that she was going to be spending time with Logan and this made her heart beat faster. It was hardly a date, as Maggie would be chaperoning, but it was two friends spending time together, and that was something. There were walls of trust that were being built.
