DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid

track two // “ANY COLOR YOU LIKE”

OUT OF THE BLUE

“I’m – Hell, kid. For all you know I could be a…” He slides his hand out of his pocket
to indicate any number of things. Rapist. Serial killer. Jesus freak.
– Logan –

Not unusual for Logan to ramble aimlessly room to room when he first comes back to the cabin. That a fixed position could offer any sort of relaxation is a concept that takes awhile for him to believe. The open road needs time to work itself out of his system, and even then he never quite loses the call. Forward motion is forward motion regardless of how circular the drive.

So he paces, head tilted back when he’s not adding to the mental list of shit he’s wrecked that he now has to fix just in case he decides it needs punishing again. Not as bad as he thought. The recliner has seen worse, simple enough to get new wood for the bottom. TV toppled but didn’t break. Nothing above the mantel fell. Overhead beams look sturdy.

Weren’t for the fire, he’d be unpacking, too: that book with the familiar cover belonged with the others in the back room; the mid-nineteenth century map of Canada that he’d picked up when he was down in Kelowna would’ve been just the right size to cover that gash in the wall, though not the high one next to it. His gaze moves to the ceiling again.

No, the restlessness isn’t anything out of the ordinary but the preoccupation is. There’s a runaway-mutant ex-soldier girl-woman fast asleep in his loft, and Logan has to decide whether or not he should wake for her dinner.

Kid can’t really afford to be skipping meals the way she clearly has. If it weren’t for the generous ass he hadn’t been able to keep himself from eyeing on the way up the stairs earlier, she’d be lean as a greyhound. Way she ate her lunch, chewing slowly, holding each bite in her mouth before swallowing, was even more pitiful than the way she’d somehow managed to look dainty devouring the piece of jerky he’d given her in the pickup. It was those hollow cheekbones of hers. Made him think she was some kind of bird long before she proved she could fly.

Logan wishes she’d just smell the food and come out herself, but even with the stairs down she hasn’t made a peep. Of course, some asshole did make her drive straight through the night so she more than deserves the shuteye.

He moves into the kitchen to check how the rabbit is cooking. Kind of a scrawny thing, but she’ll do for tonight, maybe with some leftovers for jerky. A deer would’ve been better, that way he could put off going to town awhile longer, but Logan didn’t want to go too far into the woods.

The rabbit he’d found right in the brush. Big, fearless eyes had locked onto his. She didn’t even twitch an ear as he inched closer. Could’ve been his imagination, but her head seemed to tilt when he slowly pushed one claw though the skin between his knuckles. The measured sting made him remember a question no one had ever thought to ask him before – “Does it hurt?” Open curiosity, no wariness. The rabbit, locked down by his stare, let him kneel beside her. A small quiver in her haunches betrayed warranted mistrust. Still, it wasn’t until Logan reached out to touch the velvety-looking fur on her back that she uncoiled her legs and he sliced off her head.

Have to eat something.

Opening the oven, he cuts into the rabbit with a knife. The sum of his cooking talent is a sixth sense about exactly when the meat is on the right side of rare. He gives it ten more minutes. So long as the finished product sits in its own juices, it’s edible enough for him. He has a spice rack that could be a hundred years old for all he uses it. Marie’d thought to cook the trout in honey, and it was the best damn thing he’d eaten in recent memory. Were he a complete and utter bastard he’d have already hauled her out of bed and gotten her to work her magic on the rabbit. He hadn’t, but just how tempting the thought was spoke plenty to his character.

He pops open a can of corn and dumps it into the pot he took from the sink. He puts on some soup, too, and sets out the crackers. Enough for now, though he doesn’t know how he’s going to feed her tomorrow. No bread, no milk. He could’ve been to the store and back twice in the time she’s been asleep.

Seemed like a risk. Kid doesn’t need to be waking up in some backwoods cabin, roughneck owner nowhere to be found. Sleep deprived as she was, it was possible she hadn’t been thinking straight when she agreed to stay. She’d called them friends, too, another suspect judgment call. Logan doesn’t pretend to know how twenty-one year-old kids deal with life on the run, but there’s no denying she’s put herself in an awfully vulnerable position. Super strength, poison skin, whatever the hell else she thinks she’s got in her arsenal wouldn’t be enough to keep him from getting at her, if he was some kind of psycho pervert.

Sure, he knows Marie’s safer under his roof than outside of it, but just because he told her so doesn’t mean it’s smart to believe him. Least she could’ve done was ask him to close the stairs and put the mattress over it or something. That she didn’t isn’t so much a compliment as it is a cause for concern – fucked up people are unavoidable and this world, and they should’ve taught her a lesson by now.

And wasn’t that just the most horrible goddamn thing to wish on anybody? Christ’s sake.

Logan ends up eating the rabbit on his own. He called her name up the stairs half-heartedly, but, even though the whole place belongs to him as much as anything did, going up into the loft would’ve felt like a violation of her privacy. So he leans on the refrigerator as he shovels food in his mouth, staring at the setting sun through tattered curtains. After he’s had his full, he stands out on the porch for a better view.

Only when the blue is almost completely faded from the sky and the stairs to the loft creak does Logan realize, all afternoon, he’s been doing nothing but waiting for Marie.

Sliding steps muffled by socks, he turns as she comes to join him.

“Hey,” he says, pulling his crossed arms tighter against his chest.

She squints at him, eyes still puffy from sleep. Hand hidden under the blanket she has wrapped around her shoulders, she reaches up to rub her tangled hair. Her answer is lost in a sudden, voracious yawn. Shaking it off, she drops into the porch’s only chair.

“I had the weirdest dream about you,” she raspily tells him, as if they know each other well enough to share shit like that. As if he’d ever.

He makes a general sort of noise, which doesn’t do anything to convey the real questions on his mind, like how sharp the ax in his hand was and how fast she was running in the other direction.

A tired smile appears on her face as her eyes drift shut. “You took me to prom.”

To…What in the hell? He looks into the sunset. Just as he thought. Poor judgment.

“The tux fit great,” she continues. “And your dress was real pretty.”

Incredulous, he turns back around.

Marie just goes on grinning charmingly, eyes awake now. A snort tumbles out, starting an avalanche of giggles she has to suppress against the blanket. “Faces like that, you should carry around a mirror,” she eventually manages.

He shakes his head slightly, aware that he’s starting to smile. “There’s food in the kitchen.”

“Smells great,” she says, snuggling deeper into the chair and rocking herself. “Thank you.”

Her eyes drift to the skyline. Oranges and pinks and reds bleed into the pond and glint off the powdery show. A golden eagle grips tree bark in her talons, beating her wings to settle herself in.

“This is how I always thought the great white North would look,” Marie observes. “I haven’t gotten to see it like this yet.”

“Too busy tryin’ to keep warm,” he guesses.

She agrees. “Rogue the Lonesome Hobo.”

“Why ‘Rogue’?”

“Anna Marie D’Ancanto’s too Southern.”

Logan quirks an eyebrow. “Oh, I see. ‘Rogue’ is sophisticated.”

“Shut up,” she chuckles, warmth rising in her cheeks.

He smirks. “Get your dinner.”

“Mm.”

Marie’s head lolls against the back of the rocker. They watch the color fade behind the trees. He listens as her breathing turns deep and even.

“Kid. Food,” he says. “Before you pass out.”

Eyes still shut, her lips turn up. “I was fishing for you to bring it to me.” She pushes herself to her feet, stiff as an old lady. “I guess the boss shouldn’t have to wait on the help.”

Never occurred to him to fix her a plate. Her good humor aside, he feels reprimanded. Like a damn puppy who didn’t know the rules of fetch.

Logan turns his grimace toward the window. Sun’s pretty much set. Tomorrow, he’ll stand at the edge of the cliff at the front of the cabin and watch the it rise. He likes the order to that cycle.

When he starts to lose the light, he shoves his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and shoulders his way back into the cabin.

In the kitchen, Marie leans back in her chair. She’s humming a tune he can almost place. The plate and bowl in front of her are practically licked clean.

“You get enough?”

She pats her tummy. “More soon. I’m digesting.” Marie idly picks up the tune again. Dylan, he decides, just as she starts to murmur-sing, “‘How does it feel…’”

Logan stands against the counter. “Make me a list – stick to the essentials – and I’ll go to town tomorrow.”

“There’s only one thing in this whole world I want right now.” She runs her tongue over her teeth, making a face. “A toothbrush.”

“Bathroom, under the sink.”

“Bless you.”

He shrugs off her grateful relief. “When I’m in town, I’ll check the papers, too. Find out the damage.”

Marie cringes.

“What the hell were you thinking?” He surprises himself with the question, and even more with how much he actually wants to know.

Her open-palmed answer lifts her shoulders to her ears. She drops her arms bonelessly.

That response is the last thing he wants from her. He scowls. “You don’t think things through much, do you?”

Eyebrows at her hairline, she asks, “Are you lecturing me?”

“No,” he replies, not convincing himself anymore than Marie.

She rubs her hands over her face. “I could’ve sworn when I went to sleep I was ‘resourceful.’ Now I’m back to being a ‘stupid kid.’”

“That ain’t what I’m sayin’,” he counters, the hurt in her voice making him bark at her. “I’m – Hell, kid. For all you know I could be a…” He slides his hand out of his pocket to indicate any number of things. Rapist. Serial killer. Jesus freak.

“Mutant lumberjack guy with near-immortality and razor-sharp fist claws?” she offers. “I could still end you with my pinky toe. But I’m beholden to you, so don’t you worry your spiky, bearded head about it.” The tone she uses drips sarcasm, but her little chin juts forward.

He opens his mouth to tell her off. Laughter comes out instead. Jesus! Rubber meets glue, no question. What a smart-mouthed spitfire she is.

Indignation drops Marie’s jaw.

Rolling chuckles settle in the back of his throat. “Button your mouth, kid. You’ll let the flies in.”

She harrumphs, but gives him a closed-lipped grin anyway.

It strikes him all of a sudden, how sweet Marie actually is and how much that scares the hell of out of him. He doesn’t know where to look.

Turning, he steps down into the main room and throws, “Make that list,” out behind him.

He occupies himself getting the TV working again. The socket hangs out by the wires. He must’ve jerked it out of the wall when he tipped the set over. He fits it back in, while Marie starts to clean up the mess he left in the kitchen.

“Leave it. You’re dead on your feet,” he calls, jerking his hand back just in time to avoid a spark. “I ain’t askin’ for slave labor.”

“Now listen here, sugar. A minute ago you were berating me because I don’t fear you properly. Until you make up your mind about yourself, I’m gonna go ahead and do what I feel like doing. All right?”

“Yeah, all – ” Motherfucker! He sucks on his burnt fingers. The generator out back more than survived another winter.

He’s already healed and finished with the fixture by the time Marie appears beside him with a glass of whiskey. “Bet that smarts,” she says, handing it over.

Phantom pain. His brain is never quite as quick to forget as his body. Ironic, since his memory functions in the opposite.

He drinks, and Marie rights the TV so it sits straight in its frame. Her gloved hands trail over the varnished wood. “Impressive,” she comments. “Though I don’t suppose you get cable.”

“Depends on the time of day,” he replies.

Going over to the couch, he sets his glass down to pick up the remote. He flips past a few blank channels before landing on the Oilers against the Flames. A rerun no doubt, but he hasn’t watched it yet. He settles into the cushions grandly, finally, arms outspread.

That ass he was admiring earlier is now in his way. “One side or the other, Marie.”

“Can I join you?” she asks, motioning to the long space next to him.

Logan shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

She sits, the back of her hair brushing along the edge of the couch and against his fingers. He resists the twitch.

“You know anything about hockey?” he asks pointedly, wary of Dixie-belle ignorance.

“I’ve picked up a few things here and there. Flames have Kipoff – Kipruff?”

“Kiprusoff.”

“That’s the one. I remember now. He was the top goaltender a few years back. He deserved it this season, too. Especially after that shutout against Montreal. Our offense drags ass this year, compared to our defense.”

“‘Our’? You from Mississippi by way of Calgary?”

Marie waves it off. “Ours, yours, theirs. Anyway, this’ll be no contest. I heard the Oilers phoned it in since the preseason.”

“Oh, that so?”

“Long distance,” she confirms.

“I don’t know who you’re gettin’ your facts from, kid, but the Oilers are damn close to their dynasty years. Next season – ”

“Oilers fans are always, always talking about next season. The present must be painful for you guys.”

Logan puts up one finger, twisting around. “Listen, if you want to start the Battle of Alberta under my roof, you’re not gonna interrupt…”

Marie’s not paying attention. She’s holding her head away from the hand that slipped onto her shoulder. He pulls it back immediately.

“You crowded?” He nods toward the length of the couch.

She folds up her legs Indian-style so that her knee rests on his leg. “Nope. You?”

The innocent expression on her face tells him it’s a kind of game. He thinks it might be better for his sanity if he refuses to play. Her face starts to fall.

Logan stacks his palm on top of her knee. “Nope.”

Pleased glint on the TV, she says, “Oh, watch this. Seventeen’s about to eat ice. Look at that leg wobble. And…wipeout. Ouch.”

“Yeah, well, he put Visnovsky in a sweet position.”

“Too bad he’s not getting by my man Kip.”

Kiprusoff doesn’t let her down, and the puck knocks against the boards.

“Visnovsky’ll come back with it. He doesn’t miss twice.”

“Wanna bet?” Marie nudges him when he all he gives her is a look. “I’m serious. Ten bucks a call and, let’s say, fifty dollars advance if I go under.”

“Darlin’, you’re forgettin’ this is all my money anyway.”

Marie puts a satin-covered finger to her full bottom lip thoughtfully. “So we should make it twenty bucks a call and a hundred dollar advance. I like the way you think.” Her index finger salutes the TV. “That’s twenty for me.”

In the replay, Visnovsky’s second shot bounces off the crossbar.

Logan starts to suspect this game of hers is rigged. The next two miraculous predictions confirm it.

“Lansdale ain’t exactly known for his aggression,” Logan says after she gives herself twenty more dollars for calling the rookie crashing at the net.

Marie’s got to know he’s on to her. She just gives one of her dainty shrugs. “Lucky guess, that’s all. Pardon me, sugar.”

She gets up on her knees and crawls over him, ass lifted into the perfect smacking position. He digs his blunt fingernails into the couch cushions until she’s over the side and swinging her hips into the kitchen.

“I’m gonna make us a snack. Give you chance to catch up.”

A cheating gambler and an unapologetic thief, not to mention a shameless flirt. Logan sure can pick ’em.

Or could be it’s that she can chose ’em. Maybe this is just how she gets by. Damsel in distress routine lands her a new sucker boyfriend in every town, she takes them for everything they got, then she moves on.

He’s still thinking about that possibility when she comes around the couch with a plate of stale crackers and a jar of peanut butter with a faded label.

Marie wedges her socked feet under his thigh. “You’re like a furnace. What’d I miss?”

She’s watched this game already, that’s for sure. Probably on a fuzzy TV in the kind of motel that advertises vibrating beds, with her ass in the lap of some shaggy-haired, fedora-wearing card-shark grifter.

“Wha’?” Peanut butter sticks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. Not exactly the picture of a master con artist. She’s back to being that sweet kid again.

Cynicism disappears faster than it came on. He snorts. “Jig’s up. Why don’t you just tell me the score?”

She answers sheepishly through peanut butter and a polite hand covering her mouth, “Seven-tree, F’ames.”

Figures. He changes the channel. “Better get used to the idea of earning an honest dollar.”

“Exactly where does the cable company send your bills?”

He reaches over to take the buttered cracker out of her hands and pops it between his teeth. Out of one side of his mouth, he says, “Do as I say, kid. Not as I do.”

Giggling, Marie wipes his crumbs off her chest.

He peels his eyes away and concentrates on not looking back. Car ad. Skelton of an actress he wouldn’t have kicked out bed five years ago. Nightrider, pansy. MacGyver, better. Tampon commercial. Figure skating. Highlander’s running credits, too bad. Bullshit mutant PSA. That flick about a girl on a milk carton. Not a half-bad Spanish soap. Mm. He could go for some hot wings.

“Jeez, you flip so fast how do even register what’s on?” Marie complains.

His finger automatically pauses on CBC but he catches himself.

“Hey, wait, go back.”

“No.” Stupid thing to say. It peaks her interest even more.

She catches him off guard by yanking the remote out of his hand. Not once in his entire abbreviated life has anyone had balls-out gall to assume control of a television he’s watching.

“I take it you already sleep with one eye open.”

“I sleep like a rock, actually.” Marie goes back exactly three channels. Her brow goes in. “Your guilty pleasure is Canadian Antiques Road Show?”

Logan takes the remote and tosses it on the rug. “Antiques Road Show it is.”

“The thrills you backwood Canadians get up to.” Settling in so close their belt loops are touching, she asks, “So do you hide copies of Better Homes & Gardens under your mattress or what?”

“Button it.”

For awhile, all he hears other than the TV is Marie munching on her crackers. Much better. Logan stretches out again.

He snorts at a woman, married to a ninth-generation Molson, who thinks she’s got a mahogany candle stand on her hands. “It’s for servin’ tea,” he educates Marie. “She put the cup on the shelf and the kettle on top, and poured from there.”

“‘She’ who?”

Logan’s a little thrown. “She. Her.” Isn’t that what he said? A second later, the appraiser proves him right about it being a kettle stand. “Told ya.”

Neck craned like a groundhog, Marie’s doing some math. “Honestly, you should be on the show. Look at that rug, or the kitchen table. The TV itself is probably worth a killing.”

Logan brushes that comment off. “Don’t start gettin’ ideas about flying off with my dinette set.”

Marie pokes him in the ribs. “Say, ‘dinette set’ again.”

“Quit it.” He locks her into place against his side. “I’m ticklish.”

On screen, the Molson woman is screeching over a ten thousand dollar offer and flinging her arms around the appraiser, who hollers, “I’m blushing, I’m blushing!”

Marie’s breathing hitches. Logan can smell her blood stirring up, see it rising to color her cheeks. And, hell, no wonder, he’s all but hefting her right tit. He moves his hand to the small of her back. She awkwardly tugs down her shirt, nerves souring her scent again.

Christ sake. He leans forward and rubs his bare hand together. He can feel her eyes intent on his profile. What was he thinking, putting his arm around her like he had the right? If she wasn’t anxious about his character before, he’s giving her good cause to be now.

“Look it,” he mutters. “I wasn’t tryin’ anythin’.”

“Oh,” she replies. Then, after a second, “Why not?”

He jerks his stare to her face. Slowly, her bowed, parted lips widen into the brightest smile he’s seen from her yet. She cocks her head to the side, giving her expression an allure no one who smells so innocent has any right to.

Logan’s lost count of how many times Marie’s swiped his feet out from under him in the single day he’s known her.

Fuck almighty, he should’ve known he was in for it.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid

track two // “ANY COLOR YOU LIKE”

GREEN-EYED MONSTER
“You saw what I did,” she reminds him.
“I killed her. It took seconds. It could happen to you.”
– Rogue –

The measuring cup drops to the kitchen floor when Rogue hears the rattling hiss. Her bare hand stills over the fifty pound bag of flour. A second passes as a minute, and the snake flicks its banded tail against the open flap.

Rogue breathes, “Ew,” even as a several voices tell her to shriek and run. She keeps still, irrationally more afraid of the snake slithering into sight than she is of it striking from where she can’t see. Cooler minds prevail. Slowly, very slowly, she pulls her hand away, palm up.

A flat head glances her, and Rogue skitters back from the pantry with the frantic impression that the snake is flying toward her face.

A wheezy whoop punctuations her realization that she’s got the snake around the neck. Keep a hold, mutie!

Hardly able to make a sound, she curses at the snake, herself, and other people’s stupid, moronic, Darwin award-winning impulses.

The snake is enormous. Four feet long. The markings on its back are dark enough that it takes a minute for her to realize that something took a bite out of it.

It pulls back to strike!

Rogue throws up one elbow to protect herself. The other she straightens, pushing the jerking, disgusting thing as far away as her arm will stretch. Hand twitching wildly, her fingertips betray her and dig into the snake’s spongy back.

’At’s a way! Poison the sucker, like it wants t’ poison you. The hard-forgotten hacking twang of Redneck Macomb, he of the key-jangling sadism. Two snakes too many.

“Logan!” she croaks. She tries again to little more success.

But he’s in the shower, and the snake is pissed and trying to wrap itself – herself, it’s a her, just slithered out of brumation and looking for a male – inch by dry, reptilian inch around Rogue’s arms – David’s brother had a boa constrictor he threatened in him with, slow death by strangulation – and she’s too preoccupied with poison to do anything normal, like shake her off or snap her spine.

As Rogue draws her lips back in disgust, the snake bares her fangs to the gums. Their eyes are impossibly round and so afraid. Skin. Sharp. Suck. Sink.

We agree on that, she thinks, washed by a sudden calm. Rogue pulls the snake’s face closer to her own. She snaps and hisses, but that’s her right. In the end, there can be only one predator.

To the snake, she thinks, Stronger mind, stronger poison.

Wood creaks. Logan edges into the kitchen. His hand is stretched out toward her, palm up. “Gonna have to be quick about this,” he says steadily.

Her eyes snap shut. Her fingers curve around to hide the veins protruding from her throat just as the snake goes limp. She holds the carcass out to him.

“Are you hurt?” Logan’s tone is insistent and he’s getting closer. He must’ve already asked a few times.

“I didn’t mean to touch her,” Rogue says, dropping the snake in a pile at her feet. She clasps her empty hands together and wrings. “She was in the flour.”

Water from his wet hair drips into Logan’s eyes. He doesn’t blink. “Show me your arms.”

Blood still pounds hard, darkening her veins. She shows him smooth, undamaged skin.

“Christ,” he bites off, shaking more water out of his hair. “I thought – I come out here, ready to give you hell, and you’re in a starin’ contest with a damn snake...”

“Give me hell?” she prompts. Even that sounds like a safer subject.

He pounces on it. “You used up all the hot water again.”

“I did?” she remarks to his chin, the highest part of his body she can manage to direct her eyes.

A drop of water falls from his scruff to his chest and rolls down. The towel he’s barely wrapped in rides rakishly across the cut of his hips, like the wide belts of the swashbucklers on the paperbacks her momma read in delicious rotation.

He says something about twelve year-old water heaters. She nods.

Little Marie was about twelve when she took to sneaking into her momma’s bedroom to pour through those paperbacks, one after another, in a shocking haze of bodice-ripping and maidenhead-stealing. The flushed anticipation of getting caught only doubled the thrill, because she knew when her momma gasped, “Holy hell!” and knocked The Golden Barbarian out of her hands that she’d found something worth the trouble.

Her momma starts up again, gasping and knocking around her head. The compulsion to get caught looking only gets more irresistible. Rogue’s eyes lock on the intersection of what the towel exposes and what it doesn’t. A vein winds from the space between Logan’s lower abs to edge of the gray cloth, which is thin and damp enough for her momma to cry indecency.

But the old forbidden fascination has been replaced. It’s possible to reach out to touch what had to be covered, not what could acceptably be left bare. The vein, nothing but blood pounding under raised skin, is more obscene than the bulge. His torso, his ankles, his face – skin and hair, hair and skin. Nowhere to look but the towel, dead center.

Logan shifts his hips in a move so self-conscious it startles Rogue into recognizing the sudden silence. He can probably hear her knees knocking together.

She holds onto her arms at the elbows, skin prickling. “I won’t do it again,” she says, and steps over her kill. “Do you want pancakes? I was about to make pancakes. Start offering the praise now, because you are going to heaven.” Pulling open the refrigerator, she pushes a carton of milk aside and frowns. “No blueberries?”

“Didn’t look good at the store.”

“No?” She shuts the fridge and leans against it. “Another morning.” Rogue points a toe. “I guess we could eat her. Circle of life and all that. Or not. I just feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks.”

Why is she so breathless?

One chip of pink passion nail polish on her big toe is all that’s left of her last pedicure. Fascinating. She doesn’t often go barefoot. Wiggling her toes, she thinks of cold, damp soil.

Her eyes dart up to Logan, then flick over to the jerky he left out last night. She snatches up a handful and beats a hasty retreat. “Gotta get dressed. I’ve got that roof to finish.”

“Hey, hey,” Logan chides as she picks her way around him. “You take it easy. You ain’t right.”

Rogue’s breath catches on a hiss. Concern, not accusation. Even still. She lifts her chin. “I have a job to do, and my boss won’t pay me until it’s done.” They argued, two days before, about whether she should get paid hourly or by the job. She lost. “So.”

Logan gives her a wide berth.

Hours later, she’s up on the roof and he’s still in the house. She can hear him, though. His words, “You ain’t right,” are in her head like a new personality. The opposite of the understanding she has with the snake.

Ugh. Animals, with their half-thoughts and quarter-memories, never sit right. But they aren’t usually so overpowering. Rogue sniffs back her runny nose and shakes her body to dislodge the brain fog.

Levity and lightness – that’s what Carol the Marvel would proscribe.

Arms pointed straight out for balance against the wind, she hesitates as she tries to convince her spine to fall into a graceful backbend. Though she personally hasn’t done tricks on a balance beam since she was about eight, Carol performed all the way through college.

Rogue tests the traction of her sneakers against the shingles she’s just re-nailed. She decides that wool socks are a better idea, so she drops her shoes into the wet snow a story and a half below. The work gloves she keeps for their warmth and thickness.

Perching again on the crease, she takes a deep breath and waits until her mind signals her body to remember something it’s never felt – that rush of exhilaration that comes with posing in front of a crowd, muscles quivering in anticipation.

A crowd is not something she can easily conjure up, not with the expansive, desolate panoramic view she’s come to revel in this past week. The view over the cliff alone excites a sense of discovery in her, as if at the bottom there could be some new world.

She knows for a fact there’s a dirt road down there, but it’s a nice daydream.

Deep breath, bent knees – Rogue nearly misses catching her weight, but manages to maintain a handstand through force of adrenaline. Her knees still almost buckle against the wind.

“Marie!”

The metal ladder shakes with the force of Logan clambering up. Very carefully, she walks her body around so she can see a little bit of him thorough her hair. It’s an impressive display, if she does say so herself, even if she is cheating with some anti-gravity action.

And, okay, none of the talent actually belongs to her, but he doesn’t know that. He’s not going to find out, either. Because as useful as it is, it’s still galling that whenever she’s unsure of him she automatically turns on the Carol filter.

Carol has a history of being good at impressing men. Rogue’s imitation is passable. The first time she a quipped a Carolism – “Oh, I know why women love you, cowboy. You talk low, you talk slow, and you don’t say much…with your mouth” – it earned her a sidelong, half-lidded stare hot enough to sent her stomach into spasms.

Not that it takes much. Even his glower agitates the butterflies.

“You actively tryin’ to get yourself killed today?” Logan grouches, still standing on the ladder.

Snorting, she brings her arms out to her sides and hovers upside down.

“Uh-huh. Stay there awhile, you need as much blood to the brain as you can get.”

“Tough crowd,” Rogue acknowledges, wondering what the easiest way to right herself would be. Upside down, she spins thoughtfully.

“This ain’t a circus, kid. Finish over by the loft or leave it for me. It’s gonna rain again tonight, and there’s no reason you should have to sleep on the couch.”

“Couch was comfy,” she replies, actually meaning that he was comfy.

A good amount of maneuvering had gone into getting herself into the perfect position so that when her head started to droop she could rest it on his shoulder, and then slide it ever so slowly into his lap.

He didn’t seem bothered one way or another, but even after seven days and sixteen hours of shamelessly flirting with what amounts to a brick wall with eyebrows, Rogue is still carefully holding out hope that he thinks she’s sexy. Or at least pretty. Heck, she’ll take cute at this point – anything he likes.

The huge fleece shirt she has tucked into the waistband of her jeans slips suddenly over her eyes. Perhaps he’ll like getting flashed by a bra that’s seen better days?

“Quit messin’ around,” he snaps.

Rogue fumbles with the shirt while attempting to get to a standing position. A gust of wind twists her so that she falls shoulder-first onto the roof and then slides halfway down it on her stomach.

Ow.

Almost as exasperated as she is embarrassed and hurt, Rogue doesn’t even make an effort to get up.

Logan crouches beside her. The leather of his work gloves brush against her exposed spine, making her jerk her already raw stomach against the rough shingles.

He stands swiftly, barking, “Well, kid, you’re bleedin’. Roll yourself over.”

Rogue gets onto her hands and knees instead, and holds her arm out to him as a peace offering. He helps her up, his begrudging expression fading. She lifts the flannel shirt up and sticks her pelvic bone out so they can both assess the damage. Wide, uneven stripes of red run vertically from her belly button to her ribcage, oozing tiny splotches of blood.

“It looks worse than it feels,” she tells him, even though it stings like hell.

He picks out a piece of asphalt and holds it so close to her nose she has to look at it cross-eyed. “It’s gonna feel a lot worse soaked in peroxide.”

Ignoring her pitiful whine, he impels her toward the ladder. His belt buckle hits against her butt on the way down as he keeps that babying proximity reserved for the injured or the infirm.

He stops her on the last rung, telling her to stay put.

“No sense,” he mutters, shaking the wet snow off her tennis shoes and lifting her ankle so he can shove one on and then the other.

Rogue snorts, hopping to the ground. “Tie them for me, too. I don’t know how.”

He just tugs her along into the house.

“Why’re you acting so weird?” she asks him before he asks her. “Yesterday, you were – ” She stops herself at “wonderful,” though the patient, intelligent way he taught her how to keep an engine in good repair deserves the term. And, while he did tease her into blushing laughter more times than she can remember, “dead sexy” she skips right over entirely.

“I was what?” he asks, letting go of her once they’re through the backdoor and striding ahead.

“Right!” she finishes, bent over a little as she shuffles to the bathroom.

Thigh against the sink, Logan’s unwrapping the first-aid kit he clearly bought just for her. Makes her feel a little ungrateful.

“You don’t know me well enough to know right,” he says evenly.

“Why do you do that?” Rogue asks, eyes on the thick, hollow tips of the work gloves as she pulls out the flannel shirt to unstick it from her stomach. Her best friend in junior high used to get injured like this when she slid into home plate. Raspberries, she called them.

Logan’s focus is on applying Neosporin to the back of the length of gauze.

“I mean, the way you make knowing someone all about time.” Keeping the flannel away from her body, she tries to slip the bottom button open. “I know you just as well as you know me, which might not be as well as somebody who’s known me my whole life or whatever, but I’m not even close to who I was even a year ago.”

The bottom button finally comes undone, but the next keeps rolling into the fold of the extra fabric over her thumb.

“So you just getting to know me now still gives you the advantage over anybody else.”

She might as well being wearing mittens for all the dexterity these gloves give her.

Tossing them in the sink with Logan’s, she returns to the task with renewed vigor and a final point to her rambling – “And, seeing as how you’re all Lone Ranger, I’m pretty sure I’ve got the advantage, too.”

The shirt slides down her arms and drops to the tile, making Logan look down at her.

“It was sticking.” Rogue tries to shrug, not knowing what to do with so much skin but not wanting to look anymore like an idiot. She hooks her fingers into the back waistband of her jeans and juts her hip out casually.

While he unscrews the peroxide, she slyly checks herself out. Her bra shrunk in the wash, which does great things for her cleavage. Logan turns back around, and Rogue looks at the ceiling of all places. Smooth.

He sets the peroxide on the sink, followed by the tweezers, which he squeezes a couple times just to make her grimace.

“There has to be a better way,” she gripes, her eyes already on his forehead and her skin starting to wake up before her brain hits upon the obvious. Rogue clamps her eyes shut.

“Name it,” he prompts.

She shakes her head vigorously. Not even an option. Even if it means he’d never get to say she doesn’t know him well enough again.

Well. Except for the part where he’d probably never talk to her again.

Impatiently, Logan says her name.

“I want the peroxide,” she replies, more to herself.

“Then take this.” He pushes a towel against her.

Eyes still closed, she holds it so nothing will drip into her jeans. As he tips the bottle against her skin, Rogue wonders if he can see the quiver. The reaching out.

The acid-like bubbling is painful, especially when Logan blots at it with a ripped towel square, but it’s easy to ignore compared to the itch. That gash had to have been four inches long and at least an inch wide. And his skin had just sealed itself, smooth as wax dripping down a candle.

Everyone’s skin has a will of its own. Goosebumps, ticklishness, wrinkles, sweat glands, bruises, scars. Healing. Poisoning. Pulling. It just happens. Less consciously than breathing.

Logan catches skin with the tweezers. Rogue hisses out a breath, her eyes flying open and her hand catching his.

Bare fingers clamped over his knuckles, she’s filled with a dizzying relief. Latex. He’s wearing hospital gloves. The thin kind, not the high-risk, double-layered latex they used at Southaven.

Her lips form a tremulous smile. “Gloves. Thoughtful,” she says, and she means it even if it’s a precaution for the infectious. She takes a shaky breath, blinking rapidly.

“You’re tougher than this,” Logan tells her, sounding confused.

Rogue clasps her hands behind her back. “I wasn’t – I wasn’t paying attention. And I didn’t know you were wearing gloves.” Tears spill over, drip babishly from her chin.

“Hey.” Latex brushes her shoulders. “Hey, c’mon. You couldn’t hurt me that much.”

The arrogance. Frustration and snot clog her voice. “You saw what I did,” she reminds him. “I killed her. It took seconds. It could happen to you.”

“No.”

“Yes!”

His skepticism isn’t helping and neither is the fact that she does know what would’ve happened, at least in the long run.

Even if Logan forgave it as an accident, neither of them would be able to look at each other the same way. Especially not her. She’d know what is to be Wolverine – to be really and truly invincible – and the next time she took from him it would be on purpose.

And then she’d be right back on her way to becoming the monster they always said she was.

The bathroom is suddenly too small. She hits her elbow against the sink when she draws her hands up to brush the asphalt off her stomach, never mind the blood and the puss.

“There. Like ripping off a band-aid. More peroxide. Please.”

Rogue tilts her chin up and Logan positively towers over her. Has he always been this tall? Or is it just that she’s never felt this small? And this big. All at once.

Logan’s palm – she can almost feel the ridges under the latex – presses against her forehead. He pulls it back wet. “Fever. I told you to take it easy today.”

Wonderingly, she says, “I’m allergic. She poisoned me after all.”

“No, kid, you’re sick. After moths of breakin’ into shitty motels to take showers, you’re surprised you caught somethin’?”

“I never get really sick, it just…goes away.” Her tone hits a flat note. It never just went away. She took, and then she got well again. Is that awful? Her moral compass isn’t fine-tuned enough to know for sure.

“Hey,” he says, which she’s just now realizing is Logan for, “I’m about to say something meaningful.”

She raises her eyes, and he slides her damp hair off her forehead.

“You can afford to be sick with me.”

It takes another dose of self-control not to fall apart again. She presses her cheek against his shirt and hugs her arms around his waist. She’s almost doubled-over so he can’t really return the embrace. A moment’s hesitation, then he tucks his elbow around her head and lets the sleeve of his other arm graze down her exposed back.

This time, Rogue doesn’t flinch. She shivers.

Another beat, then he says, “Gotta take care of that fever.”

She reluctantly lets him go. He’s right. Her resolve probably won’t hold if she gets any sicker.

Logan finishes cleaning her stomach and wraps it in gauze. He tells her to go lie down – in his room, so he can finish up on the roof. “And take a shirt,” he adds, passing the door on his way to the kitchen. She’s more than happy to comply, his t-shirts smelling like him as they do.

Several minutes later, he catches her drowsily burying her nose in his pillow. She lifts her head up swiftly, embarrassed but glad to accept the warm bowl of soup.

“Smells great,” she jokes.

“Don’t get too excited. It’s out of a can. This is more important.” He sets a beautifully designed sake cup and saucer down on the nightstand. “Herbal tea. Diaphoretic. Trick I picked up in Japan, among others.”

Rogue smiles. “Like you’ve ever been sick a day in your life.”

“Still won’t take my word for it.”

“I wasn’t doubting you. Anyway, how’d you know I should take it easy? I felt…off. But even I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Last night you were sweatin’ in your sleep, but you kept cuddlin’ up like you had a chill.”

Stirring her soup thoughtfully, she decides Carol would send him a wink. “I guess you’re used to women drooling on your lap for different reasons.”

That earns her very first eyebrow cock of the day. Rogue cocks one right back, slipping the spoon into her mouth.

“I’m gonna see about the roof. Drink that tea, kid. Fever’s something you gotta sweat out.”

And sweat she does. A cold sweat that gathers at her armpits and between her breasts and behind her knees. She can’t get comfortable in any position, except she knows she could on her stomach pretty much because it hurts too much to be an option.

Rogue hoped to be wet and writhing on Logan’s bed. But this just sucks.

Throwing off his covers, she drags herself into the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tub. The first spurts of water are as freezing as Logan complained about this morning. She’s patient, though, and soon hot steam clouds the air.

Tub halfway full, she slides in with a sigh. Oh yes. Much better.

She wonders if Logan’s going to get on her about the hot water again. Smirking, she spreads her limbs out. Plenty of room for two, if he’d only just join her.

A completely ludicrous, completely compelling fantasy. She rubs her pale calf against the smooth, bright white tub, trying to imagine a muscular leg covered in dark hair. How it would feel to lounge against his chest.

Rogue sinks further into the water, letting her mind drift. She starts humming Joan Jett’s version of “Crimson and Clover,” trying to remember what that song has to do with a bathtub and a rodeo…Oklahoma, summer before basic. He lost the trophy to a good ol’ boy from Tennessee, but he pursued her like a winner so she took him back to her hotel.

There are a lot of fascinating things Carol’s wild days illustrate a fearless woman can do to an enthusiastic man.

Bitterness takes Rogue out of the moment. Three strikes against her – she’s too dangerous to be fearless, and Logan’s obliviousness makes her seriously doubt that even a fake age and stolen experience can turn her into a woman.

Still, Carol’s appreciation for a well-worn pair of jeans and everything underneath soon preoccupies her again. So much so that she doesn’t notice the bathwater cooling. She has her foot propped on the edge of the tub and a hand between her thighs.

“Want something, cowboy?” she coos, before she even knows Logan’s there.

Water splashes to the floor with the force of her jerking upright. A split second later, she’s back down, covering herself with her arms. She peeks over the edge but doesn’t see him.

“Logan?” Please say she imagined him.

No such luck. “Door came open when I knocked,” he replies, evidently from around the corner.

So he didn’t see? Thank God, thank God, thank God. “That’s all right. Did you want something?” Rogue winces at the echo of Carol’s question.

He grunts something about drowning.

“Nope, not drown.” Not yet, anyway. It’s tempting, now that she’s nearly gotten caught three times today acting like a snake high on pheromones.

“I got more tea ready.”

“Out in a sec.”

He leaves, and Rogue lets her head sink underwater.

The predator instinct strikes again. She didn’t lock the door. She might even have left it open to bait him in. Only she obviously doesn’t have the right lure. Rogue is no bombshell, not in either sense. She wouldn’t tear a man part, rip him to pieces and send him flying like Carol’s exes always accused.

Baby doll, all you need…

She holds her breath hard. When she sits up, oxygen is the only thing on her mind.

Wrapping herself in a towel, Rogue takes a seat on the tub to let the pounding in her brain stop. She’s not surprised that she feels better. Maybe her fever already broke. Or maybe it was all in her head.

Rogue watches water funnel down into the pipes.

Carol has been too much on her mind. She’s pawned one too many of her memories and her traits off as her own to impress Logan. To be a bombshell.

But she’s much more dangerous than that. She’s a snakebite. A slow poison that would bring Logan to his knees until the spark of hate in his eyes would be his only vitality. And she’d drain even that, carry it with her always.

Macabre. Self-pitying. Whatever.

Rogue pitches the wet gauze but doesn’t bother to rewrap her stomach. She gets dressed and puts on real gloves, which she hasn’t worn all day.

“I have issues,” Rogue announces to Logan when she takes her seat across from him at the table. “Jealousy is a big one. I was apparently a thief before I was even out of the cradle, if you can believe my daddy’s ‘Entitled Brat’ speeches.”

Logan pushes the kettle toward her, and she picks it up.

“You don’t get sick. You don’t get hurt. I wish I could be like that, so I want to hurt you. That’s my mutation. It wasn’t like that at first, and maybe I can get to a point where I’m more, I don’t know, Zen about the whole thing.” Rogue gulps the tea down, not caring very much when it burns her tongue.

One way to keep the monster at bay – zero self-regard.

“Ever try meditation?”

“You have?” The herbal tea was enough of a surprise.

He shrugs. “It works.”

“I don’t know.” But then she remembers what he said about not taking his word. “I’d be willing to try.”

Logan studies her. “You know your eyes’ve been green all day.”

“It’s a warning,” Rogue says absently. Like when a snake rattles her tail. She sets down her sake cup, hard. For the love of God, shut up about it, she orders herself.

He pours them both more tea.

Rogue sips, watching Logan over the rim. “What color are they now?”

“They’re brown.” He’s looking into his sake cup.

Plopping her head on her hand, she shrugs. That fact doesn’t make her skin any less lethal. “They were blue when I was born. But that’s common.”

“Brown suits you.”

Her frown pulls into a rueful smile. It’s not that significant of a compliment, but she goes ahead and adds it to the mental tally she’s keeping. Brown eyes at least she can claim for herself. It’s a start.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid

track two // “ANY COLOR YOU LIKE”

A HEART OF GOLD
He shuts his eyes and puts his aching hands behind his head.
“Moon can’t be all it’s cracked up to be, kid.”
– Logan –

The glint in the old man’s eye makes Logan take a deeper drag on his cigar. Glint doesn’t dim in the cloud of smoke, though Buffalo’s cragged expression remains unaffected. He continues his methodical wipe down of the bar top.

Logan hasn’t exchanged two words with Buffalo since taking his stool, but that’s how, in the old days, they both preferred these meetings to start. Logan because even though the IOUs used to be stacked up in his favor he still felt in debt, and Buffalo because he fancied himself a great reader of body language. Now there’s wariness on both sides.

To hasten the start of a one-sided conversation – and his drive back north – Logan moves his attention to where Buffalo’s grandson stands at the door, counting out change with his good arm. When his empty sleeve falls in the way, he lets a pretty girl tie it off for him. Free admission for a kiss on the cheek.

“Can’t fault moneymaking sense for that,” Buffalo says, addressing a row of liquor. “Billy has turned all my businesses around. We’re opening a hotel lodge next year. We bought property ten miles east of the reservation. No favors needed since you ran off that sonuvabitch excuse for a sheriff. Doing real good now.”

Must be. No doubt, crowd is bigger than it was three years ago, and it’s only happy hour. Younger, too. A couple barbed-wire thin cowboys wearing black t-shirts take a seat a few stools down.

“Chris and Jared Wheeler, friends of Billy’s. A community college opened in the town over last spring. Makes it so we have to have more bells and whistles, but the money is plenty enough.”

A huddle of barely sober twenty year-olds in cutoff denim skirts dance by him on their way to the jukebox. A swinging length of wavy brown hair hits his arm. Marie wasn’t far from his mind, but now he’s thinking of her spinning in the den, scarf he bought her flying. Laughing over ten years of ballet lost on puberty and six years of stripper training sponsored by the school dance team.

He finishes his drink. Not a single desirable woman over twenty-five in the place. Goes to figure.

Buffalo sets down two tumblers of his best brandy. He toasts the grizzly torso mounted on his wall. “Nine years, Mother Fucker.” He turns and toasts Logan. “Nine years, Mother Fucker’s killer.”

Logan puts back the brandy with none of the old man’s coughing and wheezing. Nine years ago, he ran out of the woods like a wild man to slice off Buffalo Bill’s grandson’s arm at the shoulder. Grizzly had him below the elbow. That’s a lot of arm he could’ve saved, had he put any forethought into it. Logan always wonders if Buffalo thinks of that while he’s laying out the welcome mat. Weren’t for Buffalo himself, kid would’ve just bled out while Logan danced with the bear.

Yeah, he can go in for heroics every now and again. But he doesn’t know how anyone stomachs the messes he leaves behind.

“There been rumors up and down these parts, past couple weeks, about a mystery fight-circuit man named the Wolverine. Between you, me, and the Mother Fucker on the wall, I hear he answers to your calling card.” With a significant look as his knuckles, Buffalo refills his glass. “All these years, Logan, you never did talk much about your hobbies.”

A shrug is all Buffalo gets out of him.

“Can’t say I’ve met another fight-circuit man I could put in a half-decent word for.” He pours himself another toast. “’Course, can’t say I ever met another fight-circuit man who got himself robbed blind and taken hostage by a young gal let out on spring break.” Buffalo punctuates the crack by guzzling his brandy.

Sipping his nice and slow, the way good brandy’s meant to be taken, Logan glowers.

Buffalo’s laughter is mixed up with his coughing. “That’s just one of the versions I heard.” He swallows his hacking, wrinkled face smoothed out by curiosity. He sets his elbows, crosshatched by deep white scars, on the bar. “It’s a funny case. People from all over come here, they sit down, have a drink, get to talking about it. Fights up in Laughlin shut down. Ed Baylor keeping to his house on account of some dirty money he owes that he can’t pay until he sells off a motorcycle left in his possession.”

Christ, his 650. He doesn’t have the cash to buy it back since he has it earmarked for Marie. On top of that, he can’t risk the notice. What the hell. It fell into his lap once. Give it a quarter of a century, and he’ll probably find it again.

Buffalo continues, “Circuit fighters got their balls bunched up over mutants in their ranks. ‘It ain’t fair,’ as if the circuit’s ever been decent. We keep it out of these parts. This Wolverine fellow ought to keep himself out of it, too. He’s a marked man.”

Figured as much. He wanted to stop the way down to relieve some tension, but he thought the other way would be easier. Lust catches his notice.

The dancing girl with Marie’s color hair is ass to crotch with skinny cowboy number one, but her porn princess pout is for Logan. He takes her in. She’s taller than Marie. Longer legs and smaller breasts. Doesn’t look the type to sit herself on a man’s lap only to leap away just when he’s stopped feeling like a piece of shit for letting her.

“That’s Clara. She’s in Billy’s class at the community college. Does karaoke on Thursdays and the local boys on Fridays and Saturdays. Her daddy, Jerome O’Dell, drinks on Sundays.”

Logan flicks his attention back to Buffalo. “So what?”

Buffalo’s eyebrows go up a fraction. Introducing his patrons is just his way, like it’s Logan’s way to forget them half a second later. Usually. When he’s not so on edge.

“Sure, now. There was a young gal.” When Buffalo sees that’s a closed subject, he moves on. “There was a young gal and a sack full of cash, on top of two Mounties mauled but good by a wild thing in the woods. Like I say, it’s a funny case.” He steps away to put the brandy back on the shelf. “But you’re not here for my gossip. And you’re not here for my brandy, or to do me any favors, or even to run off with my customers’ goodtime daughters.” He limps out from behind the bar. “Come on out back.”

Buffalo leads Logan fifty feet into the woods behind the bar, where Buffalo’s psychiatrist-turned-preacher wife converted an old one-room prairie schoolhouse into a Native American Church.

“Phyllis is down in Arizona at a conference. I won’t tell her you were here.” Buffalo undoes the triple padlocks, not commenting on the part of the doorframe marked by Logan’s so-called calling card.

The light switch reveals rows and rows of legal mescaline in various states of bloom.

Buffalo lifts a small pot and examines the root carefully. “You know, you offended her when you wouldn’t let her be your spiritual guide. And last time you swore you’d given up peyotism.”

Logan feels a phantom lurch in his stomach, payback for his bender.

A decade ago, he came back from Japan more emotionally fucked up than he left, with only disordered passing memories from the experience. One year into living like he was raised by wolves – because, hell, he might’ve been – he saved three of Buffalo Bill’s grandson’s limbs from a grizzly. A healthy supply of peyote to help with his meditation brought the Zen back into Logan’s life and war back into his dreams. Small price to pay for the end of his short-term memory loss.

Then it was lumberjacking, semi driving, cage fighting. A string of women with a plenty of roughnecks already notched onto their bedposts. Building and tearing down and rebuilding and tearing up a cabin on a foundation of gut instinct and self-delusion. Trying everyway he could, pleasure or pain, to kill himself and failing at even that.

Yeah, he could remember the short-term. It added up to a big, stinking pile of bullshit.

And nothing short of remembering the long-term – before Japan: the tags and the lab and the wars – would make the here and now matter.

He still believes that, but peyote didn’t have the answers. Three years before, he paid for his supply by running out Buffalo’s sonuvabitch sheriff. Then he did what he always gets around to doing. He took it too far. In one day, he went through all the peyote Buffalo had given him for two months and had to break into the church to steal more. When his healing factor finally caught up to the mescaline, he was armpit-deep in a river with his claws sunk deep into his own neck, no memory of what he hallucinated. Only the sound of his own voice, “I’m gonna cut your goddamn head off. See if that works.”

Logan runs his tongue over his teeth. He can still taste the bitterness of the blood and vomit.

“I’ve started meditating again,” he finally answers Buffalo, which is a least a partial truth.

He and Marie have been working at it for a week now. Only neither of them have gotten much actual meditating done. If he so much as shifted while Marie’s eyes were closed, they flew open and she spent five minutes apologizing. The rest of the time, frustration all but fumed from her ears.

Inner goddamn poise, Marie, he growled this morning. “I’d be more inwardly poised if I were doing this alone,” she said, and he snorted, told her they’d tried that already and this wasn’t nap time. “It’s six-thirty in the morning,” she yelped, but he cut her off. Listen, he said. I’m not here. This house isn’t here. The world isn’t here. You’re alone in your own mind.

She rolled onto her knees. “Don’t you think I’m trying to be!” He refused to break his pose. “Tell me how, Logan,” she persisted. “Tell me how, and I’ll do it.” Attempting to exhibit calm for her, he tried to get her to see he wasn’t teaching her to change a tire. He didn’t have instructions. She huffed, “What use are you, then? You’re telling me to feel alone in the world – I’ve been alone in the world. It didn’t cleared up my mind any, believe me!” In a clipped tone, he retorted, in so many words, that maybe she liked it that way. Maybe she wanted her mutation to get the best of her. Easier than closing her eyes and sitting still with another person for fifteen damn minutes.

Marie leaned over and pushed him. Just hard enough that he’d had to catch himself and, startled, meet her stung gaze. After a long, uncomfortable moment, she sat, miserably, back into her pose. She closed her eyes, obviously concentrating very hard on not crying.

Twelve hours later, he’s in a Native American Church trying to score an hallucinogenic to calm her down. He left the cabin thinking he was doing it for her, but the kind of thoughts he’s been having about her all the way down here beg to differ.

“I think you ought to give me a little more explanation than that,” Buffalo says, cradling the pot. “Phyllis hasn’t forgiven you for last time.”

So Logan had been right to stay away so long. Used to be he came every other month, but even three years hasn’t dimmed the disgust. “I sent money.” It’s the only thing he can say in his defense.

“You frightened my grandson,” Buffalo tells him.

Billy’s curt, “My grandfather’s at the bar, Mr. Logan,” earlier was enough to tell him, even though Logan doesn’t remember it himself, Billy certainly hasn’t forgotten.

“He saw you out in the woods. Then he saw you again, breaking into to the church. Losing a hero is a hard thing for a boy.”

More snappishly than he intended, Logan says, “I told you then I never meant to do harm to your family. If I ain’t welcome now, say so.”

“You’ll never hear me say that.” Buffalo studies him. “But you’re not entirely sure you want this medicine, and because of that I’m not entirely sure I want to give it to you. You’re back on your past, I’d wager.”

“I ain’t tryin’ that again.”

“You saying you aren’t interested in the rumors the Wolverine man with the claws has kicked up?”

Logan stills.

“I see. You’re saying you haven’t heard them.” Buffalo puts the pot back down. “People might not remember your face, but they aren’t liable to forget those claws.”

“What people?”

“No actual people. Rumor. One man’s second cousin’s wife’s brother, or the like. There was a fight, up near High Level, back when it was barely a truck stop. Tore up a bar. Man had something like knives or bones coming out his knuckles. Know anything about that?”

Bar fight more than fifteen years ago near High Level. Doesn’t spark a flash. But if rumors can be even partially believed, it sounds enough like him that maybe he’s been right to stick around the area like a lost dog all these years. Maybe the cabin is his.

All the more reason to get back to it as soon as possible.

Buffalo picks up a different pot. “In a few days or so, this one’ll be ready enough. Give you a chance to think.”

He takes it without comment. He starts toward the ’72 GMC pickup he got on a steal for one of his bikes before Buffalo has the first padlock in place.

“Why ‘Wolverine’?” Buffalo calls out in the semi-darkness.

Logan doesn’t pause. “’Cause they’re warm and fuzzy.”

“You don’t have to explain the resemblance. Forgive an old Indian a story, but there’s one about a spirit called the wolverine and his lover, the moon – ”

“I’ve heard it,” Logan cuts Buffalo off. “Don’t worry about seeing me again.”

It isn’t until he goes to turn on the ignition that he realizes his hands are aching under the skin, and he can’t remember who told him that story. What Logan does remember is the ending. The part about the moon betraying the wolverine after tricking him into happiness.

He follows the full moon back to his cabin. Twenty different times, he almost pulls into some dive or another, hoping to find a guy who knows a guy who saw a wild man once upon a time. Or hoping to find a fight or a fuck. All of the above.

But he makes the drive without stopping. The peyote root sits beside him, where Marie wanted to be. She knew she couldn’t be seen with him, though she still put up a hell of a fight. The part for the water heater he told her he had to get – the part he could’ve gone a few months without – clanks around in the truck bed.

Logan surprises himself by turning on the radio. The one in his old pickup hadn’t even worked. The flips impatiently through a bunch of crap before stopping on a crackling Neil Young song that keeps him thinking about Marie. So he goes back to sound of the engine, only the drone isn’t as soothing as it used to be.

Thing is, Buffalo wasn’t wrong when he saw that Logan is torn over the peyote. When used in the right state of mind, it induces and enhances meditation. Abuse it and…well, he’s seen the consequences of that. He didn’t really think about how Marie would take to it or whether she’d take it all before he set out for Buffalo Bill’s. He just wanted to be of some use.

That’s a lot of bull. He wants a shortcut. Meditation can help Marie, he knows it, and he’s tried everyway he can think of to show her, short of loading her up drugs hoping she’ll float.

If he gives her the peyote, Marie will probably take it. He’s already shoved meditation so far down her throat that she’s snapped, yet she hasn’t walked away. She’s letting him push it on her, he thinks, as a trade-off for letting her push her flirtation on him. Marie’s bold enough to plant her butt on his lap and demand a backrub. She’s even bold enough to let the pretext slip and her knees fall open.

But she’s not bold enough to let herself – or him – get any satisfaction out of it. Not even through layers of fabric. He hasn’t seen so much as a bare finger since that day he walked in on her getting herself off in the bathtub. Her hot-cold act is wearing thin, especially since he knows exactly what she gets up to when she disappears into her room. It’s damnation just smelling it on her.

Smelling himself on her, though, that’s a whole different circle of hell. And he always thinks, after she springs away, if she would hurry up and stop being so damned skittish he could stop imagining all the nauseating things that could’ve happened to her to make her so afraid.

It’s past late by the time he enters the dark and silent cabin with the peyote. He can imagine himself tomorrow – Hey, kid, brought you a gift. Get high, and then try to get on me again. We’ll both have a better time. Never had to think of drugging a woman to keep her willing before.

And that’s the better alternative. The peyote is meant to help her relax, but under these fucked up circumstances it’s just as likely to do the opposite. Now that he’s actually got his hands on it, he’s more worried about finding her in a couple days at bottom of the cliff he just drove up.

The fuck is wrong with him? He should throw the damn peyote out.

He’s got better things to think about. Like the fact that his connection to this place finally has a rational basis. At least one person in a bar full of people remembers him, the man he was before fifteen years ago. The bar-brawling man he was. Not much has changed.

Logan leaves the peyote root on the mantle, exchanging it for the samurai sword. Holding this in his hand, that’s what makes him feel like there’s a different man somewhere inside of him. Honor and dignity and composure – a bunch of crap, once you get right down to it. Doesn’t stop the respect he feels for this sword, though, or him wanting a little of it to rub off on the swordsman.

He gives a few test-swings, does a few simple steps, and then puts the blade back on its mount. He had his chance for all of that in Japan. There was a reason he had to leave that man behind – a woman whose face he used to picture when he meditated. He doesn’t think he’d recognize her now.

There’s an even more forgotten woman who belongs to this cabin. Her clothes are probably molding in the box in the storage room now. He left them where he found them, in the right side of the drawer, for the longest time. The clothes that fit him – that are his, he should just get used to that – were folded in the left side. That said a lot. ’Course, whoever she was, she never came for her things. She’s better off or six feet under, and he hasn’t thought about either alternative since he shoved all her shit in the back years ago.

Anyhow. Could be something salvageable. Marie might like something different to wear. He takes the peyote with him, figuring he’ll see how it fares in the storage room until he has to make a decision about it.

The open stairs to Marie’s room makes him pause. He listens for her breathing, hearing only the slight breeze coming through what must be the open window hatch. The thought of her gone takes him halfway up the stairs, where he catches her scent.

“Marie, what the hell you doin’ up on the roof this time of night?”

A hasty scramble, then she calls out, “You can come up!”

He puts the pot outside the window and hoists himself onto the roof. Marie smiles sheepishly and scoots over for him. He’s swinging his legs over when he notices that she’s wearing a blanket and nothing else.

Logan settles in carefully beside her. She has her eyes closed, her chin titled toward the moon. He’s looking for clues for how to play this one.

Finally, he takes off his jacket, balls it up behind his head, and rolls up his sleeves. “You’re right,” he says, stretching out. “Practically balmy out here.”

A gust kicks up, making her shiver and laugh. She slips her foot out of the blanket and nudges his leg. Her bare calf makes him think of her in the tub again. He easies his left ankle over his right.

“I didn’t expect you back tonight.”

“I believe it. If I’d have known you were a closet nudist, I would’ve gone and – ”

“High-tailed it for the hills?”

“ – come back early more often.”

She half-smiles on the left, so he can’t see it.

He tries again. “Maybe made a quieter entrance.”

“Wouldn’t that have been a shock? I might’ve fallen off the roof.”

“I might’ve fallen off the roof.” Logan smirks. “Might’ve been worth it.”

There’s the full smile. “So worth it.”

They leave it at that for a long moment. It’s a cool night, clear and active. An owl swoops down on a mouse.

“So what are you doin’, Marie? Communing with nature?”

“I was inspired by the moon. I thought maybe I was more of a nighttime meditator. And then I thought if I could forget the cold…” She lets out a pretty little sigh. “Mostly I just turned blue.”

The blanket slips off her shoulder. The way she’s sitting, she’ll have to flash him to fix it.

“Lemme get that,” Logan says, and waits for her to tilt her neck before he tugs it over her collarbone. His hand brushes the ends of her hair. She keeps herself very still. He runs his hand over the blanket, following the curve of her side. Her expression remains determinedly flat.

Logan drops his hand and rolls off his side. She breathes deeply, a cloud of cold air coming out of her nostrils.

“S’pose since you’re freezing your ass off, it’s a good time to tell you I got some more clothes for you to wear. If you wash ’em first.”

“Ew,” she replies, nose wrinkled. Primly, she adds, “I don’t want whatever’s been rolling around your truck bed, thanks.”

Touch of the betrayed there. Grates on his ears like always. So she didn’t buy the water heater excuse. She thinks he was out getting laid. It would’ve been a good thing – as decent a thing as someone like him can manage – for both of them if he had.

“Ain’t like that. Box of stuff in the back I forgot about, don’t know whose it is.”

“Oh.” After a second, her grimace clears.

Hell. Again, would’ve been kinder to let her go on thinking what she was thinking about him. He’s never given her false expectations of his character before, so he sure as shit shouldn’t start doing it now. Not with all that fatal, milky skin of hers open to the elements just inches away.

He gives it a little more time.

“You can open your eyes now.”

Marie keeps them resolutely closed. “Everything’s a competition with you.” Exactly sixty seconds later, her lashes flutter open. “Sixteen minutes,” she states, letting her obvious, “I win,” go unsaid.

“Hate to be a dick – ”

That elicits a snort.

“ – but counting ain’t exactly meditating.”

“I wasn’t counting before you came,” she says, rocking herself a little for warmth. “I was trying to be calm and serene. Like my muse, the moon.” Marie tosses back her hair. “Bitch makes it look so easy. But…” She rests her chin on her shoulder so she can look at him. “I guess I’m stuck being the sun. All that conflict and thermonuclear fusion…until one day – poof – I’m all burnt up.” Her mouth takes a self-mocking curve.

He shuts his eyes and puts his aching hands behind his head. “Moon can’t be all it’s cracked up to be, kid.”

“Hm. ‘Kid.’”

Guess that remark came out dismissive.

“What’s that?” she asks, obviously just noticing his degenerate excuse for a present.

“Peyote root.”

“How unexpectedly New Agey of you.” Her tone is one of confusion.

“Helps with meditation.”

“Ah.” After a long minute, Marie starts shivering in earnest. “Peyote. That’s like LSD, isn’t it? Mescaline?”

“Yeah.”

She gets to her feel, and he tries to see up her blanket as she steps over him.

“I know you’re trying to help me, so thanks.”

“But?”

The sound of the pot cracking on the hard snow below answers his question. Shit. He didn’t even think about Southaven’s fucking try-anything approach.

“I hope that wasn’t expensive,” she says as an afterthought, shifting from foot to foot on the cold shingles. “Sorry.”

Logan sits up. “Don’t be. You know what’s best for you.”

“I choose my own treatments now.”

“That’s right.”

“But I don’t want you thinking I’m not trying.”

“I know you are. I’m a dick.”

“I know you are,” Marie echoes, lips forming a smile. The smile. The he’s-in-for-it smile. “But mine’s worse – ”

She squeezes her eyes shut and opens her blanket with a self-conscious, self-liberating shriek. He barely gets an eyeful of ice-hard nipple before she’s clutching it closed.

“I’m a tease,” she manages through her nervy grin, and scurries through the skylight.

His head drops heavily, missing his coat and hitting the roof with a ringing thunk. Below, Marie’s laughing. Clearly proud of herself.

Fuck. Almighty.

Logan rearranges his jacket behind his head. He’s getting what he deserves, at least. That was a shit thing he tried to do to her, and she actually assumed he meant the gesture to help anybody other than himself. Heart of gold kid.

He thinks of her in five years, behind the counter of some greasy, side-of-the-road kind of place. In a burnt out tone he won’t recognize, she’ll say, “Let me get you another waitress, Mr. Logan.”

As for now, she can torture him all she likes, and he’ll try not to enjoy it too much. Preemptive payback for that mess.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
thatcraftykid

track two // “ANY COLOR YOU LIKE”

OUT OF THE BLUE
“Duh, the end is them ending up together. That’s whole point
of this and every other movie pretty much ever made.”
– Rogue –

She’s sunk so low her butt is wedged between the couch cushions. To appease her cramping stomach, Rogue makes a feeble attempt to straighten herself out but gives up almost before she tries. Her chin loses the fight with gravity and lulls against her shoulder. That’s better, she thinks, not much caring that the fabric of some other woman’s low-cut sweater has apparently been collecting thin strings of drool for the last eighteen minutes. Well, twenty-six, counting the commercial break.

It’s that kind of period.

All those months on the road were too chaotic for the comfort of incapacitation. Now that she’s got a roof over her once more histrionic head and an income more steady than her weekly allowance used to be, she relaxes into misery while she can.

Having waited the precise forty-eight seconds, Rogue chants, “‘I carried a watermelon?’”

Sighing over Baby’s first awkward dance, her eyes are torn between swiveling black-clad hips and the stack of half-eaten crepes on the table between her and the TV. So tempting. Arm fully extended, the seams of her gloves barely brush the edge. But so far away.

Rogue pulls her arm back under the warmth of the American Indian-design blanket. Hard as she wills it, the door to Logan’s room remains closed. No help from that corner.

She sighs again. The sun is up, but Logan’s not. He’s been sleeping in these last few days, and it’s not because he’s suddenly decided to take it easy.

In the middle of the night, she hears him moving around downstairs. Sometimes he goes out into the woods. She asked him why he can’t sleep when she asked him why he had that nightmare she heard the other night. He turned it around on her. “You ever dream about Iraq?” No, she answered, startled into struggling to come up with anecdotes. The food was nightmarish. Carol’s – her – superior officer was a pig.

Then he went and asked about Southaven. I don’t even think about it, she flat-out lied. Unless it comes up. Internally, she pleaded, Unless somebody brings it up, so stop. “Shit like that doesn’t go away.” No, it will. She was completely earnest. Once I stop running, I won’t have to think about it. I don’t have to think about it here hardly at all.

That’s when she called him lucky. She actually said, I wish they’d given me amnesia. And she’d meant it, right up until she saw his face.

Some words no amount of explaining can take back.

It was somehow worse when his anger slipped into impassivity. “Fine, Marie. You wanna forget, that’s your business. But here’s some free advice: You’re gonna have to run a lot farther than here. And once you get there, you’d better fall in love with lying. New name, new hometown, new past. Half-truths will just remind you, make it harder. Oh, one more thing. Count on being alone, because forgetting’s the same thing as being forgotten.”

That conversation amounted to the worst in both of them. Logan proved he could be deliberately cruel, and she proved she could be carelessly so. A couple hours later, they were in the shed with a box of tools, admiring the GMC’s carburetor. Like it never happened.

Except that it had.

A lot farther than here, he said – kind of an obvious indicator that she might be wearing out her welcome. One of many. In fact, the only time he seems all that interested in her company is when she’s trash talking herself into a compromising position, and even that’s touch-and-go. Pretty literally.

So yesterday, over a breakfast that sat so long it became brunch, she choked back her wounded ego and tested her suspicion by telling him she was more than capable of house-sitting, if need be. Double the wages, of course. “You want a kings’ ransom to get rid of me, darlin’?” he said all surprised, like he didn’t know why she’d even bring up such a thing.

It was the “darlin’” that spurred her to it. Holding her syrup-drenched fork in her mouth contemplatively, she popped it out from between her lips and told him she thought he missed the fights. All that sweaty male testosterone…She decided to let it leave at that, but Carol egged her into adding that she could tell his shirt was just itching to come off. “That right?” And he drank his black coffee down. Carol piped up, Ooh, girl. There are few things sexier in this world than a bobbing Adam’s apple. Rogue had just had that thought herself, for the very first time. Her annoyance with Carol, again, third-wheeling herself into the conversation was fleeting.

Rogue was thinking about Laughlin City. She had to smile, telling Logan, You know, I almost got into that cage with you, before your friend Stew volunteered. What would you have even done? His answer was a barked-out a laugh. Logan was still laughing when she pushed back the furniture in the den and told him to get off his arrogant ass. “I don’t fight women,” he said. Too bad for you I don’t let men off that easy, Rogue replied, and Carol had her add, This is how I settled the boys down during basic.

Logan kept his shirt on, and Rogue kept her gloves. They kept their distance, too, at first, neither of them quite knowing what the other wanted out of this. He kept ducking her swings and refused to throw any of his own. So she flung her arms around his waist from behind and wrestled him to the floor. Tangled limbs, rubbing groins – a lot like dirty dancing, now that she’s thinking about it. And just as dizzily unsatisfying when the music stopped, so to speak.

Rogue wriggles awkwardly in her blanket cocoon. Untouchable, unshowered, cramping, bleeding, and all riled up on top of it all. She should have realized biology existed solely to screw her over when she brought home that first C-minus freshman year.

Huffing out a grunt, she swings her legs over the side of the couch so she can pick up the plate of crepes. She savors a big bite. Buttery, silver dollar-thin pancakes drowning in fresh strawberry syrup with sliced strawberries and brown sugar on top. Her momma’s very best feel-better medicine. Mmm. Like manna from heaven.

The second she slouched out to the den to find that Dirty Dancing was scheduled to be on after infomercials, Rogue went to the kitchen to whip up Annie D’Ancanto’s extra special occasion recipe. It had been over a year since she’d tasted her momma’s crepes. Last Valentine’s Day, instead of going out to a fancy restaurant with daddy, momma cooked crepes all day for an impromptu lonely hearts party. The guest of honor was Gloria Casstevens, momma’s serial divorcee best friend since high school. Natalie, Gloria’s daughter, was there, too. She’d been suspended from school for bitch-slapping her cheating ex into the vice-principal’s door. As for Marie, she’d taken a sick day to nurse her cramps and make David Cody – all-conference, tri-athlete superstar that he was – worry she wasn’t as into him as he liked to think. The two generations mooned and laughed over Baby Houseman falling in love with Johnny Castle, then they skipped back to scene one to do it over again.

Rogue runs out of crepes when her momma’s favorite scene – the oh-so-eighties falling in love montage – comes on. She tells herself it’s the sudden sugar loss that makes her eyes water.

Oh, my baby girl. Don’t cry. Please, don’t cry. It’s an echo of something her mother actually said, after the first time Rogue was dragged back, kicking and screaming, to Southaven. If you’d have just let them help you, you could’ve been home by now.

Gritting her teeth, she focuses on the movie to drown out the pleading. What she gets is an eyeful of skin-on-skin right as the door to Logan’s room swings open.

She tilts her chin all the way back when he comes to rest his forearms on the back of the couch. “Morning, sugar,” she says.

“Mornin’. You’re at it early today,” he comments, his attention lingering on the TV. He snorts when Baby yells, “You’re wild!”

“I actually couldn’t sleep. Which makes two of us.”

“I slept.”

An hour here, an hour there – not exactly what she’d call restful. Rogue waits for him to ask why she couldn’t sleep, but he’s actually watching the movie.

“‘Luncheonette,’” he smirks.

Admittedly not the most badass of hangouts, but still. “Don’t you start. Did I make fun of Smokey and the Bandit?”

“Yeah. You did.”

“Okay, but that was educational. Someday you might be chased by ‘smokeys’ in the South, and on that day you’re gonna thank me for giving you a realistic idea of what the highway system looks like.”

“This is me holdin’ my breath. Blue mats don’t grow naturally in riverbeds, last I checked.”

It took Rogue years to notice that error. She narrows her eyes. “Smokey and the Bandit III. Smokey and the Bandit II, for that matter. Defense rests.”

The scene switches to the part where they’re practicing lifts – “Now, you’ll hurt me if you don’t trust me,” Johnny says – and Logan finally catches on to the plot. “Jesus, they supposed to be sleepin’ together?”

The incredulity in his tone makes her want to reach up behind her and yank on his hair. “She’s seventeen. There’s nothing too young about seventeen.” She’s telling him much as her mother.

Logan grunts his disagreement.

Squaring her shoulders, she says, “I’ll thank you to keep your opinions to yourself. This movie has a lot of sentimental value.”

“That’s about all the value it could have.”

Arms crossed, she mutters, “Someone doesn’t want to eat today.”

He pushes himself off the back of the couch. “I can find my way around my own kitchen.”

Was that some kind of a threat? Some kind of an I-won’t-be-requiring-your-services-soon-so-get-your-shit-and-go kind of threat? She picks up her empty plate and scurries after him as quickly as her cramps will allow.

Rogue hovers while Logan searches through the cabinets for the coffee beans. She’s opened her mouth to say something snarky about maps, but he’s already thought to look above the refrigerator.

Fine. But she’d like to see him figure out the kettle system she rigged up when she didn’t find a Mr. Coffee or a French press handy.

Very deliberately, very smugly, Logan measures out the beans and proves he’s been paying attention all these mornings. A proverb comes to mind: give a man a fish, earn your keep; teach a man to fish, get tossed out on your rear.

“Now. Where’s the frying pan?”

“Okay, okay. You proved your point, Mr. Smug.” Rogue bumps him away from the stove with her hip. “Move.”

Logan snickers, letting her direct him to the kitchen table. She’s not amused. She’s not even pissed off. This may be just another one of their games to him, but she needs to keep this good thing going for herself. She needs him, which makes it even more important that he need her, even if it’s for something as insignificant as a decent cup of coffee.

She takes out a clean skillet to fry up his favorite, a bacon, cheese, onion, and potato omelet. Logan adamantly prefers grease to flour and salt to sugar. She goes to the refrigerator to pull out the already chopped ingredients.

“Any of that steak left over you can warm up while you’re at it?” he requests.

Rogue fixes him a look over her shoulder. “There’s going to be five eggs and a quarter pound of Canadian bacon in this omelet.”

He leans back to pat his hard, flat stomach. “Darlin’, don’t quit spoilin’ me now.”

The, “Or what?” is out of her mouth before she can stop it.

“Or who you gonna get to run to the off store for all your fancy ingredients?” He points an elbow at the grocery list in-progress hanging on the refrigerator door she’s shutting.

Letting her armload drop heavily on the counter, she returns, “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take my chances.”

The kettle’s whistling by the time he finally answers, “Suit yourself.”

She takes the kettle off the boil and starts cracking eggs with a vengeance. That was about the dumbest thing she could’ve said. Logan is ignoring her now, his eyes on the screen in the other room. Baby’s knocking at Johnny’s door, ready to deliver a very effective apology.

If only it were that easy.

“What kinda screwed up kid gets her panties in a bunch after seein’ a botched abortion?”

He isn’t supposed to notice the hot grease she flicks at him. He gives her the eyebrow.

She bangs around his pots and cups while she’s getting him his coffee. “Be as cynical as you like, but this is the first love scene I ever saw. I was nine. This, for me, is quintessential romance.” She plops the mug down, letting steaming liquid drip onto the table.

Logan keeps his mouth shut, but it curls up in derision when Baby says, “You, you’re everything!” after Johnny tells her he’s nothing, and again at the tear-jerker line: “And most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.” And when they start dancing, Logan gets a look on his face like Rogue put lemon in his coffee.

She decides to burn his omelet. Just a little. “I don’t know why you’re being so morally superior over there. So what, she looks young. Give it a break.”

“Sorry darlin’, we’re just not watching the same movie. Little girl’s lookin’ to prove something, and he’s lettin’ her. That ain’t romance.”

Rogue flips his omelet onto a plate and hands it to him. “You just haven’t seen the end yet.” It comes out more confident than it feels.

She goes back to the refrigerator to get out the leftover steak. While she heats it up, she keeps her back to the TV. All that effortless naked touching with Logan three feet away and her bent over from cramps just seems like pointless cruelty.

He turns his back on the screen, too, when he gets up to put on more hot water. He pulls down a new box of tea, this one with a picture of a moon on it. “Here. Figured you’d be needing this.”

Rogue eyes him. “You went to the store three days ago. How’d you know…”

Logan’s expression asks her if she really wants an answer to that question. He chuckles when she edges away, thighs clamped together. “If you stunk, I wouldn’t stand so close.”

That disgusting sentiment does little to take the trauma out of the notion.

With the spatula she was using, Logan plops his sizzling steak on a new plate and takes it into the den. He spreads himself out on the couch she was planning on monopolizing all day.

“And what do you think you’re doing?”

“Educating myself.”

Hrmph. Rogue takes her time drinking her tea and cleaning up the kitchen. Every once in awhile, he’ll throw a comment her way – after Baby answers how “it,” the dancing, went by double-entendring, “Fine. I didn’t do the lifts, but it was good,” Logan says, “Tough break. No wonder the guy’s so nervous” – and Rogue finds herself smiling.

His good mood is still unaccountably annoying. She should be pleased with the turnaround. Only the way he’s been stalking around the place recently has made her wary of being lulled into a false sense of security.

No busy work left to do, Rogue takes her second cup of tea and sits at the far end of the couch. Logan scoots the blanket toward her. She picks at its frayed ends.

“Somethin’ wrong?”

Her shrug is almost a cringe. If he’s starting to begrudging her presence then bringing it up probably isn’t the smartest course of action. But he’s waiting expectantly, so she has to say something. “I’m…I’m doing a good job, aren’t I? The cabin looks nice, and you still like my cooking. Right?”

“Sure. Tastes good even burnt.”

She tries to smile but doesn’t quite make it. “So, then why…” The quiver in her stomach is more than cramps. “Never mind,” she mutters.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just wanted make sure you’re getting your money’s worth. I have a thousand dollars left. To go, I mean. A thousand more dollars to earn.”

Logan’s in full-on scowl mode now. “That’s our deal. You stick to it, so will I. All right?”

“Yeah, all right. I was just saying, you know, for the record.” She forces herself to stop nodding. So he’s not planning on kicking her out, at least not now. She doesn’t really know what more she wants out of him.

He’s still frowning when he states, “I thought that’s what you were cryin’ over earlier. You shoulda known better.”

“I wasn’t crying,” she says, which is true. She was on the verge of crying. Big difference. “And, no. Actually. It’s this, this stupid, sentimental movie. I was thinking about – ” The word home won’t come out, so she finishes with, “…my mother.” Her misery sinks her back into the cushions. “Guess when I get to Alaska I’m going have to stop watching old movies, too, huh?” Not a very good joke.

On the screen, Baby yells, “You were right, Johnny, you can’t win not matter what you do.”

Rogue thinks really hard about what she can say to make it right. She takes a deep breath. “Logan?”

“Yeah.”

“I really don’t dream about…you know, the clinic or Iraq or Mississippi, or anything. I mean, if I have dreams I can’t ever remember them.” She plasters a flirty smile on her face. “That dream I said I had about you taking me to the prom? I made that up.”

Logan seems a little amused. “No kiddin’?”

“So…I guess, what I want you to know is that I do dream, but I do it when I’m awake. So I get to think of good stuff. And don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

Logan looks her over. “What kinda good stuff?”

“Like about Anchorage and my restaurant. What kind of food I’ll serve and when.” She pulls her legs up so she’s looking right at Logan. She wants him to be able to visualize with her. “The different menu options at different times of day is key. I want it to be a retro family diner for breakfast and lunch, but have real gourmet-type options for dinner. Then, after nine, we’ll serve tapas, like they do at really trendy bars…What?”

The particular expression on Logan’s face doesn’t fade. He’s looking at her eyes, not in them. She thinks he might say they’re pretty.

“What?” she repeats, a pleased smile already forming.

“I dunno. Haven’t seen you this enthusiastic before. You talked like this back in Mississippi?”

Rogue has to laugh at herself. “Constantly, about a million different things. Uncle Nuts always called me the girl with the plan.” Or the girl with the lost eyes when she got too caught up.

“Betcha no one ever said no, either. Not once you turned those big, brown eyes on ’em.”

Her smile falters. “No, I usually got my way. Except when it counted.” She grasps onto her last train of thought. “Anyway, I’ve thought a lot about wallpaper, too. It’s kitsch, but it can also be cool with the right attitude.” She gets her grin back. “Like the way you wear flannel. You’re actually inspiring a whole palate. The seventies are very now. What do you think?”

“Sounds like it could be a real nice place.”

Rogue puffs out a sigh. “But?”

“But you gotta know what you got covering the walls isn’t gonna matter much if anyone ever comes knockin’ at your door.”

“But,” she emphasizes. “You’re inspiration for that, too. I’ve been paying attention to how you keep a low profile. You can teach how to stay off the grid.”

He scratches the side of his beard. “Suppose I can do that.”

Commercials over, Baby and Johnny say their -never-be-sorries.

Logan’s eyebrows go up. “This the end?”

“Duh, the end is them ending up together. That’s whole point of this and every other movie pretty much ever made.”

Shrugging, he picks up the remote. “Seems like a fair enough ending to me.” The TV goes to black.

“Hey! Patrick Swayze was singing!” Like a hypnotist, Logan dangles a key before her eyes. She stops protesting. “Is that the Easy Rider bike?”

He’s a bit irritated. “The 1962 1200 CC Harley-Davidson chopper I built from the ground up.”

“You told me I was not even to think about the 1962 whatever from Easy Rider bike that you practically gave birth to.”

Logan spins the key by its ring and ambles toward the door. “Never know when I’ll change my mind.” He picks up both their coats from the rack. “That means you got about twenty seconds to beat me to the shed.”

Rogue launches herself off the couch. He makes it out the door before her, but she kills his lead by vaulting over the porch railing. Fortunately, Logan’s loping strides sink more in the half-mud, half-slush yard. With a mental, “Suck it, gym teachers!” she squeezes past Logan just in time to make it into the shed, victorious.

“Keys,” she huffs, one hand extended and the other resting on the top of her thigh. Whew. Nothing like a healthy sprint for stomach cramps.

Logan holds out the keys, only to snatch them back. “Sorry, kid. You lose on a technicality. No shoes, no service.”

She looks down. Her feet don’t even feel wet. “I’ve got about six layers of socks on. That ‘technically’ constitutes shoes.”

“Mm, sorry. Judges say no.”

“The judges are a bunch of cheaters,” she mutters, putting up her hair. Then it occurs to her. Head titled just so, eyes as wide they’ll go, she sidles up to him. “Not you, though. You’re a man of integrity.” Eyelash flutter for the win.

Taking her by the shoulders, Logan draws their faces closer together. Now she’s the one with the befuddled expression, watching the sunlit gold rings in his irises. His lids come down with his smirk, and he spins her around and pushes her toward the bike. “Darlin’, good effort. I’m afraid the ruling stands.”

“Like I ever had a fair shot to begin with,” Rogue complains, putting on her cloak and letting him get on first.

“That’s right, lesson number one. No such thing as a fair shot.” He stops her swinging her leg over, and taps the back of the bike. “Lesson two – acquired plates. Remember that.”

Rogue squishes in behind him on the exaggeratedly low seat and reaches around to zip his jacket. “Shut up and drive, sugar. I wanna go fast.”

It’s a risky move, having him teach her how to leave him. She’s banking on time working in her favor. Keeping him around is going to be a daily battle. Rather cheerfully, she thinks it might be ten years before the realization that he hasn’t left her yet and doesn’t intend to just sneaks up on him one day.

A piece down the hill, she yells in his ear, “Someday maybe I’ll return the favor, you could work for me! Half-bodyguard, half-mascot – Eep!” She keeps her grip locked even after he’s set the front wheel back onto the road.

That’s all right. Logan can go ahead and ignore it for now. It’s just a seed, planted for the faraway future. Another one of her daydream plans. Rogue rubs her stinging cheek against the cool leather of his jacket, trying not to think about how well any of those have actually turned out.

This could be different, though. It’s a game, the longest, most evenly-matched game they’ve played. A contest to see how high she can raise the stakes before either of them loses grip on their better natures and folds.