So, there was this boy...
It's how most stories start, few of them happy and fewer still truly satisfying. It's a standard precursor to aching hearts, settling for less, and the truth that dreams are just that... dreams. Life is not a romance novel, the handsome prince will not whisk you away on his steed and no matter how many frogs you kiss or Pygmalion schemes you concoct, the ending is very rarely like that glorious, perfect, fade-to-black romanticism of the movies.
Because unlike the movies, life goes on after the credits roll and, if you're me, Logan stops speaking to you altogether. Or, more accurately, he just wandered off somewhere to do whatever it is that he does, and didn't quite bother to say that he was leaving. A strangeness had appeared between us and I didn't really know why. Maybe I'd said too much; shown too much. It was possible, I guess he had about as much use for a histrionic mutant drama queen as he did for Band-Aids but I figure some part of me had been hoping for maybe more than a conciliatory pat on the shoulder and an uncomfortably hasty exit. A bit of reassurance would have been nice at least.
Compatibility, that was the thing. There were times when I wondered if this whole thing with Logan was just beyond even the scope of stupid. You know, pushing in from an objective point of view, what on earth was I holding out for so damn hard? He was older and unstable and dangerous and apparently right now, wholly uncomfortable with me. I was younger and weird and inexperienced and intensely neurotic. He should not and could not realistically ever actually want this. I could not see any tangible reason for it ever working out, and yet...
Yet, I really wanted it to. I kept trying to think of reasons to dissuade myself just to make this endless back and forth mental argument end, and I couldn't tell you why or how I ever thought it would work. I mean, he'd already told me to 'keep on waiting, kid,' and rationally I'd all but given up on him ever reciprocating my feelings, but that stupid, hopeless part still whispered quietly about how great it could be no matter how many times I tried to convince myself it was impossible.
Heart and head were battling it out, taking no prisoners and it was killing me in the process. I didn't know which path to follow. Logic dictated I should just get over myself and leave it alone before it got any more humiliating, but my heart... oh he had a beautiful, beautiful image and he wasn't ready to give it up yet.
But the thing was that there was also one other part. Somewhere in the back of my head I knew the reason I couldn't seem to decide was because I was afraid. Desperately terrified of what a relationship with anyone could mean and that, more than anything, was the root of my problems. I didn't know if I was trying to talk myself out of attempting a relationship with Logan or if I was just afraid of relationships in general. Some nameless fear of the unknown that kept me from making a step in any direction just in case it was the wrong one. Every time I thought about him I tried to picture the truth of what it could entail, and it was as if one half was rejoicing at the possibility of wonderful new things and the other part was...
Well the other part was the bit that screams when you step into the void. It's the part that knows you won't fly and that the ground will hit you very, very hard, and then when it's all over it knows that some part of you is going to be somehow, irreparably broken. It's the part that's afraid of being humiliated. The part that sits in the back of your mind and reminds you that you've never been kissed and you have no idea what sex is like, and that at 24 pretty much everyone else at the mansion is more experienced then you. And that it's mortifying when you're still all awkward fingers and thumbs taking a first step that everyone else has already taken. It reminds you that you can barely manage to look him in the eye any more so how in the hell do you expect to do anything else? It's all 'what-ifs' and indignity and it dares you to be more than what you are, when you already know you're just going to embarrass yourself...
And I was, I knew. Embarrassed by my own sense of inadequacy. I was afraid to fall into the void because I didn't think I was capable of flying. I didn't know how. The fall is exhilarating but the repercussions immense, and I was so, so scared that if I threw myself out there, no one would catch me. Not Logan, not anyone.
He wouldn't catch me, it whispered over and over inside my head. He wouldn't. I'd land on my face and he'd be there with a box of tissues and an admonition to "Try again with a parachute next time, kid," and the wounds I nursed would forever stay secret because it was too shameful to admit that they existed. Too degrading to admit that not only did I fail but that he didn't even notice I'd tried. I was afraid he'd laugh at me, and I don't know why I thought that. I don't know how it got into my head, like I had a low enough opinion of him to think he'd be that cruel, because I didn't. But I kept thinking that maybe he'd never realise what I was trying to do, and I didn't want to have to explain it because I found it humiliating. I wanted it to be something I didn't have to explain. I didn't want to be forced to admit that absolutely everything was new and frightening and I didn't want those fumbling first missteps to be something I had to have a witness for when everyone else was already running...
But I was already very aware that whoever I eventually wound up having a relationship with would never be so astute as to not wonder about me. About why at 24 and moreover touchable for a long time now, I'd never even learned how to kiss. Whoever they were, eventually that revelation would be made, and the thought of it made me squirm.
I was scared to death of making myself sound pathetic, when I spent so much effort trying to make people believe that I was capable. It was hard to quell and harder still to ignore. So I did the only thing I knew how.
I hid it. Buried it. Pushed down the insecurity along with my endlessly confused desires. I was too scared to face reality and too desperate to let go of fantasy, so I pretended like none of it existed.
But of course the problem with hiding things away, is that if you do it long enough and well enough, eventually people seem to forget that you have any feelings left at all.
Frustration. Confusion. Embarrassment...? I was pretty familiar with all of them. But they had a bastard half-brother I was only just now getting to grips with.
Anger. The testy, petulant kind of annoyance that gnaws somewhere at the very base of your spine. I was pissed the hell off. Bobby and Kitty were having unrepentantly loud sex in the room directly above mine (She'd got over her awkwardness with penises by then, obviously) so I'd had to vacate down to the kitchen in a last-ditch, frantic attempt to avoid the mental imagery that invariably went with the thumpa-thumpa of a bedpost beating against the wall.
I was tired, I was frustrated, I was both jealous and mildly grossed out both at the same time, and I was utterly sick of feeling like that. It was tiring being so damn conflicted all the time.
So I was taking my time nursing a mug of cocoa and trying to somehow sort things out in my head when I smelled it. Cigar smoke. I'd just about managed to convince myself that my desires were totally futile and I should get over them when, like some instantaneous Pavlovian response, my stomach twisted in a nauseatingly distracting combination of anticipation and sheer blind panic. Only one person wandered around shrouded in a pall of the finest Cuban, and that was Logan. I hadn't heard him pull back down the driveway but above the sound of bouncing springs and Kitty's moaning that wasn't really much of a shock.
I was pissed off with him too, truth be told. Or maybe not with him exactly but certainly because of him, and as he crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe with that cigar dangling out the corner of his mouth. He didn't look overly pleased to see me up and about at this time of night either. I almost wanted to smack him round the head for his calmly collected arrogance.
God, I wanted him, but in the same breath I really, really, didn't.
I didn't want to feel this way. Hell, half the time I didn't even know how I felt and maybe I was just mad at him for not feeling the same. For being so damn confident. And increasingly for pointing out that he still just saw me as a nobody.
I wanted him to notice me and desire me in all the ways I did him. I wanted him to tell me it was ok to fall because he'd catch me, and yet I knew he was never going to do any of those things. The futility of unrequited desires burned and I was, just on this particular night, very short on patience.
"You're up late, Kid," he said and I glared at him, settling more firmly in my seat and crossing my legs in a practised study of nonchalance and disinterest.
"Not tired," I said and I didn't really have the energy left to be civil. I was tense and annoyed and his persistence in calling me 'Kid' just felt patronising. I half expected him to try and pack me off to bed with some chocolate milk and a pat on the head but he didn't.
Instead he grunted, unfolded his arms and slouched towards the fridge, battered work-boots thudding dully against the tiled floor as he went. The clink of bottles said he'd yanked open the fridge door, though I kept my eyes firmly fixed on my cocoa, and I could hear him grumbling quietly to himself as he pushed things around on the shelves.
"Still no fuckin' beer..." he muttered and I rolled my eyes.
"Still a fuckin' school," I said. "You been here six years and you've not even worked that out yet?"
He cast a quick, sharp look over his shoulder at me.
"Man's gotta' live in hope, Marie," he said, pulling a bottle out the back of the refrigerator and looking at it in disbelief. "Babycham? Jesus..." He shoved it back in disgust.
"Yeah well," I said. "Sometimes you just have to accept that you're not always going to get the things that you want." And hell, didn't I know it. He turned around, flicking the fridge door closed to lean against it and stare at me.
"Real helpful," he said. "Glad to see you still know how to make a guy feel good about a situation."
I rolled my eyes at him. "It's just a beer. Didn't you get enough while you were out on your magical disappearing act already?"
He snorted. "My disappearing act?" He shook his head. "I gotta run everything past you now or something?"
"You never even told me you were leaving," I said. "I had to hear it from Ro. A goodbye might have been nice."
"Yeah well, like you said yourself. You don't always get what you want."
The strangeness that had formed between us that day on the stairs was still present but was edged with something else now and I just shrugged. I didn't know what the hell it was, though I had a nasty suspicion we weren't actually talking about Budweiser any more.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I sighed.
He snorted at me like I was some brain-dead moron he could have carte blanche to mock.
"Can't live in a fairy-tale, Kid. Sooner or later you'll get kicked back into the real world."
"Really." I observed him coldly. "That's rich coming from you."
I didn't really have an answer to him, this whole messed up conversation, or to his sour mood. Maybe he was just as unreasonably pissed off as I was. Though I knew he was still in pain it didn't make it any easier to deal with.
"What's the matter?" he growled. "Reality already started biting you?"
Bitterness marked him, I guess as much as it did me. We both wanted what we couldn't have and my unspoken desire for him too perfectly mirrored his very public desire for Jean. I knew that well enough already even if he remained unaware of my feelings.
"Spare me the lecture, ok?" I snapped. "I'm not in the mood for you to tell me things I already know."
"Yeah, well I guess we all learned something pretty fuckin' important this time round then didn't we?"
I cocked my head and stared at him expectantly. "Oh, and what's that?"
He glared at me, the words snapping in his mouth. "Next time, remember to fall for someone who actually gives a shit about you."
Oh...
Oh Jesus.
He knew... He fucking KNEW? And like a bug under his boots he stomped on it. Ripped out the one thing I'd tried so hard to hide and threw it back at me just out of spite for his own torn up fantasies. I felt the hurt well up inside me, overwhelming the anger for a moment before it burst back up like a sheet of raw flame. I slammed my cup down, staring at him with all the heat I'd felt boiling inside me since the beginning, all the fury escaping in a rage that suddenly had nothing left to lose.
"You have no right, Logan. No right to be pissed off with me for the way that you feel!"
"I have every right!" He was breathing hard, some kind of anger seething inside him. "You're driving me crazy!" He thumped his hand onto the kitchen table, making it shake under the force.
"You sit here," he snapped, "Day after day with your inferiority complexes and you wallow in your self pity. You won't even try, Marie. You don't even see what's right in front of you half the time. You want everyone to believe so bad that things are impossible and that no one will ever want you that you push them all away."
I opened my mouth to deny it but no words would come out and I could feel my heart beating too hard in my chest. He frightened me, this side of him. A side I'd rarely ever seen. He looked strange when I stopped to think about it later. Full up and about to burst on something, only I didn't know what and I never had the chance to work it out.
"Don't... don't say it," he growled. "Don't sit there and deny it. Cause you know it's bullshit. The moment you start rejecting people you forfeit all right to complain that no one cares."
My jaw dropped, eyes widening in hurt so sudden it was as if he'd reached across the table and punched me in the face. He'd thrown my feelings back as if they were absolutely nothing at all. As shallow as teenage drama trying to copycat his pain.
He snapped his mouth shut and buried his head in his hands with a groan, the sudden silence only broken by the sound of my chair scraping over the kitchen floor before I walked away from him.
"Shit... Marie, wait..."
"No." I didn't even stop. "Just... no."
I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. Not in front of him. But it was during that moment that I learned the one true disadvantage to hiding yourself from people. It's the fact that even the ones who know you best sometimes make it obvious that they don't really know you at all.
He didn't know me... Not even the simplest little thing and I may as well have been a fucking stranger.
I knew he was wrapped up in his own hurt, I understood it. I could even just about accept it. But that didn't stop it from stinging when it also made abundantly clear the one thing I hadn't wanted to accept.
That there were times, days, when I actually wished he'd fucked Jean and just gotten it out of his system; Experienced the reality of her instead of making it into this perfect fantasy to torture himself with. Because all the while he had that fantasy he would never love me. Never want me. Never catch me. Didn't even know anything about me and I knew then I should have given up a long time ago. Because in thinking so little of me he'd answered the one question I'd always been so afraid to ask. I'd lost him without ever even having him and, at that moment, my most desperately-held fantasy finally, truly died.
You see, the truth, (that purple elephant in the corner everyone's too polite to mention,) could never have been further from what he thought. Because I chased no one away. There had only ever been him. I was still waiting for anyone else to even notice that I existed.
I expected him to vanish again, I really did. Do what he's best at and avoid anything and everything that causes him discomfort. But he didn't. He slipped into the shadows like so much of his own cigar smoke; there but not quite real before he turned up one day at my door.
I had my back to him, trying to write my journal but I hadn't been able to for days. The words just wouldn't come, like they'd been replaced by this indefinable thing inside of me that was swelling and taking up every inch of space I had left in my body. My skin was too tight to contain it, my whole being stretched taut and about to burst.
Of course he didn't bother to knock. Never had done. Just let himself in and stood watching me for a moment as I tried and failed yet again to put pen to paper and form any kind of coherent thought.
I heard the creak of the loose floorboard by the door as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the silence stretching for far too long before he finally spoke.
"I'm sorry."
I froze, the world lurching to a stop for a moment, dizzying as it broke mid-spin and I turned my head slowly, afraid of what I would see in his eyes... but his face was as blank and inscrutable as the unused diary page now scrunched up in my hand.
He didn't stay. Didn't explain or contextualise exactly what part of the argument was he was apologising for. He just nodded as if it was a task now done and vanished back out into the corridor.
I never knew it could take such force of will to uncurl my fist from the sharp-edged paper ball now digging into my palm, but it tumbled under the desk as I rose to my feet, two quick steps crossing the small room and out into the hallway.
"Wait."
He paused, but didn't turn around. His head dropped a little though, but whether in annoyance or resignation at the loss of his clean getaway I wasn't sure.
"Is that it?" I asked and he sighed.
"What else do you want from me, kid?"
"I just..." I didn't even know where to start, but he barely even gave me time to fumble for my thoughts before he spoke again.
"I have to go."
I felt a twist of dread in my stomach; An unpleasant kind of anxious certainty. "Go? What do you mean, 'go'? Go where...?" I asked and he sighed again, longer this time before turning just enough to glance at me over his shoulder.
"Does it matter? I can't keep doing this."
This? I knew he meant Jean. He always meant Jean. It was the only thing I ever really did know for certain. But where the hell did that leave me? Because while I knew that hoping for affection from him was like clinging to the flotsam of an already-sunken boat, I was doing it anyway. Because even before all of this began, I liked him, and what I had never really stopped to consider was that after this was all over... I could lose him from my life entirely.
I guess I'd never really anticipated the consequences of failure because I'd never even intended to try, and in some half-formed part of my mind I was figuring at some point I'd be able to look forward to an incredibly awkward return to the status quo.
But he was leaving... and I was angry. Upset and with nothing at all left to lose.
He had humiliated me that night in the kitchen. He'd taken my deepest held secret and he'd used it to hurt me; to lash out at me because of his own damaged heart, and somewhere deep inside I still seethed.
"Oh, fabulous, Logan. Excellent idea. Hightailing it out of here without warning every time you come close to having a 'Jean moment'. Give me a fucking break."
He turned at that, staring at me so hard I could virtually feel it and I almost expected him to start shouting, but he didn't.
"You humiliated me!" I hissed. "You knew how I felt about you. You knew I was trying to hide it, just out of respect for the fact that I know you don't feel the same, and you used it anyway. And what? I get a half-assed apology before you fuck off out of here again? It's not good enough."
"Kid..." His voice was low; a little rough. "I don't think-"
"No!" I shouted. "Don't... don't you dare tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, Logan, because you don't have a clue."
I looked at him, eyes burning with the raw sting of unshed tears. His face was still, as if I'd shamed him.
"You have no idea what it's like, do you? Spending night after night wanting for something as fundamental as human contact. Something that maybe isn't just casual. How big a deal that is to me. How much it frightens me that I'm never going to have that!"
I didn't want to tell him this... I didn't want him to see what I was. How desperate I'd become. How much he'd already hurt me. But I couldn't stop despite his quiet curse, because he thought he knew and he didn't understand at all.
"You know, once upon a time I could lie to myself. I got so good at lying to myself. It's all about my skin, no one will touch me because of my skin, it's my skin that drives people away.
"Well guess what? I controlled it and nothing changed. It wasn't my skin. It was never my stupid skin. All the while I was blaming it on that, and it was me all along." I hard my voice catch... break... "It was me..."
It hurt. Oh God, it hurt so much, the tension inside me finally snapping and I sank to the floor crying so hard I thought my lungs were going to burst. Choking sobs that ripped my throat apart. I held my hands over my face, closed my eyes and let myself drown, and in the middle of it all, down on the floor... he held me. Strong arms that wrapped me tightly against his chest, a hand pressing my sobs into his shoulder and it was everything that I wanted, but at the same time it was the worst thing in the world. Because it was only temporary. Comfort from pain but that was it. The actions of a friend or a brother suddenly feeling guilty for their spite, it changed nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.
He held me tight and pressed his cheek against mine and I could feel the heat of his breath as he whispered against my throat.
"Shh, it's ok..."
But it wasn't ok. Nothing would ever be ok. And I couldn't speak to tell him.
"I understand better than you think, Marie."
"Don't!" I sobbed and I shoved him away from me, wrapping my arms around myself protectively as I sat there on the floor. "You've been such a JERK to me, Logan. Just leave me alone."
The look in his eyes was almost pained as I wiped angrily at my face and I thought maybe the truth had stung him a little bit too. I hoped it did. I wanted him to know what I felt.
He slumped down onto the hall carpet next to me then as if he'd suddenly deflated, staring pensively at the pattern on the rug for a moment.
"If it makes any difference," he said at length, "I didn't know."
"Didn't know what?" I scoffed. "That you hurt my feelings or that it actually mattered?"
"Cut it out, Marie," he growled. "I never knew how you felt. How the hell was I supposed to know something like that?" He shook his head slightly, rubbing one eyebrow with the back of his thumb. "I mean, Jesus... You told me you'd never date anyone at the mansion and then months ago I asked you to give me a chance... and you told me I was a disappointment. What the hell was I supposed to think?"
A disappointment? I don't...-
"What?" is all I managed and he looked at me, one eyebrow quirked so high in disbelief it'd almost have been funny if I wasn't so fucking confused.
"That day on the stairs," he said. "You were crying so hard and I told you that you deserved someone who loved you. Who the hell else did you think I was talking about?"
No. Just... no. He was just being nice, just being my friend...
"But... but you were just trying to make me feel better. You were just saying that-" His head snapped round and the look on his face made the words die in my mouth.
"I was talking about me. Everything I said, Marie. I was talking about ME."
For a moment I almost couldn't breathe. I was glad I was already sitting down because for one horrible second I felt like I was going to fall over.
"But... but you... You always call me kid. Like a little sister or something..."
He sounded exasperated. "You're always so sure you know everything. And sometimes, Marie, you don't know anything at all."
He shook his head as if angry, covering the space between us so fast I only felt his hand cradle my face for a second before his kissed me. Hard. Desperately. Caressing my lips with a sweep of his tongue before the whole world just flickered away. I don't remember opening my mouth and I don't remember wrapping my arms around his neck. I just remember the taste and the feel of him. The heat and the hard muscle of his body pressing against me as strong arms wrapped firmly around my back. And it was nothing like a father or a brother or a friend. He kissed me like a man kisses a woman for the first time in my life. Like everything I ever wanted, and God, it felt so good.
He released my lips after taking his fill, leaving me dazed and breathless, still tasting him vaguely on my tongue as he buried his face against my neck and I could feel him shaking.
"God, Marie... please don't tell me to stop."
I don't think I could have if I'd tried. He was holding me and breathing against my throat, everything about him just so beautiful and visceral and real.
"I'm... I'm not Jean," I whispered and I could have kicked myself because he grew still, pulling back a fraction to look at me with concern.
"What does she have to do with this?"
I swallowed hard, too overwhelmed to keep the shaking out my voice.
"I'm not her. I don't want you to be disappointed in me."
He looked at me so confused, leaning in to kiss me with a soft tenderness that almost ached, it was so, so sweet.
"I don't want you to be her," he murmured. "I've never wanted that. She died a long time ago, Marie. I kept trying to tell you..."
That was it? That was what he'd been trying to say when he mentioned her...? And then, as if the world was shifting, it all made some horrible kind of sense.
I had no idea. I never had any idea and it felt like every certainty had suddenly failed, letting loose all the insecurities and doubts I'd ever had about my ability to do this. Everything I thought I knew was suddenly wrong, from the most basic principals onwards and it felt like too much. Naivety had always been my biggest fear and suddenly it was the reality I'd always been so starkly terrified of. I'd been so wrong about him from the very moment I started and it scared me.
"I didn't know..." I whispered. "I don't even know what I'm doing." Tears made the words unsteady and I hated how it sounded. Hated how I felt vulnerable and exposed and useless and like I was being swept under by something so much bigger than I ever imagined. And then me smiled at me, and he kissed me, and he said the one thing I never knew I needed to hear.
"Neither do I."
-End-