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.
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Chapter End Notes:
So...Sorry about the lack of updates. To make a long story short, I'm currently serving in the Peace Corps in Azerbaijan and I got sick this week, so I managed to bang out two chapters, add to chapter one, and edit all the other chapters. I'll try to update whenever I can get to Baku, where I currently am enjoying daily hot running water and wifi. :D