She's looking at him again, with that withering stare of disapproval he's come to recognise all too well in the time he's been back. Dressed as she is in a floor-length brown skirt and the most agonisingly prim white blouse he thinks he's ever seen the only thing he can think to say is "When the hell did you get so fucking austere?"
She rolls her eyes at him, lips flattening into a grim line as if he's just said the most asinine thing in the world and it's all he can do not to just throw his hands up in despair and walk away. But he can't. Because she's driving and it's snowing out there and, though he's pretty sure he can't die of hypothermia, he doesn't really want to put it to the test.
And damn it, he'd thought that last icy skid had been kinda' fun.
"I'm not austere."
There's so little emotion in her voice he almost feels like winding her up, just to get some kind of reaction out of her that's not thinly-veiled annoyance. Though he decides against doing that too because she punched his lights out with one well-aimed flick of her wrist the last time he did.
The silence hangs between them as snow-chained tyres cover another mile of blank, white highway and he sighs, his breath misting the passenger-side window.
"There's a Tim Hortons in the next town," he says at length and she grunts a noncommittal reply. He grits his teeth for a moment at the sheer absence of her, even though she's sitting right there and he tries again. "Could get some maple donuts or something if you want."
Her shrug is just visible out the corner of her eye and it annoys him. "Not bothered," she says and he rubs at his face in exasperation.
"But you like maple donuts, don't you?"
Did she ever. The first time they'd taken this trip she'd made him stop in every damn town between Ottawa and Vancouver, and every year after that, it had become like tradition.
"Eh," she replies. "Can take it or leave it."
She'd been like this the whole trip though. So unlike herself and so... staid. She was usually so ready to enjoy their time and he has absolutely no idea what changed in the six months he was away.
"How about penguins, Marie? You want some tap-dancing penguins?"
She shoots him a bemused glance across the car. "What is up with you today?"
Logan stares at her. "Dunno. I was going to ask you the same question."
"There's nothing wrong with me."
He raises an eyebrow sceptically, twisting round in his seat to get a better look. The edge of irritation is clear in his voice when he next speaks. "Well I thought I'd better check cause ever since we left you've been looking like you'd rather be anywhere but here. We didn't have to come if you didn't want to, y'know. I wasn't gonna' force you on vacation by claw-point if there was somewhere else you wanted to be."
"I don't want to be somewhere else, alright?" she snaps back and he's silent for a second.
"Do you want to be here, though?" he asks and he watches as her fingers tighten on the steering wheel, her jaw setting back into that grim line he's seen too much of already.
"I don't want anything. Just... shut up and let me drive."
Silence descends on them again and he watches her, more carefully this time, from the tension in her shoulders to the way he can almost read the repetition of irritated thoughts churning round and round inside her head. She looks almost as grey and severe as the snow outside that falls wetly against the endlessly swishing wiper blades.
"You didn't answer the question," he says at length and he watches her grimace. She doesn't reply though and he sighs. It feels like he's lost her; as if she's floated away in the time he's been gone, and he figures it's probably his own fault he wasn't there to see what happened. He very rarely is. He wasn't there when she absorbed Carol Danvers. He wasn't there when she learned how to fly. He wasn't there when she toppled a pine-tree by crashing into it.
He wasn't there when she learned that her mutation was uncontrollable without a technological breakthrough they hadn't even invented yet. But he'd always had the utmost confidence that she was capable of dealing with these things for herself. He'd always known she was strong enough and he'd felt justified in leaving for long periods of time because he knew with absolute certainty that she didn't need him any more. Liked him, sure, even wanted him a little bit, but didn't need him. And he'd been right. She'd grown and matured and needed for nothing, so he left her. Sometimes for almost a year at a time, knowing that all the while he wasn't hovering, she was growing.
But he always came home around Christmas and took her on vacation. Because he was at least man enough to admit that he missed her. Selfish as it seemed, he liked spending the time with her and he liked the regularity of it, and she always enjoyed it so much...
He revised that. She had always enjoyed it. The woman sitting opposite him however, seemed to be a different matter entirely. She was someone he didn't seem to know at all and he wondered what had caused that.
"Did something happen while I was gone?" he asks, and she glances at him.
"Not really," she says and he can't smell a lie.
"But you're not ok though," he says. "There's something bothering you, right?"
"I'm fine," she replies and there, that's the lie. A source-less one, to be sure, but definitely there.
"You're such a bad liar," he says and she flinches, her fingers tightening on the wheel so hard this time she leaves dents in it.
"I'm just... I'm tired, alright?" she snaps and that's a lie too.
He leans across the car, pressing right up against her shoulder, feeling her try and pull away from him as he puts his hand on top of the steering wheel. His voice is deadly serious when he speaks.
"Pull over."
Pressed against her he can hear her heartbeat; the sharp spike in the rhythm that happens only when he gets this close. It's distinct even under the layers of cloth and the sound of the engine, and he releases his grip on the wheel, slinking back into his seat as she pulls the car over to the side of the road.
Her hands are shaking.
She doesn't look at him once they're parked though, she just stares blankly out the window and he almost wants to scream in frustration because he knows there's something wrong but he just can't work out what it is.
"I used to make you laugh," he says eventually. "You used to at least act like you enjoyed doing this."
He'd bounce the car through pot-holes and throw it round corners too fast and it'd make her giggle to see him acting like a goof because he didn't mind doing that for her. Kind of liked it, to tell the truth. Because making her laugh made him feel better too, but there hadn't been any of that on this trip. Just terse silences and disapproval every time he rode the clutch at a stop light and raced the other cars when the signal turned green
She looks down at her hands, twisting them together in her lap, but she doesn't reply. She just shrugs and he hates how she does that. Like she doesn't know it's driving him absolutely crazy.
"Fine," he says. "Don't talk to me. We'll drive the rest of the way to Anchorage in silence, spend a couple of weeks grunting at each other and then go home. Sounds like an excellent plan."
He crosses his arms and slouches down into his seat, propping one foot up on the dashboard and he knows it looks like he's sulking, but it only seems to be fitting for the level of their conversation. He hears her sigh though, and the dull thud as she lets hear head drop against the side window. His arms uncurl to rest uselessly on his thighs and he feels suddenly uncomfortable for snapping at her.
"Do you want to go home?" he says. "Would that make you happier?"
She shakes her head and he stares out into the increasing snow a little desperately, as if the freezing whiteness outside might offer some better kind of answer.
"Do you still want to go to Anchorage, then?" he asks and she shakes her head at that too, closing her eyes as if she's trying to swallow down something too big to be kept hidden.
"Then what do you want?" he asks and it takes everything he has not to let desperation seep into his voice, because it feels like she's long gone already and he has no chance of getting her back.
"I don't want anything," she whispers and that's the biggest lie of them all.
"Marie..." He can't help pleading a little and she glances at him from the corner of her eye, traces of guilt already in her scent. "Tell me the truth."
She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, squeezing her eyes shut as if concentrating harder will make the words come out.
"I'm just tired," she says at last. "I'm so tired. I want so many things I can't have, it's easier to just turn it all off and not want anything at all." And for the first time he can smell the truth, or at least a part of it. He pushes closer; hears that spike in her heartbeat again, the one that only happens when he's this close and he finally thinks he understands. He doesn't know everything; not all the details that combined to kill her hope but he knows this much at least and he kicks himself for not realising sooner.
It's right there really, he thinks. Right there on her face. The way she looks at him sometimes, when he leaves or comes back. It's an expression he's seen a hundred times on her and never quite recognised. The one that's so close to the little girl she used to be, back when she still needed him, that he's discounted it all this time. Never really looked properly, and never quite seen what was right in front of him as he blithely waltzed in and out of her life, convincing himself all the time that it was for her own benefit that he left. He'd been as blind as she'd been hopeful. She needs him again, he realises, but nothing like they'd had before and he finds that, somehow... he doesn't mind it at all.
"You should have told me," he murmurs and she shakes her head.
"What could I have said?" she whispers. "I don't- I'm not good at this," and she waves her hand abstractly in the air between them. He brushes his palm against her cheek, his fingers gloved already because it's so cold, and he turns her towards him. He strokes the pad of his thumb gently across her face and he can feel her shiver at the contact; The intimacy of it.
"Tell me what you want," he says and he can almost see the walls around her cracking, the perfect mask of indifference fracturing from the soft, vulnerable part of her fear; the part she's been trying so hard to keep hidden.
"I don't want to mess this up," she confesses and he shakes his head.
"That's not what I asked," he says. "Try again."
He sees it in her eyes, the flash of panic that wants to lie and say that she doesn't know what she wants and not take this risk and never have to feel the punch when he rejects her. But there's another part too. The part that wants this so much he can almost taste it.
His hand slips down over her jaw, pressing carefully against the side of her neck, leather-gloved fingers massaging softly at the base of her skull and it's just enough... Close enough to convince her that maybe she won't fall if she lets herself jump and she almost whimpers, surrendering to the slow, careful caress as she breathes her answer, throwing herself into the abyss.
"You..."
It seems to fill his chest with something, a flood of sensation he knows he's never felt before; warm and flowing, almost like hot water and he realises that he likes it. Wants it. Craves it, even. His fingers tighten against her neck and then suddenly he's kissing her...
Her eyes widen in shock and for one awful second her mouth remains completely unresponsive. He pauses, scared that he read this wrong completely and she only wants him back as her protector... but then her lips move under his and it's all he can do not to punch the air in excitement because it's everything that he never knew he wanted. Her lips are cool and soft and delicious and he doesn't stop to notice that her powers aren't draining him, he just deepens it; tastes her perfect lips with the tip of his tongue and she moans helplessly at the feeling, his hand sliding down her shoulder to cup her breast as his tongue pushes deeper, pressing slowly against her own.
When he finally pulls back they're both panting, combined breath fogging slightly in the cold air between them. Her nipple is hard against his palm and she can see the question clear in his eyes. She holds up her right hand in answer, a dull grey ring sitting on her middle finger and it's all he needs to know. It smells like Hank. Like pure furry genius and he kisses her again, harder this time, thumb circling that tender, hard nipple until she's whimpering into his mouth and squirming, the scent of her increasing desire overwhelming even the dampness of the snow outside.
He parts from her lips only long enough to press kisses into her neck and he can feel her pulse thundering against his lips and tongue. His hand slides down to her hip and pulls on her skirt, clutching a handful of fabric and dragging it up her thigh, tracing the line of sensuously curved muscle.
"...Never thought you'd want this..." she whimpers and he nods to himself. He gets it now. He knows what changed. She had half her dream and never thought she'd get the rest of it. Never believed she was capable of having anything that she wanted, most especially from him, and it makes him smile. Because for the once he knows that she is genuinely happy.
His mouth draws hungrily up to her lips again and he brushes a slow, delicious kiss over them, and when he pulls back to look at her he can't help but laugh a little. She's blushing up a storm and it looks perfect on her, lips reddened from his kisses and her eyes widening at him questioningly.
"What?" she says and he tugs on her skirt again, the hem of it still down around her ankles.
"Where the hell's the bottom of this thing anyway?" he asks and she can't help but giggle, laughing for the first time since they started this journey.
Logan thinks that it's probably the best thing he's ever heard.