"So you're okay with existing the way you are right now?" Natalya was asking.
Logan rubbed his forehead with the hand that wasn't curled around a beer.
"You've been…different for weeks. Do you really want to keep this up?"
"Natty…" he said, his voice low.
"I know you were handed a piece of really big news, but-"
"You've gotta leave me be, all right? I need this."
"Of course learning that changed your life," Natalya continued, quieter this time. "But you decided to not try to contact your biological son, and I just want you to be back to normal now. It's been three weeks."
Logan set his jaw.
"I mean well, here. I'm sorry I'm being so obnoxious. This just doesn't come across as, uh, your normal lone-wolf thing."
"I don't need to explain myself, Nat."
"Make sure you sleep well and all that s%$t."
"I do. I'm fine." Logan replied, his eyes on the wall opposite them. He felt very lucky that no one seemed to be on the first floor of the mansion known as the Institute right now, and especially not near this room.
"I just want to have your back, Logan, and…it's hard to watch you go through life off-kilter like this. You're out of orbit."
"Relax, kid. I'm doin' fine," he responded, turning to face Natalya. "Don't you work tomorrow?"
She sighed, her hand with the star tattoo now drumming on the table. "I'm pissing you off, aren't I?"
Logan's eyebrow lifted in a striking fashion, chugging part of his beer.
"There are answers you want to find about your past, and it would help if-"
"Nat."
That's where an uncomfortable pause kicked in. Logan looked down at the dregs of his beer, wishing he'd left more.
"All right, I'm out." Natalya responded, standing from her chair with decidedly less grace than she'd used earlier.
Their gazes met briefly, wherein they each tried to convey something, refusing to receive. She quickly found herself staring at the side of his head for a moment before leaving the room. Logan followed, then, his face once again expressionless.
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"What's up?"
Long, dark red hair, tall black boots, fitted jeans, and Logan knew from a glimpse that Natalya had come back for the first time in eleven days.
"You said on the phone that you were busy watchin' that guy." He grumbled in his version of a joke.
Natalya chuckled. "I like to look at Jacoby Shaddix, but he's got nothin' on you. What's going on with the bike?"
Logan didn't pull his focus from the vehicle beside him. "There are issues with the fuel sensor and the frame sliders."
"I'll come back later, then."
His mind flashed to Russia and everything he'd thought about as he downed a hacker's homemade vodka. Grown-up conversations with women were so difficult to have when you didn't have answers to a lot of the typical questions. With this woman, though…
"No," he steadfastly replied. "I'll get up in a second. I have stuff to pick up tomorrow to fix this. This is gonna be an all-day job."
"All right, since you sound sure. Um, are you hungry? We could go to Blazer for burgers…?"
Logan wiped as much grease and dirt onto the nearby towel as he could. "Honestly, darlin', I don't wanna deal with that place tonight."
"That's cool; I'll think of something else. I just have to remember that there's still construction at the other end of Keeler."
"People are still workin' on that street?"
He stood and approached her, his mouth at the corner of hers. She got to see his Civil War-style mutton chop sideburns up-close again.
"Good."
She allowed herself a little closed-lipped smile, and with that, he felt certain that she knew exactly what he meant. He'd had so many questions, so much contemplation about where he could fit in with "civilized" society, with the X-Men, with Professor X himself, with mortality and the passing of the seasons, and yet he knew there'd be more uncertainty to come, and made it clear to this lovely-looking bar maid, who now seemed to have a solid grasp of what that meant and still was here! Last week had been the only exception to not being pushy, just cool about Logan's brooding and traveling and the fact that he'd never be a good communicator.
"I agree." She muttered.
His hands seized her hips like a vice. That was all the green-light she needed to put hers in Logan's hair, claiming his bottom lip, wanting to sink inside the dark, very reluctantly [and secretly] hopeful, complicated force of nature that was Logan-a troubled soul made for old gothic literature.
"This first," he said roughly. "Food later," Her hands drifted to his belt buckle. "We'll go much later."
You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.
- Frank Crane