As promised, Holly and the new Logan.
Also, the song choices below and in the previous chapters are all specific to the chapters. The lyrics on all of these songs were influential in writing all chapters. The ones in bold are what inspired the story to begin with.
Post Malone - Goodbyes
5 Seconds of Summer - Easier
lovelytheband - Maybe I'm Afraid
Jonas Brothers - Sucker
Miike Snow - Genghis Khan
Taylor Swift - I Know Places
Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don't Care
Chapter 3, Goodbyes:
Two days later, on the nineteenth floor of Stark tower, with sunlight streaming through the wall of windows in front of her, Holly waited for Logan to show up. The attorney her father hired, supposedly blood thirsty as she was vicious, sat poised, polished and prepared to do battle in the most expensive outfit Holly had ever seen on any human being outside of a movie. Or Youtube. She counted the labels. Dolce & Gabana watch. Birkin bag. Twenty bucks said the pantsuit was probably something equally expensive. The shoes were red sole Louis Vuttons in a very professional nude color. Her hourly rate could probably feed a small country for a decade.
Holly watched the world below, cars coming and going. Streams of people passing by. Tourists aiming their cameras upward. Holly pushed away from the window.
"When he gets here, just let me do the talking." The lawyer, whose name Holly just could not seem to remember said.
Holly took the seat beside her lawyer. "He won't contest it."
"When kids are involved these things tend to get messy."
"It won't. This might be the easiest divorce you've ever worked on." Holly murmured.
Seven minutes later, which was three minutes after the designated meeting time, Logan and his lawyer - a dowdy looking little man in a cheap pinstripe blue-gray suit and purple paisley tie - finally arrived. "I, uh," the little man stuttered out, "apologize. There was an issue."
"Bioscan?" Holly asked.
Logan's dark brown eyes met hers. "Yeah."
She tapped between her knuckles of one hand. "It's the adamantium."
He flexed his left hand in response. "Whole scanner shut itself off."
"You know you didn't have to walk through it. I think you just like stressing out Jarvis sometimes." For a moment it actually felt like talking to her husband.
Then he spoke again. "Who's Jarvis?"
Her smile faded instantly. "Jarvis," She didn't break eye contact with Logan when she said to the air, "might I get a cup of tea?"
"Of course Miss." A distinctly british male voice said into the room. "English breakfast?"
"Earl Grey, thank you. Please bring Logan his usual coffee."
"Right away Miss."
"That's Jarvis."
The little man cleared his throat. "Ah, yes. Perhaps we should…"
Her lawyer slid the neatly stapled set of papers across the desk. "We're not asking for alimony, or recompense for time lost. And," the lawyer side eyed Holly, "no child support. We require sole custody of the children."
His lawyer looked over the papers, visibly sweating. Holly almost felt bad for him. She wanted to ask Logan if he found this guy on some 1-800 commercial or the back pages of Yellowbook.
Logan's lawyer pushed the papers back. "Yes to everything except the sole custody. We require two Saturdays a month."
Holly could have reached across and fried that little shit's brain.
"With," his lawyer went on, "a provision that when the boys are old enough to be away from their mother, it becomes two weekends a month."
Holly lost it. "You have to be fucking kidding me. He has PTSD nightmares and knives between his knuckles. I'm not leaving my kids alone with him for an entire day, forget a whole damn weekend."
His lawyer turned his head, staring at Logan in abject horror.
Logan, lips pressed flat, "Can we get a minute?"
"Absolutely not," Holly's lawyer protested immediately.
"Not a good idea. Anything you say without witnesses could be used against you." The little man said.
Logan didn't look at either of them. He kept his eyes on her. The woman the other him married. "Please."
Holly rolled her eyes heavenward. She hated when he looked at her that way. He had something to say that wasn't for anyone else but her. She used to love when he looked at her like that. It meant he was going to say something sweet and lovely and now… now her heart hurt. With a shuddering breath. "Yeah, fine, give us ten."
"Holly," her lawyer said with emphasis.
"I said go. I want to talk to my husband."
The lawyers left the room.
The Logan that was not her husband watched her for one very long moment. "I get it. Why the other guy would have been attracted to you. You don't take shit, do you kid?"
Holly unsnapped the clasp on her left hand glove and clicked it into place again. "He used to call me kid. I'll tell you the same thing I told him. You don't get to call me kid when you've pictured me without a stitch of clothing."
He held up both hands. "Easy, I didn't come to start a fight. You wanted a divorce, I'll give it to you. I didn't wake up expecting to be married with kids."
"Then what is this crap with the custody?"
"The Professor thinks that one day he's going to resurface and we'll," he paused to look for the word.
"Integrate." She supplied. The very idea hurt her heart. One day her husband would wake up finding himself in a life he didn't know.
"And I don't want him to not have memories of his kids growing up. Every kid should know their father."
"You aren't their father. You're the guy wearing their father's face."
"They don't have to know that."
Holly thought about it for a minute or two. Long enough for a knock to come to the door and a woman with a tray to enter the room. She placed a plain white and gold tea service with a couple of chocolate coated biscuits down. "For Miss Holly." A larger than average white mug with the words STARK INDUSTRIES written across both sides in bold black lettering was set down in front of Logan. "For Mister Logan, black with one sugar."
"Thank you." Holly said to the woman who no doubt was someone's secretary or admin.
After she left Logan sipped his coffee. "That's good," pleasantly surprised, Logan looked down at the cup finding deep brown froth looking back at him. "What is this?"
"Italian coffee. You think Tony Stark lets his guests drink Starbucks?" Even if they were divorcing his daughter. "Two saturdays a month here in Stark tower with me present. We can revisit that in four weeks at their birthday party which will also be here."
Storm told him as much. Before he woke up, the other Logan and Holly were planning dual parties, one at the school and a bigger one at the tower. His wife's - the idea that he'd ever gotten married was still something completely unbelievable - father had been insisting on a big party. Rich people.
"How much is that lawyer costing your dad?"
Without blinking, "Enough to run a small country. Yours?"
"Too damn much."
"Don't drain our savings. It took a lot of time to save that up."
Savings? He had a savings account? He knew about the couple of thousand in the checking, that's where the money for the lawyer came from. She managed to get him to save money?
Logan watched the woman across the table. She wasn't his type. Not even remotely. He liked women at least his height, maybe an inch or two shorter. He preferred bigger breasts. Longer legs too. The woman in front of him, across the table from him, didn't fit those descriptions.
She was short and curvy. The top of her head reached his collarbone. He remembered from the day he woke up. She had the hips he liked to hold onto. Her hair was long, and dark, he liked that. Fuller lips and bedroom eyes. She was a fighter too. Logan would have put money on arguments between them ending in sex.
The other guy couldn't be so different from him in his taste in women. There had to be something about her that made the other guy want to be with her. Want to marry her. Have kids with her.
"I could try," he said after a long quiet moment. "I can't be him, can't replace him, but I could try being with you."
Holly laughed bitterly. It was an angry, harsh sound. "While you pine for Jean?" Between clenched teeth she hissed out, "I am no one's consolation prize."
He had an intense desire to grab her and kiss her. Hard. It felt like a memory. Teeth clashing, bruising force and dark green eyes accusing him of something. Logan felt his body respond in muscle memory. He might not remember being with her, but the rest of him sure as hell did. His jeans were a little uncomfortable now.
"Do yourself a favor, drop that torch you're carrying. She and Scott deserve each other." She said as she waved the lawyers back in.
The last thing Logan asked for, before he left, was to meet his twin boys. His lawyer protested again, reminding him that anything Logan said to his soon to be ex-wife could and probably would be used against him in court. Logan told him to beat it and the lawyer left with a scowl. Her lawyer gave him a dismissive once over, shook Holly's hand and walked down the hall toward the elevator bank.
"The daycare is on the third floor." Holly told him, arms crossed over her chest.
He started toward the elevator banks too. She turned left and went down a side corridor. "We can take the private elevator. I don't want to share one with that viper."
Logan assumed she meant the lawyer. "Why'd you hire her if you don't like her?"
"I didn't. My father did." The elevator arrived and the doors opened. They got on, the doors closed.
That's when things got weird for him. Really fucking weird. A sense of dejavu hit him so hard he was startled for a second. He breathed in and he smelled something sweet. He could almost taste it. Logan cast around as the floor numbers counted down. Nothing. Just her. He breathed in deeper and christ - that was her. How the hell did she smell so good?
The desire to kiss her again followed on that realization. A loud internal voice was telling him to see where this goes. Go with it. They were already married, they had kids and he wanted her. At least his body wanted her. The part of him that was still semi-rational was telling him he didn't even know her.
When his hands turned into fists, Holly caught the movement out of the corner of one eye. She glanced at him with those dark evergreen eyes. A flash of memory brought back those same eyes looking up at him from a darkened room, lust and need and those lips parted as he slid into that warm, wet part of her.
Logan wasn't sure what possessed him. No. He knew exactly what possessed him.
He reached out, grabbed her by one elbow and tugged her over. The other hand went into her hair, tilted her head up and he kissed her. He kissed her long and hard and she didn't fight him. Her arms went around his neck and hell yes, she bit his lower lip lightly. He deepened the kiss, his tongue in her mouth and somehow they were up against a wall of the elevator. Logan didn't exactly remember moving them there.
Someone cleared their throat.
The growl that came out of his mouth when his wife pushed away from him wasn't something he was used to making. Since when did he growl?
She was smoothing her hair with quick, nervous fingers.
"Doctor," she cleared her throat while wiping at the small trickle of blood at her nose. "Doctor Banner. What are you doing down here?"
The guy she was talking to was holding two orange soda bottles and a small bag of, were those gummy frogs? "The better vending machines are down here." The guy didn't make a move to get into the elevator.
Holly, coming back to her senses, realized they were on the third floor. "We're, um," she motioned at Logan, "going to the daycare."
The guy nodded, once more eyeing Logan. "So this is?"
Fingers fidgeting, knowing her lips were bruised from being kissed and her breathing hadn't quite gone back to normal Holly sped through, "Logan this is Doctor Bruce Banner. Doctor Banner, my -" no he wasn't her husband. "Logan."
Bruce almost wanted to make a smart ass comment, but he held his tongue. Holly looked like she couldn't tell the difference between up and down right now. "When I passed it the kids looked like they were getting ready to nap. Might want to hurry."
Holly immediately looked at her watch. Oh no. It was almost 1 pm. "Right. Sorry." She stepped off and started walking.
Logan, still annoyed from being interrupted bypassed the other guy without so much as a word. He followed Holly down the hall to a room where the blinds were being drawn. Holly was standing by one of the last windows. She waved him over. "They're being put down to nap, we can't go in."
He moved to stand next to her. There were a dozen kids, varying ages and sizes, all settling into a cots. Which two were his? He wondered. Then he saw the boy fussing with the blanket at the other end of the room. Dark brown hair, dark eyes, chubby cheeks. Logan's gut said that one was his. "Him?"
"That's Tommy. He's fussy when he's tired." She pointed to the next cot. "Unlike Jamie who goes to bed without an issue." The other little boy was already fast asleep with a pale green blanket haphazardly draped over him.
One of the daycare workers opened the door quietly. "Mister Logan? Tommy's asking for you. If you're quiet, you can come in."
Logan's stomach dropped. He looked at Holly.
"You know 'You Are My Sunshine?'"
Yeah but he'd never actually sung it before.
"It helps him sleep."
The daycare worker looked a little confused at the exchange, but let him in all the same. There were so many tots in there. Nearly all of them asleep.
Tommy's fussing stopped the moment Logan crouched in front of him. "Hey kid," he kept his voice low and quiet. "Aren't you supposed to be taking a nap?"
Tommy's arms went out to him, and big tears started down chubby pink cheeks. "Da."
Logan, terrified he'd crush the boy very, very carefully picked him up and put him on one knee. The kid immediately cuddled up to him, dark hair falling into dark eyes. "You need a haircut." It was all he could think of. What did Holly say? You Are My Sunshine. He could do that. He hummed it, because the other kids were sleeping. Tommy, his son - christ he had two kids - was out like a light in a minute. The woman from the daycare went to help him put Tommy back into the cot.
"I've got it." He murmured to her and settled his son back in and covered the boy in a similar green blanket. He leaned over toward the other boy. Jamie and gently pulled the blanket up to cover him properly. Logan, mind elsewhere, followed the other daycare worker back out. He stood outside the door in the hallway for a handful of seconds.
This Logan, the one who was still in his head even if he didn't remember his life, gave him a life to come back to. A wife. Kids. And he was going to fuck it all up with a divorce? What was that thing the lawyer said when he first met him? He said 'Are you sure you don't want to try a, "Trial separation.'" Logan said the words roughly.
Holly blinked at him. "What?"
"That's what it's called, right? When we live apart but we're still married?"
"Yes, that's what it's called." Her throat was tight when she said it.
"Then let's try that first. Before we end it."
Holly shook her head. "It won't work."
He crossed the handful of feet between them, "Why the hell not?"
"You're in love with someone else." Tear filled green eyes looked up at him, clear as day and something in his chest squeezed painfully. "I saw it when I touched you that morning. You're in love with Jean. Don't even think about denying it. You want to be with her. I'm not her. I will never be her."
Why does she talk so damn much? "Give us three months."
"Why? You're not going to get over her. We broke up once because of the memory of her. When my husband found out she was alive we went through the worst fight we'd ever had. Days before we got married."
"You still married him."
"Yes, I did because he made me a promise you can't keep."
Dammit. "I can try."
Holly closed her eyes, breathed in and tried to remember her poor fragile broken heart. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her gloved right hand. "I'll give you a trial separation on one condition and one condition only. You can never think about Jean Grey in anything other than a professional capacity again."
Tony felt like breaking something. Something big. He settled for downing a martini in one shot. Damn that burned. "What do you mean trial separation?"
Holly, arms crossed over her chest, "The Professor believes that some of my Logan is bleeding through to this one. One day, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, they'll reintegrate."
"Or maybe ten years from now." Her father replied. He didn't mean to yell. He didn't. "Twenty years. Sixty. It might not ever happen, Hol. Ever."
Holly shifting uncomfortably, "Dad. I will give you back the money for the lawyer, I promise."
Money! "Honey this isn't about the money. Hell with the money. I don't care about money." He looked at Pepper. "You talk to her. I can't right now."
Pepper, having a much cooler head than either of them, "What brought this on? Last week you were certain you wanted to end it and never see him again."
Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Holly told Pepper and her father about the way Logan reacted when faced with his sons. Tony's anger softened. He knew what it was like to realize you'd miss your kid's entire life. He'd missed every single one of Holly's firsts. Never saw her first step. Never got to hear her try to call him dad as a toddler. Never saw her first tooth come in and fall out or held her hand on the first day of school. Hell, no prom pictures or broken hearts. She was nearly thirty when he met her and ten seconds from being engaged.
"Fine," he said after she finished speaking. "Fine, okay, trial separation. If he so much as makes you or the boys cry I will-" he had no idea what he could do to Logan. The man was literally made of metal and regenerated all damage. "Put my foot down."
Holly reached across the counter and took his hand. She squeezed gently. "Thanks dad."
He breathed out heavily. "So how is this going to work?"
"We're going to get to know each other again. See where things go."
"If he breaks your heart again, I will find a way to get Cap and Banner to help me break his face."
"New York is still recovering from the battle last year Tony." Pepper told him. "The four of you would level Manhattan with that fight."
He gave them both a look that said he genuinely didn't care and finally took a bite of his lunch. After they finished lunch, and Holly had gone to pick the boys up from the daycare center, Tony sat watching Pepper go through emails and answer texts. "Do you want kids?"
Pepper, startled looked up from her tablet. "Tony?"
He shoved some of the leftover zucchini from lunch around his plate with a fork. "I missed my daughter's life. Everything until she was nearly thirty."
"You gave her away at her wedding, Tony. You were there when the boys were born. You are there when she needs you."
"I want another kid." He said with some finality. "Do you?"
Pepper, flushing a deep red, "Tony…"
"You're going to have a step-daughter and grand kids. One more can't hurt, right? Or two? Maybe two more? Boy and a girl?"
"I didn't hear a marriage proposal in any of that."
"Ring shopping first. We can break it to Holly later."
"Are you forgetting to ask me something?" Pepper asked with a pointed glare.
"Keys," he was patting his pockets.
"Tony," Pepper called him back from whatever ADD moment he was having. "Did you forget to ask me a question?"
"You can pick the ring, then I'll do the down on one knee thing. Do you know what I did with my keys?"
"I'd like a fall wedding," Pepper said reaching over to the small metal tray at the end of the counter and plucking his keys out from under the mess of items deposited there. "And I am not wearing white."
He gave her that look. That one that Holly wore sometimes. It was how Pepper knew Holly was Tony's daughter. The look that said why on earth would I ask you to do something like that? "This fall." He said taking the keys from her.
Pepper, while riding in the elevator down to the garage, called her personal assistant to have the rest of her schedule cleared for the day. When asked for a reason, Pepper caught Tony looking smug. She replied with, "I am getting engaged."
No joke, I cried when I wrote the original scene with Holly/Logan. That hurt.
I need to clean up the next two chapters (one will be a date night with Logan) and then they'll go up.
