Chapter 18: Logan and Jubilee
The furniture store was cool after the heat outside (the morning started cool, but turned out hot when they left the fast-food restaurant after breakfast) and Logan looked around. There was only one salesperson there, and she was waiting on a young couple with two small children when they entered, so Jubilee wandered off to look around at the beds. Logan caught himself staring at the couple; the man had an arm around the woman's waist as they watched their children, adorable little toddlers, roll around on one of the beds while the salesperson explained something about 'visco-elastic memory cells' in the mattress stuffing. The couple walked across the store to another bed which had caught the woman's eye, and Logan realized, with a shock, that the woman was considerably younger than the man. She looked barely the legal age to be married, and the man…well, the man walked with a slight limp and had a shock of dark-brown hair, and when he turned around Logan saw the man's hair was heavily silvered at the temples. However, for all the age difference, they were clearly in love, and their fingers twined with each other as they held hands and discussed the price of the bed they were looking at. He looked down at his own hand, remembering the time he'd watched Blink and Sabretooth holding hands. He remembered wondering if he and Jubilee had ever held hands like that.
Holding hands. It seemed like such a simple thing, but really, how often did two people hold hands? Life tended to be too busy, too frenetic, for that kind of leisurely activity. And as much as he and Jubes had been together, he couldn't remember having held her hand once. Maybe a couple of times when they had been escaping some sort of danger and fleeing, but never in a simple, non-emergency way.
She was standing beside a mattress, reading the information plaque propped at the end of a mattress, when he came up. "What do you think?" she asked him, never looking up. "This comes in extra-firm, so I figure this will be good for you."
"Yeah, but ya like them soft things," Logan drawled, touching the surface of the mattress. Yep. Extra firm. Just like he liked them. Funny that Jubilee would remember, after all these years. However… "The bed ain't fer me, Jubes, it's fer you."
She frowned up at him. "For me?"
"Yeah." Logan had done some thinking before he'd fallen back asleep the night before, and had decided something. "Yer the first person 'sides me who's been up at the cabin, but I figure out of all of us, you an' me got more need of a quiet li'l retreat than anybody else. So the cabin's goin' ta be yers, too, once ya sign the deed. An' if it's gonna be yers yer gonna need somewhere comfortable ta sleep. I'm puttin' the second bed across the room from mine 'til I can build an addition, but it's still gonna be yer bed. So pick out somethin' you like."
"Really?" Jubilee's eyes opened wide. "Really? My own, my very own?" She swallowed hard.
He grinned, touched and saddened by her reaction. Jubilee was an orphan, shuttled from foster home to foster home by a system that didn't really care about her, until she'd finally had enough of it all and became a street kid. Foster homes were foster homes, and she'd never had anything of her own then. And street kids didn't have anything of their own either. Maybe the clothes on their backs, but usually those were stolen, and that was it. And then the X-Men had picked her up, taken her under their wings, so to speak, but the room designated as 'hers' wasn't really hers. When she left for the Massachusetts academy, the room was left behind. Sure, nothing had been touched, but a couple of times she'd come home unexpectedly during the holidays, and her room had been used by the visitors (other members from other teams) that occasionally visited the mansion. So 'Jubilee's room' hadn't really been her room there, either. Now he was going to build her an addition onto his cabin, and put her name on it, and even though it was his, it would be hers too. Finally something of her own.
She reached out to hug him, grabbing him tightly around the middle, and whispered, 'Thank you, Wolvie." She hugged him until he was firmly convinced that if he didn't have adamantium on his bones, they would have broken.
He found he didn't mind that a bit.
"Well, you could sort of see that the mattress store wasn't big enough to carry the stuff they had in stock ready to transport," Jubilee said later, her feet propped on the dash and her bare hand hanging out the window. "And I'm not really keen on sleeping on a bed other people put their dirty shoes up on, and other people's kids drooled all over. Yuck."
Logan rolled his eyes. "Still woulda liked ta have ya in a decent bed o' yer own tonight," he growled, slowing down to take a turn carefully. The lumber in the back of the pickup would fall out if he wasn't careful. "I ain't exactly lookin' forward ta spendin' another night on the couch."
"Oh, you only spent half a night on the couch," Jubilee said, aiming a swat at his arm. "The rest of the night you spent with me…listening to me shoot my mouth off." She went suddenly quiet, picking at her fingernails as Logan came to a red light.
"Jubilee." Logan turned to her, capturing her eyes with his own. "Ya weren't 'shootin' yer mouth' off. You were gettin' some stuff off yer shoulders ya been carryin' around fer too damn long. Ya needed ta put it down. I didn't mind, Jubes, it was the reason why I brought ya up here. D'ya understand?"
She gave him a watery smile…just as the car behind him beeped a horn irritatingly. The light had turned green, and Logan hadn't noticed. "Yeah, yeah, keep yer pants on," he growled, easing down on the gas pedal and getting the pickup moving. "Jubes, I care 'bout you. I love you. I couldn't stand seein' how bad ya was feelin', couldn't stand hearin' ya cry every night from nightmares. An' with Frosty an' One Eye back there keepin' ya from comin' ta me when ya needed a friend, it didn't look like you was goin' ta be gettin' a good night's sleep anytime soon."
Jubilee sighed. "Do you know what Frosty said? She said I was old enough to handle my own problems without bothering anybody else with them. She told me under no circumstances was I to go crawling into your bed using my nightmares as an excuse to seduce you. I got so mad at her."
Logan gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. "When we get back she an' I gonna have a little talk," he growled. "Just cause she attached herself ta Cyke don't mean she's taken Jean's place."
Jubilee was silent for a moment. Then… "I miss Jean," she said wistfully.
Logan felt his heart contract with an old pain he'd never acknowledged. "Yeah," he said. "I do too."
"Still have a crush on her?"
"Yeah," he said sadly. "Even when she married Scott, I still kinda had a thing for her. I guess it was obvious, huh?" he said, thinking about the Zippo in his pocket. He saw Jubilee's eyes flick to the pocket he kept the lighter in, and then she smiled.
"Yeah, it was kinda obvious." Jubilee suddenly looked up, into the rear-view mirror. "That jackass better get off our tail," she muttered.
Logan took a glance back. Sure enough, there was a car behind the, almost kissing the ends of the lumber Logan had bought to start putting the addition on the cabin. "Gumbo's gonna have a fit if I get the pickup in an accident," he muttered.
Jubilee took her feet off the dash and sat back in her seat, looking out the mirror on her side to see what the car tailgating them was doing. Casually, she let her arm slip out the window, hanging down, and released a small blue spark. "He'll be off our tail right about…" she pretended to check her watch, "…now."
Behind them, the car suddenly slammed on the brakes. There was nobody behind them, which was fortunate, and as Logan continued on, the tailgater was dropping off behind them gradually. "What'd you do?" he asked Jubilee, sitting in the passenger seat and looking smug.
"Dropped a paff in the road," she said. At Logan's alarmed expression, she said, "Oh, don't worry, just a small one. It popped right under his front fender. Won't damage his car or the road, but he's gonna spend some time wondering what that funny 'pop' noise was."
Logan stared at her. "Yer gettin' good," he said finally. It was the only thing he could think of to say.
Jubilee's grin got even wider. "I am, aren't I?" she said cheerfully. "Hank's impressed that I have that much control over them. And Charles is ecstatic that I've got them, and my temper, under control, since he doesn't have to call the repairmen out all the time anymore."
They pulled up in front of the cabin, and Jubilee got out. "Damn, it got hot," she said. 'It was all nice and cool this morning, and now it's all hot."
Logan grunted. "Oh well. C'mon, I wanna get at least the framework for the walls up before sunset. Grab my toolbox from the closet in the bedroom, will ya?" She vanished inside as Logan started hauling the lumber from the back of the truck and piling it behind the cabin.
They took turns holding the boards and nailing until, by the time they were ready to quit late that afternoon, the framework for Jubilee's new room was up and attached to the side of the cabin. Logan had chosen to use the existing back door to the cabin as Jubilee's room door, building three walls and leaving the side of the cabin as the fourth wall.
Jubilee stood back and looked at it. Logan said quickly, "It ain't the fanciest, Jubes, it ain't like Chuck's mansion, but it's small, and cozy, and quiet."
She turned to him, her eyes shining with tears, and said softly, "It's more than I ever had before. It's home, Logan. Finally a place to call my own. A place no one will ever take from me, of make me move away from, again. I love it. It might be small, but it's a paradise."
Logan swallowed the lump in his throat. "A paradise, eh?" he said, reaching out and scooping her up unexpectedly. "If ya were cleaner, it might be." He tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman's hoist, and headed for the small lake. It was more of a pond, really, but it was deep enough for a swim, and it was cold. He pitched Jubilee into it headfirst, and she screamed with laughter as she hit the water and went under.
When she didn't resurface right away, he waded out into the water a short distance. "Jubes?"
He felt a swirl under the water, and suddenly a concussive blast knocked his feet out from under him and he fell over. He disappeared with a yell of startlement below the surface, and found her floating underwater, holding her breath, with a wreath of colored sparkles in her hands, ready to be released. When she saw him, she grinned, dissipated the paffs, and surfaced at the same time he did.
"Like that?" She pushed long, wet, dark strands from her eyes and grinned as she sat down on the sandy bottom beside him. "I found out I could do that when I pulled you out of the rapids. Creed grabbed me and tried to get me to let go of you. I couldn't let him drag me away, so I just reached around and paffed him." She grinned. "That was when I found out my paffs work underwater. Maybe not the same way they do in air, but the force of the displaced water carries a bit more kick down there than it does up here." She demonstrated, shooting a small stream of sparks from her hands underwater. A short distance in front of him, a fountain of water suddenly sprayed up from the surface of the lake, accompanied by two small minnows who'd probably just been scared out of several weeks of life.
"Yer gettin' good," Logan said after a moment, as the water pattered back into the lake with a sound like soft rain. "Didn't know ya could do that. No, don't do it again," he said, catching hold of her arm. "You'll scare the fish away. An' there's a couple of 'em out there with our names on 'em, waitin' to be caught fer dinner..." He hauled himself, dripping, out of the lake and stepped into the cabin. Shutting the door carefully behind him, he shucked his wet clothes off in front of the door and padded naked into the bedroom. He went to rummage in the dresser for a spare pair of shorts and shirt, then ducked back into the closet and came back out with a fishing pole and tackle box.
Jubilee was still sitting there in wet clothes, though she had deigned to get out of the water and was now sitting on the grassy bank. Logan put the box down and opened it, quickly choosing a hook, then stabbed his claws into the dirt and tore up a big chunk of soil. This close to the lake's verge, the ground was moist, and as he expected, a worm wriggled out of the soil and fell to the grassy ground. He shook the earth off his claws, reached for the worm (disregarding Jubilee's 'Ewww, gross' ) and baited his hook. Wading out into the lake a few steps, he cast.
The fish were biting, and within an hour he had four or five good-sized fish on his string. He carried his last catch, a nice eight-inch spot, back to the bank and tossed the still-flopping fish next to Jubilee, who eyed it as if it would jump up and bite her. "I caught it, now ya gotta clean it and cook it."
Jubilee started at the fish with wide eyes, then looked up at him. "Soap works on fish scales?"
He started to choke with laughter. He sat down on the bank and howled with laughter as she looked at him with annoyance, and only when it became clear that she really had no idea how to clean a fish did he reluctantly choke back his laughter and reach for the cleaning knife in his toolbox. He gave her the knife and one of the smaller fish, then used his claws to clean one as he showed her how to scrape the scales from the fish, gut it and clean out its insides, tossing them back into the water for other fish to eat, and then remove the head and tail. In the time it took him to do three, she managed one. He finally took pity on her ineptitude and took the fish from her, cleaning it the rest of the way.
"We didn't have fish like this in LA," Jubilee said plaintively, sucking on her thumb, which she'd cut with the cleaning knife. "Fish in LA come already cleaned and cooked and ready to eat."
Logan laughed again as he collected twigs and kindling and had her start a fire. "Jubes, if ya wanna live up here, yer gonna have ta learn how ta rough it," he said as he pushed a couple of rocks into the fire. When they were hot, he raked them back out with a stick, placed them flat side up, and put the fish on the rocks to cook.
Jubilee raised her eyebrow dubiously, but her skeptical expression softened after she took her first bite. Logan ate slowly, savoring the taste of fresh fish. He'd get some every now and then from the seafood place in the Village and cook it when his turn for dinner prep came around at the mansion, but they never tasted as good as they did out here.
He and Jubilee sat for a long time beside the fire, his back to a tree, she lying flat on her back on the grass beside him. She talked about the astronomy class she'd taken back in college, and they sat for a while, she pointing out constellations and telling him what they were. "That's Orion, there," she told him. "See that bright one there? And the three diagonal ones?"
Logan shrugged. Stars were a way for him to get where he was going in the dark without having to check a compass. "Looks kinda like a lopsided house ta me," he said. "But if ya say it's a hunter, I guess it's a hunter." He squinted. "I still don't see it."
After a time, she ran out of things to say, and for a long time they sat in companionable silence, listening to crickets and nightbirds as the moon rose over the lake. When Logan looked down next, he found she'd fallen asleep there on the ground, her head pillowed on his lap. He woke her gently, and helped her into the cabin, where she fell into his bed. He got her sneakers and socks off and pushed her feet under the blanket, tucking the ends under her chin, and left her sleeping peacefully.