"You shine like a star
You know who you are
You're everything beautiful
She's hot, hot like the sun
The loneliest one
Still everything beautiful
Well I'll be god damned
You're standing at my door
We stayed up in the city
Until the stars lost the war
So Friday night, holy ghost
Take me to your level
Show me the one I need the most
I need the most." (Wish I Knew You- The Revivalists)
He'd screwed up with Maia. Big time. "What the fuck do I do?"
Charles gave a long suffering sigh, "Miss Kinney is correct, Logan. You have been denying your feelings. I was hoping seeing her amongst the others might allow you more freedom to be honest with yourself, but Miss Kinney's patience wore out quicker than I expected."
"She's a damned saint." Logan growled.
Charles shook his head, "She's mentally fragile, Logan, much in the same way you are. I did not want to put additional pressure on you by insisting that you allow yourself to lean on her"
"That's some crazy bullshit, Chuck." Logan told him, "I'm bad for her."
"There's a reason you were, and are still, drawn to her. She's stronger than you have given her credit for these last few weeks. She's very bright as well, and understands you more readily than I do." Charles told him, "You need to consider what the real reason is that you are keeping her at arms length. I don't believe you are bad for her."
"I don't know." Logan said defeatedly. "Going back to the boathouse. Keep an eye on her for me, Chuck?"
"She'll always be safe here, Logan." He said magnanimously.
Logan's dream that night was just that, a dream:
He was in a bar. With Scott. "So, I met this girl, and she said she's gonna meet us here tonight. Even said she would bring someone to keep you company."
Logan stared at the younger man, "This is a blind double date?"
"No!" He answered loudly, drawing attention from the man behind the bar. He lowered his voice, "I mean...is it really a blind double date if I've already met my date?"
Logan took a long sip from his beer, "I can't believe I let you talk me in to this."
"Your bike is in pieces, I was your only ride off the property with Professor X and Hank out of town and Ororo on matron duty." Scott reminded him.
Logan put money down on the bar for his beer, "I'll walk back."
He stood from his stool and was suddenly face to face with a gorgeous red headed woman. She held out a hand, "Hey! You must be Logan, Scott's friend from work. I'm Jean."
Logan chuckled shortly, shaking her offered hand, "'Friend' isn't quite the word I would use."
Jean laughed a little awkwardly, leaning to kiss Scott on the cheek, "Well then we're in the same boat. My friend isn't really my friend." She looked out into the bar, eyes searching the crowd on the dance floor, "Ah, there she is. Maia!"
Another redhead walked up, just as beautiful as Jean but obviously younger, clothed in a peach colored dress that was barely legal over the girl's fit little body. She threw her arms around Jean's shoulders, "Sorry I'm late! I ended up parking down the street like five blocks."
Jean murmured into her ear for a second before turning back to the men, "Scott, Logan, this is Maia, my younger sister."
The girl locked her blue eyes on Logan's face, the color a stark contrast from Jean's warm greenish brown ones. She smiled at Logan like she had a secret, "Not that much younger, mind you. My mom just passed down better genetics than Jean's did."
"Maia's Canadian." Jean rushed to tell Logan.
Maia nodded, "Yup, I'm from Alberta. Jean only just convinced me to move closer to her a few months back. I'm still adjusting." She blatantly ogled Logan from head to toe, "I have to say, the selection of men here is much better than middle of nowhere Valleyview."
"I was born in Alberta." Logan found himself saying.
She smiled more widely and took one of his hands in hers, "Well come on, neighbor. I want to dance."
He wasn't a dancer, had always hated it, being so close to so many other people, but they all faded away when she patiently guided him through the dance steps. The night ended with him in her bed, as well as many nights after that one.
"Do you want kids?" She asked one night, six months after they'd met in that bar, her red hair splayed across his naked chest, her nose buried against the ridge of his collarbone. She was so slight against him, so much so that he hardly felt her. Except he was intimately aware of every square centimeter of their bodies that touched, and every press of her chest on his as she inhaled at an ever increasing rate.
"I guess." He mumbled, trailing a hand across her jaw, "Hadn't ever really thought about it."
"Well, we should get married." Maia replied, sitting up suddenly, half turning away from him.
"The fuck?" He exclaimed, not liking her expression at all.
Maia flushed, the color spreading from her cheeks down her neck and settling farther down her chest, "Uh…well..you see…I'm kind of two months late."
"Late."
She nodded, "As in if I pee on one of those fancy new sticks, I'll probably get a stupid little happy face."
"You think you're pregnant." He said numbly.
Maia finally looked him in the face, an odd sort of smile on her lips, "Yeah, I do. Fucking scary, but…we're going to be fucking awesome parents, and…I want to be your wife."
He laughed, both in agreement and sheer panic as he said, "Then let's get married." Holding their tiny little girl in his arms months later made it all worth it. He couldn't remember ever feeling happier or prouder.
He'd woken up before he'd been able to put the newborn into Maia's waiting arms, but in his dream she'd been whole and happy. And both of them the most beautiful things he'd ever laid eyes on. He spent the next few days thinking, trying to pull his head out of his ass as Maia had so accurately suggested. Because deep down, he wished like hell they'd met outside of Stryker's lab, and her age wouldn't have mattered to him one bit if he'd been able to keep her safe in his arms, both her and Laura.
Logan finally got the balls to go back to the mansion two days later, and Maia's ragged appearance was enough to make him sick. It was easy to track her scent through the building, and he watched her for a moment from the doorway, her wane face staring blankly at Scott as he rambled on in the front of the class. She looked smaller than she had before, her hands resting listlessly on her lap. He couldn't watch her like than for longer than a few seconds before he stalked to Charles' office, "Fuck, Chuck, she looks terrible."
Charles sighed, putting papers he'd been scouring on his desk, "She misses you, Logan."
"I'm not someone anyone misses." Logan mumbled, earning a dark glare from Charles before he stormed right back out the office doors and back to the classroom doorway.
In the intervening minutes, Scott had shut the hell up and freed the poor kids from the mind numbing experience of listening to him speak, but Maia was still in the room. And she wasn't alone.
Hank was sitting next to her.
"Thank you." Maia whispered, giving Hank a bright smile, one that Logan had only ever seen her give to him. Jealousy flared in the pit of Logan's stomach.
"Of course!" Hank replied cheerfully, like he knew he had an in with Maia. He put a hand on her arm.
Logan took one step back. He'd wanted her to move on, to find someone that could do far more for her than he could, and Hank could be that. He was far closer to either of her ages than Logan was, be it chronologically or biologically, and he was every bit the gentleman she deserved.
Maia looked over her shoulder, her face adorable behind thick glasses, and so damned hopeful as she called his name. "Logan?"
He turned away. Hank was better for her. The best he could do was leave her to Hank and bring their daughter back to her. Hell, Hank was patient, gentle, and far better father material than Logan could ever dream to be.
"Hey!" Maia called, and he heard her tripping to the hall, catching herself on the door frame of the classroom. He wanted to keep going, but he couldn't, not when she was reaching out towards him. "Logan, please. I was an idiot." Maia's voice trembled, "You're it for me. We're better together."
He clicked his tongue in disbelief. He couldn't say anything at all. How the hell could he be it?
"No, Logan. We are. Have you been able to think of anything else? I haven't. Not really even Laura. Just you." Maia whispered the end of her proclamation, "I can't think straight when you're not with me."
He sucked in a breath, refusing to turn around to face her, "I'm bad for you."
He could smell the salt of tears suddenly break into her scent, "No, you're not. If this is about you leaving me…that wasn't your fault."
His stayed silent, but turned to face her.
"I did it, Logan." Maia's whole body was shaking, the glasses Hank had given her gripped in her hands as she continued speaking, "The only reason I lived was because her mutation was triggered in my bloodstream, but it wasn't in hers. I was dead for hours. I knew you wouldn't leave me, but I knew she wouldn't survive. I was right, but it doesn't mean I don't feel guilty."
"What did you do?" He asked, scouring his choppy memories for the answer to his own question.
Maia hiccuped once, a tiny endearing noise before she straightened her spine and leveled her gaze his direction, "I compelled you, Logan. I made you take Laura and leave. I looked you in the eyes and made you run, and then I was told you were both dead. Whatever guilt you have about fucking a teenager or leaving me, that's nothing compared to the guilt I've lived with for nearly a decade over getting you both killed. I made the wrong choice, Logan, and it's haunted me. I'm in the wrong. Me, not you. You don't get to be the fucking masochist. I keep screwing up and making things worse."
He took a second to process her words. She thought she'd made him leave her.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Logan growled, in one fluid movement gripping both of her forearms in his hands and pushing her back up against the wall of the hallway. As smart as she was, she didn't understand his mutation. Then again, he'd never bothered to explain it to her at all. He should have, their daughter seemed to take after him in that department after all, "Kid, I wouldn't have left if I'd had another choice. I'm difficult to manipulate, but you've managed to figure out a new way." She had his heart. He would have obeyed her command for the same reasons she'd given it: neither one of them had expected her to survive and Laura was of upmost importance. He would bear the guilt of leaving, not her.
He pulled the arm Hank had touched to his face and rubbed it across his stubbled cheek, intent on removing the other male's scent from her skin. "I can't stay away from you." He admitted, scared by the truth in his own words.
Maia went slack in his grip, tipping her head to the side, exposing her neck to him. Her physical submission appealed to him just as much as her words did. "Then don't. Don't stay away. I was wrong. I need you to stop hating yourself. I need you."
The way she said the last word broke him. He'd tried to stay strong, to let her go while at the same time worrying about her every need, but in the end, he wasn't strong enough.
He let her forearms go, and put a hand on either side of her face, pinning her to the wall with the rest of his body as he crushed his lips down on hers. The fingers that had been holding onto the glasses released, and the last lingering point of Hank clattered to the floor. Instead, Maia sunk her hands into his hair, moaning into the kiss. He pulled back to let her breathe and took in the flush of her skin and her wild eyes, "You're mine."
She smiled at him, a smile far brighter than the one she'd given to Hank, "I'd better be, my Wild Man."
He renewed his claim on her lips, moving his hands down to her hips to pull her up more to his level. Maia wrapped her legs around his hips readily, letting him sink even closer to her. The scent of her acute arousal reached him just after he ground his hips against her perfectly aligned core. Had she been in a skirt, he couldn't have stopped himself from burying his aching cock into that warmth between her thighs.
"Logan! Miss Kinney!" Charles yelled suddenly.
Logan instinctively moved his hands off the twin swells of her ass, and whipped his eyes to where Charles stood…among no less than two dozen students, expressions ranging from idolatry to confusion to disgust. "Shit."
Maia moved her hands from his hair to hold onto his shirt as she let her legs drop, the color of her face doing it's best to match that of her hair. She buried her face into his chest, "We're not alone, are we?"
Logan laughed in spite of himself, "No, no we are not."
Her fingers held tighter to the fabric of his shirt, and whispered, "I'm going to need you to make alone happen." He didn't move, mortified by losing control so completely in front of students, but his turn as a statue was over when she pulled herself closer to his head and growled, "You. Me. Boathouse. Now."
He wasn't sure he'd ever run that fast in his life.
Next chapter will be a MUCH more satisfying ending to this exchange between our two crazy kids, and maybe some forward motion towards the plot! Your reviews and favorites are amazing!
-Jenn