Logan showed her places in the school he thought she might like, not quite realizing that he was proud of this place, or that some part of him wanted to see her smile more. Her cheeks dimpled when she did so and she often gave this little half-smile that made him think of kissing her. He was used to urges like that so he dismissed it.
Teva looked rather at home in the greenhouse, smelling a flower here, touching a bloom there. "When I was five," she said softly as if talking to herself, "I planted some posies behind my house. I left them out on the back porch and would watch them for hours every day, just to see when they'd sprout." She sat on a stone bench, looking down at her hands.
"It took a couple of weeks for them to grow and bloom; they were so pretty, all pink and purple, and I was so proud of myself. When I saw the first flowers I ran inside to show my mum, and when I came back out the neighbor's beagle had eaten them." She laughed softly as she picked at loose threads on her jeans that were forming a hole on her knee. "I cannae believe I remember that."
Logan found himself standing in front of her, looking down at the top of her head. She shocked the hell out of him by reaching for his hand, her fingers a little cool where they curled around his. Her scent went from contented to sad and he blinked, wanted to jerk his hand back but she obviously needed it, needed the human contact, so he gave it to her. He'd never had anyone so casually touch him; he was so used to people being afraid of him or thinking he was an asshole. He sat down beside her.
"Do you remember doing anything silly as a little kid?" Teva asked, finally looking at him. Her eyes were misted over with the threat of tears, her lower lip caught between her teeth.
"I ..." The question made him intensely uncomfortable and he felt the familiar pain that accompanied any thought of his murky past. "I don't know. I'm sure I did." It was a vague answer, deliberately so, and he hoped she'd leave it at that.
"That's okay, I think everyone has some kind of story or another." She turned her body to face him, bringing her legs up to sit tailor fashion, now holding his hand in both of hers. "Do you like it here?"
He shrugged. "Better than some nameless hotel room, I can tell ya that." He was silent a moment, concentrating on her touch. He could feel the calluses on the pads of her fingers. "It's a good place. A little more fluffy bunny than I care for sometimes, but it's good. Sometimes I don't feel like I belong here, though."
"'Fluffy bunny'?" she asked, laughing. There were the dimples. "I guess if you can make it here, I can, too."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked a little indignantly.
Teva grinned. "Nothing. Just that you seem as reluctant to let yourself be a part of something as I am, when there's always the chance it could be taken from you without warning." She looked down at their joined hands. "Y'ken, I dinnae think I've ever touched anyone for this long without it being painful." Her gaze lifted again. "It's ... nice."
His head tilted slightly to the side in curiosity. "What makes it painful?"
"Emotions," she replied simply "I dinnae need to be touching someone to feel them, but skin-on-skin contact makes it harder not to. Xavier helped me with my shielding so I will'nae feel anything from you unless I want to."
She reached out one of her hands and he froze when he saw she was going for his dogtags. "Wolverine," she read aloud, her thumb brushing over the name and numbers stamped in the metal. "Military?"
Logan grunted, touching the tags when she let them go. "Somethin' like that." He tucked them inside his shirt. "Not somethin' I like talkin' about."
"Fair enough." Her hand had dropped back down onto his, her fingertips drawing designs on the back of it. "I dinnae wish to make you think about painful things."
They sat in silence a few moments, the only sound from the fountain Ororo had installed in the garden. She'd been very dictatorial in directing the men how and where to set it up.
"So ... what makes you, y'ken, special?" Teva asked.
"Ya mean my X gene?" When she nodded, he shrugged. "Healin' factor, pretty much makes me unkillable."
"Ooh, that's a handy thing to have." She finally let his hand go, her arms stretching up over her head before she covered her mouth and yawned widely. "My gods, I feel like I ran a marathon today."
"C'mon, let's get ya settled in." They went back into the mansion proper and he led her down a flight of stairs. "Got ya in the adult wing, no one under the age of 18 down here, just teachers and staff mostly." He opened a door, standing aside to let her go in. "Oh, and the rooms are soundproofed."
She flipped on the lights and stopped in the middle of the room, giving him an odd look. "Why the hell do the rooms need to be soundproofed?"
Logan grinned, didn't keep the suggestive leer out of it. "We have some couples that live down here. Ya wanna get woken up in the middle of the night?"
She blushed faintly before laughing. "Well, no, I suppose that would'nae be pleasant." She snorted. "So I guess if you're a noisy lover, you dinnae have to worry about anyone hearing it."
"Hmmm, haven't had much change to test it myself yet."
"Oh, poor you," Teva teased, laughing. She glanced around the room. "I guess that'll make it easier to play electric guitar, then. Will'nae have to deal with people being annoyed if I decide I want to play 'Stairway to Heaven' at three in the morning."
"Ya do that often?"
"Nah, more often than not it's something like Van Halen or The Ramones. I tend to sing 'I Wanna Be Sedated' when I've got bad insomnia." She smiled at him. "Thanks for showing me around, Logan. I guess I'll see you later?"
He nodded. "Yeah," he said as he went out the door. "I'm next door, if ya need somethin'." It was still a little strange to him, that he was the one getting her settled in, he was definitely not part of the unofficial welcoming committee, though he didn't mind introducing himself to new people. He figured it had something to do with the fact he'd been one of the first to meet her, then he'd gone with Scott to see if she'd come to the Institute. He wasn't sure if it was obligation or pity that he felt for her but he knew she wouldn't appreciate either of those things, so he just left it at one lonely soul trying to help out another.
Teva watched him leave, closing the door behind him and wondering how someone she barely knew could make her feel happy. She was used to being told she needed to smile more but so rarely did the guy saying it actually do anything to elicit such a response.
It wasn't late in the day by any means, only seven in the evening, but she was beyond exhausted. She'd brought enough clothes with her to last a week and she was planning on having the rest of her things sent here along with her guitars. Already this place felt like home, made her feel safe for the first time in her life. She'd keep the penthouse for now in case something happened to change her mind, but at the moment she was feeling somewhat content.
She put her clothes away in the dresser provided, found the bed already made with dark blue sheets. There were individual use toiletries in the bathroom which she gathered up and put into the medicine cabinet, placing her own things around the sink.
When she was finished she took a quick shower, brushed out her hair and braided it, and then she crawled into bed. She was asleep in minutes.
Learning her way around the mansion was confusing at first. There were at least four floors and she had the suspicion that there were more underground but she couldn't be sure. There were tennis courts, a basketball court, stables, an Olympic-sized pool both inside and out, and the latest technology in the computer rooms. The kitchen was huge with professional-grade appliances and she soon discovered that everyone was given some small food allowance to get whatever struck their fancy when the grocery shopping was done. Since she had more than enough of her own money she left herself off the list.
Discovering a veritable forest behind the school shouldn't have surprised her but somehow it did. She went in one day when the weather wasn't bitingly cold, following a well-used path that never seemed to end. She judged she'd gone something like three quarters of a mile when a body of water came into sight, a small boathouse and dock right along the shore. A lone figure sat on the end of the dock and as she got closer she found Logan sitting there with his back against a pylon, smoking a cigar.
"Hey, darlin'," he greeted without turning.
"How'd you ken it was me?" she asked, stopping a few feet away.
"Scent." He turned just his head, tapping the side of his nose. "Got enhanced senses, and everyone's got a scent."
She bit her lip, unsure of how to take that. "Uh, do I smell bad?"
He snorted, shaking his head as he turned back to the water. "Said ya had a scent, not a stench." He gestured for her to sit by him and she sat against the other pylon, bringing her knees up against her chest. "Ya smell like Ivory soap and Jolly Ranchers." He lifted his head and sniffed. "Sour Apple."
Teva boggled at him, still sucking on the piece of candy she favored. "Wow. That must get annoying, smelling everything so strongly."
Logan shrugged, taking a drag and letting smoke curl out from between his lips. There was something slightly obscene about watching him do that, he had a nice mouth and she had a bit of a hand fetish. "Ya ain't too overwhelmin', most women pile on the stinky shit an' I can smell 'em a mile away downwind."
"That 'stinky shit' gives me a bloody headache." She huddled into her jacket, the breeze out here off the water several degrees colder than up near the school. "That and I dinnae care to smell like fake flowers or food, I dinnae get the appeal."
"Ya won't hear me complainin'."
The sat in companionable silence for a time, watching the wind create ripples over the water, gulls calling somewhere in the distance.
"The Atlantic feeds in here," Logan said randomly at one point. "Spuyten Duyvil Cove. The Dutch named it that 'cause the water's so rough out this way."
"Bet it's colder than a witch's tit, too."
"I don't think I've ever heard anyone under the age of 50 say that with a straight face."
Teva laughed, looking down but still smiling. "Water's a hell of a lot colder where I'm from. All kinds of nasty wee beasties live thereabouts as well." She glanced up again into the distance. The fog along the banks made her long for Scotland again so she spoke about it.
"There's kelpies in the lochs. They're water horses that lure you in sometimes by pretending to be beautiful lasses, the better to get the men, and sometimes as ponies to entice children. If one catches you it'll dive back into the water and drown you." She chewed on the end of one fingernail. "O' course, if you manage to catch one, you'll have a creature stronger than ten land horses to work your land, but you have to be careful. They're slippery bastards, so to speak, and they'll do anything to get away. They'll bite off your left leg and your right pinkie before they escape."
"That's about the weirdest legend I think I've ever heard, and I've been to Japan."
Teva scoffed at him. "At least we dinnae make tentacle porn in Scotland. Or sell used schoolgirl panties out of vending machines."
He laughed, waving a hand at her. "Ya got me there, darlin'. It's a weird country, to be sure." He took another drag. "They actually play the bagpipes a lot where yer from?"
"Mostly to appease the tourists," she replied quickly, tauntingly. She could play them herself but rarely did, and didn't have her own set. "We sure as hell dinnae play 'Amazing Grace' as often as you bloody Americans would like."
Logan smirked. "I'm Canadian, babe. I don't understand Americans any more 'n you do."
"Ooh, so do you like hockey?"
"Ya keep teasin' me, sweetheart, an' I'm gonna think ya like me."
That made her blush and bite her lip again but she didn't evade his eyes. "So what if I do?" she asked, feeling impetuous. She hadn't felt this good in years, this free, her secret out and no longer weighing on her soul.
"Yer barkin' up the wrong tree." He said it with humor but she sensed some underlying melancholy to it, some darkness that slid behind his eyes. "I'm the lone wolf o' the bunch an' I don't play well with others."
"You dinnae sound like you believe your own words, Logan. Besides," she said, shoving her hands in her pockets before they froze off, "even wolves travel in packs. The lone wolf is the one who dies the quickest."
He didn't say anything to that, just turned his head and looked away out over the water again. She wasn't sure if she'd angered him but she wasn't going to pry, wasn't going to lower her shields enough to find out because they hadn't built that level of trust yet.
The hood of her coat kept the worst of the breeze off but her ears were stinging anyway, bared by the braid she'd put her hair into. The right one was especially cold because of the line of surgical steel hoops that marched along the outside, getting smaller the closer they got to the top. The damn things attracted the cold but she liked them and wouldn't be getting rid of them anytime soon, she'd just have to remember to wear a hat more often in the winter.
She wanted to say something to Logan, wanted to know what he was thinking. She couldn't help feeling drawn by him, feel some connection to him because, ultimately, it had been him that had convinced her to come here. Anyone else may have gotten a few moments of consideration and then a dismissal, but Logan seemed like the most unlikely spokesperson for mutant unity and a school nonetheless. He was more out of place here than she was but somehow he managed to seem like he belonged here, just another part of the tapestry Xavier had woven. She wasn't entirely sure how he'd feel to know any of that, thought maybe it would annoy him or irritate him, so she let it be, let her thoughts drift out over the water like the wind.
At some point Logan cleared his throat. "Can hear yer teeth chatterin', Teva. I'll walk ya back inside." He got up and offered her a hand, popping her up easily and dislodging her hood. She nearly jerked back when he reached out to pull it back up for her and she could see he was as confused by the gesture as she was but he completed it, eyes gone blank and unreadable now.
They walked back together, breath fogging in the air though his left behind the spicy scent of his cigar. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, entranced at the simple, easy grace of his body so out of synch with how he looked. He put her very much in mind of the animal he seemed to have chosen as his namesake, short and compactly-muscled with a temper to match, yet he moved like some kind of jungle cat, all smooth and controlled. He didn't make a sound and she wondered if his enhanced senses allowed him to move so quietly, like a wraith that she wouldn't know was there had she not been able to see him.
Getting back inside made her nose, ears, and fingers tingle painfully as feeling returned now that they were in relative warmth. Wordlessly they both headed down into the adults' wing.
"Logan." She said his name as his hand was on his door, right next to hers. "Look, I'm sorry about what I said back there. I do kinda like you but I'll leave it be, I dinnae want to stir up trouble."
Those dark eyes swiveled to hers and made her uncomfortably aware of how attractive she'd found him the first time she saw him. She swallowed hard, her lip caught by her teeth again.
"Been alone a long time, Teva," he said quietly. "Don't much act on impulses just because my body's tellin' me it wants something. Things get complicated and if yer livin' here now I don't wanna fuck up the balance."
She breathed out, found herself nodding. "No, it's fine, Logan. I can respect that. You get emotions involved and sanity goes out the window."
He nodded once, sharply. "Don't apologize for what ya said, ya didn't know." He opened his door and went inside, saying, "Now ya do," before he closed it.
Teva went into her own room, leaning against the door when she'd closed it again. Part of her had really wanted to call Logan on his obvious lack of conviction but she reminded herself again that she didn't really know him. And she wasn't the pushy sort, the kind of girl who hung on every little thing a guy said or did analyzing whether or not it meant he liked her.
Neither did she want to give up the one friendship she'd formed as of yet. No, better to leave well enough alone. The status quo was perfectly fine with her.