Katie did not notice the borderline relieved look on Scott's face (he hid it well) as the bell for the first class rang. Grabbing her bag in one hand she grabbed one of the larger muffins with the other, so that Nicole wouldn't have to starve. Finding a spot off to the side of the doors, near the stairs, She waited for her lazy friend to decide to appear. Arch, being a good puppy, followed, gently putting an arm around her shoulder, and making determined small talk.
After what seemed like hours of meaningless small talk and Arch hanging off of her every word and move, Nicole came slowly down the stairs, looking as if she had other things on her mind. She was frowning, and fiddling with that god damned dog tag, which hung over her long-sleeved turtleneck. Sighing and feeling annoyed, Katie rushed forward to shake Arch off of her. "Nicole! Finally! You missed breakfast completely. But, I brought you a muffin!" she added on a bright side.
Nicole looked up at her, a little bemused. "Thanks." she mumbled softly.
"Nicole?" Katie asked, a little confused. Talk about mood swings! Nicole went from some sort of scary dream, to angrily protesting the morning, to mumbling? "Are you alright? Is there anything you want to tell me?" Giving Arch a brief, noncommittal smile, she tried to herd Nicole off to their first period, History (with Nightcrawler, if he wasn't sick again).
Once Arch was out of earshot, Katie turned to Nicole, expecting her to spill the beans. However, Nicole merely stared at her muffin sullenly. "No, only for you." His words still echoed freshly at the back of her mind. How irritating. She expected him to have absolutely no sense of privacy with everyone else as well. It wasn't exactly what she could call comforting that he'd let whatever dregs of manners that he had, slip from his mind whenever she just happened to be the one involved. Though at the same time, the way he had put it made it sound like both a compliment, and an annoyance to him. Well, It's not my fault that he has bad timing, Nicole thought bitterly.
"Nicole? Are you listening to me? What happened!?" Katie snapped waspishly, what was it with Nicole today?
"Well..." Nicole started, wavering a bit before launching into a full-scale confession of her entire morning as they walked, going over the dream in more detail than Katie probably would have liked, and then the encounter in the bathroom... "Ugh! I wouldn't mind so much if I know what to think!" Nicole concluded, complaining and looking confused and not so happy to be so. "He's just so... arg." Nicole made a noise of irritation. "It would be so much easier if Logan wasn't so-" Here she stopped dead in the doorway, gaping. For who was lounging in the teacher's chair, feet on the desk, than the devil himself.
"Nicole? What happened?" Katie asked, peering over her friend's head. "What's Logan doing here? Where's the teacher?"
"Professor Wagner is unfortunately, indisposed." Logan drawled, grinning lazily as if he couldn't care less about Kurt Wagner at the moment.
Nicole bristled, "Who in their right mind would allow you to substitute a class?" she snapped, clutching her books to her as if they were a shield, and Logan the fire-breathing dragon.
Logan cocked an eyebrow, "Xavier." he growled, "Now, if you don't mind you two, could you kindly take your seats?"
Nicole refused to back down "What for? Its not like you're going to teach us anything, unless you'd like to open our eyes to the wonderful world of the repairman."
Logan did not look amused in the least at that last comment, though most of the class laughed, and several nodded along enthusiastically. Katie muffled a snort, though she thought that Nicole really was going to far, mocking him in front of students who were supposed to be respecting his authority. "Nicole, I don't think this is a good time..." She muttered, though no one heard her.
Sitting up, he slid his feet from the desk with a smack of his boots on hard tile. He fixed Nicole with a glare that would have sent the boldest of the older students running. "Oh, believe me there's a very long list of things that I'd just love to 'open your eyes to' " he growled. Katie had to muffle another snort, oh the multiple meanings..
Logan waited for a reaction, half-absorbed in his own internal problems. Oh, it was irritating really, how much he seriously wanted to open her eyes to some certain things... On what he felt had to be a related note, this half-knowledge of the dream was driving him mad. Why couldn't he? This had never happened to him before, it was making him think all too much, and he didn't like it. Biting back a growl of frustration, Logan watched the two girls cross in front of him and plunk into the only remaining seats, right in front of him.
Nicole promptly ignored him, banging her bag onto the top of her desk and rummaging around in it for something. Logan tried to restrain himself from staring openly at her, taking in every slight movement, every time she paused in her search for something that seemed to be eluding her at the bottom of her bag to flick her hair out of her eyes, and the fierce concentration on her face, grumbling incoherently. From where Logan was sitting he could tell that she wasn't at all listening to Katie's steady flow of distracting conversation, it was obvious that Katie didn't want Nicole to pounce over her desk and attempt to claw his face off. Finally Nicole had drawn a shabby looking sketch book and a case of professional drawing pencils from her bag, finally shoving it from her desk top and immediately flipping open to a half finished drawing.
Katie appeared to look impatient, and Logan vaguely heard her hiss, "Nicole! I hate when you draw while I'm talking to you! You get very irritable and never listen to-"
"Hush! I'm drawing the hair and that's the hardest part! Just shut up for a minute, we'll talk about your stupid love note some other time..." Nicole muttered in reply, concentration as fierce as ever.
Curious now, Logan leaned forward slightly, peering at the sketchpad. It was hard to see what she was drawing as her face was very close to it, her dark hair falling in curtains over the stark white material. Her fingers were taut around her pencil and moving in quick strokes. It was sort of funny actually, watching her get so immersed in her drawing.
Katie looked at Nicole, extremely offended. She did not think the note stupid in the least. Deciding not to talk to her friend until she got an apology, she pulled out a notebook and started trying to create a "shade possibility" list. So far, zero names.
Nicole looked up, realizing that someone was craning their neck to try and see what she was drawing. "Logan, I'm not drawing any naked women, so there's nothing you'd be interested in."
A ripple of laughter made its way around the room. Offended, with his ego suffering a minor blow, he glared at the bane of his existence. "I happen to be very interested in what you're drawing Miss Vigneau." he said coolly, "In fact, I'm sure you wouldn't mind sharing your drawing with the teacher?" Without waiting for an answer, he vaulted himself over the teacher's desk with graceful ease, and snatched up her sketchbook.
"No! I- It's not finished!" Nicole squealed, standing up to attempt to pry the sketchbook from Logan's fingers. Effortlessly, he placed a hand on her shoulder to keep her at arms length while he stared at the picture. It was a sketch of a shirtless man, wearing a pair of jeans and appeared to be dripping wet. In fact... it looked remarkably like himself, though he refused to delve deeper into what he felt about this notion. Interested, he flicked through the whole sketchbook, ignoring Nicole's protests. "Give it back! "
"No, I think you can wait. Besides, what's so important that I can't see it?" He asked, more civilly than usual. She wasn't all that bad, he had to admit, though he would have preferred her subject matter not consist of so many men with their shirts off. She glared up at him resentfully, not liking that this hand on her shoulder was enough to keep her sitting down and out of his way.
Pouting sulkily, Nicole briefly toyed with the idea of biting Logan's hand, but decided against it. There was no way of telling that he wouldn't return the favor. So she sat there, glaring up at him, watching his eyes flick over the pages. Nervously, she tried to remember if she had drawn anything extremely and embarrassingly bad in that particular sketchpad, it wasn't exactly helping that she couldn't read Logan's expressionless face. That was the sketch book that she had drawn character sketches of all of the people she knew, including Logan, drawing them from different perspectives when they weren't looking and standing still enough displaying their different characteristic expressions. They were nothing special, but they were in great detail and had notes on the sides of them. She had to stop him before Logan got to the page dedicated to him. She had gone through the trouble of actually coloring the sketches of him, many notes scribbled on the sides, making comments about his anatomy and facial expressions and much more.
Logan paused briefly on what looked something like a "character sketch" or whatever the hell it was called of Katie, barely glancing over the comments... next was one of Bobby, glanced over that one. Next one of Arch, skimmed over it as well... Completely refused to look at the one of Scott... and came to a halt at the next one, which was obviously & undeniably of him.
He vaguely heard Nicole make a small whimper of protest, but he ignored her, stepping away from her and going to sit at the teacher's desk. The page featured a full body sketch of him that filled the right hand side from top to bottom. His hands were in his pockets and he was looking to the left, his infamous smirk on his face. The sketch was in very detailed color. Slightly smaller sketches also took up the rest of the page, some just of his face and his many expressions, and a few dedicated to his hands and his claws. Along with each sketch were neatly written notes. Her handwriting was annoyingly small, but neat enough so he could read it if he squinted a bit. Small comments such as: On the short and stalk-y side, but muscular all the same. Or Light blue eyes; turn dark when he's flustered, aroused, or furious. Mostly the latter, Hair always ruffled, he must run his fingers through it a lot. Always wears the same jacket.
"I do not." he muttered to himself, and as he finished reading, flicked disinterestedly through the last five or so drawings, before handing Nicole back her sketchbook (of course, handing it back as though he wanted to, not because she wanted it back). "I'm glad you find me so fascinating," he commented quietly, looking somewhat undecided as to what to think. Was he flattered she paid such close attention, or more irritated...?
Nicole glared at him, quickly stowing her sketchbook back into her backpack. "I don't." she denied, a flush rising high on her cheeks "If you noticed I made comments on everyone else as well. Don't flatter yourself. And you do too wear the same jacket everywhere, that denim one." She smirked when his jaw dropped in utter shock.
Could the girl really be that observant?
Nicole smiled at him. "Yes, I am..."
Logan looked up at her, mouth closing with a snap. "Leave my thoughts alone!" he barked at her, somewhat enraged.
Nicole stuck her tongue out cutely at him. "I'll do whatever I want to."
"Oh, that's real lady-like..."
"I'm not being paid to be mature." she mocked, looking up at him through her lashes. An alien sensation made his stomach clench. "Besides, you deserve it for all of the times that you've invaded my own privacy." she snapped.
Defense mechanism finally kicking in, Logan roughly grabbed a chair and straddled it, his face inches from Nicole's. "It's not like I planned it all of those times that I've walked in on it. It's almost like you're there on purpose every time I let myself slip." he growled.
Brown eyes burned like embers into his own cold blue ones. Her face was wiped blank of any smug expression, replaced with a cold fury that made him cringe mentally. "You mean when you brought your slut home? You must have thought you were pretty high and mighty to dare bring a whore into this school. You're lucky I didn't tell anyone ..." she hissed, leaning toward him threateningly.
Both were completely unaware of the attention of the whole class while they strained to hear their whispered conversation, they were inches from each other, and some of the members of the Logan fan club were anxiously hoping that they didn't realize that they were within kissing range.
Katie, watching Nicole and Logan have a weird encore of their (memorable) breakfast staring contest, was more than a little relieved to hear the bell ring.