Secret Burdens
Chapter Five: Walk Before You Run
“Logan wasn’t one to walk before he ran. But with her, he may consider it.”
* * *
When he stopped to think about it, Logan really had no idea what he should say when he decided to enter Ororo’s office. He remembers talking with Rogue in the rec room, before Bobby entered and Rogue, sniffing back reluctant tears, smiled at him as she clasped Bobby’s hand, walking with him out of the rec room. He remembers chugging down the rest of his beer, and then flipping through channels, and then standing in front of the open refrigerator door for a couple minutes before deciding he wasn’t hungry and closing the door, his hands empty.
“Do not waste like that, Logan. Energy is not cheap here,” he imagines Storm scolding him were she down there. And he finds it so easy to imagine things she’d say to him now. It’s so easy for him to go back to her.
The next thing he knew he found himself walking the stairs to the third floor. And then he was passing all the classrooms, making his way to her door at the end of the hall. Suddenly, it was so easy. It was so easy to realize what he had wanted to say to her that early morning outside the mansion.
He remembers the burning along his throat with words he couldn’t say at the time. Ideas he couldn’t fathom ever breaching air, and suddenly, it’s so easy to know exactly what he wants to tell her. Honesty. That’s what she wanted to hear, and now Logan knew exactly where to start.
He watches as his hand comes up of its own accord to knock upon the wood of her door. There is a silence for a moment, a silence that threatens to break his newfound words but there is then an answer from the other side of the door and he doesn’t know if it was “Go away” or “Come in” because he’s already opening the door, already looking in to find her.
Ororo.
And suddenly, it’s not so easy.
He finds his throat is empty when he looks at her, the orange light filtering in behind her.
“Yes, Logan?” she asks, and he thinks he hears a sigh somewhere in there.
God, if she’d only listen to him for once.
“There’s something I need to tell you.” He shuts the door behind him.
Ororo looks at him, trying to gauge his approach, unsure whether she really wants to know.
“May I ask what it pertains to? Is there a problem with a student?” She hopes to detract him somehow, turn this into something she can control.
“It has nothing to do with a student. It’s about me. And you too somewhat” He sees how she’s trying to evade the conversation, how she turns her head slightly so they no longer have eye contact, the way she casually rifles through the papers on her desk.
“I do not quite understand what it is you are talking about, Logan.” Ororo stops moving papers along her desk and walks over to the couch along her wall to grab her jacket. “Can we speak about this at dinner? It is around that time now. We should be heading down.” She puts one arm through a sleeve.
“No. I need ta talk to ya alone, Storm.” He took a few steps into the room, moving toward the couch himself.
Once she had her jacket back on she took a seat and grabbed a boot, starting to pull it over her foot. “Perhaps another time then.”
“For fuck’s sake, Storm. Would you just fucking shut up for once?” Logan hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh but if she kept dogging him he’d never get it out.
She paused in putting on her other boot, looking up at him with disapproving eyes. “We have been over this before, Logan. Do not speak to me like that.”
“Look, I just need ya to listen. Ya promised you’d do that much.”
“I said ‘maybe’, Logan.” She had her second boot pulled on now and stood up, brushing her hair off her collar. “Perhaps you should learn to distinguish the difference.”
“I’m not leaving until you let me speak.” Logan grit his teeth, moving to block her path to the door.
Ororo huffed. “Well have you thought that maybe I do not want to hear what you have to say? Every word you spit at me is only to force me into a corner, to force me to bend to your rules, to make you comfortable. Well, I’m not doing it Logan.” Her voice was steadily rising.
Logan clenched his fists at his sides. “I’m not tryin’ to force you anywhere, Storm. This is about me. I’m tryin’ to make this right.”
“And how do you propose to ‘make it right’?” she scoffed, throwing her hands into the air. “Huh? How do you plan to do that? Throw some bullshit at me and expect me to spill my insides all over this carpet?”
Logan drew in a deep breath. “No, that’s not “ “
“I wasn’t thinking straight when I said I’d promise to do the same. Once again, you had me backed into a corner. You like to do that don’t you? Corner your prey and push them further and further against the wall.” Her chest was heaving, her head shaking. “Until they can’t run away and you tear them apart, huh?”
“Prey? What the fuck?” He was almost yelling, his hands running through his hair, his skin tingling with the frustration. “What the hell are you screaming about? I never thought of you like that. I’d never “ fuck “ you just get people so riled up they can’t even speak to you in normal terms!” He turned to pace away.
“Oh. So I drive them away. That’s it now isn’t it?” she spat as she strode to follow him. “And this is coming from you? You have no idea what goes on in other people’s lives, do you? You have no consideration for anyone else’s pain.”
Logan turned back sharply, making her almost stumble in her halt so as not to run into him. His eyes flashed at her. “That’s why I’m fuckin’ here, Storm! I told you before, I know I’m not the only one hurting. It was stupid of me, sure. But don’t you dare,” he raised a finger to point in her face, “Don’t you dare make this out to be my fault alone.”
Storm’s cheeks flushed with rage and she wanted to smack his finger from under her nose. Her hair was beginning to crackle with electricity. “Then what? What are you so dying to tell me?” she yelled as she threw up her hands. “What are you so desperately trying to change here?”
There was so much, so much he wanted to change but couldn’t explain in words. At least not in words she’s want to listen to, not in thoughts she’d want to think about.
“Everything! Shit, I don’t want it to be like this between us.” Logan could feel the anger tightening in his belly, the itch of adamantium beneath his skin, the puffs of air escaping his nostrils.
“There is no ‘between us’, Logan. There’s you and there’s me,” she explained as she pointed first to him and then to herself, “and it will never mix. We cannot begin to understand each other so why bother?”
“Because I don’t want understanding, you idiot! I want “ I want “ “ He had no idea what he wanted anymore.
“Idiot?” Ororo screeched. “How dare you! Do not ever “ “
“I don’t want every conversation to turn into a fight, goddamn it!” He pushed toward her. She didn’t step back.
“Then don’t call me an idiot, you Neanderthal.”
“God, just “ you make me so fucking angry sometimes.”
“Well, likewise. So just tell me whatever you were going to shove down my throat anyway so you can get out of my office and we can get on with our lives. Seperately.” She spread her hands through the air to emphasize it, and at that moment, Loagn heard something.
He couldn’t be sure, it was so faint, even to his ears, but maybe, maybe he was right. There was the soft noise of a sniffle. And fuck! Did every goddamn woman have to tear up in front of him. But it made him silently wonder if he really was that much of an asshole.
He stopped to look at her, and in that moment, he noticed the tint of red on her normally dark cheeks, the throbbing muscle that ran from her neck down underneath the collar of her shirt where he couldn’t follow it. The way her entire body seemed to pulse with her rage, her full lips pursed and ready to spit more words to sting. And suddenly it wasn’t so easy. It wasn’t so easy to look away, to remember what he came here to tell her in the first place. He tore his eyes from her face and stared at his feet, the silence bringing his breathing down, his fingers loosening their curled positions.
“I just…wanted to say something real.”
Ororo stopped. She blinked a couple times, schooled her breathing into more regular patterns and tried to find a response. But his voice, the way it sounded. Almost defeated. And she never thought she’d hear that kind of tone from him. It shocked her into silence.
“Just something…that you’d never know about me unless I told you myself.” Logan raised his eyes, trying to find her blue ones in the haze of fired tempers and raised guards. “Something truthful.”
Ororo opened her mouth to retort but found she had nothing to counter. Nothing to sling at him for something she had asked for herself. But she was hardly foolish enough to believe that Logan could lay it all out for anyone, let alone her.
“I want this to be the beginning.”
Ororo narrowed her eyes, and finding her voice finally, said “The beginning of what exactly?”
“Of the truth. Between us.”
Ororo found she had no answer but silence, as she waiting for him to continue.
“I just wanted you to know that I…” he looked back down again, searching for the words as though they were in his hands and he had dropped them, scattering them over the floor at his feet. And he had to find the pieces and pick them up. “That I…” He looked around the room, looked for something he could tell her, looked for the first remnants of him that he wanted her to know.
“That you what, Logan?” she asked as she rested her hands on her hips.
Logan looked to her. “That I hate orange juice.”
There was a moment, a split second in which Ororo tried to process his words, before the confusion leapt from her lips. “What?”
“I don’t know why. I don’t know if it was something from my past that I can’t remember, but I really do. I hate orange juice. I can’t even stand the smell.” He said it so casually, so nonchalantly that Ororo had to take a moment to question her sanity.
“All this for…you mean you came in here to…” she couldn’t finish a single sentence, and it almost made Logan smile. “You had us screaming over orange juice?” she almost screeched.
“Well, I was trying to tell you that before you tried to bite my head off.”
Ororo turned away, her arms crossed, one hand over her mouth. “God, you are so…you are so infuriating,” she managed to get out.
And then Logan saw it. He had to squint for a moment to catch it but there it was, resting behind her hand so slight anyone else would have missed it. A smirk. And then there was a muffled snort from behind her palm, and Logan began to shake his head.
“No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare laugh at me, Storm.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes and her smirk began to widen. “Sorry, I just…” she tried to stop another snort from escaping. “It’s just…” She tried desperately to keep the giggles at bay, turning to face him. “So if you ever come at me again I can just throw oranges at you, right?” she said as the first peel of laughter managed to squeeze past her hand and she had to clamp it tight over her mouth as she watched Logan glaring at her.
“A ha ha. That was hilarious,” he deadpanned.
She snorted once more, then straightened her shoulders, controlling herself once again. “I apologize, Logan, it’s just…well, you have to admit it’s rather ridiculous.”
Logan shrugged. “Small steps, Storm. It takes small steps to build trust.”
She quieted when he said that. And it made her think. Did she really want trust between them? Did she really want to lay that bridge down? It would be so much easier to just say no. To deny ever wanting that kind of openness between them. But then she'd look at him and watch the way his eyes roamed her face for an answer. The way he stood vulnerable to her, when she could at any moment strike him. And she realized that maybe the reason they never got to the bridge-laying before was because neither of them had really found a respect for the other. With most of the other members in the X-men, respect grew from an initial fear, as much as Storm would like to argue otherwise. Even mutants are wary of mutants. But in discovering each other's weaknesses, they discovered their humanity.
Logan and Ororo never got that chance.
Inwardly, Ororo smiled at his stubborness. She had to admit, it took a great amount of perseverance to change her mind, and Logan was so obviously trying to does so. Change her mind. About him.
She was beginning to feel the effects of his efforts.
Ororo drew in a deep breath, relaxing her shoulders for the first time since he entered the room. "True." She nodded. "You must first learn to walk before you can run."
Logan found himself unable to stop staring. "And I fully intend to do so."
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