She walks quickly, soundlessly, the movement of her feet barely causing a rustle. The moon lights the path inharmoniously, throwing shadows places it shouldn’t have, as if it were shying away from Ororo herself, refusing to bear witness to such an affair. The stimulating scent of impending rain settles in the air as she pulls her cloak closer to her body, hurrying along the worn path. She likes the anonymity the cloak offers her. It is a physical reminder that she is playing a game she cannot win.
Movement II: Cold Chrome Heart
Ororo retreated to her room, silently grateful she’d managed to avoid that confrontation. It’d taken every bit of her strength not to falter under his accusation. She’d nearly fumbled when he spoke his first words. She had gripped her shears just a little tighter, praying to the gods that she didn’t end up a blubbering, trembling mess. She’d held it together, though, had found power from somewhere not to break down.
She combed her hand through her hair, long mussed from the impromptu tryst in the greenhouse. Her skin still tingled from Logan’s touch. She could still feel his lips against hers, soft and affectionate. Pulling her rumpled shirt over her head, she threw it to the floor where it landed with a soft thud, as a tight ball of guilt gritted in her stomach. She’d known in her soul what he wanted when he entered the greenhouse.
She wasn’t oblivious, though she sometimes wished she were. It would make things marginally easier. For weeks, she’d avoided the questioning looks coupled with his annoyed confusion. She’d known it would only be a matter of time before he confronted her. Honestly, she hadn’t expected him to wait so long. Every day, she prepared herself as best she could for that moment. And every day, the moment passed her by until she’d stop expecting it at all.
Her gut told her to tell him everything from beginning to end, to hold nothing back from him. He would be angry with her, he would probably leave her, but at least, she’d be free of her shame. It was better that he heard it from her, anyway, instead of stumbling on the truth blindly. It wouldn’t do much to soothe the pain she’d caused, but she knew he’d appreciate it coming straight from her rather than through some secondhand discovery.
These thoughts ran through her head during the moments she’d stolen by being purposely silent. She’d made up her mind to be honest with him because he deserved that from her”if nothing else. When she finally faced him in the greenhouse, though, her nerve failed or perhaps she was being defiant. Sometimes, she could never tell.
She reached behind herself and unclasped her bra, freeing her breasts from their constrained confines. It didn’t take much work. She’d only half-fastened it”missing one of the two metal hooks in her desperate hurry to dress. She’d only wanted to find solace after being with him, needing time alone with her thoughts. She muddled his brain and her own in the process of trying to avoid the question. She hadn’t meant to be so deceptive, and she hadn’t meant to use sex as her weapon of choice.
Even though she knew she had to tell him, she was unable to form the words she needed to say. Every time she tried to mentally push herself to admit that she’d had an affair, she’d come back with something snappish and accusing, petulant replies that dripped like acid. When she did these things, she felt like an outsider in her own body, as if she really had no control over her own actions. She couldn’t quiet the scathing comments or the cool glares. Defiance poured out in heavy torrents every time she opened her mouth.
It hurt to see him hurting, and before it was all over, she’d hurt him a million times over. And how many times during this “affair” had she told herself that life without Logan wasn’t really a life at all? Apparently not enough or maybe she didn’t truly believe. She’d lie in her bed and try to imagine how things would change without him being there at all. There would be no love, no friendship, no anything. She sealed the deal on that when she made the conscious decision to be with another man.
Could she really stand the thought of him closing her out, leaving her nothing but the cold memories of how things used to be? Could she really bear the thought of him never smiling at her again, never touching her again? She’d tell herself no, but still, she played a dangerous game without humanity or law. Where was her guilt, her remorse, when she needed it the most to keep her in check?
This was not the way she should behave. She shouldn’t be capable of such deceptions. Ororo Munroe was many things, but she never thought she’d see the day when she could add “cheating girlfriend” to her repertoire.
She slid off her shorts, padding to the bathroom, remembering how she’d been unable to locate her underwear in the greenhouse. She made some lame joke about a “thong tree” sprouting next spring while chuckling halfheartedly. She’d only said it because of the looming heaviness over them. The sex had only complicated things more, and she had dressed and retreated as quickly as she could but not before he could get the very last word in.
“How could ya?” was all he said. She pretended not to hear at all because she didn’t know what to tell him, not that anything she could say would be worth a damn.
She paused in front of the sink, avoiding the mirror. Most days, she didn’t like what she saw; she didn’t know the woman in the mirror, any more. She grabbed a hair scrunchie, piling thick locks on top of her head in a messy ponytail. When she stepped into the shower, she turned the water on, pressing her back to the cool tile as she let the water wash over her.
Certain things were expected of her, and while she slowly”and at certain points in her life drastically”chiseled her true self out of marble, she knew that it would still be a long time before her friends really accepted that she was mortal. They knew she wasn’t perfect, that she’d made some unsound decisions, but they only associated this mortality with Storm the X-Woman, not Ororo Munroe the woman.
Storm was allowed her mistakes on the field, but Ororo had to be infallible. They separated the mutant from the woman. When in reality, both sides were necessary to complete a “whole.” Without Storm, there was no Ororo. Without Ororo, there was no Storm. Storm, sometimes, did things recklessly in the heat of a battle. This was understandable. But when Ororo”the woman”did things in her personal life that were equally as reckless or unexpected, tongues started flapping, unnecessary concern was shown for her “erratic behavior.”
Others were allowed their pain, their happiness, their mistakes, but sometimes, she believed they didn’t expect her to feel. They didn’t expect her to live. She wasn’t supposed to taste the wild fruit that life had to offer. Her role was merely to exist and fight the good fight. She didn’t just want to exist, though. She wanted to live her life passionately. Sometimes, she wanted to disregard the rules, as well.
For years, she lived her life on a pedestal before the X-Men and, again, with the X-Men. She knew that was partly her fault for allowing it, for buying into her own stock that she transcended typical human behavior. “Self” rebelled against the goddess feint, though, and slowly, it was gaining more control. “Self” would not be denied. “Self” felt like an animal in a cage as if she was being conditioned to be nothing less than ideal. “Self” told her they boxed her in and took her name”that she was fighting for a one-dimensional, rose-colored dream. “Self” said she was everything and nothing to them”the nurturer and the destroyer.
“Goddess, maybe I should take it easy on the Dr. Phil,” she said aloud to herself, trying to push away the brittle feelings that roiled inside of her, as she soaped up her body.
She was going to psychobabble her way into a depression if she kept this up. Besides, these were her family and friends. They hadn’t forced this role on her; she’d taken it on herself and expected them to follow it. They hadn’t given her anything she hadn’t asked”that she hadn’t demanded”from them. However, whatever she demanded of them, whatever she purported herself to be, it didn’t take away from the fact that she was not depthless.
Logan was one of the few people who’d always seen through the act, his keen intuition pierced her cold, chrome heart. At first, she didn’t like how he challenged her at every turn, how he made her question herself and her own motives. It took her a while to realize that he wasn’t trying to be malicious; he was just trying to get her to be honest with herself. She wasn’t an impenetrable, enduring deity, and she shouldn’t live life as if she were.
She was flesh, and blood, and bone. Inside her beat a heart that was capable of rendering true human emotion and not the dry impression of emotion she’d always expressed during that time. And he’d always seen that, and with time, she learned to appreciate that, even if she had given him some resistance because she thought he was intrusive. Over the years, he’d been a good friend, and before they’d started dating, she had wondered from time to time what being with him would be like.
Then, it happened, and it was all fireworks and teary love ballads. Well, it was to her, anyway”theatrics and all. She remembered the first day they stopped being Ororo and Logan and become RoLo. (“They’re not even Ororo and Logan, anymore. They’re something different now, a new breed of species”a RoLo. And they’re driving me crazy…” she remembered Alex saying not too long after they’d become a couple.) She smiled so hard that day that she was sure she would be stuck with a permanent jester’s grin.
It happened on a Sunday, two years before. After years of subtle flirting between friends and kisses shared at the unlikeliest of times, they finally stopped pretending that they were content with the way their relationship functioned; they stopped pretending that they weren’t curious about what could possibly grow from a relationship like theirs. However, it wasn’t something they planned. It was just something that happened.
It was during one of their rare vacations”nothing special, just a weekend retreat to a private ranch nestled in the mountains. The last day there, she’d gone to the horses’ corral alone. She had watched the others ride these majestic, beautiful creatures all weekend, but she kept her distance, feigning indifference when she was really just afraid. She wouldn’t even touch one.
She’d never know what possessed her to go to the corral. Perhaps, it was the lingering effects of the amaretto laced coffee she’d had earlier in the morning. She never did find out who spiked her coffee. She had her suspicions, though. So, while the others were off doing their thing, she was well on her way to being trampled by a rather angry mare. She didn’t know what she’d done to upset her, but the horse snorted at her in warning before rearing on hind legs.
She backed away from the horse, believing she’d never conquer that fear (and with logical reason, if you asked her). “Yer makin’ her skittish. She can sense yer fear,” she’d heard him say behind her. She turned to look at him, wondering how long he’d been standing there watching her make a fool of herself. He walked closer to the horse, grabbing her reins despite her aggression, petting her for reassurance. “It’s okay, girl.”
And just like that, she was okay again. The animal was so at ease with him when most people thought he was too brutish, too intense. While he saddled the horse, her mind was already wandering to what she’d do now. She’d been so deep in thought she hadn’t heard him the first time he asked her if she wanted to ride. He repeated his question and she made some weak excuse about not being dressed for riding.
Well, she hadn’t been, not wearing the long, airy skirt that was made for a day lounging around rather than riding a horse. But what she was really thinking was if he was blind or just crazy because the horse didn’t like her. Her decline resulted in fifteen minutes of childish banter back and forth”“yer scared” and “I am not” compromising most of the conversation. In the end, she relented.
And she never shared with anyone what happened on that excursion, but she was convinced that someone should compose a sonnet about skirts that had to be hiked up to your thighs when riding a horse. She always smiled thinking about it. It was her most treasured memory.
She’d been in a few relationships through the years; relationships that she believed were meaningful, but they only paled in comparison to what she had with Logan. She understood the concept of “love” before Logan, but she’d shaped it in her mind to be something of epic and nascent proportions. She’d set herself up for failure in the past believing that love was the glue that would keep everything from crumbling.
Love was a commanding force, but love wasn’t the end-all of a relationship. Love was only the captain controlling a host of factors. There had to be sacrifice, dedication, compromise, and a whole crew of other dynamics. Love only made it all worthwhile, reminding you that you’d do anything, anything at all, for this person. Most of all, though, love”real love”didn’t make you feel like you were giving all of yourself for nothing, like you were putting too much in and getting too little in return or vice versa.
For all his gruffness, Logan was different as a lover, far more considerate and gentle than she would’ve given him credit for before they got together. She could tell him whatever was on her mind. Sometimes, they didn’t have to talk at all. It was as if they just knew what the other needed or felt or thought. She waited her whole life for someone like Logan, someone she felt she could love unconditionally, someone who didn’t make her feel like she wasn’t putting her all into the relationship, and now, she was about to throw it all away from some other.
She only thought of him as “the other” because she was too afraid to think of him by name, fearing that her body would betray her feelings. Thinking of him as just a nameless face made it easier to pretend that he wasn’t real, that the things that happened between them was just some chimera she borrowed from some romance novel. She only allowed herself to think about him when she was alone or when she was with him.
She couldn’t justify what she was doing because there was no rationalization for it. It was easy to tell herself that she should end the relationship with “the other,” be honest with Logan, and swallow her medicine humbly… except… she wasn’t quite sure if that’s what she wanted. Her heart wanted one thing and her body wanted another. The only time the two could agree was when she was dizzy out of her head from the clutch of an unrestrained orgasm. Everyone knew you couldn’t listen to the inane things you thought or said while coming. People would sign over their soul in the throes of passion.
He made her feel… unusual. That’s the best way she could describe it without being completely flowery or completely dirty about it. He made her use some base-level instinct when it came to him, less thinking and more feeling, less talk and more… She didn’t want to think about that, but she couldn’t help herself. She even found him slipping into her thoughts when she didn’t want to, moving uninvited into a space in her mind when she needed to focus on more important things than the way her touched her… or the way he talked to her. Goddess, she loved the way he talked to her.
He’d speak in her ear hotly, sotto voce, saying things that used to make her flush from the overt sexuality of it all, hard words clashing with his soft, even tone. Men, even the ones she’d been intimate with, usually treated her like china glass. She couldn’t imagine any of them saying half the things he’d said to her, and when she first expressed disapproval, faintly sickened that it aroused her more than she cared to admit, he’d go into explicit detail about the things he was going to do to her, things so nasty that she got off just by listening to him, winding his words around her so tightly that she believed he’d only have to touch her shoulder and the rain would fall.
And he always wanted to hear her repeat the things he said he’d do to her, saying she had to renounce her godship and start using the whole fucking language. Goddess help her if she tried to give him the maidenly version of what he’d said, cleaning up the language, leaving it with none of the vulgarity. He wasn’t beyond meting out “punishment” for her defiance”mostly cruel, endless teasing that never caused her serious harm but she still much rather avoid it.
Besides, she liked the wolfish gleam in his eye that threatened to overwhelm her with its want while she spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable carefully, dragging it along like a slow Sunday drive. Things she thought she would never utter to another human being slipped from her lips, spoken sins that incited and excited.
Sometimes, she would refuse to repeat what he’d said because that was the thrill of the game”seeing who was truly dominant, but he’d coaxed them from her with well-placed kisses and manipulative fingers that knew no end. “Say it in your squeaky voice,” he’d tease, voice brimming with humor, before placing his mouth over hallowed nerves. Oh yeah, she’d say it and in her squeaky voice, too.
She rinsed the soap from her body, allowing herself a few more moments in the shower before she exited. The bathroom was just a blanket of fog in the shape of a man, and she waved her hand to disrupt the image. She entered her bedroom, again, sprawling nude across her bed.
She had no illusions about his, “the other’s,” romantic notions, or his lack thereof. She never wanted his adoration, loathsome promises of undying love and devotion. She didn’t want him to tell her that he’d die for her or anything equally as noble. She wanted him just as he was”contemptible, unbridled, and libidinous. He’d done things she’d often stood tall and proud against on her soapbox, but he was sorry for nothing and he regretted even less. And none of that mattered when she was with him.
There were certain things he was able to bring out of her just by looking at her, but it wasn’t the sweet, consuming ardor that Logan elicited from her. It was something sordid and thrilling, dark and enticing. She was Eve in the eternal garden and he was the serpent, calling her to taste the forbidden fruit. Except it wasn’t as beautiful or poetic as all that. No, what they shared was wicked; something not meant to be immortalized in love songs.
She’d often thought the word “fuck” was a crude way to describe sex between people, but before him, she’d never been “fucked.” The men she’d been with before him, including Logan, always made sex a beatific experience, something straight out of a virginal fantasy, nothing less than theistic. There was nothing selfish or unbidden about it, and it didn’t matter how kinky or taboo or smutty it got you never misjudged the love radiating from the act itself.
“Fucking””down and dirty, no questions asked, no explanations needed, no apologies required, rip his clothes off and straddle his hips, make him scream your name “fucking””was something completely different. It was opportunistic, selfish, and depraved”from the way he undressed her as if they had all the time in the world to the way she brushed her lips against his chest. From beginning to end, there was nothing personal to be gained. It was all about fulfilling fleshly hunger, gratuitous and deprived of heartfelt emotion.
“I want to be a wreck for you,” she’d whispered in his ear during their most heated moments of passion”that fevered instance when her eyes would milk over for a split second as the divine feeling that made her believe she swayed between life and death overtook her. In those moments, she truly believed that she wanted to devour his sins.
Afterwards, while she was alone, guilt would consume as she tried to scrub the shame away from her skin until every inch of her ached. And she always came back only to repeat the cycle again and again, disregarding the throbbing hollow in her heart that tried to open her eyes to reason. These impetuous thoughts, words, and actions coming from a woman who claimed to only love Logan.
Why was she cheating on the man she said completed her body and soul? How could she honestly look him in the eye and say “I love you” when she was playing the kind of game that no woman should play? This is when she truly loathed herself and questioned her so-called sound mind. She played the devil’s game at the expense of losing everything that was important to her”a fact that slapped her in the face when Logan had asked her if she was “fucking around.”
She couldn’t continue to do this to him or herself. It wasn’t fair to him, and it was all wrong for her. She couldn’t predict what this would do to her relationship with Logan, but she would be free of her burden, her indignity. And no matter what happened to Logan and her beyond that point, she could come to terms with herself, get her life back in order.
Author’s Notes: Inspired by another of my psych_30 challenge prompts”“Skinner Box,” which is a cage used for animals that are being experimented on. The creator of the box, B.F. Skinner, believed that if you controlled a child’s environment you could shape them to be whatever you wanted them to be. I took a lot of liberties with this particular prompt. I thought about giving a detailed explanation of my take on it, but I won’t bore you with that.
And I mentioned last chapter that I used a prompt from the same challenge, but I never explained what Approach-avoidance conflict is. I think the definition for it explains it best: Approach-avoidance occurs when an individual moves closer (physically or psychologically) to a seemingly desirable object, only to have the potentially negative consequences of contacting that object push back against the closing behavior.
The title is courtesy of a poem called “Metal Eye” by Nicole Blackman (which she performs to music on a track I have on my iPod). In fact, her performed poetry is what set the tone of this chapter, specifically “Metal Eye” and “Belfast.” And there’s a little group called She Wants Revenge that’s setting my heart on fire for this story, as well. I also borrowed a line from a Velvet Acid Christ song.
And (boy, my A/N’s get longer and longer) the idea to use the term “RoLo” in the story actually came from another fandom I’m part of. For a long time, the fans of a certain coupling in this fandom referred to a specific pairing by a combined name. Recently, they actually used this fandom name on the television show, when one of the characters on the show commented that this couple had morphed into one person.
Just for the record, Delia, actually you're the one who's too much metal for one hand. ;)
