Night
Passes slow
Get up moon go, I can’t take it
My thoughts
Weigh me down
And I’m prisoner to my blanket
Morning - Amel Larrieux
"Stop!" She cried, holding up her arms and backing into the wall as he came charging towards her. His eyes had darkened with anger and he lifted a hand to strike her face.
The hand froze in the air and her eyes widened as she began to scream. Suddenly, there was blood everywhere... so much blood and he couldn't stop it. Why had there been so much blood?
"What have you done?!" She began to scream at him, her cheeks stained with tears.
Logan jumped up in bed and waved his arms wildly in front of him. He fought with the stuffy air, his fists swinging at nothing in particular. His bed creaked under pressure and he wiped his sweaty forehead, falling back on the bed and sighed.
He hated when this happened, his nightmares swallowed him whole into a pool of fear, doubt, and self loathing.
Logan had been having these nightmares since he was a child. It was a haunting memory that he would never be able to rid himself of no matter how hard he attempted.
His knuckles itched and he scratched the ugly scars between them, groaning.
With a hesitant look at his alarm clock, he swore under his breath. It was just five after three. He threw the covers back and jumped out of bed. His sweats lay in a heap next to his well worn sneakers and he stretched his arms high over his head. For the first time in years, he hadn't awaken in a cold sweat with the sheets clinging to his body. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a peaceful night's sleep.
That was a lie.
He gave an involuntary glance at the shirt that had been putting a damn hole in his mind since it'd been here. That night she had come... things seemed to change. When he went to sleep with her in his arms, he did not dream. And if he had, he couldn't remember. He liked it that way.
"Just pussy," he muttered, turning away from the simple white shirt and began to put on his sweats. He had a match tonight and the last thing he needed was a one-time-fuck on his mind. Logan put the hood on his head, grabbed his keys off his bedside table and made his way out of the apartment.
He passed a haggard looking man sitting next to his apartment door and he snorted. He hadn't interacted with any of the tenants but he knew the lump of ragged and alcohol infested clothing as Pervert Pete. Many a day he heard women shouting at him or giving him rough shoves that eventually ended up with him at the bottom of the stairs, flat on his ass.
Apparently, Pete had found a good lay in a bottle of cheap whiskey as the old man reeked of it.
Bumping into a small Asian woman on his way down the stairs, he moved aside for her. She gave him a small smile and a kind "hello" which he exchanged with a grunt and nod of his head.
He did his usual stretching routine before he jogged and looked around to see if anyone else was out this early. It was as vacant as it was dark, save for a man sleeping on an ugly amber couch placed next to a dumpster. His early morning jog was always the result of his usual sleepless nights. When he was done with his stretching, he stood and started off in a sprint.
He would not think of her as he ran. No, he would force his thoughts to tonight's match. His opponent was as mean as they came and even uglier to boot. He walked around calling himself the 'Bionic Man' and apparently everyone that fought against him agreed that he was unstoppable.
Bullshit.
Logan had been fighting since he was a small child and so far there wasn't a fight he'd lost. He would show the 'Bionic Man' a taste of the 'Wolverine' and that would be the end of that.
That name had never quite grown on him. He received it when he was about fourteen years old. A man in town had been bullying his younger brother and Logan had honestly stalked and preyed on the man. The only reason he hadn't killed him was because his mother said not to. After that, his brother proudly walked around the town telling everyone how his older brother the 'Wolverine', would gladly kick any person's ass if they stepped to him. And it had been that way ever since. The only thing he did like about the name was whenever 'groupies' approached him after a match, they never asked him to give his real name nor did he have to waste his time making up one and they would already know to call him 'Wolverine'. Only Tom, Phyllis, and Weasel needed to know his name.
When she asked his name it slipped off his tongue too damn easy.
Bionic Man. Bionic Man. Bionic Man.
Glowing white hair, alluring blues eyes, smooth brown skin, and the most perfect ass in the world appeared in his head and he felt the twinge in his lower stomach move down to his mid-thighs. He wanted to forget her, but this was proving to be more difficult than he thought it to be.
The alarm clock buzzed in Ororo's ear but she was already awake and staring up at the ceiling with fresh tears pooling in her eyes. A long arm reached over and clumsily found the button to turn the alarm off.
The morning she left Logan's apartment, she bought more things that would be of a necessity to her. The alarm clock was just one of the things. Along her journey, halfway across the United States, she had already bought clothes and shoes for herself.
Getting up and wiping the tears from her eyes, she stretched her arms high over her head and made her way to the cramped bathroom of her hotel. She was always surprised that she hadn't managed to put her foot in the toilet when she stepped out of the shower.
She leaned over to turn the shower on and pull the curtains back. She pulled her hair out of the messy ponytail and stepped inside her shower. She had made plans to go back to Africa and maybe track down some relatives on her mother's side since she had no luck when her parents were killed looking for her father's relatives. She just remembered being a little girl lost and finally being picked off the street by a bald man that ran a home for parent-less children like her. She didn't even know what became of him as she had found herself running away with a man named Victor that promised her everything.
And everything he gave her.
From tons of money to amazing sex to black eyes.
Passport. She needed to keep her mind on the passport and how long the process would be of getting it. She lathered the cheap orange soap that had no smell in a plain white towel and began to hum to herself. Long hands worked as she washed herself with the towel and thought about him.
The man and his motorcycle.
Try as she might to forget him, she just could not bring herself to. When he told her not to leave she knew it was because he was lonely. From the looks of his apartment, it seemed like no one lived there. There was a couch, a coffee table, and an old television sitting on crates in the living room. The television was cracked right down the middle so she knew for sure that it probably wasn't in the best shape and Logan didn't seem like the type of man to sit around and watch television on a day off...
Though she had no idea what it was he even did.
She didn't dwell on the fact that she had known little to nothing about this man except the name he gave her. It didn't upset her, she realized, as she stepped underneath the water and let it hit her face. She opened her mouth and smiled a little. The entire night she'd slept in his lap, letting him hold on to her so tightly she she thought she would lose oxygen and he played in her hair.
His fingers twirled around the edges of it pulling a little while he snored into her ear and mumbled incoherently in his sleep. She found that it eased her. For once, she didn't feel like she was going to wake up and find him standing over her.
That thought quickly brought her back to reality and she opened her eyes, washing all the soap off and turned off the shower.
It was time to get down to business.
"Fight tonight," a boy that looked no older than fifteen handed Logan the flyer and walked off quickly when he took it from him. Logan had stopped by the bar to pick up his earnings from the last fight. He perked an eyebrow at him and that was made the boy almost fall over a table getting away, his red hair bouncing on his shoulders. Poor kid, Logan thought wistfully as he looked at the kid's red hair.
The first night Logan had come to the bar he remembered getting into a fight with the first person he had laid eyes on. All these bastards around here were crazy and they would try to pick a fight with the first new face that stepped foot inside. Of course, Logan just had to let them all know that he wasn't the type to get hassled around. Most of the men he fought with were larger and broader, but he was quick and he had stealth. He'd been doing this forever. They couldn't hold a candle to him.
"Good pay," he muttered dryly as he boldly snapped the rubber band in front of the owner Tom and began to count his money.
Six hundred dollars and people needed real jobs!
Of course this got under Tom's skin when Logan did this. That was why he did it. He knew Tom would never cheat him. Hell, they basically had a business going on between them. Tom found the suckers and brought them in while Logan roughed them up. It worked.
Logan didn't know Tom's story completely and he didn't care to know it to tell the truth. He'd overheard Phyllis, the middle aged bleach blond waitress mention to a few patrons and tourists that came by the bar that Tom once worked in a bank. He had a wife, two little girls, and a dog. One day, he came home to find all of them with their throats cut and he seemed to have snapped. Lost his mind completely, she told every one with wide eyes. She said that he woke up one night covered in his own blood and didn't know where he was even bleeding from.
A day later, he found himself the owner of a rundown bar and named it coincidentally after his late wife that he never talks of.
The Grace.
Ironic. A pretty name for such a shitty place.
Logan, however, knew Phyllis just loved to exaggerate things. Tom always told her she would have made a great actress the way she was so goddamn dramatic about everything. It's a damn shame because deep down Logan thought she would have, too. Though her scars had healed over the years, he saw the marks on her arms from a past filled with heroine addiction and he was pretty damn sure it went farther than that.
Mix all their stories together and they were some pretty pathetic assholes.
The only one really doing something for himself was 'Weasel', the fifteen year old red haired boy. Tom had found the boy when he was about ten, eating, or as Phyllis liked to tell it - picking through the dumpster in the alley behind the bar. He cursed the kid out and when the kid cursed him right back out, Tom took him in. Since then, he was like Tom's own. They bicker and nag one another to death but Tom loves Weasel and Logan was pretty damn sure Weasel felt the same. He found out after a fight three weeks ago that Weasel was going to one of the community colleges.
"Maybe be a businessman or some'in," was all Weasel said.
Logan looked at the worn down bar with the ugly white paint chipping from it. There were blood marks and dents from glass bottles being broken all over it. He looked at the balding Tom and his ridiculously large stomach. Logan used to joke mentally that he knew when Tom was was making his way into the room because a person would see his large belly ten minutes before they saw the rest of him. He immediately looked away though and stuffed his money into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Phyllis shuffled her wide hips through the tables, sitting down three legged chairs that always made for great entertainment when a drunken client sat down in it.
Looking at Phyllis, Logan bet she must have been gorgeous before she became a junkie.
"All right. I'll be ready tonight," was all he said as he tipped his head at Weasel, who looked at him and turned beet red. What was it that made this kid blush every fifteen minutes?
Ororo wondered if this woman looked at everyone this way. With her beak nose turned up and her eyes beady, she reminded Ororo of a buzzard. The way her huge sloping forehead protruded from her face with her dirty gray hair tied back in a tight bun did not help her appeal much either. She had been sitting at the main branch of one of those popular banks, waiting for someone, anyone to give her attention.
The ugly synthetic honey curls hung at her shoulder and swished dramatically each time she turned her head. She hated this wig more than she hated her life at this moment, but she would risk being unattractive than being found.
"Is there a contact number, Miss Munroe?" The woman asked her with an accent that Ororo could not quite place.
Ororo sighed and looked down, "No. No, you don't contact me. I contact you." She pointed at the woman who was obviously trying everything in her power not to scowl. Instead, she gave Ororo a stiff nod and handed over her receipt. They looked at one another for a moment and Ororo mumbled an awkward thanks and turned to make her way out of the building.
Sure, she must have looked crazy when she brought in a duffel bag of money, but when she pulled out such large amounts of money, those smug expressions turned upside down and they literally went insane the way they fawned over her and offered her coffee. And of course she didn't say no to the coffee. She'd adored coffee. Mostly because every morning before her father walked her to school, the house smelled of coffee that her mother had prepared. Her father would take his cup and walk around the entire home with it, talking about his busy schedule for the day and how he was still working on Ororo's new bedroom.
They had always planned to give Ororo a younger brother or sister.
She was so lost in her thoughts, she didn't notice the man she'd bumped into. She was too busy thinking of memories lost and trying to fold the duffel bag so that she could stuff it in the trash can without much struggle.
"Easy there darlin'."
Darlin'.
She'd remembered that term.
Looking up, she almost wished she hadn't.
Almost.
Her mystery man on the motorcycle.
Her s -
"Pardon me," she said politely and attempted to walk past him but failed when his strong hand gripped her upper arm.
"You got somewhere you need to be so quickly?" He asked her in a soft teasing voice. It was such a contrast to his brash appearance that she locked her eyes with his. As a matter of fact, she did have somewhere to be, though it was no concern of his. She had to buy her passport today. Today was the only day to get all of her business done and situated before she could really and truly run. The only day before she could be free.
She looked at his hand with a face that told him to remove it but he did no such thing and just smirked at her.
They stood there for a moment, staring one another down and she felt her knees go weak at how dark his eyes became as he studied her. She could feel the heat radiating off his hand through the thin fabric of her long sleeve shirt. Perhaps, it wasn't him but her instead and she should just confess that she maybe liked him... if only a little.
"No." He tipped his head as if he were wearing a hat. Ororo tried to imagine him in a fedora and almost giggled. "Pardon me." His hand slipped away, grazing her skin slowly with his calloused hand.
"Good day," she almost felt embarrassed that one night of her not even climaxing had caused her to feel this way. If she ended up liking him, it would only be trouble.
His eyes darted up to her wig and she cleared her throat. She patted the wig absently and sighed.
Just as she turned to walk away, she felt paper in her hand. It was paper that he'd slapped in her hand. When she turned to ask him what it was, she saw the back of him. "Logan!" She called but that just seemed to only make him walk faster. She looked down at the paper and frowned as she read it aloud.
"Eleven o'clock. The Grace. Cage duel. The Wolverine excepts all challengers."
She looked up and frowned once more. Who on earth was the Wolverine?
Balling the paper up quickly, Ororo tossed it into the trash can with her folded black duffel bag. She couldn't go.
He was going to be too much trouble.
