Trickle, pt. 1: Infusion
There is a sparse but devout group of nighthawks that gathers in the mansion’s Rec Room as dusk falls each evening.
Their ranks vary widely, easy come easy go, but in the fickle blue glow of the TV set sit the insomniacs, the perpetually nocturnal and the temporarily troubled in a comfortable, grouchy silence. Someone nurses a beer, another one dozes on and off in the overstuffed wicker chair by the window, yet another fills a crossword puzzle in the dim light. No one plays pool or dares to change the channel “ late broadcasts of old noir flicks are par of the course here, and so what if you've seen this one thirty times already.
The mood here changes curiously as the kids who stay up little later than usually begin to file out after the first or second flick ends. The atmosphere gradually loses its slumber party feel as the older students and junior team members take their leave, and around three o'clock there is no one here but the core group and the odd ill student.
Logan is one of 'the regulars', if you can call yourself that in what is essentially your own living room. Bobby is here often too, cracking tired jokes for the sake of the largely ambivalent audience. Remy, that traitor to his gender, has given up on their group almost entirely in favour of spending his nights next to his lady love. Fighting his own boredom and a brain that just will not stop thinking long enough to allow for sleep, Hank is not an uncommon occupant of the big recliner in the corner, so much so that nobody dares to sit in the chair for all the blue fur caught in the worn material. The Professor himself comes here occasionally for the same reason. When Polaris was still a member of the team she could be found sitting cross-legged on the floor on most nights, but since her departure it has been an all-guys party.
Except for the nights when Storm cannot sleep.
He senses her arrival, quiet as she is on her feet, but the others in the room give a satisfactory jump as the sudden sound of a folded blanket hitting the sofa interrupts the capers of Bacall and Bogie on the widescreen TV “ for men, their late night movie taste borders on sappy.
Heads whip around to spy the co-leader of X-Men, long white hair tumbling over shoulders, wrapped in the constraints of indigo silk of her scuffy old robe. She's holding a pot of tea and a humongous mug that could pass for a beer tankard. Lapsang souchon, his nose tells him as she pours a cup for herself, and for a second he allows himself to savour the smoky aroma mingling with her scent.
Greetings are exchanged as she takes her seat on the sofa beside him, and while Logan generally finds little enjoyment in the misfortune of a friend (not just a friend, eh bub?) he can't help but marvel at how simply her presence seems to lift the pensive stupor in the room.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Ororo get comfortable. She unfolds her long feet along the sofa under her blanket and sure enough, he feels a questioning kneading on his left leg. He lifts it with an obliging grunt and she slides her feet under his thigh, seeking warmth. Only his ears catch her almost non-existent sigh of contentment.
Logan is unfortunately privy to a small truth few men have unveiled: The goddess, for all her defiance of ambient temperatures, gets damnably chilly feet.
“Toes like bleedin' icicles, darlin'”, he grumbles, but it's all in good spirits. Her feline eyes catch his over the brim of her steaming tankard of tea, washed out in hues of blue as 'To Have And Have Not' grinds out its tale of a reluctant world-weary hero and a dry-witted pickpocket in unlikely love. If the parallels to their life weren't so ridiculously blatant, he'd be amused.
Except they are not in love, likely or unlikely. Frankly, Logan doesn't know what the hell it is they have. Or what to do about it.
“You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing”, Lauren Bacall's character purrs on screen, and Logan can see a twinkle in the weather witch's eye. “You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.”
And sure as blazes that damnable woman purses her lips sinfully and blows a slow stream of steam into his face, at least three little devils dancing in each of her eyes as she sips her tea. He feels a growl rising in the back of his throat, rippling up from the bottom of his belly as her toes twitch under his thigh in well-cloaked amusement.
“Storm hogging all the covers, Wolverine?” Drake quips without turning his attention from the screen, oblivious to the truth he has just voiced.
“Ya have no idea, Popsicle”, he grunts and takes a gulp on his beer, exasperated and pleased at the same time. She will grace his bed with her presence tonight, perhaps even stay until morning light paints the world a dull slate grey.
No, not like that.
They are long-time friends, closer than your average team-mates, having faced unimaginable odds together in a frantic pot-pourri of victory and tragedy, death and flame. Such experiences tend to forge strong partnership and stronger trust between comrades. But it runs deeper than that, this strange kinship of theirs.
Whatever it is between them, it has kept them irrevocably attracted to each other ever since their paths crossed. Like polar opposites, there has always been an irresistible gravity between them, a pull like the bottom current of rapids in the springtime.
They share an understanding that borderlines frightening in its intensity, one that reaches to the very marrow of their bones it seems. They are made of the same stuff, he and she, both a strange mixture of wildness and sophistication, animal abandon and honour-bound self restraint.
It is humbling and infuriating at the same time for two headstrong loners. Both have locked themselves away from the world lest they rend it to pieces unintentionally, afraid of what might happen if their true nature should ever gain the upper hand over unyielding self-discipline and the decorum of modern living.
They don't get much past each other.
Logan empties his beer bottle and turns his attention fully to the woman burrowed companionably next to him, setting aside the pretence of watching the movie. He's seen it too many times anyway, and she's far more entertaining than the capers caught on celluloid.
He takes in Ororo's posture, the slight shift in her expression as the dialogue earns a delicate snort from her, the tiny half-smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Practised mellowness and affected, strict professionalism are almost synonymous with her, but sometimes even that armour is cast aside. Not tonight, oh no, but Logan is aware that he's sharing the sofa with a very relaxed Goddess tonight “ the mask is not in place at present and her features are easy and free.
Almost as if sensing his eyes upon her face she turns and meets his eyes, tilting her chin ever so slightly. She seems younger and strangely ageless in the blue light of the TV set. He muses that she must've not looked that different at sixteen “ hell, she could probably still claim to be under 25 if she wanted.
His scrutiny is interrupted when the movie finally ends and the other occupants of the Rec Room stir up to their feet, Drake loudly complaining about numbed bits of anatomy in a stellar example of TMI as Henry shepherds him out. Slowly the room empties, the others well accustomed to Storm and Wolverine closing things up for the night, chalking it up to a near-neurotic sense of responsibility and a strict insistence on safety.
Little do they know, and what's it to them, anyway?
Exchanging goodnight tidings with the others they untangle themselves from the sofa, stretching unhurriedly against the chill that comes from staying still too long. Wordlessly they fall on the routine of shutting the downstairs level down for the night, Ororo picking up the waste basket in the corner and collecting the candy wrappers, drink containers and spilled popcorn to be sorted into recycling bins in the morning.
They stroll to the kitchen, Logan carrying her tea things along with his empty bottles without a clatter or a clink, acutely reminded of evenings with his M'iko when she wasn't being the esteemed Yashida Mariko, the right honourable daughter and heiress of the Yashida clan. If his current companion notices his pause at the sink as he glares at the water running into the drain in perfect spirals, she does not comment.
He's missing a pain, a sharp and bitter stab of guilt and inadequacy, and try as he might he only finds a dull throb of regret and tenderness in its place. In his heart, M'iko will forever hold a special place, the portrait of her beauty and unyielding inner strength framed by the black and white silk cords of mourning.
Who knew a healing heart hurt more than a broken one?
Logan wonders how Ororo copes, where her hurt and disappointment drain into, with the abandonment issues she's bound to have as they turn off the lights and program the alarms efficiently and without sound.
They take the stairs arm in arm, Logan carrying her blanket mock-chivalrously and earning a snort for his trouble as they make their way to his room without a sound or stumble through the pitch-dark corridors. When the door finally swings shut behind them on well-oiled hinges, the blanket hits the floor as he pulls her to him, her lips brushing against his butterfly-light and petal-soft.
There have been kisses between them over the years, stolen embraces and nights spent tangled together in grass or linen. Nearly Platonic, and then so much more. Soul-searing kisses before battle to send blood singing in their veins, knee-buckling kisses after arriving home victorious while both were still half-deaf from the sounds of the fight and the roar of jet engines, life-giving kisses to share air underwater... It's been a slow, prolonged courtship, this dance of theirs, always strenuously returned to square one as they keep getting lost from each other, keep getting distracted.
Jean, Mariko, Yukio, Forge, T'Challa; a parade of faces and names marching past them like a drive-by gauntlet run of heartbreak. There is a lot of troubled water under this bridge of theirs, the stream having long since frozen solid and still with sorrow and death. But tonight is not about an acute heartache. It's about life-affirming creature comforts, the constants they've become for each other.
Logan knows the taste of her well, her true taste under fright and stress and exhaustion and triumph “ black tea, sweet rain and burnt spices, a heady cocktail that could knock a lesser man off his feet in a single sip. Now he tastes smoke on the tea and a subtle shift brewing inside her like the beginnings of a monsoon.
Perhaps she is tired of sorrow and pain, too, tired of caged emotions and meaningless affairs in the arms of nameless one-night stands, strangers who never could truly understand her. A change in the weather can be seen on the horizon if only you look far enough and squint your eyes real tight... and somewhere inside Logan a trickle of water runs over the dam of ice.
His mouth covers hers again, drinking deep the feel and taste of her like a man at an oasis, reverent and desperate at the same time. The goddess in his arms is pliant and welcoming, allowing him to draw his fill and responding to his thirst and yearning with a need that rivals his own.
They undress each other slowly, gently like so many times before. To an outsider it might look like the foreplay of a couple well accustomed to each other, and they'd be right in a way “ shedding cloth to reveal skin is a ritual of theirs, carnal in nature and laced with an undertone of desire, but there is little intent behind it towards the usual context of beds, couples and nudity.
By shedding clothes they dress in their true selves, discarding decorum in favour of honesty. Moonlight sifts through his windows and paints them both with the dull blue of night turning into very early morning as they regard each other, not needing any pretence or niceties to take in each other's physique.
It is strange how closed doors and privacy turn something so natural into something so enticing. Although they have seen each other in the nude countless times on the Institute grounds, it is always electrifying to share such close quarters with not a thread on.
Even though Logan's nose and the burning of his blood tells him of mutual want it is not the right moment for them, not yet. Both of them are still raw, still cowering away from the world like wounded animals. Turning this into a one-night thrill would be a waste.
Ororo steps back into his arms just as he reaches for her. To hold but not to have, and for tonight that will suffice.
Together they fall on his bed, burrowing under the covers and seeking warmth from each other. They tangle in each other like strangely contrasting twins, light and dark, feral and regal, male and female, winding together like Yin and Yang.
His head comes to rest between her bare breasts, the steady boom of her heartbeat soothing his racing mind as her hands stroke through his hair. Her fingers weave a mantra into his scalp as his eyes flutter shut, unable and unwilling to resist this safe lagoon. A voice like summer rain hums in his ears, not unlike a balm to his scarred soul. Her song is low and innocently sweet, rising and falling in a rhythmic, rhyming language he does not understand. He finds himself at peace for the first time in weeks and lets himself to be lulled to sleep like a child in her arms.
Healing, they are slowly healing and gathering strength, adrift in the blue hue of moonlight and the endless heavens above.
Gradually the slow trickle of water along their small glacier will turn into a rivulet, then into a river free to roam and meander where it will. Hopefully they both will have recovered enough for the ride by then, ready to dive off the bridge and damn the attractions of the safe shore.
For now both of them are mending, and for tonight it is more than enough.
Aqua Vitae by Yaspis
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