winds of change ~ wolverine

sixteen

BAILEY'S POV

I officially had nothing left to hide from him and it felt like hovering a bottle of vinegar threateningly over an open wound. But most of the time, it honestly just felt unbelievably freeing. 

There was no more fear that I would slip up and say the wrong thing that would make him ask the right question. I'd already said all those wrong things and he'd already asked all the right questions to get me and all my history laid bare. There was no worry that the next big secret he would discover about me would be the thing that made him turn me away or keep me out of the X-Men. He'd already found out everything there was to know... and he'd stayed anyway.

So far, Logan had stayed true to his word. We were almost never apart, unless you're counting bathroom breaks. He attended every lecture I did, even encouraging me not to skip them. He came with me to the library and stayed as ludicrously long as I did without a word of complaint. Hell, he wasn't even studying anything and he was still a better college student than me.

I felt bad that he was hanging around so often with nothing to do, so I bought him earphones and introduced him to a few shows that he could watch while I was working and he was bored. But when I got him hooked on Game of Thrones, he banned himself from sitting directly beside me in the library because I kept taking an earbud to share and watching the episodes with him. His spot was now cemented across from me on every library shift.

I was having a breakfast of pastry and a cigarette on a bench outside campus when I remembered I'd been meaning to ask him about something, I peered at him over my sunglasses that had slid down my nose, eyes squinting through the brightness. "Oh, Andy was telling me her and some friends are going out this Wednesday before everyone gets really stuck into work for the last stretch. Do you want to go?"

He raised a brow at me. "The better question is, do you?"

I took a drag of my cigarette and shrugged. "If it was just me, sure. I've never been one to pass up on a good night out. But you would be going too, you know? I'm not interested in making you any more miserable than like, baseline level of misery."

"Oh, just baseline?" He chuckled. "How considerate, thank you." 

I mock bowed, throwing my pastry wrapper in the bin beside us. "But seriously, I'm just as okay with spending the night on the couch watching movies. It's really up to you." I lifted a finger as a thought came to me and continued before he could answer. "Actually, scrap that altogether, radical idea: why don't we do something you want to do instead, huh?" 

He narrowed his eyes as he thought. "Something I want to do?" He echoed, like he hadn't heard me right the first time.

"Yeah!" I said enthusiastically, feeling horrible that it had been almost three weeks now and I hadn't done anything fun for him. In my defense, I also hadn't done anything fun for me either, so it was an even playing field. "What do you do for fun, Logan?"

He laughed quietly, crossing his arms and leaning his elbows on the bench table. "I'm not really an activities kinda guy. If I want to relax... I just go get drunk."

I got comfortable, bending a leg and putting one foot up on the bench seat beside me and leaning forward. "Really? No golf? Or, uh... well I don't actually know what men do with their time..." I rubbed my forehead thinking. "Have sex, I guess?" I perked up as I got an idea. "We could go out and find you a girl! I can be your wingman!"

Logan smiled with a shake of his head. "You realize I'm on the job here, right? I can't just disappear to go hook up with someone."

I waved a hand dismissively. "I'm sure I'll survive a single night alone. I'll literally lock myself in a room with no windows if it would put your mind at ease. Besides, we all have... needs, I'm not judging." I wasn't a prude, but talking about sex openly was something I had to spend a long time getting used to after growing up the way I did, still getting used to I should say. I fought back a nervous smile at the subject, reminding myself that I was an adult and could talk about adult things.