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Yesterdays & Tomorrows

Summary: The ‘past’ behind Logan’s remark

Few years into the past,

“WHAT!!”

“Umm-Hmm.”

Even as she nodded in response, and even with the smile forming on her lips, the Nubian beauty could not push down the sense of unease rising within her. Working in her greenhouse, somehow her conversation with the man standing a few feet away from her had gone from the subtle and not-so-subtle variations in the smells of flowers, to something entirely different….something she cursed herself for walking into…all by herself.

“Ororo.” The gruff yet almost molasses smooth growl of her name, her complete name was enough to let her know of her folly.
“Logan it was just a….”
“Scooter! Of all the people, fuckin’ one-eyed Summers? You couldn’t have found anyone else?”

‘Okkaaayyy!’ Her inner voice came to rescue. ‘One, he doesn’t sound all that angry, but just...umm, not angry at all. Two, the claws aren’t out…yet, so that’s good and three, and the most important three of all, he isn’t objecting to the actual thing, but to choice. So, by and by, the situation is pretty favorable. Don’t screw it up.’

“’Ro? Ororo?” Logan’s hand in front of her face roused her out of her musings.
“Oh….sorry. Just zoned out for a few seconds.” She apologized for her wandering off. “Logan…” The unease was still there. After all, it wasn’t easy to talking about what she was talking about and that too with the man she was talking about.
“I-I can’t…don’t…” Logan’s shaking his head and stepping away, even if was just to lean against the worktable was enough to fan her nervousness even further.
“Logan….” Her voice cracking as her result of the sudden emotional rollercoaster she found herself on was in an odd sort of way mirroring the distant rumble of thunder.

Hearing the same boom, brought Logan back to his senses, his senses instantly zeroing in on Ororo and the feelings and emotions that were just rolling off her.
“Fuck…..” his curse, although meant for him made Ororo think that it was for her and her revelation. She didn’t think he would react this way…she did not want him to react this way, because she knew from experience what would be coming next, he would close off into his own inner world….and walk away from her....and that she could not even bear to think about.
“Logan…..I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Huh,” and there went Logan, thrown for a loop at her apology. Hurt him? How did she hurt him? Fuck, he was more in disbelief than in anything else.

---

“’Ro,” he reached forward and rested his one hand on her shoulder, lifting her chin with her so that he could see in those deep blue eyes of hers….eyes that he had grown to love in the past few months. “Hurt me?”
“I know you and Scott don’t…mmph,” opening her mouth to speak, Ororo found her words and a large part of her uneasy emotions, washed away in the wave of love that Logan’s kiss seemed to wash over her. There was nothing different…not withdrawn about the way he kissed her. It was just as passionate, just as heated as every other time…maybe even more so.

They stayed that way, until Logan, feeling the tension leave her body, not to mention her lungs call out for fresh air, drew away, but just enough so that their lips were still caressing each others.

“Really ‘Ro? Scooter? You were really so bad off then, that you had to go for that.” Logan’s chuckle was enough to let her know about his mood. Although, ‘dating’ for a couple of months now, ‘the Man from the North’ was still an enigma to her, not because he hid himself from her, but because he opened himself to her. He, the ultimate loner, the most closed off man she had ever come across…he, opened himself to her…unlike in a way that he ever opened himself to anyone or at anytime. The realization that doing so, he was putting at risk, his heart and only thing he ever truly called his own, the rag-tag bunch of memories he had collected over the years, had hit Ororo like a brick wall. That meant, just like her, he too had chosen to put all of him in this relation they were trying to build. It was….to say the least, overwhelming.

“Yes,” her lips curved up this time, but without the unease from before as she leaned into his touch.

“Man,” Logan was still having a tough time getting his head around it. “How? You are outta his league. Darlin’, fuck you are so outta my league that I can’t even see you. That’s how high you are. An’ now you are telling me you were in love with Scooter!!”
“No, not love,” Ororo was quick in responding. “It was just a crush.”
“There’s a difference?” Logan wasn’t ever adept in the subtleties, nor did he care much about them. For him, it had always been a case of want. If he wanted something, that was reason enough for him to go after it, whether it be a cigar, a steak, some asshole pissing him off, or even a woman.

However, but that was all before BOOM…Before OrorO Monroe.

Oh, he still had that want thing going; as he always would. After all, it was one of the support pillars of both the man and the animal within him, but now, he had dropped that ‘woman’ clause from it in favor of ‘just one’ woman, just her. Not only that, he had only added another layering, one of love….one drawn out of his love for her and her love him.

For him, she was a goddess who had deigned to love a mortal….she was the one who brought the man out of the animal.

“Yes, there is a difference.” At the narrow eyed look Logan sent her way, Ororo elaborated on her answer.

“See, with Scott it was….hmm…well, you could say it was more of a novelty factor than anything else. I was new student and with Scott and Jean being the only two people of my age, well, we three naturally grew closer.”
“Now, don’t tell me you had a whatchamacallit…crush on Jean? Did you?”
“You’d like that, won’t you?” Ororo struck him lightly on the shoulder, a giggle bursting from lips at the suggestive look Logan gave her.
“You know, they say that it’s a man’s top fantasy to be with two women at one time…together.” Logan drew her closer and ran his hands down her back to squeeze her behind and pull it flush against the front of his jeans.
“So, is it yours too?” Ororo grasped his shoulders, gaining leverage so as not to completely fall against him.
“Nah. Already did it. Fuckin’ too much confusion to gain anything outta it.”
“I so didn’t need knowing that,” Ororo shook her head as if trying to shake the extra bit of information off. Even though she was still learning about Logan’s life before he came to the X-Men, she knew from his own words, that it was mostly fighting, fucking and sleeping, usually in that order. She knew that going in and even though it should have troubled her, it did not…well, not as much and not for as long as she thought it would. Even before they crossed the line between friends to lovers, she already knew about the strict code of honor that Logan lived his life by. Loyal to a fault, if he was with her, he was just with her.

---

“So, you were saying?” Logan urged her to carry on her explanation. He wasn’t as much interested in the actual specifics, as he was in the way it felt….the memory part of it, for having lost is own past, he did not remember if ever he had felt the same way towards a girl….when he was a teenager himself. At least he thought he would have been. It wasn’t like he fell from the sky or something.

“Hmm,” Ororo recalled where she had left off. “Yes. Like I said, we three became quite close and I developed a sort of crush on Scott. After all, it wasn’t as if I could have it on the Professor. He is practically….” At the mischievous glint in Logan’s eyes, she lifted her hand to still his comment. “It was a rhetorical question.”

“It lasted for a few weeks. I grew out of it and my crush-radar moved from Scott to Henry….” Even as the words spilled forth, Ororo tried to bite down on them, a second too late.

“McCoy.” A ghost of hardness flashed through Logan’s eyes. Henry McCoy, the resident genius and onetime ‘interest’ of Ororo’s, was still not quite past the Wolverine’s defenses. It wasn’t as if there was anything wrong or threatening about the guy. If there was a case of a living teddy bear, one with blue fur to boot, Beast filled that to a ‘T’. It was just that, his mutation, which had quite a few feral characteristics, and his past with Ororo…well, suffice to say, for the first three months of his stay at the mansion, Beast had to content with the Wolverine 24/7.

Deliberately ignoring his growl, Ororo carried on, her hands gently kneading at Logan’s chest and shoulders.

“Its not that he was like my first love or anything,” she steered back towards the lighter….safer topic. “It was just that…he was different from any of the boys I had seen and or grown up with. Maybe if things had been different, the time and place had been different….but like I said, we were just kids then.”

“And you know what?” She finally gave in and snaked her arms around Logan’s neck to draw him closer.
“What?” Logan growled as he breathed in the intoxicating scent of arousal rising from her.

“Even if Scott was first choice…the choice of a girl,” Ororo leaned in further, nibbling at Logan’s ear. “He wasn’t my best choice….he wasn’t the choice of a woman.”

-----

The Present,

“So, you finally did it huh….got what, who you always wanted.”

His words, piercing as they were, did not hurt as much as did the memories they brought back, memories of the past…of the joy, the trust, the love that shared all those years ago. It that hurt even more because, for him to say those words that he just had….he too must have thought or be thinking of that same time….a time that was supposed to last forever, only it didn’t.

Yet, it was just that, the past….as in gone, over…never to come back.

Steeling herself, Ororo stepped past the door and closed it behind her, her nose flaring and scrunching at the heavy smell of alcohol that accompanied the overlying cigar smoke.

“What do you want? Why are you here?”
 

Note: Sorry for the delay…I had the ideas in my mind, just had to get them typed out, and somehow the mood just didn’t sit right. Won’t happen with the next update. That should be up by tomorrow.

BTW, the Logan-Ororo-Henry thing is from the supposed spoilers from the upcoming X3.