Subject: [OTL]: [OTL] Hey Now! (D, W, and X-Gang) 3/3 Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 22:34:33 -0800 From: JumpTB@aol.com Hey Now! by Omega part 3 (Damia) It was Logan who opened the passenger side of his car to help me out. Purse over my arm, shoes in hand, dopey look on my face, I let him pull me out and I leaned heavily on him. The last traces of twilight were fading, and the doorman of Lacey's apartment building recognized me, holding the door open for me to stagger through on Logan's arm. He took me to the elevator and dragged me in, pushing the button for the top floor where I'd lived with Lacey (when I happened to actually be with her) for the past seven years. My head was starting to hurt, right behind my eyeballs. When Logan flipped on the harsh interior lights, I squinted and covered my light-sensitive eyes with one hand, moaning low and long. Logan chuckled, helping me over to the sofa where he'd spent many evenings over the years, coming over to entertain his old friend and his new pupil. Easing me down, he left me there, going back into the bedrooms, with my head tilted back and my hand still covering my eyes. I recalled how Mike had been laughing heartily when I told him that no, I wasn't drunk. He'd kissed me good-bye on the cheek and told me he would come visit soon. Wisdom had merely told me needn't worry about work tomorrow with an amused look on his face, one that made his sharp features look a little softer. Logan came back with the pair of baggy flannel pants and T-shirt I slept in. He'd given me the shirt years ago, and it still smelled like him, comfortingly warm. My surrogate father, his suit now wrinkled and his tie hanging out of his pocket, pulled me up, letting me rest a hand on the back of a chair as he unzipped the back of my dress. He yanked it down just hard enough to get it to slip off but not hard enough to wrinkle the material and started working the T-shirt onto me over my strapless bra. He then guided each foot into a pants' leg and gently pulled up the flannels, even tying them at my belly button. I watched him all the while, squinting, my mind alternating between moving at snail-speed and whipping about like my brain was in a blender. My knees buckled and I almost fell but he picked me up, cradling me to his chest and carrying me into my bedroom, where he'd already pulled down the covers for me. He tucked me in, kissing my forehead and saying something I couldn't hear, and turned the light off, leaving the door open a crack so that a sliver of light came in and rested on my pillow next to my head. "Ooooh," I whimpered as I tried to go back to sleep. My head hurt too much to be awake . . . I tried to fall back to sleep but my pulse inside my cranium was too loud. I buried myself further under the covers, halfway between the foot of the bed and the head, willing the pain to go away, but it didn't. Giving up, I slithered out from under the covers and rubbed my eyes, swaying a bit as I stood up and made my slow way to the bedroom door. "Good morning - er, evening - sunshine," Logan said, looking up from the television. He was sprawled on the sofa, feet propped on the coffee table, remote in one hand, beer in the other, five o'clock news on the TV. I squinted at him and shuffled right on past, heading to the kitchen, where I collapsed at the table. Logan, who had gotten up and followed me, poured a cup of coffee from the machine and plunked the mug in front of me, sliding into the opposite chair. "It's been kept warm since six this morning, so it should be plenty nasty enough to wake you up." I took a careful sip. It was thicker than normal, more obscene to my tastebuds, and definitely nasty, as he had said. I drank some more. "Damia, darlin', this is called a hangover. Not nice are they?" he asked gently. I shook my head, seeing through my squinched up eyes that he was smiling. "Just remember this delightful experience before you get hammered again, okay?" I dutifully nodded, put a hand up to rub my eyes and in a daze of faulty motor skills I cut my cheek and blood started dripping down my face. "Aw, shit," Logan said, instantly concerned, leaping up and getting a paper towel as I stared at the crimson on my fingertips and groaned, a tendril of pain starting to work its way to my brain. Logan folded the towel and pressed it against my face, putting my hand up to hold it there and then taking his seat again, this time with a cup of the nasty coffee himself. I don't know what happened, but my eyes just started welling up with tears and my lower lip started quivering. "I feel like crap!" I wailed, my head pounding and the tears spilling over. "And my head hurts and my nose is stuffy and I cut myself . . ." I sniffed violently. "Are you going to stay here until Lacey and Craig get back?" "Don't have to. Yer old enough to take care of yourself for two weeks. I'll stay here until you feel better, though." Sniff. "Thank you," I mumbled, taking the towel away from my cheek, which was beginning to clot, and wiping my tears away with it. I don't know what had started the sudden starting of the water works, but I forced myself to stop because it made my head hurt even more. Hiccups replaced the tears as I sipped at my mug. "What were you thinking yesterday?" Logan sighed. "Whaddaya mean?" He chuckled softly, tilting back the rest of his drink. "You were tired and drunk, I guess that excuses some of it." "What? Excuses what?" I remembered drinking a lot of champagne and making Mike laugh, but that was about it. "You flirtin' with old Pete like that. Kitty would've locked you up in a closet if she'd been there. Well . . . no, I take that back. She'd laugh her head off. She's a sweet girl." "Me?! Flirt with Wisdom?!" I felt my face burning because although I couldn't remember the entire night, I was certain I had waved all my feathers at my boss. At my significantly older boss. "I would never flirt with Wisdom!" I cried shrilly and my hiccups disappeared. "Darlin', you were flirtin' in a way that I thought never possible from an eighteen year old virgin. Don't know where you learned that stuff . . . although I guess you picked it up table dancing in Russian church basements." He snorted with laughter, a loud, honking sound. "I told you about that?" I gasped. Things were getting worse and worse. "Hon, you told everyone within earshot about that." I felt the incredible urge to dig a hole in the ground, climb in, and pull the dirt down over me. Logan wouldn't take his eyes off me, and he had this annoyingly amused grin on his face. Then, like butter left in the microwave too long, his face melted into a look of gentle compassion and comfort. "Tell me straight, Damia," he said softly. "Do you find Wisdom attractive?" Mortified beyond comparison and feeling obligated to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I blurted out, "He's funny in a weird way and he's smart and he's powerful and he's cute - er, handsome." My face was on fire. Logan nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, thought so. That's why Kitty was drawn to him. I'd taught her a helluva lot, and then she went to Muir, and Pete showed up. He just didn't fall into the same mold as everyone else did. Still doesn't." He fished a cigar out of a pocket, along with a matchbook, and went to a kitchen window that opened to look over the street. Opening it wide, he leaned against the wall casually as he lit the cigar in sure, practiced moves. "He swore, he drank, he smoked, he was loud-mouthed and had worked for the government. He was sarcasm personified - still is, the bastard - and wore the same outfit every day. He didn't brood an awful lot, just accepted his choices and moved on. Kitty was looking for something a bit more alive than her old tin man Rasputin. She was only a tiny bit older than you when she and Wisdom got involved. But he was younger too - still noticeably older than her, but younger." He exhaled his smoke out the window so that Lacey wouldn't return to a tobacco-smelling apartment. "Women either love him or hate him. Most men just hate him." I felt the flush of my face recede as I listened, curious despite the ripping headache and pool of rancid coffee in my stomach. I didn't know much about Kitty and Wisdom, only that they had met years and years ago when both were with Excalibur. Pete had left, but after years they found each other again and have been together since. Wisdom would occasionally grumble about Kitty "nagging about marriage again. Why ruin something that's fine as it is?" He might as well be married, I told myself moodily. He could not possibly be any more inaccessible. "What did Wisdom do?" I asked. "You said 'his choices.' Everyone seems to know what he's done except me." "You should ask him yourself," Logan answered. "He won't answer me. He doesn't take me seriously." "He took you very seriously last night for a psych case." He grinned around the cigar clamped in his teeth. "Right. 'Course. Why not? I was flirting with him and drunk and tired. Shall I call them myself?" I asked, peeved at the way my stupidity last night kept popping up as a conversational topic. He shrugged, blowing rings of smoke out the window, and I peered at the bottom of my empty mug. Sliding my chair back from the table, I left the mug in the sink on my way out of the room. "I'm going to check my e-mail," I said to Logan over my shoulder. "Anything more strenuous than that and I think I'd ralph all over the floor." My computer, a little outdated but still functionable, sat in one corner of my bedroom. I booted it up and only briefly considered changing out of my nightclothes, but dismissed the though as laughable. Hell, I was going back to bed soon anyway. There was no way I'd make it through the night without climbing back between the covers. Logging onto AOL under my favorite screen name, NightBlade(I only had five screen names to choose from), I sifted through e-mails and found a couple of funny jokes and a lot of porn advertisements. I hated those damn things and deleted them, cursing the sick twisted minds that always seem to find my e-mail address. An e-mail from Mikey made me laugh aloud, and a download from Wisdom revealed the full reports of the last project he had me doing for him. I saved them to a disk, filing them away. A little chime sounded from the computer as Whit logged on, his name appearing on my buddy list. Immediately he sent and Instant Message to me. HijodeGato: Como estas, Mia? NightBlade: My first hangover. Um . . . yo estoy muy mal. (?) HijodeGato: And even through a hangover you remembered some Spanish - very impressive. And yeah, you conjugated it right. NightBlade: Couldn't be sure. What's up? HijodeGato: Not too much today. Had to hand in a major thesis on transcendentalism. Buncha BS, but I think I did well. NightBlade: Working tonight? HijodeGato: At the ER? No. Worked yesterday afternoon. I was supposed to work this morning, but I canceled. NightBlade: Canceled?! You never cancel. What happened? HijodeGato: I don't want to see someone. I mean, I do, but I don't. Make any sense? NightBlade: Completely. I'm not especially enthusiastic about going back to work tomorrow, either. HijodeGato: What's it with you? NightBlade: Same thing as you. NightBlade: Wisdom. HijodeGato: How was the wedding? NightBlade: Wedding was great. Reception was great until today. HijodeGato: ? NightBlade: I was tired and drunk and told/did some things I shouldn't've. HijodeGato: And Wisdom is somehow involved. NightBlade: I told him about the run in Russia and flirted with him. Big time. HijodeGato: Intentionally? NightBlade: Not really. *sheepish grin* HijodeGato: Spill your guts! NightBlade: You spill first. :c) HijodeGato: There was a patient there, she was gorgeous, like nothing I'd ever seen, and I don't know why I was flipping over her, but she's a nun. I feel like a fool but she was a total angela, like something out of a really nice illustrated Bible. NightBlade: You knew she was a nun? HijodeGato: 'Course not. I'm not that crazy. NightBlade: Just making sure NightBlade: You know Wisdom well, don't you? HijodeGato: Not at all. Every once in a while he showed up, and there were more rumors than facts about him. I hadn't heard anything about him for about five years until you took me to the CH. NightBlade: Logan was just telling me about him. Sorta. I still don't know anything about him. HijodeGato: You want to know more? Go talk to Xavier some time. He might tell you something, but don't count on it. Why do you want to know more? NightBlade: Logan said to ask Wisdom himself . . . NightBlade: I think I like him. No, I do. YOUR LIPS ARE SEALED. HijodeGato: !!!! :cO NightBlade: I mean, I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it. I feel like a fool. It's like when I had a crush on my dentist when I was younger. HijodeGato: Our relationships need us to dial 911 for some serious help. We suck. NightBlade: We're losers. Totally. This is so un-phat. I was tearin' it up too, last night, having a riot, and now I feel like such a kak. HijodeGato: Kak? NightBlade: Kak. Don't ask. HijodeGato: Trust me, I won't. NightBlade: There's a cute guy at the Mansion, though, who has offered to take me out some time; name's Matt. I might need to take him up on the offer to forget about this fiasco. But anyway . . . how are things going, though? Asides from the whole thing about the other girl. HijodeGato: I don't know. I spent last night skulking around the apartment. Definitely count on me being there by mid-summer. NightBlade: For real? I knew you were considering, but I didn't know you'd made a decision. When did this happen? HijodeGato: Last night. I just did a lot of thinking and made some decisions. I know - "What does Isa think?" - haven't told her. I think she knows, though. She seems to know things before I do. I have a hunch that she's known for a while. NightBlade: I'm glad you decided to come up - I need someone to smack me over the head if I even think about Wisdom again. But it's too bad you'll have to leave NM. I think it's where you belong. Seriously. You grew up here and everything, but you just fall into place down there. HijodeGato: Yeah. Well. If you want something to fill your time, start perusing the apartment ads. Ask Logan - I bet he knows of a couple of places. He knows everything, I swear. NightBlade: Sure thing. The old geezer's here right now. I'll ask him to make a list; maybe it'll keep him off my back long enough for me to get some more sleep. HijodeGato: Sounds good to me - hey, I've got to run. I think you need some sleep too, so I'm outta here. NightBlade: I'll be on tomorrow evening, when I get up. Talk to you then? HijodeGato: I'll clear my calendar. ;c) See you then - behave! NightBlade: *grumble* Everyone says that. ttyl! Bye! HijodeGato: Hasta luego, hermana. (Whit) I logged off and sighed, contented for the first time since yesterday - before I went to work. At least I hadn't fallen into an infatuation with my boss - that'd be like falling in love with Rosita. I laughed aloud. The thought was too funny for words, and at this point I was easily amused. My apartment buzzer sounded and I pushed myself up from the computer desk, wondering who would be here. Isa usually came in with a key, and I no one else ever really stopped by. Deevers, a friend of mine who I studied with, usually phoned before he came over. Opening the door, I found the hallway empty and a brown cardboard box waiting for me. I heard an elevator bing open down around the curve in the hallway, and I assumed that whoever was leaving had left the box for me. Someone who knew the doorman, if they had gotten in without buzzing up. If I had been a nine-year old back at the Mansion, I would never have picked up a box. I had assumed everything was a bomb back then. But now I figured hell, if someone wanted to kill me, they'd get me somehow, it didn't matter. I picked it up and opened it on my kitchen counter. I felt my face crumple as I found the note on top, written in Isa's precise, back-slanted handwriting. "You would've been over for these soon, so here they are. I'm not going to be meeting you for dinner tomorrow. We may never be friends, but you still have a special place in my life." She hadn't signed it, of course. She never signed anything, not even Christmas cards. I rummaged through the items in the box, finding extra keys to my apartment and car, compact disks I had left in her car, a pair of junky sneakers I kept in the bottom of her tack trunk at the barn, a wrapped present she must've gotten for my birthday, only two weeks away. I opened it and wanted to flush myself down the toilet when I found a photo album filled with pictures, receipts, and tickets from over the past two years. I packed everything back into the box and stuffed it into the cabinet under my sink. I didn't want to mess with it now. Not that I would put it off for long; I'd already put it off for long enough. It was time to stop procrastinating. I'd start tomorrow. "Hey Now!" by Oasis lyrics written by Noel Gallagher I hitched a ride with my soul By the side of the road Just as the sky turned black I took a walk with my fame Down memory lane I never did find my way back You know that I gotta say time's slipping away What will it hold for me What am I gonna do while I'm looking at you You're standing ignoring me I thought that I heard someone say now There's no time for running away now Hey now! Hey now! Feel no shame - cos time's no chain Feel no shame The first thing I saw When I walked through the door Was a sign on the wall that read You might never know That I want you to know What's written inside of your head And time as it stands Won't be held in my hands Or living inside of my skin And as it fell from the sky I asked myself why Can I never let anyone in? Escribir es alegria.