Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to anything X-Men or Marvel related, nor do I own the rights to the matchbox 20 song 'Unwell', but I'm ripping them both off and using them for my own amusment and hopefully yours as well. So, please review, I don't care what it's for, I just want to know what everyone thinks. If you don't like something, tell me so that I can change it next time and perhaps better my writing.Now on with the show!
Unwell
"Here, I found this in my room," Logan said to me, lying a cross necklace that I had lost the week before on the table in the library, where I was sitting.
I turned to look up at him and smiled. "Thank you, I've been going crazy looking for it," I said, picking it up and slipping it on over my head, around my neck.
I'm Layla Jameson, twenty-four years old and I live at Professor Xavier's school for the gifted, where I was working as a Registered Nurse under the training of Dr. Jean Grey. I had been a student there and when Dr. Grey heard that I was going to school to become a nurse, she invited me to work with her. Although I was living in the south in Tennessee at the time, I thought it would be a good idea and opportunity because I knew that I could train well under her. So, I packed up and once again, moved up north to Westchester County, New York. When I had lived there before, I was young, arriving when I was fourteen and right after I turned eighteen, I went back home so that I could go to college. Once I was through with my classes, I moved. Shortly after I moved back, I met Logan, whom I hated to begin with, but after a few weeks, I gave in and found out that he wasn't as bad as he seemed.
"Listen, Jean knows a really good doctor in New York City that wants to help you," he said, sitting down beside me.
"I'm sick of doctors Logan, they can't do anymore for me than what's already been done, and all they'll want to do is put me on more medication. I just want to go on with how things are now, I feel good on most days and I don't want anymore medicine because if it starts interfering with what I'm taking right now, it's just going to take longer to figure out the proper dosages for me again. I know you mean well, but this is it; I'm not going to get any better than what I am so you have to decided whether you want this or not," I said and every voice in my head screamed at me. They said that I was stupid, ugly and not worth wasting my own breath on, so why would he choose me? They were all loud and yelling different things at once, so while he spoke I had to concentrate extremely hard on what he was saying, paying close attention to his mouth so that I could make out the words. As I waited to hear what his answer was going to be, I couldn't help but think of how much easier it had been eight months before when neither of us knew just how sick I was.
"Don't get up; you don't deserve to even move. Stay right where you're at and no one will ever miss you," a foggy voice resounded in my mind as I woke from a fitful nights sleep.
I grunted. "Shut up," I said aloud sleepily.
There had been a small voice in my head that had grown over the course of the two months that I had been at school, to a mind filling sound, usually telling me that I shouldn't get up from my bed in the morning. That's when it was the loudest; as I was slipping from my sleeping subconscious to a fully woken state, he attacked me. I say 'he' because the voice was that of a male's. He would tell me that I wasn't worth living, that no one loved me or cared whether I lived or died. There was a time when I nearly started believing him, but then there was Logan. I had started seeing him nearly a month before and although the voice in my head told me that he didn't care about me and was only using me, parts of me knew that it wasn't true. Therefore, every morning when he told me that no one would even miss me if I stayed in bed and died in my room, I would remind him of Logan, which was enough to get me up and to breakfast.
"Good morning Layla," Scott said, smiling as he passed me in the hall.
"Good morning Scott," I replied.
He stopped and turned around to look at me. "It's nice to hear that you've finally started calling me Scott instead of Mr. Summers,"
"Well, I figure that since I'm working with your wife now we can be a little bit more casual with on another. Also, it's really hard to get out of the habit of calling you by a name that I called you for nearly ten years."
He smiled at me. "Are you going down to breakfast?"
"Yeah,"
"Care you walk with me?"
I smiled back at him. "Sure," I said, joining him where he was standing and then walking with him down the hall.
"So, a little birdy told me that you and Logan are going out," he said to me with a sly smirk.
I let out a laugh. "A little birdy, yeah, I work every day with your psychic wife, but I'm sure that doesn't have anything to do with it, does it?"
"My wife would never read your mind and then tell me what she saw, or heard," he smiled.
I smiled back and shook my head. "I know that, I told her about it,"
"You told her but you didn't tell me? I thought I was your favorite teacher?"
"Well I thought that you told me that we would just glaze over the whole teacher-student thing while I was here?"
"That's true but that's even more reason for you to tell me; I can't get you in trouble for it now,"
"You never got me in trouble before,"
"You were a good student,"
"Thank you,"
"But I was your favorite teacher though, right?"
I let out another laugh. "Absolutely, you were fantastic…you still are, actually,"
"He doesn't really think you were a good student, he thinks you're stupid, which you are," I heard a male's voice say to me.
"Excuse me?" I asked offended as I turned around to face the man who, apparently, thought that I was stupid. However, I didn't see anyone. I looked all around before realizing that Scott and I were the only two in the hallway.
"Who are you talking to?" Scott asked me.
"He thinks you're crazy; you're talking to people who aren't there," the voice said to me in my head. He was new, I had never heard him before and I felt completely stupid and embarrassed to have answered a voice that only I could hear.
"Sorry, I thought I heard someone behind us, I guess I was just hearing things," I blushed apologetically.
"That's what you get when living in a house with underage telepaths; they think it's fun to get inside your head,"
I forced a smile and tucked my curly brown hair behind my ears. "Rotten kids, I was never that bad, was I?"
"No, you were unusually good, which makes me think now that you were actually up to something the whole time you were here," I smiled for real that time and we continue our walk.
Although to begin with, I myself had actually thought that one of the students was messing with me and projecting thoughts into my mind. However, after enough time, I realized that it was my own mind doing it to me rather than a bored teenager. I didn't tell anyone because at that point, it wasn't enough to interrupt my life; it was merely an annoyance. That and I didn't want to embarrass myself by bringing up that I heard voices in my head. People hear things all the time, they have negative inner voices, I just rationalized that mine was male because I felt as though I didn't get enough attention from my father growing up as he was usually away on business trips. That day was the first time I had heard more than one voice, though and I began to worry slightly if perhaps it was more than just a negative inner voice. However, it was breakfast time and I had to shake it off or otherwise I was afraid everyone would think that I was going crazy, which, although I had assumed would happen one day when I was younger, I was fairly certain that wasn't the case at that time.
I was sitting at the staff table, in between Scott and Logan, eating a bowl of cereal, when someone came up behind me and smacked me on the back of the head. Choking, I turned to see Bobby Drake laughing.
"Bobby!" Rogue warned as he sat down beside her and across from me on the other side of the table.
"Just because you hit a growth spurt and became taller than me while I was gone, doesn't mean that I'm not still older than you," I said to him with a smirk. I was two years older than Bobby was and had gone to school with him for a couple of years before I graduated and went back home. His friend John had had a crush on my when I, quite frankly, really couldn't stand him. He was cocky, immature and down right irritating. He always sent Bobby to talk to me to see if I liked him too. I always replied with a big, resounding 'no'. However, through it all, Bobby and I sort of became friends. The two of us would usually end up playing a game of basketball as he tried to talk me into going out with John, where I would, for the most part, win. "And besides, you're sill not that much taller than me,"
"Can my husband act like an adult for just one day, or is that too much to ask? What are you gonna' do when our baby's born, you can't teach it that they can go around hittin' people in the back of the head just 'cause they think it's funny,"
"I'm sorry Marie, I won't do it anymore," Bobby apologized.
"Don't apologize to me, apologize to Layla, she's the one you hit,"
I had only met Rogue for the first time when I moved in, but she seemed nice enough. However, in the two months that I had been there, her pregnancy hormones had kicked in and she seemed to be a little more irritated by things, usually little things and mostly done by Bobby or Logan. I knew that everyone else was relieved by it because, honestly, it took the heat off the rest of us.
"I'm sorry Layla, I won't hit you anymore," Bobby said quietly.
I smiled at him. "It's find, don't worry about it," I said, taking a sip of my orange juice.
"Good, so when are you and Logan getting married?" he asked.
"I beg your pardon?" I asked, choking on my drink.
"Bobby!" Rogue said once again in a hushed hiss.
"What?" he asked, looking around the table and smiling sheepishly at a growling Logan. "Does everyone not know they're going out?"
After recovering from my choking, I laughed and shook my head while Logan continued to let out a small growl under his breath. "It's fine, no we hadn't told anyone yet, but we figured that everyone would know by now,"
"I thought you said you told Jean?" Scott said.
"This is why I don't tell you stuff; can you just keep quiet, Scott?" I asked, turning to him.
"You told Jean and Scooter?" Logan asked me.
"No, I told Jean and she told Scooter, I mean Scott," I said, getting confused.
"Scott, you told her that I told you?" Jean asked, sounding upset.
"No, not exactly, I just told her that someone told me that they were going out, she was the one who mentioned that she told you, not me," he defended.
"Oh, that's real mature, blame me," I said, rolling my eyes. "All right, yes, Logan and I are…going out, or whatever, is that okay with everyone or do any of you have a problem with that?" I asked, surveying the table. "No? All right then, no more funny looks toward us while we're together now, we both know exactly why you snicker and wink at us. We may not be so great at keeping a relationship secret, but ya'll are shoddy at pretending you don't know what's going on,"
"Well, as much as I'm enjoying this delightful conversation, I must go and prepare for classes now," Professor Xavier said sarcastically, wheeling away from the table and giving me a wink as he passed by.
After breakfast, everyone headed to their jobs respectively. However, Logan stopped me in the hall as I was following Jean into the infirmary.
"Can we talk for a second?" he asked.
"He wants to break up with you," the new voice in my head said at the same time.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" I asked. As they had both been speaking at the same time, all I heard was 'can we break up with you for a second?' and I wasn't sure which had been the one to mention breaking up.
"I said can we talk for a second?" he repeated.
"Oh, yeah," I said and turned to Jean.
"Take your time," she smiled kindly, continuing down the hall.
He waited until he knew that she was out of earshot before he spoke again. "I thought we weren't gonna' say anything for a while?" he asked.
"Come on, do you honestly think she didn't already know before I told her? Even Bobby knew what was going on with us and he's not a psychic. Besides, I needed someone to talk to about it. Are you mad at me?"
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "I'm thinkin' about it," he joked sarcastically with a small smirk.
"Well keep right on thinking about it, I have to get to work and so do you. You can tell me if you're mad or not at lunch," I smiled back.
"All right, come here," he said, pulling me to him and giving me a small, sweet kiss.
"Be good, don't work the kids too hard," I said.
"I'll try," he murmured against my lips, nuzzling his nose with mine. "Don't give any of the sick kids the wrong medicine; Chuck might have to fire you if you kill any of the students,"
"Shut up, I'm not going to kill any of the kids, you are such a jerk," I laughed.
He gave me another kiss. "I may be but that doesn't stop you from wantin' me," he smirked.
"You not only just proved my point but I now know that you're extremely conceded as well. Thank you for that,"
"Just admit it, you want me,"
"I have a job Logan, I don't have time to stand out here, boosting your ego anymore than it already is," I said with a smile, pulling away from him and turning to go down the hall. "Oh, and Logan?"
"Yeah?"
"I like you,"
He smiled at me and shook his head. "What?"
"I really like you," I smiled and he looked at my confused. "It's not a trick or a test or anything; I just wanted to let you know that I like you,"
He blinked at me and nodded his head. "You too, darlin',"
"He's lying," the old voice in my head told me, which made me wonder if maybe, for once, he was right.
"I'll see you at lunch," I said, fighting the new doubt that was swelling inside of me.
He must have known something was wrong, because he turned back around to look at me. "Are you alright?" he asked.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied. "You better get to work or you might be the one who gets fired,"
"All right, see you later," he said, then turned back around and walked down the hall. I stood and watched him until he turned the corner and I could no longer see him.
Work was hard for me; it was difficult for me to concentrate on everything that Jean was saying because the new voice in my head seemed to want to talk more than the other one did, in addition, causing the other one to talk more as well. They would speak loudly and they sounded as though they weren't in my head, but as if they were talking right to me, like Jean, and so when they would all three talk together, I had a hard time understanding who was saying what. Then when a student would show up, I felt as though there was total chaos going on around me. Dr. Grey must have known I was having a hard time, because when it came time to break for lunch, she told me that I could have the rest of the day off. I decided to take her up on the offer and once lunch was over with, I followed Logan to his classroom to wait for his next class to start.
"Why do you have so many of those?" he asked me, pointing to the cross necklace that I was wearing and absentmindedly playing with.
I looked down at it. "Don't tell him, you'll only make a fool of yourself and look stupid. He doesn't really care about why, he only asked because it annoys him," one of the voices told me.
"No special reason, I just like them. Why, does it bother you?"
"Would you can if it did?" he smirked.
"Not really, no," I said with a real smile. "But do they?"
"Why would it bother me?"
I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know, I just thought it might," I said as the door to his classroom swung open and the first handful of students walked in. I hopped off his desk, on which I had been sitting on the edge. "I'll see you when classes let out, yeah?" I asked.
"Yeah, bye," he said to me as I turned to leave the room.
I smiled politely and said 'hi' to a few of the students in passing before making my way out into the hall. I was walking for a few minutes before I stopped. Everyone was in class except for me and it was quiet. I closed my eyes and relished in the feeling of silence. There were no teenagers laughing and talking, no teachers calling after students to slow down, no loud voices in my head. There was only silence and it felt nice. I hadn't been in complete quiet for months, but right then, I took in a deep breath and it felt good.
"You could have peace and quiet if you were dead. It would be easy, just take a knife from the kitchen drawer and slit your wrist. You could do it and no one would care, not even Logan, because all he's doing is making you look like an idiot. He doesn't care about you, he's just leading you on, it's just a joke to him," the new voice said to me.
"Just shut up; Logan is not leading my on as a joke and I most certainly am not going to slit my wrists, so just stop it and shut up," I whispered aloud, my moment of peace ruined.
Upset, I went to my room. I wanted to take a nap and meant only to sleep a few hours, but instead slept right through dinner. I woke up at nearly ten o'clock that night, the dream that had been chasing me in my ever-elusive sleep, finally catching up with me. I thought about crying, but then realized that I was too tired to even do that, not only physically, but emotionally as well. Things hadn't exactly been going so swimmingly with my family over the past seven months, which seemed to just keep getting worse by the day. Although being away from home helped some, there were a lot of things we hadn't worked through, which seemed to be a good idea at the time, but after thinking about it, perhaps things aren't better left unsaid. However, I wasn't too terribly eager to exactly sit down with my family and talk it all through. And so I did what I always did; ran from it all.
I stood up from my bed and decided to change from my scrubs into a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. After that, I made my way from my room, up the hall and paused just outside of Logan's door. Even though it made me feel better, took my mind off of things, just to spend time with him, I didn't want to make him feel as if he had to listen to and solve all of my problems. But I felt an overwhelming need to see him and to speak to him, so I didn't pause long before lightly knocking on his door. There was a moment or two before I heard his heavy footsteps fall behind the door and then it opened.
"Hey," he said, giving me a slight smile.
"Hey, are you busy or anything?"
"No, I just got out of the shower, I was gonna' watch some TV before goin' to bed. You wanna' come in?"
I argued quietly inside myself with the voices about whether he really wanted me to come in or if he was only saying it so as to be nice to me. I reminded them that Logan never did anything just to be nice to anyone, especially if he didn't want to and it was an inconvenience to him. That made them shut up.
"Yeah," I said with a smile, walking past him and into his room.
"You didn't come to dinner," he said, closing the door and walking over to his bed where I had just sat down.
"I know, I took a nap an accidentally slept through it. Then I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep,"
"So you only come to me when you can't sleep?" he joked, making me smile. "I thought maybe that you thought I was mad at you for tellin' Jean about us,"
"No, I know you're not mad at me, but I woke up and wanted to see you," I said as he sat down beside me.
"Did you have another dream?" he asked, pushing the hair from my face. I nodded my head. "Why won't you tell me what they're about?"
I smiled weakly. "I don't know how to talk about it right now, you know what I mean? I don't know how to put it into words because it's something besides just a bad dream. I just don't feel safe enough to talk about it,"
"You don't feel safe with me?" he asked.
I looked up into his eyes. Bad choice of words. "No, that's not how I mean it," I spit out defensively.
He ran his hand back through his hair and eyed me for a moment. "How did you mean it?"
"That's exactly what you meant,"
"You don't trust him, or he doesn't trust you?" The voices inside me head were speaking at the same time, both speaking over Logan to the point that I couldn't understand what he was saying.
I shook my head. I hated to ask him to repeat himself, but I knew that with the potential of our conversation taking a considerably more serious tone, it left me no room to assume what he had said. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I asked how you meant it,"
I took a deep breath. "I mean that I don't feel safe with the situation that's caused the dreams enough to actually talk about it right now, not with anyone. I promise you that when I can, I'll tell you,"
"I just don't want to watch you go through the same thing I do every night,"
"What would everyone say if they knew how sweet you were to me?" I smiled at him.
"Why don't we just keep it between us?" he asked, leaning in to give me a kiss.
"Well, you know how bad I am at keeping secrets, so I don't know how well that'll work out," I said with a laugh.
He scrunched his forehead and raised an eyebrow as he gave me a small smirk. "That's true darlin'," he said, giving me a light kiss, drops of water from his wet hair dropping onto my face.
"Oush," I said, pulling back. He wiped them away and then kept his hand against my face, twinning his fingers in my hair. "Thank you,"
"Are you goin' home next week?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "My parents called and asked me if I wanted to come down for the weekend, but I told them that I was going to stay up here. Thanksgiving with my family has never exactly been the most fun for me,"
"Why?"
"Because…my profession isn't really something my family agrees on with me. Everyone thinks that I should have done something better with my life,"
He blinked and looked at me confusingly. "Like what?"
"I don't know, owned my own business, become a lawyer or an actual doctor even, anything besides a nurse, really. They feel the need to ask how much I make in a year and then put me down because I don't make as much money as everything else in my family. They don't get that I actual enjoy doing what I do," I said with a sigh. "I don't know, I've always preferred spending the holidays here over spending them at home and since my brother died everything's just been…harder than usual,"
"Then stay here with me," he said. I looked up at him. "I want you to,"
"You would have liked my brother; I know he would have liked you. You both had the same sense of humor; dry and sarcastic. He always knew how to make me laugh, same as you,"
He pulled me to him and leaned back against his headboard. "How much older than you was he?"
I laid my head on his chest and curled up close to him. "Just over a year, thirteen months and a day, actually,"
"Were you close?" he asked, playing with a piece of my hair, winding it around his finger.
"Yeah, he was the only one in my family who actually got me. He wanted me to do what made me happy and was so excited for me when I started classes to become a nurse. When we were teenagers, we would discus everything with each other, movies, music, politics, our futures, absolutely everything. Then I moved here and didn't get to see him very much, except for the summer. When I was off from school, we never stayed at home. He got a job early on and he would take me to baseball games, the movies, concerts, where ever I wanted to go. Then when I graduated here, he had already gone to college further down south. A year after that, I started to school closer to home. He got a girlfriend and then they got married so they lived down there. After that, he would usually only come up during the holidays. He had come up for an early visit home when he died,"
There was a silence from him and I could tell that he was debating over something.
"He didn't want to hear about all of that, he doesn't really care. Why don't you just shut up and leave? He already thinks you're stupid, don't make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have," a voice in my head said to me.
"What happened to him?" Logan finally asked, obviously deciding that it was a safe enough question.
"He had an undiagnosed Appendicitis, they just thought that it was a virus and sent him back home," I recited, the words coming out with a sound of being rehearsed. To a degree, I suppose that they were. I had gone over the words in my head time after time, wanting to make sure that when someone asked, I could answer straight away, without having to think about it and get emotional.
"I'm sorry,"
"Me too," I said, pulling away slightly. "I better go back to bed or I won't be able to work tomorrow,"
He pulled me back to him. "Why don't you just stay here with me?" he asked.
I took in a nervous breath. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, I won't let you have anymore bad dreams," he told me.
I was sold. No matter what the voices in my head, or anyone that I knew, told me, I knew that Logan was good for me, he had helped me to heal and at that time, he was the best thing in my life.