Looking for You (Logan x MC)

Author’s Note: @brightpinkpeppercorn sweetly loaned me the setting and concept from His Car, a gorgeous story that haunted me for days.

Eleanor

The autumn leaves glow red in the setting sun as Eleanor makes here way back to her dorm. Midterms at Langston are notoriously hard, and after seven hours at the library she still feels unprepared for anything but sleep. But as daylight fades, her tired eyes light on a familiar car parked halfway up her block. She’d know its make and model anywhere — a 2005 Devore GT.

It can’t be his. But her heart pounds and she lets her backpack slip to the sidewalk as she starts towards the sports car. As she draws nearer, the light from a street lamp gleams off the paint, and she exhales the breath she didn’t know she was holding. Solid black. It isn’t Logan’s car. He isn’t here.

And yet he is here, at the edge of her thoughts every moment she’s awake. She’s burned him into her memory and now she sees him everywhere — a flash of yellow on the highway, a familiar brown jacket moving in a crowd. At night, if she lets herself, she can almost feel his warm breath on her neck, his calloused hands slipping under her shirt. And when she comes apart alone in the dark, his name is on her lips.

Even his Devore haunts her dreams. Maybe that’s why she slowly circles the stranger’s car, hand pressed to her mouth as she mentally catalogues the differences. The license plate, that’s wrong. He wouldn’t be in New York. And the exhaust, that looks like a factory part. She shakes her head, trying to clear him from her mind, and makes a move towards her fallen backpack.

But — god — she can almost feel him nearby.

She moves back to the car, running her hands over the hood. It’s familiar, so familiar. It isn’t his. It can’t be his. And yet…

Suddenly her fingers are no longer drifting idly across the paint; they’re feeling desperately in the dark for something above the front tire.

Logan

He only does this when the distance between them physically hurts. He knows it’s stupid, knows he’s risking arrest for a glimpse of her. But when he can’t take the ache in his chest for another goddamn minute, he makes the four-hour drive to Langston.

He’s careful. He’s repainted his car, removed the custom modifications described on nearly a dozen arrest warrants. He dresses to blend in with Langston’s old-money students, careful not to draw attention. And he doesn’t stay long, allowing himself just fifteen minutes on campus.

He doesn’t know where Eleanor’s dorm or her classes are but he’s doesn’t have to — he knows exactly where she’ll be. And sure enough, the former valedictorian is sitting in Langston Library, her knees tucked to her chest as she scrolls through an online database.

Every hard edge in his body softens when he sees her; the best and brightest part of his world. Memories wash over him and he can almost smell the salt along the Californian coast. His eyes move over her desperately, trying to memorize every detail: the way she bites her pen, the impatient tap of her index finger as the next paper loads.

She stands, and for a moment he imagines slipping his arms around her waist and kissing the soft skin behind her ear. He moves to follow her into the stacks, then forces himself to walk towards the exit instead.

His fingers drift across the pages of her abandoned textbook as he passes, unable to resist touching something she had touched. “It’s enough,” he tells himself. For a moment he almost believes it, and a shadow of a smile flickers across his face.

He grabs coffee at the student union and then makes his way towards his Devore. He’s nearly stepped out of the shadows when he sees her, lit softly by the streetlight as her fingers move across the body of his car. It’s like he’s forgotten how to breathe. Some small selfish part of him wants her to see through the new paint and parts, to recognize a piece of him in it. Then he remembers what a life with him would cost her, and he wills her to walk away, back to the safety of her dorm room.

For a moment he thinks it has worked as she reaches for her backpack. Then her eyes move to the surrounding darkness, as though she can sense him standing just out of sight. A pause. Then she runs a tentative hand down the side of his Devore. And time stops, everything stops, because Logan knows exactly what she’s looking for: a two inch scratch along the front fender.

He remembers the day it happened, the way her hand trembled as she held out his car keys. “I — I scratched your car,” she’d whispered. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice was shaking, and he’d nearly laughed; the idea that he could be angry at her for anything so foreign to him. Her eyes filled with tears, and he’d pulled her quickly into his arms.

“It’s just a car, Ellie,” he’d murmured into her hair.

“You can fix it?”

“And lose the only proof I have you’re not perfect? Not going to happen,” he’d teased. But that wasn’t why he’d kept it. He loved having a piece of her etched into the one permanent possession he had. Maybe that’s why, even as he stripped away everything that made his car distinct, he’d left that mark untouched.

Now her fingers find its rough lines, and he hears her sharp intake of breath. A look of exquisite pain — then  hope — flits across her face.

“Logan?”

It’s a whisper, so quiet he can barely hear it above the rustling of the leaves. He knows he should step further into the shadows, knows he should wait for her to turn away. He knows he should let her convince herself this is all some terrible coincidence. Instead, he steps out into the light.

“Hey, Troublemaker.”