*****
"Logan, got a minute?"
"For you, Red, anytime," he answered in the Wolverine version of cheerful — meaning, not actively snarling. Pulling the door further open, he stepped back and let her into his room.
She signaled to him to close the door behind him, and he complied. Leaning back against the wood, he gave her a wicked grin and said, "Alone in my room with me. Don't tell me you finally came to your senses about Cyke?"
Watching and listening with new suspicions, Jean was dismayed to note the absence of genuine lechery in the smile, the habitual nature of the comment. Pausing to look around his room, she spotted something alarming. Walking to the dresser with sharp, nervous strides, she lifted the bit of lavender fabric contrasting oddly with the more masculine odds and ends. "What...?" she asked, not daring to phrase the question more precisely.
"Rogue's. Left it here the other day." He followed the forgotten scarf with his eyes, silently begging to Jean to put it down and leave it, rather than walking off with it or insisting on returning it on her way out. Marie's scent hadn't quite been rubbed out of it yet, despite his having slept with it on his pillow for the past several nights...
With an effort, Jean forced herself to put it down. "I, ah... I just heard something... interesting... from Remy."
Logan went from merely unmoving to utterly still. Jean had the horrible suspicion that he realized what she was about to say.
"He, ah, well, he claimed that... that you... ah, were having a problem with him because you, ah... found him... attractive."
Logan closed his eyes and sighed. Jean felt a dismayed sinking in her midsection, and feared she knew what his next words would be.
She was wrong.
"Have you ever found yourself so mad at someone that you had to either fuck them or kill them?"
Blink. "What?" Blink.
He opened his eyes and looked at her. She read sadness, frustration, and more than a little shame in his eyes. "Sometimes it can go both ways — and I knew Rogue wouldn't want me to kill her boyfriend."
Beginning to get an inkling of the nature of Remy's mistake, she asked, "What happened?"
He sighed. "I couldn't stand him. I stayed away for so long, waiting for Marie to grow up — and when I came back for her, she hadn't waited for me — and her guy was such an utter *prick*. An obnoxious son-of-a-whore who isn't satisfied with having the most incredible woman imaginable — he's still gotta be chasing around after anything that moves. Male *or* female. And yet she stays with him. Says he makes her happy." Another sigh. "I wanted to carve him up so badly, but I knew she'd hate that, so I couldn't. But I couldn't just let him walk by and do *nothing* — and he'd just gotten out of bed with her, I could still smell her all over him — and he's really *way* too pretty..."
Jean found herself sitting on the bed. Somewhere during Logan's mind-numbing recitation her legs had given out. The two most relevant facts to her way of thinking were chasing themselves around in her head. "So you're really in love with — Marie."
"Rogue. Her name is Marie." An odd smile, sweet around the mouth and silent agony around the eyes. "I don't think she's ever even told *him* her real name..."
"And what you told me...? About... your heart belonging to someone else...?"
Logan looked startled, as though he hadn't even considered that she might be slightly jealous to learn that she didn't hold first claim on his affections. "At her age, I couldn't exactly go around saying I wanted her bad and had to skip the country quick before I tried doing something illegal. You were there, you were handy, and it really pissed off Cyke." A pause, while he belatedly realized why this might be upsetting to her. "And you're beautiful, and wonderful, and Scooter's really unbelievably lucky to have you." Pause. "But he *does* have you — and Gumbo has Rogue..."
"And evidently he has *you*, too."
Logan growled dismissively. "He seems to think that, doesn't he? Really, I just grab him two or three times a week when it all gets too much for me and bang the shit out of him... I really *do* hate him."
"He, ah, seemed to think that you were upset because you found him attractive."
Logan shrugged. "Oh, that. I *mostly* like women — I'm just willing to be flexible every now and then. Doesn't bother me any."
"You never said anything about it *before*."
"Nobody asked."
Jean found herself starting to relax slightly. The numbness was by no means wearing off, but somehow she was beginning to accept this as a new facet of Logan's character, fitting with the parts she already knew without making them in any way false. Her brain finally escaped its vapor- lock enough to move on to another question. "And what about Rogue? Doesn't the fact that you're, well, cheating on her bother you?"
Logan sighed again. The pained look returned to his face, before being replaced by the bittersweet smile. "Say you were in her shoes — say I'd really been so into you that I couldn't deal with having Cyke walk past me smelling like you and sex all at once." Pause. "What would *you* rather I did — fuck him every so often or kill him, just once?"
An image leaped unbidden to Jean's mind, of Logan grabbing Scott by the shoulders, dragging him into a savage kiss, ripping his shirt away, pressing him down onto their shared bed... Hastily banishing the treacherous thoughts, she caught Logan giving her a knowing smile and wondered whether the direction of her thoughts had been betrayed by her face or her scent. [No, I will *not* be telling Scott about this. *Any* of this!] she decided instantly.
"Just — how long were you expecting this to go on? Sooner or later, either this has to end or Rogue's going to find out."
A wince. "That's *not* a talk I'm looking forward to having with her. If I could think of another way not to kill him, I would. I keep hoping that she'll break up with him and that'll be the end of it."
"And if that doesn't happen?"
"I don't know, but sooner or later something's got to give..."
*****