*****
"Somethin' wrong?" Coming down to the kitchen for a late-night beer or three, Logan had discovered Marie, sitting at the table staring meditatively into a cooling mug of appleish something-or-other.
"Nothin' I want to talk about."
Logan half-smiled, acknowledging his own dismissal flung back at him, before folding his arms across his bare chest and leaning back against a counter. "You don't *look* like it's nothing."
Marie thoughtfully stirred her drink.
Softening his voice to a slightly more confidential tone, "You sure you don't want to talk about it?" He took a few steps towards her and stopped, the disturbingly familiar paired odors of Remy and sex making further approach uncomfortable.
She sipped absently at her cooling drink, considered confiding in him.
He let her think about the matter, taking a swig of his beer and waiting.
"Remy's cheating on me."
He counted himself incredibly lucky that his shocked look was *also* appropriate for a friend learning unpleasant and unexpected news. "What makes you say that?"
She stirred her drink again. "Spotted a bitemark on the back of his shoulder tonight. I didn't put it there, someone else did."
Managing to shift his expression to concern — rather than the guilty lines his face was trying to settle into — he asked, "You're sure he didn't just — get into a fight, or something like that?"
"It was on the back of his shoulder." Noting his blank look — carefully crafted, that — and raised eyebrow, she smirked. "Don't play dumb — I figured out what *that* meant from one of *your* memories."
He lucked out again — she misinterpreted his poleaxed and half-embarrassed expression as a reaction to cute lil' innocent Marie having accessed *that* type of memory. She giggled absently at the look on his face, sipped from her mug, frowned at the taste of the cooled drink and then sighed.
"Funny, I was almost expecting him to run around on me — but I pretty much thought I would only have to worry about other women."
Logan relaxed slightly. Improbable as it seemed, at the moment he seemed to be off the hook. Greatly daring, he asked, "What are you planning to do about it?"
Stirring. "Nothing."
[*What*?!] "Nothing?!"
"What do you *expect* me to do?" She left the drink alone for the moment and gave him an inquiring look.
[Oh, shit. She's handing you the rope — for fuck's sake don't wind up hanging yourself with it. Anything along the lines of "Find out who he's been with" is a Bad Idea, and if she confronts him it could lead to him naming names...] "I think you should break up with the son-of-a-bitch."
"Mmm. It's that black-and-white to you, huh?" Toying with her spoon.
"Why would you *want* to stay with him, if he's cheating on you?"
A diffident shrug. "He makes me happy. When he's with me, at least he manages to make me feel like I'm the only person on his mind, the only one he wants." Staring thoughtfully into her mug, "And he's the first man not to be afraid of winding up in a coma for loving me."
[Oh, baby, not the first. Never the first. Don't ever say that, don't even *think* that...] "You can do so much better than him..."
"Who?" The bitterness had an edge to it, a blade, cutting another small piece off the ragged edges of his own tattered and non-healing soul.
He couldn't even offer himself as the answer to her question — because he was absolutely no better than Remy. He was actually worse — because at least the Cajun was honest about what he was. A smooth talker with an eye for the ladies who hadn't stopped looking just because he had the most beautiful woman in the whole frickin' state on his arm. As opposed to the utterly worthless creature standing in the kitchen advising the woman he loved to give up the man who made her feel special for having complied with the infidelity he had initiated...
He downed the last of his beer in a desperate attempt to wash the taste of hypocrisy from his mouth.
"He's such a smooth talker I don't care what the truth is, because I'd rather believe what he's telling me. I'm not gonna let myself be bothered by what he's doing when I'm not around." She set her jaw, clearly preparing herself to stand by her decision.
Making a move as if to touch her, he suddenly noted her bare arms and recalled his own shirtless state. The absolute *last* thing he could afford right now was to have her inadvertently absorb the slightest hint of his true thoughts. Awkwardly dropping his arm back to his side, he caught the flicker of hurt in her eyes at the apparent rejection, and damned himself.
Muttering something even he couldn't make out, he dropped the empty bottle in the trash on the way out of the kitchen. There was only one place he could go after a conversation like that.
*****