Off-Center and to the Left

Author Notes: My pro-Jean manifesto. :) To Andariel, who got me out of my rut quite nicely and betaed the thing, and Minisinoo's desire for more Jean-fic, which prompted me to drag this out for the umpteeth time since I finished it in February and try again. La Hacienda de Logan (TM) belongs to Sare and apparently to Logan as well. Thanks for the design, baby.

* * * * *

I fell out of love the same way I fell into it--utterly unaware it was going to happen until it did.

There's something negative to be said for pure complacency, for taking for granted, for being absolutely, unshakably sure, because God, then nothing can prepare you. Anyone who ever tells you true love conquers all--they're right. Don't doubt that. But remember to codicil it this--you have to want to conquer. It's hard. It can't be done halfway or it all falls apart at the first touch. It takes courage and determination and a hell of a lot of faith.

I didn't have any of that, and so I took the easy way out.

I didn't know I was looking for him until I stumbled across the doorway of a run-down Minneapolis motel three months later and he caught me without thinking, looking at me as if he'd never seen me before--but he knew my scent and almost dropped me again, just from shock. In all honesty, I couldn't blame him.

"Jeanie?"

"It's okay," I told him, leaning against the doorway on unsteady legs, trying to smile and tuning out my disbelief that I'd found him without even trying. "I'm not me anyway."

He held me even tighter when I started to cry.

* * * * *

"Jeanie?" As if he thought it was a trick, even with a perfect scent match and a long look at my face, a searching look that made me wonder what he could see written there. I didn't blame him, staring in the mirror on the far wall in fascination, because, really, I wasn't me anymore--how ironic that self-hatred can actually be truth. Too thin, too bitter; green eyes grown too dark, too angry, too desperate.

Logan sat on the dingy blue bedspread and watched me while I left my worn duffle bag on the floor and kicked it against the wall in a fit of less than mature satisfaction. K-Mart, three dollars, ninety-five cents. I was surprised it'd lasted so long.

"I'm fine. Angry, running from my problems instead of facing them. You know the drill."

"Yeah." You would never think Logan could infuse so much irony into one drawled word. "Welcome to my world, darlin'." He leaned back on one arm, cautious even now. "Question is, why?"

"I was cheated on and I got bored with being adult. It seemed the lesser of two evils." I turned around, pushing my hair back with one hand, suddenly aware it needed a wash and a thorough brushing, suddenly Jean again in Logan's memory--no wonder he was staring at me. He knew the tall woman in the lab, the stable one with common sense and the inner calm that had always attracted him, and I didn't have any of that anymore.

Logan digested that without expression and I walked over, dropping in his lap, pushing him back on the bed. "You still want me, Logan?" I whispered, grinding down a little, feeling the unmistakable reaction of his body under mine.

I'm not sure I meant it, even then, and I'm not sure I would have meant it ten minutes after I saw Rogue and Scott on that bed, when I was so angry and confused that half the school was complaining of headaches hours later. I'm know that's not why I left and I know that's not why I found him.

Maybe he knew that too.

"Fun as that sounds, being the replacement ain't as tempting as it should be." He didn't fight me, just waited for me to realize the cliche I was trying to re-enact. Which was fine--cliches worked, they happened all the time, that's how they got the name.

Scott cheated on me and trying to play tit for tat had never been me. Even now. And he knew that as well as I did.

The fifteen thousand reasons he gave for what he did I never heard, no matter how many times he tried to pour out his guilt in my ear in hopes of an absolution I wondered if I could even give. Sex with her took planning; it wasn't a tumble in the sack, not when you had to dress appropriately for it beforehand.

Fifteen thousand different times to reconsider and he didn't stop. Forgiveness is easy and cheap, and I've been a lot of things in my life, but never cheap.

"You don't want me."

"You don't want me either. Or this." He ran light hands up my thighs, lingering on my hips for a moment, fingers tight. Bullshitting Logan was difficult at best. He tended toward the direct approach to everything.

"No. I suppose not."

He laughed a little, settling back comfortably and I shifted to lay back beside him and clear my mind, stare up at the ceiling for inspiration.

"Who was it?"

"Who do you think?"

A pause, a consideration, then a slow nod as he looked at me.

"Yeah." A breath, and something went through his eyes that in another life could be been pain, shut down so fast that even being a telepath didn't help decipher it. "Rogue never does anything half-way."

Reminded me of someone I knew and he shook his head at my expression, eyes traveling down my body again and not bothering to hide it.

"Different look for you. I miss the lab coat, though."

I shrugged a little, willing memory to leave me alone for these few minutes. Slowly, he sat up too and just held me for a moment, then leaned back.

"This who you want to be?" With a glance down my body, more impersonal--the clothes I'd grabbed at a discount store in Tallahassee three weeks before, cheap and so little like me that they fit better than any designer skirt or suit I'd charged at Macys. No two hundred dollar Italian heels, just tennis shoes and worn tube socks. It was strange to see us in the mirror, at the woman looking back at me.

I shook my head. "I don't know yet." Being Jean hadn't been that great, when you put up the pros and cons on an itemized list, but on the other hand, I didn't know how to be anyone else either. X-Man, doctor, student, surrogate daughter, fiancée, teacher. All the titles, the respect, the name in medical journals, the dinners in couture evening gowns and the hours bent over a microscope in the lab or nights in dressed in leather.

I was more than that, I'd thought. Staring in the mirror, I suddenly wondered if I was actually a great deal less.

"You could have stayed."

I could have handled it like an adult when he said it would never happen again, because I knew it was absolutely true. But that wasn't enough. I could have agreed when the Professor said my bond with Scott was strong and that I shouldn't throw everything away for an accidental indiscretion, and for the first time, I lied to the man I loved like I loved no other. I told the truth when I said I knew Scott loved me--but it didn't really change anything. It wasn't enough.

"I chose to do this." It had been a choice, to walk out of my own life--no, to sneak out of my own life. Like a criminal.

"Can understand that. Where you goin'?"

"Good question. Keep moving until I get somewhere."

And he understood that too.

* * * * *

Did I know Rogue was attracted to Scott? Yes, of course I did--you would have to be blind not to see it. It was natural even--I understand human nature at least well enough to know that at some point, we're all attracted on some level to different people, whether or not emotions are involved. Difference is, attraction is all well and good and not something to worry over--once you throw in consensual sex, however, it becomes a different ballpark.

I left eleven days later, because I didn't want to be caught, and eleven days is such an awkward number that no one would guess what I was doing. The next day would have given me away and they would have come chasing after me before I could get my distance--seven days was predictable, and ten days was just a little cliched--but on the eleventh day, I got out of Scott's bed and walked out the door with a change of clothes and all the cash I had and took the train to Baltimore. Flew into Tennessee that same day. It was sixteen hours before someone wondered where I went, and almost a full day before Cerebro went searching--but being a telepath had its advantages and even the Professor didn't know just how strong desperation could make me.

I'll bet no one knew how strong I really was, even me.

I fell asleep beside Logan, listening to his even breathing and remembering a night long ago and far away--I curled up beside Scott the first time, utterly amazed that he loved me when I'd never seen anything in myself that I could point to and say that it made me worthy. I suppose everyone feels that way when they look at the love of their life. I never really stopped feeling it--except for eleven long days when I stared up at the ceiling of the bedroom I shared with Scott for eight years and tried to remember what it was like to know exactly who you were, when all those titles meant something. Dr. Jean Grey stopped being the right answer and maybe that was the real reason I walked out.

"Logan?"

He gave me a glance before tossing me the helmet. The day had dawned grey and rather depressing, which really didn't match my mood as it should have--just seeing him reminded me that having your life wrecked was a circumstance where misery really did love company. And of all the people in the world, he probably understood best.

"Still running, Logan?" I asked as I pulled on his jacket and brushed my hair from my eyes. "Rogue?"

"That's dead, Jeanie, me and Rogue. You know that." Dismissive. Almost casual.

"Do you tell yourself that so you don't have to go back and face her?"

"Every fucking day." He turned on the engine and I crawled up behind him, fastening the strap under my chin. "It's easier this way."

Easier sometimes isn't a bad thing. I shut my eyes at the first gun of the engine, deafening to my ears, closing my eyes as I wrapped my arms around his waist.

"She lied, Logan. She never stopped wanting you."

I knew he could hear me over the engine.

"I know. That's why I left."

* * * * *

Logan left the last time for a lot of reasons, Rogue probably being the reason that he admitted to, the one that shattered every last trace of his determination to stay, but there were four in actuality. He left because Scott annoyed him, he left because he needed to get away just on principle, he left because balancing his ethical code to the X-Men's was exhausting, and he left because Rogue said she didn't want him. If there was anyone tailored to be a member of the Brotherhood, Logan was it, and why he was on our side could be spelled in five letters--the man carried a grudge with the kind of coldness that never burns out.

He had practice at hate. I was only beginning to learn.

When Rogue threw him out of her bed and out of her life, it was that last straw he was searching for. That she hurt him I have no doubt--if anyone knows how to hurt him in all the perfect places, it'd be Rogue, who has all the memories and the will to do it. She probably inflicted wounds he's never going to be able to forget, not in this life, maybe not in the next.

Under it all though--there was relief, what I had sensed when he left even if I had been unable to admit it. Rogue set him free in a way I suspected even she hadn't completely understood. She gave him his life back, set him loose of the obligation. If he ever went back to her--if he ever wanted to, ever could--it would be different.

"Everyone misses you," I told him in the diner we stopped at six hundred miles later, over a cup of unsweetened tea and some dry toast, because my stomach was still unsettled from the ride.

He grunted something (probably didn't believe me), and stared down at his coffee like he expected Mystique to be lurking in there in the guise of a hot caffeinated beverage. I didn't think much of the shapeshifter but that would seem a little degrading, even for her.

"Rogue--"

"No." Simple as that--direct. Logan liked direct.

It was funny, come to think of it--that Rogue, who had him in her head, who could accurately predict what he'd do in any given situation, really didn't understand him any better than anyone else. I never thought about it much before--knowing and understanding were two very different things. I can look into someone's mind and read their thoughts--but that doesn't mean I always understand what I read. Rogue had him living in her head and hadn't interpreted him any better. The things she thought she knew, the things she didn't know.

She didn't know he loved her and she didn't know he'd forgive her. I knew those things, he knew those things, and he was desperate to make sure she never did.

I looked down at the remains of my toast and Logan picked up his coffee--we both knew that it wasn't how far you ran, it was how far you were willing to run, that really decided everything.

"What'd you do in Japan?" I asked him. He started a little--*did* he think Mystique was impersonating bad coffee?--and glanced up, a little surprised. Then understood, eyes narrowing just a little with the knowledge that I'd kept track of him on Cerebro. No bitterness--but then, Logan doesn't believe in lost causes, and arguing over something I'd already done would be silly, even for his temper.

"This and that. It's not far enough." A glance at me, measuring. "It won't ever be."

"Habit."

"Yeah." Quiet, almost thoughtful, less Logan than I was used to, and maybe something had changed in him, something I didn't know yet, though I was giving myself the opportunity to find out. "Are you ever going to go back?"

I picked up the crust and studied it.

"I don't know yet." That was honest at least. "You?"

"Yeah." That surprised me. "Just not today." I blinked, looking at him in wonder--a philosophy I really could live with. He smiled at me with real warmth and took the last crust from my plate. "You ever been to Mexico?"

I stood up when he dropped money on the table, drinking the rest of my tea in one gulp and grabbing Logan's jacket off the seat.

"I like the sun," I told him.

* * * * *

We received a phone call in Nogales, which was so very unsurprising that neither of us jumped when the phone rang, even though we were mostly asleep. The Professor couldn't find me, but he could find Logan, and after three months, he probably came to the conclusion that of course I would be with him, because that was exactly what I was expected to do, both of us being victims and obviously in need of mutual comfort or something like that.

I love the Professor, but even he isn't always accurate. Expectations can be a bitch and Logan mumbled something uncomplimentary when he passed me the phone before he fell asleep again.

"Sir?" I rubbed my eyes and tried to remember how to be polite while trying to pry part of the sheet from Logan--he tended to hog the covers.

"Stop it, Jeanie," he mumbled. It was unfair--he just weighed too much to be able to get stuff away without resorting to some judicious telekinetic manipulation.

There was silence on the phone--maybe somewhere in him, the Professor was a little shocked, perhaps hoped I'd thrown myself on the mercy of the Brotherhood (in which case he could come get me in the guise of rescue, save the poor hurt little Jean, who knows not what she does), and then he spoke, with so much disappointment that even I had to wonder for a second if I should be doing half the things he no doubt expected I would be doing. Just so I could deserve that tone of voice.

"Jean." Another pause, pulling out the perfect speech for the occasion of chastening a AWOL X-Man. "You're making a mistake, Jean. You need to come home. This--"

"Later," I answered sleepily and kicked Logan when he tried to take my pillow. "You know what time it is?"

"Three," Logan growled, and I sat up and on my pillow and he chuckled a little. "And I can still get it."

"You knock me to the floor, I'll levitate your ass right off the bed and you can float for a few hours." Remembered abruptly the Professor was still on the phone, I quickly pulled it back to my ear. "Sir, I'll be home when I'm ready. Not before. Goodnight."

I hung up and Logan pulled the cord out of the wall and knocked me off the bed and I proceeded to make an imitation Toad out of him while he kept laughing at me. Three hours later, we both decided it was time to move.

I wondered after we left what the manager of the motel would make of the wrecked phone and wad of cash left on the bed.

* * * * *

"I read her mind, Logan."

He looked up from the engine of the bike, trying again to reattach some wire or other that driving over the better part of the desert had somehow gotten loose. I'd stripped to my t-shirt and shorts and my overshirt was covering my head and shoulders--redheads tend to burn easily and I could see the pink of my skin was going to make some spectacular sunburns soon. Once a doctor, always a doctor--I was thinking of aloe vera and some light bandages on my shoulders, cursing the fact I'd worn a sleeveless shirt. Sitting on Logan's bag with a bottle of water beside me, sweating with the sun beating down as if it was trying to drive me underground, I watched him mutter something uncomplimentary about Scott's engineering skills.

"Don't wanna know, Red." Twist of wire, another low curse--not English, not any language I recognized--and he pulled out the screwdriver and went back into the engine case with grim enthusiasm.

"Red is right. One more hour and you're going to be dealing with a sunburned and pissed off telekinetic."

He squinted at me briefly, brushing sweaty brown hair from his forehead and leaving a smear of grease across his skin.

"Fuck off, gorgeous. Unless that cute little head of yours knows something about how the hell Scooter managed to reverse basic engine design in such a fucking useless way."

"What do you know about engine design?" I took a drink of water and threw the bottle at him--he has great reflexes, caught it mid-flight. "And why don't you want to know about Rogue?"

"Military background." A pause while he took a drink and then he went through the compartment under the engine for more tools. "And I don't wanna know, that's all there is to it."

"She thought you didn't love her. She thought it was only responsibility that was making you stay. She saw you were unhappy and thought it was her. And Scott has a BS in engineering."

"Great." A growl and then a soft, almost indistinct purr of satisfaction, drowned out immediately by the bike coming back to life. Absently, he pulled his gloves back on--habit, it was the oddest thing, and I'd bet dollars to donuts he never even noticed, no matter how hot it got, that he always had gloves on. "BS would be right. Fuck, I've never seen anything like this crap." He grabbed his overshirt from the handlebars and pulled it on, then looked me over, practically in a puddle of sweat on the edge of the road, and handed me the water bottle back. "You're going to be a very interesting shade of red, baby. Lobster style."

I narrowed my eyes and Logan caught the screwdriver that took flight toward his arm without a blink.

"Can we go?" I asked. "And would you--"

Logan's glance was speaking, and I shut my mouth, knowing better than to push that hard that fast, not with him. After a moment, he extended a hand and pulled me to my feet and I wrapped back up in my shirt, wincing at the feel of rough fabric against pre-burn sensitive skin.

"Why are you trying so hard?" he asked finally, the bag packed up, tools in place, as I got back on and the engine rumbled to life beneath us. Under my arm, his stomach was tense--Scott once said I was the most perceptive woman he ever met, but I can't read people for shit--dependence had grown over time on my telepathy, almost unconscious, to test all mental waters around me. I knew better than to even try with Logan--whatever he'd been in his past, he'd walked out of it hypersensitive to mental touch, even the lightest. Still, I knew enough by physical touch--I had hit a soft spot, something he was trying desperately and quite successfully to hide.

"I don't know."

Suddenly, he just stopped the engine, stepped off with one of those liquid movements that always made me curious what kind of training he'd gotten in his forgotten past--only a few of his students had managed to get that from him, Rogue included. I let my arm fall into the seat he'd occupied, watching him as he stared over the sand.

"You wanna go back right now?" A shift of sand under his boots as he turned around, studying me, looking for something. I didn't answer, didn't even know how to answer. Because, no, I didn't, not at all, and he looked at me for a long time, searching for something in my face.

"I didn't leave because Rogue fucked around with Remy or anyone else, Jeanie. I coulda handled that." A breath, almost a growl, and I wondered exactly how he *would* have handled that, if he had stayed, and had to think that maybe--. "I didn't leave because she said she wanted me gone, because I don't give up that fucking easy. I left because she lied to me when she said it--she looked me in the eye and lied. Now tell me, Red--how do you trust a damn thing anyone says when they can do that? I don't care what her fucking reasons were, it doesn't change the fact she *did* it." He shook his head, almost a shudder--and it occurred to me, staring at him, sitting there on an unmoving bike in the middle of the desert, gripping a helmet on a burned leg, that he wasn't angry, wasn't betrayed--that in the year he'd been gone, Logan had changed. Or maybe he had just become more what he'd always been, just below the surface. Honorable in his own way, but demanding perfect honesty in return. Not really much to ask from your lover, I had to admit.

And I understood that, and understood what he meant.

It didn't matter that Scott was sorry and would never do it again. It didn't change the fact he *did* it.

"Logan--" And I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too." Another long pause, and he growled a little, kicking the road absently, and it reminded me irresistibly of a rebellious teenager, the kid he must have been once upon a time, hard as it was to see now. Or not so hard. "Jean--"

"I don't want to go back, Logan. Not yet."

He nodded, stuffing his hands in his jeans briefly before turning his eyes toward the sun.

His question.

"How well can you keep a secret?"

And my answer.

"Huh?"

* * * * *

"How the hell long have you had *this*?"

I had a right to be shocked--Logan with all his migrating habits never struck me as the type to even rent an apartment, much less invest in real estate, and this was some serious real estate. He shrugged a little (embarrassed, amused, horrified he'd been found out?), pulling out his keys and opening the dusty door without much preamble, carrying both our bags, and I came after him into the cool darkness of a nice little house in the middle of the Mexican desert. My skin was utterly delighted and I leaned against the door to close it and just sighed in relief

He had good taste, had to give him that.

It was large, simple floorplan--since a nod gave me permission to explore, I got to it. Two bedrooms, a remarkably nice bathroom (if you ignored the dust), cathedral ceilings in the dining and living room (someone with serious money had built this, no question, but eminently like Logan himself--spartan of furniture and extremely functional, and if it had a mark of his personality in it, it had to be the absolute bareness of it.

And the security--the mansion couldn't be better protected than this. I didn't need to see the small and unobtrusive box under fine-grained wood paneling. But the dust--I sneezed as I wiped off the top of a cabinet impatiently.

"This is beautiful." I meant it too, and not just for its value as a shield against an unforgiving sun.

"Isolated." That had probably been the selling point. His voice came from the direction of the kitchen and I left my bag in the spare room and went down the hallway to find him. Nice kitchen too--

"Logan, whose was this?" A damn nice kitchen, all things considered. A baring of incisors for a second that could have been a smile before he put up the beer and few groceries we'd purchased (the aloe vera he threw to me).

"Smugglers." That explained a lot. But not the dust, and I dropped to check under the sink, frowning a little when it turned up empty. Logan leaned back against the counter across from me with a beer and watched me. "What are you lookin' for?"

He'd never understand. I had no idea how to explain, either.

"Um--" Considered his reaction, then sighed, sniffling and wishing we'd thought to purchase paper towels. "Logan, there's dust everywhere. And it's stuffy so I thought--"

He kicked the cabinet behind his heel.

"Yeah." A slight smile. "I don't like dust either. How long have you had that headache? You tell me it's from the sun, I'm not gonna believe you."

How the *hell* had he noticed that? I rubbed my head and pushed him out of my way to see what he had in the way of cleaning supplies--turned out to be a good selection and that just made me suspicious.

"Logan, I've seen your room at the Mansion." Never cleaned it--but a disaster area it always seemed to be.

"That's Marie, not me. She's a mess." Another drink of the beer, said casually enough, but the smile was gone. "I don't like clutter."

"I can see that." Windex. Relatively new too. Interesting. There were others, all written in Spanish and I finally gave up trying to translate and gathered them all up to spill across the dining room table only a few feet away, along with the very neatly and quite correctly folded cloths that were so clean (other than a fine coating of dust on the top) it made you wonder if they'd ever been used--well, they *had* been used, obviously. But still--

"Headache, Red?"

I sighed.

"It's--it's been awhile since I've stayed shielded for so long without--taking some time to rest."

At home, I'd usually used my private office, off the lab. Knelt and repeated the mantra I'd learned at the Professor's knee. The problem I'd discovered early on was I was liable to pick up anyone in range should they stumble by and I'd hated that.

I needed to re-center, needed it badly, but asking Logan to drop his privacy for me--I couldn't brace myself to ask that of anyone, especially someone with an almost neurotic dislike of sharing.

"Why don't you?" He sounded genuinely surprised and I turned around from one particularly difficult bottle.

"I don't want to invade your privacy, Logan."

"That. Don't worry--I learned a few things at the Mansion. There isn't anyone else close enough for you to pick up. And you're holdin' sheep shampoo, by the way."

Blinking, I glanced down. The Spanish made no sense, but I identified a word that indeed, meant sheep. Or contained sheep. Either way, I wasn't going to use it.

"Why do you have sheep shampoo?"

"Came with the house."

Good point. Though it occurred to me to wonder what the previous owners had been doing with sheep shampoo in the middle of the desert and gave up, pushing it off to the side before going through the rest.

"Logan, you read Spanish. Translate." I brandished a bottle and he grinned and walked up behind me and we sorted the myriad containers into some sort of order. Logan took the left side of the house, I took the right, and sitting on the floor by the front door, I closed my eyes and shut down my shields all at once.

The silence was so echoing I almost started to cry from it. It was good and it hurt all at the same time.

* * * * *

We're way too much alike. I realized this at midnight when we ended up in the kitchen. I'd fished latex gloves out of that mysterious cabinet under the sink--Logan gave them a surprised glance and I began to be really curious what kind of smugglers needed sheep shampoo and latex gloves--and beneath them my skin was smeared with aloe vera, itching badly--but I couldn't stop, not really.

Scrubbing the floor, I watched the very fine stucco tile emerge from under what could have been years of dust but was probably only months considering the sand outside, my nose red from sneezing and every window and door open. Logan grabbed my hands off the floor and I realized I'd worked the latex off my fingers and my nails were broken, sand pressed up inside.

"Wanna explain?" He tapped my palm and waited. A girl in a different life and I didn't want to explain, but he held my hands and waited.

"It relaxes me," I explained and he nodded slowly. "It's--it's mindless work."

"I know the feeling." A slightly lopsided grin and he dropped on the floor in front of me and took the sponge I'd fished from the sink, throwing it over my head so it landed on the spotless counter. I sighed.

"Cage fighting?"

"Extremely mindless work."

"You mean fun."

"Always that." Another grin as he leaned back against the cupboards and freed my hands. "What sent Scooter to Rogue, anyway?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Too bad." I looked up, meeting his gaze. "You don't have any issues telling me about Rogue's motivations or lack thereof. Damned nice if you'd reciprocate and explain what happened that made Cyke suddenly lose his mind."

I shut my eyes, ripping off my gloves, wondering why he even cared--but this was Logan and his motivations, or lack thereof, were a mystery to everyone, including probably himself.

"Were you fightin' or somethin'?"

"No."

A pause that meant Logan was processing something. And knowing Logan, when he got a fixed idea in his head, it stayed for quite a bit. I would be hearing this until he was satisfied, and he was right, I'd jumped into his personal life without invitation, so he had the right to at least understand a little about mine.

"I don't know. Because she was there? Because she threw herself at him? I don't know." I twisted the gloves between my fingers, trying to find a way to explain something I didn't understand myself. Finally, I looked up. "Why did you sleep with her?"

"I loved her. When I figured that out, it became pretty obvious." A small smile. "You're not asking me why I fucked her. You're asking why I wanted to."

I shrugged, looking at the cabinets and the fridge and the floor and anywhere but him.

"She's so young." I twisted again, feeling the latex giving under my grip. "She's only, what, seven or eight years younger that Scott? She's beautiful. She's dangerous in that way men seem to find attractive."

"Oh." And it could have meant anything. "You think he's trading up?"

I winced a little.

"Thanks. Considering I'm almost four years older than Scott, it makes me feel a hell of a lot better."

"You know that's not why. You'd like it better if you could categorize it."

That was true. I would.

"It happened," I answered finally and the gloves gave out, snapping apart in my hands, latex in ragged tears. I took a deep breath. "I didn't care why." I didn't ask him any questions, didn't ask him what he felt, if she was any good, if he just lost his mind or if he'd been drugged by accident in the lab. "It doesn't matter. It happened."

"Yeah." Logan reached over, pushing the fridge open and threw me a beer. I never liked beer much, but I took it fast, the way I did shots at the bar downtown and I reached out with a thought and snapped a second one into my hand. Logan grinned. "You can get the next ones."

"Thanks." I smirked when I tossed the empty can toward the garbage, a little guided missile that landed neatly inside without spilling a leftover drop on the newly cleaned floor. Opening the second, I closed my eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. Alcohol rushed my system and it felt better than any time I could remember--a drunk telepath was a bad idea any way you looked at it and I was so tired of controlling myself. "This place is spotless. You have a nice gym." One eyebrow went up. "Don't tell me--"

"--it came with the house," he finished with a smirk. I rolled my eyes and took another sip.

"Those smugglers were damned interesting."

"Hid a lot of money under the floorboards too."

I gave him a narrow look.

"How'd you get your hands on it? I just don't see you perusing the want ads."

He chuckled softly and kicked absently at the tile. "No. It was one of those more questionable transactions. Years ago." He paused. "The first time I saw it, I knew I wanted it. It was--familiar. And I like familiar."

I nodded wisely, sipping my second beer, feeling the alcohol burning in me, and absently levitated the can from my hand. Logan chuckled and shook his head. "Come on. Take a shower and I'll put that crap on your legs."

"You just want to see me mostly naked."

"It's a damn fine excuse." He stood up, getting my unburned wrist in one hand. "Get up." I took the last drink from my beer and let him pull me up, rubbing my sun-dried arms and shaking my head over the feel of my skin beneath my hands. I stumbled into the wall and Logan steadied me and finally dropped me on the bed, shaking his head. "You'll feel better with a shower."

I grinned up at him and pushed a loose strand of hair back.

"Yeah, you're right."

* * * * *

We shared a bed again--there wasn't a good reason now, either, there was a perfectly good bed in the other room, with clean sheets I put on personally, but Logan liked to tempt fate and hell, so did I now, and maybe we were testing ourselves. Childish and odd and twisted in all the wrong ways, but I fought him for covers and slept better than I had in a long time, listening to the utter silence outside myself and inside.

It'd been years since I'd felt that, and the faintest murmur of Logan, barely in the recesses of my mind, was more of a comfort than an distraction. Outside, there was only wildlife and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I let my mind completely relax. It was an amazing feeling.

It could have been hours later when I woke to hear Logan's voice beside my ear, his hand resting on the small of my back. Comforting if the tone of his voice hadn't snapped me completely awake.

"Jean?"

I rolled over, careful of burned arms and aloe-smeared face, meeting his eyes, only inches from mine.

"You have a week to figure it out."

Something dropped in me, something I didn't want to acknowledge.

"What?"

He paused, choosing his words.

"Scott's tracking you."

I sat up, too startled to remember how much my skin hated to be stretched right now and got a wince for my trouble. Logan tilted his head.

"How do you know?" I began to struggle out of the sheet, suddenly more afraid, more upset, than I was when I watched my lover screw Rogue. "He can't even give me this? What the fuck--"

A hand closed over my t-shirt covered shoulder and pinned me down before I fell off the edge of the bed. Patiently, he pulled me back up, settling me down and turning my head so I had to meet his eyes. There was something new there--something I couldn't read. And I wouldn't invade the privacy of his mind to find out, but--but I thought it could be fear.

The next words weren't even a surprise. I didn't know anything else in the world that could make Logan look like that.

"Rogue's with him."

Oh God. Logan sat up completely and stared down at the blanket pooling between his upraised knees.

"How do you know?"

"Professor told me, just a few minutes ago. Scott and Rogue doin' it the old fashioned way, no Cerebro required. Thought he'd warn us." A laugh that was closer to a frustrated growl than anything like amusement. "She goes through my memories enough, she's gonna remember this place. Jean--"

I rolled on my back, trying to breathe through the knowledge that I wasn't ready to see Scott, or anyone--and then turned to look at him, study his expression, and never more than at this instant I wished I could crawl inside his mind and find out if this was affecting him like it was affecting me. If he felt the sudden drop in his stomach, the strange fear, the unreadiness that permeated me.

"A week?"

"Just about." Another pause, and his voice changed. "We don't have to be here when they arrive."

The option I didn't think of, and it frightened me as much as them coming here--the idea that we may not be here when they arrived.

"Rogue?"

"Yeah." Another pause and he shook his head, laying back down. Without really thinking about it, I shifted closer and he put an arm around me, hand resting lightly on my hip. Comfort, and I never would have guessed he'd want it from me. "I didn't think she'd do it."

"Let's talk about it tomorrow," I whispered, and Logan nodded slowly.

"Yeah. Good idea."

Neither of us slept the rest of the night.

* * * * *

It occurred to me at six in the morning that this was one thing that Scott had never understood, would never understand, even though he tried. Stripped down to my underwear, I knelt on the floor of the living room across from Logan when he lit the candle (he was naked, I just couldn't quite manage that), and shut my eyes to center myself.

No, I don't think anyone would understand, not the necessity, not the pleasure, not the peace. You had to live without peace to understand.

Meditation is an exercise that telepaths tend to enjoy best when alone. As a sixteen year old girl, I knelt before the Professor's chair as he began to teach me the first words of the chant I used to clear my mind of excess, that focused me on more than the reality that surrounded me and took me deep into my own mind. After I had the basics, I spent hours alone in my room on the second floor of the Mansion, the soft scent of sandalwood surrounding me like a protective cloak, building the power of my mind in slow easy steps that had nothing to do with the strength that I was born with and everything to do with the control I needed to master, so never again would I wake disoriented with the voices of others drowning out my own in my head.

I always cleaned my space first, my own ritual--Logan glanced at me when I got up that morning and went looking for someplace I could manage it, didn't say a word when I got out the mop and sponge and rearranged the furniture to the desired emptiness, fixing the curtains, scrubbing the windows, simply helped me finish and found the rugs and got the candles from my bag. We sat down together without saying anything on the twice-cleaned, spotless floor--the words we used were different, but the idea was the same.

Control for a mutant was always something longed for--perfect control, the inner stillness we needed more desperately than any normal human could ever really understand. Hell, probably needed more than most mutants--and it didn't surprise me that he did this too, though I suppose on some level it should have. I wanted to ask him where he'd learned, if he'd always done it--and discarded curiosity and the flotsam from my mind, feeling the cool tiled floor beneath me, turning all of my attention inward until there was nothing in me but a pure emptiness I filled with the cleaning words alone--until my body was grounded and centered into perfect peace.

An hour later, Logan and I both opened our eyes at the same moment and relaxed. Licking his finger, he snuffed the candle out and relaxed.

"Where'd you learn?" I asked softly, settling back on my heels and rolling my shoulders. A pause, and he stared at the blackened wick for a long moment that seemed separate from the run of time around us.

"I don't know." He took a deep breath, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes. "A long time ago." He shifted a little on the tile, a small grin turning up one corner of his mouth--a impish look, a kid caught skipping Sunday School, oddly fitting before it faded. "You ready to talk about it?"

"Can we get dressed first?"

He started laughing and stood up--and God, now that I was awake enough to appreciate it, he did look good and I almost regretted saying anything. Turning slightly, I watched him leave the room and reminded myself I hadn't come out here to fuck him and get some sort of odd revenge.

Right as he walked back in wearing jeans and threw me one of his t-shirts, I knew exactly why I'd come to him and it made me smile, because it was so obvious.

"Thanks," I told him, pulling it over my head. He glanced at me before dropping back in a lazy sprawl, giving the candle a long look before meeting my eyes. With his hair still damp from a shower, encased in old jeans and a half-buttoned shirt, he looked as utterly relaxed and as at ease as I'd ever seen him. It was difficult to remember, with that peculiar smile and that utterly vulnerable posture, that he probably could have been buddies with my great-grandfather and that in less time than it took to draw a breath he could kill and dissect me if he wanted to. Seeing my gaze, the smile faded and I sighed, staring down at my bare feet.

"Jean?"

"A week, huh?"

Logan nodded slowly.

"Scooter's good at what he does, gotta give the kid credit. With Rogue in tow--"

"Why don't you call her Marie?" I asked suddenly.

Logan started a little, eyes meeting mine.

"No one calls her Marie."

"Except you. You always do."

Logan mulled that for a minute, then rolled onto his back, folding up his arms under his head, kicking at the floor absently with one heel before stilling.

"Jean--"

"She's going to be here and we could be here, and maybe we should decide if we *are* here, how we're going to handle it."

"I guess locking the door is out of the question." An absent statement, as he stared upward and I moved the candle and shifted closer. The dark eyes focused on me, lightened almost to amber. "You're beautiful, Jeanie."

I almost drew back, but one hand shot up, catching my face, a callused thumb running the line of my cheek, resting by my lips. Nothing for an eternal moment where we stared at each other, neither of us breathing.

Sex wasn't ever just sex for me. Never. Not when I can read the thoughts of my lover whether I want to or not, with skin flush against skin and flesh buried deep in my body. I learned that the hard way. Touch is never just touch. Nothing is ever simple.

He wasn't hiding anything from me now, wasn't even trying, and I let my shields go.

"Logan--"

"Scott looks at you and sees perfection. When I first saw you, I thought the same thing." A gentle stroke across my lower lip and I shivered at the touch, my hand coming up to unconsciously grasp his wrist. "The first time I looked at Marie, I saw everything the world wasn't supposed to be, that someone like her could end up needing someone like me. She wasn't even seventeen."

The imagery was vivid, so vivid--a ruined camper, a thin girl, and the top of that Statue. Events that bound him, that changed him whether he had wanted to be changed or not. Other things, too fast to see, barely enough to feel--that mix of anger and frustration and love and beneath it all, the bone-deep commitment he'd bound himself into with a promise he never would have made casually. The promise he'd fulfilled, that I'd reminded him of when she'd been eighteen standing in the doorway, watching her sleep.

He'd never hated me before that moment, for reminding him that he was more than a mutant cage-fighter, that he'd never made a promise lightly.

"He told me he loved me when he was eighteen," I whispered. A bed under my back, staring up into the glasses, wishing I could take his entire mind into mine the way I took his body. "He saw me for the first time that day, the day the visor was complete and he smiled when I told him my hair was red anyway." I slid my fingers up, lacing them across his knuckles. "He never touched another woman before me."

"She wasn't afraid of me. She asked me if it hurt." Slowly, he raised himself on his free arm, holding my eyes.

"He never wanted anything I wasn't willing to give first."

The grip changed, sliding into my hair, the lightest caress behind my ear.

"Jean--"

"Give me all the reasons why not to," I breathed. "The real reasons, not the ones that we've been using so far. Because it wouldn't be for revenge now. So there has to be something else."

It had to be a choice we made. Not a moment we could sit back and say it had happened in a rush of emotion--I couldn't live with myself otherwise.

He breathed out sharply, a soft growl, and leaned forward, and my free arm went back, lowering myself to the floor, the slide of denim against my inner thighs and pushing up the edge of my t-shirt, the tile cool under my bare feet.

I remembered--remembered him lying on that bed and saying his heart belonged to someone else. Weeks later, I was still feeling the touch of his lips on my hand.

I hadn't believed him--I'd never looked at myself and saw someone that others would love like that, on sight. Scott learned to love me over time and all mixed with gratitude and adolescent crush and that heat that only youth is really capable of, the kind where you don't count the cost, when you don't know how much it can hurt when it's not returned. Love without boundaries or reason. Scott loved me that way and still did.

But Logan had seen me and wanted me and loved me in the space of a day, and I suddenly wondered what would have happened if Rogue hadn't needed him so much when he came home that first time. If I hadn't told him why he had to stay.

"A hotel in Calgary," he whispered against my neck, warm breath tickling the sensitive skin beneath my ear. "She knew more than I did and didn't know anything at all. She said it was dangerous and it was a bad idea, told me that she didn't want to hurt me." Fingers laced through mine, pinning them to the floor.

"Have you touched anyone since her?"

God, I didn't know why I asked, but the brown eyes darkened completely and I felt myself begin to tremble.

"No."

I wanted him for good reasons, for right reasons, because it wasn't worth it, it would never be worth it, if it was to screw over Scott. If it was to screw over Marie. If it was a way to bury our egos and go back saying we were better adjusted because of it.

"Jeanie, give me a reason why you shouldn't."

I shut my eyes, turning my head, the feel of lips brushing my collar on cloth--habit, he always touched Rogue through material.

"He wanted me before he saw my face. He looked through my eyes before he could once again use his own." I ran a foot the length of his thigh, feeling him tense above me. "Give me another reason."

"She came to me first, when anything went wrong, when she was hurt or scared." That had to mean something. It had to. Years ago, in the garden, ripping herself from us, running to Logan because she never believed in anyone the way she believed in him.

He shook his head, bracing himself on an elbow and traced the line of my hair and I moved into the touch without thinking about it, a cat in heat already--the brush of his mouth over mine, the feel of his shoulders under the loose cloth of his shirt--

Staring at each other, knowing the decision had already been made.

The End