All the Right Reasons
by
Diebin


DISCLAIMER: I own not.
ARCHIVE: The usual suspects.
THANKS TO: Donna, who has hugged me more in the last 24 hours than is perhaps healthy, but it was much needed. Shana, who I have loved across three fandoms so far and who knows how many to come. Molly, who I don't care what she says, I will still worship in so many ways it's not funny. Nancy, who understands in a way few can. Misty, who may be a closet geek--but she's still one of us.

---

Jean fucked Logan three days ago.

Maybe it seems a little sick, but I know exactly how it happened. He told me about it--told me in more detail than he wanted to I think. But guilt gave me that much power over him.

Not a lot. There wasn't as much guilt as maybe everyone else thought there should have been--but everyone else was not me. Everyone else didn't understand the way our relationship worked, the precarious balance between faithfulness and ruthlessness.

It happened, of all the unlikely places, inside Cerebro. The Professor was away with Scott--away because the lovers had quarreled and Jean was needed at the school to take care of a student who'd fallen from the tree. Xavier decided the best way to give the couple time apart was by taking Scott to the capitol with him, leaving Storm and Jean and Logan in charge.

Logan walked in as Jean was completing the weekly checkup of the power systems, something she'd insisted on so many years before when Xavier had almost died. And with the doors closed and the power cords left disconnected where they'd been when he walked in, she begged him to touch her and for some reason, he did.

I know why, of course. I know why he forced her to the floor and didn't fight it as she dragged nails down his back. I know why he touched her. I know why he kept his eyes clenched tight and buried his face in her neck and braced his hands on the floor so that as little of him was touching her as possible.

I know why he called her Marie.

She didn't, of course. And if there's anyone I feel bad for, it's not me--or not even Scott. Certainly not Logan, although I know he's suffered more than me over the whole thing.

I feel bad for Jean--because she had know way of knowing when he touched her the first time that it wasn't really her he was seeing.

He fucked her for all the wrong reasons.

I knew before Scott did. Not just because Scott was away, but because Logan came to me and told me what had happened, and I could see in his eyes that he wanted a fight more than anything. He wanted me to yell at him and swear and maybe even cry so that he could feel like more of a jackass than he already did.

I shook my head and smiled and told him what he really didn't want to hear at all. "That's not the way to make me ready sooner, Logan."

And because I understood our relationship even if he didn't--I laughed.

It took him a while to laugh with me.

~*~

Scott came home two days ago.

I think everyone in the school heard the fight that followed, and I felt just a little guilty that maybe it was my fault. Maybe they wouldn't have fought so badly if Logan had slept with her again--if Jean had felt less used. Maybe she wouldn't have run back to Scott so fast.

Maybe she wouldn't have told him the truth.

Logan had made himself scarce, which was probably a bad idea all things considered. Scott was angry, and maybe having it out with Logan would have helped him. Maybe having an object to focus on other than Jean would have made it easier to forgive--because that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to forgive her.

He couldn't even tell himself that he hadn't expected it, and I think that's what bothered him most. That Jean had fulfilled all of his lowest expectations, and with the main target of his hatred nowhere to be found, he had no one to resent for it but her.

Logan was gone for the night and I think that's why Scott felt safe coming to me. He looked haggard and worn down and I felt mildly guilty. I think I knew that, in a round about way--that it was my fault.

I didn't tell him that though. I didn't tell him because he didn't give me a chance to apologize. He sat stiffly in my chair and when I went to hug him, his fingers dug almost painfully into my back.

I stroked his hair, because it was all I knew how to do. It was what I did for Logan when he pressed his face into my stomach--and maybe that was my mistake. Maybe the caress was the wrong type, because I felt a sudden wet heat against me and it was only when I felt the push of his glasses against my skin that I realized it couldn't be tears.

I pushed him back so strongly that I think I hurt him--and I know I surprised him. And when he saw the look in my eyes--the one that I knew was hurt and betrayal, he thought I was like him. He thought I was hurt and betrayed by the one that I loved, and that I needed comfort from someone who understood.

He wanted me for all the wrong reasons.

"I love Logan." It was all there was to say--because it should have been enough. I couldn't see his eyes, so I watched the line of his shoulders stiffen and I bit my lip because that meant I was the second person who had chosen Logan over him in the last twenty-four hours.

The fact that I was really the only one Logan had chosen back was too subtle to explain--because he didn't understand the way Logan and I were. The precarious balance between faithfulness and ruthlessness.

The line between love and possession.

He left without saying a word.

~*~

I made love to Logan a day ago.

It was something that was a long time coming--something that maybe should have happened before. I don't know if he wanted to wait until I was ready--but he didn't have much choice. I was waiting. That meant he was too.

Having Logan inside my head taught me a lot about the way people love at their lowest level of conciseness. Not the pretty, flowery love that people write poetry about. Not the every day love that you hug and kiss away. It's not even the love that meets in dark corners and barely lit rooms, the love of skin and sweat and saliva.

It's the deep, sub-conscious love. The love that you don't even know is there until it makes you do something crazy--and even then you're never quite sure why. It's the love that is possession without being property. The love that transcends simple things like bodies. The love that you can walk away from for a year and still feel.

It's a violent sort of love. Dangerous. It can flare up and burn you when you least expect it--it can make you do crazy things. Like forgive. Like understand.

Like need.

Logan was more than a body. I didn't love him for the funny tufts of hair or the strange darkness in his eyes. I didn't love him for the way his shoulders flowed so smoothly into the muscles of his back. I didn't love him for the way he my skin feel too tight.

I loved him because he was Logan--and no matter how tightly I closed my eyes, Scott would never be him.

And Jean would never be me. He made love to me with his eyes open and locked so tightly on my face that it almost hurt. It didn't matter that my skin never really touched his. It didn't matter that he couldn't kiss me like he said he wanted to--like he whispered it. It didn't matter at all, because he was Logan--and he understood the precarious balance between faithfulness and ruthlessness.

He loved me for all the right reasons.

I cried when we were finished. Not because it hurt--though it did, a little. I cried because it wasn't fair that no one else inside me had ever known what it was like, to have something so deep that you never dared question in.

I cried for Erik, who could never love Charles the way he wanted to.

I cried for Jean, who with all her power of the mind didn't understand that the body didn't matter.

I cried for Scott, who tried to be everything to everybody and couldn't understand why there wasn't enough left for himself.

I cried for Logan, who had never cried for himself for all the years before he found love, even as he wiped my tears away and asked me if he'd hurt me.

I cried for love, because I'd never really believed in it so much before.

~*~

"Don't you ever wonder?"

"Wonder what?"

"You know--wonder what it would have been like."

"What what would have been like?"

"You know--"

"Obviously I don't."

"If you hadn't found me?"

"Couldn't have missed you, really. You were in the back of my trailer."

"You know what I mean."

"Nah. I never wonder."

"You don't?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"It's was love. It was supposed to happen."

"That's taking a lot on faith."

"I have my reasons."

"Oh you do? And what are those?"

"All the right ones, Marie. All the right reasons."



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