Log: Jean and Logan

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Next on the Let's Not Crucify Jean parade list, Logan stops by. The talk is surprisingly calm.



Logan knocked on the door to Jean and Scott's suite sharply. This was _not_ going to be a fun conversation. Not at all. But he owed it to her to explain, to accept anything she wanted to hand down. A man owns up to what he's done.

An animal wouldn't care.

The sharpness of the knock, the speed of it coming on the tail of that journal comment. Jean would bet good money that it was Logan, but she wasn't about to open her shields far enough to find out. There was an easier (a part of her said 'less dangerous') way of finding out.

Not that it didn't take almost as much effort to force herself to open the door. But, of course, it turned out she'd been right. "Hello."

Logan took a second and looked at Jean on every level he could. What he got back - wasn't pretty. She looked wan and drawn, and the smell coming off her made him want to scrub out his nose with a sandblaster. "Jeannie," he said, looking her straight in the eye. "May I come in?" he asked politely enough.

"Going to try to gut me again?" she asked, although there was a distinct lack of venom in her tone, and she steped out of the doorway, gesturing him inside. It almost seemed like maybe she wasn't sure the gutting wasn't a bad idea. Although she hardly seemed certain that it was.

"Hadn't planned on it. You're Jeannie, not what'sherface, right?" he asked, leaning slightly against the wall. He wasn't getting the tingle that he got in Central Park - the sensation of wrongness, that something wasn't right. This was Jean. He knew it was.

"I don't think we want to do this in the hallway," he pointed out. "Didn't figure you for the type."

"Jane is me," Jean said, shrugging. "But I'm in control again, yes." Mostly. "Take a seat. Can I get you anything?" Oh, she was stalling. She was so stalling.

"I'm good, thanks," he said, brushing past her to claim a chair. "I know this is gonna be awkward, so I'll cut through the shit. I was wrong," he said simply. "I was convinced that something was wrong, that you were - not you. I was right, as it turned out, but my way to solve it was wrong. For what it's worth, I'm sorry, Jeannie," he said steadily. Inside, though, he was way, way off-kilter. Guilt was a powerful thing, and Logan wasn't accustomed to it.

Jean settled into another chair, tucking her feet underneath her to keep from curling up. So many different ways to look at everything that had happened. Looking away from him, she shrugged. "You don't have to apologize," she said. "You weren't that wrong. I wanted you to succeed, just so I'd stop."

Logan blinked at that. "Shit," he said evocatively. "What do you say at a time like this. Sorry I almost killed you strikes me as a little weak. I know I got no problem with the killing, but dammit, you're _Jean_!" he growled as he verbalized his thoughts, forgetting for a moment that she was undoubtedly able to pull them right out of his skull if she wanted to. "Seems I got a bad habit of taking swings at you, darlin'. Real bad habit. It ends. Now."

Jean shrugged. "I don't know, you certainly had good reason every time you did it. But that's not what you need." Even without reading his mind, that much was clear. "That's not what you're talking about. And... I guess if I learned anything from... what happened it's that if you don't do what you have to, don't deal with the shit that needs dealing with... It goes badly."

Logan couldn't help but grin at that. "You look good, Jeannie," he lied with a straight face. Well, only partially a lie. She did, indeed, look good. It was her smell that worried him. Reminded him of a wounded animal. He looked at her again for a moment, then blinked as an inspiration hit him.

"Don't suppose you and Slim got a deck of cards tucked away in here anywhere?" he asked her with a deceptively mild look.

Jean blinked at the sudden shift. "What? Oh... Um, yes. Why?"

"Good. You know how to play poker?" he asked her, cracking his knuckles with an audible metal-on-metal crunching noise. "Hey, it beats curling up into ourselves," he said at her look.

"You're an odd, odd man, Logan," Jean said, but even as she said it she was standing up and moving to rumage through a drawer for the deck.

"Heard that a time or two. I also have an excellent singing voice," he quipped. He was liking that she was showing signs of life. That she wasn't so crushed inside that she'd given up.

As he'd always thought, Jeannie was a fighter under it all. How she ever wound up with a limp dishrag like Slim he'd never fathom. "You want to shuffle?"

"Five card draw?" she asked, pulling the cards out of the box as she sat down across from him.

"Lady's choice," he said, and leaned back a bit in his chair. "Been spending a lot of time cooped up in here. Should sit by the window more, get some sun," he told her with a grin. "The pale thing doesn't work for you."

"Oh, me and the window seat are well aquainted. It's even a west facing window." Jean shrugged. "Whatever happened to 'you look good'?"

Logan didn't answer verbally, but he did form an image in his head - an almost-caricature of the Hysterical Female - Bride of Frankenstein hair, red eyes and her own personal hair shirt. He was very inexperienced at the mental projection game, but he did try to throw the image at her as best he could.

But Jean's shields were keeping her in her own head as well as a non-psi's natural inability did so. Without actually looking there was no way for her to notice the attempt at projection and as the silence lengthened she looked up from dealing out the cards to see him watching her intently. "What?"

Logan blinked and stopped trying to be cute about things. "Nothing," he said, waving it off. "I was expecting to see a cat-o'-nine-tails and a hair shirt around here somewhere. Or maybe a habit," he joked. He glanced at his cards then put them back face-down.

"The hair shirt's in the wash," she replied, smiling faintly. Tucking her feet back under herself she glanced over her own cards, not really focusing.

Logan chuckled at that, then glanced at his cards again. "Good that you're keeping it clean and all," he said after a few moments. "Anyone tell you that I had some breakthroughs in the last few weeks? Fairly traumatic, but according to Wheels it looks like one of the smaller blocks broke."

"Really? That's good to hear." There wasn't any intensity to the reply - it didn't seem she wasn't listening, or that she didn't care. More that she wasn't sure why he was saying it.

Logan sucked at small-talk. It wasn't his thing. But here he was, trying gamely anyway. "Yeah. Apparently I spent some time on a rez somewhere," he said. "Pretty sure I'm not Native," he deadpanned. "Picked up a new hobby, too," he said, trying to find something to talk about that would engage her.

"Oh yeah, what's that?" The problem was, Jean was almost as lost with small talk these days as he normally was. Nothing going around in her head qualified as small talk in the slightest, and there just wasn't room in there right now for little things. That, and the fact that she kept expecting someone to start yelling at her and no one was, meant she was more than a little off balance.

"Whittling," he said. "Just me, a knife, and a block of wood. It's nice. Very relaxing," he said. After a couple more moments of awkward pause, he sighed. "Look. I ain't the guy for small talk. I'll be straight with you. I'm worried about you. I'm not gonna blow sunshine up your ass and tell you that I can empathize with you or some shit like that. I can't. I got nothin'. But I don't want to see you waste away to nothing, choking on however much guilt you have that's real plus all the shit you're dumping on yourself. You want to make me happy? Come have breakfast with me tomorrow. How do you like your eggs?"

Jean sighed, leaning back into the chair. "I don't... I don't want small talk. I'm not exactly good at it now, either. And I'm not wasting away." The guilt thing she wasn't touching with a ten-foot pole. "But breakfast I can do. I'm agreeable about the eggs."

Logan noted that she didn't contest the guilt thing. "Only way shit's gonna get better is if you get out there and _face it_. You're a fighter, Jeannie. I know you are," he said. "And over-easy work for you, or are you more of a scrambled kinda girl?" he teased her.

Jean arched an eyebrow. "I'm more than scrambled enough," she quipped. "Let's keep the eggs all of a piece."

Logan grinned at her. He got her to crack a _joke_. Life was good!

"Fair enough. Over easy's easy enough to do. What else do you like for breakfast?" he asked her. To his eyes, she looked thin. Drawn. She could use a couple of good meals, maybe some time down in the Gym.

His treacherous brain thought of about a dozen more things she could probably really use, but none of them were real likely to be happening any time real soon. Logan squashed them like the mental cockroaches they were, and like cockroaches, they scurried back into the dark parts of his brain to come out again when he wasn't paying attention.

"I'm pretty agreeable, go with whatever you feel like, I guess." It would be good to have something to do in the morning, she decided now that she thought about it. It would keep her from obsessing over the big empty bed.

Logan shook his head. "Nope. Time to make a stand for your breakfast preferences," he said, crossing his arms for extra emphasis. "Me? I like my eggs over-easy, I like a stack of flapjacks, and I like bacon."

Jean smiled. "All right, fair enough. But pancakes and eggs sound good to me. I'll pass on the bacon, so long as you have O.J."

"I think that could be arranged," he said. "Done, then. What time's good for you?" He was normally up with the sun, but the Mansion seemed to be divided into two camps - up with the sun and complete slugs. It was getting nuts how bad the morning crush was in the Gym.

Jean was definitely in the early riser camp, although she tended not to go for exercise straight off. Coffee was always first. "Sometime after six?" she suggested. "Beyond that, just whenever you'd be ready."

"Six-thirty," he said. "Gives you time to get functional and lets me sneak in a quick workout. One bad thing about my ability to heal - it takes _forever_ to keep my muscle tone the way it is," he grumbled

"All right, you're on." Jean smiled. "So, are you wanting to finish the game or shall I just see you in the morning?"

Logan quirked an eyebrow at that, but sat back down to finish up the game. Besides, he was winning.