One Night Stand, Jean/Logan

Author: resolute
Title: One Night Stand

Fandom: New X-Men (under Grant Morrison)
Pairing: Jean Grey/Logan. Sorta.

Rating: Somewhere around PG-13, maybe R, almost.
Warnings, Spoilers, Caveats: This takes place after Jean figures out Scott is having a psychic affair with Emma, but before Magneto takes over New York and Jean gets trapped in space. Contains angst, self-loathing, poor emotional boundaries, and masturbation.


One Night Stand

The one night stand never happened. Not “never happened,” let’s not talk about it. Not “never happened,” because it was all telepathy, and sex in mind only doesn’t count. Jean knew telepathy counted. It counted when Scott did it. It would be rank hypocrisy to excuse herself.

No. Jean and Logan never had a one night stand.

One time, when Scott was away, Jean talked to Henry about it -- the new distance she felt from her usually distant man. She saw -- flashing across Hank’s mind and instantly erased -- the image of Logan and herself, naked, burning, grappling in flames. Fucking each other with no fear. No limits. Jean actually fumbled the conversation for a moment. Not at the image of herself and Logan having sex. God knows enough people wondered about it. But at the . . . approval . . . in Hank’s mind.

Their one night stand never happened.

All the times, all the times Jean had lost herself. All the times the X-Men pulled her back. Finding herself in their eyes. Finding herself in their minds. She knew them all. To see herself she saw them all. Every flaw and petty-minded crack. Every ambition and great-souled hope. Jean wasn’t who she had once been. Well. None of them were, and thank god for small favors. But Jean was now the sum of their visions of her, smelted by Phoenix and burned into body. She was what they all wanted. What they feared. Hope and love and envy and ambition. Passion made flesh.

It never happened.

Jean knew every inch of Logan. She knew the ever-present taste of cigar, stale or fresh, cheap or moneyed, she knew them all. She knew the tastes of six different kinds of Canadian beer. She knew the difference between Jack and Jameson.

Jean knew the pull and slide of muscle on adamantium graft. She knew the creak of furniture under his compact density. She knew the reconstruction of bones in feet to support the weighty structure above. Jean knew the leap, the gravity-less apogee of muscle-driven flight and the power inherent in the fall.

Jean knew the burn that faded instantly, the exhaustion that never stayed, the rash that faded, the blisters that healed before they formed. Never a hangnail. Never. Not once. Perfect hair, sleek and thick and soft, when it wasn’t coated in grease.

Jean knew the joy of physical mastery. Of skills hard-earned. She knew the pure joy of sparring, the darker joy of combat, the release of mind when body ruled.

Jean knew there was pain, too. Of course. But memory is fickle, and memory loves us while it hates us, and he did not remember the hurt. Of course, of course, shoving your ribs back into the skin hurt. Jean knew that herself. But she couldn’t remember any more than he could.

Pleasure he remembered. All the nights he spent thinking of her. She knew those. A blur. Images of her, mouth open, legs wide. She knew the feel of his hand stroking slow for as long as he could bear it. She knew how she looked to him when he was drunk. When he was lonely. When he was angry and jerked off so fast, so hard, standing barely in the door of his room, hand on the wall, fist yanking through denim and his claws sliding in and out a fraction with each stroke. That, she knew, hurt. She knew that he knew he deserved it. Deserved to hurt for what he thought of her. When he stood against the doorframe, claws pulsing and fist moving, she knew what he said through clenched teeth.

Never happened.

Comments and criticism welcome.