This isn't love, Logan tells himself. He and Marie -- they're comfortable. She understands him.

He sleeps in her bed at night; she wakes up alone in the morning. He holds her close and makes love to her over and over, chanting her name in hoarse whispers as he comes.

But it's not love.

He gets up and walks out after she falls asleep.

When Jean confronts him, says he doesn't know what he's doing to the girl who apparently worships the ground he walks on, he says, "I'm not worried. I know what I'm doing. I've done this sort of thing before."

"She's young, Logan," Jean responds. "With her, it's all or nothing. And pretty soon, if you don't make an exception, change the way you behave with her, it'll be nothing."

He shakes his head. "I don't want to talk about it."

Jean lets out a delicate snort. "There's a surprise."

"I mean it, Jeannie. This isn't love. It's just friendship with some really great sex thrown in. We don't have a 'relationship,'" he pronounces the word like an epithet, twisting it into something wrong, something undesirable. "We don't talk about our feelings and shit like that."

"If you say so, Logan." Jean is defeated. This is the three thousandth variation of this conversation; she's as tired of it as he is.

He takes Marie gently in his arms that night and tells her how much he needs her. This is new.

She shudders beneath him as she comes and he can't stop touching her. Not sated by being inside her, he needs to surround her, engulf her, pull her inside of him. "Baby, you're so beautiful," he whispers to her afterward, as he drifts off to sleep, another first.

When he wakes, it's to see her staring at him, brown eyes intense, brow furrowed in concentration. He lifts a gloved finger and traces it down the slope of her nose. "What's up, kid?"

"What is this?" she asks, gesturing to include the bed and their bodies entwined upon it.

"Us," he answers. "Friendship. That's all." That's what he tells himself. He doesn't want to examine his feelings. He doesn't need to look into his heart or any other bullshit that the others try to foist on him on the rare occasions he allows them to lecture him.

"Not love?" she asks, speaking the word for the first time in the three months they've been doing this.

He thinks for a moment, then shakes his head and says, "If it's love, does that change things?"

"There are consequences, expectations, obligations--"

He silences her with a kiss pressed to her full coral lips, through the wisp of material that protects them from each other, from acknowledging the thoughts and feelings he's trying so hard to deny.

"You're changing," she says when he releases her. She's like a dog with a bone, he thinks, relentlessly worrying at him until he tells her what she needs to hear, even though this is the first and last time she brings it up. But he won't -- he can't -- not yet.

"We're always changing," he answers, getting out of the bed and realizing he's had his first dreamless sleep in ages.

"Not you," she whispers as he walks out, but he hears anyway. "Never you."

Jean's dire predictions don't come true. Marie accepts him, makes allowances for his vagaries. Her kindness falls like rain, washing the pain away, purifying his stained and tattered soul, all without his knowledge or consent. When he recognizes it, he is grateful, which just makes him angry. He's no longer who he thought he was. Then he realizes he is better. She makes him a better man.

She has changed him, more than she will ever know, unless he tells her. But he's not ready for that yet, not ready to say the words that will codify his actions, label them and put them in a box. He's had enough of boxes and cages and being bound, and she knows that much, at least.

Scott confronts him in the garage, Ororo in the garden. It's the same conversation over and over again, with nothing changing but the person on the other end of it. Logan's response remains the same. "What do you want me to do? Lie to her? At least I'm being honest and not saying stuff I don't mean."

His nights are spent in his room now, and she comes to him, seeks him out when he doesn't arrive at her door. He makes love to her with a quiet desperation. She feels the change but isn't quite sure what's caused it or what it means, so she says nothing; she simply stares at him with those fathomless eyes that catch his and hold on like the tar on the streets in the sticky New York August.

He feels like he should say "As long as this is love --" but he never gets past the word. He can't figure out how to tell her. He tells himself his actions speak louder than words ever will, but his actions are not shouting "love." They're barely even whispering it in the dark corners of the night as he takes her body to places neither of them believed existed before they met each other.

He tells himself he won't worry. He doesn't worry -- it's not his way. And yet he does. He finds it distracts him from his usual pursuits -- he finds himself thinking of Marie and how she would react if he told her he loved her, and he takes an extra punch or two before putting down his opponent. He thinks about having Marie around all the time, living with her, not just fucking her, and he misses his stop on the subway.

And then one night she doesn't come to his bed. He knows it's because she's away on a mission, but he feels her absence keenly, as if suddenly, a limb is missing, yet he feels its phantom pain.

He's alone, and he tells himself he's not in love, but even he doesn't believe it anymore. He can't sleep without her now, and he lies in the moonlight waiting impatiently for her return.

He thinks about Marie and what she wants, and maybe what he wants, and how that might be the same thing...

When she enters his room, her touch a soothing balm upon his wound-up nerves, her kindness engulfing him once again, he knows he is in love.

She sleeps in the circle of his arms, muttering in her sleep, and he understands every word she says, even though it makes no sense, because he says the same things in his sleep. Her nightmares are his, and if he has his way, her dreams will be his, as well, and they will both sleep much better for it, blanketed in the warmth of their love.

He wakes her up to tell her, "I love you."

Her face is luminous, more beautiful than he ever could have imagined, as she says, "I love you, too," and brushes her gloved hand across his tear-filled eyes.

He's done it.

Now, the others smile at him, because they see that Marie's eyes are no longer shadowed by doubt and insecurity. They know that his actions match his words, and that the words have meant more than he'd ever imagined, leading to an unbreakable bond from which he has no wish to be freed.

She sleeps in his bed at night, wakes up with him in the morning. He holds her close and makes love to her over and over, chanting her name in hoarse whispers as he comes.

It is love, and even though he's not ready for it, he won't let it slip away.

End