If he was being honest, Logan would admit that he felt like he'd been kicked in the gut, or maybe it was sucker punched. Yeah, he always healed from stuff like that pretty quick, but it hurt like hell when it happened. Days went by, but the rest of the world might as well have been going on without him. He was focused on one thing and one thing only.
Rogue may as well have waved a big sign in front of his eyes saying, “I don't need you anymore.” There were no discussions on the weekends at breakfast, no more smiles in the hallways or teasing laughs about his bad habits. She didn't follow him around like the kid sister he'd tried to convince himself she was, easily dismissed if something more important came up but always someone who would be there and who needed his protection.
Every night she was out. It wasn't always with that Bryan kid. Sometimes she'd go out on her own or with Jubilee, Kitty, or both, going to clubs, plays, concerts. Summer was in full swing, and for the older teenagers that seemed to mean a constant round of activities. Rogue reveled in them all and was rarely alone.
At least two nights a week she came back smelling like sex and Bryan, although now she used the Professor's graduation gift of an almost-new Prius to go out. Logan knew it was only the one guy whom she gave herself to, even though they weren't technically dating so far as he could tell, because only his scent mixed with hers in that way. She seemed to have plenty of dates, though, as if she was making up for lost time.
To Logan the worst part of the past month and half had been that, if he'd kept his old way of seeing Rogue, he would have been cheering her on. She deserved to experience life. He knew that. He knew she needed to feel the touches she'd been denied so long, skin on skin. It would have been so much better if she'd turned to his touches, though, his skin against hers.
At first he tortured himself with why. Why hadn't she come to him with her curiosity? He knew she'd had a crush on him at one time, and he was the only man at the mansion she'd spent more than ten minutes with at a time during his first month back. Wasn't that normal for her? It seemed to be normal still—she rarely hung out with any single guy here, preferring to find her companionship in the wider mutant and even human world. What he didn't know was why she took that particular stance. What was wrong with him, with the other men here, in her eyes?
It took him that first week to figure it out, and he felt like cursing himself to a dozen hells, a hundred hells, when he realized what it was. Rogue wasn't even the one to clue him into it. Ororo had taken to looking at him strangely, then glancing at Jean. At first he thought nothing of it. Then he caught the frown on Scott's face one day. Only it wasn't the usual “I-think-you're-a-fucker-who-wants-to-steal-my-woman” frown. It was confused. What the fuck was confusing Scooter? Logan hated that this little inconsistency was taking his attention from Rogue, but then it occurred to him that it was part of it. So was the disappointed look in Jean's eyes that he caught later that day when he looked at her and then turned away without even a smile, too focused on locating Rogue, swarmed by guys as usual these days, as they all gathered for a summer barbecue for dinner.
Just then Rogue's eyes had slid over him, the rest of the teachers, and then snapped back to him with a small frown before she visibly shook it off and turned back to her harem. (Yeah, he thought of the mansion group as her harem.) Logan's frown, seemingly habitual now, deepened, and he glanced around to try and figure out what had brought the confusion to her eyes. He was standing with his back to the others, arms crossed, so that he could keep his eyes on her, make sure that no one stepped out of line over there. Except that he couldn't seem to stop her from stepping out of line, or rather vaulting the line like an Olympic champ.
Ororo, Jean, and Scott were talking with the Professor. Jean was the furthest from him, and it was that which triggered his revelation. Logan had always tried to walk, stand or be as near as possible to Jean as he could for the first month that he was back. Flirting, joking, taking her attention away from Scott had consumed him as a pastime to help him forget the frustrations of the past few years of empty promises for answers to his past, deserted buildings and wiped computer drives. He had sometimes wondered if he really did have enough hold on her to take her away from her fiancee, and what he would do if that happened.
That was when Logan remembered what happened at dinner time the day that Rogue's control breakthrough occurred. He had been following Jean, as usual, trying to capture her attention, seeing if it would really work or if she was just stringing him along. She'd been subtly flirting with him on the walk to the dining hall, and then they'd been interrupted by Rogue's news. When it had been his turn to congratulate Rogue...
Logan felt like getting a strong drink at that point, but he contented himself with raking a hand through his hair and downing his half-bottle of beer in one long gulp. To all intents and purposes, he'd ignored her. Brushed off her triumph with a few distant words because all his concentration was on the woman walking away. He didn't realize that he was pushing away the woman beside him until it was too late.
His heart beating faster, his breath shallower, Logan tried to calm himself from the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. He may not have been the most experienced person in social nuances, but he was pretty sure that he had committed a Major Fuck Up. You don't ignore one woman for another without facing consequences, especially not if anything remotely like sex is involved. Or even affection. No. That was Not Good Manners.
As far as he could tell, he had only two choices. He could continue standing in the shadows, waiting for Rogue to outgrow this phase and come back to him. Given what he'd just realized, that wasn't likely to happen. He may have destroyed whatever she had felt for him with one stupid, selfish act. His other option was to fight through all of her admirers and take her for himself. Or convince her to take him.
Logan knew that there really wasn't any question about which choice he would take. He also knew that he would have to plan carefully. He couldn't just wade through chopping up bodies until he got to Rogue, although that sounded like fun in his current state. He was going to have to use a strategy that no one, especially Rogue, would expect from him if he was going to change Rogue's mind about him, make her want to give him a second chance without stepping on her newfound independent toes.
His eyes burned with a new fire as he gazed at her. Logan was going to have to be subtle. The only thing that worried him was that it might kill him before he reached his goal. Or she might.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Okay, after writing this I feel slightly better towards Logan. I hope you do, too.
Chapter End Notes:
And so the campaign begins!