* * *
Most families find the addition of a baby — especially their first — to the household to be a stressful time. The new concerns and reshuffling of the former relationship dynamic — to say nothing of the lack of sleep caused by late-night feedings and diaper changes in the wee hours — have in fact caused ruptures in previously-contented couples.
For Logan and Cicely, by no means a contented couple, the change might have been expected to in fact be the camel-breaking straw. But it wasn’t so. That first few months with Maximilian (as he was rather flamboyantly named by Cicely) were probably the happiest time of their entire marriage.
Logan discovered — or perhaps rediscovered — to his vast surprise that he enjoyed dealing with children. There was an initial uncomfortable period of learning to cope with such unfamiliar territory as diapers, bottles, baby baths, and attempting to soothe an infant back into sleep at three AM, but Logan was a fast learner.
An unexpected side benefit became apparent in this period, giving an additional motivation for learning the finer points of infant care. Somewhere in that nebulous area of qualities and habits that were associated in Cissy’s mind with "How a *Good* Husband Should Be," being a good father ranked high on the list. Logan quickly noted that whenever Ciss found him with Max — whether changing a diaper unasked, lulling him to sleep or merely holding him and talking to him — the sharp expression he had gotten so used to seeing on her face would soften, and her eyes would hold more warmth in them than he was used to seeing since their honeymoon.
So between the way it made Cicely easier to live with and his own newly-developed paternal interests, he stuck around. Where he once might have been tempted to leave Ciss to deal with the kid while he spent as much time out and about as possible, instead he stayed home and helped out. He even curtailed his usual bedhopping for the first few months. (Granted, he was still running off occasionally — but maybe only once or twice a week, if that often, and coming home well before dawn instead of staying gone all night as he had before.)
He actually began to really enjoy the wake-up cries in the wee hours. Bad dreams and a restlessly energetic nature left him with frequent insomnia. Max turned out to be welcome company when the rest of the X-Mansion was enjoying the sleep of the just, and the frequent interruptions to his sleep helped ensure that Logan dropped off as soon as his head hit the pillow during the hours he *did* manage to spend in bed.
It was a brief lull in their stormy union. To the rest of the X-Crew, any difficulties the pair might have had in the early months seemed to have been smoothed over. Probably Ciss had just been cranky from the changes and stresses of pregnancy, Logan had been settled down by fatherhood, the couple had needed to adjust from "dating" to actively living together. Logan and Cissy — and Max — appeared to be a happy little family, and for this short time that would almost have been the correct impression.
But of course, things changed.
* * *
"Now try getting the other side."
Marie giggled.
"Nope, not quite. Keep smearing — your warpaint’s on crooked." Logan wasn’t giggling, or even smiling, but Marie could see the amusement lurking in his eyes.
The source of all this mirth attempted once more to summon the phenomenal degree of hand-eye coordination required to eat a spoonful of strained yams. So far he’d gotten orange mush all over his high chair, bib, hands, and face, but very little had actually been eaten.
"At least you’re getting it up to your face. Now you just gotta find your mouth..." Logan leaned his crossed arms on the table, watching as Max took the spoon clutched in his sticky fist and stabbed it clumsily into the sweet potato on his plate. "That’s the first part — keep going..." Bringing the business end of the spoon to his mouth proved a bit trickier — the more so since Max was holding it pointing downwards from his fist. Gamely he attempted to bring it to his mouth, but succeeded only in globbing more mush onto his chin. "So close..."
"He’s just smearing it all over the place. Maybe you should try feeding him yourself?"
"Nah, the baby book said to let him try feeding himself when he wants to. Otherwise we may still be spoonfeeding him when he’s two..." Indicating his orange-bedaubed offspring with a tilt of his head, "Besides, isn’t this entertaining?" Entertaining, but messy. Logan having learned his lesson from the mouthful of smushed blueberries lovingly smeared across the design on a Harley-Davidson shirt some months ago, removing his shirt before uncapping the jars of baby food had become as much a part of the routine as putting a bib on Max. A few random splatterings of orange on his bare arms confirmed the wisdom of the habit.
Marie giggled again. Max, perhaps reacting to being found overly amusing, flung down the spoon with a "Ba!" of annoyance. Eliminating the middleman along with any semblance of table manners, he stuck both chubby hands into the yams and brought them to his face. Aside from adding another coating of potato to his cheeks, he managed to get a reasonable amount actually into his mouth. Marie graduated from giggles to full scale laughter.
"Okay, now *that’s* cheating. Time to bring in a pro..." Picking up the used spoon from the floor and taking it to the sink, Logan found another baby-sized spoon in the silverware drawer. Max quit sucking on his sticky fingers and happily opened his mouth to accept another dollop of yam.
Marie propped her chin up on her hand and watched Logan expertly scraping goo off the baby’s face and transferring it to his mouth. Fun and games over, the laughter died away and the lingering smile gradually disappeared.
Catching her face out of the corner of his eye and watching the humor leave it, Logan asked, "Something wrong?" without turning away from his son.
"Oh, just..." Marie shook her head. "It’s nothing. Not important."
"Important or not, you look like it’s bothering you."
"Well, it... It just... I was getting dressed this morning, and Remy asked why I never wore the green sweater he gave me any more..."
"And?"
"And I don’t like wearing it because, well... It’s a stupid reason..."
"So?"
"So... It’s what I was wearing when... when I lost... the first time..." She paused and swallowed.
Looking around from Max for the first time, Logan saw the overly-bright look in her eyes. He nodded at her to show that he understood, and that she didn’t have to finish.
Saved from having to refer to her first miscarriage too directly, she took a deep breath and continued. "So after that, whenever I saw it hanging in the closet, I’d remember... And I quit wearing it unless Remy actually asked me about it — because he liked it, he liked the color on me and it was a really nice sweater and all that. And then when I got pregnant the second time, I didn’t want to wear it *ever* because, well... Remy said I was being superstitious, but he didn’t make a big deal about it. But this morning..." Another pause, followed abruptly by an apparent change in subject. "You know we did everything different the second time. We told everyone we were expecting the first one as soon as we knew, we barely told anyone about the second one because we were waiting for me to start showing. We were all excited picking out names and planning the baby’s room the first time, we were waiting until later on for the second one. Like we didn’t want to jinx it, you know? And Remy was doing all that the same as I was — but this morning, he said that I was being superstitious, cause it hadn’t done a bit of good helping me... helping me keep the second one, so why didn’t I just see that it was a nice sweater and put it on and quit treating it like a... ‘mark of ill omen,’ I think he called it." An unhappy laugh. "Like he’s just been humoring me about it all this time, but he’s sick of it now."
Logan gave her a compassionate look, actually going so far as to put the spoon down. "But you still don’t want to wear it anymore."
"I know, I *know*, it *is* silly and superstitious and stupid, but..."
"But you can’t help feeling that way."
Marie silently shook her head.
"Ab! Daaa..." Max impatiently slapped the tray of his high chair, demanding resumption of the potatoes.
Logan turned back to his son, but continued speaking to Marie. "I don’t like doctors or labs or any of that shit. And I know that Hank and Jeannie aren’t anything like the fuckers that had me before — even if Hank *does* get a little in-your-face about some of his research questions sometimes — and I know that I’m fine going down into the Medlab." A pause while he scraped up another spoonful. "But that doesn’t mean that I like it there. I don’t let it keep me out of there when I’ve got a reason to go — but I don’t go wandering in for no good reason either. And I keep watching my back whenever I’m there." Another thoughtful pause. "Feelings don’t follow logic. You shouldn’t let them get in the way when you wanna do something. But when it’s something little — like not wanting to wear something because it reminds you of something bad that happened once when you were wearing it — well, could be you need to get past that and move on. But could be that it’s just a sweater and if you don’t want to wear it anymore, then don’t. You’ve got other clothes."
Marie sighed. "Too bad Remy doesn’t agree."
Logan looked like he was debating something with himself for a moment, then said, "Everyone deals with grief their own way. He’s trying to get past it, too — just not the same way you are."
She frowned. "Shouldn’t he let me deal my way while he deals his way?"
"Could be you keep reminding *him* of it the way you keep avoiding stuff... Could be he wants you to get some *good* memories to do with that sweater so you can start wearing it again and it turns into just another sweater instead of bad news."
Resting her folded arms on the tabletop, Marie dropped her face onto them for just a moment. "Could be he’s just being shallow again and can’t stand seeing me not liking something that *he* gave me."
A short chuff of laughter, followed by another squeal from Max. Raising her head, Marie saw Logan carting the plate and spoon to the sink before returning with a washrag in an attempt to clear the worst of the goo off his son. Resisting the scrubbing, Max kept trying to turn his face away. "Gah! Daaa..."
"That was almost a, ‘Da,’ there — are you *sure* he isn’t starting to talk yet?"
"Ah, he makes enough noise, *some* of it’s gonna sound like words."
"I don’t know, I think he’s edging up to a ‘Da-da’..."
Logan chuckled. "Aah, I think he can do better than that." Scooping Max out of the chair, "How about it, kid? Gonna learn from your Uncle Hank, start with something *hard*?"
"Antidisestablishmentarianism, Max! Antidisestablishmentarianism..." Getting caught up in the spirit of things, Marie stood up to get closer to the baby. "An... ti... dis... es... tab..." At such close range, she had a good view of not only Max but his father, so she saw the exact moment when the playful light in Logan’s eyes went out.
Breaking off her playful chant to ask what was wrong, she got her answer before she even had the question asked, as Logan turned his head to the kitchen door. And there was Cicely, just walking into the room — clearly Logan had heard (or scented) her approach.
Marie caught her breath — Cissy was *not* a sight that should have taken the joy from *any* man’s eyes, especially not her husband’s. Right now she was obviously fresh from the shower, her damply-curling hair in a naturally tousled style that many women paid good money to simulate with perms and gels. Snug-fitting jeans and a white button-down blouse open at the top showed off a figure that had clearly bounced back from childbearing and then some. Knowing that Ciss had in fact just finished a workout helped — but not much. At least Cicely had to put in a *little* effort to look that good — but she was still starting off at an advantage. Feeling small and drab by comparison, Marie wondered, [Why the hell did I have to end up sharing a house with a bunch of frickin’ cover girls and outright goddesses? Jean, Ro, Bets, Cissy — I might as well shave my head and wear sackcloth, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in the amount of attention *I* get...]
Absorbed in feeling dowdy, Marie almost missed it when Ciss asked, "Rogue, you wouldn’t happen to be free to watch Max for a few hours tonight, would you? If it’s not too much trouble?"
Before Marie could reply, Logan answered, "S’okay, I’ll be home to watch him. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere tonight."
Cicely frowned. "Actually I was thinking we could go out, get some dinner. You know — a little time to ourselves?"
Logan forestalled Marie’s agreement again. "Nah, that’s okay. You go on out — I think Jeannie and Betsy and Ro were driving into New York a little bit later. Go along, make a chicks’ night out of it. I wasn’t really wanting to go anywhere."
The frown wasn’t going away, but Ciss was considering. "Well, maybe we could make a night of it right here at home, if we could just get someone to watch Max for a little while..."
"Sure, no problem — " Marie began, but Logan ran right over the top of her.
"No! You go on and have a good time — you haven’t done anything like that for *months*. I go out all the time, I’ll just stay home tonight. Go. Have fun."
Marie almost missed noticing Cicely’s glare, caught up in gazing awestruck at the spectacle of a man noted for his raging and untamed libido turning down guaranteed sex with a goddess. The faint trace of Logan still lingering in her mind whispered to her that *something* had to be up — there was no *way* he could have missed the fact that his wife was trying to set up a romantic evening.
Cicely obviously didn’t have a Inner Logan. Clearly she could have used one. "Actually, I was thinking less in terms of getting out of the house, and more of you and I getting some alone time."
"We see each other all the time. We *live* together."
"Yes, but I meant *alone* time. Without Max."
"Nothing wrong with Max being around. Is there, kid?" he asked, attempting to defuse the situation by redirecting attention to the ever-popular Maximilian.
[Oh, I am *not* believing he’s gotten *that* bored in bed — not with *her*! That’s what she’s *good* at!] Marie thought to herself.
That little shadow of Logan murmured in its time-faded voice, [That’s not it, that’s not it at all, it *can’t* be...]
"No, but sometimes it’d be nice just to get some *alone* time. Without having to worry about him waking up at the wrong minute..."
Logan shrugged. "I’m sure he’ll be sleeping all night soon enough..."
Ciss actually gritted her teeth. "Not soon enough for me."
Logan gave her a brief, wary look before returning his outward attention to his son. "No hurry, kid. I don’t mind."
Marie tried to disprove her growing suspicion. "It’s all right, I’d be thrilled to take him for a while. Give you two some time to yourselves."
Standing almost directly between Cissy and Marie, Logan had the luxury of being able to look at one without the other seeing his face. He took full advantage, keeping the tone of his, "Don’t worry about it Marie — I’m sure you have better things to do tonight," mild, while glaring at her warningly.
[Something’s wrong,] Marie thought to herself, echoed by that spectral Inner Logan. [Something’s *really* wrong. He doesn’t want to be alone with his wife...] Responding less to the threatening glare and more to the mute pleading she saw lurking beneath it in his eyes, she slowly replied, "Well, if you’d rather I didn’t..."
"S’okay, he and I’ll be fine. Cissy, you go. Have a good time." Without giving either woman a chance to reply further, he grabbed the shirt left draped across his chairback and left the kitchen, Max still tucked in one arm.
Ciss glared at her husband’s departing back, bewildered. "What? Is there some kind of sporting event I don’t know about on tonight?"
Finding a puzzled expression extremely easy to assume under the circumstances, Marie shrugged. "Ah, he must have had some heavy male bonding on the schedule. Maybe he had something planned with Kurt..."
* * *
[Well, so much for sleeping through the night.] Max was actually beginning to give his parents a break on the late-night wake-ups, and Logan and Cicely were getting a bit caught up on all that lost sleep. Not tonight, though — it was three AM and Max was awake.
As were both his parents — Cissy because he’d needed feeding, and Logan because she refused to let her husband sleep through the night if *she* had to be awakened. Given that breastfeeding wasn’t exactly a parental duty that could be shared, she settled for sending Logan to go get Max when he cried, and letting him be the one to get him back to sleep and in his crib afterwards.
One might argue that this was selfish of her — that if she was so insistent on Max not being a bottle baby, then she should go ahead and deal with his feedings herself and let her husband sleep. Logan, being awakened by the yowling in the wee hours regardless, could understand why it would be intolerable to always be the one who had to deal with the baby while one’s bedpartner put his head under a pillow and went back to sleep.
Besides, he liked dealing with Max, even at three AM. *Especially* now that the both of them had begun to be allowed to sometimes sleep through the night again — because he could no longer be sure that Cissy would be asleep by the time he had Max tucked back into his crib. Ciss had begun to be alarmingly awake at night...
Having been handed Max to put back to bed, Logan took precautions. "C’mon, kid — let’s go see what’s on downstairs..."
"You’re going to go down and watch TV? At this time of night?" Ciss raised her head from the pillow.
"Yeah, he’s up, I’m up — might as well. Not gonna go back to sleep for a while."
An annoyed sigh from the bed was his only answer.
Frankly, Logan didn’t hold much hope for there being much worth watching at this hour, even on cable — but Max was already yawning, and he held even less hope that the kid would stay awake longer than his mom would. Claiming to be out of bed soothing the kid to sleep didn’t work if Cissy could see that Max was already out for the count.
So he took his son and headed down to the kitchen to raid the fridge.
Turned out he wasn’t the only one with that idea.
Kurt tended to turn invisible in the shadows — one of the more convenient quirks of his particular complement of mutant characteristics. To someone with Logan’s night vision, perfectly capable of seeing normal beings in the dark, it was surreal to see a person who was *only* invisible in shadow — especially when he was *partially* illuminated, as by the light from the open refrigerator door.
"Couldn’t sleep?"
Kurt almost dropped the milk — Logan had padded into the kitchen on silent bare feet, and Kurt’s ears weren’t quite up to detecting breathing and heartbeat from several yards off. Turning and spotting the pair, he replied, "I thought Max was sleeping through the night?"
"Not always. Not tonight. So I figured I’d let his mom get back to sleep while I was getting *him* back to sleep."
"Ah." Recovering from the surprise, Kurt poured milk into his cereal before putting the jug back into the fridge.
Deciding to pass on the Lucky Charms, Logan went for a Molson’s instead. It took a bit of care to bend down to the bottom of the fridge without jostling Max, and by the time Logan straightened up Kurt had already turned on the light over the table and seated himself.
"I sincerely hope you weren’t planning on sharing that with *him*," gesturing at the beer with a spoon.
Well accustomed to Kurt’s puckish sense of humor, Logan played along. "Oh, I don’t know — probably be good for him. I think he’s good for right now, though — he’s fed and he’s happy."
"He looks it." <Crunch crunch> "He looks asleep."
Logan glanced down, although the even breathing had already told its tale. "Could be," not admitting anything. "Wakes up pretty easy when he’s put back down, though," which was sometimes true.
"Hmm." <Crunch crunch crunch>
Logan studied the powder blue pajamas but decided to refrain from comment. There are a lot of ways to deal with being scary-looking. Logan tended to go with the flow, enhance the image. Kurt went the other way.
When you can’t do anything about being blue and furry — to say nothing of having yellow eyes, pointed ears, sharp teeth, a tail, and only three digits per hand and foot — it takes some work to look harmless.
Conversational material being thin on the ground at that hour, they crunched and slurped for a while in relative silence. Finishing up, Kurt went to the sink to rinse out his bowl. "I think he’s out for good. You might be able to try going back to bed by now."
Logan considered. "Guess I could," he said reluctantly. He frankly wouldn’t have minded crashing out on the couch in front of the TV, even falling asleep there...
"Go on. I’m sure your wife misses you."
Logan couldn’t help the flinch. "Hope not." Kurt went very still. "Hope she’s asleep by now," he attempted to cover.
"And would it be such a bad thing if she were still awake?" It was phrased lightly, as though merely a bit of offhand conversation or mild curiosity, but Logan recognized that rapid vibration of just the tip of Kurt’s tail. It meant he was *paying attention* to what Logan said — and didn’t say.
[Damn. Kurt thinks he’s stumbled across A Friend With a Problem. Just what I did *not* need.] "Ah, not a big deal. I just think she could use the chance to get some sleep, is all. And so could I — and since I think Max is out for the count, I’m heading back up to bed now..."
He was escaping before the conversation went any farther into dangerous territory. Judging by the reserved tone of the, "Gute Nacht. Sleep well...," Kurt realized that Logan was being evasive, but was too polite to be actively nosy. Not at this hour of the morning, anyway...
While climbing the stairs back up to his and Cissy’s quarters, Logan considered the matter. Kurt could be both observant and persistent, and convincing him that no problem existed might prove difficult. Logan was entirely capable of telling a good friend to butt the hell out of his private life — but he would very much prefer not to have to...
* * *
"I swore I would love you to the end of time
So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
'Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive
I'll never break my promise or forget my vow
But God only knows what I can do right now
I'm praying for the end of time
So I can end my time with you"
— "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," by Meat Loaf
* * *
"You can’t keep hiding from your wife forever."
Logan lined up his shot, made it. "Not forever," he muttered absently, as though this conversation wasn’t knotting the back of his neck with tension. "Just until she gives up and goes to sleep for the night."
"Poor baby whose wife wants to actually have *sex* with him sometime in the next decade." Marie shifted from sarcasm to curiosity in the space of a breath. "Why exactly are you so opposed to just — giving her what she wants? I guess I can see you’re not the faithful type — " Logan shot her a penetrating look " — but I don’t think she’d mind as much if you were at least *with* her while you’re with her, if you get what I’m saying."
Logan flubbed his next shot, too much attention on framing his response and not enough on framing his shot. ["I don’t trust her not to have another kid to tie me down even further"? Nah, not that big a consideration and she’d probably just tell me I should talk about it with Cissy, or remind me how much I love Max and ask if another one would be such a bad thing to have. "She keeps nagging me about it — *big* turn-off." Nope, I do all the *other* shit she nags me about, just to get her off my case.] In a quiet tone, "I’m just not interested anymore." It was the most understated phrasing possible of the big reason, the actual truth.
Marie shook her head ruefully, picking up her own cue. "I can’t say much for your attention span, then, if two years is enough time for a goddess like *that* to bore you so completely." Oddly enough, Logan looked genuinely unhappy at that statement. Examining her own words for some clue to what he was reacting to, she concluded, "You’re just not made for long-term relationships, are you? If it weren’t for Max, you wouldn’t have any reason to stay married."
Annoyed, "If it weren’t for Max, we never would have *got* married." [And we’d both be a lot happier.] In a calmer tone, "I don’t think it’s fair to say I’m not cut out for long relationships when the only one I’ve ever *been* in was with someone I never wanted to keep around in the first place."
Marie smiled humorlessly as understanding set in. "Lesson One: Having one-night stands over and over with the same woman makes it *real* easy for her to mistake them for an actual relationship."
He sighed. "*Now* you tell me."
"Well. Too late for *that* advice now — you’re stuck with her. Unless you just go ahead and get a divorce and put yourselves both out of your misery.
"Believe me, once Max hits eighteen — or as to close to it as I can stand to stick around for — I’m gone. Well, divorcing Cissy, anyway — I’m not cutting *him* off."
Marie sighed a little. "That’s great for Max, but not so fair for Cissy. I mean, marriage isn’t supposed to be just until the kids are grown — it’s supposed to be a lifetime commitment, growing old together and all that." [Good thing for *me* — otherwise Remy and I wouldn’t have any reason to stay married...]
Logan gave her a measuring look, possibly sensing her own underlying regret and the reason thereof. Steering clear of her own child-related disappointments, he said, "Marriage means different things to different people."
"So, that’s it. You’re just going to cut her off — in her forties, with a grown son, and suddenly she’s got to find a new partner or spend the rest of her life alone?"
Logan frowned. "She’s got a healing factor — she won’t have really aged that much. It’s not like I’d have taken up all her good years..."
"Yeah, but you’d both have wasted a couple of decades. Why not just break it off now, if you’re going to? Save yourselves both a lot more pain and trouble, set yourselves free before things get any worse."
He shook his head, still frowning. "I married her because I wanted to be sure Max had a father growing up. I care about doing right by *him*, not her."
"Logan, you’re not a deadbeat. You’ll be around to take care of Max whether you’re married to his mother or not."
"I’m not just talking child support — which I’m sure Cissy would tear out of my living hide if I *didn’t* pay — I’m talking about *being there*. Playing catch, camping trips, teaching him to drive and fight and hunt..."
"Joint custody — "
" — assumes that Cissy would be willing to share him with me, or that I could convince a judge that someone with a shady past, near-criminal record, and lack of visible means of income — who, oh yeah, isn’t even an American citizen — deserves equal time with his son. And I’m not talking weekends and summers here — I’m talking about living under the same roof, at least as much time as he gets with his mother. And I don’t want to settle for just half his time, either, but if I split with Cissy I’d be lucky if I got *that* much." He cut his tirade off, grimly.
Marie looked taken aback. Of *course* he’d put a lot more thought into this than she had — it had been eating away at him for longer than she’d even realized that a problem existed. "You don’t think — she’d leave the X-Men if you split up?"
"I think she’d leave the *state* — go back to Wisconsin, or maybe even out to California. There’s another little superhero group out there that’s higher profile than we are, and I heard they’re recruiting. They’d *love* to get her on their team — she’s scary in a fight and photogenic as hell the rest of the time." He set his jaw grimly, game forgotten.
Too absorbed in the conversation to even think of reminding him that it was his turn at the table, Marie said, "So basically if you want to stay in Max’s life, you have to stay in Cicely’s as well?"
"Afraid so."
"Well — have you tried learning to live with her? I mean, figuring out ways to sort of — ease the tension a little?"
"That’s what I’ve *been* doing — shut up and do what I’m told at home, and get away whenever I can."
"Except for the sex. You haven’t been ‘doing what you’re told’ *there*."
"No, and — " sigh " — I’m really just not interested in her anymore." [Well, actually "repulsed by her" would be more accurate than "just not interested in her any more"...]
"Well, couldn’t you — " lowering her voice " — just pretend she’s someone else?"
Logan gave her a half-smile. [If only she knew...] "That’d work right up until I called her the wrong name — but things’d pretty much go downhill from there."
Marie winced. "Right. Good point."
"And then she’d probably make *me* be the one to get the bloodstains out of the sheets afterwards."
Marie giggled, not realizing that he hadn’t really been joking.
* * *
It wasn’t a very satisfactory situation. Cissy’s growing frustration with her husband cropped out in unpleasant ways. Logan wished she would finally get upset enough with him to stop pushing him for sex, but so far that didn’t seem to be happening. Instead, she seemed if anything to be almost begging for attention to ease the increasing tension between them. Logan, on the other hand, found her annoyance (and more to the point her resulting shrewishness) to be a severe turn-off. And as for the premise that a resumption of marital relations would help soothe his wife and make their relationship more mutually tolerable — well, it felt too much like coercion to him. Contrarily he refused to comply on general principles, even when the urge to fuck her just to get her off his case for a while briefly and occasionally arose.
So. Cicely was unhappy because her studly but unpredictable (and sometimes even intractable) mate had done absolutely nothing to indicate that he found her remotely attractive anymore. This left her feeling not merely frustrated but undesirable as well, and let to the increasing worry that she no longer had sufficient interest to hold her husband’s roving eye. The desperation came out as anger, aimed squarely at the culprit in the crime of blinding himself to his wife’s regained sexual appeal. Which led to fighting and even a few blows.
Frankly, Cicely was trying to provoke a reaction. Outrage, shouting, a sweaty furious fight that would hopefully lead to some of that adrenaline-charged sex that she so missed. Cissy had been placed on the other team after returning to active duty — it being deemed safer not to send both parents of small children into the same combat situation, just in case of disaster — and she and Logan never trained together any more either. "Domestic disputes" were the only form of action the pair saw together now.
She just wanted him to *fight back*. Defend himself, show that he cared what she said and did to him, even try to retaliate. But all she got was — nothing. Passivity, agreement, excuses — and not a sign of temper.
Sometimes there were these little ... flashes, of something displeased in his eyes. But judging by how easily Logan seemed to dismiss the feeling, it could rate no higher than annoyance.
It was as though nothing she said or did to him struck him as worth being angered over — and this, coming from a man whose favorite hobby seemed to be daring people to push the chip off of his shoulder, was close to the ultimate insult.
Cicely felt she was being considered only a peripheral matter in her own husband’s life . So she pushed and argued and even hit, trying to force his attention
Trying to get him to wake up and acknowledge her position (alongside Max) as one of the two most important people in his life.
Wasn’t she?
* * *
It was the late night talk shows that did it. Logan was sitting through Craig Kilborn’s show only because he found him marginally less annoying than Conan O’Brien. Either host, however, was preferable to heading upstairs to his wife.
It was late — but not yet late enough. Delaying his retreat to the bedroom for as long as possible after Max was down for the night increased the chances that Cissy would be asleep by the time her husband put in his appearance — ideally, deeply enough not to wake as he slipped between the covers. And in the worst-case scenario — Logan in bed with an awake, amorous, annoyed wife — well, he was cutting into his sleep time enough to justifiably claim to be too tired to accommodate her.
But restlessness at his mostly-housebound life was rising — as was sexual frustration. What he *really* wanted to do was to start going out again — drinking and fighting and *especially* fucking when the mood hit him. (Or at least after Max was down for the night, and coming home well before dawn, too — he still liked being awakened by seemingly the only person within the X-Mansion who thought his dad was a great guy.)
And *this* was the night that he finally gave in to temptation and did just that.
But if he had thought Cicely had reacted badly to his tomcatting around while she was pregnant, then it had been a reflection of blissful ignorance. Cissy’s reaction to having her husband out finding new beds to share when her own was impatiently waiting for him was — catastrophic. Thermonuclear. Apocalyptic. She woke the entire floor, *plus* the neighbors above and below their quarters.
The squall from the other bedroom was what silenced her, once she paused for breath and was finally able to hear it. Max was perhaps a bit young to follow the conversation as his mother called his father a whorehopping dogfucking bastard, but he wasn’t thrilled to be awakened listening to Mommy yelling. The flow in invective ceased as Cissy rushed to the next room to soothe her precious.
Logan painfully picked himself up off the floor, as Cicely returned from the next room. "See what you‘ve done? You’ve upset your *son*. *He* doesn’t want his daddy to go running off and leave him and his mommy all alone."
Logan could have pointed out that *Cissy* had been the noisy one waking up the household — but he maintained his silence. The mention of him abandoning Cissy and Max — even though a bit of overwrought hyperbole on Cissy’s part — had coldly reminded him of just what he had to lose.
It wasn’t merely a question of whether he would leave Ciss or stay with her. *She* could also leave *him*.
While Cicely returned to the baby’s room, setting Max back into his bed for hopefully the remainder of the night, Logan collapsed into a chair and rested his head in his hands, wondering how the hell he’d gotten himself into this situation.
Hearing her returning from the next room, he began to kick off his boots, figuring that it was definitely time to hit the sack. Time to lie with their backs to one another pretending not to be aware of each other for the rest of the night...
His wife stopped him. "Maybe you’d better sleep somewhere else tonight," she said icily.
He nodded, shoved his foot back into his boot, stood, and walked out without pausing to comment or argue.
["Sleep somewhere else." Of *course*...]
* * *
It was a slow and subtle process. A gradual accumulation of clothes, toiletries and personal items, accrued over repeated visits.
Maybe it was roughly akin to the manner in which a couple may go from merely visiting one another’s homes, to gradually leaving more and more belongings at the other’s place — until finally the decision is made to just move in together.
Logan wouldn’t know. His only real experience of couplehood had been the sudden jump he and Ciss had taken from fucking each other periodically to married cohabitation. Before finding himself shackled to the wench, he had neither allowed her to leave her paraphernalia in his room, nor left anything of his own in hers.
But the thought must have occurred to him — even if only in the nonverbal subconscious recesses of his mind — as soon as Cicely told him to sleep somewhere else (if not even before then). Because when he selected an unoccupied bedroom to crash in for the night, not only did he make a point of raiding a linen closet for sheets and blankets (a strange effort to make when merely selecting a resting place at three AM, especially for a man so used to sleeping rough), but he selected the most cramped, isolated, and undesirable room he could. Not the really nice accommodations allotted to the adults who chose to remain with the X-Men, or even one of the comfortable (albeit usually shared) rooms typical for the students. This was a little cubbyhole of a room inconveniently crowded into an oddly-shaped architectural null-space, and far from the more populated parts of the household. Servants’ quarters, somewhere to hide the crazy aunt — that kind of place.
It was therefore highly unlikely to be assigned to anyone, whether adult or new student.
Which meant that Logan could quietly take possession of this space without finding himself abruptly faced with a newly-assigned legitimate occupant.
Which meant that public attention would not be drawn to the fact that Logan had been setting up sleeping quarters for himself that were separate from those of his wife.
Cicely of course noticed — at least that her husband’s time sharing her bed was rarer and rarer. And she could have thrown a fit — had there been another woman (or even a succession of them) to direct her ire at. But Logan only occasionally went on any bedroom safaris now — though admittedly it made his life easier *not* having to get past his wife when he did. More often he merely retired to his little bedroom at a decent hour of the night, and was able to get enough sleep to often be up bright and early fussing with Max before Cissy awoke. (Staying awake hoping her husband would return from his late night "TV watching" or whatever the hell he was doing had been nudging Cissy’s sleep time back a bit.) And Cicely had just enough of a sense of perspective to feel that complaining abut Logan not sleeping next to her was a bit — juvenile? Petty? Ridiculous?
She had no idea about his separate quarters. If anything, she believed him to be sacking out on the rec room couch, falling asleep in front of the TV. She only knew that Logan left their quarters after Max was in bed (as had become his habit months ago), claiming to be heading down to watch TV or do engine work or some other damned thing, and was back home by the time she awoke alone in a bed that showed no signs of having hosted his presence at any point in the night. There wasn’t really anything she could pin down as a complaint worth fighting about. Aside from the lack of sex, that was, but she had been letting Logan know her feelings on the matter for months with no result but increasingly more vicious fights.
Had she known that Logan had, in effect, set himself up with what amounted to a little bachelor pad right under the same roof as their own family quarters, she would have had a new complaint well worth fighting about.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, Marie was the first to learn of Logan’s new private bedroom. Not because of any carelessness on Logan’s part — his new quarters were no one else’s business as far as he was concerned. Prickly closemouthed tendencies to privacy plus an unpleasant family situation to conceal equaled rabid secrecy. He made damned sure that no one ever saw him entering or leaving the room, or even the hallway leading to it.
But Marie was a special case. The fact that he came closer to confiding his genuine problems to her than to anyone else was part of it — as was the fact that he loved her. There was no one he’d rather allow into his inner sanctum.
But what it really came down to was that he wanted somewhere to talk to her without fear of careless interruption.
Logan found Marie’s marital problems to be nearly as absorbing as his own. More so, in fact — he preferred to forget about his own Cicely-related difficulties as much as possible, whereas Marie’s issues with Remy were a source of deep personal interest. From the early wish for the pair of them to split up (thereby freeing Marie for himself) to the more recently-discovered preference for Marie to be happy, come what may — however things went for the Le Beaus, Logan cared about the outcome. And as the only person Logan felt even slightly inclined to hint around the edges of his own dissatisfactions with, Marie more than rated a sounding board in return.
And she seemed to need one. She was having a problem with her husband, Logan could tell — and he wanted to know what, and whether there was anything he could do about it. But she didn’t want to talk about it in the kitchen, or the rec room, or any of the other public areas of the mansion. Nor in one of their customary juke joints or pool halls — even more public. Nor in her quarters with Remy — and he barely even considered bringing her to the quarters that he now thought of as Cissy and Max’s. Instead he led her up the back staircase and down a deserted hallway to his isolated little room.
"Logan, what *is* this place?" She glanced around, frowning as she recognized a few things of Logan’s, signs of occupancy.
"This is my bedroom." At her uncomprehending look, he elaborated. "I don’t want to sleep with Cissy, she won’t have me sleeping with anyone else, so this is the compromise."
"And she *lets* you have your own bedroom?"
"What she doesn’t know about, she can’t argue about." Flat, final. "And we didn’t come here to talk about *my* problems."
A sigh. "No, we didn’t." She set her jaw for a minute, and Logan suspected that she was making a mental note to bring up his sleeping arrangements at the earliest convenient opportunity. Subject dropped for the moment, she still showed no inclination to go on to the next one.
Logan decided to give her a little nudge. "So why don’t you want to go down to New Orleans with Gumbo next week?"
Pause. "Because I don’t feel like dealing with a bunch of thieves?" she suggested weakly.
"Shouldn’t have married one, then." [And that’s not the real reason. Try again.]
Quieter, "Because I don’t want to be spending so much time alone with Remy with nothing to talk about."
"Nothing to talk about?"
"Nothing I *want* to talk about."
Patiently, "And what don’t you want to talk about?"
"About — anything, really."
"Why not?"
"Because — because I don’t think we have anything left to say that either of us wants to hear."
[Well, *this* is an informative conversation.] Deciding to risk a wild stab, he said, "How much of this has to do with you not having kids?"
A pained look. "That’s just it. We were going to raise a family together, and be happy, and normal, and — and we can’t, and there’s no point..." She broke off, strained.
He waited.
"...I don’t know if there’s any point in us staying together."
[Damn. Lucky guess.] "Why not?" At her blank look, he added, "Not everyone gets married to start a family."
Softly, "But *we* did."
"So? Is that the *only* reason you wanted him? Because you thought he’d make good kids?"
"No, but..." Words failed her again.
"There’s more to being married than having children together. If the two of you picked each other for the right reasons, then this — it’s bad, it’s a disappointment, but it shouldn’t be a reason for the two of you to split." His words were flat, even unsympathetic — because of the effort it cost him to keep his feelings out of his voice. It wasn’t just the harsh experience that had taught him what marriage *shouldn’t* be, but the bitter irony at the realization that — chained to Cicely as he now was — he would rather have Marie happily married to another man than single and lonely.
Whether his brusque dismissal of the importance of children in a happy marriage had rubbed her the wrong way or she was actually having some worries as to whether she and Remy *had* "picked each other for the right reasons," Marie’s response was rather waspish. "Coming from the man who only stays married *because* of his son, that’s very meaningful advice."
"Damn straight — don’t make the mistake *I* did."
"Which was?"
"Letting a kid be the only reason to get and stay married. It’s not enough to make things work."
"If it’s not enough, then why don’t you get a divorce?"
An impatient snarl. "You *know* why not."
"Then either it *is* enough, or you’re being a hypocrite."
He turned and began pacing the cramped confines of the room. "What Cissy and I have... It isn’t a marriage. Not really. We’re just handcuffed together because of Max. It shouldn’t be that way. But it happened. It was a mistake but we’re stuck with the consequences."
"And the consequences are sleeping in separate bedrooms while staying ‘married’?"
He shrugged, more of an irritated twitch of the shoulder muscles than a gesture of uncertainty. "The *consequences* are staying shackled together long enough to see Max grown. The separate bedrooms are just to — keep problems from happening. Let us both stay close to Max without getting on each other’s nerves as much."
Making a weak attempt at humor, "You really *aren’t* made for long-term relationships, *are* you?"
He whirled to face her. Doubly unavailable as she was, it was nonetheless suddenly important to him that she understand this. "For the right woman, I would be. Cissy ain’t her."
She stared at him, stricken wordless for the moment. Whether merely surprised at his reaction or because she had guessed — or more likely, *thought* she guessed — who the "right woman" was, he couldn’t tell.
He resumed pacing, wanting to shift the conversation away from this dangerous ground. "If just picking who you’d have good kids with was what was important, Cissy and I would be perfect for each other. But that isn’t anywhere near to being enough. I wouldn’t want Max to ever hear this, but his mother and I would both be a lot happier right now if he had never existed. But he does, and I love him to death — and I’m willing to give up the next twenty years of my life taking care of him, keeping him safe and making him happy." Pause, as he turned to face her again for the almost whispered, "But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish to God that he had a different mother."
Equally softly, "But at least you have *him*. Even though things have gone sour between you and Cissy, at least you have Max — so the time with her hasn’t gone for nothing. You’ve got your son to show for it — even if the two of you *do* split. If I break with Remy, I’ve got nothing."
"Except memories." Softly, "Children are important and I won’t try to say they aren’t. But they aren’t enough to save a relationship that’s already doomed, and not having them doesn’t mean that the time you spend together was wasted." Stepping closer, "If I was with — with the woman I wanted to be with, we’d take each day for all it was worth, enjoy every moment. And if we had kids, I’d love it — but if we didn’t, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be thankful for every day we had together, and I wouldn’t call any of our time wasted just because we didn’t have a family."
They stared at each other for a long moment. Watching the quivering brightness in her eyes as she fought back tears, Logan eventually — reluctantly — remembered the point of this whole conversation. "And Remy isn’t *that* much of an idiot. I don’t think he picked you *just* to have half a dozen babies with — and I don’t think he’ll stop wanting you just because that doesn’t look too likely now."
The shine in her eyes threatened to spill over. "I... I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know that?"
He gave her a wry half-smile. "Probably get killed, or do something equally dumbassed."
That earned him a shaky laugh, and a very light swat at his upper arm. Logan flinched reflexively, then chuckled awkwardly, trying to pass it off as a joke. Apparently it worked, since the next thing he knew his arms were full of Marie. "I just love you, you know *that*?"
He should have taken it in context, should have realized that the kiss was aimed for his cheek, shouldn’t have responded to the affectionate gesture quite so fervently. But instinct just took over.
It was undoubtedly her surprise at finding herself in an unexpected clinch with one of her best friends that caused her to open a connection. Just for a second or two — with her control, nothing life-threatening or even debilitating. Nothing more than a light skimming of his thoughts, a quick peek into his head, no doubt to find out what the hell he was thinking in kissing her like *that*. Instinct just took over.
He felt it when she triggered her power — but what *really* got his attention was the way she stiffened in shock. Belatedly realizing the magnitude of his own error, he cautiously released her from his arms. Stepping back and not quite meeting her eyes, he muttered something along the lines of, "Maybe I should just let you go now?"
"Maybe — maybe you should," she managed.
As he listened to the sound of her rapid steps fading down the corridor, he numbly wondered how much she might have gotten from him with that kiss.
* * *