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Title: Little Things Author: Terri E-Mail: xgrrl26@yahoo.com Rating: PG-13 Archive: Dolphin Haven, Agony and Ecstasy, Peep Hut - anyone else, please ask :) Disclaimer: I don’t own them. Poo. Feedback: Please? With some kudos to my very inspirational boyfriend unit (tm Heather) on top? Good, bad, and ugly welcome……… Comments: Yep, it’s been a while, but this little fooflet should get me back in the swing of things…… -------------------------------------------------------------------------- You know, it’s the little things. Men - heck, people in general - they don’t really realize this. It’s not the times you come through for us big (although they’re much appreciated - the life-saving ones especially), it’s the times you do the little things, the things you don’t *have* to do, the things that aren’t life and death, that really bonds us to you. Take Logan, for example - wonderful man, excellent lover, all-around fabulousness personified. I know for a fact that part of him is convinced that I’m with him because of the life-save-age and the big dramatic things he’s done for me. And there’s some truth to that - I can’t say that those things didn’t make an impression, and, sure, if he hadn’t saved my life, I wouldn’t *be* here to be with him. But when I think about the times I’ve felt sheer joy and love in my heart for him, it’s always the little things that I remember. Like this time we were out picking up a new student for the school - we’d been on the road forever, or at least it seemed like it, and we’d spent a miserable day trudging around Boston in the rain. Now, that may not sound so tragic, but you have to understand that for someone with Logan’s acute senses, downtown Boston is pretty much over-stimulatory hell. And on top of that, he has this whole thing about being wet - I swear sometimes that he’s closer to being a cat than the lone wolf everyone thinks of him as. But when we finally got out of the rain and came back to the dingy, cramped, noisy hotel, he took my thoroughly drenched skirt from me, hung it up neatly, and then grunted at me to get in the shower first. I know he had to be just itching (maybe even literally) to get the city’s grime off of his skin, but he let me go first and he hung up my skirt to dry. He didn’t have to do those things, and in fact, if he had asked me to hang up his clothes and raced for the shower as soon as he opened the door, I wouldn’t have had a single bad thought about it. I knew he was overloaded and uncomfortable, and in a way more intense than I could ever really understand. But he didn’t do that. Before he took care of himself, he took care of me. There’s a lot of things like that, actually. One time he listened to me complain about Jubes for nearly an hour. No interruptions, no trying to change the subject, just a solid hour of why Jubes’ annoying behaviors were on my last nerve. I am fairly sure that this is not his favorite topic of conversation, but he listened - actually listened - until I was tired of talking about it. And once, he changed the oil in my jeep without me asking him to do it - he just kept track of when it had hit another 3000 miles and did it. He’s made me dinner several times - he actually cooked food himself and brought it to me - when I’ve been lost in working on a painting. Speaking of painting - he’s even gone out and bought me new brushes, remembering to buy exactly the kind I liked. He does these things without making a big show of it, and usually just grunts when I try to thank him, so I don’t think he realizes how much it means to me, but it’s those things I think about when I think about loving Logan. The biggest ‘little thing’ he’s done so far, though has been teaching me how to take care of myself and encouraging me to do that. It all started when I was still dating Bobby, way back when, and when Bobby - well, he wasn’t so much being a jerk as he was being a typical horny teenage boy. He wanted things I wasn’t exactly sure I was ready for and things I was even less sure we’d both *survive*. But I felt like Bobby might be the only boy to ever like me, and I didn’t want to lose that, so I was considering doing some or all of those things anyway. Well, I happened to come across Logan one night when we were both out walking on the grounds. He was still mourning heavily for Jean, but he noticed that I was troubled too and made me talk about it. After I convinced him not to skin Bobby alive, he actually gave me some very good advice about dealing with the opposite sex. But it was one thing he said that really made the difference to me, that really made me re-think more than my relationship with Bobby; it made me begin to re-think myself. He told me that I deserved to have what I wanted, and that I didn’t have to settle for treatment that I didn’t like just to get some love and happiness in return. It was partly those words - and he said them in a more Logan-y kind of vocabulary at the time - and partly the way he said it. It came out like it was just a simple statement of fact, like someone would say that two plus two equals four. It was that plain and obvious to him. I didn’t wind up sleeping with Bobby. I broke up with him instead, and I think to this day that Bobby is pissed off at Logan for that. But it was the right thing, and it was an important thing for me to do, for myself. I’ll always be grateful to Logan for finding a way out of his own pain over Jean to give me the right words at the right time. Of course, when Jean came back from the dead as the Phoenix, I don’t think Logan even noticed me for the first few months. It hurt at the time - it hurt deeply. I won’t lie and say that just because he’s with me now that I’ve completely forgotten how it felt to see him with Jean and know that he loved her. I still have moments, sometimes, when I worry that this life I have with him is all some very pleasant hallucination and that any moment now I’ll come to my senses and see them all over one another, happy together once again. But mostly, I keep that nightmare at bay. Mostly. Anyway - Logan forgot I existed for a while, but after a few months, something happened. His attention started to shift away from Jean - he’d even started taking measures to avoid being in her company at times. It puzzled me, but I frankly didn’t want to deal with it. I was hurting, and there was no way that I’d get through any kind of conversation with Logan without saying something I’d regret or crying or possibly both, so his distance from Jean remained a mystery. To this day, I don’t know the details of what happened - all I know is that they fought, and that she said something to hurt him, something that apparently couldn’t be fixed. Of course, that’s not what he offered as an explanation when we finally did talk about it - all he’s told me is that they fought - but I can read the rest on him. After the Jean thing was over, he started hanging out with me again, or trying to. I was pretty cautious and pretty distant at first. It still stung that he’d fallen so hard for Jean and that he’d so completely ignored me, and I wasn’t real eager to get burned again. Oddly enough, though, Logan seemed to really get that and even seemed to encourage me *not* to spend time with him if I didn’t want to or felt uncomfortable. Oh, don’t get me wrong - he kept on asking me to do things, finding me when I was alone in the den or out walking, trying to arrange it so that he’d be in the same vicinity as me different times during the day. But if I walked off or made some excuse, he let me go, and he even seemed a little bit proud of me for doing it. I’ve thought about it a lot, and the best theory I can come up with is that I think he wanted me to protect myself first, even more than he wanted me to give him a chance at getting close to me again. It still pretty much blows me away to think about that - and it says a lot about how much Logan really does put me first. This one, it’s not a little thing, it’s definitely a big thing. Even so, it took me some time to feel like I could open up to him even a little bit. Months, in fact. But all that time, he never stopped trying, and so I kept trying too. Eventually, we decided to start dating. Yes, we decided to go on an actual date. Which was weird - I mean, he and I - we’ve known each other for a long time, we’ve gone out together to dinner or to movies, we live under the same roof, technically speaking - and dating just seemed odd somehow. But Logan thought it was a good idea, so I agreed to it. We’d planned to go to dinner together, at a steak house we both liked. I say ‘planned’ because we never actually made it to dinner that night. He showed up at my door, just back from a bike ride. That kind of worried me because I knew he took the bike out when he wanted to think. I asked if everything was OK, but all he said was that he was sorry he was running late. We stood there staring at each other for a second and then he held up a fistful of nice clothes saying that he could change really fast if I didn’t mind him ducking into my bathroom and that we’d still be on time for the reservation. I think I stammered out ‘OK’ - I mean, yes, he wasn’t exactly dressed for an evening of fine dining, but he looked damn *good* and I just couldn’t stop staring at him. He was in a black leather jacket and jeans, his hair was all wild from the ride, and he hadn’t shaved that day, so he had that seriously sexy stubble he gets - really, who wouldn’t be a little breathless at that sight? He was in the bathroom for quite a while - I heard water running but not the shower, so I figured that he was shaving with my Lady Bic and trying to tame his hair with whatever he could find in my medicine cabinet. I snuck out and swiped a beer from the fridge for him - even though he looked sexy as hell he was still acting a little fidgety, and the beer might be a nice gesture. Finally, he opened the door of the bathroom and looked completely different yet still quite speech-stealing. He’d put on this blue shirt and khaki pants - complete with leather belt and nice shoes - and he’d shaved and somehow made his hair cooperate with an organized style. I just started heading toward him while he was still wrangling his hair a bit, while he was still in the bathroom. It was like he’d somehow become a Rogue Magnet, and the pull was irresistible. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but I do remember his eyes locking right onto mine and then his hands were on my body and his mouth was on mine with these quick little kisses, ones too fast for my skin to react to, and he was walking me backwards to the bed and I was bumping into the wall but I didn’t care. He just kept touching me and kissing me and *wanting* me and it was like this wave that came over us both and before we knew it, we were making love. And that was it - no dating (although Logan did make a point of getting me to the steak house later), no big discussion - just, boom, there we were, lovers. Which didn’t mean that everything about Jean and everything about us had been worked out, but it meant that it was a start, that I knew how he felt about me for sure, and that I knew that’s how he wanted our relationship to be, and those were the important things to me. I wonder sometimes - if he really had just taken me to dinner that night, would we have ever gotten together? Maybe it would’ve been better if we’d talked everything out and meticulously worked our way through things, but maybe the way he grabbed me and made love to me said more than all those words ever would’ve. And that brings me back to Logan pushing me to take care of myself. He slept in my bed that first night (and I’ve always kind of thought it was special and neat that our first time together was in my bed - not his truck, not some cheap hotel to get away from the mansion, but in my bed) and slept for nearly a whole day afterwards. Now, you might think that this was odd or kind of rude, but I loved having him in my bed and all I could think was that I was so relieved that he was comfortable enough with me and trusted me enough to do that. But when he woke up, he looked all nervous and finally blurted out that he wanted me to say or ask whatever I needed to because he didn’t want me to have any lingering bad thoughts about him and Jean or about what we’d just done. He was trying to show me, to make it easy for me, to do whatever I needed to do to take care of myself and I was so touched by that - I don’t think I can find the words to adequately explain it. And so, while I can’t honestly say I didn’t have *any* bad thoughts, I told him that the only thing I wanted to say was that I thought the way he snored was pretty cute and did he know that he’d had a good, full-body sweat in his sleep? He grunted out that it must’ve been a nightmare and I took his hand in mine and told him to quit trying to pat down his hair if he wanted to do more stuff with me because I was really liking how sticky-up it was. Then we made love again, and again and again. It was an important thing for me in the beginning, and still is now - the way he encourages me, the way he looks out for me, and the way he teaches me to be good to myself. I try to give all of that back to him, but the plain truth is that I’m not as good as he is at figuring out what is needed. Yes, he shows a lot less than I do when it comes to emotions, and no, I don’t have his enhanced senses to help me out, but it still makes me upset that I’m not doing as well with him as he is with me. He always says I do a good job of giving him what he needs, but I think that’s just him wanting to take care of me again. So I try to at least cover the little things - I send him a little love letter every day so that when he opens up his e-mail there’s something other than the memos from the Professor and Scott that he hates slogging through, I rub his knuckles after he’s used the claws, I’ve made a hobby of smuggling in the Cuban cigars he likes, and every now and then, I jump him while he’s finishing up in the bathroom, for old times’ sake. I think he likes those things. So far, so good, I guess. “Whatcha doin’ darlin’?” “Oh, just thinking.” “’Bout what?” “You. Like always.” There’s his Minor Eye-Roll of Disbelief. I wonder if he really does think I’m kidding. I mean, I actually *do* think about him pretty much all the time. “Seriously - I was thinking about you.” “Darlin’, ain’t much to ponder on there.” “Sure there is. You’re amazing.” “Glad you think so.” “I do.” Still a little disbelief in there, but no eye-roll. Maybe it’s time to try another little thing. “Let me show you.” “You wanna……” No, sweetheart, I don’t want to do that. Well, not yet. “Let me show you. Sit down on the couch, sugar.” Confused, but he’s going with it. “Logan, you’re amazing. You’re so good to me that it takes my breath away and makes my heart beat faster when I think about it. I love you.” “Love you too.” Hmph. I’m still not really getting through. I don’t know what else to say, I can’t find the right words. “Marie? Somethin’ wrong?” “No……I mean, kind of. I mean - I just suck, don’t I?” “Uh…..what?” “You’re so good at taking care of me and making me feel great but I suck at that with you. I can’t find the right words to tell you so that you really get it.” “Darlin’, you’re doin’ just fine. You’re doin’ good. You - ” “I suck, sugar, I do.” You know, it really is pretty bad. Here I am, really happy, getting everything I need from him and more, and I’m not doing as good of a job at - “Marie, listen to me, you make me damn happy. No worries.” “Yeah?” “Yeah.” I don’t know. I know *he* believes that, but……… “I’m not going to stop until I figure it out, you know.” “Figure what out?” “What you need, what makes you really happy - I mean really, *really* happy, like ‘everything you’ve ever wanted’ happy, like - well, happy like you make me feel.” Whoa. I think that one got through. He blinked and looked at me really seriously. But wait - now he’s just staring at me and not talking. I don’t think he’s breathing either. “Logan?” “I’d like that.” “Good.” “I mean, not that I’m not - not that I don’t - I’m happy, Marie, really happy, but I kinda like that you wanna keep figurin’ out that stuff. It’s……good.” Wow. That’s a lot of emotional stuff for him. That’s a lot of communication. Maybe I hit on something right, something good. “I mean, uh, you know, I mean that I - ” And maybe that’s all the communication he can handle at one time. “I know. I think I get it. Hey, let’s - let’s do the other stuff now. I really want to.” “Oh yeah?” Yes, I do, sexyflirtingLogan. I do very much. “Well then, let’s head back to the room, huh? I like doin’ it in the bed in there.” Yes, I do too, sugar. It’s a little thing, but I like it too. |