Soap Gets In Your Claws

Chapter Three: Bad Like Jesse James

Xavier Institute, 1974, a few weeks later

I: Jean

Jean Grey was a very cool and methodical woman, and she had decided upon setting out to find a lover in a cool and methodical way.

First, she decided to defer to the judgement of a practised lecher when it came to picking the right man for the job.

From the time she was 13, Napalm set out to explore the available suspects, from heavily tattooed former dogfaces, rough and ready lone wolves who went right from the belly of a tank or a bomber to the back of a motorcycle on down the line to willowy young hippies with the faces of choirboys on a Sunday morning.

She was semi-retired from the dating pool, and had decided on Eddie Blake, Logan and Tony Stark to rest on her laurels with.

Logan was off limits, but that left Jean with two prospects to work with.

The second step was to get a better idea of what she could expect.

Liv’s funny, dirty stories were not all that informative, so Jean went to an anonymous bookshop and picked up a copy of It’s OK, I’m With the Team, the autobiography of Shirley Trelawney, a famous mask groupie.

She turned first to the chapter on the Comedian, skipped past the unimportant parts, and got right to the dirty bits.

…he knew what I was, and, unlike some of his fellow masks, it didn’t seem to bother him.

I was nervous; you can’t be a human being and not get nervous around this man. He has the air about him of a wild animal that can’t be tamed, the baddest of all imaginable bad boys.

And here he was, in my apartment, in my bedroom, taking off his costume, as I watched, raptly.

I had thought that some of his bulk was due to the armor on his chest plate or the stars and stripes steel shields he wore on his shoulders, but I was wrong.

The man was built like a brick wall. He had a deep chest, and broad shoulders and he was all muscle.

Sweat glistened on his hairy chest as he casually took off his shirt, and when he sat on the bed to take off his boots, I couldn’t take it any longer.

I threw myself on the floor in front of him and unzipped the fly of his skin-tight leather pants.

Some masks, whose names I will not mention, wear a falsie in their codpieces or at the front of their tights, to give the illusion of gigantism.

Not the Comedian.

Eventually, I had to come up for breath, and with one of his laughs, he lifted me into his lap.

He knew I had been with other masks, many other masks, and he wanted to show me he was a better man than they were; he wanted me to know that he was the alpha wolf.

He sat me astride his leather-clad thighs and peeled off my dress.

I was surprised at the skill and deftness of his touch, but he knew, so very well, just where to touch me and how; he could read the language of my body, the way I moved, the sounds I made just like an open book.

In minutes, before he even had his pants off and me with my panties on yet, I was trembling in his arms, weak with pleasure, giddy and molten, febrile with lust.

I rolled onto the bed like I was made of water and watched him take off his leathers and his boxers.

Narrow hips, long, muscular legs, thick, meaty, hairy thighs.

He got into bed with me and hooked his thumbs under the waistband of my panties.

“Are you a real blonde, doll?” he whispered in my ear, with a low chuckle.

He had me trained; the sound of his voice and the feeling of his hot breath on my ear made me whimper and writhe.

“Yes.” I gasped.

“Ya are? Too dark in here to tell. I’m gonna need to take a closer look.”

He was, at heart, a selfish lover; he was only giving me such exquisite pleasure because he wanted to burn himself into my consciousness, to make me forget all his fellow masks, forget every man I ever had, remember him always as the best, the one.

For no other reason than to prove he could.

But, that didn’t make it feel any the less amazing.

I was swept along in the current; mute and blinded by sheer sexual ecstasy; I was beyond words, beyond speech, mewling and sobbing and clinging to his fantastically strong, muscular body as he made love to me, drowning in the immediacy, the deep, burning intensity, knocked almost unconscious by the last glorious orgasm I had, the one that coincided with his own.

I lapsed into blissful unconsciousness, waking up only long enough to hear his voice in my ears one last time.

“I gotta go home now, Blondie. You’re a real good girl, doll. Maybe I’ll see youse again, sometime.”

The next thing I knew it was morning and I was alone; and for once unregretful.

The Comedian has a steady lover, now, his partner, the red-haired Harlequin, about whom it is said burns with the fury and intensity of hellfire.

I believe it; you would have to be full of hellfire to be the Comedian’s girlfriend, or else he would burn you down to ashes and soot.

Jean laughed a little at the famous groupie’s purple prose. Her style was somewhere between romance novel and porno comic, and Jean imagined the woman probably had the same amount of brains and guts as Cheez Whiz.

However, it told her what she needed to know about Eddie Blake.

Armed with the knowledge that Napalm’s partner was a macho alpha wolf who prided himself on his ability to drive women crazy who wasn’t too keen on sticking around for further acquaintance, she devised the outline of a quick and dirty plan to seduce him, at her next convenience.

She would wait for the opportunity to present itself.

***

On a warm Tuesday afternoon, the Comedian came to pick Napalm up at the Institute at the end of the school day.

He was standing at the top of the steps, with his hands in the pockets of a pair of blue work pants, with just a white A-line undershirt on, smoking, insolently chinking the change in his pockets and eyeing up some of the older girls, a few of whom paused to look over their shoulders and leer back.

Jean walked out the front door in a pair of wedge platform sandals and a miniskirt, giving him a small, cool nod, out of professional courtesy.

He grinned at her.

Chink, clank, chink.

The outfit she had on was a lot like what her students were wearing, and left over from her recent but abandoned ridiculous attempt to rekindle her fire with Scott, but it was a warm day and she didn’t like to let anything she spent good money on go to waste.

The damn shoes had always been hard to walk on, and Jean was busy sneaking a look at Liv’s big beast on a weak chain, and thinking about that Cosmo spread and what Liv told her about his bull-like prowess and stamina, not to mention his shockingly considerable skills as a cunning linguist.

It’s a crime for a man his age to look that good.

Even with that scar, that’s a fine, good-looking son of bitch.

It suits him. Almost improves his looks.

Even the way he stands and chinks his change, the despicable son of a bitch is good, I’ll give him that.

Wait a minute.

Jean looked at her watch.

Liv had one more class to teach; it would be another forty-five minutes, maybe an hour before she came out.

Napalm wouldn’t mind.

No, not Napalm.

Not at all.

This was the perfect time.

Itch scratched, problem over, and life can get back to normal.

And he’s certainly not going to get attached.

The only thing was, Jean had never picked up a man for a meaningless quickie in the middle of the day, and she had no idea how to accomplish such a thing.

Then she remembered what Little Miss Groupie had written.

She had picked him up, casually after a Watchmen meeting, falling into step with him on the way back to his car, mentioning her apartment was just across the street.

Make it easy for him.

He doesn’t like to chase women; he’d rather they come to him.

The shoes.

I can fall off the shoes, and he can help me up, and I can ask him to help me back to my office. Then...?

Then what?

Well, he’s supposed to be a real horny bastard, maybe he’ll get the idea and come onto me.

He’s a real goddamn man, isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?

Everything good, decent, moral, and sane told Jean that she was crazy, but, nonetheless, she perfectly executed a fall off the platforms and crashed to the ground.

Vainly, Jean tried to pull down her skirt so the whole world couldn’t see her panties and garters as her books and papers scattered everywhere.

Some of her male students stood there, dumbfounded, staring at Dr. Grey’s matching sexy underwear and garters.

Jean was completely mortified.

That was not part of her plan.

“Lemme help ya up, Miz Grey. Hey, didn’t your mothers teach you little punks any fuckin’ manners?” the Comedian barked at them.

They scattered and he picked up her folders and helped her up.

It was meant to seem like an unintentional touch, and perhaps it was, but had it not been months since a man had touched her in any interested way, Jean never would have noticed the way, just for a moment, as he helped her to her feet, his hand lingered at the place on her thigh between her garters and her stocking where her skin was bare.

Jean shuddered, involuntarily, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“You alright?” he asked.

Jean lifted up her foot, absently, and rubbed her ankle like it was beginning to hurt.

“Yes. Thanks. I don’t know what made me buy these damn stupid shoes last year. Who do I think I’m kidding, dressing like one of my own students?”

He looked down from almost a foot above her, arms folded over his chest, puffing on his cigar and gave her his crooked grin.

He had noticed.

“From where I’m standing, doll, you ain’t kidding anybody but yourself.”

Jean didn’t like being spoken to that way by this animal.

What an animal…

Oh my God! Stop it, Jean, are you crazy!

“And that means?”

He laughed.

“That means if a woman gets that worked up over a guy helpin’ her up when she falls on her ass, somebody ain’t doin’ their job. And whoever he is, doll, he’s either a nut job or a faggot.” He commented.

“I think I must have twisted my ankle. D’you think you could help me back to my office? It’ll only take a minute.”

She tried to sound casual.

Little Miss Groupie hadn’t mentioned the look; an inestimably sleazy leer that let you know that he knew exactly what you were getting at.

“Yeah? A minute, huh? Why don’tcha go siddown on that bench over there for a minute, maybe you’ll feel better.”

Jean sat on the bench in the courtyard, and Eddie Blake came and sat with her.

She felt repulsion and attraction in equal parts, and a good art of the repulsion was for herself.

“Look, doll, no offence, but you ain’t too good at this kind of thing. The whole job, it was emabarssingly fuckin’ obvious. And stupid. Groupie shit. Next time you try to pick a man up, don’t act like a dumb cunt. It don’t suit you. Walk up to him, ask him if he wants ta have a beer, or go back to your office or whatever for a good time. Just come right out with it; it makes youse look better. Now, I gotta tell youse, you’re a real good lookin’ broad, and I wouldn’t mind showin’ you what it is a real man could do for you. I feel bad for ya, saddled with some Boy Scout faggot who don’t know shit about bein’ a real man. But, my partner, yunno, your old school friend, is gonna come lookin’ for me real soon. A coupla years back, I made her promise she wouldn’t screw around with masks I work with, and I told her I’d steer clear of the mask broads she worked with. That seems to work out pretty good, yunno? Not to mention, I’ve known Jimmy a long time. He’s my friend an’ I can only say that about maybe two other people in the world. Hell, I knew Jimmy since before you was born. Considerin’ how he feels about you, doll, I can’t do that to him. It’d be like stabbin’ him in the back. No dice, doll. Sorry.”

Jean put her head in her hands.

“Oh my God, oh my God, I am the whore of humanity.” She wailed.

The Comedian just laughed.

“You? Not on your life. You’re just a desperate woman, that’s all. Real fuckin’ desperate. Now, what I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna go in there and find Jimmy and tell him youse hurt your foot. An’ he can help youse get to your office. That’s who you’re lookin’ for, anyway.”

The Comedian got up.

“Lemme give youse a little piece of advice about screwin’ around, I can see you don’t do much of it. Don’t try to fuck your friend’s boyfriends. Don’t fuck some other guy anywhere near where your boyfriend can catch you. And don’t play Little Red Riding Hood with a big bad wolf like me no more. You ain’t the type.”

He patted her on the shoulder, like she was a little kid, and, chuckling to himself, went back towards the school.

Jean sat there on the bench, utterly distraught.

That had been a complete fiasco; the man didn’t even take her seriously.

And although he had let her down easy, he had completely and flatly rejected her like she was poison, and thinking of it, she was.

The Comedian might have been a lot of things, but a moron wasn’t one of them.

What kind of idiot would blithely go off and screw his old lady’s friend right under said old lady’s nose?

And even a depraved supervillain probably wouldn’t go off and have a quickie with a woman he knew a trusted friend and comrade had once been in love with.

Jean was still getting her bearings when Logan rushed out the front door, and down the steps.

He was at her side in moments.

“You okay, Red? I hear you took a spill offa them high-rise shoes?”

“I only hurt my pride, Logan. And my ankle. But it’s not serious.”

Then, something really horrible happened.

Jean just couldn’t take it anymore.

She was disgusted with her situation, disgusted with herself, and suddenly mortified that her students had seen her underwear.

Her cheap, slutty, whore of humanity underwear that she had tried to use to lure that old degenerate Eddie Blake with, and he had, albeit nicely, turned her down.

She put her face in her hands and cried.

“Jeannie?”

Logan put his arm around her.

“I fell down the stairs and Eddie Blake and half the boys in the school saw my underwear! Look at me, Logan! I’m dressed like a cheap slut at a bad rock concert! I can’t stand it, anymore!” she howled.

“It’s alright, Jeannie. Ya just had an accident. An’ there’s nothin’ wrong with a women tryna keep up with the fashions. I betcha a lotta girls fall offa those shoes. Guys too.” Logan finally said.

Before she could protest, Logan scooped her up, and carried her back into the school.

“Put me down! Who do you think you are, King Kong and I’m Fay Wray?” Jean snapped.

“Take it easy, Red. I’m just gonna take you to the infirmary an’ get Hank to take a look at your ankle.”

They made it halfway before Scott strode angrily up to them.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Logan?”

“I’m just takin’ Jeannie to the infirmary. She fell offa her shoes and twisted her ankle.”

“I’ll take care of that, Logan, if you don’t mind.”

For a moment, hostility flared up so strongly in Wolverine that Jean could sense it without even trying.

She felt his arms tighten around her, and her heart began to beat a little faster.

Then, the moment passed.

Logan carefully handed her over to Scott.

“What made you wear those crazy things, anyhow? I noticed you had them on this morning and I though, if I wore shoes like that, I’d fall down and kill myself.” Scott asked.

“Maybe she was tryin’ to turn your head, Cyke.” Logan joked.

He was walking with them, carrying the offending shoe.

“Yeah, well, Jean, you turned your ankle instead.” Scott replied.

He laughed and Logan laughed, and even Jean laughed.

She cuddled against Scott.

Maybe he would start to feel protective of her, and that would stir something manly and instinctual beneath his cool façade.

Perhaps this would lead to something.

She looked over her shoulder at Logan, who was twirling her shoe on the end of his finger, and he winked at her, knowingly.

Perhaps it would.

***

Jean really did hurt her ankle when she fell, stupidly enough.

She was laid up for about three days, and Scott actually took some time off to take care of her.

He was gallant, and sweet, and attentive, almost annoyingly so, and he rubbed her ankle with the foul-smelling stuff Beast had mixed up, but that was an end to it.

When Jean was up and around, Scott had his nose to the grindstone, again, and she was eager to get back to work.

Another Wednesday came and went.

Logan left to go see Napalm in the city, and Jean went to the library and checked out some Henry Miller and D.H. Lawrence novels.

At least they were literary.

On Friday, Professor Xavier sent her and Logan out to locate a student who was missing, and Logan was none too happy about it.

It was Friday, after all, and he had plans with his girl.

You know, like most people.

Jean wanted to search the woods, thoroughly, but Logan told her he thought he knew where the kid was, and directed her to a really sleazy dive roadhouse in the middle of nowhere about ten minutes drive from the mansion, where they located the 16 year old in question attempting to buy a beer.

The young man looked pretty scared when he got into the car.

“Are you gonna rat me out, Mr. Logan?”

“Naah. Not this time, at least. I’m gonna tell Charlie that you took a walk in the woods and got lost. But, if there’s a next time, kid, I’m gonna hang your ass out ta dry. What the hell are you goin’ to all this trouble ta get a beer, anyway. Goddamn fridge is fulla beer. You ask first, and drink one, I’ll look the other way. You start stealin’ my beer; takin’ what you want, grabbin’ a few for your ol’ lady, I’m gonna kick your ass and then hang it out ta dry. You got it?”

The student nodded.

“Good. Where are all your friends, tonight?”

“At the diner down the road.”

“Okay. Let’s dump him there, Jeannie.”

Jean didn’t want to undermine Logan’s authority in front of the student, but after they dropped the boy off, she let him have it.

“What the fuck is the matter with you? Underage drinking is not only against the law, it’s against school regulations! And you can’t be handing out cans of beer to minors on school property! Jesus, Logan, why don’t you just line up all the fifteen year old girls from Combat class who have a crush on you and bang them in your office, over the desk, the way you were pounding Mel Reinhardt when I was dumb enough to walk into your office without knocking?”

“Hey, darlin’, relax, willya? I know you was always good as gold, but most kids, especially now, by the time they’re 16 they’re drinkin’ beer and smokin’ reefers and screwin’ one another in the bushes and they been doin’ it since they were about 13. I mean, how many girls his age you think Hank’s writin’ scripts for the Pill for? Try most of ‘em. Sometimes, if they ain’t behavin’ too badly, ya gotta let ‘em slide a little. And if the kid wants to have a goddamn beer on a Friday night, he’s gonna have a goddamn beer on a Friday night. Better he drinks it in the kitchen at the mansion than hangs around in a dump like that where he can get into real big trouble. I oughtta know. I spend a lotta time at that joint.”

Jean frowned.

“You gonna report me to Charlie, cos I been a bad boy? Or are you gonna punish me, yourself?”

There was definitely a sexual innuendo in that comment.

“Grow up, Logan.”

“Why? I made it this far, ain’t I, darlin’? Shit. Workin’ on Friday night. Jesus Christ.” Logan replied.

Jean wondered, absently, what it would be like to have it matter that you were working on Friday night.

One night was just like another for her.

“I don’t mind. I don’t have anything better to do. Besides, we’re done now. We can go back to the Mansion.”

“It’s only nine, Jeannie. You turnin’ into a pumpkin? C’mon, we’re out, let’s stay out. Neither one of us is sixteen.”

“I hate bars, Logan. Especially the kind of back-alley, back-door, roadhouse pool hall dives you like to get blind, stinking drunk in.”

“So we won’t go to a bar. Let’s go to the movies. We’re about to pass the drive-in. Turn here.”

“Logan…”
“What? Look, Red, if I was trying to get into your pants, I’d ask you if you wanted to go to the motel one exit up the interstate where they got king-size waterbeds and they rent the rooms out by the hour. C’mon, I took Kitty and Jubes to the drive-in last week, for Chrissakes! I hadda take ‘em home before the last feature, though. When’s the last time ya went to a movie at all? C’mon. We’ll get some beer an’ pizza and Cokes and cheeseburgers and popcorn an’ chips an’ watch a coupla movies. When’s the last time you had a good time?”

“It’s been a while. And you won’t make a pass at me? You’re not doing this just because you know I’ve been upset lately, and you still want to get into my pants?”

“Not unless you keep talkin’ dirty to me, darlin’. If ya do, shit, I might not be able to restrain myself.”

“Logan!”

He just laughed, and smiled at her.

How could she ever have told herself he was ugly?

Logan found a good spot for them to park, left the car and came back with every kind of food they had in the snack bar.

The first movie was a Vincent Price horror job, and Jean really had a good time.

They ate too much and she laughed and screamed through the first movie.

The second was the James Bond from a few years ago where he pretended to be Japanese, and Logan seemed rather distracted by all the Japanese girls.

He had seen the movie, and he fell asleep during the middle.

Jean was distracted by Sean Connery.

He had to continue to run around killing people and wearing next to nothing and being unbelievably sexy and Liv was right, Tony Stark did look a little like a combination of Sean Connery and Errol Flynn.

She thought of Liv’s story, again.

Handsome, puckish Tony Stark with that in like Flynn twinkle in his eye, mad with lust, ravishing her, not Liv, in an adventurous fashion, in several exotic positions, on top of the Avengers meeting table.

The Comedian’s hand, a man’s hand, large and warm and firm.

Lingering on her thigh between her garter belt and her stocking.

She banished the thoughts from her mind, and looked over at Logan.

Once he had burned for her, longed for her, wanted no woman in the world more than he wanted her. He exposed himself to Femme Fatale’s powers to forget her, he spent four months in the woods with Napalm letting her heal the wounds that her indifference and Mel Reinhardt’s powers had ripped in him.

Mostly her indifference.

Napalm who understood him in a way Jean never could, one animal to another, one killer to another, bound together by a blood oath they took on a bloody birthday, maybe Napalm was a far better woman than her, all along.

Yukon Mel, too.

More honest.

He was Mel’s old man, the only man she could ever have without being responsible for his death, and, as crazy and sick and wrong as it was, Eddie Blake was the love of Napalm’s life.

She was just as likely to find love again as Mel was to find another man she couldn’t kill.

Jean suddenly wondered what the hell she was doing, trying to steal the bread for other women’s mouths when she had a man of her own, a man she loved.

You got aggressive with Eddie Blake.

You can get aggressive with Scott.

But, maybe I don’t want to.

Maybe, after being taken for granted and then ignored for so long, maybe I want to know what it’s like to be loved by a man who burns for me.

Shit, maybe I just want to get one good, dirty fuck from a real man, just once in my life.

Now, they were alone together, in the back seat of Jean’s VW Beetle, at the drive-in , and Logan was asleep, again.

The last time she looked at him it was with feigned indifference; now Jean could no longer feign indifference.

She had begun to burn the way he used to burn.

It was just as well because he couldn’t see her taking a long, lonely, longing look at him, and so she took one, letting her eyes travel all the way from the blue-black ends of his wild hair, over his rough-looking and stubbly face, down over his muscular chest, tufts of curly black hair peeking out of the collar of his lumberjack shirt, over his legs that were like tree trunks.

He was just about shoehorned into those faded old Levis, and she thought about how his thighs must be as hairy and muscular as his arms, thick and strong, and though he was a short man, built as powerfully as he was, he had to be pretty well hung.

As Napalm once observed about Logan, what a piece of work is man, the paragon of animals.

She didn’t realise she had moved over, until she felt him moving and he yawned, and put his arm around her shoulders, gathering her closer.

She nestled against him, with her head on his shoulder and yawned, too.

“Sorry, Logan. I’m so goddamn sleepy.”

“Go ahead, Jeannie. Take a nap. I’ll wake you up for the third movie.”

It was an innocent sort of thing to do, just to fall asleep with her head on Logan’s shoulder. They were friends, after all, it was a friendly thing, just to fall asleep on somebody’s shoulder.

She couldn’t remember the last time she was so close to a man and even in its innocent, comforting way, it felt good, and she dropped off to sleep.

When she woke up, she was in the passenger seat, they were at the mansion, and Logan was shaking her gently awake.

“Welcome back, Red. You passed right out like you haven’t slept for weeks. You wouldn’t have liked the last movie, anyway. It was a porno. One of those Johnny Wadd movies.”

“Napalm’s a big fan of those. She told me she screwed that John Holmes guy, but I don’t believe her. I can tell when she’s bullshitting me. Jesus, I’m tired. I really went out.”

“Can you make it in?”

Jean got out of the car.

“Yes. Well, I’ve been working hard lately. Still, I had a good time. Thanks for taking me out, Logan.”

“You should come out with me more often, Red. Next time I’ll make sure they aren’t showing any dirty movies.”

They both knew goddamn well that if they were ever in this situation again, Bambi could be the feature and they’d be going at it hammer and tongs.

“I don’t know if that’s the best of ideas, Logan. Unless we go with Kitty and Jubilee.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

***

Scott was asleep when Jean went into their bedroom; he only woke up because she had to turn the light on to get to the bed.

“Hi babe. Where were you?”

No use in lying.

“Oh, we found our missing student early, so Logan and I went to the drive-in. We gorged ourselves on beer, soda, and junk food. It was a triple feature and I fell asleep in the middle of the second movie and he had to drive home. You?”

“Oh, you know me, Jean. I just got to bed, I was working all night. I’m beat, as usual. Maybe next week I’ll go to the movies with you. It sounds like fun, and I could use a break. Well, g’night, babe. ”

He gave her a brotherly little kiss and went back to sleep.

Jean moved herself over as close to him as she could, and Scott rolled over and put his arm around her.

At least that was something.

It was hope.

She fell back to sleep, too.

***

On Thursday, Jean demanded to know if Napalm really screwed John Holmes.

“Sure I did. He was promotin’ a movie he just put out in this porno shop over on 42nd street. The one where Paulie’s girl, Rosie works in the nudie booth, yunno? Anyways, I seen the man in action and I was curious, so I showed up in my costume, yunno, not the one I work in, the Fuck Me, Daddy one that I use to pose for pictures an’ shit. And he asks me if I’m really the Harlequin and I said yeah and showed him my Justice League ID card. I asked him if he ever made it with a superhero, and he said no, and after he was done at the porno shop, I drove him over the bridge and took him up to my room at Trivelino Mac’s and we got it on.”

“And?” Jean asked.

“What do you care, Miss Goody Tw0-Shoes?”

“Fuck you, I’m just curious! I mean, the man screws women for a living.”

“Well, it ain’t trick photography, I can tell you that. He was good, but I’ve been with Tony Stark. He’s got about three inches on Tony but Tony’s better.”

“What about the hairball?”

“You mean Logan? You wanna hear something funny? I think Johnny Holmes only has an inch or two on Logan. It looks like a goddamn third leg. Man’s hung like a mule. He sure is a fuckin’ mutant. It almost looks funny on a guy that short, but, there ain’t nothin’ funny about it. He’s had more’n fifty years of practise, nobody’s better than Logan. ‘Cept maybe Eddie. You wanna talk big, shit, Johnny Holmes didn’t look all that big to me cos I’m lyin’ down with Eddie alla time, but, anyway, I think it’s mostly a tie. Between Logan and Eddie. He might not be tall, dark and handsome, but Logan sure is the best at what he does. And for my money, it’s very nice. Someday I’m gonna get the two of ‘em drunk enough to make me the meat in an’ Eddie an Logan sandwich, and then I can die a happy woman. Jesus, that’s a whole lotta cock. Why? You ain’t thinkin’ of makin’ a move on Logan, are you? Because that would be real bad for both of youse.”

“No! I mean, if I remember correctly, Scott isn’t exactly Mr. Pencil Dick, either! I’m just curious as to what it is that women see in that smelly, hairy little furball of a Sherman tank.” Jean retorted.

“Jean, don’t play dumb with me. I know about that little comedy you played out with Eddie.”

“He TOLD you?”

“Sure he told me. You know what he told me? He told me that my friend Jean Grey was going crazy from not bein’ fucked since the first Nixon administration, and I had better talk to her before she goes totally fuckin’ apeshit and starts hanging around outside the Avengers Mansion or the Hall of Justice on Friday and Saturday nights with the crazy mask groupies.”

“I am in so much trouble, Liv. I’m really sorry. What was I thinking, trying to…make time with your…partner.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t too happy about that, yunno? But I forgive youse, baecuse you ain’t been yourself, lately. Jean, you’re losin’ your fuckin’ marbles. You gotta either patch things up with Scott or break up with him, but quit doin’ this crazy shit. You’re going to end up really making an asshole out of yourself, and fuck up your life, and maybe your career and your reputation, too.”

That was good advice.

Good advice that Jean already knew she wasn’t going to take.

(Author's Note: Can this really be our Jean Grey? Whether or not we can blame it on the Phoenix, what will she do next? And who will she try to do it with? And, if Scott finds out what she's up to, will he decide turnabout is fair play? And poor Logan! Can he fight the beast in him? Does he want to? Tune in to the next exciting chapter of Soap Gets In Your Claws to find out!)