Green Amber Red
by Thyme In Her Eyes
Author's Note: Oh, the angst. I swear, this piece started out much lighter... Just to disclaim, I own none of the characters featured. Anyway, this is actually set some time after X3 but mostly focuses on the bedroom scene in X1. So enjoy, and please give feedback. Also, I know that Jean's eyes are definitely green in the comics, but dammit, Famke's eyes are dark (and very lovely), so as long as long as I write in the movieverse, that's what I'll be sticking to. :P
-- GREEN AMBER RED --
'This is no beginning... this is the final cut
Open up, I'm in love.'
– Coheed And Cambria (The Willing Well IV: The Final Cut).
x-x-x
When Logan first saw her – really saw her, not that flash of a moment full of savage panic and confusion down in the medlab – he'd wanted her. And after that first real lingering look, every time he saw her afterwards he'd notice new things about her face and body, things that made him ache to touch her. She became more beautiful every time. It wasn't something he'd never felt for a woman before, not if his memory hadn't completely betrayed him, but it was rare for him. Very rare and very special and probably as close to love at first sight as he was ever likely to get.
What was there not to like? She was tall and striking, with an ample body, just enough to go mad touching. A small waist and shapely but not heavy hips. Great curves. Very promising breasts and a flat stomach both hinted at and hidden by sensible clothes. A sexy, firm-looking ass and beautifully long legs that immediately inspired all kinds of curious fantasies.
There were other features he couldn't help but note from the first; ones that could be classed as more lovely and compelling. She moved well, slowly but purposefully. Her shoulders were graceful and her neck elegant. Her long-fingered hands were soft and steady. Her lips were full and her red hair was just as full of natural body and shine, its scent a sweet tease.
At that point, she was only an intriguing figure, a hot fantasy and a reason to hang around, although even then he was drawn to something more than that. He hadn't known that one day he would think of her as all that was right and wrong in the world, all that pure and awful in people, and so beautiful in every damn way that it hurt him to think of her.
He often wondered what would have happened if he'd been warned. If he'd been warned about what would happen to her and, by extension, to him too.
He'd known she was taken, and perhaps that should have been warning enough to back off and move on. He'd seen her with Summers and the body language said it all, as well as the scent markings. He'd been certain of her unavailablity and she was quick to clear up any doubts in his mind as soon as she had a legitimate chance. She was quick, and knew where she stood. He'd liked that. She was a challenge and, spoken for or not, Logan saw no reason why he couldn't at least test the waters.
When she escorted him to his room, he'd had a go. He'd made it clear that the earlier flirtations and innuendoes weren't just meaningless jokes to make his situation less awkward, and that he was absolutely genuine in his intent. So he flirted, teased and pushed at her boundaries a little, keen to see if she'd relax that tight control.
And that was when he had the chance to see her eyes without stray strands of hair and her reading-glasses in the way. Large dark eyes, framed by long lashes. A direct gaze, with more than a touch of gravity to it. Her look told him easily that she was a little annoyed, but that she also wanted to stay with him a while longer.
That gaze was the one that always made him wonder what she was thinking, especially after learning that she could be reading his thoughts as easily as she could a discarded magazine. He considered it an edge, and had wanted to see more of it, and of her. To know what she was really like and if her spirit could live up to the subtle promises offered by her body and how it moved. Her breath had been caught in her throat and her heart was racing, and he'd relished it. He could tell that she felt exposed and off-guard and not totally sure that she didn't like it. But she'd kept her cool and that only made him want her all the more.
There were many things he'd never forget about the way she'd stepped into his life, or more accurately, the way he'd barged into hers: how the first thing she had done was try to help him whilst he had hurt her, and how completely unintimidated by him she'd appeared afterwards; cool, professional, a wry smile playing on her mouth as if she'd faced off worse than him in her sleep. But this was the moment that could never leave him, that would always come back to haunt him, that still teased at him in moments of reflection and in tormented red dreams of her.
She was a damn fine-looking woman, he'd already known that. He'd seen flashes of fire too. Courage and temper – one hell of a cocktail. There was something under the surface he hungered to uncover, and already he wanted to sink his lips into the hidden depths of her and run his hands through the strands of her secrets.
When he invited her to read his mind, things changed. She slipped through his own defences and made him question his own control. In retrospect, double-daring her to look inside his head wasn't the wisest idea, but he'd thirsted for any kind of contact and was so pleased to see how she refused to back away from the challenge.
She instantly saw straight to worst of him; the parts he hid, and what was hidden from himself. She saw the darkest part of him as well as the worst thing that had ever happened to him; the visions that screamed in his nightmares and forced him to admit that he could be human and vulnerable. He hadn't known it yet, but what she was instantly drawn to said so much about her, so much that even she didn't grasp it yet. And in exchange, he'd had just the briefest taste of her.
When his eyes met hers the as she broke the connection, the passing moment seemed to stretch to forever and he knew he was on very unfamiliar ground looking into those eyes that suddenly seemed full of intimate understanding.
The evening had ended without either of them being completely sure who had won that round or who would have the advantage the next time they were alone together. That was a genuine first for him, and in that moment Logan knew he more than wanted her. He had to have her.
He'd never been so enticed, so fascinated. There was something there, something raw and passionate and beautiful dwelling underneath that reserved front, and it called out to him. It was something hidden and private, and in that instant everything started to change. More than he wanted her body – more than he wanted the hot scent of her, the feel of her red hair let loose and flowing around his fingers, her frantic whispering in his ears, her body tight against him, moving all over him and full of him – more than all that, he'd wanted to be close enough to her to see who she really was. Where that compassion, pain and the lingering embers of an adventurous spirit came from and what they longed for.
Looking back, his own naivete shocked him. How unprepared he was. So tragically, so pathetically sure of himself. He'd never once thought that it could happen to him, not even while it was happening.
He'd played the tough guy, the lone wolf, the rootless wanderer who lived by instinct rather than sentiment, and so he hadn't been ready for her. He'd been unready for the entire X-Men experience, really, but her most of all.
He'd been like some stumbling, helpless cub not yet out of his first fur, despite the attitude – full of arrogance and swagger, so cocksure and absolutely confident that he could flirt and tease and test her boundaries until she cracked and gave in. What Wolverine wanted, he would always get, and he'd never doubted that ancient rule of living. He was delighted to push his way into her spectrum, wearing the smug grin he knew would turn her inside out because he knew how he brought out a part of her that no-one else, especially Scott Summers, had even touched. He was happy to lay in wait and keep their connection burning, confident that she couldn't resist and that when those carefully-built walls and defences came crashing down, it would be something to remember.
He hadn't noticed how she slipped past his own defences, and kept catching slices of who he really was underneath. Or how her acceptance became important to him. He hadn't been prepared for the possibility that those silent glances, teasing endurance contests and stolen moments would come to genuinely mean something to him. He hadn't known what it was like to crave someone so fiercely whilst being consumed by tenderness towards them. He'd never even guessed that she could bring him could bring him crashing to his knees.
God, he would think when he looked back. How naïve, how foolish. The only way to describe him was green. He hadn't seen it coming. Maybe some people should come with warnings on them. God only knew what be his labels would be. The claws, maybe. Perhaps they should have been warning enough.
Most people wouldn't have given much credit to a warning on Dr. Jean Grey though. But not him; he'd known that there was more to her than his eyes could see, even if he wasn't ready for the effect she would have on him. Green as he might have been back then, he certainly wasn't foolish enough to have underestimated her.
Red was her warning. She had always been fair. He would learn later that it was her favourite colour, though it would be more than easy to guess judging by her taste in clothes. She'd been a cautious woman but drawn to the unknown, always dancing on the edge of something he had tasted too many times in his life. It made sense that her favourite shade, the colour so natural to her, should represent passion and also warn about terrible danger.
Everything about her was red; her clothes, her hair, her spirit full of strange fire. Love was red too, and passion. They were both raw and aching – full of blood and flame. Maybe, looking back at it, it was fate's warning sign; one of the symbols whose significance is only seen when it's far too late. Maybe he had always been warned.
Truth was that even if someone had warned him about Jean and had doled out the it'll-all-end-in-tears brand of advice, he'd never have listened. Been all the more enticed, in fact. Even now, with hindsight, he'd never have wanted some warning or message from above to have stopped him from getting too involved, from letting Jean into his soul. Even though he'd been burned beyond what he'd imagined possible and had been given so many burdens by his love for her, he couldn't regret it. What he'd had of her, what he'd tasted, and all he saw was there but not for him, was worth it. She had been worth it.
Green and red, they were obvious enough. Perfect compliments to each other or designed for disaster...maybe both at the same time. Maybe neither. Green and red characterised the two of them, he'd sometimes imagine, though he'd never have believed it at the time. Two thirds of the classic system of gauging danger's levels.
And amber? That was easy. The green and the red, they would hurt him like nothing else, more than he would let anyone see, but the amber? That was what would really haunt him – haunt him till the end of his days.
Amber was the glint he saw in her eyes right then, and would see a few infrequent times afterwards. Not nearly often enough. Amber was what he saw flickering in her eyes when the side of herself she chose to show the world, including those closest to her, fell away for a moment. Just a moment, a spark of a second, when the constructs of life burdened by Xavier's duties vanished and left behind the real woman underneath.
There was something so fragile and fated about the greens and reds of their relationship that it hurt to think on it, but amber was all that was beautiful. It was all that was unforgettable. Amber was all that was her.
Amber was the deepening in her gaze and the tiny warm spark of change in her eyes when he knew he'd provoked a reaction in her. Amber glowed in all those too-rare moments when quiet desire was in her eyes, when the promise in them contradicted all the excuses and denials on her lips. It was always there whenever she was provoked, when her spirit was rising to a challenge he'd set, spoken or unspoken. It was there when she refused to back down from any dares or insinuations, when she showed real grit and fight in her. Lastly, the amber warmth deep in her eyes was heart-shudderingly poignant when she didn't seem to be fighting herself anymore, when he managed to tease out a smile despite herself and when everything felt so natural and right between them.
In those uncommon moments, he was less a vicious animal than an insect caught in amber. Unlike any prehistoric bug, he would have happily bathed in it.
When he'd think of her eyes, and of that uncommon amber hint there when the world narrowed to just the two of them, he'd inevitably think of his first night at the mansion, and of everything between them in that moment. He'd often think of how easily these early interactions happened, how smoothly. How naturally a connection developed between them, how quickly the fundamental rules of their relationship were established. The thought was never a comfortable one.
The memory of how soon and how easy it was to smile inside at the sight of Jean Grey's eyes offered him no consolation for coping with all that had happened to her and living with taking her life. Instead, it offered an idea that swept a cold sweat over him; that maybe fate wasn't blind and random after all, but fully aware of what it was doing.
Most of all, he was filled with a slow, numbing dread at the idea of fate being not at all benign, but equipped with a perfect vision of where he and Jean were going and how they would be standing opposite each other again, scant inches between them, on another night not very far from then, on Alcatraz island. That the final glimmer of amber he saw in her eyes as they closed for the last time would cut him in two, leave him full of regrets, and turn all his finest memories of her into images of warnings that he could never have listened to.
-- FIN --