Falling In Love Again
by
Dyce


He watched her sleeping.

He loved doing that, loved the way it made his heart turn over and tingle with joy. She was beautiful, his Marie.

She looked so soft, so delicate, so very frail... but she wasn't. Tough as old nails and boot leather, as honey-sweet as the inside of a beehive and just as lethal. He'd made a special point of training her for it, knowing that she needed a fallback that didn't involve using her powers. Scott hadn't liked that. Scott could kiss his hairy ass.

Okay, can't think stuff like that, you'll wake her up if you go snickering like that. Even if it was a VERY funny mental image and one that Marie will appreciate when you tell her about it.

She'd gotten stronger over the years... strong enough to juggle tanks, thanks to a slip with her powers that had left all his shirts soaked with her tears and his fists aching for something to squash. He hadn't, though. He'd been ever so calm and collected, he'd smoothed her hair and given her tissues at regular intervals, and thanked Ororo nicely when she washed all the snot off his shirts for him.

Now he risked reaching out to stroke her hair gently, brushing a snowy curl away from her pretty face. She looked tired. She'd been through a lot, poor baby girl, in the last day. She'd struggled, battled the pain and the fear and he'd been helpless to protect her, reduced to watching his beloved Marie screaming and struggling against a pain that she couldn't fight.

But everything was all right now.

She looked pale, resting against the hospital-blue pillows. Maybe he should get her something? But she had everything already. He would just sit there and wait until she woke up. Yes. Quiet as a Wolviemouse, he thought giddily, aware that stress and lack of sleep was making him silly.

He sat back carefully, and was just considering taking a little nap of his own when he heard... a squeak. A tiny indrawn breath.

"No!" he whispered hastily. "Shh! Go back to sleep!"

The squeak repeated itself, a bit louder. It was building up to something.

"No!" He hissed desperately. "You can't wake up yet! I don't know what to do if you wake up!"

The squeak turned into a tremulous indrawn breath, soft lips drew up into a rictus of misery, a wail was about to emerge...

With a whispered plea for divine help, Logan leaned over and scooped the little blue bundle out of its plastic crib. "Please be quiet," he begged in a near soundless whisper. "*Please*. Your mom's *tired*."

The baby gazed up at him out of unfocused blue eyes, apparently entirely distracted from his momentary misery. As if he, Logan, was the most utterly fascinating thing that this tiny morsel of humanity had ever seen.

Logan sighed, and fell devastatingly in love once again.

He was perfect, from his tiny little fingers... Logan counted them carefully... to his miniscule toes, all bundled up in his little tiny yellow booties in case they got cold. Logan cooed unashamedly, wrapping the blanket more securely around the little body and pulling the tiny woolly hat down around little pink ears. The ears had a teeny bit of fuzz on them. Oh, furry ears. Nothing, Logan was sure, could ever be so adorable. And that face... the wide, innocent eyes... the tiny button nose... soft, pursed pink lips that parted slightly as the baby gazed up at him...

"Logan?" someone whispered.

"Fwa?" Logan said dazedly, wondering how anyone could go around talking at a moment like this.

The intruder chuckled softly. "Did he cry?"

"No," Marie whispered back, without opening her eyes, before Logan could come up with enough words to make a sentence. "He hiccupped a bit, and Logan's been making burbling noises ever since."

"Oh. Good." Hank perched on the side of the bed, smiling fondly at her. "How do *you* feel?"

"Fine." She smiled at him sleepily. "A bit sore, but I've got this whole warm, tingly thing going on."

"Splendid." His blue eyes slid over to Logan, and blue, fuzzy arms extended hopefully. "May I?"

"No. Mine." Logan made a growly face, and went back to gazing adoringly into the baby's eyes.

Hank gave him a reproachful look. "Actually, he's technically MY child," he pointed out reasonably.

Logan was in no mood for reasonable, but Marie WAS awake now, so he reluctantly passed the baby over to his father, and cuddled HIS little girl instead. "He's beautiful, darlin'," he murmured, kissing her forehead lightly. He hadn't really been happy when she learned to control her powers... especially when he'd found out how she and Hank had celebrated the event... but they were going to get married, so that was all right, and he wasn't going to complain about anything that had provided such an utterly adorable little creature.

"Good," she murmured, smiling and snuggling happily. "I'm gonna name him after you."

"You are?" Logan basked. "Oh, good."

"And you have to play catch with him and... and do those guy things," Marie said firmly, if a bit muzzily. "Because Hank gets caught up in his work stuff. And you're his grandfather... mostly... so you have to do it. And spoil him rotten, too."

Logan nodded enthusiastically. "Right. Absolutely. I'll even take him to the museum and stuff." This was a great sacrifice - Logan hated the museum with a fiery and devoted passion - but it was worth it. He had a *grandson*, mostly, except for the actual biological part, but that was fine, he was absolutely okay with that... "Hey, furball. Let Marie hold the baby."

Hank, in turn, reluctantly handed over the tiny scrap of pinkness that was his firstborn, and then nearly cried at the utter beauty of Marie holding the baby, smiling at him with the serene adoration of a mutant Madonna...

"Hey, Hank... give 'em a minute..." Logan was hauling him off to one side.

Oh, dear.

"Of course," he said as patiently as he could, resigning himself to yet another lecture about What A Very Lucky Man He Was (as if he hadn't figured *that* out on his own), and how He'd Better Take Incredibly Good Care Of Logan's Baby Girl Who Deserved Much Better. He'd had to put up with a lot of those over the last nine months. Logan seemed unaware that Marie was no longer an innocent little girl in need of fatherly love and protection. And Hank knew that he was a very lucky man, and he was well aware that Marie deserved much better, but that didn't mean he was going to let her get away. Or love her one iota less than he did.

Logan looked up at the slightly taller man, and the brown eyes were... good heavens... suspiciously bright. "You see him?" He jerked his head at Marie and the baby.

Hank nodded, a bit baffled. "I see him," he said uncertainly, checking surreptitiously to see if any claws happened to have popped out.

"Good." Logan gave the baby a fatuously adoring look of the kind he usually saved for Marie. "I could handle a few more o' those." He gave Hank a rather lopsided grin. "And when I say a few, I mean maybe a dozen or so."



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