Heavy things won't fly (August prompt for fandom_muses)

[cyke_out]

Heavy things won't fly
And the sky might catch on fire
And burn the axis of the world

Scott is standing in the ruins of the mansion. He looks at the burned-out walls, at the shell of a Sentinel that Wolverine gutted. He picks up some pulverized brick, runs it through his fingers.

"Why did you let this place die?"He doesn't have to turn around

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[canadianclaws]

Logan doesn't sleep much. His body recharges too easily for long hours of slumber. If he's been drinking, or trying to heal from something bigger than a flesh wound, he can sleep a little longer. But for the most part, his sleep is short, infrequent, and light, and he'll wake up at the slightest sound of danger.

So when his lover, lying next to him in the bed they share, begins to scream and thrash, Logan is awake and alert the instant it begins. His eyes adjust to the darkness in seconds, and he turns to find Scott, eyes still closed, screaming and convulsing. Nightmare, Logan thinks. He's seen it before. Scott's a man with a lot of demons, and it's no surprise to Logan that they haunt him in his sleep

[cyke_out]

Jean is touching him and he's on fire and then he's looking at the ceiling of the bedroom, and there are hands on him, and he sits bolt upright and cries out the name before he can choke it down.

"Emma!"

He knows it isn't her; the setup of the room is wrong, and the weight of the hands that are holding him is wrong, and he knows that he should be used to sharing Logan's bed by now.

"I'm sorry," he says, and leans over, resting his head on Logan's shoulder. "I'm glad you're here. It's just. . ." It's just that if Emma had been here, she wouldn't have let it get this far. She would have crawled into his dream and spun things around, redirected the energy, made herself part of the dream. It had bothered him, sometimes, that she did this, but he realizes now, a little guiltily, that he misses it. "It's just a dream," he told Logan. "It's stupid. I'm sorry."

[canadianclaws]

Logan reaches to put an arm around Scott and pulls him closer, rubbing his fingers over the curve of his shoulder. They're sitting up in the bed, against the headboard, the sheets in their laps tangled from Scott's convulsions.

Logan doesn't say anything at first, and barely even thinks about the name Scott called. For all that it feels like he and Scott have been doing this forever, Scott was with Emma for much longer. It's natural. Logan has to wonder how much time it took for Scott to stop yelling Jean's name when he was in bed with Emma.

"What demon was it tonight?" Logan asks, finally. He's not sure he expects Scott to answer, but it's worth a shot.

[cyke_out]

"It was just a dream," he says, automatically, and realizes that he's started to try and pull away from Logan, without even meaning to.

Emma never would have let him get away with that. He couldn't have gotten away with that, because of her power. It's not really fair, he thinks, to treat Logan differently because he didn't have that same ability. Besides, he had grown to realize in recent years, that there was a positive side to talking through all the mess in his head. And Logan did ask.

Scott leans closer against him now and begins, "I was back in Westchester." He swallows hard, then looks at Logan to try and figure out how much he wants to say. "Jean was there."

[canadianclaws]

At Scott's words, here's a flash in Logan's mind - Jean sitting over him in his room at Dr. Strange's, and a feeling of fear in the marrow of his bones. He doesn't know where the image is from, but he thinks it must have been a half-remembered dream of his own.

Logan moves his hand off of Scott's shoulder and up to his neck, where he uses big fingers to work at the tense muscles. "Jean, or Phoenix?" he asks.

[cyke_out]

Scott doesn't answer immediately. He had debated which name to use, himself.

He enjoys the feeling of Logan's fingers against him, for a moment, then says, "The first time I saw her, she was wearing this suit, right? For her first day at the school. Enormous buttons and this silly little hat." He ran his hand over Logan's hair, stopping on one side to indicate where the hat would have perched.

"It was Jean in the dream," he says firmly.

[canadianclaws]

Logan tries to picture it, Jean in a suit and a hat, trying desperately to look like an adult at 17. He finds he can't do it. Logan never knew Jean and Scott when they were kids. By the time he'd come into their lives, they were well into adulthood, in maturity and experience if not completely in years. In some ways it's easier - he doesn't know if he could feel about them what he does if he'd know them as children when he was already an ancient soul. But he still feels like he's missing something, some part of the picture of who Scott and Jean are that he'll never truly understand.

"So, Jean. At the school. What did she say? What did she do?" Logan looks at Scott, remembering the way he'd screamed - not so much in grief or sadness, but in pain. His mind conjures up an image of Jean's finger on his cheek, charred flesh beneath.

"Was she burning you?"

[cyke_out]

The question startles Scott, so much that he can almost feel the burning, all over again; he pulls back from Logan, and asks, "Is there a reason we're talking about this?" It's a real question, and so he tries to make his voice sound deliberate, not angry. The deliberate tone is so close to the way he sounds when he is very angry, though, that Logan might not immediately know the difference.

[canadianclaws]

Logan can feel his own hackles rising, and he twists his head to look in Scott's direction.

"Christ, Scott. We're talking about it because when somebody I'm sharing a bed with starts seizing and screaming in his sleep, I wanna know what's going on."

"And because you ain't the only one who has dreams like that," he adds. As soon as Logan says it, he knows it's the truth. He may not remember the dreams, in most of his waking hours, but he knows it was more than just the one.

[cyke_out]

"It's just a dream," Scott finds himself saying, for what he realizes is at least the third time. "Don't you ever have --?" And then he stops, because he realizes Logan has just admitted to troubling dreams of his own. It's not something that Scott would have guessed. God knows, the man must have enough raw material for nightmares. But, on the rare occasions that Scott has actually caught Logan sleeping, he has always seemed so perfectly still. Whatever mechanism had helped Logan repress his past memories for so long, Scott had assumed, must allow him to sleep peacefully as well.

Scott reaches out, now and cautiously touches the side of Logan's face with his fingers. "Dreams like what?" he asks.

[canadianclaws]

"I never remember 'em well," Logan says, and he reaches up to cover Scott's fingers with his own. "Not 'til something jogs my memory, and even then it's just snippets. But I remember Jean. Fire. Taunting, like she'd never have done when she was around."

He shakes his head, leaving their fingers floating, half-entwined, between them. "Never know how much is really a dream, with her."

[cyke_out]

"It's just a dream," he says, once again, though now there's a different emphasis. "It's like you said, Jean wouldn't say those things. She wasn't like that. She wouldn't say those things." He moves his hand, still kneading his fingers through his lover's hair. "It makes you wonder where they come from."

He doesn't mean the Phoenix.

[canadianclaws]

Logan hopes Scott is right. He thinks he is. But some part of him still wonders what Jean can do, when she's being the Phoenix full-time. Where she can go, and how she'd behave, and if they could ever be completely sure about anything

[cyke_out]

"Well, listen to my boyfriend, the amateur psychologist," Scott says, with a grin. Then quickly -- not wanting Logan to mistake the playful teasing for mocking -- Scott leans in to kiss him on the forehead. "That's really smart."

He isn't sure whether the kiss is appropriate to the conversation. But then, Logan is touching his thigh, and Scott can feel himself getting closer to arousal. "Why do you think Jean is your -- what did you say? Avatar?" There's no jealousy in the question. Scott has grown to accept the closeness of Logan and Jean's relationship, in retrospect, without any resentment. In an odd way, it makes him feel better about the times that he and his wife hadn't been on the best terms. At least she had somebody there looking out for her.

[canadianclaws]

"Can't get hurt by what don't matter." It hasn't always been Jean in the dreams. More Jean, now, especially since he's been with Scott. But he's seen Mariko, too, and others. Itsu, Silver Fox. David and Terrence. People he's loved. People he's failed.

"She matters," Logan continues, to elucidate. "And she ain't here. So she pops up - my brain pops up - to remind me of that, of why I shouldn't be happy when I am. To make me feel guilty."

"Not that I'd blame her, if it really was her," he adds, running his fingers farther up Scott's thigh. "Hell, I can't see her being all too thrilled about what I'm getting up to with her husband." He says this matter-of-factly, without apology, but there's still the twinge of guilt. "I pushed her away, and I didn't push you."

[cyke_out]

Scott lets out a little laugh, at the absurdity of the statement. "Are you now at a point of feeling guilty for not sleeping with my wife? For what it's worth, thank you." He doesn't react, immediately, to the hand on his thigh, but reaches out both of his own hands and starts rubbing them over Logan's shoulders. "Though, seeing it from this distance, it wouldn't have been the end of the world."

Part of him wants to leave the conversation there, to just kiss Logan now and let things take their course, to let the bad dreams fade. But now that they're talking things out, he isn't sure he wants to stop. "In the dream, she says we don't really want her here. You and I." He stops, waiting to see how Logan will react to that.