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 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.

Still, there are other explanations. "Not to go all Freud on you, Slim, but we do it to ourselves. It's our brains try'na torture us with all the things we don't wanna think. We just got the same avatar for the torturing."

Logan's always liked the feel of Scott's hands in his hair, and he doesn't pull away; instead, he pulls closer, close enough to rest a hand on Scott's thigh and let his middle finger draw concentric circles on the fabric of his shorts.

"I had a dream once where you were a bartender, and Jean was a bird," Logan adds. It's one of the few dreams he remembers with any amount of clarity. "A pretty red bird, and I was jealous you wouldn't sell me what you were selling her," he continues, though he leaves out the part about the dream ending with Logan fucking Scott's recently-deceased wife in the snow. Then he shrugs. "Brains. Thoughts. Don't make the torture any less real."

[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.

[canadianclaws]

Logan cranes his head to look at Scott, curious and concerned. "Now why do you think your brain would start questioning that?" They may be laughing and comfortable now, but Logan isn't soon going to forget the way Scott was screaming and shaking. Conscious or not, this is something that's really bothering him.

"It's like the school, ain't it?" he hazards. "You're moving on, instead of trying to rebuild. You got a life that ain't all tore up with grief and attempts at resurrection, and your mind doesn't know how to handle that."

[cyke_out]

Scott frowns, running a hand down Logan's arm as he does.

"So you think I really feel that way?"

[canadianclaws]

"Hell no," Logan says, without hesitation. "If it was what you really thought, your brain wouldn't have to convince you of it. Your mind's trying to tell you that just 'cause you learned to cope without her, it means you don't want her. But there's a world a' difference between want and need."

"But," he adds, lifting his hand to run his fingers softly over the side of Scott's face, "I ain't a mindreader like her. So you tell me what you think."

[cyke_out]

"In the dream," Scott says, not quite ready to try and sort out his conscious sentiments, "I told her I was angry at her. For not being here. Like none of this would have happened without her. I know that's not rational, exactly, but I can't help thinking she would have known how to deal with so much of this -- the Professor and the civil war and all that stuff with Wanda. What we're trying to do now. I feel like Jean would have had something to say. Maybe?"

He moves his hand to cradle the back of Logan's head, and sighs. "It makes more sense than missing her because she and I would have been so happy together. Because, well, I think that horse left the barn."

[canadianclaws]

"That horse was glued to the floor of the barn, Slim." Logan says, in his stubborn, inarguable tone. The one thing will never accept, no matter how well it would probably serve him otherwise, is the idea that Jean and Scott could ever really be over. "It just that sometimes you were looking at its head, and sometimes you were looking at its rear."

He takes Scott's hand, the one that isn't cradling the back of his head, and presses his palm against it, threading their fingers together. People are surprised, sometimes, by how gentle Logan's hands can be. He doesn't blame them for thinking that, seeing as half the time, he's using them to kill. But here, in bed with someone he loves, he'll gladly go out of his way to prove that his hands aren't just weapons.

"And yeah, maybe she would've had something to say," he continues. "But that don't mean it would've been any better'n what you've come up with."

[cyke_out]

Scott laughs quietly at Logan's first statement. "That's absolutely poetic of you. Truly. And your sense of loyalty --" He presses his palm hard against Logan's, then moves the other hand to the base of his lover's neck, feeling the top of his spine. "Well, it's inspiring. If almost entirely misguided. Thank you."

He kisses Logan's forehead. "Sorry I woke you up for this stupidity, anyway. Ready to go back to sleep?" Scott is not, particularly, ready to go back to sleep, but since he is the one who's been thrashing around like a child, he wants to give Logan the option for the next move.

[canadianclaws]

"Hey -" Logan reaches out and grasps Scott's chin, forcing him to look at him. "It's not stupid at all. I'm the only one who gets to call anything you do stupid, and this ain't it."

Logan isn't tired. He's fully awake now; he couldn't go back to sleep even if he wanted to.

He tilts his head up, plants a kiss on the edge of Scott's mouth and feels evening stubble against his lips.

"What do you think she'd do? If she was here, right now?"

He's not sure whether he means "here" as in with the X-Men, in light of all that's happened, or "here" as in here in this bed with the two of them. He's not sure it matters.

[cyke_out]

Scott takes Logan's statement in a third way, one which seems perfectly natural to him. What if Jean were here instead of me?

"If Jean were here," he says, running the flat of his hand further down Logan's back, "she would have ended this conversation a long time ago, and she'd be on top of me. Not that that's a hint." He kisses Logan full on the mouth now, but makes no further movement.

Of course it's a hint.

[canadianclaws]

For the smallest moment, the answer takes Logan by surprise. But as the implication sinks in, he realizes that the only truly surprising thing is the fact that it took so long for this to happen.

Then he decides that thinking is highly overrated, pushes Scott back against the headboard, and flips over to straddle his hips in one smooth motion.

Logan's hair is a little longer than usual, and it hangs down into his eyes as he presses his hands to the wall behind them, leans over Scott's body, and asks, "And what would she do then?"

[cyke_out]

What Jean wouldn't be doing was asking, but Scott isn't sure he needs to tell Logan that. Either Logan knows already, or it's just as well that he doesn't.

"What do you think?" Scott murmurs, and he reaches up to pull Logan's mouth back down toward him.

[canadianclaws]

"I could guess," Logan says, after a long, deep kiss. "I guess she'd just take you and do whatever she pleased." He leans down to bite at Scott's nipple and grinds his hips into Scott's lap.

"But maybe," Logan continues, reaching an arm around Scott's back and gripping the hard muscle there, "I want you to show me." And before Scott can react, Logan uses his strength to flip them over, so that it's Logan's back against the pillows and Scott laying over him, hips wedged between Logan's knees.