As Darkness Falls And Falls Away, X-men movieverse, Logan/Remy, Pg/Pg-13
Title: As Darkness Falls And Falls Away
Author: Katja, aka merry_gentry
Fandom: X-men (movieverse)
Pairing: Slash, Logan/Remy
Rating: Pg/Pg-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, they do not belong to me. They do conjure up rather pretty images in one's mind, though, don't they?
Author's Notes: Written for a few prompts over on comment_fic for havenward and cyphersushi and now strung together in a way that makes sense. Hopefully.
Movieverse - set post-X2, pre-X3 (or the 'X' that never, never happened. Bitter, moi?), so spoilers for X-men Origins, X-men and X-men 2.
Summary: “Fils de pute,” he whispers through chattering teeth. “Son of a bitch.”
*~*~*~*
He’d heard rumours of the complex up north - whispered tales of experiments and he remembers Logan hinting to him on that long-ago plane ride that that’s where everything started. Or started to go wrong. It was fifteen years ago, after all, and Remy’s not some starry-eyed twenty-one year old now, full of pain and hurt from the Island and finding himself desperate for one approving look from Logan.
But he owes the man, Remy figures, owes him for making Remy face up to his demons because a life of whoring and drinking and gambling and thieving was all very well, but it had lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that Logan’s reluctantly approving grin had given him.
Still, like Logan will even remember him - Remy hopes so, but he’s not holding out for any kind of miracle.
And he gets to Alkali Lake - flooded, the locals say, some kind of problem with the dam. And Remy clambers up there, leaving his car by the side of the road when he has to so he can climb over the rocks and the fallen trees. It hasn’t drained out yet, not completely, and Remy finds himself looking down on utter destruction.
But this is where all his informants had led him - this is where Logan died and the Wolverine was born, by all accounts, and Remy’s followed the trail all over the US, losing it at Anchorage and some bar with a regular cage fight going on but managing to pick it up again, only to be led here, where surely no one can still be alive.
There’s a glint - sunlight off metal - beneath his feet, just a couple of metres down, and Remy hesitates, rolls his eyes at himself and slips off his clothes and boots, swearing out loud at the coldness of the water. The things he does...
He brings a set of dogtags up on their chain - huddles shivering and half-naked on the shore while he looks down at his hand clenched around the metal. Swallowing heavily, Remy pushes his hair out of his eyes and opens his hand - feels his heart hit his stomach, seems like, when he reads ‘Wolverine’ on one side and ‘Logan’ on the other.
“Fils de pute,” he whispers through chattering teeth. “Son of a bitch.”
Laying the tags and their chain carefully down in the dirt, Remy dresses quickly, mechanically, numb with more than the cold from the water. He slides his arms into his trench coat last, settling it on his shoulders, and then he picks up the dogtags, looking at them just once more before dropping them in his pocket.
Swallowing, and trying to fool himself that the stinging in his eyes is just the bitter wind, Remy laughs. After all, he only knew Logan for less than twenty-four hours all together. Not enough time for a friendship, surely, and certainly not enough for anything more.
Well, he’s not going to boude all day over some man he hardly knew, is he? It’s just not the way he does things - and Remy turns to scramble back down the hill to his car, patting at his pocket before he gets in to check if the tags are still there.
They’re all he has left.
*~*~*~*
Remy’s halfway back down to New Orleans, the dogtags in his pocket a constant presence, when he hears another rumour - follows the whispers and hints east instead of continuing south. He ends up six hours out from Westchester when the sun goes down and he pulls his car into a motel carport, leaves the engine idling and taps a rhythm out on the steering wheel while he thinks.
Well, what’s another six hours when he’s been tracking back and forth across the US for months and months now?
Grinning a little at himself and his own, what? Naïveté? At thinking Logan might actually be there? In a school, surrounded by kids and...Remy swallows down the uncertainty and floors the gas, peeling out of the motel with a screech as he flips the volume switch on the radio all the way up and starts to drive through the sunset and into the night just for a rumour. Just for one man who might not even be there.
LeBeau, this is bordering on obsession, now.
Obsession, maybe, but Remy can’t just sit by and pretend like he can’t remember Logan - doesn’t even know if Logan’s alive, if he’ll even remember or want to see him, but it can’t hurt to try, right?
Five and a half hours later, Remy pulls the car to a stop at the huge iron gates - locked, of course, as they should be at near on one in the morning. It’s a huge, old lock as well, and Remy doesn’t have the right tools for the job so he slips out of his car, shutting the door quietly even though the mansion looks like it’s a mile or more past the gates. He scales the metal, drops down lightly on the other side and starts to walk, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket to shuffle absentmindedly when his fingers twitch for something to do, something to calm himself with.
The repetitive motion of the cards - over and under and together and split - lulls his mind, and Remy only stops when he’s standing on the steps outside the huge ass front door, staring up at the quiet and dark building.
The door’s locked - of course it is, keeping des petites safe and inside and everyone else out. Remy’s seen the news, he knows of the covert raid that just about made it onto the ten o’clock headlines. But, unlike the gate, he actually has picks that he can use for this one, and Remy sets to work quickly and quietly, well aware that if he gives himself a second to think then he’ll chicken out, flee down the driveway and away and he has to know one way or the other.
It’s dark inside, Remy creeping through the ground floor to the main staircase and, really, is this the best way to go about things? Wouldn’t, oh, any other time have been a better idea? He’s come this far though, and Remy climbs the stairs slowly, one hand to the banister for a balance he doesn’t need. This place is...really not what Remy was expecting - half mansion and half school. It’s nice though, from what Remy can see in the grey half-light from the moon and the stars filtering in through the window.
He makes it to the first floor landing before he hears something - a creak of a floorboard, and Remy himself hasn’t made a single sound that he knows of, not since he shut the front door oh-so-quietly behind himself. A shadow peels away from the darker shadows when Remy freezes and the man comes nearer - moonlight bouncing off metal claws but still Remy can’t relax, not even knowing who it is.
“Visitin’ hours are over,” Logan says, and Remy feels a thrill at that voice that runs through him and he grins, holds out his arms wide to show he’s not holding anything that might be taken as a weapon.
“Just popped by,” he says, wondering if Logan can see how ridiculously happy he is. Logan hasn’t thrown him out yet, after all.
“Really?” Logan asks dryly, and he comes closer, the claws disappearing with a snick.
“Oui,” Remy shoots back, all bravado and raised chin when Logan comes right up in front of him, standing so close that Remy could reach out and touch and he wants.
“Sneakin’ in, in the middle of the night, creepin’ around in the darkness?”
“‘m a t’ief, cher - sorta my usual surroundin’s.”
“Been a long time, kid,” Logan says after a pause, taking a step back, and Remy’s grin gets a little brighter, a little wider because Logan remembers him.
“Been searchin’ a long time,” he offers, and he swallows nervously. Make or break time, LeBeau.
“Well,” Logan says as he moves past Remy and starts down the stairs, “a man comes out of the dark after fifteen years, I suppose it’s manners to offer him a drink.”
Remy can hardly restrain himself from whooping but, then, he figures Logan already knows how pleased he is.
“Got a beer?”
Logan snorts a laugh and guides Remy down the corridor and into a kitchen.
“This is a school,” he says, and he flips on the lights, banishing the darkness and the shadows from Remy’s mind as well as the room.
*~*~*~*
Logan had sat him down at the kitchen island, handed him a glass of water when Remy asked for one and just stood there, leaning against the counter on the other side of the room and stared at him with his arms folded across his chest. Not hostile, Remy thought, but maybe still wary.
“Not gonna ask me what I’m doin’ here?” Remy wanted to know, and Logan shook his head.
“It’ll keep to morning, unless you’re plannin’ to blow the mansion sky-high in the middle of the night.”
“Nope,” Remy had laughed, “nothin’ like dat.”
*~*~*~*
And now they’re in Logan’s room - “like I know where else to put ya this late at night” - and standing next to Logan’s bed but they had shared a bed that one night, even if Logan doesn’t remember.
Turns out? Logan remembers a little more than Remy thought he might.
He crawls into the bed, holding the covers up and waiting patiently for Remy to kick off his boots and shuck his coat and climb in next to him.
“You barely know me,” Remy whispers into the darkness, and Logan wraps an arm around him and hauls him tight against the line of his body.
“Know enough.”
Remy sighs and burrows into a pillow that smells like Logan, pushing back against that almost too warm body.
“Gonna let me stay in the mornin’?”
“Going to be here in the morning?” Logan counters, and Remy doesn’t answer because it’s obvious. He’s come all this way, spent all these months looking. Like he’s going to go unless someone throws him out.
Neither of them sleep. They lie there - breathing just a little too quick, an awareness of each other that’s a little too there, and Remy stops clock-watching the radio-alarm on the bedside table around four, turns in the bed to face Logan and watches as Logan closes his eyes and his nose flares just a little when he breathes in - scenting him, Remy guesses, and he lets himself take in every detail of the man who let him know it was okay to give a damn. The man he might just have started to idolise over the last fifteen years but if he has, he’ll never tell.
And the darkness in the room starts to brighten, grey pre-dawn light seeping in around the curtains, and still Remy looks as Logan, still awake, opens his eyes and leans in, brushing his mouth over Remy’s in a brief kiss.
And the light gets brighter as the minutes slip past, and Remy grins and holds on to Logan tighter because they’re both still there.
“Are you stayin’?” Logan asks.
“Are you?” Remy counters, and he happily burrows further into Logan’s hold when the other man nods.
My fic masterlist is here.
My please-give-me-a-prompt begging-page is here.
Author: Katja, aka merry_gentry
Fandom: X-men (movieverse)
Pairing: Slash, Logan/Remy
Rating: Pg/Pg-13
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, they do not belong to me. They do conjure up rather pretty images in one's mind, though, don't they?
Author's Notes: Written for a few prompts over on comment_fic for havenward and cyphersushi and now strung together in a way that makes sense. Hopefully.
Movieverse - set post-X2, pre-X3 (or the 'X' that never, never happened. Bitter, moi?), so spoilers for X-men Origins, X-men and X-men 2.
Summary: “Fils de pute,” he whispers through chattering teeth. “Son of a bitch.”
*~*~*~*
He’d heard rumours of the complex up north - whispered tales of experiments and he remembers Logan hinting to him on that long-ago plane ride that that’s where everything started. Or started to go wrong. It was fifteen years ago, after all, and Remy’s not some starry-eyed twenty-one year old now, full of pain and hurt from the Island and finding himself desperate for one approving look from Logan.
But he owes the man, Remy figures, owes him for making Remy face up to his demons because a life of whoring and drinking and gambling and thieving was all very well, but it had lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that Logan’s reluctantly approving grin had given him.
Still, like Logan will even remember him - Remy hopes so, but he’s not holding out for any kind of miracle.
And he gets to Alkali Lake - flooded, the locals say, some kind of problem with the dam. And Remy clambers up there, leaving his car by the side of the road when he has to so he can climb over the rocks and the fallen trees. It hasn’t drained out yet, not completely, and Remy finds himself looking down on utter destruction.
But this is where all his informants had led him - this is where Logan died and the Wolverine was born, by all accounts, and Remy’s followed the trail all over the US, losing it at Anchorage and some bar with a regular cage fight going on but managing to pick it up again, only to be led here, where surely no one can still be alive.
There’s a glint - sunlight off metal - beneath his feet, just a couple of metres down, and Remy hesitates, rolls his eyes at himself and slips off his clothes and boots, swearing out loud at the coldness of the water. The things he does...
He brings a set of dogtags up on their chain - huddles shivering and half-naked on the shore while he looks down at his hand clenched around the metal. Swallowing heavily, Remy pushes his hair out of his eyes and opens his hand - feels his heart hit his stomach, seems like, when he reads ‘Wolverine’ on one side and ‘Logan’ on the other.
“Fils de pute,” he whispers through chattering teeth. “Son of a bitch.”
Laying the tags and their chain carefully down in the dirt, Remy dresses quickly, mechanically, numb with more than the cold from the water. He slides his arms into his trench coat last, settling it on his shoulders, and then he picks up the dogtags, looking at them just once more before dropping them in his pocket.
Swallowing, and trying to fool himself that the stinging in his eyes is just the bitter wind, Remy laughs. After all, he only knew Logan for less than twenty-four hours all together. Not enough time for a friendship, surely, and certainly not enough for anything more.
Well, he’s not going to boude all day over some man he hardly knew, is he? It’s just not the way he does things - and Remy turns to scramble back down the hill to his car, patting at his pocket before he gets in to check if the tags are still there.
They’re all he has left.
*~*~*~*
Remy’s halfway back down to New Orleans, the dogtags in his pocket a constant presence, when he hears another rumour - follows the whispers and hints east instead of continuing south. He ends up six hours out from Westchester when the sun goes down and he pulls his car into a motel carport, leaves the engine idling and taps a rhythm out on the steering wheel while he thinks.
Well, what’s another six hours when he’s been tracking back and forth across the US for months and months now?
Grinning a little at himself and his own, what? Naïveté? At thinking Logan might actually be there? In a school, surrounded by kids and...Remy swallows down the uncertainty and floors the gas, peeling out of the motel with a screech as he flips the volume switch on the radio all the way up and starts to drive through the sunset and into the night just for a rumour. Just for one man who might not even be there.
LeBeau, this is bordering on obsession, now.
Obsession, maybe, but Remy can’t just sit by and pretend like he can’t remember Logan - doesn’t even know if Logan’s alive, if he’ll even remember or want to see him, but it can’t hurt to try, right?
Five and a half hours later, Remy pulls the car to a stop at the huge iron gates - locked, of course, as they should be at near on one in the morning. It’s a huge, old lock as well, and Remy doesn’t have the right tools for the job so he slips out of his car, shutting the door quietly even though the mansion looks like it’s a mile or more past the gates. He scales the metal, drops down lightly on the other side and starts to walk, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket to shuffle absentmindedly when his fingers twitch for something to do, something to calm himself with.
The repetitive motion of the cards - over and under and together and split - lulls his mind, and Remy only stops when he’s standing on the steps outside the huge ass front door, staring up at the quiet and dark building.
The door’s locked - of course it is, keeping des petites safe and inside and everyone else out. Remy’s seen the news, he knows of the covert raid that just about made it onto the ten o’clock headlines. But, unlike the gate, he actually has picks that he can use for this one, and Remy sets to work quickly and quietly, well aware that if he gives himself a second to think then he’ll chicken out, flee down the driveway and away and he has to know one way or the other.
It’s dark inside, Remy creeping through the ground floor to the main staircase and, really, is this the best way to go about things? Wouldn’t, oh, any other time have been a better idea? He’s come this far though, and Remy climbs the stairs slowly, one hand to the banister for a balance he doesn’t need. This place is...really not what Remy was expecting - half mansion and half school. It’s nice though, from what Remy can see in the grey half-light from the moon and the stars filtering in through the window.
He makes it to the first floor landing before he hears something - a creak of a floorboard, and Remy himself hasn’t made a single sound that he knows of, not since he shut the front door oh-so-quietly behind himself. A shadow peels away from the darker shadows when Remy freezes and the man comes nearer - moonlight bouncing off metal claws but still Remy can’t relax, not even knowing who it is.
“Visitin’ hours are over,” Logan says, and Remy feels a thrill at that voice that runs through him and he grins, holds out his arms wide to show he’s not holding anything that might be taken as a weapon.
“Just popped by,” he says, wondering if Logan can see how ridiculously happy he is. Logan hasn’t thrown him out yet, after all.
“Really?” Logan asks dryly, and he comes closer, the claws disappearing with a snick.
“Oui,” Remy shoots back, all bravado and raised chin when Logan comes right up in front of him, standing so close that Remy could reach out and touch and he wants.
“Sneakin’ in, in the middle of the night, creepin’ around in the darkness?”
“‘m a t’ief, cher - sorta my usual surroundin’s.”
“Been a long time, kid,” Logan says after a pause, taking a step back, and Remy’s grin gets a little brighter, a little wider because Logan remembers him.
“Been searchin’ a long time,” he offers, and he swallows nervously. Make or break time, LeBeau.
“Well,” Logan says as he moves past Remy and starts down the stairs, “a man comes out of the dark after fifteen years, I suppose it’s manners to offer him a drink.”
Remy can hardly restrain himself from whooping but, then, he figures Logan already knows how pleased he is.
“Got a beer?”
Logan snorts a laugh and guides Remy down the corridor and into a kitchen.
“This is a school,” he says, and he flips on the lights, banishing the darkness and the shadows from Remy’s mind as well as the room.
*~*~*~*
Logan had sat him down at the kitchen island, handed him a glass of water when Remy asked for one and just stood there, leaning against the counter on the other side of the room and stared at him with his arms folded across his chest. Not hostile, Remy thought, but maybe still wary.
“Not gonna ask me what I’m doin’ here?” Remy wanted to know, and Logan shook his head.
“It’ll keep to morning, unless you’re plannin’ to blow the mansion sky-high in the middle of the night.”
“Nope,” Remy had laughed, “nothin’ like dat.”
*~*~*~*
And now they’re in Logan’s room - “like I know where else to put ya this late at night” - and standing next to Logan’s bed but they had shared a bed that one night, even if Logan doesn’t remember.
Turns out? Logan remembers a little more than Remy thought he might.
He crawls into the bed, holding the covers up and waiting patiently for Remy to kick off his boots and shuck his coat and climb in next to him.
“You barely know me,” Remy whispers into the darkness, and Logan wraps an arm around him and hauls him tight against the line of his body.
“Know enough.”
Remy sighs and burrows into a pillow that smells like Logan, pushing back against that almost too warm body.
“Gonna let me stay in the mornin’?”
“Going to be here in the morning?” Logan counters, and Remy doesn’t answer because it’s obvious. He’s come all this way, spent all these months looking. Like he’s going to go unless someone throws him out.
Neither of them sleep. They lie there - breathing just a little too quick, an awareness of each other that’s a little too there, and Remy stops clock-watching the radio-alarm on the bedside table around four, turns in the bed to face Logan and watches as Logan closes his eyes and his nose flares just a little when he breathes in - scenting him, Remy guesses, and he lets himself take in every detail of the man who let him know it was okay to give a damn. The man he might just have started to idolise over the last fifteen years but if he has, he’ll never tell.
And the darkness in the room starts to brighten, grey pre-dawn light seeping in around the curtains, and still Remy looks as Logan, still awake, opens his eyes and leans in, brushing his mouth over Remy’s in a brief kiss.
And the light gets brighter as the minutes slip past, and Remy grins and holds on to Logan tighter because they’re both still there.
“Are you stayin’?” Logan asks.
“Are you?” Remy counters, and he happily burrows further into Logan’s hold when the other man nods.
My fic masterlist is here.
My please-give-me-a-prompt begging-page is here.