Everyone Has It Figured Out but You - part 2 (R) Logan/Kurt; Logan/Daken
Title: Everyone Has It Figured Out but You
Author: eva_roisin
Fandom: X-Books
Characters: Logan, Kurt, Daken
Pairings: Logan/Kurt; Logan/Daken (non-con, dub-con)
Description: Hurt/comfort; angst.
Rating: R
Words: ~10,500
Takes Place: During the “Reckoning” storyline and before “Second Coming.”
Warnings: Contains implications of non-consensual (and non-eroticized) incest.
Special Thanks: To beta readers mozzarellaroses and yehnica , who had the patience to see this through multiple drafts. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Part One
Part Two
part one
Logan scans the newspapers at a magazine stand as he waits for Kurt to buy a copy of the Chronicle and a few other things.
They’ve done this before, but usually not so premeditatedly, and not in broad daylight. He remembers the first time. They were still living in New York then and having an argument about a Christmas tree: whether they should cut one down from outside or buy one from a lot or just get something artificial (but Logan got the sense that what they were really arguing about was the professor).
They were in Kurt’s room, and the door was closed.
He kept bamfing. Jesus fucking Christ, Logan couldn’t finish a sentence without Kurt disappearing from his line of sight. It was the most frustrating of all argumentative tactics, and Logan was tired of having to whirl around just to make a point. Finally he reached out to grab Kurt. He meant to grab him by the shoulder, but instead he grabbed him by the neck. Hard.
For an instant Elf looked horrified. His eyes widened and Logan wondered if he hadn’t hurt him in some awful way. He jerked his hand away, also horrified, just as Kurt bamfed away again.
“Oh Jesus,” he said to the empty air. “I’m sorry.”
Kurt stood behind him. “It’s alright,” he said quickly.
Logan turned around to face Kurt. “You’re-” He studied Kurt. The light over Kurt’s desk was on, but the room was still dim. It was only about six o’clock, but it was December and the sun had started going down at four-thirty. “Getting slow,” Logan finished. “What the hell was that about? Mistake like that in the field is going to get you killed.” Logan sniffed. “Surprised it hasn’t already."
“I should ask you what the hell it was about! Were you trying to crush my windpipe? With those big adamantium knuckles? This isn’t the field. It’s not even the danger room. I didn’t think I had to watch my back in here.”
“I was trying to have a conversation with you and you were being annoying as fuck about it.”
“I think the conversation’s over, my friend.”
“Fine.” Logan pointed his feet in the direction of the door. “Forget about it. But know I’m sorry.” He started to leave.
Kurt reached out and touched Logan’s shoulder. “Wait. Logan . . .” He gripped him fast through the fabric of Logan’s shirt, one finger tracing his shoulder blade.
Logan turned and tried to smile, but when he caught Elf’s expression, he felt his own mood shift. Kurt wasn’t smiling. But he wasn’t angry anymore, either. In a move that could only be described later as awkward or tentative, he pulled Logan a little tighter and embraced him with one arm, brushing his hand along his back.
Logan returned the hesitant hug. (He was also awkward. He couldn’t remember a time when things had been so awkward between them.) Then he went ahead and slung both arms around Kurt’s back.
Kurt sighed against him. He went limp and brushed his cheek against Logan’s.
This is the part where Logan started to feel uncomfortable, but more uncomfortable with himself than with Elf. Their unmotivated closeness felt both satisfying and off-putting. He wondered if they might talk about it afterwards or if they’d just pass over it. Kurt liked to talk about things-he liked to find a little kernel of meaning in the good times as well as the downturns, and he was more articulate than Logan could ever hope to be-so Logan imagined that he’d easily explain away this moment’s weird heaviness.
But then things turned, and Logan knew that what they were going to do would require no explanation. Kurt pulled away slightly and brushed the back of his hand along Logan’s jaw line. Then he tilted Logan’s chin up and kissed him. Logan kissed back, his mouth covering Kurt’s but not locking with it perfectly. After several minutes, Kurt pulled back and kissed the corner of Logan’s lips, then his cheek, then his ear, then his neck. Logan just tightened his embrace.
A few minutes later they stumbled to the bed. (Logan was half surprised that Kurt didn’t just transport them there, but then Logan realized that he wanted them to work for it, to stagger clumsily-that to Kurt, that was the good part. Not everything should be as easy as simply arriving some place unscathed.) Once there, Kurt pushed Logan’s shirt up and kissed his stomach just once. He worked one hand beneath the waistband of his pants.
Logan tugged at Kurt’s shirt. Kurt sat forward and pulled it over his head, tossing it onto the floor.
“Just-” Logan began. Take off everything, he wanted to say. He wanted to enjoy this, but a larger part of him just wanted to get it over with. Not because he necessarily wanted it to be over, but because he wanted to know how it would end.
“Logan, are we . . .” Kurt looked at him.
Logan crouched on his hands and knees and gave Kurt several short kisses.
“Are we okay?” Kurt said.
“We’re okay.” Logan put both hands on Kurt’s shoulders and nudged him onto his back.
Minutes later they were both naked on top of the bed, their clothes on the floor. Kurt bucked against him and wrapped his legs around Logan in a way that was both amusing and a turn-on.
Logan sat up for a minute and pried himself from Kurt’s grasping hands and feet. He pulled away, sliding off the bed and heading for the nearby shelf where Kurt kept his toiletries.
“Logan, what are you . . .”
“Hold on.” He searched Kurt’s things for a suitable lubricant substitute; what he found instead was cologne and a bunch of other equally pointless cosmetics. “Jesus,” he whispered. In his clumsy excitement he knocked over a bottle of CK. It hit a canister of powder, sending a white plume into the air.
Kurt propped himself up on his elbows and laughed.
“Goddamn, you’ve got more crap than a girl,” Logan said. He waited to start sneezing. “It’s like a chick’s vanity or something.”
“Smelling good is not to be underestimated,” Kurt said. “It helps with women.”
“It’s for women to try on, right? Because otherwise I can’t see how this would be helping anybody.”
“You should try it on yourself. It might improve your prospects.”
“Ouch,” Logan said. “Coming from you, that hurts.” But he was relieved; things were going to be okay.
Afterwards they lay together on the bed. Kurt’s lips touched his shoulder. Some time went by and they talked. They talked about everything except what they’d just done. And when Logan finally put his clothes back on and got up to leave for the night, he paused again, wondering if some goodbye ritual wasn’t in order. Should he kiss Kurt? Tell him he’d see him in the morning?
Kurt solved that problem: he reached over and hugged Logan, kissing him without any hesitation.
For the next several hours Logan had the complex feeling of being happy but also of wanting to undo what had happened. He knew there’d be obligations now; he’d been with enough people to understand the various possibilities of disappointment, the numerous ways you could let somebody down. He could never give Kurt a relationship. No, their friendship was inherently one-sided and imbalanced. Logan wrung support out of Kurt, and then he just got up and walked away. He was the one who needed reassurance and encouragement; Kurt was the one who always knew what to say.
It would be the worst relationship in the world.
But the next day, Kurt didn’t say anything. He didn’t give Logan any longing glances or smiles-no coded references to what they’d done the night before. Logan wondered if he’d misread Kurt, or if he’d made assumptions because of his religion. Maybe he’d been wrong in thinking that Kurt didn’t want no-strings-attached sex, or that he had moral qualms about friendly but unexplained sexual encounters.
Then Logan wondered if perhaps he wasn’t the one who wanted more.
Christmas came and went and Kurt said nothing. He gave Logan an iPod-and this was back before most people had an iPod-and he went ahead and programmed it with all of Logan’s favorite songs. “I knew you’d never get around to uploading things,” he explained. “You’re so busy.”
“Make that lazy,” Logan said. “Thanks, Elf.”
And the New Year passed, and Logan went back into the world to get some things done.
***
The second time was in San Francisco.
They’d just moved out there and Logan was adjusting to the added time crunch of having to divide himself between coasts. He hadn’t talked to Elf much recently. He hadn’t talked to anybody. Just Emma and Scott, and what passed between them was more like “talking at” than actual conversation.
But one Sunday, when he was back in town, he went looking for Kurt-just to say hi and let the guy know that he was still alive-and couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in his room. He asked Bobby, who was making his way along the corridor with a box under one arm. “Haven’t seen him as much lately,” Bobby said. “But if I were you I’d check down by the water.”
Elf was indeed down by the water, perched on the rocks and staring out at the sea. Logan had little trouble finding him once he knew where to look-the wind carried his scent. He didn’t turn around when Logan called for him.
Logan bent forward and climbed onto the rocks, teetering as he went. He finally reached the flat rock where Kurt was sitting.
“Sunning yourself?” Logan said. Truth was, the weather had been horrible and shitty since they’d arrived. Earlier it had been raining.
Kurt said nothing. Then he glanced up, showing Logan just one side of his face. He was crying.
Logan glanced away, fixing himself on the waves. He reached into his back pocket but couldn’t find his handkerchief. In his coat pocket he had a used napkin. He handed it to Kurt. He did this to buy himself time; he didn’t quite know what to say. Logan was always the one who needed comforting-not Kurt. Logan assumed that Kurt didn’t need it as much, that being religious prevented him from having any kind of emotional crisis or breakdown.
Kurt took the napkin from Logan and their hands touched, and Kurt gave him a quick, devastated glance. Kurt’s eyes frightened him. They were empty and scared and so distraught. Kurt was the one who always lectured him about things working out; the idea that he didn’t subscribe to his own beliefs-or that he did only sometimes and not others-was too difficult to fathom. It meant an unraveling of things.
“Kitty?” Logan said.
Kurt stared at the water. He clutched the napkin and brought it to his face, balling it in a fist and holding it against his lips.
“It’s okay.” Logan stiffened. He felt uncomfortable, caught in a bad situation where the other person expects something specific of you. “Kurt.” He reached for Kurt’s shoulder, closing the distance between them.
Kurt surprised him by just falling toward him.
Logan opened his arms. Suddenly things didn’t feel so forced or awkward anymore. Logan was quietly pleased with himself; he could do this. He could be for Kurt what Kurt was for him-at least sometimes. Right now.
Later that night Logan went to Kurt’s room. Kurt opened and closed the door behind Logan solemnly; they found the bed and had sex, this time without talking or joking around. After it was over Logan lay next to Kurt. He felt restless.
Kurt got up and went to the bathroom. The water started running. Logan could hear it running for a long time, but he never heard the tell-tale sounds of someone bathing-splashing and moving around beneath the stream of water-and he knew that Kurt was still upset, and that their lovemaking hadn’t really done anything for him. Maybe it had just made him feel worse.
Logan’s phone rang. He did what he usually didn’t do: he answered it.
A minute later he got up and slipped back into his clothes. Then he sidled up to the door and rapped once. “Kurt?” He paused. “Kurt, I have to go.”
The stream of water continued. Then it stopped. Then Kurt’s voice came from the other side of the door, steady and composed. “Alright, Logan. I’ll see you next week.”
***
The hotel room is facing west, so the setting sun lights up the windows. Kurt pulls the curtains before joining Logan on the bed.
Not surprisingly, Kurt is straightforward with him. There’s no teasing, no crazy gymnastics, no transparent attempt to cheer him up or, worse, get his mind off things.
He realizes that Kurt is building an argument. He’s trying to convince Logan of a few things. You’re not a bad person. He’s wrapping his legs around Logan, straddling him on the bed. Trying to make the case that he isn’t unwanted and undesirable now; that what happened with his son doesn’t make him untouchable.
It’s not that Logan doesn’t believe Kurt. It’s just that, well, it’s complicated. He tried to stress just how complicated to Kurt, but people can’t understand unless they’ve been there.
When he and Daken first started traveling together, looking for Romulus, it hadn’t seemed all that complicated. In fact, it was plain that Daken didn’t like him, and that he wasn’t going to give him the chance that he longed for. Daken didn’t want to talk about things, didn’t care about his father’s exoneration, didn’t even seem to want to acknowledge how the world had shifted, how the target of his life’s grief and rage had been transferred from one person to another.
For a few days, Logan regretted that he and Xavier hadn’t been able to reprogram Daken. Then he began to wonder what good that would have done. Daken was his programming. If they had stripped that away, what would they have had to work with?
These were depressing thoughts, and Logan chided himself for his hopelessness. He also knew that deep down inside he didn’t believe it. If he did, he wouldn’t be taking this trip with Daken-he would have gone after Romulus on his own time. But bringing Daken along for the revenge was about setting things straight. Showing the kid a few things.
Being close to him.
At a train station in Prague, Daken handed him a bottle of water and sat on the ground next to Logan, his legs crossed in front of him.
Logan opened his mouth to ask Daken why he didn’t just take a seat, but Daken pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. He laid out a map in front of him and ate a pastry as he chatted on the phone in a language even Logan didn’t know.
Then he closed his cell phone and looked up, locking eyes with Logan in a way that was both unnerving and receptive. Vulnerable even. “I know where he is now.”
“What?” Logan bent forward. “How? Where?”
Daken rose to his knees to get up. “I’ll tell you.” He set a hand on Logan’s right calf. “But we have to go.” Then he took his hand away.
And Logan grabbed his things and followed him.
***
They slept in bus stations. Rotted out boarding houses. Outside under the sky. Daken didn’t talk too much, and when he did talk it was to express agreement or consent. Logan explained his plans. Daken stared as though bored. His moment of receptiveness seemed to have passed, and Logan felt a twinge of disappointment. He’d hoped to catch Daken in a rare moment of vulnerability-he kept a look out for it, in fact. He wanted to wait until the right time to try to put to rest some questions he probably had. To tell him about his mother.
Daken didn’t touch Logan again. It would have been better, Logan thought, if Daken had still been angry with him. Anger would have meant something. It required effort to sustain.
The night after the afternoon that Daken confessed that he couldn’t find Romulus, they stayed together in a boarding house, the room twice as big as a walk-in closet. The place was dismal. Squalid. The second he walked in, Logan knew there were bedbugs. Termites, too. The moldings were chewed away. A single light bulb hung in the middle of the room.
“I want a shower,” Daken announced.
“I don’t think you’re going to get one,” Logan said. He lowered himself onto the old, stained mattress in the middle of the room. “And I don’t know what the point of showering would be, anyway. We’re just going back outside tomorrow.”
Daken looked up and considered Logan. Then he rolled his eyes. “Point taken. But in different ways than you might have intended.”
Daken turned away. He exited the room, leaving the door ajar on his way out. When he came back he was holding a basin filled with water. He set it down in the corner. He kicked off his shoes. Then he began to slip out of his clothes. First he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. Then he unbuckled his pants and dropped them to his ankles, stepping out of one leg and then the other. He wasn't wearing any underwear.
Logan made a concerted effort not to watch, but something about his son’s lean, tattooed body drew his attention. He was beautiful, no doubt. But Logan’s feelings weren’t unseemly. Instead they were wistful. And then he felt embarrassed. There was something sad about watching Daken take off his clothes. It was as though Daken should have been more self-conscious or apologetic. Most people past a certain age didn’t like being naked in front of their parents, but Daken just didn’t give a shit.
It was as though he was trying to pretend that Logan didn’t exist. But in pretending this, he was just acknowledging his existence. Logan wondered at his son’s powerlessness. The kid had been used. And right under Logan’s nose, too. For sixty some years! If I had just known about you, he thought, seized by an oh-so-predictable rush of sentimentality. If he had known about Daken, what would he have done? He would have rushed in to save him, of course. And he would have raised him right, sure. In between running favors for Weapon X and Department H.
The water splashed. Daken started to wash his face, and then the rest of his body. He raised the sponge to his chest and then wiped his armpits. The gesture was intimate yet strangely clinical. Bored, even.
“Do you want me to leave?” Logan said. Please say no.
Daken didn’t look up. “Where would you go?” He used a cloth to wipe his shoulders. “No, I don’t want you to go.” Then, without warning, he unsheathed two claws from his right hand. He looked down, inspecting them. He wove the sponge between his knuckles.
“When did they first come out?” Logan asked, relaxing into the mattress. He no longer tried to avoid looking at Daken.
“When I was ten.”
“Yeah.” That sounded familiar. “What happened?”
Daken finished washing one hand. He retracted his claws. “Ah, so this is a game. My turn. What’s it like having adamantium ones?”
Logan didn’t know how to answer this question. It was like being asked how it felt to have claws at all. He’d had adamantium ones for so long, he didn’t even remember the difference.
“I mean, you can see your reflection in them. Every time you kill someone, you get a good look at yourself. That must be incredibly titillating.”
“I don’t look that hard,” he said.
“Ah,” Daken said. “Okay, now you can ask me something else. Don’t be shy, Wolverine. Let’s take turns.”
Logan had only one question.
“Out of questions? Alright. Maybe you’ll think of something. Who do I look like?” He paused. “I certainly don’t look like you. When I was a kid, I used to look at myself in the mirror and wonder just who the hell I looked like. I certainly didn’t look like anyone else I knew. To you . . . or to most white people . . . I probably look Japanese. But to the people I grew up with?” He smiled. “Those people. There was no fooling them. There was never any fooling anybody.” He rose to his feet. “Then I met you and I realized that we look nothing alike. But I remind you of her, don’t I?”
Daken stood from the basin, naked.
Logan didn’t have to answer the question; he knew his own scent betrayed him. Ever since he’d met Daken he’d thought of Itsu-not in a way that was lewd or lascivious, but not in a way that was completely innocent, either. He and Itsu had shared their own private love, their jokes. He wished he could show this to Daken without watching Daken ruin it somehow, taint it, or take it someplace unwanted.
He also wanted to tell Daken that the marriage had been sanctioned. When he’d met Itsu, her parents were already dead. She’d been informally adopted by Suboro, and he got to know her during the long afternoons when he worked and trained around the village. Suboro had brokered the match. But she hadn’t been forced to marry him. Logan had made sure of this.
Daken moved so that he was under the light bulb. The light bathed his body-first his slim, well-muscled shoulders and chest. Then his abdomen and slender hips, and the slight tuft of his pubic hair. (How could he not have thought of her?)
As if understanding the train of his father’s private thoughts, Daken said: “When I was growing up, I assumed that my mother was a prostitute, or that you were a rapist. This is what everyone assumed. And I think maybe that would have been better.”
“Son-”
“I’m talking, Logan,” he said, his voice rising. He moved forward so that the light was behind him and his body was dark. “So she wasn’t a prostitute. That’s too bad. Prostitutes are so sympathetic. After all, who can blame a woman who trades in the one thing she knows best?” He paused. “My mother, as it turns out, was just stupid. Naïve. Still. What can you expect from women?”
He fixed himself Daken’s silhouette, no longer afraid to look. “Say what you want about me,” Logan said. “But leave your mother out of it.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t think it was wrong,” Daken said, his words slow, as though he’d been planning this all year, waiting for the right chance. (And this was the difference between them, Logan thought. Logan too had been planning what he wanted to say, but Daken actually said it.) “During the war, you’d been doing God knows what. Then that mess gets tidied up, and you just decide to settle down in the same country you’d just conquered. For the climate, I’m sure. That’s fine. But then you meet this girl. In this village. And you are who you are-decades of murdering behind you-and she’s just a girl. And you fucked her.”
Logan felt his heart thud, insistent. He tried to ignore the way his body was opening. Thickening.
“Let me guess. You’re thinking of your wedding night right now.”
“Daken.”
“Tell me all about it, Logan. And don’t spare any details. Better yet.” He stood next to the mattress and looked down at Logan.
Logan wanted to leap up and push Daken away. He needed to say something but found himself strangely dead and still, his body not his own.
Then Daken moved. He moved so suddenly that Logan at first wasn’t aware of it; he was aware only of a strange flood of warmth in his lower extremities.
Daken was on top of him.
That was another thing he wasn’t aware of at first. And then Daken pinned his hands above his head.
Logan unsheathed his claws.
“Don’t,” Daken said, and he meant it. “Logan, don’t. Just-” Then, the crush of his lips. His tongue was inside of Logan’s mouth. He pulled back. “Please. Just don’t.”
The tension fell away. Logan relaxed. His claws slowly retracted.
Daken’s body fit on top of his, not quite perfectly, but almost. He wove his legs between Logan’s. Their noses touched. Then Daken kissed his jaw line, his neck.
Logan felt his eyes water, and he let Daken switch positions with him so that Logan was on top.
“I love you,” Daken whispered. And then he made it true.
***
Four days before they were set to be married, he sneaked across the village to the house where she was staying and hoisted himself up on the windowsill, his legs dangling outside.
“Logan!” she whispered when she saw him, her expression half-pleased: all pretend guilt and good-girl mischief. Itsu was traditional but she also had a slightly less reverent side, which Logan loved. He knew that she was happy he’d come to see her.
Now she stood in the middle of her room. “You can’t be caught here.”
He tried to explain. His nervousness bordered on nausea. He loved her. He thought she was beautiful and kind, the kindest woman he’d ever known, and with a generosity that couldn’t simply be explained away by the characteristic village charm she’d grown up with. “If you don’t want to marry me . . . if someone’s just telling you to do it . . . then I can leave the village.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Of course I want to marry you. Why are you asking? Because you don’t want to marry me? Have I done something wrong?”
“Oh, no, no,” he said. Relieved because she was telling the truth. “I want to marry you. I love you. It’s because . . .” Because you’re young. Because you think you know me, but you don’t. Because you love me now, and we live in paradise, but it won’t always be this way. This place won’t always be this way.
Then she crossed the room, bent over, and kissed him on the lips. This was their first moment of physical contact.
A lifetime later, he lay with Daken in the dark. Hours had passed since they’d fucked, but Logan could think of only one word: When. When would they do this again?
Daken was also still awake. His hand was pressed against Logan’s shoulder.
Logan longed to know what his son was thinking. He understood-without really articulating-that this had just been another exercise for Daken, another victory, another prize. But he didn’t want to believe that, not yet.
Before he found out about Daken’s existence, and afterwards, he’d heard that a child conceived in love has a better chance at happiness. Whoever said that hadn’t met Daken.
***
In the room with Kurt he pretends to sleep. Really he just watches Kurt sleep and tries to figure out an appropriate time to leave.
For the remaining few days that they were in Africa, Logan let Daken approach him and do what he wanted. His mind reasoned that it was because he didn’t want Daken to go. His body always responded.
His emotions were another matter. He couldn’t locate them.
Months later he found out about Daken and Romulus. It wasn’t something he’d discovered all at once-though Wild Child cemented his suspicions when he’d thrown it in his face seconds before trying to kill him (“Once again,” he’d said about Romulus’ strange spell over Daken, “everyone has it figured out but you”)-but something he’d come to know gradually as though through his own intuition. (Because, he thought bitterly, he and Romulus had both been inside Daken. And this made them the same.)
How could he tell any of this to Kurt? How could he make him understand?
At four in the morning, Kurt stirs. He draws closer to Logan and slips one hand beneath the sheets and touches his abdomen. “What are you going to do?”
Logan lies and says he doesn’t know.
“You could always stay,” Kurt says. He draws an audible breath. Logan thinks he’s going to say something else. Then he realizes that Kurt is waiting for the answer.
He could stay . . . he could stay. He could fail to show up in Turkey. He could call this off. He could find a dozen reasons to not betray his son.
But in entertaining those options, he’s just admitted to himself that that’s impossible. The bed he shares with Kurt feels like a world, but this is only because the sun hasn’t come up yet. “I have to tell you something,” he says. “Something else.”
In the dark, Kurt tenses.
“I can tell you when I get back. It’s not a big deal.” But X-Force is the definition of a very big deal.
“When you get back,” Kurt says quickly as if to push aside the momentary unpleasantness.
And what Logan wonders-what he doesn’t have the wherewithal to ask-is whether or not Kurt’s looking forward to that. Perhaps once Logan is gone, he’ll process what Logan said. He’ll feel differently about all of this. He’ll be repulsed.
Logan just wants to leave Kurt to formulate his own thoughts. He’ll call him in a few days. From the road. From the road Kurt’s rejection will be easier to handle.
In the dark he gathers his things and estimates the amount of time it will take him to leave town. “Don’t forget your bag,” Kurt says.
Logan’s bag is in the corner. Hours ago, before they came to this hotel, Kurt did what Logan couldn’t-he went back into Logan’s apartment and got his things. Logan simply waited outside as Kurt teleported into the small, cramped place to retrieve the bag.
“I won’t,” he says. He won’t forget anything. He can’t.
Later he will wish that he’d turned on the light before leaving, if only to see Kurt squint his eyes in temporary disorientation. But when he leaves it’s dark, and it isn’t until he gets outside that he can see anything at all.
Author: eva_roisin
Fandom: X-Books
Characters: Logan, Kurt, Daken
Pairings: Logan/Kurt; Logan/Daken (non-con, dub-con)
Description: Hurt/comfort; angst.
Rating: R
Words: ~10,500
Takes Place: During the “Reckoning” storyline and before “Second Coming.”
Warnings: Contains implications of non-consensual (and non-eroticized) incest.
Special Thanks: To beta readers mozzarellaroses and yehnica , who had the patience to see this through multiple drafts. All remaining mistakes are mine.
Part One
Part Two
part one
Logan scans the newspapers at a magazine stand as he waits for Kurt to buy a copy of the Chronicle and a few other things.
They’ve done this before, but usually not so premeditatedly, and not in broad daylight. He remembers the first time. They were still living in New York then and having an argument about a Christmas tree: whether they should cut one down from outside or buy one from a lot or just get something artificial (but Logan got the sense that what they were really arguing about was the professor).
They were in Kurt’s room, and the door was closed.
He kept bamfing. Jesus fucking Christ, Logan couldn’t finish a sentence without Kurt disappearing from his line of sight. It was the most frustrating of all argumentative tactics, and Logan was tired of having to whirl around just to make a point. Finally he reached out to grab Kurt. He meant to grab him by the shoulder, but instead he grabbed him by the neck. Hard.
For an instant Elf looked horrified. His eyes widened and Logan wondered if he hadn’t hurt him in some awful way. He jerked his hand away, also horrified, just as Kurt bamfed away again.
“Oh Jesus,” he said to the empty air. “I’m sorry.”
Kurt stood behind him. “It’s alright,” he said quickly.
Logan turned around to face Kurt. “You’re-” He studied Kurt. The light over Kurt’s desk was on, but the room was still dim. It was only about six o’clock, but it was December and the sun had started going down at four-thirty. “Getting slow,” Logan finished. “What the hell was that about? Mistake like that in the field is going to get you killed.” Logan sniffed. “Surprised it hasn’t already."
“I should ask you what the hell it was about! Were you trying to crush my windpipe? With those big adamantium knuckles? This isn’t the field. It’s not even the danger room. I didn’t think I had to watch my back in here.”
“I was trying to have a conversation with you and you were being annoying as fuck about it.”
“I think the conversation’s over, my friend.”
“Fine.” Logan pointed his feet in the direction of the door. “Forget about it. But know I’m sorry.” He started to leave.
Kurt reached out and touched Logan’s shoulder. “Wait. Logan . . .” He gripped him fast through the fabric of Logan’s shirt, one finger tracing his shoulder blade.
Logan turned and tried to smile, but when he caught Elf’s expression, he felt his own mood shift. Kurt wasn’t smiling. But he wasn’t angry anymore, either. In a move that could only be described later as awkward or tentative, he pulled Logan a little tighter and embraced him with one arm, brushing his hand along his back.
Logan returned the hesitant hug. (He was also awkward. He couldn’t remember a time when things had been so awkward between them.) Then he went ahead and slung both arms around Kurt’s back.
Kurt sighed against him. He went limp and brushed his cheek against Logan’s.
This is the part where Logan started to feel uncomfortable, but more uncomfortable with himself than with Elf. Their unmotivated closeness felt both satisfying and off-putting. He wondered if they might talk about it afterwards or if they’d just pass over it. Kurt liked to talk about things-he liked to find a little kernel of meaning in the good times as well as the downturns, and he was more articulate than Logan could ever hope to be-so Logan imagined that he’d easily explain away this moment’s weird heaviness.
But then things turned, and Logan knew that what they were going to do would require no explanation. Kurt pulled away slightly and brushed the back of his hand along Logan’s jaw line. Then he tilted Logan’s chin up and kissed him. Logan kissed back, his mouth covering Kurt’s but not locking with it perfectly. After several minutes, Kurt pulled back and kissed the corner of Logan’s lips, then his cheek, then his ear, then his neck. Logan just tightened his embrace.
A few minutes later they stumbled to the bed. (Logan was half surprised that Kurt didn’t just transport them there, but then Logan realized that he wanted them to work for it, to stagger clumsily-that to Kurt, that was the good part. Not everything should be as easy as simply arriving some place unscathed.) Once there, Kurt pushed Logan’s shirt up and kissed his stomach just once. He worked one hand beneath the waistband of his pants.
Logan tugged at Kurt’s shirt. Kurt sat forward and pulled it over his head, tossing it onto the floor.
“Just-” Logan began. Take off everything, he wanted to say. He wanted to enjoy this, but a larger part of him just wanted to get it over with. Not because he necessarily wanted it to be over, but because he wanted to know how it would end.
“Logan, are we . . .” Kurt looked at him.
Logan crouched on his hands and knees and gave Kurt several short kisses.
“Are we okay?” Kurt said.
“We’re okay.” Logan put both hands on Kurt’s shoulders and nudged him onto his back.
Minutes later they were both naked on top of the bed, their clothes on the floor. Kurt bucked against him and wrapped his legs around Logan in a way that was both amusing and a turn-on.
Logan sat up for a minute and pried himself from Kurt’s grasping hands and feet. He pulled away, sliding off the bed and heading for the nearby shelf where Kurt kept his toiletries.
“Logan, what are you . . .”
“Hold on.” He searched Kurt’s things for a suitable lubricant substitute; what he found instead was cologne and a bunch of other equally pointless cosmetics. “Jesus,” he whispered. In his clumsy excitement he knocked over a bottle of CK. It hit a canister of powder, sending a white plume into the air.
Kurt propped himself up on his elbows and laughed.
“Goddamn, you’ve got more crap than a girl,” Logan said. He waited to start sneezing. “It’s like a chick’s vanity or something.”
“Smelling good is not to be underestimated,” Kurt said. “It helps with women.”
“It’s for women to try on, right? Because otherwise I can’t see how this would be helping anybody.”
“You should try it on yourself. It might improve your prospects.”
“Ouch,” Logan said. “Coming from you, that hurts.” But he was relieved; things were going to be okay.
Afterwards they lay together on the bed. Kurt’s lips touched his shoulder. Some time went by and they talked. They talked about everything except what they’d just done. And when Logan finally put his clothes back on and got up to leave for the night, he paused again, wondering if some goodbye ritual wasn’t in order. Should he kiss Kurt? Tell him he’d see him in the morning?
Kurt solved that problem: he reached over and hugged Logan, kissing him without any hesitation.
For the next several hours Logan had the complex feeling of being happy but also of wanting to undo what had happened. He knew there’d be obligations now; he’d been with enough people to understand the various possibilities of disappointment, the numerous ways you could let somebody down. He could never give Kurt a relationship. No, their friendship was inherently one-sided and imbalanced. Logan wrung support out of Kurt, and then he just got up and walked away. He was the one who needed reassurance and encouragement; Kurt was the one who always knew what to say.
It would be the worst relationship in the world.
But the next day, Kurt didn’t say anything. He didn’t give Logan any longing glances or smiles-no coded references to what they’d done the night before. Logan wondered if he’d misread Kurt, or if he’d made assumptions because of his religion. Maybe he’d been wrong in thinking that Kurt didn’t want no-strings-attached sex, or that he had moral qualms about friendly but unexplained sexual encounters.
Then Logan wondered if perhaps he wasn’t the one who wanted more.
Christmas came and went and Kurt said nothing. He gave Logan an iPod-and this was back before most people had an iPod-and he went ahead and programmed it with all of Logan’s favorite songs. “I knew you’d never get around to uploading things,” he explained. “You’re so busy.”
“Make that lazy,” Logan said. “Thanks, Elf.”
And the New Year passed, and Logan went back into the world to get some things done.
***
The second time was in San Francisco.
They’d just moved out there and Logan was adjusting to the added time crunch of having to divide himself between coasts. He hadn’t talked to Elf much recently. He hadn’t talked to anybody. Just Emma and Scott, and what passed between them was more like “talking at” than actual conversation.
But one Sunday, when he was back in town, he went looking for Kurt-just to say hi and let the guy know that he was still alive-and couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in his room. He asked Bobby, who was making his way along the corridor with a box under one arm. “Haven’t seen him as much lately,” Bobby said. “But if I were you I’d check down by the water.”
Elf was indeed down by the water, perched on the rocks and staring out at the sea. Logan had little trouble finding him once he knew where to look-the wind carried his scent. He didn’t turn around when Logan called for him.
Logan bent forward and climbed onto the rocks, teetering as he went. He finally reached the flat rock where Kurt was sitting.
“Sunning yourself?” Logan said. Truth was, the weather had been horrible and shitty since they’d arrived. Earlier it had been raining.
Kurt said nothing. Then he glanced up, showing Logan just one side of his face. He was crying.
Logan glanced away, fixing himself on the waves. He reached into his back pocket but couldn’t find his handkerchief. In his coat pocket he had a used napkin. He handed it to Kurt. He did this to buy himself time; he didn’t quite know what to say. Logan was always the one who needed comforting-not Kurt. Logan assumed that Kurt didn’t need it as much, that being religious prevented him from having any kind of emotional crisis or breakdown.
Kurt took the napkin from Logan and their hands touched, and Kurt gave him a quick, devastated glance. Kurt’s eyes frightened him. They were empty and scared and so distraught. Kurt was the one who always lectured him about things working out; the idea that he didn’t subscribe to his own beliefs-or that he did only sometimes and not others-was too difficult to fathom. It meant an unraveling of things.
“Kitty?” Logan said.
Kurt stared at the water. He clutched the napkin and brought it to his face, balling it in a fist and holding it against his lips.
“It’s okay.” Logan stiffened. He felt uncomfortable, caught in a bad situation where the other person expects something specific of you. “Kurt.” He reached for Kurt’s shoulder, closing the distance between them.
Kurt surprised him by just falling toward him.
Logan opened his arms. Suddenly things didn’t feel so forced or awkward anymore. Logan was quietly pleased with himself; he could do this. He could be for Kurt what Kurt was for him-at least sometimes. Right now.
Later that night Logan went to Kurt’s room. Kurt opened and closed the door behind Logan solemnly; they found the bed and had sex, this time without talking or joking around. After it was over Logan lay next to Kurt. He felt restless.
Kurt got up and went to the bathroom. The water started running. Logan could hear it running for a long time, but he never heard the tell-tale sounds of someone bathing-splashing and moving around beneath the stream of water-and he knew that Kurt was still upset, and that their lovemaking hadn’t really done anything for him. Maybe it had just made him feel worse.
Logan’s phone rang. He did what he usually didn’t do: he answered it.
A minute later he got up and slipped back into his clothes. Then he sidled up to the door and rapped once. “Kurt?” He paused. “Kurt, I have to go.”
The stream of water continued. Then it stopped. Then Kurt’s voice came from the other side of the door, steady and composed. “Alright, Logan. I’ll see you next week.”
***
The hotel room is facing west, so the setting sun lights up the windows. Kurt pulls the curtains before joining Logan on the bed.
Not surprisingly, Kurt is straightforward with him. There’s no teasing, no crazy gymnastics, no transparent attempt to cheer him up or, worse, get his mind off things.
He realizes that Kurt is building an argument. He’s trying to convince Logan of a few things. You’re not a bad person. He’s wrapping his legs around Logan, straddling him on the bed. Trying to make the case that he isn’t unwanted and undesirable now; that what happened with his son doesn’t make him untouchable.
It’s not that Logan doesn’t believe Kurt. It’s just that, well, it’s complicated. He tried to stress just how complicated to Kurt, but people can’t understand unless they’ve been there.
When he and Daken first started traveling together, looking for Romulus, it hadn’t seemed all that complicated. In fact, it was plain that Daken didn’t like him, and that he wasn’t going to give him the chance that he longed for. Daken didn’t want to talk about things, didn’t care about his father’s exoneration, didn’t even seem to want to acknowledge how the world had shifted, how the target of his life’s grief and rage had been transferred from one person to another.
For a few days, Logan regretted that he and Xavier hadn’t been able to reprogram Daken. Then he began to wonder what good that would have done. Daken was his programming. If they had stripped that away, what would they have had to work with?
These were depressing thoughts, and Logan chided himself for his hopelessness. He also knew that deep down inside he didn’t believe it. If he did, he wouldn’t be taking this trip with Daken-he would have gone after Romulus on his own time. But bringing Daken along for the revenge was about setting things straight. Showing the kid a few things.
Being close to him.
At a train station in Prague, Daken handed him a bottle of water and sat on the ground next to Logan, his legs crossed in front of him.
Logan opened his mouth to ask Daken why he didn’t just take a seat, but Daken pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. He laid out a map in front of him and ate a pastry as he chatted on the phone in a language even Logan didn’t know.
Then he closed his cell phone and looked up, locking eyes with Logan in a way that was both unnerving and receptive. Vulnerable even. “I know where he is now.”
“What?” Logan bent forward. “How? Where?”
Daken rose to his knees to get up. “I’ll tell you.” He set a hand on Logan’s right calf. “But we have to go.” Then he took his hand away.
And Logan grabbed his things and followed him.
***
They slept in bus stations. Rotted out boarding houses. Outside under the sky. Daken didn’t talk too much, and when he did talk it was to express agreement or consent. Logan explained his plans. Daken stared as though bored. His moment of receptiveness seemed to have passed, and Logan felt a twinge of disappointment. He’d hoped to catch Daken in a rare moment of vulnerability-he kept a look out for it, in fact. He wanted to wait until the right time to try to put to rest some questions he probably had. To tell him about his mother.
Daken didn’t touch Logan again. It would have been better, Logan thought, if Daken had still been angry with him. Anger would have meant something. It required effort to sustain.
The night after the afternoon that Daken confessed that he couldn’t find Romulus, they stayed together in a boarding house, the room twice as big as a walk-in closet. The place was dismal. Squalid. The second he walked in, Logan knew there were bedbugs. Termites, too. The moldings were chewed away. A single light bulb hung in the middle of the room.
“I want a shower,” Daken announced.
“I don’t think you’re going to get one,” Logan said. He lowered himself onto the old, stained mattress in the middle of the room. “And I don’t know what the point of showering would be, anyway. We’re just going back outside tomorrow.”
Daken looked up and considered Logan. Then he rolled his eyes. “Point taken. But in different ways than you might have intended.”
Daken turned away. He exited the room, leaving the door ajar on his way out. When he came back he was holding a basin filled with water. He set it down in the corner. He kicked off his shoes. Then he began to slip out of his clothes. First he pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the floor. Then he unbuckled his pants and dropped them to his ankles, stepping out of one leg and then the other. He wasn't wearing any underwear.
Logan made a concerted effort not to watch, but something about his son’s lean, tattooed body drew his attention. He was beautiful, no doubt. But Logan’s feelings weren’t unseemly. Instead they were wistful. And then he felt embarrassed. There was something sad about watching Daken take off his clothes. It was as though Daken should have been more self-conscious or apologetic. Most people past a certain age didn’t like being naked in front of their parents, but Daken just didn’t give a shit.
It was as though he was trying to pretend that Logan didn’t exist. But in pretending this, he was just acknowledging his existence. Logan wondered at his son’s powerlessness. The kid had been used. And right under Logan’s nose, too. For sixty some years! If I had just known about you, he thought, seized by an oh-so-predictable rush of sentimentality. If he had known about Daken, what would he have done? He would have rushed in to save him, of course. And he would have raised him right, sure. In between running favors for Weapon X and Department H.
The water splashed. Daken started to wash his face, and then the rest of his body. He raised the sponge to his chest and then wiped his armpits. The gesture was intimate yet strangely clinical. Bored, even.
“Do you want me to leave?” Logan said. Please say no.
Daken didn’t look up. “Where would you go?” He used a cloth to wipe his shoulders. “No, I don’t want you to go.” Then, without warning, he unsheathed two claws from his right hand. He looked down, inspecting them. He wove the sponge between his knuckles.
“When did they first come out?” Logan asked, relaxing into the mattress. He no longer tried to avoid looking at Daken.
“When I was ten.”
“Yeah.” That sounded familiar. “What happened?”
Daken finished washing one hand. He retracted his claws. “Ah, so this is a game. My turn. What’s it like having adamantium ones?”
Logan didn’t know how to answer this question. It was like being asked how it felt to have claws at all. He’d had adamantium ones for so long, he didn’t even remember the difference.
“I mean, you can see your reflection in them. Every time you kill someone, you get a good look at yourself. That must be incredibly titillating.”
“I don’t look that hard,” he said.
“Ah,” Daken said. “Okay, now you can ask me something else. Don’t be shy, Wolverine. Let’s take turns.”
Logan had only one question.
“Out of questions? Alright. Maybe you’ll think of something. Who do I look like?” He paused. “I certainly don’t look like you. When I was a kid, I used to look at myself in the mirror and wonder just who the hell I looked like. I certainly didn’t look like anyone else I knew. To you . . . or to most white people . . . I probably look Japanese. But to the people I grew up with?” He smiled. “Those people. There was no fooling them. There was never any fooling anybody.” He rose to his feet. “Then I met you and I realized that we look nothing alike. But I remind you of her, don’t I?”
Daken stood from the basin, naked.
Logan didn’t have to answer the question; he knew his own scent betrayed him. Ever since he’d met Daken he’d thought of Itsu-not in a way that was lewd or lascivious, but not in a way that was completely innocent, either. He and Itsu had shared their own private love, their jokes. He wished he could show this to Daken without watching Daken ruin it somehow, taint it, or take it someplace unwanted.
He also wanted to tell Daken that the marriage had been sanctioned. When he’d met Itsu, her parents were already dead. She’d been informally adopted by Suboro, and he got to know her during the long afternoons when he worked and trained around the village. Suboro had brokered the match. But she hadn’t been forced to marry him. Logan had made sure of this.
Daken moved so that he was under the light bulb. The light bathed his body-first his slim, well-muscled shoulders and chest. Then his abdomen and slender hips, and the slight tuft of his pubic hair. (How could he not have thought of her?)
As if understanding the train of his father’s private thoughts, Daken said: “When I was growing up, I assumed that my mother was a prostitute, or that you were a rapist. This is what everyone assumed. And I think maybe that would have been better.”
“Son-”
“I’m talking, Logan,” he said, his voice rising. He moved forward so that the light was behind him and his body was dark. “So she wasn’t a prostitute. That’s too bad. Prostitutes are so sympathetic. After all, who can blame a woman who trades in the one thing she knows best?” He paused. “My mother, as it turns out, was just stupid. Naïve. Still. What can you expect from women?”
He fixed himself Daken’s silhouette, no longer afraid to look. “Say what you want about me,” Logan said. “But leave your mother out of it.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t think it was wrong,” Daken said, his words slow, as though he’d been planning this all year, waiting for the right chance. (And this was the difference between them, Logan thought. Logan too had been planning what he wanted to say, but Daken actually said it.) “During the war, you’d been doing God knows what. Then that mess gets tidied up, and you just decide to settle down in the same country you’d just conquered. For the climate, I’m sure. That’s fine. But then you meet this girl. In this village. And you are who you are-decades of murdering behind you-and she’s just a girl. And you fucked her.”
Logan felt his heart thud, insistent. He tried to ignore the way his body was opening. Thickening.
“Let me guess. You’re thinking of your wedding night right now.”
“Daken.”
“Tell me all about it, Logan. And don’t spare any details. Better yet.” He stood next to the mattress and looked down at Logan.
Logan wanted to leap up and push Daken away. He needed to say something but found himself strangely dead and still, his body not his own.
Then Daken moved. He moved so suddenly that Logan at first wasn’t aware of it; he was aware only of a strange flood of warmth in his lower extremities.
Daken was on top of him.
That was another thing he wasn’t aware of at first. And then Daken pinned his hands above his head.
Logan unsheathed his claws.
“Don’t,” Daken said, and he meant it. “Logan, don’t. Just-” Then, the crush of his lips. His tongue was inside of Logan’s mouth. He pulled back. “Please. Just don’t.”
The tension fell away. Logan relaxed. His claws slowly retracted.
Daken’s body fit on top of his, not quite perfectly, but almost. He wove his legs between Logan’s. Their noses touched. Then Daken kissed his jaw line, his neck.
Logan felt his eyes water, and he let Daken switch positions with him so that Logan was on top.
“I love you,” Daken whispered. And then he made it true.
***
Four days before they were set to be married, he sneaked across the village to the house where she was staying and hoisted himself up on the windowsill, his legs dangling outside.
“Logan!” she whispered when she saw him, her expression half-pleased: all pretend guilt and good-girl mischief. Itsu was traditional but she also had a slightly less reverent side, which Logan loved. He knew that she was happy he’d come to see her.
Now she stood in the middle of her room. “You can’t be caught here.”
He tried to explain. His nervousness bordered on nausea. He loved her. He thought she was beautiful and kind, the kindest woman he’d ever known, and with a generosity that couldn’t simply be explained away by the characteristic village charm she’d grown up with. “If you don’t want to marry me . . . if someone’s just telling you to do it . . . then I can leave the village.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Of course I want to marry you. Why are you asking? Because you don’t want to marry me? Have I done something wrong?”
“Oh, no, no,” he said. Relieved because she was telling the truth. “I want to marry you. I love you. It’s because . . .” Because you’re young. Because you think you know me, but you don’t. Because you love me now, and we live in paradise, but it won’t always be this way. This place won’t always be this way.
Then she crossed the room, bent over, and kissed him on the lips. This was their first moment of physical contact.
A lifetime later, he lay with Daken in the dark. Hours had passed since they’d fucked, but Logan could think of only one word: When. When would they do this again?
Daken was also still awake. His hand was pressed against Logan’s shoulder.
Logan longed to know what his son was thinking. He understood-without really articulating-that this had just been another exercise for Daken, another victory, another prize. But he didn’t want to believe that, not yet.
Before he found out about Daken’s existence, and afterwards, he’d heard that a child conceived in love has a better chance at happiness. Whoever said that hadn’t met Daken.
***
In the room with Kurt he pretends to sleep. Really he just watches Kurt sleep and tries to figure out an appropriate time to leave.
For the remaining few days that they were in Africa, Logan let Daken approach him and do what he wanted. His mind reasoned that it was because he didn’t want Daken to go. His body always responded.
His emotions were another matter. He couldn’t locate them.
Months later he found out about Daken and Romulus. It wasn’t something he’d discovered all at once-though Wild Child cemented his suspicions when he’d thrown it in his face seconds before trying to kill him (“Once again,” he’d said about Romulus’ strange spell over Daken, “everyone has it figured out but you”)-but something he’d come to know gradually as though through his own intuition. (Because, he thought bitterly, he and Romulus had both been inside Daken. And this made them the same.)
How could he tell any of this to Kurt? How could he make him understand?
At four in the morning, Kurt stirs. He draws closer to Logan and slips one hand beneath the sheets and touches his abdomen. “What are you going to do?”
Logan lies and says he doesn’t know.
“You could always stay,” Kurt says. He draws an audible breath. Logan thinks he’s going to say something else. Then he realizes that Kurt is waiting for the answer.
He could stay . . . he could stay. He could fail to show up in Turkey. He could call this off. He could find a dozen reasons to not betray his son.
But in entertaining those options, he’s just admitted to himself that that’s impossible. The bed he shares with Kurt feels like a world, but this is only because the sun hasn’t come up yet. “I have to tell you something,” he says. “Something else.”
In the dark, Kurt tenses.
“I can tell you when I get back. It’s not a big deal.” But X-Force is the definition of a very big deal.
“When you get back,” Kurt says quickly as if to push aside the momentary unpleasantness.
And what Logan wonders-what he doesn’t have the wherewithal to ask-is whether or not Kurt’s looking forward to that. Perhaps once Logan is gone, he’ll process what Logan said. He’ll feel differently about all of this. He’ll be repulsed.
Logan just wants to leave Kurt to formulate his own thoughts. He’ll call him in a few days. From the road. From the road Kurt’s rejection will be easier to handle.
In the dark he gathers his things and estimates the amount of time it will take him to leave town. “Don’t forget your bag,” Kurt says.
Logan’s bag is in the corner. Hours ago, before they came to this hotel, Kurt did what Logan couldn’t-he went back into Logan’s apartment and got his things. Logan simply waited outside as Kurt teleported into the small, cramped place to retrieve the bag.
“I won’t,” he says. He won’t forget anything. He can’t.
Later he will wish that he’d turned on the light before leaving, if only to see Kurt squint his eyes in temporary disorientation. But when he leaves it’s dark, and it isn’t until he gets outside that he can see anything at all.