South of the Border: part three
Eventually Logan fell asleep in the chair. A few hours later a soft, tentative touch on his shoulder woke him suddenly. He had his claws at Xavier’s throat before reason finally jumped in and kicked blind instinct to the kerb.
“Jesus...” he swore, retracting the claws instantly.
“Sorry,” said Xavier, looking contrite. He rubbed at his face, looking bleary, and winced when he pressed too hard on the bruise. “What happened?”
“Wish I could tell ya. Last I remember, Frost knocked you out cold. Then we were here.”
Xavier’s brow wrinkled with a mixture of confusion and drowsiness. “What?” he mumbled, blinking rapidly as he tried to make sense of it all.
“Your sister an’ her pal saved our asses,” Logan informed him. This didn’t seem to clarify anything for Xavier, so he continued, “some asshole called Lehnsherr.”
The news seemed to hit Xavier like a sledgehammer. He slumped bonelessly back onto the bed.
“Erik?” he said softly. “Is he here?”
Logan filled Xavier in on what little he knew. Xavier absorbed the information silently, fidgeting anxiously with the blanket on his bed.
“I want to see him,” Xavier said firmly once Logan had finished explaining. He got up off the bed easily enough, but once he was on his feet he swayed alarmingly. Logan caught his elbow to steady him. Charles accepted the support for a moment, then gently shrugged Logan off.
It took them less than a minute to find Erik and Xavier’s sister. They were talking together in low voices out on the farmhouse porch. Sunset had long since come and gone, and out here in the countryside the stars shone with unmatched brilliance in the dark sky.
“Charles!” Raven cried when she caught sight of them. She smiled warmly and flung herself forward at her brother, nearly knocking him to the ground. Only Logan’s hand, landing heavily but carefully on Xavier’s back stopped them tumbling to the floor.
Xavier smiled weakly and hugged her back, but his eyes were fixed on Erik, who was silently watching them, his expression inscrutable.
“Are you okay?” Raven asked when she finally drew back. She eyed Logan, looming warily over her brother’s shoulder, with undisguised suspicion.
“Yes, yes. I’m fine,” Xavier told her reassuringly, gently extricating himself from her arms. His gaze returned to Erik. “I... I understand I have you to thank for my life.”
“Don’t mention it,” Lehnsherr murmured.
An intense look passed between the two of them that Logan didn’t understand, and he half wondered if Xavier was reading Lehnsherr’s mind.
“You should rest,” Erik said abruptly, turning his back.
“Yes, of course...” Xavier muttered, looking suddenly despondent. He turned and headed back into the farmhouse, walking slowly and unsteadily. Logan gave Lehnsherr’s turned back a parting glare and followed.
When they returned to their room Xavier sat heavily on his bed, burying his face in his hands. He looked somehow even more unwell than he had done when he was still unconscious. Logan sat down next to him.
“So...” Logan started. “I figure you owe me a couple‘a answers.”
With a deep breath Xavier took his face from his hands and nodded. “Yes, I suppose I probably do.”
“Startin’ with, who the fucking fuck exactly is this Lehnsherr guy?”
“He’s a mutant like us. His power is...”
“Yeah, I’ve seen his power,” Logan interrupted darkly.
“Oh. Well... some time ago we were both recruited by the CIA to find and train other mutants. Eventually we found it... advisable to go our own way from them, and I suppose that was the beginning of the school. There was another mutant, a man named Shaw, who Erik was determined to kill...”
“Why?” Logan interrupted.
“No,” Xavier said shortly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry but it’s really not my story to tell. I can tell you that he was an evil man, and that he did need to be stopped. Well, we found him, and unfortunately Erik did rather dramatically manage to fulfil his desire to kill the bastard. There were... unexpected repercussions, and a few months afterwards I told Erik he could leave the school if he wanted to. He did, and my sister went with him. Until now, I hadn’t seen either of them since.”
Logan paused for a second to let all this new information sink in. “Bullshit.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You ain’t telling me the whole story Xavier, and ya know it. I saw the way he was actin’ around you while you were out of it.”
“How was he - never mind. Look, it’s irrelevant anyway,” Xavier insisted, putting his head back in his hands.
“Like hell it is.”
“It’s not important.”
“You said you owed me some answers. Well so far you’re comin’ up pretty goddamn short on that promise pal.”
Xavier sighed and ran his hands through his hair, flustered. Then he reached out and ran one hand through Logan’s own hair, until it cupped the back of Logan’s head and drew him forward. The first kiss Xavier pressed to his lips was dry and almost chaste, but the following kisses became rapidly less and less so.
“Charles,” Logan muttered, half-heartedly trying to pull away. But Xavier’s hand at the back of his head seamlessly reeled him back in again.
“I just... I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he mumbled against Logan’s mouth, before kissing him fiercely once again.
Logan wasn’t an idiot. He was under no illusions that Xavier wasn’t just trying to distract him from pushing for answers. But the guy’s chosen method of distraction was hardly unwelcome, so Logan shunted aside his questions for now, and instead hauled Xavier up and over so he was sat straddling Logan’s lap. His reward for getting with the program was Xavier’s teeth biting at his lower lip, and his hand sliding down to trail up the inside of Logan’s thigh.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” Xavier warned when Logan eventually manhandled him off his lap and onto the bed.
“As a goddamn church mouse,” Logan promised.
...
Later on they lay pressed close together on the tiny bed. One of Logan’s hands was trailing idly up and down Xavier’s spine, occasionally brushing over the tiny patch of roughened skin where the scar was.
“It was Erik,” Xavier said abruptly from nowhere.
Logan’s hand stilled. “What?”
“The scar on my back, you asked about it before. It was Erik. He deflected a bullet that was meant for him, and it hit me instead.”
“You said it was an accident,” Logan growled.
“It was. He didn’t intend to do it. There was rather a lot of internal bleeding. I’m told I very nearly died on quite a number of occasions before they could stabilize me. Afterwards, with Erik and myself... things were different. He felt so guilty he couldn’t even stand to touch me. Just being around me was making him miserable. And even before... I suspect that if I hadn’t nearly bled to death on that beach our ideologies are so different that regardless... well. It doesn’t matter. In the end I told him to leave.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t going to take advantage of some misplaced sense of guilt to force him to stay somewhere he didn’t wish to. I’m not that selfish.”
A short, awkward pause followed. It was broken by Xavier extricating himself from their sweaty tangle of limbs.
“We should get dressed,” he said.
They did so in silence. By wordless agreement however, they both fell back into the same bed together afterwards.
...
As usual, Logan woke with the sun. Xavier was still fast asleep, head pillowed on Logan’s shoulder as they lay pretty much on top of one another in the too small bed. Xavier’s clothes, the ones Logan had thought so fancy and proper back in Albuquerque were now more or less completely ruined, permanently stained with dirt, blood and the usual grime of any clothing worn for four days straight.
Logan didn’t move to get up straight away. Instead he mulled a while over the information Xavier had finally coughed up last night.
So, Erik Lehnsherr. There was clearly still a shitload of history there that Xavier hadn’t told him, but Logan was smart enough to figure some of it out for himself. He couldn’t even stand to touch me - that had been fairly telling all by itself. And the tension between the two of them had been so thick you could have cut it with a knife. Of course Logan had known in theory that Xavier was at least somewhat interested in men - it had been pretty hard to miss when they’d been rolling around in bed together on that first night - he just hadn’t been expecting... this.
An image danced across Logan’s brain. Xavier bleeding out on the ground, lying in an expanding pool of his own blood and fading fast. Lehnsherr standing over him, responsible. An accident Xavier had called it - Logan disagreed. Spilling your drink, stubbing your toe, those were accidents. Sticking a bullet in your friend’s back...
Logan’s thoughts were interrupted by the door opening and Lehnsherr himself walking in unannounced. He took one look at Logan and Xavier curled up together and froze.
A long, uncomfortable silence reigned. Once the shock had faded from Lehnsherr’s face, he sent Logan a sharp look of pure, unrestrained loathing, and then his face seemed to shut down completely, becoming eerily expressionless.
“I just wanted to make sure he was alright after a night’s sleep,” Lehnsherr said, voice unnaturally flat. “Head injuries can be unpredictable.”
“Right,” Logan said, torn between getting out of bed so that Lehnsherr wasn’t staring down at him anymore, and staying right where he was with Xavier comfortably draped all over him. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”
Lehnsherr’s eyes strayed briefly to Xavier, his face still inscrutable. “I’ll be gone for most of the day,” he told Logan. Then, without any further elaboration, he left, slamming the door violently behind him. The noise jolted Charles awake.
“What was that?” Xavier mumbled, sluggish with sleep.
“Your pal Erik checking up on ya,” Logan told him.
“Erik?” Xavier said dozily, then suddenly seemed to snap to life, half-climbing half-falling out of bed. “He saw us?”
“Unless he’s gone blind since yesterday, I’m guessin’ so,” Logan said stretching his arms out above his head. The joints popped satisfyingly.
Xavier muttered something under his breath that sounded to Logan’s sharp hearing an awful lot like a bunch of very British curse words. He sat back down in a slump on the edge of the bed.
“How’s the head?” Logan asked him.
Xavier blinked a couple of times, then ran a hand over the injury. The bruise was, in truth, mostly hidden by his hair, just visible at the edges where it dappled Xavier’s hairline with blacks and blues. Logan thought it was just about starting to turn yellow and fade in places now.
“Fine, I think. Hurts less than yesterday,” Xavier said. He stood. “I’m going to go talk to Erik.”
“Ya missed him,” Logan said. He’d heard the sound of a motor starting somewhere nearby round about the time Xavier had been fumbling his way out of bed. “He’s gone off somewhere, said he’d be most of the day.”
“Did he say where he was going?” Xavier asked. He looked agitated.
“Nah,” Logan said. “Can’t ya just...?” he tapped the side of his head.
“No. That helmet he wears... it keeps me out. I can’t read his mind at all. I suppose that would be why I didn’t sense him with Raven back in Albuquerque.”
“Sounds like he don’t trust ya,” Logan commented. Xavier didn’t respond, just pinched the bridge of his nose and hunched his shoulders.
“Actually,” he said quietly, “I think I’ve got a bit of a headache. Would you mind leaving me alone for a while?”
A few seconds later and Logan was out the door and walking into the kitchen before he realised that he’d been propelled from the bedroom by a sudden, alien desire to leave rather than by any conscious decision on his part. He seriously debated going back and shouting Xavier down for it, but there was no telling whether or not he’d just get his memory of the whole thing erased for his trouble. He berated himself viciously. He’d gotten too goddamn cosy with Xavier, and that was the truth of it. He needed to be more vigilant. Xavier might be a nice guy, almost to a nauseating degree, but he was still a telepath. You couldn’t trust ‘em, whatever they were like in the sack.
He half considered just high-tailing it out of there right there and then. But that would mean leaving Xavier with Lehnsherr, and the thought of that made his knuckles itch. Logan wasn’t a sappy guy - in fact he was a seriously unpleasant bastard and proud of the fact. But he’d slept with Xavier, hell, he liked Xavier, and god help him, that meant he couldn’t just ditch the man with someone who really, really seemed like they were a few bananas short of the whole fucking bunch.
He burnt off some of his anger by leaving the house and doing a long circuit of the farm’s boundaries. It was a pretty big place - he seriously doubted that whoever Lehnsherr and Xavier’s sister had scared off would stay away forever. At the westernmost edge he saw what looked like a little town sitting squat against the horizon, quite some way off on the flat terrain. Something was kicking up dust not too far from the buildings there - probably cars, which meant there was almost certainly a fairly busy road somewhere over in that direction.
He took his time getting the lay of the land, so it was nearly four hours later when he finally made it back to the farmhouse. He was starving and made a bee line straight for the kitchen.
Raven was in there, delicately peeling pith off an orange with her slim blue fingers. The moment she saw him her entire body seemed to ripple, and suddenly Logan was looking at a perfect replica of himself lounging there at the table. It was a bizarre - and not that pleasant - experience.
“Cute.”
“Thanks,” she said. Then her body transformed again, and it was Charles sitting there instead. Her copy of her brother was, for whatever reason, wearing a ridiculously frumpy cardigan.
“So,” said Logan, pulling out a chair of his own. He wished this place had some beer, or tequila, or anything, but he hadn’t been able to turn a single bottle up. “This Erik guy. What’s the deal?”
Raven flickered once again, and now it was Erik Lehnsherr that Logan was talking to. She was damn good at impersonating him, managing not just his appearance, but his body language and facial expressions as well - everything about the man that screamed don’t fuck with me.
“What do you want to know about me?” ‘Erik’ asked, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes.
“Why did ya stick a bullet in Charles Xavier?”
Raven-as-Erik’s face abruptly froze. Her skin rippled, and once more she was red haired, yellowed eyed and sapphire blue.
“What’s it to you?” she demanded bluntly.
“I’m a nosy bastard,” said Logan.
“It was an accident.”
“Yeah, so your brother says. Strange kinda accident if you ask me, but I’ll buy it. So what happened after that?”
“None of your business.”
“Sounds to me like it got... messy.”
Raven glared. “What exactly has Charles told you?”
Logan said nothing, just crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Raven’s glare intensified.
“Look, things weren’t good after Charles got shot,” Raven snapped. “He spent a lot of time in the hospital. We all thought he was going to die.”
“And then he gets all better so you and your pal Erik up and leave him. Nice.”
“It wasn’t like that. Charles told Erik to go. He didn’t want to.”
“Sure ‘bout that?”
“Yes.” All her sultry confidence had vanished. Yet again she transformed. Now she was nobody that Logan recognised, just a pretty blonde girl. It only lasted a split second before she was back to being blue again.
“You went with him,” Logan observed casually.
“Someone had to stick by him,” she snapped, before suddenly rising and exiting the kitchen. Logan watched her go, deep in speculation.
...
He spent the rest of the day carefully avoiding both the Xavier siblings - a feat made a hell of a lot easier by the fact that both of them were, in all likelihood, also trying to avoid him.
Finally night drew in, and Lehnsherr had still not returned. Logan spent the evening sat leant against a rough stone wall that circled round some of the farmhouse outbuildings, the stubs of a couple of smoked cigars at his feet, half dozing under the starlight.
The sound of an engine approaching snapped him instantly out of it. Lights swept up the track leading to the farm, attached to a battered truck. It drove through the open doors of the nearby barn, and the engine cut out.
Cautiously, Logan got to his feet and removed his dog tags from around his neck. He left them on top of the wall, and headed on over.
The barn was stone with a corrugated iron roof, and was obviously mostly just used as a garage/workshop. Tools were neatly arranged on a workbench, and screws, bolts, and various other handy little things had been carefully sorted into orderly boxes on some shelves. Whoever owned this place had been meticulous.
Lehnsherr was getting out of the truck. He looked tired, and even more irritable than usual. The truck door slammed shut behind him, propelled by his powers.
“Fun trip?” Logan asked, leaning casually against the door frame.
If looks could kill, the stare Lehnsherr fixed him with would have surely disintegrated Logan on the spot.
“Xavier’s okay by the way,” Logan continued, idly cracking his knuckles one by one. “Little light-headed though. Course, I wore him out pretty good last night, so that explains that.”
A metallic groan filled the air. As Logan watched an old iron bracket, bolted to the wall, warped and twisted its way out of shape until it sprang free. It flew at Logan, wrapping itself around his neck and choking off his air supply. His hands flew to his throat to try and force it off, but it was held there so tightly that he couldn’t even begin to budge it. He fell to his knees.
“Do not talk about him like that,” Lehnsherr hissed, moving forward until he was only a few steps in front of Logan. The stranglehold of iron increased minutely.
Without warning Logan surged upwards and lashed out, the tips of his suddenly extended claws swiping past just inches from Lehnsherr’s chest. In truth he could probably have reached well enough to cut the man open if he’d really tried, but all he’d wanted was to piss Lehnsherr off, not outright kill him.
The near miss startled Lehnsherr enough that the tight grip of the metal around Logan’s throat faltered for a second, just long enough for Logan to tear it off. Not giving Lehnsherr any time to recover his wits he advanced quickly on the man, and got in one hell of a solid punch to the face. The very next moment white hot pain flooded his mind.
A slim, evil little knife was protruding from his chest. Lehnsherr’s hand was outstretched from where he’d used his powers to hurl it at Logan, with deadly precision. He must have had it in his pocket. The blood trickling from Lehnsherr’s split lip was outmatched by the much larger amount that now spilt from Logan’s own mouth, forcing its way up his windpipe from his punctured lung. Despite his own bloody mouth, Lehnsherr sneered victoriously at Logan.
Keeping the agonising pain at bay through sheer stubborn strength of will, Logan forced a dangerous smile onto his face. With his lips and teeth smeared with blood, it made quite the unnerving sight. For a moment Lehnsherr’s confidence faltered.
Logan gripped the handle of the knife firmly with one hand. In one swift motion he yanked it free of his body. Blood flowed even more copiously down his front, practically a damn waterfall of the stuff, before abruptly drying up completely. The pain faded and was gone.
To Lehnsherr’s credit the man barely reacted to this little revelation, apart from tilting his head slightly to the side.
“Interesting,” he said.
“Charles sure thinks so,” Logan couldn’t resist saying, laying the leer on thick. Erik snarled, and a whole toolbox full of wrenches came hurtling straight at Logan’s face.
The fight that followed was one of the most fraught of Logan’s life. There was no two ways about it - Lehnsherr was good at this. He never hesitated, and didn’t flinch away or miss an opening once. There was training behind that - and Logan was willing to bet, one hell of a lot of practical experience. But Logan had more practise at fighting than anybody else alive.
His clothes became rapidly drenched in blood as Lehnsherr’s evil bastard of a knife stabbed wildly into him a few more times. He just barely managed to dodge it a couple of times, but without fail it simply swung back around and came at him again. Lehnsherr even tried holding it still, stuck stubbornly into Logan’s body so that he couldn’t pull it free. If he’d been hoping that would stop Logan, he’d been sorely disappointed. Aside from the main problem of the knife Logan also found himself under constant attack from a barrage of other metal objects. The screws and similar small metal objects stung viciously. The wrenches and other, larger tools were worse, one breaking his kneecap and another cracking some ribs.
Lehnsherr himself hung back, preferring to use his powers rather than fight hand to hand. Logan had managed to get in one kick to the knee that must have done something pretty bad however, because the other man was now leaning heavily on the hood of the truck for support. That he still needed it was probably the only reason he hadn’t used the truck as some kind of huge battering ram to simply pancake Logan with. All Logan needed was for the bastard to make a single mistake, to lose his control to rage - just for a second.
“If you wanted Lehnsherr, I could give you details,” Logan spat, forcing himself to stand upright even as he felt his ribs knitting painfully back together. “What kind of noises he makes when he’s flat on his back, where he likes to be touched... you’d enjoy that wouldn’t you pal? We could even fucking compare notes.”
Erik snarled, bearing his teeth and flinging one hand out wildly in Logan’s direction. There was the telltale groan of metal under torturous strain, and in an instant the entire roof simply collapsed.
It hit Logan like... well like a goddamn collapsing barn. He blacked out maybe for a second or two, and when he came round he found himself buried under a pile of debris. Nearby someone was swearing in German.
Using his claws Logan quickly fought his way out through the detritus of the (former) roof. Lehnsherr was lying flat on his back amidst the wreckage. There was a cut on his face, and blood on his sleeve. He had probably used his powers to shield himself as best he could, but something had obviously gotten through. His eyes were unfocused and dazed.
Logan saw the opportunity and didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it. He snatched the helmet from Lehnsherr’s head and, with every ounce of strength he could muster, flung it away into the night.
Erik staggered to his feet, the patch of blood on his sleeve growing ever bigger by the second.
“This is your fault,” he snarled at Logan.
“How the fuck is this my fault?” Logan growled back.
But Lehnsherr wasn’t listening. In Logan’s defence, there was no reason at all for him to have expected the punch. They were completely surrounded by large amounts of jagged metal - and yet here was the moment that Erik Lehnsherr had decided to resort to normal physical violence. Well, you couldn’t accuse the guy of being predictable.
Lehnsherr wasted no time in getting a second hit in that sent Logan staggering backwards. His attempt at getting in a third was thwarted when Logan caught his arm and twisted it back painfully. Someone had obviously trained Lehnsherr for this exact eventuality however, because he knew exactly how to bend round so that he could, despite Logan’s iron grip on him, get in a vicious kick to the leg that sent Logan sprawling.
It would be easy right now. The guy had to be badly distracted and seriously worked up if he’d stopped using his powers. It would probably only last another couple of seconds. If Logan acted now, stabbed Lehnsherr with his claws now, then it would all be over...
The part of Logan’s brain that always, always wanted to go in for the kill howled with anticipation. But if he went through with it, however tempting it was, god alone knew what Charles Xavier would do to him in retribution. Logan would probably spend the rest of his life thinking he was a fucking chicken. That thought alone pulled him up short.
He got back onto his feet. Whatever brief moment of crazy (or crazier-than-usual) Lehnsherr had been experiencing, it had passed. Some of the shards of the broken roof were already hovering threateningly behind him.
Logan fought down the urge to assume a defensive posture, to brace himself for incoming pain. Instead he stood his ground, arms at his side and rolling his shoulders out casually.
“The idiot’s in love with you, ya know,” Logan drawled. He got a cigar out of the pack in his pocket - he was starting to run alarmingly low - and stuck it in his mouth.
It was fairly comical, the expression on Lehnsherr’s face. “What?” he snapped.
“Xavier. He might as well have it tattooed across his damn forehead it’s so obvious. God knows why, I mean no offence bub, but you’re not exactly playing cards with the full deck are ya? You shot him fer christsakes...”
Lehnsherr’s hands curled into fists. “It was an accident,” he hissed.
“Yeah, everyone’s been sayin’ that. What if me and Charles had a little accident, hey bub? If he slipped up and fell on my fist or something? Or worse...” Logan turned his hand, giving Lehnsherr a good view of the bone white curve of his claws.
“Then I’d kill you,” Erik said simply. A thought seemed to occur to him. “You haven’t...” he bit out, starting forward.
“No.” Logan shot back. “And I’d ‘a made anyone who tried a very sorry bastard.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lehnsherr demanded. His German accent was getting thicker by the second, as he rapidly grew more and more uncertain of himself.
“No fucking idea pal,” Logan confessed. “Maybe ‘cause I reckon Xavier is desperate to, but I know he ain’t gonna.”
“But...” Lehnsherr seemed honestly confused now, his rage less absolute than it had been just a few moments ago, although his body was still tense as hell. “You... and him,” his mouth twisted over the words as though just saying them was unpleasant.
“Yeah, me an’ him,” Logan confirmed. “And believe me, whatever goddamn torch he’s carryin’ for you Lehnsherr, I don’t like it and I don’t get it. But he ain’t my wife.”
Logan stepped in close to Erik, so they were nose to nose. Erik’s lip curled and his eyes went flinty, but he allowed it. “That said...” Logan continued. “I promise you, ya son of a bitch, if you -”
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Xavier’s voice interrupted. He had hurried over from the farmhouse at a run, and now stopped to take in the ruin of the barn with wide eyes, as well as the two of them stood guilty in the middle of it.
“Speak of the devil...” Logan muttered under his breath.
“What happened?” Xavier demanded irately. But before either of them had any chance to explain anything, Xavier had noticed the - by now quite large - bloodstain on Lehnsherr’s sleeve.
“Erik,” he said sharply. “Your arm.”
Lehnsherr blinked down at the injury like he was only just now noticing it. “It’s nothing,” he insisted, flexing the arm experimentally. Some blood dripped off his elbow onto the ground.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Xavier retorted. Glaring at the both of them he took Lehnsherr’s arm carefully in his hands, and cautiously rolled up the sleeve so he could examine the wound. “I can’t see properly in this light,” he complained. “What the hell were you two doing anyway?”
Logan and Erik exchanged a glance. Despite their mutual animosity and loathing, in that single look a silent pact was agreed upon - they would neither of them (intentionally) ever divulge the nature of this particular argument to Charles Xavier.
Realising he wasn’t going to get an answer, Xavier carted a limping Lehnsherr off back to the house, leaving Logan to examine the barn wreckage. He worked hard for thirty minutes or so, pulling aside broken planks of wood and other debris. The corrugated iron that had formerly been the roof wasn’t too heavy, and so when Logan eventually managed to uncover truck it was, against all the odds, not completely destroyed.
Satisfied that it might be salvageable, he made his way back to the house. Xavier was in the kitchen boiling some water, presumably to clean Lehnsherr’s wound with. He glanced over at Logan as he entered.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to be any more forthcoming than Erik about what exactly transpired out there?” he asked stiffly. Logan just shrugged. “No, I didn’t think so. You hurt him.”
“He gave as good as he got. Better even.”
“He doesn’t heal in an instant! I swear Logan, if you’d really hurt him...” Xavier trailed off, fighting to get his temper back under control. It was the first and only time Logan had ever seen him lose it, even just for a moment.
“You should read his mind,” Logan said after a couple of minutes of silence, both of them waiting for the water to boil.
“Pardon?”
“Lehnsherr. You should take a look inside his head. That stupid hat of his is lying out there in the dirt.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I promised him I wouldn’t.”
“Fuck that. Take a look. He’ll thank ya in the end.”
“What exactly are you driving at here Logan?” Xavier demanded. He sounded annoyed, but he looked anxious and unsure of himself, biting at his lower lip nervously. Logan tried not to stare at him doing it - and failed.
He moved in close to Xavier, right into his personal space, crowding him back against the kitchen worktop. To his credit Xavier stood his ground, staring Logan right in the eye, even when Logan boxed him in with arms braced on the worktop on either side of him. There wasn’t even a hint of the flirtatious smile now, or the enticing gleam in the eye. Not with Lehnsherr still bleeding just a couple of rooms away, effortlessly occupying all of Xavier’s attention.
Still, Logan wasn’t above a last indulgence. He took a deep breath, letting the intermingled smell of Xavier, himself, and the sex they’d had the night before wash over him. It warmed his blood and sent a heady rush racing through his veins, but Logan forced himself to ignore it.
“Read his mind. ‘Specially the bits about you,” Logan said. Their faces were pretty close together now - Logan’s head tilted down, and Xavier’s up , their mouths less than an inch apart. His eyes were a ridiculously vivid shade of blue Logan absently noticed only just now - and they fell helplessly onto Logan’s mouth for a split second, before Xavier suddenly ducked out under his arm and started fussing about with the boiling water.
Logan took that as his cue to leave. He went back to the bedroom he and Xavier had been sharing and settled down on top of the rough blanket that smelt of sex and sweat.
Xavier didn’t come back all night.
...
Logan was back outside at sunrise, examining the truck. He was a fairly good mechanic, especially in situations where tools and parts weren’t exactly plentiful. That’s what you got when you picked up motor mechanics on the fly during a war. While he was picking tools out of the wreck of the barn he noticed Lehnsherr’s helmet still lying abandoned a good distance away on the ground. Obviously nobody had felt the need to come out and collect it.
After two hours of work with what few tools he’d been able to scrounge up, Logan finally got the truck going again. The harsh, guttural rumble of the crappy engine was like the sweetest music to his ears.
“You’re leaving?” a polite voice enquired from behind him. When Logan turned Xavier was standing a few feet away, watching with interest. He’d finally changed his clothes, although these new ones were obviously designed with someone much taller in mind. They also looked suspiciously like something Lehnsherr would wear. The bruise on his face was clearly fading now, and the pallid quality of his skin over the last couple of days was completely gone, leaving him flushed under the unforgiving Mexican sun.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “Thought I’d head south.”
Xavier looked awkwardly embarrassed. “Yes, sorry. I rather scuppered your plans to go north didn’t I?”
“Don’t matter,” Logan said, throwing an oil stained rag aside and letting the hood drop down. He leant back against it, enjoying the warmth of the metal under his back.
“He’s crazy ya know,” Logan said. “I mean it Xavier, something ain’t right in that guy’s head.”
Xavier smiled warmly and shrugged helplessly. “I know. I don’t care.”
Logan snorted and shook his head. “Ya took my advice then? Snuck a look inside his skull?”
“Yes,” Xavier confessed reluctantly. “And thank you.”
The knowledge that Xavier had looked inside Lehnsherr’s mind mollified Logan somewhat. If the guy was that badly fucked up, if he’d been planning on hurting Xavier, or pulling some other stupid shit, then surely Xavier would have seen it. At least Logan hoped like hell that was true, because by himself Xavier was too damn trusting to be believed. He needed someone to look out for him, someone paranoid and suspicious to make up for Xavier’s hopeless naivety.
“What will you do now?” Xavier enquired.
Logan would go through the usual motions. Find someone who needed some fighting done, and who had the cash to pay for it. Logan was the best at what he did - but what he did wasn’t very nice.
“This an’ that,” he grunted vaguely.
“My offer still stands,” Xavier said earnestly. “About the school. I’d like you to see it.”
“Yeah well, I don’t think your pal Erik would be too keen on that plan,” Logan retorted. “He’s going back with you, right?”
Xavier eyed him questioningly. “How do you know that?”
Logan snorted. “Jesus, after all this shit he’d better be comin’ back with you, Xavier.”
“Oh. Well, you’re right, he is. And Raven.” Xavier was unable to keep himself from grinning as he said so. “And I’m sure Erik wouldn’t mind if you came along as well.”
Logan would have bet a million dollars that not only would Erik mind the extreme, he’d probably try to dismember Logan once again. The thought occurred to him that, whatever they’d done last night, even if all Lehnsherr had seen was Charles changing his clothes, then he would definitely have seen the marks Logan had left behind. Even now Logan could still see evidence of them, a faint redness peeking out from under Xavier’s collar. A feeling of warm satisfaction curled in Logan’s belly. He wished like hell he’d been able to see Lehnsherr’s face when he saw ‘em.
“Don’t make me repeat myself Xavier,” he said. “I said no, and I meant it. I’m not a team player.”
“Well, if there’s no persuading you...”
“There isn’t.”
“... then I suppose this is goodbye.” Xavier held out his hand.
Tentatively Logan took the few necessary steps towards Xavier and accepted the proffered handshake. A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was Lehnsherr, who was leaning in the front doorway of the farmhouse, arms crossed and watching them intently.
Logan felt a dangerous impulse stir in his brain, and cheerfully gave into it. He used his grip on Charles’s hand to haul him in for a brief but fervent kiss. It only lasted a moment before Logan broke it, tilting his head back to stare into Xavier’s comically wide eyes.
“Don’t do anything too stupid,” he said simply with a smirk. He then let go of Charles’s hand and clambered up in one smooth movement into the driver’s seat of the truck. The engine was ticking over nicely for such an old piece of junk, a steady low rumble that grew into a thunder as Logan put his foot down hard on the gas.
The wheels kicked up a cloud of dust as he sped away from the farm. In the mirror he could see what looked like Xavier desperately trying to talk Lehnsherr out of crushing the truck into a pile of scrap with Logan still inside.
The wind felt glorious on Logan’s face from where it streamed in through the open window. There was a heavy, tangy quality to the air that cut through the dry heat, and that spoke of a storm coming. The open road was intoxicating in the way it always was when starting out on a fresh journey, a million miles away from the depressing monotony it inevitably would become a few weeks down the line.
There was indeed a busy road leading out of the little town situated a handful of miles from the farm. Logan was speeding down it as fast as the bucket of bolts he was driving could manage, when suddenly he was hit with a mental information dump that clocked him like a punch to the face.
Xavier’s school - the location. Not just the address, but a real, bone deep knowledge of just exactly where to find it, as though he’d been there a hundred times before. And a phone number, burning itself as permanently into his brain as his own damn name. The unexpected shock made Logan swerve the truck wildly, nearly taking out a couple of other people on the road before he pulled himself together.
Just in case, Xavier’s voice echoed inside his skull.
“You bastard,” Logan muttered under his breath, knuckles white where his hands were clutching at the steering wheel. What the hell would have been so damn hard about just telling Logan where to find the place, like a normal goddamn person? Fucking telepaths.
Still... maybe one day he’d be in New York State. And perhaps while he was there a little detour wouldn’t really be all that big of a deal. Just a quick visit, somewhere to get a hot meal and a decent bed - he wouldn’t be signing on to Xavier’s mutant girl-scout brigade or nothing. Just making sure the guy was alright, and that everything was going the way it should.
And of course, it would really, really piss off Lehnsherr.
A smirk spread its way across Logan’s face. He fished around in his pocket for a cigar. Just one left. He stuck it in his mouth and lit it.
He put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The storm-cloud filled horizon rushed up to meet him.
...
THE END
“Jesus...” he swore, retracting the claws instantly.
“Sorry,” said Xavier, looking contrite. He rubbed at his face, looking bleary, and winced when he pressed too hard on the bruise. “What happened?”
“Wish I could tell ya. Last I remember, Frost knocked you out cold. Then we were here.”
Xavier’s brow wrinkled with a mixture of confusion and drowsiness. “What?” he mumbled, blinking rapidly as he tried to make sense of it all.
“Your sister an’ her pal saved our asses,” Logan informed him. This didn’t seem to clarify anything for Xavier, so he continued, “some asshole called Lehnsherr.”
The news seemed to hit Xavier like a sledgehammer. He slumped bonelessly back onto the bed.
“Erik?” he said softly. “Is he here?”
Logan filled Xavier in on what little he knew. Xavier absorbed the information silently, fidgeting anxiously with the blanket on his bed.
“I want to see him,” Xavier said firmly once Logan had finished explaining. He got up off the bed easily enough, but once he was on his feet he swayed alarmingly. Logan caught his elbow to steady him. Charles accepted the support for a moment, then gently shrugged Logan off.
It took them less than a minute to find Erik and Xavier’s sister. They were talking together in low voices out on the farmhouse porch. Sunset had long since come and gone, and out here in the countryside the stars shone with unmatched brilliance in the dark sky.
“Charles!” Raven cried when she caught sight of them. She smiled warmly and flung herself forward at her brother, nearly knocking him to the ground. Only Logan’s hand, landing heavily but carefully on Xavier’s back stopped them tumbling to the floor.
Xavier smiled weakly and hugged her back, but his eyes were fixed on Erik, who was silently watching them, his expression inscrutable.
“Are you okay?” Raven asked when she finally drew back. She eyed Logan, looming warily over her brother’s shoulder, with undisguised suspicion.
“Yes, yes. I’m fine,” Xavier told her reassuringly, gently extricating himself from her arms. His gaze returned to Erik. “I... I understand I have you to thank for my life.”
“Don’t mention it,” Lehnsherr murmured.
An intense look passed between the two of them that Logan didn’t understand, and he half wondered if Xavier was reading Lehnsherr’s mind.
“You should rest,” Erik said abruptly, turning his back.
“Yes, of course...” Xavier muttered, looking suddenly despondent. He turned and headed back into the farmhouse, walking slowly and unsteadily. Logan gave Lehnsherr’s turned back a parting glare and followed.
When they returned to their room Xavier sat heavily on his bed, burying his face in his hands. He looked somehow even more unwell than he had done when he was still unconscious. Logan sat down next to him.
“So...” Logan started. “I figure you owe me a couple‘a answers.”
With a deep breath Xavier took his face from his hands and nodded. “Yes, I suppose I probably do.”
“Startin’ with, who the fucking fuck exactly is this Lehnsherr guy?”
“He’s a mutant like us. His power is...”
“Yeah, I’ve seen his power,” Logan interrupted darkly.
“Oh. Well... some time ago we were both recruited by the CIA to find and train other mutants. Eventually we found it... advisable to go our own way from them, and I suppose that was the beginning of the school. There was another mutant, a man named Shaw, who Erik was determined to kill...”
“Why?” Logan interrupted.
“No,” Xavier said shortly, shaking his head. “I’m sorry but it’s really not my story to tell. I can tell you that he was an evil man, and that he did need to be stopped. Well, we found him, and unfortunately Erik did rather dramatically manage to fulfil his desire to kill the bastard. There were... unexpected repercussions, and a few months afterwards I told Erik he could leave the school if he wanted to. He did, and my sister went with him. Until now, I hadn’t seen either of them since.”
Logan paused for a second to let all this new information sink in. “Bullshit.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You ain’t telling me the whole story Xavier, and ya know it. I saw the way he was actin’ around you while you were out of it.”
“How was he - never mind. Look, it’s irrelevant anyway,” Xavier insisted, putting his head back in his hands.
“Like hell it is.”
“It’s not important.”
“You said you owed me some answers. Well so far you’re comin’ up pretty goddamn short on that promise pal.”
Xavier sighed and ran his hands through his hair, flustered. Then he reached out and ran one hand through Logan’s own hair, until it cupped the back of Logan’s head and drew him forward. The first kiss Xavier pressed to his lips was dry and almost chaste, but the following kisses became rapidly less and less so.
“Charles,” Logan muttered, half-heartedly trying to pull away. But Xavier’s hand at the back of his head seamlessly reeled him back in again.
“I just... I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he mumbled against Logan’s mouth, before kissing him fiercely once again.
Logan wasn’t an idiot. He was under no illusions that Xavier wasn’t just trying to distract him from pushing for answers. But the guy’s chosen method of distraction was hardly unwelcome, so Logan shunted aside his questions for now, and instead hauled Xavier up and over so he was sat straddling Logan’s lap. His reward for getting with the program was Xavier’s teeth biting at his lower lip, and his hand sliding down to trail up the inside of Logan’s thigh.
“We’ll have to be quiet,” Xavier warned when Logan eventually manhandled him off his lap and onto the bed.
“As a goddamn church mouse,” Logan promised.
...
Later on they lay pressed close together on the tiny bed. One of Logan’s hands was trailing idly up and down Xavier’s spine, occasionally brushing over the tiny patch of roughened skin where the scar was.
“It was Erik,” Xavier said abruptly from nowhere.
Logan’s hand stilled. “What?”
“The scar on my back, you asked about it before. It was Erik. He deflected a bullet that was meant for him, and it hit me instead.”
“You said it was an accident,” Logan growled.
“It was. He didn’t intend to do it. There was rather a lot of internal bleeding. I’m told I very nearly died on quite a number of occasions before they could stabilize me. Afterwards, with Erik and myself... things were different. He felt so guilty he couldn’t even stand to touch me. Just being around me was making him miserable. And even before... I suspect that if I hadn’t nearly bled to death on that beach our ideologies are so different that regardless... well. It doesn’t matter. In the end I told him to leave.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t going to take advantage of some misplaced sense of guilt to force him to stay somewhere he didn’t wish to. I’m not that selfish.”
A short, awkward pause followed. It was broken by Xavier extricating himself from their sweaty tangle of limbs.
“We should get dressed,” he said.
They did so in silence. By wordless agreement however, they both fell back into the same bed together afterwards.
...
As usual, Logan woke with the sun. Xavier was still fast asleep, head pillowed on Logan’s shoulder as they lay pretty much on top of one another in the too small bed. Xavier’s clothes, the ones Logan had thought so fancy and proper back in Albuquerque were now more or less completely ruined, permanently stained with dirt, blood and the usual grime of any clothing worn for four days straight.
Logan didn’t move to get up straight away. Instead he mulled a while over the information Xavier had finally coughed up last night.
So, Erik Lehnsherr. There was clearly still a shitload of history there that Xavier hadn’t told him, but Logan was smart enough to figure some of it out for himself. He couldn’t even stand to touch me - that had been fairly telling all by itself. And the tension between the two of them had been so thick you could have cut it with a knife. Of course Logan had known in theory that Xavier was at least somewhat interested in men - it had been pretty hard to miss when they’d been rolling around in bed together on that first night - he just hadn’t been expecting... this.
An image danced across Logan’s brain. Xavier bleeding out on the ground, lying in an expanding pool of his own blood and fading fast. Lehnsherr standing over him, responsible. An accident Xavier had called it - Logan disagreed. Spilling your drink, stubbing your toe, those were accidents. Sticking a bullet in your friend’s back...
Logan’s thoughts were interrupted by the door opening and Lehnsherr himself walking in unannounced. He took one look at Logan and Xavier curled up together and froze.
A long, uncomfortable silence reigned. Once the shock had faded from Lehnsherr’s face, he sent Logan a sharp look of pure, unrestrained loathing, and then his face seemed to shut down completely, becoming eerily expressionless.
“I just wanted to make sure he was alright after a night’s sleep,” Lehnsherr said, voice unnaturally flat. “Head injuries can be unpredictable.”
“Right,” Logan said, torn between getting out of bed so that Lehnsherr wasn’t staring down at him anymore, and staying right where he was with Xavier comfortably draped all over him. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”
Lehnsherr’s eyes strayed briefly to Xavier, his face still inscrutable. “I’ll be gone for most of the day,” he told Logan. Then, without any further elaboration, he left, slamming the door violently behind him. The noise jolted Charles awake.
“What was that?” Xavier mumbled, sluggish with sleep.
“Your pal Erik checking up on ya,” Logan told him.
“Erik?” Xavier said dozily, then suddenly seemed to snap to life, half-climbing half-falling out of bed. “He saw us?”
“Unless he’s gone blind since yesterday, I’m guessin’ so,” Logan said stretching his arms out above his head. The joints popped satisfyingly.
Xavier muttered something under his breath that sounded to Logan’s sharp hearing an awful lot like a bunch of very British curse words. He sat back down in a slump on the edge of the bed.
“How’s the head?” Logan asked him.
Xavier blinked a couple of times, then ran a hand over the injury. The bruise was, in truth, mostly hidden by his hair, just visible at the edges where it dappled Xavier’s hairline with blacks and blues. Logan thought it was just about starting to turn yellow and fade in places now.
“Fine, I think. Hurts less than yesterday,” Xavier said. He stood. “I’m going to go talk to Erik.”
“Ya missed him,” Logan said. He’d heard the sound of a motor starting somewhere nearby round about the time Xavier had been fumbling his way out of bed. “He’s gone off somewhere, said he’d be most of the day.”
“Did he say where he was going?” Xavier asked. He looked agitated.
“Nah,” Logan said. “Can’t ya just...?” he tapped the side of his head.
“No. That helmet he wears... it keeps me out. I can’t read his mind at all. I suppose that would be why I didn’t sense him with Raven back in Albuquerque.”
“Sounds like he don’t trust ya,” Logan commented. Xavier didn’t respond, just pinched the bridge of his nose and hunched his shoulders.
“Actually,” he said quietly, “I think I’ve got a bit of a headache. Would you mind leaving me alone for a while?”
A few seconds later and Logan was out the door and walking into the kitchen before he realised that he’d been propelled from the bedroom by a sudden, alien desire to leave rather than by any conscious decision on his part. He seriously debated going back and shouting Xavier down for it, but there was no telling whether or not he’d just get his memory of the whole thing erased for his trouble. He berated himself viciously. He’d gotten too goddamn cosy with Xavier, and that was the truth of it. He needed to be more vigilant. Xavier might be a nice guy, almost to a nauseating degree, but he was still a telepath. You couldn’t trust ‘em, whatever they were like in the sack.
He half considered just high-tailing it out of there right there and then. But that would mean leaving Xavier with Lehnsherr, and the thought of that made his knuckles itch. Logan wasn’t a sappy guy - in fact he was a seriously unpleasant bastard and proud of the fact. But he’d slept with Xavier, hell, he liked Xavier, and god help him, that meant he couldn’t just ditch the man with someone who really, really seemed like they were a few bananas short of the whole fucking bunch.
He burnt off some of his anger by leaving the house and doing a long circuit of the farm’s boundaries. It was a pretty big place - he seriously doubted that whoever Lehnsherr and Xavier’s sister had scared off would stay away forever. At the westernmost edge he saw what looked like a little town sitting squat against the horizon, quite some way off on the flat terrain. Something was kicking up dust not too far from the buildings there - probably cars, which meant there was almost certainly a fairly busy road somewhere over in that direction.
He took his time getting the lay of the land, so it was nearly four hours later when he finally made it back to the farmhouse. He was starving and made a bee line straight for the kitchen.
Raven was in there, delicately peeling pith off an orange with her slim blue fingers. The moment she saw him her entire body seemed to ripple, and suddenly Logan was looking at a perfect replica of himself lounging there at the table. It was a bizarre - and not that pleasant - experience.
“Cute.”
“Thanks,” she said. Then her body transformed again, and it was Charles sitting there instead. Her copy of her brother was, for whatever reason, wearing a ridiculously frumpy cardigan.
“So,” said Logan, pulling out a chair of his own. He wished this place had some beer, or tequila, or anything, but he hadn’t been able to turn a single bottle up. “This Erik guy. What’s the deal?”
Raven flickered once again, and now it was Erik Lehnsherr that Logan was talking to. She was damn good at impersonating him, managing not just his appearance, but his body language and facial expressions as well - everything about the man that screamed don’t fuck with me.
“What do you want to know about me?” ‘Erik’ asked, leaning forward and narrowing his eyes.
“Why did ya stick a bullet in Charles Xavier?”
Raven-as-Erik’s face abruptly froze. Her skin rippled, and once more she was red haired, yellowed eyed and sapphire blue.
“What’s it to you?” she demanded bluntly.
“I’m a nosy bastard,” said Logan.
“It was an accident.”
“Yeah, so your brother says. Strange kinda accident if you ask me, but I’ll buy it. So what happened after that?”
“None of your business.”
“Sounds to me like it got... messy.”
Raven glared. “What exactly has Charles told you?”
Logan said nothing, just crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. Raven’s glare intensified.
“Look, things weren’t good after Charles got shot,” Raven snapped. “He spent a lot of time in the hospital. We all thought he was going to die.”
“And then he gets all better so you and your pal Erik up and leave him. Nice.”
“It wasn’t like that. Charles told Erik to go. He didn’t want to.”
“Sure ‘bout that?”
“Yes.” All her sultry confidence had vanished. Yet again she transformed. Now she was nobody that Logan recognised, just a pretty blonde girl. It only lasted a split second before she was back to being blue again.
“You went with him,” Logan observed casually.
“Someone had to stick by him,” she snapped, before suddenly rising and exiting the kitchen. Logan watched her go, deep in speculation.
...
He spent the rest of the day carefully avoiding both the Xavier siblings - a feat made a hell of a lot easier by the fact that both of them were, in all likelihood, also trying to avoid him.
Finally night drew in, and Lehnsherr had still not returned. Logan spent the evening sat leant against a rough stone wall that circled round some of the farmhouse outbuildings, the stubs of a couple of smoked cigars at his feet, half dozing under the starlight.
The sound of an engine approaching snapped him instantly out of it. Lights swept up the track leading to the farm, attached to a battered truck. It drove through the open doors of the nearby barn, and the engine cut out.
Cautiously, Logan got to his feet and removed his dog tags from around his neck. He left them on top of the wall, and headed on over.
The barn was stone with a corrugated iron roof, and was obviously mostly just used as a garage/workshop. Tools were neatly arranged on a workbench, and screws, bolts, and various other handy little things had been carefully sorted into orderly boxes on some shelves. Whoever owned this place had been meticulous.
Lehnsherr was getting out of the truck. He looked tired, and even more irritable than usual. The truck door slammed shut behind him, propelled by his powers.
“Fun trip?” Logan asked, leaning casually against the door frame.
If looks could kill, the stare Lehnsherr fixed him with would have surely disintegrated Logan on the spot.
“Xavier’s okay by the way,” Logan continued, idly cracking his knuckles one by one. “Little light-headed though. Course, I wore him out pretty good last night, so that explains that.”
A metallic groan filled the air. As Logan watched an old iron bracket, bolted to the wall, warped and twisted its way out of shape until it sprang free. It flew at Logan, wrapping itself around his neck and choking off his air supply. His hands flew to his throat to try and force it off, but it was held there so tightly that he couldn’t even begin to budge it. He fell to his knees.
“Do not talk about him like that,” Lehnsherr hissed, moving forward until he was only a few steps in front of Logan. The stranglehold of iron increased minutely.
Without warning Logan surged upwards and lashed out, the tips of his suddenly extended claws swiping past just inches from Lehnsherr’s chest. In truth he could probably have reached well enough to cut the man open if he’d really tried, but all he’d wanted was to piss Lehnsherr off, not outright kill him.
The near miss startled Lehnsherr enough that the tight grip of the metal around Logan’s throat faltered for a second, just long enough for Logan to tear it off. Not giving Lehnsherr any time to recover his wits he advanced quickly on the man, and got in one hell of a solid punch to the face. The very next moment white hot pain flooded his mind.
A slim, evil little knife was protruding from his chest. Lehnsherr’s hand was outstretched from where he’d used his powers to hurl it at Logan, with deadly precision. He must have had it in his pocket. The blood trickling from Lehnsherr’s split lip was outmatched by the much larger amount that now spilt from Logan’s own mouth, forcing its way up his windpipe from his punctured lung. Despite his own bloody mouth, Lehnsherr sneered victoriously at Logan.
Keeping the agonising pain at bay through sheer stubborn strength of will, Logan forced a dangerous smile onto his face. With his lips and teeth smeared with blood, it made quite the unnerving sight. For a moment Lehnsherr’s confidence faltered.
Logan gripped the handle of the knife firmly with one hand. In one swift motion he yanked it free of his body. Blood flowed even more copiously down his front, practically a damn waterfall of the stuff, before abruptly drying up completely. The pain faded and was gone.
To Lehnsherr’s credit the man barely reacted to this little revelation, apart from tilting his head slightly to the side.
“Interesting,” he said.
“Charles sure thinks so,” Logan couldn’t resist saying, laying the leer on thick. Erik snarled, and a whole toolbox full of wrenches came hurtling straight at Logan’s face.
The fight that followed was one of the most fraught of Logan’s life. There was no two ways about it - Lehnsherr was good at this. He never hesitated, and didn’t flinch away or miss an opening once. There was training behind that - and Logan was willing to bet, one hell of a lot of practical experience. But Logan had more practise at fighting than anybody else alive.
His clothes became rapidly drenched in blood as Lehnsherr’s evil bastard of a knife stabbed wildly into him a few more times. He just barely managed to dodge it a couple of times, but without fail it simply swung back around and came at him again. Lehnsherr even tried holding it still, stuck stubbornly into Logan’s body so that he couldn’t pull it free. If he’d been hoping that would stop Logan, he’d been sorely disappointed. Aside from the main problem of the knife Logan also found himself under constant attack from a barrage of other metal objects. The screws and similar small metal objects stung viciously. The wrenches and other, larger tools were worse, one breaking his kneecap and another cracking some ribs.
Lehnsherr himself hung back, preferring to use his powers rather than fight hand to hand. Logan had managed to get in one kick to the knee that must have done something pretty bad however, because the other man was now leaning heavily on the hood of the truck for support. That he still needed it was probably the only reason he hadn’t used the truck as some kind of huge battering ram to simply pancake Logan with. All Logan needed was for the bastard to make a single mistake, to lose his control to rage - just for a second.
“If you wanted Lehnsherr, I could give you details,” Logan spat, forcing himself to stand upright even as he felt his ribs knitting painfully back together. “What kind of noises he makes when he’s flat on his back, where he likes to be touched... you’d enjoy that wouldn’t you pal? We could even fucking compare notes.”
Erik snarled, bearing his teeth and flinging one hand out wildly in Logan’s direction. There was the telltale groan of metal under torturous strain, and in an instant the entire roof simply collapsed.
It hit Logan like... well like a goddamn collapsing barn. He blacked out maybe for a second or two, and when he came round he found himself buried under a pile of debris. Nearby someone was swearing in German.
Using his claws Logan quickly fought his way out through the detritus of the (former) roof. Lehnsherr was lying flat on his back amidst the wreckage. There was a cut on his face, and blood on his sleeve. He had probably used his powers to shield himself as best he could, but something had obviously gotten through. His eyes were unfocused and dazed.
Logan saw the opportunity and didn’t hesitate to take advantage of it. He snatched the helmet from Lehnsherr’s head and, with every ounce of strength he could muster, flung it away into the night.
Erik staggered to his feet, the patch of blood on his sleeve growing ever bigger by the second.
“This is your fault,” he snarled at Logan.
“How the fuck is this my fault?” Logan growled back.
But Lehnsherr wasn’t listening. In Logan’s defence, there was no reason at all for him to have expected the punch. They were completely surrounded by large amounts of jagged metal - and yet here was the moment that Erik Lehnsherr had decided to resort to normal physical violence. Well, you couldn’t accuse the guy of being predictable.
Lehnsherr wasted no time in getting a second hit in that sent Logan staggering backwards. His attempt at getting in a third was thwarted when Logan caught his arm and twisted it back painfully. Someone had obviously trained Lehnsherr for this exact eventuality however, because he knew exactly how to bend round so that he could, despite Logan’s iron grip on him, get in a vicious kick to the leg that sent Logan sprawling.
It would be easy right now. The guy had to be badly distracted and seriously worked up if he’d stopped using his powers. It would probably only last another couple of seconds. If Logan acted now, stabbed Lehnsherr with his claws now, then it would all be over...
The part of Logan’s brain that always, always wanted to go in for the kill howled with anticipation. But if he went through with it, however tempting it was, god alone knew what Charles Xavier would do to him in retribution. Logan would probably spend the rest of his life thinking he was a fucking chicken. That thought alone pulled him up short.
He got back onto his feet. Whatever brief moment of crazy (or crazier-than-usual) Lehnsherr had been experiencing, it had passed. Some of the shards of the broken roof were already hovering threateningly behind him.
Logan fought down the urge to assume a defensive posture, to brace himself for incoming pain. Instead he stood his ground, arms at his side and rolling his shoulders out casually.
“The idiot’s in love with you, ya know,” Logan drawled. He got a cigar out of the pack in his pocket - he was starting to run alarmingly low - and stuck it in his mouth.
It was fairly comical, the expression on Lehnsherr’s face. “What?” he snapped.
“Xavier. He might as well have it tattooed across his damn forehead it’s so obvious. God knows why, I mean no offence bub, but you’re not exactly playing cards with the full deck are ya? You shot him fer christsakes...”
Lehnsherr’s hands curled into fists. “It was an accident,” he hissed.
“Yeah, everyone’s been sayin’ that. What if me and Charles had a little accident, hey bub? If he slipped up and fell on my fist or something? Or worse...” Logan turned his hand, giving Lehnsherr a good view of the bone white curve of his claws.
“Then I’d kill you,” Erik said simply. A thought seemed to occur to him. “You haven’t...” he bit out, starting forward.
“No.” Logan shot back. “And I’d ‘a made anyone who tried a very sorry bastard.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Lehnsherr demanded. His German accent was getting thicker by the second, as he rapidly grew more and more uncertain of himself.
“No fucking idea pal,” Logan confessed. “Maybe ‘cause I reckon Xavier is desperate to, but I know he ain’t gonna.”
“But...” Lehnsherr seemed honestly confused now, his rage less absolute than it had been just a few moments ago, although his body was still tense as hell. “You... and him,” his mouth twisted over the words as though just saying them was unpleasant.
“Yeah, me an’ him,” Logan confirmed. “And believe me, whatever goddamn torch he’s carryin’ for you Lehnsherr, I don’t like it and I don’t get it. But he ain’t my wife.”
Logan stepped in close to Erik, so they were nose to nose. Erik’s lip curled and his eyes went flinty, but he allowed it. “That said...” Logan continued. “I promise you, ya son of a bitch, if you -”
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Xavier’s voice interrupted. He had hurried over from the farmhouse at a run, and now stopped to take in the ruin of the barn with wide eyes, as well as the two of them stood guilty in the middle of it.
“Speak of the devil...” Logan muttered under his breath.
“What happened?” Xavier demanded irately. But before either of them had any chance to explain anything, Xavier had noticed the - by now quite large - bloodstain on Lehnsherr’s sleeve.
“Erik,” he said sharply. “Your arm.”
Lehnsherr blinked down at the injury like he was only just now noticing it. “It’s nothing,” he insisted, flexing the arm experimentally. Some blood dripped off his elbow onto the ground.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” Xavier retorted. Glaring at the both of them he took Lehnsherr’s arm carefully in his hands, and cautiously rolled up the sleeve so he could examine the wound. “I can’t see properly in this light,” he complained. “What the hell were you two doing anyway?”
Logan and Erik exchanged a glance. Despite their mutual animosity and loathing, in that single look a silent pact was agreed upon - they would neither of them (intentionally) ever divulge the nature of this particular argument to Charles Xavier.
Realising he wasn’t going to get an answer, Xavier carted a limping Lehnsherr off back to the house, leaving Logan to examine the barn wreckage. He worked hard for thirty minutes or so, pulling aside broken planks of wood and other debris. The corrugated iron that had formerly been the roof wasn’t too heavy, and so when Logan eventually managed to uncover truck it was, against all the odds, not completely destroyed.
Satisfied that it might be salvageable, he made his way back to the house. Xavier was in the kitchen boiling some water, presumably to clean Lehnsherr’s wound with. He glanced over at Logan as he entered.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to be any more forthcoming than Erik about what exactly transpired out there?” he asked stiffly. Logan just shrugged. “No, I didn’t think so. You hurt him.”
“He gave as good as he got. Better even.”
“He doesn’t heal in an instant! I swear Logan, if you’d really hurt him...” Xavier trailed off, fighting to get his temper back under control. It was the first and only time Logan had ever seen him lose it, even just for a moment.
“You should read his mind,” Logan said after a couple of minutes of silence, both of them waiting for the water to boil.
“Pardon?”
“Lehnsherr. You should take a look inside his head. That stupid hat of his is lying out there in the dirt.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I promised him I wouldn’t.”
“Fuck that. Take a look. He’ll thank ya in the end.”
“What exactly are you driving at here Logan?” Xavier demanded. He sounded annoyed, but he looked anxious and unsure of himself, biting at his lower lip nervously. Logan tried not to stare at him doing it - and failed.
He moved in close to Xavier, right into his personal space, crowding him back against the kitchen worktop. To his credit Xavier stood his ground, staring Logan right in the eye, even when Logan boxed him in with arms braced on the worktop on either side of him. There wasn’t even a hint of the flirtatious smile now, or the enticing gleam in the eye. Not with Lehnsherr still bleeding just a couple of rooms away, effortlessly occupying all of Xavier’s attention.
Still, Logan wasn’t above a last indulgence. He took a deep breath, letting the intermingled smell of Xavier, himself, and the sex they’d had the night before wash over him. It warmed his blood and sent a heady rush racing through his veins, but Logan forced himself to ignore it.
“Read his mind. ‘Specially the bits about you,” Logan said. Their faces were pretty close together now - Logan’s head tilted down, and Xavier’s up , their mouths less than an inch apart. His eyes were a ridiculously vivid shade of blue Logan absently noticed only just now - and they fell helplessly onto Logan’s mouth for a split second, before Xavier suddenly ducked out under his arm and started fussing about with the boiling water.
Logan took that as his cue to leave. He went back to the bedroom he and Xavier had been sharing and settled down on top of the rough blanket that smelt of sex and sweat.
Xavier didn’t come back all night.
...
Logan was back outside at sunrise, examining the truck. He was a fairly good mechanic, especially in situations where tools and parts weren’t exactly plentiful. That’s what you got when you picked up motor mechanics on the fly during a war. While he was picking tools out of the wreck of the barn he noticed Lehnsherr’s helmet still lying abandoned a good distance away on the ground. Obviously nobody had felt the need to come out and collect it.
After two hours of work with what few tools he’d been able to scrounge up, Logan finally got the truck going again. The harsh, guttural rumble of the crappy engine was like the sweetest music to his ears.
“You’re leaving?” a polite voice enquired from behind him. When Logan turned Xavier was standing a few feet away, watching with interest. He’d finally changed his clothes, although these new ones were obviously designed with someone much taller in mind. They also looked suspiciously like something Lehnsherr would wear. The bruise on his face was clearly fading now, and the pallid quality of his skin over the last couple of days was completely gone, leaving him flushed under the unforgiving Mexican sun.
“Yeah,” Logan said. “Thought I’d head south.”
Xavier looked awkwardly embarrassed. “Yes, sorry. I rather scuppered your plans to go north didn’t I?”
“Don’t matter,” Logan said, throwing an oil stained rag aside and letting the hood drop down. He leant back against it, enjoying the warmth of the metal under his back.
“He’s crazy ya know,” Logan said. “I mean it Xavier, something ain’t right in that guy’s head.”
Xavier smiled warmly and shrugged helplessly. “I know. I don’t care.”
Logan snorted and shook his head. “Ya took my advice then? Snuck a look inside his skull?”
“Yes,” Xavier confessed reluctantly. “And thank you.”
The knowledge that Xavier had looked inside Lehnsherr’s mind mollified Logan somewhat. If the guy was that badly fucked up, if he’d been planning on hurting Xavier, or pulling some other stupid shit, then surely Xavier would have seen it. At least Logan hoped like hell that was true, because by himself Xavier was too damn trusting to be believed. He needed someone to look out for him, someone paranoid and suspicious to make up for Xavier’s hopeless naivety.
“What will you do now?” Xavier enquired.
Logan would go through the usual motions. Find someone who needed some fighting done, and who had the cash to pay for it. Logan was the best at what he did - but what he did wasn’t very nice.
“This an’ that,” he grunted vaguely.
“My offer still stands,” Xavier said earnestly. “About the school. I’d like you to see it.”
“Yeah well, I don’t think your pal Erik would be too keen on that plan,” Logan retorted. “He’s going back with you, right?”
Xavier eyed him questioningly. “How do you know that?”
Logan snorted. “Jesus, after all this shit he’d better be comin’ back with you, Xavier.”
“Oh. Well, you’re right, he is. And Raven.” Xavier was unable to keep himself from grinning as he said so. “And I’m sure Erik wouldn’t mind if you came along as well.”
Logan would have bet a million dollars that not only would Erik mind the extreme, he’d probably try to dismember Logan once again. The thought occurred to him that, whatever they’d done last night, even if all Lehnsherr had seen was Charles changing his clothes, then he would definitely have seen the marks Logan had left behind. Even now Logan could still see evidence of them, a faint redness peeking out from under Xavier’s collar. A feeling of warm satisfaction curled in Logan’s belly. He wished like hell he’d been able to see Lehnsherr’s face when he saw ‘em.
“Don’t make me repeat myself Xavier,” he said. “I said no, and I meant it. I’m not a team player.”
“Well, if there’s no persuading you...”
“There isn’t.”
“... then I suppose this is goodbye.” Xavier held out his hand.
Tentatively Logan took the few necessary steps towards Xavier and accepted the proffered handshake. A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was Lehnsherr, who was leaning in the front doorway of the farmhouse, arms crossed and watching them intently.
Logan felt a dangerous impulse stir in his brain, and cheerfully gave into it. He used his grip on Charles’s hand to haul him in for a brief but fervent kiss. It only lasted a moment before Logan broke it, tilting his head back to stare into Xavier’s comically wide eyes.
“Don’t do anything too stupid,” he said simply with a smirk. He then let go of Charles’s hand and clambered up in one smooth movement into the driver’s seat of the truck. The engine was ticking over nicely for such an old piece of junk, a steady low rumble that grew into a thunder as Logan put his foot down hard on the gas.
The wheels kicked up a cloud of dust as he sped away from the farm. In the mirror he could see what looked like Xavier desperately trying to talk Lehnsherr out of crushing the truck into a pile of scrap with Logan still inside.
The wind felt glorious on Logan’s face from where it streamed in through the open window. There was a heavy, tangy quality to the air that cut through the dry heat, and that spoke of a storm coming. The open road was intoxicating in the way it always was when starting out on a fresh journey, a million miles away from the depressing monotony it inevitably would become a few weeks down the line.
There was indeed a busy road leading out of the little town situated a handful of miles from the farm. Logan was speeding down it as fast as the bucket of bolts he was driving could manage, when suddenly he was hit with a mental information dump that clocked him like a punch to the face.
Xavier’s school - the location. Not just the address, but a real, bone deep knowledge of just exactly where to find it, as though he’d been there a hundred times before. And a phone number, burning itself as permanently into his brain as his own damn name. The unexpected shock made Logan swerve the truck wildly, nearly taking out a couple of other people on the road before he pulled himself together.
Just in case, Xavier’s voice echoed inside his skull.
“You bastard,” Logan muttered under his breath, knuckles white where his hands were clutching at the steering wheel. What the hell would have been so damn hard about just telling Logan where to find the place, like a normal goddamn person? Fucking telepaths.
Still... maybe one day he’d be in New York State. And perhaps while he was there a little detour wouldn’t really be all that big of a deal. Just a quick visit, somewhere to get a hot meal and a decent bed - he wouldn’t be signing on to Xavier’s mutant girl-scout brigade or nothing. Just making sure the guy was alright, and that everything was going the way it should.
And of course, it would really, really piss off Lehnsherr.
A smirk spread its way across Logan’s face. He fished around in his pocket for a cigar. Just one left. He stuck it in his mouth and lit it.
He put his foot down hard on the accelerator. The storm-cloud filled horizon rushed up to meet him.
...
THE END