South of the Border: part one
Title: South of the Border
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Logan/Charles, Erik/Charles
Summary: Post-Divorce AU. Charles Xavier saves Logan from Emma Frost in Mexico. They have a lot of sex, and things get progressively more complicated.
Notes: Originally written for this prompt over on 1stclass_kink. Was just supposed to be a quick fill. Uh... this is no longer the case.
South of the Border
Logan was in trouble.
That wasn’t any different to normal. In many ways Logan’s default state was trouble - either embroiled in the middle of it, or the cause of someone else’s. This trouble though, this trouble was proving particularly... troublesome.
The blonde woman in white was hot as all hell, there was that much to be said for her. If you had to be someone’s puppet, Logan reasoned, then at least if they’ve got a spectacular rack you’ve got a nice view to admire while they pull your strings. But well endowed blonde bombshell or not, Logan still wanted out of this little arrangement she’d forced onto him. He was nobody’s toy.
He stood behind her, looming like a menacing bodyguard while she reclined comfortably in a luxuriant armchair. Opposite her, in the stuffy little Southern American office, sat a sweaty little man with beady, suspicious eyes. He openly leered at the woman in white - Frost people called her - as he reached over the desk to pass her a badly made martini.
“So... we have an arrangement?” he said.
Frost nodded slowly, a satisfied smirk playing about her mouth. “I believe we do. If you can meet my price of course.”
This was the third little meeting of this nature Logan had been to this week. Frost had picked him up in a rundown dive on the outskirts of Veracruz a month ago. Logan had been sat propping up the bar, minding his own damn business, when he’d suddenly found his legs walking him out the door and down the street. Frost had been waiting for him. She’d looked him up and down with a critical eye, then taken a small, nasty looking knife and cut him neatly on the bicep. Half a second later the cut had healed, a tiny smear of blood the only indication that it had ever been there.
“You’ll do,” she’d said.
He’d been following her around ever since, acting as a kind of henchman to intimidate the brutal drug runners of the Mexican underworld into taking this tiny, white skinned woman seriously. She let him off the strings occasionally, to eat, wash, take care of business, but was still always there, a constant, suffocating presence in the back of his head. Any attempts to get away or to slash her throat open had all ended with Logan blacking out. Eventually he’d stopped in favour of quietly biding his time, sitting on a slow burn of mounting fury. Woman was bound to slip up eventually.
Best he could tell she was playing a very clever game indeed, playing the drug lords off against each other like a pro. At the end of it Frost was going to waltz off with a merry shit-ton of cash, and the gangs were going to be at each other’s throats like a pack of starving wolves. Logan could have appreciated the beauty of it all, if it hadn’t involved quite so much of him being led around on a mental leash like a pet dog.
Frost and the drug baron continued hashing out terms over crappy martinis, while Logan stayed staring straight ahead, rooted unwillingly to the spot.
Hello?
The voice inside Logan’s head was quiet and subtle, the mental equivalent of a whisper. Like it was trying not to be noticed. Judging by the way Frost carried on seductively sipping at her martini, it had been successful.
He could feel another presence inside his head - much less obvious and infinitely more subtle than the all encompassing iron grip of Frost. But still, unquestionably a mind that wasn’t Logan’s own.
Well great, just goddamn perfect. Exactly what he needed, another mystery freeloader looking to set up shop inside his skull.
Not quite.
The unknown third presence suddenly surged forward, snapping with ease every connection and hold that Frost had formed into Logan’s mind. Suddenly his muscles were his to control again. With one quick thought his claws slid out from between his knuckles, the old familiar sting a blissful accompaniment to Logan’s rage.
Frost had jumped to her feet the moment her hold over Logan had been broken. He felt her try to grab control back, but something was blocking her, shielding Logan’s mind from her influence.
He snarled and started forward, intending to slit her throat.
No.
The world went black.
...
Logan woke slowly, and with a pounding headache.
He kept his eyes tightly shut against the pain, and let his nose do the work. A variety of smells suggested strongly that he was outside. The fact that he was lying on the ground, and the sun was beating down on his face did a lot to back this assumption up.
Logan’s nose told him that there was a man somewhere very close by. Logan pondered the likelihood of him being a serious threat. The odds didn’t really matter; in Logan’s book (a fairly short one with a lot of cursing) you always assumed a stranger was a threat. Or at least that they’d try to be - Logan didn’t have a real big problem with people staying any kind of threat for long.
Slowly he cracked his eyes open. Blazing sunlight immediately assaulted his eyeballs. Logan swore and rolled over, getting a nose full of dry dirt for his trouble.
“Oh, you’re awake,” said a voice. It had a fancy British accent.
Logan sat up and got a good long at his surroundings. He was sitting on the side of a rough track road that cut its way through the Mexican desert. At that very moment a truck went past, lurching all over the place on the uneven ground. Off in the distance was a small town. Despite the heat of the sun on Logan’s face it looked to be near sunset, or thereabouts.
The owner of the voice was sat on the ground a few feet away from Logan. He was dressed in the kind of casual, hard wearing clothes the desert demanded, but they looked completely foreign on him. His skin was pale and milky, flushed in the Mexican heat and unmarked by the elements. His hands looked like they’d never seen any labour more strenuous than holding a pen. He was skinny as well, slight shouldered, and if Logan was any judge on his feet he’d just about come up to Logan’s chin. In short, to Logan’s expert eye, he looked like a weakling.
Appearances can be deceiving.
That voice again, the one that had cut Frost’s puppet strings. The man sat on the roadside smiled faintly at him. There was something irritatingly familiar about his face.
“I believe I met you very, very briefly once before,” said the man. “At a bar in a town I confess I’ve forgotten the name of. I was with a friend. You told us to, and I quote, ‘go fuck yourselves’.”
It rang a vague bell.
“Yeah? Well who the hell are ya then?” Logan growled. He watched the stranger carefully, ready to lash out the moment he felt any intrusion into his mind, any attempt to take control.
“Charles Xavier,” said the man with another smile. He extended one hand out to Logan, who just stared pointedly at it until it was drawn back.
“That doesn’t really cover it pal,” Logan said. “You were inside my damn head. How?”
“I’m like you,” said Xavier. “A mutant. The same as the woman who was holding you captive.”
“She dead?”
“No.”
“Pity.”
Xavier was watching him closely. Logan tried to tell if he was poking around inside his head. He couldn’t feel anything. He had always been able to feel the presence of Frost when she’d been controlling him, but who knew what the hell this new guy could do.
“Mutant?” Logan asked eventually, voice dripping with undisguised suspicion.
“Someone with very... special abilities. Like telepathy,” Xavier tapped the side of his own head, then gestured to Logan. “Or a quite remarkable capacity for healing. You’re not alone Logan.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes.”
Logan shook his head and got to his feet. He needed sleep, a good cigar, and a drink - and not necessarily in that order. He stretched his arms out, savouring the pull of the muscles through his back as the tension drained out of them. Xavier’s eyes followed the motion briefly, before he suddenly ducked his head and looked away. Surprised, Logan took note.
“Well,” said Logan, “thanks for the pep talk and all, and saving my ass from the Ice Bitch, but you can...”
“Go fuck yourself again?” Xavier interrupted with a wry smile.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“That’s a shame. You’re a fascinating person Logan, your abilities are truly remarkable. But if you’re sure...” Xavier got to his feet, and sure enough he stood a full head shorter than Logan. “It was nice to meet you.”
And with that he turned and started walking away in the direction of the town.
Logan watched him go for a few moments, until it dawned on him that really the only place he could go himself was off in the same direction, towards the town. And the idea of trailing along behind Xavier the entire way made him feel ridiculous.
“Ahh fuck,” he muttered, then broke into a short run until he caught up.
“Just until we get to the town,” he growled when he drew level.
“Of course,” Xavier conceded mildly.
But when they reached the town Xavier turned to Logan and asked him straight out if he had any money on him. In truth Logan had none, what little cash he’d had on him he’d left behind when Frost had swooped away with him back in Veracruz.
“You can share my room with me,” said Xavier. “If you don’t mind.”
A dozen responses, most of them some variation on ‘fuck off’ hovered on the tip of Logan’s tongue. He didn’t need a stranger’s charity, especially a stranger that could read minds. There were plenty of ways to make money quick, even in a small bumfuck nowhere town like this. There was absolutely no reason for him to accept.
So later Logan could only guess that the reason he did accept was because of the way Charles Xavier had looked so ridiculously out of place and vulnerable, stood right in the middle of a rundown village in the heart of drug runner country.
He was kind of pretty, it dawned on Logan belatedly, the kind that got beat up and knifed the moment it wandered down the wrong street in a place like this. Which was a stupid thought to have - if Frost had taught Logan one thing it was that once you could get inside people’s heads, you could do pretty much whatever the fuck you wanted without fear.
Still...
“One night,” Logan muttered shortly.
...
The room Xavier was renting was situated at the back of the local taberna. Logan had never turned down a free beer in his life, so when Xavier offered him some money to go drinking at the bar he’d taken it with a begrudging mutter of thanks.
Some locals were playing a round of poker, and after getting his first beer Logan had just enough cash left to buy in. By the time the game ended the night was old and Logan had a tidy profit, even on top of the booze.
He bought a couple more beers and headed back to the room. Even though it was late Xavier was still awake, sitting up leaning against the headboard of the bed, reading a book with lots of fancy sciencey words in the title. His feet were bare, legs crossed primly at the ankles. He looked up, startled, as Logan entered.
Logan handed him one of the bottles of beer then reached into his pocket and threw some money down onto the bed. Xavier didn’t say anything, just raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“Poker,” said Logan simply.
That seemed to be sufficient explanation for Xavier, who put the money on the plain bedside table, then swung his legs over so he was sitting perched on the edge of the bed. Logan took it as an invitation, sitting down heavily next to him.
“You understand that crap?” Logan asked, nodding towards the book Xavier had been reading.
“Oh yes,” Xavier said, as if it were nothing. “It’s not a very good book though. The man’s an idiot.”
“So what, you’re some kind of brainiac?”
“I’m a doctor of genetics,” said Xavier shrugged, looking sheepish. “That’s all.”
Logan seriously doubted it was really a ‘that’s all’ kind of a deal. “So what is a fancy ‘doctor of genetics’ doing all the way out here in the ass-end-of-god-damn-nowhere, Mexico then? This your screwed up idea of a vacation or something?”
“I was looking for the woman who was holding you prisoner. Emma Frost.”
“Yeah? Why?”
Xavier gave him a disbelieving look. “You were in her... custody for nearly a month. Why do you think?”
Logan grunted. The man had a point.
Xavier twisted the bottle of beer round in his hands, then finally brought it to his mouth and took a drink. He pulled a face.
“So,” said Logan, gesturing round the room with his own beer. “What’s the arrangement gonna be here then?”
“Oh,” Xavier said, suddenly looking a little flushed. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ll sleep on the floor, you can have the bed.”
“Huh,” Logan grunted noncommittally. He gave Xavier a quick once over. The man’s shirt was slightly too big, making the thin wrists poking out from the cuffs appear all the more breakable. His hair and skin both looked soft and unsullied by harsh treatment. And his mouth... okay, Logan could admit the mouth was really something. It was a sinfully dark shade of red, looking perpetually as though it had just been abused in some fashion (Logan’s brain helpfully filled in all kinds of potential scenarios).
Altogether, Xavier was exactly the sort of... delicate kind of attractive that Logan normally had no time for. Men, women... he liked them tough, tall and lean, marked by the world and all the more desirable for it. But there was something about Xavier, fuck knew what, but Logan still found him reasonably desirable despite him appearing, on the surface at least, to be nothing more than a irritatingly naive bleeding heart. A real pretty one sure, but nevertheless.
Logan raised his eyebrows at Xavier’s offer of sleeping on the floor and countered with: “Something wrong with the idea of sharin’ a bed with me?”
“No, I just...”
“Seems plenty big enough for the both of us, unless you got a problem?”
“No,” said Xavier. “No problem. We’ll share.” He looked a little flustered, awkwardly fiddling with the bottle in his hands.
“Great,” said Logan, finishing off the last of his beer and discarding the bottle on the floor. Then, in one quick fluid movement, he pulled his shirt off over his head, leaving him in a white vest that had seen cleaner days. “Cause I’m beat,” he concluded, rolling his shoulders one by one to work out the kinks.
He glanced over at Xavier who instantly looked away and began intensely studying the label on his beer, although there was a telltale hint of pink on his cheeks. Logan took a long deep breath through his nose; letting the smell of Xavier wash over him. He smelt of the desert, the beer he’d taken a single mouthful of, and - unmistakably - the heady scent of sexual interest. Logan allowed himself a little smirk.
Xavier got to his feet and crossed over to the little window, abandoning his barely touched drink on the bedside table. With a bit of effort he levered it open, letting the cool night’s air into the stuffy little bedroom, before carefully pulling the shutters closed in order to keep the bugs out. While he was busy Logan took the opportunity to rise and cross the room silently, stalking across it until he was stood just inches behind Xavier.
Xavier’s eyes went wide when he turned to find Logan stood just inches away from him, and he tried to step back, but only succeeded in pressing himself up against the window shutter. Logan crowded in a little closer.
He felt the faintest push at his mind, and it dawned on him that, just as he could smell Xavier’s interest on him, Xavier in turn had his own, much more efficient methods of gauging Logan’s own intentions.
“Oh,” Xavier said simply.
That was all the encouragement Logan needed. He braced his hands firmly on each side of the window frame and leant down to kiss Xavier.
In retrospect, Logan didn’t know what exactly he’d been expecting. Maybe for Xavier to try and protest, to insist that he’d only just met Logan, in general act like some kind of scandalized virgin. Maybe that he’d need to be coaxed into it slowly, or treated a little roughly to get him into the swing of things. Or perhaps instead that he’d be every inch as sweet and submissive as that soft skin and those wide eyes implied.
Whatever Logan had been expecting, he’d been surprised as hell when Xavier had muttered ‘to hell with it’, and had surged up against Logan and kissed him back with an astounding degree of ferocity. His hands wasted absolutely no time in sliding their way up Logan’s torso, until Xavier’s arms were firmly around Logan’s neck. He then used that leverage to haul himself up a couple of inches, changing the angle of their messy, hot, fucking amazing kiss to a slightly better one. Logan was helpless to do anything other than wrap his arms tightly around Xavier’s waist and hold him firmly in place.
For a skinny pushover he felt obscenely good in Logan’s arms. It had been a long month in Emma Frost’s ‘employment’, with no opportunity for release. The press of a warm, squirming body against Logan’s was sending blood rocketing to parts of his body that had been far too long neglected.
They stumbled over to the bed. Xavier’s hands seemed to be everywhere at once, nimble, clever fingers dancing all over Logan’s burning skin. He was moaning quietly in the back of his throat, just the faintest vibration - probably a normal person wouldn’t even hear it at all, but Logan did, and the sound did something that bypassed his brain altogether and went straight to his dick.
It was laughably easy to pick Xavier up and dump him unceremoniously on the bed. He lay there sprawled, propping himself up on his elbows to look at Logan. His skin was flushed, his chest rising and falling quickly as he caught his breath, and the already red mouth was now a truly obscene shade, swollen and wet.
Logan must have spent too long staring, because suddenly Xavier sat up properly and reached out to brush one hand lightly over Logan’s vest, before deftly manoeuvring it up under the hem so his palm was pressed directly over Logan’s stomach. Slowly the hand trailed down until it grasped the buckle of Logan’s belt.
Xavier offered him a dirty grin.
“Excuse me, but are we having sex or not?” he asked, still in that soft, prim little tone he used.
Logan growled low and moved forward, half bearing down on Xavier and half being pulled by the hand still firmly gripping his belt. They definitely, definitely were.
...
Logan woke up with the dawn like he always did. He felt sated and satisfied, and allowed himself an indulgent few moments just lying there on the uncomfortable bed, enjoying the silence.
Xavier was out like a light next to him, turned so his back was to Logan. From this angle Logan could just about see the angry red patches on his neck, each a memento of the night before. Truth be told, if it weren’t for his healing factor, Logan would have some interesting little marks of his own this morning. Xavier’s behaviour in bed had been a surprise, to say the least. Exactly the kind of surprise Logan liked.
It didn’t take long for Logan to get his clothes together and dress, moving silently so as not to wake the occupant of the bed. He took some of his poker winnings and pocketed them, making sure he’d still left Xavier all the money he’d lent him and a little more.
His hand was on the door handle when a voice spoke up behind him.
“Well, bye then.”
Logan looked back over his shoulder. Xavier was sat up in bed, sheets pooled around his waist. He was watching Logan carefully, expression blank.
“Yeah,” Logan mumbled gruffly. He’d wanted to get away without having to talk, but now that Xavier was awake he felt as though he should say something to the man. “Look... thanks and all. For gettin’ me free of Frost. And putting up the room and...” He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling awkward.
Xavier grinned. “I don’t think you should be thanking me for that. It wasn’t exactly a chore.”
Logan chuckled as memories from the previous night danced across his inner eye. It was hard to believe that the man who just last night was cursing and moaning like a two dollar whore was the same person that was in front of him now.
They stayed there staring at each other for a long moment. Logan kept his hand on the door, ready to walk out as soon as Xavier looked away.
“Where will you go?” Xavier asked with what seemed to be genuine curiosity.
Logan shrugged. “Don’t know. Wherever I can hitch a lift to. Maybe head down south. Maybe up north, back to the States.”
“You don’t plan ahead?”
“I strike ya as the planning type?”
Xavier laughed, then immediately yawned loudly. He dropped his eyes from Logan, rubbing at them with the heel of his hand. Logan took the opportunity to quietly open the door and slip out of the room.
“You could always come with me for a bit...” Logan was in the passageway outside, about to close the door, when Xavier spoke again. He hesitated. Instinct told him to leave, to just shut the door and head out of town on the first truck prepared to take a hitchhiker. Other people were a weakness, they held you up. They got you trouble.
Telling instinct to go fuck itself for a moment, Logan turned slowly and stepped back into the doorway.
“Where you headed?” he asked cautiously.
“Back to the US,” said Xavier. “Across the border. I wouldn’t mind the company.”
Logan watched him carefully for a moment, especially the open, trusting expression, the kind of casual friendliness that Logan hadn’t seen in a long while. It should have put him off, all that trusting naivety. Usually he poured scorn on people like Charles Xavier - when he gave them any consideration at all. He should just turn his boots right now and get the hell out of dodge.
“Just for a while,” he found himself saying instead.
...
They caught a lift on the back of a truck that was heading out of town in the right general direction. Logan had been getting ready to talk in his patchy Spanish to the fat, moody looking bastard who’d been leaning against the driver’s door, when Xavier had stepped forward instead and starting chatting away fluently. The guy still hadn’t been keen, snapping back at Xavier with some choice words that Logan definitely knew and didn’t like hearing. He’d been planning to haul off and punch the guy right in his ugly face when Xavier had lifted the fingers of one hand briefly to his temple, and suddenly the fat man had been all sunshine and roses, offering to take them as far as he could.
“You know the lingo?” Logan asked Xavier as the truck lurched its way across the dirt road leading out of town. The noise of the engine and the sounds of the truck hitting rocks and potholes meant that he had to bend down real close to Xavier’s ear to make himself heard.
“Yes! Well, sort of.” Xavier shouted back. “I...” he trailed off.
I cheat, said Xavier’s voice inside Logan’s head. I take the language from inside their heads, whatever phrase I want to use, I look inside their minds to see what it is. After a few days of absorbing a language, I’m pretty good.
You inside everyone’s head all the time then? Logan ‘asked’ back. He’d had a couple of these mental conversations with Frost before, although it had largely consisted of him thinking as much nasty shit at her as he could while she sneered.
“No,” said Xavier, speaking out loud and craning his head up so he could talk straight into Logan’s ear. “Only surface thoughts without permission. Unless... “
“Unless someone’s bein’ a bit of a shit about giving you a lift?” Logan retorted, raising a sceptical eyebrow.
Xavier grinned and ducked his head.
Alright, sometimes it’s useful to delve a little deeper into someone’s mind. But there are limits. There are some things I could do, but I never would...I won’t read yours now if that’s what you’re worried about, not on purpose.
Right then the truck drove straight over a particularly deep pothole, and both Logan and Xavier had to grab onto the rusted railings around the truck bed to avoid being thrown out altogether. It put an end to the conversation, even the telepathic one. It also had the added effect of sending Xavier sliding up even closer to Logan, so they were pressed side to side.
Truth was, sitting here so close to the man was seriously testing Logan’s self control. They’d left the taberna in a bit of a hurry, no time to wash, and even if they had it wouldn’t have been anything more than a damp cloth hastily drawn over skin. And the fact was that Xavier absolutely stank of Logan. He could smell his own scent all over the man, mixed up completely with Xavier’s own smell, and the lingering tang of sex just detectable underneath both. It was doing strange things to Logan, including filling him up with a sort of possessive satisfaction. He berated himself viciously for it, he’d met the guy yesterday, fucked him once, and he was not an animal to be driven by stupid crap like this.
He hoped Xavier had been telling the truth when he’d said he wouldn’t read Logan’s mind.
...
Logan had known he was unusual for a long, long time. It’s hard to ignore the fact that most people don’t recover instantly from wounds that should be fatal, that they can get sick, and that they don’t have claws of bone that shoot from their hands. Logan was different, and he’d lived long enough to know that in this world being different was not something that it paid to advertise.
By the next night they’d made it to Culiacan. The latest truck driver that Xavier had ‘encouraged’ to give them a lift dropped them on the outskirts just as the orange sun was dropping below the horizon.
They walked through the still crowded streets, as Xavier chattered onto Logan about mutation. Logan felt that it probably should have meant something to him, knowing that he wasn’t the only freak show in the world. But instead he felt a certain unease, knowing there were powerful people out there who could do all sorts of weird, dangerous shit. How many were like Xavier, and how many were like Frost? Besides, Xavier’s mutation and Logan’s were a million miles apart - they weren’t really the same at all, whatever Xavier might think. Logan would never be able to look directly into someone’s deepest, darkest secrets, or make them dance to his tune whether they wanted to or not. And Xavier would always be appallingly vulnerable to things as petty as a car accident or a badly timed illness.
Still, Xavier was nauseatingly enthusiastic about the idea of banding a bunch of random strangers together because of some accident of genetics. He happily waxed lyrical on the subject as they walked down the back alleys and side streets of Culiacan, searching for a place to bed down for the night. He should have stuck out like a sore thumb, and Logan had been expecting to have to fend off some unwanted malicious attention. But instead the gazes of the locals seemed to slip off Xavier as if he were almost invisible, and they moved through the streets unimpeded.
They got a room at a seedy motel style establishment of the kind that you could rent from by the hour. Then they went back out and grabbed some food from a street vendor in one of the busier parts of town. Logan didn’t recognise it, but it was hot and tasted good. He also picked up a small bottle of tequila and some cheap cigars from a woman trading on the same street.
Hunger sated, he and Xavier wandered aimlessly for a while. Xavier’s desire to discuss mutation and the future of mutant kind seemed to have abated, and now he was content to simply absorb the atmosphere of the city. He took in everything, apparently insatiably curious, poking his nose in all sorts of places, protected by his powers as time and time again the locals looked straight through him and Logan both as if they weren’t even there.
Finally they wound up in a quiet part of town where some abandoned buildings met a patch of rough wasteland. Some kids were running about shouting, playing some game a little way away, but apart from that they were alone.
Logan sat down on top of a short, half crumbling wall and pulled a cigar out of the packet he’d purchased earlier. He’d swiped a matchbook from the motel earlier, and now used it to light up. The rich smoke filled his lungs. Christ he’d missed it.
Xavier sat next to him, head tilted up to look at the stars. They sat in silence until Logan’s cigar had burnt right down, and he’d put it out with the sole of his boot. Then he pulled out the small tequila bottle and took a swig, before offering it to Xavier.
Xavier took it, but instead of drinking any he just held the bottle to his nose and took a tentative sniff.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Tequila. You never had any?”
“No,” Xavier said, trying to hand the bottle back to Logan. Logan didn’t take it.
“Didn’t seem too keen on that beer last night either,” Logan pointed out. “You teetotal or somethin’?”
Xavier snorted with laughter, like that was the most ridiculous suggestion he’d ever heard. “No. I’m really not.”
“Just a lightweight then?” Logan said, raising a sceptical eyebrow, fighting down the urge to smile as Xavier’s face turned into a picture of perfect righteous indignation.
Pointedly Xavier drew the bottle back and took a generous mouthful. Logan had expected him to choke on the stuff - especially if he’d never had tequila before. If the event he did pull a face, but promptly swallowed the lot without incident.
“I’m impressed,” Logan said, taking the drink back from Xavier. “Prim and proper guy like you, I thought you’d spit it back out.”
“I had an acquaintance at university who loved absinthe,” Xavier replied. “Always used to make me drink endless amounts of the stuff with him. After that anything short of antifreeze is fine.”
Logan laughed and had some more tequila.
“Can you even get drunk?” Xavier asked curiously, watching Logan knocking t back.
“A little,” Logan confessed. “If I keep it up I can get a buzz, but it fades real quick.”
“What about other drugs?”
Logan went to answer, then a better idea struck him. He handed the bottle back to Xavier.
“Tell ya what,” he said. “You want to ask me questions? Fine. But ya gotta pay for ‘em. A shot of that for every answer.”
Xavier raised his eyebrows. “Oh really? You realise I could just take the answers straight from your head?”
“Nah, ya won’t. You promised, and you’re the sort that takes shit like that seriously.”
Xavier didn’t reply, although he did look vaguely irritated at Logan’s (perfectly correct) assessment of him. Finally, with a long suffering sigh, he capitulated and took a drink of the tequila.
“Alright,” he said after swallowing. “There’s your payment. Now where’s my answer?”
Logan grinned, enjoying his little victory and got out another cigar to smoke. “I’ve had people try to knock me out before, chloroform and stuff like that. Doesn’t take. Feel a bit woozy for a few seconds, then it just goes away. Anaesthetics are the same. Been poisoned before. One asshole slipped me enough arsenic to drop an elephant. I just felt like shit for a minute or two.”
“Does it always hurt? When you’re injured I mean.”
Logan didn’t reply, just stared in pointed silence until Xavier huffed in exasperation and had some more tequila.
“Every time,” Logan told him afterwards.
“What was the worst?”
He was staring at Logan with such unabashed inquisitiveness that Logan decided to let him off the tequila payment for this one. “Taken a gunshot to the knee, that was bad. Fell from a ten story building, walked that off but it hurt like seven hells. I drowned once. Or, I guess I didn’t drown, still here ain’t I, but I couldn’t breathe for a long while there. Felt like my lungs were on fire, and every second was a damn eternity. Weren’t the most painful, but it was the worst.”
Xavier’s expression went soft, and he shuffled closer to Logan so he could wrap a comforting hand over Logan’s wrist. To his own surprise, Logan let him.
“I’m sorry, that sounds awful.”
Up close like this, Logan could mostly smell tequila, but hidden underneath that, faded somewhat, was the same intermingled scent that had so badly tested his self-control earlier. Surreptitiously he glanced around. The kids who had been playing nearby were gone now, leaving them completely alone.
He leaned in a little closer to Xavier, so their faces were only a couple of inches or so apart. Their eyes locked briefly, then Xavier was leaning in himself, eyes flickering closed. Logan moved forward, tilting his head slightly...
Suddenly Xavier hiccupped loudly.
Logan’s eyes flew open and he and Xavier stared at each other for a brief moment, and then Xavier suddenly burst out laughing. Unable to help himself, Logan joined in.
“Sorry,” said Xavier, fighting through both laughter and repeated hiccups to speak. “It’s that damn tequila.”
Logan couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like this, with real enjoyment. He let himself savour it, the honest amusement that was increasingly rare in his life. He was still snickering away when suddenly he found himself with a lapful of a flushed Charles Xavier, who’d somehow managed to overcome his unexpected bout of the hiccups.
“Oh stop it, it wasn’t that funny.” Xavier insisted, grinning and looking faintly embarrassed. He wrapped his arms loosely around Logan’s neck.
“Make me,” Logan challenged.
Rolling his eyes good naturedly, Xavier leaned in. This time there were no hiccups to get in the way.
...
An hour or so later they were back at the grubby motel, curled up in the sheets of one of the twin beds. Logan was dozing, enjoying the sensation of sweat cooling on his skin even in the muggy heat, when Xavier rolled over and suddenly loomed over him.
Logan tried to ignore him, steadfastly keeping his eyes shut. But Xavier didn’t budge, and eventually Logan gave in and begrudgingly cracked an eye open.
“What?” he muttered warily.
Xavier was propped up on his elbows, looking down at him with a scrutinizing expression. His hair was a wild mess, and Logan vividly recalled grabbing a handful of it, using it to force Xavier to bare his throat during their earlier exertions.
“You’ve led a very interesting life,” Xavier said eventually. “Those things you were telling me about earlier. Drowning. Being poisoned. Falling from a ten story building. Hardly a sedate existence.”
Logan shrugged. “So what? I attract trouble. You’re here ain’t ya?”
“That’s a lot of trouble for someone your age.”
Xavier leaned down closer, gaze suddenly disturbingly shrewd and piercing. It would have been a little more intimidating if he hadn’t also looked so thoroughly well fucked.
“Exactly how old are you Logan?”
Logan closed his eyes against the swell of memories rising up against him, memories usually kept safely locked away. He rolled over onto his side, pointedly turning his back to Xavier. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Xavier reached out and put a warm hand on Logan’s back. “I just...”
“I said, I don’t want to talk about it. Some part of that you don’t understand bub?” Logan growled.
He felt the heavy thump as Xavier fell back onto the bed beside him. They didn’t speak again that night.
...
After that, Logan had been planning to pull a vanishing act the next morning. He still had no idea what had possessed him to trail after Xavier even this far, and if the man was going to start trying to play twenty questions at every opportunity then Logan wasn’t going to stick around to hear it.
He woke up, and was just about to get out of bed when Xavier rolled on top of him and muttered, “I promise, no more questions,” into the crook of Logan’s neck while his hand wandered down Logan’s torso on its way to more interesting places.
Logan wound up staying.
...
It took them two more days to make it to the border. Logan didn’t have a passport or any proper papers, and had wanted to head out to a remote spot and get across there. But Xavier had insisted it was unnecessary, and had got them on a bus heading to Albuquerque. Sure enough, when they got to the border checkpoint, Xavier had simply touched his fingers to his head in that odd little gesture of his, and any problems had simply melted away.
He’d kept his promise about not asking any more questions, and had instead started talking about his school. Despite himself, Logan found it quite interesting -a testament either to Xavier’s relentless enthusiasm for the topic, or the mind numbing boredom of the bus journey.
“You run this place by yourself?” Logan asked him during a moment in which Xavier had paused for breath.
Xavier shook his head and went to speak before abruptly hesitating. He looked a little lost for a second, but then pulled himself together and turned to look Logan straight in the eye, the awkward moment passing as though it had never happened.
“Yes, although, truth be told, most of the students are themselves more or less adults, they do a great deal for the school. And of course there aren’t that many of us yet. But soon there will be.”
“Sure got high hopes haven’t ya?” Logan replied, cynicism creeping in.
“Imagine how many children there are out there who are mutants, and who believe that they are completely alone,” Xavier said, eyes lighting up with a kind of steely determination and focus that Logan hadn’t seen on him before, gesturing with his hands to emphasise his words. “Convinced there’s something wrong with them, very possibly shunned by their parents, their friends, made to feel unnatural. Probably terrified of their own gifts. They need... they deserve somewhere they can go where they will belong. Where being a mutant is normal, and where they can learn to control their powers, not fear them. So yes, I suppose I do have high hopes. But not without justification.”
Xavier held Logan’s gaze for a few moments, letting his words sink in, before ducking his head and looking out the window at the passing scenery. A few people on the bus were openly staring at them, attention drawn by Xavier’s unexpected miniature rant on the subject of mutant rights. But in the next moment their gazes went glassy and they turned away, the entire incident simply forgotten.
“Hey,” Logan grunted, uncharacteristically compelled to fill the uncomfortable pause. “Look, I think it’s crazy what you’re trying to do. Doesn’t mean I don’t think you can do it.”
Xavier didn’t say anything, but did turn away from the window to look back at Logan, a soft little smile playing about his mouth. He shuffled a little closer to Logan on the seat they were sharing, so their arms and thighs down one side were pressed together, then closed his eyes and relaxed, letting the hot midday sun streaming in through the bus window warm his face. Logan watched him for a few moments, a disconcerting warm feeling pooling gently in his chest.
...
When they arrived at Albuquerque Xavier didn’t even question whether or not Logan would be sticking with him now they were in a US city. Instead he just squeezed a hand round Logan’s wrist for a brief second as they got off the bus and then walked away into town, apparently just taking for granted that Logan would follow.
Logan did follow, but that wasn’t the point.
“I’m tired of places that come complete with roaches climbing the walls, how about you?” Xavier asked as they strolled through the city streets.
Xavier took them right into the centre of the city and a hotel that was by far the fanciest Logan had ever been into. Xavier’s two fingers brushed his temple, and once again all problems melted away. The guy behind the reception didn’t bat an eyelash at the two men who both looked as though they’d been dragged ass backwards through the desert, nor did he hesitate in giving them a room with only one bed.
It wasn’t like they had a lot of stuff to drop off, nothing at all in Logan’s case and just a small battered rucksack for Xavier, so after purchasing the room they went right back out.
“We’ll meet back here,” Xavier said, before vanishing off into the crowd. Logan felt vaguely, annoyingly troubled watching him go, aimlessly wandering off alone into a strange city. Berating himself for it, and reminding himself once again that a telepath was never going to be in a hell of a lot of danger from anyone, Logan slunk away.
He found a place to change his pesos into dollars, and quickly bought himself some new clothes - more or less a repeat of his old clothes but much cleaner and less torn up. Then like a magnet he found himself gravitating to some of the shadier bars in the less wholesome parts of town.
Logan wound up spending the afternoon playing La Viuda poker in a nameless dive holed up away down a back alley. He lost a few games - mostly on purpose, winning too much was never a smart move - but all in all he made himself some decent money. He cleaned one guy right out, a big man with a nasty, weasel-like little face and a big mouth he couldn’t shut. Logan disliked him instantly - he even smelled like a bastard - and had enjoyed taking the asshole for every damn cent.
Night was drawing on when Logan left. Just as he shut the door behind him he heard it fly open again and footsteps approaching fast.
“Hey asshole!” someone yelled, and sudden unexpected pain bloomed bright in Logan’s shoulder. Weasel-face was behind him, eyes glazed with too much drink and mouth twisted up in a vicious grin. A flash of his claws and Logan had the bastard bleeding out on the alley floor.
Turned out the pain in Logan’s shoulder was coming from a knife sticking out of it. He yanked it out as quickly as he could from the awkward angle, and the pain quickly receded as the wound healed and swiftly faded to nothing. He tossed the blade down next to the body of Weasel-face.
It took maybe half an hour to make it back to the hotel. Figuring that without Xavier’s particular brand of people-skills, there was no way he was going to make it through reception with a bloody shirt and not attract attention, Logan snuck in the back way through a fire escape. It didn’t take long to find the right room.
Xavier was sat on the bed, reading the science book again. Like Logan he’d gone out and bought new clothes. Unlike Logan, his were not virtual carbon copies of the ones he’d had on before. He was now dressed smartly, in black pants and a dress shirt. Whereas Xavier’s old clothes had looked foreign and out of place on him, he looked perfectly at ease and natural in the new ones.
He smiled at Logan as he entered, swinging his legs off the bed and padding over on bare feet. He only made it a couple of steps before he noticed the bloodstain.
“What happened?” Xavier exclaimed, immediately fussing over the tear in Logan’s shirt from where the knife had sunk into his shoulder. His fingertips brushed over the skin where the wound had been.
“Some dick took offence to me,” Logan muttered, shrugging Xavier off. The man wasn’t deterred, and ducked around Logan’s back for a better look.
“There’s not even a mark,” he said, sounding fascinated. He reached out and touched the torn shirt again. Irritated, Logan span round, grabbed his wrist and glared, but this didn’t seem to bother Xavier who just stared back up at him blankly. This close it dawned on Logan that Xavier had washed as well as changing his clothes, and now just smelt of soap and clean linen - and not at all of Logan.
“Sorry,” Logan forced out, unwinding his fingers from around Xavier’s wrist. The soapy smell was bothering him intensely.
“Don’t worry about...” was all Xavier managed to get out before Logan’s arm was encircling his waist, palm sliding along the smooth, thin fabric of the new (stupidly expensive) shirt. He drew him in and kissed him with all the fervour he could muster. To his credit, Xavier got with the programme pretty quickly, his teeth scraping gently against Logan’s bottom lip and his fingers slipping just below the waistband of Logan’s jeans.
It was little effort for Logan to stoop at the knees slightly, just enough to get one arm locked behind Xavier’s upper thighs and then straighten up, hauling Xavier up until the man was helpless to do anything other than just wrap his legs around Logan’s waist and go with it.
They fell messily onto the bed together, Xavier pushing Logan over until he was lying flat on his back, then rolling on top of him.
After a few heated minutes Xavier braced his arms on either side of Logan’s head and pushed himself up so he could look Logan in the eye, hair wildly askew and previously beautifully neat shirt rumpled and pulled at possibly beyond repair.
“Let me try something...” he said breathily, before leaning down towards Logan so their foreheads were briefly touched together.
At first it didn’t feel like anything had happened. They each swiftly rid themselves of their clothes, Logan taking great delight in manhandling Xavier’s new, fancy get-up off him. And then it became suddenly, unbelievably, fucking amazingly clear what Xavier had done. Every touch, every scrap of satisfaction and every perfect little sensation were all echoed back along a mental link, until Logan felt like he was drowning under a torrent of sheer overwhelming physicality. He was barely aware of where he ended and Xavier began, just that someone needed more there, that they should move together like that now, and that was absolutely incredible, do that again...
Afterwards it took Logan quite a long time to recover. When the world came back into focus he was lying on his back, sweat cooling on his skin, feeling boneless and completely spent.
Slowly, and with an embarrassing amount of effort, he rolled over onto his side. Xavier was lying on his front, face pressed into a pillow and looking for all the world like he was asleep. His breathing was too deep for that though, and occasionally he’d groan a little and shift uncomfortably.
There was sweat still clustered in the dip between his shoulder blades, and Logan reached out idly to run his fingers through it, and then down the curve of Xavier’s spine. The soapy smell was gone he was satisfied to note, and once again Xavier smelt primarily of sweat, sex and Logan.
When Logan’s hand reached the small of Xavier’s back he pressed the palm of his hand flat to the skin, enjoying the sensation of the burning body heat beneath his hand. That was how he noticed the slight imperfection in the otherwise smooth skin. Curious he pushed himself up onto his elbows to get a better look.
There was a scar in the small of Xavier’s back, tiny but nasty looking, the skin raised and uneven. It was just to the right of his spine, only an inch or so away. Logan ran his fingers over it carefully, tracing the jagged lines of the scarring.
“What’re you doing?” Xavier mumbled, finally opening his eyes.
“Where’d you get this?” Logan asked bluntly, running his fingers over the mark again. Xavier immediately rolled over onto his back, hiding the scar from sight.
“Accident,” he said simply.
“Looks nasty,” Logan said. He wasn’t an idiot - he knew a damn bullet wound when he saw one.
“It was.”
Logan waited for more information, but it never came. Instead Xavier hauled himself up so he was sitting with his back leant against the headboard. He made a displeased face and absently wiped with his hand at some of the sticky white fluid that was smeared down his inner thigh. Then he turned to watch Logan carefully.
“I’d like you to come with me back to New York,” he said simply, like he was proposing they have eggs for breakfast or something.
Logan grunted, pulling himself upright and standing up. He stretched, savouring his loose limbs and the faint, pleasant burn in his muscles.
“I told ya, I’m not interested in your super secret mutant treehouse club.”
Xavier gave him a pointed look that Logan ignored, stepping away into the bathroom and grabbing a towel which he dampened slightly under the tap. He threw it at Xavier when he returned, then sank awkwardly under the covers. He was ill at ease among the fancy bed sheets, and wished instead for the familiarity of a plain rough blanket and crappy thin mattress. But leftover gratification from earlier activities, and the presence of Xavier fussing about with the towel next to him, soothed the unease away somewhat, and he soon found himself dozing.
At least until Xavier kicked him lightly in the side to get his attention. “It would do you some good I think, to see that you’re not alone,” he said.
Logan just grunted noncommittally.
“You aren’t alone Logan.”
“You readin’ my mind?”
“No.” The leg attached to the foot that had kicked Logan now slung itself over Logan’s calf as Xavier slumped down into the bed sheets. There was blissful silence for a couple of minutes before he spoke up again. Logan just about resisted the urge to growl with irritation.
“At the very least if you know where the school is then you can give the location to any other mutants you meet on your travels. Mutants that might need somewhere they can go, who could do with our help. And if you ever need assistance... for any reason, well then you’d know somewhere you could go.”
“Okay,” Logan conceded moodily. “Why don’t you just tell me where this goddamn place of yours is then?”
“Why don’t you just come with me and see it for yourself?”
“No,” Logan snapped. “Get it through your head Xavier, I ain’t a team player, and I ain’t interested in your fancy mutant pow-wow either.”
Xavier watched him with an irritatingly inscrutable expression for a few moments. “Of course,” he said eventually, smiling gently and nodding. “It’s your decision, naturally.” The leg thrown over Logan’s withdrew, and Xavier got off the bed. “A bath I think,” he said.
Afterwards Logan leant out the hotel window for a while, smoking a cigar and letting the noise and smell of the city wash over him. When Xavier was finished bathing he got into bed without a word, turning the little bedside lamp off and plunging the room into shadowy darkness. Logan stayed at the window for a while longer, but did eventually join Xavier between the cool sheets.
part two
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Pairing: Logan/Charles, Erik/Charles
Summary: Post-Divorce AU. Charles Xavier saves Logan from Emma Frost in Mexico. They have a lot of sex, and things get progressively more complicated.
Notes: Originally written for this prompt over on 1stclass_kink. Was just supposed to be a quick fill. Uh... this is no longer the case.
South of the Border
Logan was in trouble.
That wasn’t any different to normal. In many ways Logan’s default state was trouble - either embroiled in the middle of it, or the cause of someone else’s. This trouble though, this trouble was proving particularly... troublesome.
The blonde woman in white was hot as all hell, there was that much to be said for her. If you had to be someone’s puppet, Logan reasoned, then at least if they’ve got a spectacular rack you’ve got a nice view to admire while they pull your strings. But well endowed blonde bombshell or not, Logan still wanted out of this little arrangement she’d forced onto him. He was nobody’s toy.
He stood behind her, looming like a menacing bodyguard while she reclined comfortably in a luxuriant armchair. Opposite her, in the stuffy little Southern American office, sat a sweaty little man with beady, suspicious eyes. He openly leered at the woman in white - Frost people called her - as he reached over the desk to pass her a badly made martini.
“So... we have an arrangement?” he said.
Frost nodded slowly, a satisfied smirk playing about her mouth. “I believe we do. If you can meet my price of course.”
This was the third little meeting of this nature Logan had been to this week. Frost had picked him up in a rundown dive on the outskirts of Veracruz a month ago. Logan had been sat propping up the bar, minding his own damn business, when he’d suddenly found his legs walking him out the door and down the street. Frost had been waiting for him. She’d looked him up and down with a critical eye, then taken a small, nasty looking knife and cut him neatly on the bicep. Half a second later the cut had healed, a tiny smear of blood the only indication that it had ever been there.
“You’ll do,” she’d said.
He’d been following her around ever since, acting as a kind of henchman to intimidate the brutal drug runners of the Mexican underworld into taking this tiny, white skinned woman seriously. She let him off the strings occasionally, to eat, wash, take care of business, but was still always there, a constant, suffocating presence in the back of his head. Any attempts to get away or to slash her throat open had all ended with Logan blacking out. Eventually he’d stopped in favour of quietly biding his time, sitting on a slow burn of mounting fury. Woman was bound to slip up eventually.
Best he could tell she was playing a very clever game indeed, playing the drug lords off against each other like a pro. At the end of it Frost was going to waltz off with a merry shit-ton of cash, and the gangs were going to be at each other’s throats like a pack of starving wolves. Logan could have appreciated the beauty of it all, if it hadn’t involved quite so much of him being led around on a mental leash like a pet dog.
Frost and the drug baron continued hashing out terms over crappy martinis, while Logan stayed staring straight ahead, rooted unwillingly to the spot.
Hello?
The voice inside Logan’s head was quiet and subtle, the mental equivalent of a whisper. Like it was trying not to be noticed. Judging by the way Frost carried on seductively sipping at her martini, it had been successful.
He could feel another presence inside his head - much less obvious and infinitely more subtle than the all encompassing iron grip of Frost. But still, unquestionably a mind that wasn’t Logan’s own.
Well great, just goddamn perfect. Exactly what he needed, another mystery freeloader looking to set up shop inside his skull.
Not quite.
The unknown third presence suddenly surged forward, snapping with ease every connection and hold that Frost had formed into Logan’s mind. Suddenly his muscles were his to control again. With one quick thought his claws slid out from between his knuckles, the old familiar sting a blissful accompaniment to Logan’s rage.
Frost had jumped to her feet the moment her hold over Logan had been broken. He felt her try to grab control back, but something was blocking her, shielding Logan’s mind from her influence.
He snarled and started forward, intending to slit her throat.
No.
The world went black.
...
Logan woke slowly, and with a pounding headache.
He kept his eyes tightly shut against the pain, and let his nose do the work. A variety of smells suggested strongly that he was outside. The fact that he was lying on the ground, and the sun was beating down on his face did a lot to back this assumption up.
Logan’s nose told him that there was a man somewhere very close by. Logan pondered the likelihood of him being a serious threat. The odds didn’t really matter; in Logan’s book (a fairly short one with a lot of cursing) you always assumed a stranger was a threat. Or at least that they’d try to be - Logan didn’t have a real big problem with people staying any kind of threat for long.
Slowly he cracked his eyes open. Blazing sunlight immediately assaulted his eyeballs. Logan swore and rolled over, getting a nose full of dry dirt for his trouble.
“Oh, you’re awake,” said a voice. It had a fancy British accent.
Logan sat up and got a good long at his surroundings. He was sitting on the side of a rough track road that cut its way through the Mexican desert. At that very moment a truck went past, lurching all over the place on the uneven ground. Off in the distance was a small town. Despite the heat of the sun on Logan’s face it looked to be near sunset, or thereabouts.
The owner of the voice was sat on the ground a few feet away from Logan. He was dressed in the kind of casual, hard wearing clothes the desert demanded, but they looked completely foreign on him. His skin was pale and milky, flushed in the Mexican heat and unmarked by the elements. His hands looked like they’d never seen any labour more strenuous than holding a pen. He was skinny as well, slight shouldered, and if Logan was any judge on his feet he’d just about come up to Logan’s chin. In short, to Logan’s expert eye, he looked like a weakling.
Appearances can be deceiving.
That voice again, the one that had cut Frost’s puppet strings. The man sat on the roadside smiled faintly at him. There was something irritatingly familiar about his face.
“I believe I met you very, very briefly once before,” said the man. “At a bar in a town I confess I’ve forgotten the name of. I was with a friend. You told us to, and I quote, ‘go fuck yourselves’.”
It rang a vague bell.
“Yeah? Well who the hell are ya then?” Logan growled. He watched the stranger carefully, ready to lash out the moment he felt any intrusion into his mind, any attempt to take control.
“Charles Xavier,” said the man with another smile. He extended one hand out to Logan, who just stared pointedly at it until it was drawn back.
“That doesn’t really cover it pal,” Logan said. “You were inside my damn head. How?”
“I’m like you,” said Xavier. “A mutant. The same as the woman who was holding you captive.”
“She dead?”
“No.”
“Pity.”
Xavier was watching him closely. Logan tried to tell if he was poking around inside his head. He couldn’t feel anything. He had always been able to feel the presence of Frost when she’d been controlling him, but who knew what the hell this new guy could do.
“Mutant?” Logan asked eventually, voice dripping with undisguised suspicion.
“Someone with very... special abilities. Like telepathy,” Xavier tapped the side of his own head, then gestured to Logan. “Or a quite remarkable capacity for healing. You’re not alone Logan.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yes.”
Logan shook his head and got to his feet. He needed sleep, a good cigar, and a drink - and not necessarily in that order. He stretched his arms out, savouring the pull of the muscles through his back as the tension drained out of them. Xavier’s eyes followed the motion briefly, before he suddenly ducked his head and looked away. Surprised, Logan took note.
“Well,” said Logan, “thanks for the pep talk and all, and saving my ass from the Ice Bitch, but you can...”
“Go fuck yourself again?” Xavier interrupted with a wry smile.
“Something like that, yeah.”
“That’s a shame. You’re a fascinating person Logan, your abilities are truly remarkable. But if you’re sure...” Xavier got to his feet, and sure enough he stood a full head shorter than Logan. “It was nice to meet you.”
And with that he turned and started walking away in the direction of the town.
Logan watched him go for a few moments, until it dawned on him that really the only place he could go himself was off in the same direction, towards the town. And the idea of trailing along behind Xavier the entire way made him feel ridiculous.
“Ahh fuck,” he muttered, then broke into a short run until he caught up.
“Just until we get to the town,” he growled when he drew level.
“Of course,” Xavier conceded mildly.
But when they reached the town Xavier turned to Logan and asked him straight out if he had any money on him. In truth Logan had none, what little cash he’d had on him he’d left behind when Frost had swooped away with him back in Veracruz.
“You can share my room with me,” said Xavier. “If you don’t mind.”
A dozen responses, most of them some variation on ‘fuck off’ hovered on the tip of Logan’s tongue. He didn’t need a stranger’s charity, especially a stranger that could read minds. There were plenty of ways to make money quick, even in a small bumfuck nowhere town like this. There was absolutely no reason for him to accept.
So later Logan could only guess that the reason he did accept was because of the way Charles Xavier had looked so ridiculously out of place and vulnerable, stood right in the middle of a rundown village in the heart of drug runner country.
He was kind of pretty, it dawned on Logan belatedly, the kind that got beat up and knifed the moment it wandered down the wrong street in a place like this. Which was a stupid thought to have - if Frost had taught Logan one thing it was that once you could get inside people’s heads, you could do pretty much whatever the fuck you wanted without fear.
Still...
“One night,” Logan muttered shortly.
...
The room Xavier was renting was situated at the back of the local taberna. Logan had never turned down a free beer in his life, so when Xavier offered him some money to go drinking at the bar he’d taken it with a begrudging mutter of thanks.
Some locals were playing a round of poker, and after getting his first beer Logan had just enough cash left to buy in. By the time the game ended the night was old and Logan had a tidy profit, even on top of the booze.
He bought a couple more beers and headed back to the room. Even though it was late Xavier was still awake, sitting up leaning against the headboard of the bed, reading a book with lots of fancy sciencey words in the title. His feet were bare, legs crossed primly at the ankles. He looked up, startled, as Logan entered.
Logan handed him one of the bottles of beer then reached into his pocket and threw some money down onto the bed. Xavier didn’t say anything, just raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“Poker,” said Logan simply.
That seemed to be sufficient explanation for Xavier, who put the money on the plain bedside table, then swung his legs over so he was sitting perched on the edge of the bed. Logan took it as an invitation, sitting down heavily next to him.
“You understand that crap?” Logan asked, nodding towards the book Xavier had been reading.
“Oh yes,” Xavier said, as if it were nothing. “It’s not a very good book though. The man’s an idiot.”
“So what, you’re some kind of brainiac?”
“I’m a doctor of genetics,” said Xavier shrugged, looking sheepish. “That’s all.”
Logan seriously doubted it was really a ‘that’s all’ kind of a deal. “So what is a fancy ‘doctor of genetics’ doing all the way out here in the ass-end-of-god-damn-nowhere, Mexico then? This your screwed up idea of a vacation or something?”
“I was looking for the woman who was holding you prisoner. Emma Frost.”
“Yeah? Why?”
Xavier gave him a disbelieving look. “You were in her... custody for nearly a month. Why do you think?”
Logan grunted. The man had a point.
Xavier twisted the bottle of beer round in his hands, then finally brought it to his mouth and took a drink. He pulled a face.
“So,” said Logan, gesturing round the room with his own beer. “What’s the arrangement gonna be here then?”
“Oh,” Xavier said, suddenly looking a little flushed. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I’ll sleep on the floor, you can have the bed.”
“Huh,” Logan grunted noncommittally. He gave Xavier a quick once over. The man’s shirt was slightly too big, making the thin wrists poking out from the cuffs appear all the more breakable. His hair and skin both looked soft and unsullied by harsh treatment. And his mouth... okay, Logan could admit the mouth was really something. It was a sinfully dark shade of red, looking perpetually as though it had just been abused in some fashion (Logan’s brain helpfully filled in all kinds of potential scenarios).
Altogether, Xavier was exactly the sort of... delicate kind of attractive that Logan normally had no time for. Men, women... he liked them tough, tall and lean, marked by the world and all the more desirable for it. But there was something about Xavier, fuck knew what, but Logan still found him reasonably desirable despite him appearing, on the surface at least, to be nothing more than a irritatingly naive bleeding heart. A real pretty one sure, but nevertheless.
Logan raised his eyebrows at Xavier’s offer of sleeping on the floor and countered with: “Something wrong with the idea of sharin’ a bed with me?”
“No, I just...”
“Seems plenty big enough for the both of us, unless you got a problem?”
“No,” said Xavier. “No problem. We’ll share.” He looked a little flustered, awkwardly fiddling with the bottle in his hands.
“Great,” said Logan, finishing off the last of his beer and discarding the bottle on the floor. Then, in one quick fluid movement, he pulled his shirt off over his head, leaving him in a white vest that had seen cleaner days. “Cause I’m beat,” he concluded, rolling his shoulders one by one to work out the kinks.
He glanced over at Xavier who instantly looked away and began intensely studying the label on his beer, although there was a telltale hint of pink on his cheeks. Logan took a long deep breath through his nose; letting the smell of Xavier wash over him. He smelt of the desert, the beer he’d taken a single mouthful of, and - unmistakably - the heady scent of sexual interest. Logan allowed himself a little smirk.
Xavier got to his feet and crossed over to the little window, abandoning his barely touched drink on the bedside table. With a bit of effort he levered it open, letting the cool night’s air into the stuffy little bedroom, before carefully pulling the shutters closed in order to keep the bugs out. While he was busy Logan took the opportunity to rise and cross the room silently, stalking across it until he was stood just inches behind Xavier.
Xavier’s eyes went wide when he turned to find Logan stood just inches away from him, and he tried to step back, but only succeeded in pressing himself up against the window shutter. Logan crowded in a little closer.
He felt the faintest push at his mind, and it dawned on him that, just as he could smell Xavier’s interest on him, Xavier in turn had his own, much more efficient methods of gauging Logan’s own intentions.
“Oh,” Xavier said simply.
That was all the encouragement Logan needed. He braced his hands firmly on each side of the window frame and leant down to kiss Xavier.
In retrospect, Logan didn’t know what exactly he’d been expecting. Maybe for Xavier to try and protest, to insist that he’d only just met Logan, in general act like some kind of scandalized virgin. Maybe that he’d need to be coaxed into it slowly, or treated a little roughly to get him into the swing of things. Or perhaps instead that he’d be every inch as sweet and submissive as that soft skin and those wide eyes implied.
Whatever Logan had been expecting, he’d been surprised as hell when Xavier had muttered ‘to hell with it’, and had surged up against Logan and kissed him back with an astounding degree of ferocity. His hands wasted absolutely no time in sliding their way up Logan’s torso, until Xavier’s arms were firmly around Logan’s neck. He then used that leverage to haul himself up a couple of inches, changing the angle of their messy, hot, fucking amazing kiss to a slightly better one. Logan was helpless to do anything other than wrap his arms tightly around Xavier’s waist and hold him firmly in place.
For a skinny pushover he felt obscenely good in Logan’s arms. It had been a long month in Emma Frost’s ‘employment’, with no opportunity for release. The press of a warm, squirming body against Logan’s was sending blood rocketing to parts of his body that had been far too long neglected.
They stumbled over to the bed. Xavier’s hands seemed to be everywhere at once, nimble, clever fingers dancing all over Logan’s burning skin. He was moaning quietly in the back of his throat, just the faintest vibration - probably a normal person wouldn’t even hear it at all, but Logan did, and the sound did something that bypassed his brain altogether and went straight to his dick.
It was laughably easy to pick Xavier up and dump him unceremoniously on the bed. He lay there sprawled, propping himself up on his elbows to look at Logan. His skin was flushed, his chest rising and falling quickly as he caught his breath, and the already red mouth was now a truly obscene shade, swollen and wet.
Logan must have spent too long staring, because suddenly Xavier sat up properly and reached out to brush one hand lightly over Logan’s vest, before deftly manoeuvring it up under the hem so his palm was pressed directly over Logan’s stomach. Slowly the hand trailed down until it grasped the buckle of Logan’s belt.
Xavier offered him a dirty grin.
“Excuse me, but are we having sex or not?” he asked, still in that soft, prim little tone he used.
Logan growled low and moved forward, half bearing down on Xavier and half being pulled by the hand still firmly gripping his belt. They definitely, definitely were.
...
Logan woke up with the dawn like he always did. He felt sated and satisfied, and allowed himself an indulgent few moments just lying there on the uncomfortable bed, enjoying the silence.
Xavier was out like a light next to him, turned so his back was to Logan. From this angle Logan could just about see the angry red patches on his neck, each a memento of the night before. Truth be told, if it weren’t for his healing factor, Logan would have some interesting little marks of his own this morning. Xavier’s behaviour in bed had been a surprise, to say the least. Exactly the kind of surprise Logan liked.
It didn’t take long for Logan to get his clothes together and dress, moving silently so as not to wake the occupant of the bed. He took some of his poker winnings and pocketed them, making sure he’d still left Xavier all the money he’d lent him and a little more.
His hand was on the door handle when a voice spoke up behind him.
“Well, bye then.”
Logan looked back over his shoulder. Xavier was sat up in bed, sheets pooled around his waist. He was watching Logan carefully, expression blank.
“Yeah,” Logan mumbled gruffly. He’d wanted to get away without having to talk, but now that Xavier was awake he felt as though he should say something to the man. “Look... thanks and all. For gettin’ me free of Frost. And putting up the room and...” He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling awkward.
Xavier grinned. “I don’t think you should be thanking me for that. It wasn’t exactly a chore.”
Logan chuckled as memories from the previous night danced across his inner eye. It was hard to believe that the man who just last night was cursing and moaning like a two dollar whore was the same person that was in front of him now.
They stayed there staring at each other for a long moment. Logan kept his hand on the door, ready to walk out as soon as Xavier looked away.
“Where will you go?” Xavier asked with what seemed to be genuine curiosity.
Logan shrugged. “Don’t know. Wherever I can hitch a lift to. Maybe head down south. Maybe up north, back to the States.”
“You don’t plan ahead?”
“I strike ya as the planning type?”
Xavier laughed, then immediately yawned loudly. He dropped his eyes from Logan, rubbing at them with the heel of his hand. Logan took the opportunity to quietly open the door and slip out of the room.
“You could always come with me for a bit...” Logan was in the passageway outside, about to close the door, when Xavier spoke again. He hesitated. Instinct told him to leave, to just shut the door and head out of town on the first truck prepared to take a hitchhiker. Other people were a weakness, they held you up. They got you trouble.
Telling instinct to go fuck itself for a moment, Logan turned slowly and stepped back into the doorway.
“Where you headed?” he asked cautiously.
“Back to the US,” said Xavier. “Across the border. I wouldn’t mind the company.”
Logan watched him carefully for a moment, especially the open, trusting expression, the kind of casual friendliness that Logan hadn’t seen in a long while. It should have put him off, all that trusting naivety. Usually he poured scorn on people like Charles Xavier - when he gave them any consideration at all. He should just turn his boots right now and get the hell out of dodge.
“Just for a while,” he found himself saying instead.
...
They caught a lift on the back of a truck that was heading out of town in the right general direction. Logan had been getting ready to talk in his patchy Spanish to the fat, moody looking bastard who’d been leaning against the driver’s door, when Xavier had stepped forward instead and starting chatting away fluently. The guy still hadn’t been keen, snapping back at Xavier with some choice words that Logan definitely knew and didn’t like hearing. He’d been planning to haul off and punch the guy right in his ugly face when Xavier had lifted the fingers of one hand briefly to his temple, and suddenly the fat man had been all sunshine and roses, offering to take them as far as he could.
“You know the lingo?” Logan asked Xavier as the truck lurched its way across the dirt road leading out of town. The noise of the engine and the sounds of the truck hitting rocks and potholes meant that he had to bend down real close to Xavier’s ear to make himself heard.
“Yes! Well, sort of.” Xavier shouted back. “I...” he trailed off.
I cheat, said Xavier’s voice inside Logan’s head. I take the language from inside their heads, whatever phrase I want to use, I look inside their minds to see what it is. After a few days of absorbing a language, I’m pretty good.
You inside everyone’s head all the time then? Logan ‘asked’ back. He’d had a couple of these mental conversations with Frost before, although it had largely consisted of him thinking as much nasty shit at her as he could while she sneered.
“No,” said Xavier, speaking out loud and craning his head up so he could talk straight into Logan’s ear. “Only surface thoughts without permission. Unless... “
“Unless someone’s bein’ a bit of a shit about giving you a lift?” Logan retorted, raising a sceptical eyebrow.
Xavier grinned and ducked his head.
Alright, sometimes it’s useful to delve a little deeper into someone’s mind. But there are limits. There are some things I could do, but I never would...I won’t read yours now if that’s what you’re worried about, not on purpose.
Right then the truck drove straight over a particularly deep pothole, and both Logan and Xavier had to grab onto the rusted railings around the truck bed to avoid being thrown out altogether. It put an end to the conversation, even the telepathic one. It also had the added effect of sending Xavier sliding up even closer to Logan, so they were pressed side to side.
Truth was, sitting here so close to the man was seriously testing Logan’s self control. They’d left the taberna in a bit of a hurry, no time to wash, and even if they had it wouldn’t have been anything more than a damp cloth hastily drawn over skin. And the fact was that Xavier absolutely stank of Logan. He could smell his own scent all over the man, mixed up completely with Xavier’s own smell, and the lingering tang of sex just detectable underneath both. It was doing strange things to Logan, including filling him up with a sort of possessive satisfaction. He berated himself viciously for it, he’d met the guy yesterday, fucked him once, and he was not an animal to be driven by stupid crap like this.
He hoped Xavier had been telling the truth when he’d said he wouldn’t read Logan’s mind.
...
Logan had known he was unusual for a long, long time. It’s hard to ignore the fact that most people don’t recover instantly from wounds that should be fatal, that they can get sick, and that they don’t have claws of bone that shoot from their hands. Logan was different, and he’d lived long enough to know that in this world being different was not something that it paid to advertise.
By the next night they’d made it to Culiacan. The latest truck driver that Xavier had ‘encouraged’ to give them a lift dropped them on the outskirts just as the orange sun was dropping below the horizon.
They walked through the still crowded streets, as Xavier chattered onto Logan about mutation. Logan felt that it probably should have meant something to him, knowing that he wasn’t the only freak show in the world. But instead he felt a certain unease, knowing there were powerful people out there who could do all sorts of weird, dangerous shit. How many were like Xavier, and how many were like Frost? Besides, Xavier’s mutation and Logan’s were a million miles apart - they weren’t really the same at all, whatever Xavier might think. Logan would never be able to look directly into someone’s deepest, darkest secrets, or make them dance to his tune whether they wanted to or not. And Xavier would always be appallingly vulnerable to things as petty as a car accident or a badly timed illness.
Still, Xavier was nauseatingly enthusiastic about the idea of banding a bunch of random strangers together because of some accident of genetics. He happily waxed lyrical on the subject as they walked down the back alleys and side streets of Culiacan, searching for a place to bed down for the night. He should have stuck out like a sore thumb, and Logan had been expecting to have to fend off some unwanted malicious attention. But instead the gazes of the locals seemed to slip off Xavier as if he were almost invisible, and they moved through the streets unimpeded.
They got a room at a seedy motel style establishment of the kind that you could rent from by the hour. Then they went back out and grabbed some food from a street vendor in one of the busier parts of town. Logan didn’t recognise it, but it was hot and tasted good. He also picked up a small bottle of tequila and some cheap cigars from a woman trading on the same street.
Hunger sated, he and Xavier wandered aimlessly for a while. Xavier’s desire to discuss mutation and the future of mutant kind seemed to have abated, and now he was content to simply absorb the atmosphere of the city. He took in everything, apparently insatiably curious, poking his nose in all sorts of places, protected by his powers as time and time again the locals looked straight through him and Logan both as if they weren’t even there.
Finally they wound up in a quiet part of town where some abandoned buildings met a patch of rough wasteland. Some kids were running about shouting, playing some game a little way away, but apart from that they were alone.
Logan sat down on top of a short, half crumbling wall and pulled a cigar out of the packet he’d purchased earlier. He’d swiped a matchbook from the motel earlier, and now used it to light up. The rich smoke filled his lungs. Christ he’d missed it.
Xavier sat next to him, head tilted up to look at the stars. They sat in silence until Logan’s cigar had burnt right down, and he’d put it out with the sole of his boot. Then he pulled out the small tequila bottle and took a swig, before offering it to Xavier.
Xavier took it, but instead of drinking any he just held the bottle to his nose and took a tentative sniff.
“What is this?” he asked.
“Tequila. You never had any?”
“No,” Xavier said, trying to hand the bottle back to Logan. Logan didn’t take it.
“Didn’t seem too keen on that beer last night either,” Logan pointed out. “You teetotal or somethin’?”
Xavier snorted with laughter, like that was the most ridiculous suggestion he’d ever heard. “No. I’m really not.”
“Just a lightweight then?” Logan said, raising a sceptical eyebrow, fighting down the urge to smile as Xavier’s face turned into a picture of perfect righteous indignation.
Pointedly Xavier drew the bottle back and took a generous mouthful. Logan had expected him to choke on the stuff - especially if he’d never had tequila before. If the event he did pull a face, but promptly swallowed the lot without incident.
“I’m impressed,” Logan said, taking the drink back from Xavier. “Prim and proper guy like you, I thought you’d spit it back out.”
“I had an acquaintance at university who loved absinthe,” Xavier replied. “Always used to make me drink endless amounts of the stuff with him. After that anything short of antifreeze is fine.”
Logan laughed and had some more tequila.
“Can you even get drunk?” Xavier asked curiously, watching Logan knocking t back.
“A little,” Logan confessed. “If I keep it up I can get a buzz, but it fades real quick.”
“What about other drugs?”
Logan went to answer, then a better idea struck him. He handed the bottle back to Xavier.
“Tell ya what,” he said. “You want to ask me questions? Fine. But ya gotta pay for ‘em. A shot of that for every answer.”
Xavier raised his eyebrows. “Oh really? You realise I could just take the answers straight from your head?”
“Nah, ya won’t. You promised, and you’re the sort that takes shit like that seriously.”
Xavier didn’t reply, although he did look vaguely irritated at Logan’s (perfectly correct) assessment of him. Finally, with a long suffering sigh, he capitulated and took a drink of the tequila.
“Alright,” he said after swallowing. “There’s your payment. Now where’s my answer?”
Logan grinned, enjoying his little victory and got out another cigar to smoke. “I’ve had people try to knock me out before, chloroform and stuff like that. Doesn’t take. Feel a bit woozy for a few seconds, then it just goes away. Anaesthetics are the same. Been poisoned before. One asshole slipped me enough arsenic to drop an elephant. I just felt like shit for a minute or two.”
“Does it always hurt? When you’re injured I mean.”
Logan didn’t reply, just stared in pointed silence until Xavier huffed in exasperation and had some more tequila.
“Every time,” Logan told him afterwards.
“What was the worst?”
He was staring at Logan with such unabashed inquisitiveness that Logan decided to let him off the tequila payment for this one. “Taken a gunshot to the knee, that was bad. Fell from a ten story building, walked that off but it hurt like seven hells. I drowned once. Or, I guess I didn’t drown, still here ain’t I, but I couldn’t breathe for a long while there. Felt like my lungs were on fire, and every second was a damn eternity. Weren’t the most painful, but it was the worst.”
Xavier’s expression went soft, and he shuffled closer to Logan so he could wrap a comforting hand over Logan’s wrist. To his own surprise, Logan let him.
“I’m sorry, that sounds awful.”
Up close like this, Logan could mostly smell tequila, but hidden underneath that, faded somewhat, was the same intermingled scent that had so badly tested his self-control earlier. Surreptitiously he glanced around. The kids who had been playing nearby were gone now, leaving them completely alone.
He leaned in a little closer to Xavier, so their faces were only a couple of inches or so apart. Their eyes locked briefly, then Xavier was leaning in himself, eyes flickering closed. Logan moved forward, tilting his head slightly...
Suddenly Xavier hiccupped loudly.
Logan’s eyes flew open and he and Xavier stared at each other for a brief moment, and then Xavier suddenly burst out laughing. Unable to help himself, Logan joined in.
“Sorry,” said Xavier, fighting through both laughter and repeated hiccups to speak. “It’s that damn tequila.”
Logan couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like this, with real enjoyment. He let himself savour it, the honest amusement that was increasingly rare in his life. He was still snickering away when suddenly he found himself with a lapful of a flushed Charles Xavier, who’d somehow managed to overcome his unexpected bout of the hiccups.
“Oh stop it, it wasn’t that funny.” Xavier insisted, grinning and looking faintly embarrassed. He wrapped his arms loosely around Logan’s neck.
“Make me,” Logan challenged.
Rolling his eyes good naturedly, Xavier leaned in. This time there were no hiccups to get in the way.
...
An hour or so later they were back at the grubby motel, curled up in the sheets of one of the twin beds. Logan was dozing, enjoying the sensation of sweat cooling on his skin even in the muggy heat, when Xavier rolled over and suddenly loomed over him.
Logan tried to ignore him, steadfastly keeping his eyes shut. But Xavier didn’t budge, and eventually Logan gave in and begrudgingly cracked an eye open.
“What?” he muttered warily.
Xavier was propped up on his elbows, looking down at him with a scrutinizing expression. His hair was a wild mess, and Logan vividly recalled grabbing a handful of it, using it to force Xavier to bare his throat during their earlier exertions.
“You’ve led a very interesting life,” Xavier said eventually. “Those things you were telling me about earlier. Drowning. Being poisoned. Falling from a ten story building. Hardly a sedate existence.”
Logan shrugged. “So what? I attract trouble. You’re here ain’t ya?”
“That’s a lot of trouble for someone your age.”
Xavier leaned down closer, gaze suddenly disturbingly shrewd and piercing. It would have been a little more intimidating if he hadn’t also looked so thoroughly well fucked.
“Exactly how old are you Logan?”
Logan closed his eyes against the swell of memories rising up against him, memories usually kept safely locked away. He rolled over onto his side, pointedly turning his back to Xavier. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Xavier reached out and put a warm hand on Logan’s back. “I just...”
“I said, I don’t want to talk about it. Some part of that you don’t understand bub?” Logan growled.
He felt the heavy thump as Xavier fell back onto the bed beside him. They didn’t speak again that night.
...
After that, Logan had been planning to pull a vanishing act the next morning. He still had no idea what had possessed him to trail after Xavier even this far, and if the man was going to start trying to play twenty questions at every opportunity then Logan wasn’t going to stick around to hear it.
He woke up, and was just about to get out of bed when Xavier rolled on top of him and muttered, “I promise, no more questions,” into the crook of Logan’s neck while his hand wandered down Logan’s torso on its way to more interesting places.
Logan wound up staying.
...
It took them two more days to make it to the border. Logan didn’t have a passport or any proper papers, and had wanted to head out to a remote spot and get across there. But Xavier had insisted it was unnecessary, and had got them on a bus heading to Albuquerque. Sure enough, when they got to the border checkpoint, Xavier had simply touched his fingers to his head in that odd little gesture of his, and any problems had simply melted away.
He’d kept his promise about not asking any more questions, and had instead started talking about his school. Despite himself, Logan found it quite interesting -a testament either to Xavier’s relentless enthusiasm for the topic, or the mind numbing boredom of the bus journey.
“You run this place by yourself?” Logan asked him during a moment in which Xavier had paused for breath.
Xavier shook his head and went to speak before abruptly hesitating. He looked a little lost for a second, but then pulled himself together and turned to look Logan straight in the eye, the awkward moment passing as though it had never happened.
“Yes, although, truth be told, most of the students are themselves more or less adults, they do a great deal for the school. And of course there aren’t that many of us yet. But soon there will be.”
“Sure got high hopes haven’t ya?” Logan replied, cynicism creeping in.
“Imagine how many children there are out there who are mutants, and who believe that they are completely alone,” Xavier said, eyes lighting up with a kind of steely determination and focus that Logan hadn’t seen on him before, gesturing with his hands to emphasise his words. “Convinced there’s something wrong with them, very possibly shunned by their parents, their friends, made to feel unnatural. Probably terrified of their own gifts. They need... they deserve somewhere they can go where they will belong. Where being a mutant is normal, and where they can learn to control their powers, not fear them. So yes, I suppose I do have high hopes. But not without justification.”
Xavier held Logan’s gaze for a few moments, letting his words sink in, before ducking his head and looking out the window at the passing scenery. A few people on the bus were openly staring at them, attention drawn by Xavier’s unexpected miniature rant on the subject of mutant rights. But in the next moment their gazes went glassy and they turned away, the entire incident simply forgotten.
“Hey,” Logan grunted, uncharacteristically compelled to fill the uncomfortable pause. “Look, I think it’s crazy what you’re trying to do. Doesn’t mean I don’t think you can do it.”
Xavier didn’t say anything, but did turn away from the window to look back at Logan, a soft little smile playing about his mouth. He shuffled a little closer to Logan on the seat they were sharing, so their arms and thighs down one side were pressed together, then closed his eyes and relaxed, letting the hot midday sun streaming in through the bus window warm his face. Logan watched him for a few moments, a disconcerting warm feeling pooling gently in his chest.
...
When they arrived at Albuquerque Xavier didn’t even question whether or not Logan would be sticking with him now they were in a US city. Instead he just squeezed a hand round Logan’s wrist for a brief second as they got off the bus and then walked away into town, apparently just taking for granted that Logan would follow.
Logan did follow, but that wasn’t the point.
“I’m tired of places that come complete with roaches climbing the walls, how about you?” Xavier asked as they strolled through the city streets.
Xavier took them right into the centre of the city and a hotel that was by far the fanciest Logan had ever been into. Xavier’s two fingers brushed his temple, and once again all problems melted away. The guy behind the reception didn’t bat an eyelash at the two men who both looked as though they’d been dragged ass backwards through the desert, nor did he hesitate in giving them a room with only one bed.
It wasn’t like they had a lot of stuff to drop off, nothing at all in Logan’s case and just a small battered rucksack for Xavier, so after purchasing the room they went right back out.
“We’ll meet back here,” Xavier said, before vanishing off into the crowd. Logan felt vaguely, annoyingly troubled watching him go, aimlessly wandering off alone into a strange city. Berating himself for it, and reminding himself once again that a telepath was never going to be in a hell of a lot of danger from anyone, Logan slunk away.
He found a place to change his pesos into dollars, and quickly bought himself some new clothes - more or less a repeat of his old clothes but much cleaner and less torn up. Then like a magnet he found himself gravitating to some of the shadier bars in the less wholesome parts of town.
Logan wound up spending the afternoon playing La Viuda poker in a nameless dive holed up away down a back alley. He lost a few games - mostly on purpose, winning too much was never a smart move - but all in all he made himself some decent money. He cleaned one guy right out, a big man with a nasty, weasel-like little face and a big mouth he couldn’t shut. Logan disliked him instantly - he even smelled like a bastard - and had enjoyed taking the asshole for every damn cent.
Night was drawing on when Logan left. Just as he shut the door behind him he heard it fly open again and footsteps approaching fast.
“Hey asshole!” someone yelled, and sudden unexpected pain bloomed bright in Logan’s shoulder. Weasel-face was behind him, eyes glazed with too much drink and mouth twisted up in a vicious grin. A flash of his claws and Logan had the bastard bleeding out on the alley floor.
Turned out the pain in Logan’s shoulder was coming from a knife sticking out of it. He yanked it out as quickly as he could from the awkward angle, and the pain quickly receded as the wound healed and swiftly faded to nothing. He tossed the blade down next to the body of Weasel-face.
It took maybe half an hour to make it back to the hotel. Figuring that without Xavier’s particular brand of people-skills, there was no way he was going to make it through reception with a bloody shirt and not attract attention, Logan snuck in the back way through a fire escape. It didn’t take long to find the right room.
Xavier was sat on the bed, reading the science book again. Like Logan he’d gone out and bought new clothes. Unlike Logan, his were not virtual carbon copies of the ones he’d had on before. He was now dressed smartly, in black pants and a dress shirt. Whereas Xavier’s old clothes had looked foreign and out of place on him, he looked perfectly at ease and natural in the new ones.
He smiled at Logan as he entered, swinging his legs off the bed and padding over on bare feet. He only made it a couple of steps before he noticed the bloodstain.
“What happened?” Xavier exclaimed, immediately fussing over the tear in Logan’s shirt from where the knife had sunk into his shoulder. His fingertips brushed over the skin where the wound had been.
“Some dick took offence to me,” Logan muttered, shrugging Xavier off. The man wasn’t deterred, and ducked around Logan’s back for a better look.
“There’s not even a mark,” he said, sounding fascinated. He reached out and touched the torn shirt again. Irritated, Logan span round, grabbed his wrist and glared, but this didn’t seem to bother Xavier who just stared back up at him blankly. This close it dawned on Logan that Xavier had washed as well as changing his clothes, and now just smelt of soap and clean linen - and not at all of Logan.
“Sorry,” Logan forced out, unwinding his fingers from around Xavier’s wrist. The soapy smell was bothering him intensely.
“Don’t worry about...” was all Xavier managed to get out before Logan’s arm was encircling his waist, palm sliding along the smooth, thin fabric of the new (stupidly expensive) shirt. He drew him in and kissed him with all the fervour he could muster. To his credit, Xavier got with the programme pretty quickly, his teeth scraping gently against Logan’s bottom lip and his fingers slipping just below the waistband of Logan’s jeans.
It was little effort for Logan to stoop at the knees slightly, just enough to get one arm locked behind Xavier’s upper thighs and then straighten up, hauling Xavier up until the man was helpless to do anything other than just wrap his legs around Logan’s waist and go with it.
They fell messily onto the bed together, Xavier pushing Logan over until he was lying flat on his back, then rolling on top of him.
After a few heated minutes Xavier braced his arms on either side of Logan’s head and pushed himself up so he could look Logan in the eye, hair wildly askew and previously beautifully neat shirt rumpled and pulled at possibly beyond repair.
“Let me try something...” he said breathily, before leaning down towards Logan so their foreheads were briefly touched together.
At first it didn’t feel like anything had happened. They each swiftly rid themselves of their clothes, Logan taking great delight in manhandling Xavier’s new, fancy get-up off him. And then it became suddenly, unbelievably, fucking amazingly clear what Xavier had done. Every touch, every scrap of satisfaction and every perfect little sensation were all echoed back along a mental link, until Logan felt like he was drowning under a torrent of sheer overwhelming physicality. He was barely aware of where he ended and Xavier began, just that someone needed more there, that they should move together like that now, and that was absolutely incredible, do that again...
Afterwards it took Logan quite a long time to recover. When the world came back into focus he was lying on his back, sweat cooling on his skin, feeling boneless and completely spent.
Slowly, and with an embarrassing amount of effort, he rolled over onto his side. Xavier was lying on his front, face pressed into a pillow and looking for all the world like he was asleep. His breathing was too deep for that though, and occasionally he’d groan a little and shift uncomfortably.
There was sweat still clustered in the dip between his shoulder blades, and Logan reached out idly to run his fingers through it, and then down the curve of Xavier’s spine. The soapy smell was gone he was satisfied to note, and once again Xavier smelt primarily of sweat, sex and Logan.
When Logan’s hand reached the small of Xavier’s back he pressed the palm of his hand flat to the skin, enjoying the sensation of the burning body heat beneath his hand. That was how he noticed the slight imperfection in the otherwise smooth skin. Curious he pushed himself up onto his elbows to get a better look.
There was a scar in the small of Xavier’s back, tiny but nasty looking, the skin raised and uneven. It was just to the right of his spine, only an inch or so away. Logan ran his fingers over it carefully, tracing the jagged lines of the scarring.
“What’re you doing?” Xavier mumbled, finally opening his eyes.
“Where’d you get this?” Logan asked bluntly, running his fingers over the mark again. Xavier immediately rolled over onto his back, hiding the scar from sight.
“Accident,” he said simply.
“Looks nasty,” Logan said. He wasn’t an idiot - he knew a damn bullet wound when he saw one.
“It was.”
Logan waited for more information, but it never came. Instead Xavier hauled himself up so he was sitting with his back leant against the headboard. He made a displeased face and absently wiped with his hand at some of the sticky white fluid that was smeared down his inner thigh. Then he turned to watch Logan carefully.
“I’d like you to come with me back to New York,” he said simply, like he was proposing they have eggs for breakfast or something.
Logan grunted, pulling himself upright and standing up. He stretched, savouring his loose limbs and the faint, pleasant burn in his muscles.
“I told ya, I’m not interested in your super secret mutant treehouse club.”
Xavier gave him a pointed look that Logan ignored, stepping away into the bathroom and grabbing a towel which he dampened slightly under the tap. He threw it at Xavier when he returned, then sank awkwardly under the covers. He was ill at ease among the fancy bed sheets, and wished instead for the familiarity of a plain rough blanket and crappy thin mattress. But leftover gratification from earlier activities, and the presence of Xavier fussing about with the towel next to him, soothed the unease away somewhat, and he soon found himself dozing.
At least until Xavier kicked him lightly in the side to get his attention. “It would do you some good I think, to see that you’re not alone,” he said.
Logan just grunted noncommittally.
“You aren’t alone Logan.”
“You readin’ my mind?”
“No.” The leg attached to the foot that had kicked Logan now slung itself over Logan’s calf as Xavier slumped down into the bed sheets. There was blissful silence for a couple of minutes before he spoke up again. Logan just about resisted the urge to growl with irritation.
“At the very least if you know where the school is then you can give the location to any other mutants you meet on your travels. Mutants that might need somewhere they can go, who could do with our help. And if you ever need assistance... for any reason, well then you’d know somewhere you could go.”
“Okay,” Logan conceded moodily. “Why don’t you just tell me where this goddamn place of yours is then?”
“Why don’t you just come with me and see it for yourself?”
“No,” Logan snapped. “Get it through your head Xavier, I ain’t a team player, and I ain’t interested in your fancy mutant pow-wow either.”
Xavier watched him with an irritatingly inscrutable expression for a few moments. “Of course,” he said eventually, smiling gently and nodding. “It’s your decision, naturally.” The leg thrown over Logan’s withdrew, and Xavier got off the bed. “A bath I think,” he said.
Afterwards Logan leant out the hotel window for a while, smoking a cigar and letting the noise and smell of the city wash over him. When Xavier was finished bathing he got into bed without a word, turning the little bedside lamp off and plunging the room into shadowy darkness. Logan stayed at the window for a while longer, but did eventually join Xavier between the cool sheets.
part two