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Scott just shows up at Logan's cabin one day on his motorcycle with brittle determination in the set of his jaw and wearing desperation like cheap cologne. Stupid kid's skinnier than usual, paler than usual, has whispers of dark hollows not quite hidden by his red-lensed goggles and breath that says, 'I haven't been eating.' As if the missing fifteen or so pounds wasn't enough evidence to damn him.
Logan is leaning against the frame of his front door, watching his uninvited guest climb off the bike—there's a shaky tension in Scott's hands, in his step. Logan hooks his thumbs into his belt loops and tilts his head back a bit. “Looks like you're living up to your old nickname, Slim.” At least the kid is living. Hasn't yet managed to off himself. So that's something.
Scott stares at him for too long, clenching his hands around the leather gloves he's pulled off and shifting his weight—what's left of it, anyway—from one foot to the other. The gravel under his feet crunches softly.
Letting out an unimpressed sigh, Logan rolls his eyes and jerks his head toward the inside of his cabin. “Might as well come in; I'll fix you something to eat.” As Scott follows him wordlessly into the cabin, smelling of tenuous relief and guilt that no doubt is because of that relief, Logan adds, “And you're damn well going to eat what I give you, too; I ain't gonna wait on you just to have you turn your nose up like a spoiled brat.” He knows it's not really fair; Scott's life wasn't exactly easy before Xavier took him in. And hasn't been easy lately, either. But if he asked him nicely, Scott would probably cry and say he didn't deserve it. So this is better.
o0o
Scott sleeps on the couch, long limbs hanging off at all angles, making him look a bit like a discarded string puppet. Logan has to tell him to take his damn boots off—did Jean do everything for the punk?
He reminds Logan of a lost puppy. Logan prefers wild animals to these domesticated ones that can't take care of themselves.
At least he eats when Logan tells him to. Showers, even, without objection, though he hasn't brought any extra clothes with him, and Logan has to lend him some things that hang on his frame like the late summer velvet on a moose's antlers.
o0o
“I don't know if it's more unfair,” Scott says, fingers tracing the edges of Logan's marks—he asked to see, didn't ask to touch, but Logan just clenches his jaw and lets the stupid brat do what he likes, “that you had two or that you lost two.”
Logan rolls his eyes, shrugging the damn kid off and turning to fix him with an unimpressed glare, arms folded across his bare chest. “You got no filter left between your mouth and whatever passes for a brain in that head of yours?” And it's not like Logan ever 'had' Jean. His soul apparently wanted her enough to bugger the rules and paint her mark on his neck next to Kayla's old one, but she only ever had Scott's mark, so the message there was pretty clear. She tolerated Logan's flirting and awkwardly long stares, even flirted back from time to time, but she didn't want him. This whiny, sniveling brat was all she needed. Though the whiny, sniveling part is new, granted. And also kind of justified, considering.
“I'm sorry,” Scott says, unexpectedly, turning away and shoving one hand through his hair. It's probably the first time he's ever apologized to Logan, if Logan's been keeping track. “Everything's all...messed up—I don't—I don't know how to live in my head without her there.”
Logan pulls out a cigar and lights it, because it's his own damn cabin and he'll smoke if he likes. He's let Summers in, but he never asked him to come visit, never even said he could stay—never quite told him to leave either, but he figures the dumb kid'll get lost when he finally gets sick of Logan's unpleasant company. He takes a drag, blowing the acrid smoke back out. “So she was just...always there?” He gestures toward the general area of Scott's head with his cigar, the lit end glowing orange in the dimness of the kitchen.
Scott nods, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Since we were kids. It wasn't like I could sense her thoughts or even her emotions all the time or anything, but she was just...there. Just a sense of her. It was a sort of telepathic 'bond' from her mutation; she'd formed it before she even knew it was possible, and the Professor said she probably could learn to release it—you know...” He looks thoughtful. “I think he was a bit alarmed to discover it, and considering how young we were, that makes sense.” He laughs a little, quiet and tinged with bitterness. “But I didn't mind—I mean, I liked it. And we were soulmates too, so it just seemed...right.”
Logan snorts, cigar smoke streaming from his nose. “Having someone else in your head all the time?” He shakes his head. “Doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy.” The Professor and Jean were both always so polite, but it's simpler when all the voices in his head are signs that he's a bit crazy and not real people popping in to chat.
“No.” Scott turns his face toward Logan. “You'd probably have hated it.”
Something in the way he says it makes Logan think maybe he wouldn't have hated it after all.
o0o
“You know one thing I loved about Jean,” Scott says, taking a swallow of his beer—well, it's Logan's beer, but it's the bottle he gave him because it would have been rude as hell just to drink one in front of him, and it was painfully obvious that the kid could use a beer. Or five. They're sitting on the grass behind the cabin, watching the sun set behind the tall pine trees. “Her hair.”
Logan nods, taking a sip of beer as well. Jean's hair was beautiful.
“It was just so bright, so vibrant,” Scott continues, gesturing with the beer in his hand. “Like, 'I won't be ignored!'” He turns his head enough that it's clear he's watching Logan for a reaction. Probably can't see too well out off the corners of his eyes with those goggles on, anyway—they're the everyday pair, not the combat ones. Probably the only pair he's brought.
So Logan nods again. “I always liked her hair.”
Scott smiles. Doesn't even smell jealous. Just stupidly relaxed as if half of a beer has him tipsy already—and given how thin he is, maybe that's possible. “Her smile, too—the way her mouth would move...and her eyes.” His own smile is dopey, lost in the memory. “Like she knew something you didn't, and of course she actually did.”
Logan nods, taking a slow swallow of beer. “She had a gorgeous smile, like a sunset.”
Maybe it's bad poetry, but Summers just grins like he completely gets it, and Logan's not sure if that's a compliment or what.
“What I liked best about her,” Logan tries, and this might really get him in trouble, but the brat started this whole, 'things I loved about Jean,' game they're playing, so if he doesn't like the way Logan plays, maybe he should have picked someone else, “was her smell—the way she smelled.”
“Oh my God.” Scott makes a slightly shocked noise, choking a bit on his beer. “Are you really—you really just...said...that.”
“Oh come on, Summers.” Logan rolls his eyes. “You might not have the smelling mutation like I do, but you gotta know what I mean.” He narrows his eyes, turning toward Scott. “Not any perfume or anything; those are just distractions—the smell of her.” Everyone's got a personal scent, but Jean's was one of the better ones. One of the best.
Scott swallows then finally says, very quietly, “Yeah; yeah, I do know,” and then he's rubbing at his eyes under the goggles again, and trying not to sniff audibly, and maybe this game wasn't the best idea.
“Hey.” Logan's voice is gruff as he bumps Scott's bicep with his own much larger one. “Drink your damn beer before it gets piss-warm.”
o0o
“The scars are the same,” Scott says, just suddenly. He's sitting on the couch leaning forward with his head bent, apparently staring at the woodgrain of the coffee table.
Logan pauses on his way to bed, turns back. “The scars?”
“Yours and mine.” Scott lifts his head, goggles trained on Logan.
Logan folds his arms, leans back against the wall. He knows what his scars look like. Hasn't seen Scott's—not that he's kept it covered; Logan just hasn't cared to look.
“It's a burn.” Scott turns his face away, ducking his head again—woodgrain on the coffee table must be real fascinating. “That's the scar.” He runs a fingertip along a dark stripe in the wood. “Your other one looks like some sort of animal sharpening its claws on a tree.” That's a fair description, though the three vicious lines through Kayla's mark always reminded him of a very specific animal, the very one who'd gotten her killed. “But Jean's mark's nearly all scar, and it's a burn scar.”
It's true; that's what Jean's scar looks like. “Yours too then?”
Scott nods, fingertip circling a dark brown knot in the wood. “I think it's the same shape even—looked the same. You can...” He lets out a shaky breath, turns his back to Logan. “You can see for yourself.”
Letting out a slightly impatient breath, Logan walks over and sits down sideways on the couch, one leg folded, facing Scott's offered back. And there's the mark, or what's left of it—it really is mostly scar now, just like his own. “Yeah.” Logan's voice is rough. “It's the same.”
Scott turns around and there's such vulnerability in the set of his mouth. He smells of that now familiar mingling of relief and guilt. And it suddenly clicks in Logan's head: he's lost without his telepathic soulmate, someone he had this permanent 'bond' with since he was an actual kid not just a kid compared to Logan, and he needs someone who understands. Not just the loss, but someone who understands the things that go on inside his confused, messed up head, because he had that all his life and then it was just taken away.
Logan tightens his hands reflexively, clenches his jaw. If Logan has to be a replacement for Jean, then he'll be a goddamned replacement for Jean, because she was important and the things she did were important, and Logan's not a doctor or a scientist—he's not even a very good teacher—but it seems like he can take care of Scott, at least for now, so that's something.
And loss is something Logan knows pretty well—it's as good a place as any to start. “It always hurts,” Logan says, because he's not in the business of handing out sugary lies. “It sort of dulls with time, or maybe you just get used to it.” He shakes his head, rubs at a sore muscle in his shoulder. “And once you finally start to feel better, like maybe you can just get by, you feel guilty for feeling better.” He looks down at the faded denim of his jeans. “But you know, Kayla, she took care of me—we took care of each other—and she would have wanted me to be okay, and I know that sounds stupid, and it's probably something Chuck already told you, but Jean wouldn't want you to be miserable.” He glances up, catches the pain twitching in Scott's lips, looks away. “Now me, that's another story; she probably wouldn't spare a moment worrying about me, because you're the one she loved.”
“She cared about you too.” The words are quick, an admission.
Logan raises his eyes to Scott's face, and the kid looks away. Logan wonders how much of that is guessing and how much might be some sort of psychic bleed-over through the mind link they'd shared.
After an uncomfortably quiet moment, Scott asks, “She knew the mark was hers—how? Analysis? Did it react?”
“Both.” Because it was weird enough to warrant both.
“Oh.” And now he smells jealous. “How did it...?”
“I never saw it,” Logan says, gruff. “But she said it went orange. And there was heat too—not quite as hot as actual fire, but pretty close.”
“The reactions aren't supposed to hurt...” Scott looks confused.
Logan shakes his head. “It didn't.”
After another awkward silence, Scott says, “It was warm; when she'd touch it. Like standing near a fireplace. Not—not hot. It was...nice.”
“No colour change?” Logan raises an eyebrow.
“It went...reddish-orange,” Scott admits. “Hers, for me, would go sort of pinkish-red.”
Logan doesn't ask how Scott can even see pink and red through those lenses, because it's the sort of question he'd find irritating as hell.
Scott folds his arms across his knees, shoulders hunched. “I guess she burned us both in the end.”
Logan's probably supposed to say something like, 'You know she didn't mean to,' or, 'This wasn't anything she chose,' but instead he just says, “Yeah. Yeah, she did.”
o0o
When Scott wakes Logan up at about three in the morning by lurking in the doorway to his room, Logan growls, low and rough. “What?”
“I didn't—I don't want to be alone.” Scott's voice is small—ashamed but desperate enough to admit it anyway.
Logan rolls his eyes, though Scott likely can't see it in the darkness. “Bed's technically big enough for two, but—” It's important to warn him: “I'm not the safest person to be near when I'm asleep—you remember what happened that one time Rogue tried to wake me from a nightmare, and you don't have her power just to hijack mine.”
Scott shrugs one shoulder, darkly silhouetted against the greyness behind him. “I'm not exactly the safest person to be near either...though I suppose anything I did, you'd be able to come back from.” And it's probably true, considering Logan's survived a literal atomic bomb. “And I—” Scott's voice is pained. “I'm used to sleeping light and...being careful.”
All things considered, Scott might have been in more danger sleeping next to Jean, so that's fair, even if it hurt Scott like hell to admit his soulmate had been an atomic bomb herself, just waiting to go off. Logan shifts over more; he's bigger than Scott, but he might as well let him have half the bed. When Scott doesn't make a move either in or out of the room, Logan grumbles, “Either get into bed or get back to the couch, Summers; I'd like to get some more sleep sometime this century.”
Scott lets out a huff but finally joins Logan in the bed, bringing a cloud of guilty relief with him. Logan grunts in annoyance and turns to face the wall.
o0o
When Logan wakes in the morning, Scott is lying curled on his side, facing away from him. And one of the first things Logan notices is a second soul-mark fully visible above the loose collar of his oversized shirt—Logan's shirt; the guy seriously needs to get some of his own crap. But...Logan was just looking at Scott's neck, and there had only been one mark, scarred, so this new one has literally appeared overnight. It's larger than Jean's—quite a bit larger—and dark brown, contrasting boldly with Scott's pale skin.
“Hey, Slim.” Logan elbows him. “You got yourself a new soul-mark.”
“What?” Scott sits up, rubbing a hand over his face. “How? I—it's not been long enough for that yet, has it?”
Logan shrugs. “All I know is what I see on your neck, Summers. I suppose I should say congratulations.”
Scott looks like he might be sick. “Do you have a second mirror I can use? I need to see.”
“Yep.” Logan crawls out of bed and goes to his dresser to get his hand mirror.
“Lo-Logan.”
“What?” Logan spins around again to glare at him. “Did you want the mirror or what?”
Scott swallows. He smells of terror: guilt and confusion and terror all rolled together and it's starting to put Logan on edge. But then Scott manages to calm himself—at least somewhat—and stands up from the bed as well. “You're going to want to use that mirror yourself; there's a new mark on your neck too.”
And Logan understands that sudden spike of confusion and terror.
o0o
The new mark on Logan's neck is the colour of raw salmon flesh and it's larger than either Kayla's or Jean's. Not as large as the new one on Scott's neck, though.
“So,” Logan says, setting the mirror down on the top of the toilet tank—his tiny cabin's tiny bathroom doesn't exactly have a counter. “You're obviously thinking the same thing I'm thinking what with this highly suspicious timing, so you just wanna get this over with?”
Scott swallows, head ducked and shoulders hunched. “Not really, but...” He sighs, straightening and broadening his stance, raising his chin. “Yeah; just—I mean, it's better to know.”
“So.” Logan scratches at his bushy sideburns. “You wanna go first, or...?”
Scott turns around. “Here, just—do it—”
Taking a step forward, Logan reaches out and touches the new mark on Scott's neck. Pale beige blooms against the dark brown, clear and obvious, in reaction to his touch. Logan glares at the contrasting colours as if he could intimidate them into non-existence. “Oh, what the hell?” He'd known it was possible, perhaps even probable, but he hadn't wanted it to be.
He shows Scott in the mirrors, because he asks to see—it's pretty likely he doesn't actually want to see, but he asks.
Then it's Logan's turn to see: the new mark on his neck goes dark brown at Scott's touch.
o0o
Logan makes them breakfast. Scott didn't say anything, just sort of stared blankly, so Logan left him alone. They both needed a bit of time to process...this.
Scott is still quiet as he eats, but at least he eats, thank God.
“Maybe we were meant to be a triad,” Scott says finally, pushing a piece of fried potato around his plate. “But these marks just showed up late.”
Maybe. Logan takes a sip of his coffee. He's done eating, pushed his plate aside. If Jean were still alive, would she suddenly have his mark alongside Scott's? “Guess there's no way to know for sure.” Logan rolls his shoulders, tries not to think about what-ifs and might-have-beens.
“I didn't—” Scott's voice is small. “I didn't want another soulmate.” There's something that's not quite an apology in the set of his shoulders.
“Yeah?” Logan snorts, both hands wrapped around his mug on the table. “You and me both, kid.” He leans back in his chair, considering his new soulmate—God, that idea's going to take some getting used to. “Do me a favour?”
Scott turns his goggles on Logan. “Okay?”
Logan fixes him with an intent look. Hell, he probably looks angry. Well, he kind of is angry. “Keep your stupid ass alive for at least a few more decades—I'm running out of room on my neck.”
Scott's surprised laugh comes out mingled with a soft choke, but he grins and nods a bit. “I'll do my best.”
“Good.” Logan stands up and takes his dishes to the sink. “That's all I ask.”
o0o
Scott spends most of the day wandering—doesn't go far, but it's nice to get a break from that miasma of self-hatred and desperation. Good for the brat too, to get some fresh air and exercise. He returns at suppertime with a bucket of blackberries—and a few scratches deep enough to bleed—like an offering.
“Think we should make a pie out of those?” Logan nods to the bucket where it sits on the counter as he sets their plates on the table.
“Do you have any ice-cream?” Scott stands at the sink and turns on the taps.
“Nope.” Logan shakes his head as he lays forks beside the plates on the table.
“I could go into town tomorrow and pick some up.” Scott winces slightly as he scrubs his hands with Logan's soap—heck, even the water's gotta sting a bit in those scratches.
“While you're there, you might consider getting a few clothes that actually fit.” No doubt Xavier's still keeping the kid's bank account stocked. All these years of just giving his money away like it was water—running a school where most of the students didn't pay, constantly having to upgrade and expand and repair the facilities—and the guy still hasn't run out. Maybe he fudges the books a bit: a little gentle telepathy at the right bank employee, and suddenly a few extra millions just magically appear. Logan snorts softly at the thought.
“You don't like how I look?” Scott is actually posing, cocky little grin on his face.
Logan shakes his head, rolling his eyes a bit and trying to suppress his own grin. “You look like a hobo, Slim.”
“Oh yeah?” And that might be Scott's full cocky asshole grin—it's been a while. “What do you think you look like?”
“I look,” Logan says, stepping towards him, crowding him against the counter, “like an actual wolverine.”
Rather than looking intimated, Scott just looks...pleased. “Yeah.” More cocky asshole grinning. Like Scott would have any damn idea; the closest he's ever got to an actual wolverine would be looking at a picture in an encyclopedia. “You do.” The sudden spike of arousal in Scott's scent is the only warning and he's already surging up and kissing Logan, wet and messy, on the mouth.
Logan can't help but kiss him back, and it isn't fair. He didn't ask for any of this. He should have died before this little shit was even born. But he kisses him back because it feels good, damn it all. And the marks on their necks say this is right.