Work Text:
“Are you alright, beloved?”
Kurt raises his head from a stack of paperwork. He looks tired, Ororo thinks, and there’s an uncharacteristic tension in his shoulders, his trademark smile, a little threadbare.
“Oh, hi, Ororo,” the smile brightens but she knows him very well, she’s not fooled. “Of course.”
He rises to greet her, but he’s definitely lacking his usual bounce.
***
“Ngh!” Jean flops down in her Council seat with a strangled sound of frustration.
Ororo tilts her head in obvious enquiry.
“How did you do it?” Jean buries her head in her hands.
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific?”
“How did you deal with the obnoxious little shit? Without frying him?”
“Ah.” Realisation dawns.
“He winds Scott up, who then winds Alex up, Gabriel puts his oar in, so does Nathan and it goes round and round in ever decreasing circles, until I want to mind wipe the lot of them.”
“Oh dear,” there is both amusement and sympathy in Ororo’s tone. “Are the magic words not working?”
“What?” Jean’s head jerks up. “Magic words?”
“I’m sorry, O, my sister,” Ororo is definitely smiling now. “I thought you knew...”
***
Magic. It really is that simple, Jean thinks, as peace descends on the Summers House.
The dinner table is fun, not fraught, oh, they’re still brothers, they still pick and tease at each other, but without Logan’s machismo egging them on, there is much less of a sting, more laughter. She and Scott go to bed and they make love and lose themselves in each other, not a competition, no performance needed.
When Scott goes down to visit Emma’s White Palace the next day, she kisses him goodbye and it’s not a problem, because she feels safe and secure in their relationship, their friendship, their life.
***
Logan settles on a sofa, a quarter of a million miles away, beer in one hand, the hockey game rumbles on. He glances down at the tousled, damp, blue-black curls of the head in his lap, rests his free hand on the softly furred, strongly muscled shoulder, his thumb strokes, gently.
Good, he thinks. Life is good.
Particularly when his team score a short handed goal.
***
Kurt continues reading his book, happily ignoring the television, relaxed on his grumpy, grumbly pillow.
He does so like Cervantes.
And sex. Obviously.
***
Ororo smiles again, quietly, to herself, as Kurt bounces into the Council chamber for their next meeting, his head high and his tail in a graceful arc behind him. That’s more like it, more like her beautiful, self-assured friend.
All that was needed was the magic words.
***
Who knew that “Why don’t you go for a drink with Kurt?” could be such a universal panacea?
Apart from Ororo, of course.