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It takes longer for Kurt to catch him staring than he thought it would, but when he does the spade of his tail flicks behind him in a silent question, a little wrinkle appearing between midnight blue brows.
“Was?”
“Nothin’.”
“Don’t give me that.” Kurt shifts, though he makes no move to leave the spot that he’s warmed with his own body heat, settling again just as quickly. A curl has moved to rest against his forehead and Logan resists the sudden, outlandish urge to coax it back into place. “What is it?”
“I said nothin’, Elf, an’ I meant what I said.”
Kurt huffs, clearly unconvinced, and Logan tears his eyes away from that one stray curl before he can say something stupid. Silence falls again, the two of them sitting at the edge of the Blackbird as the other X-Men infiltrate and search and retrieve somewhere beyond the snowing wastelands ahead of them.
It’s almost peaceful.
“I’m not going to let this snow go to waste,” Kurt mutters a few minutes later, breaking the silence with ease, and Logan bites off a curse when he hops down into it.
“Elf—”
“That’s not my name,” Kurt singsongs, his tail weaving through the snowfall in happy wags. “I can’t hear you, Logan.”
“You— Goddammit, Kurt.”
“Much better,” Kurt says, and spreads his arms out, white freckles settling onto his hair and face and clothing as he grins a blinding grin. “Come join me!”
His heart skips a beat. Logan drops to the ground to join Kurt before it can do something worse. “Happy now? Got what you wanted?” Logan doesn’t usually feel anything but neutral about his height but now, having to look up to meet Kurt’s shining golden eyes, he feels off balance and wrong-footed. He crosses his arms over his chest and tries to ignore it. “You look ridiculous.”
Kurt blinks down at Logan with snow dusting his cheeks, his hair, and his eyelashes of all things. “Who, me?”
Jesus.
“Yes, you. You’re gonna catch a chill in this weather — these suits don’t insulate all that well and you aren’t all that warm on the best days.”
Kurt’s expression softens. “I’ll be alright,” he says, the even sway of his tail slowing down. Logan resists the useless urge to bristle — Kurt wouldn’t so much as blink if he did, not after knowing him for so long. “I’m hardy folk — I’m hardy? — and we have blankets in the Blackbird, and I have no doubt you would help warm me up if truly necessary.”
Logan’s ears begin to burn. “What?”
“Was?”
“You— what?”
Logan blinks, shaking his head. Stupid. Kurt looks just as confused as he does, that quizzical wrinkle right there between his brows again, and Logan’s heart is beating too fucking fast for this. He’s no spring chicken, dammit, he knows when he’s being flirted with — and he also knows when Kurt says something entirely on accident.
This is one of those times.
“Nothin’,” Logan mutters, seeing as it’s apparently half of his vocabulary this snowy, unsteady afternoon, and turns away, forcing himself not to wonder what emotions Kurt can or can’t smell on him right now. “Enjoy the—”
Suddenly there’s a three-fingered hand curled tight around his wrist, and it tightens further when he tries to take another step back towards the plane. Logan stops trying.
“I want to enjoy it with you, mein freund. Please stay.”
Logan sighs and slowly turns back around. Kurt’s fur doesn’t warm up the same way the skin beneath does, letting the snow falling to rest on his ears and cheeks stay frozen for a little while longer than it can on his own skin. It’s cold out here, their suits really don’t have fantastic insulation for places like this (something to bring up to Hank later), but Logan can’t really find it in himself to care when Kurt’s hand slides down from his wrist and curls around his gloved fingers instead. He’s gentle. His thumb brushes slowly over the carefully measured slits in the leather over Logan’s knuckles, back and forth and back and forth. The weight of Kurt’s gaze is heavy, so heavy that Logan almost finds himself sinking deeper into the snow under it.
This is a weighty moment; Logan’s got that much figured out, at the very least. He would say he isn’t sure how he got here, but weeks of laughter and closeness and the brush of knuckles against knuckles tell a story even he’s able to read, unable to make excuses for the way he’d held Kurt’s hand in both of his last week just to feel the velvet texture of his soft, clean fur. He could have felt it some other way, but it had felt like lying.
Logan’s sick to death of lying to his friends.
“Was ist das?” Kurt quietly asks, and the feeling of his hand squeezing Logan’s feels important.
What is it? Logan’s mind helpfully translates. Then, a second later, When the hell did I start speaking German?
“I’m one sappy motherfucker whenever I look at you,” Logan mutters as his vaguely embarrassed answer, staring at Kurt’s hand instead of his face. He doesn’t even need to look up to know that Kurt’s long, pointed ears just twitched at the words a normal human probably wouldn’t be able to hear, though. He knows his Elf too well.
Jesus Christ, Logan. Your Elf?
“Is that why you aren’t looking at me?” The question dances through the air like snow caught by a gust of wind. “Are you afraid?”
“Afraid of what?” That startles Logan so badly he looks up in a lurching, unsteady motion, dark brows drawn together in outrage, but all he finds is amusement making Kurt’s eyes glow warmer than a crackling fireplace in the middle of December. Still, he carries on, burning with the need to set things straight. “Kurt— No. Afraid of you? Bullshit and you know it, I could never be afraid of you.”
“But you are afraid,” Kurt surmises, “If only a little.” Then he laughs, bright and merry, his eyes sparkling a little harder as Logan feels his cheeks and ears turn beet red, and leans forward and down to press a brief, smiling kiss to Logan’s cheek. “You can’t fool m—”
Logan cuts him off the best way he knows how: grabbing him by the face and pulling him into a better kiss, lips against lips as both God and Jesus intended. Logan’s lips are chapped from the cold and the biting habit he can’t kick and he swears he can taste flavored lip balm or lip gloss on Kurt’s, three-fingered hands flailing for a second before curling tight around his shoulders with a sound of delight.
About damn time, you lovestruck fool, Logan thinks to himself, leaning back for half a second before kissing him a little harder and committing the muffled noise of pleasant surprise he lets out to memory. So maybe I was afraid, Elf — not anymore, though, now am I?
Eventually Kurt pulls back for air with a gasp, eyes wide in what’s pretty clearly a good way, and Logan takes the opportunity to ask his one burning question. “That cherry, Kurt?”
“Ja,” Kurt murmurs, sounding more than a little blissed out, and leans back in for another kiss, his fur velvety soft against the rough stubble and sideburns of Logan’s skin. “Good guess.”