Archive of Our Own

On his first night back in the twenty-first century, Logan is almost comforted by the familiarity of staring at his bedroom ceiling and finally giving up on sleeping for the night.

He sits up with some effort, somehow even more tired upright than he was laying down, and grimaces at the clock. It's well past four o’clock. He’s gotten up much earlier before, it’ll just have to do.

Being back in his room was striking, especially when he isn’t preparing to leave. This whole place was just unreal. He felt lost in his old memories, the bittersweet domesticality of the peace sanctioned in Charles’ school, once locked away in the part of his mind he doesn’t go, the one that keeps him from wanting things he can’t have. For good reason. Fortune is followed by tragedy, he reminds himself. Something will come to steal this away from him too, as it always has before. 

As it took Jean, then did the cruel mercy of not bringing her back alongside the other bits and pieces of his heart, but gave him the hope anyways.

His feet start in a direction, and don’t stop until he’s standing outside in the icy courtyard, the brisk chill of Winter’s end stinging his bare skin. The sky is dark, but dimly glowing with the promise of a new day, lighting just enough for him to see where he’s going. There’s one place he’s been meaning to visit since he got here.

Once he reaches her grave, he’s mildly irritated to find he’s not by himself.

“Scott?” He grunts, squinting at the figure asleep in the grass. Upon closer inspection, his guess was correct. Glasses ridden up his face, curled in on himself like a drunken fool, stupid haircut and all. He can’t help stare for just a few seconds, still in complete shock that he’s real, that he’s alive and older and alright.

Logan fixes his glasses before he blows his head off, then gives his shoulder a few good shakes until Scott finally gives a sign of life. He inhales sharply. Then pushes himself upright as if he’s been awake the whole time, like an ass. He stares at the gravestone reading Jean Grey , head hanging like hiding a wound.

Instead of asking Scott a stupid question like are you alright , he sits down. Not necessarily beside him, but adjacent, close enough.

“It’s her birthday,” Scott finally explains after a minute, voice surprisingly clear. “S’ why.”

Logan didn’t know it was, but then again, he never really knew much about Jean Grey at all. Only that he loved her.

He watches a glistening tear catch on his fearless leader's lip and it’s enough to draw pressure around his own chest. Pain, just there on the edge of his awareness.

“She used to cook for me on mine,” Scott mumbles again. “She’s a terrible cook.”

Logan remembers, she always cooked for everyone on their birthdays, even his own. It was never good. He nods even though Scott can’t see, the briefest smile going sour as he has to leave the memory in the past, where it belongs.

Scott turns his head around to face him, sad eyes hidden by his glasses, but mouth parted in a frown and eyebrows scrunched. “Is it you, Logan?” He asks.

“How could you tell?” He answers somewhat sarcastically. He wishes he brought a drink for himself, something to distract him from this beating thing in his chest.

“Your hands, your- fucking silence… It could only be you,” Scott turns back. “It’s only ever you.” It should be said bitterly, because Logan understands exactly why it would be, but it’s not. It sounds like the relieving breaths after coming up for air.

“I can leave,” Logan offers, already shifting to stand. He might as well anyways, he’s sitting in a layer of ice around the grass in a tank top and sweatpants.

“Wait.” Scott stops him, Logan doesn’t know why he listens. “You’re the only one who knows what it’s like.” 

What it’s like to love Jean Grey, to lose her.

“Do you come out here a lot?” Logan asks, sitting back down, closer this time. Scott briefly looks at him in acknowledgement, eye flitting away under the dark glasses. He hopes that was an alright question, that it wasn’t something he already “knew”. Charles said he’d help him regain some memories from this timeline, but it’s going very slowly.

Scott shakes his head. “Nah. No. I shouldn’t. She’s been gone for so many years now.” He thumbs the grass, Logan watches him. “You know, I feel guilty for enjoying my life without her, after she saved all our lives. And her birthday is always difficult. She never liked people knowing when it was. So selfless, that woman. Could never be selfish if it saved her life. Not even if it saved mine.”

Logan doesn’t know if he agrees according to his own memories with her, any moment he did share with her was an act of selfishness of them both. Making her birthday difficult wasn’t necessarily selfless of her, and even maybe, neither was sacrificing herself. Logan could make it fine without her, he’d lost uncountable people before and he always knows it’ll happen again. But Scott…

“We kissed,” Logan admits, and he doesn’t know why. To hurt him, to drive a reaction from him, to prove him wrong about Jean, with some newfound resolve. He suddenly felt protective of the man, or sorry for. No one can be so self sacrificing without sacrificing other things that don’t belong to them. “Do you hate me?”

Scott looks at him, face hard to read in the dark. “No.” He says, doubtless. And when Logan wouldn’t respond after that, he continues, somewhat reluctant to say. “You hurt me Logan. But I never hated you. Is that what you want to hear?”

“You knew?”

“I thought about it all the time. I wasn’t that drunk.” He said, face turned away. Different timeline, different circumstances, he guesses. He can imagine a scene with the three of them drinking, and Logan making out with Jean while they guessed Scott was blacked out in the corner. In retrospect, it’s completely fucked up, but honestly something he would probably do. “Truthfully, I thought you hated me . But I always liked having something to do with you, Logan. Even in the beginning. I’m not sure you ever felt the same, but I kind of had fun in our rivalry, when it was harmless, or I just liked it even though you were irritating. I liked that your heart belonged to Jean, and her’s belonged to me, and mine.... It felt like a game that I had all the control in. I’m trying to be okay with the mess, now.”

Guilt bounces through him, settling in a hard bright lump in his throat. Logan didn’t know what to think about that. The words resonate, though, like he felt something very similar. In the beginning he didn’t notice Cyclops much at all, just someone in his way at every turn, and carried the aura of someone spoiled - when really he was the furthest thing from - or a goody-two-shoes narc, but he wouldn’t hate anyone with clean hands just because his are dirty. No, he could never hate Scott.

And he found it very easy to hate, it was the first intimacy he remembers. Bone-deep rage as familiar as the back of his own hand. Looking at Scott, it concerned him how the warmth he felt wasn’t any sort of that. A shiver runs through him when a breeze passes, reminding him he’s cold.

“And here I thought I drove you crazy.” Logan spoke, finally.

“No, you did. Still do.” Scott sighs and rubs his forehead, like he’s got a headache just thinking about all the orders Logan ignores. 

Then he pauses, not entirely finished. His eyebrows furrow, and he stops his rubbing, onto a new train of thought now. “Something is… wrong. You’ve been avoiding me all month, but yesterday you…”

Ah, fuck. “What?”

“Nothing.” Scott shakes it off. “You looked at me funny. And it felt like…”

Like Logan was meeting a man who’d been dead for twenty years until that very day. And then reached for that man's shoulder like he expected his hand to phase right through, only for it to stop around real muscle. And then like he was going to cry but wouldn’t because he never can, tears impossibly locked in his head. His eyes burned and burned in their sockets, feeling astonishment and old grief at one time.

Logan doesn’t care if Scott finds out the truth, he doesn’t care to hide it, he just hasn’t said it outright. Part of him still aches from the alternate timeline, still grieves everything he lost there. Where Logan was the one to kill Jean, and Jean was the one to kill Scott, and Logan was as he’d always been, surviving it all. 

He was deciding whether or not to tell him, when Scott suddenly stands, shrugging off his coat and tossing it over Logan’s head, grass crunching as he walks away. The body heat left by Scott registers immediately, and he forgets whatever he was revving to say. It’s not the time or place anyways.

Pulling the coat off him, he notices the sun peaking through the trees, chasing away the dark. He reads Jean Grey carved on the stone for the hundredth time, and Scott is already so far away.

///

A week later, Scott is hiding in his room with all the lights off and his head shoved between his pillows. He often gets these migraines at least once or twice a month on account of his TBI, for a few days at a time. Logan covers his classes when it happens, like he did today.

What he’s not done in awhile, though, is come into his room afterwards. Another unusual thing Logan’s done this week, when not too long ago he was avoiding Scott like a goddamn virus.

He couldn’t see the light through his mask, but he did hear the gentle knock preceding the swing of a door opening and closing. He shuffles his mask off with his eyes squeezed tight and finds his glasses.

“Wanna go for a walk?” Logan asks, while slyly observing Scott’s room.

Scott’s skull feels like it’s vibrating and the idea of outside light doesn’t appeal to his head much at all, and neither does Logan’s company. What he really wants is a nap. 

He says yes anyways.

It isn’t so bad, moving around actually helps direct some of the pain. They walk through a shady part of the forest surrounding the school, and the fresh snow would probably be beautiful if his world wasn’t shrouded in red. The cold air is still nice though, and the quiet.

“Still get those headaches, huh?” Logan comments. So much for the quiet, anyway.

Scott finds it odd the way he phrased that, but decides it’s not worth it to press. He accepts that Logans getting lead-poisoning from the adamantium and it’s causing early dementia. Or well, late dementia, he’s practically as old as the country. “Yeah. Charles can’t do much to help me anymore.” And neither can Jean .

He keeps that last bit to himself, feeling no urge to open a conversation about her when it already feels like his head is splitting open.

Right when Logan is about to say something, the man suddenly stops frozen in his tracks, legs rooted to the spot. His eyes scan the surrounding trees, breathing in deeply from through his nose. Scott almost questions him but then Logan takes off abruptly, not even minding Scott’s “ Hey- !” as he leaves the other man to chase after him. Everything hurts too bad, he really hopes there’s no one they have to fight.

After too much running, Logan finally slows to a stop in front of a small rocky ledge.

When Scott rounded the cliff, he had to suck in a big breath, hands on his knees - when did he get so old? - and when he looks up, there’s Logan, kneeling before a dead animal, a badger probably. The thing’s red-caked chest pumps up and down rapidly with quick, pained little breaths. Blood wells in big timely spurts from the metal claws of a bear trap, nearly hidden by the snow. 

“Shit,” Scott breathes, squinting over the scene. Logan’s breath goes out like a whisper, extinguished. This will mean more to him than he’ll let on, Scott knows.

“S’ alright, it’s all over.” Logan murmurs, uncharacteristically gentle as he runs a hand through the fur, before holding his fist against its head and activating his claws in a spray of red across the snow.

It felt like a sullen moment, watching Logan kneel there with his eyes still on the animal. Scott came up from behind, wondering if a friendly touch was appropriate, then deciding he didn’t care. Logan could rip his arm off if it’s what he needed.

“Well we can’t leave it here like this, now can we?” Scott speaks after a second, leaning over to rub a hand on his shoulder.

Logan regards him with a look, a look that looks halfway between “I appreciate you” and “get your hands off me”, but does nothing to stop him. Scott’s arm stays intact.

“Step back,” Logan says, and Scott does.

He maneuvers a trick with the springs and it snaps open, blood flinging over the both of them.

“You’re experienced,” Scott minds, wishing he cleared the splash zone.

“Yeah well,” Logan leans the lifeless badger out, and stands with it in one arm, almost cradled against his chest like a baby. He glares at the trap with malice, but knows better than to kick it. “I’ve been alive a long time.”

“Weren’t you gonna try to save it?” Scott asks, but he knows Logan’s not the type to interrupt the cycle of nature, he’s the type to cut things off when it gets ugly. Even if this trap was mankind's doing, not nature’s.

“She was in pain.” He answers, and Scott can’t miss the look on his face, the distress. And suddenly this feels deeper, like it’s about something else entirely. “It was the right thing. It’s cruel to let an animal continue in pain.”

Scott stares at his own hands, then grimaces, remembering another time they were covered in death.

Logan’s free hand is slick with blood and quivering mutely when Scott’s own clasps over it, not quite holding hands, but close. He feels the trembles vibrate beneath Logan’s skin as if he’s physically holding it back, and Scott is already telepathically trying to console him before he realizes he’s thinking of someone else. Scott’s never been good with emotions, he’d hate for anyone to find out he had any, and he knows Logan’s not any better, if not even worse. He lets the red seep into the cuff of his sweater, and doesn’t allow his memories to return to Jean Grey. As far as showing he cares goes, it was the best he could do.

“Last thing.” Scott scans his feet for a long stick, and prods one end against the trap enough for it to activate again and snap the stick in half. He looks back, grinning. “Now it can’t hurt anyone else.”

Logan kinda smiles too, soft and subdued. A sight that was slowly becoming familiar.

///

They ended up burying it, then came back in time for dinner, covered head to toe in an impressive amount of all kinds of grossness. Scott’s head was still pounding, but the company was nice.

On the way to getting cleaned up, Rogue rounds a corner and nearly crashes into the both of them, gasping sharply when she sees (or smells) the dead animal blood all over Logan.

She takes a generous step back and eyes the both of them, fingers fiddling in front of her. “Logan, is anyone hurt?” She queries, after a second.

He shakes his head, but looks at her appreciatively. “No, Marie, we’re fine.”

“We just went out for some fresh air,” Scott adds. They don’t smell very fresh, but they are as close to the beauty of nature and life as anyone can get.

She nods, not exactly convinced, but ready to leave it alone now that neither of them are hurt. “So I’m guessin’ you and Cyclops are friends again?” She notices, brightly.

Scott’s half serious dementia theory is still a working one. He turns to watch the man’s face, interested in what he has to say. He thought it was abrupt when a while ago Logan stopped going out of his way to hang out with him, stopped talking when they met in the kitchen late at night, stopped looking his way, saw him only when required in meetings. Never even stuck around him to make his snarky comments, either. Just gone.

But this was somehow more abrupt.

The more he thought about it, the more worked up it made him. Why ? What in the world could have changed both those times? Why would he do any of this if only to confuse him? Their relationship is too undefined to see very clearly; drawn and redrawn, erased and corrected. He could forgive Logan for being in love with his girl, he could forgive him for anything, really. But there was something so devastating about him disappearing when he already lost someone he loved, and then coming back as if it didn’t even happen. He was already so familiar with feeling abandoned, but experience never made it easier to go through, only amplified it. Like irritating fragile scar tissue.

Logan shifts, as if sensing Scott’s burning gaze. “Yeah, pal?” Scott hums, leaning his elbow on the man’s shoulder just to be a pain in the ass.

“You see,” Logan hesitates. Visibly concocting a grandiose lie. “It’s a long story, some mindfuck crap I don’t wanna get into in the middle of the hallway, and also I need a shower.” 

‘Mindfuck crap’ is one way to put it, Scott supposes. If his mind is the one being fucked right now.

Logan continues. “But of course I’ve always been Scott’s friend.”

Scott stares and stares. Friend. Yes, he’s Scott’s friend, of course. That’s what they’ve always been. He tentatively removes his friendly placed hand from his friend's shoulder.

“Well- okay.” She looks between them, so obviously focused on the blood, but she really can’t be so surprised. She looks at Scott. “Is your head feelin’ any better, sir?”

“Much worse,” He smiles. Animal corpse fumes are to blame, most likely, but this pain he can handle.

“I’ll take care of him,” Logan says. Someone taking care of him. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Promising to join her for dinner, they depart from Rogue and head for the showers. And kind of wordlessly, step into parallel stalls, separated with a divider that mostly covers the waist down. His eyes are closed with his glasses off anyways, not that he really cares what he or Logan sees. That is, until Scott can’t find the fucking shampoo and is just uselessly patting around the stall caddy for shit that isn’t there . 

Then he hears “ I’ve got it ” to his left, and expects to be handed a bottle, only for rough hands to begin assaulting his hair. 

“Logan- get off, I can do that my damn self!” He objects, roughly grabbing Logan’s wrists to remove him.

“I’m doing you a favor, bub, trust me,” Logan insists, breaking from the grip, and smears a bit of soap across his face just because he’s an asshole. “You’re always walking out of here with your hair a mess.”

“I wish I could open my eyes right now so I could see your stupid hair ears. You think my hair is a mess?” A week ago, they weren’t talking, and today he’s helping him soap his hair. Totally weird .

When they’re all finished, he puts his glasses on in the mirror, and stares at his wet hair. Wild and sticking up into two big points on his head like animal ears. He turns to glare at Logan, but the man is already red faced and smiling ear to ear into his hand, shoulders bouncing in silent laughter.

“My hair was a mess, huh?” Scott grouches, only incentivizing him to laugh louder. It’s contagious. It’s nice.

And like that, all that confusion he had earlier is banked, settled into a lump in his throat. Fondness skips through him like a stone, then. Something stronger than fond, and he can't help the smile climbing up his own face too. He rolls up a towel and weaponizes it at Logan, who leaps back and reaches for his own.

“You’re on, slim.”

It’s tooth-rotting, is what it is.

///

The days following, Logan realizes he’s not doing very good at keeping it cool.

He tries to squish down his feelings and proceed like the Logan of this world had done, heed Charles’ advice, not spend every waking moment thinking about how terrified he is of something happening to this world again. He doesn’t think he could take it this time.

For the past few days, Logan’s tried everything to figure out why everyone claimed he was avoiding Scott, without asking around and making it incredibly obvious he hasn’t even lived the past few years. Rogue made it seem like they maybe fought - are you guys friends again? - but Scott made it sound like Logan just disappeared out of the blue, without apparent reason. Maybe they did fight of sorts, and Logan of this timeline’s first instinct was to run, but Scott didn’t understand the terms at all. 

Logan interrogated Charles, the only one who knows where he came from, then tried to prod his memories some more, but it was too soon for anything to make itself clear. He only ran into the same conclusion: something happened, Logan fled. Something that only Scott and Logan knew.

Maybe the nature of their fight wasn’t a fight at all, if Scott didn’t think anything of it. Or it could have been something Scott thought was good, and thought Logan wanted too. Something that scared Logan, maybe they were getting too close-

Oh.

We kissed. Do you hate me?

You hurt me Logan. But I never hated you.

I thought about it all the time. I wasn’t that drunk.

Logan shot up in his bed, realization stabbing him in the fucking ass.

Oh, fuck . This whole time.

Well, that explains… A lot. Logan has been acting weird then, and Scott has every right to be heavily suspicious of him, like he has been for weeks now. He even sat in on Logan’s history class recently as he played a video for the students while they simultaneously wrote reports for the third day this week, then afterwards said to him; “Are you hungover, or just an idiot?”  

Oh, Scott should never know the truth. If Scott found out what he’d done, what would he think? That Logan is a completely different man than the one he’d been living with, that this Logan killed the love of their lives? That the love of their lives killed Scott? It was a foolish thing to consider. No, Scott can never find out.

He needs time to think.

So, time passes.

Logan stays out of Scott’s way, again. It was for the best.

Maybe it wasn’t as intense as the other Logan’s silent treatment, but he just needed to make some distance, sort this out. So no more impromptu hangouts, no late night insomnia talks, no jabbing banter, and he tries to avoid eye contact as much as he can, really. 

After a few days of it, his chest is sore, like real physical pain that even his healing factor is useless against.

After a week, he can’t stand it. Scott invites him to cook with him, laughing as he explains he’s out of practice and wouldn’t mind some company. Logan doesn’t miss how Scott’s face plummets when he turns him down.

After a month, it’s routine, it’s self-loathing, and it’s made its way into Ororo’s concerns.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” She began, walking him against his classroom's wall. Logan waits for the last stray students to hurriedly abort the room, then emphasizes his ‘ whatever happened, it wasn’t me’ stare.

“Well I was teaching a class, Storm.” The windowsill digs painfully in his leg, he looks at her, quickly gauging the available space. Making a run for it would probably result with him face planting the ground with his arm twisted behind his back, or just getting thrown straight back against the wall. He can tell when she really isn’t playing.

“Don’t play dumb!” She hisses, shoving his shoulder. “Are you a sadist?” 

He shakes his head, lost, trying to shake her off him. “Give me a goddamn clue here, I don’t know what the fuck-!”

“Killing Jean in your world just wasn’t enough for you? You have to come here and hurt him too?”

Logan snaps, fiercely grabbing the collar of her jacket and yanking her, knuckles white and trembling with anger. “Don’t you ever fucking -”

He stops, the words sinking in.

Logan’s face tenses, and maybe he doesn’t really understand what’s going on. The comment about Jean stung, but the angry tears in Ororo’s eyes brings him back to Earth. And she knows . How does she know? How much ?

“What?” He manages, fists unfurling from the lapels. “How-?”

Ororo steps back a pace, visibly upset, but the thunder is passed. “You saved this school, Logan. Our home . And I can never thank you enough.” Her swirling gray eyes held his gaze, acknowledgment on her face. “Don’t you think it’s time you stop passing through?”

The thought stays with him for the rest of the day. It follows him into bed, and into his scalding hot shower. He thinks about Scott; his laugh with the towel, the comforting hand around Logan’s shaking, bloodied one. The coat he threw at him that morning to keep him warm, still somewhere in his room. The face he made when he pushed him away, like Logan was another added person to the list of people he lost before truly having.

Under the hot water, Logan digs the heels of his hands into his eyes until it hurts, then presses his palms over his ears to drown out the sound of the water. So that when he whispers it sounds like someone else telling him: “You stupid, stupid fuck .”

///

Historically, Logan builds walls. 

Well, historically meaning he built walls, more like. Which is terrifying when he realizes there’s gaps of air in the paved bricks, crumbling cracks in his self control. It’s dangerous when he wants something. Someone. Dangerous for everyone involved. And what’s worse, Logan thinks he knows precisely when he noticed the first crack, and yet didn’t do a single thing about it.

He sees summer on the other side and somehow, wants to reach his arm through and feel the sun’s warmth, splay his hands over the grass. It’s there like an opportunity - a request, like saying, you got it, get through to me. But he’s seen what’s happened to people he crossed that threshold for, horrible deaths in painful ways, some even lost from memory all together. Too much heartache for one man, but he thinks it'll go on forever. Ruin follows him no matter where he is. Or maybe it’s ruin that he follows, he doesn’t really know. 

As far back as he can remember he’s been fighting these battles, without even really knowing why. Maybe he did at one point, but it was taken from him, and he never really got it back.

All he knows is that he would have died for Jean, were he given the chance, and he thinks he wants to die for Scott, also. Not that it saved her, and not that it would save him. He could live for Scott, too. Forget about his claws. Put down his fight, leave behind the battle. Find some way to grow old, die naturally and slowly like Scott someday will, and everyone else he loves.

Because he does. Love him, that is. He aches with it.

Deep behind the walls, there’s this weak part of him - a scared, sick little part of him that still loves and craves love like everyone else - that wants to try, knowing the risks. Really try , this time. He’d make it work, he’d do anything for it to work.

He’d even beg for forgiveness.

He thinks about it endlessly, Ororo’s wake up call vibrating in his head - don’t you think it’s time you stop passing through? - He makes a point to stop avoiding him, but it seems he can’t really find him anyways.

So, he gets his shit together, and looks for him.

Looks as in, he can’t find him. It seems that it’s Logan's turn to be given the runaround, because he literally is nowhere in the mansion. Not even his room, Jean’s old room, nowhere. Everyone says they thought he was somewhere else, except for Kitty, who saw him go into the garage, mumbling about ‘needing to think’.

If he’s left the mansion altogether, he could be anywhere. He’s almost about to ask Charles to find him in cerebros, for gods sake, when he realizes where exactly he could be. The last place anyone saw Scott, before. Or what was left of him.

He remembers the destruction on the lake, and the feeling in his chest when he picked out the glasses from the rest of the debris, frozen in the moments of impact. The sinking feeling of realization that Scott Summers was just gone , completely ceased to exist. There was no body to bury or grieve, nothing to tell him it was real. She turned him into nothing, and Logan felt part of himself evaporate along with it.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck.

It can never happen again.

When he makes it to the garage, Scott’s motorcycle isn’t there. He borrows a car, destination in mind.

It’s a two hour drive in rural country, he doesn’t pass a single car on the way to the base. No bikes either. He sits in silence, with only his mind to wander and wander. He understands the depth of just how afraid he is of losing Scott again, and wonders when he had the time to become so sickeningly fond of the man.

It’s a two hour drive, but he made it in forty five.

He finds the motorcycle on its kickstand just outside the lake, and it feels like his blood is evaporating inside him.

“Scott!” He’s yelling, legs already in motion the second he hits the ground. He can’t hear the water, but he can feel the frigid wind, smelling thickly of brine. He makes it through to the lakes clearing and spots a figure in the distance. Adrenaline has his ears ringing, he can’t even hear anything else over his own voice shouting out, “Scott, Scott -!”

He finds him where he found Jean Grey.

“Fuck,” He breathes, eyes slipping closed in relief and exhaustion.

Scott stands abruptly from where he was sitting too close to the edge of the frozen lake, shocked to see him. Too quickly, Logan begins to rush to him, and Scott nearly slips on the edge before he’s being manhandled inshore.

“Scott, get away-”

“From you?” He yanks himself out of his grip, distancing himself a few paces. He smooths out his coat, staring at him incredulously. “Yeah, I’m working on it.”

Logan curses, he should’ve known getting Scott to listen would be the hard part. There’s no reason he should, anyways. He doesn’t know how to convey this urgency, doesn’t quite know how to say he cares, either. “Listen to me, alright? I can explain everything.”

Scott whips back around, crowding Logan’s space again. “What are you doing to me?”

“Let me-”

“Are you doing this on purpose?” Scott’s voice cracks weakly, and he coughs to try and amend it. He’s falling apart and uselessly pinching the seams to stay together. “I can’t take it, okay? The silent treatment- god, just say you hate me if that’s what it is, but stop disappearing, stop leaving . And then coming back like you don’t even remember, it’s hurting me, Logan, it’s-”

Logan’s handling him like he would a scared animal, one misstep will send him a mile in the opposite direction, into harm's way some other place, never to return, maybe. 

“Scotty, I don’t hate you.” He says, too quietly. He threads a hand through the side of Scott’s hair, thumb swiping his cheek, wet with tears or wind. Then louder, “I couldn’t hate you.”

“You will, when you find out what I’ve done,” Scott shakes his head, shaking Logan's grip. “When I tell you.”

“I’m the one who should be saying that,” Logan grimaces. 

“I already know the kind of man you are, Logan,” Scott swallows. “I know you well, so don’t act like-”

Logan stops him, speaking loud, then slowly quieter as he loses his resolve. He has to tell him. He can go on hating him if that’s how it has to be, but he has to know. “You don’t know where I come from, the things that happened, the people I...” Lost. Killed.

“The wars,”

“Not that.” He braces, pauses. Like dipping underwater to think clearly, before delivering the blow. “Where I came from, the world was ending. And you were dead. Many of the mutants were, but you were the first loss we suffered. Jean was the second.”

He can’t read his eyes beneath those glasses, can barely tell by the rest of his face what he’s thinking, if he’s already beginning to close himself away forever.

“Where you came from,” Scott echoes. “I don’t… understand,”

Logan lays it all down. How it’s somewhere much like here, except it all fell apart, and he was sent far back into the past to keep the events of the future from happening. He was the only one who could withstand the mental destruction of the trip, and he succeeded. But now the only one who remembers, who holds the trauma of it all, sees it every night. He keeps an eye on Scott as he explains, but his face doesn’t give anything away, not so easily.

“The first time I avoided you, wasn’t exactly me, but it’s something I would do, and it still happened. I’m sorry. The second time, I thought some space would have made it easier to process this place, while protecting you from finding out the truth, but I was wrong. I’m bad at apologies, but it's an explanation, I hope. And I need you to believe me, I know I don’t have psychic abilities that’ll let you see into my mind and see and feel everything I described, but I hope you can see it on my face and feel how much it-” He can’t bear to say it, he feels so weak already. He draws the fragmented pieces of himself in, trying to also keep himself together. “I never did anything because I hated you, Scott. It’s kind of the opposite, actually.”

Scott is silent for a few moments. The crashing of the water further downstream is audible, enough to hear a breeze shake out the trees, birds cawing in the distance. He’s quiet for so long, Logan doesn’t know if he’s been ignored or not. It’s expected, but it doesn’t make it easier.

Then he takes in a breath of air that sounds close to a masked cry. 

“Then, In your time,” He looks up again, voice cracking. “I died first. I didn’t have to kill her with my own hands.”

Out of absolutely everything Logan expected him to say, he wouldn’t even have thought of that. “You- what?”

Scott rears away, feeling burned.

“I had to or else she would have-” He stops, face contorting in pain. “She would have destroyed you! And everyone, but you first. It’s why I came here, this is where it happened.”

Logan stares, trying hard to understand. He follows his understanding of each event in this time, lining them in order to wrap his head around this revelation. “No, you… How…”

Scott has his hands in front of him, shaking violently.

“She could control my blasts, there was no other way ! I would’ve lost you both, maybe the rest of the X-men too. She begged me to.” He chokes through a sob that sounds like it’s tearing him apart, head hanging shamefully. Then it just doesn’t stop, just breath after breath wrenched from him. “I’m sorry . I’m sorry.”

Logan’s breath stutters like a heartbeat, halfway to a cry, maybe. He swallows the lump in his throat, unsure what to do with the hands at his sides until Scott sways the tiniest bit forward. He meets him halfway, lacquers his arms around him like he’s the thread keeping him together, on the earth. His chin tucked into the crook of Logan’s neck so he could feel his faint breath against bare skin.

“No one knows, we covered it up,” He sniffs in hard, swallowing a ragged breath to try and compose himself. It looks so painful, so repressed, like scars you thought were healed, now infected and oozing. Logan wants to tell him he doesn’t have to put up a tough act all the time, but doesn’t know how to start, doesn’t know how to follow his own advice. “Except Charles, and he hates me for it, I know he does. I was a pathetic, needy orphan he took a chance on because he was doing right by Alex and I killed his favorite -”

“Shh, I gotcha,” Logan tries, one hand twisted in the back of his shirt and the other bunched in Scott’s hair, sturdily holding him the best he can. “I ain’t going anywhere,”

“You should hate me,” Scott whispers, through wet lips. “We loved her.”

“Scott,” Logan levels, pulling off him to put hands on both his shoulders. He finds his eyes through the glasses. “ I killed her with my own hands. I killed her.”

Somehow, Logan works up a smile. Not out of happiness, exactly, but there is something so impactful about finding out you are not alone in the thing that’s been eating you alive for years and years of your life, with no other choice other than to endure it. The event that changed your entire trajectory and how you view relationships forever, changed someone else's too. Logan hates himself for it, but he’s relieved. He’s so fucking relieved he could sing. Someone else has loved Jean Grey and forced himself to kill her and lived with it as long as he has and is standing here knowing exactly how it feels .

Scott stares, a delicate desperation as his fists tremble where they grapple Logan's arms.

“She killed you.” Logan tells him. “I wasn’t there to heroically save you, like you did for me.”

“You did, Logan,” He takes a fragile breath, fingers curling into the fabric. “I’m here, I’m saved.”

“But I’m not your Logan. Not exactly.” He reasons, and here it is, the moment he’ll be yanked from his delusion, like a camera coming in to focus. “The professor is helping my memories come back, but I didn’t live them, I’m not the same.”

“You’re a dick.”

Logan blinks, arching his eyebrows. “Woah,”

“Most obnoxious asshole I know. You can’t teach a class to save your life. You care more about wild animals than anyone I know. You help me with my migraines. You cared enough to follow me here. You pretend to be a selfish man, but everything you do is a sacrifice for the rest of our sakes, and I see all of that, how human you are. You were never a weapon or an animal, not to any of us. You saved our lives. My life.” Scott rattles, not pushing him away, not disgusted.  “You’re my Logan, man.”

This isn’t exactly his original Scott, and he isn’t his Logan, but somehow they are both the most actualized, extended versions they could be, the only way they’d ever be alive together. Time travel really isn’t dimension hopping, he paved the path for this future. He holds the memories of his other place, but it doesn’t exist anymore. This is true. This is real.

Logan smirks. “‘Man’?”

Then Scott laughs, sweet and sad and raw from the tears, but alright. He’s alright. “I hope you stick around this time.”

He sets his head to meet their eyes the best he can, and Logan can see them faintly through the ruby shades, the outline of his lashes, the faint blue consumed in red. Then Scott’s hand comes up to curve into his cheek, fingers breaching into his hair and brushing out a tangle. 

Logan smiles at him, he can’t help it.

Slowly, the space between them gets smaller. Scott’s exhale brushes his chin, Logan looks at his lips down the bridge of his nose, foreheads almost touching. He slowly reaches up to pull off Scott’s sunglasses, hovering adjacent to Scott’s mouth.

“I’m staying.”

“Will I scare you off, again?” Scott's question is husky in his ear.

For right now, Logan’s not thinking about the long run. He’s not thinking about how in a few weeks or months or years he might get restless in the peace, and go looking for something he’s used to. Things have a way of working themselves out in this new timeline. He can see a tangible future. It’s… nice.

Logan hates to talk sappy so he answers with action. He takes Scott’s face in his hands and kisses him hard on the mouth. It’s messy for a second, teeth clash, their noses bump briefly, and then they both pull away to laugh, before they're at it again. Scott kisses like he does most things; determined and precise, of course extra and pompous too. They both have been awhile without practice, but slowly, the rhythm balances and Logan feels like he might melt.

This is the place where so much evil happened for both of them, the place that haunts their respective nightmares. It doesn’t feel like that right now, not anymore. It’s a Stryker’s evil military base at the bottom of a lake, but it’s Jean Grey’s sacrifice, because she loved them. It’s new love born from loss, it’s Scott’s lips on his, and every touch leaving heat, heat, heat that endures the cold winds whipping around them.

Logan thinks this is the stuff poets write about; all those songs on the radio, the CD’s laying around, scriptures, sonnets, epics. Being alive for a long time, he still has never seen the birth or death of people trying to describe exactly what this feeling is, the attempt to immortalize it, give it tangible form. It’s ageless, it’s innate. Some things do not change, not really.

“Scotty,” Logan breathes in his ear, plotting kisses in his hair. The air is freezing around them, but Scott is warm.

Scott kisses his neck, then returns, so so softly, “Logan.”

“I love you, is that okay?” Logan says the words into the curve of Scott’s shoulder. It doesn’t scare him when he says them, and it doesn’t feel like some great swelling cusp of realization, it felt like he’d said it so many times to him already. He doesn’t even want to run, he’s spent enough time doing that.

Scott nods, breathless, then says it back over and over in between kisses, like a promise, a prayer, until it sticks in Logan’s head.

They’re alright.

A few days after they return, they’re cooking in the kitchen late at night, Rogue waiting for the two to scrounge something up for the three of them to eat. Logan feels particularly fond of his life. He watches Scott crack an egg into a hot pan, then awkwardly try to scramble it around, splinters of egg shell mixed in. He digs the spatula under the egg, then flips it over to reveal it’s entirely charred black. Out of practice, indeed.

“What have I done,” Scott prods it as it sizzles, and Logan bursts into laughter.

“That better not be mine!” Rogue shoves both of them, and Logan grabs her shoulder for support while he loses it. 

He lets himself wonder, for just a moment, what life would be like if he hadn’t joined the X-men. He thinks he’d be less somehow. Not himself. Not all he could be.

Eventually Ororo is in the kitchen too, by mistake of passing by at the wrong time. At the sight of wasted food, she ushers them to step aside while she prepares them beautiful omelets and rice. He sits beside Scott, hand brushing his arm as he does, and exchanging little glances with him while Rogue gushes over the food. 

They have things about them only the two of them know, there’s a whole world shared in those glances that only they are conscious of. It isn’t telepathic mind-sharing born from peak human evolution, but it’s all Logan needs.

Scott hums, remembering. “Tomorrow I’m going to help you come up with assignments, Logan. I think your class is so easy, the students are beginning to prefer it.”

Logan smirks around his fork. “Tryna sabotage me, Summers?”

“Crumb,” Scott leans over and kisses a grain of rice off the corner of Logan’s mouth, who thanks him with a grunt, too focused on his next bite. When he looks up again, Rogue and Ororo are giggling at them.

In a few weeks, the ice will melt and the flowers will be in bloom, but right now, Logan can already feel the golden light of Summer.