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Scott didn't know exactly when it had started, or maybe deep down, he didn't really want to know. He was convinced that if he could isolate that exact moment, dismantle it like a faulty screw, all the chaos inside him would vanish. He would go back to being what he was supposed to be: a boy in love with Jean, jealous in the most awkward ways, with the typical problems of a high school student, plus the whole mutant thing and the X-Men missions in the background. A fragile but understandable balance, and above all: normal, or at least something resembling it.
The problem was that his heart, and even more so his body, had taken a detour without consulting him. When Logan entered a room, or when his own gaze sought him too quickly, too often, Scott felt his stomach turn. Wolverine was a man, with a capital "M", and that was already a huge obstacle to face, a problem Scott couldn't codify. Added to this was the impossibility of pretending that Logan was a normal person to have a crush on, that he wasn’t basically a wild animal on two legs: unfit, impossible, dangerous in ways that had nothing to do with his claws. Because those, at least, were obvious warnings to stay away. Everything else, apparently, wasn't.
Scott had tried many times to convince himself that what he felt wasn't attraction; that it was simply fascination, born of confused ruminations destined to vanish into thin air as soon as his brain and hormones began to cooperate again. After all, Professor Xavier often spoke to him about how confusing and overwhelming emotions could be for a teenager. His body certainly didn't spare him all the embarrassing reactions that should have been reserved for girls his age; yet, no one had deigned to explain to him why he felt them toward a mature man, God knows how old, who behaves like a stray dog.
The paradox was that Jean, with her laughter, her confident strides, the boys who surrounded her, gave him relief. The emotions he felt for her, the butterflies in his stomach, the jealousy, the agitation, were almost a lifeboat for him. As he watched her talking to someone else, as he picked at his nails because he didn't know how to approach her without stumbling over his words, Scott felt human. A seventeen-year-old boy, with homework to do and a car he loved to polish. An ordinary boy struggling with feelings that the psychology textbooks in the Professor's office could perfectly explain.
But then, Logan would say his name, give him a command. Sometimes brusquely, sometimes sharply, sometimes low as a growl between teeth. And Scott's brain would shut down in a flash of electricity that raced down his spine, often landing right in his groin. Suddenly, he was no longer a leader, nor a responsible student, nor Charles Xavier's protégé destined for great things. His entire being was limited to the pounding of his heart stuck in his throat, the sudden heat that filled him. It was the dangerous and uncontrollable awareness that everything he shouldn't have desired, he desires anyway, without excuses, without logic, without respite.
During training, Logan's orders carried a different weight. It wasn't just discipline, nor the mixture of respect and irritation he'd always felt for him. It was something that got under his skin, alive and impossible to silence. When Logan told him to move, to react, to obey, Scott felt a part of himself responding too quickly, too instinctively, too... well.
And in his endless analyses to find an explanation for all this, Scott had come to the conclusion that puberty was definitely playing its part: a fire burning beneath the surface, finding no outlet anywhere except through his own hands, secretly at night in his bed or in the communal showers, after everyone else had gone to sleep. Scott tried to trap the flames, to smother them, to deny them. But the more he tried to block them, the more they broke down.
The worst part was that Logan wasn’t even remotely what one would call a “Prince Charming”. He was rough, rude, often more feral than human. He possessed the gaze of a man who had seen things that couldn't be spoken aloud. A personality Scott should have rejected, that should have disgusted him at least a little; he repeated it to himself like a mantra. And every time, every single time, his body responded in the wrong way, or perhaps in the truest way.
What drove him crazy was that this attraction was felt for Wolverine, the indestructible mutant, but above all for Logan, the adult and unattainable man. Perhaps, Scott thought, it was for what he represented. Freedom, strength, pain, secrets, a world that didn't belong to him but that, precisely for this reason, attracted him like an abyss.
Scott lived like this, on edge. On the outside, he was the disciplined leader, the boy who tried to win Jean over, the big brother to everyone, the one who always strived to make the right decision. On the inside, it was a battlefield where Logan's voice became a siren song, an irresistible double-edged sword. Where what he should have wanted crumbled as soon as it came into contact with what he truly wanted, instinctively and frighteningly.
Scott didn't believe he loved Logan. These feelings were very confusing, but they felt more like an infatuation, unmanageable and bone-deep, but an infatuation nonetheless. But what he had certainly understood was that he loved the idea that kept him awake at night: what he could become if he stopped being afraid. He loved the feeling of wanting something forbidden. And in the confusion, the chaos, the shame and the hunger, there was a boy desperately trying to figure out who he would become, and fearing that the answer wouldn't be what anyone, not even he, expected.
There was a memory that came back to Scott every time he tried to put the chaos of his feelings for Logan into chronological order. Though it pained him to admit it, it had been just another teenage folly: him and Kurt following Logan like two curious kids, flushed with the adrenaline of calling themselves X-Men, unaware of how little they were truly prepared for what they would face upon entering that multi-story parking garage. But over time, more than any regret, one feeling had remained: the enormous distance that separated them.
Logan wasn't just stronger. He was more... defined. As if life had already taught him all the lessons Scott hadn't yet begun to grasp. And he, hidden behind his glasses and a moral code far too rigid for his age, found himself feeling an uneasy admiration; which in the following days, when it would begin to intensify, would take the shape of an uneasiness that still didn't have a name.
That sentence, "I don't fight your battles, so you don't fight mine", had been like a door slammed in his face. Logan spoke like an adult with no time for games, and Scott had felt it as a personal judgment. He and Kurt had laughed about it, or rather, Kurt had laughed about it. For Scott, however, that was the first time a question, for him completely illogical and undoubtedly too stupid to be true, began to burn in his head: What would someone like him see in me?
With Jean, everything was easier, not simple, but easier, more understandable. A girl and a boy of the same age, a bond that grew almost by itself, a codified dynamic, rules written in the social interaction manual, all they had to do was let go a little. For someone like him, who had never felt normal, being able to be normal at least in this made him feel at ease. For mutants, normality was a tight fit, but a pleasure to wear when needed. Jean was a path that he knew how to read. Logan was a labyrinth, where normality evaporated in the heat.
What could a man who had lived decades, perhaps centuries, possibly want? A man who didn't ask for companionship, didn't ask for explanations, didn't ask for anything? What on earth could a man accustomed to living on the edge, with perhaps countless scars on his heart, find in a boy who was still afraid of his shadow? What could someone like Scott possibly contribute to his life? What story could he tell him that wouldn't sound like a faded copy of a coming-of-age novel?
Scott watched him ride away on his motorbike without telling anyone, and every time he thought that one day he wanted to be like that: free, confident, perfectly at ease being himself. Then he realized that part of that fascination had a form that didn't fit with the idea he had of himself, with the idea everyone had of him.
In those reflections that had begun in that battle-torn multi-story parking garage, another question had begun buzzing in his head like an insect trapped behind glass. How did this kind of attraction work? Attraction… between men? It was easy for him to rationalize the one toward Jean: a familiar dynamic, an instruction manual embedded in society. But attraction to a man, and especially to a man like Logan, became uncharted territory for Scott. The patterns were shattered. But then, what did a man want from a man? He'd never really considered it before. Or maybe he had, and had simply never let it surface. He liked Jean, no doubt, but with Logan, it was different. He didn't want to be close to him, or at least not the way you'd want to be close to a friend or the girl you like. It was a stranger need, a mix of wanting to be like him and wanting him to… see him.
And that was the sore point: Logan didn't see him. Not as a person, not as a man, much less as a potential… something. For him, Scott and Kurt had been two obstacles to protect that night, not two companions. And the truth, the truth Scott didn't want to face, was that his heart ached for precisely this. The abyss of distance, the certainty that Logan would never think of him that way.
In his most embarrassing fantasies, Logan desired him precisely because he was young. He'd heard rumors at school, gossip after class, that some girls had secret affairs with a professor who was later fired. TV often featured dramas involving relationships between people twenty or thirty years apart in age. Sometimes Scott wondered if it could have been that easy for him and Logan, an illegal affair, him on the back seat of that motorcycle, clinging to a man many years older than him, unaware of the danger.
He'd never really understood all the attention and care girls paid to their physical appearance until he’d developed these feelings for Logan. Before, of course, he'd cared if his hair or clothes were okay, especially when he went to talk to Jean. But now there was a completely different awareness, even in the little things: how he walked, whether his pants showed off his legs or not, whether he looked good in his X-Men uniform. Scott's quest for even a shred of Logan's approval for his looks, or anything else really, bordered on the ridiculous. Naturally, it all made him feel even more immature. Scott had come to accept the part of him that hoped Logan would simply appreciate his ass in a pair of tight pants, and that made him feel miserable.
But then again, there was the other part of him that was more aware of the whole thing. Perhaps an even more uncomfortable truth. A relationship… any kind of relationship… with Logan would be a relentless storm. Logan carried with him anger, trauma, enemies, silences, sudden disappearances, a past that felt like a book full of torn pages. With Jean, Scott imagined a stable life. With Logan, he couldn't imagine anything, only momentary sparks, perhaps sudden flashes, lightning bolts that struck and scorched the earth, but left nothing behind.
That day, in front of the broken elevator from which Sabretooth escaped, kept replaying in his mind. For the first time, Scott realized that the distance between them wasn't just that of two X-Men on different levels. It was that of a man who had lived too much and a boy who hadn't yet begun to figure out who he wanted to be.
Scott wasn't sure if this attraction was real or just a confusing phase of his growth. But he knew that Logan represented everything that both frightened and fascinated him: the strength that seemed natural, the cutting maturity, the absolute independence. And perhaps, beneath it all, also the promise of a freedom Scott unknowingly longed for.
It was a matter of apparent simplicity. Although they hadn't confessed anything, he and Jean were sailing on a sea of calm intuition. It wasn't a relationship, but it could have become one without the need to demolish any fundamental part of himself. With Logan, none of this would have worked. Every gesture would have carried weight, every word resonance. He would have lived crushed by the fear of being too young, too inexperienced, too... little.
His world with Jean made him feel normal. The world he saw in Logan, however, reminded him that there was nothing normal about the X-Men, and therefore not about him either.
Ultimately, Scott was still a teenager, with a teenager's body, and all these ruminations looked like any other simple crush. The discomfort that took the form of a noisy existential crisis in Scott's head had a more subtle nature on the outside. On the most mundane days, Scott would sense it at the most inconvenient moments; for example, when Logan would walk into the kitchen at seven in the morning, covered in the smell of cigars, wet wood, and other things Scott couldn't even name. He might have already been there for an hour, making breakfast, filling the silence with the crunch of cereal, shoulders straight and ready to put on the good boy’s uniform for when everyone else woke up, but then, Logan would cross the room with that absent yet extremely alert look, and Scott would instantly become a walking disaster. The spoon would slip from his fingers, or the milk would spill onto the table. His hands, usually well controlled, would shake as if he'd just faced Magneto. Sometimes Logan would glance at him absently, a muttered "kid" in greeting, and Scott would always have to turn around and pretend to look for a napkin, because his face would catch fire.
This was the part he hated most: the regression. Logan made him feel like a child again; on one hand, an awkward, angular, clumsy thirteen-year-old, cramped in his own body, and on the other, a literal infant in Logan's eyes. But accepting it was part of the infatuation, like accepting that his voice would drop imperceptibly when he tried to say something intelligent in front of him, and failed miserably.
Sometimes Scott imagined what it would be like if Logan actually looked at him. Not in a romantic way, that was science fiction, but with genuine curiosity, as if there were something about him worthy of attention. Just this thought, tiny and stupid, was enough to heat him up, sometimes even make him run to the bathroom.
And when night crept through the silent dorm rooms and everyone else was asleep, the silliest, most adolescent question of all, one often reserved for Jean, took shape in his head. Could he like me? A thought that made the more lucid part of Scott, the one that knew Logan, laugh. He wasn't looking for anyone, obviously didn't want anyone. A loner by vocation, someone who seemed made to always be one step away from leaving.
And yet, a stubborn part of Scott found himself wondering again, and again, and again, what it was about him that could possibly struck a man like that. His glasses? His discipline? His idiotic desire to always be good? It was natural at that point to think of Jean, and how obvious, reciprocal, possible his attraction to her was. Logan, on the other hand, remained an unsolvable equation, a riddle written in an unknown language.
On those nights, Scott touched himself without even thinking too much. He'd learned that there was no hope of getting his body to cooperate, and over time, he'd gotten used to giving in to the fantasies his mind offered. Sometimes they were simply scenarios in which Logan paid him attention, a car ride together, tidying up the kitchen in pleasant silence, and that was enough for Scott to come. Other times, they were straight up sexual fantasies, Logan often didn't treat him well in those, but Scott had discovered preferences that, in his opinion, no other boy his age had.
Almost always, there was a sense of unease that followed, especially regarding what others would think if they discovered his fantasies. If he'd truly been a normal teenager, this doubt would have remained in his head and there wouldn't have been any major problems other than his opinion of himself. But he was a mutant, he lived in a house of mutants, and two of them happened to be mind readers. What would Jean think if she accidentally stumbled upon these thoughts, these fantasies? The Professor? What if they told Logan directly? What would become of him?
That constant sense of uncertainty, the fear of being discovered, Logan's endless enigma, were precisely what kept him tied, like a thin thread held perpetually taut. The more impossible it seemed, the more he felt drawn. The more he knew Logan would never look at him, the more he longed to be seen, to be touched.
When Christmas break arrived, the school emptied like an abandoned shell. The hallways, usually a chaos of footsteps, laughter, accidental explosions, and too-young voices, returned to silence and the slightly eerie sound of the wind behind the glass. Only Professor Xavier and Mr. McCoy remained, and the two students who sadly had no family to return to, Rogue and Scott.
For Scott, who had always found comfort in the noise of others, that silence seemed almost physical. He felt it on his shoulders, his hands, in his hair. He tried to fill it as best he could, training more than necessary, spending far too much time polishing the visor of his uniform. Luckily, the Professor assigned him and Rogue a mission in the city. Anything would be more than enough to keep his mind from returning to him. Logan.
The night before their departure, when everyone was in the festively decorated main living room, Charles had invited Logan to stay. Scott was doing his best to listen to the conversation undetected, leaning against the large fireplace that warmed the room. The tone had been kind, slightly affectionate, almost paternal, but Logan had declined with the same dryness with which he shook snow off his jacket. No detailed explanation, just a "Thanks, but I got some... important things to catch up on".
Scott had noticed the quick glance Logan had given him before answering Xavier, as if searching, in that fleeting second, for an external answer. He stared into the fire, trying to hide his disappointment, but with that look, the rejection had seemed as if Logan had decided to leave solely to be away from him. Perhaps Scott was fantasizing again, placing himself in a more important position in Logan's life. It often happened, because of this ridiculous crush, that he read every little thing as if it were directed at him. As if Logan had sensed Scott's feelings.
And indeed, that intuition was more precise than he could have imagined.
The dirty, uncomfortable truth was that Logan had actually noticed. Not right away, and not very clearly for a while. His super sense of smell was accustomed to the biological chaos of the school: sweat, hormones, adolescent emotions, everything rising in the air like steam from a pot. Scott had never been a problem. He smelled of neutral body wash, stress, discipline, and a faint metallic note, perhaps his glasses.
Logan had always assumed that the scent of nervousness mixed with excitement he sensed in the boy was linked to Jean. After all, two teenagers finding themselves living under the same roof while having feelings for each other was the perfect recipe for that kind of mix. There was no reason to think otherwise. Even when he noticed the way Scott froze when he entered the room, the scent emanating from him was more akin to fear, or a strange admiration; he liked to interpret it simply as respect. His day went on, never having wasted much time on it.
But over time, Logan began to notice a pattern. On those rare days when his head wasn't filled with a thousand other, far more important, thoughts, when the school was half-empty due to after-school practice or lessons with McCoy in the garden, he'd begun to sense something different when his and Scott's paths crossed. A new smell, warmer, more... directional. As if Scott were trying to hold his breath for him, and couldn't. When the boy was close to him and the room was empty enough to isolate his scent, Logan could detect that subtle yet sharp note. It wasn't the simple, silent whiff of infatuation he felt whenever Scott's attention was focused on Jean. Nor the classic stench of inappropriate daydreams that teenagers find themselves having in the worst of situations. It was something more elaborate and specific. And directed at him.
The realization didn't come in one sharp blow; he was too distracted and too uninterested in the private affairs of those noisy children to pay much attention. It was a slow succession of small moments, until one unremarkable afternoon, fell on him like a ton of bricks.
Scott was in the Danger Room, alone, repeating the same series of punches and kicks against the large punching bag in the center of the room for the hundredth time. His X-Men uniform was soaked with sweat and his hair was disheveled from his long practice. Logan entered, searching for a piece of equipment someone had moved that morning, and saw Scott whirl around, as if ambushed from behind, leaning his entire body against the large bag behind him. He looked like a deer in front of a car, stiff as a statue. Then, putting his hands behind his back in a movement that seemed more for calming himself than polite militarism, he forced a very controlled smile. "I'm almost done", he said.
Logan nodded slightly, with a low growl. He should have been gone in a couple of seconds, just long enough to grab what he needed and go. But then he felt it. Not just a vague, easily ignorable hint. A warm, thick wave that left no escape. Agitation and intense, almost uncontrollable desire, all mixed together, all directed at him. No room to delude himself that he was wrong. Scott's legs were trembling imperceptibly, and to Logan's inner dismay, the boy brought his left leg to cross his right, in what could only have been a movement to cover his growing erection.
Logan closed his hand on the tool he was looking for and turned away. “Don’t stay here too long”, he muttered. His voice was neutral, but he knew that if the boy hadn’t been so busy hiding his situation, he would have easily found a slightly stiffer inflection.
In a moment of confusion, or madness given the situation, due to the strong smell going straight to his head and the realization of how he was leaving the poor boy, Logan turned his head to look at him before the sliding doors closed behind him. Scott's gaze revealed relief at not having been discovered, but above all, immense, hungry disappointment. Logan forbade himself from thinking about the reason for this. What, for heaven's sake, would that boy have wanted to happen? What did he expect to make him feel so disappointed? Enough, Logan stopped his questions there and didn’t dare even think, much less imagine, the answers.
In the days that followed, he avoided being alone with the boy with surgical precision. Quicker steps in the hallways, meals eaten after hours, no Danger Room without the certainty of whoever was inside.
Of course, Scott immediately noticed the change in his behavior; he was torn between convincing himself it didn't mean anything, that Wolverine was simply the way he was, that Scott was just making up the whole thing, and the certainty that Logan, for whatever reason, hated him. A tiny voice, however, had arisen, and immediately ignored, increasingly trying to reduce Scott's entire world to a single, tiny, razor-sharp certainty: Logan knew. And he didn't want to be near him.
Out of fear, Scott stopped taking Logan's every gesture as a signal. He tried to relax as much as possible around him, to think only about practice, Jean, and school. He forced himself to believe, without any ifs or buts, that there was no reciprocity, no possibility. There was only a distance that had become permanent. He even stopped, at least as much as possible (so only for a short time), fantasizing about Logan during his intimate moments, for fear that Professor Xavier had finally discovered him and warned Logan.
And so, as the school prepared for Christmas with lights that warmed no one, Scott found himself living with a new truth: being seen isn't always a blessing. Sometimes it's a silent curse.
On Christmas night, the city looked like something out of a faded postcard. The streets were nearly deserted, the shops closed, the windows left lit to illuminate and decorate the street, but with a melancholy result. Logan sat alone in a bar that had no reason to be open, one of those places that seemed to exist only for people like him: people with no schedules, no home to get to, no reason to celebrate.
He played pool with slow, precise movements. There was no one to bother him, no one to look at him and make him feel observed. The curtains and cushions in the room smelled of smoke and detergent. The wooden floor creaked as if complaining of the cold.
On that night of celebration, in a rather unsavory place that made the world seem still, Logan couldn't do what he was there for: not think. Specifically, not think about Scott's smell, the truth it carried with it. He'd felt it as clearly as a punch: the emotion of a boy who didn't know where to put his hands, the rapid breathing, the fear of being discovered, the desire he felt imploding inside him. In his long life, Logan had smelled that scent a thousand times, a mixture of fear and attraction that so many people exuded in his presence. The difference was that this time it came from someone who should never have looked at him that way.
Someone too young, too pure. Too he shouldn't be for me.
Part of him wanted to dismiss it all, with the brutality with which he cut off useless thoughts. But that was precisely the problem: it wasn't useless, it was complicated, it was human. And it was the most dangerous thing that had happened to him in months.
Logan picked up the pool cue and aimed at a red ball. He hit it with a little more force than necessary, it didn't fall, but the sound of the hit bounced off the walls of the room and resonated sharply between his ribs. Absurdly, he was nervous.
He shouldn't have stayed at the school, he had done the right thing in leaving. Away from him, Scott would be safe. He would be able to breathe normally again for at least a few days, and in time, he would go back to looking only at Jean, or other girls his age, the way a boy should look at a girl with whom he could build something simple.
In the silence of the bar, Logan whispered that last word as if it were poison: "simple".
There was a moment when his mind made the mistake of imagining what it would be like if he were a different person. Or rather, if he'd remained the same person he was before meeting Charles. If Scott had been unlucky enough to encounter a man who didn't care about ruining or breaking him.
A mistake he immediately tried to drown out with the sound of the cue on the table.
Apparently, however, that wasn't his night, because in that instant the image of Scott in the center of the Danger Room came back to him: thin, stiff, his gaze hidden behind his visor, his thighs crossed trying to cover himself. That kind of tension can't be forgotten, it can't be erased by running away.
Logan sighed and ran a hand over his face. There was no one to see it, and thankfully so. Because it was a tired gesture, the one of a man who had realized something he'd rather not know.
Outside, the snow began to fall again in large, slow flakes. And in that desolate bar, Logan felt the weight of the distance between him and Charles's school, even though it had been his choice; he felt it as if he had measured it by hand, inch by inch.
The snow piled up, slowly and indifferently, and Logan felt fear for the first time in a long time. Fear that that snow didn't resemble an end, but a suspended moment that no one had the courage to dissolve.