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His first instinct is to say 'Go fuck yourselves' but then they manage to talk more.
Or rather, the guy with girly hair and sparkly blue eyes touches two fingers to his temple and suddenly all Logan can see is a map of a Human DNA strain, snippets of lectures about 'Mutants' and the faces of a bunch of kids with eyes filled with both fear and hope. And all he can think is.
Fuck.
"We have a cause, Logan" Charles says softly once Logan is able to blink away the images in his mind. "Will you help us?"
He looks to his right at Charles, and then to his left at Erik and swears again.
"Piss off and let me think about it"
"We'll be here when you've made up your mind" Erik states mysteriously, and Logan grunts as the two men walk out of the bar. He signals for another drink.
Saying yes to Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr may have been a mistake. But hell he could always walk away when he wanted, and they said they had beer, and he may or may not be interested in this Shaw guy.
According to Erik the guy doesn't appear to age. Logan can't help but feel some possibly misplaced kinship with the psycho.
The only difference Logan has yet to find between himself and this guy is that he doesn't torture kids. No one touches kids when Logan's around. Anyone who so much as lays a hand on a kid are more than deserving of Logan's claws through their skull. Yeah he might have a... soft spot for kids.
He can see it in the way Erik leans forward, spine tense and eyes wild with desperation that he's one of those tortured kids grown up. Logan can practically smell the need for revenge on the metal warper. In complete contrast, its even more painful to see how naive Charles is. How the newly graduated professor dances in his seat, hurriedly explaining his dreams to Logan while still trying to maintain an air of professionalism.
Ones broken in two millions of angry, sharp pieces and the others never been so much as cracked in his life.
And yeah, the way even Erik's eyes light up a little at the mention of the teenagers already at some facility they were taking him to, makes Logan even more interested.
He wants to know why someone like Erik wants to put kids up against a man who hurts kids for shits and giggles, and he wants to know why a gentle man like Charles would let someone like Erik do such a thing.
And he might just want to be there... you know... just so the kids actually have someone there who realises what this all means. How dangerous it actually is. An outsider who isn't dazzled by a dream of a school, or blinded by revenge. An outsider who's there for the kids and nothing else.
When they arrive at the facility, Logan gets stared at.
Huddles of agents blink at him as he strides in wearing nothing but a beaten leather jacket, an unbuttoned red tartan shirt, a white wife-beater, jeans seven shades of covered in shit and boots that drop mud all over the plush floors of an expensive CIA building. He nods, face a passive mask, at one of the agents and pops a cigar into his mouth. He has no light- shit. He hasn't needed one in years... would have thought he'd gotten back into the habit of carrying a lighter by now.
He imagines he must look quite the picture behind the immaculately dressed professor and Nazi hunter.
About half way through intimidating every jumped up guy with a gun who crosses his path, he finds himself faced with a woman with light brown hair and a goldfish expression. Her arms are crossed and she looked up at him in something like horror and something like exasperation.
She looks at Charles. "Really, Charles?"
"Ah Moira, this is Logan, he's a rather impressive mutation that I think perhaps needs a demonstration. Logan, this is Moira, our CIA handler" Charles introduces smoothly, flawlessly ignoring the wide eyed expression Moira is sporting.
Logan nods at her, expression unchanging and she curtly nods back.
He guesses correctly that Moira isn't a mutant. She doesn't even smell right.
The first of the kids Charles and Erik want to send out against the kid-torturer is a tall black guy just on the other side of twenty, who grins at him and offers a hand.
"Hey I'm Darwin, take it you're one of the ones Charles'n'Erik brought in huh?" He says, barely caring that Logan doesn't accept his handshake.
Logan nods. He's done far too much nodding, he thinks darkly. "Logan. And yeah, somethin' like that. Take it you are too?"
Darwin smiles wide and earnest, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at some double doors that Charles and Erik pushed him at before disappearing off to... somewhere. He guessed he was suppose to go in there, but had been intercepted about two thirds the way down the corridor.
"Oh yeah, c'mon, there's quite the crowd" Darwin winks and beckons him.
Logan rolls his eyes and follows.
He walks in and there's music playing and the sound of kids' laughter. Not young kids, more like young adults, so the sound isn't as annoying as Logan had anticipated.
Shut it. He was protective of them, but that didn't mean he liked all the cutsy little habits and bullshit like that. He just wanted them safe, he didn't give a fuck if they were laughing while safe or not.
There's three kids on the couch facing the door, two girls and a red head, and a dark haired boy on the other, his back to Logan. The two girls, who were sharing a magazine look up and gasp with bright smiles- huh, not a hint of anxiety Logan was so used to seeing- and the dark haired boy whips around. His bespectacled face twitches into the most awkward smile Logan has ever had the misfortune to see.
The red head simply waves. Logan decides he likes him.
The blonde girl jumps up and around the table. "Hi! I'm Raven, Charles' sister"
Yeah. He recognises the cavity inducing sweet scent of innocence and wealth.
The second girl, a Latina, stays where she is and smiles sultry from her place on the couch. She leans on her arm and hooks some black hair behind her ear, which serves no other purpose than to draw his attention to the intricate wing tattoos over her shoulders and the tops of her arms. She's far too young for him to notice anything else.
Darwin claps Logan on the back. "Right, so everyone, listen up! This here's Logan, he's a mutant like us, Charles and Erik just brought him in. Y'al say hi now"
There's a laughing chorus of 'hello's that Logan tries not to grimace at.
Darwin doesn't remove his hand no matter how hard Logan glares down at it. He doesn't like anyone touching him, especially not his shoulder. Only one person was ever allowed to do that... and they're gone.
"OK so you've just been introduce to Raven- she's a sweet lady, you'll never meet anyone cuter" Darwin grins at Raven's giggle and taps her nose. Its so sickeningly sweet and sibling-like that Logan finds himself reeling with the fact that these guys have only known each other for two weeks or less. "On the couch is Hank, or rather Doctor Henry McCoy- guy's a genius, ain't nothing he don't know"
Hank nods and gives a snap of a hand that Logan thinks might have been a wave. The kid's so tense and socially awkward, its painful to watch.
"That gorgeous lady is Angel- you wanna watch her, she got her eye on you" Darwin playfully jibes, earning himself a wink from Angel. Logan's eye twitches at the unity between these kids. "Over on her left is Sean- he's not high, he's just Sean"
"Yo" Sean whoops, once again lazily lifting a hand in acknowledgement.
Darwin purses his lips, looking around as though there's another who's missing. Apparently not finding what he's looking for, he frowns at the others. "Yo guys, where's Alex at?"
Logan hones in on the name, but dismisses it quickly. Tons of kids are called Alex. Its a fucking popular name.
"Oh he took a walk or somethin'" Angel drones from the couch, a wicked twitch to her mouth that tells Logan all he needs to know about the girl's intentions for what could well be an attractive teenage guy. "Miss him already"
Darwin snorts. "Well I say she has her eye on you, but you might become invisible once Alex gets back here"
"Boy's fine" Angel whistles, earning herself a frown from Raven and Hank, a jealous look bordering on pout from Sean and a bark of laughter from Darwin.
As if on que, the doors behind them swing open.
Silence as Logan turns around.
A pair of stormy, sky blue eyes he never thought he'd see again.
He's gotten older, but not by much. What had it been? Two years? Not long. Felt like fucking forever though now Logan was looking at the very same kid he pulled out of a plane wreckage and got trailed by for thirteen years. Never could shake the damn blond puppy.
Alex's face remains passive as he lifts a hand to Logan's cigar, which remained unlit in his mouth.
His fingertips just brush the end of the cigar. He clicks them and a spark ignites.
Logan gives a puff. "Cheers"
Alex's mouth twitches into a smile. "No problem"
The other kids in the room haven't said anything, he can feel the shock in the room and a dozen eyes pinned on his back as he continues to smoke his cigar, never taking his eyes off of Alex. Damn the kid's grown. He weren't scrawny when Logan last saw him, but jesus he's filled out.
Logan can't help but notice Alex is dressed the same as him, but with a shirt instead of a wifebeater and half-dead sneakers instead of boots.
"So where the fuck you been?" Logan asks finally, balancing the cigar between his lips and crossing his arms.
Alex shrugs. "Killed some people, got arrested, ended up here. The fuck you been?"
"Pretty much the same deal, instead I weren't stupid enough to get caught"
Darwin lets out a long whistle. "OK, so you guys know each other?"
No shit. Logan thinks, and then voices it. "This little shit's been followin' me around since he was a four year old maggot"
"This asshole kidnapped me" Alex counters, cocking his brow in an oh-so-familiar way that makes Logan either want to grin or punch off his pretty-boy face.
"So he's what, your dad?" Raven asks Alex, voice light and confused. He commends her for seeing past their bullshit and recognising it for what it really is. "Did he adopt you?"
Logan and Alex look at her and then back at each other again. They shrug in unison.
"If that's what they're callin' it" They chorus.
Sean laughs, loud and merry from the couch just as Raven brightens and goes onto tell him a story he doesn't want to hear about how her amazing brother found her too and adopted her.
Apparently the sun shines out of Charles' ass.
Logan couldn't give a shit.
He's got his son back.
Annoying little pain in his ass that he fell into a two year trance of depression without. Yeah. That one.