All Of The Animals

by Jane St Clair

23/01/01

Fandom: X-Men the Movie

Rating: NC-17

Spoilers: some

Pairing: Scott/Jean, Scott/Logan

Archive: only with permission (ask me!)

Summary: Scott makes a compromise.

Disclaimer: All things X-Men belong to Brian Singer, Fox, and the Marvel Entertainment Group. Which is sort of complicated, but the thing to keep in mind is that it's not mine. The story's mine. Clear as mud, right?

Sex disclaimer: Never ever have I ever done it at night on the hood of a car while we were pulled off a busy highway, with car lights running past us and the cold, sharp wind raking across our madly mating forms.

Sex disclaimer 2.0: Both m/m and m/f sex discussed and performed. Consider yourself warned.

Notes:
While I'm working from the movie's premise, I've adopted a few things from the comics, particularly the identity of the original five X-Men: Scott, Jean, Bobby, Warren, and Hank. I'm just presuming that Warren and Hank are off doing their own thing at the time the movie takes place. (If you don't do the whole print thing but have Internet access: Warren is Angel, Hank is Beast. You can look 'em up.)

The Octopus thing comes from the magnificently fucked-up "I Feel Sick" comics, which every angry girl should own.

ALL OF THE ANIMALS

By Jane St Clair
*****

Seventeenth verse: same as the first.

"I can't do this."

"Yes you can."

"It isn't fair to you."

Sigh. "It was my idea. Did you hit your head earlier?"

Wary pause. "Why?"

"Because you don't seem to be able to keep track of basic information from one minute to the next." The edge of the words are blunted by the handless caress that runs up and down his body. He gives up, leans into it and relaxes, doesn't try to think again until she's finished.

***

The first thing he can remember about Jean is her voice. In the dark, oddly quiet eight months after his mutation manifested and the Professor found him, he didn't open his eyes. He learned to read braille. He learned his way around the mansion by touch, always listening for the Professor's voice, ready to shift position if a mental nudge came to warn him that he was in danger. The translucence of his eyelids let him know when it was light, at least. Occasionally he cried. Only at night, when he was alone, and tired enough that the self-pity had an easy path to the surface. It occurred to him in those moments that he was effectively blind. That he'd never be able to use his eyes again. And it was worse because they were still there, and they still worked, only now they came with a price he wasn't prepared to pay.

Once the Professor came to find him in the midst of one of his crying jags. Big, oddly soft hands stroked his hair, then pulled him gently into a sitting position. Pulled him close, against the man's chest, and held him there. Rocked him gently while his exhausted grief poured out onto the wool bathrobe against his cheek. Then helped him back to bed and petted his hair until he slept.

Sometime after that, another voice came into in the house. Female. His spacial awareness was strong enough to let him know she was there even before the Professor announced her, but he only had a quick scent of body-warmth and little-girl perfume on which to build his mental image of this new person. Later, he added her voice and her kindness. In the half-dozen foster homes he'd lived in since the loss of his parents, Scott had gained some idea of the kind of person who would spend time with him. Awkward, nearly friendless girls who lived mostly in book-built dreamworlds and for whose friendship he was nonetheless pathetically grateful.

That was the image he had of Jean. Fourteen, like him, baby-fat and bespectacled. He asked her, and she told him her hair was red, so he imagined it in fat braids until the afternoon she bent over his hands and he felt it falling loose onto his skin. After that, the image included a wide, white plastic band holding back masses of bright orange hair. Her nails were usually short, and sometimes she smelled like nail polish. She told him the colours if he asked. Usually some variant on pink, but occasionally novelty colours she found: green, blue, purple, gold. He remembered her laughter when he picked up her hands and sniffed the fingertips, trying to guess the colour for himself before she told him.

He remembers the afternoon she walked through the house with his hand on her shoulder and used her developing telepathy to let him see the mansion for the first time, through her eyes.

She was already the cornerstone of his world the afternoon the Professor wheeled in softly and called to him. He came over, careful of the furniture, and the Professor laid heavy glasses on his face.

"Open your eyes, Scott."

"No."

Softly, "Scott, trust me. Have you ever known me to do anything that would hurt you or anyone else?"

He shook his head and still refused.

Jean's voice came from just behind him, over his shoulder. "Scott, I'm out of the way. So is Professor Xavier. Try. Please."

The red wash startled him. The beams left his eyes, but they only flew as far as the ruby lens and then stopped. And he could see. The Professor, who looked the way he was supposed to look: Old, gentle, wiser than any human should be. Hurt, somewhere behind his eyes. Lonely.

The atrium was the way it should be. He'd known it was brilliant; the translucence of his eyelids had told him that much. And he'd been able to imagine the plants, the parquet floor, the glass that surrounded them.

Jean was different. Because she was beautiful, and he hadn't expected that. But it was only a new detail to file away, because he already loved her more than he'd loved anyone in his short life.

***

Eighteenth verse: theme variant.

"I can't. It's not fair to him."

"If he gets what he wants, how could it be unfair?"

"He wants *you*."

(Scott can sympathize with Logan in that, at least. He remembers the first day he wanted Jean. They were two small people together in one of the upper rooms of the house, facing each other on the window seat. He couldn't see her. The book in his laps whispered to him through his fingertips and the light pouring in the window pushed against his eyelids. He wanted to see. He hadn't wanted to open his eyes in months, but it was late winter, now, and there was real sunlight for the first time in days and everything was brilliant and if he could see, then maybe he could go outside, make a few snowballs, hurl them at Jean and see the snow caught in her hair.

(And Jean had looked at him. He always knew when she did; the electric currents on his skin reversed themselves under her eyes. She said, "Hey. This is what it looks like." Touched his mind and opened her eyes for him. Showed him the room -- dusty and Edwardian, like a mansion in a children's book -- and the outdoors, where all the trees were loaded down with heavy, wet snow. And then showed him himself. Just a thin, dark boy wrapped in an oversize sweater that the Professor had given him earlier that winter, when he'd been shivering constantly. Slightly messy hair that he hadn't been able to part straight without his eyes to guide him. Too-pointed face with the eyes lightly closed. She showed him the blood vessels that just barely showed through the skin of his eyelids and the flare of lashes against his cheekbones. That he had cheekbones, which he'd never noticed before, particularly.

(That was the first moment he wanted to kiss her. Or anyone, really. Before then, even a touch of lips had never been a possibility. His family had touched him, once, but his parents were dead and his brother was gone. His guardians, sometimes in orphanages, sometimes in foster homes, had kept him clean and fed and left him alone; such friends as he'd had had offered little more than afternoons reading comics together or an occasional ball game.

(He'd reached out with both hands and caught her face. Smoothed his fingers over her cheeks and down to her lips. Up over her brows. Deep into the hollows of her eyes. Learned the textures of her skin and the shape of her cheeks.)

"He wants you too."

"I shouldn't. It isn't right."

"Do you want to?"

Silence.

"Scott. Do you want to?"

"Yes."

***

Nineteenth verse: new melody line.

"I love you."

"I know."

"I mean, only you. Ever."

"Poor Scott. You've never been in lust before?"

"No." He doesn't ask, *with who?*, but the question lingers between them. When they were children, there was only the two of them, and the Professor. Later, the others came. Hank and Warren, both of whom have since fled to other climes. Bobby, so much younger than they were that they treated him like a baby. Ororo, whose otherworldliness somehow fails to disappear even when she's curled up on the couch in soft pajamas. At university he was an odd bird, always hidden behind his glasses, and people rarely spoke to him outside class. And by then there was Jean. Fully and completely his.

"Do you want him?"

"I already told you that. Which one of us is supposed to have been hit on the head?"

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Me too. That's why I'm asking."

***

He remembers the first night he made love to her. His bedroom, in the mansion. They were both seventeen. He'd spent weeks researching women's bodies, digging through every book in existence to find out what would make her happy. What felt best. He'd searched the Internet, grateful for the first time that the Professor allowed them the freedom to investigate sites that a regular school would have kept him away from, and found a little that was useful, and a lot that was alien and useless. He'd padded softly into the room where Hank was settled with his medical studies and asked as many questions as he could manage without blushing. He didn't always understand the answers, but he was grateful for Henry's lack of teasing.

He'd found Warren and spent an hour working up the courage to ask him. Endured the heartless mockery that followed, as calmly as he could manage in the face of Warren's contempt. And then Warren had stopped, and looked at him. Taken him by the wrist and dragged him upstairs to the attic, where they spent the rest of an enlightening afternoon. His own inexperience and Warren's occasional muddles had led the other boy to strip off Scott's shirt, finally, and demonstrate the right touches on his body.

That instant, with Warren pressed against his back and Warren's fingers tracing down from his nipples, Scott had been suddenly afraid. The old mirror against the wall reflected them both. Warren was looking in the mirror, but he was looking at *him*. Scott knew that he'd only have to smile and Warren would slide those hands down below his waistband, and then they'd be somewhere he didn't want to go.

So instead he nodded and asked the next question, clinically. Warren had pulled himself together and shaken like a wet bird for a second, and then laughed and told him things Scott wouldn't have dared believe.

Jean must have known. She knew everything about him. She'd been keeping tabs on when he jerked off in the shower for most of a year. But she didn't say anything. Only curled her body around his and kissed him, stripped off his shirt and licked his neck and followed his arch back so that they were lying tangled together, and kissed again, very seriously.

He spent most of that night curled up between her knees, licking her. He knew they'd have sex, the way most people seemed to have it, eventually, but first he needed her to feel good, and to know how much he loved her. Loved her mind, loved her heart, loved her body. Loved the taste of her and her smell. Loved the soft sounds she made while he pushed his tongue up inside her or sucked gently at her clit.

And he was surprised. Because everything everyone had told him about sex said that he should be desperate for her. And he supposed to a certain extent he was. But it was less for the final goal of pushing up inside her and riding that unexpectedly beautiful body than it was to be with her, touch her, make her love him so fully that she wouldn't ever leave him.

***
part 2
***

He thinks about the safety of the room he shares with Jean. How they rearranged all the furniture one afternoon a week ago so that the bed was against the wall, the way his bed had been before they shared a room. It means there's no ownership of 'sides' of the bed; last one in is on the outside. As an arrangement, it probably won't last, long-term, but he loves it at the moment. The window hangs over them; it threw light on Jean's hair earlier today while she was stretched out beside him, close but not touching, her head by his feet. While he lay on his back with his eyes closed and his glasses off, more naked in front of her than he'd been for anyone else. Warmth on his belly when she kissed his navel and whispered plans in his ear.

She explained to him most of what he needed to do. Sometimes demonstrated touches on his body. Part of him wondered how and why she knew and the rest of him was only grateful that he didn't have to excavate all this information himself.

Her voice. "You know it won't be like this. I can't make my touch like a man's."

"I know."

"I love you that you'd do this for me. I can't. Ever. He'd never let me go."

"Love you." Doing it for her and not for her, but she knew that, as she knew nearly everything, and she'd forgiven him before this started, had to have, or she'd never have admitted to wanting Logan herself.

He's still aware of her touch now, while he pads through the house in his sweats and undershirt with a six-pack half-hidden under his arm. All the intelligence he has from Jean is that Wolverine -- Logan -- wants him, but possibly hasn't figured that out yet. That he watches Scott at least as often as he watches Jean, but his look is different. More violent. Hungry.

It's not as though Scott's motives are entirely selfish on this venture. The Professor made him promise that he'd sort things out with Logan, and he's starting to see that maybe the Professor has a point. Not necessarily because they need to work together -- if Logan's set on going back to Canada, it's a non-issue -- but because he isn't gone yet, and he and Scott strike sparks every time they're in the same room. Which makes life miserable for telepaths, the Professor and Jean principally among them. The Professor's already brittle around the eyes, has been since Magneto's imprisonment.

Scott wonders if he should tell the Professor than he and Jean figured it out about the Prof and Magneto a lot of years ago. One of their warm-and-fuzzy afternoons, during which rather a lot of things were made clear to him.

Though not as much as was made clear the afternoon he spent in the infirmary, ostensibly sitting with the Professor, and actually not- very-covertly watching the half-naked Wolverine in the next bed. Letting his eyes run down that belly, through the fur, to the rather interesting things that lay underneath his sweats. Which he already knew about, since he'd been there while Logan poured himself into one of Scott's uniforms. Too tight. Too leather. He'd looked like walking sex.

Or the afternoon that he felt Jean look past him to Logan, and then look back to him, and he could feel something like psychic pain at the back of his skull. When she decided to ask her lover to fuck this man for her.

What she said to him later was yes, she found Logan attractive. She didn't love him, but that was beside the point. She couldn't sleep with him, because he'd never give her up, and she didn't want him forever, only for a night. Pressed up to Scott's back in bed while she said it. But he could do it. Meaning Scott. He should, maybe. One of them should.

Which was how the argument began. Fifty-six hours of it, off and on. Until he crawled on top of her and into her and in the middle of the fourteenth kiss and the thirty-fifth stroke, he said he'd do it. If she was with him in his head, at least.

Scott wishes he was wearing the cardigan the Professor gave him years ago. He's taken care of it, and it's still respectable. Sort of. But he saw Logan look at it that first day and sneer, and for a second he saw through those other, feral eyes how he was prematurely old while he wore it. And he put it away.

He spent a very satisfying afternoon, before they had to rescue Rogue, imagining ways to dispose of Logan. All healing factors aside. Just really satisfying violence of the sort he didn't actually ever get to indulge in. Gun. Knife. Poison. Octopus.

Waitaminute. Octopus?

Never mind.

Wooden door in front of him that he's been through before. Came through it like a bat out of hell. Found impalements and death and other horrors, the upshot of which is that Rogue now has bedtime gloves in addition to her daytime gloves. Logan isn't asleep, or if he is, he isn't dreaming, because it's quiet. Scott knocks.

"What the hell do you want?"

"I'm told we have issues to sort out. I brought beer."

Logan tries to shut the door. Scott puts himself in the doorway. He's aware of a low-grade burn somewhere just south of his navel. He's aware of how close to naked he is, wearing only these nearly- pajamas. Logan must be able to see through his shirt. Must be able to smell him, standing here nervous and lusting. Because he is. He's very aware of the power of the compact body standing almost across him.

Logan snorts. "What the hell. C'mon in."

Inside, the room is still anonymously bare. Logan came to them with nothing, and he seems determined leave that way. There's a book on the dresser, but it's one Scott recognizes from the library downstairs. Big, heavy boots half-shoved under the bed, jeans in the closet. He's back in his Academy sweats, bare-chested. Glint of dogtags against his chest hair.

God those arms are huge. Ripped.

Logan stands in a way that purposely takes up enormous amounts of space. He's into Scott's personal space almost instantly, forcing him back into the chair. He sits, keeping his eyes up. On Logan's all the time he's moving down. Then puts one foot up on the bed and holds out the beer.

He has to steal one back, which is a feat in and of itself, in that he manages it without ever standing up straight. And when Logan turns to threaten him, he's already back in his chair, one foot up, beer open and on his knee.

He lets Logan watch him drink. Watch him snake his tongue out into the neck of the bottle, just for a second.

"So," he says, finally. "Issues."

"Hate at first sight's an issue?" Logan's somewhere just a little off his line of sight. He's moving, though, and Scott can feel him. Electric presence in the room.

"I think my kicking your ass at the whole alpha-male thing didn't help." Said to get under his skin. He imagines being locked there, under Logan's skin, when that mutant healing-factor kicks in. Warm, blood-pulsing jail where he can slide between oddly delicate flesh and adamantium-lined bone.

Logan snorts, but can't leave it at that. "When'd you do that, exactly?"

"You hate the idea of me being in charge of things. That I make the rules and they work. That Jeannie loves me." Warning growl. It's an animal sound. Dangerous. He leaves that one. "It bugs you that I get to fly the plane." Grins and tilts his bottle back and lets the almost-cold rip of the beer run down his throat. "It bugs you that I saved your life."

"I saved yours in the Statue."

"Yeah, you did. Thanks." And grins harder, because that time he really did score. Gratitude is high on the short list of things Logan absolutely can't take. Right up there with guilt, responsibility, and conversations of more than a hundred words. Which means that Scott's probably more than exhausted his ration. So he sits and drinks and lets Wolverine pace.

Animal behind him, moving through the spatial buzz that Scott's kept from his almost-a-year of blindness. It crawls up from his groin to the rest of his body. So much energy he almost can't sit still. And stays sitting still anyway, because Logan can't, and if they stop competing for space they won't have any common ground at all.

Growl. Scott tilts his head back and meets the hazel eyes. Wonders whether Logan can tell, or whether he's just caught his own reflection in the ruby quartz, the way people always seem to for the first weeks, the first months.

"Cyke. You want something?"

Deep breath. "Fuck me."

And a long, long silence. During which he realizes that Logan has concluded that this is some statement of incredulity rather than a request.

Scott reaches into the soft Jean-touch at the back of his mind and mentally kisses it first, for luck. Feels a brush back, feels it giving him the spine he sometimes forgets he has, companion to the rod he's rumoured to have up his ass. Snorts in silent laugher and has to swallow it because Logan's looking at him very strangely indeed.

Swallows the last of his beer, puts the bottle down, gets up and paces over to Logan. Who's standing in fact just left of the window, watching the door. Very warrior-ly of him. Scott leans in hard and fast and kisses him, stays there until Logan's lips give just a little and he can make a seal between them and pass the last mouthful of beer over.

Hazel startlement, then fast, animalistic, oddly joyful lust. Big hands close on his ass and pull him very close, close enough to feel another erection against his. The kiss is already hurting his mouth -- the whisker burn isn't something he's used to -- and he makes a mental note to make sure he's clean-shaven before he kisses Jean next time. Because he's close to raw, aching and still kissing and wanting this worse than he thought he did. Possibly even more than Jean thought he did.

And it scares him, almost as much as the back of Logan's hand rubbing at his groin. He keeps flashing on a line from some stupid movie, *with a flick of my wrist I could change your religion.* It'd be easy too, hard as he is.

He's still trying to figure out why that thought hasn't made his balls crawl back up inside his body when Logan starts backing him towards the bed. For a second, Scott's sure Logan will try to trip him up on the way, just to make sure he's got the advantage, but he doesn't. Steers him carefully, in fact, around anything resembling an obstacle on the floor. Pushes him down on the bed and crawls on top of him. Knees against his hips, so much huger than Jean. He thinks there ought to be some special kind of virginity reserved for never-fucked- anybody-big-enough-to-kill- you people, so he could lose his properly now.

Then naked, or nearly. He gets a second to watch Logan stare at the boxer-briefs he had on under the sweats and wonders manically why the man would expect him to go commando. He's the guy who wears old-man sweaters and teaches school. Logan, though . . . well, if Logan *had* been wearing underwear, *then* he would have been shocked. But since his hands are down the back of those black pants and gripping bare skin, it's not an issue.

"Hold still."

Body-warm metal against his hip, and Logan cuts his boxers off him. Scott wonders whether he looks scandalized. At the back of his mind, Jean's laughing at him. Until Logan kisses him below his navel, when he comes right off the bed towards that mouth, and she gets the full force of it.

Logan animal-kisses his belly and thighs. Bites him softly in more places than Scott would have judged he had. Makes him whimper, and then cry, and then beg. Pathetic, like the boy Logan obviously thinks he is, desperate for it and gasping *please please please* and whipping his hips around like some kind of specially mutated slut.

It earns him a long lick down his cock, and another along his balls and perineum. If he wasn't specially trained (though not for this), he wouldn't be flexible enough to bend the way Logan has him. His legs are in the air like a girl's, making him open for the first finger, which is big, as big as two of Jean's together, and the second, which sends him twisting almost off the bed. Logan's holding his legs up now, which he supposes is good, because otherwise he'd try to crawl --

-- well, where? Away? Onto the man? Back to Jean? Actually what he does is pull fully open. His body to Logan and his mind to Jean, who comes in through the back of his skull and becomes a red-warm tingle all the way through his body. Helps him relax, reminds him how much he wants this. Because he does. The first touch against his prostate proved that, and Logan's been quite persuasive since then. Enough that Scott's got hands hooked behind his knees to hold his own legs in the air, too desperate to be self-conscious.

He doesn't expect it when Logan leaves him, if only because instead of laying him out and fucking him into Sunday, Logan crawls up beside him and kisses him. Long and slow and deep, just like Scott wasn't slick and stretched and begging for it. Like they have all of their clothes on and a whole afternoon to learn the taste of each other. Logan's body against his shoulder is warm and alien-hairy. Good, if he's honest. He lets his legs fall and wraps an arm around the back of Logan's too-shaggy head and holds onto that contact.

Fingers stroke his belly and his cock, and they're still kissing. Logan shifts gradually on top of him and lets them kiss and rub together. Mouth on his mouth, his cheekbone, his throat, the palm of his hand. The cock against his is wonderful -- strange but very, very good. He spreads his knees to let the other man settle closer against him, and then for a long time it's just this sex-play. He's going to get tongued to death without having it touch him below his collarbone.

Jean at the back of his mind whimpers.

She's there, and she shows him how to spread his knees and angle his hips to say he's ready. It's different from what a woman would do, in that he's got an erection (two, if he counts Logan's) to content with, and unless Logan's careful, his balls are going to be caught between them. The same in that he's wet and open and very aware of this hole in him that's aching vaguely.

"You sure, Cyke?" Hissed into his ear.

"Oh *fuck* yes. Only . . ."

He doesn't finish it, but Logan's already reached between them to shift Scott's balls out of the way. Gives them a gentle rub before reaching again to bring himself to Scott's opening.

He's scared and oh god it hurts and he's more naked than he can really take. Hurts hurts hurts it hurts. Jean in him whimpering with him, wanting to get away and wanting Wolverine and it's good, suddenly. Thick in him, hot and rubbing against a spot that he definitely wants to learn more about.

The angle's bad, but Logan fucks him carefully. Scott drags his knees up, wraps a leg around the other man's waist to bring them closer together, rubs the back of one hairy calf with the other foot. Breathes in time to the thrusts into him. Gets fucked and kissed both. Warm hands on his ribs and warm presence in his mind ecstatic.

"Oh *Christ* Cyke." Logan speeds up until he's thrusting unreasonably fast, then goes in hard and groans. Hot in him, and a cool dribble that follows Logan's cock out of him. Which is less important than the mouth that's currently locked on his cock, sucking him in a way that shouldn't be possible with Logan's body so wrapped around him. But *good*, and warm and wet, and *right* in a way that a blow job from a girl is never going to be, because even a telepath doesn't know your cock like a man does.

When he comes, he's ready to scream. Accepts the hand Logan stuffs in his mouth in the spirit in which it was intended: don't wake the children. Don't scare Jean, who's warm and loving and whimpering pleasure just under the surface of his skin. In those last seconds before orgasm, he was the perfectly blended entity ScottandJean that he's only been a half-dozen times in his life. He doesn't begrudge it to her. Couldn't.

Logan crawls back up him and wraps Scott up in big arms, drops his head to Scott's chest. Licks gently across both nipples. Licks his throat and his jawline. His face, gently.

The sheer limpness of his body somehow doesn't keep him from shivering convulsively. It was good -- *really* good, if he's honest -- but he's aching raw inside, and resentful of the hurt. Wonders if this is a tiny taste of what rape victims feel. He pushes Logan off him and scoots to the head of the bed, wraps his arms around his knees and buries in face in the shelter he's made.

Wolverine's quiet for a minute. Then says, "That was your first."

He doesn't answer. If he can get really still inside, he'll calm down, and be able to finish this properly.

"C'mere." Logan stretches his arms out, but it doesn't sound like a cuddle-request, and he must be in a submissive move, because his muscles respond to the alpha-male command before he thinks about it.

Logan lays him out on his belly. Rubs warms hands along him from shoulder to knee. Then smells him. Beard stubble begins at his shoulder and grazes random patches of him until Logan's face is there at the base of his spine, sniffing. Quiet breath while Scott tries not to think about it.

"You'll be OK," Wolverine pronounces. And pulls him back up into a full-body hug. "You did good."

Scott nods and rolls both of them over so that he's on top.

"Anything different?" he asks.

"Maybe." Logan grins at him. "I'm still gonna fight you, ya know."

Scott smirks. "Somehow I'm not surprised."

"And I'm not staying."

"Didn't ask you to."

One more sniff. "When you came, you smelled like Jeannie. Why was that?"

Scott looks hard at him. Wonders if Logan can tell that Jean was with him. He gets a flash of incisor in return and isn't sure whether it's a grin or a threat.

Logan says, "I'm still gonna get her away from you, Cyke."

"Better men than you have tried."

A big hand closes around his throat. In his current position, he can't fight it off, so he waits. Until Logan drops it and lets him go.

His clothes are on the floor. The boxers are a write-off, which he pretty much expected, so he leaves them. Logan can keep them as a souvenir or something. Pulls on his sweats and tee and walks to the door.

There's just a second of warmth against his neck before Logan pins him to the walls and kisses him hard. Rubs against him, naked against the fleece. Smell-marking him, Scott thinks suddenly.

Logan whispers, "You'll be OK." Kisses him once more and steps away. Lets him leave without another touch.

Outside, Scott folds in on himself and slides down to sit on the floor. He shouldn't, not really. This is the kids' wing; anyone could come along and see him like this. But he isn't sure he can move. And if he waits here long enough, Jean will come find him. She'll rock him for a few minutes, until he's ready to get up, and the animal-smell all over him will only make her love him more.

End