powerunleashed

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tfln

from here.

Jean was on the roof, actually, but that was only because she had recently discovered how to use telekinesis to power flight and being on the roof meant that nobody else could bother her. It was a clear night and, considering it was late spring, not cold so she had a perfect view of all the stars above her.

Her phone was abandoned beside her and she laid flat on her back, looking up at the constellations above her. There was Ursa Major, Ursa Minor. Sagittarius, Cancer, Cassiopeia. She'd learned them all as a younger girl and the names and shapes came back easily to her now.

The only difference between this night and the last time she'd been on the roof was that she was perfectly sober this time around.

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Logan gets up there the old-fashioned way: He climbs out a window and shinnies up a piece of stonework. It's a pain in the ass, but it works, and he pulls himself up to find Jean stretched out on the shingles, staring at the sky.

He nearly didn't come out here. It was damn stupid to, and he knows it--indulging in a kid's crush is probably going to end in disaster, not to mention an incredibly awkward conversation with the kid's headmaster. The guy who's letting Logan crash here, despite being completely unqualified to be near a school, let alone a substitute teacher inside it.

This is a terrible idea, whatever he thinks of her. But he'd do worse for the girl who gave him back some semblance of his life, of his humanity, if she asked. Maybe he's just a sucker that way.

He clears his throat, taking careful, measured steps toward her. "Stargazing?"

"Mmmhmm," Jean said softly. She pointed out a few of the constellations, the ones she knew right off hand.

"North Star, leads right into Ursa Major and Minor. If you get lost, that's the one you look for. Of course, you probably know that already. You're all woodsy."

She didn't dare look over at him. It was easy to be brave behind the screen of a phone and quite another to be brave in person.

He sits down beside her--not too close. Last thing they need is him getting too close when she's been talking about special and...cripes, sexually attracted. Within arm's reach is good enough, his arms resting on his knees as he watches her point.

"I know a little," he owns. Years out there, he didn't have any choice but to figure this shit out. And even if he hadn't, some of it, he'd already known. He doesn't know how, any more than he knows why he's so damn good at fighting. Whoever he used to be, some of that old knowledge stuck around like it was buried in his muscle memory. "Read somewhere that it'll stop being the North Star someday. Skies'll change, some other star'll take its place. Long time from now."

"We will all be gone by then," Jean said, giving the sky one last glance before looking over at Logan. In profile, he was just as handsome as he had been face on and she had no idea what to say to him.

"We really don't have to talk about it. I shouldn't have told you that."

Please, please let her out of it.

It's something he's fine with imagining, all of them long dead and the stars still moving in their slow, steady ways. The universe'll last a lot longer than an asshole who calls himself the Wolverine for reasons he can't explain. That's a good thing, probably.

Doesn't get him out of this conversation, though.

"You wanna talk about it?" he asks, face still turned up toward Polaris. Looking back at her right now seems like one hell of a bad idea. He can feel her eyes on him, that too-smart, too-sharp gaze. She could look right through him if she wanted, and he'd probably thank her for it.

"Not particularly. I don't want to be embarrassed any more than I am already," Jean said, shrugging a little. She tried to protect herself from this, protect herself from being hurt. The burden of being what she was meant that she was alone more than often than not and while she'd felt a connection with Logan, she was too afraid to look and see if he felt the same way.

"Please just forget I said anything. Just pretend I didn't just come onto you in the most inefficient way ever."

Embarrassed. That's...Christ, he feels a stab of guilt at the thought. Putting yourself out there and getting turned down isn't a blow he's experienced much, mostly because he tries not to put himself out anyplace if he can help it, but he has enough sense of it to know the feeling.

And knowing it's Jean--Jean, whose scent feels more like home than any he remembers--only piles the guilt on harder. She really thinks he's just grateful.

"Look," he mutters, forcing himself to look her way. That's the hard part, the thing that's like a knife at his throat. She's so beautiful in the moonlight, everything about her made softer by the night's shadows--but the way she moves reminds him just how powerful she can be. Is. Jean's terrifying to behold sometimes, and it has nothing to do with the shit she can do with her mind. It's all her, all that personality of hers. "You're what, seventeen, eighteen? You can do better, Jeannie. Believe me."

"Don't," Jean said, turning around to look at him. She wasn't going to but if he was going to come up here and give her lines about how she could do better when really she'd just gone and embarrassed herself royally, she didn't really want to hear it.

"Don't try to say there's other guys, that I can do better, that somehow I'm not lacking. I don't need pity. I'm eighteen. I'm old enough to handle the truth."

"You, lacking?" He's incredulous, and frankly, easy to bait into an argument. Even knowing he shouldn't be--even seeing the mix of hurt and anger marring her face. "One of us might be lacking, darlin', but it's not you. You've seen where I'm from."

Saying it, the words grinding out of him, is painful. Logan's spent weeks--months, more like--keeping himself from thinking about what if, giving himself all the arguments he's got stored up for her. Having to voice them, though, that's something else.

"That's not your fault," Jean said quickly, face getting hot both from anger and embarrassment. She didn't really want to dissect what she felt and have it laid out for him to examine and cast aside. It was too precious to her for that and she wished she'd never said anything at all.

"You didn't ask to be kidnapped and experimented on. What memories I've found don't give me much of an idea of who you were before that but it doesn't matter. You're still a good man under everything. You just don't know the mundane facts. I don't need to know your parents' names and where you were born and your birthday to know I care about you."

"Doesn't matter whose fault it was." His hands clench. It's nothing he'll ever like talking about, much less under circumstances like these.
"You know what I did after that? Cage fighting, Jean. And worse. I got from there to here beating the hell out of people for cash. I don't know shit outside fighting and pain and--I don't even know how old I am. If you think that's the kind of man you need, you're--"

Hell, he can't bring himself to say it. It's like throwing stones at a stray dog to drive it away. He doesn't want to have to put any of this out there, but if one of them has to have sense about it, it looks like it's going to have to be him.

"Why don't you let me decide what I want and need instead of deciding for me?" Jean asked, narrowing her eyes at him a little.

"I really don't care about all that. You did what you needed to do to survive. It's what we all do. If Charles hadn't found me when I was little, God only knows what I would be doing on the streets to survive. Would you hold that against me? Would you judge me for that?"

Jean sighed and looked at him, voice softer. "Just tell me you don't feel the same way and I'll understand. You don't have to give me platitudes about how I'm some prize."

He's quiet, rigid with the tension of finding the right answer to counter the frustration he can just about smell on her. Sure, she can decide what she wants and needs--but if she's deciding about him, doesn't he get a say here?

Turns out he does, and as soon as she demands a real answer from him--just tell me you don't feel the same way--he regrets wanting to offer any kind of rebuttal at all. She always cuts right to the marrow with these things, doesn't she? It's just part of who she is, probably the inevitable result of being able to see right into people's thoughts. No time for bullshit.

He sighs, and some of the fight goes out him, his shoulders slumping.
"Can't say that, kid. Don't do this to me."

That's the problem. He looks at her and can't forget the careful, deliberate touch of her hands. He came here, didn't he? Found her, found her people, tried to learn to live among them. And never once lost the memory of the first time somebody touched him gently--that he recalls, anyway.

"I'm not a kid," Jean insisted. She was an adult, old enough to consent and decide what she wanted, and she felt like his choice of words was his way of trying to put distance between them. She didn't want distance. She wanted to push against those boundaries, blur them so that they could share space instead of dancing around one another.

Jean reached out and touched his hand lightly, just a brush of her fingertips against his skin. "I'm attracted to you. Being self-deprecating isn't really changing that for me, Logan. I've wanted you since I first went into your mind and it hasn't faded."

He knows she's coming closer, and he doesn't move away. The last thing he wants is to escape her presence, however much he knows he should. Jean's always felt like calm to him; with her nearby, the world becomes understandable, livable. The empty spaces where memories should be fill in a little.

But when she speaks, he looks up sharply, unable to mask the expression in his eyes. There's naked longing in his face--when's the last time anyone's touched him? Christ, her hands are soft--but it's mixed with horror. "That was Alkali."

"When I touched your mind, I saw past all that. I saw the man and the beast at once," Jean said, hurt and concerned that he would react so sharply to her admission. She was only trying to tell him how much she cared about him and how much she didn't care about his past.

She squeezed his hand briefly before letting it go, reached forward to touch his face in a mirror of that first touch.

"Just tell me you don't want me," she said, voice soft and pleading. "If you don't want me, tell me so that I don't have any hope."

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