Warning: "Light" slash. ADULT THEMES

NOTE:  This tale occurs about five months after events in "Red Hair and Quesadillas," yet it's from Logan's point of view, an AU on a story for Red Shades which hasn't been written yet -- and now won't be.  After events in X2 (and with the number of other stories on my plate), I've decided to "retire" The Man behind Red Shades as an active series.  That's why I'm releasing this story now. I've been sitting on it for two years. It's a bit wacko when you start AU-ing your own stuff, but I suppose you could say this is a narrative answer to Robert Frost's "two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both ...." Well, I get to travel both. The story I'd intended this to leap off from would have ended positively for Scott and Jean. But what would happen if ....

"Logan, what makes you think you know jack-shit about me?"

Scott's words. They take me by surprise.

I'd stumbled over him outside on the deck that overlooked the rear gardens, alone, drinking something cloudy white, and God it smelled like licorice. He was watching the sunset, gorgeous orange-pink through the pines, though I don't think that registered with him. His feet were bare and dirty from summer mud, and he was dressed in torn jeans and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves ripped off -- not standard Summers wear. His face had frozen into an expression like a truck in reverse. "What do you want?" he'd asked without looking at me.

Caught by surprise, I'd gone for the tease. "Cyclops drinking? What's the world coming to?"

And he'd replied, "Logan, what makes you think you know jack-shit about me?"

He was right. I didn't know much. But I did know a few things. I knew he was hurting. And I knew he had good reason. So instead of snapping back, I sat down beside him on the back step. "What is that stuff anyway?" I nodded at the drink in his hand.

"Sambuca. It's Italian. I guess my roots are showing."

"You're Italian?" That, I hadn't expected.

"My mother's mother came from Turin."

"I thought Sambuca was a jazz café in Atlanta?"

"You been to Atlanta, Canuck?"

"I been all over, One Eye."

"Been to Italy?"

"Not that I recall. But there's a lot I don't recall."

He glanced down, stared at the liquid in his glass. "Sorry."

"For what?"

"Reminding you."

I shook my head. "Don't apologize. I'm used to it." But that didn't mean I liked it.

We sat then in silence. The sun went down, lighting the pines on fire. I pulled a cigar out of my pocket and bit the end off. I had two with me and offered him the other. He laughed at me. "Not one of my vices, Logan."

"So what are your vices, hot-shot?"

"None of your goddamn business. We all have vices but we never talk about the real ones, do we?"

It was a more serious turn than I think either of us had intended. He covered it with a drink of the liqueur. I covered it by lighting my smoke, enjoying the rush of nicotine in my blood.

"Christ, that stinks," he said, waving a hand in front of his face and moving away from the cloud of cigar smoke.

"So does that shit in your hand."

"It smells like anise, Logan. That's a spice."

"I know what anise is, jackass. I wasn't born in a barn. That don't make it a normal flavor for alcohol. It's namby-pamby shit."

He snorted. "You ever actually drink any to give an informed opinion? And it's a perfectly normal flavor for alcohol in Italy or Greece. Don't knock what you haven't tried."

"It ain't whiskey."

"Thank God."

I don't know why I did it, but I held out a hand in his direction. "Okay, give it over."

He stared at me a moment, then passed me the glass. I held my breath and took a drink.

It had more kick than I'd expected. Still tasted terrible. I managed to swallow but handed him back the glass. "Okay, so it's not namby-pamby. Still tastes like black jelly beans on speed."

He laughed. "I like black jelly beans."

"That your worst vice, One Eye?"

"Not by a long shot."

More silence. I smoked. He drank, finishing his glass and going back inside to fetch another, but returning with the whole bottle instead. The label, I noticed, was printed entirely in Italian. Not made for the import market. He saw me squinting at it. "Gift from an old friend in Rome. This is the real stuff. It has hashish in it."

That made me sputter. "And you're drinking it?"

"You really do have a cockeyed view of me, don't you? I went to Berkeley, Logan. It's not exactly a conservative school. I had hair down to my shoulders once."

The mental image of Cyclops with hair to his shoulders was just . . . laughable. I shook my head.

He was carrying something in a small bowl, took out a couple. Black coffee beans. "This is how you drink sambuca the right way." He poured clear liquid into a shot glass, tossed the beans in his mouth, bit down and then threw back the shot -- made a face, but the kind you make when you like it. He offered me the bowl of beans and the glass. "Wanna try?"

"You're nuts."

He shrugged and took the bowl back, repeated the process with the beans and a shot. I watched. "You plan to drink that whole bottle?"

"Probably."

"It won't bring her back to you, One Eye."

"Shut up, Wolverine. She can go to hell, as far as I'm concerned."

"You don't mean that."

He stared at me in disbelief. Or I think he did. Hidden behind red, it's sometimes hard to judge. "How the fuck would you know what I mean? Or what I feel?" He turned away, faced back towards the pines along the yard rear. "If she wants to trade one Jew for another so she can fuck kosher, fine with me."

"You're Jewish, too?" That surprised me even more than him being a quarter Italian. "Since when is 'Summers' a Jewish name?"

"It's not. But Momigliano is a very good Jewish name over in Turin. People forget there are Italian Jews. She fled Mussolini. Jewish descent passes through the female line. My mother was her daughter -- that makes me Jewish, if I wanted to claim it. In fact, she married an Irishman and converted to Catholicism, so I was raised Catholic. Good little altar boy turned apostate. I don't believe in God, Logan. If there's a God, why the fuck did he make me like this?" He tapped his glasses, then drank a third shot of the licorice stuff. "But Ariel Gershowitz can go take a flying leap. Being a Jew -- sort of -- I guess I can say that without being accused of anti-Semitism."

I shook my head. "You're drunk as a skunk, Summers." And vicious.

"Not yet. But I plan to be. If I run out of Sambuca, will you loan me some of your whiskey?"

That made me laugh. "Don't you know better than to mix your liquor, kid? You'll be drunk and sick."

"I really don't give a shit."

"Yes, you do. You wouldn't be here with a bottle of liquorice-flavored crap if you didn't care. Your ex-lover is out with another man, so you're getting drunk. It's a fucking cliché."

"So, I'm a cliché. But not a fucking one. She made sure of that." He drank a fourth shot. It was getting harder for him to swallow. I wondered how long until it all came back up again. His mutation didn't include rapid metabolization of alcohol. Or rather it did, but in the wrong way.

Reaching across his lap, I removed the bottle from his right side to my left. "Give it a rest, kid. I don't wanna clean up your spew."

"Who said I'd ask you to?"

"Don't see anyone else around, do you?"

"Give me the bottle back, Logan."

"No."

"Fuck you!" He erupted to his feet, fists balled, swaying a little. It was nearly dark now. Crickets had started their night music. Somewhere, a barn owl hooted.

Slowly, I stood, too. I kept the bottle in hand. "You can have it later. Right now, let's walk."

He laughed, leaning over as if he were in pain. "What is this? Console-the-jilted-lover duty?" His voice was deep and mean, thrumming in his chest. "You always show up when I screw up. I killed a guy. There was Logan. With whiskey. Now Jean takes off with somebody else, and here's Logan. But I brought the alcohol this time. Is there a merit badge for keeping watch over me? I thought you called me the Boy Scout."

It would have been so easy to snap back but I didn't. He was hurt and striking out at anything that presented itself. "Let's walk," I said again. He didn't argue further, just did as I said. He wasn't steady, not by a long shot, but he wasn't weaving as badly as I'd expected. I made sure we stayed on the path, since he was barefoot. It meandered, not quite a labyrinth. The roses wafted scent in the dark, along with other flowers I didn't recognize but which I was sure Ororo could name down to the color variation. There was a gazebo at the maze center, screened from the mansion windows by summer honeysuckle and morning glory, the latter's blue buds closed now to the night air. Above, a full moon had punched a hole in hazy overcast.

Benches wound around the perimeter of the gazebo interior. "Sit, kid," I said. He obeyed once more, knees spread and hands grasped between them. I sat down on a bench at about forty-five degrees, plopped the bottle beside me and leaned my elbows on my knees. But I wasn't sure what to say. This wasn't a situation in which I'd ever have pictured myself.

After eight months in Canada chasing old leads that had gone to ground like frightened foxes, I'd come home to Westchester. Not a lot had been different from when I'd left, except there was a new adult around named Hank McCoy. He hung from the ceiling and drove everybody nuts spouting Shakespeare and chemical formulae in about equal measure. Weird dude, completely independent of the blue fur. Otherwise, everything was status quo. Ororo still presided over her garden and her history classes. Summers taught math, tinkered in the garage, and mooned after Jean. The Q-ball was as imperturbable as always. And Jean was Jean -- not interested in me. Or rather, interested, but not inclined to act on it. I'd accepted that. I hadn't come back for her. I'd come back because wolverines need a den, and people here actually seemed to care if I lived or died. So I taught kids how to defend themselves, looked after Marie, and tried to stay out of Jean and Scott's way. Whatever tension I'd created between them during my first visit had dried up and blown away. After my return, it had been Jean who kept a polite distance to make a point, while Summers was friendly.

They were happy. And I was happy for them. I might have pursued Jean had she not made it abundantly clear that she wasn't available, and if I hadn't come to like ol' One Eye. That didn't devastate me. I wasn't in love with her. I didn't know her well enough to be in love with her. She represented an ideal for me, and I was in love with that, I guess.

Then their relationship fell apart, and a love like theirs doesn't turn indifferent. It goes into friendship, or into hate. Theirs took the latter, better-worn track. I think the basic problems were there before, but five months ago they went off to some conference in Sweden and came home fighting. They'd been fighting ever since, though in all fairness, I think they had made an effort to keep their private lives private. But the quarrel was too big, she was too annoyed, and he was too young. And when you're getting a divorce - in essentials, if not in fact - it can become a war zone. The final split had occurred three weeks ago . . . three months before they were supposed to have gotten married. He'd moved out of their room and things had calmed down at last.

Until tonight.

"So," I said now.

"So," he said back, then looked down and away. "Fuck it. What do you want me to say to you? Are you my Father Confessor? I thought Charles pretended to be that."

"You're pissed at him because he's not siding with you."

"He's not siding with anybody. And I'm not pissed at him."

"Bullshit."

"Okay, so maybe I am. But I can't blame him. He can't afford to pick sides."

"You play Wronged Husband very well."

"What the fuck do you expect? She brought him back to the goddamn mansion! If that's not rubbing my nose in it, what is?"

"You're not her fiancé any more, One Eye. If she wants to see somebody else, that's her business. And she didn't bring him to the mansion. He came to pick her up. You walked in at the wrong moment; they were on their way out. At least you didn't cause a scene."

"Not in front of the kids." He ran a hand over his lower face, careful not to dislodge the glasses. "Dammit! I was with her for four years, but suddenly I'm not enough! Dr. Jean Grey got tired of her pretty boy toy. Jesus fucking Christ!"

He put his face in his hands, slid fingers up under his glasses to rub at his eyes, then laughed. "It's usually the woman who gets dumped after she puts her man through grad school. But this is the twenty-first century so I guess we get to reverse the genders. I gave up my degree for her, and it didn't mean a damn thing. Not a goddamn thing. She just used me. I am such a fucking idiot."

He was crying now, bent over, face hidden in his hands under his glasses -- and I honestly didn't know what to do. First, he wasn't even close to the truth, but this wasn't the time to point that out. He wasn't able to hear it. His relationship with Jean had fallen apart for a lot of reasons, and the age difference wasn't the least of them. But he hadn't been her boy toy, and she hadn't used him. From what I'd seen, she'd genuinely loved him -- loved him in the face of unconscious social disapproval aimed at a woman almost nine years her man's senior.

But that hadn't meant the relationship was a good one.

"You know," he went on after a minute, "I can't believe I'm talking to you."

"That makes two of us. I can't believe you're talking to me, either."

He laughed at that, took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes. It was only the second time I'd ever seen him without them for more than a few seconds, and the first time, I'd had other matters on my mind. Namely Sabertooth intent on gutting me, and Marie screaming above us while Magneto's machine pulled the life out of her. Now, I studied his face. He was pretty, like a girl. Model looks with hollow cheekbones that showed sharp in the night shadows. Full mouth. Deep-set eyes and long lashes under straight-drawn brows, and a small straight nose. It was the kind of face that had absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Unless he opened his eyelids.

But he looked too damn much like a woman, and not like a woman at all. That, if I was honest with myself, was the root of my initial dislike of Cyclops. It wasn't his discipline. I had discipline, as well. Too many years I don't remember in the military. It wasn't even the prep-school attitude, though I found that annoying. He'd said to me once, "Some of us are proud of our gifts," or some such ingested-and-regurgitated rhetorical bullshit. But I'd seen him when he didn't think he was being watched, seen him pull his glasses off and rub his temples to ease the headaches that resulted from his power. I'd heard him swear in the night when he banged his shin on something because ruby quartz blinded him in the dark. I'd seen stark panic on his face the one time St. John, chasing Bobby Drake, had slammed into him in a hallway and knocked his glasses off. He hadn't shut his eyes in time -- open only a second, but long enough to blast a chunk of plaster and wainscoting, roughly ten by ten, out of the hall wall. Thank God no one had been in front of him. He'd sat on the bottom step of the staircase and tried not to show how badly he'd been shaking. "It doesn't happen very often," Storm had told me, later.

"But it's happened before?" I'd asked in return.

"Once or twice. Yes."

"Has he ever hurt anyone?"

"Not directly, no. Once, he knocked down part of the ceiling on Francesco and Hank, but neither were really hurt."

That had given me new insight into Cyclops' famous control.

In any case, the truth was that I'd disliked him initially for his face. He was pretty, and I'd assumed there was nothing else to him. That wasn't fair and I knew it, and I'd learned better since.

"Who is this guy she's seeing, anyway?" I asked now.

"A colleague of hers." He put his glasses back on and turned his head sideways. Distant light flashed off ruby quartz and he slapped idly at a mosquito, then sighed and held his hand out. "Logan, give me the damn bottle. I'm sobering up too much."

I handed it over. He unscrewed the cap and -- now without a shot glass -- took a swig directly from the bottle and swallowed. "So, okay -- Gershowitz. She met him at the conference in Stockholm. Genetics research. She gave a paper on one panel and chaired another. It's no small thing, to get invited to chair a panel when you're only thirty-six." For a moment, an old pride laced his voice. "You remember. We went together; we hadn't had a vacation in -- what? -- over a year? It was supposed to be our fucking vacation." And that wasn't just anger, it was real pain, the kind that curls up in your belly and digs in claws.

"That's where she met him. He chaired the panel on which she gave her paper, and he was in the audience for the panel she chaired. He then proceeded to chase her all over the goddamn hotel. Wherever she was, there he was. We'd go to dinner, and he'd show up. She'd be down by the pool, and he'd show up. He didn't even take me seriously. I was a joke. At least you took me seriously enough to fight with me. He didn't even do that. He just flat ignored me. I didn't exist to him. I wasn't a physician, I wasn't a researcher, I didn't have fucking "doctor" in front of my name, so I didn't fucking exist. He's forty, he's charming, he has money, and he has prestige in the field. More, he can talk to her about what she's doing. He understands it. I haven't got a damn clue, Logan. I don't understand any of it. She has to explain it to me like I'm a sixth grader. He interrupted our dinner one night, to ask her more about her paper, and they just . . . they talked for three hours. And I sat there. I didn't understand a word."

He was crying again, drank more of the Sambuca. I was amazed that he'd tell me all this, and wondered how much he wasn't telling. Sometimes people could keep others at a distance by seeming to confide a good deal. Still, just because he was talking didn't mean he was being honest. He wasn't above hyperbole, and wounded pride could blind a man, make him pull down his shell until he couldn't see what was really happening around him. I should know. Yet for the first time, I found myself annoyed at Jeannie. I understood her position, but I was angry with her all the same. Maybe this Gershowitz's interest was genuine, or maybe it was just flattery to get between her legs, but I'd have expected better of her. She was a goddamn telepath; hadn't she felt how it had hurt Summers? Then again, I'd come to realize that telepaths could be as dense as the rest of us -- maybe more so because they were schooled into relying on that crutch. They didn't always see what was right under their noses.

"After the conference," Summers went on, "we came home and he went back to Tel Aviv. They corresponded by email. Every damn day. I'd go to bed at night and she'd be up writing to him still. Four or five letters a day.

"I read her mail once. She doesn't keep a password lock on her computer in our room, so I opened her browser and I read it." I could feel him watching me, see the faint red glow that came from his eyes. "Does that surprise you? I told you I had vices. Curiosity is chief among them. Or maybe I just felt like twisting the knife."

I was almost afraid to ask, but did anyway. "Love letters?"

"Actually, no. Mostly, it was about their research -- like she'd told me it was -- and some simple chitchat, too. She was writing to him about a little spat between Jubilee and Rogue a few months back. It blew over. She'd worried about it more than I had. For kids that age, everything's a crisis. Jean has a tendency to get caught up in that with them, maybe because of the telepathy. Anyway, there was nothing incriminating in the letters, not from her. There were a few flatteries from him, but nothing more than I'd heard him tell her in Stockholm." He took another drink of the Sambuca. "She wasn't lying to me then. I never bothered to look a second time, and for a while, I thought maybe it'd be okay. Just blow over like the mess with Jubes and Rogue.

"Then about two months ago, he showed up in New York. To do some research, or so he said. Bullshit. He came to see her. He came to take her away from me. And he succeeded." The last word cracked and he didn't continue for a long while. Instead, his jaw worked helplessly as he struggled to get control of his voice. Finally, he went on, "He asked her to help with his work. The professor agreed to 'loan' her to him, because it involved mutant genetics. Oh, that's the other thing. He knew she was a mutant and didn't care. He found her 'fascinating.' Sounds like a bad line from Star Trek. So they worked together on research for this major paper they wanted to publish. Sometimes she spent days away from the mansion." His mouth had gone hard, full lips thinning to a line.

"I'm not sure when they started sleeping together. I never asked her. She never told me. I don't think I want to know. I suspected it a long time before she admitted to it. She broke up with me before she admitted to it. She said the break-up was because we'd 'grown apart.' Jesus fucking Christ. What kind of idiot asshole does she take me for?" He drank again, but spit it out that time, screwed the cap on and set it aside. "I can't drink any more, or I will be sick."

I rattled around in my brain for something to say. The hell of it was that I didn't think Jeannie had lied to him about growing apart. She had a career, research, interests. They coincided with Xavier's dream, but they were hers, beyond that. She and Xavier just happened to be going in the same direction; it made sense that they walk together. But Summers had invested everything in Xavier's dream, and in his relationship with Jean. He was Cyclops, leader of the X-Men, Mr. Summers math teacher at Mutant High, and lover of Dr. Jean Grey. I wondered what Scott cared about, or if he even knew? Maybe, at the base of things, he was as rootless as I felt most of the time. For all his force of personality, he didn't have Jean's drive. A woman doesn't get a medical degree and a Ph.D. unless she's got drive. Even before I'd left for Canada, I'd found her down in the lab at all hours, playing with this idea or running that test. Summers did his job out of duty and loyalty and gratitude. Jeannie did it out of love and passion.

And ironically, while I was drawn to her passion, I better understood his sense of duty.

But I still didn't have anything useful to say to him, nothing that he was ready to hear, anyway. Instead, I got up and moved to sit beside him. I didn't touch. He folded his hands in front of him and stared at the thumbs. Then abruptly, he reached up to tap his teeth. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Checking to see how trashed I am. Pretty much. I can't feel my teeth. When I can't feel my teeth any more, I'm trashed."

I chuckled. "You don't lose your sense of humor."

"Nope. Never lose that." He sat up and leaned back against a beam of the white gazebo. "Though if you listen to my students, they swear I don't have one."

"They know better. But it's part of the fun to pretend you're a tight-ass, like it's part of the fun to pretend I'm the Big, Bad Wolverine."

"And you're not?"

"What do you think?"

He smiled, the first real smile I'd seen on him all night. "I think Logan likes to pretend, too."

"And what does Scott pretend?"

"Damned if he knows."

"I think he pretends he's Cyclops and can't cry because Odysseus blinded him."

Laughter now. "You know Homer, Logan?"

"You think I'm an uneducated brute. But I read Homer. I remember . . . . " I paused, looked off. "I don't remember a lot. But I remember a few things. From before. I remember sitting in a tent, with shells going off in the distance, reading the Iliad -- Achilles sulking in his tent. Damn spoiled brat. I remember a Vietnamese girl in a red dress, younger than Rogue, trying to solicit sex from me so she could feed her family. I remember villages burning, but I don't know if they did it, or if we did it."

"You were in 'Nam?"

"I think so. But I was in a war before that, too. I have older memories, sounds of buzz bombs going overhead. Artillery guns -- the big kind they used then. I remember K rations. And I remember a piece of cheese I kept in my helmet while we were doing anti-aircraft in Antwerp, shared it with a friend. Damn helmet stank of cheese from then on out. I can't stand the smell of cheese now. And I know how to jitterbug."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I didn't realize I knew, until I showed Marie the other day. Swing's back in. I taught her the jitterbug. Marie, Kitty and Jubilee."

He actually giggled. Definitely drunk. "I'd never figure you for a dancer."

"Good fighters are good dancers. It's all about balance."

"And rhythm."

"That, too."

"I have rhythm. I may not have Jean, but I still have rhythm."

God, he was drunk. I just laughed at him. "You're going to have a hangover tomorrow, is what you're going to have."

He sighed and leaned against the beam again. "Probably. So I'll have rhythm, a headache, a hard-on, and no Jean to take care of any of it." He put a hand over his face. "Shit. Sorry. That's not even funny."

He dropped the hand and turned his head to face me. Light from a distant spot flashed on red and lit half his face, like a harlequin. Beautiful boy.

We stared at each other too long then, and a subtle change raised my nape hair, like a charge in the atmosphere before lightning strikes overhead. Throat dry, I had no words. I could smell anise strong on his breath, and beneath that, half-awake desire. He really did have a hard-on. Random alcohol-induced arousal, probably. But it was there. I found myself staring at his mouth -- which was way out of line. I wasn't the one who'd drank half a bottle of Italian liqueur. But it had also been months since I'd been to bed with anything besides my own hand.

He leaned over, almost overbalanced into me, and kissed me. I didn't jerk away. I didn't respond -- much -- but I didn't jerk away. When he pulled back, I said softly, "Where in hell did that come from, Scott?" But in all honesty, I knew. I'd smelled arousal on him before when I'd been around. I'd found it amusing.

Now, he said, "Like I told you before -- you don't know jack shit about me, Logan."

Maybe that was bravado. But maybe it was the truth, too. I didn't know jack shit about myself half the time, either. But I did know that, in the sixteen or so years of memories that I did have, none of them included kissing a man. Which made the hard on beneath my own belt as shocking as his kiss had been, as shocking as the fact that I didn't want to slug him. I wanted to kiss him again. He had a soft mouth. So I did kiss him. And he responded like he knew what he was doing. Hand on the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair. But he wasn't gentle. He bit my lower lip, and it hurt, but I liked it. Lips like a girl, but he didn't kiss like one.

And something dim in the attic of my past opened a chest and climbed out. Maybe I hadn't slept with a guy in the past sixteen years. But somewhere back there, I'd known this. The sandpaper scratch of five-o'clock shadow on my face, the strength of male hands on my head, another flat chest pressed to mine.

Alcohol and hormones and loneliness. That's all this was, for him. I think. For me? I don't know. Something strange. He reminded me of someone, someone I'd known. Someone I'd loved like a brother, like another self. Someone who'd watched my back, and whose back I'd watched. Except for once. One afternoon. Then it had been someone I'd watched blown apart.

I jerked away, let out a sound like a sob. My whole chest felt crushed. He'd frozen, hands still on my head. Then he dropped the hands and moved away. "Sorry," he said. "Bad idea." And he got up, collected his bottle of Sambuca and half stumbled out the door of the gazebo, down the three wooden steps. His face was a study in shame and guilt. But I was still too shaken to do more than stare after him. He paused, one hand gripping a beam for balance, and looked back at me. "Damn it to hell. Logan, I'm sorry. Really. That was completely out of character. I'm drunk. It won't happen again, I promise." And he headed up the path, mostly in a straight line.

He'd said that curiosity was his vice.

It's mine, too.

Getting up, I followed him down the path, grabbing his wrist and dragging him along -- mostly unresisting -- until we'd exited the back gardens altogether, followed a little well-worn path to the boathouse overlooking the lake. It was the place he and Jean had meant to fix up after their marriage. It was half-finished. And unlocked.

Shoving the door open, I yanked him inside. He wasn't resisting any more. He seemed fey, like he knew everything was changing, crumbling apart around him. I backed him up against a wall, my hands flat on the rough-finished wood paneling on either side of his neck. Two inches separated our mouths.

"Where'd you learn to kiss like that? And don't tell me Jean."

"Don't be an ass. I dated people before I met Jean. And after, too." A pause. "Maybe I know a little more than you think I do."

'Jack-shit,' he'd said. It was starting to feel like that was all I knew. "You kissed men before?" I asked.

Twisted smile. "Yes. I've kissed men before. The first person I had sex with was another guy. Most of them have been women, though."

That took me a while to digest. "Spell that out. In plain English. No hedging."

"I'm bisexual, Logan. Dead in the middle. Most people prefer one or the other. I honestly don't care." He looked away for the first time, off over my left shoulder. I could tell because the direction of the dim red glow behind had shifted. "I shouldn't have kissed you. I'm sorry. Will you let me go?"

"No."

He glanced back at that. "Why not?"

"I want you to do it again."

He had no answer for that, but managed to get out, "Why?"

"Call it curiosity."

That won a smile. "Feeling experimental, Logan?"

"Maybe."

So he leaned in and did what I'd asked. Kissed me, with as much deliberation as before, as much interest in having me enjoy it. He's generous like that. But not gentle. Not harsh, but not gentle. We kissed a while, over all the skin of our faces. He even let me take his glasses off, though I could see how it made him nervous. Pretty, pretty boy. Fine face, so like a girl. But it was a man's jaw, a man's chin, a man's Adam's apple below it. And much further down, a man's dick, hard against my hip. We were either going to take this all the way to its logical conclusion, or we needed to quit right now.

I let him go and stepped away, ran the back of my forearm across my mouth. He was all flushed. I could tell even in the dark. "That's far enough for tonight," I said. "You need to sober up, and I need to think about this. We both need to think about this. I'm not interested in playing your rebound. And I don't think you're interested in being my experiment. G'night, Scott."

Going out, I looked up at the stars overhead. Some were falling.

SPECIAL NOTE:  I was asked, after writing Climb the Wind, why I've only ever shown Scott and Logan as friends, and was I anti-slash? Not at all. But despite the wonderful on-screen chemistry between Jackman and Marsden, I find it tough to spin out a believable relationship, one in which they don't act 'out of character.' Yet it was a challenge. Could I do a Scott / Logan piece and make it believable? This is probably the most negative Jean I've written, but remember, you're not hearing her side of it. Jealous Scott can be a real pill.

No, this won't have a sequel; The Man Behind Red Shades has been retired. 

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