Flashback
by
Lady-T
Disclaimer: One day I'll write for profit, fame and power. Till then I unofficially endorse Marvel characters. And do they thank me for my services...? Nooooooo...
Notes: Dedicated to probably THE slashiest episode of Evo ever produced. Even me, a dedicated het-shipper, had to admit there was something happening between Wolvie and Cap back during WWII. I think it was the caressing of his cryo pod that sealed it though...
Thanks to K Marie and Kat for the read through.
WARNING: Slash themes.
The last words he heard were his own, and later he would be able to laugh at the irony. A warning to the others that the caves are unstable. Warning that the hollows in the rock sometimes fall in because these caves are ancient. Fragile. That sometimes solid ground is nothing more than a skin and then he's gone, his stomach left some hundred feet above him as he falls, open air swallowing him whole...
Feels like a hundred anyway, but the ceiling is too close... too close and getting closer, fragmenting and breaking apart, falling right along with him.
His heart lurches, a cry of pure panic escaping his lips as the ground consumes his scream.
---
So long ago. "I will... If you will."
Respect of privacy. Mutual need. He can do that. He can do that and receive it in return, both getting what they can't do without.
He can do that...
---
He's falling... falling too far, too fast. Adamantium bones will not break but joints will dislocate like any other, with the wrenching, popping feeling that only gets worse the harder you struggle. The limp, disconnectedness of a broken link snaps right through him as he crashes, his back impacting first as the whole world falls around him.
He lands among the rubble, covering his head in the cage of his arms as his legs begin to scream in return. One worse than the other as the rock crushes him with a gasping blow. The left, it burns... fuck, it burns, bent under him too far to ever be natural, twisted too far to ever stop feeling like it's trying to tear itself free from his hip.
Arms, body, become buried, trapped...
Oh God, it burns...
---
He ignored her as she sat down on the other end of the couch, an expectant air surrounding Rogue as if she were suddenly nervous of him. He took the unlit cigar stub out of his mouth and let the silence settle once again, engrossing himself in the magazine he held as he flipped through the articles.
"Can I ask you a question?" she said at last, finally breaking the silence.
He shrugged, never moving his eyes from the page.
"Free country."
"Will you answer it?"
"Might do."
"Have you ever slept with a guy?" She flushed crimson as soon as she said it, looking away in the half hope that maybe he hadn't heard.
Logan flipped the page of his magazine, but otherwise gave no sign of a response.
"You mean slept with or had sex with?" he asked.
She swallowed awkwardly. "Either... both."
"Slept with a lotta' guys. Slept on the Blackbird next to McCoy just a couple of days ago if that's what you mean. Fucking snores like a bear..."
She chased down the smirk.
"And... the other? Have you ever...?"
Another page turn.
"Live long enough and you experience most things," he said, still studiously ignoring her.
"Is that a yes?"
"It's a reasonable assumption," he replied.
She seemed to be chewing that information over, screwing up the nerve to ask more.
"Why...?" she said eventually. "I mean, did you... was it..."
He sighed, rolling his eyes slightly as he closed the magazine. He fixed her with a mildly despairing look at her total inability to say anything coherent.
"Look, Kid... the why and wherefore ain't really important. You just do what seems right at the time, ok? That's all there is to it."
She screwed her face up, evidently unhappy with his answer and he mentally groaned.
"Why the fascination anyway?" he asked. "You suddenly curious about my sex life?"
She shook her head. "No... yes... I don't know..."
He raised an eyebrow and stared at her. "That's a lotta' answers. You wanna' pick one?"
"When I absorb someone, I get flashes of memory," she frowned. "I couldn't work out who it belonged to."
"Ah."
He tossed his magazine onto the coffee table, sparing half a thought for day before when her powers had quite successfully knocked him on his ass.
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
Logan shrugged, leaned back into the seat cushions as he contemplated the toes of his boots.
"Don't see why not. Ain't nothing to be ashamed of. Just the way it happened."
He fell silent for a moment.
"It was war, Kid... when you're risking your life day in and day out, you forge strong bonds to the people you fight with. Some say they become like brothers. Sometimes it goes deeper than that."
He shrugged. "Sometimes it comes down to just proving that you're both still alive."
Flesh on flesh, stomach to stomach, curled around each other desperately as hot, needy mouths latched together. Seeking, finding, the press of fingers along his side...
She shuddered suddenly, sucking in a sharp breath as the memory shivered through her mind again.
Logan watched her in silent curiosity as she exhaled slowly, blinking too fast as she tried to shake it off.
"Intense, huh?" he asked.
She nodded, flushing again. "Private too," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
He shrugged, picking up his magazine again as if to dismiss her. "Not your fault. You don't choose what you absorb."
She picked at her nails.
"Do you miss him? I mean... The one I keep thinking about?"
He snorted softly. "The only one, you mean. I think about him now and then."
She swallowed. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
Logan shrugged. "There's a lot of people I miss, kid. It's the disadvantage of living so long. You tend to outlast most everyone else."
Another page turn of the magazine and she took it for the dismissal he intended it to be.
---
He screams... and in screaming achieves nothing as the noise is too great, the sound of the earth grinding everything to powder. He fights... fights with all the strength he can muster, bleeding palms flattened against unmoving, sharp rock, pushing so hard... Can't breathe in the darkness, panic sweat merging with tears, rolling down his cheeks and wetting his hair, flat on his back and getting nowhere...
---
Night time... a hitched breath, a hand around his cock, hard and aching. A little uncertain, fumbling through this. It's new to both of them, not something either had ever planned. Just desperation and an aching yearn to do something that affirms life, the need to make the blood pump faster just to feel that it's still there. Chose each other, not through preference but through nowhere else to turn, feeling the pulse caused by a depth of connection that can only be wrought in blood.
Hard, hard, aching... plastered to each other, naked skin glued with sweat, face buried in his hair but still not quite certain where to put his hands. Never done this before... hidden under green canvas in the dark, crammed onto one cot, the smell of trampled earth covering everything. Touch, smell, taste, every sense overloaded in the desperate, almost hysterical need to feel something, anything, that resembles life in the middle of so much death...
It's not one of the dreams he can think about jerking off to. It was comfort in pain, the emotion too deep and too raw for a masturbation fantasy. Instead he lies there, stares at the ceiling, hates himself for still feeling so helpless over unavoidable things that are long, long gone.
Remembers it wasn't sex. It was panic, need, an antidote to the fear. An opportunity to feel life in your arms that both of them had leaped at. A moment of pure, base connection that saved his sanity over and over again through the years. His answer to every moment when the hurt was too much, he could just sink back in.
Remembers it wasn't love, it was need, an escape from the pain, and he's used it every time since, through science and humiliation, knowing the power of escaping to a catatonic state where it all plays over and over and over...
Touch him... take what he has to offer you...
The stupid, stupid American, appearing in ludicrous uniform, blue spandex in the middle of a war for fuck's sake, expecting bravado to match the arrogance of his stance and finding...
Something else. Someone else.
But it was a long, long time ago, and the stupid American though not dead is as good as, and it makes his chest hurt to think about it.
So he doesn't think about it. Waits for the knock on his door that comes like clockwork almost every night as Storm lets herself in. Another little thing the others don't know about, though he figures Rogue probably does by now, and he takes her to bed and kisses her.
And if the feel of skin on skin, glued together with sweat isn't quite like his mind would like to remember it, then he pushes it aside, rocks his hips into familiar, giving warmth, and tries not to think about anything at all.
---
Numb... numb, hot numb... cold pain... can't feel his foot...
Dark... screaming... too many voices at once, the screaming.
Raises his voice and joins them.
Oh, God, the screaming...
---
Hand moves faster now, more certain as flesh begins to tense, quiver, jerk... a hot splash against his fingers and fuck if the stupid American isn't shaking. Shaking so hard... Like he'd fall out of the cot if it wasn't for the sweat that glued them together, the heated blood and mutual exhaustion. Bodies pressed so close he can feel every tiny flicker of muscle against him, nothing to separate them in the tight, tight, hot space, wrapped under green canvas. Clinging on so hard, so tight, so desperate. Can no more stop his reaction than he can stop the tides with a grain of sand.
And Christ, oh maybe tomorrow, tomorrow will bring the uncomfortable silences and the inability to look him in the eye, but for right now there is no choice, no other option. They curl together, tired and afraid and hurt, stronger only for knowing the other is right there. Wrapped together for the comfort and the security, fucking lost and too fucking young...
---
He shivers, the cold so deep, the black so intense. Wonders if he's dead or still somehow alive. Can't tell any more, can't tell at all, can't hear or see or feel... Can't move in the closed black space to tell.
Can't see the dark red blood that pools under his back and legs and head.
Only flashing of a life barely even half lived.
And the screaming...
---
He lies still, an arm draped heavily over Ro's stomach as she sleeps beside him. Outside the door he hears Rogue approach. He can almost see her there, hand raised to knock before she pauses... screws her face up and tears herself away, because she knows he's not alone in there tonight. He hears unsteady feet escape back the way she came and sighs slowly. Half expects the whole school to know by tomorrow, though still hopes she respects her own privacy enough to respect his too.
Wonders why he doesn't want them to know. Wonders why Ro doesn't seem to mind, because isn't that what they all want...? The man on their arm to fetch and carry and just be theirs. Not... not this. What he wants. It's not even the sex, if he's true to himself. It's the security, the knowing that there's someone there. Instincts and long-ingrained practice. Pressed together in the cold and the fucking unending dark and the burning fear that tonight might always be your last.
---
Dark, so dark, the kind where you can't tell up from down, the pitch blackness of the underground. Places where light has never been. Lay in the silence and listen to the earth turning...
God, it hurts and the air is thick and dusty, grating lungs through fine wire.
It hurts, it hurts, make it stop, it hurts...
---
Been out so long. Not seen a toothbrush in over a week, out in the mud, so it's not the pleasantest of flavours. Notices the blue uniform is a little creased and torn. Notices the man inside is a little less cocky, a little less overtly pretentious this time.
Lets it slide. Knows the reason for the need. Everyone heard it all around camp even before they returned. Know Arbeit Macht Frei, but none had been prepared to actually see it. The antithesis of your American dream, soldier boy. See it and swallow it.
So he kisses him, a wet, desperate moment that tastes a little like army rations and a lot like stale coffee, doesn't fucking CARE because he needs it so bad. Needs to feel the heartbeat and the presence, fingers digging into shoulders so hard they leave bruises as they crunch together. And it's not about the sex, it's never been about the sex, hot breath panting down his ear mixed with the whimper of barely controlled emotion as he holds on so tightly.
And it pulls something in him, a weird kind of emotion, only it's nothing like he's felt for the women in his life. So maybe it's just compassion, the ease of mutual hurt, he can't seem to tell any more. Feels a little like crying himself because he knows it won't last. Knows the secret of the stupid American, knows that he's dying and when this is over it really will be the end...
---
He greys in and out among the dust and dark, fading to a place where the tearing, wrenching pull of his legs and the constant ache across his shoulders doesn't seem to exist... so he lingers there for a time only to rise up again with renewed Technicolor pain as consciousness flares.
Cry like a baby scared of the dark, it's never going to listen...
---
Watches with almost stone cold emptiness as the lights flicker on the monitoring equipment, looks down at the frost-coated glass, reaches out and runs his fingers over it.
The stupid American in stupid blue spandex, his lips almost the same colour as his costume. Reaches out and touches the glass again and again, mutters that he'll keep trying, but it's too odd to see him like that. Too odd to know that he's so, so cold when all he can remember is the heat...
He turns away and tries to never look back and he can still remember her words to him later that day.
"I will... If you will."
Remembers the stupid American said the exact same thing and wonders if he's doomed to repeat this forever.
---
In the darkness he suddenly laughs, pure hysteria. She's nothing like him. God, nothing at all and maybe the intense, burning pain has cleared away some kind of fog but he thinks that for the first time ever he's finally seeing it clearly...
Oh, he's treated her so wrong, he thinks. Gone about it all the wrong ways...
---
He rocks his hips into familiar, yielding warmth, feeling her arch and squirm underneath him, the press of her body, the moan in her voice that turns into a desperate squeal just before she comes. The look in her eyes that is so unfamiliar he always looks away, disconcerted. And he thinks now that maybe it's love and he's never seen that look before because she's the only one who's ever, truly felt it about him...
But he discounts it; he has to because "I will... If you will..."
She wants what he wants, doesn't she...? Respect of privacy. Mutual need. He can do that. He can do that and receive it in return, both getting what they can't do without.
He can do that...
Because that's what she wants, isn't it...?
---
And in the darkness the hysteria has died and now he's just crying because that wasn't it, was it? Oh God, that wasn't it...
I will... if you will. He spent so long listening to the words he never heard the tone. The unworded following to his decisions. And she never complained because maybe the unthinkable was true... Maybe she really did love him. Maybe so much that all she ever wanted was for him to be HAPPY, for fuck's sake. For him to have what he wanted...
And he spent so long, too long thinking about the past that he missed what was in his present, and so he cries because now he's lost it twice. Because the dark is so complete and the pain is so hot and the grey is so welcoming... and he doesn't know how far he's fallen or how deeply he's buried and it all hurts so much.
---
And there she was, like always, standing in his doorway too attuned to his moods to speak. She just accepts what he feels like giving her and it makes him feel like the biggest jerk ever. But she makes it all ok somehow, her smile and quiet, the heels of her hands pressing into his shoulders as she sits astride his hard, upright cock, rocking slowly as he lets her pin him down. Feels the tension bleed out, the memories he's been stewing in bleed out, the hurt and the pain and the loneliness bleed out...
---
And he knows... knows he treated her all wrong, but at least the memories were sometimes happy, and his eyes are still watering as the rocks slowly begin to vanish until the light cuts through him, and he sighs now, strangely at peace with knowing this is the end and he has a smile on his face...
Almost beatific as he lies there and for a hideous, endless moment she thinks they might be too late... that the blood loss and the pain have been too much but then he inhales, opens his eyes and smiles directly at her.
"Ro..."
She almost doesn't hear him, not over the sound of the rocks being lifted, but she sees his lips move and crawls closer to see that he's still smiling to himself.
"I had a dream all about you..."
He says it almost absent-mindedly, like he's floating somewhere else, talking to someone else, but with such affection that it makes her stop. She reaches out, touches his face. An intimate gesture they never made, not even in private. But now it just makes him beam, black-bruised arms lying heavily across the lifted debris around him, tears rolling down his cheeks despite the smile that claims his lips.
All references to characters belonging to the X-Men Universe are (c) and TM the Marvel Comics Group, 20th Century Fox and all related entities. All rights reserved. Any reproduction, duplication or distribution of these materials in any form is expressly prohibited. No money is being made from this archive. All images are also (c) and TM the Marvel Comics Group, 20th Century Fox and all related entities; they are not mine. This website, its operators and any content used on this site relating to the X-Men are not authorized by Marvel, Fox, etc. I am not, nor do I claim to be affiliated with any of these entities in any way.