Scott and Logan, Wednesday afternoon

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

Logan heads down to the garage to steal Scott's bike, but finds Scott - shock of shocks! - down there working on it. Scott's in a pensive mood. Logan's in the mood to poke a little. Surprisingly, there's less (okay, no) hitting and more serious conversation.


He'd definitely been neglecting the bike. Scott shook his head, smiling a bit wryly. Hell, he hadn't been riding the bike - except for taking it into New York to the Hellfire Club, and he didn't think he was going to let his mind go there just now.

He focused on the work of replacing the drive belt instead. There were enough gravel roads around the mansion that he tended to go through belts faster than the norm, and it looked like he'd gotten a stone caught in there at some point over the last few months and never noticed. I wonder why...

Logan was in the mood to just get out and go somewhere. Was better for him and everyone around him if he did. He walked into the garage, fully-intending to snag Scott's bike for his ride, only to see the thing half-disassembled and Scott forearm-deep in it working on it. Since fair was fair, Logan walked over to lend a hand. "Drive belt?" he asked once he got close enough to see what, specifically, Scott was working on.

"Yeah. Sorry," Scott said with another of those small, wry smile as he looked up at Logan. "No stealing my bike today..."

Logan shrugged to that. "Eventually I'll replace mine." he said, then sat himself down next to Scott. "Want a hand?" he asked.

"No, I'm good," Scott said automatically, then shrugged a little. "Almost done," he explained, looking away from Logan and back at the bike. He hadn't seen much of Logan lately, he reflected. Then again, who in their right mind wouldn't have been avoiding me lately? The thought was without any particular self-disgust, which was a nice change. It was true, though. He hadn't been great company.

Logan shrugged. "I ride this thing more than you do. Show me how to maintain it." he said. "Only fair."

Scott gave him a brief, faintly incredulous look. "You do not."

"You sure about that?" he retorted with a grin. "You've barely left your suite in weeks."

"Bullshit. I've spent plenty of time in my office. And the Situation Room. And the gym."

"Fine. Try leaving the mansion and mingling with the little people once in a while. You don't need your bike in the gym." he pointed out.

Scott paused again, staring down at the bike. "No, I don't," he muttered, shaking his head a little. "I like the bike, though." It sounded like he was trying to convince himself that was okay, still. Hah.

"Who you trying to convince, me or you?" Logan asked. "Me? I like your bike just fine." he grinned.

"Yeah, I know, and if you don't quit stealing it, I'm going to put your ass back on active status just to be able to assign you coms shifts for the next year," Scott retorted in something very close to a proper bantering tone.

"Ooh. Threats." Logan said with that same grin on his face. "You wanted me to stop stealing it all you'd have to do is say so."

"Okay. Quit stealing the bike." Again, no rancor in the words, though. "My toy," Scott muttered with a little smile, very deliberately not looking at Logan.

Logan looked at Scott, trying to determine if he was serious or not. Deciding to humor him, he nodded. "Fine." he said.

"Thanks." Well, that had been easy enough. And when Logan said he'd do things, he usually did them, so Scott didn't figure he even had to worry about backsliding. He leaned back from the bike, reaching for a rag to wipe his hands. "Plenty of other things in the garage that'll let you get out for some fresh air at an appropriately reckless speed."

Logan bah'ed at that. "Not like the bike. Now I'll have to go get my own, figure out how to get that thumb-rocket in as well." he mock-pouted. "This mean you'll actually use it once in a while?"

"That's the plan. It deserves better than sitting in the garage," Scott said, more to himself than Logan. "Besides, if I don't start spending some more time outside soaking up the sunlight, I'm going to give myself a case of my own personal mutant variety of seasonal affective disorder again."

"Sure it hasn't happened already, Captain Emo?" he asked, then stood back up with a metallic grinding in his knees. "But hey, I don't give a shit. You're getting out and enjoying yourself a little, that's what counts."

"Captain Emo. That's a new one. I don't know if I prefer it to Captain Fuckwad or not." Scott's face and voice had gone distant, though, as if he was disconnecting himself from even the mild potential conflict inherent in Logan's comment. Which was precisely what he was doing, he'd realize later. But maybe that was all right. This week, at least.

"After your little woe-is-my post up there I thought it fit." he said. "But you got what you wanted. Lots of folks telling you how wonderful you are."

What post - oh. Scott shook his head and picked up a wrench. It wasn't as if he hadn't known roughly two seconds after doing that that he shouldn't have. And no one had bought the attempt to make it into a joke, either.

"I hadn't realized you'd added mindreading to your list of accomplishments." Still no real edge to his voice as he turned back to the bike. "But I guess, if you know what I want..."

"I leave the mindreading to Jeannie and Wheels and the carebear. I just have a finely-tuned bullshit detector, and you pegged it." he smirked, leaning up against the Rolls while he was talking to Scott.

"You're a genuine grade A shit at times, has anyone ever told you that? Speaking of shit," Scott said, and while there was still no heat in his voice, there wasn't much in the way of energy either. The tiredness was creepy through again, and he concentrated on the drive belt. He'd come down here for a break, to lose himself in something mundane that he enjoyed doing. He hadn't expected to have to cross verbal swords with Logan.

"One of my more charming character traits, to hear Marie tell it." he agreed. "Least you never have to wonder where you stand."

"That's great. You know what, Logan?" Scott finally got the old drive belt off and examined it for a moment. Definitely damage from gravel. "I think about it for a minute, and really, I have no idea why you think you have a leg to stand on when it comes to judging me."

"What, you gotta be special now to call it like you see it?" he retorted, warming up to the game. "You're one of the best strategists I've ever seen. You got my respect and I follow your orders. No-one can question your courage or your dedication. Which is what makes it so frustrating when you pull this whiny emo crap. Suck it up and be a man, Summers." Logan said, then took a few steps towards the elevators. "You got a problem? Do something about it. Can't find a way? Ask. You got people here who'd die for you, and you won't honor their dedication to you."

"You don't know what I have or haven't done in terms of doing something about it," was Scott's reply. "What am I doing right now, Logan? Am I barricading myself in my office behind stacks of paperwork? Stop jumping to conclusions." He shook his head, turning back to the bike again. "As for the whiny emo crap, talk to me again when you take on any kind of real responsibility and have to deal with not being able to do a damned thing for the people you care about, over and over again. When it's the same thing happening over and over again, and you're just as helpless every time."

"Experience should be a cruel bitch, especially when you don't get it the first time." he retorted. "Try learning from your mistakes instead of just rerunning them endlessly like some hamster in a wheel."

"Right. Because of course they're my mistakes. I'm responsible for Betsy's possession and Jean's not-quite-possession-but-sort-of, and all the consequences, in both cases. It's me who's responsible for all the people I love turning into victims."

Logan grinned ferally at Scott. "You seem to love to take that responsibility, even if it ain't yours. You want it? Fine. Take it, but stop half-assing it."

"Again, I'm not taking advice for anyone who has only a hazy grasp on what responsibility is," Scott said, a bit more sharply.

Logan just flipped Scott the bird and continued his way to the garage's exit.

"I notice you like walking out on these conversations," Scott said, getting up and moving over to the tool bench. "Kind of a habit."

"It's walk or pop claw, so I walk." he gritted out. "No point in talking to you. You ain't listening." Besides, maybe Scott would take his shot so Logan could cut loose.

"What do you want to hear, Logan? That I have an appointment with a therapist tomorrow afternoon?" Scott countered, then shrugged. "Well, I do. I lost it at Charles on Monday and it became pretty damned obvious I wasn't coping." He found the tool he was looking for and went back over to the bike, crouching down. "Now, you can go ahead and feel free to make cracks about that."

Logan shook his head. "About fuckin' time." he said, then continued on his way.

"And you know something else?" Scott said, not looking at him. "I don't know why you decided to learn to be something other than brutally direct, but you need to practice your lying technique until it's a little more believable. Like hell I have your respect. You follow me and my rules because you want to be here, for whatever reason. Don't pretend you see it as anything but a necessary evil." Damn, that had felt good to say, and Scott smiled a bit tightly.

Logan just shook his head. "Now look who's flunking their mindreading skills." Logan said, tapping his skull with a finger. "Yeah, I owe you. For Marie, and for myself. But if that's all it was why'd I come back, Slim? Put that strategic brain to work on that one."

"I don't know why you came back," Scott pointed out with perfect logic. "You blew back in, got Charles to give you a job, got in my face, and then went running off to New York looking for Jean."

"You never asked."

"I was a little preoccupied. And you haven't exactly been forthcoming." Scott shook his head. "For all I know, you have some good and even halfway noble reason to be back. Which is fine. Good, actually. But that doesn't change the fact that you'd be a lot happier if 'Ro was the one in sole charge around here and I was nowhere to be found."

Logan shook his head. "I like 'Ro just fine, but without your planning, your skill out in the field, the first serious foe we came across would turn this team into hamburger."

"I think you're doing Ororo a hell of a disservice there. You think I'm doing the deployment plans by myself?" Scott shifted in his crouch, uncomfortable at the turn the conversation had taken. This felt like looking to Logan for validation. That wasn't what he was doing, was it?

"I know a thing or two, and she ain't in your league. Nobody here is." he said simply. "There, you feel better about yourself now?"

"No." Scott stared at the innards of his bike, his hands stilling. "You know, back in New York when we were at the FoH headquarters... I didn't know what the hell I was doing with that firehose. Lucky guess. Seriously, I had no idea where you all were, I just guessed it was some kind of teleportational portal. If I'd been wrong, I could have killed everyone inside."

"Oh, I get it now. It's because you're not perfect and don't have a signed statement from whatever God you believe in that we're all going to die in bed." he said with disgust.

"That mutant's dead because I focused on the evac and didn't try to communicate with him. Her. Whatever." Admittedly, he hadn't had a lot of option, with one of his telepaths out cold and the other trapped inside. "I ordered Lorna to pull out and save herself and leave him to die, without blinking. My problem," Scott went on a bit heavily, "is being in a place where I make choices like that. I used to believe we were supposed to not take our own safety into account if someone needed our help, but these days... I think about calling the Danes and saying 'Hello, I'm afraid your daughter's dead', and that's the basis on which I make the decision."

Scott looked around at Logan, then shook his head in aggravation that was directed more at himself than anything. "Nathan dragged me down to Harry's that week and lectured at me about how that wasn't a bad thing until I agreed out of self-defense. Or maybe it was the Scotch."

"If you can't make the hard calls anymore than you need to stop being in command. Let someone who can make that call make that call." he said. "And no, that ain't me. My way wouldn't work for a team like this. That's why I follow orders and don't give them."

"If I thought it was the wrong call, it would be a lot simpler," Scott said with a certain amount of frustration - at Logan, this time. "I could look at myself and say 'yeah, you've gone soft'. But I've been told before that the approach I was taking was wrong, that you do choose your team in situations like that. It's not..." He stopped, pressing his lips together as he tried to find the words. "It's not what I think the Professor would want," he finally said, reluctantly. "Maybe. Maybe I don't know what he wants, and this is one of the many things he and I should be talking about. But what I do know is that we're not just rescuing stray mutants in trouble and the like anymore. Conditions have changed."

Logan thought about that for a moment, then nodded. "You still got it, despite your doubts." he said, and then turned to bow to Scott very formally in the Japanese manner.

The bow hit home in a way that the words Scott had figured were empty hadn't, earlier, and Scott looked away, flushing. He rubbed at the scars on his face for a moment, not registering the fact that he was leaving smudges. "It's not just not wanting to screw it up," he said, almost under his breath. "It's wanting to do it right." There was a real difference there, and for the first time in what felt like months, he felt like he was clear-headed enough to see it.

"How is it right to second-guess yourself into oblivion, to take on more than your own share, and to destroy your health?" Logan asked respectfully.

"I didn't say I was doing it right," Scott said with a weary sort of amusement. "And I think... it's like most things. Too much of a good thing." He picked up a wrench. "Too much reviewing and analyzing, until it's obsessiveness, not anything productive... concern for the people I'm responsible for turning into fear for them, which is never a good thing to have driving you..."

"Sounds like you got a lot to talk about with that shrink." he said. "I ain't the guy to give you answers."

"No, but you did ask. And maybe I just wanted someone to know that I am thinking about it."

Logan nodded. "You told me, and I appreciate that. Now tell them." he said, nodding up at the rest of the Mansion. "I told you - you got people here who'd die for you. Use them."

"I think the key's to figure out some things for my own before I go looking to anyone else," Scott said, "but on the other hand, it wouldn't kill me to rediscover the fine art of conversation. Socializing. What a concept."

Logan shrugged and finally made his way out of the garage, leaving Scott to his thoughts and to his bike. But then he poked his head back into the garage a moment later. "Beer and pool at Harry's. Tonight. Eight. Be there." Logan grinned before withdrawing fully.