Logan and Jean: Nightminds

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Unable to sleep yet again, Jean finds Logan having the same problem. They go up to the roof and have philosophic conversations, with beer.



Jean sat in the rec room, knees pulled up to her chest as late night infomercials spouting miracle cutting knives and spray on hair flashed in front of her eyes. She hadn’t felt like working out in the Danger Room, as the prospect of violence wasn’t really on her mind at the moment.

She wore a pair of pajama pants and a simple white tanktop. The mansion had always been a bit colder on the first level for some reason, probably because it housed the classrooms and offices and had the task of keeping dozens of people comfortable.

She rubbed her eyes, a mess of sloppy red curls falling in front of her face that she brushed away. Picking up the remote, she started to flick through the channels before growing bored. She left one of the infomercials playing on the TV as she walked over to the French doors leading outside and folded her arms, staring out the window at the grounds touched by moonlight.

Logan liked to spend his nights outside, in what passed for clean air in Westchester. When he couldn’t sleep, when the memory leakage got particularly bad, when his slumber was interrupted by nightmares of blood and fire and death, going outside for a run usually sufficed to clear his head.

Eventually.

Tonight was particularly bad for him, and he’d been outside for hours, moving like a ghost between the trees, tag-hunting the deer and trying to submerge Logan into the beast, to let it run free as it willed.But he’d had his fun and was actually starting to feel pleasantly tired, so he loped back towards the Mansion for a beer or two and maybe a smoke before he tried the whole sleep thing again.

Jean caught sight of a silhouette slowly approaching from over one of the hills. The build, height, and general disarray of the hair made the person easy to guess but it was his mind she sensed first.

She watched his approach, arms folded as his features became gradually and gradually easier to distinguish. Other than a couple of over-achievers studying for one of Crystal’s tests upstairs, she and Logan were the only other two awake. It almost seemed proper. She knew of the dreams he had, so lately being almost parallel to her own.

She’d still be watching when he finally made it back, fixated on what she should’ve said. Their last encounter wasn’t particularly warm and fuzzy.

Logan couldn’t smell Jean but his eyes were keen enough that he saw her easily as he loped towards the Mansion proper. And, as usual, emotions ripped through him, tugging him this way and that. She was frustratingly familiar, always had been. Like he’d known her before the project, but that was clearly just him being completely insane. Shoving the thoughts and desires aside, he paused to scrape mud, leaves, and other trail debris off his bare feet before he set foot through those French doors.

“Jeannie.” he said as neutrally as he could. “You’re up late.” he observed. “Can’t sleep?”

“Nightmare” Jean said.

She stepped aside to let him pass, her own feet bare on the hardwood floors. She liked the feel of the cool ground on her skin, it brought with it a feeling of home, the freedom of walking around without the symbolic gesture of the formality of shoes.

Yep, she thought about things far too much.

“Same thing?” she asked, glancing him over. She’d known him well enough by now to figure out when he wanted to be ‘one with nature’ was when he was feeling caged.

He grunted acknowledgment at that, then diverted from his original plan of a beer, a smoke, then bed. Instead, he lingered by the doorway, leaning against a wall nonchalantly. “Drowning?” he asked her finally, making a guess as to what she had goin’ on that would deny her the pleasure of her own bed.

“Sometimes. Not tonight, though,” Jean said, glancing back behind her toward the empty room with an unfocused look. Putting the dream to words seemed almost impossible. If Jean-Paul hadn’t caught a glimpse she would’ve kept it to herself.

She let the words hang in the air almost a little too long before looking back out at the grounds.

“Would you like to meet me on the roof? It’s been awhile since I’ve been up there and I could use some air.”

The last time she checked he didn’t particularly like being flown up there like Superman and so she chose to let him find his own way up.

He noted how she didn’t offer him a lift and mentally shrugged. Her call if she wanted to make him walk. “Yeah.” he said. “Can do that.” he said, heading for the kitchen to grab that beer - or maybe a pair of them - and a smoke before he headed on up.

Woman pretty obviously wanted a pat on the head and told everything’d be all right. And, more to the point, she wanted it from him. Part of him was getting pissed-off at how he danced to her tune while another part of him was ready to do a little soft-shoe if she’d look his way. But above and beyond all of that, she was still his friend and he didn’t have so many of those that he could run around alienating them willy-nilly.

Spendin’ time with Jeannie was, for the most part, enjoyable.

Jean was waiting for him when he arrived. Her feet dangled off the edge, her face lifted toward the moon, feeling the wind stroke her hair.

“If you look just right you can see New York City in the distance. Or at least, so I used to think.” It was about two hours away, but she pretended the lights of Salem Center was Manhattan when she was younger.

Logan took a seat next to her, but not too close, and offered her one of the beers he’d brought up. Moosehead, of course, that being the go-to brew of choice between himself and Gar. “Nice night.” he hazarded by way of conversation. “Crisp and clear.” he elaborated. “So what’s got you sittin’ up here at this hour?” he asked.

Jean glanced down at the beer, giving him a playful smile. “You sure know the way to a girl’s heart,” she said, reaching out to take the beer.

“Thanks.”

She took a sip, closing her eyes again as she felt another breeze wash over her. The smile remained on her lips, her hair twisting and turning in the air like flame.

“Trying to ‘find my center,’ as the Askani might call it,” she said. She’d had far too many teachers trying to show her the art of meditation and focus. For the most part it worked, but after awhile the calm was growing harder and harder to find.

Logan barked out a laugh at that. “Not workin’ too well, is it?” he asked, then took a deep swig of his beer. “Pesky things, centers. They’re shy, don’t wanna come out and play.” He spent a moment just watching the wind play with her hair and smiled briefly, helplessly, for it. “Can’t force it. Can’t bulldoze your way through it.” he admitted. “Just have to let it come naturally, even if it means you get to spend some restless nights.”

“I wish it were that easy. Snap your fingers and then wake up the next morning awake, alert and rested,” Jean said.

She couldn’t remember the last time that happened. Actually, maybe she could, when she was a thousand miles away.

“But then you have to throw rational thought into there. Me, I was going for blind optimism,” she said, grinning softly as she took a sip of her beer.

The grin faded. “I thought about using sleeping pills again. Problem is, I’m afraid I won’t wake myself up fast enough.”

There were days when she dreaded walking the halls, remembering the dream and the sight of blood on the walls.

“Guess I should leave the logic and the thinkin’ to the folks who’re good at it?” he asked with a quirk of a grin. “Can’t say I’m real fond of turnin’ to pills to zonk you out.” he said. “But if that’s what you got to do, that’s what you got to do. Get the furball or the Russkie to set you up.” he said, then finished off his beer with a titanic set of chugs.

“Amelia’s already quite willing. She keeps getting angry when I rearrange the medical supplies occasionally at night after I get bored. I figure if she generally isn't happy with me anyway I might as well live up to the preconception,” she said.

Turning, she peered at Logan, managing to catch sight of 3/4ths of his beer disappearing before her eyes and she couldn’t help but laugh.

“Impressive.”

Logan stifled a truly epic belch, then shrugged. “It’s a gift.” he said simply. Besides, shotgunning his beers like that meant that they hit him for a fraction of a second longer before his healing factor burned it all away.

“I can see that,” Jean said, quirking a brow with an amused grin at the belch.

She glanced up toward the stars, pulling her legs underneath her as she watched, silent for a few moments as the wind howled a song.

“When you’re angry. When the animal instincts take over...do you feel like you lose a part of yourself in that moment? Do you ever see yourself just...taking off into the woods, abandoning everything?”

“Been there, done that.” he admitted, playing with his now-empty beer bottle. “Part of what’s behind the blocks, behind the damage is the time I spent wild. Feral.” he said. “Least, that’s what Chuck thinks.” he confessed a moment later. “It’s like I lose a part of me, but I’m also getting back in touch with a part of me. Ferals walk a line, Jeannie. Sometimes it’s nice and fat, sometimes it’s razor-thin. But there’s a line there, between man and beast, between reason and instinct.”

Jean glanced over to him. “Does it make you feel better, or worse when you cross that line?” she said.

Logan shrugged. “Mu.” he said.

Jean cocked her head to the side, her eyebrows drawing upward. The word sounded vaguely familiar but she couldn’t remember where to place it. Either that, or his grunting had become strangely lyrical.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Means yer question can’t be answered.” he said. “It’s not a question of better or worse. It simply _is_.” he said. “It’s both. It’s neither. It’s complicated. You want to know what it’s really like, go poke around for yourself.” he said, poking himself in the temple.

Her eyes fluttered as that click of the light bulb of recognition turned on. It was a concept she’d learned briefly between Tibet and Charles, but if they had used the word she’d forgotten.

She stared at him for a moment or two before softly smiling. “You seem awfully keen to be wanting me in your head lately.”

“Not still scared, are you?” he teased. “Afraid you might like it?” he added to his teasing tone. “Seriously, though. You’re a teep, you have a wild side, maybe you’d see something, be able to do something, that Chuck can’t or won’t.” he thought out loud.

Jean gave him a wry smile. “I doubt it,” she said to his question, the words postcards from the past, before the world grew more...intricate in the weaving of it’s web. Sometimes she felt as if she’d become a completely different person from then.

Her smile was still there, but it was a remnant, caught up in the prospect of what lay behind the door, what she might find.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“You might not like what you find.”

To be certain, the challenge was something that enticed her, but she often wondered if it was like opening Pandora’s box.

“Figured that out a long time ago. Know that anything locked up in there’s probably some sort of horror.” he said with a shrug that was far more casual than he really felt. “Still, it’s my past.” he said, as if that explained everything. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty thing to ask anyone to dip their brain in whatever I’ve got lurking upstairs.” he said. “It is, however, the only shot I got.” he said sadly.

Jean looked up at the moon, as if it would give her the right answer. Finally she looked back to him and smiled.

“We should probably not do this on the roof. Just in case.”

Logan grinned at that. “Probably not a good idea to give it a shot when you’re already all fucked up in the head, too.” he said. “It can wait.” he said, leaning back just a little to gaze up in the blackness of the night sky. “Owe you one, Jeannie.” he said after a moment.

Jean glanced down, then nodded a little. “You’re right. We should wait.”

Her nightmares mixed in with his potential house of horrors didn’t seem like the best combination.

“Also, we need to work on your tact meter,” she mused. Yet again crazy or not, she was still resisting the urge to punch him in the arm.

She then shook her head with a soft smile.

“And no, you don’t owe me.”