Logan
"I gotta hand it to you, Frost –" Logan downed the last of his beer, just as the waitress swooped in with another pitcher. "You sure know how to pick a sketchy dive bar."
Scott frowned across the table at him. "I thought she got you to choose the place."
"Exactly." Logan wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. "That's the best way to pick a sketchy dive bar."
"Young love," Hank mused out loud.
"Huh?" Scott demanded. Logan pushed back from the table, but Emma pointed across the room. Peter had his hand on Kitty's back and together they maneuvered in a complex and apparently random combination of dance steps.
"Doesn't it just make you want to vomit?" Emma asked.
Scott shrugged and reached for the beer. "I think they're cute." He frowned. "Especially when you don't think about how she was thirteen when they met."
Emma rubbed her temples. "I wish they'd just fuck. Unresolved sexual tension gives me migraines."
"Unresolved?" Scott frowned. "I thought they were --"
"No," said Emma and Logan at once.
"I'd definitely sense it," said Emma.
"I'd probably smell it," said Logan.
Hank raised his beer and held it out to Scott. "For the record? Beast or not, I don't go around sniffing people for sex. I'm totally oblivious."
Scott nodded in approval, and clinked his glass against Hank's. "Here's to total oblivion. Bottoms up."
Logan and Emma opened their mouths at the same time, but before they could race to make a dirty joke, the MC's voice cut across the room, ". . .singing a tune by the great Tom Waits, we have. . .Hank!"
"Now," Logan said, with a glance at Emma, "Let's see how good of a bar we really picked."
It didn't matter much to Logan. They could go home with a fight or without one. The bar paid lip service to being mutant-friendly but then, plenty of businesses close to Salem Center were happy to take the dollars the school brought in. The other patrons had seemed pretty easy-going, so far, and by now anybody with a brain in their skull had to have a pretty good idea that they were not just mutants but X-men. Still, Logan knew enough people who said they didn't have any problem with muties, as long as they're not shoving it in my face. In the eyes of some, a guy covered with blue fur taking to the karaoke stage on open mike night would probably qualify. If there was going to be trouble it was going to happen now. Logan glanced back at Scott, and he didn't need to see that tight-jawed nod to know Cyke would also be scanning the place for possible threats.
A soothing voice intruded on his thoughts. Honestly, you two, calm down. They both looked at Emma, who gave an innocent smile.
She must have networked them together, because Logan heard Scott's reply. What did you do, Emma?
Just watch. She reached across the table and put a hand on Logan's. Trust me. Then he felt her disconnect – probably, he guessed, in response to Logan's curiosity about what exactly she was doing with her other hand.
On the stage, Hank was raising the microphone. He cleared his throat and looked around at the audience, flashing a smile at the others in his party. From the back, an unsteady male voice rose in song, "C is for cookie, that's good enough for me –" A few scattered laughs sounded throughout the bar. Then, simultaneously, the singer and the laughers doubled over, each with a sharp cry and a hand to the forehead.
"Emma!" Scott hissed.
"Not I," she answered, just as the bar erupted in cheers and applause.
The heckler, already recovered and on his feet, called out, "Crazy fuckin' muties!"
"Go home, asshole!" shouted someone on the other side of the room. Other voices joined in -- "Let the guy sing!" "Don't you know who he is?" "McCoy!" "Hank!" "X-men in the bar!" – until they blended into a chant of "Hank! Hank! Hank!" Across the room, Kitty and Peter – and somehow, half the waitstaff and a crowd of random people they had drafted into their makeshift dance – were clapping hands and leading the chant.
The guy in the back started to stagger toward their table. Logan sighed, raised a hand, and let one of the blades protrude, just a little – it still hurt every bit as much, but sometimes less really was more. "Wolverine!" came more cries and applause from the audience.
The heckler grabbed his coat and bolted toward the door. "You people are sick!" he called over his shoulder, but the sound of his exit was drowned by the crowd's applause, and more cries of "Hank!"
"Thank you," said the man of the hour, and if a blue furball could blush, he would have been. Then the music started, and Hank began to growl his own version of Tom Waits' love song to a sultry waitress.
Emma's voice resurfaced in Logan's mind. We're not the only mutants in here. Since it wasn't me who gave all those idiots a headache at the same time, I'm apparently not even the only telepath. However. Not everyone who's cheering for Hank is a mutant.
How do you know --? Logan began. She raised an eyebrow and he corrected, All right, what does it mean?
Emma studied the nails on her visible hand. The world, my friends, may hate and fear us. However, the last few years have turned us into something far more powerful than superheroes -- She rubbed her thumb over an imaginary chip -- We're celebrities, boys. That, along with Henry's excellent singing, has earned us quite a bit of goodwill. And soon we're going to need it.
Scott frowned, and Logan heard him think, Why?
"Because," Emma said out loud. "Kitty's about to go on."
Scott
Scott wound an arm around Emma's shoulder and rested his fingers at the base of her throat. Have I told you lately that I love you?
Honestly, darling. You're just saying that because I'm the only woman with her hand on your crotch right now. She danced her fingers over the fabric of his blue jeans, as though he needed reminding.
He breathed deeply and risked a foray into Emma-logic. Fine. I hate you.
"I knew it," Emma pronounced, out loud. She whisked her hand away and raised it to the table.
The gasp Scott gave out was not the sort of thing that could be executed voluntarily and at a subverbal level.
Logan's eyebrow went up. "Knew what?" Scott had the uneasy feeling the other man was aware of exactly what Emma's hands had been up to.
Emma, as usual, didn't miss a beat, but nodded at the stage where Kitty was singing – to use the word loosely – Hungry like the Wolf, as Peter sort of danced in the background. "She really is extremely bad."
"At least she keeps missing the cues," Hank observed, "so you can't really hear her half the time."
Realizing that Emma was done with him for the moment, Scott swallowed a sigh and looked at the ceiling where . . .a purple dragon was flying in a series of loops and twirls worthy of the Lafayette Escadrille. "What's Lockheed doing?"
"Trying to decide whether her owner is being tortured or possessed?" Emma suggested.
"As long as he doesn't attack the machine," said Scott. "We can't afford to pay for damages."
"Take it out of her paycheck." Emma cupped her hands over her mouth and called, "Go, Lockheed!" The dragon took this as a summons, and flew toward Emma who covered her head and hid against the table top. "Goddamit! Bloody hell, Scott. Blast that damn thing!"
Scott looked over Emma at the others, and pointed wordlessly at his glasses. Without the visor, he couldn't throw a blast if he wanted to, not without taking the ceiling off in the process.
Emma struck out blindly in the dragon's direction and knocked over her beer, which proceeded to splash onto her halter top. "Oh hell!" She looked down at the spreading stain. "This is a Marc Jacobs. It's definitely coming out of Kitty's check."
Hank handed her a napkin and judiciously pointed out, "She didn't do anything."
"Thank you, brilliant scientific mind." Emma rolled her eyes and started dabbing at the wet fabric. "And thank you, my supposed beloved, for not defending me from that thing." Emma glared at Lockheed, which sat on the table switching its tail. "It apparently has no brain and is thus immune to normal methods of persuasion." She narrowed her eyes at Scott, who was holding a hand over his mouth. "Are you laughing?"
There was really no point in denying the obvious, but sometimes a man had to try. "Not even a little bit.
She backhanded him on the shoulder. "Asshole," she said.
"Oww."
In the interlude of dragon-related drama, they had lost track of the singers. Kitty now bounced up behind Logan's chair and asked, "How were we?" Behind her, Peter shrugged apologetically.
"Unique," said Logan. "I guess it's my turn."
Logan was onstage, performing David Allen Coe's "perfect country and Western song," while Scott sat at the table thinking about sex. This was not really due to Logan half-singing/half-declaiming that he was "drunk the day my mom got out of prison." The song was actually a good choice to get the X-men back in the graces of the crowd. It didn't require a lot of vocal talent, but rewarded theatricality – which Logan, as much as he might try to play it off, clearly had in spades. Also, it had a singalong chorus.
By the second time around, Emma – who had obviously never heard the thing in her life, and probably didn't get the jokes – was bumping up against Scott and belting out "You don't have to call me darlin' – darlin'." She kept looking at him expectantly, as though he might join in. But he had already made a point that he wasn't going to sing and now that Emma was making an issue, this was turning into a matter of principle.
He shook his head. He wasn't going to sing for her, but he was glad she had dragged them out here, anyway. It was exactly what they all needed -- not more stress and gloom; just the chance to forget all that for a while. She had made the right decision as a team leader, lover, and friend, while Scott was too wrapped up in himself to realize the decision needed to be made. It was, in other words, exactly what Jean would have done. It felt strange to realize this -- not just that he had the thought, but that he could carry it so dispassionately; he could think this, and it didn't hurt.
He wasn't going to sing for Emma, but as soon as he got home, alone, he wanted to spend the next ten or twelve hours in bed with her, and nothing to do with a good night's sleep. None of this crawl-in-my-head-and-cure-my-nightmares,
fuck-me-until-the-Phoenix- is-gone madness, either. Just bodies, strong hungry bodies, minds staying to themselves for once. He might surprise her by asking for that. If he even could surprise her. If she wasn't listening to every one of this thoughts, already if she might even now be anticipating and thinking --
"Oh, God. If they put his picture up next to Dazzler, there's not going to be any living with him."
"Huh?" Scott asked, and Emma pointed up to the stage, where Logan was done with his song, but could hardly get down thanks to the manager -- who was pressing a pen and paper into his hands -- and a waiting queue of eager-looking young women. Scott frowned. "You think you should clear a psychic path for him or something?"
"I'm pretty sure Logan can handle a few fangirls," said Emma with a smirk.
"Aren't you next?" Scott looked down at her top, which was wet with the beer Lockheed had spilled. "Do you want to go up there with your shirt all wet?"
Logan wasn't there to snicker, so Kitty just coughed, and Emma breezily replied, "I'll be fine" – which, as Scott thought about it, seemed dangerously like a clue. The MC stepped up and Emma said, "This should be the slip I put in."
"Now, singing a song by the BeeGees," the man read – oh yes, there was another clue -- "it looks like we have –" he squinted at the paper "—Scott."
"Emma!" Scott groaned. Of course it served him right. He had sat right there and let her write his name, and he hadn't even checked on what she was doing.
"Come on, sweetie." She kissed his cheek. "I have faith. I just want to hear you."
"You win. You always win." He stood up and squeezed her shoulder. She had outstrategized him, and now that he had done his best to fight it, he wasn't sure he would mind so much, after all. "At least tell me what I'm singing."
"You know it." She flicked him on the arm. "Go break a bone."
"Leg."
"Oh, I'm not that picky." She shooed him toward the stage. "Go. See?" Emma turned to the others and he heard her say. "That wasn't so hard. It'll be good for him."
When Scott got to the stage, he made a show of how much he had to raise the microphone after Logan's performance, then took it in his hand and tried a stage smile. "Here goes nothing. This one is dedicated to –"
He looked at the screen, read the name of the song, and Emma's name stuck in his throat. He dropped his eyes, turned away from the table where his friends sat, and waited for the music to start.
TBC