A Lesson In Business

by Alestar

In this business, you don't have the luxury of equating successes with eventual failures or failures with slow successes. In this business, you take everything as immediate, as winning or losing. but I haven't always been a hero.

I got lifetimes of beginnings and endings-- dying, moving on, taking new names. And all of it eventually dumps into one moment, this moment, leaning against my jeep, damp November. The leaves drip orange from the sky, onto the ground where they brown the grass. My colors. Kurt's talking to the Cardinal-- Asdell, something. They're making plans and arrangements, saying goodbyes, and Kurt's holding a small suitcase. The Cardinal reaches up and squeezes Kurt's shoulder.

When you're young, you always want to think in terms of successes and failures. Everything is a sharp turn, is the one place you're going to be living for the rest of your life. Because youth is a series of stops and starts, maybe. I don't know. I wouldn't know anything about being young. I look up the sky and let go of a long breath. Don't I feel old.

Or something. Don't I feel something.

"Don't look so happy to see me, mein freund."

I grin at the smell of bamf, and look over at Kurt, standing beside me. "Ya know how I hate to be kept waitin'."

"I do," he says. He throws his luggage into the back of the jeep, and then looks back at the church, looks at me looking at it. "It is beautiful, ja?" he says, wistfully.

"Sure is," I half-nod. "How's yer trainin' coming?"

"Training," he smiles. "I would not call it such. I'm learning the rules and ways, that's true-- but mostly I am learning to see life anew." His hand comes out to touch my arm and his face shines. "Anew, Logan!"

I nod and say, "We better hit it if we're gonna be home by dark."

***

Kurt was the first X-Man I met, aside from Charlie. I climbed on the plane, heading away from my home with Heather and James and all the government bullshit, and there was him, curled up on the seat, looking uncertain and his hand half-lifting in a greeting. Charlie introduced him as Nightcrawler, and me as Wolverine. The man sleeping in the back, he said, was Colossus-- and the pilot was Cyclops.

I sat a few seats away from him, and a couple of minutes after take-off he moved over and said, in a low voice, "My name is Kurt Wagner." My rough edges were rougher then, so I lit a cigar and said, "An' mine's Wolverine."

But those were days when a friend was anyone who lasted more than a week in my company without killing or being killed, and Kurt was never one to back down from anyone, least of all me. So we went to Krakoa, and we got back and had a beer, and we were friends. Me and this polite, evil-looking guy.

We were friends, and in this business everyone is more than friends, because everything that happens to us really is cataclysmic. So Kurt and me were more than friends. We were, regardless-- and then one night we'd been out drinking off some mission, and I was soft from listening to him laugh at nothing all evening, and we fell into each other-- and when we realized nothing'd changed, we figured it was official.

And it's not like, when there was Amanda or Mariko, we made eye contact less. It wasn't like that.

It's still not like that. Which is why I don't exactly get why I'm driving with my eyes straight ahead on the road, nodding whenever Kurt says something, taking short tight drags off the stogie. It's probably just the wet stone of that church parking lot. Just one more ending that I don't want to do.

"This isn't-- an ending, Logan."

I look over at him. "The hell it ain't. But I don't begrudge you that."

His arms are crossed, he's frowning. "I think that you do."

That's the last talking we do in the jeep.

***

We didn't really do the morning after. We woke up in my room-- my old room, this was years ago, it's Rogue's room now-- I was slumped against a pile of pillows and he was stretched out along the foot of the bed, his tail curled around my wrist, my hand. His eyes blinked open and he sat up, he looked at me, and I was looking at him, and then he looked down at himself and laughed, blushed a deep royal blue, covered his face with a hand and said, "oh." That was about as weird as it got, which wasn't very.

The next time it happened was shyer, because he hadn't been drinking and I hadn't been flirting. We were in Scotland, on Muir, waiting for the Professor to finish some sort of business, and I was perched on a rock watching the ocean-- then there was the smell of sulfur and he was sitting on the rock beside me.

He said, "Alright, mein freund, try this one."

I said, "I'm not listenin' to any more a'yer bad jokes, elf."

"No, no, this is better."

"Fine," I said, making no face.

"Okay, so. There is a hunter, who is hunting for raccoons, and he and his dogs chase one up a tree. and then. Wait. Alright-- there is a monkey, before the hunter left his house, his wife brought him a monkey. So the raccoon is in the tree, and the hunter brings out the monkey, who is wearing a baseball cap, and he tells the monkey, 'you must go up this tree and get the raccoon, and I will give you a banana,' and so the monkey climbs up the tree." He paused. "Okay. No, actually, this isn't better. Nevermind."

"Ya gotta give this up, elf."

He grinned, and I laughed. He said, "I know."

And then he leaned over and kissed my shoulder, and I looked over at him and he glanced back at me-- and the ocean was always mostly grey and pale blue from Muir Island, but it seemed bright then, and the light bounced off his shaking, laughing body for hours, and that was just something we were always good at. Meeting in the middle, understanding what the other was saying. Being together and being uncomplicated.

I'm watching the Pistons game in the den, thinking about it, and he walks in. He says, "Logan," reprimandingly, and it softens me more because I know that there are people in the world who're allowed to take that tone with me.

He says, "There is no reason for this."

"'Scuse me," I say. "Ya've been an X-Man fer five years, I figured you could handle a few pieces a'luggage on yer own."

"I don't want you to help me with my luggage."

"What do ya want?"

"I want you to be happy for me! I have found something that I love."

I look at him.

After a moment, his chin lifts and he says, "I mean that I have found another thing that I love." He moves closer to me and I allow it. I'm sitting at the end of the couch, leaned against the arm, anyway-- and like he said, there's no reason for this. "Is that what this is about, mein freund?"

I look back at the tv, shake my head. "There's no this. Yer gonna be a priest. You've wanted it for a while. I'm happy for ya. We're all behind ya on this. You know that."

Kurt leans into the couch sideways, the side of his face resting back on the cushion, gaze soft in my peripheral vision. "but," he says.

I snort. There is no reason for this. "You can't do both. The lines don't cross. You can't be a soldier and a holy man."

His hand settles on my arm, he ducks his head closer. He says, "A soldier? Is that all I am to you?"

"that's a fuckin' stupid question, Kurt."

"Then what does it matter, Logan? so I won't be a soldier anymore. So what?"

I shake my head again. Still looking at the tv. "There are plenty a'other things you won't be when you're a priest."

His hand is curled around my arm, holding, now, and his mouth is an inch from my shoulder when he says, "I am not replacing you."

The remote is on the end-table beside the couch, but I get up, I stand and go over to the TV and shut it off manually. I turn around.

"That's what it's called. When ya finish with something and you put it away, an' go get somethin' else. Yer replacing it. There's nothing wrong with that, it's what life is. but don't pansy-ass around it."

Kurt stands, follows me, stands in front of me. Says, "Fine, I am replacing. But I am not replacing you. I am replacing myself." He puts his hand back on my arm, and I can see past the frustration and confusion in his eyes to the hurt. He says, "If you feel any kind of loss here, Logan, it is because you have made the decision that you are not interested in knowing the man I'm trying to become."

"Knowing."

"loving."

I bring my hand up soft around his wrist. "Is that what I've done?" He smiles sadly.

"I don't know."

"change means death in this business," I say, quietly.

His arms come up around me, his mouth presses onto the side of my face and he says, "it's a good thing I'm changing my business."

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