On the Edge

by Minisinoo

He was chasing the sunset around the globe. There was no reason for it, no need to test the Blackbird. He knew the machine was operating at peak efficiency. Hank McCoy kept it that way, if Summers couldn't himself. Right now, he was flying just because he wanted to see the sun never set. Because he needed to feel the Blackbird respond beneath his hands. The rest of his life might be a fucking mess, his relationship with Jean headed into a death spiral, but his black lady still loved him. She still opened out when he hit the throttle, the force of her thrumming through his teeth and sternum when he pushed her to the edge of her envelope. Her speed pulled his skin, made him sweat inside his flight suit from the sheer power. He could feel that tickle-rush of potency vibrate through his pilot seat, through his lap, through his groin. It gave him a hard-on.

He'd never told Jean about that aspect of flying. There were some things he just didn't know how to explain ­ not in a way that she'd understand.

And wasn't that a lot of their problem, right now?

Don't think about it. Be Cyclops. Be a jet pilot. Feel the power of the plane around him, Pratt and Whitney J-58 air-breathing turbo-ramjets that pushed him through the pressure waves at three times the speed of sound, and hit a roof of eighty thousand where he couldn't have breathed if not for the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Higher than the eagles. In the stratosphere, the sky was black, the sun sparking bright through his visor. Maybe if he flew high enough, God would talk to him.

He had a lot of questions.

But for now, the questions could wait. For now, it was enough to chase the sun and ride the woman who still loved him, feel her respond to the subtlest touch of his hands.

He twitched the throttle to the side and peeled the plane left and down in a white gust of exhaust, then centered his orientation and spun her in a controlled corkskrew descent. And here, where no one could hear him, Cyclops, Fearless Leader of the X-Men, let out a whoop of sheerest joy. "Ow!" Reaching a new ceiling, thirty-thousand lower, he leveled out the plane and continued to fly west. Upside down.

Sometimes life needed a new perspective.

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