Logan woke all at once as he usually did, breaching the barrier between sleep and wakefulness with no drowsy transition period. He took in his surroundings with other senses before he opened his eyes, sampling the air - standard motel fare - and catching the sound of irregular, labored exhalations not far from him. That oriented him to the moment. There was always an instant after he woke up wide when he was himself, but had to bring himself to the present.

Beside him in the next bed, Scott - back from the dead. He grunted, hefting himself up onto one elbow. The bedside clock said it only had been a couple of hours. He'd turned the television off when his eyelids had started to drag, noting as he did so that Slim's breathing had deepened into the regular rhythms of sleep.

Now he was awake and caught the soft but unmistakable sound that must have woken him in the first place - panting, followed by a smothered whimper. Nightmare. He rolled out of bed and stood in the narrow space between, caught up in the moment before inaction. On the one hand, there was no good way to wake a veteran, especially not one with Scott's range. On the other hand, leaving Slim to his nightmares when they were likely the caliber that gave even Logan the shudders wasn't something he could stomach. That made up his mind, and he leaned in.

"Scott," he said, taking firm hold of the boy -- no, man's shoulder, proof of another kind of the weight he'd lost. "Scott. Hey. Slim, c'mon."

With a choked sob, Scott surfaced from the stranglehold of his blankets, exploding up into Logan's arms. He rocked with the impact, fielding the armful of Scott as the man flailed against him. He rearranged them into a configuration less awkward, which turned out to be an embrace, and Scott panted against his shoulder. Logan's fingers curled against the man's hot nape and the other happened to fall on Scott's hip as he twisted, pushing against him, and Logan's eyes popped wide. Not a nightmare. "Scott," he began hoarsely, and one of Scott's hands was on his stomach, and the other hooked around his waist, and he was still wearing Logan's jeans, Logan's shirt, but the scent that rose off him like steam off roiling water was his own, and there was pain in him but lust, too, raw desire as he rolled against him, sobbing something under his breath. To all his instincts this was the perfume of a quick lay, need bundled in his arms and those hitched little breaths telling him to go for it, peel away the layer that separated them and give the man what he'd already started.

This was the decision point, where Logan's balls hadn't engaged yet but the way Slim was rubbing against him soon it would be a moot point. Scott's fingers brailled over his stomach, faltering over the skin under his shirt as if his eyes were still screwed shut the way he'd found him in the forest. And, hell, for Logan there was a lot he'd forgotten, probably a lot he'd never know about himself but sex had always been simple. Sex was sex and he took it from the willing. A man dreaming up a boner wasn't exactly consent.

"Scott," he said urgently, cupping one sharply-angled cheekbone. "C'mon, I'm not gonna--" He was going to say, I'm not going to take advantage, and his very brain patterns shied away from the mutual reason, but maybe that was what he should've dredged up.

"Shut up," Scott muttered, and he sounded lucid. Awake as if he'd been up for hours. He repeated, "Shut up," and caught his breath as his hand palmed over Logan's belt.

"Goddamn it," Logan rasped, and pushed him down to the bed. You wanna get off? the thought blazed reckless through his head, and Scott's scent had changed, it was all trembling pre-come and salt-edged desire and he unbuckled the belt that was clearly the only thing keeping Scott's jeans up over his hips. Fine, we're gonna do this thing. He almost laughed when he unzipped the jeans and Scott's cock sprang up into his hand unobstructed. He could wear Logan's clothes but not his underwear, huh? Or maybe that had been in the other duffel. That thought turned into a never-no-mind as Scott's hips bucked and Logan's hand closed around him, shifting to a secure grip as Scott's inhalations, the needy push of his hips and the jump of muscles in his thighs told Logan how fast to stroke, which angle, pulling moan after moan tumbling from Slim's lips.

Scott's fingers branded into Logan's upper arm as Logan leaned over him, jerking his cock in a fast, firm grip. He breathed hard on Scott's cheek and the man cried out, pumping into his hand with a strangled noise, his cock spurting uncontrollably. The hand on his arm clenched hard enough to leave bruises for anyone but him.

They panted in tandem for a long moment and Logan wiped at the spilled come with a corner of the sheet, gave it up as useless. At least it had mostly missed his jeans. He pushed a finger into his mouth and the salty-sourness spread over his tongue, musk bitter as tears that left an odd tang for aftertaste.

There was a groan beside him, and before Logan could apologize or formulate a thought in that direction fingers were delving into his jeans, unzipping, untucking, and the thick length of him was going down into a heated, slick-wet vise. He could see in the dark enough to look down at Scott's mouth stretched around his dick, working back and forth and taking the length with only a slight choke, feeding on it frantic as if Wolverine had popped a claw and told him to suck as if his life hung in the balance of the world's best blow job.

"Ahh...ah, god..." He cradled the back of Scott's head, touching the downy curling hairs at his nape and wallowed in sensation, the hot wet mouth stretching back and forth on over him, soft flesh at the back of the throat catching and dragging over the head of his cock.

It was an effort not to move, not to fuck into the sweet clench of tongue and jaw moving over him so rapid now he almost felt he was the one pushing into that. He groaned a warning and Scott withdrew enough for the head to remain on his tongue but nothing else and Logan was coming, thighs tensing, cupping sharp cheekbones in both hands as Scott sucked down every drop.

He wanted it. Logan returned to his sense of self, hands fisted on his jeans, as Scott scrambled away and hunched on the end of the bed, one foot dangling over the edge. Hell, Logan realized with a start, it hadn't been just Jean in that pairing he'd been attracted to. With Jean it had spilled over into heavy-handed flirting; with Scott, hostility. Only he hadn't realized until just then, breathing in Scott's sweat and tears and hunger, his desperation.

Logan opened his mouth, thought of a couple of bad things to say, one idiocy, and three tasteless jokes, then shut his mouth, sighing through his nose. He hefted himself from the bed and Scott loosed a quiet noise, covering his face with both hands.

Logan crossed the tiny motel room in a few strides and shut himself in the bathroom, heaving a few deep breaths. His cock was still wet, soft now but give him fifteen minutes, and he scowled. He stripped down and climbed into the shower and turned the water on cold, because the last thing he needed to do was beat off and think of the salty tang that still lingered on his tongue.

On the other side of the door he could hear the water running in the sink.

He groaned and cranked the water to its coldest setting. Just the fact that Slim was almost certainly brushing his teeth was association.

Long before the point where a normal person's skin would go pruney, he stepped out of the shower, toweled off, pulled his pants up again. He shuddered, recalling the moment his cock had slid into a talented mouth. He knew the difference between a crap blowjob and expertise, and Scott's mouth had told him plenty within a few seconds. Now he had to bury any hint of those thoughts and make believe real hard it had never been.

This wasn't what he'd come to do.

He squared his shoulders, eased the bathroom door open, sniffed the air outside, made a face... He cursed. "Scott?" he said, loud, but he already knew the lack from the shift in the very air.

Scott was gone.

"I'm not a hero," Logan told the empty bedroom. There was only so much he could take. He gave a long, serious thought to curling up in the bed he'd left not too long ago and making use of it for the rest of the night he'd already paid for.

He thought about the look on Scott's blind face, when he'd fixed in his direction before Logan had ever slipped on those glasses.

He could call up the look on his face even now, that shattered post-coital expression and totted that up with the fact of not having eaten enough to counterbalance his sudden drop in weight, plus fatigue and came up with an all-too-likely he didn't consider acceptable.

Logan bit off a particularly vile expletive and grabbed the car keys.