Chapter Text
This fuckin' place.
This.
Fucking.
Place.
At least it’s quiet right now …or relatively so. It’s getting late; during the day the school is a madhouse – no, not the fun kind.
…then there’s Jimmy.
“You just gonna keep coming around unannounced?”
Yadda, yadda, yadda. He can complain all he wants, but he and his Nerd Brigade friends don’t turn down any information Victor kicks their way, do they? No. So the holier-than-thou bullshit doesn’t pass muster.
“I might,” Victor shrugs. “Gotta keep an eye on you, Jimmy…”
Which is more true than he cares for.
He should’ve kept his mouth shut, probably. But this fucking place. It always gets his hackles up, and not just because a powerful-ass spook runs the place. That matters, obviously, but then there’s the mess that surrounds Wolverine and all these reminders of what he’d never had and… …and the place dredges up a lot of shit, is the thing.
And what good has that ever done any-fucking-body?
But here he is.
“Don’t call me that”
Good god, his buttons have always been easy to find.
It’s not as though Logan doesn’t know his proper name. They’re on the damn dog tags that are surgically attached to the man’s neck.
“Come on, Jimmy…you know how it is,” Victor smarms because if he has to be uncomfortable then he’s not going to bear it alone. “Gotta come around every now and then in case your memory goes on the fritz again — wouldn’t want you to have to track me down a second time. Come knocking on my door for information.”
The other mutant scowls.
He never seems able to appreciate the fact that Victor had pointed him in some very informative directions. And maybe he’d withheld the extent of his personal knowledge until the Runt could put some pieces together on his own, but the fact remains that Victor had helped. Big time.
Logan has never quite condescended to a “thank you” but he hasn’t forgotten either. He doesn’t actually run Victor off on-sight like he always threatens to. Doesn’t ignore every word that comes out of his mouth. Doesn’t pretend the two aren’t connected at a very base level.
You know – all that cute and fuzzy family shit.
“The hell do you even want?” Logan moves on.
Victor smirks.
“Maybe I just need a warm meal and a bed to sleep in, huh?”
“There’s trees out back,”Logan jerks his head toward a window. “You can survive in the wilderness.”
True.
“Gotta say I’m shocked by your hosp–” Victor catches a scent diffusing into the space, and he snaps his head around.
There you are.
At the top of the stairs and half tucked behind the wall like you hadn’t fully committed to wanting to make yourself known.
It’s definitely you, though. You look less pale than when he dropped you off. Less like a sad ragdoll, too, which can only be a good sign.
“Hi,” your greeting is hardly more than a whisper, but his ears catch the sound as well as the quiver of a wave you send down at him.
Victor ticks his chin, just as unfamiliar with this protocol as you are.
You linger there, chewing on your lip and watching him. Deep in thought. Conflicted, maybe, like you’re thinking about saying more. He doesn’t offer to help you figure shit out. He’s curious to see if you’ll come down, though to hell if he’s clear whether he actually wants you to.
Someone calls your name, and your face flickers away to look down the hall. When you look back again, there’s something close to a smile on your face. Your eyes dart between him and Logan a couple times before you wave one more time and disappear.
Victor has no clue if he’s disappointed or not.
“Who the hell is she to you?”
Ugh.
The Runt.
“I’ve already answered that question”
Multiple times, in fact, and in detail. Too bad if Ole Wolverine doesn’t buy it. Baldy does He’s kept you these last few months. Has taken you in like a sheep to his flock or what-the-fuck-ever.
“Yeah. You have, and something stinks…”
Victor shrugs.
“What’s she say?”
Logan clucks his tongue.
“Nothing much…same story as you,” he begrudgingly admits.
Yeah because it’s the fucking truth.
Victor had never met you a day in his life before stumbling across you in some sorry-ass basement out West. He shouldn’t have cared – scratch that, he didn’t care. Absolutely not. He’d just…noticed some things. Frantic eyes. Underfed. Abandoned. The ‘M’ someone had carved into your wrist. How you were cuffed up to a support beam and huddled into yourself, looking just like….
Well.
He’d been pissed.
Seen red.
He certainly hadn’t cared, though.
He’d been simmering with barely-contained rage when he’d growled at you, asking if you wanted to get the fuck out of there.
You’d choked on your frenzied “yes!” and drew a tearful breath to try again, but he didn’t wait to hear it. Didn’t need to. The bike chain someone had fashioned into a manacle was like a twig in his grip.
He’d had you packed up in his truck before he processed the fact that he didn’t know what to actually do with you.
So, no. You’re not anyone to him.
You’re just …someone.
“Then you’ve already got your answer,” Victor shrugs. “If you don’t like it, that’s on you… …how’s she doing?”
The other man’s visage morphs into something stubborn that Victor knows well. Maybe a little smug, too, to be the one with the information now.
“ Or …I could go barging upstairs to ask her myself,” Victor offers. “Give all the little kiddies a thrill, yeah?”
Or fucking heart attacks.
This place usually gets good and twittery when he drops in.
“She’s good,” Logan deigns to answer, glancing up the stairs after you. “She told Chuck about her past. He tracked down some old school records – she never finished, so she’s getting shit set for her GED.”
Huh.
“How old is she?” Victor frowns.
Logan looks surprised. Like he’s genuinely puzzled Victor has to ask, that he doesn’t already know – the paranoid little shit can’t just believe a thing.
Then the smug look returns.
“Old enough she should’ve graduated by now.”
Little shit, indeed.
But…duly noted.
Victor can at least feel a little less twisted – but, ya know, not a lot given who he is– knowing you’re an adult.
It wasn’t until Victor had paid for a shitty hotel and ushered you inside to shower and eat that he’d noticed how you smell. How you actually smell. Under the blood and fear and, uh, general stink, which you had (mostly) washed down the drain.
Something.
Something .
Something he can’t identify from his long history of honing his senses. Something he doesn’t understand….but still feels the urge to be close to.
Which, hello!, should be setting off alarm bells. As a general rule, he discards things he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t keep them around. He doesn’t even tuck them away at a school where they’ll be safe with someone else.
Or.
Heh. Ya know.
Victor doesn’t usually do that.
Jimmy-Logan doesn’t seem to think you smell like anything out of the ordinary.
Then again, sometimes Jimmy is very obtuse.
“It’s good,” he concludes, albeit awkwardly. “...that she’s good.”
A silent but bushy eyebrow is quirked up at him in answer. In some kind of judgment, no doubt.
“I wanna talk to the Old Man,” he ignores the gesture completely.
“About her? ” Jimmy-Logan snorts. “Yeah – no. He doesn’t do that.”
Hmm. Duly noted, again.
“No, not about her”
“...about what?”
“Sorry, are you the cue ball on wheels?” Victor drawls; then, because he can only assume the telepath is listening-in from somewhere: “C’mon Xavier….”
Logan sighs.
“He doesn’t do that either … …c’mon…”
He is clearly being led to the Professor against someone’s better judgment, but Victor doesn’t care as long as he gets what he wants.
He glances back over his shoulder at the stairs one more time.
You’re not there.