Adult Education: Dismissal
Chapter 1
by
Mo
Introduction: Okay, the first thing I have to explain is how this is not a sequel to Foreign Correspondence. I have to explain that because I said in the series introduction to Foreign Correspondence that there would not be a sequel.
Hmmm. This series isn't a sequel because it's really, really different than the others. It takes place a long time after Foreign Correspondence ends, for one thing. It doesn't deal with any of the issues I had been grappling with in FC and it doesn't tell anything about what happened to all the characters I left hanging. It doesn't do any fancy switching POV stuff that makes the reader work to figure out who the "I" is. It doesn't have email or phone sex. It doesn't even have emails or phone conversations without sex. It's just a four-part first-person-Scott series and it's just about Scott and Logan breaking up. And that's not a spoiler because Scott tells the reader in the first paragraph of the first story in the series.
Okay, but if I'm honest with myself (and I try to be) I have to admit it is connected to my previous work. It is consistent with the characters and relationships presented in
I Know What You Are
We're Not What You Think
Canadian Nights
Night and Day
Foreign Correspondence
Adult Education can be read on its own, but it does make reference to events that occurred in each of the above series.
Sequel: It's not a sequel. Really. It will have a sequel, working title "Continuing Education", told from Logan's point of view.
Literature Guide: A guide to literature referenced in both Adult Education and Continuing Education will be posted after the second series is complete.
Acknowledgements: As always, a great debt of thanks is due to LS and SW, tireless researchers, beta readers, and helpers of all kinds.
It happened so gradually that I couldn't even pinpoint a day when it was over. I'm not saying I wasn't paying attention. On the contrary, I was painfully aware that Logan was cooling towards me. We were spending less time together and the time we did spend was increasingly uncomfortable. As time went on, we were talking less, we weren't training together much, we weren't working on our Boswell project. It got to a point where we just weren't doing much of anything together other than sex. And after a while there wasn't much of that, either. But, still, I can't say that there was this day or that when we broke up. I just realized more and more - day by excruciating day ñ that he didn't want me any longer.
I think it was harder on me than it would have been if it had happened a year or two ago. Lately I had started to think that we might have a future together. When the Saskatchewan outpost became fully operational and Logan came here, I had such hopes for us. It looked like he'd be staying. For a while, anyway. And he settled in differently this time. He was much more a part of the life of the school than he had been previously. Sometimes he joined us at the faculty table for meals, although he more often ate with Marie or Oliver. He was getting to know more people, participating more, often coming with us on missions. He still spent a lot of time on his own and kept kind of weird hours, but he seemed to have found a good balance for himself between solitude and social contact.
Logan had even agreed to take over teaching some self-defense classes and proved to be a popular teacher, although one with a much deserved hard-ass reputation. He and Hank were talking about collaborating on developing a wilderness survival course. Hank would do the first aid and other medical topics and Logan would cover most of the other stuff ñ how to find or build shelter; how to escape detection; hunting and gathering food. Charles was all for the idea and encouraged them to plan it for next semester. He was less enthusiastic about Logan's plan for the final exam: dropping the kids in a remote location for two weeks and seeing who was left at the end.
Not only was Logan teaching classes ñ he was taking one. I was a little alarmed when he walked into my Advanced Poetry Seminar on the first day, mostly because I remembered the last time he had sat in on a class of mine. But he truly seemed to be there to learn. He said Oliver had talked him into it, saying he wanted to take another semester of poetry but didn't want to be the only guy in the class again. Logan told me Oliver also said he was resigned to being the only one in the class who was there for the subject matter, but judging by his smile when he said it, Logan made that part up. Anyway, he took the class very seriously. He didn't participate much in class discussions, but he read all the material and would talk to me afterwards about what was said in class and ask for further reading suggestions. And he wrote me a truly remarkable essay on imagery in the poetry of the Great War, interspersing his own experiences in that war with his discussion of those described in the poems.
We spent almost every night together, those first few months he was back. Well, never the whole night. He still wouldn't sleep with me. Ever since the nightmares came back he had decided it was too dangerous. I tried to talk him out of it, both because I felt sure he wouldn't hurt me and because I knew I could help him calm down if I were there when he woke from a nightmare, but he wouldn't budge. So, we didn't get to spend the whole night together and I missed that. But what we did have was wonderful. When I'd get back to my room in the evenings, after meetings or paperwork or rounds, he'd be there waiting for me. And so eager for it. The sex was amazing at first. We were both just so happy and excited to be together without a looming departure date or fear of discovery and it just freed us sexually, or something.
I'd stop at the door to my room, hand on the knob for a minute. Feeling a kind of frisson of sexual anticipation. And then walk in and Logan would be there. Pushing me against the closed door. Kissing me hard, pulling my clothes off, moving those wonderful hands of his all over me. Talking to me, right in my ear. "I want to fuck you, Cyclops. I want you so bad. I thought about it all day ñ could barely concentrate on what I was doing, thinking of being inside you, thinking of making you moan."
Often we'd do it the first time right there. He'd push me up against the door, fucking me hard. His hands on me, his voice in my ear. Or I'd get down on my knees and suck him off first. Then he'd get down on the floor with me, hard again, telling me to get on my hands and knees. He'd climb on top of me, lying on my back. Pushing hard inside me, making me come with his dick inside me, his hand around my hard-on, his mouth on my neck.
We always ended up in my bed, though. For more sex and to talk. I swear I don't know which was better ñ the sex or the conversation. We'd spend hours in bed together ñ trying to piece together chapters in his life from his growing memories, reviewing missions and talking about what we could have done differently, talking about the school or literature or the plight of mutants in different parts of the world. So many memorable conversations that I'll always have with me. And lots of memorable sex in among the conversations. It was wonderful to finally have him opening up to me like that, talking to me like he did with no one else. He laughed so hard one time when I told him he was the most talkative quiet guy I'd ever met. And then proved he hadn't totally lost his capacity for terseness by telling me to turn over.
I'd had some unease about Logan going on missions with us. I knew we could really use his skills. I remembered, though, that our one time with him under my command had been rough in spots, although ultimately successful. It seemed possible that the complexity of our relationship would make it harder for him to take orders from me. It was one thing to agree that sex was the only arena where I did what he told me to and quite another to enter into an activity where the roles were completely reversed. But Logan wasn't worried, and after a while I wasn't, either. He didn't challenge my authority while on a mission. He only argued with an order once, and the need that time was urgent ñ really, I think he saved us all. Other than that one time, he took orders without complaint, apparently had no trouble accepting my leadership. Afterwards, though, we'd do a private postmortem in bed. He'd suggest how things could be done differently and I always found I learned from his comments. He'd had so much more combat experience, in so many different settings, and had been on both the victorious side and the vanquished. We'd discuss different ways the mission could have been handled; argue it out sometimes. I didn't always end up agreeing with his views, but I always gained a lot from listening to him. And I glowed with pride the time I asked him after a mission what I could have done differently and he said, after a long pause, "Can't think of a thing." The Boswell project was coming along, aided by the returning dreams. He had developed a method that seemed to work for him. He'd stop taking the herbs and start dreaming again, telling me all about the dreams, trying to piece together what was memory and what was dream. Then he'd start taking the herbs again when he got to a point where he felt overwhelmed with it. A lot of what he was learning was exciting for him - when he started remembering his time working with Mac Hudson he was on a high from it for days. Other times he'd get all quiet and it would become clear that he was trying to process some disturbing memory before he talked to me about it. When that happened the conversation stopped short, although the sex continued in an almost compulsive way.
That didn't scare me like it used to. I knew now what mindless sex did for him and was just able to go with the flow, to wait until he was ready to talk and do what I could for him in the meantime. When he was in a bad way I felt confident that things would get better, for him as an individual and for us as a couple.
I was feeling that way about other issues, too, not just the funk he'd sometimes get in when a particularly disturbing memory resurfaced. If we had an argument - even a fairly rancorous one ñ or if I'd find myself backsliding a little in my progress towards being more open and honest about being gay, I didn't get into the panic I would have even a year ago. We had more of a history now. We had ways of getting over rough spots that we hadn't had when our relationship was new, when we hadn't understood each other so well and hadn't known what worked and what didn't. But more important than any particular methods of dealing with each other, we had the history itself. We knew we had been through really tough times before and come out of them stronger as a couple and that gave us the confidence that we could do it again, even if the troubles themselves were new. Well, it gave me the confidence, anyway. I thought at the time that Logan was equally confident, equally committed.
After a few months, though, he was getting really frustrated as the pace of recall slowed. He still had huge gaps in his memory and they just weren't going away. He continued to recall events he'd previously lost, but they were all from time periods he already knew a lot about. There were years and years when he had no idea what he had done or where he had been and he was finding that increasingly frustrating. He also confessed that the gaps scared him ñ he worried that something had happened that he wasn't remembering because he just couldn't face it. And couldn't imagine what could have been worse than what had happened during his Weapon X years.
So, it seemed like a good idea at the time to suggest that he go to Charles and ask him for help. I had no doubt that Charles could work his way through the recesses of Logan's brain and find whatever was lurking there. And I told Logan he could trust Charles to do so sensitively, to be fully aware of what Logan wanted him to find and what he didn't, and to maintain confidentiality about the things he did find out. I probably should have thought a little more about Charles's lingering doubts about my relationship with Logan, but I really didn't think that was relevant. And I guess I've been so accustomed to turning to him in times of trouble that it never occurred to me to think whether Charles's own feelings might interfere with his ability to help Logan. To help Logan and me, together.
I did notice that Logan spent less time with me once he started working with Charles and that the time he did spend with me he was less and less communicative. It didn't worry me at first ñ I looked on it as another rough patch, brought on by whatever Charles was helping him remember. I figured it would work itself out, that Logan would talk to me about it when he was ready, as he had before. Then things got worse. Logan was actively avoiding me. If he was finding comfort in mindless sex it certainly wasn't with me. After a while it became clear that this wasn't just a rough spot. Logan wasn't interested in being with me any more. I still didn't connect that to Charles.
I decided I had to do something when I hadn't even seen Logan for a couple of days, and hadn't spent any time alone with him for close to two weeks. I was determined to confront him about what had happened to us even though I had little hope it would do any good. He had cooled towards me both gradually and thoroughly and it seemed unlikely that was going to change. But I wanted to understand to the best of my ability what had happened. Had he just gotten bored? Had I done something wrong? Was there someone else?
So this time I went to his room at night, asked him if we could talk. "I don't feel much like talking right now," he said, sitting in the chair by the bed. In a dead voice, inscrutable expression on his face, not looking at me. I got down on my knees in front of him, put my hands on his legs. "Not that, either," he said, head turned away.
"Please, Logan. It's been a long time. Let me. I'll make you feel good, I promise." Stroking his thighs now, nuzzling him through his pants, feeling him getting hard. He didn't say anything but he looked at me now, sadly. I unzipped him, started sucking him slowly. I knew without him telling me he meant it to be the last time ñ knew from the way he touched my head and face while I did him, and the rest of me afterwards when we ended up in his bed. Like he was trying to touch every inch of me, trying to create a permanent memory of what I felt like. He didn't say anything while we were having sex and turned away from me afterwards.
I lay there behind him, started to rub his shoulders. He didn't lean into me like he used to, didn't tell me it felt good, but he didn't tell me to stop, either. Finally, I asked him. "Why, Logan? Why don't you want me any more? What happened to us?"
He didn't answer for a long time. "It's not that I don't want you," he said, finally. "It's not you. It's just me."
"What do you mean?"
"You need someone who can love you, really care. And I can't. I've really tried, Scott, but I just don't have it in me. I told you before ñ they took that from me. "
"It's okay," I told him. "I don't need a lot of declarations of love. I told you I can do without that. I've learned to read what silent love hath writ."
"It's not just saying it. It's living it, feeling it. For a while there I thought I could get over it, but I can't. I'm damaged goods, Scott. And some damage just doesn't heal. Not enough to give you what you need."
"What I need is you, Logan. I'll take what you can give. Being with you is enough for me. I don't need anything more." I tried to keep my voice calm.
He shook his head. "No, Scott. Maybe it feels like that now, but it's not enough. It's not going to be enough, not long term. Better a clean break than just letting it drag out."
I didn't argue with him. I was angry, furious even, but not with him. Oh, I know Charles almost never uses his mind control powers, that he only does when he truly needs to. I didn't think he was controlling Logan's mind now, not in that direct way. Still, those had been Charles's words coming out of Logan's mouth, just as much as if he had been.
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