“You’re fucking kidding me!” Logan snapped, after boarding the jet, only to find Scott was no longer on board waiting for them.

“You two stay here, we’ll go find him,” Ororo said with a sigh, Scott certainly wasn’t acting like himself right now and it was bizarre.

“Why don’t Logan and I go,” Jean suggested, “I’ll get his attention and Logan can find him and get us both back if anything goes wrong,” she pointed out placatingly to the other women when they tried to object.

“That is a good plan,” Logan replied, though grudgingly. He placed Marie in a seat, kissed her gloved hand, and implored her to stay, and for both the other women to keep the ramp locked tight in the hopes they didn’t attract attention.

“We’ll be fine Logan,” Ororo replied, sharing a smirking look with Jean before the other woman turned to follow Logan back outside.

Logan quickly picked up Scott’s trail, and lead the pair back toward town at a brisk pace. He was grumbling to himself almost the entire way, a fact Jean didn’t bring up once, though she did smile serenely to herself. She had always known Logan was more attached to the young girl, now a young woman, they had just left behind than he would ever admit. She had even discussed it with Charles once, why Logan was so standoffish even with people he liked. Charles had found the subject amusing, telling her that was simply Logan’s nature, a self protective instinct. It seemed he was finally done hiding behind self-preservation where the young woman was concerned.

“How is Scott?” Jean asked suddenly, as she noted they were now heading directly for what appeared to be a bar.

“He watched his fiancée die, how do you think he is?” Logan snapped gruffly. “He’s being more of a pain in the ass than usual,” he added, “He’s hurting, he didn’t believe us when we told him about Rogue’s phone call and that we were going you pick you guys up, when you weren’t waiting for us where Rogue said you’d meet us he decided it a was a trap or a decoy and packed an even bigger sad, that’s why he wasn’t with us. We told him to damn well stay put though, just what we need right now is him attracting those fucking freaks again.”

As he finished his muttered tirade he pulled open the bar door, holding out a hand to stop Jean for a moment. “Stay close, this place is rough,” Logan warned, before he let her through the door a step ahead of him.

They scanned the room quickly, both spotting an unusually tousled head of hair that belonged to Scott Summers. He was sitting at the bar, a pyramid of shot glasses in front of him.

“Great, he’s fucking plastered,” Logan grumbled some more, making his way over to the man.

“Scooter, time to go,” Logan commented, clapping him on the shoulder, which caused his hand to slip where he was adding another glass to his stack and send the whole lot of them tumbling down.

“Fuck off Logan,” Scott snapped in response.

“Get a load of this guy, seems to think I was giving him a choice,” Logan quipped to Jean, though before he could make any move to drag the other man out of his seat Jean laid a hand on his arm.

“Let me try,” she suggested, before sliding in beside Scott to lean against the bar.

“Hey stranger, haven’t seen this guy in a long while,” Jean commented with a smile. She couldn’t see but she could sense Scott’s disbelief at what he was hearing, even as he refused to look directly at her. “If I recall correctly, the last time I saw this guy was about seven years ago, when I was on a date with Steven, and this poor, sorry looking young man just happened to be at the same club, getting toasted, took me a while to get him to crack too that time, something about the girl he was in love with was going out with someone else because he was too much of a coward to tell her he was in love with her,” Jean teasingly shared, watching with a smirk as Scott’s head slowly lifted and his eyes met hers through his glasses.

“Heh... great, now I’m fucking hallucinating,” Scott muttered, before grabbing a fresh shot.

Logan, who had been watching the other patrons around them for signs of trouble, suddenly turned around. “We don’t have time for this, times up for the nice way, One-eye, we’re leaving,” he demanded, pulling Scott off his stool.

“Fuck you, Logan,” Scott snapped in return, drunkenly trying to extract himself from Logan’s grasp.

“Sorry bub, you’re not my type,” Logan quipped, “And that wasn’t a request, either you walk out of here under your own power or I haul your ass out, trouble’s coming and we’ve all seen enough of that for one day,” Logan told him matter of factly.

Before Scott could do more than open his mouth to say something snarky again Logan smacked him one, carefully, knocking him out, before catching him and hoisting him over his shoulder.

“Sorry kid, who would have ever known you were more annoying without the stick up your ass, and drunk to boot, abso-fucking-lutely amazing,” Logan grunted, as he headed for the door, motioning for Jean to stay close.

Jean noticed, as they headed out, that several people in the room were watching them very closely, and not in a nice way. One, who shot her a dirty look, was on a cell phone; if she had to guess, calling in back up.